Myths of the Golden Era -- Exploded!

[Undertow]

Heck, my grandfather was the oldest of 7 kids on a sharecrop farm in Casey, IA and he and my grandma talk about how good he had it because he had meat every night. When he was drafted for WWII straight out of high school, he was 5'11" and maybe 160 lbs. He was the "biggest" guy in his squad, so he carried the machine gun.

My grandmother, on the other hand, lived in Des Moines in a tight-knit neighborhood community. Her aunt (with whom she resided) worked for the IRS, which was top-notch employment for a lady at the time. They still stood in lines for bread and soup every night. And any groceries that were purchased were done so on credit at the local grocers, and were paid up by the end of the month. And from what I gather, that was still living relatively well...[huh]

 

[Gin&Tonics]

More ironic than you know...

One of my pet peeves is when people say “well, why was I never taught about (fill in blank) in high school?” This usually refers to some PC thing that has come to light in the media about the past. An example is the recent release of the movie Red Tails. So many people have come out and said that they were not taught about the Tuskegee Airmen in school and they were surprised that their story existed.

What's really funny and ironic about that is that Red Tails is the SECOND film made about the Tuskegee Airmen! The title of the first escapes me, but I distinctly remember a mid 90's film about the same thing. When I saw the trailer for Red Tails, I was thinking, "That looks cool, but didn't they already do that movie about ten or twenty years ago? Ah well, nothing new under the sun"

 

[Henri Maginot]

What's really funny and ironic about that is that Red Tails is the SECOND film made about the Tuskegee Airmen! The title of the first escapes me, but I distinctly remember a mid 90's film about the same thing. When I saw the trailer for Red Tails, I was thinking, "That looks cool, but didn't they already do that movie about ten or twenty years ago? Ah well, nothing new under the sun"

There was a made-for-cable movie called "The Tuskegee Airmen" that aired on HBO in 1995. It starred Laurence Fishburne, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and John Lithgow.

I have to say that I am THOROUGHLY enjoying this thread! :eusa_clap

 

[1961MJS]

One of my pet peeves is when people say “well, why was I never taught about (fill in blank) in high school?” This usually refers to some PC thing that has come to light in the media about the past. An example is the recent release of the movie Red Tails. So many people have come out and said that they were not taught about the Tuskegee Airmen in school and they were surprised that their story existed. I have to explain, that they have always been in the history books and just because it was not put right in front of your nose in the media does not mean that their story has never been told or people were hiding it. I am an aviation enthusiast and I have read and known about the Tuskegee Airmen pretty much my whole life.

There is not enough time in four years of High school history class to teach everything the media thinks is important. That is when it is up to people to start doing research on their own. The upside to historically based movies is that it gets people interested and they start researching. I have a friend who has a 13 year old daughter, who watched the movie Pearl Harbor, think what you will about the movie, but she found the bases for it interesting and she has since done more research on the bombing of Pearl Harbor and why it happened.

I am sure if it was presented as “Reality” TV then people would be interested.

Hi, True, there isn't enough time in the ONE YEAR of High School history class to teach much more than the basics now, and they don't bother with the mundane details like the constitution. We weren't taught much about WW2 at ALL in Junior High or High School, but we went absolutely batty for the Civil War. Tuskegee airman hell, I didn't hear about the Battle of the Bulge in High School.

I have two anecdotes with respect to the “well, why was I never taught about (fill in blank) in high school?” part. I usually read my son's history and social studies books, (2005 high school grad) just to see what he was being taught. In the middle of the sections (around 5 pages total) on the great immigration to the US from the 1840's until 1910 from Europe, there was a two page section on a Mexican family that crossed the border into Texas to settle in 1850. It probably happened, but compared to the thousands of starving Irishmen that showed up because of the potato famine in the 1840's it was a minor thing, and it took up more than a fifth of the section.

Second anecdote. I work with a guy from the Orlando FL area. When his daughter took History, they actually did study WW2. He was surprised to learn that "WW2 was America's fault for 1. placing an embargo on Japan; and 2. Not having the CIA assassinate Adolf Hitler." He helped here memorize these "facts", then explained the reality of the situation later.

Later

 

[Story]

For those who had money, and who could hold onto it during the Depression, they were laughing. Everything was half-price and people were desperate for business and trade. I seem to recall a documentary that said, the sale of luxury cars, by makers like Duesenberg, Auburn, Pierce etc, all went UP during the Depression because they were priced cheap, and the rich people kept snapping them up.

Carpetbaggers are an infestation found during every Depression.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Second anecdote. I work with a guy from the Orlando FL area. When his daughter took History, they actually did study WW2. He was surprised to learn that "WW2 was America's fault for 1. placing an embargo on Japan; and 2. Not having the CIA assassinate Adolf Hitler."

Let me guess, the daughter never heard a single mention of "Nanking."

 

[1961MJS]

Let me guess, the daughter never heard a single mention of "Nanking."

That didn't come up, considering that it was OUR fault. I would say 95% on the NOT side. Everything being equal, I'd bet that the girl's TEACHER hadn't heard of it either. In Illinois (where I grew up) History Teachers taught Government and US History to all High School Juniors, and the later in the year it was, the faster we went through things. WW2 got the short shift. I don't remember hearing ANYTHING about Vietnam either.

I read a couple of books on that subject, don't remember which ones, but I DO remember that the author of a book on Nanking committed suicide. Writing THAT book would depress the heck out of me.

later

 

[Henri Maginot]

...It's like all of modern profanity -- lazy, pointless, and stupid. Where are the colorful attacks on the legitimacy of one's target? Where are the highly-elaborated denunciations of his ancestry? Where is the smoking, sulphurous blasphemy? Today's swearing isn't swearing at all -- it's the mindless scribblings of ignoramuses on a bathroom wall.

I think swearing can be likened to the use of a gun. You don't point a gun at anything you don't intend to kill, and you don't swear at anyone unless your intent and purpose is to insult and offend him as thoroughly, as completely, and comprehensively as possible in every aspect of his being. If you don't intend to do that, and aren't equipped to do that, you're just wasting your time with your dopey little f-words.

:eusa_clap

Would you mind terribly if I repeated that to a few of my choice associates? Following that line of thought, the late Andy Rooney is quoted as saying, "Obscenities... I think a lot of dumb people do it because they can't think of what they want to say and they're frustrated. A lot of smart people do it to pretend they aren't very smart - want to be just one of the boys."

 

[Espee]

I wonder, "If you talk like that all the time, what do you do when you're angry?" Then I figure... maybe they pull out a gun or something.

 

[Espee]

When listening to someone say, "Tomorrow morning I have to pick up my wife's car and sh-t, and then I have to go to the dentist and sh-t, after that I have to take my kid to soccer and sh-t..." I wonder, Doesn't this guy have a bathroom at home? And that seems to be a rather high frequency...

 

[Espee]

I remember when President Reagan (trying to combat critics' accusations of racism) said "I was made an Honorary Member of the Tuskegee Airmen..."

 

[sheeplady]

That didn't come up, considering that it was OUR fault. I would say 95% on the NOT side. Everything being equal, I'd bet that the girl's TEACHER hadn't heard of it either. In Illinois (where I grew up) History Teachers taught Government and US History to all High School Juniors, and the later in the year it was, the faster we went through things. WW2 got the short shift. I don't remember hearing ANYTHING about Vietnam either.

I graduated from high school in the 1990s. It didn't help that our textbooks were over 30 years old, but our entire segment on the Vietnam war was three sentences: "Vietnam was not a war. It was only a conflict. The US has *never* lost a war and never will."

I remember that I went home and told my mother that little tidbit. She was *furious* for many many reasons.

 

[Bluebird Marsha]

History in school can definitely be a problem. Mainly because there just isn't enough time to go into anything resembling details. I was lucky in high school, because we had TWO history classes we could take. World History or U.S. History. Middle school covered national and state (Kentucky) history, I think WWII got about one or two weeks coverage in each class, so we were pretty happy.As I remember it, we wanted the WWII section to go longer, and our teacher expanded it a bit. I think we even had an optional reading list, just for fun. My Sociology class covered the Nuremberg trials. Pretty decent all things considered. Don't think we covered much on Vietnam, but then, I graduated in 1981. Didn't matter, since my ROTC instructors in college were more than happy to fill in that one a bit!

I do think students enjoy history. But I imagine it can turn into a blur of dates and names, with no context. Textbooks are often mind-numbling dull. I knew about the Tuskegee airmen in middle school, as well as Nanking, and the concentration camps. I don't know about current high school requirements, but we only had to have one history credit in high school. One year isn't enough time to cover anything well. I imagine the Civil War gets short shrift also. You have to get to college usually to have a nice choice of history classes.

 

[Kirk H.]

When listening to someone say, "Tomorrow morning I have to pick up my wife's car and sh-t, and then I have to go to the dentist and sh-t, after that I have to take my kid to soccer and sh-t..." I wonder, Doesn't this guy have a bathroom at home? And that seems to be a rather high frequency...

lol...It sounds like either too much fiber or a very limited vocabulary....

 

[LizzieMaine]

We never got as far as World War 2, which was unfortunate because a couple of our teachers were WW2 vets, and it would have been interesting to get their perspective on things. I did read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" in the eighth grade, which raised some eyebrows, and got about half way thru "Mein Kampf" before giving up on it, which raised even more eyebrows.

Our tenth-grade World History book, "Earlier Ages," was copyrighted in 1937, gave very short shrift to America, and ended with the coronation of George VI. We did cover the American Revolution in great detail, with much attention given to the teacher's favorite general, Mad Anthony Wayne.

However, the teacher was highly amenable to extra credit history projects, so I did a long report on the significance and social impact of the National Industrial Recovery Act and the National Recovery Administration which got a pretty good grade -- even the cover, which was a hand-drawn reproduction of the Blue Eagle itself. None of that ever got covered in our actual textbooks, so having to go out and learn about it on my own made me that much more motivated to learn.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That didn't come up, considering that it was OUR fault. I would say 95% on the NOT side. Everything being equal, I'd bet that the girl's TEACHER hadn't heard of it either.

Apologists for the epic crimes against humanity committed by wartime Japan are among those classes of people who fill me with blind, incoherent rage.

 

[Shangas]

lol...It sounds like either too much fiber or a very limited vocabulary....

:eusa_clap

When I was in school, we studied...

Australian history.

Chinese History. (From the Qing Dynasty up to the 1970s).

German History (WWI-WWII).

And then I believe there was another course that we could take called "Revolutions", but I never took that one.

In my bachelor's degree, I studied postwar history, WWI, Interwar period, WWII, colonialism and a unit titled "Europe in the Age of Enlightenment" or something like that (which covered the period 1870-1939 and the huge social and political changes that took place then).

 

[Kirk H.]

Apologists for the epic crimes against humanity committed by wartime Japan are among those classes of people who fill me with blind, incoherent rage.

Me too.

 

[Shangas]

A friend of mine is Jewish (in fact I seem to have a number of Jewish friends...I count three, so far...) and he said that holocaust deniers filled him with such rage, he wished he could give them all a shower.

I'll give you a minute to figure out what he meant.

 

[Bluebird Marsha]

Took about .5 seconds.

And, back to myth busting, but related.

A good deal of the animosity toward Imperial Japan was not based on racism. News of atrocities against the Chinese did reach the U.S. For some reason, that caused some negative reactions. While America's feelings towards China was more than a little bit tinged with paternalism, there was quite a bit of friendly feelings towards China.