The Legacy of the "Great Stone Face"

If you are of a "certain age," you probably remember what you were doing every, and I mean EVERY, Sunday night back in the 1950s and 1960s.   You were camped out with the rest of your family in front of your Crosley, Sylvania, or Zenith television watching the same show as everyone else you knew.   The Ed Sullivan Show.   It was the mother of all variety shows, a genre which doesn't exist on TV these days, even with (or because of) the 500+ channels many of us can access via cable or satellite.   It was a genre that included comedians, musicians, and what always seemed to me to be leftover vaudeville acts.   And when I say leftover, I'm not using the term in a negative manner at all.  

A recent article in the Trib described the Ed Sullivan Show on the 40th anniversary of the show's cancellation back in 1971.  It's nearly impossible to describe to a person born after 1971 how big the Sullivan show was, but here's a comparison to today's big pop TV shows:

"American Idol" draws about 30 million viewers for its grand-finale shows, whereas Sullivan attracted some 40 million viewers nearly every Sunday night for two decades — when the country had half as many people as it does now.

In the article, Gerald Nachman says that the show today is remembered for two of its "10,000 acts":  the American debut of the Beatles and Elvis Presley's scandalizing hip gyrations.  I don't agree with that assessment.   I'll bet that if you were watching TV when the Ed Sullivan Show was airing, you remember two other acts: Topo Gigio, and that guy who spun multiple pie plates on long poles.  Who could forget the "little Italian mouse?"  And what about Senor Wences?!

That said, Nachman discusses in detail that Sullivan's greatest legacy was his relentless efforts to introduce black entertainers to the wider viewing public, acts like The Supremes, Sam Cooke, and a very young Richard Pryor.   

The show was truly a remarkable trend setter and brought countless hours of entertainment right into our living rooms every week.  The Trib article is well worth the 10 minutes to read it.

I miss variety television shows.   But you probably figured that out already.

Making A Move?

The other day, I heard a sports report that made a comment that truly befuddled me.   I don't play golf, and the comment was about a round of the US Open that was going on this week-end.   My lack of experience in the game may be at least partly why the comment confused me.

The report said something to the effect of so-and-so was holding a one stroke lead as the round began and that the other leading players were now going to "make their moves."   The comment made no sense to me in the context of golf.   What were the other competitors going to do, stop playing badly?  

How does one "make a move" in golf?   I mean, it's not like car racing, where a driver can stomp on the gas and slip around another car.   Or even yacht racing, where a competitor can do some magical thing with the sails that allows the yacht to gain speed.   In other individual sports, you don't often hear of someone "making his move" to overtake a leader.   Tennis?

So how does one "make a move" in golf?  Stop landing in traps and water hazards?   It's not like anyone lands in those places on purpose in the first place...

What Do You Expect?

I am a big supporter of public education and always have been.   I've been an elected public school Board of Education member since 1988 and graduated from public elementary and secondary schools.   Most public schools are not nearly as ineffective as some politicians would have us believe, although there is certainly room for improvement.   I've long campaigned for better funding sources for schools and a move away from the centuries old property tax system used in the U.S. to fund schools.   But money isn't the only thing we need to fix in schools.

I think the most important aspect of education that needs to be addressed is our expectations; what do we expect the schools to accomplish?  Every year, State legislatures generate a host of new objectives for schools to achieve, ranging from studying a particular subject (Lupus education), observing "Emancipation Proclamation Week," establish "diabetes care plans" for students, and requiring certain sex education courses to teach pupils about the dangers associated with drug and alcohol consumption during pregnancy. This is a very short list of recent legislative changes in Illinois.  Whether these goals are laudable is not the point.   Some legislative educational mandates are somewhat silly, but that's not the point either.  Rather, the common thread is that a hugely wide variety of social objectives find their way into a finite school day.  For every item added to the curriculum, something else disappears.

Therein lies the problem; public education seems to be focused on social issues and goals, at the expense of education.  Society expects our public schools to teach kids everything, including things that parents should be addressing or very narrowly defined topics of study.  Is it really necessary to formally require instruction on specific diseases in elementary/secondary schools?  


In a recent Marketplace article, educator Michelle Rhee points out that operating schools based on social goals rather than, economic objectives, results in one very large problem whenever the economy sours.  

(In America w)e see education as a social issue, not an economic one. And what happens to social issues in times of economic hardship? They get swept under the rug.

Joining those social issues underneath the rug, are our educational system support and issues.

Ms. Rhee suggests that we are not honest with our children about their abilities and accomplishments, and instead flood them with trophies, ribbons, and other confirmations that whatever they've done, it meets expectations.   Even if it's pretty mediocre performance.   

I think she's right, and it's not limited to sports.  Just look at all the "reality" TV shows to which many Americans are apparently addicted.   Many, if not most, glorify mediocre so-called "accomplishments" and behaviors.  Is that all we expect from people, including our kids?  Is that why the talking heads seem to think we all want a person "just like us" to be leader of the U.S.?   Let's be honest about this expectation also.  I want someone "smarter than the average bear" to lead the nation.

Rhee proposes we change from this culture of complacency:

In Korea, they have this culture that focuses on always becoming better. Students are ranked one through 40 in their class and everyone knows where they stand. The adults are honest with kids about what they're not good at and how far they have to go until they are number one. Can you imagine if we suggested anything close to that here? There would be anarchy.

Maybe we could use a little anarchy in this country.

What's In A Name?

I came across this political cartoon recently and thought it was pretty funny.   Mike Lester, the cartoonist, has summarized some thoughts we've had in recent years about increasingly strange given names we've come across....

Equality For All?

I couldn't decide what to title this post. It's about two news articles (although I'm not certain they warrant the label "news").

In the first article, a woman was found passed out in a stolen van in S. Dakota recently, and her blood alcohol level (0.708) appears to have set a state record. In fact, it was so high, it was nearly double the fatal alcohol level for half the population. She was arrested and taken to a hospital for treatment. Even more hilarious, she was freed on bond and failed to appear for her court date on 12/15/09. She was located by police passed out again in another stolen vehicle at the side of another highway. This time she was hauled off to jail. The good news is that at least she wasn't driving when she was so wasted. She clearly does appear to have some issues involving stolen vehicles and drinking vast amounts of booze.

The second article is about the fact that while drunk driving arrests of men still are much more frequent than for women, female drivers are closing the gap.

Nationally, the number of women arrested for DUI increased by 28.8 percent between 1998 and 2007, while the number of men arrested for DUI dropped by 7.5 percent, according to U.S. Department of Justice crime statistics.

Part of the huge increase may be attributable to the increase in binge drinking among women, and the fact that females have less water in their bodies than men. Another explanation given is that DUI laws are more strictly enforced against women drivers.

Or perhaps some women drivers consume huge volumes of booze and then pull onto the shoulder of the road to sleep it off (where they're easily found by cops). Maybe the drunk males manage to drive home undetected...

The World May Be Ending

It's entirely possible that the world is coming to an end. Not because of anything the Religious Right has foreseen, or Glenn Beck, or even Sarah Palin. No, the universe may be verging on imploding because Harriet Carter, the online version of the decades old catalog purveyor of gadgets and trinkets none of us ever knew we actually needed, is on Twitter.

Harriet Carter has been selling stuff from a catalog since about 1958, items including the doggy "Potty Patch" (so your pooch can take a dump inside and not ruin your carpet), the "Fanny Bank" (a plastic coin bank that looks like a bare butt; you can see where the coins go), a heated ice cream scoop, the "Marshmallow Popper" (a kids' toy gun that rapid-fires mini-marshmallows), and "The Solitaire Board" (which allows you to "play your favorite card games anywhere, even if you don't have a table!"). Does anyone actually use cards to play solitaire anymore?

A lot of the items Harriet Carter sells remind me of the kind of chachkas you used to be able to buy at "five and dime stores," like JJ Newberry, Woolworth, WT Grant, or Ben Franklin. They've almost all gone to retailer heaven and most Americans don't remember they even existed or that Kresge became K-Mart. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Harriet is still there ready to supply us.

Anyway, Harriet Carter apparently has decided that this social networking thing is here to stay, so she wants you Twits to "follow" her on Twitter. This company is just one of many that has decided that there's money to be made via Twitter, and it's leading me to conclude that while I thought Twitter was a goofy concept to begin with, the prospect of corporations sending tweets about products I should seriously purchase makes it even less attractive.

I'll do without hearing about what celebrities had for lunch today, or what Harriet Carter thinks I absolutely must have. If the world is ending anyway, I won't have anyplace to store more "stuff."

Maria Bartiromo Going Down In Flames?

If you haven't watched CNBC's Maria Bartiromo displaying her ignorance about our health system on camera, you ought to check the Youtube video or here. It's just fascinating how some public people are so supremely self-confident they can make such utter fools of themselves and keep smiling. I wonder if any little tiny alarm bells were ringing in her head as she made fun of the 44 year old Congressman for not "using" Medicare. Probably not, just like they still aren't ringing for former Governor Blago, who's still blaming everyone else for his downfall.

Maybe Maria's angling for a job with Fox?

Enough Already

Is there no end in sight of the King of Pop Mania? We don't seem to be anywhere near the end on news and entertainment programs, but everyone I know that has an opinion is very tired of the hype and hoopla concerning Jackson's death. Lately, there's been relatively little news coverage of things like multiple American States teetering on bankruptcy, the Iraq and Iran situations, and any number of other more important matters. Susan Estrich pretty much sums it up in her column from July 1. Let the man rest in peace and let's the rest of us get on with life.

Okay, calm down...

This will be a short post. Michael Jackson has died. I was dumbfounded to see NBC's Brian Williams on the evening news tonight speaking at length with a correspondent in California while the video feed showed a crowd of reporters and fans milling about on the hospital grounds. I will make a wild guess and conclude that ABC and CBS (and CNN and CNBC) all had similar hand-wringing on their evening news programs. My condolences go to Jackson's family, but please the rest of you, get a grip. The curmudgeon in me has to conclude that Jackson hasn't been relevant as an entertainer for at least a decade or two, unless you count providing scandals and bizarre behavior as entertainment. As it has for years, pop "culture" mystifies me.

Why the network news programs should treat his death like the passing of a head of state is beyond me. I bet Andy Rooney wouldn't spend that much time on this story. Grumble, grumble.