A review of PBS’s “Citizen Hearst” (American Experience)

An anecdote about the movie “Citizen Kane” (made by Orson Welles in 1941)

In 1941, Orson Welles released a film called “Citizen Kane,” which has since become a classic. But at the time, William Randolph Hearst tried to suppress the film, by financially threatening those theatres that were showing it. Thus, the film “Citizen Kane” didn’t do that well at the time that it first came out. After watching it, I can see why William Randolph Hearst didn’t like the film. It gave a thinly-disguised (but nonetheless detectable) portrayal of a character loosely based on Hearst himself – a portrayal which was somewhat unflattering. There are significant differences between the movie life of Charles Foster Kane, and the real life of Hearst himself. Other parts of the movie are eerily similar to the real thing. But to go into either the similarities or the differences between the two (let alone both of these things) would be beyond the scope of this blog post. Here, I will instead review PBS’s four-hour biography of the real William Randolph Hearst. It is simply entitled “Citizen Hearst,” an obvious reference to the famous Orson Welles film.

A review of Michael Wood’s “In Search of Shakespeare”

He had more influence upon the English language than any other individual – perhaps even more than the Biblical translator William Tyndale. Shakespeare’s plays are still read and performed today, more than three centuries after their author’s death. Even literary ignoramuses like me can recognize lines like “Brevity is the soul of wit,” or “To be or not to be” – an oft-parodied line, even in comic strips like “Calvin and Hobbes.” Relatively few of us have ever bothered to read a Shakespeare play when it’s not assigned, partly because the original language can seem rather inaccessible to us today. Yet he left an influence upon the way that we speak, which is still felt right down to the present day.

William Shakespeare

The best way to learn about Shakespeare is probably to read his sonnets and plays, or watch some of his plays performed on stage – or in certain good film adaptations. But this documentary approach will still tell you much about his life. It is a biography of the man – a man whose life has long been shrouded in mystery. In the documentary world, this may be the most in-depth biography of Shakespeare that you’re likely to find. To find something more in-depth, you’d probably have to turn to the world of books. I freely admit that I’m no expert on Shakespeare, since I never even bothered to read one of his plays in the original. The closest that I came was to watch the 1953 film adaptation of his play “Julius Caesar,” starring James Mason as Brutus. This, at least, is closer to him than watching “West Side Story” in my youth – an adaptation of his famous play “Romeo and Juliet.” Incidentally, I turned on the Spanish subtitles for that DVD of Julius Caesar. I had an easier time understanding the Spanish than the Shakespearean English, and I’m a native speaker of English (but not of Spanish).

Garlanded statue of William Shakespeare in Lincoln Park, Chicago

What fascism is (and why it stinks)

Warning: This blog post contains a disturbing picture, related to the Holocaust.

It seems that people in most political movements will eventually denounce their political opponents as “Fascists” or “Nazis” (as I will describe later on in this post). At the very least, they sometimes compare their opponents to Nazis – sometimes accurately, sometimes inaccurately. Either way, though, they are right to denounce the Fascists and the Nazis, even if they do not always correctly identify who they are. (More on that later on.)

Hitler addressing the Reichstag, 1933

But what is fascism, and why exactly does it stink (and it definitely does)? What are the biggest problems with this system of government, and why should it be left on the “ash-heap of history” (to paraphrase a characterization of communism by someone else)?. That is what I will be discussing in this particular post. I will here give a brief overview of both the history and philosophy of fascism. In so doing, I will show why it cannot possibly bear the honest scrutiny of history. This will only be an introduction to this complex topic, which will touch on some of its major themes. Indeed, I have covered other aspects of this topic in some other blog posts (which I link to here). But I may nonetheless succeed in showing why fascism is an utter travesty, and why it should be discarded. I will also give my own take on it, with my own unique perspective.

Nazi book-burning in Berlin, May 1933 (which included some Jewish authors)

A review of PBS’s “The Great San Francisco Earthquake”

The worst natural disaster suffered by a North American city in the twentieth century …

In 1906, San Francisco was hit by one of the worst natural disasters in American history. It was the Great San Francisco Earthquake. It was the largest natural disaster to be suffered by a North American city in the twentieth century. Specifically, at 5:12 a.m. on April 18th (as the PBS webpage puts it), “San Francisco residents were awakened by a 40-second tremor that moved furniture, shattered glass, and toppled chimneys. After a 10-second interval, an even stronger tremor struck, lasting 25 seconds.” (Source: PBS’s webpage on this program) As PBS also notes, “Movement along the San Andreas Fault was to blame. The North American and Pacific tectonic plates had moved past each other by more than 15 feet — compared to an annual average of two inches. The earthquake is estimated to have measured 8.3 on the Richter scale, which had not yet been invented. Survivors saw the ground move in waves as high as three feet. The earthquake ripped open streets, twisted streetcar rails, and split sidewalks.” (Source: Same as above)

A review of PBS’s “Breaking the Maya Code”

Deciphering the Maya glyphs opened up an entire world to historians …

Deciphering the Maya glyphs opened up an entire world to historians. People had long known about Ancient Maya civilization, and it was famous for the monuments that it had left behind. But until recent times, the inscriptions on these monuments had long proved impossible for linguists to decipher. The breaking of the Maya code was one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of linguistics, and allowed scholars to learn much about the early history of the Americas. It opened up a world for future study, and allowed the modern Maya people to have a greater connection with their ancestors and their heritage. Europeans are known for their colonial empires, which did not always treat the native peoples kindly (to put it mildly). Indeed, the Spanish Conquistadors had done their best to destroy many of the written Maya records that were available in their own time. But the European and North American scholars who deciphered Ancient Maya are a prominent exception to this. They did the surviving Maya an invaluable favor, by helping to undo some of the cultural damage caused by the Conquistadors.

A review of PBS’s “Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People”

The “Pulitzer Prize” was named after the great newspaper editor Joseph Pulitzer …

In 1917, six years after the death of Joseph Pulitzer, the “Pulitzer Prize” was established. It came from provisions in his will, as the result of his prior endowments to Columbia University. Many have heard of the “Pulitzer Prize,” but few have heard of Pulitzer himself. Yet he helped to make our world into a media-saturated and media-obsessed place, and the world isn’t necessarily the worse for this overabundance of information.

A review of Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan” (audiobook)

In the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes gave the most powerful argument ever written for the necessity of some form of government. His opposition to anarchy is what motivated all of his political works, including “Leviathan.” People associate Hobbes with a very dark view of human nature, and it is small wonder that his worldview is unpopular with more starry-eyed romantics. But it is hard to escape the logical force of his anti-anarchical arguments. He believed that life without government is “a time of War, where every man is Enemy to every man.” And without this government, he believed the life of man to be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”