While I agree that Spade/Locklear (Spocklear?) is disturbing, I don't get why The Superficial is appalled. This should be cause for celebration! If Spade can land Locklear, well, by gum, anything's possible.
The thing that must be remembered, though, is that Locklear is a Republican, and not of sound judgment.
Re 1: But that knowledge comes at a cost! All along I thought my inability to date Heather Locklear was just part of the ordering of the universe. Now this happens, and I must confront the awful truth that it's my own personal failing. With great freedom comes great responsibility.
Locklear is a Republican
And just when I thought it was not possible for her to be more hot! And as noted above, if David Spade is possible, all things are . . . I'm off to LA in search of true love!
...I thought Spade was a Republican too for some reason. Like I keep getting him mixed up with the buggery guy over at National Review.
Labs, Locklear won't date you because you got chump rims. Upgrade your shit, cracker.
Knoweldgeably
TMK is teh Saiselgy!
Derbyshire, his name is Derbyshire.
You know, David Spade is really not bad looking.
Well, both Spade and Locklear are 5'5", so that has to mean something.
With great freedom comes great responsibility.
This is entirely off-topic, but my family had a late-but-convenient Passover seder on Saturday, and the English text of our haggadah unsurprisingly uses the word "freedom" over and over again. We found we were unable to utter the word "freedom" except as Jon Stewart's terrible GWB impersonation: "frid'm. Heh heh."
Also, re 9: Tia is teh Locklear?
Are people shocked because Spade is ugly or because they think he is a douchebag? Because virtually any guy standing next to Heather Locklear is going to look like he fell out the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. But if you presuppose that Locklear finds him to be hilarious, I don't see what's so shocking. His career is arguably hotter than hers. He's a catch.
You know, David Spade is really not bad looking.
I distinctly thought Spade was one of those celebrity Republicans, but I don't think the Republicans would have taken this shot if he were.... And... No. Can't decide if I'm reassured.
I agree with 9.
TMK, we can all see you playing with your handle. Just FYI.
According to Wikipedia, they are both Republicans.
This list is fascinating. Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen!
They say that it's an urban legend so far, so if Locklear were to superglue Spady's penis to his leg she could really put herself on the map.
We should follow the lead of David Spader, and all rename ourselves a unique -er variant of "David Spade".
Spade has an appealing quality, in that he doesn't try to carry films or shows. He tries to be a character or a support, and ends up being funnier for it. Has some sense of his limits.
He may not be that hot, but she's kind of plastic, isn't she? Detracts from her hotness.
That list is indeed fascinating.
Rich Little, Leslie Nielsen and Jason Priestley. What's with all these Canadians moving down to the States and becoming Republicans?
That list's accuracy is very specious. But still, it's stunning that so many extraordinarily wealthy people would vote Republican.
TMK, we can all see you playing with your handle. Just FYI.
Got a problem with that? Huh? Do ya?
David Spade is just gross. And I agree with AC that Locklear is kinda plastic. Plus she just seems horrifyingly uptight. Never have seen the appeal in her.
Yaphet Kotto, otoh, is hot. Please don't tell me he votes Republican. Allow me to retain some illusions.
Shit, the Republicans got Yaphet Kotto? That's almost the same as the ability to win arguments. Whatever the subject or prior rhetorical advantage, now baa can always just come back with "Sure, but we have Yaphet Kotto". Devastating.
As remarked in 14, if David Spade is a Republican he is one of those Republicans who gave $2K to Kerry. So, what Dry said about the accuracy.
Cameron isn't just an evangelical Christian [comment being hastily updated on preview], he's one of the morality-policing sort (check out his Growing Pains antics). Starred in Left Behind.
Oh that's right, I had forgotten that I had recently seen this. If you'd like to know if you're a good person, his sister has an extremely helpful quiz for you.
Isn't David Spade getting a little old to carry off those adorably malicious leprechaun roles? Also: if he ever had a chin, it has now receded into his neck.
Man, I'm cranky today!
I want to see Kirk Cameron and Stephen Baldwin join forces as a soul-saving, crime-fighting duo.
19: Why so hung up on the General counsel of the Department of Agriculture?
Yaphet Kotto just called for Rumsfeld's resignation
I'm surprised David Milch isn't on that list, also.
Read it and weep: Kotto is a Steve Forbes Republican.
Locklear is kinda plastic
She looks awfully good for 45, though.
37: Thank god.
39: I can't hear you!
Also, it should be noted that some of people on that list have been dead for quite a while. (James Cagney, Frank Capra, maybe others.)
Kotto is a Steve Forbes Republican.
He also claims the Virgin Mary has appeared to him, so, y'know, take his endorsement with the seriousness it deserves.
Why so hung up on the General counsel of the Department of Agriculture?
What? I meant that other actor, David Spader.
Claiming that the Virgin Mary has appeared to you is much saner than endorsing Steve Forbes in 2000.
I've always thought that people often pick sides in reaction to the silliness, the fatuity of prevailing attitudes wherever they are. I know that there are people who initially supported this war for this essentially negative motive: the people around them seemed unserious and ignorant of realities to such a degree that it was hard to think they might be right, albeit for the wrong reasons.
Agreed with 45.
I think that Heather Locklear is the answer to the "douche" argument. She just strikes me as the kind of woman that men always think is hot, and I look at her and just think, "god, I bet she's an uptight jerk."
Yeah, WTF, Frank Capra? You're telling me that George Bailey wasn't a gigantic liberal with his life devoted to housing the poor? And what about Mr. Potter's Republican charity-will-make-the-rabble-lazy rationalization?
50:
Except that lots of people saw no contradiction between being liberals in the 30s and 40s (and after) and being Republicans with Reagan in the eighties and after. This probably included Reagan himself.
He also claims the Virgin Mary has appeared to him
It's in the nature of a Yaphet to make Yaphesies.
James Spader?
David. You know, on that show, with David Shatner and David Gergen.
On reviewing some pictures, I think it's the curl in her upper lip. She just looks disdainful. And her squinty eyes.
God, I really am a bitch. To make up for it, I'll admit that she's light-years more attractive than David Spade.
51: It's true, I forgot about hatred of black people.
I should note that I think David Spade is very funny, "Just Shoot Me" notwithstanding.
That list of Republican celebrities keeps shocking me. Barry Zito?! Tim Minear? Emma Caufield? Kevin Sorbo?!
(Kevin Sorbo is still a celebrity?)
Emma Caufield?
The writers made a joke about it, I think; wasn't there some episode where she spouted some Republican talking point, and someone else (Xander, maybe?) called her "Anya Rand"?
Let me chime in on the Yaphet Kotto mourning. He's Jewish, used to live in Seattle, and is a direct descendent of Queen Victoria, all great reasons for me to love him (that and my undying crush on Lt. Al Giardello). Waah!
I don't understand why Gary Oldman is on that list.
a direct descendent of Queen Victoria
So he believes, anyhow. The Queen's press secretary denies that this is a possibility.
Joan Allen played Pat Nixon. She was a 70s mom alienated by the post sexual revolution culture. She was the President in that other movie, where one's sexual past and abortion and stuff was the main theme. She seems terribly interested in politics and, particularly, sexual politics. Hmm.
Roger Moore knew how to best Yaphet Kotto.
60: I find that movie almost impossible to watch. The racism of it makes me cringe.
It is appalling. But then, so is Gone with the Wind. And what, the rest of the Bond oeuvre is okay? How about the various shifty and inscrutable Orientals? Not to mention the sexism.
59: Sentence 2 refers to The Ice Storm?
60,61 Refer to Live and Let Die?
I believe 59, sentence 2, refers to The Contender. Yes, 60-62 refer to Live and Let Die.
I don't know why the appalling sexism of the Bond movies gets a pass. Perhaps because it's so obvious? Perhaps because I'm a woman, and therefore more capable of laughing it off than, as a white person, I am racism? Perhaps because the entire canon of Western art and literature is sexist, so I'm not that hung up on it? I dunno.
The inscrutable Oriental thing, somehow, bothers me less. Again, possibly just because I'm less self-conscious about that version of racism. On the other hand, the Mickey Rooney character in Breakfast at Tiffany's almost ruins the film for me, so I think that maybe it's just a question of how much dignity there is in X or Y racial stereotype. At least the inscrutable Oriental doesn't have to act like a fool.
Oh, and I haven't watched GWTW in years.
Oh lord: the Mickey Rooney turn in Breakfast at Tiffany's literally—really, literally—made me throw up in my mouth a little, when I saw it in a theater. I had deliberately wiped those sequences out of my memory banks, in favor of what is otherwise a lovely little, though as long as we're bigotry-spotting, totally heteronormatively whitewashed, film. Audrey Hepburn. Say no more.
Yeah, the sexism of the Bond films is so OTT, it's hardly worth mentioning.
And on heteronormative white-washing, the Paul Newman / Elizabeth Taylor Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is terrific even though they spend an hour dancing around their inability to say just what made Skipper "weak".
56: I mean, she's obsessed with money for a long time, but that's because she's newly human, not because she's a Republican. Or are you thinking of something after that?
55: The one time I saw Barry Zito interviewed, he came off as someone who would believe in, for example, the power of crystals, very strongly. Strongly into natural forces flowing through him and acting through him.
It's interesting to conceive of a racism so over-the-top, so tongue-in-cheek, that we'd all feel silly not laughing. Maybe such a movie already exists?
I remember the cultural moment for Live and Let Die distinctly. I'd just been reading the book. It's a kind of travelogue of Bond's trip to the US in the early 50's, full of sights, sounds, impressions (Bond is a remarkable sensual persona, and the feel of things is always what's memorable). I didn't see the movie, but I remember thinking it ought to have been made "period," as many good movies were in those days.
I think ott racism that makes everyone laugh is alive and well in standup comedy, no?
Sure, but does it transfer to movies, situations where black and white interact, etc.
Idp, I think you're right on about the need for a "period" Bond film, they ought to make one now. Instead they're making a blond Bond. Feh.
What I remember from the books is not the feel of things, but (and this is apart from the raving misogyny, which was not nearly as cartoonish as what's in the movies)
(a) Bond is always a bit surly, because like a lot of real-life exemplary imperial servants, he's Scots, but at the beck and call of an English government; this is an interesting twist that never comes out in the movies;
(b) If Ian Fleming wasn't being paid for product placement, he was a fool. Everything had a branded label.
James Bond doesn't really work straight anymore (especially the books, which are even worse than the movies in terms of the terrible misogny and racism), which is why my ability to enjoy any of it took a nosedive around the last few Sean Connery ones/first couple of Roger Moores- Bond isn't omnicompetent, or even particularly suave- he's just very good-looking, and very, very mean. It seems like they almost figured this out a little into the Sean Connery movies, after which they got carried away with the campy superspy thing, specifically Goldfinger, where the entire time, the camera seems to be mocking him. He's terrible at his job, for all the reasons we'd dislike him (In fact, it ends up looking like they handed the script duties to someone who wanted to make fun of Fleming- they make a specific point to mock the book's heist plan).
Of course, this line of thought ends in the movie version of "The Tailor of Panama," which basically used Pierce Brosnan as the real world equivalent- booted to a low-prestige post in the middle of nowhere after one too many screwups.
73:
I'll bet the capacity, for those of us who liked the books, of Connery and Brosnan to suggest (if only in our own imagination) some of the outsider edge you refer to in a) is why they're my favorites.
I agree about the misogyny not being cartoonish, and in fact convincingly easy to inhabit.
The early scene in L&LD where Bond walks out into Harlem brought back to me then my first immersion in an American city, as an immigrant, in the early sixties. It's also full of connoiseur's takes on old cars, American food like hamburgers, etc. Some of his judgments are way ahead of then-conventional wisdom.
Does anyone beside me really miss the Dalton Bond?
Dudes. I just saw GWTW for the first time evah, and it's fucking horrifying.
convincingly easy to inhabit
Yeah, Sean "I don't think there's anything very wrong with hitting a woman" Connery was always a little too believably sadistic, come to that.
When I was little, one of the network stations used to run James Bond marathons periodically, so I think I've seen most of them.
The racism/misogyny never seemed as troubling if only that everything in the movies is so caricatured (are they ill-tempered?) that there doesn't seem like there's much danger of taking any of it seriously. In a world where secretive assassins dispose of a witness by coating her in gold body paint and secret agents run around introducing themselves by their real names, well....
Even though the books had been written from the early fifties, that product-placement thing meant they fit, and virtually embodied the Playboy Philosophy. No wonder Kennedy liked them.
I just saw GWTW for the first time evah, and it's fucking horrifying.
You want to know how truly horrifying it is, you might try watching Birth of a Nation sometime. Birth is universally and rightly decried as a racist polemic. If you watch it, though, you'll realize it's the same movie as GWTW except (a) no overt Klan rescues in the latter and (b) GWTW gets a pass. (Because Vivien Leigh is pretty?)
I have Birth at home, unwatched. I borrowed it from a film collecting friend. I'm scared to see it.
And wait, wasn't there some secret "vigilante" group that Ashley belonged to along with some other Southern men? Maybe not so overt, but still obviously Klan sympathizing.
It's been years since I've seen it now, and I think I've made something like this comment before, but my recollection is that GWTW is not worse, in terms of demeaning caricatures, than lots of other movies from the same period, and is actually a little bit better, in that at least the main black characters seem human (not so much the "and a mule?!" extras). (I'm trying to remember the movie--it might have been Sullivan's Travels or some other Preston Sturges--which has a scene on a train in which a "funny" black porter just comes off as monstrous.) It is worse in that it's all embedded in a big apologia for the South, but I think it might be getting a pass on that because that was its source material, and again IIRC, and I maybe don't RC, it actually cleaned up the book a little on that count. I seem to recall a glancing reference to a black man being killed for being uppity in the book, and the narrative attitude not being that disapproving.
Oh, definitely, the allusion is there. But by 1939, or whenever it was, they knew they couldn't actually have them heroically depicted in white robes, galloping to the rescue of imperiled white women.
Yeah, watching Birth of a Nation will really make you physically sick.
The scene in Sullivan's Travels is early and involves a uniformed porter in the luxury motor home the studio has sent to follow a few steps behind him as he attempts to experience the common man.
That doesn't sound like it. I'm thinking of a scene on a train that devolves into a food fight, maybe.
It is worse in that it's all embedded in a big apologia for the South, but I think it might be getting a pass on that because that was its source material
Yeah, to me this is key. The whole film just yearns for the good old chivalrous days of slavery. Tomorrow is another day—when the South will rise again! Hurrah! Take that, and your Oscar, Hattie McDaniel!
And as for the source material, well, nobody made them choose a blatantly racist book that glorified the old South. Plus, a film in which a little rape never hurt anybody, did it?
Been a while since I read the book, but IIRC, it's not the Klan specifically (no white robes), just a husbands' lynch posse. (Scarlett, being a Bad Woman, takes the Wrong Way home from her Frowned-Upon Job, and is Harassed.)
I think the movie was pretty faithful on that count to the book. I don't remember whether the tone was approving or just 'things are so topsy-turvy everything's messed up.'
GWTW probably gets a pass because it was a very popular, landmark sort of film.
Plus, a film in which a little rape never hurt anybody, did it?
OMG, yes 2 the Xtreeme.
GWTW probably gets a pass because it was a very popular, landmark sort of film.
Birth of a Nation was the top-grossing film of all time until the late 1930s.
What's funny is I was ten when I read GWTW and just adored it. I did notice and disapprove of the racism, but I don't think I understood that there was anything wrong with marital rape or the depiction of it in the book. If I'd been my mom, I would not have let me read it without having A Talk.
Hey, it's not rape if she really likes it!
I've never seen Birth of a Nation (or GWTW, for that matter (I nevertheless recently criticized it)), but I've seen two D.W. Griffith films, The Mother and The Law and Intolerance both of which were good and interesting.
I miss Timothy Dalton too, B.
Has anyone heard whether the new movie of Casino Royale is going to be all modernized and be-actioned? That book screams out the most for a small-scale period-piece version.
And whoever compared Fleming's writing to 1960s-era Playboy fantasies is so so right.
91: Wasn't it beat out by GWTW, which held the record longer and Burned Atlanta and said Frankly, My Dear, I Don't Give A Damn? (I think translated into modern dollars, GWTW is still one of the top grossing films of all time.)
Plus, given that GWTW's depiction of black people was an improvement compared to other films, how long was it 'acceptable'? If it took, say, 30 years for it to be recognized as cringe-worthy, that's a long time to get embedded in the pantheon.
(Will people cringe in thirty years at all the Tough, Young, and Heart of Gold 'Hoods who Just Need a Chance (and may Ballroom Dance?) in current movies? I'm cringing now.)
Marital rape, racism, nostaglia for slavery, and let's not forget: nineteen-inch waists and elbows unblemished by leaning on them...
In fairness, Scarlett is treated in an admiring fashion for: working, saving her farm when all the men around her were incompetent to do it, and killing a different would-be rapist. It's complicated on gender stuff.
You wanna hear something kind of embarrassing and cringeworthy? The rape scene was my *favorite* part of the book when I was ten. I read it over and over, and my mom would ask me what parts I was rereading, and I would tell the truth about all of them but that one.
Seriously, though, what's with people longing for aristocracy? During the fucking depression?
98: I read it when I was twelve, and I think the rape scene went over my head.
Mostly I remember thinking that Scarlett was pretty damn sensible, doing the gardening and running the store while everyone else moped around that they didn't have plantations any more.
Fucking Ashley.
Seriously, though, what's with people longing for aristocracy? During the fucking depression?
Ah, but that's not just GWTW. Glamour and idly rich people were a major part of Hollywood output in the depression. I'm not going to Google, I'm just going to bet there's a book on this by Andrew Sarris.
I also think the book, and millions were watching the movie informed by the book, just like Lord of the Rings today, enjoys adopting the "outside" pov of Rhett Butler, and his wonderful realism about sex, romance, society etc. It's a kind of set up. Also the book goes into war-induced social change, in Atlanta, with funny-accented immigrants becoming important people because of their skills
I remember watching the movie and thinking that Scarlett and Rhett's romance was pretty weak.
Going back to pick up the Moleman's comment:
Of course, this line of thought ends in the movie version of "The Tailor of Panama," which basically used Pierce Brosnan as the real world equivalent- booted to a low-prestige post in the middle of nowhere after one too many screwups.
Yeah, when I saw that it struck me that the point was "This is what James Bond would be like in a world anywhere approaching the real one -- he would be repulsive."
The movie was also horrible. Afterwards, I apologized to the person I'd convinced to see it.
You know who's massively underappreciated? William Sherman.
A very nice essay on James Bond.
Sado-masochism permeates the whole atmosphere of the books. I had forgotten until rereading them just how often Bond gets beaten up, how long he spends recovering from it, and how a woman is usually involved in the recuperative process. The strongest currents of feeling in the novels always circulate around these sequences. It would be an exaggeration, but not all that much of an exaggeration, to say that the Bond novels are at heart a series of lavish beatings strung together with thriller elements. The first of these beatings is the most famous - that's the one in Casino Royale where Bond sits in a chair with a hole cut out of it and has his testicles thrashed with a carpet beater - but not one of the novels is without its scene of Bond in torment. The tenderest, most yearning word in Fleming's lexicon is 'cruel'.
let's not forget: nineteen-inch waists
I am reading Little House in the Big Woods to Sylvia these days and find myself skipping over passages that just seem a little too objectionable for her young ears -- e.g. the Wilder aunts straining into their whalebone corsets and Docia comments that their sister-in-law bragged how Mr. Wilder had been able to put his hand around her waist when they were married.
You know who's massively underappreciated? William Sherman.
Not in The March. Which you should totally read, because it's great.
You know who's massively underappreciated? William Sherman.
Some places, that'll earn you a beating.
IDP -- what is the comparison to LoTR?
That was awesome. LB's dad is my new hero.
And yes, I want to read The March. One of these days.
I was just thinking about the poor persecuted Southerners, whose corset-addled temperaments make them swoon when they think of that wicked Mr. Sherman, and their enablers, the weedy Upper West Siders who cringe because they have to send their kids to the W. T. Sherman public school.
(I hadn't seen apo's comment when I wrote that. Apo, how's the corset?)
106:
Yeah, he's often in pain, as in L&LD when he's w/ Solitaire in the sleeper bunk, he's got a broken finger.
Sherman's a wonderful figure, interesting writer, very sophisticated for an Army officer, albeit the step-son of a Senator, with a richly weird personal life. Start with the chapter on him in Edmund Wilson's Patriotic Gore.
Oh, and get real, you crackers. Your people fired on the U.S. flag. Almost every officer in the Confederate Army committed treason to be there, going back on his oath of loyalty to the United States and making war on its government. They should be a source of enduring shame. Instead you put them on pedestals.
Kid:
I mean people know the story, and the descriptions so well, that that's what they're seeing, as much as what's actually shown.
Seriously, though, what's with people longing for aristocracy? During the fucking depression?
Gee, I wonder!
Two points:
a) WTF does "OTT" stand for?
b) I had a dream in which John Holbo, whose name was John Emerson, did something, or had something done to him.
going back on his oath of loyalty to the United States
Were most officers of the Confederate Army formerly of the US Army?
a) WTF does "OTT" stand for?
"Over The Top"
Apo, how's the corset?
Now that the temperature is up in the 80s, frankly it's making me dizzy.
OTT stands for over-the-top. You know: officer blows his whistle, you struggle up a ladder carrying a sixty-pound pack, walk into a mudscape, and die almost instantly.
So is the Peter Sellers Casino Royale any good?
Wiener in 104-
Oh good lord yes- I made it through about ten minutes before deciding to turn it off.
TQK-
Watching it aware of the changes from the source, and sort of aware of Middle Earth's retrograde mythology, maybe (Those Numenoreans! So White! So Pretty!)? Me and some friends had fun comparing the books and the movies as the Gondor/Rohan alterations to some base myth.
117:
Oh yeah, much higher proportion than the Union Army.
120: Thanks. I thought maybe "off the tarts".
107--Yeah, I was also thinking of Little House on the Prairie when I wrote that. Two pretty gruesome thought-viruses persist in my brain from those books: the fantasy that in order to have a small waist I should have worn a corset to bed from an early age (all the better to rearrange the organs with!) and the phrase "brown as an Indian."
Okay, I'm going to have to back off "most" for the moment, and I'm never going to actually count noses, so I'll just say maybe "most". Also, not the Confederate army, but the various armies of the Confederacy.
Still. Lee? Stonewall Jackson? Braxton Bragg? Longstreet? JEB Stuart? Joe Johnston? Pretty much anyone whose name you can remember? West Pointer and U.S. officer.
The only brown-related, book-derived thought I have is "babyshit brown", from one of Vonnegut's novels. The worst part is, I don't even know what shade of brown baby shit is, once it becomes brownish.
But many things in the Little House books are very good, and they get better as they go along.
Instead you put them on pedestals.
Um, not so much, really. I mean, there are folks who do, but honestly, hardly anybody in the South (other than the re-enactment people) can name a Confederate general besides Lee. Sherman comes in for special opprobrium because he burned so much history and architecture to the ground, not because of the rightness or wrongness of the cause.
I don't even know what shade of brown baby shit is
Baby shit comes in just about every color of the rainbow. It's magical stuff.
"babyshit brown" is a statistically improbably phrase in Bluebeard, according to amazon. I think it was the color of someone's car.
Hardly anybody in the South can name Stonewall Jackson? Really?
112: I'll tell him he has fans. And another vote for even though I don't have statistics, absolutely most Confederate senior officers were originally US Army. Everyone should read Grant's Memoirs -- it's remarkably entertaining as writing, and serves as a very useful potted history of the Civil War and the Army before the war. His section on the Mexican War is all about interactions with fellow officers who later fought for the Confederacy.
I wish he'd lived long enough to write a memoir of his presidency -- it seems incredible that he could have been quite as incompetent a president as he appears to have been.
I'm not doubting you, btw. I've been pleasantly surprised to see almost no Confederate flags in Texas (yes, I realize Texas flags are more distinctive).
OTOH, see Lindsey Graham, elected official, for the "Get the FUCK over it" files.
And West Point is knee-deep in statues of Confederate generals who were WP graduates, which just seems wrong to me. (Knee-deep means at least two that I've noticed. There could be more, but I wouldn't swear to it.) Once someone's betrayed their oath to the Constitution and fought against their country, I can see pardoning them being the right thing to do, but putting up statues to them in your military academy? That's just off.
A lot has been written over the years about Grant's prose style. A knack for clear writing was one of the secrets of his success, in a time when orders were hand-written. For writers, it's almost impossible to think badly of such a person.
But Sherman's are very interesting too. Comparing the styles, Wilson called Grant's "pellucid" and Sherman's "picaresque." Among other things, Sherman's are wonderful about management problems: a little section he wrote about concentrating railroad cars in the South is a perfect illustration of what's now called linear programming.
And the knowledge they had of the Southern generals was very useful. Sherman holds a council of war before Atlanta, after the Southern command change. "Who knows Hood?" "We do" "What's he going to do?"
Damned if they weren't right, too.
106 reminds me of what a previous owner of my copy of The Glass Key had to say about violence in a hard-boiled novel.
Grant on Sherman is fascinating. A picture you get of Grant from his memoirs is of someone slightly defeated by incompetent or slow-moving subordinates -- there are a number of stories of the form "I told X to do Y. When, a week later, Y remained undone, I spoke to X about it, and had an unsatisfying response. I then [engaged in some complicated circumlocution so that I could do Y myself, or at least never have to depend on X again for anything.]" When he encounters Sherman, though, he doesn't particularly rave about him, but tells stories that sound like "I told Sherman to do X. A week later, Sherman reported back that while X was impossible because my information was flawed, he had accomplished Y and Z, which served the same purpose more thoroughly and effectively." Grant never really says it explicitly, but the sense of palpable relief rising off the page at being able to work with someone who wasn't an idiot is very clear.
Hardly anybody in the South can name Stonewall Jackson? Really?
Well, yeah, they could name him, because he has a memorable name. But I really doubt most people could give you any pertinent information about him. "He, uhhhh, built some walls to keep out Union troops?"
The Civil War was a long, long time ago, y'know. Hell, Brown v. Board of Education was over fifty years ago and we die young down here. Not to say the sentiments can't be found, because they can, but they certainly don't have anywhere near the presence* they did even when I was a kid.
*Offer may be void in South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi.
And in a time of rapid social and technical change, both of those guys had been out of the Army for awhile, had tried other professions, and could think "out-of-the-box."
Hey, we're talking about management. What do you want, fresh idiom?
Didn't Stonewall Jackson have something to do with the gay liberation movement in the 70's?
There were oodles of Confederate flags on bumper stickers when I was a kid in the South. And not the deep south, either.
143:
Don't think the flags speak to apo's point about the history fading.
Damn, too bad AWB is away. She'd put us Yankees right about all this, sitting on a fence rail eating ginger snaps.
There were oodles of Confederate flags on bumper stickers when I was a kid in the South
There still are. Maybe fewer than there were in the past, but they are still not hard to find. I saw a particulary reprehensible one recently that I'm in the (slow) process of writing a blog post about.
Damn, too bad AWB is away. She'd put us Yankees right about all this, sitting on a fence rail eating ginger snaps.
Wait, she's a Lecompton Democrat?
I should qualify my remarks with the caveat that I live in perhaps the very bluest enclave of the South, and one that has seen huge amounts of in-migration. YMMV.
I thought AWB was from Kansas. Doesn't that make her lineage a complicated battleground in which the abolitionist white blood cells fight the invading Southern virus or something?
Yup. And in the process, microbial James Brothers and Cole Youngers will be loosed upon her organs.
147: It is also possible (although I frankly don't know -- my only direct experience of the south is my uncle's neighborhood in Atlanta, and all his neighbors seem to be from Queens, just like him) that you're now seeing less awareness of the Civil War, Confederate flags, etc., than you used to, so it now looks like not all that much. But if the prior baseline were high enough, there could still be quite a bit.
I'm told you see a lot of Confederate flags in Idaho.
I passed by a couple of apartments in West Germany through the windows of which I could see Confederate flags displayed on the walls.
US militarymembers from the South, clueless German hobbyists, or coded Neo-Nazi symbol? I dunno.
What everyone above said about treason.
If it's not clear, I kinda have a little crush on Grant.
114, 154: Interesting how much more heated you guys are about the Civil War than pretty much any southerner I know.
As an aside, the Confederate officer corps was mostly former US military because, well, the South has always been the base of the military, and as this ancient Billmon post notes, the southern Scotch-Irish particularly.
I kinda have a little crush on Grant
Y'mean this guy?
Interesting how much more heated you guys are about the Civil War than pretty much any southerner I know
I assure you, my heat is purely reactive. I wouldn't get annoyed if idiot Southerners didn't keep talking about the horrors of Sherman and the greatness of Lee.
I mean, apo, you gotta be kidding me. Have a look at a Southern state's standards for teaching U.S. history sometime.
As an aside, the Confederate officer corps was mostly former US military because, well, the South has always been the base of the military
No, that only accounts for the high proportion of Southerners in the U.S. military. It doesn't account for the high proportion of treason (i.e., joining the Confederate cause) among the Southerners in the U.S. military. It was open to each of them to keep his word.
Well, like I said, I really don't care about the Civil War, what with it being a century and a half finished now. However. Their states had seceded; they were no longer citizens of the United States, which does complicate the question of treason.
Have a look at a Southern state's standards for teaching U.S. history sometime.
Maybe you can tell me what you're referring to there. I can only vouch for NC's, and I guarantee you as concerns the Civil War, what I was taught way back when was no different from what was being taught in any northern state (to wit, it was generic, textbook, and boring). I'll let you know whether they praise the valor and chivalry of the Grey when my third-grader hits history classes, but I really don't see it in the offing.
Sherman is hands down the one of those guys I would like to meet, talk with, know socially, or be in business with.
Apo, I'm not holding you personally responsible for the failings of the current South to reckon with ancient history. And for all I know, North Carolina is a beacon of unflinching integrity. But seriously, there's an emphasis issue with, let's say, a lot of Southerners and their understanding of the Civil War. Here's part of the Virginia History Standards:
4.4 The student will describe the social and political life of Virginians between the Revolutionary War and the end of the Civil War, with emphasis on
* the contributions of Virginians to the establishment of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and the success of the new national government;
* conflicts between northern and southern states and within Virginia, including Nat Turner's Rebellion, and events leading to secession; and
* Virginia's role in the Civil War, including major battles and leaders in the Confederate army, including Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.
Now, okay, slavery gets mentioned, and presumably Virginia doesn't come off too well in the Nat Turner episode (although it's not too clear) but here you have Virginia's contribution to the Revolution (the Constitution!) unthinkingly bookended by Virginia's contribution to the Civil War (treason to the Constitution!).
Like I said, it's emphasis.
59 I always arrive too late for the party, cause I had a great line about Joan Allen and sexual repression. I just watched Joan Allen in a movie masturbate in the bathtub and become a colored person.
As someone who moved around a lot as a kid, I object to the requirement of teaching state history in general. It seemed like every time we moved to a new state, it was the year they taught ___ State History. By the time I was in fourth grade, I had taken full years each of Kansas State History, Illinois State History, Nebraska State History, and Ohio State History but had never actually taken United States History.
I'm looking at the standards you link, and I'm not sure how you'd teach Virginia's history differently (4th grade is state history, not US history). The preceding section is from settlement to Rev. War, then a section on the Rev. War to the end of the Civil War, then a section on Jim Crow and Reconstruction. Is your complaint that they end the quarter with the Civil War? Or that they mention it at all?
I'm not trying to be Farber-Socratic here, I'm genuinely perplexed about where your objection originates here.
165 -- I was in Texas my entire childhood, and still took like seven years of Texas history. I mean, Texas is cool and all, but please, people.
Seriously, apo, my objection is on the issue of emphasis. If I had to emphasize something about Virginia's role in the Civil War, I wouldn't emphasize the Sideburns 'n' Glory activities on the battlefield; I'd emphasize the ignominy of the government at Richmond.
Oh! Oh! Somebody else who knows Ohio history! Seriously, I learned a lot and remember a lot about that. Seventh Grade. I would read the book in Study Hall (which my kids don't seem to have; let's hear it for forced inactivity).
I don't think I ever had a day of NY history.
168: I have noticed that this state seems a bit full of itself.
I think I had Pennsylvania History at some point. Was that when I heard about the Whiskey Rebellion? Anyway, it sounds kind of cool that Becks knows about so many different states, so long as she got taught U.S. history at some point.
In 7th grade I got taught about Latin America, which was pretty cool. Don't know that I remember anything.
Because, you look at the guys on the battlefield, you say to yourself, "Support our troops!" and "Aren't they brave?" Which, yes. But is gallantry the point of Virginia's role in the Civil War? Or is the point that it was gallantry in a bad cause?
(Weiner, is it itself that it's full of?)
My kids do not appear to get any Illinois history. This bothers me. Altgelt, Jane Addams, Samual Insull, Ida B. Wells, Robert McCormick, Richard J. Daley are people whose personalities they should have an idea about.
So who's buried in Grant's tomb, LB?
Texas was its own nation for a while, you know. They've got a right.
169: Well, I'm sure the emphasis was much different before my time—I've seen old textbooks at my (Alabama) grandmother's and whatnot—but when I was coming through they weren't praising the CSA or soft on slavery. Quite the opposite, really. The public schools down here, teachers and students, have hefty Black populations, after all. I have no experience with private schools in the South.
Here are Texas's Grade 8 standards. 8.9 is about slavery, and 8.10 is about the civil war, and points 1-3 of 8.10 sure seem designed to obfuscate the fact that the South seceded in order to defend slavery. 8.11, on Reconstruction, looks OK. (IANAH.)
Weiner, is it itself that it's full of?
I thought it was Mexicans.
So were Vermont and California. You don't get quite the same messages from them.
173: Large parts of it don't seem to be full of anything else.
I read The Island of the Blue Dolphins and made a play-doh topological model for California history. I think that's about it, though.
points 1-3 of 8.10 sure seem designed to obfuscate the fact that the South seceded in order to defend slavery.
I don't know that that's all that different in the North. In a very good public high school in NYC, I came out of the Civil War unit with the impression that it was rather naive to think that slavery was any sort of important cause of the war -- that it was all about economics and federalism. Having done some reading on my own, I think now that Mrs Eichler was smoking crack on that point. But it seems highly unlikely that she was doing it out of any personal inclination toward Confederate apologism, or that NY state standards slanted that way either.
a play-doh topological model
Yeah! Yeah! I did that. The red was the mountains, the yellow was the piedmont, and the green was the coastal plains.
Also, apo, let's not forget that you (I think) and I grew up during what now looks, in retrospect, like a high point for tolerance and diversity and Free to be You and Me in the country's history. So our southern educations might have actually been better than what kids get under the new standards. A large part of the cultural pushback beginning in the 1980s was, "aw, that's a load of liberal claptrap. Some of the old bigotries were not so bad!"
Well, and as LB points out, it's not just the South. New York City was pretty disloyal. And as long as I'm being fair, Sherman was not very nice about e.g. black people voting or Indians breathing.
Looking back on it, the weirdest thing I ever did in elementary school was when we studied World History in 5th grade. We had a day where all of our regular classes were canceled and they ran everything like it would be done if we went to school in the Soviet Union (of course, a totally inaccurate, jingoist depiction of life in the USSR) so we would know How Lucky We Were To Be American Instead of One of Those Godless Russians. This would have been around 1988.
183: Part of the problem is that it's relatively easy to understand the slavery issue, and most kids come to the table with at least a basic understanding of it, but the other economic and political issues are much more esoteric to a fourth-grader and require more teaching. I mean, explaining the concept of slavery to kids is a pretty straightforward endeavor. Federalism, not so much.
I do think that one problem with criticizing the south is that the north is, in many ways, as bad or worse about race relations. Nebraska wasn't part of the Confederacy, but they've just re-segregated public schools in Omaha, for instance....
but they've just re-segregated public schools in Omaha
Wait, WHAT?
New York history: I think that may be Southern standards taking over. Don't a lot of textbook manufacturers make all their textbooks conform to Texas board of ed requirements? Anyway, based on some articles I read in the NYRB it's pretty widespread and really wrong. And I think pernicious.
I hate it when Indians breath! Seriously, I think it's useful to learn that history itself is a battleground. In 11th grade I took a "History of American History" course, organized topically. Hence, about the civil war, I learned about "the era of good feeling," Birth of a Nation, the then-current centennial boom, etc. "Frontier" was another topic, where we read Turner, et al.
In 11th grade I took a "History of American History" course
Remember when we had education in this country? That was nice.
Pretty much the entire World History and Cultures curriculum in 5th grade was like that, by the way. We learned that Africa has no culture and all of its people are starving and hungry, people in India burn up their wives, Chinese people are forced to have abortions to keep the population down, there were a bunch of ancient people who built stuff in Latin America but nobody down there has done anything for the last few thousand years or so, and that we should dismiss people with religions other than Judaism or Christianity as weirdos. I swear to god, that's pretty much what they taught us at public school in Ohio in the late '80s. I should really check with my brothers to see if they've updated things since then.
the north is, in many ways, as bad or worse about race relations
When my former brothers-in-law, from Ohio and Michigan, came down to visit, they had trouble getting past the fact that rich and poor neighborhoods were often right next to one another. I believe the exact quote was: "Jesus Christ, don't you have zoning laws down here?"
Which brought to mind the old saw about the difference between southern and northern racism. In the north, whites are okay with blacks being uppity as long as they don't have to live near them. In the south, whites are okay living next to blacks as long as they aren't uppity.
Omaha school districts. Sponsored by the only black state senator, but a lot of white people voted for it.
This doesn't affect the main point, but does Nebraska count as Northern for purposes of the Civil War? I lump them in with Kansas, Kansas-Nebraska act 'n'at, as internally divided.
From that link:
a man who has fought for the abolition of capital punishment and the end of apartheid in South Africa
Far out, dude!
In 11th grade (at the School of Science and Mathematics, which obviously isn't a good template for NC public schools at large), my teacher used Zinn's A People's History of the United States as the main textbook. I didn't realize at the time just how subversive (and, in retrospect, courageous) an act that was.
172, 182- I made an incredibly elaborate model of a Mayan temple with clay and styrofoam, in 4th or 5th grade. A little styrofoam priest stood at the top.
In the north, whites are okay with blacks being uppity as long as they don't have to live near them. In the south, whites are okay living next to blacks as long as they aren't uppity.
The phrasing of this I know is "Up North, no one cares how high you get so long as you don't get too close. Down South, no one cares how close you get so long as you don't get too high."
The thing in Omaha is, to be fair, more potentially interesting than I've let on--the issue is that poor (black) schools are chronically underfunded, and the idea is that by returning black schools to local (black) control, that the bullshit rationalizations would stop and those schools would actually get some attention.
It will be very interesting to see if it works. I think about my initial reaction to Texas getting rid of affirmative action, and yet in the event it seems to me that the substituted 10% rule is more equitable and produces far better results.
Control appears to be the big issue for him. It is important.
Matt W: Don't a lot of textbook manufacturers make all their textbooks conform to Texas board of ed requirements?
Yes, because Texas and California vote to adopt textbooks as states, not as individual school districts, as is the practice elsewhere. So if you lose TX and CA, you've lost the two biggest markets in the country by far. Thus TX standards are necessary conditions. Or so I've been told by people in textbook publishing.
183- I recall reading lots and lots of stuff about slavery for US history, but I was doing the AP reading on top of the regular course (and meeting with Mr. Marien/hoff for the AP review on Saturday mornings!), so maybe that's why.
So Becks: did you learn, and maybe map the Ohio rivers?
Muskingham, Hocking, Hochocking?
I grew up in Boston where Union monuments are common. I moved south of the Mason-Dixon line 20 years ago and I continue to be shocked by all the monuments to the (deservedly) Lost Cause.
I have to deal with some folks who glorify the the Confederacy and when they refer to the "War of Northern Aggression" (or such like) I quit calling it the Civil War and call it the War of Southern Treason. The southerners don't like that.
As LB noted what is really weird is the US Army honoring these traitors. The statues at the USMA are one thing, but some of our largest army posts are named after Confederate generals: Bragg, Hood, A.P. Hill. I'm sure there are more.
207:
Those posts were named around WWI, the "Era of Good Feeling" so called. 90's through 20's. Former Confederate General Joe Wheeler was brought back to command volunteers during the Spanish-American War.
One of the civil war amendments, (13th, 14th, 15th) after the first paragraph we all know in substance, goes on at some length to assure public money will not be used to honor Confederates, nor pay them pensions.
Think of the 90s through Teens, of Plessy and the Wilson Administration. Theodore Roosevelt was relatively pro-black, by the standards of the day.
206 - I did! And promptly forgot them. I still get the "C" cities mixed up on the map. My most vivid memory of Ohio State History was giggling every time our teacher said that Akron was the rubber capital of the world.
Alas, I retain a great deal of that, probably holding space better used for other knowledge. Where do I empty my cache? Gerry Spence used to say a lawyer needs a "bathtub mind." My drain is clogged.
Pickawillany?
Blennerhasset?
Vallandingham?
You will remember my name. Guys in basic training with me kept pointing out there is a Ting/ley Rubber Co. in Plainfield NJ.
They make waders and industrial protection garments, btw, not condoms.
I think I took two years of NM history (one in elementary school and one in middle school). I kind of wish I'd taken more--NM history is very interesting (Texas invades twice!).
I somehow made it through school without ever once playing The Oregon Trail.
The only thing I ever knew about Ohio in elementary school had something to do with height and roundness, I think.
You totally missed out, eb. Oregon Trail was the best part of elementary school by far.
Texas invades twice!
So far, punk.
Not counting the current and ongoing economic invasion, of course.
Oregon Trail was the best part of elementary school by far.
Uh, Number Munchers? Hello?
I don't think I've heard of that, either.
Number Munchers was good, but Oregon Trail was better.
if idiot Southerners didn't keep talking about the horrors of Sherman
As little use as I have for Confederate nostalgia, remarks like these do get my back up just a little. League of the South nutters notwithstanding, Sherman's March was horrible. His army burned cities to the ground in your basic 19th century shock and awe. Homelessness, disease and starvation followed. Maybe that was necessary at the time, but it didn't (and still doesn't) make the ruin any less traumatic or shameful. I'm not surprised that the descendents of those people aren't likely to exactly revere Sherman, even if they believe in the justice of his cause.
I live in a city, itself a victim of Sherman's March, that considered making "We're on fire!" the city advertising motto, until enough people remarked that that whole fire business really hadn't worked out so well last time.
To his credit, William T. has inspired two delicious drinks.
His army burned cities to the ground in your basic 19th century shock and awe.
As a great man once concluded, though....
Seriously, sure, Sherman's march was awful. Was it more awful than Petersburg or Shiloh; Andersonville or a thousand incidents of slavery itself? Do we really want to play misery poker, here?
Your comment reflects such a sensible sensibility, Paul—"justice of his cause"—that you must know yours is not the kind of feeling I was referring to. There are plenty of righteous weepers for Confederate victimhood roaring for the Lost Cause. See e.g. Lindsey Graham above.
Crap, I had only just caught up and was going to answer 166. I think there must have been a third game we played besides Number Munchers and Oregon Trail, but can't remember what.
