Lest We Furr-get: The DAR Has Always Sucked

 

By Baxter

In 1939, the Howard University School of Music asked the Daughters of the American Revolution to reserve DAR Constitution Hall for a benefit concert starring the renowned contralto Marian Anderson. As you may know, the all-white, all-idiot DAR refused, because Anderson was Black.

They banned Paul Robeson in 1930 for the same reason. However, in 1930 Eleanor Roosevelt was not First Lady.

ER furiously resigned from the DAR, booked Anderson for a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and the rest is the kind of history that the Trumpsters are now trying to erase.

So we cats were intrigued to see this photo in an exhibit of Richard Avedon's portraits at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. It's titled The Generals of the Daughters of the American Revolution, DAR Convention, Mayflower Hotel, Washington, DC, October 15, 1963. We need the back story. How did this photo happen?

Look at the expressions on the faces of the white Daughters: fury, annoyance, rejection, resignation. Everyone looking everywhere except at the one Black general in their midst. It's an amazing shot.

Fun fact: This photo was framed and mounted opposite Avedon's enormous (and famous) portrait of Anderson herself. MMFA's exhibit curator really knew what she was doing. We cats PURR.

Lest We Furr-get: Pearl Harbor Day Plus One

 

By Zamboni

Neat! Here is a colorized version of Franklin Roosevelt's speech to Congress on December 8, 1941. Some notes as you watch:

Believe it or not, December 8 (Japan) and December 11 (Nazi Germany) were the last times the US Congress formally declared war. Since then, Presidents have gotten us "involved" in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and a zillion other places. It would be nice if the legislative branch got its mojo back someday, wouldn't it?

The correct FDR quote is "a date which will live in infamy." (Not "day." Lots of people — and, by the way, Google AI — get this wrong.)

Thanks to his polio, Roosevelt was wheelchair-bound, but he seems to be standing at the lectern. It's kind of interesting to note, because now we all know how he pulled that stuff off.

Finally, just look at all the men here. Not a woman to be seen. We've still got a long way to go — only 30 percent of today's Congress are female. But it sure beats nine women in the House and one in the Senate 84 years ago. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

Everything Old Is New Again

By Hubie and Bertie

When we cats were kittens in 1969, CBS canceled The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Yep, if you don't remember it, it really happened!

The situation was a little different — no one at the FCC threatened the network, that we know of — so it was more corporate- than state-sponsored censorship. CBS was unhappy that Tom and Dick Smothers — who supported the civil rights movement and opposed the Vietnam War, and had a habit of saying so — refused to submit their shows ahead of time for review. It was a sure road to an impasse. "Don't tell comedians not to say a certain word," Dick Smothers said. "For sure they'll do it."

CBS took the brothers off the air and replaced them with Hee Haw. Sometimes you really can't make these things up.

But here's something we didn't know: After Lyndon Johnson dropped out of the 1968 Presidential race, the Smothers Brothers wrote to him, basically saying, "Hey, sorry about all the jokes." Johnson wrote back (see above). That really happened, too. What a different world. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

Lest We Furr-get: Nixon Resignation Day

By Baxter

Happy Richard Nixon resignation day! We realize that after 50-plus years, lots of people nowadays don't personally remember the cascading events of Watergate. But what a saga it was! We were watching the destruction of a truly corrupt Republican President — knowing all the while that the guardrails of a solidly secure constitutional democracy would hold firm. (That's the difference between then and now.)

It was mesmerizing to watch Nixon's speech in the East Room that morning. It was true stream-of-consciousness, from "the poorest lemon ranch in Southern California" to his warning that "those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself."

All of us who despised Nixon marveled at his comment about hate. It revealed, we thought, some self-awareness that the GOP, and the media, maybe should acknowledge. But in the decades since, we realize that Republicans have never come clean on this. In fact, they hate more than ever, and the press has given them a pass. We cats HISS.

Lest We Furr-get: The Federal Bureau Of Idiocy

By Miss Kubelik

William Webster's obit and his 101 years on the planet are handy reminders that seeing the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a state of general fuck-upped-ness is nothing new.

When Director Webster took over in 1978, the FBI was still trying to recover from the half-century of endless abuses committed by that closeted freak, J. Edgar Hoover. Then came Iran-Contra (thanks, Ronald Reagan), followed quickly by the government's complete miss on the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Not to mention all those spies who had been sharing secrets with Moscow. What a mess.

This isn't to say, of course, that the FBI under the cretinous Kash Patel is any better (or the CIA under John Ratcliffe, for that matter). In fact, with only seven months gone in Benedict Donald 2.0, we may learn of even worse scurrility in the years to come. Still, it's helpful to be able to place the Trumpsters in some historical context. Things at the bureau are terrible now, but they've certainly been terrible there before.

One note of caution, though: There were guardrails in place 40-plus years ago that are either gone or very shaky today. We have a supine Congress and a mostly compliant press, so maybe Patel will get away with stuff that William Webster wouldn't have tolerated for a moment — like, say, helping to bury L'Affaire Epstein. We cats HISS.

"The Moon, The Stars, And All The Planets"

At the White House, the long black car turned off Pennsylvania, through the northwest gate, and swept up the drive, stopping under the North Portico. The time was 5:25.

Two ushers were waiting at the door. They took his hat and escorted him to a small, oak-paneled elevator, more like an ornate cage, that had been installed in the Theodore Roosevelt era and that ascended now very slowly to the second floor.

In the private quarters, across the center hall, in her sitting room, Mrs. Roosevelt was waiting. With her were Steve Early and her daughter and son-in-law, Anna and John Boetigger. Mrs. Roosevelt stepped forward and gently put her arm on Truman's shoulder.

"Harry, the President is dead."

Truman was unable to speak.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" he said at last.

"Is there anything we can do for you," she said. "For you are the one in trouble now."

–David McCullough, Truman

Lest We Furr-get: Even More True Now

Lest We Furr-get: Hauled Off To The Hoosegow

By Zamboni

Steve Bannon was released from federal prison this week. What a pity. It was such a comfort to know that he was behind bars and not out in the world, stirring up MAGA mischief. (Actually, it's more than mischief. It's sedition.) But from what we could tell, it didn't look like he'd skipped many meals in the prison cafeteria.

Bannon may be out, but there are plenty of other people whose current, well-deserved imprisonments are something to celebrate. Like:

Ghislaine Maxwell — Sentenced to 20 years in June 2022, Jeffrey Epstein's fellow sex trafficker is languishing in the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Florida. Does she have any comment on the recently revealed tapes of Epstein, in which he spouts off about Trump? (In case you're wondering, everything Epstein says on the tapes sounds completely believable.)

Tina Peters — The former Colorado County Clerk was sentenced to nine years early last month for (OMG!) Trump-inspired election fraud. She was taken away to the Mesa County Detention Center, but not before she was forced to listen to the judge slam her for her crimes. "You are no hero," Judge Matthew Barrett said. "You abused your position, and you’re a charlatan."

Enrique Tarrio — The repugnant Proud Boy leader got 22 years for seditious conspiracy and terrorism back in 2023, and now is in residence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Manchester, Kentucky. His weeping and mewling did not move the judge, who turned away Tarrio's pleas for mercy and gave him one of the longest January 6-related sentences yet. (Funny, why has Benedict Donald suddenly started wearing MAGA caps with the Proud Boys' colors — black and gold? Perhaps some enterprising journalist could dig into this.)

Stewart Rhodes — Until Tarrio, the eyepatch-wearing Oath Keeper pooh-bah received that longest January 6 sentence (18 years). Is he the only Yale Law School grad locked up at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland?

Not only is justice being served, that's four fewer votes for Trump. Will Benedict Donald be next? Only if you vote to send him there — either early this weekend or on Tuesday. We cats PURR.

Lest We Furr-get: A Note About The Debate(s)

By Zamboni

We cats will be traveling, so it may be difficult for us to watch and immediately comment on tomorrow's Presidential debate that, so far, still seems to be happening. However, for those cable news pundits and blatherers who are busy telling President Biden what he "has" to do, we have this advice: Why not give institutional memory a try? You might learn a few things. 

Like the fact that one of the advantages of Joe Biden's age is that he's been around so long that there's very little he hasn't seen or doesn't know. And when it comes to debating, he's deftly handled two of the most difficult encounters in modern political history — against Sarah Palin in 2008, and against Benedict Donald in 2020.

The Vice Presidential debate in 2008 was beyond tricky, because although everyone knew by then that Palin was a dolt, then-Senator Biden still had to show her respect — which he did. In polls afterward, viewers said they thought Biden won the debate, 51 to 36 percent. Palin's weird winking at the camera may have had some influence on those numbers. Ah, memories.

Twelve years later, Biden was up against the ever-erratic Benedict Donald, who had been knocked askew by months of his COVID-19 mismanagement and Black Lives Matter. So he wasn't on top of his game, such as it was. But he was still an unpredictable chaos agent — and the incumbent President. So again, a tricky situation. Unlike Trump's 2016 Republican rivals, who had been completely flummoxed by how to handle him, Biden struck the perfect balance between respecting the Presidency and telling his constantly interrupting opponent to shut up. In polls afterward, majorities of viewers handed him the wins.

Please note, by the way, that we're not counting Biden's delicious smackdown of Paul Ryan in 2012. The callow Ryan was too big of a soft and squishy target for Joe to fail. But it's worth remembering that that debate came on the heels of a terrible performance by President Obama against Willard Mitt Romney. Pundits claim that incumbents rarely do well in first debates because Presidenting is a full-time job — there's no time to strategize and prepare. Maybe. But in 2012, it was an incumbent Vice President who rode to his boss's rescue. And now that same guy has been at Camp David, being the leader of the Free World, and prepping, for days. He knows what to do. We cats wish him well, and we PURR.

Lest We Furr-get: Merle Must Be Spinning

By Miss Kubelik

Is it better that right-wing country singer Merle Haggard died before Benedict Donald stole the 2016 election? Haggard used to make liberals crazy back in the day, and he no doubt would have been insufferable when Trump was in charge. Then again, maybe not. What would Merle say if he were still around?

Because Donald Trump has been spending an awful lot of time trashing the United States. We're "a nation in decline!" "A failing nation!" "A third-world country!" Everything sucks, because Biden and the Democrats are leading the nation into "servitude and ruin." Hm.

None of it is true, of course, and not just because everything Trump says is a lie. Joe Biden has been a good and successful President. We've recovered from COVID, our economy is the envy of the world, and our allies are united behind us once again. But even though Trump fibs like he breathes, Merle Haggard would be very mad. Remember this song?

Hear people talkin' bad about the way we have to live here in this country
Harpin' on the wars we fight, an' gripin' 'bout the way things oughta be
An' I don't mind 'em switchin' sides, an' standin' up for things they believe in
When they're runnin' down my country, man
They're walkin' on the fightin' side of me

Yeah, walkin' on the fightin' side of me
Runnin' down a way of life our fightin' men have fought and died to keep
If you don't love it, leave it
Let this song I'm singin' be a warnin'
When you're runnin' down my country, man
You're walkin' on the fightin' side of me.

 

Congratulations, Benedict Donald and the Republicans who support him! You've just landed on super-patriot Merle Haggard's fightin' side. Even with nine lives, we never thought we'd see it. We cats HISS.

Lest We Furr-get: When The Disenchantment Began

Liz Cheney had some admiring words for Joseph Lieberman today, which she posted with a photo from the 2000 Vice Presidential debate. It made us gag. There were many reasons to be annoyed and even disgusted with Lieberman in the years that followed, but that debate was the first thing we thought of when we heard he'd died. To say that his performance was inadequate is being very kind. We cats HISS.

Lest We Furr-get: Tidying Up

Ronna Romney is scrubbing her old tweets. Here's one of them. If we see more, we'll post them. In the meantime, we cats HISS.

Lest We Furr-get: Kim Davis Owes Some Money

By Miss Kubelik

Remember this good-lookin' li'l gal from Kaintuck? Yep, it's been eight years, but former Rowan County clerk Kim Davis finally has to pay up.

A federal jury has decreed that Davis, who denied a marriage license to a gay couple in spite of the SCOTUS decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, now has to write them a $100,000 check. "The case is about a government official that just refused to do her job," said the couple's lawyer. "It's a pretty simple case."

This is on top of Davis having lost her bid for re-election to her county clerk position back in 2018. Voters booted her out for violating people's constitutional rights. Now she's getting hit in the wallet.

MAGAts and other haters have probably already started a GoFundMe for her, but we don't care. It's deeply satisfying to see Davis become the latest poster girl for FAFO. We cats PURR.

Lest We Furr-get: 1619 And 1776

By Zamboni

We cats are plowing our way slowly through The 1619 Project — partly because it's nearly 600 pages, and mostly because wow, it really makes you stop and think.

That is, if you're white, of a certain age, and learned mostly American pablum, not history, in school. It kinda blows you away if — whenever you deign to think about it (which probably isn't often) — you unthinkingly accept the "freedom and liberty for all" themes that resonate every Fourth of July.

Instead, The 1619 Project re-centers everything for you. The founding of our nation was about enslavement just as much as throwing tea in Boston Harbor, and never mind about the later genocide against Indigenous North Americans. That's a lot of blood to have on your paws, but it's best that, instead of demonizing accurate history as the Republicans do, we all grow up and reconsider what we believe.

One of The 1619 Project's key takeaways is that Britain's pledge to free any enslaved Americans who fought on their side helped drive Southerners to support the Revolution. As writer and editor Nikole Hannah-Jones observes, "So much of the response was people saying, 'It can’t possibly be true,' or 'I certainly would have heard this before'...'I’ve never heard of this, so it must be a lie.'"

How about this instead: "I've never heard of this because my history classes were white-centered, so it must be true"?

Heck, even the musical 1776, written 54 years ago, recognized that Southern members of the Continental Congress threatened to defeat the Declaration of Independence unless "the peculiar institution" went unmentioned. Sounds like the truths Hannah-Jones and her team of historians and writers have unearthed could add another song or two to the show. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.

Lest We Furr-get: You'll Be Swell / You'll Be Great

By Zamboni

Historian Michael Beschloss is one of our favorite follows on Twitter. He usually ties his posts to either historical anniversaries or popular entertainment — "Sunset Boulevard," for example, is one of his favorites. (It's apparently also one of Benedict Donald's.) After all, as we all know, it's the pictures that got small.

And speaking of pictures, here is a photo that Beschloss tweeted on the occasion of the second Biden-Harris inaugural anniversary on January 20. This is a rehearsal of the star-studded pre-inaugural gala that was held on January 19, 1961 to celebrate John F. Kennedy's swearing-in. Produced by Frank Sinatra and JFK's brother-in-law, Peter Lawford, the show featured legendary entertainers like Nat King Cole, Gene Kelly and Ella Fitzgerald. Those were the days, kids.

(This was also before Sinatra became a Republican and BFFs with Ronny and Nancy, don'tcha know. Rumor has it that Blue Eyes was furious that JFK holidayed with Bing Crosby after getting cold feet over Sinatra's alleged mob connections. You could look it up.)

Anyway, Beschloss unintentionally gave us a good laugh with his Twitter thread on the gala. How many celebrities can you identify? he asked. We cats thought we'd have this down as a slam dunk. There's Nat King Cole at the mic, Joey Bishop second from left, and Harry Belafonte looking gorgeous in the middle. (And Kelly, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis on the right.) But who is that next to Belafonte, in the sunglasses?

The Twitterverse agreed — it was Bob Dylan. But nope, guess again. It's ETHEL MERMAN!

Who's going to tell our Nobel Prize winner for literature that people confused him with Ethel? We'll pass, thanks. But we cats PURR.

Lest We Furr-get: Freedom Summers

By Hubie and Bertie

Today, the January 6 Committee heard testimony about Benedict Donald's relentless campaign to get swing state officials and legislators to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

A couple of the witnesses were familiar, like Brad Raffensberger and Gabriel Sterling from Georgia. A new face was Rusty Bowers, the speaker of Arizona's house of representatives, who talked movingly about his devotion to the Constitution. (No, we don't think the Constitution was divinely inspired, but that's okay. Let him say it.)

The afternoon wrapped with testimony from a Georgia elections official who described how Trump upended her and her mother's lives by singling them out with his lies. Trump's abuse not only ran Shaye Moss out of her job and forced her mom, Ruby Freeman, into hiding — it drove every one of the Fulton County election staffers Moss worked with to seek other employment in fear and disgust.

So in other words, make it difficult for people to vote, scream fraud when they do, and depress election workers' willingness to make the nuts and bolts of democracy work. That's the full gamut of an autocratic voter suppression campaign. And even though Trump didn't succeed in holding on to power, his brand of suppression is continuing in red and swing states in full force.

How ironic that today is the 58th anniversary of the day Freedom Riders James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered in Mississippi. The Trumpsters and the MAGA mob may not have shot, castrated and bulldozed the 2020 election workers they harassed into shallow graves. But the rage of today's GOP against Americans' right to register, vote, and have their votes count is just as brutal in spirit, and inspires the same kind of terror. We cats HISS.

Lest We Furr-get: "With You, All Roads Lead To Putin"

By Miss Kubelik

Gee, Nancy Pelosi looked so happy last night, to not have the Orange Monster standing in front of her delivering an imbecilic SOTU. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene's and Lauren Boebert's bad behavior couldn't wipe the smile from her face — and there was no reason for her to rip up her copy of the speech afterward. Best of all: She had another smart, strong woman sitting next to her for the first time in American history.

With all the Republicans in the House chamber sporting Ukrainian colors, we couldn't help thinking about their cowed loyalty to Benedict Donald. Things have only gotten worse since they handed out little Russian flags with "Trump" on them at 2017's CPAC.

All their enthusiasm last night for the plucky Ukrainians, though, might not be able to mask anxiety the GOP could be feeling about their Russian ties. Since DOJ has launched a new task force to enforce the West's sanctions — and to particularly focus on the egregious oligarchs who do Vlad the Invader's bidding — betcha they'll uncover lots of money trails to Republican coffers. In fact, some have already been found.

So Nancy was smiling for a lot of reasons. Remember, she's the one who stood up in the Cabinet room in October 2019 and questioned Trump's loyalty to the United States to his fat orange face. She took a lot of heat from the GOP for that, but it's helpful to remember that she did it because Trump had pulled American troops out of northern Syria, giving Putin free rein there. (Easy to forget, since it happened pre-pandemic, a hundred lifetimes ago.) Now, she knows that Vlad's miscalculations will ensnare Benedict Donald, too. We cats PURR.

Lest We Furr-get: Seeing Red

By Baxter

Things in Canada seem to be under control for now, so let's return at last to the United States — where an unsuspecting time traveler beaming in from the mid-to-late 20th century would be astonished at what the Republican Party is saying and doing.

Vladimir Putin has stormed into Ukraine, President Biden and a solid NATO are cranking up economic sanctions, and the GOP in its Trumpy state has decided that Vlad is the bee's knees. Goodness gracious, do they all have to be lackeys? Why? Does Putin have pee tapes on everybody? Mike Pompeo and Benedict Donald have taken the lead on this — Putin, they say, is "savvy" and a "genius" — but don't hold your breath waiting for Republicans to condemn them for it.

How things change. The number of now-dead Republicans who proudly waved anti-Communist banners in decades past must be spinning in their graves so fast that it's amazing the Earth hasn't veered off its axis and is hurtling into the sun. 

Just think of the GOP luminaries who, if they weren't pushing up daisies, would be shocked and appalled: Bob Taft, Barry Goldwater (!), Richard Nixon (!!), Ronald Reagan (!!!), Bob Dole, Jesse Helms, John Tower, George H.W. Bush, Jim Baker, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Lugar and John McCain, to name a few.

Most of all, what would the Red-baiter supreme, Joseph R. McCarthy, have to say about all this? He's been silent for 65 years — but if our grave-spinning theory is correct, the citizens of Appleton, Wisconsin, must be feeling the Earth move. We cats HISS.

Lest We Furr-get: People Trump Doesn't Want You To Remember

By Baxter

In the wake of yesterday's hostage-taking at the synagogue in Texas and the all-out white supremacist bullshit that Benedict Donald spewed at last night's Arizona Trump "show," we cats think it's time to put on the brakes and say, whoa.

This really needs to stop. Thankfully, the FBI team (flying in from Quantico — thanks, President Biden) was able to free the Texas hostages. Trump, meanwhile, continues to walk free and spew misinformation and hate.

"If you’re white you don’t get the vaccine or if you’re white you don’t get therapeutics. In New York state, if you’re white, you have to go to the back of the line to get medical health," he said in Florence, Arizona. Complete crap from beginning to end (and we're in New York, so we know). But at least he's open about his racism, right?

Why not be, when some of his insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6 wore "Camp Auschwitz" T-shirts and toted Confederate flags? Why not be, when he jumped to defend the 2017 Charlottesville demonstrators who chanted, "Jews will not replace us"?

The best defense against such outrages, aside from calling Trump and his bigots out, is education. We cats follow the Auschwitz Museum on Twitter, and they give us daily reminders of what can happen when people succumb to indifference. Here's today's. We share it in the hope that more people will follow them, pay respect to the victims, and do everything possible to make sure that it will never happen again.

"January 6, 1938: Dutch Jewish boy Salomon Harschel was born in The Hague. In October 1942 he was deported to Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber after selection. His mother, Engeltje Harschel-Barendse, was with him." Take a moment to remember them. We cats have.

Lest We Furr-get: Plagues

By Miss Kubelik

It's easy to overlook when COVID is rearing its head again and so many important headlines are screaming at us, but today is World AIDS Day. Ah, yes, AIDS... our trial run at having a (Republican) administration that didn't care whether Americans lived or died.

(Coincidentally, it's estimated that since 1981, about 700,000 of our fellow citizens have died from HIV-related illnesses — and in less than two years, COVID has already surpassed that. Ye gods!)

But wait, there's more. Mark Meadows — that Mark Meadows, who is now allegedly cooperating with the January 6 committee — says that Benedict Donald tested positive for the coronavirus before he debated Joe Biden for the first time last fall. And he met with Gold Star families and didn't wear a mask! Are we surprised? Donald Trump is the biggest garbage person to have ever lived. But 46 had the perfect response to all this today. Nicely done, Joe.

Finally, the Supreme Court heard arguments about Mississippi's challenge to reproductive rights today. It was about as depressing as you'd expect. The one bright side (and one must always look on the bright side of life) is that any Republican who's banking on winning the midterms next year will not want SCOTUS to gut Roe v. Wade. But those election results from Virginia last month probably mean that punishing the GOP for ending abortion rights in 2022 will rest on whether white women in America value their reproductive freedom more than they hate Black people. We cats HISS.