Humanities II

A not so positive review of Charlie Chaplin's Gold Rush

"The Gold Rush" is a distinct triumph for Charlie Chaplin from both the artistic and commercial standpoints, and is a picture certain to create a veritable riot at theatre box offices. It is the greatest and most elaborate comedy ever filmed, and will stand for years as the biggest hit in its field, just as "The Birth of a Nation" still withstands the many competitors in the dramatic class.

The Birth of a Nation" is the main title David Wark Griffith, the director-in-chief of the Mutual Film Corporation, gave to his picturized version of Thomas Dixon's story of the South, "The Clansman." It received its first New York public presentation in the Liberty theatre, New York, March 3. The daily newspaper reviewers pronounced it as the last word in picture making.

If only the powers that be at msnbc.com understood that Adolph Hitler actually was a man of peace, they wouldn't have acted so rashly in removing their site's link to a Pat Buchanan column essentially blaming England for World War II.

Most Americans want their children to grow up to be "colorblind" when it comes to race. As a result, many parents, particularly white ones, don't discuss race with their children at all. But research demonstrates that babies as young as six months can recognize racial differences. And as they get older, kids start mentally categorizing people based on their race, whether they've been taught to by their parents or not. In fact, the authors of the book NurtureShock argue that parents' silence on the question may be exacerbating the problem. In the absence of open discussions about the role of race in kids' lives, they draw their own conclusions, some of which would be horrifying to progressive parents.

It would seem to me that good parents would have the confidence to let their kids hear the speech, help them put it in context, and urge them to think for themselves - just like they should with everything else they hear in school. "I think our kids are a lot more mature than we give them credit for," Boyce says. "We don't need to shield them from ideas."

We don't know what to do with our monsters. But I submit that we owe it to Jaycee Dugard to learn.

The moral is that the brevity of an e-mail message, a blog post, a text message, even a tweet, is no obstacle to powerful information, a persuasive argument, a literary moment, a zinger, a joke.

Sometimes there's no way to know at the end of the day if you won. Trying to figure it out can leave you staring out the window at 3 in the morning. This is why being a sports fan is so comforting. You might not know how you did last week, but you - and everybody else - knows how the Panthers did. There's a common frame of reference

A response to the NY Graphic's treatment of Booker t Washington which said: "There are not lacking thousands of intelligent Negroes who believe that Booker T. Washington, consciously or unwittingly, betrayed his color and his kind. . . .

News article on Marcus Garvey from Time, Dec 12, 1927.

The aim of this blog is to take you there... to the 1920's! I'll be posting photos, illustrations, magazines, music, and all kinds of vintage things that come straight from the 1920's.

Digital copies of magazine articles and cartoons from the 20s and 30s.

Time magazine issues (1923-29)

Text and digital files of the March 1925 Survey Graphic - "Harlem, Mecca of the New Negro"