“It went without saying that Mr. Mawhinney was a Christian, a long-standing member of the great overpowering majority that fought the Revolution and founded the nation and conquered the wilderness and subjugated the Indian and enslaved the Negro and emancipated the Negro and segregated the Negro, one of the good, clean, hard-working Christian millions who settled the frontier, tilled the farms, built the cities, governed the states, sat in Congress, occupied the White House, amassed the wealth, possessed the land, owned the steel mills and the ball clubs and the railroads and the banks, even owned and oversaw the language, one of those unassailable Nordic and Anglo-Saxon Protestants who ran America and would always run it—generals, dignitaries, magnates, tycoons, the men who laid down the law and called the shots and read the riot act when they chose to—while my father, of course, was only a Jew.” — The Plot Against America: A Novel by Philip Roth
If you were invited to the White House, would you go? Would your answer depend on who invited you?
Very few U.S. presidents have ever gotten more than 60% of the popular vote, so if you were to pick just about any given point in American history, you’d find that nearly half the voters didn’t back whomever was in the Oval Office at that time. This doesn’t mean that nearly half of these citizens would disapprove of the sitting President. Not everybody votes; and even partisans sometimes give the opposition the benefit of the doubt. But because the job of President involves a lot of apolitical ceremony—honoring championship sports teams, greeting dignitaries, and the like—it’s never been all that unusual for a staunch conservative or a committed lefty to be asked to shake hands with a POTUS they personally dislike.
Over the past decade though, this previously benign ritual has provoked a lot of hand-wringing. Some right-wing athletes refused to visit the White House during the Obama administration. Many more left-leaning jocks (or so it seems) have declined to meet with President Trump. For a lot of these people, this isn’t an act of pique; it’s a matter of principle.
In “Part 4” of The Plot Against America, the Levins face a similar dilemma. Aunt Evelyn has been riding high from the success of Sandy’s participation in President Lindbergh’s “Just Folks” program, where he enjoyed a summer working on a Kentucky tobacco farm with the wholesome Mawhinney family. Sandy has since become a recruiter for Just Folks, and when Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf is invited to the White House—for a state dinner with German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop—the rabbi’s date for the evening, Evelyn, excitedly asks the First Lady, Anne Lindbergh, if Sandy can attend too.
Herman, who reluctantly okayed Sandy’s Just Folks trip, vehemently rejects the idea of him attending the state dinner—and isn’t too happy about his sister-in-law going either. Each of these little acquiescences feels more and more to Herman like ways of legitimizing Lindbergh: not just as the President, but as a true moral arbiter. Every “win” Lindbergh gets—from Just Folks to the increasing numbers of ordinary Jewish Americans who appear at his rallies—makes it seem like he was right all along about what the country needs, and perhaps even right about the Nazis. It makes the Jews seem subordinate to Lindbergh, and to the homogenized white America he stands for.
Herman hashes this issue out with his brother Monty, who finds his apoplexy over Lindbergh to be somewhat silly and self-indulgent. Before the election, Monty shared his brother’s anxieties about what might happen to the Jews under a Lindbergh administration; but in the year since inauguration his life has been largely unaffected, aside from a booming business and a rising stock market. “He hasn’t done as any harm as far as I can see,” Monty shrugs. “You don’t see much,” Herman grumbles.
This is the devilish thing about The Plot Against America—both Philip Roth’s novel and David Simon and Ed Burns’ miniseries. The America depicted in this story doesn’t become fascist instantly, or obviously. For much of this story, it’d be easy to write Herman off as a paranoiac, or a conspiratorial loon. “Read the news!” he shouts at Sandy and at just about everyone else in his immediate vicinity, as though Herman, Walter Winchell and the guy who runs the newsreel theater were the only ones who could spot something insidious that was eluding nearly everybody else.
And yet it’s hard to dispute that Rabbi Bengelsdorf—as gracious and well-meaning as he may be—is deluded in his own way. All of his talk about “the people of real America,” and about how the Confederacy has a noble (if not moral) cause, and about how the nation would be stronger if Jews migrated away from urban clusters… It’s all the sound of somebody who’s confusing his own personal experiences with something universal, and righteous.
As is their way, Simon and Burns don’t paint the rabbi as wholly awful, nor do they present Herman as some kind of paragon of virtue. At one point Philip asks whether the legless beggar they pass every day has a last name, and Herman rebukes him by snidely asking, “Do you?” Herman then has to admit that he actually doesn’t know the beggar’s last name. He just knows it looks bad for Philip to wonder if he does.
So yes, it stings when the newly worldly Sandy angrily dismisses his parents as “ghetto Jews.” (It stings him personally, when Bess slaps him hard across the face.) But when Sandy secretly confides in Philip that he ate pork while in Kentucky? His brother points out that since they don’t really keep kosher in their house anyway, it shouldn’t matter. Sandy though that knows Herman and Bess would be wrecked by the symbolism of their Jewish son violating one of their religion’s laws, and in a gentile’s home no less. Appearances matter—even when they don’t tell the whole story.
Which brings us back to that state dinner, where Lionel and Evelyn endure an insulting comment from Henry Ford, and where Evelyn dances with Herr von Ribbentrop. A simple turn around the ballroom by a Nazi statesman and a prominent rabbi’s lady gets captured on film by a newsreel reporter, and then screened around the country. This invitation to dine with President Lindbergh—which Evelyn saw as a rare and irresistible honor—has led to her being used as a prop, to placate any Americans who might be worried that the Nazis are monstrous bigots. It’s good to be civil towards an opponent. But sometimes just showing up—even just to be polite—can register as approval.
Stray observations
- It doesn’t take up a lot of the running time in “Part 4,” but one of the episode’s key events—which I’m sure I’ll be talking about more next week, if the series continues to follow the overall arc of the book as closely as it has so far—is the death of poor Seldon Wishnow’s father. This sets some things in motion that should affect the Levins greatly. More to come.
- I understand why this episode doesn’t show any of Sandy’s adventures in Kentucky. In the novel, we only hear about Sandy’s summer in the sticks second-hand, after he returns home. Besides, expanding the action to a tobacco farm (or whatever plot of land in rural New Jersey could approximate the Kentucky countryside) would be expensive, even for a prestige HBO production. Still, Roth’s writing in the chapter where Sandy describes farm life is so vivid, I was kind of hoping to see it on the screen. Ah well. There’s some key action later in the book set in the Kentucky and I’ll be curious to see how—or if—Simon and Burns choose to dramatize it.
- Speaking of “later in the book”… We are zooming along now. After we spent half the miniseries just getting through the first two chapters of The Plot Against America , this latest episode skips merrily ahead, plucking key incidents from multiple chapters and ultimately ending not too far away from the novel’s end. (The state dinner and Bess smacking Sandy are both pivotal moments before the big finish.) Some intensely dramatic stuff should be coming up in the next two weeks.
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The good Rabbi and Evelyn’s veils may be beginning to slip, ever so slightly. It’s probably too late, though.So who’s today’s Henry Ford? Stephen Miller?
Miller is just a piss-ant little bureaucrat. Ford was a giant titan of industry and a complete piece of shit influencing policy. Koch, Mercer, Adelsen, Menard, Zuckerberg, Musk, Murdoch, and a bunch we probably don’t even know their names are more applicable.
Musk fits the bill pretty well. Feted by capitalists, arrogant, racist but genially so. Even makes cars, though Ford was obviously much more influential on that end.
The My Pillow guy.
Stephen Miller is more like Bengelsdorf than Ford, since Miller is himself Jewish. The difference between them is that people seem like to Bengelsdorf, whereas there are no documented cases of anyone liking Stephen Miller.
He was liked enough by someone probably equally odious as himself to marry him.
Peter Thiel more like it than Miller. Miller is a self-hating/hypocrite Jew.
Peter Thiel kind of falls into the same self-hating/hypocrite category. He’s totally a Bengelsdorf.
No mention of Tommy Dorsey’s ‘Little White Lies’ playing during the State dinner for Von Ribbentrop?
This is getting a whole lot more sinister than I was expecting this early. Where the show is presently with the media (newsreels/paper) is kind of where I expected this show to approach near the ending: propaganda saturating the airways, theaters and newspapers. Where is a Walter Winchell or Joseph Welch?Something has to break but I am not sure it will be fought in the streets.
I was wondering about Hollywood and comic books in this world. With the vast majority of the studio heads being Jewish, are they just cowed by Lindbergh’s popularity? Otherwise, you think they would be a major factor in promoting anti-fascist ideas. We’ve seen Captain Midnight and Action comics in the show already, but I guess they aren’t using obvious German stand ins for villains and, of course, no Captain America slugging Hitler several months before we are actually in the war.
Our access to power as Jews in this nation only goes as far as the Christian majority will let it. Those of us who have European ancestry are only considered “white” with the blessings of white Christians living here. So while we might have been active in entertainment, especially in early Hollywood, there was a limit to how much we could talk about our own specifically-Jewish experiences. Remarkable programs like early TV sitcom The Goldbergs (which ran in a few forms from 1929 – 1951 or so) are few and far between. (It has no relation to the contemporary show of the same name.) There was also The Jazz Singer, but again, that was VERY early on. Once people had the mindset that in order to profit, a “Mainstream Audience” (that is, a Christian white one) had to be catered to, anything else was deemed too radical or possibly too “ethnic.”
It’s pretty well documented at this point how much the Jewish studio heads pushed a white, middle-class ethos in their studios’ movies.
Does anyone know the Yiddish that Evelyn said to Ford?
I was wondering what that was as well.
Go shit in the ocean.
I can confirm not only the translation, but that this was a commonly used Yiddish phrase. My gramma taught it to me when I was a kid, and I was delighted to see it in this episode.btw, Yiddish was commonly used by older American Jews as a vehicle for insults. My gramma’s other favorite expression was Gey klop kop af vant, which means “go bang your head against a wall.”
They explained it in the Vulture recap!: “gai kaken oifen yam, which literally translates to “Go shit in the ocean,” but is synonymous to “Take a hike” or “Beat it.”
pretty sure it was “Gai kaken oifen yam” which means “go shit in the ocean” and is a pretty common yiddish insult.Zy gezunt!
On the TPAA podcast David Simon reveals it translates to “Go shit in the ocean,” essentially “Go fuck yourself.” Winona Ryder insisted she be allowed to use that expression.
On the TPAA podcast David Simon reveals it translates to “Go shit in the ocean,” essentially “Go fuck yourself.” Winona Ryder insisted on being allowed to use the expression.
it means “go shit in the ocean”
Was Von Ribbentrop a real person or did the Roth get this name from the German cartoon bad guy warehouse?
Joachim von Ribbentrop was the Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany from 1938-1945. Before that, he was ambassador to the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_von_Ribbentrop
Joachim von Ribbentrop is a real historical figure https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/joachim-von-ribbentrop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_von_Ribbentrop
Yes, and don’t forget his twin Ron Vibbentrop.
You take a left, a left, and then the third Reich, no sorry, I mean right!
…And then you keep on driving. And then you make a right.——Floyd from “True Romance”
was head of Gestapo for 10 years! 5 years! Nein! No! Oh. Was NOT head of Gestapo AT ALL!
I know Von Ribnontrop’s name directly ftom this sketch.And i still use the line ‘Won’t say no, not if it’s warm and wet’ pretty regularly.
Von Ribbentrop was very real, and his name is attached to perhaps the most infamous diplomatic agreement in history, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in which the Nazis and Soviets agreed to divide up Central and Eastern Europe between them.
Not sure if serious or…….https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_von_Ribbentrop
I loved the shock, fear, and embarrassment that crosses Rabbi Bengelsdorf’s face at the State Dinner in the mere instant that Lindberg callously dismisses his greeting. It is the defined moment that the character catches up with the viewer. His actions afterwards are scared denial of the insidious obvious. Compared with so many other series productions of the last few years, this one has real pacing. There is no directorial masturbation going on. If anything they could have had MORE episodes, unlike so many shows that could have been done a third to a half as many.
After three episodes of wondering about Bengelsdorf’s motivations, it was finally clear: he craves attention and the feeling of power and influence. What a small, petty man.
Everyone on this show has been good, but Winona Rider just gets better and better as her character gets deeper into the shit.
Not a single mention about Alvin’s struggle coming home?And I’m trying to understand the relationships: Alvin is not Monty’s son. Were there 3 brothers: Herman, Monty, and somebody else who is/was Alvin’s father?And side question: we’re getting close to December, 1941. Does Pearl Harbor happen in the book? There’s been no mention of Japan at all.
Sseems there were 3 brothers. I thought I heard Herman say something about a “Jack” so maybe that was the 3rd brother.Pearl Harbor is unlikely to happen to a purely isolationist America. A big progenitor of Pearl Harbor were the economic sanctions put in place by Roosevelt’s administration. Many credit the following proposal from Secretary of State Hull as the final impetus for Japan declaring war: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_note
I think they explained that Alvin’s parents (his dad was Herman’s brother) both died before the show begins, but I don’t believe the show describes how.
I haven’t read the book, but assuming Lindbergh isn’t pursuing a confrontational foreign policy versus Japan, there probably wouldn’t be an attack on Pearl Harbor. As long as the Emperor and Tojo felt that Lindbergh would assent to Japanese swallowing up the British and Dutch territories in the Pacific Rim, they could do without the Philippines.
Winona Ryder has always been fantastic. But you know her name is Winona Horowitz. I know it’s not supposed to matter who the performer is, but watching her see the iron cross on von Ribbentrop’s uniform. That is real shit. Yahweh, I guess, what fantastic casting.btw she is so magnetic in person that once I was in a movie theater she walked into and I turned and watched the door after she entered the room. And Lydia Deetz people. And Lainie.
In the confrontation scene btwn the two families involving Sandy, I liked Evelyn’s Freudian Slip when she said, “You’re a coward, Evelyn!” That’s what I heard.I haven’t seen much of Zoe Kazan’s work (did see Buster Scruggs)—she’s fantastic here. A tribute to principled, loving mothers, like on the opposite at-war side of this era, ScarJo was in JoJo Rabbit.I think many can relate to Herman’s frustration about Sandy’s political ignorance. Try arguing with a Trump supporter with recommendations to read the news; it’s futile.
It’s easy to parent from the sidelines (especially when you’re deliberately child-free), but the worst way to convince someone of, well, anything, is to yell at them. In fact, that’s probably the _best_ way to get someone to dig their heels in.Changing someone’s mind takes patience, clarity, an open-ear, and compassion.Many of these qualities are lacking in just about every Democrat I know.
Though I understand the focus of the show is on domestic
events in the US, I am disappointed that the show seems to be so far ignoring
the catastrophic global consequences of a rabidly isolationist US that appeases
the Nazis in 1941-1942. I haven’t read the book, so maybe it also has the same
flaw. The newsreels so far in the show seem to be unchanged in terms of the
flow of the war in Europe and Africa… one newsreel from 1942 even leads a
character to remark on the Soviets successfully fighting back and another to
allude to Britain still fighting the Germans in North Africa. This not only
stretches credulity but seems to be missing much of the larger point of why an
isolationist beating Roosevelt in 1940 would have been so bad for humanity in
general and particularly for jews everywhere. Churchill and the British people,
and Stalin and the Soviet people were tough and determined, but without US-made
war materials and the hope of US intervention, how could they realistically
hang on to the same degree even through mid-1942? Churchill’s view on the UK’s
prospects without US assistance are clear from his writings, and Khrushchev
claimed Stalin had told him privately that “If we had had to fight Nazi Germany
one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany’s pressure.” A world
where Nazi Germany defeats both Britain and the Soviet Union thanks to US
isolationism is a truly dark place, and would have provided both a more
plausible and ominous backdrop in the show for the events it depicts in
America.
*apologies for double-post*