Who wants the body of Richard III?  In death as in life, there would be more of a demand for Charles II.  His skeleton may yet have some aphrodisiac powers, and some Chinese billionaires might bid for that “enhancement.”  Poor scoliotic Richard is no one’s idea of a dietary supplement.  So, without such marketing allure, the site of Richard’s grave is largely a matter of etiquette.

The obvious answer might also be the most tactless one:  Westminster Abbey.  The Plantagenet family already occupies a number of sepulchres there; given that precedence–and the fact that he no longer takes up much room–Richard could be stuffed in some nook.  If Richard has to posthumously become an Anglican, it is only a formality.  He probably already is a Mormon.  No, the problem for Westminster Abbey would be the likely disapproval of its most prominent parishioner.

Although Mrs. Mountbatten seems an affable soul, she might not appreciate being reminded that she is from the bastard branch of the Lancasters.   Her ancestor Henry VII was certainly mindful of his dubious pedigree; to justify his seizure of the English throne, the new king’s first act was to vilify the late Yorkist king.  In a bill presented to Parliament, Richard was condemned for tyranny and usurpation.  The legislation also set the beginning of Henry’s reign to the day prior to the battle of Bosworth Field.  Through that remarkable casuistry, Richard became the rebel and Henry the rightful sovereign.   Parliament, either intimidated or with a delightful sense of irony, passed the bill.  The vilification of Richard became a Tudor tradition.  If you were an ambitious young bureaucrat (Thomas More) or a writer looking for patronage (a Mr. Shakespeare) just concoct some new monstrosities about Richard, and you will be handsomely rewarded.  So Richard became the diabolical hunchback.

Obviously, such a fiend would never belong in hallowed ground; and certainly not the most fashionable hallowed ground in Britain.  The idea of Richard in Westminster Abbey would be more than a burial; it would be his rehabilitation.  I can’t quite see the Queen admitting “We Tudors were such liars.”  No, Westminster Abbey is unavailable.

So where will Richard be interred?  Since the body was found in Leicester, the city has a legal claim and has announced its intention to bury him there.  But there is some sentiment and an email petition to have “this sun of York” buried in that city; however York seems reluctant to acquire the corpse, the media and the tourists.  (The town is already cashing in on “Downton Abbey”.)

And I can think of one place in London that would be an appropriate and appreciative site for Richard.  Give him an attractive urn and a good seat at the National Theater.

According to the ever-whimsical Jewish calendar, this year Purim will be in late February.  (I am waiting for our holiday to coincide with Cinco de Mayo.)

For our new readers as well our forgetful ones, here is what I wrote two years ago…

My Latest Attempt at a Pulitzer

Now back to the present tense.  Call it typecasting, but once again I will be portraying the villainous Haman.  I also offered to play the hero Mordechai.  As I explained to our Cantor, I envisioned a Gustav Mahler Purim, where our main character is schizophrenic with self-loathing.  If only he could massacre his Jewish identity….To the Cantor’s credit, she dissuaded the Sunday school principal from calling the police.  But the principal (Cromwell with an Isro) did have the final word in choosing this year’s skit.  Our Megillah will have a Disney theme.

I had to wonder which Disney character would make the best villain.  Ironically, most of the villains during the Golden Age of Uncle Walt were women:  the Wicked Queen, the Wicked Stepmother, the Evil Fairy, Cruella De Vil, and you’ve heard the rumors about Minnie Mouse.  (Think how Mickey got that voice!)

About 15 seconds later, I knew the answer.  There was a Disney character, an older man who seemed warm and avuncular; yet, beneath that endearing facade was a hard-drinking, womanizing bigot.  Think of a Mel Gibson who had yet to be caught.  Yes, this is the Haman I would love to play, and I would have him sing:

I‘m the paragon of film purity.

I make great cartoons and dumb comedies.

While I ply wholesome style, I’m a racist reptile.

I’ve a small mind after all.

chorus:  I’ve a small mind after all, I’ve a small mind after all, etc., etc…ad nauseum.

I can kill Ol’ Yeller and blame the Jews.

Whether rabies or rabbis  ‘s’a point of view.

This is my little reich, where we don’t employ kikes.

I’ve a small mind after all.

So, do you think this will get past the Sunday School principal…or the Disney estate?

Experts find remains of England’s King Richard III

AP

Mon Feb 4,

He was king of England, but for centuries he lay without shroud or coffin in an unknown grave, and his name became a byword for villainy.

But on Monday, scientists announced they had rescued the remains of Richard III from anonymity — and the monarch’s fans hope a revival of his reputation will soon follow.

In a dramatically orchestrated news conference, a team of archaeologists, geneticists, genealogists and other scientists from the University of Leicester announced that tests had proved what they had scarcely dared to hope — a scarred and broken skeleton unearthed under a drab municipal parking lot was that of the 15th-century king, the last English monarch to die in battle.

Lead archaeologist Richard Butler said that a battery of tests proved “beyond reasonable doubt” that the remains were the king’s.

Buckingham Palace:  When informed of the identification of Richard III, Prince Harry said, “Huh?”

Prince Philip, however, did have a better idea of Richard.  “Oh, bloody Hell.  Cement, you say. I’d rather be under a polo field.  He really was more Froggie, you know.  Plant-a-genet… What a French way to say ‘Straw.’  Cement, so improper.  Sounds almost American, although they would have had him in a car boot.  I suppose that there now will be some ceremony.  One of us will have to attend, but I am certainly not going to Leicester.  Waving, nodding, speeches.  Richard’s not missing much.  Royalty’s just not what it used to be.  Of course, he had his share of bad press.  Mind you, I can think of a few princes I wish I had strangled.”

Washington D.C.:  Denouncing the death of Richard III as another failure of the Obama administration, House Republicans demanded hearings and possible impeachment.  Speaker John Boehner indignantly asked,  “Why did this administration wait 500 years to tell the American people, and why would you trying tell them in iambic pentameter?  And why would you begin this collection of policy failures with ‘Now is the winter of our discontent…’  This is not the time to discuss global warming.”

The similarity between February and febrile is not just my feverish imagination.  In the old Roman calendar Februarius was the last month of the year, and it seemed an appropriate time to atone for the previous 11 months.  The name “Februarius” is derived from the Latin word “februare”–to purify.  Of course the Gods would expect payment for their favor–and mere vows of future virtue would not impress or convince a Roman deity.  No, the repentant were obliged to sacrifice animals.

But the dead oxen and sheep were not left to rot on the altar.  Very few religions encourage cholera.  No, with all appropriate theatrics, the sacrificed animals were burned and so presumably were the sins of the penitents. The purification required fire, and the name February referred to the burning, “fovere.”

We still have a February, although it is generally dismissed as a runt nuisance.  And we still refer to fever and febrile; now, however, when we are the burning sacrifice, we don’t feel holier for it.

Judging from travel posters and movies, you would think the Eiffel Tower was built expressly as a backdrop for romance.  Yet, when the Tower was constructed in the 1880s, it was an act of defiance.  The world’s tallest building, composed of an intricate lattice of wrought iron, certainly refuted both the laws of gravity and the conventions of beauty.  But more than that, the Eiffel Tower would proclaim to the world that France was not to be dismissed as a declining power.  If other countries now had greater armies or more extensive empires, France remained the cultural center of Europe.

Yet a decade earlier France was in ruins.  In 1870, a French diplomat and a Prussian dignitary had an argument.  The Prussian Crown demanded an apology, the French government refused, and the consequence was the Franco-Prussian War.  France thought it would teach Prussia a lesson, but it was Prussia that had done all the studying.  The German army was ready for war, the French simply for a parade.   Within two months, the French army had been trapped and captured.  Paris was besieged, enduring four months of bombardment and starvation before it surrendered.   By the time the French asked for an armistice, they had lost 138,000 men; the German losses were 28,000 dead.

The relative ease of its victories did not make Prussia more magnanimous.  Otto von Bismarck was never that affable.  Nein, France was to be humiliated.  The French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine were annexed by the German state.  France was further obliged to pay an indemnity–in gold–that was intended to cripple her economy; and until that indemnity was paid, German troops would occupy Northern France.  Here, at least, the Germans underestimated France;  the French raised the money in less than three years.  (The money was borrowed from a well-known banking family; but 3 percent interest to the Rothschilds was a bargain compared to the room and board for the German garrisons.)

The Rothschilds might have seemed reckless at the time.  Throughout the 1870s, the French Republic was always on the verge of a collapse or a coup.  A majority of the deputies of the National Assembly actually favored the restoration of  the monarchy.  The unlikely savior of the Republic was the Bourbon heir to the throne.  The cantankerous Comte de Chambord, the grandson of the Charles X, refused any constitution to constrain his divine right to rule.  Even the Royalist deputies were not that nostalgic for the 17th century.  So the Republic survived, if only for lack of a tolerable alternative.

And that survival was to be celebrated.  France would host a World’s Fair in 1889, for the 100th anniversary of the French Republic.   There was a certain Gallic gall in that choice of a theme.  Most of Europe abhorred the idea of the French Revolution; it conjured images of the guillotine and memories of Napoleon. In fact, Tsarist Russia refused any official recognition of this Jacobin commemoration.  So the Russian pavilion would be “unofficial”; there could be no Imperial insignia but the city seals of Moscow and Kiev would be permitted. (The Russians always were good at choreography.)

Yet, a World’s Fair in Paris had an undeniable allure; commerce and entertainment would take precedence over politics.  But such an Exposition would require years of  preparation and bold planning.  In 1884, a government commission announced a competition to create a monument that would represent the spirit of the World Fair.  The challenge certainly piqued Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923), France’s greatest engineer.  His bridges spanned rivers in Bolivia, Hungary and Indo-China.  He was the engineering consultant to the governments of Russia and Japan.  The Statute of Liberty, France’s gift to a fellow republic, was constructed on a framework by Eiffel.  Given his worldwide commitments, Eiffel employed a staff  of engineers, architects and draftsmen.  It was one of his subordinates, an engineer named Maurice Koechlin, who first sketched a design of a most unique tower.

There would be four giant columns of wrought iron, a strong but malleable metal.  The columns would taper until, some 600 feet above ground, they would form one tower that would rise another 300 feet.   Their lattice work structure would limit wind resistance, so it would be possible for the tower to reach an unprecedented height of 300 meters– 984 feet.  That would be twice as high as the Washington Monument, then the world’s tallest building.  Eiffel recognized the brilliance of Koechlin’s proposal, and he applied the resources of his company into turning a sketch into a blueprint.  Under Eiffel’s supervision, forty draftsmen worked on a full-scale design of the tower.  There were to be 18,000 iron girders, beams and joists, each individually designed with a mathematical precision.  Any deviation or miscalculation would threaten the structure.  The blueprints took up 5,000 sheets of drawing paper.

More than 100 designs were presented for the competition, but it was no contest.  On May 12, 1886 the Exposition Committee approved of Eiffel’s proposal.  The Tower would be built on the Champs de Mars and serve as the gateway to the Exposition.  Construction began on January 22, 1887.  The foundations were laid 51 feet underground; that required the excavation of one million cubic feet of soil.  By June the columns began to rise.  Three hundred workers assembled the iron pieces in accordance with the meticulous plans.  But the incomplete structure did not look like a masterpiece.  In an open letter to the Exposition Committee some of France’s leading artists and writers–including Guy de Maupassant and Charles Gounod–denounced the Tower:

“We come, writers, painters, sculptors, architects, passionate lovers of the beauty of Paris — a beauty until now unspoiled — to protest with all our might, with all our outrage, in the name of slighted French taste, in the name of threatened French art and history, against the erection, in the heart of our capital, of the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower…

Listen to our plea! Imagine now a ridiculous tall tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black factory smokestack, crushing with its barbaric mass Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the dome of Les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all our humiliated monuments, all our dwarfed architecture, which will be annihilated by Eiffel’s hideous fantasy. For twenty years, over the city of Paris still vibrant with the genius of so many centuries, we shall see, spreading out like a blot of ink, the shadow of this disgusting column of bolted tin.”

That, at least, was the polite criticism.  The more vehement accusation was that the Tower looked Jewish.  The Tower does not seem particularly circumcised, but its design evidently was exotic, foreign, sinister…You know where the synonyms are leading.  Of course, Gustave Eiffel himself was incriminated; he did have a German grandfather.  That grandfather was a Christian; most Germans were.  If you counted on your fingers all the Jews on the Prussian General Staff and in the Imperial Court…

But French conservatives would insist that this was a bar mitzvah.

Yet the hideous Jewish spiderweb continued its construction, and was completed ahead of schedule and under budget.  No doubt, that was further proof of its alien nature.   The World’s Fair opened on May 6th, and the Eiffel Tower was the gateway to 61,722 exhibits and shows.  The visitor could see replicas of the Bastille, Javanese villages, and an Egyptian marketplace–with belly dancers .  From America, there was Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show; the sharpshooting Annie Oakley was the crowd favorite.  Reflecting the latest advances in technology, the Fair was lit by electricity.  With that added illumination, the Eiffel Tower stood as distinct in the night as it did in the day.  Although the Exposition ended in October, tourists still came to see the world’s tallest building.  In its first year, the Tower sold 1.9 million admissions.  Gustave Eiffel made back all his investment in five months.

Today, more than 250 million visitors have ascended the Eiffel Tower, and it is one of the world’s most beloved landmarks.  French conservatives now are reconciled to it, and they did have the solace of the Dreyfus Affair and the Vichy Regime.

It is only a matter of time before “The Forsyte Saga” is made into a two-hour action epic set in outer space.  (Princess Irene is unhappily married to Soames Vader and runs off with his cousin Jolyon Vader.)  I recently saw “Moll Flanders” relocated to the Red Neck South.  Yes, that does seem like a clever idea;  but that was the limit of its wit.  The updated “Jolene” kept all the hapless heroine’s sexual misadventures but none of Dafoe’s bawdiness.  It was more anthropological than fun.  I gave up after 20 minutes, although that was enough for two nude scenes by Jessica Chastain.  (This film is recommended for teenage boys.)

So you can imagine my dread in viewing “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.”  How do you condense the complexities of a John Le Carre espionage novel into two hours?  Worse, now that the Cold War is ancient history, how do you edify an audience that watched “Lincoln” thinking the Civil War was fought against the Germans.  (That was only true in Wisconsin.)  Some 30 years ago, film makers considered the challenge of “Tinker, Tailor…” and resigned themselves into producing a six hour mini-series.  It starred Alec Guinness as the sly, subtle George Smiley.

Now, the story has been remade as a two-hour movie with Gary Oldman as the understated hero.  (I must compliment any Oldman performance where he doesn’t seem like Sid Vicious.)  Let’s see if I can describe the plot.  There is a Soviet double-agent in one of the top positions of British intelligence, and George Smiley has to find him.  No, don’t congratulate me for that succinct explanation; I only know it because I saw the six-hour miniseries.  There are four suspects; of course, the traitor turns out to be the only one who is likable.  Even his rationale for treason is somewhat endearing:  he didn’t think that he was betraying Britain but rather annoying America.

Of course, we annoying Americans might not appreciate that explanation, so the two-hour film chose to condense the answer from “those appalling Yanks”  into more of an existential shrug.  Somebody has to be a traitor; why not me.  That may be tactful but not satisfactory.  So I am offering an alternate script.

Smiley:  I do have a slight question.

Traitor (who also is the handsomest of the four suspects–but you’d expect that):  The Soviets do have a better national anthem than the Americans.

Smiley: Yes, the tune is much better, but the lyrics are absurd.  “Land of happy tractors, heroic beets…”

Traitor (who isn’t feigning a stutter in this role, and so won’t win an Academy Award):  There is an advantage to not speaking Russian.

Smiley:  If you determine your treason by the best national anthem, why aren’t you spying for the French?

Traitor (who you still picture as Mr. Darcy):  I did offer.  But French intelligence only wanted nude photos of Petula Clark.  I offered some pornography with Princess Margaret, but everyone has that.

Smiley:  At least, the Soviets respect Petula Clark.

Traitor (who really resents being confused with Colin Farrell):  It is not Russian morals so much as aesthetics.  They want nude photos of Margaret Rutherford.

p.s.  And here is the Soviet anthem:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yDrtNEr_5M

N.R.A. Calls for Armed Guards in Schools to Deter Violence

WASHINGTON — After a weeklong silence since the Connecticut school shootings, the National Rifle Association on Friday called for a program to arm and train guards in schools as the best way to protect children from gun violence. The group blamed video games, the news media and lax law enforcement – but not guns – for a recent rash of mass shootings.

So, how would I kill people with my video games?  First, I would explain to them the rules of “Civilization” and once they are lulled into a coma, I could repeatedly stab them with the CD.  It probably would take three months.

Actually, I believe my old table games might be deadlier.  If I hone the edge of my Monopoly board, I could try using it like a Samurai sword.  One paper cut on the jugular, and you could start adding up the body count.   I admit: it is unlikely.  No, the real lethality of Monopoly would be getting my victims to swallow the hotels and houses.  Of course, I would have to coax them at gunpoint.

The Human Resources Cathecism…

If there are any theologians among us, the following job may be for you….

“We are introducing a new position into our teams, the Communications Planner. This Director-level position works within client teams to develop holistic, marketing and media discipline agnostic, cross-channel and consumer-centric plans.”

I imagine that heretics will also be disciplined.

Kreme de la Kremlin

Vladimir Putin is feeling sentimental today. It is the 95rd anniversary of the founding of the Cheka, the first Soviet secret police. In honor of this special day, 95 journalists will be assassinated. (To make that quota, the corpse pile will have to include four movie critics and seven cooking columnists; Russia is running out of journalists.)

We tend to think of Lenin as a misunderstood old dear, just a badly tailored Edmund Gwenn. Of course, that is only because we are comparing him to Stalin. In fact, Lenin wasn’t that old, a mere 47 at the time of the November Revolution. (Now, don’t you feel like an under-achiever.) Nor was he remotely lovable. Although he was not a Stalinoid monster, Lenin was a certifiable creep. He was an obsessed, remorseless tyrant who actually read calculus books for fun. Would you be any less dead if Lenin shot you for the sake of dialectic materialism than if Stalin shot you because it was his hobby?

So, it was not surprising that Lenin would establish a secret police just six weeks after the November Revolution. (So much for the honeymoon.) The first head of the Cheka was Felix Dzerzhinsky who was unique among the Bolshevik aristocracy in that he really was an aristocrat. Anyone who slighted him at a soiree or beat him at tennis probably did not live to regret it. Dzerzhinsky may have betrayed his class but not his tastes. In the midst of revolution and civil war, Dzerzhinsky requisitioned a Rolls-Royce for his personal use. It should be noted that his timing was as impeccable as his style. He died of heart attack in 1926, and so avoided a less natural cause of death from Stalin.

In organizing the Cheka, Lenin was just observiing a hallowed Russian tradition. Since Ivan the Terrible, the Tsars had relied on secret police as well. Indeed, Ivan set the standard. His death squads, the Oprichniki, had a very distinctive insignia: the severed head of a dog on their saddles. The dog’s head presumably would sniff out treason. Ivan distrusted his nobles, and the Oprichniki eliminated the causes of his anxiety. Of course, even the Oprichniki found that Ivan could be a little too whimsical. There is a story of a father-and-son team who had risen high in the Oprichniki hierarchy. While at a feast, Ivan thought of a test of loyalty for entertainment. The son was ordered to strangle the father. Before the guests, the son did as he was ordered. Then Ivan ordered the son to be executed; after all, how could Ivan trust anyone who would kill his father?

At least, subsequent Tsars and their secret police refrained from decapitating dogs for decor. (However, Faberge could have made some wonderful facsimiles.) In the last decades of the Russian Empire, the secret police was known as the Okhrana. Their chief concern was suppressing the growing radical movement. They proved so successful at infiltrating revolutionaries groups that Okhrana agents actually were managing many of the revolutionary plots. In 1911, Okhrana oversaw the assassination of the Russian Prime Minister, Pyotr Stolypin. A political moderate, at least by Russian standards, Stolypin’s attempts at reforms outraged the conservatives. So, Okhrana manipulated a thoroughly infiltrated radical group to kill him. The actual assassin was a genuine revolutionary but his supervisor and his supervisor’s supervisor were all on the Okhrana payroll. It was a perfect Okhrana coup: the reactionaries kill the moderate and frame the radicals.

Yes, the Okhrana even infiltrated the Bolsheviks. One of their double agents was a young Georgian who called himself Stalin. We can surmise that Stalin only gave up the names of the people he didn’t like. Of course, that could have been enough to crowd Siberia.

Oprichniki, Okrana, Cheka, KGB…These are the happy memories that Vladimir Putin is enjoying today. And who says that you can’t bring back the good old days?

To his disappoint, Theodore Roosevelt only received one Nobel Prize on this day in 1905.  The superb physical specimen was prepared to share the Nobel in Medicine with Robert Koch, but the President felt cheated of the Literature Prize.  He was as readable and far more pronounceable than Henryk Sienkiewicz.  However, those inexplicable Scandinavians only awarded him the Peace Prize, their tribute for his diplomacy in ending the Russo-Japanese War.

But just how diplomatic was Teddy?  Here is my estimation of the negotiations.

Teddy to the Russians:  Although you are alcoholic cretins, even you must noticed that you’ve lost the war.  My God, if Harvard’s football team was half as pathetic, the Alumni Association would have executed the players.  Your peasants aren’t exactly Ivy Leaguers but if they ever catch on….I think that you should end the war before the Japanese turn the Kremlin into a pagoda.

Teddy to the Japanese:  You gentlemen have been a bit unsporting.  Once you thrash your opponents, it seems a little much to disembowel them.  I personally can’t fault your exuberance but the British are such sticklers for etiquette.  I don’t think that they will invite you to the 1908 Olympics.  They worry about you beheading the competing polo ponies.  Now, if you are content to take all of Korea and some hegemony in Manchuria, I think that we can get you into the better clubs.  Maybe even a marriage into the British royal family.

p.s.  And this was the war:  http://www.dixonvalve.com/files/publications/articles/1340196575Japan%20the%20Victor.pdf

December 9, 1868:  Birth Announcements in Breslau, Prussia

Frau Haber died in childbirth, sparing herself a very unpleasant acquaintance.  Unfortunately for the rest of us, the infant would not take hint.  Fritz (1868-1934) would grow up to achieve the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  His synthesis of ammonia was ostensibly for use in fertilizer–as the Nobel Committee gullibly commended him; however, its chief application was for high explosives.  There is a reason why terrorists like to buy large amounts of ammonia-rich fertilizer.  Herr Haber does have his admirers.  Indeed, without Haber’s ammonia synthesis, Imperial Germany would have run out of artillery shells before the end of 1914.  World War I might have been known as the “90 Day War.”

Of course, you could say that Haber’s work was misused by the military.  However, ammonia synthesis was not the limit of Haber’s genius.  He was also the pioneer of poison gas, creating chlorine gas in 1915.  There is little likelihood of its pacifist intent.  Indeed, Haber supervised its “introduction”  on French troops at Ypres.  The Kaiser was so impressed that he made Haber a captain in the imperial army.  Haber’s wife was not as enthusiastic.  Horrified by Haber’s work, she killed herself.  Haber didn’t bother attending her funeral.  He was off to the Eastern Front to introduce chlorine gas to the Russians.

Despite Haber’s genius, Germany did not win the war.  So he returned to the pursuit of pure, disinterested, amoral science.  In 1926 Haber invented a fumigant gas known as Zyklon B.   Its chief use was from 1942 to 1945 in a number of German resorts.  Haber’s relatives would have been guests there and possibly had the therapeutic  benefits of the gas.  (It arrests the aging process.)

Unfortunately for Haber, the Fuhrer was not as grateful as the Kaiser.  Since none of Haber’s works included a method to regenerate a foreskin or mutate Aryan genes, the scientist was distinctly unwelcome in Nazi Germany.  Haber would have gladly organized “Jews for Hitler” but the Nazis did have a few standards. Fritz Haber had to leave the Third Reich.  The Nobel Laureate received offers of sanctuary and employment from laboratories and universities around the world.  Ignoring its killed alumni, Cambridge University enticed him to come; but Haber was miserable.  If anything could break his heart, it was Germany’s rejection of him.  Haber left for Switzerland, just a few mountains away from his beloved militarism and jackboots, and there he died in 1934.

Let us hope that he is now in a Reich where the Bunsen Burners never run out of fuel.

And for a more likable person: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2008/12/09/december-9th-a-man-of-dubious-distinction/