Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

A Wolf on a hillside was drinking from a spring when he suddenly spied a Lamb further down the stream. “There’s my supper,” thought he, “if only I can find some excuse to seize it.” Then he called out to the Lamb, “How dare you muddy the water from which I am drinking?”
“But, sir,” said the Lamb, “if the spring is muddy, how can it be my fault? The water runs downhill from you to me.”
“Even so,” said the Wolf, “it was you who called me bad names this time last year.”
“But, sir,” said the Lamb; “I am only six months old.”
“Is that so?” snarled the Wolf. “If it was not you, it was your father;” and with that he rushed upon the poor little Lamb and—”WARRA WARRA WARRA WARRA WARRA”—ate her all up.

But before she died she gasped out—”ANY EXCUSE WILL SERVE THE POWERFUL.”

Aesop’s Fables (Sixth century B.C.)

The lamb in the fable is upset that the wolf says she’s “bad”–so she argues instead of running away. Few of the powerful people running our world care about being good. (The wolf wants to seem “arguably” good–that’s very different.) We who want to do more to defend the lambs need to get power as well as morals on our side.

Did I mention today that I’m working for Howard Dean? Political action is a legitimate and honest way to put our beliefs to work.

Public service announcement: have you, like the lamb, been brainwashed into the cult of the “good little girl”? Yes, you–whatever your age, whatever your gender–are you knocking yourself out day after day after day to dodge criticisms you think other people might make? If so, give yourself a break–and give yourself more of a chance to accomplish some good in this unhappy world. Pick some worthy goal and go after it–knowing the wolves will question your motives, your methods, and your honesty. And when you hear them telling the world how terrible you are, remember what they’ll be saying if they win.

“WARRA WARRA WARRA WARRA WARRA.”

Do you still have mental images of “book people” you loved when you were a child? Many of my own favorites come from the work of Garth Williams. Stuart Little yearning for Margalo. Fern Arable “up at dawn to rid the world of injustice.” Little Bear planning a trip to the moon. All these images still give me great pleasure.
The most magical, in every sense, are his full-color images of elves and fairies in a huge mass-marketed “Golden” picture book. (Jane Werener Watson, The Golden Books’ Treasury of Elves and Fairies, Golden Books, 1951, reprinted 1999.)

Some other books illustrated by Garth Williams:

• E.B.White, Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web.
• Laura Ingalls Wilder, “Little House on the Prairie” books.
• Russell Hoban, the “Frances” books.
• George Selden, Cricket in Times Square.
• Margery Sharp, The Rescuers.

Up the aery mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go ahunting
for fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, Red cap
And white owl’s feather….

(Poem by William Allingham,1824-1889)

Just back from a Boston-to-Philadelphia round trip on good old Amtrak. Compare this to your most recent experience taking an airplane and see why I love trains.

• Train stations embody 19th-century optimism. Airports embody 20th-century paranoia.
• Train stations are easy to get to.
• We got to South Station an hour before our train. We had time to change our return tickets (no penalty), buy sandwiches for lunch, drink good coffee, and read papers before we left.
• Nobody gave a damn who packed our suitcases.
• Our seats had space between us for our shoulders, in front of us for our legs, and in back of us so we could really recline and sleep.
• We enjoyed our time on the train reading, talking, and looking out the window at other people’s lives.
• Though glad to be home, we look forward to taking another trip on another train.

Before the 1972 election, Nixon’s tricksters worked long and hard to shape the Democratic primaries. Bernstein and Woodward’s catalog of their dirty tricks shows how
Donald Segretti tried to knock down the Democrat front-runners–Muskie and Humphrey–with great success. Nixon wanted to run against McGovern. Once McGovern had the Democrats’ nomination, the Republicans rolled out their long-hidden big guns–remember the war cry “Acid, Abortion, and Amnesty”? McGovern, portrayed as a far-out radical, lost all but one state.

So doesn’t it seem strangely familiar–the way Republicans are suddenly ganging up to attack John Kerry? Both Kerry and Howard Dean have talked about a need for “regime change” in Washington. What else to you expect Democratic candidates to want? Republicans, however, are pulling out all the stops in denouncing Kerry–and only Kerry–for these remarks.

Check out these recent
comments aimed to hurt Kerry:

• Republican National Committee chair Marc Racicot: ‘Senator Kerry crossed a grave line when he dared to suggest the replacement of America’s commander in chief at a time when America is at war…this use of self-serving rhetoric, designed to further Senator Kerry’s political ambitions at a time when the lives of America’s sons and daughters are at stake, reflects a complete lack of judgment.”
• House Speaker Dennis Hastert: ”We are at a serious and somber point in this conflict, and unfortunately both American citizens and Iraqi citizens will lose their lives….What we need is for this nation to pull together, to support our troops, and to support our commander in chief.”
• House majority leader Tom DeLay: ”America before New Hampshire.”

I think the Republicans are dead wrong here, and not just morally wrong but stupid-wrong. They’re stupid because those good old Nixon-tricks can’t pass unnoticed by bloggers and their memes. They’re stupid because the counterfit coin of their flag-waving can’t match even one of Kerry’s Vietnam medals. They’re stupid because Dean won’t be easy to beat.

Dean is going to win in 2004, I’m going to work my butt off for him between now and then, and won’t it be great to see an honest guy in the White House for a change?

The fool, the hero, the straight man–if you tell jokes, you need these three guys the way Betsy Ross needed red and white and blue.

In the physicist/bartender joke, the bartender plays straight man–his naive questions move the story along. The straight man piques the listener’s curiosity about stuff the storyteller wants to tell–and distracts the listener from stuff that has to stay hidden until the punch line.

One of my favorite jokes has three slightly-misdirecting straight men, two of whom are women. (Grrrr! No wonder they call English “the Microsoft of languages”!)

On board a train speeding toward Casablanca, four strangers were sharing one compartment: a Nazi officer, a beautiful maiden, an old peasant woman, and a handsome French patriot.

For mile upon mile they traveled in silence.

Suddenly–the train had entered a tunnel–darkness fell. And the silence was broken by the sound of a kiss, quite loud, followed by the sound, even louder, of a slap! As the train roared out of the tunnel, the Nazi had a rueful expression and one cheek much redder than the other. Still no one spoke. But what were they thinking?

The old woman was thinking, “That filthy German–she gave him what he deserved.”

The German was thinking, “How unfair! That Frenchman steals a kiss, and I’m the one she slaps!”

The maiden was thinking, “Strange–why did the German kiss that old woman?”

The French patriot was thinking, “Oh, what a clever patriot I am! The darkness falls–I kiss my hand–I slap a Nazi–and no one is the wiser!”

This joke also has a hero–the Frenchman–and a fool–the Nazi. “Fool jokes”–just a couple of memes ago, we were calling them “blonde jokes”–go back to the primitive humor of laughing at people who pratfall or poop in their pants. “Hero jokes” have a winner as well as a loser–and the winner is usually a stand-in for you.

In real life, each of us plays both fool and hero. But real life doesn’t have enough George-Burns/Dean-Martin/Marge-Simpson types to beg us to tell them stuff we want to tell them.

With this intro, imagine old Dino is here, looking handsomely looped, eager to ask me how it went last night:

Dino: (tunefully) So tell me about this Dino meeting last night.
Betsy: Not a Dino meeting, it was a Howard Dean meeting.
Dino: A meeting in a bar–so how bad a time could anybody have there?
Betsy: I had a good time–about the best time I ever had with a hundred-plus people I never met before. Vote for Dean!
Dino: Well, that’s amore. Now, say good night, Gracie.
Betsy: Hey, wrong straight man! But, you’re right, that’s enough. Good night, Gracie.

Did Donald Rumsfeld rush into war, brushing off experts who warned it would be no “walkover”? Yes, according to the New Yorker and others. No, according to Rumsfeld and General Myers, in a vehement press conference.

Not surprisingly, Myers also claims that people who thought the war should have been planned differently, and news media who report their dissent, are endangering our troops and harming morale.* I have a different perspective.

After any decision, some people who “lost” feel their ideas got no fair hearing. By protesting, they hope to move future decisions more toward their side. Left-wingers have quite a lot to protest lately, but (for example) the anti-Roe-versus-Wade crowd is still out in force. So I don’t think the fact that everyone doesn’t clam up about the war should come as a huge surprise to Rumsfeld** and Myers–nor should the fact that a free press in a free country wants to report this dispute.

Just as predictable as outcry from folks who “lost” the debate are the highly moral reasons the folks who “won” give that all debate should end immediately. For example, at Harvard, there was a very loud outcry when anti-abortion students put up posters of much-magnified fetuses–pro-choice students claimed the posters were unfair, “intimidating,” immoral, etc., etc.

If Republicans want to build our troops’ morale, let them do so by pointing out that in real life few decisions are unanimous–and that one of the things we’re supposedly fighting for is the right of dissenters to speak. It is not the fault of General Myers that sleazy politicians have been pushing the idea that any dissent is treason that hurts our troops–but I can’t help asking, what business did he have sending troops out in such a precarious way that their safety depends on an end to domestic free speech?

* “The criticisms, he said, are ‘absolutely wrong, they bear no resemblance to the truth, and it’s just harmful to our troops that are out there fighting very bravely, very courageously.’
“
** Joe Conason in Salon amusingly details Rumsfeld’s loud dissent on military strategy when Clinton had troops in the field in Kosovo.

???

My great-grandfather Patrick Devine started work as a carpenter when he was 8. Patrick moved on from making good solid Irish coffins to undertaking–then used the skills he’d acquired shipping coffins “home” to build up a small but prosperous travel business. As a little girl, I’d visit my great-uncle Joe who still ran the family business and dream of traveling as I read his brochures. He never invited me to the other half of his building, but he kept a big black hat next to the door, and would put it on when he left the travel office.

My grandfather, all six-foot-three-inches of him, went to Harvard instead–class of 1912, followed by law school. I don’t know what they did to him there–apparently the Irish boys, like the Jewish boys, had a dorm of their own so the “real” Harvard boys didn’t have to spend time with them–but he came out a red-hot Democrat and liberal. He shocked our home town (Manchester, NH) by refusing to write restrictive housing deeds that would keep Jewish families from living in certain neighborhoods. He broke with precedent by setting up his first law firm with a Jewish partner. (I might add his Jewish partner was also breaking local precedent setting up to do business with my grandfather.) And he drummed the following mantra into his children and grandchildren:

“An Irishman with one shirt is Democrat. An Irishman with two shirts is a Republican. By god, I don’t want any of those two-shirt Irishmen in my family!

My grandfather was proud of his many shirts–but to him, that wasn’t the point of politics. Politics was about people getting together, figuring out what a just society would look like, and working together to build one.

So, my grandfather is one of the reasons why you see Dean for President buttons all over my blog. And he is one of the reasons why, tonight, I am going to go to the Dean2004 meetup in Boston–even though I don’t like to drive in Boston, I don’t know anybody who will be there, and I’m feeling very nervous about it.

I’d hate to imagine my peaceful, affection-filled life has “unmanned” me to the point I can’t do something scary. My grandfather, who served with great honor in World War I, used to wake the whole household, years later, as in his dreams he yelled at the Army mules to get those xx&*!! guns up out of the mud. So this is a very small thing I’m planning to do. Still, I’d love to have company if you can join me.

Post-Meetup-Update: I went to the April Dean2004 meetup alone and had such a great time! I am now enthusiastically working with so many of the new people I met there to help elect Dean in 2004. Come to the next meetup!

• Dean2004 meetup
• (First Wednesday of every month)