That’s how our system works

Obama made a surprise appearance in the White House press room to talk about Trayvon Martin. On a Friday afternoon.

HE WENT TO LAW SCHOOL, YOU KNOW: “And once the jury’s spoken, that’s how our system works.” If that sentence seems like part of it is missing, that’s because he couldn’t really say, “And once the jury’s spoken, we have to respect that” or “And once the jury’s spoken, justice has been done,” or any other platitude suggesting that Florida possesses a just and fair and equal legal system. That’s how our system works, he shrugs.

AND IF MITT ROMNEY’S BILLION-DOLLAR TIME-MACHINE PROJECT EVER PAYS OFF.... “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”

He said that most African-American men have experienced being followed in stores, people locking their car doors when he approaches, women in elevators being nervous etc. Notably, he doesn’t indicate any race for these people scared of black men.

He explains that black people are “looking at this issue” through the prism of their experiences of racism (a word he uses just once in this speech) and their knowledge of past racial disparities. In other words, he’s explaining to white people how black people think.

UNDERSTANDABLE: “I think it’s understandable that there have been demonstrations and vigils and protests...” “Understandable” is to expressing support what “I’m sorry you were offended” is to apologies. “...and some of that stuff is just going to have to work its way through, as long as it remains nonviolent.” Sounds like he’s talking about a particularly difficult poo.

He wants “the Justice Department, governors, mayors to work with law enforcement about training at the state and local levels in order to reduce the kind of mistrust in the system that sometimes currently exists.” I’m sorry, but I find the balancing act he’s trying to perform here very amusing. He just can’t bring himself to say that the system has deserved the mistrust that “sometimes currently exists” toward it, but why else would training be required?

Similarly, he talks later about “helping young African American men feel that they’re a full part of this society” without quite saying that at the present time they aren’t, just that they feel that way.

Then he criticized the Stand Your Ground law, and asks hypothetically, “I’d just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened? And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.” This is just strange. Obama, a black man, is saying: but what if the scary black guy had a gun, huh? huh? didn’t think about that, did you?

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Happy Captive Nations Festapalooza 2013!

Obama issued a proclamation for Captive Nations Week 2013. So even stupid little symbolic Cold War relics like this one, which dates from 1959 when the “captive nations” were the Eastern European satellites of the Soviet Union, don’t go away. The proclamation fails to name any of the current captive nations. It does say that “too many people still labor in the darkness of tyranny and oppression,” fails to say how many is just the right number. The population of Egypt, the country which he’s still not willing to admit had a coup, is more than 80 million, if that’s any help.

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Today -100: July 19, 1913: Of atrocities and battles in Seattle

The NYT assesses yesterday’s Greek claims of Bulgarian atrocities, and just isn’t sure which racial stereotype it wants to go with. On the one hand, the Greeks “have never been noted for slavish adherence to veracity,” but on the other, “the ethnic origin of the Bulgarians... lend[s] something of credibility to the accusations,” although, the paper adds, the Turks are also to blame for anything that might have happened, since having been subjects of the Ottoman Empire for so long was “a dreadfully effective training in the art of emphasizing victory and lessening future opposition by wholesale massacre, made more impressive by ingenious torture.” In the end, the Times judiciously decides on “a suspension of judgment as to just how much more barbarous the Bulgarians are than their neighbors.”

Seattle Mayor George Cotterill has come under some criticism for not banning IWW street-corner speakers (as long as they don’t block traffic or display a red flag). Anyway, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who is in town, made a speech praising the mayor of Boston for cracking down on lefties, adding that anyone who believes in the red flag should be driven out of the country. Daniels may not even have known that this was a local controversy and was just giving his standard red-baiting speech. The next day, 500 marines and sailors, with several thousand locals, attacked the headquarters of the Socialist Party and the IWW hall, burning furniture and destroying newspapers.

Mexican dictator Huerta sends Felix Díaz, his competitor for the office of president (should there ever be elections), to Japan as special ambassador, because Huerta is subtle like that.

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Today -100: July 18, 1913: Everywhere the Bulgarian has passed one sees only blood, dishonor, and ruin

King Constantine of Greece telegraphs to the NYT a report of atrocities – “horrors such as human history has never before recorded” – committed by the Bulgarians. For example, “Women and Girls Outraged and Then Burned in a Mosque to the Music of Bagpipes,” which is just adding insult to injury, really.

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Today -100: July 17, 1913: Of confederacies, slit skirts, and rude awakenings

Several southern Chinese provinces are preparing to declare independence and form a Southern Chinese Confederacy. The Chinese government blames Japan.

In Richmond (state not specified), a Miss Blossom Browning, which sounds like the name of the heroine in a 1920s short story, is fined $25 and ordered to leave town for appearing in a slit skirt.

Headline of the Day -100: “FREIGHT CAR IN HER ROOM.; Girl Rudely Awakened When Train Crashes Into House.”

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Today -100: July 16, 1913: The solution of the whole matter lies within cold water

Headline of the Day -100: “Georgia Votes for Bacon.” That would be Augustus O. Bacon, the first US senator elected by popular vote after the ratification of the 17th Amendment.

Mmm, Bacon.

Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan defends going on the lecture circuit for “part of my vacation.” The tour is six weeks: how long a vacation did secretaries of state get back then? He says he’s unwilling to eat into the (rather large) nest egg he’s built up “as a protection against old age.” Sen. Bristow (R-Kansas) suggests that if Bryan served pure spring water instead of “this nauseating grape juice,” he could live within his means. “The solution of the whole matter lies within cold water.”

The LAT reports that Speaker of the House Champ Clark also does the circuit for money when Congress is not in session.

Congress hastily passes a law to force arbitration and avert a major railroad strike.

The British House of Lords votes down Irish Home Rule, although since it no longer has veto power that amounts to a short delay only (unless some major international conflagration intervenes). Tory leaders in the Lords suggested that they needed to be convinced of public support for Home Rule by a referendum, only to add the next day that they would still reserve the right to amend the bill out of all recognition (“remove the blemishes and undesirable features by which it is characterized”). Prime Minister Asquith responds to this generous offer by announcing plans for a bill to abolish the House of Lords in the next session.

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Today -100: July 15, 1913: Kill me or give me my freedom; I shall force you to make that choice

Theodore Roosevelt, who’s been awfully quiet lately, by his standards, plans to cross the Grand Canyon by mule, then hunt bears and mountain lions. Or possibly hunt mule and cross the Grand Canyon by bear, because he’s Teddy Fucking Roosevelt and that’s how he rolls!

Headline of the Day -100: “Mrs. Pankhurst Appears, Escapes.” British suffragettes are playing their Mice roles to the hilt. When out of prison on license while recuperating from hunger strikes, they’ve been attempting to give speeches, as Emmeline Pankhurst and Annie Kenney just did, and Sylvia Pankhurst did a couple of days ago, without being recaptured by the police and sent back to prison. Mrs. Pankhurst says, “Kill me or give me my freedom; I shall force you to make that choice.” The police raid (and are attacked by the audience), Kenney was caught, Mrs. P was not (Update: Actually, according to the LAT, she was. She got into a cab but was followed by a detective and arrested). The WSPU has been auctioning off Cat & Mouse licenses.

The US has sent two more warships to Vera Cruz, making four total. “This gives umbrage to the better class of Mexicans.”

An article on whether William Jennings Bryan can actually be expected to live on his salary mentions that one cabinet secretary who managed to do so was James Wilson, who I haven’t particularly noticed before but he was secretary of agriculture for 16 straight years under the McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft administrations (but he was a widower and lived in an apartment hotel). Cabinet secretaries evidently spend up to $20,000 a year (on a $12,000 salary) to keep up appearances and entertain. However, Bryan doesn’t serve booze, so he saves about $2,500 a year. As secretary of state, he is entitled to carriages and horses and the services of an official coachman.

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Today -100: July 14, 1913: Of moonlighting and creating the millennium with the ballot

William Jennings Bryan is skipping out on his day job to go back on the lecture circuit for six weeks. He’s still secretary of state, but he needs the extra money, he says. He will be paid $12,000 by the Chautauqua bureaus, equal to his annual government salary.

Alice Hill Chittenden, president of the New York State Anti-Suffrage Association (not to be confused with the contemporaneous painter Alice Brown Chittenden), has been investigating conditions in California since the establishment of women’s suffrage there, and she is appalled. The Legislature is now dedicating itself to “creating the millennium with the ballot and regardless of the staggering cost” (I hereby nominate that for the new state motto). School teachers and old people are to be given pensions, children will not be taken away from their parents because of poverty; the state is also wasting money by appointing inspectors for orphans, establishing an Industrial Accident Commission, etc.

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Today -100: July 13, 1913: Of pogroms, monsters in human form, Yankee go home, and poets laureate

Police in Kiev are conducting house-to-house searches for Jews and expelling them from the city.

King Constantine of Greece vows to “wreak vengeance” for alleged atrocities by Bulgarian “monsters in human form.”

Turkey will join in the fun, sending troops to attempt to recapture territory it lost to the Bulgarians in the last Balkan War.

The NYT reports on the front page a baseless rumor that King Ferdinand of Bulgaria has been assassinated and that a revolution is beginning. Sofia has only itself to blame for the spread of wild rumors, since it shut down all the newspapers.

The US ambassador to Mexico complains about anti-American demonstrations, so the Huerta Junta helpfully
bans all demonstrations.

The new poet laureate of Great Britain is Robert Bridges, who pretty much no one is familiar with. Some grumble that it should have been Rudyard Kipling, others consider Kipling too gauche.

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Today -100: July 12, 1913: Of overstimulated linemen, crazy lepers, the people’s fruit, and wanton and futile demonstrations

Headline of the Day -100: “Supposed Dead Man On Telegraph Pole An Overstimulated Lineman.” Someone spotted him and called the fire department, which spread out a net and climbed the poll before they realized that he was not an electrocuted corpse but was, in fact, snoring. Alcohol may have been involved.

Headline of the Day -100 (yeah, yeah, two headlines of the day, live with it): “Early, The Leper, Goes Crazy.”

The NYT appeals to the Senate not to put a tariff on the banana, the “people’s fruit.”

The governor of Oregon shows up at an IWW meeting outside a fruit-packing plant and, after hearing a strike leader say that the plant would be closed, got up on the soap box and said that the plant would be protected by all the resources of the state.

A male supporter of women’s suffrage, in what the London Times calls “another wanton and futile demonstration,” fires a toy pistol in the gallery of the House of Commons. Hilarity ensues.

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Today -100: July 11, 1913: Of Balkan wars and martyrs to x-ray

Romania, which was not a participant in the First Balkan War, joins the war against Bulgaria.

Leo Frank’s lawyers have found a man who confessed to the murder of Mary Phagan (and believed by historians to be the real killer). So that settles that.

Headline of the Day -100: “Dies a Martyr to X-Ray.” Burton Baker of the Baker X-Ray Tube Company.

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I should be thoroughly ashamed of myself for this post

Bill Clinton joined John McCain at the McCain Institute for (Snicker) International Leadership and talked about either Syria or Monica Lewinsky:

“Some people say, ‘Okay, see what a big mess it is? Stay out!’”

“Sometimes it’s just best to get caught trying, as long as you don’t overcommit”.

“we shouldn’t over-learn the lessons of the past”.

“What the American people are saying when they tell you not to do these things, they’re not telling you not to do these things”.

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Today -100: July 10, 1913: Of public bathing and ritual child-murders

Denver bans Japanese people from bathing in the lake in Washington Park. Negroes were already banned.

The lawyer for the Jew being tried for killing a Christian boy in Kiev asks the court to subpoena Christian theologians, presumably to ask them about ritual child-murder. He also wants the prosecution to produce Hebrew books cited by a prosecution witness, a Catholic priest who testified about Jewish child sacrifice, because, the lawyer says, those books don’t actually exist.

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Depth and maturity

11-year-old girl Chilean pregnant after two years of sexual abuse by her mother’s partner (but the mother says it was consensual, so that’s okay then) says (in a tv interview, because evidently Chilean tv is as awful and exploitative as ours) that she doesn’t want an abortion, not that she could legally get one in Chile. And the girl (did I mention she’s 11?) wants to raise it: “It will be like having a doll in my arms.”

Anti-choice Chilean President Sebastian Pinera says her decision in wanting to keep a baby because it will be like having a doll displays “depth and maturity,” because of course he fucking does.

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Today -100: July 9, 1913: Of hurt Slavonic feelings, scolds, roads, and lost independence

Someone finally declares war in the Second Balkan War, and it’s King Peter of Serbia, who issues a proclamation: “The Bulgarians, forgetful of the Servians’ brotherly help and the blood of the heroes who fell on the Thracian battlefields, have given the Slavonic nations and the civilized world an abominable example of ingratitude and greediness. This unbrotherly action has caused me the deepest pain and hurt my sincerest Slavonic feelings”. There’s probably an ointment for that.

More atrocity stories, which are probably about as true as the reports of great victories put out by all participants. Bulgarian troops supposedly imprisoned 700 men in a mosque in Kurkut and set it on fire.

A woman in Philadelphia is arrested as a common scold.

Gov. Elliot Woolfolk Major of Missouri has a plan for addressing the poor condition of the state’s roads: he will ask every able-bodied man to donate two days (in August, yet) to working on them. He plans to be out there with a pick himself.

Independence is gone. Independence, Louisiana, that is, wiped out by fire.

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Today -100: July 8, 1913: Of airlines, libellous statements, lethal golf balls, home rule and Havana shootouts

A Col. H. S. Maisy announces plans for a commercial airship service in England. Somehow Col. Maisy is exactly the sort of name someone who owns blimps should have. Maybe in a children’s book.

Yesterday the Daily Mail announced that the Cat and Mouse Act had destroyed militant suffragism in Britain. Which was more or less asking for it: today a pier is set on fire and a bomb exploded in Liverpool. And Christabel Pankhurst telegraphs from Paris protesting “the libellous statements in The Daily Mail.”

How They Died 100 Years Ago: “Killed by Acid in a Golf Ball.”

How They Died 100 Years Ago: a man in Plattekill, NY, hangs himself because it’s hot. He leaves behind a wife and ten children.

Parliament passes Irish Home Rule.

Over the weekend, police in Havana arrested members of a club owned by the governor of Havana Province, Ernesto Asbert, for gambling. A couple of days later the arrest of a porter at the club for possession of a firearm escalates into Gov. Asbert and two members of the Cuban congress shooting the chief of the National Police, Gen. Armando Riva, three times. He is still alive.

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Vast new powers

From a NYT article about how the Obama Administration became so, so disillusioned with Mohammed Morsi: “Mr. Morsi issued a decree claiming vast new powers, quickly puncturing the optimism in the White House and elsewhere in Washington.”

Because if there’s one thing Barack Obama cannot tolerate, it’s a government claiming vast new powers.

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Today -100: July 7, 1913: Of impersonation, Balkan wars, lynchings, and ice strikes

Sen. Cummins (R-Iowa) proposes legislation to make it illegal to impersonate members of Congress or engage in other fraudulent activities such as pretending to act on behalf of congresscitters.

So far, the Second Balkan War battles have been bloodier than First Balkan War ones, as is the way with sequels.

In Jacksonville, Florida, a negro who killed a sheriff who was trying to arrest some gamblers, is lynched. Hundreds of bullets are fired into him right outside a church where a service was going on, then his ears were cut up for souvenirs.

And in Coger, Oklahoma, site of a recent lynching, a mass meeting of white residents orders negro residents to leave forthwith.

The Great Cincinnati Ice Strike of 1913 is over, after the city seized the ice plants.

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Today -100: July 6, 1913: Of interracial marriage, charming rats and mice, and brunettes in the city

Headline of the Day -100: “Negro to Wed White Girl.” Yup, that’s news. The magistrate (in New York although the couple met in Virginia) refuses to marry them, though he claims it’s only because he doesn’t think magistrates should perform marriages.

Rodent Headline of the Day -100: “Rats and Mice Charm Queen Mary.” They ran through a maze for her at the Bedford College for Women.

A Dr. J.S. Mackintosh of London says in the NYT Sunday Magazine section that brunettes can stand city life better than blondes, which has something to do with his theory that races degenerate when they migrate from their ancestral homes.

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Today -100: July 5, 1913: Of Fourths abroad, Balkan wars, molested kings, post offices, and eugenic marriages

The US ambassador to Mexico went to Vera Cruz to celebrate the 4th of July with expatriates there, in order to avoid the festivities in Mexico City (actually on a US warship in the harbor) because Gen. Huerta planned to attend, and it would have looked like recognition of the Huerta Junta had they been seen together.

Elsewhere, though, attempts by expatriate Americans to celebrate were met by violence and trampling of the American flag. And by elsewhere, I mean Canada. In both Winnipeg and Moosejaw. Headline: “Serious Riot in Winnipeg.”

It’s oddly comforting to see rumors of atrocities being spread in the Second Balkan War, since you don’t get the anti-Muslim overtones of the First Balkan War propaganda when, for instance, the Greeks claim that Bulgarian troops massacred every resident of Nigrita and forced women to dance naked with bells around their neck.

King Constantine of Greece says that this new war is blessed by the Almighty.

Headline of the Day -100: “Suffragist Molests King.” Mary Richardson of the WSPU (we shall see her in a later post engaging in some art criticism) threw a petition into the king’s carriage, whereupon an equerry hits her with a sword, and then the whole crowd got involved.

South African police shoot striking gold miners (white ones; black and white miners never struck at the same time in South Africa, ever). Strikers burn down a newspaper and a railway station in Johannesburg. 40 miners are killed.

The US Post Office segregates its black and white clerks. There is no mention of this in the NYT that I can find.

The Pennsylvania Legislature has joined the trend of passing “eugenic marriage” laws, requiring couples to swear (or be certified by a physician) that they do not have TB or, ahem, other communicable diseases. The sponsor of this bill plans to introduce a more stringent bill banning from marriage anyone who within five years has been in an insane asylum or a home for indigent persons unless they are cured and can support a family.

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