. . . when I probably should have been doing something else.

• The Tea Party protesters do not even like the Republicans any more, if they ever did. They are also the number one source of “comment spam” on this blog, or at least of the stuff that gets through the filters. That is just how revolutionary they are. Teabaggers go where online slot machine and Canadian payday loan purveyors fear to tread. [Actually, I think the spammers must think the teabaggers are a little bit confused and thus a good target market for people who sell things by getting other people to click on links accidentally.]
• Sarah Palin is in it for the money. Some conservative pundits do not approve, but Rush is all for it. Making money is the highest social good in their philosophy, right? So I guess they have to take the greedy with the bad.
• People who comment on the American political scene for national publications should be forced to read a pile of several hundred student papers. Then they would not find Palin’s habit of speaking/writing “in half-expressed thoughts and internal contradictions” so singular. It’s more or less the norm as far as I can tell, here in the mid-ranges of higher education that Sarah could not quite hack. It’s also pretty common to just disappear from classes or change schools in mid-semester, with or without explanation. Of course, it takes a truly special person to take that approach to being governor of a state. That said, making fun of a populist leader’s syntax, as the MSM and liberal blogs like to do with Palin, just plays into their hands. Ask the Federalists how well the supercilious grammar criticism tactic worked against various upstart northern Democratic-Republicans.
• Racist humor (and, one might add, racism) is fairly common, and often tolerated, in some conservative circles. Actually, I already knew that from personal experience, but it is quite revealing that some young white conservatives thought nothing of slapping that kind of thing up on Facebook.
• You can learn colonial history on Hulu. I learned that  Captain John Smith worked out a lot and liked to hang around in Jamestown with his shirt off. It was surprisingly hot, dry, and dusty there in the Virginia Tidewater hills. Also, John Rolfe was his sidekick. And Pocahontas looked good in her miniskirt. Ahead of the curve fashion-wise, as well. To be honest, there’s something to be said for the 50s he-man version of John Smith over Colin Farrell’s big-eyed nature lover in Terence Malick’s The New World. Smith is a rather sensitive fellow for a globe-trotting mercenary in both versions, which probably says something about how Americans like to remember their conquering forebears: a little sentimental, with just a hint of tears as they regretfully wipe off the blood.

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Now playing: Beulah – Queen of the Populists
via FoxyTunes

I have to say I’m a little disappointed in this piece in The Onion entitled, “Redcoat Holdouts Still Fighting American Revolution.”  The headline hints that the article is about to play on southerners still fighting the Civil War, but using the eighteenth-century “civil war” as its source of mock-tension.  Instead, the authors seem to satisfy themselves with the slapstick-hilarity of anachronism.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  The best line in the piece is at the end.

Also, there’s no relation between me and Walter Carp of the (fictional) Merrimac Valley Historical Society, although if the surname becomes shorthand for history-doing in eastern Massachusetts, I suppose I shouldn’t (cough) complain.

Perhaps over the weekend you saw this silly article in the New York Times about conservatives reviving the shibboleth of “socialism.” Now, there’s not much about the Obama Administration that’s remotely socialist, and indeed, the article even quotes Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (an actual socialist) as welcoming the fight: “I think this country could use a good debate on what goes on in places like Sweden, Norway, and Finland.”  But to me, this article was a reminder of just how bad politicians are at using historical analogies.  A good analogy, on the other hand, is something to treasure.  While doing some background reading for an encyclopedia article today, I came across a favorite passage.  Let Henry May show you how it’s done.

With boldness and considerable success, the Church [of England] carried its attack into the enemy stronghold, arch-Calvinist Connecticut.  In 1722 the new rector of Yale, one of the tutors, and five other promising young Puritans announced that they had come, through their reading, to doubt the validity of Presbyterian orders and were going to apply to the Bishop of London for ordination.  The effect in the colony was similar to that which might have been produced in 1925 if the Yale football team had suddenly joined the Communist Party.

–Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 77.

This is one of my favorite lines in all of early American history writing.  I’m a sucker for a scholar with a sense of mischief.

Continuing evidence that Pope Benedict XVI (a.k.a. The German Shepherd) and his underlings are deeply engaged with the crucial issues of our time. Need examples? Look no further than their recent efforts to rehabilitate anti-Semites and, now, to bring back that plea bargain of the soul, that buyout of the beyond, the indulgence. From the NYT:

The announcement in church bulletins and on Web sites has been greeted with enthusiasm by some and wariness by others. But mainly, it has gone over the heads of a vast generation of Roman Catholics who have no idea what it means: “Bishop Announces Plenary Indulgences.”

In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.

Because you want to choose your religion the same way you would choose a lawyer or city councilman. The Catholic Church is the Church that Gets Things Done, eternal things like erasing your lifetime of sin. And don’t worry, today’s indulgences are nothing like that stuff Martin Luther was complaining about. In today’s Catholic Church, you don’t buy indulgences, you earn them, by like, contributing money and stuff. And prayers, absolutely, lots of prayers.

According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still face punishment after death, in Purgatory, before they can enter heaven. In exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament.

There are partial indulgences, which reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years, and plenary indulgences, which eliminate all of it, until another sin is committed. You can get one for yourself, or for someone who is dead. You cannot buy one — the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1567 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day. . . .

One really does suspect that Benedict’s goal must be rendering the Church immune to caricature by living up to it. The caricature about hyper-scholastic theologians haggling over abstruse matters like the number of angels that can fit on the head of a pin, or establishing the formula to convert the number of prayers said to years off from Purgatory? Check. The caricature about Catholics being encouraged to fixate on the letter of Church doctrine rather than the spirit of Christian moral teachings, or I don’t know, the Holy Spirit itself? Check.

Octavia Andrade, 64, laughed as she recalled a time when children would race through the rosary repeatedly to get as many indulgences as they could — usually in increments of 5 or 10 years — “as if we needed them, then.”

Still, she supports their reintroduction. “Anything old coming back, I’m in favor of it,” she said. “More fervor is a good thing.”

Karen Nassauer, 61, said she was baffled by the return to a practice she never quite understood to begin with.

“I mean, I’m not saying it is necessarily wrong,” she said. “What does it mean to get time off in Purgatory? What is five years in terms of eternity?”

The latest offers de-emphasize the years-in-Purgatory formulations of old in favor of a less specific accounting, with more focus on ways in which people can help themselves — and one another — come to terms with sin.

“It’s more about praying for the benefit of others, doing good deeds, acts of charity,” said the Rev. Kieran Harrington, spokesman for the Brooklyn diocese.

After Catholics, the people most expert on the topic are probably Lutherans, whose church was born from the schism over indulgences and whose leaders have met regularly with Vatican officials since the 1960s in an effort to mend their differences.

“It has been something of a mystery to us as to why now,” said the Rev. Dr. Michael Root, dean of the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, S.C., who has participated in those meetings. The renewal of indulgences, he said, has “not advanced” the dialogue.

“Our main problem has always been the question of quantifying God’s blessing,” Dr. Root said. Lutherans believe that divine forgiveness is a given, but not something people can influence.

But for Catholic leaders, most prominently the pope, the focus in recent years has been less on what Catholics have in common with other religious groups than on what sets them apart — including the half-forgotten mystery of the indulgence.

“It faded away with a lot of things in the church,” said Bishop DiMarzio. “But it was never given up. It was always there. We just want people to return to the ideas they used to know.”

Hmmm . . .  returning to the ideas people used to know, let’s continue that conversation. [SATIRE ALERT] The thing about absolute monarchy was, you always knew where you stood, know what I’m saying? And you know, there’s nothing like burning a heretic to bring a community together. Maybe Papa Ratzi is on to something there.

“Algonkian Indian Influences on Yankee Foodways“:
I saw this public lecture announcement come over one of the early American history email lists and assumed the worst, that someone was blaming New England’s indigenous peoples for Moxie and canned bread, possibly by way of crediting them. But I guess not. Phew! That would be adding insult to injury if I ever saw it.

Actually that lecture sounds quite interesting, and if I lived in Connecticut, I would go to it. The phrase “Yankee foodways” just gave me flashbacks to some of our early experiments with the local, um, cuisine when we first moved out there.

Common-place publishes the occasional “Object Lessons” column with good reason: knowing your material culture is important.  For instance, when cataloging the office furniture purchases of ex-Merrill-Lynch CEO John Thain, The Consumerist‘s Ben Popken makes a horrible mistake, and then corrects himself with the help of a little eighteenth-century know-how.

(hat tip, BPM)

My friend DHM has alerted us to the latest adventures of Dr. McNinja, a former student of the clone of Benjamin Franklin.  The tales are written and drawn by Chris Hastings and inked by Kent Archer (click on the picture below to see the host site).

I think Jefferson just sent little starbursts through the screen.  We’ll stay on top of this developing story….

This amused me. (Click the picture for a full-size version.) I thought it looked even better with the neocons’ idol in there, in actual idol form. The only thing this chart has to do with early American history is the I have met a couple of these people (and a lot more associates of theirs) at various Founders- and Liberty-related events. (Sadly, Trotsky was not one of them.) I am sure there was absolutely no connection between Founder idolatry and the neoconservative outlook, none, nada.