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HOMER, La. (KTAL/KMSS) A man who became legendary for being one of the U.S. Navys most prolific kissers visited Louisiana more than 100 years ago, but he did not smooch when he visited northwest Louisiana; he came to rally against the social ills of his time.

Richard Pearson Hobsons heroic efforts began during the Spanish-American war at Santiago Harbor in Cuba.

The U.S.S. Merrimacs Rear Admiral William T. Sampson ordered the ship sunk in the Cuban harbor. Hobson was one of seven men to volunteer for the suicidal mission when they learned the idea was to block the harbors entrance and trap the Spanish ships.

The Spaniards land-based cannons sunk the ship before the Merrimacs crew could, and the Spanish took the crewmen, prisoner.

A month later, the United States destroyed the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba. Hobson and the men under his command were released and awarded Medals of Honor for their role in the mission.

The obscure naval officer evolved into a national idol, and hundreds of newspapers celebrated the handsome Navy officer as a survivor of one of the most remarkable feats in the history of the U.S. Navy.

Parents named their newborns after him. A fund was raised to save his parents home, which was facing foreclosure. The Union Central Insurance Company proudly advertised Hobson as one of its policyholders. A cigar, Hobsons Choice, was even named to honor him.

With so much fanfare and adoration, it was only a matter of time before Hobson became a heartthrob.

Requests for Hobson to speak came pouring in, but Hobson refused. When he did speak on August 4, 1898, there was thunderous applause from the crowd at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Hobson tried to speak, but the cheering mob stampeded over footlights to reach him.

Hobson headed west to San Francisco, where he was to sail to a new assignment in the Philippines. But along the way, Hobson became a bit preoccupied. A police officer stated he saw Hobson kiss 163 women in Chicago. A day later, reports spread that Hobson had kissed 419 women in Kansas City and was kissing his way across Kansas. Soon word came that the hero managed to kiss 350 women in Topeka and 1,000 Kansas women in all.

Asked if he was tired from his constant exertions, Hobson supposedly responded, No, havent yet: have thoroughly enjoyed it so far. I suppose if I had kissed one woman as often as I have kissed different women, I would be thoroughly exhausted. But the constant change is delightfully exhilarating.

The newspapers often exaggerated or lied about the craze, his kissing binges in Topeka and across Kansas were contrived. When asked to explain his conduct, Hobson told the press he was simply the victim of pure patriotic enthusiasm on the part of others and said he had kissed only a few relatives and some children.

But the reputation was as immovable as the ship Hobson was famous for sinking.

There is no answer to how many women Hobson actually kissed. However, in America in the Victorian Age, such conduct was scandalous. America in the late 19th century hungered for heroes. Hobson was like a knight out of a fairy tale, and the complete and total failure of the Merrimac mission did not seem to bother Hobsons admirers.

After he left the Navy, Hobson represented Alabama in Congress from 1907 to 1915.

During his time in Senate, he advocated for a large U.S. Navy and railed against the dangers of alcohol. He warned about the Japanese, whom he believed would stage a sneak attack on the Pacific Fleet.

Even after leaving the Senate, Hobson continued his fight against alcohol until the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Then he went after the concepts of addictive drugs and communism.

Alcohol and drug prohibition and communism were his focus when he visited Louisiana in April of 1922 as part of a U.S. speaking tour which included stops in Homer, Mansfield, and several towns in Mississippi.

Hobson told a crowd at Homers Baptist church during his 1922 visit that alcohol destroys the Godlike spiritual part of man and leaves him like a beast with the social forces all at war with each other.

He also declared that communists and anarchists were sowing seeds to defy the American Constitution and overthrow this government.

Hobson led the life of a crusader, and whether the nemesis was the Spanish, racism, alcohol, drugs, or communism. Perhaps kissing damsels was simply a part of the role, or perhaps he lived a life contrary to his reputation.

Wesley Harris works as the parish historian for the Claiborne Parish Library in Homer, where he researches, writes, and speaks on North Louisiana history. His specialties are Reconstruction Era crime and World War II in north Louisiana.

An author of several books and hundreds of historical articles over the past 40 years, his work has appeared in national publications such as Americas Civil War, Wild West, and others. After retiring from a 43-year career in law enforcement, Harris joined the Claiborne Parish Library staff in 2020 and has since written or edited five books on north Louisiana history.

Harris was the 2022 recipient of the Max Bradbury Award for the best article published annually in North Louisiana History, the journal of the North Louisiana Historical Association.

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Hero or Myth: A man once considered the U.S. Navys most prolific kisser visited Louisiana to spread social conservatism - KTALnews.com

There are certainly popular films and TV shows that speak toward a more conservative ideology. American Sniper and Passion of the Christ were nominated for several Academy Awards in their respective years, with the latter receiving a four-star review from Roger Ebert. While these movies went on to critical acclaim, they are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to conservative films.

Dig a little deeper, and youll find what Slate calls an ever-flowing ouroboros of frenzied speculation and self-contradictory propaganda. My Son Hunter (about President Biden's son) and 2000 Mules (about Trump's election loss) are recent examples, but movies like them have existed for decades. In these films, right-wing ideology is disseminated through bizarre, confusing, and often empty reproductions of cinematic language.

These are films that speak directly to their niche audiences, movies that get so caught up in a miasma of talking points that they forget to be actual movies most of the time. They range from bizarre to hateful to genuine propaganda, but, more interestingly, theyre a close-up view of the often wacky and sometimes disquieting beliefs shared by a chunk of the American populace.

In a 2017 interview with Vulture, Judd Apatow explained why he thinks explicitly conservative-leaning entertainment tends to fail: [Republicans are] too concerned about trying to present themselves as correct They dont admit how lost they are. This is, in many cases, true.

Consider, for example, the Atlas Shrugged trilogy and its heroes. Protagonists Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardan, among their other benevolent, bootstrap-pulling mogul buddies, are never wrong; in fact, they are all so good at vaguely doing business that the country will fall into chaos without them. Its an absurd casting of billionaires and CEOs as the people who keep the world running, made even more surreal by the fact that none of the films' writers seem to have any understanding of the way actual business really works.

The hero of the Daily Wires premiere feature, Run Hide Fight, is similarly cast as perfect, though this time with a different flavor. Reviewers across the board recognized the movie as Die Hard in a high school, because its protagonist, Zoe Hull, is a telling mix of John McClaine and Mary Sue. With nothing but her instincts and intense knowledge of firearms, teenager Zoe can deal with her schools assailants where law enforcement cant. It's a pretty disgusting cinematic manifestation of conservative responses to school shootings, and Zoe is a disturbing mascot for the pro-gun movement.

Related: These Are Some of the Best Movies For Conservatives

These characters arent just presented as perfect; theyre barely presented as people. Characters are rendered as nothing more than a visualization of Republican talking points, a sound board that drops in vague political messaging. Rebuttal isnt always offered, but when it is, it comes from the spineless liberal who is conniving, idiotic, or both. This isn't cinema, it's pure ideology.

Nowhere is this clearer in recent years than in the antagonists in My Son Hunter. Actor John James plays a Joe Biden that is equal parts mob boss and bumbling buffoon, the type of guy who mixes up the words election and erection without batting an eye. And, of course, he's always taking a long whiff of his female security guard's hair. The filmmakers here and in other Republican movies only want to express their political beliefs, and are thus incapable of any subtlety; getting their message across is more important than naturalistic cinema or any kind of style beyond 'high school debate team monologue.'

Meanwhile, the liberal Antifa members (the conservative's boogeymen) echo the stilted language of their perfect conservative counterparts in My Son Hunter. In an early scene, Grace, the protagonist, states in the most banal way, I think I got a viral video. Im gonna trend. Her friend dissuades her from this, though, because she doesnt want the protest to have bad optics. She states, Most people are too ignorant to understand complex moral issues. You have to withhold some things for their own good. You have to choose truth over facts. Grace agrees not to post the video, and the two trade the phrase Were on the right side of history like its some sort of secret handshake.

Theres another side to the conservative media sphere: so-called 'documentaries.' Rather than documenting any sort of reality, however, these conspiracy theory movies make outlandish, often bad faith claims that are easily disputable. Movies like 2000 Mules, Plandemic, and Alexs War distort the truth to disseminate lies to an audience that is already primed to receive it. These movies arent meant to document; theyre meant to propagandize and legitimize claims that are ultimately meant to serve the creators bottom line.

Documentarian and convicted felon Dinesh DSouzas film, 2000 Mules, is just one of many, but it aptly illustrates the problems all these movies have. The film purports to reveal incontrovertible evidence that the 2020 election was stolen, and that Donald Trump should have been reelected as President of the United States.

Related: Mermaids: The Cringiest Nature Documentary Ever Made

In reality, the evidence the movie presents is little more than hidden camera videos of people dropping off their ballots. Intermingled with this are scenes of DSouza and members of the organization True the Vote (an organization which was once charged with felony crimes regarding forgery of signatures, and which illegally applied for tax-exempt status), explaining how the videos prove their points. To someone who takes everything the documentary presents at face value, it could be rather convincing. But dig in just a bit and the entire film falls apart.

For as long as people could pick up a camera, weirdos have been using film to spread their version of reality to the masses. Take, for instance, 1971s If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? The film is an adaptation of a sermon on the dangers of Communism by Baptist Minister Estus Pirkle. It portrays an alternate fantasy world in the United States after the country has been overtaken by the Communists, wherein good Christians are forced to denounce their faith or die.

The movie is a surreal, exploitation-fueled nightmare that was meant to frighten the intended churchgoing audience. Its messaging is clear: you and your fellow Christians are under threat from nefarious forces, and, thus, you must be ready to fight this illusory other.

Footmen is a look into the countrys past, a relic of a different time. It is also an oddly prescient piece, as religious and political leaders once again decry their opponents as socialists out to destroy the American way of life. Though not always through the explicitly religious lens of Pirkle, modern conservative media employs the same tactics. They aim to frighten and deceive for the sake of spreading and reinforcing a bad-faith political message. Little, it seems, has changed.

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My Son Hunter and the Weird World of Conservative Movies - MovieWeb

These three men contributed, both individually and jointly, to the overthrow of communism behind the Iron Curtain in Europe.

Blessed Stefan Cardinal Wyszyski, Pope St. John Paul II and President Ronald W. Reagan were all described as modern Knights of Liberty for their roles in bringing down European communism in the 1980s and 90s during an international conference at the Victims of Communism Memorial Museum in Washington on Thursday.

Panelists from the United States and Poland spoke about how the three men contributed, both individually and jointly, to the overthrow of communism behind the Iron Curtain in Europe. Major speakers included papal biographer George Weigel, European Member of Parliament Ryszard Legutko, and Bishop Sawomir Oder who, as postulator, handled John Pauls canonization process. Other panelists included Jan Kotaski, Polands former ambassador to the Vatican; Profs. Zbigniew Stawrowski, John Radziowski, Marek Chodakiewicz. Henry Nau, Lee Edwards, Paul Kengor, and Victims of Communism personnel, including Dr. Elizabeth Spalding and Ambassador Andrew Bremberg.

Wyszyski, who became Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw (and thus Primate of Poland) in 1948, assumed his post as communism in its postwar, Stalinist phase was stamping out all political pluralism in Poland. Seeing that Western recognition of the Yalta division of Europe was not going to be reversed, Wyszyski sought to carve out what space he could for the Church within the status quo. When the communists in 1953 claimed the right to make all ecclesiastical appointments, from parish priests on up, the Primate led the bishops collective declaration Non Possumus (we cannot agree), which landed Wyszyski under isolated house arrest for three years. During the time, the Primate prepared his spiritual strategy, including a nine-year novena to lead up to the millennium of Polish Christianity in 1966, which led to the recatechesis of the country.

Pope John Paul II who, as Karol Wojtya served as Archbishop of Krakw for 14 years alongside Primate Wyszyski. Despite relentless communist efforts to divide the two, Wojtya maintained loyal solidarity with Wyszyski. On Oct. 22, as cardinals processed up to the new Pope to declare their homage, John Paul got up and raised Wyszyski, embracing him. The next day, the new Pope declared, This Polish pope, who today full of fear of God, but also of trust, is beginning a new pontificate, would not be on Peters Chair were it not for your faith, which did not retreat before prison and suffering.

Reagan, who narrowly lost the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 and was expected to run in 1980, had already formulated a principled anti-communism, based not on political expediency but a moral assessment of the evil empire. Watching John Pauls first pilgrimage to Poland in June 1979 nine days that changed the world, as papal biographer George Weigel described it Reagan became convinced Poland was the linchpin in bringing down the Soviet Empire and that he needed to work with the Pope towards that goal. His intention was reinforced by his conviction that both his and John Pauls survival of assassination attempts in 1981 were part of a divine plan to pursue that goal.

All the speakers emphasized that, while their goals were clear, Wyszyski, John Paul and Reagan were also all realists who recognized that, while their end might be long-range, their means should always focus on expanding liberty for the captive nations while never compromising on freedoms won. All of them saw the struggle against communism not as a political or economic one but fundamentally as a moral struggle for freedom and human rights. For that reason, none of them parsed words in speaking the truth about communism or defending the rights of peoples subjugated by it.

Winsome Sears, the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, made a surprise appearance. The conference ended with a discussion about challenges of defending freedom and explaining communism to young people the post 9/11 generation today.

The Victims of Communism is an educational, research and human rights nonprofit foundation established to keep alive the memory of communisms historical record, continue the struggle for freedom in countries still under the Marxist yoke, and to memorialize the more than 100 million victims murdered by communism since 1917, including by collecting victims testimonies. It has opened a museum to the victims of communism at 900 15th Street Northwest in Washington and erected a memorial modeled on the Tiananmen Statue of Liberty from 1989 near Union Station in the capital.

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Wyszyski, John Paul II and Reagan Saluted as Knights of Liberty - National Catholic Register

By Jennifer Scott, Politics Reporter @NifS

Friday 24 March 2023 10:48, UK

Downing Street has shown "important signs of regret and embarrassment" over the rhetoric used by ministers to describe Albanians, according to the country's prime minister.

Edi Rama has previously accused Home Secretary Suella Braverman of fuelling xenophobic attacks after she spoke in parliament about an "invasion" of asylum seekers and "Albanian criminals" when describing the small boats crisis.

But speaking to Sky News at the end of his visit to the UK - which included a meeting with PM Rishi Sunak - Mr Rama said progress had been made on the language, which he hoped would not be repeated.

"British/Albanian relations touched the lowest point in history since we have come out of communism because of that rhetoric that has put the Albanian community in Britain under a very, very heavy pressure," he said.

"I must say that finally, on the side of Downing Street, we have been heard and there is not only words, but also deeds in putting together in place a joint taskforce to crack down the criminal networks, which is of course something Albania has always wanted.

"While we are having very important signs of regret and of embarrassment that is, let's say, enough at this point. I hope very much that this will not be repeated anymore and that the Albanian community here will be really honoured for it."

More than a third of people who crossed the Channel to the UK in the first nine months of last year were from Albania, according to government figures.

Under Mr Sunak's five-point plan to stop illegal immigration that was launched in December, an agreement was made with Mr Rama to embed Border Force officials in Tirana, Albania's capital, as part of a package of measures to reduce Channel crossings among people from the country.

The Albanian PM said it was a "trend" in countries that have come out of communism to see the UK as a place to go for a better life, but without a visa route, people would come via boats and seek asylum instead.

Read more:Singling out Albanian migrants 'disgraceful moment', says Edi RamaTikTok to be blocked from parliamentary devices and network

"I'm not here to question the sovereignty and the mandate of the British government to have a policy on the borders but this is all what it is about - economic reasons for coming, getting a job and building a future in a place that has always been the shining city on a hill," he said.

"They claim asylum because there is no other way. They are not part of the free labour market. So it's all about dreaming and hoping to get what they imagine best for their life now and without waiting for many more years that this might happen in Albania."

Mr Rama called on the UK government to "never forget that the Albanians here are doing great and they are helping and contributing for Britain to be a better place".

He added: "Albanians here are working for construction companies, Albanians who are nursing elderly people, Albanians doing your cooking - so improving the British kitchens, I must say - and they are even singing too, let alone the academics and the students. And it has been so unfair to them to put them under such a pressure.

"But at the same time, they are a very strong base to build something very important."

The Albanian PM urged ministers to "separate the fight against crime" from those people seeking a job, adding: "It's about having a visa system that gives access to people to apply in a regular manner and to be processed without taking the Channel, coming here to work and coming here to offer their skills.

"This is a combination of factors that is slowly getting in place and I'm sure that this issue will be solved.

"But I'm not sure that closing the borders and not letting people come in is the best for the British economy. But this is not for me to decide, is for the British people."

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Downing Street showed 'signs of regret and embarrassment' over Albanian rhetoric, says country's PM - Sky News

Fiction in translation

Championed by Elena Ferrante, Cspedess neo-realist classic The Forbidden Notebook is being reissued 70 years after it was first published. It still speaks to womens lives today

Sat 25 Mar 2023 07.00 EDT

Postwar Italian neorealism was one of the most exciting literary movements of the 20th century, but its only recently that the female neorealists have had the attention they deserve. In 2018, the publisher Daunt began its vital championing of Natalia Ginzburg, and now Pushkin brings us Alba de Cspedes. These women were famous in their lifetimes but have been forgotten since, and I think we owe their rediscovery to our own need for a reinvigorated realist novel during a moment almost as crisis-laden as Italy in the 1940s.

Its telling that many of todays most sophisticated realists, Rachel Cusk and Sally Rooney among them, have been crucial in championing Ginzburg. And its no coincidence that all this began with Ferrante fever. Elena Ferrante herself owes so much to neorealism, and its she who has driven the rediscovery of Cspedes. In Frantumaglia, a collection of letters and reflections, she listed Cspedess The Best of Husbands as one of the few novels books of encouragement she could read while writing. Publishers everywhere rushed to find a copy, and this agile, conversational translation of Cspedess 1952 Forbidden Notebook, by Ferrantes own translator, Ann Goldstein, is the first in a series of novels to be republished.

When I write in this notebook I feel Im committing a serious sin, a sacrilege: its as if I were talking to the devil. Forbidden Notebook is about a 43-year-old woman who, during a rare moment of freedom, wanders the streets of Rome on a sunny Sunday and buys a notebook from a wary shopkeeper (such items were prohibited on Sundays). Valeria returns to her husband and almost adult children only to realise she wants to hide the notebook but has nowhere to do so: I no longer had a drawer, or any storage space, that was still mine. She then begins a period of secret diary writing that feels sinful but is also a vital, unstoppable source of defiant personal definition.

Elements of the novel are autobiographical, but Cspedes was a more glamorous figure than Valeria and came from a more dangerous and powerful world. Her grandfather was the first president of Cuba, having helped lead the fight for independence. With typically passionate recklessness, she married an Italian count aged 15, had a son, and divorced soon after. She then lived publicly as the lover of Francesco Bounous, an Italian diplomat, working together in resisting fascism.

Her first novel, Theres No Turning Back, became an instant bestseller in 1938. Its the story of eight young women a kind of early version of Mary McCarthys The Group. Her feminist writing and communism made her a target for the fascists and in 1943, she and Bounous escaped to Abruzzo and spent a month hiding in the woods, waiting to cross German lines. Cspedes had met Ginzburg before the war, and Id be fascinated to trace their criss-crossing paths over these terrifying months. At just this point, Ginzburg fled Abruzzo to hide in Rome, where her husband would soon be arrested and tortured. Cspedes was safer than Ginzburg, because she wasnt Jewish, but she put herself willingly in danger, broadcasting for partisan radio when she made it to Bari, getting arrested for the second time.

The war left her chastened but determined to live and to write. She became a major player in the Italian literary scene, publishing a series of novels chronicling this period of social change on an intimate, personal scale. She also edited a journal called Mercurio where she published the giants of Italian neorealism, and wrote an agony aunt column for the popular magazine Epoca. Here she achieved the astonishing feat of gaining enormous popular success and the esteem of the highest-minded writers of her day. At one point Sartre wanted to publish the columns as a book in France and write a preface himself. What she did here and in her novels was to combine intimate revelation about womens bodily and emotional lives with a deep moral seriousness about the need for change within marriage as an institution and within womens lives.

Forbidden Notebook is in part a documentation of postwar changes in womens lives, observed with the meticulous detail of neorealism. Valerias daughter has an open affair with a not-yet-divorced man that horrifies her mother, who then comes to see this horror as symptomatic of a dead set of moral values. But Valerias diary also enables Cspedes to ask perennial questions about the value and dangers of an examined life.

Whats at stake emerges in a powerful exchange between Ginzburg and Cspedes in Mercurio in 1948, republished in the NYRB. Here Ginzburg bemoans the bad habit women have of falling into a well, floating or even drowning in the dark and painful waters of melancholy. Cspedes responds by saying that, though she agrees, she believes the well itself can be a source of strength. Because every time we fall in the well we descend to the deepest roots of our being human.

It is this well Valeria falls into when she begins secretly to write, and finds that details she used to forget quickly amid the daily busyness of household tasks and office work take on new significance. Seeing how much resonance there is in a word or intonation, she begins to understand the secret meaning of life. Theres exhilaration here, but also fears that feel as though they must be Cspedess own: is the writer in danger of participating less when shes analysing more? Is it too depressing to know the people closest to her too well?

For the reader, the discoveries of the notebook emerge as discoveries of freedom. We share Valerias pleasure and release when she manages secretly to write. Valeria is an unreliable narrator, though, and we see her cowardice and need to be loved more clearly than she does, and fear for her when she embarks on a love affair with her over-romanticised boss. The act of writing appears to have set off processes of change she cant control, yet the love affair seems incompatible with the clear-sightedness of her writerly vision; her willingness to enter the well and look around in the murky water with open eyes.

Cspedes herself remained in the well, despite her diplomat husbands growing disapproval of her writing, and emerged with confidence and elan to describe what she found there: weakness, dreams, melancholy, aspirations, basically all those feelings that shape and improve the human spirit.

Lara Feigel is the author of Look! We Have Come Through! Living with DH Lawrence (Bloomsbury).

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Original post:
Resistance fighter, novelist - and Sartres favourite agony aunt: rediscovering Alba Cspedes - The Guardian