Forbidden Knowledge Part 3

There's no such thing as a face only a mother could love. After all, with the proper coercion (be it a gavel or a gun), a good tyrant can show you just how adjustable your aesthetic sense can be. Here are five world leaders who were obsessed with their own images, and made sure that their subjects were, too.

_01:: Mausolus (?353 BCE) For 24 years, Mausolus ruled over the city-state of Halicarna.s.sus in what is now Turkey, and he spent a lot of time building up the city. So, maybe it was only fitting that in his final years Mausolus built a monument to himself. Mausolus's self-styled memorial wasn't finished until a few years after his deathwith his wife, Artemisia I, carrying on the work. But when it was done, it was one of the fanciest tombs the world has ever seen: 140 feet high, 12,000 square feet, and tastefully adorned with tons of giant statues. The tomb stood for 16 centuries before it was toppled by earthquakes. But Mausolus's wish to be remembered did come true. His name is at the root of the word for "grand tomb": mausoleum.

_02:: Julius Caesar (10044 BCE) Things were looking pretty darn good for Jules in February 44 BCE. He'd stacked the Roman Senate with yes-men and he'd just changed his job t.i.tle to "dictator for life." So he figured, what the heck, he'd ignore Roman tradition that prevented the images of living persons on coins of the realm. Caesar's portrait soon appeared on silver denari, along with the inscription "Divus Julius," or "Divine Julius." Alas, "divine" did not equate with "immortal." On March 15, Caesar was stabbed to death by a gang of senators. Pride had indeed gone before the fall. Not everyone was daunted by Caesar's recent stumblings, though. Brutus, the most famous of Caesar's killers, issued his own coins shortly after the a.s.sa.s.sination.

Touch of Evil Many believe that stuffy old Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election largely due to four words he said on television. Those legendary words? "Sock it to me," uttered on America's counterculture comedy show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.

_03:: Nicolae Ceausescu

(19181989)

Starting in 1965, Ceausescu was dictator of Romania, and boy did everyone know it. Portraits of the man hung everywhere, along with billboards extolling him as the "Genius of the Carpathians." Further still, images of him and his wife (the deputy prime minister) adorned postage stamps, and scores of books they allegedly wrote were crammed on bookstore shelves. But Ceausescu's biggest monument to himself wasinsert ironic chuckle here"the People's Palace." The second-largest building in the world, after the Pentagon, in terms of area, the complex required the razing of a good part of downtown Bucharest in the late 1980s. Not surprisingly, the "people" weren't impressed. After a revolution and a one-day trial, the "people" took the First Couple out on Christmas Day, 1989, and shot them.

_04:: Saddam Hussein (1937) For much of Saddam's 30-year-plus reign, it was probably easier to find something in Iraq that wasn't named after the dictator or didn't have his likeness on it. There was Saddam International Airport, Saddam Hospital, Saddam Stadium, dozens of palaces, and scores of statues. "Saddam has always been obsessed with building," observed Time magazine in 2000. So there was poetic justice on April 9, 2003, when Baghdad residents and U.S. marines pulled down a 40-foot statue of Saddam and triggered a symbolic, although as it turned out very premature, end of the Iraqi war. Still, there is something to be said for notoriety: Saddam portraits and bits of his statues are among the hottest souvenirs of the war.

_05:: Saparmurat Niyazov

(1940)

What can you say about a guy who becomes his country's first president and promptly begins calling himself the "Turkmenbas.h.i.+," or "father of all Turkmen"? That he has a golden statue of himself in the capital city that rotates so the face is always toward the sun? That his image appears on all the currency? That a book he wrote is the foundation of the educational system? That he renamed one of the months of the year after his mother? Well, yes, if the guy in question is Niyazov, who has been president of Turkmenistan since the Central Asian country broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991. Oh, did we mention the palace of ice he wanted to build in the middle of a desert? We're not kidding.

Pride and Prejudice:

6 Recent Cases Where Diversity Would Have

Helped

Discrimination in the workplace is a thing of the past, right? Well, not quite. These corporate giants had to find out the hard way that prejudice doesn't pay...though lawsuits certainly do!

_01:: Denny's Usually a.s.sociated with round-the-clock sausage links and "Moon Over My Hammy" specials, in the 1990s the name Denny's also became a byword for racism and discrimination lawsuits. Accused of making black patrons prepay for their meals, serving them slower than white patrons or not serving them at all, the national restaurant chain was thick in the midst of an investigation when things got even worse. Four black Secret Service agents who were a.s.signed to protect the president reported not being served while their white colleagues were. In 1993, both the U.S. government and Kristina Ridgeway, a then-17-year-old who was asked to pay a cover charge before being served, brought cla.s.s action suits against Denny's in California on behalf of all minority patrons nationwide. In 1994, the lawsuit was settled for an estimated $54 million and catapulted Denny's into a cultural transformation. Changes included diversity programs from the board members.h.i.+p on down. The results? Today, 50% of the 46,000 employees are minorities, 32% of supervisory positions are held by minorities, and contracts with minority-owned suppliers have increased from zero to $100 million a year.

_02:: Coca-Cola In 2000, the Coca-Cola Company sh.e.l.led out $192.5 million and agreed to establish new programs and reforms to settle a racial discrimination cla.s.s action lawsuit brought by 2,000 black employees. The lawsuit claimed that Coca-Cola discriminated against black employees in pay, promotions, and performance evaluations. The amount (the largest award ever for a racial discrimination cla.s.s action lawsuit) included $113 million in cash awards, $43.5 million to adjust salaries, and $36 million to establish oversight programs to monitor the company's employment practices. Talk about being the real thing! c.o.ke also paid $20 million in attorney fees and took a fourth-quarter charge of $188 million against their profits to settle the lawsuit. As part of the agreed changes, a seven-member task force was a.s.sembled to examine the company to ensure fair hiring, pay, and other human resource practices until 2004. In late 2004, Coca-Cola requested that the task force supervision remain in effect until the end of 2006. Coca-Cola seems to have learned from its mistakes. Just like they did with New c.o.ke.

Touch of Evil Southwest Airlines broke their pattern as the "fun airline" when they began enforcing a regulation (from 1980) charging hefty pa.s.sengers for two seats. Despite pending lawsuits, the rule has now been adopted by other airlines. Don't they know the human body swells at high alt.i.tudes?

_03:: Boeing In 2004, Mary Beck and 11 other women filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against Boeing that triggered a cla.s.s action lawsuit that included approximately 29,000 former and current employees of the company. Boeing agreed to pay $72.5 million to settle the gender discrimination lawsuit. The company was charged with paying female workers less and giving them fewer promotions than their male counterparts, and it actually took four full years to settle the lawsuit. The suit also contained allegations of s.e.xual hara.s.sment, retaliation, and racial discrimination. For example, the plaintiffs claimed that they were consistently denied job training and promotions and reported that when they submitted complaints to the internal Equal Employment Opportunity office they were routinely punished with denial of overtime and other forms of retribution. Under the settlement, Boeing agreed to monitor salaries and overtime a.s.signments and to conduct annual performance reviews. Eligible nonexecutive and hourly female workers, from janitors to first-level managers, got $500 or more depending on when they worked and how much they earned. Mary Beck and the 11 other original plaintiffs were each awarded $100,000. The other women received settlements based on the amount of time they had worked and how much they had earned.

_04:: Morgan Stanley Without admitting any culpability, in July 2004 Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $54 million, out of court, to settle claims that it didn't promote women and that it underpaid them. The financial powerhouse had been accused of pa.s.sing over senior women employees in its inst.i.tutional equity division for promotion and pay increases. Even worse, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawyers alleged that women were groped and excluded from male-only outings with clients. Under the conditions of the agreement, a fund of $40 million was established to handle claims from more than 300 women who believed they were discriminated against. A separate payment of $12 million was awarded to the lead plaintiff whose original complaint in 1998 and subsequent firing in 2000 prompted the investigation, and the final $2 million was used to appoint an internal diversity ombudsman and outside monitor to conduct performance and compensation a.n.a.lyses, maintain a complaint database, and implement programs to address the promotion and retention of women.

_05:: Wal-Mart As many as 1.6 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees alleged gender discrimination, and a federal judge agreed in June 2004 that the case could proceed as a cla.s.s action lawsuit. The suit claims that Wal-Mart consistently discriminated against female employees in its manager recruitment and promotion practices. Discrimination lawsuits are nothing new to everyone's favorite superstore, though. In 2001, Wal-Mart was cited and fined $6.8 million by the EEOC for a continued pattern of disability discrimination across 11 states. In fact, Wal-Mart's preemployment questionnaire violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by seeking disability-related information from qualified applicants before formal job offers were made. As part of the settlement, Wal-Mart agreed to change its ADA policies and procedures, create an ADA coordinator, provide training in ADA compliance, and offer jobs to certain disabled applicants. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart didn't quite learn its lesson. The company has since paid an additional $720,000 for violating the terms of the agreement and was even ordered to produce a TV advertis.e.m.e.nt noting Wal-Mart's role in violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON'S HORRIBLE-TERRIBLE,

NO-GOOD, VERY BAD DAY.

July 11, 1804, Weehawken, New Jersey: Alexander Hamilton met his rival, Aaron Burr, for an "interview" (so called because dueling was illegal). Burr had challenged Hamilton to the duel as a result of years of squabbling and alleged libels that Hamilton could have defused many times but didn't because of his own pride and stubbornness. Both parties seem to have intended for it to be a relatively bloodless affair, simply going through the motions to "satisfy honor." But on July 11, everything seemed to be against Hamilton. First, he chose the north side of the ledge, which meant that the rising sun and glare off the water would be in his eyes. Second, he chose two ornate smoothbore pistols, fancy but highly inaccurate. Historians now believe that Hamilton purposely fired his shot high above Burr, intentionally missing him. Burr, not realizing this, fired back, but probably only to wound Hamilton in the leg. Hamilton's choice of weapon came back to haunt him, though: the inaccuracy of the pistol turned a flesh wound into a kill shot. The huge .54-caliber ball entered above his hip (leaving a two-inch hole), shattered a rib, ricocheted through his liver and diaphragm, and lodged in the second lumbar vertebra. He died at two the next afternoon. It was sort of a bad day for Burr, too. His "murder" of the popular Hamilton made him a villain in the eyes of the public and ruined his political career.

_06:: Costco Not wanting to be left out, the Issaquah, Was.h.i.+ngton, retailer joined the ranks of known corporations embroiled in cla.s.s action gender discrimination suits in August 2004. The lawsuit, which was brought by approximately 640 female employees, alleged that a "gla.s.s ceiling" had been imposed denying women promotions to a.s.sistant manager and general store manager positions. Worse still, the claims were well founded. According to company doc.u.ments, approximately 50% of Costco's 78,000 employees are female, but less than 1 in 6 managers is a woman. Further, the complaints alleged that the company didn't announce openings for higher-paying managerial jobs. Instead, the selection process resembled a "boys' club"with top-level male executives routinely selecting other men for the higher-level management positions.

Pride over Prejudice:

5 Individuals Who Taught Us How to

Sing the Blues

Despite all the terrible inst.i.tutions that have been used to keep African Americans down, they still managed to turn their misery into the beautiful music of the blues.

_01:: W. C. Handy Discovers the Blues William Christopher (W. C.) Handy was the prototypical bluesman of the early 1900s. Born in a log cabin in 1873, Handy learned to play music at a very young age. But it wasn't until he was 30 that he got his first taste of the blues. While sitting at a railroad station in Tutwiler, Mississippi, Handy heard a local musician playing blues on a guitar, strumming it with a knife and singing about a nearby location where two railroads crossed. At first, Handy thought the sounds emanating were a little too strange, but he soon became intrigued. Over the next few years, Handy collected and copyrighted the songs he'd learned from the rural Delta folk. Then, in 1909, Handy moved to Memphis and while playing at a political rally, he composed and sang a song about the politician Boss Crump. Three years later, Handy re-wrote the lyrics and it became the widely known "Memphis Blues." It was just one of several hits he'd write. In 1914, Handy composed an instant cla.s.sic, the "Saint Louis Blues," which went on to become the first nationally recognized song of the Delta blues movement and what many consider to be the first jazz recording.

_02:: Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues" Sells a Million By the second decade of the 20th century, the blues had gained a strong foothold in the South. Unknown to many, however, is the fact that female blues performers carried more than their share of the load during this time. And while the big names like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith performed throughout the South, it was a vaudeville singer and dancer, Mamie Smith, who recorded the first blues songs in 1920. While her variety shows always included some blues and jazz numbers, her manager saw a new market for recordings in the large African American populations that had recently migrated to the North. Based on Smith's popularity in New York, her manager was able to persuade Okeh Records to record Smith's version of "Crazy Blues" and "It's Here for You." Not surprisingly, the recording was extremely successful, selling over 1 million copies in less than a year and eventually 2 million copies overall.

_03:: Charley Patton and the "Pony Blues"

Considered the founder of the Delta blues, Charley Patton was the model bluesman. The son of a sharecropper, young Patton moved with his family to the Dockery Plantation in the Delta region in Mississippi and soon began playing gigs around the area. Considered a "superstar" at a young age, Patton was always in demand to play at plantation dances and in juke joints. In fact, his slide guitar stylings became the standard imitated by other Delta musicians. In 1929 he recorded the "Pony Blues," which became a big hit for the Paramount Record Company. But it wasn't his music so much as his stage presence that made him a legend. Diminutive in size (5 feet 5 inches, 135 lbs), Patton became larger than life when he saw an audience. His raw, impa.s.sioned voice accompanied by his loud, fluid guitar playing to an unrelenting beat drove audiences into a frenzy. Of course, Patton's persona carried over into his daily life as well. Loud, boisterous, drinking excessively, and with a woman on each arm, Patton defined the image of the early bluesman. Married eight times and imprisoned at least once, Patton was always on the move.

_04:: Leadbelly Meets John and Alan Lomax Huddie Ledbetter, known to most of us as Leadbelly, was more than just a blues singerhe was one of America's greatest folk artists. Considered by some to be a murderer and by others a writer of children's songs, Leadbelly's life is legendary for its rumors and inconsistencies. In Texas in 1918, Leadbelly was accused of killing a man in a fight over a woman. And while many witnesses said it was in self-defense, Leadbelly pleaded guilty because he knew that as a black man he wouldn't get a fair trial. In 1930, he was involved in another murder (this time only attempted) and was imprisoned until 1934. Somehow, though, he still came to the attention of John and Alan Lomax, a father and son musicologist team who were commissioned by the Library of Congress to travel through the backwoods and rural areas of the South to record American folk music. The duo recognized Leadbelly's genius and promptly took him on tour with them in the northern United States, but audiences viewed him as more of a curiosity than a performer. Of course, the feelings were spurred by the press. A headline in the New York Herald Tribune (January 3, 1935), for instance, read, "Lomax Arrives with Leadbelly, Negro Minstrel/Sweet Singer of the Swamplands Here to Do a Few Tunes between Homicides." Like many a blues star, Leadbelly never achieved commercial success during his lifetime, but his songs "Goodnight Irene," "The Midnight Special," "Cotton Fields," and "Rock Island Line" are American cla.s.sics today.

_05:: Muddy Waters and the Chicago Blues In 1948, the blues got ratcheted up a notch when McKinley Morganfield and his Chicago sound hit the scene. Better known by his nickname, Muddy Waters, Morganfield helped create a new high-octane version of the music, which quickly became synonymous with contemporary urban blues. But just because he was pus.h.i.+ng the sound forward didn't mean Waters had an easy time finding a label. After cutting some unissued recordings for Columbia, Waters finally persuaded the owners of Aristocrat (a small independent label that later became Chess Records) to put him in a studio. Luckily, one of the singles, "I Can't Be Satisfied/I Feel Like Going Home," became a hit, and the modern Chicago blues was born. Waters's deep, majestic voice, coupled with an amplified guitar, introduced listeners to a sound that was exciting, powerful, and thoroughly compelling. In fact, the new music gave rise to a whole new generation of Chicago blues artists who played with Waters, including Willie Dixon, Otis Spann, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, and Otis Rush. Later on, Waters was a significant influence on the careers of contemporary artists like Paul b.u.t.terfield, Michael Bloomfield, and Johnny Winters.

Disobedience School: The Secret Lives of

4 Civil Activists

Sure, you know their names from textbooks. You've seen their statues and heard them praised as heroes for standing up (and sticking it) to the man. Heck, you might even get a day or two off in a year thanks to them. But just because history paints these proud figures heroes, it doesn't mean they didn't come with a couple of blemishes. The following are four civil activistsand a couple of their secrets that history likes to brush over.

_01:: Henry David Th.o.r.eau (18171862) A civil activist and the author of Walden and "On Civil Disobedience," Th.o.r.eau was about as eccentric as they come. In 1837, Th.o.r.eau graduated from Harvard but saw little value in the courses he'd taken. After all, old Henry felt that true education came from communing with nature (sadly, the degree isn't widely accredited). Henry, not really fond of the idea of work, once lasted only two weeks at a teaching job because he couldn't keep his students quiet and refused to punish them. So, how'd he get by, exactly? The philosopher survived mainly on odd jobs, though not too many of them. Henry made it his policy to try not to work more than 15 to 20 hours per week. His laziness isn't all this "catch" had going against him; described as "ugly but in an agreeable fas.h.i.+on" by his friends, he once proposed marriage by letter to a young lady only to be rejected. He also took to calling himself Henry David (instead of his given name David Henry) and ticked off his neighbors, who thought this to be unnatural and unseemly. Preferring to live in a small cabin close to Walden Pond, Th.o.r.eau was known to spend inordinate amounts of time standing still watching nature. Of course, he did remain active in some aspects of his life. As an uncompromising abolitionist, Th.o.r.eau harbored runaway slaves and helped them reach Canada. As for his much-celebrated imprisonment for refusing to pay a poll tax, though, that only lasted one day.

_02:: Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) To most of us, Ralph Waldo Emerson was the quirky sidekick and mentor to Henry David Th.o.r.eau. And while you might think of Ralph as the consummate Renaissance man, you probably don't consider inventing a religion to be one of his many talents. It's true, though. When Emerson started believing his Unitarian faith was a bit too limiting, he set out to create his own religion based on the relations.h.i.+p among nature, man, and the divine. Known as the Sage of Concord, Emerson was years ahead of others in understanding nature and its role. For example, his ideas on evolution preceded Darwin's, and his thoughts on matter and energy were 80 years ahead of Einstein. In fact, his discussions on the hierarchy of human needs even antic.i.p.ated the work of Abraham Maslow in the 20th century. It's too bad most of this Renaissance thinking was lost during Emerson's timeand mainly because he took such a strong stance against slavery. His attacks on the morally bankrupt inst.i.tution regularly got him in hot water, and calling John Brown a saint and a martyr didn't exactly help. In fact, it strongly curtailed his speaking engagements and left poor Emerson just that, poor.

Touch of Evil While it's said that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had many secrets, things started with the name on his birth certificate. It wasn't Martin but Michael, which his father said was a mistake made by the attending physician.

_03:: Tom Hayden (1939) The poster boy for radical 1960s political movements, Tom Hayden was a chief ideologue of the student movement and the founder of Students for a Democratic Society. Gaining international attention as one of the Chicago Seven (who stood trial for disrupting the 1968 Democratic National Convention), Tom quickly became a celebrity, even marrying fellow political activist and movie actress Jane Fonda in 1973. Although he lost when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1976, Hayden stayed involved in local California politics and ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Los Angeles in the late 1990s. Interestingly, this self-proclaimed defender of the poor and politically oppressed bought a 120-acre retreat with Fonda in 1977 to be used to train young political activists. The problem was, before they could move in Tom and Jane had to evict a number of low-income tenants.

_04:: Harriet Beecher Stowe (18111896) Known as a moody, absentminded child, Harriet Beecher Stowe grew up to be one of the most influential social critics of the 19th century. Moving with her family from Hartford, Connecticut, to Cincinnati, Ohio, she soon came into contact with the mentality of the Mason-Dixon Line and with fugitive slaves. The effects were clearly profound. In 1851, Stowe became famous for her book Uncle Tom's Cabin, which depicted the evils of slavery. When the novel was attacked as being inaccurate fiction, she published "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" in 1853 to refute the critics. Not only did the book make her an international celebrity, it actually made her quite wealthy during a time when writing wasn't viewed as a lucrative profession. Still, she managed to create arguably the most controversial piece of literature of the 19th century. In fact, when she met Abraham Lincoln in 1862, the president exclaimed, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"

Who's Your Daddy?

9 Famous b.a.s.t.a.r.ds Who Made Their Mark

Accusing someone of illegitimate birth has long been one of the greatest insults possible, so it's not at all surprising that some of history's greatest shoulder-mounted chips have been securely fastened to people with murky parentage. In fact, by the look of the names on this list, it just might be a recipe for success.

_01:: Sargon the Great (ca. 23602279 BCE) In his autobiography (recorded as The Legend of Sargon), Sargon admits, "My father I knew not." And while we don't know his genealogy, we do know the guy was "Great." Supposedly the son of royalty (at least that's what he told people), Sargon was actually abandoned in a basket on the Euphrates River and found by a gardener. Somehow, the clever kid worked his way up to cupbearer (sort of a prime minister) to the king of the Sumerian city of Kish, but his ambition didn't stop there. Eventually, Sargon founded his own kingdom among the Semitic peoples of Akkad. Of course, anyone who laughed at his supposed illegitimacy probably lived to regret it; in the span of a few decades Sargon conquered Sumeria and built one of the first true empires in world history, stretching from the mountains of southern Anatolia to the Syrian coast and the Persian Gulf. His Akkadian name, Sharru-kin, means "The King Is Legitimate." We think...

_02:: Confucius (ca. 551479 BCE) The early life of K'ung-Fu-tzu, better known in the West as Confucius, is largely a mystery. Born in the feudal kingdom of Lu, Confucius served as an adviser on political matters and court etiquette to several Chinese leaders during the mid-to late 500s BCE. The circ.u.mstances of Confucius's own birth, however, are hardly up to any Emily Post standards. According to the first complete biography of Confucius, the s.h.i.+ji, his dad, a warlord named Shu Liang He, and his mom, a member of the Yan clan, "came roughly together," indicating either a rape, concubinage, or some other sort of extramarital shenanigan. His low birth, however, didn't stop him from attracting plenty of highborn followers, many of whom protected him when his outspoken manner offended his various employers.

_03:: William I of England (10281087) Billy the Conqueror, as he liked to be called, was the son of Duke Robert of Normandy and a tanner's daughter named Arletta, who had a thing for guys in armor. By his early 20s, Billy had defeated his rivals for the throne, conquered the rich province of Maine, and become one of the most powerful men in France. But even after being crowned king of England, "William the b.a.s.t.a.r.d" didn't stop his conquestshe died in Vexin during an attempt to seize control of the French province. Interestingly enough, though, little Billy wasn't the only great king of England to be a b.a.s.t.a.r.d; Athelstan (ruled 924939), maybe the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs, was also the product of a somewhat less than legitimate union.

_04:: Juchi (ca. 11801227) It almost sounds like a fairy tale: the bride of a young Mongol herdsman named Temudjin was kidnapped by an enemy tribe, but rather than abandon her to her fate (the custom at the timeTemudjin's own mother had been kidnapped by his father), Temudjin gathered an army and risked his life to get her back. When she came back, though, she was pregnant. Amazingly, Temudjin accepted the child as his own, but named him Juchi, "the Guest," just to make sure everyone knew that he didn't regard the kid's paternity as totally kosher. Temudjin soon became known to the world as Genghis Khan, and his son Juchi began the conquest of Russia, possibly to get away from his brothers, who, according to Mongol sources, taunted him and called him a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. The kingdom he carved out was ultimately known as the Golden Horde, the longest lived of the Mongol successor states.