Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

March 21, 1922: USS Langley (CV-1) was commissioned as the Navy's first aircraft carrier. Critics claimed that the carrier was obsolete because it was too costly and vulnerable. A century later, the same is being said about USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78).




USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20), Blue Ridge-class amphibious command ship, the flagship of U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet arrives at the NATO Marathi Pier Complex in Souda Bay, Greece, March 10, 2025 for a scheduled port visit.


A good Public Affairs Office (PAO) wordsmithing team could make this in to a superb 30-second YouTube recruiting advert in about 2-hours for no additional cost.


In a 1957 issue of Harper's, Robert Moses chimed in on civil defense...



Robert Moses (1888-1981) is regarded as one of the most powerful and influential people in the history of New York City and New York state. The grand scale of his infrastructure projects and his philosophy of urban development influenced a generation of engineers, architects, and urban planners across the United States.

Scientific Blueprint for Atomic Survival - Illustrations from LIFE March 18, 1957:



Glenn O'Brien's High Times essay on the subject.



The oft-quoted article by Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970) as it originally appeared in the November 1964 issue of Harper's.

Since Masons were pledged to come to each other’s aid under circumstances of distress, and to extend fraternal indulgence at all times, it was held that the order nullified the enforcement of regular law. Masonic constables, sheriffs, juries, and judges must all be in league with Masonic criminals and fugitives. The press was believed to have been so “muzzled” by Masonic editors and proprietors that news of Masonic malfeasance could be suppressed. At a moment when almost every alleged citadel of privilege in America was under democratic assault, Masonry was attacked as a fraternity of the privileged, closing business opportunities and nearly monopolizing political offices.

Certain elements of truth and reality there may have been in these views of Masonry. What must be emphasized here, however, is the apocalyptic and absolutistic framework in which this hostility was commonly expressed. Anti-Masons were not content simply to say that secret societies were rather a bad idea. The author of the standard exposition of anti-Masonry declared that Freemasonry was “not only the most abominable but also the most dangerous institution that ever was imposed on man. . . . It may truly be said to be Hell’s master piece.“

The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Harper's, Nov 1964)

Hofstadter's 1959 BBC radio lecture on "The American Right Wing and the Paranoid Style" was later revised and published as "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" in the November 1964 Harper's Magazine. Hofstadter's initial focus on status anxiety tied to interest politics came from Franz Neumann's "Anxiety and Politics" (1954). Frankfurt School adherent Herbert Marcuse similarly connected status anxiety to interest politics in a eulogy for the deceased Neumann during a memorial service at Columbia University in 1955. Hofstadter shifted to studying the concepts of paranoia in what he termed "pseudo-conservatism", partly based on The Authoritarian Personality (1950) by another Frankfurt School member, Theodor W. Adorno, and admitted in 1967 that the book was an influential study. Hofstadter's 1954 paper on paranoia in pseudo-conservatism was presented at the 1954 Seminar of the State convened by post-industrial sociologist Daniel Bell, a 1950s Cold War liberal and post-1965 neoconservative. 

The provenance of the phrase "paranoid style" can be traced to the archived correspondence of then-BBC producer George MacBeth in a late January 1959 transmissive proposing the same to Hofstadter. On August 2, 1959, Hofstadter delivered his radio lecture on "The American Right Wing and the Paranoid Style."


UK No.1 on this day in 1971: Marc Bolan & T.Rex - Hot Love





"We have a cancer — within, close to the presidency, that’s growing."

— John W. Dean III to Richard Nixon, March 21, 1973


Audio and transcript: Watergate Trial Tapes


March 21, 1974: Belly dancer Zizi Mostafa (1943-2008) provides after dinner entertainment for Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, (seen third from left), and her husband, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, (wearing dark glasses, on right), who removed wine glasses from the table to make the way for the bejeweled feet of the exotic dancer at a Cairo nightclub late March 21st--the first day of the couple's private holiday to Egypt with a party of millionaires. At the age of 16 she quickly became one of the most popular actresses in Egypt and throughout the Arab world.



Here's Zizi Mustafa performing:




March 21, 2475: THX 1138 returns home from work via confession. While 'relaxing' at home, his roomate LUH3417, swaps his medication causing him to develop nausea, anxiety, and sexual desires.




March 21, 1982: NASA was counting down for STS-3—Columbia's third flight to space—which launched the following day. The ups and downs of Jack Lousma and Gordon Fullerton's eight-day mission:


Space shuttle Columbia took to the skies on March 22, 1982, for its third trip into space. Astronauts Jack R. Lousma and C. Gordon Fullerton rode the reusable spacecraft on a pillar of fire from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. They continued engineering tests of the orbiter with an emphasis on characterizing its thermal properties.

Lousma and Fullerton used the Canadian-built Remote Manipulator System (RMS) robotic arm to grapple and lift a payload for the first time. Mission managers extended the planned seven-day mission by one day due to inclement weather at the alternate landing site at Northrup Strip at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, the only touchdown at that location in shuttle history.

40 Years Ago: STS-3, Columbia’s Third Mission to Space