Throwing the Book at Abu Qatada

#40

An ancient and well-thumbed copy of The Old Pretender’s Book of Travesties was handed to the Antiquarian Section of our Lost Property Department earlier in the week. By chance, it fell open at Peculiars VI, Chapter 6, verse 6:

“ 6  And it came to pass that Abu Qatada al-Filistini, being greatly vexed in his own land, did fold away his tent in the  night and journey by stealth into the land of the Angles and the Saxons.  There he did spew forth many intemperate harangues, which he did pass off as sermons, and great was the paranoia thereof. And it became known amongst the people of that land that he did big-up Osama Bin Laden and his brethren in the tribe of al-Qaeda, and the people were most assuredly not amused.

“ 7  And the scribes and scribblers of the Angles and of the Saxons were moved to denounce The Abu from their housetops and from their Redtops. And there began a mighty cacophony of voices crying, ‘Woe and thrice woe, for this Abu that has come amongst us is a foreigner who speaketh only foreign and weareth a  mighty foreign beard and, were that not bad enough, he is plainly also an ill-mannered sod to boot.’ And so it was that they did very soon bang him up in Belmarsh, according to their custom, and make as if they had thrown away the key.

“ 8  But then the friends of The Abu arose, saying, ‘Yeah, you is well out of order, bro, and we is taking you to court so that we can habeas his corpus, in’it?’ And then did the leaders of the Tory-ites and the Labourites gird up their loins and speak unto the people saying, “This Abu, as thou well knowest, is a right pain in all our buttocks and any day now he will feel the force of our righteous size elevens upon his hind-quarters and be expelled forthwith unto the land of his forefathers which is in the Kingdom of Jordan.”

“ 9  But lo, an appeal was carried many leagues thence by an handmaiden of The Abu to the mighty Court of Human Rights which dwelleth beyond the Land of Nod, in the Land of Euro. And the Eurocrats did demand that the Tory-ites do stay their heads, hands and feet for fear that The Abu might be delivered unto sundry wicked sons of bitches who would surely render his garments and water his board and apply their rods even unto his tender parts.

“ 10  And when this became known among the Angles and Saxons there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. For it was revealed also unto them that The Abu would receive great treasure of income support and housing benefit and be permitted a daily stroll even unto Pound Land, which is up the other end of the High Street.

“ 11  And Lo, signs and portents were made manifest in The Sky and Darkness fell across the face of The Sun and even the dreaded Murdoch became but a humble shadow.

“ 12 And in those days there arose from amongst the Saxon host, one that was called Paul of Acre. And Paul was accompanied by a rushing wind of obscenities whenever he did pass about the City and the very ground did tremble beneath the wheels of his Roller. For he was  begat by Rothermere out of Northcliffe and did love to smite his breast mightily as he spake and to chastise the peoples of Euroland for being foreign and possibly French and sundry similar offences.

“ 13  And it came to pass that Paul of Acre did summon unto his presence  Young Cameron, leader of the Posh Boys; being the one that is called The Dave. And Paul did speak unto The Dave saying, “It is an abomination in the sight of the people that The Euros is leaving us stuck with this undesirable foreign weirdo who hath broken all the Laws of Cricket. We know in our hearts that he should have been given ‘OUT’, leg-before if not caught-behind, and quite possibly off-side as well.’

“ 14  But The Dave was an oily man, and great was his smoothness. And he did soothe Paul of Acre by saying unto him, ‘Give us this day our daily mail, even unto the seventh day. And know that I am on The Abu’s case both day and night. The twigs and twiglets of My Special Branch is all over him like a rash and we will soon have his sorry ass  bang-to-rights and show him the Red Card for handling the ball even in his own penalty area, no less.’

“ 15  But there were in that land others abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks. One of their number was called The Guardian of the Sheep, and another was The Independent of the Goats. And they were sorely troubled and went amongst the people, saying, ‘The land of the Angles is a country of laws not of press Barons. The Eurocrats is right to have protected The Abu, despite our knowing that if he had his wicked way none of his or our Human Righteousness would stand a snowball’s.  

“ 16  Now therefore, let us give thanks that we dwell under the Convention of The Euro lands. For, verily, the right to be protected from torture is one that prevaileth at all times, irrespective of the victim’s conduct. Deprivation of rights is not a legitimate punishment for whomsoever doth trespass.’

“ 17  And the shepherds  and goatherds passed amongst their brethren, saying, ‘Get ye a grip, for all our sakes, thou bunch of silly-billies. We may not like it, but preaching offensive sermons doth not remove from The Abu all vestiges of human rights. For why else do we have courts?’

“ 18  And when news of  this reached Paul of Acre he was filled with wrath and he saith  unto The Dave in his  private Chamber, ‘Yo, Rude Boy, we is being run by the distant Euros and their namby-pamby left-handed friends. It is a right stitch-up, I is telling you, which we are minded to abide no longer, in’it?’

“ 19  But lo, before The Dave could answer him, the door to the room did then burst open and in did come The Clegg, Prince among the Liberalites. Behind him lumbered Kenneth The Clerke but the girth of The Ken was too portly owing to great feasting on cakes and ale and he could not pass through the door.

“ 20 And The Ken did utter a mighty blast on his trumpet and another on his saxophone and he spake unto The Dave from outside, saying, ‘Cool it, Daddio, now that I have your complete and undivided, pray tell why it is that you is not listening to me and The Clegg concerning the Righteousness of the Euros? For am I not thine own overseer of All Justice and stuff?’

“ 21  And then did The Dave smile his biggest smile and answered him, saying unto all that were gathered there, ‘Fear not, My Dear Old Things, for even as we do speak the Blessed Theresa in her Winged Chariot is descending upon the Kingdom of Jordan to knock their towelled heads together and make plain unto them the error of their ways.’

“ 22  And hereafter shall only peace and justice fall upon our heads as the gentle rain falleth from Heaven; thanks be to Dawkins.’

“ 23  And in this manner and with sundry sleights, alarums, diversions and Olympian spectacles, The Dave did distract the hard-working families of the Angles and Saxons. And the readership of Acre fell once more into their complacent stupor, leaving only the aged Murdoch to lead as many as would follow him in a merry dance even unto the death.”

“ 24  And when all these things had come to pass, at the very last did Kenneth the Clerke clutch his head in despair, and go running about the sleeping City in his night-shirt, crying, ‘God help us all.’

Amen

A Boy Named Newt… A Boy Named Mitt…

#39

 “There is no one way of becoming President of the United States…Over almost two centuries of national life…only the paradoxes of Presidential politics have remained permanent: the paradoxes of the open forum and the closed room, of conspiracy and inevitability, of cynicism and nobility.”[1]

   So began Theodore H. White’s Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the 1960 U.S. presidential election, the first contest to spark my interest in politics. Starting in the autumn of 1959, White charted all the primaries, then the party conventions and eventually the general election campaign which would lead to the inauguration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy one cold Washington day in January, 1961. The presidential primaries come around on a four year cycle. They always take me back to the beginning of the Kennedy years, to my time of absolute political innocence – before the encroachment of knowledge and experience made the world turn sour. “Innocence”, of a sort, persists in the primary elections, except that now it takes the form of a calculated appeal to the politically naive. The simple, democratic, directness of the process induces candidates to address the voters with stunningly vacuous sound-bites. They promise their better tomorrows without any troublesome specifics concerning how they imagine getting there. They are candidates, after all, running not for office but only for the right to run for office. The primaries are not the real campaign; the goodies the candidates offer at this stage are sentiments, not real political programmes. No one whispers the essential truths of politics: that scheming in the ‘closed room’ manipulates the ‘open forum’ and that – eventually - ‘cynicism’ trumps ‘nobility’ every time.

    Taking down White’s book again after more than forty years – I bought my copy as a student in 1965 – two other aspects of the primaries continue unchanged. The first is the geographical sequence (for the Republicans this goes Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Nevada…). The second is the dynastic pretensions that drive many Americans to inflict peculiar names upon their children. In November 1960, ‘Jack’ Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) ran against Richard Milhous Nixon[2] and Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. Other, earlier, contenders for the Democratic nomination had been Hubert Horatio Humphrey and Adlai Ewing Stevenson II.

   The hopefuls contesting this year’s Republican primaries are a distinctly dubious bunch; Newton Leroy Gingrich, Willard Mitt Romney, Ron Ernest Paul and Richard John Santorum. Despite the enduring absurdity of many candidates’ names, there is – as yet - no nomenclatorial theory that would enable us to predict electoral success or failure in the USA.

   In 1776, fifty-six men put their signatures to the Declaration of Independence. The first was John Hancock of Massachusetts and his name thereby became immortalized as American slang for anyone’s signature. Almost all of the fifty-six signed familiar names of Biblical, Latin or Gaelic origin. Two of them – John Adams and Thomas Jefferson - went on to become US Presidents. The only two with genuinely unusual names were Robert Treat Paine and Button Gwinnett. ‘Treat’ and ‘Button’ had been the maiden-names of their respective mothers. Treat was briefly famous in the Continental Congress for his habit of objecting to almost every proposal while never putting forward any alternatives of his own. Button managed to get himself killed in a duel less than a year after signing the Declaration. Consequently, examples of his signature are extremely rare and are thus of extraordinary value amongst collectors of such things.

   The mother’s maiden surname has remained the most frequent source of an American politician’s middle name. FDR, JFK and LBJ received 'Delano', 'Fitzgerald' and 'Baines' from their respective mothers and Nixon got ‘Milhous’ from his. The only other vaguely “interesting fact” about Nixon’s childhood is probably what he told Dwight D. Eisenhower; “We were poor, but the glory of it was, we didn’t know it.”

   The mother’s maiden-name does not invariably explain the middle name. Eisenhower’s ‘D’ was for ‘David’, his father’s first name. Confusingly, in that family, the boys were all called ‘Ike’ anyway, and then distinguished by the use of a prefix; hence ‘Big’ Ike, ‘Little’ Ike and ‘Ugly’ Ike. Eisenhower’s predecessor as President - Harry S. Truman - sported a middle initial that had no actual name attached to it at all. Harry’s ‘S’, it seems, was purely decorative. Many of George W. Bush’s foes suggested that his ‘W’ should be replaced by a ‘D’ – “Dubya” being the letter ‘W’ as spoken by Texans.  The truth is more prosaic; his ‘Walker’ had been handed down from his paternal grandmother. Dubya’s younger brother (and sometime Governor of Florida) is John Ellis Bush - known as “Jeb”.  It cannot be a coincidence that he shares Jeb with James Ewell Brown Stuart - Jeb Stuart - the most successful Confederate cavalry commander of the American Civil War[3].

   The claims, counter-claims and personal mud-slinging of Newt and Mitt and Ron and Rick give plenty of scope for conspiracy and cynicism. It’s the vector of nobility that seems largely missing this time around. Last year, dedicated conspiracy theorists must have near wet themselves when Donald Trump hovered, however briefly, over the field of potential candidates. Since then they have had to eke what little delight they could from the Herman Cain debacle, followed by the inevitable withdrawals of Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman. Rumour has it that Huntsman lost support amongst the Republican right-wing when his ability to speak Mandarin was publicised. More recently, Newt and Mitt have accused each other of being able to speak French. It comes to something when an ability to speak a language other than English (and Spanish) is regarded as potentially “un-American”. Whenever Tea Party activists gather in significant numbers whispers of closet-liberalism abound. Can it be their belief in ‘intelligent design’ that encourages them to see conspiracies in every shadow to establish European-style social democracy in the USA?

   Santorum prefers to be known as ‘Rick’ rather than the more formal Richard John. At school he acquired the nickname of ‘Rooster’ and his similarity to a crowing cockerel must shortly justify a revival of his student appellation. Romney was named ‘Mitt’ after his father’s cousin, the illustrious Milton Romney. Quite why they favoured ‘Mitt’ over the more poetic ‘Milton’ remains a mystery, but it does give him something in common with Gingrich who inexplicably favours the diminutive ‘Newt’ over the grandeur of either Newton or Leroy.  For a more complete explanation of the persistence of both ‘Newt’ and ‘Mitt’ I am persuaded to look no further than the lyrics of a song recorded by Johnny Cash. After years of separation, a father and son have been re-united by chance in a bar-room card-game. Recognition leads them to fight each other almost to the death…

            …He went for his gun and I pulled mine first,

               And he said “Son, this world is rough

               And if a man’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough

               And I knew I wouldn’t be there to help you along.

               So I gave you that name and I said goodbye,

               I knew you’d have to get tough or die,

              And it’s the name that helped to make you strong.

              He said, “Now you just fought one hell of a fight,

              And I know you hate me and you got the right

              To kill me now, and I wouldn’t blame you if you do.

              But you ought to thank me, before I die,

              For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye,

               ‘Cause I’m the son-of-a-bitch that named you Sue.

               What could I do? Yeah, what could I do?

               I got all choked-up and I threw down my gun,

              And I called him my pa, and he called me his son,

              And I came away with different point of view,

              And I think about him, now and then,

              Every time I try and every time I win,

              And if I ever have a son, I think I’m gonna name him

              Bill or George! – Anything but Sue![4]

     

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[1] The Making of the President 1960 Theodore H. White. (Jonathon Cape 1964).

[2] Nixon had previously been Vice-President under Dwight D. Eisenhower.

[3] Jeb is a popular name in American conservative families. See also Jeb Stuart Magruder, member of Nixon’s White House staff in its ‘glory days’.

[4] A Boy Named Sue. Lyrics by Shel Silverstein.