Homicide Rewatch: Every Mother's Son

 

30^TH ANNIVERSARY NOTES

 

A little more personal discussion before we get started,

Several years ago I began the habit of purchasing from eBay DVD collections of series that bore the label For Your Consideration. (I had difficulty getting some streaming services online and I’ve always preferred hard copies to digital.) In recent years I’ve begun to extend my search for older series and last year I actually decided to see what was available on VHS.

In the winter of 2025 I found something I hadn’t been looking for but was to glad to find: an NBC Emmy VHS For Your Consideration for Homicide. I bought it more or less sight unseen. I had all the DVDs for the series and the show was streaming on Peacock and Amazon. But I had my reasons. When I got the VHS, there were two episodes that NBC submitted for consideration in all categories. One of them was ‘Every Mother’s Son.’

Here's the thing. Everyone who saw this episode at the time and years afterwards knows that this is one of the great episodes in the history of Homicide. As you will see in the notes section fans ranked it among the fifteen greatest episodes of all time. But in some ways it’s not the kind of episode you’d think even an ensemble series would submit for consideration. Only two of its leads, Andre Braugher and Kyle Secor are fundamentally front and center for the majority of the episodes. The remaining seven actors have small roles with many basically insignificant. The most significant acting in the show is done by the guest cast. It doesn’t have the standards for direction or camerawork we traditionally associate with the series. And even for a show that was one of the darkest series on network television this is one of the bleakest episodes in the show’s entire history that leaves you emotionally raw by the end of it.

But that’s the kind of thing that also makes it the perfect episode to demonstrate what Homicide was capable of as a drama. At least two or three times a season the writers would break the already flexible rules of the procedural they’d set at the start to go beyond its boundaries and turn it on its head. This was radical in the 1990s and even in the era of Peak TV that followed few shows would dare to make similar changes. In later seasons ER would be more than willing to flaunt the formula and occasionally shows like The Practice and The X-Files would do the same. But with the increasingly serialized nature of television that was to come, these kinds of radical experimentations with the format  - to show basically an entire episode where the regulars were far less of a presence than usual -  was not the kind of experimentation that even Fontana and Simon would do in their own incredible follow-ups on cable. Only network television was willing to try these kinds of things and only a handful of series – The Good Wife and This is Us were the most obvious examples – were willing to do so on a regular basis. (Comedy is a different story as we’ve seen over in the 21^st century to this day,)

I suspect that this willingness to flaunt the format was part of the reason Homicide regularly struggled for ratings in its original run. Homicide was never user-friendly by the standards of the 1990s and even now I wonder what today’s audience would think watching it. We basically spend an entire episode where Pembleton and Bayliss are investigating the murder of a fourteen-year old boy, learn he’s been killed by another fourteen year old boy who shot him by accident, then arrest him and take him into custody. Then we have to deal with one of the most unrepentant and cold murderers (who is fourteen years old, remember) who thinks that because he shot the wrong kid, he shouldn’t be punished for what he’s done.

This is bleak by any standard. Now imagine that we now spend the majority of the episode, not with Pembleton as he deals with this, but with two mothers. One Patrice Sayers is the mother of the shooter. One is the mother of the murdered boy. And the centerpiece of this episode is a ten minute sequence where these two women wait in the aquarium, talking to each other about why their here, neither knowing that their lives are about to be destroyed forever. It’s easier to watch Walter White or Tony Soprano destroy the lives of everyone they touch unrepentantly.

It doesn’t get any easier to watch, no matter how many times I’ve seen it over the years. But that’s exactly what made Homicide one of the greatest shows in history. Both Fontana and Simon would ask a lot of difficult questions in their respective groundbreaking HBO dramas over the years and they were equally brave in refusing to answer them. You can see the foundation of so much of both dramas in Homicide and OZ honestly came closer to trying to answer them than The Wire would.

One of the tried-but-true attacks on so many dramas of this century is that they go out of their way to glamorize killers and not deal with the victims of the crime. Law & Order tried to reverse that trope in its early years before eventually becoming fixated on the procedural and essentially almost every network drama that followed did the same. ‘Every Mother’s Son’ was one of the first times that Homicide pushed back against this idea and it does so in many ways.

The first is that the murder is the shooting of a thirteen year old boy Daryl Nawls. Homicide rarely flinched from the idea of children being the victims of violence, though it never went out of its way to exploit it. With Adena Watson it took five episodes before a suspect was in custody. In Every Mother’s Son, we know before the credits of the guest cast roll.

The episode spends longer that it usually does tracking down the family of the victim, something that usually takes place quickly but can often be horrendous. Bayliss and Pembleton go to the Nawls’ household, find out that Darryl’s brothers there, introduce themselves to him, ask politely to go to where his mother works. Then we see Mary Nawls, and she goes through every possible permutation of denial before Pembleton tells her what happened. We watch her breakdown; we go with her to the morgue where she identifies the body of her son. The writers make it quick but don’t spare the details. Finally they go to the home of Ronnie Sayers who multiple witnesses identified as the shooter. The cops raid the house, they present a warrant and Bayliss is so nervous he points his gun and Ronnie’s brother. Pembleton and Bayliss tell them what happened and are stunned to learn Ronnie’s only 14.

They find Ronnie who is trying to be brave and points a gun at Frank. Then he tells them he didn’t know what this is about – and then we learn the truly tragic nature of it: he shot the wrong kid. Pembleton and Bayliss know they have to go by the book and they’re in the process of getting a juvenile attorney for Ronnie.

Then Patrice Sayers shows up and she tries to do everything she can to protect her son. By this point Ronnie has made an admission and Frank is about to read him his rights but when Patrice shows up Ronnie makes it clear he doesn’t want her here. He tells her he’ll admit to it if she leaves. It’s only now we start to realize just how detached from reality Ronnie is. He truly believes that because he shot Darryl by mistake he should get to home, comparing it to a car crash. When Frank says he killed an innocent kid, Ronnie doesn’t car: “Car accidents kill innocent kids too?”

Frank now tells Ronnie to get his feet off the table. When the attorneys show up, he calls Ronnie: “Mr. Bad Ass Hard Core.” Ronnie remains unrepentant both in front of the states attorney and his own attorney, trying to get them both to leave. We now learn that in Baltimore fourteen is just old enough to get you tried and sentenced as an adult. None of them this makes anybody happy but as Gee points out: “So what do we do? Let him go? Then next week, next month, he kills someone else?” There are no good answers.

It's while this is going on that Mary ends up looking for Pembleton and Bolander asks her to go wait in the aquarium. Showing his usual charm he offers to get her son a soda and walks off with her. While this is going on Patrice ends up wandering in. That’s when the episode goes to a new level.

Lee, with the aid of Yoshimura and Fontana, go out of their way to make it clear that both of these women are the same. Both of them have lost children forever. Both of them know the comic books their children read. Both of them know just how few men there are in this world. And both of them know how horrible the city is. In one of the saddest remarks ever said on the show Mary  tells us she’s been to the funerals of three of Darryl’s classmates this year. “It’s almost how we plan our social,” she says sadly. “ Patrice says she wants to save her money and get out of Baltimore, maybe go to Canada. The only thing she knows about it is that there’s a lot of snow. “Maybe that keeps the lid on things,” Mary says sadly.

During this Bayliss walks by, sees them talking but does nothing to disturb them. Then Frank takes Ronnie to booking and the realization hits both women in a matter of seconds. Gay Thomas and Rhonda Stubbins-White are extraordinary as the two mothers but Thomas is incredible as she suddenly turns from sympathy to out and out rage at the same time. It is a rage borne in grief, of course, but it is anger, nonetheless.

You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by this and it seems all episode that Frank has that heart. Then he comes back from booking Ronnie for a moment and Howard, who’s trying to bounce the idea of a case of Frank asks him for help. Frank talks about coffee and that he drinks three or four pots a day. Howard asks for help and Braugher delivers one of the monologues that made him such a great actor (and is a good reason why this episode could work for Emmy consideration)

“Every day I get out of bed and I drag myself to the next cup of coffee. I  take a sip and the caffeine kicks in, I can focus my eyes again, my brain starts to order the day. I’m up, I’m alive, I’m ready to rock…The time is coming when I wake up and decide I’m not getting out of bed. I’m not getting up for coffee or food or sex. If it comes to me, fine, if it won’t fine. No more expectations.

The longer I live the less I know. I should know more. I should know coffee’s killing me. (This is a kind of prophecy.) You’re suspicious of your suspicions? I’m jealous, I’m so jealous. You still have the heart to have doubts? Me, I’m going to lock up a fourteen-year old kid for what could be the rest of his natural life. This is the deal, this is the law, this is my day. I have no doubts or suspicions about it. Heart has nothing to do with it anymore. It’s all in the caffeine.”

Frank then walks Ronnie into booking and tries his hardest to break the kids bravado. “If they charge you as an adult, you’re probably gonna die in a cell just like this one.” Ronnie just says: “Better than on the street.”

Frank spends the night driving recklessly, clearly bothered by the case but refusing to even engage with Tim when he tries to talk about it. It is here Frank says the words that could so easily serve as a mission statement for the reality of Homicide: “One time, one time I’d like to hear about a murder that makes any sense. One time, for any reason.” And it is a tribute to Homicide that it never backs away from that idea, not even to put the murder police themselves in a good light.

The final scenes are just as devastating. Ronnie has just been remanded to custody without bail. Frank tells Ronnie that he kept him up last night and he needs his sleep. “I don’t usually give advice, not to fourteen year old killers,” he says. “Keep your ass to the wall. Don’t trust anybody. Don’t believe anybody. Don’t help anybody. Don’t ask anybody for anything.” He knows what prisoners will do to this. He knows his life is over. He talks with Tim about how he and Mary are thinking of having children but how can he bring a child into a world like this? Tim tries to make him feel better and Frank is not having it, and in the midst of his bitter mockery, he gets a glimpse of Ronny being thrown into lockup.

The final scene shows Patrice going with her young son to give condolence to Mary who doesn’t really want it. While its going on their two remaining children play together. Patrice tries to say: “Maybe they could get to know each other.” Mary says coldly: “And what if they learn about their brothers?” Patrice’s faces goes slack. She yells for his son and pulls him out of there as fast as she can. We know without having to hear that she will do everything in her power to keep the knowledge away about what happened but she also knows Baltimore. She knows how this story ends. We all do.

At least once a season Homicide would try to flip the script and show the real consequences of the names on the board that once written in black are forgotten by the detectives and by the viewer. They wouldn’t do it that often because otherwise it would be exploitive but they didn’t look away from it either. ‘Every Mother’s Son’ represents the best of what television can be. We cannot look away.

 

 

Notes From the Board

In a ranking by Court TV of the greatest episodes in Homicide history, fans ranked this episode 9^th all time.

“Detective Munch”  The few comic moments of this episode have to do with Meldrick and Munch moving forward with ownership of the Waterfront. Much of it deals with waitresses, an interior designer and the fact that there’s no back taxes to be paid. But the high point comes when someone from the Historical Landmark Society wants their bathroom preserved because of its significance to George Washington. No he didn’t sleep there or eat there, but in 1793 having consumed a lot of wine at a dinner, he could not find a public chamber pot:

Munch: We can’t tear down our bathroom because George Washingtoon took a whiz there?”

Lewis: “Well, if you gotta go, you gotta go. Even if you are the father of our country.

 

The Opening Teaser takes place at a Canadian Football League Game in Baltimore in 1994 between the Baltimore team and the Las Vegas Posse. It was filmed at Baltimore Memorial Stadium (which Meldrick had famously wanted to flood and turn into an aquatic theme park) Clark Johnson, incidentally, briefly played in the CFL in 1979 before turning to acting. “If they said suit up, I would.” We also see Bolander grouse about the old time Baltimore Colts including Johnny Unitas.

It is here we see the first of several cameos  by then real-life mayor Kurt Schmoke as he honors the detectives for Homicide. Schmoke would serve three terms as Baltimore City Mayor and was prominently known for his opposition to the War on Drugs. He famously made a speech in which he criticized drug criminalization, which after it was published led him to widespread bipartisan criticism. Not just the Reagan administration but Baltimore’s own congressman came out against him. New York’s Charlie Range called him the most dangerous man in America. This was his second most notable appearance in public in 1995; later that year he spoke at the Million Man March.

Hey, Isn’t That…Yes that is Howie Mandel in a brief cameo as the interior decorator and yes he had hair once. Mandel is known both as a comedian and for his voice work but that’s not why he’s here. His big break on television came as Dr. Wayne Fiscus on St. Elsewhere, where despite being used for comic relief he was frequently involved in very dark and serious storylines. He was on the show from the pilot to the series finale and believe it or not, he could the bleak. In a famous episode he’s shot in the chest, hovers between life and death and ends up face to face with many of the people who’ve died in St. Elsewhere over the years. One can hardly blame him for doing standup and reality TV ever since.

Sean Nelson was only fourteen when he made his chilling appearance as Ronnie in this episode. The previous year he had electrified audience by playing the title role in Fresh, a twelve year old drug-courier who sets his employees against each other. Boaz Yakin directed and features memorable stints by Giancarlo Esposito and Samuel L. Jackson, neither of whom was the celebrity they would be a few years later. Nelson worked slowly and in intriguing projects over the next several years, from American Buffalo, alongside Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz but his greatest role afterwards to make his mark when he played DeAndre in the HBO Limited series The Corner in 2000 (we’ll get to that). He's acted occasionally ever since, most notably in Power Book 2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeopardy Masters 2025 Recap: May 7th Knockout Rounds Night 2

 

 

We knew one of the games tonight was going to be a rematch of the finals of the 2025 Tournament of Champions. What I didn’t know and perhaps most of us didn’t was who was going to be in the second game last night. That, as we saw, depended on who won the first match. It only sounds confusing when you try to explain it, and I’ll do that after I review the first game.

 

Match 1: Adriana Harmeyer vs Isaac Hirsch vs Neilesh Vinjamuri

In the Jeopardy round Neilesh as has been his want in the Tournament of Champions got off to a very rapid start and quickly built up to 6600 points. Then Isaac got hot in the category that involved Kamau Bell’s Bells and was at 3000 points when he found the Daily Double in TALKING IN COLORS. He knew how the game was going, so he bet everything he had:

“A minion of Robespierre, Citizen Chauvelin is on the hunt for this elusive hero in a 1905 novel.” Isaac figured it out: “Who is the Scarlet Pimpernel?” He doubled his score and the battle was joined. By the end of the round Isaac finished with the barest of leads over Neilesh, 9200 points to 8800. Adriana was in a distant third with 1000 points.

In Double Jeopardy Isaac took an early lead and Adriana was up and down. When she found the first Daily Double in THE STARS OF OUR SHOW, she was at a mere 600 points. She wagered the 2000 she was allowed to:

“You’ll find Alcyone, Electra and Maia in this group which is actually more than a thousand stars.”

It took her a moment to guess: “What is the Seven Sisters?” That was an acceptable alternative for The Pleaides and she moved up to 2600. She moved up a little but Isaac managed to get two of the 2000 points clue correct. He had 15,200 points and was wagering from the lead when he found the other Daily Double in A 20^TH CENTURY FACTS PRODUCTION. He wagered 4000 points this time:

The last Allied summit conference of World War II ended on August 2^nd 1945 in this German suburb.” Isaac knew it was Potsdam and went to 19,200 points. The question for the rest of the round was whether either Adriana or Neilesh could stop Isaac from running away with the game. Neither could: Isaac finished with 20,000 points to Neilesh’s 9200 and 7400. But second place mattered more than ever before.

The Final Jeopardy category was SAINTS. “This saint who helped convert Scotland to Christianity shares his name with the Latin word for an animal sent out 3 times for Noah.”

Adriana wrote down: “Who is St. Mungo?” That was incorrect. She lost 3000 points, dropping her to 4400 points.

Neilesh wrote down: “Who is St. Columba?” crossed that out and then wrote Columbus. It was a last minute decision he would regret as it cost him 5601, dropping him to 3599.

Isaac took it seriously: Who is Paul?” Neilesh was right the first time with St. Columba. Columba is the Latin word for ‘dove’ which Noah sent out three times looking for proof of land after the flood. He risked nothing and got the win with 3 match points. Because of Neilesh’s correct he finished in third with zero and Adriana got that critical match point. That decision might well be significant for both players in the final two knockout rounds when it comes to which advances.

Interviews: Adriana told us how in order to prep for the Masters she had been practicing with video games and wasn’t sure she has been using the correct hand for it. Isaac talked about the camaraderie between the three of them saying perhaps maybe all of them were underdogs now – the right amount of humbleness that he would express in his follow-up interview. Neilesh was determined to show that his victory in the Tournament of Champions just a few months earlier was not a fluke.

 

 

 

After Isaac’s victory in the first half of the match, the knockout rounds would  then proceed as follows in the following three games:

All the players who’d won a game would play in the other match tonight. (Yogesh, Isaac, and Roger.)

Then next week, the three players who came in second (Victoria, Matt and Adriana) would face off in the first game and the three third place finishers (Brad, Neilesh and Juveria) would face off in the second.

The six players with the highest match point total at the end of next week would then proceed to the quarterfinals.

 

Match 2: Yogesh Raut vs. Isaac Hirsch vs. Roger Craig

Note: With all three players each having won one game according to Ken all three had automatically qualified for the next round. However, match points would be critical for placing in the next round for all three.

The Jeopardy round was a dominant performance by Yogesh, an embarrassment for Isaac and an utter humiliation for Roger. Yogesh was the only player who had any money all the way through: Isaac kept going up and then into the hole and Roger at one point was at -4200 points. By the time Yogesh found the Daily Double he had 6600 points. He wagered 6500 points on his Daily Double in PRESENTING MYTH GREECE:

Pallas’ daughter, this goddess totes Hermes’ staff to present a message of victory.” Yogesh figure out what victory meant when he said: “What is Nike?”

When the humiliation was over Yogesh had 14,900 points, Isaac was happy to be at zero and Roger had worked his way ‘up’ to -3600 points.

In Double Jeopardy Roger did make an impressive recovery if you see it a certain way. He found the first Daily Double in 20^th CENTURY SCIENCE and was at -2000 points. He wagered the 2000 he was allowed to:

“rhyming with a term for a pro-athlete on the market, it’s a chemical trigger; Ehrlich’s one is use to test for the presence of LSD.” Roger knew it was a reagent and finally was at zero.

It was a triumph for both Isaac and Roger to have any points at all for much of the game. Yogesh wasn’t quite as dominant as in Double Jeopardy but neither could put anywhere close to a run to get near him. By the time Roger found the other Daily Double in HYMNS & SPIRITUALS he knew he was fighting for second and wagered 1600 points of his 2800.

“With music by Sir Arthur Sullivan & a favorite of the Salvation Army, this title precedes ‘marching off to war.” Roger had no idea it was ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. This category I should mention basically stumped all three players: Yogesh was the only one who could get a correct response in it and it was the 400 point clue. (Even then, it was only because he’d given Amazing Grace as a response on the 800 point clue and it had been incorrect then.)

Yogesh completed his second consecutive runaway with 25,700 points to Isaac’s 4400 and Roger’s 2800. Because second place did matter even for the three who had clinched spots in the finals all of them took it seriously.

The category was ART HISTORY: “’Hide and Seek’” & ‘The Cradle’ by this French Artist were among the 200 or so works shown at a gallery on Blvd. Des Capucines in 1874.”

Roger knew the correct artist: “Who is Morisot?” That was correct. (As Ken pointed out, this was the first French impressionist exhibition and these were all works of mothers and children.” He nearly doubled his score to 5799. Both Isaac and Yogesh thought it was one of the few other female artists of that period: Mary Cassatt. It cost Isaac 1201 points and dropped in to third. It cost Yogesh 10,000 points but changed nothing. Yogesh took his second straight victory.

 

 

INTERVIEWS: Roger reminded us that he had broken Ken Jennings one-day record of $77,000. Ken joked about it and then added: “You do have a chance at another record. Isaac admitted that he came into this tournament with low expectations. He compared it to being a really good Division III NCAA team getting drafted to play in the NBA. Ken told him that he had the longest winning streak of any of the three players on the stage. (Isaac had won nine games; Roger 6, Yogesh, 3) Isaac joked: “Can I trade that in for some points? Yogesh shared his links to Isaac and Roger. He’d played with Isaac on a quiz bowl team and he had lived in New York the same time Roger had, where they’d played in various quizzing tournaments together.

Note: Yogesh has won both his games in runaways but has yet to respond correctly in Final Jeopardy. At this point Roger is the only player with two correct Final Jeopardys in this year’s Masters.

 

LEADERBOARD AT THE END OF MAY 7^TH

Yogesh Raut – 6 Match Points - IN

Roger Craig – 4 Match Points - IN

Isaac Hirsch – 3 Match Points - IN

Matt Amodio – 1 Match Point

Victoria Groce – 1 Match Point

Adriana Harmeyer – 1 Match Point

Nilesh Vinjamuri – 0

Juveria Zaheer – 0

Brad Rutter – 0

 

The winners of each game on May 14^th will automatically advance to the next round. Whoever ends up in third in both matches will almost certainly be eliminated though there is still some hope for whoever finishes third in the first match next week. Second place is going to matter immensely in both matches.

My personal preference for the final three spots. I definitely want Brad to keep going and I would love to see Adriana continue. As for the last one, well, we’ll have to wait and see.

But the fact that Roger Craig will be going on to the quarterfinals continues to fill me with joy. We’ve already got a decent mix of the old and the new for the next round even before the quarterfinals begin.

I’ll be back next week with the results of the final two knockout rounds as we look at the complete list of quarterfinalists. There will be six quarterfinals before we move on to the next round: we’ll no doubt no more about that by the week following.

Massachusetts, South Carolina & The Sectional Crisis, Interlude 2: The 1856 Election

 

 

Under normal circumstances President Pierce should have been allowed to run for reelection. The era he was part of were the opposite of normal circumstances. Considering his general ineptitude of which the events in Kansas had been the final straw for many, it became clear to both the Southern and Northern wings of the Democratic party that if he were to be renominated the Democrats would lose the White House.

Stephen Douglas, whose ambitions for the White House had played an indirect role in so much of the chaos of the last four years, thought that he had an opening. He intended to operate quietly and unobtrusively, hoping to bridge the gap between those who had favored the Kansas-Nebraska legislation and those who had opposed it. Considering how closely identified he was with it; it wasn’t going to be easy to earn the two-thirds majority to earn the nomination.

The third major contender for the nomination wasn’t even in America before the Convention started, having spent the Pierce administration as ambassador to Great Britain. While this should have been an impediment, it was also one of his biggest strengths – because he had been out of the United States during the entire chaos that had followed, he couldn’t bare the stain of it that most Democrats did.

James Buchanan’s resume certainly had the makings of Presidential timber at first glance. He had represented Lancaster, Pennsylvania for ten years in Congress, had been ambassador to Russia, has spent a decade representing Pennsylvania in the Senate, had served as Polk’s Secretary of State, and now as ambassador to Britain. He was considered a powerful intellect by supporters.

Those were his virtues. His flaws were just as clear. A lifelong bachelor, accentuated with a certain effeminacy, Andrew Jackson would hint in the euphemisms at the time that he was a closeted homosexual. He spent years as a close friend and roommate of Senator William King, which stirred whispers in some quarters. (There is still no definitive evidence by historians to answer the question of Buchanan’s sexuality one way or the other.) The bigger problem was that he frequently was inconsistent in his policies, something that Polk would make clear during his tenure as Secretary of State. Polk believe that his behavior was dwelt to his driving ambition to become President himself one day, and as he had been considered a contender ever since 1844 for that role, it was a valid concern.

Now as he considered his options two months before the Democratic convention began, the American political system was in flux. The Whig Party, the second major party in American politics for the past two decades, was essentially dead, so the question was where they would end up voting that November.

Some would certainly coalesce around the new Republican Party which had coalesced around a provocative principle: Congress had every right to outlaw in slavery in the territories and should do so, while leaving in the institution untouched where it existed. Many Republican leaders believed that if confined to its southern base, slavery would eventually die out, a concept that former anti-slavery Whigs like  Charles Francis Adams, found enticing enough to get back into politics and would serve as a delegate to the Republican Convention.

Certain southern and conservative Northern Whigs were gravitating to the Know-Nothing Party, which had been a force in Massachusetts just two years earlier. The party had already held a nominating convention in Philadelphia that February to nominate former President Millard Filmore as its standard bearer. Their goal was to serve as a new unionist party, which was both opposed to Catholic immigration and the agitation of abolitionists.

Meanwhile the Democrats, while theoretically posed to win the Presidency again in 1856, were now facing the same kind of sectional divide that had doomed the Whigs. They had spent much of their existence adjudicating the issue of slavery in  a way to keep the South as part of their base. By 1856, however, northerners were finding this more and more unacceptable and anti-slavery Democrats were beginning to move to the new Republican Party.

In late May large numbers of boats from Kentucky and Ohio towns began arriving in Cincinnati via the Ohio River in preparation for the start of the Democratic convention, scheduled to begin on June 2. For the first time in its history, a delegation from South Carolina was present, against the wishes of diehard secessionists like Barnwell Rhett.

The party platform was decided with relative ease. The Democrats declared that the Kansas-Nebraska Act embodied the ‘only sound and safe solution of the ‘slavery question’. It made clear preserving the union was paramount and that the only way to do so was through popular sovereignty. To make their point clear on the issue the platform stated in all capital letters: “NON-INTERFERENCE BY CONGRESS WITH SLAVERY IN STATE OR TERRITORY, OR IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.”

Then the balloting started: Buchanan narrowly led Pierce on the first ballot with 135 ½ votes to Pierce’s 122 ½. Douglas trailed with 33. Fourteen ballots took place before the day ended: Buchanan finished with 152 1/2 ,  Pierce was next with 75 and Douglas had 63.

When balloted resumed the following morning, the Pierce men broke for Buchanan but Douglas was at 118. Deadlock seemed certain until Douglas’s floor manager produced a letter from the candidate, announcing he was withdrawing from the race in the name of ‘harmony for the party. The convention exploded out of enthusiasm both for the outcome and Douglas’s magnanimity. Buchanan was nominated unanimously on the next ballot. The Democrats then chose John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky as his Vice President. Breckinridge was only 35, the youngest man to ever be nominated for (or hold) the Vice Presidency.

Buchanan was clearly very much a Pierce time candidate: a northern man with southern sympathies. The same would not be seen of the Republican convention that met in Philadelphia just two weeks later. While four of the border states – Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky – all sent delegations to the first Republican convention, none of the eleven states further south were present. There was no significant presence in those states and no immediate prospect of having any. However, the convention welcomed delegations from the territories of Kansas, Nebraska and Minnesota with boisterous enthusiasm.

The biggest names in the party were some of the most towering anti-slavery men in the country: Salmon Chase and Joshua Giddings from Ohio, Henry Wilson from Massachusetts, William Seward from New York and David Wilmot of Pennsylvania. The platform was agreed upon in ten minutes. It declared the party to be ‘opposed to the repeal of the Missouri compromise’ and the present administration ‘to the extension of slavery into free territory’ and in favor of Kansas being admitted into the free states. Seward and Chase bowed out of the race early, which left two major contenders. On the first ballot, the party almost unanimously voted for John C. Fremont, currently the Senator from California.

Fremont was a national celebrity as being the ‘Pathfinder’ of the American West, the westward explorer who had crossed the territory and founded the Bear Flag Republic which became California. He was married to Jessie Benton, the daughter of Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, a brilliant writer and promoter in her own right. Constrained by the limits of 19^th century society she did everything she could to promote her husband’s legend and then his political cause. During his brief tenure as Senator, he had burnished his identity as a  staunch opponent of slavery, voting for the abolition of the D.C. slave trade and against legislation providing for harsh sentences against those convicted of encouraging or aiding slave escapes. And only 43, he fit in with the dynamism of the Republican Party and stood as a vibrant contrast to the much older men running against him for the Presidency.

Not long after fusion began to form for both major candidates. The North American Party (made up of Northern Know-Nothings) would essentially merge with Fremont and the Republicans. In September what was left of the Whigs gathered in Baltimore to endorse Filmore’s candidacy.

Almost from the start Southerners and many Northern Democrats decried the new fusion Republican party, derisively calling its members ‘black Republicans’. Northern newspapers argued the new Party was a cover for fomenting anti-southern hostility for votes. Southern newspapers called it a purely sectional party.

The campaign was divided on sectional lines: Buchanan vs. Filmore in the South and Buchanan versus Fremont in the North. In 1856 149 electoral votes were required to win the Presidency. The North controlled 176 electoral votes. Theoretically Fremont could win the Presidency with no Southern votes, which was in fact the reality. Buchanan by contrast would have to sweep the South and get all 120 electoral votes. He would also have to pick up any number of free states. Even if he pulled that off any Filmore success in cutting into his total in the South could either ensure his defeat or send the election to the House.

Both parties turned their attention on Pennsylvania, Buchanan’s home state with 27 electoral votes in play. Democrats spent half a million dollars (in 1856 money) on that state with the South playing a heavy presence. Lancaster staged a rally that drew 50,000 persons, including every national Democrat and the sons of both Clay and Webster.

Buchanan himself didn’t campaign (for a candidate to stump for himself was considered unseemly both then and during the 19^th century in general) he privately expressed fears for the nation. All other issues became trifling ‘when compared with the grand and appalling issue of union or disunion’. He feared if Fremont won, disunion would be immediate and inevitable.

Indeed the rhetoric on both sides took that very turn. What’s is little known is how many prominent Republicans and their supporters almost seemed to be hoping for that outcome. House Speaker Banks said he was ‘willing to let the Union slide.’ Seward expressed hopes for events ‘bringing the parties of the country into an aggressive war over slavery. Giddings when further, calling for a ‘servile insurrection’, with the black man waging  ‘a war of extermination against his master.” It wasn’t clear if such talk, which was incendiary and frightening to many Southerners, would drive Northern voters to Buchanan to preserve the Union as a result or if the Democrats abysmal performance in Kansas would drive alienated members to the Republicans.

When the votes were counted, Buchanan emerged the winner with 174 electoral votes to Freemont’s 114 and Fillmore’s 8 (Maryland). Buchanan carried 45 percent of the popular vote to Fremont’s 33 percent and Filmore’s 22 percent. Buchanan had won by carrying every slave state but Maryland, as well as Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, Indiana and New Jersey.

Buchanan’s statement after his victory was both smug and slightly delusional. He told his friends that his central aim as President was to ‘arrest…the agitation of the slavery question in the north and to destroy sectional parties.” This was going to be difficult considering that the Republicans had gotten 1.3 million votes in a single section of the country.

 It would be another full year before the Congressional results were known. The Democrats would gain 51 seats in the House, taking back the majority. The Republicans would double their delegation in Congress to 90 seats while the Know Nothings would lose 14. The Senate was harder to measure. The Democrats would eventually lose 3 seats while the Republicans would gain 7.

But the Republicans had derived a different lesson: their sectional power, well-established now and still growing, might actually be sufficient soon to win the Presidency without a single Southern state. One Pennsylvanian would write Seward to say the Republicans might have lost an election but gained a section of the nation. This represented the intriguing paradox of a ‘victorious defeat.

Some even thought that their win might have been possible had not made a mistake with their choice for Vice President. In the first informal ballot for the race, their had been two major contenders New Jersey Senator William Dayton and a former Illinois Congressman named Abraham Lincoln. Dayton ended up earning the nomination. The hope had been that Dayton’s ties to the mid-Atlantic region and Drayton was a known presence while Lincoln was still basically unknown even in much of Illinois.

The plan failed. Though the Democrats carried New Jersey they would lose Pennsylvania and considering the Republicans had lost Illinois (despite the defeated candidate making 50 speeches up and down his home state for Fremont) some considered that they had made the wrong choice for Vice President.

Lincoln was dealing with his own plans, to challenge Stephen Douglas for the Senate in 1858. By that point both Douglas and the nation would be dealing with a far more fiery crisis.

In the next article I will deal with the first year of the Buchanan administration and how his naïve hopes that the slavery issue would be resolved by the courts was just another stepping stone on the already bloody path to the disunion.

65 Years Later, Inherit The Wind Still Has Lessons To Teach Us (And Not The Ones You're Thinking of)

 

From my adolescence well into my college years I spent a fair amount of my time reading collections of some of the greatest plays of the greatest American playwrights. And during that same period I had a great deal of difficulty connecting with it on an emotional level the same way I could the great novels and short stories that I read during that same period.

I should tell my readers that, by and large, most of the plays I was reading at the time were unassigned and done in my free time. However, I still reach the fundamental conclusion that the only way to truly appreciate these plays is to see them performed, if not in live theater then in a filmed version. Because I live on New York I’ve had an edge on the former than the majority of Americans don’t and it has helped me comprehend why so many of these are masterpieces. I read Death of A Salesman at least a dozen times in my teenage years but it wasn’t until I saw the 1999 production with Brian Dennehy as Willy Loman that I finally understood why it was a classic. I’d never been able to process Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night after multiple readings but when I saw a production with Dennehy, Vanessa Redgrave, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robert Sean Leonard playing the troubled Tyrone family that I understood why O’Neill was one of the great playwrights of our time. And I probably read and reread Inherit The Wind at least four or five times throughout by childhood and I knew more of the historical context than the average high school student. But I didn’t fully appreciate what it meant until I saw George C. Scott and Charles Durning face off on Broadway in the 1990s.

That’s not to say there isn’t value in reading the printed version of these plays. I wasn’t formerly diagnosed with what was  known in the 1990s as Asperger’s Syndrome until I was seventeen years old but in many ways I consider a benefit to me rather than a stigma. One of the ways it has infinitely aided me is a reader and in some ways it has been beneficial when I read scripts or plays. I spent a lot of time focusing on stage directions and other minutiae that there’s a decent chance the average reader – perhaps even the average performer – might miss. And because I scoured over every page multiple times I was able to pick up details that the playwright put into words but the viewer never got a chance to actually see.

Such was the case with the introduction that Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (no relation) wrote for their play. Despite the fact that it is, for all intents and purposes, the dramatic equivalent of a roman a clef for the Scopes Monkey Trial they went out of their way to try and argue that the issues were prevalent and always would be. “These events may have happened yesterday. They could happen tomorrow,” are the last lines of that introduction. This is a more lyrical way of saying history repeats itself something that we have seen over and over again.

I recently had occasion to see Stanley Kramer’s film adaptation of Inherit The Wind, a film that Roger Ebert listed in his third volume of Great Movies. I wrote about Kramer in great detail about the masterpiece he made the following year Judgement at Nuremberg and have written that Kramer was one of the few filmmakers, along with Sidney Lumet and Norman Jewison, who was capable of making entertaining films that delivered messages to their audiences. This year is the 65^th anniversary of Inherit The Wind, a fact I am sure will be overshadowed that it is the 100^th anniversary of the Scopes Trial that inspired it and which, sadly, we now no longer seem to have any consensus on who won.

I’ve seen Inherit The Wind quite a few times and like all of Kramer’s films over the years it has  messages that everyone should hear but that few people have taken away from it. I have little doubt those who know of the film (without having bothered to see it, of course) believe that the religious right and the fundamentalist mindsight refused to get the clear lessons it taught. That is true, but its also true that Kramer was using the play to also teach lessons that are relevant to today’s progressive mindset that were relevant then – but that might have been overlooked. And the best way to do so is through the three most famous historical characters that Kramer shows us in the film.

Note: For the purposes of brevity I will refer to the dramatis personae not by their names in the movie but as to their real life equivalent.

William Jennings Bryan is played by Frederic March in Kramer’s version. There have been multiple remakes of the play over the years but March goes out of his way to make his version look the most like Bryan in 1925. Bryan’s reputation has taken a huge hit over the last century so its worth going into detail on who he was before he came to Tennessee to prosecute Scopes.

Bryan was a Congressman from Nebraska who at the 1896 Democratic Convention electrified the crowds with his legendary ‘Cross of Gold’ Speech. Bryan was only 36 years old, just one year above the age limit to be eligible to run for President but when he delivered his oration he mobilized the crowds into nominated him for President, still the youngest man to ever be nominated by a major party.

Bryan was considered a radical by the masses and many questioned his sanity. While his main argument was for regulation of money, he also advocated for the rights or workers, regulation of railroads, increased suffrage and a kind of pacificism. He was also the first major Presidential candidate to travel the entire country for votes, something unheard of and considered demeaning in the 19^th century. The corporate interests, the GOP and even some Democrats, thought he was a dangerous and it would be a threat to the national interest if he became President. In short, Bryan was 19^th century equivalent of a progressive.

He lost the Presidency to McKinley, then lost again by a wider margin in 1900. He would run once more against Taft in 1908 and suffer an even bigger defeat. He argued against imperialism, fought for the right of the farmer and the laborer and was responsible for the Democratic Party’s slow but steady embrace of labor and workers. By 1912 he was still enough of a force in the Democratic Party that his backing would help Woodrow Wilson become President. Wilson made him Secretary of State.

That was a huge blunder because Bryan was a pacifist and a quasi-isolationist. With war brewing in Europe his positions quickly became out of touch with the political scene and he resigned in 1915. From that point on his position in the Democratic party became more diminished though he still showed up at each convention. By 1924, he was completely out of touch with modern politics but he still had a following among the Southerners and the evangelicals. By the time Bryan makes it to Tennessee, then as in reality, he is still popular with the crowds of the faithful but very little else.

Spencer Tracy portrays Clarence Darrow. Darrow was considered an iconoclast in America who’d once had political ambitions himself. Like Bryan, he opposed imperialist causes and actively supported organized labor in multiple cases in his early years. Despite doing his best Darrow was frequently attacked by many of his own movement for never doing enough for it. He spent his career opposing the death penalty, which he believed was in conflict with humanitarian means. This gave the impression, early on, that he was a sensationalist and more importantly that because of the criminals he represented he was himself as much  a criminal. When it’s announces he’s coming to Tennessee to represent Scopes there is a reaction in horror, particularly about his most recent case: “those boys in Chicago.” They are referring to Leopold and Loeb, who Darrow has just acquitted for killing Bobby Franks, a fourteen year old boy. The two of them had confessed and plead guilty so Darrow was trying to keep them from hanging. He gave a twelve hour speech which sentenced them to life in prison. But because the two young boys came from wealthy families, Americans considered him greedy and an opportunist. It’s for that reason he’s considered a monster.

Finally there’s H.L. Mencken, played by Gene Kelly. Mencken has since been proved to be fundamentally both deeply conservative and racist, but those are not evident in the play or the film. What is evident is Mencken’s utter disgust for humanity in general and the people in this town specifically. He’s been assigned to this story but it’s not clear whether he has much interest about evolution or thinks its legitimate. When he sees a circus monkey he shouts: “Grandpa!” and then starts to ask it for a statement.

To call Mencken in a cynic is too generous; in Kelly’s portrayal he has a disgust for humanity in general. The fate of Scopes honestly seems less important to him then proving what he already believes about the ‘plain people’ and their lack of common sense. Ironically while the people of this town no doubt consider him part of ‘the liberal media’, he’s as conservative as they are but he holds them in greater contempt. When one offers him a nice place to stay he responds: “I had a nice place to stay. And I left it to come here.”

In the original play everyone’s dialogue is listed in traditional print, save for Horndecker (Mencken) which takes the appearance of blank verse. One gets a sense of it in Kelly’s delivery, as if he is proud to stand apart from these people. The only person in the entire play he treats with respect is Darrow but even that’s marginal. When Darrow arrives someone shouts out: “It’s the devil.” Mencken shakes his hand, saying: “Hello, devil. Welcome to hell.”  In these five words Mencken makes it very clear how little he thinks of where he is and the people who live here – something, it should be noted, Darrow doesn’t share in his delivery.

Commonly forgotten about the Scopes trial is that, technically, Scopes lost. The jury found him guilty after little deliberation. It’s pretty clear almost from the start that this is a rigged game, given the contempt the judge treats Darrow in his cross-examination and how he is clearly leaning towards every word Bryan says. When Bryan makes it clear that none of the scientific experts Darrow has brought to testify can take the stand, the judge doesn’t even bother to give Darrow a hearing before ruling.  When Darrow calls Bryan to the stand he tries to get him to talk about the Origin of Species but the judge rules that he shouldn’t have to testify on it.

Essentially the only victory Darrow managed to make in his cross-examination is to make Bryan, the self-proclaimed mouthpiece of Christianity, look like a babbling idiot on the stand and even that he only achieves in the final minutes. Because not long after the verdict Bryan dies (in the play it happens within minutes; in real life, it happened within days) there might be a perception that the victory is he killed off the loudest opponent to evolution and therefore ‘won’ the fight. But that’s not how these things work in real life and its worth noting Darrow himself expresses admiration for his fallen foe that Mencken won’t. This is the kind of humanity that, frankly, the progressives themselves clearly lack then and now.

In many ways I think the most relevant passage to the events America a century after the Scopes Trial comes when Darrow is (as the stage directions tell us) “looking for a chink in the armor.” Darrow asks if he considers anything holy and he says: “The individual human mind…An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral.” Few progressives would argue with this even today. But what does Darrow say next:

“Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there’s a man who sits behind a counter and says: “All right, you can have a telephone, but you lose privacy and the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote but at a price: you lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff of the petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.”

That is what progressives, then and now, have never taken into account. One could easily extend Darrow’s monologue to every single move forward in the twentieth century and well past it. There is a cost to every move forward and few today would want to live in the world of even the late twentieth century but they have no desire to pay for it and have little use for those who cling to the old ways.

Bryan immediately afterwards responds by saying: “We must not abandon faith! Faith is the most important thing!” This is the response of a reactionary and in this case Bryan is one. But it is also the voice of belief in something that, by and large, today’s progressives do not have. I suspect at least one of the problems in today’s society is not that the battle is being fought between the descendants of Bryan and those of Darrow, but by those of Bryan and Mencken. What’s the difference? Darrow at least believes in something – the human mind, the ability to think, and can have respect even for the opposition. Mencken believes in nothing and has nothing but contempt for those who do.

Throughout the movie he goes out of his way to mock even Darrow’s efforts at trying to win. “Henry, why don’t you wake up?” Darwin was wrong! Man’s still an ape….When he first achieved the upright position he took a look at the stars…thought they were something to eat.”

When Darrow reacts by saying: “I wish I had your worm’s eye view of history. I t would make things a lot easier.” Mencken then turns on him:

“You’d still be spending time trying to make sense of what’s laughingly referred to as the human race….you think man still has noble destiny. Well I tell you he’s already started on his backward march to the salt and stupecy of where he came.” He calls Cates: “A monkey who tried to fly.”

This is just as true when he sees Bryan suffer his heart attack. He says: “Something happened to an also-ran.” Not even his death bothers him. “He died of a busted belly.”

This finally snaps Darrow’s patience

Darrow: You never pushed a noun against a verb except to blow up something.

Mencken: You know that’s a typical lawyer’s trick – accusing the accuser.

Darrow: What am I accused of?”

Mencken: Contempt of conscience, sentimentality in the first degree.

The final lines of the film are changed from what they are in the play. It’s an exchange between Darrow and Mencken.

Darrow: “My god, don’t you understand the meaning of what happened here today?”

Mencken: “What happened here has no meaning…

Darrow: YOU have no meaning! You’re like a ghost pointing an empty sleeve and smirking at everything people feel or want or struggle for! I pity you…What touches you, what warms you? Every man has a dream. What do you dream about? What…what do you need? You don’t need anything, do you? People, love, an  idea, just to cling to? You poor slob. You’re all alone. When you go to your grave, there won’t be anybody to pull the grass up over your head. Nobody to mourn you. Nobody to give a damn. You’re all alone!

All of this rolls off Mencken and he just turns even Darrow’s vitriol against his believe against him:

“You’re wrong…You’ll be there. You’re the type. Who else would defend my right to be lonely?

Darrow’s attack on Mencken sums up the modern progressive perfectly. They look at the entire world with disregard at best and contempt for those who try to change things at worst. I should mention much of Mencken’s dialogue bares the greatest revision from the original play, no doubt done in large part with the influence of Kelly but it is still a very clear belief in how Mencken saw the world. He had little use for humanity, thought democracy and progress were a sham, and looked at so many of the great Presidents of his era from TR to Truman as world-beaters because they tried to improve things for a populace Mencken felt didn’t deserve to have things change.

I’m reminded of a line from the comedy Taxi that parallels Mencken’s mindset: “What do you think of the human race? I’m looking for an outsider’s opinion.” In a nutshell, it’s clear that so much of the modern left has not embraced the ideas of Darrow, who at one point in his career was sympathetic with causes of Bryan (in the film Bryan says Darrow twice campaigned with him for President) but that of Mencken who thinks  to fight for a cause is a sucker’s game.

This is true based on what was happening in politics at time. Not long before Inherit the Wind was nominated for four Oscars (including Best Actor for Tracy and Best Adapted Screenplay) JFK gave his famous inaugural address where he said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Before the decade was over an entire generation was protesting in the streets because the idea of doing something for your country – namely fighting in Vietnam – was something that was beneath their ideals. Their actions were one of the main reasons the New Deal consensus – formed not long after Bryan died in 1925 – fractured for good and led to the conservative revolution that was powered by the spiritual descendants of Bryan in the Bible Belt where this conflict was the greatest.

During the play Bryan remarks on how he and Darrow were once friends and should be fighting the same fight. “Why is it, my old friend, that you’ve moved so far away from me?” Darrow responds: “All motion is relative…Maybe it’s you who’ve moved away by standing still.” That concept sums up the idea of progressivism today but the problem is that motion for progressive’s takes on the idea of the Red Queen’s Race: you have to move twice as fast to stay in the same place – and the progressives never stay there long enough for you to catch up. And because they always moving forward towards a future they refuse to define;  they combine Darrow’s idea of motion with Mencken’s pomposity that even the great changes don’t mean anything. The Mencken’s of this era will no doubt say there is no real difference between America in 1925 and the present time that man continues to march backwards despite living in a world where they have reaped the benefits of progress and have never had to pay the cost.

But the Darrow’s of the world know better. When Scopes is fined just $100 for breaking the law, the playwright’s say that one of the great precedents of all time ‘has exploded with the force of a wet balloon’. Bryan realizes the significance of this in his last moments and so does Darrow, even if Mencken doesn’t or refuses to admit it. And it’s worth noting that even though Mencken’s gives the final lines of the film, the writers let Darrow have the last word. He picks up Origin of Species, starts to walk away, then pauses, picks up the Bible and claps them together before leaving the courtroom.

In his review of the film Ebert is trying to figure out what Kramer meant by that last scene: “Has Darrow found a way to conflate the two, or does he just think he’ll need them for the appeal?”  There’s a third interpretation. Darrow knows that this is just one battle and that the war still needs to be won. And going forward he’s going to need all the tools he can get to win the fight. He is in motion yet again and he will not stand still for the adversaries that remain nor listen to the scorn of those who don’t believe him on either side. He believes that you have to pay for progress but he’s more than willing to keep footing the bill, even if that means being considered the Devil.

 

 

Everything Peak TV In the 2000s Tried to Tell Us About Today, Part 2: How Lost Used Sayid's Backstory To Make A Subtle Commentary On America's Role In The War on Terror

It is nearly impossible to talk about the era of Peak TV without bringing up the effect of the War on Terror on so much of the incredible drama we got.

The immediate effect came from 24, which from the start would use so many of the arguments that the Bush-Cheney administration would give for so many of the methods used to fight it. I sometimes belief that the show and so many of the dramas that followed are an unindicted co-conspirator as one of the reasons there was so little public outcry. When millions of people tune in weekly to see Jack Bauer violently berate, torture and kill in order to protect America from global threats – and is sanctioned by both Democratic and Republican Presidents to do so in the name of national security – then it no doubt becomes easier for the average American to accept it.

For all the criticism in liberal quarters the show would receive, the writers never trafficked in euphemisms when it came to what CTU did: they never used such code words as enhanced interrogation. Indeed one of the clearest examples in how far the show was willing to go came in Day 2 when President David Palmer allowed for a Secret Service agent to torture the head of the NSA for information regarding the whereabouts of an atomic bomb. This decision later comes back to nearly destroy his Presidency that same day but he doesn’t back away from deciding to do it.

The same can’t be said of so many of the dramas that followed in its way, particularly police procedurals. Dick Wolf would be more than willing to allow for brutal interrogations of suspected criminals, first on Law & Order: SVU and then on Chicago PD in what was by far the biggest abuse of the so-called ‘cop-a-ganda’ type series that came to be during this century. There were more subtle methods used in Howard Gordon’s follow-up drama Homeland but by and large so much of television was more than willing to give cover for the ends justifying the means.

If there were shows that were willing to flip the script on the ideas raised by the War on Terror, they were mostly to be found in genre dramas. Battlestar Galactica was willing to directly criticize the actions involving the War on Terror and the war in Iraq by moving the show to a setting against human-like Cylons throughout its run. Alias more than a few times would deal with it in between stories about 15^th century Italian mystics. But perhaps the most clever – and subtlest -  criticism came on Lost.

Author’s Note: I am writing about Lost in a separate series of articles and will probably cover much of the same material later on. For this article I will try to focus mostly on aspects related to the subject at hand.

Both at the time and even more so with hindsight I’ve always been impressed with how prominent the character of Sayid Jarrah, played magnificently by Naveen Andrews, was on Lost from the very beginning. Lost debuted in September of 2004, three full years after 9/11 and more than a year after the Iraq War had begun. By this point many Americans had become increasingly xenophobic towards Muslims and they were already more than frustrated with the quagmire Iraq was becoming. In addition 24 had done much to cement the idea that all Muslims were terrorists in the mindset of popular culture as well – and indeed the first prominent scene we have with Sayid on Lost comes when the surviving passengers of a plane crash have to break up a fight between him and Sawyer (who initially looks very much like the kind of redneck who would vote for W in the upcoming election) because Sawyer is convinced he caused the crash. Sawyer, who will have a penchant for nicknames that frequently can verge on offensive, will save his most racist and offensive sobriquets for Sayid over the first two seasons.

While this is going on Hurley (Jorge Garcia), who is quickly becoming the diplomat, talks to Sayid and says casually that he had a friend who fought in the Gulf War. Sayid says he did too. Asked who he fought for he says with neither pride nor shame: “The Republican Guard.”

Even at this period the internet could take on a toxic tone towards characters but there was never any backlash towards Sayid. And that’s frankly astonishing considering that by the time were less than six episodes into the first season we already know Sayid is: a) an Iraqi (in an interesting subtext he says he’s from Tikrit, the birth place of Saddam Hussein, b) a member of the Republican Guard who America was trying to dismantle, and c) a devout Muslim. The last was perhaps the most subtle point but the writers didn’t ignore it: occasionally we would see Sayid chanting and even in the midst of the chaos on the island, we saw him unrolling a rug for prayer.

And at that point we also knew one critical thing. While he initially says he was a communications officer, we would later learn that “Occasionally I helped make people communicate.” This was perhaps the only time he dealt in euphemisms about what he did for the Republican Guard; by the time we got to his first flashback in Solitary we knew very well that he was one of the most skilled torturers in the Iraqi military.

I suspect a huge part of the reason that Sayid very quickly became a fan favorite was because both Andrews and the writers always went out of their way to show just how haunted Sayid was by what he had done to other people. Sayid was one of the most tragic characters on Lost because he yearned not to be a violent man but time and again gave into his violent behavior. He clearly loathed what he did, but he didn’t seem to think he any other options.

I will talk about my own opinions on Sayid’s character in my work on Lost but what I want to discuss in this article is a subtext that was illustrated in the flashbacks revealed in his backstory about how the American government on two critical points in his life was directly responsible for bringing out the worst parts of who he was. Later on, he would claim that he knew that this was who he’d always been but I can’t help but be reminded of how one of the themes of Lost is that every single character was being pushed by other forces on a path they never truly had the freedom to chose that led them to the island. And during the 2000s, one of the biggest forces of all was American exceptionalism.

The first chronological flashback we get of Sayid is in the Season 2 episode ‘One of Them’. In it we see Sayid at the age of 23, a soldier during the first Gulf War. The U.S military breaks in while he is being ordered to destroy Iraqi government documents and Sayid is taken prisoner.

During the episode one of the commanding officers asks Sayid if he speaks English, which he does. They claim they need him to do some translating in order to question his commanding officer about the whereabouts of an American pilot who has been taken prisoner. Sayid tries to get information but Tariq is openly hostile when he answers in Iraqi. (Sayid is very diplomatic about the horrible things he is being told to do.) The officer asks Sayid if they can find a way to make him talk. Sayid backs away.

Sayid is then called in by a member of the Department of Intelligence, known only as Inman. He talks about Sayid’s sense of loyalty and realizes that he might think what he’s doing is a betrayal. He then shows a videotape of a village on which the Republican Guard used sarin gas, and which they claim Tariq gave the order to do so. The Intelligence officer says Sayid knew people in that village. He then hands Sayid a tool box and says that he might have to get creative.

In the scene that follows between Sayid and Tariq we watch Sayid say nothing as he slowly but surely removes a wrench and heads toward Tariq. Tariq becomes first angrier and then more afraid. We cut to outside this room. Sayid emerges and tells the soldiers the pilot is dead and he will take them to the body. The last shot of the flashback shows Sayid’s bloodied hands.

During the final scene Sayid is told by Inman that they’re pulling out of Iraq. Sayid is appalled at what he has done and swears to never do it again. Inman then begins to speak in perfect Iraqi and tells him that he now has a set of skills that my prove useful in the future. He stuffs a roll of hundreds in Sayid’s pocket, cuts him free and the soldiers drive away, leaving him alone in the desert road.

So much of this episode deals with what is happening in the present that the subtext is not obvious even after multiple viewings. In context the intention of Lindelof and Cuse (who wrote the episode) is subtle but there. The government had the means to get the information from Tariq all along but rather than get their hands dirty doing it they chose to force one of their prisoners to torture another. For all their supposed respect for Sayid in their conversations, they essentially saw him as no different than Tariq. The fact that they choose to abandon him after they get what they want with no appreciation for the consequences is perhaps the most subtle criticism of U.S. foreign policy I’ve seen on television during this period: we make a mess of something and we leave it for others to clean up with no sense of responsibility. That Sayid then went on to torture dozens of supposed militants for the Iraqi – including women and children – as a result of American interference is not something they care about, unless it affects their interests.

This point is driven home when we see the events that led Sayid to get on Oceanic 815 in the first place in the flashbacks in the Season 1 episode: “The Greater Good’. In this episode Sayid is walking through Heathrow when he is detained by Agent Cole of the CIA and an agent with Australia named Agent Hewitt.

In their introduction Cole tells Sayid, almost nonchalantly, that they have tracking his movements for some time. (In a subtle nod to this, we see a flash of Sayid on a TV screen in an Army headquarters in America later in the series.) By this point Sayid has long since left Iraq and has been taking on a nomadic existence and its clear the CIA knows why. He’s looking for Nadia, a former Iraqi prisoner who the viewer (it’s not clear if the CIA knows) helped liberate when she was on the verge of being executed  by the Republican Guard eight years earlier. The government offers to help Sayid find the woman he loves but in exchange he has to help them.

A former classmate of Sayid named Essam is suspected to be the member of a terror cell in Sydney. Agent Hewitt tells him that cell is suspected in the theft of 300 pounds of C-4 which they believe will be used in a mass bombing. They want Sayid to resume his acquaintanceship with Essam.

When Sayid and Essam meet (tellingly in a Sydney mosque) Essam tells him his wife died in an insurgent bombing in Iraq. When Sayid gets close to Essam he learns that Essam has been recruited to be a martyr for this movement but he has deep doubts about what he has to do.

But when Sayid tells Cole and Hewitt about this, they see no reason to bring Essam in because he knows nothing about the C-4. They tell him that these cells operate from the top down and that Essam’s only going to know about it hours before the attack. Cole is blunt when she says that Sayid is going to have to talk his friend into blowing himself up.

Sayid is enraged by this and initially refuses, saying he doesn’t care if they arrest him. Cole says that’s fine, they’ll arrest Nadia as an enemy combatant and detain her. Sayid is intimately familiar with what that means in America and is forced to give in.

That the CIA sees no problem in creating a terrorist to stop a terror attack might seem like a far-fetched plot point but it is not far removed from ‘the ends justifying the means’ narrative we see on 24. Just as clear is that America has no real use for Essam or Sayid as nothing but pawns to help save the lives of white people. Sayid’s actions here are despicable but compared to the position the government has put him in, it’s hard to see he has a choice.

However in doing so he manipulates Essam into becoming a martyr involving lies and manipulation. When Essam learns the truth from Sayid, he is horrified by what happened, especially when he learns he did it for Nadia. He takes his life but not before telling Sayid: “I hope she makes you whole.”

Just as they had no use for Essam in life, the government has no use for him in death. When Sayid asks what will be done with Essam’s body, he is told he will be cremated as an enemy combatant. Sayid says this goes against the man’s religion and Cole and Hewitt couldn’t care less. Sayid tells them that he will claim the body and that means staying an extra day to do so  - putting him on Oceanic 815.

As I said earlier in the article one of the big questions is about free will versus destiny. A subtext of that argument is nature versus nurture and considering how many of the characters on Lost are shown to have horrible parents, it’s a question the show comes back to but never answers. Sayid Jarrah will later come to believe that he couldn’t escape who he is, at one point even being told by another character: “You’re capable of things that most men aren’t…It’s in your nature. You’re a killer.” (Lost fans know that the source is unreliable but I won’t reveal it here.) And it’s clear Sayid, at some level, has always believed it.

But as these two prominent flashbacks clearly but subtly illustrate in critical points in Sayid’s life, he was forced on the path he was because America was more than willing to use him for their own ends, then cast him aside when they need him any longer. They were more than willing to use him to achieve goals they could on their own and cast him aside when they were done with him. The fact that, in both occasions, they paid him for his services and thought it was a fair exchange for the emotional scars he had to bear for betraying everything he stood for, is an indictment of the worst aspects of how America sees the world. One almost wonders if Agent Cole, seeing reports of Oceanic 815 crashing and knowing Sayid was on it, was relieved. He could have been a problem down the line, she would have thought before going back to protect American interests at home and abroad. She certainly wouldn’t have cared if he survived.