FDR, Grilled Millionaires and the Coup Plot

This week PBS presents an American Experience episode on President Franklin Roosevelt. The program shows FDR addressing students from the University of North Carolina about what they are hearing in the media about him. Rather sarcastically he characterizes the view of the wealthy and their minions in the press, “..that I breakfasted every morning on a dish of grilled millionaire.” In many ways FDR saves those fools from themselves. This county probably goes Commie if he does not act.

The program does not detail the coup plot by aristocrats and businessmen to install a fascist military dictatorship, ala Mussolini, in 1933. We not are taught this in school, either. This is disturbing, because it helps to understand the lengths to which those of privilege will go in order to maintain their positions. This is not the stuff of conspiracy theory. The records of the McCormack-Dickstein Committee of Congress document this. PBS does a disservice to the public by not educating it to these important events.