Some Lounge material from "The ROOSEVELTS" -- funnies about TR

[UTUSN]

Somebody said, "You have to remember: The president is SIX!1"

and

Alice said, &quot TR) wanted to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every baptism."

and

Toward the end of his tenure, TR is ruminating how greatness in presidents depends on their having had a war or great crisis, that nobody would know LINCOLN without the Civil War. And the narrator reads, &quot TR) had not had a war, had not had a great crisis. Some people thought HE WAS THE CRISIS!" Haha.

[MrMickeysMom]

1. I've been enjoying it...

I missed the first hour of the series, but have been glued each night since.

I've also learned that he was shot at a political speech around the election, and then insisted on going on for an hour afterwards.

Can you even imagine the character of TR "real life"…. ? Wow…

Thank you, Ken Burns!

[UTUSN]

3. My local PBS was off the air the first 2 days. Have watched online, Google "PBS Online"

Also, the online link via my local PBS was lousy, and PBS allows you to Register/Login to get a good HD connection and pick whatever station you want.

[MrMickeysMom]

7. I forgot you could do that

Excellent reminder!

[Manifestor_of_Light]

2. Good show.

Apparently Eleanor cut Franklin off after she had her sixth child at age 31.

Doesn't excuse his affairs, but is relevant.

[rurallib]

4. Don't think this was in the current program - but Alice must have been something else

can't remember where I heard it - think it was another PBS show on TR -
He supposedly said "I can take care of Alice or I can take care of the country but no man can do both."

[UTUSN]

5. She was the daughter from the deceased first wife, became the original Bad Teenager

Last edited Wed Sep 17, 2014, 11:38 PM - Edit history (1)

in the WH. I had heard of her wicked wit salons when she was elderly, how she had a cushion with the needle point, "If you can't say something nice, come sit by me."

The BURNS documentary gave her about 5 minutes, how she was our royalty/Princess/bad-girl, the proto-Miley/KARDASH/whomevers of today. When her mother died, TR moved on despite her mother supposedly being a Big Love, married his original childhood girlfriend, and Alice was fairly shunted aside emotionally, so her acting out was a Jane FONDA-ish bid for Daddy's love and attention (my interpretation).

[kwassa]

6. She was also a diehard Republican, like the rest of the Oyster Bay Roosevelts ....

and campaigned for Hoover against FDR in 1932.

Hoover lost, bigtime.

[MrMickeysMom]

8. Where exactly was Oyster Bay again?

I probably missed this.

[Sanity Claws]

12. North Shore of Long Island

[MrMickeysMom]

14. Thanks…

[Manifestor_of_Light]

9. My parents told me about the Roosevelts.

My grandmother cried when FDR died. She was a County Extension Agent and saw how FDR used government resources to help poor people who had absolutely nothing. She told me about teaching women how to make mattresses out of surplus cotton during the Depression. They must have been sleeping on HAY. Now that blows my mind.

My mother told me about Eleanor resigning from the D.A.R. when they refused to let Marian Anderson sing at Constitution Hall, and she sang at the Lincoln Memorial instead. I thought that was a powerful story.

They were good liberal Democrats. It was OK to be a Socialist at our house, but NOT OK to be a Communist.

And when I was a kid we had three pictures of John F. Kennedy on the wall. He was more meaningful than Jesus.

The show quoted Lucy Mercer as saying FDR had "an exquisitely beautiful head". He was handsome and charming.

I'm sure a lot of women were gobsmacked. Occasionally a politician comes around with so much charisma the women go crazy. The last politician I saw like that was Bill Clinton when he ran in 1992. I had seen rock stars in concert, but never seen a politician like that. Millions of women were turned into blithering idiots when he opened his mouth. Besides which, he was damned smart.

[UTUSN]

10. Crying, charisma, gobsmacked...

The (almost) whole country cried when FDR died. The first crying I witnessed was my mother and elder sister when I was a tot, over Adlai STEVENSON's 2nd loss. As for gobsmacked, my other sister came home from college for a holiday and was totally nuts over JFK. I was 12 or 13 and my wisdom was that LBJ was much more experienced and had paid his dues. Yes, eventually, the triptych of JFK-RFK-MLK was in (well, not every) every house. But as the historical gossip unfolded, I solidified my first instincts about LBJ being a great FDR progeny.

As for MY getting misty, it has been through the filter of media: After Vietnam, when David BRINKLEY did a summary of what we believed when we went into Vietnam and he ended with, "We don't believe those things anymore..." And I held back the tears.

Then at the end of Primary Colors (movie) where CLINTON wins after the "bimbo erruptions," and a crowd of supporters is celebrating with him, and somebody says how some of us stuck with him and gave all to overcome the bad stuff and ended with, "Now, don't go breaking our hearts (again)..." Makes me bawl. And, of course, he went on to break our hearts again (and again).

In the '92 primaries, I had no idea who CLINTON was, but in one of the debates he was clearly dazzling (for me, on dominating the stage and mastery of the issues).

I'll take this opportunity to repeat my own lesson from Bill CLINTON's career: We need leaders who stay focused on using the precious time in "power" to work on our Democratic AGENDA, not indulging their peccadillos and forcing us supporters to expend all of our energy DEFENDING him/them, diverting the energies of all of us AWAY from the agenda and funneling it into PERSONAL DEFENSE.

[Kber]

11. My grandmother left the DAR at the same time.

She wasn't a civil rights activist, in fact she was kinda racist at the time. She was in her early 20s, newly married, and a proud member of Connecticut society.

But she had a world of respect for Mrs. Roosevelt. When she made that gesture, my grandmother took note and was motivated to learn more. Fast forward to the 50's when grandma was supporting school desegregation, the bus boycotts and later the civil rights act. She traveled to DC to hear King speak. That gesture changed my grandmothers life track.

A powerful role model can indeed change hearts and minds.

[ashling]

13. Not a funny, but I have been waiting

for a bio where it actually acknowledged that "he had a blood lust"