Czechoslovakia is back in the news, which it hasn't been much since the state split in two.

At Talking Points Memo, Joshua Marshall provides a clip from MSNBC in which Chris Matthews embarrasses Kevin James. Unless you enjoy shouting, it's not much fun to watch, so I'll summarize: James is a talk radio blowhard who favors a big-stick approach to foreign affairs. He uses his time on the screen to support President Bush and attack Barack Obama, and along the way he mentions the famous "appeasement" of Neville Chamberlain in 1938.

Matthews, who is going somewhere with this, asks James to explain what exactly he think Chamberlain did wrong. James tries to bluster his way past the question with more shouting and changing the subject. Sensing weakness, Matthews goes alpha-dog and refuses to let it go, and after several minutes of competitive barking he asserts his dominance and forces James to admit he has no idea what Chamberlain actually did.

Several on the left are cheering Matthews for scoring one for our side for a change, but I get no cheer from this exchange. If Matthews has a point to make (and he does), I wish he'd just make it, rather than playing a game of gotcha which can only end when the hapless guest is publicly humiliated. James is wrong because his argument is flawed, not because he is ignorant of history. The proper refutation, then, is to counter his argument, not to demonstrate his ignorance. I realize that was probably Matthews' original intent, and James brought the "smackdown" on himself by his bullheadedness. Still, I would have liked it better if Matthews had just made his argument without getting distracted by this macho display. And it displeases me that all the cheering on the left (which is what made this clip popular enough for me to have seen it) is for the macho display, not for the argument.

The point Matthews sought to make is that Chamberlain's error was "not talking to Hitler but giving him half of Czechoslovakia in 1938". Since the appeasement analogy made by President Bush refers to Obama's desire to talk to the enemy, the analogy is flawed.

This isn't actually what I set out to discuss in this post, so I'm not going to delve too deeply into this today, but I would suggest, as I've suggested before, that we commonly draw the wrong lesson from the Munich agreement. As is so often the case in the history of 20th century Europe, we pay too much attention to the Second World War and not enough to the First. In our zeal to declare the wrongness of conceding the Sudeten lands to Germany in 1938, we forget the wrongness of conceding the same lands to Czechoslovakia in 1919.

There's no easy answer to the quandary in either year, but the populations in the German parts of Bohemia and Moravia did in fact vote to join Weimar Germany or "German Austria". They resisted incorporation into Czechoslovakia, citing the fifth of Wilson's Fourteen Points. In short, they were Germans who wished their home to be part of Germany. The U.S. commission to the Paris Peace Conference had this to say:

None of this is to say Chamberlain was right in 1938. By then it was pretty clear that Hitler's goal was military (as was Clemenceau's in 1919) and on military terms it's hard to consider concession of the Sudetenland anything but a blunder. But when we talk about appeasement today, it's usually in the context of how to best avoiding war, and on that question 1919 is more pertinent than 1938.

Getting back to Chris Matthews, where I quoted him above I edited him by spelling "Czechoslovakia" correctly. What he actually said sounded like "Czech-lo-sovakia". That's not the first time I've heard that mispronunciation. Indeed, the mispronunciation is nearly as common as the correct pronunciation. In many cases it goes a step further, and the "s" sound, now deprived of its neighboring "l", is turned into a "ts", so that the whole thing sounds like "Check-lits-a-vakia".

Two questions I'm pondering. First, where does this pronunciation come from? It's easy enough to see how "nuclear" becomes "nucular", given the abundance of words with the "-cular" sound (cir-, mus-, specta-, vehi-, etc) and dearth of words with the "-cle-ar" sound; it's easy to see why the tongue-tripping "r" gets dropped from "library" and "February", or the awkward "d" from "Wednesday"; but I'm at a loss to see why "check-luh-suh-" flows more readily from then tongue than "check-uh-sluh-".

Second, why does this pronunciation escape the elitist scorn heaped upon pronunciations like "nucular", "li-berry", and "Feb-yuary"? Surely it is no more or less ignorant.

11:31:04 PM  [permalink]  comment []  

I forgot to vote in the Debatable Land's contest to identify the most underrated president. Anyone who knows me at all knows who tops my list, and I have to say: He wuz robbed!

Um, for those who don't know me, my guy finished ninth. My three votes would not have boosted his rank any. Looking at the list again later, the real shocker to me is that although 36 of our 42 presidents got at least one vote (voters were asked to name three presidents, to be scored 3, 2 and 1 points), among the six who did not is Rutherford Hayes. Wow. Hayes probably would have gotten my second or third vote.

Numbers 1 and 3 in the standings are silly. Both Eisenhower and Polk are widely considered to be great presidents. I don't question their greatness -- well, no, I take that back: I think Polk is a bit overrated -- but how can you call them underrated? I think some voters are unclear on the concept.

Numbers 2, 4, 6 and 7 are all beneficiaries of the bias toward presidents in recent memory. As for 5 and 8 ... well, grumble grumble grumble.

Disqualify those six, and the list is topped by Coolidge, whom we were discussing over on DwM today.

Here's a conundrum for you: Forget about greatest, worst, or most underrated. Try to list the five wittiest presidents. It's harder than it sounds. Our presidents have had many great qualities, but wit is not prominent among them. By strange chance, it seems that many of the ones most skilled with words are also among the most humorless (eg, Jefferson, Wilson). (It's rare that I have anything good to say about Woodrow Wilson, but here's one: He wrote some really beautiful love letters.)

It seems wrong to say that Ronald Reagan was our second-wittiest president, but if he wasn't, tell me who was.

My feeble attempt at a top five I'll put in the comments, lest it catch your eye here and spoil your attempt to come up with a list of your own. The only one I feel good about is the first. The second and third I offer up with some reluctance and only for lack of better ideas. The fourth and fifth are truly grasping at straws, based on little more than a vague hunch.

I welcome any better ideas.

2:19:20 AM  [permalink]  comment []