My mom found this newspaper recently. The date? September 8th, 1943. Italy had just quit WW2. But what is fascinating is the extent to which the war dominated the discourse. Through the newspaper there is virtually nothing that isn’t related to it somehow. Articles, war bonds, movies, comics, cigarettes, classifieds (remember those?): everything tied in with the war. In Canada and many other countries, Afghanistan and Iraq are important situations. But they don’t dominate our daily lives like World Wars 1 and 2 must have. For someone too young to remember the atmosphere, it’s more than a little surprising to see.
B
Check out more: Featured Posts - Our World - Culture
![[Post to Twitter]](http://www.cashewman.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter-micro3.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Delicious]](http://www.cashewman.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-delicious-micro3.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Digg]](http://www.cashewman.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-digg-micro3.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to StumbleUpon]](http://www.cashewman.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-su-micro3.png){kind=icon}
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I like the “T zone” where cigarettes are judged. “They’re easy on my throat” - that’s some great marketing.
About your actual point: Once Obama became president, it was almost as if the Iraq war “ended.” It dropped out of the news. While it may have been going a little more smoothly than a year prior, it was (and still is) pretty intense.
[Reply]
Brendan Reply:
January 25th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Sure, but it was never as pervasively covered in the media as this - that’s what I found fascinating.
Incidentally - also entertained by the Tzone!
thanks,
B
[Reply]
Ha! T-Zone was one thing I noticed, too. I wonder how that’d fly in a newspaper now. “The Star’s Platform” is pretty stunning. They’re blatant about being biased, and neglectful of any other truth or version of the story.
[Reply]
I wonder if it was because the war back then had such a big impact on everyone in society rather than now where it doesn’t necessarily touch us all directly. I’ve heard that there was less depression during war times of the past because everything was important back then. Day to day they had something to achieve even though it was frightening the struggle to survive gave direction and drive whereas now it’s so far removed from our daily lives. Just a thought…
[Reply]
You wouldn’t know this, but people, at a time more proximate to WWII, often referred to it as “a good war” in a few meanings. It was a good war in that it fought evil; no question about that. But lots of people used it as “I had a good war”. I guess that was in contrast to WWI, which was still fresh in the collective memory. Jac is onto something: people knew that they were fighting evil and there was very little, if any, ambivalence on the subject. Even Bertrand Russell, a life-long pacifist (who was villified for that in WWI) toned it down during WWII, realizing Hitler had to be stopped.
[Reply]
Brendan Reply:
January 28th, 2010 at 10:24 am
great comment…
[Reply]