Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 15

April 29, 2025: Ending the Vietnam War: First Blood

[On April 30,1975, North Vietnamese tanks entered the Presidential Palace inSaigon, a symbolic but significant moment to reflect the end of the war. Thatconclusion has been represented frequently & complicatedly in Americanmedia, so this week for its 50th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of such representations!]

On what aniconic film speech gets wrong about the end of the war, and what it gets veryright.

I’vewritten a few times previously inthis space about First Blood (1982), and specifically about John Rambo’s final speech tohis Vietnam War Colonel about his experiences during and after that conflict. I’dask you to check out both that prior post and that clip of Rambo’s speech (ifyou don’t already know it), and then come on back for a couple more thoughts.

Welcomeback! One frustrating part of Rambo’s speech is his reference to themyth of spitting protesters, which as I discuss at length in thathyperlinked post (quoting Jerry Lembcke’s excellent book TheSpitting Image) seems pretty clearly to have been invented longafter the fact (around the time of First Blood, in fact). But in termsof the end of the war, I think his angry assertion that “I did what I had to doto win, but somebody wouldn’t let us win!” is equally inaccurate and dangerous.I have to imagine that he’s referring to ideas like that of the controversial General CurtisLeMay, who wanted to “bomb [North Vietnam] back into the Stone Age.” I don’tthink many (if any) military strategists or historians believe such actionswould have “won” the war, but rather would have just caused infinitely moredeath and destruction while turning the Vietnamese people even more fullyagainst the United States. And in any case, to my mind the Vietnam War’s trajectoryand ending weren’t in the slightest about what “somebody” would or wouldn’t “let”the U.S. forces do—and defining the war as such both removes all agency fromthe Vietnamese and suggests that mass death and destruction would have beenpreferable.

So I don’tthink Rambo’s final speech gets the end of the war right, and I think it likewisegives into mythic us-vs.-them depictions of anti-war protesters. But one thingthis scene (and certainly Stallone’s excellent performance in it) capturesquite powerfully isthe PTSD that so many returning Vietnam vets suffered from, the impact oftheir experiences and memories on their (already challenging and fraught) livesback on the homefront. The speech’s tearful final lines, including such phrasesas “I can’t get it out of my head,” “sometimes I wake up and I dunno where Iam,” and “I dream of it every day for seven years,” puts a profoundly humanface and voice to those veterans’ issues—and the fact that that face and voicebelong to the badass physician specimen and warrior-type that was the youngSylvester Stallone only adds to our recognition that these challenges can anddid happen to everyone. While the end of the Vietnam War meant many things, herein the U.S. that’s what it truly meant, what all these vets brought home withthem—and First Blood gets that note very right.

Nextportrayal tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Representations of the war you’d highlight?

April 28, 2025: Ending the Vietnam War: The Mayaguez Incident

[On April30, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks entered the Presidential Palace in Saigon,a symbolic but significant moment to reflect the end of the war. That conclusionhas been represented frequently & complicatedly in American media, so thisweek for its 50th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of suchrepresentations!]

On how amaritime crisis turned military conflict can be connected to the war’s end, andhow it should be separated from it.

Each ofthe other posts in this week’s series will focus on a cultural work—two films,a musical, and a song, although not in that order so you’ll have to keepreading I suppose!—that depicts the historical events around the end of theVietnam War, but today’s subject was a very real historical event in its ownright. On May12th, 1975, the American merchant ship the SS Mayaguezwas seized in disputed Southeast Asian waters by forces of the Khmer Rouge, theCambodian junta that had taken control of that nation’s government lessthan a month before (toppling the US-supported Khmer Republic in theprocess). The U.S. Marines mounted arescue operation, retook the ship, and besieged the nearby island of KohTang where the hostages were wrongly believed to be held, but were met with intenseresistance by Khmer Rouge forces. After extensiveand destructive battles with the Khmer Rouge that left dozens of Americansdead and many more wounded, the Marines were evacuated on May 15; the KhmerRouge would themselves releasethe unharmed hostages.

While theinitial seizure of the ship didn’t necessarily have to do with the end of theVietnam War a couple weeks before (the Mayaguez was apparently muchcloser to Cambodian/Khmer-controlled waters than it should have been), it’simpossible to say that the timing of the incident overall was coincidental. Inhis book TheLast Battle: The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War (2002),historian Ralph Wetterhahn traces just how focused PresidentGerald Ford and his National Security Council were on perceptions of theU.S. military and America as a whole in the immediate aftermath of the withdrawalof troops from notonly South Vietnam, but also Cambodia(which had been its own evacuation operation but one closely tied to theVietnam evacuation). In his book The Mayaguez Crisis, Mission Command, and Civil-Military Relations(2018), military historian Christopher Lamb quotes Vice President Nelson Rockefelleras arguing, “this will be seen as a test case,” and adding, “I think a violent responseis in order.” There can be no doubt that the administration saw the incident asa chance to rewrite the narrative of the Vietnam War’s conclusion—nor that therescue’s failures would instead amplify those images.

If that’show the Mayaguez incident was perceived in its own moment, it certainlyhas to be part of how we remember this history. But the main reason why Iwanted to include this real historical event in a weeklong series focused oncultural texts is that I think it’s important to add that this vision of the Mayaguezis likewise a narrative frame, rather than an intrinsic layer to the events themselves.While the U.S. had attackedCambodia in the course of the Vietnam War (illegallyattacked, I should add), the two nations were of course in actualityentirely distinct, and moreover the Khmer Rouge saw the North Vietnamese (as ofApril 1975 just the Vietnamese) regime as an enemy (and the two nations would infact go to war a fewyears later, contributing to the end of the Khmer Rouge’s rule). Moreover,while it’s questionable at best whether the North Vietnamese regime were “thebad guys” in the Vietnam War (I’d personally put HenryKissinger at the top of that list), the Khmer Rouge were quite simply oneof the mostbrutal regimes of the 20th century, making the U.S. conflictwith them quite distinct from the morass that was the Vietnam War. Allreminders that our narratives for historical events are often, if not always,just that.

Next portrayaltomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Representations of thewar you’d highlight? 

April 26-27, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: Charles Richter

[125 yearsago this weekend, the first namein earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ve AmericanStudieda handful of seismic quakes, leading up to this special birthday post onRichter himself!]

On what’sexpected in Richter’s bio, what’s a good bit less so, and what to make of thecombo.

Many ofthe details in CharlesRichter’s (1900-1985) biography read like you would expect for a famousscientist overall and a prominent earthquake scientist in particular: grew upin Southern California and attended Stanford as an undergrad and Cal Tech as agrad student; after a brief stint at the Carnegie Institute for Science in DCreturned to California to work at the new Seismology Laboratory in Pasadenaunder the renowned German-American seismologist Beno Gutenberg; whiletogether there the pairof them collaborated in 1932 on a new standard scale to measure earthquakes(with Richter apparently the lead developer, given that the scale was andremains named after him specifically); and then a few years later, in 1937,Richter returnedto Cal Tech and taught and researched there for the rest of his career. Impressiveto be sure, but not a note different from what we might have drafted with onlythe knowledge that he was a seismologist who gave his name to a groundbreaking(last time this week, I promise) scientific measurement.

That mightstill be true of this more quirky detail from his LindaHall Library bio (authored by History Professor and Hall Library ConsultantWilliamB. Ashworth Jr.): “in 1966, when he was 66, he saw his first Star Trekepisode and was hooked; he became an ardent Trekkie and kept careful notes on everyone of the 79 original episodes of Star Trek that aired between 1966 and1969.” Not exactly rocket science (sorry, sorry) to imagine that a scientist wouldbe fascinated by this innovative and quitescientific (as such things go) sci fi show. But that same paragraph opensthis way: “Since the first full-scalebiography of Richter appeared a few years ago, Richter is now known for afew other things besides his scale. He and his wife Linda were ardent nudists inthe 1930s and 40s, when nudist camps were a brand-newAmerican phenomenon. Richter also seems to have had a secret passion forhis biological sister, Margaret.” “So Richter was clearly not your typical seismologist,”the paragraph concludes, in what I’d have to call an understatement.

I’m notsharing those latter details in an attempt to be salacious, I promise (andindeed, I’d say going to nudist camps with your wife isn’t particularlysalacious; the sister detail is of course different, and I won’t pretend toknow anything more than what I’ve shared). In part it’s that I learned themwhile researching this post, and I couldn’t imagine not including them once Ihad done so. But I’d say they and Richter’s bio overall prompts an interestingAmericanStudies kind of question: what are our rights and/or ourresponsibilities when it comes to personal details for public figures,particularly those who have passed away? Neither the nudism nor the potentialincest have the slightest bit to do with why we know Richter’s name; but ifknowing his name makes us want to learn about the man, then we’re likely tofind such details, or at least personal details that go far beyond whatever thepublic starting points might be. I’m not going to come up with an answer to allof this in my last couple lines here, but I’ll just add this: public figuresare also complicated private humans, like every last one of us, and that’s alesson well worth learning every chance we get.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 25, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: Movies

[125 yearsago this coming weekend, the first namein earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post on Richter himself!]

Ontakeaways from three blockbuster films about catastrophic quakes.

1)     Earthquake (1974): Iwrote inthis post about the long history of disaster films (one of the mostenduring genres of blockbusters, in fact), and there’s never been a moment morefull of such movies than the 1970s. Indeed, production on Earthquake wasrushed in order to try to beat a competingdisaster film, The Towering Inferno, into theaters, and Earthquakedid come out about a month before Inferno so mission accomplished there.But what really makes Earthquake stand out is its use of agroundbreaking (bad pun once again intended) theatrical technology, “Sensurround,”in order to help audiences truly feel the titular disaster. Given that the filmfeatures a scene (available at the first hyperlink above) set in a movie theatreduring the earthquake, I can imagine that the blurring of art and reality wouldhave gotten real complicated for at least Southern California audiences.

2)     The Great Los AngelesEarthquake (1990): In his reviewof this film (which he calls The Big One, an alternate title), WashingtonPost critic Tom Shales explicitly connected it to the 1974 film, notingthat, “bad as it is, [it] does seem an improvement over the 1974 theatricalrelease Earthquake, which also fantasized the destruction of L.A.” Butwhat interests me most about the 1990 film is that it was made-for-TV, and yetclearly intended to be just as much of a blockbuster as that prior theatrical release—the1990 film cost more than $9 million, was made over a three-year period,included sequences filmed at the same Universal Studios lot where Earthquakehad been filmed, and so on. There’s been a lot written in recent years, quiterightly, about the shift from film to TV (including in how films themselves getdistributed and viewed), but this blockbuster TV movie from 1990 reminds usthat that process has been a multi-decade one to be sure.

3)     San Andreas (2015): Hollywoodwas far from done with big-screen blockbuster disaster movies, of course, asreflected by this 2015 film about a catastrophic quake that hits the SanFrancisco Bay Area, starring blockbuster big guy Dwayne Johnson himself (amongmany others in an over-stuffed cast as is typical for the genre). I don’t knowthat there’s too much more to say about this particular film, but I’d note that,to my knowledge, there hasn’t yet been a feature film made about the 1906 SanFrancisco earthquake and fire, a real-life disaster that was (as I wrote inMonday’s post) as full of compelling stories as any imaginary one could be. Iknow that period pieces can be trickier, and generally are a distinct genrefrom disaster films—but if we’re gonna keep telling these stories, we might aswell engage with the real ones.

Richterpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 24, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: Haiti in 2010

[125 yearsago this coming weekend, the first namein earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post on Richter himself!]

On twodistinct but interconnected ways to AmericanStudy a Caribbean catastrophe.

Firstthings first (and I know I offer this disclaimer often when I write aboutglobal events and issues, but I think it bears repeating each and every time):the horrific earthquake that hit Haiti in January2010 is a specific event and history, our understandings of and engagementswith which must be centered on that island nation and its people. The hundredsof thousands of Haitians killed and millions more uprooted, the hundreds ofthousands of destroyed or severely damaged homes and other buildings (includingthe NationalPalace), the urgent and still in many ways ongoing humanitariancrises that resulted from all those and many more effects; these tragedies haveto be framed and responded to as centrally and fundamentally Haitian, and nothingI say on an AmericanStudies blog is meant to redirect or minimize that attention.

Yet ofcourse the United States is linked to the rest of the world, and in some specificcases it’s even more clearly and significantly connected in ways that demand wealso engage such global stories in terms of what they help us see in ourselves.I’m not sure there’s any other nation of which that’s more true than Haiti: fromits early 19th century Revolution and the both inspiringand fraught effects of that event in the Early Republic U.S.; to the strikingnumber of 20th century moments in which the U.S. directly intervenedin Haitian politics, including an extended (nearlytwo-decade, in fact) occupation early in the century and an ambiguous but unquestionableinfluence on a coupat the turn of the next century; the United States and Haiti have played asprominent a role in each other’s histories over the last couple centuries asany two Western Hemisphere nations. When the U.S. helped spearhead relief and recoveryefforts after the quake, particularly the January 22nd “Hope for Haiti Now” telethon,that role has to be understood as in some way connected to these longstandingrelationships—whether a continuation of US interventions, guilt for thathistory, or some combination of the two and other factors as well.

But that’snot the only way to AmericanStudy the U.S.’s role in the earthquake’saftermath, and I would say it’s at least as meaningful to understand thismoment as part of a humanitarian foreign policy alternative to those histories ofglobalintervention and realpolitik influence. No American political leaderembodied that humanitarian perspective better than PresidentJimmy Carter (RIP), and Carter was of course still doing that humanitarian worklong after his presidency, including inHaiti with those affected by the earthquake. And while that humanitarianperspective and role can and should be extended anywhere in the world, it’sperhaps especially meaningful in a Western Hemisphere context—given the U.S.’shistory of interventions and interference, but also and maybe even moreimportantly given the conceptof creolization, of the ways in which we can even more fully parallel thehistories, communities, and identities of nations like the U.S. and Haiti. Inat least some ways, that is, the 2010 earthquake hit us as well.

Last quaketomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 23, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: The Indian Ocean in 2004

[125 yearsago this coming weekend, the first namein earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post on Richter himself!]

On threecultural works that can help us remember one of the most devastating natural disastersin recorded human history.

1)     Paint the Sky withStars (2005): This poetry collection, edited by British author Stephen Robert Kuta, brought together the voicesof those directly affected by the December 2004 earthquake and tsunami alongsidemany other poets and artists. All proceeds from the book’s publication went tothe TsunamiRelief Fund, making it a worthwhile project to support in any case. But Iwould add that, while some of the poems do represent a frustratingly external(ie, Western) view of the tragedy, many were indeed authored by folks from thecountries most affected, offering a vital view into those communities and experiences.

2)     “12/26” (2006): Speakingof complicatedly Western perspectives, the idea of a white Americansinger-songwriter writing a song which features (in part) the point of view ofa non-white young woman whose family and community were destroyed by the tsunamiis, to say the least, a fraught starting point. But I think Kimya Dawson walkedthat line pretty effectively, balancing that distinct perspective with her ownpoint of view, details of the tragedy and its effects with critiques of the USgovernment and response, first-hand experiences with second-hand but still relatedissues, and more. I was glad to learn about this song while researching thispost, and plan to return to it.

3)     The Impossible (2012): AHollywood film featuring two current mega-stars (Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts)and a young actor who would soon become one (Tom Holland in his first on-screenrole) was bound to come down on a particular side of that aforementionedcultural line, and there’s no doubt that a good bit of this film focuses on theexperiences of the white tourist family at its center. But as I remember it (Isaw it not long after it came out), it did both depict the tsunami withstriking realism and portray its effects on local communities with depth andpathos—and since the film likely wouldn’t have been made without the initialstar power, it’s fair to say that it represents at least a better-case scenariofor how global cultural works can engage with this tragic quake and its aftermaths.

Next quaketomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 22, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: Three Other California Quakes

[125 yearsago this coming weekend, the first namein earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’ll AmericanStudy ahandful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post on Richter himself!]

On onestriking detail about each of three quakes that followed the 1906 disaster onwhich I focused in yesterday’s post.

1)     SanFernando in 1971: Perhaps the worst quake to hit California since 1906,this hugely destructive disaster was also (as that hyperlinked websitehighlights at length) strikingly productive, resulting in a number of new policies,laws, and research programs that substantially improved the state’sinfrastructure and disaster readiness. I’d point in particular to the Earthquake Clearinghouse, a groundbreakingresource (bad pun intended, but also it really was and is) that has become amodel for how multiple scientists and organizations can share information andideas.

2)     The Bay Area in 1989:No amount of preparation or readiness could prevent earthquakes from occurring,of course, and the next major one would hit the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area(the first major quake in that region since 1906) in October 1989. Like the 1906quake, this one’s epicenter was on the San Andreas fault,which to my understanding remains the most fragile site for such disasters tothis day. But for this AmericanStudier, as I’m sure for many Americans then andsince, what made this quake truly stand out was its impact on the World Series,the first and to date only that featured the two Bay Area teams—and which was delayedfor a week due to the quake.

3)     Northridge in1994: To come full circle to my first item, this catastrophic SouthernCalifornia quake was particularly ironic because it came four years after the CaliforniaLegislature passed  the Seismic Hazards MappingAct of 1990. As with most bureaucratic processes, the actual such mappinghad proceeded slowly, and likely had not been able to take much effect by thetime of this January 1994 quake (which would be, perhaps unrelatedly butperhaps not, the costliest earthquake in US history). In any case, thisdisaster certainly sped up the mapping and zoning processes, and in the decadessince Northridge a great deal of Southern California and the state overall havebeen assessed and developed to make them safer before the next big one.

Next quaketomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 21, 2025: EarthquakeStudying: San Francisco in 1906

[125years ago this coming weekend, the firstname in earthquakes, Charles Richter, was born. So in his honor I’llAmericanStudy a handful of seismic quakes, leading up to a special post onRichter himself!]

On twodistinct, equally inspiring communal responses to one of our most destructivedisasters.

The April 18th, 1906 earthquake thatstruck the coast of Northern California, with a particular locus of the SanFrancisco Bay Area, was itself a particularly destructive one, measuring 7.8 onthe RichterScale and hitting the maximum level of Mercalliintensity of XI (both of those measures were developed in the 1930s, and sohave been applied retroactively to estimate the quake’s force and effects). Butit was the fires that developed throughout the city in the quake’s aftermath—somestarted by firefighters themselves while dynamiting buildings tocreate firebreaks; others supposedly started by homeowners seekinginsurance payouts; but most simply the effects of a naturaldisaster on a largely wooden city—that produced the most widespreaddestruction; by the times those fires died down several days later, anestimated 80% of San Francisco had been destroyed. Well more than half of thecity’s population of 410,000 were left homeless by the quake and fires, with refugeecamps in areas such as the Presidio and Golden Gate Park still inoperation two years later. Although the relatively new technology of photography and thevery new technologyof film allowed the quake’s effects to be catalogued more overtly thanfor any prior disaster, amplifying the destruction’s public visibility, by anymeasure and with or without such records the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake wasone of America’s most horrific natural disasters.

No amountof inspiring responses to that tragedy can ameliorate its horrors anddestructions, and I don’t intend for the next two paragraphs to do so. Yet inthe aftermath of the earthquake, San Francisco communities did respond to it ina couple of distinct but equally compelling and inspiring ways. In the quake’simmediate aftermath, the city’s residents began to set up emergency proceduresand services with striking speed and effectiveness, a process documented andcelebrated by none other than WilliamJames. The pioneering American psychologist and scholar was teaching atnearby Stanford at the time, and, after waking up to the earthquake, managed tojourney into San Francisco later that day and to observe at length the city’sand community’s ongoing responses to the quake. He detailed those observationsin Chapter IX, “On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake,” in 1911 book Memories and Studies,describing what he saw as “a temper of helpfulness beyond the counting” andnoting that, while “there will doubtless be a crop of nervous wrecks before theweeks and months are over, … meanwhile the commonest men [used in agender-neutral way, I believe], simply because they are men, will go on, singly and collectively, showing thisadmirable fortitude of temper.” While not all American disasters have producedthat same communal spirit (as we’ll see later in the week’s series), it doesrepresent a consistent historical thread, and James’s observations ring trueacross many such moments.

The otherinspiring response to the earthquake came from a more specific San Franciscocommunity, and represented an opportunity to challenge a discriminatory andunjust law. By 1906 the ChineseExclusion Act and its many subsequent extensions had been in operation for aquarter century, leading to both the detention and exclusion of Chinesearrivals and numerous hardships for existing Chinese American families andcommunities (such as SanFrancisco’s century-old Chinatown). When the 1906 fires destroyednumerous public birth records, members of those Chinese and Chinese Americancommunities saw a chance to resist and circumvent those laws, and the concept of the “paper sons” was born.Current Chinese American men and families would produce fraudulent birthdocuments, whether for children born in China or to be sold or given to otherunrelated young men, in order to claim them as having been born in America andthus U.S. citizens (itself certainly a fraught category for this community, butone to which, the Supreme Court had ruled in 1898’s United States vs. Wong Kim Ark decision,the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship stillapplied). Despite its unequivocal horrors and losses, then, the 1906 earthquakeallowed for the city’s and nation’s Chinese American community to continue andgrow despite the Exclusion era’s xenophobic limitations, a positive andinspiring outcome to be sure.

Next quaketomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Famous quakes or other natural disasters you’d analyze?

April 19-20, 2025: Kyle Railton’s Guest Post on the OJ Simpson Trial

[Thisweek, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’sblog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to this repeatof his excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Hey everyone, my name is KyleRailton and I am an upcoming senior in high school. As you can tell by my lastname, I am the son of the legendary professor Ben Railton, and writing for mydad’s blog has been on my bucket list for a while, so it is an honor to get thechance! I have been semi-interested in the O.J. Simpson trial for some time,hearing occasional things about how he was guilty, the lawyers messed up, thegloves, etc., but I only became very invested in the past year, when I began aschool project about the case. It was in my American Legal Studies class, and Ichose to read The Run of His Life, the book by Jeffery Toobin, whichquickly fascinated me about every aspect of the case: the media, lawyers,drama, and especially the defendant–O.J. Simpson.  

As I continued to learn more aboutthe case, a couple of parts of the case bothered me the most. I will prefacethis by stating that I do believe that O.J. committed the crime, despite themistakes from the prosecution and the alternate theories proposed by the dreamteam. Firstly, I believe that the trial did not deliver justice, as America’sjustice system is supposed to do, implied by the name. One of the main focusesof the American Legal elective I took this past school year was to study whatjustice was, and how courts are expected to promote justice through applicationof the law. However, I saw this entire case, specifically the outcome, as notproper justice, because many external factors influenced the not guiltyverdict. For example, the media played a crucial role since the discovery ofNicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, negatively affecting and manipulatingperceptions of the trial to the public, even before the jury was selected. Manypeople saw the police as “mistreating” O.J. Simpson when rather the LAPD hadtreated O.J. Simpson like royalty many times in the past, and he was close withmany officers. Additionally, race was almost certainly a deciding factor in thecase, which was exacerbated by the media and constant coverage of the case.While it is obvious that Mark Furhman was extremely racist–a nazi even–and theLAPD has a horrific history of racial prejudice and police brutality, thesefacts had nothing to do with O.J. Simpson’s case. As mentioned in Toobin’sbook, they were specifically used as the “race card” to get Simpson free. Thereason I see this as a massive injustice is because there is lots of racialprofiling in the court system and police forces across America, but this casewas not an instance of racist police officers framing an African American man.Now, it is completely understandable why many would believe that the LAPDframed O.J., but this use of the “race card” only opens the world up tocriticism when actual racist incidents come, as they too often do because then Americansclaim that it is just another use of the “race card.” I remember a hilariousquote from a show I watched with my family based on the O.J. trial, which goessomething like, “O.J. Simpson is the first defendant to get acquitted becausehe is Black!” Race has never been a black-and-white subject in America, andwhile it is unfortunately impossible to change the past and convict O.J.Simpson, it is possible to build and grow as a nation, which starts withlearning from the history of America’s complicated justice system. 

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Lemmeknow any responses I can pass along to Kyle!

April 18, 2025: Kyle Contexts: Chinchillas

[Thisweek, my amazing younger son Kyle turns 18! So I wanted to dedicate the week’sblog series to AmericanStudying some Kyle Contexts, leading up to a repeat ofhis excellent Guest Post on the OJ Simpson trial.]

Three waysto contextualize my son’s favorite animal (and one of the cutest out there, justobjectively, you know it’s true).

1)     Exoticpets: I wrote a good bit in that post on ostrich racing on both exotic petsoverall and my sons’ interest in them in particular (focusing there on alpacas,another favorite of the boys’ and one featured at mywedding!). I certainly get critiques of exotic animal fads, such as the pot-belliedpigs a few decades back who ended up being left at shelters or justabandoned altogether far too often. But in truth, chinchillas are notradically different from many other rodents frequently kept as pets, fromguinea pigs to hamsters to gerbils and more. Yes, they require a bit ofspecialized care, but every animal is unique in its needs. And the benefits more thanspeak for themselves.

2)     Fur is murder: Most of the chinchillas in theworld these days are indeed kept as pets, as both of the chinchilla species inthe wild have becomeextremely endangered. There are a few reasons, but by far the most significantis huntingfor their fur, which has been prized for items like coats for a long time. (EvenJay-Z references chinchilla fur as the gold standard in his rap verse on his wifeBeyoncé’s “Crazy in Love.”)I’d like to think that we’ve all realized here in 2025 that fur is indeedmurder, but just in case not: the only place chinchilla fur should be found ison chinchillas.

3)     AnimalAdventures: Young Kyle had been a fan of chinchillas for a while before hehad the chance to meet one in person, but when he did it took things to a whole‘nother level. That was thanks to the folks at this local animal rescuebusiness, and specifically to their featured exhibit at the awesome Kimball Farms in Westford, MA.When they let Kyle take part in a performance and hold a chinchilla on his head(as well as in his arms, natch), my younger son’s fondness for not just thisparticular animal, but all cute animals, was truly cemented—and despite his thoroughlymature 18 year old self, that fondness remains, one of so many things I loveabout him.

Guest Postthis weekend,

Ben

PS. Lemmeknow any bday wishes I can pass along to my not-so-young man!