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The Nation's People Project is Launched
By Jeff Kisseloff
Some people like to get attention at parties by playing piano, others by doing card tricks. For me, all I have to do is casually drop that I am the archivist of The Nation, and immediately all activity in the room comes to a screeching halt - like with those yuppies in the old E. F. Hutton commercials. In my case, though, people immediately start asking questions, like, "They hired you?" Or, "Did anyone actually check your references?"
At that point, a kind person (ok, my wife) will save my reputation by asking me, "So Jeff, what is the most interesting item you've unearthed from the archive?"
Invariably, I mention a letter that the magazine received in 1925 from a certain mustachioed head of the German National Socialist Party. When I first came across the letter, I didn't know what was more astonishing, that Hitler replied to an article in The Nation or that he actually read one.
(1) CommentsJuly 28, 2009
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Uncle Walt Signs Off
By Jeff Kisseloff
In the early days of television you were nothing without a signoff. Everyone from Miss Nancy on Romper Room ("Goodbye Harold, goodbye Ida, goodbye Irving," etc) to Jimmy Durante ("Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, whereever you are.") had a distinctive way of closing their programs. Even news people weren't immune. Edward R. Murrow ended See it Now with "Good night and good luck." On The Today Show, Dave Garroway would simply utter "peace," while Huntley and Brinkley liked to wish each other "goodnight" (they must have gone to bed early).
Walter Cronkite would sign off the CBS Evening News by saying, "And that's the way it is." But was it? The Nation didn't think so when it took Cronkite to task in 1967 for not-- apologies here to Howard Cosell for borrowing his closing phrase-- telling it like it was on his program. A couple of months later, Cronkite responded to the criticism. After reading the exchange, I'm not sure who was more correct.
Cronkite was obviously a fine newsman and anchor, but I think he was much more interesting when he stepped away from the anchor perch and said what was really on his mind. After leaving the program, his comments about the media and government were invariably well thought out, pointed, and, of course, right on target. Would he have been as widely admired if he had used his program as a bully pulpit? Would he have lasted as long on the air if he had? After all, Murrow's See It Now broadcast exposing Joseph R. McCarthy as a bully was probably the most honored news program in the history of television. But that program also led to Murrow's downfall at CBS because it made him too controversial in the eyes of his bosses. On the other hand, the program marked the beginning of the end of McCarthyism, and the only reason it happened was that Murrow was willing to sacrifice his career if it meant putting an end to such evil.
(1) CommentsJuly 21, 2009
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Ties That Bind: The Nation and the NAACP
By Jeff Kisseloff
Progressive politics and the quest for civil rights were in Oswald Garrison Villard's blood. His grandfather was the great abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, the publisher of The Liberator. His mother was a leader in the women's suffrage and peace movements, his father the owner of the literary supplement to the New York Evening Post, a.k.a. The Nation. So it was no surprise when the modern civil rights movement emerged from the ashes of the 1908 Springfield race riots, Villard was one of its driving forces.
It began in January 1909 when two New York social workers, Mary Ovington White and Henry Moskovitz, and the writer William English Walling gathered in a New York apartment to organize a group they hoped would aggressively address the country's racial issues. The trio invited Villard, then a staffer on the Post (nepotism occasionally has its benefits), to join them. Villard helped organize the subsequent convention out of which The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was born. When the fledgling organization foundered, it was Villard who kept it together, and when the decision was made to pursue justice in the courts, it was Villard who took the lead in forming the NAACP's legal arm, which would prove so instrumental to the movement's success, culminating with its historic legal victory in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that made segregation illegal.
Villard became the editor and owner of The Nation upon his father's death in 1918. Over the years, however, Villard's politics gradually shifted toward the right. He sold The Nation in 1935 and would strongly disagree with the magazine's subsequent support for foreign intervention. He also joined the reactionary and anti-Semitic America First Committee. He died in 1949.
(0) CommentsJuly 2, 2009
Jeff Kisseloff
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