Quote of the Day (Alan Burdick, on Seconds, ‘The Currency of Modern Life’)

“Increasingly our days are governed by seconds. They are the currency of modern life, the pennies of our time: ubiquitous and critical in a pinch (for instance, when you just manage to make a train connection) yet sufficiently marginal to be frittered away or dropped by the handful without thought.”— New Yorker staff writer Alan Burdick, Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation (2016)

Quote of the Day (Leonard Cohen, on the Source of Poetry)

“Poetry comes from a place that no one commands and no one conquers.” —Canadian poet and singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen (1934-2016), “Acceptance Address for the Prince of Asturias Awards,” Oct. 21, 2011, in The Flame: Poems Notebooks Lyrics Drawings (2018) 

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Get Shorty,’ With an Offbeat Exchange After an Assault)

[Chili beats up Bear, a movie stuntman, champion bodybuilder, and bodyguard who “throws out things” his boss doesn’t want.]

Chili Palmer [played by John Travolta]: “Bear, look at me. You tell your boss I don't ever want to see him again. And that means he's got to be nowhere near me, Karen, or Harry. You understand?”

[Bear, on the ground, nods.]

Chili: “Okay, get up. What are you hanging around that guy for, anyway? I mean, you were in the movies, right? You were a stuntman. What's he ever done that he can talk about? You okay?”

Bear [played by James Gandolfini] [gasping]: “Not too bad.”

Chili: “How about when you fell down the stairs?”

Bear: “Pulled my quadriceps.”

Chili: “So how many movies you been in, anyway?”

Bear [still struggling]: “About sixty.”

Chili: “No shit! What were some of them?”— Get Shorty (1995), screenplay by Scott Frank adapted from the novel by Elmore Leonard, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

Nearly 30 years after I saw this film in the theaters, I was reminded all over again about its offbeat, hilarious dialogue when I read the recent New Yorker interview with Scott Frank.

Please note that Travolta and Gandolfini hailed from Bergen County, NJ, home of tough guys galore!

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Phillips Brooks, on One Who 'Flaunts His Unscrupulousness’)

“When a man comes not merely to tolerate, but to boast of the stains that the world has flung upon him; when he wears his spots as if they were jewels; when he flaunts his unscrupulousness, and his cynicism and his disbelief and his hard-heartedness in your face as the signs and badges of his superiority; when to be innocent and unsuspicious and sensitive seems to be ridiculous and weak; when it is reputable to show that we are men of the world by exhibiting the stains that the world has left upon our reputation, our conduct, and our heart, then we understand how flagrant is the danger; then we see how hard it must be to keep ourselves unspotted from the world. And now, in view of all this, we come to our religion…. She refuses to bring down her standards. She insists that men must come up to her. No man is thoroughly religious, she declares, unless he does this, which it seems so hard to do, unless he goes through this world untainted, as the sunbeam goes through the mist….It could not sustain itself in its great claim to be from God unless it took this high and godlike ground, that whoever named the name of Christ must depart from all iniquity.”—American Episcopal preacher, bishop, and hymn writer Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), “Unspotted From the World,” in Sermons (1885)

Phillips Brooks may be best known today for writing the lyrics to the gentle Christmas hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” But his ministry stretched from the Civil War to the heart of the Gilded Age—times of severe trial that left many Americans all too “spotted from the world,” as they inflicted violence on nonwhites and widened the economic chasm between themselves and those less fortunate.

The accounts of his life indicate, as Fr. Peter Kountz notes in this blog post from three years ago, that Brooks was “available, approachable, inspirational, authentic and reverent.”

But you can’t read the words above, nor the sermon in which I first encountered this great 19^th-century preacher, “The Seriousness of Life,” without feeling that he also possessed a spine of steel, and a willingness to call out the worst instincts of his time.

I was stunned when I saw how aptly the quote above applied to one contemporary figure who, more than anyone I can think of, exemplifies this “cynicism,” “disbelief,” and “hard-heartedness.”

This Republican is a far cry from the first one to occupy the White House, Abraham Lincoln, whom Brooks hailed, in the post-assassination eulogy that made the young preacher famous, as one who “showed us how to love truth and yet be charitable—how to hate wrong and oppression, and yet not treasure one personal injury or insult.”

Sadly, though, the current Republican’s attitude has not merely become an infection but a plague in American life. Otherwise, how else to explain why more so-called Christian preachers haven’t criticized his Christmas message urging those who differ from him to “ROT IN HELL”?

I’m afraid this blight on the national spirit will not be eradicated until preachers with the credibility of Brooks, across the broad spectrum of American denominations, denounce what that current national figure embodies.

Quote of the Day (Louise Erdrich, on Writing Within Limits)

“Limitations are a positive force in my life. I need them. When I am stuck, I often write within a form, to a deadline, or otherwise set up fences around what I can do. Perhaps the imposition of rules spurs me to break free. Writing a novel is always about establishing and then pushing against parameters." —American novelist and poet Louise Erdrich, “Soapbox: The Columnists—WSJ. Asks Five Luminaries To Weigh in on Single Topic; This Month: Limits,” WSJ., November 2017

(This photo of Louise Erdrich was taken in Rome on July 5, 2015 by Alessio Jacona.)

This Day in Presidential History (Truman Pledges ‘Fair Deal’ in State of the Union Message)

Jan. 5, 1949—Two months removed from an electrifying “whistle-stop” election victory over Thomas Dewey, Harry Truman urged the passage of legislation that the GOP-dominated Congress had ignored in the last session.

The President termed the laws proposed in his “State of the Union” message as “The Fair Deal”—a phrase meant to evoke for Americans the far-reaching progressive legislation championed by Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt as, respectively, the “Square Deal” and the “New Deal.”

Presidents tend to wax most optimistic in these annual messages to Congress after successful reelection campaigns, and Truman was no exception. He had not only succeeded in his bid to gain a full term in the White House in his own right following FDR’s death, but also now had returning Democratic majorities in the House and Senate that had been lost with the 1946 midterm election.

But the power of those majorities, while representing an improvement over the “Do Nothing Congress” that Truman derided in his campaign, was less than it seemed. 

Memories of the Great Depression that left millions out of work and devastated the economy had receded, leaving conservatives with little reason to agree with the President that “We cannot afford to float along ceaselessly on a postwar boom until it collapses….Instead, government and business must work together constantly to achieve more and more jobs and more and more production.”

Moreover, Southern Democrats had achieved seniority in Congress, giving them the leverage to block the civil-rights legislation the President advocated, such as cloture reform to reduce the number of votes necessary to end filibusters on voting rights and anti-lynching bills.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas could not reconcile the liberal and conservative wings of the party. While Truman could count on the GOP's principal voice on foreign policy, Arthur Vandenberg, to back his renunciation of isolationism, Robert Taft, as chair of the Republican Policy Committee, was far less willing to cooperate on domestic affairs. He was able to maintain a tight hold on the GOP, leaving the Democrats with a majority on paper only.

Just how much leverage Taft could exert was demonstrated in the fate of the President’s housing bill, which only passed by five votes in the House of Representatives—and even then only because Taft had weakened the original proposal and his “yea” vote gave coverage to Republicans wavering on the issue.

Truman did end up winning his requested increase in the minimum wage and broader social security coverage. But the rest of his package went nowhere, with Taft even authoring an article declaring, “The Fair Deal is Creeping Socialism.”

Yet Truman’s proposals established agendas pursued by later Democratic Presidents—notably Lyndon Johnson, with his civil-rights and Medicaid legislation of the mid-1960s.

Incidentally, 36 years later, Gerald Ford recalled, in his own State of the Union message, how, as a freshman Congressman, he had heard Truman report that “The state of the union is good.” 

In contrast now, Ford said, the state of the union was not good, as he cited high unemployment, a recession and inflation, an increased national debt, plant capacity and productivity not rising fast enough, lack of energy independence, and the people questioning “their Government's ability to make hard decisions and stick with them.” 

In the end, Ford’s domestic proposals made about as much headway as Truman’s, and for the same reason: de facto majorities in both houses of Congress that effectively watered them down at least, or balked completely at worst.

Joke of the Day (George Carlin, on ‘Things Better Left Unsaid’)

“I don't have to tell you it goes without saying there are some things better left unsaid. I think that speaks for itself. The less said about it the better.”—American stand-up comic George Carlin (1937-2008), Brain Droppings (1997)