Recently in Memoriam Category
"The problem with Granny D...is that she makes the rest of us look like such schlumps."-- Molly Ivins. R.I.P. campaign finance reform activist Doris "Granny D" Haddock, 1910-2010.
"'I thought the name was a horror,' he told The Press Enterprise of Riverside, Calif., in 2007. "Terrible." (Before perfecting the Pluto Platter in 1955, Mr. Morrison had called earlier incarnations of his disc the Flyin' Cake Pan, the Whirlo-Way and the Flyin-Saucer.)" And millions of dogs howled in lament: Walter Frederick Morrison, inventor of the Frisbee, 1920-2010. (By way of FmH and The Late Adopter.)
"[L]ong before Hollywood discovered the Texan, he cut a wide swath through the House, always playing the roguish ladies' man and macho militarist...[His] frequent, much more sober-styled partner was Democratic Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania powerhouse who chaired the defense subcommittee so important to CIA funding for the Afghan cause. And the fact that both have died now within days of each other punctuates the end of a major chapter for the House left behind."
Charlie Wilson, 1933-2010, and John Murtha, 1932-2010.
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." -- Howard Zinn, 1922-2010.
"It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to." -- J.D. Salinger, 1919-2010. [The Onion mourns.]
"You're not an actor if you're just a person that fits into a cute costume. You're a prop." -- Zelda Rubenstein, 1933-2010.
"Twice he was captured and escaped, once by back-flipping over a snow bank and running off into the woods before his guards could use their weapons. A third time, surrounded by the Gestapo at a maternity hospital in Oslo where he had set up a transmitter in a chimney, he shot his way to freedom with a pistol." Via a friend, Knut Haugland, WWII resistance fighter and last surviving member of the Kon-Tiki expedition, 1917-2010.
We may "play" Call of Duty nowadays, but this guy lived it. "He particularly objected to the word 'heroes' in the title. 'I never use that word about myself or my friends,' he told BBC4 Radio in 2003. "We just did a job." Referring to the glider crashes and the killing of the survivors, he added: 'Forty-one men were killed, and it could have been avoided. Because of the loss of life, you shouldn't glorify the story.'"
Update, and via several Twitterers: Also passing very recently, another unbelievable survivor of WWII: Tsutomu Yamaguchi, 1916-2010. "On August 6, 1945, he was about to leave the city of Hiroshima, where he had been working, when the first bomb exploded, killing 140,000 people. Injured and reeling from the horrors around him, he fled to his home -- Nagasaki, 180 miles to the west."
Crazy. He's like a real-life Pariah for the Atomic Age. "'I think it is a miracle,' he told The Times on the 60th anniversary of the bombings in 2005. 'But having been granted this miracle it is my responsibility to pass on the truth to the people of the world. For the past 60 years survivors have declared the horror of the atomic bomb, but I can see hardly any improvement in the situation.'"
Via @anildash, some sad news today: Brad Graham, one of the blogger old-school and an all-around friendly, funny guy, has apparently passed away. (1968-2010.)
I never met Brad in person, but we traded comments now and again and his sites -- first, The BradLands and later Must See HTTP -- could always be counted on for great pop culture commentary and sundry other quality links. Plus, he was always a very friendly and welcoming presence back in the early days, and he really helped everybody feel like they were part of a burgeoning online community. Farewell, Brad. You will be missed.
Update: The online wake is here.
"Shawn Levy, who directed Murphy in the 2003 hit 'Just Married,' said that, back then, 'so much about her fragility reminded me of a bird -- a fragile, pretty bird. She was really raw emotionally in life and in work.'" Brittany Murphy, 1977-2009.
"Van Toffler, the president of MTV Networks, said on Monday, 'Ken was a great guy. His personality really brought "Remote Control" to life, as well as a new style of programming for MTV. We were really flying by the seat of of our pants then, and Ken was the reason it worked.'" R.I.P. Ken Ober, 1957-2009. Well, that's surprising -- and depressing -- news.
"That integrity shone through in the roles he played. I can't ever remember, in all the productions he undertook, anyone having a bad word to say about him and he never had anything bad to say about anyone else either." Sgt. Howie (and TV's The Equalizer) finally had his appointment with the Wicker Man: R.I.P. Edward Woodward, 1930-2009.
"I thought of Jim not as my dopplegänger, exactly -- that would have been ridiculous. But we were the same age, came from similar backgrounds (his old man was a saloon keeper; mine, a cop), and had something of the same spoiled altar boy's worldview, and we both worshipped at the dual shrines of the Roundball and the Word."
In Slate, editor Gerald Howard remembers the late Jim Carroll, best known as author of The Basketball Diaries and the album Catholic Boy. "Tall, slim, athletic, pale, and spectral as many ex-junkies are, Jim was a vivid presence in any setting. He was a classic and now vanishing New York type: the smart (and smartass) Irish kid with style, street savvy, and whatever the Gaelic word for chutzpah is."
"Yes, we are all Americans. This is what we do. We reach the moon. We scale the heights. I know it. I've seen it. I've lived it. And we can do it again. There is a new wave of change all around us, and if we set our compass true, we will reach our destination -- not merely victory for our Party, but renewal for our nation." -- one year ago today.
Senator Ted Kennedy, 1932-2009. From the Immigration Act of 1965 to the health care reform battles of 2009, few Senators in our history have had the influence and reach of Sen. Kennedy. He was the brother that lived, and -- say what you will about his personal foibles (and the assholes on the right no doubt will revel in them) -- he spent a lifetime engaged in the struggle to make America a kinder, fairer, stronger, and wiser place. The Senate has lost one of its last, great liberals, and we are all the poorer for it.
That being said, "[f]or all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
"'For 10 years, I was a laugh,' he told CNN in an interview. '[But I] kept pounding at them and pounding at them saying hey, here's where it's at. Here's where tomorrow, this is it. You can drown out anybody with it. And you can make all these different sounds that you can't do with a regular guitar.'" Lester William Polfuss, a.k.a. Les Paul, 1915-2009. "In 1948, after being involved in a severe car accident, he asked the doctor to set his arm permanently in a guitar-playing position."
"Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." John Hughes, 1950-2009.
Update: "None of the films that he made subsequently had the same kind of personal feeling to me. They were funny, yes, wildly successful, to be sure, but I recognized very little of the John I knew in them, of his youthful, urgent, unmistakable vulnerability. It was like his heart had closed, or at least was no longer open for public view. A darker spin can be gleaned from the words John put into the mouth of Allison in 'The Breakfast Club': 'When you grow up ... your heart dies.'" By way of Listen Missy, Molly Ringwald remembers John Hughes in the NYT. An interesting companion piece to Alison Byrne Fields' pen pal blog entry making the rounds soon after the untimely news.
"'He was really a pioneer, demolishing the magnolia and mint juleps view of slavery," said Eric Foner, a professor of history at Columbia. 'And the Reconstruction book was in the same revisionist mode, sweeping away myths. Among serious history scholars, nobody is going to go back before Stampp.'" Kenneth Stampp, 1912-2009. (By way of Ted.)
"We all make mistakes. We know we make mistakes. I don't know any military commander, who is honest, who would say he has not made a mistake. There's a wonderful phrase: 'the fog of war.' What "the fog of war" means is: war is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily." -- Robert McNamara, 1916-2009
"What do I regret? Well, I regret that in our attempt to establish some standards, we didn't make them stick. We couldn't find a way to pass them on to another generation." -- Walter Cronkite, 1916-2009.
"'I was so incredibly lucky,' Malden once told The Times. 'I knew I wasn't a leading man. Take a look at this face.'" Karl Malden, nee Mladen Sekulovich, 1912-2009. "I'm a workaholic. I love every movie I've been in, even the bad ones, every TV series, every play, because I love to work. It's what keeps me going."
"Although this is an extremely difficult time for her family and friends, we take comfort in the beautiful times that we shared with Farrah over the years and the knowledge that her life brought joy to so many people around the world." Farrah Fawcett, 1947-2009.
Also leaving us of late, Ed McMahon, 1923-2009. "'Quit? Oh, I'll never quit,' he told Entertainment Weekly in 2005. 'This is what I do. If I'm in a wheelchair, I can still do radio. I tell everyone that there is only one way that I'm going to go. I'll be on TV, we'll be going to a commercial break, and I'll look dead into the camera and say, "They'll be back. I won't." And that will be it.'"
Update: "'Michael Jackson made culture accept a person of color,' the Rev. Al Sharpton said. 'To say an "icon" would only give these young people in Harlem a fraction of what he was. He was a historic figure that people will measure music and the industry by.'" Michael Jackson, 1958-2009.
"'You get so hard living here," he said in a gravelly, mournful voice. 'But pets open up that heart center. There is something about the unconditional love; they clean the blues off of you. 'That's their mission. That's why a lot of New Yorkers have pets.'" The NYT reports in on the passing of Pretty Boy, stray cat and late prince of the East Village.
"'Having gone through that disaster she was given extra years and an extra dose of vitality,' said Haas, who recalled escorting Dean to a Titanic society gala a few years ago." Millvina Dean, last known survivor of the Titanic, 1912-2009. "Dean's death fell on May 31, exactly 98 years after the Titanic was launched."
"I was able to sit at Lincoln's side and see how he thought and how he acted, and how he felt about what was going on around him. I felt the pressures that were on him. You can see what people were writing to him, how they were nudging him." Historian David Herbert Donald, 1920-2009. "'It is the most balanced of the biographies out there," Mr. Foner said in a telephone interview Monday. 'It is not a work of hero worship, nor does it have a prosecutorial brief. He presents Lincoln as a rather passive figure, not at all in charge of the forces raging around him, which is quite accurate.'"
"More than 60 years ago, I began the task of trying to write a new kind of Southern History. It would be broad in its reach, tolerant in its judgments of Southerners, and comprehensive in its inclusion of everyone who lived in the region,' he wrote....'Looking back, I can plead guilty of having provided only a sketch of the work I laid out for myself.'" John Hope Franklin, 1915-2009. "I think knowing one's history leads one to act in a more enlightened fashion. I can not imagine how knowing one's history would not urge one to be an activist."
"'As much as I like his work, I liked him 10 times better,' said Macomb-based author Tracy Knight. 'He had this playful relationship with the universe. He was just a pleasure to be around.'" By way of Blivet and Genehack, Philip José Farmer, 1918-2009.
James Whitmore, 1921-2009. "Although not always politically active, in 2007, Whitmore generated some publicity with his endorsement of Barack Obama for U.S. President. In January 2008, Whitmore appeared in television commercials for the First Freedom First campaign, which advocates preserving 'the separation of church and state' and protecting religious liberty."
"Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings." John Updike, 1932-2009.
"'Working with Ricardo was a joy,' Spelling, who died in 2006, wrote in 'Aaron Spelling: A Prime-Time Life,' his 1996 memoir. 'Ricardo made good scripts better and not-so-good scripts work. I don’t remember him ever doing any rewrites. He set a perfect example for the rest of the cast.'" Veteran stage and screen actor Ricardo Montalbán, 1920-2009.
"He will always be Captain Kirk's finest foe...Montalbán's magnetic, robust presence; that voice that sounded like a ride over rolling hills -- he made Khan Noonien Singh the worst kind of despot: the kind you're pretty sure you'd die for." In memoriam, EW's Marc Bernadin pens an appreciation of Montalbán's Khan.
"I must have individuality in everything I do. It's not easy to find it always. I question everything. I don't accept anything on face value.'" Patrick McGoohan, 1928-2009. "Mel [Gibson] will always be Mad Max, and me, I will always be a Number."
"He was awake one moment, and in the next breath, he was gone." Pat Hingle, a veteran character actor probably best known as Commissioner Gordon in Tim Burton's Batman, 1924-2009.
"I always let the other fellow have my way." Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-RI), 1918-2009. "[H]e was best known for his sponsorship of the 1972 program that has helped 54 million low-income and moderate-income students attend college. He also sponsored the legislation that founded the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities."
"It's impossible to exaggerate how high the stakes were in Watergate...From the start, it was clear that senior administration officials were up to their necks in this mess and would stop at nothing to sabotage our investigation...What we needed was a 'Lone Ranger' who could bypass the administration's hand-picked FBI director and Justice Department leadership and derail the White House cover-up." W. Mark Felt, a.k.a. Deep Throat, 1913-2008.
"My mother truly acknowledged and appreciated the fact that 'Star Trek' fans played a vital role in keeping the Roddenberry dream alive for the past 42 years. It was her love for the fans, and their love in return, that kept her going for so long after my father passed away." Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, 1932-2008.
"I think that she was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society." (The notorious) Bettie Page, 1923-2008.
For an appreciation of Page, see TIME's Richard Corliss, who today delivers a tribute as gushing and fanboy in its own way as Peter Jackson's moving remembrance of Forry Ackerman earlier this week. (1916-2008.) "But what everyone remembers about Bettie, aside from her trademark bangs, is her smile. Guileless and guiltless, it conveyed an Edenic sensuality. To her fans and her official detractors, who might have agreed that sex was dirty, Bettie's giddy energy said, 'Heck, no, it's fun!'"
"With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, 'Studs, you're an optimist.' I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what's the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven."
Popular historian, talk show host, and chronicler of the American story Studs Terkel, 1912-2008. "I've always felt, in all my books, that there's a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence -- providing they have the facts, providing they have the information."
Update: "She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility. She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances. She was proud of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and left this world with the knowledge that her impact on all of us was meaningful and enduring. Our debt to her is beyond measure." This evening brings sad news of the passing of a lady with whom Terkel could've spent many joyous hours, I'm sure: Madelyn Dunham, grandmother to Barack Obama, 1922-2008.
"'I picture my epitaph,' he once said. 'Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown." Racer, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and out-and-out movie star (blue eyes or brown) Paul Newman, 1925-2008.
"DFW was a favorite of mine, and often I turned to his brilliant work to recalibrate my sense of challenging writing: the intelligent, the unexpected, the hilarious, the exasperating. Wallace’s stuff didn’t always work, but it was the real stuff." To what base uses we may return, Horatio: As broke during my SC sojourn, Infinite Jest author David Foster Wallace chose, for whatever reason, to take arms against his sea of troubles this past week, and by opposing end them. (1962-2008.) I can't say his voice ever really spoke to me -- in fact, much like the output of Paul Thomas Anderson in the film world, I often found his essays wrongheaded and his sprawling, self-referential style actively irritating -- but that doesn't mean his loss isn't tragic and depressing, and all the more so for being avoidable.
Ed Champion, much more of a DFW fan than I, has compiled a worthy list of authors' remembrances of the man and his work.
"I don't think there will ever be another career quite like mine. It can't be duplicated. I came into the field of movie promos just as it was being born. I had the opportunity to work in virtually every style, mostly reading copy that I had written or co-written. Many of the younger narrators of today grew up hearing me. And right or wrong, it became a sort of template for how trailers should be read." Don LaFontaine, 1940-2008.
"'He was a hard man and he made no apologies for that,' Childress said. 'When it came to me and my mother and my daughter he was the softest.'" Bernie Mac, 1957-2008.
And, if that surprising bit of news wasn't sad enough, Isaac Hayes, 1942-2008. "They're standing on our shoulders. Some of them don't realize [it] because they sample me so much."
"Not everything assumes a name. Some things lead beyond words. Art inflames even a frozen, darkened soul to a high spiritual experience. Through art we are sometimes visited - dimly, briefly - by revelations such as cannot be produced by rational thinking." Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1918-2008.
Our nation's been waiting with bated breath for years. But, at long last -- Happy B-day, America! -- Sen. Jesse Helms has shuffled off this mortal coil. (1921-2008) "Ed Feulner, president of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, hailed Helms as 'one of the most consequential figures of the 20th century.' 'Along with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, he helped establish the conservative movement and became a powerful voice for free markets and free people,' Feulner wrote."
Um, yeah. As with Strom's passing in 2003, it's worth rereading Hunter S. Thompson's Nixon obit right about now. "I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum. Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man...Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place."
Same goes for Helms and the Senate. If, God forbid, the media roll over as they did at Helms' retirement and try to "Russert-ize" Helms now that the racist, homophobic bastard is finally gone, remember this: He was the worst kind of racebaiting scum and the worst kind of hypocrite. He camouflaged his divisive hatred by slathering it in fake, aw-shucks populism. And he spent his career serving the dictates of the wealthiest and screwing over the good people of North Carolina, white and black. Our nation is a brighter place with his passing. [Helms photo via here.]
"'He ran at full throttle, in both work and play, and was a man of kindness, wisdom and great humor,' Cameron said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. 'He was a kid that never grew up, whose dreams were writ large on the screens of the world. I am proud to have been his friend, and I will miss him very deeply.'" Stan Winston, 1946-2008.
“'Lawrence Spivak, who founded ‘Meet the Press,’ told me before he died that the job of the host is to learn as much as you can about your guest’s positions and take the other side,' he said in a 2007 interview with Time magazine. 'And to do that in a persistent and civil way. And that’s what I try to do every Sunday.'" Moynihan man turned pundit-king Tim Russert, 1950-2008. Now, that's a surprise. Russert was a guy I actually met a few times during my Carville days (in fact, I once inadvertently hit him with a whiffleball bat...long story), and he always seemed a genuine, amiable sort, particularly by DC talking-head standards. Obviously, his unique brand of political interrogation left something to be desired in many circles. Still, he was taken relatively young (and before his father), which is always tragic. Rest in peace, Russ.
"First, I have to satisfy the needs of popular art. Second, I don't want to be intellectually insulting. I want to raise issues and questions that are sufficiently intriguing -- so people I care about will like them, too." Sydney Pollack, 1934-2008.
Robert Asprin, author of the Myth Adventures and Phule's Company series and a staple of my early fantasy reading, 1946-2008. (By way of Return of the Reluctant.)
"'The world is a tough place,' he said with a chuckle. 'You're never going to get out of it alive.'" A damn dirty ape no longer, Charlton Heston, 1923-2008. (Between this and Buckley, it's been a bad year so far for the patriarchs of conservatism.)
Update: Hmmm. After reading up on him further, it seems Heston (nee John Carter!) was a late-comer to the conservative movement, and even to the NRA philosophy: "In his earlier years, Heston was a liberal Democrat, campaigning for Presidential candidates Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and John F. Kennedy in 1960. A civil rights activist, he accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights march held in Washington, D.C. in 1963...In 1968, following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Heston...called for public support for President Johnson's Gun Control Act of 1968...He was also an opponent of McCarthyism and racial segregation, which he saw as only helping the cause of Communism worldwide. He opposed the Vietnam War and considered Richard Nixon a disaster for America. He turned down John Wayne's offer of a role in The Alamo, because the film was a right-wing allegory for the Cold War."
"I know I've made kind of a half-assed career out of violence, but I abhor violence. I am an ardent supporter of gun control. It seems incredible to me that we are the only civilized nation that does not put some effective control on guns." Richard Widmark, 1914-2008.
"Sir John Gielgud admired Mr. Scofield’s stillness and sense of mystery, describing him as 'a sphinx with a secret.' Peter Hall, who directed Mr. Scofield’s acclaimed Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s 'Amadeus' in London in 1979, said that as a young man Mr. Scofield brought 'a sulfurous passion, an entirely new note' to the stage, and that there was always a tremendous tension beneath the surface, 'like a volcano erupting.'" Paul Scofield, 1922-2008.
"He was a really beautiful man, a lot of fun to be with. He was a storyteller in a classic British David Lean tradition." Anthony Minghella, 1954-2008. I can't say I was a huge fan of his work, although I'll stand by the first half of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Still, he aimed high, and had a keen eye for the haunting shot. Condolences to his friends and family.
"If National Review is superfluous, it is so for very different reasons: It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." A farewell to one of the left's most formidable and forthright adversaries, who began his career as a nonconformist and, from the war on drugs to Dubya and the neocons, relished bucking the trend until his final days. I hardly ever agreed with the man, and, indeed, found many of his strongly-held views repellent. But, particularly as far as arch-conservatives go, I did have a good bit of respect for him. William F. Buckley, 1925-2008.
"It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a Member of Congress. I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country." Rep. Tom Lantos, 1928-2008.
Heath Ledger, 1979-2008. What the hell? My brother called to tell me the news right after I stepped out to walk Berk, and I couldn't believe it.
It is a sad day.
Update: There're now conflicting rumors on whether the cause of death was an accidental sleeping pill overdose or -- as with Jim Henson -- pneumonia, so we'll probably have to wait a few days at least to know exactly what happened here. In the meantime, some reviews from the archives: The Brothers Grimm, Brokeback Mountain, and my favorite film of 2007, I'm Not There.
As for unfinished work by Ledger, his work on The Dark Knight was apparently complete, while Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus was still in the middle of shooting.
I don't know what else to say. I usually have some perspective about untimely celebrity deaths, but, for whatever reason, Ledger's surprising passing has been more depressing than most.
"Sir Ed described himself as an average New Zealander with modest abilities. In reality, he was a colossus. He was an heroic figure who not only 'knocked off' Everest but lived a life of determination, humility, and generosity." Sir Edmund Hillary, 1919-2008.
Benazir Bhutto, 1953-2007. It seems all too many christmases of late has been marked by grim news on the global front, from the devastating tsunami to the botched Saddam execution. This year, obviously, it was the assassination of the former prime minister who, while no angel, nevertheless embodied for many hopes for a stable, democratic Pakistan. Her murder -- in the military stronghold of Rawalpindi, no less -- further destabilizes a nuclear-armed nation already teetering on the brink, and roils significantly the Dubya administration's fatally flawed approach to the country. Let's just hope Bhutto isn't remembered as the next Franz Ferdinand.
"'They started out watching me bust my ass, and I became part of their lives,' Knievel said. 'People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner." Robert "Evel" Knievel, 1938-2007.
"Later the young soldier, by now out of uniform, approached me on the street and introduced himself as a writer. His name, he said, was Mailer. He had just seen my play ['All My Sons']. 'I could write a play like that,' he said. It was so obtusely flat an assertion that I began to laugh, but he was completely serious and indeed would make intermittent attempts to write plays in the many years that lay ahead." Norman Mailer, 1923-2007. To be honest, Mailer's writing never much appealed to me, and his public persona less so. But, if nothing else, he proved how far sheer, undiluted ambition can take you in this world. (Remembrances.)
Pilot of the Enola Gay, Paul Tibbets, 1915-2007. "He never apologized for unleashing the devastating explosive force and insidious nuclear radiation that leveled more than two-thirds of the buildings in Hiroshima and killed at least 80,000 people, and perhaps as many as 127,000...'I never lost a night's sleep over it,' Tibbets said...He said he wasn't proud of all the death and destruction and Hiroshima, but he was proud that he did his job well. 'I didn't start the war,' he said. 'I didn't do anything except what I was told to do; what I had sworn to do, years before, which is "Fight for the defense of this country."'"
Charles Francis Murphy, 1923-2007. Yesterday (which was also my mom and dad's 40th wedding anniversary, and the eighth anniversary of my own, briefer nuptials), my grandfather passed away at the age of 84. A former miner and longtime veteran of the US Geological Survey, for whom he worked as a cartographer for the bulk of his career, Grandpa spent his life making maps and friends all over this great big nation, before settling down in Lovettsville, VA, and later, New Bern, NC. Father of six children and grandfather to eighteen, he and my grandmother enjoyed their 63rd wedding anniversary this past February. He will be missed.
"I shall remember this hour of peace: the strawberries, the bowl of milk, your faces in the dusk. Mikael asleep, Jof with his lute. I shall remember our words, and shall bear this memory between my hands as carefully as a bowl of fresh milk. And this will be a sign, and a great content." Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007.
"Ugliness is so grim. A little beauty, something that is lovely, I think, can help create harmony which will lessen tensions." Lady Bird Johnson, 1912-2007. (Reminiscences.)
"Solidarity is not discovered by reflection, but created. It is created by increasing our senstivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people. Such increased sensitivity makes it more difficult to marginialize people different from ourselves by thinking, 'They do not feel as WE would,' or 'There must always be suffering, so why not let THEM suffer?'" Richard Rorty, 1931-2007.
Jerry Falwell, 1933-2007. My thoughts on this are basically the same as on Strom's passing in 2003, and once again I'd refer everyone to Hunter S. Thompson's Nixon obit. Of course, it's bad form to speak ill of the dead...still, I'm sure countless people and pets around the world passed yesterday who are more deserving of eulogy than this contemptible, hypocritical bigot. Let's just hope, for Falwell's sake, that God is more compassionate and forgiving than he ever was.
"If you get information that is going to jar the Government of the United States and jar the people of the United States, that's what you get paid for. Don't expect to be popular. The better you do the job, the more likely you are to go against conventional wisdom, and people don't like to hear bad news. So you are not going to be popular." David Halberstam, 1934-2007.
"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt." Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007.
A fond farewell to Calvert DeForest, a.k.a. Larry "Bud" Melman, 1921-2007.
Schlesinger isn't the only noted historian we've lost of late. A belated farewell to Winthrop Jordan, 1931-2007. (Via Cliopatria.)
"History is a doomed enterprise that we happily pursue because of the thrill of the hunt, because exploring the past is such fun, because of the intellectual challenges involved, because a nation needs to know its own history. Or so we historians insist. Because in the end, a nation's history must be both the guide and the domain not so much of its historians as its citizens." Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 1917-2007. After Galbraith passed on last year, this seemed like it would soon be in the cards. Still, it's a sad day. Update: Via Ted, David Greenberg weighs in on Schlesinger's passing.
Anna Nicole Smith died after what looks to be a casino bender, and, just in time for Valentine's Day, Houston has a problem with crazy-jilted astronauts. I have very little to say about either of these stories, but since they feverishly consumed most of this week's news cycles, here they are.
"She believed in democratic politics and hated it when people didn't exercise their rights to vote and protest. She believed in government and hated it when people ran it down." Molly Ivins, 1944-2007. "Her columns and essays -- and for that matter her wonderful, low, smoky voice, if you were lucky enough to hear her talk -- used her regional sensibility and experience to illuminate the wider world. She talked Texas but her subject was the universe."
"As President, my primary concern must always be the greatest good of all the people of the United States whose servant I am. As a man, my first consideration is to be true to my own convictions and my own conscience. My conscience tells me clearly and certainly that I cannot prolong the bad dreams that continue to reopen a chapter that is closed. My conscience tells me that only I, as President, have the constitutional power to firmly shut and seal this book." Gerald Ford, 1913-2006.
"I checked up on the late great J.B., His death is said on national TV..." Alas, James Brown is dead, 1933-2006.
"As George Shultz liked to say: 'Everybody loves to argue with Milton, particularly when he isn't there.'" Milton Friedman, 1912-2006.
"He was this gentle giant," said Bob Schieffer, CBS's chief Washington correspondent and a close friend..."He was a great role model." Ed Bradley, 1941-2006.
With Larry sated and Rose wilted, I suppose the Knicks are as ready as they can be for the 2006-2007 NBA season, which starts tonight on TNT (although the Knicks don't play until Wednesday.) Hopefully, it won't get too ugly for New York too early. (Also, before embarking on basketball's future, a moment to honor its past: R.I.P. Red Auerbach 1917-2006.)
Alas, today would've been Jim Henson's 70th birthday. In honor of the occasion, my sis-in-law sent along a scan of this sad (and arguably deeply disturbing) comic, which originally appeared in Cerebus back in the day (and which I used to have on a T-shirt, before it disintegrated.) Happy birthday, JH.
"We've been told that the interests of the South and the Southwest are not the same interests as the North and the Northeast. They pit one group against the other. They've divided this country and in our isolation we think government isn't gonna help us, and we're alone in our feelings. We feel forgotten. Well, the fact is that we are not an isolated piece of their puzzle. We are one nation. We are the United States of America." Governor Ann Richards, 1933-2006.
Barnard Hughes, 1915-2006. A veteran stage actor, Hughes is probably best known in my generation as Grandpa in The Lost Boys ("One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach, all the damn vampires"), although I remember having a certain fondness for the goofy Mr. Merlin as a little kid, a short-lived show that somehow made it to Belgian TV.
And if you survive till two thousand and five, I hope you're exceedingly thin. For if you are stout you will have to breathe out while the people around you breathe in...Shine on, Syd Barrett, 1946-2006.
In a surprising coda to the Enron trial, company founder, presidential confidant, and recently convicted felon Ken Lay died this morning of a heart attack. His dubious legacy: "Enron's bankruptcy filing cost thousands of workers their jobs, spooked investors into doubting the integrity of the stock market and spurred lawmakers to enact the most significant changes to corporate practices in more than 70 years."
No Jack Kennedy, but a statesman all the same. R.I.P. Lloyd Bentsen 1921-2006.
"In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong." R.I.P. John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006), a giant of 20th century economics and politics, and the wry conscience of an affluent society.
"In the weeks to come, much will be written about her central role in shaping our ideas -- and our ideals -- of urbanism. The praise will be deserved. During the 1960s, a time when the reigning orthodoxy was urban renewal, which generally took the form of urban demolition, she championed a more evolutionary, humanist, and small-scale approach to city planning." Slate's Witold Rybczynski ruminates on the legacy of Jane Jacobs, who passed away yesterday (1916-2006.)
"So, what do you do when you find out your effervescent childhood hero is a violent, potentially evil man? You can repudiate him, forgive him, or try to compartmentalize and love the ballplayer while deploring his actions." Friend, colleague, and baseball fanatic Jeremy Derfner remembers Kirby Puckett for Slate.
On the day after the untimely death of Kirby Puckett, Sports Illustrated publishes a devastating case against Barry Bonds, chronic steroid user. Not a huge surprise, of course, but sad nonetheless.
Don Knotts, 1924-2006 and Darren McGavin, 1922-2006. Update: Substantiating the old adage, Dennis Weaver, 1925-2006.
R.I.P. Phil Brown 1916-2006, who withstood the blacklist and is best remembered as Uncle Owen. (He joins Aunt Beru, who passed in 2000 (9/14).) And, also in unhappy news, farewell to the Bluths, who've gone the way of all good and tragically misunderstood television families...for now.
"If I am right, the problem that has no name stirring in the minds of so many American women today is not a matter of loss of femininity or too much education, or the demands of domesticity. It is far more important than anyone recognizes...It may well be the key to our future as a nation and a culture." Betty Friedan, 1921-2006.
"Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated." Coretta Scott King, 1927-2006. Said Rep. John Lewis today, ""She was the glue that held the civil rights movement together."
In related news, a site is chosen for the National Museum of African American History and Culture (at 14th and Constitution NW, near the Washington Monument.) As I argued before, some museum along such lines on our nation's Mall is long overdue.
In remembrance of STS-51L, a.k.a. the Challenger accident, twenty years ago today.
Nothing if not textbook and by-the-numbers (Coach Haskell would be proud), Disney's Glory Road -- the story of the 1966 NCAA Champion Texas Western Miners, the first basketball team in tournament history to feature five black starters -- still makes for a decent genre matinee. It's not a movie that'll light the world on fire by any means, but it hits its beats decently, and benefits from amiable performances from Josh Lucas and Emily Deschanel right on down the bench. I wish the movie had stayed more with the historical game plan it marked out in the opening credits -- and that the basketball scenes were more engrossing -- but, all in all, Glory Road is a journeyman sports pic.
A synopsis here is probably overkill, suffice to say that a well-meaning disciplinarian coach (Josh Lucas) rides into El Paso, circa 1965, to try to mold a championship basketball team out of a triracial group of college athletes. Do these youngsters overcome their cultural differences, learn there's a method to Coach's madness, and become a Team? Do they play well enough to get to the Big Dance? Well, I'll leave that for you to discover. The main -- ok, the only -- thing that differentiates Glory Road from its many predecessors is its period flavor. These players don't just have to worry about the usual assortment of college problems: They're also caught up in the middle of the civil rights revolution -- and the white backlash -- across the South, and have to contend with brutal acts of racism off the court as well as the usual opposing teams. George Will recently questioned whether this team was as history-making as it's made out to be here. Well, ok, but, in a way, that's beside the point. By bringing race and the civil rights struggle to the fore here, Glory Road acts as a corrective to the main flaw in what's otherwise a better basketball film, Hoosiers. As Spike Lee points out in Best Seat in the House, it's hard to watch that film, particularly its final game, and not feel at times that its an uncomfortably white basketball flick.
Speaking of Spike Lee's book, it also kinda ruined some of Glory Road for me. Therein, Lee (pre-He Got Game) spends a chapter calling out ridiculous basketball scenes in movies -- watching unathletic actors dunk on 6-foot rims, etc. And, while the rims look the right height in Glory Road, I have to admit, none of the basketball scenes are all that engaging. They're cut too close, there's barely a sense of plays developing, and very few shots seem to leave the actors' hands to go into the basket. (For that matter, you don't really get a sense of what various players' strengths or weaknesses are here, other than that Bobby Joe Hill (Derek Luke) has a nice handle and Nevil Shed (Al Shearer) has a tendency to disappear in the paint. What's more, Coach's advice throughout basically can be summed up as "You can do it!" -- Not a lot of play-calling going on.) Still, for what it is -- an uplifting vignette of sports history -- Glory Road is solid enough. Formulaic, sure, but no harm, no foul.
"So, Mr. Orange, you're tellin' me this very good friend of mine, who did four years for my father, who in four years never made a deal, no matter what they dangled in front of him, you're telling me that now, that now this man is free, and we're making good on our commitment to him, he's just gonna decide, out of the f**king blue, to rip us off? Why don't you tell me what really happened?" R.I.P. Chris Penn 1965-2006. (Salon reposted an appreciation of Penn by Cintra Wilson here.)
"Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
- Dr. Martin Luther King (1929-1968)
R.I.P. John Spencer 1946-2005, a quality character actor best known as Leo McGarry of The West Wing.
"My opponent doesn't know what it is to lose. I do. And I'll welcome the support of voters who do, too. I'll take the losers. I'll take the debtors. I'll take those who've lost in love, or baseball, or in business. I'll take the Milwaukee Braves." R.I.P. Sen. William Proxmire 1915-2005.
From the archives and in honor of Armistice/Remembrance/Veterans Day, Aftermath.
R.I.P. William Hootkin 1948-2005, a.k.a. Jek Porkins, Red Six. Between he and Michael "Ozzel" Sheard, it's been a bad couple of months for Star Wars role players. Ken Colley, Richard Le Parmentier, John Hollis, Julian Glover, Denis Lawson, and John Ratzenberger: Take your vitamins!
"Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others."
R.I.P Rosa Parks 1913-2005.
Breaking News: Segregationist, federalist, kingmaker, lousy historian, fashion maven, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist has died. Can't say I'm looking forward to the Dubya gang getting to pick a new Chief Justice. Nope, not at all. Update: Dahlia Lithwick weighs in, and the nomination calculus begins anew. Update 2: It's Roberts for Chief.
I didn't post here on the official anniversaries, but nevertheless: a moment of silence for the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, sixty years ago this week.
R.I.P. James "Scotty" Doohan 1920-2005. From the beaches at Normandy to the Enterprise engine room, he was a good man in a pinch.
"The academy never wholly embraced Foote (who, for his part, never considered himself a professional historian or a military expert). Some historians complained that Foote didn't pay enough attention to the political and economic factors behind the war. Others were offended that he'd dare to write history without footnotes. Looking back, was it merely a case of Northern empiricism scorning Southern charm?" New Yorker editor Field Maloney assesses the historical contribution of -- and controversy over -- the late Shelby Foote.
"That he was born is just one of the many undeniable facts about the life of the late Douglas Adams --author, humorist, raconteur, speaker, and thinker (although it should be noted that, on at least one parallel Earth, Mr. Adams was born a spring-toed lemur with a predilection for grassy fields and the works of Byron -- a poetic lemur whose work was not terribly springy)." With two days to go until Hitchhiker's -- you have picked out a towel by now, right? -- IGN assembles a worthy cast of Adamsian roustabouts -- including Terry Jones, Neil Gaiman, Michael Nesmith, and Stephen Fry -- to offer their remembrances. (Unfortunately, Graham Chapman could not be reached for comment.)
"We believe that Marla Ruzicka was an inspiration, that her heart was full of grace, and that she was not only a servant of those in the global village who need our help the most, but of a soul generated by love." Citing a 1968 call to service by Dr. King, The Spencerian offers an eloquent eulogy for Marla Ruzicka, the young activist tragically killed by an Iraqi suicide bomber last week.
Well, you may have missed it after all the hoopla surrounding the recent deaths of comedian Mitch Hedberg (who's responsible for the only really funny experience I've ever had in a comedy club) and civil liberties pioneer Fred Korematsu, but apparently Pope John Paul II was called up to the Head Office over the weekend. Since it's not being reported anywhere, really, I thought I should at least mention it.
At any rate, now the search for a successor begins in earnest, one that might well have considerable ramifications for US politics (although, unfortunately, a progressive pope seems unlikely.) Well, just don't put the aardvark in charge, and let's keep Lord Papal away from the chair, shall we?
R.I.P. George Kennan 1904-2005. The nation has lost one of its senior diplomatic statesmen, at a moment when men and women of his wisdom, judgment, and foreign policy experience are needed in the public arena more than ever. He will be missed.
Mark over at Nofeblog has collected some of the more compelling eulogies of Hunter S. Thompson, including ones by cartoonist Ralph Steadman and colleagues Tom Wolfe and David Halberstam.
"It's time for you and me to stop sitting in this country, letting some cracker senators, Northern crackers and Southern crackers, sit there in Washington, D.C., and come to a conclusion in their mind that you and I are supposed to have civil rights. There's no white man going to tell me anything about my rights. Brothers and sisters, always remember, if it doesn't take senators and congressmen and presidential proclamations to give freedom to the white man, it is not necessary for legislation or proclamation or Supreme Court decisions to give freedom to the black man." Along with the world taking stock of Hunter's sad fate, yesterday was also tragic and memorable for being the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X. (In recognition of the occasion, a special edition of Spike Lee's underrated biopic will be released today on DVD.)
"And that, I think, was the handle---that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting---on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark---the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
R.I.P. Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005. Oh, no...this is terrible news. Yes, his writing had been inconsistent in recent years, but Thompson at his take-no-prisoners best was a brilliant, lacerating voice that pierced through the platitudes and hypocrisy of so much of this world. This final succumbing to the Fear and Loathing, especially at this dark political hour when we need him most, is too, too tragic.
I had several links to catch up on after my trip, but frankly right now my heart isn't in it. Godspeed, HST.
Unbossed and unbought to the end, R.I.P. Shirley Chisholm 1924-2005.
Hello all. I just received word that my aunt Joan passed away this morning after a long struggle with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. She was a warm, funny, and brave individual and I miss her bunches already.
At any rate, I'm flying home to be with my family and attend the services, so updates here will be infrequent to nonexistent over the next couple of days. Have a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving. Update: As of now (Tuesday night), I'm back in NYC...thanks much for the condolences sent over e-mail and in the comments. They were much appreciated.
R.I.P. ODB 1969-2004, definitely the strangest of the Wu.
R.I.P. John Peel 1939-2004...He's signed off for the last time, and the music world is smaller without him.
"When I was born, the doctor came into the waiting room and said to my father, "I'm sorry. We did everything we could, but he pulled through." Pull through he did...alas, until today. R.I.P. Rodney Dangerfield 1921-2004.
Many condolences to the family and friends of Aaron Hawkins, a.k.a. Uppity Negro, who tragically took his own life sometime last week. While his site wasn't in my daily blogroll, I eventually found myself there a number of times over the years, and his posts and commentary were consistently funny, passionate, and well-written. Aaron was an inspired individual, and his loss is tragic. (Discovered on All About George.)
"I become irritated or disgusted only when anyone attempts to enlist these now voiceless dead for their own purposes. Respectful silence would be a far better response." So writes Slate's gone-to-seed Dubya apologist Christopher Hitchens about the 1000 dead soldiers in Iraq. Would that the victims of 9/11 three years ago today were given the same courtesy. R.I.P. [0, 1, 2]
"What happens to your online self when you die?" By way of LinkMachineGo, City Paper delves into Ghosts in the Machine.
So...you might've missed this little story in all the D-Day hullabaloo, but apparently former President Ronald Reagan died. Due to my cable issues, I've thankfully missed much of the canonization and hagiography of the past few days, although I'm sure the GOP will repeat it all at their upcoming convention anyway.
I know it's bad form to speak ill of the recently deceased, so I'll let others handle straightening the record about Ronnie's not-so-stellar presidency. But, given all the revisionist history out and about at the moment, I do think this is a good time to consider the thesis of Reagan's America by Garry Wills:
Much of Garry Wills's argument in Reagan's America can be encapsulated by George Costanza's advice to Jerry Seinfeld, prior to Jerry's being polygraphed about his Melrose Place viewing habits: "It's not a lie if you believe it." Over and over again, Wills scrutinizes the tales and myths told by Reagan about himself in his private speeches, public addresses, and autobiography, and finds them to be embellished, exaggerated, and - more often than not - patently false. And therein lies his uncanny appeal for so many people: Reagan's myths are America's myths...As Wills puts it, "the truth about [America's] actual behavior, whether on the old frontier or the new, is as threatening to our sense of identity as the terrorist himself." (452) And because Reagan believes so thoroughly in his own American myths, many Americans could join him in believing them as well...[Wills writes,] "Visiting Reaganland is very much like taking children to Disneyland...It is a safe past, with no sharp edges to stumble against. The more visits one makes to such a past, the better is one immunized against any troubling cursions of a real [American past.] If capitalist 'conservatism' canoot be rooted in the real past it works to obliterate, then it will invent a deracinating past, a nostalgia for the new, a substitute history to lull us in the time machine that travels on no roads, reaching goals no one could plan." (459-460)
In sum, "Reagan gives our history the continuity of a celluloid Mobius strip. We rides its curves backwards and forwards at the same time, and he is always there." (440) Put differently, the appeal of Ronald Reagan for so many is that he offers us a simulacrum of American history that is both appealingly mythic and appallingly untrue.
Well, at the very least, the effusive eulogizing going on right now may help topple barriers to stem-cell research. And, no matter what one's political persuasion, I think we can all agree that helping to eliminate scourges like Alzheimer's Disease would make a wonderful asset to Ronald Reagan's legacy.
"People of Western Europe: A landing was made this morning on the coast of France by troops of the Allied Expeditionary Force. This landing is part of the concerted United Nations' plan for the liberation of Europe, made in conjunction with our great Russian allies ...I call upon all who love freedom to stand with us." - Dwight Eisenhower
Well, between Tenet's resignation and Reagan's end, my cable modem picked an eventful few days to give up on me. More to come next week, after the Time Warner technicians have ascertained and corrected the problem.
"Politically outspoken against Republicans, he joked that although he hoped his funeral would be attended by far-flung dignitaries that his friends should bar President Bush and Vice President Cheney from entrance 'because everyone knew how much I hated them.'" R.I.P. Tony Randall 1920-2004. He was one of those guys who seemed like he'd be around forever. Man, that's just depressing.
"As the sword was the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first to be laid aside when those liberties are firmly established." - George Washington
"The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." - Abraham Lincoln
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
- Dr. Martin Luther King (1929-1968)
"For in the final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal."
"'Til things are brighter, I'm the man in black." R.I.P. Johnny Cash 1932-2003.
(What with Warren Zevon and John Ritter too, it's been another terrible week for entertainers.)
Well, it finally happened - Strom Thurmond died. I'm reminded of Hunter Thompson's Nixon post-mortem. Never has a man more undeserving held sway over a state so long. Lest anyone forget what Strom stood for in these days of eulogy, the guy was a racist through and through - he still holds the filibuster record for his attempt to prevent civil rights. With his shadow finally gone, South Carolina can name a road or two after him and then embrace the future.
This Week is off the air, Atticus has left the courtroom, Ahab has gone down with the ship, and the guns of Navarone have fallen silent. Rest in Peace David Brinkley (1920-2003), one of television's pioneering newsmen, and many condolences to his family. The same goes out to the family and friends of Gregory Peck (1915-2003), one of the big screen's enduring heroes. They will both be missed.
Oh no. This is horrible news. Wellstone was the progressive lion of the Senate. He's going to be missed in so many ways. And, while it seems utterly rude to consider politics at this moment of personal tragedy, lest anyone else out there was at first imagining a Jeanne Carnahan scenario to save the contested Senate seat, his wife and daughter are also among the deceased. Will Governor Ventura appoint someone to the seat? Ted Mondale or Skip Humphrey? Whomever it is, I'm positive they won't fill Wellstone's shoes.
Paul Wellstone was one of the last champions of the little guy, fighting daily for campaign finance reform, corporate accountability, universal health care, and a cleaner, safer environment. When the Democrats were falling over each other to prostrate themselves before Gore, Wellstone broke ranks to support Bill Bradley. When all too many of his Democratic colleagues in Congress voted to cede their constitutionally-mandated authority to debate and declare war, Wellstone voted no to Dubya's Johnson-esque power grab. In sum, Wellstone had in surplus those characteristics that are in such short supply in today's Capitol -- vision, compassion, and above all, integrity. In a sea of mealy-mouthed, equivocating liberals, he was a bold, fighting progressive.
And he is struck down in his prime. Meanwhile, Jesse "Race-baiting" Helms and Strom "Dixiecrat" Thurmond just go on and on and on. Sometimes the world seems so goddamn unfair I just can't wrap my mind around it.
