Glenn Beck, Anthony Weiner, John Boehner and remembering back to when Edmund Muskie's crying speech ended his Presidential campaign

By Jack Brummet, Social Mores Editor


This is the year of the weeper, isn't it?  Thinking about Congressman Anthony Weiner's tear-filled confession/press conference today, it reminded me of a couple of other public weepers on the other side of the aisle--Glenn Beck and Speaker of the House John Boehner.

When did it become OK for politicians to cry? It wasn't so long ago (it happened in the first election in which I could vote) when public boo-hooing ended Edmund Muskie's candidacy for President. 

I guess Senator Muskie was just ahead of his time. 

The "Canuck letter" was a bogus letter to the editor (the notorious William Loeb) of the Manchester Union Leader, published just two weeks before the 1972 New Hampshire primary.  The letter implied that candidate Senator Muskie was prejudiced against French-Canadian Americans (an important constituency in Maine).  The letter writer claimed to have met Muskie and his staff in Florida and asked The Senator how he could understand the problems of African Americans, given Maine's almost non-existent black population. According to the letter, a staffer responded, "Not blacks, but we have Canucks." Muskie laughed at the remark.

After the letter appeared, Muskie gave a speech in front of the Union Leader's office that came to be known in political circles as "the crying speech."   In The Crying Speech, Muskie called publisher William Loeb a liar and took him to task for slurring the character of his wife Jane (the paper had also written that she was a heavy drinker and had a foul mouth).  Network news and the newspapers reported that Muskie wept openly during the speech.  David Broder, in The Washington Post, wrote that Muskie "broke down three times in as many minutes"; The CBS Evening News showed unflattering photos of Muskie's face at, or near, weeping.  No doubt helping unhinge Muskie was the fact that William Loeb had previously baited Muskie, calling him "Moscow Muskie," and a flip-flopper.

According to the Wikipedia (and I remember him saying this at the time), "Muskie later stated that what had appeared to the press as tears were actually melted snowflakes, the press reported that Muskie broke down and cried, shattering the candidate's image as calm and reasoned."

When The Senator was outed as a weeper, he was, natch, thought to be emotionally and dangerously unstable ("is this who you want negotiating the fate of the world with Leonid Brezhnev?"     New Hampshire Democrats began to defect to George McGovern. Although Muskie beat McGovern  46% to 37%, the margin was far smaller than his campaign had predicted. McGovern now had momentum, and by the time of the Florida primary, Ed Muskie, the one-time front-runner, was Dead Man Walking.

Marilyn Berger, a Washington Post staff writer, wrote that White House staffer Ken Clawson once bragged to her about authoring the letter, which Clawson immediately denied.   In October 1972, FBI investigators said that the Canuck Letter was part of a dirty tricks campaign against Democrats orchestrated by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP).  Loeb, publisher of the Manchester Union Leader, always said that the letter was not a fabrication (but he later had some doubts about its veracity).  The alleged letter writer, one Paul Morrison of Deerfield Beach, FLA was never tracked down, if he ever existed at all.

---o0o---

Anthony Weiner: Dead Man Walking

In his delayed press conference this afternoon, Congressman Anthony Weiner said basically: I lied multiple times. I did it all. But, I'm not resigning.

#deadmanwalking

---o0o---

Faces No. 217 - The Oversight Committee

Sketches by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

---o0o---

The vicissitudes of a train-wreck, or a project gone south

By Mona Goldwater, Business Editor

It's true.  I don't know how it works in your business, but out-of-control projects really can, and do, end up sludging through these, or similar, stages:

• Uncritical Acceptance
• Wild Enthusiasm
• Dejected Disillusionment
• Total Confusion
• Search for the Guilty
• Punishment of the Innocent
• Promotion of the Non-participants

---o0o--

One of the greatest poems of all time--Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart: excerpt [For I will consider my cat Jeoffry]

By Jack Brummet
Poetry and Literature Editor

Jubilate Agno ("rejoice in the lamb") by Christopher Smart is one of my favorite poems.  This is probably the most famous part of the poem, and without a doubt, the great cat poem ever.  When I lived in NYC, I was lucky enough to attend a poetry reading celebrating a new edition of the book.  It was fantastic--I remember the readers included Robert Lowell, Muriel Rukeyser, Allen Ginsberg, James Wright, Robert Bly, Gerald Stern, Mark Strand, and many others, all taking a turn reading a chunk of the poem.

Jubilate Agno is a religious litany--a rollicking call and response poem based on the Hebrew poetry form of antiphonal responses.   In this section, instead of one line beginning Let... and the next line being For.. he went straight with the response...a wonderful piling up of imagery and thoughts on his cat.  This is by far the most famous section of the poem, although it is just 74 lines of the 1200 line poem.

If you love either poetry or cats, or both, you will enjoy this.   For me, this is where modern literature really began.  Kit Smart wrote this poem when he was confined to the rubber room between 1757 and 1763.  The poem was not published until 1939!


from Jubilate Agno
By Christopher Smart (1722–1771)

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually—Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.
---o0o---

Drawings: Faces No. 216 -- The Start-up

Drawings by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

---o0o---

Alien Lore No. 207 - The Greys, Betty and Barney Hill, and Zeta Reticuli

By Jack Brummet

Paranormal and Unexplained Phenomena Editor

Click to enlarge

Paranormal aficionados,  UFOlogists and even, once in a blue moon, a scholar or professor, make wild and fairly contradictory assertions about just exactly what The Greys are--machines?, Extraterrestrial Biological Entities/ETs?, extradimensionals?, monsters?, or maybe even the mind-effing ability of a far greater intelligence to project virtual Greys into our world?   The focus of Alien Lore took a sharp turn with stories of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction claim and the role of The Greys in that.

Greys are usually depicted as short, grey-skinned beings with only a suggestion of, or completely missing, noses, ears, breasts, or sexual organs.  The are small chested, and have no  muscular definition or visible skeletal structure. Their legs are shorter and jointed differently those of homo sapiens. Their humerus and thigh bones are the same lengths as their forearms and shins, respectively.

According to Wikipedia, "Among reports of supposed alien encounters, Greys make up approximately 50 percent in Australia, 43 percent in the United States, 90 percent in Canada, 67 percent in Brazil, 20 percent in Continental Europe, and around 12 percent in Great Britain."

H.G. Wells wrote in Man of the Year Million in the 19th century about tiny Greys with big heads. His 1901 novel, The First Men in the Moon describes moon natives as grey skinned, big headed, with large black eyes and wasp wings (very similar to our contemporary Greys without the wings). Wells also describes aliens resembling Greys brought down to Earth as food by the antagonists of his novel, and most enduring work, The War of the Worlds.

Betty and Barney Hill, claimed to have been abducted by alien beings and taken to a saucer-shaped spaceship in 1961. And this is where Zeta Reticuli enters alien lore.  The term "Greys" did not come into usage until many years later, but the beings described by the Hills fit many of the common traits of what we now call Greys.  An elementary school teacher and amateur astronomer, Marjorie Fish, concluded that the home planet of these beings as shown in a star map drawn by Betty Hill, was located in the Zeta Reticuli star system (their home planet is thought to be the fourth planet of the second star of Reticulum). The Greys became known in alien lore as Zeta Reticulans.  During the 1990s, popular culture began to increasingly link the ZR Greys to a dizzying number of military-industrial complex/New World Order conspiracy theories.

A well known example of this was the TV series The X-Files, that combined the quest to find proof of the existence of The Greys with UFO conspiracy theory subplots, to form its story arc. Other notable examples include the great and short-lived series, Dark Skies, first broadcast in 1996, which expanded upon the Majestic 12 conspiracy.

Betty and Barney Hill

Dr. Steven Greer, founder of the Disclosure Project, head of CSETI, and a prominent UFO conspiracy theorist, has publicly presented over 400 "government, military, and intelligence community witnesses" that have offered testimony to the existence of aliens and UFO and/or efforts to cover up their existence and who have stated that they would be willing to defend their claims under oath.

Alas, the odds are stacked against anyone even being able to study whether all this is true or not... Stanton Friedman considers the general attitude of mainstream academics as arrogant and dismissive, and bound to a world view that disallows any evidence contrary to previously held notions. 

Ridicule and a loss of status prevents scientists from pursuing the study UFOs.  J. Allen Hynek 
commented, "Ridicule is not part of the scientific method and people should not be taught that it is." Hynek said of the frequent dismissal of UFO reports by astronomers that the critics know nothing about the sightings, and should thus not be taken seriously. Peter A. Sturrock suggests that a lack of funding is a major factor in the institutional disinterest in UFOs.

---o0o---

Sarah Palin and Donald Trump Love Fest At Pizza Joint/Trump doesn't close the door on running himself

By Pablo Fanque
National Affairs Editor

Gawkers snap photos outside the now legendary political summit

between two strategic masterminds

Ex-Governor Palin and Apprentice-master Trump met for lunch yesterday at a midtown pizza chain.  The New York Daily News probably had the best quote on the tête à tête  These two have to be making the Republicans crazy.  All we can say is: Keep it up Donald and Sarah!

 

"We do like each other and I will tell you more than anything else, she loves this country," Trump told Fox News.

He also told them, apropos running for President, "If I'm not happy with what I see, I could very easily change my mind. ... I'm not happy with what I see," Trump said. "In 11 months, I'm totally free to do whatever I want to do."

ABC News quoted Trump on the Ex-Governor, "I’ll tell you she's a great woman, a terrific woman, and a great friend," and finally, he said, "I'd love her to run."

Palin praised Trump's "independence" and "willingness to speak his mind."  She told reporters the two are "on the same page" when it comes to GOP candidates and issues.

---o0o---

Six years ago today on All This Is That, we saluted Mark Felt, hero

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor
Poster by Jack Brummet

It was about six years ago today that Mark Felt finally came out of the closet and admitted publicly that he was Deep Throat.  His work with Woodward and Bernstein and a lot of other strangely converging forces were responsible for driving Richard Nixon from office in 1974.

---o0o---

Spiderman rides an Ostrich

I don't know who made this, or where it's from, but he seems like one brave (and jockey-light) Spiderman. . .

---o0o---

Faces No. 215 - The Line-up

Sketches by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

---o0o---

The Tupperware party gone wild

click to enlarge

---o0o---