tape, too, “Pay no attention. She’s just another member of the Ruling Class.”
So the Board of Trustees would want to know what it was, exactly, that I had against the Ruling Class.
I didn’t say so back then, but I am perfectly happy to say now that the trouble with the Ruling Class was that too many of its members were nitwits like Kimberley.
ONE THEORY I had about her snooping was that she was titillated by my reputation as the campus John F. Kennedy as far as sex outside of marriage was concerned.
If President Kennedy up in Heaven ever made a list of all the women he had made love to, I am sure it would be 2 or 3 times as long as the one I am making down here in jail. Then again, he had the glamour of his office, and the full cooperation of the Secret Service and the White House Staff. None of the names on my list would mean anything to the general public, whereas many on his would belong to movie stars. He made love to Marilyn Monroe. I sure never did. She evidently expected to marry him and become First Lady, which was a joke to everybody but her.
She eventually committed suicide. She finally found life too embarrassing.
I STILL HARDLY knew Kimberley when she appeared in the bel tower on Graduation Day. But she was chatty, as though we were old, old pals. She was still recording me, although what she already had on tape was enough to do me in.
She asked me if I thought the speech Paul Slazinger, the Writer in Residence, gave in Chapel had been a good one. This was probably the most anti-American speech I had ever heard He gave it right before Christmas vacation, and was never agair seen in Scipio. He had just won a so-called Genius Grant from the MacArthur Foundation, $50,000 a year for 5 years. On the same night of his speech he bugged out for Key West, Florida
He predicted, I remember, that human slavery would come back, that it had in fact never gone away. He said that so man) people wanted to come here because it was so easy to rob the poor people, who got absolutely no protection from the Gov ernment. He talked about bridges falling down and water mains breaking because of no maintenance. He talked about oil spills and radioactive waste and poisoned aquifers and looted banks and liquidated corporations. “And nobody ever gets punishec for anything,” he said. “Being an American means never having to say you’re sorry.”
On and on he went. No matter what he said, he was stil going to get $50,000 a year for 5 years.
I said to Kimberley that I thought Slazinger had said some things which were worth considering, but that, on the whole he had made the country sound a lot worse than it really was and that ours was still far and away the best one on the planet
She could not have gotten much satisfaction from that reply
WHAT DO I myself make of that reply nowadays? It was an inane reply.
SHE ASKED ME about my own lecture in Chapel only a month earlier. She hadn’t attended and so hadn’t taped it. She was seeking confirmation of things other people had said I said. My lecture had been humorous recollections of my maternal grandfather, Benjamin Wills, the old-time Socialist.
She accused me of saying that all rich people were drunks and lunatics. This was a garbling of Grandfather’s saying that Capitalism was what the people with all our money, drunk or sober, sane or insane, decided to do today. So I straightened that out, and explained that the opinion was my grandfather’s, not my own.
“I heard your speech was worse than Mr. Slazinger’s,” she said.
“I certainly hope not,” I said. “I was trying to show how outdated my grandfather’s opinions were. I wanted people to laugh. They did.”
“I heard you said Jesus Christ was un-American,” she said, her tape recorder running all the time.
So I unscrambled that one for her. The original had been another of Grandfather’s sayings. He repeated Karl Marx’s prescription for an ideal society, “From each
So the Board of Trustees would want to know what it was, exactly, that I had against the Ruling Class.
I didn’t say so back then, but I am perfectly happy to say now that the trouble with the Ruling Class was that too many of its members were nitwits like Kimberley.
ONE THEORY I had about her snooping was that she was titillated by my reputation as the campus John F. Kennedy as far as sex outside of marriage was concerned.
If President Kennedy up in Heaven ever made a list of all the women he had made love to, I am sure it would be 2 or 3 times as long as the one I am making down here in jail. Then again, he had the glamour of his office, and the full cooperation of the Secret Service and the White House Staff. None of the names on my list would mean anything to the general public, whereas many on his would belong to movie stars. He made love to Marilyn Monroe. I sure never did. She evidently expected to marry him and become First Lady, which was a joke to everybody but her.
She eventually committed suicide. She finally found life too embarrassing.
I STILL HARDLY knew Kimberley when she appeared in the bel tower on Graduation Day. But she was chatty, as though we were old, old pals. She was still recording me, although what she already had on tape was enough to do me in.
She asked me if I thought the speech Paul Slazinger, the Writer in Residence, gave in Chapel had been a good one. This was probably the most anti-American speech I had ever heard He gave it right before Christmas vacation, and was never agair seen in Scipio. He had just won a so-called Genius Grant from the MacArthur Foundation, $50,000 a year for 5 years. On the same night of his speech he bugged out for Key West, Florida
He predicted, I remember, that human slavery would come back, that it had in fact never gone away. He said that so man) people wanted to come here because it was so easy to rob the poor people, who got absolutely no protection from the Gov ernment. He talked about bridges falling down and water mains breaking because of no maintenance. He talked about oil spills and radioactive waste and poisoned aquifers and looted banks and liquidated corporations. “And nobody ever gets punishec for anything,” he said. “Being an American means never having to say you’re sorry.”
On and on he went. No matter what he said, he was stil going to get $50,000 a year for 5 years.
I said to Kimberley that I thought Slazinger had said some things which were worth considering, but that, on the whole he had made the country sound a lot worse than it really was and that ours was still far and away the best one on the planet
She could not have gotten much satisfaction from that reply
WHAT DO I myself make of that reply nowadays? It was an inane reply.
SHE ASKED ME about my own lecture in Chapel only a month earlier. She hadn’t attended and so hadn’t taped it. She was seeking confirmation of things other people had said I said. My lecture had been humorous recollections of my maternal grandfather, Benjamin Wills, the old-time Socialist.
She accused me of saying that all rich people were drunks and lunatics. This was a garbling of Grandfather’s saying that Capitalism was what the people with all our money, drunk or sober, sane or insane, decided to do today. So I straightened that out, and explained that the opinion was my grandfather’s, not my own.
“I heard your speech was worse than Mr. Slazinger’s,” she said.
“I certainly hope not,” I said. “I was trying to show how outdated my grandfather’s opinions were. I wanted people to laugh. They did.”
“I heard you said Jesus Christ was un-American,” she said, her tape recorder running all the time.
So I unscrambled that one for her. The original had been another of Grandfather’s sayings. He repeated Karl Marx’s prescription for an ideal society, “From each
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