Sunday, May 09, 2004
An American Mothers Day
Dateline 2004: Second Sunday in May.
That letter, and many more just like it, all signed "An American Mother", were published by the Baltimore Evening Sun during the early and mid 1920's.
I love this kind of stuff because I like to read old newspapers and magazines from those years and sure enough the pages of those old publications are filled with correspondence exactly like the example above; all holding forth on a wide variety of topics and questions and opinions of the day; all generating further reactions from engaged readers.
I found five letters (including the one above) penned by "An American Mother", and reproduced in an article titled "Letters from 'An American Mother'", by Eric Lund, (then assistant city editor for the Chicago Daily News.) Lund's article appears in the December 1969 edition of the American Heritage Magazine and begins as follows:
Sure enough i can't think of any newspapers today who will print a letter to the editor that doesn't require some variety of full disclosure and a traceable verifiable background check. Phone number, address, drivers liscense, pets name, and so on. There's probably some kind of clause contained in the Patriot Act which would make the publication of an anonymous letter to the editor a federal offense punishable by fifteen years in some underground SuperMax facility on Guam. God only knows.
But (and who would have thunk it in 1969) now we have blogging. We have Atrios and Digby and Hesiod and Lambert Strether and all you lovable characters out there to many to list. You know who you are. Returned are the "Civitas," "Veritas," and "Pro Bono Publico" of a bygone era. Welcome back-forward Roger Ailes (not the ugly baldhead one).
Lund continues:
Sounds eerily familiar even today doesn't it? Think Judge Roy Moore (a judge only "An American Mother" could love.) Or Nude statues, hehe. Yes siree it sure does ring some bells these days and there ain't no doubt "Mother" was a fairly accurate reflection of the views and sentiments of thousands of Americans in the early decades of the 20th century. Listen to "Mother" hold forth on the rule of law and the war on intoxicating substances, retro-stylie.
That outta take care of the Coors family once and for all. "Mother", if she were with us today, would love Little Green Footballs and The Presidential Prayer Team. The only catch is, "Mother", was a parody. A put-on. A clever subtle caricature, a mirror held up (reductio ad absurdum), to the opinions, religious sentiments, fears, and politics of pre World War 2 America. Mother was a merry prankster.
While reading Lund's article and the letters from AMM to the Evening Sun i couldn't help think about our own prolific letter writing version of "An American Mother": Jesus' General himself, aka: General J.C. Christian, patriotboy. Granted the General would be easy to track down as a satirical/parody effort but i have to wonder how many of the people who receive his letters would actually catch the spoof if those letters simply appeared on their own merits, free of the General's weblog source. I'd be willing to bet that if the General were to sign his letters "An American Patriot," and have them accepted by any number of small town newspapers across today's latter atomic age America, he'd be greeted without a second thought by an alarming number of mis-wired specimens who would immediately recognize him as a sage and prophet and keeper of the moral compass. An heroic "right-thinking" 100% Murican defender of women, children, human property, and the Christian conservative realm. For all the wrong thinkin' reasons of course. If i thought the General could pull a fast one on the local editors of any number of reactionary sheets, without ending up in a hidey-hole on Guam, I'd try to talk him into introducing the Chamber of Love and Correction to the inhabitants of Abbeville, South Carolina. Or some crazy assed place like that.
Many readers of the Baltimore Evening Sun recognized "Mother" as a leg pull and would respond in turn. Many also believed that H.L Mencken was responsible for "An American Mother". He wasn't.
Alas, "An American Mother" died in 1944, and in the news stories that followed Mother's departure the Baltimore Evening Sun revealed that "An American Mother" was in actuality a mother by invention only, and in fact not even of the female persuasion, but rather the dean of Baltimore's consular corps, representative of Denmark, one Holger A. Koppel. (born male, in Copenhagen, in 1871)
Koppel was however, as it turned out to be, an old friend of Henry Mencken. (Google "Holger Koppel") In 1909 Koppel and Mencken worked together to translate five Henrik Ibsen plays into English, including A Dolls House, which were then later published, no doubt, to the angst of those who opposed the women's rights movement at the turn of the century.
So there ya have it. Viva An American Mother! Toss one back for mom! while listening to an Italian opera - or wading in a pool at the base of a fountain of buck naked nymphs.
Happy American Mothers Day.
*
| To the Editor of the Evening Sun:
Sir - I consider it nothing short of blasphemous to allow symphony concerts on the Sabbath by the City Band. On my way to church Sunday evening with my school-teacher daughter and several others of my little brood we had to pass the Lyric Music Hall, and there we saw a mass of people going in to spend their evening listening to worldly music instead of going to their respective churches. It makes it so hard on a mother trying to raise her loved ones properly to have them see that the city itself is a party to this desecration of the Sabbath.... My school-teacher daughter, who is well up on music and sings in the choir, later saw the program, and she tells me that there was not one piece of the music played that was written by an American. I confess that it gave me some relief to see that our good Americans will not allow their names on a program of that sort, yet it is not right that foreigners should be allowed to make money by desecrating the Sabbath and thereby keep their families in affluence. If any of those foreigners who wrote those pieces live in Baltimore they ought to be arrested under our Sunday laws. - An American Mother |
That letter, and many more just like it, all signed "An American Mother", were published by the Baltimore Evening Sun during the early and mid 1920's.
I love this kind of stuff because I like to read old newspapers and magazines from those years and sure enough the pages of those old publications are filled with correspondence exactly like the example above; all holding forth on a wide variety of topics and questions and opinions of the day; all generating further reactions from engaged readers.
I found five letters (including the one above) penned by "An American Mother", and reproduced in an article titled "Letters from 'An American Mother'", by Eric Lund, (then assistant city editor for the Chicago Daily News.) Lund's article appears in the December 1969 edition of the American Heritage Magazine and begins as follows:
Except in their lovelorn columns, newspapers today discourage the use of pen names by their letter writers. Gone are "Civitas," "Veritas," and "Pro Bono Publico" of an earlier time. Less and less frequent opinions signed "Angry," "Disappointed," or "Irate Taxpayer."
Sure enough i can't think of any newspapers today who will print a letter to the editor that doesn't require some variety of full disclosure and a traceable verifiable background check. Phone number, address, drivers liscense, pets name, and so on. There's probably some kind of clause contained in the Patriot Act which would make the publication of an anonymous letter to the editor a federal offense punishable by fifteen years in some underground SuperMax facility on Guam. God only knows.
But (and who would have thunk it in 1969) now we have blogging. We have Atrios and Digby and Hesiod and Lambert Strether and all you lovable characters out there to many to list. You know who you are. Returned are the "Civitas," "Veritas," and "Pro Bono Publico" of a bygone era. Welcome back-forward Roger Ailes (not the ugly baldhead one).
Lund continues:
"Mother" was an unyielding moralist, a militant Prohibitionist, a staunch defender of the Sunday blue laws, and a devoted churchgoer opposed to the theory of evolution, to Italian opera, and to nude statues. She had a knack for taking something that nearly everyone regarded as fairly innocent (an opera, for instance) and discovering that it was immoral (she objected to Tristan and Isolde because it "condoned freelove"). Frequently she offended someone or some group, always perfectly naturally but in a way that demanded response. Almost invariably committed some blunder in stating her argument, an error of fact or logic that called for correction. In 1925, during the Scopes trial over the legality of teaching evolution, one of her letters began: Sir: I think that trial of religious liberty down in Dayton is the most wonderful thing since Martin Luther stood up before the Cardinals and said, 'Give me liberty of give me death!'..." [...] ...she proposed a Get-Baptized Week, prayer meetings on streetcars for young people on their way to work, and enforcement of the Ten Commandments by the police.
Sounds eerily familiar even today doesn't it? Think Judge Roy Moore (a judge only "An American Mother" could love.) Or Nude statues, hehe. Yes siree it sure does ring some bells these days and there ain't no doubt "Mother" was a fairly accurate reflection of the views and sentiments of thousands of Americans in the early decades of the 20th century. Listen to "Mother" hold forth on the rule of law and the war on intoxicating substances, retro-stylie.
| To the Editor of the Evening Sun:
Sir - ...I have never had military ideas, but for the life of me I cannot see why right-thinking people should object to our army and navy enforcing the laws of our country. Surely a man who drinks liquor when it is forbidden cannot complain if right-thinking people put him to death... - An American Mother. |
That outta take care of the Coors family once and for all. "Mother", if she were with us today, would love Little Green Footballs and The Presidential Prayer Team. The only catch is, "Mother", was a parody. A put-on. A clever subtle caricature, a mirror held up (reductio ad absurdum), to the opinions, religious sentiments, fears, and politics of pre World War 2 America. Mother was a merry prankster.
While reading Lund's article and the letters from AMM to the Evening Sun i couldn't help think about our own prolific letter writing version of "An American Mother": Jesus' General himself, aka: General J.C. Christian, patriotboy. Granted the General would be easy to track down as a satirical/parody effort but i have to wonder how many of the people who receive his letters would actually catch the spoof if those letters simply appeared on their own merits, free of the General's weblog source. I'd be willing to bet that if the General were to sign his letters "An American Patriot," and have them accepted by any number of small town newspapers across today's latter atomic age America, he'd be greeted without a second thought by an alarming number of mis-wired specimens who would immediately recognize him as a sage and prophet and keeper of the moral compass. An heroic "right-thinking" 100% Murican defender of women, children, human property, and the Christian conservative realm. For all the wrong thinkin' reasons of course. If i thought the General could pull a fast one on the local editors of any number of reactionary sheets, without ending up in a hidey-hole on Guam, I'd try to talk him into introducing the Chamber of Love and Correction to the inhabitants of Abbeville, South Carolina. Or some crazy assed place like that.
Many readers of the Baltimore Evening Sun recognized "Mother" as a leg pull and would respond in turn. Many also believed that H.L Mencken was responsible for "An American Mother". He wasn't.
Alas, "An American Mother" died in 1944, and in the news stories that followed Mother's departure the Baltimore Evening Sun revealed that "An American Mother" was in actuality a mother by invention only, and in fact not even of the female persuasion, but rather the dean of Baltimore's consular corps, representative of Denmark, one Holger A. Koppel. (born male, in Copenhagen, in 1871)
Koppel was however, as it turned out to be, an old friend of Henry Mencken. (Google "Holger Koppel") In 1909 Koppel and Mencken worked together to translate five Henrik Ibsen plays into English, including A Dolls House, which were then later published, no doubt, to the angst of those who opposed the women's rights movement at the turn of the century.
| What kind of people do really believe in this evolution nonsense? Am I to believe that I have come down from monkeys? As far as I and my family are concerned, we are satisfied to trace down to Adam and Eve, even though, of course, Eve was wicked enough to eat the apple the serpent offered her, but she, poor woman, was new to the ways of the wicked world. I say, put the people who believe in such silly nonsense out in cages with the other monkeys in Druid Park and they would soon learn sense and believe in what the Bible tells us.... - An American Mother. |
So there ya have it. Viva An American Mother! Toss one back for mom! while listening to an Italian opera - or wading in a pool at the base of a fountain of buck naked nymphs.
Happy American Mothers Day.
*
