ATST Snippet #6 (I think)

isaac_newton wrote:SNIP
Hmmm - think I agree with Dilandu on this one. I certainly would have said/written 'childish'
SNIP

Hmm, I should have said native american english speaker. I'm not terribly familiar with the british school system but do you guys have a "sophpmore" year? I now the lower grades are referred to as "forms" but am ignorant of your terms for later years.

EdThomas wrote:

isaac_newton wrote:SNIP
Hmmm - think I agree with Dilandu on this one. I certainly would have said/written 'childish'
SNIP

Hmm, I should have said native american english speaker. I'm not terribly familiar with the british school system but do you guys have a "sophpmore" year? I now the lower grades are referred to as "forms" but am ignorant of your terms for later years.

Well, here, in Russia, we usually use "kindergarten joke" to describe something like this...

P.S. I just imagined Clyntahn lamenting: "what next? Pins on chair? Bucket of water on the door? Seriously, damned heretics... act your age!"

Wonderful! A poke of crude fun to lighten up the more serious matters in the broadsheets is just what the doctor ordered, in my opinion

There was a cartoon in one of the British army periodicals during World War 2, depicting two soldiers standing by a wall with a large hole blown in it. One of the soldiers, a raw recruit, was saying to the other "Blimey, Sarge, what did that?" to which the Sergeant replied "Mice."

In an effort to explain the British sense of humour, the German army reproduced the cartoon, with the added explanatory line underneath, "Of course, it was not mice, it was a shell." This was picked up and reprinted in the following British army magazine, and that raised a far bigger laugh than the original cartoon had done.
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isaac_newton wrote:SNIP
Hmmm - think I agree with Dilandu on this one. I certainly would have said/written 'childish'
SNIP

EdThomas wrote:
Hmm, I should have said native american english speaker. I'm not terribly familiar with the british school system but do you guys have a "sophpmore" year? I now the lower grades are referred to as "forms" but am ignorant of your terms for later years.

Dilandu wrote:Well, here, in Russia, we usually use "kindergarten joke" to describe something like this...

P.S. I just imagined Clyntahn lamenting: "what next? Pins on chair? Bucket of water on the door? Seriously, damned heretics... act your age!"

Totally agree, Dilandu.
Clyntahn is the corrupt adult torturing those that depict themselves as having the innocence and simplicity of children. How demonic can children be? Is it best to beat children who ask honest questions or to teach those children properly?

Nahrmahn's little joke goes far deeper than a simple sophomoric gesture. It frames the conflict as one between a grown and jaded corrupt man against the innocence that God's gift of life begins in all his children. That sort of fundamental attack on orthodoxy must be made to overthrow the Proscriptions. So, as the initial shot against that orthodoxy, this is quite good. One hopes that Clyntahn responds as you suggest to confirm the comparison's assumptions to the Loyalist laity.

PeterZ wrote:
Totally agree, Dilandu.
Clyntahn is the corrupt adult torturing those that depict themselves as having the innocence and simplicity of children. How demonic can children be? Is it best to beat children who ask honest questions or to teach those children properly?

Nahrmahn's little joke goes far deeper than a simple sophomoric gesture. It frames the conflict as one between a grown and jaded corrupt man against the innocence that God's gift of life begins in all his children. That sort of fundamental attack on orthodoxy must be made to overthrow the Proscriptions. So, as the initial shot against that orthodoxy, this is quite good. One hopes that Clyntahn responds as you suggest to confirm the comparison's assumptions to the Loyalist laity.

The main Clyntahn problem - no sense of humor. Probably one of his most vunerable spots, actually.

isaac_newton wrote:

Dilandu wrote:A bit too... childish, IMHO.

EdThomas wrote:Dilandu, your english is superb but your reply reveals that you're not a native speaker. I suggest the proper term would be "sophomoric".

Hmmm - think I agree with Dilandu on this one. I certainly would have said/written 'childish'

On the other hand I love the image of inquisitors hunting down the guilty chamber pots...

Ahem.

For those among you who don't already know it, I live (and was raised in) South Carolina. I'm also (don't know if it shows in my writing) a military historian by training. And Nahrmahn's brainstorm, derives from a certain episode in the American Civil War.

To encapsulate, for those not already familiar with it, after Admiral Farragut had run the batteries on the Mississippi River and secured the surrender of the city of New Orleans, the South's largest port, a fellow by the name of Benjamin Franklin Butler was placed in command of the city.

Now Butler was a general in the Union Army, but that was mainly because he was too politically important for Lincoln to leave outside the army, for several reasons. Specifically, he was a prominent Democrat before the war but strongly supported the Union's cause when war broke out. Given the number of Democrats in the North (and their role as the actual or potential anti-war party), a Democrat who supported the Lincoln Administration was too valuable not to give a commission if that was what he wanted. Particularly, if it would keep him out of political mischief (and he had a certain reputation for mischief and self-aggrandizement).

I should point out, before going further, that he became a Republican during or shortly after the war and later co-authored the Civil Rights Act of 1875. During the war, he was probably — or at least arguably — instrumental in setting the groundwork in place for the Emancipation Proclamation because his policy as a general in the Union Army (without authorization from Washington) was to treat fugitive slaves as “contraband of war” and proclaim their emancipation on the basis that doing so would weaken the Confederacy. I believe he was also eventually a governor of Massachusetts, and that he had a pretty significant hand in the effort to impeach Andrew Johnson. In short, while he wasn't a very good general, he was a very good politician, and despite the many people who didn't like him very much, he actually had some pretty strong core principles to which he was consistently true.

Somehow, however, his credentials as a Democrat who had “betrayed” his party by remaining loyal to the Union failed to make him universally beloved in the South during the war. And his actions during the war didn't do much to turn that around.

As governor of New Orleans, Butler actually did quite a lot of good things, including bringing about a huge reduction — during his tenure — in the annual death toll from yellow fever. However, he was hugely unpopular with the local non-slave population, which preceded to christen him “Mister Spoons” when he ordered the seizure of a set of silverware from a New Orleans woman attempting to cross the Union lines. He also had her prosecuted as a smuggler (technically, the silverware in her possession was a violation of the pass she’d been granted to cross the lines), and the incident led to allegations that he personally looted private property during his time in New Orleans.

What really pissed off the Confederacy, however, was his General Order 28 (I think I have the number right) in which he sought — successfully, I might add — to . . . discourage the women of New Orleans from taunting, insulting, and provoking Union troops responsible for the occupation and policing of the city. The women in question — taking advantage of the social mores of the day, which required that society and the law treat any “respectable” woman as a “lady” — would jeer at Union soldiers, curse in their faces, spit on them, and empty chamber pots on to them from upper-floor windows as they passed in the street. (If I remember correctly, Farragut himself was one of the people doused with a chamber pot's contents.) If the soldiers retaliated physically against them, it was bound to create civil unrest. If they didn’t retaliate in some fashion, it undermined their authority. And it was likely that, eventually, someone was going to be provoked into the sort of retaliation guaranteed to create riots.

Butler’s solution to the problem was, frankly, ingenious. He announced that any woman showing overt disrespect to soldiers in the uniform of the United States would be regarded as “a woman of the town plying her avocation” — in other words, as a prostitute — and treated accordingly. This brought a very rapid end to the abuse of Union soldiers by “respectable women.” It also so enraged the Confederacy that Jefferson Davis that he announced that Butler would be hanged if captured. For that matter, a huge number of people in the North were outraged by it, and it wasn’t exactly well-received in England, either.

As a consequence, Butler received the nickname “Beast,” to go along with “Mister Spoons.”

The reason for this little digression of mine is that shortly after the issuance of his general order, several Confederate chamber pot manufacturers found a profitable and arguably patriotic market by producing chamber pots with his picture on the bottom and the words “A Salute to Mister Spoons” around the rim.

I did mention that Nahrmahn’s become a student of Old Earth history, didn’t I?

runsforcelery wrote:
The reason for this little digression of mine is that shortly after the issuance of his general order, several Confederate chamber pot manufacturers found a profitable and arguably patriotic market by producing chamber pots with his picture on the bottom and the words “A Salute to Mister Spoons” around the rim.

I did mention that Nahrmahn’s become a student of Old Earth history, didn’t I?

Oh, well played!

I remember seeing a commode at an ivy league school with the Harvard Banner glued to the bottom. I also seem to remember something in the movie "Lincoln" with Daniel Day Lewis, where a U.S. Envoy, or something like it, was entertained in Britain by a small group of British diplomats. At one point he was shown to the privy, where the host had hung a portrait of George Washington as a joke.

And so, perhaps childish, but very definitely effective.

Sophmoric, childish or whatever... It was still funny. It probably says something about me, but I've always enjoyed cornball humor...you know, heee hawww!!!

What would really cap this off would be to put minature Clyntahn commodes for sale up on the website...

Don

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Well done Dilandu & EdThomas - I think that we can rest content that our little discussion has lured Himself out of his lair

Thanks RFC!

Definitely 'schoolboy humour' and it will go down marvelously with the troops. I think it may be a bit much for many Reformists and those Temple Loyalists who are beginning to consider their position though. The costume may make it seem too much of a scandalous assault on the standing of the Office of Vicar in general rather than just Clyntahn in particular for them, and so tend to alienate such of a middle ground as exists. NTM all those who will just go, 'Yuck! Tacky!'

Presumably Hanth isn't getting any balloons because climatic conditions would let him use them too soon and allow RW to be warned before he meets them for himself.