Ben Miller 4/14/20 Ben Miller 4/14/20

S3E4: Barney Frank

The gravely-voiced Congressman whose heroic coming out paved the way for gay political power, but whose collaboration with finance capital helped define the Democrats' rightward shift.

On the "complicated" side of "evil and complicated" that makes up our show's motto, we present the story of the gravely-voiced Congressman who blazed trails for gay political involvement at the highest levels of power in Washington, only to spend the latter part of his career selling out the left to finance capital and excluding trans people from fights for non-discrimination legislation. Whip-smart, funny, and always ready with a biting comeback, Barney Frank came to embody the transformation of the Democratic Party away from the working class and towards a suburban party preoccupied with shallow diversity rather than true racial and economic justice.

SOURCES:

Aloisi, James. “Louise Day Hicks: ‘You Know Where I Stand.’” CommonWealth Magazine, October 16, 2013. https://commonwealthmagazine.org/politics/012-louise-day-hicks-you-know-where-i-stand/.

Battenfeld, Joe. “Barney Frank Resurfaces, to the Dismay of Bernie Sanders.” Boston Herald, January 29, 2020. https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/01/28/barney-frank-resurfaces-to-the-dismay-of-bernie-sanders/.

Chotiner, Isaac. “Barney Frank Is Not Impressed By Bernie Sanders.” Slate Magazine, March 30, 2016. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/03/barney-frank-is-not-impressed-by-bernie-sanders.html.

Cottle, Michelle. “Bailout.” The New Republic, December 3, 2008. https://newrepublic.com/article/62857/bailout.

Dayen, David. Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud. New York, NY: The New Press, 2016.

———. “Bank Deregulation 2.0 Is Here.” The American Prospect, July 18, 2018. https://prospect.org/api/content/eaadfd42-4d07-5e1f-b580-4b75f1860cc4/.

———. “Dismantling Dodd-Frank -- And More.” The American Prospect, February 6, 2017.

https://prospect.org/api/content/da53d9a4-10ff-57f6-97d0-a09f91c8cbd4/.

Dedman, Bill. “TV Movie Led to Prostitute’s Disclosures.” The Washington Post, August 27, 1989. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/tours/scandal/gobie2.htm.

Frank, Barney. “My Life as a Gay Congressman.” Politico Magazone. Accessed April 13, 2020. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/barney-frank-life-as-gay-congressman-116027.html.

Geismer, Lily. Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Henwood, Doug. “Radio Commentary, July 15, 2010.” LBO News from Doug Henwood (blog), July 16, 2010. https://lbo-news.com/2010/07/16/radio-commentary-july-15-2010/.

Molloy, Parker. “What Barney Frank Still Gets Wrong on ENDA.” The Advocate, October 1, 2014. http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/10/01/op-ed-what-barney-frank-still-gets-wrong-enda.

Schleier, Curt. “Barney Frank on Being Barney, Not Bernie.” Times of Israel. Accessed April 13, 2020. http://www.timesofisrael.com/barney-frank-on-being-barney-not-bernie/.

Sirota, David. “A ‘Grand Bargain’...For K Street.” HuffPost (blog), December 8, 2006. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/a-grand-bargainfor-k-stre_b_35853.

———. “Four Reasons to Oppose the Bush-Obama Request for Another $350 Billion Bailout.” Common Dreams. Accessed April 13, 2020. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2009/01/13/four-reasons-oppose-bush-obama-request-another-350-billion-bailout.

Toobin, Jeffrey. “Barney’s Great Adventure.” The New Yorker, January 5, 2009. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/01/12/barneys-great-adventure.

Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.

Image via: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Barney_Frank.jpg/1280px-Barney_Frank.jpg

Ben Miller 4/7/20 Ben Miller 4/7/20

S3E3: Lord Castlereagh

The Anglo-Irish aristocrat, politician and statesman Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry: better known, like Bjork or Madonna, by his mononym - Castlereagh.

SOURCES:

Ackroyd, Peter. Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day. London, UK; New York, NY: Random House, 2017.

Bew, John. Castlereagh: A Life. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Hyde, Harford Montgomery. The Strange Death of Lord Castlereagh. London, UK: Heinemann, 1959.

Kiernan, Victor. The Duel in European History: Honour and the Reign of Aristocracy. London, UK: Zed Books Ltd., 2016.

Norton, Rictor, ed. “Homosexuality in Nineteenth-Century England,” January 15, 2020. http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/nineteen.htm.

Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. London, UK; New York, NY: Penguin, 1991.

Image via: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Lord_Castlereagh_Marquess_of_Londonderry.jpg

Ben Miller 3/31/20 Ben Miller 3/31/20

S3E2: James Buchanan

The United States’ first gay – and worst – President.

The United States of America's first gay – and worst – President. This bumbling slaveholder collaborated with the Confederacy, promoted the racist Dred Scott decision at the Supreme Court, and cohabited in Washington with a dashing Alabama Senator who, in the words of President Andrew Jackson was the "Aunt Nancy" to his "Aunt Fancy."

SOURCES:

Baker, Jean H. James Buchanan: The American Presidents Series: The 15th President, 1857-1861. Macmillan, 2004.

Balcerski, Thomas J. Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Buchanan, James. Inaugural Address, March 4, 1857: https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-4-1857-inaugural-address

Katz, Jonathan. Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality. University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Watson, Robert P. Affairs of State: The Untold History of Presidential Love, Sex, and Scandal, 1789–1900. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012.

Image via: https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-18-019/papers-of-president-james-buchanan-and-harriet-lane-johnston-now-online/2018-02-21/

Ben Miller 3/24/20 Ben Miller 3/24/20

S3E1: Nikolai Yezhov

“The Iron Hedgehog” — the head of the NKVD during Stalin’s Great Purge.

A man variously known as the “Iron Hedgehog” and a “malignant Dwarf”, but also as charming, courteous, and, most importantly “a good party man,” a man who held the position of the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs - the head of the NKVD during Stalin’s Great Purge - Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov.

SOURCES:

Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 1929-1940. London: Verso, 2003.

"Gay in the Gulag." Libcom. https://libcom.org/history/gay-gulag

Getty, J. Arch, and Oleg V. Naumov. The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.

Getty, John Arch, and Oleg V. Naumov. Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin’s “Iron Fist.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.

Lewin, Moshe. The Soviet Century. London: Verso, 2005.

Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. London: Hachette UK, 2010.

Weston, Fred. "From Emancipation to Criminalization: Stalinist Persecution of Homosexuals from 1934." https://www.marxist.com/from-emancipation-to-criminalisation-stalinist-persecution-of-homosexuals-from-1934.htm

Whyte, Harry. Letter to Joseph Stalin, May 1934. https://www.marxist.com/letter-to-stalin-can-a-homosexual-be-in-the-communist-party.htm

Image via: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ezhov_NI.jpg