Back To The Island: What Does It Take To Be An Other? And What Do You Get Back In Return?

 

 

At the end of ‘Every Man For Himself’ Ben has a conversation with Sawyer about a con he’s pulled on him. “The only way to earn a con man’s respect is to con him,” he tells the resident con. “And you’re good but we’re better.”

The thing is Ben doesn’t need to prove that to Sawyer or the audience because even by this point (early Season3) we already know that the one skills the Others have in spades is conning. Ethan managed to fool the survivors long enough to kidnap Claire and Goodwin did the same thing to the tail section survivors to grab the majority of them. They fooled the raft long enough to abduct Walt; they manipulated Michael long enough to take him prisoner to a village that convinced him that was where they all lived. We’ve only seen them in ragged clothes and covered in a dirt and when there at home, their clothes are clean and their hair is combed.

And that’s all before you consider ‘Henry Gale’ who Rousseau caught in a net and told Sayid that ‘he is One of Them’. ‘Henry’ claimed that he was from Minnesota and that he’s been stranded on this island for three weeks. He stuck to this story under torture, multiple interrogations and even after the real Henry was found in a grave near the ballon. He managed to manipulate Locke into thinking he was on his side; then when his story was revealed a fraud, he convinced him that the button he’d been pushing for weeks did nothing. (Something to be clear he knew very well was a lie.) The Others then convinced Michael to free him and when he reappeared he told Michael with great sincerity: “We’re the good guys.” And I’m not sure even then if he was convinced of that.

So yes the Others were masters of the con. But they had something else in common with Sawyer: all of them were also incredibly easy to con themselves. And as we found out, that was just as true of Ben himself.

A few episodes prior Jack asked Ben if they could leave why wouldn’t you go? In his fashion Ben turned the question on Jack: “Why wouldn’t we go?”  He didn’t try to make the same argument that he would with Locke later on, promising Jack a ride home if he helped him (which was just another con). Even then, he had a clearer picture of his adversary.

When Locke came to the barracks ostensibly to rescue Jack but really to blow up the submarine that was the sole way to get people to and from the island Ben changed his tactics. He explained to Locke that his people needed ‘the illusion that they could come and go as they pleased’ and that the sub maintained that illusion. Now he needed Locke to blow up the sub so that he could maintain his hold on power as leader of the Others which was already beginning to crumble and he thought Locke was that tool. What he didn’t know – but clearly suspected – was that Locke was special and a threat to his power.

Because on an island where no one got sick Ben had developed a fatal tumor on his spine, one that required him to kidnap Jack and force him to operate on. He also knew that Locke had been in a wheelchair for four years before getting on the place and was now walking around. Locke immediately called him on it, using it to challenge his authority. Ben asked him: “You’ve been on this island eighty days. I’ve lived on this island my whole life. What makes you think you know better than me?” And Locke momentarily checkmated him: “Because you’re in a wheelchair and I’m not.”

Much of the story of how Ben managed his rise to power on the island has never entirely been made clear, though we get a strong sense of it in Season 5. After being shot he was taken to the Others by Sawyer and asked if he could be healed. Richard said that there would be consequences among them: “He’ll always be one of us.” What that meant was never clear though viewers can interpret as they see fit.

What is clear is that this decision was made against the leadership of the Others at the time, Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore. When this was pointed out Richard said dismissively: “I don’t answer to them.” When Widmore came and was infuriated by this, Richard dismissed it with: “Jacob wanted it to happen.” There’s no evidence of this but as we’ve seen just the name of Jacob was enough to silence Charles’s objections though he clearly had them.

Over the next twenty years or so, Ben became a trusted member of the Others, orchestrating the Purge that led to the slaughter of the Dharma Initiative (whom he’d been a member of for years) challenging Widmore, usurping him as leader and eventually banishing him when he ‘broke the rules. (In this case, he left the island, had an affair with a woman who would give birth to Penny, which may explain in part why he was so cold to her in life.) And for the next decade he seemed to spend time recruiting people like Juliet to deal with fertility problem, raising Alex who he’d stolen from Rousseau as an infant, and decided to torture her boyfriend when he thought she would have sex and possibly get pregnant.

And while he claimed he would rule benevolently, his interactions with Juliet would seem to speak otherwise and the way so many of his people spoke of him either dismissively or in fear show a man who is ruling very much like a religious cult leader. And it seems very clear that all of that leadership was based on the fact that he spoke for Jacob, a lie that Richard was aware of but did nothing to contradict while he was in power. In this sense Ben was the best con man on the island and like Sawyer, he’d managed to con himself that he was special and important.

This became very clear in ‘The Man Behind The Curtain’, the first episode to be Ben-centric and one of the masterpieces of the series. In a classic scene Ben has just told Locke about Jacob for the first time, saying that he has the answers. Locke wants to be taken to him and Ben says it’s not that simple. John asks if Richard could take him and Ben makes it clear (lying) that he is the only person to talks to Jacob.

In one of the great lines in his magnificent tenure on Lost Terry O’Quinn says: “You know what I think, Ben? I think there is no Jacob. I believe your people are idiots if they think you take orders from someone else. You’re the man behind the curtain, the Wizard of Oz. And you’re a liar.” Ben managed to persuade him otherwise but Locke was dead on about that part, because when it came to Jacob Ben was nothing but a humbug. As we learned in the finale of Season 5 Ben had never met him, talked to him, or even knew where he really lived.

What we’ve learned long before this is that just the mention of Jacob has been enough to get all of his underlings to go on what amounts to suicide missions. In the leadup to the Season 3 finale, he convinced his team to move up their assault on the beach to abduct the pregnant women a day early ‘because Jacob wanted it.” In the season finale we learn that he has been lying about the Looking Glass station being flooded all this time and that he has sent two people there to operate it, lying and saying they were on assignment in Canada. He convinced them to do so based on the order. When asked why they never questioned Ben, one of them says: “The moment I start doing that, everything falls apart.” And if that doesn’t tell you how much the rank-and-file have been hanging on Ben’s vision nothing will – as well as the fact that Ben has just persuaded Mikhail to ‘clean up the mess he made’ based solely on the idea of Jacob. Mikhail does it “saying he is following orders” and he is willing to pay for it with his life.

There’s a part of me that’s always wonder what the sales pitch has been to be an Other. “Give up your family, your friends to come to an island in the Pacific. You’ll have to kill your own food, sleep on the ground and you can never see anyone you know and love ever again. You do this in the name of a magnificent man who has a higher purpose for this island and everything. You can never see him, but you must trust that you are doing his work.” Much of the debate of Lost is about science versus faith and its clear not only that the Others come down hard on the side of faith, to the point of being religious fanatics. That Juliet, the last recruit, never bought this dream shows that it has a limited appeal.

The question is therefore what does it take to be the leader of the Others? And based on the series, the answer isn’t flattering: you  have to be a sucker.

During ‘The Incident’ Ben is having a conversation with ‘Locke’ who’s just asked him to kill Jacob for him. Ben asks why ‘Locke’ wants him to do it. “Because this island gave you cancer. And then you saw your daughter killed in front of you. And in reward for your lifetime of service, you were banished. And you did all of this in the name of a man you never even met.”  Ben has spent his time on the island manipulating people by telling them what they want to hear. The tables are turned when he is told what his entire life on the island has led to.

And by this point, mostly during Season 5, we’ve come to realize everyone who’s led the Others has basically done variations on the same thing, over and over. Charles Widmore is hardly a sympathetic figure but his reward for nearly four decades of loyalty to the island  he’s already lost his son, his daughter has forsaken him and he’s never met his own grandson, all of which came after forced exile from the island. His predecessor, Eloise Hawking (who he had an affair with) served the island for at least twenty three years, left to give birth to her son who she knew that she was going to have spend all of his life pushing him in the direct of the island so that he could meet his destiny – which was going to be at her hands. And it’s pretty clear that John Locke was headed down this same road in the four and a half seasons he was on Lost. He knew better than anyone what a miraculous place the island, pledged his service to it at the cost of all friendship, killed two people, was indirectly responsible for countless more and by the time the Oceanic 6 left had isolated everyone on the island. Near the end of Lost, it’s cynically said: “He was stupid enough to think he was brought it for a reason…and pursued until it got him killed.” There’s a certain truth in that, particularly considering that he died alone in a filthy hotel room and the last words to go through his head were “I don’t understand.’

Some Others have a similar devotion. Dogen was met by Jacob not long after an accident left his son in a coma. Jacob said he would save his life but he had to go to the island to guard the Temple and could never see him again. (Critically, we never know if Jacob actually saved Dogen’s son.) Jacob shows up at Ilana’s bedside and tells her “he needs her to do something.” He gives her the name of the six remaining candidates and to protect them but doesn’t tell them what all of them look like – including Locke. Despite that she remains certain that Jacob knows what he was doing when he told her what to do next and believes it despite the evidence of her eyes. The moment she does her job, as Ben says almost dully, “the island was done with her.”

I once argued that Locke was the greatest example of blind faith, and it’s clear now that the Others all showed that similar level of blind devotion. In the penultimate episode of Lost ‘Locke’ addresses the Others and tells them that they’ve all been serving Jacob but for some reason none of them have met him. By making the argument in front of Richard, he does something that clearly no one on the island has ever done and it unsettles Richard immensely. At one point ‘Locke’ says bluntly ‘I’m beginning to think you just make up these rules’ and you honestly wonder about that.

Because in the final season we learn that Richard, for all his years of service to Jacob, has been as much in the dark as everybody. He has no idea about who the Candidates are and when he learns of Jacob’s death he becomes suicidal. When Jack asks him  why: “I’ve devoted my life – longer than you can possibly imagine – to a man who told me a plan, a plan that I was to play in a role in and that would one day be revealed. And now that man is dead. So why do I want to die? Because I just found out my life had no purpose.” Jacob seemed willing to go to his grave – and even beyond – without telling anyone what the grand plan of the island was. It’s kind of hard to believe that no one wanted to kill him before.

By the final season it becomes very clear that everything that has happened to this point is essentially moves in a great game. The Oceanics are pieces in the game but they spend basically the entire series never knowing the rules or even why they were chosen to play. The Others seem to have some understanding of the rules – or at least how the game works – but they’re not allowed to play the game and don’t seem to know who the playing pieces are. They seem to have immense trust that their roles are important, but in a way they don’t know what they are any more than the survivors of Oceanic 815. They’ve conned the Oceanics as to who they are, but they’ve done a far better job conning themselves about their own roles.

This will be made clear in the next piece in which I commemorate the 15^th anniversary of Ab Aeterno, the episode that told us the story of Richard Alpert – and really everything else we needed to know about the island.

Laura Faddah Just Joined Two Groups of Jeopardy Champions - And One Is Actually Worth Being Proud of

 

I suspect that Laura Faddah, the most recent player  to  qualify for the 2026 Jeopardy Tournament of Champions, is going to get a fair amount of tongue-wagging on the internet for a little while because of something that many scholars of the game would have cause to criticize her for. I won’t lie, up until recently, I would have been one of them.

However, there is always a good mixed with the bad so let’s deal with that first. After losing in tonight’s match Laura Faddah has become one of a select group of Jeopardy champions. She is only the eighth female contestant since the lifting of the 5 game rule in Season to win eight games and it is a fairly impressive rosters.

It includes Amy Schneider, the champion with 40 wins, 20 game winner Julia Collins, 15 game winner Adriana Havemeyer, Hannah Wilson who recently returned in this most recent Jeopardy Invitational Tournament and three female contestants from Alex Trebek’s final full season: Jennifer Quail, Mackenzie Jones and Karen Farrell. This is impressive company to be among.

Unfortunately one must now get to the dubious part of this list: in 8 games Laura won ‘only’ $92,599. Obviously that is by far the least amount won by any of the women I just mentioned before (the next lowest was Karen who won $159,603.) And sadly it’s even worse than that. She has now set a mark of the most games won by any player since the five game rule was eliminated who didn’t crack the $100,000 threshold. Megan Wachspress, who I’ve referred to quite a few times over the last two years, you’re off the hook.

If you’ve read some of my previous columns about some ‘lesser’ Jeopardy champions over the past couple of years you know that I have been frequently, often ridiculously harsh on their performances. I have tried to do so from the position of being scholarly but sometimes even through the lens of objectivity, it still comes across as cold. But there are extenuating circumstances, particularly this season, and I want to be fair to Laura. So I’ll try to deal with the good and the bad.

First eight wins for any Jeopardy player is nothing to sneeze at, even in the age of the super-champion. We have been spoiled by having eight different players make it into double digits from the summer of 2021 until May of 2024 so more recent fans may have expected more.

But it’s a hard number to reach. After David Madden won 19 games  during Season 20 and 21 it took nine years for the next player to reach double digits: Arthur Chu with 11. During that nearly nine year period, only four players won 8 games or more: Tom Kavanaugh during Season 22,  Dan Pawson who won 9 games in Season 24, Tom Nissley who won 8 games in season 26 and Jason Keller who won 9 games in Season 28. It’s more games then Roger Craig, Alex Jacob or Sam Kavanaugh won and they all went on to win the Tournament of Champions. Eight games is hardly nothing.

And as I wrote in an article not long before the end of last year, the questions in Final Jeopardy and indeed much of Season 41 have been ridiculously difficult. It has been tough under those circumstances for so many superb players to win more than five. Indeed Laura is the first player so far in Season 41 to win more than five games. That’s impressive given the circumstances.

Laura had four runaway victories during her run and managed to come from behind on three separate occasions. In her fourth game she was in a distant third going into Final Jeopardy of her fourth appearance and only because she got Final Jeopardy correct did she manage to win when her opponents blundered. She was great when she needed to be.

But that being said she’s also been incredibly lucky. In her third appearance one of her opponents gave six incorrect responses in Double Jeopardy to finish at negative 2000 before time ran out. In what was her fifth win, one of her opponents was at -$1200 at the end of Double Jeopardy and had to climb out of a deep hole. In her seventh game she gave 18 correct responses and five incorrect ones and each of her opponents did even worse. Hell, in Friday’s game one of her challengers was at -$6000 halfway through Double Jeopardy and somehow managed to climb out of that hole to be on at $800 when the end of round buzzer rang. And Laura’s track record on Final Jeopardy has been pretty weak, she only managed to get three correct responses in the nine games she played. In her eight wins her opponents combined for a grand total of three and two of them were in the same game she got a correct one. All Jeopardy champions need a certain amount of luck to do well but Laura’s needed more than a lot in a very long time.

In the grand scheme of things Laura’s fortune during her run is meaningless, particularly when it comes down to the Tournament of Champions next year. And it is very early in the process: last year’s postseason has just ended. We’ll just have to see how it holds up.

For those of you who will need to keep track at this point Laura is just the second player who has been guaranteed a spot in the Tournament of Champions. The first is Ashley Chan who won $67,400 in four games. And we also have one potential three game winner: Bill McKinney, who managed to win $46,800 before Ashley Chan unseated him. It’s a low bar for a three game winner but not that low: Neilesh Vinjamuri managed to win $53,099 and we all saw how well that worked out for him.

When the next qualifier for the Tournament of Champions arrives you’ll hear from me again. Just remember Laura has won more games than any player so far in Season 41 and the third most amount of money next to Greg Jolin and Mark Fitzpatrick. She may be a lesser Jeopardy great but she’s still the best this season in most of the ways that count.

Criticizing Criticism: I Found Somebody Phil Mushnick Might Respect - And That Person Would Definitely Not Like Him

 

Every so often when I’m perusing the sports pages of the New York Post – which despite being Rupert Murdoch’s paper has a fairly balanced and even liberal sports section – I find myself being drawn, much against my will to see the columns of Phil Mushnick. A man who answers the question: What if the KKK met a man whose views were so extreme that they decided to have him to the sports page of their newsletter because that’s where they thought he could do the least damage to their image?

Anyone who has had the misfortune of reading Mushnick’s ‘opinions’ knows what I’m talking about: this is a man whose mindset is so racist, misogynistic and homophobic – as well as hostile to all people in sports, present and past – that any time you look at what barely fits the dictionary definition of writing you are always left with questions. Why does a man who clearly hates sports devoted his life writing about it? Who is his intended readership? Even by the standard of those who subscribe to the Post would probably consider his writing extreme. How does he still have a column after he keeps writing out and out hate speech in his columns and isn’t even subtle about it? All of these are important questions, but one that might seem unimportant to most people has always been key in his mind: is there anybody – not just in sports but real a human being in history – that Mushnick has a positive opinion of?

Looking at Sunday’s verbal diarrhea – I’m sorry his Sunday column – I may have gotten an answer that gives some insight into who Mushnick admires. And perhaps by extension the kind of era he would be comfortable in.

In another of his derogatory columns he referred to a broadcaster as thinking he was a wit. It doesn’t matter who Mushnick has never liked anybody who works as a broadcaster; I’m pretty sure he thinks that broadcasting games in any form perverts it. What matters is who he compared him to: Will Rogers.

Will Rogers for those of you who don’t know was one of the first great humorists and performers. He worked in vaudeville, wrote humorist pieces about America, including politics, music and even sports. His most famous line was ‘I never met a man I didn’t like” which is the complete opposite of Mushnick’s mindset. He tragically died in a plane crash in 1934, well before Mushnick was born.

Now Mushnick could have picked any white, male comic from the past, many of whom were known for more anachronistic and even sexist humor that matches Mushnick’s writing. He could have chosen Jackie Mason, Rodney Dangerfield, Jackie Gleason or Jack Benny. He could have chosen a comedian who started his career the same time as Rogers and had a far more lasting impact, from the Marx Brothers to Bob Hope or George Burns. And I’m pretty sure, given everything I’ve read about Mushnick, that he knows nothing about Rogers aside from the fact he was once considered the idea of a wit and certainly has never read any of his writing.

So why did he choose Rogers? This could be speculation but given everything I’ve read by Mushnick over the years (which is far more than a human should have to) I think he chose a man who was a famous primarily in the 1920s because in his opinion that was the best time to be alive.

Because considering the sexist, bigoted, moralizing that infests every sentence and word he’s ever written, that is the era he would be the most comfortable in. Because back then white men had all the power and influence. No one questioned issues like consent and many argued whether women should be entitled to vote. Gay people didn’t exist. If a black men said or did anything to do you could shoot him in broad daylight and the surviving family would apologize for inconveniencing you. And most importantly all of the things that Mushnick can only imply in his columns could not only be printed he could say them in public and be applauded.

More importantly in an era before television, radio, and even film newspaper writers had an influence that Mushnick could only dream of today. And it’s worth noting during the 1920s sports-writing was at its pinnacle when it came to celebrities. Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon were among the most prominent sportswriters of the era and they’d become famous for their fiction years later. Grantland Rice, Fred Lieb and Shirley Povich would cover sports for decades. Hell Ford Frick would go from writing to league president and Commissioner of Baseball! Talk about influence.

That’s the era Mushnick thinks he would be the most comfortable in; that’s the period he thinks all sports should be like, you know, before integration and women’s rights and players wanting to be paid what they are worth ruined sports forever. This isn’t the subtext of Mushnick’s writing; it’s essentially text.

There’s just a couple of problems with that. Obviously there’s the fact that all of the men I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago were some of the best sportswriters in history and Mushnick to put it mildly is barely even a writer. But more importantly the kind of tone Mushnick has in his columns is not the kind that would be appreciated by sportswriters of that era. Because they spent their time writing about the feats of the athletes on the playing field as anyone who’s read Mushnick works knows, he thinks the main thing wrong with professional sports is sports.

Mushnick is the opposite of Rogers in that he never met a man he liked. And indeed his column today leads off with a criticism of Lebron James who this week became the first player to score 50,000 points. Mushnick doesn’t mention that in his article because it’s not important to him. He spends several paragraphs arguing about James’ ‘unprofessional conduct in the arena’ which basically meant him behaving unpleasantly to Stephen Smith. He hates Stephen A. Smith too  - and yes both men are African-American -  so the only reason he’s writing this article is that James doesn’t meet his standard for a great athlete. What that standard is I have no idea: Mushnick has spent his entire career degrading Jeter, Reggie Jackson and Mickey Mantle and he used Rickey Henderson’s passing last year as an occasion to say he was not the best baserunner in history.

So it’s easy for me to see him existing in the 1920s and turning his eye on the greatest athlete during that era – one who may have been the most best loved baseball player and who was synonymous with baseball for a quarter of a century -  and saying with a straight face that Babe Ruth was an absolute disgrace to baseball and he should be banned for life.

Now even people who know nothing about baseball know that Babe Ruth in addition to everything else about him know that his incredible feats on the field are more remarkable considering what he was doing off it: mainly eating as much as he could, drinking as much as he could, and sleeping with every possible women he met. This was public knowledge to every sportswriter in America but no one wrote about because Ruth was just too popular so they looked the other way.

If Mushnick was covering the Yankees during that same period, he would no doubt have a private scorecard keeping track of the number of brothels Ruth visited across the country. I could see him posting his own ‘scorecard’ “Babe Ruth is on the verge of breaking his own record of most prostitutes seen in a single season.” He would say that Ruth was making a mockery of everything that was good about the National Pastime, not just with his horrible moral standards but the way he had debased what was a simple, scientific game. He would say that the Yankees incredible box office and remarkable run in the postseason were no excuse for the stain he brought on the game every time he walked on the field and the fact that he was a hero to millions showed just how far the nation had fallen.

There might be some sympathy for his argument on science from his fellow scribes –  Lardner himself thought it was a drawback – but everyone else in the nation would consider him a killjoy. That would not bother Mushnick one bit and I could see him using his column to argue that the new Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis was derelict in his duty to protect the integrity of baseball by letting this, this overweight, drinking, ex-pitcher disgrace the game. And I suspect knowing Mushnick he would go further, saying that there is an agreement that men like Ruth should be allowed to play the game at all.

For there was always question by some that Ruth had mixed blood in his background, and that he might have some African-American ancestry. Ruth was sensitive to this fact, something that Ty Cobb went out of his way to call him at every opportunity. (I have no doubt that Mushnick would call Cobb the true bastion of everything baseball stands for – especially his very visible racism and how he expressed it at times.) Mushnick has never been subtle in his racism today and with fewer filters I suspect he would state it directly. Hell, he’d probably make it his life’s mission to prove that the get Ruth banned.

This is speculation but it’s not idle: anyone who’s read even one of Mushnick’s columns (and again, don’t seek them out if you haven’t) know that the only joy he has in life is shitting on anyone that people like. This is the opposite of what all sports-writing has been like not just in the 1920s but really every other sports columnist I’ve ever read. Mushnick is reviled by just about everyone who works in sports in some fashion, a reputation I’m sure he’s proud of.

So it might come as shock to Mushnick to know that if he wrote the kinds of columns he did, even in the 1920s, he would have considered a pariah by everyone sportswriter. I can just imagine them all leaving the press box whenever he showed up, walking away from him as if he were Typhoid Mary. None of them would share a drink with him, none would talk to him. And in an era where the only way to get stories was to try and talk to players, none of them would give him the time of day. Even in an era which was more politically conservative then any time in history (and this was true of both political parties) his views would be considered out of touch because he did so in a public forum. There are codes to how journalism worked back then and it’s hard to imagine Mushnick could have lasted.

The other line Rogers was famous for saying was: “All I know is what I read in the papers.” I know he would need to read only a few lines of Mushnick today to know the kind of man he is and would be offended to see Mushnick use his name as the pinnacle of wit. And I suspect if Rogers met him he would just say: “I don’t like you.” And Mushnick, because he’s Mushnick, would call him a hick and a hayseed. That’s the kind of man Rogers’ was and the kind of man Mushnick is proud to be.

 

Tonight I Want to Talk About John Oliver, Part 2: How He Kept His Job As All Around Him Daily Show Alum Were Losing Theirs - And How His True Beliefs Only Emerged During Biden's Administration

 

 

Of all the decisions the Democratic Party made in the aftermath of the 2016 election, one of the most illogical was their apparent decision to increasingly use Hollywood as part of ‘the resistance’.

This was a foolish decision more multiple reasons on the parts of the Democrats. During the 21^st century the right had managed to brand them as out-of-touch liberals run by the coastal elites a weapon that had constantly cost Democrats elections they should have won. To more or less double down on this was not going to help them win back the white working class voter that was increasingly going Republican. More to the point Hollywood, including the new breed of late night hosts, had almost non-stop been anti-Trump for more than a year – and Trump had won.

For Hollywood as well as late night, the results of the elections should have given them cause to look in the mirror about how realistically they could change the minds of the electorate considering how spectacularly they had failed. They had already isolated nearly half of America during 2016 and it had not resulted in Hilary Clinton becoming President. And considering that by 2016 the economic shakiness across the industry was starting to be felt in network television and cable, the idea of continuing to go harshly against the Republicans and Trump in the aftermath could only hurt their ratings and the economic health of the industry.

And yet Hollywood decided not to regroup but almost entirely to double down on the anti-Trump rhetoric in the aftermath of the election. The reasons would seem to be based in the combination of Trump derangement syndrome and the left’s unwillingness to accept a reality that doesn’t fit their world view. There was no attempt from any part of the industry, certainly not late night, to try and understand the electorate. After all, they were all set in LA and New York and the elitist strain has always been strongest there. And to many it confirmed deeply held beliefs, far more prominent among the left then the right, of the inferiority of the American people intellectually. The electorate was brainwashing by Fox News, they hadn’t gone to the right schools, they lived in flyover country. They weren’t real Americans.

During the era of Trump many new late night shows debuted on cable and streaming led by former Daily Show alum: Larry Wilmore, Wyatt Cenac, Samantha Bee and Jordan Klepper would all host shows during this period. Very few lasted very long. Their defenders will argue it because of the racist and sexist nature of American institutions, late night being one of them. They will also argue that the election of Donald Trump killed off much of the demand for either liberal humor or made satire impossible.

But having watched quite a bit of all these shows I’d argue there’s a far more viable counterargument. Though all of them had worked for Jon Stewart for an extended period, all of them seemed to have forgotten why his tenure of The Daily Show had been both a critical and ratings success: he never took sides. He attacked the Democrats as often as he did the Republicans, he went after the failures of both MSNBC and Fox News, and while he no doubt had many reasons to be angry during that period, he rarely let it show in his broadcasts. He always went out of his way to use a light touch and he knew his first job was to be a comedian.

The same can’t be said of Problem Areas , Full Frontal or Jordan Klepper’s attempt to satirize Alex Jones. None of these hosts were interested in trying to win over the masses, being funny, or even being entertaining. What they were interesting in was essentially using their shows to express grievances and vent their rage in the guise of entertainment. It’s not like there wasn’t merit to exploring the failures of policing in America as Wyatt Cenac did or for Samantha Bee to argue about the misogynistic behavior of so many Republicans. But none of them were making a real effort to try and be entertaining – or more importantly, try to make their programs acceptable to people who weren’t already open to their way of thinking in the first place. Their shows were there to preach to the converted and as has been historical true, that’s always a smaller audience than the left wants to admit. Cable was brave to give them these chances but they went out of their way to avoid being accepted by the masses. Hollywood is a business and they failed at it.

John Oliver managed to keep Last Week Tonight going during this period, paradoxically, because his was perhaps the only late night comedy show where Trump wasn’t ever present during his first term. He dealt with him in the openings of every episode, and when it came to certain aspects of domestic and foreign policy he was prominent but by and large Trump was only a bit player between 2017 and even up to the final months of 2020.

Oliver spent much of this time dealing with foreign policy and corporations then the administration. He talked about the fallout from Brexit, the possibility of a right wing take over in France, the lead up to an Modhi’s second election in India. He talked about the elections across South America and Mexico. He talked about the opioid crisis and the evil of Richard Sackler. He talked about the coal mining industry and he talked about lawsuits. Part of the reason Last Week Tonight was perhaps the only late night show I watched consistently during that period was because unlike every other late night show, I never knew what I was going to see.

To be sure Oliver did bring up some of the leftist things involving social injustice during this same period. He talked about mass incarceration, police shootings, and the failures of the criminal justice. He talked about critical race theory, what it was and what it wasn’t. He talked about abortion and birth control. He talked about the filibuster and the electoral college. But because most of them were subjects late night and even reporting dealing with and because he made it entertaining, it was very hard to say that he was floating a liberal agenda.

During the year of COVID he spent much of 2020 and 2021 in a void, which eventually developed a personality and talked to him. Nevertheless he basically remained aloof from the election for much of 2020. To be sure he did lean into discussion of the electoral college even harder then, warned of Trump’s second term, and said election night might not be fun. (Understatement.) But even then it was hard to argue he was more left-wing then his colleagues.

The problem with John Oliver began when Biden was elected. And it should be noted it was a different kind of crisis then other late night hosts faced. In hindsight November of 2020 may be viewed as the last chance late night comedy had to save itself. By that point, audiences across the board on network had shrunk dramatically and the pandemic had shut down Hollywood and further damaged revenues. Furthermore it was the pattern of all late night, once a new President was back in office, to devote all of your energy to mock that President and whatever party was in power. The smart thing would have been to do just that.

Not a single late night show chose to follow that path. They had treated the Democrats fairly lightly during Trump’s term, during Biden’s administration they allowed him to escape untouched. The Republicans were always going to be the villains no matter how incompetent or how plagued by internecine warfare they were, no matter how inadequate they were at passing legislation. The Republicans were the enemies, little more than human. And if that met half the country chose not to watch any of their shows, if that meant their industry suffered as a result, so be it. Late Night had embraced part of the leftist doctrine where morality is the only goal. All Republicans were evil and they didn’t even deserve to be entertained.

Last Week Tonight took a different path – and it was here that Oliver real politics came into play. Oliver had always been uneasy with the alliance with the Democrats unlike the rest of late night  but his mindset was no doubt closer to the Democrats with the left. They needed to get rid of the greater evil and that meant disposing of Trump. The problem was that the left’s allegiance to Joe Biden more or less ended the day he became President and they started sounded the argument there was no difference between the two parties. This would be seen in many academic journals – and prominently on Last Week Tonight.

In the midst of 2021, America completed its pull out of Afghanistan where they had been inured for a20 year quagmire. By this point public support for our presence there was non-existent, and people had been wondering for multiple administrations why we couldn’t just leave.

Oliver seemed to be the only prominent voice arguing that America’s decision to withdraw was a mistake for humanitarian reasons. He excoriated Biden for not having any empathy for the Afghani people and gave no mention to the tens of thousands of American lives who had been lost in this war. It was the first time in my memory that I realized how far outside the mainstream Oliver’s beliefs could be. It was far from the last.

During the next year and a half after John Oliver returned to his studio, he continued to excoriate every part of the institutional world. And it was here that his unpleasantness, prominent in leftists, became obvious. When Queen Elizabeth died, he showed footage of Irish footballers chanting ‘Lizzy’s in a box’ exuberantly and was clearly chuckling when he came back. This followed a series of lectures on both Charles and the monarchy, much of which was valid but much of which followed the leftist dogma towards colonialism over all. There had been signs over the years that Oliver had the leftist version of blaming the West for not having the far left values of today, it became infinitely more obvious when Trump was gone.

Increasingly he began to argue about the failings of America, including student loans, the failings of the health care system and the government safety net. He’d done programs like this during Trump’s term but now that Biden was in office he seemed more determined to argue that correcting these evils was something that Biden had a moral obligation to do. He had, it must be remembered, previously done many shows about both the filibuster and the evil of the executive branch when Trump was in office as an abuse of power. Now he seemed to be arguing for Biden to use those same powers for the progressive agenda – and seemed to ignore the obvious contradiction.

Perhaps the strangest show Oliver ever devoted Last Week Tonight to was Law & Order. In previous years he’d actually used regulars from Law & Order in many of his comedy sketches to point out the flaws in policing. Now he spent an entire episode excoriating many of the cast members and the series that they worked on for presenting a false picture of what the criminal justice system was like. He also argued that whatever good things the cast members had done as a result of Law & Order were tainted by the fact that they working for a show that painted this false picture. Oliver went out of his way multiple times to argue that Law & Order was a drama and not supposed to be a documentary

I’ve spent the last two years wondering why, with all the problems the world was facing in 2022, why did Oliver devote an entire show to a fictional program, and couldn’t even explain why he was attacking it with the same harshness he did the actual criminal justice system? Only recently have I come up with some theories, all of which point to Oliver’s politics.

The first: purity Hollywood is known for being the most leftist organization in the country and in the Trump administration, almost every aspect of entertainment would lean into the credentials. There has always been a group that argues that no institution can ever be purely leftist – the word ‘neoliberal’ was coined for this purpose. Oliver wanted to make clear to his audience that he was had the pure leftist credentials even though he was part of Hollywood.

The second: pedantry. Law & Order has throughout its run made plotlines that have to deal with many of the progressive ideals that Oliver has spent his career advocating for and that powerful white men are responsible for it. And because it’s a procedural it can end its show arguing that justice can prevail against the rich and powerful, even if the audience knows in its heart the system doesn’t work that way. Oliver, who wants to be a truth teller, hates even the illusion that these things can work out even in fiction. Like many leftists, he likes his audience in sackcloth in ashes – which is not the best look for an entertainer.

The third: jealousy. Law and Order has always been watched by millions of people and is a cultural phenomena to this day. It will no doubt last forever. John Oliver knows that a comedian’s life has an expiration date and that is true of all entertainers. This may be a perverse form of wish fulfillment.

And I think now, it’s worth asking a valid question. What makes Last Week Tonight different from the shows of Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow? There are no interviews, just a lot of stock footage which is framed to form a narrative that Oliver wants his viewers to see. He himself has joked about how depressing his show can be and how much of is a lecture. Because he’s an entertainer, he doesn’t have to bother with alternate points of view or the illusion of fairness. There are times he will say things with legal consequences “Now I have to tell you” he says every time someone gives a counterpoint, but he makes it very clear to his audience that he thinks that his targets are lying and that he is the truthteller. He knows his audience as well as anyone on cable news – and just as conservative media, he is a white man.

There have been constant arguments on the left as to why there is a progressive equivalent of Fox News out there to ‘counteract the brainwashing of the right’. I would argue Oliver has been, certainly for the last five years, as close to that equivalent. He certainly has all the trademarks of the progressive as I know him: academic, strident in his lectures, arguing for a progressive world view, hating conservatives with a passion – and most critically, not thinking the Democrats party is a solution but rather part of the problem. There’s a contingency in British politics referred to as ‘The Loony Left’ and Oliver pretty much checks all the boxes for it.

So what’s the difference? Last Week Tonight doesn’t have anywhere near the audience of either Fox News or Newsmax. It’s audience is like most of late night, mostly the educated, primarily college age people – in other words, they are already inclined to agree with what Oliver is telling them. This is hardly MAGA country and its unlikely to involve swing voters.

This would be fine if John Oliver were satisfied in his role as an entertainer. But in the leadup to the 2024 election it became very clear that he, like so many people in late night, began to think his audience was America and that he had the power, like so many on the new left want, to change the electorate.

In the next article in this series I will deal with Last Week Tonight in the leadup to the 2024 election and how it showed that like almost everyone else in Hollywood and the left, John Oliver hadn’t learned a thing about the electorate during that period.

Homicide Rewatch: Nearer By God To Thee

 

Written by Jorge Zamacona; story by Tom Fontana & Jorge Zamacona

Directed by Tim Hunter

 

Aside from having arguably one of the most prescient teasers in the history of television (see Detective Munch) one can see Fontana poking fun at some of the changes that NBC has been forcing on Homicide after it has been renewed. This is something of a running joke with Fontana who did it with great humor and eland in his previous series St. Elsewhere and would manage to find ways to do it in his next series OZ.

Here are Bolander, Lewis and Munch watching the sexy scenes of a soap (NBC’s Another World) and Bolander grouses about why there’s so much sex on TV. Lewis, Munch and Stan engage in a conversation about whether television puts in gratuitous sex and or gratuitous nudity, a jab not only at the executives demands from them but the popularity of NYPD Blue for said gratuitous nudity. Then the episodes spends the entire show winking at that idea with its murder: Katherine Goodrich is found naked behind a church with only white, cotton gloves on, so naturally the first assumption is that this is a sex crime. Bayliss tries to raise the question with Goodrich’s former boss – who happens to be a nun – stumbles around the idea of Katherine’s sex life and is shocked when the sister says: “I think her life would have been better with more sex.” Then comes the big reveal at the end of the episode: Goodrich was not raped or violated in any form, reversing all the thinking they’ve had about the murder so far.

Then there’s the fact that Felton’s marriage, which has been a mess ever since we were introduced to him, has essentially fallen apart. We learn that Beau and Beth tried to recreate their first date, which included going to a motel room. (“She couldn’t resist me,” Beau points out. ) Felton then says that at the moment of truth, Howard beeped him, which apparently was the most recent spark that led to it falling apart. We finally meet Beth (played brilliantly by Mary B. Ward) in the final act and what happens involves the definition of her sending her husband mixed signals. We also know Felton is in the middle of having an affair – “My dad always said don’t jump ship without a life raft” – and who should it be but the brand new lead character, introduced based on the network’s demand for more women.

Nor is the only way the series is poking fun at itself. When Pembleton and Bolander are called in on the red ball, they comment on having to deal with the new shift and trying to deal with the fact that there’s someone else where they used to be. Perhaps this is a jab at the multiple times Homicide has had to switch time slots.

But all of this is lightness meant to cover a very dark subject as is Homicide’s stock in trade. Perhaps this was how Fontana decided to tweak the network heads demands for more sex, more life-affirming stories. He and Zamacona decide to take what will be the first multi-part story Homicide has ever done and deal with some very bleak and divisive subjects. The most significant turns out to be religion which network television went out of its way to avoid in 1994 and even now TV has a very mixed track record with. And rather than back away Fontana chooses to put it at the center of one of his leads, part of the process that officially makes Frank Pembleton the star of Homicide and Andre Braugher the great actor he is.

Goodrich is prominent because the previous week she was named Samaritan of the Year, for doing good work. It’s telling that Giardello views this initially with cynicism (“I read about it in my diary,” he tells Granger) and that she’s now become more important to the city now that she’s been killed. One wonders if Fontana and Zamacona are making a bigger comment on that old statement: “Where they have respect for the dead but none for the living.” It’s certainly true of the police department and indeed much of the city officials: they care far more about Goodrich now that she’s been horribly murdered then at any point when she was alive – and even that’s from what it will look like if they don’t solve the murder.

There’s nothing groundbreaking about this; it’s a message that Homicide’s made clear countless times before even at this point in its run. It’s the only way the detectives can function. And much of the three-parter is about trying to find the killer. But Homicide has always been less the kind of show that is about the puzzle as to how it reflects on the detectives. Which is why the key interactions very quickly become those between Pembleton and Sister Magdalena Weber, played by Pamela Payton-Wright.

There’s only a brief exchange between the two of them in this episode, at the morgue. Magdalena has come to identify the body but she tells Bayliss that it’s not Katherine. Bayliss thinks that it involves mistaken identity. Pembleton knows what it means: “The light is gone.” Magdalena says: “You were raised by the Jesuits.” Not long after that comes the exchange about Katherine’s promiscuity – and more importantly, that she never wore white cotton gloves. It’s clear that this is a mark of the killer.

Weber leaves to watch last rites be performed. Bayliss, usually the more sensitive is cynical about the presence of God. “Where was he for Katherine Goodrich…or Adena Watson?” Pembleton says that God exists because the murder is an example of evil. Bayliss argues about death. “Death is but a waystation towards heaven,” Pembleton says. “Something not to be feared.” Bayliss responds: “Well, that’s an answer. Do you believe it?”  “I wear a bulletproof vest, don’t I?” Pembleton acknowledges.

Pembleton is convinced this is a crime of perversion and the fact that she was dumped behind a church is clearly some kind of religious symbol. During the conversation Bayliss asks Pembleton was kind of Catholic he is. Pembleton says there are two kinds of Catholic “Devout and fallen. I fell.” He doesn’t elaborate, not yet, but it’s clear more is coming.

It’s not yet clear in the season premiere if the writers are willing to go all-in on Pembleton as star. This episode has a bigger job to do and that’s to introduce it’s new character: Megan Russert. Russert is the new shift commander, here to replace Jim Scinta who retired back in Season 1. She’s been on the job a week and the bosses send Gee to check up on her because she’s ‘inexperienced’. Gee knows better. Fontana makes it very blunt that everyone thinks the only way a woman could have made it to a position like this is because she slept her way to the top. This is stated directly by some of her own detectives, and the fact that they are more than willing to do it in front of Howard shows that they are immune to their own sexism. Howard sticks up for Russert, boasting her accomplishments, and its clear she admires Russert for what she’s done.  That respect, we will quickly see, is not reciprocated.

Russert will be considered by the devoted fans of Homicide as an ‘ill-conceived character’. Reading one of the more prominent books on the subject at the time, it’s clear to be how sexist that writing was. How could a woman rise to the top of her profession in Baltimore and not be a day over thirty five? That the writer is engaged in the same kind of sexism of the characters on the show very much shows their own blindness. Those are not the only ‘flaws’ they find in Russert, and some of them I’ll get to in just a few episodes.

The bigger problem with Russert is one the show would have repeatedly: how do you put a regular who isn’t a member of the squad in the action all the time? These flaws would become far more obvious by the time the third season is little more than half over. But neither is apparent in this episode. Indeed, throughout Hoffman’s steady, layered portrayal shows the kind of leader the Baltimore PD has in Giardello and indeed could use more often. We also see that there’s a distinct style.

Throughout the episode Roger Gaffney (Walt McPherson) and Pembleton are sniping at each other. Pembleton thinks Roger is dumb and Gaffney has been chafing at Frank’s second-guessing him all the time. All of this is par for the course but it takes on a separate context when Gaffney snaps: “Are you trying to tell me to how to do my job, boy?”

The scene that follows is one of the classics in the series. Without a word Frank begins to take off his coat and Gaffney starts to egg him on. Russert steps in to defuse the situation, and Pembleton demands an apology. Gaffney says: “Eat it” and Frank explodes. The two of them are tussling when Russert grabs Pembleton’s gun and offers it to Frank, then Roger. She tells them that if that’s what it’ll take go ahead and then the rest of us will get back to work. Silently Pembleton looks at Russert, takes his gun and puts it back in his holster. It’s not the kind of thing Gee would do but it’s just as effective.

And as this is unfolding the personal parts of Homicide begin to unfold: one of them in a storyline that will effectively take over much of Season 3; the other one that becomes an integral part of Homicide from now until the end of the series. The first is the apparent dissolution of Felton’s marriage. He was thrown out of the house a week ago, and Howard is only finding this out now. Beth Felton has been calling Kay non-stop demanding to know where her husband is. Beau seems to have realized his marriage is over – he left the house because he didn’t want his three kids see them fighting. Beth has been refusing to let him see them.

It's here we get our first glimpse of Beth when Beau comes back home to get his suit. Beth has had it dry-cleaned, apparently so she could cut it to ribbons when he shows up. Then after doing so, she begins to strip saying: “The shrink says I’ve begun to hate you.” Just as Beau comes near her she tells him to leave: “I’m going to take a nap.” Not long after that she continues to harass Howard and we hear Kay try to convince Beth that maybe should say she’s sorry for what she’s done. And Beth makes it very clear she’s not sorry. At this point it seems clear that Beth is at the very least erratic and possibly disturbed. Beau will spend much of the season worried about his kids and given Beth’s behavior, its hard to blame him.

The other story is that Munch and Lewis are in discussion to buy a bar: the Waterfront. They’re trying to get the previous owner to go down on prize because if she doesn’t they’ll need to get another partner and they don’t want that. Munch goes to see Bolander about it (naturally) and Bolander allows himself to be wooed for a free breakfast before he drops the hammer on John. “You ever see me go to Pimlico? You ever see me drop $2 in the World Series pool? So what makes you think I’d risk my pension on a bar with you?” Apart from everything else, Bolander probably doesn’t want to spent any more time with his partner off work then he does at work.

Bayliss ends up becoming the third man almost by accident. He hears the two of them talking and shut up, assumes they’re talking about him, even after they tell the truth and then decides to become a ‘silent partner’. This is done more for comedy then anything else; Bayliss is going to be anything but silent going forward.

In a sense it might seem like Nearer is ending by giving into pressure as the final moment shows Felton showing up at Russert’s doorstep and the two of them sinking into a passionate kiss. But in reality there’s not much difference between the opening of Season 3 and the Adena Watson murder. We’ve spent a lot of time investigating but no progress has been made, the press is starting to close in, the bosses are angry, and the episode ends with the detectives back at square one. Some of the pieces have changed but Homicide is still the same show.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

Detective Munch: Munch tells Bolander and Lewis that someday soon “there’ll be 500 channels. Not just sports and the weather channel, but the ballet channel, the dog food channel. We won’t leave the house any more. We’ll communicate through email and QVC and virtual reality. All without having to leave your Sealy posture-pedic.”  He didn’t mention streaming but that’s a pretty good picture of entertainment today. And Bolander says: “I wish they’d bring back Hawaii Five-O.” Which they did twenty years later. He was also accurate about high definition television and the decline of books and newspapers.

First Appearance: Walt McPherson as Roger Gaffney. Technically McPherson appeared a couple of times in Season 1 as a uniform but Fontana made it very clear later on that the two characters were not the same. Is a coincidence that the man who will become the major antagonist for all the detectives has a name very similar to ‘gadfly’? Hmmm…

Hey, Isn’t That… Tony Todd had already appeared in his most famous role as Candyman when he guest starred as the very different and dapper Matt Rhodes on Homicide. Prior to that, he was best known for smaller roles in films such as Bird, Lean On Me and The Crow. Not long after this episode aired he would appear as Augustus Cole on The X-Files. He would also play the title character in Black Fox, a series of cowboy movies on TV and in every version of Star Trek. His most famous work was in horror, mostly in the Candyman and Final Destination franchises. His biggest role on television would be playing Juma, the leader of an African rebel faction on Day 7 of 24 and the voice of Zoon on The Flash. He died on November 6^th 2024.

 

 

How Massachusetts And South Carolina Were at the Center of the Sectional Crisis, Part 1: Garrison and Rhett

 

William Lloyd Garrison and Robert Barnwell Rhett were on the complete opposite side of the question of slavery. But both men at their core had more in common in their ways of viewing the issue then they would have cared to admit – if they even acknowledged it.

Garrison believed from the moment he started writing The Liberator until the end of beginning of the Civil War that slavery was a moral wrong and should be viewed only by that lens. He spent his entire career as an activist and a journalist on that cause. And he made it very clear that any political solution or any politician who even tried to handle the slavery question – even those from his home state of Massachusetts  - were inadequate to the task because he rejected conventional politics – the system of democracy – as unsuited for his moral absolutism. He engaged in the kind of rhetoric that tended to isolate as many as it won over but he had no solutions as to how to bring about the end of slavery. He thought electoral political movements, even the ones devoted to it such as the Free Soil Party or the Republican Party were futile because they couldn’t go far enough in his mind. But as the nation grew closer to violence during the 1850s over the sectional crisis he had little use for it either and he increasingly rejected them. The nation was moving far too slow to get rid of slavery but he had no alternative to make it move faster. Garrison never saw the contradiction.

Rhett was the moral opposite of Garrison and not just in terms of slavery. Garrison believed in race equality, pacificism, free trade and was an early advocate for women’s suffrage. Rhett, by contrast, was a plantation owner, believed completely in the southern aristocracy, white supremacy and was known for being what was very close to a sexual predator – he certainly took liberties with many of his female slaves. And if Garrison advocate for slavery as a moral imperative but had no solutions to bring about its abolition, Rhett’s were if anything, more ludicrous. Considered the father of secession, he not only believed that the South could succeed as an independent nation but at one point thought that his home state of South Carolina would be perfectly fine if it alone were to secede. And the more economically untenable slavery became for a nation that was increasingly becoming industrial, he stubbornly resisted the idea of even the South trying to join an increasingly modern era. Indeed he would be one of the forces who advocated for not only the reopening of the slave trade but expanding it to South America and the Caribbean.

But both men were, when it came to the issue of slavery, two sides of the same coin. Both men believed that their respective position was the only acceptable one. Both men rejected the idea of the Congressional political system in order to bring about any solution that did not concur with their own. While Rhett was prominent in South Carolina politics he spent a far amount of time escalating the crisis from his own newspaper The Charleston Mercury. They abhorred compromise and anyone who didn’t keep loyal to their vision, even if it meant preservation of the Union. And perhaps most critically both men were more than willing to dissolve the Union if it did not meet the standards that they considered the realization of their dreams.

Both of these men had almost no direct political influence in the crisis that followed – Garrison never advocated for a political candidate and never even voted; Rhett briefly served as Senator of South Carolina but resigned having not even served one year of his original term. But because they represent the most extreme points in the issue of slavery leading up to the Civil War, a brief overview of both men is worth going into. Both men will be mentioned repeatedly in the articles that follow but for now I’ll just deal with their positions leading up to the passage of the Compromise of 1850 by Congress.

William Lloyd Garrison was an anti-slavery agitator from the agent of 18 on. Working in Baltimore for a Quaker advocacy sheet, in 1829 he published an item accusing a Massachusetts shipper of engaging in the domestic slave trade. The shipper sued and Garrison was charged with criminal libel and convicted. Unable to pay the $50 fine, he was sentenced to six months on prison but would serve seven weeks before a friend of his Arthur Tappan paid the fine. Garrison walked out defiant as ever.

On January 1, 1831 he published the first issue of The Liberator. The paper never made much money for Garrison but that mattered far less then his platform. He also founded the anti-Slavery society that was dedicated to the immediate abolition of slavery and full civil rights for freed blacks. How this was going to be possible under the democratic system he made no secret about reviling for being racist was something Garrison never chose to elucidate to his readers; from the start they thrived on morality rather than pragmatism. To Garrison, God’s law superseded the law of man.

And there was the contradiction of Garrison’s belief: slavery might be morally wrong but it was a political and economic reality. Absent divine intervention or a vast revolt by the masses slavery could only end through legislation and political power. Garrison and so many of his abolitionist colleagues never noticed or cared about the incongruity of their beliefs. He only believed in  a so-called moral standard that no one – certainly no mere elected official – could ever hope to meet.

Even the fledgling political movements that showed anti-slavery views were becoming more prominent by 1848 did little to change his mind. By 1848 the new political party called the Free Soil party was becoming  a fixture in American politics. That year it ran former President Martin Van Buren as its Presidential candidate and local Massachusetts political figure Charles Francis Adams as Vice President. But when it met in Buffalo Garrison mocked it as being politically impure claiming “it aimed not at the life, but only the growth of slavery.”  Even it’s success during the Presidential election – the new party won nearly ten percent of the vote and gained nine seats in the House and elected Salmon Chase to the Senate – did little to earn his political loyalty. All that he said was that once men like Van Buren and Adams, loyal party men before, had joined the cause of anti-slavery “the Revolution has at least begun” How it was to be carried out was not his concern.

If Garrison thought politics couldn’t solve the problem of slavery the man who would one day be called the father of the Secessionist movement believed the opposite well until the Compromise of 1850.

Robert Barnwell Rhett was born in 1800 in Carolina low country, the eighth of fifteen children. The father had failed as a planter, so the son born Robert Barnwell Smith, felt compelled to gloss over the recent years of family hardship and harken back to his prominent forbears, including Abigail Adams. At 37 he adopted the surname of Rhett.

He had established a lucrative law practice with a cousin in Walterboro and captured a seat in the state house of representatives at 26. A year later he married Elizabeth Washington Burnett, an orphan who was the ward of a prosperous Huguenot family. Rhett would bolster his wealth by exploiting property values when the Britain outlawed slavery ownership by the Britons living outside the empire. He would purchase several hundred acres of rice land and more than a hundred slaves.

He was described as a man with nervous temperament, quick in both movement and temper,  with his mind on huge conclusions with little regard for nuance or subtlety. He was regarded as a fiery speaker, wain, self-conscious, impracticable and selfish in the extreme, who nevertheless developed a huge following in South Carolina. Like many South Carolinians, he was prominent for many major rules, most notably nullification, the so-called gag rule designed to quash anti-slavery petitions from citizens and slavery itself. Like all South Carolina politicians he spent most of his early career under the shadow of John C. Calhoun – in many ways going further than even the great man wanted.

Rhett was firmly devoted to Calhoun and stayed loyal to him through many of his major position changes, most notably when Calhoun supported then President Van Buren’s call for an independent treasury in 1838, a move that shocked the states political establishment and left him isolated from the South Carolina congressional delegation. Rhett was one of the few members of that delegation that stayed loyal to him.

But when Calhoun attempted to run for President in 1844, Rhett went against him, attacking front-runner Van Buren for the inability of his allies to trim the tariff rates of the Whig’s under John Tyler’s presidency. Calhoun worked deftly behind the scenes to isolate Rhett’s actions and maintain a semblance of party peace during the campaign, which would eventually lead to James Polk becoming President that November. But Calhoun would also quietly pull away from his disloyal protégé. Rhett, certain that he was infallible, took the opportunity to increase his independence.

Polk’s administration was very effective in the minds of Democrats. He slashed the rates of tariff’s, pushed through Van Buren’s independent treasury, and completed the process begun by Tyler of annexing Texas. He led America into the war with Mexico which would bring about manifest destiny and lead to the tumult that would lead to the crisis that only the Compromise of 1850 would avert. During this period the rift between the two men began to heal – something Rhett would need if he were to achieve his next goal: to become Senator from South Carolina.

He had tried before when a vacancy opened in 1846 but it would be filled by Andrew Pickens Butler. Now when Calhoun passed away in June of 1850 he set his sites on filling the remainder of his term. His major competition was James Hammond, a former member of the South Carolina delegation plagued by ill health throughout his life. In 1840 Hammond had run for governor, in opposition to the statewide machine that Rhett had set up in the state. Hammond’s nullification credentials were, ironically, to strong for Calhoun: they needed a unionist to serve as governor. When the machine chose to endorse him in 1842, he would glide to the governorship.

But that elevation led to the revelation of a horrible scandal, which involved a deviant relationship with all four of his teenage daughters-in-law  which went on for nearly two years and according to Hammond’s only journal included “everything short of direct sexual intercourse. When his brother in law Wade Hampton learned the extent of the truth, he considered destroying him socially or even killing him. Instead he just let the rumors gestate and spread through plantation society which led to the Hammonds becoming deservedly ostracized throughout the community. He lost his opportunity for a Senate seat to Butler in 1846. With Calhoun’s death, his political fortunes momentarily brightened.

For all his horrible evils for his justification of slavery Calhoun had managed to maintain a southern-security formula that had lasted for decades: regional unity as a counterweight to the ascendant north and that would securing institutional protections – aka slavery – for the south even in a Northern-dominant Union. This flimsy arrangement was done to keep Calhoun’s position in the South more than any long term prospects for peace and now that the ‘Great Man’ was gone younger men rejected his formula. As Hammond put it: “Calhoun was so unyielding and so unpersuasive that he could never consolidate sufficient power to accomplish anything great.” And to those to men ‘greatness’ required recognizing slavery was doomed as long as the South was still part of the Union.

Hammond had rejected the initial proposal for the Compromise, arguing that peace was not something both sides desired. South Carolinians generally agreed. The rest of the South was basically harder to determine

In June of 1850 a Southern convention was held in Nashville. South Carolina sent 18 delegates including Rhett and Hammond. Rhett wrote the convention’s final ‘address’, a laundry list of complaints about the North’s antislavery agitations, saying that they had been ‘arraigned as criminals’ in a hostile Congress, arguing Congress had become little else than a grand instrument in the hands of abolitionists to degrade and ruin the South. (Men like Garrison would have argued otherwise.)

But the delegate were full of sound and fury and couldn’t come up with any bold action, other then a proposal to extend the so-called Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, something few believed the North would go with. They adjourned with a resolution to reconvene in November after Congress had met again.

The delegation was restrained but back home Rhett threw of the shackles at a dinner in his honor. “I see but one course left for the peace and salvation of the South – a dissolution of the Union.” He described a strong and prosperous Southern nation, free of tariffs, insults from the north and most important free from the threat of emancipation. “By our physical power we can protect ourselves against foreign nations whilst by our productions we can command their peace or support….Wealth, honor, and power, and one of the most glorious destines which ever crowned a great and happy people await the South.”

Rhett’s brazen words swept across the country and he quickly became a leading figure among the fire-eaters of the South, crisscrossing the state then traveling to Alabama to meet a fellow firebrand secessionist. In the process he outraged establishment politicians everywhere, including Henry Clay. On the Senate floor the Great Compromiser said that if Rhett actually led the flag of disunion “he will be a traitor and I hope he will meet the fate of a traitor. Even Hammond condemned the speech as not merely injudicious but criminal. He suspects Rhett was doing so as a hope to be sent to the Senate by the South Carolina legislature, where his passion for disunion was felt by many members. But many wondered, even if South Carolina were reading for secession, was the rest of the South?

 Governor Whitemarsh Seabrook engaged in communication with other Southern governors to test the waters. He found a lot of bluster but also caution with no clear idea that if any other state was willing to take the lead or even follow if South Carolina declared itself the vanguard in this movement. The result was a new political fault line: those who wanted immediate bold action, known as ‘disunionists’ and those who urged caution, labeled ‘cooperationists’. Rhett was the former and was certain that other states, most likely Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi would follow suit if South Carolina made the first move. The bolder (or more deluded) thought even if that didn’t happen South Carolina could survive on its own with its agricultural prowess, efficient harbor and vibrant culture. The latter embraced that South Carolina would likely do so but though if they went alone, it would end in disaster. On that side were prominent South Carolinians – including Robert Barnwell, Rhett’s own cousin.

The follow-up session met in November but with most moderates and only seven states sending delegation in all, it fizzled out. Hammond boycotted, saying that while he had favored it for 20 years “the fruit is not yet ripe.”

By the end of 1850 the legislative selection of a Senator to fill Calhoun’s vacancy was made. Rhett and Hammond were the leading contenders from the start and Rhett won on the fourth ballot. Hammond wrote in his journal thinking his political life was over and that South Carolina had chosen its fate. He didn’t think much leadership from Rhett beyond ‘abortive violence’ And so on January 6^th 1851 Rhett would swear allegiance to a constitutional system he desired as a Senator, determined to rise above the rancor that had characterized his 12 years in Congress.

He would be gone from Congress in little more than a year.

In the next article I will deal with the various political figures who would rise in both Massachusetts and South Carolina and who would play a major role as the sectional crisis deepened in the next decade.