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Posts Tagged ‘no doubt’

More Details On Your Phone Is Spying On You

01 Dec

The news on Carrier IQ software embedded in smart phones seems to be heating up. Carriers are starting to talk, a little, and Congress is taking notice. Senator Al Franken is asking pointed questions the company no doubt will not…

 

Some Thoughts On "Thinking Like A Lawyer"

09 Sep

I’ve been having this ongoing argument discussion with one of my colleagues at DePaul about the ability of law school (generally, not just mine) to adequately prepare students for the real world of law practice. Joe’s post, Resistance? No Doubt,…

 

Resistance? No Doubt, but the Timing is Ripe to Make an Attempt: Reforming Legal Research & Writing Instruction Requires Transforming the Status Quo Model of Law School Curriculum and Faculty Governance

06 Sep

Alas, I seriously doubt any such reform will by mandated by the ABA’s review of accredition standards since not interfering with the how the legal academy should produce “pratice ready” grads beyond aspirational goals for “outcomes” appears to be the…

 

Picking Up the Tab, Part 2: Are You Frustrated by the Airing of Complaints Against Particular Vendors?

24 Jul

Kudos to this year’s program planning committee because Philly 2011: Cream Cheese, Cheesesteak or Karaoke programming does appear to be a notch better than past years. No doubt it took helluva work and effort on their part to add a…

 

AM I ANTI-SEMITIC?

15 Sep

August 11, 2006

People have often asked me this question.  They say "Look what the Jews did to you, Judge Arnold Gold put you in prison the day before you had to appear in court to start defending in your case, then kicked you out of your house to sell it and pay for the fees of opposing counsel (who sued you in the first place) who were 1. your wife’s killer attorney Emily Shappell Edelman, whose killer tactics no doubt helped kill her client, who is Jewish, and 2. Nicolette Hannah’s killer attorney, James R. Eliaser, whose killer tactics deprived a small boy of his father, who is Jewish – who I discovered the concealed fact that he used to be an employee of the judge’s law firm. By ordering these attorney’s wishes, the judge effectively created the loss of my small son to me and me to him, and the exodus of the entire Clark family, less me, to the East Coast, and the fracture of the Redgrave brand.

Then there was Family Court Supervising Judge Aviva Bobb, who I believe is Jewish, who backed Gold up, kept awarding new fees to Eliaser, and then refused to let me buy my guest house so that I could continue to live in Topanga, keep my dogs, and not store my belongings and not live in a trailer. Just a reminder here of my expectations that celebrity pandering could not happen in Hollywood’s hallowed halls of justice since we read this on their mission statement.

An Appeal to the Second Circuit got me a negative review from Justice Miriam Vogel, also Jewish.

An Appeal to the Supreme Court, after I had written to Chief Justice Ronald George, who I believe is also Jewish, was turned down.

And the media, which wouldn’t stop, appeared to get more fodder from the site of Hebrew University, where one of their professors made me the anecdotal target setting out to prove her totally inapposite use of me in a legal paper.  Her name was Hila Keren, and to this day, I have received no response from her.

And then of course, there was Lew Wasserman, the top Jew in Hollywood, from the old House Calls case.

Well, my answer to this all-important question is that far from being anti-Semitic, I am, perhaps surprisingly, PRO-Semitic, and HUGELY ENVIOUS of them.

I have always respected the culture of the Jews, and their education, which certainly exceeds mine. I look up to them, and their low numbers among the world’s population has always astonished me.  Always an outsider, I even believe I have the soul of a Jew. I have made a point of making close friends with Jewish people.  (In fact, more than one of my girlfriends was Jewish.)

I WANT TO BECOME JEWISH, so that I could be completely like them, recognizably the same, but without their religious beliefs, a secular Jew.

I believe that there is the APPEARANCE of networking and mutual backscratching taking place.  Of course, business is all about mutual backscratching, nothing wrong with that, but if I am right, I want to be a part of THAT network.
 
It is absolutely no coincidence that I believe I could then enter the places where Jewish mingling and socializing take place. Clubs, temples, agents’ offices and so forth, where right now I would be unwelcome and refused entry. Perhaps because I am no longer attached to a celebrity.

It was Adolph Zukor, that originator of things Hollywood, founder of Paramount Pictures, who ages ago gave this deathless advice to newcomers to the Hollywood scene: "Talk British but think Yiddish!" That was right up my tree.

To this end, I have entertained the thought of taking a hint from Careen Johnson, a struggling black bricklayer and funeral parlor assistant who, dying to become successful as an actress, changed her name to Whoopee Goldberg.  She was smart, it got her an Emmy, an Oscar, a Tony and a Grammy. And of course she had the great talent to back it up.

Now me, I could change my name to Clarkstein or Clarkberg, but would it help? Not bloody likely! If I became a Jew aspiring to become successful as an actor or a celebrity, I would surely be advised to change it back to Clark.

Don’t think so?  Look at Emmanuel Goldenberg, Muni Weisenfreund, Julius Garfinkle, David Kaminsky, Bernard Schwartz, Jacob Cohen, Joyce Frankenberg, Aaron Chwatt and Ephraim Goldberg.  They changed their monikers to Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, John Garfield, Danny Kaye, Tony Curtis, Rodney Dangerfield, Jane Seymour, Red Buttons and Frank Gehry respectively. And then there was Larry King (interesting choice, but what is wrong with "Larry Zeiger Live"?)

No, I’m afraid that that can only be my fantasy.

But getting back to the law, I did make a point of hiring Jewish lawyers, who always keep their original names perhaps as a badge of office, oh, and a Jewish press agent, thinking that would help.

The first to defend me was Melvin S. Goldsman, and Marci Levine, Esqs. of Freid & Goldsman, their names giving them away.

I fired them when I found that my Mel allowed his Jewish adversary to write a time sensitive stipulation to Nicolette that could have led to the cessation of hostilities, didn’t read it because he was out of the office and there’s no money in ceased hostilities, and told his secretary to tell me to sign it, which I did.  Boy, was I green at the beginning.  Perhaps they were old friends. Perhaps they performed regularly for the Beverly Hills Bar Association.

My next was Steve Mindell, Esq.  I fired him because he was about as  aggressive as my little son’s kindergarten teacher.  When I asked him to get Lynn to open a joint bank account with me so that she could pay her share of the upkeep of our joint property during the three years of my lone occupation, he simply told me she wouldn’t agree. When I asked him to get our joint stock portfolo released from the freeze put on it at the height of the dotcom bubble so we could cash out, again, he wouldn’t do it. It would have meant getting a court order, and he wouldn’t go to court for it. Nothing appeared to be happening, other than his endless bills.

So then I hired hit man Mike Kelly, Esq., a referral from a Topanga millionaire divorcee lady friend.  Of course, he’s Irish, (the worst kind, I hear someone shout – but that’s a joke).

My last lawyer (apart from my Appeal lawyers, also Jewish) was a Cy Schaffer (also a Jew), to whom I paid $50,000.  In court, Judge Gold said he had made an order that I was not to use funds from a tax refund to pay this lawyer, and he should immediately refund it to me. Schaffer protested.  Gold hunted for his order, then said he couldn’t find it, and told him he could keep the money.

I fired Mike Kelly after stretched out months when he alleged I was trying to get Nicolette evicted from her little house by not paying the property taxes, and it was going to be sold by the taxing authorities. He didn’t read the 1-page notice, which had been sent over to him by her tricky attorney Eliaser, who I’m sure had read it.  It wasn’t for me, it belonged to another John Clark, on a foreclosing property in South Central Los Angeles!

So now I was out of lawyers because I stopped believing in them, lost six hundred thousand dollars to them, and had no more money. That’s how I came to represent myself in court, and had to learn what it is to be a PRO SE.

Having wised up, my first appearance before Judge Gold was over the unread by my attorney property tax inquiry.  There was Eliaser, sputtering to the judge that I was trying to get his client evicted. I showed the court the 1-page notice showing it didn’t belong to me.  Judge Gold just smiled, and thanked me for being smart enough to catch it. I asked for a sanction against Eliaser for wasting the court’s time.  Not granted.

As for my Jewish press agent, a gentleman named Michael Levine, a self-styled media expert, I hired him to give me advice on handling the media now that I was suing Larry Zeiger -sorry, King.  I got no advice at all; he refused to visit me at my house, but I did find that my money, about thirteen thousand dollars, went towards starting his new wannabe Drudge Report, aimed at bringing down the likes of Mel Gibson and Michael Jackson and maybe me and others who APPEAR to be breaking his moral code (chuckle chuckle).  Networking again, is my opinion. But unlike Red Buttons, I did get a dinner, several actually. It wasn’t until after I had dropped him that I discovered that he used to be married to King’s current wife by whom he had a child. I think he should have told me about that before I paid him a penny.

If I ever get as drunk as Mel Gibson, I’m told that I tend to act out my Jewish fantasy while singing the freedom chorus of the Hebrew slaves in their banishment.

But when I sober up, I get to thinking more about what "they" did to me.  Here I am, my possessions lost or stolen, alienated by my kids and my family (I face back East to see them), removed from my house and my wealth by quasi-military enforcers, and exiled from Topanga, my Homeland. Then these words come to me.

As long as deep in the heart,
The soul of a Jew yearns,
. . . . . . . . . .
Our hope is not yet lost.

And Barbra comes to my rescue in song.