Fauxbohs

 

In a magazine article about the home of interior designer Dallas Shaw, I encountered the unfamiliar term gypset.

"With this gypset-style approach, Shaw started with her favorite room," the article said.

A Google search shuttled me to the website of travel writer Julia Chaplin, where I found the definition.

"I coined the term gypset (gypsy + jet set) to describe an international group of artists, entrepreneurs, surfers, seekers, and bon vivants who lead semi-nomadic, unconventional lives." Chaplin writes. 

"They are people I’ve met in my travels who have perfected a creative approach to life that fuses the freelance and nomadic ways of the mythologic gypsy with the adventurous freedom of the jet set."

Martha Stewart-like, Chaplin has built an empire around the so-called gypset lifestyle, replete with branded clothing, books, excursions, and events.

While gypset describes the lifestyle, its practitioners are bohos, Chaplin says, free-spirited folks who are "nomadic entrepreneurs," and who plan the path to bohemianism with precision NASA would envy.

It ain't easy being laid back.

Chaplin's term inspires me to coin my own: fauxboh.

A fauxboh is a fake bohemian, someone who spends a fortune to look non-materialistic; uses a travel agent to book a spiritual journey; and works all day long to appear a carefree slouch. 

A fauxboh is the 2020s' version of the 1960s' plastic hippy, only better traveled. 

A fauxboh should not be confused with a fauxbo, a well-off poseur who dresses like he's homeless and penniless; in short, a fake hobo.

Nor should the term be confused with FOBO, the "fear of better options" that cripples most college applicants, job seekers, home buyers, and diners at Denny's.

Finally, a fauxboh should not be confused with a bobo, the term coined by journalist David Brooks to describe a bourgeois bohemian. 

A bobo is a well-heeled yuppie with a guilt complex. When he shops, he "shops organically," to offset the carbon footprint his five cars, two homes, and jet ski, snowmobile and motorboat leave; and when he buys, he "buys American," to compensate for the fact he outsources all his business to Mumbai. A bobo is a big-spending bohemian.

All these terms raise the question: who were the original bohemians?

The answer: gypsies.

Parisians were the first to call artists and dilettantes “bohemians,” in the early 1800s. But they borrowed the term from the one they'd been using for 400 years to label gypsies, the stateless Roma.

Banished from India to wander Europe and the Middle East for centuries, in 1423 the Roma were granted citizenship in the Kingdom of Bohemia. 

When they were cast out of the kingdom 274 years later, the gypsies migrated to France. 

The French called the Kingdom of Bohemia La Boheme, and the strange and nomadic newcomers from that land les Bohemiens.

Chips on Their Shoulders

If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.

— P. G. Wodehouse

"Modern" families can stand down.

Mr. Potato Head is no longer a mister, according to the AP.

Toymaker Hasbro announced yesterday that its spud-shaped figure will now be referred to by the gender-neutral name "Potato Head." 

The company's Potato Head kits, moreover, will now include enough parts to allow kids to create same-sex potato couples.

Whether Hasbro's move anticipated passage of the Equality Act the same day is unknown, but its choice to stand on the right side of history did not escape company spokespeople.

"Hasbro is making sure all feel welcome in the Potato Head world," the company announced on its website.

Those spokespeople did not announce whether the toymaker will remove "bro" from its name, however.

A spokesperson for the National Potato Council (NPC) applauded Hasbro's decision, pointing out that potatoes, in fact, are genderless.

"Let me explain what happens when one potato loves another," NPC's spokesman told Goodly. 

"The parts of their flowers, which do have genders, become, if you will, 'intimate.' Pollen from the male part migrates to the female part. The female part then grows into a potato, but that potato is neither male nor female. So, scientifically speaking, Hasbro's decision to remove 'Mr.' was absolutely the correct one."

But Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, newly elected Republican from Georgia, criticized Hasbro and challenged the National Potato Council. 

"This is fake botany," Greene told Goodly. 

"Everybody knows God made two sexes when He created potatoes. Hasbro and the Council are just kowtowing to you-know-who: libtards from the land of fruits and nuts."

Unlike Greene, the majority of gendered trade characters, including Mr. Clean, Mr. Bubble, Mrs. Butterworth and Lille Miss Sunbeam, support Hasbro.

Although unavailable for interview, Mr. Peanut told Goodly through a publicist, "I'm a 'nut' for LGBTQ rights and salute Hasbro for its bold decision."

The James Gang

No one talked as Jesse moved—it was as if his acts were miracles of invention wonderous to behold.

― Ron Hansen

According to the US Census Bureau, "James" is the 80th most common surname in the country. 

But, despite the surname's prevalence, you have to think hard to name a notorious James.

Wild West outlaw Jesse James is always the first James who comes to mind; but the cast of characters with that surname is in fact broad, particularly when you consider famous folks from the UK with that name—where it's the 45th most common surname, according to Forebears—and Americans and Brits who've adopted James as a stage name.

The gallery includes:

The ubiquitous comic actor Kevin James (whose real name is Kevin Knipfing).

The British actor Lily James (whose real name is Lily Thomson). She stars in "The Dig."

The actor Clifton James. His casting in numerous films as as the archetypal Southern sheriff cemented his fame. 

The TV game-show host Dennis James (whose real name was Demie Sposa). The "Dean of Game Shows," James hosted TV's first such program in 1946.

The actress Susan James (whose real name is Susan Miller). She always calls herself Susan Saint James—appropriate given her support of the Special Olympics.

The singer-songwriter Rick James (whose real name was James Johnson). He's known for hits like "Super Freak." Crack addiction wrecked his life and career.

The R&B singer Etta James (whose real name was Jamesetta Hawkins). She is best know for her rendition of "At Last."

The rock musician Tommy James (whose real name is Thomas Jackson). His band Tommy James and the Shondells is best known for "I Think We're Alone Now." 

The slide guitarist Elmore James (whose real name was Elmore Brooks). He's named by George Harrison in the Beatles' song "For You Blue," as John Lennon mimics James' signature sound.

The big band leader Harry James. He's best known today for the classic "You Made Me Love You," used by Woody Allen as the theme song of "Hannah and Her Sisters." 

The jazz keyboardist and composer Bob James (not the be confused with the intrepid artist and blogger of the same name). He's best known for his "Theme from Taxi."

The novelist Henry James, author of The Turn of the Screw and The Wings of the Dove.

The philosopher William James (Henry's brother). His work inspired AA.

The British mystery writer P.D. James.

The British erotic novelist E.L. James (whose real name is Erika Mitchell). She's best known for the racy Fifty Shades of Grey.

The professional basketball player LeBron James.

The serial wife killer "Rattlesnake" James (whose real name was Raymond Lisenba). Rattlesnake James was the last man executed by hanging in the state of California. Quite an honor!

A Mulligan Mashup

Everyone's entitled to a mulligan.

— Sen. Mike Lee

Utah's Mike Lee told Fox News this week that Donald Trump should be forgiven for inciting violent insurrection. "Everyone's entitled to a mulligan," he said. 

Sen. Lee's reprieve isn't Trump's first. Evangelical leader Tony Perkins also gave the former president a "mulligan" for porking porn star Stormy Daniels.

A mulligan—meaning a "second chance"—comes from golf.

Called by Sports Illustrated "the most significant innovation in the lowering of golf scores this side of cheating," the mulligan is named after Buddy Mulligan, a legendary Depression-Era golfer from New Jersey who demanded a warmup shot whenever he teed off.

Anti-immigrant sentiment among Wasps—whose exclusive clubs were being "invaded" by Irish-American golfers at the time—assured mulligan stuck. They relished the name, because, in their minds, all Irishmen cheated. (The term for a second chance could just have well been a cohen.)

Off the green as well, mulligan has a storied past, beginning in the 19th century.

In that century, barkeeps would place a bottle of whiskey on the bar for customers to sample. They called the bottle of free booze a mulligan.

Inmates called a prison guard a mulligan.

And hobos called the meat-and-potatoes stew they made mulligan. 

The hobos' mulligan derived from the name the nation's newspaper reporters gave to the dinners whipped up by Coxey's Army, a ragtag militia of 10,000 unemployed men who stormed the US Capitol in 1894, demanding federal jobs.

In labeling the marchers' meals mulligan, those reporters were recalling, of course, "Irish stew," a cheap chowder made from leftovers; but they were also recalling "The Mulligan Guard," a pop hit of the day written by the comedy team Harrigan and Hart. 

"The Mulligan Guard" mocked the low-class Irishmen who gathered in mobs to parade the streets of New York whenever they felt the urge to look tough. 

The song was based in part on an actual militia group run by James Mulligan, a horseshoer and ward-heeler active in Tammany Hall throughout the Gilded Age, and parodied the antics of the same militias Martin Scorsese depicted a century later in Gangs of New York.

Harrigan and Hart, alas, bear no relation to 20th century songwriters Rodgers and Hart, even though the latter mentioned mulligan stew in the first line of their classic "The Lady is a Tramp."

In Defense of Complaining

My primary hobby is complaining.

— Jay Duplass

I once shared an office with a coworker whose sole contribution to the company was a steady stream of complaints.

He complained eight hours a day. About the management. About the clients. About sports teams, television shows, restaurants, traffic, technology, medicine, politics, the economy and the weather.

No one ever asked him his opinion about anything, nor sought his help, expertise, or companionship at lunch. More often than not, his name was left off the invitation list for team meetings, and he was the last man in the office to learn the latest gossip.

The wry nickname he earned, after only a month on the job, was "Darth Vader."

Stoics—and most other moral philosophers—condemn complaining as depressing and fruitless. So do clerics, coaches, psychotherapists, moms, and motivational speakers.

“Don’t be overheard complaining," Marcus Aurelius said, "not even to yourself.”

But hold on a cotton-pickin' minute.

If I couldn't indulge in complaining, I don't know what I'd do. Probably lose my ability to speak, curl into the fetal position, and begin chewing on my blankie.

For me, complaining functions like hydrogen and oxygen: as a requisite to life.

For me, complaining is a lifestyle.

Surly to bed, surly to rise.

Sure, complaining can be mind-numbing; but it can also be masterful. Just consider these eight delicious gripes:

• Why is “abbreviation” such a long word? — Steven Wright

• Somewhere on this globe, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped. — Sam Levenson

• Santa Claus has the right idea: visit people once a year. — Victor Borge

• History keeps repeating itself. That’s one of the things wrong with history. — Clarence Darrow

• What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance. — Havelock Ellis

• Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. — Robert J. Hanlon

• I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous: everyone hasn’t met me yet. — Rodney Dangerfield

• I’m not indecisive. Am I indecisive? — Jim Scheibel

Philosopher Kathryn Norlock argues that complaining can be a "duty" when others share your peeve. 

When they do, you become not a bellyacher but a "fellow complainer." Your complaint "extends your vulnerability," offering your fellows an "opportunity for solidarity."

"Complaining helps ameliorate isolation and helps people bond," Norlock says.

But to be an effective complainer, the philosopher insists, you have to practice. 

Practice allows you to distinguish the occasions that call for complaining from the ones that don't. 

Practice, Norlock says, lets your sharpen your "skill at sociality" and "complain excellently."

I like that.

So if you're sick of hearing my complaints, let me remind you: I'm not whining.

I'm practicing.

Pulpits and Poohbahs

While today we would say something's "great" ("GameStop is great!") Ragtime-era folks would say it's "bully" ("GameStop is bully!").

So in 1904, when Rev. Lyman Abbott was invited by then-President Teddy Roosevelt to preview an important speech, Roosevelt confided, "I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit!"

In a chronicle of the meeting, Abbott recalled Roosevelt's words and described his bully pulpit as a license to build Americans' support for reform, while tearing down opposition to it.

Abbott's pubic mention of Roosevelt's words made the term famous overnight.

But today "bully" is a pejorative; and behind today's bully pulpit stands an actual bully—a corrupt conman who's using his platform to promote treason and panic timid supplicants.

However, access to the bully pulpit doesn't in itself turn a bully into a poobah.

The bully must do that to himself.

Poohbah—meaning a "pompous big shot"—was coined in 1895 by Gilbert and Sullivan when they composed The Mikado. 

The two songsters liked the flatulent sound of the word, later claiming it derived from every tin-pot dictator's way of dismissing a new idea by saying "Pooh!" or "Bah!"

Poohbah leapt overnight from the stage into British parlance, but didn't catch on in the US for another 31 years, when A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh first appeared.

Neologisms

Writers like words, and speculative fiction writers in particular
like to make them up.

― Zara Poghosyan

Children of the '60s will be happy to learn The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, published this week, includes the word grok.

   

Grok—meaning "to perceive or understand fully"—was coined by sci-fi novelist Robert A. Heinlein. His Hugo-winning Stranger in a Strange Land was a staple among readers in the '60s—even among those who, like me, didn't much care for science fiction. 

Along with The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird and Catch-22, the Library of Congress has named Stranger in a Strange Land one of the "Books That Shaped America."

The novel recounts the adventures of Valentine Michael Smith, a super-cool Martian who can't comprehend why Earthlings act so desperately. 

Despite enjoying a psychic's abilities, Smith is a naïf—no match for the cunning creatures he meets during his brief visit to Earth. 

But Smith does manage to leave one lesson behind: he teaches Earthlings to grok, to know and love all beings, the way God does. Literally (in Martian) to "drink in" all creatures great and small.

Sci-fi writers like Heinlein seem gifted in their ability to mint neologisms. 

And while not all sci-fi writers' verbal concoctions come into vogue, plenty do.

Among the latter are these gems—all coined by sci-fi novelists, playwrights and screenwriters, and all in common use today: outer space, deep space, cyberspace, hyperspace, warp speed, zero gravity, blastoff, spacesuit, time machine, scanner, transporter, ray gun, robot, genetic engineer, alien, extraterrestrial, replicant, computer virus, computer worm, fanzine, flash mob, unperson, thought police, Big Brother and Frankenstein.

Serial Killer

There is no comma between the penultimate item in a list and "and"/"or," unless required to prevent ambiguity.

— Oxford University Style Guide

The serial comma—also known as the Oxford comma—is the comma often needed before the conjunction at the end of a list.

When you omit the serial comma—as Rudy has—you kill the meaning of your statement.

You might argue Rudy saved a stroke. 

But he induced a stroke among his followers, by pitting the party of Reagan, Trump and the traitors (whoever they are) against that of Lincoln.

A single comma would have been the life-saver.

While Rudy's sin of omission is exquisite, my all-time favorite remains this book-dedication by a fellow right-winger:

This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

Although you might think so, the book's author wasn't Mike Lindell. 

The author merely shared similar parentage.

Humiliation

You mustn't humiliate the opposition. 
No one is more dangerous than one who is humiliated.

— Nelson Mandela

Humiliate is a 16th century word borrowed from the Latin humiliare‎, meaning "to abase." Humiliare, in turn, came from humus, meaning "dirt."

When hate flairs, we love to shame each other, to grind each other into the dirt.

In England in the 1660s, journalists who offended any gentleman would be publicly shamed in the coffeehouses and doused with boiling-hot coffee.

In Germany in the 1930s, Nazis would force Jews to kneel on the sidewalks and scrub anti-Nazi graffiti off storefronts, to the merriment of the goyish passersby.

In France in the 1940s, women who'd had sex with German soldiers during the occupation had their heads shaved in public, before being paraded through their home towns and villages.

In America in the 1950s, Blacks were regularly barred from entering restaurants, stores, and hotels. Attempting to do so risked public threats, insults, and beatings.

On social media right now, anyone who voices support for Joe Biden is hounded by "trolls," whose favorite tactics are to name-call and conspire to get the poster "cancelled" by the platform. (It happens to me routinely.)

Conservatives love to weaponize humiliation. While they'd deny that browbeating their opponents is a source of sadistic pleasure, their proud pronouncements say otherwise; for example (this statement from a proponent of caning children):

"Once we realize that a world of only positive reinforcements is wondrous but not within human reach, we must reluctantly turn to disincentives, sanctions, and other forms of punishment."

To understand why conservatives relish humiliation would require a battalion of psychoanalysts. Freud believed we all shared memories of prehistoric cannibalism that, under the sway of the "death instinct," we channel in the modern era into aggression.

I'm content simply to say conservatives as a lot are sick puppies.

As a political weapon, humiliation works only when its target has the temerity to think he, she or they is better than dirt. 

But self-worth among groundlings is a virtue conservatives despise, and so turn their hatred into efforts to humiliate their opponents—to grind them back into the dirt from whence they came.

Although it's hard, I for one hope to refrain from humiliating outspoken conservatives in the future, because it's the humane course of action. 

As Biden said yesterday, "We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. We can do this if we show a little tolerance and humility."

But I also hope to refrain from using humiliation as as weapon because it's prudent.

For as Mandela warned, "No one is more dangerous than one who is humiliated."

Lost Lingo

If it works, it's obsolete.

— Marshall McLuhan

Books, newspapers, broadsides and pamphlets were the 18th century's social media platforms; and printers, the century's Zuckerbergs.

To operate a press, printers would first assemble blocks of type inside a wooden frame, known as a coffin. They'd then place the coffin on a stone bed, add a page of paper on top, and crank the lever beside the bed to slide it under the press. Lastly, they'd screw the press down onto the paper, imprinting an image on the page.

When not pressing pages, 18th-century printers set type, the labor-intensive process preparatory to printing. To save some of that labor, they borrowed the Ancient Roman practice of substituting a graphic for the word "and" in written documents. ("And" is the third most common word in the English language.) Printers called their graphic—&—the ampersand, a corruption of "per se and," which was teachers' name for the graphic. (Eighteenth-century teachers insisted students pronounce the one-letter words "a" and "I" as "per se a" and "per se I" and demanded all students pronounce "&" as "per se and." Per se, as it still does, meant "by itself.")

Used type in the 18th century was tossed into a wooden box called a hell, often by an apprentice called a devil. (The printer's art, three centuries earlier, was considered black magic, because the pages were uncannily uniform. Many demonic terms stuck.) 

Type was scarce and expensive at the time, so to return it to service quickly printers would cast metal plates of entire pages. They called the plates stereotypes. French printers, instead of preserving entire pages as plates, cast frequently used phrases. They called these money-saving casts clichés, from clicher, meaning "to click,” the sound the cast phrases made when they were assembled in the coffin.

Such thrift was common among 18th-century printers. So was piracy. The printer of James Granger's Biographical History of England included blank pages throughout, to encourage artists to "extra-illustrate" the 35-volume work. Artists would interleave original drawings and paintings alongside the parts of the text their patrons found intriguing, adding "extra illustrations" to otherwise plain books. Enterprising printers—smelling money to be made—soon began to swipe images from other books and add them to copies of Granger's Biographical History, a practice they named grangerizing.

What's in a Name?

American code names since 1989 have been designed for PR value.

— Matthew Stibbe

Few members of the public know that, when the White House couldn't find a name for its vaccine rapid-development program, 14-year-old Barron Trump came up with "Operation Warp Speed." 

With a nod of the head, his family voted to adopt the name around the Sunday evening dinner table.

The program has delivered, but the name has not, turning millions of Americans off to the vaccine.

The worry they consistently invoke: the vaccine was rushed, and therefore isn't safe.

Now the hapless Administration is scrambling to launch a $300 million trust-building ad campaign.

If only Trump had been more at home on Pennsylvania Avenue, and less on Madison Avenue, he'd have listened to his career scientists instead of a 14-year-old. 

Many more Americans would be sanguine about their shots.

Career scientists, after all, named "The Manhattan Project, "Gemini," and "The Genome Project."

A perfectly pedestrian code-name like "Luke," "Operation Jade" or "The Bethesda Project" would have calmed nerves, saved lives, saved money, and sped reopening.

We can thank the Germans for pioneering the use of code-names for military operations during World War I. 

Their use really took off during World War II, when Churchill—a man of words (and deeds)—took the time to instruct his government on the wise choice of code-names.

In a typewritten memo, Churchill advised that operations should not be named by code-words that convey overconfidence; disparage the operation; trivialize the operation; or reveal the nature of the operation.

He advised, instead, that code-names derive from ordinary words used out of context; or from proper names, such as those of the gods and heroes of antiquity, famous racehorses, and British and American warriors of the past.

"Care should be taken in all this process," Churchill concluded. "An efficient and a successful administration manifests itself equally in small as in great matters."

In keeping with Churchill's dictums, Alan Turing's codebreaking operation at Bletchley Park was named "Station X;" the invasion of North Africa was named "Operation Torch;" and the Yalta Conference was named "Argonaut."

Churchill himself came up with the code-name for D-Day, "Operation Overlord."

"American code names since 1989 have been designed for PR value," says brand consultant Matthew Stibbe. 

And the danger therein? 

That the name undoes the accomplishment.

Panacea

Americans—boosterish businesspeople, in particular—are being lulled into believing the forthcoming Covid-19 vaccine is a panacea, a "universal remedy."

It isn't.

According to the new issue of Health Affairs, at the current rate of confirmed new infections per day, over 160,000 Americans will die in the six months after the vaccine's rollout.

Those deaths alone are enough to scare people into avoiding stores, malls, movie theaters, concerts, sports events, conventions, tradeshows, airports and other places where crowds gather.

The optimism is mistaken.

Panacea entered English in the 16th century. It derives from the Latin name given by the Ancient Romans to various herbs thought to cure illnesses. 

The Romans borrowed the word from the Greek panakeia, or "cure-all." The Greek god of healing, Asclepius, had a daughter named Panacea. Her name became synonymous with medicinal plants.

The vaccine is coming, but it isn't the cure for what ails us.

Time is.

Fishy

Holocaust deniers love a red herring.

A red herring is a statement meant to divert our attention from evidence. For example:

All Jews weren't exterminated. So there was no Holocaust.

The Holocaust-denier's favorite, this red herring ignores the fact that victims have survived genocides throughout history.

Right now, Rudi Giuliani is peddling red herrings. He employed one in a federal court this week:

Republicans weren't present for every ballot-count.
So Trump won the election in Pennsylvania.

Rudi's red herring ignores the fact that the election results in Pennsylvania were carefully audited by state and county election workers. Republican poll watchers, although they should have, failed to visit every election-return warehouse in the state. But Republicans' laziness doesn't reverse the outcome.

The noun phrase red herring dates to the early 13th century, when, to compensate for the lack of refrigeration, fish peddlers would salt and smoke fresh herring. A red herring was smoked so long—usually 10 days—it would turn from white to red. Poor people and British sailors lived on the tangy treats; so did Catholics throughout Lent. Red herrings were—and are—known as kippers, a favorite British breakfast food.

Two centuries later, writer Gerland Langbaine noted in The Hunter that you could train your hounds to follow the game's scent by trailing a kipper on the ground.

A century after Langbaine's handbook appeared, newspaper journalist William Cobbett related a fable about a boy who used a kipper to distract a pack of hounds from their prey. Cobbett compared the hounds to sloppy journalists who chased after "false leads."

Cobbett cemented the metaphor in English speakers' minds when he wrote that a false lead is a "red herring," because "its scent goes cold" in a day.

In Nonsense, grammarian Robert Gula defines a red herring as "a detail inserted into a discussion that sidetracks the discussion." It's purely and simply a logical fallacy.

Red herrings are bull—and bad for you. 

And, frankly, Rudi's are giving me a haddock.

A Confederacy of Crepehangers

All events are linked together in the best of all possible worlds.

— Voltaire

Most of the 78 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden—myself included—are chirpy this morning, now that the election has been called.

But whether their pleasure will last more than a morning I doubt.

Most liberals I know are Cassandras. Cassandras seem to prevail under our tent and, often, I feel awash in them.

Cassandra, of course, was the fusspot daughter of the king of Troy. Apollo made her a seer in exchange for a toss in the hay. She used that power to warn the Trojans the city would be invaded by Greeks hiding in the belly of a wooden horse. No one listened to her; but, gosh darn it, she was right.

Other liberals I know are Doubting Thomases. There are plenty of them under the tent, too.

Doubting Thomas, you'll recall, was the Apostle who refused to buy into Jesus's resurrection. "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were I will not believe," he told the disciples. But unlike Cassandra, Thomas had to eat crow.

Because I'm a cock-eyed optimist, I prefer liberals who are Pollyannas.

Pollyanna was the character in a 1913 eponymous novel whose father taught her the "glad game." The game demands that, so you'll never be disappointed, you "find something about everything to be glad about." When you shower in saccharinity, the novel preaches, you're never disappointed.

Speaking for myself, I'm a Pangloss.

Pangloss was the talkative tutor in Voltaire's 1759 novel Candide. He is a baseless, feelgood optimist and follower of the Enlightenment philosopher Leibniz, who insisted we live in "the best of all possible worlds."

While crepehanging liberals lament the future of  America—cursed as it was by the shameless slaver, germ-spreader and colonizer Christopher Columbus—I'm content like James Brown to say: I feel good.

America's an okay place.

And I'll point out, like Pangloss did, that without Columbus we wouldn't have Mallomars.

NOTE: Writer Robert Brault said it right: "You can look at optimism and pessimism as two different outfits in your closet, and you decide each morning which one you're going to wear."

Snowflakes

In arguing, what people lack in intellect they
usually make up for in name-calling.

— C. Vallo

Yesterday, I resorted to name-calling on social media, in violation of my own principles.

I labelled GSA Administrator Emily Murphy a "porker."

The point of my tirade against Murphy: because the Trump appointee refuses to affirm Joe Biden won the election, she threatens the progress of the president-elect's work on the pandemic.

"Nearly 1,500 Americans will die each day," I wrote. "That's a World Trade Center Collapse every 48 hours. She's a home-grown, overweight terrorist. Like the boss."

I admit, I called her a name. I didn't solve anything. But my ill manners stemmed from a frustration I share with 77 million other Americans.

My post "triggered" two conservative male colleagues, who said I should be ashamed of my "vicious name-calling."

In deference to them, I replaced the hurtful word "porker" with the more affectionate "blimpie pie."

It's undeniable: name-calling is wrong; fat-shaming is cruel. 

But it's worth noting that snowflakes can't take the heat; and that conservative ones, in particular, cannot tolerate the name-calling of women. (Unless their last names are Clinton, Harris, Pelosi, Omar, Ocasio-Cortez or Gaga.)

I applaud the snowflakes' chivalry. 

And I offer them a deal: I'll never call another woman an offensive name, if you grant every woman her right to a safe and sanitary abortion.

Do we have a deal?

Nonsense

Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

― Robert Frost

A high-school history teacher outside Paris was beheaded yesterday by an angry Islamist.

The teacher's sin? 

He showed his class Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

French president Emmanuel Macron responded by declaring that Islamists are at war with "the Republic and its values."

"This battle is ours and it is existential. They will not pass. Obscurantism and the violence that goes with it will not win."

Imagine an American teacher beheaded by a Proud Boy for showing his class the cover of Mad, and you'd have the picture. 

Obscurantism has an obscure history.

The term derives from Letters of Obscure Men, a 16th century book lampooning the argument between a humanist and a monk over whether every copy of the Talmud—being heretical—should be burned (the pope favored burning the books).

Two centuries later, philosophers called all enemies of the Enlightenment obscurantists.

Obscurantism, as Macron means the word, assumes the hoi polloi are morons and seeks to restrict knowledge—especially knowledge about the workings of government—to rulers.

It was obscurantism that provoked the French Revolution, when Louis XVI's clumsy efforts to cover up famines cost him his head.

Obscurantism is alive today, not only in the Paris suburbs, but in the White House.

Trump's effort to cover up Covid-19, disclosed last month by Bob Woodward, is a costly example. Over 225,000 Americans have already died from the virus. Another 175,000 are soon to follow.

“I wanted to always play it down," Trump boasted. "I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Plato called that sort of nonsense a "noble lie." 

I call it obscurantism—and eagerly await our revolution on November 3.