He made Westerns...and also this.

Today, on BoingBoing, there was a link to a fantastic little piece of forgotten history: Vietnam! Vietnam!, a pro-war documentary produced by the U.S. government and directed, at least nominally, by legendary Western filmmaker John Ford. The blogger who's presenting the film calls it "quite terrible," but the story of the film itself is fascinating.

You can view the entire film, plus read the original treatment, at the above link.

Friday Links really should have been on Mount Rushmore

As expected, the HBO miniseries John Adams is doing swimmingly - it's HBO's best miniseries debut in four years.

With that in mind, here's an all-Adams Friday Links.

• An interview with David Morse, who's playing George Washington. (TV Guide, via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
  
• A review that includes interviews with lots of cast and crew. (AP via Newsday)
  
• TIME's review.
  
• And here's a more light-hearted review, from Sarah Riley of the Appleton Post-Crescent in Wisconsin.
  
• For those of you who want to know more about John Adams in general, whether it's because you don't have HBO, you're distracted by Paul Giamatti's facial expressions, or you're just plain intrigued, here's a public-domain biography on Google Books. And of course we have to remember the ladies, so here are Abigail's letters.
  
• And Wikiquotes has some great Adams sound bytes if you're into that sort of thing.

For those of you who don't have HBO, never fear - it'll be out on DVD in June. Add it to your Netflix now!

I'm OK, you're OK, Martin's OK

It seems like nearly everybody I know watched the opener to the John Adams miniseries last night. I did not, but it is on my DVR and I'll post thoughts as soon as I get caught up.

One thing that strikes me - with all this attention paid to the miniseries, and the way the public has recently devoured various history books by McCullough, Ellis, and the like, geeking out about American history is cool again. This makes me happy - and it inclines me to put some more elbow grease into this blog, in hopes that I can sustain the history love just that much longer.

So if you have story ideas, suggestions, or if you'd like to guest blog, drop me a line or even just comment here.

For now, let's talk about Martin Van Buren.

You know, Martin Van Buren. Eighth president. Crazy-ass whiskers. First president born in the actual United States.

Okay, you probably don't know that much about him. I didn't myself until recently. Thanks to Cecil Adams, and a number of sources at work, I now know more than I ever thought I would about this man. In the process, I discovered what's probably Van Buren's greatest contribution to American life - namely, he likely originated a very important piece of American slang.

Van Buren was of Dutch extraction and was born and raised in the Dutch-American enclave of Kinderhook, New York, earning him the nickname "Old Kinderhook" when he began campaigning for President in 1836. Eventually, his Democratic supporters in New York State took that name for their political club, and abbreviated it "OK." "OK" had previously been used as a jokey editorial abbreviation meaning "oll korrect," but it was its double meaning in politics that caused the expression to really take root.

Although his attempts to build an independent treasury are often underemphasized when talking about his political contribution, Old Kinderhook was generally regarded as less than OK by his contemporaries, and historians have been no kinder. He was unseated fairly handily by Whig candidate William Henry Harrison in 1840, though he remained politically active for the rest of his life, primarily devoting himself to the abolitionist cause. He attempted to run again for president in 1844 but the Democrats declined to back him, so he formed his own party, the Free-Soil party, and tried again in 1848. You have to admire the guy's tenacity.

The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia has an excellent gateway page to all the Van Buren trivia you could ever want.

Should you ever feel like visiting Kinderhook, stop by the Martin Van Buren National Historical Site. If the Metro-North ran that far up, you can bet I'd be doing exactly that ASAP. As it is, I think it'll have to wait until I can join forces with fellow geeks who are also car owners.

Friday Links Aren't Going There, So Don't Ask

Even though I'm right up against a major-ass deadline at work, I still found time to dig up an economy-sized links package for y'all this week. Read and enjoy!

• A new photograph of Helen Keller and her mentor, Anne Sullivan, has been found. The funny comes from the breathless description - it's a doll! Helen loved dolls! She had lots of dolls! This is the only photo in existence of Helen with a doll! Der. She was a little girl. Of course she liked dolls. No wonder that was the first word Anne Sullivan tried to teach her. Big whoop, AP. Incidentally, there is not much else about Helen Keller that is funny, in case your brain tried to reference any of those awful, tasteless jokes that still make the rounds.
  
• A newsreel from the 1930s predicts fashion in 2000.
  
• 7 Insane Conspiracies that Actually Happened (Cracked)
  
• Presidential Superstitions (Neatorama)
  
• Here's a classic: John Hargrave's Senator Prank, in which a grown man posing as a ten-year-old boy convinced various senators to send him their favorite jokes. This is much funnier now than it was in 2003, considering that among the respondents you'll find eventual newsmakers like Jon Corzine and Larry Craig.
  
• In the "unintentionally funny" department, Phyllis Schlafly explains the real reason college students so often fail at simple history questions - they're not reading enough books on how great the GOP is! Yeah, that's gotta be it!
  
• It's been a bad week for museums - The Lincoln museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is closing up on the eve of the Lincoln bicentennial and the Australian Computer Museum Society just lost its storage space.
  
• Here's a fascinating archive of music, lyrics, and video footage from World War I.

Friday Links Jump the Gun

I'm posting Friday links a little early this week for a couple of reasons. First off, I want to make up for my poor showing last week. Secondly, I wanted to let all you JFK buffs out there know that his alleged illegitimate son is going to be on 20/20 tomorrow night. Check your local listings for more info.

• And speaking of JFK, let's lead this off with another Brad Neely animation, which tells the story of the hypercharismatic telepathical knight we all know and love. (Again, not safe for work at all.)
  
• A Japanese cartoon from the late 30s shows the Japanese fighting Americans, represented by Mickey Mice (Mouses?). (via Neatorama)
  
• There's an entire museum devoted to Presidential pets. Who knew?
  
• Over at the A. Lincoln Blog, Millard Fillmore soap-on-a-rope has been located. No word on whether or not he actually won the auction, though. Incidentally, give it up for Brian at the A. Lincoln blog, who's retiring from the world of history blogging after a lengthy tenure as one of the best Civil War blogs out there.
  
• Incidentally, not a link, but right now there are three Millard Fillmore soaps-on-a-rope for sale on ebay. And I do have a birthday coming up. Okay, in six months, but it's out there!
  
• Figures from early American History immortalized in Pez-dispenser form. (Snopes)
  
• The gun used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald is up for auction, along with a slew of other pop-culture-abilia. (via BoingBoing)
  
• Here's a collection of amazing historical film footage from New York City. (via Gothamist)

Cox and Combes' "Washington"

Don't you love it when your ipod coughs up one of your favorite songs in the middle of your morning commute? It's especially nice when you're in the middle of reading historical fiction about the founding fathers (Jefferson: A Novel by Max Byrd - maybe I'll post a review when I'm done) and that favorite song is about a founding father.

I must share this modern classic with you now, along with the brilliant animation that accompanies it.

Warning: If you are at work and you have computer speakers, this may not be appropriate. The video is marginally un-work-safe as well.

Another warning: This is probably not strictly historically accurate.



There's at least one more Cox and Combes/Brad Neely video with some historical relevance floating around out there, but I don't want to overload you. So I'll save that one for another time.

"Apology is only egotism wrong side out." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

We lost our internet connection at work on Friday, so I was unable to get the Friday links up. I'll be sure to super-size them this week, though - hang tight.

In the meantime, Warren G. wants YOU to enjoy the site's brand-new and totally public domain look, which was conceptualized and built for me by the very talented and graphics-capable Daryl Lang, who was troubled by the fact that I was using a copyrighted photo in my logo. Frankly, I was troubled too. One nice thing about making my blog be about history is that I should be able to come up with tons of content that doesn't step on anybody's copyright toes. Therefore, I'm happy to report that this blog is now totally free of anything that does that.

Also coming up this week - more exciting stories about rice. Seriously.