Nixon w/o Watergate.

Here’s my review of Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland on Amazon.com (by request).

Live and learn.

Ever since this AHA Perspectives article that I wrote about teaching history with YouTube got published, I’ve been peppered with e-mails explaining that contrary to what I wrote in that article it is in fact possible to download videos from YouTube and play them back from your local computer. Now that I’ve had some time to play around with this concept, I can report definitively that my correspondents are right.

[In my own defense I was going off the YouTube FAQ. From its silence I surmise that Google doesn't want you to do this, the same way that record companies don't want you to download music onto your iPod. In any event, since this is a legal gray area, I'm not sure I could have written about this in Perspectives anyway.]

By far the easiest way to download video from anywhere (YouTube included) is to download the the latest version of Real Player. If Real Player is active a button will appear during every video you view asking you whether you want to download it. You click the button and that’s that. It is both quick and easy.

My problem is that my campus computer system is Microsoft exclusive so I can’t download Real Player anywhere else except the computer in my office. Therefore, I’ve started using one of many YouTube download programs that are available. My choice is aTube Catcher 1.0 [Available here.] With this I download from YouTube, convert it to an .mpg file and keep it in a folder on my desktop which I can access from classrooms across campus. By doing this, I can treat all the YouTube videos the same way I handle the files I get from the Library of Congress or the Prelinger Archives. It’s also easy to back them up this way.

Thanks again correspondents! I’m actually glad I made that mistake in print otherwise I never would have known what to do.

A daisy and some ice cream.

As you might expect, KC Johnson offers a good contextualization of Lyndon Johnson’s infamous daisy ad to mark the death of its creator, Tony Schwartz.

What nobody seems to remember is that many of Johnson’s other ads in 1964 were just as hard-hitting and they ran a lot more than once. To sample them all, visit the 1964 page at the Living Room Candidate. My favorite is called “Ice Cream.” It’s the seventh down on the Democratic side, and I’m told the narrator is Julie Andrews, but it doesn’t sound like her to me.

Can you plagiarize a recipe?

Cindy McCain, it seems, is passing other people’s recipes off as her own again. Let me be clear from the outset. This is stupid. This is dishonest. Under no circumstances will i vote for her husband. But is plagiarism the right word for this?

Plagiarism, of course, is passing other people’s words and/or ideas off as your own without attribution. But seriously, hasn’t every cookie recipe in the world been done somewhere else before? How many different ways can you possibly make oatmeal butterscotch cookies? According to David Weiner at the Huffington Post, where I found this story, she “managed to take the time to switch a few minor details in her version of the recipe.” If that’s the standard, wouldn’t all similar recipes be virtually identical?

I’ve only started examining old cook books (for my study of ice) and one of the first things I noticed is how modern recipes are so much more specific than ones from a hundred years ago or more. The earliest recipes are much more textual, more like a story than a set of instructions. I don’t know when this changed, but I suspect that the earlier cookbooks are more practical. After all, who follows recipes to the letter anyways? The best cooks put in dashes instead of measuring, make impromptu substitutions or just make stuff up as they go along. No two dishes are ever the like, even if the recipes used are identical.

So is Cindi McCain a terrible victim here? Of course not. She probably just doesn’t want to admit that she’s never cooked a day in her life. Nevertheless, I still think this story raises interesting philosophical questions.

That’s Robert McNamara, right?

Thanks, Ari. I’ve always just used the picture in class, but this is even more striking:

The Crisis of the Union Electronic Archives.

I spent a few hours this morning with my old undergraduate adviser, Bob Engs of the University of Pennsylvania. He should our teachers an on online document depository he helped put together, the Crisis of tth Union Electronic Archives, and it’s incredibly good.

Here’s just a few samples. An envelope about emancipation from during the Civil War:

Here’s an anti-feminist cartoon from the post-war era:

The caption reads “How it would be if some ladies got their own way.”

And lastly, how can we sample anything from this era and not include old Abe Lincoln:

It’s really an incredible resource for educators at all levels and deserves much more attention.

Rules to Find out a Fit Measure of Meat and Drink

Cross-posted from Philly Trip:

If thou eatest so much as makes thee unfit for Study, or other Business, thou exceedest the due Measure.

If thou are dull and heavy after Meat, it’s a sign that thou hast exceedest due Measure; for Meat and Drink ought to refresh the Body, and make it cheerful, and not to dull and oppress it.

If thou findest these ill Symptoms, consider whether too much Meat, or too much Drink occasions it, or both, and abate by little and little, till thou findest the Inconveniency removed.

– Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard for 1742) in Benjamin Franklin on the Art of Eating, (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society Press, 2006), 44.

See, I can do colonial blogging!

Richard Nixon’s favorite Democrat.

Cross-posted at Philly Trip.

On Sunday morning, Mark, Paul and I went to the Italian Market in South Philadelphia. There we saw this mural of the late Mayor of Philadelphia, Frank Rizzo. Rizzo, a Democrat, was elected in 1971 and served two four-year terms. When I was in college he tried his first comeback as a Republican. It was then that I became familiar with his legendary career as a provocateur. Ironically, I recently finished Rick Perlstein’s fabulous new book Nixonland, which I still have with me on the trip so I’m in an excellent position to share.

Here are some quotes from Perlstein’s book to give you an idea what he was like:

p. 521: “[Police] Chief Frank Rizzo, mulling a 1971 run for mayor, said they [the Black Panthers] “should be strung up.” He added, “I mean, within the law.”

p. 732: “[Nixon] made a “non-political” visit to Philadelphia as a guest of Mayor Rizzo–who told his political machine…”either the President wins in their areas or they look for another job.”

Perlstein never used the most famous Frank Rizzo quotes. You can find a few of them here.

Rizzo died suddenly during his 1991 comeback campaign, which might explain the memorial to him in South Philly. However, it is also a sign that Rizzo-ism, what Perlstein calls Richard Nixon’s attempts at “positive polarization,” namely creating tensions between Democratic constituencies in order to improve the chances of Republican candidates, lives on.

Somehow I doubt the people who own the building with the Rizzo mural on it will be voting for Obama in November. It will be interesting to see if that matters.

Do you remember when Republican presidential candidates actually ran positive ads?

I saw both of these today while at The National Constitution Center:

Every Presidential campaign ad ever run is available for viewing at The Living Room Candidate. I expect to spend hours there as soon as I have the time.

Blogging as a course assignment or “Hello Philadelphia!”

I’m in Philadelphia right now on a trip with 30 teachers funded by a Teaching American History grant from the federal Department of Education (so I hope you’ll understand that this will be my last post here for a while). As I’ve explained before, I figured blogging is a good way for the teachers to record and, more importantly, reflect upon their activities.

If you’d like to see some of their posts, visit the trip’s “home blog” here, then click on any of the links on the blog roll to the right (under the pictures). Drop a comment if you’re so inclined. I think it would be an interesting illustration of the power of the internet to reach people. You can also read the syllabus for the course the trip is connected to here.