Dear Steven Hart:                                                                      January 20, 2012

I’ve had an on-and-off interest in public transport, and so occasionally seek books on the subject to read.  Your book isn’t about public transport, but it is in the same section in the library.  That’s how I came across it when I was seeking books on the former.  Since the book was concise and seemed highly readable, I borrowed it.
Having grown up in New York after emigrating there from my native Hong Kong, I knew the book would bring back memories.  The first time I recalled seeing the Pulaski Skyway was 30 years ago when I took the PATH train from Manhattan to Newark for the first time.  After the train left Journal Square, it hit open country (or should I say the some of the grimier parts of Jersey).  When the train crossed a river, I saw a long black bridge some distance away and thought, What an ugly bridge!  I was looking at the Pulaski Skyway.  I tried to find it on the PATH map that I picked up at the World Trade Center Station (the one that gives a 3D bird’s eye view of Lower Manhattan and vicinity.  The skyway is shown, but (if I remember correctly) it didn’t look as ugly on the map.
Later, after I’d learned to drive, my father advised me that if I was heading south on the NJTP, I shouldn’t take the turnpike (Newark Bay) extension, or I-78, right after I exit the Holland Tunnel.  Instead, I should take US1-9 South, which would put me on the skyway, and enter the NJTP at Exit 13A rather than Exit 14, saving a few cents.
Your description of Frank Hague (whom I’d never heard of before picking up your book) and his hardball brand of politics make much of today’s politics look tame.  With union-busting Dems like Hague, who needs Republicans?
I’ve never really visited Jersey City, treating it as a transit point rather than a destination (similar to what you said about the entire state).  But I’ve visited other parts of Jersey, like a family friend’s home in Nutley that my family used to visit every year.  In fact, despite having seen the grimy areas of Jersey as I passed through them on the PATH train, I didn’t regard Jersey as a dump when I was younger.  Instead, I regarded it (at least the parts I visited) as a safe haven away from New York, which I saw as a place to escape from rather than the unofficial capital of the world.
Well, I finally did escape New York, having returned to Hong Kong over ten years ago.  But while you can take me out of America, you can’t take America out of me – at least not entirely.  That’s why I try to keep up with news in New York as best as I can.
A few copies of your book sit on the shelves of Hong Kong’s various libraries.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the first to borrow my copy.  I don’t know when I’ll return to New York for a visit, but if I do, I may pencil down a trip to Jersey City on my itinerary.  It’s only a train ride away.  I’m sure it’s doable in a day.

Sincerely,

I find it very cool to think that The Last Three Miles is available to read in Hong Kong libraries.

January morning idyll, taken in 2009. I hate using flashes — it’s natural light or nothing, for me. Sadie’s usual look of indignation contrasts nicely with the dreaminess of Dances With Mermaids.

“The way you’re glaring at Gandhi,” Lynne said, “it’s like he owes you money.”

“It’s that line about forgiveness,” Theresa said. “It’s pissing me off like you wouldn’t believe.”

Lynne’s hair was an infinite variety of gray strands, light and dark, swirling across the shoulders of her black cardigan. Her face was lined and creased with decades-old smiles, and her heavy-lidded eyes were bright and curious. Theresa guessed her age at late sixties. Theresa devoutly hoped she would look that good when she was pushing seventy.

“Let’s talk about that,” Lynne said.

Theresa reached across the table and pulled a sheaf of tissues from the cardboard box. “I guess it’s because of the first counselor I went to, after everything happened,” she said. “Did the county people tell you about me?”

“Some. It’s better to hear it from you.”

“I got jumped,” Theresa said.

“You mean attacked?”

“Yeah.”

“Sexually attacked?”

“Raped,” Theresa said. “I was raped.”

“Was it . . .”

“There were five of them. They jumped me as I was getting to my car and they took me to an out-of-the-way spot and they made an all-night party out of me.” She automatically touched the scar along her lower lip, and the counselor’s eyes followed the movement. “Three of them had wedding rings on. They were slapping me and punching me, doing the most disgusting things to me, and I kept fixating on those wedding rings. Can you believe it?”

Lynne nodded.

“So the first rape counselor, it started out okay,” Theresa continued. “She, uh . . . she . . . had some good advice at first.” She clutched the used tissues in her left hand and groped for more with the other. “She pushed me to be, you know, physically active, get back to doing physical things, as a way to reclaim my body. That was the best advice she gave me.”

“What happened then?”

“She started throwing Jesus in my face, which I didn’t much like. What tore it was this long speech she gave me about humbling myself, about being fit to give and receive forgiveness. I almost knocked her head in with a paperweight.”

“You didn’t try with somebody else?”

“No, I . . . ” She stopped to take a deep breath.

Theresa glanced up at the poster.

“Something I don’t get about all that,” Theresa said. “About letting go. I mean, about forgiving. How do you do that? How could I do that? They did everything they could think of to me, then they used me for their toilet, and they left me for dead. They left me wanting to be dead. All right? I wake up in the morning and I think how good it would be to just die and not have to remember all the things I’m gonna remember. I can’t even stop thinking about what they did to me, and I’m gonna forgive them? How can I do that? Why would I do that? I can’t see that working for me.”

“Get them out of your head. Keep them from having their victory over you.”

“Oh, they won.” Theresa’s laugh was dry and bitter. Without thinking, she pushed up the sleeves of her blouse and rubbed her eyes. “They won all right. They came out of nowhere, right? They had their sick fun and then they just disappeared. I don’t know if they’re going to pop up again, or if they’re still watching me, or even if they live next fucking door to me. And if they all got the death penalty tomorrow, I’d still have them in my head. That’s never gonna … ” She stopped, too surprised to react as the counselor reached forward and took her hand. Her stomach knotted up as the woman touched the pink razor scars along her arm.

“What about this? Does this work?”

“Let go of my hand.”

“Tell me about …”

Theresa’s voice was hard and deliberate. “Let . . . go . . . of . . . my . . . fucking . . . hand . . . please.” Lynne released her, and she rubbed her wrist, hard. “You can’t do that,” she said.

“Was I hurting you?”

“It’s too much like being held down. It reminds me of too many things.”

“But the scars . . . ”

“I’m not proud of that. I know it’s bad. It just makes things easier sometimes, you know? It lowers the volume for a while. I got plenty of other scars, too. Whenever I started drifting too far away from them, they burned my tits with their cigarettes. Bring me back to the here and now, you know?” She drew a hand across her chest. “You wanna see where one of the animals bit my nipple off?”

Lynne closed her eyes and held up a hand. “I’m on your side, Theresa. They tried to destroy you. There isn’t a moment that goes by without you remembering that. So now you hurt yourself before they can hurt you?”

The blood drained from Theresa’s face. After a long pause, she said: “I guess other people have done that?”

“You’re definitely not the first. But hurting yourself . . . it’s like you’re doing their work for them.”

Theresa sighed. “Lisa says that.”

“Friend?”

“Sister. She’s . . . ” Another laugh. “She’s the only reason I’m even alive right now. I’m completely see-through to her. She knows I’m built to spill.”

“What does that mean?”

“She knows I need somebody to take care of me. Since I’m kind of legendary for my ability to pick shitty guys, Lisa has taken the job.”

“What is it about the men?”

“You name it. Drunks, hitters, rednecks, loudmouths, whatever. If there’s an alpha dog asshole in the room, I’ll find him.”

“Are you with somebody now?”

“No. There was Rob. I . . . he’s the reason I went to stay with Lisa. I was living with him when I got raped. I could tell he didn’t like it that I didn’t just jump right back into my girlfriend duties, but he was okay at first. Then he got really drunk and we had a really bad fight, and he started sounding like he was gonna be rapist number six. I just ran out of the house and got to my car and drove to Lisa’s house. No shoes, no pants, just underwear and a t-shirt and my bag. I spent the whole night screaming and crying in Lisa’s lap. Rob started banging on the door and Lisa went after him with this gigantic butcher knife. Mister Yankee Confederate Rebel, muscles on his muscles, and she’s maybe half my size, and she’s chasing him around the yard. Give me one excuse to use this on you, you worthless shithead fuck.”

“She sounds fantastic.”

“You have no fucking idea. All those years when she was the kid sister, I’m smoking and screwing and hanging out with the roughnecks, and it turns out she’s the tough cookie. If anything happened to her, I would be so fucking alone . . . ”

“No other men since?”

“No. This guy Vinnie, I was supposed to go out for a drink with him the night . . . that night, when they grabbed me. I’d been working all day and I was just going to get a couple of things from my car. He thought I’d stood him up. He texted me all these nasty messages. The animals had a lot of fun reading them to me whenever they took a breather.”

“Oh Christ, Theresa . . . ”

“He tried to visit me in the hospital, but he came the same time as Rob. That didn’t turn out so hot for him. He probably would have been a big step up from Rob, but you know, what tore it for me, I’m in this hospital room, every inch of me is either bruises or stitched up, I’m all doped up so I can use the bedpan without fainting from pain, and he’s whining about how it isn’t fair to shut him out. He went home disappointed that night and I spent the night getting my womb ripped out. How’s that for his not-fair. The high point of fall for me was being able to walk to the toilet without crying. Maybe he’d like to switch places with me. Fuck him and his not-fair.”

Theresa slumped in her chair. Her eyes were swollen and red.

“I carry all this around every minute. So where does forgive come into it?”

“It’s not about forgiving them,” Lynne said, “it’s about forgiving yourself.”

Theresa hunched in her chair. She wouldn’t meet the counselor’s eyes.

“Yes,” Lynne said.

Theresa stared off to the side. There were pictures of Lynne standing on glaciers and mountains, Lynne with swarms of little children, Lynne kayaking across lakes and oceans. Everywhere she looked, Theresa saw things that wrenched her heart.

“These are great pictures.” Theresa’s mouth was a tight white line. Her voice was slow and heavy with emotion. She pointed. “Grandkids?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“I wish these were my pictures,” Theresa said. “I wish I had all this great stuff to look back on. I don’t want this to be the biggest thing in my life, you know? Getting mauled by a bunch of creeps – poor Theresa, that’ll be the name on my gravestone. I don’t want that.”

“That brings us back to forgiving yourself. Because that’s the biggest hurdle for you right now. It’s not the only one, but . . . ”

“I was stupid,” Theresa managed to blurt out. “All right? I went down that ramp in the dark without even looking. I shouldn’t have parked there in the first place. I set myself up. I was an idiot.”

“You were a human being.”

“I was an idiot. Women have to be careful. That’s just the way it is, all right? It’s like I served myself up on a platter.”

“You were a human being who’d worked her butt off all day and you were going to have a drink with a man who liked you. Do you think you deserved to be raped? For being careless?”

Theresa covered her face and rocked back and forth. She shook her head.

“The guilt is on them. The responsibility is on them, not you. They chose to attack you. They hunted you. You aren’t living in some stupid action movie, you can’t be prepared for something like that. You’re not a predator.” She handed Theresa some more tissues. “You don’t think that way, you’re a good person . . . what?”

Theresa shrugged. “Nothing.”

“You rolled your eyes. When I said you were a good person. You disagree?”

Theresa’s voice was shaky. “It’s not that.”

“You’re not a good person? Do you think you’re a bad person?”

“I dunno about that. But I am pretty much of a fuckup.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lisa’s getting ready to open her own business, she’s got a guy she wants to marry, and I’m in my forties and I’m miles from even starting to get my shit together. Look, could we . . .” So many griefs welled up that she could barely keep herself talking. “This conversation has gotten way heavier than I thought it would. I thought we would . . . introduce . . . “ She gritted her teeth, but a faint keening sound came out anyway. “I need to go somewhere and rest because . . . ” She had to stop talking for a moment. “I wanna stop thinking about myself for a while. I wanna be blank for a while.”

“You know, it’s times like this, when your emotions are boiling over, that talking can do the most good.”

After a few tries, Theresa said: “I need . . .”

“You need to come back here. There’s a lot we need to talk about.”

Theresa hugged herself. She opened her mouth and drew in a deep, shuddering breath. As she exhaled, she seemed to collapse into the chair.

Lynne nodded. “Can you come back in two days? I really want you to do that. And I think you want to, too.”

Another deep breath. She tried to say yes, then after a couple of tries she simply nodded.

Lynne put out her hand. “I won’t grab your hand again. I’m sorry I did that. But is it all right if I hold your hand a moment?”

Theresa’s hand was bigger than Lynne’s. It felt solid and warm, not loose or weak. Lynne came forward and held it against her cheek. When she looked up again, she saw Theresa had been startled by the gentle contact.

“Don’t hurt yourself again. Okay?”

Theresa’s eyes were wide and dark.

“Between now and when you come back. I won’t ask you to promise.” She ran her other hand along the inside of Theresa’s arm, along the grid of small pink scars. “But don’t hurt yourself anymore. Okay? Stop hurting yourself.”

Theresa hunched over in her chair, as though her whole body was clenching into a fist. Her face was deeply red. She gave Lynne the quickest of nods, and then she was out of the chair and rushing down the narrow stairs, fumbling for her cell phone. She sent Lisa a text message and waited in the downstairs foyer, staring hard at the parking lot, willing the van to appear.

Bob Anderson, who just died at the age of 89, was second only to William Hobbs when it came to staging swordfight scenes in films. He started out showing Errol Flynn how to swing steel in The Master of Ballantrae (1953) and stayed busy right up through Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. Along the way he choreographed the briefly glimpsed sword work in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, along with the Antonio Banderas Zorro films (gotta love the idea of undressing Catherine Zeta-Jones during a duel — swordplay as foreplay) and the first Pirates of the Caribbean flick. At the time of his death he was back in Middle-earth for the upcoming adaptation of The Hobbit.

The clip up top features what is probably Anderson’s most beloved work, the duel between Inigo Montoya and Westley in The Princess Bride (1987), a perfectly shaped parody cum homage to the old clash-and-flash school of Hollywood swordplay. Another highlight was the bruising saber duel in the James Bond film Die Another Day, which you’ll find below.

For my money, Anderson’s finest work was the three-part duel between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back (1980). I first wrote about it as part of a series on what I consider the best movie swordfights of all time, and I still think it’s the jewel in Anderson’s crown, right up there with William Hobbs’ brilliant choreography in Rob Roy and Ryu Kuze’s almost hallucinatory climax in The Sword of Doom.

This is superb work: action revealing character every step of the way. It starts with Luke’s flashy, grandstanding challenge, and the insultingly casual way Vader activates his weapon in response. It continues as Luke throws everything he has at Vader, who keeps ratcheting the pressure on the young wannabe until the brutal final act, when Vader uses brute force to bring Luke to the brink of disaster. Though Vader’s costume was usually worn by the hulking David Prowse, Anderson himself donned the black visor for the fight sequences, simply to ensure that Mark Hamill (who wore no protective gear) wouldn’t get his head knocked off. Even when he was being a villain, Bob Anderson was a gentleman. Now that’s a class act!

Is it too uncool to acknowledge how much I’m looking forward to seeing The Hobbit? So be it. I was never the biggest fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, so I went to see Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring with no particular expectations and ended up falling hard for the entire series. Funny to think that was a decade ago. What I particularly like about this trailer is the emphasis on character and the details of performance: the way Gandalf says “No” when Bilbo asks if he can guarantee a safe return, or the seriousness that fills the room when Thorin sings. (I’m reminded of that gorgeous scene in The Two Towers when Theoden recites “Where is the horse, where is the rider?” as a wordless chorus fills the soundtrack.) So, yes, I’m dying to see both installments of The Hobbit in the cineplexes, listen to Howard Shore’s soundtrack music, watch the extended editions (can there be any doubt of those?), and finally get a look at Smaug. Jackson has said he wants to outdo Vermithrax Pejorative. It’s high time somebody tried.

So, why so hard on Hitchens? After all, the man had range: books about Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine, literary criticism, atheist polemics. But the history books added nothing that was new to the thinking on their subjects. The literary criticism was smooth and chatty, but once again did little to stir things up. The advocacy for atheism was a welcome blast of fresh air in an environment dominated by crap piety, but God Is Not Great is really just a more stylish dance along a path already paved by Sam Harris.

The biggest problem with Hitchens is that for all his impiety and wit, the man was a preening fool on the Iraq war. Too may intellectuals reacted to 9/11 by deciding to heave good sense and caution over the side, but Hitchens — by virtue of his access to big media and his lucrative perch at Vanity Fair — did more damage than any of them in the realm of public opinion. His bufoonery was made all the more grotesque by his almost demented hatred for the Clintons; having excoriated the 42nd president as a lying sleaze, Hitchens then signed on with his successor, a man whose character and morals a tapeworm would consider beneath contempt. Launched with lies and planned by corrupt dolts, the Iraq war was a new low for American foreign policy, and yet its moral squalor and strategic idiocy barely stirred a whisper of a doubt for the scourge of the Clintons.

The Iraq war was a disaster for his adopted country, but his support of it made Hitchens a regular presence on Fox News, where his podium smarts and ability to speak in complete sentences made him look like an eagle in an aviary full of deranged parrots. But while it was amusing to see him deck squawk-show palookas like Sean Hannity, it was hardly fitting work for man of his education. I’m afraid I have to side with the naysayers who appeared in the wake of the eulogies filed by the man’s many drinking buddies. For all their flash and attention-getting polemics, the works of Christopher Hitchens will not have much of a shelf life. Much has been made of his ability to crank out reams of  articles and shelves of books while staying more or less continuously drunk, but from here that seems to make him nothing more than the thinking man’s Hunter S. Thompson.

A few days after Hitchens died, I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with John Sayles during an event sponsored by The Raconteur, the soon-to-be-closed bookstore in Metuchen. The evening was a two-fer, with a reception at the bookstore (during which he signed copies of his new novel, A Moment in the Sun) followed by a Q&A session and a screening of his latest film, Amigo, at the local Forum Theatre.

Sayles received a MacArthur foundation “Genius” grant, and it would be hard to imagine a more appropriate winner. After debuting in the Seventies with a highly praised novel and story collection, Sayles became a pioneering independent filmmaker with Return of the Secaucus Seven, and he has comfortably kept a foot in both the literary and film worlds ever since. Part of his charm is that he trained up for his independent work by writing B-movie scripts for schlock impresario Roger Corman, and it’s hard to convey the pleasurable shock of going to the local twin theater or drive-in with low expectations to see something like Piranha or The Howling, only to be greeted by smart dialogue, clever storytelling and plenty of hip in-jokes. Sayles has also filmed videos for Bruce Springsteen, and he continues to do script-doctoring (credited and otherwise) on films like The Spiderwick Chronicles.

Sayles is the most personable and chatty writer you would ever want to meet, with a down-to-earth manner and a bottomless supply of amusing anecdotes about Hollywood and the trials of being an independent filmmaker. Like any working screenwriter, Sayles has a boatload of unproduced screenplays, including an early run at Jurassic Park IV that sounded pretty neat (the story, which involved velociraptors genetically modified to serve as soldiers) but was scotched when a draft leaked on the Internet; and Night Skies, an SF horror film that split into ET and Poltergeist.

But it is for  his own work that Sayles will be remembered, and rightly so. Matewan remains one of the most inspiring depictions of realistic physical courage I’ve ever seen, and Lone Star uses the discovery of a long-buried corpse to dig up layers of history and personal guilt in the disputed territory of Mexico’s border with America. Few children’s films are as charming as The Secret of Roan Inish, and few dramas are as deceptively scary as Limbo.

Amigo isn’t a top-tier Sayles epic like Matewan, but its subject — a village leader caught between guerrillas and American soldiers during the Philippine-American war in 1900 — is of a piece with his career-long penchant for telling the untold and little-known stories from American history. His low-key methods and disdain for stylistic flash lead many critics to dismiss him as a writer with a camera, but give me Sayles’ concern for integrity over, say, Martin Scorsese’s brain-dead showmanship in the historical travesty Gangs of New York.

For all the wingnut whining about liberals in Hollywood, there’s no question that Sayles’ firmly left-of-center political stance makes him an outsider. Mainstream directors like Steven Spielberg are happy to employ him for smart dialogue and ingenious genre storytelling, but Sayles was on his own when he wanted to tell the story of a violent coal-miner strike in West Virginia, or show political bloodshed in Latin America.

That commitment to integrity, and the surprising art that grows from it, makes John Sayles a true public intellectual as well as a novelist and filmmaker. He never lost his bearings, even when the likes of Paul Berman were joining the 9/11 bedwetters brigade, and he figured out how to do exactly what he wanted to do (more or less) as an artist. He will probably never get invited to as many dinner parties as Christopher Hitchens, and he has better things to do with his time than swat aside inanities tossed by Fox News stooges, but he probably isn’t going to lose any sleep over that. He’s the real thing, and as such reserves his time for things that are real. He’s already done more work of lasting value than Christopher Hitchens, and I get the feeling he’s got a lot more good work up his sleeve.

In which the pioneering rapper talks up a Los Angeles architectural landmark. Learn more about the Eames House here. Some of Ice Cube’s best raps here, here, here, and here. NSFW, unless you work at Death Row Records.

You know you want to hear Flannery O’Connor reading “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” So what are you waiting for?

Ace thriller writer J.D. Rhoades talks about why he decided to go indie and start publishing new books (and out-of-print backlist titles) as e-books.  His new one, Gallows Pole, will scare the snot out of you.

Madam Mayo, author of The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, interviews Solveig Eggerz, author of Seal Woman.

When you’re introduced to a fencer, don’t do the squiggly arm thing. Just don’t.

In which Frederik Pohl reminisces about the Battle of the Douchebag, the Battle of the 4-Color Border, and the night spent with Harlan Ellison on Long John Nebel’s talk show.

From Psycho to Casino, from The Man with the Golden Arm to Anatomy of a Murder, it’s a tribute to the title sequences directed by Saul Bass.

It appears some New Jersey lawmakers are upset at the idea that Thomas Nast (1840-1902), the godfather of political cartoonists, has been nominated for a spot in the N.J. Hall of Fame. Assemblymen Wayne DeAngelo and David Rible have asked that Nast’s name be removed from consideration because many of his cartoons depict Irish-Catholics in a demeaning light. Though Nast is celebrated for his crusade to expose Boss Tweed and his ring of thieving Tammany Hall cronies in the early 1870s, the legislators are more concerned with his penchant for ethnic stereotypes, particularly one infamous cartoon depicting a brutish Irish drunkard touching off a powder keg.

As it turns out, DeAngelo and Rible have this much right: Nast was a German Protestant who despised the Catholic church, and he saw parochial schools as dens of indoctrination and spiritual corruption. (One of his most famous cartoons, “The American River Ganges,” depicts Catholic bishops as crocodiles preying on American children.) Nast was not alone in this suspicion: anti-Catholic sentiment lingered well into the twentieth century. When Al Smith became the first Irish-Catholic presidential candidate in 1928, postcards of the Holland Tunnel construction were distributed in the Midwest, with notes warning that the Pope was having a tunnel built that would connect the White House to the Vatican. Nast wasn’t the only cartoonist to depict Irish immigrants with simian features, but the quality and detail of his draftsmanship made the slur all the more wounding.

Nast’s bigotry went hand-in-hand with that of many political reformers of the era. While Boss Tweed was as crooked as they came, there’s also no question that many of his critics were more offended by his background than his venality. Urban political machines were seen as bringing the unwashed immigrant rabble into the halls of power, where the reigning Protestant establishment had plenty of dirty laundry of its own to hide.

On the other hand, Nast was also an opponent of slavery and racial segregation whose work earned the praise of President Lincoln, and during Reconstruction he attacked the Ku Klux Klan as fiercely as he’d opposed the Tweed Ring. Nast was also a man of action. At an age when most men would be enjoying retirement, Nast sought an appointment from President Theodore Roosevelt, who made him Consul General to Ecuador. Nast’s work during an epidemic of yellow fever saved many lives, but cut short his own at age 62.

Even without his good works, Nast is simply not to be denied as a landmark figure in American culture. He invented the donkey and elephant symbols that remain the badges of the Democratic and Republican parties to this day, and those  images he did not invent outright — e.g., the classic depictions of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus — he perfected to such a degree that no one since has seriously attempted to change them.

It is the easiest thing in the world to indict our predecessors for not having attained the apex of virtue and wisdom that we represent in the present. If you want to beat up on Thomas Nast for ethnic prejudice, then have at it — his body of work supplies all the ammo you need. But if Thomas Nast was a bigot, he was a lot else besides, and our lawmakers judge him at their peril.

It’s easy to use history to certify our own virtue, but it’s far more revealing — far more interesting — to use it to see if we are as virtuous as we like to think. If even as towering a figure as Thomas Nast could be tripped up by the grimy prejudices of his time, that’s a warning for us all. For the claims that were being made about the Irish in Nast’s day — they will never assimilate, they will degrade society, they flout our laws, they’re born lawbreakers who will always be a burden on society — are now being laid at the feet of Latino immigrants, with allowances for contemporary obsessions. America was a much less populous country in the 1870s, but we seem to have assimilated the Irish just fine — in fact, each year we devote a portion of spring to pretending we’re all chips off the Auld Sod. I look forward to something similar happening with Mexican and Latin American transplants. If Cinco de Mayo ends up becoming a bigger deal than Columbus Day, so much the better.

Thomas Nast’s place in history is unassailable. Leaving him out of the N.J. Hall of Fame — the what? — will do nothing to diminish his stature, but it will certify the organizers as very small people indeed.