I just wish he would stop going all over the country and electioneering since he did win and there are too many things to be doing now or just resting instead of that.

me—Thanks for the info on the “Obambi” origin. I’m beginning to wonder if Ms. Dowd wasn’t right on the money with that. For the last few days, we’ve been seeing Obama in photos looking like a deer caught in the headlines. Sometimes he looks depressed, sometimes tired, and, unfortunately, like he’s thinking “How did I get into this? What do I do next???”  Although I appreciate the fact that he did so much reading and thinking re Afghanistan, it’s also true that he sometimes sounds, seems, like he is intensely alone. It’s slightly unnerving that our President sometimes, more and more, seems to be terrified out of his mind.                                            his

Yes Sepharad I agree and it also explains why Clemen‘s “Tales of Huck Finn” keep being put onto removal lists as being “racist” even though it is anything but. Too many look at the language or bits of the story and see one thing and miss the forest for that one tree they see out of context. Sad really.

Now L. Frank Baum claimed he got the title “Oz” from the two volume dictionaries “A-N” & the other “O-Z” he saw on a nearby shelf, as I have seen the story.

Imagination and creativity are important factors for new ideas that is constantly being tamped down and repressed in our schools who follow the influences of rout learning and following rigid procedures as you would find in any corporation. Creativity is seperate from the kind of intelligence usually searched and tested for in IQ’s. It needs to be kept alive and to be nurtured/

Blackspeare and Night-Gaunt, both my son and daughter-in-law freaked out when I gave my granddaughter Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus stories, in dialect, which they considered demeaning to black Americans. It took awhile to explain to them that Harris was just recording a range of slave tales passed from one to another, every story describing ways to elude or otherwise outfox The Man. Since then, there’s been a fair amount of research on the subject, and they both LOVE to encounter and reeducate people who deem such stories as racist (and as they’re both on American Studies faculties, they get lots of grad students with those old misconceptions). Twenty-five years ago, when our youngest son was still at the reading-singing-to-sleep age, we found and sometimes played for him, while sitting on the side of the bed, recordings of South Carolina’s living historical treasure, Aunt Tita, who recalled and tells similar-to-B’rer Rabbit allegories in her deep Gullah accent, as well as singing some of the old Gullah lullabies.

There is so, so much out of the past that can enrich our childrens’ knowledge of what America was like in the beginning and how it grew, for better and for worse. When I was very young, the most efficient part of the Holocaust was grinding on, and my parents and grandparents did everything to keep that—especially that our government and the British knew about the death camps but did nothing—from entering my consciousness. Instead they offered the fairy tale Golem and all the mythology and stories of the American Indians who survived horrendous decimations and government treasury. It took a few more years to realize that the Golem didn’t smite the Nazis, and that Jews were not necessarily American Indians though some intermarried, particularly out West. My favorite was Crazy Horse, war chief of the Sioux, which I was still reading as “Sy-oh-ex”, a problem if a kid reads true stories before knowing enough words and pronunciations and context.

Movies the caliber of “The Wizard of Oz” are still good for kids (OK, the rest of us too). And Rogers & Hammerstein gave the U.S. some of the first musicals carrying specific messages of class and race and not-necessarily-happy endings—e.g., “South Pacific” and “Carousel”—though Jerome Kern’s “Showboat” might have been earlier; not sure.

Anyone remember in what context someone dubbed our President “Obambi”?

For what It is worth this site at least has a group of people who can think without being burdened with a lack of intelligence…........ KEEP UP THE great response to the writtings of well thought works

I think it depends on the subject. The modern American tradition is often to directly confront and criticize or to suggest and allude. ‘American Beauty’ comes to mind. Personally, I think it’s less effective than allegory. Allegory forces people to find answers, to analyze the social or political context, and to try to fit the puzzle together. It forces them to learn about their world. The trick, of course, is finding Americans who will put that kind of effort into it, which is probably why we go for the less labor-intensive allusion.

If we do see allegory, its often from an earlier or different tradition, such as ‘Lord of the Rings.’ Every now and then, though, there is a subject that is so sensitive or subversive, it takes a more delicate touch or round-about approach. ‘Platoon’ is a good example of modern American allegory.

Night-Gaunt…

Of course you’re correct——I was just trying to emphasize my comment.  But you have to admit TV attracts a much larger audience——though I suppose much of the political/social satire goes unnoticed.

You are wrong Blackspeare they are alive and well in TV, books, cartoon strips, movies etc as long as there is creativity around and a public that will appreciate it.

The days of writing fairy tales and allegories are just about over, but in their place we have a host of animated TV shows that do the same thing, but with hilarity.  Like the fairy tales were able to fool the authorities so can the animated series——amazing what you can get a way with using an animated character!

Nice article, but you ought to have mentioned that Harburg wrote the words, not the music, to “Over the Rainbow.” Harold Arlen wrote the music.

correction:

“... whose writers did not enjoy freedom of speech or political criticism.”

(I hate these little scrolling text boxes. I can never see my mistakes!)

As for Baum’s claim that his book was a mere children’s story, I find it highly suspect. Allegory in the form of fairy tale was a practice largely inherited from European and English Literature, whose writers did enjoy freedom of speech or political criticism. They had to have plausible deniability in their writing. That tradition carried over to American writers, though in lesser abundance. We need only recall Grimm’s Fairy Tales and childrens ryhmes like “Humpty Dumpty” to see the tradition.

Given the monopolies, monied powers of the day, and the fierce debate over monetary policy, to admit any sort of symbolism would most likely have been professional suicide for a writer. There was no mass media the time. People were relegated to books and newspapers, all of which were easily controlled and influenced. Baum’s first line of defense was certainly to retain his credibility as a writer.

Today’s monetary reformers are not considered much of a threat to money establishment and don’t receive much attention, though they are still placed on the fringe whenever they raise the issue. From Ron Paul to Dennis Kucinich, to Michael Moore. They’ve all advocated some form of reform to money and banking structure and we all know how they’ve been treated and portrayed by the establishment. They are but glimpse of what lengths to which the money monoply will go to protect their ability to manipulate economies and seize the assets we build. Remember, Welath does not equal money. Wealth = Land (resources) + Labor. Seize the land and control the labor and you have seized wealth regardless of the currency.

For a complete description of the allegorical symbolism of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” there are two sites that I’ve found quite informative and very relevant to us today.

From “Web of Debt” by Ellen Hodgson Brwon
http://www.webofdebt.com/excerpts/chapter-1.php
(Very informative book by the way. Amy really should interview her on her show.)

A site dedicated to gold and silver investors
http://www.usagold.com/gildedopinion/oz.html

There was a song in the 1933 musical Gold Diggers of 1933 called “Remember My
Forgotten Man” (written by Harry Warren) that turned a musical about the
Depression into a political statement. The song was much like Brother, Can You
Spare A Dime and, as presented, maybe more so.

The Singer was Joan Blondell.  The song is on You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jIofWwupLA

And for those of you that only speak French, there are subtitles.

Night-Gaunt, this is cheering, at least temporarily, compared to the nightmare of mayhem that we can expect if “It’s Not Going to Be OK” is correct. You know, though, we are already a rainbow of people and it doesn’t seeem to be scaring the oil and money guys on top yet.

Amy Goodman, thank you. The wicked witch of the west scared me so badly (as a four-year-old sitting on the grass with my parents, watching the St. Louis Muni Opera’s summer production) that we had to leave. But enjoyed the movie as a kid, as a stoned college student, with our children and now grandchildren. They’re always curious about whether there are real Tin Men and Cowardly Lions and Scarecrows in real life, in the big world as well as among children and people we and they know. Speculation, description, qualifying and disqualifying various individuals have provided many odd but interesting free-for-all discussions. Am thinking now of the top political circles. Hillary is surely the good witch and Sara Palin the wicked witch. Obama is, I’m afraid, the Wizard himself. As for Tin Man, Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow ... have to think about those some more.

Silly me, I never thought about the profound and provacative metaphores and allegorys that existed in this fabulous film. I just sat around a night or two with a few friends getting stoned and trying line up Pink Floyd’s lyrics.

ah, wasted youth.

Just remember that we are in a “recession” that Depression is a forbidden word no matter how much it relates to today. The Unions are at their lowest number in many years, many millions are out of work (17.5%-20% depending on how you count them) tell us it is a Great Depression with a Greater Depression still looming like the tornado cloud super-cell very close. Unlike in the last Great Depression we have been having our businesses and jobs going over seas to the lowest bidder while the remaining jobs here are paying less and less even as the cost of living is still high or even going up! We have droughts, forest fires, floods and more plaguing the land. No rainbow in sight. But then we need to be that rainbow of peoples: all genders, “races,” economic status and level too. Something the money bag oligarchs are frightened of for if that were to happen they could be in real trouble. Either they lose power or they use military force to put it down, both they don’t want to do on any large scale.

Then the growing party encounters a Cowardly Lion, representing the politicians. These have the power, through the power of Congress and the Constitution, to confront the Wicked Witches, representing the banks, but they lack the courage to do so.
Dorothy is able to motivate these three potent forces and leads them all towards the Emerald City, whence ‘greenbacks’ had once come, and an encounter with the omnipotent and wonderful Wizard of Oz.
The Wizard of Oz is initially quite majestic and apparently awesome, but he turns out to be a little man without the power that people assume he possesses. He does, of course, represent the President of the United States. With the Wizard’s illusion of power shattered, he is replaced by the Scarecrow who would ‘be another Lincoln’.
The Wicked Witch of the West, fearful for her own power, then attempts to destroy Dorothy but is herself dissolved in a bucket of water, as rain relieves the Mid-West drought, saves the farmers’ livelihoods and prevents repossession by the banks.
The Good Witch of the South, representing the Southern electorate, tells Dorothy that her silver slippers, silver-based money, are so powerful that anything she wishes for is possible, even without the help of the Wizard. Dorothy wishes to go home. There all is now well, because the land has a stable and abundant money supply.
***
Still a Pertinent Message
So ends this famous modern American ‘fairy-tale’. Its true message has been lost to the mists of time and the demands of Hollywood, but its message is no less pertinent now than when it was written.
William Jennings Bryan was neither the first nor the last American politician to try to reform the US money supply. In fact, two money reformers achieved the office of President and attempted to put money reform into action, but just like in the Oz story, the ‘Most Powerful Man in the World’ was not as powerful as people believed.
In 1865, Abraham Lincoln introduced the original ‘greenbacks’, which were paper money issued by the US Government, largely to pay for the Federal war effort during the civil war. It was ‘fiat’ money, money made legal tender by Act of Congress. Unfortunately, Lincoln died suddenly a few weeks later and his plans died with him.
In 1963, John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 11110 which would have removed the power of money creation from all US private banks, including the privately-owned Federal Reserve, and invested that power in the US Government. Unfortunately, Kennedy was killed a few weeks later and his plans died with him.
***
The Problems of Debt
In the USA 100% of the money supply is created by the private banks. In Britain the figure is over 97%. In the rest of the world, the figure is estimated to be over 95%. All this money is created as a debt. It is created when people borrow money, as banks do not lend existing money; they just create new money out of thin air to lend.
Money created as a debt by the banks bears a charge of interest. This increases the amount of money that the economy owes by an amount greater than the amount in existence. This means that the economy is a saddled with a debt that can never be paid off. 
***
A Solution
Money does not have to be based on debt, nor indeed does it have to be based on precious metals. Real wealth is the goods and services that people create for each other. Money is merely a means of exchange. It could be created by the Treasury and spent on providing public services, saving us all a modicum of taxation, and then the economy would not have to be saddled with large debts.

Thank you for your excellent post, No_Man’s_Land.  A bit more about the parable “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” for those interested:  First published in Chicago in 1900, its author, L. Frank Baum, was the editor of a South Dakota newspaper and a supporter of William Jennings Bryan who stood three times, unsuccessfully, as a U.S. Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.  The particular concern of both Baum and Bryan was the nature of the money supply then prevalent in the United States, and in the Mid-Western States in particular.  In America during the 1890s, as in Britain, there had been a severe depression. Many businesses had gone bankrupt, farmers forced to sell, factories closed and workers made unemployed. True, some farms in the Mid-West were suffering from drought, but most were still capable of growing food; the businesses and factories were still capable of providing the things that people needed; the workers still wanted to work to provide those things, and people would still want the goods and services produced if they had the money to buy them.  The money in the USA then, as now, was entirely created by the private banking system. The pretence existed then that money was based on gold. (Even now some people still think that it is!) The major banks, based on the East and West coasts, could vary the amount of money in circulation, lending more to encourage commercial activity, then fore-closing on loans to put people out of business, enabling the banks to acquire their businesses cheaply.  Baum and Bryan wanted money to be based on silver, not gold, as silver was more readily available in the Mid-West, where it was mined. Such a money supply could not be manipulated by the banks. So the story of the Wizard of Oz starts with a cyclone in the form of imagined electoral success for Bryan…  Dorothy, a sort of proverbial ‘Everywoman’, lands on the Wicked Witch of the East (the East-coast bankers), killing her, so freeing the Munchkins, the down-trodden poor, but the Wicked Witch of the West (the West-coast bankers) remains loose.  To deal with her and to get back to Kansas (normality), the Good Witch of the North, representing the electorate of the North (this is less than 40 years after the civil war), tells Dorothy to seek out the Wizard of Oz (‘oz’ being short for ounce, the means of weighing both gold and silver). She also gives her a pair of silver slippers (as they were in the book - they became ruby ones in the film). Only these silver slippers will enable her to remain safe on the yellow-brick road, representing the bankers’ gold standard, as she heads towards the Emerald City, representing Washington DC.  On her journey, Dorothy encounters a Scarecrow, representing the farmers, who do not have the wit to understand how they can end up losing their farms to the banks, even though they work hard to grow the food to feed a hungry nation. If only they could think it through!
Next, she encounters a Tin Woodsman, representing the industrial workers, rusted as solid as the factories of the 1890s depression, and who have lost the sense of compassion and co-operation to work together to help each other during hard times. Also, a spell cast upon him by the Wicked Witch of the East meant that every time he swung his axe, he chopped off a bit of himself - he downsized! (continued following post)

One of my great grandmothers was renown for her frugality.  She immigrated from Germany as a child, traveled to the midwest via covered wagon, and saw Lincoln’s funeral train in Ohio on her journey westward.  Clothing and belongings were never tossed out - just mended repeatedly and handed down.  She could cook anything and make it seem like a feast, even with meager fare.  Each Thanksgiving she set the table with clean dishes and flatware.  Uncle Harry’s annual joke was he looked forward to her holiday meal so he would have a new paper napkin to use for the coming year. 
  We should all prepare for Thanksgiving with the attitude that we Americans survived the Great Depression - and apparently are surviving the current one.  Those of us who read the Oz books know of the tribulations and fears suffered by the characters.  The songs and stories of Americana bring us hope based on having found the rainbows in spite of the dark clouds along the way.
  More clouds and rainbows are to come.

gerard, I think your comment is wonderful. Bravo!
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is still my favorite song, since childhood.  I seriously ask, “if birds can fly, why or why can’t I?”.

Its true that there is debate about the allegorical symbolism of Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” but it’s very difficult to deny it. Monetary policy was front and center at the time and remained in the public consciousness through the Great Depression. Unfortuantely it was lost throughout what can only be described as the “foreign policy” era (wink, nod, smile).

Interstingly enough, the main argument in Baum’s day was a bi-metal specie to back the currency. They wanted gold and silver backed currency (the yellow brick road and dorothy’s silver slippers repsectively). Gold was easily monopolized and the belief was that silver, being more plentiful, would expand the currency, its control, and prosperity along with it. They never won a chance to find out.

Baum’s populaists had swallowed the Greenback party and marched their agenda forward out of the depressions of the 1870s and the 1890s, which are both largely believed to have been precipitated by a monetary policy that kept currency contracted via the gold standard. Sadly, that great populist tale has been lost in the clamor and wrangling over fiscal policy of today, none of which can ever be realized without real monetary reform.

What the populists of the 1890s and those of today today lost is the relevance of the Greenback argument. It was defeated because it was believed that the Post-Bellum inflation was inherent to the Greenback and that currency had to be backed by specie commodity. Had the people not bought into that little lie, the Greenback currency may very well have woven itself into our social fabric and we wouldn’t be having this discussion today. We did away with the gold standard in 1933 and with it, the only reason we had for keeping Federal Reserve Inc. Today, there is absolutely no reason to keep interest bearing, fractional reserve currency creation under a private banking system that acts as an independent fourth branch of government-for-profit. There is no more gold to back it. Only government bonds (promises to pay), which are negotiable. As Thomas Edison told the New York Times on Dec 6, 1921—eight years after the Fed was created:

“If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20 per cent, whereas currency pays nobody but those who directly contribute to Muscle Shoals in some useful way.”

Its time to do away with the Fed and to bring back the Greenback. The Fed creates interest bearing loans by exchanging mere ledger-enteries for interest bearing government bonds.

(Incidentally, I would really like someone to explain to me why the Fed can buy government bonds merely by entering that amount on their books, use the bonds to create Reserve Notes that they lend to us at interst, send us through 15 years of easy credit, contract the money supply and tank the economy by refusing to lend, and then portend the right to sieze the assets through foreclosure when people go into default while they never risked any wealth of their own. In my world, they call it fraud and robbery.) 

We are getting hit twice: first on the loans we must take out (else the economy dies) and second on the taxes for the federal debt through the issue of those bonds to the Fed.

The money issue will come back. It will have to. If not now, then after the currency collapses. The parabolic interest curve turns verticle after about a hundred years, which is what our debt is starting to do. The Fed was created in 1913, so I’m guessing their centennial anniversary should be one hell of a party.

The Great Depression is a true American tale. Glad to see Amy writing about it. But I would really love to see her discuss our sharecropping monetary system. If we don’t, I’m sure we’ll all be singing about rainbows again soon enough.

Whenever something good happens, it’s always someone who has stepped up and given life a kiss on the nose!