Re: Re.: Oz and Yip.

[Chris Brady <chris_brady@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Chris Carrick wrote:

??  I don't care what other "progressive" credentials [Baum]
may or may not have, in my book he's a scumbag.?

If he cheered the Wounded Knee massacre, he descends into
the lower circles of my consignations, have no doubt.
But I did not address Baum himself personally.
I also did not endeavour to divine Baum?s intentions or motives
for his creation of that book (a fruitless pursuit, anyway, according
to more than the infamous Lit Crit school that coined the phrase
 ?the intentional fallacy.?).

The criteria for categorization of someone as a Progressive in the
study of US History are certainly not the same criteria we on this
list might use to describe someone as progressive today,
while still keeping in mind the problems associated with
?Progressivism? (another thread that could be positively followed).
Historians of the United States categorize Teddy Roosevelt as a
Progressive, as well as other less savory characters, but fear not:
I won?t condescend to deliver an introductory lesson in The Gilded
Age and The Progressive Era, nor will I start another thread on
the notion of the delusion of ?progress? in history. Conventional
history as taught in our schools or published is another thing, too.
(The Progressive Party of Henry A. Wallace is again another
story? so is the FBI?s definition of a Progressive.)

I briefly discussed the musical movie based on Baum?s book,
in particular the Marxist lyricist Yip Harburg who seized on the
fertile potential of the filming of a fairy tale to advance attitudes
conducive of a more socialistic approach to problem solving.
Any creative Marxist can find several points in that movie where
remarks could reveal to others how, for example, drugs can
interfere with the achievement of goals, how the hand of power
uses all kinds of mediated chicanery to mystify the workings of
the state and obfuscate cause and effect, how the people have within
the wherewithal to actualize their will, etc.

I will say no more about it now for fear of flogging a horse of
a different color.

YFTR,
Chris Brady