Gay marriage. It's simple. And complicated.

New bit: Some time after I first wrote this in July 2011, I saw a gay person (I forget who) write something to the effect that it shouldn't be "gay marriage," it should be equal marriage or just marriage. After all, he pointed out, when he parks his car, he doesn't "gay park his car", and when he goes goes to the restaurant, he doesn't "gay go to the restaurant." A totally fair point, and wonderfully funnily put, and I now use the term "equal marriage" for clarity in the context of the debate and just "marriage" if such contextual clarity isn't necessary.  While acknowledging that error, I'm nevertheless leaving the post as it is as a historical record of my ignorance at the time. And out of laziness. 

***   

A couple of weeks ago the great state of New York authorised gay marriage, and this weekend gay and lesbian couples began registering to marry and actually marrying under this new dispensation.  Good for New York, good for America, and good for and congratulations to all the happy couples.  For me, it’s simple: we’re all equal.  Gay and straight, men and women, black and white, and all human others and in-betweeners; we’re all equal and whatever is right for one lot to do is right for anyone else to do too.  Although, I must admit, I always wondered about the Gay Olympics.  I mean, if gay people want to have their own Olympics, fine.  But why?  They’re gay, they’re not disabled.  Martina Navratilova didn’t need a Gay Wimbledon.  Although, on second thoughts, it might have helped Tim Henman.  But I digress.

For me, though, it’s complicated.  I’m one half, some would say not necessarily the better half, of a heterosexual couple of some 15 years standing.  To all intents and purposes we’re married, except we’re not.  The reasons we’re not?  First, neither of us is religious and so we can’t very well do it in front of or for God (or, even if I was religious, I’d be like, dude, you want us to get married?  You need to get other shit sorted out before worrying about that.)  Second, neither of us believes the state has any right to nose into our personal lives (or anyone else’s, for that matter), and our relationship is indeed personal.  The state has no right to approve it, or disapprove of it, allow it, or ban it.  It’s private.  It’s ours, no one else’s. 

A couple of qualifications here.  First, these are our personal opinions and if others disagree and want to get married, church or registry office or both, then obviously that’s great.  Indeed, paaaaaarty!  Second, marrying a partner who is a non-citizen so they can stay in the country is obviously a good idea for practical reasons.  Third, and most salient here, I can hear many gay people and many of their supporters saying, well, all that’s easy enough for you to say—you have the luxury of no one questioning the validity or indeed the morality of your hetero relationship—while for gay people it’s crucial, after so many centuries, indeed millennia, of repression and oppression, to receive acknowledgement of their equality as subjects of the state (the churches, certainly some of them, may need a little more time yet.... *For the term “subject” as used here, see below).  Yes, true, and for that reason I’m glad for New York, America, the aforementioned couples, and all gay people, and all of us actually, whether you like it or not, that the law has changed.  I hope it changes in more states and countries.  May such laws in fact arrive soon in Iran and Saudi Arabia and make such countries rather more relaxed and cool than they currently are.  And, if invited I’ll certainly come along to the weddings.  As I say, paaaaarty!  

But here’s why it’s complicated for me.  For the very same reason that the state has no business approving my marriage, it has no business approving gay people’s marriages.  And it has no business approving anyone’s marriage precisely because it has no business disapproving anyone’s marriage.  Acknowledging the state’s power to approve your marriage, whoever you are, is in effect acknowledging the state’s power to disapprove it as well.  At the very least, it acknowledges the idea that the state has some sort of authority over the personal relationships of individuals.  And that always carries the potential for pernicious regulation, such as forbidding certain kinds of relationships and even possibly punishing people for engaging in them.  Indeed, as long as we think the state automatically in all cases has the right to approve (and therefore disapprove) our relationships, we are * subjects of the state, subject to its whimsy at best and its bigotry at worst.  Better to be citizens and make the state the subject of its people and their choices, not the other way around.  If you want a church or the state to acknowledge your marriage in some ceremonial fashion: great, choose to do so and enjoy your big day.  But it’ll be everyone’s big day, nothing less in fact than a big day in the history of freedom and equality, when gay couples can choose to think and say with equal conviction and confidence as straight couples: we’re not going to get married because the state has no business nosing into our personal relationship.  The state has no right to approve it, or disapprove of it, allow it, or ban it.  It’s private.  It’s ours, no one else’s.  

An anarchic, tiny, and elf-like PS to a previous post.

Okay, so, the other day, I moaned at length about missing my Guardian and being forced to read The Daily Torygraph instead.  Though I made the most of things, or at least claimed to, I nevertheless ranted about the latter paper’s shortcomings.  In the course of all this, I praised the Independent.  Well, as it turned out, a few days later I couldn’t get The Observer (the Sunday Guardian, of course) on Sunday, although I was pleased to see that this time I could get an Indie.  But you know what?  It turns out the Indie is a bit rubbish in places too.  Not as rubbish as the Torygraph, not even in the same league when it comes to sheer right-wing nastiness and dissimulation, but very slapdash and irritating nevertheless, and perhaps in at least potentially pernicious ways.  Well, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and say that the following had more to do with carelessness, rather than the blatant right-wing spin that is the only possible explanation for the breathtaking narrative gymnastics performed in Vilegraph storytelling.  Anyway, that’s what I think, maybe, but let’s see what you think. 

Headline on page 20: “Fear of anarchist threat grows as countdown to London 2012 begins”.  The first paragraph explains that Olympic organisers “believe there is a greater threat of disruption to the Games from anarchist protesters than Islamist terrorism....”  Pretty scary, huh?  Fortunately, though, “planners are braced for widespread disruption to transport, security and sporting events themselves by groups such as UK Uncut, which led the student-fees protests last year.”  Whoooaaa… now wait a minute, Jane Merrick and Brian Brady, authors of this, this, this ... I can only think of a word to describe this that happens to be an anagram of this.  Switch your brains on for one second, guys, and you’ll see that the clue to your wrongness, your complete and utter wrongness, is the very name of the “anarchist” group you name, and indeed the only “anarchist” group that you name in the whole piece of this that you produced.  “UK Uncut”: a group whose very name clearly indicates that they don’t want cuts in the UK (there are other national groups with very similar names all affiliated to each other and swapping information on the internet, in an anarchic fashion, presumably).  In case you’re in any doubt what that means, Jane and Brain, perhaps a little investigating—and you need do no more than Google to get what you need—would reveal they don’t want cuts in taxes or in state spending.  They therefore believe in the state.  They are therefore, by definition... NOT anarchists.  They are, in fact, the absolute opposite of anarchists.  Also: equivalence?  Even if UK Uncut was in fact an anarchist group, an anarchist group that is cunningly disguising its anarchism by using a name that clearly indicates its support for the state, is there really equivalence between disruption by peaceful protest, or even the kicking in of a Starbucks window or two, and disruption by the means favoured by Islamist terrorists?  Clue: no there isn’t, there really is not, okay, got that?  There is no equivalence. 

On a lighter note, kind of, on page 27 John Lichfield tells us the latest on “DSK”, detailing new developments in the legal campaign of Tristane Banon, who (alleges she) was sexually assaulted some years ago by Dominique Strauss-Kahn.  Lichfield describes this other victim of the evidently misogynistic wrath of Kahn as “a tiny, elf-like journalist and novelist”.  Thanks for that, John.  Thanks very much indeed.  My appreciation of this story is immeasurably enhanced by knowing that Ms Banon is “tiny”.  And “elf-like”. 

My partner, an oracle of reason it has to be admitted, unlike her partner, says that The Observer can be just as bad, at least as the Indie, if not the Twatigraph.  Come to think of it, she’s probably right.  There may be more on this theme in posts to come. 

My day with The Daily Telegraph: why I need to be more of a retard.

Being on holiday is, of course, on the whole a good thing.  But it does have its drawbacks, and one of them, at least if you’re overseas, and I am all the way away in the south of France, is irregular access to your regular newspaper.  Normally, even in somewhere as la France profonde as the village I'm staying in, the local Presse can get your paper to order, and every year until this one the local Presse has done so as a matter of unfussy routine. Recently, however, their supplier changed, and suddenly my summer source of Grauniness is not a secure as it once was. Having arrived only last Friday, this hadn’t until today been a problem. I got the Saturday edition on Sunday, and I got The Observer easily enough in the metropolis of Mirepoix. But, today, alas, no Graun.

Now I am an avid Guardian reader, but I would like to be clear about a few issues before I go any further. I do not (normally) have a beard and do not wear sandals and thus, like most Guardian readers, I do not conform to the Guardian-reader stereotype. That said, the absence of beard is not a choice, or at least not my choice. It is simply that my partner is barbaphobic. But the sandals issues is my choice, as I despise the affected rancidity of bourgeois bohemians. Anyway, I digress. Point is, I find life very hard without my Graun, and, no, reading it on the internet is not the same. Nevertheless, I decided to make the most of the absence, and indeed to take it all in the manner of the inspirational Caitlin Moran, author of one of the books I’ve chosen for this summer’s non-newspaper reading, as it happens, who says in her fabulous new book: “I am, by and large, boundlessly positive. I have all the joyful ebullience of a retard.” (How to be a Woman, p. 5). I, sadly, do not have all the joyful ebullience of a retard. But I am trying really hard to be more like one. 

So it was with a positive outlook and a smile that I purchased, for the first time in my life, a copy of The Daily Telegraph. (Ms. Moran’s paper, The Times, was also unavailable, and the only other paper available was ex- and to all intents and purposes still-Nazi-sympathising Daily Mail, so The Telegraph it had to be.) And I found that reading another paper is really like visiting another country. Well, I say that, and reading The Independent is indeed a bit like being in France: a bit different, but not too much so, still comfortable, and in many ways cooler and otherwise superior. But I found that the Telegraph is a bit more like, I don’t know, South Africa ... in, ooh, about 1980. Here’s why. And, I must say, in a week in which one media scandal is dominating the news, my day with the Telegraph told me that the end of Murdoch will be far from the end of hideous media wretchedness.  

First up, beginning on page 1 and continued on page 2, a headline saying “Freeze immigration, says Miliband advisor” (Tom Whitehead and Mary Riddell). The news article was neutral enough, merely reporting, as far as I know fairly, what Lord Glasman said. But it does direct you to “Interview: Page B9”, an interview that makes clear what an intelligent and original thinker his Lordship is, freed as he is from thought-policing political correctness (or basic politeness and decency, as I call it). A smaller article on page 8 is headed “Gipsy camp closes school”, which certainly gave me the impression that a camp of gipsies (a collective noun for a group of gay gipsies?) physically closed down a school by, perhaps, walking up to it and locking it, or else possibly attacking it with spades, pick axes, and huge be-rhinestoned wedding dresses. But, no, the story below actually explains that the “head teacher deemed the sports fields unsafe when a convoy of 15 caravans arrived” and closed the school himself.  So, in fact, it was *the head teacher* who closed the school. *Not. The. Gipsies. Curiously, the article didn’t explain why the head felt the school was unsafe. Did the caravans have spikes on them upon which a pupil might impale himself or herself during a game of football, I was left wondering. Was there a danger that the school's girls might be influenced by hideously bad taste of Gipsy wedding apparel?  Also, wouldn't a paper like the DT normally spin a story like this in terms of elfin safety gorn maaaaad?  I wonder why they didn't in this instance. Strange.        

Next on page 1, continued on page 9, an attack on the BBC, and what turns out to be on its own evidence a thunderingly dishonest one: “BBC hires actors to help managers to take courage”, the page 1 headline says. The page 9 headline says “BBC spends £1m on actors to help managers cope with angry staff.” You have to read on quite late to find that the £1m was in fact spent over the course of 5 years on all kinds of staff training, and precisely £19,040 of it was in fact spent “on actors to play the part of ‘disgruntled employees’ who are against the move from London to Salford....” Another misleading headline, this time more weirdly so than anything, is “The shoe salesman who ran the Met”, which, as far as I can tell, refers to how Sir Paul Stephenson “is said to have placed a desire to serve the public at the core of his beliefs, a lesson he learned from a shop manager” who told him that “Keeping the queues down and the customers happy” was his mantra, a phrase which became Sir Paul’s mantra. Not exactly a shoe salesman running the Met, but I’m sure you get the message that you can't let the plebs run anything or it'll all end in tears.     

Back to the “‘disgruntled employees’”: I like those quotation marks. Republican Presidential nominee and dinosaur John McCain used them when describing Barack Obama’s ideas in the 2008 election campaign, not on paper but in speeches when he would raise his hands and wiggle his digits in a quote-unquote gesture as if to signify either the disingenuousness or else the sheer silliness of his opponent’s words—“dick fingers”, as Jon Stewart called them. Perhaps that was what The Telegraph meant by putting the term disgruntled employees in dick fingers. Because they couldn’t possibly be genuinely disgruntled about being arbitrarily relocated to Salford, could they? It's fiiiiiine. Or maybe just proud curmudgeonliness lay behind the dick finger usage. I have a cartoonishly curmudgeonly colleague who likes to put all new-fangled corporate-business speak in dick fingers. Words, for example, such as “management”, “meetings”, and “department”. Anyway, I guess that’s what was going on with Christopher Hope, Whitehall “editor”, on page 7, in an article on John Whittingdale, “the Conservative chairman of the media select committee” being “the only MP among 386 ‘friends’ listed on [Elisabeth] Murdoch’s [facebook] page....”  Apparently, “Mr Whittingdale brushed off the links, pointing out that he had lots of ‘Facebook friends’, including Chris Bryant, a Labour MP.” It reminds me a bit of Miranda’s sitcom mum, who might refer to “what I call Facebook friends”.  No, “Hope”, they’re just Facebook friends.

Anyway, we’ve seen The Telegraph on race, class, and dick fingers, now gender. First, in the purple bit at the top we have “Posh verus Push: How many C-sections is too many?”, advertising a B section piece in which Victoria Lambert, who I assume must be some sort of medical authority, explains that Victoria Beckham has had her fourth C-section and in which she asks whether that was “one too many".  Why “One” too many? was my first thought. Why not two too many?  Or, three?  Or four?  What's with the exact numbers?  At least the appropriately named Victoria (the journalist, that is) has enough awareness to ask in her first sentence “how many C-sections is too many?” To which the only appropriate answer surely has to be: mind your own fucking business, Lambert. Page 1 also announces an offer to show you how, on B14, to “Copy Michelle and beat ‘bingo wings’”. Sure enough, on B14 Matthew Barbour outlines seven ways to be just like Michelle Obama, top African-American woman lawyer and wife of America’s first black President, and, obviously crucially, non-owner of Bingo wings. I'm sure Matthew didn't mean any disrepect to Mrs Obama.  Not at all.  And I presume Matthew is free of all female aesthetic imperfections, although, to be fair, this is not just an aesthetic issue. The charming and helpful article was in the Health section of the paper. Got that, women? Also, Kate Moss was described on page 8 (main section) as someone who is “now a married woman and is, arguably, losing her supermodel looks”, and was described in this way by the staggeringly beautiful Tim Walker who, with one look at his face, has totally turned me gay. I’m guessing Tim Wanker is actually one of those made-up people to disguise the real identity of the kind of odious weasel or weasels who actually write this stuff, but I expect he, she, or they are even uglier. The same man, woman, or child, by the way, describes Andrew Marr as “the jug-earned presenter”. Not sexist, I know, but rude. Astonishingly rude, when you think about it.

And finally, just before the sport section, we have Rupert Christensen, who is not just an art critic but who with brilliant insight warns that drunks are “hilarious in the movies” but that alcoholism is actually a very serious issue. Thanks, Rupert. Who knew?  

  
So, how, at the end of the day, do you deal with newspaper like this? How do you cope with reading it while remaining sane?  How do you coping without reading it, but knowing what it’s like and that it exists in the world.  There’s only one way I can think of, and it takes us back to the example of Caitlin Moran: be more like a retard, be more like a retard....

     

How to stop Rupert Murdoch grabbing BSkyB

Hi readers,
I decided to paste in this message from the campaign group Avaaz calling for messages to be sent the public consultation on whether Rupert Murdoch and his phone hacking goons should be allowed full control of BSkyB. It tells you how to send a message, if you'd like to do so.
S

Wow! 70,000 messages for a hacking inquiry and to stop Murdoch's deal! We have 48 hours to get the government to act -- forward this to everyone:

Dear friends across the UK,

Jeremy Hunt says he'll let Rupert Murdoch own all of BSkyB, despite the hacking outrages. We have 48 hours to flood the public consultation with requests to stop the deal, and call on the government to initiate a public inquiry into the hacking scandals. Let's save our media and democracy. Send a message now.

Last week Jeremy Hunt said he'll allow Murdoch to own all of BSkyB. Now a series of reports of criminal and indecent Murdoch journalism are coming out -- hacking murdered Milly Dowler, the Soham girls, and the 7/7 families! We have 48 hours to flood the BSkyB public consultation and stop the deal.

We've done it before -- in the last consultation Hunt said our avalanche of 40,000 messages delayed the deal as his officials had to read each email carefully, fearing a legal challenge. Now our voices could halt the deal and get a full inquiry into this vile hacking.

Murdoch's media tramples standards and ignores ethics, and the whole country is horrified. But the government is pushing to give him full control of our largest commercial broadcaster. It's an outrage and threatens the very pillars of our democracy! The official consultation ends on Friday. Send a message now calling on Hunt and Cameron to refuse Murdoch's BSkyB deal until there's a full Competition Commission review and a full public inquiry into phone hacking:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/murdoch_messages_2/?cl=1145684947&v=9520

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation already owns 40% of British newspapers and 40% of BSkyB, the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster. In the US, Australia and elsewhere this degree of media dominance would not be allowed. News Corporation has admitted responsibility for hacking the phones of politicians and celebrities, and now stands accused of listening to messages of a murdered 13 year old girl. But our government wants to give Murdoch power over half of our media, allowing him to then squeeze out his rivals one by one.

Since November we’ve repeatedly rallied to stop Murdoch. We've sent messages, phoned ministers, done stunts, and funded adverts and legal challenges. Jeremy Hunt says our actions have delayed the deal and persuaded him to make changes to how Sky News will be treated if Murdoch takes over BSkyB. He's had to hire extra lawyers and is nervous about a battle in the courts. We're making an impact, but the conditions Hunt plans to put on the takeover won't work, as Murdoch regularly runs rings round regulators.

Now is the moment to stand up for our media and our democracy and build pressure on the government. Let's send messages calling on Jeremy Hunt and David Cameron to refuse Murdoch's BSkyB deal until the deal has been reviewed by the Competition Commission and a full judge led public inquiry into the hacking scandal is conducted and completed. Send a message now, and encourage your friends to do so.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/murdoch_messages_2/?cl=1145684947&v=9520

An independent and diverse media is vital for holding governments to account and should not be in the hands of someone known for unethical journalistic practices and who often seeks favours in return for endorsing politicians and parties. But people power can stop this deal. If we all stand up together now in the UK, we’ll give hope to independent media advocates across the world.

With hope and determination,

Alex, Sam, Brianna, Alice, Ricken, Luis and the whole Avaaz team

More information

Power that threatens both an industry and democracy
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-power-that-threatens-both-an-industry-and-democracy-2305054.html

News Corp's battle for BSkyB shows global ambition
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/8612669/News-Corps-battle-for-BSkyB-shows-global-ambition.html

News Corp/BSkyB deal underlines Murdoch's political clout
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jun/30/news-corp-bskyb-murdoch?intcmp=239

Rupert Murdoch: Empire of the Sun
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/30/rupert-murdoch-empire-the-sun

Police to meet NoW executives over Milly hacking claims
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14024668

Cameron: Dowler phone hack allegations 'truly dreadful'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8617387/David-Cameron-allegations-of-Milly-Dowler-phone-hacking-are-truly-dreadful.html

7/7 families may be phone hacking victims
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/News-Of-The-World-Phone-Hacking-New-Claims-Families-Of-7-7-Victim-Targeted/Article/201107116025018?


Support the Avaaz community! We're entirely funded by donations and receive no money from governments or corporations. Our dedicated team ensures even the smallest contributions go a long way -- donate here.

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Remembering Ronald Reagan. And a warning from history....

Today, fittingly enough for American Independence Day, sees the unveiling at the US Embassy in London of a statue of President Ronald Reagan http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14009137.  It seems to me, though, that what we’ll also be watching today, besides the ceremonial uncovering of a bronze simulacrum, is another moment in the creation of historical memory, in this case the public memory of the 40^th President of the United States.  There is nothing necessarily sinister or even much measurably or at least indisputably wrong with all this.  Historians routinely acknowledge that people, events, and indeed all kinds of historical phenomena are open to differing interpretations and thus get “remembered” differently by different people and differently in different times.  Reading the press on today’s ceremonials, what we* seem to remember right now is that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War by landing a bunch of rhetorical body-blows on the “evil empire” in his first term, and then offering inspirational statesman-like speeches and conferences with Mikhail Gorbachev in his second.  *By “we”, by the way, I mean those who get to tell the story in some sort of official capacity—the government, mainstream broadcast and print media—such as the BBC writer of the account in the link at the beginning of this post.  I do not wish to imply that this memory is uncontested or shared by everyone (see below), though I would argue that this kind of “official” memory is important because it is that of the most powerful and because they push it for a reason (also see below).  Indeed, many people, especially those hostile to Reagan, will point out that the Cold War ended because the people of the former Soviet Union and eastern bloc rose up and revolted against their oppressors.  Of course that’s true—and, to be sure, much of Reagan’s own rhetoric was predicated on the notion that those very people yearned for freedom and would one day rise to claim it.  On the other hand, it’s difficult to sustain the position that Reagan was in some ways dangerously powerful while denying him any agency in things that turned out for the best.  Anyway, point is, right or wrong, that’s officially and largely how he seems to be remembered at least at the moment—as a statesman of great vision and effectiveness.  He also resonates fondly in Britain, it has to be said, because of the close relationship that he and Margaret Thatcher had, pictures of which help sustain the idea over here that “the special relationship” is a real thing that actually exists, rather than a figment of our post-imperial sad imaginations.  It is, I believe, a doubly demeaning thing to Brits who espouse it and do so with such pathetic insistence and enthusiasm: a)—because it doesn’t exist, at least in the way those who think it does think it does, and b)—because if it did exist it would basically mean that we think we’re important because we pay obeisance to the biggest kid in the playground, and are therefore in fact very obviously a weedy side-kick, a Robin, not a Batman, or a David Cameron’s Gideon Osborne if you like.  Anyway, I digress.          

            The construction of one historical memory often leads to the side-lining or at least partial obscuring of others, either because they’re inconvenient or because they’re incompatible.  Very much in the inconvenient corner stands a Reagan whose Presidency saw a then-unprecedented and staggering rise in the US national debt and in inequality, poverty, and crime at home.  Those who would prefer us to see the current economic crisis as abnormal and fixable only through the drastic diminution of the state sector—rather than something that occurs on a regular basis because it’s built into the structure of capitalism and can only be fixed by radical reform of the private sector—are of course very happy for us to forget this inconvenient fact.  On the incompatible side, though, it’s difficult to square the image of Ronald Reagan now with the image he had, at least on this side of the Atlantic, when he was first elected President just over 30 years ago.  No other way to put it, he was thought of as at best a B-movie cowboy, and widely as an ancient comedy cretin who could surely never be elected President of the United States (until, of course, he was).  Certainly, in hindsight, this image is now inflected by the evidence that at some point in his time in office Reagan developed early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.  If and when that happened, no one can be sure, but no one knew anything about that at the time, and his reputation for burbling imbecility was based on various gaffes and perhaps above all on his folksy, down-home, cowboy image, which the gaffes helped to buttress.  So, many people, at least here in Britain, were genuinely shocked when he was elected President.  If you don’t believe me, check out the two following links from 1980s British satire show Not the Nine o’clock News.  Besides being interesting historical documents, they’re both funny, if somewhat misguided for reasons argued below, and they contain some very early Rowan Atkinson, which is good.  Press Conference (you only need see the first 2 minutes 40 second to get the point here): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdorjqj6aS4 --

I Believe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmWLJmbytkk

As I say, though, he was regarded as a buffoon ... at least on this side of the Atlantic.  But perhaps what we don’t understand so well over here is the American political style of folksiness.  Our politicians, for sure, are not immune to attempting to act like ordinary people.  Hence, for example, the unconvincing glottal stops affected by Tony Blair, Ed Miliband, and even, for crying out loud, Gideon Osborne.  But, although we Brits paradoxically and no doubt unfairly and perhaps even impossibly demand that our politicians be able to relate to us, we nevertheless do not want them to be just like us, much less actually be one of us.  But while “I’m one of you chaps” doesn’t work, “Ahm one of y’all” certainly does.  In fact, it’s essential.  Many Americans want their President to be someone they could live next door to, go huntin’ ‘n’ fishin’ with, and have a beer with.  We interpret the folksy act that US politicians consequently adopt as hokey, and indeed as evidence of idiocy, but we could hardly be more wrong.  It requires enormous skill to pull it off.  Witness how it didn’t work with George Bush the elder.  No matter hard he tried with various forms of verbal demotic (assumed in Britain to be signs of inarticulacy per se, rather than the very particular kind of inarticulacy it actually was), and no matter how often he hitched his belt up cowboy-style, he still sounded and looked like the wealthy, preppy New Englander he was and is, and was thus a one-termer, and perhaps only even that because he rode into office on the coat-tails of Reagan.  Of course Bush the first lost to Bill Clinton, who could do folksy so well perhaps because he was the real deal—and was a two-termer.  Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry couldn’t do it—no termers.  George W. Bush could do it, despite being anything but the real deal—two-termer.  And Ronald Reagan showed them all how.  He truly was a "Great Communicator," whatever else he may have been.  So, to conclude on a topical note, and with the promised warning from history, those who laugh at Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and at whoever the next surely-unelectable-brain-free-borderline-loon-job who emerges from the Republican heartlands happens to be....  You may laugh, and, let’s face it, you probably can’t help it.  But we ought to take them seriously, no matter how faux-folksy they may seem to us and no matter how many gaffes they may make.  Who do you think they model themselves on?  You betcha! 

How a Hatter had a role in shaping the American Declaration of Independence. Kind of....

On 11 June 1776 the American Continental Congress appointed a “Committee of Five” (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman) to draft a declaration in accordance with Richard Henry Lee’s proposal that the colonies ought to be independent and free from Great Britain. Jefferson drafted one, and the committee made some revisions and then submitted the revised draft to Congress on 28 June. Congress proceeded, over the next three days, in debates that took place exactly 235 years ago, to make a number of amendments to Jefferson’s draft declaration, or ‘depredations’ as Jefferson called them.  Observing Jefferson’s chagrin, Benjamin Franklin offered the following story in consolation, as recalled by Jefferson in 1818. The story is a lesson in literary economy that we can all still learn from. I don’t really know why, to be honest, but I really love this story.  

I was sitting by Dr. Franklin, who perceived that I was not insensible to these mutilations. ‘I have made it a rule,’ said he, ‘whenever in my power, to avoid becoming the draughtsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body. I took my lesson from an incident which I will relate to you. When I was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an apprentice Hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome signboard, with a proper inscription. He composed it in these words: ‘John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money,’ with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he shewed it to thought the word ‘hatter’ tautologous, because followed by the words ‘makes hats’ which shew he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word ‘makes’ might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats. If good and to their mind, they would buy, by whomsoever made. He struck it out. A third said he thought the words ‘for ready money’ were useless as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit. Everyone who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with, and the inscription now stood ‘John Thompson sells hats.’ ‘Sells hats,’ says his next friend? Why nobody will expect you to give them away.’ What then is the use of that word? It was stricken out, and ‘hats’ followed it, the rather, as there was one painted on the board. So his inscription was reduced ultimately to ‘John Thompson’ with the figure of a hat subjoined.

Source: Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence (Vintage Books edition, 1958), 208-09.