Mr. Jacques Derrida, Documentation, and the Great George M. and Scene II
By Jacob A. Stein

At the deposition, counsel hands the deponent the document Bates stamped 10,921. Copies are handed around to the lawyers, the associates, the paralegals, and the court reporter.

Counsel then asks the deponent a question related to document 10,921. The deponent asks to read it. When he completes the reading, he asks that the question be repeated. It is repeated. If the deponent thinks the document is harmful to his case, he is forgetful. If he thinks it unharmful, he remembers.

This ceremony goes on and on, document after document, question after question, as the documents pile up in a scramble covering the conference room table.

There are a few lawyers around who refuse to join this game. I have in mind such a lawyer. We shall call her Rosetta Stone. She uses only one document to win her case, just like the French Egyptologist used the Rosetta Stone to decode the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Ms. Stone’s technique follows that of Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) who originated the technique of deconstruction. Derrida said every written word has its own hidden meaning colored by ideology, bias, prejudice, philosophy, faith, the hidden conspiracy, the context, and the cover-up.

Ms. Stone, using that one page, conducts a four-hour, Derrida-type cross-examination, sending the witness away trembling. She wins her case using one document.

As an aside, I happened to be on a panel with a Texas criminal lawyer who said he liked to have the key document he will use on cross-examination retyped on onionskin paper. Why onionskin? Simply because when it is handed to the government witness’s to read, the thin paper wigwags in the witness’ trembling hand, suggesting to the jury that the witness is not telling the truth.

Let’s see how well we do as Derrida deconstructionists. Let’s deconstruct this lyric:

Can we tell whether the author is a man or a woman? Can we tell the writer’s approximate age? Can we tell the writer’s occupation? If we were representing the plaintiff in a personal injury case, would we put such a person on the jury? If we were the defense counsel in a criminal case, would we put such a person on the jury?

What is the political bias of a person who writes “Three meals a day, a whole lot to say; when you haven’t got the coin, you’re always in the way?” The words have conservative implications.

Do the words “Ev’rybody’s fighting, as we wend our way along, Ev’ry fellow claims the other fellow’s in the wrong” suggest that the writer was a lawyer?

Enough Derrida deconstruction. Here are the facts. The person who wrote the lyric was George M. Cohan. He wrote it when he was 26. His education was perhaps a year in grammar school. In addition to writing the words, he wrote the music to “Life’s a Funny Proposition After All.” He sang it and danced to it in the musical comedy he wrote titled Little Johnny Jones (1904), and it included “Give My Regards to Broadway.” You can see Jimmy Cagney sing and dance to it in Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Although Cohan spent most of his life on stage, he was introspective. He rarely opened up himself to anything personal, even to his friends. However, he did give a clue in a speech he wrote for himself in his play The Tavern. In the play, he was a mysterious vagabond who found himself among strangers. One of the strangers asked him in an aggressive tone just who he was. As he prepared himself for the answer, the lights dim:

The Curtain Slowly Drops

Reach Jacob A. Stein at jstein@steinmitchell.com.