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I also had never watched this documentary before; I think it must have been on at some time earlier, because the date on it was like 1994 or something. This was deeply moving, really explained the backgrounds of their attitudes and later behavior, and was very knowledgeable and perceptive. There also must be film of every damn thing that ever happened--there is even a short film of the first time Roosevelt tried to "walk" by holding on to a cane and someone's arm, after the polio struck. This is part one of apparently two parts, the conclusion next week. It goes from family background and birth, to the 1932 election and just going to the Inaugural speech.
This is a very sympathetic and complicated treatment of things, with many people who really know, and although a lot of time is given to explaining things, it is surprisingly fast-paced; it just flew by for me, and I did not feel as if the same things were just being rehashed. It was beautifully and clearly told, by people who remember and know how people thought and felt then. Eleanor has also been given a great deal of attention during this program, as she should be, being as important as she was. The wonderful combination of friendly optimism combined with deep spiritual sympathy for the suffering of others, and their outrage at greed, abuse and injustice committed by their fellow privileged rich people, so oblivious, is very well explained, and made easy to understand. The devastation to everyone, when Roosevelt was suddenly stricken with polio, and the way they all--but FDR and Eleanor--thought it was the end of an active life, is really well-told; you can just feel the fear. Then, all these cockamamie "treatments" that helped nothing, and the first great thing Roosevelt did because of it, the purchase of the land in Warm Springs, Georgia, for a rehabilitaion center, free, for the American people. Imagine the current ilk doing any such thing. Many recorded quotes also give you a clear sense of the warm, compassionate intelligence of Eleanor, and how that contributed to "their" Presidency later.
This was a really great documentary, and I am eager to also tape part two, next week. I hope they really go over, with real detail, why the programs of the New Deal were so great, and worked. By the way, I happened to flip on "BBC America" yesterday, on the BBC America cable channel, and there was a story on the Iranian woman Nobel Prize winner of a few years ago, Shirin Ebadi, and part of the story was on the kinds of stupidly belligerent things being said by the current Presidential candidates, as troublesome as the belligerent Islamist comments, with clips played. At one point, Ebadi, who had been a highly respected judge until the Islamists took over and she was removed, and who is now a lawyer, mentioned Eleanor Roosevelt, and the greatness of that generation of Americans, inventing the U.N., the charter of rights, an approach of negotiation, intelligence and law instead of brute force, money, and war, and compared it to the current group. "What has happened to Americans" since then, she asked. It struck me, too--how great a leader we used to be, when it was the Roosevelt Administration, and what a God-damned obstruction to civilization we are considered to be now.
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