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by James C. Cobb I was alternatively puzzled and amused by the torrent of praise showered on Rosa Parks, one of the most celebrated social activists of the twentieth century, by many of the same folks who are quick to condemn other activists who allegedly operate from a lofty court bench rather than a lowly […]
Andrew Smith, culinary guru and editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, asks “Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?” and investigates the history and culinary traditions of this most American of holidays. With detours to the creation of the turducken and other culinary oddities.
“If President John F. Kennedy had lived, he would not have sent combat troops to Vietnam and America’s longest war would never have occurred,” say Kennedy apologists. The assassination, they insist, had killed more than the president; it was responsible for the death of a generation—of more than 58,000 Americans, along with untold numbers of […]
James Cobb wrote in The New Republic online yesterday that this may be a watershed moment in the Civil Rights movement. He tries to unwind the knot surrounding the confluence of the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Ed. decision last year, the passing of Rosa Parks and the nomination of Samuel Alito […]
Uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan quoted David Hackett Fischer today in a post on “alleged mistreatment of detainees” by U.S. forces in Iraq. Sullivan writes in response to two stories that came out today; one, about abuses at an Iraqi ministry, the other, a story on alleged abuses by U.S. Army soldiers that has resulted in a […]
Thoman E. Mann, writing in today’s New York Times opinion page, applauds the defeat of “Election Reform” ballot initiatives in Ohio and California on Tuesday. Both initiatives “would have required a round of redistricting in the middle of this decade” and, Mann claims, “any initiative requiring mid-decade redistricting smells like a power grab by the […]
In a long line that stretches from Benjamin Franklin to Mark Twain and beyond, H. L. Mencken stands as one of America’s most influential stylists and its most prominent iconoclast. “It is a sin to believe evil in others,” Mencken said, “but it is seldom a mistake.” Preachers, politicians, pundits and pedants — Mencken exposed […]
THIS is first-rate history by a first-rate historian. Unlike many of his brethren, James T. Patterson can write, and he understands the value of vivid detail, using “Annie Hall,” “Norma Rae” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” to help explain the women’s movement. What’s more, he can think, and he offers analysis and interpretation that is consistently sensible…
PATTERSON captures one of the era’s most deplorable trends, the increase in individual and group selfishness that has manifested itself in, among other things, huge executive salaries and irresponsible tax cuts. He also zeroes in on one cause of this trend that few others have perceived: the “rights revolution,” which brought laudable progress for blacks, women and the disabled, but as it spread to other individuals and groups often transformed itself into a sense of entitlement without accompanying obligation, of rights without duties.
Rosa Parks gave us a different image—defiance that was dignified and determined. And it moved us to action—action that was immediate in Montgomery, and spread over time throughout the South. It planted in my generation the psychological seed we needed to break out of the protective cocoon of our segregated worlds, where our families—biological and extended—did everything within their limited powers to keep us out of harm’s way, echoing, for different reasons, the white mantra that we should “stay in our place.” Rosa Parks defined her place –as a first class human being—and planted the seeds that germinated in the souls of young people like myself. Within a few years, we would follow Sister/Mama Rosa, I, into a resistant, all- white University, my classmates and friends into the streets held by Atlanta’s white powers—defying their intransigence singing that old spiritual: “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me’roun.” As we, each in our own ways, challenged the system that made us second class citizens, we came to “see…in a new light both our past and our future. We could see that past—the segregation, the deprivation and denial—for what it was, a system designed to keep us in our place and convince us somehow that it was our fault, as well as our destiny. Now, without either ambivalence or shame, we saw ourselves as the heirs to a legacy of struggle…ennobling…[and] enabling us to take control of our destiny.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution printed a great excerpt from James C. Cobb’s Away Down South over the weekend. Entitled “RED CLAY AND THE BLACK EXPERIENCE,” the excerpt addresses “the readiness, even eagerness, of African-Americans both in the South and outside it to identify themselves unequivocally as Southerners and claim the region as home.” Here is the […]
In studying two centuries of Washington reporting, I found only one instance where journalists came forward to name their anonymous sources. It occurred in 1846 after the Washington Daily Times (no relation to the current paper) printed sensational allegations that Whigs were plotting with the British minister to bring about a settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute. When the Senate investigated the charges, the paper’s editor and publisher voluntarily divulged the sources of the story: a naval officer, a Senate doorkeeper, several lobbyists, and a few other journalists. Since those sources had everything to lose and nothing to gain by corroborating the Times’ allegations, every witness, under oath, denied knowledge of a plot. The committee branded the story “utterly and entirely false,” and banned anyone from the newspaper from the Senate galleries. The Washington Daily Times promptly went out of business, creating an object lesson that the rest of the press corps took very much to heart.
Despite the tremendous importance of politics in Supreme Court nominations, the single most important determinant of a successful confirmation is the qualifications of the nominee. We have measured the qualifications of all nominees since Hugo Black (1937) by content analyzing newspaper editorials from leading newspapers at the time of their nominations [see table below]. By this standard, Miers falls near the bottom of the stack. Thus, her withdrawal is not surprising.
With the “leak inquiry” grand jury adjouned for the day, it’s time for a breather. Gary Hart offers a fresh perspective in a piece in Tuesday’s Denver Post. Responding to the oft-repeated conservative defense that is, essentially, ‘no harm, no foul,’ Hart offers some historical context to the scene: The federal statute making it a […]
“…one of their clearest duties is to keep a wary eye on the gentlemen who operate this great nation, and only too often slip into the assumption that they own it.” — H.L. Mencken
David S. Reynolds, author of Walt Whitman in the Lives and Legacies series, responded to J.M. Coetzee in the “Letters” section of the New York Review of Books this week: J.M. Coetzee concludes his review of my new book Walt Whitman [NYR, September 22] with what is evidently meant as a criticism. He writes, “Reynolds’s […]
If [Ty] Cobb’s base-running was often, as one observer described it, “daring to the point of dementia,” it was also successful more times than not. He left everybody stunned at Hilltop Park in New York when he crossed up Highlander first-baseman Hal Chase, who, though only in his third big-league season, was already widely regarded […]