I once saw Ken Burns IRL, walking through the streets of SoHo in the rain, and he appeared to be a nice, unassuming guy. But I don’t know if I can take another one of his miniseries.
Are any of you going to try to watch the “Roosevelts”? I think I know what I need to know about Teddy and Franklin: according to Wikiepdia, Teddy was known for his “`cowboy'” persona and robust masculinity” (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and without even looking at Wikipedia, I know that Franklin was the most important person in the history of western civilization. I don’t know quite as much about Eleanor beyond an SNL bit “What If Eleanor Roosevelt Could Fly?” (soon to be made into a book by Niall Ferguson, btw).
I may try to watch some of “The Roosevelts”, but I think the only way I could stomach that much Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Bechbloss would be if I drank a lot. So how about a “The Roosevelts” drinking game?
Just to start:
A close up of a black and white photo lasts more than 15 seconds — take a drink.
You hear player piano music — take a drink.
Michael Bechbloss and Doris Kearns Goodwin appear onscreen at the same time — finish your glass.
Somebody says “bully pulpit” — take a drink.
Update.
Someone talks about what Obama could learn from FDR — finish the entire bottle.
Botsplainer
Did you get a big dish of beef chow mein?
rea
It seems like you can’t say anything nice about anyone–come sit by Alice and me
Nicole
I’m enjoying reading Traitor to His Class, for what it’s worth.
I finally watched The Civil War last year. It was okay. Glamorized the South a little too much for my taste, as I recall, but I may not have been paying close attention. Historical documentary music makes me drift.
cmorenc
I would be delighted if to be a conservative Republican was to genuinely be like Teddy Roosevelt, the first true progressive president, instead of like the bellicose imperialist cowboy side of T.R. But alas, that is only true in a parallel universe somewhere far, far away.
Violet
“Going to try to watch?” It’s been on all week. Are they replaying the whole thing for a binge watch fest or something?
DougJ
@Violet:
It’s PBS so I can stream it or whatever, right?
c u n d gulag
Are trying to kill us with that drinking game?
I’d watch if Shelby Foote was in it, but he died 9 years ago.
If you haven’t read his Civil War trilogy, please do. He’s a great writer!
And was an historian AND a novelist, which is what makes those books so readable.
I read all three massive books during a month one summer, in the 90’s.
gussie
My 92-year-old father reports that it’s even better than Game of Thrones, though with less ‘raunchy sex.’
Violet
@DougJ: It is PBS. I don’t know about the streaming. I was just confused because the big push for advertising was last week. I think tomorrow is the last broadcast day.
Rasputin's Evil Twin
Anyone notice that TR’s platform in 1912 would have been far too radical for R-Money to endorse in 2012?
Mike E
Totebagger.
Joseph P.
Hear George Will compare the Roosevelts to a Shakespeare play—go out drinking for the rest of the weekend.
different-church-lady
His hair was perfect.
Violet
@different-church-lady: Good Lord, his hair. In 1977 I guess that was okay. It’s not 1977. It looks so weird on him. I guess it’s part of his “brand” these days.
different-church-lady
@DougJ:
No no no, it’s PBS: you buy the extended set of 11 DVDs during pledge month.
StringOnAStick
If you do the Roku thing, you can get the PBS channel and stream it whenever you want, including the last parts that have yet to be broadcast. WE checked last night, and they were all there.
Yes, Burns has a definite style that is easily recognized so, you know what you are getting into at any point. Personally, I enjoy history and I have watched the first 3 segments and will do the last 3 on my own schedule instead of being trapped for 2 hours each night for a week.
For everyone who hates Ken Burns, hates the historians he uses (including lots of George Will, whom I detest), hates the style, etc.,etc.,etc., this series has said more about progressive ideals and what progressives accomplished than anything else ever on TV, and that’s something to be applauded and supported in the days of Koch funding of every fucking thing in media and public life. I wonder how many not so elite liberals have any idea where their 8 hour day, Social Security, or less than a 7 day work week came from? Jesus, people; cynical much?
hueyplong
If Burns doesn’t show this when talking about the 1936 campaign, I’m going to be very unhappy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3RHnKYNvx8
Librarian
@Rasputin’s Evil Twin: TR’s 1912 platform would be too radical for the Democrats to run on in any election today.
judge crater
Are Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Bechloss really on? I’ve been watching Baseball – the Nats are the only important thing in DC.
Violet
@Rasputin’s Evil Twin: Reagan’s platforms would be too liberal for any of today’s Republicans to run on. Let alone Nixon’s.
Cervantes
@Nicole: The tune “Ashoken Farewell,” which was prominent in that series, is actually not historical. It was composed in the early ’80s. (1980s, that is.)
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
But did he find the place called Lee Ho Fook’s?
Tommy
I don’t plan to watch it. Look I think the opening 20 minutes of his series on the Civil War is stunning. His use of the phrase:
Will be forever engrained in my mind. But I find his series so lacking afterwards. To the point dare I say unwatchable.
Suffern ACE
@different-church-lady: But Trader Vic’s closed years ago.
cmorenc
@Nicole:
Taken out of the overall context of what was at stake, there is something quite admirable about the sheer grit, determination, and superior cunning of the South’s fighting men and military leadership during the first two years of the war, who nearly pulled off a huge underdog upset against a Union side that on paper, had vastly superior resources of men and materials, and should have stomped the Confederates into submission inside six months, if not sooner. The thing to take out of my comment above is that the fighting men of both sides, including the Confederacy, are due a grave measure of respect, regardless of the respective merits of their causes.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t pine a bit for the “lost cause” of the Confederacy. The “what ifs” about how close they came to winning during the first half of the war are more like being thankful for the near-miss of a catastrophic asteroid strike than nostalgia for what might have been had it hit.
Taken in context of what was at stake, thankfully the Union had Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant, and for all his frequent tactical brilliance, Gen. Robert E. Lee made enough stupendous blunders that caused the summer of 1863 to turn the tide toward inexorable strangulation and Confederate defeat. The other big-picture thing to note is that for all the admirable grit and determination of the outnumbered Confederate fighting men, for the most part they were suckered and pressured into fighting for a cause that mainly served the interests of the Southern slaveholding elite, in which few of them had any real interest at stake beyond being brainwashed by jingoistic propaganda. They were mostly small barely above subsistence farmers, run-of-the-mill craftsmen, but not plantation owners or owners of large businesses secondarily dependent on the slaveholding plantations.
different-church-lady
@Suffern ACE: In LA, yes. But they’re still around in other places.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
According to Charlie Pierce, GWill is Burns’ go to “presidential historian” this time, including ample critiques of the New Deal from the mind of a wannabe Victorian-era baronet.
I’m putting this on my rainy day/multitasking watch list, maybe for the day I finally sort through all those old papers.
Mike
@c u n d gulag: Foote skews in favor of the slave rebellion. You’d be better off with James McPherson or Bruce Catton for that matter. An illuminating recent work emphasizing the disaster for all concerned in the south is The Fall of the House of Dixie, by Bruce Levine.
srv
It’s a lovely tote.
Linnaeus
Would you like to meet his tailor?
shortstop
@Nicole: Damn you! Now I’m going to hear that horrible (not even historic) tune all damn day.
I once took fiddling lessons at the Old Town School of Folk Music, ’cause I don’t know why. Our teacher loved actual Civil War camp tunes. I’d come home and play stuff like this and the third baseman would literally charge out of the house and stay gone for hours.
Cervantes
Not me, thanks.
Quite.
Anyway, a few weeks ago I was re-reading an old book about FDR and came across this:
There it was, stark and precise.
Not that we didn’t know, even at the time … but seeing it again in black and white like that … stopped me cold for a long minute.
Redshift
I’m actually enjoying it a lot (as long as I hit mute whenever George Will is on.) There’s a lot that I didn’t know, like, for example, that there was an assassination attempt on FDR shortly before he took office.
And I would disagree about Will being a “go to” in this series; he doesn’t seem to be on nearly as much as the real historians. And he’s not being especially awful, I mostly mute him because I don’t trust anything he says to be true, and I don’t want to expend the extra mental effort of filtering it out.
CaseyL
I’m enjoying the mini-series. Yes, TR and FDR are so well known you wouldn’t think there was anything more to say about them. I think the series does a very good job of presenting them “warts and all,” and it does give much more focus to Eleanor than she usually gets.
One interesting bit that I didn’t know was the growing rivalry/antipathy between the two branches of the Roosevelt family after Teddy died. Teddy’s family considered FDR’s branch upstarts; Alice (Teddy’s daughter) supported the GOP Presidential candidate rather than FDR. I knew Alice had been cruel to FDR and Eleanor, but I’d always thought that was just personal malice; I hadn’t known there was a bitter rivalry between the two branches of the family.
And, yeah, listening to Teddy’s speeches on behalf of the Progressive/Bull Moose ticket was surreal, in terms of how radical those ideas would be today.
Steve in the ATL
@cmorenc:
Sounds a lot like today’s Republican voters
shortstop
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The other option is to watch it with the sound off. I love looking at the old photos and footage, but George Will’s editorializing is too high a price to pay. Actually, I’ll probably watch the whole thing and just complain a lot.
eric
@Cervantes: “The wife whom he respected but did not love […]” I assume this is from the Clinton documentary.
jayboat
All this talk of werewolves makes me think of David Lindley and El Rayo-X’s great cover of Zevon’s masterpiece.
catclub
The Mark Twain was good IF you then go and read Mark Twain.
The National Parks one was good for the same reason – go and visit the parks.
Kind of like Zinn’s History. If you then go and read the original sources, it is worthwhile. If you just sit back on your ass and treat it as authoritative, or particularly accurate, then not so much.
jayboat
Ok, maybe ‘masterpiece’ was a bit much.
Redshift
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I ate at Lee Ho Fook’s a couple of times. Of course I had the beef chow mein. It was okay, and the service was surly, which seemed appropriate somehow.
cmorenc
@Steve in the ATL:
That was precisely the next logical step I expected readers of my comment would take – one I completely agree with.
Tommy
@cmorenc: I loved the show but my father who has a PhD in Civil War history can’t stand it. Would go on for hours about how wrong it was. Livid in fact. But honestly he spent most of his adult life thinking about it and I don’t have that time, so I guess I will never know.
Cacti
@cmorenc:
Lee’s reputation is stupendously overrated by lost cause hagiographers.
While he was an excellent tactician, he was a poor strategist. Tactics win battles, strategy wins wars.
His strategic decisions to invade the north for a second time, and not reinforce Vicksburg sowed the seeds of the south’s ultimate defeat.
catclub
@Tommy: Just ask jazz listeners what they think of Burns’ documentary. But stand back first.
Redshift
@CaseyL: Yeah, the stuff about Eleanor doing some vicious campaigning to get back at TR’s grandson for the way he’d treated them in an earlier campaign made me remark “important rule: don’t piss off Eleanor Roosevelt.”
Cervantes
@DougJ: The web-site provides access for a certain period after broadcast. I know there is an iOS app that does the same. There may be other avenues.
Cacti
@CaseyL:
I also never knew about how when TR’s son Ted was running for governor of New York, Eleanor and some friends would follow him to campaign stops in a car with a giant steaming paper mache teapot on the roof, to emphasize Ted’s closeness to the Harding Administration and the Teapot Dome scandal.
This was considered a huge betrayal, as Eleanor came from the Oyster Bay branch of the family and was Ted’s first cousin. Apparently he never forgave her for it.
Cervantes
@catclub: What of Zinn’s did you not find particularly accurate? Any examples?
Punchy
Didn’t Doris Kearns Goodwin used to date Teddy Roosevelt?
Nicole
@Cervantes: Sorry; I should have been clearer with my use of modifiers- I was referring to that kind of generic music I associate with historical documentaries. It makes me sleepy. Though that is interesting trivia that it was composed in the 1980s. I think if the composer had perhaps taken advantage of the early 1980s and gone for more of a New Romantic sound, it would have given The Civil War several more much-needed degrees of awesome. And keyboard.
And now I suddenly have an intense desire to rewatch Ladyhawke.
Bob In Portland
It’s a good show. A lot to learn about the Roosevelts.
Speaking of things to learn, here’s another report on the shoot down of MH17.
WaynersT
Watching every minute & love it. TR had a major war fetish- see why McCain loves him so. They’re both war nuts.
And nothing more humorous than George F’ing Will pontificating on the glories of trust busting.
cmorenc
@Cacti:
Exactly right – these are some of the major blunders by Lee which I had in mind that undid the benefits of his frequent tactical brilliance. We can be thankful that Lee wasn’t a more consistently good military strategist than he was, but you have to give it to him that he was good enough (in combination with the incompetence and sheer fecklessness of the Union high command for most of the first two years, especially George McClellan) that he kept the Union army on its heels prior to summer of 1863.
Ejoiner
gotta say – for my money – Comedy Channel’s “Drunk History” tops everything. Funny, informative and -even!- educational. Too bad I can’t use it in my high school class :)
Cacti
@Bob In Portland:
Commrade Bob!
I hear the rouble sank to an all-time low against the dollar and euro, and Russian authorities are warning against a panic.
That must be a real pisser for your purchasing power, no?
Tommy
@catclub: Oh I bet. I like Jazz. I am a huge baseball fan, well Cardinals at least. I spent a lot of time in National Parks. But I am not anything close to an expert on any field I just mentioned that Burns did a series on. Maybe I am stupid but I see something on PBS and assume it is true. I’ve learned that might not be the case.
p.a.
Have not read Foote, but his commentary in The Civil War was in line with the post war romanticism of The Lost Cause, States’ Rights not Slavery, Wasn’t Everyone Involved Noble schools of thought. MacPherson shows this to be part and parcel of Guilded Age racialist reconciliation between white society North and South. Foote was not close to the worst purveyor of this, but he was of this tradition. One of his pieces I liked was his admission (paraphrasing) that the North fought with one hand behind its back: using resources expanding westward and while waging war.
I liked Burns’ Prohibition.
cmorenc
@WaynersT:
And this is really why so many in the GOP can say with a straight face that they admire TR and gladly claim him as one of their own, blithely ignoring that TR is the godfather of progressivism. Of course, there’s also the sheer willingness of the GOP to distort and tell bald-face lies about historical facts, in service of propaganda, taking what kernels of truth there may be buried within completely out of context (i.e. the fact that TR was a Republican – back in an era when the democratic party was substantially the more regressive one).
Chris
@Steve in the ATL:
Yep. Substitute small businessmen and middle class professionals high on American Dream/rags to riches mythology for farmers and craftsmen, and Wall Street for slave owners, and you’re there.
Belafon
My wife has been watching it. I caught a part last night where they talked about the other woman in FDR’s life, his secretary.
catclub
@Cervantes: I am not enough of a historian to know. (So I overreached in saying inaccurate about Zinn. I meant more about not taking Burns as being the last word on his subjects.) My understanding is that the bibliography is the most valuable part of his book.
RaflW
So far, no Michael Beschloss (nor any Michael Bechbloss either).
George Will is his insufferable self, but in the first 4 episodes doesn’t appear all that often and by turns either says bland, benign stuff or embarrasses himself (or both). He looks old and washed up, perhaps with a case of pink eye, and his hair is preposterous. George, you’re old. You are not blonde anymore. Face it.
Other than that, I like it. Though it could easily be about 50% shorter.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaynersT: Whenever I heard McCain claim to be a political descendant of TR, I think of “malefactors of great wealth”
Chris
@CaseyL:
Just out of curiosity, do you know which branch of the family Kermit Roosevelt (our man in Iran in 1953) was in?
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
1) You know that “T’wasn’t us!” media statement from Russia is not the report that counts. The one that does is due from the Dutch Safety Board next year.
2) But maybe you might have something to say about this.
Cacti
@Chris:
The TR/Oyster Bay branch.
Rand Careaga
Addressing only the presidents here, I’ll probably wait for the DVD release, but TR seems a worthy subject–think of it, apart from Eisenhower the only Republican president of the XX century (OK, let’s give Taft half a point for relative inoffensiveness; debit a fifth of that for his appalling progeny) a progressive today might regard with qualified approval–and FDR, for all his flaws, was a titan in US history. Lincoln apart, there’s no one else in the pantheon fit to stand beside him.
dww44
I’m gonna comment without first reading any of the others. As a youngish senior citizen and a history major and one time teacher, I have to say that I think it is wonderfully done. Plus there’s a lot of food for thought ,like the whole thing about war (George Will said that Teddy was truly a war monger and pretty much was clear that that was one of TR’s least attractive traits). George Will is actually quite measured in his comments thus far.. Complimentary about FDR. on one occasion. The historians “weighing- ins” add much to one’s understanding of all of the Roosevelts, both as people and as historical figures..
Realize that all cannot be a fan of either Ken Burns or of his series, but I think that you do him and PBS and us a disservice by mocking this series. It plays like a movie, and fYI, it isn’t over until Saturday night.
I loved Burns series about the Depression and I think this is even better. All of the young ones (anyone younger than me by a couple of decades) can learn lots from watching this series. For me, it’s the lesson that war is far too easy to buy into but it was a lot harder then than it is now and that the very same battles we fought then, for the environment, for labor, for the social safety net, are never sacrosanct or secure. They must be defended always.
catclub
@p.a.:
It did remind me that there has always been crazy in the US electorate, and sometimes it wins spectacularly – in a ‘heighten the contradictions’ way. The damage done by Prohibition was mostly temporary.
Chris
@cmorenc:
Weren’t the original neocons former left wingers? There’s a Nixonian vibe from some of these guys, as in “don’t give a shit about domestic things, I just support whoever lets us righteously bomb the most people.” I can see them fitting right in with the Bull Moose Party.
Also, I’ve heatd similar revisionist narratives about Truman and even JFK, claiming that they’d totally be conservative today.
Cacti
@dww44:
It also let you know that after TR’s eagerness to send his sons off to the killing fields of WWI, it got his son Quentin killed, and his son Archie crippled for life.
PurpleGirl
I’ve been watching the series but I think I missed last night’s show (and I’m not sure why I didn’t turn it on). However, I’m in the NYC/Long Island market and WLIW will rerun the series next week and I can catch it then.
I’ve read a bit about Eleanor and so far Burns has treated her well. My main reference about her is the 2-volume set by Joseph P. Lash. Lash also wrote a single volume about Eleanor called “Life Was Meant to Be Lived.” The 2-volumes by Lash are “Eleanor and Franklin” and “Eleanor: The Years Alone.”
cleek
@catclub:
it’s perfect if you are cool with there being only two people worth listening to: Armstrong and Ellington. otherwise, it’s merely really good.
Chris
@Cacti:
Figures.
shelley
No matter how old he gets he still looks around 12. Kearns is okay, it’s very-serious-person George Wills that brings on the delirium tremens.
Cervantes
@Chris:
That would be Kermit Junior, TR’s grandson.
Missouri Buckeye
@Violet:
PBS will be streaming the entire series until the end of next week.
So far no mention of how Obama should have emulated FDR, but we’re just at the point now where FDR got elected.
Personally, I don’t get the Ken Burns hate I’m seeing here. I didn’t care for “Baseball” due to the extreme New York-centric view, but the others I’ve seen have been really good.
The worst part of this one has been George Will, and not because of what he says here (It’s been fine), it’s how it compares to the rest of his public pronouncements.
Cervantes
@catclub: OK, thanks.
Missouri Buckeye
@Rand Careaga: Why wait for the DVD? You can stream the entire series right now, until the end of next week.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Redshift: Surly seems exactly appropriate!
azlib
The miniseries has been fun to watch, but George Will? Really? As a Presidential historian friend of ours said “What Will knows about TR could be housed in a thimble with room left over.”
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
Actually, I tend to agree with catclub: After reading A People’s History of the United States, I got a sense that you had to be familiar with the mainstream presentation of American history to really get Zinn’s alternative take on it.
Louise
@StringOnAStick: Thank you.
Missouri Buckeye
@catclub: The guy who hosts the Jazz show broadcast Sunday nights on St. Louis Public Radio thought the Jazz documentary did an incredible disservice to the pianist Bill Evans (due to ‘reverse racism’, since Evans was White). I don’t know exactly what else he thought, but I think not much of it was good.
ET
@judge crater: I have been watching and Doris has been. The last episode that finished was with FDRs election to the WH so maybe Michael will show up for that.
I have been enjoying it if that means anything……
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid: Raises the question: Do people understand quantum physics better if they are already familiar with the ins and outs of dephlogistication?
Aside: Really glad to know people, even unto Malaysians, are still reading Zinn.
Tenar Darell
@Cervantes: @DougJ: Yep. There’s a pretty decent streaming app from PBS. Not sure how long a documentary being broadcast over a week will be available; weeklies usually available to stream for a week I think. The documentary is 7 parts, 2 hours apiece. (Not for the faint of heart).
As for Eleanor, don’t diss her, she was heroic, by any stretch of the imagination. Yesterday I learned something new, Louis Howe (the guy who got FDR elected) told her he could get her elected President, she was that integral to FDR’s mass appeal.
Kyle
@different-church-lady: Actually, I can stream PBS, so assume others can. But I’m DVRing the thing. Informative but not life changing. I was educated in the Alabama public schools, so I get my history wherever I can.
The Civil War was about as good as television has gotten, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve watched that over and over.
JimV
“For everyone who hates Ken Burns, hates the historians he uses (including lots of George Will, whom I detest), hates the style, etc.,etc.,etc., this series has said more about progressive ideals and what progressives accomplished than anything else ever on TV, and that’s something to be applauded and supported in the days of Koch funding of every fucking thing in media and public life. I wonder how many not so elite liberals have any idea where their 8 hour day, Social Security, or less than a 7 day work week came from? Jesus, people; cynical much?”
Hear, hear. Or whatever it is that people say to approve of what has been said these days.
Yes, these people had warts. So do you.
jl
I know I would not be able to take all the schmaltzy, folksy and inspiring, music filler. I can read a book on it. Or when it is avaialbe for download or CD, can skip through for actual content.
If I want the music, I’ll check out the Smithsonian online collections.
So, hope it’s useful to some people.
Jeff
Watched some of it. Groaned out loud when I saw George Will was in it, though the comments he made were rather bland. I just can’t stand the way some of the historians ASSERT that they KNOW EXACTLY what was going through a person’s head on a certain night one hundred years ago.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Tenar Darell:
PBS is already streaming the entire series.
Schlemazel
@different-church-lady:
But did he have a chinese menu in his hand?
BGinCHI
I’m sorry I’m so late to this thread. I have watched the first two episodes and I have to say despite the positive reviews I heard everywhere it is AWFUL.
The talking heads are pathetic, including Fucking George Fucking Will and Doris Plagiarist I Heart the Red Sox Goodwin. Neither has anything to say you couldn’t read with less annoying diction at wikipedia.
The only thing you learn about Teddy Roosevelt is what you already knew about him. Even the pictures are mediocre. Yes, we see the big houses on the Hudson and on LI, thanks.
I don’t know what the fuck the reviewers say, cuz this is just shitty all around.
Cervantes
@Tenar Darell:
That she was.
I assume everyone knows how she fought on Marian Anderson’s side against the so-called Daughters of the American Republic.
Here’s something else she wrote for her newspaper column some years later:
This was written sixty years ago.
Schlemazel
@cmorenc: Foote made one thing perfectly clear on the series ( I vaguely remember the lines of examples) that the North never really engaged 100% in the war. Foote’s concluding statement was “[the North] fought the war with one hand behind its back & had there been a real chance of losing would have unlimbered that arm”.
Bob In Portland
@Cacti: Can’t get out of the fifties Cold War propaganda machine, can you? Us v. Them.
We are supporting Nazis. And you’re good with that because Putin. You must be just happy with the House of Saud because Yemeni rebels, right?
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: Ah, falling into the “this truth counts, this one doesn’t”. Remember when the death squads the US supported in Latin America were freedom fighters? Remember when the US defended South Vietnam against World Communism? Ah, who would have thought that Balloon Juice was a haven for nostalgic cold warriors?
Here’s a review of an interesting BBC piece about those invisible Russian helicopters.
I would note that the lot of a foreign reporter, especially one so identified with one side of a fight, hasn’t been particularly good around the world over the last few years.
Feel free to extrapolate and tell me why it’s important about this article in your world view of things.
Schlemazel
@p.a.:
I read Foote’s massive 3 book history & there is no love or sympathy for the rebellion. There is a forgiveness & gentleness for Southerners but it hardly unexpected & didn’t, in my mind, displace the harsh opinion he held for the cause. He stated that Nathaniel Bedford Forrest was one of 2 true geniuses of the war (Lincoln being the other) but does not gloss over a bit of NBFs ugly behavior prior to or during the war.
That first book lays out in very great detail exactly why expansion of slavery was the one & only cause of the war. Without listing them he knocks down every other argument by showing how that argument has its root & stem in slavery.
Regnad Kcin
left out of this hagiography is what truly subpar thinkers the two guys were (Eleanor was a dandy) — they were no credit to our alma mater
Schlemazel
@Chris:
Kermit was TRs grandson so definitely Oyster Bay Roosevelt. But you could have guessed that by the year & who was in the White House.
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
Not that what I’m about to say is relevant to anything, but re the US and Franco and Pinochet, there are similarities.
Schlemazel
As sick as it is to have GWill-ikers on the WORST was last night. Jonathan Alter popped up unbidden for the first (and hopefully ONLY) time.
He totally misconstrues “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” and attempts to make it seem FDR was so out of touch he didn’t get that people were afraid they might not eat tomorrow. I seriously hope Alter is not that stupid or else how could he find his way to work. He is just an evil pustual on the ass of politics.
raven
I’ve really enjoyed it. Will isn’t even that bad.
Bob In Portland
For Mnem.
p.a.
@Schlemazel: I will check him out. Tks.
Bob In Portland
@Cervantes: And post-WWII Spain played a key role in the ratlines around the world. Meanwhile, the US was cultivating Nazis from Ukraine, here in the US and elsewhere. Seventy years of history. Seventy years, though, is too far to see.
gogol's wife
I haven’t read the thread yet, but I’m finding the series addictive (and I’ve never watched any of his things before). Last night’s sequence on Warm Springs was fantastic. You have to kind of read the paper while you’re watching it and dip in and out or you’ll OD, and Meryl Streep is extremely annoying, but Geoffrey Ward is excellent and there’s not too much Will.
Paul in KY
@Cacti: That’s the kind of hardball ‘calling a duck, a duck’ that (IMO) Pres. Obama doesn’t like to do. Or doesn’t do enough, whether he likes it or not.
gogol's wife
@Schlemazel:
Yes, that was jarring. I wish they’d just have Ward and maybe that Blanche lady, she’s good.
gogol's wife
@Regnad Kcin:
Have you been listening? I think that point has been made repeatedly on the series.
Woodrowfan
enjoying it so far. it’s not bad, except for George Will’s hairpiece which should be given its own habitat in the the National Zoo.
Zinn is terrible.Given the time he was writing it was an understandable reaction to the excesses (and crimes) of the Cold War, but it’s about as reliable a history as, well, as George Will would write.
Ken Burns does OK series. Disliked his baseballs series because it was all New York and Boston. It’s as if there were no teams west of the Hudson….
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
I know, it’s so mean of the Ukrainians to not let corrupt politicians run rampant. Who do they think they are, trying to get politicians to do their jobs rather than take bribes and enrich themselves at the public expense? That’s what government is for, right, Bob?
BC
I enjoy watching Eleanor become her own person. She and FDR may not have had a happy marriage, but they respected each other in the political arena.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Second day in a row you’ve defended Nazis. But they can’t be Nazis, because if they were the NY Times would have said so. Or Rachel Maddow.
Now they’ll be going through a million civil service people to purge those who aren’t true believers. Utterly clueless, aren’t you? You may be able to look up modified swastikas for fringe Russian fascist groups but you still haven’t gotten around to googling the “wolfsangel” yet, have you?
Your next diversionary tactic is to look for an equivalent in Russia to point at. The US, as far as I know, hasn’t been financing Russian fascists (although they certainly were financing the Chechens, and they could easily be classified as fascist). The US caused the coup, have been backing the fascists for SEVENTY YEARS. This mess in Ukraine is the culmination of lots and lots of your taxes. Enjoy. I’m guessing that when the winter sets in and there is starvation in the streets we’ll get down to killing the minorities in the rump state. Stand proud, Mnem, you’ve chosen your side.
Schlemazel
@BC:
My grandmothers sister was a maid in Elliot R’s home (Eleanor’s father) But that was in the very early days of the 20th Century. She would just glow when she talked about Eleanor. My mom & grandmother always spoke of her as something very special. I knew enough stories to understand. Later I learned about her married life and admired her so much more. She was something very special.
But it occurred to me while watching last night, had FDR been a decent husband & her MIL not been a towering bitch she probably would never have blossomed into such a ferocious fighter for humanity.
The other big thing I don’t think people get is how much of a ‘class-traitor’ TR & FDR were. Imagine if Rmoney had gotten elected and enacted actual corporate and banking reforms, had built social security & jump started the economy with the WPA. The Roosevelts were old money, entrenched, powerful, connected and secure old money. That they turned in the best performances of the century is an astounding thing. TR mental make up and history should have precluded him from power. It was only that connection to wealth and power that gave him the chance. FDR would have been a broken cripple if not for an unlimited supply of funds and the time to do nothing but spend it trying to recover from polio. It would have been so easy for either of them to back the wealthy and well connected like Willard would. We got lucky.
drkrick
@jayboat:
Lindley was on the original, wasn’t he?
Schlemazel
Боб в Портленде
What time is it in Moscow right now? How’s the weather? The KHL has started by now, right? Do you think Koshechkin can backstop Metallurg Mg to the top this season?
drkrick
@Cacti:
He was a lot less effective after he lost Jackson’s ability to translate his broad strokes into actionable orders. Gettysburg would have gone a lot differently if Jackson had been commanding the Confederate forces approaching town from the north during the first day.
Bob In Portland
For those with the ability to set aside propaganda for a moment, here is a piece describing the political infighting in both Novorussia and the rump state of Ukraine.
How this will sort out will be interesting, but I’m guessing at the end of the process there won’t be much of a Ukraine to kick around. I bet there’ll be NATO troops in there before too long, but they might need a passport to take their R&R in Odessa next summer.
No matter, the purpose of this US exercise is to destabilize a region next to Russia’s border, to disrupt gas to Europe and offer them our fracked gas in return, and to eventually retake all those oilfields that were once in Herbert Hoover’s pre-WWI portfolio, even as the world should be getting away from petroleum as fast as it can.
Bob In Portland
@Schlemazel: I have no idea. Can’t you google it? Maybe not. You haven’t googled “wolfsangel” yet either, have you?
drkrick
@Chris:
Truman was too racially progressive for today’s GOP in 1948, so I doubt it. They’ve got a point with JFK – if alive today he’d have been living without most of his brain for 50 years and would fit right in.
Schlemazel
@drkrick:
For one they may have actually followed Lee’s ‘suggestion’ & not engaged the Union before he was ready.
OTOH, Lee lost every time he went on the offensive. A lot of his supposed skill was simply having the shorter lines with better position. Toss in bold moves born of desperation that worked largely because of the incompetence of Union officers and you have the basis for his legend. Longstreet was a smarter general & had Lee listened to him at Gettysburg they might have continued on in PA for a few more weeks & gotten lucky by accident. They still would have lost the war but it is sad that Longstreet took the blame for Lord Lee’s blunder.
Schlemazel
Боб в Портленде
So you don’t live in Moscow? That nice as the winters there suck worse than the ones out here on the frozen tundra. Google suggestions? Well you could try opening a browser to 127.0.0.1, I am sure you will find someone there willing to engage in your bullshit.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
I think the Chechens are what people like you call “Islamo-fascists.”
And I love how you still can’t face the fact that Ukraine is an independent country from Russia. You’ve been pissed off about the breakup of the Soviet Union since 1991 and you can’t wait for Putin to get the band back together, even if it means he has to force them back into the fold. Sure, you cover it up by blathering about “fascists” and “neo-Nazis,” but what you really want is for Greater Russia to have sway over that entire region again, no matter how many gay people have to go to jail to get your way.
Russia puts a pink triangle on its LGBT citizens and all Bob can do is point to Ukraine and say, Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
Violet
@Bob In Portland:
Isn’t that precious.
Mike E
Betelgeuse!
Betelgeuse!
Betelgeuse!
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Schlemazel:
The military theory taught at West Point in Lee’s era was Jominian. It emphasized two things: interior lines and and bringing the most force to the decisive point at the right time.* Lee was considered by his contemporaries to have mastered this better than anyone. As it turned out, industrialization had changed warfare and Grant and Sherman adjusted far better to the new circumstances than Lee ever did.
*Grossly simplified.
p.a.
@Schlemazel: wasn’t Longstreet a ‘scalawag’ post war? Or at least a ‘We lost, get over it and move on’ Southerner?
Bob In Portland
@Schlemazel: Here you go, Schlem.
Just to make sure, you are saying a 2014 equivalent to “America, Love it or leave it.” You see that, don’t you? You see that you are the same reactionary prick under your skin as the assholes who supported the Vietnam War, right?
I am an American. I want the best for my country. The best for my country doesn’t include starting wars with Russia, Iraq, Iran, Syria or Afghanistan. It didn’t involve going to war in Vietnam, or backing the 1965 coup in Indonesia, or backing death squads in Latin America.
You noticed that yesterday Congress voted for money to train “moderate” Syrian rebels, right? You think that’s money better spent than, say, rebuilding Detroit or treating wounded vets in VA hospitals? If you don’t then why don’t you drag your sorry ass out of the country? Love it or leave it, my friend.
Are these things, in your mind, good for America? Oh, people here at Balloon Juice seem to be able to whine about wars when a second cousin gets a leg blown off in Kabul, and they whine about McCain wanting more war, but this one, Ukraine, is off-limits. It’s okay to have a war there because what? Does anti-Russian propaganda and US corporate interests in that region meld well with the petty Nazis in Ukraine because…Putin?
Russia is a socially conservative country, and socially conservative countries become more conservative when attacked. I don’t like the mindset in Iran either. However, the whole Iran nuclear bomb story is hogwash and rather irrelevant considering that Israel has had at least several hundred nukes for the last quarter century, in violation of international law.
So, Schlemazel, it’s America, love it or leave it. Stay pure, buddy, and get an appropriate armband for your evening wear.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bob In Portland:
rofl.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bob In Portland
@Violet: Precious, this.
If you even knew this, you’ve somehow compartmentalized it so that helping Nazis overthrow an elected government is okay because…what? Putin? Obama’s the President? And those “moderate Syrian rebels”, they’re at least better than what Bush’s rebels would have been. Destroying Libya’s infrastructure was a positive thing because…what?
If you are rooting for the Kiev government you are rooting for Nazis. Every day it gets harder to avoid. You must keep your eyes averted or you will see, and then you will have to leave America too, because you won’t love its wars. So sad.
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Rolling on the floor with Nazis. How are you enjoying your casus belli these days? Cheers.
Violet
@Bob In Portland:
Now you’re in my brain?
JustRuss
@WaynersT:
Oh indeed. And last night Will’s only appearance was to explain that FDR’s polio opened his eyes to the virtues of, I kid you not, empathy. I’m not sure if Burns is messing with us or George Will, but I’m impressed either way.
Mike in NC
I was appalled to see that asshole George Will on this series. Several years ago he was praising a revisionist history of the Great Depression called “The Forgotten Man” by Amity Shlaes. A bunch of horseshit about how Hoover had it right while FDR and the New Deal were the real disaster.
Anya
This might not make me one of the cool kids but I think Ken Burns is a national treasure. I love all of his documentaries. I am watching the Roosevelts and I am enjoying it. It made me love Eleanor even more.
geg6
@catclub:
You’ll probably never read this, but here I go anyway…
Who cares what jazz aficionados think of Burns’ jazz doc? It wasn’t and isn’t aimed at them. It’s aimed at people like me who really don’t much like jazz and who don’t know much about it but are willing to learn about something they don’t really like or know much about.
That’s what’s great about Burns’ docs. They give people without a lot of knowledge about the subject enough information and interest to go and learn more. I knew a lot about the Civil War when I watched that one in its first run, but even though I saw many flaws, I saw the value in what he had done. I found the same thing happening with the Baseball doc, too. I hadn’t been watching baseball for years (being a Pirate fan might have had something to do with that), but watching Burns’ baseball doc taught me a lot about the game that I didn’t know and helped me go back to being a fan again.
Heliopause
There’s no more Doris Kearns Goodwin in this thing than you get from an average week of Daily Show/Colbert. Far worse is George Will, who is getting more face time, and while what he’s saying is sensible enough his hair is painful to look at.
Bob In Portland
@Violet: Read the Russian report and then read the one out of Amsterdam.
Thanking you in advance for your open-mindedness in reviewing the report.
Anniecat45
@Chris:
Oyster Bay. He was one of TR’s sons.
dww44
@Missouri Buckeye: Yep, You and I definitely agree. Don’t know know how any fair minded viewer would come down negatively on this series thus far and I’ve watched every single one and will watch the rest.
Bob In Portland
@Steve in the ATL: It sounds a lot like today’s BJers when it comes to Ukraine. Read the report before another chorus of “America, love it or leave it.”
geg6
@Chris:
TR’s branch, naturally.
dww44
@JimV: Do you hear my very loud applause for your remarks?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Bob In Portland:
Are you totally unaware of the history of Russian relations with it’s conquered neighbors prior to the birth of fascism, or only mostly unaware? How about the centuries-long policy of Russification?
Cervantes
@Woodrowfan:
No examples?
Cervantes
@Anniecat45: No, he was a grand-son.
geg6
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Russia is pure as the driven snow and America and Ukrainians are the second coming of the SS. WHAT ABOUT THIS DON’T YOU GET? IT’S NAZIS, NAZIS, NAZIS AND NOBODY ELSE CAUSING PROBLEMS IN THE UKRAINE! PUTIN IS SIMPLY THE CHURCHILL/ROOSEVELT OF OUR TIME AND YOU SHITTY UKRAINIAN NAZI WORSHIPPERS WILL NEVER GET IT!
catclub
@geg6: I don’t think we disagree.
Somebody said this earlier in the thread:
dww44
@gogol’s wife: Interestingly, my husband and I recently drove the hour and half over to Warm Springs and toured the Little White House. It’s a state park now and the pool is still there but mostly not used but a couple of times a year although there is still a rehab center in operation.
About a decade ago, the state built a museum in front of the Little White House and it really is worth the visit. They’ve two of the quite spiffy vehicles that FDR drove around the hills and valleys of the area (it really is a Southern finger of the Appalachians that underlies the geography of the area). Those trips of his helped to birth the REA.
The last thing we did was to take a trip to FDR”S favorite vacation spot at Dowdell’s Knob on the top of Pine Mountain. Really is a nice view and there’s a statue of FDR commerating his many picnics there. I too thoroughly enjoyed the part from last evening about Warm Springs. For many decades after his death, this state was quite proud of its FDR connections. Maybe it will be again.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@geg6:
TYVM. One criticism, though: Needs more caps.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Cervantes:
Japan invades Manchuria: Zinn paints FDR as an enabler who should have rather gone to war post haste.
Japan bombs Pearl Harbor: Zinn paints FDR as warmonger supreme.
Johnnybuck
@geg6: “Jazz” is awesome. I didn’t know anything about it really, before I watched it. not only did I learn a lot, I became a fan of the music, particularly Be-bop. I thought “Baseball” was a little long winded for the subject frankly, but I enjoyed it. liking “The Roosevelt’s” as well in spite of George Will.
gogol's wife
@dww44:
I loved the lady who had been a patient there. She had the most beautiful accent.
Dave
I’m a boomer in my mid-60’s, retired engineer, and hated every history class I had to take in school. Had I known that real history was so interesting, I might have been a history major, like one of my sons.
I’ve watched 3 episodes so far, and while many of you think the show inaccurate and vapid, I’ll take what I can get. I was born into a blue collar family, and was the first to get a college degree. My parents were veterans and solid progressive Democrats. In our house, FDR was a saint. I am finding a lot in this series that I had never been exposed to before.
If for no other reason, I am hoping a lot of younger people are watching, because the only saint most of them have been exposed to is Ronnie Raygun. Perhaps this could open some eyes. I hope so, because a progressive future is the only hope for our progeny having decent lives, if they aren’t born to wealth and/or privilege.
Mnemosyne
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Sorry, I thought you knew that the US’s actions in Ukraine 70 years ago are much, much more relevant to today’s events than Brezhnev’s Russification actions of 40 years ago or the Orange Revolution of 10 years ago that threw Yanukovych out once before. Please try to keep up. ;-)
Bob In Portland
@geg6: This.
Are you familiar with WACL and its various iterations? Do you think that if you read The Nation you will automatically become a communist or something? The US has utilized fascist movements around the world since WWII, mostly to attack the then-Soviet Union and discourage anti-colonialist movements around the world. Or do you deny that?
Yes, there is a history, and the Soviet Union did suppress the Nazi collaborators after WWII. Stalin’s agricultural program in the thirties killed millions more. The peculiar mythology now embedded in Kiev is that pure-blooded Ukrainians would lead the West if only they could eliminate the Jewish Moskal mafia at home and abroad. (And yes, I know that it’s rather odd that there are Jewish oligarchs in Ukraine who are on the fascist bandwagon, but then you can look at that cradle of democracy and love in Tel Aviv for a current-day model.) The Banderista collaborators killed a lot of people in Ukraine back in the war, probably over a million Jews and Poles before they ever got into combat. These are the people who were coddled and fermented for the past 70 years by the US intelligence services. But that’s not an end to the story. There’s the Arrow Cross, the Ustachi, the fascists who evolved on the Latin American plantations that supply bananas to us, the Nazis who escaped to South Africa, too.
So maybe you’re at ease with the US backing fascists for its corporate interests, or the alternative is too hard for you to get your lobes around. But if you rattled your sword about MH17 you would do yourself a disservice not to read the Russian report regarding the shootdown. After you read that, and you go back and recognize the Kiev disclosure of the alleged “recorded conversations of rebels admitting to shooting down the plane” for what it is along with the peculiar loss of the air tower conversations with MH17 you will be hardpressed not admit what is in front of your face.
Mary Brown
My husband and I fell asleep on the couch watching it last night. If we partake in the drinking game we’ll both need liver transplants.
Bob In Portland
Nest stop for destabilization, Armenia!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bob In Portland: Rather than accusing everyone who disagrees with and Vald as being Nazi sympathizers, maybe you could try another tack.
Please answer the following Yes or No questions:
1) Do you believe that a soverign state that has been militarily invaded by its neighbor without a declaration of war is in the right to defend itself?
2) Do you believe that a sovereign state has the right to enter into economic agreements and treaties with other nations if it so chooses?
3) Do you believe that Ukraine is a sovereign state?
Just Yes or No, please. We can get into the reasons for your answers later, if necessary.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Schlemazel
@Bob In Portland:
as if anything you post is worth reading. You are a joke, understand that.
Bob In Portland
@Schlemazel: That’s it, Schlemazel. You’re safe if you don’t read it, you intellectual coward.
But in case you want to know where our next war will be, dip into what’s been happening over the last few years.
Keep those eyes closed tightly. We have always been at war with Eastasia, champ. Just in case you want a head start in learning a new foreign language prior to deployment.
Your problem is mistaking Wahhabis for moderates, but then your media isn’t helping you. Do you actually get scared when confronted with a link I put up? Did you know that they beheaded seventeen people in Saudi Arabia last month?
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
So which book do we need to read to understand that the Armenians are all neo-Nazis under American control and Russia is only defending themselves when they invade Armenia?
Schlemazel
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
seems exactly right to me from my reading
@p.a.:
I really need to read more on post war but it is my understanding that afterwards there was a search for someone to blame. Nobody was going to blame Robert Jesus Lee so it fell on Longstreet & his “timidity in PA to take the blame.
Me personally? Nobody is more responsible for the loss than Lee (though I will gladly argue there is no way the South could ever have won as even if Lincoln/North had given up the slavers would have tried to expand & the result would have been ‘bloody Kansas’ until the industrialized North was tired of it & finally crushed the South). But the truth is the SOuth lost on 7/4/63 in Vicksburg. It was all over but the dying after that. Davis begged Lee to send troops to defend the critical point for control of the Mississippi but Lee was so myopic & so focused on is cursed Virginia that he refused. The stupid blunder into PA was a sop to the fool Davis that was supposed to draw union troops & focus away from Vicksburg. Either Lee was a liar & knew his plan was wrong or a bigger fool who could not see what was happening around him. The CSA was designed for failure, weak central gov at a time strength was needed & it was staffed with people who could make the least of a bad situation.
Schlemazel
What I don’t understand is why anyone responds to Blob in Portland as if there were a discussion to be had. His schtick was old & tired long before this & it never changes. Just point & laugh, it is all he deserves, it is all he has earned.
If he ever decides to join in an actual debate instead of an endless silly tirade occasionally infected with Putin propaganda then sure, lets talk it would be educational and actually stimulating. But feeding this mindless troll is a waste of time & energy.
gogol's wife
@Dave:
Good comment. I agree.
Cervantes
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
These paintings are examples of … ?
And also, where do you find them?
(Thanks.)
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
1. Not quite. Is the US invading Ukraine by backing a Ukrainian coup through its 70-year history in bed with Ukrainian fascists? The Ukrainians that the US have been supporting here in the US and over there for 70 years are the ones we’ve spent our billions on. Is it okay to nurture a revolt in a foreign country if you don’t bomb it or send ground troops?
Have the Russians been providing aid to the rebels in eastern Ukraine? Yup. But most of the bullshit about lines of tanks are just that. The only thing the Ukrainian army has proven to be good at is shelling hospitals and old folks’ homes. The Ukrainian army tends to abandon their equipment in battle. Where the Russians have aided the rebels is with organization and volunteers. I presume that after Kiev folds that more economic aid will be provided to eastern Ukraine/Novorussia, probably starting with gas this winter while Europe and the rump state of Ukraine freezes.
2. Are you talking about the government that came to power in a US-backed coup? Why they have as much right to make deals with the west as Panama has a right to make deals with the US, you know, from after we separated Panama from Colombia to after we overthrew Bush 41’s former buddy, Noriega. Or how the governments of Guatemala and El Salvador had the right to make deals with the US and its military. Right? You were also aboard with those too, right?
3. I think that Ukraine is a state constructed from the flotsam and jetsam of post-war WWII, with the Soviet Union making the mistake in 1954 of grafting parts of Russia onto it to provide what they had hoped would be a more stable neighbor. The British and French created a lot of problems with the borders they drew in the Mideast after WWI, and with the continent of Africa as it staggered towards post-colonial colonialism. All the Soviet border manipulations did was jeopardize the ethnic Russians from Odessa to Lugansk, although the US was a player in promulgating the Nazi myths.
Can a diverse population survive as a country? Sure, if the US hasn’t stuck its nose into it. But ruining Dagestan and Armenia would be easier if only we’d gotten Crimea from the fascists for a base to project into Central Asia, don’t you think?
Ukraine lacks control over its east. The fascists in Kiev are under American control and will only further alienate “The Other”, as Poroshenko’s latest speech has shown. And really, Poroshenko has no other option, as he will replaced by Yats or Julia if he goes too far with the truce. But inevitably that will mean that in the chaos that Russia’s pipelines across Ukraine will be shut down and we’ll see Exxon et al step into the breach for our friends in the EU. There’s a reason why the US has been building LNG export terminals along our east coast for the last half decade, or do you think it’s a coincidence?
The Russians aren’t going to allow the fascists to thrive in eastern Ukraine, but they have to do little besides maintain the status quo for that. The Ukrainian army is in shambles, the fascist militias are poised to fight in the streets of Lviv and Kiev in order to put a purer fascist group into power if Poroshenko fails to continue the war. In Carpathia there are the first rumblings of separatism which will only get louder as they get colder and hungrier. The folks in Odessa already have felt the boot of Kiev (May 2). But what happens when the folks in Kiev don’t have a boot to spare for Odessa?
But a nice group of questions. Perhaps you can address the same questions to Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. Thanks in advance for your even-handed perusal of materials offered in this thread by me and by your honest examination of the points I’ve raised. After all, if you can’t work up a hard-on over the US destabilizing Syria then how can you complain about Russia’s interests in Novorussia? If the US can wage decades of wars that all circle around the word “oil” why are you so belligerent about Russia wanting to get its gas to market?
Cheers.
Bill Arnold
@Bob In Portland:
What law is that? (Not trying to defend Israel’s arsenal here, just fact checking)
Bob In Portland
@Bill Arnold: The same law being used as a basis for economic warfare against Iran. It’s against international law for countries to create nuclear weapons without the blessings of those in charge. As it is, Israel continues the fiction of not admitting its nuclear arsenal. And the US goes along.
Bob In Portland
@Dave: Thank you. We all have clay feet. And the NSA is measuring us for shoes.
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
No, there are four states that have not signed the NPT.
Israel is one of them.
Iran is not.
Chris
@Schlemazel:
I always find it funny when neocons(confederates) argue that the South was about states’ rights and restraining the central government (not slavery!) considering the role the C. S. A. government’s weakness played in costing them the war.
Hey, let’s not celebrate the Confederacy’s sins, let’s celebrate its ineptness.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Bob In Portland: I don’t see “Yes” or “No” answers there, Bob. I do see continuing claims about fascism, though….
Oh well, I tried. :-/
See ya.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elie
Back to the series.
I am enjoying it very much and think that Ken Burns is bringing to life the real people under the long mythologies about them. He does a fine job of juxtaposing their strengths and very real weaknesses. None of the three get a pass and you have a full sense of both the times and how they lived and related to each other. They were all very far from perfect.
I would recommend it highly and look forward to tonight’s installment.
BTW — I also loved the Civil War. I don’t resent the south when I see a balanced portrait of these very imperfect and frequently tormented leaders — many off whom were clearly just wrong. But its good to hear their stories and learn more about them to better learn about ourselves…
Bob In Portland
@Cervantes: A mighty asterisk there. I imagine that when the rest of the world signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty that they said to themselves, “Except North Korea, South Sudan and Israel.” Because if you look carefully in Leviticus you’ll find something about how Israel can have nuclear bombs.
And, of course, Iran has said over and over and over that it doesn’t plan on creating nuclear weapons. Israel remains opaque. I’d have to review the full treaty (which I’m not going to do), but somewhere along the line Israel found out how to build bombs, and that would suggest that someone already in the nuclear club provided them with help, just as South Africa provided them with a bit of the Indian Ocean to test them.
But we are playing on the margins here. If the world from Marrakesh to Jakarta goes up in flames, it’s okay because Israel has that asterisk to hide behind, eh?
Meanwhile, please feel free to read the Russian engineers’ report.
I find the parts about the missing contrail, the lack of sound of a missile launch and lack of cell phone documentation of that to be pretty compelling. The machine gun bursts going in one side of the cockpit and coming out the other is also interesting if you can get away from defending Israel’s nuclear arsenal. What do you think?
Bob In Portland
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Well, at least I attempt to answer your questions fully. Apparently, you won’t do the courtesy of explaining how the US is allowed to bomb the sovereign country of Libya, or those other sovereign countries. Cheers.
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
Wait — you think I’m “defending Israel’s nuclear arsenal”?
How do you arrive at this (stunning) conclusion?
cmorenc
@Schlemazel:
Lee’s greatest over-arching strategic blunder was failing to understand that the South did not need to achieve decisive military victory over the Union, but rather only needed to achieve an indefinite military stalemate and wear down the Union’s political will to continue the war by attrition. Thankfully, Lee’s competitiveness drove him to mount the folly of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg rather than acknowledging that the North had won and held the tactically superior high ground and withdrawing for the chance to fight on more favorable terms elsewhere. Lee was also seduced by the (possibly correct) notion that if the Confederate Army could have managed to capture the Union capital of Washington, DC, that achievement would have decisively undermined the Union’s political will to continue – which was a significant part of Lee’s motivation for initiating the northern campaign in summer of 1863 – reinforced by the near-certainty that this would have been true had the Confederate army been more disciplined in the immediate aftermath of the rout of the Union at First Bull Run in 1861, when the defeated Union army was even more disorganized and momentarily hapless in retreat and for a couple of days, the Union lacked the capacity to defend the capital against a more organized foe.
Thankfully, Robert E. Lee wasn’t a better strategic general than he was, for all his tactical brilliance.
Brian
I’ve been enjoying it, but what bugged me last night was Geoffrey C Ward. It turns out that he also had polio, but they don’t tell you this. They just let you watch him get all teary and histrionic over FDR’s polio and leave you wondering why.
Bob In Portland
@Cervantes: No offense, but I don’t want to discuss the nuclear non-proliferation treaty right now. I have never read it, only lived with it for most of my life, but I presume that anyone outside of the big five is in violation of the treaty’s purpose of stopping proliferation of nukes and is going against the spirit of it. I apologize for suggesting that when you pointed to the asterisk that you were not celebrating the asterisk.
Meantime, how about that Russian report on MH17?
Bill Arnold
@Bob In Portland:
The NPT is pretty short, and worth reading. http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/Others/infcirc140.pdf
e.g. some assertions about Iranian non-compliance made by Israelis and others are … arguable.
Bob In Portland
@cmorenc: And that’s how the Novorussian rebels were able to defeat Ukraine.
dww44
@Elie: By and large comments on this thread by the female of the species seem to not only be the more balanced, but also more empathic, not only with the 3 Roosevelts, but with others from his previous series. Of course, just proffering an opinion here.
Just further shows how much better the country might be with more women in leadership positions. Not that we are anywhere near perfect, of course!!
Elie
@Brian:
Agree with you.
We figured that it was something like that….
Thanks also for identifying his name, which they haven’t done –
Elie
@dww44:
Hell Yeah!
:-)
Bob In Portland
@Bill Arnold: Thanks, Bill. I scanned it. If Israel isn’t in violation of it by not signing it someone was in violation of it by supplying Israel with the knowledge. And if South Africa is a signatory, it seems like they would be in violation of it.
Have you ever heard of “The Safari Club”?
dww44
@gogol’s wife: Interesting, because I almost cringe when I hear accents like that. Hangover from my growing up days when those sorts of accents were equated with lack of intelligence and education. Also made me think just now of David McCullough’s characterizations of Mitty Bulloch Roosevelt, TR’s Mom. He punched a whole in the widely held perceprtion about her lack of brightness.
Bob In Portland
@Bob In Portland: Not the Safari Club in Estacada.
Elie
@dww44:
To me one of the amazing things about this series and the Civil War is how Ken Burns is able to tell these stories with such wholehearted emotion, generally using black and white photographs, letters and a few rustic film clips from the past. He finds just the right pictures to show Eleanor Roosevelt’s shyness and pain — how she never smiles as a young woman. He reveals how passionately she loved Franklin during their courtship and how “hot” she was for him — reading from a letter where she speaks of “wanting you”…
Also, the genius of who he picks to narrate and provide the voices — for example Meryl Streep is a fabulous Eleanor Roosevelt..
We love storytelling and this is storytelling at its best…
dww44
@Elie: I agree wholeheartedly. Also re your other remark to Bryan, Geoffrey Ward wrote the whole thing. Heard that in an interview last week with Ken Burns. ahead of the showing. So, maybe they assume everyone knows who he is? It was apparent that Ward had a more than normal vested interest in the part about FDR’s struggle with polio.
Long about Monday or Tuesday evening, Burns was on The Daily Show and Stewart told him that it was the best one he’d seen.
EthylEster
I have been watching and have learned a lot. I think this is Ken Burns’ best effort in a while.
I come away admiring TR’s energy and “radical” ideas but he was way over the top personally. He lobbied to get the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions in Cuba. He was shameless in his conviction that no one knew better than him.
I now believe that those three Roosevelts were really broken people in many ways. That they ended up doing the country a net good is pretty amazing, given all their neuroses.
Elie
@EthylEster:
I have wondered as I watched whether Teddy could get away with all his excesses now… we have bleached out all our leaders to be bland and obedient to the “average” American” folkways and culture.. its too bad. All of LBJs dog ear pulling and JFKs whoring around would be sanitized by exposure to judgment and smugness. Not that I want to applaud bad behavior, but shit, aren’t we all allowed to have private lives and peccadillos?
Instead, we seem to uphold the craziness in violence — guns everywhere — little girls given Uzis to shoot people as targets — men walking around showing off their guns at shopping centers cause they want people to fear them. Now THAT is crazy and I know that Teddy would have considered these people to be sick and weird..
Somehow/somewhere we are going to have to give our leaders that space again. Right now our airwaves reek of mendacity and hubris as we set about to make sure that none of our leaders can be normally human — with flaws and uncertainties that we all have….
Regnad Kcin
@gogol’s wife: Ha. Sometimes my bête noire gets the better of my listening apparatus
half glass fool
@hueyplong: It is in there.
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
You write (it does not matter to whom):
The Nation article you’re citing is an interview with Russ Bellant, who has studied fascism for decades, around the world and right here at home. Here’s what the Harvard Educational Review thought of the book he’s being interviewed about:
Not only can people profit from reading the Nation interview with Bellant, they should probably read his book as well — instead of engaging here in thinly veiled, or naked, aggression rituals.
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
Why should that offend me? I only brought up the NPT because you asserted that Israel’s nuclear arsenal was a violation of the same “international law” that people are using to criticize Iran’s nuclear program. This assertion does not work because Israel, unlike Iran, has never committed itself to the NPT’s rules. (Needless to say, the criticisms of Iran are not all legitimate.)
No problem; I just wondered how my three lines could have been so unclear.
Is there some reason I should spend time looking at it?
RaflW
Thread needs 200 comments.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Cervantes:
That’s Zinn within tens of pages in his A People’s History of the United States. It’s an example of what Woodrowfan was saying about Zinn being terrible.
Read here for more criticism. I’ll highlight this bit:
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Cervantes: @Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
And here’s Michael Kazin’s blistering critique from the Spring 2004 edition of Dissent.
someofparts
“and without even looking at Wikipedia, I know that Franklin was the most important person in the history of western civilization”
yes
there’s hope for you whippersnappers
and Eleanor rocked too
Bob In Portland
@Cervantes: Well, it would give you what the other side is saying. But refusing to look at it means that the US propaganda has worked perfectly. If you censor yourself all the heavy lifting of the Mighty Wurlitzer is done by you.
Also, the report is not that long and there are only a few English errors, and is pretty easy to understand. It addresses the lack of a contrail, the lack of sound of a BUK launching (they’re quite loud on takeoff and would have been heard up to seven kilometers around the launch site), and a few other anomalies that the Amsterdam report assiduously avoids.
But the downside is that you and most Balloon Juicers recognize the common wisdom and would not want to be agreeing with me. Think of the awful consequences. If you recognize the manipulation and how it’s been played on you over and over during your life you will lose your faith in American Manichean politics. You will realize that no matter what party is controlling the elected government that you are watching, as Jim Garrison called it in 1967, “a debating society.”
What will happen to Ukraine is pretty much pre-ordained. This winter is going to be terrible. A lot of innocent people will starve, maybe the fascist gangs will be released to keep order or create more chaos. I doubt that Russia will let eastern Ukraine fail, and I don’t think that NATO, aka, the US, will give enough military or economic aid to rescue it. Areas like Odessa, that have a long history within Russia, may eventually move away from the godawful mess created in Kiev, and there are ethnic areas along Ukraine’s western border who may have otherwise endured the nationalist rhetoric of the fascists in good times, but want no part of the freezing and starvation resulting from the coup government’s refusal to pay their bills.
But back to why you should read the Russian engineers’ report.
Maybe you shouldn’t. You fit in quite well in your slot. You don’t want to be asking too many questions. You don’t want to protest our government, maybe make a little snark about McCain, but, hey, what’s Obama supposed to do?
Yesterday Congress voted to spend money to continue to destabilize Syria and you are upset because Russia aided the rebels in eastern Ukraine. Laws apparently don’t apply to us, and if you can’t make sense out of our foreign policy then it’s because it’s stupid, not because it’s what the permanent government wants.
If the US doesn’t spend that money on “moderate Syrian rebels” maybe they could spend a little here fixing bridges. But no, even the Senate, controlled by Dems, is ready to throw a little more destabilization cash around while the vast majority of our country suffers. Okay, maybe you don’t suffer so much. And maybe that’s why you won’t look.
Just for curiosity’s sake, have you read The Nation’s interview with Russ Bellant, or Christopher Simpson’s THE SCIENCE OF COERCION? I identified them as things Balloon Juicers should read to get an understanding of the Ukrainian situation. But if you don’t want to understand it, if you’re not only willing but compelled to believe what the State Department tells you, then you won’t. You’ve already done all the heavy lifting.
Kwitney was on to the American strategy of creating enemies. ISIS is a created enemy. Granted, like Russian aid to rebels in Novorussia, we don’t know the extent of the aid the US supplied to them, but we know they didn’t interfere with the House of Saud or the Kuwaiti royal family or Qatar in financing them, and if ISIS is against our wishes then why do we have no power over our friends and allies who we’ve bailed out? And that’s before anything that might have been done through our secret intelligence budgets in aiding the overthrow of Assad.
So our allies have created ISIS (or our intelligence services created them through a kind of money-laundering operation through our allies), so sending more aid to “moderate Syrian rebels” is going to do what? Come on, you can predict it.
And then on to Dagestan until we finally get to stick a straw into Russia’s milkshake. And you will not benefit one bit from it, nor will most Americans.
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
“Other” relative to what?
Myself, I have not taken sides.
Right.
Do try not to be your own worst enemy.
Bob In Portland
@geg6: Russia is not pure as the driven snow. Do you pay taxes to Russia? Can you at least understand that American wrongdoing is your responsibility and any Russian wrongdoing isn’t? Or do you admit that your vote means nothing at all and that you are merely part of the debating society?
Bob In Portland
How do I become my own worst enemy? A lot of people dislike me here and I’m sure if I give a month’s worth of gardening tips or write incisive commentaries on some cable tv show that’s popular that I will still be disliked.
The only thing I have done here is ask people to look at source material. Oh, there’s no such thing as the US and Nazis. Those kinds of outbursts, like geg above, are defensive mechanisms. I’d love for people who claim to be progressive and thoughtful to, you know, look at the Russian report. Point out the flaws you see. And if there are no flaws, admit it.
But everyone here is so tightly wed to the MSM that I am a threat to their intellectual complacency. And I am. But I wasn’t wrong about the Vietnam War, I wasn’t wrong about the death squads in Latin America. I wasn’t wrong about Iraq or Afghanistan. Or Syria. And when Dagestan happens I won’t be wrong about that. You apparently will be wrong.
+++
2017
“Hey, didn’t that crazy guy from Portland say something about Dagestan awhile back?”
“Yeah, but even a clock is right twice a day.” (That will be your excuse.)
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
Sorry, my mistake; here’s the right link. It should answer your question.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Just what do you call a recoquista motivated by ultra-nationalism and domestic economic concerns? Fascism, right? Now let’s look at Putin’s Russia…
Cervantes
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Saw your response re Zinn. For now I have only a question re:
OK, but if you want me to respond, you still need to be more specific. Which “tens of pages”?