Was Mohandas Gandhi A Racist?
A meme appeared on facebook, “GHANDI’S 7 DANGERS TO HUMAN VIRTUE.” Below the misspelled name were seven concepts, written in all caps. This got PG thinking.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (M.K. Gandhi) “was born was born on October 2, 1869, at Porbandar, a small town on the western coast of India.” At some point the title Mahatma was applied, and is often used as though it was his name. Exact transliterations between languages using different alphabets is tricky. What is the “correct” spelling of this man’s last name? Most sources today use Gandhi.
Another term, Gandhiji, turns up in the research. “‘Ji’ in Hindi or Urdu is a suffix used after the names of respectable persons and elders like father and mother. It is used every day by millions of Indians to address their elders.Hence Gandhiji is but Mahatma Gandhi,father of our nation,addressed reverently and respectfully. We call mother mataji. Mata means mother.”
The quote in the meme is real. It is found on page 135 of Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Vol. 33. It was in an article found in Young India on October 22, 1925.
“SEVEN SOCIAL SIN The same fair friend wants readers of Young India to know, if they do not already, the following seven social sins: Politics without principles, Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice. Naturally, the friend does not want the readers to know these things merely through the intellect but to know them through the heart so as to avoid them.”
The next entry in the collected works is interesting. “79. THAT ETERNAL QUESTION However much I may wish to avoid it, the Hindu-Muslim question will not avoid me. Muslim friends insist upon my intervention to solve it. The Hindu friends would have me discuss it with them and some of them say I have sown the wind and must reap the whirlwind.”
The meme had comments. Lloyd Lachow Gandhi was intensely racist. Joanne Gibson Gandhi was not intensely racist. Fighting racism was his first cause. John Janiga Gandhi racist??? John Taylor Lloyd, were you born an idiot, or did you have to work at it?
This looks like a job for Mr. Google. When you type the phrase “Is Gandhi,” suggested searches include “sill alive” and “on netflix.” This does not help if you want to know if someone is racist.
Mr. Gandhi lived in South Africa from 1893-1915. During this time he was offended at the treatment of Indian nationals, which led to a decision to fight for Indian rights. Unfortunately, these rights were not to be extended to the native South Africans.
… there’s no doubting that Gandhi had little time for black people. During his 21 years in South Africa, he repeatedly expressed contempt for the native population, claiming they were no better than the “untouchables” of Indian society. One speech in particular stands out. In 1896, he was quoted as referring to black South Africans as the “raw kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.” For those of you who aren’t up on your South African slang, “kaffir” is a direct equivalent of our N-word. Another time, he complained about finding himself in a “kaffir” prison, claiming Indians were “above” natives, who “are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals.”
There is the story of the Durban Post Office. “The first major accomplishment of the Natal Indian Congress was to further entrench racial segregation into South African society during a time of massive racial strife. At the time, the Durban, South Africa post office had two doors. One was for whites and the other for Indians and black natives. Gandhi was so disgusted at having to share a door with blacks that he initiated a campaign for the creation of a third door. … A year later, after the issue had already been resolved, Gandhi chose to expound upon his reasons for raising it in the first place. In his August 14, 1896 letter, “The Grievances of the British Indians in South Africa: An Appeal to the Indian Public,” he called being “put on the same level with the native” a “disability.”
Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Trial Of Lenny Bruce
Towards the end of his Booknotes chat, Nat Hentoff talked about censorship. As a journalist, his views were predictable.
Mr. HENTOFF: Any words at all. Words are–I mean, there is a great–there was a great scene in New York once when Lenny Bruce, who was a friend of mine, was on trial for his words. And Richard Cue, the assistant district attorney, was making a name for himself trying to blast all of the witnesses for the defense. And he got Dorothy Kilgallen, who was a very famous then syndicated columnist, a devout Catholic, a conservative and a great admirer of Lenny Bruce. And he con–he strung together, Cue did, all of the words in Lenny’s monologues that could be considered terribly offensive, and he hit her with them. It was a barrage. `What do you think then, Ms. Kilgallen?’ `Well,’ she said, `they’re words. They’re words. That’s all. Words.’ That’s the way I feel.
When PG heard this, he remembered reading about this trial. With the aid of Mr. Google, a transcript turned up. If you like to read about lawyers saying dirty words, this is the place for you.
Dorothy Kilgallen was, to put it mildly, a piece of work. She wrote for the N. Y. Journal American, and stepped on more than a few toes. A biography, Kilgallen, tells a few of the tales. Today, Miss Kilgallen is best known as one of the original panelists on “Whats My Line?”
The People v Lenny Bruce (Cafe Au Go Go Trial) was tried June 16, 1964 to July 28, 1964 in New York City. The Per Curium Opinion of Judge John Murtagh sets the tone. “All three performances of the defendant, Lenny Bruce, were obscene, indecent, immoral and impure within the meaning of Section 1l40-a of the Penal Law. While no tape is available as to the first performance [past midnight, March 31-April 1], this monologue, according to the testimony, was essentially the same as that of the second [April 1, after 10:00 p.m.] and third [April 7, after 10:00 p.m.] performances. In the latter two performances, words such as “ass,” “balls,” “cock-sucker,” “cunt,” “fuck,” “mother-fucker,” “piss,” “screw,” “shit,” and “tits” were used about one hundred times in utter obscenity. The monologues also contained anecdotes and reflections that were similarly obscene.
Dorothy Kilgallen was called as an “expert witness”. In lawyerly fashion, the prosecutor claimed she was not a genuine expert. After her credentials were established, there were questions like “Will you tell us what the artistry, or the social value, or the merit, or the good is, in the Bruce story of sexual intercourse with a chicken?” After the testimony described by Mr. Hentoff, Miss Kilgallen talks about something that does offend her.
Q. I wouldn’t take much time, but we did discuss before Lenny Bruce’s use of the words ‘mother fucker’ at his audience. Can you tell me when James Jones or Norman Mailer or Arthur Miller has called his audience ‘mother fucker?’
Mr. Garbus: Your Honor, may I object? We are talking about books against monologue. It’s completely an irrelevant question.
Judge Murtagh: We will allow it. Objection overruled.
A. I can’t tell you anything verbatim from the books, because I read them a couple of years ago or more. I would imagine–this would be my best guess–that they did not call their audiences anything. There’s another book called The Naked Lunch which I couldn’t even finish reading, but it’s published, and I think the author should be in jail and he used–
Q. Unfortunately we can’t do everything at once, Miss Kilgallen. Are you judging the non-obscene quality and the artistic quality of Bruce by the fact that The Naked Lunch is a book which, as of this date, is sold in the community?
A. No, I’m not. I just mentioned it because you asked me for some books.
Q. And The Naked Lunch is a book you found impossible to read, is that correct?
A. Yes, I found it revolting.
Q. What was revolting about it?
A. Just the way it was written.
Mr.Garbus: Objection, your Honor.
Judge Murtagh: Objection overruled.
A. It seemed to use words for shock value, not for any valid reason, and I object to that.
Q. And when Lenny Bruce–I ask you to turn to the April 1st tape . . . and read the portion starting–‘tits and ass, that’s what is the attraction, is just tits and ass and tits and ass’–and goes on all through the page, and ask you if you find some shock value in that?
A. No, I don’t think it’s particularly shocking, it’s just a word.. . .
Q.. Do you, in your column, use the words tits and ass?
A. Never.
Q. You know exactly what Lenny Bruce was talking about?
A. Yes. . . . I think there he’s being critical of the monotony of what is on view in Las Vegas.
Dorothy Kilgallen died November 8, 1965. Lenny Bruce died August 3, 1966. Kilgallen biographer Lee Israel was convicted of selling forged celebrity letters. Nat Hentoff was laid off from the Village Voice. This is a repost. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These images are Union soldiers from the War Between the States. The spell check suggestion for Kilgallen: Millennial.
Gay Marriage And The KKK
It seems as though the United Dixie White Knights is opposed to gay marriage in Alabama. The article in The New Civil Rights Movement credits blog superstar Joe.My.God. with breaking the story. JMG reports he was “Tipped by JMG reader Fred.”
As could be predicted, facebooker are gleefully posting stock photos of klansmen, and making snarky comments. The opposition of UDWK is seen as another selling point for the benefits of gay marriage. After all, if the Klan is against something, then you need to be for it.
The fact that the issue of marriage is being decided in federal courts is not discussed. Marriage has always been a legal construct. The states and the federal government are fighting over who gets to regulate marriage, which usually does not end well for the states. The acronym IANAL is useful. Maybe arranged marriages, involving cattle, are the tradition to follow.
One wonders why “the Klan” even bothers. They are a national joke. They get less respect than the Westboro Baptist Church. If they say something, the media gleefully reports and distorts. It is almost as if someone hacked into the UDWK site, in an effort to make them look bad. If you look at the rhetoric, grammar, and spelling of the document, you might come to that conclusion.
If you want to see the UDWK statement, you get a screen: “Adult Content Warning ~ The site uniteddixiewhiteknights that you are about to view may contain content only suitable for adults.” You have two choices: “I would like to proceed to the site. ~ I do not wish to view this page.”
In it’s report, The New Civil Rights Movement mentions “The statement, to which we will not link.” TNCRM story is sponsored by LGBT Family Planning, and How To Remove Dark Spots, Watch Shocking Presentation. Stories about the KKK are good for getting people to look at paid advertising.
Last summer, a report circulated: KKK Raising Money for Police Officer Who Shot African-American Teen. “The South Carolina-based New Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan says its Missouri chapter is raising money for the still unidentified white police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, 18, who was scheduled to begin college classes this week.” This report was used to discredit Darren Wilson, while the investigation was ongoing.
During this weeks Klan sighting, a followup appeared to this story, KKK Disowns KKK Fundraiser for Darren Wilson “The fundraising email is actually in violation of the traditional Klan constitution, according to another Imperial Wizard, Frank Ancona. Ancona leads the Traditionalist American Knights, one of the largest branches of the KKK, approaching 10,000 members in the lower 48 states. Their headquarters are in Missouri.
The KKK is split into many smaller subdivisions, explained Ancona, and often times, banished members of a larger branch will attempt to start their own. Ancona believes this is the case with Murray, who is not even known to the Traditionalist American Knights. (Murray is Imperial Wizard Chuck Murray, of the New Empire Knights.)
“He basically made up his own name,” Ancona said, explaining that Murray may not even be on his birth certificate. “We are a registered organization. We have a charter with the state… Half of them don’t have the rituals for our ceremonies.”
Ancona worked with senior members of his organization to attempt to find Murray and confirm his connection to the larger group, but they could not. “No one has ever heard of the guy, I talked to the older members of our group,” he said. “There are other legitimate Klan organizations, but this group here sprang out in the last year or so I don’t believe he has any members. I think it’s just him.”
Additionally, Ancona believes Murray’s fundraising effort is a scam, because technically, members of the Klan cannot speak with the media, let alone solicit their help with raising donations. All members sign an agreement that forbids conversations with the press. Only highly vetted officials interact with reporters, and even then, interviews are rare.”
The KKK has historically been a secret society. Is posting a manifesto on the internet, and leaking it to Joe.My.God., the way things are done in the internet age? Is the UDWK a glory seeking fringe group? Maybe the post is a false flag operation, designed to build support for gay marriage.
In case anyone is confused, this post does not support the KKK. Nor will there be the ritual denunciation that anti-racists seem to feel obligated to make. It is just an effort by a slack blogger to make sense of a few things that defy explanation. The pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. The rally was held July 14, 1939 at Stone Mountain.
Tiny American Faith Groups
As you may have heard, a man killed three of his neighbors in North Carolina. The victims were Muslim, and the alleged perp is white. Since America is now a nation of media critics, the way this incident is covered is getting as much chatter as anything else. The usual comments about lack of media coverage, and the different ways the race of the perp affects what the media calls the person, are being made. If you can’t say anything good, criticize the media.
Some stories report that a dispute over parking spots was behind the slayings. While this may seem trivial to some, parking disputes can be heated. Did the condo community have enough parking spaces? Is killing over a parking spot any sillier than killing because of differing opinions about G-d?
The Washington Post has a story about the killing, Chapel Hill killings shine light on particular tensions between Islam and atheism. “The alleged assassination by an outspoken North Carolina atheist of three of his Muslim neighbors is shining a light on particular, deep tensions between two tiny American faith groups: Muslims and atheists.”
Is that tiny America, tiny faith, or tiny groups? How can atheists be called a “faith group?” Maybe we should go back to saying religion, instead using faith as a semantic substitute. Or maybe, just maybe, we should quit labeling people based on their opinions about G-d. Is it really any of your business?
The WP story has a link to the facebook page of alleged killer Craig Stephen Hicks. There are numerous comments criticizing the Abrahamic religions. There are also a puzzle, a video about New Zealand, and a link to a story about what occupations the 50 states have. The Hicks page is not different from most facebook pages.
Perhaps the facebook page has a clue to the real motive for the killing. Mr. Hicks is a Pittsburgh Steeler fan. Mr. Hicks is married, and went to Disneyworld two months ago. Mr. Hicks is in two facebook groups: Atheism on Youtube, and LET’S REACH 1 MILLION PEOPLE CAMPAIGN…It’s a start! LGBT EQUALITY. Mr. Hicks likes the movie “12 Years a Slave.”
This incident is tough to wrap your head around. Mr. Hicks probably did not need to own a firearm. Since he is white, the media guide says he is a troubled individual, which does not seem to be in question. If he had been black or brown, Mr. Hicks would be labelled thug or terrorist. Those two labels also seem to fit, regardless of whether or not this was a hate crime.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The 1927 pictures were taken at “California Beauty Week, Mark Hopkins Hotel, July 28 to Aug. 2, auspices of San Francisco Chronicle.”
Post Racial America
It is a cliche among certain pundits that this is not “Post Racial America.” No one seems to know what PRA would look like. PRA might be less noisy, with fewer odors, than the current model. The opinion that we do not live in PRA seems unanimous. After PG heard the denial of PRA one too many times, he began to wonder something. Who said America is Post Racial?
Mr. Google has 119 million answers to the question “who said america is post racial?” The short answer is nobody. The closest thing on the front Google page is an NPR commentary from January 2008. This was the early stages of the BHO run for the White House. The commenter said that the election of a dark skinned POTUS might usher in a post racial era in America.
This piece will not have any fresh opinions about race relations in America. That subject has been worn out elsewhere. If someone finds it to their advantage to denounce “racism”, there will be an audience. The truth is, very few people have ever said that America is Post Racial. This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Prayer Breakfast Speech
President Barack H. Obama gave a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday morning. Some are not happy with POTUS giving a speech reinforcing the belief paradigm, and including phrases like “people of faith,” “word of G-d,” and “children of G-d.” The name used today, for a higher power is dog spelled backwards.
POTUS is an American politician. A certain ritual invocation of the G-word is part of the game. BHO is probably a hypocrite when he says “You know he’s not saying it because it helps him advance, or because somebody told him to. It’s from the heart.” It will be a long time before a professed atheist is elected POTUS. It is part of the ritual.
There has been blowback to the speech. When a Democrat POTUS says something, the Republicans feel obligated to criticize. It is how the game is played. This is where we get to hear someone really important, like the former Governor of Virginia. “He has offended every believing Christian in the United States. This goes further to the point that Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.” That is telling him!
So what values is the former Governor talking about? The first thing BHO called for is humility. “And, first, we should start with some basic humility. I believe that the starting point of faith is some doubt — not being so full of yourself and so confident that you are right and that God speaks only to us, and doesn’t speak to others, that God only cares about us and doesn’t care about others, that somehow we alone are in possession of the truth.” It is easy to understand why professional Jesus worshipers don’t like talk about humility.
The speech lasted 24 minutes. It was two sentences that ruffled feathers. “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”
Perhaps the most ridiculous reaction, or reaction to a reaction, was at The Atlantic. Ta-Nehisi Coates is fond of high octane rhetoric. He is in rare form in denouncing the linkage of Christianity to slavery. “The “all too often” could just as well be “almost always.” There were a fair number of pretexts given for slavery and Jim Crow, but Christianity provided the moral justification.”
The embrace of Christianity by African America is not mentioned. Black people might be the most Christian population in our Jesus-mad country. There is a poignant irony in the fervent celebration of a G-d, by people whose ancestors whose enslavement was justified by that same G-d. Mr. Coates notes “(Confederate Vice President Alexander) Stephens went on to argue that the “Christianization of the barbarous tribes of Africa” could only be accomplished through enslavement.”
The feature at the Atlantic is illustrated by a picture of a Klan rally. As we mentioned before, the loyal opposition is going to criticize the POTUS. And some are going to lose their minds, and compare this criticism to a cross burning. This, as Mr. Coates might say, “gives you some sense of the limited tolerance for any honest conversation around racism in our politics.”
Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Direct Deposit Your Privilege
PG poured a cup of coffee, and got busy multi tasking. A splendid selection of images from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library” await the editor’s magic wand. Some of these images appear with this post.
Cropping/level adjusting/labeling uses hands and eyes, but not ears. This leaves a sense open for input. The audio component listens to podcasts. That leaves smell as the underutilized sense. The internet does not play to the literal sense of smell … figuratively the nose works overtime.
The soundtrack this morning is episode 33372 of Bloggingheads.tv. Talkers Aryeh Cohen-Wade and Freddie deBoer discuss a recent bit of thumb pulling by Jonathan Chait, Not a very PC thing to say. The links page is sponsored by the NRA. “Defend Your Freedom… Join NRA Today … Your Membership includes this FREE NRA Rosewood Handle Knife.”
In the event that you have better things to worry about, Mr. Chait’s commentary has ruffled a few feathers. The general concept is that some people are more concerned about the way you say something, than the actual content. A number of illustrative horror stories are given. “A theater group at Mount Holyoke College recently announced it would no longer put on The Vagina Monologues in part because the material excludes women without vaginas.”
Ad hominem has a long history as a tactic for dismissing views that you don’t want to talk about. Crying hypocrisy is usually the easiest argument to make, without getting your hands dirty with the details. Many people decide that activism is just not fun anymore, and leave whatever movement they decide to grace with their presence. Sometimes this is a good thing.
Bloggingheads has a device on the viewer enabling the consumer to make a sound bite clip. This clip is delicately known as the dingle link, not to be confused with dingleberry. This can be a problem to the multi-tasker. You are sailing along with your project, and the talker says something that you want to save for posterity, or posterior. You have to stop the player, scroll back to the start of the comment, and do the appropriate clicking mojo to save the clip.
There were three such moments in episode 33372. Mr. Cohen-Wade says the divide and conquer nature of identity politics is similar to the history of southern racism. The idea was to pit the poor whites against the poor blacks, to the benefit of the rich white people. What Mr. Cohen-Wade does not mention is that northern robber barons played the same game with immigrants. After the great migration, rich northerners saw the benefit of a divide and conquer race game.
At the sixty eight minute mark, there are back to back comments. In the first, Mr. Cohen-Wade discusses the privilege of having two parents in the house. This is an advantage in later life, but no one calling out privilege seems to think this is worthy of mention.
Immediately after this comment, Mr. deBoer notes a contradiction in the expression check your privilege. “One of the most surefire signs that someone is privileged is if they use the phrase “check your privilege. … only people who come from a certain level of education know what that means.”
Meanwhile on facebook, someone posted a tawdry video. Men were talking about male stereotypes, and how they don’t want to live up to these so called ideals. All the men in the video were under thirty. Only one of the players was mixed race, or black … it is tough to tell which. This gentleman makes a comment about dick size, and another comment with a bleeped out cussword.
There was a comment. An Atlanta man said “uhhhhh, way to represent the fatties?”. The man posting the video replied “Fat hum?”
The Boston Tea Party Story
For better or worse (it’s ok to curse), the tea party is a part of the scene. The seminal event was the Boston Tea Party in 1775. The first post below is a look at what really happened in Boston harbor. It is tough to discern truth from fable at a distance of 236 years, but we will try. The tea party metaphor gets worked over in another post, would you like a refill?
The second part is a look at the phrase “founding fathers”. This phrase is “liberally” sprinkled into rhetoric of all persuasions. This author sees a square peg being forced into round holes.
In the first year of the Obama regime, America saw the rise of the “Tea Party.” These affairs are usually right wing, and have lots of clever signs. The general idea is that taxes are too high, government is too big, and that the people need to do something.
The namesake event was the Boston Tea Party. On December 16, 1773, crowds of people (some dressed as Mohawks) went on board the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver. The crowds threw overboard 342 chests, containing 90,000 pounds of tea. The crowds were unhappy because the East India Company was importing the tea into America, with a 3 pence per pound tax.
A website called listverse plays the contrarian. (spell check suggestions: contraction, contraption) According to them : “American colonists did not protest the Tea Tax with the Boston Tea Party because it raised the price of tea. The American colonists preferred Dutch tea to English tea. The English Parliament placed an embargo on Dutch tea in the colonies, so a huge smuggling profession developed. To combat this, the English government LOWERED the tax on tea so that the English tea would be price competitive with Dutch teas. The colonists (actually some colonists led by the chief smugglers) protested by dumping the tea into Boston Harbor.”
According to Wikipedia, the Dutch tea had been smuggled into the colonies for some time. The Dutch government had given their companies a tax advantage, which allowed them to sell their product cheaper. Finally, the British government cut their taxes, but kept a tax in place. The “Townsend Tax” was to be used to pay governing colonial officials, and make them less dependent on the colonists.
In Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia, the tea boats were turned around, and returned to England with their merchandise. In Massachusetts, Governor Thomas Hutchinson insisted that the tea be unloaded. Two of the Governor’s sons were tea dealers, and stood to make a profit from the taxed tea. There are also reports that the smugglers were in the crowd dumping tea into the harbor.
The photogenic tea party movement seems to be destined to stay a while. The question remains, how much does it have to do with the namesake event?
People often try to justify their opinions by saying that the “founding fathers” agree with them. They often are guilty of selective use of history. A good place to start would be to define what we mean by the phrase founding fathers.
The FF word was not used before 1916. A senator from Ohio named Warren Harding used the phrase in the keynote address of the 1916 Republican convention. Mr. Harding was elected President in 1920, and is regarded as perhaps the most corrupt man to ever hold the office.
There are two groups of men who could be considered the founding fathers. (The fathers part is correct. Both groups are 100% male.) The Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, which cut the ties to England. Eleven years later, the Constitutional Convention wrote the Constitution that governs America today. While the Continental Congress was braver than the Constitution writers (We must hang together, or we will hang separately), the Constitution is the document that tells our government how to function. For the purposes of this feature, the men of the Constitutional Convention are the founding fathers.
Before moving on, we should remember eight men who signed the Declaration of Independence, and later attended the Constitutional Convention. Both documents were signed by George Clymer, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, George Read, Roger Sherman, and James Wilson. George Wythe left the Constitutional Convention without signing the new document. (He needed to take care of his sick wife. Mr. Wythe later supported ratification.) Elbridge Gerry (the namesake of gerrymandering) refused to sign the Constitution because it did not have a Bill of Rights. Both Mr. Wythe, and Mr. Gerry signed the Declaration of Independence.
The original topic of this discussion was about whether the founding fathers owned slaves. Apparently, PG is not the only person to wonder about this. If you go to google, and type in “did the founding fathers”, the first four answers are owned slaves, believed in G-d, have a death wish, and smoke weed.
The answer, to the obvious question, is an obvious answer. Yes, many of the founding fathers owned slaves. A name by name rundown of the 39 signatories of the Constitution was not done for this blogpost. There is this revealing comment at wiki answers about the prevalence of slave ownership. “John Adams, his second cousin Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine were the only men who are traditionally known as founding fathers who did not own slaves. Benjamin Franklin, a founder of the Abolitionist Society, owned two slaves, named King and George. Franklin’s newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette routinely ran ads for sale or purchase of slaves.
Patrick Henry is another founding father who owned slaves, although his speeches would make one think otherwise. Despite his “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech, he had up to 70 slaves at a time, apologizing a few times along the way, saying he knew it was wrong, that he was accountable to his God, and citing the “general inconvenience of living without them.”
Patrick Henry was a star of the Revolution, but not present at the Constitutional Convention. The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was in Europe during the convention. Mr. Jefferson not only owned slaves, he took one to be his mistress and kidsmama.
One of the more controversial features of the Constitution is the 3/5 rule. Here are the original words “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” In other words, a slave was only considered to be 60% of a person.
That seems rather harsh. The truth is, it was a compromise. The agricultural southern states did not want to give up their slaves. The northern states did not want to give up Congressional representation. This was the first of many compromises made about slavery, ending with the War between the States. This webpage goes into more detail about the nature of slavery at the start of the U.S.A.
The research for this feature turned up a rather cynical document called The myth of the “Founding Fathers” . It is written by Adolph Nixon. (The original post is no longer available. Here is a partial substitute.) He asks : “most rational persons realize that such political mythology is sheer nonsense, but it begs the question, who were the Founding Fathers and what makes them so great that they’re wiser than you are?”
Mr. Nixon reviews the 39 white men who signed the Constitution. He does not follow the rule, if you can’t say anything nice about someone, then don’t say anything at all. Of the 39, 12 were specified as slave owners, with many tagged as “slave breeders”.
The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, have served America well. However it was intended, it was written so that it could be amended, and to grow with the young republic. It has on occasion been ignored. (When was the last time Congress declared war?) However fine a document it is, it was created by men. These were men of their time, who could not have foreseen the changes that America has gone through. Those who talk the most about founding fathers often know the least.
A big thank you goes to wikipedia Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. This repost was written like H. P. Lovecraft.
Coexist
The custom of expressing your innermost thoughts on the back of your vehicle has taken a curious turn. One popular emblem says coexist. The seven letters are equipped with symbols, both religious and secular. One hopes that no one receiving this message has forgotten to stop, and hit the car with the coexist symbol on the bumper.
When PG was young, there was a miniature golf course on Cheshire Bridge Road called Putt Putt. The first bumper sticker he saw said “I play Putt Putt.” Is coexist an improvement?
When this post was first conceived, the i in coexist was perceived to be unadorned. It was as if the religion of i was receiving due recognition. Upon closer examination, it seems as though the tittle has a five pointed star. This means that the i is a sorcerers wand. The i apparently stands for paganism.
The c, x, and t of coexist are pretty obvious. They are symbols for the three Abrahamic religions. O is a peace sign, and e has the male and female symbols. The religions they represent are not apparent. The s is a yin yang, which is somehow related to Taoism.
Buddhism, Atheism, Communism, and Hinduism are not represented. They spell out Bach. The composer Johann Sebastian Bach produced glorious music for the Lutheran church. Perhaps the e in coexist represents the left out denominations. If this E is combined with BACH, you can spell out BEACH. This is a repost. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
What Is Dirty About Louie Louie?
The sixties were a great time to be a kid. As long as you were too young for a Vietnam Vacation, there were kicks to be had.
One of the more enduring legends was the dirty lyrics to “Louie Louie”. Recorded by an obscure band called the Kingsmen, the song was a massive hit in 1963 (It never was Number One). When WQXI put out lists of the greatest songs of all time, “Louie Louie” was at the top of the list. This is despite, or because of, the raucous sound. The song was recorded in one take, when the band thought they were playing a rehearsal. The vocals are difficult to make sense of, and rumored to be obscene. No one was ever quite sure why. With the garbled sound on the record, the listener could hear almost anything they wanted to.
The Governor of Indiana, Matthew Welsh, banned radio stations from playing the song in that state. On February 7, 1964, Attorney General Robert Kennedy got a letter from an outraged parent about the lyrics to “Louie Louie”. An F.B.I. investigation followed. After thirty months of investigation, the Bureau concluded that they could not make sense of the lyrics.
PG had a neighbor named Carol. A tomboy who could whip most of the boys, she had a pet skunk named Napoleon. Carol claimed to have heard a band at Lenox Square play “Louie Louie”. “He said the words real slow so you could understand them. I can’t repeat what he said, but it was dirty”.
Louie, Louie Oh no, me gotta go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, said, ah
Louie, Louie Oh, baby, me gotta go
A fine little girl she waits for me Me
catch a ship for cross the sea.
Me sail that ship all alone Me never think how I make it home.
Ah, Louie, Louie No, no, no, no, me gotta go.
Oh, no. Said, Louie, Louie Oh, baby, said we gotta go.
Three nights and days I sail the sea Think of girl, oh, constantly.
Ah, on that ship I dream she there
I smell the rose, ah, in her hair.
Ah, Louie, Louie Oh, no, sayin’ we gotta go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
but, ah, Louie, Louie Oh, baby, said, we gotta go.
[Yelled] Okay, let’s give it to ‘em right now! [instrumental]
Me see Jamaica, ah, moon above.
It won’t be long, me see me love.
Take her in my arms again, I got her; I’ll never leave again.
Ah, Louie, Louie Oh, no, sayin’ me gotta go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
But, ah, Louie, Louie Oh, baby, said, ah, we gotta go.
I said we gotta go now, Let’s get on outta here.
[Yelled] Let’s go.
Transcribed by David Spector Sept. 2000 Public Domain. If anyone reading this can explain what was so dirty about this song, please leave a comment. Thank you Wikipedia for your help in assembling this. This is a repost. Pictures by The Library of Congress
The Great Speckled Bird
One day in the eighth grade, PG had a sore spot in his eye. They called it a stye. One afternoon, he got out of school, walked to Lenox Square, saw a doctor, and got some eye drops.
When he left the doctor’s office, there was a man, standing in front of Rich’s on the sidewalk, selling a newspaper. He had blond hair down past his shoulders. PG asked what the newspaper was. Mostly politics, he said. PG gave him fifteen cents for a copy of “The Great Speckled Bird”.
The Bird was an underground newspaper. It was so bad, it needed to be buried. If you are under fifty, you have probably never seen one. These papers flourished for a while. The Bird was published from 1968 to 1976. The April 26, 1968 edition was volume one, number four. This was what PG bought that day.
The Georgia State University Library has a digital collection. Included in it are copies of The Great Speckled Bird. Included in this collection is edition Number Four. PG went looking for that first copy. He needed to be patient, for the GSU server took it’s time. Finally, the copy he asked for came up. It was mostly politics.
When PG saw page four, he knew it was the edition from forty four years ago. “Sergeant Pepper’s Vietnam Report” was the story of a young man sent to Nam. It had a paragraph that impressed young PG, and is reproduced here. The rest of the article is not that great, which is typical of most underground newspaper writing.
A couple of years later, PG spent the summer working at the Lenox Square Theater. The number two screen was a long skinny room. If you stood in the right place, you could hear the electric door openers of the Colonial Grocery store upstairs. The Bird salesmen were a feature at the mall that summer, which not everyone appreciated. This was the year of the second, and last, Atlanta Pop Festival. PG was not quite hip enough to make it. He was back in the city, taking tickets for “Fellini Satyricon”. The Bird was printing 26 pages an issue, with lots of ads, pictures, and the distinctive graphics of the era.
Stories about hippies, and the Bird, can be found at The Strip Project.
Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” .
This is a repost, written like H.P. Lovecraft.
Georgia Is Determined To Kill Warren Hill
Georgia is stubborn when it smells blood. When the state wants to execute someone, they don’t care how bad it is going to look to the rest of the world. They don’t care how many times they have to appeal the case. Money is no object, when it comes to paying lawyers for death penalty appeals.
The latest man to be the target of the state’s bloodlust is Warren Hill. After numerous reprieves, the state is scheduled to poison Mr. Hill Tuesday, January 27. This is the first day of a seven day “execution window” specified by the Lee County judge who ordered the execution.
Why it is so important to kill Warren Hill? The execution is for the murder of Joseph Handspike. There is little doubt that Mr. Hill is guilty. The killing took place in prison. Mr. Hill was serving a life sentence for killing Myra Wright. Mr. Handspike was also incarcerated for murder. The family of Mr. Handspike does not want Warren Hill to be executed.
There is also the issue of “intellectual disability.” There is some debate over Mr. Hill’s i.q. Some say he is smart enough to be executed. The state disagrees.
“In Georgia, defendants must prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” they are too mentally impaired to be executed. Despite doctors finding that Hill is likely mentally disabled, with an IQ of around 70, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) standard for mental disability, the state intends to put Hill to death because he cannot prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that he is indeed mentally disabled.”
Whether or not Mr. Hill is technically disabled, his execution will be bad p.r. for the state of Georgia. Numerous celebrities, including former President Jimmy Carter, are calling for clemency. Once again the state of Georgia looks bad. Is this something to be proud of?
It is not known why the state is so stubborn about this matter. Will it provide a deterrent to other prisoners not to kill each other? Will the execution of an intellectually disabled man make the streets safer? Or will it show the iron will of the state of Georgia? When Georgia wants to poison someone, nothing will stop it. Nothing.
This would not the first time the Georgia has executed an intellectually disabled man. Robert Holsey had an i.q. of 70, and came from a background of horrific childhood abuse. Brandon Rhode “was born in Mississippi to a young mother, who as a 15-year-old was not even aware she was pregnant for the first five months. During this time she consumed alcohol and drugs. Brandon Rhode … “definitely suffers from a Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder” (FASD)… “
The execution of Mr. Rhode took a curious turn. ““Rhode tried to kill himself by slitting the side of his neck and both arms. By the time he was discovered, Rhode was unconscious and had lost half the blood in his body; he was revived at the hospital in nearby Griffin…Rhode had concealed the razor blade he used to cut his neck and arms while lying under a blanket, said Joe Drolet, a lawyer for the state attorney general’s office. He was being observed by guards, but they could not see what was happening under the blanket and took action when they saw blood.” There are reports that the razor was given to Mr. Rhode by a prison guard. This is denied by the officials. “There’s not a pattern of recklessly handing out razors to suicidal death row inmates.”
Mr. Rhode was taken to a hospital, and nursed back to health. He was then taken back to the prison. Brandon Rhode was executed September 27, 2010.
There is also the case of Troy Davis. There is little doubt that Mr. Davis was present when Mark MacPhail died. There is, however, doubt that Mr. Davis pulled the trigger. The case made the state of Georgia look very bad. It would have been easy, during the unending appeals before the execution. to quietly put the case aside. There were other killers to be executed, and provide a deterrent to those contemplating murder. However, the state was stubborn, and fought a long, expensive legal fight for the privilege of poisoning Troy Davis.
In 2013, an execution of Warren Hill was postponed. There were legal issues with the drugs the state was planning to use in the execution. The method of execution, antiseptically known as lethal injection, has had problems. The manufacturers of the pharmaceuticals, mostly European corporations, do not want their products used for executions. This is another p.r. problem.
Georgia has been using mystery drugs to poison prisoners. These substances are produced by a compounding pharmacy, whose identity is secret under state law. So far this proctocol has worked well. There have been no Oklahoma style disasters when executing men with lethal injections.
Is the state of Georgia smart enough to use the death penalty? There are some bad, bad men (and one woman) on death row. Arguably, the state needs to take these people off the planet. However, the ones who get the fatal needle are not always the ones who commit horrific crimes. In the case of Warren Hill, some stubborn bureaucrat seems to have decided that nothing will stop the state from killing him. Are these people smart enough to use this ultimate penalty?
Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
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