Rebel with a cause?

Well done, good and faithful knight! I might have known Andy Peterson (a.k.a., the Improbable Bostonian) would not only know the correct answer but also have a plethora of details (see comment for Nov. 5 entry). As promised, I will write a blog in honor of said blogger, the title and subject of which is yet to be determined.

And yes, I will be kind.

I just had to devote a blog to dear old Guy Fawkes because it was the 400th anniversary of his thwarted plot. The only reason I know of him was because of some friends of friends in college, Westfield State ("Wastefield State", Camp Westy) in Westfield, MA. I was invited to a Guy Fawkes party off-campus, complete with an effigy of Guy doused with lighter fluid and set aflame while he hung from a baseball backstop. The only reason I went was because one of these friends of my friends was cute...and interested in me. The only reason they had the party was to have an excuse to drink beer, invite girls over, and burn something. Heck, they were Jewish.

But now Sir Andrew informs me that there may be more myth than fact in the "Gunpowder Plot". Historical figures in nearly every culture have been given almost godlike status, usually with disastrous after-effects, i.e., we don't get their story straight, we don't learn from their mistakes, and as an ancilliary benefit, at least in our own country, we view current leaders through the same rose-colored glasses. What I find interesting is that we Americans revile and barely remember the names of treasonous traitors who tried to destroy our way of life; the Brits have holidays in honor of such efforts. Such light-hearted treatment of national criminals (after they've been adequately punished) is surely a product of farsightedness, having a longer history and a keener memory of it.

But who knows? Perhaps a few centuries from now our nation will celebrate "Scooter Libby and Karl Rove Day", "Michael Brown Day", (fill in your own nominee).