Category: default || By jt3y

Happy European Oppressors of Native Peoples Day! I used to think this was just Columbus Day, when we celebrated the fact that if crazy ol' Cristoforo hadn't conned the king and queen of Spain out of some doubloons and leased three ships (the Nina, the Tito, and the Queen Mary) from Hertz Rent-a-Fleet, my sorry rear-end might be farming potatoes in eastern Europe. That was before my eyes were opened. Now, thanks to political correctness, I realize that the past 400 years of North American history have been a fraud!

OK, so, not quite. In sixth- or seventh-grade, two Italian-American teachers at our school jokingly proposed having a Columbus Day parade. Some how, the idea caught hold with the administration, and lunchtime on Oct. 12 found the younger kids marching around the playground, waving little American and Italian flags and singing:

In 14-hundred and 92,
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
He sailed three ships across the sea,
To find this land for you and me.

I don't know if that little celebration would pass muster today; some parent would complain, and then there would be a town meeting, where impassioned people with quavering voices would read heart-felt, angry speeches from torn-out pieces of notebook paper, and afterward some TV news crew would do a live shot for the 11 p.m. news about the big Columbus Day controversy. In the end, everyone would be frustrated and angry.

Whereas after our parade, we had pizza and chocolate milk and played dodgeball, and none of the children, so far as I know, decided on the basis of that parade they were in favor of conquering other countries and converting the natives to Christianity.

If there's one thing about American culture that sometimes aggravates me, it's the insistence on painting everything in simple primary colors: Good guys versus bad guys, heroes versus villains. The truth is rarely so clearly defined. That's not an endorsement of "situational ethics," or "ends justify the means" type arguments --- acting in bad faith in pursuit of a noble goal is still bad --- but we can't have useful discussions about history without being willing to see the nuances.

If we can have these discussions about controversial figures --- be they Christopher Columbus or President Bush --- without demonizing the other side and their arguments, more the better.

Personally, I like Stan Freberg's take on Columbus Day, as expressed on his 1961 album "Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America." Columbus, after telling the natives that he intends to open an Italian restaurant ("I want to introduce you to all of the finer things --- starches, carbohydrates, cholesterol"), asks the chief if he'll come back to Spain so that he can prove he discovered them.

"What do you mean, you discovered us?" the chief asks. "We discovered you. Standing on the beach. It's all in how you look at things."

Indeed.

Jimmy Johnson has a take on Columbus Day in his comic strip "Arlo and Janis" that's similar to Freberg's, while there's a real classic in "Classic Peanuts" today, as Sally Brown works on one of her immortal themes.

...

And unfortunately, now I'll be singing "It's a Round, Round World" all day:

COLUMBUS:
It's a round, round world,
It's a round, round world.
I believe it's round and it's gonna be found,
When all the results are in:
It's a round world now and it's always been!

KING FERDINAND:
It's a flat, flat world,
It's a flat, flat world.
I believe it's flat as a welcoming mat,
And he's sailing right off the end:
How about my crazy Italian friend?

...

I thought that Our Fair City had escaped last month's flooding relatively unscathed. Mayor Jim Brewster is reporting some $3 million in damage overall, according to Pat Cloonan in The Daily News. Forty-five basements had to be pumped by the fire department, 40 landslides had to be cleared, and a 30-by-20 foot hole opened in Walnut Street in the Third Ward. The city also handed out 80 "cleanup kits" and ran two tetanus clinics.