Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2: Wilson.
Speaker 1: We talked about Charles Brown slash Artemis Ward this week. Yep.
Speaker 1: I also said that I would talk about don Ce
Speaker 1: Sites this week. You did say that it was his biographer.
Speaker 1: He wrote a biography of Ward in the I think
Speaker 1: it was nineteen nineteen. I just want to warn anybody
Speaker 1: because it's an interesting biography, but if you go to
Speaker 1: read it, the introduction has a lot of gross racist
Speaker 1: stuff in it, Yeah, which was definitely like part of
Speaker 1: the time, but this writer's gross racist stuff is worse
Speaker 1: than Ward's gross racist stuff.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: Like it's really like, uh, I don't even want to
Speaker 1: tell the stories involved because so yucky. But like it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where there's an instance where Charles
Speaker 1: Ward does something to kind of like show how stupid
Speaker 1: this black man he's talking to is, and then Sites
Speaker 1: makes a comment on the whole thing that.
Speaker 2: Is very, very gross.
Speaker 1: So just if you want to go read some of
Speaker 1: this stuff, please know it is laced throughout with things
Speaker 1: like that, and it's not cool. It is worth reading
Speaker 1: for the understanding of the situation, but obviously with the
Speaker 1: lac that you know, it is gross and it sometimes
Speaker 1: I mean I felt it was stomach journey. It was like, oh,
Speaker 1: even for the time, you are really just no, yeah,
Speaker 1: so brace yeah. Reading about some of his humor reminded
Speaker 1: me a little bit of the era of comedy that
Speaker 1: you and I lived through, but like our younger listeners
Speaker 1: may not personally remember, right where there was kind of
Speaker 1: a vibe of it being okay to be offensive as
Speaker 1: long as you were being offensive to everyone, right, and
Speaker 1: having like a weird edginess to all of the humor
Speaker 1: that was kind of like would include a lot of
Speaker 1: really racist and sexist jokes, but with such a broad
Speaker 1: spectrum of them that it was like, well, it's not
Speaker 1: that they're racist or sexist, it's that they are making
Speaker 1: fun of everyone.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of glad that, not even kind of I've
Speaker 1: generally I'm generally glad that for the most part, at
Speaker 1: least the comedy I'm aware of has moved beyond that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it still happened.
Speaker 1: What's that thing where you know, I mean, I understand
Speaker 1: how somebody lands there and thinks that's okay, because I
Speaker 1: am definitely like, I don't I don't take anything too
Speaker 1: seriously myself, least of all. Right, But the problem is,
Speaker 1: even if you're making fun of everybody, some of those
Speaker 1: people are gonna be a punch down, and you are
Speaker 1: going to reinforce gross stuff that hurts those people, Whereas
Speaker 1: if you're punching up at people who have way more
Speaker 1: power and privilege than you with your jokes, they are
Speaker 1: going to be unharmed. Right, And that is why it
Speaker 1: is not okay to use the I mess with everybody
Speaker 1: like approach. There are still people learning that lesson or
Speaker 1: not learning it as ps maybe, but that's yeah, Artemis.
Speaker 2: Ward, Yeah yuck.
Speaker 1: Now there's also the part of me, right that is like,
Speaker 1: is this like a reverse uno that I'm just not
Speaker 1: fully grasping. Was he doing some of these things as
Speaker 1: this character who was obviously kind of a train wreck
Speaker 1: to point out that they were gross?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a little bit weird because everyone who knew
Speaker 1: him writes about how kind and gentle he was with
Speaker 1: everyone he encountered. But those are also people who also
Speaker 1: say gross racist things and may not recognize that he
Speaker 1: wasn't being kind and gentle, right, So it's a little
Speaker 1: bit tricky.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't really ever post on any social media anymore
Speaker 1: except for very occasionally Instagram. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that I got really tired of was the people who
Speaker 1: would say the thing quote ironically but like, really, you're
Speaker 1: just saying the same thing. Yeah, And so I kind
Speaker 1: of wonder if some of his humor fell into that.
Speaker 1: Yeah I'm being ironic, but really you're still just you're
Speaker 1: saying the same thing, right. That is that is the
Speaker 1: trick of ironic humor. You cannot you can't always count
Speaker 1: on your audience to get the joke.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, he's an interesting one. I like this
Speaker 1: idea that you can pinpoint a moment where kind of
Speaker 1: stand up comedy happened for the first time. I find
Speaker 1: it hilarious that there's an elementary school named after him.
Speaker 1: I'm like, but that's a weird. Yeah, it's a weird
Speaker 1: a weird name choice in my opinion at this time.
Speaker 1: I so, uh, there was an era. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: sure this still happens at some points, but like, there
Speaker 1: there was kind of an era in writing when it
Speaker 1: was way more common to render thickly all the way
Speaker 1: through the writing someone's accent and dialect. Yeah, like Bram
Speaker 1: Stoker did this also in a lot of his work.
Speaker 1: I find it so exhausting to read works that are
Speaker 1: written like that, And somehow, by coincidence, I wound up
Speaker 1: with the two longest passages.
Speaker 2: Of his writing. I did not do that on purpose. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I find it.
Speaker 1: As someone who loves to read and has always been
Speaker 1: a really good reader, I find it tiring to try
Speaker 1: to get through it. It's tricky differently than when I
Speaker 1: am reading you know, historical documents that have non standard
Speaker 1: today spellings, or things that were printed at a time
Speaker 1: when they the long s's that looks like f's were
Speaker 1: in use. Like, that's a little bit different way of
Speaker 1: brain power needing to be put toward it than the
Speaker 1: invented spellings and phonetic renderings of things that are part
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, Charles Brown yep, which makes me go, are
Speaker 1: you the it's Charlie Brown named for you? I don't
Speaker 1: look it up.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It is funny. The one thing that I find kind
Speaker 1: of hilarious is how he was kind of like the
Speaker 1: predecessor by minutes to Mark Twain. They definitely had similar style,
Speaker 1: So I don't know if that's just because they were
Speaker 1: dressing in the manner of the day, or if it's
Speaker 1: because Twain kind of modeled himself on Artemis Ward Charles Brown.
Speaker 2: I don't know, yeah, but it's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of our episodes this week was about Franksgiving. O. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was Thanksgiving a week earlier. I have so many
Speaker 1: on this one. I have a lot of thoughts too.
Speaker 1: As I was doing research on this, I had a
Speaker 1: bunch of things bookmarked, and I I think I've said before,
Speaker 1: like I'll just I'll bookmark broadly and then.
Speaker 2: I will go back to go through stuff.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I had bookmarked as like
Speaker 1: a local news article that was kind of generally about this.
Speaker 1: But this article stated with lots of authority that Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: is always the last Thursday in November, and I was like, nah,
Speaker 1: that is not correct. Something I wanted to put in
Speaker 1: the episode and I just didn't feel like had a
Speaker 1: good place in the rhythm of how things were going
Speaker 1: is that in Oklahoma, there was some debate about which
Speaker 1: day the banks would be closed. The state was observing
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving on the thirtieth, but the bank holiday had already
Speaker 1: been established as a twenty third and Attorney General mac
Speaker 1: Williamson issued a legal opinion in this matter that had
Speaker 1: a little poem in it, And the poem went thirty
Speaker 1: dates half September, April, June, and November. All the rest
Speaker 1: have thirty one until we hear from Washington. What are
Speaker 1: some of your thoughts, Holly? While we were recording, I
Speaker 1: just scribbled on my notepad that I keep by my computer,
Speaker 1: sweet baby, Gredo Thanksgiving, get your act together. Here's my thing.
Speaker 1: Two things. One, how much like legislative time was wasted
Speaker 1: on like making the president proclaim it every time? Just
Speaker 1: a lot right, like well just said it and forget it.
Speaker 1: But I think But two, what it really really reminded
Speaker 1: me of as like it was getting into the nitty
Speaker 1: gritty of we're gonna change it to give more space.
Speaker 1: Everybody's freaking out, But we already printed the things, and
Speaker 1: we're already and we already had the thing, and we're
Speaker 1: doing it this way. We've always done it this way.
Speaker 1: Why do we want to change it? Reminded me of
Speaker 1: anybody that's worked in like a corporate setting or even
Speaker 1: a not corporate setting has had this moment where like
Speaker 1: there's some process or even lack of process that has
Speaker 1: been the standard mode of doing things that has problems.
Speaker 1: But even when somebody presents a solution that will require
Speaker 1: a little transition awkwardness, people are so mad about that
Speaker 1: part that they can't get past it and they fight fight.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been on both sides of that equation
Speaker 1: where I'm like whoa, and also, come on, you guys,
Speaker 1: this is never going to get better if we don't
Speaker 1: have this two.
Speaker 2: Weeks that stink.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's what it made me think of, Like
Speaker 1: just if everybody could just chill out for like a minute, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can make this decision. We know it's going to
Speaker 1: be awkward. I'm a big fan of the let's just
Speaker 1: celebrate it twice if you love the other one so
Speaker 1: much while we figure this out. But I did it
Speaker 1: made me think about that a lot. I was not
Speaker 1: really as focused on, like the time spent doing the proclamations,
Speaker 1: because presidents and governors issue a lot of proclamations about
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, and so like that did not
Speaker 1: I didn't even really think about that as a factor
Speaker 1: in all of it. The amount of debating that could
Speaker 1: go into the passage of laws and like whether to
Speaker 1: ask the president to issue a proclamation that did crack
Speaker 1: me up a little bit. Also just I mean I
Speaker 1: said it in the episode, it was really not necessary
Speaker 1: to manufacture a connection to the like the the you know,
Speaker 1: sort of mythical first Thanksgiving, right, because the Thanksgiving holiday
Speaker 1: has always been about, uh, like the identity of the
Speaker 1: United States as a nation, you know, since there started
Speaker 1: to be national proclamations about it. Uh, and very very
Speaker 1: often connections uh to.
Speaker 2: To wars, wars that.
Speaker 1: The you know, the nation and the you know, the
Speaker 1: legislative branch and the executive branch believed were being undertaken
Speaker 1: for just reasons, right, And the idea that like Providence
Speaker 1: was smiling on our war effort because our war effort
Speaker 1: is good, like that underpinned so much of it, uh,
Speaker 1: Which that's a whole other can of worms. But like
Speaker 1: we uh, it's probably a little harder for a kindergartener
Speaker 1: to rap their head around then a feel good story
Speaker 1: about sitting down to a big dinner. But like those connections,
Speaker 1: there was plenty of other fuel for elementary school classes
Speaker 1: and whatever that did not involved having children make paper
Speaker 1: headdresses and wear them, for example. I know there are
Speaker 1: still schools that are doing that. Yeah, so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I forgot. What is the thing that somebody coined that
Speaker 1: was about things will inevitably be compared to Hitler. There's
Speaker 1: some term that somebody coined on the internet, some law, somebody.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna google it. This is Godwin's law, which
Speaker 1: is as online discussion grows longer, the probability of a
Speaker 1: comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches. One, of course, was
Speaker 1: not coined until apparently nineteen ninety according to this Google
Speaker 1: search that I've just done, so many decades after franksgiving discussion.
Speaker 1: But yeah, not a new phenomenon, No, not in the least.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: I also marveled throughout, even though I have read some
Speaker 1: of these documents we referenced at, just how much the
Speaker 1: idea of a separation of church and state was such
Speaker 1: a fib.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is such a fib Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I read about Washington's proclamations
Speaker 1: specifically was that like Washington's proclamations definitely draw on the
Speaker 1: idea of God and prayer, but without specifying any particular
Speaker 1: religion or denomination or sect within a religion, but still
Speaker 1: with the presumption that everyone has like a commonality to
Speaker 1: their religious belief that involves.
Speaker 2: God in prayer. Right.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the idea that the like that the first
Speaker 1: presidents or the so called founders were not really focused
Speaker 1: on God does not hold up in this episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I hope if folks are preparing for their own
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving meal, I hope those preparations are going well, I know,
Speaker 1: and stuff can start really early with making sure you
Speaker 1: can find the right potatoes for your potato casserole.
Speaker 2: Or whether they're going to be sold out.
Speaker 1: Of Cranberry's at the grocery store, so you know, whatever
Speaker 1: you're working on with that in my and I hope
Speaker 1: it's all going really well. And if you are having
Speaker 1: a Thanksgiving holiday in a couple weeks or a week,
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, I hope that's going to be
Speaker 1: great as great as possible. If you want to send
Speaker 1: us a notes about this or any other podcast or
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