Quote of the Day (Lillian Stone, on Family Relations at Christmastime)

“Your extended family includes grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. It also includes Enzo, your cousin's cousin's cousin, who owns the Italian place down the street and proudly displays a signed photo of Bernadette Peters above the cash register. Every time you walk by with your dog, he gives you a wink and screams, ‘Proud home of preferred manicotti of Bernadette Peters!’ Enzo, too, is family.”— Humor writer and journalist Lillian Stone, “Shouts and Murmurs: Obscure Familial Relations, Explained for the Holidays,” The New Yorker, Dec. 9, 2024

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Gospel According to St. Luke, on the Visitation)

“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechari′ah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be[a] a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.’”—Luke 1:39-45 (Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition)

The image accompanying this post, The Visitation, was drawn by the Italian Renaissance master Raphael (1483-1520), then completed by an assistant.

Quote of the Day (Hal Borland, on Why December ‘Is Neither Bleak Nor Colorless’)

“True, December can be raw and cold and its days sometimes are dark, but it is neither bleak nor colorless. Go outdoors soon after sun-up, which now comes late, and even on a lowering day you probably will find a frosty scene of dazzling beauty. If the day is clear it can be a world transformed by frost or snow, newly created, fragile as spun glass, ephemeral as the passing hour.”— American writer, journalist and naturalist Hal Borland (1900-1978), Twelve Moons of the Year, edited by Barbara Dodge Borland (1979)

Though the sun had not yet come up, I awoke this morning to see a thin layer of snow on the ground. Quite a contrast with last winter, when, a local weatherman said last night, snow did not arrive in New York City until February 1.

Let’s see what happens this winter. Unlike when I was a kid, I don’t look forward to snow—I have to shovel it and drive in it, rather than digging out my sled and sliding down a hill in my neighborhood. But I also know that a year with little to no snow in this part of the country is a sign of something wrong.

(I took the image accompanying this post exactly four years ago today, in Overpeck County Park, not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ. That December really was bleak, but for reasons unrelated to the landscape. It was, you might recall, when COVID-19 raged and fear stalked the land.)

This Day in Film History (‘Godfather Part II,’ Oscar-Winning Sequel, Opens)

Dec. 20, 1974—Two years after The Godfather broke box-office records, the sequel went into general release in the U.S., in a production that was more generously budgeted, longer, more ambitious—and with a far more tragic vision of the American Dream.

The Godfather Part II duplicated its predecessor’s success, garnering six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.  Many critics regard it as even superior to the first. 

Though it mirrored the original in many respects, it departed from it in relying less on memorable killings (e.g., the toll-booth murder of Sonny) and one-liners (“leave the gun, take the cannoli”) and more on narrative structure, characterization, and symbolism.

While Francis Ford Coppola was initially reluctant to direct Part II (even suggesting Martin Scorsese for the job), he came around to the idea because of two factors.

First, he insisted on—and won—greater creative control, largely sidelining his nemesis on the first film, Paramount studio exec Robert Evans, in the process.

Second, he was so disturbed by the audience’s delight at a sneak preview for the first film—the final scene, where the door is closed on Kay Corleone as her husband Michael conducts “business” as the new don—that he wanted to leave no doubt whatsoever that a fissure had appeared in their marriage and that the crime boss had endangered his soul.

In other words, he wanted to definitively disprove critics who thought the first film had romanticized the Mafia by depicting them as devoted family men rather than as killers. By the end of Part II, Michael Corleone sits utterly alone, as his focus on “business” has left him paranoid and questioning how it could have all gone so utterly wrong.

What went wrong for the Corleones, the film suggests, is also what went wrong with the American empire.

The movie, while covering roughly the years from 1957 to 1960, actually reflects America’s dark post-Vietnam, post-Watergate mood, in which cynicism about government lies and corruption became the order of the day. 

Coppola settled on the architecture of this epic with parallel stories of two fathers of roughly the same age, Vito and Michael Corleone, tracing the rise and decline of their family—their personal one as well as the criminal one they head.

I discussed Part II briefly 10 years ago in this post. I had seen bits and pieces over the years, both in The Godfather Saga (a chronological TV presentation beginning with nine-year-old Vito Corleone in Italy through the death of his son Michael roughly three-quarters of a century later) and on AMC (where, over the last few years, Parts I, II and III have been run as holiday mini-marathons).

But a couple of days ago, for the first time, I saw Part II as a complete entity in its own right, reel to reel. The richness I (re)discovered convinced me it was worthwhile exploring in greater depth.

Its nearly half-hour more of running time compared with Godfather I gave co-screenwriters Coppola and novelist Mario Puzo more time not only to convey atmosphere, but also to offer hints about character motivations and relationships.

This time, knowing the major plot points of the movie, small, seemingly minor moments loom larger, as with the pills that Michael takes on the way to meet partner Hyman Roth—perhaps a means of alleviating the tension and anxiety of running a far-flung criminal enterprise and of surviving an assassination in his own home.

Coppola has likened the film to a saga about a king and his three sons. The imperial theme resonates most loudly and mournfully when Corleone consiglieri Tom Hagen and “soldier” Frankie Pentangeli muse on the Roman Empire:

Hagen: “You were around the old timers who dreamed up how the Families should be organized, how they based it on the old Roman Legions, and called them 'Regimes'... with the 'Capos' and 'Soldiers,' and it worked.”

Pentangeli: “Yeah, it worked. Those were great old days. We was like the Roman Empire. The Corleone family was like the Roman Empire.”

Hagen (sadly): “Yeah, it was once.”

While thoroughly of its own time, Part II anticipated much of the disillusionment in America over the last few decades by detailing the costs of the intersection of entertainment, politics, business, and crime.

Perhaps the most vivid example is when Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista meets with United Fruit Company, United Telephone and Telegraph Company, Pan American Mining Corp., South American Sugar—and Michael Corleone and Hyman Roth.

Visually, it echoes the scene from Part I when a grief-stricken Vito Corleone calls a summit meeting of the Mafia families to call a halt to their bloody vendetta—as the inclusion of Corleone and Roth with the more conventional companies implies that little difference exists between ostensibly non-criminal and criminal enterprises.

That sense is reinforced when Batista thanks a group member for the Christmas “gift” of a solid gold telephone, and later when Roth confides to colleagues: 

“There’s no limit to where we can go from here. This kind of government knows how to help business, to encourage it…We can thank our Friends in the Cuban government, which has put up half of the cash with the Teamsters on a dollar-for-dollar basis and has relaxed restrictions on imports. What I'm saying is that we have now what we have always needed: real partnership with the government.”

Roth is voicing the code of businessmen that has prevailed so often from Adolf Hitler to the wanna-be dictators of today: the transgressions of government heads matter little so long as they can forge a “real partnership” that allows them carte blanche to operate.

It has been a devolutionary process even near the start of the movie, when nine-year-old Vito and other passengers gaze longingly at the Statue of Liberty, coming just a few scenes after we see what has happened over 50 years later: Vito’s now-grown son Michael tangling with a zenophobic U.S. senator over a bribe to secure a Las Vegas casino gambling license.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Elf,’ on Meeting a Fake Store Santa)

Buddy [played by Will Ferrell]: “You stink! You smell like beef and cheese—you don’t smell like Santa!”—Elf (2003), screenplay by David Berenbaum, directed by Jon Favreau

Quote of the Day (Monica Bellucci, on How Maria Callas ‘Created What She Wanted To Be’)

“She [opera singer Maria Callas] created what she wanted to be, like many, many, many people in the business. Marilyn Monroe wasn’t the blonde bombshell when she started. We call this ‘les femmes du spectacle.’ They know how to create illusion. An artist uses her own body as a transmitter, as a way to show themselves. The body becomes an instrument.”— Italian actress Monica Bellucci quoted by Elisabeth Vincentelli, “Reviving the Aura of a Diva,” The New York Times, Jan. 26, 2023

I had become intrigued by this quote almost two years ago, but it’s come to the forefront of my consciousness now with the release of the Angelina Jolie biopic about Callas, Maria. If anyone understands the artistic creation of illusions in the manner described by Ms. Bellucci, it would have to be Ms. Jolie, I think.

(The image accompanying this post, of Maria Callas in her home in Milan, Italy, was taken in 1957 by Federico Patellani.)

Quote of the Day (Charles Simic, on the ‘Bloody Epic’ of a Dictator)

“I had a small, nonspeaking part
In a bloody epic. I was one of the
Bombed and fleeing humanity.
In the distance the great leader
Crowed like a rooster from a balcony,
Or was it a great actor
Impersonating the great leader?”—Pulitzer Prize-winning Serbian-American poet Charles Simic (1938-2023), “Cameo Appearance,” in The Voice at 3 a.m.: Selected Late and New Poems (2003)

As a child in World War II, Charles Simic was forced to evacuate with his family several times from their Belgrade home, part of the “bombed and fleeing humanity” of that conflict—or, as he put it elsewhere, “My travel agents were Hitler and Stalin.” He finally made it to America as a teenager.

This past week witnessed the fall of another strongman: Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, whose father, Hafez al-Assad, began the family tradition of bloody rule in 1971. That’s a long time for a country to endure such repression and violence, and now the evidence of this misrule is becoming starkly evident: mass graves uncovered, perhaps numbering hundreds of thousands of people tortured to death.

And there is another way in which the Syrians' plight resembles the Simic family's: over 14 million forcibly displaced since the nation's civil war began in 2011.

The fate of Assad should be kept in mind by entertainers with authoritarian aspirations: it may take a while, but a reckoning will be at hand, for yourself and/or your family.

(The image accompanying this post, showing Assad with Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss military operations in Syria, was taken Oct. 21, 2015—nine years before the Russian dictator, with blood on his own hands too thick for words, decided that the costs of helping the younger man remain in power was more than he could handle now.) 

Quote of the Day (Ursula Le Guin, on Writers Who Can ‘Imagine Real Grounds for Hope’)

“Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality.”—Sci-fi author Ursula Le Guin (1929-2018), “Speech in Acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters,” Nov. 19, 2014

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Young Frankenstein,’ On the Correct Pronunciation of Names)

Igor [played by Marty Feldman, pictured]: “Dr. Frankenstein...”

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein [played by Gene Wilder] [correcting him]: " ‘Fronkensteen.’"

Igor: “You're putting me on.”

Frederick: “No, it's pronounced ‘Fronkensteen.’"

Igor: “Do you also say ‘Froaderick’"?

Frederick: “No... ‘Frederick.’"

Igor: "Well, why isn't it ‘Froaderick Fronkensteen’?”

Frederick: “It isn't; it's ‘Frederick Fronkensteen.’"

Igor: “I see.”

Frederick: “You must be Igor.”

[He pronounces it ee-gor]

Igor: “No, it's pronounced ‘eye-gor.’"

Frederick: “But they told me it was ‘ee-gor.’"

Igor: “Well, they were wrong then, weren't they?”— Young Frankenstein (1974), screenplay by Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, based very, very loosely on the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, directed by Mel Brooks

Fifty years ago this week, Young Frankenstein was released in the U.S. Following on the heels of Blazing Saddles, it solidified Mel Brooks’ mid-Seventies status as Hollywood’s parody master par excellence.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (J.R.R. Tolkien, on the Value of ‘Small Acts of Kindness and Love’)

“I have found that it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”—English novelist, artist, scholar, and linguist J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), The Hobbit (1937)

This Day in Journalism History (Walter Lippmann, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Columnist, Dies)

Dec. 14, 1974— Walter Lippmann, whose analyses of foreign affairs and democracy netted him two Pulitzer Prizes, a position in the Establishment, and criticism of his Olympic detachment, died of cardiac arrest at age 85 in New York.

For more than half a century after his graduation from Harvard, Lippmann dominated and influenced Washington circles from a singular perch. He was less interested in breaking news stories than in explaining and teaching about their import.

In other words, he saw himself less of a reporter or editor than as a political philosopher.  To that end, he produced book-length arguments, not just columns, on such subjects as public opinion, democracy, mass culture, and the Cold War (which he correctly feared would drag the US into a role as the world's policeman).

After graduating from college, Lippman’s initial hero was Theodore Roosevelt. Later he drafted the “Fourteen Points” that Woodrow Wilson used in negotiating the end of World War I.

The punitive peace that followed profoundly disappointed Lippmann, but he continued to offer counsel to American Presidents, meeting all the ones that followed through Nixon. JFK, for instance, took the columnist’s notes on an interview with Nikita Khrushchev with him to the 1961 Vienna summit, while LBJ sought his approval for the growing US involvement in the Vietnam War.

Within a year or so, Lippmann, concluding he had been misled by the administration, turned vehemently against the war. Before retiring and leaving Washington for New York in 1967, he went so far as to accuse Johnson of "messianic megalomania."

Over the years, the coolness with which Lippmann viewed events and leaders struck many observers, both left and right, as problematic. It seemed to spill over from objectivity to a kind of smug superiority.

Trying to define what the genre he called “the New Journalism” meant, Tom Wolfe cited Lippmann, in a 1972 New York Magazine article, as what his group of upstarts was countering:

“For 35 years Lippmann seemed to do nothing more than ingest the Times every morning, turn it over in his ponderous cud for a few days, and then methodically egest it in the form of a drop of mush on the foreheads of thousands of readers of other newspapers in the days thereafter. The only form of reporting that I remember Lippmann going for was the occasional red-carpet visit to a head of state, during which he had the opportunity of sitting on braided chairs in wainscoted offices and swallowing the exalted one’s official lies in person instead of reading them in the Times.”

In his 1965 novel Capable of Honor, Allen Drury, a former member of the DC press corps, conjured up some traces of Joe Alsop and James Reston and a lot more of Lippmann in his main character. The pompous fictional columnist, given to offering advice, requested or not, to Presidents and others, is nicknamed “Walter Wonderful,” but Drury’s attitude might be better gleaned from the character’s surname: Dobius. 

If it sounds an awful lot like “Dubious,” the right-wing novelist –who regarded as anathema ideas for negotiating with the Soviets (such as spheres of influence) that Lippmann proposed—would not have been annoyed by any such association. (In fact, he disregarded advice from his publisher's lawyers to come up with a different name for this pundit that, he wrote, thought had "a mandate from the Lord to run the White House, the country, and the world").

A less bitingly satiric but more direct and piercing depiction of a Lippmann prototype is contained in The House of the Prophet, with his lawyer, Louis Auchincloss, providing a thinly fictionalized version of his life in the character Felix Leitner.

With the journalist dead a half-dozen years by the time the novel appeared, Auchincloss could allude more directly to two aspects of Lippmann’s private life that Drury, for all his animus, didn’t address: a desire to subsume his Jewish identity (to such a point that he initially downplayed the danger posed by Hitler to European Jews), and Lippmann’s scandalous affair with Helen Byrne Armstrong, a relationship that destroyed two marriages and ended the columnist’s close friendship with Hamilton Fish Armstrong, editor of Foreign Affairs Magazine.

Quote of the Day (William James, on War, ‘An Explosion of Imaginative Energy’)

“Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrills and excitements. The only relief from Habit's tediousness is periodical excitement. From time immemorial wars have been, especially for non-combatants, the supremely thrilling excitement. Heavy and dragging at its end, at its outset every war means an explosion of imaginative energy. The dams of routine burst, and boundless prospects open….

“This is the constitution of human nature which we have to work against. The plain truth is that people want war. They want it anyhow; for itself, and apart from each and every possible consequence. It is the final bouquet of life's fireworks.”— American philosopher, psychologist, and educator William James (1842-1910), “Remarks at the Peace Banquet,” published in the Official Report of the Universal Peace Congress, held in Boston in 1904, and in The Atlantic Monthly, December, 1904

One hundred and twenty years ago this month, William James’ analysis of the psychological roots of war came amid a convulsive thrust of American power far outside the nation’s continental bounds. It was the culmination of his rising concern, since the Spanish-American War six years before, over the possibility that his fellow citizens would be embroiled in yet another overseas conflict.

Viewing the outcome of those hostilities, Secretary of State John Hay had pronounced it “a splendid little war.” Even the vast possessions in the Caribbean and in the Pacific gained by the U.S. at a cost of only 4,000 casualties, however, did not lessen James’ grave misgivings about the nation’s new imperial role.

The philosopher’s younger brothers, Wilkie and Bob, had served in the Civil War, ending up physically and emotionally wounded, respectively, in the postwar period.

Already troubled by their fate, William began to think even harder about the war fever that had swept through America again. It was a line of inquiry that Sigmund Freud would pursue, through different premises and on a worldwide scale, in his last significant work, Civilization and Its Discontents (1931).

James went on to argue in the speech and essay from which I’ve quoted that this instinct for war was so ferocious that it could only be tamped down by degrees, not abolished instantly. It was a mournful preview of what developed through the rest of the 20^th century, when technological advances spread destruction on a level that James had never seen and might not have even contemplated.

I thought of James’ speculations last night while watching, on TCM, the 1997 biopic MacArthur, starring Gregory Peck. A highlight of the movie was an extended passage from the victorious American general’s speech, a month after the dropping of atomic bombs, when the Japanese surrendered in September 1945 to conclude WWII:

“A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization. The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises the traditional concepts of war….

“We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.”

The philosopher and the general would shudder at more recent developments. The rise of terrorism has increased the chances of regional wars (e.g., the War on Terror) and failed states so weak that their governments are no longer in control (Somalia, Afghanistan).

Moreover, the alliance system that MacArthur deemed no longer sufficient to contain the madness of armed outbreaks. Pointing to a new “axis of autocracies” (Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran) now cooperating, foreign correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov asks, in today’s Wall Street Journal, “Has World War III Already Begun?”

Pray that the answer is no. 

TV Quote of the Day (‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ As Larry Vents About Calling Doctors on Weekends)

Larry David [played by Larry David]: “Why don't we just call your doctor?”

Cheryl [played by Cheryl Hines]: “You can't call my doctor on the weekends, unless it's a life-threatening emergency.”

Larry: “What?”

Cheryl: “Yeah, if you call his machine, it'll tell you you can't page him.”

Larry: “You called up and that's what it said?”

Cheryl: “Yeah.”

Larry: “That is obscene, you know that?” [imitating the doctor] " ‘Can't disturb the doctor on the weekend! Don't call Dr. Zeppler on the weekend unless it's life-threatening!’"

Cheryl: “Okay, okay.”

Larry [imitates the doctor's wife]: " ‘Norman, is someone calling? Who's calling? We're in the middle of dinner, Norman!’"

Cheryl: “Larry…”

Larry: "‘This better be life-threatening or you're not gonna leave this house!’"

Cheryl: “Larry, please. I'm begging you!”

Larry: "‘Norman! Unless they were burned in a fire I don't want you getting up from your chair. Do you understand, Norman?’"—Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 1, Episode 9, “Affirmative Action,” original air date Dec. 10, 2000, teleplay by Larry David, directed by Bryan Gordon 

Quote of the Day (Bill Nighy, on Leading-Man Roles)

“Young actors have difficulty separating their job from how they generally feel about stuff, and I had difficulty because if I had to sort of be attractive to a girl in a film or on television…I had zero confidence in that area on a personal level. It took me years to realize, oh, you just act it. They don’t know that you’re actually physically repulsive and not eligible to be intimate with a woman.”—British actor Bill Nighy quoted in Alexandra Wolfe, “Weekend Confidential: Bill Nighy: The Tony-Nominated Actor on the Trials of Theater, The Advantages of Age and the Call of Coffee,” The Wall Street Journal, May 30-31, 2015

Bill Nighy—born 75 years ago today in Caterham, Surrey, England—is proof that you don’t have to have leading-man looks to have a long, distinguished career as an actor.

This versatile character actor has appeared in all kinds of movies, including Notes on a Scandal and the Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Underworld franchises. But he’s likely to be best remembered by my readers for a romantic comedy that shows up on the small screen repeatedly this time of year.

Let me state my position on Love Actually right away: it is so eager to please that it’s like a St. Bernard that can’t stop licking your face. It’s simply too, too much.

But Nighy (pictured here, from the film) manages to rescue listeners from overdosing on all this sugar with his hilarious turn as vintage rocker Billy Mack, hoping for a return to the charts with a new version of his hit, "Christmas Is All Around."

Two years ago, in an interview with the British paper The Independent, Nighy even thought that a quote from the film would lead off his obituary:

“Hiya, kids! Here is an important message from your Uncle Bill. Don’t buy drugs. Become a pop star, and they give you them for free!”

Flashback: Dewey-Stassen Debate, 1948

“To outlaw the communist party would be recognized everyplace on earth as a surrender by the great United States, to the methods of totalitarianism. Stripped to its naked essentials, this is nothing but the methods of Hitler and Stalin. It is thought control borrowed from the Japanese war leadership. It's an attempt to beat down ideas with a club.”—New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, May 17, 1948, in the first live electronic media debate, in which he and his opponent, former Minnesota governor Harold Stassen faced off on a single issue: “Should the American Communist Party be banned?”

Fighting off a nasty cold and pressed by work obligations, I blogged less extensively than I would have liked a few weeks ago. One event slipped through the cracks then—the Dewey-Stassen debate just before the Oregon GOP Presidential primary. 

I didn't want to forget it, however. It deserves more attention than it has received this year, both for what it represented in American electoral history and as a possible turning point in the Cold War.

The debate is important for another reason: it featured two rivals whose images not long thereafter became frozen in stereotypes: Dewey, the cold "Man on the Wedding Cake" who lost a race he should have won handily against Harry S. Truman, and Stassen, the shameless, clueless, perennial Presidential sweepstakes loser. 

At the time of their clash, however, these men were viewed as credible candidates, even Presidential timber.

In the masterly historical thriller Hour of the Cat, Peter Quinn depicts Dewey as a kind of proto-Guiliani: bruising and charm-challenged. That characterization is, I’d have to say, inarguable. But in the following episode, at least, he displayed another side to his character that doesn’t get enough recognition.

Formerly a prosecutor who, like Guiliani more recently, parlayed indictments of underworld figures into a political career, Dewey soon contracted the New York Governor's Disease: the sudden itch to raise his sights to the highest office in the land. (I'm indebted for the identification of the disease's symptoms, though not its name, to Peter Quinn.) 

He was considered the odds-on favorite after having won his battle stripes as FDR's last Presidential rival, and had compiled a respected record in Albany.

Called the nation's "boy governor" after winning the Minnesota gubernatorial race in 1939, then re-elected twice, Stasssen joined the Navy in 1943, eventually becoming chief of staff for Admiral William F. Halsey. He served with distinction as part of the American delegation to the first UN Conference at San Francisco, where he not only helped write the UN Charter but was voted the most effective delegate. In the early going of the 1948 Presidential election, he pulled off several upset victories over Dewey, with polls indicating he could beat Harry Truman in a head-to-head contest.

But, with Dewey pulling out all the stops in the run-up to the Oregon primary, the Midwesterner made a crucial error by challenging the New Yorker to a debate. 

Unlike other debates before and since, this one was confined to a single topic of all-too-real importance: the constitutional question of whether Communism should be outlawed. Stassen took the "pro" position; Dewey, the "con."

The debate was broadcast on the KEX-ABC radio station in Portland. No precise count exists on the number of listeners, but with 900 audio stations nationwide carrying the debate, the estimates ranged from 40 to 90 million people. Telephone operators claimed later that long-distance calls dropped by 25% during the broadcast.

Dewey’s opening statement packed the kind of roundhouse punch that might leave its recipient technically standing, but awfully woozy. Listeners couldn't see Stassen's lack of comfort, the way that TV viewers witnessed Richard Nixon sweating in his first debate in 1960 with John F. Kennedy, but his shaky tone gave the game away.

Why did Stassen perform so badly? Admittedly, Dewey was a skillful prosecutor used to making cogent statements to audiences. But I think Stassen might have, in his heart of hearts, found this cause not to his liking.

Remember that Stassen was considered the heir apparent of the Theodore Roosevelt brand of progressivism. During the campaign, he advocated federal funds for housing, limited regulation of labor, international cooperation, and adjustment of federal taxes and spending to prevent boom-or-bust swings in the economy. As leader of the American Baptist Convention, he would join the civil rights March on Washington in August 1963.

In other words, Stassen’s stance in this debate was not really characteristic of most of the rest of his career. You have to wonder if he felt he needed to placate what he viewed as the mainstream in his party at the time. (After all, he must have thought, he’d not only knock out Dewey but even outpoint the conservative wing’s favorite, Senator Robert Taft.)

Perhaps because the contest involved a pair of losers—Dewey, the two-time Presidential loser, and Stassen, the uber-loser of them all (running not only for President—nine times!—but also governor of Minnesota and Pennsylvania)—this event has been mostly ignored.

One publication that, to its credit, did not neglect the event was Esquire Magazine, which, in the 1980s, in a monster retrospective issue that I can no longer locate, included an article on the debate.

Camelot chronicler Arthur Schlesinger also took notice. In an interview with The New York Times in 2000, the venerable historian agreed with columnist Walter Lippmann’s remark that if Dewey had beaten Truman, there’d have been no Joe McCarthy.

“Dewey wasn't a bad fellow,” Schlesinger observed. “He was rather enlightened….Although a Republican, Dewey was not a reactionary. And had he won, the politics of revenge which played a large role in the McCarthy years might have subsided.”

The 19th-century historian George Bancroft, I read somewhere once, voted Democratic on every page. The same might also be said of Schlesinger, whose reputation was made with accounts of the Jackson and FDR Presidencies, even before he became the court historian of the Kennedys.

There’s a certain brand of historian who doesn’t have a nice thing to say about a Republican until he’s dead. Sean Wilentz, a longtime defender of the Clintons, is one such individual, offering, in The Age of Reagan, some surprisingly kind words about how the latter transformed his party and the nation. 

(My own take on The Gipper: He was manifestly right about the intrinsic evil of the Soviet regime, but his part in its downfall has been exaggerated by his partisans, and the economic gains made during his Presidency would not be so fondly recalled now had not successor George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton reduced his jaw-breakingly-large deficit.)

It does make you wonder about why such historians can’t be a bit more objective and nuanced while the objects of their retrospective upgrading are still in office, or, at least, alive to appreciate it. But let’s let that pass and accept the spirit of charity that has belatedly overtaken them.

Let’s consider Schlesinger’s proposition about Dewey for a second. How well does it hold up? And what did Dewey’s triumph over Stassen in Oregon accomplish?

* It gave the upper hand to the internationalist wing of the GOP over the isolationist faction. Both Dewey and Stassen appealed to elements of this same group, particularly in their reactions to the UN and the Marshall Plan. But Dewey’s victory in the debate relegated to the sidelines the Taft isolationist element that would have most favored a ban on Communism. (Taft would try again for President in 1952, only to lose to Ike.) The internationalists would remain ascendant until the Goldwater debacle in 1964, ensuring that the GOP, like the Democrats, would favor united action of the West against Communism.

* It demonstrated that Americans need not be stampeded into running roughshod over civil liberties. Though the Korean War and the Rosenberg arrests for espionage were still two years away, Dewey still had to face a decidedly unfavorable time for taking his position against the ban. The Iron Curtain had fallen over Eastern Europe, and Stalin’s grip on the region would tighten further that year as he attempted to cut off Berlin from the West and engineer a power grab in Czechoslovakia. Film studios were doing everything they could to distance themselves from the “Hollywood Ten” screenwriters and directors who refused to answer questions on Capitol Hill about their Communist associations. In that context, the format, allowing for Dewey to frame a countervailing argument over 20 minutes, represented a whole different world from today’s, which allow slittle better than a string of sound bites. To its credit, the Republican electorate accepted Dewey's reasoning.

* The contention that there would be no McCarthyism, however, is harder to sustain. Lippmann and Schlesinger were implicitly arguing that McCarthy would have found it much more difficult to defy a President from his own party than a Democrat. This was only true to an extent, however, as can be seen in McCarthy’s disastrous decision to investigate the Army—the institution at the heart of President Eisenhower’s career.

Moreover, some of Dewey’s own associates—and presumptive appointees—indicated, in their careers, that the governor would not have acted like a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union. 

(Note to ACLU lovers: As journalist Jessica Mitford wrote in A Fine Old Conflict (1977), that organization “instituted its own loyalty purge excluding from membership those suspected of harbouring subversive ideas.”) 

John Foster Dulles’ policy of “brinksmanship” toward the U.S.S.R. continued to fan the Red Scare. Most surprising is Curt Gentry’s argument, in J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets, that Dewey won behind-the-scenes support from the FBI Director in the race against Truman with the promise of an appointment as Attorney-General.

Quote of the Day (Reporter Gene Myers, on Inequities Facing the Disabled)

“My beat is full of stories where there's no happy ending: chronic underfunding, abuse and systemic failures that continue to harm vulnerable people. People are crying to me all the time. Now imagine also having a disability and having family members with disabilities. I can't think of any other beat I've covered that was tougher emotionally. The material I have to wade through, medical research, bills in Trenton, none of that is as rough as watching the toll these inequities have on people.”—Disabilities reporter Gene Myers quoted by Alex Nussbaum, “Inside the Newsroom: Giving a Voice to the Vulnerable,” The Record (Bergen County, NJ), Dec. 8, 2024

At first, I was going to ask anyone reading this to keep in mind the struggles of the disabled community this holiday season. But that is insufficient, I believe now.

Try to keep in mind these physically and emotionally vulnerable people constantly, this holiday season and simply going forward. And together, let’s try to create a world where they have a better chance of surviving—and wherever possible, thriving—for the long haul.

Quote of the Day (Francis Ford Coppola, on ‘This Thing Called My Life’)

“I'm starting to think that this thing called my life is a movie I'm making. I'm going to write the ending of it shortly, but I don’t know what it’s going to be.”—Oscar-winning American filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, “The Gambler,” WSJ. , October 2024

Another force—God—will be the one to decide the final scene to the movie of his life, but the Almighty is likely to be more merciful and less fickle than Hollywood producers or even American filmgoers to daring, passionate, complicated Francis Ford Coppola. 

No matter the disappointing response to his latest, if not last, film this fall, the sci-fic epic Megalopolis, Coppola is assured a place in film history for, if nothing else, The Godfather Saga. His reception of Kennedy Center honors virtually certifies that.

Two speakers at yesterday’s ceremony helped to explain the enormous risks that alternately raised his career to undreamed-of heights and threatened to bring it asunder.

George Lucas: ““Here’s the thing: When you spend enough time with Francis, you begin to believe that you can jump off cliffs too.”

Al Pacino said the filmmaker was ready to break the first rule of Hollywood: Never put your own money in your movie projects.

Quote of the Day (Garry Shandling, on His Supposed ‘Intimacy Issue’)

“My friends tell me that I have an intimacy issue—but I don't think they know me.”—American stand-up comic, writer, director, producer, and actor Garry Shandling (1949-2016), quoted by Tad Friend, “Annals of Hollywood: The Eighteen-Year Itch,” The New Yorker, Apr. 13, 1998

The image accompanying this post, of Garry Shandling with then-girlfriend Linda Doucett, was taken Aug. 1, 1988, at that year’s Emmy Awards, by Alan Light.

Quote of the Day (David Mason, on Fiction and ‘Small Passages of Civility in Our Lives’)

“Fiction allows us to mourn with strangers. Even horrifying stories create, by virtue of their shape and their empathy, small passages of civility in our lives. Civilization is something we must choose; humanity is something we must make. Novels are particularly well-equipped to show us how social problems affect individual lives, but artists rarely envision viable solutions to the problems they dramatize. Perhaps it is easier to forgive in the imagination than in the streets and pubs and houses.”—American poet, librettist ,essayist, and memoirist David Mason, “Forgiving the Past,” The Sewanee Review, Spring 1998 (“Irish Literature Today”)

Mason’s essay appeared in the relatively early days of American polarization, as ideologically driven cable news stations and Internet sites were just starting to exacerbate real but still not unbridgeable differences in the nation. Since then, more and more people are addicted to their mobile phones and anti-social media.

Genres that require time, patience, and understanding—very much including the novel—have been increasingly falling by the wayside in the last quarter-century—and those “small passages of civility in our lives” that Mason hailed are growing increasingly narrow.

(The accompanying outdoor photo of David Mason, taken Apr. 24, 2012, was sent by the poet to Christine Mason.)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Psalm 55, With Lines Influencing Henry James)

“I am distraught by the noise of the enemy,
    because of the oppression of the wicked.
For they bring[a] trouble upon me,
    and in anger they cherish enmity against me.
 
My heart is in anguish within me,
    the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling come upon me,
    and horror overwhelms me.
And I say, ‘O that I had wings like a dove!
    I would fly away and be at rest;
yea, I would wander afar,
    I would lodge in the wilderness,
I would haste to find me a shelter
    from the raging wind and tempest.’”—Psalm 55:2-8 (Revised Standard Version)

These biblical verses are the source of not one, but two prominent book titles. One phrase gave rise to one of the cornerstones of modern philosophy: Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard’s 1843 title, Fear and Trembling.

The other might not be as recognizable to those who have read a novel whose title echoes another verse here: Henry James’ The Wings of the Dove.

Contemporary readers of this work from the mature period of American expatriate novelist will hear the character Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, explicitly likened to a dove because of her innocence, and leave it at that. (James, incidentally, left a clue to the real-life source of the character through the initials “MT”—Minny Temple, a vivacious, innocent cousin who died of tuberculosis at age 24.)

But readers in James’ own time, familiar as they were with the Bible—especially in the King James version—would have heard an echo in Psalm 55’s “wings like a dove,” and would think back to the entire passage—someone beset not just by the “terrors of death,” but also “the noise of the enemy” and “the oppression of the wicked.”

Milly, like the narrator of the psalm—though without knowing it (at least initially)—is at the mercy of conspirators: in this case, the cash-poor lovers Merton Densher and Kate Croy, who hope that, by Merton marrying the soon-to-die Milly, he will inherit her money, freeing him to wed Kate.

James’ personal religious beliefs appear to be unconventional, a byproduct of his father, Henry James Sr., who rejected orthodox Protestantism and became a follower of Swedish philosopher and Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. But traditional faith can leave an indelible imprint, and James—Junior, like Senior—would likely hear that phrase “wings like a dove” reverberate in the imagination in contemplating the object of the web spun by Croy and Densher.

Kate and Merton have committed the worst kind of transgression in exploiting the innocence of another human being. That violation will not go unpunished.

In the quest for material possession that justifies and finally undermines the love of Croy and Densher, the novelist might have found an equally apt literary allusion from Psalm 68: “The women at home divide the spoil, though they stay among the sheepfolds—the wings of a dove covered with silver, its pinions with green gold.”

(The image accompanying this post comes from the 1997 film adaptation of The Wings of the Dove, with Alison Elliott as Millie, Linus Roache as Merton, and Helena Bonham Carter as Kate.)

Quote of the Day (Amor Towles, on How Life Proceeds)

“Life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds. At any given moment, it is the manifestation of a thousand transitions. Our faculties wax and wane, our experiences accumulate, and our opinions evolve —if not glacially, then at least gradually.”— American novelist Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow (2016)

The attached photo of Amor Towles was taken Aug. 9, 2018, by librairie mollat.

TV Quote of the Day (‘Cunk on Shakespeare,’ on School in The Bard's Day)

"School in Shakespeare’s day and age was vastly different to our own. In fact, it was far easier because he didn't have to study Shakespeare."—English actress and comedian Diane Morgan, with her favorite line as ill-informed interviewer Philomena Cunk, on the BBC mockumentary “Cunk on Shakespeare,” original air date May 11, 2016, teleplay by Charlie Brooker, Jason Hazeley, and Joel Morris, directed by Lorry Powles

Quote of the Day (Roger Ebert, on Being Inarticulate)

“Of the many imprisonments possible in our world, one of the worst must be to be inarticulate—to be unable to tell another person what you really feel.”— Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert (1942-2013), review of the film Heat, December 15, 1995

(The accompanying photo, showing Ebert giving an interview at a Chicago public radio station, on the “Sound Opinions” program in 2006, comes from Flickr: Roger Ebert.)