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Cathy Rigby is “Peter Pan”…

18 Dec

I just noticed that Cathy Rigby stars again in “Peter Pan,” this time at Madison Square Garden through the end of the year. The advertisements proclaim “Cathy Rigby is Peter Pan” and that’s not entirely hyperbole: Mary Martin originated the role on Broadway in 1954 and won a Tony Award for her performance. Sandy Duncan starred in the 1979 revival, but the former Olympic gymnast has been Peter Pan since 1990. She reprised the role in 1998, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2008, and again this year. By the way, Rigby turned 59 shortly before this year’s run.

My audacity in mentioning a woman’s age is trumped by how impressed I am that she’s still at it. This is a physically demanding role, and Rigby delivers with boundless energy that makes you think she might actually hail from Neverland.

I worked front of house for the 1998 run at the Marquis Theater on Broadway, as well as the 1999 run at the Gerswhin. I was sporadically working concessions on Broadway back then — sort of a reserve player called in on holidays. I’m a big fan of the “Peter Pan” musical and jumped at the chance to see it live. The night before Thanksgiving in 1998, I left the theater during the climax of Act II, when Tinkerbell is dying after sacrificing herself for Peter. As I was setting up for intermission, I heard a woman ask, “Is it safe to go back in now?” I turned and saw that the woman, seated on the floor, was holding a visibly upset girl of about 7 or 8.  “Sure,” I replied, as the applause from inside the theater grew louder, “the audience saved Tinkerbell. She’ll be fine.” The news clearly improved the girl’s mood, and the woman thanked me for the update.

I knew as soon as I’d heard her voice that the woman was Katie Couric, then of “The Today Show.” Her husband had died that year, which I presume had a great deal to do with her daughter’s distress. Faith doesn’t always save the ones we love, but for her sake, I was glad it had that night.

 

 
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Posted by on December 18, 2011 in Pop Life

 

December 16, 1988: Barnabas Collins’s Costume Party…

16 Dec

Back in 1988, the FOX affiliate, WAXA, in Greenville, SC started showing repeats of the 1960s gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows.” At the time, FOX only offered weekend programming (“The Tracey Ullman Show” and “Married… with Children”), so WAXA relied on a roster of syndicated shows during the week.

My mother was thrilled to see “Dark Shadows” again. Growing up in the 1960s, she’d been one of the first wave of fans. She switched on Channel 40 every day at 7:30 p.m., right after dinner (sometimes during, sometimes before — she sort of ran her own schedule in that department). Although our interests didn’t always intersect, I was quickly hooked after seeing Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) arrive at the family mansion, Collinwood, “from England” and introduce himself in the politest way possible. I wanted to be just like him — well, except for the drinking blood part.

Christmas break from school that year began on Friday, December 16. That evening’s “DS” episode was a culmination of a storyline in which scoundrel Jason McGuire’s (Dennis Patrick) plans to blackmail family matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Joan Bennett) backfires. Ordered to leave town and desperate for money, McGuire sneaks into Barnabas Collins’s house in order to steal a fortune in jewels. It doesn’t end well for him.

The episodes airing the week before Christmas were notable for their initial attempts at humanizing the vampire, as he sets his sights on Victoria Winters (Alexandra Moltke) and throws a costume party at his home in which his guests will dress in 18th century clothing. One of my mother’s favorite Barnabas Collins lines comes when his servant Willie Loomis (John Karlen) insists that the Collinses would never agree to wear period costumes. “How fortunate for me,” he retorts, “that you are merely my servant and not my adviser!” My mother would often quote that line if I demanded to do something she knew was folly: “How fortunate for me that you are merely my son and not my adviser!”

WAXA went bankrupt and then off the air entirely in 1989, so I had to rely on taped VHS copies for my “DS” fix until the Sci-Fi Channel premiered in 1992 and started showing the series again. However, the association the costume party episodes had with Christmas remained with me and I’d watch them each year around this time.

My mother died on December 16, 2008 and my annual trip to Barnabas Collins’s costume party was as comforting for me then as it is now.

 
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Posted by on December 16, 2011 in Pop Life

 

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Newt Gingrich & The Sissy Gene…

15 Dec

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich — excuse me, DR. Newt Gingrich, M.D. — made the following comment about homosexuality on Thursday:

Asked if people can choose to be gay, Gingrich told the Des Moines Register editorial board that he does not “believe in genetic determinism, and I don’t think there is any great evidence of genetic determinism.”

He said that certain people may choose to be gay if they have certain genetic traits and are raised in a certain environment.

“I think people have a significant range of choice within a genetic pattern,” he said. “I believe it’s a combination of genetics and environment. I think that both are involved. I think people have many ranges of choices.”

Why is it that heterosexual GOP presidentidal candidates appear to have more to say about homosexuality (what causes it and its impact on society) than actual homosexuals? Congressman Barney Frank was in the closet compared to these guys.

Politicians stating that homosexuality is a choice is nothing new, and it’s both illogical and irrelevant. If you don’t believe heterosexuality is a choice, then it would follow that neither is homosexuality. However, if you are inclined to believe that heterosexuality is innate and that certain people choose to veer from that norm, it’s irrelevant. Shouldn’t we value freedom of choice in the United States? It certainly is less of a threat to me and my wife if my neighbor is gay than if he chooses to own an assault weapon.

Where Gingrich ventures into dangerous territory (not for him, of course, but for gays) is when he states that one is more inclined to choose the homosexual lifestyle if they have “certain genetic traits” and “are raised in a certain environment.” He tacitly acknowledges a “Sissy Gene” but implies that it would remain dormant in the “right” environment. Those of us who possessed the “Sissy Gene” – whether we were gay or not — know the hell it can be growing up around those who either want to mock you or “fix” you.

I was a black kid who hated sports and loved musical theatre in 1980s Greenville, South Carolina. It wasn’t pretty. The only women whose posters I had on my walls were gay icons (Marilyn, Judy, Liza) or androgynous (Annie Lennox in her “Sweet Dreams” video suit). I once came home from school and my mother had replaced my Annie Lennox poster with one of Whitney Houston from her “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” days.

I told my mother, “In 20 years, the world will remember Whitney Houston as a crackhead who married a bigger crackhead and will recognize the generations-spanning genius of Annie Lennox.” I didn’t really say that but it’s one of the many reasons I want a working time machine.

My father also tried to help me with sports. I appreciated that he wanted to spend time with me, but it was agonizing. After he took me to a basketball game, my mother asked for a status report. “Well, he fell asleep during the first quarter, but I think he was almost happy before he dozed off.”

My parents were well-meaning. They only wanted their son to be normal. No parent wants their child to be called “queer” or “fag” (as I was) if it can be avoided. Almost 25 years later, I’d like to think we’ve reached a point where we can support differences. As writer Peter David once said, “There’s no such thing as normal. Just varying degrees of abnormality.” But Gingrich and his ilk wish to use their own political time machine to take us even further back: “If your kid winds up gay and thus suffers through all the crap that people like me are going to hurl at her, then it’s your fault. You’re to blame.”

Of course, this is about as effective as black parents trying to make their child “more white” because life would be easier. All you’re going to wind up with is a tormented kid. Or Carlton Banks from “The Fresh Prince” (oh, I got compared to him a lot as well — the white kids thought I spoke “queer,” the black kids thought I spoke “white,” the white kids got offended with the black kids for implying that they spoke “queer,” I sneaked off in all the confusion.)

Fortunately, twenty years later, TV has progressed from telling black kids that their only options are “white-acting” and “thuggish.” Right?

Oh, yeah, well done, “30 Rock.”

What’s most sinister about Gingrich’s comments is how it turns a common retort from gay-rights supporters on its ear: “Why would anyone choose to be gay?” That’s because we make it too easy for them. We let them have too many rights. Our coddling culture is just enabling their degeneracy.

Ultimately, my parents loved me and most likely would have supported me if I had been gay. Too many gay kids out there don’t have that luxury. Their parents’ love is contingent on making them look good in society’s eyes and will not hesitate to make life miserable for their “sissy” sons and “butch” daughters. So, we’ll have another generation of sons who dread sinking airballs in front of their fathers because it means far more than just losing a game, and we’ll see more girls forced to try to walk in heels when they’re more comfortable in Chuck Taylors.

Gingrich might like that world, but to me, it’s a hell on earth, and as Ricky Roma said, “I won’t live in it.”

 

 

 
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Posted by on December 15, 2011 in Political Theatre, Social Commentary

 

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If I Were a Middle-Class Douchebag…

14 Dec

Middle-aged accountant and, based on his Forbes column photo, winner of the annual “Whitest Guy in America Competition” for the 40th consecutive year Gene Marks chose to share his wisdom in a manner similar to someone dropping a flaming brown paper bag outside your front door:

I am not a poor black kid. I am a middle aged white guy who comes from a middle class white background. So life was easier for me. But that doesn’t mean that the prospects are impossible for those kids from the inner city. It doesn’t mean that there are no opportunities for them. Or that the 1% control the world and the rest of us have to fight over the scraps left behind. I don’t believe that. I believe that everyone in this country has a chance to succeed. Still. In 2011. Even a poor black kid in West Philadelphia.

Marks believes that everyone in this country has a chance to succeed. And so it is. Even a poor black kid in West Philadelphia… wait a minute, why does that sound familiar?

Oh yeah, Marks probably caught “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” documentary from the 1990s. That was probably the breadth of his research on the subject. Of course, Will Smith (the TV character) did not succeed in West Philadelphia. If you listen to the theme song lyrics, Will’s mother realizes that he’ll either wind up dead or in jail if he stays in the neighborhood, so she takes the option available to all inner-city mothers: She ships him off to live with her sister, who is married to a successful lawyer and resides in Bel-Air, California. There, Will will have access to a stable home environment, the best quality education at an expensive and exclusive prep school, and most importantly no potentially lethal distractions from his homework, such as gangs or the police. Problem solved.

Marks is smart enough to realize it’s not as simple as a rich relative. He recommends that poor black kids can escape their underperforming schools by studying real hard and getting a scholarship to one of those magnent schools that their wealthy but average counterparts attend through no real effort other than choosing to have rich parents.

As Gene Demby at The Huffington Post points out by using research rather than falling asleep during a cable airing of “The Blind Side,” this is nonsense.

…Marks’ mentions Philadelphia’s magnet schools, highlighting Masterman, Central and Girls High as possibilities for the “poor black kid.” Focusing on these three schools, they are very difficult to get into and their demographics are markedly different from the larger School District of Philadelphia. Out of the 11,438 9th graders in Philadelphia, 990 or 8.7% attend those three schools. Admission to those schools is fierce. J. R. Masterman School accepts fewer than 1%  of the students that apply from outside of its middle school. Due to its larger size, Central High School is easier to get into, accepting 24% of its applicants.  Admission to the Philadelphia High School for Girls is of course limited to girls.

To be a “poor black kid” in West Philly and receive admission to one of these magnet schools, you can’t just show up on the first day of ninth grade. All of these magnet school have admissions requirements that must be met for consideration, including excellent grades, excellent standardized test scores, and excellent attendance not just in 8th grade, but in all middle school grades. You need to know the application process, and have a parent, teacher, or guidance counselor that can help you navigate this process. None of which was addressed in Marks’ privileged article.

Denby touches on the largest omission in Marks’s article: Parents. No child succeeds without their involvement. Marks seemed to believe that a child would have the “will the power” to “make sure (he) got the best grades possible (and) make it (his) #1 priority to be able to read sufficiently” without active parental support.

Parents are the ones who instill these values in their children. They set up expectations and standards. Even your Lisa Simpson prodigies have stability at home — it’s difficult to concentrate on your homework if your parents are re-enacting the climax of an Italian opera in the other room — and positive reinforcement from their families. OK, let’s say a child is able to ignore all of that. Who’s going to take the child to the library? Who’s going to help the child with her homework? I am nothing without my parents, who sacrificed, who put me first, who believed that I could do things that they had not. Did my mother really want to drive me half an hour to the city’s library because it had a larger selection than the local branch? Actually, she probably did because she placed a high value on my education. But I didn’t choose that. I did not will my parents to care.

I imagine that Marks’s article and its absurd Marks-ist philosophy will be the subject of online ridicule for a long time (frankly, I couldn’t sleep at night if this wasn’t the case). However, as we all laugh at his unholy union of arrogance and ignorance, we shouldn’t ignore the looming question of what compelled him to write such a racist article in the first place. And it is racist. He claims President Obama’s recent speech inspired it, but Obama said nothing about race (he gave the speech in Kansas; there’s one black person there and his car broke down). It’s telling that Marks views poverty as a black thing… like sickle-cell anemia and hair weaves. Don’t let those mindless paens to consumerism on the CW and FOX fool you, there are a lot of poor white kids. The Clampetts didn’t even have wealthy relatives. They had to do it the old-fashioned way — exploitation of fossil fuels underneath their home.

However, The Daily Kos’s response to Marks’s column mentioned something that answered my question.

Forbes magazine has posted a column by Gene Marks, a middle aged white guy, who wants to give advice to poor black kids about how to be successful in America. Of course, these young black kids read Forbes everyday and will internalize his wisdom. There is no poverty porn, noblesse oblige, white paternalism, compassionate conservative masturbation, navel gazing at work here. No. None at all.

I would argue that Gene Marks and those like him (there are unfortunately many) do no suffer from “noblese oblige.” No, those who subscribe to the Marks-ist philosophy must believe in the Myth of Democracy, the Horatio Alger fantasy, or their entire world view collapses.

We might prefer a democratic system but at least those dining on mutton at King Henry’s court did not fool themselves into believing they were self-made. They believed in the divine right of birth, which at least in its way acknowledges that if God raised you up, perhaps some sympathy for those below you was in order. This is back when kings and queens would bathe the feet of the poor rather than suggesting, as Newt Gingrich did recently, that they take a bath and get a job.

There is far more class mobility now than in Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy’s time but Thomas Jefferson warned that liberty required eternal vigilance. If Marks had actually listened to the words of Obama’s speech, he would have realized that the president was advising the same thing regarding the ability of U.S. children to not be defined by the circumstances of their birth. Marks chooses to ignore that, to maintain and perpetuate the Myth of Democracy, as it slowly becomes as fanciful as a kind old man in a sleigh led by eight tiny reindeer.

 
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Posted by on December 14, 2011 in Social Commentary

 

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From the New York Times: “Amazon’s Jungle Logic”…

14 Dec

An op-ed in The New York Times discusses Amazon’s holiday assault on brick-and-mortar bookstores. It’s a Scrooge left hook, followed by a Grinch uppercut, leading to a Mr. Potter TKO.

I first heard of Amazon’s new “promotion” from my bookseller daughter, Emily, in an e-mail with the subject line “Can You Hear Me Screaming in Brooklyn?” According to a link Emily supplied, Amazon was encouraging customers to go into brick-and-mortar bookstores on Saturday, and use its price-check app (which allows shoppers in physical stores to see, by scanning a bar code, if they can get a better price online) to earn a 5 percent credit on Amazon purchases (up to $5 per item, and up to three items).       

This promotion has received a good deal of negative press. Chamber of Commerce of Eastern  Connecticut President Tony Sheridan called it a “new low” and a “slap in the face to all small business owners.” Sam Hall at Amazon disagreed.

“We are enabling customers to use the Price Check app to share  in-store prices while they search for the best deals,” (Hall said). “This is a powerful  opportunity for customers to get involved and ensures Amazon customers  get the best possible prices.”

It’s not new for a store to offer to match or even beat the price offered at a competitor, but those are usually fairer battles. Small retailers aren’t in the same weight class as Amazon, which like Wal-Mart can afford to lower prices for the time it takes to crush the competition.

Another example of the app in action:

Valerie Lewis opened the slender book, cradled it lovingly in her hands and began to read a story about a bear who lost his hat. As co-owner of Hicklebee’s Books in Willow Glen, she has done this a thousand times.

Then Lewis turned the book over and allowed a visitor with an iPhone to scan the bar code using Amazon’s Price Check app. Within seconds, the Amazon price popped up: $9.59. “Let’s see what Hicklebee’s has it for,” Lewis said, then pointed to the amount imprinted on the book jacket: $15.99.

A clerk standing nearby was unable to resist mentioning the obvious — that Amazon would probably ship the book free and not charge any sales tax, further increasing its $6.40 price advantage over the venerable San Jose children’s bookstore.

Complaints in the press and on Facebook status message aside, I’m sure Amazon’s promotion wil be a succes. The U.S. consumer is the ultimate mob wife: She knows something’s up — it’s all a little suspicious — but she doesn’t ask questions.

I’m a Kindle user — I even read comics on an app these days — but in my younger and more vulnerable days, I haunted physical bookstores. My favorite was Gotham Books in Manhattan, which Katharine Hepburn described as the “greatest bookstore in New York and thus the world” (I think… the exact quote is on the bookmark you got when you bought a book there and all my books are currently in storage). I watched as my homes from home slowly closed one by one. Their replacements were the mammoth Barnes & Noble, Waldenbooks, Books-A-Million, Book Hut, and so on. They had a wider selection but were antiseptic with employees who either didn’t have the time or the ablity to talk to you about a book you might want to purchase. There was little passion in those stores. Once we accepted that, we were bound to embrace Amazon, which is now intent on wiping out the remaining bookstores with the same cold ruthlessness as Michael Corleone eliminating the competing families in “The Godfather.”

This might be the path of the future but I guess I wonder what’s the rush? Amazon reminds me of the loathsome heir to a family fortune standing over his mother on her death bed, silently willing her to croak sooner rather than later. With its price-check app, Amazon now goes as far as to smother smaller retailers with a pillow.

 
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Posted by on December 14, 2011 in Capitalism

 

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Recurring Feature (at least until I tire of it): “Things I Do to Depress Myself” or “The Legacy of George Lucas”…

13 Dec

Top-Grossing Films of 1971

1. Fiddler on the Roof  $38,261,000

2. The French Connection  $32,500,000

3. Summer of ’42 $26,315,000

4. Diamonds Are Forever $20,500,000

5. Dirty Harry $19,727,000

6. Carnal Knowledge $18,000,000

7. A Clockwork Orange $17,000,000

8. Klute $14,075,000

9. The Last Picture Show $13,100,000

10. Bedknobs and Broomsticks*  $11,426,000

I was surprised to see “Clockwork Orange” on this list. I can’t conceive of the film being made today and if it was, it would never have a national release in enough theaters to rank among the top-grossing films of the year. The re-release of “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” with Angela Lansbury is the only overtly family film. Aside from arguably “Diamonds are Forever,” the rest are movies strictly for adults or ones that parents might consider taking their kids along with them if they’re old enough, but none are the amusement park ride movies of today designed for kids and their parental chauffeurs.

Top-Grossing Films of 1981

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark $384,562,121

2. On Golden Pond $119,285,432

3. Superman II  $108,185,706

4. Arthur $95,461,682

5. Stripes $85,297,000

6. The Cannonball Run $72,179,579

7. Chariots of Fire $58,972,904

8. For Your Eyes Only $54,812,802

9. The Four Seasons $50,427,646

10. Time Bandits $42,365,581

“Superman II” is a sequel, but otherwise, it’s a still diverse selection of comedies, dramas, and action films.

Top-Grossing Films of 1991

1. Terminator 2: Judgment Day $519,843,345

2. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves $390,493,908

3. Beauty and the Beast $377,350,553

4. Hook $300,854,823

5. The Silence of the Lambs $272,742,922

6. JFK $205,405,498

7. The Addams Family  $191,502,426

8. Cape Fear $182,291,969

9. Hot Shots! $181,096,164

10. City Slickers $179,033,791

People continue to debate whether eventual Best Picture winner “The Silence of the Lambs” is a creepy drama or a very good horror movie. I fall in the latter camp. “Beauty and the Beast,” essentially a cartoon musical, has more in common with 1971’s “Fiddler” than 2001’s “Shrek.” The biggest film of the year is a sequel, and we have our first entry based on TV show — back when the mid-60s was 25 years behind us rather than the mid-80s. We also see more disposable movies — you’d think “Robin Hood” and “Hook” were bombs based on the number of people with positive experiences of them.

Top-Grossing Films of 2001

1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone $974,733,550

2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring  $870,761,744

3. Monsters, Inc. $525,366,597

4. Shrek  $484,409,218

5. Ocean’s Eleven  $450,717,150

6. Pearl Harbor $449,220,945

7. The Mummy Returns $433,013,274

8. Jurassic Park III $368,780,809

9. Planet of the Apes $362,211,740

10. Hannibal $351,692,268 $165,092,268

Everything listed is either a sequel or a remake, except for “Pearl Harbor,” “Monsters, Inc.” (sequel on the way), and “Shrek” (enough already!) “Harry Potter” and “The Lord of the Rings” are what I call “sequels from the start,” as they are event movies that are intended to have multiple installments.

Top-Grossing Films of 2011

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2  $1,328,111,219

2. Transformers: Dark of the Moon $1,123,196,189

3. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides $1,043,871,802

4. Kung Fu Panda 2 $663,024,542

5. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 $633,500,000

6. Fast Five $626,137,675

7. The Hangover Part II $581,464,305

8. The Smurfs  $562,158,353

9. Cars 2 $551,850,875

10. Rio $484,635,760

So, no dramas, one comedy (in theory), four cartoons (five, if you count the theoretical comedy), and eight sequels. The new “film series within a film series” concept (“Harry Potter” and “Twilight”) amuses me: Four to five hours to watch a film adaptation of a book that could probably be read in half that time.

 
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Posted by on December 13, 2011 in Pop Life

 

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“Charlie Said It Would!”…

12 Dec

Twenty years ago, my old archnemesis, Charlie Gertz, retired from WYFF, the local NBC affiliate in Greenville, SC. We had a complex relationship. He was the station’s meteorologist — a fancy title for weatherman some might argue, but it does require more of a scientific aptitude than Nicholas Cage movies might have you believe.

Gertz’s slogan was “Charlie Said It Would,” which referred to his accurate predictions of the weather, but his record involving the occasional rainstorm meant nothing to me. All that mattered was whether it snowed when he said it was going to snow.

The man who was out-"Meteorologisted" by my mother.

Snow Days are magical events for kids. They are less joyous for adults who have to work, especially in the South where it snows rarely and the public reaction to it is overblown. The roads are clogged prior to potential snowfalls with residents desperate to clear the grocery store shelves of milk and bread. Snow in Greenville, if it stuck to the ground at all, lasted about eight minutes but people still feared that they might resort to cannibalism if they did not adequately stock up before the “blizzard.”

The best scenario was for the “winter storm warning” to be so dire that they closed schools the night before. That’s when your Monday turned into Friday night. If they closed the schools in the morning, my father just wouldn’t wake me, and the sound of him leaving indicated my freedom.

My father woke me for school each morning at exactly 6:45 a.m. This was without fail. My father never took sick days. And he never had Snow Days. Those mornings were not easy for my father — curled up in bed, I could hear him scraping the ice off his crap car’s windshield. Then came the painful death rattle of this piece of junk trying to turn over in the cold — “bruda, bruda, bruda,” it wheezed. My father was undaunted and tried again. “Bruda, bruda, bruda,” it croaked. I pulled my pillow closer to me, rolled over on my side, and thought, “That’s a damn shame.”

Somehow, after mutliple attempts, my father would get his 1972 Plymouth Scamp running (no, really) and head off in the snow. Until its eventual collapse in the mid-80s, that insult to automobiles everywhere is what my father took to and from work each day. My mother drove the family car, which had modern conveniences such as air conditoning, a tape player, and brakes. The parking lot at my father’s job looked like “Sanford and Son” with all the men in their jalopies.

One night I recall quite vividly, Charlie Gertz announced an oncoming snowstorm that would level Greenville with up to a foot of snow. He looked directly at me through the TV set and said, “There’s nothing to do tomorrow but just watch the snow fall. ‘Cause it’s gonna!” Then he winked at the camera, and that wink said, “Hey, Stephen, screw your homework! Stay up late! Enjoy tomorrow’s ‘Young and the Restless.’ I don’t know what your father was thinking, getting married, having kids, driving a car Fred Flintstone would consider beneath him. But you can’t worry about him. Life is for the living!”

I was escastic. My mother was less so.

“That’s nonsense,” she proclaimed. “It only ever snows here if it the storm comes through Georgia. If it comes from North Carolina, the mountains will stop it. You’re going to have school tomorrow.”

“Whatever, Dr. Robinson,” I replied dismissively. “Charlie said it would, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to shoot some heroin and dance with strippers, tomorrow’s a Snow Day! Actually, I’m probably just going to stay up late reading comics and listening to Madonna and the Eurythmics, but my point holds: Snow Day, baby!”

The next morning, at exactly 6:45 a.m., my father knocked on my door.

“Time to get up, son.”

Clearly, the old man had gone mad. Didn’t he know it was a Snow Day? I was already wearing the fake Victor Newman mustache I’d received as a Secret Society member of the “Young and the Restless” fan club.

I rushed to the window, expecting to see a carpet of white on the ground, but there was only green grass.

Falling to my knees, I vowed revenge against Charlie Gertz for his treachery. He was probably taking kickbacks from the grocery stores. I also swore that once I was out of school, I’d never get up at 6:45 a.m. again.

Gertz retired in 1992 — through only minor machinations on my part. I graduated high school the same year and proceeded to spend my late teens and most of my 20s making good on my second vow. I took afternoon classes in college and worked nights during my first few years in New York. Sometime around my 30th birthday, though, I started rising at 6:45 a.m. without an alarm. You can’t escape heredity, I suppose.

 

 
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Posted by on December 12, 2011 in Pop Life, Social Commentary

 

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The Non-Passion of the Romney…

08 Dec

Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor with the alliterative Stan Lee-inspired name, made the following ringing endorsement of presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Iowa:

“If you’re looking for a candidate who agrees with you on everything, buy a mirror,” Christie told a crowd of about 150 at the headquarters of the Kum & Go convenience store chain. “I’m out here to tell you that I’m supporting him because I believe he’s the best qualified person to be president, and I believe he’s the only Republican who can win.”

The Romney campaign’s concern is that GOP primary voters’ passion is drifting toward Newt Gingrigh, who is surging in recent polls of early voting states. This is problematic as Gingrich is a trainwreck of a candidate — saddled with the baggage of an aging drag queen going on a two-month cruise to the Bahamas. A polarizing figure, he regulars ranks as “Republican Democrats Least Want to Have a Beer With Unless It Contained Arsenic” and that includes George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, whose “folksy” charm he lacks. Considering that defeating the incumbent president would involve persuading a good number of the people who voted for Obama in 2008 to switch camps, that’s an issue.

Although Christie trumpets Romney’s electability, GOP primary voters have consistently rejected it at the polls. And while it will serve as no consolation to the former Massachusetts governor, the reality is that as fickle as primary voters have been with their passions — initially playing footsie with Michele Bachmann, then flirting with Rick Perry before moving on to Herman Cain — they have been consistent in their lack of amor for Romney.

I never really got why Romney was dubbed the front runner in the race. Maybe he bought the title from the media at a silent auction. He’s never boasted the double digit lead and sense of inevitability that Hillary Clinton possessed prior to Obama’s Iowa upset in 2008. There was also a lot of passion among Clinton supporters for their establishment candidate. They didn’t just want to win. They believed in her. Does anyone really believe in Romney?

Romney can probably blame Obama for his current predicament. Christie is currently singing a similar tune to those Clinton supporters who warned that Obama would never win in the general election, especially against likely nominee John McCain. This advice was ignored and Obama eventually triumphed. So conservatives now might think there’s no need to settle. Their dream candidate, once they get around to settling on him or her, could actually win.

That’s insane, of course, because as everyone but the staunchest right-winger realizes is that Obama had appeal to the mainstream, independent voters who ultimately decide elections. They are the ones who candidates spend the general election trying to convince. They voted for Reagan. They voted for Clinton. They voted for Bush. And they voted for Obama. Meanwhile, primary voters are usually registered members of their respective parties who would not cross party lines even if the oppossing candidate were Jesus Christ. That’s your base, though, and you’ve got to win them over first before you can make it to the general election.

Romney’s hope all along has been that the GOP base’s hatred of Obama is so great that they will overlook their antipathy for him and put him forward because he’s the most electable candidate. The flaw in this thinking is that the candidate with the limp base has never sealed the deal. That was McCain’s problem. It was also John Kerry’s, which might also be a case study for GOP voters: Democrats turned from Howard Dean toward the more establishment and arguably more electable Kerry, and it didn’t get them anywhere.

Obama can also rely on a fairly solid base. The GOP primary has been one long horror movie in 3-D that will prove more effective in getting Obama supporters to the polls than his most soaring speech. Is there some disappointment among the liberal base regarding Obama? Yes, but disappointment is dfferent from dislike. The former is usually reserved for your son who keeps bringing home women who pop their gum when they speak. You’ll still support him in the end. Dislike is what McCain faced in 2008 and Romney might face in 2012.

Looking back at the Democrat’s 2008 primary race, you could argue that a protracted, bruising path to the nomination is not necessarily fatal. However, I think that fit the Obama narrative. Romney can never lay claim to being the underdog. Clinton vs. Obama was historic. Romney vs. Anyone But Romney is hardly that, but I am glad I have my free pair of 3-D glasses.

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Posted by on December 8, 2011 in Political Theatre

 

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Sebelius vs. Science…

08 Dec

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the Food and Drug Administration Wednesday and stopped plans for the Plan B morning after pill to be sold over the counter. It is still available without a prescription but only to women (and I suppose men) over 17 who show proof of age, which at 17 would mean sulleness and a propensity for texting. Explaining her decision, Sebelius says she was “worried about confusing 11 year olds.”

Forget the 11 year olds; I’m 37 and her actions confuse me.

“I don’t think 11-year-olds go into Rite Aid and buy anything,” much less a single pill that costs about $50, (said American Academy of Pediatrics) member Dr. Cora Breuner, a professor of pediatric and adolescent medicine at the University of Washington.

Plan B is emergency contraception but not an abortion pill; it won’t affect an existing pregnancy.  The FDA believed no age limit was necessary, but is there an actual risk to minors who take the pill? Sebelius isn’t talking but Greg Pfundstein at the National Review explains his support for the decision.

The general outline of the controversy is familiar enough. Plan B and similar drugs are controversial because in addition to their contraceptive effects they are known to have abortifacient effects by preventing fertilized embryos from implanting in the uterine wall. Advocates for wider availability of the drug decry those who stand in the way of a simple means of decreasing the number of abortions and out-of-wedlock births, all for the sake of very early fetal life. Imagine the “scramble — often in late-night or weekend panics after having sex without protection.” Opponents of trivializing sex, on the other hand, think that we should be concerned about how we treat all, even inchoate, human life, and, moreover, wonder why on earth we would want to decrease the caution in that late-night scenario. Do we really want to make it easier to have irresponsible sex and then run along to the nearest 24-hour retailer to pop a pill?

The sentiment here would not confuse an 11 year old. This is the standard, generally offensive judgment of women who are sexually active. Plan B wouldn’t make it “easier to have irresponsible sex.” Irresponsible sex is already easy. It’s an absolute. You can’t improve its simplicity. However, birth control — even when responsibly used — does fail. When that occurs, it’s responsible to take action.

This decision forces a minor to go to her parents if she wants the pill, which removes the choice over its usage and potentially her own pregnancy from her. Forcing women over 17 — presumably even those twice that age — to show proof of age and purchase behind the counter also restricts their privacy and needlessly so without a compelling medical reason.

Dr. Margaret Hamburg, the head of the FDA, disagreed with Not-a-Doctor Pfundstein, saying in The New York Times that the “studies and experts all agreed that young women would benefit from having easy access to the pill and did not need the intervention of a health care provider.”

The agency’s scientists, she wrote, “determined that the product was safe and effective in adolescent females, that adolescent females understood the product was not for routine use, and that the product would not protect them against sexually transmitted disease.”   

A mandate to purchase health insurance is a constitutional crisis, but the Obama Administration placing an age restriction on the purchase of a health-related item that’s proven safe is met with applause from the same people who thought the administration overreached with health care. You’d think they were the guy from “Memento.”

I suppose it’s important to ensure that women don’t have irresponsible sex but if they do, they become irresponsible mothers and eventually raise irresponsible kids who can walk into an Arizona gun show and buy semiautomatic pistols without a background check.

Arizona is the state where a punk with a gun almost assassinated a congresswoman. It’s also where you can carry a concealed weapon into a bar or a school. There have ben no recommendations for sensible changes to our gun laws since then. The Second Amendment is inviolable in this country, but a woman’s autonomy apparently is not.

 
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Posted by on December 8, 2011 in Political Theatre, Social Commentary

 

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Rick Perry, Man of Faith..

07 Dec

Presidential candidate Rick Perry released the following commercial:

Only #RickPerry is bold enough to release a commercial affirming his lack of shame in belonging to the same religion as 83% of U.S. citizens, as well as insulting homosexuals, who amount to a whopping 1.5% Who will stand behind Perry as he faces such overwhelming odds?

There is apparently nothing nobler than serving in the U.S. military… unless you’re gay. What sort of fiends are we dealing with who wish to put their lives at risk for the safety of others, many of whom often vote to deny them basic rights? They must have some insidious master plan — like when the Legion of Doom pretended to be the Legion of Good.

Perry insists that Obama has launched a “war on religion.” It’s unclear what the president has done to attack Christianity (what conservatives usually mean when they say “religion,” just as they mean “heterosexuals” when they say “Americans”). The best I can come up with are any efforts for inclusion Obama’s administration has made for groups or belief systems that conservative Christians don’t like.

When Perry talks about kids not being able to openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school, he seems to have confused the United States with Sombertown and Obama with the Burgermeister Meisterburger from “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.”

Christians have complained about the apparent secularization of Christmas (while taking their kids to see Santa at the mall) for years. The expression “war on Christmas” dates back to 2005 when Bush was in office, so yet another attack on the U.S. that occurred on his watch and for which conservatives blame liberals.

Children can pray in school. Teachers don’t smack a kid in the head if they spot them saying grace before a meal — and you might want to pray before eating a school lunch these days. What can’t occur is school-approved prayer. There are several logical reasons for this, as David E. Ross details:

  • Non-sectarian prayers are impossible. A prayer is an expression of hope, praise, or thanksgiving directed to God. If religion is removed from prayer in an attempt to make it inoffensive to all religions, it become meaningless and offensive to those who are truly religious. A “sanitized” expression is no longer real prayer.
  • Public schools are funded by taxes collected from persons of all religious beliefs. It is wrong to tax a person of one religion in support of the practices of another religion or to tax an atheist to support religion in general. It is even more wrong to tax parents to provide facilities and supervision where their children will participate in a religious activity that may differ from their own family’s practices. In any case, these taxes are collected to operate systems of public education, not public religion.
  • A teacher’s direction, “Let us pray!” is insufficient. (For a government employee — a public school teacher — to give such an order is offensive.) True prayer (even for adults) requires a state of mind that is not obtained immediately upon command. Often, this state of mind requires several minutes of contemplation, ritual, or even hymn singing. Different religions reach this state differently. This is an inappropriate activity for a group of individuals with differing religious beliefs and practices.
  • “Optional” prayer among children is not really possible. Peer pressure among children is very strong. They have trouble resisting pressures to engage in disapproved activities such as drinking alcohol and premarital sex. When officially approved and endorsed by government, pressure from peers to conform in prayer would be impossible to resist. In this manner, children will thus be led into an activity that may be contrary to their parents’ religious beliefs.

You can debate the Constitutionality and suitability of school-approved prayer — arguably not the best debate to have as the U.S. education ranking continues to drop, but you can’t claim this is anything new. It goes back decades.

Conservatives groups do point to Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill, which they claim was “an attempt to prevent religious practice in schools.”

According to the bill, which the Democratic-controlled House passed despite unanimous Republican opposition, funds are prohibited from being used for the “modernization, renovation, or repair” of facilities that allow “sectarian instruction, religious worship or a school or department of divinity.” 

The American Civil Liberties Union pointed out that the restriction has “been the law since 1972,” when another famous Republican president was in office. Perhaps Watergate was part of a then-11-year-old Obama’s far-reaching plan to curtail religious expression in the nation.

You know, all this talk about gays and prayer doesn’t come close to addressing any of the real issues the country faces (though, rampant homophobia and religious fanaticism are serious concerns). I would venture to hope that Perry realizes this, as well, and with his campaign faltering and having no real solutions to offer, he does what any desperate, shameless man would do:

You gather a group of middle-age, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family, and American values and character.

If Americans believe in values and character, they should also know that you can’t build either by denigrating other Americans, other nations, other faiths, other orientations. What leader is remembered today for having invented enemies and threats of their own creation rather than going after the ones they help enable?

Rick Perry probably knows this, but as Andrew Shepherd would say, the problem isn’t that he doesn’t get it, it’s that can’t sell it.

 

 

 

 

 
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Posted by on December 7, 2011 in Political Theatre

 

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