Just give it a damn rest, will ya?

Oh, Lord—this is making the rounds again. You know—that “ha-ha-you-Americans-can’t-organize-your-way-out-of-a-paper-bag-so-we-Brits—who-have-a-much-better-record-at-this-sort-of-thing—are-assimilating-you-back-into-the-uh-well-it-used-to-be-the-empire-but…” thing.

It first struck back in 2000, when we had the whole hoo-ha about the Gore-Bush election, And it was apt and amusing. The first six or fifteen times someone sent it to me. (I was in the UK at the time.)

Well, snorfle, yes; we definitely screwed the pooch on that one and opened ourselves to any kind of snook-cocking anyone wanted to engage in. But, really, people—we’ve moved beyond it; surely you should, too.

However, before we do, I’d like to address a few points:

1) Back when it first came out, it was Utah that HM did not fancy. But I can see the case for North Dakota, too, so this gets a pass.

2) David Cameron appointing anyone to anything? Seriously? Bwahaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!

3) Uh—“Congress” includes the Senate, dimwit. (Imagine if you said “Parliament and the House of Commons will be disbanded”, or do I need to get down to words of one syllable?) If you want to skewer, best to actually do a bit of research so you don’t look like an ignorant yahoo in the process. Just sayin’…

4) Your points 1 and 2 are redundant with respect to spelling. As for objecting to filler words, not really in a position to cavil, innit? (Also, from what I’ve seen on social media, there’s definite confusion over there on your/you’re, and there/their/they’re. Might want to brush up.)

5) I’m willing to accept the point about guns and lawyers; maybe even therapists. But, tell me—how’s that whole “mustn’t grumble” thing working out for you? And your aversion to therapists might be because they're not included in the NHS?

6) Sorry—better include “corkscrew” in there with the vegetable peeler, or the deal’s off. You do not want to mess with Californians who’ve lost access to wine; you just don’t.

7) Yeah, that whole “beer” delta was a thing, wasn’t it? But we now have microbrewers popping up everywhere (including North Dakota, although perhaps not Utah) that out-brew a lot of what gets served in British pubs. (Where, BTW, icy lager is quite the rage and there’s way too much over-priced bottled Bud sloshing around inside the Flower of British Youth for anyone over there to make remarks. People drink it here because it’s cheap; you don’t have that excuse.) And independent brewers are being swallowed up or pushed out by the conglomerates, so I’m thinking you really don’t want to go down this road.

8) Oh, please—there have to be more Brits on American TV and in movies than ever. We can't get enough of you. Throw in the Aussies and Canadians, we're completely stuffed.

9) Uh, which Four Weddings and a Funeral did you watch? The one I saw had MacDowell (the “d” is up; you might want to get your nits right if you’re going to pick them) as Southern American as they come. Did you get confused?

10) OTOH, I’ll give you the fact that that film made me want to hurl, independent of accents.

11) I have two words for you: “Downton Abbey”. I wish we could take back the 8^th Air Force if this is what we got in exchange.

12) I’ll give you the points on football, but are you seriously saying that cricket is more interesting than baseball? They're both unspeakably dire. Someone needs their meds adjusted. Oh, wait—the NHS is probably diluting them to save money.

13) Tea? With china cups and saucers? And biscuits? What freaking century are you talking about?

14) While we’re talking beverages, you should hang your heads in shame at the amount of instant coffee you drink.

And finally—let me just point out that neither you nor anyone else can revoke our independence because no one gave it to us. We took it by force of arms. 

Which, if you check your own history books, was a Big Freakin’ Deal to Britain back then. (When Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, not only was he unable to man up enough to hand his sword in person to Washington, but his band played “The World Turned Upside Down”. For a reason.)

So, for one more time—so amusing, you Brits. Ha-ha. It’s been 13 years; could you please come up with something new?

If not, let me tell the one about Blair being Bush’s poodle. That always cracks me up.

Lives, fortunes & sacred honor

In between the picnics and the fireworks today, give some thought to the basis of the holiday: the Continental Congress approving the Declaration of Independence, authored by Mr. Jefferson of Virginia. It's one of the most beautiful pieces of writing you're going to find anywhere; concise but eloquent.

NPR has printed it for you, but you can also listen to several of their reporters, newscasters and commentators reading it, and it's a document that cries out to be heard.

A beautifully-reasoned and eloquently-stated list of the reasons why--with reluctance—the British colonies along the Atlantic coast feel they need to take the grave step of breaking away from Mother England.

We recognize how serious a move this is, it says; but, given the pattern of abuse by the British monarch, we don't see any way out of it. We know it will cost us both blood and treasure, but it's costing us more if we don't do it.

Here are a couple of clauses that really strike to the heart:

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

"We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States."

And—my very favorite of all:

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Imagine, if you will, the current denizens of the US Capitol pledging their lives, their fortunes or their honor to anything.

No, I didn't think so.

So go back to the original and really listen. This is where we came from, and we should remember it.

Three days in a Pennsylvania town

In the summer of 1863, Robert E. Lee was taking the war into the North. Up until June of that year, nothing significant had happened in the East above the Mason-Dixon line. Lee wanted to change that for a number of reasons.

For one, all the slogging around Virginia was wreaking havoc on vital agriculture. He hoped that a swoop through Pennsylvania might give the Old Dominion a rest. At the same time, in the time-honored custom of armies everywhere, he expected to pick up a few things to keep the Army of Northern Virginia going. (There was a shoe factory in nearby Chambersburg, for example.)

Finally, he hoped to convince Northern pols that fighting to keep the South in the union wasn’t an economically or politically viable proposition. Invading Harrisburg or even Philadelphia would give a lot of people pause to think.

And from his experiences with the Army of the Potomac and its various commanders, he reckoned he had a reasonable chance of making that happen.

Well, except he was operating under a couple of handicaps: his most gifted general, Thomas J. Jackson (known as Stonewall from his performance at the first battle of Manassas), had died of wounds inflicted by his own troops at Chancellorsville in May. Lee had considered Jackson his right arm and it was a grievous loss.

The second drawback was that his cavalry commander, J.E.B. Stuart (James Ewell Brown, if you’re asking) had basically disappeared up his own behind. One of the main functions of cavalry was to gather intelligence about the enemy’s movements. After making big splashes in the Peninsula and Maryland campaigns of 1862 by dashing around the Army of the Potomac, he separated his unit from Lee’s main force in late June, leaving Lee with no reliable data on the Army of the Potomac’s whereabouts.

Lee found them, under the command of George G. Meade (of whom it might be said that at least he wasn’t Joe Hooker. Or George B. McClellan. Or Ambrose Burnside), at Gettysburg, a small town with a theological seminary and interesting topography, on 1 July.

The two armies maneuvered some and fought for three days in July heat that you cannot imagine unless you’ve experienced it. Thanks to the actions of cavalry Brigadier General John Buford at the first meeting, Union forces held the high ground, but it can’t have felt like much of an advantage to those who were there.

To a certain extent fighting blindly (Stuart showed up on 2 July, but didn’t have much in the way of intel to share), Lee issued uncharacteristically ambiguous orders to Lt. General James Longstreet on the 2^nd, and then sent Maj. General George Pickett’s division up Cemetery Ridge on the 3^rd, resulting in utter carnage.

(In Ken Burns’ seminal documentary, The Civil War, historian Shelby Foote made a comment on Pickett’s charge that has stuck with me. It was something to the effect that, if he’d been a soldier given the order to cross that open space and run up the hill in the face of massed Yankee fire, he’d have said, “Lieutenant—I don’t think so.” That comment came back to me when I stood at Colleville-sur-Mer and looked down from the cliff onto Omaha Beach. I don’t know how either the Georgians or the GIs of the 29^th Infantry Division took those steps.)

After three days of this, the armies faced each other in heavy rain on the 4^th; then Lee withdrew. Meade did not pursue. The Union held the ground, but the Army of Northern Virginia (what was left of it) was able to return to Virginia and regroup.

Up until then, Lee had believed in the invincibility of his army—he’d asked it to do impossible things so many times, and it had. At Gettysburg, he was heard to repeat, “It is all my fault.”

Combined with the surrender on 4 July of Vicksburg to U.S. Grant (breaking the lines of communication for the Confederacy in the West), Gettysburg basically was the point at which it became clear that the North was never going to quit, and the South was never going to win.

But the war would continue for another 22 months, with Grant taking command of the Army of the Potomac steadily grinding down Lee’s armies, and Sherman implementing the concept of total war through Georgia and the Carolinas.

Gettysburg was the tipping point, 150 years ago today.

A day at the Somme

The first week of July has a lot of historical significance if you’re a military historian. I’ll have more to say about some of the domestic bits later, but today I want to remind you of one of the most amazing stories of command idiocy in the annals of British history.

On 1 July 1916, the British Expeditionary Force impaled itself upon the idea that if you only throw more men at entrenched machine gun emplacements, you’ll achieve a breakthrough in a war of stagnation.

The first day of the Battle of the Somme cost the Brits 58,000 casualties (almost 20,000 of them dead), but won no breakthrough. Neither did it break through the dense crania of the British generals. The new commander, Sir Douglas Haig, remained boneheaded to his death, which unfortunately came long after the Armistice in 1918.

(Generals typically were not in danger of injuries, unless they fell off their polo ponies or slipped on the floor of the officers’ mess.)

No, wave after wave of Tommies went over the top from 1 July to 18 November without enough land to grow a crop of wheat changing hands. The ground was churned to sludge by unbelievable numbers of artillery bombardments; farmers are still turning up unexploded shells as they tend their fields. In the end the butcher’s bill ran to 420,000 British, 200,000 French and 500,000 Germans dead, missing and wounded.

So pause a moment and think of the day when the sun truly began to set on the British Empire; and consider the tens of thousands of men who’ve rested along the battle line for the past 97 years.

Gratitude Monday: O, Canada

Gratitude Monday—and it’s Canada Day. So I’m thinking about how great the Canadians are, individually and collectively.

I could get silly and talk about Leslie Nielsen or one of my favorite TV shows of all time, Due South. But I’ve already done that.

And Canadians are way more than wacky comedians and upright Mounties in a cynical American city. They’re even more than mail-order pharmacies and refuges for cabernet-toting discontents fleeing whichever administration gets into office down here.

They are pretty much in every way the kind of neighbor you’d like to have on your street. They don’t throw loud parties, or park huge SUVs in their driveway, or toss their clapped-out washing machines in their weed-infested front yard.

They quietly go about their lives as conscientious citizens of the world, picking up the trash they find (and disposing of it responsibly) and pitching in whenever asked to help set the worst things to rights. They define the term “stand-up guys”.

Two things in particular I’m thinking about:

Teheran, 1979. In the midst of the chaos of the overthrow of the Shah, six American diplomats were given shelter in the Canadian embassy for 79 days, until they could be extracted by a joint Canadian-CIA mission. It was an act of both neighborly kindness and extreme courage for the Canadians to hide the Americans, especially at a time when it was clear that “diplomatic courtesies” didn’t rate high on the Iranian revolutionary priority list.

The Canadians risked personal safety and national policy to help out six Americans, who’d probably been trash-talking hockey teams right up until the embassy takeover. They didn’t hesitate and they didn’t flinch.

My second example of Canadian rectitude is Lt. Gen. Roméo A. Dallaire. Dallaire had just about the worst job of the 1990s: Force Commander of United Nations Assistance Mission Rwanda (UNAMIR), from 1993 to 1996. During the worst genocide of the second half of the 20^th Century, Dallaire commanded forces without resources, with limited remit and  no backing from his political masters. I cannot believe the fortitude of a man who still managed to save thousands of the people under his care.

Although at a terrible, terrible cost. Washington Post reporter Ken Ringle told the story much better than I could, so I’ll let him do it. It was an impossible command, an impossible remit and an impossible expectation. But Dallaire took it on.

I can just picture most American generals after that posting—speaking engagements, management consulting, appearances on talk shows. Dallaire went back to Canada, where PTSD led him to a suicide attempt. His big public outing has been to testify at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda against Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, who was subsequently convicted of war crimes. He also advocated for children affected by war—something he’s an expert in.

I cannot express my admiration for the country that produced people like this. You don’t think of them a lot, because good neighbors don’t get in your face. But you’re always really, really glad they’re there.

Dancing in the streets

I came across this Evian commercial this week, which just kind of cracks me up:

Since seeing it I have been trying to imagine what sort of inner toddler I might have wriggling around waiting to get into the shot. Here’s my conclusion:

I’d be the pudgy red-head with the bad haircut my mom gave me, in my sister’s hand-me-down clothes. The one hopping the bus to blow this taco stand.

Love & sex--not the party you'd think

It’s been a strange couple of days in legal and civic circles.

First, the Supreme Court declared some parts of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 invalid. The VRA is what has kept alive the spirit of the Founding Fathers’ view of rule by the people for 48 years.

You know—the part about one (hu)man, one vote. Republicans all over the country will be holding meetings on how to make the most of this.

But then the court turned around and struck down key provisions of the cockamamie Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA pretentiously defined “marriage” as “between one man and one woman”, and essentially superseded any state laws recognizing same-sex marriage by refusing federal rights accorded married couples.

You know—like tax filing status, pensions and health benefits.

SCOTUS declared that DOMA essentially violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

And then the court declined to rule on the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, the law passed in 2008 that banned same-sex marriages in the state. This dismissal leaves in place the lower court’s ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional and unenforceable. Unless the state government decides to take it up again at the appellate level, that means the law is gone, girl, gone.

Google got clever about recognizing these decisions; if you searched on either term here's what you got around the search box:

I predict that the wedding industry is about to get a big, fat shot in the arm.

But wait—there’s more.

Wednesday a kick-ass Texas state senator, probably channeling Molly Ivins and Ann Richards (amongst others) filibustered against the latest GOP attempt to turn time back six centuries. She was trying to run the clock out on SB5, a bill that would impose such restrictions on who can perform an abortion, when and how, that it would have shut down all but five of Texas’s 42 abortion clinics. Wednesday was the last day of the special session called by Gov. Rick Perry (R-15^th Century) to consider SB5; if the measure wasn’t passed by midnight, then it would be dead.

Under Texas lege rules, Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, was not allowed to sit or lean against anything, accept any assistance, take food or water, or speak about anything unrelated to the subject of the bill. Three violations of the rules and you’re out.

Actually, it turns out that the definition of what constitutes “assistance” or “related topics” is not absolute, but dependent on how desperate the Republicans in the chamber were feeling about Davis’s potential success. You would not believe what they cried over, but around 2200 they declared three strikes against her and were going to barrel on ahead with the vote.

But here’s where the power of the people took over.

Throughout the day, Twitter was getting fired up about Davis. I was part of that. #StandWithWendy trended—there were tweets from Jill Biden out. And people started showing up at the lege (although not, it seems, the mainstream media; what a bunch of clueless dorks). When the ‘Pubs tried to shut Davis down, the members of the gallery started chanting, “Let her speak!” and Twitter went freaking mental.

Well—there was a whole lot more hoo-hah, & then the ‘Pubs tried something that absolutely boggles the mind: they called for a vote—which passed—at 0002. Meaning two minutes after midnight on Thursday.

Meaning two minutes after the session had legally ended. It was clearly in all the screenshots that the twitterati took of the voting board.

Well—being the sore losers that they are, they then tried to doctor the time-stamp, to legitimize their vote. Meaning: they literally tried to turn the clock back.

So—if you thought things went cuckoo before, you don’t understand the term “a perfect storm”.

In the end, they grudgingly (but not apologetically, because these people have no bloody shame) conceded that mistakes were made, and the vote…doesn’t count.

Perry’s going to call another special session, of course. And I have every confidence that the ‘Pubs will do everything down to and including kneecapping people to get their way.

But, damn—for one brief, shining 13 hours, a gloriously brave woman stood up for thousands of us and drove back the night.

So—here’s to the Supreme Court, and here’s to Wendy Davis. You done good.

Back to the what?

Following on yesterday’s announcement that Twinkies have joined the ranks of the un-dead, NPR has a story about the power of nostalgia in the marketplace.

As in—corporations are producing retro products & marketing campaigns, to tap into our sense that those really were the good old days.

Now, I think the mobile-to-instant-photo device is kind of interesting. I hope it comes with that characteristic “schloop” sound that Polaroid cameras used to make.

But that “back to the 90s” Microsoft campaign for Windows 8 just cracks me up. You’d think they’d want to project a sense of moving into the future with their new operating system.

Well, maybe they just want to harken back to their own glory days, when they owned the market instead of playing catch-up.

Twinkie defense 3: They're baaaack

Well, I guess we all knew that Twinkies would not go gentle into that good night. Not quite a year & a half ago, the company that industrially-extruded Twinkies, Sno Balls, Hostess Cupcakes, Ho-Hos & the like, filed for bankruptcy, & there was consternation amongst junk-food junkies throughout the land.

(Maybe around the world. Hard to know. But I suspect not.)

Anyhow, in the intervening time, apparently there were industrially-extruded Twinkie-like products on the market. Evidently each one competing with the other for the lamest name. There were Bingles, Dreamies & Cloud Cakes. (Sorry, Little Debbie, but anywhere in the tech world, “Cloud Cakes” aren’t going to be immediately identified with an ersatz food-like product. We’re thinking some kind of app here in the Silicon Valley.)

However, it was announced yesterday that genuine industrially-extruded Twinkies are returning to grocery shelves as of 15 July. Dunno about the cupcakes, Sno Balls & Ho-Hos; but apparently there wasn’t the grass-roots outcry about those ersatz food-like products.

Gratitude Monday: The grace of a mensch

Gratitude Monday and I’m deeply thankful for the life and work of Nelson Mandela.

As of this writing, he’s in critical condition in hospital, with a respiratory condition that he’s suffered since his nearly three decades in prison for his anti-apartheid work. He’s 94 years old, and frail.

What is neither old nor frail are his strength of character, his absolute integrity and his quiet dignity. You’d think a man as vilified and abused for most of his life by the white power structure would have a legitimate case for invoking the wrath of God when he and the ANC took office. But his presidency of South Africa was marked by his focus on national reconciliation.

It has never ceased to astonish me whenever I’m reminded of his gentle strength and genuine forbearance. Ninety-four years old, marked by a third of his life in prison, and he has the physical and moral uprightness of someone with the hand of God at his back.

South Africa is not without its problems. But I wonder where it would be today were it not for this amazing man?

There is a Yiddish term that is entirely appropriate to apply to Mandela: he is a mensch.

We don’t have many of them in our human history. He has added grace to our lives.