Happy Sunday. Maybe you’re a little hung over or sunburned after yesterday’s big birthday festivities. Maybe spend a little time with our special semiquincentennial edition of the Flashback quiz — beware, though, it’s longer and trickier than usual. The regular Morning will be back tomorrow to catch you up on all of the news. We’ve made all the links to our USA at 250 coverage in this special edition free to read. You just have to log in to our website or app (which is also free).
The most American thing
“It’s a trap,” says a books editor. A pop music critic calls it an “absurdist project.” On today’s episode of “The Daily” podcast, about two dozen of our journalists answer a seemingly impossible, but definitely important, question: What’s the most American thing on your beat? Some picks are straightforward, practically canonical: an Aaron Copland work, a Walt Whitman poem, the U.S. hockey teams winning Olympic gold. Others are surprising, perhaps upsetting. Bama Rush. Liquid rocket fuel. Demolition derbies. Jon Caramanica, a host of “Popcast,” said he considered “easy outs” — songs by Jay-Z, Paul Simon or Barry Manilow — but chose instead “Trump Trump Baby,” an anthem by a rapper who refers to himself as “the Mayor of MAGAville.” “I don’t know if this song is good — it’s probably not — but this is something that could only exist in the current version of America that we have,” he says. “America isn’t only what you look at and what you listen to,” he added. “It’s what you avert your eyes from.” ‘Stuck with each other’Horror movies. Workout clothes. The Grand Theft Auto video game series and The Beast roller coaster in Mason, Ohio. Amazon Prime, offers Kevin Roose, who covers technology: “It is based on a fundamentally American premise — that people want things fast, cheap and all the time.” (I feel so seen!) James Poniewozik, our television critic, picked “Survivor.” “A bunch of people come from somewhere else, and they are stuck with each other and they have to set up a society and figure out how to get along or not get along,” he says. People compete, but they also collaborate. Then there’s Kim Severson, the food writer, who says the story of America can be told through … the M&M. It was created by a pair of nepo babies. It flew on the space shuttle. It has its own store in Manhattan, plus spokescandies. The most American artwork, according to our critic Jason Farago, is actually French: the Statue of Liberty. He went inside it for the first time only a few weeks ago, and marveled at the thinness and malleability of the copper. “There’s this sort of extraordinary symbol that’s also an empty shell — it’s something that’s very, very strong, but it’s also vacant,” Jason explains. “You could spend a lot of time with your therapist talking about how these contradictions might embody a certain American ideal.” Or, you could spend 45 minutes absorbing this rollicking, rhapsodic, insightful, quintessentially American, only-in-The-New-York-Times, once-in-a-semiquincentennial podcast. I’d try that first. For more
Lean CuisineStouffer’s low-calorie frozen dinners embody a new era that turbocharged America’s diet culture. They arrived as obesity rates were climbing and home cooking was declining, as more women joined the work force. The marketing success of elevated diet food paved the way for Snackwell’s cookies and other portion-controlled, low-fat or low-carb products. — Kim Severson Browse Kim’s highlights of American food history.
Before MAGAIt’s a campaign slogan, an ideological catchphrase, a monument of political branding rather than rhetorical art, writes our critic A.O. Scott (Tony). But did you know that this slogan predates Donald Trump? Detach the four words from the current occupant of the White House, Tony writes, “and you find a sentiment nearly as old as the Republic itself.” It was Ronald Reagan who invoked the sentence first, with 1980 campaign buttons that read, “Let’s Make America Great Again.” A decade later, Bill Clinton declared his candidacy for president by saying, “I believe that together we can make America great again.” On Trump’s baseball cap, Tony notes, Reagan’s subjunctive and Clinton’s first person are gone: “This isn’t a wish or a suggestion; it’s an order.” The meaning of “make America great again” is far from stable. Repurposing Reagan’s language, Clinton emphasized the erosion of economic opportunity and the faltering of the middle class, and tried to narrow the gap between the idealism of the ’60s and the nostalgia that followed. Trump, in turn, transformed a vague, hopeful lament into a set of specific accusations — against “wokeness,” D.E.I., Marxism and other manifestations of liberal waywardness. MAGA is sometimes described as a politics of resentment, but it is also a catechism of blame, one that often makes explicit the racial and nationalist animus that earlier iterations of conservatism had tucked into the subtext. Read Tony’s full analysis, and explore five other sentences that shaped America’s story.
‘Won’t the law give me my freedom?’When the Revolutionary War was nearing its end, the colonies were home to about 700,000 enslaved people, including 5,000 in Massachusetts. One was Elizabeth Freeman, known as Bett, who had for years been held as the property of John Ashley. He was a wealthy landowner who in 1773 had hosted prominent men to write the Sheffield Declaration, whose demand for liberty foreshadowed the Declaration of Independence. Freeman had very likely heard talk of “natural rights” in the Ashley home as she took coats and capes, served refreshments and stoked the fire, writes the historian Martha S. Jones. She took herself to the law office of Theodore Sedgwick — one of the men who helped write the manifesto — and became the first enslaved woman to sue for her freedom under the new State Constitution. She won. Freeman “exposed the faulty terms of America’s fundamental contradiction: enslaving people in a nation founded to ensure liberty and equality,” Jones writes. “Efforts to abolish slavery in the new United States often were driven by the initiative and insistence of enslaved people themselves,” she added. See Freeman’s full story, and those of six others who helped shape the country. Deeply reported journalism needs your support. The Times relies on subscribers to help fund our mission. Become a subscriber today.
Ross Douthat, host of the “Interesting Times” podcast, got all dressed up to give the unifying speech he thinks America needs at this moment. And the editorial board argues that “democracy is not a sheltered structure we live inside. It is a habit we must practice — or lose.”
150— That’s about how many of the minutemen readied for the Battle of Bunker Hill were Black. During the American Revolution, about 20,000 Black soldiers fought for the British. Five thousand to 10,000 fought for the Americans. Many, in the chaotic wake of the war, emancipated themselves.
D.W. GriffithFew movies in American history have been as consequential as D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation,” a 1915 epic about the Civil War. It was based on a novel by Thomas Dixon Jr., ran three hours, earned $60 million in its first year and was screened at the White House. It also helped spur a revival of the Ku Klux Klan. When Griffith died in 1948, one prominent film critic wrote that “to watch his work is like being witness to the beginning of melody; or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination, and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art.” But the film’s incendiary view of U.S. history provoked the ire of civil rights groups, which organized protests and boycotts. Over time, critics soured on Griffith, first condemning the hateful content of “Birth” and eventually seeing the style as stiff and sentimental. — A.O. Scott Check out our list of other folks whose contributions to our history are contentious.
Breakup cityA visit to Britain may feel like an odd way to celebrate the semiquincentennial. But if you happen to be in London this summer, our Claire Moses has some suggestions for how you might get your revolutionary spirit on.
This question comes from a recent article in The Times. Click an answer to see if you’re right. To mark America’s 250th birthday, a Vermont couple visited dozens of distilleries across the country to create the United States of Bourbon. It’s a blend of 50 bourbons, one from each state. How much will a 100-proof bottle run you? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
