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?
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 BigShort 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)
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.
Heard today that a university task force wants to ban students and faculty from using several words and phrases on campus.
No, not a public school in Florida, but a private institution here in Massachusetts named for Louis Brandeis, a legendary Supreme Court Justice from 1916 to 1939 who said:
If there be a time to expose through discussion the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
Apparently, what happened at Brandeis University was not so much about misconceptions and false statements, but about individual words that might, well, trigger a student’s unpleasant memory and, in keeping with recent movements to restrict education in K-12 schools across the country, make him or her uncomfortable.
Reason I hesitate with the word “trigger” is that it is one of the words. “Trigger” may trigger a memory of gun violence, something that a considerable percentage of college students have either experienced at some close proximity, if not first hand. Says my source who has been teaching college in Boston these past twenty years since I left higher ed, “in any class of twenty students, you’ll have at least two or three.”
Might seem easy to dismiss this as a simple, innocuous accommodation. Sure, we can make the same points, teach the same lessons with, please forgive the pun, less loaded words. But do we want teachers to be so guarded that they self-censor their natural style? And what of comparisons and metaphors? Does a history teacher avoid comparing, say, the propaganda in Nazi Germany to a disease because some students likely have lost love ones to that disease?
Oh, sorry! That comparison was ruled off-limits long before Ron DeSantis was born, maybe about when Brandeis University, sponsored by the Jewish community, was founded in 1948.
Off limits or not, my comparison is calculated because it was triggered.
Earlier today I was on the phone to a friend in Florida and asked if she saw the clip of Donald Trump, with his characteristic repetition, telling the CPAC convention, “I am your warrior, I am your justice… I am your retribution, I am your retribution.”
Thought she’d want to know that, in our shared ancestral homeland a century ago, Benito Mussolini rose to power by repeatedly claiming, All’Italia serve un vendicatore! (“Italy needs an avenger.”)
Reminded of what was happening on the other side of the Alps, she was already going ballistic and cut me off:
Jesus, Mary, and Fred! That’s what they heard in the 1920s and 30s: ‘They beat us in World War I, time for us to beat them! And I alone can do it! Follow me!’
Adolf Hitler may never have used those exact phrases, but he did sell himself to a demoralized, defeated German public as their lone hope for a better future. If you allow for translation, the pitch was identical: Deutschland uber alles = “America First.” So, too, the justification: Lugenpresse = “Fake News.” As for the ridiculing nicknames and slurs, Hitler’s favorite, abschaum = Trump’s frequent, “scum.”
During the week of this writing, one of his tweets calls the Manhattan District Attorney investigating the payment of hush money: “HUMAN SCUM” (caps his), “an animal,” and a “degenerate psychopath” who “hates the USA.”
Also, as happens with all political cults of personality, their followers don’t hesitate to ridicule, condemn, threaten, and in some cases attack, harm, and kill anyone the leader names as a scapegoat for their problems. Within hours of that Tweet, death threats poured in to the Manhattan DA’s office, just as in 2018, within days of his claim of a “caravan of immigrants” about to cross the Rio Grande, aided and abetted by Jewish philanthropists, 11 people were shot to death in a Pittsburgh synagogue.
Is it possible that Donald Trump’s most outlandish claim was not wild exaggeration as we all thought, but an understatement? He could shoot someone and get away with it in 2016. By now he can don a black wig with a flattened angle to one side of his forehead with a little square mustache under his nostrils, and still have no one on a national platform dare compare him to Hitler.
Where’s Charlie Chaplin when we need him?
Following the terrorist attacks in Paris in January, 2015, Several European parliaments considered outlawing satire aimed at organized religions. The series of attacks were triggered–a professor at Brandeis might say “prompted”–by satirical cartoons in a magazine named Charlie Hebdo depicting the Prophet Mohammed in ways that Muslim extremists found offensive.
The English parliament invited comments from those who might have insights into the conflict of faith and comedy, and they soon heard from Salman Rushdie who told them that laughter is thought:
The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.
If that’s true of jokes, it must be true of comparisons. Or do we no longer distinguish between comparison and equation?
Better question may be, do we no longer distinguish between schools and nursing homes?
Easy to say that there’s no comparison between a ban on several words at a small university in Waltham, Mass., and the outright censorship of history, theory, and ideas that the governor and Republican-controlled legislature have in mind for all public schools in America’s fourth-largest state.
Especially when we consider that at least twenty Republican-controlled states are waiting to see the result and, if Florida Gov. DeSantis is successful, repeat it–just as they all pounced on reproductive rights with bans as soon as the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.
Admittedly, the comparison is minimal. However, although a blueberry will never be mistaken for a cantalope, both are fruit.
The fruit borne by seemingly minor accommodations like Brandeis’ ban is that it undermines any objections to Florida’s. And, oh by the way, it was liberals, not conservatives, who called for bans on Huckelberry Finn for years before anyone used the word “woke,” heard the term “critical race theory,” or insisted that we “Don’t say gay.” There’s a word for those who accuse others of what they themselves do, and the degree to which they do it does not lessen it. If it’s fruit, it’s fruit. It’s not one percent fruit or ten percent fruit. It is fruit.
This may be too late for the university, but the rest of us need to heed its namesake’s advice:
… the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
Is it possible that our seven-decade ban on any comparison to Hitler and the Nazis left us unable to identify and understand the rise of Donald Trump?
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Quite the motto! If the words “even unto” and “innermost parts” mean anything at all, then some ad hoc committee today might deem them uncomfortable. In 1948, “truth” was a promise. Today it’s a threat:
Picture, if you will, a sword raised by an arm unattached to a body.
Now picture, directly below it, a man, standing alone.
Sounds like a video game—rated M for moronic—until you visualize the man as a Native American from colonial times, a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. With that, it becomes history.
It is the Massachusetts state flag.
The text on the banner: Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem (“By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty”).
In recent years, petitions have aimed to ditch the flag for a new one. Some want to simply ditch the armed, unmanned yet manly arm.
Does an arm all by itself have the right to bear arms? Even if it’s in a sleeve? Sorry if that’s barely a joke, but our state flag sure lends a whole new meaning to the term “arm in arm.”
And with a state name that sounds like a sneeze, it is decapitation waiting to happen.
Simply put, there’s no question that a sword raised over a flexed arm is poised to strike. On the flag, there is only one possible target, and he happens to be Native American.
Hence, opponents denounce the image as an expression of violence in service to white supremacy.
Defenders of the flag note that the sword is a replica of one wielded by Myles Standish, representing American victory in the Revolution. They also claim that the arrow in the Wampanoag’s hand is pointed downward as a sign of peace.
Would they also approve the historical record of a new flag, among many proposed (albeit satirically), with an Indian arm wielding a tomahawk over a strolling Puritan carrying a Bible?
Put all politics aside, and regard this in terms of history, logic, and clarity.
Standish lived and died an Englishman, a military advisor for a colony, not for a state born 120 years after he died.
Also, while the Pilgrims just off the Mayflower made peace, the hard-driving Puritans soon followed. After those peaceful—dare I say multiracial?—dinners in the 1620s, massacres topped the colonial menu in the 1630s.
That includes the Mystic Massacre in present-day Connecticut which wiped out an entire Pequot village, killing more than 700 men, women and children.
There’s a reason why the doomed ship in Moby-Dick is named “The Pequod.”
And, yes, it was a village, as many tribes had contrary to the contrived myth that has justified European theft of “unused” land.
The complaint of those who prefer myths–How will we know our history?–is always a defense of things that distort and hide our history.
True, tribes at times retaliated without discriminating between the innocent and the guilty, and some tribes collaborated with the English against other tribes.
But even that belies the claim of peace to justify the armed arm on the Bay State flag.
If a sword clearly poised to strike “stands for peace,” then maybe January 6 was “a normal tourist day.” Such was the history and logic that US Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) had in mind when he quoted Voltaire during the second impeachment hearing:
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
In that case, history and logic are a lost cause, so let’s try clarity.
The primary function of a flag is that it be immediately understood from afar. Sure, some details will need a closer look, but you get the big picture.
Last year, friends willingly exchanged their easily grasped six-colored rainbow flag for one with a five-colored triangle superimposed on the hoist side.
The result is an incoherent, eleven-colored eyesore, but try pointing that out and you’ll be called an enemy of diversity and inclusion no matter that you’re talking only about graphic design.
Those defending the Bay State flag are just as oblivious to confusion and graphic failure, reacting only to the intended content they favor.
For all that, there’s another, perhaps more compelling reason to change or replace it.
In early 1986, my daughter, still seven, saw a picture of Alaska’s eight-star flag and came to me: “Dad, let’s go to as close to the Big Dipper and North Star as we can get.”
Picture, if you will, a seven-year-old looking at the menacing confusion of an armed, bodyless arm that appears to be reaching out of a grave poised to slash downward at the head of any person of any description.
Now, can you picture the child wanting to go there?
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While preparing this, my friend Kurt Kaletka of Watertown informs me that Utah just adopted a new flag that will become official next year. Apparently there was no political controversy over any content. It was purely a matter of having a more modern, dynamic, visually pleasing design that is immediately recognizable at a distance:
Very similar in style to my favorite of the few dozen proposals for a new Massachusetts flag, designed by one E. Cashman. Yes, that’s a mayflower floating on a sea of blue between fields of green and cranberry bogs:
Kurt also tells me that the original seal for Massachusetts “featured a Wampanoag with a speech bubble coming out of his mouth begging, ‘Come over and help us’”:
He found it in a Culture Quarks, a blog by Rodney Aist who describes the distinct relationships of the Pilgrims and Puritans with the native tribes. I highly recommend it, link below, for anyone wanting to know Massachusetts’ colonial history. In one paragraph in particular, Aist could be writing not just of settlement in New England, but of Manifest Destiny across the continent:
The seal beckons the Christian to mission and evangelism — in reality, to actions too often expressed in events such as the Mystic Massacre. Of course, the Indians weren’t looking for help, nor did they receive any. The seal was simply a self-interested invitation to come and ‘help yourself’ and an officially smug reminder to the Puritans that God was on their side.
Those of you outside Massachusetts may not have heard this, and I’ll bet that many of you inside may not have heard it either, but our state flag is under attack.
I’ll let the image speak for itself and welcome anyone to decide if the critics are right that it appears to be an imminent act of violence against a Native American. Or if the raised sword is a patriotic reminder of the American revolution while the arrow pointing to the ground is a symbol of the Pilgrims making peace with the Wampanoag tribe.
Is the juxtaposition purely coincidental?
Before long I’ll let you know what I think, but for now I offer a column I had in the Newburyport Daily News 35 years ago next month on the subject of state flags, prompted by my daughter, then about to turn ten, telling me that a picture of Alaska’s seven-star flag made her want to visit the state.
Of the Bay State flag, I said nothing of the offense, real or imagined, nor did I remark on the Confederate imagery on three flags of Southern states, but I still think my reason for disarming the flag–or disposing of it entirely–is more compelling than the case being made today.
Since this was written in 1988, the last lines were a comparison of the flag to the presidential campaign of Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. I have replaced those lines with something relevant today:
State flags: history that is sewn
When they were designed and first raised, they represented all the things most important to those who lived under them. Yet today, they are barely recognized–or noticed for that matter.
How many readers of this paper, for instance, can describe the figure inside the blue shield on the Massachusetts flag, or what raises what above that shield?
Of the original 13 states, only the Carolinas do not feature coats of arms or state seals, unless the palmetto tree is South Carolina’s seal.
Maryland may claim our most unusual flag. Founded by two families who wanted their rectangular coats intact, Maryland quartered, rather than halved, its flag. Each coat tyhus gained cross-corners–one an elaboratre play of black and yellow, the other a stately arrangement of red and white. The result is something you’d expect to find flying over a ski-lodge in Liechtenstien.
Few flags feature anything other than red, white, or blue as a prominent color, although three are set on attactive light shades of blue. Delaware has “colonial blue,” while South Dakota and Oklahoma have fields of “azure blue.”
Geographically relevant flags of Arizona and New Mexico feature the yellow and gold of southwest deserts. Arizona flames with sunset or sunrise, while New Mexico tenders the subtle and sparse Zia Pueblo design of the sun.
Surprisingly, there is only one green flag out of fifty. More surprisingly, it does not fly over Vermont, a name that means “Green Mountain.” Not surprisingly, it belongs to the “Evergreen State” and features a portrait of its namesake, George Washington, in its centered seal.
Washington’s eccentric neighbor has the only two-sided flag, a dark blue field with the Oregon seal on one side and a golden beaver on the other–a welcome reminder that, before the buffalo (found on Wyoming’s flag), the beaver was the most lucrative New World prize in the eyes of European fashionistas.
Only nine flags lack anything resembling an emblem in their center, although Nevada puts its “Battle Born” insignia in the upper left. And state names appear on thirty flags, including South Dakota and Idaho which name themselves twice–once on the seal and again across the bottom.
While Idaho and Maine compete for best potatoes, their flags compete for best motto. Other states carry phrases with predicable words including “liberty,” “equality,” “union,” “rights,” and in the single word under Rhode Island’s anchor, “hope.” Give me Maine’s Dirigo (“I direct”), or give me Idaho’s Esto Perpetua (“Live Forever”).
Four flags carry the slogans of our currency: Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Dakota with E pluribus unum; Florida with “In God We Trust” on St. Andrew’s crimsom cross it shares with Alabama.
Kentucky and Missouri share the historic line that became an theme song on campuses in the Sixties: “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” In a similar spirit, New York’s colorfully meticulous shield is underscored by a single word: Excelsior (“onward and upward”).
Hawai’i’s flag is the only one to incorporate the Union Jack; only those of Georgia, Mississippi, and Arkansas have Confederate themes, although Tennessee’s three white stars in a blue circle on a red field hint at it. In fact, those stars represent the three distinct topographical divisions in that most underrated, scenically elegant land.
Ohio has the only non-rectangular flag. A swallow-tailed “burghee,” its red-white-and-blue stars-and-stripe design makes it unmistakably American nonetheless.
For a detailed description of the geography, people, animals, tools, bridges, buildings, flora and fauna shown on each, check Your State Flag in the reference room of most libraries. The book contains full-page color photos of all fifty, as do other reference books and atlases.
Daughter Rachel piqued my interest two years back when she read about Alaska’s seven-star flag in National Geographic’s World and talked me into a trip to “as close as we can get to the Big Dipper and the North Star.”
That and the lumbering bear of the “California Republic” may be her favorites, though I might pick Louisiana’s mother pelican with wings spread over three chicks looking up to her. Warm and earnest, their faces have a cartoon quality that is alive and upbeat–a true travellers’ flag.
What’s the worst flag? Well, Arkansas’ diamond design looks like a label for something that will never be sold over a counter. But there’s only one foolisly incongrous flag:
An Indian on a European shield beneath a disembodied arm weilding a sword? Can anyone imagine a child looking at that and saying, “Hey, Dad! Let’s go here!”
The text on the banner: Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem (“By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty”).
Most people looking for a change want nothing more than the removal of the arm and sword. Type massachusetts state flag proposals redesign into a search engine for about two dozen proposed new flags, many of them quite attractive and acceptable to most everyone asking for change. My pick:
From designer E. Cashman:
The flower is a mayflower, which is the state flower and also the name of the vessel which carried the original Pilgrims over to Plymouth, MA. It represents the courage of the civilians of Massachusetts and honors the people who helped start the foundations of America. The cranberry red, blue and green are the State colors: Green represents the rolling hills and lush forest life, blue represents the ocean, and red represents the cranberry, which is the state berry and the state drink. The flower also has six petals to represent the fact that Massachusetts was the sixth state to ratify the US Constitution. The only reason I added the dividing lines was because each color is pretty dark, so the white fimbriation lines add contrast and make the flag more attractive to the eye.
As the dermatologist hovered over me ready to apply a blade to my neck, he was considerate enough to ask:
“Are you a fan of country music, or is this torture?”
Had I been honest, I’d have told him that listening to it for ten minutes in the operating room awaiting his arrival was, in fact, torture. But now that I was pre-occupied, why risk offending someone who literally has a knife on your throat?
“No, I’m not a fan, but I don’t mind it.”
I waited for him to ask what I am a fan of, but instead he said, “Here’s the anesthetic.”
“Yes, I’m a fan of anesthesia.”
He laughed and began cutting, and I opened up in more ways than one. “I like their voices. I’d give anything to have Larry Gatlin’s voice, or Dan Tyminski’s. But I wish they’d sing about other things. I can’t stand all that pickup trucks and cheeetin harrrts bullshit.”
One of the perks of senior citizenry is that you can say all kinds of outrageous things and have everyone humor you. The tugging on my neck ceased as the doctor, less than half my age I dare say, chuckled, as did the even younger attendant on the other side of me.
“Might be a good idea if you didn’t make me laugh while I do this,” he offered.
“Sorry,” I said before falling silent. And as if right on cue, a song that sounded nothing like the others filled the room, a much slower tempo with a rhythym and feel much like Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.”
“I like this one,” I started to say. “Ouch!” I blurted.
“Sorry. Did that hurt?”
“No, no pain. Just uncomfortable. All that tugging. I’ll live.”
He continued the procedure, and I was relieved that he didn’t notice the irony. It’s the doctor who’s supposed to tell the patient that he or she will live, not the other way around. Had he noticed, he might have laughed, and I might not have lived.
A few songs later, he stopped and asked the attendant to mop some blood: “So you liked that song?”
“Yes, but did you notice that the next song was about dying? The singer kept repeating a lyric that he was about to die. Here I am on an operating table, and you’re playing music about someone about to die!”
He kept a straight face, though the effort was noticeable: “Do you want me to remove the cyst or not?”
“Yes, I’m ready.”
He set back to work, but I was now in some kind of zone that did not allow me to shut up: “Couple years ago I was in a dentist’s waiting room with a few other patients when the song ‘We Gotta Get out of This Place’ came on.”
No response. I tried again: “Reminds me of a place I worked where, when you called and they put you on hold, the first song was always The Kinks’ ‘So Tired, Tired of Waiting, Tired of Waiting for You-ou-ou’.”
The procedure was halted as I sang the extended title, and the room was silent for a couple seconds until the young doctor matter-of-factly stated: “You know, Mr. Garvey, this could be ruled a suicide.”
“Well, if all that country music didn’t kill me, I don’t see how anything can.”
He and the attendant both cracked up, and then he said: “We’re almost done.”
No sooner did I resolve to remain silent than song came on with an opening line about a guy going to a karaoke bar. I held my tongue, but I was itching to tell the doctor how, whenever I hear people debate evolution vs. intelligent design, I insist that karaoke disproves both.
Only thing worse than karaoke may well be someone singing about karaoke.
The singer was smitten by a woman who took the mic, but she drove a Ford and he drove a Chevy, and I couldn’t tell which pickup they took from California to Carolina or if one chased the other, price of gas and carbon footprint be damned.
Nor did I ask the doctor. He was finished with my neck, and I wanted to make sure it stayed that way.
Objections to the teaching of anything about race or racism in American history on the grounds that it will make white students uncomfortable or feel guilty have an obvious answer.
Simply emphasize the roles of white men and women who formed the Abolitionist movement, fought for Emancipation, conducted many routes of the Underground Railroad, stood up to Jim Crow, marched in the Civil Rights movement, and who have assisted and promoted minority political, religious, and business leaders whose influence is felt to this day.
Yes, there were many bad white people, but there have been many good ones all along. For every Abraham Lincoln and William Lloyd Garrison, there were hundreds of white men and women in cities and towns stretching from Boston to Cincinnati who transported, hid, and housed those who escaped slavery en route to Canada.
Even the worst events–East St. Louis in 1917, Tulsa in 1921–had at least a few white people who tried to stop what other whites did.
Fill the text books and lectures with their names and stories, and see how many white students identify with them rather than with those who promoted or accepted slavery, segregation, and discrimination because it benefitted them. See how much pride white students might take in white ancestors who were on the right side of history.
For some balance, be sure to include talk of African-Americans who sided with the plantation owners, who kept other enslaved people in line, who aided and abetted the Confederate Army. There’s a reason that the most menacing slavecatcher in the 2019 film Harriet was a Black man.
This is not to say we should emphasize white contributions over those of African-Americans. Any measure of one against the other is irrelevant. All that matters is that every student has someone they can identify with, someone they can look at with pride.
All of this occurs to me while reading biographies of such activist politicians as Thaddeus Stevens (the Pennsylvania congressman played by Tommy Lee Jones in the 2012 film Lincoln) and writers such as Maria Weston Chapman and her abolitionist sisters. How is it that those most devoted to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence go unmentioned in history texts while those who took up arms against our country have their names over–and statues of them just outside–many school doors?
Call it “Consensus History.”
In a 2008 book, Past Imperfect, Charles Peter Hoffer explains that, even before Reconstruction ended, the national mood was to forget all that happened.
Politicians and preachers, to borrow a phrase, told of very fine soldiers on both sides. “Valor” became a code word to indicate that no one was at fault. As if America fielded one huge Blue & Grey Army, every soldier and officer in it a hero for us all.
Businesses advertised products with soothing myths and servile stereotypes such as “Aunt Jemima” and Cream of Wheat’s black chef, “Rastus.”
Northern publishers vied for Southern readers. History texts started describing the enslaved as “happy,” “content,” “well cared for” and “treated like family.” Since no publisher was going to foot the bill for separate school texts, books sold in New England were the same as those that whistled Dixie—a practice that lasts to this day, and which also explains why labor history is absent from most school textbooks.
Confederate statues started appearing throughout the South, while Northern apologists for slavery–“doughfaces” as they were called for their willingness to allow the South to dictate their expressions–were rehabilitated in the North.
Here in Newburyport, for example, the Kent Street Common, a park set aside for the public in the 1830s, was renamed in 1890 for Caleb Cushing, a former mayor, US Rep., and the US Attorney General who supported the Dred Scott decision. His Southern sympathy ran so deep that he maintained correspondence with his good friend Jefferson Davis after secession, a violation of Pres. Lincoln’s wartime order–and therefore an act of treason.
Today, you cannot find more than ten people out of Newburyport’s 19,000 who realize that Cushing Park is named for a traitor.
Nor would they want to. All for the same reason that my “simple” proposal for “Role Model History” might be rejected by those who use terms such as “cancel culture” and “woke” and “critical race theory” as all-purpose excuses to ban all talk of race and racism in public schools.
Are they as worried about having their children identify with activist role models, with people motivated more by what’s best for all than by what’s-in-it-for-me?
Years before we ever heard the word “woke,” Doris “Granny D” Haddock, a white woman who at the age of 90 walked from Los Angeles to Washington DC to raise awareness for campaign finance reform, put it this way:
If we Americans are split into two meaningful camps, it is not conservative versus liberal. The two camps are the politically awake and the hypnotized.
The second camp is under a spell so strong that it can’t even recognize the contradiction of opposing what they call “cancel” while promoting anything called a “ban.” Much less than they can see or hear that “woke” is an abbreviated form of “aware.” If they did, would they want the Book of Revelations stripped from the Bible? “Revelation” does mean “made aware,” so the book is “woke” by their own imagined definition.
Hypnotized, indeed!
If there can be Consensus History, there can be Role Model History. Let’s give it a chance to break that spell.
I am a liar. So is everyone who ever taught American history in an American school.
Though I quit lying in classrooms twenty years ago, I have continued to lie about American history and governance in my writings. And my former colleagues continue to lie to American youth.
All of which may be a moot point. After all, what teenager today with a IQ higher than that of a popsicle stick could possibly believe that, “in America,” as we so profoundly intone, “no man is above the law”?
Unless Attorney General Merrick Garland has come out of his coma between the time I write this and the time you read it, it’s not just “one man” above American law, but a whole crime family.
More than one, as you can see in the Oscar-nominated documentary, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which tells of how the Sackler family dodged liability for their opiod scam. All they had to do was take their billions out of Purdue Pharma’s account and put it in another, untouchable bank account. All the pesky lawsuits from the families of 500,000 people killed by the addiction? Settled for a mere $6 million.
If that strategy sounds familiar, it’s likely because you heard a year ago that most all funds were transferred from the “Trump Organization” under investigation in New York for defrauding charities. All of it went into a brand new account with the Trump name on it. All of it now untouchable.
You may also recall hearing during the 2016 presidential campaign that numerous lawsuits in at least four states had been filed against the fraud known as Trump University. All the pesky lawsuits from students holding worthless degrees? Settled for a mere $25,000 here or there, as well as contributions to the campaign coffers of at least three attorneys general.
Keep in mind, too, that in these cases the name Trump stands not just for the father, but for the sons, the daughter, and the holy rollers who worship the example they set, who do believe that tax evasion shows that someone is “smart.”
Who knew that, when Republicans talk of “family values,” they mean crime families?
Another term for this is “corporate socialism. ” As a Newburyport Daily News reader wrote after the paper ran my column on the train derailment in Ohio:
While the Republicans rail at socialism for people–Medicare, social security, etc.–they ignore, as do most Democrats, the way the so-called “free market” is socialized by corporate law, bankruptcy law, patent law, etc. Those laws have led directly to the massive inequality we have. The amount of asset shifting by those laws is enormous.*
Though he was talking about the railway industry’s grip on the Republican Party and its fingers on many Democrats, he was citing the very laws the Sacklers had used to escape penalties for knowingly pushing an addictive drug. I wrote back to tell him of the film I just saw, and to ask what more he knew of laws unfamiliar to me. He obliged:
Another “corporate socialism” issue arises in the context of patents. Although they allegedly inspire inventions, in many cases they are used by large corporations to shelve improvements that would cost them money or markets. Should someone in the “free market” not be allowed to reproduce a product, especially if they can do it cheaper? Why does the “inventor” get a seventeen-year head start. Also, many high-end labs, for example, require their employees to assign any patent rights to the lab, not just the inventor. I think that system is also a bit twisted.
His phrase “shelve improvements” lit another light-bulb. Back in the 80s, the “big three” American auto manufacturers were, with the aid of the Reagan Administration, able to suppress the development and marketing of electric cars. We can only wonder how many other products have been ditched, how much sustainable technology shunned for the sake of bottom lines.
As Granny D told us, “When elections are for sale, so is our freedom.”
On the subject of bottom lines, a neighbor chimed in with another comparison of my take on the train derailment to the pharmaceutical industry:
The one subject no one has researched is the power of pharmaceuticals in this country and the fact that more people are dying from prescriptions than street drugs. Three decades ago, you were in the minority if you needed daily meds; now, you are in the minority if you do not need medication. Cholesterol drugs have been listed as one of the top causes of ALS, and a recent publication stated the FDA is not reporting these adverse effects. –Probably because the membership has personally invested in stocks.
She didn’t name anyone, but her note is another sharp reminder that Republicans do not have an entire monopoly on crime family values. Big Pharma’s biggest hooks are in Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) whose daughter, Heather Bresch, was CEO of Mylan Inc. Mylan specializes in generic drugs and made national news in 2016 when it raised the price of a two-pack of EpiPen from $124 to $609.
Did I call myself and many other American teachers liars for parroting the ridiculous idea that no one is above the law? Or that the term “free market” is anything more than a cynical joke? I’ll do it again for promoting the myth that America is governed by the persuasion of merit, not by the influence of money.
Of course, if I’m ever charged with any crime based on what I’ve ever said, I could just use the excuse made by one of Donald Trump’s lawyers defending herself in the suit filed by Dominion Voting, a line quite similar to a defense used by lawyers representing Fox “News” against libel suits in recent years:
No reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact.
First thing to be said of Living is that it’s a film about idealism.
By now you’ve heard that it’s about an elderly man–a “humorless civil servant” as the promos tell us–learning that he has less than a year to live, regrets that his life has been devoted to little more than pushing papers, and decides he wants to enjoy life, “but I don’t know how.”
The bubbly, chatting, joking presence of a newcomer to the office he supervises helps steer him toward making a mark on the world. Not wanting to give too much away, let’s just say it will be a mark of joy.
By the time the credits roll, he will sing the Scottish lament, “The Rowan Tree,” a song aimed straight at the tear-duct but with the smile of nostalgia. His earlier “don’t know” becomes “I don’t have time to get angry.”
Could compare the arc of Living to Dickens’ ChristmasCarol. Mr. Williams (Bill Nighy) is no Scrooge, but the diagnosis of a terminal illness is as jarring as the appearance of any number of ghosts. If ghosts terrified Scrooge to change his ways, Ms. Harris (Aimee Lou Wood) amuses Williams to do the same. Another newcomer to the office full of desks piled high with paperwork, much of which “we can keep here for a while,” is the baby-faced Mr. Wakeling (Alex Sharp) whose assistance, as devoted as Bob Cratchit to Scrooge, causes Williams to entrust him with keeping that mark alive.
Living also inverts Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener.” From “A Story of Wall Street” to a look at London’s carefully timed financial district, and from scriveners to accountants. But this time its the guy in charge who finds out that he would prefer to. Not “not to,” but to. Or, to be, rather than not be. And it’s the newcomer who serves him best and tells his story.
There could be three Oscar nominations for those roles, but Nighy has the only one for Lead Actor in a performance as subtle as Anthony Hopkins in his prime. If subtlety is power, then Living is as powerful as any entry on the Best Picture list. Despite that, it’s only other nomination is for Adapted Screenplay, adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 classic film, Ikiru.
A story that seems to end halfway in, Living is born anew with each of the four accountants Williams supervised adding a scene they witnessed as a piece of a puzzle, the full picture realized only upon completion. All of it good news adding up to a testament.
Wakeling frames the puzzle, delivering a eulogy to a young cop who had worried about failing Williams. His reassuring hand on the cop’s shoulder as he leaves may as well have been that of Williams’, a visual echo.
Wakeling also serves as our stand-in. The film begins and ends with him. If Harris was Williams’ inspiration, Wakeling is his legacy. Can he protect the mark Williams made? Part of that mark was to make Wakeling an idealist. Can he make marks of his own?
He wants to. But you’ll have to see what the film has to say about that–a film that asks us what we have to say about any idealism of our own.
Mouth of the River 