More on old standards and what the tell us. Bad behavior. Inappropriate behavior. Mischaracterization and Overreaction

The concept for this post came due to a discussion following the first accusation, which at that time was unspecified against Matt Lauer.  Some of the denizens of the house spoke up defending him, noting that there can be false accusers.  Others said he had to go.

And, to break it down further, Lauer's defenders were the female residents of the house. Those who said he had to go were the male resident.

I need to note here, right from the onset, that I'm not trying to excuse caddish, brutish, rapine,  or generally bad behavior.  But I'm trying to refocus the discussion a bit on some things that have been missed and give it a degree or proportionality.

Anyhow, the female expression of doubt might say something about this matter having perhaps gone too far.

I'd like to fully claim that this is one of my "you heard it hear first times" but the stellar blawg Above The Law got to part of this topic first, before I had a chance, quoting from A Man For All Seasons when it did.  Specifically, it quoted from this oft quoted scene:

More: And go he should if he was the Devil himself until he broke the law.
Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, not God’s – and if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake.

This was in reaction to the story on Garrison Keillor, although Lauer was noted in the text of  the entry, where the author of that blawg entry noted, after setting apart examples such as Harvey Weinstein's, that:

Perhaps the best recent example of this overreaction occurred just yesterday, when Minnesota Public Radio not only severed all ties with Garrison Keillor, but took extraordinary efforts to basically erase him and his work from public existence. And it did this based on an allegation that, although it has not been made public, seems to have been made by a single person, and, if you credit Keillor’s explanation at all, does not appear to have actually involved sex.

And so now we have the stories of Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor.

After pondering this most recent set of accusations, I think I'm with Above The Law, although my reasons depart somewhat from his.  His is set out mostly in terms of overreaction and the defense of the accused, and they're well worth reading.  He raises really good points.  I'll leave those points to his blog and instead to my frequent theme of what these events teach us about standards.

To expand out a bit in other areas, however, the reaction to Keillor's incident, if there even is one, seems to be a gross overreaction.  Keillor himself put it well in a comment he at first posted and then later withdrew, that being:

It’s astonishing that 50 years of hard work can be trashed in a morning by an accusation,” he said in a Facebook post Wednesday evening. “I always believed in hard work and now it feels sort of meaningless. Only a friend can hurt you this badly. I think I have to leave the country in order to walk around in public and not feel accusing glances.

There's never been any suggestion that Keillor is a Harvey Weinstein and there isn't now.  Nonetheless Minnesota Public Radio is going so far as to actually change the name of the radio show that Keillor once hosted and founded.  Truly, that's extreme, and particularly so given that the supposed incident seems to be truly innocent, and indeed the fact that it has become an incident suggest that we're now at the outer limits of what can suddenly be used to publicly trash a person.  Apparently he only went to pat somebody on the back and his hand slipped, a long time ago, to the embarrassment of both Keillor and the subject, who he claims remained his friend right up until the lawyer's letter came.

That's punishing somebody for an accident.  Merely contacting a female in some forbidden zone doesn't make the contact an act of hostile sexual aggression.  Indeed, if it is, there are now certain occupations and endeavors that will have to be segregated by gender, as indeed, they once were.  In our state, for example, there's was a high school stand out wrestler who could never place in state wrestling as he felt that his Mormon faith precluded him from wrestling girls, and there are a few girl wrestlers.  Frankly, I admired him for the courage of his convictions.  But if this is now the standard, i.e., if we have a new Keillor Rule, don't we have to re-segregate all sports?

Indeed, we'd practically have to re-segregate all education.  Passing in the halls, for example, now takes on a new aspect of hazard, at least for me.  And I'm absolutely convinced that its' going to be a very short passage of time in this current atmosphere until we get a "he looked at me" as the claimed assault.  Sounds extreme, I know, but it's coming.

There might be a lot of Keillor level accusations going around right now.  Truly, is an incident of such low weight really worth hiring a lawyer over, let alone firing somebody for in this context?

Keillor, I'd note, had issued a written statement somewhat defending, in a way, Al Franken.  His comment was that it would be absurd for Al Franken to resign over what was basically sophomoric gross humor, referring to the Tweeden incident (alone, I believe).  I'm not so sure that Keillor isn't right, taking at least that singular event,even though I noted the disparity in treatment he was at first receiving in the press as compared to others from the political right.  That seems to have stopped.

Note that this doesn't condone the behavior. But the question is whether or not its really a sexual assault, the way most people would view it if not engaged in a frenzy of public condemnation.  I don't really think so.  Actually, its the sort of gross humor we'd expect out of Saturday Night Live, from which Franken hails.   And it might make him a personal creep. But would you fire him for it?  Maybe. But if he's essentially self employed, or the employee of the electorate, should he have to resign?  I don't think so.  If voters of his district are sufficiently angered, well they can fire him next go around.

Which raises a certain irony we'll briefly divert from the main point of this essay to note.  Franken comes up from a comedy medium which is pretty far left wing and not very funny.  It's long used gross humor, and now he's being hung for gross humor.  Keillor, whose writing I like and whose radio show I also liked, is a figure of the political left and now he's sort of ironically a victim of a political standard that's from the political left that's groping for the the standard that he romanticized about in his radio shows and writings but didn't really adhere to himself. There's some sort of weird irony at work in this. Franken, now that his crudeness is revealed, can only retreat to a standard upheld by people he's generally socially opposed.  Keillor would really be better off visiting with Father Wilmer from his show.  Not that Keillor is justly accused (I don't think he is) or that Franken is some sort of sexual monster, he doesn't appear to be.

This gets into something I noted just the other day, but it's now being addressed by syndicated columnist Mona Charen.  At least a little bit of the male bad behavior problem here has been preserved and amplified by the feminist movement having been co-opted by the Sexual Revolution, which did it, and women, no favors.  It's been bizarre.

I noted this in my screed of earlier this week entitled  The Amazing Density of the Reaction to the Abusers and the fellow traveling of Cosmopolitan and Playboy. I don't intend to repeat that here, but what that pointed out is that the feminist movement went from one that was really in favor of full political and social rights for women, and which worried about their workplace safety, to one that adopted the position, or was co-opted into it, that sexual libertinism was somehow essential for womanhood.  That is, the movement went from trying to require men to live up to their declared standards of conduct and afford equal treatment to women, to one which went to demanding that women be regarded as routinely acting every bit as bad, sexually, as men at their worst. That made meaningless sex, backed by up free access to lethal redress for the natural byproducts of it, the feminine standard.  Now, to some degree, some of the women (but not all by any means) who are now complaining are victims of that decreace of the standards into the mud. Some, almost certainly most, are innocent victims of the changed standard, although some have participated in it, and some are complaining of the natural results of a standard they embraced.

Charlen states in  her article:

Like the new left they emerged out of, feminists joined hands with sexual revolutionaries in rejecting all of the old sexual mores — including marriage. "Destroy the patriarchy," they chanted. They agreed with the Playboy Foundation (a contributor to the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund) that linking sex with morality at all was an outdated idea.

I pointed out this link just the other day.  I'd go on to note that Charen is blunter about what I've been somewhat subtle about.  A lot of the current complaints we're hearing range from "ungentlemanly conduct" to a complaint that the woman didn't feel right about sex outside of marriage and felt that the man vaguely forced her into it.

Charen went on:

And so professional feminists actually helped midwife the loose sexual culture we have today. Arguably, this culture has permitted men to behave even more shabbily toward women than the old mores did. This may sound odd, but I think it's true. Even the sexual harassment has become grosser than it was a few decades ago. I know of a few women who faced harassment in the 1970s and 1980s (myself included), but honestly, it was practically as polite as a Victorian drawing room compared with the stories we are hearing now about Louis C.K. or Harvey Weinstein or Mark Halperin. Womanizers used to at least make an effort at seduction. Now they seem to act out repellent narratives from porn movies.

There's an extremely important aspect of this that seems to have been missed in all the recent discussions.  Prior to the Sexual Revolution and the feminist movement's unholy alliance with libertinism, men and women knew where the lines were.  The lines were crossed, but they were definitely there.  Married men instantly crossed a line if they did anything untoward with a woman who was not their spouse and adultery, a word that now seems old fashioned, was totally disapproved of.  It happened, but that these were line crossing events were clear without question.  Women who did the same were also across that line.

Moreover, a woman, and it was more often women than men, who had sex or even came on to a married man were regarded as dirt by society at large and by other women most particularly.

But it went further than that.  Sex outside of marriage was frowned upon society wide.  It happened, to be sure, and males were more likely to engage in it than females.  That was the double standard so widely talked about, but what's important to note there is that in neither gender was it really approved of.  It may have been somewhat winked at in regards to men (but not if they were in some demographics, such as the Catholic, Orthodox, Orthodox Jewish, etc, demographics), and it was universally condemned in women, but that the line existed is clear.  Indeed, had the original direction of the feminist movement been adhered to, the logical result would have been to condemn men as much for this conduct as women.

Moreover, there was a fairly clear "keep your hands to yourself" rule that operated amongst unmarried men and women and most definitely in regards to married men and women. That some people violated this in one fashion or another is also clear, but there were reputational consequences.  men who were "grabby" were marked by women in that fashion.  Close boyfriends or girlfriends had more license, under consent, but only if they were fairly close.  There was not an expectation of anything more.  Once again, what is important here is that there were fairly clear lines that existed, and for which there were no good reasons whatsoever for departure from, which operated to protect women more than they protected men.

Charen further notes;

Our 50-year excursion into sexual excess may yet provoke a counter-revolution. Women are clearly finding their voices, and men (at least many men) are recognizing how dishonorable and grubby this behavior is.

But, it should be noted, both genders are groping back to find where the lines are. And what turns out to be the case is that the desired line seems to b e the old line that was there in the first place.

And Charen further importantly noted in her article:

Women are often victims, but they are not angels. Yes, powerful men abuse their positions to get sex. But any serious reckoning with sexual misbehavior has to take account of the women who use their sexuality to gain advantage, too. Just as everyone knows men who have harassed, they also know women who have slept their way to the top.

Indeed, that's true, and we'll get to Matt Lauer now in this context.

Lauer has come out admitting inappropriate behavior, but already one of the accusers has revealed that the inappropriate behavior was when she was called to his office and had sex with him, she claims. If that's right, that's not rape under the classic definition and might be only under the current frenzied definition. That's a two way consensual immoral act.

At least its not rape in the classic sense.  In the modern sense there will be a lot of discussion about "she was afraid of her job" and the like, and the accuser has already claimed this. But this has never been an excuse for an immoral act. A person can't claim that they went along with other bad acts as they were afraid for their job.  Probably a lot of people do, but that's not a justification for the act, unless we're willing to really broadly excuse a lot of conduct we never have in the past.

And less it come up, this shows how this is not "about power".  Using power is one thing, but that doesn't make the use of it about it.  It's not surprising that creeps like Weinstein used their position to pressure women for sex.  Maybe Lauer did as well. That makes them creeps.  It doesn't necessarily make them rapists however. Force makes a person a rapist.

All of which takes us back to the old standard.  Knowing when to say no goes a long way, even if you are afraid to, and even if you don't.. And knowing that demanding sex is wrong goes a long way too.  What appears clear is that Lauer is accused of immorality, but if that's the new standard, let's remember it was the old one.  Where is the line drawn?  You can't draw it retroactively and you can't apply it to some if not all.

And so all the old standards that existed for a reason suddenly reappear as shadows.  Those shadows existed for a real reason.  Standards laughed at by "progressives' that argued they were mere relics of an unenlightened age suddenly are taken back off the shelf and applied by people who can't remember where the standards came from or how they were to be applied.  Adultery turns out to be actually wrong.  Keeping your hands to yourself once again is the rule to be applied.  Hefner and Brown should be revealed for the perverted agents of immorality and decay they were.  But we likely wont' get quite that far. 

If we did, it'd clear up where the lines are. But it would also impose responsibility where it is now lacking, in the individual. Are we going to go back to go forward. We should, but that would require us to admit that we were wrong in the first place.

Well, perhaps, not so much we.  Actually.  Fallout from the 1960s and 1970s again.

Mexican raid at Indio Camp

On this day in 1917 unidentified Mexican forces crossed the border near Buena Vista, Chihuahua and engaged elements of the 8th Cavalry for five hours.  American troops crossed the border in the fight and burned Buena Vista to the ground.

The event is one of those specifically referenced as qualifying the U.S. participants to receive the Mexican Service Medal, although the event is much less well known that one that would occur later that month, on Christmas Day.

The Amazing Density of the Reaction to the Abusers and the fellow traveling of Cosmopolitan and Playboy.

We've been hearing a lot about male bad behavior, starting with the entertainment industry (Cosby, Weinstein, etc) and moving on to politics.  It started, I suppose, with Franken (if we don't count Wiener. . . or Trump . . . or Clinton. . . or Kennedy) and has gone on to John Conyers.  One of the weekend shows discussed it in length, again, and again with women who have suffered abuse.  The discussion was pretty revealing.

Most of that we've been through here before, but one thing that really struck me is that women serving in Congress who were interviewed were all big on the fix.  They're going to have training sessions.

Seriously?

Cokie Roberts expressed the view that nothing was actually going to change.  Whether this is a watershed moment or not, this increadably stupid modern American reaction to this age old bad behaviro is really telling.

Training sessions.

That's dumb.

This is conduct that's been regarded as reprehensible in most societies for eons.  It's certainly always been regarded as deeply immoral in any Christian society, and as my now frequent quoting from the Old Testament in this series of stories shows, it's been regarded as deeply immoral in Jewish culture for millennia.

I'm sure that force upon women hasn't been regard as immoral at all in all cultures, however, at all times, even though there are very certainly non Christian and no Jewish cultures where it would have been also.  Certainly Roman Britain gives us the example of Chiomara who had the head of an offending Roman Centurion cut off so she could return it to her husband and note that he remained the only man who had been intimate with her to be alive.

Maybe Congress staffers could take Chiomara training?

Anyhow, this moronic Congressional reaction says a lot about how far gone we really are in terms of grasping what is really a very simple standard. We've worked so hard to divorce ourselves from the natural law and from any concept of traditional morality, based as it is on religious principals that we've effectively returned to paganistic practices and now wonder why things are so bad.  Moreover, in our confusion, we're trying to create the old standard out of new namby pamby social cloth.

You can't sensitivity train people into what is right and wrong and have them believe it.  It has to have a basis in something.  Otherwise, why not get away with whatever you can?

On this, I recently heard a podcast that had some really interesting revelations about the sad state of things and how we got there.  We've been discussing a lot about the eruption of abuse allegations endured by women recently.  In that context, we've discussed the bizarre groping in the dark for the old standards.  But I haven't looked much at the female role, or those who claim a female role, in the decline of the standards.

Related to this is this fascinating story:

The Cosmo Girl Never Existed | Catholic Answers

Here's the synopsis of it:

Sue Ellen Browder helped sell the sexual revolution. And she, along with many others, lied to do it. Her book, Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement, names names as it tells the heartbreaking tale.

It's a really fascinating story.

One of the things I haven't discussed here, in depth, is the female role in subverting the progress of women and the bizarre way that came about.  In part I haven't discussed it as I don't really know that much about it, the way that I do the male role and the figures in it, such as Hugh Hefner.  Sue Ellen Browder really goes into it, however, and from that we can see how there was a female companion to the destructive role that Hefner and his ilk played in the form of Helen G. Brown and Cosmopolitan magazine and that the image it portrayed was just as big of fraud.  Indeed, Browder confesses that the magazine simply made things up and that she participated in that.

Browder is pretty clearly an unabashed admirer of Betty Frieden in her early days, but maintains, pretty effectively, that the feminist movement was co-opted and that even Frieden, who originally regarded Cosmopolitan as disgusting trash, came around to linking what was a libertine sexual movement completely independent from feminism with what was a women's rights movement.   She maintains, in fact, that it was a tactical move on the part of the libetines.  Indeed, Freiden maintained that feminist movement wasn't about sex and originally had fairly conventional moral views which she never wholly gave up, although under pressure she came around to supporting abortion.  Browder's expose is pretty shocking and shows that the feminist movement could have gone another way, and indeed she sees the women who are pro life today as heirs to the feminist movement.

This isn't intended to be a review of the podcast, but we've delved a lot into this topic, i.e., the roles of men and women and the nature of the relationship between men and women, a lot recently.  There was an aspect of this missing that Browder cover, and that is that the role of women popularized by Playboy and then picked up, in a morphed form, by Cosmopolitan, has been aggressively destructive to women.  It in facts supports the view that abusers today hold of women and helps keep that conduct going on.  It will as long as the image, which was not one women ever wanted, and don't want now, keeps on.

Now, to be fair, Browder discusses at length the horrible work environments that women worked in prior to the rise of the feminist movement.  That's important also as its very easy to either imagine that things have always been as bad as they currently are in the workplace for women, or they are worse than ever.  Neither is true and Browder makes that pretty clear.  A lot gains were in fact made and the workplace is much safer now for women than it used to be.  Abuses haven't stopped, however.

And here's where things circle back around. Women will never be equal in society as long as a pagan concept of their sexuality remains the popular one. Women want it, now, and always.  That's the societal view.  Take any sitcom you watch, or look at the copy of any magazine, etc. and you'll get that message.  The Playboy message was that all women were young, big boobed, dumb, available and sterile.  The Cosmopolitan view was different in only in the message that they were thinner, smarter and really slutty.  Women have had to contend with that expectation every since.  In that context, it's a lot easier for men with Cosby or Weinstein instincts to get away with immoral behavior for a really long time.

So, train up a new standard?

Not hardly.

Acknowledge the old one.  Indeed, the original feminist never intended or desired to abandon it.

North Korea keeps on perfecting its ICBM

Uff, this year won't end soon enough. 

Of course, that takes the naive view that with the end of the year, the end of the year's bad news comes as well.

Probably not.

Anyhow, North Korea has tested an ICBM that can probably hit anywhere in the United States.

Just a few months ago, when the Dear Leader first tested an ICBM the denial of this was so strong that one forum I noted on this drew an immediate response from somebody declaring that North Korea had not developed an ICBM.  Heck, they'd just tested one.

This is a huge, immediate, problem. 

We've ignored this for years and years.  Starting really with Clinton the North Korean progression towards a nuclear weapon, and the capability to deliver it, has been pretty obvious.  Of course, the first Presidents to deal with it, or not, had more of an excuse.  It was further away.  Maybe the whole thing could be diverted.

By President Obama's term it was pretty evident that the crisis was becoming immediate.  Of course, he had plenty of crises on his hands.  And now it's nearly fully developed, and we have President Trump, whom many feel rather uncomfortable with in this context.

Well, this is going to be a test of President Trump, and for that matter the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.  Let's hope we all pass the test, whatever that means.

And the Old Standard Strikes Back

And now Matt Lauer.

Seems like it just won't end.

Coffee

Coffee rationing began in on this day in 1942.

Smiling soldier.  I think he's drinking coffee.  I may have had to volunteer for service (which I likely would have done anyway) just in order to get a cup of coffee.

I would not have liked that.  Coffee roasters were already restricted to 75% of their war time prior average.  This resulted not due to fewer beans being produced during the war.  Not hardly. Rather, it resulted from the fact that this import crop is shipped to the continental United States

I think that's something that we tend not to ponder much. Coffee is a huge American drink, just like tea is a huge British drink, but in neither case do these consuming nations produce the elemental crop locally.  Given that, it's really amazing that either drink has such a hold in the consuming nation.  Indeed, by and large, with some slight exception, its not even grown in the Norther Hemisphere.  Kona coffee, grown in Hawaii, is the only coffee actually grown in the United States, in so far as I'm aware.

Just consider it for a moment.  The bean that is roasted to produce the crop is grown thousands of miles from the continental United States, roasted (often) in the US, and then packaged for sale here.  It's pretty amazing that there's more than a couple of varieties of it, frankly, or that its even affordable.

The Coffee Bearer, by John Frederick Lewis, Orientalist painter.  The same figure was a figure in his painting The Armenian Lady, whose servant she is portrayed as being.

As an aside, the second biggest coffee bean producer in the world (the first is Brazil) is. . . . Vietnam.

One more reason that not having prevailed in the Vietnam War is unfortunate, to say the least.

Well, anyhow, it's not cheap, as any coffee drinker will tell you. But it's not terribly pricey either.

And somehow, it's gone from a few basic brands to a wide variety of specialty brands and brews of every imaginable type and variety.

Coffee varieties have of course always existed.  Interestingly, one of the contenders for oldest coffee brand sold in the United States is Lion Brand which is Kona coffee.  Lion was first sold in the United States, as green coffee beans, in 1864.  Pretty darned early.  Hawaii wasn't an American territory at the time.  Folgers has them beat, however, dating back to 1850.  Hills Brothers dates to 1878.  Maxwell House to 1892.

Arbuckle Coffee, for some reason, was a huge item in the West in the late 1800s, showing how brands come and go.  I've never seen Arbuckles sold today, although it apparently still exists.  The owners of the company, John and Charles Arbuckle, owned a ranch near Cheyenne, although I don't know if that explains the connection with the West, or if perhaps that connection worked the other way around.

Now there's a zillion brands of coffee, many of which I don't recognize, and many which have pretensions towards coffee greatness.  This seems to have come about due to the rise of coffee houses, lead in a major way by Starbucks.  There's a Starbucks on every street corner now, it seems.  I'll be frank that I don't like their coffee much at all.  Too strong, and I like strong coffee.  Anyhow, the many specialty brews that Starbucks makes has spawned many various specialty coffees, or at least different coffees, to the extent to which a person can hardly keep track of it.  Over the weekend I was in City Brew, one of the local coffee houses, as well as Albertsons, where a Starbucks is located, and they both had "Christmas Blends".  How can there be a Christmas blend of coffee?

Chock full o' Nuts, a brand that, as the can indicates, has been around since 1932.  That was the date the company founder changed his nut shops into lunch counters, figuring that they were a better bet during the Great Depression.  I used to drink Chock full o' Nuts when I was in college but stopped as it seemed to have way too much caffeine.

Not that I'm complaining.  I frankly like the vast variety in coffee. And while I'm not inclined to buy something like Starbucks Free Range Easter Island Coffee Licked Gently By Baby Yaks, I will buy peculiar roasts just because the sound interesting. And I tend towards those dark roasts even if I sometimes wish I'd gotten something milder.

And it is interesting to see how coffee houses, following in Starbuck's wake, have popped up everywhere.  Just the other day I bought a sack of Boyer's coffee in the grocery store.  I was aware of Boyers, as they're a Denver brand with a Denver coffee house, but I wasn't aware that you could buy it up here.  Quasi local, as it were.  A great Denver coffee, with some good coffee houses is Dazbog, which plays up the Russian origin of the founders.  One of the independent local coffee houses here sells Dazbog, and its good stuff.  City Brew has outlets here in town, and apparently they're originally from Montana, which they play up with some of their roasts, even though we all know coffee isn't grown in Montana.  I'm told that Blue Ridge Coffee, another local coffee house that sells sacked coffee, is purely local.

And that doesn't cover every coffee house in town.  Quite the evolution when just a decade or so ago you'd have had to go to a conventional cafe and just have ordered the house coffee, whatever that was.  No special roasts or blends.  Just a up of joe.

And I prefer to buy from the locals as well.  Subsidarity in action, I suppose.  Indeed, I'm not told that I can buy Mystic Monk sacked coffee at the Parish Office, and I likely will.

In the grocery store, for the most part, you bought the major brands.  Most of those are still around,  but now you can buy any number of major and minor brands.  I even have a coffee grinder, although that certainly isn't a new invention, although most of the time I buy pre ground coffee.  Indeed, I got the grinder as I bought whole bean coffee by mistake, which I've done from time to time, and I don't want to waste it.

Using coffee grinders, of course, is an odd return to the past. Everything old is new again, sort of.  But the huge variety, of course, is wholly new.

Industrial strength coffee grinder.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Related threads:

Coffee

The Science Behind Coffee and Why it's Actually Good for Your Health

Blog Mirror. A Hundred Years Ago: Keep Coffee Warm with a Thermos

National Coffee Day.

The Joy of Field Rations: Roasting Coffee in the Field

Mid Week At Work: Railhead: Sunrise Train, Torrington Wyoming

Railhead: Sunrise Train, Torrington Wyoming

The early risers.

Thanksgiving 1917

Given the news of the day, it couldn't have been a cheery one.

President Wilson issued a proclamation, as was the custom:

 

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
 It has long been the honored custom of our people to turn in the fruitful autumn of the year in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God for His many blessings and mercies to us as a nation. That custom we can follow now even in the midst of the tragedy of a world shaken by war and immeasurable disaster, in the midst of sorrow and great peril, because even amidst the darkness that has gathered about us we can see the great blessings God has bestowed upon us, blessings that are better than mere peace of mind and prosperity of enterprise.

We have been given the opportunity to serve mankind as we once served ourselves in the great day of our Declaration of Independence, by taking up arms against a tyranny that threatened to master and debase men everywhere and joining with other free peoples in demanding for all the nations of the world what we then demanded and obtained for ourselves. In this day of the revelation of our duty not only to defend our own rights as nation but to defend also the rights of free men throughout the world, there has been vouchsafed us in full and inspiring measure the resolution and spirit of united action. We have been brought to one mind and purpose. A new vigor of common counsel and common action has been revealed in us. We should especially thank God that in such circumstances, in the midst of the greatest enterprise the spirits of men have ever entered upon, we have, if we but observe a reasonable and practicable economy, abundance with which to supply the needs of those associated with us as well as our own. A new light shines about us. The great duties of a new day awaken a new and greater national spirit in us. We shall never again be divided or wonder what stuff we are made of.

And while we render thanks for these things let us pray Almighty God that in all humbleness of spirit we may look always to Him for guidance; that we may be kept constant in the spirit and purpose of service; that by His grace our minds may be directed and our hands strengthened; and that in His good time liberty and security and peace and the comradeship of a common justice may be vouchsafed all the nations of the earth.

Wherefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Thursday, the twenty-ninth day of November next as a day of thanksgiving and prayer, and invite the people throughout the land to cease upon that day from their ordinary occupations and in their several homes and places of worship to render thanks to God, the great ruler of nations.
In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done in the District of Columbia this 7th day of November in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and seventeen and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty-second.

WOODROW WILSON

 The news, overall, was pretty grim:

The concern of what was going on with Russia, as can be seen, was mounting.

So what was Thanksgiving like in 1917 for average Americans?  This item from A Hundred Years Ago gives us a glimpse/  This ran on A Hundred Years Ago prior to the 2017 Thanksgiving.  I'm linking it in now, as the 1917 Thanksgiving was on this day, rather than the slightly earlier day in November we now celebrate it on.  An interesting look at earlier Thanksgivings:

Grandma’s 1914 Thanksgiving

Interesting that goose was the meat of choice.

The Aerodrome: National Aviation History Month

November 27, 2017

National Aviation History Month

Somehow I managed to miss the fact that November is National Aviation History Month.

Something that would have fit in well as a topic here on our blog.

Well, at least there's a little November left anyhow.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 28, 1917.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 28:

1917  Cornerstone laid for the Platte County Library.

I'm not completely certain, but I think that the old library is still there, attached to a much larger more recent structure. That sort of library update is fairly common. The Natrona County Library is the same way.

Libraries have fallen on somewhat hard times in recent years, but they remain a vital part of any community.  Most, indeed nearly any significant library, have updated their services over the years and offer a variety of them, although competing with the home computer is pretty tough.

In smaller communities, they also provide vital meeting room services.  Indeed, I was trying to remember if I've ever been in the Platte County Library.  I don't think so, but the reason I was trying to recall that is because I took a deposition in a southeastern Wyoming library years and years ago.  I'm pretty sure, however, that was the Goshen County Library.  Nonetheless, in smaller towns, finding a space in which to do something like that can be hard, and libraries can fit the bill. By the same token, I've taken a deposition in the Yale Oklahoma library, and there clearly would have been no other place in which to do that.

Anyhow, today is the centennial of the Platte County Library's cornerstone being fixed.

The M4 Sherman gets no love. . . but it should.

 M4 (not M4A1) version of the Sherman tank prior to the elimination of the dual forward firing machineguns that are very rarely sen in photographs.

Listen to this presentation from modern tanker Nick Moran and you'll know why.  It's excellent:

Nick Moran on C-Span on the M4 Sherman.

And then consider his individual presentations on M4s:

Not that it matters.  M4 haters are going to believe all the myths about them as its fun to do.

Okay, I know that some thing that this blog never looks at anything more recent than 1917, unless its really recent, but as people know we stray outside the lines here all the time, and we recently did so with our excellent (if I do say so myself) expose on myths of the Korean War.

In that we addressed the much maligned M4 Sherman tank. Indeed, in the context of the Korean War I've been a bit of a M4 critic myself, but I've conceded in that post that the stats just don't bear up the idea that the M4 was a horrific piece of junk that got  all of its crews killed in Korea.  Indeed, the stats show that the M4 was taking on the T-34/85, which I regard as the best tank of World War Two (Moran does not) and besting it.

And stats are hard to ignore.

But people do anyway.

Now, as I'll note below, I think there some explanations to that which somewhat modified that story, but in general  I agree with Moran's opinion, as is obvious, but I didn't come to it through Moran.  I've long held the opinion that the M4 was a good tank and frankly the best the US could have hoped for during World War Two.  But Moran did add factors to it, such as the ability to load the tank on ships easily, that I had not considered.  My opinions has long been based on something else.

Sherman's function, almost all the times.

The German tanks it opposed were often broken down.

A broken down tank is a worthless hunk of scrap steel.

Nonetheless there are zillions of articles, blog entries and some books that roundly condemn the M4 Sherman.  It's interesting, inf act that there are those who will post the question "why is it so routinely condemned" while other actually act as if they're breaking  new ground on some story.  Consider, for example, this recent article on something called "Military History Now".

Tank Busting – Blowing Up the Myth of the Mighty M4 Sherman

by MilitaryHistoryNow 12 September, 2017 • 21 Comments

“The Battle of the Bulge exposed deficiencies in the M4 so glaringly obvious, what became known as the Sherman Tank Scandal would be splashed across front pages all over the Allied world.”

By Christian M. DeJohn

THE SHERMAN TANK — who hasn’t cheered it in Hollywood epics like A Bridge Too Far, Band of Brothers, or The Pacific? Just when all hope seemed lost, a column of Shermans arrives in the nick of time to save embattled American soldiers. Great cinematic moments like these are spot on, aren’t they? The Sherman was the tank that won the war, right?*

Well, not exactly.

According to British historian Sir Max Hastings, “no single Allied failure had more important consequences on the European battlefield than the lack of tanks with adequate punch and protection.” The Sherman, he added, was one of the Allies’ “greatest failures.”

Well, with all due respect to Mr. DeJohn, and to Sir Max Hastings, one of my favorite military authors, "bull".

 USMC M4A3R3 on Okinawa. The M4A3 had both the 75 and the 76 (which was really a 75) high velocity gun.  This photo provides a good illustration of the way the US had to approach tanks.  It's not like the Germans or the Soviets needed to put tanks on a postage size Pacific island after hauling them half way around the world, is it?

Okay, let's discuss the Sherman a bit.

Before we do, however, let's get a handle on the state of tanks, in very general terms, before World War Two, and into it.

Now, this isn't going to be a "history of tanks, 1919 to 1945".  That would be a 300 page text at least.  No, by general, I mean general.

Generally, there'd been a lot of experimentation with tanks in the decade leading up to World War Two, but the US wasn't one of the nations that was doing the experimenting.  Indeed, our best tank designer of the period, J. Walter Christie, didn't receive any contracts for tanks in the US, or at least none of note.

 You have to love this photograph of J. Walter Christie, famous tank designer.

Now Christie,  like Ferdinand Porsche, was a mechanical and automotive genius, not a tank designer per se, but like Porsche, he turned his attention to tanks.  Heck, it was an interesting fast moving field, so why not?

He worked on neat tank designs all through the 1920s and 1930s and never received a US contract.  His big success, sort of, was the T-34, which did use his suspension, and if you look at it is pretty obviously a Christie tank.

U.S. T3E2 tank.  Nope, we didn't adopt that.  Nor would there have been a really good reason to either.

Soviet pre war BT-7 light tank.  It's a Christie

As this would suggest, while we were basically ignoring tanks, European nations were not, and a lot of various tank designs were out there.  Some were good, some were bad, and hardly anyone really had a concrete idea of exactly how tanks would really be used in the future.  Probably the Soviets had the best grasp on it, quite frankly, leading up to World War Two.  Some American cavalrymen, who basically lacked tanks, grasped it as well.  And Heinz Guderian really grasped it.  He was a German.

German Schnelletruppen, fast troops, who were used to develop German armor tactics before the Germans had armor.

Guderian, and others developed mobile tactics but they really lacked tanks.  It was only in the final run up to World War Two did the Germans acquire really functional tanks.

The Germans started to build tanks by the mid 1930s, but as they had none, and as their production capaciity was very limited, the tanks they built were of limited type and really not all that useufl in real combat.  The first one, the Panzerkampfwagen 1, established the design for most German tanks for the rest of the war, but it only fielded a machinegun for a gun.  Pretty useless.  

Panzer I in Noraway.  Basically, it was a tracked armored car, not a real tank.

The Germans new the Panzer I wasn't great, and rapidly developed it into the Panzer II. But htat tank also was a really light tank.  It was a real tank, however, and the chassis established the basic chassis for most that would come after that. And the first thing to come after it was the Panzer III followed by the Panzer IV

 Panzer IVG.

No matter what people like to think, it was the Panzer III and the Panzer IV, which sported a 75mm gun, that were the real German tanks of World War Two.  They grossly outnumbered anything else thet Germans used, tank wise, and constituted the real armored threat posed by the Germans.

Burning Panzer IV

They were also the basic foundation for nearly everything else that was tank like, or sort of tank like, that the Germans used. As this isn't a history of the zillions of tank like things the Germans used (and I've omitted captured Czech tanks entirely, I'd note) I'll not go into that, other than to note that no matter what an American, English, Canadian, or Soviet soldier was likely to encounter, in terms of German armor, it was probably based on the Panzer III and it likely carried a 75mm rifle at hte most.

And it was a good design.

But it wasn't as good as the T-34. And it wasn't as good as the M4 Sherman.

Indeed, even the rather weird American design the M3 was regarded as pretty effective against the Panzer III and IV, and it doesn't look like it should be.

The M3.  It's weird.

Now, I'm not really going to sit here and praise the M3, which was a real throw back as a design, with its strange side mounted 75mm gun.  About the most that can be said for it, in my view, is that its armor protection was pretty good and that its gun worked well.  But what the real story is on it is that the US, Christie or no, was staring pretty much from scratch and that was a good thing as it turned out.

And it was a good thing as it spared the US from what European nations had to go through.  They all had tanks, but nobody really knew exactly how they'd' be used, so there was, in some countries,  like France, a plethora of tank designs combined with bad doctrine, or in others, like Germany, barely adequate tanks (at first) with good doctrine.

 M3 in British use.  The British used the M3 in combat more than the US, as the M3 was rapidly being replaced by the M4 by the time of Operation Torch.  Be that as it may, the US did still field M3s in North Africa and the Soviet Union used them at least as late as Kursk, the biggest tank battle in history.

Being an industrial giant, the US was able to skip the nifty but fairly useless light tanks that were supposed to be battlefield fighters (as opposed to scouting tanks, which are also really light) and go right for the useful medium tanks.  That meant we skipped the Christie suspension, for good or ill, and went for a chassis design that was used first in numbers in the M3 (and was first used in the M2 medium tank, a very rarely US tank that was around only in very small numbers very briefly).

 M4 in use by training crew, Ft. Knox. This photo was taken prior to any US tank action during World War Two.

Unit training with M3s and M4s.

Now, as noted, the British, who ended up using it more than we did, liked the M3 but it was rather obviously a throw back. But soon came the M4.  And the M4 was a really good tank.  It wasn't perfect, but it was really good, and for the most part it had the advantage on its real opponents.

M4A1 in North Africa.

The Sherman was highly transportable, something that was important in a global war.  It came equipped with a 75mm gun at first, which was perfectly adequate for taking on the Panzer III and IV.  It had good armor protection, at least as good as the flat armored Panzer III and IV it took on, and it was extremely mechanically reliable, which no German tank ever was.

 Common early cast hull production version of M4A1 Sherman.

So what about all the stories to the contrary.  Wasn't it a horrible flaming  nightmare?

No.

Tank combat is a horrible flaming nightmare.

That contributes to the myth of the M4 being a bad tank, and almost everything you hear about the M4 being a bad tank is, in fact, a myth.

Armored combat is incredibly horrific, if you are in it.  If your tank is penetrated by an enemy projectile, and any tank can be, the net results is a shower of molten steel inside the tank followed, in all probability, by a horrible flaming death.  If you have any doubt, I suggest you view the long version of the M4 and M26 duel with a German Tiger in Cologne, late war.  You can see a dazed Sherman crew escaping from a destroyed tank and you can watch a German tank commander burn to death on a Tiger, a tank that some tank fans think is a fantastic tank. 

Not pretty.

And given that, and given American expectations, the general belief is that any American tank ought to be 100% impervious to anything bad happening to its crew.  But that's not warfare.

Now, the Sherman was not a perfect tank.  It had a very high profile for one thing compared to the Panzer III and Panzer IV.  But it could and did match those tanks in combat and really was a better combat tank than  they were. And most German armor was made up of Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs.

But not all German tanks were IIIs and IVs, and that's contributed to the myth.

The Panzer III and Panzer IV served the Germans really well throughout the war.  However, on the Russian plains, after the Soviets got their act together, they were no match for the T-34 which not only was a great tank from the onset, it was improved continually by the Soviets throughout the war.  Tanking a basic  Christie light tank design and ramping it up massively, the T-34 was the first really modern tank.  It was revolutionary and nothing the Germans had was a match for it. So they reacted.

Disabled Tiger I that had the distinction of knocking out a M26 Pershing, the first Pershing to be knocked out in combat, even though the M26 was a better tank. After achieving that, this tank became disabled and had to be abandoned.  German tanks were frequently disabled.

In fairness, one of the reactions, the Tiger tank series, had been in development since before the war, and its design showed it.  But the T-34 made its fielding imperative.  The second reaction, the Panther, was a pure reaction to the T-34 and superficially resembles it in a bulbous fashion.

Panther knocked out in the Battle of the Bulge.

Panthers and Tigers were a huge problem for Sherman's and were particularly a problem for the original M4A1.. They grossly outgunned the original version of the Sherman which made it quickly plain that the 76mm gun which had been available, but basically not fielded, should have have been fielded. The 76mm gun was much more capable of taking on the armor of the German cat tanks than the 75mm, which basically wasn't.  And the Sherman was grossly outgunned by the excellent 75mm gun on the Panther, let alone the massive tank destroying 88mm gun of the Tiger.

It should be noted here, however that even the Germans weren't really capable of keeping up with the Soviets. The T-34/76 came out in 1940 with a 76mm gun.  35,000 of them were made.  In 1943 the Soviets introduced the T-34/85, of which 55,000 were made.  So even the highly celebrated Panther, which came into service the same year as the T-34/85, did not sport a gun that was as big as Soviet tank, but only sported one that was as large as the high velocity M4 Sherman.  FWIW, during the Korean War the M4 Sherman, by which time only the "Easy 8" variant equipped with the 76mm high velocity gun, routinely bested the T-34/85, although that can be explained in more than one way.  Also, as otherwise mentioned here, the later variants of the T-34 and the Sherman were basically identical in terms of armor thickness.

Anyhow, the British had anticipated German armor advances before they were fielded, which is why they'd adapted the Sherman to a heavier British 75 gun before the US really fielded them. That tank, the Sherman Firefly, wasn't perfect either but it proved fairly adept at taking on the heavier German tanks.

 Sherman Firefly, with its obviously much larger 76mm gun.

Moran, I'll note, doesn't like the Firefly.

But I do.

Anyhow we should have no doubt.  The Tiger and Panther were fully modern tanks.  If the T-34 isn't the first modern tank in the world, they surely are. The M4 wasn't.  It was a good World War Two generation tank.







So let's talk numbers.

Eh?

Yes, numbers.  Numbers mean a lot.

There were 1,347 Tigers built and about 6,000 Panthers. There were around 180,000 T-34s built, however.  About 50,000 Sherman's were built.  About 6,000 Panzer IIIs were built.  About 8,500 Panzer IVs were built.

 Loading a Sherman in the United States for shipment.  If you can't ship them, they don't do much good.

M4 on transport.  This tank has just about enough room to be shipped and that's about it.  It's  not like this ship was going to take on a M26.

While I hate to go down this road, there were also 6,406 M10 tank destroyers built by the US.  This takes us down a weird road, however, because if I discuss these quasi tanks, then I have to mention things like the German  Sturmgeschütz III, which is a type of turetless tank destroyer, of which 10,000 were built.  And it wasn't alone.  There was also the very heavy Jagdpanzer (hunting tank) of which slightly over 400 were built on the Tiger chassis.  And the US also built the M36 (about 2,300) and the M18 (2,500). The reason that I mention them is that Sherman's would have to tank on the Sturmgeschütz III while German tanks encountered the various American tank destroyers.

M18 in Germany, 1945.

M36 Tank Destroyer. the M36 fielded a 90 mm gun, giant for the time.  Most people would think this was a Sherman, as it has a Sherman hull.  But it isn't (and the turret has an open top).

M10 in Italy.

This tells a pretty significant story, but not a very clear one.

And what it basically tells us is that there weren't all that many Tigers, but more Panthers than you'd suspect, but also a lot of Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs and things based on Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs.

There were also a whole lot of T-34s. And as the Germans were fighting a whole lot of Soviets who were using a whole lot of T-34s, as well as Sherman's (yes, they used Sherman's) and M3s (even as late as Kursk) the Germans had massive constant armor demands in the East.

Which doesn't mean that there weren't armor demands in teh West as well, but the US, UK, Canada and Free French had a lot of Sherman's, as well as a selection of smaller numbers of British tanks (the British never stopped producing their own designs, even as they used large numbers of Sherman's).

Added to that, as Sherman's almost always worked, and a very high percentage of German tanks were broken down at any one time, the number becomes much more skewed.

So, yes, it would have been much better if all Sherman's had been equipped with the high velocity 76mm rifle by 1944.  And it would have been better yet, in a magical world, if just as many M26 Pershing's had been been available as M4s in 1944, but that requires a complete suspension of reality and technology.

 Canadian Ram Mk II, early variant.  Those who like to play "should have" with American tank production fail to appreciate that even though the United State's industrial capacity was vast, it was still sufficiently limited that the United States had to rely on Canada in part to help build adequate numbers of Shermans. Granted, that was in part because the Sherman was used by the United States, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia and the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, people who imagine that the US should have been making something else fail to appreciate that the US couldn't actually manufacture all the M4s required.  Beyond the Ram, at least the UK had special variants, with Canadian and American hulls, that were uniquely their own.

Which brings us to this uncomfortable point.

If you are an infantryman in France in August, 1944, and are looking out at field where two or three German tanks show up, and maybe one is a Tiger or Panther, would you rather have one or two, or even three, M26s show up, or ten M4s.

I think the answer that is pretty obvious.

And chances are high, even in that scenario, that the M4s will not be knocked out.  If some are, and war is about killing, let's not fool ourselves, it's probably not going to be more than two, and unlikely to be three.  And all the German tanks are likely to go down.

And that's really the calculation that had to be made.  Lots that worked well all the time, and were adequate almost all of the time, or very few that worked most of the time, and were super all of the time.

Well what about the claims cited by the opponent of the Sherman in the article cited above, that being:

Certainly, the Sherman was a decent design, simple to build in large numbers and maintain, easily transported, adaptable to multiple roles and mechanically reliable. But in the three most basic requirements of a decent tank — firepower, armour protection, and mobility — it fell down in two out of three.

Well, not so much, unless you are operating in a perfect world.

In terms of firepower, okay.  But you can blame the Army in Europe, not the tank's designers, on that.  Prior to June 6, 1944 the Army had designed  a version of the M4 that was as well gunned as any tank on the battlefield except for the Tiger.  The Tiger did indeed have a super heavy gun for the time, an 88, but it was also a heavy tank that didn't have eto be shipped by sea and it was not a paragon of mobility.  Indeed, the Tiger depicted above is a typical one.  It put itself out of action.

But  the US could have fielded a M4 with a 76mm gun, and ultimately did.  The British did as well.  And, and often forgotten, the US fielded three quasi tanks in addition to the  Sherman, and those tanks had no other role other than to hunt tanks.  The Sherman's role was to be a tank, and while in the popular imagination tanks only fight other tanks, that's never been true.

Armor protection?

The Sherman's armor protection is as heavy as the  T-34/85's, and the T-34/85 was the best tank of the war.  Even at that, the Army did introduce an up-armored variant of the M4, that being the M5, but it didn't stick around all that long.  Anyhow, the Sherman was more heavily armored than supposed, which bring us to the uncomfortable truth hat, armored with the good rifles of the late war period, any tank could turn another into a flaming oven.

Mobility?

Oh please.  The Sherman was more mobile than any of hte heavier German tanks.  And it actually worked almost all the time.  Most of hte German tanks sat around unworkable, and hence not very mobile, most of the time.

Well, what about

The U.S., Dr. Weigley noted, went all through the Second World War refusing “to develop, until too late to do much good, heavier tanks comparable to the German Tigers and Panthers, let alone the Royal Tiger or the Russian Stalin.

This is not true either. In fact, the US developed a tank that was better than the German cat tanks and probably the equal of the IS 1, but perhaps not the IS 2.

It'd have been great if the US could have fielded thousands of M26s.  For that matter, it would have been great if the US had introduced the B-36 during World War Two, and perhaps the P-80. But that's a fantasy.

In reality, there wasn't any way to ship thousands of M26s to Europe unless we were going to land on the continent in the spring of 1945, at which time we wouldn't have had to fight Tigers and Panthers at all, as we would have been met with T-34/85s in Normandy.  The entire concept that we could have fielded heavy tanks  in numbers just flatly wrong as it ignores production and shipping realities.

Which brings us back to the reality of combat.  People get killed.  And death in combat is violent and shocking.  It was far better to have that 50,000 Sherman's than maybe 10,000 M26s, or 5,000, or however fewer it would have been.  Is that comfort for anyone whose relative was killed when an 88 from a Tiger hit a Sherman?  No. But it might be for the infantrymen saved when rounds from three or four Sherman's went into a single Panther.

The prefect is the enemy of the good.  The M4 wasn't perfect, but it was better than it gets credit for being, and the best under the circumstances.

 M4A3(76)W HVSS Sherman being used a a field piece during the Korean War.  If the M4 was such a bad tank, inadequate to take on the German cat tanks, how come it routinely bested the T-34/85, the best tank of the Second World War, and one that had a larger gun than the M4A3(76), the final version of the standard US version?

__________________________________________________________________________________

*I wonder if the author of these statements saw any of these films.  In none of them do a "column of Sherman's arrive in the nick of time" to save anyone.

Indeed, in A Bridge Too Far Sherman's are shown being fairly easily knocked out by anti tank guns, something that is fairly realistically (and rarely) portrayed in this film.  Sherman's are shown in thsi film, which is a highly accurate portrayal of the actual events of Operation Market Garden, as Sherman's were actually used by the British.  German tanks are shown in the film, but are not shown in action against Sherman's (which didn't happen much in that engagement), but are portrayed as being correctly fearsome (and are portrayed as contemporary German Leopard IIs).

In Band of Brothers Sherman's are depicted in a tank for German armor engagement, but frankly fairly accurately.  The problem here is that, most of the time, Sherman's were in fact more than good enough for the job, naysayers or not.

And in the Pacific, well shoot, darned near any allied tank was more than a match for any Japanese tank.  Sherman's, as well as M2s, were used in the Pacific and they were more than a match for anything the Japanese had to offer. . . in spades.

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