Loathsome Custom Series...

Looks like my fave King James was the first to tax tobacco...

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Here is a remarkably biased, slanted, sarcastic, and snarky chapter from England.   Evidently, Colombus was not an evangelist for Isabella and Fernando's Catholic mission but was obsessed with gold.    Well, to be fair, so was the Church.

Dalton Trumbo, "Johnny Got His Gun [half-cocked]"

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NOVEMBER 30, 2015|Bruce Cook, civil liberties, Dalton Trumbo, HUAC, Jay Roach, John McNamara, Johnny Got His Gun, Josef Stalin

Film the Legend

by RON CAPSHAW|2 Comments

On publicity junkets for Trumbo, star Bryan Cranston has repeated the line, “Everyone has the right to be wrong.” Cranston claims this quote came from Dalton Trumbo himself, and shows that the blacklisted screenwriter supported and defended everyone’s right to free speech.

The real Trumbo didn’t. The movie is frank about his membership in the American Communist Party, but its makers (director Jay Roach, screenwriter John McNamara) give us not a hint of what that entailed, or how roundly contradicted is Trumbo-the-free-speech-avatar by Trumbo the actual person.

Trumbo celebrates the screenwriter’s battle against the blacklist. There is much to be said for his go-it-alone fight against the Hollywood producers, but the image of him as a New Deal liberal hero defending civil liberties against homegrown fascists crumbles when you look into what he said and did in the 1940s and 50s.

His daughter Nikola has said that being a communist in that period had “nothing to do with Russia” but was instead about the “rights of workers.” If so, Trumbo spent a great deal of “wasted” time defending Joseph Stalin. It is easy to confirm his zigs and zags in accord with the policy changes out of Moscow throughout much of his adult life.

When Stalin allied with Hitler in 1939, and announced that comrades should not support Great Britain’s military response to the Third Reich because it was an “imperialist war,” Trumbo followed suit. He wrote many vociferous attacks on the British during the nearly two years of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, despite that they were almost alone in fighting Hitler. His novelJohnny Got His Gun (1939) carried the same pacifist message, for the same reason—a fact that those who celebrate it rarely discuss.

To help the non-interventionist cause, Trumbo even defended the Third Reich. In response to Hitler’s crackdown on France, the famous civil libertarian disputed reports of Nazi brutality coming out of France, declaring that “To the vanquished all conquerors are inhuman.”

When the socialist motherland was invaded two years later, Trumbo suddenly and with equal passion switched to supporting the Allies’ war against Hitler. When asked how he could reconcile the pacifistic theme of Johnny Got His Gunwith his newfound bellicosity, Trumbo explained that the quadriplegic, blind, and deaf character he created would have supported the Progressive nature of the war.

The convolutions are breathtaking. The sudden ex-pacifist now found it necessary to denounce pacifists as fascists because they wouldn’t get into the effort to defeat the fascists. And an entity he had just gotten done lambasting as an American Gestapo, the FBI, was now worth helping. The famous civil libertarian encouraged the Bureau to arrest those who spoke out against the war (which, to be fair, did include some homegrown fascists).

After the war’s end, Trumbo’s thinking took a not very surprising turn back to peace as promoted by the Russians. He portrayed the Soviet regime in the manner it presented to the world: as a Progressive country that liberals could easily support. As Stalin swallowed up Bulgaria, Romania, and Czechoslovakia, and repressed countries such as Poland, Trumbo amazingly penned a 1946 article asserting that the Soviet Union “had no colonies.” In 1949, a year after being blacklisted, he doubled down, declaring the Soviet Union had no anti-Semitism because it was forbidden by the Soviet constitution.

Uncle Joe needed to be protected not only from the supposed fascists who ran the U.S. government but by rival revolutionaries: the Trotskyists. Trumbo, the famous civil libertarian, bragged of enforcing his own blacklist by keeping such “reactionary and untrue” works as Leon Trotsky’s “so-called biography of Stalin” from making it to the big screen.

The FBI, by the way, was bad again. He denounced it during the Cold War as a “hateful shadow preying on the citizenry.” Meanwhile, as late as 1956, he was still asserting Stalin to be “one of the democratic leaders of the world.”

If the arrogant Trumbo felt a sense of entitlement, so did many of his comrades, for the World War II period was the high tide of communist influence in the film industry. Not only were those like Trumbo highly paid for cranking out screenplays (into which they tried, with only limited success, to insert their pro-Soviet and pro-collectivist point of view), they had a power that reached beyond the industry. John Howard Lawson, the autocratic head of the Hollywood Communist Party, penned the 1942 California Democratic State platform. Trumbo himself wrote speeches for Secretary of State Edward Stettinius.

At the point when Soviet crimes became hardest to deny, the 1956 speech by Nikita Khrushchev admitting that Stalin had killed thousands of innocent people during the Purge Trials of the 1930s, Trumbo again had a characteristically arrogant response. He wrote to a communist friend that he was “not surprised,” having read all the notable anticommunist writers like Arthur Koestler and Ignacio Silone—even Leon Trotsky! So he knew about the murderous policies of Stalin all the while that he publicly defended the dictator? Yes, if that statement is to be believed. (Another possibility is that he just said that in order not to look like a dupe, which would have offended his dignity greatly.)

He enjoyed his position as editor of the prestigious movie-industry journal, The Screenwriter, and it cut no ice with him at all when one anticommunist writer pressed him to publish, in the interest of freedom of expression, an article that Trumbo didn’t agree with. Trumbo, as he rejected the man’s submission, informed him that freedom of expression wasn’t an inalienable right, in fact was downright fascistic and had led to the Holocaust.

Trumbo sidesteps such compromising matters. Clearly they would jeopardize the portrayal of Trumbo as civil libertarian extraordinare. The most criticism the movie allows in is that 1) Trumbo was a limousine communist who craved all the creature comforts of capitalism, and 2) he behaved autocratically toward his wife and children. The movie opts for a breezy, light approach at times (director Roach also made Meet the Parents in 2000 and the Austin Powers movies). But its “screwball comedy” tone halts when it comes to lauding Trumbo as a civil libertarian.

McNamara has said that he did “an enormous amount of research” to write the script, but that his chief source material was Bruce Cook’s 1977 biography of Dalton Trumbo. The Cook biography has been rereleased in conjunction with the film, and in fact Cook is listed as cowriter in the film credits. What is notable about this 1977 work is that it is a kind of time-capsule document of the attempted rehabilitation of Reds in the context of an anticommunism that was being blamed for the carnage of Vietnam.

In the era of the antiwar movement and Watergate, the countercultural Left was in the ascendant, and one sign that they were feeling their oats was their eagerness to promote the rehabilitation of the Hollywood communists of old. For Cook, and many other journalists, biographers, screenwriters, and novelists from E.L. Doctorow to Arthur Laurents (whose novel was the basis for the Robert Redford-Barbara Streisand pro-Popular Front movie, The Way We Were {1973}), the robotic Stalinoids among their elders were now airbrushed into heroic civil libertarians.

And now the time capsule has been removed from its cask and given the imprimatur of accuracy, with the movie following the biography in retaining in every detail Trumbo’s claims about himself as he sat before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Early in the biography, the reader is helpfully alerted to a certain bias. Cook calls himself an “advocate” for his subject. Indeed he bases his account on interviews only with Trumbo’s admirers, such as his wife, his comrades in the Party, and fellow travelers including Cary McWilliams, editor of the Nation. No adversaries are heard from.

Ronald Reagan, for example, would have been instructive. Reagan went head to head with Trumbo and the other leading Hollywood Reds during the fight for communist control of the Screen Actors Guild in 1946. He recalled Trumbo’s defending the Soviet constitution as more democratic than the American one.

Cook tiptoes so cautiously around these aspects of his subject that Trumbo himself has to bring up the question of his Party membership. The biographer swallows whole the screenwriter’s explanation for joining in 1943—that he had long been allied with the Reds ideologically but now foresaw trouble ahead for the Party from anticommunists. Supposedly he signed on as a way of supporting, in their time of need, those alongside whom he had fought the good fight.

It would be no defense to say the compromising material alluded to above was not available in 1977. Trumbo’s defenses of Stalin, and (as unearthed by writer Allan Ryskind) of North Korea during the Korean War—along with the chilling statements about who, in Trumbo’s judgment, deserved to have his civil liberties respected and who didn’t, have been available in Trumbo’s papers donated to the University of Wisconsin repository since the 1960s.

Indeed one gets a sense throughout the film that McNamara knows Trumbo’s politics were hardly democratic. Other characters do call him a “swimming pool Stalinist.” But most such comments come from the hardline Right, whose representatives in the film are presented as the destroyers of civil liberties. McNamara has Trumbo land comfortably (and falsely) in the sensible center by ranging horrible people to his right, while contrasting him, on the other end of the spectrum, with Arlen Hird, a more hardline comrade played by Louis C.K. In response to Hird’s wish that everyone earn the same salary, McNamara has Trumbo reply urbanely that that would make for “a dull world.”

McNamara does allow that Trumbo was one to dismiss political arguments with frothy spin. Criticized by Hird for “talking like a radical while living like a rich guy,” Trumbo hastily improvises by reasoning that “a radical can fight with the purity of Jesus, but a rich man wins with the subtlety of Satan.” “Please shut up,” replies his comrade.

It’s a pity that this is the only moment in the film when a bullshit detector is applied to Trumbo. For, if one accepts that he did know what was really going on in the Soviet Union, he peddled his own brand of it albeit in a witty manner. The rest ofTrumbo lets its hero present to a credulous world, as if it were real, the hollow image of a supposed defender of everyone’s right to be wrong.

Ron Capshaw

Historian Ron Capshaw is a writer in Midlothian, Virginia.

About the Author

 The Crisis of Our Universities Is a Crisis of Left-Liberalism

Delegation and Polarization 

Blackstone's Commentaries on Wife Beating...

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Read 'f' as 's'.    For the Latin, you are on your own.
Nothing about "rule of thumb" in any way, shape, or form.
"Chastisement" allowed in the same manner as over one's servants or children since "he is to answer for her misbehavior" but "the husband was prohibited to use any violence to his wife."

The RIGHTS of PERSONS.
Book I.
Ch. 15.
IN the civil law the hufband and wife are confidered as two diftinct perfons ; and may have feparate eftates, contracts, debts, and injuries ^c : and therefore, in our ecclefiaftical courts, a woman may fue and be fued without her hufband ^d.
BUT, though our law in general confiders man and wife as one perfon, yet there are fone inftances in which the is feparately confidered ; as inferior to him, and acting by his compulfion. And therefore all deeds executed, and acts done, by her, during her converture, are void, or at leaft voidable ; except it be a fine, or the like matter of record, in which cafe fhe muft be folely and fecretly examined, to learn if her act be voluntary ^c. She cannot by will devife lands to her hufband, unlefs under fpecial circumftances ; for at the time of making it fhe is fuppofed to be under his coercion ^f. And in fome felonies, and other inferior crimes, committed by her, through conftraint of her hufband, the law excufes her ^g : but this extends not to treafon or murder.
THE hufband alfo (by the old law) might give his wife moderate correction ^h. For, as he is to anfwer for her mifbehaviour, the law thought it reafonable to intruft him with this power of reftraining her, by domeftic chaftifement, in the fame moderation that a man is allowed to correct his fervants or children ; for whom the mafter or parent is alfo liable in fome cafes to anfwer. But this power of correction was confined within reafonable boundsⁱ ; and the hufband was prohibited to ufe any violence to his wife, aliter quam ad virum, ex caufa regiminis et caftigationis uxoris fuae, licite et rationabiliter pertinet ^k. The civil law gave the hufband the fame, or a larger, authority over his wife ; allowing him, for fome mifdemefnors, flagellis et fuftibus acriter vering him, for fome mifdemefnors, flagellis et fuftibus acriter verberare uxorem ; for others, only modicam caftigationem adbibere ^l.
{FS}

Christina Hoff Sommers is correct.

Is Trolling a Crime, and thus a Defamatory epithet?

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"The Internet has developed a rather unfortunate infection, which is called Trolls. Trolls are unpleasant Internet vigilantes who target anyone who they feel doesn’t fit in with their own personal views on the world, and woe betide you if you actually directly challenge those views.

Trolling is a new term for an old, and very antisocial form of behaviour called harassment, and in civilised societies we have laws preventing one individual from harassing another, or from organising a group to do so.

This is where the Internet steps in and messes things up somewhat. Not only does the net give people anonymity for good reasons, such as hiding from persecution, but it also allows people to hide their identities whilst they cause trouble for others."

Your Logical Fallacy Is...

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https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/false-cause

false cause

You presumed that a real or perceived relationship between things means that one is the cause of the other.

Many people confuse correlation (things happening together or in sequence) for causation (that one thing actually causes the other to happen). Sometimes correlation is coincidental, or it may be attributable to a common cause.

Example: Pointing to a fancy chart, Roger shows how temperatures have been rising over the past few centuries, whilst at the same time the numbers of pirates have been decreasing; thus pirates cool the world and global warming is a hoax.

Fair Dinkum, Crikey

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Waltzing Matilda

by A.J. 'Banjo' Patterson

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong, Under the shade of a coolibah tree, And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled, 'Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me? Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?' And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled, 'Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?' Down came a jumbuck to drink at the billabong: Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee. And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker-bag, 'You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me. Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.' And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker-bag, 'You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me' Up rode a squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred; Down came the troopers, one, two, three: 'Whose' that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker-bag? You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me! Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me. Whose' that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker-bag? You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me!' Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong; 'You'll never catch me alive! said he' And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong, 'You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me! Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me!' And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong, 'You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me!'

Eponyms that lost their Capitals...

Sandwich

The first written usage of the English word appeared in Edward Gibbon's journal, in longhand, referring to "bits of cold meat" as a "Sandwich".^[12] It was named after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, an 18th-century English aristocrat, although he was neither the inventor nor sustainer of the food. It is said that he ordered his valet to bring him meat tucked between two pieces of bread, and because Montagu also happened to be the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, others began to order "the same as Sandwich!"^[6][7] It is said that Lord Sandwich was fond of this form of food because it allowed him to continue playing cards, particularly cribbage, while eating without getting his cards greasy from eating meat with his bare hands.^[6]

The rumour in its familiar form appeared in Pierre-Jean Grosley's Londres (Neichatel, 1770), translated as A Tour to London 1772;^[13] Grosley's impressions had been formed during a year in London in 1765. The sober alternative is provided by Sandwich's biographer, N. A. M. Rodger, who suggests Sandwich's commitments to the navy, to politics and the arts mean the first sandwich was more likely to have been consumed at his desk.

Before being known as sandwiches, the food seems to simply have been known as "bread and meat" or "bread and cheese".^[6]

Etymology of Sandwich

Jar-gone!

OCTOBER 16, 2008, 11:36 AM

Tech Terms to Avoid

In two weeks, I’ll celebrate my eighth anniversary writing this column. And if I do any ruminating during my 15-second celebration, I’ll recognize that one thing still hasn’t changed: there’s still no single technical level of writing that makes everybody happy.

I still get complaints from total newbies, who are bewildered by terms like “smartphone” and “plasma TV.” And I still get bashed by the gearheads, who find the column not nearly technical enough.

I think a lot about the technical level of the column. Over the years, I’ve adopted a number of tricks that are designed to communicate technical points without losing the novices–and one of them is avoiding jargon.

Why tech writers use so much jargon, I don’t know. Maybe it’s self-aggrandizement; they want to lord their knowledge over everybody else. Maybe it’s laziness; they can’t be bothered to fish for a plain-English word. Maybe it’s just habit; they spend all day talking shop with other nerds, so they slip into technospeak when they write for larger audiences.

In any case, I’m making available to all, for the first time, my list of pretentious pet-peeve words to avoid. I used to consider plain-English writing a competitive advantage, so I’ve never leaked this list to potential rivals. But at this point, forget it; any tips that might contribute to clearer writing deserve to be free.

* Content. As in, “Web content.” Ugh. If you mean “Web pages,” say “Web pages.” If you mean “music,” say “music.” Nobody outside the tech industry says “content” when they mean “what’s on your player” or “what’s on your Web site.”

* Device. You know what’s weird? Cellphone companies never actually use the term “cellphone.” They always use the word “device,” as in the wince-inducing sentence, “The user can transfer D.R.M.-protected content to their device.”

Look, I get it: these days, cellphones do more than make phone calls. But you don’t need to abandon the term “cellphone” for that reason; the meaning of “cellphone” has already expanded to accommodate its new functions. If you say “cellphone,” your audience already understands that it means “a gadget that makes calls, gets on the Internet and takes crummy pictures.”

* Dialog. The term “dialog box” is already a problem, since it doesn’t really identify what it is (a message box on the screen, forcing you to answer a question–like how many copies of a printout you want). But unfortunately, there’s absolutely no alternative. And shortening this to “dialog” is definitely a step in the wrong direction.

* Display. “Display” can be a noun (“a display of fireworks”). It can also be a verb that takes a direct object (“He displayed emotion”). It is not, however, a verb without a direct object, except in magazines like PC World: “Shows filmed in high-definition end up displaying in letterbox format.”

Displaying what in letterbox format? Fireworks? Emotions?

The word this writer was looking for is “appearing.”

* D.R.M. What’s so nauseating about this term is that it started out as a euphemism. It means copy protection, which most people don’t like on their software, music files or videos. So with doublespeak like “digital rights management,” the companies who favor copy protection think they’re putting a positive spin on the concept. And by using “D.R.M.” instead of “copy protection,” we’re playing into their sad little manipulation.

Sorry, Charlie. It’s still copy protection, and we should call a spade a spade.

* Enable. Who on earth says, “Enable the GPS function”? Only user-manual writers and computer-book authors. Say “Turn on GPS” instead.

* E-mail client. Originally, someone coined “client” to distinguish your computer’s e-mail program from the computer that dishes it out (the server). But when you’re not explicitly trying to make that differentiation, just say “e-mail program.” The only people with e-mail clients are the lawyers who represent Outlook and Gmail.

* Functionality. WOW, do I despise this pretentious word. Five syllables–ooh, what a knowledgeable person you must be!

It means “feature.” Say “feature.”

* LCD. What I hate about this word is that it doesn’t say what it is (“the screen”). And even if you spell out what it means in parentheses, you still haven’t told readers what the heck you’re talking about. (“Liquid crystal display? Ohhh, so THAT’S what it means.”)

* P.D.A. Here’s another ridiculous term–ridiculous because it’s not self-explanatory. “Personal digital assistant?” Give me a break. It’s a palmtop.

* Price point. What are you, paid by the word? “Price” alone does the job.

* URL. This one’s common, but I still can’t stand it. “Uniform Resource Locator”? Oh, thank you–that helps. NOT!

I use “Web address.” Same number of syllables, and crystal-clear.

* RAM. Here again, there’s a plain-English word that does the same job without the intimidation: memory. That’s a word that says what it means.

* S.M.S. The ultimate pointless term. “Text message” is the same number of syllables, and also says what it is. “SMS” doesn’t do anyone any good–but it does baffle the non-technical.

* Support. I don’t mean “support” as in “tech support,” although even that term is a corporate creepy cop-out (it means “help line”). No, I mean the verb, as in, “The laptop supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.”

In no other corner of modern discourse is “support” used that way. I use “has,” “offers” or “works with.”

* USB. I use this term in my writing, but only reluctantly; there simply isn’t any other term that does the job. But it’s a hateful term–even knowing that it stands for “Universal Serial Bus” doesn’t begin to help you understand what it is. Let’s have more clever, self-descriptive names for jacks, like FireWire or (for Apple’s wireless) AirPort.

* User. There are two industries that refer to their customers as “users” –technology and illegal drugs.

When you’re writing about computers, there’s almost never a sentence where you couldn’t substitute “you” or, worst case, “the customer” as the noun and thereby improve the sentence. Instead of saying, “The user can, at his or her option, elect to remove this functionality,” say, “You can turn this feature off.” It’s not only clearer, but it gets you out of the awkward “his or her” bit.

* Wi-Fi. I use this one occasionally, but only with gritted teeth.

It’s just not a good term. It doesn’t say what it means. People think it stands for “wireless fidelity,” but the Wi-Fi Alliance, which hired a branding firm to create it, says it doesn’t stand for anything.

I use the term “wireless hot spot” when I can, but only because there’s no more comprehensible alternative. (“Bluetooth” doesn’t immediately convey that technology’s function. But at least it’s better than “Wi-Fi.” Once you hear that it’s named for a Danish king who brought together warring factions, you never forget its meaning.)

And there you have it: Pogue’s Anti-Jargon Dictionary. You’re free to use it to launch your own writing careers, with my compliments!

P.S.–Set your TiVo! This Sunday, October 19, I’ll report on the Encyclopedia of Life on “CBS News Sunday Morning.” (The Encyclopedia of Life, eol.org, is an ambitious international “moon shot” of a project. It will attempt to catalog and describe every single one of the Earth’s 1.8 million known species in one place, drawing on both experts and ordinary citizens to fill in the blanks.)

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