As a reminder that media coverage of Political conventions hasn't really changed all that much since broadcasting got started, here is a one hour snapshot from June 26, 1936 at the Democratic National Convention.

On this evening there were seconding speeches, and pleas from the Chairman to keep the hyperbole down to five minutes apiece. On this evening too, there was sufficient boredom going on in the broadcast studio that such journalistic greats as H.V. Kaltenborn and Edward R. Murrow were reduced to interviewing delegates to find out which was the youngest at the convention - and in Murrow's case, interviewing the on-site barber to get the "scoop" on "just what goes on in a barber shop during a convention". Pretty weighty stuff, but no less strange than the endless trivia and human interest stories we deal with now.

So here is the last hour of the convention day for June 26th 1936, the seconding speeches, as presented by CBS Radio, hosted by Robert Trout.

(FDR - answering the well-upholstered whiners)
Note: A repost from 2009 but . . .timely as ever!

During the last few days of the 1936 Presidential campaign, FDR spoke at a rally in Worcester Massachusetts on October 21, 1936, answering Republican charges he mishandled the recovery that pulled the country out of depression. It was a familiar complaint:

FDR:

“Three and a half years ago we declared war on the Depression. And you and I know today that war is being won. But now comes that familiar figure, the well-upholstered hindsight critic. He tells us that out strategy was wrong, that the cost was too great, that something else won the war. That is an argument as old as the remorse of those who had their chance and muffed it.”

You'd think, 73 years later there would be a different story. But no.

I guess the upholstery just doesn't change.

In keeping with our current preoccupation with taxes, the deficit and spending, I thought I would run an address President Franklin Roosevelt gave while campaigning for re-election in 1936.

Seems the subject of taxes has been with us for a very-very long time. And it also seems the ones doing the most complaining haven't changed very much in the past 200 or so years.

Comforting, I suppose. But you'd think by now it would get a little tired.

In 1936 though, FDR had a few choice words nestled in what has become a timeless address.

President Roosevelt: “In 1776 the fight was for Democracy in Taxation. In 1936 there is still the fight. Mister Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said ‘taxes are the prices we pay for civilized society’. One sure way to determine the social conscience of a government is to examine the way taxes are collected and how they are spent. And one sure way to determine the social conscience of an individual is to get his tax reaction. Taxes, after all are the dues we pay for the privilege of membership in an organized society. And as society becomes more civilized government, national and state and local, is called on to assume more obligations to its citizens. The privileges of membership in a civilized society are vastly increased in modern times. But I am afraid we still have many who still do not recognize their advantages and want to avoid paying their dues.”

Tax breaks for the wealthy were a concept well in place by the time Hoover was President.

FDR: “To divide fairly among the people the obligation to pay for these benefits has been a major part of our struggle to maintain Democracy in America. Ever since 1776, that struggle has been between two forces; on the one hand there has been a vast majority of citizens who believe the benefits of democracy should be extended and who are willing to pay their fair share to extend them. And on the other hand, there has been a small but powerful group which has fought the extension of these benefits because they did not want to pay a fair share of their cost. That was the lineup in seventeen hundred and seventy-six and it’s the lineup today. And I am confident that once more, in nineteen thirty-six democracy in taxation will win. Here is my principle, and I think it’s yours too; Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.”

So hearing this now and knowing it was from the dim-distant past of 1936, it makes the current situation and posturing that much more absurd. Unfortunately if it were only absurd it would be laughed off. But it has become deadly serious business in the ensuing years.

And I keep reminding myself that Fair is a place in Pomona California where people get together once a year and show cows.

In contrast to the first day of Congress in 1995, here is the first day of Congress in 1936. Certainly one of the first on-the-spot broadcasts of Congress in action, it's an interesting glimpse into the goings on from an earlier time. No less partisan and no less cantankerous, it may be a bit dim at times to listen to, but the spirit and the persistent gavel banging is all there for this half hour excerpt of what was a three hour broadcast.

On hand to comment on the events was Washington Bureau Chief for the Baltimore Sun J. Fred Essary who offers some insights as to what's in store for this session of the 74th Congress:

J. Fred Essary (Chief, Washington Bureau, Baltimore Sun):”Congress may be called upon first to pick up and then to patch up the wreckage of many of the New Deal measures, wreckage thrown upon the legislative doorstep, when the Supreme Court shall have ruled upon the constitutionality of the AAA, Coal Control, TVA, cotton control, securities control, regulation of both holding companies and labor disputes. Practically the whole of the New Deal program. The fact is, Ladies and Gentlemen, the shadow of the Supreme Court more completely envelopes Congress at this time than at any other within our recollection.”

Further evidence it just doesn't change - only the players and the clothes.

(Mitja Nikisch - A tragic case of timing)

Probably one of the more tragic stories in the history of classical music is the story of Mitja Nikisch. Son of the great conductor Arthur Nikisch, whose recording of Beethoven's fifth symphony in the early years of the 20th century went down as the first recording of the symphony, Mitja was torn between his duty as keeper of the family tradition of classical music and his overpowering love for Jazz. For a time he split his loyalties between both, gaining fame and notoriety as a gift Classical pianist (this recording of the Mozart Piano Concerto no. 20 is a rare example) while at the same time, achieving a reputation in Berlin Jazz circles as an extraordinary band leader. And for a time he was able to succeed in both. It was as a result of the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and Nazism virtually banned all Jazz and dance bands as "degenerate" that Nikisch's life took a tragic turn. While he was able to straddle both worlds for a time, by 1936 he was able to do neither and the result was a tragic and premature death by suicide of a promising and gifted talent at the age of 36.

Of the handful of recordings Nikisch made, only this one features his playing of Mozart. The Piano Concerto Nr. 20 K. 466 with The Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Rudolf Schulze-Dornberg, recorded for the Telefunken label in 1934.

(Fernand Oubradous - did for the Bassoon what Landowska did for the Harpsichord)

Fernand Oubradous had a long and celebrated career throughout France and Europe. In addition to his work on Bassoon, he was also an accomplished clarinetist as well as conductor and led his own orchestra in a series of award winning recordings for French Pathe` in the 1950s.

So we're posting something a bit more familiar today - Mozart: Bassoon Concerto K. 191 with Fernand Oubradous, Bassoon and an unnamed chamber orchestra conducted by Eugene Bigot. Recorded in Paris for HMV, June 23, 1936. This particular recording is from Victor set - M-704, as it was released in the U.S.

(Ernest Lundeen - talked an interesting talk . . but)

I don't think there is any historic shortage of populist movements being undermined and subverted by people of skeptical motives. I say that due, in large part to the Teabagger Movement where, what appear to be sincere motives on some peoples parts, being hijacked by people of less than honorable motives to satisfy an agenda, a warped ideology or a grudge.

I was listening to a broadcast of a program, popular in the 1930's called "Peoples Lobby" which feature Congressman Ernest Lundeen as featured speaker from January 18, 1936. The subject was Social Security, Unemployment Insurance and Health Care (yes, talked about even then). Lundeen was author of the Lundeen-Fraser Bill, which was widely supported in Congress as an anti-poverty measure.

Lundeen makes an interesting set of points:

Ernest Lundeen: “ Two hundred giant corporations control over half the corporate wealth of the country. And at the present rate of concentration, by 1950 over eighty percent of the corporate wealth of the country will be controlled by two hundred giant corporations. Each year we read of the huge salaries and dividends drawn by bankers and captains of industry Recently, the top salaries of 1935 have been published. In 1929 Eugene Grace of Bethlehem Steel Corporation received one million, six hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars in salary and bonus. In 1935 the Chairman of Bethlehem Steels’ board received two hundred and fifty thousand in salary alone. Coca-Colas President received One hundred thousand three hundred and fifty dollars. Woolworth’s Company President received three-hundred thirty-seven and a half thousand. The country’s largest publisher William Randolph Hearst drew five hundred thousand dollars, and so on down a long list of executive salaries. And that is not mentioning the House of Morgan and other money lords of the American financial aristocracy . . . as long as these great American natural resources continue to fill the greedy coffers of the super-rich, the corporations continue to function, corporate surpluses are piled high for the rainy day. But let business become slack and profits be reduced, a great cry goes up from the corporations that they cannot afford to do business and employ labor. And that is why the American people do not derive full benefit from our enormous natural resources because they have no control over their operation and the distribution of the wealth they produce. We, the people have lost the ownership of the country in which we live.”

It all sounds very good - a sympathy heard a lot today.

But in Lundeen's case it had something of a hollow ring to it. Lundeen, it turns out, had a lot of connections to the Nazi Party in Germany. So much so, that he was actively tailed by the FBI all the way until his mysterious death in a plane crash in 1940. The controversy surrounding his death has never been explained, as were the extent of his connections to Berlin.

His motives on the surface looked good. Beneath the surface, another story.

It reminds me a lot of the current argument about Health Care and who is really running the argument against reform.

(You'd act that way too if you discovered the theory of relativity!)

In case you almost forgot, today (March 14) is Albert Einstein's birthday. A hundred and thirty years ago today . . . . .

(Albert Einstein speaking at the opening of the New York Museum of Science and Technology - April 1936)

"Civilized man hasw a feeling of superiority to our primitive man. He considers himself, so to speak, as a higher being.

Does he not live in an ingeniously constructed house, instead of a clay hut?

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With the endless drone of hate and vitriol spilling out of last weeks CPAC cabal, it's comforting (somewhat) to realize the amped-up hysteria and whining is just what history does, and does over and over. It's never civilized, it's never constructive and it is always based on fear and paranoia.

So it's mild comfort to know another President faced pretty much the same barrage. President Roosevelt faced familiar taunts and similar paranoid rants during his re-election campaign in 1936.

Here is an excerpt from the now-famous Madison Square Garden address of October 31, 1936.

"“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. ... Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today.  They are unanimous in their hate for me. And I welcome their hatred!"