POLITICAL SPEAK

 

I wonder how many of you know, dear readers, that the word “Gobbledgook”, meaning a nonsensical word or phrase designed to imply importance has an actual birthday? The word was born on Sunday, 21 May, 1944,  in the pages of “The New York Times Magazine”. And it is just one of the many new English words born out of American politics. For example...

In 1812 the Massachusetts’s legislature contrived, with the help of Governor Elbridge Gerry (pronounced "Jerry"), to redraw the lines for the Essex County Congressional District, to insure a Thomas Jefferson Democratic-Republican won the elections there. 

According to legend it was famed painter Gilbert Stuart who first examined the twists and bends and curves of the new district (above) and observed that, to him at least,  it resembled a salamander. But whoever said it first, it was Benjamin Russell, editor of the Boston Sentinel, who renamed the proposed district a Gerrymander, after the Governor. 

So Elbridge Gerry (above), a man who signed the Declaration of Independence,  is remembered not for the good he tried to do but for his most blatant act of gaming the democratic system - cheating to win an election, It was an act so damaging to democracy his name used as a verb, (Gerrymandering), to the redrawing of congressional district to insure the election of one particular candidate or party. And allowing politicians to control the drawing of districts has Gerrymandered all negotiations out of American politics.

Almost as old is the word “Bunko”, meaning a fraud or a fraudulent spiel used by salesmen to sell bad or fake products.  Police departments around the nation still have squads of officers assigned to uncovering fraud and cheating scams, named “Bunko Squads”.  Originally the word was used to describe a speech by Felix Walker, a congressman from North Carolina.

Walker was born in 1753 in the mountains of western Virginia. He worked as a store clerk in Charleston, South Carolina, and tried homesteading with Daniel Boone in Boonsboro, Kentucky. He fought in the American Revolution, and served in the North Carolina House of Commons, the state legislature. In 1816 he was appointed to Congress, to represent the Blue Ridge ‘hollars’ and the French River valley of Buncombe Country.

The county was named after American Revolutionary War hero Colonel Edward Buncombe (above), who had been wounded and captured at the battle of Germantown, in 1777. Recovering from his wounds in occupied Philadelphia that May, Colonel Buncombe was sleepwalking when he fell and bled to death when his wounds reopened. The new county named in his honor was so large it was locally referred to as “The State of Buncombe.”Expecting a contentious re-election in 1818 and again in 1820, Felix Walker quickly learned the value of a well publicized and well received speech. And on 25 February, 1820, while the House of Representatives debated the crucial issue of the “Missouri Compromise”, deciding whether or not to take the first step which would lead to the Civil War, Congressman Walker arose and began to pontificate about the wonders of his district. 

The leadership were eager to put the matter of the Compromise to a vote, and after listening to Walker’s rambling speech for several minutes, they urged the Congressman to stop wasting time and sit down. But Walker explained that his speech was not intended for the benefit of the congress, but for the "simple folk of Buncombe County back home". And then Walker returned to his endless platitudes.

Almost overnight Walker’s speech was transformed from being about Buncombe to being “pure Buncombe” itself. And, with a little modification in spelling, it changed from "Buncombe", to "bunkum", and then to "bunk", as in a useless, pompous and empty speech, or "bunko" a false promise intended to further a fraud: an entirely new word had been added to the English political language.

Gobbledygook is a 20th century invention, and first appeared in an article about an internal government memo. The author of that memo and that article, and the inventor of the word, was Texas Congressman Maury Maverick (above), who was one of those rare politicians who actually believed that politics was a form of public service. He won a silver star and 2 purple hearts in WWI. And then he ran for Mayor of San  Antonio, Texas

He was limited to one term because during his service a communist rented a meeting room in the Civic Auditorium (above, left) . Legally Mayor Maverick could not refuse to rent the room. But his opponents were able to rabble rouse a little Texas-Hysteria, complete with demonstrations that grew until tear gas shells were lobbed back and forth in front of the auditorium. After that panic, he was defeated for re-election.

Maury Maverick later won election to Congress, where, in 1944,  he was named chairman of the "Small War Plants Committee" -  overseeing and coordinating the work of thousands of small factories all across the United States, seeking to avoid duplication of their efforts, causing shortages of raw materials and general waste.

Being a man interested in results,  Maury (above) quickly grew frustrated with the growing complexity of official language which prolonged the already almost endless committee meetings he had to attend .

He defined his new word as a type of talk which is long, vague and  pompous,  "…when concrete nouns are replaced by abstractions and simple terms by pseudo-technical jargon…".  It all made him think of the wild turkey’s back home, and their conversations which sounded like,  "gobble, gobble, gobble, gook".

In his memorandum (above) Maury ordered, in pure Texas style, "Anyone using the words “activation” or “implementation” will be shot”. The sorry state of affairs is substantiated because those very words have burrowed their way into our language and are now passively accepted. Perhaps this is because, despite Maury's protests, no one was executed. But perhaps because no one was, the continued human attraction to verbosity has since produced such nonsense such as "Pentagoneze", "Journalize", "circumlocution", and other such gobbledygook phrases used to describe Maury’s gobbledygook.

In an interesting (I think) side note, gobbledygook was the Maverick family’s second addition to the American lexicon. The first was their family name. There was a Maverick aboard the Mayflower. And 17-year old apprentice, Samuel Maverick, was shot down by 'lobster backs' at the Boston Massacre (above). But the most famous Maverick of all was another Samuel, born in Pendleton, South Carolina in 1803.

This Maverick, Samuel Augustus Maverick (above), graduated from Yale in 1825 and was admitted to the bar in 1829. A year later, he ran for the South Carolina Legislature, but his anti-secession and pro-union opinions contributed to his defeat.  

In 1835 Samuel Maverick moved to Texas. He was one of two men the rebels in the Alamo elected to the Texas Independence Convention, and he thus missed being butchered when Mexican troops captured the mission.   

He was elected Mayor and then Treasurer of San Antonio, and later served in the seventh and eighth Texas Congresses. He also dabbled in East Texas land speculation, and sometime in 1843 or 1844, as payment for a bad debt, Samuel Augustus took possession of a ranch around Matagorda Bay, Texas, on the Mexican border.

The only problem was that Maverick had no experience in ranching and no interest in learning. When he saw that every other rancher had branded their cattle, Augustus decided there was no need for him to bother.  In 1847, when Samuel moved back to San Antonio, he left his cattle under the care of his ranch hands, who saw no reason to pay more attention to their jobs than their absentee boss

They let the animals wander the open range. Cowboys who found unbranded cattle thus identified them all as the property of "Mr. Maverick", and mavericks thus became any unbranded cow or horse.

Samuel Augustus Maverick favored Texas annexation by the United States. And after it was, he opposed  secession from the union until he realized there was no stopping it.  When he died in 1870 he left holdings of over 300,000 acres and a reputation for independence - not being branded by any special interests. His son, Albert, fought with distinction for the south in the Civil War and was promoted to second lieutenant. After the war Albert Maverick  helped preserve the Alamo, donated "Maverick Park" to the city and lived to swear in his own son, Fontaine Maury Maverick (above), as Mayor of San Antonio - and later inventor of the term gobbledegook.  Albert Maverick died in 1936 at the age of 98. Maury Maverick died in 1954. He was not yet 59 years old.

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LAST WORDS

 

I can prove Gaius Caligula was, if not the most depraved then certainly the stupidest Roman Emperor of them all.  According to Tacitus, who was never wrong, in 41 A.D., after having been stabbed by his own bodyguards, the lunatic’s last words were, “I am still alive!” Playing opossum never seems to have occurred to him. 

 Listen, if you are already half dead and bleeding out from two or three fatal stab wounds, what could be the harm keeping your big mouth shut, instead of alerting your killers they had not yet finished the job.  Last words such as those are self defining; you are dead because you were really, really stupid.

Consider Billy the Kid’s last words, as he walked into a darkened room, in which Sheriff Pat Garritt, was waiting with his finger on the trigger of a loaded shotgun. Said Billy, “Who’s there?” He should have asked that before he entered the room.

There is a school of thought that last words reveal some insight into character. I’m referring to the   utterances of those who knew they are facing an imminent death; as in 1790 when French Reign of Terror victim Thomas de Mahay, the Marquis de Favras, actually spent his last moments on earth reading his own death warrant as he climbed the steps of to the guillotine. 

He might have been searching for a legal loophole. Instead his last words were addressed to the clerk, there to check him off the execution list, Thomas handed the clerk his death warrant while pointing out, "I see that you have made three spelling mistakes.” That might have been a helpful remark if he was looking to delay the proceedings, but it also insulted the last guy who might have halted things. What an arrogant putz.

Or consider the final words of the clever, acid tongued Lady Nancy Whitcher Langhorne Astor (above, center), the first female member the English Parliament (above), who awoke from a coma to discover her family had gathered around her. 

From her own deathbed she asked, “Am I dying or is this my birthday?” She then promptly died. Unfortunately, the family’s response was not recorded, and I am the kind of person who wonders what they might have replied to a question like that.  Happy birthday, Grandma?

I have also wondered about the last words of Margaretha Geertfuida Zella, the little Dutch girl better known by her stage name, Mata Hari. She was a dancer who became a stripper because, as she admitted, “I could never dance very well.” During the First World War she became a famous spy because she was so bad at it.  It is not clear even today who she was spying for, if anybody.

But at 5:00 A.M. on 15 October, 1917, as she stood in front of the French firing squad, Margaretha was asked if she had any last words. Her reply was, “It is unbelievable.” And then the idiots shot her without asking what she meant by that.  What was unbelievable, unbelievable to whom? I would like to know.

There is a similar story told about the last words of painter and poet Pietro Arentino, (above) the father of modern pornography, and thus one of my heroes. Pietro was known as the "Scourge of Princes", but also a good friend of the painter Titian. And it was helping out his friend that got Pietro killed. 

See, in 1556 Guidobaldo Il della Rovere (above), the Duke of Urbino, hired Titian to paint a portrait of his wife, Giulia da Varno. Titian needed the money, as usual, but the problem was that Giulia was not only rich, she was also “vain and ugly”, making her a dangerous combination for an artist trying to paint her.  If the portrait didn’t look like her she would be offended. If it looked too much like her, she would be offended. Luckily for Titian, Pietro came up with the solution.

At Pietro’s suggestion, Titian (above) hired his favorite prostitute from a local brothel, and had her pose for the painting of the body. But in place of the prostitute’s head he painted a glamorized portrait of Giulia, based on flattering paintings done of her as a young bride wanna-be. 

It sounds like a bad joke but in the hands of a genius like Titian such absurdity can become great art. , i.e. his painting the Venus Urbino (above). The Duke was thrilled with the finished product. When he  saw the painting he confided, wistfully, to both Titian and Pietro, “If I could have had that girl’s body, even with my wife’s head, I would have been a happier man.” 

Pietro laughed so hard he had a stroke. They carried him to a room out of the way and when it became clear that he was not likely to recover the Duke called for a priest to administer extreme unction. 

First the priest prayed for Pietro, and then offered to hear his last confession. But since Pietro was still unconscious, the priest continued, anointing Pietro with holy oil on his eyelids, ears, nostrils, lips, hands and feet, each time repeating the chant, “By this holy unction and his own most gracious mercy, may the Lord pardon you whatever sin you have committed.” 

As the priest finished the last prayer, Pietro’s eyes opened and he said clearly and distinctly, “Now that I’m oiled. Keep me from the rats.” And then he died. There was no doubt about what he meant, and that in effect he had died laughing.

And then there are last words for which no explanation is required because the act of dying is the explanation; such as when the great amateur botanist Luther Burbank delivered his last words on earth; “I don’t feel so good”. 

For some last words, location is everything - as when the poet Hart Crane (above) delivered his last words, “Good-bye, everybody". He was standing on the railing of the Steamship Orizaba,  heading back to New York City. Immediately after those words he jumped into the Gulf of Mexico. What more explanation could you require?

But I retain my deepest affection for the actor, comic, poet, playwright and historian, Ergon Friedell. In 1933 he described the newly triumphant Nazi Party as "...a bunch of debased menials".  One of his last public performances in 1939 was a parody of a speech by Adolph Hitler. 

On the night of 16 March, 1939 two Nazi thugs arrived to arrest Egron. While his housekeeper delayed them at the front door, Ergon climbed onto his bedroom window ledge and before he jumped to his death spoke his last words that revealed a sweet and gentle heart, to go with the quick, funny and facile mind he had exhibited his entire life.  Teetering on the ledge he warned those who might be on the sidewalk beneath him in the dark, “Watch out, please,” he said. Only then did he jump. God bless, him.

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DO YOUR COWS POINT NORTH

 

I am certain that some will think this story is much a moo about nothing. But I think it behooves us to consider the implications of what at first blush seems like a simply grazy observation. Back in 2008 a pair of zoologists at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany made the startling discovery that at any given instant on any given day, two out of every three cows standing in fields all over the earth have steered themselves along North-South magnetic lines, as if they were over sized leather covered compass needles. We don’t yet know for certain if they are headed for the North Star or aiming their dairy-airs south, but we now know that those of us with frontal mental lobes, single chambered stomachs and just two teats apiece have been missing the meat of this story for the last 10,000 years.

The word “cow” derives from the Latin word ”caput”, meaning the head, which is the ancient way of counting cows, as in “Me and Tex are driving five hundred head to Abilene”. Clearly it was the head of the living cow that Gandi was thinking of when he wrote, “The cow is a poem of pity…She is the second mother to millions of mankind.” She is also, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the source of 18% of the world’s methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. And almost one third of the world’s oversupply of cow burps (the primary source of bovine methane) comes from India’s 280 million sacred cows. Holy or not, cows belch so much because they re-chew their cuds, regurgitating and re-digesting the cellulose over and over again. So the first secret of cows is that every cow is bull-limic.

The emotional life of the average Daisy or Bessie has been described as comparable to a potato on sedatives. But complexity was always hidden just beneath the hide. The American Humane Society has taken note that if one herd member is shocked by an electric fence, the entire herd avoids the wire. English linguistic bull artists have noted that cows moo in local dialects and inflections. And it has long been common knowledge that ungulates form their own bovine breakfast clubs. Three or four females establish lifelong bonds, a cow herd within the herd, or a “curd” if you will. Daisy actually enjoys a rich emotional life, nurturing animosities against her fellows, developing friendships and even mulling over the bovine equivalent of the Stephen Sondheim conundrum, “Is grass all there is?"

This shared arrogance of our two species matches the obsession of Bessie with a subject familiar to many obsessive humans; sex. Eric Idle has described cows as the “…librarians of the animal world; mild by day, wild by night." And John Webster, a professor of animal husbandry at Bristol University in England, describes cows as “gay nymphomaniacs”. The “curds” constantly cowlick one another. And a single Bessie in “heat” can set off a Daisy chain of cow girls “mounting” herd mates in a riot of bovine dominatrix behavior. Unseen by inattentive humans, a pasture of grazing Gurneys is in reality a seething mass of bored libidos on steroids. Literally  It gives a whole new meaning to the term “pasteurization”.

Few have ever denied that individually cows process a certain personal magnetism. Their sheer bulk demands respect, if not religious devotion. These are not cuddly creatures. The one point three billion cows alive at this moment are ponderous moovers and shakers, and udderly unimpressed with humanities’ crème-de-la-crème, logic. Every dairyman has herd that cattle tend to face uphill, into strong winds or turn their flank steak to the sunny side on a cold morning; and that all seems plausible. But the idea that these cow hides might be sharing some kind of mystical, new-age ferris sensitivity seemed until 2008 to be an oxymoron. But scientists seeking out the magnetic orientation of hills created by the European ground mole (Talpa europaea), stumbled over the realization that perhaps larger mammals might also be influenced by something other than human magnetism.  And this seemed confirmed by further study.

German researchers examined Google Earth photographs taken at the same local time of day, observing some 8,510 individual cows in 308 separate herds on five different continents, at essentially the same moment.  And the humans stumbled upon this udderly amazing fact; cows got magnetism. Generally, at any given moment, 70 % of the cows in any herd are standing about five degrees off of true North-South orientation. In Oregon State, closer to the North Pole, the deviation of cows is all of 17.5 degrees. In the southern hemisphere (Africa and South America) the alignment was slightly more north-eastern, south-western. Still, adjusted for latitude, 70% of all cows point toward the magnetic pole, and this is much too large a percentage to be a mere homogenized coincidence. The next question is, of course, why have cows got magnetism?

Cows are not migratory, but they once may have been. Cows share a common ancestor with whales, the “Pakictids”, which 53 million years ago had a whale’s ear and a cow’s teeth in a really ugly little dog’s body -  sort of a Mexican hairless meth addict with hair.  Could this ancient mongrel have been the source of the current magnetic deju moo?  It could, if it milked its genes for all they were worth.

So it seems, upon rumination, that we owe cows an apology, that to err might be human but to forgive could be bovine. But stop the stampede for animal rights. My guess is we could be apologizing to Daisy and Bessie “auf die Ewigkeit warten”, as they say in Germany, and it would make no difference because Daisy and Bessie are not particularly interested in our moo-tivations, because cows are just as conceited as we humans are. And in the final rendering the squeaky veal always gets the cud. Holy, cow!

P.S. Photographs are from “The Secret Life of Cows” by Glen Wexler.

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