Retribution of the Dollar-Hunters

Writers and journalists have traveled from “across the pond,” stayed for a while, examined American society, and published their viewpoints since the 1700’s.
They discussed topics like American individualism, and the large number of churches.
However, one attribute stood out—how fixated Americans were on making money, and the lives of the very rich.

French historian Alexis de Tocqueville (who visited America in 1831) was concerned that there would be “permanent inequality of conditions and inequality” because of American pursuit of self-interest and American disinterest in the general good.
He also discussed how quick Americans were to act in an excessively subservient manner to people they perceived as wealthy.

Book cover of Dickens & the Workhouse by Ruth Richardson, published by Oxford Press in 2012.

Novelist Charles Dickens asserted that Americans had a relentless focus on materialism—especially in relation to slavery, the prison system, and treatment of the mentally ill.
English economist John Stuart Smith described (in 1860) how American men were devoted to “dollar-hunting,” and American women were devoted to “breeding dollar-hunters.” 

Founder Thomas Jefferson, had a “complicated” history with money.
He assumed authority of the Monticello plantation (inherited from his father), at the age of 21, and was a wealthy man since birth.
As a young man, he advocated for abolition.
However, when he neared the age of fifty, he realized that Monticello earned 4% a year through the births of black slave children alone, and that these babies were his most lucrative “investment.”
He walked an intellectual tightrope on the issue of slavery for the rest of his days—fearing punishment from God, but unwilling to face bankruptcy.
(The book Master of the Mountain, by Harry Wiencek, tells the story of Jefferson’s financial decisions, in relationship to his views on morality.)

Religion played a part in American viewpoints about wealth.
The early Puritan and Calvinist settlers (ignoring the story of Job in the Bible) viewed material prosperity as a sign of God’s love.
During the Gilded Age (1877-1900), young boys read the rags-to-riches novels of Horatio Alger—a man raised in a Calvinist household who graduated from Harvard Divinity School.
Minister Norman Vincent Peale expressed his belief that one could “live successfully by picturing oneself succeeding,” both on his pulpit, and in his book The Power of Positive Thinking.
Several Protestant ministers—among them Joel Osteen and Paula White—continue to preach the “prosperity gospel.” 

Although many Protestant ministers didn’t believe the theories of Darwin, social Darwinism* had a big impact on American men in the late 1800’s.
According to historian Richard Hofstadter “American society saw its’ own image in the tooth-and-claw version of natural selection.”

Andrew W. Mellon (James Cromwell) in 2010-2014’s TV series Boardwalk Empire. In the episode “You’d Be Surprised,” Mellon testifies before Congress.

Andrew W. Mellon (1855-1937), Secretary of the Treasury under three Presidents—Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover—told Presidents that a Depression* would “be good for the country because it would purge marginal farmers and small business people.”
He also advocated for violence against labor unrest.
(After his death, the IRS sought millions from Mellon’s estate for back taxes; his estate finally settled for $668,000.)
Today, Mellon heirs still fund right-wing causes.

Along the way, there was some rebellion against the “love of wealth” ethos.
The ”Share the Wealth” clubs,* of “Kingfish” Huey Long (1893-1935), claimed to have seven million members in the early 1930’s.
In FDR’s first inaugural address he said: “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”

American films illustrated our concerns.
In 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life, a guardian angel teaches George Bailey (James Stewart) the value of love, and his own life, over materialistic goals. 

Cousin Eustace (Charles Williams), Cousin Tilly (Mary Treen), Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell), and George Bailey (James Stewart) gaze at a basket of money in It’s a Wonderful Life.

It’s a Wonderful Life deals with many money issues.
Young George Bailey assumes that his future wife, Mary (Donna Reed) must prefer his high school rival Sam Wainwright, because Wainwright is so wealthy.
Banker Henry Potter (Lionel Barrymore) owns most of Bedford Falls.
Yet, Potter is so avaricious that he steals the $8,000 that Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) loses, and then connives to send both Bailey and Uncle Billy to prison, because of the loss.
The alternative universe Bedford Falls—Pottersville, in which Bailey was never born—is a sleazy place of poverty, crime, and run-down businesses.
(Bedford Falls has been picked clean by Henry Potter. Uncle Billy has been committed to an asylum, and their bank is a brothel.)

At the end of the film, Bailey’s navy veteran brother, Harry, makes a toast: “To my big brother George, the richest man in town.”
George’s “wealth” is the love and admiration of the people of Bedford Falls, not the money in his bank account.

The Scarecrow (Patrick McGoohan) puts a gun to the head of a British soldier in Disney’s The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. The film and TV series were based on stories of the British smuggling gangs who brought in brandy and tobacco to avoid taxes, and novels by Russell Thorndike about a pirate turned vicar (Dr. Syn) who steals to give to the poor.

European popular culture tended to have a more egalitarian bent, and viewed wealth with suspicion.
English folklore told of Robin Hood, who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.
Dashing highwaymen, like Dick Turpin, were sung about in ballads and immortalized in plays.
French authors created Arsene Lupin (a gentleman thief)—and the much more ruthless Fantomas—criminals who successfully eluded the police.
The German legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin explains how the Piper—when cheated of his full fee (for luring away thousands of rats)—revenges himself on the town of Hamelin, by stealing away its’ children.

Americans favored some famous thieves—Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and Bonnie and Clyde, to name a few—but these were real people who Americans read about in newspapers and dime novels.
We also heard stories about industrious workers like Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, and John Henry.
When I researched Paul Bunyan, however, I discovered that the Bunyan stories were rooted in the lumber fields of Canada.
There weren’t any folk tales about John Henry; his battle against a steam drill originated in an 1870 song.
Johnny Appleseed was a real person—horticulturist Jonathan Chapman (1775-1845).
It turns out that Chapman was a missionary of the Swedenborgian Church, as well as a planter of apple trees.
According to Collier’s Encyclopedia, “a good deal of what has been presented to the American public as folklore, we now know never existed in the oral tradition.”

We might assume that love of money, and admiration for the rich, goes hand in hand with the famous “Protestant Work Ethnic,” but that isn’t the case.
It’s true that (according to Pew Research Center), Americans work longer hours per week than Europeans, and take shorter vacations.
It’s also true that millions of Americans have two, or three, jobs.
(It’s been this way since the 1990’s.)
However, people don’t have multiple jobs because they want to work more.
Most are doing so because of medical debts, because hourly wages are so low, or in order to feed and house their children.
According to an article in The Guardian (September of 2022, Michael Sainato), nearly 5% of U.S. workers hold two or more job positions.
However, many experts call that a serious underestimate.

In Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, she theorizes that because real wages have stagnated for workers since the 1970’s—without the safety nets afforded in other Western countries—we’re experiencing what political scientists (like Diana Mutz) call “dominant group status threat.”
A percentage of Americans feel that the “outgroups” (Blacks, Asians, immigrants) are doing “too well,” and therefore their own status is being threatened.
These deep fears are one source of MAGA support.

The Bizarro World of the Superman comics (art by Wayne Boring) is a crazy mirror image of the real world in which “bad” means “good” and coal is used for money.

To simplify, we’re living in a bizarro world where half of us believe that Democracy is only possible if we all have equal access to good health, education, and opportunity; while others just want to join the “top” caste, and are fearful of societal change.
Each believes the other is living in “Bizarro World.”

*Further information on these ideas is found in Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Phillips, published in 2002, by a division of Random House.

Living in an Incoherent, Distracted Mass

 The December 1943 DC Comics cover of Wonder Woman running for President.

There have been forty-six presidents in U.S. history, and by many standards they’ve been fairly similar men—similar in ethnicity, height, religion, chosen professions, and age.
All but a very few had at least one ancestor who arrived on American soil in colonial days.
(Therefore, many either were slaveholders, or had ancestors who were slaveholders.)
Thirty-one served in the military.
Twenty-seven were trained as lawyers.
All but two (Catholics Kennedy and Biden), were Protestants—with thirteen Episcopalians.
It’s evident that there’s been “a presidential type,” and that for generations Americans tended to be fearful of non-British influence.

TV Wonder Woman Lynda Carter played President Marsdin in five episodes of Supergirl.

Of course, women have been cast as U.S. presidents in various films and television shows.
Presidents were portrayed as women in science-fiction projects like 1953’s Project Moon Base, and 2016’s Supergirl TV series (in which Lynda Carter was President Olivia Marsdin).
Most of the time, the productions have been comedies: 1964’s Kisses for my President; a 1985 TV series, starring Patty Duke (called Hail to the Chief, that lasted seven episodes); and most recently—Presidents Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Laura Montez (Andrea Savage)—in the Emmy-winning HBO TV series, Veep.
Although Candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, all elected presidents have been White Christian men of Northern European descent—with one exception (Barack Obama) who isn’t White, but fit most of the other criteria.  

Thomas Jefferson (Ken Howard) and John Adams (William Daniels) in 1776. 

The actors portrayed the parts in both the Broadway stage version and the 1972 movie.

William Daniels was the same height as the Founding Father he played—5 feet 7 inches.

While Jefferson was very tall at 6 feet two inches, he wasn’t as tall as the actor who played him—Ken Howard who was 6 feet 6 inches.

(Adams and Jefferson later became the second and third U.S. Presidents.)

Despite the fact that there were many Dutch, German, and Swedish immigrants in the colonies, it won’t shock anyone to learn that nearly all U.S. presidents had strong roots in the British Isles and Ireland.
The only exception was the 8th U.S. President, Martin Van Buren, who was of pure Dutch descent.
(In fact, English was his second language.)
Dwight D. Eisenhower was predominately German and Dutch, with some British ancestry.
Donald Trump is half-German.

The U.S. is supposed to be a “melting pot.”
Yet, few people whose parents (or grandparents) weren’t born here, made it to the White House.
Three presidents—Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan and Chester A. Arthur—were the sons of fathers who were born in Ireland, and had mothers whose people were long-time U.S. residents.
Barack Obama is the only president with a parent of non-European ancestry—but although his father was Kenyan—Obama also had deep roots in America (and in the British Isles), through his mother.*
Woodrow Wilson was exceptional in that three of his grandparents were born in Ireland and Scotland.
Trump’s paternal grandparents were Germans, and his mother was a native of Scotland, making him a true “child of immigrants.”
(It’s bizarre that an “anti-immigration politician” would be one of the few whose ancestors arrived in this country so recently.)

We don’t have DNA results for many U.S. presidents.
However, it’s safe to bet that no presidents have ever been of mainly southern European, Native American, Jewish, French, Russian, Scandinavian, Slavic, South American, or Asian descent.
In Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves by Henry Wiencek, Wiencek describes how Jefferson recoiled from the prospect that “foreigners” would get the vote.
He’s quoted as saying: “They will infuse into [the law] their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.”
What Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers, feared was that “foreigners” (at that time, numerous Dutch and German settlers) were slow in assimilating into Anglo-Saxon culture.

Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis)—between abolitionist James Mitchell Ashley (David Costabile) on the left and William Seward (David Strathairn) on the right—in 2012’s Lincoln.

Actor Daniel Day-Lewis is 6 feet 2 inches—only two inches shorter than President Abraham Lincoln who was 6 feet 4 inches.

There’s no height requirement for becoming president, but they’ve usually been taller than average.
At 6 feet 4 inches, Abraham Lincoln was the tallest president.
Twenty-six of our presidents have been 5 feet 11 inches tall, or taller, and only three (Van Buren, Harrison, and Madison) were 5 feet 6 inches or under.
(The average male height in the U.S. has been 5 feet 9 inches, from 1776 through 2023.)

Although presidents are allowed to be as young as 35, most have been in their mid-fifties.
The youngest president was Theodore Roosevelt; he was 42 when he became president in 1901 (after President McKinley’s assassination.)
John F. Kennedy was the youngest elected president at age 43.
The oldest president was Joseph Biden who was inaugurated at age 77.
Until 69-year-old Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981, only two other presidents (Harrison and Buchanan) had been in their late 60’s when elected.
(It’s without precedent that the U.S. may be considering an 82-year-old Democrat running against a 78-year-old Republican, in November of 2024.)

The Constitution lists three qualifications for becoming president.
Candidates must be at least 35 years old, a natural born citizen, and a U.S. resident for fourteen years.
However, the phrase “natural born” wasn’t defined.
Was John McCain “natural born,” although he was born in the Panama Canal Zone?
Was Ted Cruz “natural born,” although he was born in Calgary, Canada?
British law of the era (when the qualifications were established), allowed foreign-born children to be “true native subjects” as long as at least one parent was British.
Thus, there’s a legal precedent for both McCain and Cruz being “natural born,” with John McCain’s case being stronger.
(Both John McCain’s parents were U.S. citizens, and his father, Admiral John S. McCain, was stationed in Panama.
Although Cruz’s father wasn’t a U.S. citizen, his mother was dual citizen of the U.S and Canada.)

It's interesting that the Trump administration changed the law—on October 29, 2019—so that automatic citizenship was taken away from children of U.S. government employees, and members of the armed forces, if the children were born on foreign soil.
(Now, these parents must apply for citizenship for their children.)
Since a child born abroad to two married U.S. citizens traveling abroad automatically acquires U.S. citizenship, it seems odd that the law was altered.
Does the Government just want more paperwork to shuffle?

According to Jamelle Bouie’s 7/2/23 N.Y. Times column “What Frederick Douglass Knew and Trump and DeSantis Don’t,” the Trump administration searched for a way to end birthright citizenship, but was unsuccessful.
Boule says that “the attack on birthright citizenship is an attempt to stigmatize and remove from society an entire class of people.”
(Is Trump still carrying a grudge because Ted Cruz beat him so many times in the 2016 presidential primaries?) 

If Republicans were able to eliminate birthright citizenship, what would the phrase “natural born citizen” mean, and why was this phrase used in the first place?
Obviously, the Founders were afraid of foreign influence, and didn’t anyone with strong ties to another country to be in charge.
Furthermore, they wanted all presidents to have been born on U.S. soil, and not to have acquired citizenship by governmental decree.
(They may have accepted a person born on foreign soil to American parents—as long as they were raised on U.S. soil—but we don’t know that for sure.)

The Founders didn’t mention experience, or education level, as a qualification for the presidency.
Despite some expressing anti-German prejudices, they didn’t specify ethnicity, or being from the British Isles.
They didn’t specify being a landowner.
They didn’t even mention whether a President could be a man or a woman.
They only listed a minimum age, being born on American soil, and residing here for at least fourteen years.
Making the qualifications minimal was an excellent decision, and I’m sure doing so was purposeful.

*According to Ancestry.com, President Barack Obama has extremely deep roots in the U.S.
He’s the 11th great-grandson (through his mother, anthropologist Stanley Ann Dunham) of John Punch—an African man who attempted to escape indentured servitude (in 1640), and ended up a slave in colonial Virginia.
Obama’s mother also had ancestors from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, and Switzerland.

Sex, Lies, and Streaming Movies*

Opposition parties (with the aid of the press), have long debated whether candidates were “fit” to be presidents.
The candidates honesty, adherence to societal norms, stability, levels of “masculinity” (whatever that means), and religious devotion, have all been measured and debated.
It was once thought that a divorced person couldn’t be elected president, or an atheist, or someone who shirked their military duty.
However, most of those “taboos” are now in the dust bin.

Integrity and character were once considered factors as to who should be elected president.
In 1952—when Candidate Richard Nixon was accused of illegally receiving $18,000 from backers—he denied using the money for his own support and played the “family” card, disingenuously saying that he’d never return the family cocker spaniel, “Checkers.”
(The speech worked, and Eisenhower kept Nixon as his running mate!)
There were many stains on Warren J. Harding’s legacy but the chief one was the “Teapot Dome Scandal”—a saga of drilling oil on federal land, bribes and interest-free loans, blackmail, gambling with the White House china, a murder-suicide, and rumored poisoning of a President by his wife.
Most of the “dirt” on Harding, came out after Harding died.
(”Teapot Dome” refers to the dome shape of one of the Wyoming oil fields where Secretary of the Interior, Albert Bacon Fall, illegally allowed private interests to drill for oil.
The corrupt former Cabinet official was eventually sentenced to a year in jail, fined $100,000, and lost his law license, but Fall was the only person who endured any consequences.)

Andrew Jackson (Charlton Heston) and his wife Rachel (Susan Hayward) in The President’s Lady. The 1953 film is on Jackson’s early life and his marriage to Rachel Donelson Robards.

Divorce was once thought to be an important issue that could break a potential candidacy.
Andrew Jackson’s marriage to Rachel Donelson Robards occurred before her divorce from Lewis Robards, making her an inadvertent bigamist.
(This scandal followed the Jacksons through their 34-year marriage, and his political career. Rachel died soon after Jackson was elected, and she was never First Lady.)
Candidate Gary Hart and his wife Oletha never divorced, but his being a front-runner (for the 1988 nomination) ended after photos of Hart surfaced on the “Monkey Business” yacht.
Andrew Jackson married a divorced woman, but the first president to be a divorced man was Ronald Reagan.
The next divorced president was Donald Trump—a twice-divorced, notorious womanizer since the mid-1970’s—who bantered about his infidelities (and personal sex life) with radio host Howard Stern during the 1990's and early 2000's.

The fact that Bill Clinton received educational draft deferments, and didn’t volunteer to serve in Vietnam, made him a “shirker,” according to a few WWII veterans.
Some life-long Democrats (like my father) chose to vote for Independent Ross Perot in 1992, rather than vote for him; however, Clinton still won two terms.

After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, PT109—the 1963 film about his WWII exploits—was re-released.

Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, were young men of the same era, and received educational and medical deferments during the Vietnam War. However, Biden expanded health care and benefits for veterans, and frequently mentions deceased veteran son, Major Beau Biden, in his speeches. 

A poster for 1995’s Jefferson in Paris with Thomas Jefferson (Nick Nolte) Sally Hemings (Thandwe Newton), and Maria Cosway (Greta Sacchi). The movie deals with the period (1784-1789) when Jefferson was the U.S. Minister to France.

Publicity about sexual indiscretions have affected political futures since the nation’s earliest days but the stories weren’t a problem, as long as they were just rumors.
Federalist Alexander Hamilton might have become one of our first presidents, had he not confessed to a year-long affair with a married woman, and making blackmail payments to her husband.
Grover Cleveland and Warren G. Harding were both accused of siring children out of wedlock.
Al Gore fell victim to the indiscretions of the president he served.
Would Gore have won the Electoral College (after winning the popular vote, in 2000), if not for the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal?
In total, four U.S. presidents have been accused of siring children with women they owned as slaves (among them, the Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming story), and at least seventeen have been accused of engaging in sexual relations outside of marriage. 

15th President James Buchanan was the only unmarried president—leading some to question his sexual orientation.
However, if Buchanan was gay, the word didn’t get out.
His image (in the mid 1800’s at least) was “manly” enough for him to be nicknamed “Old Buck.”
Sources like Collier’s Encyclopedia make a big point of his “near-engagement” to Anne Coleman in 1819, as if to prove his “sexual normality,” but “less conservative” sources speculate about Buchanan’s “special friendship” with William Rufus King.

Fictional President James Marshall (Harrison Ford), a Vietnam War vet, fights terrorists in 1997’s thriller Air Force One. No U.S. president ever fought in Vietnam; but candidates Al Gore, John Kerry, and John McCain were all Vietnam War veterans.

Pundits have had some odd ideas about masculinity.
Why else would a Newsweek cover story (1987) describe Republican candidate George H.W. Bush”—a WWII pilot, who flew fifty-eight missions and won the Distinguished Flying Cross—as a “wimp?”
A year later, Democratic candidate, George Dukakis, was criticized for not looking sufficiently “macho” while riding in a tank.

“Mental health standards” have also been high—for presidential candidates, at least.
In 1972, Democratic candidate George McGovern was set to run with Tom Eagleton.
After it came out that Eagleton had received psychiatric help for nervous exhaustion, however, McGovern felt forced to find a new vice-presidential running mate.
(The revised ticket lost to Republicans Nixon and Agnew.)
There was also a big to-do as to whether Ed Muskie (the early Democratic front-runner in 1972), had “cried” when responding to reporter questions about his wife.
Newspapers discussed whether the liquid on Muskie’s cheeks was tears, or melting snow, and he was proclaimed “unstable.”
(Soon, Muskie’s presidential campaign was dead.)

As to religion, no U.S. president has ever declared himself to be an atheist.
Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln were both “called” atheists because their religious views were atypical, and neither believed in organized religion.
Ulysses S. Grant was one president who refused to specify his Protestant religious denomination, but he never said he was without a belief in God.

Press Secretary Jerry Ross (Martin Short) sneaks the Martian “girl” (Lisa Marie) into the White House in 1996’s Mars Attacks!  He lifts a lever, under the bust of President Kennedy, which opens the door to a secret assignation space.

It's interesting that the press, and other societal critics, assumed for generations that the American public wanted a “paragon” as their president, but perhaps that was never true.
President Harry Truman never earned a college degree, and didn’t do well as a haberdasher.
Yet, many consider him a good to great president.
The fact that President John F. Kennedy conducted sexual affairs while he was in the White House was covered up at the time, but now that everyone knows, it’s done little to hurt his presidential legacy.
It appears that our “concern with fitness” is based on which political party we’re aligned with—and not by what attributes a great president should have.

*The title of this article is based on the film Sex, Lies, and Videotape, which is about sex, lies about sex, and recording stories about sex lives on videotape. Videotape is a tech dinosaur. The 1989 film starred James Spader and Andie MacDowell.