February 15, 2018--Gilded Age

A friend who seems to know about almost everything that's on TV--knowing her is better than subscribing to TV Guide--recommend that we watch "The Gilded Age," part of the American Experience series broadcast on PBS.

I confess that I rarely (that means never) watch PBS. I like my TV at its raw, unrefined worst (when I can't stand any more Morning Joe, for example, I switch over to reruns of Married With Children)--television for me is for escape or to keep up to the minute about the latest high school shooting massacre (yesterday, therefore, involved switching back and forth between Olympic figure skating and the horrendous story of mass murder in a high school in South Florida not too far from where we used to winter.

But before that, we watched about half of "Gilded Age" (I kept nodding off since I'm not that good at taking in information other than by reading or talking).

What I saw of it was OK, full of well chosen photographs of the then vulgarians who made up the conspicuous worst of that era. The point, in part, was to remind us that we're living in a similar age and that we need to protect ourselves if we want to preserve what's left of our democracy. 

Dealing with gross inequality must become our highest priority. It was good, though, to be reminded that no matter how bad we think things are today they could be worse. Like during the Gilded Age of 1880 to 1920.

You know how these documentaries work--they depend mainly on vintage photos, film from back then, and talking-head historians who set the context. The ones who get me snoozing.

Last night, one of the historian experts who wrote definitive books about John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and William Randolph Hearst (all Gilded Agers), was David Nasaw, an old friend. I hired him for his first academic job in 1978 at Staten Island Community College. Some years before he had produced a neat book, Starting Your Own High School, derived from his experiences teaching at the Elizabeth Cleaners Street School. It was written by the kids and edited by David. He was just the kind of "radical" educator we were eager to bring on board at SICC for our "experimental college," which I directed.

He turned out to be the great teacher we were hoping for and after Staten Island went on to bigger but not necessarily better things. He's now a distinguished professor at the City University of New York's Graduate Center, where, after serving in President Kennedy's administration, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was affiliated. So David is doing very well as a cultural and social historian and was perfect for setting context for "The Gilded Age."

He and it were good enough so the next time my friend recommends something serious to watch on TV, I'll think about giving it a try.