"These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him--at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars--his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself--such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog."--Franklin Roosevelt. Sept. 23, 1944, address to the Teamsters Union.
Steve Kuusisto's guide dog, Nira, meets Fala in Hyde Park. Monday, December 29, 2008.
Having recently lost my dog to age and injury, I'm a sucker for pics of pooches. I'm not sure which of those two looks more noble.
Posted by: Linkmeister | Wednesday, December 31, 2008 at 02:33 PM
Damn right you do! Leave the dogs and kids out of it! Dog power! Those rumourmongers will have to roll over on their backs belly up and bark when the dog aliens arrive in their ships, just like Gary Lason predicted all those years ago!
Posted by: Uncle Merlin | Wednesday, December 31, 2008 at 02:47 PM
Lance- I love that picture of FDR's library. It looked familiar, even though I haven't been to Hyde Park since I was 16. At the back corner, there is a little table that seems to have some kind of game on it, but not a chess set. One of my distinct memories of my visit was that there had been a chess set on a stand to the right of the path I took through the first floor of the house, a set displayed at starting position except for one thing. A rook was missing, and since no prior move could have captured it, I assume that some miscreant had snatched it for a souvenir. So I have been wanting to go back for years to see if replacement or restitution had been made. We'll have to go there soon and check.
I don't recall ever reading that FDR played chess. I think he would have found it too confining. He would have wanted to find some more direct way to effect mate than playing out 30 or so moves by some silly rules concocted thousands of years ago. He was the only president i "knew" for my fist thirteen years. I miss him terribly.
-Dad
Posted by: Pop Mannion | Thursday, January 01, 2009 at 02:52 PM
When I was last at Hyde Park a few years ago, I asked a docent if Fala had any descendants, figuring that the FDR pedigree might be something people looking for a scottie would be interested in. She didn't know. I wonder if anyone checked on it?
Posted by: CJColucci | Friday, January 02, 2009 at 12:46 PM