Document 1: excerpts from: "Birdland: Two Observations on the Cultural Significance of
Baseball"

by Gerald Early

American Poetry Review, July/August 1996, pp. 9-10

It has become a commonplace for baseball enthusiasts, o anyone writing about
baseball, to quote Jacques Barzun's famous line from his book, God's Country
and Mine: A Declaration of Love Spiced with a Few Harsh Words: "Whoever
wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball......
This is quoted almost as a self-evident truth, although I am not sure in the
end why baseball is America's game or why it should say more about our
national character, the true subject of the Barzun book, than football,
basketball, or boxing. After all, baseball is an intensely popular sport in
Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Japan, to name just a few countries. Has
it made these countries more American, imbibing American cultural values
through playing and watching this sport? Or can we learn about Cuban
national character, Dominican national character, or Japanese national
character through studying what baseball means to these various peoples? Is
baseball American because it contains something clearly understood as
American values, whatever they happen to be, or because it is an allegorical
transparency through which any people wind up seeing themselves as they wish
themselves to be?

In his book, Barzun discusses baseball for several pages, culminating with a
satirical conversation with a British friend about the relative merits of
baseball and cricket. Baseball wins out because it is truly a game and not
simply the gestures and rituals approximating a game, as the American
speaker describes cricket. Baseball is, to be sure, an American cultural
declaration of independence, and written, as this book was, during the age
of the Marshall Plan, there seems little reason for American institutions to
take a back seat to Europe anymore. Barzun's discussion is limited
exclusively to the aesthetics of the game, to its content as a spectacle. He
says, for instance: "Accuracy and speed, the practiced eye and the hefty
arm, the mind to take in and readjust to the unexpected, the possession of
more than one talent and the willingness to work in harness without special
orders, these are the American virtues that shine in baseball." But baseball
not only, according to Barzun, expresses the nation's character; it is the
best group game ever invented, the game of the twentieth-century:

That baseball rightly expresses the powers of the nation's mind
and body is a merit separate from the glory of being the most
active, agile, varied, articulate, and brainy of all group games.
It is of and for our century. Tennis belongs to the
individualistic past--a hero, or at most a pair of friends or
lovers, against the world. The idea of baseball is a team, an
outfit, a section, a gang, a union, a cell, a commando squad--in
short, a twentieth century setup of opposite numbers.

Barzun's book was published in 1954, a time when this type of national
character meditation was popular as in intellectual exercise, and a time,
during the intense, anti-Communist, anti-leftist insurgency movement or
mood, when a preoccupation with defining the national self might be
expected, particularly defining the national self within the framework of a
tradition that is so culturally centrist. That is, baseball is
individualistic but does emphasize teamwork and community; it is
anti-intellectual but cannot be won through sheer brute force or strength or
emotion but through cleverness, thought, guile, and technical mastery of
small details; it is mute like dance, but far less aesthetically and
intellectually self-conscious, yet it has attracted far more intellectuals
to write about it than dance ever has; it is a mass game played by children
and adults but has enough intricacy to satisfy the most snobbish devotee; it
has the most intense historical consciousness and historical pretension of
any sport, a near prototype for the historical obsessions of other
popular-culture inventions like Rock and Roll and Hollywood film, yet it
readily abandons tradition for commercial advantage. Baseball has the image
of stability and conservatism, yet it has been rocked by more labor disputes
and unrest than any other popular-culture industry except journalism. It is
the perfectly balanced centrism of its values--which historians Robert F.
Burk and David Hackett Fischer argue reflect baseball's puritan
origins--more perhaps than specifically what its values are, that makes
baseball so meaningful to Americans as a cultural expression of the national
character. There is something about baseball's checks and balances that
mirrors those checks and balances of the Constitution, of Enlightenment
rationalism, of liberalism as a nineteenth-century ideology of organization
and discipline, the great metaphor of self-interested individuals as
self-interested association, the invisible hand of perfected design. Adam
Smith as the Great Commissioner of Baseball.

Major League baseball, always a powerful sign and symbol of American civic
religion, truly became the national game with the integration of the black
player in 1947. One natural result of this was that the game became a more
effective propaganda weapon in the Cold War. With integration, the talk
about baseball symbolizing American democracy became more intense, if not
necessarily more convincing. It used to be argued that a man of any
background or any size could learn to play this game on the highest
professional level. After 1947, it could be argued that a man of any color
could, in association with any other group of players. Indeed, it was the
associational power, the associational myth of baseball as a team sport,
that made racial integration of the game the powerful cultural event that it
turned out to be. I do not wish to argue with Barzun's interpretation of the
characteristics of this game reflecting both its own superiority as a game
and the superiority of American civic traits by being a mirror of them. I
wish only to point out that Barzun confines himself to the game on the
field. He does not mention the management of baseball, baseball's history as
a mode of capitalist production or commercial ingenuity, or how the game
came to be what it is either as an aesthetic or commercial enterprise. He
does not talk about the reserve clause, trading players, the existence of
leagues, the power of team owners, or any of the bureaucratic or managerial
structure of baseball. Baseball, like most other professional sports, has a
medieval aspect, operating, as it does, as a cult, a guild, a cartel. It has
exclusivity and mystique. In short, for Barzun, as for many others, baseball
is not an activity in itself to be understood but a complete and
self-sufficient allegory to be explicated. That is to say that baseball, for
Barzun and others like him, functions as American culture's practical
criticism, as the artform that tells us what is right and wrong, beautiful
and ugly, good and bad about American cultural values and the dissent they
generate. This is not an untoward consideration when one remembers, after
all, that Barzun was, in the 1950s, an historian of some popularity and
stature which means he was both a cultural guardian and an explicator. But
baseball is not a game that simply emerged through the magic of American
cultural virtues, which is all a merely allegorical reading of the sport
would say, or at least the sorts of allegorical readings we have become
accustomed to. The fact that Barzun's comments assume this, in the end,
makes his remarks, no matter how touchingly or effectively poetic, or
skillfully interpretative as a rhetorical act, largely predictable. His
remarks have been made before, and it is only because he is a historian of
some intellectual weight that his insights, such as they are, have any worth
at all and their worth is obvious: further intensifying the national myth of
this game. What Barzun's baseball comments represent is that, by the middle
of the twentieth century, baseball as an unquestioned symbol and
performance-ritual of the best qualities of something called Americanism was
an entrenched truism. Barzun, in effect, offers a tautology. That is why
baseball enthusiasts like to quote him.

Document 2: New York Times Magazine November 16, 1952
"This Is the Beat Generation"

A 26-year-old defines his times.
By CLELLON HOLMES

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The wild boys of today are not lost. Their flushed, often scoffing, always
intent faces elude the word, and it would sound phony to them. For this
generation conspicuously lacks that eloquent air of bereavement which made
so many of the exploits of the Lost Generation symbolic actions.
Furthermore, the repeated inventory of shattered ideals, and the laments
about the mud in moral currents, which so obsessed the Lost Generation does
not concern young people today. They take it frighteningly for
granted. They were brought up in these ruins and no longer notice
them. They drink to "come down" or "get high," not to illustrate anything.
Their excursions into drugs or promiscuity come out of curiosity, not
disillusionment.

Only the most bitter among them would call their reality a nightmare and
protest that they have indeed lost something, the future. But ever since
they were old enough to imagine one, that has been in jeopardy anyway. The
absence of personal and social values is to them, not a revelation shaking
the ground beneath them, but a problem demanding a day-to-day solution. How
to live seems to them much more crucial than why. And it is precisely at
this point that the copywriter and the hot-rod driver meet, and their
identical beatness becomes significant, for, unlike the Lost Generation,
which was occupied with the loss of faith, the Beat Generation is becoming
more and more occupied with the need for it. As such, it is a disturbing
illustration of Voltaire's reliable old joke: "If there were no God, it
would be necessary to invent Him." Not content to bemoan His absence, they
are busily and haphazardly inventing totems for Him on all sides...

In the wildest hipster, making a mystique of bop, drugs and the night life,
there is no desire t shatter the drugs and the night life, there is no
desire to shatter the "square" society in which he lives, only to elude it.
To get on a soapbox or write a manifesto would seem to him absurd....
Equally, the young Pepublican, though often seeming to hold up Babbitt as
his culture hero, is neither vulgar nor materialistic, as Babbitt was. He
conforms because he believes it Is socially practical, not necessarily
virtuous. Both positions, however, are the result of more or less the same
conviction -- namely that the valueless abyss of modern life is unbearable.

Document 3 Hollywood blacklist, per the daughter of Bartley Crum

The New York Times

Sunday, April 20, 1997

Patricia Bosworth

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ON THE LAST DAY OF LAST month, the Screen Writers Guild West, representing
more than 7,000 writers, quietly took action at its board meeting to restore
10 writers' screen credits on 24 films like "Robe," "Hellcats of the Navy,"
"Inherit the Wind" and "Born Free." Since the guild has also restored
credits to other writers including Dalton Trumbo for "Roman Holiday," "The
Brave One" and "Gun Crazy."

When I heard the news about the restored credits I thought, Hey, it's about
time. The injustice has been going on for 50 years.

I first learned about the Hollywood blacklist on Nov. 24, 1947. I remember
the exact moment. I was standing with my father, Bartley Crum, by a phone
booth near Union Square in San Francisco, feeding him nickels and dimes
while he made a series of intense phone calls to Dore Schary, who was the
head of MGM.

If you're wondering why he had to make from a pay phone, it's because was
bugged by the F.B.I. At that point I was too young to quite grasp the bugged
calls, but I did know that my father had been one of six lawyers who had
just defended the "Hollywood 10" in front of the House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC) in Washington.

These were the writers like Waldo Salt, directors and producers who had been
subpoenaed to testify about their political beliefs. But they stood on their
First Amendment rights and refused to reveal whether they were Communists.
After the hearings, in October, the Hollywood 10 were indicted for contempt.
In the weeks that followed it seemed as if the studios would oppose any
further HUAC attempts at censorship, but on Nov. 24, the studio heads did
about-face and instigated their blacklist.

On that foggy afternoon in San Francisco so long ago, my father stopped
making phone calls and turned to me to try to explain why the Hollywood 10
would have to be sacrificed to appease HUAC. It was the start of the Red
Scare and America's paranoia about Russia and Communism.

Eventually, of course, the Hollywood 10 -- among them Ring Lardner Jr. and
Dalton Trumbo -- went to prison for refusing to cooperate with the
committee. When they came out, they were blacklisted and would remain so
until they testified under oath whether they were Communist Party members.

Today, almost nobody I know has anything but the vaguest memories of the
Hollywood blacklist. Nobody remembers that HUAC continued its investigations
into the film community well into 1956 and that hundreds of witnesses were
called to testify and to inform on colleagues to prove their loyalty and
their patriotism.

In January, the subject of blacklisting swam back briefly into our national
consciousness when the great director Elia Kazan was rejected for two
lifetime achievement awards from the American Film Institute and the Los
Angeles Film Critics Association -- because of what he did during the
blacklist. Tempers ran high, with Kazan's' defenders insisting that he be
judged solely on his artistry, not his politics, and his detractors
maintaining that he should still be punished for informing and for selling
out.

Back in the 50s, there wasn't any talk of selling out when blacklisted
writers, just out of jail, huddled in our living room. Instead, my father's
conversations with them focused on the meaning of loyalty and questions
about censorship and how one could survive in the writers' black market. All
the best writers had been blacklisted, and everyone was writing under
pseudonyms and being paid in cash; it was hard to open a bank account,
impossible to get life insurance. Nobody had enough money. Everyone was
being hounded by the F.B.I.

My father was being hounded too. Because he had defended the Hollywood 10
and taken on numerous loyalty cases as well, he was labeled subversive. He
was followed relentlessly by the F. B. I., and our phones remained tapped.
My father was even put on the F.B.I. security index, which meant that in the
event of an "emergency" he would be put in a concentration camp. He lost
most of his clients. Close to bankruptcy and in despair, my father informed
on two colleagues already known to be Communists. In 1959, he committed
suicide.

By that time the blacklist had ended. The first break came with Otto
Preminger, who announced he was hiring Trumbo to write "Exodus." Then Kirk
Douglas said he would give Trumbo full credit for writing "Spartacus." These
actions paved the way. In 1961, Ring Lardner, who had been blacklisted since
1947, was given credit for writing "The Cincinnati Kid." He went on to win
an Oscar for "MASH." Salt came back with "Midnight Cowboy" and "All the Way
Home," winning Oscars for both.

Now we are in the spring of 1997, and the Guild has restored screenwriting
credits to more writers who have been long blacklisted. Though years after
the fact, I suppose it's a nice gesture and maybe it can make a difference,
if only to remind people that in Trumbo's words "the blacklist was a time of
such evil, no one survived untouched."

But why did it take so long to have those writers recognized? I think it is
a combination of embarrassment and hypocrisy. The cold war lasted until
1991. During much of the time between the 1950's and then HUAC was still
active in various forms. Many movie executives were afraid to stand up for
anything least of all blacklisted writers. And nobody wanted to seem soft
on Communism.

Today there are still threats to our freedom of expression, many of them the
work of self-appointed guardians of decency. We can put them in historical
context by remembering the blacklist of the 1950's.

Documents 4 Phil Ochs

Some select quotations

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[The demonstrations were] merely an attack of mental disobedience
on an obediently insane society...and if you feel you have been living
in an unreal world for the last couple of years, it is particularly
because this power structure has refused to listen to reason...Step
outside the guidelines of the official umpires and make your own
rules and your own reality.
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(from _An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Period_ by
Charles DeBenedetti (Syracuse Univ. Press, 1990).

America is two Mack trucks colliding on a superhighway because all
the drivers are on amphetamines.

It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles. The reward is the
act of struggle itself, not what you win. Even though you can't expect
to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt.
That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's life.

God isn't dead--he's just missing in action.
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From the liner notes of The Broadside Tapes:

When they show the destruction of society on color TV, I want to be
able to look out over Los Angeles and make sure they get it right.

Leaving America is like losing twenty pounds and finding a new
girlfriend.

A protest song is a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it
for bullshit

And if there's any home for America, it lies in a rebolution, and if
there's any hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis
Presley to become Che Guevara.

The final story, the final chapter of western man, I believe, lies
in Los Angeles.
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From Phil's intro to The World Began In Eden And Ended in Los Angeles on
There and Now - Live in Vancouver 1968

I was over there, entertaining the troops. I won't say which
troops.
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From Phil's intro to The Marines Have Landed on the Shores of Santo
Domingo on Phil Ochs in Concert and There But For Fortune

Before the days of television and mass media, the folksinger was
often a traveling newspaper spreading tales through music. There is
an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their
actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror
available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song.

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From Broadside

"Leave the old and dying America and use your creative energies to
help form a new America, which would be de-militarized, more
humanistic, where the police are less hostile and closer to the
community, where the wealthy are not given unleashed power for the
exploitation of the people. "And, mostly because it's now a matter of
life and death, reassert an ecological balance with the environment,
which means the people in the oil companies and the car companies
and the space industry and all the other industries will have to be
brought into account, so that there will be a new definition of
government which has to be closer to the people and less close to
special interests which are far more harmful than any revolutionaries."

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From an interview with Michael Ross, 1969

"I can spare a dime, brother, but in these morally inflationary
times, a dime goes a lot farther if it's demanding work rather than
adding to the indignity of relief."

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From the liner notes of "I Ain't Marching Anymore":

A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a
song is learned by heart and repeated over and over. -- Joe Hill