Three Thoughts for Outside Context Day

[supergee]

"There goes the neighborhood"--unidentified Native American, 1492

"He knew the world was round-o
His balls hung to the ground-o
That navigatin', masturbatin'
Son of a bitch Columbo"--T.S. Eliot or one of his collaborators

"Columbus and his band slammed into these shores with all the force of a jet into a skyscraper"--The Rude Pundit

Comments

[cmcmck]

Everybody's favourite Genoese (or something).

Apparently not.

[dreamshark]

In a timely kick in the balls to Italian-American identity politics, Spanish forensic geneticists yesterday released the results of a 22-year research project into Christopher Columbus's origin. Looks like he was actually "a Sephardic Jew from Western Europe."

Re: Apparently not.

[minoanmiss]

I do not want to be argumentative, but 1) he had Jewish heritage in his DNA but that doesn't make him a practicing Sephardic Jew 2) in a time of rising antisemitism worldwide, reassigning Columbus as Jewish and thus reassigning his atrocities as Jewish is a statement with a lot of meaning.

Re: Apparently not.

[dreamshark]

I assure you, "atrocity" is not the first word that Italian-Americans associate with Columbus.

And of course he was not an openly practicing Jew when he became a favorite of Queen Isabella (who, simultaneously with sending Columbus out to explore the Americas was LAUNCHING THE SPANISH INQUISITION against Jews and Moriscos).

Re: Apparently not.

[supergee]

This is not new. In the early 60s Ralph Ginzburg’s magazine Fact ran an article called “Columbus, the Spanish Jew who didn’t discover America.”

[sturgeonslawyer]

Unfortunately, the best evidence I can find is that those delightful lines not from anyone related to Eliot, but an American songwriter name of Jerry Bryant. Full lyrics here