Today is Talk Like A Pirate day, so even people from Massachusetts are adding Arrs to their conversation.
BlueBlood.com’s Lenka commemorates the day that was first celebrated in John Adams’ report to the Continental Congress in 1786, when Tripoli’s ambassador explained away the Barbary pirates thusly:
It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.
The United States continued paying tribute to the Barbary States until 1805, Lenka said, and these early national humiliations led to the current sub-prime mortgage crisis.
Previously: A la carte feminism; Sugar levels; Young Hollywood and the birth of the United States
See also: Lenka at BlueBlood.net
I thought the sub-prime crisis was caused by Obama. That’s what McCain said. Shouldn’t McCain change — er, re-craft — his message to blame Barbary pirates or humiliations or the Koran, or whoever it was who was actually responsible?
Oh, wait. My mistake. McCain never changes his message.