Ken Burns’ new documentary “Prohibition” premiered last night. What was the most surprising thing you learned?
• Prohibition just one of those crazy ideas you have when you’re drunk
• 18th Amendment also banned tweed jackets, forcing millions of professors into dark, vice-ridden “lecture-easies”
• Moonshine isn’t distilled; it occurs naturally in the soil of several Southern states in shallow “moonshine-tables”
• Prohibition hatched after President Wilson suffered stroke following massive kegstand
• Ken Burns only 58
• Carrie Nation doesn’t NOT look like Don Zimmer
• TiVo automatically assumes recording of PBS is human error
• 2/3 of America used to be able to agree on something
• Fountain pens used to be only kind of pens
• There’s some sort of parallel with a current political issue, where banning a mind-altering substance doesn’t make it disappear, but only creates an enormous black market run by super-wealthy criminals, and forces law enforcement and the courts to fight a battle that’s impossible to win and ultimately meaningless. What issue was it again? Shit, I can’t remember. I really need to stop smoking weed.
—Staff (Chernicoff, Klumpp, Thornton)
