Brown Campaign Apologizes to Whitman Over Slur

New York Times

A political aide to Jerry Brown, the Democratic candidate for governor in California was heard suggesting that  the Republican candidate Meg Whitman is “a whore.”

The Whitman campaign expressed its outrage.

 

And so do I.  With a MBA from Harvard, Meg Whitman would be a madam.   A Harvard pimp would know exactly where to put Adam Smith’s invisible hand.  Just imagine the pro-active, synergized win-win managerial cliches that Madam Whitman would bring to the brothel.  For the sadists and masochists, there would be a frequent flayer program.  (With 25,000 welts, you are upgraded to a Gucci face mask.)  Since Ms. Whitman would register her business as a medical research center–Whorvard– the client’s investments would be tax-deductible.

Of course, the workers (alias stakeholders, teammates, add your favorite HR gibberish) would have to be downsized, and I don’t mean replacing Ukrainians with Thais.  Instead of wasting money on forged green cards and penicillin, the MBA brothel would replace those superfluous humans with cheaper and far more compliant plastic dolls: the Whitman Vamplers.  All will have pre-recorded cassettes to exclaim the client’s manhood and unparalleled stamina.  Custom recordings can also accommodate fetishes and political preferences.  (Senator David Vitter likes his dolls to talk dirty about Charles Darwin.)  In short, the Whitman vamplers would be everything a client would want in a second wife. 

And Meg Whitman offers the same managerial efficiency to government.  What MBAs would do to a brothel, she’ll do to California.

p.s.  Let’s not forget the historic significance of this day:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2007/10/09/leif-ericson-day/

Last night the family and friends celebrated my wife’s birthday at a popular restaurant, part of the California chain not founded by Father Serra.  (Mind you, think of how well he might have done offering pepperoni and avocado communion wafers!)  At the bottom of the check was the now all too familiar enticement:  “Tell us about your experience for a chance to win $500 in our weekly cash drawing.”  Go to a drugstore for coughdrops and your receipt will have a similar survey request.  I will admit that I have occasionally gone online to fill out these surveys.  It is my way of thanking some anonymous MBA for doing nothing more harmful than crafting a ridiculous questionnaire.

So what did I divulge to the marketing department of “California Pizza Kitchen”.  Here are some of the questions–at least how I remember them.

Why are you here?

• 1.  I like the food. 
• 2.  There’s got to be something on the menu to please my picky nephew, although he then will waste half of the food.
• 3.  To atone in this life for the undeserved success in my previous incarnation.  (Was I Louis XV or James Dean?)

Would you notice if your server had a hideous skin disease?

• 1.  Yes.
• 2.  No.
• 3.  I might have mistaken the eczema flakes for croutons.

Name your three favorite signatories of the Treaty of Westphalia.

Are you still here?

• 1.  I was a history major and a Hapsburg junkie.
• 2.  I made up the names of the three signatories, as if a second-rate MBA like you would know the difference. 
• 3.  For the chance at $500, I went to Wikipedia for the answers.  It says the Treaty of Westphalia established standards for baked ham.

Do you really believe that we are giving away $500?

• 1.  Yes, but I am obviously an idiot.
• 2.  Of course not, but my boss just passed by and I didn’t want to be caught looking at a porn site.
• 3.  It’s me, Scott from your Marketing class at Northwestern.  Hope you don’t mind but but I am plagiarizing this survey for Burger King.

October 6, 1891:  The proper thing to do

Charles Parnell (1846-1891), the leader of the Irish representatives in Parliament, was a veritable kingmaker. Shifting his bloc to the Tories or the Liberals, he could determine who would be Prime Minister. However, Parnell was not quite so adroit in his personal affairs. A Captain O’Shea noticed that his wife’s younger children seemed to resemble Mr. Parnell, and the indignant husband began divorce proceedings. Mr. Parnell’s name was conspicuous in the accusations.

One can’t be monogamous with someone else’s wife.  Of course, Parnell attempted to do the “proper thing” but a certain Church prominent in Ireland does not approve of divorce. He only outraged the Church further when he married his divorced mistress. From pulpits and in the Irish press, Parnell was condemned.  With his status as a pariah, he was abandoned by the Irish members of Parliament. Under the strain, Parnell died soon after of a heart attack.  It was on this day in 1891.

“The Uncrowned King of Ireland“, Parnell had been a proponent of Home Rule for this country. He alone seemed capable of controlling the sectarian rifts between the Ulster and Catholic Irish members of Parliament. Prime Minister Gladstone needed that solid Irish bloc to support his bill for Irish Home Rule. Without Parnell’s leadership, the Ulster members joined with the Tories and blocked the passage of Home Rule. The majority of Ireland’s population would remain unwelcome guests in their own country.  The best chance for a peaceful integration of Ireland into the United Kingdoms was lost, and the consequence was to be rebellion and civil war.

Parnell might have been consoled to know that he would be portrayed by Clark Gable in a Hollywood saga.  Unfortunately, it also was Gable’s worst role.

October 4, 1957:  Those Filthy Communists Start the Space Race

What was a Sputnik?  On October 4, 1957, the news of a Soviet satellite eclipsed the premiere of “Leave It to Beaver.”  Didn’t the Cleaver Family realize that it now was in peril?  (Eddie Haskell was too evil to die.)  Our American sense of complacency was shattered.  Of course, we could have blamed Hollywood for the Communist triumph.  After all, in the early Fifties we had blacklisted Larry Parks and Howard DaSilva for losing  China to the Reds?  With Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, Hollywood even had a new crop of New York Jews to scapegoat….

Strangely enough, however, the country remained surprisingly sedate.  Yes, considering that Soviet missiles probably were targeted at every grade school, we now would have a national policy of air raid drills.  Fortunately, hiding under a desk or lining up against a wall of metal lockers are equally effective safeguards against a 8000 degree thermonuclear blast.  And now the American dream house would include a fallout shelter.

And some of the other reactions were actually useful.  Public schools now were encouraged to teach science.  If the Soviets were endoctrinating their little Red Pioneers with chemistry and physics, America’s children could no longer afford to be blithely ignorant.  “Knowledge is power!” said Frank Bacon (Francis doesn’t sound sufficiently American), and that would be our national policy.  Naturally, we weren’t going to forfeit the skies to the Commies; we would build satellites, missiles and rockets too.  We would race them to the Moon, and may the best socio-economic system win!

True, the Space Race didn’t turn out to be as fantastic as Stanley Kubrick imagined, but it was pretty cool.  The youngsters will just have to take our word for it.

October 1, 1891:  Leland Stanford Opens a Sober Version of Dartmouth

And now for today’s lesson in linguistics…

After an edifying summer working as an intern at my wife’s place of employment, the college student refrained from killing anyone. On the contrary, he actually wrote thank-you notes and my wife received one. (His script was legible, his writing grammatical, and his prose articulate–it is hard to believe that he was born within the last 30 years.) If you were not amazed by his anachronistic literacy and courtesy, you had to be impressed by his stationery–embossed with the name and logo of his college: Stanford.

The logo included the school motto: “Die Luft der Freiheit Weht.” I knew that Stanford was conservative but this was intimidating. Being a prurient intellectual, I had to learn what that Teutonism meant. The translation is “the wind of freedom blows.” Since it is German, it could be an expletive.

My next question was “Who first said it?” The answer is Ulrich von Hutten–a 16th century poet who now is so obscure that he really was a $2000 question on Jeopardy. Hutten’s quote was a reference to the Reformation. Ironically, Hutten said it in Latin: “videtis illam spirare libertais aurum.” The Latin was good enough for Hutten–and everyone else for 350 years, but then a Stanford president translated it into his linguistic specialty–German–and made it the school motto.

In 1891, German seemed a respectable if unorthodox choice for a school motto. However time-honored, Latin was effete and archaic; German was the language of modern science and philosophy. On the other hand, Caligula did not sink the Lusitania. Yes, Julius Caesar had invaded Belgium and France, but he did not violate any treaties in doing so. So in 1917, Stanford claimed that it did not have an official school motto; that German garble was just a 26-year-long misimpression.

(Actually, I am surprised that Stanford did not simply claim that “Die Luft der…” is not German but Northern Swiss.)

In 1923, Stanford resumed using that misimpression as its school motto. Of course, 18 years later the school again had to explain its motto. This time it did not deny some acquaintance with the phrase. Yes, it was German–but it was good German. Ulrich von Hutten had never been a Nazi; that certainly was an advantage of dying in 1523. (And he died of syphilis–which is quite a democratic disease.) So anyone who criticized Stanford’s school motto was siding with the Germans!

Yes, you can see why Stanford is the Republican think tank.

p.s.  And have some more history:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/10/01/chicken-a-la-shah/

Stonehenge skeleton came from Mediterranean

AP
LONDON — A wealthy young teenager buried near Britain’s mysterious Stonehenge monument came from the Mediterranean hundreds of miles away, scientists said Wednesday, proof of the site’s importance as a travel destination in prehistoric times.

The teen — dubbed “The Boy with the Amber Necklace” because he was unearthed with a cluster of amber beads around his neck — is one of several sets of foreign remains found around the ancient ring of imposing stones, whose exact purpose remains unknown.

The British Geological Survey’s Jane Evans said that the find, radiocarbon dated to 1,550 B.C., “highlights the diversity of people who came to Stonehenge from across Europe,” a statement backed by Bournemouth University’s Timothy Darvill, a Stonehenge scholar uninvolved with the discovery.

Historians believe that this is the earliest example of an over-the-top bar mitzvah.  “Imagine renting out Stonehenge. Someone made a fortune in goat futures.  Of course,  renting the Sphinx would have been even classier but you know how the Egyptians and Jews get along.”  

But the identity of the body raised a serious question.  “If you use the Bible as a Dun & Bradstreet, there is really only one family that could have splurged like this. So I’m afraid the teenage corpse is Isaac.  It figures.  The kid just escapes being sacrificed, and then he overdoses anyway.”

The Tea Party says that it simply wants to restore our founding principles.   Of course, it would have preferred writing them….

Our Declaration of Independence

When in the course of American events, we find it necessary to rebel against foreigners, we’re gonna do it.  Of course, we have our reasons, not that it is anyone’s business.  That’s the whole point of this.

But we do have a few things to get off our chests.

First, how can we be subjects of the King of England if he is not even English.  The guy is a German.  Sure, George III claims that his great-great-great grandmother was 3/8ths British.  Even if you believe that, that makes him 3/256ths of  one of us.  Would that entitle him to a green card, let alone the throne?  And did George von Hanover even have the basic decency to marry an Englishwoman. No, his frau is Charlotte von Mecklenburg-Strelitz?  The Kraut is just rubbing it in.  So he is King of England?  Let’s see his birth certificate.

Next.  Maybe we should have revolted sooner but we really resent this new Gregorian calendar.  It is supposed to be “oh so” scientific and accurate, and all the fancy nations in Europe are using it.  Right, we want to be just like France.  So England forced us to adopt it in 1752 and we lost 11 days.  Our lives were shortened!  And what’s to stop England from cutting a month off of  the next calendar.  Maybe February doesn’t meet the approval of  the scientific elitists?  It may be their science, but it is our time and we will keep it at our own pace. 

Finally, why did there have to be 13 colonies?  That is a pretty Satanic thing for England to do.  And if the jinx weren’t bad enough, the names of the colonies are humiliating.  What grown man wants to be called a Virginian?  Carolinian, Marylander and Connecticutie are just as suggestive.  But at least you can pronounce them.  Do you say Massachusettsian or Massachusettite?  Well, in our America, state names will be prim, neuter and humorless. 

So, despite the breakdown of Mr. Adams, the defection of General Washington and the suicide of Mr. Jefferson,  we of the Tea Party Convention pledge our lives, our sacred honor as well as the generous donations of Versailles Reality and Triangle Trade.

September 24, 1143:  Pope Innocent II Dies and Henceforth Lives Up To His Name

At one time, picking a Pope was simple.  The congregation convened in a catacomb and elected whoever wanted his name on the top of the to-be martyred list.  In the fourth century Constantine at least prolonged the Pope’s lifespan if not his  job security.  Until the 8th century, the Pope was a third-string bureaucrat subject to the whims of Constantinople; some Popes “retired” to Byzantine prisons–although they probably were more comfortable than anything still in standing in Rome.  But Pepin the Short, his boy Charlie, and a surprisingly efficient French army improved the status of the Papacy, making the Pope the biggest landholder in Rome.

And with that extra incentive, every robber baron in the vicinity now wanted to be Pope.  A Pope was chosen by the people of Rome; in other words, who ever had the toughest mob.  Criminal gangs were establishing dynasties of Popes.  In response to the chronic scandal, German Emperors would periodically march into Rome, oust the Italian scoundrel and replace him with a (surprise) German bureaucrat who, by no coincidence, was the Emperor’s relative.  Of course,when the German Army left, the ousted Italian scoundrel usually returned and drove out his German replacement.  This frequently left the Church with two Popes.

In the mid-11th century, with a German army in the vicinity, the reformers in Church established new rules for the election of the Pope.  The Pontiff would no longer be the choice of the Roman gangs but elected by a group of Church prelates, establishing specifically for this responsibility.  They would be known as Cardinals.  In the original rules, the Cardinals’ choice would require the approval of the Holy Roman Emperor.  (Remember that nearby German army; as soon as it left, that specific rule was forgotten.)  Oh, yes, the Pope had to be dead for three days before the Cardinals could elect his successor.

But in 1130, the papal election did not quite observe that waiting period.  It had been obvious that Pope Honorius II was dying.  It was also obvious that the majority of Cardinals would elect the rich, charming, reputable Pier Pierleoni the next Pope.  However, his chief rival Gregorio Papareschi had a very effective campaign strategy.  His allies kidnapped the dying Pope.  Since they would be the first to know when Honorius became the late Pope, the Papareschi Party would also be the first to have a Papal election.  They did, and guess who won?  Papareschi now was, however ironically, Pope Innocent II.

Of course, Pierleoni and his allies did not recognize Papareschi’s usurpation.  They had their own Papal election and Pierleoni became, at least to a majority of the Cardinals, Pope Anacletus II.  (Pierleoni evidently did not use a focus group for that name.)  Rome’s populace sided with Pope Anacletus, and Innocent was driven from the city.  In fact, he left Italy, going first to France to plead his cause with the most powerful man in the realm.

Bernard of Clairvaux would have had a deceivingly simple resume:  Oh, he was just a simple monk.  In fact, he was the type of person who would join a committee and within 30 minutes be running it.    And Bernard liked to join lots of committees, especially royal counsels and church councils.  Mesmerizing and manipulating, Bernard ran France and much of the Church.  He definitely was the man whom Innocent had to win over.

And Innocent had one very persuasive argument.  Pierleoni was half-Jewish.  True, the Pierleonis were not only nouveau riche but nouveau Christian.  Grandpa had been the most successful usurer in Rome; even the Popes owed him.  Pope Leo IX (really Bruno von Eguisheim-Dagsburg, cousin of Emperor Conrad II)  coaxed his favorite creditor into becoming a Christian noble.  Now, the grandson of the usurer was claiming to be Pope.  Bernard of Clairvaux wouldn’t stand for that:  “It is an injury to Christ that the offspring of a Jew should have seized for himself the throne of St. Peter.”

Of course, Christ was the offspring of a Jew and so was St. Peter,  but you didn’t try contradicting Bernard with logic.  Pierre Abelard had and was condemned for heresy.  Bernard declared his support for Pope Innocent, which then determined the decisions of French and German church councils, and their respective monarchs went along.  The German Emperor led an army into Italy in 1132 (a now familiar itinerary) to establish Innocent in Rome.  Anacletus was relegated to the quaint category of Anti-Pope, but he was still more popular in Rome than Innocent.  The Pope was only safe there in the company of a German garrison.  In 1139, Innocent did become the uncontested Pope by outliving Anacletus.

On this day in 1143, Innocent II died.  He was never made a saint…but Bernard of Clairvaux was.

September 23, 63 B.C.:  Happy Birthday Octavius.

The Emperor Augustus commands our respect.  His teenage self was more deserving of a good slap.  You could imagine this short, puny, overbearing 18 year-old at the University of Chicago but not the inheritor of the Roman Empire.  Yet, that was exactly what the teenager demanded when he showed up, unannounced, at the home of Marc Antony in May, 44 B.C.

In the two months since the murder of Julius Caesar, Antony had demonstrated genuine brilliance as a politician.  The very fact that he was alive is proof.  On the Ides of March,  Caesar’s family, friends and partisans were also at the mercy of the conspirators–the self-proclaimed Liberatores.   Any resistance or the least misstep would have led to a purge, with Antony’s name on the top of the list.

The majority in the Roman Senate had not been involved in the assassination, but it certainly seemed acquiescent.  The august patricians were a pliant lot, as obliging to the Liberatores as they had been to Caesar.  The Liberatores demanded that Caesar be declared a tyrant whose murder was a patriotic and justifiable act.  Most of Caesar’s senatorial allies were understandably absent from the Senate, but Marc Antony had not fled or was even quiet.  He did not question the justification for Caesar’s death but he did raise the most interesting technical objection to declaring Caesar a tyrant.

If Caesar were indeed a tyrant, then all his laws and his actions were invalid.  That would include every appointment which Caesar had made.  Unfortunately, Antony noted, many of the Senators and their relatives were filling those posts as of that moment.  It would be a administrative nightmare and a personal tragedy if so many people were immediately stripped of their honorable and often very lucrative posts.

Now the question before the Senators was not liberty versus tyranny, but liberty versus their families’ net worth.  Yet, the Senate hoped to avert a civil war and so, until he was ready, did Marc Antony.  He offered this compromise:  Caesar was no tyrant but his murderers were fully pardoned.  Furthermore, their leaders were to be appointed to important posts far from Rome.  Brutus and Cassius may have realized that they were tactfully exiled, but in control of the rich provinces of the East they could raise an army to challenge their enemies in Rome.  Antony knew that as well, but he was playing for time.  With friends in Gallia and Iberia and being in Italia, he could raise an army, too.

As the executor of Caesar’s will, he began spending large sums on the recruitment of friendly legions.  Unfortunately, the chief heir to that will, Caesar’s great-nephew Octavius did not appreciate the expenditures.  Furthermore, he objected to the compromises with Caesar’s murderers.  Octavian, now styling himself as Caesar, showed up at Antony’s home and demanded an explanation.  The obnoxious youngster was kept waiting, but Antony eventually saw him.

According to the historian Appian, Antony offered two answers to young Caesar’s objections.   The first was a detailed account of the political situation that faced Antony and Caesar’s family and friends, and how his compromises and expenses were protecting them until the day that they could exact their revenge.  Antony’s second explanation was more personal: he really didn’t need to explain his actions to a presumptuous brat, so Octavius should never bother him again.

Well, as we know, Octavius did.  But if Antony dismissed the annoying kid, the Roman Senate adopted him.  The Senators saw in him a rival claimant to the Caesar faction, someone to undermine the growing power of Marc Antony.  Young Caesar was a senator at 19, and a general with consular powers when he was 20. Of course, the Senators just knew that they could control him.  As Cicero said of Octavius, “He is an admirable youth who should be praised and ignored.”

After all, he was just a short, puny, overbearing kid.