Quote of the Day (Tom Robbins, on Being ‘Extremely Reverent’)

“I’m extremely reverent; it just depends what I’m looking at. From the outside, my life may look chaotic, but inside I feel like some kind of monk licking an ice cream cone while straddling a runaway horse.” —American novelist Tom Robbins (1932-2025), quoted by Rob Liguori, “ ‘I Don't Let It Snow on My Fiesta,’” The New York Times Sunday Magazine, May 25, 2014

This cropped image of Tom Robbins, in San Francisco at a reading sponsored by Booksmith, was taken on Sept. 24, 2005, by 48states (talk).

TV Quote of the Day (‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ on What Worries the U.K. Government)

James Hacker [played by Paul Eddington]: “Humphrey, I'm worried.”

Sir Humphrey Appleby [played by Nigel Hawthorne]: “Oh, what about, Prime Minister?”

Hacker: “About the Americans.”

Appleby: “Oh yes, well, we're all worried about the Americans.” — Yes, Prime Minister, Season 1, Episode 6, “A Victory for Democracy,” original air date Feb. 13, 1986, teleplay by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, directed by Sydney Lotterby

Forty years after this episode in this hilarious series aired, the British have even more to worry about their partner in the “special relationship” than they did back when it only concerned Americans going crazy about Communist subversion.

Now, the Prime Minister has so much more on his mind—like whether the current American President will destroy the transatlantic alliance, subvert representative governments around the globe, spark a trade war by ratcheting up tariffs, or use Royal Air Force bases for potential unilateral strikes on Iran.

Moreover, the Prime Minister and King Charles are sweating over what else the Americans have in the Epstein files—like whether they could make matters even worse, if possible, for the former Prince Andrew, and, with more revelations spilling out about additional cabinet ministers, whether the government of Keir Starmer could fall.

This Day in Film History (Death of Stanley Kramer, Postwar Liberal Producer-Director)

Feb. 19, 2001— Stanley Kramer, a director and producer who stirred audiences’ consciences with provocative sociopolitical content, died at age 87 at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, Calif., from complications of pneumonia.

It had been more than two decades since Kramer had retired from the movie business, and more than three since his films had made money or even won critical acclaim. In the quarter century since his death, both conservatives and liberals, in agreement on little else, believe that he was as stodgy in technique as square in outlook.

But Kramer had a two-decade run in which he attracted major stars and made profitable movies with content that risk-averse, politically conservative studio executives regarded as radioactive. 

He might not have been the flashiest, most innovative director, but he was important for making Cold War America look in the mirror he held up to it on injustice at home.

Coming of age in Hell’s Kitchen in New York during the Great Depression, hearing his mother extol her clerical job at Paramount Studios in Gotham, Kramer eventually made his way to Los Angeles, where he got ground-up training in the film industry as a carpenter, screenwriter, editor, and producer before his rise was interrupted by a stint in the Army Signal Corps during World War II.

The fracturing of the studio system in the late 1940s opened the way for someone like Kramer who had, in effect, adopted guerrilla tactics in producing his early independent pictures, on the cheap and on the fly. Because of its sensitive subject, Kramer shot Home of the Brave (1949), generally considered the first movie on racism to be distributed by a Hollywood studio, in seventeen days in total secrecy under a different title.

A five-year contract he signed as an independent producer for Columbia Pictures in 1951 guaranteed a steadier financial base and higher budgets, but at the price of being second-guessed by studio head Harry Cohn, whom Kramer later described as “vulgar, domineering, semi-literate, ruthless, boorish and malevolent.”

High Noon, a taut western with a not-so-subtle message about the dangers of McCarthyism, represented perhaps his greatest triumph in this period while also damaging a friendship and giving him a reputation for having the courage of someone else’s convictions.

After his producing partner, screenwriter Carl Foreman, ran afoul of the House Committee on Un-American Activities for refusing to “name names” of Communists he had known earlier in the industry, Kramer bought his share of the partnership, and would have totally erased his participation in the movie were it not for protests by director Fred Zinnemann and star Gary Cooper.

A move into the director’s chair, Kramer felt, was a natural progression for him, considering how he had become so involved with all aspects of his films to date. 

But it took a couple of years before he hit his stride with The Defiant Ones (1958), with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier as escaped convicts forced to overcome their differences over race—a dramatic encapsulation of the conflict starting to rage in earnest in America during that time.

Over the next nine years, Kramer would delve into nuclear annihilation (On the Beach, 1959), evolution and church-state relations (Inherit the Wind, 1960), antisemitism (Judgment at Nuremberg, 1961, and Ship of Fools, 1965), greed (his atypical 1963 breakneck farce, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World), and, most controversially, interracial marriage (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967, in the image accompanying this post).

What The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael lambasted as Kramer’s “irritatingly self-righteous” themes may have limited the director’s critical acceptance. But with his movies continuing to mint box-office gold, Hollywood congratulated him—and itself, for appreciating him—with the Irving Thalberg Award for overall excellence at the 1961 Oscars.

But after Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Kramer never had another success. A self-described New Deal Democrat, he fell out of step with youth that gravitated towards more radical “New Left” politics, telling film historian Donald Spoto that he had been “somewhat viciously attacked along the way for being part of a ‘do-good' era.”

I don’t think that audiences simply tired of Kramer’s politics or of his largely stationary camera. Many were driven to distraction by his earnestness, an outlook that naysayers found out of place in an age gone so stark, raving mad that it required movies with the kind of subversive style and substance of The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde.

I question whether any Kramer-directed movie has served as fodder for film-school sessions on technique, but, by directing 14 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances, he displayed a deft touch with often skittish professionals, and his influence runs stronger than many cynics care to admit:

*Aaron Sorkin’s penchant for courtroom drama (the scripts for A Few Good Men and The Trial of the Chicago Seven) and preachy politics (The West Wing) owes much to him.

*Quentin Tarantino has compared him to Oliver Stone, except that the controversial J.F.K. auteur was not a “clumsy filmmaker” like Kramer.

*And, with Judgment at Nuremberg, Kramer paved the way for Steven Spielberg’s searing Holocaust drama, Schindler’s List.

Today, the Producers Guild of America presents the Stanley Kramer Award to honor films that highlight significant social issues, including, for example, Good Night, and Good Luck, The Normal Heart, and Get Out.

Quote of the Day (Jesse Jackson, on Using American Influence in Northern Ireland)

“If legislation were passed supporting the MacBride Principles, as President I would sign it into law. Any President should.”—Democratic Presidential candidate and civil-rights advocate Jesse Jackson (1941-2026), quoted in “Simon-Jackson on Ireland,” The Irish People, Mar. 19, 1988

The many obituaries and career assessments of Jesse Jackson since the announcement of his death earlier this week have understandably focused on his impact as the most important African-American leader between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama.

But more broadly, he may have been the most radical major party candidate in American history since William Jennings Bryan. His concerns touched on not just the problems faced by this nation’s working class but those abroad.

Over the last decade, in writing (with Rob Polner) a biography of Paul O’Dwyer, An Irish Passion for Justice, I became fascinated with why this Irish-born New York radical lawyer, politician, and activist supported Jackson’s insurgent Presidential bids in 1984 and 1988.

Particularly since 1969, with the start of the sectarian “Troubles” that convulsed Northern Ireland, O’Dwyer had sought Democratic politicians aiming for national office who would aggressively press Great Britain for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

Rather than George McGovern, an antiwar liberal who might have normally won his endorsement, he ended up supporting Shirley Chisholm in the 1972 Presidential primaries because, unlike the Senator from South Dakota, she took an unequivocal stance favoring Irish unification.

Additionally, in the U.S. at large as well as in New York State, O’Dwyer had long felt uncomfortable with the party’s lack of Black leadership. With Jackson’s ringing oratory on behalf of a “Rainbow Coalition” of white and Black voters motivated by economic unrest in the Reagan era, O’Dwyer saw a charismatic candidate who could break through.

To an extent not always understood by many who focus on particular countries, the struggle for civil rights has taken inspiration from around the world. Henry David Thoreau’s concept of civil disobedience profoundly shaped Mahatma Gandhi’s strategy of passive resistance to British rule in India, which in turn influenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the segregated American South.

In the late 1960s, civil-rights marches staged by Ulster Catholics drew on the non-violent protests of African-Americans under the leadership of Dr. King. 

And, as civil rights activism moved to a different spot on the globe in the Seventies and Eighties—South Africa—many Ulster nationalists and their American supporters glimpsed another, economic model with potential for exerting pressure on a recalcitrant regime: the Sullivan Principles.

In 1977, as a tool against apartheid, the Rev. Louis Sullivan of Philadelphia conceived non-discrimination guidelines that companies investing in South Africa should follow to ensure fair employment. 

Seven years later, the Irish National Caucus fashioned a similar cudgel against the “the systematic practice and endemic nature of anti-Catholic discrimination” in Protestant-dominated Northern Ireland since partition in 1921, naming the MacBride Principles after Sean MacBride, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and co-founder of Amnesty International.

These nondiscrimination and corporate codes appealed to O’Dwyer. Peter King, a conservative Long Island Republican who made common cause with the progressive Democrat on Ulster, remembered about his ally, in an interview with Rob and myself for our biography:

“Paul was really a lawyer at heart, and saw things through the vision of a lawyer. Even though he was in politics, and ran for office a number of times, he had that legal direction— how can this be done, how can the law be changed, how can we put certain protections in. Even in the frenzy of a political or nationalist moment, he was at his core a lawyer.”

Jackson, along with another 1988 Democratic Presidential candidate, Senator Paul Simon, responded to a questionnaire from the Ad Hoc Congressional Committee on Irish Affairs, with the response above on the MacBride Principles.

A few weeks later, just before the Democratic Presidential primary in New York, O’Dwyer introduced Jackson to Irish politicians and lawyers at a fundraiser, extolling the candidate’s interracial vote-getting potential.

Though the party’s eventual nominee, Michael Dukakis, had endorsed this corporate code of conduct as governor of Massachusetts, he did not discuss it much on the campaign trail after securing the nomination.

In any case, his failure at the polls that autumn meant that it would take another four years before O’Dwyer found, in Bill Clinton, a candidate willing to endorse the MacBride Principles and appoint a special envoy to facilitate the peace process in Northern Ireland.

With Jackson’s passing—and access to his papers and the recollections of friends and family members—the time is ripe for historians and biographers to investigate and weigh the legacy of this complicated but critically important American progressive. His advocacy on behalf of Northern Ireland should be a part of such research.

(The portrait of presidential candidate Jesse Jackson that accompanies this post was taken during the 1980s by Jesse Jackson for President, Inc.)

Quote of the Day (Katie Martin, on Bitcoin and the ‘Tech Wreck’)

“The shock to bitcoin is brutal for those who have placed their life savings in this thing. But the warning signs were there all along, and those who bought it anyway can reasonably be expected to have done so with their eyes open. Theirs is a pool of capital that has been placed in this unproductive belief system for too long. In this more sober market environment after the ‘tech wreck,’ now is the time for that money to do something more useful in the financial system.”— Market trend columnist Katie Martin, “The Long View: Bitcoin Blues and ‘Tech Wreck’ Signal a Fundamental Reset,” The Financial Times, Feb. 7-8, 2026

The image accompanying this post, of a bitcoin logo with digital enhancements, was taken on June 2, 2025, by Dmar198.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (The Prophet Joel, With a Thought for Lent)

“ ‘Yet even now,” says the Lord,
    “return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
     and rend your hearts and not your garments.’
Return to the Lord, your God,
    for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
    and repents of evil.”—Joel 2:12-13
 
The image of Joel accompanying this post is a detail from the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, by the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564).

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The American President,’ on an Institution No Longer Around)

[Walking with each other before delivering his State of the Union address]

Sydney Ellen Wade [played by Annette Bening]: “How'd you finally do it?”

President Andrew Shepherd [played by Michael Douglas]: “Do what?”

Sydney: “Manage to give a woman flowers and be president at the same time?”

Andrew: “Well, it turns out I've got a rose garden.”— The American President (1995), screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, directed by Rob Reiner

It’s funny how seeing a movie decades apart can make you look at it in completely different ways. Case in point: The American President, which I viewed shortly after it came out in November 1995 and again yesterday afternoon, at a special Presidents’ Day presentation at the Barrymore Film Center in Fort Lee, NJ. (It featured an excellent introduction by Fairleigh Dickinson University Professor Pat Schuber on the evolving nature of the Presidency.)

When I heard the above exchange three decades ago, for instance, I groaned at lines so corny that even Frank Capra (such an obvious inspiration for the movie’s creators that he’s even referenced at one point) wouldn’t have served them up.

Yesterday, I groaned for a different reason: the Rose Garden that President Shepherd makes use of no longer exists, in the beloved form that Americans of both major political parties cherished. And all because of one man.

Years ago, I had decidedly mixed feelings about Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay, as I did in my few attempts to watch the TV show for which this film was, in effect, a dry run: The West Wing. It raised valid concerns about America’s polarized environment, the microscope under which modern Presidents exist, and the precious lack of personal privacy they enjoy.

But with its bad guys—all Republicans without a single redeeming ideological or social value—it created straw men that his heroes (liberal Democrats) could easily swat away. At least George Bernard Shaw, also given to long speeches in his plays, gave his devils their due, which made rebutting them all the more convincing.

Moreover, Sorkin's heroes possessed few complications, with their real-life inspirations bleached of their flaws when depicted in fictional form. In this film, as a centrist liberal facing a sex scandal promoted by the opposition, Shepherd had clear affinities with the President at the time, Bill Clinton.

Except for this fact: Clinton not only had to issue a false denial that only the most gullible believed about a past affair (with trashy entertainer Gennifer Flowers), but his campaign labored mightily to stamp out entire “bimbo eruptions,” while Shepherd was a lonely widower enchanted by a single intelligent, lovely environmental lobbyist.

Despite these shortcomings, time had raised my opinion of The American President from decidedly mixed to good, if not great. It was even better cast than I had recalled, with Samantha Mathis, John Mahoney and Wendie Malick in interesting supporting roles, and several lines and situations rang with unexpected prescience.

In his climactic speech, for example, Shepherd not only identified the divisive electoral strategy of his rival (an obvious Newt Gingrich stand-in), but the same one employed by the current Oval Office occupant for the last decade: “Whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it.”

And, when Martin Sheen’s chief of staff A. J. MacInerney tells Michael J. Fox’s idealistic aide, “The President doesn't answer to you,” Fox could answer for today’s citizenry outraged by daily lies and civil liberty violations: “Oh, yes he does.…I'm a citizen, this is my President. And in this country it is not only permissible to question our leaders, it's our responsibility!”