Journalism

DETOUR is an ultra-low-budget 1946 film noir that packs an undeniable punch. “He went searching for love,” the Detour poster said, “but fate forced a detour” — to accidental murder. The film is one of Richard Lingeman’s touchstones in his new book The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. . . .
. . . continued at the L.A. Review of Books, HERE.

The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago this week, has often been criticized by blacks, by radicals and also by mainstream historians who doubt its significance as a turning point in the Civil War and in American history.
. . . continued at LA Times op-ed page HERE or http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-wiener-emancipation-proclamation-20130102,0,5858934.story

December 26, 1862: thirty-eight Dakota Indians were hanged in Mankato, Minnesota, in the largest mass execution in US history–on orders of President Abraham Lincoln. Their crime: killing 490 white settlers, including women and children, in the Santee Sioux uprising the previous August.
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Lincoln’s treatment of defeated Indian rebels against the United States stood in sharp contrast to his treatment of Confederate rebels. . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE

Two films about American slavery in the Civil War era are currently playing in theaters.
Steven Spielberg’s film “Lincoln” begins with a black soldier reciting the Gettysburg Address.
Quentin Tarantino’s film “Django Unchained” begins with a black slave being recruited to kill two whites murderers. . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE

Jon Wiener: Your new book is not just a collection of verse from your Deadline Poet contributions to The Nation—it’s a 150-page narrative poem.
Calvin Trillin: Let’s not be afraid of the word “epic” here. It’s a long epic poem in iambic pentameter, interrupted at points by what we call “a pause for prose.” There’s a prose piece, for instance, that’s called “Callista Gingrich, Aware That Her Husband Has Cheated On and Then Left Two Wives Who Had Serious Illnesses, Tries Desperately to Make Light of a Bad Cough.” . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE

Oliver Sacks is the legendary neurologist and New Yorker essayist whose books include the classic The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. His new book is Hallucinations.
Jon Wiener: In your book Hallucinations you mention what you call your “long virginity” in experience with hallucinogenic drugs.
Oliver Sacks: I was afraid you’d get onto this. That was the last chapter I wrote, and I wasn’t sure whether it should be in the book or not. I think it probably should. I think I was afraid of hallucinogenic drugs. . .
. . . continued at the LA Review of Books, HERE.

Daniel Day Lewis deserves the Oscar for best actor for his wonderful portrayal of Lincoln in the new Steven Spielberg movie. But while the acting is great, there’s a problem with the film: it is dedicated to the proposition that Lincoln freed the slaves. Historians say that’s not quite right. The end of slavery did not come because Lincoln and the House of Representatives voted for the Thirteenth Amendment. . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE

If you thought Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States—a ten-part documentary series premiering November 12 on Showtime—would offer a series of conspiracy theories concerning the American past, you would be wrong. Despite Stone’s 1991 film JFK, there’s no JFK assassination conspiracy here—just a statement that the public found “unconvincing” the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. There’s no 9/11 conspiracy, and no allegations that Franklin Roosevelt schemed in secret to get the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor as a backdoor way to force the United States into World War II.  The series’ massive, 750-page companion volume, co-written with historian Peter Kuznick, also shuns conspiracy theories. . . .
. . . continued at The Nation HERE

An appeal to Republicans: don’t listen to the pundits who say the lesson of 2012 is that you should change course to appeal to women and minorities in order to win elections. You should stick to your principles—and with the the old white men who provided tens of millions of votes on Election Day.. . . .”
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE.

If  only white people had voted on Tuesday, Mitt Romney would have carried every state except for Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut and New Hampshire, according to the news media’s exit polls. Nationally, Romney won 59 percent of the white vote, a towering twenty-point margin over Obama.
. . . continued at TheNation.com, HERE