Statement by Devorah Tarrow, Aesthetic Realism Consultant, Sociologist

I am writing to oppose the lies of "Adam Mali" and "Michael Bluejay."

First, I want to say that the people putting forth that material have an agenda that has nothing to do with telling the truth. It is to try to hurt what is greater than their egos can stand. And one, "Adam Mali," has been in league with his mother to do so. Ellen Mali hated the fact that she wasn't allowed to make the Aesthetic Realism Foundation a personal power center for herself.

The lie about education.
The first lie I'll address is that Aesthetic Realism discourages a person's educational endeavors, squelches one's individual expression and ambition. I say this: Aesthetic Realism encourages abundantly one's love of learning, and very much higher education. For over 30 years, I've taught many women in Aesthetic Realism consultations. Many of them have gone on to get college and post-graduate degrees, and have become teachers themselves, nurses, computer experts, persons of stature in varied professions. All along the way in their Aesthetic Realism education, these women had not only their consultants' support, but we've taught them how to love high educational standards so that they could succeed.

My own education.
That those attackers have impugned Mr. Siegel's love of education makes my blood boil. I began to study Aesthetic Realism in classes taught by him as I was in the midst of my college education. I got my BA at the New School for Social Research while studying with him. In classes, Mr. Siegel encouraged my study of the work of such persons as Max Weber, Lukacs, Emile Durkheim, and my final thesis for graduation was based on Aesthetic Realism.

I went on to get my Masters degree in sociology from NYU.

There is only one thing revered at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation: and that's solid, respectful, thoughtful, careful knowledge about the world, art, and people. Eli Siegel LOVED EDUCATION. He did not want adulation: in every class he asked for critical, analytical looking. This was a constant.

There was the scholarship of Mr. Siegel himself, who generously imparted that knowledge in thousands of lectures and lessons. I, who was concentrated on psychology and statistics when I began to study Aesthetic Realism, had my sight and mind broadened so that I now also love-and this is an abbreviated list-English literature and poetry, French literature, economics, history, the literature of the drama. And art. I've now studied and written on Picasso, the ceramist Beatrice Wood, painters Fernand Leger and Roy Lichtenstein, the photographer Lewis Hine, and more.

I've seen that Aesthetic Realism is true through a rigorous pursuit of study in the arts and sciences, with all the skepticism and questioning that takes in. In Aesthetic Realism classes, Eli Siegel took up the works of such social scientists as Marshall McLuhan, Talcott Parsons, C. Wright Mills, Franklin H. Giddings, Rollo May. I saw Aesthetic Realism as true about these thinkers and many more, through principles, beginning with Mr. Siegel's statement: "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites." And I'm still happily seeing!

What Simone de Beauvoir wrote of Jean Paul Sartre is true, I have seen, of Eli Siegel: "He's a marvelous trainer of intellects."

And I say this: Ellen Reiss carries on this tradition of scholarship as she teaches, with exactitude and good will, in the professional classes for consultants and associates.

The death of Eli Siegel.
I saw and learned from Eli Siegel in the time near his last days, and he was as logically exact, as intellectually comprehensive, as kind and encouraging of one's happiness as ever, even as he himself was ill, as he was wounded mortally in an operation, by a doctor who told people later that he was angry at his tremendous respect for Mr. Siegel.

Mr. Siegel felt to the end that the world can be honestly liked, and that every choice can be made in keeping with that true and honest care for the world, which is the same as dignity for oneself. That a person chooses to die with dignity when he or she has been fatally injured or is fatally ill is something that is now respected and accepted worldwide. This choice has been made by persons whose names many are familiar with, including very recently, the fine actor Jerry Ohrbach, following a long illness. A newspaper reported his agent as saying, "When he was ready to leave, he left-with dignity." There is the popular and much respected film Million Dollar Baby, whose main character, Maggie Fitzgerald (played beautifully by Hillary Swank), asks the character Frankie Dunn (played by Clint Eastwood), who is her manager, to help her to die after she is paralyzed in a boxing match. He does assist her, and she is grateful; she wanted to live with dignity and she wants to die with dignity.

This was Eli Siegel's choice. The motive of those attacking him is to be seen in their lying about even this most large, deep, and personal matter.

[To visit my website, go to: http://www.tarrow-carduner.net]

• Ellen Reiss has written about the death of Eli Siegel every year since 1987. The issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known titled "Always: Love of Reality" is online now.
• Rev. Wayne Jack Plumstead writes about Eli Siegel's dying in the Countering the Lies website (see his statement).
• Dr. Arnold Perey writes about Eli Siegel's death in the Countering the Lies website in relation to the death of George Harrison and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (see his statement).