These days, Adam Smith’s
economic precepts in The Wealth of Nations (1776) are much more likely
to be followed than the moral ones propounded here. Indeed, those virtues may
be more flouted by the rich, famous, and powerful than by ordinary citizens. So
much the worse for all of us.
The image
accompanying this post, showing Cullen Murphy at the 2007 Texas Book Festival
in Austin, Texas, was taken Nov. 3, 2007, by Larry D. Moore.
Of the
three alternative nightmare Presidential candidates described by Thomas, the
one that has come closest to realization is the first: a protectionist.
However, the
second candidate, seeking to “suspend cherished individual liberties to keep
America ‘safe,’” has also come to pass—ironically, in the form of a President
who once aired an ad, “Let our politicians give back our police department's
power to keep us safe,” only to foment a coup d’etat on Jan. 6, 1921, in which
police desperately tried to prevent the safety of members of Congress.
Finally, a
“populist” has won twice, but not through a “soak the rich” program (he is,
after all, a plutocrat!), but by appealing to the worst prejudices of voters.
Sadly, the "time to worry" has passed. The emergency is here; it's now time to ensure, against growing odds, the survival of the republic.
(The image
accompanying this post, showing Evan Thomas reading at Annapolis Book Festival,
was taken Apr. 28, 2018, by Slowking4.)
This, one of the most famous of Christ's parables, gains in poignancy when one remembers the animus that so many Jews of his time had for Samaritans. A priest and a Levite, both members of groups deeply familiar to his audience, pass by the robbed and half-dead traveler. It's only a person from the despised Samaritans who comes to the traveler's aid.
If even someone from an "out" group can react with mercy, Jesus is telling his listeners (and us), why can't you?
The
image accompanying this post, The Good Samaritan, was created by the
Italian Renaissance painter Jacopo Bassano (c. 1510-1592).
This is
the argument that Hollywood has been making since at least 1938, when Marie
Antoinette and The Adventures of Robin Hood both premiered. Which is
more fondly remembered—and, I would say, viewed—these days?
The image
accompanying this post shows Robert Downey Jr. speaking at the 4 San Diego
Comic Con International, for "Avengers: Age of Ultron," at the
San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, CA. It was taken on July 26, 2014, by
Gage Skidmore.
The image
accompanying this post of two North American river otters was taken at the San
Francisco Zoo on Aug. 29, 2005, by Dmitry Azovtsev.
Two months
ago, I sat up with a start when I saw another New Yorker contributor take
up the mantle from Roger Angell as the venerable magazine’s maven on the Great
National Pastime. My curiosity fired, I began reading the article by Louisa
Thomas—and kept reading, transfixed.
What she
had to say about Juan Soto particularly fascinated me. If you’re a New
York baseball fan, he’s either a Yankee turncoat, a Met still with much work needed
to justify his mega-contract—or both. (If you’re a fan of the Washington
Nationals or San Diego Padres, your view is far simpler—he’s a sell-out,
period.)
Chill out,
people. Ms. Thomas’ description of him at the plate signifies why so many major
league clubs eyed and/or pursued him so avidly in the offseason: he’s a batter
not only with excellent hit-to-all-fields approach, but with world-class
mechanics honed by constant repetition.
Talk radio
fans in the New York area were obsessed with his slow start to the season (.231
batting average, .357 OBP, .413 OPS, 9 HRs, 27 RBIs, 36 runs through end of May).
All that mania was misplaced: with no nagging injuries, Soto remained what he
was before, just going through what happens even to the best hitters: a slump.
His speed
might be average and his defense mediocre, but the outfielder is still as pure
a hitter as the game has: with a decent batting average and more-than-solid
power. His totals through Tuesday are far more in line with what Mets owner Steve
Cohen was expecting this winter: .269 batting average, .908 OPS, 21 HRs, 52 RBIs,
and 66 runs.
Suddenly
the talk has turned: Instead of why Soto’s been such a bust, it’s now why he
was snubbed for the All-Star Game.
As for Ms.
Thomas: I look forward to seeing if her account of the World Series this fall
will be as classic as Angell’s invariably were (notably, “Agincourt and After,” on
the epic seven-game Cincinnati Reds-Boston Red Sox clash).
I was
fortunate enough to meet Bill Moyers at a local promotional event for Fooling
With Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft—one of his book/PBS
series tie-ins in which he interviewed cultural figures such as Joseph
Campbell. He signed my copy of this particular book, and immediately followed
up with a response to a question I had asked about the source of a quote.
Late last
month, when I heard about Moyers’ death, I realized with a shock that I hadn’t
heard about him for a while. His commentaries had become lower-profile, largely
confined to his Website, after his retirement from PBS in 2015.
That year, I remembered with a start, coincided with Donald Trump’s descent down the escalator at Trump Tower and into a political arena that he quickly defiled more than many of us dreamed possible.
I badly missed Moyers’ soft-spoken,
earnest, but piercing insights into the culture of Washington and what the
changes about to ensue in American life meant for the survival of the republic.
The
memories forged in youth endure the longest. So it was for me, as, I suspect,
for many others, in my first exposure to Moyers—not as the press secretary for
Lyndon Johnson (a tenure that began 60 years ago this month), but in my early
teens, watching Bill Moyers’ Journal.
From his
time in government, and even as part of major news organizations (Newsday,
PBS, CBS), Moyers knew how addictive power could be. He was hardly a naif,
giving, for instance, the go-ahead to the ethically dubious “mushroom cloud”
commercial used against Barry Goldwater in LBJ’s 1964 Presidential race.
But, as a Baptist deacon's son and ordained minister himself, he also recognized that at some point, it was necessary to
one’s soul to cease participating in evil. When he couldn’t continue defending
a Vietnam War policy he knew to be wrong, he resigned after only a year as press
secretary, even if it meant incurring his boss’s wrath to the end of the Johnson’s
life.
“An Essay on Watergate” outlined in detail, through conversations with Presidential historians, how LBJ’s successor, Richard Nixon, sought to expand the prerogatives of his office as a means of striking at his enemies.
But neither
Johnson nor Nixon could even conceive of the lengths to which Donald Trump
would defy the Constitution, trampling norms and pushing, pushing, pushing
against laws, daring Congress and the courts to rein him in.
What
Moyers warned could have come to pass had Watergate gone undetected and
unpunished—" the public conscience smothered, the Congress intimidated,
the press isolated, and the political process rigged,” not to mention “unbridled,
capricious and arbitrary rules”—has occurred with Trump’s second coming to
power.
In a 2022 podcast interview with Dr. Bandy See, Moyers laid out a case for how a notably psychologically disturbed Trump had posed a threat to the Constitution.
But fewer
people were aware of this discussion compared with the audience he could reach
in his years on television—and it’s a sign of our political fragmentation that,
even if he had reached the old numbers, many people would not have paid
attention to the message.
Such is
the plight of our time—or, as the biblically conscious Moyers would have known,
a prophet is without honor in his own country.
(The image
accompanying this post shows Bill Moyers speaking with attendees at a special
screening and discussion of his documentary, "Rikers: An American
Jail", at the First Amendment Forum at the Walter Cronkite School of
Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University in Phoenix, AZ.
It was taken Apr. 19, 2017, by Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ.)
At the
time, the appointment seemed logical, even inevitable, considering the
general’s decades of experience, bravery, intellect, and a strategic skill
manifested during WWII with an “island-hopping” campaign that minimized loss of
life.
But,
within a year, MacArthur’s overweening ego and hubris would imperil US troops,
threaten a wider conflict, and precipitate a historic showdown concerning
civilian authority over American armed forces with President Harry Truman.
Some
signs, even within the first two weeks after Communist forces invaded South Korea,
were already ominous for MacArthur’s leadership. Aides were initially reluctant
to break the news of the attack to their boss, and even after learning of it, for
the first 24 hours he downplayed its severity.
If he
could get the 1st Cavalry Division into action, he told GOP foreign-policy
maven (and future Secretary of State) John Foster Dulles, “Why, heavens, you’d
see these fellows scuttle up to the Manchurian border so quick, you would see
no more of them,” according to Bruce Cumings’ The Korean War: A History.
When he
was prevailed upon at last to depart from Tokyo (where he was serving as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan) for the first of a series of one-day
flyovers over Korea, he veered sharply towards alarm, telling Truman that South
Korean forces were in no position to repel the invaders without American
support.
One
military observer—like MacArthur, often mentioned as a Presidential candidate—Dwight Eisenhower, was skeptical but not surprised that his fellow WWII hero was
not at the top of his game. Privately, he wondered if MacArthur, now 70, might
be too old for command.
Eisenhower,
who had noted acidly that he had “studied theatrics” under MacArthur as his
aide in the Philippines in the 1930s, would have had the personal knowledge and
credibility to gain immediate public approval for a decision to relieve his old
boss of command. But MacArthur’s superior at the moment was Truman, who lacked
the stature of the commander of US forces in Europe in the last war.
Two and a
half months after his appointment, MacArthur pulled off the kind of unexpected,
daring move for which he had become known by ordering an amphibious assault on
Inchon, the port city of Seoul that, because of its tides and lack of beaches, was
deemed by MacArthur’s subordinate Gen. Edward Almond, “the worst possible place”
for such an operation.
Inchon
achieved the surprise MacArthur desired, and he predicted to Truman that US
troops would be home for Christmas. But instead of stopping at the 38th
Parallel, the point at which America’s allies had agreed would restore the
division between North and South Korea at the start of the conflict, the
commander “went ahead to the Yalu frontier and set up an enormous disaster, which
clouded his reputation,” according to historian David Fromkin.
“There’s a
spot where the mountains go down on a north-south basis,” Fromkin explained to C-Span’s
Brian Lamb in a September 1995 interview on “Booknotes,” “and if you’re
a commander going there, you don’t want to get in that position because you
have to split your troops. But he [MacArthur] did and he shouldn’t have; he
went all the way up to the Chinese border, although there were signs that if he
did so, they’d come in against us with their limitless manpower.”
The
counterattack by the Chinese forces reversed all the gains by the US at Inchon.
Communist momentum was only blunted when Matthew Ridgway took over command of
the US Eighth Army in Korea and re-energized the demoralized troops.
By now,
MacArthur was not only violating Truman’s directive to clear any statements
with the White House first, but alarming the Joint Chiefs of Staff and allies
with his urging that China lay down its arms or face “a decision by the United
Nations to depart from its tolerant efforts to contain the war…[that] would
doom Red China to the risk of imminent military collapse.”
He provided GOP leaders eager to score points against Truman over the military stalemate
with a soundbite for taking the war to China: “There is no substitute for
victory.”
Truman’s decision to relieve MacArthur of command led to a firestorm of controversy back home, but it was necessary to preserve the constitutional structure of ultimate Presidential authority over the military.
Just as important, by scotching the
general’s proposal to drop up to 50 nuclear bombs at air bases, depots, and
supply lines to create a radioactive barrier and halt Chinese and North Korean
advances, Truman prevented the direct intervention of the Soviet Union in the
conflict—and the possibility of World War III.
When John O’Hara first wrote about the custom of
“Assembly” in the early 1930s, it was contemporary. When he titled the first
collection of his extraordinary short stories in the 1960s using the word,
however, fewer readers would have recognized the reference. That number has
surely dwindled in the sixty-plus years since.
In the foreword to his 1960 trio of novellas, Sermons and Soda-Water, O’Hara explained what he felt increasingly compelled to
do, particularly for younger readers not familiar with the original context of
the times:
“I have lived with as well as in the Twentieth Century
from its earliest days. The United States in this Century is what I know, and
it is my business to write about it to the best of my ability, with the
sometimes special knowledge I have. The Twenties, the Thirties, and the Forties
are already history, but I cannot be content to leave their story in the hands
of the historians and the editors of picture books. I want to record the way
people talked and thought and felt, and do it with complete honesty and
variety.”
You can read O’Hara for his extraordinary facility
with dialogue, as well as for the insights into characters that he wants you to
infer from below the surface of the story.
But, especially in his later work—and even glancingly,
here, in Appointment in Samarra—you come away with a better
understanding of a particular time and region (what he called his “Pennsylvania
Protectorate” of the anthracite coal area in which he grew up).
It is, as he hoped, something you’re unlikely to learn from “historians and the editors of picture books”—or, I might add, other writers of fiction.
(For a further consideration of why, "Among American novelists, O'Hara remains our best, begrudging social historian," I urge you to read Charles F. McElwee III's fine 2014 essay on the Website of the John O'Hara Society.)
Well, I guess in the United States, the closest
equivalent is any media outlet owned by the Murdoch family.
Two
delegates who locked horns in the debate leading to independence, Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson, took turns in creating Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, which sought to assure
the public—and, in far-off Great Britain, King George III—that their problems
were not with the monarch but with his ministers imposing coercive measures on
the colonies.
Years
later, John Adams recalled that during the American Revolution,
one-third of the colonists supported the cause, one-third were opposed, and
one-third were neutral. If anything, non-supporters of independence were still
in the ascendant one year earlier, but events were assuming a momentum that
many feared could not be controlled.
This
latter group is not as celebrated as the radicals, who won the vote for
independence in the Second Continental Congress and, in the end, the war
itself. They come off especially badly in the musical 1776.
But the
moderates’ stance was not without merit, and they marshaled compelling
arguments for the colonists’ rights before the Declaration of Independence and
contributed to the republic afterward.
The most
prominent moderate delegates from two large middle colonies, including New
York’s John Jay, who became the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court;
Pennsylvania’s James Wilson, among the keenest legal minds of the revolutionary
and Federalist periods; and Robert Morris, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant who
earned the nickname “Financier of the Revolution” through his crucial infusion
of money when the Continental Army was at its most desperate.
But the
leader of the group in the debates already convulsing the Second Continental
Congress was Dickinson, a wealthy lawyer who, by refusing to sign the Declaration
of Independence—even though he promptly joined the Continental Army as a
private—immediately forfeited much of the credit he deserved for mobilizing American
opinion against British policies in his pamphlet Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768).
In devastating
critiques of the Stamp and Townshend Acts, Dickinson crafted one of the first
known strategies for nonviolent protest in American history, preferring to call
on economic pressure and appeals to the Mother Country’s longstanding care of
its faraway offspring (“where is maternal affection”?: he wondered) to bring
Britain’s ministers around.
Unlike fellow
Pennsylvania delegate Joseph Galloway, who wanted the colonists to be brought
more tightly under the British umbrella, Dickinson preferred that the colonists
be allowed to administer something more akin to home rule.
Yet his
reluctance to accept the inevitability of independence might have resulted from
internal divisions within his own extended clan. His in-laws included not just independence
firebrands but also loyalists and others whose allegiance could be swayed to
and fro—an example in microcosm of the split that Adams saw in the nation at
large.
On a committee
that the Continental Congress designated to respond to Britain, Dickinson found
himself working with a Virginia delegate less inclined to speak up but every
bit his equal as a penman: Thomas Jefferson, whose Summary View of the Rights of British America attracted wide notice within his colony and
among the other politicians gathered that year in Philadelphia.
The case
that the panel would present had assumed greater importance with the outbreak
of hostilities at the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. Dickinson
read the first draft by Jefferson—and blanched over its fierce statements.
Jefferson
read Dickinson’s revisions, nodded—and mostly accepted only his minor
suggestions.
Dickinson reviewed Jefferson’s “fair copy,” made a few other suggestions—and, after some more changes, Congress had in its hands a document that slammed the “Legislature of Great-Britain” for being “stimulated by an inordinate Passion for a Power.” (To track the intense revision process behind Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, see this "Editorial Note" on the "Founders Online" Website.)
At the
same time, it pledged to readers that, while committed to defending their lands
and freedoms, “we mean not to dissolve that Union which has so long and so
happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored.”
What a
difference a year would make. King George III’s high-handed refusal even to
consider the “Olive Branch Petition” adopted that same weekend in Philadelphia undermined
the warnings of Dickinson, its primary proponent, that the colonies were
incurring enormous risks by fighting Britain without a powerful ally or an effective
central government.
In the
end, the defiance of the Continental Congress brought on the violence and the assault
on privilege that concerned Dickinson. But the cause won out and even a
conservative reformer like Dickinson accommodated the new order by serving in the governments of Pennsylvania and Delaware. At his death in 1808, Jefferson hailed his onetime "moderate" opponent in the Continental Congress:
"Among the first advocates for the rights of his country when assailed by Great Britain, he continued to the last the orthodox advocate of the true principles of our new government, and his name will be consecrated in history as one of the great worthies of the revolution.”
[Evangelist Sister]
“Sharon [Falconer] christened it ‘The Waters of Jordan Tabernacle,’ added more
and redder paint, more golden gold, and erected an enormous revolving cross,
lighted at night with yellow and ruby electric bulbs….
“All of
Clontar, with its mile of comfortable summer villas and gingerbread hotels, was
excited over the tabernacle, and the Chamber of Commerce had announced, ‘We
commend to the whole Jersey coast this high-class spiritual feature, the latest
addition to the manifold attractions and points of interest at the snappiest of
all summer colonies.’
“A choir
of two hundred had been coaxed in, and some of them had been persuaded to buy
their own robes and mortar boards.
“Near the
sand dune against which Sharon and Elmer [Gantry] lolled was the tabernacle,
over which the electric cross turned solemnly, throwing its glare now on the
rushing surf, now across the bleak sand.
"‘And
it's mine!’ Sharon trembled. ‘I've made it! Four thousand seats, and I guess
it's the only Christian tabernacle built out over the water!’”—Pulitzer and
Nobel Literature prize-winning American novelist Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), Elmer Gantry (1927)
I came
across this quote after watching on TCM, decades after the first time I saw it,
the 1960 film adaptation of Elmer Gantry. (In the attached image, that’s
Burt Lancaster as the titular preacher and Jean Simmons as Sharon Falconer.)
In the
movie, the grand evangelical center that Sharon envisions is built (and then
destroyed in a fire) in the fictional Midwestern city of Zenith. I was all the
more surprised, then, to discover that Sinclair Lewis set Sharon’s project in a
seaside community in New Jersey. I wondered, given that the novelist conducted
extensive interviews and research while writing his fiction, if he had a
particular Jersey Shore town in mind.
For help, I turned to Dr. Sally E. Parry, Professor Emerita in the Department of English at Illinois State University and Executive Director of the Sinclair Lewis Society. She wrote back that though the novelist did most of his research in the Midwest as he visited churches (especially in Missouri), he did not, to the best of her knowledge, model the tabernacle on a particular place.
Sharon
Falconer, she continued, is strongly based on Aimee Semple McPherson, whose
ministry was primarily centered in California. “The novel was also inspired to a certain
extent by Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896), which
Lewis admired (Carol Kennicott discusses it in Main Street). Theron Ware
is a Methodist preacher who is awakened to a variety of religious beliefs,
including some by Sister Soulsby.”
Dr. Parry
confirmed one possibility I raised: that Lewis might have learned about some
Jersey Shore spots while working as a janitor for six months at Helicon Hall,
the novelist Upton Sinclair’s 1906 utopian experiment in Englewood, NJ.
Now that I
think of it, locating Sharon’s tabernacle by the shore might have appealed to
the novelist in a couple of other ways: it would have testified to the growing
national ambitions of her ministry, and this geographic location would have
been even more resonant for a structure named after “the Waters of Jordan.”
Whatever
the case may be, this novel, like so much of the writer’s other work at the
height of his influence on American culture in the 1920s, continues to
reverberate a century later.
In the
late 1980s, in an appearance at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey,
Tom Wolfe highlighted the conclusion of this stinging satire, where Gantry notices “a new
singer, a girl with charming ankles and lively eyes, with whom he would
certainly have to become well acquainted.” Lewis had certainly anticipated the
sensational sex scandals that had recently engulfed televangelists Jim Bakker
and Jimmy Swaggart, he observed.
The death this past week of the latter reminded me that Swaggart was involved in
another scandal three years after the one that led to his defrocking by the
Assemblies of God.
Unfortunately,
the immense moral and political sway wielded by today’s mega-church leaders has
led them to ignore the lessons of history offered by the Bakker and Swaggart
cases, with Robert Morris and Mike Bickle among the recent
high-profile preachers who have strayed from the straight and narrow path through sexual misconduct.
I can’t
imagine that Sharon Falconer’s “Waters of Jordan” could cleanse the enormous
sins they have committed.
When it
was over two hours and 50 minutes later, the A’s highly touted, 25-year-old
rookie, Robert "Lefty" Grove, lost on a sacrifice fly in the
15th inning by the New York Yankees’ catcher Steve O'Neill, while 31-year-old
veteran Herb Pennock (pictured) used guile to survive and come away with
the 1-0 win in the first game of a double-header.
(If you
want to know: the second game that day was shorter and less eventful: a 2-hour,
8-5 loss for the Yankees.)
Fans have
witnessed some remarkable Independence Days at Yankee Stadium over the years—notably
Dave Righetti’s 1983 no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox and a dying Lou
Gehrig’s “Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth” in what was, in effect, the
first Old Times Game. But two Hall of Fame pitchers matching zeroes had to be
extra special.
I have no
idea of the full extent of what Grove and Pennock endured that afternoon
because I can find no record for the temperature and pitch counts then. Even
so, the two lefthanders had to surmount considerable frustration, knowing that
their offenses could give them no breathing room.
True to
form, the cool, unflappable Pennock pitched to contact and painted the corners,
finishing the day with five strikeouts, four hits and, equally important, no
walks. Grove notched 10 strikeouts—every one of them a necessity to get out of
jams, as he yielded five walks and 14 hits.
Powerhouses
that had formerly won World Series, both the Yankees and the A’s were being retooled
by their front-office executives, Ed Barrow with New York and Connie Mack (who
doubled as manager) for Philadelphia.
The Yankees, having won three straight pennants from 1921 through 1923 and a World Series in the latter year, fell to second place in the American League in 1924. In the first half of 1925, they had to deal with two months without Babe Ruth, with a medical ailment dubbed the "Bellyache Heard Around the World." After sitting on the bench for two years, the promising Lou Gehrig did not replace Wally Pipp at first base until June 1.
The team that became immortalized as “Murderers’
Row” was making do, as much as they could, with pitchers that Barrow had acquired
since coming over from the Red Sox, such as Pennock, George Pipgras, and “Sad
Sam” Jones.
The A’s had gone through a fallow period after their 1910-14 pennants, but Mack was now assembling a talented young squad that included future Hall of Famers Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane, and Jimmie Foxx.
But, as I wrote in this post from 2011,
the most ferociously competitive of this bunch was Lefty Grove—so volatile
that, after (another) hard-luck 1-0 loss that deprived him of a chance for a 17th-consecutive
victory, he wrecked the A’s stall lockers, not to mention his uniform.
Neither the A’s (88-64-1, good for second place in the AL) nor the Yankees (69-85, seventh place) gave their fans much to cheer about in 1925. But they would return to form the following year, with the Yankees winning three straight pennants and two World Series from 1926 through 1928 and the A’s doing likewise from 1929 through 1931. Both teams have fair claims for being considered among the greatest of all time.
Happy Independence Day! Remember, as Benjamin Franklin noted, that we have a republic—if we can keep it.
Oh, and while we’re at it—please don’t start with the notion that Mercy Otis Warren was some kind of DEI inclusion in the study of early American history (as some in the current Presidential administration undoubtedly believe).
She was one of the first public intellectuals in the republic, frequently corresponding (and sometimes jousting) with John Adams—and, through her patriot husband James Warren, deeply familiar with many of the major players in the American Revolution and the foundation of the nation.
Unable by law and custom of the time to serve either in the military or in politics, she wielded her pen to influence minds.
Her explanation for the rise of the Committees of Correspondence that sprang up throughout the American colonies against British misrule offers lessons in hope for those looking to resistance in a current time of dismay and trial:
“When afterwards all
legislative authority was suspended, the courts of justice shut up and the last
traits of British government annihilated in the colonies, this new institution
became a kind of juridical tribunal. Its injunctions were influential beyond
the hopes of its most sanguine friends, and the recommendations of the
committees of correspondence had the force of law. Thus, as despotism
frequently springs from anarchy, a regular democracy sometimes arises from the
severe encroachments of despotism.”
Wanda [played
by Jamie Lee Curtis]: “No.”
Archie: “He's
no idea?”
Wanda: “He
doesn't have a clue.”
Archie: “What?”
Wanda: “He's
so dumb...”
Archie: “Really?”
Wanda: “...he thought that the Gettysburg Address was where Lincoln lived.”— A Fish Called Wanda (1988), screenplay by John Cleese, directed by Charles Crichton and John Cleese
Poor Otto would never
have guessed that the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg (featuring Pickett’s
Charge) occurred on July 3, 1863, or that the “Address” in question was
connected to the fighting.
The
image accompanying this post shows James Mason as Brutus in the 1953 film
adaptation of Julius Caesar.
Okay, the calendar has turned another page—the month that Weaver warned about. It’s time for the managers of the New York baseball teams, Carlos Mendoza of the Mets (who have lost 12 games of their last 20) and Aaron Boone of the Yankees (12-13 in their last 25 games) to invest in earplugs, the better to tune out any booing from their home crowds.
(The source of this image,
cropped from a baseball card of Earl Weaver from the 1976 Baltimore Orioles
Photocards set, is Trading Card Database.)
