RIP, Hugh Massingberd
Typically unsigned, Telegraph obituaries are written by a stable of contributors. But during Mr. Massingberd’s tenure, observers widely agreed, every obit in the paper bore his droll, distinctive stamp. Naturally, he covered the presidents, kings and captains of industry who are the grist of obit pages everywhere. But Mr. Massingberd also sought out eccentrics; having the good fortune to live in Britain, he found them.
One Telegraph obituary, from 1991, opened this way: “The Third Lord Moynihan, who has died in Manila, aged 55, provided through his character and career ample ammunition for critics of the hereditary principle. His chief occupations were bongo drummer, confidence trickster, brothel-keeper, drug-smuggler and police informer.”
Another, from 1988, memorialized Peter Langan, a London restaurateur: “Often he would pass out amid the cutlery before doing any damage, but occasionally he would cruise menacingly beneath the tables, biting unwary customers’ ankles.”
And there was this much-quoted line, also from 1988, which appeared in The Telegraph’s obituary of John Allegro. A once-renowned scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Mr. Allegro later advanced a theory that Judaism and Christianity were the products of an ancient cult that worshiped sex and mushrooms. His obit in The Telegraph pronounced him “the Liberace of biblical scholarship.”
For the record, I am convivial and I do not suffer fools gladly.
Angry Liberal
At the risk of sounding like a shrill partisan, as I listen to Fox News in the background as someone else here watches it – man, do I hate them.
Joyeux Noel, y’all!
What’re ya doing here? Go back to your families!
The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting: An Oral History
My neighbor (bless her heart) gave me this book for Xmas, and, like I knew I would, I read it cover-to-cover in pretty much one sitting.
I guess they were my (substantially more talented and successful) peers, more-or-less, but even now I can’t say that with any sort of real belief or sincerity. Sure, I stood and played and sang on some of the stages they did, but I never got any closer than seeing them live a bunch of times and, in the holiest of moments for me, interviewing Westerberg backstage at a Madison WI gig (where I mortified myself by asking the man what high school he had gone to – we were both from Minneapolis – and receiving a very uncomfortable silent pause in response, followed by a polite demurral (“I don’t like to talk about that, man”), but they were always the drunken sloppy gods in my sphere.
Those were sure some magic times, in retrospect, and like every youngster, we never thought they’d end.
But they did.
And I’m insanely grateful that I had them and equally grateful that I – and many of my friends – survived them with limbs and lives intact and no obvious scars (although there are tons of psychic ones).
Cool.
(And, yeah, it’s a great book, but probably only if you had some sort of fire in the iron of those times.)
…home again, home again, jiggety jig!
Well, home for Lynn anyway. Me & the kids are just visiting Cleveland for the holidays. It was a damned long drive through a drizzly foggy gray day and even the traditional half-pound of chocolate-covered coffee beans I bought (and ate pretty much) in Indiana didn’t do much to perk me up.
I think it was when, stuck in seemingly eternal stop-and-go traffic at an Indiana turnpike toll plaza, I told Lynn that I was gonna rest my eyes whenever we stopped and that she should nudge me awake when it was time to roll forward again that she became concerned and strongly suggested that she drive at our next fuel stop. I demurred for a moment, then acquiesced and settled in the passenger seat for a blessed and much-needed nap…
…which wasn’t to be. Instead I read stories to the urchins until the light faded and we all lost our patience, then I fiddled with the iPod, trying to use my tiny FM transmitter to broadcast my massive and rarely perused library of holiday (take THAT, Bill O’Reilly!) songs to the car stereo – an undertaking that met with ultimate failure as we entered the clogged airwaves of metropolitan Cleve-O. By then, I was so focussed on how much I hated being in the car that it was all I could do to not rip my seat belt off and exit the still-moving car just to experience some sweet horrible brief freedom before the jagged hard cold asphalt ripped the flesh from my tumbling limbs and broke and smashed my cartwheeling skull like an overripe melon.
Merry Christmas!
To market, to market…
…to buy a fat pig!
Ho Ho Humbug
Come! It’s not too late!
Join me in despising the holiday season!
Also: Separated at birth?
More Season’s Greetings
From my current employer.
Margaret Chase Smith said it all for me.
In 1950.
Here.
I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some soul-searching–for us to weigh our consciences–on the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America–on the manner in which we are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges.
I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution. I think that it is high time that we remembered that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.
Whether it be a criminal prosecution in court or a character prosecution in the Senate, there is little practical distinction when the life of a person has been ruined.
Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:
The right to criticize;
The right to hold unpopular beliefs;
The right to protest;
The right of independent thought.
The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us doesn’t? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in.