November 25, 2003
Faces in the clouds
Forty years ago this month, President John F. Kennedy was shot dead on the streets of Dallas. Forty years ago this December, the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy -- the Warren Commission -- began their investigation of the assassination. Forty years ago next September, they made their report. The report ran to 26 volumes and over 5000 footnotes; the National Archives stored 360 cubic feet of the commission's materials. And still, people feel that the matter is not settled. The ongoing and pervasive belief that Lee Harvey Oswald was not a lone gunman -- a "silly little Communist" -- might just be a need for meaning for most of its adherents, an outcome of a culture of conspiracy that might tell us something about the conflicted essence of the national story of America. But it seems rather unkind to say that the true believers, those who brush conventional logic aside, are simply searching for meaning. They're not trying to make Kennedy into a martyr for something larger than himself; they think that they've found the traces of something monstrous. Going through 363 cubic feet of documents, how could they not?
November 16, 2003
The standard of civilization
In 1964, an essay by Frank Littlefield called "The Wizard of Oz: A Parable of Populism" appeared in American Quarterly. It initially caused little stir, but over the years it's been repeated and has created a widespread belief that the book is a political allegory. Littlefield noted that Dorothy's magic slippers were silver in the novel, and he began to map the political meaning to the various characters. The Tin Woodsman is the Eastern industrial laborer; the scarecrow the Midwestern farmer; the companions travelling on the Yellow Brick Road are Coxey's Army. The Cowardly Lion, Littlefield wrote, represented William Jennings Bryan, the "Great Commoner", and The Wizard of Oz is an allegory about the magical benefits of monetary reform.
(more...)
November 11, 2003
Commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer
Dwight Eisenhower created Veterans Day in 1954 to honor all of America's veterans. My grandfather won a Purple Heart in the Army Air Corps in World War II; I owe a great debt to him and to the rest of the armed forces, past and present. It's entirely right that there be a day dedicated to rememberance and thanks. There's an intentional vagueness to Veterans Day, however; it's intended to honor all military veterans, every soldier and sailor from World War II through today. November 11 was originally a celebration of Armistice Day, and the legislators who drafted 44 Stat. 1982 in 1926 could be specific:
(more...)WHEREAS the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and
WHEREAS it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations...
Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.
November 06, 2003
Tinseltown
Peg Entwistle was a failure. In New York, she had been a player (though not a successful one) with Lawrence Langner's Theater Guild. When the Depression came, she had trouble getting stage work, so she headed out to California; a play with Billie Burke closed quickly, and her first film role came in a disastrous Irene Dunne comedy that RKO held back to re-edit. Her contract, RKO informed her, would not be renewed. One drunken September evening, she went up to the Hollywood Hills and killed herself. Today she is one of Los Angeles' most famous ghosts, not because of who she was but because of where she died; Peg Entwistle is the woman who threw herself off the Hollywood sign.
(more...)