March 19- American History Chat

What did Congress do during the 1918 flu pandemic?
  This article draws parallels between the 1918 pandemic and the current COVID19 pandemic.  

Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Implemented by US Cities During the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic
QUOTE: These findings demonstrate a strong association between early, sustained, and layered application of nonpharmaceutical interventions and mitigating the consequences of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in the United States. In planning for future severe influenza pandemics, nonpharmaceutical interventions should be considered for inclusion as companion measures to developing effective vaccines and medications for prophylaxis and treatment. 

Frank Leslie’s Weekly
This is a paid subscription online archive to the newspaper. 

Back in the 1890s, fake news helped start a war
QUOTE: Yellow journalism has been defined as any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical manner. The term was coined in the 1890s to describe the ferocious circulation war between William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal and the New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer. They sought out crime, scandal and salacious detail. Facts that got in the way of a gripping story could be left out. Imaginary details could be added. Any excuse to include an image of a scantily-clad woman was welcome. The goal was to create a sensation that would prompt people to buy copies of the paper. In other words, truth was sacrificed, a victim to profit. 

The New York Times and the slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print."
  QUOTE: In 1897, Adolph S. Ochs, the owner of The New York Times, created the famous slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print," which still appears on the masthead of the newspaper today. He wrote the slogan as a declaration of the newspaper's intention to report the news impartially. 

Fairness Doctrine
  QUOTE: The fairness doctrine took effect shortly after the creation of the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) in 1927 and was continued by its successor, the FCC, until the late 1980s. In its 1929 Great Lakes Broadcasting Co. decision, the FRC asserted that the “public interest requires ample play for the free and fair competition of opposing views, and the Commission believes that the principle applies to all discussions of issues of importance to the public.” 

Fox News Drops ‘Fair and Balanced’ Motto
QUOTE: In the latest sign of change at the cable news network, the “Fair and Balanced” motto that has long been a rallying cry for Fox News fans — and a finger in the eye of critics — is gone. The channel confirmed on Wednesday that slogan and network have parted ways. 

This is Sinclair - The Guardian
QUOTE: Most Americans don’t know it exists. Primetime US news refers to it as an “under-the-radar company”. Unlike Fox News and Rupert Murdoch, virtually no one outside of business circles could name its CEO. And yet, Sinclair Media Group is the owner of the largest number of TV stations in America.  “Sinclair’s probably the most dangerous company most people have never heard of,” said Michael Copps, the George W Bush-appointed former chairman of Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the top US broadcast regulator. 

Fox news agreement (with consumers)
Company furnishes the Company Sites and the Company Services for your personal enjoyment and entertainment. By visiting the Company Sites (whether or not you are a registered member) or using the Company Services, you accept and agree to be bound by this Agreement, including any future modifications ("Agreement"), and to abide by all applicable laws, rules and regulations ("Applicable Law"). 

The 25th Amendment
In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President. 

What the 25th Amendment Is Really For
  QUOTE: President Eisenhower, who suffered multiple health crises, found it intolerable that there might be no one at the helm were a nuclear war to break out. Eisenhower executed an agreement with then-Vice President Richard Nixon to transfer power if Eisenhower became incapacitated. Eisenhower also had his administration propose a more formal and permanent solution. After President Kennedy’s assassination, the issue gained additional urgency. Congress approved the 25th Amendment in 1965, and state ratification was completed in 1967. 

Our dangerous addiction to political hyperbole
QUOTE: They want to move public opinion in their direction, and they seek to get it with a rhetoric of alarmism. Opinion journalists have adopted this approach, in part for the same reason — because they think their best chance at persuasion is to indulge in intentional overstatement — but also because, once again, standing out in the clamorous marketplace, winning an audience and profit-generating online traffic, requires some attention-grabbing gesture. 

The Conservative 1960s
QUOTE: More than three decades [after the 1960’s; this review of Mary Brennan's Turning Right in the Sixties is from the 1990’s] later Americans are still struggling to understand the rise of modern American conservatism. Much of this is the fault of scholars and journalists. Very little has been written about the rise of the right in the 1960s. From today's vantage point, this is arguably the most significant development of that decade, yet scholars and journalists have focused almost exclusively on the new left, civil rights, and the decline of American liberalism. 

The Postwar Liberal Consensus: History and Historiography
QUOTE: Anticommunist foreign policy. The respectable spectrum ran from George Kennan to John Foster Dulles but did not include Henry Wallace or pre-war conservative isolationism.  Anticommunist domestic policy. The respectable spectrum ran from Truman to McCarthy, but their differences were always more about style than substance.  New Deal. Both major political parties agreed that a modest welfare state was necessary, if not good. This aspect of the consensus extended into labor relations, as workers were allowed to collectively bargain for wages but not for control of the workplace. Gender relations. This might have been one of the most powerful forms of consensus, as the traditional nuclear family, and all that it entailed, had about 20 years of unprecedented stability. Race relations. There was only a consensus on race relations insofar as African Americans were not taken into consideration, which they weren’t by the vast majority of white Americans north and south. 

The Origin of FOGHORN LEGHORN
  

The Attack on Yale
QUOTE [from 1951 review]: The recently published book, God and Man at Yale (Regnery, $3.50), written by William F. Buckley, Jr., a 1950 graduate of Yale University, is a savage attack on that institution as a hotbed of "atheism" and "collectivism." As a believer in God, a Republican, and a Yale graduate, I find the book is dishonest in its use of facts, false in its theory, and a discredit to its author and the writer of its introduction. 

  McCarthy And His Friends
QUOTE [from this 1954 review]: The task of evaluating the record of a man like Joe McCarthy is difficult, especially before the dust of quieter years has settled over the controversy. With the conflict between liberal and red-hunter still raging, William Buckley and L. Brent Bozell have undertaken what they would call an impartial and sober survey of the man and his beliefs. But the authors, because of their preconceptions, soon find themselves battling on the side of the Senator and reading into the record of the last four years the best of all possible meanings. 

  CONSERVATIVE COMPLICITY
QUOTE: William F. Buckley Jr., the influential conservative thinker who died in February at the age of 82, opposed every milestone achieve­ment of the civil rights movement. He denounced the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education when it was handed down, opposed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and belittled the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a marginal federal effort to “instruct small merchants in the Deep South on how they may conduct their business.” 

The Contract with America: Implementing New Ideas in the U.S.
QUOTE: Decades from now, historians quite likely will reflect back upon the Contract With America as one of the most significant developments in the political history of the United States. As Newt Gingrich, the first Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives in 40 years, has written: "there is no comparable congressional document in our two-hundred-year history." 

Yes, Polarization Is Asymmetric—and Conservatives Are Worse
QUOTE: As the Pew study makes clear, in the mid- to late-1990s, we did not have anywhere near the level of public polarization or ideological or partisan animosity that we have now. In the public, this phenomenon has been much more recent (and is accelerating). But in the Gingrich era in Congress, starting in 1993, where Republicans united in both houses to oppose major Clinton initiatives and moved vigorously from the start of his presidency to delegitimize him, the era of tribalism started much earlier, while the ante was upped dramatically in the Obama years. The fact is that it was not public divisions on issues that drove elite polarization, but the opposite: Cynical politicians and political consultants in the age of the permanent campaign, bolstered by radio talk-show hosts and cable-news producers and amplified by blogs and social media, did a number on the public. 

The 'feminine' has always had a complex relationship with the mainstream of the Western intellectual tradition, sometimes revered and at other times vilified. Fears of losing some essence of Western Civilization has often animated the alt-right. Yet these views of the West have often romanticized notions of ancient Greece and Rome. Aspects of this have been perverted and weaponized on social media. Online journals and blogs such as Eidolon and Pharos, and other forms of discourse are now starting to address these strange appropriations of the Western classical tradition. What is going on here? In this episode of History Talk, hosts Jessica Viñas-Nelson and Brenna Miller speak with three classicists to try and answer this question: Denise Eileen McCoskey, Donna Zuckerberg, and Curtis Dozier.