Alice Hu's Primary Source Responses

Hi, everybody--sorry this is not especially timely!

Sylvie: I guess I'm confused about what WFB is doing here. He's complaining both about Vatican II and Catholics for failing to keep with the nature of Catholicism. Is he as out of touch, as it were, as he seems? It seems like WFB understands Catholicism in a very different way from many other Catholics--isn't everyone supposed to listen to the Pope, for instance? And what good does it do for Buckley to rail against Catholics who are 1) complying with Vatican II, and 2) who clearly aren't going to re-conservatize themselves? It seems like he isolates himself a lot here, not only because he distances himself from what would be his largest voter base, but also because he's making the assumption that people are voting solely on religious convictions. This seems to me like a political shot-in-the-foot, so I wonder--what did he hope to gain from this?

Jenni: First of all, I really like seeing the ads you use. It probably doesn't speak wel of my maturity, but I think they're hilarious. That being said, what I have to say is mostly a response to Tom's response to your sources. I'm not sure these are necessarily operating in terms of sexuality at all--at least, not in terms of sexuality in regards to men. Especially in contrast to the other sources that you're using--Bernice Bobs Her Hair, for instance--the absence of men and men-centric ideas, rhetoric, or language is actually pretty surprising. Well, it might not be--I'd be really upset if I saw a man in a Kotex ad on TV, come to think of it. But the point is, I think that you might look at these in terms of how a "modern woman" is defined NOT in terms of men--in terms of things like "self-actualization" (sorry for a very frou-fy and vague term) and staking a claim to womanhood or femininity through means OTHER than relationships with men, as happens in Bernice Bobs Her Hair.

Andrea: First of all, I'm a Classicist, so I find this pretty exciting.... I don't know if this strictly addresses what you're hoping to do with this source, but I'm really intrigued by the interplay of gender roles here. For instance, when Mr Terrell talks about how "Miss Church knows more Latin than I do," I'm surprised by the prominence and authority of her position as a teacher, but then when we read about her oven mishaps, she completely loses her identity as a teacher and is simply a housewife--it seems like it's possible that questions of advancement as a woman fall by the wayside when it comes to needing to present an exemplary middle class white-model marriage.

Chris: So what strikes me particularly is the word she uses in the last quote: "slave." It seems such a loaded word, I wonder--do other kinds of traditional ways of talking about slavery in the US (ie, African American slaves in the 19th century and before) crop up? How does the servitude of the Chinese change ideas of what slavery/servitude was?

Tom: Not knowing much about the political landscape of California at the time, I hope that what I have to offer isn't toooo unhelpful. I guess what strikes me in the first article about Gubser is the fuss about party labels--since you've talked about this time as sort of a turning point for Southern California, is it possible that Northern CA (Gilroy's North, right?) was aware of SoCal's changing tendencies and concerned about defining itself politically? In the same vein, the Republicans for Palo Alto also are concerned with how the Republican party is labeled--it is not necessarily a question of conservatism but one of "Republicanism." I'm just curious as to how much these two regions interacted, and if that affected how the two parties attempted to define themselves in each region.

Brendan: So, because these are, of course, told very retrospectively, I'm curious about how these veterans' attitudes to war and patriotism have changed. For instance, Guerra's account says he no longer believes in war, while Gonzalez's talks about how thankful he is for the opportunities living in the US has afforded him. Is there more of a distinction for these veterans between the military and the government/the nation at large than perhaps for veterans who did not deal with discrimination?

See you all very soon.