Showing posts with label Detroit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Detroit. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Esperanto — The Most Neutral Thing

Tobias Sigel
Not a funny man.
Except the hair
An Esperantist walked into a bar… Okay, that’s a setup for a joke, but I’m not certain what the punchline should be. Maybe it’s better that way.

Most of the article that appeared in the October 13, 1914 Washington Post was concerned with the then-current antipathy the Canadians had for the Germans. Canada had been in the war since August 4, 1914 and the Canadians were ready to cast off all things German, just as Americans did after their entry in the war.

Groucho Marx, in his 1972 album An Evening with Groucho attributed anti-Germany sentiments in Canada to the Lusitania, noting, “I was supposed to sing a song, a German song, and I was afraid they were going to kill me if I did, that audience.” Groucho’s fears might have been appropriate even before the sinking of the Lusitania, which (after all) wasn’t a Canadian ship (it was British), wasn’t sailing from or to Canada (New York to Liverpool), and Canada was already at war with Germany when the Lusitania was torpedoed (May 7, 1915). It is entirely possible that Groucho decided it would be prudent not to sing “Oh, How That Woman Could Cook” (and here’s a 1915 rendition, so it stayed popular for a while).



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