Category: Reading

I’ll take a rare, reluctant excursion into a topical area I most often avoid (contemporary politics), but I do so in the interest of the worthy topic of language, specifically words, their use and abuse.

I’ve read that during the presidential administration of Gerald Ford, Hollywood comic Don Penny was brought into the White House communications office to improve the president’s wooden delivery.

Now, Gerald Ford was a good man. His transitional tenure in the highest office in the land was marked, as I remember, by steady, mostly uncontroversial initiatives (if you rule out his pardon of Richard Nixon, for which even the liberals ultimately gave him an award and told him he did the right thing in declaring an end to “our long, national nightmare,” i.e., Watergate.

He said of himself, after assuming — in a most unassuming way –the Oval Office ( going from vice president to president in the wake of Nixon’s resignation) that he was “a Ford, not a Lincoln.” He was a humble man.

But it is true — his delivery of speeches put you in mind of another word — soporific (sleep enducing).

So it has been written that, after one trying session with Ford, Don Penny said, “Mr. President, these are words. They mean something.” It was a joke, meant to cure Gerald Ford’s inarticulacy.

But yes, we must all remember — words DO mean something.

The current president is part way through a second term in his broken tenure. His inarticulacy is well-known and, one might suppose, deliberate. He comes under enough fire from the Left without me repeating one wag’s suggestion that he functions with a fourth grade vocabulary. His supporters would say he is plain-spoken. You may notice that he repeats himself often, seemingly in a failed search to find a better. clearer way to say what he’d just said. One might also theorize that this is calculated to drive him point home — twice.

Nonetheless, in Donald Trump’s and all of our mouths, words DO mean something, whether you like them or not. Among the things for which he will be remembered is extreme rhetorical recklessness. This has been noted often by friend and foe alike, and it is clear he never intends to change, short of a divine rhetorical intervention –such as God having Lincoln, Gladstone, or even just Ted Sorensen appear to him in a dream to scold him like a Christmas ghost. “Mind your words, Donald!”

His most recent venture into rhetorical recklessness was to suggest that some members of Congress should be executed for, in an undeniably blatently political gesture, creating a video in which they remind military service members that they don’t have to obey illegal orders.

Well, this is true, if an order can objectively be judged to be illegal. That, of course, is not at all a clear, easily recognizable matter to determine. It could be decided after the inevitable courtmartial.

The subsequent furor among Democrats and the liberal media was a predictable — and partisan – tempest in a tea pot. But even Trump’s partisans were inclined to call it –reckless. Another in the inumerable instances of rhetorical recklessness on the part of Donald Trump. It does not serve him — or the nation — well.

This sort of thing is boundless in our society now dominated by the impulsive world of social media. Trump is our first truly social media president.

There is a way to discuss all matter — to object, affirm, criticize — that is powerful, creative, respectful, useful — if the president would only pay attention to the impact and value of his own words.

To which I’ll add, in despair, ‘ain’t never gonna happen.’ Trump is Trump –rude, crude, ineducable on this score. (How did he ever pass the verbal SATs to get into Yale??) And he is reckless. One prays his recklessness is a superficial calculation to shock on the surface while, again, one prays, he is actually more deliberative in private when he makes the decisions that affect our national and international fortunes. The jury is still out on that.

TRump is given to insulting people. I dislike that very much. That’s recklessness. Perhaps he could at least learn to be creative in his insults and denigrations, like John Randolph of Roanoke who, in describing the corrupt nature of another politician’s speech, famously said, “thy words stinketh like a mackerel in the moonlight.”

I guess that would be an improvement. Better still, Mr. President, how about you just stop hurling insults?) It stinketh!

Harmony, as it happens, is the name of a seriously topical musical of the same name. I wish I’d seen.

It came primarily from a seemingly unlikely source — Barry Minilow, who (though I was not aware of it) is Jewish and in the brilliant twilight of his career, though its most public manifestations were melodic juke box hits like “Copacabana.”

But Harmony is serious business about a seriously discordant period of modern human history.

Why am I writing this?

Because I just happened to stumble on a two-year-old review of the show. (It is my habit never to visit the bathroom, public or private, without something to read. Thus, before heading to the privvy, did I pick up a two-year-old magazine from one of my pack-rat-stacked piles of obscure journals (these admittedly being fire hazards which I insist on keeping around for the fire they ignite in my brain).

On this visit to that periodical, I turned to the “stage” section.

And there it was. Something old but still new on a subject that is, sadly, eternal — the undaunted human spirit amid state tyranny, bigotry and terror. And it was, further, a musically relevant offering from the world of show business that did not have its origin on The Voice or America’s Got Talent –and was not seeking to push some politically correct “message” into my ears and down my throat.

Harmony is about a six-member 1930s comedic German singing group with three Jewish members that gets caught in the raging Nazism of Weimer-era Berlin. It’s based on fact and set in the same milieu that is the setting for Cabaret, among the most celebrated stage and screen hallmarks of Seventies America. The group became so famous that they appeared in more than twenty films and toured internationally with the likes of Marlene Dietrich. Manilow and librettist/lyricist Bruce Sussman, according to the review, “tweaked” the show for a quarter century and “devised a cunning range of songs for both the boys’ cabaret act and to illustrate their off-stage drama.”

If Jersey Boys about the The Four Seasons can offer compelling drama in its contemporanious American context, I can only imagine how much off-stage drama can be drawn from the story of a mixed Jewish/Gentile troupe “stayin’ alive” and hiding in plain sight in the world of the Third Reich.

Again, from the review I learned that the show offers songs ” ranging from “snappy, sometimes slightly naughty comic numbers suitable for debauchery-seeking Weimer nightclub audiences to lush ballads such as the standout duet called Where You Go,’ which is sung by the wives of two of the singers.”

Of course, life on and off stage gets complicated for the group and their families, such as when a fan who also happens to be a Nazi officer informs the singers that they “project the image that Germany is amusing and non-threatening.” (Reminds me of how current Russian, Chinese, Iranian or North Korean shills now and then proffer similar, transparently false assurances that their dreadful societies are fun boxes of freedom and light-hearted amusement.)

Among the group’s edgy efforts while on tour to project the truth about their country’s growing agony — in this case, during a show in Copenhagen — is inclusion in the score of a “witty but chilling song” entitled “Come to the Fatherland” which concludes, Or we’ll come to you.

They survived during Germany’s twelve-year Nazi nightmare. In 1933, they came to Carnegie Hall and the NBC airwaves and were tempted to stay but reluctantly, probably wrongly, feared they would not be welcomed here (this according to this review which, by the way, was written by Kyle Smith for the journal New Criterion in June, 2022.)

The show’s narrator,apparently paralleling Joel Gray’s memorable role as Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret, is an amiable group member named Chip Zien. I get the sense that that was the name of one of the actual group members, the last of whom died in 1998. Some of his commentary, according to reviewer Smith, is “tense” and “regretful.” His “younger self” wishes it had made different choices than, perhaps, to have stayed home during such a dangerous, horrific time for all Europe and the world, thereby giving any measure of aid and comfort to Nazi oppressors.

The the show is also obviously a tribute to all long-suffering Jewry, to all who shielded and protected the singers, and to Holocaust victims. In fact, the 2022 performance took place at the National Yiddish Theatre in the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan.

Barry Manilow is on record saying Harmony is the career achievement of which he is proudest.

Rightly so.

But have there been any subsequent performances of Harmony over the last two years?

Manilow, Sussman and coreographer Warren Carlyle apparently staged the 2022 version on a very limited budget with minimal sets and scenery changes, relying heavily, according to Smith, on video and photoraphic images.

Some college, or even high school drama department or community theater somewhere should take note. A musical that finds a way to seriously yet entertainingly illuminate the problem of anti-semitism would be very timely indeed.

Nothing like a bright, sunny day at the end of August to get you thinking about the environment. I want to save the environment. I like wind and sun. I doubt we can live by wind and sun alone.

But who am I to say so? ( My former colleague Tom Matteo in Massachusetts heats with solar and says he hasn’t had a power bill in three years.)

I’m sure he’s not alone among solar –or wind — boosters. In time, their individual testimonials may heat up the push toward reliance on sun power or turn the blade on wind.

There are skeptics, millions of them, and those whose life-long livlihoods and skill sets and knowledge of the pitfalls of wind and solar are generating abiding objections and warnings about the limitations of sun and wind power. Beyond that, they, like I, would warn against extremes and government coercion when those in power decide they will force us off reliance on fossil fuels.

A weekend ago, I attended a picinic of Local 7 of the United Association of Plumbers and Steamfitters in Upstate New York. There were hot dogs, ribs, wings, the works.

I wound up with a copy of the Association’s trade journal containing an editorial by its General Secretary-Treasurer, Derrick Kualapai.

Seems in our time, I’m not the only one warning against the extremes. Kualapai is the man issuing the warning here — against those who insist adamantly — and sometimes intolerantly –that alternative clean sources (ACS), must be limited to wind and solar. To insist on these sources solely – and I don’t doubt there are many in the environmental movement who do — is, in Kualapai’s words, to insist on “extremely narrow and unrealistic approaches” to the quest for a cleaner environment.

Of, course, Kualapai is a major stakeholder here.

One must always be suspicious of the motives of any writer — of those arguing any point of view — be the motive financial, ideological or what have you. So I invite everyone to be skeptical right along with me. The union for those who earn their living by traditional ways of doing anything might always have ulterior motives for their arguments. But, of course, that does not automtically make their point of view wrong.

Kualapie says his union supports policies that protect and preserve the environment. “Let me be clear at the outset,” he writes in the Journal ( of the United Association), ” we are not climate deniers.” He insists, with the same vigor as those who might attack the union on these grounds, that the union and its members “advocate fiercely for smarth, sensible, decorbonization strategies, including green hydrogen, bioenergy, geothermal and thermal energy networks, as well as advanced nuclear systems, including small modular reactors, and carbon capture utilization and storage.”

Sounds great to this layman, though I don’t know what “capture utilization and storage” is all about except maybe, as the awkward phrasing suggests, the capturing and re-use of carbon that the power industry has managed somehow to store? (Can you tell I was an English major?)

But I’m being told here that these are all options to a narrow focus on wind and solar as exclusive alternative clean sources of energy. Industry stakeholders actually like these alternatives. But I’m being told many in the environmental movement do not.

And Kualapai concludes, “while the UA recognizes the push for wind and solar energy, we’ve also learned that –even with maximum development –they will never solely provide enough power to ensure a sufficient supply of reliable energy for the future.”

“Never” is a challenging word. But that’s what he says, while I’m sure the Green Movement is insisting, ‘never say never” when it comes to wind and solar.

But I ‘m glad I went to the picnic. In the interest of balance, I guess I’ll have to watch for the next picnic held by the Green Lobby. After all, a hot dog is a hot dog, whether you heat it up using gas, wind or solar.

Charcoal briquettes are best.

And in all liklihood, at a Green Lobby event, I’m not likely to be eating meat.

A corn dog will do.

When we hit 35, we posessed 21% of the nation’s wealth. Millenials nearing that average age possess just 3% of the nation’s household wealth.

So says a fascinating volume noted below that broke upon the scene almost three years ago.

It has been alleged in various quarters that our bid for personal freedom ended up destroying the institutions and restraints that made freedom safe and possible.

The book containing those charges is Boomers: The Men and Women who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster. (Sentinel, 2021)

I’ve only scratched the surface and so cannot make a good case for or against Andrews’s dire thesis. But, being a Boomer, I’m certainly interested in exploring her less than throroughly rosie exploration of the civilizational contributions — or desecrations — of Steve Jobs, Aaron Sorkin, Heffrey Sachs, Sonia Sotomayor — Boomers all, and all, among others, scrutinized in this book . And, of course, of millions of others (including, as I’ve indicated, myself), will have to examine our own consciences and our sense of our own contributions or divigations.

To mention just one person:

Camille Paglia has always interested me, a flashy Boomer contrarian. I don’t hear much about her lately.

But I agree with those who admire her for resenting the over-elevation of pop culture and the denegration of academia — and, with critic/observer Michael Brendon Dougherty’s mordent aside about “the naivete’ of a generation that thought the worst effects of free love could be handled tidily by penicillin.”

But Dougherty concedes, “If Boomers are going to die with nearloy three-fifths of our nation’s wealth (which apparently Andrews’s book maintains), “we had better find a way to be written into their last wills.”

I’m one Boomer who doesn’t expect to reap that bonanza. So I know no one will be interested in finding their way into my will.

Not a post-Boomer soul.