The Last Classically-Trained Actor

 Christopher Plummer died at 91, having triumphed on stage, screen, and television. He learned to act the old-fashioned way, through technique abd building on his innate personality and skills. Although he played Hamlet, Henry V, and Lear, all Shakespearean tragic heros with notable flaws, he seemed to have special relish for the villain's role, from Shakespeare's Richard III to endless evil characters in otherwise forgotten TV shows.

I always had an affinity for him because he had his first Broadway success in the first Broadway play I ever saw. It was in 1955 and it was The Lark, an English adaptation by Lillian Hellman of Jean Anouilh's play about Joan of Arc. If you look at the cast list today, it blows your mind. The stars were Julie Harris, herself launching a spectacular theatrical career, and playing a rare dramatic role on stage, none other than Boris Karloff. Plummer was Warwick, the English general, who was the principal villain, since the Bishop, who enables the English to burn Joanfor heresy, is torn by his conscience far more than the military man. It was ironic that the more complex role was filled by a far more classic villain, Karloff.

Also in the cast were a young Theodore Bikel as the local member of the nobility who becomes Joan's first convert, and Joseph Wiseman, who went on to play many wonderful supporting roles on Broadway and TV, usually as a villain. I remember him best in Child's Play, where he was one of two leads who were Catholic school teachers. Wiseman of course was the martinet and the nice guy was played by Pat Hingle, another frequent villain. One of Bikel's best roles was as Zoltan Karpathy, "that dreadful Hungarian," in My Fair Lady.

Plummer managed to win a lot of attention even among this stellar cast. He always added to the quality of the shows, movies, and TV programs in which he appeared. He was a mainstay of the two Stratford's--Connecticut and Ontario; at the former, sadly long gone, he gave what many critics called the best Shakespearean performance ever, playing Iago to James Earl Jones's Othello. 

He was also temperamentally suited to playing one of the greatest Shakespeare stars, John Barrymore, in the eponymous play, because like Barrymore, whose career was cut short by his early death from drinking and excess, Plummer hit the booze hard and lived the fast life for years, blaming himself for the end of his first two marriages. 

His most enduring role was the one he despised until he accepted that it would always be popular: Baron von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Reading how much he hated the part, my heart warmed because I'd always ahared his low opinion of the saccharine vehicle.  I recall a takeoff in a revue on Broadway long ago which featured Hermioned Gingold as the lead in "The Sound of Schmaltz"

He managed to win an Oscar as well as Tonys and recognized that he was lucky to be one of those actors who was instantly recalled by audiences even if they couldn't quite come up with his name. I only wish I had been able to see him more often onstage, where he likely did his greatest work.

The Inevitable Day Came

I can't claim I was the first to warn us that this crew might well have a coup in mind. More informed people were speculating about it. But this was the result of four-plus years of tolerating Trump. It was the result of people like the Wall Street ranter who sent out a neswletter that Trump was great for the Street and thus there was no doubt he'd be re-elected and that that was the only result anyone with brains wanted.

It's also time to regret feeling that Hillary Clinton blew it when she called the scum that invaded the Capitol yesterday "the deplorables". She was being too restrained. I still blame Hillary's overpaid, cocky, and totally out-of-it senior staff for screwing up her campaign. And she gets the blame for not listening to Bill even if she didn't want him out there on the trail in 2016. He could bring out the best in people who feel they've been mistreated, instead of the worst that the present incumbent draws out.

Until now, I hadn't even taken much notice of the little punk, Josh Hawley of Missouri. This is the best Yale Law School can give us, along with Clarence Thomas. And Harvard Law can answer for Ted Criz, too. Hawley really thought that he could pick up Trump's filthy legacy to ride to the White House in four years. Even after yesterday's riot, he still was trying to push Trump's baseless nonsense. I wish Claire McCaskill, who was the Senator he ousted by Missouri's resident idiot voters, had been free on MSNBC to describe this pompous jerk.

This all shows that the ends justify the means to most of these people: the pols like McConnell and McCarthy., Pence and Graham. And yes, that Wall Street clown I mentioned earlier. "He's good for business...and for us" was their credo. "Where's mine?" Presidential relatives have long been mostly embarrassment for past White Houses. Billy Carter, Roger Clinton, Don Nixon, Eisenhower's older brother (not Milton), Bush's cousin who was chortling with Trump that time about grabbing women by the youknowhat. But Trump Jr. and his siblings or half-siblings or whatever really stand out as the lowest of the low. n they

All these smart guys who got burned by the spectre of power they traded their integrity for when they signed on for this administration. They all were burned or disgraced or just rendered ineffective at best. Mattis, who finally broke his silence; Sessions, who figured he could satisfy his desires for the attention that eluded him on the Hill; all the hangers-on with warped values.

The law enforcement people who stood aside and ler returnedt these marauders into the Capitol. It's been noted how they would have launched howitzers at a similar group of invaders if they were black. People like Mitt Romney have emerged with new lustre--even G.W. Bush provided a fine statement yesterday: And yes, Dick and Liz Cheney rose to the occasion--wow! it's hard to believe how bad he was in office and yet how favorably he compares with the incumbent.

Will life ever return to normal after COVID? Will the old norms of political behavior ever re-emerge after this profane period? I hope for the best but I expect the worst. The rich filth have seized control and they will spend whatever it takes to keep on stealing through tax breaks and outright handouts from the public trough. It will take a lot more than outrage at the spectacle we witnessed on TV yesterday to effect change. 

We need a complete housecleaning and the country missed its chance in November--sure, Biden got in but they returned all those sleazebag GOP Senators who should have been beaten. It was encouraging that owing to the work of people like Stacey Abrams, Georgia gave us the two Democratic Senators to make the new VP provide the majority. I would have made her the Attorney General. 

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Things Get Curioser and Curioser

 The trendiest words I've encountered over the past few years are "evidence-based" plans, programs, or findings. Although like most concepts that achieve great popularity, evidence-based started out as a genuine effort to bring some reality to project planning and other programs, its limitations have grown evident as it has gradually been incorporated into the lexicon of grantmaking and plannng.

However, I'm not entirely sure anyone expected to see the rise of argument without any evidence. This is what the legions supporting Trump have presented us as their crowning legacy. The American rejection of Trump by seven million votes (roughly 81 to 74) is being opposed by a campaign that has failed to present any evidence that the election was in any way "rigged" or otherwise stolen. 

This in itself is unusual--there's usually been chicanerr y in every election but it hasn't affected the result all that frequently. It's enough to make one admit after years of denial that the leftists of the 60s may have had it right after all: those ensconced in power will do anything to avoid relinquishing any of their suzerainty. 

We are facing on January 6 the spectatcle of a large number of Republicans in Congress object to certifying the electoral vote for Biden based on nothing. And we have a president encouraging armed supporters to come to Washington. He's also installed cronies at the head of the Defense Department and other powerful agencies. If you don't start thinking that a coup is possible and that some preparation to resist it is in order, I suggest you are delusional.

This whole totally false post-election protest has left our political structure and constitutional government hanging by a thread. A few individual members of state canvassing board have held the line against throwing out millions of votes just on someone's say-so that there was malfeasance or that rules weren't followed.

If anyone was messing with the system, it was the Republican-dominated legislatures that are successfully practicing voter suppression. Closing polling places, limiting mail-in voting, and restricting early balloting are all such suppression devices. Photo ID is another. No one has present any credible evidence that there have been violations of the rules to justify any of this vicious attempt to disenfranchise legitimate voters.

But we have top-of-their-class Harvard and Yale law grads like Cruz and Hawley demanding an audit where no one has shown any basis for needing one. We are depending on Pence not to throw a monkey wrench into the certification process. They even cite the 1876 electoral commission which was a totally corrupt fraud. Democrats went along with GOP theft of the presidency in return for the end of Reconstruction.

Like banana republics and other states we have often scorned, the U.S. may have to take on another pitched battle against the real enemy within--the reactionary right that has found its demagogue to lead both the unthinking and those dedicated to maintaining the 1% in control by any means. 

What Would Pete Have Thought?

 I've kept viewing commercials on television for a car that begin and are accompanied throughout with Pete Seeger singing about waking up early to start a hard day at the mill. It shows a family or couple getting into  the fairly fancy car and backing out of their driveway but just missing being wrecked by a car passing speedily on the road.

Pete's tenor is of course unmistakable. I immediately began thinking about what he would have thought of his labor song being appropriated by a capitalistic car company to sell automobiles. Even though I see myself as a pragmatist (not to be confused with a foreign policy realist, thank you), it's very difficult for me to hear Pete Seeger singing and not be swept up in his love for the workers and the downtrodden. 

It makes me consider what I haven't done to strive towards the kinds of goals he espoused. And his voice has that timbre that always cuts right to one's essence. One of my favorite renditions was on an old Weavers album--maybe it was their reunion at Carnegie Hall--when the three tenors who had clocked time in the group joined in giving the old chestnut Wimoweh (which has since been popularized and somewhat profaned since the Weavers got it from its South African creators) a rousing workout. 

You hear Pete coming in and standing out with his extraordinarily distinctive tenor. It's almost as thrilling as his leading We Shall Overcome, shouting out a line after a huge rally crowd sings the one before.  Another similarly exciting moment hearing an even more marvelous voice stand out from a group is a now You Tubed scene from Showboat where Hattie McDaniel, Helen Morgan, and Irene Dunne start into Can't Help Loving That Man o' Mine. Right near the end, Paul Robeson walks into this 1936 movie clip and lends his glorious bass to the finale. It makes it absolutely perfect. I believe Pete was driving with Robeson to the concert at Peekskill when a right-wing mob stoned their car.

I remember being delighted when Pete was given the Kennedy Center Honors back in the 1990s, a solid achievement for Bill Clinton's Administration. Not everyone recalls that Pete and the Weavers were blacklisted and kept off television--then becoming the major entertainment medium--for many years. If someone had told me that that could happen... It was even better that underneath his uncharacteristic jacket up there in the Presidential box, he was wearing a work shirt.

I ended up wishing that this commercial had been aired before Pete passed on last year at 92. But I took some consolation from the probability that his estate would benefit--probably more richly than from any concert payday--and through it some worthy causes.

There Went the Judge

 It's not often that you are faced with the death of someone who was both a model and a mentor, a judge and a natural leader. For me, that was the late Chief Judge William C. Pryor, who passed away last Thursday at 88. At the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, where I was privileged to work when Judge Pryor was the Chief Judge, he was the effective man i n the middle, calming the judicial waters after the court had almost torn itself apart with personalities clashing.

As a judge, he brought to the appellate bench the skills and the attitude of a good trial judge, basing his decisions as much as possible on the facts with scrupulous impartiality.  He was soft-spoken yet firm when he reached a conclusion. And although he had no particular liking for administration, he led the court system in D.C. effectively through cooperation with Chief Judge Fred Ugast of D.C.'s Superior Court, the trial court. During the decade I spent at the court, that kind of collaboration hadn't occurred before him and did not exist after he stepped down.

So often it happens that the most effective leader is the one who does not seek the position but accepts the responsibility. By proceeding calmly but firmly, he earned the respect of contentious judges on both the appeals and trial courts.  He took no pleasure from ceremonial or social occasions--often, he would approach me during some get-together at the court or with the bar to ask if I wanted to go for a run with him. 

The testimonials in the media from a deceased judge's law clerks are invariably totally laudatory and also completely predictable. But everyone on the staff at the court appreciated how he would treat them as full colleagues. And although he focused on the evidence in criminal cases, never succumbing to demands for either excessive leniency or firmness, he often was hailed by men whom we ran by during jogs in D.C. After one such greeting, he remarked to me that he had sentenced the man to a term of several years.

He grew up in the District, starting segregated public schools. He was a good athlete, especially at basketball and tennis, and worked out for most of his life. He would chuckle at remembering that he had been recruited by Dartmouth where it had been assumed he was a good football player but which he hadn't played. He loved basketball and blamed his bad knees on playing on concrete courts growing up.

After Dartmouth and Georgetown Law, he took a Master's in Judicial Studies at the University of Virginia with my former boss, Prof. Dan Meador. Unlike many judicial education courses, this one was demanding and rigorous. He was not prone to parading his education. Once in a divorce case, where counsel for a well-heeled couple had condescendingly tried to explain to the trial judge, Judge Pryor, about the importance of the right summer camp for the couple's children, he saw that they assumed he knew nothing of that strata. He never disclosed his own attendance at Northfield Mr. Hermon, then Dartmouth and Georgetown.

In his last years, we would meet, usually serendipitously, at the same health club. Everyone in the locker room knew and respected him; he would enjoy getting into discussions with them about almost any subject. He was also proud of his two sons, doing his best to launch them on good careers. At home, the judge conceded that his wife of many years was in charge, pointing out that she was a teacher, who to him had more natural authority than a judge.

There have been far too few jurists who brought his temperament and skills to the job. In our ideologically-divided age, he has already been and will continue to be sorely missed. He was someone for whom you wanted to give nothing less than your best.

Things Get Weird

Over the years since first reading George Orwell's two masterworks, Animal Farm and 1984, it could be said that they prompted a look backward--we conjure up recollections of totalitarian and authoritarian states but have been less capable of recognizing rather than envisioning dystopic societies such as that depicted in 1984. But today there have been many clear indications that such a future is not so distant and unlikely. 

Orwell's perception, moreover, extended to a clear analysis of not only why socialism has not been widely accepted in the U.S. but the reasons why its prospects here remain dim--as evidenced by how easily the Republicans wielded the scare propensity of the very word to successfully resist any "Blue wave" that might have accompanied Biden's victory. This has usefully been summarized from what may be his most continually relevant work, The Road to Wigan Pier, published in 1937 :                    

    Why then are we not all socialists?

Orwell attempts to answer this difficult question. He points out that most people who argue against socialism do not do so because of straightforward selfish motives, or because they do not believe that the system would work, but for more complex emotional reasons, which (according to Orwell) most socialists misunderstand. He identifies five main problems:

1. Class prejudice. This is real and it is visceral. Middle-class socialists do themselves no favors by pretending it does not exist and—by glorifying the manual worker—they tend to alienate the large section of the population that is economically working-class but culturally middle-class.
2. Machine worship. Orwell finds most socialists guilty of this. Orwell himself is suspicious of technological progress for its own sake and thinks it inevitably leads to softness and decadence. He points out that most fictional technically advanced socialist utopias are deadly dull. He criticizes H. G. Wells in particular on these grounds.
3. Crankiness. Among many other types of people Orwell specifies people who have beards or wear sandals, vegetarians, and nudists as contributing to socialism's negative reputation among many more conventional people.
4. Turgid language. Those who pepper their sentences with "notwithstandings" and "heretofores" and become over excited when discussing dialectical materialism are unlikely to gain much popular support.
5. Failure to concentrate on the basics. Socialism should be about common decency and fair shares for all rather than political orthodoxy or philosophical consistency.

Applying Orwell's analysis to our milieu more than eighty years later, we can point to those who, in focusing entirely on economic factors, diminish the significance of the "culture wars". Recently, we have beginning to hear acknowledgment of the negative power of elitism, condescension, perceived favoritism toward minorities, and use of such terms as "deplorables" in firing up people who didn't go to college to turn to those who surely do not have their interests at heart or in mind except to draw on the anger of people who feel neglected, insulted, or passed over. Resentment remains and is now again being recognized as a powerful generator of negative voting.

This counts for a lot. Lincoln observed, "God must have loved the common people because he made so many of them." He also employed the self-deprecation tack since successfully used by politicians who seek to counter the tendency of many who are struggling to make ends meet to express misguided respect for rich candidates who inherited or made a fortune on their own. Some rich men may not steal; we have seen, however, that that is not true across the board, any more than it is the case that any economic group has a lesser propensity to engorge off the public trough. 

Asked about how his early life led to his success, Lincoln said that his early years could be summed up in a phrase from Gray's Elegy: "the short and simple annals of the poor." Lincoln was able to use these responses so well because he did rise from an impoverished and hard-scrabble background. Only those who did live a Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story are thus able to employ this approach: it is akin to the now-iron rule that only members of ethnic groups can make jokes about their group. 

Something to Cheer

 We were out walking along Connecticut Avenue here in the nation's capital at about 12:30 P.M. and suddenly we heard and saw a cacophony of horns honking, banners waving, flags flying in the breeze out of sunroofs, and a whole procession of cars parading down the avenue past the Zoo and on, presumably, to downtown DC as thousands cheered. 

It's been much too long since we had something to cheer about like this. Even election night was muted because of the Congressional results. But now it was as if all the pent-up enthusiasm--absolutely no curbing allowed, Larry David--was suddenly released and exploded in a merry pandemonium.

As with every time one gets loaded, there'll be sober second thoughts in the morning, but today is just a great beautiful--70 degrees and sunny here--day for celebrating. Reminds me of the ancient ad slogan from my much much younger days: "They said it couldn't be done..."

Sermons and soda water tomorrow, comedy tonight! Everything is forgiven for Joe--and yes, over the years, there was plenty. But everything changes--now and then. I just received a note saying that the Year of Living Dangerously is over. As one who lived for a while in Indonesia, it really was like that here. Only it was for four years. 

Skip Happy Days Are Here Again, even if they are. I like Ding Dong, The Witch is Dead!!