A quintessential commentary on the state of historical literacy in the nation today was heard the other morning on the show that replaced Don Imus, "Boomer and Carton In the Morning" on Sports Radio 66 WFAN. The episode on the station, which through syndication spread Imus across the nation, featured hosts Boomer Eisason and Craig Carton and a couple of other guys talking about the blockbuster $100 million 7-part 8 ½-hour HBO series John Adams.
"An epic event," as the HBO hype machine calls it, the series has been running every Sunday night since March 16. They are up to episode six this Sunday (April 13) at 10 PM (EST), but seem to run again every few hours on most days and nights. The HBO Paul Reveres even managed to get posters hung in my local post office, next to the Ten Most Wanted mug shots.
The great moment in historical discourse began with Boomer, the show's intellectual, announcing he had been watching the HBO series on Thomas Jefferson. His sidekick Carton ejaculated something to the effect of, "You jerk. The series is about John Quincy Adams."
That was true. The John Quincy Adams in the first episodes was about three years old.
A debate then began about who had succeeded George Washington and his vice president, Thomas Jefferson. Among the candidates mentioned were Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson and Warren Harding. A wiser head came on the scene and pointed out that Monroe and Madison were in there somewhere.
In the melee, I seemed to have heard one of the scholars suggesting Martha Washington also was one of the first presidents. I can't swear that one of the stupid kibitzers didn't mention her name, not wanting to make them sound stupider than they are.
I think the reason they were talking about it at all is that Samuel Johnson, I mean Samuel Adams, the beer, is a sponsor. The guy on the bottle, or on the screen, playing John Adams' cousin Samuel Adams looked more like Roger Clemens during the Waxman steroid committee hearings.
Well, nobody is perfect, it could be argued.
Hey, I understand. Our heads are filled with all kinds of baseball statistics at this time year, like who leads the league in triples, getting mixed up with NFL passer ratings, and which drunken hop head starlet is not wearing underwear.
But these are not average Americans. Boomer and his panelists are communicators, trusted authorities on what is really important, and who might be expected to have a firmer grip on our past, even though they may have forgotten more about American history than some of our younger people ever knew.
In a recent test, a majority of students at a major American university didn't know which president was in a wheel chair. As novelist Dan Jenkins theorized, soon they will be not knowing which one was the tall one with a beard and top hat?
(The answers, Boomer and the other radio pundits might want to know: 1. FDR; 2. Rutherford B. Hayes. Also Grant, Garfield, Harrison, and, of course Lincoln.)
Is it any wonder that by all reports Bart Simpson is a genius compared to the rest of us?
That's why HBO deserves more than praise of critics for spending $100 million on Tom Hanks' production, based on David McCullough's doorstopper of a book of the same name. It deserves a medal.
What I liked about this John Adams is that it's not by Ken Burns. Our modern Homer who monopolizes the retelling of American history on PBS is given credit for inventing the hallmarks of video history: gentle folk music that borders on intellectual Muzak, the reading of letters by pompous actors intercut with commentaries by academics letting us know how smart they are, and lots of sunsets. All being burnished by Burns' magnetic personality and his giving the impression that none of what the series is about would have been possible without him It's Ken Burns' Civil War, Ken Burns' Baseball, Ken Burns' Jazz. There is just so much of a good thing one can take without becoming nauseous, like eating one too many Mallomars.
HBO's John Adams is about John Adams, not Tom Hanks or the working executive producer Gary Goetzman.
In its most gripping family drama since The Sopranos, HBO is telling us who Adams really was, only 196 years after his death.
Its other major achievement was finding an actor who will live in the annals of Adams portrayals. Paul Giamatti is brilliant, second only to William Daniels in 1776 but in the top three with George Grizzard who did him in the 1976 PBS bomb The Adams Chronicles.
Laura Linney is also spectacular as the dear Abby in Adams' life.
I'm not a great fan of David Morse's George Washington. That fake nose makes him look like a clown, when he doesn't seem to be auditioning for the role of the face on the dollar bill.
I admit I was disappointed that they didn't seem to have lap dancing in the colonial taverns. It might have been hard with those ladies in their bustles and hoop skirts. And neither did they have Liberty Pole dancing apparently.
Being HBO, I also was surprised that they didn't show any of the founding fathers mufkeying around, as they used to call it in ye olde days before HBO invented the F-word and its conjugations on modern TV mature programming. Our sons and daughters of the revolution were mostly Anglo-Saxons whose vocabulary was filled with more four, five, six and seven-letter words then even George Carlin knew.
The writing by Kirk Ellis is a little over-wrought. There is a tendency to have Adams show up at every turning point during the Revolutionary War, like Zelig. It wouldn't have been surprising to see him shivering with the starving troops in Valley Forge.
But HBO's John Adams still has been a joy to watch. Great acting, great production values, great dedication to telling us more than we ever wanted to know about the country's founding workaholic.
John Adams concluding April 20, sets the standard by which all history videos now be judged.
I especially recommend Boomer and Carton catch up with their Sunday Night History by watching the marathon on April 20, from 1 to 10 PM.
Meanwhile, I give HBO three huzzah, huzzah, huzzahs.