America’s most famous greasy pole is no more. When the plebes at the U.S. Naval Academy gathered on May 24 to mark the end of their grueling first year in Annapolis, they clambered up the 21-foot Herndon Monument almost without breaking a sweat, in two minutes and five seconds.

The annual ritual commonly took hours in the past, because upperclassmen slathered the monument with lard and hosed down the ground at its base as well as the plebes. But the wussification of America proceeds apace, and the service academies are not spared. This year the order came down: no lard, no hoses. According to an academy spokesman, Vice Admiral Jeffrey Fowler, the -superintendent “made the decision this year that it would be safer for the midshipmen to climb the monument without grease.”

The Scrapbook thinks we can all agree that he’s right about that. But do we really want our academy superintendents to conceive of themselves as playground monitors? Picture a member of the class of 2013 opening the 1983 novel A Country Such As This by Senator James Webb, former secretary of the Navy and 1968 Annapolis grad, and reading this passage:

In the center of the crowd, as if on stage, a thousand plebes surrounded the Herndon Monument, a twenty-foot phallus erected in honor of a ship once lost at sea. The monument and the small field around its base was slick with grease. Bags of grease dangled from its top, ready to pop when touched. The plebes in the grass were shin-deep in it, falling and laughing, covered with the ooze.  They were trying to build a human wall, in order to place a midshipman cap on top of the monument. Once they were able to do so, completing a ritual that dated back to Nimitz’s and Halsey’s midshipmen days, plebe year with all its deprivations and humiliation would be over. They had been trying for more than an hour. Somewhere at the base of the monument, thick-legged and broad-backed J.J. Lesczynski was providing a platform for that human wall. . . . The plebes were four layers high, now, a gluey ring around Herndon. A small midshipman was hiked up to the second layer, and crawled among his classmates as if they were boulders. .  .  . The crowd began to yell, a crescendo. .  .  . and the thousand plebes raised fists into the air, clasping friends and dancing in the muck around Herndon. Their joy was real.

Do you imagine that this young midshipman will be grateful to the superintendent for sparing him this ritual in the name of safety? Will he pity the likes of Nimitz and Halsey, who lived in less enlightened times? Asked and answered.

Now that the pole has been degreased, The Scrapbook wonders how long the cover toss will last—that moment at the conclusion of the graduation ceremony when midshipmen fling their caps into the air. After all, there are children present, scrambling to grab one of the covers as a souvenir. They might trip and fall in the melee. Better safe than sorry, right? ♦

Self-Pity in the Oval

At a fundraiser for Senator Barbara Boxer in California last week, President Obama, according to the report from the press pool, “began with his usual speech .  .  . walking the crowd through the economic situation that greeted him his first day in office and the initiatives Democrats have passed since—stimulus bill, extending unemployment benefits and COBRA, health care,” etc.

Then he uncorked a Jeroboam of bombast and self-justification: “Let’s face it,” he said, “this has been the toughest year and a half since any year and a half since the 1930s.” -Really? As Daniel Halper commented at weeklystandard.com, “One does hope it’s been the toughest year and a half he’s ever had. He is the president, and it’s a job that requires a bit of work.” But it’s astonishingly unseemly, not to mention historically illiterate, for Obama to elevate the difficulties he’s faced above those confronted by​—well, by FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, and Nixon, just for starters.

Any one-month period from 1941 to 1945 was probably a bit tougher for the chief executive than the last 18 months combined. There was a hot war in Korea when Eisenhower took office, with over 300,000 U.S. soldiers deployed there. The Cold War was at its peak when JFK took over—the Berlin Wall went up in August 1961. Was 1969-70 a walk in the park for Nixon? How about 1979-80 for Jimmy Carter. More recently, there was the late unpleasantness of 9/11 that landed in George W. Bush’s inbox during his first year in office.

In terms of the domestic political balance of power, Obama took office with a stiff breeze filling his mainsail: just shy of an 80-seat majority for his party in the House of Representatives and with a filibuster-proof 60 senators.

Some brave adviser needs to whisper some simple advice in the president’s ear: Man up, sir.

If one wants to play the game “Compare and Contrast the Respective Performances of our Chief -Executives Since the 1930s,” The Scrapbook is prepared to argue that we have seen more self-pity in the Oval Office over the last year and a half than in any year and a half since the late 1970s. ♦

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Texas Textbooks Update

Texas has been much in the news as it adopts new textbook standards reflecting a more conservative approach to numerous issues in American history. These include such ideologically freighted issues as the role of Christian belief in the founding of the American republic, the nature of the capitalist system in contrast with the failure of socialism, and the doctrine known as “American exceptionalism.”

If we may be immodest, one area of concern that has been neglected except in these pages (“What Johnny Needs to Learn About Islam,” -Stephen Schwartz, December 7, 2009) are the new standards for teaching about Islam, which ended up surprisingly good.

The final draft of the standards was released by the Texas Education Agency on April 15, for public comment before a final vote by the Texas State Board of Education. The second draft of the Texas standards clarified the relationship of Islamic fundamentalism and Palestinian terrorism, as Schwartz had recommended in his article last December. The final version reads as follows:

§113.42, World History Studies, (14), “History. The student understands the development of radical Islamic fundamentalism and the subsequent use of terrorism by some of its adherents. The student is expected to: (A) summarize the development and impact of radical Islamic fundamentalism on events in the second half of the 20th century, including Palestinian terrorism and the growth of al Qaeda; (B) explain the U.S. response to terrorism from September 11, 2001, to the present.”

In his capacity as executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, Schwartz attended the public hearing in Texas and testified in support of the proposed changes in standards, on May 19. We’re happy to report that the Texas State Board of Education voted to adopt the new standards two days later. ♦

Can This Marriage Be Saved?

A

orrection published in the May 27 Washington Post:

A May 23 Style article about wedding registries mixed up the opinions of Martha Ertman and Karen Lash, a married couple who discussed their 2008 engagement. Ertman was in favor of having a registry, and she, not Lash, said, “You get a ring with a diamond, and you register; that’s how you know you’re doing it.” It was Lash, not Ertman, who said, “It seemed greedy.” ♦

Sentences We Didn’t Finish

‘The Roman Catholic hierarchy is entitled to its views. But the episode reinforces perceptions of church leaders as rigid, dogmatic, out of touch .  .  . ” (Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, May 27). ♦

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