Steve Goddard's History Wire

Think 2004 Was A Dirty Campaign?

The Hartford Courant provides a useful antidote to the assertion that "Politics has never been as nasty as it is now." In an unusually meaty election-eve editorial, The Courant (which incidentally is older than the nation) offers some perspective by examining past presidential elections:

"John Adams' supporters skewered Thomas Jefferson as a guillotine-mad French revolutionary, a coward (Mr. Jefferson did not serve in the military) and a presidential candidate for "the cutthroats (i.e. common folk) who walk in rags and sleep amidst filth and vermin." Mr. Jefferson's detractors (including The Courant) charged that he would legalize prostitution, incest, rape and marital infidelity.

"Mr. Jefferson's supporters were no less vitriolic. They warned that Mr. Adams was a keeper of mistresses and a thief who intended to install himself as king if he won the presidency."

Colt 45 is More Than a Beer

In the time it took to ram a charge and a lead ball down the barrel of a single shot rifle, Comanche Indians could shoot six arrows or run 150 yards with spear and tomahawk.

Enter Sam Colt and his firearms, which fired multiple times without reloading, an innovation that would lead to the winning of the American West. PBS features the legendary Hartford manufacturer on its "Who Made America" series.

Say It Ain't So, Joe

Promising the greatest discovery since the birth of Christ, a team of explorers prepared to ascend Mount Ararat earlier this year, confident that they'd find buried there Noah's Ark. As the National Geographic reports, the team set forth its goals at an April, 2004 press conference:

"Explorers have long searched for the ark on the Turkish mountain. At a news conference in Washington, D.C., (Christian activist Daniel) McGivern presented satellite images, which he claimed show a human-made object—Noah's ark—nestled in the ice and snow some 15,000 feet (4,570 meters) up the mountain.

"We are not excavating it," McGivern told the audience. "We're going to photograph it and, God willing, you're all going to see it." If successful, he said, the discovery would be "the greatest event since the resurrection of Christ."

But then, National Geographic reports, the plot thickened....

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

“I was just doing my act. I’m a singer and piano player. I just stumbled onto a voice.” So did Vaughn Meader explain the unexpected public reaction to his imitation of John F. Kennedy, which led to fame and fortune. The Detroit News reports on the bounty reaped by an unlikely entertainer, upon his death this week at age 68:

"When it came out in late 1962, poking gentle fun at JFK’s wealth, large family and “vigah,” “The First Family” became the fastest-selling record of its time, racking up 7.5 million copies and winning the Grammy for album of the year."

The Inimitable Ray

The pathos of an entertainer or professional athlete of color, competing at the top levels of their craft in 1940s and 1950s America, only underscores the cruelty of a life of segregation in the days before the Civil Rights Movement, when celebrities were lauded in public, then denied service at restaurants and hotels. A signal example of that phenomenon is the career of singer and pianist Ray Charles, who died last June.

The New York Times writer A.O. Scott reviews a new motion picture that makes that era jump off the page, featuring a dead-on imitation of Ray Charles by young actor Jamie Foxx:

"When Ray Charles died in June, he had ascended to the most rarefied level of fame; no longer merely a celebrity, he had become an institution. There is no doubt that he deserved this status, or that he enjoyed it, but universal esteem is not always a blessing for an artist. Some of Charles's music has become so familiar that we risk growing deaf to the audacity and innovation that made it great in the first place. The opening bars of "Hit the Road Jack" can be heard at every ballpark in the land, whenever a hapless pitcher heads for the showers - a clever enough joke the first hundred times you hear it but a curious fate for a song that crackles with so much high-spirited sexual drama."

To read more about this legendary entertainer, click here for his own autobiography.

There is TOO an Afterlife

Sorry you're dead, but here's one comforting thought -- your reputation is alive and well or alive and declining, as the case may be.

American Heritage Magazine takes the measure of such cultural icons as founding fathers, musicals and reformers, to see who's hot and who's not, though their bodies may have cooled long ago. Butterfinger candybars are in, Hershey bars out, for one. Scrap your mint julep and replace with an Old Fashioned. And go away Ally McBeal; the in feminist, Alice Paul, has been out of the headlines for nearly a century.

No More Pigeonholes?

How comforting when we were able to pigeonhole a candidate as liberal or conservative; left, center or right. Those times have changed as the current presidential election demonstrates. Andrew Sullivan, writing for Time, describes our confusion:

"Why is this election so hard for so many people? Here's one theory. It's not so easy to tell who's the liberal and who's the conservative anymore. You want a candidate who pumps unprecedented amounts of money into agricultural subsidies, uses tariffs to protect some American industries and adds a whole new entitlement to Medicare? That would be the, er, Republican, George W. Bush.

"You want a future President who will be hard nosed about committing U.S. troops abroad, wants to balance every new spending item with a tax hike or a spending cut elsewhere and backs states' rights on social issues? Then go ahead and vote for the, er, Democrat, John Kerry."

Debutantes Mourn

"Lester Lanin, who, from the White House to Buckingham Palace, from the Plaza Hotel to the grand ballrooms of the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers, epitomized a rarefied and perhaps fading species - the society bandleader - died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 97...."

"Mr. Lanin brought smooth tones, swift changes and a casually elegant style to a continuous stream of dance music, from Dixieland to swing to very, very tasteful rock 'n' roll. He supplied danceable happiness to several generations of the richest and most beautiful people on earth, at events ranging from Queen Elizabeth's 60th birthday party to the wedding of Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel to the private parties of the duPonts, Chryslers and Mellons," according to the New York Times.

For a nostalgia fix, pick up Lester Lanin's Music for Moonlight Dancing.

Campaign Trail 1912

As a continuing History Wire feature, we drop in on presidential campaigns of yore at the same point as the 2004 campaign, to get a notion of how those campaigns coped with challenges expected and unexpected. Followers of presidential history can find, in HW's September and October archives, postings on the campaigns of 1896, 1920, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1948, 1952, 1960, 1964, 1972, 1976 and 1980.

On October 30, the candidate rose to address the throng of 16,000 adoring supporters at the Madison Square Garden as the presidential campaign roared into its final days. Nothing remarkable about that, except the fact that only 16 days earlier, Theodore Roosevelt had been the victim of an assassin's attack. As he left a Milwaukee hotel to make a speech, a lunatic named John Schranck shot him with a revolver.

Roosevelt biographer William Roscoe Thayer writes, "The bullet entered his body about an inch below the right nipple and would probably have been fatal but for an eyeglass-case and a roll of manuscript he (Roosevelt) had in his pocket." Roosevelt's reaction when the assailant was overpowered and brought before him: "Don't hurt the poor creature." More painful perhaps than any wound his attacker caused was the two-week convalescence his doctors ordered.

Teddy Roosevelt had already spent nearly two terms as president, from 1901 to 1909. But unhappy at the performance of his successor, William Howard Taft, the Rough Rider ran once more in 1912 as the candidate of the new Bull Moose Party, challenging both Taft and Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson, governor of New Jersey. "I am glad beyond measure," Roosevelt now told his audience, "that I am one of the many who in this fight have stood ready to spend and be spent, pledged to fight, while life lasts, the great fight for righteousness and for brotherhood and for the welfare of mankind."

Remarkably, Taft seemed to rely almost totally on his reputation and a healthy war chest, taking "little or no active part in the campaign." With he and Roosevelt splitting the GOP vote, Wilson was elected handily with 6,286,000 votes out of 15,310,000 cast. Roosevelt received 4,126,000 and, amazingly for an incumbent president, Taft came in third with 3,483,000.

Thriving in the Great Outdoors

In 1911, Leon Leonwood Bean grew tired of his feet getting wet on hunting trips, so he designed a shoe with leather uppers sewn to rubber bottoms. People he showed them to raved about them, so he began taking mail orders for the strange looking footwear, and Brunswick, ME's L.L. Bean was born.

Nearing its centennial, L.L. Bean is still churning out boots and lots of other merchandise as well. Newsweek examines how the company is adapting -- and thriving -- in the internet age.