That’s yesterday’s Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, titled “Some Theme’s Missing,”, above. Does the pattern of the letter squares remind you of anything? Given that December 18 is the first night of Hanukkah, many found the resemblance of the puzzle to a Nazi swastika…disturbing. Sinister even.
Republicans pounced. New York Times-haters pounced. Donald Trump Jr. pounced, on Twitter. Israel’s Israel National News thought it notable that the swastika crossword was published following what it deemed an anti-Semitic op-ed by the Times the day before, warning that Benjamin “Netanyahu’s government…is a significant threat to the future of Israel — its direction, its security and even the idea of a Jewish homeland.”
The publication also posted a poll asking readers if the puzzle’s design was “intentional Nazi imagery or an unfortunate coincidence?” Of the 440 votes, nearly 85% deemed the symbol to be deliberate.
The House of Representatives passed legislation last week ordering the Capitol’s bust of Roger Taney, the Supreme Court Chief Justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision, to Hell, or someplace. It will be replaced by a new bust of Thurgood Marshall, the first black judge to serve on Court.
Of course it will. This naked political grandstanding wouldn’t be complete without installing a black judge’s image as a rebuke to the evil white judge. The legislation now heads to President Biden’s desk to be signed, probably followed by a victory jig.
The pandering legislation says that Taney’s bust is “unsuitable for the honor of display to the many visitors to the Capitol.” It currently sits at the entrance of the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol where the Supreme Court met from 1810 to 1860. Taney led the court from 1836 to 1864.
“While the removal of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s bust from the Capitol does not relieve the Congress of the historical wrongs it committed to protect the institution of slavery, it expresses Congress’s recognition of one of the most notorious wrongs to have ever taken place in one of its rooms, that of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s Dred Scott v. Sandford decision,” the legislation says. I wonder how many of the members who voted for the legislation know anything about Taney or have ever engaged in an objective reading of his opinion. My guess: not many. Maybe none.
Sixty-eight years after he was disgraced and his reputation ruined, brilliant physicist and atomic bomb architect J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose security clearance with the Atomic Energy Commission was revoked on the grounds that he was a supporter of Communism, has been finally declared innocent of that charge. Declassified documents, the Department of Energy has ruled, show that the investigation that rendered the American hero a broken man (he died 12 years later at the age of 62) was biased and flawed.
Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm said in a statement that “ evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness of the process that Dr. Oppenheimer was subjected to while the evidence of his loyalty and love of country have only been further affirmed.”
In the latest issue of the SABR’s Baseball Research Journal, Jerry Nechaldecides to finally investigate the conventional wisdom that pitchers deliberately threw at black batters after Jackie Robinson broke the color line in 1947 for an extended period. In the film “42,” Pirates pitcher Fritz Ostermueller is shown verbally abusing and then deliberately throwing at Robinson.One of Ostermueller’s teammates confirmed the pitcher’s intentions years later in an interview, and there are other anecdotal accounts regarding other pitchers as well.
Like most research aimed at proving a particular thesis with social and political implications, Nachal’s effort was threatened by many forms of statistical pollution, prime among them being researcher bias. The task Nechal set out for himself was daunting; among other obstacles, standard baseball statistics don’t identify the races of players. Ultimately he relied on a previous study’s breakdown, and used a definition of “black” that excluded Hispanic and Native American players, which also meant that if those players were also thrown at more frequently than “whites,” it would distort the study results. Then there was the problem of accounting for deliberately close pitches that didn’t actually hit a batter. These were unrecorded and unmeasurable until very recently. The study had to be based entirely on batters who were hit by pitches and got a free trip to first base if not the hospital. Continue reading →
Mayor Levar M. Stoney (D) of Richmond, Virginia is all puffed up with pride because he has overseen the complete removal of statues in the city depicting major Civil War figures who sided with the Confederacy. “Over two years ago, Richmond was home to more confederate statues than any city in the United States,” Stoney said in a statement on Twitter. “Collectively, we have closed that chapter. We now continue the work of being a more inclusive and welcoming place where ALL belong.” His victory lap was occasioned by the toppling of the last Confederate statue remaining in the city of 230,000, which memorialized Ambrose P. Hill, Robert E. Lee’s most trusted lieutenant general, and which had stood on a pedestal at a busy intersection in Richmond since 1892. Hill’s remains were in the pedestal of the statue, now ticketed for the local Black History Museum, where it can be assured of obscurity. Hill’s remains? Supposedly they will be deposited in a grave somewhere, but who knows? They may get flushed down a toilet.
My question is what will the airbrushers plan to do with the city? Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy; its existence is certainly a more prominent memorial to the Grays than any statue of a general most non-Civil War buffs couldn’t distinguish from Benny Hill or Pork Chop Hill. Richmond’s crucial role in the Civil War is its primary claim to fame. Level it, I say. That’s the only way to “close the chapter.” A city that was mission central for the South’s efforts to enslave blacks—-there was really more to it than that, but I’m mouthing the official, historically ignorant line here—can’t possibly be a welcoming place: who does the woke mayor think he’s fooling? At very least, Richmond has to change its name, doesn’t it? Maybe to something like Floydtown or Diversityopolis?
My father told me he was certain that there were incidents like this during World War II, but that the military covered them up.
The Army Board for Correction of Military Records has changed the death record of African-American WWII Private Albert H. King to list him as having died “in the line of duty.” King, a 20-year-old black soldier with the Quartermaster Corps, was in fact murdered on March 23, 1941, by a white member of the military police, Sgt. Robert Lummus, who shot King five times as he walked on the main road at Fort Benning toward his barracks. King had tried to escape a mob of whites intent on beating him on a bus. Sergeant Lummus claimed self-defense and just 13 hours after shooting King, was found not guilty by a military court.
A thorough investigation had taken place, clearly.
The photo above was taken in a Plains state elementary school in the early 1950s, and depicts a cow-milking exercise. It is, obviously, one of those “Oops!” unfortunate—but funny!—shots that ended up in a local newspaper somewhere because nobody noticed the problem until it was too late.
A Facebook friend posted it on the social media platform for “a chuckle”, and it was clear that the reaction was…restrained.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Dayis tougher than it may seem…
Is posting that photo unethical, as it will be legitimately offensive to some, or is it innocently funny, and only objectionable to the political correctness scolds?
I thought it was funny when I saw it. I also thought my friend would get a fair amount of flack. But the more I think about the factors involved, the more uncertain I am of the answer to the quiz question…
Is posting the photo in a public forum a Golden Rule breach? Obviously the photo embarrasses the teacher who, as my freind wrote, “probably wishes she had been standing for the photo.” My friend, however, was a professional performer, in a field where being able to laugh at moments that would humiliate normal people is essential.
Based on the period of the photo, it is certain that the teacher by now must be either dead or too old to care about an old newspaper clipping. Does that take the Golden Rule off the table.
It is more likely that the children shown might be embarrassed by the photo, or were when it was originally published. Does that matter? Was showing it more unethical then than now, when parents (unethically, even though “everybody does it”) post videos of their children in embarrassing (but funny!) situations constantly?
Some people thought the photo was very funny, and appreciated seeing it. It brightened their day! Is that enough to make showing the picture ethical? What formula should we use to determine whether utilitarian analysis justifies an action where the benefits are tangible and the “harm” is ephemeral? If the photo brightened one viewer’s day, isn’t that enough?
One critic of the photo sniffed, “Photoshopped!” If so, and I note that there is always someone who will try to discredit any photo they object to as photoshopped whether it was or not, does it matter to the question at hand. If it’s funny, it’s funny. Or, since it is theoretically funnier if genuine, does being photoshopped change the utilitarian analysis? Should it?
Can showing the photo be justified as a social statement and attempt at a course correction, echoing the common lament that the culture is becoming humor adverse thanks to woke-poisoning, and it is a serious problem?
The New York Times has an article about the competition to create a new Christmas music standard, or at least a hit song for streaming. The piece’s “Rules of the Game:
No. 1: The public prefers the old classics, and isn’t too interested in new songs.
No. 2: Singers shouldn’t wander too far from the melody.
No. 3: “You can’t be too corny at Christmas. You totally get a free pass.”
Corny is fine, but what about creepy?
D. Dark Christmas Songs
1. Traditional Carols
The problem with “The Carol of the Bells” isn’t the lyrics, it’s the music. The thing is affirmatively creepy; my mother hated it, and compared the tune to “The Hall of the Mountain King.” No other Christmas music has been so frequently used darkly. It came, then, as no surprise when the TV horror mini-series “Nos4A2,” based on a novel by Stephen King’s son, used the carol as its theme music. The show is the tale of a damned man who kidnaps children and takes them to “Christmasland” where they are kids forever, and also become little vampires. The music, which is by a Ukrainian composer, is unquestionably ominous. Why it has remained in the Christmas canon is a mystery to me.
Another carol in a minor key is “We Three Kings,” which contains this cheerful lyric in Verse 4, sung by Balthazar:
Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume Breathes a life of gathering gloom;— Sorrowing, sighing, Bleeding, dying, Sealed in the stone-cold tomb
Merry Christmas!
And why would you give that stuff to a baby?
I’m going to call “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” a traditional carol since its lyrics are more than a century old. It’s not creepy, but it is a sad song, and sadder still when one knows its origins.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem titled “Christmas Bells” on Christmas Day, December 25, 1863. He was in despair: his son had been wounded fighting for the Union the month before, and the poet feared he would die. The author of “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “Evangeline” and other famous poems also was still mourning his second wife, who had died horribly in a fire two years earlier. He was not in a good state of mind when he wrote,
The up-scale retailer Hammacher Schlemmer is battling it out with The Sharper Image in the high-priced Chritsmas gifts, toys food items and decorations market for people who literally have money to burn. I’m especially impressed with the golf ball-locating glasses, the Belgian Chocolate Hot Cocoa Bombs that “explode with flavor” in a cup of hot milk, at only $5 a bomb, and the “first marble run with a track that is suspended in mid-air for only $199.95. However, what caught the ethicist’s eye was the “Your Year to Remember” wall art, which commemorates a birthday or anniversary with coins minted in that year, plus bold graphics that list “major news events” along with pop culture and sports happenings.
For some strange reason, the catalogue designers chose 1968 as the year to display. You can’t make it out from the graphic above, but the major news events listed are…
Before Thanksgiving completely out of view in the rear view mirror, I’d like to recommend Steve-O-in NJ’s valuable, as always, overview of the holiday and its meaning, historically and to our American society now. This is a particularly good candidate for Comment of the Day because, as always on holidays, traffic was confined to only the most active commenters, and many may have missed it.
C.S. Lewis writes that history taught under a tyrant’s rule was “duller than the truest history you ever read, and less true than the most exciting adventure story,” while designated hero Prince Caspian is taught the truth in secret – that the tyrant is trying to cover up the past for his own benefit.
As far as I know, Joy Reid, who I think did another piece bashing the 1950s, has no background in history or much of anything else. She is simply someone who spreads anger, hatred, and unhappiness into the world in the interest of feeding the confirmation bias of her idiot followers and sowing discord and division otherwise.
Celebrations of thanks in Europe date back at least to the chanting and later singing of the Te Deum, a fairly lengthy prayer of praise offered in thanks for victory in war, recovery of leaders from illness, and just about any good event, the idea being we mortals should acknowledge whence whatever blessings we received came. The idea goes back still farther to the 100th psalm, “Praise the Lord all ye lands,” sometimes sung in the Christian tradition as “Praise God from whom all blessings flow…”or other translations.
Services of thanksgiving were and still are a thing in Europe not necessarily tied to any one particular day or event. For the first century or so of this nation’s existence, that was the case here also. Washington was the first president to proclaim a one-off day of giving thanks,and other presidents followed the custom by presidential proclamation as they saw fit. In fact the ancient Te Deum was offered after the Battle of New Orleans in the Cathedral of St. Louis, the oldest continually used cathedral in North America. Continue reading →
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