CSotD: I guess you had to be there
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David Horsey writes an appreciation of the musical "Hamilton," praising the way it purposefully departs from a true historical setting in order to illuminate the timeless issues its real-world characters faced.
Which may be the case (I haven't seen it), and I don't have a problem, for instance, with productions of "Hamlet" set in modern totalitarian states, because sometimes you need to step back from the Shakespeare-worship of the classroom and view his work separate from his reputation.
Similarly, you need to view historical figures as people, and to examine the issues they dealt with as real matters, as things still in play with real consequences to be dealt with, and not as settled historical memes engraved in granite.
But a little of that goes a long way, and Horsey notes the way refusing to immerse yourself — truly immerse yourself — in the settings of history leads to a lack of understanding.
If the revisionist magic of “Hamilton” works, it will inspire young fans of the musical to dig deeper into the stories of the American revolutionaries and not be put off by the fact that they were mostly white men in waistcoats. … Some folks, however, may have more difficulty overlooking the fraught issue of race. These days, it is nearly impossible to talk about Washington and Jefferson without stating a caveat: They owned slaves. Last week, on the campus of the University of Virginia, protesters covered a statue of Jefferson with a black shroud and accused him of being a “racist and a rapist,” a terribly oversimplified characterization.
I read something — stopped reading something — the other day in which the author wrote that Jefferson had "repeatedly raped" Sally Hemings, which both waters down the concept of rape into any sort of coerced sex and condescendingly assumes Hemings did not have the strength of character to participate in her own fate.
Which is not to underplay the evil of coerced sex.
Nor to ignore the way many slaves seemed to go along with what was happening while hiding deep resentment.
We've recently had an uproar, for instance, over a cheerful kid's book about George Washington's cook, who was indeed a cooperative slave until the day he saw his opportunity and escaped.
And we do know that there are affairs even today that include an imbalance of power, and there were also relationships that not only crossed racial lines but defied master/slave divisions.
Example: Jim Beckwourth, the famous mountain man, was born around 1800 as the son of a white man and a slave, but it looks from here that, after leaving Virginia for Missouri, his parents lived essentially as man and wife in a world that would not allow such a thing. Jim was freed by his father, because the law made him a slave from birth.
Granted, having an affair with an employee always carries a potential element of coercion, and there is no more coercive relationship than owner and slave.
But, then again, if we're not going to judge the people we used to call whores and winos and junkies, perhaps we should extend the same compassion to people who lived very different lives in very different times than our own.
Thoughtful compassion won't make slavery a good thing, anymore than it makes opiode abuse a good thing.
Nor will it change the puzzling, disturbing actions of men who knew that slavery was a bad and troubling thing but kept their slaves.
Then again, we accept that people shoot up heroin knowing they shouldn't, wishing they didn't and swearing some day they won't.
It mostly comes down to whether that is the part of their life you feel overrides all else, or whether you see it as a deep flaw in an otherwise valuable person.
Which requires you to find out what that person was really like and what they really did, and not just the deplorable part that has come to your attention.
Thoughtless compassion being as foolish as thoughtless condemnation.
Speaking of thoughtfulness
I continue to be impressed with cartoonists who examine issues rather than lining up by team colors, and Gary Varvel, though a conservative by nature, has been not simply questioning but going pretty hard on the rightwingers in Congress. His lack of concern over who wears the (R) and who wears the (D) is refreshing in a day when loyalty is praised above logic.
This commentary on the latest attempt to end the Affordable Care Act cracked me up, particularly because I believe the theory that ridicule can be more potent than simple criticism.
There are many ways you could depict the Republicans attempting to reanimate a corpse, but this is, both conceptually and graphically, so totally silly that it deserves special applause.
Not every political cartoon can be funny, but when it works, it's a wonderfully persuasive technique.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I don't know what's up with the Lockhorns, but the panel, generally considered to appeal to the blue-hair crowd, has recently included a lot of up-to-date cultural references, and this one really goes against the concept of Leroy as being locked in the early 60s and locked in his own early 60s.
The juxtaposition factor being that Dave Whamond, whose strip is generally more of a young, hip spot, here makes a gag that nobody under 40 is really going to get.
Yeah, the guy is still on the packaging, but he's not on TV commercials the way he was half a century ago.
He's sure not inspiring the young Louie-Louie crowd the way he did, back in them days …
(I had this 45. Flip side was "Long Green.")
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