On Friday, January 27, 1871, Kentucky Democratic congressman J. Proctor Knott figured he’d derail a land-grant bill being debated on the House floor with an entertaining speech dripping with sarcasm. For thirty minutes he lampooned the absurdity of approving an expenditure of tax dollars for a god-forsaken, freezing nothing of a town located on the edge of nowhere called Duluth. It worked. The legislation on behalf of the St. Croix and Lake Superior Railroad never made it to a vote. Deader than Julius Caesar.

Does the Constitution, like Jerry Seinfeld’s “two-face” girlfriend, look different under different lighting? Much like Gwen’s appearance in the Seinfeld episode “The Strike,” our nation’s history during the dark days of crisis has altered the seemingly fixed features of our Constitution’s language into meanings at odds with common perception. Furthermore, how does one square those ‘altered meanings’ with what appear to be in contradiction with precedents set by the US Supreme Court?  

I can’t deny it. One of my all-time favorite WW2 films is Robert Aldrich’s 1967 blockbuster The Dirty Dozen. Based on a 1965 bestselling novel by E. M. Nathanson, the plot involves twelve hardened convicts, five of whom were awaiting execution, recruited as a commando team by the US military for a top secret, most likely suicidal, mission behind enemy lines. A full pardon would be their reward for success. The movie featured an all-star ensemble cast that included: Lee Marvin, George Kennedy, Trini Lopez (a popular musician), Telly Sevalas, Charles Bronson, Donald Sutherland, and football legend, Jim Brown. Who doesn’t remember his grenade run?

In the first part of “The Director’s Cut,” I recounted autobiographical experiences with filmmakers who’d exploited my ignorance with cinematic adaptations of literary figures. I’d been completely misled by the camera’s perverted depiction of fictional characters lifted from the printed page. Today’s post continues that theme by examining instances where filmmakers intentionally sought to manipulate their audience for propagandistic purposes. Move over Tarzan, Frankenstein, and 007—make way for Hitler, Khrushchev, and JFK.

Tarzan, Frankenstein, and James Bond. These three fictional characters were cinematic icons of my youth. There were others of course. Hammer film monsters and ‘sand and sandals’ heroes were my daily bread. I knew all about Steve Reeves (Hercules), Victor Mature (Hannibal, Demetrius and the Gladiators, Samson and Delilah) and Kirk Douglas (Spartacus). I was a sucker for all of it.

Do you remember your earliest moment of political awareness? Is it age related or linked to some unforgettable circumstance? If memory serves, the first indication I noticed of a political consciousness presented itself when I was five years old. It appeared the same year I discovered my fascination with history. It was 1960.

The brainchild of Ken Kesey, Ramon Sender, and Stewart Bland, the Trips Festival occurred in San Francisco January 21-23, 1966. Around 10,000 people attended the happening. Wes Wilson did the poster. Owsley Stanley ran the sound and brought the LSD. Music was provided by The Grateful Dead, Big Brother and The Holding Company, The Marbles, Jefferson Airplane, The Charlatans, and The Great Society. Eric Christensen documented the event on film. Author Tom Wolfe noted, “The Haight-Ashbury era began that weekend.”

As I sit here at my office desk thinking about today’s Fourth of July celebrations, I cannot resist the urge to link Independence Day with what transpired in the final weeks of the Supreme Court’s 2025 term. The month of June is for Court junkies like me a heady time of intense anticipation. Especially the final cases on the final announcement days.  

In 69 B.C., Julius Caesar went to the Roman province of Further Spain to kickstart his political career as quaester under the governor Antistius Vetus. Not a particularly sexy posting, the job required him to ride circuit among the native communities as a financial magistrate to rule on court cases and settle legal disputes. Yawn.

Louis the Stammerer. Justinian the Slit-Nose. Alfonso the Slobberer. Aethelred the Unready. Charles the Bald. Eystein Foul-Fart. You don’t often hear about these historical leaders whose unflattering monikers suggest they just couldn’t cut the mustard. In contrast, there’s the lengthy roster of those rated as “Greats” in the chronicles of past eras—Cyrus the Great, Peter the Great, Constantine the Great, Catherine the Great, Frederick the Great, Pope Gregory the Great, Pompey the Great, Alfred the Great, Charlemagne (Charles the Great), and Suleiman the Great (and Magnificent). The generally accepted lineup of this hallowed order contains the names of over 150 people.

Tolstoy’s remarkable story on behalf of a man he viewed as one of earth’s greatest creations due to his manly virtue and human charity certainly deserves our attention and respect. It is reminiscent of things said by many of President John F. Kennedy, martyred nearly one hundred years later also by an assassin’s bullet. But one would be amiss to eclipse the politician for the person. Here we will consider Abraham Lincoln as a political figure.

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin was spot on when she stated in the beginning of her massively successful book The Team of Rivals “the uniquely American story of Abraham Lincoln has unequalled power to captivate the imagination and to inspire emotion.” According to a recent estimate, something like 15,000 to 16,000 books have been written in English on his life and career as president.

Professor Ross Davis of George Mason University once wrote: “Nothing in the law of sports matches the frequency of baseball’s interaction with the institutions of the law or the tendency of lawmakers who speak of sports to talk in baseball terms.” Other court watchers have noted that there are more references to baseball in federal and state court opinions than any other sport.

Leo Frank was a Brooklyn Jew who’d relocated to Atlanta in 1908 to help manage his uncle’s pencil-making business, the National Pencil Company. He acted as the factory’s superintendent.

The horror of Adolf Hitler is not that he was a demon shot out of a portal of Hell but that he was a human creation, born of human parents, whose character was formed out of historical circumstance. He was a product of a particular time and place. This fact renders his monstrous behavior all the more real, all the more evil—and, therefore, all the more demanding of historical study.

I reckon everyone has at one time or another considered a wish list of mysterious disappearances they’d love to see resolved. Lost things found. The mental discomfort of not knowing the whereabouts of ‘vanished’ people or things can vex one’s equilibrium to the point of obsession.

“I can say with confidence there has never been a man or woman—not me, not Bill, nobody—more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as President of the United States of America.”

Pres. Barack Obama, July 27, 2016 at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

In the late 1950s, rock ‘n’ roll was not only big news but a big problem to most adults. Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Elvis, Buddy Holly…the roster of teenage music heroes was growing as long as Jason Momoa’s hair. Parents, teachers, civic officials, religious leaders, even the neighborhood policeman—all the usual stop signs of public order and decency—were at wit’s end trying to grapple with its growing popularity and influence. Was it the work of Satan? The Kremlin? The Elders of Zion?

Located roughly 150 miles southwest of St. Petersburg sits the city of Novgorod, or as it was called by its inhabitants in medieval times, Lord Novgorod the Great. Long a Baltic outpost of Kievan Rus’ and an appendage of its rotational system of princely rule, the citizens of Novgorod decided to ditch their Kievan-selected prince, Vsevolod Mstislavich, in May 1136 and establish for themselves an independent republican regime.

For nearly 60 years Judy Blume has shown what literature for young people could be. Never condescending or judgmental, always honest, authentic and encouraging. Quite often provocative. Her books were not peopled with heroes and villains but human beings…