Tag: The Big Lebowski

Presidents’ Day (*some exceptions apply)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Hail to the chief, President Nobilette.

I think we can all agree that some who have held the office do not deserve a Day, unless that day is in court, wherein a judge intones:

“Will the defendant please rise?”

Still, setting dreams aside for the moment, there once was a time when Presidents’ Day was less about presidents, good, bad, or indifferent, or even our first president, than it was about (wait for it …) bicycles.

According to a 2015 story by Yoni Appelbaum in The Atlantic, Americans once honored George Washington on Feb. 22 through feats of cycling.

When the date became a federal holiday in 1885, Appelbaum wrote, the nation “was deep in the grip of the bicycle craze.”

“In Boston, cyclists used the public holiday to hold bicycle races before cheering throngs. Local bike stores opened their doors to entice the race-day crowds, bringing them in off the snowy streets to preview the pleasures of spring. February 22 soon marked the start of the season, the day on which bicycle retailers held open houses to show off their latest models to eager crowds.”

—The Atlantic

As with quality in the nation’s highest office, this glorious state of velo-affairs could not last, of course. As the appeal of the humble two-wheeler began to wane in the early 1900s, the automobile rose up to take its place on the national stage, and the seasonal advertising campaigns shifted gears, from vehicles powered by living people to ones that ran on dead dinosaurs.

This will not stand, y’know? This aggression will not stand, man. So, today, turn a pedal for Liberty! Leave the dino-burner in the driveway! Take your bicycle for a red-white-and-blue spin!

And for the love of George Washington, don’t buy any golden high-tops.

‘At least it’s an ethos’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 27 Comments

Were the Capitol Hill Commandos nihilists? Or do they have an ethos?

Beats me. They didn’t appear to be granting interviews — too busy smashing cameras and/or taking selfies — but if I were to guess, it seems to me that their ideology starts and stops at Adolf Twitler.

A few clearly had an agenda, but a lot looked like dumb dogs that caught a Cadillac and didn’t know what to do with it. They sure as shit weren’t prepared to drive it.

From the collection of Chairman Bao Wao Wao.

The Weather Underground Organization had a program when it bombed the U.S. Capitol back in March 1971 — armed struggle against imperialism a la Che Guevara and Mao Zedong. Create “two, three, many Vietnams,” as Che advised.

And the WUO decidedly was not above “demands for control and power through seizures of institutions,” as the leadership explained in the 1974 political statement “Prairie Fire,” with the caveat, “Actions are more powerful when they are explained and defended.”

The WUO didn’t exactly drive their program home, either. A bunch of them wound up in the carcel or the camposanto, and a number of their former comrades in the old Students for a Democratic Society split off in other directions, as Mike Klonsky did with the October League and later, the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist); Your Humble Narrator had a brief affiliation with both organizations in the late Seventies after an undistinguished stint with the Socialist Workers Party.

But at least these organizations had an ethos, a plan, a vision, however myopic. What were (are) these new insurrectionists thinking? Give us your best guesses in comments.