Welcome to Pottersville

Seventy years ago America was on the precipice of becoming a full blown police state.         Many lived in fear that they might be suspected of having ties to the communist party and be called in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). If this happened, they would be asked to name other people who might be categorized as subversives. If they refused, as many did, they could expect to lose their jobs and serve some time in prison.        In 1950 Howard Fast, a novelist, was called in front of HUAC. The committee asked him to for the names of donors to an orphanage Fast had set up, an orphanage for the children of Americans who had fought with the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. Fast refused, and was sentenced to a few months in prison for contempt of Congress.       After he was released, Fast wrote Spartacus , a novel about a Thracian...

Being the President of the United States has many perks, such as being able to drop nukes or to have buildings named after you, but perhaps one of the greatest rewards for being the leader of the free world is the White House movie theatre. Here the President can schmooze with foreign dignitaries, and he is just about the only person on the planet who nobody will shush if he talks during a movie. We can learn a lot by finding out what movies these men were interested in. We see the narcissistic nature of LBJ by knowing that his favorite movie was a short biopic of himself, and many Americans were able to connect to President Reagan by watching the movies he had starred in. Movies like  Bedtime for Bonzo  . In 1915 Woodrow Wilson became the first President to screen a film in the White House, showing The Birth of a Nation . The film is a piece of revisionist history that was created to romanticize the American South and to portray blacks as menaces to society. Supposed...