Inspiration Porn
There is a lovely TED talk in the weekly email. The title is “I’m not your inspiration, thank you very much.” The speaker, Stella Young, delivers the message while sitting in a wheelchair.
The concept here is that *disabled* people are people. They are not here to inspire you. They are not intended to show you how bad your life could be, so you should appreciate what you have.
Ms. Young has a talent for words. She says some things much better than this slack blogger. TED talks include a transcript, aka the lazy bloggers friend. Laziness is not considered a disability.
…these images, there are lots of them out there, they are what we call inspiration porn. And I use the term porn deliberately, because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. So in this case, we’re objectifying disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. … I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve been approached by strangers wanting to tell me that they think I’m brave or inspirational, and this was long before my work had any kind of public profile. They were just kind of congratulating me for managing to get up in the morning and remember my own name. And it is objectifying. These images, those images objectify disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. They are there so that you can look at them and think that things aren’t so bad for you, to put your worries into perspective. …
I really think that this lie that we’ve been sold about disability is the greatest injustice. It makes life hard for us. And that quote, “The only disability in life is a bad attitude,” the reason that that’s bullshit is because it’s just not true, because of the social model of disability. No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp. Never. (Laughter) (Applause) Smiling at a television screen isn’t going to make closed captions appear for people who are deaf. No amount of standing in the middle of a bookshop and radiating a positive attitude is going to turn all those books into braille. It’s just not going to happen.”
EMIT (Educate Motivate Inspire Tripe) is in your inbox everyday. Yesterday, this tweet sent PG down the rabbit hole. @chescaleigh “There’s a nasty rumor about racism, and it needs to die. Thankfully @the1janitor is here to help (via @Upworthy)” There was a link to Here’s What Morgan Freeman Had To Say About Racism, And Here’s A Guy Explaining What He Got Wrong.
The intro to the video said, among other things, “Every black person is going to have a different opinion/experience/perspective when it comes to racism.” This sentence got PG in a twitter exchange.
@chamblee54 @chescaleigh @the1janitor @Upworthy the intro said every black person has a different take on racism. so does every white person
@chescaleigh @chamblee54 didn’t deny that. but a white person’s perspective on racism lacks experiencing racism. so that’s a very different convo
@chamblee54 @chescaleigh i agree and disagree ~ white ppl experience prejudice ~ the semantics get in the way of understanding other people
@chescaleigh @chamblee54 white ppl experience prejudice not racism. They’re both shitty but not the same. Sounds like u need to read the link I posted
@chamblee54 @chescaleigh have glanced over article ~ re:#2, have been the only pwoc ~ i could go point by point, and might later on blog ~ thx 4 reply
PG saw the Upworthy video. A young man said that people need to talk about racism. He said nothing about listening. A poster for the University of Alabama football team was in the background. The exploitation of young black men, by college athletics, was not mentioned.
The article @chescaleigh linked to was 18 Things White People Should Know/Do Before Discussing Racism. It is poorly written, and full of logical fallacies. Here is item 3. “3. Oprah’s success does not mean the end of racism. The singular success of a Black man or woman (i.e. Oprah, or Tiger Woods, or President Obama) is never a valid argument against the existence of racism. By this logic, the success of Frederick Douglas or Amanda America Dickson during the 19th century would be grounds for disproving slavery.”
There was one last tweet. It was deleted a little while after being sent. Sometimes, it is best to use discretion. @chamblee54 @chescaleigh I read “18 things…” it was not very helpful.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. UPDATE: Here is the reply post, The Problem with 18 things. UPDATE: Stella Young died December 7, 2014.
Diane Linkletter
Did Art Linkletter’s daughter, Diane, jump out a window while high on LSD? This was one of those indications that the sixties would soon be over. But what really happened? The more one looks, the stranger it gets. Let’s look at the basic story. This is a three part series.(one two three)
“At 9 a.m. on the morning of 4 October 1969, Diane Linkletter lept from the kitchen window of her West Hollywood apartment, plunging six floors to the sidewalk below. She died at County USC Medical Center at 10:30 a.m. The preliminary cause of death was given as “multiple traumatic injuries” according to a coroner’s statement. An autopsy was conducted that afternoon.”
Soon the rumors started to “fly.” Diane was tripping on LSD, thought she was a bird, and jumped out the window. When her father, beloved TV personality Art Linkletter, heard the news, he went into attack mode. He blamed her death on LSD, and those who advocate for its use. Art was still raging eleven years later when he confronted Timothy Leary.
Part of the weirdness was Art Linkletter, who some called the squarest person in America. He hosted an afternoon TV show. Every afternoon, a group of kids would be on. Kids Say the Darndest Things. Art would mug for the camera after every one. This video, hosted by Bill Cosby, showcases the talent. Art was also a popular pitch man for commercials. Two of these commercials featured Diane. (Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Circus Nuts)
Here is the snopes synopsis of October 4. Many things in this account are contradicted elsewhere. “Edward Durston was in Diane’s apartment at the time of the fall. … He arrived at 3 a.m., after Diane telephoned him sounding “very upset” and asked him to come over. She baked cookies shortly after his arrival, and they sat up all night talking.”
“About 9 a.m. … Diane Linkletter went into her kitchen and didn’t return. Durston went looking for her but failed to “reach her as she approached the window … She went over to a window. I tried to grab her and she went out.” She was found lying on the sidewalk immediately below her kitchen window. After interviewing Durston, LA homicide detective Lt. Norman Hamilton was convinced the girl had been in a “despondent, depressed, emotional state,” that she was “concerned with her identity, her career.” She had complained she “could not be her own person.” …
“According to Art Linkletter, Diane had called her brother, Robert, just shortly before 9 a.m. on the morning she died, and he was hurrying to her side at the time she jumped. Art Linkletter asserted … that Diane had taken LSD the night before her death, with her panic over its effects leading to the fatal plunge. (Art spoke for the family on the subject of Diane’s death. It appears, however, he was relying upon Robert’s account of his phone call with Diane for that tidbit of information. By all accounts, Art Linkletter hadn’t had direct contact with his daughter during the last twenty-four hours of her life.)”
Edward Durston … made no mention of Diane telephoning her brother. According to Robert Linkletter, however, after he spoke with Diane, he then spoke with Durston, asking Durston if he could handle things until Robert got there. …
“Whatever the truth of the phone call, Robert’s account of it appears to be the source of all claims that Diane’s death was related to LSD, both the original claims that she had taken drugs the night before and died while on an out-of-control trip, and the later claims that she had experienced flashbacks from a bad trip taken six months earlier and was panicked into taking her own life.” (There are unverified stories about Robert Linkletter.)
Was Diane tripping that morning? We honestly do not know. The toxicology report shows no sign of drugs in her system Of course, the dosages used for LSD are very small. They might not show up in a post-mortem blood test. This source says “LSD was detectable in blood samples taken 16 hours after participants had been given 200mcg of LSD.” This report was written in 2019. The test used might not have been available in 1969. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.






WFMU Beware of the Blog had a tribute to Art Linkletter, after his death, at 98, on May 26, 2010. The story had a link to We Love You, Call Collect, the spoken word entertainment recorded by Art, and Diane, a few months before she self-defenestrated. One of the comments sent PG down a google rabbit hole. “Recently, I was poking around for info on Bobby Jameson/Chris Lucey, who put out the enigmatic Songs of Protest and Anti-Protest, in ’65. Turns out Jameson was pals with Diane Linkletter right up until the time of her death. The liner notes to Rev-Ola’s reissue of “Songs of Protest…” (released, apparently, without Jameson’s permission) repeated the falsehood that Jameson had supplied Linkletter with the LSD that killed her.” This story is about to get weird.
Bobby Jameson aka Chris Lucey was a piece of work. He was recently honored by Ariel Pink with Dedicated To Bobby Jameson Mr. Jameson was a neighbor of Diane Linkletter, and roommate of Ed Durston. Mr. Durston was with Diane Linkletter when she took her final step. There is a blog, with many stories. What follows is just one version of October 4, 1969. It is not verified, and will differ from other accounts. Selections from four posts are used. Bobby Jameson died May 12, 2015.
The Rev-Ola Records story appears to be real. “In my hands is the paper fold out from Rev-Ola Records reissue of the Chris Lucey album-cd “Songs Of Protest” from 2002 … distributed by Rev-Ola Records …, without my permission or knowledge … “Art Linkletter had a television program entitled “Kids Do The Damndest Things” and he couldn’t have been more right about that on the night of October 5th 1969. On this date, his own daughter, Diane Linkletter (originally turned on to LSD by none other than Bobby Jameson) apparently took her own drug-induced leap into infinity.”
“Nancy Harwood and I ended up subletting an apartment from Timmy Rooney, one of Mickey Rooney’s sons. It was located across the street from the Shoreham Towers, where Diane Linkletter lived on the 6th floor. … We ended up with a roommate in the new place, because he already lived in the apartment. His named was Ed Durston. I didn’t want another roommate, but it was the only way Nancy and I could afford to live there. …”
“The apartment was on the second floor of the building. Below us lived another musician named Jimmy George. … Ed Durston was a shady dude to say the least, but he was highly intelligent and quick witted, so if nothing else, he was fun to spar with mentally and verbally. I had to keep an eye on him though, because his interest in Nancy was obvious. Along with just about everybody else during those times, Ed was a loady, and to some extent that was more of a convenience than a problem. Ed always knew where to get drugs, so he did serve a purpose … Both Timmy Rooney, and his brother Mickey Jr, were always dropping by the apartment to see how we were doing. They were well acquainted with Diane Linkletter. … Nancy and I would get to know Diane as well.”
Here is Bobby Jameson’s October 4 story. “I went up … to talk to Ed Durston after Timmy Rooney told me Ed was in the apartment when Diane jumped from her 6th floor kitchen window. I also wanted to see Jimmy George, who lived below the apartment where Nancy and I had lived with Ed. From what I’d learned, Jimmy had actually been outside his apartment, and seen Diane falling to the pavement below. At first he’d thought someone was playing a practical joke and had thrown something out the window, but then realized it was a person. He didn’t know at first it was Diane, and he’d seen her hit the ground. He was in shock, but ran over to where the person hit the pavement, and that is when he realized it was Diane. He told me he could not do anything for her, and it made him feel like an asshole. He said she was still alive when he reached her, and that she looked up at him but couldn’t speak. He said she was bleeding a lot from her head, and he wanted to help her, but didn’t know what to do. …”
“When I got to Ed, he was doing better than Jimmy, but he still looked like he’d been through the ringer. I asked him, “What the fuck happened Ed, what the fuck was going on?” He looked up at me from where he was sitting and said, ” I don’t know man, I really don’t know. We were just there, the two of us,” he said, “talking a long time about life. You know, like half the night …”
“Then she just started acting crazy.” “Whatta ya mean Ed, crazy how?” I asked. “Well, we were sitting on the couch, and she got up and went out on the balcony, and just started climbing up on the railing like she was gonna jump off. I ran out there and drug her off, and pulled her back into the living room, and pinned her down on the floor and said “What the fuck are you doing Diane? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Ed was ringing his hands as he told me the story. He was having a lot of trouble going over that night. “So did she tell you what was wrong?” I pleaded. “No,” said Ed, “She told me she was just screwing around and everything was OK and to let her up because it was just a joke.” Ed kept rubbing his hands together like he couldn’t get them clean. He just kept rubbing them together. He continued on, “I made her promise me that if I let her up she wasn’t gonna do anything crazy, and she said, “I promise.” “I let her up, and she said she was going to go in the kitchen and get a glass of water, and I said OK.” Ed looked like he might start crying at any second, and I didn’t blame him, because it was too awful to comprehend.”
“She walked into the kitchen and I turned around to watch her and she just climbed up on the countertop by the window over the sink. I ran in the kitchen and tried to grab her, but she just went out the window before I could get there.” He paused for a moment, as if to get his courage up and said, “I had a hold of her ankle man, I had her by the ankle, but I couldn’t hold her, I just couldn’t hold her man.” I stood there in front of Ed with this crystal clear picture of Diane’s kitchen in my head, with her going out the window, and Ed trying to hold her by the ankle. I just broke down and cried like a little boy. I just couldn’t believe that it had happened. I stood there in front of Ed crying, for I don’t know how long. I just sobbed, because there wasn’t anything I could do about it either.”
Art Linkletter Control Freak is the last Bob Jameson post to be excerpted today. It is a doozy. In this post, we will be introduced to Harvey Dareff. We will hear more about him later.
“This is a picture of the Shoreham Towers, the building where Diane Linkletter lived. To the left is Horn Ave. where Nancy and I lived with Ed Durston. As I mentioned earlier, Diane had a major problem with her dad, Art Linkletter, who was a control freak and attempted, successfully, to intervene in every single attempt by Diane to have a boyfriend. When I got to know Diane, she had met and was extremely happy about it, a guy name Harvey Dareff. …”
“When her dad found out about Harvey he pulled his usual bullshit and appeared on the scene to carry out his dirty work. Art Linkletter showed up to meet Harvey one day and shoved a $10,000 check in Harvey’s face and told him to take the money and stay away from Diane. Harvey took the check and tore it into little pieces and threw it in Art’s face and said “No” thus canceling out Art’s theory that all any guy wanted from Diane was her money. …”
“Art liked CONTROL, he would go to any length to get his way, period. More than anything else in Diane Linkletter’s life, this incident proved to be the final straw and catalyst that pushed Diane over the edge. In conversations with me she complained that her life was not worth living in, unless she could get her father to stop fucking up every relationship she attempted to have. She told me she had even started having relationships with other women, because she was so goddamned lonely …”
“The trouble with people like Art Linkletter, is that they have constructed a false image of goodness about themselves, and use it to manipulate the world around them to their own satisfaction. Prior to Diane’s death, Linkletter’s oldest daughter’s husband also committed suicide by shooting himself. Maybe someone ought to ask what the fuck was going on in that family that caused 2 young people to end their lives in rapid succession. Art Linkletter used his daughter’s death to blame all things on drugs and thus removing himself as any possible cause for the tragedy. My experience in 1969 with Diane, was that her father Art had more to do with her death than any other single factor there was. ”
This is part two of a three part series. (one three ) Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Image #06663: “Fifth International Pageant of Pulchritude and Eleventh Annual Bathing Girl Revue, Galveston, Texas, August 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1930”






On Halloween, 1948, a fifth child was born to radio personality Art Linkletter and his wife Lois. The couple named the baby Diane. Her godfather was Walt Disney. … Diane’s life was untroubled until her teenage years. Like most teens, she struggled to find herself. Diane’s path to adulthood was complicated when she eloped at age 17 with Grant Conroy (seven years her senior). Diane thought she was pregnant, and Grant offered to “do the right thing.” When she discovered she was not pregnant, her parents had the marriage annulled. Diane and Grant never even lived together.”
“Diane moved into Shoreham Towers, a luxury building in West Hollywood. The building’s residents were older than Diane, so she made friends closer to her age in the neighborhood. One of Diane’s new friends was Ed Durston, who lived with a roommate in a building across from hers. On Friday evening, October 3, 1969, Diane went out with a friend, Robert Reitman, to a show at the Griffith Observatory. Robert dropped Diane off at her apartment about midnight.”
Bob Jameson says “Ed Durston was a shady dude to say the least.” Ed Durston, aka David E. Durston, was with Diane when she took her final step. In the seventies Mr. Durston became the director of gay porn movies, with Manhole and Boy ‘Napped.
In 1985, Mr. Durston went to Manzanillo, Colima, Mexico, with Carol Wayne. She was an actress, best known as the “Matinee Lady” with Johnny Carson. Miss Wayne drowned on January 13, 1985. IMDB says it was “extremely suspicious circumstances.” Ed Durston died May 6, 2010.
SECOND HOMICIDE INVESTIGATION PROGRESS REPORT covers the incident at 10050 Cielo Drive, August 9, 1969 … the murder of Sharon Tate, and four companions. “On Saturday, 10-4-69, Dianna Linkletter committed suicide at her residence by jumping from the 6th floor kitchen window at her apartment. At the time she jumped, Edward Durston (LA 978 312D) was in the apartment. … As result of previous information from an unreliable informant, Durston had come up as a possible suspect in this case. With Sheriff’s homicide investigators cooperating completely (supervised by Lt. Norman Hamilton), Durston was given polygraph examinations … Included in the examinations were some keys in the Tate homicides. The polygraph operator … , and the investigators are convinced Durston was not involved in the Linkletter death or the Tate case.”
“Also connected with Durston in the original information received were three other hippies, all users of drugs and car thieves: Harvey F. Dareff (LA 978 313D), is the boy friend of Dianna Linkletter, and had lived with her for several months and was substantially supported by her. He is presently in New York as of approximately 9-25-69. He has not been eliminated as a suspect. …. Robert Parker MacDonald, aka Bobby Jamison (LA 684-737J), and James Steven Williams (LA 978-318W); these two subjects are presently in the Sunset Strip area and dealing in narcotics. Narcotics Division, LAPD is attempting to build a case on both subjects at this time. Neither has been eliminated positively as suspects. Investigators feel Dareff is a good suspect as some information has been received indicating he may have gone to the Cielo residence on the evening of 8-8-69, to possibly buy or sell narcotics. This information has not been verified–investigation is continuing.”
The Cielo Drive killings were unsolved on October 4. There are other indications that “Linkletter was a friend of Abigail Folger and probably knew Sharon Tate. … Durston was a “speaking acquaintance” of Voityck Frokowski.” You cannot discuss these cases without wild eyed speculation. Some of it involves the players in the Linkletter drama. It can be neither proved, nor disproved.
“Diane Linkletter-Harvey Dareff’s live in girlfriend, supposedly committed suicide in the presence of Ed Durston … (Durston was an early LAPD suspect in the Tate murders.) … Dareff was at the Cielo Drive residence the afternoon of the murders as part of a drug deal. (recall that a large MDA shipment was due to be delivered to Cielo the evening of the murders). … Dareff and Durston’s friend Bobby Jameson are very strongly believed to be two of the hippies in the van who famously drove caretaker William Garretson home from Sunset the evening of the murders … “
This concludes a three part series. (one two three ) For more accurate information, you can see a John Waters movie The Diane Linkletter Story. There is a book, Diane Linkletter: A Princess Wrongly Accused. At all times, you should be skeptical of everything you hear. “Inter city beauties, Atlantic City Pageant, 1925” illustrate this feature. This is a repost.
The Playboy Interview Bob Dylan
The Notorious 1966 Playboy Interview -Bob Dylan turned up in the youtubeque the other day. The speaker bought a copy of the magazine online … “I’m one of the few people who can say I bought it for the article and be honest.” A quick google search turned up PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: BOB DYLAN February 1966. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
The winter of 1966 was a different time. Mr. Dylan released Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited in 1965, with Blonde on Blonde to follow in 1966. He shot a screen test for Andy Warhol, and met Edie Sedgwick. Winter of 1966 saw America one year into the escalation of the War in Vietnam. The times they were a changin’.
The interview is not a linear Q&A. The entertainer takes a question from Nat Hentoff, and then says whatever feels right to say. This video, Bob Dylan San Francisco Press Conference 1965, is more of the same. Maybe the best way to approach this is with a few quotes.
PLAYBOY: In recent years, according to some critics, jazz has lost much of its appeal to the younger generation. Do you agree? DYLAN: I don’t think jazz has ever appealed to the younger generation. Anyway, I don’t really know who this younger generation is. I don’t think they could get into a jazz club anyway. But jazz is hard to follow; I mean you actually have to like jazz to follow it: and my motto is, never follow anything. I don’t know what the motto of the younger generation is, but I would think they’d have to follow their parents. I mean, what would some parent say to his kid if the kid came home with a glass eye, a Charlie Mingus record and a pocketful of feathers? He’d say, “Who are you following?” And the poor kid would have to stand there with water in his shoes, a bow tie on his ear and soot pouring out of his belly button and say, “Jazz, Father, I’ve been following jazz.” And his father would probably say, “Get a broom and clean up all that soot before you go to sleep.” Then the kid’s mother would tell her friends, “Oh yes, our little Donald, he’s part of the younger generation, you know.” … As far as folk and folk-rock are concerned, it doesn’t matter what kind of nasty names people invent for the music. It could be called arsenic music, or perhaps Phaedra music. I don’t think that such a word as folk-rock has anything to do with it. And folk music is a word I can’t use. Folk music is a bunch of fat people. I have to think of all this as traditional music. Traditional music is based on hexagrams. It comes about from legends, Bibles, plagues, and it revolves around vegetables and death. There’s nobody that’s going to kill traditional music. All these songs about roses growing out of people’s brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels – they’re not going to die. It’s all those paranoid people who think that someone’s going to come and take away their toilet paper – they’re going to die. …
PLAYBOY: Mistake or not, what made you decide to go the rock-‘n’-roll route? DYLAN: Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I’m in a card game. Then I’m in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a “before” in a Charles Atlas “before and after” ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy – he ain’t so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I’m in Omaha. It’s so cold there, by this time I’m robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain’t much to look at, but who’s built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything’s going good until that delivery boy shows up … he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say? PLAYBOY: And that’s how you became a rock-‘n’-roll singer? DYLAN: No, that’s how I got tuberculosis. …
PLAYBOY: How do you feel about those who have risked imprisonment by burning their draft cards to signify their opposition to U. S. involvement in Vietnam, and by refusing – as your friend Joan Baez has done – to pay their income taxes as a protest against the Covernment’s expenditures on war and weaponry? Do you think they’re wasting their time? DYLAN: Burning draft cards isn’t going to end any war. It’s not even going to save any lives. If someone can &el more honest with himself by burning his draft card, then that’s great; but if he’s just going to feel more important because he does it, then that’s a drag. I really don’t know too much about Joan Baez and her income-tax problems. The only thing I can tell you about Joan Baez is that she’s not Belle Starr. …
PLAYBOY: Writing about “beard-wearing draft-card burners and pacifist income-tax evaders,” one columnist called such protesters “no less outside society than the junkie, the homosexual or the mass murderer.” What’s your reaction? DYLAN: I don’t believe in those terms. They’re too hysterical. They don’t describe anything. Most people think that homosexual, gay, queer, queen, faggot are all the same words. Everybody thinks that a junkie is a dope freak. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t consider myself outside of anything. I just consider myself not around. …
PLAYBOY: Paranoia is said to be one of the mental states sometimes induced by such hallucinogenic drugs as peyote and LSD. Considering the risks involved, do you think that experimentation with such drugs should be part of the growing up experience for a young person? DYLAN: I wouldn’t advise anybody to use drugs – certainly not the hard drugs; drugs are medicine. But opium and hash and pot – now, those things aren’t drugs; they just bend your mind a little. I think everybody’s mind should be bent once in a while. Not by LSD, though. LSD is medicine – a different kind of medicine. It makes you aware of the universe, so to speak; you realize how foolish objects are. But LSD is not for groovy people; it’s for mad, hateful people who want revenge. It’s for people who usually have heart attacks. They ought to use it at the Geneva Convention. …
PLAYBOY: Did you ever have the standard boyhood dream of growing up to be President? DYLAN: No. When I was a boy, Harry Truman was President; who’d want to be Harry Truman?
Glenn And John
The Glenn Show on blogginheads.tv is fun to listen to, especially when co-blackguy John McWhorter is sitting in. The show has a way of producing quotes, which gets in the way of multi-tasking. You are cruising along, doing whatever, and someone says something that needs to be noted. You stop, find the text on youtube, go to bhtv, and make a video clip. 56822 had a bunch of these moments. Many of these incidents involve america’s favorite bad word. The substitute today will be donald.
John is some sort of academic, working at Columbia University. Part of the academy game is writing books. John is working on a history of the english language, and a book about profanity. “the chapter on fuck is frankly a lot of fun.”
Profanity is a social function, rather than a moral one. Like the rest of the language, it changes over time. “You know people have taboos and it’s reflected in language and ours used to be about damn and hell and fucking shit and now those taboos are about and get ready listeners this can be hard get ready you ready it’s about donald faggot and cunt.”
John later gave an example of usage. He was doing a radio show in Oakland. “We said donald … this n-word piety had not come in.” Later in the show, John returned to his academic roots. “that’s the way Myron would put it because he’s an asshole … yes I said it folks.”
Glenn is writing his memoirs. It has been a long, strange trip. From the south side of Chicago … “you know just a donald from the south side so to speak” … he got educated, and moved into academic life. Along the way, he became a Reagan conservative, and a coke freak, not necessarily in that order. He is in recovery, from both conservatism and cocaine. As one man said in a half way house, “okay you’re very smart professor Lowry I want you to ask me one question what were you doing in the streets of Boston showing your ass just like a donald from the project’s”
“It ain’t over til its over.” Years ago, the popular saying was “It ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings.” Apparently, fat ladies are now a protected class. This is progress. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the pictures in Aliquippa, PA, in January 1941. This is a repost.
Racially Motivated
A post on chamblee54 examined the local custom of changing street names. Towards the end, there was this sentence: “Some of these changes are racially motivated, while others are not. Some make sense, while most do not.” If you were to say this out loud, chances are good that someone would interrupt you, and say “Why don’t you say racist?” This is a repost.
The AP style guide took up this issue earlier this year. Here is what they say: @APStylebook “Do not use racially charged or similar terms as euphemisms for racist or racism when the latter terms are truly applicable.” @APStylebook “The terms racism and racist can be used in broad references or in quotations to describe the hatred of a race, or assertion of the superiority of one race over others. Our new race-related coverage entry on Stylebook Online offers details on when and how to use the terms.” You have to pay for the Stylebook online. God is in the details, and hiding behind a paywall.
@AnApeInKhakis “Remove nuance from journalism. If water’s not frozen, it’s boiling.” @beautypill “Yes, for example “You’re missing the point” and “You should go fuck yourself” both apply here, but critical differences in tone guide which one I should use to address your tweet.”
@Zigmanfreud “Yeah, the HUGE problem with this AP stylebook decision is that the people making the judgment call on what is “racist or racism” are so liberal & so PC that anything short of a white person apologizing for being born white (especially if they are a conservative man) would qualify”
@EvanDonovan “Yes, but when are they truly acceptable? Increasingly, newsrooms want attribution when that word is used. “Xxxxx has been under fire since making controversial comments last week. Yyyyy called those comments racist….”
This quotefest could go on all day. If you want to explore the racially/racist rabbit hole, go to an internet near you. More to the point, is changing a street name racially motivated, or racist? This statement applied to multiple street name changes. Often, race was not an apparent factor. We don’t know when the changes took place, or what government body made the changes.
Is this institutional oppression, or just government nonsense? Changing the street name is typical of the petty, separate-water-fountains nature of Jim Crow. Is the water boiling, or is it not frozen? At some point, the writer needs to think for them self. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
July 3, 1981
July 3, 1981, was another day before a holiday. The new President, Ronald Reagan, was recovering from gunshot wounds. There was talk of an era of conservatism, with possibly severe repression.
There was an article in the New York Times. RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS. “Doctors in New York and California have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer. Eight of the victims died less than 24 months after the diagnosis…”
This was the media debut of AIDS. It would not have that name for a while. Almost nobody thought, on that summer day, just how bad AIDS would be. In five years it was obvious how serious AIDS was.
PG was on another trip to the west coast. It was becoming obvious that this would be a vacation, rather than a relocation. He was riding a bicycle, with a milk carton overloaded with camping gear. Some kids told him to get saddle bags, and carry the weight lower. If you have the weight on top, you would lose control coming down a big hill. PG did not listen to the kids.
On July 4, PG left Patrick’s Point state park, about 300 miles north of San Francisco. Coming down the first hill on highway 101, the bike shook, shook harder, and flipped on its side. PG was thrown off. The front wheel was bent beyond repair. PG gathered his gear, left the bike behind, and got a ride into the nearest town.
PG got a bus ticket to Seattle. That city was in an economic downturn, with less than half a page of help wanted ads. PG found a auto delivery service, and got a VW bug going to Oak Ridge, TN. In a few days he was in Atlanta. A few days later, a temp agency came up with a job as a driver for a blueprint company. PG worked for that company, in one form or another, for the next 24 years.
As for the gay men with Kaposi’s Sarcoma … in all probability, the patients mentioned in that article were all dead within a year. AIDS has become a dominating story in our time. At its worst, it was claiming 50,000 lives a year. With the advent of wonder drugs, the death toll has been greatly reduced. The impact of AIDS on American life cannot be adequately described. This is a repost.
Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. Lawrence K. Altman, M.D. is still writing articles for the New York Times.
Extreme Redneck
You’re An EXTREME Redneck When…..
1. You let your 14-year-old daughter smoke at the dinner table in front of her kids.
2. The Blue Book value of your truck goes up and down depending on how much gas is in it.
3. You’ve been married three times and still have the same in-laws.
4. You think a woman who is out of your league bowls on a different night.
5. You wonder how service stations keep their rest-rooms so clean.
6. Someone in your family died right after saying, ‘Hey, guys, watch this.’
7. You think Dom Perignon is a Mafia leader.
8. Your wife’s hairdo was once ruined by a ceiling fan.
9. Your junior prom offered day care.
10. You think the last words of the Star-Spangled Banner are ‘Gentlemen, start your engines.
11. You lit a match in the bathroom and your house exploded right off its wheels.
12. The Halloween pumpkin on your porch has more teeth than your spouse.
13. You have to go outside to get something from the fridge.
14. One of your kids was born on a pool table.
15. You need one more hole punched in your card to get a freebie at the House of Tattoos.
16. You can’t get married to your sweetheart because there’s a law against it.
17. You think loading the dishwasher means getting your wife drunk.
18. An East Texas couple, both real-life rednecks, had 9 children. They went to the doctor to see about getting the husband “fixed”. The doctor asked them why, after nine children would they choose to do this. The husband replied that they had read in a recent article that one out of every ten children being born in North America was Mexican, and they didn’t want a Mexican baby because neither of them could speak Spanish.
This is a two part post. The second part is a list of 15. It is fun facts about the commode. These are borrowed from a site called Listserve. LS has lots of lists, and is publishing fresh content in 2022.
1. The film “Psycho” was the first movie to show a toilet flushing – the scene caused an inpouring of complaints about indecency.
2. Pomegranates studded with cloves were used as the first attempt at making toilet air-freshner.
3. Hermann Goering refused to use regulation toilet paper – instead he bought soft white handkerchiefs in bulk and used them.
4. Over $100,000 US dollars was spent on a study to determine whether most people put their toilet paper on the holder with the flap in front or behind. 3 out of 4 people have the flap in the front.
5. King George II of Great Britain died falling off a toilet on the 25th of October 1760.
6. The average person spends three whole years of their life sitting on the toilet.
7. The first toilet cubicle in a row is the least used. (and consequently cleanest)
8. An estimated 2.6 billion people worldwide do not have access to proper toilet facilities, particularly in rural areas of China and India.
9. The Roman army didn’t have toilet paper. They used a water soaked sponge on the end of a stick.
10. The toilet is flushed more times during the super bowl halftime than at any time during the year.
11. 90% of pharmaceuticals taken by people are excreted through urination. Therefore our sewer systems contain heavy doses of drugs. A recent study by the EPA has found fish containing trace amounts of estrogen, cholesterol-lowering drugs, pain relievers, antibiotics, caffeine and even anti-depressants. Modern urine is expensive.
12. Lack of suitable toilets and sanitation kills approximately 1.8 million people a year.
13. The toilet handle in a public restroom can have up to 40,000 germs per square inch.
14. While he didn’t invent the toilet, Thomas Crapper perfected the siphon flush system we use today. He was born in the village of Thorne – which is an anagram of throne.
15. In a 1992 survey, British public toilets were voted the worst in the world. Following quickly behind were Thailand, Greece, and France.
Add.1-An amusing feature of the water closet is the tendency of people to die there. Elvis comes to mind immediately. There is some debate about this, as some say he was stricken on the throne, fell off, and perished on the floor. Judy Garland is also known to have met her maker while doing number two. Add.2- It seems that this is a real problem with older people that have constipation issues. When you are in delivery mode, and you push too hard, you can cause something called Valsalva’s maneuver. To make a long story short, all that squeezing can pinch the arteries going into the heart. This is not good for you. According to a commenter here, it is .06% of all deaths. This is a double repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress
Dorothy Parker
PG first heard of Dorothy Parker in tenth grade. His friend Bob Gibson cut the poem Resume out of the literature text book, and carried it in his wallet. Mrs. Parker had been dead for two years at the time, with her ashes resting in her attorney’s filing cabinet. As the years rolled on, there were stories about the round table at the Algonquin hotel, and a poem about W.R. Hearst … “Upon my honor, I saw the madonna, by the door, in a niche, of a well known whore, and a prominent son of a bitch.” There was another famous comment: Re “The Cardinal’s Mistress” by Benito Mussolini, Dorothy Parker wrote one of my favorite bon mots: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” Wikiquotes lists both of these items as “misattributed.”
It is now 2019, several years after the first DP post. Born Dorothy Rothschild, on August 22, 1893, Miss Parker did nicely without a middle name. Chamblee54 has featured Miss Parker several times (one, two, three, four.) Today, these four posts will be combined into one. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library” and The Library of Congress. If you want a list of clever sayings, google is your friend. The quote investigator has five pages of the alleged sayings of Miss Parker.
It was 5:25 pm. PG had not heard from either person who was supposed to be at his house at 5:30. While muttering things about unreliable people, he started to look at a writing contest. The idea was to write 100 words or less. The challenge was to produce a “a quick, honest and heartfelt response” to an image. The meme is seen below the fold.
The image has a quote. “I hate writing. I love having written. Dorothy Parker.” When PG sees words of wisdom, with a famous name at the end, his impulse is to check it out. When you search the wikiquote page on Miss Parker, and look for hate, love, and writing, you will not see the quote.
There was one item in wikiquotes that made PG laugh. It was in the “Misattributed” section. “Upon my honor, I saw a Madonna. Standing in a niche, Over the door, Of the glamorous whore, Of a prominent son of a bitch.” Said to have been written in the guest-book of Hearst Castle, referring to the room occupied by Hearst’s mistress, Marion Davies. Parker always denied it, pointing out that she would never have rhymed “honor” with “Madonna”.” Nor would the entertainer.
When PG saw that quote, he knew that this piece would be longer than 100 words. Inserting quotes into a piece will bloat the word count every time. About this time the phone rang. His friends were in the front yard, being eaten by mosquitoes. PG put on a white shirt, and left.
Later that night, 99 sick well chosen words fell out of the fingers, and into the ether.
The quote is suspect. Wikiquotes does not show it, after a search for love, hate, and written. The image is probably manufactured. The image is a piece of paper, coming out of a vintage manual typewriter. The main text is one size. The author credit is another size. Vintage manual typewriters only produced one size of product. This one size is considerably smaller than either size in this image. The text in this image was produced elsewhere. This rendering of a bogus quote is then pasted onto a blank sheet of paper, seen merging from a vintage manual typewriter.
The other day there was a post here on the dotty subject of Dorothy Parker quotes. The departed dipsomaniac would seem to be a quote magnet.
One quote, that appears to be genuine, is about another quote magnet, Oscar Wilde. “A Pig’s-Eye View of Literature: Oscar Wilde If with the literate I am, Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit, We all assume that Oscar said it.” (First printed in Life, (2 June 1927) p. 13 When you can give a source for a quote, the chances of it’s legitimacy go up tremendously.)
The original plan for this post was to do a wikiquotes search of the quotes in this post. This concept very quickly turned out to be too much work. The first paragraph of the original post has a clue.
PG first heard of Dorothy Parker in tenth grade. His friend, Bob Gibson, cut the poem Resume out of the literature text book, and carried it in his wallet. Mrs. Parker had been dead for two years at the time, with the ashes resting in her attorney’s filing cabinet. … there was another comment : Re “The Cardinal’s Mistress” by Benito Mussolini, Dorothy Parker wrote one of my favorite bon mots: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
In the post the other day, it was discovered that the poem about W.R. Hearst was written by someone else. Which brings us to “The Cardinal”s Mistress”. Yes, that was written by Hitler’s BFF, Benito Mussolini. When he wasn’t making the trains run on time, he wrote a sappy novel. And the comment by Miss Parker is great. But did she really say it?
A blogspot facility called Heavens to Mergatroyd has the text from a New Yorker review of TCM. It is a delightful read. However, the landmark quote is not there. The spell check suggestion for mergatroyd is derogatory.
Wikiquotes calls the comment “misattributed”. “Quoted in The Algonquin Wits (1968) edited by Robert E. Drennan, and Try and Stop Me. As noted at Snopes, Drennan’s source seems to be a Parker review which does not seem to contain this quote. If Parker wrote this statement anywhere the primary source seems to have gone missing.”
Try and Stop Me is a newspaper column by Bennett Cerf. The link is to The Dispatch, Lexington N.C., October 12, 1962. Next to the column is The Dispatch Religious Activities, Directory of Churches. The pastor of First Baptist is David Hoke Coon, Jr.
While preparing this commentary, an effort was made to find the text for “Resume”. It is a bona fide quote, first printed in New York World August 16, 1925. While looking for the text, Google suggested a search for “resume dorothy parker analysis.” One result was sponsored by a politician, Michelle Nunn. Another had this to say. “We know that we’re being a bit obvious here. But check it out: almost every single line in this poem offers an idea for a different way to die. When it comes to wordplay, Parker’s not messi…” Maybe she meant to say messy.
BigO is a site with mp3 downloads. Most of them are concerts. PG found one exception. It was a 1960 interview, STUDS TERKEL WITH DOROTHY PARKER/BOB NEWHART – CHICAGO 1959/1960. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Dorothy Parker is somewhat of a legend. There were the funny sayings, a few poems and stories, and her life. Mrs. Parker was well known as a witty person during the twenties. She drank, a lot, and talked often of suicide. It was surprising to find a 1960 interview.
In fact, Dorothy Parker died in 1967, at the age of 73. By 1960, she was in decline, living at the Manhattan’s Volney Hotel. “Edmund Wilson … paid occasional painful visits to her at the Volney. (“She lives with a small and nervous bad-smelling poodle bitch, drinks a lot, and does not care to go out.”) … She was still revered, a legend, but she had also become a pathetic relic. Yes, “you might as well live,” but for what? And on what? Not only was she running out of old friends, she was running out of money, though uncashed checks, some quite large, were strewn around her apartment (along with the empty bottles), not helping with unpaid bills.”
There were some zesty quotes in the interview with Mr. Terkel. “I can’t call myself a critic. Honestly. I can only put down what I think and pray there isn’t a libel suit.” “I’m not a poet, you know, I just write verse” “The beat boys aren’t saying anything except look at us aren’t we great … I don’t think the beat generation is much worth worrying about. Very soon, in the very near future, they will be as forgotten as mah jongg.”
Towards the end of the interview, Mr. Terkel said “i know some people would want me to ask, did she really say all those things that she was quoted as saying” “… no, no, and it was a curse on me, it was simply awful the things that were attributed to me. I wouldn’t have minded if they had been good. I was, in effect, the shaggy dog of my time.”
Another quote magnet for the meme generation is Thomas Jefferson. PG saw yet another inspiring quote on facebook today. Mr. Google was consulted. It turns out the quote is real.
Thomas Jefferson to William Hamilton, 22 April 1800 is the source. Vice President Jefferson was going to be elected President later that year. It is not known what effect that had on the quote in the meme. “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.” It is not known whether a twenty first century Jefferson would unfriends anyone who says anything unappealing.
We Can Forgive The Arabs
The facebook meme showed a quote about American deaths in a mid-east war, and how Israel is willing to make the *scarifice.* PG remembered a quote from long ago. Something about how the thing Israel hates most is being forced to kill Arab children. Who said it, and when? Veteran readers of this blog should know where this is going. This is a repost.
Golda Meir is a matriarch of the State of Israel. Her wikiquote page has this: “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” The attribution says this: “as quoted in A Land of Our Own : An Oral Autobiography (1973) edited by Marie Syrkin, p. 242.” There is a remarkable second attribution. “Harvey Rachlin was unable to find a primary source for this quote and the one below. The Mystery Of Golda’s Golden Gems”
” The one below” is wiki-listed as a “variant” of the first quote. “We can forgive [them] for killing our children. We cannot forgive them from forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with [them] when they love their children more than they hate us.” “As attributed in an Anti-Defamation League advertisement Ad that ran in the Hollywood Reporter.” The source: “Golda Meir (1957.)
The ADL Ad was reported on August 19, 2014. This was during an Israeli visit to Gaza. It was preceded by Bob Schieffer, on a CBS broadcast in July 2014. “Last week, I found a quote of many years ago by Golda Meir, one of Israel’s early leaders, which might have been said yesterday. “We can forgive the Arabs …” Mr. Schieffer did not give a source for the quote.
When dealing with a quote, you should ask questions. Did they really say it? When and where did they say it? What was the context? What was the original language, and can we trust the translation? Many, many famous quotes fail these simple tests. Brainy Quote is not a valid source.
The Mystery Of Golda’s Golden Gems takes a critical look. It turns out that the Schieffer/ADL team was using a combination of two quotes. These were the quotes investigated by Harvey Rachlin. “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” “When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.”
“… many of these cite as their source A Land of Our Own: An Oral Autobiography. … The quote appears, along with several others, on the last page of the book’s text (before the index) under the heading “On Peace.” Its source is given as: National Press Club, Washington, 1957. I wrote to the National Press Club in an effort to obtain a copy of Meir’s 1957 speech. The response I received was that Meir, who at the time was Israel’s foreign minister, did not speak there in 1957….”
“…Curiously, most of the books I looked at, as well as Meir’s own autobiography, My Life, contained no mention of these two most famous Meir quotes. Nor was either of them included in The New York Times’s 4,883-word December 9, 1978 obituary of Meir – although Times reporter Israel Shenker found room for more than three dozen other quotes from Meir.”
“My investigation took a turn when I found a 1970 collection of Meir quotes titled As Good As Golda: The Warmth and Wisdom of Israel’s Prime Minister. In this book there are two quotes that bear close resemblance to the pair in question: “Peace will come when Nasser loves his own children more than he hates the Israelis” and “What we hold against Nasser is not only the killing of our sons but forcing them for the sake of Israel’s survival to kill others.”
“Strangely, there are no citations for any of the quotes in the book, and while I found these two exact quotes in other books (all published in or after 1970) none of the citations were from original sources. Even more bizarre is that As Good As Golda was compiled and edited by Israel and Mary Shenker – yes, the same Israel Shenker who several years later would write the massive New York Times obituary that contained dozens of Meir quotes but, notably, not her two most famous ones. …”
“… In August 2014, in the wake of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza, the ADL placed an ad … The ad had both Meir quotes strung together with the singular attribution “Golda Meir (1957).” The ADL did not respond to repeated requests from The Jewish Press for a statement as to whether the organization possessed any verification of the quotes and why they ran together, as though they were part of the same statement.”
Harvey Rachlin comes to the conclusion that there is no way to verify these quotes from Golda Meir. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
John Waters Graduation Speech
It was a rainy thursday morning. The horrible election is over, with a horrible woman the representative elect. Philando Castile is still dead, as is, presumably, Coach Casteel. The later was the eighth grade gym teacher at Cross Keys, a sadist who got off on making eighth graders run endless laps around the baked clay field. The world can be a muddy place sometimes.
Facebook comes charging to the rescue. A fbf posted a story, John Waters’ RISD Graduation Speech: Real Wealth is Never Having to Spend Time with A-Holes. There is a video, and, praise the lord, a transcript, aka the lazy blogger’s friend. The cisscript is courtesy of a promising blog, TELL YOUR PUP YOU LOVE HIM. A recent post is Questionnaire for left-wing hacks. “Are there topics you refuse to cover because doing so would make you a pariah among your journalist friends?”
When you listen to something while multi tasking, you wait for the moment when you have to pause the show, and take notes. This only happened one time with this product. “Never be like some of my generation who say “We had more fun in the ’60s.” No, we didn’t! The kids today who still live with their parents who haven’t seen them in months but leave food outside their bedroom doors are having just as much fun shutting down the government of foreign countries on their computer as we did banning the bomb.” The crowd laughed on cue.
What “the People’s Pervert” does not mention is that the bomb was never banned. Nuklure weapons are just as popular as ever before. Countries like Israel and Pakistan have the bomb, and wonder why caught-in-the-middle Iran are nervous. Do today’s keyboard warriors really shut down foreign governments? Only if you work for the Russian/Republican partnership.
The message was entertaining enough. John Samuel Waters Jr., hereafter known as JSW (too bad his grandfather did not put Samuel first) says a lot of things. Infiltration of the *establishment* is suggested, to make “really devious” product like “Hairspray.”
“I’m also sorry to report there’s no such thing as karma. So many of my talented great friends are dead and so many of the fools I’ve met and loathed are still alive. It’s not fair, and it never will be.” Fair is a baseball, it between the foul lines. If you try any of the stunts suggested in this address, good luck getting funding for your next project.
Youtube has the predictable fawning, punctuated by dangerous clarity. “Good lord! There are few things in life more irritating than fake bravery. Here’s a guy whose SJW views are so firmly part of the mainstream that they’re shared by most of the government, the media, and 95 percent of our colleges and universities, yet he still acts like some kind of defiant rebel whose views are somehow iconoclastic and brave. They’re not, though. Not for decades. Just turn on the TV sometime, John. Your views are 100 percent Establishment now. God help us all.”
Maybe we should focus on the multi tasking. The pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The distraction from SJW was taken by Lewis Wickes Hine in June 1918. “Relatives visiting a wounded French soldier in American Military Hospital No. 1 at Neuilly, supported by the American Red Cross.” These three images are the last ones shown today. This is a repost.
Bad Gays
Bad Gays “A podcast about evil and complicated queers in history, hosted by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller.” The first episode I listened to was Jeffrey Dahmer. I soon learned that BG is uber-woke. Think Robin DiAngelo on steroids, with better hair. I find this sort of talk to be rather dreary.
As it turned out, I had downloaded a show about Truman Capote. While racism did exist in Monroeville Alabama, and was deplorable, Truman is a hoot. We learn that Miss Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe to play Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Which brings us to thursday morning. “I am sitting on the front porch. I am listening to a podcast about Gertrude Stein It is not kind to the lady. I thought of my friend, who lives in Mexico. He gave me a copy of The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. I sent him a link to the podcast on facebook. Life is good.” There was a lovely reply: “She and Gertrude Stein are buried in Paris in Père Lachaise cemetery. Their names are on each side of the tombstone. So sweet.”
I don’t know much about Gertrude Stein. It seems like she had a brother named Leo, that she was close to. Leo and Gertrude lived together in Paris. Leo then said rude things about Alice B., and Gertrude kicked him out of her life. While writing this piece, I tried to find more information about Leo/Gertrude/Alice. Google is not always the answer.
Gertrude apparently was fond of the Germans, and the Vichy regime in occupied France. This is curious for a Jew. Somehow, Gertrude and Alice managed to stay in France throughout the war.
Carl Van Vechten was the next episode in the que. CVV was the literary executor for Gertrude Stein, and an all around piece of work. All I knew about CVV was a collection of photographs in the Library of Congress. Some of these portraits are displayed with this post.
Mr. Van Vechten was connected to something called the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of music, art, and literature in upper Manhattan. As you might imagine, BG had a lot to say about the lives of Black people in the rural south. It is not tough to imagine a person of color, in 1921 Georgia, thinking they would be better off in New York City. BG played this for all it is worth.
I got curious about CVV, and googled him. In addition to the birth/death information (June 17, 1880 – December 21, 1964), there was one delicious item. In 1926, CVV published a book, N____ Heaven. At 14 minute into the podcast, BG discussed this book. I wish I could have seen their faces.
FWIW, the titular phrase was uttered by a character in the novel. It seems as though “Some churches had separate balconies that black and white alike called “n____ heaven”” The book was a sensation, with both admirers and detractors. “This reissue is based on the seventh printing, which included poetry composed by Langston Hughes especially for the book. Kathleen Pfeiffer’s introduction investigates the controversy surrounding the shocking title and shows how the novel functioned in its time as a site to contest racial violence.”
“The one violent protest which has come to my ears was that of a certain Negro whose conversation is heavily sprinkled with the words “darky” and “n___.” When I suggested to him that he eliminate from his own conversation words which he objected to from he lips of others, a deathly silence came over him and our conversation abruptly died. Soon afterward he remembered that he was already late for an important engagement downtown.”
After acknowledging the existence of NH, BG had a pearl-clutching meltdown. One wonders if they actually read the book they were denouncing so fervently. If one is so inclined, NH is available for download here. The end of the book features a “Glossary of Negro Words and Phrases.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
The Origin Of Barbie







PG found a copy of Snuff at a yard sale. The story was written by Chuck Palahniuk, pronounced paula nick. This book report may have spoilers. This is a repost.
The 197 pages recount an attempt to break a world record. Aging porn star Cassie Wright is trying to take on 600 men in one session. The plan is to die, in a blaze of gooey glory. The story is told by four characters: Mr. 72, Mr. 137, Mr. 600, and Sheila. Each of the four feels a connection to Miss Wright. It is a case of four wrongs making one Wright.
The story gets weirder and weirder. Mr. 72 is convinced that he is the son of Cassie Wright. Mr. 137 became an Okla-homo after being diddled by daddy. Mr. 600 is said to be Miss Wright’s baby daddy. Sheila, original name Zelda Zonk, was another possible Wright baby. After a while, the reader just plows ahead. When PG pays a dollar for a book, he wants his money shot money’s worth.
Snuff has a couple of gimmicks that are repeated to the point of no return. The talent is known by a variety of names, like pud puller, wiener wrangler, page paster, fist flogger, white washer, and sherbet shooter. The movies made by Cassie Wright all had satirical titles, like World Whore One, and The Asshole Jungle. It was funny the first twenty times.
Another gimmick Mr. Nick works us with is the “true fact.” Someone will throw out a chestnut, and say “true fact.” Many of them are Hollywood beauty secrets, like Lauren Becall, and Tallulah Bankhead, drinking eggshell tea. Here is an example.
“… Hitler … was disgusted by seeing his fellow soldiers visit French brothels. To keep the Aryan bloodlines pure, and prevent the spread of venereal disease, he commissioned an inflatable doll that Nazi troops could take into battle. Hitler himself designed the dolls to have blond hair and large breasts. The Allied firebombing of Dresden destroyed the factory … “
Mr. Google has more. “But in 1942 the project was halted when German soldiers refused to carry the dolls because of the potential embarrassment if they were captured by the enemy. Author Graeme Donald uncovered Hitler’s secretive “Borghild Project” while researching the history of Barbie, which was based on a postwar German sex doll.”
“I was actually researching the history of the Barbie doll that was based on a German sex doll of the 1950s. Ruth and Elliot Handler from America visited Germany in 1956 and saw the Lilli dolls that were sold in barbers’ shops and nightclubs – and were not for children Ruth didn’t realise this and bought one and realised later they were not toys. But Ruth and her husband used the doll as a foundation for what became Barbie.”
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.









































































































































































































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