Anyone else been watching THE ROOSEVELTS on PBS this week?

[LincolnToddFan]

I've studied Franklin and Eleanor, but knew virtually nothing about Teddy Roosevelt other than that he was a bit of a wild man and a Lincoln admirer....wow...there is SO much more!

TR's mother Martha Stewart Bulloch was a quintessential Southern belle. During the Civil War, she successfully prevailed upon her Yankee husband Theodore Sr. not to take up arms and fight for the Union, as he'd wanted to. Margaret Mitchell reportedly based Scarlett O'Hara on her.

TR was an intellectual, an imperialist, a romantic and a bully with a hair trigger temper. (He apparently once shot a dog for barking at him!) During his presidency he staged boxing and jujitsu matches in the East Room. He also forced members of the Diplomatic Corps down to Rock Creek Park where he put them through a series of harrowing obstacle courses designed to test their "fitness". Anyone who failed was considered a wimp, and TR would write to their home Embassies suggesting that they be recalled. The antics of his children in the WH make those of Tad and Willie Lincoln look sissified.

There was/is a serious strain of mental illness and alcoholism running through both branches of the patrician Rooselvelt family..the Oyster Bay side(TR's branch) and the FDR/Hyde Park side.

Nowadays a guy like Teddy Roosevelt would have no chance of being elected to the presidency...he would be put on Ritalin and treated for ADHD.

This miniseries by Ken Burns is every bit the equal of his monumental Civil War epic...it's GREAT!!