The Nixon Collection At Club 21 NYC

May 15, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Culture | Leave a Comment 

Courtesy of reader Tom Van Oosterom:

Resting nicely — and very well aged — next to Liz Taylor’s:

Featured Articles — April 4, 2009

April 4, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Culture, Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

G20: A ‘new world order’ is simply fantasy By Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph
The international act of posturing was pointless; because despite having caused the problem, the political class had none of the requisite skills to sort it out, says Simon Heffer.

The West’s Fatal Overdose By Gabor Steingart, Der Spiegel
The G-20 has agreed on plans to fight the global downturn. But its approach will only lay the foundation for the next, bigger crisis. Instead of “stability, growth, jobs,” the summit’s real slogan should have been “debt, unemployment, inflation.”

Obama Wants to Control the Banks By Stuart Varney, The Wall Street Journal
I must be naive. I really thought the administration would welcome the return of bank bailout money. Some $340 million in TARP cash flowed back this week from four small banks in Louisiana, New York, Indiana and California. This isn’t much when we routinely talk in trillions, but clearly that money has not been wasted or otherwise sunk down Wall Street’s black hole. So why no cheering as the cash comes back?

Geithner’s vision was born on the Sage of Omaha’s desk. By Michael Hirsh, Newsweek
Tim Geithner dismisses the idea that he is manipulated by Wall Street. And indeed the Treasury secretary, a career Washington technocrat, has never worked on the Street. But that doesn’t mean the kings of finance aren’t influencing Geithner now. In fact, the public-private partnership plan that Geithner laid out with great fanfare last week to address the “legacy” assets issue was first conceived by Warren Buffett.

North Korea: Time for Strategy By Douglas Paal, Carnegie Endowment
North Korea is poising to fire a long-range missile in the guise of a satellite launch, sometime between April 4 and 8. This is in plain defiance of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1718 of 2006, which banned missile tests in the aftermath of Pyongyang’s first nuclear weapons test.

Congress’s great dynastic hope By Editors, The Economist
TO THE buzz of an approaching helicopter, 30,000 people arise in Wardha, in the dead centre of India, and start waving at the sun-bleached sky. Rahul Gandhi—the 38-year-old heir to India’s great political dynasty; son, grandson and great-grandson of prime ministers; and leader in waiting of their Congress party—is coming.

The Revolution Is Not Being Televised

April 1, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Music, Nixon Administration | Leave a Comment 

..at least on YouTube.

Annals Of The Obama Administration

March 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Annals of the Obama Administration, Culture, Faith, History, International Affairs, Latin America, Obama administration, Religion, Secretary Clinton | Leave a Comment 

SOS Clinton’s reset button gaffe was explained as having been the result of moving her political apparat to Foggy Bottom. 

But news arrives from her Mexican trip that fits into the “you couldn’t make something like this up” category of world class diplomatic blunders.  

On Friday she visited the most sacred of Mexican sites: the Basilica of the nation’s patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Mrs. Clinton can be excused for not being personally aware of the history of the shrine and the miraculous painting.  That’s why there are legions of staff at State to prepare briefing books and pithy remarks.  (And I know there’s no reason why she, or anyone at State, should be as intrigued as I am by the story of the Virgin’s eyes, which is something like the western hemisphere’s Shroud of Turin.)

But nothing can prepare you for the sheer tin ear incompetence of what actually went down.  Here’s the Catholic News Agency’s account.   Read it and cringe.  

During her recent visit to Mexico, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an unexpected stop at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and left a bouquet of white flowers “on behalf of the American people,” after asking who painted the famous image.

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously imprinted by Mary on the tilma, or cloak, of St. Juan Diego in 1531. The image has numerous unexplainable phenomena, such as the appearance on Mary’s eyes of those present in the room when the tilma was opened and the image’s lack of decay.

Mrs. Clinton was received on Thursday at 8:15 a.m. by the rector of the Basilica, Msgr. Diego Monroy.

Msgr. Monroy took Mrs. Clinton to the famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which had been previously lowered from its usual altar for the occasion.

After observing it for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked “who painted it?” to which Msgr. Monroy responded “God!”

It’s bad enough already — but it gets worse.  It turns out that she had been there before and still didn’t know what she was seeing.

Clinton then told Msgr. Monroy that she had previously visited the old Basilica in 1979, when the new one was still under construction.

Banality is the mother’s milk of diplomatic diplospeak, but, surely, a worldly Wellesley grad supported by scores of assistant under secretaries and stables of speech writers should be able to come up with something better than this:

After placing a bouquet of white flowers by the image, Mrs. Clinton went to the quemador –the open air area at the Basilica where the faithful light candles- and lit a green candle.

Leaving the basilica half an hour later, Mrs. Clinton told some of the Mexicans gathered outside to greet her, “you have a marvelous virgin!”

Secretary Clinton wrapped up her good will visit to Our Lady of Guadalupe by flying to Houston to receive an award from Planned Parenthood.

This evening [Friday 27 March] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to receive the highest award given by Planned Parenthood Federation of America — the Margaret Sanger Award, named for the organization’s founder, a noted eugenicist. The award will be presented at a gala event in Houston, Texas.

Annals Of The Obama Administration

March 25, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Annals of the Obama Administration, Art, Culture, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

If the politicization of American foreign policy is proceeding Clinton-style at DOS, back at the White House the politicization of American art and culture appears to be proceeding Chicago-style.  

Having dissed the journalistic establishment by blowing off the Gridiron Dinner and ignoring the major print poobahs at Tuesday night’s press conference, it appears that the President is now flipping off all the creative folks who supported him so ardently, and whose hopes for him and what his administration would mean for the arts were so high.

The President recently made three arts-critical appointments of individuals whose resumes are light on arts cred but heavy on political clout.  The fact that these “stealth” appointments were made without any announcement —much less any fanfare— from the  White House delayed the unfavorable reaction that is just now beginning to register.   

So far nobody has pulled out the old “most unlikely appointment since Caligula appointed his horse a Consul” chestnut, but that’s only a matter of time now that Judith H. Dobrzynski has sounded the alarm in her “Blogs & Stories” piece on today’s Daily Beast.  

Her headline sums the situation up neatly: “The arts world is fuming over Obama’s underqualified “arts czar,” and a humanities appointee who lacks a college degree.”  

While the head arts honchos have yet to be appointed, Ms. Dobrzynski reports on the three lower-level but critical appointments of the people who will actually be making things happen.  She calls them “strange at best and, at worst, deflating.  None has much arts expertise; what they do have are political connections.  Bernard, appointed to a key post at the academically minded NEH, never graduated from college, though he claims a bachelor’s degree on his résumé.

Ms. Dobrzynski notes —and dismisses— the predictable defense:

Obama’s defenders say these people don’t need expertise in the arts and humanities, that it’s enough that they’re close to Obama. 

Liaisons to the White House are always political posts. They are involved with all interactions with the White House (and Congress) on things like the budget, agency priorities, and the other political appointments. They work best when the appointments are not highly politicized.

These three appointments seem to be far more politics-as-usual than was expected of the Obama administration. A White House spokesman declined to comment on that directly, but said, “President Obama recognizes that support for creative expression is an important part of who we are as a nation, and he’s committed to ensuring that the arts community has an open line to the White House.”

But, for now, at least, the high-flying arts hopes are falling back to earth. 

The new “arts czar” —who will oversee NEA and NEH for the White House— is a classically politically-charged Chicago lawyer named Kareem Dale.

Take Dale’s stealth appointment as “arts czar.” While the White House has confirmed the appointment to news outlets, no formal announcement has been forthcoming. The only official word on him from the White House came in mid-February, when Dale—who is partially blind—was made special assistant to the president for disability policy. He is currently holding both positions.

Dale—who has both law and MBA degrees from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign—is no slouch, but he has limited experience in the arts: He worked as a volunteer on Obama’s Arts Policy Committee, then as a paid staffer (becoming the campaign’s disability-vote director). He was president of the board of Chicago’s Black Ensemble Theatre, where he helped raise $15 million to finance a new building. His father, who owns R.J. Dale Advertising and Public Relations, preceded him on the board, as chairman. Both the father—Robert J., but known as Bob—and son are members of Chicago’s vibrant African-American network and longtime Obama donors.

At NEH the new Director of White House and Congressional Affairs is Geoffrey Bernard.  Dobrzynski calls this appointment an “even stranger fit” than art czar Dale.

Co-founder of B & G Associates in Los Angeles, a political fund-raising and strategic-planning firm, he raised millions of dollars for the Obama campaign with his partner, Rufus Gifford, the “G” in B & G.

Gifford was recently named finance director of the Democratic National Committee; Bernard was a superdelegate to the Democratic Convention. The pair cuts a wide path through L.A., and on March 10, the Washington Post named them “leading candidates for Washington’s new same-sex power couple.”

B & G’s website says Bernard worked in real estate and cable television before getting into politics. He also did campaign work for President Clinton, who rewarded him with an appointment to the presidential advisory committee of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and is involved with social-justice organizations. As for connections to the humanities? Zip.

The website also says that “Jeremy holds a bachelor’s degree from Hunter College in New York.” But a Hunter spokeswoman, Meredith Helpern, said “He did not graduate from Hunter,” though he did attend. She declined to provide any further information.

At the NEH, Noel Milan, the acting director of public affairs, said, “the documents we have contain no reference to an earned degree. It says he attended Hunter College.” Milan said Bernard did not want to comment.

The third hinky arts appointment is Anita Decker as NEA’s Director of White House and Congressional Affairs (the same position Bernard holds at NEH.) 

She has even less ostensible expertise in the arts, according to published reports. A graduate of the University of Arizona, Decker is from… Chicago!—and has spent her life in Illinois politics. She headed Obama’s downstate office.

The Crime And The Rhyme

March 18, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Art, Culture | Leave a Comment 

Today is the nineteenth anniversary of the robbery at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.  It remains the biggest art heist in history.  The several paintings (Degas, Rembrandt, and Vermeer’s “Lady Writing a Letter”) would now be worth in the neighborhood of $500 million.

The benefactress’ will stipulated that nothing be changed — so the empty frames are still there waiting to be reunited with their erstwhile occupants.

Ulrich Boser has written a new book that describes the bold caper and claims to break some new ground regarding the culprits.

Still among the missing:  Jan Vermeer’s Lady Writing A Letter With Her Maid (circa 1670)

It’s an ill wind that blows absolutely no good — and the Gardner robbery at least inspired a terrific poem by William Carpenter.  It would be going too far to say that the rhyme balances the crime (if for no other reason than that the poem is in free verse).  But when the paintings finally find their way home, it may be looked back on as a case of win/win.

GIRL WRITING A LETTER 

A thief drives to the museum in his black van. The night
watchman says Sorry, closed, you have to come back tomorrow.
The thief sticks the point of his knife in the guard's ear.
I haven't got all evening, he says, I need some art.
Art is for pleasure, the guard says, not possession, you can't
something, and then the duct tape is going across his mouth.
Don't worry, the thief says, we're both on the same side.
He finds the Dutch Masters and goes right for a Vermeer:
"Girl Writing a Letter." The thief knows what he's doing.
He has a Ph.D. He slices the canvas on one edge from
the shelf holding the salad bowls right down to the
square of sunlight on the black and white checked floor.
The girl doesn't hear this, she's too absorbed in writing
her letter, she doesn't notice him until too late. He's
in the picture. He's already seated at the harpsichord.
He's playing the G Minor Sonata by Domenico Scarlatti,
which once made her heart beat till it passed the harpsichord
and raced ahead and waited for the music to catch up.
She's worked on this letter for three hundred and twenty years.
Now a man's here, and though he's dressed in some weird clothes,
he's playing the harpsichord for her, for her alone, there's no one
else alive in the museum. The man she was writing to is dead --
time to stop thinking about him -- the artist who painted her is dead.
She should be dead herself, only she has an ear for music
and a heart that's running up the staircase of the Gardner Museum
with a man she's only known for a few minutes, but it's
true, it feels like her whole life. So when the thief
hands her the knife and says you slice the paintings out
of their frames, you roll them up, she does it; when he says
you put another strip of duct tape over the guard's mouth
so he'll stop talking about aesthetics, she tapes him, and when
the thief puts her behind the wheel and says, drive, baby,
the night is ours, it is the Girl Writing a Letter who steers
the black van on to the westbound ramp for Storrow Drive
and then to the Mass Pike, it's the Girl Writing a Letter who
drives eighty miles an hour headed west into a country
that's not even discovered yet, with a known criminal, a van
full of old masters and nowhere to go but down, but for the
Girl Writing a Letter these things don't matter, she's got a beer
in her free hand, she's on the road, she's real and she's in love.

Poet and novelist William Carpenter: "The thief sticks the point of his knife in the guard's ear.
I haven't got all evening, he says, I need some art."

Natasha Richardson RIP And Stacy Keach Update

March 18, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, In Memoriam, Movies, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

A few minutes ago word reached the major news media outlets that actress Natasha Richardson had died at the age of 45, a few days after suffering head injuries in a skiing accident. Though her movie appearances were generally in out-of-the-way, little-seen films – The Parent Trap and Maid In Manhattan being the major exceptions – she enjoyed considerable success on the stages of the West End and Broadway, most notably as Sally Bowles in the 1998 revival of Cabaret, and won the sort of acclaim that proved her a worthy member of the Redgraves, the most respected acting clan in the English-speaking world. She will be missed.

The tragedy of Ms. Richardson’s last days has rather overshadowed the illness suffered by another prominent actor. Yesterday morning, Stacy Keach, less than a week into an 18-day stint playing the 37th president in the touring production of Frost/Nixon at LA’s Ahmanson Theatre, was hospitalized for undisclosed reasons. This evening it was announced that he has suffered a mild stroke which does not affect his movement or speech, and is making a steady recovery. It is not clear, however, whether Keach can return to the Ahmanson’s boards to complete his run or when or if he will rejoin the production for its remaining dates in Tempe, Arizona, San Antonio, Sacramento, and Dallas.

In the meantime, Keach’s understudy, Bob Ari, is taking over the role of RN. Ari has previous experience with the part; he was Frank Langella’s understudy in the original Broadway production of Frost/Nixon and, in the role of Bob Zelnick in the touring production, does a rather broad Nixon impression at one point in the play.

Having seen Keach portray RN at the Kennedy Center last year, I can assure TNN’s readers in the aforementioned four cities that I hope for his quick recovery, not least so that they have the chance to see his incisive and memorable portrayal in this role.

Peace Breaks Out

March 17, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, Economic issues, Faith, News media, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

Looks like I wasn’t the only one puzzled, bemused, and frustrated by Frank Rich’s column —”The Culture Warriors Get Laid Off“— in Sunday’s New York Times.  

But then what’s new about that?  Why was this Sunday different from any other Sunday?  

Truth to tell, it was only different in degree rather than in kind.  But then, Mr. Rich’s job description is to attract attention and provoke controversy — and he does his job very well.

Sunday’s thesis was that the current economic collapse has allowed President Obama to accomplish in a couple of months what it took FDR several years to achieve following the Great Depression: The eradication of religion from, and the erasure of its baleful influence on, American public life.

On today’s Daily Beast, Lee Siegel calls out Mr. Rich on his phony historiography and his convenient ideology.

Imagine that you’ve been bravely pounding your breast for the past eight years over the religious right’s brutal domination of American public life, and suddenly, 50 days into a new administration, you realize that the religious right has disappeared.

Just five years ago, in a typical outburst of alarm, Frank Rich saw Mel Gibson’s The Passion, came back home, and hysterically worried in a column that “America is 82 percent Christian, and 60 percent of the population believes the Bible is historical fact. (The Jewish population is 2 percent.)” These terrifying statistics, combined with the fatal catalyst of Gibson’s blockbuster, actually made Rich “feel less secure as a Jew in America than ever before.”

But now Rich has some great news: Everything has changed! It’s safe to be a Jew in Manhattan once again.

Mr. Siegel isn’t having any of it.  Neither the idea that religion was driven from American life between the 1920s and the 1950s; nor that we’re in for at least another forty years’ renaissance after the intervening Dark Ages when the Catholics and the Christers were in charge.

Rich exemplifies the smug liberal belief that behind every conservative belief is a nihilistic opportunism. In this view, all it takes to dispel the gloom of religious sentiment in public life is a burst of happy rationalist sunlight. The enemy is deluded; we are authentic and real. Rich and his ilk refuse to entertain the idea that along with the usual political gamesmanship, there is such a thing as decent and principled opposition to issues like abortion and stem-cell research. They refuse to accept the fact that the “culture wars” are anchored in competing outlooks on life.

For Rich, trends are an all-or-nothing proposition. He cannot accept the idea that at a time of economic crisis, economics will be uppermost in people’s minds, but that this does not mean that the same people will abandon values and beliefs embedded their hearts and minds. No, for Rich, economic issues are in, cultural issues are out. Everything changes in an instant. Limbaugh is a buffoon, and the GOP is a mess.

Cultural “trends” come and go, the news cycle spins and dries and spins again—but cultural attitudes are, if not forever, stubborn and persistent. So is the power of belief, even–imagine!—among people we don’t agree with, or even like.

So Bob Tyrrell Wants To Have A Beer With Clinton

March 12, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Isn’t it ironic?

Wherein Nixon, The Neocons’ Dove, Goes To War

March 11, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Movies, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

“Watchmen” author Alan Moore, though alarmed by Ronald Reagan’s hawkishness, made Richard Nixon the first-strike madman in his story, now a majorly long motion picture. I wonder why?

Everyone Knows RN Served Until 1989!

March 9, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Book Review, Culture, Movies, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

One review after another of “Watchmen,” including this one in England’s prestigious Guardian, says that the movie’s fictional Richard Nixon was serving a third term as President. Evidently reviewers are being thrown off by the opening titles, which show RN reelected in 1976 after a constitutional amendment permits him to seek a third term. But by 1985, when the action of the story occurs, he’s on his fifth.

RN’s luck’s about to run out, though, because at the very end of the graphic novel (I’m not sure about the movie, which I haven’t seen yet), a newspaper headline says that “RR” is considering running in 1988. Presumably the reader is expected to think Ronald Reagan. If so, the authors are teasing us. As we learn on “Watchmen”’s very last page, the candidate’s actually another famous cowboy: Robert Redford.

alt.-37 And Blue Man’s Group

March 6, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Book Review, Culture, Richard Nixon, Vietnam | 1 Comment 

Reviewing “Watchmen” in the New York Times, as a public service A. O. Scott notes the use of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” during a sex scene and beseeches filmmakers:

[C]an we please have a moratorium on the use of this song in movies? Yes, I too have heard there was a secret chord that David played, and blah blah blah, but I don’t want to hear it again. Do you?

Amen and alleluia.

Several “Watchmen” reviews, including Scott’s, have persuaded me to watch for the DVD, if only to restrict the gushing blood, cracking bones, and exploding bodies to a smaller screen.

Having missed the graphic novel phenom entirely, I did buy a copy of the book and am about halfway through. Reading a comic book at 54, I feel self-conscious, even though it’s strictly for research purposes. President Nixon, of course, is in his fifth term, having sent a big blue superman called Dr. Manhattan to defeat the Viet Cong, enabling the U.S. to win the war. That’s alt.-37 above, anxiously contemplating the possible loss of the entire Eastern establishment in a hypothetical nuclear exchange. It’s now the mid-1980s. The Soviets have invaded Afghanistan and plunged into Pakistan. But the blue man has broken up with his girlfriend and been accused of giving everyone cancer. He’s gone to Mars to sulk and so isn’t available to RN to blunt the invasion.

The reflections of another from “Watchman”’s band of troubled superheroes on the meaninglessness of the universe and the pivotal role played by chance in our lives reminded me of one of Woody Allen’s best movies. A ring decides a character’s fate in Allen’s “Match Point,” a broken watch in “Watchmen.” The book has also been giving me weird dreams. Its looming apocalypse resonates discomfitingly with our all-too-real economic crisis.

A Look At The Magazines

March 3, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Media, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The new issue of The American Spectator has a column by Jonathan Aitken (former British cabinet minister and author of the one biography of President Nixon published in the post-presidential years that enjoyed RN’s full cooperation) discussing Frost/Nixon. It turns out that Aitken’s wife Elizabeth is an old friend of Frank Langella and that the actor, when preparing for Frost/Nixon’s initial incarnation as a play on London’s West End, conferred with the biographer in order to give his portrayal of the president additional accuracy and depth.  Aitken, whose high regard for Langella’s performance was previously noted in TNN, offers further very illuminating insights into it in  this column, which, at the moment, is only in the print version of TAS.

This week’s issue of The New Yorker is also of interest.  It includes a review by the late John Updike of Blake Bailey’s long-awaited biography of John Cheever, whose byline appeared alongside Updike’s for nearly three decades in the magazine’s pages.  It is as good as nearly any essay the author of the Rabbit tetralogy ever published; nothing in it gives the slightest indication that it would prove to be among his last writings.

The magazine also features an excerpt from the late David Foster Wallace’s last, unfinished novel, which is all about IRS agents in the Midwest – I kid you not, though somehow, coming from this writer, it makes sense.  Be warned: though the long essay about Wallace’s tragic but heroic career by D.T. Max that accompanies it says that Wallace was seeking a more straightforward approach in this book, the excerpt is, in some passages, nearly as complex as much of his masterwork Infinite Jest. But it’s still worth examining.

Passing Strange

February 19, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

It turns out that when the going gets weird, the weird go to Julien’s Auctions.  

This, alas, is far too sad to be amusing much less funny.

Bill Hicks’ Legendary Letterman Set Aired At Last

February 2, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Culture, Entertainment, Media | Leave a Comment 

What turned out to be Bill Hicks’ final appearance on CBS’ The Late Show with David Letterman was finally broadcast on Friday night, sixteen years after it was cut from the show.

I met Bill shortly after I joined NBC’s Late Night with David Letterman in the summer of 1987. He had been banned from the show a couple of years earlier for PWI — performing while intoxicated.   I was unaware of this backstory when I saw him at a club and was bowled over by his presence and his talent.

He had completely dried out and I vouched for him and he returned and became a friend of the show, regularly appearing several times each year.

My job was to decide whether a comic had enough material to fill a five minute segment, and then to help hone it into a set that would both fit into the context of Dave’s show and come in right on time.  Some comedians resented it, and I knew they were thinking “he sounds exactly like Nixon” when I told them that I understood how they felt.  (It wasn’t coincidental that Saturday Night Live’s “politically incorrect private investigator” was called Frank Gannon P.I.P.I.)

But I had no doubts about my ability to do my job because it didn’t take a comedian —much less a rocket scientist— to figure out that the sense and sensibility of Dave’s network show was different in every way from the freewheeling club atmosphere in which the comedians developed and performed their sets.  A TV set was tightly timed: at the pre-show production meeting I would have to tell the producer and director the set’s last word —the out cue— in advance.  The ideal Late Night five minute set included two or three runs of jokes on separate topics building to a big joke at the end.

Bill understood the necessary (or as he put it, necessarily evil) function I performed and enjoyed the irony of working with a man whose qualifications for the job of comedy arbiter consisted of studying history in grad school and working for Richard Nixon for seven years.  So we hit it off and hung out whenever he was in town working on a set.  He was amused when one of the introductions I wrote for Dave described his comedy as “relentless.”

At one point cameras from CBS’ 48 Hours examined the process by  following us around from club to club and then into the studio for the broadcast. The months of ribbing that followed from Dave and the Late Night crew, added to the fact that neither NBC nor CBS would reimburse me for the town car the cameraman required to film from the front seat, put paid to my interest in any further on camera work.

I left Late Night on 14 February 1992.  After his last show on my watch, Bill gave me a picture book of dinosaurs with the inscription “From one dinosaur to another.”

Later that summer Dave decamped to CBS.  On 1 October 1993 Bill was scheduled to do his first set on the Late Show; it would be his twelfth appearance with Dave but his first on the CBS show broadcast at the earlier, 11.30, hour.

His set was pre-approved in the usual way by my successor and delivered successfully at the Ed Sullivan Theater. But when Bill got back to his hotel, he received a call from Robert Morton, the show’s producer, informing him that, on consideration, the set was considered inappropriate and would have to be cut. He assured him that he would be invited back to do a different set. Bill called me, but aside from expressing sympathy there was nothing I could do.

What none of us knew was that Bill knew there wouldn’t be another time.  He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he died five months later, fifteen years ago this month, less than two months into his thirty-second year, on 26 February 1994.

In the last few years before he died, Bill had developed a large and growing cult following, particularly in the UK where they took his outlaw persona literally, and where he filled theaters with his one man shows (as you can see in the heavily produced BBC filmed version of one of his West End extravaganzas).

John Lahr, the New Yorker’s drama critic, was an early and ardent Hicksian. After the Late Show fiasco, Bill wrote him a 39-page letter, and Mr. Lahr incorporated this apologia pro vita sua into an earlier New Yorker profile to make an insightful and indignant and moving chapter in his book Light Fantastic.

Which brings us back to Friday night.

Bill’s mother appeared with Dave in an introductory segment that was about equal parts poignant and uncomfortable.  Dave apologized and eulogized, and Mary Hicks offered acceptance but not absolution.  In fact, although Dave rightly, and characteristically, accepted responsibility for cutting the set, the question was almost certainly first raised by the CBS Standards and Practices rep assigned to the show and the show’s producer.   If the five minute segment was the reality with which the comedians had to cope, the Standards and Practices constraints were the producers’ cross to bear.  

The set, with its unrelenting language and undercurrent of violence, delivered with Bill’s characteristic intensity, was undeniably disturbing.  Whoever made the decision, it was, in terms of the realities of the times,  certainly an arguable —and, arguably, the right— one to make.

The first shock watching this old footage was seeing how uncharacteristically healthy Bill looked.  The man always described as pasty and pudgy was now lean and trim.  The irony was painful.

On the page the jokes had seemed edgy but unexceptional. But in performance, with Bill’s charisma and intensity added, the whole became greater than the sum of its parts, and I could understand why it made the Standards and Practices already supersensitive needle flip into the red.

Bill begins by joking about hunting and killing Billy Ray Cyrus, Michael Bolton, Marky Mark and others; then he does some gay and lesbian material before attacking pro-lifers; he segues into some of his old smoking jokes and ends with a rant about Easter and people who wear crosses.

Even today, with all the changes the intervening years have seen, this is still a set that would still be challenging in terms of broadcast network standards.  It would probably be passed, but there would surely be some discussion.

The mistake was the preapproval that led Bill to perform with the expectation that the set would air.  But mistakes get made, and if Bill had lived, he would have taken the Mulligan, and the unhappy experience would have become fodder for later rants instead of the tragic legend at the end of his career.

If you seek Bill’s legacy — just look around.  His influence can be seen and felt and heard anywhere good comedy and craftsmanlike comedians are to be found.

Cynthia True’s biography —American Scream— tells Bill’s story.  And John Lahr edited Bill’s routines and writings in Love All the People. But the best sources are Bill’s own several CDs and DVDs.

Ian McEwan on John Updike

January 31, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Culture, In Memoriam | Leave a Comment 

As the days go by, the void left by the passing of all-round man of letters John Updike on Tuesday seems to grow greater and greater. Americans, I think, tended to take him for granted, to assume that week after week into eternity he would continue to have a review or story or poem in The New Yorker, month after month there would be his lengthy assessment of some art exhibition in The New York Review Of Books, year after year he would publish a new book — and that decade after decade he would be hovering somewhere near the shortlist for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and time and again someone else would get it. (And being repeatedly passed over for the Nobel, indeed, could be said to have been his destiny as the premier writer of the rarely-spoken-of Silent Generation; I’ll devote a post to this next week.)

But Updike may have been more highly regarded abroad. Ever since the 1960s he has had a wide and admiring readership in Russia. In England this week, Ian McEwan said that in recent times Updike was “the greatest novelist writing in English” — something that more than a few readers would say of McEwan himself.

Today, McEwan assesses Updike’s achivement in a carefully reasoned and eloquent essay in the Guardian. Here’s a representative excerpt, about the Pulitzer-winning Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom tetralogy:

Like [Saul] Bellow, his only equal in this, Updike is a master of effortless motion – between third and first person, from the metaphorical density of literary prose to the demotic, from specific detail to wide generalisation, from the actual to the numinous, from the scary to the comic. For his own particular purposes, Updike devised for himself a style of narration, an intense, present tense, free indirect style, that can leap up, whenever it wants, to a God’s-eye view of Harry, or the view of his put-upon wife, Janice, or victimised son, Nelson. This carefully crafted artifice permits here assumptions about evolutionary theory, which are more Updike than Harry, and comically sweeping notions of Jewry, which are more Harry than Updike.

This is at the heart of the tetralogy’s achievement. Updike once said of the Rabbit books that they were an exercise in point of view. This was typically self-deprecating, but contains an important grain of truth. Harry’s education extends no further than high school, and his view is further limited by a range of prejudices and a stubborn, combative spirit, yet he is the vehicle for a half-million-word meditation on postwar American anxiety, failure and prosperity. A mode had to be devised to make this possible, and that involved pushing beyond the bounds of realism. In a novel like this, Updike insisted, you have to be generous and allow your characters eloquence, “and not chop them down to what you think is the right size”. He was clear, too, that we all sense more than we can ever put into words, and was mindful of the example of Joyce and his “great attempt to capture the way we move through life”.

Ill Winds Blow No Good

January 28, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Ethics, Faith, History, In Memoriam, Money, Music, Perfect Songs | Leave a Comment 

OK — the Co-operative Group has a long, distinguished, and principled history since its founding in 1863. Sure — it’s green and enlightened. No doubt — it can see you sustainably through from cradle to grave.

But it is now complicit in an indignity of almost unimaginable proportions — in which it will be aided and abetted by the most unlikely co-conspirator.

The bad news is reported in today’s Daily Telegraph.  Read it and weep:

In a commercial tie-up that might shock Dylan fans almost as much as his famous switch from acoustic to electric, he has agreed the use of the track in a new ad for the Co-operative Group.

The ad campaign is the culmination of a two-year rebranding exercise by the group, which runs funeral, travel and legal services as well as a chain of supermarkets.

It is the first time Dylan has allowed one of his recordings to be used for an advert in the UK.

The philosophical questions the 1960s protest anthem poses about war, peace and freedom and the fuzzy, vaguely optimistic refrain it gives in response – “the answer is blowin’ in the wind” – made it a favourite of civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protests in the 1960s and 70s.

Blowin’ In The Wind was originally released in 1963 on the album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and Rolling Stone magazine put it 14th on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

The Co-op runs its business according to ethical guidelines on environmental impact, fair trade and social responsibility, and a spokesman for Dylan’s record label, Columbia, said this influenced his decision to approve the use of the song.

As of today, 28 January 2009, we have the answer to the age old question: Is nothing sacred?

The answer is: No.

Now is the time for your tears.

The Rise & Fall Of The White House Intellectual

January 23, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Culture, Nixon Administration figures, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House | 1 Comment 

Ben Alpers of Oklahoma University put up a quite interesting blogpost this week tracing the roughly fifteen-year heyday of the “White House intellectual.”

President Kennedy began the tradition by bringing in acclaimed historian (and walking definition of savoir-faire) Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to chronicle the mighty doings to come. (In this respect, there was a parallel between Schlesinger’s function and that of Theodore Roosevelt’s biographer Edmund Morris when he was given access to President Reagan throughout the 1980s for his authorized biography (which proved a bizarre disappointment in most quarters when it finally appeared in 1999).

Schlesinger was there for all of the Thousand Days, and made that the title of his Pulitzer-winning account of the Kennedy Administration later. When Lyndon Johnson came to the Oval Office after the terrible day in Dallas, Schlesinger wanted to leave, but Johnson persuaded him to stay for a while.

But the historian left in January 1964 and LBJ replaced him with Eric Goldman, the author of Rendezvous With Destiny. After two years of increasing disillusionment with Johnson, Goldman left to write the remarkable study The Tragedy Of Lyndon Johnson. Goldman was replaced by another historian, John P. Roche, who had worked as a Capitol Hill speechwriter and thus had better firsthand knowledge of the nitty-gritty of politics than his predecessor. He left in 1968 to write a newspaper column.

When President Nixon came in, the nebulous “White House intellectual” post went unfilled for a time. Ralph De Toledano, RN’s first biographer and a mainstay of conservative journalism, hoped to occupy it, but was not called on to do so.

But gradually, through 1969, Daniel P. Moynihan, who had been associated with the group around Commentary (still a liberal journal in those days) and who had worked in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, gradually assumed such a role in the Nixon White House, regularly discussing books with the President and helping to keep him abreast of what academics thought of his policies. (This was also done by Dr. Henry Kissinger whenever there was time to spare from the making of foreign and national-security policy.)

It should be emphasized, however, that Moynihan had a much greater hands-on role in the development of policy in the White House, especially where domestic affairs were concerned, than was the case with Schlesinger, Goldman or Roche.

In 1971 Moynihan left the Administration. By that time foreign affairs were almost completely dominating Kissinger’s time. And so the informal position of in-house intellectual was dormant for a time, except to the degree that Pat Buchanan, TNN’s own Frank Gannon, Ray Price, and (up to 1973) William Safire could fill it in the course of their work.

When Gerald Ford succeeded Nixon in 1974, his chief of staff Donald Rumsfeld urged him to revive the position, and so Robert Goldwin, the former dean of St. John’s College in Annapolis, came to the White House.  Among other things he organized meetings between leading thinkers, social scientists, and educators with White House staffers and, occasionally, with the President.  After future Vice President Dick Cheney replaced Rumsfeld as chief of staff, he continued to work closely with Goldwin.

(The enthusiasm of Rumsfeld and Cheney for maintaining the White House’s ties to the intellectual community is somewhat ironic, since, a quarter-century later, both men would have easily topped the list of those most hated by much of the liberal intelligentsia and in academia, which is now probably more left-leaning than it has ever been.)

When Jimmy Carter became president in 1977, no real effort was made to continue Goldwin’s work.  With the Reagan presidency came Edmund Morris, but, as noted, his job was to be a biographer, not to comment on or influence policy.   George H.W. Bush had few dyed-in-the-wool intellectuals on his staff (Christopher Buckley, in Bush’s vice-presidential years, probably came closest) and Clinton more or less functioned as his own in-house intellectual; Sidney Blumenthal would have been the closest thing to one in that Administration, but functioned more as a cheerleader and spinmeister a la Joe Conason than as a careful observer.

It appears likely that President Obama, like Clinton, will be his own White House intellectual, at least in the opening stages of his Administration.  Thomas Frank, as one commenter at Alpers’s post notes, might have been a candidate, having long resided in Hyde Park not far from the then-state senator, but the controversy that ensued when Obama paraphrased Frank’s argument in the book What’s The Matter With Kansas? would have scotched that.   Yesterday Forbes produced a list of America’s 25 top liberal intellectuals.  Blogger Matt Yglesias, #16 on it, might just be the guy who’d be a good fit for this nebulous assignment at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Sun Sets On Another Part Of The British Empire

January 13, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Culture, Science | 1 Comment 

As reported in today’s (London) Times:

The classic British bulldog, a symbol of defiance and pugnacity, is to disappear. A shake-up of breeding standards by the Kennel Club has signalled the end of the dog’s Churchillian jowl. Instead, the dog will have a shrunken face, a sunken nose, longer legs and a leaner body.

The change has angered the British Bulldog Breed Council and it is threatening legal action against the club. Robin Searle, the chairman, said: “What you’ll get is a completely different dog, not a British bulldog.”

The shake-up comes as one of the country’s leading zoologists and animal behaviour experts, Sir Patrick Bateson, announced that he would be heading an independent inquiry into dog breeding.

The Kennel Club is determined to show its commitment to dog welfare and has ordered the removal of characteristic features from some dogs. In a statement it said: “The breed standards have been revised so they will not include anything that could in any way be interpreted as encouraging features that might prevent a dog breathing, walking and seeing freely.”

In a country where the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded sixty years before the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, this is no small thing.

Proponents of the new regs claim that the life of a British bulldog isn’t all beer and skittles kibbles. Most are born by Caesarean section because their large heads and small hips make natural delivery difficult. And, as the report discreetly puts it, “the breed’s anatomy also hinders mating.” The poor blighters are also prone to skin and coat problems, cherry eye, respiratory disorders, and bone and mouth problems.

But many bulldog fanciers and pet owners see the sudden introduction of new regs that go into effect immediately as an attempt to muzzle discussion.

The new regulations —which, depending on your point of view, represent a step in the right direction or the intrusion of PC into the canine world— will apply to other breeds as well:

The shar pei will lose the familiar folds of skin on the neck, skull and legs while the Clumber spaniel and the labrador retriever must stay slim to qualify as top show dogs. Flat faces without a muzzle on Pekingese are also no longer acceptable because they cause breathing difficulties. Other breeds to change are the bloodhound, German shepherd hound, basset hound, Saint Bernard, chow chow, the Dogue de Bordeaux and mastiff.

Judges at licensed dog shows have been instructed to use the new breed standards and to choose only the healthiest and best-adjusted dogs when deciding champions. Those at Crufts are under orders to expel from the competition any animal that shows signs of disease or deformity. Incestuous breeding of dogs is also to be banned. Marc Abraham, veterinary adviser to the Kennel Club, said: “The changes will leave breeders and judges in no doubt about their responsibilities to safeguard the health and welfare of dogs, first and foremost.”

Bad symbol! Bad! The above poster—published when Britain stood alone in Europe after the fall of France in 1940— may have to be airbrushed to fix the large head, small hips, and thinning coat.

Weekend Indulgence

January 10, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Barack Obama, Culture | Leave a Comment 

Around 10:30 last night, as my wife and I left dinner at the fine Spanish restaurant Jaleo in DC’s Penn Quarter, we went down the U Street corridor on our route home. As I drove by Ben’s Chili Bowl, the Washington landmark now celebrating the half-century mark, I idly wondered: “When is Obama going to eat there?”

A little over twelve hours later he did, in the company of DC Mayor Adrian Fenty. Unsurprisingly, the President-elect ordered Ben’s specialty, the world-famous chili half-smoke (an edible as native to DC as, say, the Juicy Lucy to Minneapolis) with the requisite chili fries. Surprisingly, he told the press that despite serving in the Senate for the last four years just a few miles from Ben’s, he had never visited the establishment before.

But then again he is supposed to be an exercise nut, and Ben’s is a dangerous place to be if one hopes to stay in that category.

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