Category Archives: history

X-Men portray historic, ongoing civil rights struggles

In a previous Nerd/Wise article, I explained why comic books and graphic novels are unfairly criticized and should be viewed as a form of modern art and literature. That discussion was limited to more unique works in graphic literature, ignoring the superhero genre that has come to define the medium. Today, we give superheroes their due by looking at how they can be used to tell complex, real stories. Specifically, we look at the X-Men and the allegory of civil rights, starting with its allusions to the African-American Civil Rights Movement and moving on to today’s references to the push for LGBT rights.

In 1963, Stan Lee, legendary creator of almost all of our most famous heroes, was running thin on ideas for origin stories and, in a bout of laziness, decided to create a team of heroes who were simply born with their powers. Ironically, this decision created the most compelling trait ever tacked onto a superhero team. The X-Men were heroes, like Spider-Man, because they chose to be, and chose to use their gifts for the betterment of mankind. Unlike Superman, they weren’t deified and honored but marginalized and feared.

Since (Uncanny) X-Men #1, this has been what makes the X heroes unique. They didn’t ask for their gifts, but they have to deal with them. And as such, they became the stand-in for every person who has ever felt marginalized for traits beyond their control, whether it be skin tone, gender, or sexual orientation.

The real world shows us that it is difficult to come to terms with the qualities we bear for which society chooses to judge us. Some of us are unable to handle this pressure, and we seek an outlet for our frustration. Sometimes, that frustration is let out through art or music, but many times, it can lead to outbursts of violence. Those of us who feel marginalized need the guidance of those who relate and understand our problems and can offer direction. In the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the African-American community chose a leader in Martin Luther King Jr. The X-Men were given Professor Charles Xavier.

Professor X, the mentor and leader of the X-Men, faced discrimination his entire life — not necessarily for being a mutant, which he could easily hide, but for being a quadriplegic. Professor Xavier, like King, was proof that an educated man with a vision could make a difference. Both men guided the marginalized, gave value to the voices of the unheard, and spoke truth to power while offering a vision of peace. Obviously, there are some differences. King never trained the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to fight giant robots bent on his peoples’ destruction in the streets of New York, but the similarities are still worth noting.

On the other side of the coin exists Magneto, who, for most of his history in the comic books, was the leader of the Brotherhood of (Evil) Mutants. While Professor X appealed to the better angels of our nature, Magneto appealed to the more likely response from people who have spent their lives oppressed and hated. Magneto, as leader of the Brotherhood, offered mutants a chance to retaliate against human hatred. Instead of pushing his followers to win over the hearts and minds of humanity, Magneto told them they were superior, they were ascendent, they were meant to replace homo sapiens.

Magneto began as a more simplistic villain, even outright calling the Brotherhood “evil,” but he eventually evolved into a nuanced and accessible character, thanks primarily to the tremendous work of X-Men godfather Chris Claremont. Magneto was revealed to be a Holocaust survivor, and his hatred of humanity can be better understood in this light. He has already seen what humans will do to the “other,” and he refuses to allow it to happen again.

It’s easy to see the appeal of Magneto’s message — except for the mass genocide parts, at least. Magneto’s later characterizations, including those beautifully portrayed on the silver screen by Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender, show him as a militant mutant advocate but not an inherently evil man. He appeals to the young men and women who are sick of the status quo and see that the entire system is flawed and biased against them. To them, the problem can not be fixed through gradual change and education but by tearing the whole system down. Philosophically, this isn’t necessarily wrong; sometimes, a revolution is necessary to fix humanity’s mistakes. The problem is when this is taken to its logical extreme and philosophy begets violence.

Magneto has been compared to Malcolm X for his “by any means necessary” approach. Perhaps this is unfair to the man and to the character, but it is obvious that Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, and the Nation of Islam at least inspired much of Magneto and the Brotherhood’s characterization. The militancy, the rhetoric, and the desire to separate mutantkind from humanity are lifted from the Nation of Islam and their push for separation of the races.

The X team has historically been very diverse. Since Giant-Size X-Men #1, the team has had an international flavor. Joining Scott Summers and Jean Grey were the Canadian Wolverine, the German Nightcrawler, the Soviet Colossus (in the middle of the Cold War), and Storm, who was born in New York City but raised on the African continent.

This second X team was introduced in 1975, when even including an African-American superhero was still controversial. Even more unique was that Storm’s character was not defined by her “blackness”; she was a character in her own right, with an interesting origin story and traits unique to her — something incredibly rare for a woman superhero, let alone a black woman superhero.

Despite the team’s ethnic diversity, Xavier’s new gang of uncanny heroes often dealt with problems more appropriate for a cosmic opera than a civil rights allegory. However, Claremont’s skills as X-Men writer knew no bounds, and he managed to create an enduring story that appealed to fans of both science fiction and political allegory.

The upcoming X-Men movie, Days of Future Past, is based on the comic book of the same name about a dystopian future in which mutants have been hunted down and placed in internment camps. The story is the realization of Magneto’s nightmare: a second holocaust for his people. The Sentinels, giant mutant-hunting robots, seek out the former X-Men and capture or murder them ruthlessly, strictly because of their X-gene. This potential future is a reminder of everything the X-Men have to fight against. They are being destroyed strictly for being different, like the Jews of the 1930s and 40s. They are feared without reason, like many of those put through the communist trials of the early Cold War era.

And this future seems very possible in the comic book world Marvel had created by 1980. The mutants were being marginalized since their kind had first been known to the world. They had been called “mutie” and attacked by mobs. Despite doing everything right, they never seemed to make much progress.

The X-Men have evolved over the years and have taken on the characteristics of each new group being marginalized by the American mainstream. At times, they are derided as enemies of God and demons incarnate, corrupting society with their sinful ways, like the LGBT community of today. They’ve been told to stay in the closet about their powers and asked to simply “stop being a mutant,” like Iceman was in X2. And in Joss Whedon’s “Gifted” story line, scientists created a “cure,” to which the mutant community asked, “Does that mean we have a disease?”

Since 9/11, the X-Men have taken on the burden shared by Muslim-Americans. Should they be judged for the errors of others? Should all Muslims be feared and marginalized because of a few extremists? Should good, tax-paying mutants be feared and marginalized because of a few mutant terrorists?

The X-Men teach us about ourselves. They bring into focus our fears and our prejudices and ask us to rethink what we claim to already know. They show us that the world isn’t always black and white, even in a medium that was built on black and white morality tales. Are the X-Men perfect? No. They make mistakes. Often tragic ones. And many times, their dealings with the government create morally ambiguous situations in which we are left to believe that both sides are right. They challenge us. Hopefully, they continue to do so, and future generations can find themselves questioning their world thanks to the brilliant stories told about the Uncanny X-Men.

Wrong-headed criticisms of Abraham Lincoln

Recently on Fox Business Network, former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano showcased his historical contrarianism by attacking the most revered presidents in U.S. history, including Abraham Lincoln. The judge declared that the American Civil War was Lincoln’s fault: that slavery had been on its last legs and that Lincoln’s decisions actually set back progress by a century.

Napolitano is a well-educated man and obviously came to this opinion after actually studying the topic, but his assertions were not unlike those made by many students of history — at least the ones who don’t dig too deep. Napolitano’s opinions are not accurate, and more indicative of a personal bias toward skepticism. And while skepticism is healthy and good for debate, Napolitano’s limited and factually erroneous views of our 16th president show how a need to believe the worst in people can easily lead to missing out on the whole story.

Napolitano contended, in part, that “[i]nstead of allowing it to die, or helping it to die, or even purchasing the slaves and then freeing them, which would have cost a lot less money than the Civil War cost, Lincoln set about on the most murderous war in American history in which over 750,000 soldiers and civilians — all Americans — died…”

Napolitano’s comments are part of a troubling trend in interpreting the Civil War. In an attempt to seem open-minded and free-thinking, smart people are arguing against the grain. While these antithetical arguments sometimes bring out valid new perspectives, this view of Lincoln and the Civil War does not. Unfortunately, Napolitano is not alone in his “scholasticism.”

On a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, the brash host showed his skepticism about lionized personalities as well by asserting that Lincoln was a racist. Maher’s guest, basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabar, stood up for Honest Abe, just as Jon Stewart did against Napolitano. To his credit, Maher didn’t press Abdul-Jabar to reverse his position. However, the opinions expressed by Maher and Napolitano are shared by a lot of educated people who misunderstand Lincoln’s actions and ascribe sinister intentions and dark thoughts to one of America’s greatest heroes.

The problem is one of historical comprehension. Lincoln has been apotheosized in the nearly century and a half since his death. This deification is certainly deserved, but it also causes us to attribute superhuman traits to a real man — a man who faced great odds and triumphed. For those of us who study history, this idolization has caused a backlash.

When we see comments made by Lincoln in his pre-presidential Senate campaign debates with Stephen A. Douglas, we are shocked at their racist nature. When we hear about his desire not to end slavery but only to save the Union, we are hit with a gut punch, left wondering if there have ever been true heroes. Unfortunately, this is where otherwise intelligent men like Maher leave the conversation. The problem with this analysis of history, however, is that it only tells half the story.

Let’s first look at Lincoln’s purported racism. The most frequently cited statement in support of the claim that the Great Emancipator was no better than the people of his time is from Lincoln’s debate with Douglas in Charleston, Illinois, in 1858:

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause] — that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Harsh. It’s easy to see why some view these words as evidence against Lincoln. But these must be viewed in context.

Lincoln was, before anything else, a politician and a legal scholar. And despite our current attitudes, being a politician is not inherently bad. Many political operatives have been able to use their manipulative abilities to do great things for people. Lincoln was one such operative, and he was using his skills as an orator and a debater to slowly move the center position of the argument about slavery closer to the position of the abolitionists’.

Lincoln learned in his legal career that, by not objecting to every detail of an argument, he could more easily win that argument by only clinging to the aspect that was most important. If he conceded the alleged inferiority of the African race and offered that intermarriage should not be permitted, his argument that slavery should be abolished would be viewed as the bare minimum argument, and therefore, the moderate stance.

The future president was also debating with the shining star of the Democratic Party. Douglas, known at the time as the advocate for popular sovereignty, was pushing his philosophy as a way to answer the difficult questions about the expansion of slavery. When states like Kansas applied for statehood, the U.S. Congress was left gridlocked in debate, time and time again, about whether or not slavery should be allowed there. Douglas’ answer was that the inhabitants of the state should be allowed to choose whether or not the “peculiar institution” could exist within their boundaries. At the time, that was considered the moderate position.

Lincoln had to run against this supposedly moderate man while wearing the label of “Republican,” a party which, at the time, was considered a radical and “black” party. Lincoln, like good politicians of today, had to play down his more “radical” viewpoints in order to appeal to a broader population. As such, he said things that could be construed today as anti-black and racist.

When answering Douglas’ charge about Lincoln wanting complete equality for “the negro,” Lincoln answered: “I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife.” By stating his view this way, Lincoln was not saying that there was anything wrong with mixed race marriage — though it is doubtful he cared either way — but was instead making Douglas’ complaints seem absurd and out of touch. By changing the terms of the debate, Lincoln was making the abolition of slavery appear to be a more palatable proposal. Lincoln was nothing if not a moderate, and his political decisions and speeches reflect that.

At the time of Lincoln’s political career, one solution to the slavery problem that was advocated strongly by abolitionists was the colonization of American blacks in Africa. Lincoln supported this venture even through the beginning of the Civil War. This support has been seen by some as further proof of Lincoln’s racism. However, this is another case of not understanding context.

Lincoln’s statements were colored by what actions were politically and logistically feasible. His ideas were pragmatic, and abolishing slavery in the United States when the South held such disproportionate power would have been impossible. The colonization proposals were often made by men who wanted abolition, but who realized that unchaining thousands of men and women after lifetimes of brutality and oppression would lead to great civil unrest and, possibly, ethnic war. By simply removing the former slaves from the continent, the horrendous institution could be destroyed, and former slaveholders would not have to fear for their lives.

However, slavery was the backbone of the American economy, especially in the South, and not even the $3 billion it would cost to buy the freedom of the slaves would be able to persuade the men who profited from the blood and sweat of their fellow human beings. Again, Napolitano’s claim that Lincoln could have simply bought the freedom of the African race is completely off the mark, as the president would have been more than happy to perform such an action had it been possible.

Lincoln’s election as president in 1860 caused an enormous backlash from Southern reactionaries despite Lincoln consistently stating that he had intended to leave slavery alone. Lincoln, in fact, believed he was constitutionally bound to defend the institution despite his personal hatred of it.

“Honest Abe” was very much a constitutionalist and intended to follow the document according to his interpretation, even when he didn’t support what he believed it said. As a result, he promised to honor his duty — to citizens of both North and South, meaning that he had to follow even the laws he despised, like the Fugitive Slave Act. Since Lincoln did not acknowledge secession as any form of legitimate act, he considered himself to still be the president of even those states in open rebellion. And, as treason is a crime, Lincoln responded in the way his constitutional oath required of him.

The idea that Lincoln started the Civil War is absurd. With seven states already in active rebellion by the time he took office, Lincoln had to respond quickly and in a way that would give him the advantage. The first step was to simply wait for the Confederacy to become the aggressors. By sending federal aid to Fort Sumter, Lincoln was directly challenging the South’s claim to sovereignty. The Confederates fell for the trap, firing on the Fort, giving the Union the moral edge, and helping to rally Northerners who were still indifferent toward the secession.

Does this tactical maneuver mean that Lincoln should be implicated for starting the war? No. He was acting in a constitutional manner, doing the job he had sworn to do. The South was actively breaking the law through secession, and Lincoln, as chief executive, was responding. In fact, by waiting for the South to shoot first, the president was taking a much more lenient position than could have reasonably been expected.

Lincoln continued to move the country forward through his moderation. It’s true that the “Emancipation Proclamation” actually freed no slaves, but it didn’t have to; it is not as though its inability to be enforced makes it a less remarkable document. The proclamation, along with the more romantic “Gettysburg Address,” changed the war. It gave Southern blacks something to fight for by granting them freedom when the war would end. The proclamation may not have directly freed anyone, but it removed any doubt that the Civil War was about ending slavery — ironically causing the South’s fears to be realized. Further, it made abolition into a reasonable solution for more of the American population, which set the stage for the complete emancipation brought on by the 13th Amendment.

Napolitano’s criticisms of Lincoln are nothing new. It’s easy to take the Great Emancipator’s quotes out of context, like Maher did, and call Lincoln a racist. It’s easy to call Lincoln a warmonger when ratings or provocation are more important than the facts. But to do so is wrong.

Lincoln had a goal in mind and worked slowly toward it using the means available to him as president. By moving slowly, asserting the “moderate” view that the African race was inferior, waiting for the South to fire first, refusing to free slaves for the first few years, then technically freeing none, he opened up the possibilities for change that resulted in three powerful amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as well as millions of newly freed Americans. Lincoln’s actions changed the world for the better.

If you want to know more about Lincoln, read Gary Wills’ Lincoln at Gettysburg and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, and watch Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. Pay special attention to the Cabinet meeting scene in which the president explains why a 13th amendment to the Constitution is necessary. That scene, and the movie on the whole, perfectly captures Lincoln’s moderate philosophy of governing.

“I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.”
— Abraham Lincoln, July 10, 1858, Chicago, Illinois.

Star Wars was robbed by Academy in 1977

Star Wars is a cultural phenomenon. Lightsabers, droids, Wookiees, and the Death Star are part of our everyday conversations. The Washington National Cathedral is adorned with a gargoyle of what Americans voted to be the epitome of evil: Darth Vader. And almost every single piece of media made in the last decade, in my experience, contains at least one reference to a Star Wars movie.

Star Wars is easily one of the most successful franchises in world history, yet it is so much more than that. The Star Wars films have inspired generations of young people to dream and to fight back against injustice. They taught us to realize our places as individuals, while remaining integral parts of a much larger universe. The original, historic chapter of the film series, however, is the ultimate example of Academy Award oversight.

Each year, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards excellence in film, only one movie can take home the top honor: Best Picture. It’s no secret that the Academy naturally favors a certain type of movie. And that is OK. As much as I love Superbad, it’s certainly not the type of movie that should be named Best Picture.

Often, a tremendous work of art is given the nod, much like this year’s 12 Years a Slave. Sometimes, however, the best film of the year gets overlooked in favor of a Hollywood vanity piece or a good movie that will be forgotten in a few years. But some types of movies — in certain genres or with certain characteristics — seem doomed, however good, right from the start.

Seeing that a few comedies have won Best Picture was actually quite jarring. In my time, every winner has been a period piece or a film that raises awareness to illness. These films are often heart-wrenching masterpieces that did not get the proper box office respect. But the Academy’s love affair with these true, or at least almost true, stories neglects original writing and punishes those who make creative films.

Blockbusters are typically big moneymakers. Recently, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com identified 11 features that define a film as a blockbuster. Those 388 films are listed here, beginning with number 62, Jaws; how many Best Picture winners can you pick out? You won’t find many. Only three Best Picture winners have grossed over $200 million domestically (in the United States), and only six winners are in the top 200 domestically grossing films of all-time. Does the Academy have a natural aversion to blockbuster films?

Examine the Best Picture nominee list closely. Star Wars is one of only six science fiction films in eight decades to receive a Best Picture nomination. I understand that science fiction does not typically stand out for nuance or impressively written scripts. In a lot of instances, a science fiction film shouldn’t get the honor of Best Picture. Did The Avengers deserve to win Best Picture? Absolutely not. That doesn’t prevent it from being one of my all-time favorite movies. But I have a special affection for hero stories and movies that stretch my imagination.

Other blockbusters and science fiction films, however, are more than blow-em-up spectacles. Unfortunately, I think the prejudice against genre films has led to some egregious oversights from the Academy. Escapism can create movies just as compelling as reflection can. That brings us back to the original Star Wars film. This masterpiece was a victim of the Academy’s predisposition against films about the extraordinary, and was ultimately passed over for the top award. If Star Wars didn’t win in 1977, I have to ask: can a science fiction movie ever win Best Picture?

Star Wars defied conventional Academy practices by actually receiving a Best Picture nomination in the first place. The film even took home seven trophies, primarily for its innovative approach to filmmaking. But at the end of the night, the statuette for Best Picture was awarded to Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Don’t get me wrong. Annie Hall is a tremendous film. The movie is hilarious from beginning to end and holds up even after 37 years. It’s a rare older movie that feels like it could have been made today. And it defies awards expectations of its own as a comedy, which is so rare to see honored with an Oscar. It is also not nearly as innovative as Star Wars.

Consider: which movie has made a greater impact on world culture, Annie Hall or Star Wars? I challenge you to name any movie that has made a larger impact than Star Wars. But again, I understand if you disagree about cultural relevance being a factor in naming Best Picture. That is also an impact that cannot be fully measured for many years after a film’s release. So let’s dissect the iconic film for its specific merits.

In my view, a movie should be graded on plot, characters, acting, world building, creativity, innovation, subject matter, and historical relevance. Annie Hall gets high marks for several of these categories, while Star Wars is superior to most films in nearly every one.

Star Wars is, perhaps, the most technically innovative movie of all time. Sure, it doesn’t look like Avatar, but the original movie was made before computers were even a factor in filmmaking. In fact, the production of Star Wars helped to create the computer generated imagery that made movies like Gravity and The Avengers possible.

George Lucas, with very little money available to make his vision come to life, managed to create an entire universe of societies, spacecraft, and sentient beings of peculiar appearance, using only models and costumes. Lucas created the Wookiee, the Jawa, dozens of background alien species, and two legendary droids named C-3PO and R2-D2 without any help from the CGI that would eventually become synonymous with Lucasfilm and its spinoff company, Pixar.

However, these technical leaps don’t necessarily make a film worthy of Best Picture. If they did, Gravity would have been the 2013 winner. Thankfully, it wasn’t, but that’s because the story of Gravity, while interesting, was shallow and lacked any kind of memorable character. That might also be one of the potential weaknesses of Star Wars. Its characters may not be as complex as something from Shakespeare — but they are just as recognizable, if not more so. Are there any movie characters more well known than Luke, Han, Leia, Vader, or the droids?

Again, popularity does not mean a film is necessarily good. I can admit that Obi-Wan never made me cry like Oskar Schindler, and Luke isn’t perhaps as inspiring as Abraham Lincoln. But these characters live in a galaxy different from our own, and yet they still manage to make us feel as though we have joined them on their journey.

Luke Skywalker is offered as a stand-in for the viewer. He is a kid from a simple place looking to leave his world behind him when an unexpected turn of events leads him to the stars. He is motivated by a desire to accomplish something, and he believes the Galactic Empire needs to be brought down. He is a man who longs for his father, aspiring to be like him without even knowing who he was. It is a story familiar to every boy and girl who feels they are destined for greater things.

Luke has to come into his own while learning from his mentor, Ben Kenobi. Ben becomes a surrogate father — not just to Luke, but to those of us who want to believe we can achieve greatness. Ben’s climactic fight with his former protege, Darth Vader, ends with the mentor’s sacrifice before the eyes of his apprentice. Luke then has to rise up and become the new hero the Galaxy needs. It is the advice of his mentor, along with the assistance of his new friend, the roguish Han Solo, plus his newfound faith in his own ability and the world around him that leads Luke to an immeasurable victory as he brings down the planet-destroying Death Star.

Sure, Luke isn’t facing disease or dealing with being a slave, but he’s a young man fighting a literal galaxy of problems, dealing with his inadequacies and yearning to know about his parents and find himself. Perhaps the acting isn’t on par with Daniel Day-Lewis or Gary Oldman (though Oldman had been rumored to be joining the cast of the next Star Wars flick), but there is never a scene in the original movie that takes the audience out of the moment through bad acting or unbelievable sets. What Lucas and the actors did was create an unbelievable world and make it believable. That type of talent should be honored.

The Star Wars films aren’t overtly about the human condition and they don’t raise awareness to some controversial topic, but they do follow a time-honored story structure, one that has been imitated many times since and has been honored in other, non-sci-fi films. Star Wars is about the hero’s journey, a narrative technique that is rooted in ancient mythology.

As explained by mythologist Joseph Campbell, the hero’s journey is the arc that follows a hero from the common to the extraordinary. This hero is often an everyman on an unlikely quest, an epic campaign to overcome the greatest odds. The hero will grow as a person either for surviving the trek or for dying a legend. These stories also often follow the friends of the protagonist as they come into their own and help the hero defeat the great evil. The hero’s journey may not involve human suffering in a way we can always relate to, but that doesn’t make a film any less qualified to be considered the Best Picture of the year.

Perhaps you believe the Best Picture winner should speak to something beyond what appears on the screen. As I said, great movies must have compelling subject matter. A Best Picture winner should teach a lesson and make us think about how we live our lives. Star Wars, with its philosophical underpinnings and questions on war and proper government, accomplishes all of this in spades.

Star Wars is packed with philosophy. Questions of destiny and the great interconnectedness of all life fill the movie from beginning to end. The Force, introduced in the first Star Wars movie, took traits from religions and philosophies across the globe to create a mystical, mythical energy force that binds us and guides us. Fans of Star Wars were inspired by Kenobi to listen to our surroundings and become attuned to the space in which we live. And the Force is just the glue that holds together the enormous world built by Lucas and his crew.

No movie was as thorough as Star Wars in creating an entire universe. Many lines in the 1977 film were carefully crafted to construct a history of this galaxy so different from our own. When speaking to Obi-Wan, Luke casually mentions “The Clone Wars” years before this event would be expounded upon. Obi-Wan’s lines about Luke’s father display an uncertainty that takes on new meaning when the viewer learns the truth in the sequel. What other movie has created lines so rich in content that books could be written for years expanding on just several hours of film?

If a movie is funny, dramatic, original, compelling, and innovative, what else does it take to be given the honor of being called Best Picture? By denying the statue to Star Wars, was the Academy simply making a pretentious statement against a movie that requires such suspension of disbelief? What is the point of movies if not to create new worlds and tell stories that can’t really happen? As much as I am a fan of realism in movies, escapism should not be so marginalized.

Lucas and the folks at Lucasfilm created the world’s most enduring movie, lasting across generations of fans and penetrating our culture in every way. And even if you take away all that has happened since the 1977 release, what you are left with is still a modern myth, a compelling narrative of trial and loss, a rich plethora of characters who take us on a heroic journey to a galaxy far, far away.

Star Wars was the most innovative and influential film of the 20th century. It was unjustly denied its due respect from the Academy by not receiving the award for being the Best Picture of 1977.

Cinco de Mayo: May the Fifth be with you?

Even though the title of this article sounds like I’m telling you to carry whiskey around (I’m not not telling you that), I will in fact be talking about why we in the United States and Mexico celebrate Cinco de Mayo. We’ll also take a look at the similarities between the events that inspired that holiday and the narrative structure of one of the most beloved modern mythologies, celebrated with its own holiday yesterday, Star Wars.

Cinco de Mayo, or El DÃa de la Batalla de Puebla (Spanish: “the day of the battle of Puebla“), is not Mexican Independence Day, as is too-often thought in the United States. Instead, May 5 is the anniversary of a battle fought at the city of Puebla in 1862, wherein the Mexican army, outgunned and outnumbered nearly 2-to-1, crushed the army of the Second French Empire on its way to Mexico City. As it happens, the French still managed to work their way around and take the capital for a few years, but the battle at Puebla hampered their resources and might even have been a key factor in keeping the French out of the American Civil War.

Puebla, or Puebla de los Ãngeles, means “village of the angels,” (as opposed to Los Angeles, California, which is an abbreviation of the city’s original name, a reference to “Our Lady the Queen of Angels,” or the Virgin Mary). Puebla is so named because the bishop of Tlaxcala in the 16th century dreamed the site where he would found the city, and he saw angels tracing it out for him. Turned out, the place was about five miles from the monastery where he lived. It’s one of the major waypoints between the Atlantic port of Veracruz (where CortÃ©s offered up a “true cross” when he conquered the place) and Mexico City.

Mexico had spent a lot of money in civil wars and, indeed, needed to spend more in ongoing efforts to discourage rebellion, so Mexican president Benito JuÃ¡rez decided to suspend repayment of the country’s foreign debts after his 1861 election. Many European creditors came in through Veracruz to get their money back. Spain, France, and Britain made a temporary alliance with each other to send their troops into Mexico for this purpose, but after taking Veracruz, Spain and Britain backed out, seeing that France wanted more than just debt repayment.

France, under the direction of Emperor Napoleon III (not to be confused with the more famous Napoleon, who was his uncle), decided to take a straight shot at expanding its empire while the Americans were distracted with their own war and in no real position to enforce the Monroe Doctrine (which was basically the States flipping the bird at Europe, telling them not to mess with our continent). Even better, if France was able to get a stronghold in Mexico and set up its own puppet regime, the French would probably support the Confederates in exchange for the Rebels tolerating France’s nearby presence. That support may have given the South the edge it needed to win.

But when France’s army of 8,000 took on the Mexican force of about 4,500 on that fateful Fifth of May, the French were repelled. The aggressors suffered casualties at three times the rate of the defenders, forcing them to retreat by the end of the day and hold off their advance for an entire year while they waited for reinforcements and additional armament. JuÃ¡rez declared Cinco de Mayo a national holiday four days after the battle, and it served to help strengthen the unity of the Mexican people.

After France won the second battle of Puebla, moved on to take Mexico City, and forced JuÃ¡rez into exile, the American Civil War was almost over. Emperor Napoleon, not wanting to leave all his armed forces stuck across the ocean fighting Mexicans and Americans while the Prussians were consolidating power closer to home, decided to pull out. The puppet emperor of Mexico Napoleon installed was ousted and executed by JuÃ¡rez, who assumed power once again.

Without the victory at Puebla on May 5, 1862, Mexico might not have been able to keep its sovereignty as a state. So, in celebration of that battle, and the cause of freedom, we in the United States like to … drink tequila and eat tacos, I guess. Cool.

Of course, reality and fiction often overlap. And with May the Fourth and Cinco de Mayo just one day apart, my mind naturally draws connections between the two. So what do the second French intervention in Mexico and the rise and fall of the Galactic Empire have in common? Let’s see …

A politician becomes emperor after enacting a coup d’etat (French: “stroke of state”). Both Napoleon III and Palpatine were granted unilateral power over their respective state militaries and used them to overthrow the government to become emperor.
Said politician misleads allies as to his true intentions in order to use their armies. In Star Wars, Palpatine uses the Separatists to spark war and scare the Republic into giving him power. In real life, Napoleon led Spain and Britain to believe he only wanted to force Mexico to repay its debts rather than to take over the country.
The army of the empire overruns the front lines of the opposition with overwhelming force. In Star Wars, the Empire obliterates Alderaan with the Death Star. In history, the allied Europeans swept into Veracruz easily.
A plucky, outnumbered band of courageous defenders thwarts the empire in order to avert catastrophe. In Star Wars, the rebels blow up the Death Star with the dead Bothans’ intelligence and Luke Skywalker’s powers of the Force. In history, the Pueblans repelled France’s forces despite terrible odds.
A powerful force, conflicted until the very end of the engagement, turns against the empire and enables the underdogs to emerge victorious. In Star Wars, Darth Vader realizes he wants his humanity, even more than he wants revenge, and kills Palpatine, allowing the rebels to wipe out the new Death Star. In history, the Union wins the Civil War and turns at least some part of its attention to the French occupation, prompting Napoleon to get out.

On the other hand, Emperor Napoleon was generally a pretty good ruler, unlike Palpatine. He was a progressive who did a lot to further women’s rights in France, promote equal opportunities, and help the economy, until he was ultimately kicked out of power by yet another revolution (say one thing about France, say they liked revolting in the 1800s).

Also, Mexico was a political madhouse prior to France’s invasion. Embroiled in civil wars and reform wars, the opposition liberal and conservative parties were hardly afraid to back up their politics with violence whenever and wherever they could. Part of the reason Napoleon thought he could take over was because the Mexican people were sick of their country’s politics and infighting. The Battle of Puebla went a long way toward cementing the public against foreign power, but perhaps otherwise they would have largely welcomed the intervention.

Either way, Star Wars has much fewer shades of grey in its morality than real life does. Big surprise there.

Whose religion is it anyway? Easter edition

Many of us were able to spend yesterday with family and friends, eating ham and potatoes and deviled eggs that mom (or another varied matronly figure) cooked up for the occasion. Some of us attended our local place of Christian worship in honor of the death and resurrection of Jesus (Yeshua), while others refrained.

Certainly, the Christian church (fragmented though it be) is the primary sponsor of this particular day of rest — which makes it so odd that it’s named after what is almost certainly a pre-Christian, Saxon fertility goddess, Ēostre. It’s sort of like if I created my own religion (like Scientology … but we’ll call it “Give-Jim-all-your-money-ism”), and then decided the biggest holy day of the year, the celebration of when … uh … Supergod ate all the alien bad guys 5 billion years ago … anyway, that day should be called “Buddha.”

To be fair, the early church didn’t start off calling the day “Easter.” In fact, it wasn’t even just one day (it still isn’t), but a whole week, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, called then (and now, in most of the rest of the world) “Paschal,” which is a Latin derivation of the Hebrew Pesach, or “Passover.” Passover is the traditional Jewish holiday celebrating the time when God killed all the first-born Egyptian sons because the Pharaoh wouldn’t let Moses’ people go. The Jews were “passed over” because they sacrificed goats and smeared the blood on their front doors.

This event is one of the most visceral representations of the idea that the Hebraic God’s people can be saved (or forgiven, or redeemed) by offering up a blood sacrifice that runs throughout the Old Testament. Since the whole notion of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross ties directly into that, the early Christians decided to just steal the whole holiday: word, time of year, ritual, and theme, whole hat from the Jews (again, to be fair, they technically were Jews themselves … as are Christians, arguably, today — just an extremely “reformed” version).

So if the day already had a perfectly good, if plagiarized, name, why give it a totally different one in English? Simply put, when the Roman Empire started to spread Christianity to the Germans and the Bretons in the early hundreds A.D., those cultures already had an early spring celebration called Ēosturmōna? (“Easter month”). This was the big-deal celebration around those parts, and even if people were willing to be bullied into monotheism and whatnot, they weren’t willing to give up their annual “We survived the winter, now let’s get bizzay” traditions. So the name stayed.

But what do we know about Ēostre anyway? Not that much. There was an 8th-century account by a canonized monk named Bede attesting that the holiday of Easter Month was once used to celebrate a goddess, but that’s the oldest bit of writing available on the subject. It could possibly be that no such goddess had ever existed, and the Breton tribes used the word “Easter” to refer to the dawn (from Proto-Indo-European root aus, “to shine,” shared by the word “east”), and, therefore, to spring, since, y’know, dawn starts happening sooner in spring.

On the other hand, the dawn/fertility goddess of the contemporary Old High Germanic tribes was named Ostara, and there is a lot of evidence to suggest that many fertility goddesses, from Roman Venus to Babylonian Ishtar to Sumerian Inanna, all derive from a root goddess named something like “Hausōs,” the personification of dawn. It seems likely that the nearby Northumbrians in England would have taken the dawn goddess along with the other deities intrinsic to these cultures.

In the root mythology, Hausōs was a bringer of light who was punished for aiding humanity (much like Christian Lucifer and Greek Prometheus, but unlike Japanese Amaterasu). Typically, the goddess is imprisoned by a dragon or another god and gets rescued by a powerful hero, either another god or a mortal. This, of course, symbolizes the day/night cycle on Earth.

While we’re on the subject of Easter, a quick note or two about bunnies and eggs. Are they really just fertility symbols co-opted by Christians to represent resurrection? Well … maybe, maybe not. One popular theory about dyed eggs is that people had to hard-boil them to preserve them during Lent, when they weren’t allowed to eat them, and frequently put flowers into the pot to color the eggs to make them pretty. Then, the eggs were a treat on Easter Sunday.

As to the bunny, there was a peculiar belief in medieval times that hares were hermaphroditic and able to conceive without losing their virginity. Thus, the idea of the hare was linked to the virgin birth and showed up in illuminated manuscripts and paintings of Mary and the Christ child. That, however, has nothing in particular to do with death and/or resurrection, so it’s anyone’s guess how the Easter Bunny specifically landed the job.

Hope you all had a pleasant “East Day,” and feel free to consider joining the church of Give-Jim-all-your-moneyism. New members are welcome anytime.

Apocalypse later: End time prophesies, countdowns

Human religions seem a little obsessed with the idea of a final, conclusive tallying of moral debts and credits. Christians in particular tend to demonstrate a bit of perverse, preemptive schadenfreude over the idea that, when the trumpets sound, some folk (i.e. people we disagree with) are going to the not-happy place, while we, the good ones, are going to have fun in the sun for all eternity. Of course, Christians don’t want sinners to suffer forever, but hey, we can only do so much, right? “So much,” in this case, typically being either handing out vilifying, out-of-touch tracts … or nothing at all. But y’know. Only so much.

The end of the world isn’t just a religious obsession, however. Zombies and nuclear holocausts and plagues have all taken numerous turns in our media. If you’re reading this, you probably live in a relatively safe society (i.e. laws keep bigger people from killing the smaller ones and taking our stuff), even though humans are primed by evolution to use physical force to survive (i.e. kill people and take their stuff); apocalyptic scenarios, no matter how unlikely in reality, are a constant undercurrent in our subconscious awareness. We like to hear stories about desperation and survival in the face of severe adversity, because we want to train ourselves via social learning to survive in those conditions if necessary.

So let’s talk about eschatology for a few minutes. Eschatology (Greek eschatos, “last, furthest, extreme”; logos, “word, being”), literally “word of the end,” refers to the study of the end times as a phenomenon, usually in relation to the biblical book of Revelation (to reveal is to “un-veal,” or unveil), so named on account of the prophecy being revealed to John (a disciple of Jesus and the book’s alleged writer) by an angel on the island of Patmos.

The word revelation is where we get apocalypse (Greek apo, “from”; kalyptein, “cover, conceal”). In the Middle Ages, the word apocalypse was used frequently, not as a catchall for the end times, but with its literal meaning, to discover the truth of something.

Finally, the word Armageddon, which is another of those that is often used in the context of end times, refers to the Palestinian mountain of Megiddo (Har means “mountain,” Megiddo, incidentally, means “place of crowds”), which was specifically mentioned as the site of the final battle in the book of Revelation.

All caught up? Good. Let’s look at what the end of the world is like in Christian, Hindu, and Mayan mythos.

Judgment Day

There are several ways religious scholars and lay folk have interpreted the book of Revelation. The most common (as displayed in Tim LeHaye’s unsubtle Left Behind book series) is to assume that the events discussed have yet to occur. It makes sense if you’re trying to interpret the book more or less literally, as it refers to the sun burning up a third of the Earth, dragons roaming about, and the resuscitation of all the dead martyrs. I’m confident in saying that most of that stuff has not, as of yet, happened. Anyway, this interpretation sees the events of the book, even if symbolic, eventually coming to pass. There will be an Antichrist (virtually every major political figure in the Western World has been called thus by some crackpot at one time or another). There will be rapture (good Christian folk zapped up to heaven before bad stuff starts happening). There will be tribulation (wormwood and locusts and the four horsemen). Everyone fights, nobody quits.

Another interpretation is the preterist version, which sees the book as commenting on or foretelling the fall of Jerusalem, which actually occurred circa A.D. 100, when the temple was destroyed and desecrated. Like much of the contemporary apocalyptic literature (none of which made it into the Bible), major use of allegory and metaphor was used to hide the message, so as to avoid unwanted scrutiny by those people the passages were condemning. Think Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. In this interpretation, the long-haired locusts were the barbarian Huns, the whore of Babylon was Rome, and the beast slouching toward Bethlehem was Roman Emperor Nero, who was famous for throwing Christians to the lions whenever he found them.

A third interpretation mostly focuses on a “broad strokes” view of the book, in which God’s people, who find themselves neck deep in troubles, eventually end up pulling through and overcoming adversity. This interpretation sees the book as a metaphor for hope amid times of trial, rather than an account of real events, past or present.

Kali Yuga

Aside from the fact that every Hindu god is an aspect of another god, or has multiple personae, names, and avatars, there are two Kalis, just to add to the confusion. One of them is Shiva’s consort, a bloody warrior woman frequently depicted with sword in one hand and severed head in the other. Her name means “the black one,” from the Sanskrit root kalah, because she existed before there was light. The one they’re talking about in Kali Yuga, however, is a demon who has nothing to do with that other one. Our Kali’s name comes from kad, which means “suffer, grieve, hurt.” He’s basically a bully.

There are four ages (Yuga) in the Hindu mythic chronology, and Kali Yuga is the last one. The bad news is it’s by far the shortest. In fact, it only lasts 1/10,000th of a Brahma day, and it started in about 3100 B.C., at the Kurukshetra War, the one between the Kaurava and Pandava that I talked about in an earlier article. The good news is that 1/10,000th of a Brahma day is still 432,000 of our years, so we’ve got some time yet. Kali Yuga is the age of meanness and pettiness, when people are impolite, greedy, and murderous. Yep, sounds about right. When it’s over, the cycle will start over again with the first of the four ages, where everybody is righteous and wise.

The long count

The Mayans loved their calendars. They were the most accurate calendars ever created, by some accounts, and the culture was so invested in them that they named their children after the day they were born, with names like “Two Monkey” and “Four Death.” They used a method called the calendar round, in which the calendar didn’t reset every year, but rather every 52 years, meaning they didn’t need leap days, or leap seconds, or whatever. Things just rounded out, and the cycle lasted a normal human lifespan. When they needed a longer way to keep track of dates, they used a method called the long count.

So nearing the end of 2012, there was a big to-do about the Mayan calendar ending. Apocalypse! But no, it turns out this was just a misinterpretation of the long count. You see, one day on that calendar is a k’in. Twenty of those is a winal. Eighteen winals is a tun (about one solar year). Twenty tuns is a k’atun. Twenty k’atuns is a b’ak’tun (we’re up to 400 years). December 21, 2012, was simply switching over to the 13th b’ak’tun on the long count calendar. Nothing more, nothing less. No apocalypse. And, you know, there wasn’t one, so it bears out.

So whether the world ends tomorrow, 400,000 years from now, or it’s already happened and we don’t realize it, here’s hoping that we don’t all get eaten by giant, man-faced locusts.

No, Founding Fathers wouldn’t agree with you

Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Socialist. Political pundits of all philosophies like to argue they are on the side of the Founding Fathers of the United States. This idea, no matter the purveyor’s political persuasion, is a myth.

The Founding Fathers were not a monolith. They were a collection of incredible — but flawed — men of varying degrees of intellect and a wide range of philosophical, theological, and political beliefs. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson rarely agreed. Alexander Hamilton and John Adams were of the same political party and could almost never get along. Benjamin Franklin’s views of the world contrasted sharply with those of the Founding Fathers from Virginia. These men were people with opinions as wide-ranging as our own.

Saying you agree with the Founding Fathers is bold, since even deciding who counts as a Founder can be difficult. For the sake of our discussion, the Founding Fathers will be defined as the men who helped to spark the American Revolution and worked to establish the new government formed in 1787. This includes the men who argued against the Declaration of Independence, like John Dickinson, and who opposed the Constitution, such as Patrick Henry. In my view, the Founding Generation ended with the deaths of Adams and Jefferson on July 4, 1826, only a year after the conclusion of the presidency of the last Founding Father, James Monroe, and 50 years after the date of Independence.

Using this formula, we see that there are 60 years’ worth of leaders included in the Founding Generation. These were men who identified with 13 different colonies, were born across the span of the 18th century, and had very different stories that defined who they were.

Washington, Jefferson, Henry, James Madison, and others were born into the Virginia planter aristocracy. These bastions of liberty were actually men of almost noble birth who expected men of the underclass to defer to their judgement. This view caused some strong personality clashes when Washington led the Continental Army, which was full of Massachusetts men, who were raised in a world of comparable equality and were filled with the “leveling spirit.”

These Tidewater gentlemen evolved over time, especially through the Revolution and the Washington administration, but much of their Virginia breeding was hard to shake. Jefferson, despite being the strongest advocate for the people among the planter class, was still a slave owner after all.

Even during the time of the Revolution, “democracy” was a dirty word and shorthand for what could go wrong without proper leadership. Madison, the so-called “Father of the Constitution,” feared that unfettered democracy would create anarchy. He argued for a grand republic, full of conflicting interests, that would force compromise since a majority would never be attainable.

Adams, who spent his presidency opposing Madison’s new political party, shared a similar view about democracy. He was perhaps the best representative of the Bostonian view of America, which was opposed at the same time to aristocracy and the rabble. It was Adams who pushed heavily for a government of checks and balances to thwart the power of the minority or the majority to oppress their natural opponents.

Adams was perhaps the most devoutly religious Founding Father. Despite this, he is often associated with the Treaty of Tripoli, which he signed in 1797, that stated his belief that the United States was not founded on the Christian religion. Yet Adams was a strong Christian. Other founders were Deists, meaning they believed in a god, but also that this god was not a part of everyday human affairs. Thomas Paine was perhaps Deism’s strongest advocate, but the philosophy also heavily influenced Jefferson and Franklin.

Paine and Jefferson often found themselves in agreement, but Adams and Franklin certainly did not. While there was a strong respect between them, the two personalities clashed greatly when they were together in Europe to negotiate deals for the former colonies. The two giants of the American Revolution were just too different.

Franklin was a unique animal in world history. Historian H. W. Brands has dubbed Franklin the First American; he lived a life that is much more familiar to the modern American. Unlike the Virginia planters, Franklin was not born into privilege, but into the strict, Puritanical society of Boston. Being raised in the Calvinist tradition, Franklin maintained a strong sense of morality in terms of the treatment of others, but harbored a rebellious opinion against entrenched power, whether it be the Penn family, established churches, or, eventually, the British government.

But Franklin did not always oppose the Brits and is a perfect example of how Revolutionary leaders were actually fairly conservative compared to later revolutionaries, like the French. Franklin was, for most of his life, an advocate for a stronger British Empire. He believed that a king and a populist government were not mutually exclusive. Franklin only accepted independence when all other options seemed hopeless. Certainly, this is hard for modern Americans to understand, which is true of many aspects of the Founding Fathers due to the intervention of some 250 years.

Indeed, it is impossible to define the philosophies of the Founding Generation using modern terminology. Alexander Hamilton, who was considered a conservative at the time, supported a strong federal government, advocated for a controlling monetary policy, and pushed his financial system as a way to spawn economic growth for the young nation. Jefferson, considered a liberal, favored an agrarian society of small farmers, free of government intervention wherever possible, and argued that the Constitution granted the federal government almost no powers whatsoever. Yet, on the opposite side of the same coin, Hamilton was considered too pro-business and literally lived on Wall Street, while Jefferson hated big business and supported the struggle of the so-called average man. If you define yourself on either side of the Democrat/Republican divide, you would find it impossible to agree with either Jefferson or Hamilton completely.

Jefferson and Hamilton led the first opposing political parties in American history. It was their philosophies that created the disputing views we hold of the bedrock of our government, the U.S. Constitution. We hold the Constitution to be a sacred document, as though it is the perfect creation of a divine being. Many judges and Supreme Court justices believe that the Founders had an original intent for each word of the document; therefore, the Constitution is a rigid document with specific rules, rather than the vague, evolving document that liberal justices see.

But there can be no “original intent” as there were so many originators of the document. No part of the Constitution can be attributed to a single brain. The Founders were of very different minds with regards to the government they wished to create and run. Henry and Samuel Adams outright refused to be involved with the Constitution-making process. They favored the Articles of Confederation, which held the government together from the time of the Revolutionary War.

The Constitutional Convention, which took place in Philadelphia in 1787, brought together a large group of diverse men with different goals. Some wanted only to adjust the Articles. Others wanted to start from scratch. Madison offered the Virginia Plan, a proposal for a bicameral legislature with a House and a Senate given representation proportionate to population. Others pushed for the New Jersey Plan, which gave representation by state, meaning small states and large states would have equal power in the federal government. Hamilton pushed for an elected monarch-for-life. Every side of this argument combined to give us the mixed Congressional system, balanced by a strong executive, that we have today.

And when the Constitution was completed, almost no one was completely satisfied. So when you say you are “pro-Constitution, like the Founders,” remember that some of them weren’t even in favor of creating the Constitution.

Hamilton and Madison did more than anyone to define what the Constitution would accomplish through their collaboration on the Federalist Papers. Yet for years afterward, these two titans argued with each other over the meaning of the ratified document. How is it that the two men who are arguably most responsible for our Constitution and the way it has been interpreted couldn’t even agree on it, yet men like Justice Antonin Scalia claim to know the original intent of the document?

Our Constitution was created as a compromise and we should govern in that spirit, not claim to know the exact meaning of the text, trampling over others who disagree. The Constitutional arguments we have today have been around since 1787 and were themselves extensions of debates that have raged for centuries about the role of government in general.

If the Founders were alive today, Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the Adams cousins would not be able to agree on how to define a pizza, let alone what toppings to put on it. That’s not to say we shouldn’t look to these iconic men for inspiration and guidance. The Revolution and the government they created are magnificent works of human endeavor and compromise. We cannot, however, be bound by their words to a point of paralysis.

And we cannot accept the idea that the Founding Fathers as a whole would agree or disagree with a certain viewpoint. They were men of their times, bound by context and situation. We can say that Jefferson would be a libertarian, Hamilton a neoconservative, Franklin a Democrat, but would those definitions be fair to the complex men we exalt? Absolutely not.

These men (and let’s not forget the contributions of Abigail Adams) spent their lives reading, writing, studying, and thinking, and came to very different conclusions about what America could and should be. We should be inspired by that spirit and begin our own journeys of philosophical discovery to determine what works best for our time and our problems. Otherwise, our minds will continue to live in a generational tyranny, blindly following the precedents set by men who have been gone for 200 years and have no sense of our world. Follow their examples, learn from their wisdom, but don’t be constrained by their works.

Happy 80th birthday, Ms. Steinem

On this day in 1934, a baby named Gloria entered the world. No one could have imagined the profound impact this future advocate would have on women’s rights in her lifetime. Steinem is often called the mother of feminism, and it’s not hard to see why.

First, a bit of history; there are three distinct waves of feminism. The first wave of feminism took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During this period, activists like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott were focused not only on the property and voting rights of women but also on the abolition of slavery. Through their hard work, they reformed existing social standards and were successful in getting women the right to vote.

The second wave of feminism began in the 1960s and runs congruently with third-wave feminism to the present. While first-wave feminism focused on suffrage and changing existing sexist laws, second-wave feminism broadened the discussion to empower women in their sexuality, families, reproductive rights, and workplaces. Steinem is one of the most prominent women to emerge from this wave of feminism.

Third-wave feminism is a bit trickier to define. The term was coined in the 1990s as a backlash against the failings of second-wave feminism, mainly that the second wave was a movement created by upper-middle-class white women and didn’t account for the opinions and cultures of women from more diverse backgrounds. Steinem, considered a second-wave feminist, nonetheless addressed many third-wave concerns as well, working with many civil rights activists including Coretta Scott King and Cesar Chavez.

I consider myself a third-wave feminist and would even argue that we are actually headed for a fourth wave of feminism. A fourth wave would broaden the discussion of women’s equality to a global scale.

All of this is well and good, but if it weren’t for the work of Ms. Steinem, I wouldn’t be having this discussion at all today. Before she was a political activist, Steinem was a journalist. One of her most famous pieces was written for Show magazine. Steinem was employed as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club. The article “A Bunny’s Tale,” published in 1963, shed light on the exploitative treatment of the Bunnies and the legal murky sexual demands that were made of them. After her work on the piece, Steinem had a hard time finding writing jobs, a failing that Steinem attributes to her time as a Bunny.

In 1968, she landed a job with the newly created New York magazine. After her time with New York, Steinem co-founded one of the first feminist-focused magazines, Ms. The magazine was shocking for the 1970s because, at that time, most publications for women focused on child rearing, cooking and cleaning tips, keeping a satisfied husband, and proper makeup application. Instead, Ms. concentrated (and still concentrates) on women’s reproductive rights, politics, and social activism.

When the Ms. preview debuted, the syndicated columnist James J. Kilpatrick jeered that it was “C-sharp on an untuned piano,” a note “of petulance, bitchiness, or nervous fingernails screeching across a blackboard.” After hitting the newsstands for the first issue, network news anchor and 60 Minutes creator Harry Reasoner said he would “give it six months before they run out of things to say.” Ms. is still in publication today and the magazine can boast the best coverage of global women’s rights and politics.

In addition to her work in journalism, Steinem was an ardent political voice for many different issues, including reproductive rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, opposition to the Vietnam War, and LGBT equality.

Because of Steinem’s work, I get to write a blog every week about how far we’ve come in feminism. I can discuss pop culture things like Oscars fashion and professional wrestling. Because of her work, I can talk about politics and government and my place in them. Most importantly, because of her (and women like her), I have the courage to tell you stories about discrimination when they happen to me.

It’s fitting that Ms. Steinem’s birthday falls in March. March is Women’s History Month, and our history would be much different if Gloria Steinem hadn’t taken the path she did. Truthfully, I’m excited to see where the movement will take us in another 52 years, when I’ll be nearing my 80th birthday. In the meantime, I’ll just have to live by Gloria’s sage wisdom: “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”

Celebrating feast of St. Patrick: Booze 1, snakes 0

Today, everybody’s a little bit Irish. And the people who are normally just a little bit Irish are wearing Notre Dame shirts and getting into fistfights. It’s St. Patty’s Day, and the bars are enticing us all with green beer and playing Flogging Molly and Riverdance on the speakers. But who was St. Patrick, and why do we celebrate his day by getting sloshed?

Next to St. Nicholas, St. Patrick is probably the most widely known person with a St. in front of his (or her) name, though he was never formally canonized by any pope. Patrick, or Padraig in Irish, is based on the Latin word patricius, which simply means “father.” He was born Maewyn Succat in Scotland in the fourth century, though it’s hard to pinpoint anything more specifically. He was kidnapped by Irish pirates as a teenager (seriously), and brought to Ireland as a slave. At the supposed urging of God, he escaped captivity and ran 200 miles to a port with a ship bound for England.

Patrick joined the priesthood and then went right back to Ireland to become bishop of Armagh. He was famed for using the Irish weed, the shamrock, to explain the concept of the Christian trinity: one God with three distinct entities. Such a teaching would have resonated with pagan Irish, who already revered the shamrock and had a few models of three-in-one deities, such as the Morrígna of Macha, Anann, and The Morrígan. After many years trying to convert the Irish amid hostile conditions, Patrick, friendless and generally disliked, died March 17, supposedly, of an unknown year.

His legacy, however, did not. Early writings after Patrick’s time referred to him as a warrior priest who carved out converts from the pagan druids (though there is no real evidence of this) and established the highest moral virtues in great lords and ladies. Many accounts blur the line between Patrick and one or two other church representatives in Ireland at or near the same time. Regardless, Ireland became a Catholic country through and through, and Patrick was given the credit.

Stories about Patrick include how he prayed all the snakes away (though evidence would indicate there were never any snakes in Ireland in the first place) and that he once took so long giving a sermon that a staff he planted in the ground at the beginning grew into a tree by the end. He is a revered figure throughout Ireland, swept up in the cultural and religious identity of the island, and his feast day, the purported day of his death, is celebrated by breaking the Lenten fast and indulging in a little booze. So remember that you’re in mourning when you’re chugging green (or otherwise) beer tonight.

Now let’s talk a little bit about that booze. If you’re drinking beer (Old English beor, probably borrowed from Latin biber, “to drink”; or derived from Proto-Germanic beuwo, “barley”), go for Guinness in Ireland’s honor. Our “Modern Urban Gentleman” has already given a nice primer about the drink, but allow me to expand a bit.

Beer is made from malted grains (malting is the process of soaking grains in water and then heating them up rapidly, to turn the starch into soluble sugars) left to ferment (yeast eats at the sugar and poops alcohol). Most all beer today contains hops, for the bitter flavoring and as a preservative. Initially, the term “ale” (Proto-Indo European alu, “sorcery, possession, intoxication”) was used to mean “beer without hops,” but by the 18th century, they all used hops, and the term “ale” came to mean “beer brewed in the country” as opposed to in town. (Today, “ale” is specific to beer produced through top-fermenting yeast, versus bottom-fermented “lager.”)

Beer is one of the building blocks of civilization, indirectly responsible for every technological advancement from farming to refrigeration. The drink’s economic value throughout history cannot be overstated. Need something made cheaply that can serve as food, medicine, and suppression of rebellious inclinations for the masses? Look no further!

The first beer was probably brewed sometime around 9500 B.C, along with the introduction of cereal (Latin cerealis, “of Ceres,” the Roman goddess of harvest and agriculture). One of the earliest recipes for beer comes from the Sumerian religion, where Ninkasi, the goddess of beer, had her own hymn which essentially laid out how to make the stuff in an easy to remember, spoken litany. Beer came to Ireland around 3000 B.C., and might well have been brewed with a little bit of opiate in the mix, against pharmaceutical advice.

What’s the other Irish drink? Oh, right. Whiskey! Everyone but the Americans and the Irish spell it “whisky” (Gaelic uisce beatha, “water of life,” as Latin aqua vitae). Jameson and Bushmills are the go-to choices, while the Modern Urban Gentleman recommends Redbreast. Distilled spirits haven’t had nearly the storied history of beer (or wine). Distillation as a practice — that is: boiling out the different parts of a chemical solution, in this case to get all the alcohol into one container — may be only as old as about the 13th century, where it was done in Italy. Back then, these beverages were largely made in monasteries and used as medicinal anesthetic and antiseptic. Think rubbing alcohol. It didn’t take long to become recreation, however.

Beer and wine can only reach alcohol levels of about 20 percent, maximum, before the yeast starts to die off faster than it poops. Distilled liquor (from Latin liquere, “to be liquid”), made of barley (whiskey), potatoes (vodka), sugarcane (rum), wine (brandy), and other produce, can get much more alcoholic than that.

A brief side note about the nomenclature for alcohol levels, because it’s interesting: We typically use ABV — alcohol by volume — these days, because it’s useful and easy. However, you may have heard the term “proof” to refer to this as well. The term comes from 18th-century British naval convention, when sailors might have been paid in rum. In order to determine that the bottles were alcoholic “enough,” some of the liquor was set afire. If it burned, meaning it was at least 57 percent (four-sevenths) alcoholic, it was “proved.” Therefore, 100 proof meant four parts alcohol per seven. Since then, the term has gone out of fashion everywhere except the United States, where we use it, largely for style purposes, to mean twice the alcohol percentage (i.e. 80 proof means 40 percent ABV).

So, no matter what you’re drinking tonight, remember to be safe, raise a glass to the departed, and keep away from snakes!

What is it good for? War, archery to win wives

War. War never changes. Or so says Ron Perlman at the start of the Fallout video game, anyway. Syria is embroiled in all-out civil war, Russia is on the brink of rampaging through Ukraine, and Venezuela is newly plagued by violent unrest. War is something that permeates human history and leaves scars, both physical and cultural, in its wake.

While we’re all quite aware how poorly real people deal with war, maybe we can learn something from the myths and legends about how to resolve our differences in a better way. Let’s find out.

The fall of Camelot

Ah, the nobility and honour (English spelling intentional) of the chivalric court of King Arthur (“Arthur” possibly means “bear king” in Old Irish). The golden age of Britain, when Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table slew ferocious creatures like boar demigods and dragons, and sought to engender unity and goodwill among men. Surely these paragons of virtue can tell us something about how to conduct just wars and strive for peace.

Yeah, it’s a great thought, but these guys were as bloodthirsty as anybody else. Arthur reportedly conquered Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, took Gaul from the Romans, and ran roughshod over the Saxons that tried to invade. When he had to march out to defend Gaul from the Romans who wanted it back, he left his nephew (or possibly his bastard son) Mordred in charge of Camelot. When he returned, Mordred had stolen his wife, Guinevere, and usurped the throne. There was another battle among the family at Camlann (which could be a word derived from “Camelot”), and both kings died there, or maybe Arthur escaped to Avalon (which could also be a word derived from “Camelot”) to recuperate.

What can we learn about war from these noble knights? Mostly that you shouldn’t trust family members with your crowns. But, y’know, d’urrr. Moving on.

The battle of Troy

No other mythical battle has received quite as much cultural exposure in this country than the battle of Troy (Greek Ἴλιον, or Ilion — now you know why Homer called his poem The Iliad). There are movies and retellings and Wishbone episodes — you name it. We all know how it goes. Trojan prince Paris names Aphrodite the prettiest goddess, so she makes Grecian princess Helen fall in love with him. Helen’s husband Menelaus and his brother King Agamemnon (“very steadfast”) get some Greeks together to go burn their topless towers, or some junk.

After a 10-year siege, including lots of heroics and human sacrifices and dead warriors, Odysseus (obviously the root of our word “odyssey”) carts out his big wooden horse and the Trojans take it into the city, accepting it as a gift to the victors. Greeks pour out in the middle of the night and open the gates, and the rest is a slaughter. Troy is razed to the ground. Pretty much all the remaining Greeks get killed on the way home, though, save Odysseus the wise, who has a very eventful journey and has to win his wife back in an archery contest when he finally returns to Ithaca.

So, what can we learn from the Trojan War? Maybe that you shouldn’t commit genocide just because your wife runs off with another man? Also, it’s okay to look a gift giant-wooden-horse in the mouth.

Mahabharata

The “great tale of the Bharata dynasty” is the longest poem ever written, consisting of about 1.8 million words (or over 7,000 pages — twice the length of all of the Song of Ice and Fire novels so far put together). It’s a Hindu holy book, filled with philosophical and religious instruction about the gods and living nobly, but the story it tells is that of the Kurukshetra War that took place sometime in the 1000s BC, beginning the fourth and final age of mankind, the age of Kali.

The war was fought between two sets of cousins, the Kaurava and Pandava princes. More family trouble. Basically, this guy named King Shantanu falls for a girl who already has a child. They have two sons together who inherit the throne, but both die childless. The girl’s first kid, Vyasa, beds some of the former queens of his half brothers and two sons come out of it: Dhritarashtra (king of Kuru, hence the Kauravas) and Pandu (hence, Pandavas). Pandu gets the throne, but then his son bets his kingdom in a crooked dice game with his cousin and loses everything. After the cheating is found out, war happens.

The Bhagavad Gita, probably one of the most famous works of Hindu religion/mythology, concerns one of Pandu’s semi-divine children, Arjuna, who balks at the idea of fighting his own family. Krishna, one of the avatars (incarnations, from the Sanskrit avatāra, “descent”) of the god Vishnu, convinces him to fight, as it is his duty to uphold the law and serve his royal father.

(Arjuna, point of interest, also wins his wife Draupadi in an archery contest, in which he wields a heavy steel bow and shoots a target shaped like the eye of a big fish. What is it with people winning wives by shooting? Wasn’t that also the deal in Disney’s Brave?)

Anyway, the Pandavas eventually win out, though the battle only leaves 10 surviving warriors in the aftermath.

So, what can we learn from the Kauravas and the Pandavas about warfare? Probably a lot of things, but mostly that you should never bet your kingdom in a dice game. I swear, even Richard would have put up his kingdom for a horse that one time. Bad policy.

So there you have it. Legendary wars are a lot like real world ones, with death and sorrow being the primary leavings. Justice only ever prevails at great cost, and virtue is mostly rewarded with a quick, clean death rather than one drawn out and terrible. If the ancient heroes rarely live through their wars, why do we suppose we will live through ours?

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