Beyond The Valley of the Brown Book Bonus

If some novelist can write a sequel to a book, your friendly, neighbourhood Justa can do the same thing to a post. As for its name, we can do no better than borrow from the title of a Russ Meyer movie sequel that sort of wasn’t a sequel once Jacqueline Susann’s lawyers got finished with it (this is likely the first time a blog has ever referred to those two individuals in a post about Freemasonry).

This entirely fictional tale takes place in the lobby of a Masonic Hall in, uh, an entirely fictional city. People are gathered around after a DeMolay Advisory Council meeting. One of the DeMolays makes a comment about The Book, referred to in our clever and creative subject header.

Harrumphs an entirely fictional Mason, “You know what the problem is with that book? People will petition Lodges thinking we’re like what’s in it and we’ll have to explain to them we’re not.”

Or something like that. It’s fiction, remember, so I can just make up whatever I said. Oh, uh, I mean the ‘entirely fictional Mason.’

You’ll recall in our original post, remarks were made on the nature of the newspaper business. This post being a sequel, the same shall be done here. Another old trick of the trade is The Sidebar Story. Whether some Masons like or not, Freemasonry is deemed mysterious by some, even outside Omaha, Nebraska. So several news outlets have taken it upon themselves to do sidebars showing that the Freemasons aren’t really all that mysterious at all. You can see each story by clicking on the link (in a shade of Cryptic Rite purple).

Since the job at hand is myth-busting, who’re you gonna call? Jay Kinney! Jay was a somewhat-regular participant a number of years ago on alt.freemasonry, in a time when Masons spent more time there discussing Masonry than laughing at conspiracy nuts. Jay has his own book out and his sidebar story comments have been quoted in some fairly respectable places. Take Time Magazine for example.

Then there’s National Geographic News.

This site in India seems to have re-written the above piece.

National Public Radio took the opportunity to chat with Jay. Oh, and with some Freemason named Brent Morris (stop searching on-line for your name, Brent).

There’s even a little mini-slide show on Belief Net.

And there’s Chris Hodapp’s favourite newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald, which went for an independent source.

So, the oft-lambasted media—with the help of a few knowledgeable brothers—are helping to educate non-Masons about our fraternity which should please even the most harrumphing fictional Mason.