Ken Burns' Prohibition (PBS Series -- Airing 10.02.11 -- 10.05.11)

this is fascinating. episode one aired tonight (repeated at 10PM)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJdKK6L8Z2o

so many things i didn't know.

• the staggering amount of alcohol consumed by men in the era before the turn of the century.

• women's role in the "dry" movement, by staging prayer-protests outside of saloons, and linking "temperance" with the "suffrage" movement.

• how one woman (pre-1900, i think) waged a war -- almost a real war -- against saloons by walking in their front-door and throwing hammers and pitchforks at the drinks and mirrors and fixtures, all to enforce state "dry" laws that governors wouldn't enforce.

• how alcohol-producers believed that they would always withstand the "dry" movement at the nat'l level, since a huge percentage of the u.s. gov't's operations were funded by taxes on alcohol.

• how "drys" cleverly supported the 16th amendment, allowing the u.s. gov't to impose an income tax, which -- almost overnight -- ended the u.s. gov't's reliance on alcohol-production as a means of funding the government (thereby opening the door to prohibition).

• how "wets" miscalculated, allowing congress to send the 18th amendment to the states, but thinking it was DOA since the legislation only gave a 7-year window for ratification (the "dry" movement achieved ratification in a fraction of that time).

• how, moments after prohibition went into effect, two armed robberies occurred, intercepting and stealing a cache of alcohol that had been taken by gov't forces.

• how the "drys" naively believed that the mere ratification of the 18th amendment would end alcohol consumption in america (e.g., "people will obviously follow the law").

taping this since it ran during the baseball game. excited to watch tho (while imbibing for sure)

haha, yeah. i opened one of these to watch the show

http://www.superchefblog.com/images/inedit_300dpi200x550pxl.png

outstanding beer, btw.

Alas, there existed a rather voluble strain of progressivism which embraced teetotalism.

I don't know if I'll see the rest of it because of conflicting things, but I was glad to catch the first episode. I knew the broad outlines, the connections with early American feminism and the birth of Progressivism, but it did a good, brisk job of tracing all the interlocking impulses behind temperance.

It's always a little comforting in a weird way to be reminded that our country has pretty much always been insane.

"moral uplift" and so on

xpost to me

Love the strong implication that lesbian Christian feminists were leaders of one of the major pro-Prohibition groups. God bless America.

A splendid book:

http://www.amazon.com/Fierce-Discontent-Progressive-Movement-1870-1920/dp/0195183657/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1317608544&sr=8-6

yes! i was surprised by the ties between progressivism and prohibition, which was party based on a belief that gov't intervention could moderate behavior to the point of ending vice (or at least a certain kind of vice).

(xp to alfred)

Among Woodrow Wilson's many sins: selecting a Navy secretary (Josephus Daniels, under whom FDR served) and secretary of state (Bryan) who were committed dries and banned alcohol from mess halls, officers' quarters, and state dinners.

some of Mencken's most caustic, lasting essays contain let's say intemperate swings at the Anti-Saloon League, which was in its death throes in the late twenties but poisonous in defeat.

They used a Mencken quote in the show tonight.

This more than makes up for The Tenth Inning.

bring back Prohibition

This was pretty good. It was frustrating to see women come together to address their crappy lives and focus on booze as the root cause, when the real root cause was a worldview in which women were barely human. But like they mentioned, temperance was an appropriate cause for women to champion. If they knelt in prayer against marital rape, they would probably be stoned as witches.

how one woman (pre-1900, i think) waged a war -- almost a real war -- against saloons by walking in their front-door and throwing hammers and pitchforks at the drinks and mirrors and fixtures, all to enforce state "dry" laws that governors wouldn't enforce.

Carrie Nation! the namesake of a gay bar on Hudson Street in NYC which later moved to Brooklyn (and is now closed, I believe)

This:

the staggering amount of alcohol consumed by men in the era before the turn of the century.

can't be emphasized enough, and made me far more sympathetic to my teetotalling texas grandparents than i had been before i'd realised it

How much booze did they say men drank before the turn of the century? I was attempting to assemble a cheap shelf for the bathroom and failing, and so could not hear some parts of the doc over my furious cursing.

The alcohol content in booze also much higher in the 18th and 19th centuries.

another favorite part was highlighting the internal fight between the makers of beer and the makers of stronger alcohol products (e.g., whiskey). they should have stood together to resist the "dry" movement, but instead, the former claimed the latter was a dangerous drink -- destructive to families -- while beer was a "healthy drink," like liquid bread, which could even be given to babies (!).

I'm sorry I missed that part. I would love to know how the winos stood in this scenario.

they didn't stand; they staggered.

sorry i missed tonight's installment. got to get the DVD i think.

I'm watching it now!

It's on right now, and they will repeat after it's over. Also if you have cable some of those minor public stations often re-run the Ken Burns series weeks or months after the original airing. In any case, it's already amazing, I love seeing all of this archival footage, more than you find in books!

Easy joke, but one of my friends on Facebook suggested coming up with a drinking game for watching this.

that forces you to wait too long between drinks. you should be downing scotch after scotch after scotch while watching this.

I'm glad this actually followed the early career of Al Smith, whose mid thirties opposition to FDR (it's like Al Gore joining forces with the Tea Party) forever diminished his legacy.

Also: Jess Smith and Harry Daugherty are in this!

OMG this is so negative. I never realized how much I can't stand these Prohibition people. This view was given no airing whatsoever in my house when I was growing up.

The program has been good at connecting the disparate strands of early twentieth century politics. I mentioned Al Smith earlier, but I didn't know that the famous Olmstead case, in which SCOTUS ruled that wiretapping was an acceptable means of getting incriminating testimony, was brought by the bootlegger himself.

the staggering amount of alcohol consumed by men in the era before the turn of the century.

didn't you watch Deadwood?

http://obit-mag.com/media/image/CarryNation1910.jpg

i love that woman.

Did not know about the 1924 Democratic convention standoff between teetotaling Klan sympathizers and big-city boozers.

What a country.

tipsy, you'd really enjoy Mencken's campaign coverage: long, caustic essays on McAdoo, Smith, Coolidge, and the suffocating heat of the convention halls.

Propaganda from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. Keep the faith!

Loooove the presence of John Paul Stevens. It's amazing that this man is ninety-two!

this is the best thing ken burns has ever done.

this is the best thing ken burns has ever done.

― Mr. Snrub,

Completely agree.

Watching makes me realize this country's always been kind of fricken nuts.

It's been ages since I watched "The Civil War" but I agree this is tops.

I missed about a third of this but caught part of each installment.

Agreed that the overall feeling was one of "lol we've always been bonkers."

Really looking forward to re-watching it soon.

saw one 2 hr part, loved it

sort of a pity this didn't get made a decade or more ago when there were more people who could remember drinking during prohibition. i think a couple of the really old ladies qualified, but even someone as old as john paul stevens isn't old enough for that. it was really good nonetheless. my favorite factoid was the yale club in nyc buying 14 YEARS worth of booze in the year before the law took effect.

Watching makes me realize this country's always been kind of fricken nuts.

Welcome to the club!

Carrie Nation! the namesake of a gay bar on Hudson Street in NYC which later moved to Brooklyn (and is now closed, I believe)

It changed its name to Ginger's Bar about 10 years ago and it's still open. 5th Avenue in Park Slope. Still predominately lesbian.

Also the revised name of the band in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Carrie Nations)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49w2EAfmR60

<3

This is great (and available on netflix now).

yeah it's interesting! people used to be drunk as fuck!

Saw the first ep, was interesting but loooooong. Will have to lobby my wife for part 2.

i guess i broke it up cuz i was watching on netflix

yeah it's interesting! people used to be drunk as fuck!

― "If you like the Byrds, try Depeche Mode" (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, July 12, 2013 6:54 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is the main thing i took away from daniel okrent's book

i swear they said in the first episode that an average adult male drank 88 bottles of whiskey a year

It's amazing they didn't foresee what would happen - as the doc says, the prohibitionists just thought everyone would stop drinking because it was illegal.

i swear they said in the first episode that an average adult male drank 88 bottles of whiskey a year

― "If you like the Byrds, try Depeche Mode" (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, July 12, 2013 7:01 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha i just went and checked my book--the stat they have is 90 bottles of 80-proof liquor per adult per year

Other things:

- the utter sumptuousness of George Remus' lifestyle / he's been a teetotal all along / then running his wife's car off the road and shooting her in front of the stepdaughter

- 'There were some sharp cracks on either side ... Lutherans drink in public and pray in private, Baptists pray in public but in private they drink ...'

– the flotilla of ships used as floating alcohol warehouses

- the finery of that turn of the century period, even the streetcars look dainty, the saloons, and that early motor-hearse that they use to hide alcohol in (at Arlington Cemetery) with neo-classical scrollwork on it

– the blase and shameless connections, in several cities, between gangster bootleggers and the chief of police and the mayor ... I was familiar with the basic idea that prohibiting alcohol immediately made it a huge and profitable black market, but this really brought him how the fact that someone was a bootlegger also made them seem like an alright kind of guy, worked as a cover for horrible, murderous people to do whatever the fuck they wanted

I vividly remember my fifth grade teacher Mrs. Hoffman, teaching about Prohibition, telling a story told to her by her neighbor, a nun, who remembered the day alcohol was made illegal, and reacted by getting drunk and proclaiming "nobody's going to tell me what to do!" True or nor, it's amazing I recall so many details of that anecdote from over 25 years ago. Made an impression, says I, as I sip on a glass of Rare Breed.

Watched the first episode on Netflix last night. Learned lots of new stuff. My favorite fun fact was that the term "Teetotal" came from the phrase "Capital T Total Abstinence".

Also the word "Scofflaw" coming from a Boston Herald poll