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History, Bitter & Twisted October 20

Arrivals:

1632 – Christopher Wren always wanted to get his hands on St. Paul’s Cathedral.  In 1661, he worked on some repairs there, and in 1666, he envisioned a new dome for it.  Chance and a clumsy baker came along, and later that year, the cathedral burned down — along with the rest of London.  Although I don’t think Wren was happy about the Great Fire of London, it did give him his big break.  He immediately submitted a design to rebuild the whole city on a European model, with wide boulevards and spacious piazzas.  Charles II took one look and realized that Wren’s design would, first of all, cost too much and secondly, take way too long – people were homeless now.  However, Charles did ask Wren to rebuild the city’s churches.  He designed and built over 50 of them, but he always held out for a crack at St. Paul’s.  Finally, in 1670 he was given the money and the go-ahead.  It took Wren 5 designs, 3 kings, 1 queen, and 41 years to complete the Cathedral.  It was worth it.  Fortunately, in the 20th century, it survived the bombing of London in World War II.  Unfortunately, after the war, when nobody cared about beauty, St Paul’s got crowded in by a bunch of rectangles and cubes.  Fortunately, it still dominates these petty intrusions, as Wren’s masterpiece.

1927 – Long before there was Dr. Phil and his 3-ring media circus, there was Dr. Joyce Brothers, the woman who invented Pop Psychology.  Brothers got her start on a local New York TV station, doing an afternoon advice program in 1958.  The format was simple: Brothers would take questions from the audience and answer them.  The show was such a success (Brothers actually gave good advice) that it was syndicated on both TV and radio.  She also wrote a newspaper column and a monthly column for Good Housekeeping Magazine.  Never afraid to promote herself, Brothers has appeared on tons of talk shows been a regular on TV game shows like Match Game and Hollywood Squares and made cameo appearances on pretty well every sitcom known to man.  She has a Ph.D. in psychology and got her start on TV when she won on The $64,000 Question game show.  Her category was boxing.

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1973 – The Sydney Opera House was formally opened by Queen Elizabeth II.  The opera house is to Sydney what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris and Big Ben is to London. It is one of the most recognized structures in the world.   It is also an essay in what happens when we let government bureaucrats off the leash.  The original design for the Opera House was accepted in 1957.  The completion date was scheduled for Australia Day, January 26th, 1963, and it was supposed to cost 7 million dollars.  Construction started in 1959, and all hell broke loose.  Apparently, nobody in the government had told the architect, Jorn Utzon what they actually wanted, so the design had to be changed several times.  In 1965, a new government was elected, and construction was put under the authority of a whole new department.  So things had to be changed again.  Then it turned out that the original construction was not strong enough to handle the redesigned structure, and that had to be changed.  Tension between the architect Utzon and the construction committee continued until he finally resigned in frustration.  He went on to call the whole affair “Malice in Blunderland.”  Then the new team redesigned most of the interior, wasting more time and money.  Things went on like this for several more years.  In the end, the Sydney Opera House cost $102 million — 14 times the original estimate — and was over 10 years late.  Luckily, the place is absolutely fantastic, so nobody seems to mind.

1944 – Douglas MacArthur made good on his promise and returned to the Philippines.  Early in World War II, when the Japanese army overran the Philippines, General MacArthur had been ordered to escape and go to Australia to lead the counterattack.  He was not pleased, and with the simple phrase “I shall return.” Indicated that he was going to come back and kick somebody’s ass.  After 3 years and several extremely bloody campaigns, he did.  MacArthur was an incredible general and an even better showman.  He understood the public’s need for a hero and worked hard on his image, including meticulously taking the metal bands out of his hat so it looked ruffled and casual.  Similarly, the famous footage of him striding towards the shore at Leyte was filmed twice for dramatic effect.  He also filmed the Japanese surrender on board the USS Missouri, in 1945.    

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Departures:

1890 – Sir Richard Burton, a 19th century adventurer who joined the army early, went to India and then promptly “went native.”  Unlike most imperialists of his time, he thought “native” cultures were viable, dynamic and interesting.  He adopted local clothes (which made a lot more sense than Oxford wool) learned the language and studied the religion.  He travelled throughout India and the Middle East and even disguised himself as a Moslem and went to Mecca.  During his lifetime, he attracted a great following, mostly due to his adventures but also because he was seen as exotic.  However, this brought him into conflict with Victorian society who thought that he’d “gone a little too native.”  He also published number of books that were blatantly sexual — The Kama Sutra, for one.  His friends and supporters called these “extensive studies” but most everybody else called them porn.  Oddly enough, even though he was publicly frowned upon by polite society Queen Victoria knighted him in 1886.  His most famous journeys were with John Speke, searching for the source of the Nile.

1926 – Eugene Debs, the only man in history who ever ran for President of the United States five times – once even from his jail cell in the Atlanta Penitentiary.  Debs was a socialist before it was cool.  In his day, in fact, it was so un-cool to be a socialist that he went to jail for it.  Debs spent most of his life (when he wasn’t in jail) as a union organizer.  He was an organizational genius and a brilliant orator but he got caught in the ideological wars that have always plagued the socialist movement.  As a result, he spent twice as much time and energy dealing with internal squabbles as he did building the labour movement.  In 1918, he gave a speech criticizing America’s entry into World War I and urging men to resist the draft.  He was arrested, tried and sentenced to 10 years in prison.  In 1921, President Harding commuted Debs’ sentence (he was not pardoned as is generally believed) and he was released.  And even though socialism was still not all that acceptable, over 20,000 people welcomed him home.

History, Bitter & Twisted October 19

Arrivals:

1937 – Peter Max, a 60s going on 70s artist who put the psycho in psychedelic.  Max’s work uses strong colors, bubble letters, sunshine and rainbows.   Like most artists of the period, he uses American clichés as a backdrop for his art.  He is deeply influenced (“rip-off” is such a 60s word!) by Andy Warhol and he must have seen the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine at least 8 times.  Today, Max’s art seems horribly out of date but he’s still flogging it — mostly to government officials and old company executives who think it’s still cool.  Eventually there will be another 60s revival, and ordinary people will reclaim Max’s art.

1969 – Trey Parker, one half of the geniuses behind the mega-funny TV series South Park.  Parker and his creative partner, Matt Stone have done a lot of other things but none of them is as funny as South Park – except maybe Team America: World Police, which died at the box office.  South Park is so funny that it has angered many members of “Politically Correct,” a special interest group for people born without a laugh track.  They claim that Parker, Stone and South Park have a Hidden Right Wing Agenda.  I’ve seen the show, and they might be right.

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1453 – French troops recaptured the city of Bordeaux, and so virtually ended the 100 Year War.  This was a war that had everything.  It even lasted longer than it was supposed to –116 years (a great trivia question, by the way.)  It had great battles, Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt (where the obscene middle finger gesture comes from.)  It had fascinating personalities: Edward the Black Prince, John the Fearless, Henry V, running around calling everybody his “Band of Brothers” and shouting “Once more into the breach,” etc. etc.  And everybody’s favourite heroine, Joan of Arc, answering God’s summons to save France and, (when the English burned her at the stake) ending up looking remarkably like Ingrid Bergman.  It started out with glorious knights, in full armour, hacking away at each other in chivalrous individual combat and ended with rows of cannons, dramatically blasting away, in indiscriminate wholesale slaughter.  It would have been a brilliant war except for a couple of minor problems.  One — it started as a family feud when Edward III of England and Philip of Valois both wanted to oppress the French peasants at the same time — not a real good reason to have a war.  Two – it lasted so long that the original arguments between the original combatants were long since gone and forgotten, and you had people’s great-grand-children shooting at each other, for no apparent reason.  And finally three – it irreparably changed the face of warfare.  It’s all well and good to have a couple of hundred noblemen dressing up and playing Capture the Flag, but when you field huge professional armies that spend year after year butchering the civilian population for money and sport – that just gives war a bad name.

1987 – The stock markets of the world unexpectedly crashed on what has come to be called Black Monday.  And they didn’t just collapse, they dropped like they’d fallen down a well.  It was the largest percentage drop in world history (even bigger than the Stock Market Crash of 1929.)  Wall Street alone lost over 20%.  People lost millions in a matter of minutes.  Even the big boys, Gates and Buffett, took a kicking.  Immediately afterwards, economists gathered in Washington, DC, to figure out the cause and future prevention of such a terrible occurrence.  They yipped and chattered, hemmed and hawed and rattled around for about a week and a half, then announced that they had no idea what the hell just happened but they sure hoped it wouldn’t happen again.  It has — several times.

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Departures:

1745 – Jonathan Swift, yet another witty Irishman.  Everybody knows that Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels about Lemuel Gulliver’s adventures in the land of the Lilliputians (little people) and the Brobdingnagians (giants) but most people never get past that.  Actually, Gulliver travelled to several other strange lands including Laputa, a flying island, Glubbdrubdrib and Japan.  On his final voyage, he goes to the land of the Houyhnhnms where graceful and noble horses rule a race of filthy, stupid men called Yahoos.  When Gulliver’s Travels was published, many people believed that there was a Gulliver and that he did actually travel to those places.  I’m not sure that Swift ever clued some of them in.  Swift also wrote A Modest Proposal in which he advocated poor people selling their children to rich people for food – an interesting concept in 1729.  Once again, many people thought Swift was serious.

2008 – Mr. Blackwell! Has it come to this?  Richard Blackwell was a very successful fashion designer who made extensive use of television and journalism to promote his designs.  He wrote a fashion column and a couple of books.  His House of Blackwell designed clothes for Jane Russell and Nancy Reagan among others.  He was very good at what he did.  But what is he remembered for?  Blackwell’s Worst-Dressed List, an annual mean-spirited charade that served absolutely no purpose.  The thing ran for over 40 years and just got bitchier and bitchier as it went along.   People ate it up, enthralled with celebrity women getting impaled by Blackwell’s nasty barbs.   It was insult humour for the masses at its best.  Who am I kidding?  I loved it, too.

American Election 101

It’s that time again — time for the American elections.  Remember how much fun we had last time with McCain and Palin?  It was way better than Bill Clinton playing the saxophone and Monica Lewinsky.  Anyway, Canadians love American elections but like most things American, we don’t really understand them.  So what I’ve done is prepare a quick cheat sheet to explain the finer points.  In most cases, I’ve compared their system to ours, but some things just don’t translate into our language.  Regardless, feel free to print this and keep it by the TV as Glenn Beck and Jon Stewart and all the rest of your favourites duke it out ‘til November.

Americans elect everybody, not just Barack Obama.  They elect governors and senators, judges, and sheriffs, and sometimes even the guy who does the laundry, depending on which state you’re in.  Everybody!  Most of these elections don’t mean anything, even to the people doing the voting.  So you get weird things happening like Jesse (The Body) Ventura, a former professional wrestler, getting elected Governor of Minnesota.

In Canada, we elect a few things like MPs and MLAs, but, in general, we don’t let the serious business of government fall to the fickle whims of the public.  So we appoint most of our people.  People like Frank (Big M) Mahovlich a former professional hockey player, who was appointed to the Senate in 1998.  He scored 533 goals in the NHL.

In America politics is a participation sport – everybody who wants to gets a whack at it.  If you have an issue you’re concerned about, you can jump right in there.  You can find people who think the same way you do, organize them and take part in the body politic.  Then, with a little luck and a lot of hard work, you might find yourself or your candidate available to run in a primary election where other citizens vote for or against you and your issue.  All you have to do to start this process is register to vote.

In Canada, politics is a spectator sport.  Everybody watches carefully but the game is only played by lawyers, teachers and social workers, who are called “They.” And what it comes down to is this:

“Are you going to vote?”

“Probably, but “they” are just going to screw us again.”

America has a two party system.  They have one party which is right wing and conservative, called the Democrats, and they have another party that is further right wing and even more conservative called the Republicans.

As I mentioned before, in Canada, we have only one party called “They.”  This party split into two factions in 1873 when John A Macdonald and his friends got bribed and Alexander Mackenzie and his friends didn’t.  Even after all these years, “They” remain suspicious of each other, carefully calculating how much money each faction gets to distribute to its friends and screaming bloody murder if one side gets more.  “They” come together at election time and divide up the country in various ways.  Then, after the election “They” bugger off and go back to squabbling.

America has a vibrant political media.  They have talk radio, newspapers, magazines and tons of blogs and websites.  But the big hitters are on TV — lined up directly against each other — on two gigantic television outlets, Fox and MSNBC.  They act like a bunch of drunken pirates swearing and brawling across the airwaves.  They hiss and spit.  They call each other names.  They bite.  They pull hair.  They fight it out in the alley with chains.  They don’t have any rules, and they don’t give a damn who gets in the way.  This goes on non-stop 24/7.  They don’t even take a break for Christmas.

In Canada, we have the CBC with Peter Mansbridge and that “mild and crazy guy” George Stroumboulopoulos.  These shows are on late in the evening, but most people who watch CBC have PVRs now so they can tape them and watch them the next day — after Jeopardy and The Wheel.

Americans have election issues, like Health Care Reform, Illegal Immigration, Gay Rights in the Military and The Economic Stimulus Package.  They take these issues seriously.  They debate them vigorously, putting their opinions forward and arguing their points, pro and con.  Candidates let the people know where they stand on these issues and defend their positions in open debate.

We have no such concept in Canada.  There are certain things we just don’t talk about in public – it’s considered rude.  In some places, it’s even illegal to discuss certain things.

Just a few other notes to enhance your election experience:

  • 1 – Americans have a different culture than we do — just like every other country in the world — places like China, India, Mali, and Greece.  So when they do something we don’t understand, they’re not just trying to piss us off.  Tolerance is important.
    2 – A southern accent doesn’t necessarily mean stupid.  It just sounds that way.
    3 – Don’t try to figure out the primaries.  As I’ve already told you, certain things just don’t translate into our language.
    4 – Americans are not as anti-American as we are.  Despite what you might see in The Huffington Post or on Jon Stewart, they just aren’t.  You’ll have to trust me on this one.

And finally, a word of warning:

This is an off-year election which means a lot of things to Americans.  It is very complicated politically and extremely important.  Each election is significant.  It will dictate not only the makeup of the current Congress but also set the stage for future elections and determine the direction of the country for years to come.

What does this means to Canadians on election night?    Seriously, it’s not going to be like 2008.  It’s going to be dull.  You won’t know or care about 99% of the candidates.  Barack Obama isn’t running so it’s not going to be sexy, and the only dumb ass so far is Christine O’Donnell in Delaware (and that’s going to be over pretty early.)  Be prepared to switch channels, and don’t feel bad if you don’t have much fun.  But, stay tuned because it’s only 2 more years until Obama runs again.