A Blog of My Own

Of all the productions of musical comedies I’ve seen in 50 years of patronage since childhood, one of the ten most successful is the current production of The Music Man being put on by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario this summer. Certainly not the only reason, but an important one, is Leah Oster’s performance as Marian Paroo, the librarian.

She made me aware of a paradox. Why this production of The Music Man works is that you know that you are seeing, at last, Meredith Willson’s The Music Man. That is, it is the text itself—the book, music and lyrics by Willson—that shines at center stage. You get these characters, you get what Willson wanted you to know and feel about them, and you surrender yourself to his vision and the brilliant, original way he realized it. All of that, one would think, might be at odds with a performance that stands out for its beauty as much as Leah Oster’s does. You might think, I should be believing in Marian Paroo’s reality right now, not being ravished by Oster’s singing. I should be in River City, not somewhere inside my own head making comparisons to Barbara Cook’s Tony-winning (and Capitol-recorded) performance in 1957—comparisons which, and this is all that really needs to be said, do not leave Leah Oster in the dust.

The paradox, I guess, is that it takes a singer/actress of such magnificent voice that you can’t help noticing her to erase the singer/actress from your mind and put you in communion with the author.

The paradox occurs elsewhere. It takes someone of Sinatra’s preternatural talent—a voice so special that Sinatra was nicknamed, in fact, “The Voice,” as if all others need not apply—to make you finally understand Cole Porter when he asked the musical question, “What Is This Thing Called Love?” The awesomeness of Sinatra’s talent calls attention to itself and somehow, by doing so, abnegates itself so that you feel in direct communication with the writer, not the singer. It can take an unconventional production that rethinks Hamlet (such as the one playing at Stratford this year with Ben Carlson, directed by Adrian Noble and set in some 1910 nightmare hybrid of Edwardian England and Denmark)—a production the idiosyncrasy of which can’t help calling attention to its own brilliance—to make you finally understand Shakespeare. It’s counterintuitive that the more an interpreter’s majesty holds center stage, the more the writer of the original text does, too, but that seems to be the way it often works.

Leah Oster

Olive Riley, the world’s oldest blogger, passed away on July 12.

You can read her 74 blog posts here.

Olive’s passing probably doesn’t make me the official titleholder of World’s Oldest Blogger now. Hey, let’s face it, she had fifty years on me. I’m kind of young, in those terms! I might have fifty years of blogging still ahead of me, and, doing the math, I might be at most middle-aged!

But I’ve moved up one.

Olive as a Girl

As a public service, here’s a page that evaluates banks for safeness and soundness. This might be a good time to check to see how yours rates.

A good piece in Slate by E.J. Graff makes the point that the notorious New Yorker cover is dangerous, even though satirical, because it reinforces neural pathways in our brains that are predisposed to misgivings about Barack and Michelle, even if we “know better.” In other words, by visualizing deep fears, it may not lampoon them or dispel them, but instead strengthen them—even though this was not the cartoon’s intention.

But making things real can be a force for good, too. In fact, another case of it may well account for Obama’s candidacy.

I refer to the first three seasons of the Fox show 24. In that show, a central character was President David Palmer, who was black. Dennis Haysbert portrayed him as a man of considerable strength of character and intelligence.

When I saw the show, I thought, “Wow—what an edgy, daring, admirable and cool casting choice.” I also thought the show must be taking place in the year 2300, since it was inconceivable to me that we’d have a black president any time sooner than that.

Season 3 of the show ended in May 2004. Now here it is merely four years later, and what seemed like as if it could not happen for another three centuries is on the cusp of happening now.

I think it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that 24 made it happen. By showing it to us, it made the possibility of a black president real. Ironically, Rupert Murdoch may be responsible for electing Barack Obama president.

I’m a devotee of the first 5 seasons of Saturday Night Live–the golden age, as I think of it–and have acquired the first 3 seasons on DVD. (Of course, I haven’t actually watched any of the DVDs yet. At the rate I’m going, I figure I’ll watch all the DVDs I own and haven’t watched yet, and listen to all the CDs I own and haven’t listened to yet, by the year 2016. Sadly, the literal truth is that I’ll probably die with some of them still in shrink wrap.)

This morning I came across a fun web page by Kara Kovalchik that lists, and describes, “5 Awful Saturday Night Live Hosts” from these first 5 seasons. (If you’re curious, they’re Milton Berle, Louise Lasser, Frank Zappa, Jodie Foster, and Chevy Chase–but I recommend going to the page and reading it to find out just why.)

Jesse Ventura is considering getting in the ring with Al Franken and Norm Coleman as a candidate in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race.

Conventional wisdom is that this will hurt Franken, in that Ventura, like Franken, opposes the Iraq War and will siphon off some of the anti-war vote that might have gone into Franken’s tank.

I see it differently. I think Ventura in the race helps Franken’s chances.

There are two kinds of people in Minnesota, as elsewhere. Dumb people, and not-dumb people. Some of Franken’s opposition has come from the not-dumb who don’t like his politics, but a considerable portion has come from people who don’t get that his humorous writings over the years have been satirical.

Satire is criticism. It is often, going back to Jonathan Swift and his Modest Proposal, the most potent form of criticism, succeeding in directing people’s attention to social and political ills in need of correction far better than straightforward harangues have done. Its method has often been (again, going all the way back to Swift) to posit a point of view exactly opposite to the one held by the writer, in order to hold that position up to ridicule.

The problem Franken now faces is that a (classic) satirical tool he has often employed, and brilliantly, is to play the fool. People who have some ability to pick up on nuance have had no problem realizing that the sensibility that drove Franken’s satire (both on the printed page and in performance) was the opposite of the one on the foolish surface. He has portrayed a vain, blinkered narcissist in order to hold up for examination, and criticize, the narcissism in all of us. He has written as if he were a sexist pig in order to put us in touch with, and cause us to examine, our sexual attitudes (and to make us wonder whether limitless pornography, viewable by youngsters, is really a thing we ought to be tolerating). There is no doubt that there is narcissism and sexual-objectification in Franken; he has never said, “I am better than you.” He has said, “I am you. Let’s face it, we’re human. If we have a hope of making this world a better place, the first thing we have to do is admit who and what we are to have made the world the way it is.”

But a lot of people (apparently) just don’t get it. They’ve been swayed by Franken-haters that he sincerely supports the positions that he has held up to ridicule. They don’t realize that his core beliefs are the same as theirs. In short, they are dumb. Since they oppose Franken, they are a natural part of Norm Coleman’s constituency, absent a Jesse Ventura in the race. But since I think they are also exactly the kind of people who would vote for a professional wrestler, Coleman stands to lose more voters to Ventura than Franken does.

Ventura also presents Franken with a whole different opportunity. I have written that Franken would be much better off being funny in this race—being who he is—than hiding his wit under a bushel. Apologizing for his wit, which he has tried to do to win the dumb people back, obviously hasn’t worked—they still don’t like him. His wit is a powerful tool for point-making. Trying to win this Senate race without it will be like trying to wrestle with both hands tied behind his back. The eminently ridiculous Ventura provides him a juicy target for his humor.

Run, Jesse, run.

I’ve been grappling on this blog with how Al Franken should handle his humorous past (and his humorous talent) in his present run for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota. Now so is Michael Kinsley of Slate. Good piece.

My wife is a devotee of the work of American poet Eugene Field (1850-1895). One of the nation’s first newspaper columnists (for the Chicago Daily News), he is often referred to as “The Poet of Children,” because he wrote the hardy perennial “Wynken, Blynken and Nod.” But he deserves to be known for more than that, and in fact, he railed against the sobriquet in his own time.

Back in July of last year, I quoted one of my favorite poems by the humorist Roy Blount, Jr., “Song to Pie.” On this Independence Day 2008, nothing could be more appropriate than to reproduce Eugene Field’s ode to that defiantly American culinary classic, “Apple-Pie and Cheese”:

Full many a sinful notion
Conceived of foreign powers
Has come across the ocean
To harm this land of ours;
And heresies called fashions
Have modesty effaced,
And baleful, morbid passions
Corrupt our native taste.
O tempora! O mores!
What profanations these
That seek to dim the glories
Of apple-pie and cheese!

I’m glad my education
Enables me to stand
Against the vile temptation
Held out on every hand;
Eschewing all the tittles
With vanity replete,
I’m loyal to the victuals
Our grandsires used to eat!
I’m glad I’ve got three willing boys
To hang around and tease
Their mother for the filling joys
Of apple-pie and cheese!

Your flavored creams and ices
And your dainty angel-food
Are mighty fine devices
To regale the dainty dude;
Your terrapin and oysters,
With wine to wash ‘em down,
Are just the thing for roisters
When painting of the town;
No flippant, sugared notion
Shall my appetite appease,
Or bate my soul’s devotion
To apple-pie and cheese!

The pie my Julia makes me
(God bless her Yankee ways!)
On memory’s pinions takes me
To dear Green Mountain days;
And seems like I see Mother
Lean on the window-sill,
A-handin’ me and brother
What she knows ‘ll keep us still;
And these feelings are so grateful,
Says I, “Julia, if you please,
I’ll take another plateful
Of that apple-pie and cheese!”

And cheese! No alien it, sir,
That’s brought across the sea,–
No Dutch antique, nor Switzer,
Nor glutinous de Brie;
There’s nothing I abhor so
As mawmets of this ilk–
Give me the harmless morceau
That’s made of true-blue milk!
No matter what conditions
Dyspeptic come to feaze,
The best of all physicians
Is apple-pie and cheese!

Though ribalds may decry ‘em,
For these twin boons we stand,
Partaking thrice per diem
Of their fulness out of hand;
No enervating fashion
Shall cheat us of our right
To gratify our passion
With a mouthful at a bite!
We’ll cut it square or bias,
Or any way we please,
And faith shall justify us
When we carve our pie and cheese!

De gustibus, ‘t is stated,
Non disputandum est.
Which meaneth, when translated,
That all is for the best.
So let the foolish choose ‘em
The vapid sweets of sin,
I will not disabuse ‘em
Of the heresy they’re in;
But I, when I undress me
Each night, upon my knees
Will ask the Lord to bless me
With apple-pie and cheese!

In the fall of 2006, I entered a Chicago Tribune essay contest run by columnists Mary Schmich and Eric Zorn. The task was to write about an experience involving losing; the winners of the contest (there would be four winners) would, by virtue of winning, turn that losing experience into a winning one.

I was a winner.

Here’s the essay that nabbed me the honor:

1962, Baltimore. My friend Mark and I were the ones who remained standing in the spelling bee that would determine Mt. Washington Elementary’s representative at the citywide competition.

Back and forth we went in our mutual excellence. Words of all stripes—mere child’s play to us. The longer we went mano a mano, the more I realized I really had a chance to win, the giddier I became. Yet a tiny voice spoke to me, clashing with that of the teacher calling the words. It said that ever since I’d known him, winning had been Mark’s birthright, not mine; it said that he was the perpetual hero of the story, and I the sidekick. I knew that victory for me now required silencing that tiny voice.

My word. A noun. Singular or plural? I couldn’t quite hear. Clarification on this mattered now more than anything. I asked for clarification. The answer: Singular.

I spelled it with an “s” on the end.

Within a second, I knew the terrible thing I’d done. I grew dizzy even before I heard the gasps of the others. What had made my mouth say what my brain knew better than? An impulse from my unconscious that second place was safer? More familiar? That I might win a bee and lose a friend? That there was danger as well as glory in the spotlight?

Mark went on to become a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution. I went on to enter this contest.

Now, an addendum. Last week, I received this email press release about Mark:

J. MARK IWRY NAMED ONE OF THE “100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE IN FINANCE”

List Released in June 2008 Issue of Treasury & Risk Magazine

WASHINGTON, DC – J. Mark Iwry, Principal of The Retirement Security Project, Nonresident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution, Research Professor at Georgetown University, and Of Counsel to Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, was named one of the “100 Most Influential People in Finance” in the June 2008 issue of Treasury & Risk Magazine. He was one of five individuals recognized in the category of Retirement & Benefits for his efforts to “take the case for simpler, broader retirement savings options to the corridors of power.”

On behalf of The Retirement Security Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts in partnership with The Brookings Institution and Georgetown University, Mr. Iwry works to promote effective policy solutions to improve the retirement security of all Americans. He has authored numerous proposals and reforms that are changing the way Americans save, including the automatic IRA proposal he co-authored through the Retirement Security Project, which is pending as a bill in Congress.

Mr. Iwry served at the U.S. Treasury Department from 1995 to 2001 as the principal Executive Branch official directly responsible for tax policy and regulation relating to the Nation’s qualified pension and 401(k) plans, employer-sponsored health plans, and other employee benefits. Under his direction, Treasury launched an integrated strategy to increase saving by defining, approving and promoting 401(k) automatic enrollment and other default arrangements, including the introduction of automatic rollover to curtail pension leakage. He was a principal architect of the Saver’s Credit to expand 401(k) and IRA coverage for middle- and lower-income workers and of the “SIMPLE” 401(k)-type plan, and was centrally involved in developing the sweeping Presidential proposals to expand coverage through “Universal Savings Accounts.”

Mr. Iwry. regularly advises Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, often testifies before Congress and State legislatures, and has advised five Presidential campaigns (2004 and 2008), GAO and other federal agencies, private-sector organizations, and foreign and State government agencies and officials on strategies to expand saving and retirement security. He is active as a lecturer and author, and his views are frequently reported in the major media and trade press. Formerly a partner in the law firm of Covington & Burling, chair of the D.C. Bar Employee Benefits Committee, and member of the White House Task Force on Health Care Reform, Mr.Iwry is an honors graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and has a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He is a member of the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court and is listed in Who’s Who, Best Lawyers in America, etc.