An Evacuation Day Letter

March 17, 1776

An open letter to General Howe:

It has come to our attention while observing your military maneuvers against our army in Boston that you may not fully understand your position. Thus we are writing to bring to your attention to two features of the situation.

First, you could continue your action of evacuating your forces from Boston and relocating to Nova Scotia. This would be a great strategic victory for General Washington, boost morale on the colonial side, and serve to increase their support among the rebellious population.

Second, with end of the recent unfavorable weather, your position is strengthened should you instead choose to attack. While we understand your wish to avoid another situation like the recent battle at Bunker Hill, we feel that we should point out that you did win that engagement.

What this means is that while an attack would no doubt be costly, you could achieve victory here, potentially nipping the revolution in the bud and eliminating the General Washington as an ongoing threat to your control of the colonies. The next commanding general would be in a weakened position and a future colonial army would be unlikely to challenge British rule.

We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of the strategic situation and promotes understanding and clarity as your suppression actions continue.

Sincerely,

The Tories 

A Modest Proposal

There. That does it.

Happy 4th

Hey kittens, happy 4th.  I've been thinking about the 4th a lot lately, and this being the 4th I thought it might be a good time to write about it.  You know the 4th don't you?  It goes like this:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Now that's a wonderful thing.  Our Constitution, our supreme law, contains within it a clear restriction on the power of government that guarantees that the people of our land will never have to worry about the abuse of the great power that we, the people, put in the hands of our political, judicial, or military leaders.  Since all of the people who serve in those branches of our democracy take a sacred oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, it would be quite extraordinary if this crucial set of individual rights were ever violated.

Our private business is ours and we never have to worry about "Big Brother" looking over our shoulders.  Any time the government peeks into a citizen's private matters you can be sure that such peeking is done for a good reason, and that this reason has been carefully considered  and found to have a probable cause, and that even then the search must be limited to only the things that are described in a legally sworn warrant.  This is a very high standard indeed.

Oh, I know.  It's just words on paper, isn't it?  Haven't totalitarian states often claimed similar "rights" for their citizens, legal fictions that were more propaganda than protection?  Of course.  The old Soviet Union had a constitution too:

Article 54. Citizens of the USSR are guaranteed inviolability of the person. No one may be arrested except by a court decision or on the warrant of a procurator.

Article 55. Citizens of the USSR are guaranteed inviolability of the home. No one may, without lawful grounds, enter a home against the will of those residing in it.

Article 56. The privacy of citizens, and of their correspondence, telephone conversations, and telegraphic communications is protected by law.

Article 57. Respect for the individual and protection of the rights and freedoms of citizens are the duty of all state bodies, public organisations, and officials.

Citizens of the USSR have the right to protection by the courts against encroachments on their honor and reputation, life and health, and personal freedom and property.

Just words.  Didn't mean a thing.  But here in the U.S. of A. things are a bit different.  Not only does every public official vow to defend our rights, but our citizens will not stand by and see those rights violated.  Imagine, if you will, that we found out that our government was spying on us -- that data about all of the emails and phone calls of every citizen was being collected by a secretive agency.  Imagine that this was not based on any probable cause.  Imagine that the specific area of the search was limited to being everyone and everything.  And then suppose that this was all approved by a secret court, a Star Chamber, if you will, that had tried us all and found each of us to be suspect.  Such a thing would clearly be a violation of our most fundamental rights, and Americans would never stand for it.  We would rise together, hold mass protests, demand hearings, and work to set things right once again.  That's what makes our system work.  The Constitution is only as strong as the will of the people to keep it strong.  If that should ever waiver, God help us all.

Dear Mr. President

Mr. President, I have a proposal.  It's not a modest proposal, but it is a simple one.  Please remove our ground forces from Afghanistan.

I know, you've heard this before, but bear with me for a moment.  I know that you have set the end of 2014 as the date that we will get out, and I know that you are a man who sticks to his guns.  We can all see that you do that.  But what, really, have we to gain by hanging around and getting shot at?

During your administration an average of 32 Americans die in Afghanistan every month.  That's more than one every day.  During the previous administration the average was about 6 per month.  That is a lot of blood shed on your orders, and a lot of Americans who have far less to be thankful for this season.  What have we got to show for it?

Yes, you've killed a lot of terrorists, and there's nothing wrong with killing terrorists.  Love it.  Good job.  But do we really need all those Americans in harm's way to achieve that?

Yes, we've trained the Afghan military to defend their own country and to prop up their own corrupt, double-dealing government.  That's swell too.  All it has cost us is a lot of lives, green on blue killings, and having to take lip from our good friend, Hamid Karzai who is, let's face it, a punk.

So, what's to stop us from leaving right now?  Are we concerned that if we go terrorists will begin to use Afghanistan as a base of operations again?  Is that the problem?  Okay, I've got that one solved.

Actually, you've got that one solved. Years ago, during your first presidential campaign, you said that if terrorists (you were speaking specifically of Osama Bin Laden, but the point is still a good one) were based in another country, and that country was unable or unwilling to go and get them, then we would do the job.  You were right.  You proved it when ordered the assault on Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.  You have proven it by striking at our enemies in The Philippines, in Yemen, in Kashmir, and all over Africa.  You can do it in Afghanistan.  You can tell the Karzai government that they are now ready to run their own country, congratulate them on their rapid progress, and get us out.  You can make sure that they understand that if anyone starts to use any part of their eternally fractured country as a base for international terrorism, we will strike.  We will strike with missiles, with drones, with air power, with naval guns, with special forces, or with as many soldiers as you, the commander-in-chief, deems prudent.

This proposal has a lot of advantages.  For one thing, we will be unsubscribing from the coffin-a-day program that we're on now.   For another, freeing up those troops will help the process of transforming our military into a more nimble, flexible fighting force, the kind that doesn't rely on old battleships, bayonets, and horses.  Finally, by setting up the military to quickly take on our enemies, regardless of borders, you will be creating a bold new global strategy based upon your successful elimination of Osama Bin Laden.  We can call it the Obama Doctrine.

With the Obama Doctrine in place there will be no safe haven for our foes, our losses will be reduced, and you will be remembered as the president who gave us both war and peace.

How about it Mr. President?  What do you say we bring them home by Christmas?

Big Jared is Watching You

It was lunchtime and, having been too disorganized to pack a lunch (again), I took a short walk to the nearest place that could provide me with a meal that was both cheap and quick.  For me, that's Subway.  You know the place.  It's the one that says you can "eat fresh" by consuming preserved meats.  Yeah.  I'm not crazy about it, but it's a sandwich and I don't have a lot of time or money, so it works.  After the sandwich artist had made my lunch I grabbed a bottle of Diet Coke and stood at the register.  The friendly lady stopped as she was ringing me up and reminded me that I had a Subway card in my wallet (don't judge me).  It was nice of her to remember, and hey, I'll save a few bucks someday, so, you know.

I walked back to the workshop, carrying my bag of meat, bread, and veg, and sat myself back down at my desk.  I was on break, so I put work out of my mind for a moment, logged into Twitter, and prepared to read the wit and wisdom of the world wide interweb.

The tweet that stood at the top of my timeline caught my eye.  It was "sponsored."  That is, it was an ad.  I usually ignore these, but I was struck by the coincidence   It was from Subway.  The tweet said that I could enter to win a trip to Italy if I gave them free advertising by tweeting a picture of my sandwich and my Diet Coke.

Think about that.  It might be random chance that I got an ad from Subway just as I came back from Subway after using my customer loyalty card.  It might be just one of those things that they asked for a picture of a sub as it was sitting right in front of me.  But to ask for the sub along with the brand of soft drink that I had just purchased?  That is what you call creepy.

George Orwell's dystopic vision of the future just barely missed.  Yes, the government can and does keep citizens under surveillance, but it is big business who is really paying attention.  Not so they can oppress us.  So that they can better serve us.  I am reminded of "I, Mudd," the Star Trek episode in which androids plan to do the same thing.

NORMAN: We shall serve them. Their kind will be eager to accept our service. Soon they will become completely dependent upon us. 

ALICE 99: Their aggressive and acquisitive instincts will be under our control. 

NORMAN: We shall take care of them. 

SPOCK: Eminently practical. 

KIRK: The whole galaxy controlled by your kind? 

NORMAN: Yes, Captain. And we shall serve them and you will be happy, and controlled.

And we let the androids in.  We joined the social media sites that mine us for information.  We accepted the loyalty cards that sold our privacy for a cup of coffee or a burger.  And we could do something about it, but we won't.  Because we are happy.  And controlled.

Orwell was not our prophet.  It was Walt Kelly's Pogo.  "We have met the enemy and he is us."

The Code of the Cowboy

Here's to singing cowboy superstar Gene Autry, who was born 105 years ago today.  Back in his day he was as big a star as ever shown in the west.  Today he's just the kind of hero that we wish we could root for. Gene was always the good guy, and he wrote this, the Code of the Cowboy.  Learn it.  Live it.

1. The Cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage.
2. He must never go back on his word, or a trust confided in him.
3. He must always tell the truth.
4. He must be gentle with children, the elderly, and animals.
5. He must not advocate or possess racially or religiously intolerant ideas.
6. He must help people in distress.
7. He must be a good worker.
8. He must keep himself clean in thought, speech, action, and personal habits.
9. He must respect women, parents, and his nation's laws.
10. The Cowboy is a patriot.

And to top it off, he stared in my all time favorite serial, The Phantom Empire.  Here's part one:

Glenn's Book of Quotes Number Twenty-Six

". . . a wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government . . ." -- Thomas Jefferson, first inaugural address

From the very beginning, Americans have had a healthy distrust of power.  If that power is concentrated in the hands of the few, and if those few are insulated from the people, that distrust turns to outright hostility.  In 1801 the biggest, scariest power in the land was the still somewhat new federal government.  The Constitution, which created that government, was only twelve years old.  The Bill of Rights, which tempered its power, was only ten.  Would this new government usurp the power that rightly belonged to the people, or would it be a faithful steward of the power granted to it by the people?  


When policy is being debated today I often think of this quote.  Will this new action by our powerful government leave us more or less free to regulate our own pursuits?  Will they restrict or enhance the blessings of liberty? And is this proposed public good quite good enough to justify taking the bread which the people have earned?  


I'm not providing the answers on any particular questions.  I just think that the questions are worth considering.

Live Long and Prosper, America

I love this picture.  I love it so much.

How do I love this picture?  Let me count the ways, let me sing of my love.

It's Nichelle Nichols, our own Uhura, in the Oval Office, with the President of the United States!

Oh.  My.  God.

Okay, my little Trekkie heart can only take so much.  I'll try to calm down.

Things I love about this picture:

1.  It's the Oval Office.  What a great room, filled with power, symbolism, and history.

2.  Nichelle looks great.  79 years old, still a hottie, and I'll fight any man who says otherwise.

3.  She's wearing a Starfleet necklace.  To meet the President.  How cool is that?

4.  They're obviously happy to meet each other.  And why not?  After all,

5.  He has said that he's a fan of the show and . . .

6.  He had a crush on her when he was a younger fan.  No really!

Months ago Pres Obama was quoted as saying that he'd had a crush on me when he was younger. I asked about that & he proudly confirmed it!
— Nichelle Nichols (@RealNichelle) March 1, 2012

Well, of course he did.  What kind of red-blooded American Trekkie male didn't have a crush on Uhura?

7.  The Vulcan salute.  The President of the United States, giving the Vulcan salute, in the Oval Office.

8.  And this is the big one.  When Star Trek first aired it was in a different America.  It was in an America that had never seen an interracial kiss on it's television before Nichelle Nichols and Star Trek.  It was in an America where the sight of an African-American woman as an officer, an equal to other officers, a respected expert and leader, was unusual, and unusually important.  You may have heard the story.

And there you are.  From Star Trek to Martin Luther King, Jr., to this moment.  Take another look at that picture.  Do you see a bit of pride in Nichelle's smile?  You should.  After all, she opened the hailing frequencies.

Put 'em Up, Put 'em Up

This is Harold "Honeyboy" Hughes.  He was a relative of mine, on my mother's side.  A K.O. sensation among the featherweights, I see.  Family lore has it that he was fairly well known in upstate New York and Vermont, where he plied his trade in the 1930s.  Years after his death a mention of his name in that area would often find an old fight fan that remembered him fondly.  I've heard that some of the people who knew him best didn't have overwhelmingly positive memories of old Honeyboy.  He looks like he was a tough little fighter and I sure wouldn't want to have had to square off against him.

This poster is obviously aimed at the trade more than the fans, which is kind of interesting.  I love the language of the thing.  I especially love the list of "his battles."  A lot of Kids, along with Mickey, Frankie, Charlie, Willie, Tiger, and Joe.  But my favorite name is right at the top.  K.O. Bunny.

What a great fighter name!  K.O. Bunny.  Can you picture what this guy would look like?  Maybe a buffed up Bugs wearing trunks and a mean look?  And who would want to get knocked out by a guy named K.O. Bunny?  I mean the K.O. part, sure, but the Bunny?  Who would admit to getting knocked out by a Bunny?

It's times like this I wish I could draw.  I'd love to come up with an image for K.O. Bunny.  Man.  And I wonder what the Honeyboy-Bunny fight was like.

One of these days I'll have to make up a story about that.  For now, you just need to know that Honeyboy Hughes is a fighter.  He is not an alibi artist.  And don't you forget it.

For the Children

You've probably heard that phrase before. We have to do this, “for the children.” We must ban that, “for the children.” Those who would censor, restrict, or regulate always say it is “for the children.” When my state attorney general, Martha Coakley, helped draft a law to regulate naughtiness on the internet, it was “for the children.” Never mind that it was an unconstitutional infringement of the
First Amendment (a federal judge recently said so when she struck it down). When Tipper Gore got warning labels on CDs, it was “for the children.” When Joe Leiberman tried to regulate computer games, it was “for the children.” Smashing rock 'n roll records, banning pinball, burning Harry Potter books, it's all “for the children.” As Robert Heinlein wrote in “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” “The whole principle is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak.”

One of the earliest moral panic episodes of the past century was the “great comic-book scare.” In his excellent book on the subject, The Ten-Cent Plague, David Hajdu gives us a history of comics in the 1950s, the men and women who made them, and the panicked, duped, self-serving, or just downright venal people who destroyed the industry.

Mr. Hajdu writes a good history of comics, delving into the lives and personalities of their creators as well as their social milieu. At first I thought this might be off of the main point of the book, the censorship of comics. Often in pop-culture histories the writer will take extended sidetracks into parts of the story that are fun to read and write about. While I enjoyed these section of the book I had, in my mind, judged them to be a minor flaw in the narrative structure. But I was wrong. By laying down a solid (and very interesting, especially for a comic book fan like me) foundation describing the writers, artists, publishers, and their work, it put many of the arguments of the anti-comics forces into a context that demonstrated the wrongness of their position.

Some may be surprised to read about what a big issue this was at the time. Public comic book burnings were held all over the country. Local censorship boards sprung up across the map. Congressional hearings on the subject were broadcast on live television. Major newspapers like the Hartford Courant wrote editorials calling for an end to the comics menace. Fredric Wertham's infamous comic-bashing book The Seduction of the Innocent was a bestseller. Publishers and newsstand owners were threatened with prosecution, years before the CBLDF was even imagined. It is a remarkable story.

I'd call this a must-read for any real comics fan and a good read for anyone interested in American history, pop-culture, art, or witch trials.

Eat Food

Regular readers might recall my going on about Food Rules, Michael Pollan's pithy follow-up to In Defense of Food. Now I've gone ahead and read that book, subtitled “An Eater's Manifesto.” So should you, if you are concerned at all about food.

And you ought to be, you know. Concerned. We're living in an age when going to the market means filling our carts with the products of food science. The first two words of Pollan's famous dictum, “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants,” is no joke. Most of what we feed ourselves with today is not food but “edible foodlike substances.”

Mankind has been eating animals and plants for millennia. Only in the last few years have we begun eating products that are made in plants. What is this vast experiment in the way we eat doing to us? We are beset with obesity, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Scientists tells us that a child born today has a one in three chance of getting a diagnosis of diabetes sometime in his life.

Who is to blame for all this? Business, of course, is one villain. So is food science in the employ of that business. Government, in it's efforts to do something for us, as usual, does something to us. Surprisingly, one of Pollan's biggest villains is nutritional science.

At first I had trouble with this. Yes, I could see that scientific errors, hubris, and bad communication had caused many problems, but Pollan's condemnation of what is he prefers to call “nutritionism” seemed off. Surely it is good to know about vitamins, fiber, and such.

But as I read I began to understand what Pollan was driving at. Science is a reductionist discipline. It has a tendency to look at the bits and pieces of something, see what they do and how they work together. The problem is that food is a complex subject. We don't yet really understand all the dynamics of the interaction between the complex things we put on our plates and the complex beings that do the eating. But nutrition science learns something about a part of our food and goes from there. The classic example is the “lipid hypothesis.” You know it as the concept that fat in our food is bad for us. Fat is to be avoided. Science said so. So now there are low-fat versions of everything. They're more chemical than food, but the label says it is good for us because it is low-fat. Problem is, it turns out that there really isn't much evidence, all these years later, that fat in food is all that bad. Sure, overindulging in anything isn't the best idea, but fat is an essential part of our system. It makes your brain work, for one thing. But fat was the enemy, so it had to come out of the foods that we had been eating. Pigs were bred so that they'd be less fatty (and less tasty). And butter was right out. My parents always had margarine on the table. No unhealthy butter for us. There was overwhelming scientific consensus (how we love that phrase) that this new miracle of food science, margarine, was good, and butter, which was higher in fat, was bad. Margarine had some fat, but not as much, because it was made with a wonderful new invention called trans fat. I think you know how that worked out for us.

In fact, since nutritionism took over from traditional cuisine American waistlines have increased as have our medical bills.

Perhaps you are still diligently searching the grocery aisles for chemically jiggered low-fat versions of your favorite foods. You haven't heard that scientific consensus has shifted away from it? Why do you suppose that public health officials have been slow to correct themselves? What are they afraid of? Pollan suggests that they are afraid that “we'll come to the unavoidable conclusion that the emperors of nutrition have no clothes and never listen to them again.”

More than an attack on food science, In Defense of Food is a call for mindfulness about how and what we eat. It is a reminder that the brightly colored packages in the middle of the grocery store may contain attractive and tasty products, but they are not really food and they are probably not very good for us. It is a call for a return to a more traditional diet with foods that have been traditionally grown, not manufactured in a factory or doused in chemicals, injected with hormones, or otherwise “improved” to make them more profitable. It is a Glenn Guaranteed Good Read and as long as you plan to eat in America, an important one.

As the Blogoshere Turns

It's been a good week in Lake Blogosphere.  I've bumped into a few things that I rather liked.

I found our Video O' the Week via Folderol.  It's on a baseball blog called Foul Territory and shows the Texas Rangers, my current favorite team (go Rangers, beat those Yankees!) celebrating their division championship.  While normally such locker room celebrations feature champagne showers, the Rangers had a special ginger ale-only celebration for outfielder Josh Hamilton, who is a recovering alcoholic.  That, my friends, is what we mean by the word "team."

Our Cat O' the Week is also a video.  Incurable Insomniac presents Cat vs. Printer -- The Translation (warning--NSFW language).

In the Picture O' the Week our Canadian correspondent Calvin gazes south from his Cave of Cool to remind us that the presidency of Barack Obama contains an element of positive change for America that is as beautiful as it is exciting.  And if you think I'm being hyperbolic, you obviously haven't been paying attention for the last couple of centuries.

Finally, the Post O' the Week is by Bill Peschel.  It's a true tale of a literary hoax involving Jean Shepherd (of A Christmas Story fame), Theodore Sturgeon, Frank Kelly Freas, Ian and Betty Ballantine, saucy bawds, and seventeenth century sex scandals.  How can you not love that?

Geek-in-Chief

As you and most of the free world have probably heard by now, President Obama will appear on an upcoming episode of MythBusters. At first I wondered why. What is his hidden purpose? Then I heard the details. The arch-liberal has ordered Adam and Jamie to retest the Archimedes death ray. Clearly this is all part of a plan to replace our nuclear weapons with a solar powered alternative. Well that didn't work when Jimmy Carter tried it, and it won't work now!

I wonder if we can get people to start spreading that around the interwebs as a serious conspiracy theory? That'd be cool.

As soon as I heard that the president would be on MythBusters I knew we'd start seeing the Obama-haters making the usual idiotic comment about “more important things to do.” What some so-called patriots don't understand about the American system of government is that the president has two constitutional roles. He is the head of government and the head of state. In most of the world's nations these roles are separated. In the UK the head of government is the prime minister, the head of state is the monarch. In Germany the head of government is the chancellor, the head of state is the president. In Finland the head of government is prime minister, the head of state is the president. In America both jobs go to one person. As head of government he does important stuff like propose legislation, veto bills, run the executive branch, and command the armed forces. As head of state he is the embodiment of our national spirit. Like a walking, talking flag, he is the symbol of what we think of as American virtues. He hands out awards to writers and artists. He poses for pictures with Boy Scouts and astronauts. He calls the winner of the Superbowl and meets the World Series champions in the Rose Garden. And this president encourages math and science.

According to what I've read, the announcement occurred during the first ever meeting of a president with science fair winners. If that is so I am astounded. It seems the most reasonable thing in the world that the president would boost American science education in this way. If Mr. Obama is the first to do this then he deserves high praise for this wise and proper exercise of his office. And what better way to get lots of young people excited about science than to appear on the most popular of science popularizing TV shows, MythBusters?

Will a pro-science president encourage learning and lead to a generation of more educated Americans? It's plausible. And if things work out, we might even end up with a solar powered death ray.

Political What If . . .?

Marvel Comics used to publish an occasional comic book in which they posed “what if” question and told a story that was strictly outside of the “canon.” What if Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four? What if Dr. Doom became a hero? What if Invisible Girl married the Sub-Mariner? (Ew, ick on that last one)

I like to play political what if. For example, the people of California are going to vote in a referendum next month in which they may decide to decriminalize and regulate marijuana use and growth. Far out, huh? Okay, just for fun, what if John McCain had won and he was our president now?

I'll just bet that he would have his Attorney General tell the Californians that it didn't matter what they wanted, the feds would continue to prosecute recreational and medical users. The 10th Amendment can be ignored by Presidents, the Commerce Clause allows Washington to override all state laws, and the will of the people be damned. The President would insist that the demon weed be destroyed wherever it is found to prevent the scourge of reefer madness.

Whew. Scary story. Fortunately, it is only a “what if.” Good thing we voted for change.

Happy Trails

There is something sad about the upcoming auction of Roy Rogers' stuff at Christie's. It seems to mark the final passing of a particular type of Americana, the singing cowboy. Seeing old Trigger, Buttermilk, and Bullet on the auction block is just plain wrong. They should be in the Smithsonian.


Action!  Thrills!  Adventure!  Romance!  Singing!  What's not to love?

Roy and Gene Autry and Tex Ritter and a whole bunkhouse full of minor players rode off into the sunset a long time ago. The place they made in American pop-cultural history should be remembered and honored. I'm glad that Roy's old group, the Sons of the Pioneers, still performs regularly, as do such fun western swing acts as Riders in the Sky. It's nostalgia, it's hokey, it's cornball, but I'm mighty glad that someone is keeping those campfire embers glowing.

Independence

This version of events is, I believe, not strictly accurate. Still, it is worth noting that America began with the word.

Trust Us

Don't you worry about a thing. This blog is protected by a high-tech blowout preventer. Go ahead, click the link. It will provide us with clean, reliable blogging, free us from our dependence on foreign bloggers, and it's perfectly safe. Besides, even in the million to one event that something should go wrong, we are prepared. Go ahead. Click the link. What's wrong? Don't you like America? Click it. You know you want to.

DRILL BABY DRILL!!!

Hooray For Yiddish!

It's kind of a pointless exercise, writing about a book that is out of print. It's not like you, gentle reader, can rush out to your nearest Border & Noble-a-Million DotCom and pick it up. But perhaps someone in the wide, wide world of publishing will hear about this and decide that this is just the right time to re-release a wonderful book with limited commercial appeal. Yes, perhaps that will happen.

Many, many years ago I read Leo Rosten's wonderful The Joys of Yiddish. Many years after that my best beloved, trolling the bargain book tables as she is wont to do, found the sequel, Hooray For Yiddish! She brought it home and said “Look, you'll want to read this!” I agreed, and we put it in the stacks for later reading. And, since there are thousands of books in our tiny apartment, and since we are terribly disorganized people, I lost track of it.

Flash forward a few years to last month. I stumbled across it next to a DVD with a Star Trek cartoon on it (I told you we were disorganized). And that brings us here.

The subtitle of Hooray for Yiddish! is “A Book About English.” And so it is. This is a lexicon of words in English, Yiddish, and “Yinglish.” The English words and phrases are those that have been influenced by Yiddish. These include “crazy-doctor,” “so sue me,” and “live a little.” The Yiddish ones are words from that language that have entered our language or that Rosten thinks should enter our language. These include “mentsh,” “shlock,” and “shlemiel.” Yinglish words are, of course, those that straddle the line, like “ipsy-pipsy.”

If you think that sitting down with a lexicon would be at all boring, you obviously don't know Leo Rosten. Rosten was a terrific writer, wit, and raconteur. His writing is wise, learned, and hilarious. Almost every entry is illustrated by a joke. It doesn't matter that some of the jokes are, shall we say, classic. The truly good ones are always worth retelling.

Here for example is how he explains the use of the word “kibitzer,” meaning one who comments from the sidelines, offers unasked-for advice, or wisecracks:

The sign on the doctors' office read:

DR. ROBERT LEWIN, Brain Surgery.

DR. J.O. BANKMAN, Psychiatry.

DR. CHARLES GOLUB, Proctology.

Under this imposing troika, a kibitzer scrawled:

We specialize in

Odds and Ends.

And here is how he illustrates the word “mazel,” meaning luck:

In the powder room of the Ritz Hotel in London, bejeweled dowagers, attending a great charity ball, fluttered about the mirrors. Several noticed an enormous diamond on the pink and ample bosom of Lady Gwendolyn de Plotnick. “I may say,” said Lady de Plotnick, “that this is the third-largest diamond ever known. The largest was the Cullinan diamond; the second largest, the Kohinoor; and the third is—the Plotnick.”

“Gracious!”

“My!”

“How fortunate you are!” cooed the ladies.

“We-ell, not all that meets the eye is fortunate,” said the admired one. “As my ancestors often said, 'Nothing is all mazel.' So it is with this diamond. Alas, whoever wears the Plotnick diamond inherits the Plotnick Curse.”

“Oh.”

“What's the Plotnick Curse?”

Sigh. “Plotnick.”

As I read this book my amazement at the influence this language, spoken by a tiny minority of Americans, continued to grow. I hear Yidishisms and Yiddish influenced English all the time, often spoken by people who have no idea of the origin of their words or why they phrase things the way they do. It is a tribute to the genius of America, the strength of the English language, and the incredible dynamism of the Jewish people. America, the melting pot, continually refreshes itself with new peoples, cultures, and ideas. We took in these huddled masses from eastern Europe and they gave us the gifts of their language and culture. The world has never been the same.

The marriage of English and Yiddish is surely a match made in heaven. Both are magpie languages. Yiddish is a thousand years old. It is Germanic at its base, written with the Hebrew alphabet, with bits of eastern European, Slavic, Romance, and other languages mixed in. It took a bit from here and a bit from there and became its own beautiful thing. English is an aggressive borrower. As James Nicoll famously said, “English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle through their pockets for new vocabulary.” It gladly lends and even more happily takes any word, phrase, or grammatical construction that might be useful, euphonious, or just fun to say.

While the combination was perfect, the growth of Yinglish still seems amazing. It's influence on our language is entirely out of proportion to the relatively small group of people who spoke the language. Today fewer than 200,000 Americans can converse in Yiddish. And yet it is a big part of our language. Why? Because of the people who spoke it. The culture of these Ashkenazim was shot through with a love of learning, language, and literature. They were a people who had suffered much and were determined to survive and prosper. They were brave, brash, witty, talented, and funny.

I think funny is the key here. In vaudeville, radio, musical theater, stand-up comedy, movies, and TV, Jewish people have had a tremendous influence. Just look around: Milton Berle, Jack Benny, George Burns, Lenny Bruce, Jerry Seinfeld, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Morey Amsterdam, the Marx Brothers, Phil Silvers, Henny Youngman, the Three Stooges, Jon Stewart, Lewis Black, Billy Crystal, Soupy Sales, Jerry Stiller, Neil Simon, Carl Reiner, Allan Sherman, Zero Mostel, Buddy Hackett, Carol Kane, and Krusty the Clown. Try to imagine American humor without them. Impossible. The very idea is meshugge.

If Italian is the language of music and French is the language of love, Yiddish is surely the language of funny. Shmendrick, shmo, shlemazl, they're just fun to say. Shmeer, shpilkes, shmuck, useful words to be sure, but also a joy to hear.

Rosten's enjoyment of and enthusiasm for his mama-loshn, his mother tongue, is infectious. This is certainly the best lexicon I've read this year. Good luck trying to find your own copy. Mazel tov. 

Intolerance

Would you boycott a bookstore because it hosted an author you disagreed with? When did McCarthyism become part of the mainstream? Before we patronize a bookstore should we investigate their loyalty to what we believe to be correct? “Are you now providing or have you ever provided a forum for members of this party or that?”

In order for this thing called America to work it requires open forums that allow free expression. It also requires tolerance, even of those beliefs that we may despise. Without that the Bill of Rights is meaningless. Intolerance is un-American.