Gumption: Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers

by Nick Offerman

Oh, hello. I believe the first part of this amendment refers to a notion I applaud loudly, the separation of church and state. Practice the religion of your choice, as you’re free to do, and keep it out of the public arena. It seems worth remarking upon that this was the very first protection Madison awarded us American citizens. PS: Those of you trying to recruit people to your religion may not be violating the actual written law, but you’re certainly pissing all over the laws of common decency. Jesus would hang his beautiful Nubian head in shame.

“It is one great purpose of the park,” Olmsted pronounced, “to supply the hundreds of thousands of tired workers, who have no opportunity to spend their summers in the country, a specimen of God’s handiwork that shall be to them, inexpensively, what a month or two in the White Mountains or the Adirondacks is, at great cost, to those in easier circumstances.”

On the creation of Central Park.

Another of my favorite plebian victories scored by the designers was in the egalitarian nature of the pathways themselves. August Belmont, of horse racing fame, was one of the park’s commissioners, and he insisted that the finest sections of the park should be serviced by carriage roads and bridle paths, so that the wealthy would be favored in viewing the scenes. Olmsted and Vaux nipped that idea in the bud by ensuring that all the most pleasant vistas and grottoes were accessible only by pedestrians, so that citizens from every class could use the park with equal opportunity.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, bogeyman-fear politics saw Franklin sign his Executive Order 9066, a directive born of hysteria that ended up imprisoning Japanese Americans in internment camps; about 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent were incarcerated for two to three years. That was in the 1940s, gang. Eleanor was very opposed to this racist, cowardly act on the part of our nation, for which she was again widely ostracized.

you look at the numbers, you would have to assume that the McDonald’s factory beef burger sandwich is the most delicious sandwich. In truth, it’s pretty easy to understand that in fact, it’s simply the easiest choice for a lot of consumers. If there was a fast-food joint selling a Reuben sandwich for the price of a Big Mac, we might see some different stats.

You youngsters may not be hyperaware of this little speed bump in our great nation’s track record regarding civil liberties, but if you’ll recall from chapter 7, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, ol’ FDR pooped his presidential drawers and, under the pressure of his advisers, issued Executive Order 9066, which yanked about 120,000 Japanese Americans from their (mostly West Coast) homes and plunked them unceremoniously into concentration camps. “Say what?” you say. “That is accurate reporting,” I reply. “No shit?,” you add. “That’s a negatory on the shit,” I persevere. “That is fucked up,” you conclude. “You don’t say. Read on.” This next part is juicy and shameful.

Find out what makes you kinder, what opens you up and brings out the most loving, generous, and unafraid version of you—and go after those things as if nothing else matters. Because, actually, nothing else does.

There was a large video screen hanging upstage at Ms. Anderson’s show, and she stood at a keyboard, or set of keyboards, with other doohickeys in evidence, technically speaking. There were three microphones, side by side in a row. I’m writing this from memory, but what I remember is that through her groundbreaking use of technology in performance, she bent and stretched our little midwestern minds before fully blowing them when she picked up her electric violin. The central microphone worked normally, but each of the two side microphones piped Laurie’s voice through a filter, so one sounded like a somewhat truculent, authoritative man (an alter ego who has come to be known in later years as Fenway Bergamot), and the other mike filtered her voice into a harmonizing chorus. The videos on the screen alternated between abstract beauty and short vignettes in which she was playing the man character, complete with moustache, and shot with some sort of fish-eye lens, creating a somewhat dwarfing, fun-house-mirror effect. Her electric violin looked like something out of Tron that might also emit a lightsaber’s blade, and I also recall a bit where the lights went dark and the only light was inside her mouth, intermittently visible through the opening and closing iris of her lips.