Liz and I don't have much in common, but we've each been caught lying about our proud American Indian ancestry.
In my case the embarrassment was minimal even though it was compounded by claiming another bogus kinship.
When I was wee, the adults in my clan would remark about our descent from Daniel Boone and the strain of Cherokee in our blood. I accepted it as gospel and bragged of it as we played cowboys and Indians on the Des Moines River bluffs.
Years later I learned the myth was understandable, but phony. We had a very weak relationship to Dan'l's wife, Rebecca Bryan, but barring some seriously immoral hankie-pankie in them thar Appalachian hills, his DNA flowed down a different crick.
And an18th Century liaison contributed a drop of Indian blood -- maybe Cherokee -- only to a branch that an uncle or cousin or something married into.
I learned to live with shame of mere Irishness (polluted with a contribution here and there of some northern European strains). Anyway, I never planned to capitalize on my Indianity to help me capture the U.S. Senate seat belonging by divine right to the Kennedys of Massachusetts or their acolytes.
Not so for poor Ms. Warren, one of President Obama's favorite Regulators and a member of the Harvard faculty and governing class. It seems that when she applied to be a Harvard teacher the university was anxious to hawk a diverse faculty. Liz went along with the gag. "Me diverse. Heap Injun."
That turned out to be heap fib, and she got caught. Worse for her, she ducked and dodged like Bill (I never touched that woman) Clinton, and turned a small problem into a big one. It may or may not be enough to help keep the less-objectionable Scott Brown in the Kennedy seat.
We can only hope.
Jun 1, 2012
May 31, 2012
So long, May
A TMR bonus factoid: When she married Sammy Davis jr. on November 13, 1960, interracial marriage was illegal in 31 states.
How Many Poles Does it Take...
Okay, it was the dumbass move of the month, this "Polish death camp" line our dim president threw out. It wasn't a mere "gaffe." He read it from his teleprompter, meaning it was written by experts in demagoguery, edited by even greater authorities on the art of bullshitting voters, and, finally, approved by the handful of high courtiers allowed to walk into the Obama Oval Office without knocking.
None of them, not even His Ineptness himself, had a neuron jiggled by the inherent dangers of an adjective, in this case "Polish."
Politics being the street brawl that it is, Romneyites are within their rights to kick the Obama campaign wedding tackle. True, the mouthpieces of the left are going blue in the face screaming that the GOP should retire to a neutral corner while the Obama seconds sponge him off and apply styptic powder. Wouldn't they just.
It will all die down, leaving His Ineptness with fewer Ski votes this fall. And leaving some of us slack-jawed in amazement at the things the American electorate and its media find crucial.
---
Here's what happened, Bunkie: About 73 years ago a country called Germany, led by a guy called Hitler, had a friend called Russia. Together, they raped a country called Poland. A domestic dispute occurred and Germany wound up running things in Poland. Among the innovations there were "death camps," conceived and operated of the Germans, by the Germans, and for the Germans. The camps wrecked unbelievable horror on millions of innocents who happened to have the wrong religion or the wrong genes or the wrong profession.
Hence "Polish death camps" -- a central event in the defining years of the 20th Century. It was universally understood that the term referred to German evil which, as a matter of Nazi convenience, was perpetrated across its border with Poland. It was simply more efficient to put ovens and torture chambers close to the target demographic.
By 1944 or '45 German guilt was in all the papers. No one qualified to appear in public without a minder thought otherwise. Even many dues-paying members of the teachers' unions knew it and taught it.
Times change. History gets muddled, as do educationists, journalists, and grasping parasites of the political class. And so a great international debate flares over what, not much more than generation ago, would have been a phrase objectionable only to the most anal grammarian at Miss Porter's Country Day School.
Meanwhile, Rome-on-Potomac burns because math is a lot harder than squalling about ethnic insensitivity. (cf: fiat money, debt)
This is not to let His Ineptness off the hook. He has one and only one profession, the politics of power. He and his elite panderers to public opinion of the moment are rewarded beyond Midas dreams to appear Christly at all times to even the looniest understandings held by blocs of the voting public. It's Propaganda 101, Mr. President. You flunked.
Now, as a practical matter, guys nicknamed Ski don't constitute the most important part of your electoral base. But, out of pure human kindness, may I suggest that you don't repeat the error.
For instance, if one of your crack speech writers gives you a draft containing "Negro lynchings," you might want to rephrase.
None of them, not even His Ineptness himself, had a neuron jiggled by the inherent dangers of an adjective, in this case "Polish."
Politics being the street brawl that it is, Romneyites are within their rights to kick the Obama campaign wedding tackle. True, the mouthpieces of the left are going blue in the face screaming that the GOP should retire to a neutral corner while the Obama seconds sponge him off and apply styptic powder. Wouldn't they just.
It will all die down, leaving His Ineptness with fewer Ski votes this fall. And leaving some of us slack-jawed in amazement at the things the American electorate and its media find crucial.
---
Here's what happened, Bunkie: About 73 years ago a country called Germany, led by a guy called Hitler, had a friend called Russia. Together, they raped a country called Poland. A domestic dispute occurred and Germany wound up running things in Poland. Among the innovations there were "death camps," conceived and operated of the Germans, by the Germans, and for the Germans. The camps wrecked unbelievable horror on millions of innocents who happened to have the wrong religion or the wrong genes or the wrong profession.
Hence "Polish death camps" -- a central event in the defining years of the 20th Century. It was universally understood that the term referred to German evil which, as a matter of Nazi convenience, was perpetrated across its border with Poland. It was simply more efficient to put ovens and torture chambers close to the target demographic.
By 1944 or '45 German guilt was in all the papers. No one qualified to appear in public without a minder thought otherwise. Even many dues-paying members of the teachers' unions knew it and taught it.
Times change. History gets muddled, as do educationists, journalists, and grasping parasites of the political class. And so a great international debate flares over what, not much more than generation ago, would have been a phrase objectionable only to the most anal grammarian at Miss Porter's Country Day School.
Meanwhile, Rome-on-Potomac burns because math is a lot harder than squalling about ethnic insensitivity. (cf: fiat money, debt)
This is not to let His Ineptness off the hook. He has one and only one profession, the politics of power. He and his elite panderers to public opinion of the moment are rewarded beyond Midas dreams to appear Christly at all times to even the looniest understandings held by blocs of the voting public. It's Propaganda 101, Mr. President. You flunked.
Now, as a practical matter, guys nicknamed Ski don't constitute the most important part of your electoral base. But, out of pure human kindness, may I suggest that you don't repeat the error.
For instance, if one of your crack speech writers gives you a draft containing "Negro lynchings," you might want to rephrase.
May 30, 2012
It's the law!
Found in the crawl space under the shop. It's decorated my loo for years, a reminder to myself that I am quite the criminal when I test fire .22s in the gun room.
Until the early 1960s, Camp J was a pasture. Land was cheap. Even so near the nice water, even within the village limits, it was economical to reserve grass and burr oaks for the contentment of cows. I suspect the farmer erected the sign to protect his herd from the autumn invasion of bookkeepers and insurance peddlers who might mistake a Guernsey for a grouse.
Until the early 1960s, Camp J was a pasture. Land was cheap. Even so near the nice water, even within the village limits, it was economical to reserve grass and burr oaks for the contentment of cows. I suspect the farmer erected the sign to protect his herd from the autumn invasion of bookkeepers and insurance peddlers who might mistake a Guernsey for a grouse.
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