Humor

Of Presidents and Emperors

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Former constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz posited on Fox News on November 25 that the “president’s not the king; the president’s far more powerful than the king. The president has the power that kings have never had.”

This is not an argument the former scholar offered for any previous occupant of the White House in Alan Dershowitz’s long life, so one wonders what renders this an argument worth pursuing on Fox News or anywhere that is not a mere public park with wooden crates available to stand on and bellow from. But he did so anyway.

The United States of America has three coequal branches of government to run its operations; our constitutional arguments usually concern which branch ought to run which operation. Our executive branch is one of those three, and we have not been ruled by a king or an emperor for a very long time. America’s last emperor died in 1880, after all, and we have not had a monarch since (or since 1776). (1880? Needle scratches on record as the music stops.)

When Emperor Norton I died in San Francisco in 1880 he left no offspring and no claimants to his (our) throne. We have been a republic ever since, although Alan Dershowitz seems to think that the current executive in the White House has the most legitimate claim to the American throne since Joshua Norton, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, last occupied it.

Come to think of it, Mr. Dershowitz may be onto something when he asks us to compare the current occupant of the White House and Emperor Norton I.
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Silence Is the Loudest Meow

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

What follows is a rewritten version of a piece that first appeared almost a year ago: “Hard Out Here for a Cat.”

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More than once she has given public lectures about the number of chores that occupy a cat’s day. Perhaps you have attended. She tells me that they are very well-attended. (She is seen above with her second-best human, me.)
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Nice Haircut

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Years of haircuts experienced on the hair-bearing side taught me the wrong lesson: that I could do it for/to myself and save money.

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Among the many things that are better left to professionals—piloting a jet, performing almost any surgery, copy editing—cutting hair always should be included. I did not know this until the day I learned it.

Cutting hair looks so easy. The professionals talk to you and even chat amongst themselves while they are doing it, for crying out loud. (Some will even use the word “amongst” while talking: “Your dark hairs are here, amongst the gray ones.”) How do they do that? If you interrupt me while I am merrily typing away, I will pretty much stop typing and begin to glare at you until you decide to ask someone else whatever it is you came to ask me. And how do you know where I live anyway?

One of my barbers back in the early 2000s was a World War II Navy vet who loved to tell stories from his war years while he was wielding his scissors around my scalp. (He was of the old school: No clippers for his customers. “Why give them a cut that they can give themselves?” he would ask-declare. Little did he know how well I knew that lesson. See below.)
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