Monday, July 23, 2007
Roots of Conservative Punditocracy/ Celebrity Endorsements
by Ken Houghton
So it was with some interest that I found (at the NYPL for the Performing Arts in Lincoln Center, before seeing OOP in IMAX/3-D*) a couple of Folkways discs of Presidential Election songs, including this Oscar Brand recording.
Included is a track called "If He's Good Enough for Lindy" (track 209; sample audio available at the link above) from 1928.** "Lindy" is, of course, Charles Lindbergh, best remembered these days (politically speaking, that is) for his isolationism and the America First Committee (b. 1940). In another universe—an ill-conceived one of Philip Roth, for instance—he might have been President.
So it's interesting to find him as the prominent endorser of a candidate in 1928. And what a candidate. And what a use of Celebrity Capital.
*If you can, do it. Well worth the incremental cost.
**It is also on this Brand disc.
There is some justifiable high dudgeon on the Tubes regarding the likes of Michael Gerson and David Broder, who appear to have made careers out of Always Being Wrong.
So it was with some interest that I found (at the NYPL for the Performing Arts in Lincoln Center, before seeing OOP in IMAX/3-D*) a couple of Folkways discs of Presidential Election songs, including this Oscar Brand recording.
Included is a track called "If He's Good Enough for Lindy" (track 209; sample audio available at the link above) from 1928.** "Lindy" is, of course, Charles Lindbergh, best remembered these days (politically speaking, that is) for his isolationism and the America First Committee (b. 1940). In another universe—an ill-conceived one of Philip Roth, for instance—he might have been President.
So it's interesting to find him as the prominent endorser of a candidate in 1928. And what a candidate. And what a use of Celebrity Capital.
*If you can, do it. Well worth the incremental cost.
**It is also on this Brand disc.
Labels: history repeated, Politics, punditry
Comments:
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But until Hoover hit the Depression, there was little reason to think he was other than a highly competent man and excellent presidential candidate. He'd done tremendously admirable work on refugees and helping Europe after WWI, and held multiple Cabinet posts with great success; he's the only famously successful Secretary of Commerce in the nation's history.
I have tremendous grudges against Charles Lindbergh, and thoroughly believe that Hoover was, contrary to some revisionist views of late, a complete failure against the Depression, and I have a large portrait of FDR hanging on my wall, but I wouldn't, in fact, hold any positive views about Herbert Hoover against anyone at all prior to 1930.
Even anti-semitic fascist-leaners like Charles Lindbergh.
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I have tremendous grudges against Charles Lindbergh, and thoroughly believe that Hoover was, contrary to some revisionist views of late, a complete failure against the Depression, and I have a large portrait of FDR hanging on my wall, but I wouldn't, in fact, hold any positive views about Herbert Hoover against anyone at all prior to 1930.
Even anti-semitic fascist-leaners like Charles Lindbergh.
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