The promos on the National Geographic Channel announce that a program on Hitler's bunkers under Berlin will be shown tonight. It is known that Hitler spent the last months of World War II living in tunnels dug under Berlin and it's estimated that as many as 100 people were down there with him. Apparently this program will be the first opportunity to see how and where the Nazi leader spent his last days.
One of my favorite books is The Bunker by James P. O'Donnell. a correspondent who got to enter this series of tunnels dug deep under Berlin as the war was coming to an end. As I recall O'Donnell more-or-less accidentally found Hitler's rooms under the city. For 105 days Hitler and approximately 100 associates hunkered 55 feet under the burning city. Apparently Hitler had hiding places prepared all over Germany and moved from one to another, but his last days were spent in this bunker with his inner circle and his mistress Eva Braun. According to O'Donnell Hitler and Braun were married at the end of their stay there and they committed suicide by poison along with Goebbels, his wife and their six children in the very last hours of the war.
O'Dennell interviewed many of the survivors of this rat pack and included many accounts of those who were with Hitler. I misplaced or lost the hardback copy of O'Donnell's book but fortunately a few years ago the Amazon.com used book department was able to find a paperback copy which I now have safely preserved. It is a sobering record of an insane, bizarre leader and the deluded people who believed in him and huddled with him.
Not being fans of the Oscar programs, our set will be focused on this report on the Bunker. If you find a copy of The Bunker by O'Donnell, I suggest you buy it.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Never In My Born Days....
Eugene Robinson, my favorite Op-Ed columnist in the Washington Post has written a thoughtful piece today on the mountain of issues facing our new president, which Robinson describes as 'a presidency on steroids.' We all know them, they're cataloged for us everyday and Robinson adds a new list to such things as the closing of Guantanamo, health insurance for children, changing unwanted policies from the Bush administration. The mess in the Middle East looms large. Now in addition the president's responsibility for this mammoth stimulus package may cause him to become in addition to his presidential role, an auto executive, a banker, a mortgage broker and quite possibly other jobs as well.
On top of all of this is the sad display of the House Republicans voting to a person against the $787 billion stimulus bill, and only Republican senators Specter, Snow and Collins daring to march out of step with their party. More than any other time that I can remember, Congress, the first branch of government is broken. It's always easier to see the faults than it is to find solutions, but the faults are glaring. It seems to me so long as Congress is organized on the seniority system with the inertia built into it, with members following the marching orders of the lobbyists, with the fact that unless they commit something scandalous enough to land them on the front page, most incumbents will be reelected term after term. In the case of the House of Representatives, two year terms dictate that members must begin campaigning for the next term on the day the present one begins. Senators, on the other hand, serve for six years, when I believe, four would be better.
A broken presidency can be fixed by voting out one person, that can't be accomplished in Congress.
On top of all of this is the sad display of the House Republicans voting to a person against the $787 billion stimulus bill, and only Republican senators Specter, Snow and Collins daring to march out of step with their party. More than any other time that I can remember, Congress, the first branch of government is broken. It's always easier to see the faults than it is to find solutions, but the faults are glaring. It seems to me so long as Congress is organized on the seniority system with the inertia built into it, with members following the marching orders of the lobbyists, with the fact that unless they commit something scandalous enough to land them on the front page, most incumbents will be reelected term after term. In the case of the House of Representatives, two year terms dictate that members must begin campaigning for the next term on the day the present one begins. Senators, on the other hand, serve for six years, when I believe, four would be better.
A broken presidency can be fixed by voting out one person, that can't be accomplished in Congress.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
When the race is ours.....
We have a black president, and an Hawaiian president, and an Indonesian and a partially Asian president with roots deep in Kenya as well as Kansas, who entered politics in the black neighborhoods of Chicago's South Side. All of this was brought home to me in a picture of the sharply contrasting elements and influences in Barack Obama's ethnic and cultural makeup in an article by Professor Dwight N. Hopkins of the University of Chicago Divinity School in the Christian Century magazine.
We Americans have lived under the one-drop-of-black-blood rule as a means of maintaining white supremacy from the time the first Africans were brought in chains to the new world. They and their children were designated as black as long as there was one drop of black blood in their makeup regardless of how white they may have looked.
I grew up in a western suburb of Chicago, Oak Park. Chicago was described as a thousand small towns or neighborhoods knit together and it certainly seemed that way. Called the second largest Polish city in the world, neighborhoods of almost every nationality and ethnic make up could be identified. In the midst of this kaleidoscope of many backgrounds was the stark contrast of white versus black. Blacks weren't even counted as citizens in the minds of many until after Emancipation and the end of the Civil War. We white Northerners often looked down on Southern white supremacists as blatant racists, but in practice we forced black people to stay in their own neighborhoods and turned a blind eye to their inferior schools and lack of playgrounds and social services others enjoyed from the same tax base.
The south side of Chicago had a large population of African Americans and had grown rapidly with the coming of World War II when both blacks and whites from the southern states emigrated to northern cities to work in the burgeoning defense industries. De facto segregation kept black persons in their own neighborhoods.
Professor Hopkins raises the interesting question of what race is Obama? The professor quotes Georgian Congressman John Lewis who has said that no black person who had come out of segregation and the civil rights movement could have been elected the first black president. And of course President Obama redefines what it means to be called black. His ancestors didn't come from the West African empires of long ago and therefore had no connection to the European slave trade. During the civil rights struggles Mr. Obama didn't live in the southern states but in Asia and the pacific islands. He didn't grow up in an American black church, the cradle of civil rights. He was born in Hawaii and grew up among Japanese Hawaiians, Chinese Hawaiians, Filipino Hawaiians, Pacific Island Hawaiians, Native Hawaiians and white Hawaiians. Whites are still a minority in Hawaii. Dr. Hopkinds points our that the black-white paradigm of the mainland 'did not dominate his reality.'
From age six to ten he lived in Indonesia and spoke Indonesian. He was also raised in a white environment. His Kansan mother (not from the South) reared him with the help of his white grandparents.
Yet he is our black President and is more African than most of our African American citizens. His father came here voluntarily from Kenya in east Africa as a student in 1959. Barack Obama was 22 when he moved to the South Side of Chicago and engaged in the tradition of segregation and the one-drop rule. He received three things in Chicago, a black family through marriage, a black community through his excperience of working as a community organizer, and a black church.
With the fascinating science of DNA we could all learn much of our backgrounds. Most of us today know nothing of our heritage more than three or four generations back, certainly not eight or ten and before. We have 'drops' we've never dreamed of, and are recipients of others, good or bad, who have made us who we are.
President Obama is perhaps the most 'American' of all American presidents and most like us. He is the result of the melting pot. Many years ago, long before any dream of an Obama presidency, I came to believe through my own observation and experience of the civil rights movement that the ultimate solution to the 'race issue,' so-called, would be intermarriage and the total blending of the races. I participated in civil rights activities in rather limited ways in comparison with many who were truly heroic in their willingness to sacrifice their careers as well as their own physical safety. But for all of us this election has meant a great step forward in weakening the one-drop rule.
We Americans have lived under the one-drop-of-black-blood rule as a means of maintaining white supremacy from the time the first Africans were brought in chains to the new world. They and their children were designated as black as long as there was one drop of black blood in their makeup regardless of how white they may have looked.
I grew up in a western suburb of Chicago, Oak Park. Chicago was described as a thousand small towns or neighborhoods knit together and it certainly seemed that way. Called the second largest Polish city in the world, neighborhoods of almost every nationality and ethnic make up could be identified. In the midst of this kaleidoscope of many backgrounds was the stark contrast of white versus black. Blacks weren't even counted as citizens in the minds of many until after Emancipation and the end of the Civil War. We white Northerners often looked down on Southern white supremacists as blatant racists, but in practice we forced black people to stay in their own neighborhoods and turned a blind eye to their inferior schools and lack of playgrounds and social services others enjoyed from the same tax base.
The south side of Chicago had a large population of African Americans and had grown rapidly with the coming of World War II when both blacks and whites from the southern states emigrated to northern cities to work in the burgeoning defense industries. De facto segregation kept black persons in their own neighborhoods.
Professor Hopkins raises the interesting question of what race is Obama? The professor quotes Georgian Congressman John Lewis who has said that no black person who had come out of segregation and the civil rights movement could have been elected the first black president. And of course President Obama redefines what it means to be called black. His ancestors didn't come from the West African empires of long ago and therefore had no connection to the European slave trade. During the civil rights struggles Mr. Obama didn't live in the southern states but in Asia and the pacific islands. He didn't grow up in an American black church, the cradle of civil rights. He was born in Hawaii and grew up among Japanese Hawaiians, Chinese Hawaiians, Filipino Hawaiians, Pacific Island Hawaiians, Native Hawaiians and white Hawaiians. Whites are still a minority in Hawaii. Dr. Hopkinds points our that the black-white paradigm of the mainland 'did not dominate his reality.'
From age six to ten he lived in Indonesia and spoke Indonesian. He was also raised in a white environment. His Kansan mother (not from the South) reared him with the help of his white grandparents.
Yet he is our black President and is more African than most of our African American citizens. His father came here voluntarily from Kenya in east Africa as a student in 1959. Barack Obama was 22 when he moved to the South Side of Chicago and engaged in the tradition of segregation and the one-drop rule. He received three things in Chicago, a black family through marriage, a black community through his excperience of working as a community organizer, and a black church.
With the fascinating science of DNA we could all learn much of our backgrounds. Most of us today know nothing of our heritage more than three or four generations back, certainly not eight or ten and before. We have 'drops' we've never dreamed of, and are recipients of others, good or bad, who have made us who we are.
President Obama is perhaps the most 'American' of all American presidents and most like us. He is the result of the melting pot. Many years ago, long before any dream of an Obama presidency, I came to believe through my own observation and experience of the civil rights movement that the ultimate solution to the 'race issue,' so-called, would be intermarriage and the total blending of the races. I participated in civil rights activities in rather limited ways in comparison with many who were truly heroic in their willingness to sacrifice their careers as well as their own physical safety. But for all of us this election has meant a great step forward in weakening the one-drop rule.
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