Whither Urbanity?

Moderator John Daly
Dorothy Kilgallen,
Fred Allen, Arlene Francis,
Bennett Cerf

I've been binge-watching an old television game show from the 1950s-1970s, "What's My Line." It's the cream of the crop of those old panel-type shows in which well-known celebrities try to guess something — in this case, the unusual line of work of a contestant (decorously called a "challenger.")

The master of ceremonies of the Sunday night program was John Daly, who on weeknights on another network (ABC, not CBS) was the anchorman of the nightly news. The panelists, seated left to right, were usually:

• Dorothy Kilgallen, who wrote the "Voice of Broadway" column for William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal-American
• Fred Allen, whose mordant-yet-gentle wit had been the raison d'être of the popular "Allen's Alley" program, the top-rated radio show of 1946-47
• Arlene Francis, a pioneer for women on television, who from 1954-57 was host and editor-in-chief of "Home," NBC's hour-long daytime magazine program
• Bennett Cerf, whose Random House publishing firm published such writers as William Faulkner, John O'Hara, Eugene O'Neill, James Michener, Truman Capote, Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, and many others.

Each challenger in turn was called by Mr. Daly to "come in and sign in, please." He or she did so on a small chalkboard, then walked by the panel shaking hands with each panelist in turn. If the challenger was female, Mr. Cerf and Mr. Allen would rise to shake hands, at which point you could easily see the men were wearing tuxedos. (The women panelists would dress as for a fancy cocktail party.) Once seated next to Mr. Daly, the challenger would field yes-or-no questions from the panelists concerning his or her occupation or profession. Each "no" answer would earn the challenger the vast sum of $5. If the total mounted to $50, the challenger would have stumped the panel, and the game was over. But the panel maintained a .750 batting average over the course of time, guessing the line of work correctly 3 out of 4 times.

The centerpiece of each episode was a "mystery guest." He, she, or sometimes they would appear on the stage only after Mr. Daly had instructed the panel to don blindfolds, since the guest or guests would be instantly recognizable to them (and was instantly recognized by the studio and at-home audience.)

Barbra Streisand as a "mystery guest"
on "What's My Line" in 1964

"What's My Line" was fun not just because the guess-the-occupation or -identity premise was interesting, but also because the moderator and panelists were so urbane, witty, and cosmopolitan. They were bastions of civility with a capital "C." They were unflappably polite, supremely polished, ever-decorous. Though there was a lot of good-natured ribbing, there was never any skewering, any snark, any snideness. It was okay back then for the male panelists to comment (in a gracious way) on how pretty certain of the women challengers were, and the female panelists would not hesitate to extol the handsomeness or ruggedness of certain of the male challengers — this, although all the panelists were well known to be happily married to people who were likewise in the upper crust of the New York social and entertainment world. (In fact, Arlene Francis's husband, actor Martin Gabel, was often a guest panelist on the show.)

It was a show from a more relaxed, happier time, I think — well before all the venom, vituperation, coarseness, and in-your-face sexuality we witness today in our social media and in our popular entertainments.

The Bears Ears Controversy

In my last post, "The Coming Green Wave," I mentioned the controversy over Bears Ears National Monument. It's a wilderness area in southeastern Utah that was declared a national monument by President Barack Obama in December 2016. In December 2017, President Donald Trump reduced it drastically in size.

Here's a map. You can click to enlarge it:

Pursuant to President Trump's order, only the Indian Creek Unit and the Shash Jáa Unit will remain protected.

Some Bears Ears photos:

Get the picture? Bears Ears is a national treasure: lovely, vast, unspoiled, once the home of ancient North American Pueblo peoples. Many Native American tribes today still consider sites within Bears Ears sacred:

The Hopi, Navajo, Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni tribal governments are working together to defend the Bears Ears National Monument. They support two bills now in Congress: H.R.4518, the Bears Ears National Monument Expansion Act, and S. 2354, the Antiquities Act of 2018. These bills would restore and expand the boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument to the full boundary originally proposed by the five tribes in 2015.

A national monument is "a protected area that is similar to a national park, but can be created from any land owned or controlled by the federal government by proclamation of the President of the United States." The main difference between a national monument and a national park is that the latter must be created by an act of Congress; the U.S. president, acting alone, can declare a national monument. This is what President Obama did with respect to Bears Ears.

My understanding is that if it were to remain a fully protected area, none of the original Bears Ears National Monument could undergo oil or uranium extraction; real estate development; agricultural use other than cattle grazing, which is permitted; destructive forms of recreational use; etc. After being shrunk, some 85 percent of the original site would no longer be protected.

Mr. Trump's Bears Ears order also cut another national monument, Grand Staircase-Escalante, to about half its original size.

Grand Staircase-Escalante

Grand Staircase-Escalante was declared a national monument by President Bill Clinton in 1996.

I am about to donate to the Bears Ear Defense Fund, set up by the Grand Canyon Trust. I invite you to donate to this fund or any other worthy organization that works to defend Bears Ears.

The Coming Green Wave

Timothy Egan

"A Green Wave is coming this November," writes New York Times op-ed columnist Timothy Egan, who calls it "the pent-up force of the most overlooked constituency in America. These independents, Teddy Roosevelt Republicans and Democrats on the sideline have been largely silent as the Trump administration has tried to destroy a century of bipartisan love of the land."

Mr. Egan rightly feels Mr. Trump deserves much blame for supporting our country's continuing to burn coal, thereby exacerbating climate change. He says the record firestorms in the American West and in Canada this year may finally convince voters to vote "green," in view of the fact that climate scientists are at last confirming that global warming causes strange weather patterns that can lead to forest fires, hurricanes, and (as is happening here in Maryland) repeated heavy rainstorms that produce scary, killing, financially costly flash floods.

The coming Green Wave of anti-Trump/anti-GOP voting, Mr. Egan says, will arise because:

... if just one unorganized voting segment, the 60 million bird-watchers of America, sent a unified political message this fall, you’d have a political block with more than 10 times the membership of the National Rifle Association.

Bird-watchers in Colorado

And also because:

While President Trump tries to prop up the dying and dirty coal industry with taxpayer subsidies, the outdoor recreation industry has been roaring along. It is a $374-billion-a-year economy, by the government’s own calculation, and more than twice that size by private estimates.

Huge numbers of outdoorsy potential voters are already in revolt:

The revolt started after Trump shrunk several national monuments in the West last year — the largest rollback of public land protection in our history. The outdoor retailer Patagonia responded with a blank screen on its web page with the statement, “The President Stole Your Land.” It was the first shot in a battle that has been raging all summer.

Bears Ears National Monument in Utah
was shrunk by presidential order this year.

The ultimate size of the revolt could be phenomenal. After all, "144 million Americans ... participated in an outdoor activity last year," writes Mr. Egan, and there were "344 million overall visitors to national parks."

If just a tenth of these patrons of national parks and a tenth of all these outdoors-loving people show up at the polls and vote "green" this year, it could dramatically change our politics going into the 2020 presidential election year.

Thomas L. Friedman

And then, writes Times op-ed columnist Thomas Friedman in "What if Mother Nature Is on the Ballot in 2020?," Katy bar the door!

What if all the extreme weather this year — linked to climate change — gets even worse and more costly? What if the big 2020 issue is not left-right — but hot-cold or wet-dry? What if the big 2020 issue is not “Who lost Russia?” or “Who lost North Korea?” but “Who lost planet Earth?” ...

Mother Nature is done letting us pretend that we don’t know and can’t connect the dots — and that could create some very interesting politics. ...

Sure, Trump will sneer that “green” is girlyman, uneconomic, unpatriotic and vaguely French. But Democrats can easily counter that green is globally strategic, locally profitable and working class — green is the new red, white and blue. That message can play today in Rust Belt battleground states like Michigan and Ohio.

If the "green" message — surprisingly to many, perhaps, it's a highly pragmatic one — plays out the way it ought to in Michigan, Ohio, and other key states, it could turn Mr. Trump into a one-term president!

On Localism and Subsidiarity

E.J. Dionne Jr.

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. titles today's column "Don’t let politics dumb you down." The column asks us to get back to thinking and debating seriously about our politics, rather than just forever chastising Donald Trump's latest tweet. One key to doing so, says Mr. Dionne, is to get involved with the new "localism" in America:

As Washington politics becomes increasingly rancid, a disheartened nation turns toward the many good things happening at the grass roots. In cities and towns across the country, civic and political leaders are — honest and true! — solving problems and finding new missions for old places. Words like “rebuilding,” “reclaiming” and “renewing” are the stuff of local life.

David Brooks

Mr. Dionne points out that op-ed writer David Brooks of The New York Times has also been championing localism of late, as, for instance, in his recent column "The Localist Revolution." In it, Mr. Brooks writes:

Localism is the belief that power should be wielded as much as possible at the neighborhood, city and state levels. Localism is thriving — as a philosophy and a way of doing things — because the national government is dysfunctional while many towns are reviving. Politicians in Washington are miserable, hurling ideological abstractions at one another, but mayors and governors are fulfilled, producing tangible results.

Solving problems. Tangible results. Aren't these supposed to be exactly what politics and government are all about?

Mr. Dionne cautions us that we need to keep in mind, "as many localists do, that some problems require national action. We’re better off having a federal Social Security and Medicare program, and it will take a comparable effort to get health insurance to everyone."

Mr. Dionne's attitude here reminds me of the principle of social organization called "subsidiarity," to wit, that "social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate (or local) level that is consistent with their resolution." Subsidiarity is familiar to me, as a Catholic, as the general belief that "matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority."

George Weigel

I originally learned about that big word, "subsidiarity," from the writings of Catholic essayist-ethicist George Weigel, who is about as conservative as a thinking Catholic can be — and much more conservative than I am. In an anti-Trump 2016 column, "Resisting the Demagogue," Mr. Weigel wrote:

There is nothing remotely Catholic about the Trump sensibility. There is nothing in Mr. Trump’s record or his current campaign to suggest that he gives a fig for the life issues, for religious freedom in full, or for the constitutionalism that is America’s unique expression of Catholic social doctrine’s principle of subsidiarity. Rather than lifting us above anger to renewed common purpose, Mr. Trump is dragging our politics even deeper into the muck ...

In general terms, Mr. Weigel impresses me as being to the political right of Mr. Brooks, while Mr. Dionne is clearly to Mr. Brooks's left. Yet all three champion some form of localism/subsidiarity. All this tells me that the idea of localism/subsidiarity might well constitute the fundamental solution to all our political woes today.

Democratic Socialists vs. Social Democracy

Sheri Berman

In the Washington Post today, an article by Barnard College professor of political science Sheri Berman is of interest: "Democratic socialists are conquering the left. But do they believe in democracy?"

Much of Berman's article is a quick history of two of the primary branches of European socialist politics, beginning with the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 and ending with the "unraveling" of the post-World War II order in the 1970s. During that extended period, "three camps emerged with different views of capitalism and democracy":

• One camp — that of Vladimir Lenin, the man who engineered the bolshevik communist takeover of what would, in 1917, become the Soviet Union — set about bringing down capitalism lock, stock, and barrel (and with it, democracy as we know it). The necessary agent that would bring about the end of capitalism was thought by this camp to be "a revolutionary vanguard."
• Another camp, disdaining the "violence and elitism" of the revolutionary movement with its self-styled "revolutionary vanguard," settled for "agitating against the reigning [capitalist] order and eagerly awaiting its departure." That departure was sure to happen in the not too distant future, it was felt by this camp. This camp thought it wrong to promote governmental "policies to 'reduce capitalist exploitation'." Why? "Alliances or compromises with nonsocialists" would just prop up the existing order. As for democracy per se, safeguarding it was not a priority — just "a means rather than an end." This camp was that of the first "democratic socialists." It wanted to use democratic means solely to put an end to capitalism's exploitation of the working classes.
• A third camp, the "social democrats," were willing to compromise with the forces of the capitalist bourgeoisie. To leftists of this stripe, capitalism was not necessarily "bound to collapse." But its "downsides" could be ameliorated if its "upsides" were harnessed to the task by means of enacting "concrete reforms" in the here and now.

*****

Bernie Sanders

In 2016, we witnessed a Democratic presidential primary battle between the party's eventual candidate, Hillary Clinton, and Senator Bernie Sanders, who called himself a socialist. Is Senator Sanders a "social democrat," or is he a "democratic socialist"? It's a question I can't easily answer, if the litmus test is simply one's attitude toward capitalism. Neither Sen. Sanders nor Ms. Clinton talked about bringing about an end to capitalism, after all.

Ms. Berman says in her article, "Although traditions are neither monolithic nor unchangeable, democratic socialism and social democracy have worked very differently." And the two camps have accordingly evolved differently. So I think I'm on firm ground when I say Bernie Sanders was and is, at least in today's terms, a "democratic socialist," while Hillary Clinton represented the forces of "social democracy" in our 2016 presidential race. (By the way, I voted for Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the Maryland presidential primary in 2016.)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Now, in 2018, we Democrats are trying to resolve the question of what our party should do if we want to deliver as much of a death blow to Trumpism as possible in the upcoming November elections. In particular, should we support latter-day "democratic socialists" like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is running for Congress in New York's 14th district?

Conor Lamb

Or should we lean more toward today's "social democrats," such as Conor Lamb, who won a special election in March of this year to be able to represent Pennsylvania's 18th district?

Well, I'd say that as a practical matter, we can do both. Wherever the ultra-left Ocasio-Cortez's can get on the ballot, we can support them if we are so inclined. Where the best Democratic hope lies with a more moderate Conor Lamb type, then that candidate can be our standard bearer.

My attitude is: whatever works to give Trump a big, fat black eye is all right with me ...

Movie: "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society"

Just watched "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" on Netflix. What a sweet film!

Based on a 2008 bestseller by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, it's a love story-cum-mystery taking place in 1946, with flashbacks to 1941, that is set on the English Channel Island of Guernsey, which was occupied by the Germans during World War II.

The story is also about a female protagonist who seeks within herself the ability to break with the social conventions of a time when women were supposed to subordinate themselves to men in a male-run world. Even though Juliet Ashton (Lily James) is already an established bestselling author, will she be able to find the inner strength to write not what she and her public and her publisher want her to write, but instead write what her heart tells her to? And will she be able to follow her own heart as she organizes her life-to-come in her postwar Britain?

At the outset of the movie, the audience is shown that German-occupied Guernsey during the war was subjected to the depredations of inhuman, jackbooted Nazis. Now, the war over, Juliet meets the members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society with whom she has been corresponding by mail. To her surprise, she finds them strangely unwilling to open up to her about their experiences during the occupation. She does learn, however, that the "literary society" was founded on the spur of the moment in 1941 merely as an excuse for getting the Germans to overlook their being out and about after curfew. Yet they are also truly devoted to reading and to discussing literary classics such as Charlies Lamb's Essays of Elia and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.

Can Juliet break through to the society's tiny handful of longstanding members to find out why they don't want to talk about the occupation? If she does, what might she learn? How might learning it change her life?

I invite Netflix members who might wish to learn the answers, or might ling to view a sweet, cozy, romantic film that packs a message about the values that are truly human, to be sure to watch "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society." Enjoy!

The Blanket Coverage of Trump's Sins

New York Times
columnist
Thomas Friedman

Thomas L. Friedman's latest New York Times op-ed, "Keep Up the Blanket Coverage of Trump. It Hurts Him," prescribes the wrong fix for our ailing democracy. Mr. Friedman's premise: "Just a little wave of disgust among Republican moderates is all that is needed to turn several key states from red to blue."

His prescription (aimed mainly at those in the news media who decide what material gets covered the most): Don't stop the ongoing vituperative coverage of everything the president does wrong and everything he cruelly and falsely utters.

Mr. Friedman's hope: " ... there are decent Republican moderates who, while they may never pull the lever for a Democrat, just might get too disgusted to vote. It’s the best hope."

Too disgusted to vote??? Don't pull any electoral levers at all, if you feel you can't tolerate Trump and refuse to vote Democratic??? The recommendation is itself undemocratic. In itself, if carried out, it would further wound our democracy.

Moreover, Mr. Friedman's logic is self-refuting. He says there has indeed been ongoing blanket coverage of Trump's neverending faux pas. No one would challenge this fact, I agree. Yet in the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls, Trump still has a personal approval rating of 43 percent.

Trump's job approval ratings since he took office in January 2017 are shown by the lower black line in this graph:

They're right where they were just after his inauguration! Though they've leveled off in the last couple of months, in the first half of 2018 they have even climbed, after having bottomed out at 37 percent last December!

So the incessant bad press hasn't really hurt Trump.

Mr. Friedman says, in what I consider a tellingly weak argument:

I want all of this heard and spread from sea to shining sea. Because though [Trump's words of "bullying arrogance"] do rally Trump’s base, they also rally Democrats and evidently embarrass Republican moderates and alienate independents.

The veteran pollster Stanley Greenberg told me that he’s seeing signs of this is in his recent focus groups: One was with moderate Republicans, all of whom “were put off’’ by Trump’s behavior, and another was with “secular conservative Republicans,’’ half of whom were put off.

Overall, it seems the ongoing vituperativeness of most of the media coverage toward Trump has had marginal impact on G.O.P. voters, if only half of secular conservative Republicans have been "put off." Mr. Friedman continues:

In addition, Greenberg said, the full Trump — insulting black sports heroes, threatening conservatives who dare cross him, praising Vladimir Putin and attacking the F.B.I. — “reminds evangelical conservatives of the devil’s bargain they made in supporting him. Seeing him in all of his overreach and mania and self-absorption doesn’t make them second-guess their choice, but it makes them uncomfortable about it.’’

Just "uncomfortable"? Just "put off"? The continuing assault of our rational media upon our irrational president hasn't shown itself to be a great strategy, I'd say. So now the best prescription is: if you're not a confirmed Democrat but are uncomfortable with and put off by Trump, just don't vote?

No, I say, that is the worst sort of prescription, if we want to save our democracy. We need to find a way to convince as many as possible of the 40-45 percent of the electorate who continue to form Trump's base to abandon him at their polling places. We need to convince those who cast no vote at all in the 2016 election, and those strong Democrats who might otherwise fail to vote this November, to come out and vote against Trumpism. Let's maximize voter turnout, not minimize it!

A History of Sexual Harassment

You have to be living on Mars not to know that the last several months have given us a great deal to think about concerning sexual abuse and harassment. The Twitter #MeToo hashtag (see also here on Wikipedia) has swelled to epic proportions via the tweets of women who report having been harassed and coerced into sex — or, sometimes, who refused to be coerced — and then (until recently) felt unwilling to publicly accuse the harasser.

I admit I've been torn as to whether to take #MeToo as seriously as aggrieved women might wish me to. For one thing, I've had a blind spot as to whether I ought to believe most of the women's allegations.

The reasons for which I've had a blind spot have to do in part, I think, with the facts of my age (70) and my gender (male). Plus, I seem to personally nurture a psychological predisposition toward innocence. I want to believe that I myself am innocent of all except minor transgressions, and I want to believe that most other people — including most men — are equally innocent.

My predisposition toward innocence has wrongly led me to believe that the spate of harassment and abuse accusations against men — when they are not false accusations — are the fault of the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s. At that time, old sexual taboos pretty much evaporated. My (incorrect) belief has been that the relaxing of sexual taboos has had as a side effect the engendering of widespread sexual harassing and abuse. Thus if we were to look back to before the Sexual Revolution, we would find little if any sexual harassment.

Wrong!

Yesterday I googled "history of sexual harassment" and found "A Short History of Sexual Harassment" by Reva B. Siegel. Siegel shows that sexual harassment and coercion have been endemic in American life ever since there was American life in the first place. Siegel: "The practice of sexual harassment is centuries old — at least, if we define sexual harassment as unwanted sexual relations imposed by superiors on subordinates at work."

First example: the treatment of black female African slaves by their white male masters. Siegel: " ...  sexual coercion was an entrenched feature of chattel slavery endured by African-American women without protection of law."

After the slaves' emancipation in the mid-1860s, the focus shifted to how women who were not chattel slaves ("property" rather than human beings) but instead "wage-slaves" have been treated. Any woman in the work force might be subjected to harassment and sexual coercion by her male employers or superiors, and have no legal recourse. The law as then practiced thought of every woman, slave or free, as being in effect the possession of some man:

At common law, sexual assault gave rise to an action for damages insofar as it inflicted an injury on a man's property interest in the woman who was assaulted; thus, a master might have a claim in trespass against a man who raped his slave, or a father might bring a seduction action against an employer who impregnated or otherwise defiled his daughter.

As for rape per se, yes, it was clearly against the law. Usually, though, no woman could prove in court that she had been raped unless she could show that she had put up the "utmost resistance" to the act that had been forced upon her. The legal standards that were then in effect cocerning "utmost resistance" were impossible to prove. Any woman who tried would typically just lose her job and/or her good reputation, and the main reason for that catch-22 was that men believed women in general were by nature "promiscuous." If a man had sex with her, the default assumption was that it was at her behest.

What Siegel says in her essay convinces me that sexual harassment and coercion have been rampant not just for decades but for centuries. Wherever and whenever there has been a situation in which a man is in a position of power and a woman is subordinate to him, there has been a substantial likelihood of sexual abuse.

*****

Hands off!

Sexual abuse is thus not just about sex. It's about power. It's about control. And it's very often about class distinctions, inasmuch as the harassing/abusing male is often of a higher socioeconomic class than the woman being abused — the reason being that the higher-ups in an organization are apt to possess more of the attributes of high socioeconomic class than the lower-downs.

And, given the reasons why these class distinctions arise in the first place, it's accordingly often about race and ethnicity, since the abused women are often people of color, whereas the abusing men are often white.

Yet class distinctions and race/ethnicity distinctions are not always present. What is generally present is a difference in the relative levels of power. If the potential abuser can convey to the potentially abused that her (or his, when the abuser is a woman or a gay man) job is at stake unless she complies, and then if she does not keep her mouth shut about the abuse later on, the ground is fertile for abuse.