"For all practical purposes" (math humor)

A math professor used the phrase "for all practical purposes" during class. A student asked what he meant by that.

"Suppose we line up all the boys on one side of the classroom and all the girls on the other. On a given signal, both groups will walk half the distance towards the middle of the room. On each subsequent signal, each group will walk half the remaining distance. Theoretically, of course, the two groups will never meet. But in reality, after a few signals, the two groups will be close enough for all practical purposes."

Ethics and ethicists

(From Asimov Laughs Again, Harper Perennial edition 1993, #374, p. 203):

The school year was over and the faculty heaved their usual sigh of relief. Professor Murray of English literature said to his colleague, Professor Cardozo of Romance languages, "I had an interesting experience during the year. A Miss Brentwood came to see me in the middle of the year and said intensely, 'Professor Murray, I'd do anything to get a passing mark in this course, I mean literally anything.' She was a strikingly beautiful girl and I admit I was tempted, but her school record was abominable and I did manage to cling to my integrity. I said, 'Miss Brentwood, I suggest you study.' This, of course, was the last thing she would do and in the end I was forced to give her a failing mark."

"Amazing," said Professor Cardozo, "for precisely the same thing happened to me. I, too, had to flunk Miss Brentwood. Do you suppose she tried it with all her professors?"

"Possibly," said Professor Murray. "Shall we look up her record and see?" 

No sooner said than done. They scanned the record and Professor Cardozo said, "Interesting. An F in my course and in yours and, indeed, in all of them but one. In one course, she got an A."

"And which course was that?"

"Professor Hingman's course in professional ethics."

C. S. Lewis: "[American] schools where the standard was far too low"

from a letter to Martin Kilmer, Nov. 23, 1958:

American university teachers have told me that most of their freshmen come from schools where the standard was far too low and therefore think themselves far better than they really are. This means that they lose heart (and their tempers too) when told, as they have to be told, their real level.

The Bible according to Hilton

This is from the UK show That Was The Week That Was, around 1963.

In the beginning there was darkness upon the face of the Earth, and there was no iced water. And Hilton said, Let there be iced water. And in every bathroom pipes ran with plenteous iced water, and Hilton saw that it was good. 

Then he said, Let there be music. And in every lobby, single study parlor, double French bedroom and luxury suite, yea, in every elevator, other pipes gushed with plenteous canned music. And Hilton saw that it was good. 

And he said, Let the earth bring forth Hiltons, yielding fruit after fruit after their kind. And so the El Paso Hilton begat the Beverly Hilton, which begat the Puerto Rico Hilton which begat the Istanbul Hilton which begat the Panama Hilton which begat the Nile Hilton which begat the Virgin Islands Hilton which begat the Trinidad Hilton which begat the Teheran Hilton which begat the Acapulco Hilton. 

And on the seventh day, Hilton rested.

But only for an instant. For messengers came unto him and said, Behold, there is an Anglo-Saxon people that dwell in darkness and know not thy name, nor drink they thy iced water. And Hilton took his rod and smote upon the rock in the place which is called Park Lane and out of it came forth a pillar of 130,000 cubic feet of concrete. And the view from the top thereof was thirty miles in any direction, and from thirty miles in any direction thereof the view was, alas, of the pillar. 

Then sent Hilton for the scribes and elders of the people and commanded that they come to him. And they cast lots and sent unto him an elder named Maudling whom they could best spare to be sacrificed. And Hilton gave him a pair of silver scissors and bade him cut the tape, and Maudling would not. But the serpent Clore, who privily did own the freehold, tempted his handmaiden, Beryl, and she spake unto Maudling saying, Give me your scissors. And lo, as he stood wondering, as was his wont, what words to speak, she cut the tape and there was a great gushing of iced water and puking of piped music and a great charging of fifty guineas a night without breakfast.

And Hilton said, Behold, I have given unto you the London Hilton containing everything meet for your needs: a view into the garden of your Queen, yea, and a library wherein you may read Hilton Milton, and 850 Hilton manservants and maidservants smiling Hilton smiles, which they smile not saying cheese, as other men, but saying Hilton Stilton.

But the people were a stiff-necked people who would not drink of the iced water nor would they eat of the Olde English Breakfast, consisting of ripe melon, All-Bran, crisp waffles with ham or sausage, and hot chocolate. For they cried out, What is this Olde English Breakfast? We know it not. Neither will we pay 15/6 for it.

And Hilton was exceeding wroth, and departed with a gnashing of his teeth to beget the Athens Hilton which begat the Moscow Hilton (which was called the Comrade Hilton) which begat the Berlin Hilton (which was called the Adolf Hilton) which begat the Pisa Hilton (which was called the Hilton Tiltin') which begat the Tel Aviv Hilton (which was called the Hilton Schmilton), which begat the Rabat Hilton and doubtless also the Sodom Hilton and the Gomorrah Hilton which were also turned into pillars of concrete. 

And it came to pass that the Hiltons covered the face of the Earth. And there was a great flood of iced water, and the darkness was greater than it was in the beginning.

Historical notes: the building of the London Park Lane Hilton was controversial at the time; the people mentioned were real. For many years, "Comrade Hilton" was the nickname foreign visitors used for the government-run hotel in Red Square in Moscow.

Pronunciation

When Orpheus smote his tuneful lyre
Among the Slocum Regis choir
Who, greatly daring, undertook
The celebrated work by Gluck
(Or, as some put it, tried their luck
At singing choruses by Gluck),
The name of his unhappy spouse
Diverse opinions did arouse.
For while sopranos, strong and screechy,
Loudly lamented Eurydice
And altos on the lower G
Bewailed the sad Eurydice,
The basses scorned distinction nice,
And sang the fate of Eurydice.

As given in the "Kipling Journal" (March 1968, vol. XXXV, no. 165). Introduced with the following: "...a memory of a verse which appeared in Punch many years ago and, if the Editor will permit, deserves repeating."

https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/journal/kj165

Google Books

Camille Paglia on pronouns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nL8eRuGMmc

Whole speech: Camille Paglia: Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism (and pronouns). Brooklyn Public Library, March 16, 2017 (1:20:50)

Q: So, in the realm of free speech, I was curious about your thoughts on the backlash received by Prof. Jordan Peterson on the U. of Toronto campus. Have you heard of the issue?

Paglia: No, I haven't. Want to tell us a little bit?

Q: Basically, he is in opposition of bill C-16 and basically his refusal of using gender pronouns on the campus. [NOTE: this is only partially correct. He has never refused to use someone's idiopronouns when asked. But he was and is opposed to making a law requiring it because that's compelled speech, an infringement on free speech.]

Paglia: Oh.

Q: He's received enormous backlash in his videos on Youtube—

Paglia: Wait. This professor refused to use the pronouns that are being requested or demanded by gender activists.

Q: Yes.

Paglia: Okay. Well, more power to him, is what I say. This is getting ridiculous. My Ph.D. is in English literature from Yale. Contribute to the language. Write a poem. Write a book. Look at the way Gloria Steinem won her one great accomplishment, that she was a cofounder of Ms. Magazine. And there was a very important contribution made by the word "Ms.", because before this, unlike the Romance languages, in English you had Mrs. or Miss. So if you were unmarried at age 40, 50, 60, you were still called "Miss" in a very demeaning way. Whereas in France a young girl is called "Mademoiselle." The minute a person gets in her 20s and afterward, she is called "Madame", whether she's married or unmarried. "Madame." She has dignity, she has authority. And the same thing in Italian. You're "Signorina" if you're young, and "Signora" if you're old. It doesn't matter if you're married or unmarried. "Ms." was a very important contribution to the language. It took time to be absorbed.

But this political agitation to change everyday common speech, are you kidding me? People shouldn't be putting up with this for one second. What kind of nonsense is this? Absolute nonsense! These people who are searching for their own identity and want to impose on others, that's not my philosophy as a libertarian. That is an invasion, intrusion into other people's personal rights. Why? The English Language is owned by everyone! It was created by great artists: Chaucer and Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Joyce and so on! How dare you, you sniveling little maniacs, to tell us how we're going to use pronouns! Go take a hike, I say to them!

The oldest joke I know (c. 61 AD)

By “joke”, I mean a setup with a punch line, not a retelling of a prank or deception of some kind. The oldest joke I know is from chapters 85-87 of The Satyricon by Petronius, circa 61 AD.

Here’s the modern version.

When the traveling salesman’s car broke down, he stopped at a farmhouse. The farmer said the only place he could sleep was with his daughter and warned the salesman to keep his hands off her. They went to bed and he made a tentative pass. She said, “Stop that or I’ll call my father!” But... she moved closer.

After more tries and increasingly feeble protests, finally he succeeded, and found her an accomplished and willing lover. Shortly thereafter, she tugged on his pajama sleeve, and said, “Could we do that again?”

After he drifted off, she awoke him and asked for yet another round of torrid lovemaking. He obliged, but not being the man he once was, fell back asleep at once. Again, he found himself being shaken by the girl, asking for yet another round. He turned over, facing away from her, pulled the covers over his head, and said, “Stop that, or I’ll call your father!”

In Petronius (tr. W. C. Firebaugh) the traveler (not a salesman) seduces his host’s young son. Note that he telegraphs the punch line (the original Latin does, too) and thus ruins it.

When I was attached to the Quaestor’s staff, in Asia, I was quartered with a family at Pergamus. I found things very much to my liking there, not only on account of the refined comfort of my apartments, but also because of the extreme beauty of my host’s son. For the latter reason, I had recourse to strategy, in order that the father should never suspect me of being a seducer...

In a few days, a similar occasion brought about the very same conditions as before, and the instant I heard his father snoring, I began pleading with the lad to receive me again into his good graces, that is to say, that he ought to suffer me to satisfy myself with him, and he in turn could do whatever his own distended member desired. He was very angry, however, and would say nothing at all except, “Either you go to sleep, or I’ll call father!” But no obstacle is so difficult that depravity cannot twist around it and even while he threatened “I’ll call father,” I slipped into his bed and took my pleasure in spite of his half-hearted resistance. Nor was he displeased with my improper conduct for, although he complained for a while, that he had been cheated and made a laughingstock, and that his companions, to whom he had bragged of his wealthy friend, had made sport of him. “But you’ll see that I’ll not be like you,” he whispered; “do it again, if you want to!” All misunderstandings were forgotten and I was readmitted into the lad’s good graces. Then I slipped off to sleep, after profiting by his complaisance. But the youth, in the very flower of maturity, and just at the best age for passive pleasure, was by no means satisfied with only one repetition, so he roused me out of a heavy sleep. “Isn’t there something you’d like to do?” he whispered! The pastime had not begun to cloy, as yet, and, somehow or other, what with panting and sweating and wriggling, he got what he wanted and, worn out with pleasure, I dropped off to sleep again. Less than an hour had passed when he began to punch me with his hand. “Why are we not busy,” he whispered! I flew into a violent rage at being disturbed so many times, and threatened him in his own words, “Either you go to sleep, or I’ll call father!”

Solzhenitsyn

You haven't had to do much lying, do you understand? ... You people were arrested, but we were herded into meetings to 'expose' you. They executed people like you, but they made us stand up and applaud the verdicts ... And not just applaud, they made us demand the firing squad, demand it!

	Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward, pp. 436–437.

Werner Finck, a dissenting comic in the Third Reich

Leonard Moseley, On Borrowed Time: How World War II Began (1969), chapter 6, "Hitler over Bohemia": 

The Kabarett der Komiker was a small night club which operated in a back room of a building on the Kurfürstendamm in the fashionable West End of Berlin, and any foreigner who visited it in 1939 was astonished at what he saw and heard. Not that the entertainment offered was prurient; when the Nazis came to power in 1933, one of their first acts had been to close down the homosexual and lesbian joints and the sadomasochistic striptease dives for which Berlin was famous. After-dark entertainment was now confined to high-kicking legs and an occasional glimpse of a bosom.

The Kabarett der Komiker had survived the Nazi purge because it relied on verbal rather than visual effects to make its impact. The entertainment was divided between sentimental singers, an occasional dancer, some slightly risqué sketches, and the services of what the Germans call a Conferencier, a sort of master of ceremonies who tells jokes and sometimes sings between acts. The only difference between Werner Finck and his counterparts in other countries was that his jokes were almost all political, and that every time he voiced them he gambled with his life and liberty. 

Werner Finck [1] was an anti-Nazi who made no secret of his contempt for Adolf Hitler and the men who were running Germany. He did something no one else in the Reich had the courage to do publicly: he made fun of them. Bouncing onto the Kabarett der Komiker's minuscule stage in his floppy suit, outsize bow tie and floppy hat, he would lift his hand in a majestic Hitler salute. Then, after a pause, without a muscle moving in his face he would say, "That's how high my dog can jump."

Finck always knew the latest gossip about the Nazi leaders. When Field Marshal Göring's wife, Emmy, announced that she was pregnant, Finck sidled onto the stage and said in a whisper to his audience, "Psst! D'you know what she's going to call the baby if it's a boy? No? I'll tell you! Hamlet. Yes, Hamlet! Well, obviously!" And then, hand on his chin, he began pacing back and forth across the stage, reciting, "Sein oder nicht sein, das ist die Frage!" [2]

And each time he concluded his act for the evening, Finck would march to the wings, turn, give the Nazi salute, and shout in a strident voice, "Heil...er...er...Now, what is that fellow's name?"

No one knows why the Komiker was allowed to stay in business. Between 1936 and 1939 it was temporarily shut four times by Joseph Goebbels, and on five occasions Werner Finck was jailed for "insulting behavior toward the state." But each time the cabaret re-opened and Werner Finck returned, his repertoire as bitingly contemptuous.

On January 25, 1939, Captain Paul Stehlin, the assistant air attaché at the French Embassy, was sitting at a corner table with General Karl Bodenschatz, Göring's chief aide and the fourth most powerful man in the German air force. As the Frenchman turned to his companion he was relieved to see that Bodenschatz was laughing at Finck's mordant comments on the Nazi leaders. "So long as he doesn't mock the Luftwaffe!" said Bodenschatz.

[1] An indestructible who is still appearing at the Kabarett der Komiker on the Kurfürstendamm today [1969].

[2] Which in German means either "To be or not to be, that is the question" or "His or not his, that is the question."

Ayn Rand: "the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted"

 Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (part 2, ch. 3):

“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with.”

Scott Adams on Trump's tactics in peace deals

 Episode 1296 Scott Adams: Democrats Fall for Massive Disinformation Campaign From Their Own Side (streamed live on Feb 25, 2021) (13:35)

[...] so when the Khashoggi thing first came out, and it was obvious Trump was sort of underplaying it, I said that's probably the smartest thing he's ever done, because that gives the USA tremendous leverage over Saudi Arabia, [...] because we would have a club over public opinion. Trump decided not to use that club.

What did he get in return? You don't know, do you? I don't know! Do you think that Trump, just think of his personality, think of his deal-making, and think of the fact he would've been completely aware that he had now leverage over Saudi Arabia? Do you think he didn't know that? I said it every day on live stream while it was happening? Yeah, of course he knew it. [...] Do you think [...] Saudi Arabia didn't know that? Do you think he got something in return? 

[...] we do know the peace deals between Israel and other countries started coming together, and that never happened before. What would it take for those other countries to feel safe in joining with Israel on some kind of a peace deal? Well, probably they needed to know that Saudi Arabia wasn't going to be a problem. And they weren't.

Acrostics in Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night's Dream,  III, i:

TITANIA

Out of this wood do not desire to go:
Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate;
The summer still doth tend upon my state;
And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,

Comedy of Errors, I, i:

DUKE SOLINUS

Hapless AEgeon, whom the fates have mark'd
To bear the extremity of dire mishap!
Now, trust me, were it not against our laws,
Against my crown, my oath, my dignity,
Which princes, would they, may not disannul,
My soul would sue as advocate for thee.
But, though thou art adjudged to the death
And passed sentence may not be recall'd
But to our honour's great disparagement,
Yet I will favour thee in what I can.

These are probably coincidences, like the "Bible Code". For more information see "Shakespearean line-by-line acrostics" by A. Ross Eckler, Word Ways, Feb. 2007. (Free Library)   

Thomas Sowell on intellectuals and crises

Interview, The American Enterprise Online, August 2004

There's something Eric Hoffer said: "Intellectuals cannot operate at room temperature." There always has to be a crisis—some terrible reason why their superior wisdom and virtue must be imposed on the unthinking masses. It doesn't matter what the crisis is. A hundred years ago it was eugenics. At the time of the first Earth Day a generation ago, the big scare was global cooling, a big ice age. They go from one to the other. It meets their psychological needs and gives them a reason for exercising their power. Many intellectuals' preoccupation with the poor is very much the same thing. The thing that gives it all away is that after they say, "We must have this program because the poor can't afford medicine, or can't afford housing," they will splutter if you say, "OK, let's have a means test so it really goes to the poor." If they were really concerned primarily about the poor, they would agree to it. But they are bitterly opposed to that, because the poor are a lever to reach other, political, goals.

Walter Williams figured out some years ago that the amount of money needed to move the poor out of poverty would be trivial compared to the amount of money that's spent on these damn programs that are supposed to help the poor but usually don't. But the poor are being used as human shields in the political battle. You put the poor up in front of you as you march across the battlefield and enemy troops won't fire, so you can expand your power, and raise taxes, and so forth.

Intelligence vs. reversed stupidity

Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Someone* once said, “Not all conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.” If you cannot place yourself in a state of mind where this statement, true or false, seems completely irrelevant as a critique of conservatism, you are not ready to think rationally about politics. 

* John Stuart Mill (in a Parliamentary debate with the Conservative MP, John Pakington, May 31, 1866):

What I stated was, that the Conservative party was, by the law of its constitution, necessarily the stupidest party. Now, I do not retract this assertion; but I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.

The gullibility of the educated

“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”

C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, ch. 5, section 1 (Miss Hardcastle speaking to Mark Studdock)

C. S. Lewis on the state of colleges

CSL, letter to his father, 3 Nov. 1928, a few years after becoming a tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford:

Two or three of us who are agreed as to what a College ought to be, have been endeavouring to stimulate the undergraduates into forming some sort of literary society. In any other Colleges the idea that undergraduates should require, or endure, stimulus in that direction from the dons, would be laughable. But this is a very curious place. All [Magdalen] College societies whatever were forbidden early in the reign of the late President—an act which was then necessitated by the savagely exclusive clubs of rich dipsomaniacs which really dominated the whole life of the place. […] When I came I found that any Magdalen undergraduate who had interests beyond rowing, drinking, motoring and fornication, sought his friends outside the College, and indeed kept out of the place as much as he could. 

[…] I am quite sure that this College will never be anything more than a country club for the idlest 'bloods' of Eton and Charterhouse as long as undergraduates retain the schoolboy's idea that it would be bad form to discuss among themselves the sort of subjects on which they write essays for their tutors. Ours at present are all absolute babies and terrific men of the world—the two characters I think nearly always go together. Old hearts and young heads, as Henry James says: the cynicism of forty and the mental crudeness and confusion of fourteen. 

Except for classics (and that only at Winchester, and only a few boys even there) I really don't know what gifts the public schools [not the same as USA public schools] bestow on their nurslings, beyond the surface of good manners: unless contempt of the things of the intellect, extravagance, insolence, self-sufficiency, and sexual perversion are to be called gifts.

Cloward–Piven strategy

Wikipedia:

The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty." 

Chaucer's color vision

Chaucer didn't have words for the colors like orange, but he could see them.

Canterbury Tales

Knight's Tale, 1273-4

The cercles of his eyen in his heed,
They glowéden bitwyxen yelow and reed

Nun's Priest's Tale, 136-7

His colour was bitwixe yelow and reed,
And tipped was his tayl and bothe hise eeris;

Men and women

I can tell you why men and women can never get together, Doc. Each wants something completely different. A man wants a woman, a woman wants a man! Impossible!

Arthur, in Oh, Men! Oh, Women! (1953), act II. By Edward Chodorov.

Nancy Pelosi's unintended humor

From October 2006:

Though she is probably the second most lampooned woman in U.S. politics -- after Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) -- Pelosi is far from a household name. "I don't think most people know who I am," she says. 

That could change in one historic moment if Pelosi is pulled from the trenches and plopped into the spotlight. 

She sees it as an opportunity to change the culture of Washington. 

"I think the fact that I am a woman will raise expectations in terms of more hope in government, and I will not disappoint," she says. 

"The gavel of the speaker of the House is in the hands of special interests, and now it will be in the hands of America's children. I don't mean to imply my male colleagues will have any less integrity.... But I don't know that a man can say that as easily as a woman can."

Rick Rescorla, 9/11, and the 1993 WTC bombing

Rick Rescorla was chief of security for Morgan Stanley in the World Trade Center. He and his friend Dan Hill predicted the 1993 WTC bombing and 9/11.

After the bombing, Hill (who spoke Arabic and was a convert to Islam) visited many mosques in the New York area and across the Hudson in New Jersey. At the Turkish mosque in Patterson, everyone was friendly and pro-American and hoped the bombers weren't Muslims. From Heart of a Soldier by James B. Stewart (Simon and Schuster, 2002) (Google Books link):

But at every other mosque, Hill was struck by the intense anti-American hostility he encountered. Though these were not his own views, he barely had to mention that he thought American policy toward Israel and the Middle East was misguided, or that Jews wielded too much political power, to unleash a torrent of anti-American, anti-Semitic rhetoric. Many applauded the bombing of the WTC, lamenting that it hadn't done more damage. “Those are the towers of Jews”, he was told at several stops. Then his hosts quoted from the Koran [Sura 4:78]: “Wherever you are, death will overtake you, though you are in lofty towers in the sky.”

On 9/11/2001, Rescorla and his two lieutenants, Jorge Velasquez and Godwin Forde, were last seen in the South Tower on the 10th floor, heading upward, shortly before it collapsed at 9:59 A.M.

Gandhi's last words

हे राम

(Roughly pronounced, "hey raam") Google Translate

Rama (Ram) was the seventh avatar of Vishnu, the sustainer.

Jane Austen on unintelligibility

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, vol. 2, ch. 1:

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

Rhetorical devices

Chiasmus - reversal of words with related meaning.  By day the frolic, and the dance by night. — Samuel Johnson

Antimetabole - a subtype of chiasmus. Reversal of same words. "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Ciceronian irony - blame by praise and praise by blame.

Apophasis - the speaker or writer brings up a subject by either denying it, or denying that it should be brought up.

In the 1984 U.S. presidential campaign debates, Ronald Reagan used a humorous apophasis to deflect scrutiny of his own fitness at age 73 by replying, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

In Cicero's "Pro Caelio" speech, he says to a prosecutor, "Obliviscor iam iniurias tuas, Clodia, depono memoriam doloris mei" ("I now forget your wrongs, Clodia, I set aside the memory of my pain [that you caused].")

When apophasis is taken to its extreme, the speaker provides full details, stating or drawing attention to something in the very act of pretending to pass it over: "I will not stoop to mentioning the occasion last winter when our esteemed opponent was found asleep in an alleyway with an empty bottle of vodka still pressed to his lips."

Maureen Dowd's "evolving" view of how feminism was affected by Bill Clinton's sexual escapades

2003/10/05 - NY Times - Win One for the Groper

Certainly, the bodybuilder-turned-phenom has had moments of being, to use David Letterman's word, a lunkhead. But I find the selective outrage of feminists just as offensive.

Feminism died in 1998 when Hillary allowed henchlings and Democrats to demonize Monica as an unbalanced stalker, and when Gloria Steinem defended Mr. Clinton against Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones by saying he had merely made clumsy passes, then accepted rejection, so there was no sexual harassment involved. As to his dallying with an emotionally immature 21-year-old, Ms. Steinem noted, ''Welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.''

Surely what's good for the Comeback Kid is good for the Terminator. 

2016/02/14 - NY Times - "When Hillary Clinton Killed Feminism"

The interesting thing about the spectacle of older women trying to shame younger ones on behalf of Hillary is that Hillary and Bill killed the integrity of institutional feminism back in the ’90s — with the help of Albright and Steinem. 

2016/10/03 - Daily Caller - "Feminism died a little bit when the feminists had to help Bill Clinton" (video, interviewed by Katie Couric)

“I do think that feminism died a little bit when the feminists had to help Bill Clinton when Monica was actually telling the truth,” Dowd continued. “They had to support Bill Clinton just because they wanted his progressive policies on women.”

Feminism: an exchange of yokes?

Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, chapter 8, "Cults, Communes, and Clicks", p. 195: 

As the us-versus-them opposition is replicated within the original grouping, policing actions get under way. This is a form of behavior that, in addition to allowing some people to be censorious and aggressive toward others, reflects a presumption of rights and wrongs: We are right. You are wrong.

Many feminists have trouble swallowing this. As a political science professor from Texas (who has a bumper sticker on her pickup truck saying FEMINIST REDNECK wrote to us: "I have not thrown off the yoke of one master to have it replaced by another, even if its name is feminism." 

"Imbecile bourgeoisie"

From The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad, chapter 2. Verloc is an inept anarchist agent and Vladimir is his superior. It's interesting that, in the present day, the left wants to do what Vladimir accuses the ruling classes of that day of wanting.

Mr Vladimir bore the look of heavy inquiry with perfect serenity.

"What we want is to administer a tonic to the Conference in Milan," he said airily. "Its deliberations upon international action for the suppression of political crime don't seem to get anywhere. England lags. This country is absurd with its sentimental regard for individual liberty. It's intolerable to think that all your friends have got only to come over to - "

"In that way I have them all under my eye," Mr Verloc interrupted huskily.

"It would be much more to the point to have them all under lock and key. England must be brought into line. The imbecile bourgeoisie of this country make themselves the accomplices of the very people whose aim is to drive them out of their houses to starve in ditches. And they have the political power still, if they only had the sense to use it for their preservation. I suppose you agree that the middle classes are stupid?"

Mr Verloc agreed hoarsely.

"They are."

"They have no imagination. They are blinded by an idiotic vanity. What they want just now is a jolly good scare. This is the psychological moment to set your friends to work. I have had you called here to develop to you my idea."

"Since there is no god, it is our job to do His work."

Howard Bloom:

I realized I was an atheist at thirteen years old and it wasn't a choice, it just happened. But no benevolent God would be so cruel. No benevolent God would create a cosmos with such pain. Any God so vicious would be one that we, as humans, would be obliged to oppose with every muscle and every cell.

And, in fact, whether there is a god or not it is our obligation to oppose the outrages and pains of this planet. Here's something I wrote a while back.

Since there is no god, it is our job to do His work. God is not a being, he is an aspiration, a gift, a vision, a goal to seek. Ours is the responsibility of making a cruel universe turn just, of turning pains to understandings and new insights into joy, of creating ways to soar the skies for generations yet to come, of fashioning wings with which our children's children shall overcome, of making worlds of fantasy materialize as reality, of mining and transforming our greatest gifts--our passions, our imaginings, our pains, our insecurities, and our lusts.

This is the work of deity, and deity is a power that resides in us.

A blogger's view on reporters

Blogger Marco Arment:

Almost every time I’ve talked to a reporter has gone this way: they had already decided the narrative beforehand. I’m never being asked for information — I’m being used for quotes to back up their predetermined story, regardless of whether it’s true. (Consider this when you read the news.) Misquotes usually aren’t mistakes — they’re edited, consciously or not, to say what the reporter needs them to say.

Talking to reporters is like talking to the police: ideally, don’t. You have little to gain and a lot to lose, their incentives often conflict with yours, and they have all of the power.

https://marco.org/2014/11/16/why-podcasts-are-suddenly-back

How Nazis viewed the USA

We would not say anything if the U.S.A. were aware of its intellectual and moral defects and was trying to grow up. But it is too much when it behaves in an impudent manner toward a part of the earth with a few thousands years of glorious history behind it, attempting to teach it moral and intellectual lessons, whether out of innocence or a complete lack of genuine culture and learning. We can forgive the mistakes of youth, but this degree of arrogance gets on one’s nerves.

Joseph Goebbels, 9 August 1942 “Aus Gottes eigenem Land” ("God's Country"), Das eherne Herz (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1943), pp. 421-427.

A law professor's views on reporters

Speaking as a lawprof who used to take calls from reporters, I eventually figured out that the reporter always had the idea of what I was going to say and would keep talking one way or another at me to try to get me to say it. When I realized that all my effort explaining things in a service-oriented way was wasted and the only quote that was used was the thing I could see, in retrospect, the reporter was taking up my time trying to get me to say, I stopped taking calls — to save time and to protect myself from distortion and exploitation.

Law professor Ann Althouse,  2/4/17, 12:11 PM

Journalism

Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits -- a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.

Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, "13. End of the Road...Death of the Whale...Soaking Sweats in the Airport".

"The virtue of their victims"

 Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (part 3, ch. 1), Dr. Hendricks to Dagny Taggart:

“I quit when medicine was placed under State control some years ago,” said Dr. Hendricks. “Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I could not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward.

“I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything — except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the ‘welfare’ of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, but ‘to serve.’ That a man’s willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards — never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy.

“I have often wondered at the smugness at which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind — yet what is it they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it — and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.”

What the Obama adminstration really thought about the media

Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. "All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus," he said. "Now they don't. They call us to explain to them what's happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That's a sea change. They literally know nothing." 

Ben Rhodes, advisor to President Obama. From "The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama's Foreign-Policy Guru" by David Samuels. New York Times, May 5, 2016.

The gullibility of the intellectual community

Simon Karlinsky wrote in his introduction to Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 1940-1971:

...the groundswell of enthusiasm for Soviet Russia among America’s intellectuals which came just as Stalin was consolidating his power and plunging the country into the worst nightmare in its history. What amazes a person even minimally acquainted with Soviet realities about the intellectual climate of America in the thirties is the almost inconceivable gullibility of the intellectual community, its lack of any meaningful criteria for comparing the situations in the two countries.

Muggeridge's Law

From Tom Wolfe's "Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast:  A literary manifesto for the new social novel," Harpers, November, 1989. 

While Malcolm Muggeridge was the editor of Punch, it was announced that Khrushchev and Bulganin were coming to England. Muggeridge hit upon the idea of a mock itinerary, a lineup of the most ludicrous places the two paunchy pear-shaped little Soviet leaders could possibly be paraded through during the solemn process of a state visit. Shortly before press time, half the feature had to be scrapped. It coincided exactly with the official itinerary, just released, prompting Muggeridge to observe: We live in an age in which it is no longer possible to be funny. There is nothing you can imagine, no matter how ludicrous, that will not promptly be enacted before your very eyes, probably by someone well known.

A full Moon can occur on Easter Sunday.

The rule for finding the date of Easter is usually stated as follows:

1. Determine the date of first full Moon on or after the first day of Spring.
2. Easter is the Sunday after that.

This eliminates the possibility of the Moon being full on Easter Sunday.

Except that it doesn't. A lunar eclipse can occur only when the Moon is full, and there was a nearly total lunar eclipse which was seen in most of Europe on Easter Sunday, April 12, 1903 (pdf).

There are two factors in the rule for Easter that contribute to this situation.

1. The first day of Spring is always assumed to be March 21. This is not exactly true. The vernal equinox (determined astronomically) can occur on March 19, 20 or 21.
2. The full Moon used is not the astronomical full Moon, but an ecclesiastical full Moon, i.e., one that is used for ease of determination.

The second factor is responsible for 1903, because the ecclesiastical full moon was on April 11.

The date of Easter is actually determined by the Roman Catholic Church using tables that were set up when the Gregorian Calendar was established in 1582.

For further information: United States Naval Observatory, The Date of Easter.

"[We academics are] the most useless people in the world" --Germaine Greer, 2014

Germaine Greer, FemiFest radical feminist conference, London, August 31, 2014 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7b59mFyREY
https://vimeo.com/105476725 [timing in brackets]

4:01 [3:34] "So I really think we've gone about as far as we can go with this equality nonsense. It was always a fraud. It always placed women in a position of having to adapt to a pre-existing reality that they didn't approve of anyway."

4:37 [4:10] "[The corporate world] is a completely sclerotic, phalliform organizational system, and everything travels vertically. All orders come down from the top. Everybody's in authority over everybody else. It's not the way we do things. It's not the way we can go on doing things because we know that those systems depend upon oppression and cruelty, downright cruelty, and--'unmanning people', I almost said. Making people feel inferior, making them apologize for their existence, making them strive to be more like whatever the thing is you want them to be, and I think we have to do something."

7:07 [6:40] " ...the abominable Guardian, which is probably the most treacherous newspaper the women's movement has ever had...and their treatment of their female staff, with a few exceptions, is usually a pretty good example of what they're like at base level."

9:26 [8:52] "How do we form ourselves into an activity--a force to improve the situation? I don't have the answers. I'm an academic--[we're] the most useless people in the world."

Islam and Nazism

Oriana Fallaci, The New Yorker, June 5, 2006, "The Agitator":

“Islamism is the new Nazi-Fascism. With Nazi-Fascism, no compromise is possible. No hypocritical tolerance. And those who do not understand this simple reality are feeding the suicide of the West. […]

“I am known for a life spent in the struggle for freedom, and freedom includes the freedom of religion. But the struggle for freedom does not include the submission to a religion which, like the Muslim religion, wants to annihilate other religions. Which wants to impose its ‘Mein Kampf,’ its Koran, on the whole planet. Which has done so for one thousand and four hundred years. That is, since its birth. Which, unlike any other religion, slaughters and decapitates or enslaves all those who live differently.”

The rest of this post is from http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2008/08/fundamentalism-and-fascism

Michael Potemra tells us that in Bernard-Henri Levy’s forthcoming book Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism , there is an interesting line from the journals of Paul Claudel. On May 21, 1935, Claudel wrote, “Hitler’s speech: a kind of Islamism is being created at the center of Europe . . . ”

The Catholic poet and diplomat Claudel wasn’t alone in linking National Socialism to Islam. Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian who was the principal author (with Bonhoffer) of the Barmen Declaration against the Nazis, had this to say:

Participation in this life, according to it the only worthy and blessed life, is what National Socialism, as a political experiment, promises to those who will of their own accord share in this experiment. And now it becomes understandable why, at the point where it meets with resistance, it can only crush and kill with the might and right which belongs to Divinity! Islam of old as we know proceeded in this way. It is impossible to understand National Socialism unless we see it in fact as a new Islam, its myth as a new Allah, and Hitler as this new Allah’s Prophet. 

(Church and the Political Problem of Our Day , 1939, p. 43)

Cato the Elder on women

Woman is a violent and uncontrolled animal, and it is useless to let go the reins and then expect her not to kick over the traces. You must keep her on a tight rein [...] Women want total freedom or rather - to call things by their names - total licence. If you allow them to achieve complete equality with men, do you think they will be easier to live with? Not at all. Once they have achieved equality, they will be your masters ...

I post this quote solely to provide its exact source and the context. It's attributed to Cato the Elder in many places on the Web, and it's composed of excerpts (with some paraphrasing) from a speech of Cato reported in Livy's History of Rome, book 34, sections 2-4:

Give the reins to a headstrong nature, to a creature that has not been tamed, and then hope that they will themselves set bounds to their licence if you do not do it yourselves. This is the smallest of those restrictions which have been imposed upon women by ancestral custom or by laws, and which they submit to with such impatience. What they really want is unrestricted freedom, or to speak the truth, licence, and if they win on this occasion what is there that they will not attempt? 

Call to mind all the regulations respecting women by which our ancestors curbed their licence and made them obedient to their husbands, and yet in spite of all those restrictions you can scarcely hold them in. If you allow them to pull away these restraints and wrench them out one after another, and finally put themselves on an equality with their husbands, do you imagine that you will be able to tolerate them? From the moment that they become your fellows they will become your masters. [...]  

You have often heard me complain of the expensive habits of women and often, too, of those of men, not only private citizens but even magistrates, and I have often said that the community suffers from two opposite vices - avarice and luxury - pestilential diseases which have proved the ruin of all great empires. [...] The very last things to be ashamed of are thriftiness and poverty, but this law relieves you of both since you do not possess what it forbids you to possess. The wealthy woman says, 'This levelling down is just what I do not tolerate. Why am I not to be admired and looked at for my gold and purple? Why is the poverty of others disguised under this appearance of law so that they may be thought to have possessed, had the law allowed it, what it was quite out of their power to possess? 

Do you want, Quirites, to plunge your wives into a rivalry of this nature, where the rich desire to have what no one else can afford, and the poor, that they may not be despised for their poverty, stretch their expenses beyond their means? Depend upon it, as soon as a woman begins to be ashamed of what she ought not to be ashamed of she will cease to feel shame at what she ought to be ashamed of. She who is in a position to do so will get what she wants with her own money, she who cannot do this will ask her husband. The husband is in a pitiable plight whether he yields or refuses; in the latter case he will see another giving what he refused to give. Now they are soliciting other women's husbands, and what is worse they are soliciting votes for the repeal of a law, and are getting them from some, against the interest of you and your property and your children. When once the law has ceased to fix a limit to your wife's expenses, you will never fix one. Do not imagine that things will be the same as they were before the law was made. It is safer for an evil-doer not to be prosecuted than for him to be tried and then acquitted, and luxury and extravagance would have been more tolerable had they never been interfered with than they will be now, just like wild beasts which have been irritated by their chains and then released. 

Edward Gibbon, Charles Martel, and Islam

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter LII.

A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.

In actual fact, today Arabic studies are taught in Oxford.

From such calamities Christendom was delivered by the genius and fortune of one man. Charles, the illegitimate son of the elder Pepin, was content with the titles of mayor or duke of the Franks, but he deserved to become the father of a line of kings.

In 732, around October 10 (exact dates uncertain), Charles battled the Muslim armies between the cities of Tours and Poitiers and finally defeated them.

...the Arabs never resumed the conquest of Gaul, and they were soon driven beyond the Pyrenees by Charles Martel and his valiant race.

Charles Martel was the grandfather of Charlemagne.

"Answer" by Fredric Brown (1954) (complete short-short story)

Dwan Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.

He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe -- ninety-six billion planets -- into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.

Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."

Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.

Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn."

"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."

He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?"

The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.

"Yes, now there is a God."

Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.

A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

Loyalty and lying

https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/05/ol4-dr-johnsons-hypothesis/

For example, in many ways nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth. Anyone can believe in the truth. To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable demonstration of loyalty. 

Obama and Saruman

The Two Towers, “The Voice of Saruman”:

Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard  [Obama's “racism” speech]; and if they did, they wondered for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell [...] But none were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will, so long as its master had control of it.

Return of the King, “Many Partings”: 

[Gandalf said,] “I fancy [Saruman] could do some mischief still in a small mean way.” 

Return of the King, “The Scouring of the Shire”:

[Saruman said,] “ ‘One ill turn deserves another.’ It would have been a sharper lesson, if only you had given me a little more time and more Men. Still I have already done much that you will find it hard to mend or undo in your lives. And it will be pleasant to think of that and set it against my injuries.”...  

But Frodo said, “...He has lost all power, save his voice that can still daunt you and deceive you, if you let it. ...”

Sexual Identity in 1958, from comedian Shelley Berman.

We only hear his side of the call.

He phones his sister, but his very young nephew answers instead. Hilarity ensues.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=300&v=nWwUgjkOHAA 

 

Finally (at 7:52 in the video) his sister comes to the phone.

Do me a favor, tell my nephew he's a boy, will you?

He doesn't know. He doesn't know! I asked him before, he didn't know what the hell I was talking about!

What do you mean, "he's a baby"? Now is when he should know! Now, during his formative years! Don't wait till he grows up and makes an arbitrary decision!

Originally on the LP Inside Shelley Berman.

"Chivalry is the most delicate form of contempt"

Albert Léon Guérard, Bottle in the Sea (1954):

Descartes wrote in heavy but lucid nontechnical French, for the layman if not for the man in the street. He was the first of the great popularizers (vulgarisateurs in the strictly French sense): a distinguished line and particularly Gallic, in which Pascal himself, and Renan, were to be his successors. He went so far as to include among his potential audience "even women": a revolutionary step, for the elaborate gallantry of the time had not yet broken down the prejudice against feminine brains: chivalry is the most delicate form of contempt. It is odd to think of the austere logician, mathematician, and physicist as a professor for society ladies: yet he had among his disciples Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia and Queen Christina of Sweden. We might consider him as a forerunner of Trissotin in Moliere's Learned Ladies; most decidedly of Fontenelle, whose Chats on the Plurality of Inhabited Worlds are masterpieces of drawingroom wit and courtesy; of Voltaire, who wrote his Universal History for Madame du Chatelet; of Bellac in Pailleron's Le Monde ou Von s'ennuie, the professor as society pet, a composite picture of many successful academic lecturers; even of Bergson, whose courses at the College de France were thronged with the aristocracy of birth and wealth.

Cesar Chavez' fundamental problem

Like most ’60s radicals—of whatever stripe—he [Chavez] vastly overestimated the appeal of hard times and simple living; he was not the only Californian of the time to promote the idea of a Poor People’s Union, but as everyone from the Symbionese Liberation Army to the Black Panthers would discover, nobody actually wants to be poor.

The Madness of Cesar Chavez (by Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic, July/August 2011 Issue)

Phaedrus - "what is good" - Plato/Jowett vs. Pirsig

Phaedrus by Plato (258d) (translated by Benjamin Jowett):

Soc. The disgrace begins when a man writes not well, but badly.

Phaedr. Clearly.

Soc. And what is well and what is badly—need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?

As paraphrased in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig:

And what is good, Phaedrus , and what is not good—need we ask anyone to tell us these things?

Science and religion

Max Planck, Where Is Science Going?  (1932), page 214

Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.

1 Thessalonians 5:21 (NKJV)

Test all things; hold fast what is good.

Another Ogden Nash poem

Medusa and the Mot Juste

Once there was a Greek divinity of the sea named Ceto and she married a man named Phorcus,

And the marriage must have been pretty raucous;

Their remarks about which child took after which parent must have been full of asperities,

Because they were the parents of the Gorgons, and the Graeae, and Scylla, and the dragon that guarded the apples of the Hesperides.

Bad blood somewhere.

Today the Gorgons are our topic, and as all schoolboys including you and me know,

They were three horrid sisters named Medusa and Euryale and Stheno.

But what most schoolboys don't know because they never get beyond their Silas Marners and their Hiawathas,

The Gorgons were not only monsters, they were also highly talented authors.

Medusa began it;

She wrote Forever Granite.

But soon Stheno and Euryale were writing too, and they addressed her in daily choruses,

Saying we are three literary sisters just like the Brontës so instead of Gorgons why can't we be brontësauruses?

Well, Medusa may have been mythical but she wasn't mystical,

She was selfish and egotistical.

She saw wider vistas

Than simply being the sister of her sisters.

She replied, tossing away a petrified Argonaut on whom she had chipped a molar,

You two can be what you like, but since I am the big fromage in this family, I prefer to think of myself as the Gorgon Zola.

An Ogden Nash poem

from the collection I'm a Stranger Here Myself  (1938).

How Now, Sirrah? Oh, Anyhow 

Oh, sometimes I sit around and think, what would you do if you were up a dark alley and there was Caesar Borgia,

And he was coming torgia,

And brandished a poisoned poniard,

And looked at you like an angry fox looking at the plumpest rooster in a boniard?

Why that would certainly be an adventure,

It would be much more exciting than writing a poem or selling a debenture,

But would you be fascinated,

Or just afraid of being assassinated?

Or suppose you went out dancing some place where you generally dance a lot,

And you jostled somebody accidentally and it turned out to be Sir Lancelot,

And he drew his sword,

Would you say Have at you! or would you say Oh Lord!?

Or what if you were held up by a bandit,

And he told you to hand over your money, would you try to disarm him and turn him over to the police, or would you over just meekly hand it?

What would you do if you were in a luxurious cosmopolitan hotel surrounded by Europeans and Frenchmen,

And a beautiful woman came up to you and asked you to rescue her from some mysterious master mind and his sinister henchmen?

Would you chivalrously make her rescue your personal objective,

Or would you refer her to the house detective?

Yes, and what if you were on trial for murdering somebody whom for the sake of argument we might call Kelly or O'Connor,

And you were innocent but were bound to be convicted unless you told the truth and the truth would tarnish a lady's honor,

Would you elect to die like a gentleman or live like a poltroon,

Or put the whole thing in the hands of an arbitration committee headed by Heywood Broun?

Yes, often as through life I wander,

This is the kind of question I ponder,

And what puzzles me most is why I even bother to ponder when I already know the answer,

Because anybody who won't cross the street till the lights are green would never get far as a Musketeer or a Bengal Lancer.

Political correctness

Dorothy Healey, in California Red: A Life in the American Communist Party (1990, U. of Illinois Press):

However, with the white chauvinism campaign of 1949-1953, what had been a legitimate concern turned into an obsession, a ritual act of self-purification that did nothing to strengthen the Party in its fight against racism and was manipulated by some Communist leaders for ends which had nothing to do with the ostensible purpose of the whole campaign. Once an accusation of white chauvinism was thrown against a white Communist, there was no defense. Debate was over. By the very act of denying the validity of the charge, you only proved your own guilt. Thousands of people were caught up in this campaign—not only in the Party itself, but within the Progressive Party and some of the Left unions as well. In Los Angeles alone we must have expelled two hundred people on charges of white chauvinism, usually on the most trivial of pretexts. People would be expelled for serving coffee in a chipped coffee cup to a Black or serving watermelon at the end of dinner.

(See the end of this post for a more recent watermelon incident.)

Healey was eventually accused of "white chauvinism" herself. She gave in to the charge because she thought the whole thing was a farce and this would end her involvement. But then she was ordered to sign a written public statement, which was used against her in her later dealings with the Party.

She writes:

Because it was almost impossible to criticize a Black leader, the Party suffered and I think the Black leaders themselves suffered […] When Blacks were spared this [criticism], it wasn't doing them any favor. [sic] […] when you have the notion that only Blacks can lead or that you must uncritically accept Black leadership without any standards, then you get reverse application of what you were fighting for. […] One of the great ironies of the white chauvinism campaign is that we lost a large number of Black members because of it. They were just contemptuous of the whole thing because it had so little to do with fighting racism in the real world outside the Party's ranks.

Joseph R. Starobin was the American foreign editor of The Daily Worker. In his book, American Communism in Crisis, 1943-1947 (U. of California Press, 1975), he described the campaign against "white chauvinism" as a "witch hunt" and that it was used to "settle [personal] scores". Words like "whitewash" and "black sheep" were considered racist.

Doris Lessing, Language and the Lunatic Fringe (NY Times, June 26, 1992):

Yes, I know the obfuscations of academia did not begin with Communism—as Swift, for one, tells us—but the pedantries and verbosity of Communism had its root in German academia. And now it has become a kind of mildew blighting the whole world. […]   

Raising Consciousness, like Commitment, like Political Correctness, is a continuation of that old bully, the Party Line. […] 

The demand that stories must be 'about' something is from Communist thinking and, further back, from religious thinking, with its desire for self-improvement books as simple-minded as the messages on samplers.  The phrase Political Correctness was born as Communism was collapsing. I do not think this was chance. I am not suggesting that the torch of Communism  has been handed on to the Political Correctors. I am suggesting that habits of mind have been absorbed, often without knowing it.

Ron and Allis Radosh's Red Star Over Hollywood (Amazon "search inside", Google Books) recounts how  Dalton Trumbo was severely criticized for "white chauvinism". One of his sins was describing a Negro boy in one of his writings as "polished and dressed in his very best" because this implied he was "clean only on special occasions"!

Here's another excerpt from that book. Herbert Biberman was a screenwriter, one of the Hollywood Ten. He had gone to New York to consult leading "Negro cultural workers" there about films the Communists were planning. Biberman wrote about this to Albert Maltz and Dalton Trumbo.

Biberman found, much to his surprise, that they "were too busy and occupied to spend an instant dealing with people who were so misinformed as to still consider that they were being 'broad-minded' in consulting Negro cultural leaders as 'experts' on Negro material" that was developed by "lily-white artists for the good of the Negro people." White artists could join with them, he reported, but they would have to admit that "they needed the Negro People more than the Negro people needed them." 

With each sentence, Biberman sounded more and more agitated. What he had learned from his experience in New York, he wrote, was "soul-shaking, land-shaking, country-shaking." He learned about "the poison of chauvinism" and how it was deeply embedded even in people like themselves. After all, they were only white middle-class artist, separated from the real struggles going on in America. After talking with the New York African-American cultural leaders, Biberman decided that all their films—including those they thought were favorable to the fight for civil rights—were in reality patronizing and racist.

From October 2017, a watermelon incident similar to that reported by Dorothy Healey. Snopes: 

Detroit firefighter Robert Pattinson was fired for behavior deemed offensive and racially insensitive after bringing a watermelon to work on his first day on the job. 

Rating: TRUE.  

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/detroit-firefighter-watermelon-fired/  

https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/detroit-firefighter-fired-for-bringing-watermelon-to-station 

Black Detroit firefighters defend white recruit fired over watermelon:   

https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/black-detroit-firefighters-defend-white-recruit-fired-over-watermelon 

Information control and Communism

From "My Country, Vietnam", by Doan Van Toai, in Second Thoughts: Former Radicals Look Back at the 60s (1989), edited by Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Madham Books, Lanham, Maryland (emphasis added). The author had been a student activist in favor of the N. Vietnam takeover, and in the interim he had become a bank branch manager.

[...] But my attitude changed when the new regime turned its back on the promises of a national reconciliation and, taking off its patriotic mask, revealed its Marxist face.

When I was suddenly ordered to work on a plan to confiscate all private property and create a Communist state, I refused. [...] I resigned from my post. A few days I was arrested as I was attending a public concert in the National Theater. I asked my captors, "Why have you arrested me, what have I done?" They replied: "That is for you to work out." [...] 

While I was in jail, Mai Chi Tho, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, addressed a selected group of political prisoners. He told us: ''Ho Chi Minh may have been an evil man; Nixon may have been a great man. The Americans may have had the just cause; we may not have had the just cause. But we won and the Americans were defeated because we convinced the people that Ho Chi Minh is the great man, that Nixon is a murderer, and the Americans are the invaders.'' He concluded that ''the key factor is how to control people and their opinions. Only Marxism-Leninism can do that. None of you ever see resistance to the Communist regime, so don't think about it. Forget it. Between you - the bright intellectuals - and me, I tell you the truth.'' And he did tell us the truth. [...]

When I was still inside, I used to talk to one of the older prisoners who was a South Vietnamese Communist named Nguyen Van Tang. Tang had been imprisoned for 15 years by the French, for 8 years by Diem, for 6 years by Thieu, and now for 2 years already by his own comrades, the Marxist rulers of the New Vietnam. While we were in prison together this old Communist said to me, "My dream is not that I will be released. My dream is not that I will see my family. My dream is to be back in a French prison 30 years ago." 

(a version of this essay was published in the NY Times Magazine, 3/29/81, titled A Lament for Vietnam.)