Dimming The Gaslight -- How Democrats Have Devalued a Cinematic Classic

Happy Fourth of July to everyone.  We at History, Rinse, & Repeat are taking advantage of the surfeit of national holidays not just by posting an update, but by hosting a staff retreat in the Adirondacks, where A.H. has visited every summer her entire life, and I have done likewise for all but the first four of my seventy years.

Although we may be taking time off, the world does not.  The news has involved several topics that were the subject of previous articles.  This week we have updates that concern three such articles.

Gaslighting

The biggest news this week was obviously the debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.  It cannot have been a debate that made partisans of either candidate happy, but it was particularly disastrous for the current President.  On one level, it was no surprise to see the demeanor of President Biden at the debate; claims of “cheap fakes” notwithstanding, there have been many episodes of comparable senescence.  What was surprising, at least to this author, was that the President’s handlers, who have been so successful pulling him together for important events in the past, failed so miserably last Thursday.

The subject of President Biden’s infirmities, mental and physical, was the topic of one of our earliest pieces, Biden, Fetterman, & The 11th Century "Weekend at Bernie's," in which we compared both President Biden and Senator John Fetterman to the legendary Castilian knight, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, known in legend as El Cid.  Since that article, President Biden’s issues have only worsened, although Senator Fetterman has made a remarkable recovery, defying the maxim that one never gets a second chance to make a first impression.

The real story of the debate has been the manner in which President Biden’s supporters, both political and, more egregiously, in the press, responded to the President’s performance.  As we discussed in our update, A Presidents’ Week Update – Desmond Dekker’s “Israelites” And What The Virgin Islands Can Teach Us About Settler Colonialism, they have, in the past, contorted themselves to create the illusion of a President full of vim and vigor.    Numerous press outlets had amplified the assertion by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre that President Biden’s obvious senior moments were not what they plainly appeared to be, but were manufactured deceptions, “cheap fakes,” engineered by distortion and editing.  Jean-Pierre’s claim was taken to the extreme by CBS News, which falsely labeled a straightforward video of the President as “digitally altered.” 

Many of these same supporters and press outlets now claim to be shocked (shocked!) to learn that, in a twist on Mark Twain’s famous quip, reports of Joe Biden’s demise had been greatly understated.  Recriminations are flying with the term “gaslighting” the new mot du jour (or de la semaine).

I have always had an issue with the accusation leveled by Republicans that the Biden administration, and Democrats more generally, are “gaslighting” America when they proclaim as true obvious falsehoods, such as the border is secure, the Afghanistan withdrawal was an unqualified success, and that “it is hard for [Biden’s staff] to keep up with this president.”  My quarrel with the characterization of this behavior as “gaslighting” is not that these falsehoods are true, but that the term “gaslighting” implies a level of intelligence absent from these falsehoods, rather than one of mere shamelessness.

“Gaslighting” comes from the 1944 film, Gaslight, the most famous version of a play with a similar name, Gas Light.  The movie starred Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Angela Lansbury, and Joseph Cotton, figures with charisma that few can match today.   The plot involves a thief, portrayed by Boyer, who murders a woman for her jewels.  Unable to find the jewels, he marries the murdered woman’s niece (Bergman) and moves into her house in order to locate them. As part of his elaborate plan, the thief determines to convince his wife that she is going insane, with the help of the housekeeper he hired (Lansbury).  Among the devices the pair employs is the dimming of the house’s gas lights, hence the film’s title.  In short, the plan in Gaslight involves preparation, calculation, sophistication, and intelligence, none of the qualities that can be ascribed to the Democrats and the press in their defense of the President.  For example, when Joe Scarborough states that Joe Biden is “better than he has ever been, intellectually, analytically,” and “And f-you if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever,” -- statements that have aged rather poorly -- he is not displaying any intelligence or deviousness.  Nor does it seem likely that he was actually trying to persuade anyone of the President’s mental acuity.   Instead, such statements reflect simply a refusal to acknowledge the obvious truth and a pretext, however thin, to justify one’s support for the President’s reelection. Statements such as Scarborough’s have no place in Gaslight, but were more accurately captured by another film, Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josie Wales, in which Eastwood’s principal nemesis has a memorable line that has seeped, in various forms, into popular culture: “There's another old saying, Senator: Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining.”

In short, to say that the Democrats are “gaslighting” the American public is to give them far too much credit.  What they are doing is second-rate and simplistic and is more accurately captured by a cruder term.

Jim Crow In Chicago

Three weeks ago, we published an article, Inherit the Windy City – How Chicago Has Revived a Legacy of Jim Crow about the use, in Chicago, of restrictive covenants to prevent unused school buildings to be used as charter schools when sold, thereby depriving children in Chicago, primarily Black children, of an opportunity to seek better educational options.  The article was republished, in modified form, at the website Real Clear History.  In it, we noted that the use of restrictive covenants was not merely a legacy of Jim Crow, but its very essence.  Recently, Mayor Brandon Johnson announced the formation of a task force to study reparations to compensate Black residents for past practices that harmed Blacks, including the use of restrictive covenants and the redlining of districts that resulted therefrom.  One can only hope that the task force recommends compensation to the current children for the damage done to them by the current use of such covenants.

Taking Action at Harvard

Our final update concerns a perennial favorite of this site, our alma mater, Harvard College, the subject of our article, The Harvard Marching Bund – Antisemitism at Cambridge.  Harvard, and the City of Cambridge, have been subject to heavy criticism concerning their lenient handling of antisemitic “protests” that have disrupted the operations of the university and Harvard Square.  It is reassuring to know, however, that local authorities are not tolerant of all disruptions.

According to an article in the Harvard Crimson, the Fox Club, one of eight all-male final clubs at Harvard, has been renovating its clubhouse and renting another in the meantime.  As viewers of The Social Network are aware, final clubs are one of the last vestiges of the era when Harvard was an all-male institution.  They are eating clubs where male undergraduates can grab lunch or an occasional dinner.  More importantly, they are a place where an undergraduate may serve himself liquor.  As portrayed in the movie, final clubs greet every weekend with the arrival of beautiful women, scantily clad, in limousines, for a night of debauchery.  The reality is far more prosaic, at least in my club where no women were allowed.

Harvard has waged war on the final clubs for some time, deeming them a threat to the “values” of the university.  Although the clubs are independent of the college and own their own property off-campus, for a period of time members were subject to various sanctions by the college until Harvard was stymied by litigation.  One suspects that, if asked by a Congressional committee, former President Claudine Gay would have been far less reluctant to denounce final clubs than she was to denounce antisemitism.

Accordingly, when preppies get out of hand, local authorities take action.  It was reported in the Harvard Crimson, that the Fox Club had been evicted from its temporary clubhouse, apparently for rowdy behavior.  It is good to see that, when swift action is required, the City of Cambridge is aligned with Harvard.