Attack of the Killer Cocktail Sombreros - op-ed

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Attack of the Killer Cocktail Sombreros

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain is one of the most admirable people in history. As a 34-year-old professor at Maine’s Bowdoin College he was beyond military age in 1862 but decided to enlist in the 20th Maine Infantry because of his profound belief in freedom for all.

Chamberlain is best known for his leadership in the Battle of Gettysburg. Surrounded and almost defeated by the 15th Alabama during a fierce battle among rocks and trees, with few remaining men still able to fight and out of ammunition, Chamberlain did something quite illogical – he ordered a bayonet charge, which saved the Union position. Unlike Viet-Nam era generals, who led from radios in air-conditioned bunkers, or modern generals, armed with pearl-handled resumes’, who lead from luxurious executive jets, Chamberlain led from the front.

In an era of theatrical facial hair sculpturing, Chamberlain adorned himself with a death-or-glory moustache that Asterix the Gaul might find a bit too much. General Chamberlain’s ‘stache all by itself could have frightened some of the Confederates on Round Top into surrendering.

Chamberlain fought in numerous battles, and was awarded the Medal of Honor, small compensation for the pain, infections, and operations he suffered all his life from multiple wounds.

After the war, Chamberlain served as governor of Maine and then as president of Bowdoin College. Chamberlain was not a backslapping fund-raiser; he also taught, at different times, every subject in the curriculum except science and mathematics.

In 1880, as commander of the militia, Chamberlain was called upon to resolve violence in the state capital of Augusta due to a contested election. He and his men ejected armed occupiers from the capitol and kept the peace for twelve days until the Maine supreme court made a ruling. On one occasion during this near-rebellion he faced down a mob that was determined to reoccupy the state house and kill him. He turned down bribes offered by both sides, being a man of honor instead of a deal-maker, and that was the end of his political career.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain died in 1914, honored for his courage, gallantry, and love of freedom.

Bowdoin College, another of Chamberlain’s great loves, does not at present appear to love freedom as much as he did. Students are being punished, and might be expelled, over sombreros.

Sombreros.

The putative objects of cultural appropriation and hurt-feelingness are not even real sombreros, but rather 2-3” party decorations, surely made in China, which a couple of giddy lads balanced on top of their heads after an encounter with a few glasses of merriment several weeks ago.

Perhaps the decorations should have been little homburgs, derbys, top hats, Prussian picklehauben, berets, trilbys, busbys, fedoras, fezes, kepis, kippahs, tams, tarbooshes, turbans, Mao caps, hoodies, cowboy hats, Irish walking hats, or workers’ hard hats. But wait – possibly neither the administration nor the students at progressive Bowdoin have any familiarity with workers’ hard hats.

Bowdoin’s administration collapsed tearfully into full Aunt Pittypat smelling-salts mode while accusations of cultural bias and the We Want Answers thing flew through the clean Maine air like General Pendleton’s cannon fire over the wheat fields at Gettysburg.

Yet the college did not cancel its annual Cold War party (that Stalin – what a fun guy) the same night of the attack of the cocktail sombreros, nor did the cafeteria modify its Mexican day menu the same week.

As a teenager applying to Bowdoin, Chamberlain needed help in prepping his knowledge of Greek and Latin, since the mastery of both was required for admission. Now, one supposes, young Chamberlain would have to demonstrate proficiency

Cultural Colonialism and a Fish

Mack Hall


Hayden Panettiere, who is famous for playing an “indestructible cheerleader” (I’m only repeated what the AP says) on television, has directed the fisherpersons of Taiji, Japan to stop their annual dolphin fishing.

Posturing – I mean, protesting – the annual seal hunt in Newfoundland is like, so back in th’ day, like, y’know? The happening place now for posing prettily for the cameras and patronizing the benighted natives is darkest Japan. Lapsing into the imperial first-person plural, Great White Non-Huntress Hayden sayeth, “We’ve been to Taiji…it’s a beautiful place with beautiful wildlife.”

Yeah, and the local folks are so cute and quaint and folksy, too, and love to sit on the doorsteps of their ‘umble cottages in the evenings, playing the banjo and singing their ethnic songs. Of course there is the matter of their killing our animal-friends thing.

Any centuries-old culture which has found its balance with nature certainly needs to be corrected and its future planned by a 20-year-old American whose moral, cultural, and intellectual authority comes from appearing on the tellyvision.

Hayden-Sahib promises the fisherfolk of Taiji that if only they’d stop being meanies and killing Flipper she’d love to be their spokesprincess and help them promote tourism and maybe basketweaving. No doubt they’ll build a statue of her and form a cargo-cult.

Newfoundland was promised the same deal – stop beating the widdy-biddy-big-eyed baby seals to death and we’ll send you some tourists. Yes, if we all stop farming and fishing we can feed the world based on visiting each other.

Perhaps my neighbor, who raises horses and cows, could be persuaded to give all his livestock to a nature preserve – where’d they naturally be naturally eaten by the natural and organic wolves – and charge tourists five dollars each to walk across his fields and admire the clover or something. No hayrides in a wagon, though, because a tractor burns that wicked old polluting gasoline and using a mule would be animal cruelty. Let the mule, too, be recycled by cuddly carnivores.

In the summers we could all stop fishing the lakes and streams, beat our fishing poles into plowshares, and learn how to wear funny clothes and pose for pictures with tourists. With the proceeds we could put fish-flavored tofu on the table beneath an ikon of the divine Hayden.

Hey, we could sell our woods rattlesnakes to tourists as pets. The city folk could take the critters back to their high-rise apartments and snuggle up to them on cold winter nights, or maybe turn the rattlers loose in the city parks where children play. Hey, if rattlesnakes are good for country children just think how much better they’ll be for city kids.

And Newfoundland could send Hayden some harp seals for her swimming pool for her pet dolphin to eat. Hayden does know that none of these critters is a vegetarian, doesn’t she?

Japan, like Iceland and England, is a small island nation, and because of this much of her economy is based on the sea. Seafaring nations squabble with each other over limits and about who should fish where, but none of them proposes mass starvation by not fishing at all. A 20-year-old whose wholly artificial living is not based on the soil or the sea is not only presumptuous but dangerous in telling people who actually work how to live. A Japanese fisherman living a marginal life has no following of thousands of cell-‘phone twitterers whose idea of a rough day is being asked to turn in a global-warming essay on time. He is pretty much alone. The fisherman makes his peace with the sea because his living is the sea, and if he does not fish his children do not eat. To require this man to surrender his dignity and his heritage and take up selling made-in-China souvenirs to mocking visitors is unconscionable.

Eat the fish. Save the humans.

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