“Little House on the Prairie”: Tea Party manifesto

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 18:17:00 +0000

THE LITTLE HOUSE BOOKS, eight novels published between 1932 and 1943, are Laura Ingalls Wilder’s tribute to the great plains and her homesteading family. “I realized that I had seen and lived it all,” she wrote later, “all the successive phases of the frontier […] a whole period of American history.” Written during the depression, when the author was in her sixties and seventies, these autobiographical narratives of enduring wildfire, drought, locusts, tornadoes, and blizzards have sold tens of millions of copies.

Beloved though they may be, however, the books are in danger of being politicized, having already acquired a certain conservative aura. Much of it emanated from the 1970s-era television caricature, “Little House on the Prairie,” which leached the books of their rich specificity while displaying an often shirtless Michael Landon, chest shaved, addressing concerns never mentioned in the originals, including drug addiction, rape, and menopause. Ronald Reagan reportedly called it his favorite television show (Landon campaigned for him), watching it in the White House while he and his wife dined off TV trays. In a 2008 profile of the Republican vice-presidential nominee, the New York Times cited one of Sarah Palin’s sisters remembering that her sibling read “a lot” as a child. The only specific title she could recall was Little House on the Prairie.

Salon.com > Laura Ingalls Wilder

“Little House on the Prairie”: Tea Party manifesto