Some Historical Echoes Really Undermine Your Own Case

Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.
— George Wallace, 1963

Israel today, Israel tomorrow, Israel forever.
— Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Yesterday

Yes, apparently he really said that. They have video and everything.

The echo is so strong that I have to admit to wondering whether he was trying to subtly signal that he thinks he's on the wrong side here. (Although if so, he ought to remember that "Hell's just a place for kiss-ass politicians who pander to assholes.") Or maybe his unconscious is working overtime?

'cause really, if this is an honest attempt at pro-Israel hasbara, I kinda got rate this a big 'ol FAIL.

Wallace didn't recant as much as quickly as he was given credit for (there's a whole chapter of my dissertation on this), but he did start shifting positions to some degree within a decade. I wonder how long Rep. Jeffries will take?

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 20, Tabloid Nation I: OJ (Con't)

...the only reason we will care about this case 10 years after, 20 years after, is what it told us about race in this country. The rest is passing entertainment.... The case represented a referendum on what we [thought] about race in 1995.

— Jeffrey Toobin (2005 interview)

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 20, Tabloid Nation I: OJ (Con't)

The jurors had discussed the merits of the case against O. J. Simpson for about two hours—less time than most other adults in America.

— Jeffrey Toobin, The Run of His Life: The People vs. O. J. Simpson

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 20, Tabloid Nation I: OJ (Con't)

There was another man not too long ago in this world who had those same views, who wanted to burn people, who had racist views, and ultimately had power over people in his country. People didn't care. People said he's crazy. He's just a half-baked painter. And they didn't do anything about it. This man, this scourge, became one of the worst people in the world, Adolf Hitler, because people didn't care, didn't stop him. He had the power over his racism and his anti-religionism. Nobody wanted to stop him....And so Fuhrman. Fuhrman wants to take all black people now and burn them or bomb them. That's genocidal racism. Is that ethnic purity? We're paying this man's salary to espouse these views...

—Johnny Cochran, summation to the O. J. Simpson Jury

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 20, Tabloid Nation I: OJ (Con't)

OJ is in massive denial. He obviously did it. He should do a diminished-capacity please and he might have a chance to get out in a reasonable amount of time.

—Johnny Cochran, in private, prior to being hired as Simpson's lawyer

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 20, Tabloid Nation I: OJ (Con't)

I'm not black, I'm OJ

—O. J. Simpson, 1968

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 20, Tabloid Nation I: OJ

OJ, Monica, Iraq war runup. 3 media events impossible to explain to The Kids Today. had to have been there

—Atrios (Duncan Black) on Twitter, March 19, 2014

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 19, The Gingrich Revolution and the Clinton Restoration: Politics, 1994 - 1996 (Con't)

I can't think. I can't act.... I can't focus on a thing but the next fund raiser. Hillary can't. Al can't — we're all getting sick and crazy because of it.

—Bill Clinton, speaking to Dick Morris, during 96 re-election campaign

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 19, The Gingrich Revolution and the Clinton Restoration: Politics, 1994 - 1996 (Con't)

The era of big government is over.

—Bill Clinton, 1996 State-of-the-Union address

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 19, The Gingrich Revolution and the Clinton Restoration: Politics, 1994 - 1996 (Con't)

Any Republican urge to negotiate a “least bad” compromise with the Democrats, and thereby gain momentary public credit for helping the president “do something” about health care, should also be resisted. Passage of the Clinton health care plan, in any form, would guarantee and likely make permanent an unprecedented federal intrusion into and disruption of the American economy–and the establishment of the largest federal entitlement program since Social Security. Its success would signal a rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the very moment we have begun rolling back that idea in other areas.… But the Clinton proposal is also a serious political threat to the Republican Party. Republicans must therefore clearly understand the political strategy implicit in the Clinton plan–and then adopt an aggressive and uncompromising counterstrategy designed to delegitimize the proposal and defeat its partisan purpose.... But the long-term political effects of a successful Clinton health care bill will be even worse–much worse. It will relegitimize middle-class dependence for “security” on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.... The first step in that process must be the unqualified political defeat of the Clinton health care proposal. Its rejection by Congress and the public would be a monumental setback for the president; and an incontestable piece of evidence that Democratic welfare-state liberalism remains firmly in retreat.

—William Kristol, Memo to Republican Leaders, December, 1993

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 19, The Gingrich Revolution and the Clinton Restoration: Politics, 1994 - 1996 (Con't)

There is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending you can love your country but despise your government, How dare you suggest that we, in the freest nation on earth, live in tyranny?

—Bill Clinton, May, 1995

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 19, The Gingrich Revolution and the Clinton Restoration: Politics, 1994 - 1996 (Con't)

Powerful forces [are] threatening to bring down [Clinton's] administration. I think that they are called "hormones".

—Jay Leno, The Tonight Show, 1994

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 19, The Gingrich Revolution and the Clinton Restoration: Politics, 1994 - 1996

[With their health care plan, the Clintons] were going against the entire tide of Western history. I mean, centralized, command bureaucracies are dying. This is the end of that era, not the beginning of it.

—Newt Gingrich, 1994

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 18, From Clinton to Gingrich: Politics, 1992 - 1995 (Con't)

[Reply to question about Democrats in Congress:] We're owned by them. Business. That's where the campaign money comes from now. In the nineteen-eighties we gave up on the little guys. We started drinking from the same trough as the Republicans. We figured business would have to pay up because we had the power on the Hill. [pause] We were right. But we didn't realize we were giving them power over us. And now we have both branches of government, and they have even more power. It's too late now.

—Marty Sabo, Chairman of House Budget Committee, to Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, 1993

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 18, From Clinton to Gingrich: Politics, 1992 - 1995 (Con't)

I cannot believe you could live on this earth and know that you were responsible for electing a slime, a scum, a philandering, pot-smoking, draft-dodging pig of a man. . . . You make me sick. I hate your guts.

—Bush Campaign Manager Mary Matalin to her future husband, Clinton Campaign Manager James Carville, after Clinton's election

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 18, From Clinton to Gingrich: Politics, 1992 - 1995 (Con't)

[It's] the economy, stupid.

—Sign in W. Clinton's campaign headquarters, 1992

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 18, From Clinton to Gingrich: Politics, 1992 - 1995

Friends, this election is about more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe and what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself. For this war is for the soul of America. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side.... And as those boys took back the streets of Los Angeles, block by block, my friends, we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country. God bless you, and God bless America.

—Pat Buchanan, 1992 Republican National Convention

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 17, The Culture Wars of the Early 90s (Con't)

People used to think that television was aimed at the mind of a 12-year-old. Now it seems aimed at the hormones of a 14-year-old.

—Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs (1998)

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 17, The Culture Wars of the Early 90s (Con't)

Thomas had effectively walled himself off from embarrassing questions about his private life. Hill would not be so lucky.

—Jane Mayer & Jill Abramson

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 17, The Culture Wars of the Early 90s (Con't)

You all have a much tougher rode to travel. Not only do you have to content with the ever-present bigotry, you must do so with a recent tradition that almost requires you to wallow in excuses. You now have a popular national rhetoric which says that you can't learn because of racism, you can't raise the babies you make because of racism, you can't get up in the mornings because of racism. You commit crimes because of racism. Unlike me, you must not only overcome the repressiveness of racism, you must also overcome the lure of excuses.

—Clarence Thomas speaking at Savannah State College, 1985

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 17, The Culture Wars of the Early 90s (Con't)

Without the Cold War, what is the point of being an American?

—John Updike, Rabbit at Rest (1991)

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 17, The Culture Wars of the Early 90s (Con't)

Our ideals are triumphing but American wealth, influence, prestige and power are all declining.

—William Schneider

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 17, The Culture Wars of the Early 90s

Where appropriate I employ the term "Tabloid Nation," which I did not originate, to categorize media firestorms such as those surrounding the Gulf War, the O.J. trial, and Monica Lewinsky.... When really important news took place, such as presidential dalliances with interns, electronic avalanches overwhelmed the populace. It remains true today and will be event truer tomorrow that never before have there been so many ways of acquiring information. Yet enough time has already passed to make it clear that the multiplication electronic outlets does not lead to a better-informed public, except in the area of celebrity gossip where giant strides have been made. While everyone knows more than any human being should about the failings of Britney Spears, the percentage of Americans who don't believe in evolution, who think the sun revolves around the earth, or who cannot find Iraq on a map remains huge.... The irony of Tabloid Nation is that we are all wired, all digital, all the time, learning more and more about less and less, a legacy that has been a long time building but never more so than now. The nineties offer many distressing examples of this.

—William L. O'Neill, A Bubble in Time: America During the Interwar Years, 1989-2001 (2009)

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 16, The Gulf War & Bush 41's Foreign Policy (Con't)

The First Gulf War, precisely because it was so easy, taught the military little and the future Bush II administration nothing.

—Historian William L. O'Neill

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 16, The Gulf War & Bush 41's Foreign Policy (Con't)

This seems to be the Any Warhol War... A quarter-hour of fame and maximum attention and, in retrospect, horrendous losses of life on the other side, but remarkably trivial in its consequences otherwise.

—Historian John Shy, quoted in The New York Times, January 16, 1992

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 16, The Gulf War & Bush 41's Foreign Policy (Con't)

SAVANNAH, Ga., June 15 — The yellow ribbons, now frayed and faded, are still wrapped around the oak trees near the Hunter Army Air Field here where horn-honking, flag-waving crowds lined the streets in the early morning hours last March to greet the first troops returning from the Persian Gulf war.

But here as elsewhere, the war seems like something from another era these days, and the talk is of other things: the sluggish economy, the dreary stretch of empty buildings on Broughton Street downtown, the record-breaking local murder rate.

A year after it began in fear and ambiguity and ended in relief and jubilation, the Persian Gulf war has receded to a degree that few people expected, replaced by fears about the economy and doubts about the country's ability to handle problems at home as easily as it dispatched Saddam Hussein's overmatched military forces.

At the Raytheon plant in Andover, Mass., where the Patriot missiles that helped decide the war are manufactured, the talk is of possible layoffs....

—Peter Applebomes, "Year After Gulf War, Joy is a Ghost", The New York Times, January 16, 1992, opening grafs

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

How to Survive

Every time I rewatch the trailer for How to Survive a Plague (2012) — and I find it compulsively rewatchable; I keep playing it in the background as I prepare for my lecture on AIDS on Tuesday morning — I tear up when I get to the part where Peter Staley, speaking in 1990 at the Sixth International Conference on AIDS in San Francisco, says "Some day, there will be a people alive on this earth who will hear the story that once there was a terrible disease, and that a brave group of people stood up an fought, and in some cases died, so that others might live and be free."



Well, one small slice of those people will be the students in the course I'm teaching, on Tuesday afternoon. All of them are younger than the drug cocktail that produced the so-called Lazarus effect in 1996; that has shaped their world. But they should hear the story behind.

And if you haven't seen the movie yourself, see it. If you have seen it, see it again. Not only because it is an amazing story. But we have a lot of terrible evils that plague this world. This is how we'll survive them: by acting up. And fighting back.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 16, The Gulf War & Bush 41's Foreign Policy (Con't)

By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!

—George H.W. Bush

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 16, The Gulf War & Bush 41's Foreign Policy (Con't)

Interviewer: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?
Cheney: No.... Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. It would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, and took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place?... It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq. The other thing was casualties.... And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, and took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? And our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.

—Bush 41's Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, in 1994

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 16, The Gulf War & Bush 41's Foreign Policy (Con't)

...XVIII Corps also made good progress, the chief problem being mobs of surrendering Iraqis who kept getting in everyone's way.

—Historian William L. O'Neill

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 16, The Gulf War & Bush 41's Foreign Policy (Con't)

...The Gulf War now has a logo and a theme song. We had gone frm Vietnam horror to mainline entertainment. No wonder the networks push war so hard. Desert Storm's a hit show.

— David Hackworth, retired army colonel & commentator on CNN

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.

US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 16, The Gulf War & Bush 41's Foreign Policy (Con't)

I'm going to pop some popcorn and watch the war.

—College student, 1991

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US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 16, The Gulf War & Bush 41's Foreign Policy (Con't)

This [is] no time to go wobbly.

—Margaret Thatcher to George Bush '41, referring to Iraq, 1990

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.