Bodark43

Bodark43 t1_jdum4ny wrote

The English would have been as likely to be playing bagpipes in the 13th century as the Scots.

But the harsh sound of Highland pipes can to some extent be blamed on relatively recent pipeband competitions. The 18th century ones, before the Victorian Scottish revival, were sweeter, pitched at A, not Bb. But when a competition is between pipe bands, includes drums and is set outside on a parade ground ( instead of listening to a lone piper in someone's house) the edgier sound wins.

The 18th c. pipes sounded more like present-day Border pipes Lively enough to play for a dance, but not maddeningly loud.

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Bodark43 t1_j9gdrv2 wrote

McEnroe says now that Borg is the only tennis player he actually enjoyed hanging out with, who became a real friend. Of course, it was really hard to be friends with McEnroe.

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Bodark43 t1_ixctpli wrote

The witness to Ford's viewing the film was not a medical professional, and his mental and physical health had been declining for some years. But it is significant that he was very upset, did not applaud the implementation of Hitler's Final Solution. Regardless of how he might have felt about the film, though, Ford's anti-Semitic effect has indeed long outlasted him. A friend has told me you can buy still reprints of The International Jew in Istanbul. But if Roosevelt had listened to him, lots of Jewish refugees could have escaped to the US and survived the Holocaust. I'm not saying Ford was admirable, or even defensible. I am saying he was complicated.

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Bodark43 t1_ixcsqj6 wrote

No, nobody who was a card-carrying NSDAP member would have said there were "good" Jews. But certainly the "clean Wehrmacht" myth that the German staff were just professionals following orders has been decidedly disproven.

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Bodark43 t1_ix8eucg wrote

Ford was not your usual anti-Semite. He seems to have been similar to Charles Lindbergh, another Michigander farm boy. On one hand, he thought there was an international Jewish banking conspiracy, published The International Jew and even the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. On the other hand, like Lindbergh he thought there were "good" Jews, and he employed Jews in his factories and even had a Jewish architect who designed the factories-( and was puzzled as to why that architect got offended at what Ford was publishing). He also advocated letting Jewish war refugees into the US early in the conflict at a time when most people- especially Roosevelt's State Dept.-, were against it. Hitler loved Fordism. Ford didn't love Hitler...but he never returned Hitler's medal, either.

Ford's mental state in the 1940's was not great, but one witness stated that he was pushed further into dementia after watching a newsreel about the liberation of the death camps in his home theater.

Ford had so many contradictions that Stephen Watts wrote his excellent biography of several people named Henry Ford, instead of trying to explain how they fit together.

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