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[John C]

It's not limited to the Golden Age Beetle, either, just so you know.

That tendency is prevalent in all of art "history." I hate it when I keep reading paraphrased "facts".

I guess it's the Valance Effect:  When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

There's a story about Howard Chandler Christy that has been going around for 80+ years and I've challenged it in my HCC biography (http://www.bpib.com/illustra2/christy.htm) that's been posted for nine years (and comes up #1 in Google for Howard Chandler Christy, so it's been seen by many a HCC fan). NO ONE has yet to find the source material that the story describes, yet it persists.

Well, we do live in a society with an "expert fetish," for lack of a better term.  For all the talk about the Internet as a great intellectual equalizer, most people would still rather trust a hollow credential than first-hand research.

Or celebrity, failing credential.  I'm no fan of vaccines, myself, but I always get a kick out of people who cite Jenny McCarthy's book.  Because who knows more about brain damage and infectious diseases than a snude model?  (Actually, hang on a second...)

But my point is that, for you to be right, there's at least one PhD in Art History who must be wrong, and we can't have that.  It'd be like...having a teenager find the cure for cancer in a backyard garden!

By the way, having read through the biography (very nice job--I didn't plan on staying to read), I'm now wracking my brain, because I'm sure I've seen the picture you're talking about, but can't remember where.  I was reading old fiction rather than looking for art, so it didn't strike me as significant.  I want to say it was Atlantic Monthly, but (a) I don't want to send you on a wild goose chase and (b) the latest the Cornell archive goes is 1901, which is likely too early.

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=atlantic

And only peripherally related, I have a fantasy world where Christy was assigned to illustrate Jack London during their brief overlap, accelerating the development of the superhero and comic book.  I mean, all The Red Virgin (from "The Iron Heel") or The Shadow and the Flash (eponymous) need are action illustrations.  And Christy might not have done much action, but how far is The Eternal Question (or even The Soldier's Dream) sitting from Miss America or the Woman in Red in concept?

History sure ain't what people are writing these days.  Comics are just the latest in a long line of lazy historical writers.

It's true, but it seems more annoying here.  With general art or sociopolitical history, there's a certain amount of poliical delicateness required for publication (for example, we never, ever mention that Lincoln wanted to send the blacks "back" to Africa to solve the slavery problem) and many primary sources are traditionally far out of reach to a casual historian.

But with comic books?  With Charlton comic books for heaven's sake!?  If I have access to a full run of the Charlton Blue Beetle (I believe I have most issues in paper, no less), then they're not hard to come by at all, especially for someone planning to write a comprehensive or authoritative book on the subject.

(I often wonder if there's a place in the market for uncovering these ever-creeping myths.  Not in the sense of proving them wrong, which is easy enough to do, but in pinpointing where they came from and why they've held on with researchers who should know better.)

ps. John - if you want to read all of my Blue Beetles, I'll be happy to loan them to you. It's not a complete run, but it's not $8 grand, either.

I may take you up on that at some point, thanks, but the collection here is already pretty darn good and I'm currently engrossed in the Ars

[jfglade]

 Thanks, because now I know that there is some basis to that aspect of the Blue Beetle. I will probably get around to downloading and reading that story, but it will be anti-climatic to learning that the oft reported "Super Blue Beetle" did have some basis in fact. Checking the source material will seem rather routine now, but it does sound like the story from #33 is one the amazing side.

[narfstar]

An interesting book is Unfounded Loyalty. Written by a black man showing how it falsely came about that the Dem party was the party that took care of them. He traced it back to some Philladelphia newspapers. Most significant gains have been brought about by Republicans but few blacks know that. The Dems fought against the Civil Rights acts and LBJ went sided with the Rep.

[JonTheScanner]

Recall that the Democratic Party is not monolithic.  It was even less so before the 1970s.  The Southern states were pretty solidly Democratic (dating back to the Reconstruction which was viewed as Republican run).  Southern Democrats were much more conservative than many north-eastern and western Republicans.  They were adamantly opposed to Civil Rights legislation.  Excluding them the landmark 1964 Civil Rights legislation was favored by a larger fraction of Democrats than Republicans.

Here is the vote on the landmark Civil Rights Bill of 1964:

The original House version:

    * Southern Democrats (11 states): 7-87   (7% yes)
    * Southern Republicans: 0-10   (0%)

    * Other Democrats: 145-9   (94%)
    * Other Republicans: 138-24   (85%)

The Senate version:

    * Southern Democrats: 1-20   (5%)
    * Southern Republicans: 0-1   (0%)
    * Other Democrats: 45-1   (98%)
    * Other Republicans: 27-5   (84%)
          Barry Goldwater of Arizona voted no

VP and later President Lyndon Johnson who pushed for this bill, is supposed to have remarked that it would lose the South for the Democrats and he was right.  The South is now overwhelmingly Republican in national elections.

[JVJ]

Thank you, Jon,
A great example of the difference between research and repetition. Real facts are always more revealing than restatements, which often tend to be oversimplifications of complex issues. I have never seen the roll-call civil rights votes presented with such clarity. Again, thanks.

And thanks also for the kind gift that arrived today. Totally unexpected. I did already own a copy and will make certain that this one finds a sympathetic and appreciative home. Your thoughtfulness is GREATLY appreciated.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[John C]

Also key to the political debate is the fact that the names and platforms are essentially meaningless to the parties themselves.  Both parties are effectively (and presumably literally) businesses, and just like it's stupid to assume that everything IBM (International Business Machines) sells must be a machine used for business in the international market, it's also wrong to assume that a Democrat must support populist causes.

Eric's numbers cut to the heart of the matter, and you see similarly "not right" votes for bills on copyright, banking, war and other foreign policy, free speech, and anything else of actual substance.

[boox909]

What started out as an interesting thread about Blue Beetle, has instead turned into a thread of partisan fail.


B.

[JVJ]

One of the little-known, fleeting powers of the late-Fox/early Charlton Blue Beetle character was the ability to hi-jack threads. Surely you read about that in one of Ron Goulart's many tomes on future technological predictions in mid-Fifties comic books!


(|:{>

[John C]

And hey, a little partisanism never hurt anybody.  How it became such a dirty word in the last decade or so, I'll never know.  When I was a kid, open discussion and argument was an ideal, not a collapse of civilization.  (And now Psychology journals are running articles about how people who question history or the government have serious mental issues--how wonderfully Stalinist!)

Plus, what's not political about comic books?  There's propaganda (intentional and not) of all sorts and all the world's ills are abstracted into a fistfight between two guys.  Sometimes the early books deal directly with political issues (some shallowly adapted from the day's headlines).  And--and here's the main Beetle connection--almost everybody claiming to be an impartial researcher is either failing to do original research or pushing a preplanned agenda.

Related, I should mention that when I teach (Computer Science), I consistently find that these sorts of issues become absolutist dogma that can waste up to a lecture per semester.  X is more efficient/faster/easier/more bloated than Y, buut nobody seems to have a reason to say that nor have any reason to question the conditions.

One of the most important tools I picked up from my high school American History class (beyond asking "where's your thesis in this work," which I unfortunately rarely put into practice in my haste) is the "to what extent..." line of questioning.  In other words, circling back to the (now completed) Blue Beetle deal, the question the "definitive" authors should be asking isn't "did Holyoke mess with the formula," but rather "to what extent did Holyoke mess with the formula."  The first requires nothing more than dogmatic assertion ("yep!"), whereas the latter requires specifics, details, and comparison.

[narfstar]

I freely admit to being very partisan. I hate both national parties but despise Democrats far more. I blame our corrupt  legal bribery campaign system for a large percentage of the problem. I know that many get into politics to make a beneficial difference. The system soon puts them into a bad place if they ever want to get re-elected. This is my down and dirty difference between liberal and conservative
Conservative is more the end justifies the means while liberal is more the means excuse the end. Both actually want the same end results most of the time.

[John C]

Well said.  And if we're really honest about it, it's not even just about reelection.  A politician in power is never going to seek out less power unless he's ineffectual (for not having power or for opposing the rest).

I think it was an insight in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" that "anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."

And I can't help but remember being taught that the ancient Atheniens drew lots to fill political office.  At the end of the term, their administration would be put on trial.  If they couldn't defend their choices to a jury of citizens, they were thrown in prison or executed.  While I'm not necessarily suggesting anything by mentioning this, the idea of personal, direct responsibility (and the absence of a political "caste") is mighty appealing.

[narfstar]

Well said.  And if we're really honest about it, it's not even just about reelection.  A politician in power is never going to seek out less power unless he's ineffectual (for not having power or for opposing the rest).
AT the Repubulican NEA caucus a former representative spoke to the group. He tried to make the point they they should not give schools money with some regulation. I tried to make the point that they never should have taken the money in the first place. He considered it "their" money while I consider it our money taken unjustifiably by them in the first place.

I think it was an insight in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" that "anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."

And I can't help but remember being taught that the ancient Atheniens drew lots to fill political office.  At the end of the term, their administration would be put on trial.  If they couldn't defend their choices to a jury of citizens, they were thrown in prison or executed.  While I'm not necessarily suggesting anything by mentioning this, the idea of personal, direct responsibility (and the absence of a political "caste") is mighty appealing.

ABSOLUTELY  appealing, and a huge conflict of interest is allowing lawyers to be legislators.