I like Ike and to hell with Linton!
From my music textbook:
"In 1937, the anthropologist Ralph Linton published an article entitled 'One Hundred Percent American.' 'There can be no question about the average American's Americanism or his desire to rpeserve his precious heritage at all costs,' wrote Linton. 'Nevertheless some insidious foreign ideas have already wormed their way into his civilization without his realizing what was going on.' These 'insidious' ideas'- derived from the cultures of Asia, the Near East, Europe, Africa, and Native American- include pajamas, the toilet, soap, the toothbrush, the chair, shoes, the mirror, coffee, fermented and distilled drinks, the cigar, and even the newspaper. On the train to work, Linton's 'average American' reads the news of the day, imprinted in characters invented by the ancient Semites by a process invented in Germany on a material invented in China. As he scans the latest editorial pointing out the dire results to our institutions of accepting foreign ideas, he thanks a Hebrew God in an Indo-European language that he is 100 percent (decimal system invented by the Greeks) American (from Americus Vespucci, Italian geographer)."
From a book about gays in the military:
WAC Sergeant Johnnie Phelps became legendary for a conversation she had with Eisenhower when she served on the general's staff during the postwar occupation of Europe. She knew how to answer the day he called her into his office and said he had heard reports that there were lesbians in the WAC battalion. He wanted a list of their names, he said, so he could get rid of them. That, Phelps suspected, would be a tall order, since she estimated that 95% of the WAC battalion of nine hundred women at that headquarters was lesbian.
"I'll make your list," Phelps concluded in her crackling North Carolina accent, "but you've got to know that when you get the list back, my name's going to be first."
Eisenhower's secretary, also in the room, corrected the sergeant. "Sir," the secretary said, "if the General pleases, Sergeant Phelps will have to be second on the list. I'm going to type it. My name will be first."
According to Phelps, Eisenhower looked at her, looked at the secretary, shook his said, and said, "Forget that order. Forget about it."
