The Fragmentation Of History

[LizzieMaine]

Biblical textual criticism is a dense and complicated subject, but there's no shortage of "internet experts." Somewhere right now there's a forum where someone is proving via frantic googling that Westcott and Hort were agents of Satan.

 

[3fingers]

^^^ Chick thinks so. Make of that what you will. Pro or con.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Biblical textual criticism is a dense and complicated subject, but there's no shortage of "internet experts." Somewhere right now there's a forum where someone is proving via frantic googling that Westcott and Hort were agents of Satan.

Never understood why anyone could, with a straight face, claim expertise on the Bible without at least two years of solid academic study (preferably at the graduate level) in both the ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek languages. A bit like a self designated expert on Goethe or Schiller who cannot read German, or an "expert" on Tolstoy who is illiterate in Russian. The more one studies language, the more one realizes that "lost in translation" is the rule and not the suggestion. Heck, even Elizabethan English loses a lot if the context isn't examined.

I prefer a dispassionate , even pedantic, lecture from an able scholar over the admittedly entertaining hellfire and brimstone sermon of some bush league Elmer Gantry in a church any day, even at the risk of being bored by the former. Why? Because I'll take notes, go home and study, and ultimately learn more from the former. One more reason why I rarely attend church these days.

 

[sheeplady]

I wonder if racism stings people this much when they get their wad of twenties from the ATM, or if they're just happy to have their cash no matter who's face is on it.

 

[GHT]

I wonder if racism stings people this much when they get their wad of twenties from the ATM, or if they're just happy to have their cash no matter who's face is on it.

We have had the same face on the front of our bank notes for the last 67 years.

 

[Artifex]

It often seems as if popular culture is a whirlpool circling the drain of partisan propaganda. That is, it takes active effort merely to maintain one's intellectual standards, to avoid being drawn into whatever nonsense they've whipped up this month.

As a relative newcomer to the world, I find it very hard to judge whether the second-rate thinking of today is actually worse than that of yesteryear.

Someone, somewhere, must have made an impartial study of the matter...

 

[sheeplady]

We have had the same face on the front of our bank notes for the last 67 years.
View attachment 165763

As an American I admit that I have next to no understanding of royalty (as a concept). But, given your context and ours, I'd state having the queen on your banknotes is a far sight better for Britians than having Jackson on our twenties.

Jackson being a genocidal maniac. And the twenty now being the most common currency. While many of the early countrymen on our currency were slave holders; Jackson "earned" his place through "westward expansion." Which is a nice term for the forced and brutal relocation and slaughter of American Indian tribes in the southern states. And he did so by abusing the power of the executive branch, which had been attempted to be checked by the supreme court (our judicial branch). There are easily thousands of other American political figures who could go on the twenty. Thousands. We could (and should) pick any of those other people.

 

[EngProf]

As an American I admit that I have next to no understanding of royalty (as a concept). But, given your context and ours, I'd state having the queen on your banknotes is a far sight better for Britians than having Jackson on our twenties.

Jackson being a genocidal maniac. And the twenty now being the most common currency. While many of the early countrymen on our currency were slave holders; Jackson "earned" his place through "westward expansion." Which is a nice term for the forced and brutal relocation and slaughter of American Indian tribes in the southern states. And he did so by abusing the power of the executive branch, which had been attempted to be checked by the supreme court (our judicial branch). There are easily thousands of other American political figures who could go on the twenty. Thousands. We could (and should) pick any of those other people.

I'll be GLAD to take any and all of those horrible pieces of paper with "Old Hickory's" picture on them that other people don't want.

 

[tonyb]

The new First Lady series of Federal Reserve Notes are now in circulation.

The recently departed Barbara Bush is the first so honored. That’s her on the new one dollar bill.

 

[GHT]

Jackson being a genocidal maniac. And the twenty now being the most common currency. While many of the early countrymen on our currency were slave holders; Jackson "earned" his place through "westward expansion."

Is that Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the US? The one who gave the Brits a bloody nose at New Orleans?

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Is that Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the US? The one who gave the Brits a bloody nose at New Orleans?

The very same. He is also depicted on an equestrian statue in the center of the park directly across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.
I recently read a book titled "The Bank Wars" which recounts the battle between Jackson on the supporters of re-chartering the Second Bank of the United States. In that story he is portrayed as a kind of 19th Century preview of the current resident of that house.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've heard people complain strenuously about efforts to remove Jackson from the twenty. "It's TRADITION!" they bellow. Yeah, tradition since that long-ago ancient date of 1928, which anyone with a sense of history extending past their own generation would understand is really not long enough to count as "tradition" at all.

I'm not one in the habit of quoting the Founders, but George Washington, for one, strongly objected to the idea of depicting politicians on our currency -- declaring the habit to be "monarchial." I agree with him.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The new First Lady series of Federal Reserve Notes are now in circulation.

The recently departed Barbara Bush is the first so honored. That’s her on the new one dollar bill.

Martha Washington beat her to it.

What's really interesting to me is not so much the "tradition" of so-and-so being on our bills as it is the fact that until the currency redesign of 1928, those faces were in a constant state of flux. The $20 featured everyone from Grover Cleveland to Pocahontas before Old Hermanmunsterface got his ugly mug pasted on there.

 

[Harp]

I prefer a dispassionate , even pedantic, lecture from an able scholar over the admittedly entertaining hellfire and brimstone sermon of some bush league Elmer Gantry in a church any day, even at the risk of being bored by the former. .

Shirley Jones' bordello lecture, waving her stockings, proclaiming gospel grace, beauty, truth, and elegance
sure bests anything stump spoke by Gantry...

 

[LizzieMaine]

Meanwhile, four days in, the coverage of the whole Kate Smith business just keeps going from bad to worse. The columnists are all having their say, and the "hot takes" have sorted, as I knew they would, into vulpine screams of "OMG PEE CEE PEE CEE PEE CEE" or navel-gazing NPR-type analyses of today's jackhammer social-media environment. But not one of them -- not one -- has made any serious examination of who Smith was, what the history of the songs were, why she recorded them, and what, if anything, any of it actually meant. All they're doing is quoting the same old Wikipedia stuff over and over and over again. I belong to an email list of people who specialize in studying popular music of the pre-rock era, a list populated by some pretty eminent names in that field, and not one of them has been contacted or consulted by anybody working on this story. Who cares about factual information when everything you need can be cut and pasted from a "crowd sourced encyclopedia?"

Kate Smith didn't "sing jingles." Kate Smith didn't "make a video." And on and on. The sheer lack of fundamental understanding of what she did do, and why she did it, and the lack of any effort to actually figure that out beyond a few lazy internet searches is really frustrating. I worked as a reporter. This isn't how reporting is done. What it is, however, is the ulitmate fruit of the "hot take" culture of the past twenty years. Nobody cares anymore what you know. They only want to hear what you *think,* even if you don't know how.

By the way, if I was Randy Newman, I'd be furiously scrubbing my back catalog from the internet. His 1970 recording of "Underneath The Harlem Moon" is going to get him in big, big trouble.

 

[tonyb]

..,

By the way, if I was Randy Newman, I'd be furiously scrubbing my back catalog from the internet. His 1970 recording of "Underneath The Harlem Moon" is going to get him in big, big trouble.

Would any mentally competent English-speaking adult need to be told that many of Mr. Newman’s better-known efforts — “Political Science,” “Sail Away,” “Short People,” etc. — are satire?

In light of that, a person would take Newman’s recording of a tune made popular a good 40 years earlier (and recorded by Ethel Waters, for cryin’ out loud) in that context.

 

[vitanola]

Meanwhile, four days in, the coverage of the whole Kate Smith business just keeps going from bad to worse. The columnists are all having their say, and the "hot takes" have sorted, as I knew they would, into vulpine screams of "OMG PEE CEE PEE CEE PEE CEE" or navel-gazing NPR-type analyses of today's jackhammer social-media environment. But not one of them -- not one -- has made any serious examination of who Smith was, what the history of the songs were, why she recorded them, and what, if anything, any of it actually meant. All they're doing is quoting the same old Wikipedia stuff over and over and over again. I belong to an email list of people who specialize in studying popular music of the pre-rock era, a list populated by some pretty eminent names in that field, and not one of them has been contacted or consulted by anybody working on this story. Who cares about factual information when everything you need can be cut and pasted from a "crowd sourced encyclopedia?"

Kate Smith didn't "sing jingles." Kate Smith didn't "make a video." And on and on. The sheer lack of fundamental understanding of what she did do, and why she did it, and the lack of any effort to actually figure that out beyond a few lazy internet searches is really frustrating. I worked as a reporter. This isn't how reporting is done. What it is, however, is the ulitmate fruit of the "hot take" culture of the past twenty years. Nobody cares anymore what you know. They only want to hear what you *think,* even if you don't know how.

By the way, if I was Randy Newman, I'd be furiously scrubbing my back catalog from the internet. His 1970 recording of "Underneath The Harlem Moon" is going to get him in big, big trouble.

Thank heaven that TD has already gone on to his reward! That Clambake 7 revival of a then thirty year old tune would make him persona non grata today.

Actually, I can think of few popular artists of the first third of the last century whose recorded catalogues could survive the scrutiny given that of our "Songbird of the South", race performers included.

Cone to think of it, the "Long hairs" or classical performers of the period don't fare much better. Among others, Alma Gluck, Mabel Garrison, and Rosa Ponselle must these days all be strictly de trop

 

[Benny Holiday]

Never understood why anyone could, with a straight face, claim expertise on the Bible without at least two years of solid academic study (preferably at the graduate level) in both the ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek languages. A bit like a self designated expert on Goethe or Schiller who cannot read German, or an "expert" on Tolstoy who is illiterate in Russian. The more one studies language, the more one realizes that "lost in translation" is the rule and not the suggestion. Heck, even Elizabethan English loses a lot if the context isn't examined.

I prefer a dispassionate , even pedantic, lecture from an able scholar over the admittedly entertaining hellfire and brimstone sermon of some bush league Elmer Gantry in a church any day, even at the risk of being bored by the former. Why? Because I'll take notes, go home and study, and ultimately learn more from the former. One more reason why I rarely attend church these days.

The Book can only be understood in context of the culture and time in which its 66 books were written. The intent of the original language is paramount to understanding its themes and topics. Much of Christianity, courtesy of the medieval church, has teachings about, for instance, death that are not found anywhere in the Bible.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Would any mentally competent English-speaking adult need to be told that many of Mr. Newman’s better-known efforts — “Political Science,” “Sail Away,” “Short People,” etc. — are satire?

In light of that, a person would take Newman’s recording of a tune made popular a good 40 years earlier (and recorded by Ethel Waters, for cryin’ out loud) in that context.

Ya'd think. Although I wish someone had told Ethel that "schvartze" is not an inoffensive substitute for the "d-word."

 

[scotrace]

You know, when this Kate Smith thing blew up, such as it has, I remember thinking that most of the people reading the story would have to look up who Kate Smith was, even though they'd likely heard her sing God Bless America a dozen or more times. And now we have to clutch our pearls and cover the statue and get her out of baseball--she's as much a part of baseball as third base as the Fat Lady Who Sings When it's Over--and treat her like an overweight General Beauregard Slavemonger. And she is dead as Julius Caesar and there is no getting the story right.

God is infinitely forgiving. People, not so much. We're awash in information, but much of it is unusable garbage opinion and list click bait. And too many read that garbage as factual, rehash and share and it becomes even more embedded.

And YES. By all means get Jackson off the currency. The Trail of Tears is his doing, something that is wrong in or out of context and historical place. A death march is a death march.