I think it
was one phrase—"florid, moustached, parakeet coloured”—that grabbed my
attention in this passage about the stunning androgyne Vita Sackville-West.
After this, it was that bit about a new acquaintance who “writes fifteen
pages a day.” (I wish I could equal that output!)
I can’t
imagine describing anyone this way. But then again, that was part of the acute perception
and sensibility of Virginia Woolf.
It came a
few days ago, as NT Live presented the play that started Arthur Miller
in 1946 on his career as the bard of modern age tragedy: All My Sons.
Originally,
the Barrymore had promoted a 2019 NT Live production starring Bill Pullman and
Sally Field. I’m not sure why, but the theater ended up showing one from the
2025-26 season at Wyndham’s Theatre in London’s West End, with Bryan Cranston
and Marianne Jean-Baptist in the same roles.
With all
due respect to Pullman and Field, it’s hard to imagine how they could equal,
let alone surpass, the two more recent leads for shattering impact.
Not all of director Ivo van Hove’s attempts to bring freshness to taken-for-granted classics are well advised, as I noted over the weekend about how he had (mis)handled Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler.
As I began watching this performance,
I wondered how the elements of this stage design—a large tree, fallen
overnight; an unadorned house front; a lit overhead circular portal—would aid
or detract from this viewing experience.
But his
stripped-down production of Miller’s first Broadway success enables
contemporary audiences to focus on his talented performers, in a way that theatergoers
more than three-quarters of a century ago, fresh from reading about war
profiteers and experiencing losses in the struggle against totalitarianism, were
unlikely to have done.
For me,
the revelation here was Marianne Jean-Baptiste, whom I had only seen
previously in her Oscar-nominated turn in Secrets and Lies. As Kate
Keller, she seems to find untapped reserves of fury and sorrow as a wife and
mother unable to deal with the realizations that the crime of her
munitions-manufacturer husband and the wartime disappearance of her beloved
older son Larry might be linked in some way.
Though Bryan Cranston is familiar to TV viewers stateside from the long-running series Breaking
Bad and Malcolm in the Middle, he shows further evidence here that
the versatility he displayed onstage in Tony-winning roles in Network
and All the Way was no fluke.
He
masterfully strips away the thin membrane of respectability surrounding his
protagonist, Joe Keller: Seemingly cleared of charges of having okayed a
shipment of defective parts leading to the deaths of 21 pilots, he suddenly
finds himself facing the unwelcome appearance on his doorstep of the two
children of the business partner on whom he laid responsibility for the
transgression.
The English actress-playwright Hayley Squires brings the requisite amount of sweetness and steel as Larry’s fiancee, Ann Deever, who, as the first step in turning the page with an engagement to the Kellers’ younger son Chris, must find a way to get Kate to stop denying that Larry is dead.
And Tom Glynn-Carney is sullen and fierce as Ann’s brother George, who confronts
the Kellers with the truth they can no longer avoid.
In some
ways, Paapa Essiedu has the trickiest role as Chris, the surviving son
at sea: drawn to but bashful about courting Ann, chafing at inheriting from his
father a business that leaves him uninspired (“If I have to grub for money all
day long at least at evening I want it beautiful”), and loving his father while
struggling with the vague sense that something is wrong with the parent. He
brings fire to his late moment of revelation and resolution.
The first
in a quartet of Miller tragedies (followed by Death of a Salesman, The
Crucible, and A View From the Bridge) that traced American
socio-political dysfunction to a father’s failure to live up to a moral code, All
My Sons has been served well by this production that highlights why we are
still dealing with the playwright’s theme of corporate irresponsibility and the
remorseless pressures of capitalism.
The
Barrymore has also done well by bringing it to a select but appreciative
audience. I look forward to its NT Live production next month: John Millington
Synge’s tragicomedy of Irish country life, The Playboy of the Western World.
The image accompanying this post shows where Little Women author Alcott served as a nurse: United States Hospital (formerly the Union Hotel) in Georgetown. Though her service only amounted to several weeks starting in December 1862, she became in her way as much of a casualty of the conflict as the men she tended.
Bad ventilation, unhealthy food, and 12-hour shifts undermined her health, as did the medication she was given: calomel, which we now know was a poisonous mercury. According to Rachel Williams’ February 2016 blog post for the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, the writer “was never fully well thereafter.”
Memorial Day originated following
the Civil War as a communal remembrance for those who fell during that
conflict. Today is an appropriate time to recall not only the sacrifice of
those who suffered and perished in these and other American wars, but the
nurses like Alcott who endured their own traumas in tending to them.
Though
a half million disembarked at the conclusion of the conflict, all too many
others never made it home. It is they, as well as all the others who perished
in American wars, that we remember and honor today—and pray that their supreme
sacrifice may never be repeated.
The white tags here, in English and Spanish, list the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit” understanding, wisdom, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord.
The image accompanying this post, Pentecost, was created in 1545 by the Venetian Renaissance painter Titian (c. 1485–1576)
In 25
plays written over nearly a half century, Ibsen moved from historical and/or
verse dramas to challenging contemporary tragedies shot through with verisimilitude,
psychological insights and symbolism.
Carefully studying the works of Shakespeare in his long initial theatrical apprenticeship, he ultimately was exceeded only by The Bard as the most performed playwright in the world.
His work influenced such later playwrights as
August Strindberg, Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, Eugene O’Neill, Clifford
Odets, and, perhaps most powerfully, George Bernard Shaw, whose essay “The Quintessence of Ibsenism" expounded his importance as a dramatist of
ideas.
In his
youth Ibsen was a political radical, and in the plays of his maturity he was
unafraid to embrace iconoclasm.
In A
Doll’s House (1879), he dared to show a housewife willing to leave not just
her husband but her children in making a bid for independence.
As if in
answer to those who protested that decision, he outraged public opinion even
more by presenting in Ghosts (1881) a wife who stayed with her husband and
suffered the consequences: a son suffering from syphilis, which she believes he
inherited from his philandering father.
When that
predictably brought down on him a storm of criticism, he responded with An
Enemy of the People (1882), which displayed contempt for representative
democracy (“What is the majority? The ignorant mob. Intelligence is always to
be found in the minority”).
Paradoxically,
this nonconforming playwright grounded much of his work in what would have
seemed familiar to audiences of his time: the well-made play featuring plot
exposition (often with long-concealed secrets) and clear denouements.
I wonder
if those traditional elements may account for why so many performances of his
plays stateside go beyond normal translations into English to more freewheeling
adaptations meant to recreate the sense of shock experienced by his own
Victorian audiences.
In the case of A Doll’s House, for instance, Ingmar Bergman and Amy Herzog, among others, have trimmed the text and even eliminated characters.
Herzog and
Miller, understandably unnerved by the advocacy of eugenics in An Enemy of
the People, jettisoned the concept, but in the process downplayed the
satire that even took in the play’s hero, Dr. Thomas Stockmann.
Even when
playwrights have delivered adaptations with less stilted dialogue that retain the
plots, they can be undermined by wayward directors. Ivo van Hove, working with Christopher
Hampton’s serviceable 2004 adaptation of Hedda Gabler, undercut it b
subjecting his lead, Elizabeth Marvel, to a tomato dousing.
The
Republican Party under Donald Trump has transformed into own version of The
Liars’ Club. Only this time, it encompasses not a small group of entitled
jocks (though Secretary of War Pete Hegseth seems like an alum of such a
group), but an organization of politically engaged adults.
Their
silence in the face of assaults on the Constitution and democracy—from Cabinet
members (like the ones in this picture, joined by Veep J.D. Vance) down to local officials asked to violate time-honored election laws and
regulations—is being enforced by a President with a code of omerta
worthy of a sullen crime boss.
This week’s primary losses by Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy and Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, after their undistinguished challengers were flooded
with funds and endorsements by the President and his spineless surrogates, will
only confirm the sense of helplessness felt by any Republicans hoping for even
an inch of space from a leader bent on remolding the Grand Old Party in his own
scowling image.
There is a
double danger affecting the nation’s Democrats: desperation that they can no
longer rely on a single member of the opposite party to rein in the President,
and that a defection by one of their own might further embolden him.
Which
brings us to the curious case of John Fetterman.
Lack of
Prudential Judgment
A relative
of mine recently noted that, though he abominated Fetterman during his successful
2022 campaign for the U.S. Senate, his views about the former Pennsylvania
lieutenant governor have moderated since then. “He makes more sense than many
Republicans or Democrats,” he said, observing that Fetterman had won praise for
his efforts on behalf of Western Pennsylvania.
In fact, late last July, Fetterman commended the Trump administration for delivering over
$1 billion in infrastructure funding to the state. Surely it didn’t escape his
notice how the President interfered with funding projects to build new Hudson
River rail tunnels and Army Corps of Engineers plans in cities like New York,
San Francisco, Boston, and Baltimore—areas controlled, not coincidentally, by
Democrats.
That’s the
most charitable case for why, as Jonathan Martin’s column earlier this month
for Politico laid out, Fetterman has become a tempting target for
Presidential courting:
“He
largely ignores Trump’s transgressions, finds ways to support the White House
in high-profile moments and is increasingly ubiquitous when criticizing his own
party on right-coded media in ways that affirm conservative views about liberal
excess.”
I am not
one to disown a Democrat or progressive for wandering off the reservation when
compelled by conscience. In an age of polarization, independent thinking in a
public official is as important now as it was back in 1774, when father of
conservatism Edmund Burke extolled the ideal of a representative who “owes you,
not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving
you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
But the
independence that Burke advocated depends on a sense of prudential judgment
that Fetterman, in backing the Iranian War—and in even more ludicrously supporting
President Trump’s plans for a White House ballroom on national security
reasons—sorely lacks.
Fetterman
disregarded the bona fides of Trump and his lackeys in evaluating these two
propaganda offensives. That’s important, because, if administration figures are
prone to congenital misleading, then an elected official must work harder to
verify claims and supporting evidence.
That fails
utterly with the Iranian War and the White House Ballroom, as they have been
started and supported by a Liars’ Club at the highest level of the nation:
Trump and his advisers.
Ballroom
BS
The $200
million for the ballroom, its financing through private donors currying favor
with the President, and the complete East Wing demolition required to make way
for it should have concerned Fetterman. Instead, in an interview last August with Fox News Digital, he predicted that the plans would be “done in a
tasteful and historical kind of way.”
“Tasteful”
and “historical” in the same sentence as the President who destroyed the Rose
Garden? That would be enough to make many people gag. But Fetterman compounded
his error this April by spreading Trump’s claim, with no evidence, that the
shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner further justified the
ballroom plans on security grounds.
Periodically,
Trump officials should be subjected to The Pinocchio Test: i.e., the louder
they scream that they are telling the truth, blameless, and innocent, the
faster we should whip out rulers to measure their noses for unexplained
elongations.
Administering
the Pinocchio Test should be normal business on Capitol Hill in maintaining the
government’s system of checks and balances. Predictably, Republicans have
abdicated this role except in the cases of Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi, who so embarrassed
or disappointed the President that Congressmen and Senators could safely attack
them.
But it is
shocking to find a Democrat like Fetterman who commits the same sin. His
support for Israel’s offensive against Gaza might be excused as backing for a
nation subjected to a horrendous attack.
The
Iranian Insanity
But the
campaign against Iran was a war of choice, the logical consequence of breaking
the 2015 Iran-US nuclear treaty negotiated by the Obama administration that
allowed unprecedented monitoring of uranium stockpiles.
Once
Trump, at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s urging, pulled out of the
pact, assessing any potential nuclear buildup became a matter of
guesswork—which, as seen after the fall of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, can prove
wildly mistaken.
In
assessing Netanyahu’s arguments for a widened conflict that no President from
either party in the prior three decades had accepted, Trump—and, consequently,
Fetterman—might have thought of an exchange between Pat Riley—at that time, before
becoming a Hall of Fame coach, a secondary offensive weapon for the Los Angeles
Lakers—and Wilt Chamberlain.
The
superstar center, according to a speech I heard Riley give at a nonprofit trade
association when he was with the New York Knicks, was incredulous that his
teammate had taken and missed a shot that would have won the game. What was he
thinking?
“I was
wide open,” Riley answered.
“Did you
ever stop to think there might be a reason for that?” Chamberlain shot back.
Indeed, in
reviewing past reluctance to authorize American military operations against
Iran, Trump should have thought “there might be a reason for that.” Instead,
with the Israeli leader feeding his fantasy of one-upping prior Presidents, he
decided to join Israel in the attack.
He did so even
though, according to a New York Times account of a crucial planning meeting,
CIA director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed
Netanyahu’s expectation of a mass Iranian uprising as fantasy, and Trump’s
military advisers warned that the Strait of Hormuz could be seized.
Following
the invasion, Trump, Pete Hegseth, and other officials tried out a series of
shifting rationales—defeating Iranian proxies in attacks on Israel,
neutralizing ballistic missiles, and regime change—before settling on what
seems to be the current motivation: annihilating Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
The
nuclear question seems to be the best way for punching one’s ticket for
admittance to the Liars’ Club. Following last June’s “Twelve-Day War,” a US-Israel
joint air attack launched for this very purpose, Trump announced that Iran’s nuclear program had been “totally obliterated.”
If that
was the case, why the need for another operation, particularly since no
evidence has emerged of Iran restarting nuclear enrichment?
Fetterman
would be far better consuming shredded lettuce than the shredded war
justifications of Trump and Pete Hegseth. And someone should ask why he muted
his rhetorical trumpet when Trump issued this genocidal ultimatum to Iran: “A
whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again"
unless a deal was reached.
At this
point, it’s worth asking: Is there any use of military force by the
administration that Fetterman regards as unwise, let alone immoral?
It’s hard
to tell what’s more infuriating: the Fetterman negative vote against invoking
the 1973 War Powers Act that ensured its Senate defeat, or his justification
for it: “I would never want to restrict any future president to do this kind of
military exercise that was very successful.”
Come
again? “Successful” how?
Leave
aside that Fetterman doesn’t seem disturbed by an administration and its
congressional lackeys who, as this “military exercise” has evolved, have
claimed: a) that the war is over; b) acknowledged that the war could continue
for quite some time; and c) that a deal was within reach (this, often after the
Trump Organization bought stock in companies that benefited from the war).
But what
can you say about an “excursion” in which the Islamic regime remains in place,
having discovered an effective tool of retaliation in closing the Strait of
Hormuz that it had never attempted before—and reduced the President of the
United States to a tweeting, cursing madman on Easter?
Like many
of his fellow Trump supporters, a longtime friend of mine has consistently
derided “globalists.” But what is the President now if not a globalist, except
that his inclination is based on self-aggrandizement rather than the
rules-based international law that long sustained Pax Americana?
In dealing
with Russia and China, Trump’s attitude has been, “We’ll grab what we can, and
let you do the same.” While busy taking over Venezuela, enforcing an embargo
that has reduced Cuba to a shambles, and even threatening the NATO alliance by
screaming for the annexation of Greenland, the President has signaled to
Vladimir Putin that he doesn’t mind if Russia takes over Ukraine.
Where has
Fetterman been in all of this? On Fox News last year, he said that if the
President secured a lasting peace in the Ukraine conflict, he’d gladly nominate
him for a Nobel Peace Prize. This then begs the question: how would Putin
accept any deal that did not provide him with a net territorial gain at the
expense of Ukraine?
Trump
Derangement Syndrome—or Fetterman Derangement Syndrome?
Like the
President, Fetterman has unleashed a round of vitriol against anyone who holds
good-faith reservations about initiating a war against a nation nearly four
times the area and twice the population of Iraq—a land in which, it might be
remembered, the US became involved in a quagmire.
This
month, with rhetoric earlier retailed by the masterminds who brought us the
Vietnam War, he accused the Democratic base of becoming “increasingly
anti-American.”
It didn’t
stop there. In a March interview, he saw this cohort as being “governed by the
TDS”—Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It’s not
enough that the senator is using a shopworn version of columnist Charles
Krauthammer’s “Bush Derangement Syndrome” coinage from 2003.
But he
might have more profitably reflected that “TDS” refers not to administration
critics but to a President who stays up all night tweeting the most absurd,
bigoted, obscene memes and rants—as well as one who has started his very own
Mideast forever war to go along with his domestic endless retribution campaign.
“I’m going to disagree with [Trump], but I’m always going to disagree with respect,” Fetterman vowed. That disagreement has been decidedly low-key.
Aside from that,
though, why would the senator accord respect to a head of government who
doesn’t respect the dignity of the Presidency, let alone his predecessors,
popes, officeholders, journalists, entertainers, economists, business leaders,
and ordinary citizens?
In the
face of a daily cascade of personal insults and envelope-pushing violations of
the law, outrage is the more appropriate response.
“I’m never
going to call people Nazis or fascists or authoritarianism and all those
extreme terms,” Fetterman said on Fox News in late April. But if Trump does not
crave authoritarian rule, how else to describe someone who:
*puts his
image on currency and photos;
*says that
the only thing restricting his conduct in office would be his own “ethics”;
*enables a
tech billionaire outside government to remove congressionally authorized
agencies and their staffers at will;
*threatens
businesses with tariffs or lawsuits, or demands a share of profits as leverage,
to pressure companies into political alignment with the administration;
*pursues
prosecutions against the likes of James Comey, Mark Kelly, Governor Tim Walz,
Jerome Powell, Adam Schiff, John Brennan, and Letitia James on thin to
non-existent evidence;
*authorizes
government agencies to harass universities, law firms, even networks with
late-night talk-show hosts who joke about them.
If the
pattern of Fetterman’s statements sounds familiar, it should: Robert Kennedy
Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard started out as progressive Democrats until their
criticisms of others in their movements became louder and more frequent while
their complaints about Trump turned mute before being totally abandoned.
Never mind
saving his political career: If Fetterman wants to preserve his self-respect,
he can look at what happened to Kennedy and Gabbard once they fell into Trump’s
embraces, which ended up involving:
*shamelessly
praising the President beyond what they would ever have for any Democratic
leader;
*keeping
silent about major policy differences with the President;
*for RFK
Jr., saying nothing while one of the primary tributes to his clan, the Kennedy
Center, faced physical dismantling and creative emasculation;
*for
Gabbard (before her just-announced resignation), investigating preposterous 2020 electoral claims of Presidential
election that were outside her authority as director of national intelligence.
As with
RFK Jr., it has to be asked how much Fetterman’s move towards the right
resulted from genuine policy disagreements as opposed to an erratic
personality. His attempt to carry on his senatorial duties following his stroke
and the depression that followed is commendable.
But the
behavior catalogued in a New York Magazine article last year (e.g.,
driving at recklessly high speeds, as well as what a former chief of staff
listed as “Conspiratorial thinking; megalomania…high highs and low lows; long,
rambling, repetitive and self-centered monologues; lying in ways that are
painfully, awkwardly obvious”) calls into question whether he should continue
in office.
In his
interview with Martin for Politico, Fetterman wondered how Trump and the
GOP could tolerate a social liberal like himself when they had forced out Tom
Tillis and Bill Cassidy for far less.
As a
public official, if you accept and spread the arguments of The Liars’ Club,
you’re only one small step from joining it. Unlike a private citizen, you have
access to information that might make you change your mind. Only willful
ignorance, not naivete, could cloud a failure to perceive that the paramount
issue of our time is preventing the most powerful man on earth from doing
whatever he likes.
That
should be as good a reason for any as why Fetterman should not accommodate an
ignorant, loutish billionaire with a thirst for political dominance and a gift
for demagogy.
Well, maybe one more: Caligula, according to the ancient historian Suetonius, had thought so highly of his horse Incitatus that the Roman ruler thought of naming him a consul until his assassination.
Take your pick for why: either as an example of
the emperor’s madness or of his contempt for the Senate—two traits typical of
America’s current aspiring authoritarian.
Baker wrote this in the Carter Administration. Imagine
what he might have written after reading about the plan signed off by Acting
Attorney General Todd Blanche in which the Internal Revenue Service would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from all audits of “any matters currently pending” relating to President Trump, his family and his businesses.
The image accompanying this post, John Irving in the
Netherlands, was taken on May 2, 1989, by Rob Bogaerts (ANEFO).
A week or so ago, The New York Times created a hornet’s nest with a list of the 30 greatest living songwriters that some (like critic Ted Gioia) derided as methodologically suspect. Predictably, even more readers complained that their choices didn’t make the roundup, with Joel among the most glaring omissions.
(See
this podcast with the Times critics debating this egregious
exclusion and others, in a manner that YouTube respondents variously assailed as “smug,” “insufferable,”
“oblivious,” and “unbelievable.”)
I know
that the Piano Man’s output has, for some reason, not always won critical
acclaim. You can count me among his longtime fans. It’s not just that his concerts have
been electrifying, but his recordings display to the utmost his skills as a
lyricist and musician. Turnstiles is a prime example.
This album
also represented his attempt to wrest creative control of his material in the
most decisive fashion. His label, Columbia Records, suggested that he work with
James William Guercio. This producer, manager, and songwriter, through such
acts as Chicago, Blood, Sweat and Tears and the Buckinghams, was at the time an
influential proponent of jazz rock—or, as I noted in this prior blog post,
“brass rock,” characterized by a driving horn section.
At the Caribou
Ranch recording studio in Colorado, Guercio was exerting tighter control over
his productions. In Joel’s case, the producer pushed for studio musicians,
including from Elton John’s backup band.
After
listening to these sessions, Joel decided that, though this studio hires might
have benefited the English superstar, it wasn’t what he wanted. He
called the sessions off, and pressed his case with Columbia for a backup group of
his own to work on his next album.
To make
doubly sure that he got what he wanted, Joel took over the producer’s chores as
well. That turned out to be a mixed blessing. He may have come closer to the
sound he wanted, but, as he recalled in a 2009 Billboard interview, “I’m
not a producer. I’m a good partnering producer when I work with somebody like
Phil Ramone or Mick Jones; I have a lot of ideas. But I don’t know technically
always what I should be going for.”
The real
benefit came from the comfort level he felt from working with what became the
“Billy Joel Band”: bassist Doug Stegmeyer, drummer Liberty DeVitto, guitarists Russell
Javors and Howie Emerson, and saxophonist Richie Cannata. It was like what
another up-and-coming Columbia artist, Bruce Springsteen, had wanted and
gotten, with the now-legendary E Street Band.
Because he
permanently parted ways with those backup musicians a couple of decades later,
Joel didn’t achieve the longevity and camaraderie that The Boss gained with his
“Band of Brothers.” But for the time they played together, there was a drive
and cohesion to his sound.
Equally
important for Joel, after three years of feeling lost in
Los Angeles, the longtime Long Island resident moved back east. The title of
this new collection, Turnstiles, was a celebration of that decision.
(Incidentally,
the cover of the album was shot in an actual abandoned subway station. The
assorted non-Joel figures in the photograph were meant to suggest people
associated with different songs, so the teenaged girl with the headphones, for instance, represents “All You Wanna Do Is Dance.”)
Joel’s
move back home also was something of an act of defiance against anti-New York
sentiment in the nation. The singer-songwriter decided it was time for a change
when he saw the notorious 1975 New York Daily News headline at the height
of the bankruptcy crisis: “Ford To City: Drop Dead.”
On vinyl,
Joel reacted with a dystopian piece of science fiction, "Miami 2017 (Seen
the Lights Go Out on Broadway)." After 9/11, it became an unexpected
anthem of resilience for the metropolis. Now, we are almost a decade after the
future that he imagined.
If "Miami
2017” seemed tailor-made for arena rock, “New York State of Mind” felt more
like its natural setting was a small jazz club. Indeed, it has become something
of a pop standard, covered by the likes of Tony Bennett, Carmen McRae, Mel
Torme, Barbara Streisand, Shirley Bassey, and Diane Schuur with Stan Getz.
I embraced
two other songs because in some ways they reminded me of the work of two
cultural figures I was just beginning to enjoy.
With
backup singers, castanets, strings, and especially an opening drumbeat
reminiscent of “Be My Baby,” “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” was Joel’s tribute to “Wall
of Sound” producer Phil Spector and then-wife Ronnie. (In fact, the latter
released her own estimable cover version a year later, noting in interviews
that she identified with the song’s theme of a break from California following
her divorce.)
The other
cultural figure I thought of was F. Scott Fitzgerald, on “I’ve Loved These
Days.” So many of the images and themes evoked here—spending beyond one’s
means, pearls, caviar, foreign cars, champagne, and cocaine—could have been
drawn from the pages and life of the author of “The Great Gatsby.”
One other tune
deserves special attention, as Joel would return to its main concern later in
his career: “Summer, Highland Falls.” Named for the upstate New York town where
Joel stayed upon his return from the West Coast, the song functioned as an
emotional taking stock and recalibration.
He has
been frank in admitting that lines like “It’s either sadness or euphoria”
recognized the manic depression with which he has battled through much of his
life, even at the height of his success—a condition he explored later in “I Go
to Extremes” and “You’re Only Human (Second Wind)”.
Though the
album only peaked at #122 on the U.S. Billboard chart on its release, songs
from Turnstiles helped solidify his growing acclaim as a top-notch live
performer, as exemplified from several from the LP being included on his
first live collection, Songs in the Attic (1981). Eventually it reached
platinum status.
Joel did not produce another LP until 1993 with River of Dreams. Like Turnstiles, that marked a watershed of sorts, as it turned out to be his last collection of original pop tunes.
His concert partner Elton John admonished him
to sit down and write some more, but if Joel felt his creative well had run
dry, it’s hard to take issue with his decision to take this turn in his career.
It would only have invited more critical derision than he’d experienced
already.
For most of two decades, it was Killebrew’s misfortune to play—first in Washington, DC, then in Minnesota—for owner Calvin Griffith, who low-balled him at salary time.
After he retired, misfortune often took a more dire financial
form: car dealership and car leasing firms whose failure ultimately, despite his
healthy sums from sports memorabilia appearances, pushed him towards bankruptcy
in 1993.
Killebrew
was honest enough to admit feeling stressed by all of this, but he soldiered
on, demonstrating why he was liked and respected not just by fellow baseball
players but by sportswriters, who finally elected him to Cooperstown, after
three missed tries, in 1984.
Though
nothing like the versatile “five-tool player” (hitting for average, hitting for
power, speed, arm strength, fielding ability) held up as the beau ideal of
everyday players, Killebrew possessed one skill in abundance: slugging home
runs.
The 573
round-trippers he amassed at the end of his 22-season career ranked fifth at
the time of his retirement. Even that statistic doesn’t indicate the frequency,
consistency and force with which he punished the ball.
Starting with the Washington Senators, then moving when the team became the Minnesota Twins before closing out his career after one season with the Kanas City Royals, Killebrew recorded eight 40-home run seasons and 44 multiple home run games. He led the AL in home runs six times, walks four times and RBI three times.
Named to 13 All-Star teams, he was selected Most Valuable Player
for the American League in 1969, when he led the Twins to the American League
West Division championship.
Ossie Bluege, the farm system director who scouted and signed him for the Washington Senators, observed: "He hit line drives that put the opposition in jeopardy. And I don't mean infielders, I mean outfielders."
Griffith took note of these tape-measure homers: “He would hit the ball so blooming high in the sky, they were like a rocket ship going up in the air.”
That bat was what kept Killebrew in the lineup game after game, year after year, despite a glove that most observers of the game thought was suspect. But in his defense, he never spent enough time at one position to master it.
According to Mark Armour’s post shortly after Killebrew’s death, “he was repeatedly shifted
between three defensive positions throughout his career, getting 44% of his
starts at first base, 33% at third base, and 22% in left field.”
Off the field, Killebrew’s benevolence sprang from a belief that “The most important reason that we're here on Earth is to love and help one another.” To that end, he became involved in several charitable activities, including:
*helping
to establish, in Sun Valley, ID, the Danny Thompson Memorial Golf Tournament (named
after a Twins teammate who died of leukemia);
*creating
the Harmon Killebrew Signature Classic Golf Tournament to benefit the American
Red Cross; and,
*starting
the Harmon Killebrew Foundation, a fund-raising charity.
This week, we are reading the comments of some university
commencement speakers, and it will continue like this for several days or so.
But Ms. Smith’s reminder from a dozen years ago bears
keeping in mind, perhaps now more than ever. Barriers of class, ethnicity,
race, religion, and politics should not be as rigid as physical structures in
blocking access to each other.
The image accompanying this post, of Zadie Smith announcing
the five 2010 National Book Critics Circle finalists in fiction, was taken on
Jan. 22, 2011, by David Shankbone.
Over two
days in Beijing this week, two 24/7 practitioners of propaganda, Donald Trump
and Xi Jinping, met. These leaders of America and China, so used to employing
this “monologue” on their countrymen, wielded it on their foreign
counterpart.
Don’t be
fooled into thinking that these efforts were aimed at establishing their
countries as superpowers. Rather, in their blatant legacy-building, these septuagenarian
strongmen were engaged in the final rites of their own cults of personality.
Colin
Jost: “Don't you
live in, like, Maine?”
“Carlson”:
“Yes. And let's talk about Maine. M-a-i-n...e? Huh! Really? The ‘e’ is silent.
But who silenced it and why?”
Jost: “What the hell are you talking
about? You're talking about the silent ‘e’ in Maine now?”
“Carlson”:
“I'm glad you brought it up, Colin.”
Jost: “I didn't.”
“Carlson”:
“And what does that ‘e’ stand for? Oh, I know. ‘Euphoria.’” [A poster for
the HBO series “Euphoria” flashes on the screen.]
Jost: “No!”
“Carlson”:
“Oh, yes. ‘Euphoria.’ And no, I'm not talking about the feeling I get when I
press ‘1’ for ‘English.’” [High-pitched, self-satisfied cackling.]—“Weekly Update” segment, Saturday Night Live, Season 51, Episode 18,
original air date May 2, 2026
Tucker
Carlson has been lampooned before on SNL, but it was almost inevitable
that the show would return to him recently, especially considering his podcast
apology for past support of Donald Trump.
But his interview
with Lulu Garcia-Navarro of The New York Times following his
much-publicized break with Trump over the Iranian invasion deserved scorn that the show's writers ignored. It’s astonishing: he can
sound sincere, even logical, and before you know it Carlson’s spewing the most
bigoted, conspiratorial nonsense.
All this shoots from his mouth with such glib rapidity that he can’t keep track of
what he says. So he denied to Garcia-Navarro, for instance, about ever
wondering if Trump might be the anti-Christ, even though he said it only a few
weeks ago on a readily available recording.
I love how
in his devastating impression, Jeremy Culhane captured how what Carlson wants to be
a chuckle turns into a cackle. Only I wish he had included one of this
demagogue’s most weaselly statements whenever he discusses matters like COVID
vaccines: “I’m just asking questions.”
