Today marks the 10-year anniversary of my first longitudes post. It also precedes my wife and me migrating to a warmer clime for six months, where I won’t have access to a (real) computer. Therefore, I’ve decided to go on indefinite hiatus.
I’ve truly enjoyed writing these 240 or so essays and am grateful to all who take time to read. I’ve tried to keep a mix of lighthearted and serious—life, after all, is both. With the lighthearted, I hope I’ve provoked a smile or laugh. With the serious, maybe I’ve encouraged (in my amateurish way) some considerations.
In that light, here are some of my favorite lighthearted and serious quotes. And to get one last lick in, I encourage all to watch a new documentary on the late George Carlin, entitled George Carlin’s American Dream.
While most of my heroes are musicians, comedian Carlin is one of the exceptions. He was not only damn funny, he had guts and integrity and was unafraid to butcher sacred cows. He remade himself several times, getting better with each remake. And it goes without saying we agree on a lot of things. I could easily list a hundred Carlin quotes, but in the interest of variety, I’m limiting myself to four.
We need you now more than ever, George.
Peace.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups—George Carlin
Political correctness is America’s newest form of intolerance, and it is especially pernicious because it comes disguised as tolerance—George Carlin
Rights are an idea. They’re just imaginary. They’re a cute idea. Cute…Rights aren’t rights if someone can take ’em away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country, is a bill of TEMPORARY privileges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know the list gets shorter, and shorter, and shorter—George Carlin
When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and Smiley shirts—George Carlin
George Carlin being arrested in Milwaukee in 1972 after exercising his temporary privileges
If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses—Lenny Bruce
The Jefferson and Lincoln memorials are stunning but you look at the dome of the Capitol and remember the mob that stormed it in the name of a miserable lie that is being repeated this election year and how do you explain this? The mob went to the same schools we did, learned about Jefferson and Lincoln, and yet they are fascinated by fascism and long for a dictator—Garrison Keillor
I went to church Sunday morning, which I need to do if I want to know whether I’m a believer still or if it’s just nostalgia—Garrison Keillor
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire—Winston Churchill
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself—Mark Twain
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect—Mark Twain
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind—Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library—Frank Zappa
The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced—Frank Zappa
Republicans stand for raw unbridled evil, and greed, and ignorance, smothered in balloons and ribbons—Frank Zappa
Liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them—Lenny Bruce
I am really enjoying the new Martin Luther King Jr. stamp – just think about all those white bigots licking the backside of a black man—Dick Gregory
Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war, for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I’d say we deserve ours more—John Lennon
Agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation—Oscar Wilde
All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised—Oscar Wilde
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel—Samuel Johnson
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing—Socrates
Modern Christianity is an encyclopedia of traditional superstition—Gore Vidal
Are we a dream in the mind of a deity, or is each of us a separate dreamer, evoking his own reality?—Gore Vidal
The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country…and we haven’t seen them since—Gore Vidal
I enjoy watching documentaries and interviews. On YouTube the other day I caught an interview clip between disgraced TV journalist Charlie Rose and American investor Ray Dalio on the potential for “civil war” in the states…Dalio pointing out that we’re now in “Go ahead, make me!” territory, where it’s okay to trample on the rule of law and the Constitution. Dalio claims this could lead to large-scale violence, even larger than what we witnessed at the U.S. Capitol in 2021.
Dalio specializes in hedge funds and, even though he’s a smart guy, I take what he says with a grain of salt. I was actually more interested in Rose. Most television journalism is superficial at best (the Big Three), and polemical at worst (FOX News and MSNBC). Rose was on PBS and his interviews on The Charlie Rose Show always had much more depth.
In 2017, eight women accused Rose of sexual misconduct. PBS, CBS, and Bloomberg L.P. summarily fired Rose—based on accusations and without due process—and since then he’s been residing in the #MeToo purgatory chamber.
“I’ve held him in such high regard and I’m still struggling,” lamented King, adding that he “does not get a pass here.”
“There is no excuse for this alleged behavior,” huffed O’Donnell. (Nice that she used the qualifier “alleged.”)
Then I did some more clicking and found a HuffPost video entitled “A Brief History of Charlie Rose’s Creepy On-Air Behavior.” The video features both King and O’Donnell engaging in, and even prompting, sexual flirtation with Rose. But I saw very little “creepiness” by Rose (whatever that word means).
The misleading and libelous click-bait title of the video—which is not your typical, amateurish YouTube compilation, but an official HuffPost production—is one thing. Another is the question of, to what end does this video serve, besides being #MeToo eye and ear candy? In the video, after Rose compliments her on her tan, King pulls the top of her dress toward her breast. O’Donnell spanks her ass. It’s standard frivolous morning-show fun and games.
Double standard here? If so, should we allow double standards? Borrowing King’s language, do women “get a pass”?
***
For his part, Rose (a bachelor) admitted after the anonymous charges that his behavior may have been “inappropriate” and “insensitive,” but “I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings, even though I now realize I was mistaken.”
Garrison Keillor—also banished to the #MeToo gulag for alleged sexual harassment, and whose saga I wrote about here—recently made a similar statement about “shared feelings” on CBS News Sunday Morning. Keillor was also abruptly fired for “alleged” behavior, but is now having a bit of a comeback, traveling his A Prairie Home Companion stage show around the country again. His archived, filmed shows, plus A Writer’s Almanac, have been restored for public viewing.
Evidently Minnesota Public Radio had a change of heart.
While Rose has remained quiet, Keillor is largely unrepentant. He argues that his behavior toward his accuser, an assistant, was “mutual flirtation,” the sort of behavior that “thousands of people did before me.” He says “The culture changed…you should not be friends with a female colleague. It’s dangerous.”
(If true, what a sad state of affairs. I would never have dated and later married my wife of 36 years, whom I worked with in 1985-86.)
Al Franken, who was forced to resign from the Senate before he had a chance to defend himself in front of his colleagues, is also back in the public eye. He has a podcast and recently toured the country with his The Only Former Senator Currently on Tour Tour.
Clicking around yet again, I landed on an essay by race and gender activist Ijeoma Oluo. In 2017 Oluo was contacted by USA Today and asked to provide an editorial rebuttal to the idea that due process (a legal term) should always be followed when sexual harassment charges are levied against a man. In other words, they wanted her to say that sexual harassment charges are occasions when due process should be brushed aside.
I’m hardly a fan, but to Oluo’s credit, she declined this appalling request. I don’t read comic books like USA Today, but I’m not surprised a vanilla publication like USA Today would pursue a debate where one side suggests the rule of law be abandoned in a drumbeat of “guilty until proven innocent.” False equalization once again.
***
Like the problems of climate change and guns, sexual harassment shouldn’t be a political issue. It’s not liberal, conservative, Democrat or Republican. It’s common sense and affects everyone. Liberals and the “mainstream media” shouldn’t be capitulating to the harshest voices of #MeToo, and the alt-right should stop being apologists for Republican misogynists (and, I might add, electing them to the White House). Period.
And Rose, Franken, and Keillor should not “get a pass.” But at the same time, their punishment should fit the crime. There’s a difference between sexual assault and sexual harassment, and there are different shades of harassment. Painting with one impulsive brushstroke to erase careers based on allegations is a dark alley I don’t think we want to venture down.
Like Keillor correctly noted in his CBS interview, the #MeToo movement began with a noble goal in sight: inappropriate advances and sexual harassment, especially in the workplace, are a form of bullying, and bullies shouldn’t be tolerated.
At the same time, and as I’ve analogized before, the idea is to hit the bullseye. But pulling back too far on the bow not only misses the entire target, it can cause a lot of collateral damage. Gayla King agrees.
We’re already mired in a civil—rather, uncivil—war between two distinct political ideologies. Do we really want to start another uncivil war between the two genders? I, for one, hope not.
You see it everywhere. Often on a yard sign or bumper sticker. Sometimes accompanied by the words “I Believe.” Yesterday I saw it again while driving.
I’m not talking about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, flying saucers, pothead pixies, or various religious deities. Rather, a different supernatural entity that takes the form of a furry biped. A creature not unlike the Himalayan Yeti, or “Abominable Snowman.” I’m talkin’ ‘bout Bigfoot. Sometimes known as Sasquatch. Scientific name: Hoaxus maximus.
At one time I was mildly amused at how certain adults clung to a grainy 59-second video—filmed in California in 1967, significantly when LSD was still legal—to substantiate their claims that Bigfoot is real. “Let’s all play make-believe. It’s easier and more fun than the truth.”
These days, I no longer see the cuteness or humor.
Since the 2016 nomination and election of an even more terrifying biped (scientific name: Dumbshiticus politicus), whose singular pre-election political credential was that he led a movement attempting to disprove the citizenship of a sitting president—even after that president was, beyond reason, compelled to produce his birth certificate—there’s been one idiotic claim after another. And enough idiots to believe in those (always unsubstantiated) claims to cause serious alarm to the rest of us forced to reside in the Kingdom of Lilliput (America).
I truly believe (maybe I should use a different word) that these Bigfoot cultists actually think a creature like this exists. Just go to the Wikipedia article. Wikipedia is a wonderful tool. But the entry for Bigfoot has 90 paragraphs devoted to him. There are 249 footnotes.
Remember, unlike World Book or Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia. It is “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” as Abraham Lincoln once wrote in a very different time. Citizens of our republic contribute to it. And there’s obviously been a helluva lot of contribution to Bigfoot.
(The Wikipedia article for the Gettysburg Address has half the footnotes of Bigfoot.)
***
Some of you probably know that there once was an historical epoch known as the Age of Enlightenment, or Age of Reason. According to the aforesaid free encyclopedia, it was “an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and effects.”
During this Age, knowledge was pursued “by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.”
Francis Bacon, John Locke, Voltaire, Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels), John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson were just a few of the leading lights casting light. Another was scientist Sir Isaac Newton. Newton must have had foreknowledge of what was comin’ down, because his Third Law of Motion states that “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
Satirist Jonathan Swift, the Kurt Vonnegut Jr. of his day (oil painting by Charles Jervas)
Longitudes predicts the 21st century will be the opposite reaction to the Age of Reason. Think about it. We kicked off this century, this new millennium, with a “truther” movement claiming that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job.
Ten years later Lilliput entertained itself with a “birther” movement claiming that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and therefore shouldn’t be president.
Since then we’ve entertained ourselves with one fiction and conspiracy theory after another. Manmade climate change is a hoax. COVID-19 is a hoax. Joe Biden’s election victory is a hoax. The January 6 U.S. Capitol attack was “legitimate political discourse” (Republican National Committee, February 2022). The Sandy Hook massacre was orchestrated by the government to enact stricter gun legislation. (I’m not religious, but God help anyone who believes this last claim.)
But Bigfoot is real.
Why do so many people exercise freedom of choice by believing in unscientific, unsubstantiated, and preposterous claims?
The late James Randi, a professional debunker of psychics and faith healers, famously exposed the fraud of supposed mentalist Uri Geller on a 1973 program of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Geller was humiliated when his “mind” was suddenly, for the first time, unable to bend spoons. The result? Instead of the public showering Randi with praise and gratitude, he was the recipient of an avalanche of hate mail. (Few of us like being shown we were fools.)
James Randi with Johnny Carson
Psychologists undoubtedly have detailed analyses for the phenomenon of masses of people who choose the lie over the fact. I’m not a psychologist, so I’ll just say: there are many idiots living among us.
People, there is no such creature as Bigfoot. There’s also no Santa Claus or Luke Skywalker, and the town of Mayberry is fictional (ask journalist Ted Koppel, who tried to visit one time). And—though this may shock and offend—there was no giant boat that held two of every species on earth.
***
Maybe I’ve got it wrong, though. Those of us who still believe in reason and enlightenment—in progress, knowledge through education, book-learning, the scientific method, the five senses, solid and verifiable facts and the search for truth (of course, truth is ever-evasive; the idea is to pursue it)—still need a place to escape to in the face of monstrous tragedy (or monstrous idiocy). And self-annihilation is not an option.
The Rolling Stones sang “We all need someone we can dream on.”
But like I tell my five-year-old granddaughter, Avi, while it’s fun to pretend, there really are no such things as ghosts, haunted houses, and people on horseback without heads. And she gets it. (Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are on hold.) Sadly, there are way too many adults these days…adults, but who have the minds of children…who can’t differentiate between fantasy and reality.
And as long as society believes in things like Hoaxus maximus, there will always be a Dumbshiticus politicus lurking in the shadows.
Dumbshiticus politicus, exhorting his mob toward “legitimate political discourse”
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist…The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocation, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, January 17, 1961
Every so often Eisenhower’s warning of a growing American military-industrial complex—where armed forces, commerce, and politics are closely linked—flashes on my personal radar. It did so again September 4 while watching CBS News Sunday Morning.
The title of the segment was “HIMARS: How it’s changing Ukraine’s fight against Russia.” I’ve been out of touch for a few months, so I was curious to learn about Ukraine’s success or failure against its invader neighbor to the east.
Indeed, I got a report card. But it played second fiddle to the larger story concerning defense contractor Lockheed Martin’s lucrative development of high-mobility rocket systems (HIMARS), which Ukraine is now successfully deploying against Russia.
On Sunday morning…America’s most popular church day, and for many a day of repose…I digested with my scrambled eggs one dazzling image after another of ground explosions, army tanks, death missiles, fireworks, bombs bursting in air, and sober army generals and Pentagon officials glowingly discussing the success of HIMARS.
HIMARS is being developed, per CBS national security correspondent David Martin, in a “Lockheed Martin plant in rural Arkansas, a seemingly minor outpost in America’s vast military-industrial complex…”
Chief weapons buyer for the Pentagon, Dr. William LaPlante, explained how Lockheed—with the federal government looking over its shoulder—plans to “dramatically increase production” of the high-mobility rockets.
“Can you double production?” asked an earnest Martin of Lockheed COO Frank St. John, as if on the verge of drooling. “Absolutely,” St. John responded, struggling to suppress a smile.
Martin also dangled a juicy morsel in front of retired army Lieutenant-General Ben Hodges. Martin noted that the 16 HIMARS rockets which the U.S. has thus far given Ukraine “doesn’t sound like a lot.” Hodges not surprisingly replied “It’s nowhere near what I think Ukraine can use.”
In 2020 Lockheed Martin received almost 90 percent of its total revenue, totaling 53.2 billion dollars, from defense contracts. Notably, this was before the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Watching this broadcast, it struck me that America is now in one of its periodic lulls between wars, yet despite this, conflicts are occurring in other countries, and America, as it usually does, has a significant role to play. And there’s a lot of green to be made in fulfilling this role.
Longitudeswon’t weigh in on Eisenhower’s words of warning about “misplaced power” and the “power of money.”
And it won’t take a stance on how involved the U.S. should be in helping Ukraine win its war against an imperial aggressor. For once, I’m in the majority: in support of Ukraine’s David-like fight against Goliath Russia.
What struck me was the cold, clinical manner in which Martin and CBS conducted its segment. Numbers were tossed around, statistics were dispassionately run down, and as I already mentioned, the viewer received an entire war-video game’s worth of destructive images.
The intended takeaway is that America’s military-industrial complex is, even without our own war, doing wonderful work defending freedom around the globe. And, in fact, there’s room for expansion. (Sixteen HIMARS weapons just aren’t enough.) Maybe—this time, anyway—it is a good thing. But for me, the players in this broadcast seemed a bit too cozy.
Flow chart of “follow-the-money” game (courtesy Transcend Media Service). Note the flow between defense contractors, media, voters, and elected officials.
Since the blaspheme of the Vietnam War, we’ve had multiple jarring examples of how crony capitalism conducts itself in a nefarious fashion. And the 1990 Gulf War and 2003 Iraq War are sterling examples of how the corporate media is a not-insignificant conduit between military, commerce, and politics.
General Electric is a large weapons manufacturer that consistently lands in the rankings of top arms-producing and military service companies. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), in 2019, General Electric ranked 12th in the United States and 21st in the world out of these companies. GE is a major manufacturer of aircraft parts and missiles that were used extensively in the Gulf War and in Iraq. And, until 2013, GE either directly owned or had shares in the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).
Transcend Media Service: Solutions-Oriented Peace Journalism, May 17, 2021
Getting back to that CBS News Sunday Morning broadcast, it would have been nice to have former army General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s prophetic words at least alluded to, for balance purposes.
But I guess providing such balance wasn’t part of Martin’s assignment.
This is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
John F. Kennedy, during a 1962 Nobel Prize dinner
The title above is a biography by John B. Boles that I just finished. Normally I’d do a book review, but the subject himself is so fascinating I’d rather just riff on Jefferson than critique the book. Buckle your seat belts.
Suffice to say, Boles’s book is a good one-volume treatment of Jefferson. It’s easy to read and well-sourced. Fairly comprehensive. Maybe a bit too adulatory, but at least honest.
Before discussing Jefferson, I have to say I was somewhat surprised by what I learned about several other “Founders,” or sub-Founders. Although popular today because of that Broadway play, I had no idea that Federalist and Jefferson nemesis Alexander Hamilton was such an outright bastard. His poisonous lies and relentless invective make Trump look like a Cub Scout. (Okay, maybe not.)
I also had no idea that the man who killed Hamilton in a duel, Aaron Burr (Jefferson’s first-term vice-president), was such a self-centered, scheming treasonist.
And I especially didn’t know that Jefferson hated fellow Virginian Patrick Henry. Although a great orator (“Give me Liberty or give me Death!”), Henry evidently didn’t read books and wasn’t very smart. He actually proposed imposing a dictatorship when the American Revolution began going badly. For years, Jefferson ridiculed him mercilessly at the dinner table.
Aaron Burr (left) and Alexander Hamilton (right)
But back to the dinner topic at hand…there are some things most of us know, or should know, about Thomas Jefferson. He was the third American president and a Founding Father chosen to author the United StatesDeclaration of Independence, the iconic written diatribe against King George III detailing why American colonists chose to break from England to form their own country, and which was signed by 55 other congressional delegates from the 13 colonies.
More than any other Founder, Jefferson exalted the ideas of democracy and individual conscience. Along with fellow Democrat-Republican and protégé James Madison, he conceived the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and which separates religion from all levels of government. (Government-imposed religion was an absolute given in the Old Country.) He modeled it after the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which he’d also authored three years earlier as Governor of that colony.
As for his own religion, although considering himself a Christian, Jefferson was a deist who felt the Christian faith had become corrupted by disciples after Jesus’s death. Jefferson was a leading light of the Age of Enlightenment, an admirer of philosophers John Locke and Thomas Paine (Common Sense, The Age of Reason). Throughout his life he was fascinated by science and adhered to reason and rationality over superstition. He considered Jesus the most moral philosopher the world has known, but did not believe in his divinity. He created his own Jefferson Bible by excising everything supernatural from the New Testament. (Printings of his bible are available at a bookstore near you.)
Jefferson lived at a plantation he called Monticello, which he carved out of a mountain outside Charlottesville, Virginia using slave labor. He developed it over a period of 40 years. (Monticello is pictured on the U.S. nickel, the flip side of Jefferson’s profile.) Here, he established a 1,000-foot-long terraced vegetable garden that grew 330 varieties of vegetables and 170 varieties of fruits. As a politician he championed the small farmer, was a pioneer of sustainable agriculture, and was one of the country’s great epicures.
As president, Jefferson doubled the size of America by overseeing the purchase of the western Louisiana territory from Napoleon Bonaparte of France. It cost the U.S. all of four cents an acre. He then organized a successful exploration of the unknown lands by his secretary, Meriwether Lewis, exponentially increasing America’s knowledge of Western geography, archaeology, flora, fauna, and Indian tribes.
Meriwether Lewis
After the Library of Congress was burnt by invading British during the War of 1812, Jefferson sold his personal collection of 6,487 volumes to restart the library. They replaced the collection that Jefferson had earlier recommended the library acquire.
Just before his death in 1826, Jefferson conceived, founded, was principal architect for, and chose the curriculum and faculty for one of America’s most respected public universities, the University of Virginia. He was “convinced that the people (white males) are the sole depositories of their own liberty, & that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree.” (I tried to gain entrance to UVA in 1977 but was rejected. In 2005 I visited Monticello, and revisited the campus while our daughter was touring colleges. Everyone at both places politely referred to him as “Mister Jefferson,” as if he was still alive.)
Along with designing the university, Jefferson also oversaw the layout for the nation’s new capitol grounds at Washington D.C., and his neoclassical architectural designs set the precedent for future U.S. federal structures.
Jefferson was probably the most intelligent and worldly of all the Founding Fathers. (Benjamin Franklin is up there, too.) Although ambitious, his patience, even-temperedness, humility, and knowledge were renowned amongst his political peers, including George Washington, who made him Secretary of State and often consulted him. Like so many in the 18th and 19th centuries, he experienced profound death and tragedy, losing his wife Martha at a young age, along with children and grandchildren.
Jefferson lived 83 years, dying the same day as his onetime rival but beloved friend, second President John Adams. It was 50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He wrote his own epitaph. It was simple and reflected his humble public persona, stipulating what he was most proud of: Author of the Declaration of Independence (and) of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia. Of his being president for two terms and his presidential accomplishments…nothing.
Monticello
As exceptional a human being as Jefferson was, his enlightenment was tempered by his place and time. Even during his lifetime rumors swirled of a slave concubine (in today’s parlance, “sex toy”) known as “Black Sal” or “Dusky Sally.”
For 200 years historians have grappled with whether slaveholder Jefferson fathered children with a quadroon “servant” named Sally Hemings. A DNA study in 1998 concluded there was a high probability he was the father of at least one of Hemings’s six children. However, that study also said Jefferson “can neither be definitely excluded nor solely implicated…”
Presently, most Jefferson scholars and historians, including the Thomas Jefferson Foundation—through combining the DNA findings with written evidence—conclude he did father children by her (not surprisingly, Hemings descendants do as well). Biographer Boles goes further to suggest their “relationship” was “founded on shared tenderness and love” and that “the sexual attraction between Jefferson and Hemings was likely mutual…”
I find Boles’s suggestion of romantic love between master and slave plausible, but unnerving, and it’s one of the few criticisms I have of his book [in addition to some qualified language such as “Jefferson rarely (sold slaves),” “he made an effort (not to separate mothers from their children),” he “(only sold his slaves) out of economic necessity,” and “Jefferson’s theoretical opposition to (whipping)”].
It was in Paris between 1787 and 1789 while Jefferson was American minister to France that their (probable) intimacies probably began. Hemings was a teenager who was acting as companion to Jefferson’s younger daughter, Maria. By several contemporary accounts, Hemings was extremely beautiful, with “very light skin; long, straight black hair.”
Slavery had been illegal in France since Louis X in 1315. Was Hemings technically free while on French soil despite being owned by an American? If so, did Jefferson think this mitigated a middle-aged widower like himself having sex with a young, uneducated, recent ex-slave? Did love blossom either before or after she agreed to return to the states with him? Can love even exist between a master and servant/slave, or is it always rape?
Soap opera aside, bottom line is Jefferson owned people. Any additional moral crimes stem from that original sin.
Sally Hemings was born in 1773. Her white father, John Wayles, was Thomas Jefferson’s father-in-law. She died in 1835 and there are no photos or drawings of her. This is a detail from a Monticello “Farm Book,” displaying her four children: Harriet, Madison, Eston, and Beverley. Notably, all were named after friends or relatives of Jefferson (Madison after James Madison).
In his meager defense, Jefferson successfully banned American importation of Africans. And despite unenlightened views on racial equality/inequality, he opposed slavery throughout his life and, at least at the start of his political career, tried to abolish it through state and federal legislation. Of course, his efforts were fruitless, primarily due to violently intransigent southern politicians who, two generations later, would finally have their apocalypse. Of the roughly 200 slaves owned by Jefferson during his life, he freed only two. He freed five more in his will. Three more left Monticello with Jefferson’s consent. All except two were domestic help and part of the Hemings family.
As I expected, while Boles justifiably devotes extensive print to slavery and Jefferson’s immersion in it, his coverage of Jefferson’s American Indian policies and affairs, including their removal, is woefully inadequate. So I’ll offer a few paragraphs on that subject.
Jefferson the amateur anthropologist admired Indians and believed they were superior to blacks physically, intellectually, and culturally, and also that they might eventually become ingratiated into white agrarian society as equals. But even here there was a great hypocrisy. He stipulated to Meriwether Lewis that the Corps of Discovery restrain from any acts of hostility toward Indians they might encounter…but he also hungered for the land they inhabited.
In an 1803 letter to William Henry Harrison, who was then the territorial governor of Indiana, President Jefferson outlined a devious policy of using government trading posts to drive Indians into debt so they would more easily “lop (the debts) off by a cession of lands.”
And when a patronizing Jefferson addressed a delegation of Shawnee and other Indian tribes in 1809, hoping to win them over from the British, he threatened that “the tribe which shall begin an unprovoked war against us, we will extirpate (exterminate) from the earth or drive to such a distance as they shall never again be able to strike us.”
Then, as now, enlightenment only goes so far.
Indian Head nickel and Jefferson nickel: opposing views of Liberty
Originally, I ended my post with the pithy statement above. Then I thought, who am I? Thomas Jefferson deserves better. After rereading the Introduction in Boles’s book, I landed on this excellent paragraph, which perfectly summarizes how I feel. Anyway…thanks for taking time to read all of this. Peace.
We should not expect (Jefferson) to have embraced the values of a cosmopolitan, progressive person of the twenty-first century. How could he have possibly done so? Instead, we should try to understand the constraints—legal, financial, personal, intellectual—under which he lived. To understand certainly does not mean to approve or even forgive; rather, it means to comprehend why Jefferson made the kinds of decisions he made and saw the world as he did. He was a gentle, well-educated, idealistic man who sought—by his lights—to do right. Yet at times he acted in ways we now find abhorrent. Appreciating how this can be so is the task of the Jefferson scholar, the student of history, and perhaps every American citizen.
The Winter Olympics just concluded. So many things happened, some of them even having to do with sport, that I thought a few longitudinalobservations might be in order.
(Full disclosure: the only sports I watched were Alpine and Nordic skiing, speed skating, and curling. Therefore, I received much of my information second-hand. I’m sure a lot of folks enjoy the bobsled event, but four people crammed into an ugly oblong box and sliding down the ice to cross an invisible line within hundredths of a second of their competitors just doesn’t appeal to me. Unless the bobsled is Jamaican.)
Here are some suggestions for improving the Winter Olympics. You may wish to take some of these with a grain of salt:
Russia and China should be kicked out of the games for 20 years. If after 20 years they’ve gotten their act together, they can then rejoin the party. And I don’t mean the Communist Party.
The figure skating age limit should be raised to 18. Why are little girls skating out there, anyway? At first I thought the Russian silver medal winner, 17-year-old Alexandra Trusova, was bawling because her teammate, 15-year-oldKamila Valieva, was scolded by her Politburo coach after a disastrous performance. Then I discovered she was upset because “Everyone else has a gold medal, everyone, but not me!”
Silver medalist Alexandra Trusova with dripping mascara (Getty Images)
If you have to have little girls skating in the Olympics, at least make sure they receive adequate food and water. Anorexia shouldn’t be a prerequisite for competition.
Flags are really important in the Olympics. Since the U.S. right wing loves flags so much, our conservative athletes should be permitted to add their own flag to the stars and stripes during ceremonies. There’s the Don’t Tread On Me flag, the thin blue line flag (I think that’s what it’s called), and a couple other unmentionables. Let the rest of the world see how regressive America really is!
Bring back some old-timers for us old-timers. You know, a senior category. Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, Janet Lynn, Katarina Witt, Tonya Harding, and Nancy Kerrigan are all still alive. It would be fun to see them back in action. Roll them onto the ice, give Harding a hammer, and let ’em mix it up. And to spice things up, throw in that corrupt French judge from 2002.
“Insert Race Card Here. KA-CHING! Here’s Your Entitlement Receipt” (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)
Keep race and the race card out of the games. After speculation that Russian medal favorite Valieva might be denied a medal due to ingesting trimetazidine (she was actually denied due to stress), U.S. sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson tweeted that the only reason she herself was barred for smoking pot in the summer Olympics was her “skin color.” Longitudes, however, feels it has more to do with Sha’Carri’s stupidity than her skin tone. Getting stoned is okay, Sha’Carri, but when you compete for your country, give the bong a break.
United States, lighten up on coverage of our sports stars. Media saturation of Mikaela Shiffrin, top U.S. athlete in the winter games, caused her to DNF in three events and finish 9th and 18th in two others. Even the White House press secretary pressured her. You U.S. talking heads did the same thing with male skier Bode Miller. There are other attractive female skiers out there besides Mikaela Shiffrin. I’d like to suggest Lara Gut-Behrami and Dorothea Wierer.
Since the U.S. usually does poorly in the biathlon (cross-country skiing combined with target shooting), give us Yanks a break and revise the target. A human shape with a bullseye over the heart would be more appropriate to our unique culture of gun violence.
Add a triathlon event. The athletes have to downhill ski, then speed skate, then perform in an ice dancing competition. The last event would be especially fun to watch.
Judges, keep a sharper ear on the music selected for figure skating. Although 99 percent of people are probably unaware, part of Alexandra Trusova’s program (see mascara above) included “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by the Stooges, Iggy Pop’s old band. It’s a fantastic rock song, but more appropriate for an opium den than a women’s girls’ skating program. What’s next, Spinal Tap’s “Sex Farm”?
I hope my above suggestions prove useful. I’m sure I’ve offended at least one person with them: bobsled fan, Communist, prepubescent girl, senior citizen, social conservative, social justice warrior (SJW), gun nut, flag waver, feminist, French skating judge, or oblong box. But as I see it, if I haven’t offended at least someone, then I’m not doing my job.
Our son Nick recently visited us for the holidays. We both like to play chess, so we had a couple friendly competitions in the family room. Now that my brain is atrophying due to age and excessive amounts of social media, he destroyed me.
But it got me to thinking about a guy who was once a sort of chess-playing pop star: Bobby Fischer. Bobby was an American chess grandmaster who won the U.S. championship in 1956 at the cheeky age of 14. Overall, he won eight U.S. championships, including a rare 11-0 victory in 1963-64, the only perfect score in the tournament’s history. He’s mainly known for his Cold War rivalry with a Russian named Boris Spassky. In 1972 he defeated Spassky to become World Chess Champion.
Fischer had his title revoked in 1975 after making outrageous demands prior to a match with Anatoly Karpov. Some think he did it deliberately because his chess skills were so far beyond anyone else, and he had nothing else to prove.
I didn’t learn chess until I was 15, but I competed for my high school chess team, and wore out the book Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. These days, since my wife refuses to learn the game, the only time I drag out the chessboard is when Nick visits.
Fischer died of kidney failure in 2013. I already vaguely knew of certain “personality quirks” of his. Wikipedia filled in the details. They’re not pretty:
Although his mother was Jewish, Fischer was a vehement anti-Semite and Holocaust denier
Fischer believed in an international Jewish conspiracy
He agreed with Nietzsche that religion was used to dull the senses of the people, but then joined the evangelical Worldwide Church of God in the mid-1960s
Fischer believed that the world would soon come to an end
He became Catholic at the end of his life and believed “the only hope for the world is through Catholicism”
Fischer got along well with Jewish chess players, but at the same time wrote that “It’s time to start randomly killing Jews”
After 911, Fischer applauded the attacks and said “What goes around, comes around”
Fischer openly hoped for a military coup d’état and execution of Jews in the United States
Fischer was never formally diagnosed, but some people have speculated on his sanity.
Check.
***
Last night I watched news coverage and analysis of last year’s January 6 insurrection against the U.S. Capitol, and it struck me that Fischer might fit in well with a lot of people in America today. Not so much because of his anti-Semitism and religious obsessions—which are bad enough—but because of his anti-rationalism and conspiracy obsessions.
Today, America has an entire political party—the Republican Party—that has hitched its wagon to an autocratic demagogue who continues to spread a Big Lie about an election result. Not to mention who once ridiculed the coronavirus threat as being a Democratic conspiracy (and views man-made climate change as a worldwide liberal conspiracy).
The PBS show Frontline just aired a documentary that reveals conspiracy theorists and right-wing extremism have only gotten worse since a year ago.
And House Republican Liz Cheney was unseated earlier this year from her conference chair because she condemned Trump for instigating the January 6 riot and implored her fellow Republicans to stand up to him and his catacomb of lies. (Obviously, they haven’t.)
Cheney’s father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the most conservative Republicans during the Bush II era (and called “Darth Vader” by critics for his hawkishness and advocacy of torture as policy), was quoted as saying today’s Republican leaders don’t resemble “any of the folks I knew.”
The two Cheneys were surrounded by Democrats and the only Republicans present in the House during a moment of silence yesterday.
***
One would think things couldn’t get much worse than January 6, 2021. But according to George Packer, staff writer at The Atlantic and part of a panel on PBS Newshour yesterday, the insurrection is probably just a harbinger, a “warning shot”:
How can one overreact to a mortal threat to American democracy, the first in my lifetime that actually seems to be on a road toward making it impossible for the popular will to be respected at the ballot box?
That’s been the goal of all these bills passed or debated across legislatures in Georgia, in Arizona, in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, which are not just about restricting access to the ballot, but are about putting elections in the hands of reliable partisans, so that, next time around, we will have states that claim that the election was somehow wrongly held, and that it’s thrown into the hands of a partisan legislature, which sends its own electors to Congress to choose the next president.
When you have a compelling but divisive leader, and a political party that falls in behind him, and you can convince enough people to believe in unfounded conspiracies…anything can happen. Witness 1930s Germany. Witness 2022 America.
While you can’t formally diagnose a nation, some people (like myself) have speculated on America’s sanity.
Watching “CBS Sunday Morning” this morning drove home a startling statistic: the United States ranks number 48 in the world for percentage of citizens who have been vaccinated for COVID-19.
I knew things were bad here. A story on that same program revealed that the social media platform Facebook is, once again, under fire. This time it’s for permitting the spread of misinformation on COVID-19—such as that the vaccine contains a microchip allowing the government to monitor us—that is leading directly to people’s deaths.
Researchers analyzing Facebook misinformation, not surprisingly, had their Facebook accounts shut down. And Facebook, not surprisingly, declined a “Sunday Morning” request for an interview.
I’m far from being an admirer of Mark Zuckerberg, and I have a lot of issues with Facebook, despite being a moderate user. But one thing Zuckerberg said hit me in the gut. He implied maybe the problem isn’t so much Facebook, but America, since other countries are less inclined to get suckered by false information on social media platforms. Ignoring his garbled English, he said “I think that there’s that’s something unique in our ecosystem here.”
My position is that, like other deadly pursuits such as tobacco use, hard drug experimentation, and irresponsible sex, if adults exercise their freedom of choice by choosing ideologically-driven rumors, conspiracy theories, and cartoon science, we shouldn’t bemoan any consequences befalling them. The problem is, their “viral” stupidity have consequences for the rest of us. And maybe there is something unique here in America that contributes to our embrace of lies and the lying liars that tell them.
What might this unique condition be?
I’ve always believed that education, not military or economic might, is the key to a population’s well-being. However, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reports that, while the U.S. scores high in upper secondary education (i.e. high school) graduation rates, it is below average in student reading, math, and science skills. Per the OECD’s latest (2015) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, the U.S. ranks 25thout of 40 OECD-member nations. Just behind Latvia.
In other words, we’re spitting out high school graduates like assembly line widgets, but many of these widgets are flawed and mucking up the entire machine.
Certainly there are other factors in our embrace of polluted information: an inordinate (or perhaps warranted) distrust of government compared to other countries; a gaping ideological divide that drives the most fanatical ideologues toward irresponsible leaders and media outlets; deep-rooted cultural fears and prejudices.
But doesn’t education overcome much of the above? Maybe not.
Just yesterday I learned that the father of one of our daughter’s friends tested positive for the coronavirus and is now resting not so comfortably in a hospital bed. Of course, he’s unvaccinated. Evidently he has, or perhaps had, a strong ideological opposition to vaccines (and evidently doesn’t care about spreading the virus to others). His daughter, at one time livid with him for being so stubborn and selfish, is now wringing her hands with worry. I don’t know his educational background, but his daughter attended one of the best and most expensive private schools in the city, so I’m assuming this guy has a college degree, or at minimum a high-school diploma.
And I have an old schoolmate who graduated with honors from high school, attended an Ivy League university, and who works in health care, yet who consistently lampoons the president’s Chief Medical Advisor and his attempts to educate Americans with scientific data on the coronavirus.
So maybe education isn’t a match for dogmatic ideology. Or maybe American schools these days are less about knowledge and more about job training and income earning potential. I don’t know. Does anyone?
Speaking of cartoons, where’s Mighty Mouse when you need him?
…And the timing couldn’t be better, since I cannot think of anything to write about!
So, I’ll do what I did for the 100 milestone back in 2016 and list some links to essays that I’m still fairly comfortable with.
I’ll keep the bullshit canned and go straight to the list, but not without saying “Thank you” to you readers, followers, commenters, and “likers” who have stuck with longitudes, even after my periodic silences.
Adolescence is a difficult and confusing time, and maybe more so when you attend a traditional, single-sex boarding school. My school was way out in rural western Pennsylvania. We wore coats and ties, shared formal meals, had strict study hours, and were required to play sports. A lot of boys struggled. Some were there one day, then gone the next. I made it until graduation, and I think what helped me glide over the waves was finding little chunks of floating driftwood to cling to. This brief, long-ago, personal drama was one of them.
In 2017 I read William Shirer’s monumental The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It really affected me, and it was no coincidence that I read it soon after the inauguration of Donald J. Trump. It became clear to me that a lot of the tactics Trump used to gain and consolidate power (and still uses, with the assistance of his party) were on full display in Germany in the 1920s and ’30s: attacks on the press, demonization of critics, far-right nationalism, sloganeering, authoritarian rhetoric, racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry, the “Big Lie,” etcetera, etcetera. So to deal with my disgust, I wrote a four-part series on Nazism before the U.S. entered WWII. This link takes you to my summarization, in the last part.
No, I’m not calling Trump a Nazi. But you’d have to either be willfully ignorant or a blind and deaf pig farmer in Patagonia not to recognize the parallels.
Longitudes loves talking about music and movies. Here’s a link to a review of the music featured in Ken Burns’ and Lynn Novick’s seven-part PBS documentary on the Vietnam War. [I also critiqued the documentary itself (click here), but it’s a shade more hard-hitting.] I’m still disappointed that Ken (“Mister America”) never solicited my input before choosing songs for his soundtrack. I think my two cents would have enhanced his project immeasurably. Then again, I could be overestimating my musical acumen. After all, I would never have picked Ringo to replace Pete Best.
Like “The Night Watchman,” this one is autobiographical. It describes my involvement in a march in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio to protest government inaction on gun control. Those of you reading from outside the U.S.A. probably shake your heads at the strange fascination America has with firearms. Well, some of us inside the country are doing the same thing. The march was precipitated by a horrific school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018 that killed 17 students and injured 17 others. The killer had known mental health issues, but at 18 years was able to legally purchase an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle from a local gun store. The massacre surpassed Littleton, Colorado as the deadliest high-school shooting in the country’s history…so far.
Both the march and a rally afterwards were significant for including a number of local children and students. When young people have to take to the streets to try and fix problems their parents helped create, your country’s in bad shape.
(A different face of fascism.) Lillian Gish was a silent-film actress who extended her career into talkies and made over 100 films in her 99 years. She’s been called “The First Lady of American Cinema” and was a “pioneer of fundamental film performing techniques” (AllMovie Guide). She’s also from my home state of Ohio. In 1976 Bowling Green State University honored her and her actress-sister Dorothy by naming its theatre and film department after them. But in 2019 the college’s Black Student Union petitioned to rename the department, because in 1915 Lillian had acted in The Birth of a Nation, producer D.W. Griffith’s groundbreaking yet controversial film that portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as heroes. (Gish was only 22 and had appeared in the film at the behest of Griffith, her film mentor.) University trustees unanimously voted to remove the Gish name.
This is my attempt to make a black-humor statement (note the Kubrick reference in the essay title) about a phenomenon of the 21st century known by its critics as “Cancel Culture.” Should we remove or tarnish someone’s name due to a single incident in their youth, or should we weigh their indiscretions against the context of their times and the full measure of their lives? And what does wiping out a name solve, anyway?
This one didn’t get a lot of “likes.” (Not that I use “likes” to influence what I write about.) Maybe I should have provided more backstory. Maybe most readers agreed with the name-changing. Maybe my attempt at dark humor was too acidic. Or maybe it just went over people’s heads. No matter. I like it, so here it is again.
The legendary singer/actress died on May 13, 2019 at age 97. I’ve never been a huge fan, but for some reason her passing hit me hard. It might have been because she was one of the last remaining stars of Hollywood’s “Golden Age.” She also symbolized a simpler time in America that required societal role-playing and which a lot of people now pine for…and not necessarily for the best reasons. I’m sure some of it had to do with the fact that on the day she died I visited her childhood home here in Cincinnati. There was something melancholy and palpable about being the only person there on that grey, blasé day.
So I did what I usually do in those situations. I wrote it all down.
On January 28, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made a trip to Florida to meet with ex-president Trump. The intent was to advertise to all that “We’re still with you.” Reports are that McCarthy wanted to also “apologize” to Trump. It’s still unclear what he wanted to apologize for.
A recent Politico poll shows 72 percent of Republicans think the recent U.S. presidential election was fraudulent. Now, think about this: almost three-fourths of one of the two major political parties in the U.S. subscribe to a cockamamie conspiracy theory and support a former leader who, through his irresponsible and incendiary oratory, inspired an insurrection by white supremacists against the U.S. Capitol.
This in addition to four years of incessant bloviating, insults, lies, and just plain bad policy that has turned America into the wealthiest banana republic in the world.
I don’t know what these people are thinking. Do they think? But the black comedy we’re experiencing now, where GOP congressmen actively promote a political tactic the German National Socialist (Nazi) Party perfected called the Big Lie, refuse to publicly wear facemasks during a deadly pandemic, refuse to hold hearings on Supreme Court nominees (Merrick Garland, in January 2016), or who set off alarms by bursting through congressional metal detectors installed to protect legislators, has to begin somewhere. When and how did this horror show begin?
To be fair, Democrats have also shifted from the middle in the last forty years or so. However, most political observers agree that the shift is much more pronounced on the right side of the aisle and is less about policy than behavior. Part of it is due to a powerful conservative-biased media that erupted during the Clinton presidency and is now a regular news/propaganda source for many Republican voters. Columnist and GOP’er David Brooks recently observed that “a lot of these Trumpy Republicans, they run for office so they can get on FOX News, not to pass (legislation).” That’s a lot of power—dangerous power— for a news network to wield, and it’s a major contributor to the gridlock we now see in Washington. And FOX News is just one of many conservative outlets…shockingly, one of the more benign ones.
Another reason why the Republican Party has abdicated its responsibility as a guardrail of democracy is existential fear. Authors Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, in their book How Democracies Die, trace this fear to a changing demographic precipitated by civil rights legislation in the 1960s. The historically dominant white male demographic is shrinking, due to civil and equal rights, immigration, and an overall more tolerant and diverse secular and non-secular landscape in America.
No group wants to be squatting on the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder. But white males, who predominate in the Republican Party, see themselves slipping downward. This existential fear encourages extremism, embodied by, at best, election-year attempts at character assassination, and ever-increasing racist and xenophobic behaviors at worst. And now, Big Lie tactics.
The slide began a long time ago: GOP strategist Lee Atwater’s self-admitted “naked cruelty” against Gov. Michael Dukakis (D-MA) before the 1988 presidential election; Republican politicians’ incessant attempts to scandalize Bill Clinton during the 1990s (Travelgate, Filegate, Whitewater, then the pearly gate of Monica Lewinsky, which resulted in the partisan weapon of impeachment for lying about sex); the now-discredited “Swift Boat” smears of 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry; GOP accusations that Barack Obama was a Muslim, or that he wasn’t born in the U.S. (which Trump spearheaded, quite successfully, before his own presidential run); the 2016 refrains of “Lock Her Up,” led by GOP leaders, including Trump, despite zero evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton. And most recently, Trump’s attempt to smear Joe Biden through enlistment of a foreign power in digging up dirt on his political rival’s son (and which Trump was justifiably impeached for, despite Senate Republicans’ refusal to convict).
Maybe the slide began with the illegal activities of the Nixon re-election campaign committee (CREEP) that resulted in the Watergate scandal.
***
So far in 2021 it’s clear that the Republican Party is still the party of Trump, with all the poison that such an association brings to American democracy. Unless moderate Republicans (those few that are left) have the chutzpah to pull their party back to reality and decency—and if world history is any lesson—there are even darker days ahead for the U.S. than what occurred on January 6.
NEWSFLASH: a recently-elected GOP congresswoman from Georgia named Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on Facebook in 2018 that a Jewish-run banking firm deliberately fired a space laser to start a California wildfire in an effort to manipulate the stock market and benefit itself. Ms. Greene is a QAnon supporter with a history promoting wacky anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. She also posted and liked Facebook comments advocating execution of Democrats. Despite this, Republican leaders, including fellow conspiracy-theorist and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (see above) have so far done nothing.
longitudes 
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