Just finished reading: When Harry Met Pablo
I just finished reading When Harry Met Pablo: Truman, Picasso, and the Cold War Politics of Modern Art by Matthew Algeo. If you’re keeping track, this is both my third book by Algeo and my third book about Truman.
This was another fascinating book, but I managed to winnow it down to a few things I learned. Flip through my sketchbook then keep scrolling to find out where “paparazzi” comes from and whether or not book-banning is a good idea.
To cement a lie as fact, just go ahead and get it on the congressional record.
11-year-old Grace Bedell wrote to Abe Lincoln recommending he grow facial hair.
Abe listened and was elected. Yay!
Robert Todd Lincoln’s widow, Mary Harlan Lincoln, asks George Dondero to return the letter to Grace decades later.
He found Grace and she graciously let him keep the letter “for posterity.”
OR
He found Grace… stayed a few days. Grace’s husband didn’t like him. Then Dondero sneakily left with the letter when Grace wasn’t home.Dondero gave a speech about it to codify it in the record.
Grace “cried for days” after Dondero stole the letter, according to Duane Billings (whose dad was raised by Grace) and also “He gave that little speech in Congress to cover his ass.”
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Don’t try to control what people read and say and think.
Harry Truman didn’t like communism. Or modern art. But he declared that “we are not going to turn the United States into a right-wing totalitarian country in order to deal with a left-wing totalitarian threat.”
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See that tiny biscuit I doodled in the upper right corner? I planned to have the springy-fork snap that up. Shout-out to my husband for immediately making biscuits when I had this little brainstorm.
Inventing a biscuit-spearing springed-fork would basically secure the presidency.
After writing to Bess about the “good fellow” who developed cube shaped peas, Truman joked (I assume) “if someone would invent a fork with a spring, so you could press it and spear a biscuit at arm’s length without having to reach out and incommode your neighbor — well, he’ll just simply be elected president, that’s all.”
That inventor would have my vote for sure.
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If you bring up your traits during a marriage proposal, maybe lead with your selling points.
Writing to Bess to propose, Truman confessed “It is a family failing of ours to be poor financiers. I am blest that way.” Shockingly, Bess turned down his proposal… leaving him with a broken heart to match the broken leg he got two months later when thrown by a 400 lb. calf. Poor guy.
Eight years later Bess said yes.
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“The conditions for democracy and for art are one in the same.”
FDR pointed out that “what we call liberty in politics results in freedom of the arts.”
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Friends are important. Also, people are monsters.
Francisco Franco got his buds Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to help out a bit when he wasn’t getting his way in Spain.
According to art historian Gujs Van Hensbergen:
“For three hours, in wave after wave planes dropped a mixture of 250-kilogram ‘splinter’ bombs and ECBI thermite incendiary bombs. Designed to burn at 2500° C, transforming the city into an apocalyptic fireball. Those who managed to escape… were strafed from the air with machine-gun fire.”
That’s 4532° F.
He did this to his own people.
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Anodyne means inoffensive and overly sensitive politicians aren’t new.
It even means deliberately inoffensive. For example, a benign “Sport in Art” exhibit. Nevertheless... so much offense taken!
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Hey, maybe keep the freedom in cultural activities?
Daniel Defenbacher wrote to Secretary of State George Marshall that “it is strange that a nation shouting of freedom of expression should turn dictatorial in its cultural activities.”
Strange indeed.
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Extraconstitutional sounds fun, but it’s not!
To me, it sounds less “24-hour dictator” and more like Oprah gleefully shouting “YOU GET MORE RIGHTS! YOU GET MORE RIGHTS! EVERYBODY GETS MORE RIGHTS!”
In any case, Charles de Gaulle had been out of power in France for a dozen years when la crise de mai 1958 happened. Through a bloodless coup, he was brought back into power and remained there until 1969.
I didn’t know much about de Gaulle to begin with and this section of the book was both fascinating and terrifying.
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Water guns with stinky dye protect against unwanted advances.
Italy had a lot of “mashers” — guys harassing visiting women with unwanted sexual advances. An Italian company marketed an “anti-masher gun” to female tourists. Disappointingly, I couldn’t find a photo. Or more details. The gun squirts out a stinky “distinctive dye” so it’s clear to the police who shot the masher and who the masher harassed.
“Putting the ‘stink’ in ‘distinctive!’”
I just made that up. I’d hoped to find some advertisements because holy crap I need to see the headline here, but my 120 seconds of exhaustive research yielded zilch.
I have so many questions:
Was the smell distinctive? Or just the color? If both were distinctive, there are more possibilities. Like purple ink that reeks of asparagus pee. Pink skunk smell. Orange BO. Blue rotten egg.
Was it a real problem matching the perps to the women? Like a guy has blue ink all over him and protests that THIS isn’t the woman he harassed, he harassed someone else…? Not the woman with the blue rotten egg gun. He harassed the woman with a vomit-smelling blue ink.
Was there no other solution than women forking over money to buy a ridiculous product to police these creepy men themselves…?
The manufacturer loaded up “a bevy of buxom blondes” for testing. The women reported favorable results, so there’s that.
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Book-burning = bad
It would be far more fun to read about history if I could be a little smug about it. Like, “oh these silly old-timey people making dumb mistakes. They don’t know any better” instead of the shitty realization that we’ll just keep making the same mistakes.
In any case… the Dallas Art Association wrote to The New York Times sounding the alarm: “The fundamental issue at stake is that of freedom and liberty — not just for the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, but eventually for our school system, our free press, our library, our orchestra, and the many other institutions of society. We believe that democracy cannot survive if subjected to book-burning, thought control, condemnation without trial, proclamation of guilt by association — the very techniques of communist and fascist regimes.”
Gulp.
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“Paparazzi” traces it’s roots to a philandering king.
Back in the day, Italian photographers could make money photographing tourists. When cameras became less expensive and more ubiquitous, some photographers shifted to taking candids of celebrities. Which leads us to King Farouk of Egypt getting photographed by Tazio Secchiaroli at a café with two women, neither of whom was his wife. The king lunged at Tazio. Then (get this!) another photographer snapped a pic of the king snapping.* Italian director Frederico Fellini got wind of it, then based a character on Tazio in his 1960 movie LaDolce Vita. Fellini wanted to name the obnoxious character something, he later said, that seemed like “a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging” … he went with Paparazzo. And that is the entomological etymology** of “paparazzi”.
How amazing is that?!
*I thought I found a picture of this. But the angry man in the picture was more handsome than the king. Get this — it was Mariska Hargitay’s dad! Dun-Dun.
**Ok, this probably doesn’t make any sense. But when else am I going to have the opportunity to show off that I know “entomology” means bug stuff and “etymology” means the origin of words?!
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There can be no life or development without change.
After skipping Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration and going to a modern art show at The Armory, Theodore Roosevelt said “It true, as the champions of these extremists say, that there can be no life without change, no development without change, and that to be afraid of what is different or unfamiliar is to be afraid of life.”
There can be no life without change.
He followed it up with “It is no less true, however, that change may mean death and not life, a retrogression instead of development.”
All in all, not helpful advice.
PS
Thank you to Matthew Algeo for sending me a copy of When Harry Met Pablo, along with two others to give out to POTUS Notice subscribers. (One copy made it’s way all the way to the Netherlands!)
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