Speaking Frankly of a Frank(ed) Christmas

Followers of the American political scene may be forgiven if they read the words "franking privilege" and automatically think of a very smart, very loud, soon to retire Congressman from Massachusetts. They should think again.

The congressional franking privilege, which the Continental Congress instituted in 1775, allows members to send their constituents mail without having to pay postage. According to one estimate, this perk cost taxpayers $113.4 million, in current dollars, between 1988 - 2007.

The founders saw the need for unimpeded correspondence between Congressmen and their constituents. However, the founders had no way of anticipating such free media as radio and television, let alone email and Facebook.

In our time of unprecedented deficits, eliminating the franking privilege is one small way Congress could save public funds. It wouldn't take a Constitutional amendment, either, just a bit of discipline by those who serve in the People's House.

Former House Speaker and current GOP Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has alleged that "no federal official at any level is currently allowed to say ‘Merry Christmas.’" Newt Gingrich must know, as surely as does Barney Frank, that no one can stop certain federal officials from saying anything.

The Franking Commission Staff has told House of Representative members they may not use "Merry Christmas" or "Happy New Year" in franked -- that is to say, taxpayer funded -- mailings. This ruling does not apply to mail Congressmen or Congresswomen pay for out of their private funds and contributions.

Virginia Congressman Scott Rigell has taken to YouTube to address his constituents and all Americans this holiday season. Standing in front of framed copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, Mr. Rigell wishes viewers a "Happy Chanukah" and a "Merry Christmas."

So far as I can tell, Congressman Rigell's creative video costs taxpayers nothing and adds not one penny to our national debt.

For that, I wish the Congressman a very Merry Christmas. Now, let's speak with his colleagues about that $113.4 million.

English Professors: Is Anyone Paying Attention?

The Beatles sang that Eleanor Rigby's funeral was a solitary affair. Other than Father McKenzie, "Nobody came." Father McKenzie then quietly returned to his priestly sinecure, just another of the countless "lonely people."

Today, Father McKenzie might well be teaching English at The University of Georgia. According to Emory's Mark Bauerlein, UGA English professors published 23 research articles in 2004. Of these 23 articles, Bauerlein writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "16 received zero to two citations, four of them three to six, one eight, one 11, and one 16."

UGA English professors are writing and publishing serious work. But is anyone paying attention? And if not, what larger scholarly purpose is being served?

Good research can spring from and inform good teaching. At a major university, however, teaching can be controversial. For decades, a teaching award at a Harvard or MIT was considered the "kiss of death" for tenure. A 2008 article in The Harvard Crimson argued that such awards are "no longer" such a career risk.

MIT, at least, is paying attention to its reputation for teaching while reaching out to students far beyond MIT's Massachusetts campus. The selection of undergraduate literature courses available free online through MIT Open Course Ware includes such offerings as Introduction to Literary Theory and Literary Interpretation: Virginia Woolf's Shakespeare.

Given MIT's international reputation, the likelihood seems strong these courses will reach a larger audience. Father McKenzie, if he teaches at MIT, will not speak only to himself.

Maybe he'll even earn tenure.

Vaclav Havel: In Pace Resquiat

In 1983, the Nobel Peace Prize went to Polish union organizer Lech Walesa, who dared the wrath of the Soviet Union (read "Russian Communist International State" or, as President Reagan succinctly put it, "Evil Empire"). Although Winston Churchill famously and correctly warned an "Iron Curtain" had cordoned off Eastern Europe from the Democratic West, each generation produced its Lech Walesas who espoused the cause of freedom.

Czechoslovakia briefly enjoyed a Prague Spring in 1968, an experiment in "socialism with a human face" that Soviet Russia crushed. Young author Vaclav Havel, who became known to two generations as "dissident playwright Vaclav Havel," endured ostracism and even prison as he continued to utter the one word totalitarians cannot abide: NO.

By 1989 as George Kennan had predicted, the Soviet Empire was crumbling, having spent its way into oblivion. When Poland and Czechoslovakia broke away, Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel were elected to leadership positions. As Presidents of Poland and Czechoslovakia, Walesa and Havel saw freedom restored to millions of oppressed peoples.

Time passed both Walesa and Havel by, with each being replaced by democratically elected rivals. Havel helped ensure a peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia into two republics, one Czech and one Slovak, that retain cordial relations today. Compare this event with the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Now Vaclav Havel has died at age 75. In a testimony to the state Havel helped build, his fierce rival and successor Vaclav Klaus was among the first mourners to acknowledge Havel's legacy.

Writers, like political leaders, are survived by their legacies. The rare writer-political leader like Havel, then, leaves (at least) a double legacy. "The Power of the Powerless," Havel's magnificent 1978 essay, joins his plays and other writings as an enduring testament to a man who, to the end, understood and voiced the link between "dissidence" and freedom. In pace resquiat.

Hitch: He Made Us Think

One of our finest and most provocative essayists, Christopher Hitchens, has died. At almost the same time Hitchens published Hitch-22, his memoir, he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, which claimed him 18 months later.

It may seem both unusual and ironic for the man who penned God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything to be eulogized by theists. In these hyper partisan times, tributes coming from both the political left and right seem almost unthinkable, yet they proliferate. In response to a Facebook friend's passing along the news last Friday, I posted that "he made people think." My friend, in a Hitch-worthy moment, replied, "I liked him anyway."

I will not speculate what awaits the exuberantly atheist Hitchens in the afterlife. Regarding his terminal illness and what he both endured and learned from it, I will leave Hitchens the last word.

Self-Publishing Online

Who says you need a New York publisher to sell novels? Who says you even need physical copies of your book?

More and more writers, many of whom are rejected by agents and publishers, are finding an audience online. Most self-published books won't sell hundred of thousands of copies the way this one has. In fact, almost none will.

All the same, a small to medium advertising budget and a low selling price (such as 99 cents) can attract attention. The tale of how text finds reader may lack the romantic appeal of E. Lynn Harris selling books from his car trunk or at beauty parlors, but any Internet user knows online rejection can sting quite a bit less than an angry or flustered "No!"

Which is not to say you can't still drop by one of the remaining independent bookstores to be rejected in person. Plus, you can console yourself by buying an espresso, which you won't have to make, while you're there.