But a state department cable dated 9 December sent to all US diplomatic posts said that typography shapes the professionalism of an official document and Calibri is informal compared to serif typefaces.
“To restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program, the Department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface,” the cable said.
“This formatting standard aligns with the President’s One Voice for America’s Foreign Relations directive, underscoring the Department’s responsibility to present a unified, professional voice in all communications,” it added.
The change to Calibri in 2023 was recommended by diversity and disability groups in the US government, according to US media reports. Some studies have suggested that sans-serif fonts, such as Calibri, are easier to read for those with certain visual disabilities.
A friend recently posted a screed by someone who listed all of the reasons that someone should not support the current administration and that feller in the Oval Office.
At the end, though, this someone said despite on in spite of all those reasons, this someone whole heartedly and devotedly, supported that feller in the Oval Office because this someone felt that, finally, the feller in the Oval Office ‘fought for the someone’s in this world.‘
For myself, I find it difficult to identify with any of the fights that feller is having but there you are.
That fight, I guess, includes the efforts to restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program, the Department by returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface.
This formatting standard aligns with the President’s One Voice for America’s Foreign Relations directive, underscoring the Department’s responsibility to present a unified, professional voice in all communications.
I am reminded of the line from My Cousin Vinny where Lisa comments on deer hunting while Vinny is concerned about what pants to wear. Lisa says:
Imagine you’re a deer. You’re prancing along, you get thirsty, you spot a little brook, you put your little deer lips down to the cool clear water… BAM! A fuckin bullet rips off part of your head! Your brains are laying on the ground in little bloody pieces! Now I ask ya. Would you give a fuck what kind of pants the son of a bitch who shot you was wearing?
Imagine you are the leader of a country.
And you get a cable from the United States Department of State.
Maybe its a birthday greeting?
Maybe its a list of problems?
Maybe its a declaration of war?
Now I ask you?
Would that leader care what font was used?
Fighting for me?
I had no problem with Calibri.
But while you were out the room, I lost my mind trying to deal with this.
dead voters stolen fraudulent ballots secret computer servers
Federal investigators have been interviewing multiple people who are pushing unfounded claims that Venezuela helped steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump, the Guardian has learned.
While there were a variety of conspiracy theories that helped fuel Donald Trump’s 2020 “Stop the Steal” movement – dead voters, stolen, fraudulent or forged ballots, and secret computer servers in Germany – the purported influence of Venezuela was always a central claim. It asserted that electronic voting in the US was secretly controlled by the impoverished regime, both by President Nicolás Maduro and his deceased predecessor Hugo Chavez.
Not only was it bizarre on its face, but a judge in Delaware ruled it false in 2023, and Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN later paid a total of hundreds of millions in total damages in defamation claims. At heart, the theory was that Smartmatic, which had the contract for electronic voting machines in Los Angeles, and Dominion, which ran voting in many other parts of the country, had been created or influenced by Venezuela to fix elections.
On the day when I left home to make my way in the world, my Daddy took me to one side.
‘Son,’ my Daddy says to me, ‘I am sorry I am not able to bankroll you to a very large start, but not having the necessary lettuce to get you rolling, instead I’m going to stake you to some very valuable advice.
One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken.
Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear.
But, son, do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you’re going to wind up with an ear full of cider.
Damon Runyan from his musical, Guys and Dolls.
Of course, I have to consider, had the current guy in office won in 2020 … he wouldn’t be the current guy in office today.
Never would have heard of the current VP.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Also growing up in the shadow of Chicago and the original Mayor Daley, I am reminded of the joke of how Daley was in boat with 2 guys and the boat was sinking and there was one life jacket. The three guys vote and Daley wins by 7 votes.
democracy most fragile thing on earth, it rests upon you and me
Democracy is the most fragile thing on earth, for what does it rest upon?
You and me, and the fact that we agree to maintain it.
The moment either of us says we will not, that’s the end of it.
It doesn’t rest on anything but us; it doesn’t rest on armed force, the moment it does it isn’t democracy.
It isn’t something to kick around or experiment with.
From the preface page to the 2017 Edition of the book, Advise and Consent by Allan Drury (WordFire Press: Colorado Springs, Colorado , 2017).
Advise and Consent is one of those books AND film adaptations that I can read or watch again and again.
Watching the movie today I have to laugh the Minority Whip of the Senate arrives a the Capitol Building in a cab, walks to a news stand and buys and paper and only then learns what the President did overnight.
In today’s instant news coverage, I marvel that anything got done back in 1959.
I mean the poor guy woke up, got dressed, had breakfast and got to work before he had any news on which to plan his day.
According to Wikipedia, “Advise and Consent is a 1959 political fiction novel by Allen Drury that explores the United States Senate confirmation of controversial Secretary of State nominee Robert Leffingwell, whose promotion is endangered due to growing evidence that the nominee had been a member of the Communist Party. The chief characters’ responses to the evidence, and their efforts to spread or suppress it, form the basis of the novel.”
A Mr. Tom Kemme, in his book, Political fiction, the spirit of the age, and Allen Drury (Bowling Green State University Popular Press: Bowling Green, Ohio. 1987), writes that, “The basic assumption underlying Drury fiction is that totalitarian Communism is intrinsically evil and that Communism’s ultimate goal is world domination, an end or goal that Communists will strive to achieve by whatever moral, immoral, or amoral means are expedient, including propaganda, lies, subversion, intimidation, infiltration, betrayal, and violence.”
Had anyone been able to tell Mr. Drury that such a threat would be coming, not from Communists buy from within the Government, he would have dismissed the plot as impossible to believe.
But if we make one slight change, that phrase can be read …
The current administration is intrinsically evil and that the current administration‘s ultimate goal is world domination, an end or goal that the current administration will strive to achieve by whatever moral, immoral, or amoral means are expedient, including propaganda, lies, subversion, intimidation, infiltration, betrayal, and violence.
Just that last bit is worth repeating.
The current administration will strive to achieve [its goals] by whatever moral, immoral, or amoral means are expedient, including propaganda,
lies,
subversion,
intimidation,
infiltration,
betrayal,
and violence.
It’s worth repeating Mr. Drury’s warning.
Democracy is the most fragile thing on earth, for what does it rest upon? You and me, and the fact that we agree to maintain it. The moment either of us says we will not, that’s the end of it. It doesn’t rest on anything but us; it doesn’t rest on armed force, the moment it does it isn’t democracy. It isn’t something to kick around or experiment with.
It isn’t something to kick around or experiment with.
this great nation will endure as it has endured will revive, prosper
This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself–nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.
Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
From the 1st inaugural address of Franklin Roosevelt, March 4, 1933.
Please allow me to hit some of those points again.
This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.
Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
As an aside, my wife and I marvel when faced with people in elected office who can speak in complete sentences.
And such sentences.
I do long for that day of newspapers and reporting and not the 140 character sound bite.
But I digress.
It was Franklin Roosevelt who had a hand in designing and building what became known as the Oval Office.
The West Wing had been built by his 5th cousin, Theodore Roosevelt and the President’s office was centrally located and windowless near what is now known as the Roosevelt Room.
President Theodore Roosevelt liked to have his work space distractions limited.
In other words he was so A.D.D. that anything like a window made it impossible to concentrate on any one thing for long. (Maybe A.D.D. is too strong a word and I should say that he was so intellectually stimulated, author of 40 books, spoke 5 languages and a near photographic memory that he was easily bored but I digress again).
It was President Taft who moved the Presidents office to a room on the outside wall and added bay windows that looked out on the south lawn.
This office was still center aligned and used by all the President’s from Taft to Hoover.
Late in the Hoover years, a fire broke out in the West Wing and reconstruction was in progress when FDR moved in and he had the office moved to the corner of the West Wing and fashioned into an oval.
The room took its power from the person in the office.
It became known as the most powerful room in the western or free (non-Soviet-aligned) world.
In the 1995 movie, “The American President”, President Andrew Shephard, played by Michael Douglas has the line, The White House is the single greatest home court advantage in the modern world.
It wasn’t until today, 82 years after FDR built it, the any one felt that folks needed a sign to let them know where they where when they had reason to be in that office.
That says something about insufficient or inadequate stature felt by the current occupant.
Small wonder that confidence languishes …
for it thrives only on honesty …
on honor …
on the sacredness of obligations …
on faithful protection …
on unselfish performance …
without them it cannot live.
Reading over this speech I ask, why can’t THOSE folks read this and feel some conviction?
But then I am reminded of a quote of President Warren Harding when he said, “Somewhere there must be a book that tells all about it, where I could go to straighten it out in my mind. But I don’t know where the book is, and maybe I couldn’t read it if I found it.”
They just don’t get it.
Deep down, though, I think THEY DO GET IT and they know it and they know that they know it and I know that they know that they know it.
And what do I know.
They have sold out.
I also know that this great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.
We need restoration.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone.
careless people, they let other people clean up the mess they have made
Adapted from the passage:
I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused.
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . . .
From the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925).
Celestial Eyes, the original 1925 dust jacket for The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was the work of Francis Cugat, also known as Francisco Coradal-Cougat (May 24, 1893 – July 13, 1981). Cougat was a painter and graphic designer whose most famous work was this book cover.
In the realm of life imitating art, the line; I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused., sends shivers down my spine.
As it goes on, the more I believe it has to be a hot house phenomena.
Like the Roading 20’s, the USA rose up and passed Prohibition.
I look for and feel a growing wave of resentment that will wash away the carelessness of this current era.
But for now, it’s all careless and confused.
They will smash up things and creatures and then retreat back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that keeps them together.
And let us clean up the mess they have made.
*Thanks to good friend Bryan whose post reminded me of the passage.
No Haiku For You 