For Duty & Humanity

Back in 1934, "The Three Stooges," the famous comedy trio, released one of their short films called "Men in Black." It was nominated for an Academy Award in the short subject category. The little film of about 20 minutes had the Stooges* being doctors in the "Los Arms Hospital," with Dr. Graves as the hospital  superintendent. The Stooges have promised to devote their lives to the cause of "duty and humanity," a slogan given to them in medical school. They don't remember much else from their medical training, but they remember the slogan. Later, when they report to Dr. Graves, he asks them where they found the patient in Room 72. They answer, "Up on the chandelier," and Dr. Graves then asks, "What did you do for him?" Curley replies, "Nuthin'! What did he ever do for us?" Graves yells, "What are you working here for?" And the Stooges say in unison, "For duty and humanity!"

There are numerous incidents during the film, but the point is, quaint slogans may seem nice, but they are meaningless, unless their meaning is truly understood and acted upon accordingly. Does any person claiming Christianity REALLY believe that the Ku Klux Klan is a "Christian" organization, more specifically, a "white, Protestant Christian" organization? This is a terrorist group responsible for the burning of crosses and the use of violence to frighten and injure those they find to be "unacceptable."  Does anyone with a shred of tolerance and kindness toward others believe that "MAGA" ("Make America Great Again") is a slogan of tolerance and inclusiveness? Quite the opposite, it is a slogan associated with INTOLERANCE, BIGOTRY and outright HATE. It is a slogan for a particular American fascism led by the "Fascist-in-Chief," an American fascist sonofabitch, Donald Trump. The Three Stooges portraying doctors in a short film and shouting, "For duty and humanity," didn't hurt anyone, nor did they threaten American democracy. I cannot say the same thing about Donald Trump and his stooges.

* Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curley Howard (the actual 1934 film spells it "Curley," in the opening credits, but I believe later it was spelled "Curly").  

Public domain photo from Wikipedia showing the Three Stooges in 1937 (Larry Fine, Curley Howard and Moe Howard.  

WORD HISTORY:
Charade-This is a word with a great deal of uncertain history. It was borrowed by English from French "charade" (meaning, "a riddle") in the 1770s. French got the word from the Provençal word "charrado," which meant, "chatter," which was derived from the verb "charrar," which meant, "to chat, to converse." This seems to have come from Italian "ciarlare," meaning, "to chatter," but where Italian got the word is unknown, although Spanish has "charlar," meaning, "to chat, to talk on about unimportant things," and an obvious relative of the Italian word. The English meaning certainly ties in with "a riddle," as the name of the game "Charades" has participants acting out a word or individual parts of a word until someone guesses the correct answer. This provided the other meaning to "charade," although with a negative twist to the meaning; that is, "to act to deceive someone about a real intention or to cover up the real meaning of something."