Last night I received the following email from Historic Tacoma.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation in partnership with American Express has chosen 25 historic properties in the Seattle-Puget Sound area to compete for  $1 million in preservation grants. Of those 25 properties, two are located in Tacoma, the Spanish Steps and westside’s Titlow Park Lodge.  Sites in Pierce County include the Anderson Island Historical Society’s Johnson Farm; the Orting Soldiers Home, Garfield Hall; and Skansie Brothers Net Shed in Gig Harbor.  How can you help assure that these funds come to Tacoma and Pierce County?  You can VOTE!  Just go to www.partnersinpreservation.org where you can vote for one project each day from April 15th through May 12.  Not only can you vote, you can forward this information to friends, family and co-workers or post it on your Facebook page and encourage them to vote.  Not only will your vote inform the overall grant making process, but the top vote recipient is guaranteed to have their project funded; a number of the other 25 properties will receive some level of funding.  You can learn more about the process on the Partners in Preservation Website….Historic Tacoma encourages you to VOTE for funding for these Pierce County projects and to help spread the word by encouraging others to vote too.

The criteria that determined how these historical sites were selected for this process is explained here.

Several hours after casting my first vote and I still find myself stuggling with the concept of assigning significance to a historic place based upon the contemporary sentiments of the modern majority.  Granted, that’s not what Partners In Preservation is advocating – all of these sites are already winners for having made it onto the ballot and this election will not, in itself, determine anything beyond a “grant” to the most popular place.  Nevertheless, it would certainly seem absurd if the National Parks Department, in the face of declining revenue, were to hold an online election asking citizens to vote for their favorite national treasure to ensure funding.

Imagine being asked to dissect and then appraise the historical significance of Pearl Harbor relative to Gettysburg. Then again, by offering this very analogy I betray my own message and reveal that in fact I have already placed greater value in Pearl Harbor and Gettysburg as historical landmarks than Tacoma’s Spanish Steps or the 5th Avenue Theatre.  In the end, perhaps I’m really just full of myself, and this whole article is just about me trying to fill space on The Melon.

Still, the fact that after two days of voting only one Pierce County historical site - the Skansie Brothers Net Shed – has climbed its way into a top-ten ranking suggest to me that something about this process is sacrilegious.

In a park in Ankara, brides pose as wedding pictures are taken. I am struck not by how different a scene this appears, but how normal it appears. During my quick stroll through the park I saw three different brides having pictures taken, all in flowing white dresses, some sleeveless, and often with low backs. They were all beautiful dresses that would look entirely natural in an American wedding environment. Turkey is officially 98% Muslim, obviously, the actual level of practicing Muslims is likely much lower, but could it be that despite a host of rather radical religious, cultural, and historical differences that when a young Turkish woman imagines her ideal wedding she imagines something quite similar to that of a young American woman?

Western brands are very popular in Ankara, and a trip to the city center can yield a variety of fake La Coste, Nike, Adidas, and other apparel. I was approached at my language institute by a young Kazakhistani woman inquiring about whether I had any American music on my cell phone to give to her, and had a Jordanian teenager ask my advice regarding who the best rap artists are in the States. As an American, I know what’s cool… I guess… Clearly faulty logic somewhere in there… Regardless, the commonalities that globalization creates are incredible.

Globalization, the growing interconnectedness of individuals across the globe, has long been simultaneously praised and condemned. Praised for decreasing conflict, increasing international trade, and creating personal connections between those in the developed world and developing world possible: see kiva.org. Condemned for destroying local culture, creating a new wave of capitalist imperialism, and placing otherwise content locals into sweatshops for long hours and little pay. Many believe the story of globalization is one of opportunity, and many others the story of exploitation.

A classic political science argument on globalization is that no two countries both with McDonalds will ever go to war. While this particular example has been proven wrong, and was subsequently adapted to be more specific, the McDonalds are of course merely a symbol for globalization, and the actual argument is that no two countries that are fully integrated into the global economy would ever go to war because the economic repercussions would simply be too great. Of course, economics does not tell the entire story of globalization, if only there was a symbol of globalization that was not economic but rather a social symbol… but what?

I present to you, the Holderith Theory of Conflict and Globalization. No two states in which at least 20% of the population is married in strapless dresses will ever go to war.

A seemingly bold theory, but really not… To begin my theory is safe from the past due to the relatively recent emergence of strapless dresses, and I have already accounted for the future because none of the countries on the West’s To Do list have a significant quantity of marriages involving strapless dresses (sources pending). That’s right go ahead, attack Iran… Before NATO/UN/Coalition/Israeli/US forces even reach Tehran I will have begun my first lecture tour.

I jest, with this example. However, consider the realities of globalization, the reasons why globalization destroys local cultures is the same reason why globalization prevents war. Because women in Ankara want a wedding that would be immediately recognizable across the West is undoubtedly linked to the reason why Turkey’s integration into the European Union is possible. Turkey is poised to play a greater role in world politics then ever before and maybe, just maybe, it is because women in Turkey, Western Europe, the United States, close their eyes and picture one of the most important days of their lives with striking similarities…

Today I came across this article by Malcolm Gladwell on Atticus Finch: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/10/090810fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all. In the following paragraphs, I’ll explain why I disagree with Gladwell’s analysis of Atticus and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Let me qualify my statements by saying I’m working in rural Maine right now, and I have no access to a To Kill a Mockingbird book. I did teach the novel a year-and-a-half ago to ninth graders, however, so I do remember the passages I’ll reference here.

Gladwell spends the first third of his article describing Jim Folsom, an Alabaman governor of the 1950’s–who had a “gradual and paternalistic” view toward bringing about racial justice, “a prodigious drinker, and a brilliant campaigner,” and a man who said “All men are just alike.” And then Gladwell claims that Harper Lee based Atticus Finch’s character off Jim Folsom, that Atticus was an “Old-style Southern liberalist” instead of a Civil Right’s activist, and that, therefore, Atticus shouldn’t be toted as a such a hero, since he wasn’t radical enough.

Although Atticus wasn’t a large scale Civil Right’s activist, he also was not the passive, stuck-in-social-mores “Old-style Southern liberalist” that Malcolm Gladwell claims. I’ll take a closer look at the To Kill a Mockingbird passages Gladwell cites in order to debunk Gladwell’s claims.

Gladwell says the scene in which Atticus quietly leaves court after the jury pronounces Tom Robinson guilty shows Atticus couldn’t be a Civil Right’s hero. “If Finch were a civil-rights hero, he would be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict. But he isn’t. He’s not Thurgood Marshall looking for racial salvation through the law. He’s Jim Folsom, looking for racial salvation through hearts and minds.”

Why must Gladwell write in dichotomies? To him, if Atticus isn’t Thurgood Marshall then he must be Jim Folsom. But does Gladwell forget that Atticus doesn’t bow under the jury’s verdict? As Atticus says, he knew the jury would convict Tom Robinson; only Jem, Atticus’s son, in his naivete and youthful inexperience with racism, thinks Atticus stood a chance. Even before he lost, Atticus planned to take the case to a higher court, and he has hope to win in that court. But then Tom Robinson escapes, and is shot and killed, and Atticus’s work abruptly ends. He would have taken his case further if he had the chance; he doesn’t have the chance, so he continues his work as a small-town lawyer. Lee didn’t portray a governor like Folson or a big-time Civil Rights activist; she portrayed a small-town lawyer who did his best against racial prejudices.

At the end of this same section Gladwell writes that, “All men [Atticus] believes, are just alike.” Atticus never says or implies he believes all men are alike; his closing speech in court suggests this simple statement is ludicrous. All people are not or never will be equal in ability, he says, but everyone should be equal before the law. I wish I had before me this excellent speech–to which Gladwell never even mentions. Here, Atticus appeals to Tom Robinson’s innocence before the law, not just the “hearts-and-minds” approach for which Gladwell derides Atticus. Atticus doesn’t tell the jury to let Robinson off because they’re good people, Atticus tells the jury to let Tom Robinson off because he has proved Tom innocent, so it’s their duty before the law.

Gladwell, amazingly, admits that Atticus stands up to racism. Yet he qualifies this praise by citing instances where Atticus admits that some men who are racists also have good traits. Gladwell also qualifies this praise by saying “What [Atticus] will not do is look at the problem of racism outside the immediate context of Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Levy, and the island community of Maycomb, Alabama. Folsom was the same way.”

To Kill a Mockingbird is a good novel, and a good novel has complex characters. Thus, Atticus can applaud how Walter Cunningham lives independently of WPA handouts and rebuke him for leading a potential lynch mob. Atticus’ attitude doesn’t mean he applauds Cunningham’s racism; it just shows how any human being, with some admirable qualities, can also be racist. Gladwell ignores one of the excellent messages in Lee’s novel–that a racist can lurk within even the best of us–and complains that Lee didn’t go far enough in her condemnation.

Folsom was a governor; if he only looked at one town he wouldn’t have been doing his duty. But Atticus was a lawyer in one town whose first priority was that town. Plus, he would have looked beyond that town if he’d had a chance to take his case higher. Gladwell argues that Folsom (and by a weak extension, Atticus) couldn’t see that “racism had a structural dimension,” that it must be changed at a political, not just personal level. Atticus started with the personal level, but he also worked in the political realm. He worked for justice among his neighbors and then in the courts, leading to the larger world.

Next, Gladwell argues that Atticus wants the jurors to “swap one of their prejudices for another,” i.e. Atticus wants the jurors to be prejudiced against the white trash Ewells whereas they would usually be prejudiced against a black man. Yes, the Ewells are white trash, but in the courtroom Atticus never once refers to, let alone derides, the Ewell’s social class. He sticks strictly to facts of the case, and he gains no pleasure–personally or in the context of his case–in humiliating the girl Mayella, who says Robinson raped her but was in actuality raped or beaten by her father. Galdwell cites other cases of the time period that use class as a way to argue for guilt or innocence, but he uses no evidence of Atticus doing so in To Kill A Mockingbird’s court case.

And lastly, when I was sick of Gladwell picking apart the novel for his own argument, he completely misconstrues the book’s ending. A kind, eccentric neighborhood recluse, Boo Radley, kills Bob Ewell when Ewell is trying to hurt, or even kill, Scout and Jem, Atticus’ kids. The Sheriff and Atticus decide not to bring the events to the limelight. Gladwell claims that this final event means, “Maycomb would go back to the way it had always been,” that the Sheriff and Atticus have “cut their little side deal” and “decided to obstruct justice in the name of saving their beloved neighbor (ie. Boo Radley) the burden of angel-food cake.” This conclusion may be cute word choice yet it’s untrue to the novel and the characters’ motivations.

If they took Boo to court, he’d get off in self-defense, but they decide he should be left alone. Boo Radley’s character is a parallel to Tom Robinson’s character. Both men have quietly done good to others and deserve to be left alone. Robinson is brought to the spotlight and convicted of a crime he didn’t commit; Boo would be brought to the spotlight and acquitted of an act of self-defense. The Sheriff and Atticus want to spare him of this exposure to which they couldn’t spare Tom Robinson. Furthermore, Maycomb can’t revert to the way it has been, because it never changed in the first place. It still doesn’t understand the best citizens among it, and it still needs people like Atticus and the Sheriff (who asked Atticus to take Tom Robinson’s case) to defend its  falsely accused and misunderstood people.

Gladwell’s last two sentences say that Atticus adopts “one set of standards for respectable whites like Boo Radley and another for white trash like Bob Ewell. A book that we thought instructed us about the world tells us, instead, about the limitations of Jim Crow liberalism in Maycomb, Alabama.” I’ll discuss each sentence separately.

Let me reiterate that Atticus never acts on social conventions; he looks at peoples’ actions and characters. Ewell both raped or beat his own daughter as well as tried to killed Atticus’ children. Boo Radley saved Atticus’ children’s life. Their social class was completely incidental to his views of the people. And who thought Boo Radley was a respectable white anyway? The whole town except Atticus wanted Boo thrown in an asylum and said that he sliced his own father’s leg open with scissors. Boo Radley is only deemed “respectable” in order to fit Gladwell’s argument.

And that last sentence–meant to be revelatory and stunning–doesn’t make sense. The first and the second potential functions of the book aren’t mutually exclusive. Even if the book did only tell us about the limitations of Jim Crow liberalism, wouldn’t that be a way of “instructing us about the world?” (A very vague phrase, by the way.) The world of Alabama, in the fifties, placed limits on Jim Crow liberalism, and To Kill a Mockingbird, through specific characters and situations, could show these limits so that political reformers and others could make things how they should be. Although, as I’ve proved, Atticus wasn’t the passive man, ignorant of the outside world, that Gladwell thinks.

So, why was Atticus a hero? It would take someone more learned than I to scratch the surface of that complex character. But, as a teacher, I taught him as an admirable character because he treats people the same despite their race, social class, or differing viewpoints. Atticus has progressive views and hidden talents and yet, unlike Gladwell’s description of Folsom, Atticus uses these views and talents only when occasion arises, not vainly, nor superfluously. He is a man who works for family justice all the time and neighborhood and community justice and national justice when occasion arises. I could give multiple examples which prove these traits, but I’ll spare you here. Other real Civil Right’s heroes could have had different, maybe better, qualities, but these are Atticus’ fictional ones.

This complex, classic novel and novel’s hero deserves a more nuanced perspective than this article gives it and him.

I recently finished this tour-de-force of a book that relates the life of Alexander Hamilton starting with his obscure birth in the Caribbean to his death at the hand of the rogue Aaron Burr. This book is a fantastic read, beautifully written. Chernow takes pains to make arguments against many of Hamilton’s detractors throughout history, and he often succeeds in defending Hamilton and in bringing his brilliance into today’s world.

Alexander Hamilton
Ron Chernow

Penguin Press: 2004

Most of Chernow’s previous writing consists of biographies or histories of financial greats such as J.P. Morgan and John D Rockefeller Jr. In this tome (and it is a tome at 852 pages long and even more notes), he turns his face to the first great financial wizard of America, Alexander Hamilton. Throughout the book, Chernow’s writing is clear, excessively coherent, and at times very fun to read.

Before reading the biography, I knew almost nothing of Hamilton– save the fact that his death resulted from a duel, at the hand of the vice president no less! This biography alerted me to the brilliance, the sheer talent and drive that possessed Hamilton throughout his life. But also Hamilton’s amazing ability to infuriate and turn people into enemies. That attribute eventually caused his downfall.

Hamilton was born on a Caribbean Island and later immigrated to New York at the age of 17. After failing to get into Princeton, he attended Kings College (later Columbia University) and was an early adopter of the Revolution Spirit, giving speeches on the college lawn. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, he became an Artillery Commander which eventually led him to meeting General George Washington. Washington soon took Hamilton as an aide-de-camp and, eventually, Hamilton acted as Washington’s chief of staff, writing numerous correspondence for the General and in some ways, acting like the son Washington never would have.

After the war, Hamilton was a key figure from New York at the Constitutional Convention and eventually wrote The Federalist Papers with John Jay and James Madison. Though at the time it was known those three wrote them, it has only become apparent that Hamilton wrote the majority of them years later. After the adoption of the Constitution and the election of Washington as President, Hamilton followed his long patron into the Treasury Department and began to make enemies as fast as possible. Hamilton saw America as a united republic, a great power waiting to be born. He believed in the industrialization and powerful merchants as the leaders of America. This brought him into powerful conflict with history’s most notorious idealist, Thomas Jefferson, and his disciples James Madison and James Monroe.

Jefferson saw America’s path as a small agrarian society. Sadly, Jefferson’s idea of America only worked with legalized slavery, an institution he claimed he detested and yet kept slaves throughout his life. During Washington’s presidency, two political groupings started to develop: the Federalists led by Hamilton, and the Republicans (Democrat-Republicans who would later become today’s Democratic Party) led by Jefferson. Both groups saw their viewpoint (a strong union backed by a powerful national government with a very strong executive branch for Hamilton, an intensely weak federal government with unbelievably powerful states rights and most power gifted to the House of Representatives for Jefferson) at what the revolution truly meant. They were unable to understand the other side’s viewpoint, and too often, they sought to distort their enemies’ arguments in atrocious ways.

Hamilton succeeded in convincing Washington (who usually did his best to stay above politics and simply choose better policies) that a strong Treasury, with the ability to tax at the federal level and restricted from the states was the best way to grow the nation. Hamilton served five years at the Treasury and quickly built its size in terms of manpower to be larger than the rest of the executive branch combined. When he left, he returned to his law office and often tried cases before the Supreme Court. He was also still very active in politics. In 1800, he worked too diligently to have his party member, John Adams voted out of the presidency and was soon persona non grata with much of the political establishment. The ascension of his arch-rival of Jefferson to the presidency and Madison (who since he had written the Federalist Papers with Hamilton had moved to oppose most of Hamilton’s positions) to Secretary of State, left Hamilton out in the cold.

Just four short years later, Hamilton would be engaged in a duel after Aaron Burr accused Hamilton of slandering him in private conversation. Hamilton, Chernow argues, threw away his first shot and Burr shot Hamilton. Hamilton died the following day, ending the life of one of America’s most interesting and complex characters. Hamilton has left us millions of words on his political thinkings, and much of it is still very important today. We still use the Federalist Papers in cases before the Supreme Court and we still use his reports on manufacturers to understand the progression of the American economy.

Throughout his life, Hamilton was often demonized by the Jefferson faction as an aspiring monarchist with connections to Great Britain with hopes of bringing back the King. Throughout his life, Hamilton was notoriously thin-skinned and took these assertions personally, which often led him to act completely irrationally in his attempts to put them to bed. There is no evidence for this, however. In fact, there is a complete lack of evidence that Hamilton was anything other than a brilliant financier and writer who was one of our greatest patriots. Because he fought poorly against Jefferson, he came down on the wrong side of history when Jefferson led his Revolution in 1800 and he tried to push America away from the Hamilton Empire and back towards an agrarian backward, nonfunctional society.

Chernow’s book does a great service to rehabilitate Hamilton and, more importantly, to portray this multi-sided character very well.

Five out of five Melons!

Ever since Woodrow Wilson articulated it in his Fourteen Points, the concept of self-determination has been at the forefront of various movements pursuing the goal of independence. In a nutshell, self-determination is the freedom to decide actions without the imposition of will by others. For nationalist groups, this means the right to govern themselves without the compulsion of another state, and it generally involves some sort of uprising or conflict against such external party or parties.

Cast in the light of the nationalist wave that swept the world in the 20^th century, self-determination is now conceptualized as a right that different peoples are entitled to. It is now commonplace to speak of how the Palestinians deserve their own state or the right of the Tibetans to their own country. But acknowledging a right to something is not the same as saying that something should be given. That a group deserves independence does not necessarily mean they should get it.

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European Director Bruno Giussani speaks at TED 2009

Since 1984, the TED Conference has been providing an outlet for speakers from around the world to present “ideas worth spreading” to members and more recently at TED.com to the general internet public. TED has brought in hundred of speakers like Al Gore, Malcom Gladwell and Jane Goodall.

In the interest of finding out more about such an exciting resource, The Melon sent some questions out to TED’s European Director Bruno Giussani. The following is our Q&A discussion:

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Last summer I visited Holocaust/WWII memorials in four European countries and compared them in a six-part series here at The Melon. The fundamental question I asked (and could not answer to my satisfaction) was “What is the value of remembering, particularly collectively remembering, this crime against humanity?” Recently, during my studies in Viet Nam, I decided to tackle the question again when I visited the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. Its concern is to remember and represent the crimes and everyday occurrences of the American War.

Opening on September 4, 1975, the museum now has eight permanent exhibits and is in the process of being renovated. When it opened the museum was originally called the (American) War Crimes Museum, but the name was changed after relations were normalized in order to prevent U.S. visitors from feeling uncomfortable. The captions and descriptions were in Vietnamese and English, with a few in French, Chinese, or Japanese. Additionally I observed several tours of the museum for French speakers.

The first stop on the tour, “Historical Truths,” is a room filled with pictures, quotes, and graphs, presenting so called “objective” information. Indeed, the facts contained were about as objective as you can be – tonnage of bombs dropped per year, U.S. budget allocations, locations of important military units, etc. The quotes were mostly from U.S. officials highlighting their attitudes toward Viet Nam, the people here, war in general, and to a lesser extent communism. The presentation of the factual information was where the bias came in, but there was nothing particularly interesting in that. In fact, visiting certain parts of this museum was the most stereotypically “insert state ideology here” experience I’ve had in this country. Exception: a brochure of the Reunification Palace that badly photoshopped the top of it to emphasize the Vietnamese flag. That, however, is just funny.

The second room I liked the best. Titled “Requiem,” was a collection of the photos of 134 war journalists from 11 countries killed in action. Most of the photos were in black and white, with short descriptions of the photographers and/or the circumstance described in the photo. The photo I remember the most was one of the first I saw: a field of rice or grass with U.S. troops a few yards from the camera, moving through it. It was probably the last shot on the last roll of film that particular photographer took before he was killed that day.

Unfortunately, the exhibit was small. It could have been a museum unto itself. Several iconic images of the war, such as a mother and her children swimming across a river, were featured. The captions were minimally political, probably because this was one of the more updated parts of the museum and because funding for it was provided by a French agency. As far as I could tell there did not seem to be censorship or overt bias affecting the display of the photos. By examining the contemporary work of people who were documenting the war at all stages and from all perspectives, remembering took on a new twist. It was fundamentally different from the primary sources displayed in the Holocaust memorials, which were mostly written sources or photographs of victims taken before the war or without their consent. Covering the war was work for the photographers who died, and it was done voluntarily. Their own personal experiences were not the purpose of what they did and how they represented with their cameras.

“Joe the Plumber is a war correspondent for Pajamas Media? Is this a news story or a mad-lib?” – Jon Stewart

Now I thought that I had properly dismissed Sam the Bullshit Artist (aka Joe the Plumber) in my first article where I pointed out he can’t think, drive, vote, or plumb. Apparently I forgot to let him know that he can’t correspond very well either. For those of you who don’t actively research this issue, I’m going to go off on a bit of a tangent and provide a really quick history lesson.

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Readers will remember that I concluded The Furtherance of Peace: Part 1 by saying that, while it is impossible to know for certain why the bulk of the Northern populous and its leaders ultimately responded to the assassination of President Lincoln with obliviousness toward the South, it is nonetheless certain that in April of 1865 there were many reasons why following the Confederate conspiracy theory to its logical conclusion would have been disadvantageous to the greater cause of the Union.

TRAPPED BY JUSTICE

From a strictly legal standpoint, because hostilities had by no means ceased in the immediate aftermath of General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox – as evident by the fact that both the Confederate government and the bulk of its national army remained in the field at the time of Lincoln’s assassination – any supposed Confederate assault on the president, his cabinet, etc., could, if true, easily have been justified as an act of war. While addressing a euphoric crowd from a White House window, just three days prior to his assassination, Lincoln himself soberly acknowledged, “No man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man” thereby nullifying any notion that Lee’s surrender marked any immediate end to the Civil War. These facts would have complicated the trial of Booth’s captured conspirators who, with the notable exception of Mrs. Surratt, most of the people in the North eagerly wanted to see hanged for treason and murder. Since a speedy and decisive trial was so necessary to satisfy the inflamed passions of the North and to stabilize what was a visibly shaken cabinet – now headed up by a Southern Democrat president whose assent to the White House lacked critical legitimacy – Union leaders may have been willing to take an imperfect stab at justice. According to several historians, including Otto Eisenschiml, author of In The Shadow of Lincoln’s Death, that is precisely what the 1865 conspiracy trial ultimately was.

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