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choco_froshOK, there's about ten things I should be doing right now, from baking someone a get-well pie to taxes to figuring out housing for the NAGCR AGM. But I got to reading the list of the U.S. presidents as snack foods, which funny and swawesome and you should read it. However, it is much too kind to Millard Fillmore who, in addition to being regularly ranked as America's worst president (present company excepted), had a second career as a professional xenophobe which everyone forgets about...
This, in turn, got me thinking about my tenth-grade history textbook, The American Pageant (edition of, yikes, like 1994.) Generally very good! But had some weird habits, notably consigning certain events to what I'm not sure is damnatio memoriae or whitewashing. Like the picture of crazed Know-Nothings "campaigning for their xenophobic, anti-Catholic candidate"...without noting that that candidate was ex-president Millard Fillmore.
Or the fact that it referred to "the assassin's bullet that killed Hamilton" without noting the famous name of that assassin.
It's like that chunk of the textbook fell out of some alternate universe where somebody else shot Hamilton.*
And this, in its turn, got me thinking about the basic implausibility of Aaron Burr's career. Like, imagine you lived in that alternate universe (where he dies in the Revolution, or was never born, or whatever), and someone pitched a show that was the events of his actual life in THIS universe:**
PITCH: We're going to do a show about the first couple of decades of US History.
Audience: OK, with you so far. Timeless story, famous names, always gives you the opportunity to ask yourself interesting questions about government, ideals, and your own times.
PITCH: To avoid having this just be a docu-drama, we're going to make our central character...slightly fictional.
Audience: How do you make someone only slightly fictional??
PITCH: We're gonna take this rando named Aaron Burr. Grandson of Jonathan Edwards, if you'll believe me. Hung out with, oh, Lafayette and Hamilton and Benedict Arnold. Native New Yorker. Apparently a weird combo of cautious, prickly, and ambitious. Would probably have had a bright future in politics, but he got killed in one of Washington's battles. What we're gonna do is imagine the world where he survives.
Audience: 'Kay.
PITCH: We'll probably have a couple episodes about the war, his friendships with famous dudes, his personal life. Mostly follows actual history, establishes character, blah blah blah.
After the war he goes back to New York, he finishes his studies and he practices law.
Audience: Makes sense.
PITCH: Becomes what they called a "Quid": a political moderate. So we get to look at that important but forgotten political group.
Audience: Cool!
PITCH: As such, Jefferson picks him as his running mate in 1800. In real life, he did pick a New York moderate - George Clinton - but he had a helluva time persuading him to take the job, whereas we're imagining that Burr woulda jumped at the chance.
Audience: Again, makes sense.
PITCH: But here's where it gets crazy! We're gonna look at the weird-ass ways presidential elections worked back then, and imagine the scenario where Jefferson and Burr get the same number of votes! The choice has to go to the House of Representatives!
Audience: Now you're just overdramatizing. The Twelfth Amendment got passed just 'cause someone imagined what would happen if that shit went down.
PITCH (ignoring them): And then, Burr refuses to concede, simply because he feels that to do so would be an insult to his honor.
Audience: OK, that's...wow. That's like Hamilton at his most arrogant, if he loved himself even more and his country less. So simultaneously insane and horribly plausible. I take it Jefferson still somehow becomes President?
PITCH: Yeah, but the conceit is he didn't trust Burr to begin with, what with being a slippery political moderate of unclear principles, but now their relationship is downright poisonous. Like, TJ and Hamilton hate each other's positions like poison, but each one has a grudging respect for the other one as a smart man of high principles; whereas they just despise Burr.
Audience: They're basically rival Gryffindor's to his Slytherin.
PITCH: So that's Season 1!
(More later. We haven't even GOT to the insane part)
* Which, in fact, would be entirely plausible. Great man, but also kindof an arrogant ass, so it's almost shocking that no one else shot him before Burr got the chance.
** Source for much of what follows: D.O. Stewart, American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America.
This, in turn, got me thinking about my tenth-grade history textbook, The American Pageant (edition of, yikes, like 1994.) Generally very good! But had some weird habits, notably consigning certain events to what I'm not sure is damnatio memoriae or whitewashing. Like the picture of crazed Know-Nothings "campaigning for their xenophobic, anti-Catholic candidate"...without noting that that candidate was ex-president Millard Fillmore.
Or the fact that it referred to "the assassin's bullet that killed Hamilton" without noting the famous name of that assassin.
It's like that chunk of the textbook fell out of some alternate universe where somebody else shot Hamilton.*
And this, in its turn, got me thinking about the basic implausibility of Aaron Burr's career. Like, imagine you lived in that alternate universe (where he dies in the Revolution, or was never born, or whatever), and someone pitched a show that was the events of his actual life in THIS universe:**
PITCH: We're going to do a show about the first couple of decades of US History.
Audience: OK, with you so far. Timeless story, famous names, always gives you the opportunity to ask yourself interesting questions about government, ideals, and your own times.
PITCH: To avoid having this just be a docu-drama, we're going to make our central character...slightly fictional.
Audience: How do you make someone only slightly fictional??
PITCH: We're gonna take this rando named Aaron Burr. Grandson of Jonathan Edwards, if you'll believe me. Hung out with, oh, Lafayette and Hamilton and Benedict Arnold. Native New Yorker. Apparently a weird combo of cautious, prickly, and ambitious. Would probably have had a bright future in politics, but he got killed in one of Washington's battles. What we're gonna do is imagine the world where he survives.
Audience: 'Kay.
PITCH: We'll probably have a couple episodes about the war, his friendships with famous dudes, his personal life. Mostly follows actual history, establishes character, blah blah blah.
After the war he goes back to New York, he finishes his studies and he practices law.
Audience: Makes sense.
PITCH: Becomes what they called a "Quid": a political moderate. So we get to look at that important but forgotten political group.
Audience: Cool!
PITCH: As such, Jefferson picks him as his running mate in 1800. In real life, he did pick a New York moderate - George Clinton - but he had a helluva time persuading him to take the job, whereas we're imagining that Burr woulda jumped at the chance.
Audience: Again, makes sense.
PITCH: But here's where it gets crazy! We're gonna look at the weird-ass ways presidential elections worked back then, and imagine the scenario where Jefferson and Burr get the same number of votes! The choice has to go to the House of Representatives!
Audience: Now you're just overdramatizing. The Twelfth Amendment got passed just 'cause someone imagined what would happen if that shit went down.
PITCH (ignoring them): And then, Burr refuses to concede, simply because he feels that to do so would be an insult to his honor.
Audience: OK, that's...wow. That's like Hamilton at his most arrogant, if he loved himself even more and his country less. So simultaneously insane and horribly plausible. I take it Jefferson still somehow becomes President?
PITCH: Yeah, but the conceit is he didn't trust Burr to begin with, what with being a slippery political moderate of unclear principles, but now their relationship is downright poisonous. Like, TJ and Hamilton hate each other's positions like poison, but each one has a grudging respect for the other one as a smart man of high principles; whereas they just despise Burr.
Audience: They're basically rival Gryffindor's to his Slytherin.
PITCH: So that's Season 1!
(More later. We haven't even GOT to the insane part)
* Which, in fact, would be entirely plausible. Great man, but also kindof an arrogant ass, so it's almost shocking that no one else shot him before Burr got the chance.
** Source for much of what follows: D.O. Stewart, American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-02 03:45 am (UTC)Ergh. Yeah.
PITCH: So that's Season 1!
That's delightful.
Which, in fact, would be entirely plausible. Great man, but also kindof an arrogant ass, so it's almost shocking that no one else shot him before Burr got the chance.