Ragging on the Vatican Embassy

The past two weeks allowed us to observe the birth and death of a fresh manifestation of OIP Derangement Syndrome. The phenomenon surfaced on 20 November as the National Catholic Reporter ran a story quoting James Nicholson, former head of the Republican National Committee, and a handful of other former US Ambassadors complaining about a change in the US Embassy to the Vatican. Some called it part of a pattern of administration attacks on “religion,” by which they meant their religion.

The right-wing clearinghouse Breitbart.com picked up that story on the Monday before Thanksgiving. The next day, the Washington Times, founded and maintained until 2010 by the Unification Church, ran a story headlined, “Obama’s call to close Vatican embassy is ‘slap in the face’ to Roman Catholics”. That story relied entirely on Breitbart, which in turn relied entirely on the National Catholic Reporter. The Washington newspaper did not bother to report the State Department’s press briefing on the issue.

(Digression #1: The Washington Times just published a column criticizing Pope Francis‘s first encyclical as based on “a disturbing ignorance.” But evidently that wasn’t a slap in the face to Roman Catholics because the author insisted he was writing with “deference and respect.”)

(Digression #2: I’ve previously noted a pattern of right-wing media playing up incendiary cultural stories just before Thanksgiving, when many government offices shut down and spokespeople are unavailable to refute falsehoods.)

Dynastic Presidential aspirant Jeb Bush picked up the “Vatican embassy closing” story and in a tweet tried to tie it to a controversy over the Affordable Care Act. The National Republican Senatorial Committee tried to capitalize on it with a webpage headlined “Obama Closes Vatican Embassy.”

And the whole thing turned out to be illusory. Normally we use the term “closing an embassy” to refer to breaking off or suspending diplomatic ties, but in this case it referred simply to moving the US Embassy to the Vatican to another office building closer to Vatican City. The embassy will be in another part of the same building as the US Embassy to Italy, allowing for more efficient operations and security at a smaller cost. The State Department had started to consider that idea when Gov. Jeb Bush’s brother was President.

CNN, the Washington Post, and Politifact all deemed the right-wing complaints bogus. But facts don’t matter to people suffering from OIP Derangement Syndrome. Especially when they think they’re on a mission from their God.

Willy Wonka to the 33rd Degree

Last month I saw that the National Heritage Museum’s announcement of a conference on Masonic history promised this paper by Bradley Kime of Brigham Young University: “Freemasonry in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”

That amused me as an example of academic triviality, so I went looking for more information. I discovered that as of last fall Kime was a TA at BYU, and I found the abstract for another version of his paper at the ACA/PCA national conference:

The film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, based on Roald Dahl’s famous story, has exercised an enormous amount of influence on American popular culture. The film score was nominated for an academy award and Sammy Davis Junior’s cover of “Candy Man” topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The original film gave rise to a forgettable Freudian remake in 2005, to new lexical items such as Oompa Loompa and Golden Ticket, and to the unforgettable character of Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka. Yet, there is more to this morality tale than meets the eye. My research shows that this story is far from being understood or completely unpacked: there are not only strong thematic parallels with Free Masonry, but also biographical details in Dahl’s life that show his own exposure to Masonry. I have used unpublished archival materials, including from the Dahl archives, to outline the remarkable parallels to Masonic ceremonies in the film and to explore possible Masonic influences in Dahl’s life during key moments when the story was inspired and written.

I recognized that PCA/ACA stands for Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. And I realized that I know that because I myself have presented at the New England Popular Culture Association’s annual meeting. And suddenly this effort didn’t seem so amusingly trivial.

Oz as China?

Years ago Martin Blythe sent me a link to his web essay titled “Oz is China: A Political Fable of Chinese Dragons and White Tigers.” Blythe, formerly top publicist for Paramount Pictures, makes an enthusiastic case that L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as an allegory of Chinese politics, but not a convincing one.

Giving illustrator W. W. Denslow the first name “Frank” is obviously an error of carelessness rather than misunderstanding, but it doesn’t bode well for accuracy in detail. Similarly, Blythe writes, “In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s friends all end up with territories to run: the Scarecrow gets to rule Oz from Beijing, while the Tin Woodman calls himself emperor of the Winkies (just like the Kaiser, who decided to open a brewery there).” In fact, the word “emperor” never appears in that first book. The Tin Woodman adopts that title in later books, but Blythe's essay never acknowledges those.

“Oz Is China” repeatedly makes factual statements without offering support for them. For example, “Baum read the newspapers avidly and he was consumed with news from China.” As a former newspaper publisher and occasional journalist, Baum undoubtedly did read the papers, but what evidence suggests news from China “consumed” him? Did his pseudonymous Boy Fortune Hunters in China show an unusual level of knowledge about that country? (Check out its recent reissue as The Scream of the Sacred Ape.)

The essay lacks citations. The claim that Pearl S. Buck “would come to see The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a gentle satire on Western imperialism and the Christian civilizing mission in China” is not augmented by any quotation or reference to writing by Buck. Nor does it help that the essay says Buck was “exactly Dorothy’s age (6 years old)…when The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written”; the book never states Dorothy’s age, and Buck was seven when Baum wrote the book in late 1899.

This is an example of the circular reasoning that spirals through the entire essay. Another:

Anna May Wong...discovered during her heyday in the 1930’s that part of being American means coming to terms with your “inner Dorothy.” So we could say, and should say, that Dorothy was also Chinese American.

The quotation marks might tempt one to think that Blythe is quoting Wong. But his essay offers no evidence that Wong ever read Baum’s book, much less saw herself in Dorothy.

Even when the essay does offer a citation, its claims go well beyond that evidence, as in these two paragraphs:

When Baum writes: “The Wicked Witch was angry to find them in her country,” the illustration shows her dressed in Manchu pigtails, her imperial regalia and her Golden Cap—the Empress Dowager in all her glory.

Many people spotted this when the book came out. The Boston Beacon wrote, in September 1900, that “the Scarecrow wears a Russian blouse, the fierce Tin Woodman bears a striking resemblance to Emperor Wilhelm of Germany, the Cowardly Lion with its scarlet beard and tail tip at once suggest Great Britain, and the Flying Monkeys wear a military cap in Spanish colors.”

Yet that quoted passage says nothing about the supposedly obvious resemblance between the Wicked Witch and the Dowager Empress, even as it proposed links between other characters and European figures.

“Oz Is China” resembles similar attempts to argue that Baum based Wizard on US monetary policy, the King James Bible, or Gaelic—I’ve read all of these. They all rely on:

• carefully selecting details from the books, movie, and/or Baum’s life and overlooking many contrary facts.
• ignoring how Baum had no idea that this book would be his major work and cared very little for storytelling consistency.
• overlooking how the “obvious” symbolism went entirely unremarked in Baum’s own time and every other time until the theorist’s revelation. 
• imagining that Baum was entirely devoted to that cause or area of knowledge, yet chose to keep its significance secret for the last twenty years of his life.

In sum, those are classic conspiracy theories, albeit harmless ones.

A little more convincing, because they don’t claim intent on Baum’s part, are arguments that the book could be interpreted in certain ways, such as Bird Brian’s reading at GoodReads that focuses on Japan instead of China. Of course, that review still refers to Dorothy as an “Aguished midwestern teen,” and appears to suggest that the 1900 novel reflected western concerns following the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.

Tracking the “Children of Oz”

A couple of years ago I started tracking one of the curious manifestations of Oz's cultural legacy in America, the term "Children of Oz" as a synonym for what others had called "Indigo Children". That label seemed to trace back to a man named James Twyman, who claimed to be bringing messages of peace from such children, as on this page from his website:

We are the children of light. Several names have been given to us such as: Indigo, Children of Oz, the Psychic Children, Rainbows and Mystics. . . .

That webpage has a 2003 copyright date at the bottom. The previous year, Twyman had published the book Emissary of Love: The Psychic Children Speak to the World. Here's a sample of its wisdom:

PRETEND that you are still that Original Self.
PRETEND that nothing ever changed.
Then know that what you are pretending is indeed fact.
It is true.
Build your life around it.
Give everything you have to realize it.
Nothing else matters but this,
And that is why it is the message of the Children of Oz.

Twyman's first book in this vein was Emissary of Light, first published in 1996. That prompted David Sunfellow of an organization called New Heaven, New Earth to publish an online "report" about Twyman. Among other things, it says:

As far as we have been able to determine, there are kernels of truth in everything Twyman claims. At the same time, virtually every aspect of his story has also been misrepresented, embellished, and spun in dubious ways. Similarly, while Twyman's main contention that he physically met 13 spiritual masters in Bosnia is almost certainly not true, he seems sincere, and genuinely committed to personal and planetary transformation. Indeed, a part [sic] from his megalomaniac claims, he seems like a regular guy -- warm, personable, friendly.

Emissary of Light starts with a "psychic child" in San Francisco giving Twyman the power to bend spoons. That seems minor as far as powers go (only slightly above the Robin level). Spoon-bending was so long ago exposed as a parlor trick that I thought the very term had become a synonym for humbuggery. Twyman must feel otherwise since he's selling an online course called Spoonbenders. The text of the lessons seems to be here, and is analyzed on this page. It includes such instruction as:

First, find a thin spoon that you can easily bend with your hands. You don't want to start off with one that is too thick. . . .

Take the spoon in your hands, holding the handle in one hand and the bowl in the other. Notice how much pressure it takes to bend it around 45 degrees. . . .

At a certain moment you will know that it is time to put some pressure on the bowl. As you imagine that the molecules are spreading apart, assist the movement by giving a slight push with the first two fingers of your other hand.

Somehow I don't think Glinda would be impressed.

As for the Oz connection, the label "Children of Oz" seems to be nothing more than grabbing a term with cultural resonance. There's no deeper understanding of how the Oz books depict children than is evident from this extract from "Regaining Your Indigo Power" on Twyman's website:

The ego doesn't want you to remember Love or Oneness, because then it will lose its power, just like the Wicked Witch in the story of the Wizard of Oz.

The “Children of Oz” meme seems to have died down recently. Almost no websites using the phrase have been added in the last six months, according to Google, and the phrase doesn't appear in Google's blog search (though of course that changes now). Even James Twyman has moved on: his latest message, available in book, movie, and lecture form, is “The Moses Code.”

(Picture above from Printfinders.com, which has a variety of John R. Neill illustrations for sale, not all correctly labeled.)

Worldwide Conspiracies in Oz

Because The Wizard of Oz occupies such a big place in Americans' collective imagination, it's only natural for our conspiracy theorists to decide that it means even more. And of course the World Wide Web is a wonderful forum for people to express their theories about, well, worldwide webs.

I recently sampled some of the online conspiracist essays about Oz, and see some broad patterns:

• Many of these theories trace The Wizard of Oz's role in their personal favorite conspiracy back to author L. Frank Baum, given his lively, if not detailed or consistent, opinions on religion and social movements.
• However, none of the conspiratorial connections those theorists see were detected in Baum's lifetime or shortly afterwards. All these interpretations date from well after the MGM movie was televised annually.
• Many theorists have a hard time differentiating between the book and the movie, crediting Baum with details that didn't appear until 1939 or seeing books and movie as all part of the same conspiracy.
• Racism and bigotry of other sorts is never far below the surface of these theories.
• Most enjoyably, conspiracy theorists have a wonderful way of splintering into smaller and smaller groups, each accusing others of being part of the conspiracy.

Here's one such essay, "L. Frank Baum and the Not-So-Wonderful Wizard of Oz," apparently a joint production of Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D., and Steve Van Nattan. The main text is said to come from Cuddy's book, the Biblical interpolations from Van Nattan.

Cuddy is an anti-New World Order crusader. His biography reassures us that he "has been a Senior Associate with the U.S. Department of Education [and]...testified before members of Congress on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice." (No dates attached to those experiences.) Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) inserted various Cuddy writings into the Congressional Record during debate on an education bill in 1998.

Van Nattan is a Christian pastor who's written such things as, "Nor will I approve of the pulpit being used by those who are mere do-gooders or political hucksters, such as the Gideons. I know how to hand out Bibles without the help of Episcopalians." (Those aggressive Episcopalians.) The "Not-So-Wonderful" essay also appears on Van Nattan's old website, with every appearance of the phrase "New World Order" replaced with "piano casters." The ways of the world are mysterious, but an explanation may lie in the fact that Van Nattan has a piano supplies business. And, apparently, a hacked-up website.

Van Nattan has apparently angered another conspiracy theorist, Edward Hendrie, on the question of interracial marriage. Meanwhile, Hendrie and Cuddy and a lot of others are in agreement that the U.S. government knew about the September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York in advance--but it's quite possible each has different explanations and therefore opposes the other.

But where in the Oz legend, you must be asking, are the Illuminati? According to "Wizard of Oz and Illuminati Mind Control", they were involved, too. That essay seems to come from Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler's book The Illuminati Formula to Create an Undetectable Total Mind Controlled Slave, and Deeper Insights. (Insights even deeper than undetectable mind control?) That book reveals, among so much more, that "At the Kennedy Space Center...Mind control testing is done, and base programming such as the Wizard of Oz programming is done here." Well, some people do think Oz is on another planet.

Springmeier presents himself as a minister, and Wheeler states that she is from "an Illuminati family." This webpage links them to other identities. In March 2001, the Portland Oregonian reported that Springmeier had been arrested on drug charges and found with "white supremacist literature." He replied by starting the charges were--what else?--a conspiracy. But in late 2003 Springmeier was sentenced to nine years in prison for helping to rob a bank in 1997.

Ken Vardon, maintainer of the webpage reprinting Springmeier and Wheeler's Wizard of Oz essay, has his own opponents among the conspiracy crowd who regard him with suspicion because of his military background.

Also reprinting material from Springmeier and Wheeler is this page from the "New Covenant Church of God" in Sweden, whose website tells us:

The theme inside the MGM is the Wizard of Oz which is for Monarch programming. (To understand the Wizard of Oz mind control programming the reader needs to get this author’s various writings on the Monarch Programming, which includes an Illustrated Guide To Monarch Programming and other writings.) Bob Hope, an MI-6 agent who was used extensively in W.W. II to trigger mind-controlled military men with the proper hypnotically embedded trigger words, received his own mind-controlled sex slaves after the war. . . .

Secret agents, word-triggered hypnosis, sex slaves--that definitely sounds like a Bob Hope movie from the early 1960s. Somewhere between Bachelor in Paradise and I'll Take Sweden. Pity it exists only in some fevered imaginations.