You know, there’s supposed to be an old British documentary called “The Night Mail.” I think that’s the title. About an overnight mail train. I’ve never seen it; it’s supposed to be a classic. But that’s not what I’m referring to here. Rather, it’s the arrival of today’s mail at 7 p.m. This after getting no mail yesterday (a regular delivery day despite the proximity to Veterans Day). And no mail on Saturday, which was Veterans Day. I got calls from neighbors the last couple of nights wondering what was going on.
I heard our mailbox open and went out to the porch before the mailperson, who was other than male, had departed.
“Boy,” I said cheerfully. “You guys are having a rough time. What happened to the mail yesterday?”
“The guy who had the route yesterday–I don’t think he had a flashlight,” the mailperson said. She scurried into the dark before I could fully process that. Didn’t have a flashlight? Yeah, sure, a flashlight would be nice if you’re out after dark. But since when did it become a requirement for finishing a mail route in the middle of a semi-lighted city?
“Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” I’m one of many under the mistaken impression that these words were written with a United States postal agency in mind. The words paraphrase Herodotus, who was describing a Persian courier system of the 5th century B.C. Those guys knew how to deliver a message. The mistaken impression arises from the fact Herodotus’s words are inscribed on Manhattan’s old General Post Office
Memo to Berkeley P.O.: Neither Herodotus nor his American translator mention anything about artificial lighting. No torches, electric or pre-electric. If you trust the Greek, the Persians were uncowed by undispelled night-time gloom. And you know, from a customer standpoint, I’m not even asking for “swift completion” of the appointed rounds; just plain old unmodified “completion” would do fine.
John Kerry: You know, a quip that requires a half hour of set up and 72 hours of explanation–it ain’t a quip. Please: Go away, dismal man. Let us remember you as you were in your finest hour: Conceding defeat.
Cruz Bustamante: It’s flattering to California voters that the first words out of your mouth in your campaign spots are, “I was really fat.” Yes, if you don’t live here, you’re missing a real treat: A career pol–he’s a Democrat, for the record–term limited out of his spot at the trough (lieutenant governor) and snuffling and snarfling his way toward another (state insurance commissioner). How ironic to compare him to a swine swilling down slops, because he’s basing his appeal to voters on the fact he went on a diet and lost 70 pounds. It all connects with his hunger to serve the public because he says he promised his family he’d lose the weight, and he did; and now, he’s promising to help us all get cheaper insurance–and he’ll keep that promise, too. If the Republican in the race–Steve Poizner–is not a serial murderer, I may vote for him. (One of the Bustamante ads, on YouTube, is below).
And then there’s David Brooks: His op-ed column in today’s New York Times (you’ve got to be a paid subscriber to get it online, so no link). This former gung-ho Iraq war supporter decides, three years, 7 months, and 14 days into the enterprise (not that anyone’s counting) that it might be a good idea to study up on the history of Iraq to see whether it offers any clues about the challenges the project poses. And–zounds!–it does:
“Policy makers are again considering fundamental chnges in our Iraq poliicy, but as they do I hope they read Elie Dedourie’s essay, ‘The Kingdom of Iraq: A Retrospect.’
“Kedourie, a Baghdad-born Jew, published the essay in 1970. It’s a history of the regime the British helped establish over 80 years ago, but it captures an idea that is truer now than ever: Disorder is endemic to Iraq. Today’s crisis is not three years old. It’s worse now, but the crisis is perpetual. This is a bomb of a nation.”
Later, Brooks quotes Kedourie’s view of the nation’s political future: “‘Either the country would be plunged into chaos or its population should become universally the clients and dependents of an omnipotent but capricious and unstable government.’ There is, he wrote, no third alternative.”
“An omnipotent but capricious and unstable government.” Saddam, anyone?
Despite the finality of Kedourie’s view, Brooks complacently describes the alternatives he sees open to the United States now. Make one last effort to pacify Baghdad–thus, he apparently believes, pouring oil on the restive countryside. Acknowledging that probably won’t pan out, he says Iraq ought to cease to exist.
“It will be time to effectively end Iraq, with a remaining fig-leaf central government or not. It will be time to radically diffuse authority down to the only communities that are viable–the clan, tribe or sect.”
But guess what? Brooks says we’ll still be there–apparently forever. Our “muscular presence” will be needed to “nurture civilized democratic societies that reject extremism and terror.” Uh, yeah, just what the doctor ordered: Having the troops referee the contest among the clans, tribes and sects. Someone needs to give Brooks something else to read to give him a clue about how that’s turning out.
“Petty Officer [Dustin] Kirby, 22, is a Navy corpsman, the trauma medic assigned to Second Mobile Assault Platoon of Weapons Company, Second Battalion, Eighth Marines. Everyone calls him Doc. He had just finished treating a marine who had been shot by an Iraqi sniper.
“ ‘It was 7.62 millimeter,’ he continued. ‘Armor piercing.’
“He reached into his pocket and retrieved the bullet, which he had found. ‘The impact with the Kevlar stopped most of it,’ he said. ‘But it tore through, hit his head, went through and came out.’
“He put the bullet in his breast pocket, to give to an intelligence team later. Sweat kept rolling off his face, mixed with tears. His voice was almost cracking, but he managed to control it and keep it deep. ‘When I got there, there wasn’t much I could do,’ he said.
“Then he nodded. He seemed to be talking to himself. ‘I kept him breathing,’ he said.”
As a great sports talk show guy has been heard to say, it’s not my style to criticize. So I’m not going to get exercised by the Chevy truck ad campaign that’s airing during this year’s baseball playoffs. I’m not going to get upset by the campaign’s appropriation of iconic images from our recent history–Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, Nixon’s White House departure, a Vietnam combat scene and a Vietnam peace march, a Woodstock clip, New York firefighters, the shafts of light memorializing the World Trade Center, NewOrleans after the flood (which begins a sequence suggesting Chevy trucks have had a big part in helping New Orleans put itself back together). I’m not going to drone on about the irony in John Mellencamp, whose song “Our Country” is the ads’ soundtrack, praising G.M. as a company that looks out for working folk with the company in the midst of putting tens of thousands of people out of their jobs. I won’t so much as mention that Mellencamp is performing the song before Game 2 of the World Series, in effect giving G.M. a free ad for its trucks.
(I might do all those things, but others have beat me to it, including someone who put up a somewhat predictably but still sharp parody on YouTube.)
What I will do is suggest a few clips Chevy might want to add to its paean to itself; or better yet, use them to do a whole new ad.
–GM workers fighting cops and company goons as they sought to organize their plants in the 1930s.
–Street scenes from Flint and other towns GM and other automakers have abandoned. I’m sure Michael Moore would share some of his footage.
–Some film of the Corvair; maybe spliced together with some images of Ralph Nader when he outed the car as “unsafe at any speed.”
–Maybe shots from a GM board meeting where the auto geniuses plot their winning market response to Toyota, Nissan, Honda et al. You could have clips from the ’70s and the ’90s.
–Some beauty shots of the Chevy Suburban and the Hummer. Even better if they’re shown at a gas station. Mix in a satellite view of Hurricane Katrina and some pictures of that Antarctic ice shelf collapsing and maybe some grainy street video of people looking real hot in an urban setting.
–Footage of the aftermath of some of the thousands of fires in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s involving GM pickups with defective fuel tank designs. It would be extra realistic and downhome to see some amateur video of a funeral or two of the 1,800 people or so who died in the crashes.
Not sure what music would work best for this. “This Land is Your Land” is always a happy, snappy pick-me-up. And maybe close the ad with a statement from the company. Something simple, like “We’re sorry.”
I joined the Organization of American Historians earlier this year, mostly to get access to its online journal archives; besides, you don’t have to be a real historian to be a member. One of the unanticipated perks is the quarterly Journal of American History. The September issue has a sort of roundtable discussion–it was conducted in email–among a group of scholars who have focused on the history of the Vietnam War. The subject is legacies of the war, and among the questions the journal posed to the historians was this: “Why or why not is Vietnam an appropriate historical analogy for thinking about current U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq?”
[The question is in the news, too. The commander-in-chief was asked the other day whether there was some parallel between the Tet Offensive of 1968 and the current bloodbath in Iraq. He allowed there was, then quickly added that since we’ve succeeded in turning Iraq into what it was not before we invaded–a 365-day-a-year, hands-on, post-graduate level training camp for ambitious terrorists–there is no way–no way!–we’ll leave before “the job” is done.]
Back to the historians. They all have much to say about Vietnam/Iraq parallels. But the one who sums them up best (and most dispassionately) is Christian Appy of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He says:
“There is a danger that any effort to compare current events with historical antecedents will badly distort both past and present. I agree that Iraq and Vietnam are vastly different … but surely there are commonalities, at least in a general sense, in the way U.S. officials justified their policies in the two countries, and these analogies can serve public debate. After all … one important connection is that U.S. policy makers then, as now, believed detailed local knowledge was largely irrelevant except in narrowly tactical terms (that is, where are the “bad guys”?) because Washington clung to the hope (in spite of massive contrary evidence) that U.S. technology and military firepower could hold the line long enough for modernization (or nation building) to draw each country into a stable global system amenable to U.S. economic and political power.
“At the risk of gross oversimplification, I’d like to list a few linkages. Then as now, the president claims:
—We face a global threat (Communism/terrorism).
—The enemy we fight is part of that global threat.
—We fight far away from home so we won’t have to fight in our own streets.
—We want nothing for ourselves, only self-determination for them.
—We are doing everything possible to limit the loss of civilian lives.
—We are making great progress, but the media isn’t reporting it.
—Ultimately, the war must be won by them with less and less U.S. “help.”
—Immediate withdrawal would be an intolerable blow to U.S. credibility and would only embolden our enemy and produce a bloodbath.
—Antiwar activism must be allowed but demoralizes our troops and encourages our enemy.
“Then, as now, the president does not say:
—The enemy in Vietnam/Iraq actually does not pose a threat to U.S. security, but we’re fighting anyway.
—We do indeed have geopolitical and economic interests in the region and will never tolerate a Communist/radical Islamist government.
—We are using weapons and tactics that don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.
—We will stretch and break the law to spy on and sabotage antiwar critics.
—We won’t ask the nation as a whole to make a major sacrifice but will continue to send the working class to do most of the fighting.
—The progress we report is contradicted by our own sources.
—Troop morale is going downhill.
—Most of the people over there don’t want us in their country.”
Blufr: I can see this getting old very fast, but it’s a semi-addictive social trivia site. I say “social” because apparently visitors submit the true/false statements that you’re asked to vote “way” or “no way” on (some of the questions are pretty lame, I admit. Mine, of course, was brilliant: Of the four assassinated U.S. presidents, only Abraham Lincoln died in Washington, D.C.” Way? Or Now way? The answer at the “read more” link below).
I said I can see this getting old. But ‘m embarrassed to say how long I spent on this and how many questions I clicked on. Ridiculous.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute cooked up a 60-question quiz it says proves U.S. college students are a bunch of dolts and ignoramuses when it comes to knowing basic American history and civics. You can’t take the full quiz, apparently, but there’s a five-question sample version online. Go take it. Then report back: How did you do? (Grading scale is as follows:
5 of 5 correct: You’re Ben Franklin, coolest, smartest American ever and inventor of the $100 bill.
4 of 5: You’re James Madison, main man of the Constitution who let the Brits burn the White House.
3 of 5: You’re Al Gore: Way smart, inventor of Internet and “Love Story” model, but haunted by failure.
2 of 5: You’re Warren G. Harding, and your biggest accomplishment is dying in office.
1 of 5: You’re George W. Bush, and you have never liked quizzes.
The esteemed Writer’s Almanac mentioned Saturday that August 26 was the 86th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the vote throughout the United States (according to a Smithsonian Institution essay, 11 states had already enacted full or partial women’s suffrage before the federal amendment was passed). The Writer’s Almanac threw in a few details about the event — the secretary of State, Bainbridge Colby, signed the ratification proclamation, that he did it at home and virtually in private in order to stay clear of a feud between factions of the women’s suffrage movement. I hadn’t read any of that before and found it interesting. Although he apparently didn’t want any truck with the activist women, he was apparently quite expansive with reporters on the day of the signing. The Writer’s Almanac quotes him as saying, “I turn to the women of America and say: ‘You may now fire when you are ready. You have been enfranchised.’ ”
If that sounds familiar, it’s no accident: ‘Fire when ready’ is a near-verbatim lift from Commodore Dewey’s instructions to one of his officers at the 1898 battle of Manila Bay. In 1920, those words must have had a lot more immediacy than they do now, so maybe Colby spoke assuming everyone who read those words would understand just what he meant. I don’t quite get it, though: Ladies, you may fire when you are ready. Upon whom are they supposed to train their guns? Colby and his like?
I went looking for a more complete version of the quote, and found it in another blog: the complete text of the New York Times story that appears to serve as much of the source of the Writer’s Almanac account. Here’s Colby’s Dewey quote as the Times gave it:
” ‘You remember,’ he continued, ‘the simple way in which the late Admiral Dewey went about the opening of his battle at Manila Bay, how he waited until morning to enter Manila Bay, went up on deck, wiped the egg stains of breakfast from his moustache, observed the disposition of the enemy’s ships and of his own, which had crossed the mines during the night, and then taking out a cigar, turned to one of his Captains and said,”‘When you are ready, you may fire, Gridley.” So I turn to the women of America and say: ‘You may now fire when you are ready. You have been enfranchised.’ ”
Reading the whole quote, it’s clear that Colby was rather taken by the parallel between himself and Dewey. The women? They were incidental to the part he was playing. In fact, the article makes Colby sound like someone who was still working on a fully stocked and, thanks to the 18th Amendment, completely illegal liquor cabinet.
The Times account also straightfacedly reports Colby’s praise for his boss, Woodrow Wilson, as one of the great supporters of women’s suffrage: “There never was a man more deeply or profoundly convinced of the justice of the suffrage cause than Woodrow Wilson. And there never was a party leader who held his party with more stern, austere and unbending insistence to the performance of a duty dictated by high principle.”
Interesting, then, to read the Smithsonian article’s account of the president and the suffragists: that when women met with him just after he took office in 1913 and asked him to support action on an amendment, “Wilson replied–none too brilliantly–that the suffrage issue had never before been called to his attention and that he did not know where he stood.” For years afterward, Wilson refused to lift a finger to move the amendment forward and eventually ordered the arrest of militant suffragists picketing the White House (the Smithsonian piece says the president was especially sensitive to banners that quoted his own rhetoric. Alice Paul, the founder of the National Woman’s Party, was arrested carrying a sign that said, “THE TIME HAS COME TO CONQUER OR SUBMIT. FOR US THERE CAN BE BUT ONE CHOICE. WE HAVE MADE IT” — a statement Wilson made in reference to Germany in World War I.
Slate is running an online version of “The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation.” Ever since I came across Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” — one of the best and most chilling Holocast narratives I’ve ever seen — I’ve been a big fan of the graphic novel format as a method for relating history (another, much quirkier example: “The Fatal Bullet,” a retelling of the James A. Garfield assassination). I don’t think such treatments are replacements for deeper reading, but they can make complex historical subjects more accessible to a wide audience.
In the case of the new 9/11 comic book, you won’t learn anything new if you paid attention to the original report and other accounts. But seeing the events in pictorial form has a way of bringing them freshly to mind. Whether a lot of people want to have that day put in front of them is another matter; I tend to think the day is worth contemplating and contemplating again. (The Washington Post, which I believe owns Slate, ran a story on the book last month. Among other things, the piece mentions that the authors’ previous credits include un-revolutionary stand-bys like “Richie Rich” and “Caspar” — you know, the friendly ghost).
Hard to believe that, yet again, I’ve let the anniversary of the Chatsworth Wreck pass with no mention. For newcomers, the wreck took place about midnight on August 10, 1887, when an excursion train to Niagara Falls plunged off a small trestle over a culvert two and a half miles east of Chatsworth, Illinois. If you’re not from the town or one nearby, or if you’re great-great-grandparents weren’t on the train, or if they didn’t just miss it, you’ve never heard of the event. But about 85 people died in the wreck, one of the deadliest train accidents in history to that point (though, thinking about it, already dwarfed by other transportation disasters, like the sinking of the steamboat Sultana on the Mississippi immediately after the Civil War).
In the past, Chatsworth marked the anniversary with gatherings of survivors and rescuers, the latter sometimes exhibiting souvenirs taken from the train. Once, about 35 or 40 years ago, a Chicago psychic named Irene Hughes was invited to the wreck site for a midnight gathering at which she tried to channel images of the event. Apparently not one to disappoint, she sat on a chair in the middle of the now little-used Toledo, Peoria & Western tracks and offered a few random images — for instance, a train crew running for help and the suffocating sensation of a victim trapped in the wreckage. She swore she hadn’t researched the event beforehand.
Next year: The disaster’s 120th anniversary. Wonder whether Chatsworth has anything special planned.
You know, there’s supposed to be an old British documentary called “The Night Mail.” I think that’s the title. About an overnight mail train. I’ve never seen it; it’s supposed to be a classic. But that’s not what I’m referring to here. Rather, it’s the arrival of today’s mail at 7 p.m. This after getting no mail yesterday (a regular delivery day despite the proximity to Veterans Day). And no mail on Saturday, which was Veterans Day. I got calls from neighbors the last couple of nights wondering what was going on.
