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Who Wants to Go to The Minstrel Show? · Armstrong & Getty One More Thing

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Who wants to go to the minstrel show.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: It's one more.
• 0:03
  Speaker 3: Thing I'm strong.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Before we get to that, I was doing a little
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: research on bimbofication as the story just broke a little
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: bit ago about Christy Noms's husband, who is into the scene,
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: the bimbification scene apparently, as all the pictures have come
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: out of him in a tight little top with weig,
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: big giant fake breasts and tiny little.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Shorts reminds me of that weirdo teacher in Canada. Although
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: didn't he turn out to be making a statement I
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: don't know against political correctness.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know. It usually includes large augmented breasts, heavy makeup,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: blonde hair, form fitting or revealing clothing, and an affect
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: of a ditsy, carefree, sexually available femininity. And then so
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: the question I was asking, just the way he was dressed,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: is he a gay dude? Not that that matters. It
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: matters to his wife. Probably they're in a heterosexual marriage.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: But according to chat gbt anyway, the community, the bimblification
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: community is mostly women and LGBTQ dudes. I'm sure there
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: are some straight dudes, but it's mostly not so who knows.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: I don't know many straight men that put on lipstick and.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Little pink tight shorts.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: But he's super into like bimbo fied women because he
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: wants to be one. I don't know.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Wow wow, anyway, sounds like a long therapy session.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I have a feeling Oprah is going to come out
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: of retirement and do an interview with him. He will cry,
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: He'll go through an entire box of tissues and explain
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: how he's been hiding this as or Diane Sawyer, she
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: did the one with Bruce Jenner when he came out
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: as Caitlyn Jenner.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so he'll have a good cry, deflate his balloon
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: boob and.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: Re stuff with these tissues.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Pink shorts, and just like a man, damn it, like
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: a man, Ry.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Lewandowski will throw his head back in laughter.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Back to the minstrel show thing.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Oh and one other quick follow up to yesterday's One
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: More Thing podcast, which I'm going to assume if you're
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: listening to this one, you probably listened to yesterday's which
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Joe brought us that author what was the guy's name?
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Inman?
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Man, I did quite a deep dive on that
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: throughout the day yesterday fascinating stuff. There's tons and tons
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: of effect. The audio recorded almost all of it, So
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: there's audio recordings going over many, many many decades him
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: and his entire family every single day forever.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's absolutely a nut and cruel and selfish and
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: morally indefensible. But he collected an oral history of the
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: century unlike anything ever heard.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: It's one of the most thorough diaries of an every
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: man in the history of the world. And then he
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: puts a bullet in his head at age sixty three,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: and that's the end of that.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I actually ordered a five hundred plus page edition
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: of that. I mean it's it runs, what I say,
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  Speaker 1: twenty five times as long as the Bible in its entirety.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Who as the time, ain't nobody got time for that anyway.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Minstrel shows fits into and I mentioned this. I can't
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: remember what the other one was, but it's USA two fifty,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: which is a year long Wall Street Journal series examining
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: America's first two hundred and fifty years. And they look
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: at different aspects of American life for each of their articles,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: and this one is looking at entertainment in America from
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Singing Yankee Doodle, the streaming avengers. That's been entertainment, and
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: then they start with the early Republic. It's all about
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: music and fairs because mass entertainment didn't exist. The bigger
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: cities like New York and philadelph Philadelphia boasted theaters, but
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: for most American families across thirteen newly independent states, public
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: entertainment options generally were limited to dances feasts. I tell
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: you what, honey, you go to the dance, I'll go
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: to the feasts. Ah.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's not a tough call.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: And local traveling fairs. Professor of history says, you have
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: large scale gatherings of people for harvest days and feast days.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: In the South, court days also provided entertainment. Those were
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: the days when the court was in session in a county,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: so all the lawyers and judges would come together. Anybody
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: who had a case that they needed to hear, whatever,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: would all come together, and everybody would come together for
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: events like horse racing and wrestling on court days. On
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: a typical day, an American family would be more likely
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: to entertain itself at home by singing traditional folk songs
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  Speaker 1: like Barbara Allen, patriotic songs such as Yankee Doodle or
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: hymns like Amazing Grace. Local families would visit each other
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: to talk, make music, and play simple games like cardter checkers.
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  Speaker 2: I can imagine gathering my two sons on a Saturday night.
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  Speaker 2: We're going to sing folk songs and in out the lyrics,
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: not bar Brown.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: And again, Dad, Hey, come on now, it's a great song. Meanwhile,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: back on the plantation, Black Americans enslaved were using homemade
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: instruments such as stringed gourds to produce music with complex
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  Speaker 1: rhythms influenced by the African traditions which would later develop
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: into blues and jazz. And they like to tell traditional
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: stories like Brer Rabbit and nan Sea tricksters who provided
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: models for overcoming powerful oppressors. See where that would resonate
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: and by the time we moved into the early nineteenth century,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: American families in cities enjoyed a new entertainment option. Public
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: gardens places of sanctuary built into cities where you could
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: walk around in a more pastoral setting. Most of the
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: gardens have stages where shows are put on. People start
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  Speaker 1: bringing their kids. So is this actually just you know, parks,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: pretty spaces in the midst of the urban grittiness of
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, which was some a gritty grittiness. Entertainment
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: entrepreneurs like Pt. Barhama eventually expanded these gardens to include
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: museums and theaters where families could do everything from gawking
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and unusual people that's one way to put it, yeah,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: or animals, to watching performances of fairy tale characters like
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Aladdiner goldielog Let's.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Go laugh at people with birth defects.
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  Speaker 1: Oh. In the eighteen forty some gardens and theaters began
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: to put on minstrel shows. In a typical performance, family
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: might watch a spoof of a Shakespeare play performed in
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  Speaker 1: blackface with heavy elements of pantomime, as well as the
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: minstrel lineup, in which the performance would get up one
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  Speaker 1: by one to singer tell jokes while the quote unquote
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: end men at each end of the line cracked side
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  Speaker 1: jokes about the performances. Oh, the performances Yeah. Some of
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: the most popular minstrel songs of the year are still
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: sung today, like Campton Races and O. Susanna says this
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  Speaker 1: history of Professor the minstrel show was clearly designed to
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: demean African Americans, but it was also a major form
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: of family entertainment. They're doing these things to appeal to kids. Then, interestingly,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: parlor pianos became more affordable in the mid eighteen hundreds,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: and a lot of people bought pianos. In the eighteen
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: sixties saw the emergency emergency board games such as the
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Checkered Game of Life, which we talked about the last
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: time we talked about this, which taught and it became
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the Game of Life, which taught children moral lessons by
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: rewarding virtues like honesty, industry, and ambition while pushing vices
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: like gambling in temperance or idolists. Remember the key to
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: that was some of the squares included humiliation, despair, and suicide. Yikes,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: well you got.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Nothing else to do?
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, then you got the Gilded Age. Your eighteen eighties
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: and nineties circuses got bigger and bigger. Companies like Ringling Brothers,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Barnum and Bailey offered elephants, equestrian acts, clowns and contortionists
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  Speaker 1: and a huge, big top that could see thousands. So
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: that dates back to the eighteen eighties. Oh, I do
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: enjoy a good contortions. In many places, the circus was
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: the biggest business anyone had ever seen. They're very organized
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: and modern. People were excited by seeing something so new.
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  Speaker 2: I'm sure.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: And then you'd have your traveling extravaganzas like Buffalo Bill's
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West shows. We've seen those reenacted
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: in the movies, which I guess were just spectacular. They
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: would have hundreds of performers reenacting frontier battles.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Well, and then try to imagine that when you haven't
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: seen anything the slightest bit entertaining in like five years.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Well, now, wait a minute, and I was playing the
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Humiliation in Suicide game at home with my friends and singing,
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  Speaker 1: Barbara Allen.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, you haven't done anything the least bit out
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: of work in school and raising kids every day, day
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: after day, week after week, month after month, season after
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: season for so long. Yeah, anything comes along to town,
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: it's gonna seem pretty exciting. Well, yeah, but how about
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: hundreds of performers, like re enacting the battle a little
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: big horn be awesome, shooting blanks at each other and
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: stuff like that. Oh my god, you'd lose your mind.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia's Centennial Exhibition of eighteen seventy six was the first
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: major World's fair to be held in the US. It
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: drew nearly ten million visitors, twenty percent of the population
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  Speaker 1: of the country. Wow sheez in eighteen seventy six. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and that was right around when vaudeville began to take off.
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  Speaker 1: By the eighteen nineties, millions of Americans would go out
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: to vaudeville shows every week. Typical vaudeville show involved a
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: series of ten minute acts like stand up comedy, dancing, singing,
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  Speaker 1: and juggling. Vaudeville troops would travel the country by rail,
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  Speaker 1: performing at sites from small town opera houses to urban theaters,
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  Speaker 1: seating several thousand people. Ground floor tickets were about a buck,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: but you got adjust for inflation. Of course, in the home,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: rich family might have one of the new phono graphs
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: that played music stored on wax cylinders, but most families
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: were still making their own music using sheet music or songbooks.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: They were reading serialized fiction newspapers and magazines. That was
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Charles Dickens how he came to fame writing serialized books,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: kind of sink it up as he went. And then
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: the early twentieth century Golden Age of Hollywood, early silent movies, etc.
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  Speaker 1: First projected on a screen at vaudeville shows during intermissions.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: But after a while people were like, that's more entertaining
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: than the show. And then in the late twenties, sound
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: came to movies and movie attendance grew by forty percent
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: almost immediately. They were amazed. They could see the top
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: stars singing and dancing, they could hear the ratitad of
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: the guns, and also made for a tremendous amount of
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: creativity and movie making. It's interesting airborne warfare came along
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: earlier than talkie movies. I mean, maybe that's obvious in
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: a way because of the technology, but I don't know.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: It seems odd to me. And then you know, we're
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: much more familiar with the twentieth century and how that's changed,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: and there's no reason to go through that. I looked
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: up the lyrics hit me.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: In Scarletttown, where I was born, there was a fair
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: made dwelling made every youth cry well today. Her name
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: was Barbara Allen. It twas in the mery month of May,
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: when green buds were swelling. Sweet William on his deathbed,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: leave for the love of Barbara Allen. And it goes on,
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: And don't like that yep. I can just see me
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: in the song about a hottie, and you see me
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: and the kids sitting around singing that. I try that
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: this Saturday night. Put away your turn off the TV,
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: put away your video games. We're gonna sing. Barbara Allen got.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: A song for you.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The leaves were the buds were a swelling kids.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Come on, now, some respect.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: People in the past were so dumb.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Sure, sure they were. Wow, Well, I guess that's it.