The empty concert hall

Although Minnesota hasn’t been my home for over a year, that doesn’t mean I haven’t kept track on some of the things going on there. And one of the stories in which I’ve been most interested is the nearly year-long lockout of the musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra. It’s been a sensational story throughout the arts community, and even the mainstream press. (This site provides a very good, concise rundown of the history of the dispute.)

I have many good memories of the Orchestra, having been a season-ticket holder for several years, so it’s natural that I should eventually have chosen to share some thoughts on it. For some time though, I hesitated over exactly what word to use to describe the situation. Not tragic; a natural disaster, a fatal illness, a dead child – that’s tragic. If not that, then, how about sad? Well, yes, it was sad in a way, but it wasn't as if my heart was broken or anything that extreme. Painful? Maybe psychically, but my back is far more painful than an orchestra lockout.

Finally I settled on unfortunate, although that seemed in some way to be a copout. Saying a situation is unfortunate is somewhat like telling a woman her dress is interesting, or that a blind date has a great personality. It’s so noncommittal that its real meaning is not what is said, but what is unsaid.

But after considering the issue*, it struck me that unfortunate is exactly what the lockout is. And my reasons for choosing the word might be just as unfortunate – or at least noncommittal. For while I am a great fan of classical music, the truth is that I do not need to have a live orchestra in order to achieve the fullest enjoyment from that music.

*And the dictionary definitions: unfavorable, inauspicious, regrettable. Or the most appropriate, perhaps: suffering from bad luck.

I hadn’t given this concept much thought until I read a column by Terry Teachout in which he discussed why he seldom went to live concerts anymore. I won’t quote him here, partly because I can’t find the exact article I’m thinking about, but also because I don’t want to superimpose my words on his, or to distort his own personal experience. Suffice it to say that I took his sentiments as an inspiration for my own reasoning. Which is thus:

First off, going to concerts is expensive. Perhaps I didn’t realize how expensive it was until we stopped going a couple of years ago. This was partly because I was unemployed and we couldn’t afford it, and partly because we were preparing to move. Yet even after we moved (the first time) and I returned to a regular job (the first time), we didn’t go back to being regular concertgoers. And in the meantime, we found that it was getting easier to pay our regular bills each month.

So there’s a financial consideration to be made. But it’s also true that for many, live music is the pearl of great price – the pleasure it provides is far more important than any monetary consideration, and we’ve always been prepared to make that sacrifice. Therefore, it might be fair to ask why a live concert might not be worth the cost. And that’s where the real soul-searching takes place. For, after several years of attending both the Minnesota Orchestra and the Minnesota Opera, we found ourselves – bored. It’s not that the music wasn’t good – it was, and often was excellent. But it had lost the capacity to thrill.

It was partly because the Minnesota Orchestra didn’t seem to us to be quite as good as it once was, and the Minnesota Opera seemed stagnant in their productions. These observations may have been objectively true, or it may just have been the way we saw it, but it was there nonetheless.

It was partly because the selections themselves weren’t as interesting as they used to be. Now it’s true that everything’s exciting when it’s new, but it’s also true that familiarity can breed contempt. In short, there were too many old pieces we’d heard too often, and the new compositions were often somewhere between unsatisfying and unpleasant.

And, closely intertwined to those points, it was partly because technology has improved so dramatically in the past few years. For example, I can pop in a CD of any Beethoven or Mahler symphony, or any Wagner opera, and enjoy its crystal-clear sound and its excellent musicianship without leaving the comfort of my living room. No parking problems, no whispering people sitting next to us, no traffic congestion to deal with. The quality of the recordings is exceptional – at least as good as the live experience, and a far cry from the scratchy mono recordings of decades past. The quality of the playing, likewise, is meant to produce the best listening experience possible – anyone can enjoy the Chicago or Philadelphia orchestras even though they might be living in East Skitch. I can listen to what I want: maybe the Orchestra’s playing Haydn while I’m in the mood for Mozart, or the Opera’s performing Verdi when what I really want is Puccini. All of this for a fraction of the cost and hassle.

There’s also the fact that my visual experiences aren’t limited to attending the concert hall. A number of orchestras and opera companies broadcast in HD to movie theaters, and the performances are subsequently made available on Blu-Ray DVD, again for a fraction of the cost. Some, like the Metropolitan Opera, make past performances available to subscribers through online archives. All of this makes a great chunk of the history of classical music available to me, no matter where I live, no matter whether or not that area has an orchestra or an opera company, Great performances have been recorded and preserved for posterity, and I can access them for minimal cost. I’m guaranteed the best possible sound, I’m able to enjoy it in comfortable surroundings, and with an extensive enough library, I can pick and choose what appeals to me.

Now, I’m not immune to the argument that the experience of watching an opera in a movie theater or on television can’t compare to seeing it in person. Many operas, for example, are now starting to be staged and cast with the camera in mind, as opposed to the live audience. As well, the cameras, and not you, make the choice of what to look at on stage. I’ll leave it to as to what you might think of this trend, but I’ll readily concede that it’s not necessarily for the best.

On the other hand, the camera can also provide me with an angle unavailable to those in the opera hall; furthermore, considering the price of tickets, the camera can also allow me to actually see the performers from close range, instead of looking down on them from the nosebleed section. And as for the trend of staging productions for the camera rather than the live patron, the counterexample is that financial considerations often require companies to program familiar pieces in order to sell tickets, rather than new or underperformed works that might not put bodies in the seats – therefore, each approach has its own drawbacks.

Professional sports, especially the NFL, faces a similar situation, in that the home viewing experience now far outweighs that of attending a game in person. The HD picture on the big screen TV, with closeups, instant replays, and the pause button, and the Red Zone ability to watch other live games, all from a comfy couch with a few friends over, far outweighs sitting in a cramped seat, surrounded by obnoxious drunks, watching ant-sized players down below while consuming outrageously priced food and drink, in weather that could be wet, frozen or baking, all of which can be obtained for the cost of a second mortgage.

Much ink (and many pixels) have been, and will continue to be, used on the future of classical music, and what can be done to cultivate a new audience. The live concert isn’t, and shouldn’t be, dead. Nor have we sworn off live concertgoing ourselves, despite what I might have made it sound like; I love dressing up and going to the concert hall, and now that we’ve settled in Dallas, we may well return to being regular attendees at the orchestra and opera. But I cannot deny – I admit it, in fact – that my classical music appreciation has not only been enhanced but has grown as a result of this technology, and that at this moment I derive far more pleasure from it than I would if there was a Minnesota Orchestra for me to go and see.

Of course without live orchestras there can be no new music from new composers, no new recordings to make their way to CD or DVD, no ability for a communal experience with like-minded people. I don’t want that to disappear, and I don’t think anyone else does, either. The point I’m trying to make in this whole essay is that you could – and I want to emphasize could – make an argument that not every area needs a live orchestra or opera company, and the death of the Minnesota Orchestra, if it happens, shouldn't automatically lead to the death of the arts in the Twin Cities.

As we move increasingly to a virtual society of people who live in a cocoon of their own making, providing their own entertainment on their own timeline, consumed from the Cloud, connected only with earbuds and joined by friends who are seldom (if ever) seen in person, it shouldn't be a surprise that we would confront the same possibility for the world of classical music. It is, perhaps, tragic that this is the society in which we find ourselves, but we would be fools to deny it. ◙

Of Rent-A-Mobs, absurd health insurance reform, and running the Peachtree instead of watching 40 hot dog eaters

R ent-a-Mobs. The classlessness of the Christian bashers has grown. Fresh off successes in overturning religious freedom via the overthrow of common sense in favour of selling out to every sin-pusher in the world, they have returned to Austin, where weeks ago, a bill to ban the murder of children after they are 20 weeks old was killed by the filibuster of Wendy Davis that reminded me of the Indianapolis 500's three qualifying sessions (Day One Q1 and Q2, Day Two) and where rules may deserve a change.

The delay tactic used was the bill would die at midnight if it was not passed. The roll call in the Senate started just before midnight, but the final approved votes were at 12:02 AM, killing the bill.

If it was INDYCAR, this problem, and another current session, would not have been needed, all Gov. Perry would have needed was to sign the bill that passed. In INDYCAR, if a car leaves the designated pit box at 3:59:55 PM, just seconds before the 4 PM gun that ends Day One Q1, that driver is entitled to make his runs, even if the green flag waves at 4:02 PM and the run ends at 4:05 PM, and if the driver's time is between 10th and 24th, he is in the field, or between 1st and 9th, he enters Q2.

Would common sense have prevailed?

For someone who was taught to hate orange early and still does with reckless abandon, seeing orange tee-shirts and the classless dress of the protesters had me laughing at what they were doing.

And oh, by the way; the rent a mob told pro-life legislators they hoped their daughters were raped. Now this is thuggery.

Be in the worst shape, lower rates, but double or triple rates for healthy ones? I admit I'm a fitness person. I've run nine marathons and made my super sprint triathlon debut last year. I lift weights and with my best friend, often take barre classes together (she was my dance partner). I avoid colas and junk food when possible, and prohibit quick-service restaurants, colas, and coffee from any intake. And, to take a cue from our British readers (considering the number of football posts we've done here), I do not tolerate fags, nor do I even use them. (If you're not familiar, that's a Brit term for a cigarette.)

With mandatory “health exchanges” coming in play and new approved health care under the “Affordable Care Act,” in effect, a healthy person would pay two to three (or more) times greater than what they currently pay, including mandatory payment for baby murders, and with the anti-Christian agenda of Dear Leader, it is no longer possible to count AIDS as a “pre-existing medical condition” as part of pushing sin legalisation.

So it's perfectly OK to reward poor health but if you're fit and do marathons and the rest, but anyone who is obese, has morbid conditions (including STD's), and the works will be rewarded with lower rates. Go figure. That's ObamaCare.

When in the course of human events . . . Those words mean things. It was 237 years ago those words launched the Declaration of Independence against King George III. How much of this holds true today as we have Dear Leader leading a generation to believe in dependence on the government.

Cultural Outrage has a New Lead. ESPN, which has taken over tennis (and is perpetuating its decline), once again showed the ultimate Independence Day disgrace; the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating contest. Once again, there were two contests, a women's and a men's. What is with that show? Forget the chemical loads, I ran Peachtree Street! ◙

Why I didn't celebrate the 4th last week

From this great takedown by Judge Andrew Napolitano, "Jefferson Weeping":

The litany of the loss of freedom is sad and unconstitutional and irreversible. The government does whatever it can to retain its power, and it continues so long as it can get away with it. It can listen to your phone calls, read your emails, seize your DNA and challenge your silence, all in violation of the Constitution. Bitterly and ironically, the government Jefferson wrought is proving the accuracy of Jefferson's prediction that in the long march of history, government grows and liberty shrinks.

Somewhere Jefferson is weeping.

Read the rest and weep as well. (H/T Mark Shea) ◙

Autogol

I danced for five years at a major dance studio in the region, and we competed annually. I do not think our choreographer wanted us to sabotage our routines, and cause us to lose to opponents. I played varsity baseball while a 6th grader for a small parochial school, and while we never won, I don't think Coaches Frazier and Griffin wanted us to throw games. We worked on fundamentals. I've debated, and would never consider doing ANYTHING to intentionally cause our team to lose.

Anyone who has played sports and is on defense knows the goal is to prevent the offense from scoring. The sad thing from overturning both Proposition 8 and the Defence of Marriage Act is that the Supreme Court ruled the defendants' attorneys were not entitled to defend the statutes in question. In the former, it was a private party, and in the latter, it was the Leader of the Loyal Opposition. In both cases, the attorneys entitled to defend the statutes were on the opposition, the respective Attorneys General (Kamala Harris in California and Eric Holder for the United States) were not defending the laws they were supposed to defend, but chose to side with the sexual deviancy lobby.

In effect, the Attorneys General told their teams to work against what they were supposed to defend. It would be a head coach telling his players to score own goals in an attempt to lose games. It is akin to being one of the members of the Black Sox, and Kennesaw Mountain Landis could not prosecute them.

That is the larger issue with overturning both DOMA and Proposition 8. The courts have said if an attorney jumps ship and sides with the opponent, the defence cannot hire a new attorney to defend them. Is that the court of law?

The only thing I can say about what both cases did is something you hear at football broadcasts but you do not want to happen.

¡¡¡¡¡AUTOGOL!!!!!

If you were a defender, and you scored an own goal, you would be ashamed of yourself. But in the overturning of both cases, the Mr. Holder and Mrs. Harris patted themselves on the back, since they worked against the side they were supposed to defend, and instead worked to score the own goal.

Sad. The real problem now is the Supreme Court ruled the attorney who is supposed to defend can now jump ship and cause an instant victory for the opposing side. ◙

Retro TV Friday

Lunchtime Thursday I contemplated something about evening news here in the Midlands of South Carolina. While we have the luxury of Charleston news available to us as do Columbia, the Columbia market was fortunate to be 2013 and not 1989.

Why?

Until the early 1990's, WIS, the NBC affiliate, was the only station with an evening newscast (WOLO-ABC in 1992, WLTX-CBS in 1995, and WACH-Fox in 1996 added evening newscasts, with WACH only being a junior newscast of WIS for the early years before they branched out on their own with the only local three-hour newscast in the morning in the 21st century and one hour at 10 PM -- they tried a 7:30 PM for a while as a "last word before primetime" but didn't work well though it was sold as an Idol pregame). Television reruns dominated the other three stations (Andy Griffith on WLTX and Cheers on WOLO; WACH was too new at the time).

That could have spelled disaster in the Midlands for situations such as the 2005 Firecracker 400 (rain; ended after 2 AM) or last Wednesday's Boston-Chicago Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final (three overtimes; ended at 1 AM) if television was still that way with only one station having evening news. Could you imagine more people reading the morning paper for results as the newscast didn't air until 1:30 AM in off the air territory. ◙

Scouting's version of the USAC/CART war

The recent Indianapolis 500 reminded me of the tragic news among the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America selling the 100-year old organisation to the wolves of sexual deviancy advancement organisations that sacrifice children in order to advance the wants of this tiny minority that controls Hollywood and the government.

Scouting, as a result of this tragic move by the National Council, under the bullying of AT&T, Intel, and UPS, has sown the seeds of a split as a result of the cave to sexual deviancy activists. The majority of sponsoring organisations (churches for the most part) do not support the bullies that changed the policy to advance sexual deviancy, and it is evident that Scouting's version of the USAC/CART Split of 1978 has arrived with the tragic vote of the National Council.

Much as an airplane crash that killed United States Auto Club officials on the way home from Trenton, New Jersey, in 1978 accelerated the divisions that led to the owners' split with the national governing body, resulting in a split that reared its ugly head at Indianapolis for 30 years, Scouting's major split was a byproduct of the 2012 elections, one that according to Hillsdale College showed the power of the powerful group in the electoral process, the group now clearly in charge nationally, those without religious belief (mostly atheists, humanists, and those without a belief system). They control higher education, cultural institutions, the media, and Hollywood, while carrying a clear understanding of their power and momentum of their growth. It is a split between Scouting sponsoring organisations and the National Council that seems to be irrepairable after recent changes.

The Hillsdale report noted in a swing state for 2012, President Obama lost the Protestant vote by three percent and Catholic vote by eleven percent. However, with just one eighth of the vote, the Nones carried the election home with a nearly 2:1 margin that supported him. The results were shocking, and other elections, where Nones were in control, showed as sexual deviancy activists won all four elections on redefining “marriage” that were aimed at weakening churches, and following further state legislative votes, churches are now barred from ministry work for certain groups as a result of the Biblical worldview in conflict with the state's worldview in a full quarter of the states – twelve and the District of Columbia – in full, and more in part.

Liberal authorities want to eject Scouts for a Christian worldview (including Jamboree venues), which was the reason for the sellout in part in order to keep using facilities, and also to keep corporate sponsors, bullied by activist groups such as the Human Rights Campaign (which is not about human rights but about forced acceptance of sin and expulsion of those with a Christian worldview, as Matt Barber learned) and the Pride Foundation, and also by federal laws of this Administration, including Public Laws 111-84 (Shepard-Byrd) and 111-321 (redefines the military's goals to homosexual activism), and now even a bill to legalise bestiality and other gross conduct currently illegal. Sadly, this is the reason for the demise of the Boy Scouts of America.

In the Hillsdale article, they noted “dhimmi” means non-Muslim, and under Muslim rule, those who are not Muslims could only survive if they accepted Muslim dominance. The modern ruling Nones have adopted the same playbook in that Humanist dominance must be accepted and Christianity must be shut down.

The result of this massive decision by the National Council, and in effect the dhimmitude of Christians by the ruling Nones, has created the catalyst for the upcoming split in Scouting. It is on par with USAC and CART 35 years ago, but was not something we needed until activists ran roughshod with the power of humanists against Christians. These are splits that are necessary in order to preserve the Biblical truth, as the Scouts and the supermajority of sponsoring organisations have been abandoned for the 30 pieces of silver that the Nones took in order to advance an agenda pushed by the President. ◙

Opera Wednesday

I grew up in the Boston area and have always been a Red Sox fan. As a kid, I went to many ball games at Fenway Park and always found it to be a magical place. Of course, part of being a Red Sox fan is experiencing gut-wrenching disappointments, albeit, interspersed with moments of elation.” -- Richard Maltz, composer, Bambino.

And such is the opening notes for the recent South Carolina performances (in Aiken and Columbia) in the Month of May of Mr. Maltz's Bambino, a short (30 minute) one-act opera that's a work of fiction that was conceived ten years ago, but was made different following October 27, 2004.

Bambino starts innocently set above the Green Monster, yes, the well-beloved left-field wall that has a reason for being nearly ten metres tall near Lansdowne Street, with John Dooley as Buck (a young Red Sox player, ironic considering a top prospect currently in Pawtucket after having his first cup of coffee was Jackie Bradley Jnr) and Kelsey Harrison as Molly (his girlfriend) walk into Fenway, thinking this was to be the time the Red Sox finally would make it. Once Buck walks into the locker room, the story then focuses on Molly's fears and the staging moves to the box seats at Fenway, in a section that would be normally for players' wives and girlfriends.

While this takes place, a montage of famous moments from the past (all real life, unlike this opera!) are shown, from the story of the Curse (we know of course legend has it that “No, No, Nannette” was being funded resulting in the firesale) to the plays of the past. The most famous moments of those shown are the ones from 1975 (Game 6) but little, if any, reference to going between Buckner's legs or what is known as the Boston Massacre (1978 – Nike had to pull shirts thanks to Джоха́р and Тамерла́н Царна́ев).

Molly (dressed well for the event) is met by a few fans (and note the programs come from 2007), while in this game setting, Buck, in 21st-century home uniform, is patrolling the famed left-field area near the fence. After a few errors, he finds the Red Sox down two after just an inning. What happens is he is confronted by a ghost, George Herman Ruth himself (Kevin Eckhard). After a disappointing K in the inning he batted, the situation turns ahead to the end of the game, down two runs, two on, two out in the bottom of the ninth.

Suspiciously I see there is a gangster on top of the Green Monster. This sets the stage for the dramatic ending of this too-short operetta. Buck is up to bat in the situation and after two strikes are set (with appropriate recitatives), the dream of a big hit is there. Naturally, in the dramatic settings of theatre, you go unrealistic of the modern game. Buck hits a long fly ball and runs across the bases, and just as he is about reach the plate, and the relay, a few shots are fired (from the Monster, no less), reportedly trying to keep the Curse alive. Buck slides home but is killed from the gangster's fire. He's safe. The Red Sox win.

Poor Molly grieves while her beau lays dying the team had finally won. Thus was another chapter, legend says, the fate of Buck George dying while the curse ends, or so it goes in the story. Considering the Curse of Ben Tillman here for a long time that ended in 2002 (women's athletics), what else could you say? Makes you wonder how the opera was rewritten after the 2004.

But in actuality, as I learned, the real Curse isn't at Fenway. It's across town on the grounds of Boston University, at Nickerson Field, originally Boston's National League stadium (Boston was a two-team town until the end of 1952; Boston's National League team moved to Milwaukee in 1953 and to its present location in 1966 – note too that two other two-team towns were down to one as St. Louis and Philadelphia also lost their American League teams, the present Baltimore and Oakland teams). In recent years, teams that called Nickerson home have folded – Boston University's gridiron team, and a few women's professional footballers have failed. Could that be the true place where the Curse still stands, from the time in 1935 when George Herman Ruth came back to Boston for a curtain call in the NL and retired shortly into the season? ◙

Ken Venturi, R.I.P.

I first heard of Ken Venturi when I was ten or so. It was in Phil Pepe’s book Winners Never Quit, one of those books that I’d buy at the scholastic book sales they had when we were kids. Pepe’s book told the stories of athletes who’d come back from extraordinary adversity of one kind or another to become champions, and one of those chapters was on Ken Venturi.

Venturi had been a hotshot golfer with an ego to match. He’d finished second in the Masters as an amateur, had won early and often on the tour as a pro, and lived the life of the celebrity. Then, almost overnight, his game went south, that sweet swing turned into a mess, his mechanics crumbled. Soon he was reduced to begging for spots in tournaments. Even the Masters forgot about him. But because Venturi had ruffled so many feathers along the way with his cockiness, few people felt sorry for him, and even fewer believed he’d ever make it back. But he did, and the story of how the new, humbler Venturi overcame exhaustion and heat stroke to win the 1964 U.S. Open at Congressional is one of the great chapters in golf’s long history.

His rebirth was short-lived; carpel tunnel syndrome in both wrists devastated him, making it almost impossible for him to even feel the club in his hands. Without that touch, his game again faltered. Surgeries and endless practice brought him back, to the point that Pepe’s chapter ends with Venturi winning the 1966 Lucky Invitational in San Francisco, his final tournament victory.

Venturi retired from the tour the next year, and then began the remarkable next stage of his life, one that would surely have qualified for an entirely new chapter in Pepe’s book. As a child he had stuttered so severely that doctors told his mother he’d never be able to pronounce his own name; he’d overcome that, just as he would overcome the challenges that threatened his golfing career, and now Venturi would turn to broadcasting, where the next 35 years he would be the lead golf analyst for CBS.

I loved listening to Venturi cover golf, and over the years he became one of my favorite broadcasters. He might not have been as smooth as some, might not have had the way others had with words, but – like so many other broadcasters I’ve eulogized over the years, including his good friend and colleague Pat Summerall – Venturi was a big-match announcer. When you heard his hushed voice as Nicklaus stood over a put, you knew this was a big moment.

And like them, Venturi didn’t make the broadcast about himself. He told it like it was, but without the smarmy snark of a Johnny Miller or the harshness of a Curtis Strange. He wasn’t interested in showing the viewers that he was smarter and cleverer than the golfers on the course. And, perhaps most important, he was always on the golfer’s side. He didn’t want to see them fail out there, and took no delight when misfortune befell them. I remember during Jean van de Velde’s meltdown at the 1999 British Open that ABC’s team of Mike Tirico and Strange almost seemed to relish what was happening. Venturi wasn’t like that – he knew the pain of losing, and though he’d tell you what went wrong out there, he never suggested that he would have been above making that same mistake.

Venturi’s work with Vin Scully, Summerall, and Jim Nantz made CBS’s golf coverage the best on TV. When he retired a few years ago, to be replaced first by Lanny Wadkins and then by Nick Faldo, it just wasn’t the same. Don’t misunderstand me – I think Faldo can be very good, but he’s not Venturi.

When I’d heard a couple of weeks ago that Venturi was too ill to attend his (richly deserved) induction into the golf Hall of Fame, I worried that this might be the challenge he wouldn’t be able to overcome. His death on Friday, at age 82, leaves a void in both the sporting and broadcasting worlds. Ken Venturi was a class act, on the course and behind the microphone. He was a winner. ◙

Originally posted at It's About TV!

Classic Sports Thursday

There was actually a time in the 1950's when the “have car will race” adage came to ragtops. A Midwestern organisation, the Society of Auto Sports, Fellowship, and Education (SAFE), started its Circuit of Champions for convertibles. These cars were a mix of the wild and not fairly well organised touring car divisions at the time (NASCAR was only developing after the Barkheimer Associates deal in 1954 into the national organisation), and SAFE's Circuit of Champions was gaining popularity in the regions they raced with the odd convertibles.

However, the stunning changes in motorsport in the United States after the 24 Heures du Mans disaster led to the end of motorsport's governing body, the AAA Contest Board, and led to major changes that still affect motor racing today. In the Midwest, SAFE was purchased by Big Bill France (NASCAR), leading to the development of the NASCAR Convertible Division, a division that raced until 1959 officially, racing mostly on short tracks, where drivers could be seen sawing their hands on the wheels of these cars. Some circuits included quarter-mile tracks inside football stadiums such as Winston-Salem's legendary Bowman Gray Stadium (still in operation today and was the real-life site of the short-lived documentary Madhouse) and the home of what is now the Arizona Cardinals (that played in Chicago at the time), Soldier Field (the Granitelli family organised the races; the track was removed following complaints by hippies, and stadium renovation when the Bears were forced to leave Wrigley Field because of a requirement imposed by the NFL after the merger stadia had to seat a minimum of 50,000 spectators).

With the hardtops already having established the Labor Day race that became known as one of saloon racing's four majors (the Southern 500) and the grandest in stature (first paved NASCAR circuit, Daytona was still running on the beach and road circuit until the end of 1958), Bob Colvin of Darlington International Raceway decided he was going to have a big race for the ragtops also. That ragtop race was declared to be a Confederate Memorial Day race that would be their grandest in stature on the (then) 1 3/8 mile egg (there were a few slight rebuilds, one in 1953 and a few in the 1960's – the current track measurement of 1.366 miles was not established until 1971; based on running 10 feet from the wall, now seven feet from the wall after the SAFER barriers were installed for the 2004 races).

Mr. Colvin's Rebel 300, a “Grand National Convertible Championship” race, would be established for May 11, 1957, the Saturday before Mother's Day, and the day after the Confederate Memorial Day (May 10; the state did not officially observe it until the 21st century, but in South Carolina it is a reference to the capture of Robert E. Lee and also Thomas Jackson's death). But an interesting dilemma took place after rain interrupted the event plans. South Carolina law prohibited racing on Sunday (the law was modified to carry a 250-mile / 402 km exemption or if it started after 1:30 PM in the 1980's), and even though the rain date was not mentioned, “next clear day” was attempted, which was Sunday, in violation of the law. Darlington County authorities arrested Mr. Colvin after pulling the safety car to pit lane to start the Rebel 300 that Sunday, which the promoter posted bond.

Curtis Turner looked on his way to winning when a “Big One,” as called today, took place within the first 30 laps, but crashed in that incident (future Grand Slam race winner Jim Paschal and future official Dick Beaty were also involved), leading to an easy lead change by Lap 33 for Glenn (Fireball) Roberts, who led all but one lap afterwards to win the inaugural Rebel 300 in the Ford super team organised by Peter DePaolo, who just 32 years earlier was the first man to win the Indianapolis 500 in less than five hours. The other members of the podium were distinguished racers themselves, with Tim Flock (no Jocko to mess around this time) and Bobby Myers filling out the podium. Roberts and Flock are Motorsports Hall of Fame in America members, and Myers, known for his exploits at Bowman Gray, would sadly be killed that September at the Southern 500. (Myers' brother Billy also raced, winning two premiership races but died of a heart attack the next year; both brothers are memorialised by the National Motorsports Press Association Myers Brothers Award for lifetime achievement; Bobby Myers' son Danny became a well-known mechanic at Richard Childress Racing and in 1998 fueled both a Cup car and an IRL car at the Indy 500. It was the crying image of “Chocolate” best remembered from Kevin Harvick's tear-jerking 2001 Atlanta win three weeks after being hired by Childress to replace a legend, and Danny retired in 2002, becoming the Childress museum's curator. The Childress organisation also has a winery in the area also.) Roberts died in the 1964 Charlotte crash of burns, and Flock died in 1998 of cancer.

Other top five drivers were Bob Welborn, a legend in the division, with Buck Baker (2013 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee) as co-driver, with Lee Petty (patriarch of the family) in fifth.

The 1957 Convertible race at Darlington was the first of six, with the first three being full Convertible Division races, and the last three being Grand National races that required convertibles. When the Rebel 300 became a Grand National hardtop race in 1963, they actually tried it was two 150-mile races. That didn't work and the race since 1964 has been a full hardtop race for 300, 400, or 500 miles, depending on the year of the race, and since 2005 returned to Confederate Memorial Day as a 500-mile race, televised on Fox.

Whatever people call it, Saturday's Bojangles' 500 is the 57th edition of the Rebel 500, and has an interesting take as the only NASCAR Convertible Divison race still run as a full championship race in what is now the Sprint Cup Series. The “convertible race” of the 100-mile qualifying races for the Daytona 500 (now Budweiser Duel) was a championship race for convertibles in that year, but even after the division was discontinued, the two qualifying races format continued though it lost championship status in 1972.

An interesting thought as convertible racing was popular in the 1950's as the Rebel 500 takes the green Saturday night.  ◙

Drawing the line

I read the news today (oh, boy)* that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie underwent gastric bypass surgery back in February.  Christie apparently underwent the weight-reducing surgery at the behest of his family, and told the New York Post that "he wasn’t motivated by thoughts of running for president." Now, I find that a little hard to believe in a man who's ego is at least as big as his waistline, especially considering how he bridled at former White House physician Connie Mariano when the later said she worried about him dying in office.

*If you don't get it, look it up.

Let's give Christie's motives a pass for now and assume he's telling the truth.  He wants to be healthier, he wants to be around for his family.  That' s a noble sentiment.   However, it does raise the question, which is this: should the health of a candidate for public office be a campaign issue?

Having said that, let's take it a step further: assuming that the health concern in question does not prevent the candidate from actually discharging the duties of said office, do we have the right - or the obligation - to consider whether or not that issue might limit the candidate's ability to complete the full term in office?

At first glance, I'll admit, this seems to be a very intrusive question.  Yet, should Christie make the run for president, at the weight he currently carries, it's going to be asked.  And the further one probes in considering it, the less clear-cut the answer becomes.

Let's take an example and work from there.  There are no right or wrong answers, per se, but you might feel that some are more easily answered than others.  So ask yourself if these are issues:

A cancer survivor, one whose cancer has been eradicated - an issue, or not?  You'd probably say not, and I'd probably agree with you.  But let's change it slightly - what about someone whose cancer was merely in remission?  Paul Tsongas, for example, famously retired from the U.S. Senate in 1984 due to non-Hodgkin lymphoma.  When he returned to politics, in his run for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination, he made his survival of cancer an issue.  But as Tsongas later admitted, he'd been treated for a recurrence of the cancer in 1987.  It came back again after the campaign, and claimed his life on January 18, 1997.  That would have been two days before his (first) term as president would have expired.  An issue, or not?

What about a candidate, like the current president, who smokes (or has smoked)?  It can shorten a lifespan, after all, as those government warning labels keep reminding us.  An issue, or not?

How about someone with a history of Alzheimer's in the family tree?  An issue, or not?  Or does it depend on that person's age?  An issue only if they're older?  And how about age in the first place?

What about someone who's blind?  And does it matter if they were born blind, became blind recently, or is blinded while in office?  Does it affect that person's ability to exercise the duties of the office?  Does it make them easier to deceive?  An issue, or not?

What about someone with a condition that may well be terminal, but may not be?  HIV?  President Kennedy's Addison's disease?   What about other conditions, such as diabetes, which might leave someone more susceptible to a coma if the blood sugar plunges?  What about high blood pressure, which increases the risk of stroke?   What about stress-related illnesses?  MS?  An issue, or not?

Obviously some of these may be more credible than others, but the question remains - are any of these issues that should be raised in a campaign?

As medical science continues to progress, we are able to discover predilections for some diseases long before their effects can be seen - sometimes, even in the womb.  In some cases, a person could be disqualified for public office before they're even born.

We see Nanny Bloomberg's quest to rid New York City of anything that might possibly decrease the lifespan (i.e., things that aren't good for you) - so if these standards are being applied to the average consumer, do they exist for the candidate as well?

I don't pretend to have the answers, but that isn't going to stop me from asking the questions. ◙

"My college actually took me away from logical thinking"

So says Forbes magazine publisher Rich Karlgaard in this article (H/T NRO).  His experience pretty much jibes not only with my own, but with many of my friends who sit in "careers" for which they're vastly overeducated.

A friend of mine, like Karlgaard a PoliSci major, has never had a job for which his degree meant anything other than that he had a college degree in the first place.  "Unless I was actually going into teaching, that degree was pretty much useless from a job standpoint," he told me.  "I didn't take it because I thought it would improve my chances to get a job or to make more money.  I took it because I liked and was interested in politics, and I wanted exposure to the kinds of thought I would be encountering."  Meaning?  "Look, I didn't have any illusions that I'd be getting a good education.  After all, this was a school where the students cheered when they heard Reagan'd been shot.  They had bumper stickers that said 'Reagan in '80, Bush in '81.'  If they were any more left, they would have fallen off the table completely.  But I figure if you want to be involved in 'competitive' politics (as I did at the time), it's good to know what the enemy's saying about you."

But the point he went on to make is this: "Ultimately, it didn't matter what I studied.  I figured a successful school year was one in which I still knew as much at the end of the term as I did at the beginning.  As long as they didn't make me stupid, it was a good year.  But at the end I had that degree.  How many decent jobs can you get now where they don't ask for - demand - a college degree?  Even when it has nothing to do with the job itself?  It's lazy - they just use it as a gatekeeper to keep out the riffraff.  Most of the jobs out there can probably be handled just fine by someone with a degree from a vo-tech school."

I digress with that little anecdote, but only slightly.  Karlgaard's point in this article is similar to my friends - that college has become an enormous (and ridiculous) drain on family and individual finances, oftentimes for nothing more than a piece of paper that does little to prepare the student for life after college - and introduce him or her to a lifetime of debt. Karlgaard posits that the average student would "learn more and spend much less at a community college," and it's hard to disagree with that.  The money quote:

The U.S., I would argue, is driving itself crazy over early achievement. Expensive four-year colleges are a symptom. They’ve become a costly dream trap for too many kids and families. High school grades are overemphasized, SATs must be prepared for years in advance, youthful intellectual experiments (or pranks of the kind Steve Jobs famously engaged in) are discouraged–and for what? Most kids won’t get into the topflight college of their dreams. Worse, some who actually clear that bar will nearly bankrupt their parents in the process. Or they’ll find life so competitive at Elite U. that they drop down into the Mickey Mouse courses–which exist everywhere, even at Harvard–and end up with a worthless degree.

In fact, it's been my observation that education is really one of the last things the modern college is concerned with.  First and foremost is indoctrination, but after that there's the endless quest for prestige, to be able to say "we're the best business school in the world," or law school, or engineering school, or what have you, in the ratings that come out from publications such as US News  There's the desire for research dollars from governments and foundations.  There's the scam being leveraged on alums to provide financial support for the school.  There's a continuing, and growing, alliance with big government and big business to control access to the power in this country.

But don't just take my rantings - be sure to read all of what Karlgaard says, and discuss.   ◙

Giulio Cesare or, the Queen of the Nile

Dessay and Daniels in Cesare - but which one's the queen?

April Fools' Day may have been the first of the month but it didn't matter for the Metropolitan Opera last Saturday, as it pulled off one of the great practical jokes of recent time on a capacity crowd in New York and a worldwide HD theater audience, with David McVicar's hoax "production" of Handel's Giulio Cesare.

The idea of doing a broad parody of Handel's most famous opera - turning it into a sex farce complete with cross-dressers, hokey dance scenes, and over-the-top arias that seemed as if they would never end - would have been a risky stunt in less capable hands, but McVicar and his talented cast executed the spoof brilliantly, with nary a wink nor nod to the knowing audience, most of whom were in on the joke from the opening curtain. Not since This Is Spinal Tap has a genre been mocked so mercilessly - and hilariously - as it was here.

Cesare was ripe from beginning to end with scenes so ridiculous that they obviously weren't meant to be taken seriously as actual opera.  Take, for example, French countertenor Christophe Dumaux, whose Tolomeo was a joy to behold, a remarkable performance of over-the-top effemininity made all the more effective through Dumaux’s insistence on playing it all straight (so to speak). Surely the idea of turning the bloodthirsty co-ruler of Egypt into a fruit-flavored sadomachostic drag queen, and then suggesting that he actually had a sexual interest in Pompey’s widow Cornelia (shrilly played by Patricia Bardon) would have been madness in the hands of a lesser production team, but the sheer ridiculousness of it all just added to the general gaiety of the night.

Tolomeo’s bitter rival to the throne, his sister Cleopatra, was played to the hilt by the afternoon’s star, soprano Natalie Dessay. Dessay has long been recognized as one of opera’s greatest actresses, and her willingness to spoof her own reputation with an all-singing, all-dancing interpretation of the teenage queen that seemed to have come right out of a Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney “hey kids, let’s put on a show!” musical, with routines ranging from the Charleston to Bollywood-inspired schtick, was a risk from which lesser singers might have shied. Dessay, at least thirty years too old for the role, eshewed the use of any makeup that might have detracted from the impression she was actually playing Cleopatra's mother, and proved that in the generally stuffy world of opera, a diva willing to make an asp of herself is indeed a breath of fresh air.

Cleopatra’s love interest, Giulio Cesare himself, was the famed countertenor David Daniels. Up until the 1980s, the role of Caesar, written for the castrati of Handel’s time, had frequently been interpolated for high basses, providing a measure of authenticity for the work. That obviously would have been inappropriate in this case; thankfully, McVicar chose to go with the more modern practice of casting Caesar as a countertenor, and in the hands of Daniels, the military general became just another lovestruck boy. Daniels’ passionate make-out sessions with Dessay provided some of the biggest laughs of all.

We also shouldn’t overlook Alice Coote in the trouser role of Sesto, Pompey’s grieving son. The idea of Coote’s hermaphroditic Sesto vowing vengeance on the mincing Tolomeo would have been enough to keep anyone in stitches for the rest of the evening, were there not even more laughs in store.  And we must save a word for Rachid Ben Abdeslam, as Cleopatra's aide Nireno, obviously channeling Liberace's comedic talents in a flamingly flamboyant presence throughout.

The cast was ably led throughout by conductor Harry Bicket, perhaps today's premier interpreter of early music.  Baroque opera has gotten a bad rap through the centuries for its static staging and endless lyrical repeats (in which a single line is repeated as many as three or four times), making it rich for parody.  But by slowing the tempo even further, Bicket was able to produce exaggeratedly long set pieces - so long, in fact, that were this an actual opera many patrons probably would have fallen asleep.  This production, however, proved the old adage that nothing succeeds like excess.

Only base Guido Loconsolo, as Achillas, struck a sour note. His spot-on, realistic portrayal of Tolemo’s once-loyal aide turned traitor, was too grounded in reality to truly fit in, as if he were the only one of the cast not in on the joke. As it turned out, though, McVicar had an answer for that as well.

In an age when the world grows increasingly absurd, parody has become more and more difficult to pull off. Fortunately, McVicar’s crowning touch – that of bringing Tolemo and Achillas back from the dead to join in the chorus at the finale – surely removed any lingering doubt that this was a performance not to be taken seriously. After all, the alternative would be that the Metropolitan Opera was treating one of classical music’s greatest composers with utter disregard and contempt, mocking the story, the characters, and – most of all – the audience in a way that was both obscene and depraved, rendering the venerable Met as little more than a gay burlesque theater and Cesare a demented fantasy.

It would be so unthinkable, in fact, that only a madman would suggest that this performance was ever meant to be seen as anything other than this generation’s Rocky Horror Picture Show. Indeed, it’s likely that the Met’s Giulio Cesare can look forward to a long life of midnight showings at independent movie theaters. And for fans of absurdist musical comedy, that’s the best news of all. ◙

A new humanist theocracy?

I was raised in the reading of A Beka's wonderful history books about the United States, and the discussions of the Separatists, those who wanted a split from the Church of England, and the Strangers. It was a love of religious freedom that sent the Separatists on their way to the New World to settle nearly 400 years ago in the Plymouth Colony.

Now with the advancement of the homosexual agenda, including the systematic swiping of an entire region, I have this scary thought to consider:

Four hundred years ago, the Separatists left England over the fearsome arm of the Church of England, and a state-run church. Freedom of religion was the main goal, the ability to study God's Word, and being able to worship God. Now, in the same region, freedom of religion and speech are both being stripped, as homosexual activists have made it clear they want a humanist theocracy, where their agenda is the "gospel," and those opposing them are arrested and punished.

The Pilgrims, if they see what has happened today, would be very angry and wanting to escape the humanist theocracy that the sexual deviants have pushed on the nation, through the media and indoctrination of generations. They wanted to escape the state-run Church of England; now they are seeing a humanist agenda establishing a state religion, where the sexual deviants' agenda is law and freedom of speech and religion are eliminated by the state religion of humanism, which is controlled by the sexual deviants, with a President of the United States helping push the end of religious freedom and the push of a new state religion. While the First Amendment only bans Congress from establishing a state religion, today's modern humanist agenda is only glad using courts and state legislators to push a state religion where the state is a deity, and Christians are prohibited from any activity, from running ministries to help the needy, to adoption and foster care, and even teaching children a worldview opposed to the humanists.

Has the nation, especially in New England, fallen prey to a humanist order that is every bit as troubling as the Separatists 400 years ago leading them to leave England for the New World? The sellout to humanist ideas is the saddest thing we're seeing today. If Roger Williams saw what was happening, he would prohibit this humanist agenda. ◙

The buzz that lingers

If you were like me growing up (and, as I always say, you should have been), you remember electric football - the game with the vibrating plastic men who never went where you wanted them to, instead congregating on the sidelines against the board's edge - or, even worse, running the wrong way into the opponent's end zone.

The Tudor game pictured at left was the second electric football game I ever had, and the first one to have real teams, instead of the generic red and white teams.  This one had the Cardinals and the Bears, and included spare holes in the end zones so you could move the goal posts from the goal line (where the pros had them at the time) to the back of the end zone, for the college version.  (Although why you'd want to use college rules for NFL teams was always a mystery to me.)  For me, the real fascination with the game lie in the externals - the simulated cardboard stadium, the design of the field, the helmet logos on the side of the board, and the different teams you could buy.  I had my share of games over the years, each one of them with its unique characteristics, and although none of them played very well, I loved them all just the same.  The games have long since disappeared from the household, but they've also disappeared from the stores, a victim mostly of our continuing obsession with the latest technology.  When you can recreate games and leagues with a computer, why bother with a three-dimensional game that doesn't work very well?

My interest in them has always remained, though (as hours of trolling around eBay would attest), and so I found this article (h/t Uni Watch) of great interest, telling us of efforts to revive the electric football industry.  I know I'm not alone in my affection for the game, as this book and website show, and I really hope Doug Strohm's efforts to get the NFL merchandising license pan out.  The games have improved over the years, and besides, there's something so - social about it all.  It's not sitting in front of the screen for hours; it's something you do with other people.  It's something you can be part of in ways other than simply pressing buttons.  And I wish them all the luck in succeeding.

By the way, that game pictured on the Unforgettable Buzz website?  It was one of the great games ever made, a Tudor special edition for Super Bowl III, as the logo and the teams would indicate.  It was the first to be specially made with the Super Bowl logo and markings on the field, and it was the first game to feature an AFL team in white uniforms (previously, NFL teams came in both dark and white jerseys, but AFL teams were dark only).  I had this game, and although the Colts may have lost the real Super Bowl, in my version they beat the Jets every time.  Of course, I can't promise that I didn't help the players out a little from time to time...    ◙

Retro TV Friday

The report that Disney Channel is reviving for a generation that hasn't played the game -- in fact it's been nearly 20 years since the format even aired in the States -- the game that legend says came from Burt Reynolds' living room and whose format is owned by the company.

"Welcome to the quick-draw game that everybody's playing -- it's Win, Lose, or Draw!"

In celebration of Disney's new revival of the teen format, let's look back at the show:

Pilot clip: 



A contestant's child posted this clip of their father playing (best known version, Bert Convy):



NBC Daytime version (Vicki Lawrence):



Robb Weller (the final season of the original):

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Pat Summerall, R.I.P.

My favorite Pat Summarall moment was from the 1990 Super Bowl, back when I still watched the game.  The San Francisco 49ers were in the process of crushing the Denver Broncos - had, in fact, just scored twice early in the fourth quarter to make the score 55-10 (the eventual final), and as CBS prepared to go to commercial, Summerall summed it up as only he could.

"This," he said, "is just unfortunate."

That he didn't resort to hyperbole, trying to be clever or the coiner of a new phrase, tells you what you need to know about Summerall the broadcaster.   In the past, I've referred to announcers like Summerall (Curt Gowdy, Chris Schenkel) as "big-game" announcers, because the sound of their voices lent gravitas to the event they were broadcasting, but as I think about it I think one could add another description: "gentleman announcer."

This shouldn't be read as sexist, of course.  What I mean is that, like those other men, Pat Summerall was a gentleman in the way he broadcast a game.  There was no shouting or hyperventilating every time someone made a routine play, no attempt to make himself the center of attention - the broadcast wasn't about him, it was about the game.  He had a rich, smooth voice, was clear and spare with his words, and understated in his delivery.  He enjoyed great chemistry with his broadcast partners, notably Tom Brookshier, John Madden and Ken Venturi, and they all profited from working with him.  And he respected the viewers.

Pat Summerall was one of the first former athletes to make the successful transition to the broadcast booth.  He had been an NFL placekicker, most notably for the New York Football Giants, and it was supposedly through his kicking that George Allen Summerall earned the nickname "Pat," for Point After Touchdown.  After retirement he moved to the broadcast booth at CBS, first as a color commentator on NFL football (working with, among others, Chris Schenkel), then to lead NFL announcer in 1974, from which he would ultimately broadcast 16 Super Bowls.  Besides announcing live events, he was also the host (with Brookshier) of NFL Films' This Week in Pro Football, back when that show (along with Howard Cosell's Monday Night Football halftime show) was the main delivery method for highlights of the week's action.

Eventually, Summerall became lead broadcaster on all of CBS' major events, including the NBA, the Masters and the U.S. Open tennis championships.  (He even filled in once for the ailing Harry Carey on a Chicago Cubs game for WGN.)  It didn't matter that Summerall had never played professional tennis or golf or basketball; he had experts to provide the analysis.  His job was to be the professional broadcaster, and he did it as well as anyone.

Summerall and Madden moved to Fox in 1994 after the network won the NFC television rights from CBS, and that was good news for the NFL - but not so good for the rest of us, since Summarall's move meant he'd no longer be heard on those other signature events.  Nothing against Jim Nantz, but Pat Summerall never felt the need to turn the 18th hole at the Masters into a Hallmark Moment.

Outside the booth, Summerall fought a long and ultimately successful battle against alcoholism.  In 2004 he underwent a liver transplant, and he had other assorted health concerns over the past couple of decades.  He was the longtime commercial spokesman for True Value Hardware, which meant that even non-sports fans probably recognized his voice. 

Pat Summerall died on Tuesday at the age of 82, and the more I think about it, the more I like that description "gentleman announcer."  I certainly like it for Pat Summerall - one of the very last of an era we'll likely not see (or hear) again. ◙  

This piece originally appeared on our sister site, It's About TV.

Humanism's charge

The charge of the postmodern humanist movement has clearly shown its targets are those who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, and those who study it. The sad state of affairs continue, and we must push hard to turn back Satan's charge.

Any organisation with a Biblical worldview, such as the American Family Association and the Family Research Council, are now caled "hate groups" in the Department of Social Engineering, Special Rights Division (fka the military). When "Army Values" are that of humanists, where sin is acceptable but God's Word is not, those new values imposed by Shepard-Byrd and Public Law 111-321 has turned the "military" into a pathetic ballroom dance, the cluster foxtrot has gone awry. Hoping to hear a full investigation into this.

Our well-esteemed Catholic colleague Rick Santorum (whose son attends The Federal Feminazi Academy of South Carolina*) has a speech scheduled at Grosse Pointe High School in Michigan that administrators wanted to cancel because of his worldview (remember that sexual deviancy activist Dan Savage turned his name into a type of X-rated material in a cybersquatting maneuvre designed to turn voters off him -- hasn't won elections since that happened). After pressure mounted, they had to allow him to speak there. Once again there is the New Tolerance push against a worldview built around the Bible.

And one more piece of New Tolerance stupidity. Washington State is run by King County. The rest of the state does not matter, and we saw it when "marriage" laws were changed to advance the humanist agenda. When Arlene's Flowers in Richland, WA, on the other side of the state (southeastern Washington) as compared to King County on the west, declined to do flowers for a fake "wedding" ceremony in violation of the majority of the nation (but is legal in that state) of sexual deviants, state officials have decided that the florist needs to be taken down for violating special rights laws, and likely Shepard-Byrd, which makes it a federal hate crime.

Is the forced acceptance of sin making it impossible to trust God anymore?

* The School Formerly Known as The Citadel, as it is often referenced by conservatives in our state following the Clinton Administration's successful defeat of men's only schools, while women's only schools are prominent. ◙

We can be heroes

A few years ago - well, almost seven, to be exact - I wrote about one of the novels that made a seminal impact on the youthful Hadley - Walter F. Murphy's The Vicar of Christ. It's a book that holds up surprisingly well today, as does this review. Considering the novel's protagonist - a man who is elected pope and takes the name Francis I - I though it might also still be of interest.

I've linked a couple of times in past weeks to James Bowman's site, where he's been discussing a series of movies he's presented, entitled "The American Movie Hero." Bowman presents three architypes of movie heroes: the virtuous hero (Gary Cooper, John Wayne), the "cool" hero (Humphrey Bogart, Steve McQueen), and the cartoon hero (Harrison Ford, in Raiders of the Lost Ark).

It's difficult to craft a good story without a hero of some type, even if's only an anti-hero. Show me a flawed story, whether movie, show or book, and I'd suggest one of the major problems is the lack of a hero. Bowman doesn't presume to discuss all types of heroes, and therefore I'd suggest the existence of another: the doomed hero.

The doomed hero encompasses elements of all three types listed above. He probably comes closest to the virtuous hero, the one who fights for an ideal; who, as Bowman says, sees "the work that needs to be done," and this is perhaps the defining characteristic of the doomed hero. However, the doomed hero can also share elements of the cool hero in the sense of fatalism and world-weariness that accompanies his mission, which can include a moral ambiguity about his work. It's more difficult to see the similarities with the comic, or larger than life, hero, although the doomed hero often appears in works of an epic, larger than life, scale.

Most of all, when watching or reading about the doomed hero, there is the sense on the part of the witness that "this isn't going to turn out well." Think of Maximus, the character portrayed by Russell Crowe in Gladiator. Not only is there a sense of foreboding about Maximus throughout the film, that although he's certain to triumph he's also going to pay a heavy price, there's also the feeling that this is as it should be, that there really isn't any other way it could happen. The doomed hero meets this with a sense of resignation - the resignation that you see in Steve McQueen's face in The Towering Inferno, as his character, Fire Chief O'Hallorhan, heads back into the burning building in a last effort to save the lives of those trapped inside. The expression on McQueen's face (through which McQueen usually did his best acting) tells you that he doesn't expect to come out of this building alive, and it's perhaps more a testimonial to McQueen's star power than anything else that he somewhat surprisingly survives his mission, rescuing those inside to boot.

This has been perhaps a somewhat roundabout introduction to Declan Walsh, the doomed hero of Walter Murphy's 1978 novel The Vicar of Christ, a book that probably should be better known than it is. We know he's doomed before the story even starts, really: in a brief introduction, the unnamed narrator explains that he's on a mission to write the biography of the martyred Walsh, who died as Pope Francesco I. So, having been told in the opening pages that our hero dies, we are immediately plunged backward into the remarkable story of Walsh's life: a Korean War hero and winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Chief Justice of the United States and, finally, Vicar of Christ.

If all this sounds a little like just a too much for one lifetime (not to mention straining the credulity of the reader; even a favorable reviewer called it "preposterous"), there's good reason. I'd read the book myself one summer during my college years, afterward discussing it with a professor who enjoyed discussing that type of thing, and making this very point. Of course, he shrugged in response - after all, the story wasn't really about realism. It was about the epic, mythological hero. Were the adventures of Ulysses, Beowulf and Arthur any more realistic? It was big book for the reader to get lost in (over 600 pages), a bigger-than-life story that reminded one that life itself, in fact, is bigger than life.

The Vicar of Christ tells this epic story through the eyes of four people who knew Walsh well – a fellow soldier in Korea, a Supreme Court associate justice, the Cardinal who spearheads Walsh’s election as Pope (the book’s longest section), and, as a type of coda, the journalist who provides the inside story of (the now) Francesco’s final days. In doing so, Murphy tells us as much about the narrators, who appear and reappear through Walsh’s life, as he does about Walsh. Their distinctive voices, their (at times) compelling stories, their frequently contradictory opinions of characters they each come in contact with, and their insights into the enigmatic Walsh/Francesco all serve to weave the disparate threads of the story together. We know Walsh as they did, but in the end it’s unlikely that we know him any better then they did, for Murphy as author only lets us see Walsh through their eyes, giving us as much knowledge as he does them.

Murphy, given the chance to provide us with easy answers about Walsh, declines the opportunity and leaves the task to us. Occasionally one of the narrators will provide us with insight that another narrator lacks, but ultimately we’re left to guess about Walsh as much as they do. And while it’s clear that we’re meant to admire Walsh, it’s not at all clear that we’re supposed to understand him.

Murphy is never blind to Walsh’s faults. In an effective use of the narrative form, Walsh’s actions – good and bad – are always given to us as seen through the eyes of others, denying Walsh the opportunity (common to so many fictional characters) to provide a self-serving explanation. (When we do hear those explanations, they’re filtered through the translations of the narrators, further separating Walsh from the reader.)

As to those faults, they are a mixture of the objective (adultery, arrogance, crudity) and the subjective (a liberal Catholicism that will not rest easily with many more orthodox Catholics, though ultimately it does not get in the way of the story). But if great men have great faults, they frequently also have great virtues as well. A towering intellect, a driving ambition, an inner confidence that helps to hide an uncertainty self-knowledge, and an uncertain growth that (depending on your own reading of Walsh) either leads him far away from his old self, or brings him to the fulfillment of his destiny – these are the traits that Murphy uses to confirm his verdict of Declan Walsh/Pope Francesco I as a great, if flawed, man.

It’s always been a wonder to me that The Vicar of Christ, which was published in the heyday of the television miniseries, was not made into one. Its truly epic scale that covers all of the American passions – politics, religion, war, justice, lust – made the story a natural, and I’d thought that at one time I’d read of the story being optioned; alas, however, nothing apparently ever came of it.

So what, ultimately, do we make of Walter Murphy’s The Vicar of Christ? Doubtless it represents many things to many different readers – a hoary relic, the last gasp of a fading liberal Catholicism; a reminder, through the mists of time, of the legendary hero-warrior; a story, uniquely American, of ambition and accomplishment; or perhaps a universal story, that of triumph and tragedy, loss and redemption. At the very least it presents us with a doomed hero that would have done Wagner proud, a man sacrificed on the pyre of his own beliefs. Was he martyred for the faith, or stopped from destroying it? Or could it perhaps be both? That is one of the many mysteries the reader encounters, mysteries likely to be mulled over in the mind for some time to come. Not everyone will like it, or agree with it. Some may be bored with it. Fewer, in all likelihood, will quickly forget it.

One thing is for certain, however. As the college professor told me those many years ago, it is a modern demonstration of the power of myth, the need for heroes, the drama of life. And life itself requires some suspension of ordinary, mortal belief, doesn’t it? For even the most ordinary of lives is so full of miracles that, were we to write about it in simple truth, nobody would believe it.
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Margaret Thatcher, R.I.P.

Margaret Thatcher was next to Churchill, the greatest British Prime Minister of the 20th Century. She was, next to Ronald Reagan, the greatest leader of my lifetime.

That first statement is arguable, though I think just barely.  The second is true without a doubt.  Margaret Thatcher died today at age 87; she'd been in poor health for some time, and one knew the end was coming, but it was still a shock to read about it this morning.  Thatcher was a woman of her convictions - rare among politicians of her era, virtually extinct among politicians today.  She sought not only to govern, but to overturn a system which appeared beyond salvation.  It is difficult today to appreciate just how broken things were in Britain when she took over; they were far different when she left office.  Some will say that her changes were for the worse; I beg to disagree.

They called her the "Iron Lady," and she took it as a compliment.  She was the anti-Oprah, a woman who governed based on principle rather than emotion, who was concerned with doing what she thought was right rather than trying to make people "feel good."  In fact, I doubt very much that she ever asked any of her cabinet ministers how they "felt" about things.  "What do you think?" she would have been more likely to say.  She and Reagan were ideological soul mates and, along with Pope John Paul II, made up a triumvirate that helped bring down Communism. They were larger than life, and that is most assuredly a rarity in this day and age.

Being larger than life has its downsides, however, one that all three share to one extent or another.  It is one thing to transform a nation, a cause, a movement; it is another thing to be a transformational leader.  Reagan and Thatcher shared the problem of succession within their parties; just as Reagan was followed by the weak George H.W. Bush and then the Democrat Bill Clinton, Thatcher was succeeded by the weak John Major and then the disastrous Tony Blair.  The Republicans' stock remains low today because it's seen not as the party of Reagan but of George W. Bush; the Conservatives are led not by a Thatcherite but by David Cameron, who may lead the party to extinction the way he's going.  Only JPII had a successor who built upon his legacy, but with the transition from Benedict XVI to Francis only God knows where the Church will wind up.

I've always said it was a privilege to have lived in Reagan's time, and the same can be said for Thatcher.  Would that there were leaders today - even leaders with whom I don't agree - who were so firm in their beliefs, who actually believed in something other than which way the public opinion polls were blowing.  You might not have liked the lady, but you knew where she stood.  And, more often than not, for the opposition she stood over their defeated bodies.  Put bluntly, she had more balls than any one of them.

At the 1980 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher confronted those who urged her to make a "U-turn" in her policies given the outspoken opposition of the Labour and Liberal parties. She replied, "To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the 'U-turn', I have only one thing to say: "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning."   That is as fine, and true, an epitaph as anyone could ask for. ◙

He Is Risen!

Resurrection, by Raffaellino del Garbo.
Originally for the church of the Benedictine monastery of Monte Oliveto

Those who have read Our Word over the years understand our enjoyment of sacred music, and we have always enjoyed serious sacred music, and we've spurned away from the man-centred music that has sadly come to dominate in our churches thanks to Oregon Catholic Press, GIA, Vivendi, Sony/ATV (the Michael Jackson Family Trust and Sony), and Warner Music Group.

For this Easter, we celebrate Christ's resurrection with Beethoven's Mount of Olives. ◙