Happy 90th Birthday to my Father

Born on this day in 1923.  Died in 1976.

Semi-pro football player.

Division middleweight boxing champ in the Army.

  

WW II Veteran. 

Earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for surviving 5000 hours flying ‘The Hump’ in the back of a C-47.

Among the 2% of the anti-demolition specialists who survived that occupation. 

At the end of the war, was offered a commission to stay in the Army and teach that skill but declined so he could return to his young bride and do his part [with me] to begin the Baby Boom Generation.

Commercial Artist.

Husband.

Father.

Worked too hard. 

Died too soon.

When I Am King – Anonymous Internet Posts Will be Banned

I guess this is what REAL bloggers do. They post regularly. They deal with current events...the immediate and topical...what a concept. This latest Edict is prompted by a news item from three weeks ago. That’s current...sort of. However, this desire of mine has been on the Wish List for years.

The good news out of England was the decision to put Jane Austen’s likeness on the new £10 note. The bad news was that it spurred a bunch of Neanderthals to post some rather disgusting tweets for the world to see. To call the statements ‘misogynistic’ makes misogynists look good. Women who spoke out in support of the new currency received messages that threatened kidnap, rape, beatings and bombings. Of course, all the tweets were anonymous.

These hidden scum have their own name – ‘trolls’...and the hate they post is called ‘trolling’. How cute. The fairy tale character that lives under the bridge. I can think of other names.

Ruth Marcus wrote a fine commentary on this. I like her conclusion – “The Internet has weaponized hate speech.” I don’t tweet but I have long been against crude incivility and dumb-ass replies [“You suck!” “No, YOU suck!” Brilliant. Socrates would be so proud.]. Now, it’s threats of mayhem and other criminal acts. What makes people think this is OK?

I like to read commentary. Along with the sports, comics, obituaries, movie times, weather and other news, the editorial page is why I enjoy the daily newspaper. I know. I’m old and still cling to that archaic preference for an actual, paper THING in my hands...where ALL that stuff is...in the same place. Cue the savvy, cool, Internet users rolling their eyes.

Call me old-fashioned but I want more of my learning and mental stimulation to come from sources other than a screen. If newspapers disappear, society will lose more than just knowing what’s going on. Think about what many people do when they believe the rest of us aren’t looking and don’t know what’s going on. They do it every time.

But I digress. Sometimes, I read commentary on-line. The advantage there is that you can also see readers’ replies. Among the respondents, you will find all manner of clever wordplay in place of authors’ names. And who out there is surprised at this directly proportional relationship? The more considerate and polite replies seem to be from writers whose handles resemble real names while the mean, boorish, bellicose dreck comes from ‘USADUDE or SKYFART21.

I have discussed this with friends and, of course, they point out valid reasons why this could never happen. You can’t police speech that way. What if someone writes from work or the library’s computer? What about whistle blowers who have valid reasons to hide their identity? I know this is fantasy...just like me being King.

So, when I am King, anonymous communications will be banned. All replies, comments, feedback and other pronouncements made on the Internet will be under peoples’ real names. All web site and internet software will require a name to be filled in and it will already be filled in...with your name. How? I will commission a team of brilliant scientists who will invent an app that analyzes the information in your finger tips and breath to identify the unique person that you are...and the ‘From’ part of your note will already be filled in. I guess if you want to actually write a letter to mail or compose your threat by cutting and pasting newspaper words, like in the old movies, you can still do that...provided there are still newspapers around.

I’m just tired of the snarky, ignorant mud-slinging that serves as repartee nowadays. The internet was supposed to be democratic and free but has become ‘classless’ in the worst sense of the word. Freedom of expression is a wonderful thing but the right to be stupid should come with the responsibility to be identified with your opinions.

After that, I will make political ads fully transparent. Instead of a plug that ends with, “Paid for by Americans for America and the American Way”, there will be names of REAL people and REAL organizations.

Vote for me for King.

Exhibit Review – War Photography

On August 8, Beck and I went to the Corcoran Gallery in DC to view a photography exhibit.  War Photography – Images of Armed Conflict and its Aftermath was originally organized by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and is in the District until September 29 before moving to the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

How powerful was this exhibit?  We could not get through it without taking a break.  Like the combat soldier, we needed some R&R to sit, have a cold beverage and a snack and talk about what we had experienced before we could make it to the end.  Can’t remember a museum exhibit that required a ‘time out’ before.

The images are displayed in groupings that take one through all the phases and aspects of warfare from recruitment and training, deployment, battle, to R&R, homecoming, death and funerals. Sections on civilians and refugees are also included.  Over 300 pictures date from the earliest days of photography and show scenes from the Mexican and Crimean Wars.  The most recent are from the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.

Especially in this digital age, where images are so easily made and transmitted, one has to appreciate the challenges photographers faced in the mid-19^th century.  Huge cameras, heavy, glass plate negatives and the need for long exposures required an equally huge tripod and lots of time.  Only stiffly-supported people and the aftermath of battles were photographed.  With the advent of smaller cameras and faster, strip film, brave shooters could document the action in the actual battles. 

Document.  There’s a key word.  While many of these pictures have exquisite composition and other elements of fine photography, the importance of the images is in what they show...the moments in time and place.  I find the most powerful are in two categories.  One is the instants certain events occur, like Robert Capa’s ‘The Death of a Loyalist Militiaman’ from the Spanish Civil War or Joe Rosenthal’s iconic shot of 'Marines Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima’.  The other is the sadness and horror of war’s impact on people, especially those caught up in it.  The human body is too magnificent a creation to maim. 

Firing on Communist targets on the west central front, 
near the village of Nunema, Korea,during the Korean War, 1951. 
Image by Wayne C. Weidner

This is a striking image and I mean no disrespect to PFC Weidner [yes, some of the photographers were active military who documented the action when they were not actually fighting in it].  While the shot captures the instant the two cannons fired, it was not a hard picture to take.  Since it was night time, he needed to keep the camera still, open the shutter and wait for the guns to fire.  The muzzle flash and the snow were enough to illuminate the whole scene.  Close the shutter and you have a winner.

The Viet Nam shots always have a different effect on me because my generation fought that war.  I could have been in it.  The luck of the draft lottery kept me out and some might say ‘shame on me’ for being thankful I didn’t get to serve my country.  That’s a discussion for another time.  I just know the rest of my life would have been very different from what it became.  Apart from that, I touched upon some of that in a Veterans Day book review in 2011. 

The body of an American paratrooper killed in action in the jungle 
near the Cambodian border is lifted to an evacuation helicopter. 
Photo by Henri Huet (1966).

Mr. Huet was one of 135 photographers killed while 
documenting the war in Southeast Asia.

My personal feelings about Viet Nam made me realize another thing as 160 years of conflicts were laid out before us.  Apart from the horror of some of the images, another reason the exhibit is provocative is that one’s impression can depend on political and moral views. Clearly, a pacifist would be repulsed by all of it. I suspect many of us occupy a middle ground where some wars feel right [e.g. WW II; “The Last Just War”] and we accept the need to fight back when attacked. 

Here’s where we loop back to the documentary aspect of photography and politics...and the right to know.  One of the most gruesome images was of a bus in Israel moments after a suicide bomber attack.  The emergency personnel had barely arrived on the scene and many of the dead are visible.  The description noted that the government would not permit the publication of this image.  I can understand how such an image could sicken many and drive others to commit their own mayhem on innocents from the other side. 

When that photo reminded me that governments try to manipulate public opinion, especially during war time, by showing positive images and suppressing negative ones, I was reminded of a more recent example from our current conflicts.  I was surprised that one controversial image was not in the exhibit.  Until a successful Freedom of Information Act challenge changed the policy, the Bush administration would not allow photographs to be taken of American war dead.  Even images of the clean, orderly, flag-draped caskets on their way home was deemed politically threatening to the guys who did not want the public to think about the costs and consequences of war.

Surprisingly absent from the War Photography exhibit was an image like

this, which caused controversy in the early days of the Iraq War.

(Image copied from Google Images)

Images from war are powerful.  That’s why people try to capture them...and why other people try to prevent you from seeing them.  If you are in the area, I encourage you to see this exhibit.  It’s difficult but provocative and seeing it is your right as a citizen of a free country.  This freedom was won by the men and women featured in the images.

Passed Presidents - # 29 – Warren G. Harding

This date prompts a change in the order the presidents’ grave sites will be presented. It might be a bit of a jolt since we jump from the 18th century and the significant contributions of our Founding Fathers [See #1 - GW; #2 – JA; #3 – TJ and #4 – JM] to the 20th century and a man who said of himself, while in office, “I am not fit for this office and never should have been here.” That’s a quote they’ll carve on a wall someday.

President Harding and his Airedale, Laddie Boy

From exhibit of Presidents’ pets at The Newseum (7 March 2010)

So, instead of presenting the sites in the order of each president’s term, our next guest is up because today is the 90th anniversary of Mr. Harding’s death. He was on an extended tour of the American West, including the Alaska Territory, when he died suddenly in San Francisco on August 2, 1923. He is one of eight presidents to die in office...four by assassination and the third from Ohio on that short list. Now there’s a creepy distinction – “Welcome to Ohio – Home to Half the Murdered Presidents”. More on that in September.

It was the second road trip after my retirement...a three-day swing through Ohio to visit four burial sites. I travelled with good buddy, Frank. I call him ‘Frnak’ because when I type his name too fast, it often comes out that way. Now his wife calls him “Fer-nak”...I love it. Anyway, I pick him up the day after his Penn State Nittany Kittens lost a football game to the Ohio State Buckeyes. I suggested that as long as we were going to Marion first, we could swing by Columbus and I could shoot the capitol building. Funny thing happened while it was his turn to drive. He conveniently missed the interstate exit toward Columbus and we were well on our way to Pittsburgh before I noticed. While he claims it was an honest mistake, deep down, he was not going anywhere near Columbus that day. The ‘Frnak Diversion’ has become legend...and sounds like a classic chess move.

Warren Gamaliel Harding was raised in Marion, Ohio. He was a newspaper publisher before he entered politics. His home is there as is his final resting place...one of the prettiest of all the presidents’ graves.

Home of 29th President, Warren Harding, 
Marion, OH (25 September 2006)

Consider how different campaigning was then. In 1920, while his Democrat challenger toured the country, Harding stayed here, enjoying the comforts of home. The press came to him. They paid to see him give pronouncements from his porch and then spread the word around the nation. The campaign didn’t need a half billion dollar war chest to feed the TV ad machine. 

It was the first election where women were allowed to vote and unfortunately, they turned out for the handsome, philandering, empty suit of a ladies man. He was the first sitting senator to be elected president. I believe only Kennedy and Obama can also make that claim. He was the first president to ride to his inauguration in an automobile and the first to speak on radio. Instead of doing his job, he was known for his all-night poker games at the White House. His wife, Florence [her friends called her ‘Flossie’; the President called her ‘The Duchess’] served alcohol in violation of the 18th Amendment...upholding our fine political tradition that the laws elected officials pass don’t really apply to themselves.

I have to admit, before I read about him recently, the only thing I could associate with his administration was the infamous Teapot Dome Scandal. In another ‘first’ for the Harding times, Albert Fall, his Secretary of the Interior, became the first Cabinet member to be sent to prison. For this and other failures, the man has been a fixture on every ‘Bottom Ten’ list of U.S. presidents. At least he appointed Taft to the Supreme Court.

The Harding Tomb, Marion, OH (25 September 2006)

The man was not a picture of good health and fitness. He had heart disease and suffered from fatigue and depression. His dalliances alone would have run a healthy man ragged. He had mistresses and affairs galore, some producing children. When he went on the trip west, he was also stressed about the pending poop storm his corrupt ‘friends’ in the Cabinet had created. Most documents say he died of a coronary. Some mention food poisoning because his quack doctor said that’s what happened in Alaska but he wouldn’t allow anyone else to examine the president. I’m in the camp that strongly suspects The Duchess poisoned his two-timing butt. She was alone with him when he died and then refused to permit an autopsy. Death by natural causes...wink, wink.

Warren G. Harding

29th President; Served 1921-1923

Born: November 2, 1865, Blooming Grove, OH

Died: August 2, 1923, San Francisco, CA

Grave Location: Harding Tomb, Marion, OH

Date Visited: 9/25/2006

The man was a zero. His administration was a kleptocracy. His cronies were scoundrels and thieves. At least the ladies liked him.

In addition to the simple caution that we should watch out for how power can corrupt the powerful, we are also reminded of just how easy it is for this to happen. The two administrations before Harding’s were more active and disciplined and the nation was eager to recover from the First World War. Harding won by promoting a “Return to Normalcy” and the public ate it up. As a more recent administration demonstrated, when it’s all about helping your friends more than the people; and the priorities are tax breaks, lax regulation and public risk for the sake of private gain, the nation gets shafted. Is this a great country or what?