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Saturday Q&A

It's been a while since we had a 100% normal weekend. That will happen during "end of the school year" season. Anyhow, it is non-politics questions day (though we do allow historical questions about politics; just not modern stuff).

If you are still working on the headline theme—which was apparently a little tougher than we thought, but still way more doable than the previous one—we'll tell you that the band that recorded "New Orleans Is Sinking" and "Wheat Kings" would likely have an advantage.

Non-Politics Questions

M.P. in Austin, TX, asks: Given our current leader's desire to build memorials (and the many Internet comments making clear what terrible things will happen to them over time), I did a quick search to see if there were previous memorials or structures built by presidents that quickly fell into disrepair due to their unpopularity. Most of the results discuss gravesites, which is not quite what I was looking for. Any good examples from past days?

(Z) answers: Not so much. First, because the era of monument building is largely limited to the last 150 years. Second, because presidents don't typically concern themselves with monument-building, as it's so obviously tacky for them to do so.

If you want "examples," you have to bend the parameters of the question quite a bit. There are, for example, presidential monuments that have fallen into disrepair, but they weren't the work of presidents, they were the work of private citizens. Presidents Park, which is not far from Colonial Williamsburg, is probably the most famous one of these.

The closest thing we can think of, within the parameters of the question, are efforts to rename things in honor of deceased presidents. Lyndon B. Johnson, for example, exerted some muscle to get Cape Canaveral renamed as Cape Kennedy. That lasted only a few years, and then it was back to Cape Canaveral. Similarly, Mt. McKinley was not initially renamed by a president, but it WAS re-renamed by a president, namely Donald Trump. Most folks in Alaska, and around the world, are still using Denali. And once a Democrat takes over the White House, the federal government will resume using Denali, as well.

M.W. in Ottawa, ON, Canada, asks: Since Donald Trump recently relaunched the Presidential Fitness Test, I'm curious how you'd rank the presidents by physical fitness. Perhaps just the top and bottom five. Let's say on their (first) inauguration day (to be fair to those who suffered an incapacitation while in office).

(Z) answers: The five fittest presidents, with most fit at #1:

Abraham Lincoln: He was a gifted athlete in his youth, and as president impressed men 30 years younger with feats of strength. The doctor who treated Lincoln on his deathbed marveled at what a physical specimen he was.

Theodore Roosevelt: He was picked on as a four-eyed nerd as a kid, and through sheer force of will, made himself into something of an Adonis. A short Adonis, but an Adonis nontheless.

Gerald Ford: He was offered an NFL contract, and remained a talented athlete into his senior years, exercising and playing golf regularly.

George W. Bush: A fitness fanatic with excellent genes.

John Quincy Adams: He kept himself in great shape—famously, through nude swims in the Potomac early in the morning.

The five least-fit presidents, with most unfit at #1:

John F. Kennedy: Despite his youthful, healthy image, he suffered from several serious chronic conditions, including back problems and Addison's Disease. He took a vast cocktail of drugs, and was often drugged enough to not be of sound mind. He was in pain all the time, and wore a stiff corset under his suit, much of the time, to try to cope. Even if he'd served two full terms, he is not likely to have lived long beyond his presidency.

Franklin Pierce: He was a severe alcoholic, and he suffered through his entire term with what we now know as clinical depression. Mental health is health, too.

Donald Trump: The book is still being written on this one. However, he clearly has cognitive issues, and those issues could well prove fatal (as they did for his father and grandfather). There is copious evidence of biological dysfunction, possibly caused by an adderall addiction. His sleep schedule is atrocious. His diet is atrocious. He's got symptoms of other issues, even if we don't know what those issues are. If he survives his term, and lives another decade, he might move down this list. But this is where we put him right now.

William Henry Harrison: He was 68 when he assumed the presidency; the modern equivalent would be something like 83. And he was frail, which undoubtedly laid the groundwork for him to contract pneumonia and die after just over a month in office.

Chester A. Arthur: During his entire time in office, he was suffering from Bright's Disease (now known as nephritis), which killed him the year after he left office.

Note that William Howard Taft was relatively hale and hearty, despite his weight, and the same was true of Franklin D. Roosevelt early in his term, despite his disability. Meanwhile, some of the presidents who developed significant health problems while in office, such as Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge, did not have those health problems on their Inauguration Days.

B.S. in Huntington Beach, CA, asks: After reading Erik Larsen's The Demon of Unrest, I was surprised by the premise that South Carolina dragged the rest of the South into the Civil War. Understanding that the immediate cause was the election of Abraham Lincoln and opposition in the north to slavery, I have always understood that those states which became the Confederacy did so of their own volition, with little to no hand-wringing over the issue of secession. It seems to me that all of the secessionist states withdrew from the union for very simple and understandable (although despicable) reasons: to continue the institution of slavery, which was the backbone of the southern economy, and to maintain the state of white privilege to which those privileged Southerners had grown accustomed.

To what extent do you believe it was South Carolina's fault versus the almost universal desire of the Confederate states to maintain their immoral status quo?

(Z) answers: Remember that Larsen is a popular author. And while he's very good at what he does, his starting point is "What you've always known about history is wrong." He does not make his money affirming historical consensus.

The pre-war South had a very limited intellectual tradition. But most of the political philosophy that WAS produced came out of South Carolina, particularly Senator and VP John C. Calhoun. So, the intellectual basis for secession was certainly the work of the Palmetto State, at least primarily.

Also, South Carolina went first, and set a template for how to secede. That made it much easier for the other states to take the plunge.

But that is the extent of South Carolina's leadership of secession. The South Carolinians did not call for some sort of national secession council, or travel around proselytizing on behalf of secession. Keep in mind that the other six Lower South states seceded just a couple of weeks after South Carolina did, in the middle of winter, in an era when travel times were very long. There is no way people from South Carolina could have played a role in, say, lobbying Texas to secede.

That secession was driven primarily by self-interest, with South Carolina merely serving as a model/inspiration, is indicated by the fact that the first seven states to go were the seven slave states with (by far) the highest number of enslaved people per capita. The next four states to go, after Sumter, were the four slave states with the next-four-highest numbers of enslaved people per capita. The four slave states that did not go (Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware and Maryland) were the ones with the lowest numbers of enslaved people per capita.

D.R. in Fremont, CA, asks: My great-grandfather was conscripted into the Confederate Army in Tennessee, where he lived. He did not want to fight in the war and escaped, was caught, and escaped again. Somehow he managed to go to Mexico and he stayed there until the Civil War was over.

My question is: How on earth was an able-bodied young male able to get to Mexico at that time without being caught and forced back into the Confederate Army? I learned online that he was not the only young man to go to Mexico to escape military service. Was there something like the Underground Railroad going South to help these young men go to Mexico?

(Z) answers: There was no Underground Railroad-type operation for Confederates fleeing to Mexico, and there was no need for one. It was a fairly easy matter to catch a boat to take you down the Mississippi River, and then another one to take you to Mexico.

The Confederate (and Union) authorities did not work especially hard to recapture men who fled the draft, for a couple of reasons. The first is that resources were scarce, and every person assigned to track down draft dodgers was one less person helping to win the war. The second is that both sides knew that draft dodgers made lousy soldiers, because they didn't want to do the job. Better for them to self-select out of the armed forces.

The purpose of the draft, in the Civil War era, was not to enroll new soldiers, at least not directly. It was to "encourage" soliders to volunteer, because the financial and reputational benefits of being a volunteer soldier were vastly better than what a man got if he was drafted. It is estimated that only 4% of men who were drafted ended up actually serving.

R.H.D. in Webster, NY, asks: President John F. Kennedy would have turned 109 yesterday. When he was inaugurated in 1961, there was a gentleman holding the Bible, I presume, in between him and Chief Justice Earl Warren:

Do you know who that person was?

(Z) answers: Kennedy used the Fitzgerald family Bible for his swearing in. As that Bible is very heavy, and very fragile (it was printed in 1850), it was held up by Clerk of the Supreme Court James R. Browning.

K.W. in Albuquerque, NM, asks: You mentioned recently that you think Western movies will stand the test of time. What are your nominees for the top ten films in the genre?

(Z) answers: I don't particularly want to rank them, so these are in chronological order:

Stagecoach (1939): The film that established John Ford as a director, John Wayne as a leading man, and Westerns as a serious genre. It still holds up, nearly 90 years later.

High Noon (1952): Great performances by Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, and an obvious allegory for McCarthyism.

The Searchers (1956): This might be Ford's best performance as a director, and Wayne's best performance as an actor, even if neither won an Oscar for their work. Best seen on a proper screen, as the movie is chock-full of small details that give the tale nuance and depth.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966): The greatest of the spaghetti Westerns, with what is probably the most iconic scene to be found in any Western film.

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968): The second-greatest of the spaghetti Westerns, and the opening scene at the railroad depot is almost as memorable as the three-way standoff from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Rio Bravo (1959): This is Quentin Tarantino's favorite Western, and for good reason. It's a virtuoso demonstration of directing from Howard Hawks (note, for example, that nobody says a word until more than 6 minutes into the film). And what a cast. It's also a very obvious response, allegorically, to High Noon.

Blazing Saddles (1974): There have been many Western comedies, none have come close to this one. My favorite Mel Brooks film.

Unforgiven (1992): The best of the revisionist Westerns, though it wins out over Django Unchained by a very small margin. And, unlike Dances with Wolves, it's not basically a "white savior" film.

Tombstone (1992): The story of the shootout at the O.K. Corral has been adapted for at least 80 Westerns. The best of those adaptations is Tombstone, which was a masterpiece, even if Disney didn't know what it had on its hands. If they hadn't botched the rollout, Val Kilmer surely would have won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, as his performance was magnificent. And the fact that he stood out is really saying something for a movie that also has Kurt Russell, Michael Biehn, Powers Boothe, Dana Delany, Sam Elliott, Charlton Heston, Stephen Lang, Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton and Billy Zane. My Darling Clementine, a much earlier telling of the shootout, is also a worthy contender for this list.

No Country for Old Men (2007): Probably the best of what's called a "Contemporary Western" or "neo-Western" or "urban Western." I give this film the nod primarily due to Javier Bardem's performance. That said, I thought long and hard about giving this slot to Die Hard.

It is not easy to limit it to ten, of course.

T.K. in Boulder, CO, asks: I inherited a fondness for Western movies from my grandfather as a young boy in the 80s. Later, I wanted historical context so I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. Now, I can't help but see themes of them-versus-us, xenophobia, or killing aliens in every one. Is that a product of the generation that produced them, or a fundamental theme of the genre? I'm not angling to cancel Western movies or the people who enjoy them; even problematic media can teach us lessons. With westerns surviving 500 years from now, I wonder what we're passing to our descendants.

(Z) answers: For the first 30 or so years of the Western genre, the dominant theme (not true of all films, but most) was "the Indians were dangerous and savage, and so of course we were justified in taking their land." Put another way, most Westerns operated as nationlistic propaganda serving to legitimize the appropriation of Native lands.

In the mid-1950s, and particularly in the 1960s, that messaging became problematic, thanks to greater sensitivity about social issues, and about representation. It also became less necessary, as the Indian Wars were no longer in living memory for most Americans (having ended in 1890), and American ownership of the land was a broadly accepted reality.

Everyone has heard that the conflict in movies is either going to be man vs. man, man vs. nature, or man vs. himself. Well, for man vs. man Westerns after 1960 or so, the antagonists were less and less likely to be Native Americans, and much more likely to be white men (criminals, or opponents in a land war, or corrupt government officials, etc.). Meanwhile, there were a lot more man vs. nature, and man vs. himself Westerns. For example, the last 20 films of John Wayne's career did not involve Native Americans as the main enemy, or even as a subsidiary enemy.

These are very broad generalizations, but they largely hold true. In terms of what is passed on to future generations, well, again, not all Westerns are them-versus-us, xenophobia, or killing aliens. Further, there are some very problematic elements of, say, the works of Shakespeare (e.g., The Merchant of Venice). But people largely tolerate and accept those elements as a product of their time.

D.S. in Layton, UT, asks: Where on the spectrum of great movie actors would you place Marlon Brando? Who would you place with him?

(Z) answers: It is very tough to compare actors, because differences in style, and differences in eras, mean you're often comparing apples to oranges to kumquats. That said, here is my attempt to list the 10 greatest movie actors, in alphabetical order, and treating "actor" as a non-gender-specific term:

Henry Fonda: If you do any acting, you know it is pretty easy to play "big." Fonda pretty much always played the everyman, which means playing "small," and yet he dominated the screen in pretty much every film he was in. That takes talent

Charles Chaplin: Perhaps the greatest genius on this list, and maybe still the best comic actor that the film world has ever seen.

Daniel Day-Lewis: I don't care for Paul Thomas Anderson films, but I nonetheless liked Day-Lewis' Daniel Plainview. That said, my favorite performance of his is, not surprisingly, his turn as Abraham Lincoln.

Humphrey Bogart: He has been dead for nearly 70 years, and yet he still has at least half a dozen films that remain well known, with Casablanca at the top of the list. I was on Hollywood Blvd. a couple of says ago, and Bogie shirts, posters, etc. are still for sale all over the place. Clearly, he penetrated America's psyche.

Marlon Brando: It is a damn shame that he often lost interest in acting, and so phoned his performances in. But when he was engaged, he was maybe the best ever. And his Vito Corleone is certainly in the running for finest film performance of all time.

Morgan Freeman: One of the most versatile actors on this list, he's done comedies, dramas, historical epics, war films, prison films, comic book films, etc., and he's done pretty much all of them well.

Katharine Hepburn: The only actor to win four Oscars, she managed to stay at the forefront of her profession for nearly 60 years. She and Fonda in On Golden Pond is one of the great movie pairings of all time, up there with Bogie and Bacall, or Gable and Leigh.

Diane Keaton: Every movie I've seen her in, from The Godfather to Annie Hall to Father of the Bride, she was just perfect.

Peter Sellers: The other contender, with Chaplin, for the greatest comic actor of all time. Just an absolute genius, and a chameleon who could disappear into any role, much like Gary Oldman.

Meryl Streep: She's pretty much brilliant in everything, from Kramer vs. Kramer to The Iron Lady to The Devil Wears Prada. It's hard to think of the last time she was in a bad film. I don't much care for jukebox musicals, but she was even good in Mamma Mia!.

D.J.M. in Salmon Arm, BC, Canada, asks: Since it's AI week, I was wondering what you think about the use of AI in movie scenes compared to years ago. For example, consider this short video of a Charlie Chaplin stunt:

Are we losing our creativity to AI?

(Z) answers: Well, I don't know if AI has had enough time to do that kind of damage.

However, something I have said many times about video games is that CGI and other such tools have done a lot of harm. Back in the early days of video gaming, the graphics were so crude, a game had to be carried by a really great concept and/or storyline. Now, all the CGI bells and whistles are used as a crutch, and the concepts/storylines often aren't as strong.

I could be persuaded that movies have suffered a similar de-volution, for a similar reason.

S.N. in Sparks, NV, asks: On Memorial Day, I listened to a local rock band that included Blacks, Latino and white members. While I like rock music, I typically don't pay much attention to band members, so the following may be off-base. My perception is that few black musicians are members of notable rock bands. If this perception is accurate, why is this?

(Z) answers: It is true that a lot of talented Black musicians have chosen genres other than rock. Undoubtedly, Marvin Gaye, Dr. Dre, Nat King Cole, Miles Davis, and a host of others could have been successful rock musicians if they had chosen that as their genre.

Still, there are many prominent Black rock and roll solo artists, including Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Chubby Checker, Bo Diddley, Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Tina Turner, Billy Preston, Ray Charles, Lenny Kravitz, etc.

If we are only allowed to include Black musicians who are in rock bands, the list is still pretty long, and includes Sly Stone (Sly and the Family Stone), Slash (Guns N' Roses), Vernon Reid (Living Colour), Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy) Clarence Clemons (Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band), Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), William DuVall (Alice in Chains), Angelo Moore (Fishbone), Jaimoe (the Allman Brothers), Chuck Mosley (Faith No More), Floyd Sneed (Three Dog Night), Randy Jackson (Journey).

And finally, don't forget all those Motown bands, like the Temptations, the Four Tops, the Supremes and the Four Seasons.

So, I think Black musicians are pretty well represented in rock, on the whole. Even if none of them will be performing an America 250 concert.

A.S. in Bedford, MA, asks: What is your favorite national anthem?

(Z) answers: Sorry to be obvious, but "La Marseillaise." Maybe I've seen Casablanca too many times. The Japanese national anthem is also quite nice.

F.S. in Cologne, Germany, asks: Do you agree that "Offense wins games, defense wins championships" in the NFL, the MLB, the NBA and the NHL?

(Z) answers: I think it is probably most true in MLB, assuming we count pitching as part of defense (which we certainly should). Baseball requires consistency if you want to win, and great pitchers produce at a more consistent level than great hitters. A great pitcher could very well pitch two gems in a week. On the other hand, for every game in which a great hitter has 2 HRs and 5 RBIs, he'll also have four games where he goes 0-for-5.

I think it is next most true in the NHL, where a goalie who is on fire can almost single-handedly lift his team to a title. I'm thinking prime Dominik Hasek or Patrick Roy here.

I think it is only a little true in the NBA. Having strong defensive players is nice, but nobody would trade a Ben Wallace or a Dennis Rodman for a Magic Johnson or a Kobe Bryant. As long as a strong offensive producer is at least somewhat capable on defense, scheme and strategy can compensate for their lack of defensive dominance.

I don't think it's particularly true in the NFL. There are teams who famously won on the strength of their defense, like the "Steel Curtain" steelers, or the 1985 Chicago Bears. There are also teams who famously won on the strength of their offense, like the west-coast-offense 49ers of the 1980s, or the "Greatest Show on Turf" Rams of the early 2000s. In the NFL, it's "good defense OR good offense can win championships."

P.R. in Arvada, CO, asks: Who do you think will win the Stanley Cup this year? The Las Vegas Golden Knights or the Carolina Hurricanes?

(Z) answers: The Hurricanes. They were a considerably better regular-season team and they have home-ice advantage.

J.K. in Elk Grove, CA, asks: Growing up, I was very much into trivia books and still keep a well-read assortment of books from this genre. I have also been reading your site for many, many years and one of the things that draws me to it is the combination of intellect, wit, and (occasional) snarkiness. Which leads me to my question: I see similarities to your writing style(s) as I did with The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams—although Cecil, I recall, tended to puff up his narcissist side. Is the series something you used to read? The website still has archives from past years (last updated in 2018), and still proudly displays its tagline: "Fighting ignorance since 1973. (It's taking longer than we thought.)"

(Z) answers: I was a regular reader of that site for at least 10 years, until they stopped producing new content. I am sure Cecil had an influence on my writing. That said, I always thought the narcissism bit was tongue-in-cheek.

P.D.N. in Austintown, OH, asks: Who were (Z)'s favorite teachers, and why did he become a history professor?

(Z) answers: In chronological order:

Mrs. Karen Heitman (Kindergarten and First Grade): She was the ideal teacher for young kids, balancing "nurturing" with "maintaining discipline." She had been teaching at that school for so long, that some of my classmates were children of her former students, and a couple of my classmates were grandchildren of her former students.

Mrs. Patricia Hugh (Seventh Grade): She was tough, but she taught us a lot, including about discipline and focus.

Mrs. Lisa Roseman (High School): I did 4 years of high school theater, and she was the teacher for all of them. As we were both endowed with artistic temperaments, we butted heads sometimes. However, no other high school teacher had a bigger influence on the person I am today.

Mr. Carl Sims (High School): His freshman English class was wonderful, and helped me to start understanding abstract concepts like theme and symbolism and allegory.

Mr. Hank Woods (High School): There are no history teachers on this list, until we get to the college professors, because my pre-college history teachers were mostly pretty mediocre. However, the kind of thinking I would eventually do as a historian was the kind of thinking Mr. Woods demanded in his senior English class.

Prof. Joan Waugh (College): I first had her for the Civil War, then for the Gilded Age, then for a seminar on Civil War soldiers, then as supervisor of my three-quarter honors thesis. So, her signature is on something like 20% of the credits that earned me my undergrad degree. Then, she was chair of my dissertation committee, and I also worked for her as a TA and in other capacities. No person has had more influence on either my teaching style or how I think about history. If you saw one of her lectures, and then saw one of mine, you would know instantly that I must have been her doctoral student.

Prof. Jan Reiff (College): I had her seminar on urban history, and then she also served on my committee. She did much to help me see the hidden possibilities of evidence.

Prof. Peter Tokofsky (College): He taught Urban Folklore and Mythology; from his class I took the lesson that there is hidden subtext beyond many things that people do and say (for example, we had a whole lecture on the hidden subtext of elephant jokes).

Prof. Mortimer Chambers (College): I had him as a student for Western Civilizations (4000 B.C. to 1000 A.D.) and then was his TA for the same class. A brilliant teacher, and a model of how to behave like a gentleman.

Prof. Merrick Posnansky (College): He taught classes on African history and archaeology, and did both very well. My interest in material culture comes from him.

Prof. Michael Dukakis (College): Obviously, his analysis of presidential politics ended up having a pretty big impact on what I did with my life.

Prof. Jeff Cole (College): I took Intro to Mass Communications with him. He managed to make every lecture engaging, such that the 400-person room would be packed, even on rainy days. He also had a big influence on my teaching style.

Prof. Susan Rhoades Neel (College): I had her for history of the West. On the first day of class, she walked up on stage and said "Hello, Westerners!" I had never realized, until that moment, that I was born and raised in the West (to me, up to that point, "The West" was what I saw in John Wayne movies). It was an eye-opening class, in terms of what place does, and does not, mean.

Prof. S. Scott Bartchy (College): I took, and then TA'd for, his History of Religions course, and I also TA'd for his courses on the history of Christianity. Very eye-opening, and my final paper topics these days are an adapted version of his final paper topics (same methodological concepts, different raw material).

My having become a professional historian is primarily due to three things. First, my maternal grandparents were very interested in history, and encouraged that interest in me. Second, Prof. Waugh's Civil War class, which I took as a sophomore, engaged me in a way that none of my previous college classes had. So, I continued with her (five more classes, as noted) and also switched my major to History. Third, when it came time to make decisions about my future, I said, "Well, I'm good at writing, and good at speaking, and I've done well in my history classes, and I already have someone to work with. So, history grad school seems to make sense."

D.S. in Smithtown, NY, asks: Since you are spread out over multiple time zones and cover events in even more time zones, how do you keep track of what time/day it is for someone/somewhere else? Do you have multiple clocks, an app, just do the math in your head?

(Z) answers: For purposes of writing, we usually just give times for the Eastern Time Zone. The much harder part is to make sure to use "yesterday," "today," and "tomorrow" properly, since the day we are writing is usually not the day we publish.

For purposes of coordinating, it's not too difficult. One of us lives in the Netherlands, all the others live in the same time zone (and, in fact, the same city). So, we have a set schedule for editing, etc. based on which person is that day's primary author.

J.K. in Boston, MA, asks: I love this site and have nothing but positive things to say about the tone, the number of days off, the timing of the postings, and all of that. As far as I'm concerned, this whole operation feels like an act of love, and I am not one to nitpick about a gift.

My question is actually about the regular website versus the mobile website. When I open Electoral-Vote.com on my phone, it defaults to the desktop site. I then click on the mobile site icon and it opens a second window. Am I doing something stupid? Like, is there a more straightforward way to open the mobile site right away? For that matter, does the site have any way of knowing if it is opened on a mobile device versus a desktop?

I will continue doing what I'm doing and don't need you to change anything, it's more just a curiosity.

(Z) answers: We appreciate the kind words, and the many similar messages we got from readers!

Our habit, in nearly all cases, is to cause all links to open up a new page. So, you're not doing anything wrong or stupid. If you want to go directly to the phone page, then bookmark www.electoral-vote.com/phone/.

This item appeared on www.electoral-vote.com. Read it Monday through Friday for political and election news, Saturday for answers to reader's questions, and Sunday for letters from readers.

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