Reconstruction Time Again

"The Fourteenth Amendment went into the Constitution in 1868 with vague language guaranteeing citizens of the United States the 'privileges and immunities' pertaining thereto. It turned out the Supreme Court would read that phrase to exclude pretty nearly every right worth having. By the time the nation adopted a voting rights amendment in 1870, it was already too late. The country that had won its war had no commitment to securing the peace, and the South's white supremacist redeemers, emboldened by the feeble opposition they met, had established themselves as the power and later the law in the old Confederacy."

In The American Prospect, Eric Rauchway reviews two recent books about Reconstruction, Nicholas Lemann's Redemption and Garrett Epps's Democracy Reborn.

And Edward L. Ayers in Slate praises Lemann's book as one that bridges popular and academic history.

Culture and Consciousness

Obituaries for historian Lawrence Levine, 1933-2006, and anthropologist Clifford Geertz, 1926-2006.

Committees, Why Did There Have to Be Committees

"In his nine years with the department, Dr. Jones has failed to complete even one uninterrupted semester of instruction. In fact, he hasn't been in attendance for more than four consecutive weeks since he was hired. Departmental records indicate Dr. Jones has taken more sabbaticals, sick time, personal days, conference allotments, and temporary leaves than all the other members of the department combined."

Andy F. Bryan in McSweeny's uncovers a letter from 1939 denying Indiana Jones tenure.

Spotlight on Lou Dobbs, Y'all

"Who is the most left-wing commentator on mainstream television? Keith Olbermann? Bill Maher? Not even close. I'm talking about a man who says both parties are 'bought and paid for by corporate America,' and calls lobbyists 'arms dealers in the war on the middle class.' This latter-day William Jennings Bryan denounces the 'corporate supremacists' in Congress who write 'consumer-crippling' bankruptcy laws, pass job-exporting free-trade deals, and raise the interest on college loans. He peppers his economic analyses with quotes from the labor-supported Economic Policy Institute. And he recently called the GOP's effort to link a minimum-wage hike to a repeal of the estate tax 'obscene.' I refer, of course, to Lou Dobbs."

Peter Beinart takes a look at economic nationalism in The New Republic.

Smash the System

"Then he holds forth—eloquent, bitter, tart, only mildly deranged—about what inspires him in life, about what he detests, and about his need to leave before he physically attacks the counselor. Tommy makes a fart joke and is gone. He speeds away from what he sees as a disaster in modern masculinity in a banana-yellow, vintage Mustang. 'Flight 93,' reads its bumper sticker, 'Let's roll.'"

Troy Patterson in Slate presents Steve Coogan's latest BBC show, Saxondale.

1956

"If it took Moscow a few weeks to decide upon its course of action, the same could not be said of the United States. Despite promiscuous pledges to roll back Communism, President Dwight Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had no intention of rolling back anything. In a National Security Council meeting, Vice President Richard Nixon even stated that a Soviet invasion would not be an unmixed evil for the West, as it would bolster the alliance against Communism. Then, as now, what Gati quite correctly calls the Republican right’s 'fundamentalist rhetoric of liberation' was simply pious nonsense that ended up having lethal consequences."

Jacob Heilburn, in The New York Times, reviews three recently published books about the Hungarian Revolution.

And U.S. News & World Report provides a commemorative history.

A Bill of Right

"What happened to the Washington that created something so magnificent? Why do we no longer expect—or demand—greatness from Americans' joint enterprise, our government? In the 1960s, before Watergate and Vietnam, most Americans believed that their government usually did the right thing. Now we've accepted Ronald Reagan's old formulation about the nine most dangerous words in the English language: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.' How ironic that a member of the GI Bill generation would sell his countrymen on that idea. But it's not a truism; it's self-fulfilling prophecy. We expect our government to fail, and it meets our expectations."

Edward Humes, author of Over Here: How the GI Bill Transformed the American Dream, argues in favor of a new GI Bill in the Los Angeles Times.

Can't Anyone Here Play This Game?

"It basically boiled down to a political history through which Democrats are seen as weak on defense, dismissive of rural and Southern culture and out of touch with white middle-class voters."

On CNN.com, Candy Crowley posts excerpts from her investigation into the Democratic Party's forty years of electoral difficulties.

Dare to Be Stupid

"Or check out 'Bob,' his recasting of 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' entirely in palindromes. The song is worth a whole library of faux-scholarly Dylan criticism. It manages to reproduce all of Dylan's lyrical signatures—gnomic aphorisms ('Do geese see God?'), fragments of dialogue ('"Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod'), dislocated historical figures ('O Geronimo, no minor ego')."

Sam Anderson ponders "Weird Al" Yankovic's oeuvre in Slate.

"John Kerry Is an Asshole!"

Watch a moving documentary of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders as it unfolds during October and November in The War of the Words.

Retired S1Ws Recalled to Active Duty

"'I got a letter from the P.E. the other day,' said James Bomb, 46, also a former S1W. 'I opened it, and read it, and said they were suckers. They want me for their army or whatever? Picture me giving a damn—I said "Never."'
"'Then again, I could use the money,' Bomb added."

From The Onion.

A Traitor to the Cause?

"Conservatives aren't turning on Bush because his policies aren't conservative. They are turning on him because his policies, from Iraq to Hurricane Katrina, have dramatically failed--and failed policies, by definition, cannot be conservative."

In The New Republic, Peter Beinart calls out critics who claim that George W. Bush is not really a conservative.

And Harold Meyerson in The American Prospect offers a post-midterm analysis.

Drip Your Own Pollock

Here.

Raise Your Fist

"'We had a bond,' [Tommie] Smith, who recently retired as a track coach and instructor at Santa Monica College, told The Times on Tuesday. 'It was a long-lasting friendship because of that day.'
"[John] Carlos, a counselor at Palm Springs High School, said: 'Peter Norman was my brother.'"

The Los Angeles Times reports the death of Peter Norman, the 1968 Olympic silver medalist in the 200 meters.