Tale as Old as Time

The supposed finale episode of the Jan. 6^th hearings happened this week and they happened to coincide with the death of theatre-film-TV icon Angela Lansbury.

Timing aside, you may be asking:

Chair, how do these two events have anything in common?

Because as far as we can tell, death is final and a TV series, even a real-life, limited one, never truly ends.

Well, let me explain.

It is true that no TV show, be it a limited series, news program or super indie non-network offering that was once viewed somewhere via some barely gettable online platform, is EVER safe from resurrection, rebooting or, well, theft.

And that not even Elon Musk, the richest human on the planet, (Note: Okay, the italicized may be questionable), who was last heard to be confabbing with Russian President and fellow Bond villain Vladimir Putin, has figured out a way to truly cheat death.

Despite all evidences to the contrary.

Central casting couldn’t have done this good #idiot

Yet each – the TV show finale and the Death – reminded me of what we now refer to as 21^st century tribalism, AKA a term that most appropriately describes the world as we now experience it, at its best AND its worst.

Definition, please —-

Tribalism is the state of being organized by, or advocating for, tribes or tribal lifestyles. Human evolution has primarily occurred in small hunter-gatherer groups, as opposed to larger and more recently settled civilizations. So in a political context, tribalism can mean discriminatory behavior or attitudes towards out-groups, based on in-group loyalty.

Let’s start with Angela Lansbury, since speaking of her is much more pleasant.

There are few in any group who have not been positively touched by her talents. One of the most accomplished performers in the entertainment business over a seven-decade career, Dame Angela momentarily made many tens of millions of people better with such iconic performances as Jessica Fletcher on the long-running TV series Murder, She Wrote; Broadway’s original Mame, in the Tony-award winning self-titled lead role; and in three indelible, Oscar-nominated roles, most notably as the forever evilest mother of them all in the 1962 classic suspense drama, The Manchurian Candidate.

But the part that probably brought her the most and broadest attention, especially from young people, was her voicing (and singing) of Mrs. Potts in Disney’s perennial animated classic, Beauty and the Beast.

It is not an exaggeration to write, as I have before, that seeing Ms. Lansbury make her entrance down a spiral staircase as Mame on the set of her rambling Beekman Place penthouse to a roomful of Manhattan sophisticates back in the mid-sixties, is what made me first want to be in show business as a little boy.

Up until then I felt that I didn’t fit in anywhere and all the sassy retorts and sparkly glamour I was suppressing on the inside (Note: barely) were destined to eat me alive unless they and me finally got out.

But once I saw her version of Auntie Mame emerge in her glittery gold pantsuit and take her nephew (who was about my age at the time) by the hand and introduce him to her world of….brilliance… I knew I had found my tribe.

I didn’t know how I could get to them or when I would but I knew it was where I belonged. In a place where I could talk uncensored about the theatre, politics, or pretty much anything else happening in society while simultaneously being stylishly dressed and slightly (ahem) snide.

If it wasn’t always the loftiest of goals it at least gave me a framework I could modify to my personal style. And, as the years moved on I would become, well hopefully, a bit wiser and more truly sophisticated myself.

I would learn that what I at the time mistook for being city-sophisticated meant merely being smart, educated and open to all opinions on the issues of the day without losing your sense of humor.

As for being snide and stylish — okay, that hasn’t changed, much. Or at all. Some things are just baked into your cake.

So yeah, Dame Angela gave this 10 year old A LOT. So much more than a reality TV performer turned the unlikely POTUS (#45) and most powerful human on the planet, has done for his followers.

Watching the compilation of interviews and clips of January 6, 2021, how is one not grabbed by the mob mentality and violence against law enforcement and sacred government landmarks like the Capitol Building, not to mention the salivating mouths of armed followers threatening personal harm against elected representatives from all FIFTY states they were forcing to hide inside their coat closets and elsewhere for protection?

Generations of Americans took their kids on tours of the Capitol. What do you say about a tribe of people smearing feces on the walls of those same offices?

How do you respond to this tribe’s construction of a medieval gallows and rope from which to hang the sitting Vice President of their own political party because he would not turn his back on every citizen who voted in the 2020 presidential election and not ratify duly counted votes submitted by each of the states?

Moreover, how can anyone respect their tribal leader, who represented everything they were standing for simply by sitting back and letting their violence and mass hysteria continue, and allowing the pleas for help from the broad swath of citizens they threatened, citizens he was elected to also represent, go unanswered, all the while watching it play out on television and by every account salivating at the pandemonium he presumed would allow him to illegally stay in office?

How does anyone of any American tribe root for an illogical, 18^th century temper tantrum as the answer to an imagined 21^st century dispute fueled by 19^th and 20^th century resentments?

Hell, if I know.

I want to reason with other tribes, come to some sort of consensus and build our society up as best we can. I don’t seek their approval, merely our coexistence based on the rules and a shared, rational reality.

I wish I could say the same of them based on what I saw in the Jan 6^th TV finale – and see elsewhere.

The latter extends to the reaction of Alex Jones, the alt right shock jock and snake oil pitchman who has spent years spreading lies that the deaths of elementary school children at the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary massacre was staged by actors. Mr. Jones was ordered to pay almost $1 billion in damages to their surviving families this week and, as the verdict was being read, was broadcasting his reactions live, laughing and mocking these parents and survivors as he solicited his listeners to buy more of his fake potions so he could continue his legal appeals.

It also extends to far right conspiracy theorist Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), as he faced his opponent for re-election, Wisconsin Lieutenant Gov. Mandela Barnes, a Black man, in a televised debate.

Asked to say something positive about his opponent, Sen. Johnson noted that he appreciates that Barnes had loving parents, a school teacher, father who worked third shift, admitting he had good upbringing. Before pausing and quickly adding: I guess what puzzles me about that is with that upbringing, why has he turned against America?

Of course, the week prior Sen. Johnson, who is now ahead in the polls, was on tape telling a group of several thousand supporters on the campaign trail that Democrats don’t particularly like this country moments after lamenting over all the anger and division in the country.l

Talk about adding fuel to the fire.

Well, Full Confession:

I may be a snide, partisan and only sometime stylishly dressed Democrat who has spent most of his life in and around show business, but the one thing you can’t say about me is that I am not a thoughtful listener who doesn’t reason things out logically or someone who doesn’t like engaging with both sides of a debate.

But where does that get you?

What do you do when you are faced with tribes who operate on a set of alternate facts as they riot and lie and put their virtual hands over their ears in order to get their way at all costs?

One thing you can do is go to the head of the snake and subpoena their tribal leader to testify under oath about what is true. Treat him no differently than any other member of any American tribe if and/or when it is proven that he or they have committed crimes, or even lied under oath to those tasked with carrying out the law.

Sure, that’s one alternative. And the path the bi-partisan members of the Jan. 6^th committee have chosen to take.

But there is another.

Grab some old Angela Lansbury recordings and remember that in a civilized society there are still peak moments of pleasure to be had.

Even if the majority of them seem rooted in the past.

Angela Lansbury – “Beauty and the Beast”

12.16.12

by notesfromachair

A Real Conversation

Gun control? Adolescent depression? Human impulse to violence? Bad people doing bad things to good people? All or some of the above?

I’m not sure.

This is what I imagine: A room at a school, similar to the one I went to decades ago because, let’s face it, east coast classrooms for mostly middle class white kids are not all that different.

But this one is. Because when you open the door — you know, the one that has a rectangular glass cutout at the top of it where you can see in — there is something unusual. First you react to the fact that bodies are lying on the floor. But not just bodies – coarsely severed limbs on top of bodies. Then you realize there’s blood. A lot of it. Everywhere. And in between is carnage. The carnage of human remains – part of a brain, an elbow, maybe a knee or a piece of foot. It’s not like war, though, because these are smaller than the usual body parts of war. Well, not all wars, I suppose. Though I have never been on a battlefield, I imagine scattered among the young adult males, and nowadays even females, we might also find on some the remains of youngsters no older than those in that Connecticut schoolhouse on Friday morning.

Sorry to get so graphic but there seems no other way to talk about it other than to report on what is real or what we know to be real through our informed imagination and by the fact that no one wants to say exactly what they’ve seen inside that classroom except to call it words like “gruesome,” unspeakable” and “a massacre.”

From Newtown…

What we have physically seen with our own eyes are cops, medical workers, politicians and yes, even Presidents, seeming overwhelmed, speechless or, inarticulate actually, as they tried to put the tragedy into words and express how they or we were feeling. And you know that I’m not exaggerating on that score when seasoned tragedy professionals find it all too much too bear and dare to allow themselves to become inexpressive or, perish the thought, overly emotional, or even merely just plain emotional. At all.

Not everyone went there. Some among them had logical explanations for the unexplainable. Politicians like ex-Arkansas governor/former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee noted publicly that it was unsurprising that school shootings like this continue to take place because as a society we have banished religion from the classroom. This is what happens to you “by removing God from our schools,” Mr. H., an ordained minister, warned in his best imitation of Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell or….(fill in your favorite fundamentalist religious icon of choice). Or – perhaps he was just being himself.

Click here to watch full video.. if you can.

“Comedy equals tragedy plus time.” Alan Alda once spoke these lines in the poignantly funny and tragic Woody Allen film masterpiece “Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Someone should pass this on to Mr. Huckabee because his full remarks would only make sense as the nonsensical punch line of a televangelist in a not yet written Woody Allen film. But voiced the very day of the massacre in the last month of 2012 they come off as just plain shallow, stupid and simplistic. Not to mention dangerously misinformed. Still, one wonders if the reverse is true – if tragedy is nothing more than comedy plus time. Meaning, if we have long enough to think about something we once thought was funny, can we conclude that in our older years we’ll find that same laugh riot just plain sad? Using this logic and Mr. Huckabee’s words maybe this is what drove the now dead 20-year-old Connecticut assassin to do what he did. Maybe gales of laughter heard while not in the presence of God surrounded him enough that one day the laughter turned into anger, which then turned into this. Uh, I don’t think so. That sounds as likely and simplistic and as appropriate a thought as Mr. Huckabee’s explanation. So sorry for stooping so slow.

But back to carnage and the mass murder of 27 people, mostly children between the ages of 5 and 10. Murder, that is, by at least one automatic weapon and two pistols held by the hand of someone who was not yet old enough to legally drink in the United States. Of course we all know that many young men and women under 21 do drink. Just as we know many people under 21 are taught to shoot firearms. However, the latter is legal. Even when they’re not in the military. (Note: the minimum age for military service is 18. Just thought I’d bring that salient fact up).

Sorry if I’m getting too snide, graphic or just plain gross. But when the big macho male Connecticut Medical Examiner gets on television and says of the massacre, “I’ve been doing this work a third of a century and this is the worst that I’ve seen and probably that any of my colleagues have ever seen” you know the time for niceties are gone.

By the way – salient fun facts:

A single assault weapon, like the legal one used on Friday morning, fires up to six bullets a second.
The average victim in our latest U.S. mass murder had anywhere from 3-7 bullet wounds in their bodies.
The 20 or so dead children were all wearing “cute kid stuff,” according to that same Ct. chief Medical Examiner, whose name is Dr. H. Wayne Carver. And when pressed even further on the subject by one overzealous reporter, he added, “the kind of stuff you’d all send your kids off to school in every day.” Dr. Carver looked them all straight in the eye when he added that fun fact.

Connecticut Medical Examiner, H. Wayne Carver

Connecticut Medical Examiner, Dr. H. Wayne Carver

Want more? Yes, I thought you did. Well, did you know that —

The bodies in the crime scene were so gruesome that rather than have parents come directly into the site they were given photographs taken by “very good staff photographers” to ease their pain, while assured that “up close and personal time” would eventually happen.
The mother of the accused shooter was an avid gun collector and marksman herself who owned numerous guns and often took her two sons to shooting ranges and taught them how to pull a variety of triggers correctly.
When pressed again by another reporter if he was affected emotionally by what he had seen after examining more than 11 bloody child corpses in that single day alone, Dr. Carver responded that if you weren’t affected you “don’t belong in this business.” He also noted that in the past he has “sat down in the locker room and cried alone but I haven’t yet on this one.” But, he added, “notice I said “yet.”

There is a tipping point for everything – a boiling over moment when a critical mass is reached and something that has been building for a long time can’t help but inevitably explode into existence. (Okay, it’s not always an explosion but it is worth noting that these things do often start gradually and mount with time). We’re told this is how change occurs and, looking back in history, we can trace the inevitability. But we can never quite predict what that tipping point will actually be. And often not without hindsight, long after it happens.

I’ve told a number of people that I was just slightly older than the dead children at Sandy Hook Elementary School when both Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were shot within a few months of each other in 1968. At the time, it felt like a tipping point on gun violence in America had been reached. But it hadn’t.

It happened again many more times over many more decades – most recently after the mass shootings at Columbine, then again at Virginia Tech, and then this past year at the movie theatres in Colorado. But, once again, it hadn’t.

Today is the Day rally, Washington DC, 12/14/12

Unlike war, there are not countries to be brought together to broker a treaty or an end to this reality. There is simply the citizenry of the country in the form of the government. And we all know how well that has been going.

And yet, there seems to be something about the deaths of young children that occasionally does make the difference. We saw this in the Vietnam War with the My Lai massacre. We also saw it with AIDS when young hemophiliacs like Ryan White were ostracized or infants in other countries began to be massively ravaged.

It’s sad to think that it took the deaths of these innocents for us to reach the tipping point this time. But what’s sadder is to think their deaths won’t make the difference.

A friend wrote to me that there are 275 million guns in private hands in our nation of 315 million and that it will be incredibly difficult to put this genie back in the bottle. This friend is incredibly smart and often quite perceptive. But in this case, I hope he’s as wrong as Mike Huckabee.

notes from a chair

Tag Archives: Sandy Hook

Tale as Old as Time

A Real Conversation