TV Quote of the Day (‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show,’ With a ‘Rotten Day’ for Ted)

[Georgette, finding Ted Baxter in the arms of another woman, strongly considers becoming a nun. Mary Richards invites the nun overseeing Georgette’s application to her apartment for a meeting. With Mary running late, Rhoda lets the nun in, followed right after by Ted, who, unaware of her vocation, begins putting the moves on the nun.]

Sister Ann [played by Gail Strickland]: “Mr. Baxter, are you asking me for a date?”

Ted Baxter [played by Ted Knight]: “Is the Pope Catholic?”

Sister Ann: “I hope so. I’m a nun.”

Ted: “...What a rotten day!”— The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Season 4, Episode 14, “Almost a Nun's Story,” original air date Dec. 15, 1973, teleplay by Ed. Weinberger and Stan Daniels, directed by Jay Sandrich

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Book of Esther, Who Helps Avert ‘The Calamity That is Coming to My People’)

“Then Esther spoke again to the king; she fell at his feet and besought him with tears to avert the evil design of Haman the Ag′agite and the plot which he had devised against the Jews. And the king held out the golden scepter to Esther, and Esther rose and stood before the king. And she said, ‘If it please the king, and if I have found favor in his sight, and if the thing seem right before the king, and I be pleasing in his eyes, let an order be written to revoke the letters devised by Haman the Ag′agite, the son of Hammeda′tha, which he wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the provinces of the king. For how can I endure to see the calamity that is coming to my people? Or how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred?’ Then King Ahasu-e′rus said to Queen Esther and to Mor′decai the Jew, ‘Behold, I have given Esther the house of Haman, and they have hanged him on the gallows, because he would lay hands on the Jews. And you may write as you please with regard to the Jews, in the name of the king, and seal it with the king’s ring; for an edict written in the name of the king and sealed with the king’s ring cannot be revoked.’”—Esther 8:3-8 (Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition)

Jews worldwide have found meaning and consolation for centuries in the story of how Esther, an orphan in a foreign land, saved her people by telling King Ahasu-e′rus of the genocidal intent of his evil minister, Haman.

But I have come to think that this tale can apply even more broadly—to refugees, displaced persons, immigrants—the persecuted and unwanted around the world (including in this country) who find themselves at the mercy of civil authorities who use them as scapegoats to distract from their own policy failures, whipping up dangerous resentments and injustice in the process.

One verse resonates especially in our time: “How can I endure to see the calamity that is coming to my people? Or how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred?”

The image accompanying this post, Banquet of Queen Esther, was created in 1660 by the Dutch painter, printmaker, and draughtsman Rembrandt (1606-1669).

Quote of the Day (Sam Lipsyte, on ‘No Time for Self-Pity’)

“Certain truths, like the fact that in this twisted world it's the charlatans who emerge victorious, still hurt, but now is no time for self-pity.”—American novelist and short-story writer Sam Lipsyte, No One Left to Come Looking for You (2022)

(The image accompanying this post, of Sam Lipsyte at a Philip Roth birthday reading at the Library of Congress, was taken Mar. 19, 2014, by Slowking.)

Quote of the Day (Patricia Marx, Imagining a New Voice-Mail Message for the U.S. Government)

“You have reached the U.S. government. We are currently unable to answer your call, because everyone has been fired except Bob. If you would like to leave a message, listen carefully, as most of our menu options have been fed into the wood chipper. Please note that this call is being recorded so that we can use it against you.”—American humorist Patricia Marx, “Shouts and Murmurs: You Have Reached the U.S. Government,” The New Yorker, Mar. 3, 2025

Quote of the Day (Baseball’s Casey Stengel, on How Leo Durocher Couldn’t Slug With Fists or Bat)

“That fresh boob is lucky I didn’t knock out his few brains with that bat, but nothing like that was necessary. He can’t hit any harder with his fists than he can with a bat.”—Then-Brooklyn Dodger manager (and future New York Yankee skipper) Casey Stengel (pictured), on a May 12, 1936 beneath-the-stands altercation with light-hitting St. Louis Cardinal infielder (and future manager) “Leo the Lip” Durocher, originally in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, quoted by John Swanberg, “Men of Summer,” The New York Times Book Review, Apr. 2, 2017

Think I could let Opening Day go by for the Yankees without genuflecting reverently towards their past?

Well, maybe not so reverently, judging from today’s quote. But a few choice words from Casey Stengel, over a decade before his glory days with the Bronx Bombers, were irresistible.

You can be sure that Leo Durocher gave his side of the story to waiting reporters, and that Stengel didn’t come off anywhere so well as his own account suggested.

But let it also be said that the Ol’ Professor wasn’t the first Yankee employee who took exception to the antics of “Leo the Lip”—nor would he be the last person associated with major league baseball to regard him balefully.

None other than Babe Ruth accused him of stealing his watch. Durocher’s vehement denial might have to be taken with a grain of salt, considering that the telephone-and-bell system he rigged up in Polo Ground offices enabled his New York Giants to storm back against the Dodgers and win the 1951 pennant.

Ultimately, Stengel had the last laugh on his hated rival, being still alive for his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The controversial Durocher wasn’t around to enjoy his own induction in 1994.

Catcher and broadcaster Joe Garagiola wrote a book, Baseball Is a Funny Game. In the case of Stengel and Durocher, it was also a scrappy one.

Play ball!

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Man Who Would Be King,’ on What a Whiff of Power Can Do)

[Two soldiers, dismissed from Her Majesty’s service in India, have traveled to remote Kafiristan, where they conquer opposition and set themselves up as overlords. One, Danny, has not only had himself crowned king and masqueraded as a god, but now also desires to take a wife so he can establish a dynasty, breaking an agreement with friend Peachy that they would abstain from sex and alcohol.)

Peachy Carnehan [played by Michael Caine]: “What about the contract?”

Danny Dravot [played by Sean Connery]: “The contract only lasted until such time as we was kings, and king I've been these months past! The first king here since Alexander, the first to wear his crown in twenty-two hundred and...”

Peachy: “Fourteen.”

Danny: “Fourteen years! Him... and now me! They call me his son and I am... in spirit anyway. It's a hugeous responsibility. The bridge we're building, it's only the first of many. They'll tie the country together. A nation I shall make of it, with an anthem and a flag. I shall treat on equal terms the viceroy and other kings and princes. When I've accomplished what I set out to do, I'll stand one day before the queen. Not kneel, mind you, but stand like an equal. And she'll say: ‘I'd like you to accept the Order of the Garter as a mark of my esteem, cousin.’ She'll pin it on me herself. It's big. I tell you, it's big!”

Peachy: “And I tell you, you need a physic!”— The Man Who Would Be King (1975), screenplay by John Huston and Gladys Hill, based on the short story by Rudyard Kipling, directed by John Huston

Decades after seeing the film for the first time, I caught up again with this great adventure tale early last night on TCM. Once again, it did not disappoint.

The tales and poetry of Rudyard Kipling have rightfully been criticized for their racism, but in this story he warned of the dangers facing the greatest empire in the world in the Victorian Era: power and the loss of moral authority over distant subjects (what political scientist Joseph Nye calls “soft power”).

I don’t know how many Americans watching this magnificent buddy-movie adaptation by John Huston applied these themes to their own country in 1975, the year they lost Vietnam. But Kipling’s cautionary horror story should resound even more loudly in our contemporary moment.

If power can intoxicate the likes of Danny Dravot—a vagabond still trying to live up to the moral code of a soldier—think how much more it can affect the judgment of a leader with a lifetime of defying laws and mores, but now with increasingly fewer institutional checks on his authority and ambition to expand his imperial reach.

And how much greater will be the downfall of the current successors to Danny and Peachy, the comrade-in-arms who realizes too late the madness of the man he had unstintingly supported?

Quote of the Day (Victor Hugo, on the Upper and Lower Classes)

“There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.”—French novelist-poet Victor Hugo (1802-1885), Les Miserables (1862)

The image accompanying this post shows Fredric March as Jean Valjean, sentenced to prison for stealing bread to feed his starving children, in the 1935 film adaptation of Hugo’s novel.