Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Topic A

Of course, the election remains Topic A, at least until November 6, and in Washington, needless to say, indefinitely.  This has been a particularly frustrating election, based on the following observations:

1. Media pack behavior.  Never before have the media behaved so totally within a pack mentality. The conventional wisdom is somehow fashioned amid the sturm und drang of the campaign and hardly anyone dares to offer observations that challenge it. Now instead of merely elevating the uninformed views of people randomly interviewed on the street to high commentary, we are offered "tweets" and attempts at "zingers" emanating from "spin rooms"--it's all totally bogus. Steve Allen really had it right as to the significance of the opinions of the "man in the street"--they usually were idiotic.

2. Built-in bias. The media still is susceptible to slick operators, and Romney certainly is one of those. So Obama is decried as condescending, out-to-lunch, and off his rocker when he appears to be laid back in the first debate; Romney adopts a moderate, less contentious tone in the last and is praised as statesmanlike. Romney also blatantly discards his previous positions and rarely is called on it. 

3. Campaign oratory.  Wendell Willkie once admitted that "in moments of campaign oratory, we all expand a little." This time Romney has shown he will say anything and change any position to meet the immediate campaign need.Obama rarely exaggerates but the media are much more willing to turn on him and it isn't his incumbency because Bush II got the same "liberal media bending over backwards to be nice to him" treatment.

4. Obama's arrogance.  The President has not received good advice or support from his top-level staff.  He obviously doesn't enjoy these kinds of debates--since they aren't really debates in any normal meaning of the term, who of substance would?--but having agreed to them, he needed a much better strategy.  His unwillingness to get down and work closely with pols of his own party also is hurting him. He seems to have few surrogates--few out there speaking for him. Bill Clinton has done far more than anyone might reasonable expected. Only at the convention did other Democrats show up, perhaps because Obama had not been there for them.

5. The ads.  Yes, they're lying and awful. Apparently, as we have learned over decades, negative ads work. Some people clearly are influenced by them. It does make you recall that "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public"--I can't remember whether that was Barnum or Mencken speaking.

We do get the leaders we deserve.  Clarence Darrow said it best: "When I was a boy I was told anyone could grow up to become President. [He was speaking btw of CalvinCoolidge.] Now I'm beginning to believe it."

Friday, October 12, 2012

Baseball's Back

Yes, the euphoria brought on by baseball could quickly dissipate if tonight's deciding game in the division series against St. Louis goes the wrong way. And in D.C., that's bad because the sleazeballs who run baseball already don't like Washington--having abandoned the nation's capital for years. But for the moment, it's a wonderful time. Even the always-pompous Thomas Boswell, self-described as America's preeminent baseball scribe, suggested today that last night's Nats walk-off win that evened the series was the first real baseball occasion here.  And in a way, he got it right.

This team can drive you crazy--as can most teams for which I end up cheering. They lose big--12-4 and 8-0, the latter when I went to the first post-season game in 79 years played here. And being Washington, everything is open to argument. After all, the Homestead Grays, who played half their home games here in old Griffith Stadium, played in Negro National League championship in 1948, and still playing stars like Buck Leonard then--Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, and Larry Doby having departed the NNL for the white majors, with Satch and Doby playing that fall for Cleveland in the World Series--I suspect they could have beaten more than half the major league teams then.

But then someone who got a big contract and a lot of abuse when he didn't produce--Jayson Werth, goes and hits the walk-off homer after a textbook at-bat where he waited and fouled off for the right pitch. I even remember Werth when he was being touted as an Oriole of the future playing for the Bowie BaySox ten-plus years ago.  And as tall as he is, he was then a catcher, not an outfielder. All catchers aren't squat--remember Carlton Fisk and Jason Varitek.

It's wonderful to see how this turns the town on. Even last night's VP debate--usually Washington is the number-one audience for anything political--took second place, although the Nats had just won but the long-time local favorite, the Orioles, were just getting going up at Yankee Stadium. The O's also managed to pull out a Game 4 get-even special, with teenage phenom Manny Machado setting up a ninth-inning score. 

A new game every day, including today, when I get to go yet again. Two days ago, disaster for both Nats and O's; yesterday, resplendent triumph. Now, of course, I so want to see the locals take out the Cards--always, like the Reds, the ever-dangerous "other team" so we can go up against my childhood favorites, the San Francisco, nee New York, Giants.


Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Theatre & Baseball

Last week I attended performances at Washington's two top theatres--the Shakespeare Theater Company and the Arena Stage--the one put on by the Shakespeare was really a production it was hosting for the National Theatre of Scotland, called Black Watch, and at the Arena, I saw Kathleen Turner appearing as Molly Ivins, the wonderfully funny and iconoclastic journalist who died much too early.

Another attraction last week that I enjoyed was the last game of the regular baseball season here, the Nats v. the Phillies, on Wednesday. Although the Nats had clinched first place in their division, this win gave them home-field advantage throughout the post-season as they ended up tied with the Reds for that distinction but prevail based on their superior season record against Cincinnati. 

Black Watch is the account of how the storied regiment found being sent to Iraq as frustrating as every other elite military unit found that country.  The U.K. has been way ahead of the U.S. in recognizing that their leadership blindly and foolishly followed Bush II into two  needless wars, as Blair became what the British press described as "Bush's poodle".  The play features about ten enlisted men who cannot comprehend why they are where they are, much less see their comrades killed or wounded in a country that doesn't want them there.

There were endless warnings issued about the gunfire, explosions, and strobe that would occur during the show, and you were told toseek an usher to help you out of the hall if you needed to leave and sternly reminded that no one would be readmitted during the performance. So yes, there were mortar-simulating sounds and all the rest but I don't quite understand the need for all the precautions that we now are treated to everywhere. This wasn't even a performance where actors run up and down the aisles--which is when I could understand having warnings not to step out into the aisle without taking great care.

I found the play unsatisfying because while it traces the glorious history of the regiment, then about to be amalgamated with other Scottish units, the message to me was lost in a lot of the extensive physical action onstage, which featured much choreographed somersaulting and other motion. Also, I'm embarrassed to note that despite the many months Eileen and I spent in the U.K. some years ago, including some time in Scotland, I did miss a lot of the dialogue and punch lines owing to my inability to catch both the exact phrasing and probably some slang as well. To anyone who has spent time in the service, of course, the constant use of four-letter words is totally appropriate and accurate.

Turner got the Texas accent down well, I thought, and in general, I liked her performance as the hard-drinking, chain-smoking, totally irreverent Ivins. I first read Ivins in a Houston alternative paper in the early 70s when I went to Houston to do some legal work. She struck me as a comer likely to move right up and out from that limited platform--and so she did, on to the Houston Chronicle and then the New York Times--which under Abe Rosenthal, was not yet ready to allow her unfiltered prose into its strictly-edited columns--and thence on to national TV and syndication.

Again, however, as has been the case with too many one-actor bio shows--especially about subjects with whom I'm in sympathy--the play came up short.  It created a portrait of Ivins but it lacked that extra punch she always had in her writing and personal appearances.  Turner did everything she could, I felt, but she needed better material. Perhaps they might have included even more of Ivins's own stuff.

The ballgame turned out to be the best entertainment of the week,partly because the Nats managed to hold on to a lead and also because Teddy Roosevelt, perennial loser (526 times) in every fourth-inning Presidents Race--the four on Mt Rushmore are the competitors, won for the first time.  There have been plenty of Let Teddy Win banners at the park and during the last week, Teddy was the main promotional subject--the day I was there, they gave out Teddy pins.

Some suggested that this was challenging a jinx--baseball adores superstition.  Others said they should have kept it going and referred to Charles Schulz's assuring all Peanuts readers that Charlie Brown never was going to be allowed to kick the football. I suggest that it was appropriate for the last game of the regular season, since there's too much other sturm und drang when the post-season gets started. Maybe Teddy will go on another losing streak for a few months, days, or decades. 

It reminded me of another great losing record--that of the Red Klotz-led white teams who were the perennial victims of the Harlem Globetrotters.  They were usually, as it happened, dubbed the Washington Generals--and our current Wizards have but a slightly better record--or the Boston Shamrocks or Hawaiian Pineapples: as you can see, cliches were them. Their overall record against the Globies was something like 8-3,500. When a writer asked Klotz what it was like on one of those rare occasions when they beat the once- fabulously talented and still-beloved Globies, he answered: "It was as if they shot Santa Claus."