Eric Zorn, a columnist in the Tribune, had an interesting column on "weasel words," like allegedly, perhaps, or if (and I'd add maybe).

I agree with Eric that these words are important, not only talking about those who are accused of crimes, but also in talking about anything that we're not sure of. Perhaps people are a little too sure of themselves these days. A maybe or perhaps, now and then, tones it down a bit, I think. What do you think?

[Corrected typo]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

"Weazel" sounds like someone's name, (A politician, perhaps?) not the name of a slippery carnivore called weasel.

Zorn gives cogent reasons for using the words, yet we do see them used to manipulate thought as well as to give the benefit of the doubt where due.

"weazel words"

Weasel words.

The article does actually refer to "weasel" not "weazel". It also states, "... Lynch mobs, even virtual lynch mobs in roiling, indignant Internet message areas, are downright un-American....".

I had always thought that lynch mobs were an American invention of the Wild West era - or are the cowboy film comments about "rope necktie parties" simply mythical?

I had always thought that lynch mobs were an American invention of the Wild West era

I'm not sure that the US invented mob violence. Maybe we did. But, I associate most lynching, not with vigilante justice in the Wild West, but with the intimidation, torturing, and hanging of mainly Blacks, but also Chinese, Mexicans, and others, starting during the Reconstruction (immediately after our Civil War) and continuing until this day (though abated). The last lynching in the county I grew up in was of two Mexican-Americans, who had been arrested for the assault of a woman in San Francisco. They worked for a famous bootlegger there, but were from San Jose (farther to the south). The largest mass lynching in the US was in the late 19th century. Eleven Italian-Americans who were accused of criminal activities. But, by far, the most lynchings were of Blacks, and these were tolerated by local law enforcement. Some entrepreneurs even sold postcards of the events.

I suppose I should know - but did the "Wild West" era succeed the "Reconstruction" - which your posting would seem to imply?

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Originally posted by zmježd:
The last lynching in the county I grew up in was of two Mexican-Americans, who had been arrested for the assault of a woman in San Francisco.

Just out of curiosity, when was that?

Just out of curiosity, when was that?

During Prohibition, in the late twenties.

[Addendum: My memory is playing tricks on me. The Sonoma County lynching took place in 1920. There were three men, two Anglos and one Latino, and they had shot the Sheriff, James Petray, while he and two men from the San Francisco Police Department were trying to arrest them. Here's a photo of the three victims. I also remembered it as taking place in Healdsburg (though it was Santa Rosa), but after re-reading about the case, it was some Healdsburg police, including the chief, who took part in the lynching. Sheriff Petray was from Healdsburg. This lynching seems more of a vigilante crime than one motivated by race.]

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quote:

did the "Wild West" era succeed the "Reconstruction"

The Reconstruction is a well-defined period following the end of the Civil War in 1865 until 1877. My impression is that the "Wild West" era is more of a literary genre than a useful historical description. The western fringe of U.S. expansion was always wilder than the settled east, from about 1820 until the early 20th century. Most movie westerns take place after the Civil War and before World War I.

Sorry about the typo in my first post; I have now corrected it.

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The western fringe of U.S. expansion was always wilder than the settled east,

Hmmm, seems to me, it still is.

As for the "wild west" being more a literary genre than a useful description, that is probably true. In this Wikipedia article there is a section on "Fiction and Non-fiction." They made an interesting comment: "Considerable poetic license has been taken with numerous actual events and characters such as Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid as they have been portrayed in ways which reflect contemporary concerns more than the historical record." I suspect many people have based their opinions of the wild west on TV shows, which were just that...TV shows.

I would imagine that most people's knowledge of history is very much influenced by films and TV. How many of us even bother to study history once we leave school?

My formal historical learning covered a specific period of English history and, even though I have a greater interest in history than many, my post-school studies have been "self-selected". I thus know very little about some eras and topics and quite a lot about others.

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:
My formal historical learning covered a specific period of English history .

This is sadly true for most of us (in the UK anyway). I don't know how history is taught in the US, or even how it is taught nowadays in the UK, but when I was at school it had a very narrow focus.

We did a year (with the PE teacher - PE teachers always seem to get landed with also doing history, I don't know why) who did "cavemen" with a lack of actual knowledge that was quite spectacular looking back on it.*
We did the rest of the time on the middle ages.

That was it. The whole of time redujuced to some inaccurate prehistory and some stuff about serfs.

I wasn't especially interested in it then though I have read widely since. I wish we had been taught more of an overview of history rather than intense and useless knowledge about a specific period. I have a vivid memory of drawing diagrams crop rotation systems in the middle ages which were most likely as entirely specious as the diagrams we drew of cave dwellings and prehistoric tombs.

(* The one thing I still remember from my lessons on cavemen has nothing to do with history but something to do with language. I recall having written a sentence that began with something like prehistoric man would have built his dwellings in... and being severely shouted at for getting it wrong because, according to the aforementioned PE teacher, would have implied that prehistoric man didn't do something because something else prevented him. The teacher, as you can see, was as well-versed in English as he was in history. Of course at the time I lacked the confidence, the power and the knowledge of grammar to be able to argue. (I was eleven.)

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:
I had always thought that lynch mobs were an American invention of the Wild West era

What do you call the Salem witch trials? They were pretty much a lynch mob.

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What do you call the Salem witch trials? They were pretty much a lynch mob.

a witch-hunt.

(sorry)

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What do you call the Salem witch trials? They were pretty much a lynch mob.

I call it justice being served. I think that to be a proper lynch mob it has to be extrajudicial. They were convicted, in court, of witchcraft, which was a capital crime, and executed. All perfectly legit.

I am reminded of the play, "The Crucible," which was a thinly disguised metaphor for the McCarthy hearings. All quite legal, BUT...

I purposely didn't mention the witch trials in Salem or in Europe, or the Inquisition, because as neveu pointed out: they were within the legal system. (They were morally wrong, too.)

I think they are legitimate. After all, the Holocaust murders, confiscation of property, etc., were legal at the time in Germany, as well.

Lynching was more like dueling: technically illegal, but tolerated by officials.

The Online Etymology Dictionary suggests that:

quote:

1835, from earlier Lynch law (1811), likely named after William Lynch (1742-1820) of Pittsylvania, Va., who c.1780 led a vigilance committee to keep order there during the Revolution. Other sources trace the name to Charles Lynch (1736-96) a Virginia magistrate who fined and imprisoned Tories in his district c.1782, but the connection to him is less likely.

Wikipedia also has an article.

quote:

the Holocaust murders ... were legal at the time in Germany, as well.

No, I don't believe they were. That would be one reason that they were not known to the general public.

OED, discussing the etymology of 'lynch law', concludes:

The particulars supplied by Ellicott, together with other evidence, clearly establish the fact that the originator of Lynch law was Captain William Lynch (1742-1820) of Pittsylvania in Virginia. According to Ellicott, ‘this self-created judicial tribunal was first organised in the state of Virginia about the year 1776’; an article in the Southern Lit. Messenger (1836) II. 389 gives the date definitely as 1780.

No, I don't believe they were.

A better example would be the sterilizations of people which took place under laws which the Germans enacted based on some of the US eugenic laws.

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No, I don't believe they were.

I definitely overstated the situation. Yet, there were many laws that did allow for confiscation of possessions and property and severe punishments for minor offenses, specifically for people of certain ethnicities, religions, or for homosexuals. The concentration camp ovens, I agree, were not legal and therefore were hidden from the public.

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That would be one reason that they were not known to the general public.

I suppose. And, yet, down deep I think many of the Nazis knew that their laws, making their transgressions legal, wouldn't be accepted by the general public.

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Lynching was more like dueling: technically illegal, but tolerated by officials.

I think this is an excellent, succinct definition. I've always heard it as "a group of people taking the law into their own hands." It implies unjust violence, and usually, as stated by others, racially prejudiced motivation.

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I would imagine that most people's knowledge of history is very much influenced by films and TV. How many of us even bother to study history once we leave school?

I have a Bachelor's degree in History, and my special (favorite) area of study was the Westward Expansion era of the U.S. I love to read about how the pioneers made their way out there, their way of life, overcoming struggles, etc. I also find it interesting (if sad) that my ancestors thought it necessary (Manifest Destiny), even their duty and right, to take over the whole width of the continent. The Frontier Era, and the official "exploration of the West" ended in 1840 when the first plans for actual settlement began and wagon trains of families starting moving across the continent in earnest. The years before 1840 saw the fur-trappers out there, few if any women. It was "uncivilized" but it was also an autonomous existence for most of the year. Once a year the traders would bring caravans of wagons to a pre-determined "rendezvous" spot and the trappers would come down from their solitude in the mountains to get supplies and have their revelries together. Once the families started settling and women came out, much of that sort of thing calmed down.

A lot of what we term "The Wild West" era really occured post-1849 when the men started going out in droves to find Gold. Again, we had large groups of men with very few women and things became . . . well . . . wild. Much like Fraternity parties, except with guns. It's not as colorful or humorous as the TV shows and movies depict, but there was quite a bit of that "the gun is the law" sort of thing going on, from what I've read.

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A lot of what we term "The Wild West" era really occured post-1849 when the men started going out in droves to find Gold. Again, we had large groups of men with very few women and things became . . . well . . . wild.

J.S. Holliday, historian of the Gold Rush, has said that San Francisco is unique among cities in that it was born rich, it was born urban, and it was born male. In the 1850s San Francisco was 90% men; women didn't reach parity until the census of 1910.

quote:

I have a Bachelor's degree in History, and my special (favorite) area of study was the Westward Expansion era of the U.S. I love to read about how the pioneers made their way out there, their way of life, overcoming struggles, etc. I also find it interesting (if sad) that my ancestors thought it necessary (Manifest Destiny), even their duty and right, to take over the whole width of the continent.

Oh, I agree with you, CW! I often wish I'd lived in those times, such as during the times of one of my favorite kid's books, Caddy Woodlawn. I sometimes look around our area of Illinois and wonder what it was like in the early 1800s.

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Yet, there were many laws that did allow for confiscation of possessions and property and severe punishments for minor offenses, specifically for people of certain ethnicities, ... ...

This rings a bell. It's a description of current U.S. Drug Policy.

U.S. prison population today is 2,269,675

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About Californians ... "The miners came in '49, the whores in '51 ... and when they got together, they produced the Native Son."

........ ..... ... .. . . . . .. ... ..... ........

"Lies My Teacher Told Me"

.... and

"The Long Death - The Last Days of the Plains Indians"
,,,, and ....

"1491" ... are eye-openers for those of us who are interested in American History.

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