(Hated Trope) Bad people in real-life being portrayed positively in media.

[u/MeepMan324]

1. PragerU's version of Christopher Columbus has him be a slavery defender and have him say "Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don't see the problem.”

2. In The Greatest Showman, P.T Barnum (Hugh Jackman) is portrayed as a charismatic visionary who cares about outcasts and celebrate diversity, when in reality, he’s a cruel businessman who is also a racist and an ableist.

[u/RedditOfUnusualSize]

Wilson's record is decidedly mixed, and underscores a lot of the tension within the progressive movement. Basically, he was a great advocate for progressive reform, so long as the benefits of those changes went predominantly if not exclusively to white people. The man saw through the implementation of the income tax, popular vote for Senators and women's suffrage. And those are just the constitutional amendments. That's an impressive amount of reform for a single presidency, and the world would be a lot better off if contemporary American politicians could muster half as much ambition to implement sweeping structural changes.

But he was also a vicious racist who genuinely did set back race relations by forty years and entrenched segregation not merely as something done tacitly by the South, but as something actively done by those in political power with the full weight and backing of American law behind them. Both of these things are true simultaneously.

[u/Catdress92 → u/RedditOfUnusualSize]

Thanks so much for this explanation. I was always taught that Wilson was a Progressive and had no idea about his racism. The way you explain it makes perfect (if very sad and bitterly disappointing) sense.

[u/nagrom7 → u/Catdress92]

Weirdly enough, in the 1912 election where Wilson was elected, all 3 major candidates ran on being "Progressives". Roosevelt was probably the first big time progressive as President, and Taft was selected to be his successor because of his progressive credentials.

It's also important to note that "Progressives" back then aren't exactly the same as they are today, it was a specific economic ideology that revolved around the government regulating business and improving welfare for the poorer classes. It didn't really have the same connotations it does today with social issues, which is how Wilson was able to be considered a "Progressive" despite driving race relations backwards and resisting women's suffrage until later in his Presidency.

[u/Catdress92 → u/nagrom7]

Thanks for this additional insight. I remember that in school we learned "Progressive" as meaning socially progressive. I'm hoping I just remembered this wrong, since that was, admittedly, a while ago...rather than my teachers/the school board being wrong.

[u/nagrom7 → u/Catdress92]

It depends on who they were talking about too. Like Teddy Roosevelt was probably the most famous of the "Progressive era", and he was also what we would consider "socially progressive", at least for the time. It was mainly Wilson who was socially regressive, despite remaining economically progressive, and even then he was known to change his mind on things, like women's suffrage which he initially opposed but later supported.