By: Martin Merritt, esq.
Past President, Texas Health Lawyers Association
Past Chair, DBA Health Law Section
martin@martinmerritt.com
“Please Tell Me you Didn’t. . . How to Keep Clients Out of the Jailhouse, Poorhouse and Lawyers Out of the Nuthouse” -Blog
As you can tell, I love talking about health law & litigation issues, and general wellbeing, if you have any health law questions or better yet, need to refer a case, just call or drop me an email and I will happily talk.
At the Tom Thumb grocery store near my house, there works a special needs kid named “Antonio.” I don’t know how it began, but if he is working, no matter how far into the store I have managed to make it, he will eventually catch up with me and give me a great big hug and ask about my day.
I don’t know which one of us gets more out of it (not that many people are even a little bit happy to see me, maybe that means I need more friends.) I just learned a long time ago, it’s best not to “question the magic.”
Questioning the Magic. Case in point, in 2019, Carson King, an Iowa State football fan held up a poster behind the national pregame broadcast which read, “Busch Light Supply Needs Replenished. Venmo Carson-King-25.” It was meant to be a joke. But, before he knew it, he had thousands of dollars in donations.
Carson then decided he would take $18 and buy a case of Bud Light, then donate the rest to the Children’s Hospital located on the campus of Iowa State’s rival, the University of Iowa. This is, if you haven’t heard of it, is the children’s hospital which overlooks the Iowa Hawkeye’s stadium. During Iowa football games, the fans stop, turn and wave to the children in the hospital.
Eventually, the story of Carson King’s generosity caught national attention. What started as a joking request for beer money, ultimately raised $3 million for the children’s hospital. (Sunshine, football and beer. What could possibly go wrong?)
Then (sunofabitch) somebody just had to “question the magic.” Somebody dug up a social media tweet, a 16 year-old Carson probably shouldn’t have tweeted. It reminded me of my sainted Mississippi mother would frequently shake her head, then mutter under her breath, whenever we kids destroyed something she kinda wanted to keep, “I can’t have nuthin.’’
As it turned out somebody on the internet (the kind that love to tear good things down) decided to see if they could find something a 16 year-old Carson King would come to regret tweeting, And of course if you go looking for the bad in people (we all have a “shadow self” according to Carl Jung) you will find it. In this case, it was a re-tweeted joke that the 16 year old Carson had seen on Comedy Central’s “Tosh.O.”
As a consequence, Anheuser-Busch had to pull its affiliation with Carson King and his support of the Children’s Hospital, so as not to offend the perpetually offended. This takedown came from the offended “left,” and seems something of a matching “bookend” with the Dylan Mulvaney Anheuser-Busch beer can putsch. Where people on the offended “right” were so outraged by a kid that looked like Audrey Hepburn, they literally started shooting their own beer.
As a defense lawyer, I don’t try to moralize about people doing stupid things. I just accept they will. But, I do come bearing gifts. Stop paying attention to social media and all those millions of posts just flow unnoticed, through an invisible sewer and harmlessly out into the sea of inconsequence, as if they never existed.
The Case of the Velvet Claws. In law school, I watched every episode of Perry Mason, one of the first-ever television shows, about a criminal defense lawyer, which ran from 1957-1966. I can’t tell you how much I love mid-Century nostalgia. Even the furniture. There is something safe about the past (just don’t “question the magic.”) I even have three very large, framed black and white prints from the Perry Mason TV show on my office wall.
But I never knew there were any Perry Mason “books.” Then I came across one in an antique mall, which was almost 100 years old, with yellowed pages so delicate, I was afraid to open it. I bought it for display and then went looking online for a copy I could actually read without tearing the pages.
Well, imagine my surprise, Earl Stanley Gardner wrote 78 full-length Perry Mason novels beginning with The Case of the Velvet Claws in 1933. With sales of 300 million books, Perry Mason books sales rank 3rd all-time behind Harry Potter and Goosbumps.
They are full-size novels, you can get them in any form you like on the internet, from decorative antique hard copies, original paperbacks, or a series of newly printed versions with art deco or mid-century artwork on the dustjackets. They are actually a fun read, even if you aren’t a defense lawyer. When I finish these, I might take up Dashiell Hammett.
If Perry Mason novels isn’t your thing, I bet if you give it a shot, you can find something to read, some grass to walk on, or some special needs human in a grocery store who needs a hug. (Just don’t question the magic.)