I begin with the event, as described by John Cabot. “The line wheeled instantly into a dense and solid column, crowding the street with its impenetrable mass. Emerging from the shelter upon the full run, while rending the air with their enthusiastic shouts, they rushed upon the bridge. They were met by a murderous discharge…the whole head of the column was immediately cut down like grass before the scythe, and the progress of those in the rear was encumbered by piles of the dead. Still the column pressed on,…until it had forced its way to the middle of the bridge. Here it hesitated, wavered, and was on the point of retreating…when Napoleon, seizing a standard…placed himself at the head of the troops, and shouted, “Follow your general!” The bleeding mangled column, animated by this example, rushed with their bayonets upon the Austrian gunners….The French army now poured across the narrow passage like a torrent…”The great Prussian general and student of Napoleon’s methods, Karl Von Clauswitz, announced at the time, “There was no feat of arms which excited such amazement in Europe.” The audacity and courage of the attack quickly made Napoleon famous in Germany and England as well as France. A century later the English poet Thomas Hardy would write;
“On that far-famed spot by Lodi, Where Napoleon clove his way
“On that far-famed spot by Lodi, Where Napoleon clove his way To his fame, when like a god he, Bent the nations to his sway…
Even as when the trackway thundered, With the charge of grenadiers, And the blood of forty hundred, Splashed its parapets and piers…”
Even as when the trackway thundered, With the charge of grenadiers, And the blood of forty hundred, Splashed its parapets and piers…”
Napoleon always contended that the Bridge at Lodi marked a transition in his life. “From that moment I foresaw what I might be. Already I felt the earth flee from beneath me, as if I were being carried into the sky.” The very night of the battle Napoleon told one of his generals, “They haven’t seen anything yet. In our time no one has the slightest conception of what is great. It is up to me to give them an example." And an historian would later write, “The battle at Lodi convinced Napoleon Bonaparte that he was a man of destiny.” That conviction propelled him, in just six years, to declare himself Emperor of France. But…
Forget the painting. In 1796 the 27 year old Napoleon crossed the Alps on a mule. The revolutionary government in Paris had given him command of the stalemated war in Italy because, as an official warned, "Advance this man or he will advance himself without you." Within an hour of taking command of 37,000 starving men in the Alpine foothills, Napoleon issued his first order. “I seek to lead you into the most fertile plains in the world…There you will find honor, glory, and riches.” And they did. Within a month and with a minimum of fighting Napoleon had outmaneuvered the 50,000 man Austrian army and cleared Italy south of the River Po.
That broad river now protected the Austrian Army under General Beaulieu and it did not seem possible that the outnumbered French could force their way across without suffering debilitating losses. But without pausing to consider the odds Napoleon feinted toward the bridge at Valenza. Then, “When certain that Beaulieu had his eye on that point, Bonaparte marched rapidly down the river, and crossed at Placentia…. Beaulieu took alarm, and withdrew the body of his army, …Bonaparte was jubilant. " ...Another victory, and we shall be masters of Italy." (“A Life of Napoleon” by Ida Minerva Tarbell). That next victory was to be the Bridge at Lodi, on May 10th, 1796. However…
The Austrians lost 355 men killed defending the bridge while estimates of the French dead run as high as 2,000. Also, the Lodi bridge (over the River Adda, above) was at most 200 feet long, not 600 as Napoleon claimed in his dispatches. And even David Chandler, in his massive “The Campaigns of Napoleon” was forced to admit, “In sober fact, of course, the result was another disappointment…for once again Beaulieu had evaded his clutches and made good his escape.” In other words General Beaulieu was not present at Lodi, but only a 10,000 man Austrian rear guard, which would have abandoned the bridge without a fight if only given the chance. The Battle of the Bridge at Lodi was totally unnecessary - except for its role in the creation of the Napoleonic legend.
Forget the painting. In 1796 the 27 year old Napoleon crossed the Alps on a mule. The revolutionary government in Paris had given him command of the stalemated war in Italy because, as an official warned, "Advance this man or he will advance himself without you." Within an hour of taking command of 37,000 starving men in the Alpine foothills, Napoleon issued his first order. “I seek to lead you into the most fertile plains in the world…There you will find honor, glory, and riches.” And they did. Within a month and with a minimum of fighting Napoleon had outmaneuvered the 50,000 man Austrian army and cleared Italy south of the River Po.That broad river now protected the Austrian Army under General Beaulieu and it did not seem possible that the outnumbered French could force their way across without suffering debilitating losses. But without pausing to consider the odds Napoleon feinted toward the bridge at Valenza. Then, “When certain that Beaulieu had his eye on that point, Bonaparte marched rapidly down the river, and crossed at Placentia…. Beaulieu took alarm, and withdrew the body of his army, …Bonaparte was jubilant. " ...Another victory, and we shall be masters of Italy." (“A Life of Napoleon” by Ida Minerva Tarbell). That next victory was to be the Bridge at Lodi, on May 10th, 1796. However…The Austrians lost 355 men killed defending the bridge while estimates of the French dead run as high as 2,000. Also, the Lodi bridge (over the River Adda, above) was at most 200 feet long, not 600 as Napoleon claimed in his dispatches. And even David Chandler, in his massive “The Campaigns of Napoleon” was forced to admit, “In sober fact, of course, the result was another disappointment…for once again Beaulieu had evaded his clutches and made good his escape.” In other words General Beaulieu was not present at Lodi, but only a 10,000 man Austrian rear guard, which would have abandoned the bridge without a fight if only given the chance. The Battle of the Bridge at Lodi was totally unnecessary - except for its role in the creation of the Napoleonic legend.Philip Dwyer calls the legend of Napoleon leading the charge across the bridge, “…remarkable, since Bonaparte was not personally involved in the crossing and in the memories of the day he is not even mentioned….And yet, within a month, this ‘feat’…was to become the cornerstone of the Napoleonic legend.” And as far as proving to Napoleon his own greatness, Steven Englund, yet another Napoleon biographer, has observed that Napoleon’s “… belief in his own superiority was strong and clear and it predated Lodi” (Napoleon, p 108). So the traditional story of the Bridge at Lodi, Napoleon’s version, was largely what would today be called “spin”. And a decade after becoming Emperor, after the death of three to six million souls in his name and opposing him, the map of Europe would look a great deal like it did before his rise. Great social forces were unleashed by the revolution but a decade and a half after his rise Napoleon’s empire would consist of one large house on a rock in the middle of the South Atlantic.
In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, and before the full implications of its bungling had become obvious, a member of a later generation of spin makers told reporter Ron Suskind, in October of 2004, “We’re an empire now and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality…we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too…We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
“Not a creature cares in Lodi, How Napoleon swept each arch,
In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, and before the full implications of its bungling had become obvious, a member of a later generation of spin makers told reporter Ron Suskind, in October of 2004, “We’re an empire now and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality…we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too…We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”“Not a creature cares in Lodi, How Napoleon swept each arch, Or where up and downward trod he, Or for his memorial March!
And if here, from strand to steeple, Be no stone to fame the fight,
And if here, from strand to steeple, Be no stone to fame the fight,
Must I say the Lodi people, Are but viewing the crime aright?”
“The Bridge at Lodi” by Thomas Hardy, Spring 1887
“The Bridge at Lodi” by Thomas Hardy, Spring 1887
- 30 -
What the heck do rabbits have to do with eggs? They don’t lay eggs. They don’t even eat eggs. If you put an egg in front of a rabbit, the rabbit with nudge it aside to get to the grass underneath. You could even write the rabbit’s name on the side of the egg, and the rabbit will still ignore it.
And yet we insist upon convincing our toddlers every year that for some reason a rabbit has chosen to hide vast numbers of eggs all over our back yards. Under bushes. Behind flower pots. In trees. What is wrong with us?! Rabbits can’t climb trees.
You might as well tell your children that elephants have been herding water buffalo in your flower bed, or that squirrels are using your attic to store up their winter supply of canned beats. Why do we insist upon telling our children this particular absurd story? 
Where is this rabbit supposed to get all of these eggs? And from whom is he supposedly hiding them? From the chickens, perhaps - otherwise known as “the mothers”. If you think about it an Easter Egg Hunt is a mass kidnapping and we are encouraging our children to be accessories after the fact. 
The very idea is so silly that most of the eggs hidden today aren’t even real, they’re plastic. And they are filled with chocolate and licorice and sweet tarts and other things that rabbits don’t eat!
Children eat those things. And I understand that the hunt is for their benefit. It’s just supposed to be fun. But couldn’t it be logical and fun at the same time? Couldn’t we have an Easter chicken hiding the eggs? Why does it have to be a rabbit?!
I know I’m overwrought over this. The Easter bunny is just another one of those little contradictions accepted without question by most people, one of those silly little bumps in logic in our lives that don’t make any sense what-so-ever! Like Daylight savings time, or that bar on boy’s bicycles, or Keanu Reeves’ movie career.
You could get excited about outrageous, silly things like that, or you can just ignore them, pretend there is a logic to them, and live your life in some semblance of calm. But to do so would be a fraud and you know it!
The truth shall set you free. I don’t know who said that but whoever it was, they were right. We deserve to know why it is an Easter Bunny who hides eggs. And if the answer isn’t good enough, we have a right to pick our own anthropomorphic creature to create our Easter fun.
Here’s all I could find out about the Easter Bunny; Rabbits are an old German symbol of fertility, for obvious reasons. And the egg is a symbol of breakfast and birth, I guess. And if you put those two together, the Easter Egg Hunt becomes a rabbit symbolically hiding the secret of his fertility all over your back yard, where you children can find it.
Now, oddly enough I have had a male rabbit actually do that in my back yard. And what he did didn’t smell like eggs, at least not fresh eggs. I ended up with fifty million female rabbits in my backyard for the next twenty-four hours or so. My dog was too scared to go outside. And I certainly didn’t want any small children going out there, either, because I wasn’t sure I could explain what they would see. Not to mention their propensity for picking things up and putting it in their mouths. What an Easter that was.
But, back to the ceremony; why would you want your children to find the secret of fertility? So you can have a grandchild, that’s why. Grandchildren are essential because they help you torture your adult children, thus completing part of the circle of life.
It’s curious that the chickens, who actually lay the millions of eggs stashed under bushes and flowers and lawn chairs on Easter Sunday, are not considered symbols of fertility. The feminists’ version of this is that these chicks do all the work while some guy gets all the credit. Thank goodness feminism has been totally discredited. Still, those hard boiled chicks may have a point: scrambled, but a point.
Murray Chotiner was probably the last political campaign manager who had a day job. As a political manipulator Murray claimed to have created Earl Warren, who was elected California Governor in 1942. But Murray’s tactics in that campaign so alienated Warren that the Governor refused Murray’s help for his 1946 re-election campaign. The politician Murray is usually credited with “creating” and the one who never broke trust with him was Richard Nixon.
Doctor John Lungren, personal physician to Richard Nixon, recalled a breakfast lecture he received from Murray Chotiner in 1952. Said Murray, “First, a basic truth – you must define your opponent, never let him define you. If he does you are through, pure and simple. Then you find your opponent’s weakness in his record or conduct – he’s too liberal, he’s soft on defense, he’s too weak on criminals, he’s got character problems – and you move in, hitting harder and harder – with no letup. And you never give voters more than they can handle. They have their own lives. Most people can’t absorb more than two or three issues during a campaign. So limit your themes, focus and refine the issues and drive them home again and again.” (Healing Richard Nixon; A Doctor’s Memoir 2003.)
Murray was a “cigar chomping wheeler-dealer”, “…a chubby lawyer…(dressed in) monogrammed white-on-white dress shirts and silk ties with jeweled stickpins. The monograms said “MMC” because…he billed himself as Murray M. Chotiner, though, in reality, he lacked a middle name.” Murray was married four times, hung out with gangsters, and the L.A. Times described him as “…a brilliant, abrasive and passionate political strategist whose campaign instincts were so acute and effective that his opponents feared him as the “Machiavelli of California politics.” A friend described him as a “…a very aggressive, hard driving fellow… a mechanic, a nuts and bolts man”. And a future Nixon aid described Murray as “...a hardheaded exponent of the campaign philosophy that politics is war.”
Murray’s first experience in politics came when he worked for Herbert Hoover in 1932. In 1938 he ran in the Republican primary for a California Assembly seat and lost. In 1942 came his work for Earl Warren, and in 1944 Murray was elected president of the California Republican Assembly. In ’46 he worked for Republican Senator William Knowland, under the slogan, “We Will Not Surrender” without ever identifying to whom the Senator would not surrender to. That same year he advised Richard Nixon’s first run for office against Democrat Congressman Jerry Voorhis. Both Nixon and Knowland won. 
Politics was still a “hobby” at this point for Murray. To earn a living he practiced law, sharing an office with his older brother, Jack. Their clients were, according to Murray, "unsavory, to say the least"; over four years - from 1949 to 1950 – the Chotiner brothers defended 249 mob clients, ranging from local bookmakers to New Orleans mobster Carlos Marcello and L.A.’s mob boss Mickey Cohen. In fact Cohen donated $5,000 to Nixon’s 1946 campaign and provided free space for a “Nixon for Congress” office in one of his buildings”, again according to Chotiner.
There are two pronouncements usually credited to Murray Chotiner. The first is “Chotiner’s Law”; "An incumbent forced to fight in a close primary election almost always loses the general election that follows.” (This was the origin of Ronald Reagen’s 11th Commandment – “Never speak ill of a fellow Republican”). And the second pronouncement was the professional code of conduct which Murray Chotiner lived by: “Victory is all that matters".
In 1950 Murray took full control of Nixon’s U.S. Senate campaign, labeling his opponent, Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas, as “The Pink Lady”, alleging that she was a communist sympathizer – “Pink right down to her underwear,” said Murray. 
It was Murray’s advice that lead Nixon to accept the vice-presidental post from Eisenhower in 1951. And when, during the campaign, Nixon was accused of influence peddling, it was Murray who tore up Nixon's resignation telegram to Ike, and pushed him to make his famous “Checkers speech; “We did get something, a gift, …It was a little cocker spaniel dog…and our little girl Tricia, the six year old, named it Checkers….and I just want to say this,…we are going to keep it.” Needless to say, even though Nixon never fully answered the questions about his favors for friends, the speech saved his career and propelled him into the vice-Presidency.
Murray was there when Kennedy defeated Nixon in 1960, and when Nixon failed to win the Governorship of California in 1962. In 1968, when Nixon won the Presidency by a narrow margin, Murray was still there again, if now behind the scenes. In May of 1972, when the “Plumbers” were arrested planting "bugs" inside the Democratic Party National Headquarters in the Watergate complex, Murray Chotiner had an office directly above them. As the crises grew and began to engulf Richard Nixon’s Presidency, on Thursday, January 24, 1974, Murray’s Choitner’s car collided with a truck in suburban Washington, D.C. Curiously the accident happened directly behind the home of Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy. In fact, Kennedy called for the ambulance. Murray was taken to the hospital with a broken leg and seemed on the way to a quick recovery when he developed a blood clot. A week after the accident, on Janurary 30th, he died.
Nixon’s office released the following statement on February 3rd, 1974; “I am profoundly saddened by the death of Murray Chotiner. For more than a quarter of a century, he was an ally in political battles, a valued counselor, and a trusted colleague. But above all, Murray Chotiner was my friend. His friendship never wavered; in periods of adversity it grew stronger. While some recoil from the label "politician," Murray was rightly proud of it because he was a professional who had the respect and admiration of those who worked with him…he will forever have my gratitude”
Effective at noon on August 8, 1974 Richard Nixon resigned as President. I suspect that Murray Chotiner would have called him a quiter.
