Today W/O Fascists

2 May in History.

1957 - Senator and would-be fuhrer Joseph McCarthy dies.

1972 - Director of the KGB --- oops --- FBI John Edgar Hoover dies.

Ain't that a pair of bookends.

Let's reprise yesterday's Carlos Fuentes Macia quote: "It's Moby-Dick. The genius of Melville is that he saw that this is a country which needs a monster."

Commie-ism was the monster-under-the-bed-that-wasn't-there that these two and their ilk (ain't that a grand word for their ilk) bamboozled a nation with. (And yes, never end a sentence with a yada yada, but today is Colourful Word, Sin-tax, and Venting Day; youse could look it up.) Not that this shinola is peculiar to USE; same old same old whenever folks want to fake the little people.

"If you come to a fork in the road, take it." (Y. Berra)

Perfect segue for following, the great Yogi.

Jean-Francois Revel died last Saturday. He was one of the 40 "Immortals," the members of the Academie Francais, who guard the French language. How they let him in ... that's enough to cause your auteur to call them "Belgian Fries," which is in fact where they come from, and they slather them with mayonaisse, not catsup. [The word "Ketchup" is banned on this site, unless used in an ironical sense.]

It's never too late to settle scores. Your author, the Executive Directoire of the Museum of the Bourgeois, has had it in for "Revel" for 36 years now, ever since "Revel" published his dumb dumb book, Without Marx or Jesus in 1970. The obit in the NYT called him a "French philosopher." Back in the old days, "Revel" billed himself as the hottest journalist on the block, not a philosophe. "Revel" (his real name was Ricard) opposed American imperialism in Indochina, but liked it elsewhere. That was his idea of "progressive."

Well, boy howdy, howdy boy.

Sort of a grab-bag today.

Tomorrow: MoB goes wild --- it's the birthday (1919) of PETE SEEGER.