I have celebrated The Ides of March as a political holiday for more than a decade now. It is a day to commemorate our entertainment and edification by political hacks from Pericles to George W. Bush, by marking the day 2,053 years ago when the Roman Senate brilliantly settled a political standoff by imposing term limits on Julius Caesar.
But who will win the Grand Prize this year? Who will take home the "Senior Shiv in the Solar Plexus" Where Brutus slipped it, and the respected "Knife in the Back Plaque", where Cassius paid off his old enemy? We had many contenders, but in the end there could be only one winner.
The proper tone was firmly set by this year’s grand prize winner when he opened his front door on the morning of December 9, 2008 and found himself facing a team of F.B.I agents. The first words out of his mouth were “Is this a joke!” And it is that question, more than the bribery, the shakedowns or the spousal supported profanity which earned this twice elected political hack - who was he running against, Kevin Federline?
The proper tone was firmly set by this year’s grand prize winner when he opened his front door on the morning of December 9, 2008 and found himself facing a team of F.B.I agents. The first words out of his mouth were “Is this a joke!” And it is that question, more than the bribery, the shakedowns or the spousal supported profanity which earned this twice elected political hack - who was he running against, Kevin Federline?And now the unanimously un-elected ex-Governor of Illinois, the soon to be indicted unofficial poet laureate of the criminal justice system, the winner of the 2009 Ides of March Political Award, the Sanjaya of Springfield, Rod Blagonevich.
This prize has not been awarded to Mr. Blogoiejevich for trying to sell a senate seat, or for threatening to pull funding from a children’s hospital, for the federal charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and “play-for-pay” charges, nor even for committing his alleged crimes over his official phone lines even after the press told him the feds had them bugged , an act Jon Stewart has described as “a new low in dumb.” The day before he was arrested, Blagojevich told reporters, “…anybody who wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it…” Did he think they wouldn’t? Yes, to be this crooked and this stupid deserves a prize – just not an Ides of March prize.
All these offenses might violate criminal, civil and moral codes in any number of societies worldwide. But practical politics is not judged against a legal or moral scorecard, but by only one measurement. Can you get re-elected? And the answer here is unequivocal. 
The Ides of March 2009 prize has been awarded to a man who has never lost an election, who won his last (2006) election as Governor by 11 percentage points, but a politician who, by October of 2008 (two months before he was arrested) could find barely 10% of registered voters who wanted him re-elected. The same poll showed that 0% of voters rated his job performance as excellent, and only 4% rated him “good” while 64% rated his job performance as “poor”. As Jay Leno pointed out, Blagojevich’s approval rating was so low, he even disapproved of himself. Rod Blagoeijevich has managed to give crooked politics a bad name in Illinois. That ranks as an historic achievement.
The farce of his senate appointment collapsing post swearing in, in a haze of conflicting testimony by now Senator Burris, was followed by the announcement of Blogoiejevich’s six figure book deal. This inspired Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roper to imagine what the finished book might offer up as a protagonist. “Blago…just like Batman… a misunderstood superhero who roams the streets of Chicago in a black outfit…painted as an outlaw. Maybe they can just call (his) book “He’s Batty.”
While the ex- Governor has compared himself to Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart, David Letterman said that Blagojevich resembles “…a producer of an adult entertainment awards show….”. And then there is the helmet hair. Jay Leno suggested that not only should Blagojevich go to jail but his hairdresser should be given the death penalty. Jon Stewart has suggested that Rod himself be indicted for beaver pelt smuggling. Letterman observed that Blogo spoke for 47 minutes at his own impeachment trial in the Illinois senate. Afterward, Letterman said, “They had to rush him to the emergency room at Supercuts.” Worse; “…next month his hair goes digital.” And Jimmy Kimmel suggested, “They nabbed him with a butterfly net and some Aqua Net.”
So there is no contest for this year’s award. The other competitors are simply not in the same game, not working down to the same shockingly low standard of behavior and illlogic as Rod Blagojevich, ex-governor of Illinois and charter member of the “Future Felons of 21st Century America”,...winner of the 2009 Ides of March Award!
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After Mary chased Mr. Soper out of the Bowen family kitchen, it would appear that he was no longer welcomed in the house by Mr, Bowen - which makes me wonder if he was as “diplomatic” as he claimed to be. We know that the next time he tried to talk to Mary Mr. Soper approached her at the rooming house where she lived. This time he even brought along an actual medical doctor, Doctor Raymond Hobbler. But this did not strengthen his argument. Again Mary refused to hand over her urine, blood or feces. Defeated yet again, the Health Department decided to dispatch Doctor Sara Josephine Baker (above), an assistant, an ambulance and five police officers.
Mary was not a complete fool. She had consulted a chemist – what we would call a pharmacist. He had examined her and assured Mary she was clear of the disease. So she felt it was the health officials who were crazy. Doctor Baker explained later what happened when Mary answered the knock on her rooming house door. “As she lunged at me with the fork, I stepped back, recoiled on the policeman, and so confused matters that, by the time we got through the door, Mary had disappeared.” They turned the tiny house upside down, and five hours later found Mary hiding in the supply closet of a neighboring house. Wrote Dr. Baker, “(Mary) came out fighting and swearing, both of which she could do with appalling efficiency and vigor…she was maniacal in her integrity…The policemen lifted her into the ambulance and I literally sat on her all the way to (Willard Parker Hospital)…it was like being in a cage with an angry lion.”
But throughout that time Mary continued to fight back. The hospital's tests showed 120 out of 163 of her stool samples tested positive for typhoid. So Mary sent her own samples to a private lab and consulted her own physicians. They reported her as free of typhoid. As she wrote the courts, “I am an innocent human being. I have committed no crime, and I am treated like an outcast - - a criminal. It is unjust, outrageous, uncivilized. It seems to me incredible that in a Christian community a defenseless woman can be treated in this manner.” Clearly this was not an ignorant woman. A photo of patients taken from the hospital on North Brother Island is dominated by a glaring Mary Mallon from the first bed. No wonder she is glaring becuase it is a staged photo. Except for her first few days there, Mary was not confinded to a bed. She was not ill. She lived in a small shack (below - called a "cottage" by the officals ). But she was still not a woman to be ignored.
In 1910 a new commissioner of the NYC Board of Health agreed to release Mary if she promised to no longer work as a cook, and checked in every three months with the board. Mary immediately agreed, and on February 20th 1909 she stepped off the ferry from Brothers Island and blended into the city of New York. She reported to the Health Department a few times and then simply disappeared. She was not heard again for five years.
She was. She returned to her cottage, and eventually a job helping in the laboratory. That is Mary above, on the right, wearing glasses now, standing next to bacteriologist Emma Sherman. Mary must have been lonley. She had few visitors, usually staff, and never admitted she might be responsible for any illness or deaths. For twenty-three years she was identified to all as “Typhoid Mary”. Then, in December of 1932 she suffered a massive stroke. In 1938 she died. An autopsy revealed her liver heavily infected with Typhoid bacteria. Mary Mallon is buried in St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx.
George Soper built a career on public health, becoming director of the American Cancer Society from 1923 to 1928. He died on June 17, 1948, at the age of 78, in relative obscurity. He must have known that his subject, the woman he built his career upon, would be better remembered than he was; which was odd. She wanted no fame, while he hungered for it. No cause of death for Mr. Soper was given. Again, that seems a little odd, to me.
George A. Soper graduated from Columbia University in 1899 with a doctorate in the new field of “civil” engineering. He was described as a man of “average build, high wide forehead and hooded eyes that seem foreboding,” which I suppose came from staring down disaster day after day. 
George was hired by the city Department of Health, and tasked with answering a basic question; what happens to all that human waste dumped into the Hudson and East Rivers? Conventional wisdom was that it all floated out the bay. But by releasing floats into the rivers and tracking their journeys over three years, George came to the stunning realization that because of the tides, neither river actually flows very much. The floats meandered back and forth for weeks before eventually escaping into the bay. Since the river did not flush itself, it was not a very good toilet. As George explained to the New York Times, “…immense quantities of poisonous sewage floats for days in the river and bays close to public baths, bathing beaches and the oyster beds of Jamaica Bay, from which 1 million bushels are brought to New York markets every year.” (p. 20, NYT March 14, 1911 Sports) George was obviously preparing the public for the expense of building a new sewage system.
George knew there would be resistance to the idea - “No new taxes!” is not a new battle cry – and he knew opponents to the expense would be nit-picking every word he said. And if you listened carefully you could hear Dr. Soper soften his absolutes, even in that same interview with the Times. He continued, “Only recently there was an outbreak of typhoid at the Rockaway Peninsula…In one case we traced the oysters to a dealer who was to have put them into fresh water before selling them. We could not assertion whether or not he kept his promise…” In other words, George knew the sewage was killing people but he did not yet have the individual case histories or the laboratory work that would establish it to a scientific certainty. And that was why, when landlord George Thompson asked Dr. Soper to investigate a house he was renting in Oyster Bay, Long Island, Dr. Soper jumped at the chance.
Banker Charles Warren and his family had rented the Thompson guest house for the summer. On August 27 one of the Warren daughters had suddenly developed a fever of 105 degrees F, a headache, diarrhea, nausea and a heavy cough. When she also developed a skin rash the doctor diagnosed her with typhoid fever. Quickly Mrs. Warren, a second daughter, two maids and the gardener also came down with the fever. A Board of Health investigator quickly ascribed the source to a contaminated water supply, but the Thompson family drank from the same supply and they were all fine. Mr. Thompson was convinced the cause could not be the water, in part because, if it was, he would have a very hard time renting that house again.
Dr. Soper agreed with Mr. Thompson, and began his own investigation, but this time in New York City where he interviewed the Warren family intensively. George had noted that there were eleven people in the Warren household that summer, but only six had developed typhoid. What was different about those six people? What had they done that the five other occupants had not done? Eventually, after hours of interviews, the family remembered a special treat they had eaten for desert one night; peaches. George realized now he had to locate the cook, who everyone was certain, had not developed typhoid.
All the family knew about her was that she was middle aged, had dark hair, and was named Mary. She had been provided by an employment agency, which had checked her letters of reference but had not kept them. So George found himself tracking “Mary” the cook through other servants used by the same agency. He ran into suspicion and secrecy, and had to travel to Boston, but eventually he discovered that her name was Mary Mallon, and she had cooked for seven families over the last seven years. In those families 22 people had developed typhoid fever, and one young girl had died. Soper was now certain he had found a carrier for typhoid, something that been only a theory up to now; Which explains why Dr. Soper was so excited when he found Mary, working as a cook for Walter Bowen and his family, on Park Avenue.
Soper appeared before Mary in the Bowen kitchen and, “I was as diplomatic as possible, but I had to say I suspected her of making people sick and I wanted specimens of her urine, feces and blood.” Mary would later claim that Soper also told her he was going to write a book about her and offered to split the royalties with her. But whether such a deal was offered or not, Mary’s reaction was swift and definitive. According to Soper, “She seized a carving fork and advanced in my direction.” Soper says he ran from the house, feeling lucky to have escaped.
And to be honest, I do not blame Ms. Malone. A strange man has approached her and asked for a sample of her bodily fluids. And worse, she was accused of being a typhoid Mary; in fact, the original Typhoid Mary.
There is a school of thought that last words reveal some insight into character. I’m not referring to suicide notes or pompous words meant for posterity, but the spontaneous utterances of those who know they are facing an imminent death; as in 1790 when Thomas de Mahay, the Marquis de Favras, was handed his death warrant as he climbed the steps of his scaffold. Thomas actually spent his last moments on earth reading the document, as if looking for a loophole, and his last words were addressed to the clerk, to whom he pointed out, “I see that you have made three spelling mistakes.” That was not a helpful remark if he was hoping for a delay the proceedings, but it did tell us a great deal about Thomas. 
Or consider the final words of Lady Nancy Whitcher Langhorne Astor, the first female member the English Parliament, who awoke on her own deathbed to discover her family was gathered around her. She asked, “Am I dying or is this my birthday?” Unfortunately, the family’s response was not recorded, and I am the kind of person who wonders what they replied to that question. 
I have also wondered about the last words of Margaretha Geertfuida Zella, the little Dutch girl better known by her stage name, Mata Hari. She was a dancer who became a stripper because, as she admitted, “I could never dance very well.” During the First World War she became a famous spy because she was so bad at it. It is not clear even today who she was spying for, if anybody.
There is a story told about the last words of Pietro Arentino, the father of modern pornography, and thus one of my heroes. Pietro was a good friend of the painter Titian. And it was helping out his friend that got Pietro killed. In 1556 Guidobaldo Il della Rovere, the Duke of Urbino, hired Titian to paint a portrait of his wife, Giulia da Varno. Titian needed the money, as usual, but the problem was that Giulia was not only middle aged but she was also “vain and ugly” and rich; a dangerous combination. If the portrait didn’t look like her she would be offended. If it looked too much like her, she would be offended. Luckily for Titian, Pietro came up with the solution.
At Pietro’s suggestion, Titian hired his favorite prostitute from a local brothel, and had her pose for the painting of the body. But in place of the prostitute’s head he painted a glamorized portrait of Giulia, based on paintings done of her as a young woman. It sounds like a bad joke but in the hands of a genius like Titian such absurdity can become great art, i.e. the Venus Urbino.
They carried him to a room out of the way and when it became clear that he was not likely to recover the Duke called for a priest to administer extreme unction. First the priest prayed for Pietro, and then offered to hear his last confession. But since Pietro was still unconscious, the priest continued, anointing Pietro with holy oil on his eyelids, ears, nostrils, lips, hands and feet, each time repeating the chant, “By this holy unction and his own most gracious mercy, may the Lord pardon you whatever sin you have committed.” As the priest finished the prayer, Pietro’s eyes opened and he clearly said, “Now that I’m oiled. Keep me from the rats.” And then he died. There was no doubt about what he meant, and that in effect he died laughing.
And then there are last words for which no explanation is required because the act of dying is the explanation; such as when the great amateur botanist Luther Burbank delivered his last words on earth; “I don’t feel so good”, or the poet Hart Crane who delivered his last words, “Good-bye, everybody”, from a ship’s railing just before he jumped into the sea. What more explanation could you require from such people?
But I retain my deepest affection for the actor, poet, playwright and historian, Ergon Friedell, whose last words revealed a sweet and gentle heart, to go with the quick and facile mind he had exhibited his entire life. On the night of March 16, 1939 two Nazi thugs arrived to arrest Egron. While his housekeeper delayed them at the front door, Ergon climbed onto his bedroom window ledge and before he jumped to his death warned those beneath him, “Watch out, please.”
God bless him. 
