TV Quote of the Day (‘The Munsters,’ on a Gallic Blond Bombshell Back in the Day)

Lily Munster [played by Yvonne De Carlo]: “Herman's practicing to be a child.”

Grandpa [played by Al Lewis]: “Practicing? That's like Brigitte Bardot practicing to be a girl.”— The Munsters, Season 2, Episode 27, “Eddie's Brother,” original air date Mar. 24, 1966, teleplay by Dick Conway, Allan Burns, and Chris Hayward, directed by Ezra Stone

As a tween, I often watched the two seasons of The Munsters, and after all of that how many lines do you think I can recall? Only this set.

Part of the reason, I surmised while researching this blog post, was that this episode was the one with lines used for commercials promoting the horror sitcom in syndicated reruns in the early Seventies. Never underestimate the power of repetition on impressionable young minds!

And never underestimate the impression made by a pretty female face and figure on males of any age.

When The Munsters first aired this episode, French actress Brigitte Bardot, who died this weekend at age 91, had already been an international star for a decade, ever since her appearance in …And God Created Woman. That film’s popularity was assured as soon as it was banned in several states and condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency for its depiction of a free-spirited, “liberated” woman.

Only two years before Grandpa drew his extremely unlikely comparison of his big, awkward, ugly son-in-law Herman to the modestly sized, mambo-dancing, comely actress, Bardot had herself become the subject of a movie: Dear Brigitte, with James Stewart sputtering in frustration as his math prodigy son develops a crush on the blond bombshell.

Time Magazine called her “the countess of come hither,” but the phrase that seems to have first come into heavy use—specifically about her—was “sex kitten.” The quality evoked by that phrase—innocence and sensuality—came into play most often in frothy comedies like Viva Maria! (1965), made with fellow French icon Jeanne Moreau.

That’s the only one of her movies I ever sat through. More than 50 years later, I don’t recall being particularly bowled over by it.

Bardot’s private life (four husbands, four suicide attempts) was as tumultuous as her public one (support for the far-right group National Front, noisy opposition to the #MeToo Movement). Her post-retirement activism on behalf of animal rights was, in the end, more heartfelt and passionate than her pouty screen siren image. 

I’m glad she lived as long as she did, without suffering the premature, youthful death of another alluring blonde who sprang to fame in the Fifties: Marilyn Monroe.

Quote of the Day (Chloe Fox, on Community Spirit and Independent Bookstores)

“Community is what so many of us are lacking in our lives. Our yearning for it is what sends us in our droves to music festivals and overpriced theatres. It's what we thought we'd found on social media and have since realised we didn't. And, above all else, it's what independent bookshops thrive on.”— English author, journalist, and new bookstore owner Chloe Fox, “The Best, Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done,” The Financial Times, Dec. 20, 2025 (“How To Spend It” supplement)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Metropolitan,’ on Jane Austen)

[Two of the more intellectual members of the “Sally Fowler Rat Pack” of debutantes and their dates are discussing novels they’ve recently read.]

Audrey Rouget [played by Carolyn Farina, right]: “By Tolstoy, War and Peace and by Jane Austen, Persuasion and Mansfield Park."

Tom Townsend [played by Edward Clements, left]: "Mansfield Park? You've got to be kidding.”

Audrey: “No.”

Tom: “But it's a notoriously bad book. Even Lionel Trilling, one of her greatest admirers, thought that.”

Audrey: “Well, if Lionel Trilling thought that, he's an idiot.”

Tom: “The whole story revolves around, what? The immorality of a group of young people putting on a play.”

Audrey: “In the context of the novel it makes perfect sense.”

Tom: “But in the context of the novel, then nearly everything Jane Austen wrote is near ridiculous from today's perspective.”

Audrey: “Has it ever occurred to you that today, looked at from Jane Austen's perspective, would look even worse?”— Metropolitan (1990), written and directed by Whit Stillman

I couldn’t help feeling amused by last week’s conjunction of events: Turner Classic Movies’ scheduling of Whit Stillman’s movie during the holiday season, and this past month’s 250^th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen.

But I really chuckled when I heard this exchange. In a 2017 appearance at Arizona State University, Stillman disclaimed any notion that his first film, an indie movie darling set during Christmas break, was an adaptation of Mansfield Park, let alone that Austen had “inspired” this film.

Whatever. Given that the filmmaker's last movie to date, Love and Friendship (2016), was an adaptation of Austen’s unfinished epistolary novel Lady Susan, I don’t think he would deny that she was a formative influence on his sensibility.

Take another look, then, at the above sample from Stillman’s unabashed talkfest. What a slyboots he is—ribbing the very book that furnished the ethical conflict of his own movie.

I must confess that when I first saw this comedy-drama 35 years ago, I felt deep ambivalence. 

My upbringing was blue-collar ethnic, not WASP upper class, and if I spoke the way that Audrey and Tom do here (let alone their earnest philosophical friend Charlie about “Fourierism”), my friends would have handed my head to me. 

In fact, I wondered back then how many students even at elite college campuses talked about such subjects in their dorms instead of their classrooms.

But the more I thought about this movie’s young people, the less removed they seemed from my own experience.

Pampered and privileged as these preppies were, they shared many of the insecurities of my lower-middle-class set: clinging to one’s social circle, longing for someone who may or may not like you in return, wondering where the money would come to pay for the clothes and activities that would keep you in your clique, and making sense of your parents (or, as the cynic Nick says, “The most important thing to realize about parents is that there is absolutely nothing you can do about them”).

The very thought of it might puzzle my group—and the Sally Fowler Rat Pack subset of what Charlie christens “the Urban Haute Bourgeoisie”—but the values that Jane Austen extols in her social satires apply as much to all classes and regions in modern America as in the novelist’s Regency England: sincerity, thoughtfulness, and decency.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (G. K. Chesterton, on Herod and the Holy Innocents)

“We all know the story of how Herod, alarmed at some rumor of a mysterious rival, remembered the wild gesture of the capricious despots of Asia and ordered a massacre of suspects of the new generation of the populace [Matthew 2:16-18]. Everyone knows the story; but not everyone has perhaps noted its place in the story of the strange religions of men. Not everybody has seen the significance even of its very contrast with the Corinthian columns and Roman pavement of that conquered and superficially civilized world. Only, as the purpose in his dark spirit began to show and shine in the eyes of the Admen, a seer might perhaps have seen something like a great gray ghost that looked over his shoulder; have seen behind him filling the dome of night and hovering for the last time over history that vast and fearful face that was Moloch of the Carthaginians; awaiting his last tribute from a ruler of the races of Shem. The demons also, in that first festival of Christmas, feasted after their own fashion. ….Herod had his place, therefore, in the miracle play of Bethlehem because he is the menace to the Church Militant and shows it from the first as under persecution and fighting for its life. For those who think this a discord, it is a discord that sounds simultaneously with the Christmas bells.” — English man of letters G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), The Everlasting Man (1925)

The image accompanying this post, The Massacre of the Innocents, was created in 1610 by the Flemish artist and diplomat Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).

Flashback, December 1990: ‘The Godfather Part III’ Ends Saga in a Dying Fall

The Godfather Part III arrived in American theaters over the 1990 holiday season burdened with reports of a trouble production that eventually outweighed the hopes for a repeat of its two Oscar-winning predecessors. 

Though not a disaster, it didn’t live up to box-office expectations either, grossing approximately $136.9 million worldwide against a $54 million budget—hardly the record-shattering blockbuster that the original was.

Much of the pre-release bad press concentrated on the decision by director Francis Ford Coppola to cast daughter Sofia in the pivotal role of Michael Corleone’s daughter Mary. This derision had an element of Schadenfreude, in the way that many critics have of taking an award-winning filmmaker down a peg after a string of successes.

More in a minute on alternatives to Sofia Coppola. But there was another casting choice—a refusal to bring back a key cast member from the earlier films—that had just as critical an impact on the project.

Viewers expecting to see Robert Duvall as consiglieri Tom Hagen were in for a big letdown. The actor, nominated for Best Supporting Actor in the role in The Godfather Part I, wanted more than the $1 million he was offered for this second sequel, believing it wasn’t close to what Al Pacino ($5 million) and Diane Keaton ($1.5 million) would be receiving.

Coppola, facing financing and scheduling restrictions by studio Paramount Pictures, couldn’t accommodate the demand. But he incurred stiff creative consequences for rewriting Hagen out of the script.

It wasn’t just that Hagen’s straight-arrow son, Fr. Andrew Hagen (played by John Savage), was only a shadow of his dad, given how little he figured in the final cut. It wasn’t even that the bland WASP lawyer character invented to replace Hagen, B.J. Harrison (played by George Hamilton), was likewise a pale reminder of Hagen.

No, it meant that Michael couldn’t turn to Hagen as his natural choice to run the foundation meant to launder the Corleone family’s blood-stained reputation, but instead would select Mary. 

Moreover, the new movie would abruptly short-circuit a running thread of the first two films without explanation: Hagen’s struggle to balance his intense loyalty as an adopted member of the Corleones with his conscience.

Though Duvall was sorely missed, it was by casting his daughter that Coppola turned himself into the pinata for critics. In his defense, it was a decision made under tremendous duress.

Julia Roberts was originally cast as Mary Corleone, but had to withdraw because of scheduling conflicts in finishing the film that would lift her to superstardom, Pretty Woman.

Her replacement, Winona Ryder, was a seasoned actress who could have brought heat to the love scenes with illegitimate cousin Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia, in an explosive Oscar-nominated performance), and personified an independence strongly suggestive of her mother, the family outsider Kay Adams-Corleone.

But what was described in press reports as “nervous exhaustion” (i.e., working nonstop on several films back to back) led to a prolonged medical absence for the actress.

Coppola could have waited for Ryder to recover, or he could have gone with two other rising young actresses, Laura San Giacomo (recently in Sex, Lies, and Videotape) or Annabella Sciorra (Jungle Fever). But the director had decided that Mary Corleone should be a teenager, and in looking around for a member of that age group who saw someone close at hand: Sofia.

Sofia Coppola was 19 years old at the time of production, with neither experience nor interest to date in becoming an actress. Her mother Eleanor, a documentary filmmaker who had observed and chronicled the excesses of her husband, feared that this was another one of his mistakes.

With a production deadline bearing down on him and a belief that she was closer to his conception of Mary Corleone, Francis chose to go with her, perhaps believing he could elicit a fine performance from the neophyte. The decision was reminiscent of John Huston’s in casting his similarly inexperienced teen daughter, Anjelica Huston, in the 1969 movie A Walk With Love and Death.

But Francis Ford Coppola was dealing not with a one-off art house historical drama as Huston was but a high-stakes movie franchise. Sofia became collateral damage.

The vacuums caused by the absence of Duvall and Ryder led to frenzied rewrites, a process that had begun a decade before Coppola and novelist-screenwriter Mario Puzo formally committed to the project. By the time it was over, 16 script variations had been produced.

All this rewriting resulted in problems with plot and characterization. The real-life scandal that became intertwined with Michael Corleone’s effort at redemption—the Vatican Bank—wasn’t introduced until 40 minutes into the film. And why did Connie Corleone (played by Talia Shire) evolve from the wayward and outraged sister of Michael in Parts I and II to one not only wholly supportive but exceeding him in calculation and cunning in Part III?

Given all of these issues, as well as Coppola’s acceptance of the project as a means of extricating himself from his financial reverses of the prior decade, the wonder is not merely that The Godfather Part III was made at all but that it turned out as well as it did, with seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture. (Inexplicably, Pacino wasn’t nominated for Best Actor.)

Pacino, Keaton and Garcia turned in superb performances, the cinematography was excellent, and, for all its imperfections, the Puzo-Coppola screenplay contained its share of excellent lines (e.g., Michael’s oft-quoted, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in”).Coppola’s 2020 re-edit prompted a more positive reappraisal of this conclusion to this indispensable crime family epic.

Quote of the Day (Lionel Richie, on Facing Fear)

“Every time you feel fear, step forward. That’s what I keep in my mind now. Is today confusing? Yeah. Tomorrow may not be. Why? Because I faced today.” —American Grammy and Academy Award-winning singer-songwriter Lionel Richie, quoted by Elizabeth Egan, “Lionel Richie Opens Up in a Memoir,” The New York Times, Sept. 30, 2025

(The image accompanying this post, cropped, with Lionel Richie among Kennedy Center honorees, was taken on Dec. 2, 2017, by the U.S. State Department.)

Quote of the Day (Percy Bysshe Shelley, on a Cloud Sifting ‘Snow on the Mountains Below’)

“I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.”— English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), “The Cloud,” originally published in 1820, reprinted in The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1994)
 
As I type this, some form of winter precipitation is falling outside my window. I’ve thrown up my hands on whether, or how much of, it will amount to snow. (Forecasts for my county predict anywhere from 4 to 9 inches, but the “Weather” app on my iPhone says my town will get 1 to 3 inches, with the rest being rain or “wintry mix.”)
 
I have certainly had my share of snow in my lifetime, though it has diminished in the past couple of decades. Even so, that experience consisted of at best short hills in the northern New Jersey suburb where I have long resided. I had nothing like the experience that Shelley and his young wife Mary had in 1816 when they were staying in the Swiss Alps.
 
(The image accompanying this post, of Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps, was taken on Apr. 10, 2011, by Carlosvi04london.)

Photo of the Day: Altar Display, St. Cecilia Church, Englewood NJ

I took the image accompanying this post at the Christmas vigil service at my longtime spiritual home, St. Cecilia Roman Catholic Church in Englewood, NJ.

Praying for a Change of Heart

Two of the most enduring holiday entertainments involve a change in the main character’s heart. In the upteen versions of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (as seen in this image), malignant miser Ebenezer Scrooge repents after late-night visits from the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, a kind of American Christmas Carol, pulls salt-of-the-earth George Bailey from a fatal jump off a bridge, to which he’s been driven by Bedford Falls’ equivalent of Scrooge, banker Henry Potter.

For nearly three-quarters of a century, American Roman Catholics were accustomed to praying for “the conversion of Russia,” the Soviet state spearheading an atheistic assault on the destruction of religion.

This alarming Christmas season might at last induce Americans—including Catholics who constituted the key swing group in the past three Presidential elections—to pray for another dramatic change of heart: Donald Trump’s shift away from the authoritarian path he has followed more assiduously than ever before.

It’s no wonder that Silicon Valley has embraced Trump in his second term, as no American politician has so embraced one of the tech industry’s biggest mantras: “move fast and break things,” as when he quickly demolished the East Wing of the White House.

In the last two weeks, however, several incidents have increasingly called into question what PBS Newshour commentator David Brooks termed the President’s lack of “moral acuity,” including:

* telling a Bloomberg News reporter who was asking a follow-up question, “Quiet, piggy”;

* referring to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as “seriously retarded” in a Truth Social post, leading to a tripling in use of the slur on social media in the hours afterward;

* adding his name to the JFK Center for the Performing Arts, only hours after its board (whose directors were stacked in his favor) voted him the honor;

* affixing negative plaques to White House West Colonnade signs of prior presidents he loathes (e.g., Joe Biden was “the worst President in American history”);

* alleging that the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife by their son Nick was “reportedly due to the anger he caused by others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction … known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME."

Let’s spell out the unprecedented nature of these remarks and actions:

*No other President has had public buildings or monuments (re)named in their honor while in office, and in most cases this occurred after their deaths.

*No other President has publicly derided the physical attributes of female reporters.

*No other President has bandied the word “retarded” about in public to deride another person’s intelligence, like the kind of 1950s middle-schooler who used to be called “fresh.”

*No other President has falsely ascribed a family’s private tragedy—arising from one member’s addiction or depression—to public opposition to White House policy.

None of these incidents touch on policy matters. They relate only to Trump’s character, or lack of it. For that reason, in no way can his diehard defenders default to the “what-about” option they have invariably employed about his opponents.

A relative asked me recently how I thought history would judge Trump. Though I told him this would depend to a large extent on Trump himself, I think now that the larger question is how history will judge us—especially my fellow Roman Catholics—for not just putting him in power in the first place, but returning him to the Oval Office, when his instinct for unchecked power had become obvious with the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

For years, I groaned at the prospect of sermons touching in any way on government policy or officeholders. These all seemed too divisive, too oblivious to the compromises needed to advance legislation.

But Trump has fundamentally changed the situation. There is no longer any realm of life—including sports or entertainment—that is beyond his commentary and befoulment. 

To borrow what John F. Kennedy said about the racism undergirding segregation in the 1960s: “We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.”

Trump’s remarks and actions beg for a forthright condemnation by the American archbishops, not the muted, passive voice-laden admonitions of their recent statement on violations of immigrants’ rights.

Over the past decade, few matters have dismayed me as much as the affection held by many Catholics for Trump. 

Just a few weeks ago, for instance, a fellow member of a Catholic group to which I belong complained that the President had been “investigated to death,” ignoring the fact that his political rise was made possible because local officials hadn’t investigated him enough early in his career.

That immunity from prosecution (including most GOP senators refusing to go along with impeachment) only ensured his current impunity in defying even legal efforts to stop him.

The Roman Catholic hierarchy in the United States cannot escape its own responsibility for the disaster now unfolding.

By emphasizing the overwhelming importance of outlawing same-sex marriage, transgender designation, abortion, or even contraception, it didn’t merely narrow the focus of what Joseph Cardinal Bernardin had rightly termed the “seamless garment of life” but effectively tore it to pieces. Other issues, such as civil rights, immigration, climate change, and economic justice, were inevitably downplayed.

The point man for this approach, and the one best exemplifying its dangers, is the now-retiring Timothy Cardinal Dolan. As President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) from 2010 to 2013, he led national church policy and advocacy, including opposition to Obamacare regulations calling for religious-affiliated institutions like hospitals and schools to provide contraception for employees.

More recently, as a recent New York Times article noted, he not only served on Trump’s “Religious Liberty Commission” but joked in a private phone call that he spoke with the President more than with his own mother.

That friendliness and solicitude were the bonds that ensured the prelate’s silence when Trump engaged in humorless insults of Democratic rivals for the Presidency at the 2016 and 2024 Al Smith Dinners, occasions normally given easygoing bipartisan joshing.

“Instead of telling Trump he was over the line, Dolan enabled him in his blasphemous effort to cast his campaign as a quasi-religious crusade and himself as a saintly martyr saved by God,” Times columnist Maureen Dowd correctly observed. “The conservative cardinal didn’t care about soiling the legacy of the great Democratic patriot Al Smith.”

Last week, when Brooks decried Trump’s lack of “moral acuity,” he elaborated on why the President's recent unhinged behavior is so disturbing: “Authoritarian leaders know that a certain part of the population likes it when they see the great leader idolized and venerated…. It is a form of psychological amassing of power to turn yourself into a demigod.”

Brooks likened such acts to those perpetrated by Mao Tse-Tung and Joseph Stalin. But there is another historical comparison that Dolan and like-minded colleagues on the USCCB might better understand: In abrasiveness, vindictiveness, financial and sexual corruption, and megalomania, the President is the modern equivalent of the pagan Roman emperors in the days of the Apostles.

Those emperors engaged in self-aggrandizement even as they persecuted the early Christians. These days, Trump has pursued self-preservation and self-aggrandizement even as he disregarded the civil liberties of undocumented aliens, many of whom are members of the very church led by Dolan and company.

In ignoring Trumpism’s increasingly open appeals to nativism, bigotry, and authoritarianism, the more conservative archbishops overlook a glaring 20^th-century dark spot in American Catholicism: the inflammatory radio broadcasts of Fr. Charles Coughlin that fueled the rise of the Christian Front in the 1930s.

They can rest assured, however, that American Jews still remember that the church hierarchy did nothing to stop Coughlin until the U.S. was at war with the Axis powers in 1942. Complicity, now as then, will breed consequences.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Henri Nouwen, on Why God Sent Jesus to Us)

“Wherever we go we see divisions among people—in families, communities, cities, countries, and continents. All these divisions are tragic reflections of our separation from God. The truth that all people belong together as members of one family under God is seldom visible. Our sacred task is to reveal that truth in the reality of everyday life. Why is that our task? Because God sent Jesus to reconcile us with God and to give us the task of reconciling people with one another.”— Dutch-born Catholic priest, theologian, psychologist and writer Henri Nouwen (1932-1996), Bread For The Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith (1997)

Quote of the Day (John Green, on Seeing ‘The Beauty of the World As Young People Do’)

“We need to put down our armor of cynicism and irony and thinking that we know about everything that matters. We need to try to grapple with the beauty of the world as young people do: in an open, vulnerable way. It’s cheesy as all get out, but… when you’re lying down with your friends under a big sky at night and you’re looking at the stars and you’re conscious of how large the universe is, that’s a borderline sacred experience. If you lose that in adulthood, you’ve lost something really important.”— Young-adult novelist, vlogger, philanthropist, and philanthropist John Green quoted by David Marchese, “The Interview: John Green Knows That No One Really Loves You on the Internet,” The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Nov. 30, 2025

(The image of John Green that accompanies this post, which was taken on Nov. 19, 2024, comes from “Let's Talk about Money” on YouTube.)

Quote of the Day (Laurence Rees, on a Prior Use of Political Deflection)

“[D]eflection [was] akin to modern ‘whataboutism.’ When confronted with the Holocaust they [leading former Nazis] voiced a series of blatantly false equivalences, such as the firebombing of Hamburg or colonial injustices, dismissing the charges as 'victor's justice.' This allowed them to label the Allies as hypocrites, reinforcing a belief in their victimhood.”— English historian and documentary filmmaker Laurence Rees interviewed by Danny Bird, “The Idea That There’s a Widespread Movement to Learn From History or to Understand It Meaningfully is False,” BBC History, February 2025

For the contemporary resort to “whataboutism” or “deflection,” please see Mona Charen’s June 2025 article in The Bulwark.

(The image accompanying this post shows former Nazi high officials who were defendants in the postwar Nuremberg trials.)

TV Quote of the Day (‘SNL,’ on Why Santa Might Have Been Watching the Show)

Michael Che [pictured]: “Now, you told me you wanted to share your Christmas wish list.”

Michael’s “12-year-old nephew,” Tyson [played by Kam Patterson]: “I sure do, but Uncle Che, do you think Santa is watching SNL?”

Michael: “I mean, I think Santa’s watching. He’s over 100 and white, so probably.”—Saturday Night Live, Season 50, Episode 9, original air date Dec. 20, 2025, “Weekend Update: Michael Che’s Nephew Threatens Santa” 

Quote of the Day (Caroline Crenshaw, on the SEC and Markets That ‘Start to Look Like Casinos’)

“It has been unsettling to see how precipitously one Commission [the current U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] is willing to undo the work of the Commission that came before it—all without a single notice-and-comment rulemaking to date.  I’m concerned that the fundamental precepts upon which our markets have been built—tenets that have, by and large, kept our markets safe for both issuers and investors alike—are being eroded.  I fear that the very core of our intricate market structure is under attack.  And instead of safeguarding our markets for investors to fund their retirements in safe and sustainable ways, we are moving in a direction where markets start to look like casinos.  The problem with casinos, of course, is that in the long run the house always wins.”—American attorney and current SEC member Caroline Crenshaw, “Speech by Commissioner Crenshaw on Investor Protection and Market Transparency,” Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, speech delivered Dec. 13, 2025

The image of Caroline Crenshaw that accompanies this post, taken Nov. 9, 2020, comes from the SEC.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Pope Leo XIV, Calling for ‘Hearts Attentive and Vigilant As We Await Jesus’)

“Let us be careful not to get caught up in frenetic activity in preparing for the feast, which would lead us to experience it in a superficial way and leave room for disappointment. Instead, let us take the time to make our hearts attentive and vigilant as we await Jesus, so that His loving presence may become the treasure of our lives and hearts forever.”— Pope Leo XIV quoted by Isabella H. de Carvalho, “Pope on Advent: Prepare for Christ's Coming, Don’t Get Lost in Frenetic Activity,” Vatican News, Dec. 17, 2025

Song Lyric of the Day (Elvis Costello, on ‘Lovers Laughing in Their Amateur Hour’)

“Lovers laughing in their amateur hour
Holding hands in the corridors of power.” —British singer-songwriter and Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame member Elvis Costello, “High Fidelity,” performed by Elvis Costello and the Attractions on their Get Happy! LP (1980) 

If recent rumors are true, this is one current example.

Quote of the Day (Rob Reiner, on How He’d Like To Be Remembered)

“Complete this sentence (fact or fiction are both acceptable): ‘I was born in THE BRONX, N.Y. and I studied MY FATHER AND MOTHER at HOME. I became world famous in SHOW BUSINESS and I hope I'll be remembered as MORE THAN JUST A MEATHEAD.”—American film director (and actor on TV’s All in the Family) Rob Reiner (1947-2025), completing “The Mel Brooks Questionnaire,” T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Sept. 28, 2025

I never thought, when I first spotted this quote, that I would be using it so soon on this blog. It’s a tribute to Rob Reiner that he had such an ability to laugh at himself—and to help others do the same in the often insane world in which we live.

I’m not going to talk—at least not right now—about the President’s graceless social media post about the tragic murder of Reiner and his wife Michele at the hands of their son Nick, following their unrelenting but unsuccessful efforts to save him from drug addiction and depression. I’d rather discuss what Reiner’s TV and film work meant to me.

As a tween, I came to know Reiner through his role as Mike Stivic, the liberal "Meathead" foil to bigoted father-in-law Archie Bunker on Norman Lear’s taboo-breaking Seventies TV satire All in the Family. 

Nowadays, some on the right might tag him as a “nepo baby” as the son of The Dick Van Dyke creator Carl Reiner. What I did know was that he was brilliant, richly deserving of the Best Supporting Actor Emmy he won before departing the show.

I have so many favorite episodes involving him (and, indeed, as far as I’m concerned, it never recovered after he and Sally Struthers left), but I urge you to view two in particular: “Gloria Poses in the Nude” (Season 4), when Reiner uses a twitch in the eye to signal his jealousy of his being painted by a friend of his, and “Gloria Suspects Mike” (Season 6), in which Mike nervously tries to fend off an attractive economics student (played by Bernadette Peters) who is coming on to him.

Even while appearing in All in the Family, Reiner was looking to write and direct. He did so on several episodes in the show’s first few seasons, and helped conceive the short-lived summer replacement comedy The Super, starring Richard Castellano.

A decade later, he had become a force in film, pushing from strength to strength with The Sure Thing, This Is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…, Misery, and A Few Good Men.

Dustin Hoffman joked that every actor has at least one Ishtar on his resume. The same applies to directors. I’m afraid that I was peripherally involved in what may well have been Reiner’s. 

In the early 1990s, while working in research at a nonprofit trade association, I was contacted by a staffer at Rob Reiner’s production company, Castle Rock Entertainment, for the names of some area enclosed malls that could be used for a scene in his next film, North. I provided a few names, and couldn’t wait to see the results.

In 1994, North finally appeared. It not only underperformed at the box office, but in the years since, it’s been listed among the worst movies ever made. Well, every decent film director is entitled to at least one misfire, I guess.

From what I can tell, however, no movie in Reiner’s considerable filmography as a director, producer, and writer was in bad taste. Quite simply, he respected the intelligence of audiences, like his father and Lear.

Rob Reiner grew up and flourished in a better time than the current moment. His life and work deserve celebration, not trolling by a barbarian and his all-too-easily-influenced horde.

Nearly 40 years after working with Reiner on Stand by Me, one of its child actors, Will Wheaton, now established in the industry, told CNN, upon hearing the news of the director’s death:

“The world knows Rob as a generational talent, a storyteller and humanitarian activist who made a difference with his art, his voice, and his influence. I knew that man, but I also knew a man who treated me with more kindness, care, and love than my own father ever did. And it is the loss of that man that is piercing my heart right now.”

(The image accompanying this post, of Rob Reiner at the German premiere of The Bucket List, was taken in Berlin on Jan. 21, 2008, by Franz Richter)

Quote of the Day (Robert A. Heinlein, on Rudeness and ‘A Dying Culture’)

“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”—American science-fiction writer, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988), Friday (1982)

Well, in at least one case, large-scale public rudeness can precipitate a riot.

Quote of the Day (Keith McNally, on a Feeling Increasingly Common in the Holidays)

“There are few feelings of relief that compare to the first gulp of night air after leaving a dinner party prematurely.”— British-born New York restaurateur Keith McNally, I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir (2025)

The image accompanying this post comes from the 2005 dramedy The Family Stone, which features a dinner party that can’t end soon enough for its attendees.

This Day in Literary History (V.S. Pritchett, Wildly Versatile British Man of Letters, Born)

Dec. 16, 1900--Victor Sawdon Pritchett—or, as readers came to know him across multiple genres across the 20th century, V.S. Pritchett—was born in a lower-middle-class household in Ipswich, Suffolk, England.

Though Great Britain has had at least several examples of the term applied to Pritchett, “man of letters” (see: Samuel Johnson, G.K. Chesterton, Matthew Arnold) I’m not sure there are (outside of, say, Edmund Wilson and Lionel Trilling) many Americans who fit the bill.

Perhaps, reflected Ronald Gottesman in a June 1987 review of Pritchett’s essays in The Los Angeles Times, “These men of letters--all of them fictionists or poets as well as critics—were independent, flexible, liberal, morally serious in the practice of discrimination and judgment—the chief marks of criticism before Literary Theory banished authors, vaporized texts, and called readership into doubt.

Over 75 of his 97 years, Pritchett’s output was enormous: five novels, two memoirs; approximately 100 short stories; travel books; major studies on several European writers; and thousands book reviews. Writing as much as he did in any one of these genres would have challenged other authors; producing all of it combined was mind-boggling.

And that’s just what he published: there were also thousands of letters sent to lucky recipients.

Though the author attributed the impetus for all this activity to a spendthrift father who endangered the family’s financial security, his anxiety about not having enough funds lasted well into adulthood, according to biographer Jeremy Treglown. “Even in his most celebrated years,” observed British literary critic Frank Kermode in a February 2005 article for The New Republic, “he could not live by his books alone, and remained dependent on journalism.”

In Brian John Spencer’s “The New Irishman” blog, I was especially interested to discover one of Pritchett’s formative journalistic experiences: covering the Irish War of Independence for the Christian Science Monitor and how the writers in Dublin’s literary circle at the time influenced his own short-story writing.

Quote of the Day (Anne Tyler, on Biting One’s Tongue)

“Someday I'd like to get credit for not saying all the things I could have said.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Anne Tyler, Three Days in June (2025)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Barney Miller,’ As Fish Receives a Stupefying Retirement Gift)

Det. Phil Fish [played by Abe Vigoda] [opens his present]: “What is it?”

Det. Stan “Wojo” Wojciehowicz [played by Max Gail]: “It's a New York City municipal bond.”

[All the cops in the precinct stand silently aghast, until…]

Det. Sgt. Nick Yemana [played by Jack Soo] [horrified]: “Oh, my God.”

Fish [still trying to comprehend this]: “A New York City municipal bond?”

“Wojo”: “Yeah. Hey, it's worth a thousand dollars when it matures.”

Fish: “If it matures... in 1997... I would have been 83.”—Barney Miller, Season 4, Episode 2, “Good-Bye, Mr. Fish: Part 2,” original air date Sept. 22, 1977, teleplay by Reinhold Weege, directed by Danny Arnold
 
For reasons related to my school workload and the series’ prime-time schedule, I seldom saw Barney Miller during its eight-year run. With (somewhat) more leisure time now to catch its syndicated reruns, I finally caught up with this two-part episode on the retirement of Det. Fish.
 
Many baby boomers like myself are now facing the future confronting the lovable grouch of the NYPD 12^th Precinct. I was fully prepared for the poignancy of his goodbye (necessitated by Vigoda’s departure for a short-lived spinoff series involving Fish and his wife).
 
What I didn’t expect was Wojo’s going-away present for his comrade and friend. That inappropriate gift provoked a roar of laughter from the studio audience at the time, too.
 
No wonder: Less than two years before, New York’s plunge toward a bankruptcy filing—and the notorious New York Daily News headline it inspired (“Ford to City: Drop Dead”)—put Gotham on a brink from which it only narrowly stepped back from, though not without massive cuts in services and a sharp falloff in quality of life.
 
Nor did it help that only two months before this episode premiered, New York received another black eye: a nearly 24-hour blackout that led to a massive outbreak of looting.
 
The very survival of the city, then, was at stake when Wojo presented Fish with this gift—which meant, of course, that with no city, no maturity on that bond.
 
Barney Miller lasted nearly my whole time in high school and college, a period when New York struggled to climb out of its deep hole. The crazies that came like an unstoppable tide into the 12^th Precinct were just a sample of the collective insanity gripping the city.
 
At various points, it seemed like Barney and his staff were the only bulwarks against what Fish called “the trouble this city is in." In this retirement episode, the pressures of that fight seemed to get to Fish at last, as he came perilously close to abusing a suspect until Barney stepped in.
 
Three years after the sitcom went off the air, showrunner Danny Arnold was honored with the Writer’s Guild of America’s Paddy Chayefsky Award for his lifetime achievement in TV. 

While his sitcom was usually more genial than Chayefsky’s dyspeptic screen satires, the daily dilemmas of this stationhouse reminded me of a line from the latter’s Oscar-winning screenplay for The Hospital: “Among us middle class, love doesn't triumph over all—responsibility does.”

Photo of the Day: Carrie Tower, Brown University

In late October 10 years ago, I visited Brown University while vacationing in Providence, R.I. I was impressed with the architecture of the Ivy League campus, but, with so much happening in my world and my life the last decade, I had little reason to think back on it.

Until late yesterday, that is, when I saw the first awful news of yesterday’s campus shooting that left two students dead and nine others injured.

Among the photos I took 10 years ago was this one of the 95-foot-tall campanile clocktower on the Quiet Green adjacent to the Van Wickle Gates, Hope College and University Hall.

Carrie Tower was named for Carrie Mathilde Brown, granddaughter of Brown University namesake Nicholas Brown Jr., whose death in 1892 after 16 years of marriage devastated her husband, Count Paul Bajnotti of Turin, Italy. The widower left this tangible reminder of his wife in the city where they first met.

Preeminently, then, Carrie Tower stands for the enduring power of love—a force so strong, according to the monument's inscription, that "Love is Strong as Death." The truth of that statement will be tested in the days ahead, not just at Brown but in gun-maddened America. 

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Sholom Aleichem, on Not Being ‘Worried About God So Much’)

“I wasn’t worried about God so much. I could come to terms with Him one way or another. What bothered me was people. Why should human beings bring suffering to others and to themselves, when they could all live together in peace and goodwill?”—Yiddish fiction writer and playwright Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, a.k.a. Sholom Aleichem (1859-1916), “Schprintze,” in Favorite Tales of Sholom Aleichem, translated by Julius and Frances Butwin (1983)