Southern Bookman

Voting at Georgia Tech on a record-breaking day for runoff elections

I was among the 301,500 Georgians who set a record Monday for runoff election voting.

Waiting at Georgia Tech's Ferst Center, where I believed the line would be shorter than at other sites I tried, I saw a sign for Tech's Center for Relativistic Astrophysics.

Beam me up Scottie: at the site of cosmic Einstein studies, we had to stand for more than an hour to vote in the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker.

Perhaps someday a bright young Tech engineer will invent an app to allow us to cast our ballots from home.

The afternoon was pleasant, and it was heart-warming to see so many Georgia Tech students voting. Downtown Atlanta's skyline rose majestically into the brilliant blue sky. Nearby, the Coca-Cola building gave silent testimony to Atlanta's commercial history.

Thanks to the valiant poll workers, true American heroes, the line moved quickly.

At last reaching the Ferst Center lobby, I saw a video presentation on a TV screen of a Georgia Tech multimedia project that had won the Smithsonian Institution's People's Choice Award.

In partnership with Auburn University, the multimedia project on display at Tech's Architecture Department examined Bloody Sunday at Selma in 1965, a major turning point in the civil rights movement.

The exhibit is titled "Walking in History's Footsteps." Those of us voting also walked in those footsteps.

Veteran journalist Margaret Sullivan gives ink-stained prescriptions for a critically ill media

Veteran journalist Margaret Sullivan led the Buffalo News in the last days of newspapers' eminence.

In "Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (And Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life," Sullivan laments the demise of local newspapers and the rise of social media spreading false information.

Over the last few decades, once vital newspapers and local TV news operations have been ravaged by the migration of advertising to Internet sites.

The former media critic for The Washington Post and "public editor" for The New York Times, Sullivan diagnoses major failings of national media, which she blames for Donald Trump's 2016 election.

She stands among those calling for the traditional media to make changes in political coverage, no longer giving equal weight to untruthful views. She gives a thorough exploration of the "objectivity" debate, calling for news media to rigorously expose untruthful claims.

Along with her earnest prescriptions for the embattled news media, Sullivan gives a memoir of her career, from her childhood in Lackawanna, N.Y., a declining industrial suburb of Buffalo, to vaunted places among the elite national media.

From a progressive middle-class family, Sullivan was inflamed to enter journalism by Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate coverage and the film "All the President's Men."

After graduating from Georgetown, Sullivan rose from the reporting ranks to a series of executive positions at her hometown Buffalo News, a curious survivor among afternoon newspapers. She at last reached the top as managing editor and executive editor, increasing the newspaper's staff diversity and giving more coverage to black neighborhoods.

Sullivan said goodbye to Buffalo paper when New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. offered her the public editor's job, in which she answered reader complaints and exposed the newspaper's journalistic failings.

Battling Times editors whom she finds as defensive and self-protective as any government bureaucrat, she finds the job stressful but meaningful. Her prime target is the Times' addiction to anonymous sources, which she never completely quells.

Former Times editors Jill Abramson and Dean Bacquet are skewered as thin-skinned and self-righteous. Although Sullivan shows herself standing her ground against combative Times editors, Sullivan admits that Abramson once made her cry and confesses that she's shed a few newsroom tears. That's about as confidential as the book gets.

Sulzberger, whom a few years ago passed the newspaper's leadership to a new generation, comes across as the most admirable of the Times' leaders, even giving Sullivan a going-away party attended by resentful Times editors.

The account of Sullivan's years at the Post lacks the drama and inside intrigue of her tenure at the Times. Back in the newsroom in the Post features department, she after a slow start gains her footing as a prominent media critic, predominantly taking the Times to task for its exaggerated coverage of Hilary Clinton's email debacle. She finds that the Times' prominent front-page coverage of the Clinton story, along with CNN's incessant coverage of Trump rallies, were a major factor in Trump's unexpected election.

Sullivan's closing chapters are a valuable primer on the news media's crisis, from the demise of local news to the national media's challenges in covering candidates like Trump who stir their conservative base with false claims.

Now a Duke University professor, Sullivan has moved to the sidelines. Her clear-eyed views raise hopes that she'll soon return to the fray.The national media need a smart battler like the woman who never lost her Buffalo toughness, albeit with a few tears here and there.

 

 

 

Remembering John F. Kennedy on 59th anniversary of his assassination

On another anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination - the 59th - I remember the young president killed on a sunny Friday afternoon in downtown Dallas.

I think about President Kennedy without tears, as New York Times reporter and assassination witness Tom Wicker advised in an article for Esquire.

JFK will always glow in my memory. At home from school, I loved watching  his witty press conferences on TV. His eloquent speeches. His smile, his glamorous wife, and his then small children. With his cultured Boston accent, he somehow spoke to me directly.

For all of his faults, he'll always be my greatest president. The world ended on Nov. 22, 1963. A new one rose in its place, but it never shone so brightly.

An old man now, I'll never stop being a child of Camelot.

Bruce Catton's "The Army of the Potomac Trilogy" a classic Civil War history

Bruce Catton's "The Army of the Potomac Trilogy" combines a great novel's memorable characters with a classic history's understanding of politics and battles.

Recently released in one volume by the Library of America, Catton's "Mr. Lincoln's Army," "Glory Road" and "A Stillness at Appomattox" trace the main Union Army's perilous path to eventual victory over Robert E. Lee's Army of  Northern Virginia.

First published from 1951 through 1954, Catton's books reveal the characters and motivations of a gallery of major and minor figures, from Union Gen. George McClellan and President Abraham Lincoln, to subsidiary generals, cabinet members, and meddling members of Congress.

Confederate generals Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Joseph Johnston and James Longstreet receive more cursory attention, focusing on their battlefield leadership, which for the war's first fraught years foiled the Union commanders.

The first volume looks at McClellan's organization of the Union Army after the disastrous losses at the first and second battles of Bull Run, also known as Manassas, and other debacles.

In an eerie foreshadowing of today's melodromatic political climate, accusations of treason were freely hurled about, even at McClellan, who when he first took command was urged by some of Lincoln's cabinet members to overthrow Lincoln's government and rule as a dictator.

"Mr. Lincoln's Army" ends with McClellan's victory at Antietam, which led to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. While McClellan disappointed Lincoln by not pursuing Lee's retreating soldiers, the bloody battle was a turning point.

The second volume tells of McClellan's ouster and further devastating union losses at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, followed by the Union's decisive victory at Gettysburg. Once again, the Union Army upset Lincoln by letting Lee escape. This time, Gen. George Meade displayed the exasperating failure of nerve.

"A Stillness at Appomattox" details how U.S. Grant took over the Army of the Potomac. Unlike his predecessors, Grant displayed a willingness to engage Lee's army in a series of bloody battles. The Union Army suffered heavy losses, but outlasted Lee's decimated army, at last achieving the long-awaited Union victory.

A longtime editor at American Heritage after a newspaper career, Catton was a pioneering popular historian of the Civil War, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for "A Stillness at Appomattox." His trilogy helped generate the huge interest in the Civil War among a general readership, and set the stage for Ken Burns' popular PBS history of the war.

From a predominantly conversational, colloquial writing style, Catton rises to passages of eloquent power reminiscent of Proust or Tolstoy.  He's a writer with a wide range, like an organist who can play different registers.

Catton displays a sense of an America moving from a rural to an urban nation at the dawn of a revolution in technology and commerce. He captures the speech and intellectual outlook of an era thrust into a bloody civil war and its wrenching changes.

"The Army of the Potomac Trilogy" reads like a historical novel as well as a consummate history.

Like other classics in the field, it holds up a mirror to our conflicted age.

 

 

  

Break out the cigars: World's population hits 8 billion

No wonder places seem so crowded these days: The world's population reached 8 billion Tuesday.

I remember when 3 billion was considered too many.

Although population growth has slowed somewhat in recent years, the number of people consuming the earth's finite resources will hit 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion in the 2080s, according to the United Nations.

Growth has stalled in the industrialized world, which bears the most responsibility for climate change as carbon emissions keep rising.  The populations of Japan, China and European nations are aging. The U.S. population has also stalled.

Developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Mideast are experiencing huge population increases, as their resources disappear. Non-industrial nations are suffering the most from climate change, although they've registered the least amount of carbon emissions. Industrial nations at the recent climate change conference in Egypt pledged to contribute billions to those countries, but even greater aid will be needed.

Getting past the gloomy forecasts for the future, those children being born at a rapid pace offer hope for humanity. The laws of probability suggest that  generations to come will include geniuses who will develop technological solutions to the earth's problems. Our future descendants will invent now un-imagined wonders, discover cures for diseases, create new works of art.

On the other hand, perhaps humanity will die like the dinosaurs, and a new cycle of life  begin. Or the Earth will turn into a lifeless rock spinning around a dying sun. Humanity might say goodbye to our ancient home and find a new beginning far far away in the universe.

For now, I need to buy some batteries for the TV remote.

 

 

Paying homage to Henry Adams at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington

During a weekend trip to Washington, D.C., I made a long-desired pilgrimage to the site of Henry Adams' home.

The Hay-Adams Hotel now stands at the Lafayette Square corner where Adams lived next to John Hay in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

Adams, the great-grandson of President John Adams and grandson of President and U.S. Rep. John Quincy Adams, was best known during his lifetime as the author of the nine-volume "The History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison."

Hay's long career of governmental service included terms as President Lincoln's secretary and secretary of state under presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.

We ate lunch at the Hay-Adams Hotel, at 16th and H streets, across Lafayette Square from the White House. The adjoining houses of Hay and Adams were demolished in 1927 for the hotel's construction.

The hotel's restaurant was packed with people in suits and dresses, who gave the air of conducting serious business. Several distinguished looking gentlemen upon leaving exchanged jokes with the middle-aged waiters, promising with handshakes to return soon. Our waiter showed us a photo of him  and Henry Kissinger.

Overhearing the German-flavored conversation of well-dressed young people at an adjoining table, I studied a photo on the wall of Hay and Adams' homes. 

Ever since I read Adams' autobiography "The Education of Henry Adams" as a young man, I've been fascinated with Adams' life. Adams' "Mount St. Michel and Chartres," a study of the medieval veneration of the Virgin Mary and what Adams saw as the 20th century's tragic turn to an obsessive belief in science, is also one of my favorite books.

Adams in "The Education of Henry Adams" laments that his classical education at Harvard ill-prepared him for the 20th century and its technological changes, which he called the rise of "the dynamo." He also felt that his life of writing and a political insider was superfluous compared with his great-grandfather and grandfather's service to the nation.

Unmentioned by Adams in his autobiography was the death of his wife, Marian "Clover" Adams, an aspiring photographer who committed suicide in 1885. She battled depression and felt overshadowed by Adams' eminence.

One day, I'll travel to Rock Creek Cemetery to stand at her grave and contemplate August St. Gaudens' eerie monument to her. Adams, who lived until 1918, commissioned the sculpture, which shows a bereaved woman wearing a shroud.

Adams' old Boston heritage connects with another famous St. Gaudens statue, the monument at Boston's Public Gardens to Robert Gould Shaw, who led the black 54th Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War. Shaw and many of his troops were killed in an attack on Fort Wagner, S.C. on July 18, 1963.

Unlike Shaw and one of his brothers, Adams didn't fight in the Civil War, instead serving as secretary to his father, Charles, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, whose main task was keeping  the British from allying with the Confederacy.

In "The Education of Henry Adams," Adams gives an insightful account of the Civil War, observed from London and his service to his father.

The historic corner where Adams lived and carried out a busy social life hosting leading writers, scientists and politicians hasn't changed that much during the years.

Looking out the restaurant window at historic St. John's Church, Lafayette Square and the White House, I marveled that Henry must have enjoyed a similar view.

 

 

Washington, D.C. visitors honor veterans, nation's history

Crowds in a celebratory mood packed Washington over the Veterans' Day weekend.

We traveled to the nation's capital for an impromptu family reunion, all of us happy at the Democratic surge in the midterm elections.

Visiting museums, the Thomas Jefferson and Lincoln memorials and the Vietnam Memorial, we encountered waves of fellow citizens enjoying the majesty of the nation's capital.

Veterans, many of them in wheelchairs, gathered in our hotel lobby and traveled the National Mall's pathways. A special group of them, Elks from Florida and Virginia, wore Veterans' baseball caps and distinctive red shirts after participating in a special ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial.

Aging baby boomers like me, college students speeding by in ubiquitous bicycles and Lime scooters, and young couples crowded the sidewalks, celebrating the nation's freedom.

I especially loved the children, from infants in their parents' arms to teenagers. Children packed the Lincoln Monument, a new generation receiving the promise of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

While I was enthralled by the Capitol, the White House, and the Washington Monument, I'll strive to carry out a simple message on the sign at St. John's Episcopal Church near the White House:

"Love Your Neighbor."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John F. Kennedy's inaugural address reflects long-shattered American unity

On the eve of the election that could sound the death knell for American democracy, I reread John F. Kennedy's inaugural address.

Kennedy's speech on that frigid March morning in 1961 expressed an American unity that's long been shattered.

His message shadowed by the cold war against the Soviet Union, the young president saw the United States as a beacon of freedom and human rights. 

That fragile moment of shared purpose sinks further into the distant past. Now, the GOP that once supported Democratic presidents engages in brutal political warfare, vowing to end America's system of free elections.

Kennedy's inaugural address asked the nation to renew its commitment to American democracy, now in peril.

Democratic Party lurches toward disaster

It's been a beautiful autumn, heading to the political apocalypse.

The Democratic Party's panicking, scrambling to hold on to formerly safe House districts and governorships as the Republican tide rises, even after Jan. 6. GOP candidates who deny Joe Biden won the presidency aim to seize power over elections.

As time runs out before Tuesday's election, Bernie Sanders and others bemoan the Democrats' muddled messaging on the economy, abortion and climate change. Barack Obama, Sanders and Biden rush to bolster faltering Democratic campaigns after early voting has been going on for weeks.

Why didn't they take action months ago?  As Democrats launch their belated fire drill, the Republicans have convinced voters that the economy is horrible and crime rampant.

New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman keeps assuring his readers that inflation is under control, employment stable, crime rates falling.

For many voters, reality doesn't match Krugman's ivory tower views.

Krugman has admitted he was wrong on inflation's rise. Further damaging Krugman's credibility, he claimed this week that inflation is under control just a day before the Fed further raised interest rates to cool rising prices.

It's not surprising that conservative Washington Post columnist George Will has turned against  Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, appealing to them this week not to seek re-election in 2024. Will in his column exposed Harris' alarming incoherence, citing several devastating quotes from public events. The Democratic Party needs a new generation of leaders.

Biden has even lost liberal Post columnist Eugene Robinson. In his Friday column, Robinson cited Biden's speech this week in which the president warned that the GOP threatens American democracy. While agreeing with Biden's assessment, Robinson pointed out that voters are more concerned with the economy, and suggested that Biden would have been more effective pushing his economic accomplishments.

As global carbon emissions soar unabated, the climate change-denying GOP surges. They plan to cut Social Security and Medicare, and cause political turmoil. They plan to cut aid for Ukraine, giving Putin the victory he yearns for. They wish to end American democracy.

The days are beautiful in the last days of the republic.

 

 

 

UGA professor James C. Cobb's biography of historian C. Vann Woodward gains recognition

Historian C. Vann Woodward's books were a major influence on young Southern progressives in the 1960s and 1970s.

Woodward, who died in 1999 at age 91, demolished many of the prevailing Southern myths about Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Confederate nostalgia and the region's economic and political system.

A new biography of Woodward written by University of Georgia history professor emeritus James C. Cobb, published by University of North Carolina Press, is receiving attention. This week, Cobb's book received a positive review by Columbia professor Eric Foner in the London Review of Books and a more mixed review in the Wall Street Journal by the WSJ's conservative scold Barton Swaim.

Woodward, who attended Emory University and received his doctorate at UNC, grew up in rural Arkansas, inheriting a hatred of segregation from an uncle who was a Methodist minister.

A leftist scholar influenced by Marxism,Woodward like several other 20th century academics gained fame writing for a popular audience. A longtime professor at Yale, Woodward like Richard Hofstadter and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. influenced public policy with his work.

In a biography of Georgia populist Tom Watson, who turned from a supporter of black rights to a virulent racist, Woodruff found that the populist movement in the late 19th century at first sought economic and political cooperation between black and white workers, but fell victim to racial divisiveness pushed by the white ruling class that violently overthrew Reconstruction.

Woodward in "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" found that segregation didn't have deep roots in the South, although he softened that viewpoint later in his career. He also viewed the "New South" ideology of post-Reconstruction leaders like Henry Grady as a cover for economic exploitation of the white and black working class.

In "The Burden of Southern History," a collection of essays, Woodward presented the South as fundamentally different from the North, because it was the only region of the country that had suffered defeat in war. That view turned bitterly ironic in the Vietnam era. 

Martin Luther King cited Woodward's writings as a major influence on the civil rights movement.

Yet, as Foner and Swaim point out, Woodward opposed black studies programs late in his career. His rightward turn cost him his long friendship with the esteemed black scholar John Hope Franklin.

Despite criticism from leftist academics, Woodward remained an esteemed historian. Some of Woodward's beliefs have been discounted, but his work has largely withstood years of critical re-examination.

Woodward's books led to the South confronting its past with unsparing honesty, boosting its post-war economic revival. As the South again reverts to racial politics and white grievance, Cobb's book will help bring a needed return to Woodward's lessons.