Taking pride in one’s children?

Here is Malcolm: a dyed-in-the-wool socialist, egalitarian, unredeemed subverter of the capitalist system.

Here is an email from his eldest daughter: she is now “Vice-President” in a $35 billion corporation.

On these occasions, Malcolm has a mantra:

What would Uncle Ernest [Father of the Chapel at a South Yorkshire pit] have said?

Answer comes there none.

Ever wondered …

… why, from Lerwick to the Lizard, from Llanwnda to Lowestoft, all those LibDem polling graphs came out the same?

Wonder no more! As a special service Malcolm Redfellow’s Home Service brings you all of the LibDim crap that will fall through your letter box between now and the next election:

Would you like some cream with that, vicar?

Dearie me! Speaker Boehner is still having problems keeping his little dogies in the corral. The present issue is paying the disaster relief. Mark Warner was wielding the knife of brutal satire:

“The Senate is saying . . . why should we, in effect, rebuild schools in Iraq on the credit card but expect that rebuilding schools in Joplin, Missouri, at this moment in time have to be paid for in a way that has never been in any of the previous disaster assistance that we’ve put out before?” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He blamed the dispute on tea-party-affiliated Republicans in the House who demanded the spending cut.

Whatever Obama’s difficulties, in the polls or on the stump, he has ever-ready allies in the frothing Tea Party types.

As we watch Texas Governor Rick Perry’s rocket ascent in the Republican beauty ratings decine into scorched stick status, we can celebrate another triumph of Tea Party bone-headedness:

Texas Governor Rick Perry has jumped ahead of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to claim clear frontrunner status in the Republican presidential race. Perry’s ascendancy in the polls has more to do with his swagger and style than with any specific policy positions. Indeed Perry’s more expansive views on immigration run counter to the restrictive attitudes of the tea party.

What this tells us is that voters who identify with the tea party may not agree with Perry on every subject, but they like his approach. He is a big personality, much more colorful than the buttoned-down Romney, and in states with closed primaries, where only registered Republicans can vote, it’s hard to see Romney getting much traction with Perry in the race. Romney comes across like a competent manager when the tea party, reveling in historical ignorance, is only looking for someone to shake things up.

Of course, if one is looking for big …

No wonder as they scratch around for a credible candidate for 2012 the GOP elders are looking with interest at — of all people — Chris Christie of Noo Joisey. Here, more from Palash R. Ghosh:

In the unlikely event that Christie becomes a Republican candidate for president and actually gains the nomination, I feel that he has no chance of winning the election – and it has absolutely nothing to do with politics or his legislative expertise.

While I admire the governor very much — to put it bluntly (as Christie himself would), the governor is fat, some would say grossly obese – and there has never been an overweight president in my lifetime (and none since William Howard Taft, a 300+-pound behemoth in the early 1900s).

That picture of Christie (above), by the way, has more than once come with the caption:

Chris Christie blasts Obama’s “one-size-fits-all” health care plan.

That would be XXXL.

It was somewhat cruel, then, to find this on Christie’s official web-page:

Trenton, NJ – First Lady Mary Pat Christie announced today that on Monday, September 26, Drumthwacket will be illuminated in red and blue to celebrate Family Day – A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children™. Mrs. Christie, honorary chair of Family Day in New Jersey, is encouraging families to take part in the national effort that serves as a reminder to parents of the importance of having dinner with their children as a way to prevent substance abuse. 

Only in the great US of A could sharing a meal with one’s children be brand-named and trade-marked. Or that it somehow be linked to “substance-abuse”.

Take another gander at Governor Chris — self-evidently a serious calorie abuser. Then, perhaps, remember Queen Salote of Tonga in the 1953 Coronation parade:

It rains heavily in Tonga, in the warm South Pacific. Thus it did not seem unusual to Tonga’s Queen Salote that it should be raining in London on coronation day. Instead of withdrawing into the shelter of her coach like most notables in the long procession from Westminster Abbey, Queen Salote sat in the drenching downpour, a massive (6 ft. 3 in., 280 Ibs.), broad-faced woman in red robes and a headdress from which two feathers stuck stiffly upright; she beamed, waved, mopped rain from her face with a handkerchief, beamed again. The soaked, footsore crowd who had waited interminable hours to see the procession instantly warmed to Queen Salote.

She — by all accounts, a well-educated and intelligent lady, and so probably unique, therefore, at that particular bun-fight — shared an open-top coach in the pouring rain with a diminutive and obscure Malaysian sultan. Allegedly the off-microphone exchange went:

Who’s that with Queen Salote?

Oh, that’s her lunch.

Similarly, one wonders if “lunch with Chris” might not — too easily — become lunch for Chris.

Still party time!

Malcolm’s attentive reader has been speculating how he’ll get back to that album cover at the head of this post.

Easy!

An association crossed Malcolm’s butterfly mind. Back in October 1933 Benny Goodman’s Orchestra —Charlie Teagarden on trumpet, and big brother Jack, a.k.a. “Big T”, tromboning and vocalising —recorded Texas Tea Party:

Now, Mamma, Mamma, Mamma —
Where did you hide my tea?

Track 13, disc one, of that compilation above.

If anyone still hasn’t made the … err … connection, then refer to Kerouac, On The Road, section four:

… he cried in Spanish. “Dig that, Sal, I’m speaking Spanish.”
“Ask him if we can get any tea. Hey kid, you got ma-ree-wa-na?”
The kid nodded gravely. “Sho, onnytime, mon. Come with me.”

More to the point …

… what is the point of Janet Daley?

• Who does she represent?
• What does she stand for?
• Who ever elected her to anything?
• Is she not one of our more unnecessary American imports?

Nail, meet hammer

Both Tom Watsons — the golfer and the MP — are estimable souls. Both strike firmly down the fair-way. One is a wee bit more rotund. It doesn’t make him less deadly.

Alas. Tom Watson MP seems not to have added to the sum of worldly wisdom, via his blog-site, the last few days. His offerings there regularly skewer the Murdoch satraps. Even so, his tweets can land a deadly punch as well.

Consider the latest:

Tom Watson: ‘It seems unusual that some former staff members receive money [from News International for legal fees] and others don’t’.

Indeed.

Perhaps some clarity might result from Coulson suing on just that basis.

Duvet time!

Oh, the joy of being sixty-odd pages into the latest Neal Stephenson!

So: it’s early to bed, late to rise. And if wakefulness strikes at 2 a.m., so much the better.

By the way …

Anyone not keeping up with Malcolm’s reading habit, should be looking elsewhere.

Here’s one we made earlier

You pluck something out of the ether:

Andy Coulson is suing News Corporation, the parent company of News International. According to court filings, the lawsuit was filed yesterday.

Huh?

All fired up

A high point in Malcolm’s career in elective politics was chairing the committee of the local crematorium.

Mock it not!

Thereby he  “covered” two hours of an “environmental studies” class, at ten-minutes’ notice, armed only with the journal of the crematoria association.

Over that two-hour session (which significantly contributed to Malcolm’s overtime payments) and allowing for the statutory tea-break, students calculated the effort required to excavate graves six-feet deep, versus the cost of therms charged by still-nationalized British Gas to raise the human cadaver to its burning point (at this distance in time, Malcolm reckons it was then less than 50p a cadaver). Not forgetting, because the two-hours ran slow, an animadversion on the extra cost of incinerating an emaciated advanced-cancer case.

Malcolm’s moment of self-adulation came from the cynical student, leaving the room, muttering “That’s my best class, ever,”

Bleak House

At that time Malcolm’s day-job was to lecture on English Literature, including a course on Dickens.

Captain Frederick Marryat, in Jacob Faithful, killed off his main character’s mother by implying she had spontaneously combusted. After half-a-dozen telling references to “cinders”, we come to this:

A strong, empyreumatic, thick smoke ascended from the hatchway of the cabin, and, as it had now fallen calm, it mounted straight up the air in a dense column. I attempted to go in, but so soon as I encountered the smoke I found that it was impossible; it would have suffocated me in half a minute. I did what most children would have done in such a situation of excitement and distress—I sat down and cried bitterly. In about ten minutes I moved my hands, with which I had covered up my face, and looked at the cabin hatch. The smoke had disappeared, and all was silent. I went to the hatchway, and although the smell was still overpowering, I found that I could bear it. I descended the little ladder of three steps, and called “Mother!” but there was no answer. The lamp fixed against the after bulk-head, with a glass before it, was still alight, and I could see plainly to every corner of the cabin. Nothing was burning—not even the curtains to my mother’s bed appeared to be singed. I was astonished—breathless with fear, with a trembling voice, I again called out “Mother!” I remained more than a minute panting for breath, and then ventured to draw back the curtains of the bed—my mother was not there! but there appeared to be a black mass in the centre of the bed. I put my hand fearfully upon it—it was a sort of unctuous, pitchy cinder. I screamed with horror—my little senses reeled—I staggered from the cabin and fell down on the deck in a state amounting almost to insanity: it was followed by a sort of stupor, which lasted for many hours.

Well, Marryat was simply expanding upon a report in the London Times in that same year of 1832.

In due course (which brings us back on track), by 1852, Dickens was writing Bleak House and needed to off his minor villain, Krook. Krook is found mysteriously burned to death:

“What’s the matter with the cat?” says Mr Guppy: “Look at her!”

“Mad, I think. And no wonder, in this evil place.”

They advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground, before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the light.

Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to be steeped in something; and here is — is it the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it coal? O Horror, he IS here! and this, from which we run away, striking out the light and overturning one another into the street, is all that represents him.

Help, help, help! come into this house for Heaven’s sake!

Plenty will come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that Court, true to his title in his last act, has died the death of all Lord Chancellors in all Courts, and of all authorities in all places under all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice is done. Call the death by any name Your Highness will, attribute it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you will, it is the same death eternally — inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only — Spontaneous Combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died.

A Malcolmian aside:

Compare and contrast —

• Charles Dickens, 1852: “What’s the matter with the cat?” says Mr Guppy.
• Arthur Conan Doyle, 1894: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” “That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes. 

Dickens, for this piece of literary legerdemain, was the focus of instant criticism. All modern editions contain Dickens’ self-defence:

The possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has been denied since the death of Mr. Krook; and my good friend Mr. Lewes (quite mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing to have been abandoned by all authorities) published some ingenious letters to me at the time when that event was chronicled, arguing that spontaneous combustion could not possibly be. I have no need to observe that I do not wilfully or negligently mislead my readers and that before I wrote that description I took pains to investigate the subject. There are about thirty cases on record, of which the most famous, that of the Countess Cornelia de Baudi Cesenate, was minutely investigated and described by Giuseppe Bianchini, a prebendary of Verona, otherwise distinguished in letters, who published an account of it at Verona in 1731, which he afterwards republished at Rome. The appearances, beyond all rational doubt, observed in that case are the appearances observed in Mr. Krook’s case. The next most famous instance happened at Rheims six years earlier, and the historian in that case is Le Cat, one of the most renowned surgeons produced by France. The subject was a woman, whose husband was ignorantly convicted of having murdered her; but on solemn appeal to a higher court, he was acquitted because it was shown upon the evidence that she had died the death of which this name of spontaneous combustion is given. I do not think it necessary to add to these notable facts, and that general reference to the authorities which will be found at page 30, vol. ii.,* the recorded opinions and experiences of distinguished medical professors, French, English, and Scotch, in more modern days, contenting myself with observing that I shall not abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable spontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received.

Modern instance

Now we have West Galway coroner Dr Ciaran McLoughlin coping with a similar inexplicable death.

Just before last Christmas, the body of Michael Faherty had been found , totally burned, with damage only to the immediate floor and ceiling.

Malcolm has no opinion on how such things could happen. All he knows is that the human body contains a considerable quantity of sodium. And he has seen how that can burn.

So, on “spontaneous combustion”, like Charles Dickens, he has an open mind.

Especially in regard to Bleak House.

The death of Krook apart, that is a fine novel.

An ingenu at Brum

The Pert Young Piece around Redfellow Hovel has — just possibly — taken offence over the Guardian‘s rock correspondent.

Not because of his taste in music.

For some reason he was sent to observe the LibDems at play, in their Birmingham Conference.

Pity they couldn’t fill the Hall.

So here, it comes

Alexis Petridis goes looking for dissent among the faithful. “Dissent” — that’s resistence to being led by the nose. He sees this:

The moment when a lone voice shouts: “Rubbish!” as Danny Alexander suggests Gordon Brown spent too much money turns out to be a dizzying pinnacle of insurrectionary excitement that the conference will never scale again. It’s all glossy optimism, and woe betide anyone who attempts to suggest that said glossy optimism might be bordering on the delusional. A man from the BBC quotes a few poll figures at a Guardian Q&A panel, but no one wants to know. Someone bellows: “Did Miliband send you?” A woman seated behind me starts pretending to snore. “You’re a miserable sod,” snaps Lynne Featherstone, the equalities minister. Everyone cheers. The BBC man leaves.

Ms Featherstone happens to be the MP for Redfellow Hovel.

Ms Featherstone is so much a minister for “equalities”, she thinks it’s all men’s fault.

Subjective judgments

The uncultured English need a cultural thought-police. Actually, they have numerous such operations, but fail to recognise what they are and what they represent.

With the arrival of one Michael Gove as the arbiter of what is “education”, things have become more stringent. Particularly since he is — apparently – simultaneously  Scots, far right, authoritarian, possessed of a hot-line (if only through his wife) to that great intellect and moralist , Rupert Murdoch.

Let us continue

Well, consider this, as a critique of set-books at A-level:

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and Catch 22 were replaced by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Northern Lights and that the latter two books were not challenging enough.

Wowza!

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is a demanding book?

Philip Pullman isn’t a contentious author?

And — above all — Huckleberry Finn — a century and a quarter on — does not provide serious topics for social, literary and cultural analysis? Even if it’s worthy of study at university level (yeah .. yeah .. that’s in the US).

Where does one start?

Well, let’s knock off Huck Finn, and let the others take their chance.

Malcolm’s copy of his Huckleberry friend, a J.M.Dent Classic,  was probably bought around sixty years ago  — as a birthday present or to fill out a thin Christmas stocking. To this day, Malcolm thanks his nearest and dearest (now all deceased) on the back of these gifts. Such knowledge awarded him an 11+ scholarship to Paston School (Norfolk County Council granted, so generously, four a year) — except, of course, there was no way, back in the mid-’50s —  the son of a publican and sinner could do the 30-odd mile return daily return journey to North Walsham.

And Fakenham Grammar School quickly cut him down to size.

Huck Finn, Malcolm… please!

OK! OK!

Let’s start with an obvious thought: race.

The whole “message” of the novel is Twain challenging the contemporary notion of “race”. The “moment of incitement” is Huck’s meeting with the escaped slave, Jim.

Shall we pursue that one, Mr Gove?

Then, again, Huck challenges the notion of paternal authority, by running away. 

Happy about debating generational conflict, Mr Gove?

Ah, but it’s so much cleaner, whiter, more consensual dealing with World War 2 occupations.

Here’s a funny thing, Mr Gove

Huckleberry, after all this time, is still making waves.

You see, it uses the n-word. So does Of Mice and Men — a specified text for English National Curriculum, But Professor Alan Gribben of Auburn University, Montgomery, Alabama,  felt that this why so many schools (and those US school district authorities of which Mr Gove greatly approves) felt Huck was “inappropriate”. So “injun” became “Indian”. And the roof fell in.

Here’s a thought

It’s not the input. It’s — critically — the output.

Give a student a text. Ask for a critical response. Evaluate that. You are, after all, judging the ability of the respondent, not the source.

Oh, and by the way — once upon  a time, long before “qualitative assessment”, the Book of Job was set as an examination text.

Would Mr Gove justify that?