Your Most Disturbing Realizations

[ChiTownScion]

I consider that a very sad analyalization [sic] of recent history and am disappointed that you see it that way...FWIW

Somehow, I'll survive...

 

[LizzieMaine]

The more that one studies history, the more one realizes that "moral clarity," at least in a societal sense, never existed. Improved communication has forced more honesty, and the more knowledgeable one becomes, the more one realizes that past which we are inclined to view through rose colored glasses, never existed either.

I always recommend the work of Stephanie Coontz, who's devoted a great deal of research to the social history of American family life, and has documented that a lot of what people commonly believe about the Era, especially, was in fact quite different than it's remembered. Popular culture tends to depict such things in one way because it reflects the view of what Americans liked to think they were, not what they actually were. Especially good is her 1992 book, "The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap," which came out at the height of the debate over "family values" in American life. Coontz demonstrated, convincingly, and with full historical documentation, that much of what we think of as the "traditional way of life" of the postwar years was very much a historical aberration.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The last episode of "MASH"? I saw the original film in 1970 and I watched it while sitting on the mud at an outdoor GI theater in a place called Long Binh in what was then still the Republic of South Vietnam. It was very controversial at the time because the Army thought it was anti-military and at first weren't going to allow it in military theaters, but there was a big fuss in Congress and they relented. We loved it. The "theater"only had a single projector so after each reel we had to wait a few minutes while the new reel was loaded.

The Army was not inaccurate in its belief -- MASH was, of course, always specifically intended as a cynical parable about Vietnam, to the point where the studio demanded that several specific references be added to the script to emphasize that it was "no, not about Vietnam at all, it's really about KOREA, see?" But all you had to do was look at the poster for the film to understand otherwise.

Note the use of the Vietnam-era fifty-star flag on the helmet instead of the period-correct 48-star era version. And nobody in 1970 interpreted that as a "V-for-Victory" sign.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I always recommend the work of Stephanie Coontz, who's devoted a great deal of research to the social history of American family life, and has documented that a lot of what people commonly believe about the Era, especially, was in fact quite different than it's remembered. Popular culture tends to depict such things in one way because it reflects the view of what Americans liked to think they were, not what they actually were. Especially good is her 1992 book, "The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap," which came out at the height of the debate over "family values" in American life. Coontz demonstrated, convincingly, and with full historical documentation, that much of what we think of as the "traditional way of life" of the postwar years was very much a historical aberration.

Having grown up on tales of "the good old days," I was fascinated by the World War II era from the time I could walk. The idea of the whole of the US nation, pulling together to defeat a deadly wrong, was one that I embraced.

The fact of the matter is that what was pitched to me and what I embraced was a half truth. Yes, the nation was at war and hardships were endured by all, but human vice has always existed. Wives cheated on their military husbands. Kids growing up without dads and moms employed in defense industries turned to delinquency. Alcohol abuse and drug addiction proliferated. The time was lived by women and men of flesh and blood, and their morals were as flawed as any.

The postwar forties and fifties were even worse, as you have noted. We look back with fondness and want to recall the Eisenhower era as a Paradise Lost, and that's unrealistic. The idea that "America lost it all in the Nineteen Sixties" in studying the history of the American Twentieth Century is every bit as flawed and unrealistic (if not outright dishonest) as "Longstreet lost it all at Gettysburg" and the Lost Cause romanticism of Douglas Southall Freeman is when studying the American Civil War. History is more complex and nuanced than that- and I for one think that's a good thing. Makes it a lot more interesting.

 

[Trenchfriend]

In Germany, we love it. So much of traumatic in these couple of seconds.

Legendary.

I watched M*A*S*H often as a boy, after primary-school in the mid-90's and later, too. The intro gets me every time. I know Trapper John, M.D., too.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Exactly. While I very much grieve for the loss of the communitarian values of the Depression era and very much dislike the individual-uber-alles "I got mine and the hell with you" values of the postwar era, I also understand that there were plenty of contradictions in both cases. We like to remember the WW2 era as a time when everyone was willing to sacrifice to do their bit, but we choose not to remember the hoarders, the black-marketers, the ration-chiselers, the many celebrities and sons of wealth who managed to finagle their way into rear-echelon service or to avoid service altogether, and those who actively resisted the draft, either for religious or political reasons or just because they didn't feel like going to war. And then there's the whiners and complainers and moaners to whom the stock reply was always "Don't you know there's a war on" when they started to wail about how they were being "inconvenienced" by it all.

And that doesn't even include those who were convinced we were fighting on the wrong side of that particular war, of whom there were a lot more -- in positions of high power, no less -- than anyone wants to admit.

 

[ChiTownScion]

The Army was not inaccurate in its belief -- MASH was, of course, always specifically intended as a cynical parable about Vietnam, to the point where the studio demanded that several specific references be added to the script to emphasize that it was "no, not about Vietnam at all, it's really about KOREA, see?" But all you had to do was look at the poster for the film to understand otherwise.

Note the use of the Vietnam-era fifty-star flag on the helmet instead of the period-correct 48-star era version. And nobody in 1970 interpreted that as a "V-for-Victory" sign.

The differences between the original book, the Robert Altman film, and the Alan Alda television show really bring this out. Hot Lips Hoolihan eventually was morphed into Margaret the Proto Feminist, and Hawkeye became an Everyman with the morals of Plato, Buddha, and Christ- incorporating only the more admirable characteristics of each. Even Frank Burns was eventually replaced in the television show by Charles Winchester: a stuck up Back Bay Brahmin type who nonetheless was a compassionate person underneath it all.

 

[Zombie_61]

The more that one studies history, the more one realizes that "moral clarity," at least in a societal sense, never existed. Improved communication has forced more honesty, and the more knowledgeable one becomes, the more one realizes that past which we are inclined to view through rose colored glasses, never existed either.

I agree, though I'd describe it in a slightly different manner. Society in general is the same as it ever was. There are, and always have been, those individuals and groups who do their best to live by some form of moral compass, and there are those who don't.

The difference between "then" and "now" (if there is a difference) is that the "improved" communication makes us more intimately aware of what occurs in the world around us, complete with regularly scheduled updates, and the modern so-called "news" media is all too willing to reveal every evil deed by broadcasting them straight to our big-screen televisions and computers in high definition. Within minutes we can now learn about people we've never met, who live in a town we've never heard of, and find out what happened to them today whether it was good or bad; something that was nearly impossible in what we glowingly refer to as The Golden Era. And since that same media relishes in reporting "bad" news...I think you understand my point.

Yes, society has evolved during the last 60-70 years. But I'm not qualified to determine whether we've actually evolved in a negative direction, or if it just seems that way because we're constantly being bombarded with "bad" news.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Speaking of MASH, I was just struck by that Pauline Kael quote on the poster -- "the best American war comedy since sound came in." The talkie revolution began in Hollywood in 1927, escalated in 1928, reached flood tide in 1929, and was basically over by 1930. That "since sound came in" in 1970, when MASH came out, was a period of about forty-three years. From our perspective that's the amount of time since the MASH TV series began in 1972.

Ooowee.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One thing people forget about media in the Era is that it wasn't as slow or non-comprehensive as they think. Most daily newspapers published multiple editions, updated constantly as new stories broke. I own a number of bound volumes of urban papers of the thirties and early forties which include *all* the editions of each day for the period covered by the volume. A paper like the New York Daily News or the Boston Record published as many as nine editions a day, from the "bulldog" or "Pink Edition," which hit the streets around 9 pm the day before the issue date to the "Sports Final," which hit the streets around 530pm the next day in order to include that afternoon's baseball scores and horse racing results. The content of each edition could change dramatically over the course of the day, and you were never more than a few hours from the next edition hitting the street. That's not the split-second release of news people get today from the internet, but neither is it the "waiting around twenty-four hours for the latest news" situation that most people today believe that people of that time experienced.

One of the volumes, of Hearst's Boston Record, covers the Morro Castle maritime disaster in 1934, and each succeeding edition from that day is more sensational than the next in the way it plays the story, complete with wirephotos, interviews with survivors, speculation on the cause of the accident, and huge, screaming headlines. In looking at it I'm struck by how similar it is to watching a news story develop on CNN.com, Fox News, or any of the other tabloidy news webites.

As for playing up "bad" news, I need only point to the content of the mass-appeal daily papers of the Era. The highest-circulation paper in the country thruout the Era was the tabloid New York Daily News, which was never known for its restraint -- just after Christmas Day in 1936, the News covered its entire front page with a gigantic photo of the nude, mutilated corpse of a kidnapped child sprawled in a snowbank under the screaming headline KIDNAPPED BOY SLAIN! I don't think that the News, even in its sleazy modern form, would dare to do that today.

Other tabs, like the New York Daily Mirror, the Boston Record, the Chicago Times, and the Los Angeles Mirror, were among the higher-circulation papers as well, and maintained a similar focus on crime, sex, gossip, and scandal in their news columns. The broadsheet Hearst papers, which blanketed the country, were little better. And then there's the Chicago Tribune, which, thruout the Era, was possibly the worst daily newspaper in the country, known for its flagrant suppression and fabrication of news when it suited Colonel McCormick's purposes and its verging-on-pro-Nazi editorial columns. The Daily Worker had a better journalistic reputation than the Tribune in those days.

 

[Zombie_61]

The Army was not inaccurate in its belief -- MASH was, of course, always specifically intended as a cynical parable about Vietnam, to the point where the studio demanded that several specific references be added to the script to emphasize that it was "no, not about Vietnam at all, it's really about KOREA, see?" But all you had to do was look at the poster for the film to understand otherwise...

I was going through school during the first six to seven years that M*A*S*H was on television, and I lost count of the number of co-students who were convinced it was set in Vietnam until I informed them otherwise. Of course, the series really was a running commentary on the war in Vietnam (and on war in general) thinly veiled under the veneer of Korea, but still...

 

[GHT]

The more that one studies history, the more one realizes that "moral clarity," at least in a societal sense, never existed. Improved communication has forced more honesty, and the more knowledgeable one becomes, the more one realizes that past which we are inclined to view through rose colored glasses, never existed either.

Have to agree with this. In the age of innocence, Catholic priests were doing unspeakable things to alter boys, as were their Anglian counterparts and many celebrities too. The difference back then was, nobody knew, or would ever believe the child. Poor kid knew he would get a beating for telling lies. Politicians were on the take and business leaders were as avaricious as they are today. It was always there, but without the level of communication or the advances in criminal science, who would ever know?

 

[Fading Fast]

One thing people forget about media in the Era is that it wasn't as slow or non-comprehensive as they think. Most daily newspapers published multiple editions, updated constantly as new stories broke. I own a number of bound volumes of urban papers of the thirties and early forties which include *all* the editions of each day for the period covered by the volume. A paper like the New York Daily News or the Boston Record published as many as nine editions a day, from the "bulldog" or "Pink Edition," which hit the streets around 9 pm the day before the issue date to the "Sports Final," which hit the streets around 530pm the next day in order to include that afternoon's baseball scores and horse racing results. The content of each edition could change dramatically over the course of the day, and you were never more than a few hours from the next edition hitting the street. That's not the split-second release of news people get today from the internet, but neither is it the "waiting around twenty-four hours for the latest news" situation that most people today believe that people of that time experienced.

One of the volumes, of Hearst's Boston Record, covers the Morro Castle maritime disaster in 1934, and each succeeding edition from that day is more sensational than the next in the way it plays the story, complete with wirephotos, interviews with survivors, speculation on the cause of the accident, and huge, screaming headlines. In looking at it I'm struck by how similar it is to watching a news story develop on CNN.com, Fox News, or any of the other tabloidy news webites.

As for playing up "bad" news, I need only point to the content of the mass-appeal daily papers of the Era. The highest-circulation paper in the country thruout the Era was the tabloid New York Daily News, which was never known for its restraint. Other tabs, like the New York Daily Mirror, the Boston Record, the Chicago Times, and the Los Angeles Mirror, were among the higher-circulation papers as well, and maintained a similar focus on crime, sex, gossip, and scandal in their news columns. The broadsheet Hearst papers, which blanketed the country, were little better.

When I started working in NYC in '82, (and for several years after that) the NY Post and Daily News put out a few editions a day and the "Extra" or "Final" (I forget whose was which and if those were the exact names) came out at, usually, a little after 5pm and had not only ball scores but also closing stock prices.

Like many, I'd wait if it wasn't out to get a copy to read on the commute home. And there were also "Special" editions when a big news story broke during the day. To Lizzie's point, even in the '80s, even with all the TV and radio news available then, you could still, in NYC, get several editions thought the day and keep up with news as it developed via the papers (which gives me a feel for what nine editions must have been like - kinda like a very, very slow internet connection . (Must be the first time I tried, but we seem to have a much reduced menu of emoticons in this new - and in general - great updated Fedora Lounge format. James Power's laser gun doesn't seem to have made the cut.)

The few times you couldn't get a late-edition and you had to buy an earlier one, the paper felt dated and stale. No stock prices, no ball scores, no updated-from-the-morning stories - it all felt flat and old.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Thruout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, the equipment manager of the Boston Red Sox was sexually-molesting young African-American batboys *in the team clubhouse,* and though several players and other representatives of the team were aware of what was going on and tried to intervene, the story was suppressed by both the team and the Boston media until the issue was forced to the surface by one of his victims holding up a sign in front of the TV cameras at a game in the early 1990s. This man had worked for the team since the mid-forties, and God only knows how many victims he hurt before he was finally dealt with.

I don't like to read stories like that, but I'd much rather be confronted with them than have them covered up.

 

[tonyb]

The more that one studies history, the more one realizes that "moral clarity," at least in a societal sense, never existed. Improved communication has forced more honesty, and the more knowledgeable one becomes, the more one realizes that past which we are inclined to view through rose colored glasses, never existed either.

Precisely.

My drinking days expired before everyone walked around with access to the World Wide Web in their pockets, so I don't know how barroom boasts and debates play out these days, but I'm confident that people are less given to certainties and exaggerations than they used to be.

I am acquainted with a person who sees the world as divided between those with strong moral compasses and those without. I understand the desire to have explanations for all phenomena, to live in a world built on strong foundations, to know that there are absolute rights and wrongs. I understand it completely, really. But I view such folks the way I view all absolutists, and utopians, and scriptural literalists. Sure, there are guidelines -- legal, religious, social -- and it's a darned good thing there are. But if morality were so clear cut as this acquaintance of mine believes it is, we'd have very little need for lawyers, or clergy, or Miss Manners. Or booth reviews.

 

[tonyb]

The last episode of "MASH"? I saw the original film in 1970 and I watched it while sitting on the mud at an outdoor GI theater in a place called Long Binh in what was then still the Republic of South Vietnam. ...

Great movie. I'm a big Altman fan, and "MASH" is among his best.

He despised the TV series, by the way. I believe that time will bear him out.

 

[ChiTownScion]

And then there's the Chicago Tribune, which, thruout the Era, was possibly the worst daily newspaper in the country, known for its flagrant suppression and fabrication of news when it suited Colonel McCormick's purposes and its verging-on-pro-Nazi editorial columns. The Daily Worker had a better journalistic reputation than the Tribune in those days.

The Colonel was one of those all too common fellows who was born on third base, and then spends a lifetime congratulating himself on how well he hits a triple. The better newspaper publisher in Chicago of that era was- in my opinion- Frank Knox of the Chicago Daily News. His editorial character, "Col. McCosmic," was a classic put-down of the pompous McCormack. Interestingly, both men were Republicans who had issues with FDR's New Deal, although Knox later buried that hatchet and went on to serve as Roosevelt's Secretary of the Navy.

 

[tonyb]

Have to agree with this. In the age of innocence, Catholic priests were doing unspeakable things to alter boys, as were their Anglian counterparts and many celebrities too. The difference back then was, nobody knew, or would ever believe the child. Poor kid knew he would get a beating for telling lies. Politicians were on the take and business leaders were as avaricious as they are today. It was always there, but without the level of communication or the advances in criminal science, who would ever know?

Yup.

In the Upper Midwest of my early years, sexual matters were spoken of in hushed tones, when they were spoken of at all.

Such reticence provided cover for those who molested children, and left the victims thinking they were somehow to blame for what happened to them, that they were "dirty."

Perhaps the women over in the Powder Room discuss these things more openly than their mothers and grandmothers did. I wouldn't know. But I do know that among the women I have known well enough to know such things about, the percentage who were sexually exploited in one way or another during their childhoods is staggering. A majority, perhaps. And I know that some of them still carry some shame over it, misplaced as they know that shame to be.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And the converse of that is that there were constant campaigns among women, especially during the twenties, thirities, and early forties, for greater awareness of such things. There were also strong criticisms from women of the double sexual standard and calls for women to be more aware of their own physical needs and the workings of their own bodies. These weren't under-the-counter books, either -- this was mainstream thought for most thinking women of the time, and you'd find frank, open discussion of these issues in best-selling books and many of the popular women's magazines of the day.

The idea that women of the Era were perfectly satisfied to remain "barefoot and pregnant" in a "man's world" until those awful bra-burning feminists came along in the sixties is the most pernicious myth come out of the Happy Fifties-revisionism of the seventies and eighties. There isn't a single thing that Betty Friedan or Robin Morgan wrote about in the sixties that Elizabeth Hawes hadn't already written about twenty years earlier.

 

[Fading Fast]

Great movie. I'm a big Altman fan, and "MASH" is among his best.

He despised the TV series, by the way. I believe that time will bear him out.

"Mash" the TV show was huge when I was in high school yet I couldn't stand it as I couldn't stand Alan Alda's preaching. While, I'm sure, I didn't understand political context of his comments then, I knew when I was being preached to by a moralizing snob and I didn't like it.

Edit Add: My one small caveat is that I so disliked it, that I would bet I saw five or less episodes, so maybe - for a show that ran for 90 years - I'm not being fair. But I was a kid, didn't like the preachiness and moved on.