TLP Weekend Edition (May 24-25, 2025)

What we're reading and checking out.

Members of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment place flags at the headstones of U.S. military personnel buried at Arlington National Cemetery in preparation for Memorial Day. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

🗣️ “President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Memorial Day Address at Gettysburg,” delivered on May 30, 1934. FDR commemorated Memorial Day (before it was changed by Congress to the last Monday in May) with a speech at the Gettysburg battlefields to remind Americans that our nation had survived the Civil War and would hopefully do the same with the Great Depression. His theme that day was overcoming three main sources of political sectarianism:

We are all brothers now, brothers in a new understanding. The grain farmers of the West and in the fertile fields of Pennsylvania do not set themselves up for preference if we seek at the same time to help the cotton farmers of the South; nor do the tobacco growers complain of discrimination if, at the same time, we help the cattle men of the plains and mountains.

In our planning to lift industry to normal prosperity, the farmer upholds our efforts. And as we seek to give the farmers of the United States a long-sought equality, the city worker understands and helps. All of us, among all the States, share in whatever of good comes to the average man. We know that we all have a stake—a partnership in this Government of this, our country.

Today, we have many means of knowing each other—means that at last have sounded the doom of sectionalism. It is, I think, as I survey the picture from every angle, a simple fact that the chief hindrance to progress comes from three elements which, thank God, grow less in importance with the growth of a clearer understanding of our purposes on the part of the overwhelming majority. These groups are those who seek to stir up political animosity or to build political advantage by the distortion of facts; those who, by declining to follow the rules of the game, seek to gain an unfair advantage over those who are willing to live up to the rules of the game; and those few who, because they have never been willing to take an interest in their fellow Americans, dwell inside of their own narrow spheres and still represent the selfishness of sectionalism which has no place in our national life.

Washington and Jefferson and Jackson and Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson sought and worked for a consolidated Nation. You and I have it in our power to attain that great ideal within our lifetime. We can do this by following the peaceful methods prescribed under the broad and resilient provisions of the Constitution of the United States.

Here, here at Gettysburg, here in the presence of the spirits of those who fell on this ground, we give renewed assurance that the passions of war are moldering in the tombs of Time and the purposes of peace are flowing today in the hearts of a united people.

Words worth listening to today.

📚 Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. A new book by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson takes a look at the fatal missteps of Joe Biden and his inner circle that led to the return of Donald Trump to office and the decline of the public’s trust in the Democratic Party. As The New York Times book review writes:

The result is a damning, step-by-step account of how the people closest to a stubborn, aging president enabled his quixotic resolve to run for a second term. The authors trace the deluge of trouble that flowed from Biden’s original sin: the sidelining of Vice President Kamala Harris; the attacks on journalists (like Thompson) who deigned to report on worries about Biden’s apparent fatigue and mental state; an American public lacking clear communication from the president and left to twist in the wind. “It was an abomination,” one source told the authors. “He stole an election from the Democratic Party; he stole it from the American people.”

Yikes.

🎙️“JD Vance on His Faith and Trump’s Most Controversial Policies,” podcast interview of Vice President Vance by Ross Douthat. In the latest episode of his podcast recorded in Rome, Douthat and the Vice President have a fantastic talk about Catholicism, immigration, trade, and cultural issues. Douthat asks probing but fair questions and Vance offers straightforward and clear responses to his questions on numerous complicated topics. Regardless of your political orientation, or views about the media, this is a top-notch, intelligent, and civil discussion between two men who share the same faith and broad outlook on public policy.

📖 “The Rot at Disney Goes Deep,” by Steven Watts. What on earth has happened to Disney? What accounts for their strange trajectory and current cringe-worthy output. In short, why is their stuff so lame? Steven Watts explains in a terrific article for Compact magazine:

Toward the end of the Great Depression, many Americans looked to Hollywood with a keen sense of anticipation. Walt Disney, who had exploded onto the movie scene a few years earlier with his delightful Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony animated shorts, had launched a new project, something never attempted that many industry veterans deemed foolhardy: a feature-length animated film. Convinced that animation was suited only to brief bursts of comedy and could never hold an audience for 90 minutes, they deemed it “Disney’s Folly.” But when Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered on Dec. 21, 1937, it proved the naysayers wrong. The movie was an enormous success as audiences cheered and the critics swooned. It went on to become one of the most popular and profitable films in movie history, as well as the Disney Studio’s most cherished creative artifact for many decades.

Fast forward 90 years. In March 2025, after several years of troubled production, Disney released a new live-action remake of Snow White (minus the dwarfs in the title) amidst a storm of controversy. Initially beset by delays tied to Covid and the Hollywood writers’ strike, the project fell prey to bickering over cultural stereotypes and suffered from the studio’s ham-fisted attempts to update the story. Its star’s outspoken political pronouncements caused additional problems. The cinematic result, it is fair to say, has impressed neither the American public nor the critics. Ticket sales have lagged badly while reviews have ranged from unenthusiastic to devastating. Disney is poised to take an enormous financial loss on the project.

The contrasting fates of the two films throws into high relief several larger problems tormenting Disney—a notable creative decline, an embrace of identity politics, and an economic strategy pricing many ordinary people out of its market, and a seemingly determined effort to alienate its mass audience. The result has been a loss of the innovative ethos and democratic spirit that fueled Disney’s rise. As a historian who has written on the rise of Disney and sources of its appeal, I believe that Uncle Walt would be mystified by his organization’s modern course of action, and likely angry at the result….

The politicization of Disney is a betrayal of its guiding spirit. With the founding of the company in the late 1920s and over the next 40 years, Walt consistently appealed to the human love of innocence and fantasy, and the yearning to see the triumph of good over evil. As he once put it, “I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty.” Sending the company to the ramparts of the culture war has undercut that agenda….

The present Disney company seems determined to cloud Walt Disney’s pioneering entertainment vision. It has rejected creativity for cashing in, fantasy for activism, and affordability for upscale appeal. Rather than making innovative productions that appeal to the childlike innocence in all of us, Disney relentlessly cannibalizes its existing catalogue of movies for remakes and imbues them with progressive pieties. It becomes increasingly difficult not to see this dreary parade of retreads as a cynical, even desperate, maneuver to extract dollars from the pockets of consumers by trading on the Disney name. No wonder the studio seems to be losing its long connection to a middle American audience.

Read it and weep.

📽️ Hung Up On A Dream: The Zombies Documentary. This is a fantastic, moving documentary about the cult favorite Sixties band, The Zombies, who made one of the greatest albums of all time, Odessey and Oracle, as well as one of the greatest songs ever, “Time of the Season.”

In their first ever feature documentary nearly sixty years after they met as teenagers before the British Invasion music scene, THE ZOMBIES tell their story of navigating the tumultuous music industry over the decades and making one of the most influential albums of all time, Odessey and Oracle. “She’s Not There” made them the first British band after The Beatles to reach #1 in the US. After years of touring and many missteps in the 60s, sadly the band missed out on their biggest moment yet, when “Time of the Season” hit #1 and became a global success, inspiring new generations each year. The band looks back on their journey, where true friendship led them to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.