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Author Archives: Matthew Lasar
Lenny Bruce got Lyndon Johnson totally wrong (but maybe it wasn’t his fault)
All the good, smart people looked at Lyndon Johnson take the White House in November of 1963 and said “What an asshole; we’re doomed.” But once installed, Johnson, a politician first and foremost, knew what time it was and what he would be remembered for. Continue reading
On electoral politics, compromise, and life
“Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary everywhere else in our lives, we imagine ourselves entitled to a politics in which we never have to settle for less than our preferred candidate and platform.” Continue reading
In which Drew Pearson tells Chairman Khrushchev that Americans are a “peculiar people”
I am finally getting around to the latest Kennedy Assassination files posted on the National Archives. These include a 1964 Central Intelligence Agency document in which some CIA informer summarized a conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Drew Pearson and Soviet … Continue reading
The White Left in the thinking of Edward Bellamy and the imagination of Carson McCullers
Edward Bellamy joins the White Left in his 1887 utopian novel Looking Backward: 2000 to 1887. Carson McCullers briefly illuminates the White Left in her 1940 novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Continue reading
Posted in race
Tagged Carson McCullers, Edward Bellamy, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
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Edward Bellamy’s post-corporate utopia
Edward Bellamy had harsh words for Gilded Age capitalism. But he also shared the perspectives of some of corporate capitalism’s biggest boosters, then and now. Continue reading
Socialist Workers Party infiltration statistics, revisited
I am finally getting around to reading FBI on Trial: The victory in the Socialist Workers Party suit against government spying. The statistics on Federal Bureau of Investigation infiltration of the group are just amazing, even to jaundiced old me. … Continue reading
The remarkable endurance of San Francisco’s creepy “Early Days” statue
Heather Knight of the San Francisco Chronicle has a good history of a statue that should be sitting in some municipal storage basement, rather than perched in front of the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library. “Early Days,” as it … Continue reading
White House: are you washed in the blood of the pig?
Largely eclipsed by the Charlottesville Horror are comments that President Trump made the other day that included a historical lesson on how to deal with Muslim terrorists. The advisory came in the course of a statement denouncing the recent ISIS … Continue reading
How Google joined the Nth International
Kudos to David Brooks of The New York Times, whose strange column calling for Google CEO Sundar Pichai to resign forced me to read former Google engineer James Damore’s equally strange advisory on gender differences in the high tech workplace. … Continue reading
Posted in gender differences, Silicon Valley
Tagged #fringenextdoor, David Brooks, Google, James Damore
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The hottest historical figures of the global Cold War? and the winners are . . .
In the final exam for my Global Cold War class, I give my students a two point bonus question: who was the hottest historical figure of the Cold War? I allow them to define “hot” any way that they wish: … Continue reading