19 – North of Boston
At five seconds per channel, it took Adam Shapiro no more than three minutes to flip through the entire circuit of cable TV selections, analyzing and deciding on his viewing pleasure based on video and audio fragments. It drove his father crazy. It was a skill Shapiro’s generation lacked but his son seemed to have been born with, just as his son could carry on a conversation with his parents while at the same time slaying enemy soldiers on his Nintendo. Cartoons, movies, talk shows, and commercial after commercial cycled past on the screen, all while Shapiro hoped to spend some time with his son. TV time together might not meet the standard of “quality” time, but it was time together at least, rather than time apart.
Shapiro quickly lost patience.
“OK. Enough. Stop that.” He barked. “Why don’t we look at the listings and decide what we want to watch.”
“That’s not how I do it, Dad. I have to see what’s on before I can decide,” his son, Adam, responded. “It just takes a minute.”
“All right, but come on, make a decision,” Shapiro said, only half paying attention to the TV, fascinated by his son’s intense concentration on the screen, eyes pinched together, analyzing each five-second segment and literally making instant thumbs up or down calls, jabbing at the remote with his right thumb.
Shapiro stood up to leave, frustrated. “You know,” he said. “Just call me back when you’ve decided what you want to watch.” He walked toward the door of the room they all called “The TV Room,” much as Shapiro disliked that label.
Just as he reached the door, a phrase caught Shapiro’s attention. He swiveled around.
“… punish the so-called Chosen people for spitting in God’s face.” He heard a voice say from the TV, as the channel flipped to a Toyota commercial. “Zero zero zero percent financing …”
“Wait,” Shapiro told his son. “Flip back to that last one. I want to hear what he’s saying.”
“Dad, no. It’s some God show or something. I don’t …”
Before Adam could say anything more, Shapiro grabbed the remote and toggled the channel button to return to the previous show.
“What I am saying, in plain American English, is that God wants us to round up the Jews in this country.”
Shapiro saw two men in dark suits, standing in front of what looked like a living room set, two comfortable chairs and a coffee table. The man speaking looked as if he were being ejected from the set, none too subtly. A young blonde woman walked on, smiling and excited, bouncing up and down in her enthusiasm, her hem line demurely below her knees, two breasts that someone other than the Lord gave to her bouncing to a rhythm of their own. The show’s host, however, took a couple of seconds to recover before greeting the woman with a broad and perhaps overly enthusiastic hug.
“Why does that man want to round up all the Jews, Dad?” Adam asked tentatively. “I don’t understand what he’s talking about. I thought that was something the Nazis or somebody did back in history far away, not this country. I don’t understand.”
Shapiro saw the tentatively fearful expression on his son’s face. This would be a “quality” parenting moment after all, Shapiro thought.
Shapiro was not sure he’d ever directly experienced anti-Semitism. Certainly, Adam, who liked to boast that his Dad was Jewish, his mother was some kind of Christian and he would decide what he was when he grew up, never felt shunned because of his father’s heritage. He’d learn about the Holocaust in school, of course, just as he’d learn about the Civil War and the Great Depression, but at his age historical events did not seem any more real than Star Trek or The Lord of the Rings. That stark brand of “round up the Jews” talk was entirely new to him.
“Dad, what kind of jerk was that guy? How come they let him say that on TV? Americans don’t hate Jews, right? That’s some German – or Arab, I guess – kinda thing, right?”
“Actually, Adam, this country has its share of that, too, and not too long ago. There used to be the same kind of preacher on the radio. Father Coughlin was his name. He was a Catholic priest with his own radio show. Millions of people listened to him every week. And he used to say the same kind of stuff about Jews, the same kind of hate talk. He went on for years.
“And plenty of people agreed with him. Hey, Charles Lindbergh, the first guy to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, he used to talk about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to get us to fight in World War Two. Even some presidents have talked that way. Harry Truman, you know, the guy who took over after President Roosevelt died, he said something like the Jews are all selfish and they are as cruel as Hitler and Stalin when they get any power.”
The six-year-old’s puzzled look reminded Shapiro that his son’s knowledge of American history included George Washington, a cherry tree and some vague knowledge about Abe Lincoln freeing the slaves.
“You’ve never experienced anti-Semitism yourself, but it has been a part of America right from the beginning.” Shapiro put his arm over his son’s shoulder. He tended to speak to his son sometimes as if he were delivering an opening argument in a jury trial. Maybe he was so intense as a father, he sometimes thought, because he hoped to make up with intensity all the ordinary time he missed with his son.
“Sorry about going on like that,” he said sheepishly to his six year old.
Adam had a puzzled look on his face, quite obviously not understanding what his father was talking about.
“Hey, Buddy, forget about it. I don’t expect this will ever be a problem for you.” Shapiro rubbed the top of his son’s head. “So, what’s on TV?”
“It won’t be a problem for me if I don’t decide to become a Jew, right Dad?” Adam asked, not quite willing to drop this topic. “And if it became a real problem, you could decide not to be a Jew any more, so there isn’t anything to worry about. How’s that?”
Shapiro turned to look at his son.
“Adam,” he said. “I can’t ever stop being a Jew.
“And I wouldn’t if I could. And you know, son, with me as your father, I don’t know if you can help being considered a Jew no matter what you want. And since most everybody is going to think Adam Shapiro is Jewish, no matter what you decide, you might as well get the benefits of being Jewish yourself.
“Hey, who knows. There might be some girl some day who wouldn’t think of bringing you home to meet her parents unless you were Jewish. It could come in handy.”
“Dad, stop that,” Adam moaned. “Girls. Yuch.”
He went back to the remote and found a Mork and Mindy rerun. Father and son sat side by side on the sofa, watching Mork from Ork consider what a strange place Planet Earth is.
Shapiro, thinking to himself, agreed.