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Author Archives: revolutionaryrob
Posts: 8 (archived below)
Comments: 4
Louis Armstrong
In my movie there would be a lot of portrayals of the dualities of American life, and I think, at least for me, When the Saints Go Marching In is one of those songs that is both happy and sad at the same time. You could say it’s an all-purpose song, but I have specifically happy and specifically sad thoughts about it when I hear it, and the imagery it would be matched up with could bring up both emotions. It’s also classic Louis Armstrong, who is classic jazz, from the Jazz Age, the 1920s, where the arc of my movie would peak.
The Speakeasy
The 21 Club in New York City was a Speakeasy in the 1920’s during Prohibition. Their website has some interesting information about the wine cellar:
Perhaps the most elaborately disguised vault in New York City, ’21’s Wine Cellar was built to be invisible. Behind several smoked hams that hung from the basement ceiling and a shelved wall filled with canned goods, stood a perfectly camouflaged 2 1/2 ton door that appeared to be part of the wall. Opened only by inserting a slender 18″ meat skewer through one of many cracks in the cement wall, the secret door silently slid back to reveal ’21’s most coveted treasure: two thousand cases of wine.
There were apparently many raids at the club but the staff was so good at keeping an eye out that they always saw the police coming and hid everything just in time. The 21 club has a section about its history on their website at http://www.21club.com/web/onyc/wine_cellar_history.jsp
Posted in 1920-1932
Tagged organized crime, prohibition, Roaring 20's, speakeasy
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Outstanding
These aren’t done yet:
- Gulf War
- Ella Baker
Posted in June 21 assignment
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Religious Right
Jim & Tammy Faye Baker
Well there’s the textbook version and there’s the bigger picture. The textbook is not inaccurate by any means but I’d argue it’s not necessarily complete.
Religious fundamentalism sees a surge in the 1970s as a response to the excesses and immorality of the sexual revolution of the 1960’s. Evangelical Protestantism expanded greatly during this time and sought to overturn Supreme Court decisions banning prayer in schools, protecting pornography as free speech and legalizing abortion. To be an evangelical christian, one must go through some process of being born again and subscribe to the bible’s teachings. Jimmy Carter is noted as being the first evangelical President, but there is no explanation about how that affected his Presidency. It does note that most evangelicals enter politics as conservatives (Republicans) but Carter was a democrat.
[My opinion follows.] The problem with the Religious Right not identified in the text is that there is a refusal to accept the separation of church and state as a fundamental and inalienable part of American society. This makes America a secular (non-religious) state/country/government. When I learned about why America was settled, it was in large part due to people wanting to be free to practice their religion of choice. I thought everyone learned this in school. Now I find it so mind boggling that it is so important for Americans to impose their religious beliefs on others, and that it doesn’t occur to them that if it’s being preached to them by their Pastor on a Sunday in a church, then it falls under the umbrella of “religious beliefs.”
The other problem with the text regarding the Religious Right is that it doesn’t mention how Jerry Falwell was he would say crazy and bizarre things like blaming 9/11 on pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, the American Civil Liberties Union and People For The American Way. The text doesn’t mention Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s embezzling money from the nonprofit ministry (with a weekly broadcast for donations) to furnish a lavish lifestyle. The text doesn’t mention the preacher who says that God came to him and had a detailed discussion with him. The text also doesn’t discuss how Bush and Karl Rove courted the Religious Right in order to win their elections, and then were made out to be fools when 60 Minutes did interviews of former White House staffers explaining how they laughed at these crazies behind their backs and had no intention of doing most of what they promised them.
Posted in June 21 assignment
Tagged conservatism, crazies, religious right
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Acknowledgment of the “Military Industrial Complex”
This post is somewhat outside and in between the two assignments at the same time.
In 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower makes a speech where he warns against the military industrial complex.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction…
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Although Eisenhower was a Republican and people rightly protested war in the 1960’s, the governments we as a people have elected in the 50 years since Eisenhower has left office have generally grown the military and embraced war, and to some degree this includes Obama, too.
Regardless of whether or not we think a given war, action or conflict is right or correct, there is the concern and issue that our government and economy needs the industries that serve the military. The fact that people in America benefit financially at various levels from wars they conduct abroad leads to a conflict of interest. (Conflicts of interest can be the appearance of the conflict or a true conflict.)
We need to talk about this oil spill…
That was clear from class today.
A friend of mine just brought up the oil spill to me again on the phone, and he was too young to remember the Iranian hostage crisis. We are living through a terrible moment in history right now, and this isn’t a moment where you “remember where you were when…” like one day you will tell someone younger than you where you were the day Barack Obama was elected President. That was a great day. Your grandparents remember where they were when they found out that John F. Kennedy had been killed. That was a horrible day.
Every single day during the Iranian hostage crisis, I came home from school hoping upon hope that my mom would tell me the hostages were freed. I remember getting the newspaper and hoping that there would be something happy there to find out about these poor people. The newspaper was Newsday, and it was an “evening” paper – so there was never going to be anything new in that paper that I didn’t already know. This went on for 1 year and almost 100 more days… it was torture to be an American citizen in 1980 because some Iranian college students made fools of us and we had a President who wouldn’t stand up for us. OK it wasn’t really torture, but it was deeply and thoroughly humiliating. I do not use these words lightly. I feel this same sense of humiliation again when I see these corporate executives on TV each morning, and I hear reported the effing jerk CEO of BP say he’d like his life back. Really? Like “Seth and Amy? Really?” really?
What we are living through now is an enduring and sustained horribleness. The world is being polluted – no, destroyed, before our eyes, while we watch – and we are powerless to stop it right this instant. By “we” I mean you, me, the President, scientists: by we, I mean all the people of the planet Earth. And men who make more money in a month than we will make in a lifetime sit on morning TV and act like snotty children who you want to just smack upside the head. If you’re lucky enough to be crazy busy, you can avoid the news. If you’re not, you try to figure out how to expel the sadness from your body because it’s so sad but it’s hard to cry for an oil soaked pelican. We couldn’t see those hostages all that time, but is the sadness different or is it my soul that is so hardened by a country so stupid as to elect the leaders that they do?
So we’re living through this event. People, animals, economies, systems of all types are going to be screwed over by this event. It won’t just end and we look back and see houses built a year later. We’re not going to grow a bunch new fish on the Today show and ship them in a big truck to New Orleans (they built house frames in Rockefeller Center and shipped them to La.) Whether or not you believe in a higher power, how did they ever think they were going to just rebuild biology? How did they think they allow the possibility of this happening and how do they think they can ever, ever possibly make amends to all of the Earth’s creatures for what they have done?
My friend Chris is a video guru of sorts and he made this video because he felt he needed to do something.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-zxJRzQo48
Health Care Reform Deja Vu
1993: Bill Clinton assigns Hillary to figure out how to reform health care. She comes up with a plan that gets everyone on to some kind of private plan, no mention of a public option. The public revolts against her and I got the feeling it was much because the public felt she overstepped her boundaries as a first lady, but that would be just my interpretation. She was treated horrifically by Republicans – just horribly – and everyone abandoned the idea. It was so ridiculous that the guy that ran against Hillary Clinton for Senate the first time around – about 8 years later – actually used it as his main campaign slogan – something like “and you know how she screwed up that health care plan”.
Well you know what? In 2005, Congress passed prescription coverage for Medicare beneficiaries without funding it. But the interesting part about that plan? It was the EXACT model that Hillary Clinton came up with for the entire health care system in 1993. Why did nobody notice? Probably because nobody was still in the news that could have made the connection between the two. I receive Medicare, so I realized how it was working and remembered it sounded exactly like the 1993 Clinton plan.
This is Clinton’s speech on health care on September 22, 1993, 8 months into his first year of office:
Posted in 1989-2000, Economic History, June 8 assignment
Tagged first ladies, health care reform, hillary clinton, medicare
1 Comment
The Appointment of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
First of all, i was alive when this happened, but I was not really picking up on just how horrible this situation was. Anita Hill was a woman that had worked for Clarence Thomas in the early 80’s and had been repeatedly sexually harassed by him. She came forward and testified to some of the most horrible and unacceptable behavior of how any man would act towards any woman inside or outside of a work setting. Clarence Thomas just said she was lying, and the men that conducted the hearings treated her like she was lying too.
The point in time is important because it was where I knew something was wrong, but nobody could explain to me so that I could understand it what exactly what was wrong, or what was so wrong about what was going on. It was presented in the news very much like each person had their side to the story, and not like “Come on folks, no woman would make this stuff up.”
(This is just extra me-on-a-soapbox now.) First, look at the picture and figure this is in 1991, almost 20 years ago and the article inside that issue is titled “He Said She Said” and the cover calls it the “watershed” debate on sexual harassment. I’m not sure what exactly was meant by watershed at the time, but I can tell you that although this despicable human being was appointed to the Supreme Court, that was the last time we ever seriously doubted a woman’s word and it was the beginning of making it very clear that sexually harassing behavior in the workplace was – without question – off limits.
So I was just looking for other Time Magazine pictures and came across this letter to the editor about a book on Clarence Thomas:
…But what is Thomas accused of? Behaving crudely toward Anita Hill. Either it never happened, or it was so minor that it did not matter to Hill at the time… – Marc Richmond
I look at that statement now and I think what the heck could that guy be thinking? Well it’s almost impossible to comprehend just how quickly this has changed in the past 40 years. When Hill was working for Thomas in the early 1980’s, it was unthinkable for someone in Anita Hill’s position to speak up and risk her job – she would not be believed and she would be fired for making such accusations. By the 1990’s, people were willing to believe there were two sides to every story (lies) about this, but after this, it was almost as if no man was safe from the accusations of a woman – and that had negative consequences, too. It’s actually weird that Time would print such a letter because it’s one thing to complain about your boss when you’re trying to build your career – but this woman courageously stepped up when it was necessary to save America from this person of despicable character.
I remember at the time that there was a television show called Murphy Brown that ran an episode about how awful this whole thing was: that Anita Hill would come forward with such embarrassing details and they publicly rebuffed her and appointed Clarence Thomas anyway. Murphy Brown was on Mondays at 9pm and it ran for 10 or 11 years, it was our “Two and a Half Men” of the 1990’s – it was a huge show for a long, long time. I knew at the time something was wrong and our country had done something wrong when I saw that episode and it ended quietly and sadly with his confirmation being replayed. I wouldn’t figure it really what was so wrong about it until I saw Clarence Thomas interviewed on 60 Minutes a couple of years ago and he was such arrogant you-know-what and I thought wow, that’s one rude obnoxious SOB who I wouldn’t want greeting customers at my local Walmart, forget making decisions on the Constitution of the United States. Now whenever I happen to read something in the newspaper about a Supreme Court decision, he just always seems to be on the wrong side of what I was taught about liberty, democracy and basic fairness.
I don’t really follow nominations as I don’t think there is very much we can do to stop them, but I think this hearing is part of the trend that contributed to the kinds of appointments we see now where Judges avoid specific or deep questioning, and has now resulted in the nomination of Elena Kagan where we really know so extremely little about her.
Posted in 1989-2000, June 7 assignment, Political history, Social History
Tagged conservatism, judges, sexual harassment, supreme court
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