Media

Effects of newspapers, movies, television on public consciousness

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Unbeatable Tongues

Everyone tells lies to everyone else;
    they talk with slick speech and divided hearts.
3 Let the Lord cut off all slick-talking lips
    and every tongue that brags and brags,
4     that says, “We’re unbeatable with our tongues!
    Who could get the best of us with lips like ours?”

Psalm 12: 2-4 (Common English Bible)

The Psalmist anticipates the fraught search and seizure of Mara-Lago and its outrageous critics. “We’re unbeatable with our tongues!” sing those “slick-talking lips.”   Another translation says, “Friend tells lies to friend/ And smooth-tongued, speaks from an insincere heart.”  It seems so personal. How can friends speak to each other this way?

It means we have staked our allegiance to a certain candidate, and whatever that candidate does or says, we will defend him or her at the expense of truth.  I’m going to be honest here, not smooth-tongued. I mean Donald Trump, who has based his credibility on an imagined stolen election, and who took the Fifth Amendment this week when questioned under oath about his dealings in real estate.  Who appears to have stolen highly classified documents from the government after campaigning loudly about the mis-handling of classified e-mails by his opponent in the 2016 election.

On Friday,  August 12, the Washington Post reported:

The FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida home earlier this week found four sets of top-secret documents and seven sets of less-secret but still classified information, according to a list of items seized in the high-profile raid and unsealed by a federal magistrate judge on Friday.

Ex-President Trump responded with a litany of excuses, saying the documents were planted at one point and that he had de-classified them on his own initiative, at another point. “De-classification” is possible only with the approval of agencies outside of the presidency.  When you can’t keep your story straight, it is likely you are lying about something.

The former President has set such a low bar for sincerity that his followers have been seduced into the  same low standards for truth when speaking to their friends.  They blame the media for attacking him, when the media reports his mis-steps. They use the “What about, e.g. Hunter Biden?” strategy when questioned  about the ex-President’s shady financial dealings.  They assassinate the character of everyone who crosses him, e.g. former VP Mike Pence, Brad Raffensberger (Georgia), Rusty Bowers (Arizona),  all loyal Republicans. These are the reactions of people who accept the shifty guilt of the ex-President.

The “unbeatable tongues” of Congress spoke brashly this week against the Department of Justice and the FBI, claiming Gestapo or Marxist tactics for seizing what are classified, likely nuclear, documents from the residence of the former President. With every legal protection of investigation and seizure in place, with President Trump’s attorney on site, with the President viewing the procedure through his extensive security system, their unbeatable tongues could still lash out claiming unlawful seizure. “Who could get the best of us with lips like ours?”

“Everyone tells lies to everyone else.” The writers of the Psalms understood the power of the human voice. To them it had two main opposing goals: praising God and lying. The power of the lie was witnessed this week as politicians and certain media lined up to defend the indefensible.  It is because the lie has become the coin of the realm in politics that the rest of us are too eager to trade in lies.  We are quicker to join the unholy choir, than to face facts. A brash, irreverent man has stolen documents sacred to the security of America, and some of our leaders choose to defame law enforcement.

The Psalmist says that Yaweh will protect us from liars:  “. . .you will protect them from that brood forever.”  It is a formidable brood that seizes the megaphones of media and hypnotizes the public by its utter audacity.  It is a formidable task to reclaim the standards for truth and stir people to re-think their allegiances.

Who will circle around their flawed leader and who will abandon his decadent cause? This month may determine who follows whom.

The wicked will scatter in every direction,

as the height of depravity among the children of Adam. (12:8)

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Our Barbaric Yawp

One thing I rarely hear on Facebook:

I totally disagree with you, but I respect the sincerity of your convictions.

One thing I almost never hear on Facebook:

I did disagree with you, but you have given me something to think about.

One thing I have never heard on Facebook

I totally disagreed with you, but now I think you are right.

Why do we post our strongly-held positions on social media? Do we expect to hear “now I think you are right,” because we have spoken so eloquently or do we just hope for one of these three welcoming responses to validate our positions? Do we realize that we will most likely hear none of those three responses?

Mostly we will get friendly confirmations from people who agree with us or angry protests from those that don’t, and that nothing will change as a result of our declaring our strongly-held truth. We are sending our messages into an echo chamber that assures us that we are right and or assures us that any loud dissonances come from the ignorant others who cannot imagine any belief but their own. Is that the only point of ranting for hours a day about what is wrong in the universe?

A hundred years before there was an internet, Walt Whitman said, “I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” He was a poet with no concern about who accepted his rantings.

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

He was an advocate for equality and diversity, but he was satisfied to send out his yawp without expecting impact. “Yawp” was his coined word for a shout without much meaning or impact.

When Facebook ranters send their “barbaric yawps over the rooftops,” they have much more concern about the number of likes and comments they receive, because they suppose that proves they are making an impact. They live in a fantasy world where they can push the boulder of truth up a mountain without that boulder ever rolling back on them. And if they are short on “likes,” they believe that someone, somewhere is listening and thinking one of those three thoughtful responses (above) without giving it a “like.” “I respect your sincerity;” “You have given me something to think about;” “Now I think you are right.” They have made a difference.

Snap out of it, people. Facebook is no instrument of evangelism for whatever cause you espouse. Mostly we are satisfying our own egos that the same people agree with us every day, and the same barbarians insert their ugly contradictions. We may be inflaming the wounds that keep our community divided or convincing our adversaries that there can never be harmony in our dissonant society. We are declaring the eternal polarization of our immediate and wider society by declaring our immovable positions.

There is no give-and-take on Facebook, what we once called constructive discussion.  If you want to see investigation of a topic from different points of view, you may see it in an offline public forum, where the rules of discussion are declared and a moderator is present to keep the rhetoric from getting too harsh. You may, but likely won’t, see it in a Congressional Committee’s inquiry session, but you certainly won’t see it in the U.S. Congress itself. We have few models of constructive discussion, so it is no wonder we don’t do it on Facebook.

What Facebook and social media in general are good for is casual conversation, announcements and keeping friends up to date on events in our lives. Avoiding the inflammatory articles or memes and sticking to common wisdom, like Ben Franklin put in Poor Richard’s Almanac (“A penny saved is a penny earned”).  You can share your concerns about the world in a conciliatory way, but avoid accusing the other side as the cause of them. And if you must declare your uncompromising convictions, do it with a generous spirit (“I realize others may legitimately disagree, but  . . .”).

This is polite dinner table conversation, merely intended to share our lives without blaming others or inflaming controversy.  There will never be a law enforcing such conventions, but we could encourage them and discourage the others by spending our likes efficiently.  Keep the shouting down by holding back the “likes.” Occasionally comment to warn the posters who are getting too strident. Get out of an argument as it happens. Let the angry voices speak into an empty room.

Somewhere in our society we need to explore controversy, maybe in public forums with enforced rules of discussion, but not on Facebook, where arguments ramp up wildly with no one listening to the other. It is one barbaric yawp after another.

There are also blogs or newsletters that may take a political turn.  We can chose to subscribe or not. We don’t have to listen to carping or accusations unless we chose to.  Anyone can start a blog or newsletter for anyone who cares to read.  And the letters to the editor of any online or print publication give us a chance to speak our piece with decorum, but not compromising our convictions.

But on the social media platforms, could we stop pretending we are aligning the world to our beliefs? Could we stop inciting others to be rude or acting out their own irrelevant tantrums?  Could we stop trying to prove we are the smartest in the room or at least smarter than those other ignorant people? Could we find a better place to shout our barbaric yawp?

If we agreed to make Facebook a benign site of friendly discussion, we could reduce hate speech and openly insulting remarks. We could set standards of conversation that would teach our children how to engage without rancor. And we could stop deluding ourselves that we are changing the world with our declarations of our personal convictions.

Just know if you continue your political ranting, meming, and yawping I’m not going to “like” to you.

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Lies–Big and Small

On January 6, 2022 President Joe Biden said, “We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie. The former President of the United States has spread a web of lies about the 2020 election.”

The issue has always been, not whether we listen to lies, but what do we call a lie and what are its cousins ?  What are harmful lies—hyperbole, overstatement, innuendo,? What are comparatively innocent—satire, irony, wit? What are deliberate lies and what are lies reported without conscious knowledge that they are lies–gossip, rumors, hearsay? What are lies of omission, for example in reporting a crime or in teaching U.S. History?

Lying has become so prevalent that we need a range of words from a Thesaurus to describe what it is, such as this non-exhaustive list below, arranged as a continuum from most negative to neutral language.

treachery—slander—deceit—perjury—propaganda–duping– disinformation–disregard– conspiracy theory—fabrication—fudging—competing version—equivocation—claim (which can be true or false)

 Some argue that lies with minor consequences are not actual lies, but “equivocations” (meaning “waffling” or “hedging”) of an incident. And yet positive or negative equivocations might determine whether a defendant is guilty or not guilty.

The word “pernicious” is often attached to “lies” to indicate their dangerous potential. The fact is that pernicious lies may begin as careless, but often evolve to become malicious lies as they pass through the mouths of commentators, media, or neighbors.

Most lies have significant consequences—“disinformation” would be an example.  The Pew Center reported that 23 per cent of Americans knowingly or unknowingly shared a made-up news story on social media during the election season of 2016 (“Many Americans Believe Fake News is Sowing Confusion,” Pew Research Center, December 15, 2016).  Regardless of whether we knew it was a lie, it had the effect of a lie, i.e. deceiving people, just as a person convicted of manslaughter took a life, whether he or she intended to or not.  So does that violate our ethics for lying, because our internet posting spread an unrecognized falsehood?

“Conspiracy theory” could not qualify as a lie, because, after all, it is only a theory. Yet we know how theories gain credence by becoming alleged facts. Fox News Host Tucker Carlson proposed that the attack of the Capitol was engineered by government agents, called “unindicted co-conspirators” in the investigation. This designation indicated only that the suspects had not been charged in that stage of the investigation.  Zignal Labs, a media intelligence firm of the Associated Press, reported that Carlson’s claim spiked on the internet after he released a documentary series about the insurrection. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla added credibility to the theory of outside intervention when he declared, “they were masquerading as Trump supporters, and, in fact (italics added), were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.” Gaetz offered no evidence.

Such claims, without concrete evidence, remain in the category of “conspiracy theory,” yet they are cited by naive citizens as facts. When and how did the “theory” graduate to a “lie”? No one will be charged with a crime for theorizing a conspiracy, unless it can be proved to be “sedition,” meaning “incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.”

Lying is rarely defined as a crime, but is often a gradual slipping into darkness from “equivocation” to “disinformation” to “treachery.”  That is why lies can run amuck in our culture. Jesus said of the devil, “. . . he is a liar and the father of lies” John 8:44.  This personification of lying affirms how lies have a life of their own. They spread insidiously, like a virus, and just as deadly.

The reporting of history often travels the slippery slope from understatement to exaggeration.  When we consider the events of January 6, we recognize that telling truth about those events will be crucial to understanding U.S. history going forward. Politicians are vying for their version of the truth about that “insurrection,” which some call a “demonstration.” The Select Committee of Congress labors to identify the facts of that event.  Their work  will influence how it be remembered.

Lies of omission are represented  in our reporting of race-charged events in textbooks. The Jim Crow era has been highlighted or downplayed in various curricula.  For example, the laws of “Sundown Towns,” where Black citizens could not remain overnight, were not treated in my high school social studies curriculum, yet they institutionalized vigilantism because white people were empowered to drive Blacks from their neighborhoods at sundown.

Vigilantism also motivated the McMichaels with a firearm to apprehend Ahmed Aubrey in their neighborhood, which led to his death.  How might the McMichaels have been influenced in their high school education, if the topic of vigilantism had been directly addressed?  Do we consider the disregard of racially charged topics that reflect badly on our local reputation a kind of lying?  Shouldn’t high school students understand that lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, and local vigilante organizations are part of their history? Or is U.S. history as transmitted through textbooks a form of “disinformation”?

In spite of their elusive quality, lies need to be defined, exposed, and prosecuted wherever possible.  They function like cancer in that they cannot be cured without identifying them and destroying them, however crudely. Like cancer, they have the power to make the whole body politic dysfunctional.

We live in a time when truth is up for grabs and many of us unwittingly ally with deceit.  That should not stop us from struggling to expose the lies tangled with our own belief system and dealing with them ruthlessly, declaring what we believe to be true, regardless of what our neighbors may think of us. 

Lies metastasize. Today’s omission or equivocation may be tomorrow’s bigotry or treachery.

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We Didn’t Start the Fire

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning (Billy Joel)

Politicians and journalists are fond of using hyperbolae, when they can not carry out their literal intentions. I was reminded of that when I read the Post-Dispatch editorial censuring Fox news host Jesse Watters for his metaphorical use of “ambush” and “kill shot” to describe how he would attack Anthony Fauci in an interview.  Sounds like a journalist’s whim, until he asks his viewers, “Now you get that footage to us. You get it to Fox. . .  make a name for yourselves.”   This is the language of provocation.

Fox may argue it was no more than a metaphor, a rhetorical, not a literal attack, but they know full well that there are some in their audience who just want permission or incitement to seize vigilante justice and use real bullets when words are inadequate. Fox is playing with fire, and they know it.

Do I mean they are literally taking foolish risks with inflammatory materials? No, but I see similarities between those who take risks with fire and those who egg on their audience to do things they would never do themselves–assassinate a public health official.  How much easier it would be for an unstable member of Watters’ audience to pick off a public official with an AK47, than to trap them in an interview that leads them to make foolish generalizations and then rhetorically nab them while the cameras are rolling.

President Trump was also fond of waging rhetorical war with the subconscious desire to literally take people out. He wished he could be allowed in a room alone with a whistleblower who revealed his crooked dealings with the Ukraine. Was this hyperbolae or an actual threat to a whistleblower, who is protected by law?

After the FBI uncovered a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, she wrote that Trump’s violent rhetoric generated regular threats against her and her family.

He promised a civil war if he was impeached (a real war or literal?). He told his followers to “fight like hell” if the Electoral Collage vote went against him.  Did he mean legal protest or armed insurrection? Clearly his inaction during the insurrection suggested tacit approval of the violence.

The track record of metaphors becoming violence is alarmingly consistent during the Trump administration. The difference between the metaphor and violent action has been slim, because depth of anger against President Trump’s opponents has lingered just below the surface of legal conduct.

We know the President will hide behind the metaphor of “fight like hell,” when he is charged with inciting insurrection. Of course he never intended the violence that followed that speech. If so, why did he stand by for five hours before urging the insurrectionists to dissipate? If so, why did be promise “civil war” if he was impeached in 2021?  How many metaphors can he use without culpability? Is language free of consequences? Or are you allowed to yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater, when there is none?

A rhetorical analysis of the opinion makers on Fox news would probably yield similar hyperbolic language intended only to engage and excite their audience. That is their style of journalism, and they have a right to it. Still that style can easily rise to incitement, and journalists have to be responsible for the consequences of their rhetoric. Be careful what you wish for, Fox News.  You may find listeners eager for permission for violence.  “We didn’t start the fire   . . .”
Oh, yes you did!

 

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Where There is No Vision . . .

“Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18)

(https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+29%3A18%2CEphesians+5%3A14-17&version=KJV)

I noticed an Op-Ed by Janet Y. Jackson last week, trying to cheer us up for the holidays. She says, “What can we do to restore the holiday spirit and help squelch the depression that affects so many around the holidays? Sometimes you just need to find the funny” and proceeds to list her favorite Christmas movies.

I am entirely in favor of every means to restore joy to a bleak outlook and depression, but Ms. Jackson puts in no good word for worship and celebration of the meaning of Christmas, not even the therapeutic practice of “Blue Christmas.”  Hers is an entirely secular outlook. Since she represents the editorial board of the Post-Dispatch, I have to wonder if her celebration of the secular represents the Board’s view as well.  The Board may be in need of a spiritual vaccination.

Speaking of vaccinations, has there been any coverage on how religious faiths regard the responsibility to self or community of getting vaccinated? There are well-considered religious beliefs on both sides of the issue, and I would be interested to read what faith leaders from both sides would have to say about vaccinations. Not political rants, but spiritual convictions.  We could stand to hear how people of faith negotiate this decision. Forgive me, if I have missed this coverage in the Post-Dispatch.

I am writing this on Saturday, December 18, and I keep looking in the space once reserved for religious columnists in the Post-Dispatch. We are one week from Christmas and Kwanza, but not much to report about services, concerts, food distribution, housing for the homeless, inter-faith activities, or how celebrations are influenced by current pandemic conditions. Maybe it is all coming later this week, but Saturday is when I have been conditioned to seek out religious observances and activities.

Saturday is when the Post-Dispatch overflows with consumer fliers, which I throw out as soon as I get the paper. I am mostly shopping online, and I am trying to make gifts less important when so many are in need this time of year. I am bombarded with appeals in the mail, so I have to make difficult decisions for my contributions. I wonder if the Post-Dispatch might run a series on the most worthy charities and how to spot them? It would not bring them any income like the advertising fliers do, but still is it all about profit this time of year?

Many spiritual leaders are looking for language to restore unity within their churches. I acutely feel this need to recover the language of unity and healing, when the language of argument and division comes so easily.  I am a faithful reader of the Op-Ed pages of the Post-Dispatch, and they do not promote the language of healing. Of course, that is not what they are intended to do.

That is why the newspaper needs a religious column: to represent the language of healing and unity. We need Belief-Ed stories and language, where people of faith can gather inspiration. I am sorry to say we are not always saved by entertainment and diatribes.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish”

 

 

 

 

 

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Tennessee in Florida

Poets.org tells us that Key West was a location for poets in the early twentieth century.

Over 100 miles from mainland Florida and the southernmost point in the United States, Key West has attracted numerous artists and writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Wallace Stevens, Ralph Ellison, Elizabeth Bishop, Tennessee Williams, Robert Frost, and James Merrill, with its remote location, tropical setting, and wild spirit.

Tennesee Williams came to Key West at the age of thirty in 1941. He bought property on 1531 Duncan Street in the neighborhood of the poet Elizabeth Bishop, who lived at 624 White Street.

Unlike the Hemingway House, Tennessee Williams’ place in Key West is owned privately and inaccessible to the public. However a museum dedicated to his memory has a model of the house on Duncan Street (below). It has a back wing he called the “Mad House,” where he wrote so many of his plays. By all accounts he loved Key West and several of his plays were performed in the local Waterfront Theater.

We saw a Christmas play at the Waterfront Theater, All is Calm. It is true story of a truce on Christmas Eve between the Germans and the British in World War II. It is really an opera performed with Christmas carols and popular songs of the period.  It begins with tentative overtures to celebrate together and ends with raucous and a little drunken singing, as the soldiers consume what is left of their alcoholic rations. The production is really an homage to “peace on earth” and the hope of reconciliation of traditional adversaries.

Tennessee himself was not a dreamer, but an unapologetic realist. Regarding his late conversion to Catholicism, he said, “It wasn’t my idea. I don’t think I wanted to do it, but that happened during my Stoned Age.” Poets.org confirms that “Williams was baptized, with encouragement from his brother and a fair amount of alcohol, at St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church on Truman Avenue.”

His Pulitzer Prize award-winning dramas were A Streetcar Named Desire  and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, both stories of hard-edged characters,  although he said his favorite among his plays was the more sentimental The Glass Menagerie. 

According to Poets.org, the nearby neighborhood of Windsor Lane became a gathering place for poets in the mid-twentieth century.

Near Solares Hill, the island’s highest point at sixteen feet above sea level, is Windsor Lane Compound, established in 1976. The assortment of restored shacks, shanties, and cottages, were once winter homes for writers such as Richard Wilbur, John Ciardi, John Hersey, and Ralph Ellison. On William Street is a Greek Revival house and writing studio once owned by Shel Silverstein.

… Another frequent visitor, Wallace Stevens once wrote in a letter that Key West “is the real thing… the sweetest doing nothing contrived.” Though good friends with Hemingway, one rainy night outside of Sloppy Joe’s bar, the two got into an infamous brawl in which Stevens broke his hand on Hemingway’s jaw. https://poets.org/listing/poet-homes-key-west-fl

This is a lot of lore I did not know when we visited Key West, so we missed some of it. We ate twice at the Banana Cafe on Duval Street, which is not too far from Windsor Lane and William Street, but we were unaware.  These locations were remote from the wharf and the entertainment district of Key West. They were more bohemian and inexpensive. Wallace Stevens wrote:

Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

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Hemingway: A Local Hero

The story goes that in 1931 Ernest Hemingway and Pauline lodged temporarily in a Key West apartment, awaiting the delivery of his Model A roadster, but the wait was prolonged enough for him to fall in love with the town. He loved the fishing, the beautiful shoreline, the bars, the intimacy of Key West. Pauline’s uncle bankrolled the purchase of a poorly-maintained house on Whitehead Street, and they worked relentlessly to make it a winter residence.

The famous polydactyl (six-toed) cat was a gift of Captain Harold Dexter. Snowball spawned 59 descendants by best reckoning and they swarm the house today with their own residence and keepers.  They have the usual cat presence of belonging to a place and  ruling it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were interested in the 1930’s story of Ernest Hemingway, since we had just visited Yellowstone where he was known for his hunting and drinking prowess in the summer at the L__T Ranch in Wyoming. While he was writing The Green Hills of Africa in Key West, he was writing Death in the Afternoon  and To Have and Have Not between 1932 and 1936 in his northern retreat.  Chris Warren, his Yellowstone High Country biographer, claimed he was happiest and most at home with his family during this time in wilderness. He taught his boys to hunt and fish and frequently went hunting with Pauline, who knew her way around a rifle.

A great source on Hemingway’s writing technique, especially in Key West in  1934, is With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba. compiled from the notes of the hopeful novelist, Arnold Samuelson. He mentored the young writer while he did odd jobs around the homestead and the boat, the Pilar.  A good insight into his writing routine:

Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing to know is when to stop. Don’t wait until you’ve written yourself out. When you’re really going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop.  Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work. , The next morning, when you’ve had enough sleep  and you’re feeling fresh, rewrite what you wrote the day before. When you come to the interesting place and you know what is going to happen next, go on from there and stop at another high point of interest. That way, when you get through, you never get stuck and you make it interesting as you go along. (11)

This explains why Hemingway typically spent the afternoons fishing or hunting without consulting his work.  He had a rhythm that energized his work and depended on an active sporting life.   We had lunch at one of his favorite haunts : “Blue Heaven.”  Nearby he officiated boxing matches at a place called “The Blue Goose.”

Charles Thompson came from an influential Key West family and “taught Hemingway to fish the big water of the Gulf Stream” (High Country, 27).  In turn Hemingway showed Thompson around the big game of Yellowstone in 1932. The following year they traveled to Africa to hunt the really big game. They enjoyed a sometimes competitive, sometime ruthless hunting relationship. Much of the experience is found in The Green Hills of Africa.

In With Hemingway,  Samuelson relates the fishing on board the 38-foot Pilar, Hemingway’s new fishing boat, in which he travels to Cuba. Pilar was a nickname for Pauline and the heroine in For Whom the Bell Tolls.  EH, as Samuelson referred to him, enjoyed helping others hook the marlin and sailfish with him at the helm, as he did landing the fish himself.

 

 

 

 

 

The well-known Key West illustrator, Guy Harvey, drew the story of The Old Man and the Sea early in his career, and his illustrations follow the stairs up three flights in the Custom House Museum. The stairs, with their captions and illustrations, are fascinating to climb, considering you can not find the drawings paired with the Hemingway text anywhere else.

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To Kill a Mockingbird

We came to New York to reunite with some friends and to see Jeff Daniels, as Atticus, in To Kill a Mockingbird.

 [As a side note the two best meals I had that week were cooked by our friend Mitch Leibowitz (chickpeas first, then salmon) with honorable mention to the English Beef Stew at the Director’s Irish Pub on Thursday night].

The main course was Aaron Sorkin’s Mockingbird.  I have to confess a little disappointment with his version of Harper Lee’s moving story of racism in the post-Depression deep South. A little too much Sorkin and too little Harper Lee.

If you were a fan of Sorkin’s Newsroom or West Wing you would recognize a certain plot line in his To Kill a Mockingbird. An Idealist meets the harsh reality of politics or southern poverty and becomes a hard-fighting pragmatist. I would argue that the novel is more understated and compassionate.  That’s how it won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize: with a broad humanitarian theme of “walking around inside another person’s skin.”

That theme is stated in the current Sorkin version of the novel, but it gets some opposition from a “fight for justice” theme that the novel promotes less.  Jeff Daniels’ Atticus is a laidback country lawyer who gets angry after his epic trial and has a physical face-off with the over-played villain of the story, Bob Ewell. The result is an enlightened Atticus who is ready to take a few swings for justice, as his news director character, Will McAvoy, in Newsroom would have.

In the stage play Atticus begins from the premise that people are willing to be changed by a good trial argument. The evidence, that Bob Ewell was his daughter Mayell’s attacker and not the poor Black Tom Robinson, is overwhelming, Atticus shows uncharacteristic optimism going into the trial.  His expectations do not match Harper Lee’s Atticus, who is the sober pessimist on all subjects and especially on the subject of changing the traditions of Maycomb, Alabama. Atticus in the novel would never be carried away by a good case he had planned for a jury trial.

Sorkin’s Atticus, like President Bartlett on West Wing, believes in the system and the basic goodness of human beings.  He is bitterly disillusioned by his defeat in the trial to save Tom Robinson from a rape conviction, and later has a physical confrontation with Bob Ewell, as Ewell baits him in front of Atticus’ house.  It is an outbreak of pure anger, which you will not find in the novel version of the story.  It appears that pure racism can only be opposed by the physical anger of righteous men in Aaron Sorkin’s world.

The overwhelming theme of Lee’s novel is that “you can’t a know man without walking around some time in his shoes.”  Atticus spends a lot of time explaining the racism of Bob Ewell and John Cunningham to his children, so they don’t hate these “white trash” characters for their apparent disdain for Black folk. The novel is more about empathy than retaliation.

And the framing story around the novel is the reigning fear the children have for the reclusive Arthur (Boo) Radley, who at the end turns into their savior when they are attacked by Bob Ewell in a late night ambush.  In the closing scene Scout and Jem are stricken for their suspicion and fear of Boo and reach out to him gratefully for his rescue from a murderer.  Boo, even though he is a white privileged character, has become the victim of prejudice in the novel, and the conclusive example of the need to “walk around in man’s shoes.”

In the play, what the audience most remembers is the closing argument  in the courtroom from Jeff Daniels, as he challenges us to rise against prejudice wherever we find it. The final words of the play are the same as those we hear at the beginning when the judge enters the courtroom, “All rise.” Aaron Sorkin is less committed to understatement  and empathy than Harper Lee.

I love Jeff Daniels, so it pains me to say he was not cast correctly to play an aging, frail attorney, who keeps many of his opinions to himself, and who reveals his sharpshooting skills only in a desperate emergency. In the novel he is touted as “One-shot” Finch, but we only know this because a rabid dog is charging him and the sheriff has come to the scene without his distance glasses. After Atticus nails the dog with one shot, he never picks up a gun again in the story, even when Bob Ewell shows up armed at his house. Atticus believes in the struggle, but it is a non-violent struggle.

Daniels cannot conceal his broad shoulders and more solid build, so he cannot faithfully represent the more lanky Finch, who constantly asserts he is too old for physical activities in the novel. The actor I have always considered for Atticus is “Law and Order’s” Sam Waterson, who played a similar character to Atticus on a television ripoff of  Mockingbird “I’ll Fly Away.” Waterson has the shaky voice and lean build needed for the character of Atticus, who is superficially weak, but powerful in conviction and determination. Daniels is good with the wry humor, but he is an imposing figure, no matter how you dress him, a character it is hard to underestimate.

I also quibble with the decision to assign adults to the roles of Scout, Jem and Dill. In the novel they are profound young people, but often act childishly. The actors who play them, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Hunter Parrish, and Noah Robbins, all convey their roles effectively, but the wisdom, the “out of the mouths of babes” effect that Harper Lee uses to effect in the novel, is less striking coming out of the mouths of adults. The critical scene, where Atticus sits guard outside the jail and the hooded clan members show up to lynch Tom Robinson, conveys less of the vulnerability of the children who arrive to protect Atticus, partly because it is hard to see them as vulnerable children. Keenan-Bolger, who plays Scout, is almost as tall as Mr.Cunningham, ring leader of the Klansmen.

I hate reviewers who complain that a play is not a successful rendition of the book, so it is not fair for me to carp about this play, which, after all, is effective as an Aaron Sorkin version.  My problem is I like the Harper Lee version better. I like the understatement and the broad theme of learning to understand the aliens in our lives.  The final scene where Boo Radley is unmasked and becomes the rescuer instead of the monster makes more sense in the novel than the play. I wish Aaron Sorkin was more willing to walk around in the shoes of the original Atticus and his creator, Harper Lee.

But Sorkin has a message he is not willing to understate: a passion for justice needs a determined aggression. The titular theme of the novel “It is a sin to kill a mockingbird,” is not assertive enough in Sorkin’s universe.

 

 

 

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Clyde’s

We sat five rows from the front of the compact Hayes Theater Friday night. It was the perfect vantage point to see the entertaining, but relatively unheralded play we had come for. I only knew it was written by the Pulitzer-prize-winning playwright, whose Intimate Apparel I had seen four summers ago.

The battle for the souls of human beings takes place in the kitchen of a sandwich shop at a truck stop. Only Lynn Nottage could imagine such an earthbound scenario for salvation. Four ex-cons are condemned to work  for Clyde in a sandwich shop by their last-chance mentality. They have no one else who will give them employment, so they suffer the abuse of a curvy, heavy-set, African American woman.

Clyde wants the usual truck stop fare dished out in rapid-fire orders, tuna fish, ham-and-cheese, turkey, but her employees dream of exotic sandwiches with organic spices inspired by their mentor Montrelous, played by William from “This is Us,” Ron Cephas Jones. Rafael (Rez Salazar) is a mercurial Latino, who has vivid dreams of sandwiches with wonderful spices (many unknown me) that come from exotic lands. His recipes come out almost as a challenge.

Letitia (Kara Young), is a single African American mother with a desperate on-again, off-again relationship with her ex, and visions of sandwiches she could make with organic spices on whole-grain bread.  Each time the characters expound their visionary sandwiches, the lights go low and time seems suspended in honor of their creative geniuses.

Jason is a tattooed white late-comer to the kitchen, who takes no pride in his work and just wants to stay out of trouble long enough to get a better  job.  His residual inmate anger is closer to the surface, and he finds the sandwich recipe ritual silly. He slops the mayo and mustard on his sandwiches indiscriminately.

Clyde haunts the kitchen as a bullying manager, who reminds each employee they are one whimsical move from the street. She is large, dressed in skin-tight apparel that emphasize her majestic curves, with a voice that could dress down a drill sergeant. She also has the drill sergeant’s tendency to demean and discourage her subordinates. The atmosphere of the kitchen effectively reproduces the prison these employees have known too well.

At the other extreme Montrelous offers encouragement and hope for his fellow employees, as they invent their recipes. He wears a Nehru suit with a fez-like hat, all in subdued colors, a dramatic contrast with Clyde. When it comes time for him to confess his crime to the others, it appears to be no crime at all.

The entire story emerges from the kitchen that alternates as heaven and hell with lighting and sound to produce the atmosphere.  The souls of each of the three younger characters seem to hang in the balance.  Without giving away too much, the dramatic lighting and sound effects become the focus of the action as the story drifts to a denouement.  The kitchen becomes the setting for ultimate spiritual drama.

At the very least you can leave with some very exotic sandwich recipes, but that was  hardly the attraction for me.

 

 

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Portrait of a Spy

Just finished spy thriller Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva. It has the usual disclaimers that names and places in the book are fictional and yet you hang on to the shreds of authenticity that it all could have happened pretty much the way it was narrated. It was written years after the very real tragedy of 9/11 and just prior to the killing of Osama bin Laden by Navy Seals in Abbottabad. Silva concedes:

in creating the character of Rashid al-Husseinai, I have borrowed much from the curriculum vitae of the American-born al-Quaeda cleric and recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki  –including his Yemeni background, his disturbing connection to two of the 9/11 hijackers in San Diego and Northern Virginia, and his apparent journey from  moderation to radicalism and terror. The fictitious Malik al-Zubair was also inspired by real terror masterminds . . .(Spy, 450)

The novel hinges on a plot to attract and ensnare those responsible for bombings in Copenhagen, London and Paris that take place in the early chapters. The bold plan depends on an Arab heiress, believed by some to be a financier of terror, but who, in fact is supporting feminist and liberal causes in secret. Her considerable wealth is employed to lure the terrorist leaders to a meeting and the plot thickens . . .

Major role players include Israeli intelligence, British MI5, and American CIA in order of respect the novel accords them. The protagonist is a retired Israeli operative and the MI5 and CIA are brought into the scheme as the plot unfolds. The CIA is portrayed as an over-funded and politicized enterprise with a giant operations room employing far too many people for covert operations. Our hero, the Israeli Gabriel Allon, manages to call a few shots, but the final operation becomes constrained by a treaty between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Daniel Silva is obviously disturbed by the actual sources of terrorist funding as a subplot and theme of his novel. In his Author’s Notes he adds after his disclaimers:

Regrettably, a decade after the attacks of 9/11, much of this money still comes from the citizens of Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, the Sunni Muslim emirates of the Persian Gulf.  In a secret cable made public in 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote: It has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority.” In conclusion Clinton’s memo declares, “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” (451)

The intriguing amalgamation of fiction and current events gives the novel Portrait of a Spy significance. The killing of a major character carries the weight of sacrifice. Was it a necessary sacrifice or was some bureaucratic or diplomatic detail at fault?  What about the CIA, which had the fictional traitor Ellis Coyle operating right under its nose? Fictional details carry more than fictional significance.

The business and technique of artistic restoration contributes to the intrigue of novel. Silva describes an authentic and laborious process of restoring a fictional Titian masterpiece and brings it to Christie’s in London for an auction that will fund a terrorist network. The theme of restoration of human spies gives weight to the restoration of paintings. Silva’s spies show some fragility along with dauntless courage in the conduct of espionage.

My first Daniel Silva novel  delivered some rare qualities that made me want to read more.

The usual deceptive temperament and courage of the characters; the usual high suspense in more than one place in the plot.

The unusual relevance to real world events, the subtextual critique of financing of terrorism, the understated political commentary, and the fragility we expect from human beings, even those trained in  ruthlessness.

The unusual qualities make me a fan of spy novels- the ones that perform believable feats in realistic contexts with vulnerable characters.