Palinode

Palinode (pronounced pal-uh-nohd)

(1) A poem in which the poet retracts something said in an earlier poem.

(2) A recantation (used loosely and now rare).

(3) In Scots law, a recantation of a defamatory statement.

1590–1600: From the sixteenth century French palinode (poetical recantation, poem in which the poet retracts invective contained in a former satire), from the Middle French palinode, from the Late Latin palinōdia (palinode, recantation), from the Ancient Greek παλινῳδία (palinōidía) (poetic retraction), the construct being πάλιν (pálin) (again, back) + ᾠδή (ōidḗ) (ode, song) + -ia (from the Latin -ia and the Ancient Greek -ία (-ía) & -εια (-eia), which form abstract nouns of feminine gender.  It was used when names of countries, diseases, species etc and occasionally collections of stuff).  The alternative form palinody is obsolete.  Palinode & palinodist are nouns, palinodial, palinodical & palinodic are adjectives and palinodically is a (non-standard) adverb; the noun plural is palinodes).

Although the palinode is now usually defined as meaning “a poem in which the palinodist (ie the poet) retracts something said in an earlier poem”, the French in the sixteenth century seem mostly to have use the word of works in which the writer “retracts invective contained in a former satire”.  It thus had an obviously political slant and it seems likely at least some palinodes were penned to stave of threats of legal action (or something worse).  Although it endures in literary use (and among political scientists with a feeling for classical forms), the word has long been obscure and the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) lists the adjective palinodical as obsolete with its only known instance of use dating from 1602 when it appeared in a work by the English poet, playwright and pamphleteer Thomas Dekker (circa 1572-1632).  The “other” species of palinode was the “ode to Sarah Palin” (b 1964; Republican nominee for VPOTUS 2008) of which there were several including some set to music.

The palinode became associated with poetry because verse (in one form or another) was once a more common form of written expression.  It has however been applied to any retraction or recantation (formal or otherwise), especially one that publicly withdraws an earlier statement, belief or work.  For reasons of ecclesiastical practice, theological palinodes tended to be in verse but there were exceptions including by John Milton (1608–1674) who in The Reason of Church-Government (1642) retracted his earlier advocacy of episcopacy (the bishops and their role), acknowledging his views had changed; for years it remained a rare example of its type.  Beyond poetry proper, use has been quite loose and memorable palinodes have been political, scientific and literary, some especially of the latter described variously as “insincere”, “back-handed” or “bitchy”.  Much of their charm lies in some retractions becoming famous while the original text doubtlessly would have been forgotten were it not for the palinode.

The Death of Socrates (1787), oil on canvas by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.  Had Socrates just dashed off a palinode, maybe he'd never have had to take his dish of hemlock.

The archetypal palinode dates from the sixth century BC and it set the template.  According to legend, the Greek lyric poet Stesichorus (Στησίχορος, circa 630–555 BC) blamed Helen of Troy for the Trojan War and almost at once was struck blind.  He then composed a (“it was not true…”) palinode absolving Helen of guilt, the words of the encomium (praise, eulogy) said to have come to him in a dream.  His sight was restored, thus the understanding the use of the device as a means of undoing moral or divine offense.  The texts from Antiquity have of course survived only in fragmentary form but clearly there were palinodes, Plato (circa 427-348 BC) in his Phaedrus (a dialogue between Socrates (circa 470–399 BC) and Phaedrus (circa 444–393 BC)) he recounted how Socrates first delivers a speech condemning love, then explicitly retracts it with a second passage praising divine madness and erotic love.  Plato explicitly called the second speech “a palinode”, making it one of philosophy’s earliest known self-conscious retractions and, it has to be admitted, only those for whom martyrdom is a calling would think it not preferable to taking hemlock.

Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400), right at the end of The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400), as a formal retraction, disowned those earlier passages he had come to think sinful or frivolous and begged forgiveness for having written them.  It's considered one of Medieval literature’s most explicit and sincere palinodes and presumably he also asked God and at least one priest for absolution for those unworthy thoughts, this likely the course of action taken also by the English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) who wrote long pieces disavowing earlier having welcomed communism and opposed censorship.  One long-established tradition (transgress with enthusiasm in youth; reform with piety as one contemplates mortality) is a movement owing much to Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) who in Confessiones (Confessions, 397-400) wrote: Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo (Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet), an exemplar of that school of the palinodic being George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; POTUS 2001-2009) who abandoned whiskey and much else.  As he might have put it in a “Bushism”: “I spent my youth misunfortunatistically”.  The whole “born-again” movement in Christianity seems often something of a life lived palinodically.

Galileo before the Holy Office (1847), oil on canvas by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury (1797-1890).

The element “Holy Office” was first applied to the official designation for the Inquisition during the thirteenth century and after that there were a number of variant constructions before in 1965, it was renamed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the most famous of the latter-day inquisitors being Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) who, with some relish, discharged the role between 1981-2005.  Since 2022, the Inquisition has been styled the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF).  Coincidentally, DDF is also the acronym for “drug & disease free” and (in gaming) “Doom definition file” while there’s also the DDF Network which is an aggregator of pornography content.  The Holy See may be aware of these uses but probably takes the view the target markets are different and, given the DDF Network appears not to offer any “gay male” content, if one author’s conclusions are accepted, the site is unlikely often to be accessed by priests, bishops, cardinals and such.

Some palinodes have become among the more famous statements made by an accused before a court.  Under courts run by the Nazis and the Soviet Union they were of course legion (the scripts often written by the prosecutors) but the most famous was probably the retraction the Roman Inquisition in 1633 extracted from the Italian physicist and pioneering astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564–1642); under threat of torture (words to be taken seriously if from the lips of an inquisitor), he abjured his support for heliocentrism; the defendant's legendary mutter: “Eppur si muove” (although it does move) almost certainly apocryphal.  After that, palinodes came thick and fast, the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) in Les Confessions (Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1770, published 1782)) not only his retracted many of his earlier stances (especially in matters of religion and education) but did so repeatedly, sometimes in the same chapter.  More than a decade in the writing, Les Confessions functions as something of a “rolling palinode”, his intellectual past constantly revised.  More nuanced in this approach was the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) who, in later editions of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859), toned down or even withdrew some claims regarding human evolution and teleology.  These revisions can be considered “partial palinodes” but they were really merely a reflection of the modern scientific method which updates theories as new evidence emerges; a matter of correct intellectual caution.

Agitprop poster of comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953, left) greeting comrade Trofim Lysenko (1898-1976, right).  The Russian slogan (РАБОТАТЬ ТАК, ЧТОБЫ ТОВАРИЩ СТАЛИН СПАСИБО СКАЗАЛ!) translates best as “Work in such a way that comrade Stalin will say ‘thank you.’”  In comrade Stalin’s Soviet Union, wise comrades followed this sound advice.  For students of the techniques used in the propaganda of personality cults, it should be noted comrade Stalin stood around 1.65 metres (5 foot, 5 inches) tall.

In the matter of scientific and intellectual palinodes, others can do the retractions which can be thought of as palinodes by proxy or (more flippantly) Munchausen palinodes by proxy.  To avoid damage to his reputation, Sir Isaac Newton’s (1642–1727) executors and later editors suppressed and implicitly retracted his alchemical writings and similar judicious editing has excised from the records of some their embrace of the once intellectually respectable field of astrology.  Actually, Newton wasn’t wholly wrong on the science; at the molecular level there is little difference between lead and gold and although traditional chemical alchemy seems impossible, recent experiments have, atom-by-atom, transformed lead into gold, the problem being that to transform a few atoms (and even these often short-lived radioactive isotopes rather than stable Au-197) demanded the use of a huge and expensive particle accelerator; unless there’s some unanticipated breakthrough, the process cannot be scaled up so gold must continue to be dug up.  Communism systems too belatedly made something of an art of the palinode.

In the Soviet Union, after the death of comrade Stalin, a number of “scientific orthodoxies” supported by the late leader abruptly were cancelled, notably the dotty, pseudoscientific “theories” of agronomist Trofim Lysenko whose doctrine of Lysenkoism set back Soviet agriculture by decades.  The evidence suggests comrade Stalin was well aware comrade Lysenko was likely a comrade charlatan but, uniquely among the many Soviet apparatchiks, the dodgy agronomist achieved a great rapport with the peasants who were being most tiresome.  It was Lysenko’s remarkable success in convincing peasants to accept the Kremlin’s imposition of collectivized farming that make him Stalin’s invaluable asset.  In China, when comrade Chairman Mao (Mao Zedong 1893–1976; chairman of the CCP, 1949-1976) instituted many of Lysenko’s “agricultural reforms” (which included applying Karl Marx's (1818-1883) theories of class consciousness to the thought processes of seeds), in the great famine which followed, it's believed between 40-45 million may have starved to death.  The Kremlin was at least precise in who or what got cancelled whereas the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) were a little vague although the Chinese people understood their language.  Long skilled at “reading between the Central Committee’s lines”, when they heard it admitted comrade Chairman Mao’s legacy was “70% good and 30% bad”, the meaning was clear.  As a judgment it may have been generous but if applied to some leaders in the West, would the numbers be any more favorable?

Lindsay Lohan on the cover of Vogue Czechoslovakia, May 2025.

So palinody has a long tradition but while figures like Rousseau, Darwin and Muggeridge had years or even decades “agonizingly to reappraise” their position, in the social media age, it can within the hour be necessary to recant.  In 2006, Lindsay Lohan granted an interview to Vanity Fair in which she acknowledged: “I knew I had a problem and I couldn't admit it.  “I was making myself sick.  I was sick and I had people sit me down and say: 'You're going to die if you don't take care of yourself'”, adding she used drugs: “a little”.  On reflection, and possibly after seeking advice, he publicist the next day contacted the magazine in an attempt to get the “drug confession” retracted.  Later, she would also recant her claims her earlier (and by some much-admired) weight-loss had been achieved by D&E (diet & exercise), admitting it was the consequence of an eating disorder.  Ms Lohan has issued a few palinodes (but although also a song-writer, none have been in poetic verse) and as well as drug use, the correctives have covered topics such as the MeToo movement, Harvey Weinstein (b 1952), Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) and her attitudes to motherhood.

Ye (b 1977, the artist formerly known as Kanye West).

The first notable palinode of 2026 was interesting for a number of reasons, the first of which was structural.  Although the once vibrant industry of print journalism has in the West been hollowed out by successive strikes from the internet, social media and AI (artificial intelligence), in a tactic guaranteed to ensure maximum cross-platform coverage, the multi-media personality, rap singer and apparel designer Ye chose as the host for his latest announcement not Instagram or X (formerly known as Twitter) but a full-page advertisement in Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ (Wall Street Journal).  As a “commercial, in confidence” arrangement, it’s not certain how much the WSJ would have invoiced to run the copy but advertising in the paper remains at “premium level” because of its national circulation and readership with a high proportion in the still much-prized “A”, “B1” & “B2” demographics.  Industry sources suggest that, depending on the day of the week and other variables, a full-page advertisement (black & white) placement in the WSJ’s national edition typically would cost between US$160,000–$220,000 for a “one-off” (ie no re-runs or ongoing contract).

That’s obviously rather more than a post on Instagram or X but what a still “prestigious” legacy title like the WSJ confers is a certain “authority” because, as Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) explained in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964): “The medium is the message”.  If one conveys one’s message through a whole page of the WSJ, regardless of the text’s content, the message is different compared with the same words appearing on a social media platform: anyone can post a palinode on Instagram but only a few can pay Rupert Murdoch US$200,000-odd to print it in the WSJ.  The point about Mr Ye using the WSJ was the message was aimed not only at his usual audience but those in finance and industry who interact with the music and apparel businesses.  While some consumers of rap music or his other “projects” may be WSJ readers or even subscribers, the publication’s base has a very different profile and it will be a certain few of those Mr Ye wishes his message to reach.

Marigold Counseling's Bipolar Disorder chart.

Headed “To those I’ve hurt”, his palinode was more than a simple retraction and was an apology for his previous “reckless” anti-Semitism; whether “reckless” carefully was chosen from the spectrum (careless; reckless; intentional) used by disciplinary bodies in sporting competitions wasn’t discussed.  By way of explanation, Mr Ye revealed that some 25 years earlier, he’d suffered an injury to the “right frontal lobe” of his brain and, because the medical focus at the time was on the “immediate physical trauma”, “comprehensive scans were not done” meaning “the deeper injury, the one inside my skull, went unnoticed.”  It seems that not until 2023 was his condition correctly assessed, the injury linked to his diagnosis with Bipolar Disorder type-1 (the old “manic depressive disorder”).  Clinicians distinguish between type 1 and type 2 Bipolar thus: (1) In Bipolar I disorder there must be at least one manic episode that may come before or after hypomanic or major depressive episodes (in some cases, mania may cause a dissociation from reality (psychosis)) and (2) In Bipolar II disorder there must be at least one depressive episode and at least one hypomanic episode but never any psychosis.  (Cyclothymic Disorder involves periods of hypomania and depression not sufficiently severe to be classified as full episodes).  As Mr Ye explained: “Bipolar disorder comes with its own defense system. Denial.  When you’re manic, you don’t think you’re sick. You think everyone else is overreacting.  You feel like you’re seeing the world more clearly than ever, when in reality you’re losing your grip entirely.  Once people label you as ‘crazy’ you feel as if you cannot contribute anything meaningful to the world.  It’s easy for people to joke and laugh it off when in fact this is a very serious debilitating disease you can die from.”

As he further noted: “The scariest thing about this disorder is how persuasive it is when it tells you:  You don’t need help. It makes you blind, but convinced you have insight. You feel powerful, certain, unstoppable.  I lost touch with reality. Things got worse the longer I ignored the problem.  I said and did things I deeply regret.  Some of the people I love the most, I treated the worst. You endured fear, confusion, humiliation, and the exhaustion of trying to have someone who was, at times, unrecognizable. Looking back, I became detached from my true self.  In that fractured state, I gravitated toward the most destructive symbol I could find, the swastika, and even sold T-shirts bearing it. One of the difficult aspects of having bipolar type-1 are the disconnected moments - many of which I still cannot recall - that led to poor judgment and reckless behavior that oftentimes feels like an out-of-body-experience.  I regret and am deeply mortified by my actions in that state, and am committed to accountability, treatment, and meaningful change. It does not excuse what I did though. I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people.”  He also included remarks intended explicitly for the black community, which he acknowledged “held [him] down through all of the highs and lows and the darkest of times.  The black community is, unquestionably, the foundation of who I am. I am so sorry to have let you down. I love us.  My words as a leader in my community have global impact and influence.  In my mania, I lost complete sight of that.”

He made a comment also about what is a sometimes misunderstood aspect of Bipolar Disorder: “Having bipolar disorder is notable state of constant mental illness.  When you go into a manic episode, you are ill at that point. When you are not in an episode, you are completely ‘normal’.  And that’s when the wreckage from the illness hits the hardest.  Hitting rock bottom a few months ago, my wife encouraged me to finally get help.  My words as a leader in my community have global impact and influence. In my mania, I lost complete sight of that.  As I find my new baseline and new center through an effective regime of medication, therapy, exercise and clean living, I have newfound, much-needed clarity. I am pouring my energy into positive, meaningful art: music, clothing, design and other new ideas to help the world.”  He concluded by saying: “I’m not asking for sympathy, or a free pass, though I aspire to earn your forgiveness.  I write today simply to ask for your patience and understanding as I find my way home.”  The message was signed “With love, Ye.”

Mr Ye with his wife, Australian architect & model Bianca Censori (b 1995) in “WET” themed top (which she wears well), Huacai Intercontinental Hotel, Beijing, China, September 2024.  Ms Censori works for Yeezy as an Architectural Designer.

What Mr Ye placed in the WSJ was a certain type of palinode, one in which there’s a retraction and definitely an apology but also an explanation.  Although, commendably, he included the words “…It does not excuse what I did…”, documenting the long-undiagnosed traumatic brain injury does provide an explanation for his conduct so, the piece is not a true mea culpa (from the Latin meā culpā (through my fault) and taken from the Confiteor, a traditional penitential prayer in Western Christianity; it’s best translated as “I am to blame”.  Mr Ye’s point was that what he did was wrong but “he” was not to blame in the sense that what he did was the result of the Bipolar Disorder induced by his injury.  What that means is that there was no mens rea (a construct from the Latin mēns + reus (literally “guilty mind”), the phrase a clipping of the precept in English common law: Actus non facit reum nisi mens rea sit (The act does not make a person guilty unless the mind is also guilty).  In other words: “I didn’t do it, the Bipolar Disorder did it”.  As a defence the approach is well-known but what Mr Ye is suggesting is supported in the medical literature, there being a number of documented cases of individuals whose behavior suddenly and radically changed for the worse as a result of a condition affecting the brain (either traumatic injury or an illness such as a tumor).  Despite his caveat, his diagnosed Bipolar Disorder, as well as explaining things, may well “excuse what I did”.

However, as an exercise in “reputational recovery” (one of the forks of “crisis management”), Mr Ye does have “a bit of previous” for which to atone including donning a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt which was controversial because there is no political or moral equivalence between that and the implications of “Black Lives Matter”.  In isolation, such a thing might have been thought just a publicity device and, in another time, the dark irony may have caught on in sections of the black community but in the atmosphere of 2022 it was the wrong item at the wrong time.  Worse was to come because later that year Mr Ye tweeted he was going “death con 3” on the Jews, the play on words assumed an adaptation of the DEFCON (Defense Readiness Condition) status levels used by the US military:

DEFCON 5: Normal peacetime readiness (lowest level).

DEFCON 4: Increased intelligence gathering and strengthened security.

DEFCON 3: Heightened readiness; forces ready for increased alert.

DEFCON 2: One step from nuclear war; forces ready to deploy at six hours notice.

DEFCON 1: Maximum readiness; imminent nuclear war or attack underway.

Fashion statement: Mr Ye in black capirote.

So it could have been worse, assuming his “death con 3” implied only “heightened readiness; forces ready for increased alert”.  The Pentagon invoked DEFCON 2 during the Cuban Missile Crisis (16-28 October 1962) and has never (as far as is known) triggered DEFCON 1.  However, “death con 3” was thought bad enough and a number of corporations sundered their contractual arrangements with Mr Ye, the loss of the agreement with Adidas believed financially the most damaging.  The next year, to his “Vultures album (re-titled Vultures 1 for the packaged release in 2024) listening party” Mr Ye wore a black Ku Klux Klan hood.  The use of black rather the while of the KKK in popular imagination attracted some comment from those who seek meaning in such things but it was historically authentic, the original, Reconstruction-era Klan (1865-1871) not having a standardized or even defined garb.  In the 1860s, members used whatever fabric was available, bed-sheets, blankets, sackcloth, and women’s dresses all re-purposed with no apparent interest in patterns or color co-ordination and animal hides or even face paint were used if no fabric was to hand.  The choices were pragmatic, the purposes concealment and intimidation, not visual uniformity.  The now familiar capirote (pointed hood) atop a white robe didn’t become emblematic of the KKK until the heyday of the so-called “Second Klan” between 1915 and the 1940s and although white deliberately was chosen as a symbol of “purity” and white supremacy, there’s nothing to suggest Mr Ye was seeking to vest his garment with similar denotations.

Fashion statement: Mr Ye in the now deleted “Swastika T-shirt” (the Yeezy part-number was HH01). 

Most provocative however was doubtlessly his adoption of the swastika for various purposes and his effuse praise for Hitler and Nazism.  In humanity’s long and depressing roll-call of evil and depravity, there is Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) and there is “everybody else” so selling “swastika T-shirts” at US$20 (promoted in an advertisement at the 2025 Super Bowl) and “dropping a tune” titled Heil Hitler was never likely to be a good career move.  The product code for the T-shirts was “HH01” and those who recalled his comment: “There’s a lot of things that I love about Hitler" in a December 2022 podcast with the since bankrupted host Alex Jones (b 1974) probably deconstructed that to mean “Heil Hitler” although to remove any doubt he also tweeted: “I love Hitler” and “I'm a Nazi”.  Swastika T-shirts were just too much for Shopify which took down the page, issuing a statement saying Mr Ye had “violated” the company's T&Cs (terms & conditions).  It was an example of the dangers inherent in having a site administered by AI with humans checking the content only in reaction to complaints.

Forbes magazine, 31 August 2019.  Forbes had just anointed Mr Ye a “billionaire”.

Those with some generosity of spirit will attribute honorable motives to Mr Ye’s palinode while cynics will note the financial hit suffered as a consequence of his recent conduct.  In 2020, he complained to Forbes magazine it had neglected to include him on their much-anticipated “Billionaires List” (he may have been peeved his then wife (the estimable Kim Kardashian (b 1980)) had made the cut) and duly the publication re-crunched its numbers, including him in a revised edition.  In the wake of his troubles, Forbes “wrote down” the value of his brand and after the “Adidas fallout”, he didn’t appear on the 2023 list.  As he said in the WSJ advertisement, he is “pouring my energy into positive, meaningful art: music, clothing, design and other new ideas to help the world” and all these products, appropriately branded, need to be sold at a profit but having a brand tainted by an association with Nazism and anti-Semitism makes things a “harder sell”.  Hopefully, all will be forgiven and Yeezy-branded hoodies, running shoes and such will again ship in volume; Rupert Murdoch can be proud of the WSJ’s latest contribution to American commerce.

Sandwedge

Sandwedge (pronounced sand-wej)

(1) As Operation Sandwedge, a proposed clandestine intelligence-gathering operation against the political enemies of US president Richard Nixon.

(2) As sand wedge, a specialized golf club, an iron with a heavy lower flange, the design of which is optimized for playing the ball out of a bunker (sand trap).

1971: The name was chosen for a “dirty tricks” covert operation as a borrowing from golf, the sand wedge a club used to play the ball from a difficult position.  The construct was sand + wedge.  Dating from pre-1000, sand was from the Middle English sand, from the Old English sand, from the Proto-West Germanic samd, from the Proto-Germanic samdaz, from the primitive Indo-European sámhdhos, from sem- (to pour).  Wedge was a pre 900 from the Middle English wegge (wedge), from the Old English wecg (a wedge), from the Proto-Germanic wagjaz (source also of the Old Norse veggr, the Middle Dutch wegge, the Dutch wig, the Old High German weggi (wedge) and the dialectal German Weck (a wedge-shaped bread roll) and related to the Old Saxon weggi.  It was cognate with the dialectal German weck derived from the Old High German wecki and Old Norse veggr (wall).  The Proto-Germanic wagjaz is of uncertain origin but may be related to the Latin vomer (plowshare).  Sandwedge is a noun; should the plural ever be needed, it would be sandwedges (ie phonetically a la the use in golf (sand wedges)).

In golf, when using a sand wedge (left), the player’s stance and the way in which the club addresses the ball differs from what’s done when using a conventional iron (right).  Noted golfer Paige Spiranac (b 1993) demonstrates the difference although there may be some variations depending on an individual's weight distribution. 

Richard Nixon.

Operation Sandwedge was a covert intelligence-gathering operation intended to be conducted against the enemies (a long list which later became public) of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974).  Beginning in 1971, the early planning was done by Nixon's Chief of Staff HR Haldeman (1926-1993), his assistant for domestic affairs, John Ehrlichman (1925-1999) and Jack Caulfield (1929–2012), then attached to Ehrlichman’s White House staff “handling special assignments”; also involved (though paid not by the White House but from external campaign funds) was Tony Ulasewicz (1918-1997), later a bit-player in the Watergate affair.  The core of Caulfield’s plan was to target the anti-Vietnam War movement and those figures in the Democratic Party Nixon had identified as the greatest threat to his re-election in 1972, including Ted Kennedy (1932–2009; US senator 1962-2009), Ed Muskie (1914–1996; US senator 1959-1980), William Proxmire (1915–2005; US Senator 1957-1989) and Birch Bayh (1928–2019; US senator 1963-1981).  Of interest too was a settling of scores with those who had prevented G Harrold Carswell (1919–1992) being confirmed by the Senate as Nixon's nominee for the US Supreme Court and the president's net was internecine too, some of the targeted figures in his own Republican Party.

G Gordon Liddy.

Operation Sandwedge was intended to be clandestine but it wasn’t subtle and included physical and electronic surveillance, the intelligence of particular interest that which could be used either to feed damaging leaks to the press or for purposes of blackmail including dubious financial transactions, mental health records and (preferably “unnatural”) sexual proclivities.  However, the operation never proceeded beyond the planning stages because Haldeman and Ehrlichman thought the methods of Caulfield (a former New York City Police Officer) unsophisticated so transferred the project to G Gordon Liddy (1930–2021), a lawyer, one-time FBI agent and later one of the great characters of the Watergate affair.  Attached to Liddy's operation was former CIA operative Howard Hunt (1918–2007) who, under his name and many noms de plume, was a most prolific author of fiction and non-fiction, his bibliography extending to over 70 titles.  Caulfield had chosen the name sandwedge because, as a dedicated golfer, he knew the sand wedge was the club of choice when one was in a difficult spot;  if well-played, it was what could transform a bad situation into something good.  At the time, code-names were among the many imaginative things to emerge from the bunker at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the one chosen for the squad to investigate leaks of information to the press was dubbed “the plumbers”.  One member later told his elderly grandmother one of his duties in the White House was “investigating leaks” and proudly she told him: “Your grandfather was a plumber”.   

Paige Spiranac's definitive guide to the correct handling of one's sand wedge, one of a series of invaluable short clips called Paige Quickies.  They're an ideal guide for both experienced golfers wishing to hone their techniques and those taking up the sport.

The Watergate complex, Washington DC.

The Watergate affair was of course one of the best known (and among nihilistic political junkies the most celebrated) of the “dirty tricks” operations run out of (or at least connected with) the Nixon White House but it was far from unique.  Some strikingly immoral back-channel operations had been run even before the 1968 election but by 1971 the vista had expanded to include what would now be called fake news plants, the infiltration of the staff of political opponents, break-ins and burglary, among the most infamous of which was “the plumbers” (including Liddy) breaking into the office of the psychiatrist treating Daniel Ellsberg (b 1931), the former Department of Defense (now known also as the Department or War) military analyst who had leaked the “Pentagon Papers” (something which was a reasonable achievement in the days when decamping with thousands of pages of classified material demanded not a few minutes copying data to a USB stick but many hours between midnight and dawn using the photocopier).  The doctor's Ellsberg file revealed nothing of interest but the burglary gained a place in history, being recorded by Ehrlichman (who approved the operation) as "Hunt/Liddy Special Project No 1".  There would be more.

Paige Spiranac is active on Instagram and recently posted a “Life update” to her four million followers, advising “I have bangs now”.  Hopefully, she will keep us informed and there will be more to come.

Sandwedge had been envisaged as an intelligence gathering operation, the most novel aspect of which was that while the project documents presented an overview of something using conventional methods of surveillance and the compilation of publicly available material, privately, Caulfield admitted electronic surveillance would also (unlawfully) be used, something any expert presumably could have deduced from the impressive total of budget request.  Of greatest interest were financial records (relating particularly to tax matters), mental health conditions, undisclosed legal problems and sexual conduct, especially if illicit and preferably unlawful.  The idea greatly interested Haldeman and Ehrlichman but they had never been convinced by Caulfield’s “lack of background” by which they meant education, social skills (ie correct way to use knife & fork in polite company) and political experience.  Accordingly, Sandwedge and all intelligence matters were transferred to Liddy, the article of faith in the White House being anything run by a trained lawyer legally would be “bullet proof”, not a quality they associated with the schemes of ex-NYC police officers, a breed not always with a reputation for rectitude.

New York Times, Saturday 2 March 1974.

Liddy revelled in the role as the White House’s clandestine clearing house for “covert ops” and applied his own list of spy-like code names (Gemstone, Diamond, Ruby etc) to an range of activities expanded beyond Sandwedge including physical espionage, infiltration of protest groups, secret wire-taps, sabotage of opposition campaigns and, of course, “honey-pot traps” (the use of attractive young women as temptresses).  Even for Haldeman and Ehrlichman (behind their backs, known to White House staffers as “the Germans” or “the Prussians”) the implications of becoming essentially gangsters was too much but the shell of Liddy's structure was in 1972 approved and even that pared-down framework included a range of unlawful activities, including the one which would trigger the chain of events that culminated in Nixon’s resignation and see dozens of the conspirators (including Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Liddy) jailed: the break in and bugging of the Democratic Party offices in the Watergate complex.  As the affair unfolded, suspicion fell upon Caulfield until it was realised his role in Operation Sandwedge had ended before any dubious operations began and he’d never been part of Liddy’s more ambitious plans.  He was compelled to resign from government but was never prosecuted, maintaining to his dying day that if he’d been left to run Operation Sandwedge, there would have been no burglaries in the Watergate complex or anywhere else and thus none of the cascading scandals which at first paralysed and later doomed the second term of the Nixon administration.

On the golf course, Lindsay Lohan in bunker with sand wedge, rendered as a pen drawing by Vovsoft.

One attractive thing about the historic records of the US government is the relative openness and accessibility to the documents which can lay bare the operations of at least some of the machinery of government.  Things are of course not as open as they used to be but the US attitude to the classification of material is still preferable to that of institutions like the UK’s Cabinet Office or the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) both of which operate in an air of obsessive secrecy.  One treasure trove is the on-line archive of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum which includes a stash of transcripts of the White House tapes subpoenaed by the SSPF (Watergate Special Prosecution Force), including the famous (and politically fatal) “smoking gun tape”.  In some ways even more so than the audio tapes, the transcripts provide an insight into how politics actually is practiced and it’s useful to compare them with sanitized (and sometimes mendacious) memoirs or “official histories”.  On 21 March 1973, President Nixon met with John Dean (b 1938; White House Counsel to the President, 1970-1973) when “Operation Sandwedge” and its corrosive consequences were discussed:

DEAN:  I think, I think that, uh, there's no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we've got.  We have a cancer--within, close to the Presidency, that's growing.  It's growing daily.  It's compounding, it grows geometrically now because it compounds itself.  Uh, that'll be clear as I explain you know, some of the details, uh, of why it is, and it basically is because (1) we're being blackmailed; (2) uh, people are going to start perjuring themself very quickly that have not had to perjure themselves to protect other people and the like. And that is just--and there is no assurance…

DEAN: Jack [Caulfield] had worked for John [John Mitchell (1913–1988; US attorney-general 1969–1972)] and then was transferred to my office.  I said, "Jack, come up with a plan that, you know, is a normal infiltration, I mean, you know, buying information from secretaries and all that sort of thing."  He did, he put together a plan.  It was kicked around, and, uh, I went to Ehrlichman with it.  I went to Mitchell with it, and the consensus was that Caulfield wasn't the man to do this. Uh, in retrospect, that might have been a bad call, 'cause he is an incredibly cautious person and, and wouldn't have put the situation to where it is today.

PRESIDENT: Yeah.

DEAN: All right, after rejecting that, they said, "We still need something," so I was told to look around for somebody that could go over to 1701 and do this.  And that's when I came up with Gordon Liddy, who-- they needed a lawyer. Gordon had an intelligence background from his FBI service.  I was aware of the fact that he had done some extremely sensitive things for the White House while he'd been at the White House, and he had apparently done them well. Uh, going out into Ellsberg's doctor's office.

PRESIDENT: Oh, yeah.

PRESIDENT: January of '72?

DEAN: January of '72.  Like, "You come over to Mitchell's office and sit in on a meeting where Liddy is going to lay his plan out."  I said, "Well, I don't really know as I'm the man, but if you want me there I'll be happy to."  So, I came over and Liddy laid out a million dollar plan that was the most incredible thing I have ever laid my eyes on.  All in codes, and involved black bag operations, kidnapping, providing prostitutes, uh, to weaken the opposition, bugging, uh, mugging teams. It was just an incredible thing.

PRESIDENT: But, uh..

DEAN: And--

PRESIDENT: ...that was, that was not, uh...

DEAN: No.

PRESIDENT: ...discussed with..

DEAN: No.

PRESIDENT: ...other persons.

DEAN: No, not at all. And--

PRESIDENT: (Unintelligible)

DEAN: Uh, Mitchell, Mitchell just virtually sat there puffing [on his pipe] and laughing. I could tell 'cause after he--after Liddy left the office I said, "That's the most incredible thing I've ever seen.  "He said, "I agree."  And so then he was told to go back to the drawing boards and come up with something realistic. So there was a second meeting. Uh, they asked me to come over to that. I came into the tail end of the meeting. I wasn't there for the first part. I don't know how long the meeting lasted. Uh, at this point, they were discussing again bugging, kidnapping and the like. And at this point I said, right in front of everybody, very clearly, I said, "These are not the sort of things that are ever to be discussed in the office of the Attorney General of the United States"--where he still was--"and I am personally incensed." I was trying to get Mitchell off the hook, uh, 'cause—

PRESIDENT: I know

DEAN: He's a, he's a nice person, doesn't like to say no under--when people he's going to have to work with.

PRESIDENT: That's right.

DEAN: So, I let, I let it be known. I said, "You all pack that stuff up and get it the hell out of here 'cause we just, you just can't talk this way in this office and you shouldn't, you shouldn't, you should re-examine your whole thinking." Came back-

PRESIDENT: Who else was present? Be-, besides you-

DEAN: It was Magruder, Magruder [Jeb Magruder (1934–2014; deputy director of Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP) in the 1972 election (better known as CREEP))]

PRESIDENT: Magruder.

DEAN: Uh, Mitchell, Liddy and myself. I came back right after the meeting and told Bob, I said, "Bob, we've got a growing disaster on our hands if they're thinking this way.'  And I said, "The White House has got to stay out of this and I, frankly, am not going to be involved in it."  He said, "I agree John."  And, I thought, at that point the thing was turned off. That's the last I heard of it, when I thought it was turned off, because it was an absurd proposal.

PRESIDENT: Yeah.

DEAN: Liddy-I did have dealings with him afterwards. We never talked about it. Now that would be hard to believe for some people, but, uh, we never did. Just the fact of the matter.

PRESIDENT: Well, you were talking about other things.

DEAN: Other things. We had so many other things.

PRESIDENT: He had some legal problems at one time.

Lichtdom

Lichtdom (pronounced lish-dumm)

A visual technique using light to emulate large-scale architecture.

1934: The construct of the German Lichtdom was licht + dom (literally “cathedral of light”).  Licht (variously light, effortless, freely, easy, free; luminous; eye, clear, sparse, bright, light, shiny, light colored; distinct, plain, obvious, explicit, lucid, straightforward) was from the Middle High German lieht and the Middle German līcht), from the Old High German lioht, from the Old Saxon lioht, from the Proto-West Germanic leuht, from the Proto-Germanic leuhtą, from the primitive Indo-European lewktom.  The descendants include the Dutch licht and the English light.  The obsolete alternative spelling was Liecht.  The colloquial uses include describing candles and (in hunting), the eye of (especially ground) game.  The usual plural is Lichter but Lichte operates as a plural when speaking of candles.  Dom (cathedral; church; big church building; dome, cupola) was from the French dôme, from the Italian duomo, from the Latin domus (ecclesiae (literally “house (of the church)”)), a calque of the Ancient Greek οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας (oîkos tês ekklēsías).  Lichtdom is a compound noun.

Reichsparteitag (Party Rally) Nuremberg, 1934.

Of all that was designed by Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945), little was built and less remains.  Although he would later admit the monumentalism of the Nazi architectural model was a mistake, his statements of contrition seemed always tinged with a regret that in the years to come, all he was likely to be remembered for was his “immaterial lightshow”, used as a dramatic backdrop for the party rallies held at the Zeppelinfeld stadium in Nuremberg.  Compared with what, had things worked out, he’d have been able to render in steel, concrete, marble and granite, Lichtdom (cathedral of light) was of course ephemeral but it’s undeniably memorable.  Speer created the effect by placing the Luftwaffe’s (the German air force) entire stock of 152 1500 mm (60 inch) searchlights around the stadium’s perimeter and maximized the exposure of the design by insisting as many events as possible be conducted in darkness.  The other other advantage was the interplay of light and shadow disguised the paunchiness of the assembled Nazis, many of whom were flabbier than the party’s lean, “Aryan ideal” (by which they meant something stereotypically “Nordic”) but that was anyway suspect; one joke spread by the famously cynical Berlin natives noting that empirically a better description of the Nazi reality was "as blonde as Hitler, as fit as Göring, as tall as Goebbels and as sane as Hess".  The use by the Nazis of the term “Aryan race” to describe people of “pure Germanic descent” was later extended to encompass “all non-Jewish Caucasians” but it was a pseudoscientific concept and one of a number of acts of Nazi misappropriation.  Aryan was a Sanskrit word from the Proto-Indo-Iranian áryas (the original Indo-Iranian autonym) and it entered English in the nineteenth century as a technical term used in structural linguistics, initially to describe Indo-Iranian languages and later extended to most Indo-European languages.

Reichsparteitag (Party Rally) Nuremberg, 1936.

The spectacle left few unimpressed.  Sir Neville Henderson (1882-1942; UK ambassador to Germany 1937-1939), the UK’s admittedly impressionable ambassador described the ethereal atmosphere as “…both solemn and beautiful… like being in a cathedral of ice.”  History though has preferred “cathedral of light” and brief views are captured in Hans Weidemann’s (1904-1975) Festliches Nürnberg (Festival of Nuremberg; a 1937 propaganda film chronicling the 1936 and 1937 events) which is mercifully shorter than Leni Riefenstahl’s (1902–2003) better-known works although the poor quality of the film stock used can only hint at the majesty achieved but the use of Richard Wagner's (1813-1883) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Master-Singers of Nuremberg, 1868) as a musical accompaniment helps.  Riefenstahl actually claimed she suggested the idea to Speer and a much better record exists in her film Olympia (1938) which documented the 1936 Summer Olympics at which the technique was also used.  Architects had of course for millennia been interested in light but apart from those responsible for the placement of stained glass windows and other specialties, mostly they were concerned with function rather than anything representational.  It was the advances the nineteenth century in the availability and luminosity of artificial light which allowed them to use light as an aesthetic element not limited candles or the time of day and thus the angle of sunlight.

Fragment from Olympia (1938) with Lichtdom.

Speer had plenty of time to reflect on the past while serving twenty years in Berlin’s Spandau prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a sentence he was lucky to receive.  His interest in light persisted and with unrestricted access to the FRG's (Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany, 1949-1990) technical libraries, he assembled close to a thousand pages of notes for a planned book on the history of the window in European buildings, musing on variables such as the cost and availability of glass at different times in different places, the shifting cost of the labor of glaziers & carpenters and market interventions such as England’s notorious “window tax” which resulted in some strange looking structures.  Ever drawn to the mathematics he’d in his youth intended to study until forced to follow his father into architecture, he pondered the calculations which might produce the changes in “what value a square meter of light had at different periods” and what this might reveal beyond the actual buildings.

Lindsay Lohan in a drone (UAV; unmanned aerial vehicle)) light show over Marina Bay, Singapore, generated by Google's Gemini generative AI (artificial intelligence).

It was a shame the book was never written.  He recalled also the effects he applied to the German pavilion he built for the Paris World’s Fair in 1937, bathing it at night with “…skilfully arranged spotlights.  The result was to make the architecture of the building emerge sharply outlined against the night, and at the same time to make it unreal... a combination of architecture and light.”  It was at the Paris event the German and Soviet pavilions sat directly opposed, something of a harbinger and deliberately so.  He was nostalgic too about the Lichtdom, thinking it recalled “a fabulous setting, like one of the imaginary crystal palaces of the Middle Ages” although wryly he would note history would remember his contributions to his profession only for the ephemeral, the “…idea that the most successful architectural creation of my life is a chimera, an immaterial phenomenon.”  Surprisingly, for someone who planned the great city of Germania (the planned re-building of Berlin) with its monumental structures, the news that all that remained in the city of his designs were a handful of lampposts (which stand to this day) seemed something almost amusing.  In all his post-war writings, although there’s much rejection as “a failure” of the plan of Germania and the rest of the “neo-Classical on a grand scale” which characterized Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) vision of representational architecture, it’s not hard to detect twinges of regret for the unbuilt and sometimes he admitted it.  As he was contemplating a return to the drawing board upon his impending release, he noted: “Although I have had enough of monumental architecture and turn my mind deliberately to utilitarian buildings, it sometimes comes hard for me to bid goodbye to my dreams of having a place in the history of architecture. How will I feel when I am asked to design a gymnasium, a relay station, or a department store after I planned the biggest domed hall in the world?  Hitler once said to my wife: ‘I am assigning tasks to your husband such as have not been given for four thousand years. He will erect buildings for eternity!’  And now gyms!”  As things transpired, not even a gym was built and he instead re-invented himself as an author, writing his history in text.  Of that piece of curated architecture, some were fooled and some not but what he wrote remains (selectively) useful.

Tribute in Light annual commemoration, New York.

Dramatic though it was, the exact effect Speer achieved in the 1930s is so tainted by its association with the Nazis that few have attempted to recycle the motif although one pop-star used the effect as a visual backdrop in 1976 when he was going through “his right-wing phase” which later he came to think of as “an unpleasantness” and preferred “never to speak of it again”.  Those affected badly by having seen “something nasty in the woodshed” will understand how he felt.  Isolated or clustered beams are however often used and one display is an annual “Tribute in Light” to commemorate the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  It demonstrates the way the dynamics can be used; depending on conditions, the light can bounce off the clouds, creating a very different effect than that afforded by a clear sky and it’s possible to render in those clouds a virtual oculus.

Tribute in Light annual commemoration, New York: The oculus effect.  Note the circling birds.

One problem with high intensity light the Tribute in Light has high-lighted is the way temporarily it messes each year with the migration of hundreds of thousands of songbirds.  The memorial uses 88 focused spotlights, the beams of which reach some 6¼ miles (10 km) into the sky and are visible from as far away as 60 miles (100 km).  Traditionally, the display was illuminated from dusk to dawn but of late it’s been switched off for 20 minute intervals in deference to the songbirds which in mid-September make their long flight from breeding grounds in Canada's boreal forests to their winter homes in the southern US, Mexico, and Central & South America.  They fly mostly by night and it’s thought they’ve evolved to navigate by the stars but, unfortunately, are much attracted to light.  The Tribute in Light having more light than anything else at altitude, the display seems to confuse the birds and it was noted the death toll from birds crashing into New York windows increased every 9/11.  Observers found there was also an element of sound involved, the birds in the light issuing the call associated with distress, this tending to draw more songbirds to the light.

Tribute in Light annual commemoration, New York: Songbirds "caught" in the light.

Researchers used radar to quantify the effect.  Typically, the skies within a ¼ mile (400 metre) of the un-illumined memorial contained around 500 birds but when lit, within 20 minutes, there were almost 16,000.  Extrapolating the data, it was estimated some 1.1 million migrating songbirds had been affected between 2008-2016, even accounting for the lights since 2009 having been shut-off for 20 minutes whenever volunteer birders count more than 1,000 in the beams.  It’s thought the death–toll from birds crashing into buildings is relatively low but there’s concern also the creatures are compelled to expend energy when circling the site, burning up vital resources needed for their long flights.  Shutting off the lights is thought to allow the birds to re-focus on their guiding stars to find their bearings and continue the migration south.  Birders would prefer searchlights not be used at all and some sites have agreed not to use them during the migration season but there’s obviously much sensitivity around the 9/11 commemoration.  Human development of the built environment has for a long time influenced the migration path, the radar data confirming birds disproportionately choose to fly over cities, the researchers referring to the “almost magnetic pull of birds to light.”  We need to remember it's their planet too.