Politics Ink: Hoover, Fonda lose political insult value

http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=86464§ion=NEWS&subsection=FOCUS_POLITICS&year=2004&month=3&day=20

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When Republican allies of President George W. Bush try to indict Democratic presidential rival John Kerry for 34-year- old ties with the anti-Vietnam war activities of Jane Fonda, only 20 percent of Americans have any idea what that's all about.

And when Kerry accuses Bush of being the first president to suffer a net loss of jobs since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the Great Depression, more than half of respondents are left wondering whether the Democratic challenger is talking about a former FBI director, a 69-year-old dam on the Colorado River, a vacuum cleaner or an imaginary friend.

A National Annenberg Election Survey found that twice as many Americans recall Fonda as a popular Hollywood actress with at least 47 films to her credit than remember her as the controversial anti-war activist who traveled to North Vietnam in 1972 to highlight her opposition to the war.

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When survey respondents were asked, "Just your best guess, what was Herbert Hoover known for?" less than 7 percent tied Hoover to the Great Depression or the 1929 stock market crash - the parallel with Bush that Kerry likes to claim in his campaign speeches.

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you end up with idiots like G W Bush as president (small "p" in his case).

Schools do not teach truth, only the sanitised version of past events that the pablum-encrusted "experts" allow. Controversy is frowned on but controversy is what makes history worth studying. If everything was always the same, we wouldn't have anything to learn from the past.

It isn't, and our kids are cheated of knowing that.

Thus, FDR is a saint, without anyone mentioning what a cut-throat and ruthless politician he was.

Or how RR ratted out other actors during the HUAC years.

Or how the US came to be involved in Cuba in the first place (Remember the Maine?) or why it was called Hearst's War in the first place.

And VietNam? Let's not go there, as Colin Powell might say.

People learn what they're taught. How many Americans were even alive during VietNam? I only know what I know about WWII because the media has always been full of movies and books and articles and stories about that war. Seen many VietNam movies out there? Anything about Allende?

My kids, who are all in their twenties, said they learned very little recent or current history in school. Their schools concentrated on ancient history so much that they hated the subject.

They learned most of their European, American and political history at home. We read and discussed everything. They learned nothing in school about unions, or women's history.

I think we are educating them to be fodder for the corporate machines, and not to be thinking citizens. We are creating consumers rather than citizens.

It is shameful. I know I had a better education than that.

Not long ago, I talking to my daughter about an article that compared 0/11 to the Reichstag fire. My daughter, a magne cum laude graduate of a good university, did not know what the Reichstag fire was! I guess I failed her on that one.

I am amazed at the gaps in current education.

should be required of all decision making executives and high school kids.

It was not just about Vietnam, but about WWII and about the Missile Crisis. And, of course, about Iraq.

And even after we left the movie I still wondered how could it have ended. Kennedy was ready to start pulling out troops in 1965 and Johnson changed it but what would Kennedy have done? Just pulled out?

About FDR, and ask your parents and grandparents whether they knew that FDR was crippled..

When so few know the history of the country, we are going to repeat it once in a while.

that one reason for the preference of Kerry over Edwards was the (at least perceived) experience in foreign affairs, while candidate Bush was so ignorant and probably still is.