Moonstruck Scholar Bares Theory in Unusual Cardiff Quarterly

Articles about mooning always attract me.

“Early Mooning in America” is the title. Lincoln Diamant, a New York historian and biographer, is the author.

His argument is that European explorers discovered mooning--described as the contemptuous baring of the buttocks--in the Americas and joyfully took the practice home just like their other discoveries: corn, potatoes and tobacco.

“Within half a century of Columbus’ landing on San Salvador,” Diamant writes, “the literate population of Europe was adding New World mooning to its broad arsenal of uncivilized rejoinder.”

It’s all there, complete with scholarly footnotes, in Volume I of the Journal of Unconventional History. The Cardiff-based quarterly is the offbeat brainchild of co-editors Aline Homaday and Ann Elwood.

“We want to provide a place for people who may have been shut out by the traditional professional journals,” Elwood said. “We want things that are scholarly but controversial; new ideas that are not yet accepted.”

Volume I also has an essay by La Jolla historian Alice Goldfarb Marquis on “The Ballad of Jackson Pollock: Marlboro Man,” and one on “Science, Reason and the German Utopia” by Hugh Murray.

Elwood, 59, and Homaday, 66, have their own unconventional histories. Each earned a doctorate in history at UC San Diego after a career outside academe.

Elwood was a free-lance writer (including children’s books). Homaday was the publisher of the (San Diego) Daily Transcript from 1950 to 1972.

Volume II, soon at selected bookstores, will look at wife-beating in Rhode Island and the European avant-garde. Volume I has already stirred up a ruckus.

The mooning article brought a hot response from a San Francisco writer who says Diamant has it all wrong: that mooning was spotted as far back as the fall of Constantinople in 1204.

Ah, the invigorating give-and-take of intellectual life.

Highfalutin Food for Thought

Radicalizing prose is sometimes found in unlikely places.

In the days before last week’s strike authorization vote by Union-Tribune guild members, there was a clipping from the society pages of the San Diego Tribune posted prominently on the newsroom bulletin board at the San Diego Union.

The clip told of the recent Christmas party at the La Jolla home of David Copley, president of Copley Press Inc. and son of publisher Helen Copley. A party complete with caterer and designer.

“The party played out in a scene that was a nostalgic tour de force, the kind of glowing, sparkling, fragrant ideal seldom realized by even the most committed Christmas mad . . .

“Copley greeted his guests at the entry, where a brightly lacquered antique sleigh was moored as backdrop for Dickensian costumed carolers. Santa cut through the crowd sampling cheeses and fine pate . . .

“With champagne to wash it down, fare ranged from traditional ham biscuits to quail ragout and shellfish bisque (fun to slurp off cloudy puff pastry shells). Dessert included toothsome persimmon tarts and a deadly delicious chocolate density.”

To newspaper guild members, the message was clear: Let ‘em eat cloudy puff pastry shells.

Keeping Sweets Tax-Free

Political rumble.

* Libertarians don’t win many elections but they do have fun.

Take Dennis Thompson, the San Diego computer firm owner who is running for governor as a Libertarian.

He doesn’t like Atty Gen. John Van de Kamp’s proposal to tax candy. So he sent Van de Kamp a box of sour ball candies to show his displeasure. No response yet.

“I’ll probably hear from his dentist,” Thompson said.

* Opposition research has begun in the race for sheriff.

Vince Jimno, on leave as police chief in Escondido, gave a stump speech Friday to San Diego’s Catfish Club, a black professional organization.

In the front row, with a tape recorder, was a visiting Jeanette Roache, wife of a rival candidate, Sheriff’s Capt. Jim Roache.