|
Turkeys Voting For Christmas
Turkeys voting for Christmas is an English idiom used as a metaphor for a situation in which a choice made is clearly against one's self-interest. In the United Kingdom, turkeys are commonly eaten as part of the English Christmas dinner. History The ''Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations'' writes that a commentator in the '' Independent Magazine'' traced the origin of the phrase to British Liberal Party politician David Penhaligon,"Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations", by Ned Sherrin, ''Oxford University Press'', Edition 4, 2008, "Introduction to the first edition"/ref> who is quoted as saying: "Us voting for the Pact is like a turkey voting for Christmas" in reference to the 1977 Lib–Lab pact which he opposed. The phrase was soon borrowed by other politicians and public figures. In 1979, Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan was faced with a vote of no confidence called by Scottish National Party, who were upset with Labour's treatment of the recent Scottish devol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thanksgiving Turkey, With Cranberry Stuffing 2022
Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in October and November in the United States, Canada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Germany. It is also observed in the Australian territory of Norfolk Island. It began as a day of giving thanks for the blessings of the harvest and of the preceding year. Various similarly named harvest festival holidays occur throughout the world during autumn. Although Thanksgiving has historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, it has long been celebrated as a Secularity, secular holiday as well. History Prayers of thanks and special thanksgiving ceremonies are common among most religions after harvests and at other times of the year. The Thanksgiving holiday's history in North America is rooted in English traditions dating from the Protestant Reformation. It also has aspects of a harvest festival, even though the harvest in New England occurs well before the late-November date on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teresa Gorman
Teresa Ellen Gorman (; 30 September 1931 – 28 August 2015) was a British politician. She was Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Billericay, in the county of Essex, from 1987 to 2001 when she stood down. She was a leading figure in the rebellions over the Maastricht Treaty that nearly brought down John Major's government. She worked in both education and business. Early life Gorman was born Teresa Ellen Moore in Putney, London, England."Teresa Gorman, Tory MP – obituary" telegraph.co.uk, 28 August 2015. Her father was a demolition contractor, her mother a waitress. She was educated at County School in London, leaving the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Humour
British humour carries a strong element of satire aimed at the absurdity of everyday life. Common themes include sarcasm, tongue-in-cheek, banter, insults, self-deprecation, taboo subjects, puns, innuendo, wit, and the British class system. These are often accompanied by a deadpan delivery which is present throughout the British sense of humour. It may be used to bury emotions in a way that seems unkind in the eyes of other cultures. Jokes are told about everything and almost no subject is off-limits, though a lack of subtlety when discussing controversial issues is sometimes considered insensitive. Many British comedy series have become successful internationally, serving as a representation of British culture to overseas audiences. Themes Some themes (with examples) that underpinned late-20th-century British humour were: [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
False Consciousness
In Marxist theory, false consciousness is a term describing the ways in which material, ideological, and institutional processes are said to mislead members of the proletariat and other class actors within capitalist societies, concealing the exploitation and inequality intrinsic to the social relations between classes. As such, it legitimizes and normalizes the existence of different social classes. According to Marxists, false consciousness is consciousness which is misaligned from reality. Thus, it is a serious impediment to human progress and correcting it is a major focus of dialectical materialism. Origin of terminology Although Marx never used the term "false consciousness" in his writings, he made references to workers having misguided or harmful ideas, and he suggested how those ideas get reinforced by powerful elites. For example, in an 1870 letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt, Marx discussed the antagonism between English proletarians and Irish proletarian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York Times''. Together with entrepreneur Raoul H. Fleischmann, they established the F-R Publishing Company and set up the magazine's first office in Manhattan. Ross remained the editor until his death in 1951, shaping the magazine's editorial tone and standards. ''The New Yorker''s fact-checking operation is widely recognized among journalists as one of its strengths. Although its reviews and events listings often focused on the Culture of New York City, cultural life of New York City, ''The New Yorker'' gained a reputation for publishing serious essays, long-form journalism, well-regarded fiction, and humor for a national and international audience, including work by writers such as Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, and Alice Munro. In the late ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, images, and videos in Microblogging, short posts commonly known as "Tweet (social media), tweets" (officially "posts") and Like button, like other users' content. The platform also includes direct message, direct messaging, video and audio calling, bookmarks, lists, communities, a chatbot (Grok (chatbot), Grok), job search, and Spaces, a social audio feature. Users can vote on context added by approved users using the Community Notes feature. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams (Internet entrepreneur), Evan Williams, and was launched in July of that year. Twitter grew quickly; by 2012 more than 100 million users produced 340 million daily tweets. Twitter, Inc., was based in San Francisco, C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Heartfield
John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld; 19 June 1891 – 26 April 1968) was a German visual artist who pioneered the use of art as a political weapon. Some of his most famous photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements. Heartfield also created book jackets for book authors, such as Upton Sinclair, as well as stage sets for contemporary playwrights, such as Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator. Biography Early life, education and work John Heartfield was born Helmut Herzfeld on 19 June 1891 in Berlin-Schmargendorf, Berlin under the German Empire. His parents were Franz Herzfeld, a socialist writer, and Alice (née Stolzenburg), a textile worker and political activist. In 1899, Helmut, his brother Wieland Herzfelde, Wieland, and their sisters Lotte and Hertha were abandoned in the woods by their parents after Franz Herzfeld was accused of blasphemy. His family had to flee to Switzerland and later they were deported to Austrian Empire, Austria. When their parents disappe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schweik In The Second World War
''Schweyk in the Second World War'' (German language, German: ''Schweyk im Zweiten Weltkrieg'') is a play (theatre), play by Germany, German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht. It was written by Brecht in 1943 while in exile in California, and is a sequel to the 1923 novel ''The Good Soldier Švejk'' by Jaroslav Hašek. Background ''Schweyk in the Second World War'' is set in German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Nazi-occupied Prague and on the Eastern Front (World War II), Russian Front during World War II. In a summary written for potential composer Kurt Weill, it was written: "The Good Soldier Schweyk, after surviving the First World War, is still alive. Our story shows his successful efforts to survive the Second as well. The new rulers have even more grandiose and all-embracing plans than the old, which makes it even harder for today's Little Man to remain more or less alive." Hanns Eisler, ultimately, became Brecht's chief musical collaborator for the work. Plot As Schweyk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horst-Wessel-Lied
The "" (), also known by its incipit "" ('The Flag Raised High'), was the anthem of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) from 1930 to 1945. From 1933 to 1945, the Nazis made it the co-national anthem of Germany, along with the first stanza of the "". The "" has been banned in Germany and Austria since the end of World War II unless for artistic or educational purposes. History The lyrics to "Horst-Wessel-Lied" were written in 1929 by '' Sturmführer'' Horst Wessel, the commander of the Nazi paramilitary "Brownshirts" (''Sturmabteilung'' or "SA") in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin. Wessel wrote songs for the SA in conscious imitation of the Communist paramilitary, the Red Front Fighters' League, to provoke them into attacking his troops, and to keep up the spirits of his men. Horst Wessel Wessel was the son of a pastor and educated at degree level, but was employed as a construction worker. He became notorious among the Communists when he led a number of SA attacks into the Fisc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bertold Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote ''The Threepenny Opera'' with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, Brecht wrote didactic ''Lehrstücke'' and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the . When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Brecht fled his home country, initially to Scandinavia. During World War II he moved to Southern California where he established himself as a screenwriter, while also being surveilled by the FBI. In 1947, he was part of the first group of Hollywood film artists to be subpoenaed by the House Un-A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mouseland
Mouseland is a political fable first told by Clarence Gillis in 1944, and later and most famously by Tommy Douglas, leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) that became the New Democratic Party of Canada, both social democratic parties. The story is about a nation of mice voting for either black cats or white cats to run their country, and expresses the CCF's view that the Canadian political system was flawed in offering voters a false dichotomy: the choice of two parties, neither of which represented their interests. Synopsis The mice voted in black cats, which represented the Progressive Conservative Party, and then they found out how hard life was. Then they voted in the white cats, which symbolized the Liberal Party and things were different, but still not good for mice, because the government was still run by cats; subsequently they alternated the two, then they tried a coalition, and ultimately spotted cats were voted in which sought to sound li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chickens For Colonel Sanders
"Chickens for Colonel Sanders", or "Chickens for KFC", is a political rhetorical analogy which compares the irony of someone supporting a politician, organization, or ideology which contradicts their own beliefs or rights to the idea of chickens supporting American restaurateur Colonel Sanders or his chicken fast food restaurant Kentucky Fried Chicken. Usage The phrase "Chickens for Colonel Sanders" has been used by various politicians in different scenarios, such as in 1978 by Canadian politician Steven W. Langdon, NDP candidate for the Ottawa Centre federal electoral district, when comparing the district voting for the Progressive Conservative Party to a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders, and more recently in 2016 by U.S. lawmaker and representative Keith Ellison ( D-Minn) using the phrase in comparison to Muslims voting for Donald Trump. Commentator Thomas Frank also cited an example of its use as a rhetorical tool of the grassroots conservative movement in the United States ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
