A Christmas Memory

 Linda was only ten years old in 1949 but remembers that her mother walked with her and her two older brothers to the downtown shopping area in White Plains, NY to do Christmas shopping. The walk was about a mile from her quiet residential neighborhood.  Her mother, although a second-generation Italian American, was for her time a modern woman, but she never learned to drive a car. In any case, in those days there was only one car in a family, and it was needed by her father who ran a high-end fruit and vegetable business in town. Christmas was his busiest time of year and there was no way he could help with Christmas shopping.

 

So the little entourage trooped downtown where Macy’s has just opened a store that would eventually turn sleepy White Plains into a suburban metropolis. Still, the downtown was filled with small specialty stores. Linda remembers that her mother made them wait outside while she shopped. She would go from store to store picking out presents that the kids would help her carry. Finally, loaded down, they would take the bus back home. It should be noted that Linda’s mother was well along in her fifth pregnancy at the time.

 

Linda does not remember what she got that Christmas but a couple of years later, she bought herself a very memorable present. It was a pair of six-shooters, fancy cap guns that she had long coveted. She had always loved to play cowboys and Indians with her childhood friends, Barbara and Eleanor, and here was her chance to acquire a fine set. She was a little embarrassed thinking she was too old for such things and told the proprietor they were a gift for her cousin.

 

She remembered this incident the other day while we inadvertently happened on a TV broadcast of women’s calf roping or Breakaway. In this event young women, dressed from head to toe in cowboy regalia, expertly guide their horses to chase down a fleeing calf and put a lasso around its head. The best of them manage to do it in two or three seconds.  It is a remarkable display of horsemanship. It was really a pleasure to watch these healthy young women compete in this event especially since we had never heard of it before. 

 

Today, 75 Christmases have passed, and it might surprise Linda’s 17 grandchildren to think that their grandma once thought of herself as a gun toting, hard riding cowgirl.  The spirit of adventure has never left Linda. Earlier this year she thoroughly enjoyed re-reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and right now she is enthralled by Melville’s Moby Dick. Still, she likes to think back and remember those days in Whiter Plains. Her favorite radio show was The Lond Ranger. Who could ever forget the William Tell Overture and the announcer’s words, “Return with us now to those glorious days of yesteryear.”

 

PS. Amazingly, kindergarten cowgirl friends Barbara and Eleanor are still friends although one resides in New Hampshire and the other in Florida.

 

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Holiday Film Favorites

 

Each year the Christmas season brings back to TV all the traditional holiday classics from Miracle on 34^thStreet on Thanksgiving Day to Frank Capra’s beloved It’s a Wonderful Life, right before Christmas. It’s hard for me to watch the latter anymore because I cry too much, but here are some other favorites for holiday viewing.

The Shop Around the Corner: This film premiered on January 12, 1940 but must be placed with the great films associated with 1939, the “annus mirabilis” of Hollywood’s Golden age. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, it received no Academy awards and appears to have been a box-office flop. Today, it has become an enduring holiday classic. The wit and subtlety of the famed “Lubitsch Touch” is clearly evident. Lubitsch turns All-American boy Jimmy Stewart, and co-star Margaret Sullavan into believable clerks in a Budapest dry-goods store who unwittingly fall in love via mail. Both actors gave unforgettable performances but neither gained even an Academy award nomination. The rest of the cast was equally fine, especially Felix Brassart as a co-worker, and William Tracy as a savvy delivery boy. The film ends fittingly as the two lovers are united on Christmas Eve as snowflakes fall on The Shop Around the Corner.

Remember the Night. Barbara Stanwyck stars with Fred MacMurray in this little known 1940 romantic comedy set in the holiday season. Stanwyck plays a shoplifter on trial before District Attorney MacMurray, but circumstances lead them to spend the holidays together. In this film, written by Preston Sturges, who subsequently  went on to become a famous director, Stanwyck transformed her character from a petty thief to a self-sacrificing heroine. The fine cast includes Beulah Bondi, Sterling Holloway, and Elizabeth Patterson.

I’ll Be Seeing You: This 1944 film is a Holiday drama with film noir trappings. Two strangers meet on a train, but she is a woman with a past and he is a soldier suffering from war wounds, both physical and mental. She is travelling home to spend the holidays with family, and he, with no particular destination in mind, gets off at her stop in hope of seeing her again. The film stars Ginger Rogers, who turned to dramatic roles after the break-up of her great dancing partnership with Fred Astaire. Rogers had won a Best Actress award in 1941 for her performance in Kitty Foyle, but I believe she is much better in this film. Joseph Cotton, fresh off his roles in Citizen Kane, and The Magnificent Ambersons, is equally fine. Director William Dieterle not only brings out the chemistry between the two stars, but also gets the most out of a fine supporting cast, including a teen-age Shirley Temple. The film’s theme song, the popular wartime melody, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” helped make it a huge hit at the box-office, but it is largely forgotten today. 

The Holly and the Ivy. Celia Johnson, Ralph Richardson, and Margaret Leighton star in this 1952 British holiday film. A widowed minister is torn between the needs of his family and his parishioners, but his three grown children must decide between their own needs and those of their aging father.  All comes to a head on Christmas Eve as the annual family reunion exposes the long simmering family tensions. Based on a hit London play, this film is not as well known as less serious holiday films.  

The Big Little Jesus: Dragnet was a hugely popular TV series that premiered in 1951. It’s film noir trappings and low key, realism made it a long-running police procedural, perhaps the most influential of all time. In its third season, it featured a Christmas special, entitled, “The Big Little Jesus.” Two police detectives, played by Jack Webb, the show’s creator and star, and Ben Alexander, receive a call on Christmas Eve to investigate the theft of a figure of the baby Jesus from a creche in a largely Hispanic church in downtown Los Angeles. 

The half-hour episode begins with the familiar Dragnet theme over a panorama of Los Angeles, followed by the famous opening lines: “This is the city, I work here, I’m a cop.” The detectives dutifully track down the leads and interview the ordinary suspects in typical Dragnet style, but to no avail. Finally, they return to the church with the bad news that the beloved figure of the baby Jesus will not be part of the Christmas celebration.  Before every episode, it is claimed that “the story we are about to see is true.” If that is correct, this true story is far more moving than most of the other favorite fictional holiday stories. It can be seen on YouTube.

Radio Days: My favorite New Year’s film has long been Swing Time, the greatest of all the 1930s musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The beautiful dancing, the great songs, and the look at a world of class and elegance that has long disappeared makes it a wonderful way to usher in the New Year. However, I would place Woody Allen’s Radio Daysright up there as required New Year’s viewing. Allen wrote and directed this 1987 film that provides a nostalgic and often hilarious view of the world of his youth, a world that coincided with the glory days of radio back in the late 30s and early 40s.

Three Jewish sisters and their families live together with their elderly parents in a large house in the Jewish section of Rockaway, a remote beach community in New York’s borough of Queens. The story is narrated by Allen as the world in which these people live is seen through memories of his boyhood. Although the extended family and its life are far removed from glitzy Manhattan, they are connected with its life and culture through the radio which created a common culture for the extremely diverse city. 

Julie Kavner, Diane Wiest, and Rene Lippin play the three sisters. I grew up in Queens back then, and these three women reminded me of my mother’s three sisters who lived with their families in my Italian grandparent’s home. We tuned in to the same radio shows, read the same newspapers with their comics, and listened to the same melodies featured on the soundtrack of Radio Days. At the finale, the film takes us to a Manhattan night club where revelers are ushering in the year 1944 in the midst of World War II. Diane Keaton sings, “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To.”

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PS. I like to watch these films on DVD but I believe most are available on streaming services. 

Review: Ken Burns, Leonardo Da Vinci

A few years ago I attended a lecture at my local senior center about Renaissance art given by a young art historian. The room was full and I thought she did a fine job except when she discussed  Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. She gave the standard interpretation that claims that Leonardo depicted the moment when Christ tells the Apostles that one of them will betray Him. 

Afterwards, I went up to her and asked if she was familiar with the interpretation of famed twentieth century art historian Leo Steinberg in which he argued that Leonardo depicted the institution of the Eucharist, and the Apostles startled reaction to the words, "This is My Body...this is My Blood." Her answer was puzzling. She said that she was familiar with Steinberg's interpretation but thought that her audience would not be able to handle it.

I thought of her words the other day when I watched the section on The Last Supper in documentarian Ken Burns' four-part series on Leonardo that aired on PBS. Burns also failed to mention Steinberg's magisterial interpretation that has been around for years. Why? Burns is so popular that he can do virtually anything he wants on PBS. Could he and his art history advisors have been ignorant of the Eucharistic interpretation? Or do he and they and the PBS audience find it difficult to handle?

Burns and other moderns believe Leonardo to be a great genius but what would they think if Leonardo, like most people of his time, actually believed that Christ meant it when he said "This is My Body," or what would they think if Leonardo, again like most people of his time, believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist? What kind of a genius would it be who could hold beliefs that in the eyes of moderns appear to be ignorant, and superstitious? In Steinberg's words:

"Ideal art was believed to reveal humane truths which the service of religion could only divert and distort. And it was again in Leonardo in whom these highest artistic goals, originally embodied in ancient Greece, seemed reaffirmed. In this projection of nineteenth-century values upon Renaissance art, the masterworks of the Renaissance were reduced to intelligible simplicity, and Leonardo’s Last Supper became (nothing but) a behavioral study of twelve individuals responding to psychic shock."

In other words, modern secularist believe that  Leonardo spent two years of his life creating a magnificent mural for a monastic dining room, but deliberately left out any religious meaning or significance. In Leonardo's Incessant Last Supper, Leo Steinberg demonstrated that Leonardo did just the opposite. For those who can see, Leonardo told the whole story of the Passion. Here is just one example. 

Christ becomes the capstone of a great central pyramid… And midway between the…slopes of Christ's arms and the floor lines that transmit their momentum, exactly halfway, there lies the bread, and there lies the wine.

Below I append a review of Leonardo's Incessant Last Supper that originally appeared on this site ten years ago. \

The damage to Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Last Supper is well known. Even after the most recent restoration the huge fresco that measures over 29 by 15 feet is in such perilous condition that viewing access is strictly controlled and limited. 

We know from early copies that much of Leonardo’s work has been irretrievably lost or covered. Early on, the feet of Christ and the Apostles had so disappeared that the monks had no reluctance to put a door in the wall under the figure of Christ. We know of this from copies but even the earliest copies are often unreliable.  They either omit or alter certain important details. Finally, although the painting is still in its original venue, it is impossible to replicate the monk’s dining room and see the painting as its original viewers would have seen it.

Compared to the physical damage that Leonardo’s work has suffered, the interpretive damage has been even greater. Since the eighteenth century art historians and critics have generally believed that in the Last Supper, Leonardo depicted the moment immediately following Christ’s announcement of his betrayal. Over 50 years ago in the very popular series of Metropolitan Museum seminars in Art, critic John Canaday wrote,

The Last Supper is a great picture with a religious subject. That is not exactly the same thing as saying that The Last Supper is a great religious picture, which it is not…. Nor did Leonardo intend it to be one. In all reverence he conceived of the moment when Christ says to his disciples, “One of you will betray me”, as a moment of unparalleled human drama. 

Even today, a quick web search shows that the lead Wikipedia article begins with the following pronouncement.

“The Last Supper specifically portrays the reaction given by each apostle when Jesus said one of them would betray him.” 

It was this common but mistaken interpretation that the late Leo Steinberg set out to repair in an extended essay, “Leonardo’s Last Supper,” that appeared in the Art Quarterly in 1973. Almost thirty years later in 2001 he published his definitive revised update, “Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper.” Steinberg’s thesis was controversial but anyone reading “Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper” today would have to acknowledge that it is a revolutionary masterpiece by one of the greatest art historians of the twentieth century. [i]

Steinberg took on an academic tradition that had been entrenched ever since the time of the Enlightenment. In a famous essay German philosopher and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s claimed that Leonardo had depicted the psychological shock on the faces of the Apostles at the moment immediately following the announcement of the betrayal. Goethe’s interpretation had seemingly settled the matter for all future observers. Steinberg, however, blamed nineteenth century secularists for a profound mis-reading.

Ideal art was believed to reveal humane truths which the service of religion could only divert and distort. And it was again in Leonardo in whom these highest artistic goals, originally embodied in ancient Greece, seemed reaffirmed. In this projection of nineteenth-century values upon Renaissance art, the masterworks of the Renaissance were reduced to intelligible simplicity, and Leonardo’s Last Supper became (nothing but) a behavioral study of twelve individuals responding to psychic shock. [ii]

Reading Steinberg’s “Incessant Last Supper” not only brings one deeper and deeper into a great masterpiece, but also deeper and deeper into the mind and culture of the genius who was Leonardo. Beginning with the general principle “that nothing in Leonardo’s Last Supper is trivial,” Steinberg asserted that the subject of the picture was the whole story of the Last Supper; the Institution of the Eucharist, the Passion, and the significance of it all to the viewer.

To  illustrate his thesis I would like to concentrate on Steinberg’s analysis of Leonardo’s portrayal of the Apostles. Leonardo obviously knew his Apostles and the legends that had grown up about them. Their appearance, their gestures, and their placement show that they are reacting in their own characteristic way to the announcement, “This is My Body…Take and eat.”

From left to right the Apostles are Bartholomew, James (the eventual head of the Church in Jerusalem), Andrew, Peter, Judas, and John. On the other side there are James (the son of Zebedee), Thomas (who has thrust himself ahead of James), Philip, Matthew, Thaddeus (sometimes called Jude), and Simon.

Much of the detail of the original has been lost but an anonymous copy c. 1550, gives a very good look at the hands and feet of the 13 men in the picture. Steinberg’s stressed the significance not only of the feet of Christ but of the Apostles. Christ’s feet are central and larger and they announce his impending crucifixion. The feet of the Apostles are there to be washed but also represent their role and future destiny.

this very night, each of these feet is washed and wiped dry by the Master. In view of the gospel…how negligible can these feet be; surely, this is their hour![iii]

While he stressed the importance of viewing Christ and the Apostles as a whole, Steinberg also broke them down into groups of six, three and two, and discussed the various relationships in these groups. Here are some examples.

 Let’s start with the triad of Simon, Thaddeus, and Matthew on our right at the end of the table.  

A flotilla of six open hands in formation strains toward Christ, as if in immediate response to the word “take!” ….the Communion of the Apostles is imminent.[iv]

Hands take on special significance. The “affinity” of the left hand of Thaddeus to the left hand of Christ “leaps to the eye.”

Thaddeus’ hand toward Christ; Christ’s toward us. It is missing a lot to dismiss the correspondence as accidental.

Feet, hands, even fingers are important. In the triad at Christ’s left hand (Philip, Thomas, James) the finger of Thomas, who has thrust himself forward toward Jesus, is a veritable sign marker, “the finger destined to verify the Resurrection, the Christian hope….“

this upright finger occurs in Leonardo’s rare paintings no less than four times, invariably pointing to heaven…The steeple finger is Leonardo’s trusted sign of transcendence…[v]

The triad closest to Christ’s right hand includes Peter who denies, Judas who betrays, and John who remains to the end at the foot of the Cross.

The inner triad refers to imminent Crucifixion. It contains the dark force that sets the Passion in motion, then, behind Judas, St. Peter. Peter’s right hand points the knife he will ply a few hours hence at the arrest. And the interlocking hands of the beloved disciple are pre-positioned for their grieving on Calvary.

None of these gestures can be explained as a reaction to the betrayal announcement.

Finally, no review can do justice to Steinberg’s discussion of the figure of Christ, who can no longer seen as a passive figure sitting back while the Apostles react to the betrayal announcement. 

as the person of Christ unites man and God, so his right hand summons the agent of his human death even as it offers the means of salvation….the Christ figure as agent—both hands actively molding his speech, and both directed at bread and wine…[vi]

Unfortunately, Goethe only saw the painting briefly in Milan. In his analysis he relied on a copy that left out the bread and wine of the Eucharist. For Steinberg, the institution of the Eucharist is central to the painting.

Christ becomes the capstone of a great central pyramid…And midway between the…slopes of Christ arms and the floor lines that transmit their momentum, exactly halfway, there lies the bread, and there lies the wine.[vii]

Steinberg backed up his interpretation with a virtuoso display of all the tools available to a modern art historian. He displayed a magisterial familiarity with the interpretive history; the texts; the traditional legends; the related paintings; and with the whole oeuvre of Leonardo. More than anything else, however, was his ability to immerse himself in the whole culture and devotion of Medieval and Renaissance Christianity.  He was born a Russian Jew and emigrated to America right after World War II. He somehow managed to graduate from Harvard and land a position at New York University where his original field was modern art. But he eventually gravitated to the Renaissance, and his integrity and great learning allowed him to see the “Last Supper” through the believing eyes of Leonardo’s contemporaries. 

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[i] Steinberg, Leo: Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper, New York, 2001.

[ii] Ibid. p. 13.

[iii] Ibid. p. 61.

[iv] Except where otherwise noted this quotation and all the following can be found in the relevant sections of chapter IV, “the Twelve.”

[v] Ibid. p. 70.

[vi] Ibid. p. 57.

[vii] Ibid,. p. 58. 

Thanksgiving 2024

 

My wife and I are thankful that we've made it to another Thanksgiving Day. Here is my annual Thanksgiving message.

To say I was born and raised in New York City would be a little misleading because in my memories of New York in the 40s and 50s, the city was a collection of small towns or villages. I was born in Woodside, a section of the borough of Queens, and the skyscrapers and streets of Manhattan were as remote for me as China would be to my grandchildren today.

Because of our insularity I can’t be sure if a Thanksgiving custom we had back then was unique to Woodside or whether it could have been found elsewhere throughout the great metropolis. Anyone else I’ve mentioned it to had never heard of it including my wife who was born a little bit north of the City in White Plains, the hub of Westchester county.

Anyway, on Thanksgiving morning the children in our neighborhood would dress up as bums or hobos. It didn’t take much since back then we would usually wear our clothes until they literally fell apart. We would take our most worn and tattered clothing and rip and tear them a little more. Then, we would blacken a cork over a candle and smear it over our faces to simulate dirt. I remember my grandmother giving me a little pouch with a drawstring, or was it a pillowcase, that we hobos could sling over our shoulders.

Then, we were ready to make the rounds of our neighbors to ask, “anything for thanksgiving?” Inevitably, they would answer our plea with some of the bounty from the meal they were preparing. Usually it would be apples, or walnuts, or sometimes a few pennies. Don’t laugh. Twenty pennies were enough to buy a Spalding (Spaldeen), the elite of bouncing rubber balls used by us in so many street games.

I don’t know where the “anything for thanksgiving” custom came from. We lived in a small neighborhood that seemed to have been mainly Irish with a mixture of Italians. In my nearby Catholic school the majority of the kids seemed to have Irish names. There were Ryans, Regans, Dunphys, Moylans, and Healys. However, A few blocks down busy 69^thStreet were the Napolitanos who ran the grocery store. In the other direction lived the dreaded Gallos whose kids were the toughest in the school. 

But I’m not sure that “anything for thanksgiving”  was an ethnic custom. We were a predominately Catholic neighborhood and the idea of thanksgiving was part of our religious heritage even though none of us knew that the word “Eucharist” meant “Thanksgiving.” On the other hand, it could have been a peculiarly American response to the end of the Great Depression and the Second World War. Nothing had marked the depression so much as homeless men on bread lines or riding the rails. These were the hobos that we children imitated. Even though most of us could be considered poor, at least we and our neighbors would be able to sit down that afternoon in our homes to the best meal of the year. We did have a lot to be thankful for. The Depression was over, the men had returned from the terrible war, and the NY Yankees were on the verge of recovering their past glory.

Over 75 years have passed since those childhood years but I can truly say that my wife and I have much to be thankful for. Our grandparents came to this country from Italy with nothing but their own traditions, customs, and religion. Like most children of immigrants our parent came to love America and worked hard to provide for their children and give them a standard of living that is still the envy of the world. 

Even today, after a pandemic and divisive political campaigns, there is more reason to hope than to fear. I would just like to end this post with George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789. Thanksgiving did not become a National holiday until after our terrible Civil War, but Washington’s words are as meaningful today as they were in 1789.  

Thanksgiving Proclamation
Issued by President George Washington, at the request of Congress, on October 3, 1789

 


Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and—Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”



Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favor, able interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.


And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.



Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.


 

Go. Washington 

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Happy Thanksgiving.

Election Analysis 2024

  

                  

Since former President Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamela Harris in the 2024 Presidential election, I have read a number of analyses of the election results and all, whether Republican or Democrat, blame the Democrats for the defeat. Harris is blamed for not being a good candidate. President Joe Biden is blamed for not stepping down sooner. The Democratic party is blamed for being overly “woke” and out of touch with ordinary Americans.  Even the millions of people who voted for Trump are blamed for being racist, bigoted, and misogynistic.

However, I have not seen one analysis where Trump is given any credit for his remarkable victory. Even the conservative editorial writers and columnists at the Wall Street Journal cannot give an ounce of credit to Trump or his team. Indeed, throughout the long-drawn-out campaign, these commentators found it difficult to say even one good word about Trump. It is as if they feared alienating friends or colleagues in the industry. The editors of the WSJ consistently believed that Nikki Haley or anyone else were better candidates than Trump, and despite their losses in the primaries, would have been easy winners for the Republican party. 

In any contest, it is usually the superior player who wins.  Can it be that Trump was the superior player in 2024? Since Trump first entered the political arena in 2015, I have never seen such enthusiasm for a candidate. It grew as he demolished leading Republicans in the 2016 campaign, and then upset Hillary Clinton in the Presidential election. His controversial defeat in the 2020 election obviously did not diminish the enthusiasm of his millions of supporters and ultimately it carried him to victory this year. Without that enthusiastic base no Republican could have won. Was this enthusiasm based on nothing? Was it totally unreasonable?

I have talked with a number of Trump supporters over the years, and I can point to a few reasons for his popularity. In the first place, from the moment he entered politics, it was clear that Trump was not a politician. Perhaps this is the reason why so many in the governing class despise and hate him. He was rich but he was not one of them. No one has ever accused him of being a politician. To put it in a positive way, he appears to his base as genuine, and not as a phony. He is incredibly rich and flaunts it, but still seems like a regular guy. 

I believe that his supporters also admire his courage. He showed a lot of courage in taking on the Republican establishment in 2015. As President I recall his seemingly innumerable press conferences where he took on the entire attacking press corps without benefit of teleprompter or staged questions. Compare his bravado to Biden and Harris who hardly ever held a press conference. 

Who can forget that moment in Butler, Pennsylvania when an assassin’s bullet came within an inch of taking his life. He could have stayed on the ground covered by Secret Service agents, but something in this 78-year-old man made him rise and shake a defiant fist in the air. 

Maybe, courage has something to do with the fact that Trump might be the hardest political campaigner in history. I know he gave practically the same speech at every rally, but he was still out there night after night right till the last day of the campaign.

Trump should also be given some credit for his actual campaign. He obviously picked a team of very talented and capable people. Only after the election did we find out that the leader of the campaign was Susie Wiles. She led a campaign that won every battleground state, as well as the popular vote. The media totally overlooked her. They still don’t know how she did it.

 

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Endorsement

 

 

The Weekly Bystander endorses Donald Trump for President.

A year ago I was looking forward to this year’s Presidential election with great anticipation. President Biden was running virtually unopposed in the Democratic primaries and was a lock to get the nomination. Although former President Donald Trump faced stronger opposition in Republican primaries, he seemed unstoppable. The 2024 election was shaping up to be a rare event, a contest between two Presidents. It would be a contest between the current administration, and the previous one. It would be easy to compare the two administrations on the basis of what they actually achieved, and not on some promised reforms or future policies.

However, it was not to be. Biden’s inept performance in the early debate led to a Democratic insider party coup that forced him out of the race. As a result it seemed as if Kamela Harris, Biden’s anointed successor was a reform candidate running against Trump who now appeared as the incumbent from whom we had to turn the page.. She has consistently declined to run on her record, but just talks about her plans for the future. Even though practically everyone in the country has already made up their mind, it still seems to me that there is no way the Biden-Harris administration can stand comparison with that of the Trump administration. *

There is no need to go over the whole list of failures of the Biden-Harris administration except to note that the greatest failure is still hidden. How long have Democratic insiders like Vice-President Harris known of President Biden’s incapacity? How long have we been governed by a secret cabal? It is claimed that President Biden removed himself from the race only after being threatened by the 25th Amendment. That amendment, however, cannot be used as a threat. If the Vice-President suspected the President was mentally or physically unable to continue, she had the responsibility to call a cabinet meeting and call for a vote. Perhaps this explains why the cabinet has met only once in the past six months, and that only for a photo op.

Whether elected or defeated, Harris and the Biden Administration will have a lot to explain in the years to come.


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* See earlier post on the resumes of the two contenders.

Yankee Tragedy

  

Ever since the ancient Greeks dramas have been classified as either tragedy or comedy. To put it simply in a tragedy things start out well for the hero but then end badly. From Oedipus to Hamlet that has always been the case. On the other hand, in a comedy things start out badly but end up well. It is not a question of laughs. There are very few laughs in Dante’s Divine Comedy, but the hero eventually goes from the depths to the heights.  

I thought of this the other night while watching the NY Yankees blow a five-run lead in the fifth inning of the fifth game of the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was not the loss of the game and the Series that was tragic, but the individual tragedies involved. Just as in dramas of old it seemed as if the gods or fate were involved in bringing down not just one but three Yankee heroes. 

The Yankees had lost the first two games in Los Angeles and when they lost the third game at home in Yankee Stadium, it seemed like all hope was gone, especially since Aaron Judge, their best player and league MVP, was not hitting. Nevertheless, they won the fourth game 11-4 sparked by a grand slam home run and base running antics by Anthony Volpe, their young shortstop. Moreover they would have their ace pitcher Gerrit Cole on the mound for game five.

As in all tragedies game 5 started on a high note. Judge broke out of his slump with a two-run homer in the first inning. A couple of innings later he made a spectacular catch against the wall to add to his hero status.  By the fifth inning the Yanks had built up a 5-0 lead. Cole was cruising along, and all seemed well but fate intervened to bring down the mighty.

In the top of the fifth with a runner on first Judge dropped an easy fly ball that any little leaguer could have caught. To say this error was inexplicable would be an understatement. Now there are runners at first and second with nobody out. Still, Cole induces the next batter to hit a grounder to Volpe at shortstop. He attempts a force out at third but throws the ball in the dirt for another error. Now the bases are loaded with no one out. 

Let’s stop for a moment to consider the tragic fate of Anthony Volpe. Since the days of the legendary DiMaggio, Rizzuto, and Berra the large Italian American community in New York’s metropolitan area has always loved the Yankees. Volpe came from an Italian American family and he and his family had always loved the Yankees. His play in the series had brought him to the top of the world but one errant throw brought him down. 

Years ago while listening to a Yankee game being broadcast on the radio by Tom Seaver, one of baseball’s greatest pitchers, and Phil Rizzuto, the legendary Yankee shortstop. A player had just made an error and Rizzuto asked Seaver how he would react as a pitcher. Seaver said that rather than being angry at his teammate, he felt that it was his responsibility to bear down and get out of the inning without any further damage.  In other words, it was his job to protect his teammate from blame.

Incredibly, Gerrit Cole did just that. With the bases loaded and no one out, he struck out the next two batters, including Shohei Ohtani, the Dodger MVP. Then Cole induced Mookie  Betts to hit an easy grounder to first base but then commits his own error by failing to cover the base for the throw. Who knows what could have been going on in this great pitcher’s mind after this misplay? Two hits later and the score was tied. 

In front of 50000 fans and millions of TV watchers, three fine players had fallen from the heights. Even Shakespeare would have been hard pressed to write such a tragedy.

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Alfred Hitchcock Presents

 

 

If you want a break from hurricanes and the election, try any of these films by Alfred Hitchcock.

Famed British film director Alfred Hitchcock’s long career spanned almost 50 years. Known as the Master of Suspense, he came to America in 1940 and his first film, Rebecca, won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Today, he is best known for Technicolor classics like Rear Window, Vertigo, and North by Northwest. Older readers might remember his long running TV series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, that featured short suspenseful dramas all introduced by Hitchcock himself. Who could ever forget the episode where a woman after killing her husband by hitting him over the head with a frozen leg of lamb, cooked the lamb and then served the evidence to the policemen investigating the homicide?

Nevertheless, I prefer some of his earlier black and white films that demonstrate that he was not only a master storyteller, but also a master of film noir and its techniques. Below find short descriptions of some of my favorites. It never ceases to surprise me that even senior citizens have never heard of or seen these classics. 

Rebecca. As mentioned above, Rebecca was Hitchcock’s first American film. Joan Fontaine, Lawrence Olivier, and Judith Anderson starred in this 1940 suspense drama based on a novel by Daphne du Maurier. Olivier plays a British aristocrat, a widower after the mysterious death of his beautiful and accomplished wife, who brings his new wife home to his estate that seems under the spell of the deceased Rebecca.   This film won the Academy Awards that year for Best Picture and Best Cinematography, and Fontaine, Olivier, and Anderson received Academy Award nominations for their performances. Hitchcock was at his best in Rebecca. 130 minutes. 

Shadow of a Doubt. Joseph Cotton and Teresa Wright starred in this 1943 thriller.  A long-lost relative returns to a sleepy small town for a stay with relatives who welcome him with open arms. He charms the whole town, but his niece begins to have doubts about Uncle Charley. Filmed on location in Santa Rosa, California, Shadow of a Doubt was Alfred Hitchcock’s personal favorite. 108 minutes.

Spellbound. Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman starred in this 1945 film about murder and repressed memory. Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis were starting to make their way into Hollywood and Hitchcock went all out in this film full of dreams and analysis. Surrealist painter Salvador Dali was even brought in to help with the dream sequences although most of his work never made it to the final cut. The film received nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, and famed musical director Miklos Rozsa won for Best Score. 111 minutes.

Stage Fright. Marlene Dietrich, Jane Wyman, and Richard Todd starred in this little known 1950 film shot in England. Dietrich plays a theatrical entertainer whose husband has been murdered. Police suspect her lover who claims his innocence and hides out with Wyman’s family.  The plot thickens until the typical Hitchcockian ending. Dietrich gets a chance to sing in her own inimitable fashion. The film also features famed British actors, Alastair Sim, Sybil Thorndike, and Joyce Grenfell. 110 minutes. 

Strangers on a Train. Farley Granger and Robert Walker starred in this 1951 Hitchcock thriller where a chance meeting on a train results in murder. This is my favorite Hitchcock film, from the opening sequence as we follow the footsteps of two men boarding a train, to the climactic finale which takes place on a carousel in an amusement park, a finale that is one of the most memorable in film history.  Robert Walker, who normally played boy next door roles, gave his greatest performance as a charming psychopath planning the perfect murder. Ruth Roman, and Patricia Hitchcock, the director’s daughter, are featured.101 minutes. 

I Confess. Montgomery Clift starred in this 1953 film as a priest who hears a killer’s confession but then is accused of the murder himself.  Unable to speak out because of the seal of the confessional, police and public opinion turn against him especially when it turns out there was a woman (Anne Baxter) in his past. The film was beautifully photographed on location in Quebec. 95 minutes.

I prefer to watch these films on DVD as opposed to streaming. Most of the DVDs for the films listed above come with special features that discuss the actual making of the films. In addition, there are no ads, and most include close captioning for the hearing impaired. 

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Vance Walz Debate

 Since I fell and fractured the humerus in my left arm five weeks ago, it has been difficult to use the keyboard on my computer for anything more than a sentence or two. But I would like to make a brief comment on last night's debate.

Before the debate, I thought that Republican Senator Vance would have to show that he was Presidential. He did not have to win but just show that he could be up to the job. Trump is nearly 80 and even his most ardent supporters must be concerned about the succession issue. So, it was not a question of win or lose the debate but would Vance show that he belonged in the arena.

I believe he passed with flying colors. He was intelligent, articulate, knowlegible, poised and young. His youth was a breath of fresh air. 

In fairness, I have to say that Governor Walz did better than I thought he would, and showed much more knowledge and experience than his running mate. This debate was the most substantive I have ever seen in all my years of following politics.

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Review, God and Man at Yale

 

                                           

William F. Buckley, Jr.

 Below find a brief review of William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale, a book which some believe launched the conservative movement in America. The main issue raised by Buckley is still with us today, and explains the major difference between our two parties that should be evident in tonight's debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. 

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 William F. Buckley Jr., the famed Conservative commentator, first came to the nation’s attention with the publication of God and Man at Yale back in 1951. The book, a review of Buckley's years at Yale was subtitled, “The Superstitions of ‘Academic Freedom’”. 

Buckley must have had an outstanding college career before graduating in 1950. For example, one year he held the prestigious position of editor of the Yale Daily News.  He  loved his Alma Mater but found some disturbing trends. 

Here I would just like to concentrate on his lengthy chapter devoted to the teaching of economics at Yale, a chapter primarily analyzing the textbooks chosen for the basic introductory course that was taken by a large number of students. All four of the textbooks believed that the biggest problem facing America in 1950 was “income inequality”. That’s right! Income Inequality or, as he titled it, THE UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME. Why was income inequality such a big issue back in 1950?

I believe the answer can be found in the background of the economists who had written the textbooks. If Buckley was about 25 in 1950, then I would guess the authors of the textbooks were born before the First World War and grew up in the era marked by the subsequent Communist Revolution in Russia and the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s. Paul Samuelson, for example, was born in 1915 and his textbook, Economics, an Introductory Analysis, was first published in 1948 and soon became one of the best-selling textbooks of all time. Samuelson’s book was one of the four reviewed by Buckley.

Samuelson and the others all believed that the experiment begun in Russia in 1917 was the wave of the future, and that the Great Depression in American had shown the inadequacies of the traditional system of free or private enterprise in dealing with modern economic issues. In the chapter on economics Buckley cited a comparison between the Soviet and American systems from one of these textbooks. The italics are Buckley’s.

compare “ the situation in our economy with that in a socialist economy, such as the Russian or Czechoslovakian. In the Russian economy the decision to produce, let us say 20 million tons of pig iron, is made by the Central Planning board, which presumably takes into account the needs and resources of the Russian economy before it comes to a decision. The same board determines how many automobiles to produce, how many pairs of socks to manufacture, and how many acres to put into wheat. In our economy, no such institution exists. No one group or person determines how much steel to produce, how many tractors to make, or how much land to plant in cotton…. In a socialist economy, important questions of output, price, employment, and so on are planned collectively. In a capitalistic economy, these decisions are made separately by individual firms…. How does the business firm determine how much it will produce? The answer to this question is to be found in the fact that the business firm in this country is privately owned…. The determination of how much to produce, or of the price to be charged for the product, is made with one interest in mind—that of the owner. The owner’s interest is to secure as large a profit as possible. [Pp. 65-66]

Just as today, it was believed that the profit motive that was the root of all evil. In the words of one text, “the state, being free from the profit motive and having the power of compulsion, is able to make its revenue fit its expenditures (within limits) rather than the reverse.” [p. 67] Of course, profit motive brings up the image of the greedy businessman as often portrayed in popular movies of the 1930s or in the figure of Mr. Monopoly from the very popular board game.

Samuelson’s text disclaimed the image but still used it.

In this connection, it is important to understand just what a monopolist is. He is not indeed,“…a fat, greedy man with a big moustache and cigar who goes around violating the law. If he were, we could put him in jail. He is anyone important enough to affect the prices of the things that he sells and buys. To some degree that means almost every businessman”… [75]

In 1950 all four textbook authors were convinced that the experiment going on in Russia was the wave of the future and that the private enterprises system was a thing of the past that had been forever discredited by the Great Depression. The textbooks, and the professors who chose them, were all advocates of central planning, a large central government, extremely high progressive income tax rates, and confiscatory inheritance tax rates. 

Writing in 1950 I don’t suppose that the young Buckley or the textbook authors could have foreseen the great economic boom that would take place in the USA in the next few decades, a boom that not only raised millions out of poverty, but also created the wealthiest country in the history of the world. Neither could they imagine that during the same period the Soviet economy would finally be exposed as a rotten failure. At the same time as we were beginning to learn about Stalin’s brutal oppression, we were learning of people lining up at Russian markets for hours to buy inferior or even non-existent necessities. 

The Soviet Union had eliminated income inequality by making everyone poor. Years later, we would learn that they had actually created a new aristocracy of Communist party members and their friends who lorded it over their subjects. As in most socialist countries members of the ruling party made up only about 10% of the population. So much for central planning and the elimination of the profit motive.

In one of history’s ironies Paul Samuelson made a fortune with his economics textbook, In true capitalist fashion he contrived to bring out a new edition every couple of years so that students could not buy older used texts. No central board or agency prevented him or his publisher from printing and selling as many copies as the market would bear. He lived a long life and received practically every award a scholar could get. In 1996, he was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Bill Clinton, another Yale graduate who now makes millions by giving speeches to fat cats all over the world while he, his wife, and "democratic socialists" or so-called progressives complain of income inequality.

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Two Resumes

  

                  

This week at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), the Democrats nominated Vice President Kamela Harris to be their standard bearer in the November election. She will face off against the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. Now would be a good time to compare the two candidates. 

Theoretically, we are their potential employer, and let’s imagine that we are looking at their resumes and considering their qualifications for the job. Of course, like any good employer, we should not consider their age, gender, race, creed, or color. Let’s concentrate on their recent work experience.

First, we find that Donald Trump has actually served four years as President of the USA. He has four years of on-the-job experience. We see that his administration had some major successes in foreign affairs. He met with many foreign leaders, both friend and foe, and the World was at relative peace, especially after ISIS was defeated in Iraq.  Toward the end of his term, his administration brokered the Abraham Accords, an historic first step in normalizing relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. There was no war in Ukraine.

Domestically, his most important achievement was tax reform that made the tax system not only fairer and simpler, but also more growth oriented. It is important to understand that the Trump reform was not really a cut in taxes but a cut in tax rates both personal and corporate. In 2016, before tax reform, the Federal government collected $3.27 trillion in taxes. By 2019, before the pandemic hit, total tax revenues rose to $3.46 trillion. Moreover, during the Trump administration employment and real wages reached all-time highs.

But more than anything else, he was always up front, a leader in both foreign and domestic affairs. We remember his many press conferences where, unscripted and without a teleprompter, he took on all questions from largely hostile media.  Even during the Covid crisis, he was on stage practically every day during that national emergency. Whatever you think of vaccines, there is no doubt that he acted with firmness and alacrity in their development. 

In summary, his resume shows four years or relative peace and prosperity despite a pandemic, and despite incredible and unprecedented opposition from his political opponents.

 

Now, let’s look at the resume of Vice-President Harris. There is a lengthy goal statement, but one wonders why she has not achieved any of these goals in the past three and a half years of the Biden/Harris administration. She plans to do many things on Day 1 of her administration, but since she is in office right now, why hasn’t she done them already? 

I would ask any reader to help me list three significant things that she has achieved as Vice-President. I can offer a couple of hints. She obviously participated in the coup that put an end to President Biden’s re-election campaign. After years of lying about how sharp and capable he was, she helped to throw him under the bus. If she is truly running the show now, she added insult to injury by putting Biden on the DNC stage at 11:30 on Monday night.  

She also appointed Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate. His only qualification seems to be that he will not outshine her. Otherwise, her resume is blank for the past three and a half years. What has she been doing during that time? She was supposed to be Border Czar, but her handlers have deleted that item.

Finally, her resume shows no evidence of any real leadership. Did she play an important role in the inner circles of the Biden administration? Or is her call for a new era of hope and joy, a critique of that administration? Who knows? She is being hidden from view in the same manner as Biden four years ago, she gives no interviews or press conferences. Her speeches are all ghost written and delivered via teleprompter. It is true that she does a good job of reading from a teleprompter.

I watched her acceptance speech to see if she added more information on her role in the Biden administration. She briefly mentioned three things. First, she warned President Zelensky of Ukraine that the Russians were about to invade.  Three years later, the war goes on. Second, after three years of an open border policy she worked this year to create a border bill but that was somehow derailed by former President Trump. Finally, she is currently working with President Biden to end the Gaza war, but so far with no success. That was all she could say about her record as Vice President. She spent much more time talking about her mother.

 

Who would you hire?

 

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki Revisited

 

                                             

 On August 5, 1945 a U.S. Air Force bomber dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Four days later a second atomic bomb was dropped on the port city of Nagasaki. Five days later  on August 15 Japanese Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese government agreed to accede to Allied demands and surrender unconditionally. 

Earlier that year, on May 8, 1945, the European Allies had accepted the surrender of Germany after Hitler’s suicide. VE Day marked the end of the war in Europe and the Allies could now turn their full attention to the defeat of Japan. Joseph Stalin, the brutal Communist dictator in Russia, had refused to open an Asian front against Japan until the defeat of Germany. 

After VE Day Stalin agreed to launch an attack on the Japanese puppet state in Mongolia within three months. On July 26, 1945 the Allied leaders met at Potsdam and issued a demand to Japan to surrender unconditionally or face utter destruction. While the Russians built up their forces in the East, the United States launched a series of devastating firebomb attacks on Japanese cities from recently taken islands in the Pacific.

When these attacks failed to bring the Japanese to their knees, the Allies made preparations for a full-scale attack on the Japanese mainland. Massive casualties were projected on both sides.  Finally, by the beginning of August scientists had successfully tested the Atom bomb. President Truman then made the decision to use the bomb.

I was six years old at the time and have only the slightest recollection of that world-shattering event. I don’t think anyone at the time could have imagined the awful destruction caused by those two bombs. A few years later, after the Soviet Union had managed to steal the technology and build their own bomb, I remember participating in air raid drills in school. Teachers told us to crouch under our desks or just put our heads on the desks with our hands over them. I guess that this exercise was to protect against shattered windows but even we children realized its futility.

As  I got older I became somewhat aware of the debate that had gone on within the Truman administration about the decision to drop the bomb, as well as the debate that still goes on among scholars and other commentators about the necessity and morality of the action. I’m sure that this question is one in which there are strong arguments on both sides. For myself, I still wonder why it was necessary to drop the second bomb on Nagasaki only four days after Hiroshima. 

Coincidentally, at the time Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan. The day the Japanese government agreed to surrender was August 15, for Catholics the feast day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. Although Catholics had celebrated the feast of the Assumption on August 15 for centuries, the doctrine had never been officially defined by the Church. 

Maybe it was the awful destruction of the Second World War, maybe it was the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and maybe it was the prospect of an atomic arms race, but only five years after the surrender of Japan on August 15, Pope Pius XII, in a rare exercise of Papal infallibility, declared that belief in the Assumption of Mary was a binding doctrine of the Catholic church.

So far, despite the Cold War and the continued development of nuclear weapons, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain unique.  Although warfare has continued, there has thankfully been no worldwide conflagration to match either WWI  or WWII. It might not seem so, but since August 15, 1945 we have witnessed an unprecedented era of peace between world powers.

 One of the reasons I voted for Donald Trump in 2016 was his stated concern about the danger of nuclear war. I cannot find the exact source but I recall that when he was asked about the greatest issue facing the country, he put the threat of nuclear war at the top of the list. Given the events of the past four years,  I believe that it should still be at the top of the list in the 2024 Presidential campaign,. It certainly far surpasses in importance any issues that "progressive Democrats" have raised since 2016.

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