The interminable days of Christmas

Joe Biden got an unexpected gift on Christmas Eve -- an outpouring of sympathy.  He and the good doctor were taking calls on a line set up to let children "track" Santa Claus via NORAD.  (They must have been tempted to discontinue it after 2018, when Trump shat on a little girl's hopes by asking if she really believes in Santa "because at seven it's marginal, right?")  All went well with the Bidens and some children in Oregon until their father grabbed the phone and rang off with "Merry Christmas and Let's Go Brandon!"  Because nothing says "good will toward men" like a coded insult.  

Now the clever wordsmith, an ex-cop named Jared Schmeck, is whining because his "freedom of speech" is being attacked from left (Eric Swalwell) and right (Erick Erickson).  No one told him that's how free speech works -- you get to say whatever you want to the President without armed men breaking down your door, and then other people get to say things about you.  If you don't like it, don't be a schmeck.  (See what I did there?)

Meanwhile in Austin, armed men were making an arrest at the home of Alex Jones and it wasn't Alex!  It was his wife Erika Wulff Jones on charges of causing injury to a family member and resisting arrest.  Alex says it was the result of "medication imbalance."  We've all been there, especially around the holidays.  The good liquor is all gone, somebody makes a remark about the pate you spent three hours on, or the decorations, or Aunt Vicki who can't help being a tad incontinent, somebody else makes a grab for the remote...let's just say I've been there.  I'm sure Mrs. Jones will make bail by New Year's Eve and they can start all over.

Expect the next battle in the culture wars to involve Bambi.  A new translation to be published in January promises to make the author's intentions more explicit.  In 1923 Felix Salten was not writing a children's story that Walt Disney would make into a saccharine movie, but "an existential novel about persecution and antisemitism in 1920's Austria."  The Nazis got it:  In 1935 they banned the book as "Jewish propaganda."   I expect the new translator, Jack Zipes, to be assailed for ruining a "beloved classic."  Can't we let children enjoy the book/movie without all this wokeness? they will cry.  The old argument about whether Disney was a racist, or any more racist than other filmmakers of his era, will be aired again.  Salten may join Toni Morrison and Ta-nehisi Coates on the list of writers who promote CRT.  And that's January.  

Here's a bombshell to play with until then:  According to Stephen Nissenbaum's The Battle for Christmas, when Clement Clarke Moore wrote "A Visit From St. Nicholas" in 1822 he was one of the richest men in New York and owned five slaves.  I thought this would be of interest in the place where a statue of Jefferson was recently banished from the City Council chamber.

From California comes an animal story the kids will love.  Simon Curtis says he found a baby tree frog in his package of romaine lettuce.  He's debating whether to keep Tony (as he calls him) or release him "if it's warm enough."  At some point in his journey Tony has certainly been refrigerated, so I feel sure he can cope with California weather.  Dole and Fresh Express recalled tons of romaine after listeria was detected at three plants, but they did not mention amphibians.

I guess I don't give enough thought to Queen Elizabeth.  At 95 she's spending her first Christmas without her husband of 73 years; she can't have but a few relatives because of the bloody pandemic; and a man was arrested for trying to breach Windsor Castle with a crossbow.  Here's a woman who never wanted anything but a quiet life in the country with her horses and dogs, and then her Nazi-loving uncle got entangled with an American divorcee and her world turned inside out.  That devotion to Duty and to an archaic institution called The Crown is vanishing.  Cherish it while you've got it, Britons.

Claire Foy played the queen in the first seasons of The Crown and is now to be seen as the Duchess of Argyll in A Very British Scandal, a BBC series about her tabloid-transfixing 1963 divorce.  I believe this is the only case of a salacious story becoming an opera (Thomas Ades's 1995 Powder Her Face) before it reached the home screen.  Ades must be the first composer to set oral sex to music; I wonder how the Beeb will handle it.

Desmond Tutu is dead.  When he began demanding political equality for Black South Africans he had to explain that there was no intent to "destroy white people."  You have to say it over and over.