Tag: Vietnam War

Don’t Know Much About History.

Sorry about the lack of updates since Sunday….As it happens, encroaching November has frightened me into working harder on my US history orals site. My note-taking is still two months or so behind my reading, but – in case you’re interested – I’ve recently put up notes and reviews on the following books:

John Morton Blum, Years of Discord: American Politics and Society, 1961-1974.
William Leach, Land of Desire, Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture.
Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right.
Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus.
Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America.
Robert Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975.
Robert Weisbrot, Freedom Bound: A History of America’s Civil Rights Movement.

Gary Wills, Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home.

Updates to the orals site should come relatively frequently for the next few months, so expect more to come.

The Value of Service.

While General Clark comes out for national service, fellow candidates Dean and Kerry bicker over Vietnam. Hmm…while I’m very sympathetic to the idea that a war record should not be a prerequisite for political office, Kerry’s military service is obviously one of his main selling points, particularly when placed in contrast to Dubya’s AWOL year. So I’d say it’s a dumb call for Dean to begrudge Kerry’s mentioning of Vietnam, and especially given Dean’s own tour in Aspen during that time. For the Deanies, I’d think the less said about ‘Nam, the better.

It’s Oh So Quiet.

Still catching up with my Oscar slate, and last night’s foray was Phillip Noyce’s remake of The Quiet American. All in all, very well done, and a battered, despairing Michael Caine deserves an Oscar for this much more than he ever did for his turn in the schlocky Cider House Rules. (As I said last week, though, the Best Actor field this year is very, very strong, and I still think Day-Lewis has the edge – having not yet seen any of the movies featuring Best Actress nominees, I can’t really comment on the women.) Brendan Fraser is also quite good, and the political dimension of the story (i.e. America’s involvement in sponsoring Vietnamese terrorism) is very well-integrated with the dramatic tale being told. If anything, the film slipped in the ratings to the right only because (a) The Pianist was better, or at least more powerful, (b) I found this film a bit slow in the first hour, partly because the tale begins at the end with the death of the “quiet” American (not much of a spoiler – it’s almost the first shot in the film), and thus much of the dramatic tension in the story has already been siphoned off, and (c) the “Vietnam is a woman” allegory is a bit heavy-handed – the audience can pick up on what’s going on without it being stated over and over again. But it’s worth seeing, and Michael Caine is magnificent.

Bugs not Bombs.

Ethel the Blog recently posted this old article reaffirming the fact that GOP House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is a freak show. Worth perusing on the eve of an Iraq war, as DeLay calls Dems the “appeasement party”, is this choice nugget – DeLay on Vietnam: “He and Quayle, DeLay explained to the assembled media in New Orleans, were victims of an unusual phenomenon back in the days of the undeclared Southeast Asian war. So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself.“