Critics,
admirers and the man himself all referred to P.T. Barnum as a Humbug. Like many, I
first encountered that charming, old-fashioned word in my favorite childhood
book and movie, which featured a character based on Barnum, The Wizard of
Oz. Author L. Frank Baum was from Chittenango, New York, near
Syracuse. Like Barnum, he was a master of escapism. If he’s not the father of
American fantasy fiction he’s damned close. Baum’s work is steeped in America’s
peculiar magic, the stuff of state fairs, wild west shows, circuses, medicine
men. He is associated with Kansas because that’s where Dorothy comes from, but
his actual long term base was Chicago, and for a number of years he edited a
newspaper in Aberdeen in the Dakota territory. During the 1890s he penned a
couple of now notorious editorials wherein he advocated the extermination of
the remaining Native Americans. He couched it almost as an act of mercy, but it
rings chilling to us in the 21st century. No one hates to hear it
more than I do. I am here at all because of my obsession with L. Frank Baum and
The Wizard of Oz. Yet on two occasions, the death of Sitting Bull and the
aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre, Baum advocated, in print, the worst
thing anyone could wish on other human beings. To bring up his positive legacy
in this context would seem like a rationalization for the indefensible, even in
the context of his times, so I won’t do it. I’m telling you he said these bad
things because you should know. Frankly, I don’t know any historical figure who
didn’t do or say some bad, even intolerable things. If you prefer to boycott
Baum’s books I fully understand, but I warn you, young people – J.K. Rowling
will be a lateral move. Maybe, and I’m just spitballing here, maybe people with
a lots and lots of imagination but not a lot of grounding in reality should
refrain from opining on life and death political matters. That rules me out!
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