Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 29

November 13, 2024: AmericanStudies’ 14th Anniversary!: Teaching Thoughts

[14years ago this week, this blog was born. For this year’s anniversaryseries, I wanted to highlight a handful of the types of posts that have kept meblogging for nearly a decade and a half now. Leading up to some special weekendtributes!]

In mid-May2011, almost exactly six months into my blogging career, I decided to endthe Spring 2011 semester with a few consecutive posts (starting with thathyperlinked one) reflecting on that semester’s classes, teaching, and otherwork in my roles at Fitchburg State. I won’t pretend to remember if I plannedat that time to make such end-of-semester reflections a consistent part of theblog, nor exactly when I decided to complement them with beginning of semesterposts (I featuredone individual such post in September 2011, but featured the first full pre-semesterseriesin January 2012, and likewise featured a weeklong end of semester seriesthat May). All I know is, it’s been a long time since I’ve started or endeda semester without blogging about it, and I really love how much the two gohand-in-hand for me: the promise of a new semester and the opportunity to expressthose hopes in this space; the culminating moments of a semester and the chanceto think about takeaways from that work here. Other than my sons, teaching andblogging have been my two true constants over the last 14 years, and I lovethat they’re so intertwined.

Next poston posts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Giveme a great anniversary present and say hi in comments, please!

November 12, 2024: AmericanStudies’ 14th Anniversary!: Lifelong Learning

[14years ago this week, this blog was born. For this year’s anniversaryseries, I wanted to highlight a handful of the types of posts that have kept meblogging for nearly a decade and a half now. Leading up to some special weekendtributes!]

For sometime in the blog’s early days (and really its early years), I’d say my poststended to focus on the kinds of familiar topics I highlighted yesterday—sometimesfavorites, sometimes frustrations, but most of the time subjects about which I knewa decent amount before I began planning and writing. It was really when I beganplanning weekly series around a particular topic that I likewise startedcreating posts—not all of them, but at least a couple in each series, let’s say—froman initially less well-informed place, and thus needing to research before (andwhile) writing. As a result, there’s absolutely no doubt that I have learned agreat deal from this blog, about an unbelievably wide variety of topics: including,to cite just a few from my early moves into such weekly series, SanDiego, satire,and Sendak.I hope I’ve modeled lifelong learning as a collective goal in the process, but inany case that goal has kept the blog fresh for its author, and thus withoutquestion kept me going.

Next poston posts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Giveme a great anniversary present and say hi in comments, please!

November 11, 2024: AmericanStudies’ 14th Anniversary!: Foregrounding Favorites

[14years ago this week, this blog was born. For this year’s anniversaryseries, I wanted to highlight a handful of the types of posts that have kept meblogging for nearly a decade and a half now. Leading up to some special weekendtributes!]

For folkswho know me, it’s likely no surprise that the first month of this blog includedposts that featured TheMarrow of Tradition, Thunderheart,Boston’sShaw/54th Massachusetts Memorial, TheGrandissimes and The Squatter and theDon, TheBest Years of Our Lives, and the ChineseEducational Mission and its Celestials baseball team. That is, all of thosethings are favorites of mine in their respective cultural and historicalcategories, and I can’t imagine creating a daily blog without getting thechance to share such favorites with y’all (I’m honestly just surprised I didn’tget to Springsteenor Saylesfor as long as I did, although I’ve more than made up for it since). While Igot a lot of those favorites into the mix very quickly, I’ve certainly returnedto favs every month and year since, including further attention to those butalso to other subjects such as (to name just a few from this past year) KaneBrown, Houseof Leaves, Deadwood and Justified, and many many more. I’mstill doing this 14 years down the road for lots of reasons, as I hope thisseries will illustrate, but high on the list is that I’m having a lot of fun,and favorites help make it so.

Next poston posts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Giveme a great anniversary present and say hi in comments, please!

November 9-10, 2024: 2024 Election Reflections

So thathappened. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years thinking and writingabout the worst and best of America, and somehow I’m still surprised andsaddened when we lean into our worst. We can try to understand and analyzethese results in all sorts of ways, but the bottom line is that more than 70million of my fellow Americans voted for a candidate who expresses and embodiesnot just the worst attributes of human behavior and the worst impulses toward fascism,but also (and most relevantly to this blog) the worst of our shared historiesand national identity.

The onlyother thing I want to say here is this: over the last few days, I’ve started towork hard to lean in myself, into the people and things I love, into the bestin my life, from the biggest (my younger son as he moves through his senioryear, my older son as he continues to rock his freshman year in college, myparents, my wife) to the smallest (a Reese’s ice cream cake for no reason otherthan all the reasons). And one of the things I love most is the best of thework I get to do—in the classroom, on my podcast, in this blog, everywhere Iget to do this AmericanStudying thing. La lucha continua, and as ever I’m veryproud to be in it with y’all.

Bloganniversary series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

November 8, 2024: The 1924 Election: Foreshadowing the Future

[This hasbeen a particularly crazy last year/decade/eternity, but it’s not the firstnutty presidential campaign and election. 100 years ago wascertainly another, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of 1924 electioncontexts, leading up to some reflections on this year’s electoral results!]

Three waysthat the 1924 election foreshadowed future political events.

1)     Progressive programs: I don’t want to repeattoo much of where I ended yesterday’s post, but I don’t think it’s possible tooverstate the significance of La Follette’s third-party run and success.Coolidge’s win was due in large part to perceptions that the economy was booming—butfive years before the stock market crash, La Follette’s success reflected asizeable contingent of Americans for whom things weren’t going so well, and adesire for a government that could support and help those folks. Less than adecade later, the federal government would dedicate itself to doing so in waysthat would extend into at least the1960s and in many ways the rest of the century.

2)     Catholic candidates: A major reason for theridiculous deadlock at the 1924Democratic National Convention was that one of the two leading contenders forthe nomination, New York Governor Al Smith, wasCatholic, and thus the target of the same longstanding anti-Catholicprejudices I highlighted in thispost a couple months back. If Smith did not ultimately break through thoseprejudices in 1924, however, he was able to do so just four years later, winning the Democratic nominationat the also-contested 1928 Democratic National Convention in Houston. Smith lostto Herbert Hoover in November, and there’s no doubt that hisCatholicism played a role; but progress is progress, and I believe Smith’sprogress in the 1920s absolutely foreshadowed Kennedy’selection in 1960 (as well as the non-issue that Biden’s Catholicism hasbeen in our current moment).

3)     Right-wing extremism in New York: Both ofthose were genuine and positive legacies of the 1924 election, and I don’t wantto minimize them by ending on a darker note. But the presence and influence ofthe Ku Klux Klan at the Democratic Convention in New York City was a powerful momentof foreshadowing in its own right, and I’m not talking here about the immigrationrestrictions and exclusions I highlighted in Wednesday’s post. Instead, I’m thinkingabout another, even more extreme right-winggathering in Madison Square Garden fifteen years later, one that trulyreflected the presenceof such American extremists. I think it’s fair to say we’re still dealingwith that presence lo these 100 years later.  

2024election reflections this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other crazy elections you’d highlight, or thoughts on this oneyou’d share?

November 7, 2024: The 1924 Election: La Follette’s 3rd Party

[This hasbeen a particularly crazy last year/decade/eternity, but it’s not the firstnutty presidential campaign and election. 100 years ago wascertainly another, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of 1924 electioncontexts, leading up to some reflections on this year’s electoral results!]

For one ofthemost successful third-party candidates in American history, on three waysto analyze why such candidates exist.

1)     Splintered Parties: Dissatisfied with the increasinglyconservative, isolationist, pro-business and anti-labor stance of theRepublican Party in the 1920s, Robert“Fighting Bob” La Follette, the most famous political figure in the history of Wisconsinand an ardent supporter of labor unions, progressive taxation and wealthdistribution, and other liberal causes, decided not long before the 1924campaign began to leave that party and form his own, theProgressive Party. Many of the most successful third-party candidates andcampaigns in American history have started in similar ways, with a schismin one of the major parties; I’d say that defines these particularthird-party candidates as well-established political players, part of theexisting system, yet with a new perspective that challenges that system’scurrent duality and offers voters a somewhat familiar but still new alternative.

2)     Self-Confidence: While third parties are thusgenerally responding to evolving realities within the existing parties andsystem, as well as to voting blocs that are no longer represented by thoseparties, they have also almost always depended on a famous individual aroundwhom the new party can be organized. And from WilliamJennings Bryan to TeddyRoosevelt to RossPerot to RalphNader to RFK Jr. (not providing a hyperlink for that mofo, sorry), most ofthose individuals have been, shall we say, very fond of the sound of their ownvoices. It’s understandable—to run a campaign that challenges the major partiesis an act of striking self-confidence, if not indeed hubris. Quite likely that’snecessary in our political system; but at the same time, it can make thesethird parties dangerously close to cults of personality. From what I can tell,La Follette was genuinely more focused on the people than himself; but it’salways a fine line with third-party candidates, is what I’m saying.

3)     Setting the Stage: However we parse theirmotivations, there’s no doubt that third parties can have a real effect onelections, and at times that effect has been a very frustrating one (looking atyou, Ralph). It doesn’t seem like La Follette’s presence in 1924 necessarily didso, since he probably gained votes from more liberal voters in both parties. Andin any case, there’s another, longer-term potential effect of third-partycampaigns, especially those that reach a certain level of success as La Follette’sdefinitely did: they can help reshape political conversations, setting thestage for future evolutions of the parties and the system as well as the nationoverall. It was nearly a decade before Franklin Roosevelt would begin creatingthe New Deal, and of course the onset of the Great Depression was the mostsignificant factor in that sweeping transformation of American politics andsociety. But I would argue that La Follette’s campaign proved that there was a substantialpublic appetite for (among other reforms) support for workers and taking careof the most vulnerable, all of which helped make the New Deal possible.

Last 1924contexts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other crazy elections you’d highlight, or thoughts on this oneyou’d share?

November 6, 2024: The 1924 Election: KKKonventions

[This hasbeen a particularly crazy last year/decade/eternity, but it’s not the firstnutty presidential campaign and election. 100 years ago wascertainly another, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of 1924 electioncontexts, leading up to some reflections on this year’s electoral results!]

On theKlan’s influence on both 1924 Conventions, and a frustrating national parallel.

More than8 years ago, I wrotefor The American Prospect about the chaotic 1924 Democratic NationalConvention (to this day thelongest continuously running convention in US history) and the frustratinglyover-sized role that the Ku Klux Klan played there. I’d ask you to check outthat column (at the first hyperlink above) if you would, and then come on backfor more.

Welcomeback! I’m always learning, and it’s important to note that I was apparentlymistaken that the Convention was widely known as the “Klanbake”—that’s apparentlya myth which developed after the fact, based on asingle newspaper editorial. But nonetheless, the Klan was a prominentpresence at that DNC in New York, and a driving force in the Convention’sinability to settle on a nominee until the 103rd ballot. And it’sworth noting that the Klan was also prominently present at the RNC in Clevelandthat year, leading another editorial writer to dubthat one the Kleveland Konvention. Just as the DNC failed to censure or inany formal way call out the KKK, so too was an anti-KKK measure voted down atthe RNC; eventually the Republican VP nominee Charles Dawes did publicly criticizethe Klan, but with sufficient mixed signals toward the organization that, as NewYork Mayor Fiorello La Guardia noted, “General Dawes praised the Klan withfaint damn.” There’s no question that the Ku Klux Klan was a major politicalplayer for both parties in the 1924 campaign.

Moreover,whatever we call the conventions or say about the KKK’s role at and aroundthem, I stand by the final arguments I made in that American Prospectcolumn—that we can’t separate the Klan from the most significant legislation passedin 1924, and one of themost influential laws enacted in American history: the Johnson-Reed Act,better known as the ImmigrationAct of 1924. I said most of what I’d want to say about that horrific law inthose two hyperlinked columns, as well as in those final paragraphs of the Prospectpiece. The bottom line, to me, is that it wasn’t just the respective national conventionsand political parties which were under the sway of the Ku Klux Klan in 1924—it wasthe entire nation, and in its immigration policy, its visions of diversity and inclusion/exclusion,and its definitions of American identity it would remain so for the next fortyyears.  

Next 1924contexts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other crazy elections you’d highlight, or thoughts on this oneyou’d share?

November 5, 2024: The 1924 Election: Three VP Nominees

[This hasbeen a particularly crazy last year/decade/eternity, but it’s not the firstnutty presidential campaign and election. 100 years ago wascertainly another, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of 1924 electioncontexts, leading up to some reflections on this year’s electoral results!]

On howthree Republican nominees for the Vice Presidency exemplify electoral chaos.

1)     Frank Lowden: Up until the ratificationof the 25th Amendment in 1967, if wasn’t required for a formerVice President and newly sworn-in President like Calvin Coolidge to nominate anew Vice President, and so Coolidge didn’t do so when he ascended to thepresidency in August 1923. That meant that for much of 1923 and 1924 Coolidgewas seeking the Republican nomination and reelection to the presidency with noVice Presidential nominee, and thus that the 1924Republican National Convention in Cleveland needed to name such a nomineealongside Coolidge. Coolidge’s choice was Frank O. Lowden, aformer U.S. Representative from and Governor of Illinois who had himself soughtthe presidency in 1920. But perhaps because he had lost that nomination tothe Harding-Coolidge ticket, or perhaps because he had his own futurepresidential ambitions (and did run again in the1928 Republican primaries), Lowden turned down the nomination.

2)     Charles Dawes: With Coolidge’s own choice forVP out of the running, the convention delegates as a whole settled on a newnominee, the lawyer and businessman, WorldWar I officer, and Harding administration official (in the role of the first director ofthe Bureau of the Budget) CharlesDawes. During his time as Coolidge’s VP Dawes would become best known for draftinga WWI reparations plan, known as the Dawes Plan,for which he received the 1925Nobel Peace Prize. But Coolidge clearly never warmed to Dawes as his VP, asillustrated by the president’s failure to support Dawes’ signature domesticachievement: Dawes championed the McNary-HaugenFarm Relief Bill and helped it pass Congress, but Coolidgevetoed the bill not once but twice (in 1926and 1927). And when Coolidge announced he would not seek reelection in 1928and Dawes was rumored as a possible candidate, Coolidge told delegates that hewould consider any nomination of Dawes as a personal insult.    

3)     Charles Curtis: Herbert Hoover ended up the Republicanpresidential nominee in 1928, and Dawes was likewise passed over as a VicePresidential nominee despite his continued interest in the role. Instead, the RepublicanNational Convention in Kansas City chose Kansas Senator CharlesCurtis as Hoover’s VP nominee. The choice of Curtis reflected a second consecutiveRNC with a contested vice presidential nomination process that was separate from,and perhaps even more combative than, the presidential nomination. But at thesame time, Curtis was a hugely significant symbolic choice—as an enrolledmember of the Kaw Nation, he was (and remains to this day) theonly Native American ever to serve as Vice President. Another way that thechaos of these 1920s elections mirrors some of the factors that have made ourown current campaign and election unusual and groundbreaking!

Next 1924contexts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other crazy elections you’d highlight, or thoughts on this oneyou’d share?

November 4, 2024: The 1924 Election: Harding’s Shadow

[This hasbeen a particularly crazy last year/decade/eternity, but it’s not the firstnutty presidential campaign and election. 100 years ago wascertainly another, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of 1924 electioncontexts, leading up to some reflections on this year’s electoral results!]

On how theHarding administration’s scandals expanded in the year after his death, and howthey didn’t ultimately matter much in the election.

Beginning withthe 1840 election and WilliamHenry Harrison’s particularly abrupt death just one month after hisinauguration, and continuing through the 1960 election and theKennedy assassination, every twenty years the president who triumphed in thatcampaign ended up dying while still in office. The majority of those deathswere due to assassinations (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy), butthere were also three who died of natural causes: Harrison in 1841, FDRin 1945, and, on August2nd, 1923, Warren Harding from what was likely cardiacarrest but was called at the time a cerebral hemorrhage that had followed an“acutegastrointestinal attack.” Harding was on atrain and boat trip across the Western U.S. at the time (known by theevocative name the Voyageof Understanding), and apparently sometime in the course of the trip askedhis Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover (who laterwrote about the conversation) what a president should do if is he aware ofa scandal inside his administration that has not yet come to light.

Accordingto Hoover, he advised the president to publicize such a scandal; we’ll neverknow if Harding would have done so had he lived, but one thing is for certain:major scandals related to his administration did indeed emerge in the year afterhis death, amidst hisformer Vice President and newly sworn-inPresident Calvin Coolidge’s reelection campaign. The most prominent suchscandal was TeapotDome, which involved illicitly awarded leases to federal lands; investigationsbegan two months after Harding’s death and continued into early 1924, withHarding’s Secretaryof the Interior Albert Fall eventually serving prison time for his role. Justa couple months later, the Senate voted to open up another investigation, thistime into Harding’s Attorney GeneralHarry M. Daugherty; those investigationsbegan in March 1924 and continued for the next few months, eventuallyresulting in the conviction of and prison time for another former Hardingofficial, AlienProperty Custodian Thomas W. Miller (although Daugherty escaped with a hungjury). Those weren’teven the only scandals, but they were more than enough to dominate headlinesfor much of 1924.  

You’d thinkthat those election-year scandals would have affected Calvin Coolidge’s campaign—hehad been part of the Harding administration (it’s second-highest rankingofficial, no less), had assumed the presidency upon Harding’s death andmaintained much of the administration’s structure, and was running forreelection amidst all these stories about his former boss’s multi-layered corruption.At the very least, you’d think he’d have to constantly distance himself fromHarding, as AlGore did from Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal throughout the 2000campaign. But from what I can tell, Harding’s scandals were largely treated bythe press as separatefrom Coolidge and his campaign, and they don’t seem to have significantly shiftedtheeventual voting patterns (which closely mirrored the 1920 election, with athird-party thrown in about which I’ll write more in a couple days). Part ofthe reason is likely that the economy was in very good shape, which always benefitsan incumbent seeking reelection. But I’d say it also reflects an early 20thcentury reality that has changed drastically in the last 100 years—that vicepresidents were seen as quite distinct from the president (as we'll see in tomorrow's post as well), and given space todefine their own campaign as a result.  

Next 1924contexts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other elections you’d highlight, or thoughts on this one you’dshare?

November 2-3, 2024: October 2024 Recap

[A Recapof the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

September30: 19th Century Baseball: A Contested Origin: Inspired by abicentennial birthday and connected to my new podcast, a series on 19C baseballkicked off with two interesting details about the contested story of the sport’sorigins.

October1: 19th Century Baseball: Henry Chadwick: For his 200thbirthday, the series continues with three ways the “Father of Baseball” helped shapethe sport and its stories.

October2: 19th Century Baseball: The Massachusetts Game: Three placesthat can help us better remember an alternative form of baseball, as the seriesplays on.

October3: 19th Century Baseball: The First Professionals: Four figureswho together help us chart the evolution of professional baseball in the late19th century.

October4: 19th Century Baseball: The Celestials: The series concludeswith two 19th century baseball context for the 1870s team at theheart of my podcast.

October5-6: My New Podcast!: And speaking of that podcast, a special weekend poston three takeaways from my first experience with the medium!

October7: Contested Holidays: Memorial/Decoration Day: Ahead of Columbus/IndigenousPeoples’ Day, a series on contested holidays kicks off with a couple additionalthoughts on my annual Memorial and Decoration Day post.

October8: Contested Holidays: The 4th of July: The series continueswith whether and how there’s a place for celebratory patriotism in our nationalcommemorations.

October9: Contested Holidays: Labor Day: The bare minimum for how we shouldcelebrate Labor Day and a couple steps beyond, as the series parties on.

October10: Contested Holidays: Thanksgiving/Day of Mourning: With Thanksgiving justa few weeks away, two ways we can be thankful while mourning.

October11: Contested Holidays: “The War on Christmas”: The series concludes withthree voices who can help us see through the “War on Christmas” canard.

October12-13: Contested Holidays: Columbus/Indigenous Peoples Day: And for theholiday, a special weekend post on how my thinking on it has evolved over thelast decade, and one thing I’d still emphasize.

October14: Famous Phone Calls: The Great Gatsby: For the 75th anniversaryof a key stage in the technology, a series on American phone calls kicks offwith three phone calls at the heart of Fitzgerald’s portrayal of early 20CAmerica.  

October15: Famous Phone Calls: The Scream Films: The series continues with onething that’s really changed since the first of these phone-focused films, andone that hasn’t.

October16: Famous Phone Calls: Phone Songs: Five pop songs that call upon thistechnology, as the series rings on.

October17: Famous Phone Calls: “Madam and the Phone Bill”: A funny and fun poetic character,and the layers of meaning she reveals.

October18: Famous Phone Calls: The 2024 Election: With the election now just daysaway, the series concludes with how phone calls symbolize the striking contrastat the heart of this campaign.

October19-20: An AmericanStudier Tribute to the Phone: And on a more fullypositive note, what the phone has meant to me over the last decade of my lifeand relationships.

October21: Prison Stories: Dorothea Dix: For the 30th anniversary of asobering statistic, a PrisonStudying series kicks off with the activist fromwhom we still have a lot to learn.

October22: Prison Stories: Alcatraz: The series continues with why it’s okay toturn a prison into a tourist attraction, and what we can remember instead.

October23: Prison Stories: Ian Williams and Teaching in Prisons: Re-sharing one ofmy earliest posts, on a colleague and friend doing vital work in our prisons.

October24: Prison Stories: Johnny Cash: The message the Man in Black still has forus, if we can ever start to hear it, as the series rolls on.

October25: Prison Stories: The Inside Literary Prize: The series concludes with threequotes that together sum up why one of our newest prizes is also one of themost important ever.

October26-27: A PrisonStudying Reading List: And speaking of writing and reading,a weekend reminder that there’s always more we can read and learn.

October28: The Politics of Horror: Psycho and The Birds: We all know this year’sHalloween is interconnected with a very scary political season, so a series onthe politics of horror films kicks off with defamiliarization and prejudice inHitchcock.

October29: The Politics of Horror: Last House on the Left: The series continueswith a horror film that’s more disturbing in what it makes us cheer for.

October30: The Politics of Horror: Hostel and Taken: The horrifying xenophobia atthe heart of two of the 21st century’s biggest hits, as the seriesscreams on.

October31: The Politics of Horror: The Saw Series: Different visions of moralityin horror films and franchises, and whether they matter.

November1: The Politics of Horror: Recent Films: The series and month conclude withquick political takeaways from five new horror classics.

Electionseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Topicsyou’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!