1. I’m sticking with my Miami pick over
Oklahoma City in 6 games. Miami leads 2-1.
2. Wow!
I cannot believe Paul McCartney turned 70 yesterday.
3. Here’s an
interesting online ad from last month from The Orlando Women's Center:
"LIMITED TIME SPECIAL! PRINT THIS
PAGE AND BRING IT IN FOR $50 SAVINGS. ONLY ON SUNDAYS! VALID FOR ABORTIONS
PERFORMED BY 5/31/12. You must present this page to the receptionist at the
time of the abortion. ON SUNDAYS ONLY.
$50 credit towards cost of abortion. No
cash value."
What
a great idea for a Sunday. I’ve got a suggestion for another ad campaign:
Next Lord’s Day…
Exterminate a Life!
4. The other night my
kids received the movie HUGO from Netflix. I was able to watch it with them and
was so pleased with the product. It was nominated for various Academy Awards,
including best picture, for good reason.
It
contained joy and sadness, conflict and resolution, and the joy of childhood
coupled with nostalgia. Martin Scorsese was the producer (along with Johnny
Depp) as well as the director.
Part
of his motivation in this movie (based on the children’s book The Invention of Hugo Cabret
by Brian Selznick) he also wanted to pay tribute to the movies of the
great French movie maker, Georges Melies, who began
making movies at the turn of the 20th century.
This
struck a chord with me. When I was almost 9, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. CBS,
as part of its coverage, showed a segment from Melies’ movie A TRIP TO THE
MOON. I will never forget the humor of seeing the rocket enter into the eyeball
of the man in the moon.
Later,
I discovered that Melies lost a lot of money when workers for Thomas Edison
basically stole the film’s distribution in the States. (This was highlighted in
a segment of FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON–a miniseries that I also treasure.)
In
some ways, HUGO reminded me of one of my five favorite movies of all
time–CINEMA PARADISO. Both were about fatherless boys who cultivate a rapport
with grandfatherly old men. In the backdrop of these relationships were the
movies.
By
the way, although this HUGO is not a biography of Melies, there are some true
elements in the movie that paralleled his life.
When
I was a teenager, THE BAD NEWS BEARS was considered family entertainment. I
would’ve been embarrassed for the language of that movie to be heard on a ship
carrying a bunch of sailors.
It
is so nice today to have high quality movies available that all of the family
can see.
I
have said it before and I will say again–in many ways, we’re living in a golden
age of movies for children.
5. Robert Caro has
done it again. I have just completed his fourth volume in his biography of
Lyndon Johnson. This tome is called THE PASSAGE TWO POWER. I believe this is
his best work to date.
It
covers a brief period of time–the end of Johnson’s Senate years through the
first few months of his presidency. Caro is intentional about this. He is
seeking to illustrate Johnson’s sheer misery during his vice presidential years, and
his despair over the fact that–in his own mind–his political career was over.
He also seeks to emphasize the enormous pressure Johnson was under as the
transition took place after the assassination of Pres. Kennedy to his new
administration.
I
have read numerous books on Lyndon Johnson. This is by far the best treatment
of this phase of Johnson’s life. Never before have I seen so clearly spelled
out the challenges that Johnson faced as he tried to navigate the stormy waters
during the months following the Kennedy assassination.
Caro
does an amazing job disproving the idea that Johnson’s success of passing
legislation–such as the tax reduction bill and the civil rights bill–was simply
the result of a nation emotionally seeking to honor its fallen president.
Rather, Johnson called upon a lifetime of congressional relationships and
cultivated political skills to achieve what seemed impossible. Indeed, I
personally agree that he showed more political skill working with Congress that
any other president in US history–including Franklin Roosevelt.
This
volume is the most positive treatment of Johnson Caro has offered to date, and
he makes it clear that it will be the last. In the next volume–Caro says it
will be his last–the author will tackle Johnson’s unraveling policy concerning
the Vietnam War. However, in this book, Caro makes a stronger case that Johnson
was the indispensable man when it came to passing civil rights legislation. How
ironic–the president with the worst (in my opinion) social skills of any other
in US history, is arguably the greatest president when it comes to social justice.
Let
me emphasize that Caro continues to be one of the more effective biographers
when it comes to capturing Johnson’s complex personality. He relates concrete
accounts, which, I had not seen before, concerning Johnson blackmailing a
couple of Texas newspaper publishers in order to assure that he received
favorable coverage.
Another
fascinating tidbit–the week of Pres. Kennedy’s assassination Congress had begun
investigating Johnson’s top aide–Bobby Baker–for financial impropriety. Had
that investigation occurred sooner, Johnson’s political career could have ended
before he ever became president. As it was, the coverage of Kennedy’s
assassination blunted the investigation’s impact as it related to Johnson.
It
took 10 years for volume 4 to appear after the publication of Master of the Senate. I hope that it
will not be 2022 before Caro’s next Johnson volume is presented to the public.
Robert
Caro has now entered into the pantheon of the great biographers: James Boswell
(Samuel Johnson), Douglas Southall Freeman (Robert E. Lee and George Washington),
and Edmund Morris (Theodore Roosevelt).
*Thanks to Peter King for the inspiration for this blog's title.
