I’ll be hosting a Cambridge Forum event Tuesday night at 7 featuring Wendell Potter, born-again insurance industry flack and author of Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans.
Date: Tuesday, November 30th
Time: 7 p.m.
Location: First Parish Church, 3 Church Street, Cambridge
Tickets: This event is free; no tickets required
Interesting Editor’s Note in Monday’s New York Times about “The Decision to Publish Diplomatic Documents.”
First it says:
The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. The New York Times and a number of publications in Europe were given access to the material several weeks ago and agreed to begin publication of articles based on the cables online on Sunday.
Sounds just like the WikiLeaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars the Times has published over the past few months, right?
Not so fast:
The documents — some 250,000 individual cables, the daily traffic between the State Department and more than 270 American diplomatic outposts around the world — were made available to The Times by a source who insisted on anonymity. They were originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing official secrets, allegedly from a disenchanted, low-level Army intelligence analyst who exploited a security loophole.
In truth, WikiLeaks bypassed the Times this time, so the Gray Lady had to get the documents second-hand from the Guardian newspaper of London.
Why the snub?
Presumably because of this takedown of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the Times last month.
Payback’s a bitch, eh?
Except when it’s not.
Former Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter are out there post-morteming – in the most non-ideological terms possible, of course – their SCOTUS careers.
So why not former Justice John Paul Stevens?
Why not with a vengeance.
Especially regarding his change of heart over capital punishment (he voted to reinstate it in 1976, said he believes it’s unconstitutional in 2008).
According to Sunday’s New York Times:
[O’Connor and Souter’s] abstract discussion is nothing like the blow-by-blow critique in Justice Stevens’s death penalty essay, which will be published in The New York Review’s Dec. 23 issue and will be available on its Web site on Sunday evening.
(See here, which the hardworking staff will get to very soon.)
On Sunday’s CBS magazine 60 Minutes, Stevens – who evolved from a moderate Gerald Ford appointee to a staunch liberal vote on the court – also evened the score on Bush v. Gore (“one of the court’s greatest blunders”) and weighed in on Babe Ruth’s called shot in the 1932 World Serious against the Chicago Cubs.
Transcript (via net54baseball):
In our time with Stevens we expected to cover momentous events, but, in his chambers, we didn’t imagine we would get a ruling on one of the greatest controversies in baseball.
We noticed a box score from Game 3 of the 1932 World Series. Legend has it that the Yankees’ Babe Ruth pointed to a spot in the Cubs’ Wrigley Field and nailed a homerun right there – it’s the famous “called shot,” but whether it actually happened is ferociously debated.
Remember the fateful year when Stevens was 12? Well, he was here when Ruth came to bat. And we figured it was a question of suitable national importance on which to render this justice’s final ruling.
“He took the bat in his right hand and pointed it right at the center field stands and then, of course, the next pitch he hit a homerun in center field and there’s no doubt about the fact that he did point before he hit the ball,” Stevens recalled.
“So the ‘called shot’ actually happened?” Pelley asked.
“Oh, there’s no doubt about it,” Stevens said. “That’s my ruling.”
“Case closed!” Pelley said.
Stevens said, “That’s the one ruling I will not be reversed on!”
Even Stevens.
So . . .
On Sunday, Roger Federer’s dom trampled Rafael Nadal’s calm in an ATP World Tours championship match that was actually less strenuous than the final score indicated.
Via the Wall Street Journal:
Federer and Nadal Rekindle a Rivalry
Tennis has a rivalry again. In London on Sunday, Roger Federer defeated Rafael Nadal 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 in the ATP World Tour Finals. Though the match wasn’t a classic, it did much to reinvigorate a clash that recently had become one-sided. The 24-year-old Mr. Nadal had won six of their previous seven meetings and this season had distanced himself from the 29-year-old Mr. Federer by winning three-straight Grand Slam singles titles, including his first U.S. Open.
Bring on the Australian Open!
(With props to the irrepressible Dan Kennedy, who often blogs about his tech quandries)
The other week the hardworking staff filed from San Francisco on our Global Worldwide Headquarters-issued iPad and promised that we would soon figure out how to add links and graphics to our iPosts.
Turns out, we can’t. Steve Jobs won’t let us.
Unless, perhaps, we add the BlogPress app to our bag of iTricks.
So, as we type, the hws is purchasing at great expense to ourselves ($2.99) said app.
We’ll keep you iPosted on the results.
(P.S. The test went up before this did. Typical.)
So here’s my initial foray into BlogPress and I have no idea how it works.
But I’ll work on it.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Terry Teachout is a knockout.
He writes a lively blog (About Last Night), recently authored a well-received biography of Louis Armstrong, and contributes regular theater reviews to the Wall Street Journal.
And on Friday there was this:
The Cowardly Lion Waits for Godot
How a baggy-pants comedian did justice to a stage masterpiece
Lede:
Bert Lahr, who died in 1967, is best remembered for having played the Cowardly Lion in the 1939 film version of “The Wizard of Oz.” That’s not a bad way to crash posterity, but in his day Mr. Lahr was better known as Broadway’s most beloved low comedian, a scene-stealing burlesque clown who cavorted to convulsively funny effect through such musicals as Cole Porter’s “DuBarry Was a Lady” and Harold Arlen’s “Life Begins at 8:40.” So it was quite a surprise when the producer of the first Broadway production of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” soon to be hailed as one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, proudly announced in the spring of 1956 that Mr. Lahr would be the star of his show. What on earth, people asked, had possessed the Cowardly Lion to commit himself to so patently misguided a venture?
The answer came on the morning after “Godot” opened. Every critic who covered the show heaped praise on Mr. Lahr, and the most perceptive ones saw that his performance was profoundly true to the spirit of the play. Though Mr. Lahr was no kind of intellectual, he had instinctively understood what Mr. Beckett was up to. “I know it’s supposed to be tragic, but there are lots of gags,” he told his agent after reading the script. So there are, for “Godot” is a Laurel-and-Hardyesque farce about the meaninglessness of life. Even those critics who, like Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times, found it hard to stomach the play’s dark vision were staggered by the crazed beauty of Mr. Lahr’s acting: “His long experience as a bawling mountebank has equipped Mr. Lahr to represent eloquently the tragic comedy of one of the lost souls of the earth.”
The production lasted a short 10 weeks. But . . .
Goddard Lieberson, who produced original-cast albums for Columbia Records, had the brilliant idea to record a complete performance of the play. The existence of the resulting album, which has been out of print for the past quarter century, is no secret, but its longstanding unavailability has caused it to be overlooked by most people who write about “Godot.” Even John Lahr, the comedian’s younger son, fails to mention it in “Notes on a Cowardly Lion,” the uniquely perceptive biography of his father that he wrote in 1969.
It is, therefore, stop-press news for anybody who loves great theater that the 1956 recording of “Godot” is available once again, not as a CD but as an MP3-only sound file that you can download from Amazon for $3.56, or from iTunes for $5.99. (You can find it on either site by searching for “Bert Lahr.”) Culturally speaking, I’d call that the deal of the decade.
Culturally speaking, I’d call Terry Teachout a dean of the decade.
Tell me I’m wrong after you read this passage (sorry to quote so much, but can’t help myself):
Speaking as a working drama critic, I must confess that listening to Mr. Lahr’s “Godot” is a humbling experience, because it reminds you of how excruciatingly hard it is to describe in words what actors do onstage. In “Notes on a Cowardly Lion,” John Lahr quotes from his father’s favorite review of the show, which was written by Kenneth Tynan, the great English drama critic: “‘I’m going,’ says Mr. Lahr. ‘We can’t go,’ snaps his partner. ‘Why not?’ pleads Mr. Lahr. ‘We’re waiting for Godot,’ comes the reply. Whereat Mr. Lahr raises one finger with an ‘Ah!’ of comprehension which betokens its exact opposite, a totality of blankest ignorance.”
That happens to be one of my all-time favorite descriptive passages from a theater review, one that I like to cite in the classroom when showing students how to convey in words the essence of an art form that is only partly verbal. But to actually hear Lahr exhaling the preposterously ecstatic “Aaaaaaaaah!” that was preserved for all time on the 1956 recording of “Godot” is…well, it is to weep. Not even Mr. Tynan, gifted though he was, came within a country mile of suggesting Mr. Lahr’s idiot bliss. How miraculous, then, that we can now know just what it sounded like 54 years later! If anything justifies the existence of the phonograph, this is it.
As I said: Teach In!
Since this is what you do on Thanksgiving, this is what I’ll do.
I am thankful for:
• The Missus, my ever-loving bride who has stuck with me through thick-headedness and thin pickings for lo these 30 years
• Homemade chocolate chip cookies, the making of which is the only thing I remember from college
• My students at BU, who are an endless source of amusement, bemusement, and enlightenment
• The Friends of Boston’s Homeless, whose Long Island Shelter has provided essential services for over two decades
• The iPod Nano, which delivers music on my way to school and news on my way home
• The Missus
• Thelonious Monk, who played the way I’ve always wanted to write
This is totally wrong:
As Jeter Talks Turn Ugly, The Question Is, Why?
Tyler Kepner’s piece in Wednesday’s dead-tree New York Times begins with a “Casablanca” reference, something that’s always welcome.
In “Casablanca,” Rick tells Sam, his beloved piano player, that the owner of the Blue Parrot wants to hire him and double his salary. Sam dismisses the offer.
“I like it fine here,” he says, adding, “I ain’t got time to spend the money I make here.”
Shouldn’t everything be that way? Don’t we wish that people who are already set for generations could not act insulted when offered even more riches?
Cut to: Derek Jeter and the New York Yankees, currently in discussions about a new contract for the 36-year-old shortstop and Yankee fixture, who unfortunately just submitted his worst-ever season in a salary-drive year following an expired 10-year, $189 million deal.
Kepner:
Jeter has made more than $205 million from the Yankees. He likes it here. The Yankees like him. The sides have had 10 years to think about their next agreement. Did it really have to get nasty?
It didn’t have to, but it’s entirely predictable that it did.
The Yankees are offering Jeter three years and $45 million. Jeter’s rejection brings to mind Jack Nicholson’s question in Chinatown:
At one point [Jake] Gittes asks millionaire Noah Cross (John Huston) why he needs to be richer: “How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can’t already afford?”
What Jeter can buy with a bigger contract, he believes, is respect – the coin of the realm in the sporting world.
But here’s what the hardworking staff recommends:
Jeter should follow the lead of – God forgive us – Alex Rodriguez, who in 2007 sidelined his agent and made his own deal.
Memo to Derek: You’ll find real respect in how you act, not what you earn.
When Rafael Nadal lost to Robin Soderling in the 2009 French Open, he said the reason was he had “lost my calm.”
He also said this:
“Well, that’s the end of the road, and I have to accept it. I have to accept my defeat as I accepted my victories: with calm.”
Cut to: the ATP World Cup final, where Nadal lost all three matches last year, but beat Andy Roddick in the first round this year.
Nadal:
“To finally win a match here is very important for me . . . I can play with a little bit more calm the next match”
The next match is against Novak Djokovic.
The calm before the storm?
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