Hallelujah Trail

"Women will remake the world."



Well, maybe. Hey, did you ever see this old movie?



UPDATE: She won.

12 comments:

PALADIN said...

Mona The Muslim Nazi.
You'd think she would agree with the poster after her "experiance" in Egypt.

U.S. citizen my ass, she 's a citizen when it suits her.
I wonder who this Pamela Hall is?
I like her courage , nobody else there was saying a damn thing.

Grim said...

I'm not sure who Pamela Hall is. Her video recording was published by the NY Post, though, so maybe she's associated with them.

Now, Ms. Eltahawy is an interesting character. She wrote a piece for Foreign Policy a few months ago asserting that Islamic men hate women, full stop. Now she's standing here asserting that it's racism to call Islam uncivilized. I wonder how you sort that out? Islam has noting to do with race, at least as we'd normally understand the term. Even if we take it as a kind of "race," though, what's her point? Is it uncivilized because it's against women, or is it to be defended because it's a race (of a sort)?

Grim said...

By the way, if you haven't seen the movie, the thing that reminded me of it was the way that the women in the movie would do the most aggressive things; and when called on it would reply in a perfectly civilized tone as if what they were about was obvious and ordinary. For example, they didn't approve of drinking, so they set out to destroy an entire wagon train of whiskey so that the rightful owners couldn't drink it.

That's pretty much the dynamic at work here. 'I do have a right to spraypaint this poster, actually. I'm merely engaged in my right of free expression. Naturally you can't have a problem with that. Now get out of the way before I have to call the police.' She sounds so proper saying it, for a moment you have to doubt whether she isn't in the right after all.

That's how Prohibition happened, mind you. You've got to watch these folks. :)

Blast Hardcheese said...

One of Donald Pleasance's finest roles. "Yeah, now I see it!"

Grim said...

Yeah, the Oracle is a great character. I love those scenes, and the one cavalry scene where they march the train out -- with a huge thunderstorm gathered, many miles away, on a distant mountain. That's a beautifully shot scene.

Eric Blair said...

It's just like Thackeray wrote: "Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it."

Cass said...

Grim, I know you are yanking my chain, but allow me to point out the order of operations here:

Prohibition was the 18th Amendment.

Women's suffrage was the 19th (IOW, it came after).

The vast majority of voters were male at the time Prohibition was passed.

If there is one enduring constant in the world, it is the tendency of men to blame women (sometimes humorously, more often not).

As for "women will remake the world", they will do no such thing... unless men roll over and play dead, or give up as so many are doing these days. "Women" are not some monolithic constituency any more than men are. In the story you allude to here, one woman did something wrong.

And another woman stood up for what was right and tried to stop her despite the well known aversion most women have to physical altercations.

Here's another little known fact about Prohibition:

The repeal movement was started by a wealthy Republican, Pauline Sabin, who said that prohibition should be repealed because it made the US a nation of hypocrites and undermined its respect for the rule of law. *Her* fellow Republicans were put in office by the "drys" and, even though they eagerly partook in consumption of alcoholic beverages at her parties, in public they presented themselves as opposing the repeal of prohibition, lest they be thrown out of office by the dry voting blocks. This hypocrisy and the fact that women led the prohibition movement convinced her to start the organization that eventually led to the repeal of prohibition.[12][13]

When her fellow Republicans would not support her efforts, she went to the Democrats, who changed from drys led by conservative Democrats and Catholics to supporting repeal led by liberal politicians such as La Guardia and Franklin Roosevelt. She, and they, emphasized that repeal would generate enormous sums of much needed tax revenue, and weaken the base of organized crime. The Repeal of Prohibition in the United States was accomplished with the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution on December 5, 1933. By its terms, states were allowed to set their own laws for the control of alcohol. The organized Prohibition movement was dead nationwide, but survived for a while in a few southern and border states.

Funny how that never seems to get mentioned.

Tom said...

If there is one enduring constant in the world, it is the tendency of men to blame women (sometimes humorously, more often not).

Ever since Adam.

Tom said...

While I agree with the sentiment of the poster and with the woman who tried to stop the vandalism, I am rather scandalized that no one seemed able to respond to the vandal and tell her vandalism is NOT legally protected speech, especially the police officer.

Grim said...

Prohibition was the 18th Amendment.

Women's suffrage was the 19th (IOW, it came after).


Chain-pulling aside, it's actually kind of an interesting point that both of them were voted for chiefly by men. Usually civil rights expansions come with (a) very high levels of social instability and/or violence, and (b) the group giving up power doing so because it cannot resist adequately. This is a very rare example -- it may be a unique example -- of a major social change effected by persuasion of the powerful, without violence, to yield up a measure of their power.

"Women will remake the world" was just the name of the chant the women in the movie used. :)

Cass said...

I kind of figured it was something like that, but hadn't seen the movie. That's why I didn't say anything initially...

...that, and the awareness that you were yanking my chain :p

Grim said...

Someday you should see the film. It's silly, but very funny in many respects. The music is often quite good, and some of the cinematography is good also. In any case it's the sort of film you'll find yourself quoting for years.