Transhistorical Warnings and Those To Whom They Apply...

Took the night off from reading and writing about John Adams to watch John Adams stuff on American Experience. Nothing there that I didn’t already know (and remember, I’m not that smart – so probably not a lot of new stuff there)…

…but in the reenactment parts of Adams waiting for the election results and final counts of the 1796 election – the guy who played Adams was smoking these little brown cigarettes. I didn’t know our second president smoked Mores.

Not Mores – Mores! Moops?

I used to smoke Mores. I was playing video games at my friend’s apt and we smoked a ton of cigarettes while we played. His girlfriend came over later – saw all my More butts in the ashtray and said: “You bastard! What’s her name?!?”

My friend Pete, who apparently was as naïve as me said: “What do you mean?”

She said: “These skinny little brown cigarette butts! Only women smoke Mores!”

I’m still dealing with the fallout of this copyright stuff for the Religion and the Constitution reading packet. I should’ve e-reserved that puppy…but some of these older readings – they just won’t scan…or they look like crap. There’s at least one author who is completely refusing permission – or, permission will be impossible. Have I become the Shawn Fanning of the U? I sure hope not.

The Adams show reminded me of why I’m drawn to him – and the warning for me that comes from the life of John Adams…besides “Don’t retain Washington's cabinet” – or “Lay off the midnight snacks!” A few years after losing the election of 1800 – Adams publishes a bunch of articles blasting Hamilton, other Federalists – and a variety of enemies – Federalists and Dem-Republicans alike! He used these articles to rid himself of bad feelings from the past. While there are some benefits to this…most of them are private – and even the private benefits come at a cost. First of all, people who feel or understand these things – when they see someone blasting away in print (even in e-print) they know: these thoughts about the past have more to do with the author than the past. So – maybe the author himself gets this release – excoriates the demons in a relatively harmless way – writing: fine. But even this private benefit can be stripped away when the writer thinks: ‘Hmmm, in the process of purging the past I may have hurt or misrepresented someone I love.’ And if this author – whether Adams or me – is sensitive enough to still smart from things in the past – they damn well better be sensitive enough to understand – or at least wonder/fret about whether or not they have hurt others in the written exorcism process. If they don’t – they’re a hypocrite or the writer has deluded himself into thinking that he is the only one can be or has ever been hurt.

And that’s pathetic.