Christmas Every Day

1973 Death of a comic genius

Walt Kelly was born in 1913 and began a career in journalism while still in his teens. He added cartooning to his list of talents, moving to California in 1936 to work at the Disney studio as a writer and animator, contributing to such masterpieces as Pinocchio, Dumbo, Fantasia, and The Reluctant Dragon. During World War II he worked for the American army as an illustrator of manuals. During this period he introduced the world to a cartoon possum who would later become famous as Pogo.

After the war Kelly entered the realm of comics and political cartooning. While employed at the New York Star, he started a daily strip involving animals of the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia. Pogo was named after the lead character, an amiable, laid-back possum who occupied the swamp with a host of anthropomorphized creatures such as the blowhard Albert the Alligator, the self-worshipping Beauregard Hound, the poetic turtle Churchy Lafemme, the coquettish skunk Miz Ma’m’selle Hepzibah, and know-it-all Howland Owl. The level of humour and wit was high, ruminations on life were plentiful, and the political satire was biting. Pogo took stands against both communism and right-wing extremism, portraying Senator Joe McCarthy as a sinister wildcat and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev as a pig; Richard Nixon appeared as a spider.

Pogo was enormously popular in syndication and in collections of strips, with Kelly winning numerous prizes for his art and acknowledged as an influence on the genre. There were fitful attempts to continue the strip after Kelly’s death but none could successfully imitate the inimitable.

Startling trivia fact: Pogo’s full name was Ponce de Leon Montgomery County Alabama Georgia Beauregard Possum.

1970 Murder of Pierre Laporte

In the 1960s the movement for the independence of Quebec developed a violent wing. Among those turning to terrorism or “propaganda by deed” was the Front de libération du Québec or the FLQ, a Marxist-Leninist group that combined a desire for independence with plans for a communist revolution. The FLQ carried out bank robberies, bombings, sabotage, kidnappings and murder to advance their cause. On October 5, 1970 the Libération cell of the FLQ, composed of well-educated activists, kidnapped a British diplomat, James Cross, and held him hostage, demanding money, and the release of FLQ prisoners for his return. A few days later, the Chénier cell, a rather more thuggish bunch, kidnapped Labour Minister Pierre Laporte. These actions prompted the federal government to suspend all civil liberties in Canada under the War Measures Act.

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau won a lot of support for his hard-line stance. “Well, there are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don’t like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed. But it’s more important to keep law and order in this society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who don’t like the looks of…” A CBC reporter asked: “At any cost? How far would you go with that? How far would you extend that?” Trudeau replied: “Well, just watch me.” The next day Laporte’s body was discovered in the trunk of a car; he had been strangled to death.

The Chénier cell would eventually be tracked down, tried and convicted of murder — though all would eventually be freed and continue their fight for independence in less violent ways. The Libération cell released James Cross in return for safe passage to Cuba; all would eventually return to Quebec.

1859 John Brown leads ill-fated raid

John Brown (1800-59) was a radical abolitionist who hoped to spark a rebellion among the slaves of America’s southern states. His attack on a federal arsenal that was to garner weapons for this rising failed and Brown was hanged for treason.

Brown was an unsuccessful farmer and businessman who once had plans to become a Congregationalist minister. In the late 1830s he became involved with the abolitionist movement and thus with the most pressing question in American politics: would the institution of slavery be preserved and even allowed to expand in the newly-settled territories of the West? He became increasingly convinced that the end of slavery could not be achieved peacefully and after the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act which made it illegal to aid runaway slaves even in free states Brown began to take direct action. He formed the League of Gileadites to deter the the return of escaped slaves and support the covert escape routes to Canada.

In 1855 Brown and some of his family moved to Kansas where abolitionist and pro-slavery forces were squaring off and where violence was being used to determine whether the territory would enter the Union as slave-holding or free. This “Bleeding Kansas” era pitted “Free-Staters” versus “Border Ruffians” with both sides forming militias to intimidate officials and voters; both sides imported heavily-armed supporters from beyond the borders of Kansas.

In May 1856 Brown’s men conducted the Pottawatomie Massacre in which five pro-slavery settlers were taken from their homes and murdered. This set off a series of raids and killings that focussed the nation’s attention on Kansas and Brown, who was now convinced that only a much bolder and more violent approach would achieve abolition. Returning to Massachusetts, he began to gather money and arms to spark a rebellion of slaves throughout the South.

This rising was to begin with an attack on a government armoury at Harpers Ferry, Virginia where Brown and his men would capture tens of thousands of weapons. They would then penetrate the slave states, distributing the arms to rebellious slaves whose defection would cause the collapse of the plantation economy and the end of slavery. Though the capture of the arsenal was easily achieved, the complex was quickly surrounded by outraged locals and American federal troops under Robert E. Lee. Fourteen men died before the raid was quashed.

John Brown’s trial was a media sensation. Though he and six others were hanged for their crimes, the raid was successful in polarizing the United States and convincing many in the North and South that only war would resolve the problem of slavery. Brown’s speech at the end of his trail reveals the religious underpinnings of his actions:

[H]ad I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment. This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to “remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them.” I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done!”

A year later southern states embarked on the path of secession and civil war which led to the death of 620,000 Americans and the end of slavery.

2007 An ornament of popular culture

Future historians may well note this date as the beginning of the end of Western Civilization. Keeping Up With the Kardashians, a “reality” television show of a particularly inane and sordid nature, aired for the first time on the E! Cable network.

At the end of the 20th century the name Kardashian meant very little in the public mind, except for those who remembered that one Robert Kardashian had been among the legal team that secured O.J. Simpson his acquittal for murder. It seems, however, that in 1978 Mr. Kardashian had married flight attendant Kris Houghton and spawned a number of daughters whose names began with the letter “K” — Kourtney (b. 1979), Kim (b. 1980), and Khloé (b. 1984) — and a son, Rob (b. 1987), for whom, apparently, no suitable “K” name could be found. The parents divorced in 1991 and a month later Kim married Olympic decathlete hero, Bruce Jenner. From his loins sprang two more “K” kids, Kendall (b. 1995) and Kylie (b. 1997) before he, through the miracle of surgery, transitioned to Caitlin Jenner, for some reason declining an opportunity to become “Kaitlyn”.

This blended family lived lives of little distinction: Kris opened a kids’ store; Kim was a stylist and personal shopper; she and her sisters ran a clothing store. Fortunately, Kim, in a moment of girlish innocence, had made a sex tape in 2007 with someone named Ray J and this tape (oops) was released to the public. Kim was now famous, or — even better — notorious. And she was rich, having made $5,000,000 from the tape’s distributor. All this whetted the public appetite for all things Kardashian and some genius decided that a television crew recording the family’s every move and utterance would prove to be gripping broadcast fare. And so it proved. Despite the sound of critics slashing their own wrists, Keeping Up With the Kardashians has become a staple of American popular culture making millionaires of its subjects. Of their failed marriages, breast enhancements, sex-changes, overdoses, spats, divorces, 325-page book of selfies, and all-encompassing family values, we shall say no more.

The big four sports organizations in North America are Major League Baseball, The National Football League, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association. Rival leagues have come — the WFL, the XFL, the WHA, the ABL, etc. — and gone, but only one plucky challenger has had any real effect on their sport: the American Basketball Association which played its first game on this date in 1967, a contest between the Anaheim Amigos and the Oakland Oaks. (Oakland won 134-129).

As is usual with these upstart leagues, ownership was often shaky and fan support was sparse. Despite the presence of star players like Rick Barry, Julius Irving, and George “the Iceman” Gervin, changes of team names and locations were frequent. The Anaheim Amigos became the Los Angeles Stars and then the Utah Stars; the Oakland Oaks morphed into the Washington Capitals and then the Virginia Squires. The most extreme case of instability was the case of the New Orleans Buccaneers/Louisiana Buccaneers/Memphis Pros/Memphis Tams/Memphis Sounds/Baltimore Hustlers/Baltimore Claws.

The plan of franchise owners was to force a merger with the NBA which was feeling the influence of the higher salaries that the arrival of the ABA had produced. Only a few teams endured to reap the benefits of this plan. In 1976 the ABA folded with four teams — the Indiana Pacers, New York Nets, San Antonio Spurs, and Denver Nuggets — joining their older competitor. Though the league had died, a few of their innovations were attractive enough to be adopted by the NBA: the 3-point arc, the slam-dunk contest, and market penetration into states that had hitherto been college basketball hothouses.