Wake Up Uncle Sam! Murfin Verse for Independence Day Encore

  

                                    Uncle Sam Dozing by J.C. Leyendecker.

None of my detailed historic posts about today, family tradition musings, or sharing the text by Long Tom and the boys.  Most of you have seen those anyway.  I was asked to come up with a chalice lighting for Fresh Eggs or Sanctuary a worship service at the Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation shared on Zoom due to the Coronavirus pandemic in 2021 led by our interim minister Rev. Jenn Gracen.  The Independence Day and poem I came up with was inspired by that and our conflicted feelings over the Founders, Declaration of Independence, White privilege, and patriotic symbolism.

The prompt for the poem was taken from a 1924 cover of the Saturday Evening Post by artist J.C. Leyendecker.

Wake Up Uncle Sam!

Independence Day 2021

 

As an allegorical figure you have seen better days,

            heroic posters, Saturday Evening Post covers,

            Jimmy Cagney dancing stiff legged,

            even stilt walkers in Main Street Parades.

 

But as a shrewd Yankee trader ready to sell some

            cure-all elixir at inflated prices,

            at least you were truer to the spirit of America

            than some goddess Columbia in a Liberty Cap

            or crowned Lady in a Harbor offering

conditional welcome to swarthy and pitiful refugees.

 

Like the Flag that bedazzles your swallow tail suit,

            high top hat, and pantaloons you have become

            an empty symbol of chest-thumping jingoism

            devoid of the promises of that Declaration

            we are supposed to celebrate today

            or any of the ringing rhetoric

            that promised us something different

            and finer, more noble and widely embracing.

 

We never quite lived up to all that hokum and hurrah

            no matter what a show we made of that banner

            and frankly of you.

 

No wonder you needed a nap.

            but that M-80 lit under your tilted chair

            should wake you up at last.

 

The enemies of Liberty are afoot.

            It is time to wake up defend

            those old promises,

snake oil though they might have been.

 

—Patrick Murfin

Your Uncle Sam Makes His Bow

 

By the Civil War, Uncle Sam was already an established national symbol.  But maybe not so national.  He was always a Yankee, as in this depiction of a knock down, drag out battle with his Southern spouse.

On March 13, 1852 the first cartoon featuring a figure identified as Uncle Sam appeared in the New York Lantern, a weekly paper. But Uncle Sam as a personification of the United States dates back to the War of 1812 when a sharp tongued but shrewd Yankee farmer was used to disparage Mr. Madison’s War. This first reached the printed page in the 1816 book The Adventures of Uncle Sam in Search of his Lost Honor by one Fredrick Augustus Fidfaddy, an obvious nom de plume. 

 

Was Troy, New York Army purchasing agent Samuel Wilson really Uncle Sam?  I wouldn't bet on it.
 

Some trace the name to a Troy, New York man, Samuel Wilson, known locally as Uncle Sam, who inspected provisions purchased for the Army. He affixed a stamp with the initials U.S. to the goods. Although monuments have been erected celebrating Sam Wilson as Uncle Sam, most scholars now scoff at the idea. 

 

Uncle Sam supplanted and earlier figure, another Yankee named Brother Jonathan who appeared in the humor magazine Puck.  Sam seems to have appropriated Jonathan's wardrobe.

 

More likely Uncle Sam is simply derived from the initials U.S. on military buttons and branded on Army mules and horses. By the time of the Civil War, Uncle Sam had displaced Puck magazine’s Brother Jonathan—another Yankee—and was rivaling the allegorical female figure of Columbia as a national personification. Cartoonists in popular magazines like Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated were showing him complete with white chin whiskers, striped pants, and an old fashion cut-away coat. 

 

The most famous Uncle Sam of all was created by illustrator James Montgomery Flagg and used on this famous Army recruiting poster which adapted Lord Kitchener's pose in an equally famous World War I British poster.

 

The most famous version of Uncle Sam is the one created by James Montgomery Flagg in 1916 featuring a grim Uncle Sam pointing directly at the viewer. The original version was featured on the cover of Leslie’s Weekly with the phrase “What are you doing for Preparedness.” It was soon made into an Army recruiting poster with the bold words, “I Want You for the U.S. Army.” 

 

The pose and slogan were actually adapted from a hugely popular British recruiting poster featuring the image of Lord Kitchener. The poster was re-issued during World War II and versions of it can still be found in most recruiting stations.   The iconic image has been parodied many times. 

 

Uncle Sam has been appropriated by both political parties and by the Left and the Right, but as a nationalist symbol he has often been adopted by racists, xenophobes, and anti-immigration zealots.

 

Sam worked his way into popular culture in many ways. As accurately portrayed in the classic MGM musical bio Yankee Doodle Dandy, George M. Cohan’s father portrayed Uncle Sam in the Four Cohans vaudeville act and George employed him in his patriotic musical extravaganzas. The Uncle Sam stilt walkers became a staple of circuses and Fourth of July parades. He has been employed in countless animated cartoons and is regularly exploited in advertising. 

 

In the 1960s and ‘70s Lar “America First” Daly was a perennial candidate for Mayor of Chicago, Governor of Illinois, and President of the United States always campaigning in an Uncle Sam hat and suit. Uncle Sam hats were a regular motif at Tea Party events and Republican campaign rallies. But don’t blame Sam, it’s not his fault.

Murfin Verse Crisis Alert for Independence Day—Wake Up Uncle Sam!

A 1924 cover of the Saturday Evening Post by artist J.C. Leyendecker.

In 2021, in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, I was asked to come up with a chalice lighting for July 4th zoom worship service of the Tree of Life Unitarian Congregation. The poem I came up with was inspired by that and our conflicted feelings over the Founders, Declaration of Independence, White privilege, and patriotic symbolism during a time of strife and uncertainty.  Now, three  years later, the details of the current crisis are different but no less fraught with danger to democracy, cherished values, and survival of life itself as we know it.

In fact the danger has never been greater.  Not only does the former thug in the White House retain the mindless devotion of his MAGA minions and absolute command of the former Grand Old Party, but despite an avalanche of civil and criminal prosecutions put off a day of fatal judgement that could prevent him from winning re-election.  His hand picked Supreme Court majority has not only ruled in his favor and granted willy-nilly delays, but actually struck the heart of democracy itself by decreeing that Presidents cannot be held legally liable for their “official actions” that might otherwise be criminal.  As Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her blistering dissent:

The long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding… The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.

The Court has already gutted women’s reproductive rights and signaled support for harsh and punitive state laws aimed at virtually complete abortion bans.  This week in a spate of opinions the Court also struck down the procedures for enforcement of critical environmental and safety regulations.  Legal observers are certain there is more of the same—or worse—coming ahead in the new Court session this fall.

Meanwhile long standing concerns for President Joe Biden’s age and health and his alarming presentation at his first debate with the Orange Menace have left many discouraged and fearful that he cannot best his criminal rival in November.  The President was already plagued with low fervor among core Democratic constituencies.   Youth voters are extremely alienated and many will simply sit out the election.  Climate catastrophe and opposition to support for Israel in its genocidal war in Gaza are key disappointments for young voters who turned out for Obama and against Trump in the last election.  The growing Muslim vote, critical in Michigan and other must-win states, is probably completely lost while right wing Jews attack him for being at all critical Netanyahu’s bloody assaults.  Black voters are unenthused and resent feeling taken for granted  by Democrats.  They will still skew heavily to Biden, but lower over-all turn-out may not be enough to overcome a large, hostile White electorate.  Latinx voter are confused and worried about immigration and asylum issues.

Biden’s last line of defense is a huge turn-out of women motivated by outrage over restricted reproductive rights and an array of gender defining issues. 

The prompt for the poem was taken from a 1924 cover of the Saturday Evening Post by artist J.C. Leyendecker.

Wake Up Uncle Sam!

Independence Day 2021

 

As an allegorical figure you have seen better days,

            heroic posters, Saturday Evening Post covers,

            Jimmy Cagney dancing stiff legged,

            even stilt walkers in Main Street Parades.

 

But as a shrewd Yankee trader ready to sell some

            cure-all elixir at inflated prices,

            at least you were truer to the spirit of America

            than some goddess Columbia in a Liberty Cap

            or crowned Lady in a Harbor offering

conditional welcome to swarthy and pitiful refugees.

 

Like the Flag that bedazzles your swallow tail suit,

            high top hat, and pantaloons you have become

            an empty symbol of chest-thumping jingoism

            devoid of the promises of that Declaration

            we are supposed to celebrate today

            or any of the ringing rhetoric

            that promised us something different

            and finer, more noble and widely embracing.

 

We never quite lived up to all that hokum and hurrah

            no matter what a show we made of that banner

            and frankly of you.

 

No wonder you needed a nap.

            but that M-80 lit under your tilted chair

            should wake you up at last.

 

The enemies of Liberty are afoot.

            It is time to wake up defend

            those old promises,

snake oil though they might have been.

 

—Patrick Murfin