Recently in Politics Category

Common-place, the online journal of early American history and culture, has a special issue up this quarter on early American politics. Among its features is a joint interview with Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, a prolific historian couple formerly of University of Tulsa and now of Louisiana State. Burstein recently published a biography of Washington Irving, focusing on the political context for the emergence of his career; Isenberg recently published a biography of Aaron Burr. The Common-place interview focuses on ways in which the two men's histories and careers, both based in Manhattan, were entangled. It begins:

How does one speak of Aaron Burr and Washington Irving in the same breath?

Burstein: First of all, they shared the island of Manhattan for a good many years. Washington Irving was the youngest in a large family of merchants with both literary and political ambitions. The brother with whom he was closest, Peter, ran as a Burrite for the New York Assembly and was the editor of the Burrite newspaper, the Morning Chronicle. The oldest Irving brother, William, served two terms in the House of Representatives as a Republican. John Irving, a lawyer and later a judge, hung out his shingle at the Wall Street address that Burr had recently occupied. Washington Irving, trained in the law, briefly worked there, too. Just before his first voyage to Europe, in 1803, twenty-year-old Washington had breakfast with Burr and absorbed his advice on how to profit from his time abroad.

Isenberg: Burr's appeal to the Irvings was the same as his appeal to other young New Yorkers looking to rise in society by attaching themselves to a politician sympathetic to their ambitions. Burr was a patron of the arts--the patron, for instance, of the well-known artist John Vanderlyn; Washington Irving was an incurable theatergoer and theater critic in his New York years and would pal around with painters and poets all his life. His brother William, the congressman, belonged to a literary society and wrote doggerel poems that formed companion pieces to his soon-to-be-famous brother's occasional pieces. In a letter to his daughter Theodosia, who was Irving's age, Burr, when vice president, eagerly praised the young writer's satirical essays about Manhattan society.

For the rest of the interview click here.

Alex Ross has this to say, in light of the spontaneous singing in Union Square the other night (see his original post if you want more links to follow):

A quick search of YouTube reveals that young crowds across the country broke into the national anthem in the early morning hours. You can find videos for the East Village, Times Square, Berkeley, Portland OR, Amherst, Ann Arbor, Seattle, Madison WI, and Harvard Yard (with band), among others. Two obvious conclusions: 1) contra Palin, the entire country is "pro America"; 2) increased support for music education would be nice.

One more musical angle: Bob Dylan announced the outcome of the election by playing "Blowin' in the Wind."

If you're like me at all, you've been thanking your favorite deities (or Barack Obama, whichever you prefer) that you haven't heard Sarah Palin's voice in the last several days. If you can handle it, though, check out this final note, so to speak, on the Couric interviews, also courtesy of Alex:

Highlights from some of my favorite bloggers' reactions to the news that we won the election:

Jeremiah Moss, from Jeremiah's Vanishing New York (my favorite anti-gentrification blog), has a great account of the spontaneous parades that could be heard roaming below 14th street until 3 am on the 5th. He was at Union Square for the sing-along I posted a video of the other day. From his post, composed around 2:30 in the morning:

In the streets of New York, crowds are still cheering, shouting "Yes, we can!" Cars honk their horns. People bang pots and pans. They cannot stop. Don't want to stop. When the announcement came over the television that he had been elected, cheers erupted from the streets. A crowd gathered on 8th Street and 1st Avenue, taking over the intersection. Police pushed them back here and there, but otherwise left the celebration alone.

People in cars stopped and the crowd rushed to shake their hands and kiss them through open windows.

Garbage men riding the backs of honking trucks waved and pumped their fists.

City bus drivers honked and slowed down so passengers could stick their hands from the windows and high-five the people on the street.



At Union Square, the park was packed. People climbed lamp posts and hoisted flags atop. We sang God Bless America. We chanted "U-S-A" and "Yes, We Can" and "O-Ba-Ma!" Strangers hugged and kissed strangers.

The celebration went on and on, a wave that rose and fell, then rose again, for hours and hours. Down side streets and avenues, in pockets of jubilant people.

For Jeremiah's photos of the night -- a fantastic set of images -- click here.

Alex at Flaming Pablum (which has its own recurring feature on NYC's Vanishing Downtown) has my favorite rubbing-it-in image:


Alex also has one of my favorite Obama/pop culture mashups as part of his GOTV post:






(Sidenote: As his penchant for Bowie imagery would suggest, Alex is a serious 70s rock aficionado, with a specialty in the NYC downtown scene. If you wander over to his site, don't miss his series of posts on NYC in rock videos and on album covers. I thought I'd throw that in since I know some of our readers share similar tastes.)

Gowanus Lounge collects accounts and photos of Obama celebrations in Brooklyn; Gothamist reports on arrests from one such street party in Williamsburg. (h/t to Jeremiah for the last two.)

Meanwhile, our friend MaNNaHaTTaMaMMa posts on intergenerational euphoria spilling over into other areas of life.

Are there other accounts from NYC blogs you think we should know about?

The newstands were bare yesterday -- if you were looking for a copy of The New York Times, that is. One of the maintenance guys in our building (which is in Union Square) told us at about 9:30 a.m. that he'd been to six different newstands in the area, and the Times was nowhere to be found.

I confirmed that myself a little while later on the way to Washington Square. The only copy I saw anywhere was in a vending box in a student residence hall -- and I was a quarter short, having off-loaded almost all my change the night before. (By the way, those newspaper vending machines seem to have become very scarce in my neck of the woods. Is that true all over the city?)

The New York Post must have done well yesterday. They seemed to have printed extra copies, and many would-be Times readers (I wasn't the only one searching) were settling for the Post. (I bought two myself.)

Luckily, our copy of the Times had been delivered in the morning, but I wanted two more pristine copies for posterity -- to give to my sons when they turn 21, perhaps. A friend of ours who works for the times told us that employees were lining up at the delivery trucks to buy copies, and he wasn't sure that he'd be able to get one. (He finally managed at the end of the day, apparently, when one truck happened to return with copies.) The Times apparently printed 35% more copies than usual, but there was still a nation-wide shortage. There's an article about the shortage in today's Times.

If you didn't get a copy (or if you live outside of NYC and realize now that you want a copy), the Times online store is offering copies (limited supply!) at an unreasonable mark-up of 1000% (14.95). It does, however, come with a "n a resealable plastic envelope."Go to http://www.nytstore.com.

Have  you voted yet? Well, what are you waiting for?

If you're searching for thematically appropriate music to listen to while you read political blogs all day, you won't do better than WFMU's Electile Dysfunction stream. If you don't know WFMU, it's Jersey City's freeform radio station, now celebrating its 50th year serving the NYC area (and now the globe, thanks to the intertubes). No one does better or more eclectic themed playlists.

At the moment, DJ Hatch -- formerly of WNYU -- is finishing up a set. Click here for the stream; you can also check here for the entire day's schedule, which will be archived and available to listen to whenever you get a hankering to remember this historic freaking day! (Did I already remind you to get out the vote??)

And, as an update to yesterday's post: Hey, Lurkers! That was supposed to be a lurker amnesty post. Thanks to the folks who piped up with suggestions. Keep them coming! We also want to know who else is out there, how you found us (was it the recent feature in the Manhattan User's Guide? one of our classes?), and what we can do to make this a place you want to peek in on more regularly.

So let us know who you are. Yes, you can!

I know you're probably tempted to regard the McCain campaign as comedy, say in it attempts to paint Obama a socialist for supporting a graduated income tax -- the same sort of tax plan McCain himself has defended in the past. And certainly their campaign -- the moose-hunter in particular -- has provided fodder for humorists (including NY's finest -- well, this season at least).

In case you need a little more humor to fill those gaps between refreshing fivethirtyeight.com a dozen times a day, consider this terrific bit about Park Slope parents from my friend A White Bear:

I keep hearing parents around here making a new threat when their kids misbehave, and it's working. They don't threaten not to take them to Balthazar or not to buy them that Eames chair they so wanted. They threaten them with Barack Obama's disappointment in them.

"What would Barack Obama say if he saw you treating your brother that way?"
"If you don't stop hitting me, you won't get to watch the Barack Obama debate tonight."
"Do you think Malia and Sasha act like that? No, they don't."

The rest of the post here (and yes, that's me she references in the first paragraph).

For more Park Slope election oddities, check this out. I'd bet those houses don't get a lot of Halloween action this year: too scary for the kids!

John McCain and Sarah Palin, in the latest installment of their occasionally uncomfortable joint interview with Brian Williams, offer their definitions of "elites":

WILLIAMS: Who is a member of the elite?

PALIN: Oh, I guess just people who think that they're better than anyone else. And-- John McCain and I are so committed to serving every American. Hard-working, middle-class Americans who are so desiring of this economy getting put back on the right track. And winning these wars. And America's starting to reach her potential. And that is opportunity and hope provided everyone equally. So anyone who thinks that they are-- I guess-- better than anyone else, that's-- that's my definition of elitism.

WILLIAMS: So it's not education? It's not income-based? It's--

PALIN: Anyone who thinks that they're better than someone else.

WILLIAMS: --a state of mind? It's not geography?

PALIN: 'Course not.

WILLIAMS: Senator?

MCCAIN: I-- I know where a lot of 'em live. (LAUGH)

WILLIAMS: Where's that?

MCCAIN: Well, in our nation's capital and New York City. I've seen it. I've lived there. I know the town. I know-- I know what a lot of these elitists are. The ones that she never went to a cocktail party with in Georgetown. I'll be very frank with you. Who think that they can dictate what they believe to America rather than let Americans decide for themselves.

I suppose we could have seen that coming. Too bad no one lives in that Pennsylvania cornfield where Flight 93 went down, or they just might be targets too. Oh, wait ...

So I find their answers interesting, in part because I've heard myself saying more than once this season: "What's wrong with arugula anyway?"  But of course that must mean I'm an elitist too. Real, men, apparently, only eat iceburg lettuce purchased at a Super Walmart. Oh, wait ... apparently even Walmart stocks the funny green stuff these days. Elitists!

Sure there are some folks in NYC who take their food snobbery out on the rest of the country. My friend A White Bear has great anecdotes in this vein from her shifts at the Park Slope Food Co-op, involving annoying co-workers who poo-poo middle-Americans for their poor taste in cheese -- as if every rural Kansan has a world-class fromogier within a couple minutes' drive. (The fact that they don't must be what's really the matter with Kansas.) And certainly there are a lot of people who live here who talk loudly, sometimes when tourists are close enough to overhear, that they can't imagine living anywhere else. (By the same token, tourists are often overheard saying loudly that they might be having a good time on their visit, but they can't imagine living here.)

And I'll admit it: I've identified emotionally at times--in spite of the fact that my ability to live in Manhattan has nothing to do with money and everything to do with a million happy accidents I couldn't have coordinated if I'd wanted to--with the old Talking Heads song "The Big Country," from their second album, More Songs about Buildings and Food (1978). The speaker is in a plane, flying over the mid-West (which apparently includes everything west of the Hudson). Looking down at all the ballfields and driveways he launches into the chorus:

I wouldn't live there if you paid me.
I couldn't live like that, no siree!
I couldn't do the things the way those people do.
I couldn't live there if you paid me to.

Guilty as charged? Maybe. But I've had my moments of nostalgia for the sort of Sam Shepard world I grew up in, too. I only wish the bulk of the people there didn't think Obama is literally the anti-Christ, foretold by Scripture to wage war on Israel and usher in a one-world state. Don't they know how to read? To sift information? Can't they ask their fromagier for political advice? Oh, wait ...

All this waffling (Am I an elitist? Am I above that? Does thinking I'm above it make me an elitist anyway?) and referencing old Talking Heads songs is merely a set-up, though, for an excuse to plug David Byrne's recent entries in his online journal. He's on tour at the moment, all across that Big Country, on the ground this time. And, as he's proven many times before, he's an exceptionally gifted blogger. I would pay good money for a "David Byrne's Guide to Weird Americana," and even more to be a stowaway on his buses and planes and other modes of transport. From hot-air ballooning in Albuquerque to visiting Satin Doll's Lounge in Milwaukee, his entries celebrate the joys and idiosyncratic oddities of this great land of ours. It's a nice corrective to the dismissive (if sometimes understandable) chorus of his old song "Big Country," and yet this Byrne persona clearly retains an insidery-outsider's edge. It's not an elitist edge so much as one that brings a more generous kind of moral clarity.



As for McCain and Palin's less generous kind of moral clarity: doesn't that last line smack a little of hypocrisy?

"[Elitists are those] [w]ho think that they can dictate what they believe to America rather than let Americans decide for themselves.

I'd rather not have them legislating morality for my family, thank you. Damn evangelitists.

Byrne tour dates here, though there's no hometown show listed. Photo by Lily Baldwin, snagged from Byrne's journal. Doesn't it look a lot like an Amy Bennett painting?

Today we inaugurate a new feature called . . .

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Every weekday morning I give my younger daughter a ride to school on the back of my bike. She's about the same age her older sister was when she swore off this routine, but for now, the bike ride is still part of what we do.

We ride down the edge of Little Italy, cross Canal, pass Columbus Park (near the infamous "Mulberry Bend" of the nineteenth century) on one side and the Tombs on the other. This is the neighborhood of the old Five Points.

Once we've cut over through Chatham Square, we cut down a short little street called Oliver. Turns out this is the street Al Smith was born on; the housing projects at the end of the block bear his name. (Richard Price named them after Clara Lemlich for his thinly veiled setting in Lush Life.)

The school itself is nestled between the Smith Homes and Knickerbocker Village, a low-rent complex that takes up two city blocks on the north side of Catherine Street. All of this preamble is to get me around to the point of the post: Knickerbocker Village is also the name of a blog run by folks who grew up in KV, which was built using federal funds during the Depression. I like their blog very much; it's a serious New York history blog with a distinct, neighborhoody feel.

Recent scholarship on that part of lower Manhattan has emphasized its long history of interracial relations, even -- dare we say it? -- its cosmopolitanism and comingling of cultures. W. T. Lhamon, one of the most imaginative scholars (and inveterate defenders) of blackface minstrelsy sees the form, which he thinks originated at the end of Catherine Street down by the old Catherine Slip on the river, as inherently subversive, antiauthoritarian, and a product of cultural clashes on the old LES, an outpost of the Black Atlantic. It's part Irish, part African, and completely American.

Which brings us to the title of the post. Knickerbocker Village (the blog) recently featured this little ditty, a tongue-in-cheek tribute to Obama's Irish ancestry. I think it carries a little of the subversive edge of the old LES, home to Al Smith, and before him to TD Rice, Master Juba, and a host of other cosmopolitan entertainers.

There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama
You don't believe me, I hear you say
But Barack's as Irish as our own JFK
His granddaddy's granddaddy came from Moneygall
A village in Offaly, well known to you all.
His mam's daddy's granddaddy was one Falmuth Kearney
He's as Irish as any from the Lakes of Killarney
His mam's from a long line of great Irish Mamma's
There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama

   
Bonus: Barely Political had a fun time a while back with a similar premise.

In 1960, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, candidates for the U.S. presidency, spoke at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner. The foundation -- named for the four-term Governor of New York and candidate for the presidency in 1928, an Irish kid from the Lower East Side -- hosts the white-tie dinner as a fundraiser for Catholic Charities. In election years since 1960, candidates have often, but not always, been invited to speak.

This year, McCain went first. He set the bar high -- in a meta way, even -- but I think he was bested by The One. See what you think:






As a bonus: McCain finally makes it to Letterman's show. Verdict: More cranky than funny, certainly not as good as his performance at the dinner.