Hunka Hunka Burning Forefather
George Washington was kind of a hottie. Tall, too!
George lives on at the National Constitution Center in Philly in an amazing roomful of the framers of the Constitution.
Hunka Hunka Burning Forefather
George Washington was kind of a hottie. Tall, too!
George lives on at the National Constitution Center in Philly in an amazing roomful of the framers of the Constitution.
Get this Washington bio. You'll be amazed. TB survivor, first white man to see the Ohio River, having had six horses shot from under him, having had bullets tear his clothes yet not mark him, he makes fictional "action heroes" look somewhat lame. And most people don't know he saved the US from a military coup.
Radwaste at June 11, 2008 2:07 AM
And before he got the wooden teeth which are so famous, he ask experts whether if would be possible to extract the enamel from his slaves.
Crid at June 11, 2008 7:01 AM
If or whether, one or the other... (I was late for the commute)
The point is, I love the founding fathers like nobody's business, but we have to remember who's who and what's what
Crid at June 11, 2008 7:50 AM
And the portion of the statue you show doesn't even show his quads. He was a prodigious horseman and had the muscular legs to show for it.
"First in war. First in peace. And first in the hearts of his countrymen." We united states were lucky to have a great man as our first president.
BlogDog at June 11, 2008 11:30 AM
Enough about Washington! Let's have more about the Philly love! :-) One of the more amazing things about Washington that people take for granted: had he wanted to be King, he would have been King. The republic would have ended practically before it had even begun. Look how many other young nations have detoured into totalitarianism following a democratic revolution. Sure, they start out with all kinds of high ideals, but then it just becomes totalitarianism and oppression. It's hard to believe now, but North Korea's Kim Il Sung, Cuba's Castro, the Philippines's Ferdinand Marcos, and even Zimbabwe's Mugabe, among others, were all looked upon quite optimistically when they began. It took awhile for the kleptocracies and dictatorships to settle into their later horrors.
Quizzical1 at June 11, 2008 12:33 PM
One of the more amazing things about Washington that people take for granted: had he wanted to be King, he would have been King.
The greatest gift George Washington gave this country was his resignation after two terms as president.
In this jaded and cynical age, we don't quite get it, but George Washington could have been re-elected again and again, president for life.
Instead, he gave us a two-term tradition that remained unbroken until FDR.
Conan the Grammarian at June 11, 2008 1:16 PM
Men like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Lincoln stand as proof of the theory that there is a fixed amount of intelligence in the Universe.
There will never be men of their like again.
brian at June 11, 2008 7:25 PM
Long quote alert, but I really liked this from UK Times columnist Matthew Parris. Especially the first line.
"America is more than a country: it is an idea... How the world sees the idea of America matters not just to the world, but, increasingly, to America. The idea of America thirsts for a reinforcing shot of nobility. Only a president can provide it.few would deny that the idea of nobility has been important to the way that the United States has seen itself, and the way we outsiders have seen the United States. I don't think that the Statue of Liberty represents an entirely hollow idea, or that the words “Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses...” are without resonance. Or that they and the exalted spirit animating them could easily be attached to the name of any other nation on Earth.
Nobody should (and I don't) represent the history of the United States as the continuous triumph of altruism and principle. I wouldn't even claim the preponderance of those qualities. But they do, if fitfully, appear to recur: a sort of trademark for America. Rightly or wrongly, names such as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, Truman, Roosevelt, Kennedy - even, abroad, Carter and Clinton - would, put to any multinational focus group, test positive for perceived moral stature not just as domestic politicians, but as figures in world history. I would argue for the inclusion in that list of Ronald Reagan, too - there was something big about the old man; just as there seemed to be an air of decency surrounding George Bush Sr. Put in the fashionable terms of 21st-century marketing, there has persistently been something noble in the American brand".
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article4083026.ece
Jody Tresidder at June 12, 2008 5:36 AM
PS,
Wish I'd written the 2nd par! But I forgot to put it in italics as part of the same monster quote.
(Thanks v. much Amy, for the rescue from spam filters).
Jody Tresidder at June 12, 2008 8:42 AM
We as a country were blessed with an amazing group of men that created the government we now live under. I would add Andrew jackson to that list of great Americans though. Old hickory was the first president to actually take the view of the common man into the White House.
We Americans hold ourselves to very high ideals about liberty and equality. We have missed those targets a lot over the years, but with every passing generation we get better. It is nobler to aim for the ideal and fall a little short than to aim lower and fall even shorter.
steveda at June 12, 2008 12:09 PM
Jody, that piece is grotesque
Crid at June 12, 2008 1:08 PM
"Grotesque?"
Oh dear, Crid.
Jody Tresidder at June 12, 2008 1:54 PM
> The idea of America thirsts
> for a reinforcing shot of
> nobility.
Why would someone say something so inane?
The next sentence is even weirder:
> Only a president can
> provide it.
Let's pour coffee and think about what makes people say strange things. Let's talk about movie stars.
One of the great parts about working in Hollywood is that everyone has a feeling of intimacy toward it. Even if they think movies are silly and not worth going to, almost everybody has a warm vibe about a movie they've seen, and thinks 'They oughta make more movies like that one.' So if you work here, you can have easy conversation anywhere in the world. There's no culture too high or low to have been touched by film. It's been said that Hollywood is everybody's second job, because they know exactly what Spielberg or Clooney or Denzel should do next.
(You might be able to say some of this about auto mechanics too. People always have stories to share with auto mechanics, and free advice to extract from them. But even if you have a car in the garage and love it, you're still threatened by it. You know things could go sour at any moment. It could be stolen, pricey parts could fail, or the goddamn thing could crash and kill you and your children. Movies almost never kill their viewers.)
If any of these everyday people actually went to Spielberg's office and pitched a project, he'd patiently explain why it couldn't be done. (They say he's very polite.) And if it could be done, he'd know why it was a bad investment, even if he couldn't put the feeling into words.
But that's just for a movie. What's the greatest nation in world to learn from overseas columnists who say we need to dial in our "nobility"? Golly, I shouldn't misquote him... It's the "idea of America" that needs this "shot of nobility." And actually, we "thirst" for it.
This is just too nutty. Let's do another movie example. Imagine that I wrote Scarlett Johanssen a letter saying she wasn't going to be truly happy until she moved to a small-scale macrobiotic farm in central Oregon... Where the air is fresh and clean... Where the people who smile at you really mean it, and there's no red-carpet silliness or fancy-pants restaurants... Where she'd finally be able to just put in a hard day's work in the gardens and sing guitar duets at night. And imagine that in a postscript, I added that I own a modest property in that very area, one in which I just happen to keep a recently-restrung six-string.
You'd say I was fuckin' nuts, and pathetic besides. You'd say I was so blinded by the beauty of the subject that I'd forgotten the great distance between her life and mine. You'd say my presumptions about the needs of faraway figures describe only the randomized daydreams on my own docket. You'd tell me to be less concerned about distant people whose challenges and enthusiasms are unknown to me, and to concentrate on fixing the indisputably broken links in my own context.
And that's what I'd tell Mr. Parris.
But I wouldn't stop there!
It's just so fucking whack. Again:
> The idea of America thirsts
> for a reinforcing shot of
> nobility.
Notice that he doesn't actually say America needs to be more noble: Wording it as "the idea of America" guarantees that we can't hold him accountable for the calumny, though it's certainly what pops into a reader's head. In your life, have you ever known of an idea that "thirsted"?
So what's left?
> Only a president
> can provide it.
Nowhere in the piece does he explain why this is so. But he's a Brit, so he knows people will understand... When your culture --and that of your surrounding nations-- is built from regency, you just assume that some big guy has to be running the machine. This is one of the most dangerously powerful forces in human affairs, because it's so clearly nourished by childhood, when we need to believe that Mom & Dad are keeping the monsters away from our door.
> there was something big about
> the old man; just as there
> seemed to be an air of decency
Is there anything in there besides corrupted father-worship?
As he puts it:
> one person stands head
> and shoulders above all
> else in defining the nation to
> itself and the world.
Naw, the president is just hired help. The presidency is a nice gig, but the best Americans (and the best of everyone else) knows that it's nothing too precious.
Again, I love what the founding fathers built, too... But precisely because it was not a structure constructed on resplendent individual personalities. Wonderful leaders are difficult to find, bruise easily and spoil quickly. The Framers knew that wisdom is spread all too broadly.
The punch line is the title of the article:
> How to detoxify the
> noble American brand
Every word of that is straight out of the States. From the can-do spirit of the "how-to" to the Oprah-drenched "detox" to Hollywood's self-righteous "nobility" to the Madison Avenue "branding"... America rules this man's obsessions with an iron fist.
Again, I'll paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke (I really ought to look up the exact cite someday): America is an incredibly beautiful twenty-year-old woman; the rest of the world is a hopelessly in love fourteen-year-old boy whom she doesn't even know is even alive.
Crid at June 13, 2008 2:44 AM
And just for the record, Washington was indeed handsomely tall; but aside from the dentition issues mentioned earlier, he was also humorless and somewhat stingy: During his presidency he billed the Congress for his Elderberry wine.
Crid at June 13, 2008 2:46 AM
Dear Sir,
Re: your letter of June 13.
The Times (UK) always welcomes lively correspondence, especially from readers in our former colonies.
Yrs faithfully etc.
Jody Tresidder at June 13, 2008 5:02 AM
Great. Here's some more:
> I feel as an Englishman the
> strongest possible impulse
> to wish both well -
Can you imagine someone who casually follows world events even bothering to say something like that about the Prime Minister? What are the odds that anyone in your (American) social circle --or anyone reading this blog-- even knew Gordon Brown was a contender for the office before he actually had it? (Except for maybe that cowbell-knocker Hrissikopoulos.)
> Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln,
> Wilson, Truman, Roosevelt,
> Kennedy - even, abroad, Carter
> and Clinton - would, put to any
> multinational focus group, test
> positive for perceived moral
> stature not just as domestic
> politicians, but as figures in
> world history.
Finding Carter and Kennedy on that list suggests that this focus group is responding only to the marketing... Those names are of course world-famous, but moral stature got nuthin' to do with it.
> The American Eagle, as we
> abroad see the creature,
> looks sick - perhaps
> mortally so.
Well, we'll call you if we need you. But as Steyn noted in the frontpage story in the NYT (and here) yesterday, American character has always been singular, and no other nation can even seem to recognize the particulars of our courage nowadays.
It's OK with me if other industrial powers, even those we so often militarily shelter, want to cluck about things they don't like about us. We weren't paying attention to them before these recent crises, either. And if we're "mortally" sick, they're screwed anyway: Parris doesn't offer the name of another nation that could consume his attention as we have (let alone make peace on his mothership Continent, etc.). For moral leadership, the United States of America has no contenders.
Which is why you live here, Jody.
Crid at June 13, 2008 7:35 AM
Interesting Crid .. I agree with most of what you say although I would question Clinton's and Truiman's inclusion in that list of "moral" American Presidents more so than Kennedy or Carter.
Clinton sat back and allowed some pretty bad things to happen ... Serbia's ethnic cleansing as well as the horrors of Rwanda and Somalia are just a few.
Kennedy was loved by Europe and his assassination gave him a near saintly quality. JFK had some significant positives to his administration - as short as it was - but he also had a few big negatives like the Bay of Pigs and Viet Nam. In all honesty, anyone that can drive Kruschev crazy enough to pound the UN podium with his shoe is worthy of admiration in my book.
I wonder why Pariss includes Truman in that list as well. As far as I know Truman comes under a great deal of scrutiny - especially on the international side - regarding his use of the atomic bomb in Japan. (I am not going to great lengths to defend him against those charges other than to say I think he did the right thing given the circumstances.)
I have to disagree with you on Jimmy Carter. He was an absolutely inept president in a lot of ways, but as far as pure morality, and his concern for the overall human condition, I believe you are hard pressed to find a president with better credentials in those fields. I have said it on many occasions that while Lincoln was probably our most effective president he had a few morality issues, and while Carter was one of our least effective presidents, he was the most moral. Maybe there's an inverse relationship between morality and effectiveness in a president? Nahhhh... Jefferson was moral and effective and Bush is ineffective and immoral. Damn, another good theory shot to hell.
steveda at June 13, 2008 8:23 AM
"For moral leadership, the United States of America has no contenders.
Which is why you live here, Jody."
We must have missed that bit when we got our permanent resident cards, Crid.
Jody Tresidder at June 13, 2008 8:45 AM
"Kennedy was loved by Europe and his assassination gave him a near saintly quality."
True enough, steveda.
Though Joe Kennedy's truncated position as Ambassador (in London) was something of a blot at the time!
Jody Tresidder at June 13, 2008 9:06 AM
> We must have missed that
> bit when we got our permanent
> resident cards
No, it was written on your application form. Or are you implying that you're here for some other reason?
> as far as pure morality, and his
> concern for the overall human
> condition,
Who cares what's in his deepest Christian campfire-with-smores heart-of-hearts? The truth about Carter, and it's one of the greatest ironies of our political history, is that he was much like Nixon. He thought a president could just sit alone in the office in a cardigan with a yellow legal pad and write out the solutions to our problems... Basically, he was drunk on the kind of lonely hero rhetoric offered by Mr. Parris. Meanwhile, he armed the shit out of Saddam.
Crid at June 13, 2008 9:44 AM
No, it was written on your application form. Or are you implying that you're here for some other reason?
Crid,
I suggest you acquaint yourself with the fine print of these matters.
Or are you just going to click your heels and demand to see my papers!
Jody Tresidder at June 13, 2008 10:09 AM
> Or are you just going to
> click your heels and demand
> to see my papers!
We already did
Crid at June 13, 2008 12:33 PM
Hi Jody! Watch this at about 2:55.
Crid at June 14, 2008 5:50 PM
Crid, you're stuck somewhere unpleasant. The evidence is oozing into your words.
America DOES crave nobility, and for exactly the same reason they idolize some movie stars: they want somebody to get real life right, just as their hero saves the day on the screen.
Why do you think Ronald Reagan smoked his opponents so easily in the public eye?
You know most of the hype around what Mr. Bush does and doesn't do is nonsense. The real duty of doing what he is commonly blamed for actually resides with Congress. But the common man cannot be bothered, apparently, with learning the names and offices of his Congressmen, and so there is only one name known to blame. Geez, these people want prime attention if the French fries are cold: "I want the manager, dammit, not some assistant manager! I'm important!"
I've met a few movie people at Dragoncon (not that this makes me an expert, of course), and I suggest that not only do they actually work, many of them are quite a bit more educated than we are. So we should put John DeLancie in office. He knows the difference between "pretend" and reality, and has played nobility before. Why not put somebody in office who can actually look and act Presidential?
Radwaste at June 15, 2008 11:56 AM
> America DOES crave nobility, and
> for exactly the same reason they
> idolize some movie stars
Some of us don't.
> these people want prime attention
> if the French fries are cold
Some of us have learned not to pester the hired help when we go for downmarket dining.
> quite a bit more educated
> than we are
Education isn't on my checklist of essential human blessings. It ain't the smart guys who make the sun come up in the morning, it's those fuckers who bang the garbage cans together. Radio host Prager has a brother who's a heart surgeon, but admits that the people who care for us in that primitive way do more for our health than the medical guys could ever dream of.
> Why not put somebody in office
> who can actually look and act
> Presidential?
Because there's more to life than appearances. Besides, deLancie hasn't worked since 1987.
Keep your nobility to yourself, buster.
Crid at June 15, 2008 11:23 PM
Crid,
Your link doesn't work for me for some odd reason.
(Was it Gore vs. Buckley?)
Jody Tresidder at June 16, 2008 7:04 AM
It should be remembered that there's a big difference between 'a noble man' and 'a nobleman'; the only people here who long for the latter are the clowns who'd just LOVE somebody to bend their knee to
Firehand at September 13, 2011 2:50 PM
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