Impromptus

A Miss Universe from Nicaragua, &c.

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Miss Nicaragua Sheynnis Palacios reacts after being crowned Miss Universe in San Salvador, El Salvador, November 18, 2023. (Jose Cabezas / Reuters)
On the effects of a pageant; Nikki Haley’s name; ‘Happy Thanksgiving’; treasurable teachers; and more

‘Nicaragua’s increasingly isolated and repressive government thought it had scored a rare public-relations victory last week,” reported the Associated Press. Why did Daniel Ortega and his gang think that? Because Miss Nicaragua, Sheynnis Palacios, won the Miss Universe pageant. That is something for a dictatorship to take advantage of.

But there was a problem: Apparently, Señorita Palacios had taken part in pro-democracy demonstrations when a student.

In celebration of her victory in the pageant, Nicaraguans took to the streets, but not in the way the government would have wanted. As the AP said, they waved “the blue-and-white national flag, as opposed to Ortega’s red-and-black Sandinista banner.”

I’m glad that the Sandinistas have their own flag, their own symbol, leaving the national flag to other Nicaraguans.

Further from that AP report:

Vice President and First Lady Rosario Murillo lashed out Wednesday at opposition social-media sites — many run from exile — that celebrated Palacios’ win as a victory for the opposition.

“In these days of a new victory, we are seeing the evil, terrorist commentators making a clumsy and insulting attempt to turn what should be a beautiful and well-deserved moment of pride into destructive coup-mongering,” Murillo said.

Dictatorships want a nation to have no life outside the dictatorship itself. Remember the slogan of Mussolini and his gang: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

Félix Maradiaga is a Nicaraguan democracy leader and a former political prisoner. With other prisoners, he was released earlier this year. They were exiled to the United States, by plane. Let me quote from a piece I wrote about Maradiaga and his ordeal:

The plane was a charter from Omni Air Transport. When it took off, the prisoners — now ex-prisoners — sang the national anthem. And prayed. The moment was “bittersweet,” says Maradiaga. Sweet, because they were out of prison. Bitter, because it would be some time before they were allowed to return to their homeland. (If ever?)

Note something about the national anthem: It is illegal to sing it in Nicaragua. It is also illegal to raise the national flag. Why? Because the dictatorship sees both the anthem and the flag as symbols of the opposition.

• Violence by men against women has been part of the human experience from the beginning. It will always be. But it can be lessened, through civilization (in a word).

This violence has been a particular problem in Italy. Sometimes the subject is discussed openly, sometimes sotto voce.

Let me now quote from another Associated Press report — a moving and important story:

After the latest, horrifying killing of a college student allegedly by her resentful and jealous ex-boyfriend, students from Turin to Palermo have taken to pounding on classroom desks in unison to demand a stop to the slaying of women in Italy at the hands of men.

• In America, we have “DEI”: “diversity, equity, inclusion.” In Canada, apparently, they have “EDI”: “equity, diversity, inclusion.” Either way . . .

“This is bonkers,” says Dr. Jacobs, below. Isn’t it though?

• I had never heard of the Florida Standard. I have now. This is a publication that backs Governor Ron DeSantis. On social media, these guys had a question for readers: “Did you know that Nikki Haley’s parents are immigrants from India and her birth name is Nimarata Randhawa?”

Actually, her birth name is “Nimarata Nikki Randhawa.” She has always gone by her middle name. And she married a man named “Haley.” In other words, hers is a classic American story.

Anyway, the Florida Standard people produced an article headed “Republicans Shocked After Discovering Nikki Haley’s Real Name.”

Nativism has always been a component of our national life, and it seems especially strong today. But let me say something else about the tactics of the Florida Standard: They remind me of a piece of Florida political lore.

George Smathers never said it, but someone said he said it, and it is pretty darn clever:

“Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, he has a brother who is a known homo sapiens, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy.”

• A headline from the New York Times, about the speaker of the House, “MAGA Mike” Johnson (as Matt Gaetz named him): “Johnson Pays Trump Visit as He Faces Mounting Criticism from the Right.” (Article here.)

Oh, sure. Maybe the Republican Party will drop this obeisance someday. Shake off this mesmerism. But that day seems far off . . .

• When people speak of the horseshoe — Left and Right ending up in proximity to each other — this is the kind of thing they mean:

• A lot of people shrink from choking out the dread phrase “Merry Christmas.” But a lot of people shrink from saying “Happy Thanksgiving,” too. Last week, I heard a lot of people say “Happy Holiday.” Or “Have a happy holiday.” In a store on Thursday morning, I said to the young woman behind the register, “Happy Thanksgiving.” She replied, “Have a nice day.”

Fine with me. None of my business. It’s a free country. People can say whatever they want. I just find it a little weird . . .

• How you like this one?

• Evgenia Kara-Murza is the wife of Vladimir Kara-Murza, the Russian political prisoner. He is in solitary confinement in Siberia, in very bad health. On Thanksgiving, Evgenia tweeted the below. What a woman — noble. If she can be grateful, the rest of us can.

By the way, when I write about Ukraine and Russia, I habitually do so at “The Corner” on this site. Same with Israel, in the current Gaza war.

• In Impromptus, I routinely have language notes. Let’s do one. During a football game on Saturday, I heard an announcer say, “They’re playing with tempo now!” What he meant was that the team in question was playing at a faster clip, or a faster tempo. “Tempo,” meaning “time,” can be slow or fast, or in between: Lento, Adagio, Andante, Moderato, Allegro, Vivace, Presto — those are all types of tempo.

(Actually, they convey moods, as much as speeds, but let’s not get too deep into it here . . .)

A golf announcer will say, “He stroked that putt with pace,” or, “He had some pace on that putt.” Oh? What pace? You see what I mean . . .

• I very much appreciated what “Pop” — Coach Gregg Popovich — did here:

I saw Coach Steve Fisher do that at the University of Michigan once.

• “Joss Ackland, Busy, Versatile Actor on Stage and Screen, Dies at 95.” A fascinating obit, by Clay Risen, published in the New York Times. Let me point out a few things.

“I get to do a lot of villains,” said Ackland, “but that’s because I’m English.”

I also loved this: “I do an awful lot of crap, but if it’s not immoral, I don’t mind. I’m a workaholic.”

How about his origins? “Sidney Edmond Jocelyn Ackland was born on Feb. 29, 1928 — a leap day — in the North Kensington neighborhood of London.” You know who else was born on a leap day? Rossini, the composer.

More from the obit: “His father, Sydney Ackland, was a journalist from Ireland whose serial philandering kept him largely out of his son’s life, leaving him to be raised by his mother, Ruth Izod, a maid.”

With his wife and two children, Joss Ackland lived in South Africa for two years.

The country’s intrusive apartheid regime disgusted them; at one point the police raided their home looking for subversive material and left with a copy of the novel “Black Beauty,” the tale of a horse by Anna Sewell, which investigators thought might be anti-apartheid.

A striking detail.

Toward the end of his career, Ackland was pretty grumpy — understandably so — about what TV and movies had become. “They give them all these car chases, the villain dying twice, and they play down to the audience,” he said. “But I believe you should never give people what they want. Give them something a little more than what they want and that way they grow up.”

I believe that. It applies to entertainment, politics, journalism, and other things.

• There is little so peaceful as hitting golf balls while a mighty cruiseliner makes it way out to sea . . .

• Two of the big people in my life were — are — Rob Lillie and Don Horning. They were my gym teachers and coaches in junior high school. I’m not sure how you could ask for better. They are also — and unsurprisingly — very charitable. An article about them was just published: “Thousands of turkeys later, retired Ann Arbor teachers keep a Thanksgiving tradition alive.” They have provided dinners for needy people for all these years, all these decades. I’m so, so glad to have encountered them, in those early and formative years.

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