CSotD: Militias, the Census and other jokes
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Big Nate knocked me off my chair this morning. I'm finishing up next week's issue today and had two movie reviews that were coming in last night, since the press previews were held in the past 36 hours.
Both arrived, as promised, at the last minute. One said "Sorry it’s a bit long, this movie had a lot going on!" and the other also went over-length, and said, "I had a lot to say!"
One of them was 20 words over the requested 500 word limit. The other was 940 words.
Guess which one said, "… so you’ll probably have to cut it down a bit."
Of course — the first one.
An editor's lot is not a happy one.
First as History, Then as Cartoon
Today's Vintage Thimble Theater, from October, 1931, is wrapping up an arc in which Popeye has defeated the enemy army singlehandedly, because the cowardly army on his side took to the hills.
It ties in nicely with the current yapping about "well-regulated militias" and specifically, with Justice Stevens' op-ed piece pointing out that the Second Amendment is about those actual 18th century militias.
I've cited the Bladensburg Races before, but this comic neatly mirrors the Second Battle of Sackets Harbor, also in the War of 1812.
As the British fleet approached, Gen. Jacob Brown placed his militia at the obvious British entry spot, a narrow, easily defended ankle-deep ford where the island behind which the British clearly planned to land met the shore, then anchored his Albany regulars farther up by the boatyard.
That well-regulated militia lay behind a natural breastwork of earth until the first British boots touched water, whereupon they fired a single volley and then ran into the woods and hid, allowing the British forces to land unopposed.
The regulars took up the fight and acquitted themselves well, but it was a close, hard-fought battle until Brown dispatched a half-dozen dragoons to ride up and down the edge of the woods shouting about the great victory and the retreat of the enemy.
Hearing them, the well-regulated militia burst out of hiding, joyfully streaming down to celebrate their vicarious triumph.
The hard-pressed British mistook them for reinforcements, withdrew to their boats and returned to Kingston. The battle was won.
Immediately after the war, Madison tasked Brown with reorganizing the American army so it no longer had to depend on militias, who had behaved with an equal lack of valor in several other battles.
At which point the Second Amendment became as obsolete as the Third.
Cuenta Conmijo
First of all, the Constitution does not say "count the citizens."
We're supposed to count everyone except "Indians not taxed," which is to say, Indians in sovereign nations, while slaves were only counted as 3/5's a person, which — contrary to the unschooled opinions of young liberals — was intended to prevent slaveholding states from getting the massive undeserved Congressional representation and tax funding they'd have earned had non-voting slaves been counted as whole persons.
BTW, the Census comes under the Dept of Commerce, so it's none of Jeff Sessions' goddam business what they ask, and his pretense that it is to preserve voting rights is ludicrous given who he is, who he serves and what they've done so far.
Meanwhile, Dan Wasserman is reflecting how people who actually understand the immigrant community know this question will be taken.
I keep reading that we asked the citizenship question as recently as 1950, but that's another way of saying we stopped asking it after the Red Scare and about the time we passed the Civil Rights Act.
And so the question is perfectly consistent with Making America Great Again, innit?
But back to those Indians not taxed for a story about how ridiculous the Census was even before we started sliding into fascism:
I was the census reporter for our paper in the 1990 Census, and, as it happened, not only was Akwesasne within our circulation area– a reserve that, together with Kahnawake and Kanesatake, is the most militant native community north of the Rio Grande — but so was Ganienkeh, a splinter community whose militancy cranks up to 11.
Shortly before Census Day, a medical helicopter got lost and started circling around looking for a landmark. Someone in Ganienkeh saw an Army chopper flying low overhead, took out his deer rifle and started shooting at it, wounding the doctor on board and severing a hydraulic line, bringing the helicopter to the ground near the compound.
The State Troopers and FBI took offense at this, and there followed an armed standoff for a week and a half, which ended as such things mostly do in Mohawk country with everyone still pissed off but cautiously stepping back.
A year or so later, when the Census numbers had been crunched, I got this chipper press release from the Bureau with figures about Indian population, including the ridiculous story that they had passed the books over the barricades at Ganienkeh and the Mohawk inside had filled them out and passed them back.
I have long advised against lying to the press, because it is not only insulting but makes us wonder what's really up. In this case, the lie was so preposterous that it amused both the newsroom and the Mohawk to whom we went for comment.
But it also made me start poking around.
What I found was a huge undercount of native people across the country, linked to a variety of problems including homelessness in cities and the scattered populations in the Four Corners area.
It was more resigned incredulity than active anger, with my Navajo source joking, "If they get a good count, I wish they'd share it. We have no idea who's out there."
The biggest laugh being that they never had to count heads in Ganienkeh in the first place, those being the most not-taxed Indians on the continent.
And I wouldn't have thought of the story if the nitwits hadn't brought it up.
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