Culture Watch

Sports: Now Money in College Football Is Killing Students

by George Beres

Tragedy that this summer has hit college football evokes memories of deaths that once nearly caused a football season to be cancelled. This was after the 1909 season, when six players were killed while competing in college games. Action taken then led to creation of the rules committee that eventually became the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). So far, there is no sign that universities, held captive by television promotions, are prepared

Hiroshima: Memoir of a Bomb Maker ... "The Gadget"

by Paul Olum

Editor's Note: The late Paul Olum, who later served as president of the University of Oregon, worked in his youth on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. Following is a selection from a manuscript he left behind. It has never before been published. It was made available to HNN by George Beres, who served with him on the University of Oregon Arms Control Forum. The memoir was written in 1983 following a reunion of Los Alamos scientists. It is reprinted with permission of the Olum family.

Media Watch: The Congressman Acquitted of Murder

by R.M. Devens

Editor's Note: It has all the elements of a compelling human interest story: power, sex, murder. No wonder the media seized on the case. No, we're not talking about Chandra Levy and Gary Condit. This story's about Congressman Dan Sickles, who in 1859 was implicated in the murder of his wife's paramour. As you can see from the selection that follows, not as much has changed in America as people think. We've always loved a good sensational story.From R.M. Devens's Our First Cent

Media Watch: Now’s a Good Time to Remember Richard Jewell

by Leonard Steinhorn

Largely because the Chandra Levy case involves the words “intern” and “sex,” the press has begun to make the inevitable comparisons between Rep. Gary Condit and former President Bill Clinton. But a more apt comparison for Condit may be Richard Jewell.

For Sale ... The Smithsonian

by Anonymous

Editor's Note: Unhappy staffers at the Smithsonian have leaked the following document, which suggests the institution could raise tens of millions of dollars by selling naming rights to various rooms, halls, and buildings. Lawrence Small, the ex-banker who now runs the Smithsonian, says the document was prepared by underlings"to find ways to raise money in the private sector," as Maureen Dowd reported in the New York Times. He himself admits that"the list is funny in some places."

The Color Line: The Great White Myth of Kennewick Man

by Knute Berger

Five years ago this July, an ancient skeleton was found on the banks of the Columbia River during a hydroplane race near Kennewick, Washington. When the bones turned out to be a major archaeological find, the remains of a 9,000 year-old prehistoric man, a political, legal, cultural, and racial battle ensued. Just who was Kennewick Man, who owned his bones, and what should be done with them? The Indians and Federal government have argued that the law—specifically, the 1990 Native American

Should We Bring Back the Guillotine?

by Derek Alger

Albert Camus began his classic essay Reflections on the Guillotine with an anecdote about his father’s excitement over the prospect of attending the execution of a man guilty of a particularly heinous crime in which he slaughtered a family of farmers, including children. Camus’s father believed that the guillotine was too mild a punishment for one who was guilty of such a bloodthirsty crime, but still, he dutifully set out in the dark to go to the designated place of execution at the oth

The Color Line: White People Think We Can Put Race Behind Us and Black People Don’t

by Knute Berger

Not long ago I visited Memphis, Tennessee. There are two major tourist attractions there. One is Graceland, a shrine to a demigod named Elvis. The other is the National Civil Rights Museum. I’ll bet you can guess which is the most popular. I had the weird experience of visiting both on the same day—and I suffered extreme cultural whiplash. One is a place where a bunch of rockin’ good ‘ol boys ate fried banana sandwiches and shot holes in the walls with no mamma to tell them no. The oth

Books: Michael A. Bellesiles's Arming America

by Daniel Justin Herman

Editor's Note: The following review first appeared May 25 on H-Net, a scholarly society.There's been a count, there's been a recount, and there will be recounts of recounts, no doubt, yet no clear winner has emerged. The final numbers, it seems, depend on which standards are used. In the meantime, liberals proclaim

What Jesus Thought of Women

by Keith Miller

What a discovery (more like a revelation, as it has turned out) made one day at Wabash Valley College Library, Mt. Carmel, Illinois, some twenty years ago. What leapt out at me, while leafing through a few volumes at random on the shelves there, was the following:"The Plight of the Song of Songs," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 42 (March 1974):82-100. The author of the article was William E. Phipps, Presbyterian minister, and Pr

Books: Robert Caro's Master of the Senate

by Robert D. Novak

IT HAS BEEN twelve years since publication of"Means of Ascent," the second volume of Robert Caro's"The Years of Lyndon Johnson," but the long-anticipated third volume,"Master of the Senate," is worth the wait. Portraying Johnson's most productive and effective years as Senate majority leader, the book, which covers the years 1949-1960, reveals how an insecure southern po

Harvard and Jihad

by Daniel Pipes

Imagine it's June 1942 - just a few months after Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States. At Harvard University, a faculty committee has chosen a German-American to give one of three student orations at the festive commencement ceremony. He titles it"American Kampf," purposefully echoing the title of Hitler's book,"Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle") in order to show the positive side of"Kampf." When this prompts protests, a Harvard dean defends it as a"thoughtful oration" that defines th

Stop Daniel Pipes Before He Commits Speech Again

by Edward Alexander

In Late March, about two hours after I had sent the announcement of Daniel Pipes' forthcoming (April 10) lecture at University of Washington on"The War on Terrorism and Militant Islam" to its academic sponsors for distribution on their"lists," I was besieged by e-mail messages from self-identified Muslims. These exhorted me to cancel the lecture or--failing that--to do penance for having organized it or to allow design

Joseph Kennedy and the Jews

by Edward Renehan, Jr.

Arriving at London in early 1938, newly-appointed U.S. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy took up quickly with another transplanted American.

Bobby Seale’s Confession: David Horowitz Was Right On

by Jamie Glazov

Bobby Seale, the former chairman and co-founder of the Black Panther Party, has just recently made a confession about Panther criminality that has vindicated what David Horowitz has been saying for years. Seale is best remembered for his 1969 courtroom histrionics as one of the Chicago Eight, the eight moral degenerates who were put on trial for inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Seale’s behavior caused the judge to order him shackled to a chair and gagged. Seale is no

Books: LBJ Had a Bright Side and a Dark Side

by Robert Caro

There was a bright side to Lyndon Johnson's race to power, and a dark side. Let me talk about the bright side first. The bright side is very bright. For Lyndon Johnson was a genius at what his Hill Country populist forebears would have defined as the highest art of government: the art of using the power of the sovereign state to help its people, particularly the least fortunate among them, people who couldn't help themselves, who were fighting forces too big for them to fight alone. His fa

Why Doesn't Bill Ford Try For a Little Historical Truth in Advertising?

by Edward J. Renehan, Jr.

My daughter Katherine is the only 11-year-old in the country who recognizes on-sight the ancient American naturalist John Burroughs (1837-1921). And she has lately been making a great many sightings."Daddy, there he is again!" she shouts. Upon this cue I look up from my newspaper, turn to the television, and confront Burroughs's white-bearded grin as he sits at a picnic table with Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone and Thomas Edison. The newsreel footage, which dates from 1917, has been cleaned

Hollywood: Back to Making War Seem Simple

by Ron Briley

On a rainy Sunday night in Albuquerque, I trudged to the High Ridge Cinema to catch a screening of No Man's Land, a Bosnian film which was recently honored with an Academy Award for best Foreign Language Picture. Director Danis Tanovic, who worked as a photographer on the front lines of the war in Bosnia, presents a gritty, realistic, and unheroic portrait of war. It is too bad that I was the only one in the theater.On the other hand, mainstream American films dealing with war have been doing big time business in Albuquerque and around the country. Cinematic blockbusters like Ridley Scott's Blackhawk Down and Randall Wallace's We Were Soldiers had their release dates pushed up to take advantage of American patriotism in the war on terrorism.

The West: "I'll Wrangle In The Mornin', Boys": The Wrangler, The Warbler, And The Women Of The Rodeo

by Keith Miller

The year I was born (1942), Maynard Dixon (1875-1946) painted an oil-on-canvas, a beautiful, panoramic view, the Open Range, to be seen in the Museum of Western Art, Denver, Colorado. In the foreground of this artwork is a mounted cowboy herding part of what is meant to represent a larger contingent of steers. In the distance a mesa is depicted, surmounted by a billowing, white cloud. The whole conjures up a West, existent from about 1865 until 1890, the ascendent period for cattle drives,