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Kenneth ClarkKenneth Clark
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Session:         Page of 763

never have wanted this. I mean, I remember when I was about 12 or 13 years old, having my first argument with my mother, because she was trying to tell me that Jonah -- you know-- was in the bowels of the whale, and I remember saying, “That's not possible.”

And my mother got very angry with me, because she thought that I was turning away from the teachings of the church. I tried to say to her: “Look, merely because people say things, it doesn't mean you have to believe them,” and my mother threw a chicken bone at me. You know.

All the times that I've gotten in trouble have been times that I think had the common denominator of my not only not accepting uncritically what other people want me to accept, but I guess what really contributed to the trouble is that when I'm goaded I say, “I'm not accepting it.” And I get in arguments. And once I'm in the argument, I'm in the argument.

Well, today was very similar. I had lunch with a very good friend of mine-- very close friend. We've been friends for over 20 years. He's Jewish. And at the end of our lunch, he, for some reason, -- John insisted upon asking me what I thought of the Israeli-Ugandan coup, that our newspapers are praising, our media's praising, you know, everyone saying what a tremendous blow this is against terrorists, and, rightly or wrongly, I feel that, if this is a blow against terrorists, from my perspective, it's a substitution of one kind of terrorism for another kind of terrorism.





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