Dane-geld (Dane tax) was the bribe paid by eleventh-century England to persuade visiting Vikings not to ravish and pillage there (Vikings considered ravishing and pillaging the English a really, really great way to spend vacations) but go ravish and pillage the French instead.
Barack Obama likely was tempted to pay Dane-geld when Somali pirates seized the US-flagged Maersk Alabama. After all, he had much bigger problems (like the future of the known world) heavy on his shoulders. But he is an educated man and probably remembers Rudyard Kipling's poem, Dane-Geld, which reads in part:
It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:-
"Though we know we should defeat you,
We have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
Seems a dead, white male can be a lot of use to a live, black male these days.
(Samantha Jones is a Canadian journalist publishing her erotic memoir at www.lulu.com)
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