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On this day in 1966, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Now, quoting from the National Security Archive:
The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a law ensuring public access to U.S. government records. FOIA carries a presumption of disclosure; the burden is on the government - not the public - to substantiate why information may not be released. Upon written request, agencies of the United States government are required to disclose those records, unless they can be lawfully withheld from disclosure under one of nine specific exemptions in the FOIA. This right of access is ultimately enforceable in federal court.
LBJ only reluctantly signed the law. He held no signing ceremony, which was unusual, given that he typically enjoyed pageantry almost as much as patronage. And he issued a signing statement (pdf) that undercut FOIA. I suppose it’s not surprising that the president wasn’t a huge fan of a law that offered the American people unprecedented access to government documents. More surprising? Republican Congressman Donald Rumsfeld (pdf) was on the side of the angels, championing FOIA — though only in the wake of LBJ’s landslide in the 1964 election. Approximately a decade later, Rumsfeld and his buddy, Dick Cheney, would spearhead the Ford administration’s losing effort to contain FOIA’s growth.
If Rumsfeld’s support for the bill was politically motivated, the real hero of the story was a Congressman from Sacramento, John Moss. Moss had led hearings in the mid 1950s on the perils of government secrecy. Ten years after that, in 1965, he sponsored the FOIA bill. At the time, Moss struggled against every agency in the federal apparatus, including the Department of Justice, which threatened that the Supreme Court would strike down FOIA (pdf) even if it somehow became law.
Despite the executive branch’s misgivings and roadblocks set up by entrenched bureaucratic interests, the Senate passed its version of Moss’s bill in the spring of 1966. The Johnson administration — nudged by a young press secretary named Bill Moyers — then began looking for ways to hop on the bandwagon before it completely filled. White House counsel Milton Semer, for example, suggested that LBJ could spin FOIA as an effort to cut through the red tape (pdf) in Washington. The Justice Department, meanwhile, worked directly with Moss, watering down his bill by exempting many different kinds of documents from FOIA and offering “broader protection for the internal working papers of executive agencies.”
The House voted on Moss’s bill on June 20, passing it unanimously. Johnson then signed FOIA into law on this day in 1966. Years later, Bill Moyers recalled:
I knew that LBJ had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the signing… He hated the very idea of the Freedom of Information Act; hated the thought of journalists rummaging in government closets and opening government files; hated them challenging the official view of reality. He dug in his heels and even threatened to pocket veto the bill after it reached the White House…He relented and signed ‘the damned thing,’ as he called it (I’m paraphrasing what he actually said …).
So, on Independence Day, we should celebrate our freedom to gather information about the government, even as the government gathers information about us.
On this day in 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg concluded with a Union victory, leading directly to Shelby Foote’s finest hour. Although I know enough to be skeptical, and to carp, cavil, and, most of all, quibble rather more knowledgeably than the next chap, I’m still wowed by Ken Burns’s ability to evoke the horror of war by weaving together footage of talking heads and a series of still photographs, mediocre paintings, and an empty field, all backed by dramatic readings of primary sources, now-iconic music, and David McCullough’s spare narration. And speaking of masculinity and patriotism, I should know better than to let this bring tears to my eyes. [Sniff, sniff.] Damn you Ken Burns! You and your moving pictures!
Scott adds: Remember there’s a reason Ari and Eric invited me here. (Not that correlation has anything to do with causation, mind you.)
[Editor's Note: I pass along the missive you'll find below without comment. (Because I know next to nothing about the situation at Antioch.) That said, I was asked to post this by a very dear friend, whose very dear friend works at Antioch. So there you have it. Oh, there's one more thing: the petition is is somewhere around the bottom third of the text. If you're interested.]
Dear …,
I am writing to ask whether you might be interested in endorsing, and helping us circulate, our petition in support of Antioch College (please scroll all the way down to see the text of the petition and the petition link).
On June 11, 1963, after federal troops forced Governor George Wallace to allow two African-American students, Vivian Hood and James Malone, to enroll at the University of Alabama, John F. Kennedy gave the above speech, perhaps the finest of his career. (The highlight of the address begins around the 4 minute mark; part 2 can be found here; the full text and audio are available here.) A day later, Byron De La Beckwith killed Medgar Evers. Then, near summer’s end, more than 200,000 people participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. King shared his dream for the nation. Less than three months after that, Lee Harvey Oswald (please, don’t start) assassinated JFK. Finally, a bit more than a year after Kennedy’s Civil Rights address, on this day in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson honored Kennedy’s and Evers’s memories by signing the Civil Rights Act.
Well isn’t that a neat package, tied up with a pretty bow? Actually, the story’s much more complex than that, probably too complicated for a short-form blog post. For example, Kennedy’s support for Civil Rights was often notoriously lukewarm. And Johnson, at the time Senate Majority Leader, had infamously tried to have it both ways with the 1957 Civil Rights Act: insuring that the legislation would be gutted, to placate Southern Democrats, while shepherding it to passage, a subtle nod to the party’s pro-Civil Rights wing. By 1963, though, JFK had embraced the cause. At least sort of. Confronted with the intransigence of segregationists like Wallace, and worried that the U.S.’s image as a free society would suffer in the eyes of the international community at the height of the Cold War, Kennedy pushed for a Civil Rights Act — until he was killed. Which is when LBJ picked up the torch.
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President Johnson, aided by Hubert Humphrey and other Democratic advocates for the bill in the Senate, then locked horns with LBJ’s longtime friend and mentor, Georgia Democrat and white supremacist, Richard B. Russell, who said: “We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our [Southern] states.” (You can see LBJ above, looming over Russell. God, Johnson was a scary prick.) Beginning in March 1964, Russell organized segregationists in the Democratic caucus for what would be the longest filibuster in the Senate’s history. Johnson and Humphrey worked tirelessly to outflank them. But the two Democrats had to rely also on Everett Dirksen, a leading Senate Republican, for support. Finally, on June 10, 1964, Dirksen had the votes for cloture. Russell and the segregationists stopped yapping. And less than a month later, the Civil Rights Act came to the floor.
Even that’s just a fraction of the Act’s legislative history, as lawmakers continued maneuvering behind closed doors. The bill, as originally written, forbade segregation in public accommodations and outlawed discriminatory hiring practices, but only those based on race. Then, at the eleventh hour, Senator Howard Smith, a Democrat from Virginia, added one word to the legislation: “sex.” Hott! Smith’s detractors claimed that the Senator, a segregationist, had amended the text to scuttle the bill. Smith, though, insisted that he was working with Alice Paul, that he was championing women’s rights. Regardless, the final bill made it illegal for an employer to “fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions or privileges or employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” Title VII of the Act also created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to implement the law.
Despite the changes, the Act passed — 73-27 — and LBJ signed it into law on this day in 1964. The nation moved incrementally closer to realizing the promise embedded in the 14th Amendment. Which is why, despite long odds, I still support Dr. Ron Paul for President. Courage, my friends. Courage in the face of tyranny.
The above is Wes Clark on Face the Nation, suggesting that having been a prisoner of war during Vietnam doesn’t necessarily qualify John McCain to be President of the United States. Actually, Clark’s argument is more nuanced than that: he notes that McCain, for all his heroism, lacks command experience, which might really be relevant to working in the Oval Office. The best part of the clip, though, is the reaction — first incredulous, then angry, finally fuming — of Bob Schieffer, the show’s host. Schieffer, who served in the USAF for three years as a public information officer, simply can’t believe that Clark would dare spew such apostasy.
Clark’s appearance and then several follow-ups, the Obama camp’s speedy and perhaps ill-considered repudiation of Clark’s comments, and McCain’s subsequent efforts to claim that Clark besmirched his honor while simultaneously burning Old Glory and spitting on a nun have generated quite a bit of conversation today. (See, if you can stomach it: Clark “swiftboated” McCain.) All of which means that Barack Obama, because of an increasingly oft-used property of guilt-by-association that applies only to Democrats, doesn’t support our troops. It seems that most of the talk, as the preceding rant suggests, has been about the politics surrounding this absurd brouhaha.* I haven’t seen many people considering whether Clark is right on the merits, whether McCain’s tenure in a Vietnamese prison camp leaves him no more likely to succeed as president than Obama, who has no military background.
That’s where Fontana Labs provides us with some much-needed help. Labs kind of beat Clark to the punch about a week ago, responding, in a post over at Unfogged, to what was then Richard Cohen’s** latest in a succession of execrable columns. In that piece of drivel, Cohen suggests that, because of McCain’s wartime experience, the American people should ignore his serial flip-flopping of late. The Maverick will be resolute when it counts, Cohen assures us. Labs***, in his nut graf, replies:
Thanks in large part to John Doris and Gil Harman, a lot of philosophers are vaguely familiar with situationist psychologists who think that there’s very little predictive value to our folk-psychological character concepts. As I understand it, one situationist theme is that (for example) courage as traditionally conceived is far too broad: someone might have courage-in-situation-x but fail to have courage-in-situation-y, and there’s very little correlation between the two fine-grained traits. Hence we shouldn’t expect courage-on-the-battlefield to predict courage-in-committee-meetings. But we do, and so are led into error. McCain is a really interesting example of the phenomenon just because both his courage and his failure to be courageous are on full public display.
Yes, just so. And furthermore, circling back to and expanding upon Wes Clark’s original point about experience, history is agnostic on whether great warriors make great presidents. In the “yea” column you’ll find George Washington. Because I’m feeling generous and Eric’s looking over my shoulder, I’ll thow in Teddy Roosevelt. And if you insist that I expand the column to include borderline cases, we could also talk about Andrew Jackson****, Harry Truman, and Ike. The “nay” column is far longer, so I’ll just hit the highlights: Zachary Taylor, U.S. Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, John Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and, of course, George W. Bush.
Perhaps more interesting than any of the above, though, is this: the nation’s two greatest commanders in chief, and, not coincidentally, two greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, never served in the military.
The point here isn’t that heroic service in the armed forces should disqualify a candidate from the presidency. That’s just silly. But it’s equally silly to assume that valor on the battlefield will translate into excellence in the executive branch. That such a claim is the centerpiece of John McCain’s bid for the presidency — and make no mistake, it absolutely is — speaks volumes. Which is why McCain and his flying monkeys in the press corps are lashing out so fiercely at Wes Clark. All of that said, why Barack Obama is taking his whacks at Clark is anybody’s guess.
* See the updates. I’m totally wrong about this. Oops.
** Worse than ever for the Jews, thank you very much.
*** You’ll have to decide for yourself if “Fontana Labs” is just one of the many pseudonyms that “General Wesley Clark (C, Cuba)” deploys when he prowls the web. Clark used to be notorious for commenting under the handle, “SACEUR.” Until, that is, Petey outed him for hating on John Edwards.
**** You have no idea how much this pains me. No, really.
[Update: Here's Clark artfully elaborating on his earlier comments without apologizing at all. Veep? Maybe so. Maybe this is all some super-complicated gambit in which Clark serves as attack dog, Obama disavows Clark's comments, and then they come together to conquer the world. Via TPM.]
[Update II: Oh look, The Editors covered this issue. It looks like I was wrong that nobody was writing about substance. Please ignore my post. Sigh.]
[Update III: There's also substance from the awesome Sir Charles at cogitamus, which I usually read every damn day. Rats. Wait, I have a novel idea: I think I'll read my favorite blogs, beyond just TPM, before I write my posts in the future. Then I won't look like an idiot. Er, quite as much of an idiot.]
On this day in 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York City, touching off riots that some historians and journalists argue began the modern gay rights movement. The above video is Charlie Rose’s show from June 24, 1994, an episode marking the 25th anniversary of the riots. Featured on the show are historian Martin Duberman, who literally wrote the book on Stonewall, along with Jim Fouratt, Barbara Smith, Tony Kushner, Andrew Sullivan, Bruce Bawer, Donna Minkowitz, and Ian McKellen. I try never to insult Charlie Rose, and shows like the above are the reason why. Also, he loves his MacBook Air as much as I do mine. And he’s way better than Terry Gross, who I really should insult more often.
* Written with tongue in cheek. Please don’t hate me.
On this day in 1963, John F. Kennedy gave his “Ich bin ein Berliner” address. More than 100,000 people looked on as the President of the United States said that he was a jelly doughnut. Or that Berliners were jelly doughnuts. Well, it turns out not really. But that would have been totally awesome.
So, I have a question: beyond the political theater, especially the image of East Germans watching in silence as Kennedy spoke, can somebody spell out for me why this speech is still considered a big deal? I understand that JFK was identifying with the plight of Berliners. And I understand that Berlin at the time served as a symbol for the dangers of the Soviet Union’s ostensible program of world conquest. That explains, I suppose, why the BBC says that this “was seen as a turning point in the Cold War.” But such a claim hinges on a pretty loose definition of “turning point,” right? Not to mention the convenient use of the passive voice. In the end, the “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech seems to me like little more than anti-Communist demagoguery. I mean, JFK was no Mayor Quimby. Or am I missing something? I suppose we should just be glad that Kennedy didn’t try to give the Chancellor Adenauer a backrub. That would have been embarrassing.
On this day in 1876, just a week before the nation celebrated its centennial, George Armstrong Custer, along with more than 200 men of the Seventh Cavalry, died at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Or, if you prefer, the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Or, perhaps, the Battle of the Greasy Grass. Whatever. On the one hand, the history of the fight is so well known that I feel silly blogging about it. On the other, the particulars are unknowable and there’s still so much mythology and hagiography surrounding Custer that both his career and demise remain shrouded in mystery.
That’s where Michael Elliot, a professor of English at Emory, enters the fray. His new book, Custerology: The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer, is an easy read and one of the finest recent works in the field of memory studies. At its best, it hearkens back to some of the canonical literature in the discipline of American Civilization: books by Henry Nash Smith, Leo Marx, and, most aptly, Richard Slotkin. I should note, so there’s no confusion, that this is just about the highest praise I can lavish on a scholar. Well, short of saying that they remind me of Richard Hofstadter (kindly take note of the last paragraph).
As Elliot’s title suggests, he sets his sites on the people who have studied Custer, individuals for whom, in many instances, the Little Bighorn is an ongoing concern. Elliot hits the predictable targets (reenactors, Park Service personnel, history buffs) and all the hot spots (Custer’s hometown, the Crazy Horse memorial, the battlefield itself). But he’s at his very best when he ventures into Indian country, where he considers the meaning of Long Hair and the Battle of the Greasy Grass for the Native people — and their descendants — who fought with Custer and those who killed him. Elliot’s portrait of Crow and Northern Cheyenne country, its people, and their simmering conflicts over history and cultural sovereignty is remarkable.
If I have a complaint about the book — and I suppose I have to come up with something, otherwise you people might think I’m not very smart — it’s that Elliot’s argument is somewhat predictable. Memory is contested in the New West, he says. To which I reply: um, yeah. Still, in this case, because Elliot works across huge cultural divides, and traverses so much time and space, he can be forgiven a thesis that’s something of a cliché in a field that’s still struggling to find its raison d’etre.*
[Author's Note: Thanks to commenter Levi Stahl for sending me a copy of Custerology. I'm sorry it took me so long to read it. But I'm glad that I finally did.]
* Ooh la la, thees sintence ees vedy French, non?
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[Editor's Note: Ben Alpers, author of this excellent book, is back. And since I spent yesterday first driving to San Francisco, then getting on a plane at SFO, then flying to Cleveland, and then driving from the Cleveland airport to the East Side, all with two kids in tow, I really appreciate the help -- even more than usual, that is.]
On this day in 1916, Mary Pickford signed a contract with the Famous Players Film Company that made her the most highly paid, and powerful, female star in Hollywood. The contract guaranteed her $10,000 per week for two years, thus totaling over $1 million. Just as importantly, it created a separate production unit within the studio, Pickford Film Corporation, over which Pickford, and her mother Charlotte, would have control. This gave the star enormous say over her roles and even the final cut of her films. She was also able to reduce the number of feature films in which she had to appear to six a year, still a very large number by today’s standards.
Pickford’s ability to garner such a deal reflected both her astuteness as a businesswoman and her status as Hollywood’s biggest star. Born Gladys Smith on April 8, 1892 in Toronto, Canada, Pickford became a child star of the stage in Canada and, in 1907, traveled to New York to pursue a career on Broadway. Two years later, she signed with D.W. Griffith and became part of his Biograph motion picture troupe. Pickford moved with Griffith’s company from New York to Hollywood in 1910. By the time she left Biograph in 1911, she had appeared in seventy of the short, one-reelers that dominated the American, and world, film markets until the rise of the feature film in the middle of the 1910s. Griffith famously did not credit his actors, as he feared that they would become too popular and powerful. But Pickford became the first great female star of American motion pictures while still working for him, “The Biograph Girl with the Curls.”
Pickford easily made the transition to features, appearing in seven feature films in 1917 and eight in 1915. In such movies as Tess of the Storm Country (1914), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917) and The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917), she created a strong and marketable image. While her beauty was legendary, she usually played plucky, somewhat tomboyish girls, often dramatically younger than the actor’s own age. In The Poor Little Rich Girl, the then-twenty-four-year-old Pickford played a twelve-year-old.
Pickford’s business savvy never left her. In 1919, along with her husband Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and her former employer D.W. Griffith, Pickford founded the United Artists studio, which was designed to give these screen legends total control over the production and distribution of their films.
But Pickford’s screen persona remained remarkably unchanged, and this eventually proved the undoing of her film career. Pickford continued to play adolescents into the mid-1920s (when the star was in her thirties). But as Pickford aged, these roles became less credible. And audience tastes in female stars, too, began to change. Pickford successfully made the transition to sound, winning a best-actress Oscar for her first talkie, Coquette (1929). But her career was already in a downward spiral. Coquette marked by a belated attempt by the actor to remarket herself. She cut her hair, which had been long, into a fashionable bob. And she played a more overtly sexual character closer to her own age. But audiences never warmed to the new Mary Pickford. Pickford retired from the screen in 1933.
A complete Mary Pickford one-reeler, The Dream (1911), as well as clips from two other Pickford silents, Rags (1915) and Little Lord Fountleroy (1921), can be seen here. A clip from Coquette is available here.
Sources:
“Mary Pickford” (PBS’s The American Experience)
“Biography” from the Mary Pickford Library Website.
Gaylyn Studlar, “Mary Pickford” in Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (ed), The Oxford History of World Cinema. New York. 1996, pp. 56-57.
[Editor's Note: Commenter Matt Dreyer sends along the following as food for thought. I don't know how many times I need to tell the rest of you people to step up and start pulling your weight. This is a group endeavor.]
On June 21st, 1789 New Hampshire ratified the United State Constitution. It was the ninth state to do so. Article VII of the Constitution states, in full, “The ratification of the conventions of nine states, shall be sufficient for the establishment of this constitution between the states so ratifying the same.” June 21st is therefore, whatever a bunch of crazed July 4th partisans might want to tell you, the birthday of the United States as opposed to the date, give or take, on which a motley collection of colonies declared independence from Great Britain.
On this day in 1975, Universal Studios released the scariest horror film of my youth: Jaws. Speaking of which, while I was in graduate school, my closest friend had a summer house in the Hamptons. We used to spend a fair amount of time there, as you might imagine. Because that’s how we rolled. Anyway, the nicest and closest beach was at East Hampton. And nearly every time we went there, no matter the day or time, we’d see this wiry, George-Hamilton-bronzed older dude in a black banana hammock stretched out on the sand. Although he was often the only other person there, we never paid much attention to him. Until, that is, this one day, when the guy got up, stretched, and turned toward us. It was Roy Scheider! In all the times we saw him there, he never once went in the water. True story.
[Update: Here's Roy Scheider's obit. And another one.]
You’re making me take seriously a post I put up in jest. That said, here’s the thing: it seems that wars occupy tiers of significance in American memory. I should note that everything from this point forward is speculation of the idlest variety. I should also reiterate that I’m talking about, to borrow Kieran’s phrase from the previous post, a specific kind of “metric”: memory. Which is to say, I’m mostly not going to talk about which American wars actually were historically significant, though that’s probably an interesting and blogworthy discussion in its own right. Or maybe I’ll mix and match. Because this post is going to be like jazz: improvisational.
[Editor's Note: Kathy Olmsted is back, sharing some of the material she used in her last book As always, thanks, Kathy, for your help.]
On this day in 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg died in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison, in retribution for committing what FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover called “the crime of the century”: stealing the “secret” of the atomic bomb.
The archives of the former Soviet Union reveal that Julius was indeed the leader of a Communist spy ring, though he was not a source of critical atomic information for them. But scholars have found no evidence that Ethel was a full-fledged agent. Instead, she was simply an accessory to her husband. How, then, did she end up in the electric chair? Short answer: because she came to symbolize the worst fears of the men in the White House, the FBI, and the media.
On this day in 1812, the United States declared war on Great Britain, beginning this nation’s least interesting military conflict. And that’s all I have to say about that.
* No offense to any War of 1812 vets out there — especially you, Senator McCain. Apologies also to my colleague, Alan Taylor, who’s writing what I’m sure will be the definitive treatment of the War of 1812. I mean, how could it not be?
Why? Because apparently “presidential historians” all think he’s going to win. And if there’s one thing historians are lousy at, it’s predicting the future. Anyway, here’s the article — if you want to waste your time. And here’s my favorite graf:
This should be an overwhelming Democratic victory,” said Allan Lichtman, an American University presidential historian who ran in a Maryland Democratic senatorial primary in 2006. Lichtman, whose forecasting model has correctly predicted the last six presidential popular vote winners, predicts that this year, “Republicans face what have always been insurmountable historical odds.” His system gives McCain a score on par with Jimmy Carter’s in 1980. [emphasis mine]
Six! Wow, that’s a breathtaking streak of predictiveliciousness. Oh wait, what’s that you say? The popular vote winner doesn’t necessarily win the presidency? Huh, that can’t be right. Because that would totally screw up Professor Lichtman’s foolproof system. Surely there’s a Comments Box somewhere on the Constitution. No? Man, this country has lousy service. I’m so not tipping my waiter founding father.
[Editor's Note: It is my great privilege to welcome Charles D. Weisselberg, Professor of Law at Boalt Hall and Faculty Co-Chair, Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice (full bio here). Professor Weisselberg, as the post title suggests, will be teaching us a bit about the Miranda case. Thanks to him, for taking the time to do this.]
Forty-two years ago today, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Miranda v. Arizona, perhaps the Court’s most recognized criminal procedure ruling of all time. The 5-4 decision was authored by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The five justices in the majority hoped that the procedures set forth in the decision would enable suspects in the stationhouse to make a reasoned choice whether or not to speak with police. The dissenting justices feared it would effectively end the practice of police interrogation. How did Miranda come about, and what does it accomplish today?
[Kathy Olmsted is back, this time with an excerpt from her forthcoming book on conspiracy theories. As always, thanks to Kathy for doing this.]
On this day in 1971, the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers. President Richard Nixon responded to this liberal “conspiracy” with conspiracies of his own, and started down the path that would lead to his resignation and disgrace.
Throughout his career, Nixon always worried that un-American forces were conspiring to subvert the Republic. As the tapes of his Oval Office conversations reveal, he viewed himself as a soldier in the battle against “the liberal media,” disloyal Democrats, the “intellectuals,” and Jews. Then, in June 1971, all of these groups seemed to unite in one terrifying plot. “We’re up against an enemy, a conspiracy,” he told two of his top aides, Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. “They’re using any means. We are going to use any means. Is that clear?”
d put a link to the above in the comments of the Medgar Evers post. Having never seen this video before (see here for a more complete accounting of my cultural illiteracy), I found my breath taken away by the awesomeness of the young Dylan. I mean, like any self-hatingrespecting leftie Jew, I lurve Dylan. But this is amazing.
Be warned: there will be no hating on Dylan in the comments. [/gauntlet throwing]
The winner, in this case, is: “Yeah, actually there is an interesting story behind this. I like to fuck dolls. See ya Monday.” — David John
So, have you seen this? Probably. Because, as with so much else of great cultural value, I’m way behind the times. But even I know that the New Yorker, on the last page of the book, now runs a weekly contest to come up with the best caption for an uncaptioned* cartoon. Many people find the contest and its results cloying. I am one of those people. So, too, is Daniel Radosh, proprietor of this site. Each week, he runs his own contest: a challenge to submit “the worst possible caption for this [week's] New Yorker cartoon.” If you don’t mind off-color humor, you might want to check it out. Oh, and here’s a quick meditation on how to win the actual New Yorker caption contest. If that’s your thing. Of course, as Eric points out, the winning answer should always be, “Christ, what an asshole.”
Also: is Daniel Radosh related to Ron Radosh? I bet everyone knows — except me. Because I’m behind the times.
* A word? No, I doubt it. “Blank” would have been better. Whatever. You people need to back off. Or I’ll cut you.
[Author's Note: Thanks to "anonymous," who -- with revelations of super-cool jurist Alex Kozinski's public relations troubles in mind? -- sent me a link to Radosh's site. Keep the tips coming people.]
[Update: Ben Wolfson gently reminds me in the comments that I initially saw the Slate piece linked above while reading a post of his over at Unfogged. I regret having not credited him earlier.]
On this day in 1963, an elderly Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc climbed from a car stopped at a busy intersection in Saigon. He sat down and crossed his legs as another monk poured gasoline over him and a third lit him on fire. Quang Duc began praying as flames engulfed his body. As he burned, passersby prostrated themselves before this horrifying spectacle of devotion. Quang Duc’s body finally toppled over, his flesh incinerated, leaving only his heart behind.
Quand Duc chose to immolate himself to protest Ngo Dinh Diem’s — the United States’s handpicked dictator in Vietnam — oppression of the nation’s Buddhist population. A bit more than a month earlier, as Buddhists in Hué readied to celebrate the Buddha’s birthday, a local factotum and Diem loyalist had refused to allow them to gather. Several thousand Buddhists then took to the streets for a peaceful protest. Police fired on the crowd. Nine people were killed in the melee.
Buddhists mounted more protests in the following weeks, demanding that Diem punish the officials responsible for the killings. Arrogant and out of his depth, Diem, a Catholic, vacillated between ignoring their entreaties and blaming the entire controversy on the Vietcong. Buddhists countered Diem’s intransigence with a campaign of demonstrations and propaganda: public rallies, high-profile hunger strikes, and coordinated interviews with foreign journalists. Tri Quang, one of the uprising’s leaders, suggested to American officials that, “The United States must either make Diem reform or get rid of him. If not, the situation will degenerate, and you worthy gentlemen will suffer most. You are responsible for the present trouble because you back Diem and his government of ignoramuses.”
True to form, those ignoramuses ignored pressure from Washington as well. It was against that backdrop that Quang Duc killed himself, generating international outrage. Newspapers worldwide published stories headed by a stark image of the immolation. Buddhists had tipped off an AP photographer, Malcolm Brown, about their plans. At the event itself, they handed out biographical sketches of Quang Duc, revealing that he had been sixty-six years old at the time of his death. His last words were a plea to Diem for compassion and religious toleration.
Instead, the Diem administration replied with scorn and crackdowns. As police raided Buddhist temples, Madame Nhu, Diem’s sister-in-law, referred to Quang Duc’s death as a “barbecue”. Less than six months later, a coup — if not supported by the CIA then certainly tolerated by the Agency — toppled Diem’s government. He and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were killed. Madame Nhu went into exile.
Seriously, the golf stuff on his website begs to be mocked. I mean, I have nothing against golf (that’s a lie). But isn’t the game linked in people’s minds with rich, old coots? Forget that Tiger Woods fellow. He should get off my private club television (damn Negroes are everywhere these days) lawn. Not to mention, golf despoils the environment. McCain might as well run an “I Heart Palm Springs! And Sprawl, Too!” banner across the top of his website and be done with it. Also, he could accept ads from Centrum Silver and Sunsweet prune juice. Oh wait, we’re not supposed to make fun of McCain’s age. Well, in that case, let me just say that while I would never allow a candidate’s advanced years to keep me from voting for her or him, I’m not sure that America is ready to elect Methuselah. There, is that better?
Anyway, even if fossilized McCain’s not trolling America, America appears to be trolling him (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). You go, America. Tell the angry sweet old maverick what you think. And remember, you need to yell into his ear trumpet. But not during his backswing. Because that would be rude.
Via the comments at unfogged.
Last weekend, while scurrying around the Tubes looking for historical anniversaries, I noticed that on this day in 1935, “two recovering alcoholics, Bill W. and Dr. Bob S., found[ed] Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio, to help each other stay sober.” So I said to myself, “Self, that’s pretty interesting. I’d like to know more about AA. More than I learned from Fight Club, at least, or back in my DJ days, when I spun the wheels of steel at a Narcotics Anonymous dance in 1986.*”
And so, earlier today, I started looking for good sources. I didn’t find much. Most of the histories of AA floating around on the Web are, for what I assume are very good reasons, of the internalist variety and thus lacking in distance from the subject at hand. They’re extraordinarily laudatory; they border on mythology. And they’re often preachy, uncritically asking readers to accept the existence of a higher power. None of that’s too surprising, of course. AA literally saves peoples lives, including, it seems, the people writing these histories. More power to them, I say.
So then I turned to this book, written by my former colleague Sarah Tracy. But it stops before AA starts. That was when I decided that there must be a good history of AA** out there, but I wasn’t going to find it. Or at least I wasn’t going to find it in time to write my usual dazzling take on This Day in History. To make my deadline***, I had to choose another This Day for this day. Pondering my next move, I clicked over to Unfogged, planning to kill some time. I found this post.
[Editor's Note: Vance Maverick -- range-rider, blue jeans model, American hero -- is back to let us know how the NEH works for all of us (suck it, Newt). Thanks for sending this along Vance. And for keeping us safe. And clad in dungarees. We appreciate everything you do. Also: Readers, if you want your name to appear in lights pixels, all you have to do is send good stuff our way. We reserve the right not to post what you send. But we'll thank you nevertheless. Remember: Ask not what your blog can do for you; ask what you can do for your blog. Stirring!]
The National Endowment for the Humanities has initiated a new program, Picturing America, to promote American art in the classroom. (I learned about it from Margaret Soltan, reporting on a lecture by John Updike at the launch; a version of his text is here.) The heart of the program is a virtual exhibit, distributed to schools as a set of reproductions, and also visible online in a well-designed chronological gallery.
Some caviling aside – the “wall text” for the images isn’t great, and the selections of sculpture and architecture are fragmentary compared to the paintings – the “exhibit” is really impressive: substantial but digestible, “link-rich” without distraction, and consistently strong in selection without sacrifice of breadth. You may not come away knowing what’s American about American art (neither, as Soltan points out, does Updike), but you’re sure to be surprised. A few surprises for me: Whistler’s “Peacock Room”, a cinematic Hopper , a challenging Romare Bearden collage. Check it out.
On this day in 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy played a game of guilt by association. He attacked Joseph Welch, special counsel to the United States Army, suggesting that an associate at Welch’s white-shoe firm, Hale and Dorr, had ties to a Communist organization. McCarthy referred to Fred Fisher, who had, while in school, joined the Lawyers Guild, a group devoted to protecting civil liberties. In this case, though, unlike many other episodes during McCarthy’s reign of terror, somebody powerful pushed back. Welch replied to McCarthy:
Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
Television cameras captured the moment, reducing the jowly, sneering McCarthy in size. By refusing to back down, Welch unmasked McCarthy as a fraud and thug, a bully without any decency at all. The confrontation between the two men turned out to be the apogee of the 50s Red Scare.
I wonder: if we give them Arnold Schwarzenegger, do you think they’d give us Jennifer Granholm? As a one-time thing, I mean. Don’t just react; think it over for a minute. Amending the Constitution (see here and here) is really a big pain. And we need more Canadians* in high office. It’s just a thought.
* Relax. This is not the first step in a Canadian fifth-column conspiracy. Because the first step has long since been taken! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!**
** I’ve always wanted to write, “mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.” It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I had hoped. Sometimes life is a series of small disappointments.
[Editor's Note: Teo, frequent commenter and outstanding history blogger in his own right (see here and especially here), joins us today for a weekend edition of This Day in History. I'd tell you more about Teo, but I don't really know much about him. Other than this: I've been begging him to get a PhD in history for months now, preferably here, at UC Davis. But no matter what I've tried -- even a Camaro leased in his name -- he has spurned my advances. Which really is too bad. Because he's already a great historian. Seriously, check this out. See for yourself.]
On this day in 1692, a massive riot broke out in Mexico City. The ultimate cause of the riot seems to have been the failure of both the wheat and maize crops the previous autumn and the resulting shortage of grain, but to call this event a “corn riot,” as many have done, is to simplify things overmuch. The viceroy of New Spain, the Conde de Galve, did in fact go to great lengths to supply the city with grain, often at the expense of outlying areas.
The problem, however, at least for the urban poor, was how to get that grain. While supplies in the city were not severely impacted by the overall shortage, prices certainly were, and they climbed dramatically throughout the course of the spring. The system of grain distribution in Mexico City at the time was based on a public granary (pósito) and accompanying grain exchange (alhóndiga). As supplies came in from the agricultural hinterland they were deposited in the posito, which the government put a high priority on keeping stocked. Consumers could then come to the alhóndiga to buy grain from the pósito.
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To me, the image to the right looks an awful lot like an anthropomorphic chimpanzee (sorry for the lousy screen cap). But that’s silly, of course, because it’s Barack Obama! Brought to you by the New Yorker! Right on the magazine’s home page! Actually, the image is a tease for a video about drawing the presidential candidates, including a meditation on Obama’s efforts to cast himself as post-racial. Still, it strikes me that this caricature — and perhaps the video as well — suggests one or more of the following: 1) I’m too sensitive. 2) Editors at the New Yorker aren’t sensitive enough. 3) Having an African-American man run for president will present extraordinary, and likely salutary, challenges for our culture. To be clear, 1, 2, and 3 are in no way mutually exclusive.
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On this day in 1874, Harper’s Weekly ran the above cartoon. As recently as mid century, bison, roaming in herds across the continent’s midsection, had numbered somewhere between 30 and 200 million. By 1874, though, many observers assumed the animals, along with the Plains Indians who depended on them for survival, would soon disappear from the American scene, a species and a race vanishing because of the impact of industrialization and white settlement throughout the West.
Buffalo robes became a hot commodity in the 1850s, when settlers, pouring into Kansas Territory, began hunting bison for sport. But it was the arrival of the railroad — it always is in Western history, isn’t it? — following the Civil War, that pushed the species toward the tipping point. The railroads needed to feed workers who laid their tracks. And market hunters were happy to provide relatively cheap bison meat. At the same time, more railroads meant more settlers in the region, better access to eastern markets, and greater demand than ever for hides. Eventually, the railroads also realized that the bison themselves were a tourist attraction. And riders marveled at the great, shaggy beasts and sometimes shot them from trains.
Bison robes were prized for their durability and their warmth, qualities that made them especially useful in the West. Then, starting early in the 1870s, tanneries in the United States and Europe began using bison hides for leather. Because of this new commercial application for the animals’ skins, coupled with the widespread availability of more accurate rifles, the slaughter accelerated. By the mid 1870s, the bison had largely disappeared from their range on the southern plains.
In 1871, R. C. McCormick, a delegate to congress from the Arizona Territory, introduced legislation to protect the bison. Like the animals themselves, his bill died. McCormick, undeterred, tried again the following year, lobbying his colleagues by showing gruesome images of piles of bison carcasses, stripped of their hides, rotting in the sun. Finally, in 1874, congress passed legislation protecting the animals. President Grant, though, listened to his old friend and trusted adviser, General William T. Sherman, who insisted that the destruction of the bison would hasten the end of the Indian wars in the West. With the buffalo gone, Sherman argued, the Plains Indians would be forced to assimilate; they would have to embrace sedentary agriculture. Grant vetoed the bill. The hunt continued.
A decade later, just a few hundred bison, a small herd located near Yellowstone National Park, were still alive in the United States. Somewhere, Kevin Costner just shed a tear. Or maybe he thought of a great idea for a sequel.
Robert F. Kennedy won the California primary on June 4, 1968 and then was shot on this day in that same year. He died the following day, June 6, 1968. The above is Ted Kennedy’s eulogy for his brother. As a side note, I’m not thrilled with all of the images in this video, but it’s better than the others that I’ve found, which all seem to include soaring soundtracks. That said, the text and delivery are remarkable, perhaps especially so because Senator Kennedy is now ailing. Especially moving, I think, is the section — beginning around the 3:00 mark — in which Teddy reads a speech that Bobby gave in South Africa in 1966.
After the championship game of the NCAA basketball tournament, CBS broadcasts a video montage of tournament highlights backed by the song, “One Shining Moment.” It’s an almost singularly terrible song. But, for millions of college basketball fans, it has enormous symbolic resonance: the champion has been crowned, the joy of the tournament is already fading, the season is over. People weep. Really. Well, the primary campaign’s over, and I’d like to put together my own montage: filled with highlights, or lowlights, of the past six months of electoral hijinks.
Here are five moments that leap immediately to my mind:
1) Obama’s speech on race.
2) Chris Matthews, during coverage of any of the primaries or caucuses, spewing his love for Obama all over MSNBC’s set.
3) Watching, with glee, the returns from Iowa (see above for footage).
4) God-DAMN America!
5) Seeing the “Yes We Can” video for the first time.
So, what are yours? Which moments shine bright in your mind’s eye? They don’t have to be videos, by the way. I’m just too shallow to think of anything else.
Melissa McEwan has a very thoughtful post up over at Shakesville. So thoughtful that I’m going to steal the whole thing.
I’m not sad because Obama’s the nominee.
I’m sad because there are women at this blog, in my personal life, across this nation, and—if my inbox is any indication—across the globe, women of all races and sexualities and socio-economic classes, many of whom weren’t even Hillary Clinton supporters, many of whom voted for Obama in the primary, who have watched with horror the seething hatred directed at Hillary Clinton just because she is a woman.
(I’m not talking about legitimate criticisms of her campaign, which I have made myself. I’m not saying any criticism of Clinton is de facto sexist; it isn’t. I’m talking specifically and only about misogynist attacks, which are always unjustified and smear not just the woman at whom they are directed, but all women.)
And these women have witnessed this despicable but spectacular marriage of aggressive misogyny and their long-presumed allies’ casual indifference to it, and wondered what fucking planet they were on that dehumanizing eliminationist rhetoric, to which lefty bloggers used to object once upon a time, was now considered a legitimate campaign strategy, as long as it was aimed at a candidate those lefty bloggers didn’t like.
And these women felt, quite rightly, like feminist principles were being thrown to the wolves in a fit of political expedience.
And these women felt personally abandoned. By people they had considered allies.
And while they struggled to understand just what was happening, while they were losing their way along well-traveled paths that no longer felt familiar or welcoming, they were admonished like children to stop taking things personally. They were sneered at for playing identity politics. They were demeaned as ridiculous, overwrought, hysterics. They were called bitches and cunts. They were bullied off blogs they’d called home for years.
(But don’t take that personally.)
And now, at long last, even now, when Clinton cannot win, she is being pushed out, carelessly, rudely, with little regard for the implicit message in hustling a historic candidate off the stage and demanding her graciousness in defeat, despite offering her no graciousness in victory. Right to the end, there is a lack of respect that hurts to watch.
And I’m sad because I know there are women who are hurting. Not because their candidate lost. Clinton may not have even been their candidate. They’re hurting because misogyny hurts all women, and because they have fewer allies than they once thought.
And unlike the people (including many of these women) who are feeling the same way with regard to racism in this campaign, who are licking wounds of racist attacks even as preparations begin for the breathtakingly awesome celebration of the first ever presumptive nominee of color, ZOMG, these women do not have an equivalent wonder to celebrate. They don’t have a “despite it all.” They don’t have a step forward to point to, to say the pain was worth it.
They just have the pain.
And I’m sad because I see so little evidence of people who are willing to understand that.
I don’t agree with everything Melissa says here. Or at least I would add a few points that she doesn’t include in her post. I think, for instance, that it matters a great deal that the Obama campaign was not nearly so sexist as the Clinton campaign was racist. I also think there are good reasons to be very angry with Senator Clinton herself. And, finally, I think that inasmuch as Clinton is being urged to quit, it is because many people, myself included, believe that she may be harming the presumptive Democratic nominee with her ongoing suggestions that Obama’s apparent victory is illegitimate.
Still, McEwan’s overwhelming point, specifically as it relates to the tolerance of sexism and outright misogyny by Democrats and erstwhile allies of feminism, is right on. Even if the Obama campaign didn’t trade in sexist assumptions, it benefited from them. And I, for one, wish that I had spent more time during the primary season talking about this issue.
Beware: spoilers below the fold.
On this day in 1868, John Logan, Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, asked Americans to set aside May 30 “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.” The holiday, initially known as Decoration Day, later evolved into Memorial Day.
Via wryandstanley comes this useful tidbit:
A few weeks ago, I botched some minor thing at work. No big deal, and I was chided mildly via e-mail. I said the basic “thanks for the heads up” sort of thing, adding “must’ve been a brain fart”, only to wince at the expression “brain fart”.
Seemed a bit crude for this situation, yet I wanted something light-hearted and silly to note that I was indeed taking the suggestion in-stride. (Yes, sadly, sometimes in life, this sort of gesture is necessary.)
Hence was born: “brain burp”!
I’ve been using it ever since, and I invite you to use it as you see fit.
Thanks, I will. Especially because this very thing (well, not exactly, but close enough) happened to me last week. And I found myself totally at a loss for how to describe the origin of my screw-up. See, that’s just what I mean: when “screw-up” is too crass by half, “brain burp” may be just the ticket.
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On this day in 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, a vaguely written piece of legislation later used as a pretext by state and federal authorities to dispossess the few remaining tribes in the southeastern United States — “removing” them to lands west of the Mississippi.
Beginning in the summer of 1829, following the discovery of gold on Cherokee lands, the State of Georgia’s longstanding desire to rid itself of the tribe became more urgent than ever. In December of that year, the state legislature ruled that the Cherokee constitution and laws would be meaningless come the following June. Georgia’s lawmakers implied that it would be open season on the Cherokees and their landholdings at that time. The federal government, then, had just a few months to avert what surely would have been another horrifying chapter in the already-grim story of Native-white relations in the United States. Andrew Jackson, who had long favored removal, seized the chance to advance his pet policy.
It wouldn’t be easy. By that time, Protestant evangelicals had taken an interest in the Cherokees, holding them up as the most civilized of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes (along with the Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Seminoles). The Cherokees had “civilized” themselves by adopting sedentary agriculture, a tribal constitution modeled on the U.S.’s, a written alphabet (see above), and, in some cases, Christianity. Reformers — including Catherine Beecher, who rallied women to the cause — organized a huge petition drive to counter President Jackson’s lobbying.
Jackson responded by casting support for removal as humanitarian and paternalistic. Observing the mistreatment of Native people throughout the nation’s history, Jackson claimed to want “to preserve this much-injured race.” At the same time, he packed the House and Senate committees that would write the removal bill with his loyalists. On this day in 1830, Jackson had his law, sealing the fate of the eastern tribes.
Jackson had promised that removal would be voluntary, that those Indians who wished to remain in the east would be able to do so, and that those who moved would be compensated for their property. In fact, the pressure to leave was intense, often accompanied by the threat of violence, and Native people who got paid for their land typically only received a fraction of its value. At the same time, Jackson compounded his crimes by setting the precedent of trying to remove tribes on the cheap. Underfunding and federal neglect ultimately led, after Jackson left office, to tragedies like the Trail of Tears, when, in 1838, thousands of Cherokees died en route to Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma. In the end, Jackson only forestalled the bloodletting that he claimed to want to avoid in 1830, putting off the carnage and relocating it to the West, where relatively few whites had to confront the horror.
In the Congressional debates surrounding removal, Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, who opposed the measure, had asked: “Do the obligations of justice change with the color of the skin?” For Andrew Jackson the answer was yes.
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With all this talk that Obama’s the antichrist, shouldn’t we be just a bit more vigilant and at least read up on the subject. Go here for further information.
Via Alterdestiny.
In the above speech, which is long but worth the time, Obama appeals to graduating seniors to embrace public service. He asks them directly, personally, to forego the fruits of our “money culture.” And he draws on a classic Second Great Awakening formulation: individual salvation hinges on good works; community salvation rests on individuals sacrificing for the greater good. Even after seven years of kleptocracy, this speech makes me think that civic virtue might not be dead after all. That’s the audacity of hope talking, I know. I’ll get over it soon enough.
A reader just sent me this clip of Liz Trotta — who’s apparently a contributor to Fox News — casually, and with a chuckle, suggesting that it would be a “good idea” for somebody to kill both Osama and Obama, people she apparently can’t tell apart. Is it possible that she’s trying to make Senator Clinton look good by comparison?
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On this day in 1856, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina approached Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts while the latter sat at his desk in the Senate chamber. As Sumner affixed postage to copies of “The Crime Against Kansas,” a speech he had given earlier that week, Brooks explained that the address had been a “libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine.”
“Mr. Butler” referred to Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina, Brooks’s cousin and one of the figures Sumner, in his stem-winder, had excoriated for supporting the abominable Kansas-Nebraska Act. After explaining his business with the Senator, Brooks began caning Sumner, who tried to rise and flee but found himself trapped beneath his desk, which was bolted to the floor. Struggling wildly as Brooks continued raining blows down upon his head, Sumner finally wrenched the desk from its moorings. He then collapsed in a pool of his own blood.
Sumner, in his speech, had been rather hard on the superannuated Butler. The abolitionist had called the South Carolinian a “Don Quixote who had chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows…the harlot, Slavery.” Sumner also had said that Butler, who drooled and suffered from a tremor as a result of a stroke, “discharged the loose expectorations of his speech” when supporting slavery.
Steeped in the aristocratic South’s honor culture, Brooks found these insults intolerable. He also viewed Sumner as a social inferior and so chose not to challenge him to a duel. Instead, he beat Sumner as an overseer would beat a slave.
Many Southerners recognized that Brooks had defended not only his family’s reputation but also the region’s good name. Editors at the pro-slavery Richmond Examiner, for instance, opined that the violence represented an:
act good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequence. The vulgar Abolitionists in the Senate are getting above themselves…They have grown saucy, and dare to be impudent to gentlemen…The truth is, they have been suffered to run too long without collars. They must be lashed into submission.
Brooks thus became a hero in the South, where people apparently begged him for fragments of his shattered cane, “sacred relics.” He received from admirers dozens of new walking sticks, often inscribed with pithy phrases (”Hit Him Again”). And although some of his colleagues in the House tried to expel him, they failed to reach the required two-thirds majority because of the Southern delegation’s sectional loyalties. Brooks then quit to make a point, re-running for his seat and allowing the people of South Carolina to return him to Washington with their blessing.
For Northerners, many of whom had no love for radical abolitionists, the caning of Sumner nonetheless joined the Sack of Lawrence — an episode in which approximately 800 pro-slavery terrorists had burned parts of that town, the center