Quote of the Day (Pamela Paul, on ‘The Dudebro Candidate’)

“Broadly speaking, the dudebro candidate is more about vibes and style than about policy or platform. Picking up on the attitude and aesthetics of the manosphere, he is out to court attention, the tonal opposite of politic or cautious. This is a guy who openly disparages the need to watch what you say—and that's part of the appeal. Running for office almost as an act of defiance, the dudebro offers a potent brew of strong masculine energy, cross-party populist fury, frat-boy antics and straight-talk authenticity.”— American journalist, correspondent, editor, and author Pamela Paul, “Politics With Swagger. Meet the Dudebros,” The Wall Street Journal, June 13-14, 2026

First, the “Tech Bros”; now, “The Dudebros.” I wish the whole bunch would just bro away!

Well, one such “Dudebro,” reality TV star Spencer Pratt lost his bid for LA Mayor a month ago—and, by the end of the week, one more is likely to fall by the wayside. All kind of questions had been swirling about the Democratic primary winner for U.S. Senator from Maine, Graham Platner, even before the weekend.

But now, with a claim from a woman he dated that he had raped her several years ago—and the subsequent withdrawal of endorsements by prominent Democrats and a threat by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee not to invest in his campaign if he remains on the ballot—it’s hard to see him continuing.

Pamela Paul identifies Donald Trump as the prototype “dudebro candidate,” though I would argue that the real forerunner of this type was former wrestler turned Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura.

In any case, Trump won’t be going away any time, insulated from accountability by an acquiescent Supreme Court and GOP majorities in the House and Senate, as well as from so many gaffes and missteps that anyone else would have disappeared from the scene a long time ago. (Consider this: while Platner has one unadjudicated sexual assault charge against him, Trump has had at least two dozen women who accused him of sexual misconduct---and a civil jury found him liable for sexual abuse against E. Jean Carroll.)

The “Tech Bros” are unlucky to go away any time soon, either—unless one or more fall out with Trump, as almost happened with Elon Musk.

“Frat-boy antics” might be one description for this entire crew, but I prefer “obnoxiousness.” It’s an indictment of our time that these men are able to come out of nowhere and be seriously considered for high positions in government or business.

(The image accompanying this post, showing Pamela Paul at the 2019 Texas Book Festival in Austin, Texas, was taken Oct. 26, 2019, by Larry D. Moore.)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Legally Blonde,’ As Elle Grills the Star Prosecution Witness)

Elle Woods [played by Reese Witherspoon]: “Isn't the first cardinal rule of perm maintenance that you're forbidden to wet your hair for at least 24 hours after getting a perm at the risk of deactivating the ammonium thioglycolate?”—Legally Blonde (2001), screenplay by Amanda Brown, Karen McCullah, and Kirsten Smith, directed by Robert Luketic

Twenty-five years ago this month, the uproarious comedy Legally Blonde premiered. I don’t think the legal profession has quite recovered in the years since!

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Paul to the Romans, on Creation and Hope)

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”—Romans 8: 22-25 (Revised Standard Version)

The 1612 image accompanying this post, Apostle St. Paul, was painted by the Spanish Renaissance painter, sculptor, and architect El Greco (1541-1614), and hangs in Museo del Greco, Toledo, Spain.

This Day in Radio History (Pioneering Female DJ Alison Steele Debuts on WNEW-FM)

July 4, 1966—Complying with a directive from the Federal Communications Commission that FM stations could no longer simulcast programming from their AM station counterparts, WNEW-FM coupled something tried and true—pop music in a middle-of-the-road (MOR) with something new: an all-female roster of deejays.

A member of this unusual group made this declaration on that Independence Day:

“Hello New York and America, this is WNEW-FM ... Where the girls are ... Welcome to history.”

The background and selection of that early group—actresses, models, and assorted TV personalities—represent a long, fascinating story in and of itself, which Dan McCue relates in this Substack post from this March.

But I want to focus on the one who delivered the above greeting, survived the format switch and mass replacement by male DJS a year later and, amid an employment environment far different from today, created a template that other females in the role pursued: Alison Steele.

To say that Steele was the first woman to win Billboard’s FM Personality of the Year in 1976 and that she was an inductee in the Radio Hall of Fame and Rock and Rock Hall of Fame doesn’t begin to describe the place she held in the imagination of faithful listeners.

You had to experience it, night after night, at your most restless and searching when you were unwilling or unable to sleep.

At the time of her hiring, Steele, a divorced single mom with a nine-year-old daughter, trailed a set of broadcasting gigs behind her: office aide, production assistant and associate producer at a New York radio station, morning exercise program leader, and, in the parlance of the day, “weather girl.”

“I was determined to be in show biz; I would do anything,” she told Su Yates of TV/Radio Week in an August 1978 interview. The Brooklyn native had been taught well by her mother, a singer and concert pianist: “She taught me a very simple rule: If I wanted something, all I had to do was go and get it.”

The entertainment world is filled with ambitious, hard-driving people who are sure that with one break, they can vault to the top of their profession.

But Steele’s willingness to try something different in that first year in her 2 pm-7 PM—theater reviews, celebrity interviews, whatever might reasonably hold a listener’s interest—may have impressed her bosses that she would be a quick study when they instituted a free-form, progressive-rock format in October 1967.

Once given her new perch from 10 PM to 2 AM six nights a week, she demonstrated the intelligence to craft an utterly individual on-air personality, signaled in her characteristic opening—a jazzy, flute-inflected melody followed by an intro she herself wrote and made famous throughout the New York City area, that, with some variations, went like this:

"The flutter of wings, the sounds of the night, the shadow across the moon, as the Nightbird lifts her wings and soars above the earth into another level of comprehension, where we exist only to feel. Come fly with me, Alison Steele, the Nightbird..."

During my adolescence more than 50 years ago, WNEW was the New York station you listened to be cool, to hear concert simulcasts, musician interviews, and most tellingly, cuts from up-and-coming artists. Truth be told, I was more familiar with Steele’s male on-air colleagues because of the early hours I needed to maintain for school.

But I stayed up for the first hour or so to hear where her inclinations took her—spinning records by Yes, Genesis, The Moody Blues, Santana, and the Grateful Dead, interviewing Thin Lizzy, KISS, and Moody Blues bass guitarist John Lodge, and reading Poe, Wordsworth, Ginsberg, and Shakespeare—all in that voice.

That voice—low, honeyed, sultry, as if Lauren Bacall or Kathleen Turner were purring directly to you. (Luckily, listeners only heard her purr and not her French poodle, Genya, chewing on a bone in the studio near her.)

Her aural allure was matched by a physical one, marked by flaming red hair and bohemian attire: suede fringed vests, leather skirts, bell-bottom jeans, and flowing velvet materials. No wonder she was rumored to have dated Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson, Sean Connery and a few rock stars.

It’s been 25 years since I read veteran DJ Richard Neer’s memoir of working at the station, FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio, but I can still vividly recall this passage:

“There was once a summer concert in Central Park when [Steele] wore a thin leather halter top, a leather bikini bottom, with high boots and a bare midriff. Boys were literally falling out of trees to get a better look.”

Unlike her high-living colleagues, Neer also notes, she was never “intoxicated by anything more than a New York Rangers victory.”

During those first years on the job, Steele disclaimed negativity (“I’ve always gone by the idea that there’s something fine in life, but you have to make the effort to find what it is,” she told K. Michael Blumberg in a 1974 New York Daily News profile).

She never wrote a memoir, as another DJ, Meg Griffin, for instance, urged. But in later years, after The Nightbird had flown from WNEW, she slipped hints about the sexism and bruises along the way.

“She was burned badly a few times,” recalled Griffin. “She lost several opportunities because she was a woman, and I don’t think that’s something you forget. She’d always tell me women had to work twice as many hours and be 10 times as good to be noticed in radio.

She related additional frustrations to women’s studies scholar and author Becca Anderson, observing that at a Madison Square Garden concert, “I was the last person be introduced. So they [her fellow male WNEW deejays] were all on stage when they introduced Alison Steele, ‘The Nightbird.’” They had to wait while the crowd cheered wildly for her.

There were also petty annoyances, as when station management wouldn’t buy her a step stool so she could reach records on the top shelf, or not giving her the night off to accept her Billboard award.

Management and, perhaps, some of her fellow DJs may have felt annoyed over the attention this radio pioneer received. But it’s doubtful that any of them ever inspired, as she did, at least three fictional nighttime deejay characters on TV and screen:

*Angie, a female trucker who worked with the air name of “The Nightingale” on BJ and the Bear;

*Rita McCall, a controversial personality who draws the attention of a murderous stalker in the Kojak episode "A Strange Kind of Love"; and

*Stevie Wayne, a smalltown deejay with a beguiling voice that Adrienne Barbeau patterned after Steele, in John Carpenter’s 1980 horror film The Fog.

By the end of the 1970s, WNEW and the Nightbird came to a parting of the ways. According to Neer’s account, the station asked him whether her extensive outside activities (public appearances and producing radio and syndicated TV shows) were distracting her from the work.

For her part, Steele could see a rising demand that deejays move away from the free-form format that emphasized personality-driven selections and towards homogenized choices. So, after 13 years, she left the station that made her famous in September 1979.

Her remaining 15 years were more nomadic—a stint announcing the soap opera One Life to Live, commercials (again), serving as writer, producer, and correspondent for CNN’s entertainment and lifestyle program, Limelight, and returning to her “Nightbird” roots at 92.3 K-Rock in the late 1980s. Increasingly, they were also darkened by health concerns.

Psychologist Dr. Patricia Farrell recalled becoming acquainted with Steele after meeting her on a late-night talk show, Last Call. Off the air, Steele confided that she had cancer and “was convinced that her job and the discrimination she had to battle in the industry had caused it.”

Her “vacations” had become trips to Lenox Hill Hospital. Exhausted from the chemo, she should have taken time off but couldn’t because she needed the health insurance.

The driven woman who’d become a radio legend and role model for later female deejays Carol Miller, Jody Peterson, and Rita Houston should have had a happier ending than death at age 58. 

Rock died some time ago at WNEW, but it continues to live in the memories of Steele’s listeners, who would agree with how colleague Vin Scelsa characterized her in a tribute:

“In her undying devotion to her audience, Alison was unique. She was one of the last purveyors of the utopian, communal vision of radio.”

Quote of the Day (John Quincy Adams, on the Deaths of His Father and Thomas Jefferson)

“[Tavernkeeper John] Merrill told me that he had come this morning out from Baltimore, and was informed there that my father died on the fourth of this Month, about five o’clock in the afternoon. From the Letters which I had yesterday received this event was so much expected by me, that it had no sudden and violent effect on my feelings— My father had nearly closed the ninety-first year of his life: A life illustrious in the Annals of his Country, and of the World— He had served to great and useful purpose his Nation, his Age, and his God— He is gone, and may the blessing of Almighty Grace have attended him to his Account— I say not, may my last End be like his! it were presumptuous— The time, the manner, the coincidence with the decease of Jefferson, are visible and palpable marks of divine favour, for which I would humble myself in grateful and silent adoration before the Ruler of the Universe— For myself all that I dare to ask is that I may live the remnant of my days in a manner worthy of him from whom I came, and at the appointed hour of my maker die as my father has died; in peace with God and man, sped to the regions of futurity with the blessings of my fellow men.”—John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), Sixth President of the United States, diary entry for July 9, 1826, in Diaries 1821-1848, edited by David Waldstreicher (2017)

Many Americans felt similarly to John Quincy Adams: that the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both on the 50^th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, were “visible and palpable marks of divine favour” on the United States.

Many of my readers will know that Jefferson had died at 12:50 pm, and that John Adams—who had reconciled with his longtime friend turned political rival the decade before—passed away later in the afternoon, unaware of what had happened in Virginia, with the words, “Jefferson still survives.”

Fewer people will know that, because of the still-slow state of overland communication in those days, John Quincy Adams, in Washington, was unaware of Jefferson’s death in Charlottesville 117 miles away. And it would not be for another three days when John Quincy learned of his father’s death at the family home in Massachusetts, 447 miles away.

When John Quincy Adams passed 22 years later, the news spread far more quickly, because the first links between major Eastern cities had been established for the telegraph, which Samuel Morse had publicly demonstrated in 1844. (See this 1999 C-Span clip for how the new invention was used so dramatically for what became a true “media event.”)

The younger Adams—who, like his father (and unlike Jefferson), was turned out of the White House after one miserable term—did indeed, as he hoped, “live the remnant of my days in a manner worthy of him from whom I came.” As the last prominent living link to the American Revolution, he lent tremendous prestige to the antislavery cause.

He was, in fact, engaged in another front in his struggle against slavery—a House of Representatives vote related to the Mexican War—when he was felled by a fatal stroke. 

By this time, this former President, after a long public career marked by controversy, was hailed as “Old Man Eloquent” by admirers and even recognized by opponents as a debater and legislator of formidable passion and shrewdness.

In its way, his last words were as memorable as those of his revered father: “This is the last of earth, but I am composed."

(The image accompanying this post is a detail from John Trumbull's 1818 painting of the Committee of Five presenting their draft of the Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. From left to right, the figures are: John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin.)

Song Lyric of the Day (Francis Hopkinson, Sending Up Redcoat Readiness in the Revolution)

“A soldier stood on a log of wood,
               And saw a thing surprising.
 
              As in amaze he stood to gaze,
               The truth can't be denied, sir,
              He spied a score of kegs or more
               Come floating down the tide, sir.
 
              A sailor too in jerkin blue,
               This strange appearance viewing,
              First damned his eyes, in great surprise,
               Then said, ‘Some mischief's brewing.
 
              "These kegs, I'm told, the rebels hold,
               Packed up like pickled herring;
              And they're come down to attack the town,
               In this new way of ferrying.’ 
 
              The soldier flew, the sailor too,
               And scared almost to death, sir,
              Wore out their shoes, to spread the news,
               And ran till out of breath, sir.”— American polymath and signer of the Declaration of Independence Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791), “The Battle of the Kegs,” originally published in 1778, reprinted in American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, edited by David S. Shields (2007)
 
Faithful reader, if you’ve been reading this blog long enough and frequently enough, you’ll notice that I open and close the workweek with a humorous quote, on the reasonable supposition that everybody needs a laugh as they start their jobs on Monday and once they make it to Friday. I find no reason to change that pattern as we begin celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
 
If you read anything at all about that document and the American Revolution in general (which I hope you will), nearly all of it will be very sober. And I’ll provide a bit of that over the weekend myself.
 
But human nature doesn’t change that much over the centuries, and the men and women who created this country liked to drink and laugh as much as we do. I think they would have nodded in agreement with a bibulous fellow writer on my college newspaper, when hearing a recent article described as “very sober,” remarked, “Gee, I hate anything sober!”
 
So did Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence whom I think you and I would have liked to hang with. A blog post of mine from 18 years ago described the general arc of the career of this witty Renaissance Man of the Revolution, but his part in depicting one incident in the war deserves a fuller explanation.
 
If the rhythm of his verses above sounds familiar, it should: they’re written to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.” Modern Americans associate that tune with patriots playing it on fife and drum on the way into battle, but it began a few decades before the war, with British doctor Richard Schuckburg creating a straw man with a colonist who was both a provincial hick and a pretentious fop.
 
By the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord, according to this account of the song on the Website of The Kennedy Center, the colonists were throwing the insult back, singing the tune derisively at the fleeing redcoats.
 
Nearly three years later, Hopkinson decided to make further use of the tune’s melody. You can see from the verses I’ve quoted that the lyrics are in ballad form, as capable of being sung as read.
 
What he was doing was rather audacious: taking a failed patriot military operation and, instead of being defensive about it, using it to mock vaunted British heroics.
 
In my high school, if you mentioned “The Battle of the Kegs,” some rowdy classmates might have seen it as a dare to finish off libations at a party. 

But in the American Revolution, it referred to a real patriot tactic in January 1778: to float explosive barrels at British ships. The colonists needed to try something: the British had captured and made themselves comfortable in Philadelphia, the capital of the young republic.
 
The whole thing was a big dud: no British ships blew up. But Hopkinson used the opportunity to satirize the redcoats’ panic and overreaction to the unknown objects coming their way.
 
Ultimately, the American Revolution would have to be settled by other means. But then as now, satire directed at an enemy possessing overwhelming power was necessary to sustain the spirit for the larger contest.

Song Lyric of the Day (Bob Dylan, on When All Signs Point Away From Love)

“The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you.”—American singer-songwriter and Nobel Literature laureate Bob Dylan, “I Want You,” from his Blonde on Blonde LP (1966)
 
I’ve blogged before about Blonde on Blonde, but my special feeling for one single from the Bob Dylan double-album, “I Want You,” requires me to focus on that today, the 60^th anniversary of its first appearance on the U.S. Billboard “Hot 100 chart. (It peaked at #20.)
 
More than a few critics and academics have parsed its lyrics. I’m not going to pick one interpretation—many seem perfectly plausible and non-exclusive to others. That’s what happens with lyrics so quicksilver and elusive, much like the nature of love itself.
 
Variations exist as much in its performances as in interpretation.
 
The brisk, buoyant tempo of the original recording reminds me of a later Dylan song I cherish, “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.” But a decade later, indulging his penchant for not settling for a single way to play his classics, he slowed it down to give it a torch-song feeling.
 
Three decades ago, in the tribute album A Nod to Bob, the folksinger Cliff Eberhardt delivered a plaintive, keening acoustic version that rends the heart without doing any violence to the spirit of the original.

Quote of the Day (Sara Coleridge, on What July Brings)

“Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots, and gillyflowers.”—English poet and translator Sara Coleridge (1802-1852), “The Garden Year,” in Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children; with Some Lessons in Latin in Easy Rhyme (1834)
 
“Hot July”? More and more the last few decades, it means a heat wave—and it looks like this year will be no different, at least where I live.

Quote of the Day (Alfred North Whitehead, on ‘The Art of Progress’)

“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.”—English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

Flashback, June 1961: Elvis Flops on Film, Flies in Studio

As June 1961 moved towards its conclusion, Elvis Presley and manager “Colonel” Tom Parker tried to recover from a rare career misstep by the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Earlier in the month, the latest Elvis movie, Wild in the Country, had divided critics while leaving loyal fans in little to no doubt about its lack of value. 

Not only was it his only film to lose money during its initial release, but the title song, rushed out to boost its prospects, only peaked at #26 on the US Billboard Hot 100—hardly up to his lofty commercial standards.

It all turned around on a long session at RCA Studio B in Nashville. True Elvis fans might enjoy “Kiss Me Quick,” “That’s Someone You Never Forget,” and “I’m Yours,” but the two that scored solidly with the public were “(Marie’s The Name) His Latest Flame” and “Little Sister,” which were released as a double single.

Both tunes came from the songwriting team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. The duo, who managed to get hold of his attention in 1959 by sending a demo for “A Mess of Blues” while still on his Army stint in Germany, went on to write 16 songs for The King. Amazingly, though, they never met the singer who turned their compositions into hits.

Elvis tweaked “Little Sister” slightly, cutting the tempo in half and slowing it down, according to Paul Simpson’s The Rough Guide to Elvis. By the third take, he liked the groove so much that he told his backup musicians to “burn” on the next take. 

That was the one that turned out to be a keeper, confirming Pomus’ hunch that, while Bobby Darin had decided it wasn’t for him, it would be the kind of nasty blues that Elvis did so well.

“His Latest Flame” proved a harder nut to crack. Elvis and his musicians were floundering in the studio, uncertain how to proceed. 

None of the attempts to start it on different instruments seemed to click, until someone called Pomus to see what he would play the piano portion. The songwriter was surprised to hear that his intro was three bars long rather than four.

From that realization sprang the eventual solution: a Latin flavor with a Bo Diddley beat. Tom Petty, asked by Rolling Stone Magazine for the Elvis tunes that most influenced him, described how this one came together from what originally had been “kind of a mess”:

“An acoustic guitar and a snare drum played with brushes carry the rhythm, but when the six-string bass comes in and the piano goes up to the high register, the whole thing jumps out of the speaker.”

I don’t have the technical knowledge to explain this process remotely as well as Petty did. All I know is that I never grow tired of hearing this, and it is easily among my half-dozen favorite songs by The King.

(Five of those musicians, by the way, were participating at the same time and in the same RCA studio in another recording session of a classic: Roy Orbison’s “Cryin’.” Talk about catching lightning in a bottle!)

Technically, Presley’s was a cover version of this Pomus-Shuman composition: Del Shannon had already released it as a single and cut from his debut album, Runaway With Del Shannon. 

But Presley’s interpretation is the one that, more likely than not, you’ll hear on your favorite oldies station, because once the “His Latest Flame/Little Sister” double single was released in August, it shot into the top 5 in the Billboard charts and all the way up to #1 in the UK.

The following year, Elvis lured his fans back to the movies with Blue Hawaii, another formulaic profit-maker that generated additional soundtrack sales. By now, he was tiring of plots that sidetracked him from his ambition to become another James Dean.

But he felt no such ambivalence about “His Latest Flame.” Even while making it, he noted, “It’s a good song. I like it even if it takes us 32 hours.” He had no reason to revise that opinion in the years to come.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Murder by Death,’ With a Character Who Resembles His Actor)

Lionel Twain [played by Truman Capote, pictured]: “That drives me crazy!”

Sam Diamond [played by Peter Falk]: “Sounds like a short ride to me.”— Murder by Death (1976), screenplay by Neil Simon, directed by Robert Moore

The murder mystery spoof Murder by Death premiered 50 years ago today, featuring a cast of highly accomplished film veterans like David Niven, Maggie Smith, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Elsa Lanchester, and James Coco.

But wouldn’t you know it, a mere tyro caught most of the attention of the public: In Cold Blood author Truman Capote, in the only film where he played someone other than himself. (He provided voiceover narration of his stories “The Thanksgiving Visitor” and “A Christmas Memory,” and played the Capote look-alike in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.)

I bet that you were as surprised as I was to learn that for his performance, Capote was nominated for a Golden Globe in Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture. But remember, these were the awards that notoriously handed Pia Zadora a statuette as “New Star of the Year” for the 1982 bomb Butterfly. In other words, you have to wonder which Hollywood powerbroker influenced such ridiculous recognition.

I doubt that Neil Simon thought that Capote turned in a noteworthy performance, though I have read a couple of versions of his reaction. When interviewed for George Plimpton’s 1997 oral biography Truman Capote, the playwright-screenwriter, while admitting that hiring the author was more producer Ray Stark’s idea than his own, said that he “had no problem with him.”

Well, except for two: Capote was “very ill at ease with the dialogue” and “didn’t know how to move,” as he was always looking for his marks.

On the other hand, in commentary for a 1999 DVD release of the movie, Simon said he and director Robert Moore wanted to replace Capote as Lionel Twain, the rich eccentric who invites the world’s greatest detectives to his home for a contest to solve a murder. In the end, that desire didn’t come to pass.

Two rather different reactions, as I say. But when you think about it, both were united in one belief: Capote was making mistakes that professional actors would not have committed, and it was deeply frustrating.

Besides lack of experience, there was another reason why the creators of Murder by Death should have thought better of hiring Capote in the first place: he was already well along in the drink-and-pills spiral that led to his death by liver cancer in 1984.

A couple of years before, he had been in such terrible condition when commissioned to write the screenplay for The Great Gatsby remake that he had to be replaced before he could finish. Gossip spreads fast in Hollywood, and nobody involved with Murder by Death should have been surprised that he would be a handful.

Flashback, June 2001: Early Alarm Sounds About Enron

John Olson (pictured) is not a well-known name, but when he died a few weeks ago, this retired energy analyst was remembered in obituaries for his warning 25 years ago this month about one hot stock—which the object of his skepticism tried to tamp down.

Too bad that others didn’t perform proper due diligence on Enron, which six months later collapsed, in the largest bankruptcy filing to that point in U.S. corporate history.

The initial outsized expectations about Enron’s stock reminded me of a phrase coined by the otherwise colorless former Fed chair Alan Greenspan (who also died this month): “irrational exuberance.” Though Greenspan was discussing speculative market bubbles as a group, I think it applies just as much, maybe even more so, to individual stocks today.

Take a bow, Elon Musk.

You heard about that guy, right? World’s richest person. World’s first trillionaire, courtesy of a very generous compensation plan approved by shareholders of his company, Tesla.

More about him in a minute. But first, a refresher on Enron:

Through much of the Nineties, Enron was a Wall Street darling for advancing from a natural-gas provider to an energy-trading colossus. It reported incredible returns, reaching $90.75 per share on August 23, 2000 with a market capitalization of more than $70 billion, making it the seventh-largest publicly traded corporation in the U.S.

Who wouldn’t want to invest after a management guru like Gary Hamel had praised it for creating “a capacity for perpetual innovation” with an organization consisting of “potential revolutionaries”? Even pundits across the political spectrum like Bill Kristol and Paul Krugman took fees to serve on the company’s advisory committee.

Wall Street was particularly enamored of Enron head Kenneth Lay, a corporate leader used to being listened to. That respect derived not only from the eye-popping numbers he produced but from his cozy relationship with George W. Bush, a rising politico so grateful for the $122,500 contributed to his Texas gubernatorial campaigns that he nicknamed the gray-haired businessman “Kenny Boy.”

In March 2001, Lay and his successor as Enron president, Jeffrey Skilling, were annoyed when a young financial journalist, Bethany McLean, wondering how the company made its money, asked, in a Fortune Magazine article, if Enron was overpriced.

But they really grew incensed when Olson—a local analyst with long experience monitoring the energy industry—told U.S. News and World Report three months later that Enron was "not very forthcoming about how they make their money" and said no "analyst worth his salt . . . can seriously analyze Enron."

Olson chuckled over a misspelled handwritten note that Lay dashed off to his boss in the wake of that interview. The analyst’s equanimity was justified: other observers were soon pursuing the hard questions that he and MacLean had posed about Enron’s operations.

By year’s end, it had all unraveled in a massive bankruptcy and corporate scandal. In May 2006, Lay and Skilling were convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges.

So now you may be wondering, how could Lay possibly relate to Elon Musk?

Some of you reading this might see my eyebrow lifted derisively in his direction because of my distaste for his involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the behest of Donald Trump.

Or you might argue that, unlike Enron, Musk built something that can be seen—rockets, an AI startup fueling data centers, and, through Tesla, the EV, the most significant contribution to the American auto industry since Henry Ford’s assembly line.

You can even accept (as analyst Jeff Sommer does here, before swatting it down) that Tesla can build a successful colony on Mars and reap a bonanza from its military contracts.

But there’s a simpler yardstick for measuring how close Musk comes to the now-infamous Kenneth Lay: What did his prior financial reports promise investors, and did he achieve those goals?

That’s where matters become slippery. A New York Times analysis from earlier this month found that Musk was late or did not deliver on his company deadlines roughly 35 percent of the time. In 33 percent of his more than 600 claims, his companies did not provide a public update—or the plans were too vague to know if he succeeded.

And five years ago, Consumer Reports compiled a telling timeline of his continuous claims that Tesla models would shortly become fully autonomous, along with deaths of people who accepted these assurances that turned out to be—well, let’s just say premature.

In other words, if Musk were a musical, it would be Promises, Promises.

Unlike with Enron, nobody has yet proven that Tesla’s accounting practices are fraudulent. But it would be enormously difficult to decipher even if anyone tried to do so. Now with Vanity Fair, Bethany MacLean has questioned the ethics and governance behind his complicated 2019 acquisition of Solar City.

Testifying before Congress in 2002, Olson cautioned that “It is axiomatic on Wall Street that if a stock price is rising arithmetically, management egos tend to rise exponentially.”

That was the case as Lay pressured editors and analysts for better press coverage, and maybe even more so with Musk. He was only half-joking when he said, while hosting Saturday Night Live in 2021, “To anyone I’ve offended, I reinvented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?”

Put that together with his use of ketamine, a dissociative drug, and you’ll understand why in The Atlantic last year, Shayla Love wrote that Musk’s “cognitive and psychological health is of concern not only to shareholders of his companies’ stocks but to all Americans.”

One last resemblance between Lay and Musk: each backed a successful candidate who then followed through on the ballyhooed businessman’s policy prescriptions. Lay, for instance, influenced Bush’s gubernatorial policies on electricity deregulation, taxes and tort reform.

Musk’s Presidential beneficiary-patron has permitted him even more latitude. Past robber barons were content to bribe and sway officeholders, but in taking his position with DOGE, Musk joined the government, if briefly.

That takeover was so swift and audacious that observers could hardly rouse themselves to ask if self-interest might be the principal reason for his lightning strike against the agencies that regulated his enterprises. Were he alive today, Kenny Boy might be asking, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Quote of the Day (Mel Brooks, on a Source of Jewish Humor)

“When the tall, blond Teutons have been nipping at your heels for thousands of years, you find it enervating to keep wailing. So you make jokes. If your enemy is laughing, how can he bludgeon you to death?”—Oscar- and Tony-winning American comic actor-writer-director Mel Brooks, Playboy interview, October 1966

Happy birthday to Mel Brooks, born 100 years ago today in Brooklyn!

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Titus Brandsma, on Love Over Neo-Paganism)

“Neo-paganism may reject love, but history teaches us that, despite everything, we will be victorious over this neo-paganism through love. We will not abandon love. Love will win back the hearts of these pagans. Nature is stronger than philosophy. Let a philosophy reject and condemn love and call it weakness, the living testimony of love will always renew its power to conquer and captivate the hearts of men.”—Carmelite priest, professor and journalist St. Titus Brandsma (1881-1942), Spiritual Itinerary of Carmel (1936)

Exhibit Review: "‘Born To Run' at 50," Passaic County Arts Center, Hawthorne NJ

Fifty-one years ago this month, when Eric Meola came to photograph Bruce Springsteen for the upcoming song collection, Born To Run, the Columbia Records singer-songwriter had two albums under his belt that attracted little interest. It was a real question how long the label would retain this young musician whose talent hadn’t yet registered with the public.

That sense of everything riding on the present moment permeated the studio where Springsteen had been reworking his songs for months. Not surprisingly, Meola found “someone who had put his soul on the wire for the better part of a year to make eight songs.”

The intensity of one artist was matched by the one viewing and capturing his image. “I had a sense of the history unfolding in front of my camera,” Meola remembered. “I wanted to photograph that history more than anything I have ever worked on.”

The product of that session featuring Springsteen and saxophonist and onstage foil Clarence Clemons is at the heart of “Born To Run at 50,” an exhibition at the Passaic County Arts Center (PCAC) in Hawthorne, NJ, containing a sampling of items from the recently opened Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music at Monmouth University.

Three months ago, at the time the exhibit opened, I clipped an article out of my local paper, The Bergen Record, about this commemoration of that landmark album’s cultural impact and the aftermath of its success.  The other day, picking up that piece again, I wondered when I should see it.

At that point, a lyric from another Springsteen LP went through my mind: “Summer’s here and the time is right.” There was no doubt that I had to see this.

One photo plucked out of the Meola session, folded in half and wrapped around, ended up on the cover of Born To Run and found their way, Springsteen noted, in “the windows of every record store in America”: the one with him leaning on the cover of Clemons—“the big man with the big smile,” in Meola’s words.

But in truth, almost any of the more than two dozen outtakes displayed on the walls of the PCAC would have made for a compelling visual image of this turning point in The Boss’s life.

My favorite shows the same Springsteen attire (black leather jacket, tweed cap) as the album cover, but with sneakers hanging off the guitar and an “Elvis Fan Club of NYC” button on his jacket.

In addition to the evocative Meola photos, the exhibit contains other artifacts documenting Springsteen’s time in New Jersey in the two-year period between Born To Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, such as:

*A handwritten note addressed to the “landlordess” of the cottage where he composed Born To Run, apologizing for a later payment of a water bill (two humorous postscripts ask, “Do you like my classy writin’ paper?” and “I’m practicing my autograph. Whadya think?”

*An artistic recreation of the customized guitar featured on the cover of the album;

*A video from his acclaimed 1978 performances at the now-defunct Capitol Theatre in Passaic;

*A now-ragged sweater worn by The Boss thrown into the audience at one of these shows, then caught—and now displayed, like a precious relic, all these years later.

For longtime fans like myself, the exhibition (which runs through July 19 at the PCAC (in the John W. Rea House, 675 Goffle Road, Hawthorne) offers the opportunity to relive when the New Jersey rock ‘n’ roll scene (including good friend Southside Johnny) burst with vitality and the seemingly endless promise of being young and alive.

For later generations, it tells a story of how music was recorded, promoted, and performed long before the digital era utterly transformed how the industry reached millions of listeners worldwide.

The exhibit has whetted my interest in seeing what other events may be sponsored by PCAC. And, at some point, I’ll have to drive down to Monmouth County and spend a few hours at the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music.

Quote of the Day (Philip Roth, on the End of a Summer Love)

“What was it inside me that had turned pursuit and clutching into love, and then turned it inside out again? What was it that had turned winning into losing, and losing—who knows—into winning? I was sure I had loved Brenda, though standing there, I knew I couldn't any longer."— Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Philip Roth (1933-2018), Goodbye, Columbus and Other Stories (1959)

(The image accompanying this post shows Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw in the 1969 adaptation of Goodbye, Columbus.)

Britain’s Gamble 10 Years Ago—and Ours

I don’t imagine the British know much baseball history. More’s the pity, because if they had, this week’s major political event might have reminded them of the adage of the great New York catcher and philosopher, Yogi Berra: “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

For my mostly stateside readers, I’m talking about Monday’s announcement by Keir Starmer (pictured) that he would step down as Prime Minister. Wouldn’t you know it, it was almost 10 years to the day that David Cameron did likewise.

Cameron’s decision immediately followed his failed gamble that a defeat of a referendum calling for Brexit would deflate the anti-free trade movement within his Conservative Party.

Instead, the yes vote to withdraw from the European Union precipitated his own fall from power, and overshadowed the terms of five subsequent PMs (including, now, Starmer) who eventually stood in front of 10 Downing Street to say, too, they would be stepping down.

Six leaders in 10 years represent no way to run a government, let alone a business. Coalition fractures mean at minimum that long-term projects won’t start, and that unscrupulous leaders will make a money or power grab while they can. At worst, they encourage a voter perception of anarchy and the need for a strongman to quell the chaos.

Sifting through the controversies that eventually engulfed Starmer in an article last month in The Financial Times, Anthony Seldon, co-founder of the Museum of the Prime Minister, summarized questions related to this streak of ineffective British leaders:

“Is it the incumbents or the system that is responsible? Are the problems the prime minister faces simply greater than before? Has the job now become impossible?”

Seldon cites three government structures in decline that are contributing to the current “churn at the top”: the replacement of Members of Parliaments motivated by the public interest by ones acting in their own private one; a deterioration of the civil service; and an electorate susceptible to instant gratification.

He also fears current developments in the two established parties, the Conservatives and Labour: “It is entirely possible that one or both will cease to exist as exist as mainstream parties in the next 10 [years]. If that happens, another source of national stability will be swept away.”

Seldon’s sweeping historical overview is fine, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t take into account how the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-09 stoked popular resentment on both sides of the Atlantic against international trade arrangements that millions came to regard as inequitable.

That popular unrest was manifested in the successful Brexit campaign, which produced its own inevitable lamentable consequences in the public sphere, according to The New York Times’ Michael D. Shear and Megan Specia:

“Perhaps no part of British society was changed more by Brexit than its political landscape, which has fractured into a chaotic tug of war in which no party seems able to satisfy the demands of an angry and disillusioned public for long.”

With all the hang-wringing by Seldon, Shear and Specia over volatility in the British government, they should cast their eyes “across the pond.” Here, unsteadiness over the past decade was generated not by six people, but by just one, driven by rage and retribution?

Yes, just as Britain took a flyer on a major shift in government, so did the United States 10 years ago this fall, when it elected Donald Trump—a candidate with no governmental or national security experience—President. Anger over two major issues that landed him in the White House also propelled the Brexit campaign: immigration and unequal class outcomes over trade policy.

In the last 10 years, Britain has only had one leader who remotely resembles Trump: Boris Johnson. As I wrote in this post from 10 years ago, when it looked like Johnson would not seek the brass ring, their shared traits include brashness, lying, an overactive libido, non-ideological conservatism, irresponsibility, a brand name, and faux populism.

Even so, Johnson has been no match over time for Trump, who, even after being cast out of the White House in the 2020 election, darkened American politics with ceaseless conspiracy mongering and his bid to return to power to avoid criminal and civil responsibility for his misdeeds.

And now, when he’s not busy earning nicknames like “Landscaper in Chief” and “The Creature From the Green Lagoon,” the Trump Presidency has created a vortex of instability characterized by longtime friends and allies insulted and alienated, promises made and broken, policy positions taken before being forsaken, including:

*Republican Senators cozy up to him unashamedly, only to find themselves “primaried” and losing their seats for no reason they can account for.

*The same senators are assured by White House aides that Trump will support a housing bill they’ve been working on with Democrats for over a year, only for the President to cancel the signing event at the last minute, insisting he won’t put his signature on it until Congress passes his pet voter ID legislation.

*Trump publicly speculated about making Venezuela the 51^st state.

*Even as the Trump administration negotiated with Iran, it prepared and launched a surprise invasion.

*With the “Memo of Understanding” (not yet a treaty, let alone one fulfilling initially stated war aims), Trump is teaching Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu what US observers have known for years: don’t count on his loyalty when he finds it disadvantageous.

*By exempting many agricultural commodities he announced last year, Trump has “raise[d] questions about the coherence of the president’s tariff initiatives as a whole,” according to a report this month by the American Enterprise Institute.

*At the start of the Iran War, he called for “unconditional surrender”—a demand long-since dropped.

I wish the British all the best as they look for a competent leader who’ll last more than Boris Johnson’s three years or Starmer’s two. But it could always be worse. They could choose a Trumpian leader desperate and able to stay on longer, perpetrating untold damage in the process.

(The image accompanying this post, of Keir Starmer, is his official portrait, taken July 5, 2024, on his appointment as Prime Minister, by Simon Dawson/ No 10 Downing Street.)