I don't have much experience inside the P-G aside from a short-term part-time job working there in 2004. It was a job photocopying opinion columns as part of the process for submitting them for national awards. I met some interesting people there and I once got within 6 feet of Jack Kelly - though I don't think he ever knew who I was. All that being said, this blog post will be about Tony Norman, friend of mine, rather than Tony Norman, heart and soul of the P-G.
There's a video on some platform somewhere in this universe of a wedding ceremony held at a local church. It's October of 2008 and the lovely wife and I are getting married. If you were to find the video and if you were to look carefully you'd see, just behind me and just off to my right, P-G columnist Tony Norman.
He was my best man.
The previous night we had our bachelor party at a local bar - no strippers, no loud music, no drinking till puking, just the two of us, a couple of beers and a plate of (if memory serves) something called "Mediterranean Nachos." I remember a pile of pita chips drenched in a paste of feta cheese mixed with lots and lots of supposed "Mediterranean" seasonings. Wasn't bad but it made me burp. A lot.
And then there was the married man (Tony) to almost married man (me) conversation. Much more important than the beer or the culture-crossing finger food. I won't go into details but Tony was, well, Tony throughout; intensely thoughtful, deep to a full fathom five, and very very funny.
Back to the video.
As with many wedding videos, it captures that point in the service where the pastor asks me if I "take this woman to be my wife" and I remember suddenly not wanting to get anywhere near the old Jack Benny joke ("I'm thinking about it!") jumped a little too quickly onto the "I do."
At that point in the video (and unknown to me until I saw it sometime later) Tony Norman fist pumped an emphatic (though silent) "yes!" Tony's always been big fan of the lovely wife (as am I) and evidently, he was quite relieved that I was finally settling down with such a lovely lovely lovely.
Anyway, back to Tony. When I first "met" him it was the mid-to-late 90s and it was just via e-mail, I recall. I would occasionally write in in critiques of his column (yes, critiques - I was a recent grad student and an obvious expert on everything) and Tony would dutifully fold up my arguments neatly and with all the corners squared off and then effortlessly slide each of them (again, dutifully) into his more than efficient rhetorical shredder.
But in a nice way.
Then at one point I remember paraphrasing Bertrand Russell. I am pretty sure this was sometime after Columbine. At this point I knew Tony was a faithful church goer and he knew I was an solid agnostic.
I asked Tony why God didn't just stop those two from killing all those students. Surely Omnipotence could have done something to stop the killing before it started. This is where Russell comes in. Either, I posed to Tony, God couldn't stop it or he could, but chose not to.
Either God is not omnipotent or He is and he chose not to save all those kids.
Perhaps, I asked - again paraphrasing Bertrand Russell - Christians should stop worrying about whether they're worthy of God's grace and wonder if He's worthy of their praise.
"We have to have lunch." Tony wrote back.
And we've been good friends ever since.
I have the video to prove it. Someplace.
