The Crazy People That Make U.S. History Interesting August 14, 2011

I am a history nerd. That is not a secret. A lot of people think history is boring, but it depends on what it is. If you’re reading about George Washington in a textbook, yeah, can be boring. But lunatics, crazy people, and socially-inept creatures are always interesting.

Here are three noteworthy individuals (Sadly, for bad reasons):

1. William Walker–Walker was a lawyer and journalist who one day decided, like any sane person, that he would like to raise an army and take over a Central American country. So he did.  In 1855, when he undertook the expedition, he had already conquered Baja California with an army of 45. No sweat. He needed more, so he raised an army of about 300 and took over Nicaragua. Literally. He was recognized as the President of the country for almost a year, before being forced out of office. When he tried to return to the area in 1860, he was executed.

2. Henry Rathbone–Trivia question: How many people in President Lincoln’s box at Ford’s Theatre were murdered? The answer? Two. (Another question you can ask is how many people in the box were later in a mental hospital–also two). Rathbone and his fiancee Clara Harris were in the box with Abraham and Mary, sitting next to them, when Booth killed Lincoln. They were powerless to stop him, although Rathbone did his best to disarm the assassin afterwords.

Sadly, that is not the end of the story. In 1883,  Rathbone murdered Clara (and unsuccessfully tried to kill their children and himself). He spent the rest of his life in an insane asylum in Germany.

3. Charles Guiteau–Upset that he was passed over for the job as ambassador to France, despite the fact that he had no qualifications whatsoever, Guiteau did the country a favor (in his own mind) by murdering President Garfield. Guiteau had a history of rejection. He joined a sex cult, but nobody would sleep with him–they nicknamed him “Charles Gitout.” He managed to be a loser in just about every way possible. In the end, he managed to succeed in two things: killing the president, and being hung. But that’s about it.

Taking a Stand Against the Gleeification of the U.S. August 9, 2011

I’ve never watched Glee. If I did, I imagine my eyes would bleed, quickly and painfully. I have no interest in writing about the show as television, but as a movement.

What Glee does is turn popular kids into the geeks they never were. And THIS I have a major problem with.

I try not to pay attention to the show or the buzz that it receives, but one thing I have noticed is that fans of this monstronsity of a program call themselves “Gleeks.” Fine, a simple and potentially clever way of punning the show’s title. I get that.

And if these people were geeks who were unpopular and awkward in high school, it would make sense. But there is a major and incredibly irritating problem with this sentiment–almost all Glee fans I know were not geeks in school–they were popular, non-geeky, and socially adjusted.

What is it about the past that makes people pine to be bigger losers than they actually were? There’s an oft-repeated statistic about wealth in the United States–19% of people believe they are in the top 1% of earners. Clearly, this is a mathematical impossibility, so they are not all that rich.

It appears that nerds are the same way. It feels like 75% of Americans want to believe that they were among the 5 nerdiest, least socially-adept people in their high school. Your later success comes after being picked on in high school. But your shirt being called weird once doesn’t make you a geek. You were not one. And you can’t be one retroactively. You can’t pine for the days that never were.

I don’t care for Glee–I find it annoying, and pointless, and stupid. That much can be gleaned solely from the commercials I’ve had to watch. However, it becomes offensive to me on a personal level when the head cheerleader wants to remember her days as an weirdo. NO. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO. Real geeks can be attracted to this show. I don’t care. But I refuse to allow non-geeks to commandeer our word. I’m not going to accept that without a fight.