Sunday's Reading - So Far: Movies, History, Books, Politics, Fiction

I took a short ride this morning on the bike. I thought to do so at noon. That did not happen. 

This is what I did instead.

From the email:

1. The Rest is History from Lapham's Quarterly
2. The front page of The Guardian - just in case you think the world stopped when Trump went to court.
3. The Magnificent Ambersons: rebirth for ruined Orson Welles masterpiece that rivalled Citizen Kane 
4. The Irish Times's Books page - here's an idea for American newspapers: publish American short stories in your pages!
    

Also from Lapham's Quarterly: The Hypocrisy of This Nation! How abolitionists viewed the American flag.

Key’s colorful description of the national flag flying high above Fort McHenry is a triumphant expression of American patriotism. It holds a special place in the minds of the nation’s citizens, even if many of them are unable to recite its lyrics accurately. While the most famous line of the National Anthem is the opening exclamation, “O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light,” the most infamous line appears in the third of the song’s four original sections. Assailing the enslaved people who had absconded from their American owners and volunteered for the British armed forces during the war, it surmises these traitorous bondmen had either fled in fear before the Battle of Baltimore or lost their lives in the process of betraying the pro-slavery republic: “No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.”

After reveling in the alleged demise of these formerly captive people, the song repeats its inspiring crescendo, “the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave / O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Key’s lyrics did not go unchallenged. Years later, the Quaker abolitionist Dr. Edwin Atlee parodied the “National Song” to illuminate the plight of the fugitive slaves who fought alongside the British against the United States in the hope of becoming free. Unlike Key’s original poem, this revision depicts the plight of all enslaved people whose blood daily streamed under the lash of their American oppressors, while the national banner, “With its stars, mocking freedom, is fitfully gleaming.”

Instead of a land of liberty, the United States was a shelter for slavery: “No refuge is found on our unhallowed ground / For the wretched in Slavery’s manacles bound.” Should the nation fail to achieve its boasted ideals, “our star-spangled banner at half mast shall wave / O’er the death-bed of Freedom—the home of the slave.”

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After witnessing the coffle, Dickey fired off an angry letter to the local Paris Western Citizen. While proud of “Columbia’s free born sons” for turning the Kentucky wilderness into a commercial emporium, he decried the traffic in human beings, “a business commenced at first on a moderate scale, in Kentucky, but now grown so enormously as to be become truly alarming.” He also denounced the use of the American flag as a symbol of the nefarious trade. It was hard to imagine a greater insult to the republic and its founders than “to hoist the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ the flag of freedom, the Eagle of proud America, over a set of poor unhappy slaves, fettered to misery, to despair, who never knew Liberty, save in dreams of the night, or the airy visions of the day.” It was, Dickey concluded, a “shameful prostitution.” Others agreed.

And maybe now you will understand why burning the flag is free speech, and laws against its burning amount to idolatry.

I just heard Pence on Meet the Press. Vapidity made flesh. Like all candidates, he does elide his own responsibilities. How can he deny the Trump DOJ let off Hillary Clinton?

Judge Aileen Cannon getting ready for work today 

Looking at fiction:

Museum Piece By MIKE BARTHEL - brilliant, but that might just be my sense of humor showing.

Janice Deal | Lost City | The Moth Short Story Prize 2021 - I had trouble hearing, I need real speakers for this machine (which means I need more money) 

While on The Irish Times' Books page, I took the time to read Walking Ghosts: a short story by Mary O’Donnell. Well, worth the time for readers and writers, alike.

From Uncanny, I read Rabbit Test. Rather good, scary good. The prose is straightforward. What hits hard is the juxtaposition of other stories. Reading The Rain Remembers What the Sky Forgets
by Fran Wilde, from the same source, makes me feel the blandness of my own prose.

I am so tired of all the comparison to Hillary Clinton by Donald J. Trump. He had a chance to prosecute her, he did not. Why not?

Justice Department winds down Clinton inquiry; finds nothing of consequence  1/8/2020

As a part of his review, Huber examined documents and conferred with federal law enforcement officials in Little Rock, Arkansas, who were handling a meandering probe into the Clinton Foundation, people familiar with the matter said. Current and former officials said that Huber has largely finished and found nothing worth pursuing - though the assignment has not formally ended and no official notice has been sent to the Justice Department or to lawmakers, these people said.

The effective conclusion of his investigation with no criminal charges or other known impacts is likely to roil some in the GOP who had hoped the prosecutor would vindicate their long-held suspicions about a political rival. Trump, though, has largely shifted his focus to a different federal prosecutor tapped to do a separate, special investigation: U.S. Attorney in Connecticut John Durham, who Attorney General William Barr assigned last year to explore the origins of the FBI's 2016 probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Trump Complains Barr, Pompeo Should Go After Hillary Clinton Bloomberg 10/8/2020

William Barr says Trump privately told him he wanted to drop the focus on Hillary Clinton's emails, despite suggesting the opposite publicly Business Insider 3/8/2022

Trump's reported private comment is contradicted by years of evidence showing that the president very much did not want to drop the focus on Clinton's private email server and was not above publicly pressuring the Justice Department to do so.

"You've got to speak to Jeff Sessions about that," Trump said during a September 2017 rally when his supporters began chanting "Lock her up!" A few months later he told conservative radio host Larry O'Connor that he was "frustrated" that presidents weren't supposed to interfere in the DOJ and FBI's operations, but added, "Hopefully they are doing something."

Trump's comments about Clinton did not stop once Barr became attorney general. Trump pressured Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to release more of Clinton's emails in the weeks before the 2020 election. Privately, Trump was going even further in pressuring Barr to deliver politically-motivated probes of top Democrats.

"The the president has also conveyed to Mr. Barr, directly and through surrogates, that he wanted 'scalps,'" the Times reported in October 2020.

And nearly four years after beating Clinton, Trump made it clear that he loved how his supporters wanted to send her to prison.

Here I close for now. I need to do something more with "Love Stinks." I found I can listen to Land of the Lost (WXPN's 80's show) on Mixcloud.

I retitled "Psychotic Ape" but it got a quicker rejection than it did under the old title:

Thank you for thinking of NewMyths. Unfortunately "Non-Being Tussles with Being" is not quite what we are looking for at this time. We wish you good luck placing it elsewhere.

Susan Shell Winston, editor 

sch 1:20 pm