The Stream of History, TV at Eight in the Morning, and Five Interesting Bits and Pieces

First Thing in the Morning

Each morning when I wake up I flip on my bedroom TV to see if anything “big” happened overnight. 

Not me, but the picture is pretty appropriate anyway

Yesterday morning, both CNN and MSNBC, on this anniversary of the white supremacy demonstration in Charlottesville a year ago, were featuring panels discussing the manner in which the President manages to be a racist without specifically openly being one. 

They discussed his comments that “there were good people on both sides” in those demonstrations (Since when are any white supremacists “good people”?) and his attacks on NFL football players, Lebron James, CNN anchor Don Lemon, his stated preference for immigrants from places like Norway rather than the Central American immigrants seeking asylum at our southern border and his referring to certain African nations as “s_ _ t hole” countries.  (Do you see a pattern here?  Something that would appeal to a white supremacist, perhaps?) A former White House aide, who had worked on “the Apprentice” TV series and recalled the President’s use of the “n” word in those days was also included in both of these channels’ programming.  My conclusion:  If it walks like a duck, smells like a duck and quacks like a duck, one may conclude that it’s a duck.

I then switched to Fox News where a panel was seriously involved in interviewing an ex-NYC police officer who was producing evidence to prove that the Mueller investigation is nothing more than a smokescreen to hide the Democratic Party’s “collusion” with Russia.   This was clearly another Fox attempt to discredit the Mueller investigation which, in my opinion, is going to produce enough evidence to guarantee the impeachment, conviction and exile of Donald Trump, unless he resigns first, as did Richard Nixon. 

At that point, I shut off the TV, got up, and added this to the blog posting you are now reading.

Jack Lippman

The Stream of History – So Pertinent Today !

(A Tale of Two Johnsons)

History is like a stream running by, with eddies and currents, sometimes fast-moving, even churning, and other times slowly meandering with barely noticeable motion.  

The “Founding Fathers” sidestepped the issue of slavery when they established our country.  When this evasion could no longer be maintained, and all compromises had been exhausted, our bloody Civil War took place.  In the eyes of most at the time, in both the North and the South, the war was fought to preserve the Union, and not to end slavery.  The seceding States maintained that their “States’ Rights” permitted them to secede and of course, the Federal government disagreed.  The “rights,” of course, in which the seceding States so strongly believed that they were willing to shed blood for them, included their citizens’ right to own slaves.  They feared that the nation was sliding down a slippery slope leading to the abolition of slavery (which had already happened in most Western nations) but rather than come out and say that, they insisted that that the War was about “States’ Rights.” 

The Republican administration, after the Civil War was over, embarked on two courses.  First was reuniting the nation.  Second was dealing with the newly freed slaves.  The Republican Party was split among those who prioritized reuniting the nation and those who believed that guaranteeing the ex-slaves their newly found freedom was more important.  This latter group were known as Radical Republicans, led by Charles Sumner and later, by Thaddeus Stevens.  Today we would call them “civil rights advocates.”  Crucial to determining who would win out in this struggle was the unsuccessful attempt to impeach Andrew Johnson, who had succeeded the assassinated Abraham Lincoln in the White House.

Lincoln had been a fence-sitter between both sides, but many feel he would have ultimately sided with the Radical Republicans. Johnson was a Democrat whom Lincoln selected to be his Vice-Presidential running mate as a sign of unity between the parties and was most unlikely to side with the Radical Republicans. 

Andrew Johnson

Basically, the impeachment was based on Johnson’s supposedly unconstitutional attempts to fire his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton.  Stanton stood with the Radical Republicans in regard to the freed slaves, advocating an extended military government of the South.  Johnson stood with the rest of the Republicans and the Democratic remnant in Congress, both of these groups being more intent on reunification of the nation than on dealing with slavery, and willing to offer amnesty to the former secessionists on a relatively generous basis.    With the failure of Johnson’s impeachment in the Senate by one vote, which was probably bought, the course was set for the fate of the ex-slaves over the next century.  Bringing equality to them would take a back seat.

The next two Presidents, Ulysses S. Grant (1868-1876) and Rutherford B. Hayes (1876-1880) gradually brought the seceding States back into the Union and also attempted the Reconstruction of the South, half-heartedly trying to bring the ex-slaves into the mainstream of American society.  These were turbulent times hallmarked by political corruption, bloody racial violence and deals between the political parties which ignored the underlying purpose of the Civil War, once you got beyond the surface of the “States’ Rights” argument to its core, that of ending slavery.  By the end of Rutherford B. Hayes’ presidency in 1880, “Reconstruction” was over.  The States of the Confederacy, now readmitted to the Union, were dominated by the same former slave-owning upper classes there who, whether they were Republicans or Democrats, cared little about the welfare of the ex-slaves. 

States got away with passing local legislation which hampered equality for the ex-slaves despite the passage of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments (banning slavery and providing equal protection under the law for all).  Radical Republicans got nowhere with their efforts.  Although the Federal government did fight Southern terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, these remained powerful until well into the 20^th century. “Jim Crow” laws segregating schools, transportation and almost everything else in the South were passed and found to be constitutional by a compliant and politicized Supreme Court, and only were challenged when the 1964 Civil Rights Law was passed during the administration of Lyndon Johnson.  Another 54 years have passed since then and many Americans still remain anchored or becalmed somewhere far upstream from today in the stream of history in which today’s events are flowing by us. 

  

Lyndon Johnson

The Radical Republicans of the 1860’s and 1870’s parallel the left wing of today’s Democratic Party.  Were he still alive, Republican Charles Sumner would probably campaign for Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Lopez.  The remaining “regular” Republicans and the Democrats during the last three decades of the 19^th century more or less paralleled today’s Republican Party, having a pro-business orientation and downplaying social issues, including the plight of the former slaves.  Only since the advent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt has a progressive Democratic Party evolved, one that is willing to attempt to swim with the current in the stream of history.  It took a near-fatal economic depression to get America to start to do that by throwing the rascals out during the 1930s and1940s.  But now the rascals are back, and they are busily trying to row upstream against the current.

JL

Five Items of Interest

 Check them out.

JL

1. Sexy Theatre Question 

If you were to go to see a production where the leading female character is played by a male actor, and that female role requires that she impersonate a male, who temporarily impersonates a female for purposes of the plot, what would you be witnessing?  (answer at end of this posting.)

(a) a mildly pornographic film

(b) a nude drama in a basement theatre in Manhattan's East Village

(c) something by William Shakespeare

(d) the annual show at the Fire Island (N,Y) Drama Festival

 2. Bada Book, Bada Bing

In the preceding posting, the demeaning of men in advertisements was discussed. This is most prevalent in television commercials such as the current one which advertises a middle-level hotel chain.  The owner or CEO of the company, a tall, dumb looking gentleman, simplifies everything his staff brings up by saying all one has to do is say “Badda book, badda bing.” 

That expression originated in the one of the Godfather movies where shooting someone up close to get rid of them quickly, “bada bing,” was used.  To make the point that a gunshot was involved, sometimes “bada boom” is added by those using this expression. (It also appeared in the Soprano TV series as the name of Tony Soprano’s strip joint, “Badda Bing.”) 

Obviously, the CEO in the aforementioned commercial is totally unaware of all of this and corrupts the expression to “Badda book, badda bing,” perhaps alluding to the fact that hotels are in the business of “booking” rooms and displaying total ignorance of the actual expression.  In any event, I am still waiting to see a TV commercial where this kind of stupidity is attributed to a female.

3. The Willfully Thick

Some of Kathleen Parker’s Washington Post columns are reproduced a few days later in many newspapers.  I read them in the Palm Beach Post.  On August 9, they published a Parker column dealing with the President which originally appeared on July 27 in the Washington Post.  Oddly, I have been unable to locate it on the various websites, including that of the Washington Post, where her columns are usually accessible.  Nevertheless, here are the concluding words of that column as it appeared in the Palm Beach Post where our country’s growing frustration with the Trump immovable base is aptly described thusly,

“It isn’t possible to use logic with the illogical; it’s futile to explain the obvious to the willfully thick.”

 

Great!  Couldn’t have said it better myself.  Don’t bother arguing with these idiots. Just register and vote, and make sure you get a few other to do the same.

And as an afterthought related to my opposition to the direct popular election of the President, if indeed 40% of our electorate think illogically and are willfully thick, the Founding Fathers were wise is restricting their ability to elect a President on a popular basis back in 1789.  Our democracy wasn’t any more ready for direct election of Presidents then that it is today.

 4. How to Tell You’re Getting Old

Recently, I was driving along 41th Street in Miami Beach with my daughter and some of her friends.  I pointed out that the neighborhood was becoming noticeably Jewish with several “Glatt Kosher” butcher shops and a number of “Hasidim” strolling along the sidewalks.  I then pointed at the street sign which read “41^st Street – Arthur Godfrey Road” and pointed out how ironic this was because Godfrey, a TV personality during the forties and fifties, was known to be an anti-Semite.  A nearby Bal Harbour hotel, the Kenilworth, from which he frequently broadcast, and of which he ultimately became a part-owner, openly rejected Jewish guests.  Some say that Godfrey changed this when he took over the place, but his reputation, deserved or not, still carries that stigma.  

The point I am making is that when I explained all of this, the four younger adults in the car all replied that they had never heard of Arthur Godfrey.  I understand where they were coming from because I most likely have never heard of a lot of entertainers today whose names are household words to those who have never heard of Arthur Godfrey.

 5. Investors:  Dumb or Smart?

One of the non-issues brought up in the Florida Democratic primary race for that party’s gubernatorial nomination is what is touted to be the nation’s biggest shopping mall being built on land west of Miami bordering on the Everglades.  Ignoring its political implications, if any, I seriously question the sanity of the developers and investors who are involved in such a project in an age when existing malls are filled with vacancies (according to the Wall Street Journal, this year’s mall vacancy rate just hit 8.6%, the highest since 2012), as major retail chains are downsizing and as more and more purchases are being made on the internet.  Could it be that investors in the mall expect to lose their shirts in this crazy project, and eagerly anticipate their being able to somehow use those losses to counter the profits made by other investments, thereby reducing their overall tax liability?

Answer to theatrical question asked above:  You’d be at a performance of William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.”

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Jack Lippman