Editor’s Note: We are off to an exciting start to the new Administration! I looked on with wonder and appreciation at the thick sheaf of Executive Orders on President Biden’s desk. You know, the stuff that we debated extensively during the well-travelled campaign trail from the basement in Delaware to that car trip to Pennsylvania. I am kidding, of course. But you would think that some of these super important Day One issues might have come up during the alleged campaign before the …wait, sorry “cleanest election ever.” It will take me a couple days to get used to it, though preparations have been made. My favorite in the thick stack was not the cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline, which even the environmental Canadians thought was OK. It is only a loss of 11,000 formerly well-paying jobs, not the 42,000 we heard about briefly when it seemed like the loss of energy independence was a bad thing. But my favorite Day One EO is the command that genetically male athletes can compete in women’s sports based solely on a spirited affirmation of their femininity. Denial will naturally be prosecuted under Title IX. That decree really summed up the rational goodness of the new Executive policy. This is a Number One issue, apparently. As such it requires our enthusiastic support, so despite the lingering dread effects of testosterone, these will be our new women’s athletic champs. Forgive my brief incredulity. I am sure we will all be fine with that, except for a few old- fashioned clingers who don’t think that a lifetime of training, dedication and commitment to excellence should be sacrificed to an idea that doesn’t seem to make any sense. Please refer to footnotes, which express my support to any citizen dressing however the hell they/them want. This one may include reliance on Footnotes 1, 2 and definitely 3. For NSA screeners that are human, those protective notes of support are prominently posted on the website. Unity for what matters!

Meanwhile, Marlow is expressing his observations the new means of exercising Free speech, now that Twitter, Facebook and Google have stepped up to rightfully stifle thoughts they disagree with. This isn’t new, and thankfully there are historical precedents for protection of Constitutional rights. Check it out. We will meet tomorrow to talk about other great new ideas that will make us better citizens!

– Vic
Author’s Note:
All of us internetted folks of the here and now think we invented one person mass media. Well, old timey photos say otherwise like this one from 1938 in San Francisco (courtesy John Guttman).

That was one mass media daily driver. Wonder what kind of mileage he got.

San Francisco, being San Francisco, still sees such with old vans and beater cars traveling about its streets festooned with all sorts of political-speak.

Backstory: Most of the text in this photo relates to an initiative on the November 1938 ballot in California to create a system of “retirement warrants” in place of public assistance for those 50 years or older. Had it been adopted and implemented, retired California residents in that age range would have received tax-and-interest-free self-liquidating “warrants” of $30 a week for life. It failed to pass, by a relatively small margin of 1,143,670 to 1,398,999.

Proposition 25 caused a huge uproar that lasted for years. An attempt to put it on the ballot again in 1942 was thwarted when 14,000 petitioner signatures were disqualified.

One postmortem from 1939 described the acrimony between the factions in support of and against the proposition as “an upheaval which amounted to almost a verbal civil war. Brother was turned against brother, father against son, wife against husband; it was an emotional crisis and none of them could be rational about it, no matter which side they espoused. Friendships of long standing were damaged beyond repair, in a contest that was more wrath-provoking than any political or religious argument. Everyone took sides and every street corner was a battle front. Its advocates hailed it as a cure for all of the ills which afflict mankind. Its opposers damned it as a subversive plot to ruin everything up to and including the California climate.”

There’s a little Bernie, some Hillary, a large dash of Trump, and a whole bunch of frustration in those old words. I wonder why he chose to do it in ALL CAPS font.

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