HBO Does John Adams

I can never decide whether to cringe or rejoice when I hear that there is going to be a television show or movie focusing on early America. I enjoy getting the sense of being there through the set and costume, but unfortunately, those are often the most accurate parts. HBO's mini-series John Adams is a bit better than most Hollywood attempts at history, but it falls into the usual trap of oversimplifying events and glorifying the main character.

Let's face it, John Adams wasn't easy to like in his own time; he referred to himself as obnoxious. But since HBO is basing the show on David McCollough's adoring bio of Adams, we have to like Adams at the expense of the other players. Worst perhaps in Jefferson--not surprising--who came off in Part 2 as a background player who just happened to write the Declaration of Independence because Adams told him to do it. The debates over declaring independence take up an entire 1 1/2 hour segment, but as another history blog notes, the common people and Thomas Paine's Common Sense are both left out.

The fun of the show, for me, is seeing the world of the late 18th century. They've shown Boston, Braintree (where the Adams' farm was located), Philadelphia, and Paris so far. I saw the episode set in Paris a few days before I saw the Fragonard room at the Frick Museum (you can actually tour it online), and I was struck by how the art and the salon world in France both have the same color palette and joie de vivre. It's hard to picture John Adams in a rococo world, but I'll give HBO credit for a clever scene depicting just that.

For more on the series' inaccuracies, check out this HNN piece or browse through the journals of the Continental Congress.

Responses to Obama's speech on race

As promised, here are some responses to Obama's speech. Even those who continue to disagree with Obama's association with Wright concluded that the speech was one of the most important in the past 50 years. I think it's unfortunate that the controversy over Wright is interfering with people's ability to engage the real discussion about race Obama tried to begin: most of the t.v. news reports are so stuck on controversy that they can't move on to conversation.

Here are a few links to check out:

One historian offers a history of a tradition of sometimes inflammatory African American criticism of America through Christianity

The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson has the inside scoop

Jon Stewart's take and an attempt at dialogue with Senior Black Correspondent Larry Wilmore

NY Times' Nicholas Kristoff: "What’s happening, I think, is that the Obama campaign has led many white Americans to listen in for the first time to some of the black conversation — and they are thunderstruck."

"A part of our union that we have yet to perfect"

Driven by controversy swirling around his former pastor, Barack Obama made a major speech today about race in America. Speaking across the street from Independence Hall in Philadelphia, he didn't venerate the men who formed the nation, as many speaking in such a setting would. He spoke of the constitution as a document "ultimately unfinished" and "stained by this nation's original sin of slavery."

It was a striking beginning to a speech that was the most frank, open, and intelligent discussion of race I have ever seen by a politician. Certainly, there was some political pandering in the speech. But he acknowledged what so many politicians fail to: complexity.

Here's the transcript. The video is available there, or with slightly better quality on Youtube: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

I'll post again when the press and historians react in the next few days.

Visit with an eccentric millionaire

If you were a gentleman in the early 20th century who inherited a fortune, what would you do? Perhaps build a castle out of hand-mixed concrete and hand-painted tiles? Or create a museum about early American tools? These were the rather bizarre ways Henry Mercer of Bucks County, PA chose to spend his money and free time.


A few friends and I drove out to Doylestown to see Mercer's house and museum. We were absolutely overwhelmed by how quirky this guy must have been. He started a tileworks and collected tiles from around the world, many of which he built into the walls of the concrete castle he designed and built. There were cuneiform tablets from ancient Iraq embedded into one concrete column and Chinese ceiling tiles from centuries ago overhanging a stairway. There were no hallways, just one strange little room leading to the next.

Along with tiles, Mercer was also obsessed with tools. He had a broad definition of what a "tool" was and had a whole taxonomy of classifying tools. The museum, with 6 stories winding around a massive central atrium, is organized around this system. There are tools for butter churning, tools of transportation--hence the boats and carriages suspended from the rafters--tools for heating, and tools for punishment, to name a few. That last category included a room which you enter only to find yourself underneath a gallows.


In some ways, it's a curator's dream--a collection already organized and catalogued. Mercer kept meticulous records of each of his objects, even (unfortunately) writing the number he assigned the object on the object itself. But more than a museum, the place feels like an attic full of treasures.

Notes on a scandal

With the latest sex scandal--NY Governor Eliot Spitzer's involvement in a prostitution ring--I think I have reached political sex scandal fatigue. Not that such scandals are undeserving of exposition and attention, but I couldn't help but wonder why they seemed to happen so often. I found some possible answers to my question in a NY Times article which historicizes the trend and looks to a variety of scholars for explanations. Here are the possible answers the article presents:
-male politicians become the alpha male and thus think they have a right to sleep with whomever they'd like
-this happened all the time before and we just didn't hear about it as much
-politicians feel entitled, which makes them ignore the consequences of what they do
-politicians are risk takers who think nothing can bring them down
-politicians are thrill-seekers
and my personal favorite
-sex and power both express "this huge energy these people have"

Notice that none of these explanations have anything to do with things changing in our society--these scandals have always gone on. There's such a lengthy history of them that my alma mater George Washington University offered a seminar on the topic, and you have to scroll to get through Wikipedia's list of them (which is pretty incomplete, at least for the early years).

The most acrimonious one in early America was probably the Eaton Affair, in which Washington high society was thrown into tumult over the appointment of a cabinet minister whose wife, Peggy Eaton, was alleged to have been sexually improper. A strange post-script--at nearly 60, Peggy married a 21-year-old painter who then ran off with her money--and her grand-daughter. Let's hope Gov. Spitzer has a better fate.