Franklin program featured in The Onion

The local print version of The Onion for Oct. 16-22 included a lengthy article about the Benjamin Franklin program as part of its AV Club coverage of local San Francisco events. (Unlike the rest of the contents in this satirical newspaper, the AV Club provides serious reviews, interviews, etc. about local events.) Since I couldn't find this article anywhere on the web, I am reproducing it here for those who missed it.

Feature

Benjamin Franklin and the Invention of America. With election season in full swing, there’s no better time to take a look back at American history to see just how we got here. More than 200 years before anyone declared, “It’s all about the Benjamins,” it was about one Benjamin—Mr. Franklin. Patriotic statesman, noted scientist, prolific writer, and industrious inventor. Franklin is celebrated Friday and Saturday at the Herbst with a program from Humanities West that includes insightful lectures, music, and more. Just what was it that made Franklin so special? The A.V. Club spoke with three of the people involved with the program—including Pulitzer-winning Stanford prof Jack Rakove—about beaver hats, democracy, and tying the past to the present.

Dee Andrews

History Department Chair, California State University East Bay

The AV Club:

What question do you get asked most about Benjamin Franklin?

Dee Andrews: I think the image most people have of Franklin is from the end of his life, when he was a diplomat in Paris, the famous pictures of him in his beaver hat with the spectacles at the end of his nose, being surrounded by Parisian women. I think most people want to know whether he was really quite as sexually prolific as people seem to think he was. He was really an extraordinary figure by all measures—intellectually and experientially nobody can compare with him. He would be the first to say that he liked women, absolutely, but I think that’s admirable myself.

AVC: Is there anyone in modern America who resembles Franklin?

DA: No. At his time it was possible to be somebody who was involved in many different aspects of life, because the world was as simpler place. I suppose if any of the great computer wizards of our time turn to politics and writing, that could still be a possible life course. If Steve Jobs decides to get involved in California politics and it also turns out he’s a brilliant writer and knows how to be a truly gifted diplomat in his old age, I suppose Steve Jobs might be a Franklin type.

AVC: Given today’s political climate, what lessons should we learn from Franklin?

DA: That democracy is still the best hope on earth for a fair and just society. Franklin was the most democratic of the Founding Fathers, he had come out of regular people. He wrote his newspaper for regular people and he was eager to sense public opinion.

Jack Rakove

Professor of History, Stanford University

AVC: Why was Franklin never president?

Jack Rakove: Had he not gone back to France in 1776 as part of our embassy, Franklin could have been president of the Continental Congress. When Franklin comes back from Europe in the mid-1780s, he’s elected president of Pennsylvania. When he comes back he’s almost turning 80, which by anybody’s standards, then or now, maybe even John McCain’s, would be regarded as a relatively senior age.

AVC: Was the media as critical of prominent figures then as they are today?

JR: Oh yeah, probably more so. Eighteenth-century press is pretty wide open, pretty satirical. There are conventions like you don’t sign your name, you write pseudonymously, opinion pieces are published under an initial or some sort of pen name. The convention was that it’s the argument that counts, and not the authority of the writer. Today when you blog or when you post comments to a news article or opinion piece, you can do it anonymously and therefore you have the same kind of license that existed in the 18^th century. You can hide behind the veil. That’s probably one of the reasons why people are so obnoxious on the Internet.

AVC: How as it decided that Benjamin Franklin would be on the 100-dollar bill?

JR: That I don’t know. He was a wealthy guy, so maybe they thought aim high.

George Hammond

Chairman of the Board of Directors, Humanities West

AVC: Have you found any obscure facts about Franklin?

George Hammond: People have an image of him putting the kite up in the sky and having the key attached to it and proving that lightning is electricity, but he actually sat down and wrote a scientific paper on the subject, making predictions about what would happen. He went to Europe and he was well known as this one American scientist when Europeans thought there’s nothing going on over there except farming. Philadelphia was a town of about 20,000 people at the time. From their point of view, America was less civilized than, say, what people think of the backwoods of Canada now.

AVC: What do you hope that people will take away from this series?

GH: One of the things that we really try for in our programs is to fill in the detail to cut through the image. People will say today there’s this big financial mess so we can’t get anything done, and in the old days they didn’t have these messes. It’s important when you’re living in the present time to not buy the fact that the past was quite as simple as it appears. People accomplished great things when there was a huge mess going on.

--Nicole Beckley