Outliving this Day and Coming Safe Home

‘The modern young man,’ said Aunt Dahlia, ‘is a congenital idiot and wants a nurse to lead him by the hand and some strong attendant to kick him regularly at intervals of a quarter of an hour.”

Looking forward to the second installment of “Upstairs Downstairs” this evening, and in anticipation of the coming season of “Downton Abbey,” I have discovered that there may well be an overlooked career path. It seems that the occupation of butler to a rich household might be well worth looking into. In our pseudo-egalitarian culture here in the United States, personal or household servants such as maids, valets, and butlers have been frowned on as demeaning to those who serve. Many years ago, when I was in the private security business, one of my customers, who actually a kitchenette in their master bedroom suite for the practical reason that you almost had to pack a lunch to journey to the main kitchen had a “house manager” with whom I usually dealt. They also had a cook and a full-time maid and cleaning woman. The house manager made it clear that he was not a “butler” on at least one occasion, but he functioned as one, at least to my understanding.

I have to confess that from time to time I have fantasized having a valet (actually pronounced with the “t” not “val-ay”), but never to be one. I suppose valets or any kind of personal servant can be useful. Especially for the idle rich who lack practical skills. Martha is a fan of P. G. Wodehouse, who created the characters Bertie Wooster, the upper-class dingbat and member of the Drones Club, and Jeeves, his wise and competent valet, for a series of short stories. The situations always vary but boil down to Wooster getting into an impossible situation as only the idle rich can, and Jeeves getting him out of the predicament in a clever way. I have to admit that the legal profession often comes very close to extracting errant bumblers from their predicaments, or at least mitigating the results of their folly.

So, if I ever wanted to become a butler as yet another career, I am in luck. In London, there is the Bespoke Bureau, an agency that places personal servants. So far this year, according to The Economist, it has placed 345 butlers – twice as many as in all of 2011. One Anthony Seddon-Holland runs the Guild of British Butlers which has a five week training course. Rick Fink of the Butler-Valet School in Oxfordshire has a four week course that costs £8,000. Sounds like a lot until you realize that a world class butler, according to Mr. Seddon-Holland, can make $240,000 per year. Demeaning, indeed!

Seddon-Holland is considering bringing his enterprise to the United States. If his does, there might be a revival of the personal service industry here. Perhaps only few can afford to hire a full time butler or valet, but I notice that many seem to afford once in a while maid and housecleaning people, and hardly anyone in my neighborhood mows and rakes their own lawn (we do our own, mainly because Martha (a.k.a. Ms. Spock) doesn’t trust anyone else to do it right).

Anyone looking to set up something like this? I know someone who can set up the business entity.

To read The Eonomist article please see http://www.economist.com/node/21564544

Though I am not a fan of Garry Trudeau’s politics, I appreciate his long running comic strip Doonesbury as clever (mostly) and fair comment on political-social–cultural aspects of the country. Occasionally I am somewhat offended, but I can give as well as I can take in that regard and there is no way I would give up the near absolute freedom of speech we have. As a matter of fact, I believe freedom of speech tends to make it possible for one’s opponent to shoot themselves in the foot occasionally. Thus, to my fellow ideologues, I have the same answer as I do about guns. Don’t ban expression; just be careful when using it.

This week’s Doonesbury theme portrays a fictional Mitt Romney proselytizing in France for the Mormon Church during his youth. It suggests that Romney chose missionary work to dodge the draft during the Vietnam War. It also features a somewhat oafish Frenchman as a foil to the depicted earnest and somewhat hypocritical youthful Romney. So far, its targets are fair game. Our jurisprudence assumes, as my fifth grade teacher would have put it, if one is big and ugly enough to get into national politics, he needs a thick hide.

I suppose that one could argue either way that Trudeau is attacking or at least ridiculing the Mormon Church. If so, the left will doubtless get their yuks – ridiculing religious beliefs is acceptable in that bubble. Some of the right will be outraged. Neither group will be swayed. Many in the center; that is, the independents, may well be.

It is well documented that in the 1960 election, John F. Kennedy and his campaign rightly believed that Americans feared religious bigotry more than they feared that the Roman Catholic JFK would be a pawn of the Pope. Kennedy welcomed, and in some cases deliberately fostered airing the question of whether his faith disqualified him from being President. When it was brought up, it was perceived as rude and bad form. The degree to which JFK’s strategy worked is open to question because of the narrow victory, but it certainly did not hurt.

Perhaps Mitt Romney received a gift from Garry Trudeau. I guess we’ll see.

Ben Franklin is said to have observed that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Samuel Adams was a brewer when he wasn’t agitating for independence

Nowadays, there seems to be some correlation between one’s political bent and beer brands.

According to the National Journal, if you like Samuel Adams beer, you are most likely a Republican, and you vote. Drink Heineken? you are a Democrat, but don’t turn out at the polls much. Bud Light and Miller High Life don’t have much of a political slant, and do not turn out much. Budweiser drinkers skew toward the Dems, but again are not reliable voters. Those who imbibe Molson turnout heavily for the Dems. Dos Equis drinkers are decidedly non-partisan, though its principal ad spokesman The Most Interesting Man in the World (Jonathan Goldsmith) is a staunch Obama fan.

Here’s a chart that shows more data.

None of the above is my regular brew, but, as you probably guessed, my second choice is Samuel Adams, Boston Ale, if you’ve got it. That, and Cape Cod potato chips, are two of the reason we should keep the MSSR.

Cheers!

Washington Post columnist Matt Miller opines believes that the first order of business for the new Congress in 2013 is for the Senate to change its rules and eliminate the filibuster. This has been proposed a number of times in the past to no avail. It’s no surprise that change attempts have failed; it’s never been in most Senators’ self-interest to change the rule.

Nevertheless, the filibuster, or more correctly, the requirement of a supermajority of three-fifths to end debate on a bill in the Senate, should be retained. Why? Because it is an important veto point to guard against improvident legislation. The sacred shibboleth of “majority rule” often obscures that a democratic majority can be just as tyrannical as a monarchy or dictatorship. Recall what a “majority” really is – 51% plus 1. In other words, with genuine majority rule, a law can be imposed unwillingly on essentially one-half of the country. That may be “democracy” but it is not liberty. The framers considered a supermajority requirement, but ultimately rejected it because the rest of the structure was deemed sufficient to protect against a tyrannical majority. Doubtless that delegates from the most important states – Hamilton of New York and Madison of Virginia – argued against it, for varying reasons, was par to the reason for rejection of a supermajority except in a few cases.

That, of course was before the 16^th and 17^th Amendments, which gave Congress an essentially unlimited taxing power, which it had not previous had, and direct election of Senators, which made the Senate as much subject to transient public passions as the House. The supporters of doing away with the filibuster are mainly, but not exclusively, on the left. They should be aware of Oprah Winfrey’s favorite quote concerning being careful of what one asks for. If the filibuster did not exist, it’s entirely possible that the ACA would have been repealed, to some degree anyway, or at least the President would have been forced to veto it.

It has also been argued that the Senate, because each state, regardless of population, gets two Senators, is undemocratic. But the premise of the alleged disproportionate representation is that the states are just that. They are not provinces or subdivisions of the nation. That is the nature of a federal system. The problem is that the unlimited taxing power given to Congress by the 16th Amendment has allowed the federal government to intrude in policy issues that were originally deemed to be the province of the states. This has been done in the name of “regulating” interstate commerce, no matter how attenuated the effect, and by conditioning federal funds on compliance with what Congress deems to be worthy of support. The solution is not to erase state lines, but to allow states, say, like New Jersey and New York whose residents undoubtably have more in common with each other than they do with those of Texas or Montana, to make policies consistent with their residents’ wishes.

A further observation: Mr. Miller recalls that the filibuster was used to thwart civil rights legislation in the past. True enough, but because a rule or practice can be misused is no reason for getting rid of it if it has beneficial utility. Anyway, the civil rights filibusters were busted when the national consensus was reached that the legislation was necessary and desirable. Prior to the post World War II era, whether right or wrong, there was not such a national consensus.

See Miller’s column here.

The United States has a strategic oil reserve that is buried in underground salt caves to meet a national emergency. One province in our neighbor to the north has what some might consider an equally if not more important strategic reserve. It has been hit with a serious setback.

The Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers reports that thieves have made off with more than a million gallons of syrup from their stockpile. That is nearly a one quarter of the reserve and is worth almost $30 million.

Canada produces almost 75% of the world’s maple syrup, which makes it, apparently, a serious situation. Who were the thieves? The National Review muses, with tongue firmly in cheek, that it might be Quebec’s separatist Parti Quebecois seeking the upper hand, possibly by causing a spike in the cost of pancake breakfasts and thus creating an internatioal crisis. The Atlantic, however, suspect these guys:

　

It is reported that the Mounties are on it.

“We never insult any prophet — not Moses, not Jesus — so why can’t we demand that Muhammad be respected?” Ali, a 39-year-old textile worker in Cairo, said.

Wire reports reported in various news media (for example this link) relate that “When the protests against a U.S.-made online video mocking the prophet Muhammad exploded in about 20 countries, the source of the rage was more than just religious sensitivity, political demagogy or resentment of Washington, protesters and their sympathizers here said.

“It was also a demand that many of them described with the word “freedom,” although in a context very different from the term’s use in the individualistic West: the right of a community, whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish, to be free from grave insult to its identity and values.”

That cuts to the core of what all of this is about. It’s the Clash of Civilizations described by the late political scientist Samuel Huntington. (See The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996)(this book was an expansion of an article published in Foreign Affairs in the summer of 1993). The almost two decades since Huntington’s essay has largely validated his thesis. This is nowhere truer than in the case of the Western and Islamic civilizations, or cultures.

Huntington identified eight current civilizations in today’s world. One can quibble about the contours, differences, and characterization of some of them, but he maintained that the most relevant differences were two: language similarity and religion. The salient examples, of course, are the Western, Indo-European and Judeo-Christian (and increasingly secular) in religious tradition, and Islamic, whose very name denotes its defiantly theocratic religious tradition, and its Semitic languages, with Arabic at the center. The values held dear by the cultures flow in large part from those two characteristics. That seems to make a lot of sense, given that the essence of religion is one’s view of the universe and place in it, and language is the principal communication medium. Those of us who know more than one language understand the difficulty of translating some concepts from one to another.

The clashes occur, according to Huntington, at “fault lines” where the cultures meet and interact. Historically, that has been geographical. Oceans, as well as lesser bodies of water, and deserts have kept clashes to a minimum. When transportation and communication methods improved, the conflicts became more common, but were still kept to minimum by physical distance. Most recently, with travel time to any part of the world reduced to hours, and communication of visual images as well as sounds and words reduced to milliseconds, serious clashes are bound to become more commonplace, and severe.

As a value system, the culture of Western Civilization is clearly superior in dealing with the world as it is and human beings at they are. These values, however, did not spring into being overnight. The West, as exemplified by its English speaking core, had a long tortured process of development, and only with the progression of Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Industrial Revolution of the past 500 years or so, has it come to be world dominant. As far as its attitude toward what the West regards as fundamental human rights – freedom of belief, expression, personal autonomy or privacy, and property – the Islamic world is where the West was at the beginning of the 15^th Century.

To illustrate the last point, the referenced article quotes “When you hurt someone, you are just hurting one person,” said Ahmed Shobaky, 42, a jeweler. “But when you insult a faith like that, you are insulting a whole nation that feels the pain.” This statement, with no alteration, could have been spoken in Western Europe of the 14^th Century to general approval. Blasphemy, defined as the current powers that were at the time, was an offense that merited burning at the stake and eternal damnation. (Admittedly, the political correctness crowd in the U.S. would like to restore blasphemy, defined according to their aesthetic, to the penal code. But that is beside the point of this essay. See )

As aesthetically displeasing as the cultural attitudes of the Islamic civilization may be, it is probably not in the American interest to try to impose, or even encourage, the various Islamic states to change to Western specifications. The “Arab Spring” has sprung. It was a was a hookah dream from the beginning. Democracy in the Islamic world will inevitably be mobocracy, at least on some level, usually one that suits the current mullah. Mubarak style rule there is what is in the U.S. interest. Military intervention is not warranted except for surgical operations like removing the Taliban, who harbored terrorists, and not for so-called nation building. Removing Saddam from power in Iraq was probably a mistake. If Saddam was an SOB, to paraphrase Harry Truman, we should have made him our SOB. That is more-or-less what happened with Qaddafi in Libya after his outrages in the 1980s, and he was tolerable up through his demise last year. Those resources would have been better spent removing the mullahs in Iran. Again, looking to history, Iran/Persia has been a contender for world domination for the past four thousand years.

The United States should continue to trade with the Islamic world, should accept bona fide refugees from those benighted countries, and make whatever alliances deemed in the interest with whoever happens to be in power at the time. We should terminate all economic aid to those countries (except, possibly for an immediate quid pro quo), punish mistreatment of our citizens, whether visitors to them or elsewhere, and maintain vigilance over those who would do us harm anywhere. That should be the fundamental basis for a foreign policy that will mitigate this clash of civilizations.

Mom didn’t want any of her kids to be President

And who could blame her? Born in the waning months of Woodrow Wilson’s administration, Mom has survived the tenures of sixteen men (and with God’s grace, may well survive a 17^th). During that time, only two managed to achieve general good will throughout and at the end of their administrations. I speak of Eisenhower, already a hero for defeating Hitler and the Nazis, and who attracted the same kind of affection one has for their grandfather or favorite uncle, and Coolidge, who stayed so cool hardly anyone noticed when he left office. All of the others were at one time or another vilified, and called names unspeakable in semi-civilized company by the most vocal of one faction or another.

Those who suffered only verbal abuse were the lucky ones. Two (Kennedy and Reagan) were shot, one fatally; three (Roosevelt, Truman, Ford) were shot at, fortunately without effect; one (Ford), in addition to actually being shot at, had a pistol pointed at him that failed to fire. Two (Harding and Roosevelt) died in office of more-or-less natural causes, though the strain of the office may have played a part. One (Clinton) was impeached, though not convicted. Another (Nixon) resigned in the face of impeachment. Four (Hoover, Ford, Carter, Bush I) were incumbents who were sent packing. A fifth might well be (although that is far from certain). Two (Truman and Johnson) declined to run for re-election because they perceived certain defeat.

So what did Mom do? Well according to John Steele Gordon writing today in the Wall Street Journal she simply named her three sons Robert, David, and Steven. No President has ever had one of those as their first name, although Eisenhower’s middle name was David.

According to Gordon (and I already knew and had verified these facts), six Presidents have been named James, four have been named William, four named John, three Georges, and two Andrews. The rest – 22 in all – had unusual handles given to them.

Mom also had three daughters, but because women have only recently been within striking distance of being C in C in their own right, any of them would have been a first, Christian name and all. As an aside, President Wilson had a debilitating stroke the year Mom was born, and the consensus was that his wife Edith pretty much made his decisions for him during his last year. See James S. McCallops, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson: The Unintended President. Nova History Publications, 2003.

Gordon doesn’t discuss surnames, but a review of the 43 (because of his split terms, Grover Cleveland is denominated the 22^nd and 24^th) men who held the Presidential office, indicates most bore family names that originated in the British Isles, that is, England and Scotland. Two – Kennedy and Reagan – are recognizably Irish (and they were the ones who were shot at with effect – is that a weird coincidence or what?). Three – Van Buren and the Roosevelts – are Dutch. Ike’s name is of German origin, and, President Obama’s is Kenyan, or at least an Anglicized version thereof.

What all of this means beyond being sophisticated small-talk (is that an oxymoron?), I can’t venture a guess. Gordon speculates that unusual given names might more memorable, and thus help at the ballot box. But unusual names can be somewhat off-putting, or are they? I’ll let the political consultants take over from here. My one unsuccessful foray into that venue proves I’m no expert.

For those interested, Mr. Gordon’s article can be located at this link.

One of my regular readers and incisive critics suggested that I post something about our Labor Day being the first Monday in September rather than May 1, like the rest of the world.   I refer to last year’s post for the occasion.

It’s analogous to the Virgin Islands being at a great distance from the Isle of Man.

http://www.bobreagan13.com/search?q=labor+day

Happy Labor Day.

An op-ed published in Sunday’s Dallas Morning News seemed to suggest it was defensible for a two year old child, who had been adopted by apparently loving and stable parents, to be taken from them by an illegitimate biological father – legally.

University of South Carolina law professor Marcia Zug says the South Carolina Supreme Court made the right decision when it affirmed the decision of a lower court that required Matt and Melanie Capobianco to turn over their daughter Veronica to one Dusten Brown.

Before you conclude that South Carolina is a nutty place, read on. It seems that state’s court were faithfully applying federal law, duly enacted by Congress and considered an upheld by the United States Supreme Court in 1989. The underlying rationale: It seems that Mr. Brown is 1/32nd Cherokee Indian, which makes Veronica 1/64th, at least biologically.

See:  Marcia Zug’s op-ed piece at this link.  There are a number of links to the story found with a Google search.

Recall a fin de la décennie fictional party in a 1980 Doonesbury cartoon in which one of the characters described the 1970s decade as a kidney stone. Having survived that decade more or less intact, I agree with that appellation. Your essay highlights that one of the stones, unfortunately, has not passed. That one is the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act.

The case of he Veronica, whatever her surname ends up being, highlights the all too often outrageous misuse of law in our nation today. A tribe’s interest outweighs the rights of individuals? Well, let’s go back to the days of tribalism, and see how that works for us. There are numerous examples throughout the world, none of them pretty.

When I first started practicing law over 20 years ago. I accepted ad litem appointments in child welfare cases to help pay the bills. Surely you are aware of the appalling circumstances in which too many children are born, situations which cause Child Protective Services to have one of the highest turnover of all occupations.

One case I had involved a child born to a blue-eyed “white” (I put these race/ethnic descriptions in quotes to show my contempt for them) woman in the county jail, who was in for a number of offenses, including prostitution. She was a cocaine addict, and the child was born with physical problems caused by it. Nevertheless, the long term medical prognosis was good. CPS placed the child with a foster family, who was also “white,” who started the adoption process. There was absolutely no way to determine who the biological father was – a judge later observed that we cannot do DNA tests on every man in Dallas County – but, because, the child had somewhat darker skin and brown eyes, the CPS powers that be decided that she must be “hispanic” and declared the foster parents ineligible to permanently adopt her. The child’s “hispanic” heritage, as it were, had to be preserved. Because I was of the opinion the foster parents had bonded, I opposed this, and after considerable legal wrangling, including my request for a jury trial on the best interest issue, the foster parents were permitted to adopt the child. I may have been helped by a contemporaneous incident where a television news crew videotaped a “black” child being taken kicking and screaming from his “white” foster parents in another county. It seems that the CPS was influenced by the National Association of Black Social Workers position that the so-called trans-racial adoptions were deleterious to “black” children and families. The Texas Legislature soon thereafter amended the Family Code to prohibit consideration of race or ethnicity in determining the best interest of the child (Texas Family Code § 162.015, which does recognize the pre-emptive effect of the ICWA where it applies.) 

Although their view is dubious, at least the NABSW had the interest of the child in mind. The ICWA seems to extol collectivism, that is, the interest of a tribe. That is false to the ideals of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution (as amended) to preserve and protect individual rights. I am aware of the nice distinctions that Indian tribes are regarded as separate nations for some purposes, but Indians are United States citizens, and should have the same rights. Are tribal courts constrained by the Constitution? I would like to know.

Then, again, who is an “Indian”? I do not care for the “Native American” appellation. Natives of a country or locale are those who are born there, and the implication that those who can find an ancestor, however remote, who immigrated prior to 1492 have a greater right, however slight, to be here is troubling. In Veronica’s case, that means that, if I read Mr. Brown’s ancestry correctly, one great great great great grandparent is a Cherokee. Yet, she is described as a “Cherokee child” in Ms. Zug’s essay. That really takes the concept of hypodescent – the “one drop” rule – to ludicrous lengths. As a legal principle, hypodescent goes back to feudal times to prevent the offspring of the lord of the manor’s dalliance with the scullery maid from having inheritance rights and thus complicating the rules of primogeniture and entail and other property issues. The American version was similarly applied to slave owners and their slaves. It survived with regard to interracial marriage in many states until the 1960s. What is really troubling is it still survives in practice and statute. We have discarded numerous other Medieval practices, but the decennial census requires us to identify ourselves by race or ethnicity. (I typically decline to answer, or put down “other” – “human.”) This had the unhappy result of making identity politics and its rancorous results eclipse more important issues.

I strongly disagree with Ms. Zug’s analysis that the remedies that the Capobiancos in Veronica’s case seek are wrong. It is the ICWA that is wrong on many levels. It should be repealed in its entirety or at least amended to make the rights of individuals and the best interest of the child paramount. I am not sure we can count on the U. S. Supreme Court to redress this particular grievance, but hope springs eternal.

Ms. Zug’s phrasing that Veronica was “reunited with her father” seems disingenuous, if not an outright lie. Were they ever together as a family in the first place? Her essay and other sources concerning the controversy suggest otherwise. Mr. Brown was an illegitimate parent to begin, and reportedly knew and did not oppose the adoption when it first occurred. This suggests his motives for seeking custody might be less than honorable. Mr. Brown did post nativity go to the trouble of establishing his tenuous Cherokee credentials. To what end? Had he ever developed a relationship with the child prior to her being placed with the Capobiancos? Is the biological or genetic relationship alone enough? Much of our legislation and jurisprudence seems to indicate so. It seems that if a man were to discover some stray spermatozoa of his produced a child he was unaware of or never had a relationship with, he might have the moral compass to believe himself obligated take some responsibility for support. How can a right thinking person, committed to the idea of individual rights and liberties, countenance allowing him to intrude upon a stable family or other relationship. To my mind, that is just wrong. Is someone trying to make a point with a test case? It would be interesting to find out what’s behind this.

I have not practiced in the family courts for nearly 20 years. Stopped getting appointments not too long after the case related above. Guess I was too much of a troublemaker, so I went on to make trouble in the more mundane area of contracts and business. Keeps the blood pressure under control, but I hope I raised yours. Perhaps you’ll write your Congressman, but as I said, hope springs. . ..

　

Political Correctness on Steroids?

No. on methamphetamine? 

Maybe there is no adequate metaphor or intensive allusion to describe the essay entitled “What Did You Just Say?”in the July/August 2012 issue of State Magazine, an official publication of the United States Department of State (current Secretary, the Hon. Hilary Clinton).

Perhaps diplomatic etiquette is even more restrictive than what we heretofore believed. I understand the necessity to avoid inadvertently insulting allies or provoking less than friendly nuclear powers. As a firm believer in generating light rather than heat in most situations, I generally avoid gratuitously offensive speech. But enough is enough.

John Robinson, the State Department’s Chief Diversity Officer, appears to think otherwise. At the outset, I am appalled that such a position even exists in a government agency. No doubt it comes with a generous salary and benefits, at taxpayer expense. (GS-10, Step 1 is $74, 872, GS-15, Step 10 is $155,500 for Washington, D.C. If the position is a Senior Executive Service level, it would probably be higher.)

For such lucrative pay, Mr. Robinson gets to come up with and admonish employees of the State Department and, possibly others, to avoid committing such unpardonable sins like the following:

How many times have you or a colleague asked if someone could “hold down the fort?” For example, “Could you hold down the fort while I go to…” You were likely asking someone to watch the office while you go and do something else, but the phrase’s historical connotation to some is negative and racially offensive. To “hold down the fort” originally meant to watch and protect against the vicious Native American intruders. In the territories of the West, Army soldiers or settlers saw the “fort” as their refuge from their perceived “enemy,” the stereotypical “savage” Native American tribes.

Of course, I am highly offended that anyone would restrict the native American appellation to those who had an ancestor who immigrated prior to 1492. “Native,” of course, literally means being born. If one is born is this country, one is a native American. Putting that beef aside, who other than a full time history professor who doesn’t have the talent or gumption to do much serious research would come up with such esoterica? It’s all for a good cause, though. It gives yet another phrase for those – mostly light complexioned pseudo-intellectuals – who have nothing better to do than grieve for their non-melanin challenged brethren, who, if not, should be offended.

“Going Dutch.” Likely you or your colleague meant that each person pays for his or her own meal. The historical meaning: a negative stereotype portraying the Dutch as cheap because

they will invite you to a meal but then not pay for it.

Somehow, knowing what the Hollanders have put up with, present and past, in their hardy little nation, one cannot imagine a Dutchman being offended by anything less than a slap in the face. Probably not even that, given some of the recent events such as the murder of Theo van Gogh and the exile of Ayann Hirsi Ali as a result of Muslim extremism tolerated there.

“Rule of thumb.” This is an acknowledged and generally accepted benchmark. Many women’s rights activists claim this term refers to an antiquated law, whereby the width of a husband’s thumb was the legal size of a switch or rod allowed to beat his wife. If her bruises were not larger than the width of his thumb, the husband could not be brought to court to answer for his behavior because he had not violated the “rule of thumb.”

The origin of this expression is uncertain, I disagree that it is acknowledged by any scholars. Nevertheless, good grief!

There is no absolute verification as to the historical roots of the word “handicap.” However, many disability advocates believe this term is rooted in a correlation between a disabled individual and a beggar, who had to beg with a cap in his or her hand because of the inability to maintain employment.

If there is no such verification, why bring it up. Does anyone know someone who has been brought to tears by hearing the word uttered? In Britain, I noticed that there are organizations and programs to assist “cripples” and “spastics” that no one seems to take offense with.

 
This year, NIKE, the famous footwear company, celebrated Irish culture and St. Patrick’s Day by introducing a new sneaker in the United States called the Black and Tan. Ah, Black and Tan,
the foamy concoction that is half pale ale, half Guinness Stout. What a wonderful celebratory gesture and appreciation for Irish culture. Not! What the creator failed to account for is the historical context of the Black and Tan. The original Black and Tans were an ad hoc military group that committed atrocities against Irish civilians; the “tan” referred to the khaki of their uniforms.

Robinson goes on to relate that Nike caved and removed the name Black and Tan from the offending footwear. I’m sure “sneaker” probably should be banned, also, as it might be offensive to wearers who might be burglars. The pusillanimous character of the big corporate world is well known, so that is probably no surprise. Anyway, the paramilitary Black and Tans were certainly matched in atrocities by the IRA Provos. Perhaps “IRA” should be banned as an acronym for individual retirement accounts. Might offend Irish Protestants, but, since they are not one of the left’s favored groups, they probably don’t matter.

Craziness. Your tax dollars are being spent for this nonsense. No wonder we’re in such fiscal shape. For one thing, no doubt the cost of Nike’s re-branding will be passed on to their customers, of which I am not one. I can think of a lot more useful work for Mr. Robinson, if he is employable in the private sector.

Common, everyday figures of speech, particularly when no offense is intended, or remotely though possible should never be proscribed. These sayings are part of cultural literacy, which a growing number of Americans seem to lack. Furthermore, the world is full of sights, sounds, odors, tastes, and touches offensive to varying degrees. We cannot sanitize everything, nor should we. It’s part of life, and euphemisms inhibit communication.

Can you hold down the fort while I put on my sneakers and go down to the pub to quaff a few black and tans? I promise not to park in the handicapped parking space. My companion and I are going Dutch, of course.

For the entire article see this link
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/195572.pdf