So, nu? So, Sue Me

The New Neo Posted on by

A while back we had a Great Musicals Debate here in which commenter Richard Saunders wrote, in response to my saying that I much prefer the original stage version of “Guys and Dolls” to the Brando/Sinatra film version:

Neo — I can’t remember a more serious disagreement I’ve ever had with you! Okay, maybe Marlon Brando might not be a great singer, but Sinatra as Nathan Detroit, Jean Simmons as Sarah, Sheldon Leonard as Big Julie, how can you beat that? And all the people who came from the show — Vivian Blaine, Stubby Kaye, B.S. Pulley, Johnny Silver, what about them? Sky’s response to Nathan in their scene in Lindy’s is a rule I’ve held to my whole adult life.

I can take the heat, so I won’t get out of the kitchen.

Of course, Sky’s response to Nathan is in the script, both the play and the film, so we can’t use that as an example to distinguish one from the other. Part of the difference between stage musicals and filmed ones is a matter of more projection and broadness—after all, you have to reach the balcony—and a film is of necessity more subtle and naturalistic. And part of the difference is that something about that proscenium arch and all those fellow audience members shifting and breathing around you reminds you that you’re in a theater and this is a stage, and there’s the excitement of a live performance that really can’t be captured on a film or video. It’s something like watching an acrobat on a high wire without a safety net. This is it, the performers stand or fall in this moment, and there’s greater risk and even danger that can lead to a heightened reaction in the audience.

That’s the general argument in favor of theater. But in particular, in the case of “Guys and Dolls,” although the movie makers had the excellent judgment to hire some of the wonderful stage play originals—the ones Richard Saunders lists—that certainly doesn’t give the movie any advantage over the play, it only means that those roles are played very very well.

Marlon Brando is only in the movie, and Richard Saunders and I seem to agree on his general deficiencies in the role. And it’s not just that although he’s a serviceable singer he’s not a good one. It’s that Sky is a big singing role as compared to, for example, that of Nathan Detroit. Sky has all the beautiful ballads, as well as the fabulous “Luck Be a Lady,” and they’re all songs that require really good singing.

Jean Simmons is okay, another thing on which we agree. She can actually sing—and, like Sky, she needs to be able to sing because her role is also a role that absolutely requires it.

And then there’s Nathan Detroit, played by Frank Sinatra in the film and Sam Levene in the play. Ah, Sinatra! Sinatra is a great singer of a particular type: smooth as silk, usually specializing in songs of heartache, although he’s also rather versatile. He’s Italian and not Jewish. But why on earth would that matter? Because Nathan Detroit, more than any other role in the play, is written with a lot of Jewishisms and/or Yiddishisms—words, gestures, accent, cadence—as an integral part the character. And it’s really not a singing role, although that’s Sinatra’s specialty.

The role’s creator Sam Levene was not a singer; he’s much worse at singing than Brando ever was. But he doesn’t even try to sing. He was adept at the Jewish vernacular that’s built into the song, and the role fit him like a glove. I had never read this part of Levene’s Wiki entry before looking it up for this post, but I’m not surprised at what it says:

Although not known as a singer, Sam Levene originated the role of Nathan Detroit in the original 1950 Broadway production and original cast recording of the musical Guys and Dolls, and later reprised the role of Nathan Detroit in 1953 in the first UK production of Guys and Dolls. His solo number, “Sue Me,” was written in one octave to compensate for his lack of vocal range. Sam Levene lost the role to Frank Sinatra in the film version. Guys & Dolls director Joseph L. Mankiewicz wanted original Broadway star Sam Levene, but producer Sam Goldwyn insisted on giving the part to Frank Sinatra. Joseph L. Mankiewicz said “if there could be one person in the world more miscast as Nathan Detroit than Frank Sinatra that would be Laurence Olivier and I am one of his greatest fans; the role had been written for Sam Levene who was divine in it”. Fordham Professor of Music Larry Stempel, author of “Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater” said if given a choice, he would cast Sam Levene, who created the role on Broadway, as the ideal Nathan Detroit instead of Nathan Lane, who played the part in the Broadway revival or Frank Sinatra, who played the part on film, stating “Musically, he may have been tone-deaf, but he inhabited Frank Loesser’s world as a character more than a caricature.”

Exactly and precisely what I think about it. Your mileage may differ, of course. That’s fine. But to me, Sinatra—despite his brave efforts—fails.

First let’s have the smooth-as-silk Sinatra, singing to Vivian Blaine (the originator of the stage role of Adelaide) in the film, crooning beautifully as always, but trying to find the right inflection for “So, nu?” and IMHO failing at that (making it a bland “So new?”):

Now we have the stage version (the London revival)—which of course is broader in style, because the performers have to reach the rafters (and in those days mics were rare)—with the non-singing Levine and the fabulous Blaine once again. You may think there’s too much schtick here. But to me it’s authentic shtick, and very entertaining. Note also, in contrast to the relatively immobile Sinatra, how much Levine uses physical gestures (in particular his hands), and how his attention is absolutely riveted on Blaine/Adelaide and is responsive to her. This is a couple who’ve been together a long time, having a fight:

[NOTE: Let me add that they eliminated many great songs in the movie: “A Bushel and a Peck,” “Marry the Man Today,” and “I’ve Never Been in Love Before”—as well as “Take Back Your Mink,” for which they substituted one of the few bad songs Frank Loesser ever wrote, “Pet Me Poppa.”]

Google’s AI ethics board

The New Neo Posted on by

The folks at Google have made sure that Kay Coles James will not be on an AI ethics board they’re setting up, because she’s from the Heritage Foundation. She may be a black woman, but as a conservative black woman, she has offended.

You can read about the brouhaha here; it’s rather typical of these sorts of fights. But there’s a deeper issue pointed out by the author (I’ve highlighted it in bold):

Neither Google nor anyone else appears actually comfortable with meaningful external oversight. Neither Google nor anyone else seems to have a principled or systematic way to handle the power it has stumbled into. That’s why companies are formulating these panels with goals like “be convincing to society broadly” — as Google aimed for with the inclusion of James — rather than “review the process for approving collaborations with the U.S. military.” The brouhaha has convinced me that Google needs an AI ethics board quite badly — but not the kind it seems to want to try to build.

Science keeps developing technology that outpaces our ability to know how to use it. I’m not suggesting that we not develop it. But I’ve long been very concerned about a sort of Frankenstein’s monster effect.

Those MAGA-hatted Asians attacked in DC were North Korean defectors

The New Neo Posted on by

A few days ago you may have come across the story of some MAGA-hatted Asians who were assaulted in DC:

A Twitter account proudly posted a short video clip on April 30 showing several street thugs harassing a group of Asian tourists who were wearing MAGA hats.

“Not Around Here Pimp…Ain’t None Of That Make America Great Again Sh*t,” wrote “Bigalow Black,” who hails from Washington D.C., and Miami, according to his Twitter profile.

The video shows a group of black men surrounding the Asians, grabbing the MAGA hats off their heads, and throwing one of them in the air before stomping on it. It’s not clear whether the hats were returned or if the police were called…

The tweet, which highlights an ugly and disgraceful attack on innocent tourists, was retweeted 3.8 thousand times and liked 7.9 thousand times.

Just another day in Trump’s America, and of course it’s Trump’s fault.

Now it emerges that the MAGA-hat tourists had a special history:

“The Asians wearing MAGA hats were not just tourists,” Wendy Wright, president of Christian Freedom International, told PJ Media. “They are North Korean defectors and South Koreans who get rice, medicine, and Bibles into North Korea and North Korean defectors out.”

The attack happened in Washington, D.C, Wright said.

Just days before President Trump met with Kim Jong-un in February, North Korea announced that it was facing a food crisis. Daily rations were cut and it was reported that 41 percent of North Koreans were undernourished. These Korean aid workers were in America as part of an effort to bring relief to starving North Koreans…

Wright told PJ Media by email that members of the group had bought the hats Monday night in a souvenir shop in Washington and that the assault happened Tuesday morning — the day Bigalow Black posted the video on Twitter. The thugs stole three of their hats, but the group didn’t call the police, according to Wright. “They were not hurt, but they said that may be because they did not fight back,” Wright said.

She told PJ Media that the Koreans were shocked that something like this could happen in America.

“They came from a totalitarian country that does not allow free speech or freedom of thought, and could not believe this assault on belief would take place in the U.S.,” she explained. “They were really shocked that this could happen and knew it was not random vandalism but it was an assault on free speech.”

The irony here is incredibly thick.

This incident encapsulates so many things that are wrong with the left today, but in particular its dangerous and many-pronged assault on free speech. It is often remarked on by those who escaped from totalitarian leftist countries that they came to the US for that very freedom, and lately it pains them tremendously to see the same threats to liberty occurring with increasing frequency. This incident may have been small in terms of actual physical harm done, but it is ominous for what it says about the state of our nation.

This is why I love watching YouTube

The New Neo Posted on by

Amateurs, doing what they love, having fun for the love of it.

Apparently they learned that in four hours.

Oh heck, I’ll throw this in too. Very schmaltzy, but good schmaltzy (the backstory is worth watching, but if you want to cut to the chase go to about 3:30):

I can’t decide whether these people are the new Taliban or the new Red Guard

The New Neo Posted on by

Maybe it doesn’t even matter which it is, because the impulse is the same whether it’s supposedly religious or supposedly secular/leftist: to destroy history and its representations and replace them with the new orthodoxy. The deeper motive is to indoctrinate in a way that will make it more difficult for people to think.

The people I’m referring to in the title of this post are a panel called the “Reflection and Action Group” (love these titles) formed by the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) to study some murals deemed offensive that were painted in a San Francisco high school during the Depression and were among several works of art in that high school that were funded by the WPA (hat tip: RedState).

The new panel recommended that the murals in question, about the life of George Washington, be removed entirely by painting over the plaster with white paint:

We come to these recommendations due to the continued historical and current trauma of Native Americans and African Americans with these depictions in the mural that glorifies slavery, genocide, colonization, manifest destiny, white supremacy, oppression, etc. This mural doesn’t represent SFUSD values of social justice, diversity, united, student-centered. It’s not student-centered if it’s focused on the legacy of artists, rather than the experience of the students.

Back in the 60s and 70s, this is what happened:

Public complaints first came to light about these mural panels in the late 1960’s, and at the time, opponents called for the destruction of the murals due to their offensive depictions of African-Americans and Native Americans.

In response, the school decided to install new murals with more positive imagery by artist Dewey Crumpler. His murals, entitled “Multi-Ethnic Heritage: Black, Asian, Native/Latin American”, depict Latin Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and African Americans overcoming oppression. They were completed in 1974.

Nope, not enough for the Taliban. The offending murals Must Be Destroyed, and this is somewhat ironic considering the intent of the mural maker:

Robert Chemy, a professor emeritus at San Francisco State University who wrote a biography about Victor Arnautoff (the mural artist who painted the Life of Washington), believes the artist was presenting “a “counter narrative” to the prevailing high school textbooks of the time because his representation of the westward expansion included the slaughter of Native Americans, and he presented Washington as a slave owner, both facts the official narrative back then tended to either ignore or gloss over.” ]

“He put those ghastly gray pioneers literally walking over the dead body of an Indian to demonstrate that the settlement of the west was an act of conquest that involved the slaughter of Native Americans,” Cherny said at a 2018 Board of Education meeting. “That was a very bold effort on his part to counter the kinds of textbooks that students were seeing.”

So the artist was a leftist, a sort of Zinn ahead of his time, correcting the more patriotic “narrative” in the 30s that left out all the exploitation. Now I guess people are considered too dumb and/or too easily traumatized to take in even that message from the left; it simply must be erased, smashed, painted over, destroyed, and then replaced by another narrative.

It all makes me think of something Allan Bloom said over three decades ago:

You know, we’ve all read history. Everybody, you know, world history, and weren’t all past ages maaaad? There were slaves, there were kings—I don’t think there’s a single student who reads the history of England and doesn’t say that that was crazy. You know “that’s wonderful, you gotta know history, and be open to things and so on,” but they’re not open to those things because they know that that was crazy. I mean, the latest transformation of history is as a history of the enslavement of women, which means to say that it was all crazy—up till now.

Our historical knowledge is really a history which praises, ends up praising, ourselves—how much wiser [voice drips with sarcasm] we are, how we have seen through the errors of the past…Hegel already knew this danger of history, of the historical human being, when he said that every German gymnasium professor teaches that Alexander the Great conquered the world because he had a pathological love of power. And the proof that the teacher does not have a pathological love of power is that he has not conquered the world. [laughter] We have set up standards of normalcy while speaking of cultural relativism, but there is no question that we think we understand what cultures are, and what kind of mistakes they make.

And here’s a video showing the WPA artwork, both older and newer, in that San Francisco high school that is still named George Washington High School (for now):

Another fine jobs report

The New Neo Posted on by

My, my, my:

The U.S. jobs machine kept humming along in April, adding a robust 263,000 new hires while the unemployment rate fell to 3.6%, the lowest in a generation, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Nonfarm payroll growth easily beat Wall Street expectations of 190,000 and a 3.8% jobless rate…

Unemployment was last this low in December 1969 when it hit 3.5%. At a time when many economists see a tight labor market, big job growth continues as the economic expansion is just a few months away from being the longest in history…

April’s big increase comes amid a mostly positive backdrop of economic data.

GDP increased 3.2% during the first quarter, far exceeding expectations, while productivity during the quarter jumped 3.6% for its best gain in five years. Pending home sales rose 3.8% in March, providing some hope in the real estate market so long as rates are held in check.

It must pain the MSM to have to report on this.

I also noticed some commentary by Warren Buffet, who said that no economics textbook would have predicted the present situation involving a combination of very low unemployment, inflation and interest rates not rising, plus the U.S. government spending more money than it takes in. He added this prediction:

I don’t think our present conditions can exist in terms of fiscal and monetary policy and various other elements across the political landscape,” he said. “I think it will change, I don’t know when, or to what degree. But I don’t think this can be done without leading to other things.”

Wow, talk about going out on a limb! Hold the presses: It will change! He doesn’t know when, or how, or to what degree. And it will lead to other things!

The FBI sent a spy to talk to Papadopoulos

The New Neo Posted on by

Even the NY Times is reporting on this (taking time off from its hobby of publishing anti-Semitic cartoons):

The conversation at a London bar in September 2016 took a strange turn when the woman sitting across from George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, asked a direct question: Was the Trump campaign working with Russia?

The woman had set up the meeting to discuss foreign policy issues. But she was actually a government investigator posing as a research assistant, according to people familiar with the operation. The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer to better understand the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.

They’re just seeking understanding. Note the date; this was during the campaign and under Obama’s watch.

The American government’s affiliation with the woman, who said her name was Azra Turk, is one previously unreported detail of an operation that has become a political flash point in the face of accusations by President Trump and his allies that American law enforcement and intelligence officials spied on his campaign to undermine his electoral chances. Last year, he called it “Spygate.”

And he was right.

The decision to use Ms. Turk in the operation aimed at a presidential campaign official shows the level of alarm inside the F.B.I. during a frantic period when the bureau was trying to determine the scope of Russia’s attempts to disrupt the 2016 election, but could also give ammunition to Mr. Trump and his allies for their spying claims.

“Could also give ammunition to Mr. Trump and his allies for their spying claims”—Ya think? Ya think, oh ye great gray lady?

Ms. Turk went to London to help oversee the politically sensitive operation, working alongside a longtime informant, the Cambridge professor Stefan A. Halper…

A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment…

[Halper’s] job was to figure out the extent of any contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Russia. Mr. Halper used his position as a respected academic to introduce himself to both Mr. Papadopoulos and Mr. Page, whom he also met with several times. He arranged a meeting with Mr. Papadopoulos in London to discuss a Mediterranean natural gas project, offering $3,000 for his time and a policy paper.

The F.B.I. also decided to send Ms. Turk to take part in the operation, people familiar with it said, and to pose as Mr. Halper’s assistant. For the F.B.I., placing such a sensitive undertaking in the hands of a trusted government investigator was essential.

British intelligence officials were also notified about the operation, the people familiar with the operation said, but it was unclear whether they provided assistance. A spokeswoman for the British government declined to comment.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed that British intelligence spied on his campaign, an accusation the British government has vigorously denied.

I suppose that if a candidate really was some sort of Russian tool, it would be good to know such a thing. But, as the article quotes Bill Barr as saying:

I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated.

“Adequately pedicated” is legalese for there had better be a really really good reason and really really good evidence that this is going on, before resorting to such extreme and suspect methods. And there has been zero indication that was true.

I wonder whether the Times is aware that their article makes Trump look better and better—and that it makes them look worse and worse.

Case in point—this article from nearly a year ago in the Times, entitled “With ‘Spygate,’ Trump Shows How He Uses Conspiracy Theories to Erode Trust”:

Last week, President Trump promoted new, unconfirmed accusations to suit his political narrative: that a “criminal deep state” element within Mr. Obama’s government planted a spy deep inside his presidential campaign to help his rival, Hillary Clinton, win — a scheme he branded “Spygate.” It was the latest indication that a president who has for decades trafficked in conspiracy theories has brought them from the fringes of public discourse to the Oval Office.

Now that he is president, Mr. Trump’s baseless stories of secret plots by powerful interests appear to be having a distinct effect. Among critics, they have fanned fears that he is eroding public trust in institutions, undermining the idea of objective truth and sowing widespread suspicions about the government and news media that mirror his own.

Students of Mr. Trump’s life and communication style argue that the idea of conspiracies is a vital part of his strategy to avoid accountability and punch back at detractors, real or perceived, including the news media.

“He’s the blame shifter in chief,” said Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer. “Conspiracies, by definition, are things that others do to you. You’re being duped; you’re being fooled; the world is laughing at us. It goes to this idea that you can’t believe anything that you read or see. He has sold us a whole way of accepting a narrative that has so many layers of unaccountable, unsubstantiated content that you can’t possibly peel it all back.”

The irony is so thick, with so many layers of unaccountable, unsubstantiated content in the Times, that you can’t possibly peel it all back.

Andrew C. McCarthy on the Mueller letter leak

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember as you read this recent article by Andrew C. McCarthy that McCarthy worked with Mueller for many years and once deeply respected him—that is, until the last year or so.

Here’s McCarthy on Mueller’s leaked letter:

The purportedly private letter to Barr, like Mueller’s purportedly confidential report, was patently meant for public consumption, and thus leaked to the Post late yesterday. The timing is transparently strategic: the leak drops a bomb as Barr was preparing for two days of what promises to be combative congressional hearings, starting this morning; it gives maximum media exposure to Mueller’s diva routine and its Democratic chorus, while the attorney general gets minimal time to respond to asinine cries of that he should be charged with perjury, held in contempt, and – of course – impeached.

The Post’s reporters say they were permitted to “review” the letter yesterday. This phrasing implies that they were not permitted to keep a copy – i.e., no fingerprints on this leak of a close-hold document. Keep that in mind next time you read one of those hagiographies about ramrod straight Bob Mueller who never plays these Washington games, no siree…

Barr and Mueller spoke by phone the day after Mueller sent his letter. If you wade through the first 13 paragraphs of the Post’s story, you finally find the bottom line:

“When Barr pressed Mueller on whether he thought Barr’s memo to Congress was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not but felt that the media coverage of it was misinterpreting the investigation, officials said.”

So even Mueller conceded, through gritted teeth, that Barr’s letter was accurate. The diva was just worried about the media coverage.

Please read the whole thing.

Barr’s testimony and public opinion

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t watch Barr’s testimony yesterday, but he was apparently great—but only to those predisposed to agree with him:

Mazie Hirono of Hawaii either completely trashed Barr or made a fool out of herself. Ted Cruz positively owned the Democrats. Kamala Harris, oddly, gutted Barr like a fish? I dunno. That’s what one website said…

If you only paid attention to media takeaways and social media reactions, you have no idea what happened in yesterday’s hearing. It’s almost as if, now follow me on this, but it’s almost as if nothing substantive actually happened yesterday.

Because it didn’t.

These hearings are a joke, moreso now than they’ve ever been. There is no point to these hearings because they give us no new information. Everything we know about the Mueller report, his letter to Barr, and the actual investigation into Donald Trump are things we know based solely on what’s been publicly released. We didn’t need this hearing.

So why have it? Because Congressional hearings are publicly-funded campaign ads. They give politicians a chance to show off their best material to the people who watch not to learn anything but to see someone get “owned.”

Indeed. That’s why some people refer to these things as “theater.”

I used to think—long long ago—that people could be persuaded by logic, and that when it was obvious to me that someone had the better hand in an argument, the same would be crystal clear to the majority of people listening. Ha!