Spiritual Quote of the Day (Gorman Beauchamp, on the Vatican Amid ‘A Veritable Tsunami of Apology’)

“We live amid a veritable tsunami of apology. The Catholic Church, which, of course, has much to apologize for, has, of late, offered mea culpas to Galileo, the Jews, the gypsies, Jan Hus, whom it burned at the stake in 1415, even to Constantinople (now Istanbul) for its sacking 800 years ago by the knights of the Fourth Crusade, an event for which the late John Paul II expressed ‘deep regret.’ No wonder that a group in England, claiming descent from the medieval Knights Templars, is asking the Vatican to apologize for the violent suppression of the order and for torturing to death its Grand Master Jacques de Molay in 1314, an apology timed to commemorate the 700th anniversary of that fell deed.”— American literary critic and scholar Gorman Beauchamp, “Apologies All Around,” The American Scholar, Autumn 2007

Almost lost in the hoopla over last week’s release of Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical about AI (which I will try to discuss sometime in the near future), was his apology for the Catholic Church’s role in legitimizing slavery and centuries-old slowness over condemning the practice.

A couple of days later, I came across Beauchamp’s appraisal of expressions of regret by major nations and institutions over past injustices. If he took in the pontiff’s more recent statement, I can’t imagine he regarded it with anything other than cynicism.

To some extent, Beauchamp’s outburst was understandable, as he wrote it when cries for reparations, most notably for slavery, began to gain steam in legislatures across the country. Still, there seemed something altogether too categorical with his concluding sour plea, “No more apologies.”

Within a couple of years, the Grouchy Gus persona adopted by Beauchamp spread through American conservative circles. Although Barack Obama never used any form of the words “apology” or “sorry,” his remarks to foreign countries about America’s past tangled history in his first term fed a myth that he had done so.

It all climaxed in Mitt Romney’s charge during his 2012 debates with the President that he had been on an “apology tour”—a phrase that Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in a different context, would have called “boob bait for the bubbas,” or tough-sounding rhetoric meant to turbo-charge populist hordes. It was not one of the shining moments of Romney's career, and one that I'm sure he would prefer that people forget.

During his first year at the Vatican, Pope Leo was extremely cautious, making some moves that helped mollify the Church’s right wing that had smarted over the more spontaneous Pope Francis (e.g., calling for “generous inclusion” of those attached to the Latin Mass). But I’m afraid that President Trump’s increasingly intemperate outbursts (including, this weekend, his third) about Leo have neutralized that effort toward internal unity.

One sign of the end of this era of good feeling came in Christopher Tremoglie’s essay a few days ago in the conservative Washington Examiner, which posited that the pope and other liberals should have saved their breath, because it was African chiefs, waging war on fellow rulers and selling as chattel to whites, who were really responsible for the African slave trade.

Leo is not engaging in the “woke culture” or “white guilt” that has led Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and other GOP politicians to interfere in how Americans learn about the greatest stain in our history.

Instead, experience—in dealing with emerging Third World countries considering their relationship to Catholicism, and in tracing mixed-race Black creoles on his mother’s side of the family—has taught Leo how complicated and wounding the Church’s attitude towards slavery has been over the centuries.

It started with ecclesial institutions owning slaves themselves in the Middle Ages, and continued with Renaissance popes legitimizing the quest of Spanish and Portuguese conquerors to subjugate and seize the lands of “Saracens, and pagans, and other infidels, and enemies of the name of Christ" anywhere, according to Nicole Winfield's article for the National Catholic Reporter.

Africans now account for roughly 20% of the Church’s population worldwide. Moreover, it is growing rapidly not just in overall numbers but also, in contrast to what has been happening in the U.S. and Western Europe, in terms of seminarians, priests, and nuns.

For conservatives holding the line against any changes, if the Church hopes to retain its ban on clerical celibacy, it will have to import to the U.S. many of these African-trained religious personnel. And to appeal to these people entering the ranks of the religious, the church must own up to its past terrible mistakes related to the continent.

But another aspect of acknowledging past injustices, whether the Vatican’s or the West’s in general, is being lost. Formally admitting these mistakes not only has the potential to heal the wounded but to remind others why they would feel this way in the first place.

Slavery perpetrated over centuries, for instance, permeated virtually every aspect of culture and commerce over much of the world. Given that all-pervasive influence, nobody should imagine that it would not leave psychic stains on those it injured.

All the same, don’t be surprised if the pope’s right-wing critics begin to resurrect that “apology tour” bit. Only the next time, I want that “tour” to be comprised of Donald Trump and his supporters displaying proper penitence for denouncing a not-at-all-radical pontiff trying to speak plainly about the facts of history.

Quote of the Day (Plutarch, on ‘Uneducated Generals and Leaders’)

“Uneducated generals and leaders are oftentimes tripped up and toppled over by their innate foolishness. For they establish their lofty power upon a pedestal that has not been leveled, and so it cannot stand upright. Moreover, just as a builder’s rule is first established straight and unbending, and then is used to correct the alignment of everything else through adjustments and juxtapositions with respect to it, in the very same way those who govern must first achieve governance of themselves, straighten out their souls, and set their character aright, and then they should assimilate their subjects to themselves. For the one who is tipping over cannot straighten up someone else, nor can the ignorant person teach, the disorderly establish order, the disorganized organize, the ungoverned govern.”— Greek historian, biographer, and essayist Plutarch (c. 46-120 AD), "To an Uneducated Leader," in How To Be a Leader: An Ancient Guide to Wise Leadership, translated by Jeffrey Beneker (2019)

Song Lyric of the Day (Mel Brooks, With Rediscovered Lines for ‘Springtime for Hitler’)

“Maybe other men have vigor and dash
But other men don't have that mustache.” —Oscar- and Tony-winning American comic actor-writer-director Mel Brooks, quoted by Jason Zinoman, “Mel Brooks Donates His Archives to Museum,” The New York Times, May 14, 2026

At some point before the film The Producers was released, Mel Brooks decided to discard the above lyrics for the tune that is its uproarious climax.

I’m not sure why he did so. The only reason I can come up with is that “Springtime for Hitler” already had so many hilarious lines that the audience would never remember this couplet for the ages.

These lines, by the way, were part of the first draft of his Oscar-winning screenplay, along with other treasures from his multi-decade career now given to the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, NY—a wonderful museum that also contains contributions from George Carlin, Lily Tomlin, Lenny Bruce, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and Brooks’ longtime friend, Carl Reiner.

This Day in Baseball History (Willie Mays Clubs 1st HR)

May 28, 1951—Decisively ending an 0-12 hitless streak that seemed to confirm his initial fears about joining the major leagues, 20-year-old New York Giants rookie Willie Mays hit the first of his 660 career home runs.

In his first at-bat at the team’s home, the Polo Grounds, their newly installed center fielder smacked an offering from star Boston Braves southpaw Warren Spahn over the left-field fence, for what was also his first career hit.

My blog post from 10 years ago briefly reviewed the amazing career of the man that many have proclaimed the best all-around ballplayer of all time. But I think it’s worth spending a little time here on his introduction to the big leagues, as well as how it compared and contrasted with that of rookie and legendary Hall of Famer, Mickey Mantle.

These two were not the only future Hall of Famers to experience difficulties when first exposed to the big leagues. Others, such as Willie Stargell, Brooks Robinson, Pie Traynor, and Roberto Clemente, had relatively subpar campaigns even over their first five seasons, as demonstrated in this 2012 Jim McLennan post on the “AZ Snake Pit” blog.

But the spotlight shone more intensely in New York, the media and sports capital of America—and Mays wasn’t yet over his yips at the plate. He then proceeded to go on another hitless streak: 0-13. At this turning point in his career, as he sat sobbing in front of his locker, he found reassurance from a manager not otherwise known for being soft-hearted: Leo Durocher.

Though he had clashed with Jackie Robinson while managing the Brooklyn Dodgers, Durocher took a gentler approach with this less mature but still immensely talented player now under his wing.

When Mays repeated what he had told him previously while in the Giants’ top minor-league club, the Minneapolis Millers—i.e., that he doubted his ability to hit major-league pitching—Durocher answered, “As long as I’m the manager of the Giants, you are my center fielder. … You are the best center fielder I’ve ever looked at.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, and justifying his manager’s confidence, Mays went on a 14-for-33 tear. He sparked the team’s thrilling pennant run that season, winning Rookie of the Year honors with 20 home runs, 68 RBIs, and a .274 batting average in 121 games—not to mention playing dazzling defense.

There couldn’t have been a more dramatic contrast to another much-heralded outfielder that year, Mantle. Though some veteran New York Yankees like Hank Bauer sought to make him comfortable, the “Commerce [Oklahoma] Comet” was well aware that he was regarded as an interloper and ultimate threat to job security by the Bombers’ proud but fading superstar fixture in center field, Joe DiMaggio.

In contrast to Durocher, Yankee manager Casey Stengel—after successfully overriding the advice of general manager George Weiss that their hot young prospect was not ready for the majors—felt the need to send Mantle back to the minors when his strikeouts began to mount.

It’s now part of Bomber legend how a tough-love visit from Mantle’s father Mutt led his son to surmount his funk and for Stengel to call him back up—as the team’s current rightfielder and centerfielder-in-waiting—in late August. Mantle ended the season hitting .267 with 13 home runs, 65 RBIs, and a .792 OPS.

While Stengel managed Mantle for the first 10 years of his career, Durocher only benefited from having Mays in his lineup for three. (The “Say Hey Kid” served in the Army from May 1952 through March 1954, causing him to miss most of one season and all of another, and his manager was fired after a third-place finish in 1954.)

Nevertheless, that short period of time was enough to make the crusty Durocher speak glowingly about him for the rest of his life, as seen in this passage from his autobiography, Nice Guys Finish Last:

“If somebody came up and hit .450, stole 100 bases, and performed a miracle in the field every day, I’d still look you right in the eye and tell you that Willie was better. He could do the five things you have to do to be a superstar: hit, hit with power, run, throw and field. And he had the other magic ingredient that turns a superstar into a super Superstar. Charisma. He lit up a room when he came in. He was a joy to be around.”

If Durocher served as a kind of proud surrogate father to his young superstar, Stengel often acted as a demanding, frequently disappointed one to his. Early to see Mantle’s immense gifts, he also frequently grew frustrated with him for not paying attention to constructive construction and for not measuring up to a standard for what he could be.

The dissing of his best player may have reached a nadir in 1959, when Stengel listed Hank Bauer, Yogi Berra and Phil Rizzuto as his best players, according to Jane Leavy’s The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood. Pressed by Bauer about this noticeable exclusion, Stengel answered, “You gave 110 percent every time you were in the lineup.”

I couldn’t finish this post without looking at one particular aspect of this landmark game in the career of Mays.

The at-bat against Spahn was not only an indicator of his future greater greatness, but also a sign of his comfort at the plate against the Hall of Fame hurler. In 253 plate appearances against him, Mays hit 18 homers (the most he accumulated against any pitcher), while batting .305. with a .955 OPS.

Since the run he gave up to Mays was his only one in his 4-1 victory, Spahn took the first round-tripper by Mays in stride, joking later, “For the first 60 feet, that was a hell of a pitch."

I suspect that it was harder for him to accept another he yielded in July 1963, when, on the mound for the Milwaukee Braves, he lost his chance at outdueling the (now San Francisco) Giants’ Juan Marichal in the 16^th inning when, after 16 innings and 201 pitches, he watched his chance at a complete-game shutout disappear through  Mays’ solo HR.

Quote of the Day (Virginia Woolf, After Encountering a Very Important Person in Her Life)

“Not much to my severer taste—florid, moustached, parakeet coloured, with all the supple ease of aristocracy, but not the wit of the artist. She writes fifteen pages a day…knows everyone. But could I ever know her…She is a grenadier; hard; handsome; manly; inclined to double chin.”—English novelist and critic Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), on first meeting novelist and future love Vita Sackville-West [pictured], in a Dec. 21, 1922 entry in The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Two: 1920-1924, edited by Anne Olivier Bell, assisted by Andrew McNeillie (1978)

I think it was one phrase—"florid, moustached, parakeet coloured”—that grabbed my attention in this passage about the stunning androgyne Vita Sackville-West. After this, it was that bit about a new acquaintance who “writes fifteen pages a day.” (I wish I could equal that output!)

I can’t imagine describing anyone this way. But then again, that was part of the acute perception and sensibility of Virginia Woolf.

Quote of the Day (Simon Kuper, on ‘The Little West’)

“[T]he the last meaningful multinational alliance [is] a ‘Little West’ consisting of Europe, including Brexit Britain but minus Hungary, plus Canada. The Little West is a herbivorous but surprisingly solid bloc, terrified into co-operation by outside threats….The Little West has an ideology of sorts, probably shared by a slight majority of its citizens: democracy, individual freedoms and nostalgia for the old order. The other powers have no belief system beyond an all-purpose aggressive nationalism. China's Communist party isn't communist, and Russian and American action bounces around according to the personal whims of Vladimir Putin and [Donald] Trump.”— Columnist Simon Kuper, “A New World Disorder,” The Financial Times, Jan. 31-Feb. 1, 2026

Quote of the Day (Mary McCarthy, on Making 'A Realistic Decision')

“If someone tells you he is going to make 'a realistic decision,' you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.”—American novelist and essayist Mary McCarthy (1912-1989), “American Realist Playwrights,” in On the Contrary: Articles of Belief, 1946-1961 (1961)

Review: The NT Live Production of Arthur Miller’s ‘All My Sons,’ at the Barrymore Film Center, Fort Lee NJ

Under the NT Live banner, Britain’s National Theatre has made available live productions to cinemas around the world. Last year, a movie house not far from me, the Barrymore Film Center in Fort Lee NJ, showed a startling production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth starring Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma. As I am unlikely to visit the UK any time in the near future, I hoped for another such production soon.

It came a few days ago, as NT Live presented the play that started Arthur Miller in 1946 on his career as the bard of modern age tragedy: All My Sons.

Originally, the Barrymore had promoted a 2019 NT Live production starring Bill Pullman and Sally Field. I’m not sure why, but the theater ended up showing one from the 2025-26 season at Wyndham’s Theatre in London’s West End, with Bryan Cranston and Marianne Jean-Baptist in the same roles.

With all due respect to Pullman and Field, it’s hard to imagine how they could equal, let alone surpass, the two more recent leads for shattering impact.

Not all of director Ivo van Hove’s attempts to bring freshness to taken-for-granted classics are well advised, as I noted over the weekend about how he had (mis)handled Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. 

As I began watching this performance, I wondered how the elements of this stage design—a large tree, fallen overnight; an unadorned house front; a lit overhead circular portal—would aid or detract from this viewing experience.

But his stripped-down production of Miller’s first Broadway success enables contemporary audiences to focus on his talented performers, in a way that theatergoers more than three-quarters of a century ago, fresh from reading about war profiteers and experiencing losses in the struggle against totalitarianism, were unlikely to have done.

For me, the revelation here was Marianne Jean-Baptiste, whom I had only seen previously in her Oscar-nominated turn in Secrets and Lies. As Kate Keller, she seems to find untapped reserves of fury and sorrow as a wife and mother unable to deal with the realizations that the crime of her munitions-manufacturer husband and the wartime disappearance of her beloved older son Larry might be linked in some way.

Though Bryan Cranston is familiar to TV viewers stateside from the long-running series Breaking Bad and Malcolm in the Middle, he shows further evidence here that the versatility he displayed onstage in Tony-winning roles in Network and All the Way was no fluke.

He masterfully strips away the thin membrane of respectability surrounding his protagonist, Joe Keller: Seemingly cleared of charges of having okayed a shipment of defective parts leading to the deaths of 21 pilots, he suddenly finds himself facing the unwelcome appearance on his doorstep of the two children of the business partner on whom he laid responsibility for the transgression.

The English actress-playwright Hayley Squires brings the requisite amount of sweetness and steel as Larry’s fiancee, Ann Deever, who, as the first step in turning the page with an engagement to the Kellers’ younger son Chris, must find a way to get Kate to stop denying that Larry is dead. 

And Tom Glynn-Carney is sullen and fierce as Ann’s brother George, who confronts the Kellers with the truth they can no longer avoid.

In some ways, Paapa Essiedu has the trickiest role as Chris, the surviving son at sea: drawn to but bashful about courting Ann, chafing at inheriting from his father a business that leaves him uninspired (“If I have to grub for money all day long at least at evening I want it beautiful”), and loving his father while struggling with the vague sense that something is wrong with the parent. He brings fire to his late moment of revelation and resolution.

The first in a quartet of Miller tragedies (followed by Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and A View From the Bridge) that traced American socio-political dysfunction to a father’s failure to live up to a moral code, All My Sons has been served well by this production that highlights why we are still dealing with the playwright’s theme of corporate irresponsibility and the remorseless pressures of capitalism.

The Barrymore has also done well by bringing it to a select but appreciative audience. I look forward to its NT Live production next month: John Millington Synge’s tragicomedy of Irish country life, The Playboy of the Western World.

Quote of the Day (Louisa May Alcott, on Volunteering as a Civil War Nurse)

“The sight of several stretchers, each with its legless, armless, or desperately wounded occupant, entering my ward, admonished me that I was there to work, not to wonder or weep; so I corked up my feelings, and returned to the path of duty, which was rather ‘a hard road to travel’ just then. The house had been a hotel before hospitals were needed, and many of the doors still bore their old names; some not so inappropriate as might be imagined, for my ward was in truth a ball-room, if gun-shot wounds could christen it. Forty beds were prepared, many already tenanted by tired men who fell down anywhere, and drowsed till the smell of food roused them. Round the great stove was gathered the dreariest group I ever saw–ragged, gaunt and pale, mud to the knees, with bloody bandages untouched since put on days before; many bundled up in blankets, coats being lost or useless; and all wearing that disheartened look which proclaimed defeat,  more plainly than any telegram of the [General Ambrose] Burnside blunder. I pitied them so much, I dared not speak to them, though, remembering all they had been through since the route at Fredericksburg, I yearned to serve the dreariest of them all.”— American fiction writer—and Civil War volunteer nurse— Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), “Hospital Sketches,” first published in 1863, reprinted in A Strange Life: Selected Essays, edited by Liz Rosenberg (2023)

The image accompanying this post shows where Little Women author Alcott served as a nurse: United States Hospital (formerly the Union Hotel) in Georgetown. Though her service only amounted to several weeks starting in December 1862, she became in her way as much of a casualty of the conflict as the men she tended.

Bad ventilation, unhealthy food, and 12-hour shifts undermined her health, as did the medication she was given: calomel, which we now know was a poisonous mercury. According to Rachel Williams’ February 2016 blog post for the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, the writer “was never fully well thereafter.”

Memorial Day originated following the Civil War as a communal remembrance for those who fell during that conflict. Today is an appropriate time to recall not only the sacrifice of those who suffered and perished in these and other American wars, but the nurses like Alcott who endured their own traumas in tending to them.

Photo of the Day: ‘Last Stop USA,’ John F. Kennedy Memorial Park, Piermont NY

“GI Joe,” the waving soldier in this statue in upstate New York’s Rockland County, represented a common figure in World War II: the 1.5 million GIs who, after training at Camp Shank in nearby Orangeburg, would embark from Piermont Pier for the European theater.

Though a half million disembarked at the conclusion of the conflict, all too many others never made it home. It is they, as well as all the others who perished in American wars, that we remember and honor today—and pray that their supreme sacrifice may never be repeated.

Photo of the Day: 7 Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost, St. Cecilia Church, Englewood NJ

A number of people, including myself, lined up after morning Mass on Pentecost Sunday in front of this display at my longtime spiritual home, St. Cecilia Roman Catholic Church of Englewood, NJ. 

The white tags here, in English and Spanish, list the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit” understanding, wisdom, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Acts of the Apostles, on the First Pentecost)

“When the day of Pentecost had come,
  they were all together in one place.
And suddenly from heaven there came
  a sound like the rush of a violent wind,
  and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3
Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them,
  and a tongue rested on each of them.
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit
  and began to speak in other languages,
  as the Spirit gave them ability.”—Acts 2: 1-4 (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition)

The image accompanying this post, Pentecost, was created in 1545 by the Venetian Renaissance painter Titian (c. 1485–1576)

This Day in Theater History (Henrik Ibsen, Playwright-Provocateur, Dies)

May 23, 1906—Characteristically exclaiming Tvertimod! (On the contrary!”), playwright Henrik Ibsen, who influenced the international theater scene by overturning expectations and confronting audiences with controversial subject matter and greater realism, died in Oslo, Norway, at age 78 following a series of debilitating strokes.

In 25 plays written over nearly a half century, Ibsen moved from historical and/or verse dramas to challenging contemporary tragedies shot through with verisimilitude, psychological insights and symbolism.

Carefully studying the works of Shakespeare in his long initial theatrical apprenticeship, he ultimately was exceeded only by The Bard as the most performed playwright in the world.

 His work influenced such later playwrights as August Strindberg, Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, Eugene O’Neill, Clifford Odets, and, perhaps most powerfully, George Bernard Shaw, whose essay “The Quintessence of Ibsenism" expounded his importance as a dramatist of ideas.

In his youth Ibsen was a political radical, and in the plays of his maturity he was unafraid to embrace iconoclasm.

In A Doll’s House (1879), he dared to show a housewife willing to leave not just her husband but her children in making a bid for independence.

As if in answer to those who protested that decision, he outraged public opinion even more by presenting in Ghosts (1881) a wife who stayed with her husband and suffered the consequences: a son suffering from syphilis, which she believes he inherited from his philandering father.

When that predictably brought down on him a storm of criticism, he responded with An Enemy of the People (1882), which displayed contempt for representative democracy (“What is the majority? The ignorant mob. Intelligence is always to be found in the minority”).

Paradoxically, this nonconforming playwright grounded much of his work in what would have seemed familiar to audiences of his time: the well-made play featuring plot exposition (often with long-concealed secrets) and clear denouements.

I wonder if those traditional elements may account for why so many performances of his plays stateside go beyond normal translations into English to more freewheeling adaptations meant to recreate the sense of shock experienced by his own Victorian audiences.

In the case of A Doll’s House, for instance, Ingmar Bergman and Amy Herzog, among others, have trimmed the text and even eliminated characters. 

Herzog and Miller, understandably unnerved by the advocacy of eugenics in An Enemy of the People, jettisoned the concept, but in the process downplayed the satire that even took in the play’s hero, Dr. Thomas Stockmann.

Even when playwrights have delivered adaptations with less stilted dialogue that retain the plots, they can be undermined by wayward directors. Ivo van Hove, working with Christopher Hampton’s serviceable 2004 adaptation of Hedda Gabler, undercut it b subjecting his lead, Elizabeth Marvel, to a tomato dousing.

Quote of the Day (Raymond Chandler, on the Truth of Science and the Truth of Art)

“There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.” — American mystery novelist, short-story writer, and screenwriter Raymond Chandler (1888–1959), "Great Thought" (Feb. 19, 1938), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)

The Liars’ Club and a Senator Who Enables It

In the 1993 thriller The Liars’ Club, a circle of teens is forced to maintain even greater loyalty than before because of one member’s involvement in a sexual assault. When the victim is murdered, the web of complicity tightens. An attempt to call an end to the deceit only results in worse transgressions.

The Republican Party under Donald Trump has transformed into own version of The Liars’ Club. Only this time, it encompasses not a small group of entitled jocks (though Secretary of War Pete Hegseth seems like an alum of such a group), but an organization of politically engaged adults.

Their silence in the face of assaults on the Constitution and democracy—from Cabinet members (like the ones in this picture, joined by Veep J.D. Vance) down to local officials asked to violate time-honored election laws and regulations—is being enforced by a President with a code of omerta worthy of a sullen crime boss.

This week’s primary losses by Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy and Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, after their undistinguished challengers were flooded with funds and endorsements by the President and his spineless surrogates, will only confirm the sense of helplessness felt by any Republicans hoping for even an inch of space from a leader bent on remolding the Grand Old Party in his own scowling image.

There is a double danger affecting the nation’s Democrats: desperation that they can no longer rely on a single member of the opposite party to rein in the President, and that a defection by one of their own might further embolden him.

Which brings us to the curious case of John Fetterman.

Lack of Prudential Judgment

A relative of mine recently noted that, though he abominated Fetterman during his successful 2022 campaign for the U.S. Senate, his views about the former Pennsylvania lieutenant governor have moderated since then. “He makes more sense than many Republicans or Democrats,” he said, observing that Fetterman had won praise for his efforts on behalf of Western Pennsylvania.

In fact, late last July, Fetterman commended the Trump administration for delivering over $1 billion in infrastructure funding to the state. Surely it didn’t escape his notice how the President interfered with funding projects to build new Hudson River rail tunnels and Army Corps of Engineers plans in cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Baltimore—areas controlled, not coincidentally, by Democrats.

That’s the most charitable case for why, as Jonathan Martin’s column earlier this month for Politico laid out, Fetterman has become a tempting target for Presidential courting:

“He largely ignores Trump’s transgressions, finds ways to support the White House in high-profile moments and is increasingly ubiquitous when criticizing his own party on right-coded media in ways that affirm conservative views about liberal excess.”

I am not one to disown a Democrat or progressive for wandering off the reservation when compelled by conscience. In an age of polarization, independent thinking in a public official is as important now as it was back in 1774, when father of conservatism Edmund Burke extolled the ideal of a representative who “owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

But the independence that Burke advocated depends on a sense of prudential judgment that Fetterman, in backing the Iranian War—and in even more ludicrously supporting President Trump’s plans for a White House ballroom on national security reasons—sorely lacks.

Fetterman disregarded the bona fides of Trump and his lackeys in evaluating these two propaganda offensives. That’s important, because, if administration figures are prone to congenital misleading, then an elected official must work harder to verify claims and supporting evidence.

That fails utterly with the Iranian War and the White House Ballroom, as they have been started and supported by a Liars’ Club at the highest level of the nation: Trump and his advisers.

Ballroom BS

The $200 million for the ballroom, its financing through private donors currying favor with the President, and the complete East Wing demolition required to make way for it should have concerned Fetterman. Instead, in an interview last August with Fox News Digital, he predicted that the plans would be “done in a tasteful and historical kind of way.”

“Tasteful” and “historical” in the same sentence as the President who destroyed the Rose Garden? That would be enough to make many people gag. But Fetterman compounded his error this April by spreading Trump’s claim, with no evidence, that the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner further justified the ballroom plans on security grounds.

Periodically, Trump officials should be subjected to The Pinocchio Test: i.e., the louder they scream that they are telling the truth, blameless, and innocent, the faster we should whip out rulers to measure their noses for unexplained elongations.

Administering the Pinocchio Test should be normal business on Capitol Hill in maintaining the government’s system of checks and balances. Predictably, Republicans have abdicated this role except in the cases of Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi, who so embarrassed or disappointed the President that Congressmen and Senators could safely attack them.

But it is shocking to find a Democrat like Fetterman who commits the same sin. His support for Israel’s offensive against Gaza might be excused as backing for a nation subjected to a horrendous attack.

The Iranian Insanity

But the campaign against Iran was a war of choice, the logical consequence of breaking the 2015 Iran-US nuclear treaty negotiated by the Obama administration that allowed unprecedented monitoring of uranium stockpiles.

Once Trump, at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s urging, pulled out of the pact, assessing any potential nuclear buildup became a matter of guesswork—which, as seen after the fall of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, can prove wildly mistaken.

In assessing Netanyahu’s arguments for a widened conflict that no President from either party in the prior three decades had accepted, Trump—and, consequently, Fetterman—might have thought of an exchange between Pat Riley—at that time, before becoming a Hall of Fame coach, a secondary offensive weapon for the Los Angeles Lakers—and Wilt Chamberlain.

The superstar center, according to a speech I heard Riley give at a nonprofit trade association when he was with the New York Knicks, was incredulous that his teammate had taken and missed a shot that would have won the game. What was he thinking?

“I was wide open,” Riley answered.

“Did you ever stop to think there might be a reason for that?” Chamberlain shot back.

Indeed, in reviewing past reluctance to authorize American military operations against Iran, Trump should have thought “there might be a reason for that.” Instead, with the Israeli leader feeding his fantasy of one-upping prior Presidents, he decided to join Israel in the attack.

He did so even though, according to a New York Times account of a crucial planning meeting, CIA director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed Netanyahu’s expectation of a mass Iranian uprising as fantasy, and Trump’s military advisers warned that the Strait of Hormuz could be seized.

Following the invasion, Trump, Pete Hegseth, and other officials tried out a series of shifting rationales—defeating Iranian proxies in attacks on Israel, neutralizing ballistic missiles, and regime change—before settling on what seems to be the current motivation: annihilating Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

The nuclear question seems to be the best way for punching one’s ticket for admittance to the Liars’ Club. Following last June’s “Twelve-Day War,” a US-Israel joint air attack launched for this very purpose, Trump announced that Iran’s nuclear program had been “totally obliterated.”

If that was the case, why the need for another operation, particularly since no evidence has emerged of Iran restarting nuclear enrichment?

Fetterman would be far better consuming shredded lettuce than the shredded war justifications of Trump and Pete Hegseth. And someone should ask why he muted his rhetorical trumpet when Trump issued this genocidal ultimatum to Iran: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" unless a deal was reached.

At this point, it’s worth asking: Is there any use of military force by the administration that Fetterman regards as unwise, let alone immoral?

It’s hard to tell what’s more infuriating: the Fetterman negative vote against invoking the 1973 War Powers Act that ensured its Senate defeat, or his justification for it: “I would never want to restrict any future president to do this kind of military exercise that was very successful.”

Come again? “Successful” how?

Leave aside that Fetterman doesn’t seem disturbed by an administration and its congressional lackeys who, as this “military exercise” has evolved, have claimed: a) that the war is over; b) acknowledged that the war could continue for quite some time; and c) that a deal was within reach (this, often after the Trump Organization bought stock in companies that benefited from the war).

But what can you say about an “excursion” in which the Islamic regime remains in place, having discovered an effective tool of retaliation in closing the Strait of Hormuz that it had never attempted before—and reduced the President of the United States to a tweeting, cursing madman on Easter?

Like many of his fellow Trump supporters, a longtime friend of mine has consistently derided “globalists.” But what is the President now if not a globalist, except that his inclination is based on self-aggrandizement rather than the rules-based international law that long sustained Pax Americana?

In dealing with Russia and China, Trump’s attitude has been, “We’ll grab what we can, and let you do the same.” While busy taking over Venezuela, enforcing an embargo that has reduced Cuba to a shambles, and even threatening the NATO alliance by screaming for the annexation of Greenland, the President has signaled to Vladimir Putin that he doesn’t mind if Russia takes over Ukraine.

Where has Fetterman been in all of this? On Fox News last year, he said that if the President secured a lasting peace in the Ukraine conflict, he’d gladly nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize. This then begs the question: how would Putin accept any deal that did not provide him with a net territorial gain at the expense of Ukraine?

Trump Derangement Syndrome—or Fetterman Derangement Syndrome?

Like the President, Fetterman has unleashed a round of vitriol against anyone who holds good-faith reservations about initiating a war against a nation nearly four times the area and twice the population of Iraq—a land in which, it might be remembered, the US became involved in a quagmire.

This month, with rhetoric earlier retailed by the masterminds who brought us the Vietnam War, he accused the Democratic base of becoming “increasingly anti-American.”

It didn’t stop there. In a March interview, he saw this cohort as being “governed by the TDS”—Trump Derangement Syndrome.

It’s not enough that the senator is using a shopworn version of columnist Charles Krauthammer’s “Bush Derangement Syndrome” coinage from 2003.

But he might have more profitably reflected that “TDS” refers not to administration critics but to a President who stays up all night tweeting the most absurd, bigoted, obscene memes and rants—as well as one who has started his very own Mideast forever war to go along with his domestic endless retribution campaign.

“I’m going to disagree with [Trump], but I’m always going to disagree with respect,” Fetterman vowed. That disagreement has been decidedly low-key. 

Aside from that, though, why would the senator accord respect to a head of government who doesn’t respect the dignity of the Presidency, let alone his predecessors, popes, officeholders, journalists, entertainers, economists, business leaders, and ordinary citizens?

In the face of a daily cascade of personal insults and envelope-pushing violations of the law, outrage is the more appropriate response.

“I’m never going to call people Nazis or fascists or authoritarianism and all those extreme terms,” Fetterman said on Fox News in late April. But if Trump does not crave authoritarian rule, how else to describe someone who:

*puts his image on currency and photos;

*says that the only thing restricting his conduct in office would be his own “ethics”;

*enables a tech billionaire outside government to remove congressionally authorized agencies and their staffers at will;

*threatens businesses with tariffs or lawsuits, or demands a share of profits as leverage, to pressure companies into political alignment with the administration;

*pursues prosecutions against the likes of James Comey, Mark Kelly, Governor Tim Walz, Jerome Powell, Adam Schiff, John Brennan, and Letitia James on thin to non-existent evidence;

*authorizes government agencies to harass universities, law firms, even networks with late-night talk-show hosts who joke about them.

If the pattern of Fetterman’s statements sounds familiar, it should: Robert Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard started out as progressive Democrats until their criticisms of others in their movements became louder and more frequent while their complaints about Trump turned mute before being totally abandoned.

Never mind saving his political career: If Fetterman wants to preserve his self-respect, he can look at what happened to Kennedy and Gabbard once they fell into Trump’s embraces, which ended up involving:

*shamelessly praising the President beyond what they would ever have for any Democratic leader;

*keeping silent about major policy differences with the President;

*for RFK Jr., saying nothing while one of the primary tributes to his clan, the Kennedy Center, faced physical dismantling and creative emasculation;

*for Gabbard (before her just-announced resignation), investigating preposterous 2020 electoral claims of Presidential election that were outside her authority as director of national intelligence.

As with RFK Jr., it has to be asked how much Fetterman’s move towards the right resulted from genuine policy disagreements as opposed to an erratic personality. His attempt to carry on his senatorial duties following his stroke and the depression that followed is commendable.

But the behavior catalogued in a New York Magazine article last year (e.g., driving at recklessly high speeds, as well as what a former chief of staff listed as “Conspiratorial thinking; megalomania…high highs and low lows; long, rambling, repetitive and self-centered monologues; lying in ways that are painfully, awkwardly obvious”) calls into question whether he should continue in office.

In his interview with Martin for Politico, Fetterman wondered how Trump and the GOP could tolerate a social liberal like himself when they had forced out Tom Tillis and Bill Cassidy for far less.

As a public official, if you accept and spread the arguments of The Liars’ Club, you’re only one small step from joining it. Unlike a private citizen, you have access to information that might make you change your mind. Only willful ignorance, not naivete, could cloud a failure to perceive that the paramount issue of our time is preventing the most powerful man on earth from doing whatever he likes.

That should be as good a reason for any as why Fetterman should not accommodate an ignorant, loutish billionaire with a thirst for political dominance and a gift for demagogy.

Well, maybe one more: Caligula, according to the ancient historian Suetonius, had thought so highly of his horse Incitatus that the Roman ruler thought of naming him a consul until his assassination. 

Take your pick for why: either as an example of the emperor’s madness or of his contempt for the Senate—two traits typical of America’s current aspiring authoritarian.

Quote of the Day (Russell Baker, on the Government and the Rich)

“The Government cannot afford to have a country made up entirely of rich people, because rich people pay so little tax that the Government would quickly go bankrupt. This is why Government men always tell us that labor is man's noblest calling. Government needs labor to pay its upkeep.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American humorist, reporter, and memoirist Russell Baker (1925-2019), So This Is Depravity and Other Observations (1980)

Baker wrote this in the Carter Administration. Imagine what he might have written after reading about the plan signed off by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in which the Internal Revenue Service would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from all audits of “any matters currently pending” relating to President Trump, his family and his businesses.

Quote of the Day (John Irving, on Free Time and Writing)

“The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.” —American novelist and screenwriter John Irving quoted by R.Z. Sheppard, “Life into Art: Novelist John Irving,” Time Magazine, Aug. 31, 1981

The image accompanying this post, John Irving in the Netherlands, was taken on May 2, 1989, by Rob Bogaerts (ANEFO).

Quote of the Day (Willa Cather, on the Past)

“Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Willa Cather (1873-1947), My Antonia (1918)

This Day in Rock ‘n’ Roll History (NY-Inspired Billy Joel Scores With ‘Turnstiles’)

May 19, 1976—Though Billy Joel did not achieve the chart-topping LP that executives desired on his fourth studio album, he staked out the sound that paved the way for later success—and created what many feel was a high-water mark in his career as a singer-songwriter—with Turnstiles.

A week or so ago, The New York Times created a hornet’s nest with a list of the 30 greatest living songwriters that some (like critic Ted Gioia) derided as methodologically suspect. Predictably, even more readers complained that their choices didn’t make the roundup, with Joel among the most glaring omissions. 

(See this podcast with the Times critics debating this egregious exclusion and others, in a manner that YouTube respondents variously assailed as “smug,” “insufferable,” “oblivious,” and “unbelievable.”)

I know that the Piano Man’s output has, for some reason, not always won critical acclaim. You can count me among his longtime fans. It’s not just that his concerts have been electrifying, but his recordings display to the utmost his skills as a lyricist and musician. Turnstiles is a prime example.

This album also represented his attempt to wrest creative control of his material in the most decisive fashion. His label, Columbia Records, suggested that he work with James William Guercio. This producer, manager, and songwriter, through such acts as Chicago, Blood, Sweat and Tears and the Buckinghams, was at the time an influential proponent of jazz rock—or, as I noted in this prior blog post, “brass rock,” characterized by a driving horn section.

At the Caribou Ranch recording studio in Colorado, Guercio was exerting tighter control over his productions. In Joel’s case, the producer pushed for studio musicians, including from Elton John’s backup band.

After listening to these sessions, Joel decided that, though this studio hires might have benefited the English superstar, it wasn’t what he wanted. He called the sessions off, and pressed his case with Columbia for a backup group of his own to work on his next album.

To make doubly sure that he got what he wanted, Joel took over the producer’s chores as well. That turned out to be a mixed blessing. He may have come closer to the sound he wanted, but, as he recalled in a 2009 Billboard interview, “I’m not a producer. I’m a good partnering producer when I work with somebody like Phil Ramone or Mick Jones; I have a lot of ideas. But I don’t know technically always what I should be going for.”

The real benefit came from the comfort level he felt from working with what became the “Billy Joel Band”: bassist Doug Stegmeyer, drummer Liberty DeVitto, guitarists Russell Javors and Howie Emerson, and saxophonist Richie Cannata. It was like what another up-and-coming Columbia artist, Bruce Springsteen, had wanted and gotten, with the now-legendary E Street Band.

Because he permanently parted ways with those backup musicians a couple of decades later, Joel didn’t achieve the longevity and camaraderie that The Boss gained with his “Band of Brothers.” But for the time they played together, there was a drive and cohesion to his sound.

Equally important for Joel, after three years of feeling lost in Los Angeles, the longtime Long Island resident moved back east. The title of this new collection, Turnstiles, was a celebration of that decision.

(Incidentally, the cover of the album was shot in an actual abandoned subway station. The assorted non-Joel figures in the photograph were meant to suggest people associated with different songs, so the teenaged girl with the headphones, for instance, represents “All You Wanna Do Is Dance.”)

Joel’s move back home also was something of an act of defiance against anti-New York sentiment in the nation. The singer-songwriter decided it was time for a change when he saw the notorious 1975 New York Daily News headline at the height of the bankruptcy crisis: “Ford To City: Drop Dead.”

On vinyl, Joel reacted with a dystopian piece of science fiction, "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)." After 9/11, it became an unexpected anthem of resilience for the metropolis. Now, we are almost a decade after the future that he imagined.

If "Miami 2017” seemed tailor-made for arena rock, “New York State of Mind” felt more like its natural setting was a small jazz club. Indeed, it has become something of a pop standard, covered by the likes of Tony Bennett, Carmen McRae, Mel Torme, Barbara Streisand, Shirley Bassey, and Diane Schuur with Stan Getz.

I embraced two other songs because in some ways they reminded me of the work of two cultural figures I was just beginning to enjoy.

With backup singers, castanets, strings, and especially an opening drumbeat reminiscent of “Be My Baby,” “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” was Joel’s tribute to “Wall of Sound” producer Phil Spector and then-wife Ronnie. (In fact, the latter released her own estimable cover version a year later, noting in interviews that she identified with the song’s theme of a break from California following her divorce.)

The other cultural figure I thought of was F. Scott Fitzgerald, on “I’ve Loved These Days.” So many of the images and themes evoked here—spending beyond one’s means, pearls, caviar, foreign cars, champagne, and cocaine—could have been drawn from the pages and life of the author of “The Great Gatsby.”

One other tune deserves special attention, as Joel would return to its main concern later in his career: “Summer, Highland Falls.” Named for the upstate New York town where Joel stayed upon his return from the West Coast, the song functioned as an emotional taking stock and recalibration.

He has been frank in admitting that lines like “It’s either sadness or euphoria” recognized the manic depression with which he has battled through much of his life, even at the height of his success—a condition he explored later in “I Go to Extremes” and “You’re Only Human (Second Wind)”.

Though the album only peaked at #122 on the U.S. Billboard chart on its release, songs from Turnstiles helped solidify his growing acclaim as a top-notch live performer, as exemplified from several from the LP being included on his first live collection, Songs in the Attic (1981). Eventually it reached platinum status.

Joel did not produce another LP until 1993 with River of Dreams. Like Turnstiles, that marked a watershed of sorts, as it turned out to be his last collection of original pop tunes. 

His concert partner Elton John admonished him to sit down and write some more, but if Joel felt his creative well had run dry, it’s hard to take issue with his decision to take this turn in his career. It would only have invited more critical derision than he’d experienced already.