[75 years ago this week, operator-assisted toll dialing was introduced to make long-distance phone calls much easier. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy some classic phone calls in American culture, leading up to a special tribute to what phones mean in my own 21st century life!]
On how
phone calls can symbolize the striking contrast in our 2024 electoral choice.
I haven’t
written much in this space about the
2024 campaign, which is fine by me and I imagine fine by you all as well
(plenty of that elsewhere, and really everywhere else, if you want it!). I do
have an election-week series on the 1924 campaign coming up in a couple weeks,
and will end that series with a weekend post reflecting on the 2024 results,
whatever they will be (keeping everything crossed, natch). I know it’s no
secret to any reader of this blog (or anyone who knows me, or anyone who exists
in October 2024) what I fervently hope will happen on Tuesday November 5th,
and not just for all the obvious and crucial political and contemporary reasons
(although duh)—I also still believe, and in fact believe even more fully than I
did when I wrote that 2020 Considering History column now that I’ve learned a
lot more about her, that Kamala
Harris’s heritage and identity make her just as foundationally American as,
if not even slightly more tellingly and importantly American than, Barack Obama
(whom I’ve
called “the first American President”).
So yeah,
the stakes in this election are high, in AmericanStudies terms as in literally
every other way. And I’d say that phone calls offer a clear and compelling way
to represent one of the most fundamental contrasts at the heart of our
electoral choice. On the one hand we have the two justifiably infamous phone
calls through which then-President Donald Trump sought to undermine the 2020
election (before and after it took place) as well as American democracy and
ideals, the rule of law, and our relationships with foreign allies among other
things: his July
2019 call to Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky; and his January 2021 call to
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. There are no shortage of moments
to which we can point to make the case that Trump was the worst president in
American history (with all due respect to
Andrew Johnson), but I don’t think it gets much clearer than the
combination of those two phone calls. Or, to put it another and even more
telling way: Trump embodied and continues to embody the worst of American
history, our most divisive and destructive impulses, the frustrating but
inescapable fact that our boasted
civilization is but a thin veener; and these phone calls are exhibits 1 and
1A in that case.
On the other
hand we have a famous phone call that came to symbolize the actual results of
the 2020 election: “We
did it, Joe!” The contrast in not just content but also and I’d argue
especially tone between that November 2020 call and Trump’s pair is striking,
and connects to the ways that this year’s Democratic National Convention in
August leaned into tones
of hope and joy (in direct and potent contrast to the fearful
and resentful Republican National Convention in July). But it was also just
a very meaningful and moving moment for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, an
important stage in the arc of a definingly American family story, individual life,
and political career that are all both literally and figuratively on the ballot
this November. I guess I’m not telling y’all how to vote (although if you’re
planning to vote Trump, I really am not sure what you get out of this blog)—but
who on earth would vote for the guy who made those 2019 and 2021 phone calls
when they could vote for the lady who made this 2020 one?!
Tribute
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Famous cultural phones you’d highlight?
No comments:
Post a Comment