Saturday, May 10, 2025

Here's Looking at You, Paul

 This short term at Paideia I’m teaching a course called, “Put ‘Em Up, Nazi”.  We study World War II films made during World War II.  Of course there are hundreds of examples to choose from, but I’ve selected the ones that most successfully navigate the conflicting agendas of propaganda and cinematic art. Films like 49th Parallel (where the title of the course comes from), Mrs. Miniver, Casablanca, Watch on the Rhine, and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.  As they worked on these films their creators might well have been asking themselves, “What if Hitler wins?” and their films are plainly designed for audiences living with that same fear, designed to stoke their courage and resilience and rouse them into action. 


Sunday, February 09, 2025

So Long, Jimmy

 I read Jonathan Alter's Jimmy Carter biography not too long ago.  What attracted me to it was hearing somewhere that his thesis was that Carter was a better President than you think and not as good an ex-President as you think.  That sounded like a hot take, but I bit anyway, and found it to be a somewhat true description of the book.  Alter doesn't diss post 1984 Jimmy at all, just notes that he maybe stuck his nose in where he shouldn't have a couple of times and that some of his charitable efforts (especially early on) had a calculated "image restoration" quality to them.  But those are quibbles, and Alter says so.  An ex-Presidency for the ages.   


As for his political career, the parts that stood out to me are (1) his shame that as a Sumter County businessman he didn't get behind Clarence Jordan and Koinonia when he should have, (2) the brilliant bait-and-switch he pulled on segregationists to get elected Governor in 1970, and (3) the Panama Canal Treaty.  That's something I remember happening, and Alter's account of Carter recognizing that it had to be done, that it would a brutal job, and that there would be no political payoff for it, and then digging in and making it happen - reading about that inspired me more than any photo of him hammering nails.   A lesson for our times.    


Godspeed, Jimmy, and thank you.