The Roosevelts: An Intimate History

[azaleaqueen]

Did anybody else watch this? What did you think? I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[chonies]

Loved it! I am a pretty easy target for the Ken Burns brand, though.

Some of the highlights included the defanging of the mythic stature of TR. I love the emphasis on their personalities but at times I wondered if it was a tad too psychological. However, I enjoyed it tremendously and made me want to run out and read every last book.

[azaleaqueen]

When they were talking about criticisms of FDR (i.e. his recovery programs during the Depression), like allegations that he was a socialist, made me think I was listening to accusations of Obama today.

[Baby Fish Mouth]

I thought it was a wonderful series. It was very psychological, but these were three people who were deeply affected by their respective childhoods, families and health problems.

It made me realize that nowadays we are way too ready to vilify politicians based on any flaw. FDR never would have been elected today based on his inability to walk without assistance and his marital affairs.

I wish there had been more on Alice Roosevelt, because I've always found her fascinating.

[tabby]

Sept 24, 2014 12:03:41 GMT -4 azaleaqueen said:

When they were talking about criticisms of FDR (i.e. his recovery programs during the Depression), like allegations that he was a socialist, made me think I was listening to accusations of Obama today.

I thought the exact same thing! I kept thinking, "Wow, that sounds familiar."

I was kind of shocked to hear how young TR was when he died. I always knew he was the youngest president, but I guess I never learned - or didn't retain - that he died when he was only 60. He shoehorned a lot of living into his time.

One of the photos from Eleanor's funeral was pretty amazing - it showed President and Mrs. Kennedy, future President Lyndon Johnson, former President Eisenhower, and former President Truman. Quite a turn-out.

I loved this series, I think it's some of Burns's best work.

[chonies]

Sept 24, 2014 12:38:54 GMT -4 Baby Fish Mouth said:

I thought it was a wonderful series. It was very psychological, but these were three people who were deeply affected by their respective childhoods, families and health problems.

Well, true, but they also went to church on occasion, were educated in a certain way, knew people, and so on. I don't doubt the psychological aspect to their lives, or anyone else's, but I thought the psychological narrative was a tad heavy-handed at places.

I was most disappointed in Alice Roosevelt, although to be honest I didn't know much about her, except she was a handful, her mother died as a complication of childbirth, and the snake story. She sounded much more fixated and less wacky-LOL fun than I thought she was. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was disappointed.

[jmc]

Sept 24, 2014 18:37:11 GMT -4 chonies said:

I was most disappointed in Alice Roosevelt, although to be honest I didn't know much about her, except she was a handful, her mother died as a complication of childbirth, and the snake story. She sounded much more fixated and less wacky-LOL fun than I thought she was. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was disappointed.

She came off as a high society, Sarah Palin-ish IRL troll.

[chonies]

I was thinking Ann Coulter, but yeah. Troll defines it.

ETA: To be super-clear, I objected to the way the narrative sometimes veered into strict Freudian-type psychology, but I don't object to psychological interpretations in a broader sense.

Also, who was the expert/talking head who spoke often about polio? I kept missing his name, and it wasn't James Tobin, who wrote The Man He Became. The expert in the series had dark hair and a beard, and spoke with a lot of emotion when addressing the psychological impact of a disabling disease.

[GoldenFleece]

Alice Roosevelt Longworth was a more interesting character than the scope of this documentary had time to cover. I ended up reading a biography about her after her name kept showing up in other political biographies I would read (she was a regular visitor to the LBJ White House, and in Lady Bird's diary, she recounts the first time she and Alice got to talk since Jackie Kennedy married Onassis, where Alice giddily rushed up to Lady Bird all eager to gossip, saying, "Isn't it delicious?"). Here, it's called Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker and here's a presidential historian's account of her life and personally interacting with her, plus dozens of photos to boot. She knew every presidential couple from McKinley to Ford, and died at 96, in 1980.

I think she developed the trolling personality partly as a defense mechanism to cope with the way her father treated her in the wake of her mother's death, both the distance and never speaking to her about her mother. Also, his second wife Edith was his childhood sweetheart, so in a way both of them saw Alice as a reminder of their fractured love story and his "unfaithfulness" in going off and marrying someone else first. Edith said of her predecessor, that it was just as well that she'd died, because she would have bored Theodore to death. But Alice herself contracted polio as a child and Edith was the one who made her wear leg braces and do exercises every day, helping her avoid long-term side effects. This probably contributed to Alice's scornful attitude about FDR's polio, that if she had the willpower to defeat it, why didn't he? Which of course has nothing to do with it, but these were people born in the 1880s, so I'm a lot less bothered by them being unenlightened than I am to encounter the same sorts of attitudes in online comments sections now.

[Ripley]

Wasn't Alice Roosevelt the one who is reported to have said, "If you haven't got something nice to say about someone, come sit beside me"?

TTMR & I watched this and really enjoyed it. For all that Fox news blathers on about how we have radical left-wing liberal administration, it was a joy to watch a real liberal in action. I'd read the text of Roosevelt's "Fala speech" but watching him deliver it was wonderful. Theodore Roosevelt was a reminder that it was once possible to be a progressive Republican. And Eleanor was wonderful (mostly).

We both agreed that when we watched the last episode that it felt like our grandparents had died again.