Mallard Fillmore

[Wilson Gray]

On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> _neither_ ... _or_

Jon! I'm shocked! Shocked!!! ;-)

But, seriously, at UC Davis, when I succumbed to decalcomania and put
a decalcomania (this latter usage was still possible, even "proper,"
in the Saint Louis of my youth) of  the Flag in the window of my
V-Dub. My friends and schoolmates were shocked! shocked!!! that *I* -
a black guy, after all - would adorn my short with that symbol of the
Reactionary Right.

I tried to get them to see that allowing the Reactionary - even this
good word, once a standard denigration <har! har!> in opposition to
"Radical Left," is now being applied to the radical, reactionary
Democrat Party - Right to co-opt *any* national symbol was stupidity
bordering on reefer madness <har! har!>. But, of course, mine was a
voice crying in the irrigated desert.

Davis is such a tiny town that, even in my day, a half-century ago,
when all of UC Davis amounted to a mere 12,000 souls (today, the
faculty and staff alone number approx. 12,000), gown-Davis's ass
*owned* town-Davis's political ass, lock, stock, and barrel. For all
practical purposes, UC Davis *is* the town of Davis. Indeed, only the
seat of the state government is of greater importance than UC Davis in
the greater Sacramento metropolitan area. The Vet School conducts an
experiment to discover what materials cats the most like to scratch.
It leads the news on local TV and makes the front page of The
Sacramento Bee.

This, IMO, gave the Davis students of my day a greatly-distorted
picture of their supposed political power that was going to reshape
the United States and, consequently, the world. Which is not to say
that I'm under the impression that anything that is/was true of UC
Davis accounts for *any* aspect of today's national political
atmosphere.

Rather, it's just that I wouldn't be me, if I didn't get anecdotal on
y'all's asses. ;-)

When I arrived in Cambridge, I was shocked! etc. to discover that the
Harvard-MIT axis exercises no such control and influence even over
just Cambridge, let alone the greater Boston metropolitan area.

--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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