July 15, 2003

• Bishop and Saint

  
  

  Today is the birthday of Clement Clarke Moore, author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” also known as “The Night Before Christmas.”

  
  

  Here is a biography of Moore:

  
  

  Clement C. Moore

  
  

  Here is a related biography:

  
  

  Bishop Paul Moore of New York

  
  

  Here is an attack on Clement Moore:

  
  

  A Plagiarist and a Creep 

  
  

  Here is a defense of Clement Moore:

  
  

  Yes, Virginia, Moore Did Write It.

  
  

  It seems the real creep here is Greg Hill.

  
  

  First runner-up creep: Gerald McDaniel, whose Cultural Calendar for today has the following entries:

  
  
• On this day in 1779, a New York City clergyman and avocational poet Clement Moore was born. His only work of note is the poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” which gave us so many holiday icons. It turns out that scholarship now indicates that Moore, either intentionally or unintentionally, plagiarized the work, which was originally written by a Dutch-New York humorist. A lawsuit* eventually gave the original author’s family proprietary rights.
  
• On this day in 1789, the electors of Paris set up a Commune to live without the authority of the government.
  
• The Marseillaise was officially adopted as the French national anthem on this day in 1795. “Allons, citoyens!”
  

  Actually, the Marseillaise has ”Aux armes, citoyens!“ not “Allons, citoyens” as the self-described liberal McDaniel claims.  The former phrase goes well with the populist song lyrics of Jimmie Rodgers:

  
  

  “I’m gonna buy myself a shotgun,
   one with a long shiny barrel.”

  
  

  For more on Rodgers and shotguns, see my July 8 entry on the pursuit of happiness in Meridian, Mississippi, A Face in the Crowd.

  
  

  * I can find no other mention of any such lawsuit on the Web.  It seems to be a figment of McDaniel’s liberal imagination.