Tag Archives: Commentary

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: A tale of two actors

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Werner Krauss (Caligari)

Krauss was an unapologetic anti-Semite who supported the Nazi party and its ideology. In 1933 Krauss joined the Vienna Burgtheater ensemble to perform in Campo di Maggio (German: Hundert Tage), a drama written by Giovacchino Forzano together with Benito Mussolini, where-after he was received by the Italian dictator and also made the acquaintance of German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.

Conrad Veidt (Cesare)

Veidt had long been known in German theatrical circles as a staunch anti-Nazi. His activities came under the scrutiny of the Gestapo, and a decision was made to assassinate him. Veidt found out about the plot, and managed to escape Germany before the Nazi death squad found him . . . When Britain went to war, he gave most of his estate to the war effort. He also donated a large portion of the salary from each of his movies to the British war relief, as well.

Source: IMDB

Previously, I was most familiar with Veidt as Jaffar in The Thief of Bagdad, a villainous role which he played delightfully. He made me a fan.

Everyday lessons children learn (a minor rant in D sharp)

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During the summer, neighborhood residents can pay a fee to use the swimming pool at my apartment building. It’s a win-win, at least for those who can afford it. Families get access to an outdoor pool during the hot months. The building owners make a little extra money, or have more to pay for the pool’s upkeep. (Residents don’t pay extra.)

For the most part, the families are well-behaved. The children can be loud and rowdy, but that’s normal. I expect that.

Over the years, though, some families haven’t been so well-behaved. I noticed that when one woman with four boys arrived, they would take over the pool from west shallow end to east deep end, from north side to south side. Some of the other families, crowded out by five people, would collect their children and leave. It’s hard to have fun when you find yourself in the middle of someone else’s game (boys) or laps (woman). The woman, whose personality resembled Lucy van Pelt’s, never seemed to notice the disruption they brought. That obliviousness bothered me most. (To be fair, some families greeted her, so she was known in the neighborhood.)

Other parents bring younger children, then don’t supervise them. The area is full of hazards, including sprinklers that are easy for running kids to trip over, but they’re let loose anyway, come what may. Some run around screaming. A few who spot the local wildlife—often rabbits, sometimes baby rabbits—chase and terrorize it. My favorite was the trio who jumped up to grab the lowest branches of one of the struggling crab apples, then stripped all the leaves off. Bored with that, and with no parents in sight, they broke off the lower branches they could reach. I said something to them, but they stopped only a moment, then ignored me. (Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.) When I came out the next day, the devastation under the tree made it look like a major storm had blown through.

The other thing I notice is how much stuff people leave behind. Pool toys and noodles. Floats. Towels. Action figures. Bottles. Shoes and articles of clothing. Pool users leave something behind almost every day. When I was a kid millennia ago, my brother and I didn’t lose anything or leave it behind. We didn’t have much, and if you lost something you weren’t going to get a replacement or something else to console you.

This brings me to a different topic—the building’s bike room. For a long time it was full of bikes. I noticed many, probably most, of them had flat tires and other signs of neglect, like dust, cobwebs, and cocoons. Some remained untouched for years, presumably abandoned since tenant turnover rate is substantial. Except for the rust and grime of neglect, most appear to be in okay shape. That’s especially true of some of the abandoned children’s bikes. They’ve been there so long that the former owners must be in middle school (or higher) by now.

Every now and then management purges some bikes they can’t account for, but not all. Every time I see these still useful bikes hanging or lying there, getting dirtier and more banged up, I wonder if the former owners realized how many people would appreciate having one of those rusting conveyances. There’s even a bike shop in the area where teenage workers learn how to repair bikes while earning a refurbished bike for themselves. I’m floored by the waste, which was a luxury that only a few could indulge in not so many generations ago.

Bother the bunnies, trash the trees, waste what you have—there’s more where that came from.

Abandoned children’s bikes. Some still had some use left in them. Someone even left training wheels behind.

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Abandoned by the pool. People leave stuff like this behind all the time. This disappeared after a week, probably picked up by the maintenance folks when they realized it wasn’t going to be claimed.

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And, for good measure, three of the dozens of bikes abandoned on the University of Chicago campus. When I was a student, every day I wished for a bike. These folks? Apparently not.

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Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story

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Finally I treated myself to the complete Anne of Green Gables DVD set — the 25-year-old VHS tapes just don’t display the Prince Edward Island scenery to its best advantage on a flat-screen TV.

Besides reading most of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne series, I’ve seen the Sullivan Entertainment Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea more times than I can remember. Anne is the ideal for an INFP like me; I like to think that once upon a time I had her potential, minus the ambition.

I’ve seen that regular Anne devotees don’t like The Continuing Story installment and read that due to a copyright dispute Sullivan couldn’t use material from Montgomery’s later books as he had for Anne of Avonlea. Many fans, perhaps unaware of this issue, hate this series because it deviates so widely from the established story and has some nasty continuity errors (for example, Anne and Gilbert would have been well into middle age by World War I).

I don’t hate The Continuing Story because it deviates from the Anne story and its timeline. I hate it because it’s a weak story that has nothing to do with Anne of Green Gables. Even if you can imagine that it’s not about Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe of Avonlea and that is just another movie set during World War I, the plot is such a convoluted, implausible mishmosh and the visuals so flat that it’s a bad showing all around. It doesn’t help that, while Anne and Gilbert are supposed to be in their early 20s, Megan Follows and Jonathan Crombie were in their early 30s when the series was filmed — well past the freshness of college and first jobs.

If all else shone, the continuity issues would be the kind of details I could overlook as poetic license. But nothing in this series works — nothing. All the elements that coalesced to make the previous installments conquer and capture millions of hearts across the globe are missing from this unrelentingly grim, joyless mess.

Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story — Plot

Conflict is at the heart of any plot, and as a girl and later as a young woman Anne’s tendency to daydream, act on impulse, and lash out in temper led her into any number of scrapes, some more serious than others. Her romantic fixation on Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” sets off her trouble at the very beginning and later leads to a fateful accident and rescue. When she isn’t daydreaming, writing, or sharing her hopes with Marilla or bosom friend Diana, she’s sparring with Avonlea’s busybody and gossip in chief, Rachel Lynde. Part of the reason Anne is beloved is because we like to see ourselves in her and because we recognize the dramas of girlhood which become more significant when she begins her teaching career in Anne of Avonlea. Despite the Rachel Lyndes, the Pringles, and the Katherine Brookes of the world, Anne, her imagination, and her vision prevail. That’s what we love — the idealism and the conviction that imagination doesn’t have to be suppressed or obliterated by conventional society, that it can thrive despite the human and social obstacles.

Anne and Gilbert are past the broken-slate stage of life, and The Continuing Story needed a more mature plot and conflict. Sullivan takes us from the small-town squabbles of Avonlea (first series) and the politics of private-school teaching (second series) to the conflict to end all conflicts — World War I. Our heroine, whose most nerve-wracking moments to date have been reciting poetry to sophisticates and islanders at the White Sands Hotel, awaiting test scores to see if she beat Gilbert Blythe academically, facing down the Pringle clan, and more of the same, now finds herself dodging bullets, shells, and spies in a torturous plot that plays on none of her beloved qualities.

Near the beginning Anne meets a publisher who wants adventure books written for women (although not by women). That’s what The Continuing Story tries to be — a woman’s adventure story, with a wife braving the front in France during WWI to find her MIA husband, a sort of Ernest Hemingway SuperLite. Despite the shelling, the bullets, the amputations, and the sense that there’s supposed to be ever-present danger, there’s no dramatic tension in sight, and the story drags on and on and on. I watched the second chapter for what seemed like a long, dreary time, then decided I needed a break. When I checked the time marker on the DVD for the remaining time, I saw that I had watched 10 minutes. Ten minutes! It felt like at least 30 or more. This is not exactly the desired denouement for a good war or adventure film.

There’s a plethora of implausible coincidences (for example, Anne manages to run into Fred Wright and Jack almost the moment she reaches the French front), but every attempt at dramatic tension falls flatter than a crepe — so flat that even if you had been told every spoiler ahead of viewing The Continuing Story, it wouldn’t ruin the series for you. It’s that dull and lifeless.

Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story — Setting

As you’d guess from the plot, you’re not going to be spending much time on Prince Edward Island or even in eastern Canada — most of the film is set in New York, London, France, and Germany. The indoor scenes could be anywhere — indeed, they were filmed in Canada — so there’s no sense of New York, London, or any other location. These vintage buildings, and the tight outdoor shots designed to hide geography and sets, made me yearn for the strong sense of place and community both the books and previous series are known for.

As for embattled France, it too consists of tight shots that make Gil’s field hospital and the various camps look just like what they are — sets. The uniformly low, gray skies add to the effect, and so do the scenes of soldiers, nuns, Red Cross workers, doctors, and nurses running willy nilly back and forth — it’s as though they’re there to add senseless movement and energy and to keep the already small spaces filled. Instead of looking like people caught in the chaos and terror of war, they look like extras whose director hasn’t given them direction, leaving them to flit about randomly.

New York, France, London, and Germany are sandwiched between establishing and concluding scenes set closer to the places Anne’s admirers have come to love. In an interesting, ill-conceived twist, Sullivan seems determined to obliterate the one place that is dear to everyone — Green Gables. In five short years, an absentee Anne has allowed what “people in Avonlea say [is] the prettiest acreage on the north shore” (Marilla) to become the kind of rundown shanty you might see in Pennsylvania when the farm’s been abandoned for decades. If you’re thinking, “Anne would never have let this happen to the home Matthew and Marilla kept up so meticulously,” you’re right. How could such a desirable house and farm have become so decrepit in a mere five years? How could Anne let it? The shutters are loose and askew, the fences are broken, and — best of all — there’s not an inch of paint left on the weathered boards of the house. Renters! Then, when Gil and Anne try to save Green Gables, they accidentally set fire to the once-airy, now mysteriously dark, forbidding house. It’s as if Sullivan wanted to obliterate the very heart of the work that made his name and fortune. This brings us to . . .

Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story — Characters

Anne Shirley, bright, imaginative, inventive, dreamy, inspired by Tennyson and devoted to Gilbert once she realizes she loves him, is recognizable only because she’s played by Megan Follows. First, Sullivan has her being cozy with Fred Wright (yes, bosom friend Diana’s dull but good husband) as well as an unlikeable adventure writer named Jack whom she meets in New York and, improbably, in several other places. He may be an adventurer and spy, but Jack manages not to be any more interesting than Fred — which should be irrelevant, because Anne is just now starting life with Gilbert after years of separation. The Anne we know isn’t that light or feckless.

The Anne who once yearned for puffed sleeves and pearls now sports tailored suits and dresses with gaudy geometric patterns — stylish, yes, but not reflective of her tastes. No matter where she is or what her circumstances, Anne always looks like she just stepped out of a popular fashion catalog. She doesn’t look like someone scraping by. Beyond the clothes, hats, and trim hairdo reminiscent of Katherine Brooke’s, Anne retains nothing of her old self. When she isn’t being distracted by Fred or Jack, she’s so single minded in her search for Gilbert that all sense of personality is lost. Imagination, the literature of romance, the attachment to community, even her smile, are lost to the grimly unrelenting bore she becomes. War changes people, but from the beginning Anne isn’t Anne.

Once Anne declared her feelings for Gilbert, fans wanted to see them together as two strong-willed, bright people in love with all the joys and conflicts that come with it. To avoid that possibility, Sullivan makes Gilbert disappear for more than half the movie. Indeed, Jack the uninspiring adventure writer seems to get as much screen time as our Gilbert. For huge swathes of footage, Fred Wright is more front and center than the male lead. Even when Gilbert does reappear, Anne leaves him to talk to Jack. Gilbert has been transformed into a earnest young doctor, a two-dimensional shadow of his adolescent self, when he had not only a mind and a heart, but a personality.

In the meantime, bosom friend Diana has become such a tiresome snob that her own high-and-mighty mother, Mrs. Barry, has to rebuke her. Mrs. Lynde, Moody Spurgeon, and Josie Pye (now Mrs. Spurgeon) make token appearances, with Josie magically become a shrill, self-righteous patriot.

Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story is ironically named; there’s nothing about this story that is recognizable, let alone familiar. When I watch Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea again, I won’t envision a future state where Green Gables is a wreck, Gilbert has the charm of a post office, Diana is a fashionably dressed fishwife, and Anne foregoes Tennyson for a nun’s habit and a spy’s mission. I have an imagination, and I can imagine this abomination away. Like a certain Dallas storyline, it was all a bad dream — a nightmare that never happened.

Cooling off at the movies: Moonrise Kingdom

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With a day off from work, temperatures in triple digits, and no air conditioning in my apartment (I’m a holdout), I decided Independence Day would be a great opportunity to go to the movies.

Choosing a movie is always hard. I don’t like urban, gritty, violent, inane, Disney, or Disneyesque movies, which doesn’t leave much these days except the occasional period drama or book adaptation, and even some of these (like the 2011 Jane Eyre) disappoint me.

J. mentioned Prometheus, but after reading the description I had an unpleasant vision — right or wrong — of Solaris with George Clooney. When I looked on Flixter, a movie called Moonrise Kingdom had scored more than 90 percent positive with both critics and moviegoers, and the plot seemed innocuous. So that’s what we set out to see.

Normally, going to a movie on July 4 is the last thing I’d think of, so I was surprised to find a good-sized crowd at the ShowPlace ICON Theatre on Roosevelt Road. I thought most people would be watching TV or entertaining in their air-conditioned homes or, if feeling especially heat resistant, cooking out in their yards or favorite parks. But many like us apparently decided to escape the relentless sun and heat in the dark coolness of a movie theater.

When the ticketing system asked us to choose our seats, we were surprised to find that the only seats left were a few in the front, those for the disabled, and a few scattered singles. Our only choice was to be on top of the screen. We wondered what was up because we’re used to these theaters being at most one quarter to one half full, even for a big movie like the first Sherlock Holmes directed by Guy Ritchie. When the lights came on at the end, we saw that there really had been a nearly full house.

First, I should admit that I’d never seen a film directed by Wes Anderson. I mention this because so much of the commentary online is focused on how Moonrise Kingdom is (or isn’t) a typical Wes Anderson film. I can’t agree or disagree with either position. Even if Moonrise Kingdom were just like every movie that Anderson’s made, at least it’s not a sequel or a period piece written, acted, and filmed according to today’s sensibilities. That alone gave it a leg up in my world.

If the title Moonrise Kingdom weren’t enough of a hint, the maps showing the location throughout and the stylishly clad narrator (Bob Balaban) who describes future events are strong clues that this is a fable that requires us to lay aside our expectations of realism or at least reality and to fire up what imagination remains to our adult selves.

Set in 1965, the story is centered on two misfit pre-teens, Suzy (Kara Hayward) and Sam (Jared Gilman). We’re taken on a tour of Suzy’s house and family as though it were a dollhouse and they the inhabitants whose lives are exposed from almost any angle — a sly acknowledgment of their unwitting role as subjects and our omniscient one as viewers. This is no ordinary house in an ordinary location. It’s part of a series of isolated and insular New England coastal islands, a world unto itself.

It’s raining to beat the band, and each family member finds a way to fill his or her time. The boys don’t watch TV or play Battleship; they listen to an educational recording by Benjamin Britton. At first Suzy turns her vision inward, reading one of her fantastically titled library books, then she picks up her binoculars to look outward toward the normally expansive world of water, now confined by rain and mist.

From this restricted and restrictive world of Suzy and her trapped family, we’re transported to the great outdoors and the equally restrictive, even hostile world of Suzy’s counterpart Sam — the Khaki Scouts. When the officious Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton) discovers Sam has gone AWOL, his Scouts consider the unpopular missing boy a “fugitive” and arm themselves accordingly.

For the rest of the movie, it’s Sam and Suzy vs. the dysfunctional adults around them. No matter how troubled the parents, scout leaders, police, and other authority figures may be, Sam and Suzy emulate their furrowed brows, he while smoking his short-stemmed pipe, she while sporting an eye makeup combination last seen on one of James T. Kirk’s alien conquests. The misadventures, some epic, that follow are never bust-a-gut, slapstick hilarious, but with a few gratuitously sad exceptions they are delightfully amusing. The audience soon finds itself guiltily on the side of a friendship so unfamiliar to the 12-year-old couple that they want it to be love and for it to last forever.

Too many directors fail to use the visual, kinetic possibilities of film, but Anderson isn’t one of them. His color palette evokes the popular Hipstamatic and Instagram apps, which in turn mimic the grainy, off-hue, decaying prints taken by cheap cameras decades ago. The characters and the camera are kept moving — away from one destiny and toward another. Many of the visuals, even the maps on which the fugitives’ progress is tracked, are memorable.

Each time you see Moonrise Kingdom, you’ll probably spot some new visual, verbal, or aural nuance. The performances are spot on, although I confess I didn’t recognize Bruce Willis as Captain Sharp. Newcomers Hayward and Gilman are the showstoppers, while Norton as painfully earnest and ineffectual Scout Master Ward never misses a beat.

For such a quirky film, the ending is predictable and conventional, yet still satisfying, while leaving the possibilities open. As Samuel Clemens knew, that’s the way childhood fables should end.

Human hoarding

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Generally, I don’t comment much on current events. If I had to say why, it’s because taking a stand gives half of those who know what it is an opportunity to disagree and reveals how judgmental I can be.

On top of that, there’s the possibility I may be wrong.

When I read that a woman had given birth to octuplets, my first thought was of a desperate couple who had resorted to fertility drugs and why that would not be for me. I still (selectively) resist the intervention of science in nature, although my rational self knows that men around the world have interfered with nature since their time began. I admit that I might feel differently if I were more personally affected; it’s easy to make pronouncements from the mountaintop.

After a few days I became curious about the fate of the octuplets and their mysterious parents. By then it had come out that the mother was an unemployed single woman who already had had six (6) children through IVF.

There went the childless, loving, and happy Yuppie couple many of us had probably envisioned.

Six children. Six. And she wanted more.

For a few minutes, I couldn’t quite retrieve from the archives of my mind the pathology that this situation reminded me of. And then it came.

Animal hoarder.

The desire for more children, on top of six existing children, especially in a situation where it is likely that the mother doesn’t have the resources to provide adequately for so many, financially, physically, or emotionally, made me think of those sad souls who take in dozens or even hundreds of animals which, when rescued when a neighbor complains about the smell or other signs, invariably prove to be starving, diseased, battle scarred, and neglected. I’ve wondered if animal hoarders initially mean well but lose control. Do they notice how much the animals suffer and block it out? Or do they believe they are doing them a favor? Are they that blind to the cruel consequences of their actions?

Nadya Suleman, the woman for whom six children were not enough, said she wanted a big family because she had had a lonely childhood. Two, four, or even six children were not enough to fill that gaping hole in her soul. Despite her age and the odds, she thought she would end up with two more children, not eight — as though eight was the critical mass needed for the seal on that well of loneliness.

The story may yet be saddest for the children, born to a woman whose motivations and judgment are questionable, at best. How did she think she was going to raise eight children, including two infants, when she couldn’t manage six? Fourteen? Does she think she, by herself, has the resources to give these children individual attention? Or even to care for their basic needs? How did she think she would house, feed, clothe, and educate them for 18 years each? And pay for their medical care?

Most couples, when they learn they are expecting their first child, feel a thrill of joy and a thrill of fear. Both are natural; raising a child is no small responsibility. What did Nadya Suleman think when faced with the prospect of raising six? That she needed two more to complete her ensemble? Did she think of anyone other than herself? Did she consider the future at all?

I wish these 14 children well, and I hope that Suleman obtains the help she needs. Cat hoarding is appalling enough. Human hoarding? Inconceivable.

Is it live or is it Memorex?

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Even the most well-behaved children might develop a case of the fidgets when Dad is about to be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, so I wasn’t surprised to see Michelle Obama lean over a few times toward Malia and Sasha. I wondered if she were talking to them or someone else, or if she were, in traditional Mom fashion, telling them to “settle down.”

There they were, taking pictures and videos and sending text messages from their unique vantage point at the inauguration. No one had a better perspective on the event, and only the most stoical of stoics could have resisted temptation. Young girls are not known for stoicism, although I imagined somewhat whimsically that they were telling their friends, “Will you look at him? He’ll think he’s important now!”

Now that we have the technology, we keep trying to capture the moment, whatever the moment may be. When I was a child, film and processing were expensive enough to make photography a small luxury. The camera, a Kodak that cost $2 or $3, came out mainly for special occasions (the obligatory birthday and Christmas shots) and excursions, with an occasional photo of Virgil in the washtub or Diane in the bath. For practical reasons, photos were secondary to the experience.

When camcorders became the ubiquitous rage and I saw fathers (almost never mothers) recording every moment, I began to wonder if something weren’t being lost. Intent on his viewfinder, the family videographer seemed unable to focus on anything beyond that narrow range. Every moment recorded represented a moment in which the dad did not see the world from his child’s perspective; he was an observer of his child’s life, not a participant in it. Do those parents watch those videos now?

Now you can’t go into a restaurant, movie theater, café, park, or any public place without being blinded by the flash of someone’s digital camera. Blogs and social networks are full of photos of smiling groups of people at their family, evening, and weekend outings and comments about fashions, hair, and memorable happenings. Joy is ephemeral. Who can be blamed for trying to cage it within a few thousand pixels?

Photos and videos show and tell the stories of our lives. On January 20, 2009, as I saw images of people at workplaces, schools, churches, and senior centers across the country with tears in their eyes, I thought that, without the distraction of trying to record history, they are the ones who have captured it best — not on chip, but in their minds, hearts, and imaginations.

Not a choice, but a certainty

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My dad lived from March 13, 1913 until July 28, 2001, a time of amazing changes. He grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania and never graduated from grade school. He drove a pair of farm mules as a boy and quit driving a Ford van in the late 1980s. He was born before Hitler came to power and died after the end of Soviet communism. He was bombed by German aircraft during his World War II service in the United Kingdom, and he watched the first moon walk by man. He observed the decline of American robins and other birds that followed the widespread use of DDT even as Rachel Carson was writing Silent Spring. He and his sisters noticed that the climate had changed between their childhood and middle age, that winters were no longer a solid freeze between December and March. He and his generation witnessed the awful power of the atomic bomb and lived with the Cold War that followed. During his lifetime, there were two world wars, the Korean War, Vietnam, and the Gulf War, plus countless regional conflicts, terrorist attacks, and peace demonstrations led by a generation with whom he felt little in common.

The death of chess champion Bobby Fischer made me think of change and how nothing in my childhood prepared me for it,

When I was a child, the people in the headlines were Muammar Qaddafi (various spellings), Idi Amin, Jean Paul Getty III, Patty Hearst, Richard Nixon, Golda Meir, Yasser Arafat, Helmut Schmidt, Ted Bundy, Evel Knievel, and, of course, Bobby Fischer. The odd thing is, even as a teenager whose body, mind, and emotions were evolving every day, I never thought of the world as changing, as being different by the time I grew up. Subconsciously, I thought that Muammar Qaddafi and Idi Amin would always lurk as unpredictable threats, that Patty Hearst would always be prominent as victim-turned-fugitive, that Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs would spar in perpetuity, that Evel Knievel would continue to hurt himself spectacularly for TV cameras. And that Bobby Fischer would continue to symbolize America’s pride and dominance.

The announcement of Fischer’s death reminded me that I have not heard or thought of him in decades. That Evel Knievel is dead. That Ted Bundy, whose murders filled me with terror when I read that the then-unknown killer’s victims were primarily girls with long hair and pierced ears, was executed. That little from the headlines of my youth remains. There is still conflict in the Middle East, but the characters, plot, and staging continue to change. Terrorism haunts us more than ever, as the threat of planes hijacked to Cuba became planes flown into urban towers. Fear of the Soviet finger on the button of the bomb has become fear of a terrorist hand on a dirty bomb. Muammar Qaddafi and Fidel Castro are with us still, but happily no longer have the same potential bite. The mighty Soviet bloc is now a checkerboard of ethnic conflict and capitalist corruption. The American robin and bald eagle have made impressive comebacks, but more species than ever are endangered by everything from climate change to habitat loss.

I have a vague, unsupported notion that the state of the world and its inhabitants is worse than it was 40 years ago, yet logically I know the underlying problems remain the same: The environment. Resources. Poverty and distribution of wealth. Conflict. The list goes on.

In the U.S., we have sacrificed freedoms in a futile bid for security and safety, but it is likely that that pendulum will swing back again. When it comes to celebrities, we have traded the Bobby Fischers and Evel Knievels for the Britney Spears, but perhaps we will tire of our fascination with the dysfunctional, and some other celebrity-worship paradigm will take its place.

To me, Andy Warhol did not deserve his 15 minutes of fame, but he was right in ways beyond which he meant. The current generation doesn’t grasp the emotional power of seeing an American defeat a Soviet on even just a chessboard because its context is not theirs today. My generation doesn’t feel the same twinge as my father’s when we see photos and footage of the flag being raised on Iwo Jima. Future generations may see video of the events of September 11, 2001, but will not experience the immediacy of our shock and horror. This is how history is written; it’s in the past; it happened to someone else. We understand best what is in front of us now.

Today’s politicians speak glibly of “change” and the need for it;. What they do not mention is the one truth beyond their control: Change is not a choice, but a certainty.

HK, from another perspective

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Simon Owens sent me a link to an article he’d written about Harriet Klausner, with interviews with “publishers, professional book reviewers and novelists to see whether she has any effect on the publishing industry.” See “Harriet Klausner: the publishing industry’s secret weapon?”

Keir Graff of Booklist sums it up well: “I think her industriousness is an entertaining phenomenon, but she’s perhaps a better example of compulsive behavior than genuine book reviewing.”

Neither leader nor follower

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It’s mid-February 2007, and right now it’s difficult to tell if there are more candidates for the office of U.S. president or for the position of the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby. The one offers fame and infamy, depending on one’s perspective, while the other offers fame, infamy, and possibly large amounts of money. Maybe both do.

In the end, of course, there can be only president and one father. The one depends on events and the beliefs, opinions, and moods of voters, and the other on being in the right place at the right time. Perhaps it amounts to the same thing.

At a gathering for contender Rudy Guiliano, a young woman who liked what he said told a reporter, “We are all Republicans.” As someone who is not a Republican, or a Democrat, I was disappointed by the narrowness of this view, which (in different forms) dominates politics. First and foremost, we are all Americans. No, first and foremost, we are all humans. That is something that we can’t choose, we can’t change, and we can’t deny.

What is a leader of humans? Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin were absolute leaders, cult figures with ideology as religion. In business, there used to be the traditional “boss,” the executive or manager known to subordinates as “Mr. Carruthers,” the honcho whose authority, at least in his sphere of influence, was absolute. Today, absolute authority has fallen out of favor, for the most part. Everybody is a member of a team. Even the president has a team, the Cabinet.

In any case, whether dictator by decree, democratically elected official, or promoted executive, leaders have to have qualities that gain and retain the confidence (or fear) of their followers and peers. The best way to accomplish that is to tell the people what they want to hear. Tell the populace that they deserve to overrun Europe; tell shareholders that costs will be cut and profits increased; tell employees that their satisfaction is important to the company’s success — and then throw enough bones to all your constituents to keep them happy, or at least occupied. To be a leader, you must have a persona with presence and messages that resonate.

The truth rarely resonates. No one wants to be told that their new polka-dot dress is ugly or that taxes need to be raised or services cut (or both). We want new roads but we don’t want to pay for them. We expect our leaders to produce a new highway without our producing the funds.

Some peoples chose their leaders because they were perceived to have extraordinary spiritual powers or because they performed exceptionally well in battle. Perhaps it was a remnant of this thinking that led to the election of the Father of Our Country, a tribute to George Washington’s popularity as the military leader whose generalship helped to win the war. Today, though, not enough of our leaders, business or political, have the courage to risk career or political suicide by telling people the truth. To lead must you be willing to lie?

Under those circumstances, I can neither a leader nor a follower be.