Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 386
April 11, 2013
April 11, 2013: Taxes in America: The Populists and Taxes
[As you finalize your taxes—not you, I know you’re done already, I mean everybody else—this week’s series will focus on some American moments and issues related to this controversial national theme. Leading up to a special weekend post that will frame that theme very differently!]
On the influential third party’s support for an income tax, and how that history reinforces yet changes our perspective on the politics of taxation.In 1892, the People’s party (generally known, then and now, as the Populist party) held its first national convention in Omaha, the only convention at which the party would nominate its own third-party candidate for president (it did nominate a vice presidential candidate for the 1896 Democratic ticket). The convention nominated James B. Weaver of Iowa as that candidate (with Virginia’s James Field as his vice presidential nominee), and passed the so-called “Omaha Platform” (which had been drafted by Minnesota Congressman Ignatius Donnelly) to express the principles for which that candidate and the party were running. That platform addressed multiple controversial issues, both in its list of “demands” and in the subsequent “Expressions of Sentiments”; but among the former, stated as clearly as any single idea in the platform, was this sentence: “We demand a graduated income tax.”The Populist party and the Omaha Platform comprise interesting and significant national histories in their own right, but that specific demand proved particularly influential, and is telling in at least two distinct yet complementary ways. For one thing, when the Democratic Party explicitly allied itself with the Populists in 1896—both by aligning presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan with that aforementioned vice presidential nominee, Georgia Senator Thomas Watson; and by adopting aspects of the party’s platform—it did so in significant measure by endorsing a federal income tax, the first time that one of the two major parties had done so in its national platform. The two parties’ political identities and priorities were of course far different in the late 19th century than they are in the early 21st; but this endorsement of the income tax could be seen as one of the Democratic Party’s earliest moves toward its overall identification with taxation as a necessary and meaningful part of government’s responsibilities.In that sense, the existence and arc of the Populists’ support for the income tax likely reinforces our general, communal perspective on the politics of taxation. But on the other hand, I think it’s worth noting the complex dynamics of social roles and classes in these moments and details. The Populists were the self-identified party of farmers, laborers, and the working class, and articulated their support for the income tax (as with every part of their platform) in contrast to the bankers, railroad magnates, and other corporate interests in explicit opposition to which the party had come into being. The same could be said of the Democratic Party’s 1896 endorsement of the tax, as part of the presidential platform for “The Great Commoner” Bryan. I would argue that our 21st century narratives tend to frame taxes as the enemy of the working man, created and supported by “elites”—certainly the Tea Party’s rhetoric does so—, but what the Populist influence reveals is that the income tax’s origins lie, in large part, within one of the most working class-centered political movements in American history.Final taxing topic tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the influential third party’s support for an income tax, and how that history reinforces yet changes our perspective on the politics of taxation.In 1892, the People’s party (generally known, then and now, as the Populist party) held its first national convention in Omaha, the only convention at which the party would nominate its own third-party candidate for president (it did nominate a vice presidential candidate for the 1896 Democratic ticket). The convention nominated James B. Weaver of Iowa as that candidate (with Virginia’s James Field as his vice presidential nominee), and passed the so-called “Omaha Platform” (which had been drafted by Minnesota Congressman Ignatius Donnelly) to express the principles for which that candidate and the party were running. That platform addressed multiple controversial issues, both in its list of “demands” and in the subsequent “Expressions of Sentiments”; but among the former, stated as clearly as any single idea in the platform, was this sentence: “We demand a graduated income tax.”The Populist party and the Omaha Platform comprise interesting and significant national histories in their own right, but that specific demand proved particularly influential, and is telling in at least two distinct yet complementary ways. For one thing, when the Democratic Party explicitly allied itself with the Populists in 1896—both by aligning presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan with that aforementioned vice presidential nominee, Georgia Senator Thomas Watson; and by adopting aspects of the party’s platform—it did so in significant measure by endorsing a federal income tax, the first time that one of the two major parties had done so in its national platform. The two parties’ political identities and priorities were of course far different in the late 19th century than they are in the early 21st; but this endorsement of the income tax could be seen as one of the Democratic Party’s earliest moves toward its overall identification with taxation as a necessary and meaningful part of government’s responsibilities.In that sense, the existence and arc of the Populists’ support for the income tax likely reinforces our general, communal perspective on the politics of taxation. But on the other hand, I think it’s worth noting the complex dynamics of social roles and classes in these moments and details. The Populists were the self-identified party of farmers, laborers, and the working class, and articulated their support for the income tax (as with every part of their platform) in contrast to the bankers, railroad magnates, and other corporate interests in explicit opposition to which the party had come into being. The same could be said of the Democratic Party’s 1896 endorsement of the tax, as part of the presidential platform for “The Great Commoner” Bryan. I would argue that our 21st century narratives tend to frame taxes as the enemy of the working man, created and supported by “elites”—certainly the Tea Party’s rhetoric does so—, but what the Populist influence reveals is that the income tax’s origins lie, in large part, within one of the most working class-centered political movements in American history.Final taxing topic tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
April 10, 2013
April 10, 2013: Taxes in America: Lincoln and Taxes
[As you finalize your taxes—not you, I know you’re done already, I mean everybody else—this week’s series will focus on some American moments and issues related to this controversial national theme. Leading up to a special weekend post that will frame that theme very differently!]
On the income tax’s largely unknown origin point—and why it matters.In August 1861, with the Civil War a few months old and the question of funding this huge federal undertaking gaining increasing urgency, Abraham Lincoln advocated for and Congress passed the Revenue Act. The law included various provisions, such as tariffs on numerous imports and an extensive real estate tax, but was most noteworthy for its creation of the first federal income tax, levied at 3% on all annual incomes over $800. The following year’s Revenue Act expanded and complicated that initial tax, exempting the first $600, keeping the 3% rate up to $10,000, and then taxing incomes over $10,000 at 5% instead (among other stipulations and details). Acts in the subsequent two years added further levels and rules, but when the war ended in 1865 so too did Congress sunset these new revenue-gaining mechanisms.These earliest, temporary federal income taxes certainly foreshadowed on multiple levels the progressive income tax that would be more permanently created a half-century later, and about which I’ll have more to say in tomorrow’s post. But they also, I would argue, illustrate two other enduring aspects of our national identity and politics, both of which remain salient in our 21st century moment. For one thing, while the Revenue Acts were created out of the Civil War’s most basic necessity, they also connect to one of the war’s more complex and divisive realities: that despite the ostensibly all-encompassing nature of military service in the era (particularly after 1863), the wealthiest citizens were often not those doing the actual fighting. As such, the income tax could be described as a way to force those wealthiest Americans to contribute to the war effort in other ways—to ask them, that is, to share some of the sacrifices that were otherwise all too frequently asked disproportionately of those Americans in less comfortable circumstances.And then there’s the question of what we make of the specific use to which these earliest income tax revenues were put. On the one hand, you could analyze the militaristic purpose behind this tax as a precursor to just how much of our current revenue is spent on “defense” and all that it includes; of course the Civil War effort would seem far more worthy of support than much of our current defense spending, but the connection is there nonetheless. On the other hand, clearly the Civil War was the nation’s highest and most pressing priority in 1861, and through that lens war spending thus represented the federal government’s clearest way to support those Americans who needed it most; which might, in its own complex way, provide an argument for redirecting much of our contemporary “defense” spending toward areas such as education, infrastructure, and the social safety net. It’s in those areas, I would argue, that we can and must move toward a more perfect union, find the better angels of our nature, in the 21st century.Next taxing topic tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the income tax’s largely unknown origin point—and why it matters.In August 1861, with the Civil War a few months old and the question of funding this huge federal undertaking gaining increasing urgency, Abraham Lincoln advocated for and Congress passed the Revenue Act. The law included various provisions, such as tariffs on numerous imports and an extensive real estate tax, but was most noteworthy for its creation of the first federal income tax, levied at 3% on all annual incomes over $800. The following year’s Revenue Act expanded and complicated that initial tax, exempting the first $600, keeping the 3% rate up to $10,000, and then taxing incomes over $10,000 at 5% instead (among other stipulations and details). Acts in the subsequent two years added further levels and rules, but when the war ended in 1865 so too did Congress sunset these new revenue-gaining mechanisms.These earliest, temporary federal income taxes certainly foreshadowed on multiple levels the progressive income tax that would be more permanently created a half-century later, and about which I’ll have more to say in tomorrow’s post. But they also, I would argue, illustrate two other enduring aspects of our national identity and politics, both of which remain salient in our 21st century moment. For one thing, while the Revenue Acts were created out of the Civil War’s most basic necessity, they also connect to one of the war’s more complex and divisive realities: that despite the ostensibly all-encompassing nature of military service in the era (particularly after 1863), the wealthiest citizens were often not those doing the actual fighting. As such, the income tax could be described as a way to force those wealthiest Americans to contribute to the war effort in other ways—to ask them, that is, to share some of the sacrifices that were otherwise all too frequently asked disproportionately of those Americans in less comfortable circumstances.And then there’s the question of what we make of the specific use to which these earliest income tax revenues were put. On the one hand, you could analyze the militaristic purpose behind this tax as a precursor to just how much of our current revenue is spent on “defense” and all that it includes; of course the Civil War effort would seem far more worthy of support than much of our current defense spending, but the connection is there nonetheless. On the other hand, clearly the Civil War was the nation’s highest and most pressing priority in 1861, and through that lens war spending thus represented the federal government’s clearest way to support those Americans who needed it most; which might, in its own complex way, provide an argument for redirecting much of our contemporary “defense” spending toward areas such as education, infrastructure, and the social safety net. It’s in those areas, I would argue, that we can and must move toward a more perfect union, find the better angels of our nature, in the 21st century.Next taxing topic tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
April 9, 2013
April 9, 2013: Taxes in America: The Whiskey Rebellion
[As you finalize your taxes—not you, I know you’re done already, I mean everybody else—this week’s series will focus on some American moments and issues related to this controversial national theme. Leading up to a special weekend post that will frame that theme very differently!]
On two entirely distinct ways to AmericanStudy one of our first domestic crises.First, at the risk of self-plagiarism, I’m going to copy a paragraph from my prior post on George Washington’s second term; my apologies, but the ideas are relevant to this post as well: “George Washington was reeelected unanimously (and unopposed) in 1792, the last time a president ran uncontested, but much of his second term was dominated by unexpected crises and scandals. That included the unfolding effects of the French Revolution and the related European wars, about which I’ll write more below; but no event was more striking and significant than the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion. Tensions had been boiling over since Washington and his Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton instituted a new whiskey excise in 1791, and came to a head three years later when a group of Pennsylvania farmers destroyed a tax inspector’s home and began armed resistance against the federal government. When diplomatic resolutions failed and Hamilton led a military force (of 13,000 militia men) against American citizens, it became clear that Washington’s honeymoon period was over; the presidency and government had become the controversial and debated entities that they have remained ever since.”One way to analyze the Whiskey Rebellion would be to do so through the lens of Hamilton, and more exactly his complicated relationship with President Washington’s other most prominent Cabinet member, Secretary of State (during Washington’s first term) Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton and Jefferson represented the clear and striking distinction between the Federalists, with their emphasis on a strong central government, and the emergent Democrat-Republicans (known at the time of the Constitutional debates as the Anti-Federalists), with their resistance to that concept. And the Whiskey Rebellion certainly illustrated some of the tensions that such distinct perspectives could and did produce in the new American polity. But it’s also worth noting that just as Hamilton became closely connected in our national narratives and consciousness to banks, so too did Jefferson come to be associated with what he called “yeomen farmers”—and the two men thus embodied, at least in those dominant images, the opposed groups at the heart of the Whiskey Rebellion’s conflict. There’s an entirely different, and far less civically minded, way to analyze the Rebellion, however. Perhaps because of our temporal distance from its events, perhaps because it was fought over something as seemingly silly as alcohol, or perhaps because farmers occupy such a generally positive place in our national narratives (see the recent Super Bowl ad, for example), it’s tough to see the rebels as the 18thcentury equivalents to contemporary armed domestic terrorists such as the Hutaree Militia. But it’s also tough to come up with convincing reasons why these Early Republic violent insurrectionists, shooting federal agents rather than paying taxes, were different from such 21st century extremist groups. The fact is, as long as we’ve had a federal government, we’ve had Americans who position themselves in armed opposition to it—and that’s a dark and troubling but unavoidable American history.Next taxing topic tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On two entirely distinct ways to AmericanStudy one of our first domestic crises.First, at the risk of self-plagiarism, I’m going to copy a paragraph from my prior post on George Washington’s second term; my apologies, but the ideas are relevant to this post as well: “George Washington was reeelected unanimously (and unopposed) in 1792, the last time a president ran uncontested, but much of his second term was dominated by unexpected crises and scandals. That included the unfolding effects of the French Revolution and the related European wars, about which I’ll write more below; but no event was more striking and significant than the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion. Tensions had been boiling over since Washington and his Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton instituted a new whiskey excise in 1791, and came to a head three years later when a group of Pennsylvania farmers destroyed a tax inspector’s home and began armed resistance against the federal government. When diplomatic resolutions failed and Hamilton led a military force (of 13,000 militia men) against American citizens, it became clear that Washington’s honeymoon period was over; the presidency and government had become the controversial and debated entities that they have remained ever since.”One way to analyze the Whiskey Rebellion would be to do so through the lens of Hamilton, and more exactly his complicated relationship with President Washington’s other most prominent Cabinet member, Secretary of State (during Washington’s first term) Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton and Jefferson represented the clear and striking distinction between the Federalists, with their emphasis on a strong central government, and the emergent Democrat-Republicans (known at the time of the Constitutional debates as the Anti-Federalists), with their resistance to that concept. And the Whiskey Rebellion certainly illustrated some of the tensions that such distinct perspectives could and did produce in the new American polity. But it’s also worth noting that just as Hamilton became closely connected in our national narratives and consciousness to banks, so too did Jefferson come to be associated with what he called “yeomen farmers”—and the two men thus embodied, at least in those dominant images, the opposed groups at the heart of the Whiskey Rebellion’s conflict. There’s an entirely different, and far less civically minded, way to analyze the Rebellion, however. Perhaps because of our temporal distance from its events, perhaps because it was fought over something as seemingly silly as alcohol, or perhaps because farmers occupy such a generally positive place in our national narratives (see the recent Super Bowl ad, for example), it’s tough to see the rebels as the 18thcentury equivalents to contemporary armed domestic terrorists such as the Hutaree Militia. But it’s also tough to come up with convincing reasons why these Early Republic violent insurrectionists, shooting federal agents rather than paying taxes, were different from such 21st century extremist groups. The fact is, as long as we’ve had a federal government, we’ve had Americans who position themselves in armed opposition to it—and that’s a dark and troubling but unavoidable American history.Next taxing topic tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
April 8, 2013
April 8, 2013: Taxes in America: The Stamp Act
[As you finalize your taxes—not you, I know you’re done already, I mean everybody else—this week’s series will focus on some American moments and issues related to this controversial national theme. Leading up to a special weekend post that will frame that theme very differently!]
On the law that helped prompt the Revolution—and foreshadowed our continuing complex relationship to taxation.In March of 1765, dealing with the lingering aftermath of the French and Indian War and the resulting need to station a standing army (of 10,000 soldiers) on America’s western frontier, as well as with colonies that had begun to resist their royally appointed governors and leaders in various small but telling ways, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act. The law required all colonists to pay a small tax on every piece of printed paper used (for any activity), and represented, at least as the colonists’ generally perceived it, the first tax created for the specific and sole purpose of raising money for the Crown. It thus also appeared to be an attempt to circumvent the authority of the various colonial legislatures, which had their own mechanisms in place for raising and spending revenues.The Act itself thus served as a direct precursor to many of the issues that would animate the Revolutionary events (the Boston Tea Party, for example) and rhetoric (the list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence). One particular moment in its aftermath, however, served as an indirect but even more telling step in the path toward those historic events. Led by the newly elected young firebrand Patrick Henry, the Virginia House of Burgesses adopted the Stamp Act Resolutions, protesting the Act and establishing the colonial legislature’s sole right to levy taxes on its own citizens. However, Virginia’s acting royal governor, Francis Fauquier, refused to sign the Resolutions, and instead dissolved the House of Burgesses. Patrick Henry did not deliver his famous “Give me liberty, or give me death!” line for another decade, but the 1765 events and confrontation indicate just how fully he, Virginia, and the colonies were on their way toward such moments.Henry’s Resolutions, and the overall response to laws such as the Stamp Act, also comprise potential origin points for one of our more complex enduring national attitudes. This is purely interpretative, and if there are statistics related to this question I haven’t seen them, but it seems to me that Americans are far more accepting of local and state taxes than of federal ones (such as the income tax, about which more later this week). Obviously we like to grumble about property taxes, or automobile excises, or sales tax, but I’m not aware of any organized protests against those taxes, along the lines of the kinds of Tax Day events that have long been a part of American political life and have become even more prominent in the era of the Tea Party. There would be various ways to interpret that trend, if it is indeed accurate, but one would hearken back directly to Patrick Henry, and the idea that taxes which come from close proximity to us are somehow more tolerable than ones levied from a centralized government.Next taxing topic tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
On the law that helped prompt the Revolution—and foreshadowed our continuing complex relationship to taxation.In March of 1765, dealing with the lingering aftermath of the French and Indian War and the resulting need to station a standing army (of 10,000 soldiers) on America’s western frontier, as well as with colonies that had begun to resist their royally appointed governors and leaders in various small but telling ways, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act. The law required all colonists to pay a small tax on every piece of printed paper used (for any activity), and represented, at least as the colonists’ generally perceived it, the first tax created for the specific and sole purpose of raising money for the Crown. It thus also appeared to be an attempt to circumvent the authority of the various colonial legislatures, which had their own mechanisms in place for raising and spending revenues.The Act itself thus served as a direct precursor to many of the issues that would animate the Revolutionary events (the Boston Tea Party, for example) and rhetoric (the list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence). One particular moment in its aftermath, however, served as an indirect but even more telling step in the path toward those historic events. Led by the newly elected young firebrand Patrick Henry, the Virginia House of Burgesses adopted the Stamp Act Resolutions, protesting the Act and establishing the colonial legislature’s sole right to levy taxes on its own citizens. However, Virginia’s acting royal governor, Francis Fauquier, refused to sign the Resolutions, and instead dissolved the House of Burgesses. Patrick Henry did not deliver his famous “Give me liberty, or give me death!” line for another decade, but the 1765 events and confrontation indicate just how fully he, Virginia, and the colonies were on their way toward such moments.Henry’s Resolutions, and the overall response to laws such as the Stamp Act, also comprise potential origin points for one of our more complex enduring national attitudes. This is purely interpretative, and if there are statistics related to this question I haven’t seen them, but it seems to me that Americans are far more accepting of local and state taxes than of federal ones (such as the income tax, about which more later this week). Obviously we like to grumble about property taxes, or automobile excises, or sales tax, but I’m not aware of any organized protests against those taxes, along the lines of the kinds of Tax Day events that have long been a part of American political life and have become even more prominent in the era of the Tea Party. There would be various ways to interpret that trend, if it is indeed accurate, but one would hearken back directly to Patrick Henry, and the idea that taxes which come from close proximity to us are somehow more tolerable than ones levied from a centralized government.Next taxing topic tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?
April 6, 2013
April 6-7, 2013: The Crowd-sourced World Series
[In honor of Opening Day, this week’s series has focused on some of the many AmericanStudies connections to the national pastime. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the hits provided by my fellow AmericanStudiers—add yours to help us bring it home, please!]
T.S. Flynn responds to Tuesday’s Black Sox post, writing, “As entertaining as they are, Asinof's and Sayles's Eight Men Out are flawed and fictionalized accounts of the Black Sox scandal. The baseball researcher Gene Carney worked extensively to unearth the facts behind the scandal, and he published his preliminary findings in Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball's Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded. Unfortunately, Mr Carney passed away in 2009, but the work he began continues through SABR. Also of interest (particularly for American Studies scholars) is Saying It's So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal by Daniel A. Nathan, which examines the manifold ways the scandal has been represented (and twisted) in American popular culture.”An anonymous commenter responds to the Ruth and Gehrig post, writing, “As a boy, I idolized Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig as the greatest of all time, but in my adulthood I have to discount their accomplishments because they didn't play against African-American competition. Interestingly, they were willing to barnstorm against those players to make extra money in the offseason, but they didn't use their stardom to demand equality on the Major League stage. Perhaps it was simply a time before activist athletes like Ali, Bill Russell, and others, but a player like Ruth at the height of his powers was uniquely positioned to demand real change.”Jeff Renye shares this amazing story of baseball in the immediate aftermath of World War II.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What would you add?
T.S. Flynn responds to Tuesday’s Black Sox post, writing, “As entertaining as they are, Asinof's and Sayles's Eight Men Out are flawed and fictionalized accounts of the Black Sox scandal. The baseball researcher Gene Carney worked extensively to unearth the facts behind the scandal, and he published his preliminary findings in Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball's Cover-Up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded. Unfortunately, Mr Carney passed away in 2009, but the work he began continues through SABR. Also of interest (particularly for American Studies scholars) is Saying It's So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal by Daniel A. Nathan, which examines the manifold ways the scandal has been represented (and twisted) in American popular culture.”An anonymous commenter responds to the Ruth and Gehrig post, writing, “As a boy, I idolized Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig as the greatest of all time, but in my adulthood I have to discount their accomplishments because they didn't play against African-American competition. Interestingly, they were willing to barnstorm against those players to make extra money in the offseason, but they didn't use their stardom to demand equality on the Major League stage. Perhaps it was simply a time before activist athletes like Ali, Bill Russell, and others, but a player like Ruth at the height of his powers was uniquely positioned to demand real change.”Jeff Renye shares this amazing story of baseball in the immediate aftermath of World War II.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What would you add?
April 5, 2013
April 5, 2013: Baseball in America: Nine Inspiring Innings
[In honor of this week’s Opening Day, a series on some of the many AmericanStudies connections to the national pastime. Add your responses and thoughts for a weekend post that’s sure to touch ‘em all!]
On the baseball book that serves as a professional inspiration for this AmericanStudier.I first read Daniel Okrent’s Nine Innings: The Anatomy of a Baseball Game (1985) as a kid, and the book—in which Okrent uses a single June 1982 game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Baltimore Orioles to tell literally hundreds of different baseball stories—has stuck with me ever since. Partly that’s because I love baseball, and in particular the way in which the game’s slower pace allows for an awareness of all the stories and histories and statistics (among other things) that are in play in every moment; I don’t know of any work that captures that side to the sport as well as Okrent’s book, and so I’d say it’s a must-read for any baseball fan. But it’s also because Okrent’s book serves as a model for what I’d call two central goals of all public scholarship and writing, and certainly of mine (here and elsewhere).For one thing, Okrent knows that the best histories, however much they connect to huge communal and social and cultural issues, are made most compelling when they’re also and centrally connected to individual stories. That’s one main reason why I focused on individual lives and personal narratives in my second book; why my upcoming third includes at length the stories of Yung Wing and his Chinese Educational Mission students; why I’m beginning to flesh out the idea for a Hall of American Inspiration. Each time Okrent pauses in the game’s action to narrate another individual story and identity (I particularly remember the one about Baltimore’s Lenn Sakata, but they’re all compelling), I suppose it might seem digressive or like delayed gratification; but to me, those individual stories not only complement the unfolding communal drama but greatly enhance it, making clear all of the lives and histories on which each and every such moment depend.And for another thing, Okrent creates that sense of drama. Granted, a baseball game, like any sporting event with a winner and loser, is inherently dramatic (although some might disagree about baseball!). But I think there’s still a broader lesson for public scholars, particularly after a few decades in which the idea of writing as narrative or story has tended to be supplanted by theoretical and academic modes that entirely resist those goals. What Okrent demonstrates, on the other hand, is that writers can be nuanced and analytical and yet still create narratives and stories, and deeply dramatic and compelling ones at that. American history is full of such stories (Yung Wing’s and the CEM students’ being two of my personal favorites, but two of many), waiting to be re-told and communicated to American audiences. They’re not simple, and our work with them shouldn’t be. But if they’re worth telling ,they’re worth telling to as broad and deep an audience as possible—and Okrent gives us great guidance in how to do so.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So what do you think? What takes do you have on baseball in America?
On the baseball book that serves as a professional inspiration for this AmericanStudier.I first read Daniel Okrent’s Nine Innings: The Anatomy of a Baseball Game (1985) as a kid, and the book—in which Okrent uses a single June 1982 game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Baltimore Orioles to tell literally hundreds of different baseball stories—has stuck with me ever since. Partly that’s because I love baseball, and in particular the way in which the game’s slower pace allows for an awareness of all the stories and histories and statistics (among other things) that are in play in every moment; I don’t know of any work that captures that side to the sport as well as Okrent’s book, and so I’d say it’s a must-read for any baseball fan. But it’s also because Okrent’s book serves as a model for what I’d call two central goals of all public scholarship and writing, and certainly of mine (here and elsewhere).For one thing, Okrent knows that the best histories, however much they connect to huge communal and social and cultural issues, are made most compelling when they’re also and centrally connected to individual stories. That’s one main reason why I focused on individual lives and personal narratives in my second book; why my upcoming third includes at length the stories of Yung Wing and his Chinese Educational Mission students; why I’m beginning to flesh out the idea for a Hall of American Inspiration. Each time Okrent pauses in the game’s action to narrate another individual story and identity (I particularly remember the one about Baltimore’s Lenn Sakata, but they’re all compelling), I suppose it might seem digressive or like delayed gratification; but to me, those individual stories not only complement the unfolding communal drama but greatly enhance it, making clear all of the lives and histories on which each and every such moment depend.And for another thing, Okrent creates that sense of drama. Granted, a baseball game, like any sporting event with a winner and loser, is inherently dramatic (although some might disagree about baseball!). But I think there’s still a broader lesson for public scholars, particularly after a few decades in which the idea of writing as narrative or story has tended to be supplanted by theoretical and academic modes that entirely resist those goals. What Okrent demonstrates, on the other hand, is that writers can be nuanced and analytical and yet still create narratives and stories, and deeply dramatic and compelling ones at that. American history is full of such stories (Yung Wing’s and the CEM students’ being two of my personal favorites, but two of many), waiting to be re-told and communicated to American audiences. They’re not simple, and our work with them shouldn’t be. But if they’re worth telling ,they’re worth telling to as broad and deep an audience as possible—and Okrent gives us great guidance in how to do so.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So what do you think? What takes do you have on baseball in America?
April 4, 2013
April 4, 2013: Baseball in America: International Arrivals
[In honor of this week’s Opening Day, a series on some of the many AmericanStudies connections to the national pastime. Add your responses and thoughts for a weekend post that’s sure to touch ‘em all!]
On two relatively recent communities of international Major Leaguers, and the divergent strains of immigration to which they connect.To my mind, the most interesting way to frame the mid-20th and early-21stcentury histories of baseball (not from the sport’s earliest moments, that is, but over the last fifty to seventy-five years) is through the lens of diversification. Of course the most famous and striking moments on that timeline relate to African American ballplayers: the rise of the Negro Leagues, the stories of Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby, the inspiring and uglier sides to Hank Aaron’s record-setting career, and so on. But in the last few decades, paralleling of course the nation’s expanding and evolving multi-cultural community, baseball has grown far more diverse still: with the explosion of Hispanic and Latin American ballplayers, for example, but also with the increased presence of the two groups of international stars on whom I want to focus in this post, Japanese and Cuban players.These two groups share a couple of core similarities: both have to this point featured mostly players who were already successful professional ballplayers in their home countries (a very different dynamic from young Latin American players drafted in their teens, for example); and both became particularly prominent with the mid-1990s arrivals of especially legendary such national stars, including the brothers Livan and Orlando “El Duque” Hernándezfrom Cuba and Hideo Nomo and Hideki Irabu from Japan. But due to the drastically distinct situations in those home nations, such stars came to the United States and the Major Leagues in very different ways: the Cuban players generally defectingand escaping from the closed-off island nation, and thus often leaving family and friends behind in the process; and the Japanese players generally being publicly courted through high-priced bidding wars, and thus often leaving their prior teams and leagues as conquering heroes. Of course I can’t speak for any of these individuals, but it seems clear that the move to the majors was thus far more fraught, diplomatically and personally, for the Cuban than the Japanese stars.Those Cuban professional athletes are not, of course, directly equivalent in any way to other potential refugees from that nation or similar situations—but they can remind us that even in a high-profile world like major league baseball, the very different cultural and historical paths to American identity and community remain. Similarly, while the Japanese stars are not in the identical situation as immigrants who come to the United States to (for example) study at elite universities or perform high-skilled occupations, they do connect to such experiences, and to the complex narratives of national and immigrant need that both link and contrast those immigration stories with the arrivals at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Professional sports can feel like a fantasy world, and in many ways do fit that description; but as with any part of our culture and society, they’re full of exemplary histories and trends, and ripe for AmericanStudying.Final diamond connection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on these histories, or other aspects of diversity in sports? Other baseball connections you’d highlight?
On two relatively recent communities of international Major Leaguers, and the divergent strains of immigration to which they connect.To my mind, the most interesting way to frame the mid-20th and early-21stcentury histories of baseball (not from the sport’s earliest moments, that is, but over the last fifty to seventy-five years) is through the lens of diversification. Of course the most famous and striking moments on that timeline relate to African American ballplayers: the rise of the Negro Leagues, the stories of Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby, the inspiring and uglier sides to Hank Aaron’s record-setting career, and so on. But in the last few decades, paralleling of course the nation’s expanding and evolving multi-cultural community, baseball has grown far more diverse still: with the explosion of Hispanic and Latin American ballplayers, for example, but also with the increased presence of the two groups of international stars on whom I want to focus in this post, Japanese and Cuban players.These two groups share a couple of core similarities: both have to this point featured mostly players who were already successful professional ballplayers in their home countries (a very different dynamic from young Latin American players drafted in their teens, for example); and both became particularly prominent with the mid-1990s arrivals of especially legendary such national stars, including the brothers Livan and Orlando “El Duque” Hernándezfrom Cuba and Hideo Nomo and Hideki Irabu from Japan. But due to the drastically distinct situations in those home nations, such stars came to the United States and the Major Leagues in very different ways: the Cuban players generally defectingand escaping from the closed-off island nation, and thus often leaving family and friends behind in the process; and the Japanese players generally being publicly courted through high-priced bidding wars, and thus often leaving their prior teams and leagues as conquering heroes. Of course I can’t speak for any of these individuals, but it seems clear that the move to the majors was thus far more fraught, diplomatically and personally, for the Cuban than the Japanese stars.Those Cuban professional athletes are not, of course, directly equivalent in any way to other potential refugees from that nation or similar situations—but they can remind us that even in a high-profile world like major league baseball, the very different cultural and historical paths to American identity and community remain. Similarly, while the Japanese stars are not in the identical situation as immigrants who come to the United States to (for example) study at elite universities or perform high-skilled occupations, they do connect to such experiences, and to the complex narratives of national and immigrant need that both link and contrast those immigration stories with the arrivals at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Professional sports can feel like a fantasy world, and in many ways do fit that description; but as with any part of our culture and society, they’re full of exemplary histories and trends, and ripe for AmericanStudying.Final diamond connection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on these histories, or other aspects of diversity in sports? Other baseball connections you’d highlight?
April 3, 2013
April 3, 2013: Baseball in America: Ruth and Gehrig
[In honor of this week’s Opening Day, a series on some of the many AmericanStudies connections to the national pastime. Add your responses and thoughts for a weekend post that’s sure to touch ‘em all!]
On the iconic teammates who embody two contrasting narratives of American identity.One of the most defining, originating American myths is that of the “Puritan [or sometimes Protestant] work ethic,” the concept of a community of quiet, stoic everymen and –women going about their often thankless but vital labors with determination and persistence. Yet at the same time, two of the first genuinely famous American individuals would have to be Miles Standish and John Smith, both boisterous, hard-living, larger-than-life, and self-aggrandizing soldiers and explorers who famously wooed the ladies and carved new territories with (seemingly) their forceful personalities alone. (Seriously, if you haven’t read Smith’s third-person personal narrative of his own heroism, you have to, if only for the passage where he fights off hundreds of Indian attackers and uses his guide as a personal shield.) And these two narratives came together to form Revolutionary America’s defining icon, Ben Franklin, a self-made man composed (if you read hisautobiography) of equal parts persistent hard work and self-conscious myth-making.Like all enduring national narratives, these defining images have evolved over the centuries; yet they have likewise retained some core elements that remain visible in many different incarnations. For example, we can see strong respective elements of each in two of the 20th century’s most famous and iconic sports figures, a pair who happened to be teammates on the New York Yankees: Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Each was interesting and complicated in his own right, but there’s no question that their most iconic qualities fit these two enduring narratives quite closely: Gehrig was known first as “The Iron Horse” for his astounding and record-setting consecutive-games-played streak, and second for his stoic and inspiring battlewith the tragic illness (ALS) now generally known by his name; Ruth was known as “The Sultan of Swat,” as much for his legendary parties and excesses as for his titanic homers, and like the aforementioned American icons went out of his way to embrace and extend his own mython every occasion. (An interestingly similar dichotomy could be identified in two subsequent Yankees teammates, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.)It’s easy to side with Gehrig and quiet hard work over Ruth and boisterous excess, and of course my own phrasings and frames here have undoubtedly done so. It’s certainly fair to add that, if we think of icons as role models (an idea that various sports figures have passionately critiqued), far more of us parents would likely direct our kids to emulate Gehrig than Ruth. But from an AmericanStudies perspective, it’s particularly interesting to consider the enduring co-existence of these two narratives, the sense that we have found ways, across the centuries and in many different social and cultural contexts, to valorize such seemingly contrasting and even directly opposed ideals. We are of course big, and contain multitudes; but narratives and images like these can help us push past that bigness to consider and analyze some of the communal emphases that have defined and continue to define us, and that reveal the multiple sides to our shared national identity and culture.Next diamond connection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on Ruth and Gehrig, or these narratives? Other baseball connections you’d highlight?
On the iconic teammates who embody two contrasting narratives of American identity.One of the most defining, originating American myths is that of the “Puritan [or sometimes Protestant] work ethic,” the concept of a community of quiet, stoic everymen and –women going about their often thankless but vital labors with determination and persistence. Yet at the same time, two of the first genuinely famous American individuals would have to be Miles Standish and John Smith, both boisterous, hard-living, larger-than-life, and self-aggrandizing soldiers and explorers who famously wooed the ladies and carved new territories with (seemingly) their forceful personalities alone. (Seriously, if you haven’t read Smith’s third-person personal narrative of his own heroism, you have to, if only for the passage where he fights off hundreds of Indian attackers and uses his guide as a personal shield.) And these two narratives came together to form Revolutionary America’s defining icon, Ben Franklin, a self-made man composed (if you read hisautobiography) of equal parts persistent hard work and self-conscious myth-making.Like all enduring national narratives, these defining images have evolved over the centuries; yet they have likewise retained some core elements that remain visible in many different incarnations. For example, we can see strong respective elements of each in two of the 20th century’s most famous and iconic sports figures, a pair who happened to be teammates on the New York Yankees: Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Each was interesting and complicated in his own right, but there’s no question that their most iconic qualities fit these two enduring narratives quite closely: Gehrig was known first as “The Iron Horse” for his astounding and record-setting consecutive-games-played streak, and second for his stoic and inspiring battlewith the tragic illness (ALS) now generally known by his name; Ruth was known as “The Sultan of Swat,” as much for his legendary parties and excesses as for his titanic homers, and like the aforementioned American icons went out of his way to embrace and extend his own mython every occasion. (An interestingly similar dichotomy could be identified in two subsequent Yankees teammates, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.)It’s easy to side with Gehrig and quiet hard work over Ruth and boisterous excess, and of course my own phrasings and frames here have undoubtedly done so. It’s certainly fair to add that, if we think of icons as role models (an idea that various sports figures have passionately critiqued), far more of us parents would likely direct our kids to emulate Gehrig than Ruth. But from an AmericanStudies perspective, it’s particularly interesting to consider the enduring co-existence of these two narratives, the sense that we have found ways, across the centuries and in many different social and cultural contexts, to valorize such seemingly contrasting and even directly opposed ideals. We are of course big, and contain multitudes; but narratives and images like these can help us push past that bigness to consider and analyze some of the communal emphases that have defined and continue to define us, and that reveal the multiple sides to our shared national identity and culture.Next diamond connection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on Ruth and Gehrig, or these narratives? Other baseball connections you’d highlight?
April 2, 2013
April 2, 2013: Baseball in America: The Black Sox
[In honor of this week’s Opening Day, a series on some of the many AmericanStudies connections to the national pastime. Add your responses and thoughts for a weekend post that’s sure to touch ‘em all!]
On three different ways to interpret what remains one of sport’s most stunning scandals.When a group of players on the White Sox conspired with gamblers to “fix” (or rather, from the players’ perspective, throw) the 1919 World Series, a story that unfolded over the following two years and culminated in the 1921 “Black Sox trial,” the scandal seemed to exemplify ideas of lost innocence and purity (which were already in the air in that post-World War I, “lost generation” moment). Nothing summed up those ideas better than the mythic but enduring image of a young boy confronting “Shoeless” Joe Jackson outside the courthouse with the words, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” And in Eight Men Out (1963), his seminal book on the scandal, Eliot Asinofhelped reiterate and enshrine those images of the scandal’s corrupting effects and meanings on America’s national pastime and perspective.There was another side to Asinof’s portrayal of the scandal, however—one that didn’t necessarily take hold of the popular consciousness in his era, but on which John Sayles’ 1988 film adaptation of the book focuses at length. This interpretation focuses less on the effects of the scandal and more on one of its key causes: the striking yet representative greed and selfishness of Charles Comiskey, the White Sox owner, in an era when professional athletes had (compared to their employers, at least) no power or say in their careers and fates. Sayles, for whom labor history is one of the defining American issues and stories, pulls no punches in his portrayal of Comiskey specifically and the era’s labor dynamics more broadly—he likes to say that he tries to push beyond black and white in his films and engage with the grey areas in between, and I believe he has done so to great success on many occasions, but to my mind his Eight Men Out is at its heart a clear and ringing indictment not of corrupt baseball players, but of a corrupt capitalist system that uses and then scapegoats them.There’s another way to characterize that system, though: to focus on how much, to quote Denzel Washington’s character in Glory, “We all covered up in it, too. Ain’t nobody clean.” To see, that is, the Black Sox as emblematic of unifying American goals and desires, however much we might like to locate them outside of us instead. It’s to that end, I would argue, that F. Scott Fitzgerald makes Jay Gatsby’s closest New York associate the mysterious Meyer Wolfshiem, a fictional version of Arnold Rothstein, “the man who fixed the World’s Series” (as Gatsby puts it). One could of course argue that Gatsby’s association with Wolfshiem reveals his shadier and more shameful side, the kinds of gangster connections that Tom Buchanan scornfully critiques. But to my mind, Gatsby ultimately embodies nothing less than the American Dream—there’s a reason Fitzgerald nearly changed his title to Under the Red, White, and Blue—and so too, in its own dark and twisted way, does making a fortune by fixing the nation’s most significant sporting event and spectacle.Next diamond connection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on the Black Sox? Other baseball connections you’d highlight?
On three different ways to interpret what remains one of sport’s most stunning scandals.When a group of players on the White Sox conspired with gamblers to “fix” (or rather, from the players’ perspective, throw) the 1919 World Series, a story that unfolded over the following two years and culminated in the 1921 “Black Sox trial,” the scandal seemed to exemplify ideas of lost innocence and purity (which were already in the air in that post-World War I, “lost generation” moment). Nothing summed up those ideas better than the mythic but enduring image of a young boy confronting “Shoeless” Joe Jackson outside the courthouse with the words, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” And in Eight Men Out (1963), his seminal book on the scandal, Eliot Asinofhelped reiterate and enshrine those images of the scandal’s corrupting effects and meanings on America’s national pastime and perspective.There was another side to Asinof’s portrayal of the scandal, however—one that didn’t necessarily take hold of the popular consciousness in his era, but on which John Sayles’ 1988 film adaptation of the book focuses at length. This interpretation focuses less on the effects of the scandal and more on one of its key causes: the striking yet representative greed and selfishness of Charles Comiskey, the White Sox owner, in an era when professional athletes had (compared to their employers, at least) no power or say in their careers and fates. Sayles, for whom labor history is one of the defining American issues and stories, pulls no punches in his portrayal of Comiskey specifically and the era’s labor dynamics more broadly—he likes to say that he tries to push beyond black and white in his films and engage with the grey areas in between, and I believe he has done so to great success on many occasions, but to my mind his Eight Men Out is at its heart a clear and ringing indictment not of corrupt baseball players, but of a corrupt capitalist system that uses and then scapegoats them.There’s another way to characterize that system, though: to focus on how much, to quote Denzel Washington’s character in Glory, “We all covered up in it, too. Ain’t nobody clean.” To see, that is, the Black Sox as emblematic of unifying American goals and desires, however much we might like to locate them outside of us instead. It’s to that end, I would argue, that F. Scott Fitzgerald makes Jay Gatsby’s closest New York associate the mysterious Meyer Wolfshiem, a fictional version of Arnold Rothstein, “the man who fixed the World’s Series” (as Gatsby puts it). One could of course argue that Gatsby’s association with Wolfshiem reveals his shadier and more shameful side, the kinds of gangster connections that Tom Buchanan scornfully critiques. But to my mind, Gatsby ultimately embodies nothing less than the American Dream—there’s a reason Fitzgerald nearly changed his title to Under the Red, White, and Blue—and so too, in its own dark and twisted way, does making a fortune by fixing the nation’s most significant sporting event and spectacle.Next diamond connection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Thoughts on the Black Sox? Other baseball connections you’d highlight?
April 1, 2013
April 1, 2013: Baseball in America: Symbolism
[In honor of this week’s Opening Day, a series on some of the many AmericanStudies connections to the national pastime. Add your responses and thoughts for a weekend post that’s sure to touch ‘em all!]
On two novels that put the sport to very distinct symbolic work.
Sports in general make very good metaphors—just ask George Carlin, whose bit on baseball vs. football remains one of the great metaphorical analyses of all time. But it seems to me that in American stories and narratives, no sport has more consistently offered up metaphors for key themes and issues than baseball: from fathers and sons in Field of Dreams (1989; spoiler alert!) to relationships and love in Bull Durham (1988) and For Love of the Game (1999), good and evil in The Natural (1952) to life and death in Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), communal hope and disappointment in “Casey at the Bat”(1888) to the Civil War in Play for a Kingdom (1998), American culture and literature are full to overflowing with baseball tales that depict yet transcend the sport. (I’ve even got my personal favorite baseball and America story, for when I finally write that screenplay.)With the exception of the putrid For Love of the Game, each of the works in that paragraph (and plenty of others I didn’t mention, such as 2011’s The Art of Fielding ) has a lot to recommend it. But to my mind there are two baseball novels that stand out even among that crowded and impressive field, vying for the title not only of greatest baseball work but of the ever-elusive Great American Novel. Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel (1973) does so self-consciously, overtly, swinging for the fences from its title on; but if David James Duncan’s The Brothers K (1992) is not quite so blatant in its ambition, both the novel’s social and historical sweep (it covers with equal breadth the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s; Vietnam, leftist radicalism, Eastern philosophy, religion, work, love, death) and its multi-layered echoes of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1880) make clear its own quest for the pennant. The two novels differ greatly in tone—Roth’s is, like much of his work, sarcastic and cynical; Duncan’s far more earnest and poignant—but also, and more relevantly for this week’s series, in the uses to which they put their baseball threads.On the one hand, Roth’s novel is far more centrally composed of such threads than Duncan’s—every character in The Great American Novelis connected in one way or another to the book’s fictional baseball team (the Ruppert Mundys) and league (the Patriot League), whereas in Brothers K there are long sections in which we follow characters into very distinct settings and worlds (Vietnam, India, an isolated Canadian cabin) where baseball has little if any presence. Yet on the other hand, and without spoiling the specifics too fully, Duncan uses baseball, and its symbiotic relationship to the brothers’ father in particular, as a framing element in deeper and more structural ways, so that wherever the boys go, and whatever other themes their stories involve, we see the interconnections with the sport and its defining familial and American presences. Which is to say, I don’t know if Roth’s novel would fundamentally change if it focused on basketball, or soccer, or the publishing world, or any other sphere; while Duncan’s is to my mind, despite its breadth, a baseball novel through and through.Next diamond connection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Baseball stories or works you’d highlight?
On two novels that put the sport to very distinct symbolic work.
Sports in general make very good metaphors—just ask George Carlin, whose bit on baseball vs. football remains one of the great metaphorical analyses of all time. But it seems to me that in American stories and narratives, no sport has more consistently offered up metaphors for key themes and issues than baseball: from fathers and sons in Field of Dreams (1989; spoiler alert!) to relationships and love in Bull Durham (1988) and For Love of the Game (1999), good and evil in The Natural (1952) to life and death in Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), communal hope and disappointment in “Casey at the Bat”(1888) to the Civil War in Play for a Kingdom (1998), American culture and literature are full to overflowing with baseball tales that depict yet transcend the sport. (I’ve even got my personal favorite baseball and America story, for when I finally write that screenplay.)With the exception of the putrid For Love of the Game, each of the works in that paragraph (and plenty of others I didn’t mention, such as 2011’s The Art of Fielding ) has a lot to recommend it. But to my mind there are two baseball novels that stand out even among that crowded and impressive field, vying for the title not only of greatest baseball work but of the ever-elusive Great American Novel. Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel (1973) does so self-consciously, overtly, swinging for the fences from its title on; but if David James Duncan’s The Brothers K (1992) is not quite so blatant in its ambition, both the novel’s social and historical sweep (it covers with equal breadth the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s; Vietnam, leftist radicalism, Eastern philosophy, religion, work, love, death) and its multi-layered echoes of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1880) make clear its own quest for the pennant. The two novels differ greatly in tone—Roth’s is, like much of his work, sarcastic and cynical; Duncan’s far more earnest and poignant—but also, and more relevantly for this week’s series, in the uses to which they put their baseball threads.On the one hand, Roth’s novel is far more centrally composed of such threads than Duncan’s—every character in The Great American Novelis connected in one way or another to the book’s fictional baseball team (the Ruppert Mundys) and league (the Patriot League), whereas in Brothers K there are long sections in which we follow characters into very distinct settings and worlds (Vietnam, India, an isolated Canadian cabin) where baseball has little if any presence. Yet on the other hand, and without spoiling the specifics too fully, Duncan uses baseball, and its symbiotic relationship to the brothers’ father in particular, as a framing element in deeper and more structural ways, so that wherever the boys go, and whatever other themes their stories involve, we see the interconnections with the sport and its defining familial and American presences. Which is to say, I don’t know if Roth’s novel would fundamentally change if it focused on basketball, or soccer, or the publishing world, or any other sphere; while Duncan’s is to my mind, despite its breadth, a baseball novel through and through.Next diamond connection tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Baseball stories or works you’d highlight?
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