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The Presidential Dinner That Scandalized America · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: for tuning in. If you are listening to this the
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: day it comes out, then you, like us, have hopefully
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: survived what is called super Tuesday. Super Tuesday is where
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  Speaker 1: all the nominees for president get together and and you know,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: pitch their cause to each state. We don't know how
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: it will work out, but you know it's a good
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: way into today's episode. Hi, I'm Ben, Hey Ben, I'm
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: no what will you use? How Like? Super is kind
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: of an interesting word thrown around. You got like super
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  Speaker 1: fun sites. You ever heard of those? They're like clean
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: up nuclear cleanup sites, you know, Yeah, And I always,
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  Speaker 1: when I used to work for public radio, always used
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  Speaker 1: to think that they were super fun sites. You know,
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  Speaker 1: it's like like a like a bouncy castle or something
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  Speaker 1: like that. But it turns out it's quite a depressing,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: heavy thing. The words super used in politics just interesting
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  Speaker 1: to me. But super Tuesday, to me, sounds like a
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  Speaker 1: vestige of like old you know, the old days of
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  Speaker 1: stumping politics up on a platform. You know, is you is?
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  Speaker 1: Is you? Ain't my constituency? That kind of thing, you know. Yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's a as as the guy who, with some small
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  Speaker 1: measure regret, coined the term superproducer. Here, Oh, shout out
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: to our super producer, Casey Pegram still in the race,
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  Speaker 1: the Race for our hearts, winning by a large margin,
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  Speaker 1: and as it turns out, not a toxic waste cleanup
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  Speaker 1: site or a super charged political day of the year. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: the freeze super I for super Tuesday. It always it
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  Speaker 1: always felt to me growing up like political pundits. We're
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  Speaker 1: trying to make it sound more fun than it is,
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  Speaker 1: you know what must I. I don't know how it
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  Speaker 1: came about, but it is a strange title. I'm gonna
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  Speaker 1: bring back just using super to say something's great. That's
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  Speaker 1: just super, like someone some from the Midwest would say.
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  Speaker 1: But we digress. Today we are posing a question that
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  Speaker 1: was posed in a film that actually had similar things
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  Speaker 1: residences to today's episode, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Starring
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  Speaker 1: Sydney Pottier. Remember that film, then, I do know what's
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  Speaker 1: the question? Well, it was about a a dinner where
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  Speaker 1: a an African American gentleman comes. I'm sorry, the title
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  Speaker 1: was the question guess Who's coming to dinner. That's okay,
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  Speaker 1: I'm back in Yes. So it's a film where Potier
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  Speaker 1: plays an African American gentleman who comes to dinner and
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  Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, all kinds of hilarity, awkwardness and satire. Ensue.
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  Speaker 1: Guess who's coming to dinner has a lot in common,
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  Speaker 1: You're right with today's story. Today's story involved aolves one
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  Speaker 1: of the most famous presidents in US history, President Theodore Roosevelt,
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  Speaker 1: now Eddy, as he is known to his friends. It
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  Speaker 1: was was not a status quo type of president. He
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  Speaker 1: was known for shaking things up and kind of making
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  Speaker 1: his own way. In nineteen o one, he did something
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  Speaker 1: that wouldn't seem too controversial to us today. He had
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  Speaker 1: someone over for dinner. You know. And of course he's
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  Speaker 1: the president at this time. He's he's pretty busy in general,
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  Speaker 1: but because he's the president of the United States, even
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  Speaker 1: the smallest of social decisions carry enormous weight in symbolism
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  Speaker 1: for the public. It's not like uh, you or or
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  Speaker 1: I casually inviting a new friend or new coworker to
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  Speaker 1: have some to have some lasagna or something. This is
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  Speaker 1: always going to be interpreted as a statement. It's true
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  Speaker 1: and Deborah Davis in her fantastic book Most of Honor
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  Speaker 1: book or T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and the White House
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  Speaker 1: Dinner that Shocked a Nation, UH referred to this situation
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  Speaker 1: as such. African Americans were invited to meet in offices,
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  Speaker 1: they of course built the White House, they worked for
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  Speaker 1: the various presidents, but they were never ever invited to
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  Speaker 1: sit down at the President's table. And when that happened,
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  Speaker 1: the outrage was just unbelievable. And a big reason for that,
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  Speaker 1: she goes on to say, is that in society, UH,
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  Speaker 1: the idea of dining together really created a sense almost
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  Speaker 1: a code word for social equality, and folks just weren't
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  Speaker 1: ready to accept that fully yet, despite obviously, UH, slavery
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  Speaker 1: having been illegal for some time and African Americans UH,
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  Speaker 1: for all intents and purposes, being able to occupy the
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  Speaker 1: same social strata as white people, but it was just
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  Speaker 1: not something that was embraced even still. Yes, and that's
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  Speaker 1: let's not bury the lead. The guests in question is
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  Speaker 1: booker Talia Farrow, Washington, American educator, author, UH, a leader
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  Speaker 1: in his community at the time. There's a there's a
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  Speaker 1: double down, meaning here this is something that may have
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  Speaker 1: incensed the racist members of the public in the American South. Traditionally,
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  Speaker 1: at this time, it was understood that if you invited
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  Speaker 1: a male to have dinner with you, and this person
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  Speaker 1: was not related to you already, then you were tacitly
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  Speaker 1: inviting this man to woo your daughter. They're like, come
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  Speaker 1: on in, have a meal, have some lazage. This is
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  Speaker 1: my daughter, isn't she lovely? She's uh, she's nineteen and
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  Speaker 1: uh she's getting up there. Ben. I love how in
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  Speaker 1: all of these imaginary circumstances, everyone's always eating lasagna. It's lazagne.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know why. I don't know. Do you think
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  Speaker 1: they serve If they serve lasagna in the it's probably
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  Speaker 1: some fancy like lobster lasagna or something like that. I
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  Speaker 1: would think, you know what, I bet you have a
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  Speaker 1: lot of latitude when you're president, because it's true, the
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  Speaker 1: menu has changed so much over the years. And now
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  Speaker 1: we can't forget that iconic picture of our current president
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  Speaker 1: with all the McDonald's, big max and stuff stacked up
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  Speaker 1: in baroque fashion, and he was very happy about that.
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  Speaker 1: I think he was doing the iconic double thumbs up.
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  Speaker 1: So yes, so you can see, at least according to
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  Speaker 1: Deborah Davis, you can see that as the primary reason
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  Speaker 1: or one of the primary reasons people were so offended.
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  Speaker 1: It caused them to clutch their pearls to imagine that
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  Speaker 1: a black man would be able to have that level
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  Speaker 1: of access to a family, especially the presidential family. Both men,
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  Speaker 1: both Washington and Roosevelt, were very much aware of this,
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  Speaker 1: and again, grasp your pearls here gasps softly. They were
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  Speaker 1: going to be women present have Uh. But let's get
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  Speaker 1: into before we get into the outrage, which is gonna
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  Speaker 1: come as it's inevitable, let's talk a little bit about
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  Speaker 1: why he would have wanted book or to Washington at
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  Speaker 1: a at a gathering like this where you're gonna talk policy.
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  Speaker 1: It was because he was a highly influential leader in
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  Speaker 1: the African American community, founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute.
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  Speaker 1: Born into slavery um, he saved up and put himself
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  Speaker 1: through school, was an educator after the Civil War, and
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  Speaker 1: that's when he founded those institutes that mission earlier in
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  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty one in Alabama, UH now known as Tuskegee University.
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  Speaker 1: So he was along with W. E. B. Du Bois
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  Speaker 1: was one of the foremost African American leaders at the time,
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  Speaker 1: and Roosevelt would have wanted to hear what he had
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  Speaker 1: to say and would have wanted to collaborate with him,
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  Speaker 1: because Roosevelt was, like you said, he thought outside the
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  Speaker 1: box and he wasn't gonna let the man tell him
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  Speaker 1: what to do, even though he technically kind of was
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  Speaker 1: the man. Yeah, and I like that you point out
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  Speaker 1: how Washington was immensely influential. Theodore Roosevelt was immensely impulsive,
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  Speaker 1: legendarily so. And here's how it all went down. So
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  Speaker 1: he had this pre existing appointment, and this was a
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  Speaker 1: business appointment. They were supposed to compare notes and Roosevelt
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  Speaker 1: was going to get some advice on uh, some cabinet picks.
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  Speaker 1: But then at the very last minute, it's true, Roosevelt said,
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  Speaker 1: you know, let's make it dinner. And he was going
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  Speaker 1: to send out this invitation to dinner. The story is
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  Speaker 1: that he paused for just a second and thought, is
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  Speaker 1: this a bad idea because of all the stuff we've
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  Speaker 1: got going on here in the US, and it's crazy
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  Speaker 1: messed up I'm paraphrasing, uh, And instantly he felt deeply
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  Speaker 1: ashamed that he even bothered hesitating, and so he said,
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  Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna send this out before
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  Speaker 1: I can change my mind. And now Booker T. Washington
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  Speaker 1: gets the invitation and he has some thoughts. Well, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I mean he had to decide whether or not to
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  Speaker 1: accept the invitation. I would imagine that the immediate impulse,
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  Speaker 1: especially for a guy like that who had come so far,
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  Speaker 1: knew the symbolism of it. But I guess he had
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  Speaker 1: to decide if it would look at like a betrayal
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  Speaker 1: to his community in some way, or if it was
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  Speaker 1: worth you know, making that big statement and you know,
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  Speaker 1: kind of weathering the bruhaha that would follow um in
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  Speaker 1: in the interest of kind of moving social discourse forward.
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  Speaker 1: And obviously he chose the ladder, right, Yep. He said,
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  Speaker 1: this is gonna be problematic for me, but I have
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  Speaker 1: no right to refuse, and he felt like he had
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  Speaker 1: to accept it as a representative of his community. Of course,
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  Speaker 1: they knew the s was gonna hit the f I'm
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: going to say that you can fill in whatever initialisms
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  Speaker 1: you like for that. The shorts were gonna hit the farm. Yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: the scoop was gonna hit the France. It's early in
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  Speaker 1: the morning today for us, I guess it is. It's
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  Speaker 1: almost noon man, Yeah, I know, right. But the weather here, well,
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  Speaker 1: it's very dreary. So they knew that s was going
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  Speaker 1: to hit the f the Spain was going to hit
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  Speaker 1: the France. A White House reporter put the news of
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  Speaker 1: this dinner on the wire service, and this is mind you,
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  Speaker 1: before they actually ever sit down to eat. There is
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  Speaker 1: a massive backlash. The stories that were printed about this
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  Speaker 1: are disgusting. They aged like milk as as were wont
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  Speaker 1: to say. The men both received separately and as a group,
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  Speaker 1: death threats. There were. There was, of course the cliche
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  Speaker 1: racial element to it, uh, and it included accusations that
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  Speaker 1: this would make book or t Washington quote uppity uh,
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  Speaker 1: and that it would fuel ambition in his community. But
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  Speaker 1: then there was also criticism saying, you know, Teddy Roosevelt
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  Speaker 1: is a publicly elected official and he has no right
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  Speaker 1: to push his private agenda on the public. Yeah, I
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  Speaker 1: mean the notion that he was using this to quote
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  Speaker 1: unquote fuel negro ambition end quote. Again, this was from
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  Speaker 1: from Deborah Davis from her book and again from the
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  Speaker 1: reporting of the time, and that is the one of
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  Speaker 1: the gentler ways. He really just using outdated language. We
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  Speaker 1: would never use that term in that way today, but
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  Speaker 1: at the time that was sort of the more polite
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  Speaker 1: way to characterize the situation. But some of the things that,
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  Speaker 1: like you said, Ben, that were printed were absolute fearmongering, racemongering,
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  Speaker 1: hateful kind of stuff. And to imply that Teddy Roosevelt
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  Speaker 1: was somehow trying to push some secret progressive agenda was
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  Speaker 1: just like the height of like paranoia. What what Okay,
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  Speaker 1: here's my question. What is so insidious about not wanting
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  Speaker 1: people to be segregated? That's that's the weird thing to me.
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  Speaker 1: Senators spoke out against this. James K. Vardaman Um said
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  Speaker 1: some things that I'm I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
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  Speaker 1: quote him full because they're they're disturbing. But he said
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  Speaker 1: something like, and he's a Democrat from Mississippi, says the
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  Speaker 1: White House is now so saturated with the odor of
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  Speaker 1: blank that the rats had taken refuge in the stable.
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  Speaker 1: Other senators like Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina uh threatened
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  Speaker 1: to kill a thousand people to quote put them back
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  Speaker 1: in their places. The Missouri Sedalia Sentinel published a poem
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  Speaker 1: on its front page entitled Blank in the White House.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, this was a national story and it's it's
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  Speaker 1: a a chilling look at how normal this sort of
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  Speaker 1: discourse was in the early twentieth century. Yeah, they were
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  Speaker 1: like vulgar cartoons characterizing Mrs Roosevelt. And she was a
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  Speaker 1: very very popular first lady, So all of a sudden
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  Speaker 1: to have her maligned so openly just for being associated
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  Speaker 1: with this, because since she was one of the guests
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  Speaker 1: of the dinner as well, one of the you know,
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  Speaker 1: gas women that was going to be there, right, And
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  Speaker 1: there wasn't a hundred percent support in the African American
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  Speaker 1: community for Booker T. Washington. There was a radical opponent
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  Speaker 1: of his, a fellow named William Monroe Trotter, who said
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  Speaker 1: agreeing to this dinner showed book Or T. Washington as
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  Speaker 1: a hypocrite who supports social segregation between blacks and whites,
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  Speaker 1: while he himself dines at the White House. So everybody
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  Speaker 1: from all all angles had some problems, They had some
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  Speaker 1: stuff to say about this, and they had to go on.
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  Speaker 1: It was really just like a great excuse to push
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  Speaker 1: forth whatever your particular agenda was. Whichever side of the
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  Speaker 1: issue you might have found yourself on. You could use
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  Speaker 1: it as a way to say, book or t you're
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  Speaker 1: selling out. You know, you're uh not practicing what you preach.
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  Speaker 1: You know, you're behaving as though you think you are
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  Speaker 1: better than you're you know, fellow men um. And the
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  Speaker 1: other side of it would be, you know, Theodore Roosevelt
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  Speaker 1: is a some sort of heretic, and he is you know,
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  Speaker 1: just totally you know, gonna shatter the moral fiber of
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  Speaker 1: of the country by doing such an outrageous thing. And
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  Speaker 1: let's just remember, this is a dinner. This is it.
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  Speaker 1: How intrenched must that social moray have been in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: o one for people to do lose their minds over
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  Speaker 1: this story in this way? I mean it absolutely created,
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  Speaker 1: like I find, a kind of hysteria. Yeah, I hope
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  Speaker 1: it was. I hope it was so widespread, at least,
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  Speaker 1: this belief in the importance of dinner. I hope it
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: was so widespread that it became a euphemism for hitting
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: on someone's daughter. You know, it's like, well, I'm gonna
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: go have dinner with your dad. See it's weird when
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: you put it like that. And then as kind of weird.
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  Speaker 1: So what happened exactly, Like, I mean, do we know
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: how the dinner itself went? We we know, uh a
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: little bit. But this is weird because people started trying
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  Speaker 1: to rewrite history as it was happening. Republican pundits went
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: into damage control. They wanted to to get in front
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: of the story, as they say in the media today.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: One one idea was saying, Okay, look, well we report this,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: let's call it lunch, because somehow lunch is less of
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: a problem. And now we're gonna say, uh, we're also
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: gonna say, hey, Booker T. Washington did not go to
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: the dining room, and there weren't any women present. The
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: guys were just sitting in the office. Their meeting went long,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: and so they ordered a tray of sandwiches, and for
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: some reason that made people in the South feel less
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: bloodthirsty about it, which is weird because of the power
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: of sandwiches or the great or lunch. Maybe they're like, well,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: it's just lunch. It was definitely definitely, Oh that's a
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: good point. But that was sort of a a diminished version, right, Like,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: so dinner is the height of social equality. Lunch is
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: a little more you can just kind of, you know,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: hop in and hop out, like it doesn't require quite
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: as much pomp and circumstance, right, And so for this
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: goes on until the nineteen thirties. Someone finally asked Ms Roosevelt,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: there's a great NPR story about this. Someone finally asked
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Mrs Roosevelt, tell us straight, was it lunch or was
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: it dinner? She checked her calendar and she said it
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: was most definitely dinner. And it was still even even
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: in book or T. Washington's obituary in nineteen fifteen, it
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: was reported as lunch in his obituary. This was a
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: really weirdly important thing. Wait a minute, the way a minute?
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: So which was it? We do we have confirmation it
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: really is? There some mystery surrounding this to this day.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Almost if we trust Mrs Roosevelt's calendar, it was dinner.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Where's the story about tray of sandwiches come from? That
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: comes from Republicans trying to spend the story public party
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: at the time. They wanted to preserve the political viability
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: of the Roosevelt administry. God, and so they softened it
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: to sandwiches. But it probably wasn't true. Now I get
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: it now. I get it had me gone because I
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: almost though I got lost in the spin myself. Ben.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: We all, we all do get caught in the spin
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: cycle every so often. So this is the weirdest thing
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: because a lot of the story is lost to history.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: We we actually wouldn't know about this dinner if Deborah
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Davis had not heard about it just in passing at
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: John McCain's two thousand eight concession speech to the newly
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: elected at the time President Barack Obama. I think it's
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: wild to that a a story that generated headlines or
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: leads h such as this one from the Memphis Simitar
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: that declared this act by President Roosevelt to be the
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: citizen of the United States. Full stop. Bid of Dick Arnold,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: out of out of the running. Yeah, let's see assassination
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: of Abraham Lincoln. Forget about it outright. The Civil War
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: everybody in there is officially not as bad as not
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: a big deal. But you ask an influential black man
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: to dinner, and all hell breaks lose. So the point being, then,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: with what you were alluding to, I think is that
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: this was largely kind of lost to history. I didn't
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: know about it until we until we started reading up
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: on this here. Yeah. Yeah, So in McCain's concession speech,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: which Debort Davis hears, McCain says, a century ago, President
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: the White House was taken as an outrage of many quarters.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: America today is old away from the cruel bigotry of
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: that time. There is no better evidence of this than
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the election of an African American to the presidency of
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: the United States. And this hit Davis. She thought, wait,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: what when did book or T. Washington go to the
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: White House? She's a cultural historian, so so that's gonna
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: pique her interests. And then she found that this didn't
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: even really show up high on Google. She had to
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: she had to hit the books to figure out this story.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And we want to thank Deborah Davis for the excellent
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: work here, because we forget sometimes how easy it is
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: to lose these tremendous moments. You know, this is the
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: thing always bothers me whenever whenever I do a show
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: or look into something at the White House, or when
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: those press clubs or prayer breakfast. When people get together,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: it's hard to find the menu, and I want to
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: know what's on the menu, Like, what did they wasn't
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: a tray sandwiches? I think it's important. I want to
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: know that too. For our purposes today, we will just
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: go on continuing to believe that it was lasagne. Oh
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: thank you man. That's very that's very kind. That's what
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: I that's what I choose to believe. I think it's
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: because I finally started watching Sopranos, so I thought, did
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I tell you that? You know? But but you for
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: like years you've been telling me Carmela's lasagna is second
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: to none. It's got little basil leaves in between the layers,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: you know, got that cheese, you know that's that's so
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: that's so creamy and delicious. Yeah, her lasagna is a
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: huge hit anywhere she brings it. She always brings it
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: to pot lux at our church and everything, and people
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: go crazy for it. I have an unrelated food question,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: well somewhat somewhat politically related, but it's a food question.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: So one of the people who was running for the
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Democratic nomination, I think Amy Klubachar from the Midwest. Uh
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: dropped this phrase hot dish, and I didn't know what
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: a hot dish was. I thought it was literally just
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: like a hot but it's a specific kind of thing.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of this because they're like hot jazz.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: I can't tell the difference between a hot dish and
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: a casserole. Like, I'm sorry, I thought I thought you
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: meant like as a euphemism for a person. I look
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: at that hot dish. No no, no, I would no,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: no no no, but no, okay, So you mean, like,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: if you're designating a type of pot luck, you're saying
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: bring a hot dish. That means it can be anything.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: A casserole is is is specifically a mishmash kind of
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: thing with different ingredients with a cheesy crust. Well, here
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: is apparently the difference, and this is something I had
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: not heard before. So, fellow ridiculous historians, let us know
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: the scoop on this. So cast roles and a hot
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: dishes are sort of the same thing, but the big
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: differences Supposedly that cast roles use tuna and chicken but
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: hot dishes use red meat and more were condensed super varieties,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: but those still sound like cast roles. To me, that
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense to me. I don't understand it.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: You could make a squash cast role, doesn't have to
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: have tuna or chicken. You can make a broccoli cast role,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: green bean cast. Anyway, we're gonna put this one to bed.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's worth our time though. Oh no,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: you're right, you're right. Let's let's keep going, because, uh,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: the president did other stuff. Exactly, he did do other
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: stuff because as we know, uh, Teddy Roosevelt was a
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: real pioneer in many respects, Like in terms of his
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: hunting prowess. We did that that episode where I think
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: we he and his sons went on a crazy hunting
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: expedition once he had retired from the presidency, Uh for
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the Smithsonian where he ended up you know, taxidermy ng
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: and sending back all these specimens. A lot of those
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: are still there today. So he was a very forward
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: thinking man. Obviously, it was just an interesting kind of
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: excuse for him to be able to kill some big, wild,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: exotic game. But you gotta give him props for like
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: making it about science. But he did a lot of
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: other things too. He was a man of first Um,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: he was a huge proponent of experiencing new things and
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: pushing the envelope um. And so because of that, we
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: have a lot of presidential first that happened under Teddy
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Roosevelt's watch. He was the first president to ride in
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: the submarine. He was the first to have a telephone
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: in his residence. And this is interesting. He was the first,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: presumably to have a dojo in the White House. Is
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: just from the Mental Floss article. Ben, this is the
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Mental Floss article. Is Theodore Roosevelt in the first presidential
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: car ride? That's crazy? Yeah, I had a dojo. I
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: wonder if he was any good, but if he could
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: like take a man down with some sweet karate moves
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: and you can. You can read more about this at
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: another Mental Floss article on a deep dive Theodore Roosevelt
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Mojo in the Dojo by Jenny Drapkin Man. I love
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Mental Floss. I to um William McKinley, his predecessor was
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: the first president to ride in a car, but it
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: was Roosevelt who kind of codified it right and and
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: made it part of his job to make the rounds.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: When he took a tour of Hartford, Connecticut in nineteen
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: o two yeah. The New York Times says that he
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: was quite pleased with the quote handsome Victoria automobile because
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: he thought it was a great way to shake a
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: lot of hands in a short period of time, more
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: so than like, what would they do like a whistle
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: stop tour? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, and take the train? Right.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: But in private, he he complained about them. He said,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: motor cars are a trial. I suppose ultimately will get
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: them in their proper place in the scheme of nature,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: and when, by long custom their uses regulated in proper fashion,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: their objectionable features will probably be eliminated. But just at present,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: I regard them as distinct additions to the discomfort of living.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: He kind of had it all right. Every single point
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: he listed there was right, It was regulated, It was
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: more integrated into the day to day of human existence.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: But I don't think those one of those negative features
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: that he's referring to. I kind of somehow doubt those
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: went away. Is it the fact that they're big and
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: bulky and can run you down and kill you and
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: smell bad? Uh? Yeah. I I would not be surprised
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: if the automobile industry asked him for a little bit
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: of endorsement there. Interesting, But he had one other big
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: first in November of nineteen o six, right he did. Indeed,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: he was the first president to leave the US. He
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: hopped aboard the U s. S. Louisiana to take a
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: tour of the Panama Canal, which was a big project.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: We take that for granted presidents going on diplomatic trips,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's just like par for the course.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: But that's a big one. He was the first one
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: to leave the country. Uh, to inspect that that canal.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: That was that he he had really been a huge
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: part of making happen. And so perhaps a good place
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: to end our story today with Roosevelt and Washington. Famous
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: loss to history Dinner is to objectively look at the
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Roosevelt administration and the enormous race problem in the United States.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: When he was reelected, Uh, he said that his plan
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: was to improve race relations in five and historians like
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: you can look at his work and say that, yes,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: he firmly believed that all men are created equal. But
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: as history dot Com notes, his administration took kind of
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: a passive approach to improving civil rights, and his successors
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: did much the same thing. It really wasn't until Lyndon
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act in nineteen sixty four
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: that the effort to correct racial discrimination was encoded into law.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: So it's been a long road, you know, but dinner
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: does a lot. It does, and it continues to be
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: a really important tool for networking and for meeting with
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: business clients and things, because it does kind of the
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: idea of breaking bread together. It really is this great
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: equalizer where if you're having dinner with the CEO of
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: your companies, say, when you guys are sitting across from
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: each other at the same table, eye to eye, yea,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: there is something some an effect to that that's hard
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: to measure, that really does make you feel like you're
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: sort of on the same level. And I think that's
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: a powerful thing. And kudos to Teddy Roosevelt for, whether
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: completely intentionally or kind of brashle making this grand gesture. Uh,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: it obviously made a big splash and was very important.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: As always, thank you so much for tuning in. We
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: want to hear from you. What do you think are
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: some of the most influential dinners in history? And we
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: mean global history, not just uh, not just US history.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: And it can be something like the book or t
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Washington Teddy Roosevelt dinner, or it could be something you know,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: a little more red Wedding esque, if you want to,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: if you want to be dark about it. But in
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: the fact that they found out that there was an
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: assassin taken out, assassin hired to kill book or two
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Washington because of this, well their death threats for sure. Yeah. Yeah,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: But there was somewhere in the reporting that said they
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: they you know, uh, there was a botched attempt at
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: an assassination, or there was some evidence that there had
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: been an assassin sent to Tuskegee to take him out. Yeah,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: I bet they were already. Also, so many death threats
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: that guy was getting, That's what I'm saying. Can you imagine, like,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: how dare you start a school? So so let us
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: know about your favorite historical dinners bonus points if you
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: can give us the menu too. It's it's killing me, folks,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: it's killing me to read about these amazing moments and
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: not know what they were eating. Uh you know, maybe
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: that's just me. Maybe I should not criticize history for
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: not keeping better at track of its menus. No, personally, Ben,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: I think it's a it's an absolute crime against humanity
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: that we cannot know what these political luminaries were eating
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: every minute of the day. Now we do, because it's
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: all preserved in the tweet record and on their instagrams
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: and on their instagrams with tasteful food picks. I love that.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: But that's a discussion for another day. Uh. For now,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: I think we can bid this topic and you fair
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: listeners Asia A huge thanks to super producer Casey Pegram
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: As always, thanks to Alex Williams, who composed this here
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: song that you hear before your very ears. Thanks to
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Christopher hasciotas always here in spirit of course, gabelues here
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: what would we be without? You are wonderful um and
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: talented research associate. Thanks to Eve's Jeff Cote on our
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Pure podcast This Day in History Class. Thanks also, of
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: course to book or T Washington and to Theodore Teddy Roosevelt.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Where can I tell you about my favorite dinner in history?
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: You might be asking yourself, Well, do we have a
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: deal for you? You You can find us on Facebook, you
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Our Facebook page is top notch. It's called ridiculous Historians.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: We'd love for you to join us and our fellow listeners.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: They're all you have to do is name Casey nol
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: Me or or all three of us, or some combination thereof,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: or honestly, just make us laugh, like I heard a
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: terrible punt recently. No one, if you like to, if
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: you'd like least, you're into this. Okay, this comes from
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: another show stuff they don't want you to to know. Someone said,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: did you hear about this plan to deliver magazines by drone?
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: It's raising a lot of issues. I'm raising because I
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: don't know, because magazines come out in issues, and the
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: drone is flying the magazine. It's raising the like I
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: got it. That's good, and I'm just slow. I like
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: you said it's early, Well it's twelve. Were both. I
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: think we're both a little out of the weather. And
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: then and it is a pretty dreary Pacific Northwest seat
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: type day outside. So stay warm, stay dry, folks, and
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: we'll see you next time. For more podcasts from My
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.