Jack Benny and America's Mission after World War II: Openness, Pluralism, Internationalism, and Supreme Confidence

2010 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-353
Author(s):  
JAMES GRAHAM WILSON
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Central Character ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Equality ◽  
Radio Program ◽  
Lasting Peace ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
At Home

This article argues that the Jack Benny radio program reflected and illuminated America's sense of mission coming out of World War II by providing listeners with a conceptualization of a world in which the promotion of universal values was to usher in an era of lasting peace. A study of the Jack Benny Program from 1945 to 1950 illustrates how World War II changed the purpose of the show; how Jack Benny, his writers, and his cast understood notions of openness, pluralism, and internationalism; how the correlation they drew between social equality at home and international priorities abroad sometimes preempted official US policies; and how they provided, in the form of the show's central character, a model of supremely confident leadership in an era fraught with anxieties.

Cultures in Contact

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Watson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
World War ◽  
Working At Home ◽  
Michel Leiris ◽  
Novel Of Manners ◽  
At Home

In this chapter I investigate the paradox that the writer who most vividly embodied the exchange between literature and anthropology during this period, Michel Leiris, worked hard to maintain separate identities and spaces for his life as an anthropologist (working at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris) and as a writer and memoirist (working at home). While Leiris came of age professionally and aesthetically during the fertile interwar period in France of “ethnographic surrealism,” his anthropological writings in the period after World War II show a surprising fidelity to disciplinary protocols. The chapter argues that Leiris’s ethnography of the Francophone Caribbean, Contacts de civilisations en Martinique et en Guadeloupe, tries to subvert those protocols, turning from a social science survey into something like a novel of manners by the end. Ultimately, however, this literary turn falls prey to tropes of imperial romance that Leiris ostensibly seeks to undercut.

Let the Good Times Roll: Life at Home in America during World War II

1993 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Harold E. Mahan ◽  
Paul D. Casdorph
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Roll Life ◽  
At Home

Patriotic Declaration of Democracy

Worldview ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 36-37
Author(s):  
Korean Christians
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
World War ◽  
Independence Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Dark Shadow ◽  
At Home

Today we celebrate the fifty-seventh anniversary of the March First Independence Movement. Compelled by the aspirations of our people that resounded throughout the world on that day in 1919 and moved by the patriotic spirit of our forefathers, we take this occasion to make a solemn and patriotic declaration, both at home and abroad, concerning democracy.The division of Korea at the end of World War II shattered the hopes that had filled the hearts of our people at the time of Liberation from Japanese rule. This tragic division once more cast a dark shadow over the future of our nation. Yet to the end our people refused to give up their cherished hope. They rose up out of the ashes of the Korean War, they crushed the dictatorship of Syngman Rhee through the Righteous Uprising of April 19, and they reestablished in every heart the hope for realization of a free and democratic society.

You Must Remember This

2018 ◽  
pp. 155-182
Author(s):  
Nina Silber
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Racial Oppression ◽  
World War ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
At Home

In the lead up to World War II, and in the course of the war itself, memories of the Civil War were deployed once again. This time, the war, the fight against slavery, and Lincoln in particular, assumed noteworthy prominence, reminding Americans of the importance of fighting a just and moral war. However, this created a challenging rhetorical environment for cementing a united homefront – including both white southerners and African Americans. White southerners, like Douglas Freeman, tried to keep Confederates prominent in the Civil War narrative, while black Americans used the new emphasis on Lincoln to talk about racial oppression at home and abroad. An anti-communist backlash, in the end, helped silence voices that focused on problems of racial oppression.

The Anti-Religious Campaign, 1959–1964

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eren Tasar
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The State ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
World War ◽  
First Time ◽  
Party Group ◽  
At Home

With Party chairman Nikita Khrushchev’s success against the “Anti-Party Group” in 1957, the hard line against religion once again became a viable project for the first time since the 1930s. Khrushchev launched his anti-religious campaign in late 1958 as a “corrective” to what he viewed as the state’s unacceptable lethargy toward religion in the period since World War II. His campaign restricted SADUM’s finances significantly. However, it also coincided with Moscow’s drive to enhance Soviet ties with the Muslim world. As a result, the muftiate suffered financially at home but enjoyed a significant boost in its overseas prominence. Ironically, SADUM emerged from the Khrushchev years even more indispensable to the state than before.

Jim Crow in Uniform

2021 ◽  
pp. 211-259
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Guglielmo
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
White House ◽  
Military Life ◽  
At Home

Chapter 6 examines the military’s black-white boundaries in the context of troops’ training and stateside service during World War II. These boundaries, the handiwork above all of military officers and leaders, wended their way through nearly every aspect of military life, creating a dense and powerful structure of white domination and black subordination—or in the words of one wartime commentator, “Jim Crow in Uniform.” In the eyes of its creators, this version of Jim Crow was necessary both to win a war for freedom overseas and to shore up faltering white supremacy at home, faltering in part because of the military’s own unwitting actions. As with its civilian cousin, Jim Crow in uniform generated extensive protest, which managed to blur a small but important number of black-white lines. The number would have been higher had protesters not faced formidable opposition in the White House, in Congress, in the courts, and among military leaders.

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