Michael Lear: Part Three
By Michael Moriarty
web posted July 14, 2014
Michael Lear, while becoming a series of these articles, is also blossoming simultaneously into not only a One Man Show but a full novel as well.
All at once?!
Yes.
It seemed to make the best sense.
Why?
An article, a novel and a One Man Show are three entirely different ambitions, let alone creations.
I have already realized how definitive the three separate formats have become.
They are now three, very different experiences, both for myself and my audiences.
Today, July 8, 2014, began with this fortune cookie message: "The saints are the sinners who keep on trying."
And as my driest of friends… literarily that is… as George P Saunders added, "…so true. We are saints, Michael… so few of us left."
To which I laughed and added, "So few of us smart enough to keep it a secret."
The world and the human race are hurtling toward a World War III at ballistic missile speed and, in the wake of that prospect, I've simply become more and more philosophic.
My best friends are now Chinese Fortune Cookies.
That's not entirely true but it certainly sounds right.
Why? As I ended my last article, this "profoundly blessed life of 73 years"… my life?!
It will most certainly prove to be a divine comedy. Its content convinces me that the funniest comedians on earth are the saddest-looking.
With the most miserable of straight faces.
The Biblical prophets of Mad Magazine.
Does that war-torn publication of my college days still exist? Doesn't matter really.
Michael Lear is living in his own version of Mad Magazine.
Comedia del Arte demands that I wear tragedy on my face as I banish all smiles to my belly.
Nothing more divine than living a belly-smile. Far more magical than a belly-laugh. And far more permanent. Eternal actually.
Aside from that? Don't react to anything until it actually happens.
You don't really know what to do until you must do something.
Even if that something is to remain silent.
Never, however, forget "The Belly Smile".
No one sees it or even knows of it but you!
What does that Belly Smile mean?
Faith!
Faith in Life's perfection!!'
Despite appearances, Life is all that it must be.
There is not a flaw in it!
While these meditations reverberated within me, my eyes fell upon my computer screen and a statement hung there, one which rang with even more profoundly and enormously important reverberations.
I was gazing at a highlighted comment… the words hanging there quite boldly upon my computer screen.
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency."
Wow!
"It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president."
Thank God someone has said it!
"The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."
I saved the comments on my computer screen, placing them in my own personal site, only to see them removed the next day by FACEBOOK!
Why?
Apparently they were falsely attributed to a former Czechoslovakian Prime Minister.
Then I'm told it was bounced around as someone else's brilliance.
It did, however, originate in Czechoslovakia.
I so agreed with the words in the message and the entirety of its statement that the present mystery about their author's real identity adds to the mythic feelings that have begun to surround the villainy of an "Obama Nation".
Whoever it was, if not a Czech Prime Minister named Vaclav Klaus, this creature that shared his or her opinion of America and President Obama?!
This modern prophet with bull's eye eloquence?!
It is for me, at any rate, a divine indictment erupting from the now anonymous truth-telling of a major, third millennium mind, heart and soul.
It would be a great shame if we didn't finally learn who actually penned those words.
The previous major Czechoslovakian citizen to enter my life was another man with the same first name of Vaclav.
Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright/poet, dissident under Soviet occupation of his country, and, eventually a former President of the Czech Republic.
I had been part of a public reading of one of Havel's plays at the New York City's Public Theater.
Following that, I had appeared as a Czechoslovakian dissident in an hour television drama clearly inspired by the Paul Henreid character in the now-iconic drama, Casablanca.
I'd even written a song to be played in the drama and which I performed on the piano and sang along with… in Czech.
That theme is now the central theme for the second movement of my First Symphony.
Czech intellectuals, in my experience, now live and sound more American than most Americans these days.
Again my refrain: "No wonder I left America for Canada!" 
Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com. He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/@MGMoriarty.