This Day in Television History (‘The Flintstones’ Premieres)

Sept. 30, 1960— The Flintstones, the first animated cartoon to run on primetime network television, premiered on ABC.

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, annoyed that critics labeled as “children’s entertainment” their first two TV cartoons, Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound, conceived of this show as a way to attract adult audiences as well.

The creators were originally inspired by a 1955 Tex Avery animated short, The First Bad Man, on the history of Texas 1 million years ago.

But Hanna—much to the irritation of his partner—openly admitted that Fred Flintstone bore many than a passing resemblance to Ralph Kramden, another loud, burly guy with an endlessly understanding wife and with a neighbor and sidekick, from The Honeymooners.

If Honeymooners’ star and creator Jackie Gleason ever felt like suing for plagiarism, he soon got over it, realizing that millions of youngsters would have blamed him for driving their favorite show off the air. (Such fears did not prevent the creators of the comic strip “Hi and Lois” from squawking that the original name of the series, “The Flagstones,” was all too reminiscent of their own couple, the Flagstons.)

For adults, there were winking references, throughout the series’ six-season run, to celebrities (often guest-starring as themselves) such as “Stony Curtis,” “Gary Granite,” “Ann-Margrock,” “Liberocki, “Arnold Palmtree,” and “Wednesday Tuesday.”

The prototype set by The Flintstones—a jerk of a dad with a more level-headed wife—wasn’t irretrievably lost when the show went off the air. More than two decades later, it would be revived by The Simpsons.

The quartet who created Fred and Wilma Flintstones and neighbors Barney and Betty Rubble had extensive acting experience, especially of the voice kind:

*Alan Reed, who preferred radio to film work, was the voice of “Boris” in Disney’s Lady and the Tramp before taking on the role of Fred—a character whose ample physical dimensions were modeled on his.

*Jean Vander Pyl played not only Wilma but Pebbles, before going on to The Jetsons, Top Hat, The Secret Squirrel Show, and The Magilla Gorilla Show.

*Bea Benaderet, the voice of many female characters in Warner Brothers Looney Tunes, had to withdraw from her role as Betty Rubble because of scheduling conflicts with a new series, Petticoat Junction.

*Mel Blanc, my favorite of the group—nicknamed “The Man of a Thousand Voices” for his long and versatile career in animation—not only gave vocal form to Barney and Flintstone pet Dino, but also to more than 40 other characters on the show. So integral was he to the show that, after he was involved in a near-fatal accident several months into the show’s run, his colleagues gathered at his hospital bedside so he could participate in episodes as he recovered.

A close relative, hearing that I’d be creating this post, said, “You can’t write about the show without discussing the theme song.”

True enough. I readily confess to being more than a little hazy about some episodes and characters after all these years, but “Meet the Flintstones” is engraved in my memory, as it is, I suspect, for more than a few baby boomers.

That catchy tune, with lyrics by Hanna and Barbera and an irresistible melody by composer Hoyt Curtin, wasn’t heard until Season 3. But it’s the way that everyone has recalled ever since.

Central to the appeal of The Flintstones are its cheerful anachronisms.  Start with that “Meet the Flintstones” line about the “modern Stone Age family. Think also of “The Barney Copter,” an experiment in flight that Fred promptly takes control of (and dooms) as “The Flintstone Flyer”: Dino (dinosaurs, scientists say, had disappeared well before homo sapiens came along); and Christmas (the Stone Age was, of course, centuries before Christ).

Oh, one more thing you might wonder: Where did Fred’s catchphrase, “Yabba Dabba Doo!", come from? Reed improvised it, improving on the script’s “Yahoo!”, inspired by the Brylcreem slogan, "A little dab'll do ya."

Quote of the Day (Anthony Powell, on Decisive Events in Life)

“For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected, so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity.”—English novelist Anthony Powell (1905-2000), A Buyer’s Market: A Dance to the Music of Time, Second Movement (1952)

Joke of the Day (Michael Palascak, on What He Should Have Learned As an English Major)

“I was an English major when I was in college. I didn't get a lot of job interviews, being an English major. I should have seen that coming. Foreshadowing.”—Stand-up comic Michael Palascak, Comedy Central special, Nov. 6, 2019

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Fr. Jack Welch, on ‘The Catholic Imagination’)

“The Catholic imagination is a thesaurus of metaphors and symbols. The mystery of God requires a kaleidoscope of imagery. God is like a rock, a fortress, a shield, a place of refuge. God is like a mother, a shepherd, a dark night. The psyche finds images for what cannot be fully expressed.” —John Welch, O. Carm. (1939-2025), “Catholic Imagination,” Carmelite Review, Fall 2013-Winter 2014 issue

Flashback, September 1975: Redford Paranoid Thriller ‘Three Days of the Condor’ Opens

Three months after the Rockefeller Commission released its report documenting abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Three Days of the Condor was released 50 years ago this week, further heightening audiences’ fears about a secret government agency run amok.

The movie, which starred Robert Redford, brought in $27 million in box-office revenues on a budget of $20 million, cementing the actor’s status as the premier leading man of the mid-1970s after it had been temporarily disrupted by the underperforming The Great Gatsby.

The film was an adaptation of the James Grady novel Six Days of the Condor. Though there were numerous changes from page to screen (itemized in Allan MacInnis’s 2011 post from the “Alienated in Vancouver” blog), the most significant might have been the time compression indicated by the title.

Peter Yates, who worked with Redford three years before on The Hot Rock, was originally set to direct. But he was replaced by Sydney Pollack, who had collaborated with the star on The Way We Were and would make a total of seven films with him.

Pollack’s “great gift,” Redford said in a Time Magazine interview after his friend’s death in 2008, was “to cover what could have been just sort of crass commercial filmmaking with a whole artistic [approach] that was more abstracted and was more hip and was more offbeat.”

In Pollack’s filmography, the movie resembling this the most might be The Pelican Brief, another slick thriller featuring the biggest box-office star of the time (Tom Cruise) and the requisite love interest (Jeanne Tripplehorn).

Redford’s character, Joe Turner, goes out to pick up lunch for his colleagues at the fictitious American Literary Historical Society (a CIA cover), only to discover upon his return that all his coworkers have been slaughtered. Following a planned attempt to “come in from the cold” that nearly ends with his own assassination, he goes on the run to save his life and ferret out the truth

Reflecting in some manner the film’s plot, the atmosphere on the set was “tense,” according to this recollection by photographer Terry O’Neill, “mainly because the film was very topical, New York City was a bleak place in 1974, the President [Nixon] had just resigned, and the former head of the CIA [Richard Helms] was supposedly on set talking to Robert Redford.” 

That turned out to be the case, as the actor was, with as little fanfare as possible, eliciting from Helms inside tips about his former agency.

Redford’s Turner is supposed to be bookish and slightly naïve as he pores over books in his unsecured office.

But Redford being Redford, he doesn’t look the slightest bit nerdy, an impression enhanced by his stylishly casual apparel: flared denim, a gold and gray wool tie, and a gray tweed herringbone jacket that fostered such a fashion trend that “all menswear guys have tried to copy this jacket,” said French designer Nicolas Gabard, according to Charles Teasdale’s retrospective on the film this month in The Financial Times.

I guess the filmmakers needed something to make it plausible that Faye Dunaway’s Kathy would fall for this stranger who abducts her in his frantic attempt to stay alive—not normal behavior for most women in similar circumstances.

But for all that, the plot was taut and the conspiracy details not especially far-fetched—especially so for 1970s audiences who were learning daily, through the evening news, to distrust whatever the government was telling them. 

Though Dunaway did not experience with Redford or Pollack the animosity she had encountered with Roman Polanski on Chinatown, her role was also hardly as complex or extensive as in that classic neo-noir. Nor was she able to rehearse or emotionally bond much with Redford, who was already busy with pre-production on All the President’s Men.

That adaptation of the Bob Woodward-Carl Bernstein bestseller about how they broke the Watergate story was a real-life version of the “paranoid” or “conspiracy” thriller genre that became so prominent in the Seventies.

Such movies as The Parallax View, The Conversation, Klute, and Winter Kills marked a sharp turn away from nail-biters from a few decades before, when—at least on film—the U.S. government protected its citizens from foreign agents infiltrating the U.S. (Additionally, two Godfather movies and Chinatown evinced cynicism about Law and Order, American style.)

Now, with revelations of Presidential deceit about Watergate and Vietnam—not to mention the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr.—the American government and private companies with access to high-tech equipment and secrets were being depicted as nefarious.

Unlike wartime and later “conspiracy” movies, Three Days of the Condor was neither blithely optimistic nor pessimistic. Its “open” ending about Turner’s fate was, however, deeply disquieting—in effect, leaving it up to the public to defend against attacks on the liberty of institutions as much as on individuals, from whatever quarter.

Photo of the Day: Fall Festival, Englewood NJ

Today, my hometown of Englewood, NJ, celebrated its fall festival in Depot Square. The event featured several service providers, numerous food vendors, and several rides. I couldn’t resist taking this particular photo—especially since some corn was among the items sold at the food stalls.

Quote of the Day (Stephen Sondheim, on Music, ‘A Foreign Language’)

“Music is a foreign language which everyone knows but only musicians can speak.” — Pulitzer Prize-winning American songwriter Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021), Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics, 1981-2011 (2011)

Joke of the Day (George Carlin, on Talking to Himself)

“The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept.” — American stand-up comic and actor George Carlin (1937-2008), A Modern Man: The Best of George Carlin (2021)

Quote of the Day (Rupert Holmes, on ‘Sweetening’ in the TV and Recording Businesses)

“ ‘Sweetening’ …is a term I first heard Carol Burnett use. I happened to be on the set of her show…and [she] was all worried about a sketch they were doing. And she said to her producer, ‘Yeah, no, I know, in the sweetening it’ll be OK.’ And I thought, ‘I wonder what that is.’ And then I learned quickly that was the term for adding a lot of canned laughter, and choosing your shots very carefully, and cutting away sometimes when something fell flat. And it all looked great. It was falling flat in the studio but once you saw it on the screen, it was all touched up and dressed. And in the recording business they say, ‘I think it needs sweetening,’ and what they mean is, ‘We gotta add strings and maybe some brass and maybe some synthesizer.’ In other words, the record sounds OK but it really could use a string section. That’s sweetening."— British-born American composer, singer-songwriter, dramatist and author Rupert Holmes, quoted by Andrew F. Gulli, “Interview: Rupert Holmes,” The Strand Magazine, Issue LXXIII (2024)

Quote of the Day (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Comparing Writers and Actors)

“Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It’s like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying—only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.” — American novelist and short-story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), The Last Tycoon, edited by Edmund Wilson (1941)

My favorite author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, was born on this day in 1896 in St. Paul, MN. Though his prose is marked by the feathery style of poetry, his literary aspirations revolved, to one extent or another, around acting:

*In the short story “The Captured Shadow,” his youthful alter ego, Basil Duke Lee, casts a girl he has a crush on as the lead of a play he’s written;

*As a student at the now-defunct Cardinal Newman Prep in Hackensack, NJ, he loved the opportunity to take the train into New York to catch plays;

*In college, he wrote music and lyrics for the Princeton Triangle Club, the university's undergraduate musical comedy troupe;

*In 1923, hoping for a Broadway smash, he wrote (and invested money in) his only published play, The Vegetable, only to see it die after a single performance in Atlantic City;

*Though no record of it has ever been found, the actress Lois Moran claimed to have arranged a screen test for the author—which, predictably, did not work out well; and

*In his later years, as he struggled with creditors and alcoholism, Fitzgerald found much-needed temporary employment (and eventual heartbreak) as a Hollywood screenwriter.

Well, no matter. To his credit, Fitzgerald recognized the potential for motion pictures as a new art form, and even in its unfinished form The Last Tycoon may well still be the best novel ever written about Hollywood.

(For an interesting take on a surprising Fitzgeraldian influence on a recent film-- Damien Chazelle’s sprawling examination of the transition from the silent to sound eras, Babylon—see Kathy Fennessy’s December 2022 post from the “Seattle Film Blog.”)

Quote of the Day (Sir Winston Churchill, on ‘The Wicked’ and the Dictators)

“The wicked are not always clever, nor are dictators always right.”— British Prime Minister and Nobel Literature laureate Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), The Grand Alliance: The Second World War, Vol. 3 (1950)

Joke of the Day (John McDowell, on Two Close-Sounding Words)

“If I had known the difference between the words antidote and anecdote, one of my good friends would still be living."—Comedian John McDowell, quoted in “Laughter: The Best Medicine,” Reader’s Digest, January 2014

Yet one more good reason to pay attention in English class, folks!

Quote of the Day (Edna O’Brien, on ‘Any Artist Who Bows to Pressure’)

“Doctrinaire opinions are anathema to art, and history has shown us that any artist who bows to pressure, political or otherwise, is a lost soul.”—Irish fiction writer, playwright, screenwriter, and memoirist Edna O’Brien (1930-2024), preface to An Edna O’Brien Reader (1993)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Thomas a Kempis, on ‘A Peaceful Man’)

“First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others. A peaceful man does more good than a learned man. Whereas a passionate man turns even good to evil and is quick to believe evil, the peaceful man, being good himself, turns all things to good.”— German mystic and ecclesiastic Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471), Imitation of Christ (ca. 1418-1427)

Quote of the Day (W.H. Auden, on Why ‘We Must Love One Another or Die’)

“All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.” — English poet-critic W.H. Auden (1907-1973), “September 1, 1939”

TV Quote of the Day (‘Gilmore Girls,’ As Lorelai Explains Her Flexibility)

Lorelai Gilmore [played by Lauren Graham, pictured]: “As long as everything is exactly the way I want it, I'm totally flexible.”— Gilmore Girls, Season 2, Episode 13, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” original air date Feb 5, 2002, teleplay by Amy Sherman-Palladino, directed by Robert Berlinger

This post is for a friend of mine (AND HE KNOWS WHO HE IS!!!) who has, for the last quarter-century, been quite the fan of Gilmore Girls—and, as he told me the other day, was absolutely glued to the set this weekend when Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel had an on-air reunion at the Emmys, to celebrate 25 years of the series.

I sure hope that, in indulging his appetite for eye candy, he didn’t develop too much eyestrain.

Quote of the Day (Richard Russo, on Half of a Movie Buddy Team)

“[Actor William] Nolan was the reliable, competent American Everyman, the Nick Carraway who would never understand or accept or like himself half as much as Gatsby did. The Milton of my fourteen pages was a lot like me, a man cautious by nature and experience, who knew himself too well to be much of a fan and, as a result, was often too grateful for the good opinion of others.”—American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and screenwriter Richard Russo, “Milton and Marcus,” in Trajectory: Stories (2017)

The news of Robert Redford’s passing this week prompted me to read at last the novella “Milton and Marcus,” in the story collection Trajectory by Richard Russo. Somehow I had never gotten around to perusing the book after buying it eight years ago, even though I’d heard it was a roman a clef (i.e., a story about real people or events, but overlaid by thinly fictionalized names and details) about his adventures as a screenwriter for Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

Once I started reading it, it turned out to be every bit as dishy as I’d been led to expect—and every bit as funny, compassionate, and rueful as the fiction that has brought Russo critical and popular acclaim.

The novella’s narrator (only referred to by the nickname “Hotshot” by one of the two movie stars in the story) is a less successful alter ego of Russo: a novelist and screenwriter whose career is on the wane. I knew that Russo had worked several times with Newman (called here Wendell Pierce, or “Wendy”) but I’d been unsure of any Russo collaboration with Newman’s two-time co-star and longtime friend, Redford (called “William Nolan” in this story).

Then, according to this 2012 Albany Times-Union article, I discovered that Russo had been working on the screenplay for the 2015 Redford film A Walk in the Woods. Yet final writing credit for the movie went to Michael Arndt (under the pseudonym “Rick Kerb”) and Bill Holderman, rather than Russo.

Clearly, at some point, Russo’s and Redford’s views on the first draft had diverged and the novelist was no longer associated with the project.

Until the appearance of either a Russo reminiscence or a full-scale Redford biography appears, all we have about what transpired during the script’s development is conjecture.

But “Milton and Marcus” offers a clue: Redford had a fragment of a script early on, solicited Russo’s ideas for expanding it some years after Newman had died, but chose to use the contributions of other writers whose services he had engaged in the meantime.

Ultimately, “Milton and Marcus” becomes a story of charisma, loyalty, self-absorption, and desire—sometimes on the part of writers as much as actors. “Wendy” is depicted more affectionately than “Regular Bill” (the nickname for the Redford character, who was called “Ordinary Bob” by many in the film industry).

But much of the intrinsic interest in the tale also comes from inferring the parallels between its characters and their real-life counterparts:

*Wendy and “Regular Bill” score huge successes in their younger years with a few “buddy” movies, as did Newman and Redford with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting (in the image accompanying this post, of course);

*Wendy engages in a fruitless, decades-long attempt to find another script for himself and Nolan to work with, as Newman did with Redford;

*Wendy thought before his death that the script idea by “Hotshot” (his nickname for the Russo alter ego) might appeal to Nolan’s “left-wing” tendencies; Redford was similarly a longtime progressive, particularly as it related to environmentalism;

*An associate of “Regular Bill” chuckles about the star’s penchant for fast driving; and yesterday’s New York Times obit noted that Redford in one year, the star received eight tickets for speeding in a Utah canyon;

*Nolan lives in Utah, as did Redford;

*To the surprise of many, a decade after Newman’s death, Nick Nolte replaced him on A Walk in the Woods; Nolan’s eventual co-star for “Milton and Marcus,” Gene Handy, possesses a similar gravelly voice, reputation as a dedicated actor, and tendency towards hard living that landed him in rehab;

*“Regular Bill” convenes his group to talk about “Hotshot’s” script while in post production on Desperation Alley, “which was rumored to be overbudget and behind schedule”; similar speculation swirled around a 2007 film that Redford directed, Lions for Lambs, whose $15 million in US and Canadian gross revenues fell well short of its $35 million budget.

As Wendy aged, Russo implies, he took increasingly riskier roles, while for Nolan, the notion of leading a “regular” existence, or even taking roles of “regular” people, had become unattainable.

I believe that in the case of Redford, this was largely true—by the mid-Seventies, he had stopped taking the edgy parts he had often taken as a younger, hungrier actor (as in Inside Daisy Clover, where he played a bisexual character). As a director, however, the opposite was true. The Milagro Beanfield War, for instance, was the first big-budget Hollywood production with a largely Hispanic cast, while his establishment of the Sundance Institute boosted the production of independent films.

Following Redford’s death, tributes have flowed in for the star, from both film colleagues and from people whose lives were touched by his activism. Moviegoers, unlike entertainment industry professionals, are less familiar with idols’ complex personalities and working methods. “Milton and Marcus” is an insightful reminder of how those who enter their turbulent orbit experience them at close range.

Quote of the Day (Joe DiMaggio, on the Importance of Shortstops)

“The shortstop roams far and wide for his chances, and his duties are numerous enough to keep him busier than a one-armed paper hanger. Above all players he must be fast of foot, strong of arm, acrobatic as a trapeze artist. He must throw hard and far, overhand, sidearm, underhand. He must make his pegs while running, falling, skidding, from a crouch, even while in the air—with both feet off the ground.”—New York Yankee and Baseball Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio (1914-1999), Baseball for Everyone: A Treasury of Baseball Lore and Instruction for Fans (1948)

Anthony Volpe’s multiple problems—for his first two seasons, at the plate, and now there and in the field—have nettled Yankee fans like myself who became accustomed to the yearly consistent excellence of Derek Jeter.

When Joe DiMaggio looked at the shortstops of the Bronx Bomber clubs of his time, he could see models of defensive stalwarts in Frank Crosetti, who held the position in his first years, and Phil Rizzuto (pictured), who did so through the end of the Yankee Clipper’s career, and beyond.

Implicit in DiMaggio’s analysis is how a great shortstop can relieve pressure on a pitcher—rescuing him from a desperate situation, or avoiding a prolonged at-bat that can put runners on base, tax his arm, and exhaust his spirit.

Though the Yankees have enough offensive power to go far into October, as they did last year, their weakness at shortstop may form part of a larger defensive vulnerability that could doom their chances. In any case, the top brass will have difficult conversations in the offseason about Volpe, a player they once characterized as one of their hopes for the future.

Quote of the Day (Richard Wilbur, on a Job of Poetry)

“One of the jobs of poetry is to make the unbearable bearable by clear, precise confrontation.” —Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Richard Wilbur (1921-2017), “The Art of Poetry No. 22” (interviewed by Peter A. Stitt, Helen McCloy Ellison and Ellesa Clay High), The Paris Review, Issue 72 (Winter 1977)

Quote of the Day (Samuel Johnson, Defining 'Italian Opera')

“An exotic and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated, and always has prevailed.”—English man of letters Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), in Lives of the English Poets (1779–81) (“Hughes”)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (John Courtney Murray, on ‘The Erroneous Conscience,’ Freedom, and Tolerance)

"The erroneous conscience is endowed with internal personal freedom. It has the right not to be forced to abandon its religious convictions and practices and not to be coerced into acceptance of the true religious faith, against its own subjectively sincere mandate. It also has a right to reverence and respect on the part of others, and others have the duty of paying it reverence and respect. The respect, however, is not owed to the erroneous conscience as erroneous, since no respect is due to error, but to the man in error who is still endowed with that measure of human dignity which is synonymous with internal personal freedom. The duty here is therefore of the order of charity; its proper name is tolerance.”—American Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray (1904-1967), The Problem of Religious Freedom (1965)

Quote of the Day (Ellen Glasgow, on Meanness, ‘A Fatal Inheritance’)

“And though excellence may be seldom or never handed down in the blood, meanness, as his mother had warned him, is a fatal inheritance.” —Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and feminist Ellen Glasgow (1873-1945), In This Our Life (1941)

Roughly 30 years ago, while visiting Richmond, I toured Hollywood Cemetery, a kind of Valhalla for Virginia’s most illustrious. It’s not just two American Presidents who are buried here (James Monroe and John Tyler), but also many of the most prominent figures in the Confederate government and military: Davis, Pickett, Maury, Anderson, Mason, McGuire, and Fitzhugh Lee.

Nearby one of the most famous of these, General “Jeb” Stuart, is Ellen Glasgow—born eight years after the surrender at Appomattox, but, unlike so many of her generation, detached from and even skeptical of the Lost Cause mythology that distorted Southern life for a century.

While others wrote of moonlight and magnolias, she described an uneasy regional transition from an agrarian to industrial economy—and suffragettes’ refusal to accept a patriarchal society.

When adapted for the screen in 1942 by John Huston as a Bette Davis-Olivia de Havilland vehicle, In This Our Life was unusual at the time for its frank treatment of racism. The film, like the novel, showed how desperately clinging to anachronistic and even false codes of conduct could spiral into what James Baldwin called “the white descent from dignity.”

Though feminist literary scholars have somewhat revived interest in Glasgow, she has never fully recovered the popularity she experienced while alive.

But we should certainly pay renewed attention to her warning about meanness. Events are proving all too well that it can be carried in the DNA of a nation as much as in a family. The only cures for this fever are charity and a Glasgow-like independence of intellect and spirit.

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Big Bang Theory,’ on Being Beaten Up in School)

Dr. Sheldon Cooper [played by Jim Parsons]: “When one gets beaten up every other day in school, one of necessity develops a keen sense of hearing. Incidentally, one can get beaten up in school simply by referring to oneself as ‘one.’”— The Big Bang Theory, Season 3, Episode 23, “The Lunar Excitation,” original air date May 24, 2010, teleplay by Lee Aronsohn, Steven Molaro, and Steve Holland, directed by Peter Chakos

Quote of the Day (Arthur C. Brooks, Calling for a ‘Politics Cleanse’)

"Start with a politics cleanse: For two weeks… resolve not to read, watch or listen to anything about politics. Don't discuss politics with anyone. When you find yourself thinking about politics, distract yourself with something else. (I listen to Bach cantatas, but that’s not for everybody.) This is hard to do, of course, but not impossible. You just have to plan ahead and stand firm. Think of it as ideological veganism. On the one hand, your friends will think you’re a little wacky. On the other hand, you’ll feel superior to them."— American author and academic Arthur C. Brooks, “Treat Yourself to a Politics Cleanse,” The New York Times, Aug. 2, 2018

Seven years after Brooks wrote this, a “politics cleanse” is all the more necessary—and all the more elusive. Even today, on the 24^th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, politics obscures what should be a day of solemnity and service.

(The image that accompanies this post, of Arthur C. Brooks speaking at an event in Phoenix, AZ, was taken on Apr. 13, 2017 by Gage Skidmore.)

Quote of the Day (Truman Capote, on Birthdays)

“I think always about somewhere else, somewhere else where everything is dancing, like people dancing in the streets, and everything is pretty, like children on their birthdays.” —American fiction writer, essayist and screenwriter Truman Capote (1924-1984), "Children on Their Birthdays" (1947), in The Complete Stories of Truman Capote (2004)

Quote of the Day (Jonathan Zittrain, on Problems With AI Being ‘Excited and Very Agreeable’)

“They have been tuned to be really nice and really excited and very agreeable, which means they will agree with almost anything. … This way of being, it has no recollection — it’s stateless. … It is trusting the user to be honest about what happened, and then it goes up to something it didn’t do, and provides an explanation for the thing it didn’t do with all of the gravity that it can for a fable, and this is pervasive.” — American professor of Internet law Jonathan Zittrain quoted by Liz DeLillo, “Jonathan Zittrain Discusses Governance, Eccentricities of AI,” The Chautauquan Daily, Aug. 21, 2025

I thought of Zittrain’s warning (which I heard while on vacation at the Chautauqua Institution last month) when I came across a New York Times article from early August about how chatbots can go into a delusional spiral.

A “sycophantic improv machine” led, Kashmir Hill and Dylan Freedman reported, a Canadian corporate recruiter with no history of mental illness to believe for a while that he had “discovered a novel mathematical formula, one that could take down the internet and power inventions like a force-field vest and a levitation beam.” This is exactly the kind of “really nice and really excited and very agreeable” mechanism that Zittrain spoke about.

Who knows what will happen with people less skeptical and more open to illusions?

I have problems with "Real Time" host Bill Maher, but I nodded in agreement when last month he took to task those who love this new state of affairs:

"People don't read anymore, they ask their Chatbot the question and sometimes it's right and sometimes it isn't. But what it always is, is a f--king a-- kisser. You literally can not ask it a question so stupid it won't respond 'great question.' 'Can I drink milk if it's lumpy? Great question!'"

(The image of Jonathan Zittrain accompanying this post was taken at Cambridge on Dec. 1, 2018, by Joi Ito and posted on Flickr.)

Quote of the Day (Casey Stengel, on Handling Sportswriters)

''Let 'em ask you one question, and you keep talking so they won't ask you another one.''—Original New York Mets manager Casey Stengel (1890-1975), advising then-third base coach Whitey Herzog on how to deal with sportswriters, quoted by George Vecsey, “Sports of the Times: Stengel Lives,” The New York Times, Sept. 18, 1987

Photo of the Day: Late Summer Dawn, Lake Chautauqua, NY

It’s hard to believe that I’m back two weeks now from vacationing at Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, but the images and other memories of that time linger—including this picture I took on my last day there, of walking by Lake Chautauqua at dawn. 

Particularly in those last few days there, as the weather cooled, segueing toward fall, it offered a feeling of peace and serenity that I, in turn, present to you, vicariously.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (C.S. Lewis, on How God Answers)

“When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.'” —British novelist and religious author C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), A Grief Observed (1961)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Succession,’ on the Future and the Past)

Logan Roy [played by Brian Cox]: “The future is real. The past is all made up.”—Succession, Season 2, Episode 8, “Dundee,” original air date Sept/ 29, 2019, teleplay by Jesse Armstrong, Mary Laws, and Alice Birch, directed by Kevin Bray

Movie Quote of the Day (‘My Darling Clementine,’ on Love)

Sheriff Wyatt Earp [played by Henry Fonda]: “Mac, you ever been in love?”

Mac [played by J. Farrell MacDonald]: “No, I've been a bartender all me life.”— My Darling Clementine (1946), screenplay by Samuel G. Engel and Winston Miller, directed by John Ford

This bit of dialogue—not in the original script for this classic western—has been headlined, in this YouTube clip, as the “Greatest Bartender Line of All Time.” I heartily concur.

Quote of the Day (Jason Isaacs, on Charisma and Madness)

“When I think someone’s terrible, someone else might think they’re brilliant. One of the things that’s very charismatic is madness.”—British actor Jason Isaacs (The White Lotus), quoted by Andrew Goldman, “Jason Isaacs Might Say Too Much,” New York Magazine, June 16-29, 2025

The image accompanying this post, of Jason Isaacs at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival, was taken Feb. 18, 2025 by Harald Krichel.

Quote of the Day (Mandy Patinkin, With His Grandpa’s Advice on How To Behave Toward People)

“My grandpa Max the junkman would say in Yiddish, ‘The wheel is always turning.’ What he meant was how to behave toward people. The person on the bottom of the wheel, you better be nice to, because at some point you’re going to be on the bottom.”—Emmy and Tony-winning American actor-singer Mandy Patinkin quoted by Alex Witchel, “‘I Behaved Abominably,’” The New York Times Magazine, Aug. 25, 2013

The image accompanying this post, a cropped picture of Patinkin posing with a fan at the Israel @ 60 event in Washington D.C. on June 1, 2008, was uploaded July 28, 2008, by Jeffhardywhyx (talk).

Quote of the Day (Tim O'Brien, on the ‘Mythomania’ Epidemic of the Last Decade)

“Mythomania—or plain old lying—infiltrated churches, schools, hair salons, corporate boardrooms, courtrooms, and nightclubs. Smith & Wesson received seven hundred write-in votes in Topeka’s mayoral race. The Library of Congress was under pressure to ban its copy of the Gutenberg Bible for flaunting the word fornicate and the first two syllables of the word sodomy. Speechwriters jumped aboard. Nannies and city councilmen in Prescott, Arizona, denounced the devil’s codex implanted in the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution; NASA was burning down forests in Idaho; the Census Bureau was refusing to count people with blue eyes; Grover Cleveland’s skull was buried under the Watergate complex; vigilantes roamed the nighttime streets of Fargo in search of Democrats and Kenyans; Columbine was a CIA operation; Pearl Harbor never happened; corporations were people; Amazon was a distinguished citizen. In Fulda, where the Truth Tellers were led by Dink O’Neill, his brother Chub, and Chamber of Commerce President Earl Fenstermacher, the burdens of seeding fake unfake news kept them hopping through the hot days of September 2019.”— American novelist Tim O'Brien, America Fantastica (2023)

Quote of the Day (Barack Obama, on Labor Unions)

“It was working men and women who made the 20th century the American century. It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.”—Former President Barack Obama, “President Obama on Labor Day: The Fight for America's Workers Continues” (address at the Milwaukee Laborfest), Sept. 6, 2010