Category Archives: Obits

Thanks for letting me know about this public servant, Sam

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Earlier one of our friends posted a long and thoughtful comment on a previous post, and among many other points he noted the importance of “investigative reporting” to “help restore trust” in our society.

Well, yes and no. The investigative stuff is important, or at least it used to be. Woodward and Bernstein have been heroes of mine since the start of my career in the mid-70s. But I hope you’ll notice that it doesn’t mean as much today. Woodstein reported the truth about Watergate, and Nixon resigned rather that be impeached. Media expose outrage after outrage after outrage about Trump (which doesn’t take much investigation, since he boasts to the world of his sins — he is even impeached, twice, and gets conficted of crimes.

And what’s the public’s reaction? They cheer at his rallies, and elect him again.

And you know, an overemphasis on investigative journalism in my generation — the post-Watergate generation — has something to do with that. Every cub reporter (or at least, most of the ambitious ones) entering newsrooms since 1974  has come in busting to rip the cover off public officials, and they’ve done a lot of it, constantly. (I told one reporter who wanted to drop everything to chase after a lead because he wanted to “hit a home run” that he needed to stop swinging for the fences, and concentrate on getting on base. I wanted him to cover his beat. Even in those days of full newsrooms, I was never fully satisfied with my people’s coverage of the everyday stuff.)

And you know what resulted from all that fervent investigation? The public at large came to believe that that was all government was about — corruption. Say “They’re all a bunch of crooks” to the average guy, and he’ll nod his head.

Journalists knew better. We were out there covering public officials up close. Sure, there were slimeballs out there, but we knew most of them were decent, honest people doing their best to serve the public. But that’s not the way we covered the public sphere. Decent, honest folks don’t give you home runs.

That’s why I appreciated a feature we had at The State when I first arrived in the late 80s, back when had not only plenty of people but loads of space. We had a weekly page in the special Sunday section that included in-depth stories about the past week, the opinion pages, and related stuff (back then, all papers had these sections, and gave them names like “Perspective,” “Impact,” “Insight,” “Review” and such.) In that section, my team (governmental affairs) had a full page to fill about goverment and politics.

And we had a centerpiece feature on it that in the newsroom we called “bureaucrat of the week.” That’s because we considered it a pain in the posterior. We passed the duty around among the staff, everybody having to write one, and each reporter groaning when his turn came up again. (They’d rather be out there swinging at the fence for something on the front page.)

But I thought it was great. It was a weekly profile of one of the thousands of little-known people out there working hard at state agencies, explaining what these people did and why they did it instead of earning more money out in the private sector.

It was an example of a type of public journalism (or civic journalism, or community journalism; it was called different things and defined different ways, but I tend to think of it in communitarian terms), a movement that arose in the 90s because some editors were smart enough to realize that people were getting a skewed view of the world. It was about covering all that went on in a community, not just what went wrong, giving the public a full, holistic picture of reality.

Well, it was a noble goal, and I believed in it, but I seldom really practiced it day-to-day. Even in those flush days, resources — people, space and time — were finite, and you had to cover the plane that crashed, couldn’t afford to cover all of the thousands that land safely.

I say all that to explain why I appreciated this Facebook post by Sam Johnson, a young local attorney who was a close aide to Steve Benjamin during his years as mayor of Columbia. He wrote this about a neighbor of ours who died this week:

True public servants lie in the shadows. You often never know their name. Or, that they were even there. They weren’t there for that reason…for you to know them or the recognition. In today’s world, these types of public servants are rare breeds. They serve because they believe in something bigger than themselves.
Chris Carrizales was a true public servant. He was a brother. He was a friend. He didn’t care about the accolades. He wasn’t posting every cool interaction he had for the clout. And, while he was often in the shadows serving our country and serving Columbia, he very much deserves his flowers.
And, when you are serving together, others might just see the highs…but true brothers see your lows. Chris was there for the lows…with you. My wife, just yesterday, reminded me of several.
Chris worked in the last two mayoral administrations here in Columbia. In short, he was family. He never met a stranger. He cared. He did the work. Often it was an all day, more than a mere 9-to-5 requirement. Like I said, he believed in service. And, he did it all with style, grace, and class. My brother was special and he will truly be missed.

There was a similar accolade posted on the city website.

I didn’t know Chris Carrizales, but I miss him now. And I appreciate Sam for taking the time to bring him, and his years of devoted service, to our attention.

 

Do you like David Lynch’s work? No offense, but why?

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By that “no offense,” I mainly mean, “no disrespect to the recently departed.” But I also mean, “no offense to you if you like his stuff.”

People I know and respect and even love like his work. My daughter is a “Twin Peaks” fan, and she’s smart and creative and I love her with all my heart.

But I just don’t get the appeal. I’ve tried, in these recent days with streaming services going out of their way to offer me Lynch works (that’s Max that you see above), to give him one more chance — you know, outta respect.

But I never get farther in than a few minutes, before I make a firm decision not to spend any more of time I have left in life at the age of 71 on this.

What’s the problem? Take your pick. There’s the acting — if you want to call that “acting.” There’s the direction — which I think consists mostly of telling actors to “be as bad as you can possibly be, like you’re doing a comedy skit about bad acting, only without the humor.” There’s the editing, the weird pacing, the odd lighting, the special efforts made to make sure people think, “something’s not right here.”

Yeah, I get that he’s trying to make us uncomfortable. But isn’t there enough of that in real life? And if he’s trying to comment on all the awkwardness in real life, couldn’t he represent the real awkwardness more recognizably? This is like the diet Pepsi of awkwardness — something of a cola flavoring, but with a terrible artificial aftertaste.

I’ll admit that a lot of my dislike arises from his having shafted a generation of sci-fi fans by getting their hopes up, and presenting them with the worst major motion picture in history, his “Dune.” Yes, I’ve mentioned that before, but I’ll add a new twist: It is so bad that it makes a new “Dune” look great, despite it starring Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides. I mean, weirding modules? Where the hell did that come from?

Not to mention those pustules on Baron Harkonnen’s face. Why are we looking at those? Do you really think we wouldn’t get the idea that the Baron is a really gross guy whom you would cross a galaxy to avoid without lingering on those pustules?

Of course, I’ve learned something — or been reminded of something — by those films Max has offered. In watching a bit of “Fire Walk With Me,” and even less of “Blue Velvet,” I realized that’s a trademark move of his — finding something gross to zoom in on, sometimes microscopically, and linger upon, for no particular reason.

(I had never seen “Blue Velvet,” but had always meant to, thinking anything with Isabella Rosselini and Dennis Hopper’s got to be good. Well, no it doesn’t, it turns out. I had probably forgotten that Kyle McLachlan’s in it, too.)

Hey, I can take looking at gross things. I watch a lot of murder mysteries, and sometimes those bodies have had some pretty nasty things done to them, and the camera doesn’t shy away (how could they, after the expense of creating the effect?). I consider “Saving Private Ryan” to be a masterpiece, and the first 20 minutes of that can really test your ability to stomach blood and guts. But there’s a reason for it. This is one film that refuses to shy away from the horrors of war.

Lynch’s grossness seems to be there just because he wants it there, just as Tim Burton wants to see a lot of prison stripes on the screen. (And no, I don’t like him much, either.)

And yet… a lot of folks like it. Or they like something that’s eluding me. In a way, it feels a lot like the way I reacted to Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming.” I saw it as part of the American Film Theatre series back in the ’70s (my wife and I had season tickets to that, largely because they were really cheap for college students), and thought it one of the most offputtingly pointless things I’d ever seen. I mentioned that to my good friend, the late Dan Henderson, who was very much the aesthete. Dan said, “You just don’t get absurdism.” I allowed as how he was probably right about that, given all I’ve seen and read of the Theater of the Absurd.

Because of that similar feeling, I considered Lynch as an absurdist. No, it’s not that. Pinter is that, but Lynch isn’t quite. And even if it he was, it wouldn’t make me feel better. Tagging a label on somebody doesn’t really ring my bell.

But enough of my rant. Some of you like this stuff, and I want to ask you, why?

Also, how about giving me your list of Top Five Movies (or TV shows) by David Lynch.

Maybe there’ll be something there I will like. After all, I have a faint memory of having mildly enjoyed “Wild at Heart.” But that was a long time ago now, and I can’t be sure…

Remembering Jimmy

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a Jimmy in 1976

Gerald Ford was a pretty decent guy. I would have been fine with him continuing as our president back in the mid-’70s. But he never had a chance of getting my vote in 1976. That’s because he was up against Jimmy Carter.

I had voted for the first time in 1972, and I had a terrible time getting the job done. I must have been in that booth — and we had actual booths back in those days — at least 15 minutes. The holdup was voting for president. I didn’t think much of McGovern. He had run a lame campaign. I was still mad at him for dumping Eagleton. Eagleton had actually been treated for his mental problem. Think what a comfort that would be to us today as we look forward to the inauguration in the coming month.

Mostly, I thought McGovern’s blundering incompetence was an indicator he’d be terrible at the job. Meanwhile, I knew Nixon at least knew how to do the job — but I didn’t trust him one bit. I was sure, even at that early point in the investigations, that he was involved in Watergate. Fortunately, there was a solution — I was sure McGovern was going to lose. So I voted for him, as a protest vote against Nixon. I suppose I finally pulled that lever just as the election volunteers were contemplating sending a search party in after me.

I was happy to have no such problem in ’76. I was for Jimmy all the way. I liked everthing about the guy, mainly that he was different. No, and not “different” like the excuse people use today. He was different in that he was not a crook like Nixon, and a more inspirational figure than poor Ford. And I’m not going simply by the influence of that new show, SNL — which had told me Ford was a klutz, and Carter was the coolest presidential candidate ever — a guy who could, if called upon, talk you down from a bum trip on Orange Sunshine (the cure involved listening to the Allman Brothers).

And it was more than the fact that he had that million-watt smile, which made us feel like everything was going to be fine. Jimmy was here, and we were done with all the crap the country had just been through.

There were more serious reasons. I liked what I had read about what he had done as governor of Georgia. I liked how that might translate into performance as president.

I liked the fact that he was a smart guy — one of Admiral Rickover’s nuclear Navy whiz kids. And he spoke to us as thought he thought we had brains, as well. He leveled with people, even if it set him up for embarrassment, such as when he told Playboy that he had “lusted in his heart” after women other than his wife — and everyone mocked him. At the very peak — or perhaps I should say nadir — of the sexual revolution, he dared to speak of right and wrong, and admit his own failings.

He dared to speak of God, and inspire us by living his life as a man who loved God, and wanted to live according to the wisdom that faith brought him.

I was a copyeditor at The Jackson (Tenn.) Sun at that early point in my career, fresh out of school. I had just joined the paper in the fall of ’75. I was frustrated not getting to write, and looked for anything that could add that enrichment to my dull routine. I volunteered to review books, and our managing editor — who was also our book editor, because that was something he loved — funneled to me any books about this exciting novelty, Jimmy Carter, who had just burst upon the national scene. That fed my enthusiasm.

Being a copyeditor, a desk man, I understood that reporters couldn’t go around with candidates’ bumper stickers on their cars, but cloistered as I was in the newsroom, I saw myself as an exception. And I really liked his green-and-white sticker scheme — a departure from all the blue and red I’d seen in my life, signifying that Jimmy, too, was a departure, and a welcome one. So I put one on the bumper of my orange Chevy Vega.

Probably the clearest (and least relevant, I realize) memory I have of that sticker was on one of my volunteer writing assigments. One weekend I went to Memphis for a book fair, attended by a number of prominent writers of that moment. The organizers set me up to take Mary Hemingway (How It Was) to lunch, and asked me if I’d pick up historian John Toland at the airport. I did so, but as I had not read his new biography of Hitler, we didn’t have much to talk about — except Jimmy Carter. He liked him, too, and therefore liked my sticker. He went back to my bmper and autographed it when I dropped him off at the hotel. By the way, I later read his book, and I recommend it. I learned a lot from it.

Early in the campaign, I got a chance to meet Carter — by, of course, volunteering to go cover a campaign event in Memphis. Since I was there in a journalistic capacity, I knew I wasn’t there to make like a fan. But I did shake his hand. I remember debating with myself whether that was OK, and I think I eventually decided it was. At least, I hope I decided that. It would pain me to realize I passed up that opportunity.

I remained a huge fan for the rest of his life. And it affected me. In the ’90s, I would become president of the board of our local chapter of Habitat for Humanity. That was totally due to Jimmy Carter.

At this point I should probably be running over things he did in office and analyzing them in detail. But while I thought Jimmy did a great job, that’s not why I was such an admirer. I liked and respected Jimmy Carter because he was the best human being to become president of the United States in my lifetime.

And now I thank God for letting him stick around here with us for as long as He did…

 

What happened to Apollo Creed?

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Hey, he looked fit to ME…

You may start seeing more of this kind of post, now that I’m over 70.

But my concern here grows out of something that’s bothered me for decades.

When Carl Weathers died several days ago, The New York Times reported:

His family said in a statement that he “died peacefully in his sleep.” The statement did not give a cause or say where he died.

Come on, people! How did he die?

This kind of thing has bothered me since my earliest days in the newspaper racket. When somebody dies, the cause of death should be right there in the lede. Especially in news stories, but also in obits. This is particularly the case in people who die young.

I see a person who looks about 20 in a photo with an obit, and the first thing I think is, “Maybe it’s an old picture.” Then, when I see it isn’t, I think, “What happened?”

I mean, don’t you? But too often, you’re told nothing. Or maybe, just maybe, the family will request donations to a fund that fights a deadly disease, and at least you have a hint.

And yeah, sometimes I can understand people not wanting to say, if there’s something about the cause — say, suicide or a drug overdose — that makes an excruciating tragedy even worse, and loved ones don’t want to see it in print. But I gather that lots of people simply don’t want to say, whatever the cause is. It has to do with a notion of privacy which I don’t understand.

In fact, I’ve long wished newspapers would refuse to run obits unless the cause of death is stated. That’s never going to happen, since obits are now ads, and organizations as desperate for revenue as our beleaguered newspapers aren’t going to give up a stream of revenue. And back when newsrooms handled them, it still didn’t happen because editors saw obits as a basic public service — you had to reported who had died in the community. But if you ask me, telling readers what’s killing the people around them is a pretty fundamental kind of public service.

But it didn’t bother me so much when people were old. And back when I first cared about obits, I would have seen 76 as old. Of course, I’m wiser than that now (that’s only six years older than I am!), but it still wouldn’t have occurred to me to wonder in this case, until I saw this story this morning in The Boston Globe.

It was about the fact that a Super Bowl ad featuring Weathers is still going to run during the game. Which makes me think, hey: He was healthy enough to shoot a commercial recently, so… he wasn’t wasting away with a fatal disease — that anyone knew, anyway.

Maybe it was a stroke. I know from personal experience how those can sneak up on you (although I was very lucky with mine).

But I’d still like to know. I mean, the guy was only 76…

And when she passes, each one she passes…

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In was in a two-hour Zoom meeting when this came across my screen and all I could think to do was reject what I was seeing:

This is hard to accept. Y’all know what a fan of Astrud I am. It’s not just her voice — although the simple honesty of it when you listen to her first and most famous recording sort of sweeps me away. It’s not entirely her visual allure, although that was pretty overwhelming as well, whether she was dressed in modest mod attire or less formally. I’m glad I didn’t see that picture back in the day. I was just a kid.

Back then, fortunately, I didn’t see a lot of things that the web makes accessible. There was just the wonder of seeing her on the tube, and hearing her. The web complicates things, and often it does so with nonsense and rumor.

I remember reading once, in recent years, that she left her husband João for Stan Getz. I thought that was on Wikipedia, but it’s not there now. Apparently it was something in the Brazilian press, connected to her going on tour with Getz as she was getting divorced from João — something that (as I read elsewhere) was João’s fault, by the way. Trying to check it, I ran across multiple stories about how Getz exploited her, which is just disgusting:

Getz often boasted that “he’d made Astrud famous”, but it seems he did his best to make sure she never received her fair share of the royalties. Gene Lees, the editor of DownBeat magazine, who translated “Corcovado” into English, later alleged that Getz intervened as soon as it was clear “The Girl from Ipanema” was going to be a lucrative hit. “Astrud hadn’t been paid a penny for the session and within days, the record was on the charts,” he wrote in Singers and the Song II. “It was at this point that Getz called Creed’s office. Betsy, Creed’s secretary, took the call. Creed was out of the office. When he returned and she told him Stan was anxious to talk with him, Creed thought Stan must be calling to see that Astrud got some share of the royalties. On the contrary, he was calling to make sure that she got nothing.”

The extent of the financial injustice is also made clear in Ruy Castro’s 2003 book Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World. Castro details that João Gilberto received $23,000 for his work on the album. Getz got the lion’s share of money for the album, estimated by some to be nearly a million dollars. Getz earned so much from its success that he immediately bought a 23-room “Gone With the Wind-style mansion” in Irvington, New York.

As for poor Astrud Gilberto, she was paid a relative pittance for turning millions of people on to jazz and the rhythms of Brazil. The woman “responsible for the record’s international success” (in Castro’s words) earned only what the American musicians’ syndicate paid for a night of session work: $120…

What an a__hole. How could anybody do that to Astrud? I mean, look at her. She was 22 when she recorded that. A babe in the woods. Someone a halfway decent person would want to protect. (See how my perspective shifts over the years from dazzled kid to father of daughters, and then to grandfather?)

Of course, maybe that story was just rumors, too. But I don’t think so.

To pull us all back from my digression — don’t look at her; listen to her. Here are some links. I’ll go away and leave you to contemplate them in peace, and become an Astrud fan. Some people like the piercing artistry of opera divas. I like this:

2022: The Year in Obits

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That headline may seem odd, but I was just trying to think of something that sort of addressed my topic, but wouldn’t sound as nekulturny as “Top Five Dead People of 2022.” Which would have reflected the post more honestly.

Anyway…

This is a time of year when newspapers and other outlets crank out “Best _____ of the Year” lists. I’m not sure why they still do it. In the dead-tree days, we had a reason: It was the time of year when you had the greatest amount of space (on account of all the Christmas-shopping ads) and the least amount of real news. But I guess the beast still has to be fed. We also did it because at that time when content was badly needed, a lot of people were taking end-of-year vacations, before things got busy in January. And this didn’t require reporting — someone just needed the patience to dig through the year’s pages.

Such non-news stories generally mean little to me. “Best Books of 2022” means nothing to me, because I’ve never been interested in the hot books of the moment. When I read, I’m going to choose from the best (or at least, most engaging to me) of that which has been published since (and frequently before) Gutenberg, knowing that I’ll never live long enough to read everything I’d like to read from the best of the 19th century, not to mention other eras. Why waste time on the latest tattle, or the hottest young novelist?

And as I’ve grown older — and especially since COVID — I’ve gotten the same way about current movies. Why go see the “Avatar” sequel when I didn’t much like the original, and I can stream something like “The Grapes of Wrath” or “His Girl Friday,” or “Is Paris Burning?” far more cheaply and conveniently, and without some popcorn-munching kid kicking the back of my seat? (By the way, those three aren’t my three fave films. They just popped into my head, for different reasons. They are: the film I won’t let myself watch until I finally finish reading Steinbeck’s original, which I have steadily failed to do; my actual fave comedy; and a film I’d always meant to see, but didn’t see until recently, and I was more impressed than I thought I would be.)

But you know what does interest me, aside from Dave Barry’s always-entertaining review of the year? The annual list of who died. I like to be reminded of the passing of people who have left a significant mark on our world — not so much because it tells me something about the past year, but because it provides a fascinating, personal perspective on the entire time in which they lived. It’s an interesting, fresh way of being reminded why the world I live in is the way it is, told through the lives of people who played memorable roles in making it that way. These deaths bring history to life, you might say.

And occasionally I’m surprised by the deaths I have missed. I was particularly surprised to learn that Bette Davis had left our presence in 2022, when she would have been 114. (She actually died at a more reasonable age in 1989.) It took me a moment to realize why The State had placed her picture with this story, and initially the search function was unhelpful. But then I searched on “Davis” instead of “Bette,” and found that someone associated with publishing the “Extra” pages of The State‘s e-edition didn’t recognize that the screen legend was not Miles Davis’ wife, Betty. So it was worse than simply misspelling “Bette” in the cutline.

But we all make mistakes — you’ll probably spot some below — so let’s move on from that before I get embarrassed, too.

Looking back, here are the Top Five People Who Actually Died this year, in my view…

Dang it! I don’t have time to whittle it down that far! With apologies to Nick Hornby, here are the Top 25. Of course, I’m putting them in order, so you can see what would have been my Top Five. But I thought those would all be boringly obvious, and it was more interesting to keep going:

  1. Elizabeth II — I doubt I need to explain this, except to say that I had to think for a moment before putting her ahead of the first pope to abdicate in 700 years. But still, she was such a part of our lives for SO long. She set too many records to get bumped to second place. And Pope Benedict only held on for less than eight years before, you know, quitting. Lilibet wasn’t one to quit. And she was a good queen.
  2. Pope Benedict XVI — Oh, and since stories I read this morning failed to name him, to my frustration, the last pope to quit, without external pressure (unlike Gregory XII), before this one was Celestine V, in 1294. He only lasted five months. I suppose I could write a book about the more recent ex-pontiff, but since I’m just getting started on my list and need to move on, I’ll just say nothing against him, but note that I’m glad our pope is now Francis.
  3. Mikhail Gorbachev — On another day (that is, a day on which Benedict had not just died) I might have put Gorby in second place, and debated whether to put him in first. He had more effect on the world than any Soviet leader since Stalin, only in a good way. Don’t try telling Putin that, though.
  4. Pelé — As you know, I’m constantly trying to throw in a little something for sports fans out there, conscious that most of y’all care more about athletics than I do. But I didn’t have to strain myself on this one. This guy was a superhero, and his superpower was football. (Real football, the kind where you use your feet.) Not having been a big fan of this sport, the first thing I usually think of when Pelé’s name comes up is that scene from “Vision Quest” when Elmo the cook talks about seeing him on TV. That was great…
  5. Jerry Lee Lewis — He wasn’t the King, but he knew the King. There are a lot of things to remember about The Killer — hammering the piano with his feet, marrying his 13-year-old cousin. Great balls of fire. But you know what I always think of? The time when he was arrested trying to break his way into Graceland. He had come to show E who the real king was. Well, he wasn’t the King, but he knew the King, you see.
  6. Sidney Poitier — I wrote about his passing earlier, and thinking back, it hits me that I still haven’t seen “A Raisin in the Sun” or “Lilies of the Field.” But I’ll tell you this: I definitely intend to see them well before I shell out money to see that “Avatar” sequel. In fact, I’d much rather sit and watch “To Sir With Love” another five times, back-to-back, than see that CGI nonsense.
  7. Madeleine Albright — She and Dick Riley were my two favorite members of Clinton’s Cabinet. Hers, of course, was the weightier position. She came along at the time when Democrats were going on about the “peace dividend,” and reminded us that in keeping with the liberal notion of America’s postwar role, we were still “the indispensable nation.” That ticks some of y’all off, I know, but not me. I appreciated it.
  8. Loretta Lynn — I was never a big fan myself, but I’m fully cognizant of her impact on our culture. I also enjoyed the movie. My favorite part was the way Levon Helm (see Ronnie Hawkins, below) absolutely embodied the Coal Miner himself.
  9. Wolfgang Petersen — My favorite Clint Eastwood movie wasn’t directed by Clint Eastwood. It’s Petersen’s “In the Line of Fire.” He also gave us “Air Force One,” and before that, “Das Boot.”
  10. Ray Liotta — One of the people who are here because they were “so young,” not so long ago. And he had a distinctive quality on screen. The first time I saw him was in Jonathan Demme’s action-comedy “Something Wild.” Jeff Daniels was funny, Melanie Griffith was sexy, and Ray Liotta was scary. Of course, he expanded on that in later roles, especially “Goodfellas.”
  11. James Caan — From Sonny in “The Godfather” to the Dad on the “naughty list” in “Elf,” he made his distinctive mark on the Hollywood of his times.
  12. Tony Dow — Yeah, I know Wally was older than the Beave and me, but it’s still a shock for him to be gone.
  13. Dwayne Hickman — Again, youth personified when we knew him. Oh, and for you clueless kids out there — we’re talking Dobie Gillis here. You don’t know who that was? Next, you’ll say you don’t remember Maynard G. Krebs.
  14. Ivan Reitman — Not one of the great filmmakers of his time, but he certainly had an impact, via  Meatballs (1979), Stripes (1981), Ghostbusters (1984), Ghostbusters II (1989), Twins (1988), Kindergarten Cop (1990), and Dave (1993). My fave might be “Dave.”
  15. Hilary Mantel — An unusual character, but an impressive writer. And while I read and enjoyed Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, I can congratulate myself that while she is gone, I still have the experience of reading The Mirror and the Light in my future.
  16. David McCullough — He not only told us, compellingly, the stories of Harry S. Truman, John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Panama Canal, and the Wright brothers. He also narrated Ken Burns’ “The Civil War.” Dude got a lot done in his 89 years.
  17. Meat Loaf — In drafting a list of notable names, how could I leave out this one?
  18. P.J. O’Rourke — A gifted commenter on our times, even if he was a libertarian. And don’t forget, he also was a frequent panelist on NPR’s “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!”
  19. Ronnie Hawkins — I don’t put him here because of his own music, about which I know little. I put him here because The Band’s first job of note was backing him up — before they did the same for Dylan. So nice work, Ronnie, because I do love those guys.
  20. Mark Shields — I enjoyed his commentary on PBS, and when he was spoken of upon his death as a decent man and a man of faith, that was no surprise. I attended Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York for the first time in 2004, when I was there for the Republican National Convention. At one point I looked around me, and saw someone familiar: It was Shields, sitting there alone. I suspect he was much in demand on the Sunday morning network political talk shows, but there he was at Mass. Not a big thing, maybe, but it made a favorable impression on me.
  21. Bill Russell — He may not have been as big as Pelé, but he was a giant in professional basketball (and not just because he was 6’10”). He was “the centerpiece of the Celtics dynasty that won 11 NBA championships during his 13-year career.” Red Auerbach called him “the single most devastating force in the history of the game.”
  22. Ronnie Spector — With the Ronettes, she gave us “Be My Baby.” And you can’t beat that, can you?
  23. Dirck Halstead — Another celebrity journalist. Don’t know him? Well, you’ve seen this picture, haven’t you? And this one? Does this guy look familiar?
  24. Nichelle Nichols — Better known to you as Lt. Uhura. I wasn’t a huge Trek fan, and I can’t say I knew her, but my old friend Burl Burlingame could. So I’m including her, as much as anything, as a way of remembering Burl.
  25. Sonny Barger — The only member of the Hell’s Angels I would have been able to name if you had asked me (you can thank Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson for that). Not that that’s a good thing, but he was a significant figure in the culture — and the nightmares — of the ’60s.

That’s enough for me. Who makes the top of your list?

We lost the queen at a bad time. Some brief thoughts…

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Of course, it was a bad time for Britain, as you’ve probably read or heard a thousand times in recent days. But even before this sad occasion, there were pieces being written in reputable journals, such as this one in The Atlantic, foretelling woe for Albion. That was published in January, and it began:

The grim reality for Britain as it faces up to 2022 is that no other major power on Earth stands quite as close to its own dissolution…

So bad timing for Britain, and bad for me, too, as a blogger. My own 91-year-old mum was in the hospital having surgery — the placement of a pacemaker — that very day. She had just gotten out of the ER, and my brother and I had just seen her in post-op, when we got the news about the queen. (My mother is at home now and fine, thank God.)

Needless to say, I didn’t have time that day for blogging, or paying work, or much else. And things have been busy since.

But I had thoughts, and ripped them out over Twitter that day, when I had a sec, and thereafter. Which in a way was fine, because I really didn’t have any sort of coherent, strung-together essay popping up at that moment. Just a few quick thoughts. Here are some of them. I won’t embed the tweets, since y’all don’t seem to like that, but here are the thoughts:

I’ll add a couple more…

My headline is quite intentional. I say “we” and not “Britain,” because we’ve all lost someone of great importance to our world, someone who helped keep civilization anchored, someone who lived an unimpeachable life in view of the whole planet, and never did anything to embarrass or shame the human race, much less the British portion of it. (No matter how much I may like some of them, I have a hard time thinking of any American leader of whom I can say that.) She was a beacon of civilized restraint in a world increasingly condemning itself to drown in stupidity and snark. And she did it for 70 years! I really wish she could have beaten the Sun King’s record. And after that, I’d have cheered for her to beat Methuselah’s.

Y’all know, of course, that I’m an Anglophile. But I can still think of plenty of things to criticize the country for, from the dim times before Alfred the Great to the present time. But I don’t lay any of it at Elizabeth’s feet. At least, not this Elizabeth. And that is really, truly extraordinary. I doubt I’ll ever see anything like it again (and of course, I expect some of you will quickly share your Ten Worst Things About QEII lists. But those will say more about you than about her).

To sum it up, I will embed one of the tweets, so y’all can see the headline to which I was responding:

Sidney Poitier was AWESOME. Why don’t we just say that?

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Someone I follow posted this today, quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

Actually, that was the first part of a two-tweet series, finishing with this. But I initially only saw the first one, and I reacted this way:

Which of course is why all forms of Identity Politics are a very bad idea. Because they cause people to forget that we’re all just people…

I realize that wasn’t where she was going with that, but it’s where I went. Partly because I’m always down on that harmful phenomenon. But also because I was irritated earlier this week when I saw this headline from Variety:

Losing Sidney Poitier Reminds Us That Only Four Black Men Have Won Best Actor

My irritation arises from more than that headline. Perhaps you’ve noticed, perhaps you hadn’t, but we get a lot of headlines like that these days. Every story written about, say, the latest award nominations, tends to center on whether this was a good year or a bad year, based on how many Asian female directors were recognized. (Or something like that. Maybe just female directors or Asian directors or directors “of color,” to broaden the field somewhat…) So this is just another in that series.

And no, that is not what losing Sidney Poitier makes us think about — not if we appreciated Sidney Poitier.

That’s because Sidney Poitier was AWESOME. To cite Donne, his loss makes us all “the lesse.” His accomplishments were not, as would have been said in his early career, something you had to say “Negro actor” to acknowledge. He was just a great actor, period.

Take away the fact that he was black, and that’s what you’ve got left. And it’s enough, more than enough, for reflecting upon his prodigious talent, and being thankful for it.

You want to recognize the struggles he had as a black man? Certainly, do so. You want to talk about his political activism? Great, let’s do that — in a separate discussion. But you don’t immediately drop the subject of Sidney Poitier, remarkable human being, to start counting how many actors with dark skin have won a particular Oscar. That indicates you’re thinking of him as “oh, that famous black guy” instead of the talent he was.

Anyway, I’ll drop that for now, and turn to a more worthy subject: I need to go out and find the Sidney Poitier movies I haven’t seen, and watch them and enjoy them. I’m realizing I’ve seen too few of them, and that’s good news: I have a lot of enjoyment ahead of me.

For instance, I haven’t seen either “Lilies of the Field” or “Raisin in the Sun.” So I’m looking forward to those. And after listening to a discussion of it on NPR the other day, I want to check out “No Way Out.” And yes, I’ll be careful not to accidentally watch the one with Kevin Costner (which, unfortunately, is way easier to find on streaming services).

At this point, I’d compose a Top Five list, but that would be ridiculous when you consider the important films I haven’t seen yet. So maybe later.

Among those I’ve seen, there’s… “The Defiant Ones,” which personally I found forgettable. (I find most Tony Curtis movies forgettable. Chain even Sidney Poitier to Tony Curtis, and you have a problem with me.) I probably ought to go back and watch “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” I’ve seen it, but it’s not a favorite. (I remember the point of it being, Let’s see how liberal and broad-minded Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy really are, which seemed to me a thin premise for feature length.)

My faves include “In the Heat of the Night” and the lesser-known sequel, “They Call Me MISTER Tibbs.” (I haven’t seen the third in the trilogy — in fact, I just this moment learned that there was a trilogy.)

But my Number One is so far above those that it’s a separate category. That’s “To Sir With Love.”

Hey, I’m a child of the ’60s. I’ve gotta love that one. Right, Lulu? And I do. If I did a Top Five of that decade, I’m pretty sure it would make the list.

Let’s cut away for a clip…

Another way to write an obit

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As y’all may know, I recently had occasion to write my father’s obituary.

It wasn’t easy. Aside from my deep emotional investment in the task, there was the fact that I don’t think I’d ever written one before. I had, of course, edited thousands over the years — although not any more than I absolutely had to.

I may have been reluctant to admit this to my colleagues at the time, but at the very beginning of my newspaper career, when I was a copy editor in the mid-’70s, I used to do all I could to avoid handling obits. I’ve told you how things worked back in those days of technological transition. Next to each Harris 1100 editing machine — the copy desk shared four or five — there would be a basket filled with copy awaiting editing. Each item consisted of hard copy typed on an IBM Selectric (the only font our massive scanner could read), with a coil of loosely-rolled punch tape clipped to it with a clothespin.

If I saw that the basket next to one 1100 was filled with obits, and another machine was open, I’d take the other machine. Why? I found obits depressing. Not so much because it was sad that some stranger had died, but because they said so little about the person’s life and character. I would think, This is it? Perhaps the only time this person’s life is summarized in print, and this is all it would say? That seemed to me even more tragic than the death itself.

Part of that was because in those days, obits were a free service offered by a newspaper, handled by the one non-business division of the publication, the newsroom. Funeral homes made money off the obit, but we did not. Since it was free and journalists handled it there was a strictly followed format. You could say this and that, but you couldn’t elaborate — nothing beyond the most simple, straightforward facts.

About 20 years ago, as newspapers’ financial fortunes failed, that changed. Obits were handed off to the advertising department. That meant bereaved families could write the obits themselves and say anything they liked and go on as long as they liked — but they would pay for it, at a steep rate, by the inch.

I was sad to see my industry stop providing that free service, but glad to see some life introduced into these accounts — even though so many of them are poorly written.

It also meant that when I had to write my father’s last month, I had quite a free hand, as long as we were willing to pay for it, which we were.

I wrote it as well as I could, communicating in as dignified a manner as I could my Dad’s life, as a naval officer, as an athlete, as a husband, father, and grandfather. It contained personal color, but since as an amateur genealogist I see these as important historical documents, I wrote it so that anyone in any time would find it appropriate. My fictional friend Jack Aubrey would have found the summation of Dad’s time in the Service perfectly commendable two centuries ago. I hoped it would be helpful to descendants tracing the family tree two centuries in the future.

That’s one way to write an obit. But in this pay-to-play era with all its freedom, there are other ways as well, and some of them are fun to read.

So it is that I pass on one brought to my attention by Stan Dubinsky, who sent it out to his email list with the headline, “Best obit ever: ‘Renay Mandel Corren – A plus-sized Jewish lady redneck died in El Paso on Saturday’.” An excerpt:

Of itself hardly news, or good news if you’re the type that subscribes to the notion that anybody not named you dying in El Paso, Texas is good news. In which case have I got news for you: the bawdy, fertile, redheaded matriarch of a sprawling Jewish-Mexican-Redneck American family has kicked it. This was not good news to Renay Mandel Corren’s many surviving children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, many of whom she even knew and, in her own way, loved. There will be much mourning in the many glamorous locales she went bankrupt in: McKeesport, PA, Renay’s birthplace and where she first fell in love with ham, and atheism; Fayetteville and Kill Devil Hills, NC, where Renay’s dreams, credit rating and marriage are all buried; and of course Miami, FL, where Renay’s parents, uncles, aunts, and eternal hopes of all Miami Dolphins fans everywhere, are all buried pretty deep. Renay was preceded in death by Don Shula.

Because she was my mother, the death of zaftig good-time gal Renay Corren at the impossible old age of 84 is newsworthy to me, and I treat it with the same respect and reverence she had for, well, nothing. A more disrespectful, trash-reading, talking and watching woman in NC, FL or TX was not to be found….

It continues, at some length, in the same vein. I encourage you read the whole thing; it might alleviate the boredom of yet another routine Friday for you.

Still, as much as I admire it, I tell myself that the way I wrote my father’s obit was the right way, for him and for me. I’m almost sure of it…

Joel Lourie on losing Bob Dole

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I just thought I’d share this with y’all. I found it on LinkedIn, and asked Joel, and he said he didn’t mind.

It’s what Joel Lourie, former Democratic state senator, had to say upon the death of Bob Dole the other day. I share it because it reminds us the way one human being is supposed to speak of another, regardless of such insignificant things as party affiliation:

Bob Dole was a good man, and yes, definitely a hero, and he deserves all the kind words that come his way.

You’ll see Joel’s post got more than 140 likes. Quite a few were from other friends of mine, including James Smith…

Colin Powell was a very impressive guy, period

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Colin Powell was a very impressive guy, a hero and role model for us all.

He was a man who radiated leadership and strong character. Four-star general. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Secretary of State. He was someone many wanted to see run for president, except that he didn’t want to. (Which makes him preferable in my book than all those people who run for the job every four years when no one asked them. And I don’t hold it against him that he declined. He had given enough to his country, and gave more later.)

So I’m a bit bothered by the way his death was covered by many:

  • Reuters — Colin Powell, the first Black U.S. secretary of state, a top military officer and a national security adviser, died on Monday at age 84 due to complications from COVID-19. He was fully vaccinated, his family said.
  • CBS — Colin Powell, first Black secretary of state, dies at 84 from COVID-19 amid cancer battle
  • CNN — Colin Powell, first Black US secretary of state, dies of Covid-19 complications amid cancer battle
  • USAToday — Colin Powell, first Black secretary of state, dies from COVID-19 complications
  • LATimes — Colin Powell, America’s first Black secretary of State, dies at 84

And here are some headlines that were on the right track, more or less:

  • New York Times — Colin Powell, Who Shaped U.S. National Security, Dies at 84
  • BBC: Colin Powell: Former US secretary of state dies of Covid complications
  • The Washington Post — Colin L. Powell, former secretary of state and military leader, dies at 84

You can probably see where I’m going with this. Colin Powell wasn’t impressive “for a black guy.” He wasn’t great because he was black.

He was impressive for anyone. I suppose some people think there’s nothing special about earning the rank of four-star general. Such people are wrong. It’s a huge accomplishment, and worth a salute from everyone, especially us civilians. But then he went beyond that. And every job he did was a testament to standout characteristics that had nothing to do with the amount of melanin in his skin.

Was the fact that he was black and held these posts interesting, and even a testament not only to his abilities but to the country he served? You bet. As he said during confirmation as secretary of state:

“I think it shows to the world what is possible in this country. It shows to the world that: Follow our model, and over a period of time from our beginning, if you believe in the values that espouse, you can see things as miraculous as me sitting before you to receive your approval.”

Don’t leave it out. Include it in the history book. For that matter, include it in the obit. Celebrate it. (And don’t forget to mention that the man who did these things was a son of immigrants, yet another reason for all of us to take pride in his accomplishments.) But don’t make it the first thing you have to say about him, please.

Because he was much more impressive than that.

Top Five John le Carre novels, and further reflections on the passing of my favorite living author

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Alec Guinness as George Smiley.

Alec Guinness as George Smiley.

About this time of year, various publications — The New Yorker comes to mind — publish lists of best thises or thats during the past year. And when I see the “best books” lists, I tend to feel somewhat alienated.

Nothing against the books they list, exactly. The thing is, I haven’t read them, and don’t plan to read them, although I suppose anything’s possible. I look at books this way: I only have time to read a certain number in my life, and over the centuries since modern literary forms in English have arrived so many have been written that I want, and even feel obligated, to read. But the odds are against any of them having been written in the last year, or having made such a list.

Also, I’m not a trendy reader. My tastes don’t tend toward the latest, hottest thing.

Truth be told, in my lifetime I’ve only been interested in reading a few writers who have been among the living. But that doesn’t mean there have been none. Until the year 2000, Patrick O’Brian was still alive, and y’all know how I love him. (Although I’d never heard of him until after he had died.) And there are still people out there such as Nick Hornby and Roddy Doyle — both of whom are so “living” that they are actually younger than I am.

But until he died over the weekend, my very favorite living author was John le Carré, which of course was the workname of David Cornwell. You know, the way “Ellis” was the workname of Jim Prideaux.

Not that I loved everything he ever wrote (The Mission Song, and a couple of others, left me flat). But there was a stylistic mastery and an insightful glimpse into being human even in his weaker work. Here’s where I should stop and give you a good excerpt, but I’m not going to because there are so many thousands of great passages, and I fear forgetting to give you one of the best ones.

And I’ll confess I didn’t get around to reading some of the last few. I was sufficiently disappointed in A Most Wanted Man that I sort of stopped there. Prompted by his death, I went and put Agent Running in the Field and A Legacy of Spies on my Amazon wish list. After all, the latter one has Smiley in it!

But we all have more productive periods in our lives, and it had been awhile since le Carré had done his best stuff.

It’s not just that the Cold War ended. Two of my very favorites came after the Karla Trilogy, and weren’t even in the same fictional universe (near as I can recall) as George Smiley. I should explain. I guess here is where I should give my Top Five Best list, so you know what I’m running on about:

  1. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold — Here, I’m being coldly analytical. This is not my personal favorite. The next four would come ahead of it on that score. But it’s the best book he wrote. It is the ultimate, textbook, perfect book about espionage in the Cold War. You can and will be fooled by this one. You go in thinking, OK, classic Cold War spy tale, starts with someone trying to cross the Wall in Berlin. And then Control has a chat with Leamas, asks him whether he’d like to get the guy who got his agent, and Leamas is like “Hell, yes,” and we’re off. But where to? Leamas thinks he knows, but he doesn’t. All the moral ambiguity, all the betrayal, all the darkness and — that word again — the coldness — of the secret world, at its most plainly brutal. It’s perfect. Just don’t plan to go away in a good mood at the end. But you’ll be impressed. This is the one that made le Carré, enabling him to quit his job with the spooks and become a novelist full-time. Because it was just that good, and the world could see that.
  2. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy — The best of the ones I really love, the first volume of the Karla Trilogy, the first one in which our hero George Smiley — the short, fat, cuckolded scholar of German literature — fully appears. Sure, he had been the star of those two Agatha Christie-type books before the big one named in the top position here, but this is the first, full-fledged, George Smiley spy book. This is the one full of characters you’ll love — Smiley, Connie Sachs, Jim Prideaux, Peter Guillam, Toby Esterhase. Read it, and enjoy.
  3. Smiley’s People — The whole gang is back for the denouement of the Karla saga. All the best of them, anyway — there’s Smiley, Connie, Peter and Toby, and of course the nemesis himself, Karla. And some fun new people, such as Otto Leipzig. This one’s for all the marbles. And of course, while he pursues his quarry, George is conflicted about it, because that’s our George. It wouldn’t be satisfying otherwise. George even goes back into the field in this one, as he probably hadn’t done since the war — because there’s no one else he can send, no one else who’ll do the job just right. There’s just one great bit after another. One of my favorites — the snatching, interrogation, burning and turning of Grigoriev, the small but essential piece of the puzzle. Very instructive, if you want to learn how to interrogate a hostile potential asset.
  4. The Night Manager — This may be my very favorite, which makes me feel disloyal to George and his People. It’s totally unrelated. No Soviets, no Russians, even. No Circus, no Moscow Centre. Just a decent guy with some gifts who undertakes to go deep to try to bring down the Worst Man in the World — a global superstar of an arms dealer. You just really care what happens to Jonathan Pine, a volunteer on a moral quest. He’s the night manager, you see. Did you see the series that was made for AMC? It was excellent, but it didn’t satisfy me, because it just wasn’t nearly as good as the book.
  5. The Little Drummer Girl — This is another that totally leaves the Cold War track, and it’s wonderful. It’s about a carelessly lefty actress recruited by the Mossad to penetrate a Palestinian terror cell. What’s best about it? I think it’s the recruitment of Charlie, the agent. It goes on and on for some time, but it’s all wonderful. It’s the heart of the book. Smiley himself couldn’t have done what Kurtz did in turning this Palestinian-leaning semi-activist into a fully committed asset for Israel. And she goes deep, all the way, and as unlikely as the premise seems, it works — you believe it. By the way, the movie with Diane Keaton is great, even though they had to make the British Charlie into an American, on account of her being, you know, Diane Keaton.

You’ll notice that I list two of the three Karla-Trilogy books, but not the middle one. That’s because it, well, doesn’t fit. It was like le Carré decided to write a higher-toned version of a Bond novel, with shoot-’em-up violence and exotic locales. The Honourable Schoolboy didn’t work, and the author went back to what we all loved in Smiley’s People.

There are other bits and piece in his other books that sometimes exceed a lot of what you see on my list. For instance, the opening of The Russia House, the opening chapter, is a completely severable tale that sets up the longer one and then ends, and it’s perfect. But I’m not nearly as fond of the rest of the book.

Now I’m going to make like one of le Carré’s least-lovable American characters and air one of my complaints about his later career. Toward the end, he started reminding me of Bill Haydon from Tinker, Tailor, of whom it was said, “He hated America very deeply.” At one point, Haydon explained, “It’s an aesthetic judgment as much as anything… Partly a moral one, of course.”

With Haydon, that worked. Haydon didn’t suffer fools, and the Americans were so unsophisticated, so muscle-bound, so offensively puritanical and sure of themselves. And MI6 was just so much better, and yet they’d missed their chance. As Connie said so sadly of Bill and the rest, “Poor loves. Trained to Empire, trained to rule the waves. Englishmen could be proud then, George.” (During the war, she means.)

And now they had to play second banana to the “cousins” across the pond, and it was cruelly grating. Reading it, and being the Anglophile I am, I could sympathize. As a fan of the genre, I certainly knew that English spy literature was better. (They had le Carré, Len Deighton, Graham Greene. What did we have over here? Tom Clancy?)

This worked in the early books. It was all part of the moral-ambiguity thing. Sure, the Bolshies were bad, but was our lot all that better? George Smiley was never entirely sure of that, but he did his best and soldiered on, believing that as awful as we might have been, liberal democracy was the way to go. More or less.

But later on, it got sort of ridiculous. In The Tailor of Panama (which had some good bits, but I preferred the original), and worst of all, in A Most Wanted Man. In the climactic scene of the latter, the Americans who swoop in and ruin everything might as well be wearing T-shirts that say, “Here Come the Bad Guys!” It’s cartoonish.

But there are still bits to love in those books as well, even though our man seemed to have gone a bit overboard on his distaste for us fools across the pond.

And he was still, no doubt about it, my favorite living author. Until Saturday…

Here I am a decade ago, at dusk, outside George Smiley's house on Bywater Street in London. I don't think George minded.

Here I am a decade ago, at dusk, outside George Smiley’s house on Bywater Street in London. I don’t think George minded.

Remembering Fritz Hollings

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Two great South Carolinians: Fritz Hollings and Lee Bandy. Fritz is probably castigating Lee for what he called 'the Bandy Hurdle,' and Lee is letting it roll off his back.

Two great South Carolinians: Fritz Hollings and Lee Bandy. Fritz is probably castigating Lee for what he called ‘the Bandy Hurdle,’ and Lee is letting it roll off his back.

I was awakened Saturday morning by a notification on my iPhone — Fritz Hollings had died. I didn’t get around to writing something about it that day, or the next day, or the next, because it just seemed like too big a task.

And it was too big a task, remembering Fritz and what he meant to me and other South Carolinians. And I don’t have time to undertake it today, either. So here are some scattered thoughts, rather than a coherent whole:

  • First, he was of that generation — the postwar generation — that believed in using government to get things done. Big things, things that made life better in their state and country. He saw it as his duty. He brought great energy and great intellect to that task, throughout his career. He didn’t let ideology or party or what other people might think of him get in the way of that mission. Young people today by and large don’t know what it was like to have this kind of elected leader, although we still have some around. You know, like Fritz’s younger friend Joe Biden.
  • He may have been the first politician I ever met and shook hands with. Or maybe it was Strom. Or maybe it was a state senator. I just remember being taken by my grandfather to an event in Bennettsville, at the Marboro County Country Club. I was introduced to someone called “the senator.” I can’t remember who it was. Maybe it wasn’t Fritz, because he wasn’t in the Senate until 1966, and surely I’d remember it better if it had been that late. This was probably in the ’50s, so probably Strom. But my point in mentioning it is that he and Strom were both in public office most of my life, and their service extends as far back as I remember and beyond. Say “senator” to me and I picture one of them. Both held some sort of public office well before I was born. And most of that time, they’d have been called “senator.” As in, Boy, shake hands with the senator…
  • Fritz is the reason we have our state technical schools, which in turn are a big reason why we have BMW and other major employers. And the way he got them was so old-school, so pre-Watergate Morality, so whatever-it-takes, so non-21st century, that it is a thing of beauty. Basically, he took a bottle of bourbon with him to visit one of the main obstacles of getting his tech schools passed, Senate Finance Chairman Edgar A. Brown. They drank the bottle together, and when it was empty Fritz had a one-paragraph agreement that founded his tech system. And countless thousands of South Carolinians have benefited.
  • While Hilton Head was booming as a destination for the rich, Fritz Hollings showed the nation aspects of life in South Carolina the Chamber of Commerce wouldn’t have appreciated. Here’s how The New York Times described his “poverty tours” in its obit: “Having grown up in segregated Charleston, attended a segregated college and served in a segregated army, Mr. Hollings had little contact with poor black people and initially opposed civil rights legislation. Guided by N.A.A.C.P. officials, he toured poor black and white areas of his state in 1968 and 1969, and what he saw shocked him: rat-infested slums where families subsisted on grits and greens; children infected with worms, living in shacks without lights, heat or water; a mentally disabled mother of 10 who had never heard of food stamps. ‘There is hunger in South Carolina,’ a solemn Mr. Hollings told a Senate committee. ‘I know as a public servant I am late to the problem,’ adding, ‘We’ve got work to do in our own backyard, just as anybody who’s candid knows he has work in his own backyard, and I’d rather clean it up than cover it up.'” In other words, he faced the real problems of South Carolina without blinking.
  • In the ’80s, the Gramm–Rudman–Hollings Balanced Budget Act constituted the most serious effort to bring the nation’s spending in line with its income in my lifetime. He remained a budget hawk for the rest of his career. When other Democrats were claiming to have produced balanced budgets in the late ’90s, he scoffed — if the budgets were “balanced,” how come the national debt kept growing?
  • They may have named that new bridge after Arthur Ravenel, but I enjoyed this anecdote from my cousin Jason, who remembers how relentless Fritz was in taking every possible opportunity to get South Carolina what it needed: “I drove over the Ravenel Bridge today and remembered Fritz Hollings. When I interned with him, one of my dad’s college buddies was the Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House and was nominated to be Secretary of Transportation. Senator Hollings was the Chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee and would vote to approve the nomination. As I walked out of the Senator’s office to go to the White House to have lunch with Andy Card, the Senator said, ‘Tell Andy Card if he wants my vote, we need a new bridge over the Cooper River. OK boy, go get us that bridge.’ I did, Senator Hollings, I did…”
  • Fritz was known for his, um,  frankness. A lot of people’s favorite story was when he answered a Japanese insult to the American work ethic by suggesting we should draw a mushroom cloud with the caption, “Made in America by lazy and illiterate Americans and tested in Japan.” Another might be when he said to our current governor, “I’ll take a drug test if you’ll take an IQ test.” But my favorite was when he’d just been re-elected after a tough challenge in 1992, and said that now “I don’t have to get elected to a bloomin’ thing. And I don’t have to do things that are politically correct. The hell with everybody. I’m free at last.” Of course, he ran again in 1998 against Bob Inglis, and we voted him in again. You can’t vote a guy like that out of office. People say they like Trump because he’s not “politically correct.” Well, neither was Fritz. But he didn’t sound like an idiot. Therein lies the difference.
  • Fritz was equally frank about what he thought of the press, and his criticism (unlike Trump’s) was right on the money. He fully understood that the press covered politics like sports — ignoring what was important, and yammering endlessly about winning and losing and strategy. My longtime colleague Paul Osmundson shared the picture above of Fritz and our late, dear friend Lee Bandy. Well, Bandy wrote his share of horse-race stories, many while I was his editor. And I well remember the editorial board meetings in which Fritz ripped into Lee for it. The senator complained that he tried and tried to get reporters to write about substantive issues, but “Ah can’t get past THE BANDY HURDLE. THE BANDY HURDLE! All he wants to talk about is who’s up? Who’s down? Who’s winning? Who’s losing? The Bandy hurdle…” And he was right. But don’t blame Lee (who chuckled through these tirades). They all do it. And we editors all share the blame. (This was the bane of my experience with the campaign last year. I wanted to talk about who should be governor and why, and reporters wanted to talk about campaign ad strategy, or which 2020 hopefuls were coming to campaign with us. Yeah, I hear ya, senator…)
  • I first met Joe Biden through Fritz. I’d always wanted to meet him, and since they were friends, one time in the 2000s when I saw Biden was coming to town, I called Fritz to ask him to ask Joe to come by and meet with us. He did, and Joe came by on a Friday afternoon (our hardest workday) and talked for two-and-a-half hours. It was stressful, knowing we’d have to get all those pages out before we left that night, but I enjoyed it, and appreciated that Hollings set it up.
  • I mentioned Bob Inglis. He and Fritz became friends after their contest in ’98. I liked what he said on Facebook: “Over lunch in Charleston in 2015 (we’d long since made up after the 1998 race), Senator Hollings told me that he’d shrunk 2 inches–6’2″ to 6′. I wish I had said, ‘No, Senator, you haven’t shrunk a bit–not in what you’ve meant to SC, not in what you’ve meant to America.’ Farewell, sir.”
  • Speaking of Republicans, when Strom left office and Fritz finally became our senior senator after 36 years, he took Strom’s replacement under his wing. He encouraged Lindsey Graham and had a lot of good things to say about him. I’m thinking he was probably proud of Lindsey when he said all those honest things about Trump back during the 2016 election. And I think he’d be scornful of what Lindsey has become. You’d never, ever have seen Fritz kowtowing to someone like Trump — or to anyone, for that matter.

I’ve got to get back to work. And when I go home tonight, I need to get back to reading Ron Chernow’s book on Alexander Hamilton. I originally got that book because Fritz called (about something else, probably one of his opeds) and told me how wonderful it was, way back when I was still at the paper. Least I can do in the senator’s memory is finish it…

I’m deeply shocked to learn of the death of Burl Burlingame

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After our tour of Ford Island in 2015, we dropped by our Alma Mater to pay respects.

After our tour of Ford Island in 2015, we dropped by our Alma Mater to pay respects.

Y’all know I’m not a big Facebook user. So I had to return to America to learn that my high school friend and blog regular Burl Burlingame had died suddenly on the Ides of March — just two days after we left for Ireland.

I had just gotten into the office this morning, and Lora said she had been looking for Ireland pictures on my Facebook (there were none — I was putting them all on Twitter), and she noticed that my friend had died. That’s how I learned about it.

His most recent FB profile photo, from 2018.

His most recent FB profile photo, from 2018.

WHAT?!?!?

“Sudden” was the way his passing was described. It was certainly that from my perspective.

Wow. The world has lost an extraordinary person. Even in high school, Burl was a Renaissance Man — writer, photographer, cartoonist, musician, actor. Wherever you looked, Burl was there and playing a major role. Larger than life. Before I had even done so much as work on a school paper, he wrote, illustrated and published his own underground newspaper in which he regularly referred to our principal, Mr. Yamamoto — who was seldom seen by students — as the Ghost Who Walks. He used to carry around a briefcase with multiple harmonicas in it, which he could really, really play. When he portrayed the secret policeman in the senior class production of Woody Allen’s “Don’t Drink the Water,” his was easily the most memorable performance.

Burl in 1971.

Burl in 1971.

As an adult, he just expanded on all of that. Like me, he spent 35 years as a newspaperman, but while I was concentrating on that one thing, Burl was making his mark in other spheres — writing books on military history, becoming a master modeler (of course, like most of us, he had taken up that hobby as a kid, but then turned pro), and establishing himself as probably the leading expert in the world on Japanese minisubs. So it was perfectly natural when he left the paper to become staff historian at the Pacific Aviation Museum.

I feel privileged that I got to reconnect with Burl, through this blog, almost 40 years after we graduated from Radford High School together. And I’m glad I got to see him twice in recent years, first when he gave my wife and me a personal tour of his museum and Ford Island, and again when he came to Columbia for an international modelers convention.

And I’m having trouble absorbing the fact that I’ll never see him again in this life.

On Ford Island in 2015.

On Ford Island in 2015. Note the rainbow.

Philip Roth, the last of the literary lions of the ’60s

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At least, I don’t think there are any left… Joseph Heller, Tom Wolfe, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, John Updike… who’s missing?

Anyway, Philip Roth’s gone now, too.Philip_Roth_-_1973

I don’t have a lot to say about this one. I had read and largely loved most of what Tom Wolfe had ever published, so he meant more to me.

I think all I ever read by Roth was “Goodbye Columbus.” That was pretty good, but not exactly something that set my mind on fire the way, say, Catch-22 did. I think I liked some of the other stories in that collection better, such as “The Conversion of the Jews.” So I appreciate that one writer eulogized him as being “forever the little boy on the roof threatening to jump, forcing the Rabbi into an apology.” Nicely said, especially since it’s an allusion I actually get.

But I never heard anything about Portnoy’s Complaint that made me want to read it. (Of course, I never heard much about it that rose above the level of a dirty joke.) Maybe I should. You know, to have a better grasp on the serious literature of my time, the way I made myself read a couple of Updike’s “Rabbit” books, to be better in touch with the alienation and discontent of my generation and yadda-yadda.

Or maybe not. I had a pretty happy childhood, and have only ever had a limited appetite for disaffected moral aridity. Thoughts?

Or anything else you’d like to say about Roth? I’m outta ammo…

Goodbye, Columbus: I not only read the book, but saw the film. I'll say this for it: If forced to watch an Ali McGraw movie, I'd rather see this than "Love Story."

Goodbye, Columbus: I not only read the book, but saw the film. I’ll say this for it: If forced to watch an Ali MacGraw movie, I’d rather see this than “Love Story.” That’s about as far as I can go with it. I liked Benjamin better in “Catch-22.”

Ranking the Bonds (a Roger Moore memorial post)

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Accept no substitutes, unless you're forced to.

Accept no substitutes, unless you’re forced to.

In breaking the news about his death this morning, The Guardian called Roger Moore “the suavest James Bond.”

The way I think of Moore.

The way I think of Moore.

OK. Maybe. I’d say Pierce Brosnan comes close, though.

The thing is, personally, I never quite accepted Moore as Bond, even though he played the part in more films than anyone. I thought of him as “The Saint.” Part of the problem in accepting him as 007 is that he had the rotten luck of following Sean Connery, who of course defined the role.

All of this is to build up to a Top Five List, in this case ranking the Best Bonds. Yes, I know; it’s been done to death. But it’s the first way I could think of to mark the passing of Simon Templar.

So here goes:

  1. Sean Connery. Yes, I know: It’s like picking the Beatles as “best pop group.” Barry in “High Fidelity” would sneer at me for being so obvious. But it’s not even close. He was Bond when Bond was cool — in the Mad Men, Playboy magazine era when wearing the right tux, drinking the right martini and having as many beautiful women as possible was fashionable, even praiseworthy. He wore his hyper-masculine image with just the right bit of irony, at a time when we boomers weren’t old enough to realize what a joke it was. Austin Powers showed us that, much later. (If you go back and watch the Connery films now, you’ll see Mike Myers wasn’t changing or exaggerating the details at all; the films really were that ridiculous.)
  2. Daniel Craig, particularly in “Casino Royale,” essentially an “origin story.” He’s the roughest, least-suave Bond, to the point that you’re a bit surprised to find out (in “Skyfall”) that he was of the landed gentry. He’s what you might suppose a guy with a License to Kill would be in real life — an ex-SAS ruffian who, if he showed up in a John le Carre novel (which he probably wouldn’t), would be confined to Scalphunters down in Brixton (think of the marginal character Fawn in Tinker Tailor and The Honourable Schoolboy).
  3. Roger Moore. He played the part loyally and with good humor for all those years, and if nothing else kept the franchise warm while we waited for another Connery to come along (which did not, and likely will not, ever happen). His was always the likable Bond, with the obvious question arising: Do we want Bond to be likable?
  4. Timothy Dalton. OK, so his films aren’t that memorable, and he only played Bond in one more film than that dabbler George Lazenby. But I thought he had a decent presence for the part, even though it was insufficiently explored. He’s the Bond we hardly knew.
  5. Pierce Brosnan. I hesitate to include him, since he brought so little to the part that I’m having trouble remembering the titles of the ones he played in. But I have to have five. The main thing I remember about the Brosnan films was that a BMW Z3 starred in one of them.

That’s my list. Your thoughts?

Daniel Craig: A bit of the old Ultraviolence.

Daniel Craig: A bit of the old Ultraviolence.

Who was the bigger star? Carrie Fisher or Debbie Reynolds?

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singin

I had this rough impression over the past day that, while the death of Debbie Reynolds got pretty good play in the news, it was mostly because she died one day after her daughter, Carrie Fisher. And while this may be an erroneous impression, it seemed that the play on Debbie was front-pagish, but the passing of Carrie got centerpiece treatment on the news sites I saw.

Perhaps this is a generational thing, but back in her day, it seems to me that Debbie Reynolds was by far the bigger star. Look at the starring roles she’s known for: “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Tammy and the Bachelor,” “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” “How the West was Won,” “The Singing Nun,” to mention the most obvious. All pretty much boffo at the box office. And her performance of “Tammy” topped the pop charts in September of 1957.

Some of those things were a bit early for me. “Singin’ in the Rain” was released the year before I was born, and I thought of it as an oldie that occasionally appeared on TV. But I remember the later ones, and I grew up thinking of Debbie Reynolds as a big, established movie star, like, I don’t know… say, the woman who stole her husband away, Elizabeth Taylor. (And what did she have going for her, that a kid would have seen, besides “National Velvet?” She was better known for her tabloid lifestyle with Richard Burton, who stole her away from Debbie’s husband.)

Whereas Carrie is, let’s face it, Princess Leia. But to my kids, and people younger, that’s as big as it gets — maybe bigger than being Scarlett in “Gone With the Wind,” back in my parents’ day. It made her an icon. My elder son invited a girl from school over to play when he was about 6 purely in the hope that he might persuade her to do her long hair up in those braided side buns. She didn’t go for it, so that was a bust. The fascination never left him, or any of us, I suppose.

To me, “Star Wars” was wonderful — I actually reviewed the movie in The Jackson Sun when it came out, and the review was enthusiastic. I remember it grabbed me so that when I was driving home afterward in my orange Chevy Vega, I had to keep shaking off the feeling that I was flying an X-Wing, trying to get into position to blow up the Death Star.

And I was, more or less, a grownup. So I can see how irresistible the pull was for kids. And we all enjoyed seeing her back in “The Force Awakens.”

The accolades for her went on about how in later years she had become an accomplished author, etc. And feminists said things like how much more they liked her as the mature “General Morgana” rather than the enticingly nubile princess. But let’s face it, folks. We cared because she was Princess Leia, period. And I doubt that that’s just true of us boys.

Oh we enjoyed seeing her play a supporting role in “When Harry Met Sally,” and we emitted delighted cries of recognition at her cameos in “The Blues Brothers” and “Austin Powers.” But even then, John Belushi and Mike Myers totally stole those scenes.

As a movie star, as one who got leading roles, she was Princess Leia, period. And don’t get me wrong — I honor her for it.

And maybe that’s enough to overshadow her mother, even though to musical fans, “Singin’ in the Rain” is pretty iconic. Interesting that both of them made the films for which they’d most be remembered when they were 19…

Anyway, I found the comparison interesting, and I wouldn’t want to take anything away from either of them. Rest in Peace, ladies…

"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"

“Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?”

John Glenn always gave his country 110 percent

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astronaut_john_glenn_in_a_state_of_weightlessness_during_friendship_-_gpn-2002-000075

See how I didn’t use, “Godspeed, John Glenn?” I wanted to, but I figured everyone else would…

John Glenn was one of my heroes, but that says nothing special about me, except that I was a kid when the Mercury Seven — of which he was the most illustrious, the most conspicuous — were wowing the nation with their exploits. I remember being herded into the auditorium with the rest of my 3rd-grade class to watch him orbit the Earth, as it happened, on a medium-sized black-and-white TV that had been wheeled in for the occasion.800px-colonel_john_glenn_official_photo

Later, The Right Stuff made me admire him all the more, even though Wolfe made it clear how low the astronauts were on the Test Pilot Pyramid (“A monkey’s gonna make the first flight!”). When he ran for president in 1984, he was the guy I wanted to see take it all. I couldn’t believe he did no better than he did; I chalked it up to a decline in the national character.

An anecdote that illustrates Glenn as an exemplar of old-fashioned virtues: In the book, Tom Wolfe really played up Glenn’s status as the most gung-ho, straight-shooting, hard-working, unapologetic advocate of duty and clean living in the astronaut corps. One small example of how meticulously conscientious he was: Whenever he went on a goodwill tour of one of the factories that were building the components of the Mercury rockets and capsules, within days he would send hand-written thank-you notes to everybody he had met at the plant.

I never met Glenn myself, but early in 1984, his daughter made a visit to Jackson, Tenn., where I was the news editor of the local paper. She came by the paper and met with us, advocating for her dad, and before she left, I put on another hat and asked her whether there was any chance of getting John himself to come speak at the banquet of Leadership Jackson, of which I was the rising president.

In the mail a few days later, I received a card from her in which she went on at length about her efforts to follow up on my request.

So, in addition to being our foremost Single-Combat Warrior Challenging the Godless Commies for Dominance of the Heavens, he was a pretty-good Dad as well, passing on his own relentless habits of following through, of being dutiful even in small things.

OK, I’m going to say it: Godspeed, John Glenn…

The death of Fidel Castro (and Ron Glass, too!)

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fidel-castro-1959

By now, you’ve heard that Fidel Castro outlasted 10 U.S. presidents. I’ve read that several times. But I make it 11. Check my math:

  1. Eisenhower
  2. Kennedy
  3. Johnson
  4. Nixon
  5. Ford
  6. Carter
  7. Reagan
  8. Bush 41
  9. Clinton
  10. Bush 43
  11. Obama

Oh, I get it. They’re not counting Obama, since Fidel didn’t quite outlast him. Duh.

Whatever. Guy was in office a long time, longer than a lot of you have been alive.

And what’s he got to show for it? Almost six decades of oppression, and some beautifully preserved antique cars. I read over the weekend that since the thaw began, a huge part of the Cuban economy is American tourism and the officially tolerated sex trade, which takes us back to where he came in.

He’s been there so long, that it’s nice to do a recap to refresh your memory. Here’s one. Here’s another.

The big question now is, will things get better between the U.S. and Cuba now, or worse? I’m not overly optimistic, with you-know-who about to take over in Washington.

ron-glassAnd now, let’s pause a moment to remember Ron Glass, whom we all remember (if we’re old enough) from “Barney Miller,” but I recall more fondly as Shepherd Book from “Firefly.” As you may recall if you’re a Browncoat, one of the great unsolved mysteries from the short-lived series was just what sort of shady past the Shepherd had.

Now we’ll never know, even if there’s a revival of the series, which there should be.

Requiescat in pace, Ron… (Do they have Latin in the future ‘verse, or is it just English and Chinese?)

shepherd-book