So happy to read of yellow thingies. I'm copying your Thingummy too, John. Except I keep my stuff in blue thingies. Is this a cultural divide thingie?

Thanks all. This is good wit for Sunday!

Charlotte

Okay - I'll play the heavy. John, you're a wonderful and amusing poet, and a fine old fellow, and a maddening Tory, and everything in between - but you're also abusing some very sensible Sphere guidelines by posting one of your poems in General Talk, and somebody's gotta say something.

The problem is that if John Whitworth or anybody else wants to put up a poem on General Talk, than anybody can put up their poem, there are enough members who would jump at the opportunity, and the joint would become a vanity site/chat room. And since we can't have a rule that says "No posting on General Talk unless you're lovable and irascible old John Whitworth, or somebody of equal stature," there is one that says, "...you may only post your own poems in the workshop forums and nowhere else..." and it's [posted right at the top of General Talk and numerous other places. And, entertaining as that particular poem may be, it's a rule that makes sense for the overall good and functioning of the Sphere.

Michael,

You're quite correct, of course, and whilst I agree that John is indeed wonderful I've done the necessary and deleted the poem.

Jayne

Foiled again!

Irascible, moi? I wouldn't dream of treading on your toes, old thing. As for a Tory, certainly I am a Tory. Is it really maddening to be at one with Edmund Burke and David Hume? Rather than J.J. Rousseau and Tom Paine, I mean.

I don't understand American politics at all. Republican? Democrat? Seem much the same to me. Is Kennedy better than Nixon? What at? Kennedy started the Vietnam War and Nixon ended it.

Well, yes, John, Kennedy started it, but in a relatively small way. He couldn't have known the monstrous thing it would become under Johnson - from 16,000 American "advisors" in 1963 to 550,000 combat troops in early 1968. And yes, Nixon ended it, but on shameful and despicable terms that made a mockery of all those who had died in the war.

Nixon also initiated the infamous Southern Strategy, luring all the Dixiecrats who opposed desegregation into the GOP; talk about taking a scorpion to your bosom. But he did some good, too, I'll give him that.

Ed

He couldn't have known, Brian. Why couldn't he have known? He started a war in a small way. But that's the way wars start. And since America lost, the terms would always be bad terms. You get good terms only if you win.

Err ... do wars usually start in a small way? WWI? WWII?

In any case, it wasn't yet a war in Kennedy's time, and he couldn't have known that a few thousand advisers would turn into half-a-million soldiers, because he got assassinated long before it happened. Nor could he have known that America would eventually lose what became a war after his death. (Actually, they didn't lose - Nixon just pulled out, like the bishop having second thoughts about the actress.) And it's not even entirely true that he started it all; he inherited a "situation" from the French.

While I am not an unconditional fan of Kennedy, I don't think it's fair to blame the dead for the fuck-ups perpetrated by the living who came after them.

"Do wars usually start in small ways," I mean, Brian, that is almost beyond funny and quotable, especially from someone who tries to back himself up by talking history.

Wars start in the absolute smallest of ways, you can quote me.

ps, I'm perplexed by your war statement, Brian, have you not read E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime?

Maybe you were being ironic?