From Grave to Big Screen

Last fall, a friend handed me a book she spotted at a sale and had reason to think I would want.

The book is Digging for King Richard: The Search for the Lost King, and she brought it to King Richard’s Faire where I have strolled as a minstrel since 1999, or 1499 as we rennies might prefer to call it.

As anyone who has read English history can tell you, there’s little resemblance between the real Richard III killed in The Battle of Bosworth in 1485 and the jolly, joking, song and dance Richard who rules Carvershire down in the cranberry bogs well south of Boston.

In fact, we are now ruled by King Richard XI, and not one of the eleven has ever reminded anyone of the title character of William Shakespeare’s most frequently performed, published, cited, critiqued, and quoted history:

My horse! My horse! My kingdom for my horse!

According to Digging, Shakespeare’s play is not so much a portrait of a character as it is character assassination. Except for the controversial king’s love of his horse, the Bard, perhaps with an eye on the Globe Theater’s box office receipts, was intent on delivering us into and then away from evil.

Author Mike Pitts paints a very different picture that compares–without attempting to equate–the king who died young to America’s John Kennedy, a charismatic figure who inspired a nation with his promise, was killed for his noble cause, and was mythologized into sainthood despite many flaws.

Except that Richard III was mythed into deviltry as soon as his body was thrown into a shallow grave not far from the battlefield in Leicester, now a bustling city in central England. No markings were made, and his whereabouts were unknown until 2012 after a persistent Ricardian named Philippa Langley prevailed upon archeologists at the University of Leicester to check a local parking lot, or “car park” as the Brits call it.

Ricardian? Yes, such folk exist all over the world, dedicated to rehabilitating the name of a good man who they say had no motive to kill those kids in the tower. If that sounds far fetched, at least one Canadian is mentioned in the book as a contributor of DNA evidence. Furthermore, the Ricardian I know at the faire, a native of Chicago, offers far more documentary evidence than old Willie-Nillie was willing to include in his hatchet-job dressed in iambic pentameter.

Richard III’s skeleton indeed revealed a curvature of the spine, a case of scoliosis that would not have been visible when he was fully clothed–a far cry from the “hunchback” in Shakespeare’s Richard III. Other than that, the only mystery remaining after the bones were found was what happened to the monarch’s missing feet. Pitts guesses that at some point the car park was repaved, and the preperatory cut went a bit too deep. Maybe King Dick parked himself slightly over the line, but at least he was spared the fate of “Off with his head!”

All of this is now a film, The Lost King, with the always enchanting Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water, Maudie) cast as the intrepid Philippa Langley, and Steve Coogan as a husband who balances his attempts to aid and abet her dream with some semblence of practicality.

The casting of Coogan is telling. He starred opposite Judy Dench in 2013’s Philomena, also directed by Stephen Frears, and also about a woman in search of someone lost. That gained four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, an award shared by Coogan. He’s now co-writer of The Lost King.

For that reason I offer a preview rather than a review–and also because the film may play in Newburyport for just one week and I can’t see it until the second-last day.

Judging by the book, we’re in for a can’t-look-away mystery even though we know the outcome before it starts. Judging from the trailer, we’re in for a whistful fantasy as Hawkin’s Langley imagines the young, charming king by her side offering encouragement as she campaigns for his return to the good grace of British memory.

Judging from the other Frears-Coogan collaboration, we’re in for a most satisfying ride that I have reason to think you will want to take.

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A Shape of Things to Come

FT. MYERS, Fla. (April 1) — In a 6-3 decision late last night, the US Supreme Court cleared the way for the State of Florida to begin a massive construction project in the Gulf of Mexico to reshape its boundaries to look like an AR-15 assault rifle.

“We are tired of looking like a puny handgun,” said Helen Highwater, director of Gulf’s Alternative Geography, or GAG, a new state agency created by Gov. Ron DeSantis as part of his “anti-woke” campaign.

“As anyone who reads the news knows, the AR-15 is today’s weapon of choice,” she continued, “as American as grieving motherhood and consoling apple pie.”

“This is Florida’s tribute to the 2nd Amendment,” said the governor while vacationing in Iowa.

His wife, Amy, was more expansive, citing several Republican Christmas cards with smiling moms, dads, and kids brandishing automatic assault rifles. “The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference—they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good, on or off shore,” she said while touring New Hampshire.

“The governor and his team, all of us, are working tirelessly for the people of Florida,” said DeSantis’ chief of staff, Evan Elpus, while attending strategy meetings in South Carolina.

To pay for the project, the National Rifle Association has pledged an unspecified percentage of anticipated profits from a new law requiring all students of all schools, kindergarten through college, to own and carry a loaded gun.

The state’s Republican-controlled legislature is expected to easily pass the measure this month, following their current push to repeal a long-standing state law that requires a sitting governor to resign if he or she runs for president. Both measures will take effect immediately.

Environmental groups, gun-control advocates, and the International Cartographic Association, meanwhile, are considering an appeal to the United Nations as well as organizing flotilla protests in the Gulf such as the rallies Trump supporters floated in harbors on both coasts in 2020.

“Geography is not fungible,” read a press release from Rand McNally, Inc. “Like mathematics, it is defined, literally set in stone. Once in a century, an earthquake or some other natural disaster might change coastlines, and then only slightly. But not people. We can protect and preserve our coasts, as the Dutch have done with their dykes and sea gates, but we cannot turn water into land.”

Highwater dismissed the claim. “Sounds like old Rand missed a memo from the NPS,” she laughed, citing the National Parks Service’s “promise” to “look into” the “possibility of” shifting the Earth’s axis to combat climate change suggested by US Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) in 2021.

“But the Parks official only said that as a way not to embarrass the congressman who mentioned it,” interjected a reporter who covered the hearing when Gohmert, with all seriousness, posed the moronic question.

“Which means they didn’t say no,” Highwater shot back, “which we take as yes. We’re Americans, we can do anything we want!”

Another reporter asked if the artificial peninsulas to create the box magazine and handle will be “sound science,” which drew a comparison to Florida’s response to the Covid pandemic. Said Highwater:

“It is sound when it suits us. At first we took the precautions, but when we saw how masks and vaccinations didn’t suit our supporters, and interfered with our Spring-Break economy, we condemned them both.”

“But you can’t legislate geography,” insisted the first reporter as the governor’s private police began to move her toward the door.

“Why not?” Highwater yelled as the journalist disappeared. “We’ve just seen science legislated for the sake of both addressing and denying Covid. Here in Florida, we’ve legislated race relations and the labor movement out of history and literature, and you liberals have legislated English and mathematics for reasons known only to yourselves.”

The last claim drew a collective “What???”

Highwater ignored it: “Geography was the only K-12 subject left!”

“When was math ever legislated,” asked the second reporter.

“Your ‘order of operations’ nonsense,” Highwater snapped. “A pure triumph of something-out-of-nothing over common sense. Instead of reading an equation or a formula naturally from left to right, today’s math teachers say look across the line and do the divisions and multiplications first. If that’s the case, why are they not written first, ahead of any addition and subtraction?”

The reporter was speechless.

“See! You can’t answer. It’s hierarchy for the sake of hierarchy. You create confusion and then want credit for a convoluted way to cut through it. And you wonder why the public is lately so quick to distrust educators?”

“What was ever legislated regarding the teaching of English other than the governor’s own ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill?” asked a reporter who hadn’t yet spoken.

“Well, ‘legislated’ may not be the word,” admitted Highwater, “but you have to admit that this idea of people ‘owning’ pronouns, or using such a presumptuous phrase as ‘my pronouns’ is bending rules to suit one’s own preferences. They even use the very word preferred.”

“But that’s for the sake of accuracy, according to how individuals identify,” countered the reporter.

“Language doesn’t care how anyone identifies,” Highwater ridiculed. “There are adjectives for that. Or do we now have a right to ‘preferred adjectives’? From now on I will be described only as charming, witty, erudite, fearless, compassionate, and admirable.”

Reporters started laughing, and so Highwater raised her voice, “That’s no more absurd than using the plural ‘they’ for ‘he’ or ‘she’. If you want to sound stupid, be my guest, but don’t insist that the rest of us do the same.”

Highwater turned and gestured toward reporters from Miami’s Spanish-language press corps: “Now you have these academics telling you to use the word ‘Latin’ with an X as a suffix. The word is Latin, right?”

A few of them nodded, and Highwater went on: “The added O is a suffix. So is the A. If you want the word to be neutral, just use it without a suffix: Latin. Not this tin-eared, cross-eyed, mealy-mouthed, snub-nosed, brain-dead Latin X. I swear, when I first saw it (“Latinx”) in print, I wondered, ‘Does it rhyme with stinks?'”

“Bigot!” yelled an onlooker from the back of the hall.

“Thank you for the compliment!” the new GAG director taunted as she turned to leave the podium.

She froze when another voice came from the back of the hall: “What about the Robin Williams’ line???”

Reporters were puzzled until one remembered the 1990 film, Awakenings, when Williams’ character, wooing a nurse, told her she gave him “a hard-on the size of Florida.”

Highwater smiled and leaned back toward the microphone: “What could make that point better than a gun?”

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Might look like a bad joke, but it’s a decal that you can purchase on-line for under $5.00. One site offers three for the price of two.

Killing Curiosity First

Oh, say, can we not see how bizarre we now be?

How else do you explain the social media post of a dual photograph to show a presidential candidate flexing a baseball bat next to the head of a district attorney investigating him?

Anyone else doing that would be arrested before the post gained a comment, but influence over violent mobs works wonders for someone bold enough to wield it. If we are going to remove things from textbooks, shouldn’t we start with the absurd lie that, in America, “no one is above the law”?

Time to treat the lies like dominos and knock ’em all down. Anyone who still thinks that E Pluribus Unum has any truth left to it has forgotten the English translation. Only one exception I can think of: When atheists object to “In God We Trust” on our money, we only need tell them that money is the God we trust.

Americans may sing that we are “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” but that’s another lie we should purge from public schools and public events. What is free about schools banning To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Color Purple, and Custer Died for Your Sins? What is brave about a political party kowtowing to a demogogue?

Call it the land of the fearful and the home of the controlled.

It’s way past time to change “sweet land of liberty” to “taste-free land of conformity.” “This Land Is Your Land” needs a revised title, “This Land Is Private Property,” and a sequel, “It’s All for Sale.” Sorry, Woody, no more socialist tresspassing for you!

At times the greedy go too far, even by America’s present-day survival-of-the-slickest standards. This past week, The Boston Globe treated its readers to the story of the Boston Red Sox’ attempt to trademark the name, Boston. The team owners wanted exclusive rights to use the name on hats, shirts, jackets, bibs, mugs, and related merchandise. An overwhelming public objection forced them to withdraw the bid, but you have to wonder how anyone or any corporation–since, in America, corporations are people–could expect to gain ownership of a geographical name.

More often, they find legal technicalities and loopholes that favor them. Another Globe report last week told of a homeowner on the tip of Cape Ann looking to privatize a beach that has had public access since the Puritans realized that Massachusetts has a second cape. The Red Sox may have been as thwarted as they were in last year’s playoffs, but one rich resident of Rockport may get her privatizing way.

Dismiss those items as regional if you want, but another development last week has national implications. To satisfy Florida’s wish to white-wash American history as taught in the state’s public schools, a textbook publisher was willing to remove any reference to race in a passage about Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus in 1955.

The proposed new passage did not even mention that Parks was African-American.

The publisher has since relented, no doubt swayed by an inability to sell such a dumbed-down excuse for a book anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line, on the west coast, or to private schools with any degree of integrity in the South–if integrity is or ever was legal in the South. Still, it is clear that history texts will be re-written to avoid the protests of parents who don’t want to hear it and, therefore, do not want their children to know it.

Maybe they think that if curiosity kills anything, they should kill curiosity first. No word yet on whether Gov. DeSantis will insist that the text describes Parks as making a “normal morning commute.”

This is nothing new. Since the end of Reconstruction, publishers have bent to the wishes of school boards that pick texts for large populations. Since Texas has long had a state-wide board, it was by far their biggest prospective customer. Because publishers want to maximize profit, only one version of a text would be printed to distribute nation-wide.

In effect, Texas has for decades filtered the texts used across the USA–texts that adhere to the board’s very specific criteria such as portraying slavery as “a mostly benevolent institution” and saying “nothing critical of the free market system”–which is why the labor movement and most details of the New Deal are absent from American history textbooks.

Today, however, it’s not just historical accuracy that is at stake. Logic itself is a victim when you do not or cannot disclose the reasons for things such as someone’s choice to be arrested rather than change her seat. This isn’t anything approaching “critical race theory.” Nor is it necessarily what we promote as “critical thinking.” This is a limit on the very ability to think.

For a vivid example of what such a limit can do, consider any conversation or argument you’ve had or overheard in recent years regarding American athletes who have knelt during the National Anthem before a game. How many times do you recall those who complain of “disresepect for the flag” ever addressing the reason for the act? How many times do they so much as mention it?

Call it the land of the oblivious and the home of don’t-hold-your-breath.

If we are going to be a nation in which there is no cause and effect, no truth or consequence, no concern for consistency or contradiction, no attention and even less memory, then what good is the dawn’s early light?

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Rosa Parks riding on the Montgomery Area Transit System bus. The photo is undated, and the unconcern of her fellow passenger suggests that on this occasion, it was “a normal morning commute.” Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus on Dec. 1, 1955, and ignited the boycott that led to a federal court ruling against segregation in public transportation. In 1955, Montgomery’s racially segregated buses carried 30,000 to 40,000 blacks each day. (AP Photo/Daily Advertiser)

https://www.dailybreeze.com/2017/12/01/photos-rosa-parks-arrested-for-refusing-to-give-up-her-bus-seat-to-a-white-man-on-dec-1-1955/

Recovering the Green Book

Eight years ago my daughter, then living in Los Angeles, took me to the Autry Museum of the American West to view an exhibit titled, Route 66: The Road & the Romance. Among so many hoped-for items, such as the original manuscripts of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and Kerouac’s On the Road, was something I had never heard of nor imagined:

The Negro Motorist Green Book. Or, as it is more commonly called, The Green Book.

Though I was not able to pick it up and thumb through, I was close enough to read fine print through the museum glass. There were two copies, one closed to show the cover, shown here at the far left:

The other was open to sample pages. Like those historic manuscripts, they were quite faded. A plaque aside the display offered a paragraph’s summary of the purpose served by the book’s annual editions from 1936 to 1967.

Months after my trip to LA, I was hosting a small gathering of friends, when one asked if any of us had ever heard of the Green Book. Seems he heard an unexplained reference to it in a documentary about Jim Crow. I hoped someone else could offer an answer with more than my memory of a single paragraph, but none of my seven guests could.

So I did the best I could: “A travel guide to let Black people know where they could find hotels and restaurants all across the country that were not segregated,” or something like that and nothing much more. At the time, the eight of us, all white, all high school graduates in the late-60s, treated it as historic trivia, interesting to know.

In retrospect, that moment was an indictment of American education.

Three years later, Green Book was the title of the film that won three Oscars, including Best Picture. It was also a box office hit, and so millions of viewers–including many African Americans–heard the title for the first time and gained some idea of the book’s purpose, even if it was wrapped in an entertaining road-trip/buddy flick that veered to and fro delightful and menacing:

This year, finally, Victor Hugo Green’s eponymous annual travel guide, compiled when he was delivering for the United States Postal Service full-time with the help of a network of USPS friends and contacts–not to mention the effect of word-of-mouth on business owners eager to advertise for an “underserved” clientele–gets its due:

https://www.audible.com/pd/Driving-the-Green-Book-Audiobook/B0B2KF9YK5?

Author Alvin Hall’s title is taken from his own award-winning podcast he’s been doing for a few years, but it originated with two road trips he took to research the Green Book along routes where he might find places listed and people who remembered them before the Civil Rights Acts made the book moot–in theory anyway.

With associate producer Janee Woods Weber and field producer Kemi Aladesuyi along for the ride, Driving the Green Book benefits from the perspectives and responses of three distinct generations and backgrounds. Indeed, the book keeps gaining strength in the number of voices we hear along the way, such as Bryan Stevenson, founder and director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, who just last week received a National Humanities medal from Pres. Biden*:

My grandfather would say to me things as a child, like whenever a white person comes up to you don’t look them in the eyes; you always say “yes, sir,” you always say, “no, sir.” There were strategies you had to adopt to stay safe. My grandfather was a proud man; he was a smart man. But in the presence of white people, he would become something else that was deeply painful for him because he wants to model something for me, but at the same time he wants to keep us safe. There is that duality, that burden that I think few people understand.

Writes Hall:

Sometimes a person’s story and their telling of it unexpectedly connected deeply with my own history growing up in the rural, deeply segregated South and worshiping in a Baptist church. The person’s voice, accent, and cadence were like hearing a spiritual or the humming of a gospel song I had known since the time I could feel music.

Alvin Hall may yet be better known as a television and radio host of and guest on shows offering financial advice, but The Green Book caught his attention when he saw it mentioned in a magazine article in 2015. Like my friend at the party, he knew only that it was something used during segregation. Unlike my white friend, it reminded the Florida Panhandle native who grew up in the 1950s of things that his family and other African American families did when planning and taking trips.

Following the great migration of African-Americans in the deep South to the booming industries of northern cities ignited by WWI, and along many US routes before the interstate was mapped out, many trips were made between the Rust Belt and the Cotton Belt, and for some, off to California. The Green Book grew exponentially, soon dropping the word “Motorist” for “Traveler” to include advice on buses and trains–including which train lines restricted their seating to the polluted cars immediately behind the locomotive’s coal car.

Sixty years later, Hall realizes why mid-summer family trips of his youth always began in the wee hours, included “shoebox” lunches, made improbable detours around some places, never stopped in others, and why African-Americans always bought the largest cars–a detail that Martin Luther King noted in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Hall also realized why many Black men bought and kept chauffeur caps at the ready in their cars. And with stories gleaned from elderly locals when he re-created two trips–from Tallahassee to Ferguson, Missouri, and from Detroit to New Orleans–he illustrates the African-American realities of “Sundown Towns” and “driving while Black,” as well as the frequent and emphatic advice given by parents to their children: “avoid eye-contact.”**

Places listed by The Green Book that we visit with Hall vary from the legendary Dooky Chase restaurant in New Orleans, to James Baldwin’s Beale Street in Memphis, to the Lorraine Hotel, now a museum, with roots in Black history long before it became known to the world in 1968. We also hear of Esso (now Exxon) which, way ahead of the rest of corporate America, “not only carried The Green Book, [but] encouraged Black ownership of their franchises.”

Hall immediately makes clear that the 2018 film was not at all about the Green Book anymore than Grapes of Wrath was about grapes or vineyards. Before long, Hall convinces us that the book was about far more than travel. In the context of segregation and of a country where whites–whether empowered by a uniform and badge or just out on a drunken lark–could threaten and harm Blacks with impunity, the Green Book was about safety and reassurance. At a time when Americans were just starting to drive and long highways were connecting destinations asking them to call, the Green Book made possible for Blacks what whites have always taken for granted.

Hall’s Driving the Green Book describes a book that was more than anything a book about freedom.

Because of that, Hall’s amazement at his own discovery is palpable when he informs us that nowhere in any edition of the book, do words such as “segregation,” “racist,” “harrassment,” or anything like them appear. It was all understood, and it was left unsaid so that children wouldn’t worry about what might happen to them–so long as they remembered to avoid eye-contact. As his introduction says of the people he interviewed:

Amazingly, virtually every person, without my asking, connected their past experiences to current events. They just did it seamlessly. I understood and, most important, received the wisdom and insights these generous people were passing along to me about driving as well as living while Black in America then–and now.

Today, as state legislatures–with loud public support–move to suppress historical truths that they deem “uncomfortable,” Driving the Green Book is no mere description of three-decades way beyond the reach of America’s rear-view mirror. It is more accurately described by its subtitle: A Road Trip through the Living History of Black Resistance.

Heed the word “Living.” While Black children may yet be well-advised to avoid eye-contact, white adults will be ill-informed until we start making it.

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https://alvinhall.com/radio/radio-podcast-driving-the-green-book/

* https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/biden-honors-ejis-bryan-stevenson-with-national-humanities-medal/ar-AA18YtLu

**Also in 1963, this became a song on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album: https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/oxford-town/?

A Quiet Film

Cait is hiding when we first meet her. Crouched down in the middle of a large field of overgrown hay, we hear Mammy call her name several times before she stands up and starts for the farmhouse.

Inside, a gaggle of sisters and an overwrought mother make it clear why the nine-year-old would have preferred to stay in the hayfield. Before long, Da, who prefers liquid lunches, will make it clearer yet.

In school, Cait is a self-conscious misfit, barely able to read aloud, and unwilling or unable to join her classmates in games at recess. In the hallway, other girls tell her sister, “”Your sister’s weird.”

That’s one of very few lines of dialogue in the quick opening scenes before a letter arrives from a distant cousin a few hours away in rural Ireland–which is about as wide as Ireland gets–offering to take the girl for the summer.

As a title, The Quiet Girl describes the film as much as it does Cait, played by first-time actor Catherine Clinch.

Thus begins a transformation, although Cait will remain a girl of few words while living with a childless older couple, helping with chores both in the kitchen and out on the farm. Most notable is the daily assignment to run the length of a farmhouse driveway to retrieve the mail each day while Sean sets his watch. Seeing the gradual glimmer on her face is like viewing the Mona Lisa.

Equally fascinating is the transformation of Eibhlin (EF-linn, Gaelic version of Evelyn), a story told not in dialogue but hinted at in visuals–a secret slowly unfolded in a home that, as Eibhlin told Cait, “has no secrets because, where there are secrets, there is shame.”

The Quiet Girl could be classified a mystery, and among the best in which you realize later in the film that hints were hidden all along–at times worn–in plain sight.

Even the overgrown hay gains meaning.

Also in plain sight when it is over are patrons who are visibly moved, and the comment most often heard is “powerful,” with several thanking me, the projectionist, for showing it–by which, of course, they are thanking the Screening Room for booking it.

Easy to understand why it gained one of the five Oscar nominations for Best International Film. This was the first feature film for Colm Bairead, know for his documentaries. His emphasis on visuals kept the English subtitles to a minimum while making Gaelic something of an audio treat.

To quote NPR’s headline: “This tender Irish drama proves the quietest films can have the most to say.”

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American Hypnosis

If there’s a prize for Look-Who’s-Talking Headline, Yahoo News just nailed it:

Ron DeSantis hit with an ethics complaint from Trump super PAC

In fact, they nailed it twice. The idea that anyone connected to DT (medical pun intended) would complain about anyone else’s ethics is beyond berserk. To this projectionist, it’s like listening to people who use cellphones in public places–such as a movie theater–call anyone else rude.

That much, however, is obvious. What really takes the prize is the reason stated in the report’s opening line. From the top:

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Donald Trump’s allies are stepping up their battle with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, formally accusing him of violating state ethics and election laws with his “shadow presidential campaign.”

Shadow? Do they think that Iowa and New Hampshire–where DeSantis has been making appearances for months–are towns in Florida? If they can’t see that he’s running, direct sunlight won’t help. They haven’t been looking.

Nor have they been reading. In an essay headlined, “Swamplandia: The Money behind Ron DeSantis’ Popular Facade,” Andrew Cockburn tells us that, as soon as DeSantis took office as governor, the head of his PAC wrote in an email to his chief of staff:

It is the governor’s desire to fundraise and maintain a high political profile at all times–inside and outside of Florida.
Harper’s, Feb. 2023

And that was just the eye-opening first paragraph of several pages documenting that Florida has become the stage for what is called “performative politics.” The governor’s office has been a prop for a presidential run since he first crossed its threshhold.

The audience is not the population of one state, certainly not all of them, but residents of all 50 states who might be inclined to vote in Republican primaries next year. That’s why the dialogue never touches on concerns specific to the state, such as a rapidly eroding coastline, pollution of the Everglades, vulnerability to hurricanes, or health care for an over-sized aging population.

Instead, the speeches are all red meat. Drama is kept at a pique, even though DeSantis trys to distinuguish himself from DT with the claim that he creates “no drama.” Watch a newscast any night, and you are likely to see the actor in the leading role behind a microphone badgering a reporter for asking a question. Or on one of Florida’s spring training diamonds playing catch–in more ways than one–with a cherry-picked reporter lobbing softball questions.

Can’t have a play without villains, and DeSantis’ script has plenty: teachers, librarians, historians, writers, scientists, doctors, nurses, students petitioning for gun regulation, students wearing masks, students wanting to know the truth of their ancestors’ history, parents concerned about college admission requirements no longer addressed by white-washed high school curricula, grandparents wanting to protect the truth of their own history, anyone not straight, any mind not narrow, businesses with any inclination toward diversity, even Disney. And reporters–unless you count the supporting actors from Fox News, even though it claims to be an entertainment outlet “which no reasonable person would believe” when faced with libel suits.

An entertainment outlet is made to order for DeSantis both on and away from his Florida stage. And he for it. Apparently convinced that MAGA: The Amusical is nearing the end of its run, Fox has bought all broadcast rights to DeSantis’ War on Woke. The art of this deal is that he will use the word “woke” as often as possible. For their part, Fox‘s talking heads will blame everything on it.

Train derailment? Biden was distracted with his “woke agenda.” Bank failure? The bank was too concerned with “woke diversity.” Seriously, those of us they accuse of being “socialists” and “communists” they now blame for the disastrous failure of capitalism. Kind of like blaming Mike Pence for the attack on the Capitol, which also happened last week.

If America doesn’t win the World Baseball Classic, it will be because pitchers used woke windups, base-runners took woke leads, fielders wore woke gloves, hitters swung woke bats, catchers called woke signals, coaches gave woke signs, managers chewed woke tobacco, and batboys had their name changed to batchildren.

Trust me, Fox won’t even notice that “woke tobacco” is a contradiction in terms, and their audience will swallow every drop of Fox spit.

Any production of this scale needs mega-funding. According to “Swamplandia,” there’s no lack of it. For the point of the essay, I can’t pin it any better than did Doris “Granny D” Haddock, the woman who walked cross country at the age of 90 in 2000 to call attention to campaign finance reform:

If money is speech, then bribery is legal.

Though she passed away 13 years ago, Granny D’s description of the USA today is so accurate and incisive that it could be the opening line for War on Woke‘s marketing strategy:

If we Americans are split into two meaningful camps, it is not conservative verus liberal. The two camps are the politically awake and the hypnotized.

If War on Woke, starring hypnotist Ron DeSantis, is ever adapted for film, the donors may prefer not to be mentioned in the end credits. Instead, they may just sum it up in an expression so common that no one takes much note of it, not even the fill-in-the-blank name tacked on to its end:

Brought to you by Citizens United.

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Postscript:

On the day I wrote this, Fox News has been reporting on all of its programs that Silicon Valley Bank had donated $73 million to “Black Lives Matter causes.” Their source is the Claremont Institute, a conservative think-tank that was an early supporter of DT and is behind many of the voter suppression measures that have been passed or are pending in Republican controlled states. Fact checkers from various newspapers have investigated the claim and found no truth to it

From Harper’s magazine, illustration by Tim Enthoven.
https://harpers.org/archive/2023/02/swamplandia-ron-desantis-funders/

A Banshee of Inishplum

With a birthday tomorrow—doesn’t matter how many—I like to tell people that I was born on Hangover Day, which I suppose makes me politically incorrect for two reasons.

All the more reason to treat the two days as a dual feast as I have done every year of my very prolonged adolescent life.

Could say that this year I claimed most of the week, sitting out Tuesday’s storm by boiling a full pot of corned beef & cabbage with creamer potatoes, baby carrots, and pearl onions. As the snow started falling at noon, I did dart down to Plum Island’s one packy for a six of Guinness Stout so I could pour one bottle into the stock.

The beef came without a packet of seasonings, so I found a few lists online but none had measurements, By this time, I had already quaffed a bottle of Guinness and said what the hell!

Started throwing them in at who knows what amounts. Garlic powder, fennel seeds, dry mustard, cloves, cinnamon, red pepper, allspice, Worcestershire sauce, a couple bay leaves, and, out of habit, salt & pepper.

While quaffing yet another Guinness, I felt like a banshee of Inishplum and started laughing while throwing some of the seasoning into the pot from a few feet away.

Before long, the cinnamon & cloves made my place smell like Christmas, but I’d had a third Guinness by then, so… What, me worry?

The result tasted like the pipes calling Danny Boy, everything on the plate a worthy nominee for Best Taste, though the Julia went knife and folk to the beef that played the title role.

My one mistake was adding the salt, which I blame on the Guinness–the ones I quaffed, not the one I added to the stock which should get the Julia for Best Ingredient. Made me forget that corned beef always has the salt, if not the seasonings.

This did not have any noticeable effect on the food, but it did make the broth difficult–and perhaps dangerous per my primary care physician–to drink. Inspired, no doubt, by my four Guinnesses of the evening, I cut the broth in half with water.

Result was more satisfying than any hot toddy despite the lack of alcohol, unless you count the Guinness–the one boiled in the stock, not the four quaffed.

Who says the Irish can’t cook? Then again, I’m half-Italian which may qualify as cheating when it comes to culinary skills. Whatever the answer, here I am three days later to tell of it, as I prepare for a left-over St. Patrick’s Day meal.

You may be wondering what I had for desert after my impromptu Tuesday feast. But had you kept count, you’d have known that there was one bottle of Guinness left unaccounted for.

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How it looked: https://www.justapinch.com/recipes/main-course/beef/boiled-corned-beef-and-cabbage-dinner.html

How it tasted: https://www.armadillopepper.com/blogs/recipes/guinness-beer-brined-corned-beef-brisket

Spin-off of a Spin-Off

Swear I went to bed late, late Sunday night convinced that I wouldn’t write a blog about the Oscars I had just suffered through.

But thought leads on to thought, as Robert Frost might as well have said, and on Tuesday morning I posted “Winners Talking,” a list of faults offset by the purposeful acceptance speech of Sarah Polley, Director/Writer of Women Taking.

Felt rather odd to be praising a winner when I wanted the award to go to another nominee, but I left that out.

While writing it, I wanted to comment on the choice of Best Actor in a Leading Role. And while thinking of it, I recalled a story told by Michael Keaton who was nominated for that award in 2015. That was enough to turn a passage into a blog of its own, “Ranked Choice Oscars,” posted yesterday. When it was over, the spin-off blog had less to do with Best Actor in 2023 than with Best Film in 2016 and a political analogy it offered.

Strange to think that Best Actor was one of just three categories in which I could said to be rooting for anyone–despite my admitted indecision over which actor it was. One other was Best Film, which I thought was Elvis. I might have had the same conflict with Living, but it was not nominated, possibly because it was an adaptation.

You might object that the Coen Brothers’ re-make of True Grit in 2010 gained a nomination for Best Picture. Well, yes, it gained ten nominations and won nothing, which is another way of proving the same point.

Finally, at the risk of contradicting “Winners Talking,” Adapted Screenplay was the only other category I had hopes for. Not for Women Talking, but for Living, adapted from a classic 1956 Japanese film, Ikiru, itself adapted from Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

To me, relevance is first and foremost. What could be more relevant than a story spanning 137 years and spreading all around the world?

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Or a poem written 108 years ago and still quoted as both encouragement and condolence all around the world?

All about choices. Found this lovely scene on the site of Abhishek Sharma Gaur, an Indian writer who used it to illustrate his interpretation of Robert Frost’s poem. You’ll have to allow for his English, but it’s a charming, brief read:
https://abhisheksharmagaur.medium.com/two-roads-diverged-in-a-yellow-wood-76299f831186

Ranked Choice Oscars

Before the Oscars were announced, the one that seemed most certain was for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

All inside speculation, including that of my small-arts-cinema projectionists’ grapevine, was that Brendan Fraser would win for his portrayal of the aptly-named title character in The Whale. That, despite much buzz at various times for each of three other contenders.

Reminded me of 2016 when all the buzz was about a toss-up race between The Revenant and The Big Short for Best Picture. Both films had strong, fervent support, but, as actor Michael Keaton later explained, voters who ranked either film high ranked the other low.

Keaton had a role in Spotlight, another of the Best Picture nominees. Before the ceremony, he bucked up his fellow cast members who were accepting a loss before it happened, telling them of his hunch: Those who voted for either film first would pick Spotlight second. His hunch was right: Due to ranked choice, Spotlight won.

Because it is all kept under wraps by PricewaterhouseCoopers, it is possible that Spotlight gained the most first-place votes. But all of the talk at the time makes Keaton’s explanation far more probable. Nor does a ranked choice make it any less of an award. If anything, it strengthens the choice as one made by consensus.

This year’s contest for Best Actor had a similar dynamic. Austin Butler had impressive critical reviews for the title role in Elvis, a huge box office hit which never hurts. Bill Nighy had equally strong endorsements for his role in Living, an arts cinema favorite which always helps. Colin Farrell had both in Banshees of Inisherin which was both. The differences between their three characters and those three films–one vibrant and flashy, one subtle and contemplative, the other evocative and mystical–would have favored Brendan Fraser in a film that commanded curiosity.*

Fraser didn’t need it. Best Picture is the only category determined by ranked choice due to the number of nominees. Every other category goes simply to the most first place votes.

Still, there’s a lesson from 2016 that might be drawn regarding consensus:

Ranked Choice Voting–or Instant Runoff Voting–is a political initiative that has been adopted by the states of Maine and Alaska and by a few dozen counties, cities, and towns across the country. Reports are that Minnesota is about to pass it. So far the results have proved that it favors candidates who are realistic and practical while keeping flamboyant extremists out on the margins.

The most often used example of the difference it would make is the 2000 presidential election. If either Florida or New Hampshire had RCV, third-party candidate Ralph Nader’s votes would have been redistributed, and the deregulatory disaster of Bush-Cheney would have been avoided. Put another way, it would serve as a built-in runoff when no candidate reaches 50% of the total vote.

As a long-term advantage, far more votes would have gone to Nader as a first choice from people who preferred him but voted for Gore out of fear of electing Bush. And they were many, all of whom would have ranked Gore second. Since percentages of votes in elections are what determine a party’s standing in future elections, this in time would make a third party viable.

If America is to ever have a third party with any chance of success, if we are ever to attain government by consensus rather than a tug-of-war of us-versus-them, RCV is the necessary first step to it.

Perhaps instead of citing the Bush v. Gore example, advocates of RCV should cite the Oscars. Unlike the reaction to names such as Republican and Democrat, no one thinks that Elvis or Everything Everywhere All at Once are threats to western civilization.

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*My omission of Paul Mescal is only because I have not seen Aftersun, nor do I recall any speculation that he might win.

On this 2009 Academy Awards Oscar ballot note the instruction for members to place numbers in each of the circles next to every film title in the list. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images)

Winners Talking

Maybe I’m desperate to find something relevant, a speech, a claim, a joke, anything in the most lackluster, lame, and listless Oscars in my long lifetime.

Exceptions were few and far between. The song and dance of “Naatu Naatu” from India’s RRR had me up on my bare feet. The composer singing his later acceptance of the award was its delayed, all-smiles exclamation point.

John Travolta’s intro to the annual “In Memoriam” added a new level of tribute when he struggled with the closing line, “who we will always remain hopelessly devoted to.” The reference was to Olivia Newton-John’s hit single, “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” from the 1978 musical, Grease, in which they co-starred. She died of breast cancer last August.

That, too, was soulfully echoed by the last chord Lenny Kravitz struck in his accompanying “Calling All Angels.”

And there was the the Best Documentary Oscar going to Navalny, about the plot to kill the Russian anti-corruption campaigner and former presidential candidate now in a gulag jail. Several of the film’s crew took the stage with director Daniel Roher, among them Alexei Navalny’s daughter and wife, Yulia, who addressed the hall, the viewers, the world.

One more most memorable moment I’ll save for last, but save for these exceptions, the Oscars seemed to be three-plus hours of non-stop thank-yous. The total dominance of two films, no matter what anyone thought of them or other contenders, only added to the monotony.

Other exceptions made it worse, at times cringeworthy: Lady Gaga begging us to feel her song before she sang it; host Jimmy Kimmel asking Malala who spit in whose face, a reference to a video overblown nearly a year ago and long-forgotten now.

Yes, he cracked one stinging, timely joke about how someone can edit 44,000 hours of riot and mayhem into a four minute ad for tourism, but I can’t recall anything else he said. Her matter-of-fact response, “I’d rather talk about peace,” was unforgettable.

Okay, when Kimmel whimpered away from Malala trying to save face–“That was a good answer”–he offered Colin Farrell a question from “Joey in New York.” Farrell lights up, not missing a beat, “Oh, I haven’t seen Joey in years!” But that was Farrell’s joke.

And there were the Disney and Hulu streaming service ads that were hard to distinguish from the ceremony (or each other). They were especially vexing when sandwiched between some of the presenters and recipients who boasted of “the big screen” as the place where films “are meant to be seen.” Last year we saw one actor slap another; this year we hear hints of a territorial war within the industry.

Saving the best for last, let’s consider Sarah Polley’s acceptance of the Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Women Talking:

Miriam Toews wrote an essential novel about a radical democracy in which people who don’t agree on every single issue managed to sit together in a room and carve out a way forward together free of violence. They do so not just by talking but also by listening.

Polley, who also directed the film, began by “thanking the Academy for not being mortally offended by the words ‘women’ and ‘talking’ so close together like that.” Not that anyone needs forgiveness from humorless people, but somehow I feel forgiven for joking that Women Talking is the most redundant title I’ve ever heard.

If that’s not enough, Polley spoke before a formidable backdrop image of Frances McDormand as she appeared in Women Talking. McDormand was also a co-producer of the film. I doubt that the Academy intended the irony, but she has given the Oscars three of its most lasting moments, riveting acceptance speeches for Fargo and Three Billboards in Ebbing Missouri, and a hilarious howl for Nomadland.

Though the cameras never found her, if she was there at all, McDormand made possible this year’s only lasting moment.

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