"Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!"
The famous words uttered by President Theodore Roosevelt and read aloud at the 1904 Republican national convention, when the American citizen Ion Perdicaris was kidnapped by a gang of evil bearded, gun-toting Berber tribesman in Morocco, headed by Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli.
Leave it to the Greeks.
Roosevelt had seven battleships from the Atlantic fleet dispatched to the Moroccan coast, to make good his "big stick waving" policy.
Except the Greek consulate quietly let Roosevelt know that Ion Perdicaris was a Greek citizen, not an American from Trenton (although he had family there), and Roosevelt probably realized he couldn't actually send Marines into Africa anyway, and so the matter was handled "diplomatically," which is to say, the American people would not know that the kidnapper Raisuli's demands were met, $70,000 was paid for Perdicaris' release, and Roosevelt got re-nominated for a second term which he won easily in November.
In 1975 the film, "The Wind and the Lion" was made with Sean Connery as Raisuli and the role of Ion Perdicaris rewritten as "Eden" Perdicaris and played by Candace Bergen.
"As historians we've got to tell the truth about the past as far as we know it, but that's quite a different thing from searching into the truth of people's lives here and now. All this prying and poking about into what other people prefer to keep hidden seems to me a very presumptuous and dangerous fashion." The character Sir Edgar Iffeley in Angus Wilson's "Anglo-Saxon Attitudes."
I will not be posting tomorrow, so I thought these words worth pondering today, because sometimes I wonder whether we haven't reversed the fashion and are far more interested in private lives than the truth of history. Not that I'm against the poking and prying, mind you, as long as we don't let those writing the past off the hook. Because it's so hard undoing historical lies; then if you manage to, it's so often too late -- the one waving that big stick around has already been re-elected.
As for the movie version? Well, it bears little or no resemblance.
Just a thought.
In the meantime, yesterday Eduardo Santiago and Mark and I went to a reading of Howard Junker's writers from Zyzzyva Magazine at Skylight Books on Vermont to hear a number of wonderful writers, and then we went to the Greek Festival over at the Cathedral of St. Sophia on Normandy between Pico and Venice, sponsored by Mrs. Tom Hanks and the Greek community, and if you've never gone run don't walk (as William Como used to say in his After Dark movie reviews) to next year's! The food was great, the dancing and people watching and general atmosphere extremely entertaining. I'm told the new expression to replace "awesome" is "very reasonable" -- said like you're a very stoned surfer. So the event was definitely [eyes half-closed now] very reasonable.
And the Cathedral is worth a visit any time -- the most divine mosaics. And the crystal chandeliers? Heaven!
Leave it to the Greeks.Roosevelt had seven battleships from the Atlantic fleet dispatched to the Moroccan coast, to make good his "big stick waving" policy.
Except the Greek consulate quietly let Roosevelt know that Ion Perdicaris was a Greek citizen, not an American from Trenton (although he had family there), and Roosevelt probably realized he couldn't actually send Marines into Africa anyway, and so the matter was handled "diplomatically," which is to say, the American people would not know that the kidnapper Raisuli's demands were met, $70,000 was paid for Perdicaris' release, and Roosevelt got re-nominated for a second term which he won easily in November.
In 1975 the film, "The Wind and the Lion" was made with Sean Connery as Raisuli and the role of Ion Perdicaris rewritten as "Eden" Perdicaris and played by Candace Bergen.
"As historians we've got to tell the truth about the past as far as we know it, but that's quite a different thing from searching into the truth of people's lives here and now. All this prying and poking about into what other people prefer to keep hidden seems to me a very presumptuous and dangerous fashion." The character Sir Edgar Iffeley in Angus Wilson's "Anglo-Saxon Attitudes."
I will not be posting tomorrow, so I thought these words worth pondering today, because sometimes I wonder whether we haven't reversed the fashion and are far more interested in private lives than the truth of history. Not that I'm against the poking and prying, mind you, as long as we don't let those writing the past off the hook. Because it's so hard undoing historical lies; then if you manage to, it's so often too late -- the one waving that big stick around has already been re-elected.
As for the movie version? Well, it bears little or no resemblance.
Just a thought.
In the meantime, yesterday Eduardo Santiago and Mark and I went to a reading of Howard Junker's writers from Zyzzyva Magazine at Skylight Books on Vermont to hear a number of wonderful writers, and then we went to the Greek Festival over at the Cathedral of St. Sophia on Normandy between Pico and Venice, sponsored by Mrs. Tom Hanks and the Greek community, and if you've never gone run don't walk (as William Como used to say in his After Dark movie reviews) to next year's! The food was great, the dancing and people watching and general atmosphere extremely entertaining. I'm told the new expression to replace "awesome" is "very reasonable" -- said like you're a very stoned surfer. So the event was definitely [eyes half-closed now] very reasonable.
And the Cathedral is worth a visit any time -- the most divine mosaics. And the crystal chandeliers? Heaven!
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