update on the Morris thing – Kimchi and Justice

thelovelyjazmin:

idyllspace:

magdalyna:

ravingliberal:

grassthatchedhut:

papinianista:

owainns:

elizascuyler:

ok but i feel like after hamilton i can’t take the founding fathers seriously anymore like

mention john adams and all i think about is ‘tell my wife john adams doesn’t have a real job anyway’

mention james madison and all i think about is ‘madison u made as a hatter so take ur medicine’

mention thomas jefferson and all i think about is ‘stayin mellow doin whatever the hell it is u do in monticello’

mention george washington and all i think about is [jefferson voice] daddy’s calling’

idk this is becoming a problem

tbh I don’t really see it as a problem? like the founding fathers are not serious they’re ridiculous and petty and self absorbed and absolutely flawed human beings and i think the musical does a great job of conveying that! and it’s important is because everyone tries to portray the founding fathers as this monolithic group of intelligence and justice and bravery and they really…. weren’t. gouverneur morris literally dies by shoving a whalebone up his dick. aaron burr tries to start his own empire in the southwest and is tried for treason (and if I’m not mistaken i think one of his defense attorneys is luther martin, aka the former attorney general of maryland and most abrasive– but also most strongly anti-slavery– asshole at the constitutional convention). alexander hamilton literally tries to fight the entire democratic-republican party. like, these guys are ridiculous and they all have vastly different viewpoints and everyone glorifies them and tries to use them in their political arguments (take a shot every time u hear someone say “but the founding fathers believed” like which fucking founding father i want citations) and it’s popular media like hamilton that humanizes them, that makes people realize that they really weren’t just a bunch of boring marble statues who were somehow more enlightened or superhuman than the rest of us.

so like this is all true, but I just want to add that one of the most frustrating/hilarious parts of doing constitutional law is that a huge amount of the time when even super eminent people say “the Founding Fathers believed” they mean “the Federalist Papers say.” Aka “Hamilton specifically writing in his most propagandistic mode believed”. Aka “the man with the most opinions in the history of opinions believed, and probably no one else.”

I am mostly into (as u say @crossedwires) the mythological retelling aspect of the musical but if ONE originalist sees this show and thinks “wait…….these documents were not delicately handcrafted out of marble and a lot of the people who wrote them were habitual liars and the best interpretive guide we have to the Constitution was written by a guy whose idea of compromise was the Reynolds Pamphlet…………” I will be very satisfied.

wait can we go back to the thing about morris

you can’t just casually drop “dies by shoving a whalebone up his dick” into the discourse and then move on

Odd bless America.

*raises hand* wait, I too would like more detail about death by whale bone sounding, what the actual fuck.

according to wiki: Morris died on November 6, 1816 after causing himself internal injuries
and an infection while using a piece of whale bone as a catheter to
attempt clearing a blockage in his urinary tract.

See? “The Founding Fathers” wanted us to all have access to medical care.