Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History
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BE P.C.
The Romany aren’t as persecuted today as they have been in the past (at least, not in the U.S.), but stereotyping of the Romany still exists. You can even find some remnants in everyday speech. Anytime you say that someone has “gypped” you—that is, cheated or deceived you—you’re using a racial slur: “gyp” comes from “gypsy.” You probably didn’t know that. Well, now you do.
NEW AGE GYPSY?
Admiring their nomadic, property-eschewing style as a type of independence, New Agers have latched onto gypsies, publishing books on so-called “gypsy” lore, legend, even medicine. Here at BRI, we have to agree with a contemporary Rom who writes, “There are four hundred books on the gypsies, but in all, not more than ten of which tell us anything new or true about them.” Some people are just skeptical. . .
Frederick Douglass named himself for a character in a Sir Walter Scott poem.
MR. SAM, THE WHISKEY MAN
* * *
Samuel Bronfman knew how to make great whiskey, but more importantly, he knew how to sell it during prohibition.
Most of us know the big American tycoons of the 19th Century—Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and J. P. Morgan. One 20th Century Canadian tycoon positioned his family up there with the most successful: Mr. Sam, the Whiskey Man.
STARTING WITH HIS SHIRT
Mr. Sam was Samuel Bronfman, third son of a poor Jewish immigrant to Canada from southern Russia in the late 19th Century. Like many fellow immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Bronfmans came with little more than the shirts on their backs. The family traveled to Canada’s prairies to rebuild their lives and, if they got some “mazel” (that’s Yiddish for “luck”), maybe they’d prosper.
WELCOME TO THE HOTEL MANITOBA
In 1903 the family used savings to purchase a small-town hotel in rural Manitoba, then a second in Saskatchewan. But by 1912, when Sam was 23 years old, the family used profits from the first two hotels, and bought a Winnipeg hotel to operate. The hotels really made their money from liquor sales, and temperance crusades were widespread in every Canadian province except Quebec. Mr. Sam saw legal problems coming. He started moving a step ahead of the regulators—and he stayed there.
YOU’VE GOT MAIL
In 1916 when Prohibition was enacted across Canada, except in Quebec, Mr. Sam (a step ahead) was set up in (guess where?) Montreal, Quebec. Local prohibition in Canada was strictly enforced in the provinces, but liquor trade between the Canadian provinces was federal and legal. Mr. Sam legally sold liquor to thirsty souls in prohibition-fettered provinces. He sold it from Montreal by mail-order. His business boomed, aided by the government.
The first language of African-American heroine Sojourner Truth was Dutch.
DOCTOR FEELGOOD
When the mail-order loophole closed, Mr. Sam was still a step ahead. By then he had a wholesale drug company, which was already doing business in various “liquor-based elixirs.” Booze for “medicinal purposes” was legal across Canada. One doctor in British Columbia reportedly averaged 4,100 prescriptions monthly.
HERE’S TO YOU, MR. VOLSTEAD
When Prohibition came to the United States in 1919, Mr. Sam was ready. He’d established a string of “export houses” and warehouses along the Canadian side of the Great Lakes and across the prairies. American wholesale buyers would come to Canada, pay their money, and take delivery on the Canadian side. The Bronfmans paid the appropriate money in taxes to Canadian governments, which fully endorsed export sale of liquor. Where the liquor ended up wasn’t Bronfmans or Canada’s responsibility.
OFFSHORE BANKING
Naturally, there was opposition, since Bronfman was going against the Prohibition law. Based in Montreal, the whiskey man foresaw closure of the prairie and Great Lakes “export houses.” American pressure and enforcement efforts were making business difficult. So Mr. Sam exported his liquor with a tiny French protectorate, the island of St. Pierre off Newfoundland. From there the (laundered) liquor went south. In 1923, more than 500,000 cases of liquor, mostly whiskey, went through St. Pierre. One thing you can say for Sam, he had plenty of chutzpah.
THE LOUISVILLE SLUG
By the 1920s the Bronfmans were major players in the international liquor trade. In Yiddish, “bronf-man” means “whiskey man,” and Sam’s name was proving prophetic. By 1923 he was blending house brand whiskey, and buying a Louisville distillery that was shipped, piece by piece, to Montreal.
BECOMING KOSHER
In 1928, the Bronfmans bought a financially troubled Canadian distillery, Joseph E. Seagram & Sons. Mr. Sam was now poised for the end of Prohibition, figuring that he needed years of lead time to properly age his whiskey, and be ready when legal markets opened. In 1935, barely two years after the end of Prohibition, Seagram’s brands sold more than a million cases in the United States alone. They continue to be a world sales leader.
When the NAACP was founded in 1909, its only black officer was its newspaper editor.
THE WHISKEY MAVEN
Mr. Sam studied to become a whiskey-making maven to ensure the Bronfman name was associated with quality. Sam directed the process of making his whiskey as well as directing the Bronfman business empire all his life.
THE SHIRT OFF HIS BACK
In 1939 Sam was elected chairman of the Canadian Jewish Congress, which he ran in as hands-on a manner as he did his liquor business. The Jewish Congress became a powerful political lobby, and still is today. (The Jewish Congress was recently a major player in forcing Swiss banks to return stolen accounts to Holocaust victims.) Sam’s newfound talent—fundraising—generated tens of millions of dollars for Jewish causes. Mr. Sam once handed back a check for $250,000 with the scornful comment, “Get serious!” Then raised $25 million.
A FAMILY AFFAIR
When Mr. Sam died in 1971 at the age of 82, his two sons were already involved in the business. Mies van der Rohe designed the famous Seagram Building in New York City. Before the end of the century, the Bronfman Empire had expanded to include multimillion-dollar real-estate holdings, a substantial share of Dupont, and major interest in Universal Studios. Mr. Sam’s family, thanks to his chutzpah, didn’t have to worry about the shirts on their backs.
THANK YOU SIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?
The delegates at the American Constitutional Convention had more than the country’s well-being in mind when they were preparing the Constitution. A party bill from two days before the official signing shows the boys—only 55 of them, mind you—made quick work of 156 bottles of liquor, including eight bottles of whiskey.
In his 90s, civil rights leader W. E. B. DuBois joined the American Communist Party.
THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS: KOREA
* * *
A groundbreaking conflict (remember, we can’t call it a “war”) that brought us a lot of now-familiar phrases.
The Korean War was the first conflict for which an international organization recommended the use of force; the first war that couldn’t be called a war because Congress never declared it to be one; and the first war in which jet fighters and helicopters were widely used.
bamboo curtain
Coined by Time magazine in 1949, it refers to the barrier of mistrust between China and its allies on the one hand and the non-Communist nations of Asia and the West on the other. The bamboo curtain was a counterpart to the “Iron Curtain” between the Soviets and the West.
police action
When communist North Korea attacked Haesong, South Korea, in June 1950, the United Nations demanded the attackers withdraw completely. When that demand was ignored, the Security Council decided to send in the troops. The U.N. didn’t have a police force as such, but recommended that member nations take action, and 30 of them agreed to do so. President Harry Truman called out U.S. air and sea forces. He was acting without a vote of Congress because he was responding to a security measure recommended by the U.N. At a press conference, a reporter asked the president if the war could be called a police action under the United Nations
’s supervision, and Truman agreed that it could.
“Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”
The U.N. instructed its forces only to expel the aggressors and to do nothing more. Supplies were flowing to the Communists from Manchuria, behind the Chinese border, but the U.N. troops were not permitted to bomb enemy bases, airstrips, or supply centers because it might provoke an all-out war with the Soviet Union. Commander in chief General Douglas MacArthur voiced his frustration loudly and publicly. In response, President Truman replaced him with General Matthew B. Ridgway—in effect ending MacArthur’s military career. In a farewell speech to Congress, the general quoted a barracks song about old soldiers like himself.
Booker T. Washington was the first black person on a U.S. stamp.
to bug out
The term originated during World War II, but in Korea it acquired enormous currency. To bug out didn’t just mean a retreat or withdrawal, but a fast pulling out, to avoid being killed or captured. Since the war it’s been used more loosely for any rapid departure.
airstrike
The widespread use of jet fighters was new in this war, giving rise to the term airstrike, for attacks on enemy positions.
chopper
Helicopters saw a lot of action, too, and were nicknamed choppers, probably from the “chop-chop” noise made by helicopter rotors.
buy the farm
An air war called for training flights, generally carried out in American rural areas. When an air force training flight crashed on a farm, the farmer could sue the government for damages sufficient to pay off his mortgage and thus buy the farm outright. Since the pilot in such a crash usually died, he “bought the farm” with his life.
eyeball to eyeball
But Korea was primarily a ground war. When MacArthur’s headquarters sent a dispatch to the Twenty-fourth Regiment to ask if they had contact with the enemy, they responded, “We is eyeball to eyeball.” The message was widely quoted, and a decade later it was used with reference to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Cold War threatened to become a hot one.
M.A.S.H.
While attempts at peace negotiations went on for more than a year, some four hundred thousand casualties were inflicted on U.N. troops. Treating casualties was the job of the mobile army surgical hospital, or M.A.S.H., which inspired a motion picture and long-running television series of the same name.
Albert Einstein’s brain was left in some mason jars behind a cooler in a doctor’s office.
hooch
As in all wars, there was fraternization with the local populace. From it came the use of hooch for a peasant shack or hut, or any place where a serviceman might set up housekeeping with a Korean woman. The word comes from the Japanese uchi, for “house,” and was also extended to mean a bunker or other front-line living quarter. Later, it was widely used during the Vietnam War.
brainwashing
The sick and wounded who were taken prisoner by the Chinese were subjected to brainwashing to indoctrinate them with Communist beliefs. The technique involved both physical and mental torture to break down a soldier’s loyalties and family ties. The word itself is a translation from a Chinese term for “thought reform,” and the effectiveness of the technique was shockingly demonstrated during prisoner-of-war exchanges when a number of American soldiers said they did not wish to be repatriated. Since then, the term is used to mean changing someone’s outlook or opinions, usually by underhanded means.
Christine Ammer’s book, Fighting Words, explores the
linguistic legacy of armed conflicts over the centuries,
from biblical times to the present.
CASUALTIES
The Korean War took the lives of nearly 4 million Korean people (the majority, North Koreans). That’s 10% of the population at the time.
Chinese people were the next biggest losers, with about 1 million casualties.
Nearly 55,000 Americans died in the conflict.
Tennessee Williams died after he choked on a nose-spray bottle cap.
BEST CRACKPOT RELIGIOUS LEADER: RASPUTIN
* * *
Grigory Rasputin was his own walking warning label.
Rasputin was the wrong guy at the right place at the wrong time. At the beginning of the 20th century, Imperial Russia was like a Jenga tower with one supporting strut too few. Rasputin didn’t cause the czar to fall, but he sure helped to push.
THEY DON’T CALL HIM THAT FOR NOTHING
The name “Rasputin,” wasn’t his name, it was his condition: in Russian, it means “debauched one,” and it was given to him after he built up a reputation, at a young age, for having a way with the ladies. You would think that being known as “Rasputin” would be a detrimental sort of thing—I mean, just imagine trying to meet people here if your name was “Greg Pervert.”
HE CHANGES HIS WAYS (AS IF)
Rasputin experienced a religious conversion at the age of 18, which one could normally assume would have gotten him and his skirt-chasing ways sorted out. Au contraire. First, he joined a sect known as “Khlysty,” which translates, roughly, as “the Flagellants.” Not a good first step. Later he chose to pursue the closeness to God that only comes through what Rasputin described as “holy passionness,” which could only be reached through sheer sexual exhaustion. This provided Rasputin the theological rationale he needed to do whatever he wanted to do with women.
MISTER ST. PETE
Fast forward to 1903. Rasputin is the toast of the St. Petersburg movers and shakers, who, with the spiritual dilettantism that inflicts the bored upper classes everywhere, regarded him the way celebrities in the 1960s regarded their swami. Sure, Rasputin was illiterate and he only bathed once a month, but there sure was something about him.
The day JFK was killed in Dallas, Richard Nixon was across town at a Pepsi convention.
THE TOP OF THE SOCIAL LADDER
Within a couple of years, Rasputin had found his way to the Czar Nikolas II and Czarina Alexandra, and he endeared himself to them by easing the pain of their hemophiliac son (historians think by a form of hypnosis). He also told them that his destiny was now tied to theirs; without him, they were doomed. The czar, never the world’s most courageous person, kept him around.
This is when things got bad. By day, Rasputin was the czar’s spiritual adviser; by night Rasputin wallowed in the orgy pit. People complained. The czar had them transferred to Siberia.
HE’S OUT, HE’S IN
Finally the Prime Minister presented the czar with a formal report on Rasputin’s extracurricular activities. The czar booted Rasputin for a couple of months, but the czarina would have none of that. Rasputin was back, and the best the czar could do was shrug and regard Rasputin as his wife’s pet.
THE CZAR GOES TO WAR
World War I broke out, and the czar, perhaps wanting to feel like he actually was in charge of something, went to command the army in the field. The czarina was left to tend to internal affairs, and stop that snickering. Rasputin was in the background, advising the empress. His advice on political matters was just about as helpful as you might expect any advice coming from an ill-educated, over-sexed, religious wacko might be.
IT’S A DIRTY JOB. . .
The Russian nobles, perhaps suspecting that the Proletariat Revolution was on its way and that Rasputin’s “advice” wasn’t going to do much to help the nobles keep their lands or their heads, decided to get Rasputin out of the way.
THE SUCKER WON’T DIE!
And thus it was in late December 1916 that Rasputin found himself at the home of Prince Feliks Yusupov, lured there by the promise that he’d meet someone’s very attractive wife (no, really). They fed him poison in tea and in cakes. He gobbled it down and didn’t blink. Then they shot him and cut off his instrument of theological enlightenment. (No, not his brain. Yeesh.) He managed to launch himself out the door. They shot him again, wrapped him in a carpet, and heaved his body into a river. At which point, of course, he died. Let’s see you wiggle ou
t of a wet carpet.
As part of MK-ULTRA, the CIA tested LSD as a mind-control weapon.
JUST LIKE HE SAID
But he was true to his word; the Romanovs and the rest of the nobility were all dead within a couple of years. The moral of this particular story is, if you’re ever the emperor of the largest country on earth, and a strange-looking monk comes by and offers to heal your hemophiliac son, run. Just run. No good will come of it. It’s a valuable lesson for us all.