A LOYAL READER going by the moniker The Raven asked me to pass this tidbit on to y’all:

Hi Clark:I propose to rename the USA to “Anglosaxland,” basing on the following reason:

As everyone knows, our “great” leader Richard Cheney told, after GOP “won” the election, that finally this is the land of Anglo-Saxons, and therefore the stolen election was not stolen at all.

BTW, this very Cheney is Norman by origin, descendant of those who conquered these very Anglosaxons in 11th century. Please submit your ideas on how to rename the USA in connection with this, to theraven@linkeseite.zzn.com.

The Raven

I haven’t heard of the statement from which the above correspondent is quoting. I have, of course, heard of the Norman conquests that temporarily drove the proto-Brits into northwestern France (and of The Norman Conquests, Alan Ayckbourn’s too-clever-for-its-own-good ’70s play about a hapless Brit middle-class philanderer).

The title of Michael Moore’s movie The Big One came from his facetious suggestion of that as a new name for the nation. I’ve heard other suggestions in recent years, such as “The Home Office” and “Home of the Whopper” (not to mention the ol’ standby “Amerikkka”).

None of these fully express (and perhaps no one name can express) my vision of Usonia (a name derived from Frank Lloyd Wright) as a big polyglot mongrel mishmosh of ethnic, lingual, religious, and subcultural cliques, all under the increasingly heavy thumb of the corporate overlords and their wholly-owned politicians. If you’ve got an idea, let me and the Raven know.