Entertainment

PRIMETIME

You never know. The most stop-the-music, shocking bit of TV seen last week may have been on, of all places, C-SPAN 2. It was in a fascinating show starring declassified black-and-white film, labeled “Outtakes,” of interviews with Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States.

Seated at a desk, circa 1964, when he was 10 years out of office and close to 80, Truman, in his clipped but casual monotone, told fabulous inside tales. The anecdotes flowed so easily that it was as if you and a close friend, a former U.S. President, were on a long car ride, swapping stories – until he told one that nearly caused you to drive off the road.

Among the less shocking but riveting was the one Truman told about a dinner hosted by Josef Stalin, how Stalin’s dinners included many toasts, all followed by swigs of vodka, with which Truman was unfamiliar and found tough “to get down.” He also said he found vodka to be so powerful that he’d regularly just touch it to his lips following each toast.

But this dinner, Truman recalled, was shortly after Stalin was rumored to have suffered a heart attack, thus Truman said he was amazed that Stalin, who didn’t look well, could down so much vodka and remain coherent. Finally, Truman reached over to pour from Stalin’s carafe. A poker player, Truman caught Stalin in a bluff – his “vodka” actually was a clear, light wine.

Also Truman recalled being apprised of the atomic bomb project. He began to speak of an update he received about “Little Boy,” the code name for the bomb, when he stopped and suggested how silly it was to speak cloak and dagger code into the ear of the President of the United States. In the background a spontaneous laugh, perhaps from the cameraman, was heard.

But there was a moment that wasn’t the least bit funny nor charming.

Recalling a political campaign, Truman spoke of an effort expected to placate “niggers.” Whoa. That stopped me, cold.

Sure, 20th Century U.S. Presidents were often given to private expressions of bigotry. Richard Nixon’s intolerance was heard on Oval Office recordings; Woodrow Wilson’s private letters revealed him to be less enlightened than he’s widely credited to have been.

But to see and hear a U.S. President, as late as 1964, sit before a camera and casually utter that word was a shock.

C-SPAN, immediately after that clip aired, hooked up with a scholarly gent standing in the Truman Library in Independence, Mo. He explained that Truman’s use of “nigger” might be attributed to the context of the story he told, as if he were quoting someone else.

But next, and more significantly, he said that it could not be forgotten that Truman, at his core, was a product of 19th century – and not 20th century – America. In other words, it’s likely that the word flowed naturally from him.

From there, it became a quick and natural trip to 21st-century America, where the “N-word,” historically the most hateful slur for African-Americans, has fought back from near-extinction and been returned to the mainstream – incredibly, though, by the work of African-Americans, specifically many of the biggest music (rap), movie and comedy stars.

In many cases, the word is now so reflexively and casually spoken by young black men when referencing other young black men that one is left to wonder if its hateful, hurtful and historical significance escapes them the way it was lost on Harry Truman in 1964.

Surely, the current use of the word could be excused, explained and rationalized the way the man in The Truman Library first suggested on Truman’s behalf – that it be placed in the context of the dialogue Truman was revisiting. But even Truman’s advocate saw it for what it was in the 1960s and for what it remains: A vile, backwards word.

And, by program’s end, it was difficult to discern what was more disturbing – the word easily spoken into a camera in 1964 by a former U.S. President, or the word easily spoken into cameras and microphones by African-Americans more than two generations later.