The Clean Water Act Turns 40

I highly recommend this Paul Greenberg editorial.

The Clean Water Act Turns 40: Is the Law Still Protecting Our Waters? | | AlterNet

"Mistakes have been made"

President Nixon's Press Secretary, Ron Ziegler, may have been the politician most notable for deploying what has become a clichéd understatement in politics: "mistakes were made." Following the resignations of John Dean, John Ehrlichman, and H.R. Haldeman, Ziegler held a press conference. This conference was remembered in his obituary.

"I would apologize to the Post, and I would apologize to Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein. ... We would all have to say that mistakes were made in terms of comments. I was overenthusiastic in my comments about the Post, particularly if you look at them in the context of developments that have taken place," he said at the time. "When we are wrong, we are wrong, as we were in that case."
"Watergate Press Secretary Dead at 63," CBS News

Later, President Reagan would use the phrase to brush off Iran-Contra misdeeds. President Clinton would do the same in the wake of a Democratic fund raising scandal, and Senator John McCain would describe missteps in the conduct of the Iraq War with the phrase.

The phrase is used as the title of a Broadway satire, a book about self-deception by psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, and a recent novel about the 1990s Seattle Grunge scene: Tyler McMahon, How the Mistakes were Made (2011).

Near the end of eight years in office as President, Ulysses S. Grant used a variation of the phrase in his last State of the Union Address. He admits error, denies intent, and shifts the blame to the advice he received from members of Congress. What else would one want to extract from a non-apologetic apology?

The third paragraph:

Under such circumstances it is but reasonable to suppose that errors of judgment must have occurred. Even had they not, differences of opinion between the Executive, bound by an oath to the strict performance of his duties, and writers and debaters must have arisen. It is not necessarily evidence of blunder on the part of the Executive because there are these differences of views. Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit, but it seems to me oftener in the selections made of the assistants appointed to aid in carrying out the various duties of administering the Government--in nearly every case selected without a personal acquaintance with the appointee, but upon recommendations of the representatives chosen directly by the people. It is impossible, where so many trusts are to be allotted, that the right parties should be chosen in every instance. History shows that no Administration from the time of Washington to the present has been free from these mistakes. But I leave comparisons to history, claiming only that I have acted in every instance from a conscientious desire to do what was right, constitutional, within the law, and for the very best interests of the whole people. Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent. (emphasis added)
Grant, State of the Union Address, 5 December 1876

Every political speech should begin thus. It may be worth suggesting, that the phrase "history shows" always leads to a self-serving fabrication, and one that often defies the evidence. Even so, in this instance, who can argue with Grant that every administration has made errors? But, historians have often suggested that Grant's administration was particularly riddled with corruption. It's not the presence of errors that Grant must defend, but their scale. The same might be said concerning how we entered the Iraq War.

Obama's Socialism Assessed

Richard Eskow offers a sensible assessment of the alleged socialism of President Obama at AlterNet. Eskow's analysis highlights the failure to comprehend history and economic terminology that is on display in popular expressions by those who will say anything to rally those who lament the election of America's first Black President (see "The Joker," for example).

The Republican presidential candidates keep calling Barack Obama a socialist. If they're trying to invoke the Red Menace like Republicans of past campaigns, they're a generation too late. Americans between the ages of 19 and 29 have no memory of the Cold War. Today they have a more positive impression of socialism than they do of capitalism.

The word “socialism” can be applied to a range of economic models, from Cuban collectivism to the Western European social democracies that are the home of some of the world's most successful corporations.

Read the rest at "Why Obama's the Least Socialistic President in Modern History (And That's a Shame)"

One wonders what those who deem President Obama a Socialist, despite the evidence, might have said a century ago after hearing President Roosevelt speak (see "Malefactors of Great Wealth").

Hemingway and the Black Renaissance

Ohio State University Press is bringing out an important new book this spring. From the publisher's website:  

Hemingway and the Black Renaissance, edited by Gary Edward Holcomb and Charles Scruggs, explores a conspicuously overlooked topic: Hemingway’s wide-ranging influence on writers from the Harlem Renaissance to the present day. An observable who’s who of black writers—Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Wallace Thurman, Chester Himes, Alex la Guma, Derek Walcott, Gayl Jones, and more—cite Hemingway as a vital influence. This inspiration extends from style, Hemingway’s minimalist art, to themes of isolation and loneliness, the dilemma of the expatriate, and the terrifying experience of living in a time of war. The relationship, nevertheless, was not unilateral, as in the case of Jean Toomer’s 1923 hybrid, short-story cycle Cane, which influenced Hemingway’s collage-like 1925 In Our Time.

Gary Holcomb told me about this book while we were fly fishing in Idaho. I am excited to see it in press.

Why Vietnam? (1965)

Poking around in a sale bin at my neighborhood grocery store, I found a four DVD set of documentaries: Vietnam: America's Conflict (Mill Creek Entertainment, 2009). I suspect that some or all of these are readily available free elsewhere.

The first in the series is Why Vietnam? (1965) put out by the Department of Defense to highlight aggression by the communists in North Vietnam. The 31 minute film begins with a story of the failure of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to halt Adolf Hitler's aggression. Chamberlain failed to heed the lessons of Benito Mussolini's aggression in Ethiopia, the narrator explains.

The Defense propaganda film--documentary is an inaccurate term--is available at Internet Archive's Movie Archive. There, FedFlix "feature[s] the best movies of the United States Government, from training films to history, from our national parks to the U.S. Fire Academy and the Postal Inspectors, all of these fine flix are available for reuse without any restrictions whatsoever." Using "Vietnam" as a search term produces 170 hits. It seems more than likely that I can find most, if not all, of the fifty films on Vietnam: America's Conflict there.