Month: December 2005

Don’t mention the war Part XIII (and yes, we are bigots, but don’t mention that either)

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Whenever the English (there are separate Sctottish and Welsh teams) soccer team is playing against the German team, the English fans like to sing:

There Were Ten German Bombers In The Air, There Were Ten German Bombers In The Air, There Were Ten German Bombers, Ten German Bombers, Ten German Bombers In The Air.

And The RAF From England Shot One Down. And The RAF From England Shot One Down. And The RAF From England, The RAF From England, The RAF From England Shot One Down.”

With each repetition the RAF shoots down another German bomber.

Thing is, next year the Soccer World Championship tournament will take place in Germany, and the English national coach Sven-Goran Eriksson doesn’t want the English fans to sing that song in Germany: ‘It is really important that we respect our German hosts.’

This attempt to avoid giving offence is quite worthy. Unfortunately the same spirit isn’t always prevailing here in Germany. A popular German childrens’ song with the same melody as ‘Ten German Bombers’ is called ‘‘Zehn kleine Negerlein (Ten Little Negroes), and in each stanza a ‘Little Negro’ dies is a different way – respectivily drowning, getting shot, gluttony, a spell from an evil witch, stuck in s swamp, drinking too much beer, gluttony again, sunstroke, excessive grief, and run over by a horse carriage.

The Swedish coach’s exaggerated sensitivity is quite amusing, but I think we should emulate him as far as our children’s songs are concerned. It is easy to imagine the outcry by the German media if it turned out that children in the American south were taught songs like this, for example.

George Bailey & Kelo

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While I was growing up, my parents often remarked on the role of a small town banker. His was a job that needed honesty & good judgment. In the depression, our local banker stuck it out, losing his own money. The piano lessons I took in their family parlor didn’t teach me much, but their tenacity did. In some areas, bankers were stingy about loaning money for irrigation – we were close to the Platte so wells didn’t need to be terribly deep (nor terribly expensive). Still, our village was relatively prosperous because those loans were forthcoming from later owners of that local bank. [In Texas] still later, in my copy shop, one of our best customers testified before the state board that new bank after bank would prosper. This was during the early eighties oil boom; he made his consulting money (and paid his printer). However, as the decade moved on, so did the landmen. Those banks, one by one, closed. Balance, good judgment, foresight – these aren’t all that easy.

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“…a caged lion…”

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Krauthammer, tells us that the trial of Saddam is a botch, and that he is being allowed to turn the trial into a trial of the new regime, instead of a trial of his own crimes

I derive no pleasure from saying I told you this would happen. Saddam devoted a lot of time and energy to studying the Hitler and Stalin dictatorships, and he consciously and openly modeled his regime on theirs. As a student of tyranny, Saddam knew that he was likely to end up in a situation like this one day. So, he has modeled his performance on Herman Goering’s performance at Nuremburg, as I predicted two years ago. He is a tough and ruthless man with nothing to lose. Iraqis have lived in mortal terror of this man for decades. No wonder he is able to upstage everyone in the room.

Saddam wants to be remembered by history as an Iraqi patriot. He is being allowed to lay the foundations of a post-Saddam legend in this trial. Saddam is using our own notions of due process and fair play to undermine our larger efforts to move Iraq beyond him and his regime. Saddam is going to be considered a hero by Sunni Arabs for ever and ever, and this trial, his last moment on the stage of history, may well be his finest dramatic performance.

(Via Ann Althouse.)