Doughface

    "We are all docile dough-faces,

They knead us with their fist

They the dashing southern lord

We labor as they list"

    Walt Whitman

“Doughface” originally referred to masks made out of dough but came to be used disparagingly referring to politicians who were pliable and easily manipulated.  During the 1850s Northerners, including poet Walt Whitman and antislavery newspaper editors, employed the insult against Northern politicians with Southern sympathies, such as presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan (above), who believed appeasing the South on the slavery issue was essential to keeping the Union together and that slavery would eventually go away when it proved economically unprofitable. Examples of “Doughface” policies included support for pro-South forces in “Bleeding Kansas” and acceptance of the Dred Scott decision and enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act

My cousin Tommie (Thomasine) Adelizzi, who is enamored over our family being James Buchanan’s closest relatives of our generation, recently appeared in a BBC documentary about America’s fifteenth president, commonly considered one of our worst.  A staunch defender of someone whose name would have been hers had she not been born a girl (instead that some would say dubious honor fell to me), Tommie wrote:

    He was not the worst President.  He was not a person who wanted slavery. ln fact he freed several slaves that he was given by friends.  His story is really about trying to save the fragile United States at the time.  It’s a story of a President who fought the press and how the writers of that time rewrote history.  He was possibly the best or one of the best educated gentlemen to hold the office.  He was not only a member of Congress, he was Secretary of State, Ambassador to Russia and England, and a successful lawyer, which the writers say he was a pauper.  They claimed he was gay.  He was very interested in ladies, especially Southern ladies.

I emailed back, “JB’s poor reputation as worst President is undeserved.  The main rap against him – that he dithered while Southern states seceded – is inconsequential in view of the fact that the Civil War, given the existence of slavery and Southern intransigence, was inevitable, even desirable. Regarding rumors that JB was gay, unsubstantiated though they are, if true, more power to him for finding a measure of happiness after his true love committed suicide.” I could have added that the bachelor President’s niece, Harriet Lane, was the greatest First Lady of the nineteenth century, Dolley Madison having been given undue credit for saving the portrait of George Washington and a slaveowner to boot, who sold a loyal servant of 30 years so her waistrel son could purchase a suit.

When Harriet Lane was just 25 years old, she served as Buchanan’s hostess when he was appointed Minister to Great Britain. In a short biography Ginger Shelley and Sandie Munro wrote that Harriet accompanied her uncle when he received an honorary degree from Oxford University, along with Alfred, Lord Tennyson.  They wrote: “When the students at Oxford saw Harriet, they greeted this fashionable [and well-endowed] woman with cheers and much whistling.  She became the center of attention at an event which was supposed to be for her uncle and the English poet!”

“Never on Sunday” (1960), with a “Pygmalion plot about a whore with a heart of gold, takes place on the Greek coastal town of Piraeus with actress Melina Mercouri played a free-hearted soul whom an American name Homer attempts to woo by convincing her to give up her profession in favor of a classical education. Unlike the other town prostitutes, one of whom’s fantasy is to marry a rich 84-year-old uninterest in sex, she is not beholden to a pimp and only takes clients she likes.  It earned a PG rating and many Oscar nominations after censors demanded that nude and sex scene be cut.  It comes off as tame, mild entertainment, interesting primarily for the dinging, dancing, and Melina Mercouri’s performance.

After reading positive reviews of the Starz series “Vida,” about to begin its third and final season, I binge-watched season one, then learned that the cable station wanted me to pay for season two.  No thanks.  Two Latinas (Lyn, an upwardly mobile snob, and Emma, a total narcissist) reunite in East L.A. after their mother dies and learn that she had married a lesbian named Eddie, who like them inherited one third of the family-owned neighborhood bar. The most compelling characters are Mari, a militant community activist fighting gentrification still subservient to men, and Eddie, whom the sisters first resent and gradually begin to appreciate and warm to.