Today -100: May 25, 1910: Of shacking up

There was a discussion of women’s rights at the National Arts Club. Nothing very interesting, but one speaker decided to attack Mary Wollstonecraft, discrediting her feminist ideas by reference to her personal life, which the NYT described thus: “formed a living alliance, not a marriage, with Gilbert Imlay”. What strikes me is the scrabbling around for words to describe such a relationship.

Don’t you hate it when everyone else shows up at work wearing the same color?

CAPTION CONTEST.

Today -100: May 24, 1910: Of successful duels and fouled shamrocks

Headline of the Day -100: “Third Duel Successful.” Between Count Ismael de Lesseps (son of the Panama Canal guy) and Count Just de Poligny. What constitutes a “successful” duel? Turns out, this time they managed to injure each other. The seconds stopped their first duel, with swords, on account of gross unfairness, de Poligny being lame; their second duel was with pistols, and they exchanged 6 shots without anyone being hit (does that mean 6 rounds, or 3 bullets each? I’m not up on my dueling terminology). This time, this successful time, de Lesseps was hit in the thigh near the femoral artery, while his bullet ricocheted off de Poligny’s pistol into his arm. So I guess everyone’s happy. Don’t know what the duel was about.

Other Headline of the Day -100: “Submarine Fouls Shamrock.” The Shamrock was a yacht.

This is what success looks like

Yesterday Obama gave the commencement address at West Point.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE: He declared Mission, you know, Accomplished, in Iraq: “this is what success looks like: an Iraq that provides no haven to terrorists, a democratic Iraq that is sovereign and stable and self-reliant.” (Today’s speech-writer has a serious hard-on for alliteration: earlier, US troops demonstrated “competence and creativity and courage”.)

I KNEW THERE WAS A CATCH: “And as we end the war in Iraq, though, we are pressing forward in Afghanistan.”


AND YET, WE GOT KARZAI STEALING THE ELECTION. FUNNY, THAT. “We have supported the election of a sovereign government”.

HOPE THAT WE’LL GET THE HELL OUT OF THEIR COUNTRY SOMETIME IN THE NEXT 20 YEARS: “We’ve brought hope to the Afghan people”.

I’M LOOKING AT YOU, GIRL SCOUTS: “And through a period when too many of our institutions have acted irresponsibly, the American military has set a standard of service and sacrifice” etc. There’s that alliteration again.

FUNNY YOUTUBE VIDEOS? “We cannot leave it to those in uniform to defend this country--we have to make sure that America is building on its strengths.”


HOW AMERICA HAS SUCCEEDED: “America has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation--we have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice, so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities and face consequences when they don’t.” Steering the (alliterative) currents of cooperation? If only he had steered that out-of-control metaphor before it broke up on the rocks of rhetoric.

SIZE MATTERS: “let’s be clear: Al Qaeda and its affiliates are small men on the wrong side of history. They lead no nation. They lead no religion. We need not give in to fear every time a terrorist tries to scare us. We should not discard our freedoms because extremists try to exploit them.”

EXCEPT OF $4 BAGELS AND THE POSSIBILITY OF ANOTHER SEX AND THE CITY MOVIE: “Terrorists want to scare us. New Yorkers just go about their lives unafraid.”


EXCEPT AT BAGRAM, WHERE THE DC DISTRICT COURT SAID WE CAN DO WHATEVER WE LIKE: “And so a fundamental part of our strategy for our security has to be America’s support for those universal rights that formed the creed of our founding. And we will promote these values above all by living them--through our fidelity to the rule of law and our Constitution, even when it’s hard; even when we’re being attacked; even when we’re in the midst of war.”

I DO NOT THINK THAT WORD ABHOR MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS: “America does not fight for the sake of fighting. We abhor war.”

Today -100: May 23, 1910: Of comets and hair

Headline of the Day -100: “Two See Comet and Die.” In Alabama, “Miss Ruth Jordan, daughter of a farmer... was called to the door of her home to see the comet and immediately fell dead, physicians assigning heart failure as the cause. An unknown negro on the depot platform was shown the comet and instantly dropped dead.”

At yesterday’s suffrage demonstration, someone surreptitiously cut off 12 inches of a 16-year-old girl’s hair.

Wreath

The president of Ukraine, square-headed Mr. Y, at a World War II memorial ceremony.



The opposition party managed to steal the wreath and are auctioning it off.

But is it art?

Headline of the Day (NYT): “Obama Sketches Energy Plan in Oil.”

Today -100: May 22, 1910: Of parades, pogroms, corruption, arbitration, and marionettes

The Equality League of Self-Supporting Women holds a women’s suffrage parade/demonstration in NYC to protest the NY Legislature’s failure to vote a suffrage bill out of committee. It’s the largest suffrage demo ever held in the US. The New York Times reports it on p. 11.

Russian expulsions of Jews, hitherto most notable in Kiev, have reached Moscow. Expulsion orders are being made against babies as a way of forcing parents with residence permits to leave. In Kiev, Jews have usually been ordered to leave within two days.

Congress is working on a bill to require transparency for campaign contributions and expenses, but the Senate is insisting that reports be released only after elections, in case they influence the election, which is rather, one would have thought, the point of the exercise.

Peru and Ecuador, which were threatening to go to war over a border dispute, have accepted offers of mediation from the US, Brazil and Argentina. Boooring!

Not 10 years after the Boer War, a new Union of South Africa is formed by the British, uniting the conquered Boer republics and the British colonies in a federal structure, paving the way for the leveling down of the rights of Africans. The new prime minister will be Louis Botha, a general on the losing side of the war.

Signor Parisi and his Italian marionettes, who went out of business six months ago after losing the economic battle with moving pictures, have returned for Sunday performances, now in English, of “Constantine and the Pagans” and the tale of Roland, which are the only marionette plays translated so far from the Venetian dialect.

Today -100: May 20, 1910: Of big booms, wet in Denver, and no country for really old men

At a barracks in Cuba, a carpenter tried to repair a case of dynamite by hammering in a nail, resulting in 35 deaths and 145 wounded. The carpenter’s head was found a quarter mile away.

Headline of the Day -100: “Athletes to Form New Body.”

The chair of the press committee of the NY State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, the impressively named Mrs. Barclay Hazard, writes a letter asking how suffragists explain the fact that Denver, despite having women’s suffrage, just voted itself wet.

I just looked at that sentence again, and it seems to have a double meaning I didn’t intend. “Wet” of course means that alcohol may be sold.

Denver also elected a woman election commissioner, Ellis Meredith, the first woman ever elected to a city office in Denver.

The Census Bureau investigated Noah Raby, who claimed at the time of his death to be 131 years old, and says he was actually 92 (Wikipedia says 81). It further doubts that anyone had ever reached 110 years of age.

Graham V. Florida: We learn, sometimes, from our mistakes

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against sentencing minors convicted of crimes other than murder to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. The dissent was written by Clarence Thomas, joined by Scalia and Alito.

Thomas first rejected the idea that the Supreme Court is better able to judge whether such sentences are proportionate to the crime committed than are legislatures, judges or juries: “I am unwilling to assume that we, as members of this Court, are any more capable of making such moral judgments than our fellow citizens. Nothing in our training as judges qualifies us for that task”. Boy, ain’t it the truth.

Indeed, he rejects the notion that punishments which are grossly disproportionate are unconstitutional, that is, that they are cruel and unusual.

The majority argues that there is an evolving standard of public opinion which now opposes locking up minors and throwing away the key. Thomas disagrees, and we’ll get to that, but first he denies that the constitutionality of a punishment rests on what he dismissively calls a “snapshot” of public opinion. Worse, he says, the Court only allows for evolution away from draconian punishments: why, there might be a “pendulum swing in social attitudes” in favor of more drastic punishments.

In support of his contention that there is a consensus among the American people for imprisoning minors for life for crimes other than homicide, Thomas notes that such imprisonment is allowed under the laws of 37 states (the Supreme Court often uses laws, no matter when enacted, as a proxy for public opinion, which leads it to declare in effect that laws are constitutional because they are laws), while only 5 states ban it. He rejects as completely irrelevant to determining the current acceptability of such punishments that in 26 states these laws have fallen into disuse.

And hell, if you go back to the 18th century, “the common law set a rebuttable presumption of incapacity to commit any felony at the age of 14, and theoretically permitted [even] capital punishment to be imposed on a person as young as age 7.” Good times, good times. This is Thomas’s gold standard for moral acceptability: hanging little children for property crimes. Stevens, concurring with the majority, writes, “We learn, sometimes, from our mistakes.” It’s like he’s never even met Clarence Thomas.

Today -100: May 19, 1910: Of comets, duels, and cross-dressing

The Earth passes through the tail of Halley’s Comet, nothing in particular happens. Some astronomers sound kind of disappointed.


If you’re keeping track of the people the NYT claims were made hysterical by the comet, to previous stories about women, the French and Chicagoans, add Mexicans (“For ten days superstitious Mexicans have sought to avert the impending disaster with music, incantations, and weird ceremonies, and many have spent day and night in prayer”), Russians, the “poorer Dutch and colored people” in South Africa, Puerto Ricans, steerage passengers on the Germania, foreigners in NY (“The Italians yelled with fright, and several of them fell on their knees”), and Southern Negroes.

The president of the Russian Duma, Alexander Guchkoff, and Count Uvarof, a deputy, are imprisoned in Peter and Paul Fortress for 4 weeks and 3 weeks respectively for dueling.

Wellesley issues a rule that no photographs be taken of students wearing male garb (in college plays).

Specter exorcized

Somewhere, tonight, Anita Hill is doing the Nelson Muntz “ha ha.”

Today -100: May 18, 1910: Of comet terror

Headline of the Day -100: “Chicago is Terrified.” Halley’s Comet, of course. Especially, according to the Times, women, one of whom is interviewed by telephone from inside her apartment, whose windows and doors she has stopped up to keep out the deadly cyanogen believed to constitute the comet’s tail.

Today -100: May 17, 1910: Of parole and stuttering

The House passes a bill (which the Senate has already passed) to establish a parole system at the federal level. Some are suggesting this is because of the presence of several well-connected bankers convicted of embezzlement in federal pokies.

In Paterson, Mrs. Amelia Spinelli filed for divorce against her husband of four months on grounds of cruelty, specifically his stuttering, which is especially obnoxious in Italian. In court, John Spinelli answered one question, “Tu-tu-bu-tu-tu-bu-bu.” “What does he say?” asked Mrs Spinelli’s lawyer. “He hasn’t said it yet,” replied the judge.

Academic freedom

Israel barred Noam Chomsky from entering the West Bank (not Israel, Associated Press, the West Bank). Evidently the complaint was that he intended to lecture at Bir Zeit University in Palestine but not also in Israel. The Interior Ministry is now claiming it was just a big misunderstanding, but Chomsky was questioned by border police for hours, and they were relaying questions from the Interior Ministry, so I think not.

Today -100: May 16, 1910: Of the ugliest woman in the world, the servant problem, and entering the comet’s tail (not a euphemism!)

Contractual issues have delayed the much-anticipated appearance in New York of the actress Polaire, billed as the ugliest woman in the world on account of her wide mouth, wacky hair, large hands and alleged 14-inch waist.


The General Federation of Women’s Clubs is holding a meeting in Cincinnati, and planning its next biennial convention. However, the Mississippi delegation has announced that no representatives of that state will be able to attend, “because of the servant problem.”

Halley’s Comet fever is gripping the NYT, with no fewer than 20 stories in today’s paper about whether it will mean the end of the world. The scientific consensus is that it won’t. The Earth will enter the comet’s tail... on Wednesday. If you don’t see one of these posts three days from now, you’ll know that the world came to an end in 1910.

Obama is angry, yes he is

The Iraqi Election Commission says that its recount found absolutely no fraud in the Iraqi election. Then the Iraqi Election Commission excused itself, stepped out of the room, and loud laughter was heard.

---

Yesterday Obama gave a speech about how he is angry about the big oil spill. Yesterday the White House announced that he was going to make a speech about how angry he is. That’s how disciplined Barack Obama is: he schedules his anger. Anyway, he said that he was tired of all the finger-pointing, and he’s looking at you, BP executives. Not pointing his finger, just looking.

Today -100: May 15, 1910: Mammy!

There is a plan to erect a monument in Galveston to “black mammies,” according to a repulsive article reproduced from the Houston Chronicle, which is full of praise for the mammies’ “simple and unselfish service,” her superstitious terror of ghosts and squeech owls, her “intense... pride in her ‘white folks’” etc. “Though her skin was black, her soul was white”.

Norway grants municipal suffrage to all women over 25 (since 1901 there has been a muni. franchise with property and tax-paying qualifications; a national suffrage with the same limitations has existed since 1907).

Caption contest

Today -100: May 14, 1910: Of smugglers

Former New Hampshire Governor Frank Rollins (in office 1899-1901), his wife and son are arrested for smuggling. They had returned to the US aboard the Lusitania and failed to declare expensive gowns and jewelry.