Of Pupils and Politicians
On September 8, the start of a new school year, President Obama gave a TV speech to kids across the country in which he urged them to work hard and in that way realize their full potential as individuals and citizens. Nevertheless, despite its lack of political content, the speech, even before written and delivered, was damned by right-wing foes as the sort of propaganda once used by communists and Nazis in their ruthless campaigns to mind-control the impressionable children of the Soviet Union and Germany.
Whether impressionable or not, when I was a school kid at P.S.147 in Manhattan during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the city’s mayor was Fiorello H. LaGuardia, a Republican, and our president was Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat. Often, but especially at election time, party bosses would send their spokesmen to my school on the Lower East Side to spread their good tidings of the better days to come if our parents voted correctly.
To be sure, the appearance of political proxies at the school, in the immemorial form of an address to a captured audience in the assembly hall, was never overtly political. If it were, the Communist, Socialist and Socialist Workers parties would all have demanded equal time, which would have been awkward for Mr. Vogel, our principal, in the heyday of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Ostensibly, the Honorable Judge Julius Katz, let us call him, or the no less Honorable Councilman Mario Mancuso had torn themselves away from their all-important duties and come here to, for example, honor our beloved kindergarten teacher, Miss Edna Veitch, upon her thirty years of service to the school. They would assure us that, thanks to her and her former pupils, all model citizens with never a day in jail, the school was renowned throughout academia as the most illustrious not only in our own district but also throughout the city, even where kids had fountain pens, educated parents who could help with homework, and leather briefcases for their books instead of their mother’s outstretched garters or their father’s stained neckties.
But eventually, while still on the subject of public service, our esteemed visitors, after quoting Ben Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, would slide skillfully, like radio comic Bob Hope from a golf joke to a commercial for Bromo Seltzer, to the forthcoming election, and of its importance to the students and their families, and, luckily, of the availability of candidates who were qualified to do for the city and country what Miss Veitch had done and would continue to do for P.S.147, the school they most enjoyed visiting because of its hospitality, dedication to learning and its reminder of their own humble background.
Never once, that I can recall, did the representative of any candidate, Democrat or Republican, ever say an unkind word about an opponent, who was always nameless if not nonexistent. Their modus operandi was to so extol their own candidate that it was unthinkable for anyone to have the chutzpah to be running against him. Sad to say, candidates were always male, and there were still diehards who questioned the right of women to so much as vote, even if it were, thank the Lord, for a man.
This high standard of deportment must seen incredible to young people who live in today’s political climate, when slander and invective have become a default style of discourse, as in the case of the president’s address to school kids. It may seem even more incredible than to learn that at Maxie’s Sanitary lunch wagon outside P.S. 147, a hot dog with all the trimmings once cost a nickel, and that for another nickel, if you were lucky enough to have one, you could wash it down with a bottle of Pepsi that, according to the jingle which still rings in my ears, contained “twelve full ounces.”
Saturday, September 26, 2009
PUBLIC OPTIONS WITH A ROYAL TOUCH
Is it of interest to my fellow Americans that the tercentary of the birth of English author Samuel Johnson coincides with the current debate about the inclusion of a public option in the proposed health care reforms of President Obama? I believe that it should be, if only as a reminder of a public option that was acceptable in Johnson’s time long ago but might currently, in a more “progressive” day and age, be regarded as intrusion by big goverment.
Samuel Johnson was born in poor health on September 18, 1709, and was never free from pain and illness until he died on December 13, 1784. In later years, he was also never free of the often obnoxious presence of James Boswell, a Scotsman and his self-appointed biographer.
Frail at birth, and not expected to live, he was baptized at once by the vicar of St. Mary’s in Lichfield, his hometown in Staffordshire. But it seems that he was already possessed of the tenacity that enabled him to survive and later distinguish himself by writing dozens of works in almost every genre that offered decent payment in pounds if not guineas, and to be outranked on Parnassus Britannica only by William Shakespeare, who wrote a mere 37 plays, 154 sonnets and a few other poems, all so full of allusions to Greek and Roman mythology that you can’t enjoy them without reaching every other line for a reference book by Thomas Bulfinch and/or Edith Hamilton.
Put out to a wet-nurse who would have been disqualified by the National Health Service if it had already been established, he contracted scrofula, a form of tuberculosis affecting the lymph nodes of the neck. Scrofula was known also in England as the King’s Evil, because loyal subjects, if they valued their necks and their exposure to a hangman’s noose, were compelled to concur that royalty ruled by Divine Right, and that it enabled a sovereign, among his other powers and prerogatives, to employ a Royal Touch and rid subjects of scrofula, perceived at the time as a sort of supernatural evil as well as a debilitating disease. Also, in a quaint departure from present-day financial arrangements with healers and HMOs, the patient not only didn’t pay so much as a farthing for the treatment but was presented with a coin valued from about ten to twenty shillings, according to such fluctuating factors as the crown’s share of the booty from pirates it had sanctioned sub rosa, just as our own government has sanctioned such activities as rendition and virtual torture.
Though recommended to his parents by no less an authority than Sir John Floyer, former physician to Charles I, the treatment did not work for some reason, and the disease left Johnson with permanent scars and frequent bouts of depression about his health and appearance. Despite this disappointing outcome, Johnson was a royalist all his life, as demonstrated by his opposing the revolt of the American colonies in 1776 and graciously accepting a pension from the crown. On the other hand, he would have scorned so much as a dinner invitation from such an ignoble nobleman as Lord Chesterfield, who had once refused to support his plan for a new and definitive dictionary of the English language.
Formed by decree of Henry VIII in 1540, the Company of Barber-Surgeons was in Johnson’s day more than the equivalent in prestige of today’s American Medical Association, and neither its own archives, nor that of its successor organization, the Royal College of Surgeons, indicate whether it approved or disapproved of a monarch’s intrusion into their learned profession, which included but was most certainly not limited to brain surgery, then as now the hallmark of competence. But disapproval of the Royal Touch, and denouncing it as quackery and restraint of trade, would have been of no avail, not if the Company wished to maintain its privileges, tantamount, in modern parlance, to both a vertical and horizontal monopoly.
It is interesting, however, to speculate what would have happened if, throwing caution to the winds that prevailed over the Tower of London, the Company, in the manner of special interest groups of our own day, had engaged a professional scribe to present their case to the kingdom against a public option like the Royal Touch. According to my informal poll of a group of scholars at my daughter’s old school in London, King’s College, by far the most qualified scribe for the assignment would have been one Thrush Limberger (1690-1763), author of Demons over Westminster and a frequent contributor to the Birmingham Bludgeon. And by a stroke of good luck, one of the scholars recalled that Limberger actually did write a broadside on the subject in question, and he was kind enough to consult his archives and provide me with a copy. The following two excerpts, the exordium and the peroration, are typical of the style and flavor.
Concering True and False Healers
With the help of God and this plume plucked from a true English goose and not a Burgundian bird of prey, let the truth be revealed at last to all honest and patriotic folk in the land, from the Shetland Islands to Cornwall! Have not we all, and especially the middle classes, the good merchants and yeomen of England, suffered long enough from our own lethargy in a matter that concerns our health and that of our wives and babes, our kith and kin, and also, lower in the social order but also children of God, the cooks who prepare our roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and the maids who serve them and afterwards scrub our pots to our satisfaction?
Verily, and with Bible in hand, I swear upon my life that no one reveres the Crown more than I myself, and, with God’s grace, may the present king and queen and their progeny rule with glory until the Day of Judgment. And may they repulse and crush both Catholics and Jacobites at home and the French and Spanish abroad. But to suggest that royalty has a God-given dispensation to treat scrofula or, for that matter, any other affliction of body or soul is, I say, sheer balderdash and poppycock. And this asserveration is not only my own but also, a fortiori, that of the synod of learned ecclesiastics that met only a fortnight ago at Bury St. Edmunds. The original purpose of their meeting was to deplore the plethora of witch trials that had occurred in that town at the behest of the Lord Chief Justice, but while in session they had also felt it their moral duty to discuss and denounce (1) such royal disgraces as dalliance with actresses and (2), far more heinous, the retention of such ineffective and unholy practices as the King’s Touch.
..........................
Enough of my discourse! Great God of heaven and earth, what more reason and example can I offer to convince my fellow Englishmen that the king oversteps his powers when, despite his lack of an apprenticeship to a qualified member of the Company of Barber-Surgeons, he presumes to employ one or more of his digits to cure an affliction of such gravity and complexity as the scofula. Considering the number of traitors at home and the number of foes abroad, I humbly suggest the king’s hands would be better employed in the perfection of such worthier skills as archery and swordsmanship.
eHhBefore I take leave of my readers, permit me to mention once again the doleful case of Samuel Johnson of Lichfield. If his parents had rushed their Sammy to the surgery of a qualified physician instead of to the royal palace, he would almost certainly have been cured and then forever after free of the scars and mental indispositions that, inter alia, limited his choice of a wife to a widow nineteen years his senior. According to his dedicated and meticulous biographer, James Boswell, her rejection of the customary and natural noctural duties of a true English wife forced Johnson to exercise his manliness in a manner that violated his religious principles and evoked a perpetual fear of divine retribution in the afterlife.
In 1649, Charles I was executed after having been convicted of the high treason of making war against his subjects when, asserting Divine Right, he attempted, like our current king, to more fully exercise what he believed to be his just powers. Opposing Parliament and marriage to a Catholic princess from France, a dangerous and longtime enemy, were, admittedly, far more serious transgressions than curing scrofula, and yet, as a loyal subject, I am duty bound to remind our present monarch of the propensity of disgruntled subjects to make molehills into mountains.
At any gathering, I have always been the first to raise my glass, whether of ale or port, and to cry out, “God save the king!” Currently, with the current epidemic of scrofula, I am compelled to add, “May God also save the physicians who are members of the Company of Barber-Surgeons and therefore more qualified to rid England of this scourge!
Boswell nowhere mentions what became of Johnson’s shilling. We can be sure, however, that if Johnson saved it until he moved to London in 1737, and there spent it at one of the fleshpots on Fleet Street and on every other street, lane and alley, Boswell, who shares a Hibernian ancestry with Rupert Murdoch,iberH would have mentioned all the lascivious details in his biography, regarded as the greatest and most entertaing in all literature.
Is it of interest to my fellow Americans that the tercentary of the birth of English author Samuel Johnson coincides with the current debate about the inclusion of a public option in the proposed health care reforms of President Obama? I believe that it should be, if only as a reminder of a public option that was acceptable in Johnson’s time long ago but might currently, in a more “progressive” day and age, be regarded as intrusion by big goverment.
Samuel Johnson was born in poor health on September 18, 1709, and was never free from pain and illness until he died on December 13, 1784. In later years, he was also never free of the often obnoxious presence of James Boswell, a Scotsman and his self-appointed biographer.
Frail at birth, and not expected to live, he was baptized at once by the vicar of St. Mary’s in Lichfield, his hometown in Staffordshire. But it seems that he was already possessed of the tenacity that enabled him to survive and later distinguish himself by writing dozens of works in almost every genre that offered decent payment in pounds if not guineas, and to be outranked on Parnassus Britannica only by William Shakespeare, who wrote a mere 37 plays, 154 sonnets and a few other poems, all so full of allusions to Greek and Roman mythology that you can’t enjoy them without reaching every other line for a reference book by Thomas Bulfinch and/or Edith Hamilton.
Put out to a wet-nurse who would have been disqualified by the National Health Service if it had already been established, he contracted scrofula, a form of tuberculosis affecting the lymph nodes of the neck. Scrofula was known also in England as the King’s Evil, because loyal subjects, if they valued their necks and their exposure to a hangman’s noose, were compelled to concur that royalty ruled by Divine Right, and that it enabled a sovereign, among his other powers and prerogatives, to employ a Royal Touch and rid subjects of scrofula, perceived at the time as a sort of supernatural evil as well as a debilitating disease. Also, in a quaint departure from present-day financial arrangements with healers and HMOs, the patient not only didn’t pay so much as a farthing for the treatment but was presented with a coin valued from about ten to twenty shillings, according to such fluctuating factors as the crown’s share of the booty from pirates it had sanctioned sub rosa, just as our own government has sanctioned such activities as rendition and virtual torture.
Though recommended to his parents by no less an authority than Sir John Floyer, former physician to Charles I, the treatment did not work for some reason, and the disease left Johnson with permanent scars and frequent bouts of depression about his health and appearance. Despite this disappointing outcome, Johnson was a royalist all his life, as demonstrated by his opposing the revolt of the American colonies in 1776 and graciously accepting a pension from the crown. On the other hand, he would have scorned so much as a dinner invitation from such an ignoble nobleman as Lord Chesterfield, who had once refused to support his plan for a new and definitive dictionary of the English language.
Formed by decree of Henry VIII in 1540, the Company of Barber-Surgeons was in Johnson’s day more than the equivalent in prestige of today’s American Medical Association, and neither its own archives, nor that of its successor organization, the Royal College of Surgeons, indicate whether it approved or disapproved of a monarch’s intrusion into their learned profession, which included but was most certainly not limited to brain surgery, then as now the hallmark of competence. But disapproval of the Royal Touch, and denouncing it as quackery and restraint of trade, would have been of no avail, not if the Company wished to maintain its privileges, tantamount, in modern parlance, to both a vertical and horizontal monopoly.
It is interesting, however, to speculate what would have happened if, throwing caution to the winds that prevailed over the Tower of London, the Company, in the manner of special interest groups of our own day, had engaged a professional scribe to present their case to the kingdom against a public option like the Royal Touch. According to my informal poll of a group of scholars at my daughter’s old school in London, King’s College, by far the most qualified scribe for the assignment would have been one Thrush Limberger (1690-1763), author of Demons over Westminster and a frequent contributor to the Birmingham Bludgeon. And by a stroke of good luck, one of the scholars recalled that Limberger actually did write a broadside on the subject in question, and he was kind enough to consult his archives and provide me with a copy. The following two excerpts, the exordium and the peroration, are typical of the style and flavor.
Concering True and False Healers
With the help of God and this plume plucked from a true English goose and not a Burgundian bird of prey, let the truth be revealed at last to all honest and patriotic folk in the land, from the Shetland Islands to Cornwall! Have not we all, and especially the middle classes, the good merchants and yeomen of England, suffered long enough from our own lethargy in a matter that concerns our health and that of our wives and babes, our kith and kin, and also, lower in the social order but also children of God, the cooks who prepare our roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and the maids who serve them and afterwards scrub our pots to our satisfaction?
Verily, and with Bible in hand, I swear upon my life that no one reveres the Crown more than I myself, and, with God’s grace, may the present king and queen and their progeny rule with glory until the Day of Judgment. And may they repulse and crush both Catholics and Jacobites at home and the French and Spanish abroad. But to suggest that royalty has a God-given dispensation to treat scrofula or, for that matter, any other affliction of body or soul is, I say, sheer balderdash and poppycock. And this asserveration is not only my own but also, a fortiori, that of the synod of learned ecclesiastics that met only a fortnight ago at Bury St. Edmunds. The original purpose of their meeting was to deplore the plethora of witch trials that had occurred in that town at the behest of the Lord Chief Justice, but while in session they had also felt it their moral duty to discuss and denounce (1) such royal disgraces as dalliance with actresses and (2), far more heinous, the retention of such ineffective and unholy practices as the King’s Touch.
..........................
Enough of my discourse! Great God of heaven and earth, what more reason and example can I offer to convince my fellow Englishmen that the king oversteps his powers when, despite his lack of an apprenticeship to a qualified member of the Company of Barber-Surgeons, he presumes to employ one or more of his digits to cure an affliction of such gravity and complexity as the scofula. Considering the number of traitors at home and the number of foes abroad, I humbly suggest the king’s hands would be better employed in the perfection of such worthier skills as archery and swordsmanship.
eHhBefore I take leave of my readers, permit me to mention once again the doleful case of Samuel Johnson of Lichfield. If his parents had rushed their Sammy to the surgery of a qualified physician instead of to the royal palace, he would almost certainly have been cured and then forever after free of the scars and mental indispositions that, inter alia, limited his choice of a wife to a widow nineteen years his senior. According to his dedicated and meticulous biographer, James Boswell, her rejection of the customary and natural noctural duties of a true English wife forced Johnson to exercise his manliness in a manner that violated his religious principles and evoked a perpetual fear of divine retribution in the afterlife.
In 1649, Charles I was executed after having been convicted of the high treason of making war against his subjects when, asserting Divine Right, he attempted, like our current king, to more fully exercise what he believed to be his just powers. Opposing Parliament and marriage to a Catholic princess from France, a dangerous and longtime enemy, were, admittedly, far more serious transgressions than curing scrofula, and yet, as a loyal subject, I am duty bound to remind our present monarch of the propensity of disgruntled subjects to make molehills into mountains.
At any gathering, I have always been the first to raise my glass, whether of ale or port, and to cry out, “God save the king!” Currently, with the current epidemic of scrofula, I am compelled to add, “May God also save the physicians who are members of the Company of Barber-Surgeons and therefore more qualified to rid England of this scourge!
Boswell nowhere mentions what became of Johnson’s shilling. We can be sure, however, that if Johnson saved it until he moved to London in 1737, and there spent it at one of the fleshpots on Fleet Street and on every other street, lane and alley, Boswell, who shares a Hibernian ancestry with Rupert Murdoch,iberH would have mentioned all the lascivious details in his biography, regarded as the greatest and most entertaing in all literature.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
