Mark Dunn - Ibid - A Life

“They would either associate it with crocks filled with Heaven knows what kind of unpalatable imaginings, or assume that the burgers were made from crocodile meat. After I left him, I recalled that in Britain the word has an even more negative denotation. Kroc didn’t always take my advice, though. I recommended early on that he come up with some kind of advertising mascot. Remembering my days with the circus and this one fellow in particular — a Scots kid who made me laugh every time I saw him — I suggested a clown named Ronald. Ronald McDonald. Ray said, ‘What does a clown have to do with hamburgers and French fries? What else you got?’”

A year after Jonathan’s death, Ray Kroc introduced the world to Ronald McDonald.

24. “You’re giving money to everyone you meet!”Addicus Andrew Blashette to Jonathan Blashette, 13 August 1960. Young Addy Andy was clearly upset with his father, but there wasn’t much that anyone, including A.A., could do to dissuade him. Incidentally, during those brief moments Jonathan’s son allowed me to interview him, I asked if he might wish to address in more detail his feelings about his father’s late-life benevolence-run-amuck. Blashette declined, stating that everything he wanted to say on the subject had already been told to Glover just moments before the author’s painful gluteal encounter with Blashette’s Tiffany desk-top fountain pen holder.

25. Jonathan’s entrepreneurial spirit, coupled with a virtually non-existent screening process, brought all manner of investor-hungry schemers to his doorstep.

Others included:

Theatre impresario Darrell Platt, who sought $75,000 to mount a new Broadway production of Streetcar Named Desire featuring Don Knotts as Stanley Kowalski and Irene Ryan as Blanche DuBois.

Environmental artist George Dellums, in negotiation with Buckminster Fuller to top the architect’s famous geodesic domes with nipples. (The word “negotiation,” Jonathan quickly learned, involved little more than pleading with Fuller’s secretary to allow him into the architect’s office.)

26. The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Philadelphians . The publication (Racine: Alternative Voices, 1960) created, as might have been expected, an ecumenical firestorm — one that singed Jonathan as well. Assuming that his financing of Umberger’s trip to the Wadi Qumran would remain unpublicized, Jonathan was surprised and dismayed to find his name prominent upon the book’s acknowledgments page. The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Philadelphians , allegedly translated from the “other” Dead Sea Scrolls, “ the ones they don’t want you to know about ” was discredited by a multitude of Biblical scholars. Most regarded the book as a blasphemous hoax. Both Umberger and Jonathan were blasted in both the religious and mainstream press for attempting through this proposed addendum to the Bible to alter the “Holy Word of God.” On the religious television program Life is Worth Living Bishop Fulton Sheen became so exercised over the publication that his speech lost all coherence and the producer was forced to cut away to a rerun of December Bride.

The religious community was up in arms over the book for several reasons. Umberger contended that not only was it written by the Apostle Paul, but that it had every right to be added to the Pauline canon. More audaciously, Umberger defended the validity of its content, which, if accepted, upended 2,000 years of doctrine and tradition addressing the role of women in the Christian church. Anticipating this reaction, Umberger pushes his case full-throttle in his introduction, excerpted below:

“The Apostle Paul was no dummy. He knew that his advice to the early Christian Church would not be regarded lightly. He took seriously this opportunity to guide and shepherd the growing Christian flock, even if it meant back-pedaling on some of his previous positions on important issues facing members of the Church. It was in this spirit that he wrote to the congregation at Philadelphia. Paul began by making passing references to his early pronouncements on hair braiding and the wearing of gold and pearls: ’Perhaps I was a little too unyielding in my opinions proffered to good Timothy on this matter. Women have always braided their hair and they will continue to braid their hair and who am I to make them feel guilty about it? Say to the ladies, ‘Braid if you must, but not excessively so.” As to the matter of accessories, perhaps I was a bit too severe here as well. Gold and pearls if worn with decorum and a certain modesty of presentation, should not impede one’s ability to worship .’

More important was Paul’s modification of his original position on the role of women in the family of Christ, a position which religious patriarchs (ignorant of the Philadelphia epistle which apparently never reached its intended recipients) would eventually set in stone, its contours etched deeper and deeper with each succeeding generation, as male dominance of the Christian Church solidified and then fossilized over two millennia. ‘But as to this matter of the role of women, I know that I have said on a number of occasions that women should keep silent. (The Corinthians I especially singled out on this point.) Yes, I was wrong and I admit it. Sometimes I simply do not think things through. You will recall my directive to the slaves at Ephesus to obey their masters. What was I thinking? We are held in thrall — all of us — only to the Lord our God! Slavery is wrong! wrong! wrong! So say I about the women. Speak up and praise the Lord as loudly and as heartily as the men around you! Shake off the shackles of gender-slavery placed upon you. Preach and teach the word of the Lord, and enrich and aggrandize the family of believers! We are — all of us — master and slave, man and woman, equal in God’s eyes! Didn’t Jesus tell us this? I really should have paid closer attention .’”

27. The attack came out of the blue. It shook Jonathan to the core.Glover, et al.

28. “ This is not what I meant.”Andrew Bloor to Jonathan Blashette, 2 September 1960. Bloor continues:

“It serves you not a whit to give all your money to these crazy people. It would be different if there were some nobility or high purpose to their causes. There is not. Nobody is approaching you with a proposal to find an end to cancer, Jonathan. Or even to try to get that godawful hour-long Lucy and Desi thing cancelled. I’ve always been supportive of your goals, your dreams, your choice of female companions, all of your major life decisions. But here I must draw the line. You are writing the final chapter of your life in Crayola and I will not have it! You were put here for a very important reason. This is not it!”

29. Jonathan’s reply was scathing.Jonathan Blashette to Andrew Bloor, 6 September 1960. Responding to Bloor’s last charge, Jonathan writes:

“You have been telling me this for years, Dr. Bloor, and I still do not to this day know what you mean. You are like the psychoanalyst who sits and nods while the patient fumbles and flounders and doesn’t get a clue. You do not know what it is that will bring wonderful affirming purpose to my life any more than I do. All you’ve had is a feeling, old man. A feeling that betrayed you and betrayed me. I will hear no more of it. If these people want my money, so be it. I am doing nothing with it. My dream of making any kind of mark has melted away in the barren desert of my dried out, dried up, withered, broken-hipped, wife-bereft, freak-legged life. So why not let that money go to those who still have dreams with a pulse? What do you want from me? I am a man. That is all. A man who did some things. I didn’t save the world. I did the best I could with what I was given. Let’s end this discussion, once and for all. I’ve had enough of it.”