Malcolm X: The House Negro Versus The Field Negro

There is a schism in the black community as old as slavery in America itself; this is the dichotomy Malcolm X is attempting to explain here. I use the terms I do in the title because they are the terms Malcolm himself uses in his speech; had he used the other N-word, though - although I suppose 'Negro' ought to more rightly be considered 'the other N-word' given the current prevalence of its more inflammatory partner - I wouldn't have. I've made my position clear on the N-word and its proper usage many times before*.

What Malcolm either fails to comprehend or simply chooses to ignore for either political purpose or rhetorical expediency (or both) is that different people survive in different ways; rather than condemning the House Negro (albeit in the polite way that was his usual style but which the media frequently chose not to depict, lest his message become too popular) he could have chosen to understand that the so-called Uncle Tom** did what he did to survive. But he doesn't, at least not here. Chris Rock, in many ways Malcolm's intellectual successor, makes it clear in his act that 'there are black folks and there are n-words', delivering a similar message***, with the same punch, sweetened but not diluted by its having been expressed in comedy terms.

Of course, the attitudes Malcolm is describing here aren't confined to any specific group or otherwise arbitrarily assigned subset; they are universal. Many people (I hesitate to say most, although I'm thinking it) are the product of received knowledge. They either vote the way their parents voted or against them in a shallow kind of rebellion, think the way their friends think because they've surrounded themselves with people who think the way they do, and never really examine anything crucial for themselves; it's scary to be an individual, there is safety in numbers, and our long-held beliefs are essentially such a comfort to us that to eschew them would throw our lives into chaos.

Today, all around us, there are House Whites and Field Whites as well, not to mention some who are a little of both; those who accept and actively propagate the status quo in support of some mythical past that never existed, those who work to overthrow it in support of change which after all is inevitable, or a growing class of radical centrists like myself who are tired of their society being pulled apart in a tug of war between extremists of either stripe. As a dynamic it's far more complex even than conservative and liberal, as there are progressives on the right and regressives on the left. Whether or not Malcolm was comfortable with the notion, black and white are more similar than many (again, I'm trying not to think most) might care to consider, united as they are by their joint membership in the only race that really matters: the human race.

*In short, white people have used up their entire share, and aren't ever allowed to use it any more.
**Another often mis-used phrase which would take too much time to clarify here.
***Similar, but not the same; Rock's black folks, unlike Malcolm's House Negroes, aren't sell-outs - and in fact are as scared of the Field Negroes Malcolm is championing as anyone rightly ought to be.
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In Memoriam: Malcolm X

We declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.

While I don't always agree with everything Malcolm X said - especially when it came to fighting bigotry with bigotry - I do understand completely why he said it, and I couldn't agree more with the above statement. As for this need we seem to have nowadays to always agree with everything someone says in order to admire them, I have no idea where it comes from. Probably, as the world becomes safer and more anodyne, this is one of the things we do to re-insert some drama into our lives.

In all honesty, I believe that Malcolm's legacy was to serve as a shadow self to Dr. King; maybe the in-your-face rhetoric of the one scared a few whites who were on the fence in the 1960s into supporting the more touchy-feely agenda of the other, and that's a victory in and of itself.

Today would have been Malcolm's 85th birthday; perhaps if he'd have survived his assassin's bullet, today he'd be a genial old grandfather taking a blue pencil to the more militant speeches he gave in consideration of his legacy, an option denied to him on that day in February 1965 when he fell. Then again, he might still be as fiery as ever, a feisty old firebrand giving publicity whores like Al Sharpton the occasional stern what-for.

Merely considering it, though, is the best way I can think of honouring his memory today.
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Remembering... Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

As these things go, hers was not the worst ending in the world...

Okay, so she was by her husband's side when he was murdered, in November 1963; despite her frantic scramble out of the car - screaming 'They've killed my husband!'* - she didn't later descend into madness like Mary Todd Lincoln, nor did she end her days in obscurity like Lucretia Garfield or Ida McKinley. Among the wives of assassinated American Presidents, in fact, Jacqueline Kennedy may have found the elusive formula for turning her tragedy as First Widow into triumph merely by surviving what was to come.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy's own third act saw her transform from tastefully glamourous mourner in the latter half of the 1960s to tabloid fodder (and prey of paparazzo Ron Galella) throughout the 1970s as she married and then was widowed by** shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, to a literary editor first with Viking Press and then with Doubleday, before settling nicely into a well-balanced public/private life as the longtime companion of Maurice Tempelsman from the 1980s onward.

After her death - on this day in 1994, which came after a brief battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma - Central Park's main reservoir was renamed the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in her honour, while the White House's East Garden had already been renamed the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden in her honor by her successor, 'Lady Bird' Johnson, in recognition of Mrs Kennedy's efforts to make the Executive Mansion, and everything in it, 'the best'***.

*Which, in all fairness, they had.
**October 20th, 1968 and March 15th, 1975, respectively.
***Which she surely did; she routinely tops the list of favourite First Ladies, and both incoming and outgoing First Ladies are invariably compared to her.
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Pop History Moment: "Happy Birthday Mr. President"

On this day in 1962, during what would be her last public appearance - at a birthday tribute to US President John F. Kennedy held in Madison Square Garden - Marilyn Monroe walked onstage a woman and walked off it a goddess.

During her introduction by the President's brother-in-law, actor Peter Lawford, her tardiness (due as much to crippling stage fright as it was to her having to be sewn into her dress) was referred to when he called her 'the late Marilyn Monroe'; it was an eerily prescient statement...

Within three months she would be dead.
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POPnews - May 19th

[The Franklin Expedition exerts a strange pull over the Canadian psyche... In the same way island nations necessarily fear (and therefore revere) the sea, Canada's cultural identity is informed in just such a way by the North; our endless fascination with conquering it has long been tempered by its occasional retribution, the most spectacular incidence of which would be this one. Prompted mainly by Franklin's wife, Britain's Admiralty launched a search for the missing expedition in 1848; their efforts began yielding answers in 1850 with the discovery of relics on the east coast of Beechey Island, but the case isn't likely to ever be closed... In August 2008 Robert Grenier, a senior archaeologist with Parks Canada, and oral historian Dorothy Harley Eber began yet another quest for the doomed explorers.]
1535 - French explorer Jacques Cartier set sail on his second voyage to North America with three ships, 110 men, and Chief Donnacona's two sons (whom he'd kidnapped during his first voyage).

1536 - Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England's King Henry VIII, was beheaded for adultery.

1568 - England's Queen Elizabeth I had Mary, Queen of Scots, arrested upon her arrival in the town of Carlisle.

1649 - An Act declaring England a Commonwealth was passed by the so-called Long Parliament; the country would be a republic for the next eleven years, a time now known as the English Interregnum.

1780 - During New England's Dark Day a combination of thick smoke from forest fires, fog, and heavy cloud cover caused complete darkness to fall on Eastern Canada and the New England beginning at approximately 10:30 AM; the smoke, which didn't clear until the middle of the next night, was naturally taken by some to be a portent of the end times.

1802 - The Légion d'Honneur was founded by Napoleon Bonaparte, when he was still First Consul of the First Republic. Designed to replace all the royal orders swept away by the French Revolution, it remains the highest decoration in France today and is divided into five various degrees: Chevalier (Knight), Officier (Officer), Commandeur (Commander), Grand Officier (Grand Officer) and Grand'Croix (Grand Cross). The Order has a maximum quota of 75 Grand Cross, 250 Grand Officers, 1,250 Commanders, 10,000 Officers and 113,425 (ordinary) Knights; as of 2000 the actual membership was 61 Grand Cross, 321 Grand Officers, 3,626 Commanders, 22,401 Officers and 87,371 Knights. Some of the first were given out by Napoleon himself in August 1804 at a military camp near Boulogne.

1845 - HMS Erebus and HMS Terror with 134 men under John Franklin set sail from Greenhithe, a port east of London on the River Thames, beginning their disastrous expedition through the Canadian Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage; all hands were lost in that first winter to scurvy, hypothermia, tuberculosis, and lead poisoning.

1848 - Following the American victory in the Mexican-American War the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was ratified by the Mexican Senate - having already been signed by both parties near Mexico City on February 2nd and ratified by the US on March 10th; the treaty ceded 1.36 million km² (525,000 square miles) of land including all of California, Nevada, and Utah along with parts of five other modern-day states for $15 million US.

1897 - Oscar Wilde was released from Reading Gaol, his health ruined and reputation in tatters, but his talent intact; while imprisoned Wilde wrote De Profundis, and upon his release he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol, dedicated to fellow inmate Charles Thomas Wooldridge - a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards who was later executed at the facility for the murder of his wife Laura Ellen.

1961 - The Soviet Union's Venera 1 probe became the first man-made object to fly-by another planet when it passed Venus; however, it had lost contact with Earth a month earlier and did not send back data as it was intended to do.

1962 - A birthday salute to US President John F. Kennedy took place at Madison Square Garden in New York City, the highlight of which was Marilyn Monroe's infamous rendition of Happy Birthday; it would be her last public appearance before her death the following August.

1971 - The Mars 2 probe was launched by the Soviet Union.

1992 - Vice-President Dan Quayle criticized TV's Murphy Brown at a meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California saying, in part: '...Murphy Brown—a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman - [mocks] the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'lifestyle choice'.' His comments were the butt of jokes throughout the summer, and even though the show's star Candice Bergen later said she agreed with the bulk of the speech, the show's season premiere that fall was the last word in revenge by comedy. Of course, he might have been taken more seriously had he been able to spell the word 'potato'...
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Happy Birthday Tina Fey

The first female head-writer at Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey was also a standout cast member on that show - combining class and insouciance at the Weekend Update news desk while poking fun of her shortcomings as an actor and impressionist in regular sketches; she shares similar duties in the current NBC sitcom 30 Rock, the single best of its genre in its first run on television today.  

Fey also wrote and co-starred in the 2004 film Mean Girls and the 2008 film Baby Mama (with former SNL and Weekend Update co-star Amy Poehler).  In addition to appearing in The Invention of Lying alongside Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Rob Lowe, and Christopher Guest, her most recent foray into cinema has been Shawn Levy's rom-com-gone-wrong Date Night, in which co-starred with fellow NBC stalwart Steve Carell.
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Harry Truman: The Man And His Mountain

With all due respect to geologist David A. Johnston and National Geographic photojournalist Reid Blackburn, probably the most famous victim of the destruction wrought by Mount St. Helens was the keeper of the St. Helens Lodge at nearby Spirit Lake, Harry R. Truman. In the two months prior to the eruption, the 83 year-old Truman became something of a minor celebrity the world over for his determination to remain in his home despite its proximity to the danger zone, at the foot of the mountain. Convinced that the threat of eruption was overexaggerated, he famously stated: 'If the mountain goes, I'm going with it.' Both Truman and the lodge he loved were buried under 46 m (150 feet) of ash and rubble on this day in 1980...

The subject of the book Truman of St. Helens: The Man & His Mountain written by Shirley Rosen, he was later played by Art Carney in the 1981 docu-drama film St. Helens, and had the song Harry Truman written and recorded by Irish band Headgear in his honour. Now the spirit of Spirit Lake, the region's revitalized wilderness are criss-crossed by Truman Trail and Harry's Ridge, which were named for him.
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Pop History Moment: The Eruption of Mount St. Helens

On this day in 1980 at 8:32 AM Mount St. Helens erupted, triggered by a magnitude 5.1 earthquake beneath the mountain's north slope; in all 57 people were killed that day, while 200 homes, 47 bridges, 24 km (15 miles) of railways and 300 km (185 miles) of highway were destroyed. It was, and remains, the largest volcanic eruption in the contiguous United States in recorded history; the area is now preserved by the US Parks Service as the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

I was living in Chilliwack at the time, and was actually a witness to history when, like millions of others within its earshot, I heard Mount St. Helen's erupt. I'd been laying in bed when I heard what sounded like the lid on the dumpster beneath my bedroom window being dropped; I can remember wondering which of my friends was up so early on a Sunday morning and already messing around. The sound of it woke my parents up and startled our dog so badly she refused to come out from under their bed for an hour. Ten minutes later my mother came into my room and turned on my clock radio; that's when I learned what I'd really heard. While conducting research into this piece I learned that the force of the eruption was equivalent to 27,000 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons; no wonder then, despite being more than 200 miles from the blast, that it was so clearly audible where we were.

Later that day I can remember the dusting - literally - of ash on our car. I even asked to borrow my mother's camera and took a picture of it; I had the picture in an album for years, but now I can't find the picture (or the album) anywhere. Fortunately the eruption was more enduringly dramatized in a 1981 TV movie entitled St. Helen's, starring Art Carney as holdout and victim Harry Randall Truman, the owner of the Mount St. Helens Lodge at Spirit Lake and something of a celebrity in the last days of his life; he was among those who died that day after refusing to leave the mountain and his body has never been found. The event is also covered in a book, Truman of St. Helens: The Man & His Mountain, by Shirley Rosen.
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POPnews (US) - May 18th

[Apollo 10 astronauts touched the nose of a large plush Snoopy for luck shortly before blasting off on this day in 1969; turns out America's favourite cartoon beagle provided them with some very good luck indeed, as the mission would set a record for the highest speed ever attained by a manned vehicle - 39,897 km/h (11.08 km/s or 24,791 mph) - during its safe return from the Moon on May 26th.]
1896 - The US Supreme Court ruled 7-1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that the doctrine known as separate but equal was constitutional; the majority opinion - which essentially made racial segregation legal - was written by Justice Henry Billings Brown, with the dissent offered by John Marshall Harlan, while their colleague David Josiah Brewer did not participate. Plessy v. Ferguson remained the law of the land until it was judicially repudiated by the court's decision in favour of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

1917 - Shortly after the United States' entry into the Great War (the previous April 6th) the Selective Service Act of 1917 - drafted by Brigadier-General Hugh Johnson - was passed, creating the Selective Service System and giving the President of the United States (in this case Woodrow Wilson) the power of conscription.

1926 - Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (shown, at left) disappeared while visiting a beach in Venice, California; 35 days later she stumbled out of the desert near the Mexican resort town of Agua Prieta claiming to have been kidnapped, drugged, tortured, and held for ransom. The story she later told of her 'ordeal' was riddled with inconsistencies, and has never been satisfactorily explained - although it did later inspire a satirical song, The Ballad of Aimee McPherson, which was popularized by that inspired satirical popularizer Pete Seeger.

1927 - 45 people were killed and 58 injured by bombs planted in a school by a disgruntled school-board member in Michigan named Andrew Kehoe in the so-called Bath School Disaster.

1933 - As part of his New Deal reforms of the US economy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an act creating the Tennessee Valley Authority; the TVA was originally undertaken to provide jobs to a region particularly hard hit by the Great Depression by building a series of facilities to create and distribute hydro-electric power.

1953 - Jackie Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier.

1958 - An F-104 Starfighter sets a world speed record of 2,259.82 km/h (1,404.19 mph).

1969 - Apollo 10 was launched; during their mission Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young, and Eugene A. Cernan orbited the moon. In an interesting note, Charlie Brown and Snoopy were the mission's semi-official mascots, and their creator - venerable Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz - created some artwork for the occasion.

1980 - Mount St. Helens erupted in Washington state, killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage.

1992 - Don W. Wilson, the Archivist of the United States, officially announced the ratification of the 27th Amendment to the US Constitution, more than 202 years after it was first submitted to Congress.

1998 - The US Department of Justice and 20 states filed United States v. Microsoft, an antitrust case against spam purveyor and frustration producer Microsoft; the lead prosecutor in the case was Joel I. Klein.
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"Return To Innocence" by Enigma

Birthday wishes go out today to Michael Cretu, the creative powerhouse behind the electronic music project known as Enigma; since 1990 Cretu (along with David Fairstein and Frank Peterson) has been producing what can best be described as 'a thinking person's techno'.

As a follow up to Enigma's Gregorian chant infused debut, MCMXC a.D. - which has sold some 60 million units worldwide to date - 1993's The Cross of Changes spawned the project's biggest single to date, Return to Innocence. The song features vocals by Andreas Harde (known professionally as Angel X) and a sample of an aboriginal Taiwanese chant called Jubilant Drinking Song performed by the husband and wife Amis folk duo of Kuo Ying-nan and Kuo Hsiu-chu - who later sued Virgin Records for credit and received an unspecified financial settlement.

The video for Return to Innocence was shot in Malaga, where Cretu lives, and was inspired by the 1930 Alexander Dovzhenko film Earth.
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POPnews - May 18th

[That the Meiji Restoration was responsible for creating the modern nation of Japan out of the tiny, fractious fiefdoms of the late Edo period via the mighty Empire of Japan is a matter of historical record... The jingoism which marked the 45 years of the Meiji Era (leading to the country's military domination of Asia in the first four decades of the 20th Century as well as its disastrous involvement in World War II which brought all that to an end) though, has only recently begun to be studied by English-language scholars, especially those investigating the reigns of Meiji's successors - his son Emperor Taishō (known in life as Yoshihito) and his grandson Emperor Shōwa (the redoubtable Hirohito). The best of these studies, which comes highly recommended by the Pop Culture Institute, is Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix, which is such a thrilling read that hopefully one of these days I'll be smart enough to finish it!]

1152 - Henry, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, married Eleanor of Aquitaine at Bordeaux Cathedral; the groom was a 19 year-old noble who within two years would become Henry II of England, and the bride a 30 year-old mother of two whose marriage to France's King Louis VII had only recently been annulled - albeit reluctantly - by Pope Eugenius III, for failing to provide her husband with a male heir*.  She would have no such trouble with her new husband, eventually providing him with five sons (and three daughters besides!); which is no surprise since, as we now know, the sex of a baby is determined by the father. Three of those sons - or two-and-a-half, anyway - would go on to serve as Kings of England: Richard I (better known as Richard the Lionheart), the hapless King John, and the pseudo-monarch Henry the Young King.

*At the wedding of Louis and Eleanor, which took place in the same church 15 years earlier, things had been quite different in at least one way - on that day the bride was 15 and the groom 17 - although in both instances she was far savvier than he!

1268 - The crusader state of the Principality of Antioch fell to the forces of Mameluke Sultan Baibars during the Battle of Antioch, sending Bohemond VI into exile and his title into extinction.

1302 - Following the so-called Bruges Matins - a nocturnal massacre of French troops garrisoned in Bruges by members of the local Flemish militia under Pieter de Coninck and Jan Breydel - only a handful of troops and the governor, Jacques de Châtillon, managed to escape with their lives.

1593 - Playwright Thomas Kyd's accusations of heresy against his colleague led to the issuance of an arrest warrant for Christopher Marlowe; two days later Marlowe appeared before the Privy Council to defend himself, and ten days after that he was murdered in mysterious circumstances...

1765 - Fire destroyed as much as one-quarter of Montreal, including 100 homes.

1803 - At the outset of the Napoleonic Wars the United Kingdom revoked the Treaty of Amiens and declared war on France; in all there had been peace between the two nations since March 25th of the previous year - surely a record! - but soon enough the new Prime Minister William Pitt was organizing the Third Coalition in an effort to curb Napoleon's desire to reign over the whole of Europe.

1804 - Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed Emperor of the French by the French Senate.

1811 - The Battle of Las Piedras - the first great military triumph in the struggle for Uruguay's independence from Spain - saw a victory by Jose Artigas over Spain's José Posadas.

1848 - The first of Germany's National Assemblies - the Nationalversammlung - met at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt; its existence was both part and result of the March Revolution which united the 39 states of the German Confederacy.

1869 - Japan's Ezo Republic - founded by the remaining supporters of the defeated Tokugawa Shogunate on the island of Hokkaidō - surrendered to the imperial forces of Emperor Meiji, represented by Prime Minister Kuroda Kiyotaka.

1896 - A mass panic known as the Khodynka Tragedy occurred on Khodynka Field in Moscow during the festivities surrounding the coronation of Russia's Tsar Nicholas II, resulting in the deaths of 1,389 people.

1910 - The Earth passed through the tail of Halley's Comet.

1948 - The First Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China officially convened in Nanking.

1959 - The National Liberation Committee of Côte d'Ivoire was founded in Conakry, capital city of Guinea.

1974 - Under the aegis of Project Smiling Buddha, India successfully detonated its first nuclear weapon, becoming the sixth nation to do so.

1980 - Students in South Korea's sixth largest city began demonstrations, calling for democratic reforms; their efforts would bring about the Gwangju Massacre, one of the most brutal events during the dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan.

1983 - The Irish Government launched a crackdown to defend its radio monopoly, putting Dublin's popular pirate station Radio Nova off the air.

1993 - During anti-EU rioting in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen - caused by the approval of the four Danish exceptions in that day's Maastricht Treaty referendum - police opened fire against civilians for the first time since World War II, injuring 11 demonstrators by firing a total of 113 bullets against them.

2006 - Nepal's post Loktantra Andolan ('Democracy Movement') government passed a landmark bill curtailing the power of the monarchy and secularizing the Himalayan nation, a crucial step in the process that would eventually see Marxist forces outlaw the stabilizing effects of the monarchy of King Gyanendra.
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"Stumblin' In" by Great Big Sea

While we're on the subject of Alan Doyle, here's one of Great Big Sea's typically buoyant up-tempo ditties*, sung by the man himself; from the band's 2002 album Sea of No Cares, it's Stumblin' In, a song which could so easily be about me, I could sue them for the improper use of my likeness rights. Then again, I suppose I'm not the only schmuck in the world who's socially clumsy, so maybe I won't risk it!

If you like the video, the band's Great Big DVD from 2003 features this plus a dozen others, an output remarkable for its variety, joie de vivre, and consummate musicianship. Like the entire rest of of their output, it comes most highly recommended from all of us at the Pop Culture Institute.

*As opposed to one of their heartfelt ballads, at which they also excel.
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Happy Birthday Alan Doyle

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the band Great Big Sea...

As much as I love all the members of the band (hey Sean, hey Darrell) though, something happens between the time that smoky baritone of his leaves Alan Doyle's mouth and enters my ear that I can only describe as magic.

All I can say is his wife Joanne is one lucky lady; the pride of Petty Harbour, Newfoundland, Doyle also just happens to be friends with Russell Crowe, another of our favourites here at the Pop Culture Institute.
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Happy Birthday Craig Ferguson

Stand-up comedian, sitcom star, talk show host, screenwriter, and novelist... Hey! How'd he get my career? Ah, yes... Talent. Yeah, gotta get me some of that.

Currently the host of The Late Late Show, as of 2008* Scotland's loss is America's gain as the former Glaswegian who once performed under the name Bing Hitler has settled nicely into a new life in Los Angeles. Highly acclaimed for his performance of Nigel Wick on The Drew Carey Show, TV's Craig Ferguson nightly entertains as many as 2 million people with his smart, surreal version of a late night talk show.

*February 1st, to be more precise, a 'great day for America'.
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"I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor

What better song to play on an occasion like this than Gloria Gaynor's 1979 hit I Will Survive, which was adopted as a gay liberation anthem almost the moment it was released. Despite becoming a born-again Christian in 1982, Gaynor has repeatedly refused to distance herself from the gay community, categorically refusing to engage in the kind of hatred and judgement that others of her ilk have so enjoyed.
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Pop History Moment: It's Okay To Be Gay

On this day in 1981 the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses; the event is now commemorated as the International Day Against Homophobia.

It needs to be re-iterated that the only thing sick about homosexuality is the treatment gay people receive, occasionally resulting in a sort of post-traumatic stress disorder, brought on principally by religion. Since there are no arguments against homosexuality that aren't at their root religious in nature, may I suggest that religious fundamentalism take the place left by the removal of homosexuality from the list? Anyone who can listen to Christ's message of love and compassion and glean from that the desire to judge and punish and even kill another person is clearly suffering from some kind of delusion, and should be helped*.

As the image attests, there is still far to go; I took this picture in supposedly ultra gay-friendly Vancouver, in 2006. It is by no means the only anti-gay expression I've encountered in this city, nor is it by any means the worst; for instance, I used to encounter anti-gay sentiment on a weekly basis at work, where I could not be out. Yet I feel grateful that I live where I do, and not in a great many other places like Iraq, where the situation is much worse.

*And Christianity is by no means alone in all this; most religions preach love and peace and tolerance and do the exact opposite.
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POPnews - May 17th

[Currently on display in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens next to a working model of it made and offered to the museum by Derek de Solla Price, the Antikythera mechanism is easily one of the wonders of the ancient world and at least a thousand years ahead of its time.]
1521 - Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, was executed for treason - a scene rather graphically depicted in the first season of The Tudors, in which Buckingham is played by Steven Waddington.

1536 - George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford and four other men - Henry Norris, Sir Francis Weston, William Brereton and Mark Smeaton - were executed on Tower Hill for treason; in Rochford's case the charges were especially dire, since they involved allegations he'd had sexual relations with his own sister, Anne Boleyn, Queen Consort of England's King Henry VIII. His Lordship's wife, Jane Parker, has ever since borne the appellation 'the notorious Lady Rochford', although a recent biography of her by Julia Fox has sought to rehabilitate her image; as for her husband, he's been frequently portrayed of late: as long ago as 1970 he was played by Jonathan Newth in The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and more recently by Steven MacKintosh in the 2003 TV version of The Other Boleyn Girl based on the novel by Philippa Gregory, Jim Sturgess in the 2008 film The Other Boleyn Girl, and by Padraic Delaney in the television series The Tudors.

1590 - Anne of Denmark was crowned Queen of Scotland in the Abbey Church at Holyrood; the wife of James VI would later be crowned queen consort of England, and was the mother of the ill-fated Charles I.

1642 - Legend has it Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve founded the Ville Marie de Montréal.

1792 - The New York Stock Exchange was formed when 24 brokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement beneath a buttonwood tree at 68 Wall Street.

1814 - The Constitution of Norway was signed and the Danish Crown Prince Christian Frederik was elected King of Norway by the Norwegian Constituent Assembly.

1849 - A fire burnt much of St. Louis, Missouri, to the ground.

1900 - During the Second Boer War, British troops arrived to relieve the town of Mafeking, which had endured a 217-day siege; the hero of the action was Robert Baden-Powell, who later went on to found the Scouting Movement.

1902 - Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais discovered the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient mechanical analog computer possibly used for navigation, in a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera.

1933 - Vidkun Quisling and Johan Bernhard Hjort formed Nasjonal Samling - the Nazi party of Norway.

1943 - No. 617 Squadron of the RAF executed the Dambuster Raids by bombing German dams.

1954 - The US Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark case in the US Civil Rights movement and one which President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously labelled 'crummy'.

1974 - Police in Los Angeles led by Captain Mervin King raided the Symbionese Liberation Army's headquarters at 1466 East Fifty-fourth Street in the riotous Watts neighbourhood, following a botched robbery by members at Mel's Sporting Goods Store in Inglewood the previous day; the resulting exchange remains one of the most heated police shootouts in US history, involving over 9000 rounds of ammunition on both sides and killing six SLA members in the process, including Camilla Hall, Nancy Ling Perry, Angela Atwood, Willie Wolfe, Donald DeFreeze, and Patricia Soltysik, most of whom perished in a fire which broke out during the action and eventually destroyed the house.

1978 - Charlie Chaplin's coffin was found, his body still inside it; it had been stolen eleven weeks earlier from its grave near Lake Geneva in an attempt to extort money from his family. He was reburied beneath two metres of concrete to prevent a repeat of the indignity.

1980 - General Chun Doo-hwan of South Korea declared martial law in order to suppress student demonstrations.

1987 - An Iraqi fighter jet fired two missiles into the American warship USS Stark (FFG-31), killing 37 and injuring 21 of her crew.

1992 - The so-called Black May began when Thai police and protestors started attacking one another; by midnight, the Thai government of General Suchinda Kraprayoon had declared a state of emergency, and military troops opened fire on protestors. All told, fighting lasted for three days.

1995 - After 18 years as the mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac took office as President of France.

2006 - The aircraft carrier USS Oriskany was intentionally sunk in the Gulf of Mexico for use as an artificial reef.
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Best Of The Best: Henry Fonda

Jezebel (1938) - This was Warner Bros. answer to MGM's Gone with the Wind, with all the usual differences between the two studios intact; headstrong belle Julie (Bette Davis) insists on wearing a red dress to that season's cotillion, a function at which all the ladies are meant to wear white; scandal - rather than hilarity - ensues. Owing to the moral strictures of the time (those of 1938, not 1852, like there's much difference) for her impertinence she begs to redeem herself by going in search of her lover (Henry Fonda), who has been quarantined (along with half of New Orleans) during an outbreak of yellow fever - even though to my mind scarlet fever would have had greater symbolism. Nevertheless, although we leave her picking her way through stacks of corpses at the fadeout, audiences at the time knew that she was already dead, in a very literal sense the silver screen's first fashion victim.

Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) - In typical Hollywood fashion Fonda's Lincoln is altogether prettier than history's Lincoln; also in typical Hollywood fashion, the facts of the plot don't necessarily jibe with those of any official biography. Hollywood lore has it Fonda was reluctant to play such a great man, echoing Lincoln's own humility to a tee, and thanks to that as well as the accomplished direction of John Ford and the film's quality-minded producer Darryl F. Zanuck, the film is rendered emotionally true if occasionally factually spurious.

The Grapes of Wrath (1940) - Long considered Fonda's greatest role, much of the credit for that goes to John Steinbeck, whose fictional characters were often flawed yet triumphed in spite of it. Steinbeck's novel loses none of its sweep here as the Joad family travels from Oklahoma to California during the Dust Bowl, encountering the usual technological, geographical, and classist obstructions along the way. Although the movie and the novel differ greatly in both their politics and endings - Steinbeck's original being too honest for the Hollywood of the time - it is still a very satisfying experience to watch. Filmed in sepia to great emotional effect by legendary cinematographer Gregg Toland, if anything the visual aspects of the film are distracting, necessitating multiple viewings; how many depends on how distracted you are by pretty things.

The Lady Eve (1941) - No actor of this era could have asked for a better sparring partner on film than Barbara Stanwyck; director Preston Sturges makes the most of her inherent larceny (in real life she was an orphan who came up the hard way from Brooklyn and through the Broadway chorus) by pairing her with the painful earnestness and puppy dog eyes of Fonda, and demonstrated his flair for comedy - even if it did set him up for a string of roles in which he was routinely pussy-whipped to within an inch of his life. Featuring a cast comprised of the cream of Hollywood's character actors, neither Stanwyck nor Fonda ever looked lovelier.

The Big Street (1942) - Before we loved Lucy she played a variety of roles in which she wasn't the slightest bit lovable (and a couple in which she was a little too lovable, if you catch my meaning); this is one of the former. Exactly why nice guy Henry Fonda falls for a mercenary bitch like Lucille Ball is a mystery, but maybe it shouldn't be; goodness knows, it happens often enough in life, so why not in the movies? Damon Runyon's story - originally entitled Little Pinks - is typically mawkish, but is herein honed to a shine by screenwriter Leonard Spigelglass, who milks the third act so effectively by the time The End appears onscreen you won't be crying anymore because you'll have run out of tears.

Mister Roberts (1955) - By the time Fonda was cast in this one he'd been away from Hollywood for awhile, immersing himself in his first love - the stage; only the insistence of director John Ford managed to sway the gnat-like attention spans of studio executives into casting him. Also notable as the final film role of William Powell, it has the kind of heavyweight cast that only a Steven Soderbergh or a Woody Allen could get away with today, including James Cagney, Jack Lemmon, and Ward Bond.

12 Angry Men (1957) - The ultimate jury room thriller is mainly shot on a single set, in close-up, and by the end of it the claustrophobia has become almost palpable, exactly as intended; not only will you see every bead of sweat on every brow and every upper lip, you'll have them yourself. Director Sidney Lumet's first feature film stays close to the script of the play on which it was based, explores themes such as bigotry, and allows Fonda the chance to liberal the place up with his trademark panache in his courageous defense of a defendant guilty only of being the wrong colour.

Advise and Consent (1962) - Allen Drury's novel was suitably lurid to have censor-busting director Otto Preminger fairly salivating to direct it. A heavyweight cast featuring Charles Laughton, Don Murray, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford, Gene Tierney, Franchot Tone, Lew Ayres, and Burgess Meredith among others does justice to the heavyweight themes on offer, and reminds us that politics didn't become a dirty game a few years ago, but probably always was one. So as to give the nation's prudes the collective collywobbles, Preminger set some of the film's scenes in a gay bar - by general consensus the first time any director had ever done such a thing*.

*Although you'll never convince me that Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz wasn't entirely set in one.

On Golden Pond (1981) - Fonda's final film marked not only the first time he'd ever worked with fellow legend Katharine Hepburn but amazingly also the first time they'd ever met! In fact, the hat he wears throughout the film had once belonged to Spencer Tracy, and was a gift from her; one almost wonders what Tracy would have done with the role - for about two minutes, that is, after which you'll find it hard to believe anyone else had ever assayed the role, even though Ernest Thompson's play had been performed before (and has been performed since). Unusual in its depiction of the elderly as (gasp!) human the film was prescient in that the gold in the pond was likely due to the reflection of all the Oscars it would garner.
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In Memoriam: Henry Fonda

In a day and age when Orthodox rabbis couldn't go to the movies due to the preponderance of ham they were bound to find there, few performances were as kosher as those of Henry Fonda - who was born on this day in 1905; in fact, contemporary critics initially often found fault with his low-key performances, soft voice, and the subtlety of his body language. Thanks in large part to him the movie-going public's tastes gradually began to shift, putting Fonda's star even higher in the firmament nearly thirty years after his death than it was at its apogee in the early 1940s.

Of course, his style of naturalism didn't stop executives from pairing him with actresses so overblown they could have found work as hurricanes; a frequent costar in his early days was noted e-nun-ci-a-tah Bette Davis, whose teeth marks could be found all over the scenery in films like That Certain Woman (1937) and Jezebel (1938). Though these films had assured his enduring fame, over the next five years he starred in a string of others that cemented his reputation: The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), and Tales of Manhattan (1942) are just three of the 22 acclaimed performances he made in this period, in films any actor would be glad to have on their resume.

Enlisting in the US Navy at the American entry into World War II, Fonda served on board the USS Satterlee as a quartermaster, during which time the ship saw action in the English Channel. He was later transferred to the Pacific theatre and as a result of his service there Fonda was later awarded a Presidential citation and a Bronze Star.

Whatever damage his wartime service might have done to his career, it did nothing but improve his popularity... Without missing a beat he stepped back onto the sound stages of Hollywood, and over the next three decades aged into the grand old man in films like Mister Roberts (1955), 12 Angry Men (1957), Advise and Consent (1962), Sex and the Single Girl (1964), and Yours, Mine and Ours (1968); lending gravitas to dramas and thrillers, verisimilitude to Westerns and especially war movies, as well as a kind of exasperated charm to comedies, in any of the 106 productions in which he appeared after his screen debut in 1935 Henry Fonda was as reliable a brand to the makers of films as Panaflex or Kodak.

Fonda's last role - apparently undertaken when he knew he was dying - was in the 1981 film On Golden Pond, in which he costarred with Katharine Hepburn and his daughter Jane Fonda*; his performance as Norman Thayer - who faced the inevitability of his own mortality by becoming cranky - earned him an Oscar at the 54th Academy Awards. Owing to his ill-health Fonda was unable to attend, and the award was accepted by his daughter Jane instead.

Henry Fonda died in August 1982.

*Whose birth had halted production during the filming of Jezebel.
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"When" by Rowlf the Dog

Choosing my favourite Muppet is a kind of Sophie's Choice not even Meryl Streep and William Styron combined could make; one thing many of those Muppets I like best have in common, though, is that they are performed by Jim Henson, and such is the case with Rowlf the Dog. Like many kids I'd always wanted a dog for as long as I could remember, and in the years before our family finally got one, I had a Rowlf puppet which satisfied my need in much the same way an inflatable lover is an adequate substitute for a real one (which is to say, not very much, but better than nothing).

Although I grew up watching The Muppet Show in its initial run, after watching Season One on DVD I was amazed to discover that many of Rowlf's finest moments were shown in the UK but sacrificed for commercial consideration in North America; imagine my delight in not only discovering a vast quantity of new material decades after I thought I'd seen it all, but doing so in flawless audio and video quality.

This song, simply entitled When, was written by Abe Burrows, and performed with the usual flair by Henson in Episode 219, during Season Two of the show; in this instance, though, Rowlf's performance wasn't the UK Spot. As a tribute to him, for years after Henson's death Rowlf fell silent, appearing only now and then to occasionally tickle the ivories; those who knew him said Rowlf was the character that was closest in style and substance to Henson himself. I can think of no better tribute to Henson on this, the anniversary of his death, than to let Rowlf sing again...
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