Kings, Devils, Chimps, and Laureates

Pictured left: Vice-President of the United States William Rufus DeVane King




More articles from the NYT:

*******The Vatican issues a revised rite of Exorcism: It cautions exorcists "must not consider people to be vexed by demons" when they are merely annoying. A Vatican bureaucrat said that demonic possession can be recognized by several criteria including: speaking an unknown language, sudden enormous strength and the disclosure of unknown occurrences. The Devil, he stressed, is a real and active entity and his existence is a cornerstone of Catholicism.
*******On 3-19-99 as Germany prepares to mark the 250th annniversary of the birth of Goethe, an article on the secret exhumation in 1970 of his remains by East German scientists. What flesh still clung to him was macerated from his bones which were cleaned and strengthened before his laurel wreath was polished and reattached to his cranium and his body re-interred in the crypt in Weimar.
******An article on the discovery of the AIDS virus in African chimpanzees.
******An article on the discovery that Rigoberto Menchu, the Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize winner lied about much of her biography. She maintains, for instance, that her brother Felipe died from starvation. He denies this.
******A peculiar local matter about an African-American King County (Seattle) Council member, Larry Gossett, proposing that the county include an image of Dr. Martin Luther King with every designation. Obviously, no one has the temerity to object, but there is also little enthusiasm.
King County was named in 1852 for William Rufus DeVane King, an Alabama Senator who was the Vice-President Elect at the time. The county to the south of King was named after Pierce, the President-Elect. King was ill with tuberculosis and died six months after being sworn into office. (His swearing-in was held in Cuba.) He was never replaced by President Franklin Pierce. Aside from his sickliness he was widely disparaged for some perceived unmanliness and his close friendship with bachelor Senator James Buchanan was ridiculed. King was also unmarried.
As Steve Tally writes in "Bland Ambition" a history of the Vice-Presidency: "King did nothing to dispel the stereotype of the effeminate homosexual. He was a flowing dandy who favored silk scarves, brilliant stickpins, and glittery accoutrements. he continued to wear powdered wigs years after they passed from fashion. King's political peers did not view his esoteric air with quiet tolerance. Andrew Jackson, who had a manly reputation as the winner of numerous duels. referred to King as Miss Nancy. Aaron Brown, a senator from Tennessee gave King the nickname Miss Fancy."
Of course, no one could use King's own qualities to defend leaving the County name alone in 1985 when the Council, by a single vote passed some sort of resolution instructing residents that the county name, crafted in 1852, should be considered to signify a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.. Problematically, Vice-President King was a slave-holder as was George Washington.
Though the black population hovered around 5% in King County, no one seemed to begrudge honoring this truly significant role model with the name re-rooting, especially as the frightening and depressing traffic corridor which was renamed Martin Luther King Boulevard has come to look more like a slander than a tribute. As existing names are each a lesson in history whether they continue to have immediate recognition or not, I have a innate distrust of this kind of rebranding. Frankly it showed enormous ingenuity to find another foothold on the late civil rights leader.

By the way, when Buchanan was made President, succeeding Pierce, he selected the handsome John Cabell Breckinridge as his Veep. Breckinridge was an epic mess, but the street and mall in Little Rock are kind of nice.