Behind the Scenes Minis: Questionable Jokes and Turkey

Published Nov 22, 2024, 2:00 PM

Holly notes the racist views of one of Charles Brown's biographers. Tracy and Holly also discuss presidential proclamations and the ways Thanksgiving has been framed as a feel-good story over the years. 

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V.

Wilson.

We talked about Charles Brown slash Artemis Ward this week. Yep. I also said that I would talk about don Ce Sites this week. You did say that it was his biographer. He wrote a biography of Ward in the I think it was nineteen nineteen. I just want to warn anybody because it's an interesting biography, but if you go to read it, the introduction has a lot of gross racist stuff in it, Yeah, which was definitely like part of the time, but this writer's gross racist stuff is worse than Ward's gross racist stuff.

Huh.

Like it's really like, uh, I don't even want to tell the stories involved because so yucky. But like it's one of those things where there's an instance where Charles Ward does something to kind of like show how stupid this black man he's talking to is, and then Sites makes a comment on the whole thing that.

Is very, very gross.

So just if you want to go read some of this stuff, please know it is laced throughout with things like that, and it's not cool. It is worth reading for the understanding of the situation, but obviously with the lac that you know, it is gross and it sometimes I mean I felt it was stomach journey. It was like, oh, even for the time, you are really just no, yeah, so brace yeah. Reading about some of his humor reminded me a little bit of the era of comedy that you and I lived through, but like our younger listeners may not personally remember, right where there was kind of a vibe of it being okay to be offensive as long as you were being offensive to everyone, right, and having like a weird edginess to all of the humor that was kind of like would include a lot of really racist and sexist jokes, but with such a broad spectrum of them that it was like, well, it's not that they're racist or sexist, it's that they are making fun of everyone.

Right.

I'm kind of glad that, not even kind of I've generally I'm generally glad that for the most part, at least the comedy I'm aware of has moved beyond that.

I mean, it still happened.

What's that thing where you know, I mean, I understand how somebody lands there and thinks that's okay, because I am definitely like, I don't I don't take anything too seriously myself, least of all. Right, But the problem is, even if you're making fun of everybody, some of those people are gonna be a punch down, and you are going to reinforce gross stuff that hurts those people, Whereas if you're punching up at people who have way more power and privilege than you with your jokes, they are going to be unharmed. Right, And that is why it is not okay to use the I mess with everybody like approach. There are still people learning that lesson or not learning it as ps maybe, but that's yeah, Artemis.

Ward, Yeah yuck.

Now there's also the part of me, right that is like, is this like a reverse uno that I'm just not fully grasping. Was he doing some of these things as this character who was obviously kind of a train wreck to point out that they were gross?

Oh yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, it's a little bit weird because everyone who knew him writes about how kind and gentle he was with everyone he encountered. But those are also people who also say gross racist things and may not recognize that he wasn't being kind and gentle, right, So it's a little bit tricky.

Yeah.

I don't really ever post on any social media anymore except for very occasionally Instagram. But one of the things that I got really tired of was the people who would say the thing quote ironically but like, really, you're just saying the same thing. Yeah, And so I kind of wonder if some of his humor fell into that. Yeah I'm being ironic, but really you're still just you're saying the same thing, right. That is that is the trick of ironic humor. You cannot you can't always count on your audience to get the joke.

Yeah, it's not amazing.

Yeah, yeah, Yeah, he's an interesting one. I like this idea that you can pinpoint a moment where kind of stand up comedy happened for the first time. I find it hilarious that there's an elementary school named after him. I'm like, but that's a weird. Yeah, it's a weird a weird name choice in my opinion at this time. I so, uh, there was an era. I mean, I'm sure this still happens at some points, but like, there there was kind of an era in writing when it was way more common to render thickly all the way through the writing someone's accent and dialect. Yeah, like Bram Stoker did this also in a lot of his work. I find it so exhausting to read works that are written like that, And somehow, by coincidence, I wound up with the two longest passages.

Of his writing. I did not do that on purpose. Yeah, I find it.

As someone who loves to read and has always been a really good reader, I find it tiring to try to get through it. It's tricky differently than when I am reading you know, historical documents that have non standard today spellings, or things that were printed at a time when they the long s's that looks like f's were in use. Like, that's a little bit different way of brain power needing to be put toward it than the invented spellings and phonetic renderings of things that are part of this.

Yeah.

Yeah, anyway, Charles Brown yep, which makes me go, are you the it's Charlie Brown named for you? I don't look it up.

I don't know, I don't know.

It is funny. The one thing that I find kind of hilarious is how he was kind of like the predecessor by minutes to Mark Twain. They definitely had similar style, So I don't know if that's just because they were dressing in the manner of the day, or if it's because Twain kind of modeled himself on Artemis Ward Charles Brown.

I don't know, yeah, but it's interesting.

Yeah. One of our episodes this week was about Franksgiving. O. Yes, it was Thanksgiving a week earlier. I have so many on this one. I have a lot of thoughts too. As I was doing research on this, I had a bunch of things bookmarked, and I I think I've said before, like I'll just I'll bookmark broadly and then.

I will go back to go through stuff.

And one of the things I had bookmarked as like a local news article that was kind of generally about this. But this article stated with lots of authority that Thanksgiving is always the last Thursday in November, and I was like, nah, that is not correct. Something I wanted to put in the episode and I just didn't feel like had a good place in the rhythm of how things were going is that in Oklahoma, there was some debate about which day the banks would be closed. The state was observing Thanksgiving on the thirtieth, but the bank holiday had already been established as a twenty third and Attorney General mac Williamson issued a legal opinion in this matter that had a little poem in it, And the poem went thirty dates half September, April, June, and November. All the rest have thirty one until we hear from Washington. What are some of your thoughts, Holly? While we were recording, I just scribbled on my notepad that I keep by my computer, sweet baby, Gredo Thanksgiving, get your act together. Here's my thing. Two things. One, how much like legislative time was wasted on like making the president proclaim it every time? Just a lot right, like well just said it and forget it. But I think But two, what it really really reminded me of as like it was getting into the nitty gritty of we're gonna change it to give more space. Everybody's freaking out, But we already printed the things, and we're already and we already had the thing, and we're doing it this way. We've always done it this way. Why do we want to change it? Reminded me of anybody that's worked in like a corporate setting or even a not corporate setting has had this moment where like there's some process or even lack of process that has been the standard mode of doing things that has problems. But even when somebody presents a solution that will require a little transition awkwardness, people are so mad about that part that they can't get past it and they fight fight. I mean, I've been on both sides of that equation where I'm like whoa, and also, come on, you guys, this is never going to get better if we don't have this two.

Weeks that stink.

Yeah, And that's what it made me think of, Like just if everybody could just chill out for like a minute, Yeah, we can make this decision. We know it's going to be awkward. I'm a big fan of the let's just celebrate it twice if you love the other one so much while we figure this out. But I did it made me think about that a lot. I was not really as focused on, like the time spent doing the proclamations, because presidents and governors issue a lot of proclamations about a lot of stuff, and so like that did not I didn't even really think about that as a factor in all of it. The amount of debating that could go into the passage of laws and like whether to ask the president to issue a proclamation that did crack me up a little bit. Also just I mean I said it in the episode, it was really not necessary to manufacture a connection to the like the the you know, sort of mythical first Thanksgiving, right, because the Thanksgiving holiday has always been about, uh, like the identity of the United States as a nation, you know, since there started to be national proclamations about it. Uh, and very very often connections uh to.

To wars, wars that.

The you know, the nation and the you know, the legislative branch and the executive branch believed were being undertaken for just reasons, right, And the idea that like Providence was smiling on our war effort because our war effort is good, like that underpinned so much of it, uh, Which that's a whole other can of worms. But like we uh, it's probably a little harder for a kindergartener to rap their head around then a feel good story about sitting down to a big dinner. But like those connections, there was plenty of other fuel for elementary school classes and whatever that did not involved having children make paper headdresses and wear them, for example. I know there are still schools that are doing that. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, I forgot. What is the thing that somebody coined that was about things will inevitably be compared to Hitler. There's some term that somebody coined on the internet, some law, somebody. I'm just gonna google it. This is Godwin's law, which is as online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches. One, of course, was not coined until apparently nineteen ninety according to this Google search that I've just done, so many decades after franksgiving discussion. But yeah, not a new phenomenon, No, not in the least.

Anyway.

I also marveled throughout, even though I have read some of these documents we referenced at, just how much the idea of a separation of church and state was such a fib.

Yeah, it is such a fib Yeah.

One of the things that I read about Washington's proclamations specifically was that like Washington's proclamations definitely draw on the idea of God and prayer, but without specifying any particular religion or denomination or sect within a religion, but still with the presumption that everyone has like a commonality to their religious belief that involves.

God in prayer. Right.

But yeah, the idea that the like that the first presidents or the so called founders were not really focused on God does not hold up in this episode.

Yeah.

Anyway, I hope if folks are preparing for their own Thanksgiving meal, I hope those preparations are going well, I know, and stuff can start really early with making sure you can find the right potatoes for your potato casserole.

Or whether they're going to be sold out.

Of Cranberry's at the grocery store, so you know, whatever you're working on with that in my and I hope it's all going really well. And if you are having a Thanksgiving holiday in a couple weeks or a week, I guess, you know, I hope that's going to be great as great as possible. If you want to send us a notes about this or any other podcast or history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app and wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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