kingtycoon | (no subject)

More media criticism! Or at least here's a new viewing diary.

It's appropriate that tonight while the Republicans choose what lamb to sacrifice in the general election that I mention how I have been watching Old Ken Burns' civil war - what with that war being waged by the first republican president.

Okay - so I'll talk about my experience as an historian. Here's the first thing you should know - I'm not that good at it. I've known a few folks, professional historians - they're not that good at it either. You see, you have to specialize - that's the thing, nobody's all that bright about the broad arc of history - and when you do read books about that? They tend to be really, really awful. Now - as a boy I was uninterested in American History and the crux of American History is the Civil War - so I kind of skipped it. Worse than that - you know most curricula are based on semesters - and you have a semester for America before the civil war and a semester for America after - and unless your professor is an enthusiast - you'll probably skip the whole thing. In this respect Old Ken Burns is pretty much my best instructor on the subject - probably the best instructor of quite a few people.

So want to get into it but I have to speak to what it is to be interested in history. Sure, sure you're interested in the past, we all are, it's interesting. Not as interesting as the future, of course not - permanent optimism. But if something catches your eye and you gain a specific interest in the past - you start noticing the minutia, devoting time and effort and the interminable energies of your life-essence to that one narrower and narrower subject. Real historians spend 20 years writing a hundred page monograph on a subject you didn't know you could do scholarship about. That's how it is. So Ken Burns has offered the documents for the lay-person. And my position is, if you're not a specialist on the topic of the war between the states - you're a lay person. Just goes that way.

Now - I like these movies! I like the narration, I like the actors that they chose. Mostly. I like Shelby Foote, and I like the photographs. I like the pacing and I like the truthfulness of it.

See right now the Republicans are of a different stripe than Lincoln. You hear loose talk from that camp about secession because the cruel onus of civil rights and the welfare state is punitive to their useful idiots. I'm from Ohio and I like thinking about how in the past, when there was animosity against union because union required a shred of human decency, a bunch of Ohioans were called up to burn down the south. I don't think much of the red-states/confederacy and it's heartening to remember a time when hard men from Ohio burned those fuckers down. Especially on a night like tonight when the confederate apologists are meeting to choose their leader.

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Seriously, I'm always curious what the Republicans mean by calling themselves "the party of Lincoln." Lincoln the guy who urged taxes & tariffs? The guy who wanted urbanization & massive infrastructure investment? The pro-equality guy? The MOST POSSIBLY ANTI-STATES RIGHT'S GUY EVER?

The matter of states rights was resolved at Appomattox Courthouse and shouldn't ever be brought up again.

Oh c'mon, Grant is an Illinois guy. Saying he's an Ohio guy is like saying Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were Kentuckians.

Your experience dealing with the war in education is strange to me -- everywhere I've been, it's been the culmination of the First Half (or Front Nine, as I like to call it), and then Reconstruction starts the Back Nine. Ken Burns' version is pretty good, and is especially good when viewed through the lens of how our interactions with the period shift according to the times.

Ah, you're right of course - although I will point out that Burns does just what you claim to be disingenuous and calls both Davis and Lincoln Kentuckians.

I am actually pretty curious about your criticisms of the picture - since you are my expert in such things - that is - I'd hit you with an email if I had a serious question about the civil war. Did you think the picture missed anything worth adding?

god, will you just move to la and be my boyfriend???

That's probably the best thing I can do with myself right now even.

live with me, take your time getting an amazing perfect for you job. all of our problems are solved, i get the most formidable man in my bed, everyone wins. done. fly abomb out as much as you want with all the money saved on rent.

Couldn't even sleep for thinking about this.

can we at least do the weekend we never got to do, to see if there's a spark? or like, a hundred acre forest fire blaze or something?

Having skipped out on most of the good parts of high school, I have to say I don't actually know that much about the Civil War, beyond what you absorb with it being part of the American zeitgeist. The broad strokes, enough to get a mildly challenging Simpsons reference. I could probably tell you more about Franz Josef than I could about Lincoln. I've always assumed that that history was something - like poetry! - that I'd catch up with in old age. What else is senectitude for beside massive Shelby Foote tomes and sixteen hour documentaries?