We had front row center seats last night to see the Shakespeare Theater Company’s production of The Taming of the Shrew and to simply say it was good doesn’t do it justice. It was the finest Shakespeare production I’ve ever seen. The entire cast was brilliant, highlighted by Ian Merrill Peakes’s bravura performance as Petruchio, a performance that, had it been delivered in a big budget Broadway production, would have won him a Tony. My facial muscles hurt by the final curtain because I’d spent the entire show grinning from ear to ear. It was riotous, rip-roaring fun and it answered the question of why we (or anyway, I) go to the theater: to enjoy that feeling of giddy delight that only a live theatrical performance of this kind can deliver. See it if you can.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Can Obama move to the center?
There is now a common consensus among conservatives, independents, and even many liberals that if Barack Obama is to recover from his summer of discontent he will have to move to the center and forge a consensus that can be supported by a majority of Americans. In a post over at Contentions, Jennifer Rubin (who is fast becoming my favorite blogger) this morning references a column in the Washington Post which gathers advice for Obama on how he can recover his mojo. She excerpts from the Post column this advice from Newt Gingrich:
Obama faces a choice: He can attempt to run a left-wing government against the American people. Or he can govern from the center with a large majority of Americans supporting him. He can have either his left angry or the American people angry. We will know in September which choice he has made.
Ms. Rubin then observes correctly:
And that is really what it’s all about. Analysts and pollsters will give suggestions on rhetoric or strategy, but Obama’s dilemma is a philosophical one. He’s shown himself to be a far-Left liberal, and the country doesn’t like it. He can keep at it and try to muscle through the top agenda items on the liberal wish list, putting at risk his congressional majority and his own popularity (what remains of it). Or he can swing back to the center, start over on health care, put aside cap-and-trade, come up with a tax-reform and tax-relief plan, and get serious about spending control. That would require a heartfelt realization that his agenda is too radical and will, over time, erode his standing and potentially render him a one-term president.
But will Obama make the move to the center? Can he? I myself have mentioned a few times over the past couple of weeks that I’m not sure an individual as intellectually cloistered and morally arrogant as Obama can bring himself to compromise. Ms. Rubin harbors her own doubts:
I suspect that so long as there are allies and advisers whispering in his ear that all he needs is some rhetorical tweaking, we won’t see anything approaching a substantive revision of his agenda. If the president doesn’t correct course, the voters may do it for him in 2010. But for now, don’t get your hopes up for a swing to the center. After all, Obama is being told, and no doubt believes, that the mantle of liberalism has been passed to him from Ted Kennedy. He won’t give it up—unless the voters force him to.
As Newt Gingrich says, it won’t be long before we find out.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989
I received my copy of Steve Hayward’s The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989 from Amazon the other day and I’m 100 pages into it. So far it is as good as the first volume, which I blogged about here. Fascinating stuff. We’re going to see The Taming of The Shrew at the Shakespeare Theater’s summer free-for-all tonight (front row seats!) but other than that, for the rest of the weekend, I’ll be the guy on the couch.
Mad Men: Love Among the Ruins
“New York City is in decay” – Don Draper
New York City was indeed in decay in 1963, the year in which season three of Mad Men is set. Liberal social and economic policies had begun to take its toll, sending the city into a downward spiral marked by two decades of rampant crime, disillusionment, and near bankruptcy. Don utters the line during a conversation with the head of the organization that is about to tear down the old Pennsylvania Railroad Station and replace it with the new Madison Square Garden. Now, New York has always been famous for its unsentimental attitude towards its historical architecture, tearing down and building back up at will, always in the name of progress, and nearly always with the approval of its denizens. But no other episode in its history has shown the downside of this attitude as the tearing down of Penn Station. This:
was replaced with this:
Is it any wonder the Penn Station episode caused such furor among the natives? Recall architect Vincent Skully’s famous quote comparing the new and old buildings: “One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat.”
The grief over the loss of such a grand building is conveyed in last week’s episode of Mad Men by Paul Kinsey, the beatnik-wannabe in resident. But Mad Men, as is its norm, refuses to come down on one side or the other. For everyone else at Sterling-Cooper, if it means more business in the form of a relationship with the owners of the new Garden, tearing down Penn Station is a good thing. The only hint that the producers may be sympathetic to the Paul Kinsey side of the argument is that the demolition plays such a large part of an episode entitled “Love Among the Ruins,” inspired by a Robert Browning poem of the same name whose subject is that of two lovers who meet in a turret of the last remaining tower of a once great city, now overrun with nature:
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
Till I come….But he looked upon the city, every side,
Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades'
Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,--and then,
All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.
Like the lovers in the poem, the characters in this episode of Mad Men are shown searching for love and fulfillment amidst a decaying city. It does not come so easy for them as the poem’s narrator.
The largest part of the story, I think, was the sexual awakening of Peggy Olson. The early Peggy was sexually naive to the point that she didn’t even know she was pregnant until she was about to give birth. Her prudish nature otherwise has been well-documented through the series run, and it is reinforced in “Love Among the Ruins” in her reaction to Ann Margaret’s performance in the Bye, Bye, Birdie ad. She seems threatened by both it and the men’s reaction to it, especially Don’s. But when she notices how men react to Joan’s flirtations she goes home and sings Bye, Bye, Birdie in front of her mirror – she’s seeing if she can be that girl, the kind of girl Ann Margaret was portraying. And she can. Later on she picks up a young man at a bar. She does the picking up as he seems almost incapable of it – she seems worlds more experienced than he. Later at his apartment when he doesn’t have “a Trojan” and she refuses intercourse, he is ready to dismiss her (“It’s getting late”), but she is the one who suggests “there are other things we can do.” As she leaves, he drops hints that he’d like to see her again, which she ignores. On the way out the door, though, she turns back and says, “This was fun.” While Peggy has grown and matured in front of our eyes the past few years, it is unimaginable that she would have said something like that, or acted like this, in season one or even season two. She is a harbinger of the sexual revolution to come within the next few years.
But in 1963, some of the old attitudes still survive, even on Madison Avenue. Roger Sterling’s divorce and remarriage to a girl young enough to be his daughter has cost him respect. His daughter, Joan Holloway, Bert Cooper, and even Don all have new attitudes towards him – they see him as frivolous, or worse. The most interesting part of this new attitude is how his relationship with Don will be affected. At the restaurant meeting with the Madison Square Garden executive, Don’s contempt for Roger is barely disguised.
Another aspect of how the episode shows “Love Among the Ruins” is the date set for Roger’s daughter’s wedding: November 23, 1963. President Kennedy will be assassinated the day before her wedding and one has to think that, due to this, there might not even be a wedding. Even if there is, it will be against the background of national grief and mourning. Love among the ruins, indeed.
As for Don, he continues his attempt to be a good husband. He intercedes in the disagreement between Betty and her brother about what to do about their ailing father, telling the brother how it will be. Don does the right thing, taking the old man into his home. Don Draper, the serial adulterer, often does the right thing. In many ways he is the most sympathetic and humane of all the characters on Mad Men. Witness his reaction last season to the younger associate’s jokes about Freddy Rumsen and this season to his discovery of Sal Romano’s homosexuality.
Still, he struggles. At the outdoor Maypole event, Don lapses into reverie about his daughter’s young teacher, a young pre-hippy type, watching her intently as she circles the pole. Almost subconsciously, he reaches down with his hand to touch the grass, caressing it, getting in touch with the earth. It’s a startling effective scene. You can feel the summer heat, you can feel Don’s desire. Mad Men does scenes like this, scenes with subtle, subliminal messages, told without words or with words that obscure the scene’s true meaning, better than any show in television history.
The final scene is another example of this. The show ends with a sort of rapprochement between Don and Peggy, as she comes to his office to discuss a Pampers ad. They sit together, wordless, until the picture cuts away to black. The two characters with the most to hide, with the most formidable facades, share a common bond, one that need not be spoken about or acknowledged, but one they are aware of nonetheless. Every scene with these two alone together has echoes of the flashback scene is season two when Don visits a disoriented Peggy in the hospital and tells her to get up and get out of the hospital and get on with her life. “This never happened. You’ll be shocked how much it never happened.”
Much, much more went on in this episode but since I have other things to do today I better end it here. I wish I could get to these Mad Men reviews earlier in the week but having a full-time job gets in the way. I’m a slow writer and I don’t have time to get to them during the week. Anyhow, I’m enjoying writing them but they will necessarily have to wait until the following weekend.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Ellie Greenwich, RIP
It was my beautiful bride who called me at work yesterday to break the sad news of Ms. Greenwich’s death earlier this week. When I began to list off for her some of Ms. Greenwich’s other songs - “Chapel of Love,” “Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Leader of the Pack,” “Then He Kissed Me,” “Baby, I Love You,” and more, my wife, no great lover of rock and roll but one who has a native instinct for the beautiful, said, “There’s something pure about her melodies.” Indeed. Brian Wilson said something similar: “"She was the greatest melody writer of all time." Wilson’s love for “Be My Baby” is well documented and he would spend his career as leader of the Beach Boys trying to match it. He famously wrote the Beach Boys finest song, “Don’t Worry Baby,” as an answer, and tribute, to “Be My Baby.” I’ve always thought The Beatles were also paying tribute to it in “What You’re Doing.” Both songs are great; neither match “Be My Baby.” Nothing could.
Of all The Brill Building writers, only Carole King can be considered an equal. Both Greenwich and King wrote with their then husbands, Jeff Barry and Gerry Goffin, respectively, the woman writing the tunes and the men the lyrics. Ms. King is famous now, of course, because she went on to have a very successful solo career, releasing on of the most popular albums of all time, Tapestry. Ms. Greenwich, while remaining successful in the music business after the Girl Group moment, never achieved anything like the fame Ms. King did. It is nice to see that she is now being recognized for her supreme talent in so many obituary tributes over the past few days. This one from the Washington Post sums up her career very nicely, and there are many others available through a simple Google of her name.
While the records ultimately had the names of the girl group or other singer on them (The Ronettes, The Crystals, The Righteous Brothers, The Shirelles, The Shangri-Las, Darlene Love, etc.,) though they were recognized, correctly, as the product of the great authoritarian producers of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s (George Goldner, Shadow Morton, Phil Spector), it was the Brill Building writers who gave them the raw material to craft some of the finest songs ever recorded, songs that would define an era. As critic Greil Marcus said long ago, if you were looking for rock and roll between Elvis and The Beatles, you found it at the Brill Building. And no one there did it better than Ellie Greenwich. Gone, too young, at 69. RIP.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Turning Point
For me it was 1987. I’d been a conservative for some time but a naive one. I had my views, the other side had theirs, let’s debate the issues and may the best man win. Then came the Bork nomination. Robert Bork was then, and may still be now, the finest legal thinker we have in this country. A lifelong scholar, a brilliant mind, a long and distinguished career in the law - no one was more qualified to serve on the court. The character assassination campaign he endured from the left, now widely believed to be one of the low points in modern American politics, was shocking to me. It was the point in my political education when I realized the other side did not deal in good faith, was not interested in open and honest debate, and would stop at nothing to get what it wanted, even if it meant the destruction of a honorable man’s reputation. Judge Bork’s nomination would, of course, ultimately go down to defeat in the Senate due to nothing more than the vitriolic lies spewed out by his enemies. I’ve never viewed the left in this country the same since.
And if the campaign to destroy Judge Bork had a leader, it was Ted Kennedy:
Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit down at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of democracy.
Ted Kennedy has just passed so I will not elaborate now out of respect for the dead. Before we all get caught up in the media’s adoring tributes to him, I would urge you to read the following:
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2009/08/26/some-important-lessons-from-ted-kennedy/
And finally, this GQ expose from 1990 by the late Michael Kelly:
http://men.style.com/gq/features/full?id=content_5585
This is the man who slandered Robert Bork in order to keep him off the court.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Mark This Moment?
I was confused and then incredulous this past Monday evening while watching the Fox News Special Report panel discuss the Obama administration’s decision to investigate CIA interrogators. The discussion was whether or not politics played into it and some on the panel agreed that the decision was made, or at least announced that day, to deflect attention from Obama’s failing health care bill. I nearly refused to believe it. I’ve been arguing in this space for quite some time now that I believe Obama and the people that surround him are essentially amateurs in over their heads. But could they really be this stupid?
The American people support the CIA interrogations by a wide margin. They understand instinctively that the program has produced results over the years and has helped keep us safe. Even those who may be uneasy over some of the methods being used understand the importance of the work, and they have little sympathy for terrorists getting smoke blown in their faces or bugs placed in their jail cells. They further understand that to go after the people doing this difficult work will almost certainly put an end to the program. Who, after all, would be willing to press hard during an interrogation if there exists a strong possibility that they may end up going to jail for doing so? The investigators will mail it in from now on, and who can blame them?
Even if there is no terrorist attack on American soil during their tenure, I am convinced that the Obama administration will one day rue this decision. For it reinforces the belief that they much more serious about going after former Bush officials than about fighting the war on terror. Furthermore, it does so at a time when Obama’s poll numbers are diving and his domestic agenda is in complete disarray. Americans have already begun to distrust his judgment. And now this. How could they possibly think this decision would play well with the majority of Americans?
Charles Murray has an answer in this very interesting post. Mr. Murray is one of the smartest men we have so he should be listened to. (I would point out though, that Pauline Kael did not say that. What she said was far less egregious. When asked about her reaction to Nixon’s election she commented that she did not feel qualified to talk about it because no one she knew had voted for him. Conservatives have been using the story Mr. Murray tells for years to demonstrate liberal insularity. While Ms. Kael was certainly a liberal, she was not stupid. Having said that, I would not dispute that their is a “Pauline Kael syndrome” among liberals. The syndrome simply needs another name.)
Money quote:
But they’ve been in the bubble too long. They really think that the rest of America thinks as they do. Nothing but the Pauline Kael syndrome can explain the political idiocy of letting Attorney General Eric Holder go after the interrogators.
Over at Commentary’s Contention blog, the marvelous Jennifer Rubin says something similar:
…the Obama team and its irritated left-wing supporters are acting like moths to a flame—they cannot pass up a chance to bash the Bush team. Even when it’s counterproductive, politically unpopular, lacking in factual support, or all three, they can’t help themselves. It is what motivates them, what gives them a sense of moral superiority. They are “un-Bush” and must perpetually remind us of their disdain for all things, people, policies, and events of the Bush years.
Over at Hot Air, Doctor Zero sums up my own thinking on the subject:
The Obama Administration, aware that everyone outside of union bosses, and interest groups looking for billion-dollar ribeye steaks of taxpayer money, is having trouble remembering why they voted for Obama, has decided to drag CIA interrogators and Bush Administration officials into court, where they will be persecuted for their role in defending America from terrorist attacks. Apparently Obama and his accomplices decided to distract their liberal base from the fiery Hindenburg crash of socialized medicine, by offering them a relaxing cruise on the Titanic of leftist foreign policy. As with everything else the current Administration does, it’s a remarkably foolish move: dangerous for America, and self-destructive as a strategy.
Finally, Jonah Goldberg over at The Corner, tells us to take note of this moment:
For years to come, this moment will resonate. Columnists will talk about how the deficit spiraled (even further) out of control in the summer of 2009 and the emasculation of the dollar became irreversible. Hawks will blame the castration of the CIA as the fons et origo of the next terror attack or the cause of the bureaucratic calcification of the CIA that led to some other intelligence catastrophe. Of course, there will be rebuttals to these contentions, there always are. And today's events are the children of yesterday's. The Church Committee didn't burst into existence ex nihilo and neither did the Holder inquisition. But this moment, it seems to me, will be the symbolic inflection point in conversations and arguments for years to come. So take notes, folks.
I couldn’t agree more.