Gender Inequality Day 2016

April 12 this year marked Gender Inequality Day. What does that mean? Apparently, the average woman had to work all of 2015 and right up to April 12 to make as much as the average man made in 2015 alone. To put it another way, it is claimed that the average woman makes only 79% of what the average man earns in any given year.

The 79% figure is apparently based on US Census figures that look at no one in particular, or no occupation in particular, or no industry in particular. One report indicated that the prestigious American Association of University Women is leading the charge for gender equality.                                                                                        

"You can't negotiate your way out of discrimination," says Lisa Maatz, vice president of government relations at the american Association of University Women, a "one-stop shop" for gender equality. and, she notes, April 12 -- or $0.79 -- is the best-case scenario.

The 79% figure has by now become etched in stone and is one of the many mantras that liberal activists must pray daily. It is one of those bogus claims that cannot be disputed by anyone, much less politicians like President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton must kowtow to at every opportunity. In fact, the very actions that the Obama administration is taking to deal with gender inequality prove that the 79% figure has no real basis. The government is actually proposing new regulations that would require companies to fill out massive questionnaires to ensure that they are providing equal pay for equal work. In other words, the government now wants to find hard data to support its bogus 79% claim.

I did a little analysis of some gender inequality claims in 2013 and repeat it here. I looked a little deeply into the census figures for Connecticut's Fairfield County and found that the 79% figure was a meaningless statistic, and that there was no wage discrimination at all. One is led to question the credibility, the honesty, and even the sanity of groups like the American Association of University Women, and the politicians who bow to them. Here is the post from 2013.

A recent front-page article in the Connecticut Post, Bridgeport Connecticut’s local newspaper, highlighted the so-called gender gap in wages between men and women in prosperous Fairfield County. The article featured two columns of statistics indicating the different wages of men and women in various towns in the county. The article was based on a report by the American Association of University Women that used figures from the US Census bureau.

Interestingly, the article did not list even one incident of wage discrimination and even quoted a spokesman for the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities who said, “the number of women who complain about not getting as much as their male counterparts is small.” Moreover, the article did mention that the figures did not actually compare salaries of full time employees working the same job. The report just used averages based on the salaries of men and women “across companies, industries and job titles.” Nevertheless, as a headline proclaimed, “Wage Gap still exists in region.”

The report’s statistics could lead to some laughable conclusions. It would seem that the best place for a woman to work would be Bridgeport, a city where the average woman makes $35932 per year or about 90% of what the average man makes. Compare that to her poor sister in nearby Westport whose average pay of $82052 is only about 50% of what a Westport man earns.

There is an old saying: “Statistics don’t lie, but liars use statistics.” I would venture to guess that there is little wage discrimination in Connecticut and that the disparities in income are largely based on choices that people choose to make. All government employees, for example, work on gender-neutral pay scales. Teachers, police officers, firefighters, mail carriers, all get the same pay for the same work. Even the high priced occupations that the article and accompanying editorial mentioned as going mainly to men are no longer the exclusive male bastions of the past. The medical and financial professions have become increasingly open to women and will become more so since the majority of college graduates today are women. No modern company would dare to have differing wage scales for men and women.

Why did the editorial complain about the disparity in incomes in well-to-do communities like New Canaan and Darien? Obviously, talented well-educated woman choose to live there because of the beautiful homes, excellent school systems, and crime free streets. To hold the city of Bridgeport up as a kind of gender paradigm is ludicrous. It is one of the murder capitols of the state, and its school system is in shambles. Politicians in Bridgeport should be looking at New Canaan and Darien and ask themselves what they can do to emulate them.

One of the statistics noted that in both New Canaan and Darien the number of married women in the work force is only about 40% compared to a national average of about 60%. While one of the “experts” quoted in the article referred to the “nostalgic idea of what the family is supposed to look like,” and called it a “romantic notion,” it still seems to be working very well in New Canaan and Darien. Compare that romantic notion with the one espoused years ago by Murphy Brown and see the devastation that single motherhood has brought to the lives of so many single mothers and their children in cities like Bridgeport.

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Who was Shakespeare?

This year England is celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, the greatest dramatist in the English language. I think that the celebration is twelve years too late. At the risk of losing what little credibility the Weekly Bystander might possess, I confess that I am a Shakespeare denier. I believe that the great plays and poems attributed to William Shakespeare, the man of that name from Stratford on Avon, were not written by him, but by an aristocratic contemporary, Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, one of the most prominent and notorious noblemen in Elizabethan England.

 

Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, 1575

In other words, I am an advocate of the theory that the true identity of the greatest writer in the English language has been hidden for more than 400 years. I am not alone. Great writers like Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and Henry James, as well as great Shakespearean actors like Orson Welles and Derek Jacobi believed that the plays and poems were written by someone other than the simple commoner from Stratford. Even Sigmund Freud agreed.

While many names have been put forward as the true author, I believe that the aristocratic background, unique education, and life experience of the Earl of Oxford makes him the prime candidate for the true author of the Shakesperean canon. When it comes to Shakespeare, I agree with those who are called by scholars, with a certain degree of contempt, “Oxfordians”. These would include the unfortunately named J. Thomas Looney an English high school teacher whose groundbreaking 1919 book, Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, has never received the attention it deserves.

Oddly enough, it was on my first trip to Italy back in 1997 that I saw the light. My wife and I attended a little symposium on the Renaissance held that year in Gardone Riviera, a resort town on the coast of beautiful Lake Garda. We stayed in an old pensione up the hill from Gardone that had a spectacular view of the lake.

Before the trip I had happened to read a book by Joseph Sobran* that also questioned the authorship of the man from Stratford, and promoted the cause of the Earl of Oxford, but I found it hard to believe given the overwhelming scholarly tradition. Italy changed my mind. Many of the plays are set in Italy, and the playwright seems to have a first hand knowledge of the customs, language, and geography of the country.

The man from Stratford never traveled outside of England. Scholars are reduced to saying that he got his extensive knowledge of things Italian by listening to Italian seamen in London pubs. On the other hand, shortly after he turned 21 and took his seat in the House of Lords, the young Earl of Oxford left England to spend a year and a half traveling on a kind of grand tour, most of which was spent in Italy. Is it a coincidence that practically every town he visited in Italy is featured or at least mentioned in the plays? Venice, Verona, and Padua come immediately to mind. Places he did not visit, like Turin and Bologna, receive no mention in the plays.

Moreover, my own brief first visit to Italy convinced me that it would be impossible to describe the beautiful countryside, and the fabled cities without having actually seen them. Even today, after many subsequent visits, I find it almost impossible to describe the breathtaking scene of the Tuscan countryside, or a ride in a water taxi down Venice’s Grand Canal.

The young Edward de Vere spent a fortune on his Italian journey and had to borrow heavily to pay his enormous bills. He arrived back in England deeply in debt and even stark naked, having been stripped of his clothes by pirates in the English Channel, in the same manner as Prince Hamlet in the famous play. This incident is just one of many where the life of the Earl of Oxford is mirrored in the plays and poems of Shakespeare.**

Edward de Vere was born in 1550, fourteen years before the man from Avon.  The de Vere’s were one of England’s great aristocratic families, and could trace their lineage back over 400 years. After the death of his father, when Edward was only twelve, he was taken from his mother and made a ward of the Crown. His property and wealth were managed by Queen Elizabeth’s favorite, Sir Robert Dudley, and his education and upbringing were put into the hands of Sir Robert Cecil the Queen’s chief minister, who even non-Oxfordians believe to be the prototype of Polonius in Hamlet. Edward de Vere grew up in the highest circles of English society, and studied under some of the greatest scholars of his time.

On the other hand, it would appear that the man from Stratford on Avon received no more than the barest elementary education. His father was a butcher and his family was illiterate. Scholars are hard pressed to find any evidence that he received even an elementary education. He left no books or manuscripts behind but only a handful of copies of his signature on legal documents that indicate that he could hardly write his own name.

Throughout his life Edward de Vere was associated with the theater. He sponsored and promoted plays and companies of players. However, at the time it was considered disgraceful for someone of his status to associate with plays and players. For this reason Oxfordians believe that he used the name of the man from Avon to cover his tracks. There is evidence that the young man from Avon was amply compensated. After all, what’s in a name?

The greatest objection to the authorship of de Vere is the fact that he died in 1604. Although it is difficult to date the plays, the traditional belief has been that some, like the Tempest, were written between 1604 and 1616, the date of the death of the man from Stratford. However, in recent years scholars have reduced the number of post-1604 plays to one or two and even their dates are questionable. One recent author has even argued that the whole “Shakespeare project” seems to shut down after 1604.

The other objection involves a kind of reverse snobbery. We live in the age of the underdog and people like to believe that the greatest author in the English language was a common man possessed with great natural genius. We do not like aristocrats and shows like Downton Abbey make us aware of their follies and weaknesses. Nevertheless, greatness in any field still requires education and life experience. Every author writes himself. The plays of Shakespeare are all about Kings, Queens, and other aristocrats. In those plays Edward de Vere wrote about a world of which he was intimately acquainted and in which he played a major role.

Written around 1604, Hamlet was one of the last plays. The dying words of Hamlet could well apply to Edward de Vere.

O God, Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
Absent thee from felicity a while,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story.

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* Joseph Sobran, Alias Shakespeare, 1997.

**Mark Anderson, Shakespeare by Another Name, 2005, provides an exhaustive account of the similarities between the life of Edward de Vere and the characters in both the plays and poems of Shakespeare.   

Easter Monday

Easter Bombing in Pakistan

                                           

Reputed members of the Islamic State murdered four nuns of the Missionaries of Charity working in an elder care facility in Aden, Yemen on March 4, 2016. The only crime of these nuns, like some many thousands of others brutally persecuted in recent years, was that they were Christians. What is so bad about Christianity? 

Personally, I like practically everything about it, especially the belief in, and hope in the resurrection from the dead.

It is clear from Scripture that, even after the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday, his subsequent Ascension forty days later, and the incredible events of Pentecost, St. Peter did not fully understand the implications of the Resurrection. Only after a personal vision convinced him that Jesus died and rose for all, did Peter see the light. He said,

“Now I really understand that God is not a respecter of persons, but in every nation he who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. He sent his word to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ (who is Lord of all). You know what took place throughout Judea: for he began in Galilee after the baptism preached by John: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and he went about doing good and healing all who were in the power of the devil; for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all that he did in the country of the Jews and Jerusalem; and yet they killed him, hanging him on a tree. But God raised him on the third day and caused him to be plainly seen, not by all the people, but by witnesses designated beforehand by God, that is, by us, who ate and drank with him after he had risen from the dead. And he charged us to preach to the people and to testify that he it is who has been appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness, that through his name all who believe in him may receive forgiveness of sins.” *

I have come to believe with Peter that “God is not a respecter of persons, but in every nation he who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Nevertheless, I like being a Christian, especially a Catholic.  As I said, I like a religion that believes in and holds out hope for resurrection, for a life after death.

I like to think that the four nuns murdered in Yemen by Moslem fanatics earlier this month are living a new life, and that they are not just rotting bodies being picked apart by vultures. It also strikes me that those four nuns, like tens of thousands of other Christians who have also been brutally persecuted in our own time, had already given up their lives in the service of others when they took their initial vows. Like Jesus, they went about doing good and healing.

Even today, the day after Easter, there is the terrible news that Taliban suicide bombers murdered at least 65 people and wounded over 300 in Pakistan just because they were Christians celebrating Easter.

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*Acts of the Apostles 10: 25-37.

Saint Joseph and My Grandfather

                                            

Every March 19 the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of St. Joseph, the stepfather or surrogate father of Jesus. Actually, the feast day is now largely neglected in America especially since it is so close to March 17, the feast day of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. There will be no parades or parties to honor the carpenter who took the Virgin Mary into his house.

Surprisingly, St. Joseph was largely neglected during the first fifteen hundred years of the Church. He played an important role in Scripture during the early days of Jesus but was completely absent during the adult or public life of Jesus. If you just page through Dante’s Divine Comedy, you will be hard pressed to find any sinners or saints called Joseph or Giuseppe. It is obvious that in the year 1300 Italians did not name their children after the husband of Mary.

For a variety of reasons St. Joseph only entered the spotlight in the fifteenth century after the Black Death had devastated Europe. He was only given a feast day in 1479 by Pope Sixtus IV, a former head of the Franciscan order. After that St. Joseph became more and more popular and he was eventually named patron saint of the entire Church, not just of one country or city.

At the same time, artists of the Renaissance began to depict him in a different manner. Previously, he had been depicted as a sleepy old man off to the side or in the background in depictions of the Holy Family. In the gospel of Matthew angels bring messages to Joseph while he is sleeping. However, during the Renaissance artists like Raphael depicted him as a younger man, virile and muscular enough to protect not only his family, but also the entire Church.

Eventually, Joseph, Giuseppe, or Jose would go to the top of the list of popular names for children. Both of my paternal grandparents were named after St. Joseph. Although we called them Baba and Nana, he was Giuseppe or Joseph DeStefano, and she was christened Josephina Maria Naclerio. I don’t want to neglect my grandmother, a great saint in her own right, but I would like to spend the rest of this post writing about my grandfather.

Joseph DeStefano was born in 1880 in the town of Agerola, a little town up the hills from the city of Amalfi on the famed Amalfi coast of southern Italy. His father died when he was young and he came to this country with his stepfather when he was only a teenager. He had hardly any schooling and must have immediately gone to work with relatives in the fruit and vegetable business. He was the kind of immigrant that no one wants today. He was not an engineer or a physicist but he was one of the wisest men I have ever known.

He must have been a hard worker for he soon had his own stand in a kind of supermarket. My grandmother, who was twelve years younger than him, told me that he would not consider marrying a woman who was not from his own village of Agerola. She was born in 1892 in Agerola and came to this country in 1906 to work in her uncle’s sewing factory. She was the oldest child and left home never to return. I suspect that there were too many mouths to feed back home, but she claimed that she came to find a husband because she didn’t like the young men in Agerola.

Of course, she lived with her uncle’s family and one day Joseph DeStefano was visiting after dinner. When he saw this beautiful and hard-working young woman from his hometown, it was love at first sight, for him. She was not so sure but he persisted and, according to her, he made sure that other suitors kept their distance.

They soon married and she worked the store with him even after she began to have children. Eventually, they moved out of Manhattan to the borough of Queens where they bought a three family house to live in as well as provide rental income. They opened a new store in Jamaica, where they served the well to do nearby community of Forest Hills.

They quickly had four children, one of whom died in infancy. In true American immigrant fashion, they all were upwardly mobile. Their eldest daughter married an engineer whose parents had emigrated from Italy to open a restaurant in Memphis, Tennessee. Eventually, they came to New York and opened a restaurant on the East side of Manhattan coincidentally called, “The Original Joe’s”. Their son, also named Joseph, studied engineering at Manhattan College. The younger daughter married a New York City policeman of Irish German ancestry. Their only son, my father, worked in the store until the outbreak of World War II when he left to work in the defense department of the Bulova Watch company.

My grandparents had to close the store on the departure of my father. They never learned how to drive a car or truck and without my father they could not go to market or make deliveries.  My grandfather retired at the age of 60 and spent most of his retirement caring for a garden that included a cherry tree, a prized fig tree, a grape arbor, and a large vegetable garden. He thought that grass was a waste of good ground.

Like most Italian men, my grandfather never went to church except perhaps for special events like weddings and funerals. Also, like many Italian men he did not like priests. I went to Catholic school and he warned me to do what the priests say, but not what they do. Nevertheless, I believe that he was one of those millions of un-canonized saints in the true selfless tradition of his namesake.

My mother died in 1950 when I was only eleven years old. My father was forced to move me and my two younger brothers next door to live with my grandparents in their modest ground floor apartment. My grandfather was 70 years old at the time and my grandmother 58. Only now that I am in my seventies do I realize how hard that must have been for them. Never, ever did I feel unwelcomed or unloved. Like St. Joseph my grandfather became a foster father to me. We made wine together. We built a coop for the chickens together. I helped him with the constant work in the garden but I never could match his inborn skill and knowledge. He could barely read English and I never learned Italian but now I realize that both Baba and Nana taught me what it meant to give up one’s life for others.

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