I'm a Good Guy

Recently The Guardian posted the number 486 million dollars.* That is how much the famous smiley face figure earned the Smiley Company last year from products blazoned with the yellow face. 

The company has 458 licensees in 158 countries for its trademarked version of the face. The company, needless to say, is celebrating its fiftieth year in business happily.

According to The Guardian, the smiley has been around in one form or another since the 1950s. 

A yellow and black one first showed its face in 1961, when it was printed on a promotional sweatshirt by the New York radio station WMCA to promote the news-talk show Good Guys.

I can’t speak to that origin of the WMCA sweatshirt, as I wasn’t tuned into that station until later in the decade, when WMCA and WABC-AM were the two biggest rock-and-roll stations in the Big Apple. They competed mightily against each other, attempting to be the first station to broadcast the newest recording by the Beatles and other mega-rock groups. 

I mainly listened to Cousin Brucie and his colleagues at WABC. However, I did defect to WMCA for its overnight show hosted by DJ Dean Anthony. Anthony’s shtick was to play a game called Actors and Actresses, the object of which was for listeners to call in to the station and try to identify a thespian by his or her initials. Was CC Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Chase, Charles Coburn, or someone else? Anthony worked from a list that was submitted by a listener—who, for his or her efforts, was awarded a WMCA Good Guy Sweatshirt.

In the fall of 1967, I submitted a list that was selected by Anthony, and I duly received a Good Guy sweatshirt—which, 55 years later, I still have (although it has shrunk a great deal and now comes down barely to waist level).

Now, the interesting thing is this: On the night that Anthony featured my list, my brother, who had been gallivanting around town until the early hours of the morning, called into WMCA and, without knowing it was my list, was able to name a lesser-known British actor, whose identity had stumped many other callers. 

*

And what has a half-century of change brought us?

WMCA now features “a Christian radio format consisting of teaching and talk programs.”

WABC has a daily show hosted by Rudy Giuliani.

***

* https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/25/fifty-years-and-500m-dollars-the-happy-business-of-the-smiley-symbol 

More Herself? Queen Elizabeth and Selfhood

In Act III, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1 Prince Hal, the heir to the English throne, has been summoned by his father, the King, to answer for the dissolute life he has been leading. The King cites the Prince’s 

inordinate and low desires,

Such poor, such bare, such lewd, such mean attempts,

Such barren pleasures, rude society

and wonders how such actions 

Accompany the greatness of thy blood

And hold their level with thy princely heart.

Hal’s response is

I shall hereafter, my thrice gracious lord,

Be more myself.

I have always been fascinated by that reply. What can it mean to be more oneself? What, indeed, is the self anyway?

*

I have an existentialist view of selfhood; that is, existence precedes essence—or, simply, you are what you do.(1) There is no pre-ordained “true you.” There is no set role to be followed, no fate that’s yours from birth. 

The death of Queen Elizabeth II has been the occasion for numerous magazine and newspaper articles about her life and her role as Queen of England. And has led me to think about her selfhood and whether her true self was other than the role she played for 70 years.

Here is one view to consider:

“She meant reliability and stability,” said Kate Nattrass, 59, a health recruiter from Christchurch, New Zealand, which is a member of the Commonwealth.

But the queen did so at the cost of great personal sacrifice. “In many ways, she was  a woman robbed of being able to be herself,” Ms. Nattrass said.(2)

This is a view that sees a conflict between the actions of the Queen and what may have been her true desires. The essential Elizabeth was suppressed to allow the ceremonial Elizabeth to thrive.

On the other hand, consider the words of 21-year-old Princess Elizabeth five years before ascending to the throne: 

And as Tom McTague wrote in The Atlantic, 

When the Queen devoted her whole life to the service of Britain’s “great imperial family,” she meant it and honored it.(3)

It was a life that at her birth she was not destined to lead. Through the abdication of her uncle, Edward VIII, and the death of her father, the role of Queen of England became hers, and while Elizabeth was not destined at birth to eventually become Queen of England, she completely embodied the role that fate thrust onto her.

Another writer at The Atlantic, Helen Lewis, pointed out that 

everyone here knows that being royal is a bloody awful job. Elizabeth II didn’t choose it, and she did it anyway.(4)

(Or did she choose it by accepting it?)

“Duty,” “self-discipline,” “work ethic,” “sense of service” were some of the terms used by other writers to describe the qualities that were evident in the seventy years of the Queen’s reign.

She was, as Beth Thames, reminds us, 

a woman who got up every day — yes, from a comfortable bed made up by other people — and did what had to be done. And she did that for 70 years. Duty called at 7:30 each morning and she answered day after day.(5)

*

Prince Hal had to be spurred by his father’s rebuke to be more himself. The self, in that hierarchal society, being independent of one’s will (indeed, the will— emotional, irrational—was a challenge to one’s true self) was aligned with destiny. 

Since Elizabeth never had to be rebuked or shamed or otherwise spurred into being regal, was her life a challenge to the belief that existence precedes essence—in that her self seemed to be governed by essence of royalty? Or would it be truer to say that Elizabeth totally accepted destiny, making self and role identical? By accepting, indeed embracing her role, she can be said to have chosen her selfhood, which was displayed for seventy years as she

remained determinedly committed to the hallmark aloofness, formality and pageantry by which the monarchy has long sought to preserve the mystique that underpinned its existence and survival.(6)

***

(1)  I discussed this many years ago in the following post: https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2011/08/ask-wrong-question.html

In another post, I posed the following thought experiment:

Charlie, walking down Main Street, spots a Baskin Robbins ice cream store ahead of him. “Boy, I’d like some chocolate chip ice cream,” he says to himself as he makes his way to the shop. “I really want some chocolate chip,” he says to himself again, as he takes a number and waits his turn. (You always have to wait on line at Baskin Robbins.) When the counterperson calls out number thirty-seven, Charlie steps forward. “I’ll have . . . er . . . that is I’d like . . . um . . . ok, two scoops of maple walnut ice cream with sprinkles.” Charlie finishes his ice cream cone and says to himself, “The maple walnut was good, but I really wanted chocolate chip.” Question: What did Charlie really want—maple walnut or chocolate chip?

https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2009/08/three-thought-experiments.html 

(2) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/10/world/europe/queen-elizabeth-uk-identity.html?searchResultPosition=58

(3) https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/09/queen-elizabeth-ii-death-global-legacy/671377/

(4) https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/queen-elizabeth-ii-funeral-british-monarchy/671475/

(5) https://www.al.com/life/2022/09/when-duty-called-queen-elizabeth-always-answered.html

(6) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/world/europe/queen-elizabeth-dead.html?searchResultPosition=31

 

The Jokesters

A Belgian Man Has Been Pranked with Pizza Deliveries for 9 Horrible Years

https://www.foodandwine.com/news/pizza-delivery-prank-9-years-belgium

*

Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott are real cards—producers of laugh-a-minute knee slappers, they have you rolling in the aisles. They also happen to be governors of two states of our union, Florida and Texas, respectively. Lately, when they need a rest from limiting women’s control over their bodies, banning textbooks, and other primary activities deemed necessary for the head of a backward political entity, they metamorphose into red state gagsters. Their shtick is to prank residents of other states by sending them unordered pizzas people. 

Abbott literally had two buses deliver immigrants to the doorstep of Vice President Harris. (There was no word whether they came bearing pepperoni or meatball pies.) DeSantis went one better (or worse) by chartering two planes to fly immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. (Does any resident of Florida wonder why DeSantis is spending that state’s taxpayer money to transport people from Texas to Massachusetts, or are they all in on the gag?) 

Supposedly, the purpose of the stealth transportations was to produce a kind of neo-Candid Camera moment, in which the pranked liberal residents of the District of Columbia and of the Vineyard would be caught losing it over the arrival of the Latin American strangers. “Smile,” Greg and Ron would exclaim, “you’ve been revealed as hypocrites!”

Except things didn’t happen that way. To take the example of the Vineyard residents: they rushed to welcome the incomers bearing their meager belongings. According to the Vineyard Gazette,

A coalition of emergency management officials, faith groups, nonprofit agencies and county and town officials were organizing food and shelter for the migrants, who spent Wednesday night at St. Andrews Church in Edgartown. The Salvation Army, among others, was providing food. . . .

As word spread of the migrants' plight, a crowd of people — many eager to offer assistance — gathered outside the church. Edgartown Police Lt. Chris Dolby urged people not to deliver additional donations.

Speaking outside the parish hall Thursday morning, state Rep. Dylan Fernandes said the situation was under control “with local law enforcement jumping into action.”

“People were served breakfast this morning by the parish and served lunch by the school system. We are a community that helps one another and you can see that here,” he said.*

*

Perhaps the best summation of the transportation stunt is this headline in New York magazine:

DeSantis Tries to Prove Liberals Hate Immigrants As Much As He Does, Fails

*

I have two final points to make:

1) When I finish this post, I’ll be writing a check to HIAS, whose motto is:

Welcome the stranger.

Protect the refugee.

2) For my next pizza, I won’t have it delivered; I’ll pick it up myself.

***

*  https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2022/09/14/planeload-venezuelan-refugees-arrive-marthas-vineyard-airport

 

Judenrein

In 1973, the first Monopoly World Tournament took place at Grossinger’s Hotel in Liberty, New York. Less than a decade-and-a-half later the hotel—the Star Beet of the Borscht Belt—closed for good.

About a week-and-a-half ago, the derelict remains of the grand resort were engulfed by a great fire. Sic transit gloria mundi!

I learned of the fate of Grossinger’s remains from this report by NPR: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/19/1118549797/huge-blaze-engulfs-grossingers-hotel-inspiration-for-dirty-dancing

The headline of the article proclaimed that Grossinger’s was famous because it supposedly inspired the movie “Dirty Dancing”: 

A huge blaze engulfs Grossinger's Hotel, the location that inspired 'Dirty Dancing.' 

Three lines of the article were about the movie, but only one sentence told the reader what the hotel was all about: 

Hundreds of thousands of vacationers made their way to the Catskills to visit the spot.

But who were those vacationers? On that NPR is shtum.

The New York Times, to its shame, in the headline for its fire report also saw fit to link Grossinger’s to the same crappy movie:

Catskills Hotel That Inspired ‘Dirty Dancing’ Suffers Devastating Fire.

And the Times waited seven paragraphs to answer what NPR declined to say—that Grossinger’s was part of “a vibrant vacation scene for a primarily Jewish clientele.” 

And what did they come for?

Not to buy the deed for the Boardwalk or to pass Go and collect $200.

But for rest, relaxation, lots of good food, and great entertainment (so many comedians, singers, and actors got their start in the Borscht Belt).

It wasn’t the goyishe dirty dancers who quaffed the red stuff in the Borscht Belt. 

***

The flames that engulfed the remains of the great Grossinger’s Hotel were not as hot as I was when I read the NPR article (and later saw the Times headline). 

Here are some other headlines:

Fire hits vacant Grossinger's hotel, once a Catskills jewel that became 'Dirty Dancing' inspiration

ABC

Building at the Catskills' famed Grossinger's resort, an inspiration for "Dirty Dancing," burns down in massive fire

CBS

And in the ultimate disgrace:

Fire destroys building at Grossinger’s Catskills resort, the inspiration for ‘Dirty Dancing’

NY Jewish Week 

***

Who needs the Christian Nationalists to eliminate the Jews when a pop culture reference can make decades of a strong cultural heritage disappear?

 

Don't Send in the Clowns

OK, class, it’s time for a quiz.

What does this picture have to do with Shakespeare’s Hamlet?

You in the back playing with your cell phone—what do you have to say?

Oh, er, that looks like a clown—a woman clown. I don’t think that that has anything to do with Hamlet. I mean, he was a prince, right? And a guy. Not a clown, and not a woman, right?

Well now, take a look at this second picture. I ask the same question: What does this picture have to do with Shakespeare’s Hamlet?

You there, spooning yogurt into your mouth—what do you have to say?

Well [gulp], what he said. That’s a lady clown, not a prince of Denmark.

You two are half right; the first picture is from a magazine advertisement advertising magazine advertisements. It’s from 1970. The second picture is from the front cover of a DVD recording of a 2018 production of Hamlet at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. 

But maybe, on second thought, both your answers are correct. While the recording is allegedly of Shakespeare’s tragedy, one must wonder what in hell it has to do with the play Shakespeare wrote. [I leave aside for now the issue of whether a woman should play the Prince.] Why is Hamlet made up and dressed as a clown? What in the text signals that? Then again, even if there was clear reason for the Prince to be a clown, why is he dressed in white? Hamlet himself (in Act I, Scene 2) refers to his “inky cloak” and “customary suits of solemn black.” Which is a sign of his continuing mourning for his father. Is the wearing of white meant to be a vitiating or elimination of Hamlet’s deep-seated feeling? 

I have no intention of ever watching the Globe’s production to record other abominations.   

*

Classic theater and opera are unfortunately hostages to directors who harbor IDEAS. These ideas are put to work overriding the intentions of the original creator—playwright or composer/librettist.  

Simon Brett in his 1997 satirical mystery novel Sicken and So Die has landed his fourth-rate actor-hero, Charles Paris, a part in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Unfortunately, the original director succumbs to food poisoning and is replaced by an avant-garde Romanian director, who has an IDEA: the cast will play the comedy nude. Except for the fact that there’s a murder, the book is wonderfully funny and absurd.

Perhaps the most famous 20th century example of a director imposing his IDEA on a Shakespearean play is the case of Peter Brooks’ production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which appeared in New York in 1971. Brendan Gill, in his New Yorker review, notes that 

And Clive Barnes, who raved about the production in the New York Times [“the greatest production of Shakespeare I have ever seen in my life”], wrote of “an Oberon on a trapeze, a Puck who juggles with plates or dashes across the scene on Tarzan rope or runs on stilts.” [Here is a video of some plate spinning.]  

  

All that was mind-boggling stupidity enough, but perhaps worst of all was having characters on their knees speaking Shakespeare’s great verse affectlessly.

*

Gill was “miserable” during the evening and wondered what Brooks’ intention was.

Mr. Gill, staying the course, had a stronger stomach than me; I walked out very early in the evening and went home to a welcome cup of tea. I figured if I wanted a circus, I would buy popcorn and wait for the elephants.

 

Bottoms Up!

A

Fifth

of 

Jim Beam

*

A

Fifth 

of

Johnnie Walker

*

A 

Fifth

of 

Donald Trump

Round and Round

We have the Hebrews to thank, it has been said, for giving us the belief that history is linear and not circular. It was, however, a member of the tribe, Karl Marx, who claimed that history does repeat itself: appearing first as tragedy, and then as farce.

I was never a believer in the circularity of history, whether manifesting itself as reincarnation, the transmigration of souls, or Yeats’ “A Vision,”* most prominently displayed in his great poem “The Second Coming.” However, recently, I have found reason to share Marx’s view about historical repetition, although I’m not sure that his formulation is correct, or if the reverse is true—history appears first as farce and only later as tragedy.

*

Since in the last few years I have had more spare time than I know what to do with it (yes, I know that I could engage in saving the whales or mining crypto), I have undertaken a kind of historical research by trawling the archives of The New Yorker magazine. I am on my second go-round; having begun this tour in 1940, I am now into the autumn of 1971. What has stood out most prominently this time around is that the state of the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s was uncannily like what we face today, a half-century on.

In this blog post I have gathered together many cartoons and comments from back then which I think you will plainly recognize as distant mirror images of our own time.

*

*

*

*

*

*

Now on to the political.

*

*

*

*

2022

Former President Donald Trump called for the US Department of Education's abolition during his Saturday speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas.

Trump told a crowd that prohibitions need to be brought in on teaching "inappropriate racial, sexual and political material" to American schoolchildren.

"If federal bureaucrats are going to push this radicalism, we should abolish the Department of Education," he continued.

https://news.yahoo.com/crowd-cheers-trump-calls-abolition-093209367.html

*

*

*

*

Philip Hamburger visited Kent, Ohio in 1971, one year after Ohio National Guardsmen murdered four Kent State students who were protesting US actions in South East Asia. Here's what one local interviewee said:

*

2022

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Saturday said “no one can convince” her that the rioters behind the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol were not anti-fascist protesters 

https://news.yahoo.com/rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-no-193748469.html

"As another example, the sting they did involving Gretchen Whitmer was fake. Just like those who instigated January 6. It was a fake deal. Fake. It was a fake deal," Trump said. . . . 

Trump also alluded to conspiracy theories about the Capitol riot being orchestrated by FBI agents, propagated by his allies, including Ted Cruz and Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-jan-6-riot-gretchen-whitmer-kidnap-plot-fake-cpac-2022-8

*

*

l. E. Sissman 

Review of Joe McGinniss, The Selling of the President 1968

*

And Finally:

***

*  “All things are subject to a cycle of changes, which can be regarded as bi-polar, passing from a state of objectivity to one of subjectivity before returning to objectivity again. This can be seen as a form of oscillation, or a circuit around a wheel, and divides experience into the two halves of objectivity and subjectivity.”

(Got that?)

https://www.yeatsvision.com/Overview.html#AV