Let's stay focused here

Charlamagne Tha God took exception to Joe Biden calling Trump our first racist president, noting the obvious that many presidents before were avowed racists. I suppose Joe meant in recent history, but then Richard Nixon made it pretty clear where his affinities lay. You could also make the case that the notorious crime bill that Bill Clinton endorsed unfairly targeted Black Americans. He rushed the bill through Congress hoping it would help Democrats in the 1994 midterms, only to see that Congressional election blow up in his face. However, neither Nixon nor Clinton nor any modern-day president was ever as overtly racist as has been Donald J. Trump, which is the point Joe Biden was trying to make in an effort to solidify his support among Black Americans. He just may have lost Charlamagne's vote.

Of course our current president would like Black voters to believe he has done more for them than even Honest Abe did back in 1863 when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation by executive order. This came in the same speech where Trump announced he was sending in his stormtroopers to riot torn cities. As you can imagine, this claim was met with even more incredulity than the statement Honest Joe made in response. Such unwarranted federal police actions are specifically in response to Black Lives Matters protests still going on throughout the country, where his stormtroopers have rounded up what they believe to be the ring leaders of this notorious movement that Trump has openly admonished.

Portland, Oregon, has been the staging ground for this federal invasion. Ostensibly, the stormtroopers were called in to protect federal buildings, but they soon became "proactive" in the words of Homeland Security Director Chad Wolf, making extralegal arrests to thwart what they considered to be potential violent acts against federal buildings. The Mayor of Portland joined protests against these jackboots only to find himself tear gassed as well. Herr Trump was so pleased with these actions that he has vowed to send his jackboots into Seattle, Chicago, New York and other unruly cities where he says Democratic mayors have failed their people.

It is all part of the Republican campaign strategy to make Americans feel that their security can only be entrusted to Donald J. Trump. If Sleepy Joe Biden is elected, anarchy will reign as we have seen in Seattle, where a small neighborhood briefly declared its autonomy. It seems that his campaign has been watching too many Purge movies.

While I can understand that Charlamagne might be a little miffed by Honest Joe's seemingly naive comments, it is pretty clear we need to get our wannabe fuhrer out of office as soon as possible. Imagine what might happen in the next four years if this guy is allowed free rein! So, yes, I'm willing to give Joe a pass on this one.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

Dispatches from Vilnius

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