It’s getting ugly.
District police are forced to break up a House party on the Hill, after Republicans and Democrats almost come to blows over a pension bill. It’s not exactly Lyon v. Griswold or Brooks v. Sumner, but it...
View ArticleAmerican Scholars.
John Updike reviews the flood of new Emerson literature emerging in the wake of the Sage of Concord‘s bicentennial. Perhaps now would be a good time to revise my paper on Herbert Croly and Emersonian...
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Mission Compromised.
When writing about Touchstone’s new version of The Alamo, I find myself in a very similar situation as I was post-Hellboy. Part of me really wants to say nice things about this movie. The occasional...
View ArticlePrez Suicide, don’t do it!
“Sweet steel! Come forth from out your sheath, And glist’ning, speak your powers; Rip up the organs of my breath, And draw my blood in showers!” Historians learn more about Abraham Lincoln’s Reznor...
View ArticleDesolation Row.
For the historians and Dylanologists out there (or for those wondering why Dylan would contribute a new song to a flat-out stinker like Gods and Generals), here’s another intriguing passage from Bob...
View ArticleSend back the blood-stained money.
“‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said to me. ‘I’m sorry for what she’s done.” As pointed out in lecture this afternoon, today’s NY Times includes an editorial on the corporate divulging of ties to Antebellum...
View ArticleOnce there weren’t greenfields.
“Black inhabitants of the ‘neat little settlement,’ the [1856] article said, ‘present a pleasing contrast in their habits and the appearance of their dwellings to the Celtic occupants, in common with...
View ArticleFeet of Clay?
“The blend of businessmen’s aversion to government regulation, down-home cultural populism and Christian moralism that sustains today’s Republican Party is a venerable if loosely knit philosophy of...
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Dixieland.
“If you are going to tell people the truth, you’d better make them laugh. Otherwise they’ll kill you.” This savvy George Bernard Shaw quote introduces Kevin Willmott’s razor-sharp documentary-satire...
View ArticleCrisis of the New Order.
“Observers describe Bush as ‘messianic’ in his conviction that he is fulfilling the divine purpose. But, as Lincoln observed in his second inaugural address, ‘The Almighty has His own purposes.’...
View ArticleThe Atlantic Sesquicentennial.
“In The Atlantic’s very first issue, in 1857, the magazine’s founders — an illustrious group that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell...
View Article“Empty Suit”…with a Stovepipe Hat.
The whole thing, really, is a fairy tale. I mean, give me a break: The guy gives a good speech. Yes. Give him that. But are we electing a toastmaster or a president of the United States? Let’s look at...
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Wright? What about this Douglass fellow?!
“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn…your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of...
View ArticleHis Soul’s Marching On?
“‘It’s a great, great project,’ Brolin told us. ‘The script was already out there; I read the script, I loved it. It would be a very tough character for me to play. We’re going to do some tests once...
View ArticleStampp of Excellence.
“‘He was really a pioneer, demolishing the magnolia and mint juleps view of slavery,” said Eric Foner, a professor of history at Columbia. ‘And the Reconstruction book was in the same revisionist mode,...
View ArticleSmorgasbord of Vengeance.
Lots of scores to settle and cold dishes served in the trailer bin of late… Antebellum musician Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) finds himself way down on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line in...
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Chasing Darkness.
“How dark it would have been—imagine leaning out your door and, on the darkest nights, not being able to see more than a few feet in any direction. Historian Peter Baldwin describes as ‘downright...
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