DailyNewsGems

The Legacy of The Godfather--50-Year Anniversary

 

Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, James Caan, John Cazale

Photo Credit: Everett Collection

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Lost in the sheer madness during the 94^th Academy Awards on March 27, was an epic milestone in motion picture history.

The Godfather, the 1972 American crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola celebrated its 50-year anniversary.

Sean "Diddy" Combs introduced Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, and Al Pacino in a tribute to the Godfather Trilogy that was (in my opinion) much too brief for such a brilliant masterpiece.

During the 1973 Academy Awards, The Godfather was nominated for 10 awards, coming away with three, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Marlon Brando).

Prior to the tribute, chaos and confusion took place at the Dolby Theatre, right in the heart of Hollywood, when actor Will Smith (who would later that night win an Oscar) approached comedian Chris Rock on stage and delivered a hard slap to his face for his insensitive joke about his wife's bald head. Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith (unbeknownst to Chris Rock) suffers from alopecia, a medical term for hair loss.

Whatever took place after the Will Smith slap, to many it’s just a hazy memory. The slap heard round the world took center stage and devoured the news cycle for days after the awards ceremony. It certainly overshadowed the milestone of the Godfather hitting its 50-year mark.

Despite The Godfather being released 50 years ago, so many of its memorable lines and scenes of the film are still very much with us and pop up in our everyday language. The Internet Movie Database, (IMDb) for example, lists more than three hundred films and television shows that have referenced “The Godfather.”

Imagine, 132 million people had seen the Godfather by January, 1975. The movie earned more than $250 million worldwide, a figure that continues to grow.

There’s a famous story that former New York Governor Mario Cuomo refused to see “The Godfather” for its depiction of Italian-American stereotypes which he found repulsive. Finally, Cuomo broke down and saw it and he considered it a masterpiece.

Singer Vic Damone had initially been cast in The Godfather for the role of Johnny Fontane, but reportedly bowed out. “As an American of Italian descent,” Damone said, “I could not in good conscience continue in that role.” The role of Johnny Fontane was filled by singer Al Martino.

Brendan Hennessey, Associate Professor of Italian in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Binghamton University, says Cuomo’s initial rejection of the film “was probably typical of Italian Americans of a certain age, definitely in New York state. That generation was still very close to the anti-Italian discrimination of their parents and grandparents who worked hard to distance themselves from stereotypes of Italian criminality and racial inferiority that were very common in the early 20th century through the end of WWII.” “More recent controversies,” Hennessey explained, “over serious representations like 'The Sopranos' or silly ones like 'Jersey Shore' and the non-controversy over renaming Columbus Day are all remnants of that era of assimilation.”  Hennessey contends that the current generation of Italian-Americans are not as outraged by these stereotypes as much as their parents and grandparents were.

Marlon Brando and Francis Ford Coppola discuss a ‘Godfather’ scene on location in Little Italy.

Photo Credit: Anthony Pescatore/NY Daily News via Getty Images

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So, exactly why is The Godfather considered such a cinematic masterpiece to this very day? 

Former New York Times op-ed columnist and currently writer-at-large for New York Magazine, Frank Rich, tells me “as King Lear exemplifies, classic drama so often involves a family battling over love and power. In The Godfather, Coppola wedded those basics to memorable, original characters, an epic shadow history of America, bravura filmmaking, and pitch-perfect casting that called on the talents of several generations of great American actors, among them stars in-the-making like Pacino.”

John Mosier, Professor of English (Emeritus) at Loyola University, New Orleans, thinks that The Godfather was a compelling Italian immigrant saga; one that chronicles the importance of family and loyalty when all other traditional levers of power in America fails them.

Additionally, “it told a story about two aspects of American life,” Mosier says, “that everyone knew existed, but had never been talked about: Sicilian culture here and criminal activity.  So, it used a typical story device—young idealistic man who’s drawn into a life of violence.  It did so in a way that was neither moralistic nor tragic—the ending was a very fine touch.  He should have stopped, basically.”

For serious film buffs, I compiled a selection of facts about The Godfather, along with a collection of original film reviews from 1972.

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Robert Duvall holds cue cards for Marlon Brando to read 

Source: Paramount Studios

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The Godfather: Facts, Feats, and Historic Firsts

• Mario Puzo was born in 1920 in Hell’s Kitchen (West Side of Midtown Manhattan), the son of Italian born parents.
• His first two novels, “Dark Arena” and “Fortunate Pilgrim” though critically acclaimed, earned him only $6,500. At age 45, he owed $20,000 in gambling debts, so he wrote a ten-page book outline-entitled Mafia, hoping for more commercial appeal. The Godfather was a pulp novel about sex, violence and crime. Eight publishers turned him down.
• The Godfather book was a rousing success, spending 67 weeks on the New York Times' Best Sellers List
• On March 5, 1967, Paramount bought the rights to Mario Puzo’s book, “Mafia,” later renamed “The Godfather.”
• In 1969, according to Robert Evans (head of production at Paramount), "there wasn’t a single Italian director with any credibility to be found.”
• 12 directors turned down the opportunity to direct The Godfather.
• September 27, 1970: Francis Ford Coppola was officially announced as The Godfather director with an anticipated release at Christmas, 1971.
• The final draft of the screenplay ran 158 pages and was dated March 29, 1971.
• Coppola reportedly made The Godfather because he was Italian and desperate for work. He was offered and accepted $125,000 and 6% of the profits.
• Hollywood heavyweights, Anthony Quinn, George C. Scott, Laurence Olivier, and Ernest Borgnine were rumored to be vying for the part of Don Corleone.
• Anne Bancroft was briefly considered for the part of Carmella “Mama’’ Corleone.
• Al Pacino failed his screen test, he forgot his lines.
• Ryan O’Neal, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Frank Langella, Martin Sheen, and David Carrradine, were all considered for the role of Michael Corleone before settling on Al Pacino. For a short time, James Caan was the frontrunner to play Michael Corleone.
• Casting for The Godfather formally began in New York at THE GODFATHER Production Offices on the 28^th floor #1 Gulf and Western Plaza on November 20, 1970.
• Pacino was 31 years old when he finally secured the role of Michael Corleone.
• At 5:30 a.m. on March 23, 1971, filming for The Godfather began.
• The Godfather was shot in 120 New York area locations over 67 days.
• Gianni Russo (who played Carlo Rizzi in the Godfather) claims that he worked in organized crime early in his life, serving as an errand boy and mob associate for Frank Costello.
• Marlon Brando was 47 years old when he was cast in the Godfather. He was viewed in the industry as washed up. Prior to The Godfather, Marlon Brando was in a series of flops and was considered box office poison.
• Brando was paid $50,000, plus $10,000 a week in expenses during his contractual six weeks of shooting, and a percentage after the picture brought in $10 million.
• Coppola was certain he was about to be fired. His insistence over casting Pacino and the rest of his chosen cast member had earned him the hostility of almost all the top executives at Paramount.
• New York crime boss, Frank Colombo assembled tens of thousands of protestors to march through the streets of New York, to protest the making of The Godfather and its distorted depiction of Italian-Americans.  A benefit concert was organized, headlined by Frank Sinatra, and raised roughly $600,000—which he used, according to Al Ruddy (The Godfather producer), for “the sole express purpose of stopping the filming of The Godfather.”
• At the request of the Italian-American Civil Rights League, all references to the Mafia and Cosa Nostra from its screenplay, were eliminated.
• In The Godfather, Coppola sought to express how Americans as a whole must rely on their family for what America fails to provide them, and in the case of the movie that family is Don Corleone.
• Among the most pressing obstacles facing Coppola was financing: the film’s budget, originally set at $2 million, quickly leaped toward $6 million.
• The gruesome scene with the dead horse’s head was a real horse, obtained from a rendering plant in New Jersey, where they located a horse ready for slaughter. The horse’s head was smeared with Karo blood. The horse’s head in blood stemmed from Sicilian folklore: they nailed your favorite dog’s head to your door if you didn’t pay up.
• For Marlon Brando, the production crew created “dental plumpers,” flesh-colored blobs of acrylic that fit into the sides of Brando’s mouth and flush up against his teeth. To hold the appliances in place, a metal band attached to the plumpers was wrapped around the base of his teeth, with the ends wrapped around his molars like a piece of bridgework. On each foot, Brando wore a ten-pound weight to slow his movements, and padding was added around his waist for a belly grown fat from sumptuous eating.
• The name of Tony Soprano’s strip club in the HBO series, The Sopranos. “ Bada-bing” came from a line in The Godfather spoken by James Caan.
• Sonny (James Caan) beating of Carlo Rizzi (Gianni Russo) for harming his sister was filmed on Pleasant Avenue in East Harlem.
• The assassination of Sonny was considered a technical masterpiece; 200 bullet holes were drilled into the car and filled with squibs—tiny explosive rounds that could be remotely detonated—and another hundred were attached to the tollbooth. 
• A suite in the Americana of New York, on Sixth Avenue, served as a substitute for Las Vegas.
• Vegas casino chief Moe Greene (Alex Rocco,) the Jewish gangster, was based on the real-life American gangster, Bugsy Siegel. 
• The Godfather opened nationwide on March 24, 1972.
• The Godfather brought in $465,148 in its first week alone from just the five Manhattan theaters, considered (at the time) the largest one-week total ever for a motion picture.
• By the following week, the movie had racked up $7,397,164 across 322 theaters in the US and Canada. In less than a month after the opening, The Godfather was grossing $1 million a day, the first film ever to break the magical million-dollar mark.
• During the 1973 Academy Awards, The Godfather was nominated for ten awards: Best Picture; Brando as Best Actor; Coppola for Best Director; Coppola and Puzo for Best Adapted Screenplay; Pacino, Caan, Duvall each for Best Supporting Actor; along with nominations for costumes, editing, and sound.
• The Godfather met with so much box office success, a sequel was quickly worked out with a release date of April, 1974.
• Francis Ford Coppola eventually became a five-time Oscar winner and the recipient of the Academy’s 2010 Irving G. Thalberg Award.
• The Johnny Fontane character is thought to be inspired by Frank Sinatra.
• Francis Ford Coppola and James Caan were classmates at Hofstra University.
• Pacino and Caan signed onto the Godfather for $35,000. Robert Duvall made $36,000 in the Godfather

Italian phrases in The Godfather

Caporegime is a Mafia term for a lieutenant, or second in command.

            Strunz is derived from an Italian term, stronzo, the vulgar translation for which is “a piece of shit.”

            Lupara is a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun that is often homemade. It’s a traditional Cosa Nostra weapon in Sicily.

            Pezzonovante means someone who is powerful, a big shot.

Michael calls Apollonia (the young Sicilian woman) “pazzo,” meaning “crazy”.

• Pacino sprained an ankle ligament when he raced out of the Louis Restaurant (after gunning down Mark McCluskey, the corrupt Irish-American police captain and Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo, the top narcotics man, who became associated with the Tattaglia family) to catch a getaway car in a scene that never made the final cut. Pacino was sidelined for a few days and had to rely on crutches and a cane when shooting resumed along with plenty of painkillers.
• Pacino’s grandparents were genuine Sicilians. He was born in East Harlem but moved to the Bronx at a young age.
• After Marlon Brando passed away (2004), his own annotated script of “The Godfather” fetched $312,800 at a New York auction, which is believed to be the highest amount paid for a film script.
• The baptism scene in The Godfather was filmed at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Mulberry Street, Manhattan. The exteriors of the baptism scene were filmed at Mount Loretto Church in Staten Island. The church burned down in 1973.
• Filming for the shootings during the baptism: (the barbershop, the revolving doors, and the walk up the stairs) was filmed at the St Regis Hotel in Manhattan. Moe Greene’s massage took place in the steam room in the McBurney YMCA, West 23^rd Street, Manhattan.
• On March 15, 1972, five New York theaters screened the world premiere of The Godfather for the public. That night, the film took in a record $57,000. In the first week, the take was $465,000, also a record.
• Paramount pre booked The Godfather in 350 theaters. The film, which costs $6.2 million to make, earned $13.8 million from those bookings alone before the film hit all theaters nationwide.
• In 1972, the average ticket price in the United States was around $1.60. With the high demand over The Godfather, Paramount boosted ticket prices to $3.50, then weekend prices went up to $4.00
• In the film’s initial release, Paramount made $85.7 million. It was the first movie in motion picture history to gross an average of $1 million a day. It was the highest-grossing film of all time, until Jaws surpassed it in 1975. To date, it has grossed nearly $135 million domestically, and an estimated $250 million worldwide.
• NBC paid $10 million to air “The Godfather” over two nights in November of 1974. An estimated 42,400,000 households watched a slightly abridged version of the movie.
• Brando worked on the Godfather for six weeks.
• The Godfather won three Oscars.
• There are 16 hugs, kisses, and squeezes in the Godfather.
• 132 million people had seen the Godfather by January, 1975.
• The Godfather ran for two hours and fifty-six minutes.
• The Godfather film opens in August, 1945

--Bill Lucey

April 7, 2022

WPLucey@gmail.com

Source: “The Annotated Godfather” By Jenny M. Jones; “Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather” by Mark Seal; “The Godfather: A Pictorial History” By Gerald Gardner; “The Godfather Legacy” by Harlan Lebo

 

Original Movie Reviews of The Godfather (1972)

• “Far from surviving …as the Gone with the Wind of gangster movies, my guess is The Godfather will be as quickly forgotten as it deserves to be.”

--William F. Buckley, The New York Post, March 14, 1972

• “The Godfather is as good as the novel—and essentially as immoral and therefore in its new incarnation and availability to the illiterate, far more dangerous…The whole function of this film is to show us that Hitler is a grand sort of family man, gentle with children, daring and ruthless with enemies, implacable in the matter of honor and so loyal to the ties of blood that even a brother-in-law, to a sister’s sorrow, must go (juicily garroted) if he happens to have betrayed a son of the house.”

--Judith Crist, New York Magazine, March 20, 1972

• The Godfather” rediscovers the marvelous possibilities existing in the straightforward narrative movie that refuses to acknowledge it's about anything more than its plot, and whose characters are revealed entirely in terms of events. The Godfather moves so quickly, in such a tightly organized series of interlocking events, that the film, like its characters (who are not the sort to muse very long about their fates), doesn't have time to be introspective—to betray the excitement of the immediately felt emotion or of an explicit action by somehow commenting on it.

--Vincent Canby, The New York Times, March 12, 1972

•  “Coppola has found a style and a visual look for all this material so “The Godfather” becomes something of a rarity: a really good movie squeezed from a bestseller. The decision to shoot everything in period decor (the middle and late 1940s) was crucial; if they’d tried to save money as they originally planned, by bringing everything up-to-date, the movie simply wouldn’t have worked. But it’s uncannily successful as a period piece, filled with sleek, bulging limousines and postwar fedoras. “

--Roger Ebert, January 1, 1972, Chicago Sun-Times

• “It’s an extraordinary achievement: a new classic in a classic American film genre: a richly ironic example of how crude popular fiction maybe be transformed into great popular art; a fresh source of both legend and optimism, reviving the career of Marlon Brando and probably making the career of Marlon Brando and probably making the careers of young actor Al Pacino, young screenwriter director Francis Ford Coppola, and several others. And last but hardly least, it is a product of almost limitless commercial potential.”

--Gary Arnold, The Washington Post, March 22, 1972

• “Director Coppola, whose Hollywood record so far has been undistinguished, tells The Godfather with a kind of brilliant low-keyed virtuosity, with one particularly effective use of symbolism: the underworld dealings are conducted in thickly darkened rooms, usually in murmurous tones, and these scenes are contrasted with the pastoral, open-air semi-freedom of Corleone family life.”

--Kevin Kelly, The Boston Globe, March 23, 1972

• “The Godfather is a baptism in blood, a ripping, tearing blockbuster of a movie, as charged with excitement as a hoodlum using a machine gun, as shocking as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,”

--Joyce Haber, Los Angeles Times, 1972 

• “This is a curious film. One comes to understand, even to condone, the activities of the Godfather and his clan. And even though it frankly portrays the underworld’s influence in the sacrosanct worlds of Hollywood and Las Vegas, there is the feeling that, with young Michael there, these will be better worlds. Essentially, The Godfather is the projection of a myth, not a fact. But it is myths — not facts — that make a fortune. “

--Arthur Knight, The Hollywood Reporter, March 8, 1972

• “It takes a masterful presentation of a gripping story to hold a man in his seat for 2 hours and 55 minutes with a minimum of squirming. This is what The Godfather does.”

--Emerson Batdorff, The Plain Dealer, March 23, 1972

 

What to Know About Ukraine's History

Ukrainians desperately trying to board trains at Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi Central Station.

Photo Credit: Pete Kiehart/The Guardian/BuzzFeed

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Over a week into Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, turmoil and bloodshed remains, with residents of Kyiv rushing to the train station in order to escape Russia’s wrath.

More than one million Ukrainians have been displaced, adding to the humanitarian crisis.

Russian troops, according to a Human Rights Watch report, have fired cluster munitions into at least three residential neighborhoods.

More threatening still, Russia has captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe after shelling part of the complex, raising fears of a nuclear disaster; others equate it to a “war crime.” For now, the power plant’s six reactors reportedly remain intact and undamaged.

The Associated Press reported that the head of Ukraine’s security council called on Russia to create humanitarian corridors to allow children, women and the elderly to escape the fighting. The United Nations has reported 752 civilian casualties across Ukraine, with 227 killed and 525 injured. Since February 24, 28 children have been killed.

In February 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered three thousand U.S. troops to position near Poland and Romania—NATO countries that border Ukraine—to counter Russian troops stationed near its border.

A Russian air strike on a rural residential area in Kyiv region killed at least seven people on Friday, including two children.

Photo Credit: Twitter/@rustem_umerov)

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Since the Ukraine conflict continues to grow more ominous by the hour, I compiled some historical facts about the Eastern European country.

• Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, was founded about 1,500 years ago by proto-Ukrainian Slavic tribes.
• Historically, in December 1922, Ukraine together with Russia and Belarus, and Trans-Caucasian Federation were the founding members of the Soviet Union.
• Ukraine is home to more than 100 different national or ethnic groups.
• Ukraine's population is overwhelmingly Christian; the vast majority - up to two thirds - identify themselves as Orthodox.
• Since the 17^th century, Ukraine was divided among three Empires - by Austrians in the West, by Turks in the South, and by Russians in the East.
• The Ukrainian national anthem is called ‘Shche ne vmerla Ukraina’ which translates in English to ‘Ukraine’s glory has not yet perished’
• Ukraine’s name derives from the Old East Slavic word "ukraina" meaning "borderland or march (militarized border region)" and began to be used extensively in the 19th century; originally Ukrainians referred to themselves as Rusyny (Rusyns, Ruthenians, or Ruthenes), an endonym derived from the medieval Rus state (Kyivan Rus)
• At the end of the World War I, Ukraine was divided into two: Western Ukraine became part of Poland and Eastern Ukraine, the larger part was absorbed by into the Soviet Union and renamed the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Both governments imposed their own language and government.
• The Second World War claimed the lives of 5.5 million Ukrainians, including at least one million Ukrainian Jews.
• Most Ukrainians live in cities (67.2 %). The largest metropolitan area in Ukraine is Kiev (3.2 million), Kharkiv (1.7 million), Donetsk (1.7 million), Dnipropetrovsk (1.5 million), and Odessa (1.1 million). The largest ethnic group are ethnic Ukrainians (78%) and ethnic Russians (17 %).
• The state language is Ukrainian, an east Slavic language that uses the Cyrillic alphabet, composed of a mixture of Latin, Greek, and Slavic letters.
• The famous Carol of the Bells Christmas carol is based on a Ukrainian folk tune.
• In the 8th-10th centuries, parts of what is now Ukraine were ruled by the Khazars, a Turkic tribe which converted to Judaism.
• The territory of Ukraine became the site of almost constant warfare between Poles, Muscovites, Ottomans, Tatars, and Ukrainian Cossacks in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. According to Alexander Motyl, professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark, “the subsequent incorporation of most Ukrainian territories into the Muscovite State and its successor, the Russian Empire, cut off Ukraine from its roots in Europe and had ruinous consequences for Ukrainian religion, language, and culture, which were progressively Russified or banned.”
• During the 16^th and 17^th centuries, tens of thousands of Ukrainians were captured annually and shipped to and sold in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman empire, as slaves.
• Ukraine experienced a major cultural, political, and economic revival in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries, when the charismatic Ivan Mazepa served as leader of an autonomous Cossack polity known as the Hetmanate—until his defeat by Peter the Great at the Battle of Poltava in 1709.
• Ukraine’s national poet, Taras Shevchenko, was born a serf in 1814 in a small village south of Kyiv
• Ukraine was the birthplace of many prominent Jews—among many others the writers Joseph Roth, Paul Celan, Bruno Schulz, Sholom Aleichem, Vasily Grossman, Isaac Babel, and Shmuel Agnon. Zionist leader Vladimir Zhabotinsky and former Israeli Prime Minster Golda Meir were also born in Ukraine, as was the founder of Hasidism, Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer.
• Twentieth-century Ukraine was the site of two genocides—the Holodomor of 1932-1933, during which millions of Ukrainians were mercilessly killed in an artificial famine engineered by Joseph Stalin and his henchmen, and the Holocaust, which took the lives of millions of Jews. Ukraine suffered 15 million “excess” deaths between 1914 and 1948, due to wars, genocides, and Stalin’s repressive policies.
• Ukrainians formed the majority of Soviet political prisoners; they staged revolts in the concentration camps of the Soviet Gulag; they fought bravely against Stalin and Hitler; they resisted Muscovite and Russian imperialism for centuries.
• The Ukrainian diaspora in the United States consists of about 1.25 million people, who, while concentrated in the formerly industrial Northeast and Midwest, are found in all 50 states.
• Prominent Americans of Ukrainian descent include astronaut Heide Marie Stefanyshyn-Piper, actors Jack Palance, Natalie Wood, Vera Farmiga, and Liev Schreiber, policymaker Paula Dobriansky, Metropolitan Opera singer Paul Plishka, football great Bronko Nagurski, economist Greg Mankiw, inventor Igor Sikorsky, journalist Mike Royko, and writer Chuck Palahniuk. 
• The first literary tradition of the Ukrainian language was created by Ivan Kotliarevskyi at the end of 18^th century and developed at the beginning of the 19^th century by the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevechnko. According to Sergei Zhuk, Professor of History at Ball State University, since a publication of Shevchnko's collection of poetry Kobzar in 1940, Ukraine witnessed a rise of nationalist movement which eventually untied Western part (Austrian) and Eastern (Russian) part of Ukrainians in one large patriotic movement, resulting in an independent state in 1991.
• A peaceful mass protest, the "Orange Revolution" in 2004 forced the authorities to overturn a rigged presidential election and to allow a new internationally monitored vote that swept into power a reformist slate under Viktor YUSHCHENKO. 
• Ukraine celebrated its 30^th anniversary of independence in 2021.

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

March 4, 2022

Source:  Congressional Research Service (CRS); Sergei Zhuk, professor of History at Ball State University; Alexander Motyl, professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark; Monica White, Associate Professor of Russian & Slavonic Studies at the University of Nottingham; Robert W. Orttung Research Director, Sustainable George Washington University Research Professor of International Affairs (IERES); “A History of Ukraine: It’s Land and Peoples” by Paul R. Magocsi

Old and New Money Collide on HBO's "The Gilded Age"

 

That Julian Fellowes is at it again.

The screenplay writer of the Academy Award winning film “Gosford Park” and creator, writer, and executive producer of the Award-Winning PBS series “Downton Abbey” recently premiered (January 24^th) on HBO with his latest period piece: “The Gilded Age,” a miniseries set in New York in 1882. The drama depicts the old money established families (like the Astor’s) having to contend with the bluster of families with new money (nouveau riche) invading New York, such as the Vanderbilt’s, Carnegies, Rockefeller’s and other major titans of 19^th century industry.

Fans of Fellowes will most likely be welcoming with open arms the lavish dresses, extravagant hats, and enormous mansions that became so emblematic of the Gilded Age on his new HBO creation. It will remind them so much of the magnificence of Downton Abbey which ran on PBS from 2010-2015.

The Gilded Age in the United States spanned from 1870 through 1900, roughly speaking.

Whether the “The Gilded Age’’ matches the cult following popularity of “Downton Abbey” remains to be seen. Prior to its debut on HBO, reviewers took a rather dim view of Fellowes new drama.

Inkoo Kang, television critic of the Washington Post wrote: if “The Gilded Age isn’t a serious show, it’s not a reliably entertaining one, either. Sure, the sets and costumes and gewgaws are fun to look at. But it’s also dispiriting to watch so many talented stars get so little meat to chew on. “

Mike Hale, television critic for The New York Times wasn’t too enthusiastic about the show either. “In general,” Hale wrote, “the conservatism and provincialism of the old guard is so overdrawn, and presented with such little context, that the society women seem like they’re from outer space, and the actresses playing them can’t do much to make them human.”

At this early juncture, some historians were hoping for a little more to chew on from Mr. Fellowes latest offering.

Daniel Czitrom, Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, Massachusetts) and author of "New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Police Scandal that Launched the Progressive Era"  says, “with all the money spent on sets, costumes, furniture, hair styling, etc., too bad there wasn't any left for the script, which is full of cliched, boring dialogue, and conveys little dramatic tension.”

Czitrom additionally wondered whether “it would be asking too much to portray people who work for a living (the vast majority) who are not house servants, such as the immigrant neighborhoods full of creative energy and family life in the tenements?” “What about,” Czitrom thundered, “the real class struggle, visible everywhere on 1880s New York City streetcar lines, the docks, tenement cigar factories, and many other such examples.”

Personally, after watching only two episodes of “The Gilded Age," I’ll reserve judgement whether it’s a smashing success or a major flop so early into the miniseries.  “The Gilded Age” includes nine episodes with each episode released on Monday’s. 

What viewers might find interesting, and even helpful, is “The Official Gilded Age Podcast” hosted by Alicia Malone (host on Turner Classic Movies) and Tom Meyers (host of the Bowery Boys podcast) who dissect each episode and provide some historical context to what viewers just saw. I found the first two episodes of the podcasts extremely informative and entertaining.

In episode one of the podcast, “The Gilded Age’’ creator Julian Fellowes discusses the hills and valleys he went through in getting his latest drama on to HBO. And Tony Award winning actress, Christine Baranski, who plays Agnes Van Rhijn, the embodiment of the old New York socialite, discusses how she prepared for the role.

In the second episode of the podcast, Morgan Spector who plays George Russell, a ruthless robber baron of the new money in New York, gives voice to the research he undertook to better understand a 19^th industrialist.  Spector is joined by Location Manager at HBO, Lauri Pitkus, who discusses all the different locations the show had to travel to in order to find the right mansion, since most of the Gilded Age mansions in New York City no longer exist.

Since it took Julian Fellowes nearly ten years to get the “Gilded Age” made, it would be a shame if his efforts didn’t match the high expectations. The Gilded Age, after all, was an incredibly momentous period in American history.

To many, the Gilded Age conjures up images of robber barons, corrupt politicians, and unscrupulous business practices with limited interference from the federal government.

That much is certainly true.

The term “robber baron” dates back to the Middle Ages, and was used to describe individuals who employed unscrupulous business methods to eliminate competition in order to develop a monopoly in their industry. Most of these industrial titans of the Gilded Age demonstrated little compassion for workers.

David S. Tanenhaus, Professor of History and Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said “The Gilded Age is a fascinating period in American History, which historians have described as the Great Barbeque during which the few feasted while the many were roasted.”  According to Tanenhaus, 35,000 workers died in factories and mines every year from 1880 to 1900, the total deaths (700,000) are equivalent to the number of Americans who died in the Civil War.  “During the Gilded Age,” Tanenhaus further explained, “the United States had the highest rate of industrial accidents and deaths in the world.”

While the movers and shakers of industry accumulated mass fortunes, 40% of industrial workers during this time earned measly incomes, well below the poverty line.

“Protectors of our Industries” was created by Bernhard Gillam and published in 1883 by Keppler and Schwarzmann in The Puck, a satirical magazine.

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Who coined the term Gilded Age?

The Gilded Age was widely popularized with the publication of Mark Twain’s 1873 novel: “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today” written along with his friend, Charles Dudley Warner, in which they lampoon the personal greed and political corruption of the era. As Twain saw it, the age wasn’t a golden age, rather, it was a gilded age. To gild is to cover something of lesser value, giving it an attractive but deceptive look.

Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector star as wealthy social climbers in “The Gilded Age,” a new series created by Julian Fellowes on HBO.

Photo Credit: Alison Cohen Rosa/HBO

***

One feature of accumulating great wealth during this era, was the way in which the industrial titans flaunted their prestige and power by living in magnificent brownstones and palatial mansions (influenced by Europeans and Persians) with huge billiard rooms and libraries, European antiques and stunning art collections and riding in gold-trimmed carriages, while average workers (including a gush of immigrants lured to America by the high demand for jobs) lived in filthy, wretched conditions, squeezed like sardines in tenements, without much living space or sometimes not even running water.

In one scene from HBO’s “Gilded Age,’’ someone mentions to social climber Bertha Russell (played splendidly by Carrie Coon) at a dinner party that she hears that she has a French cook. “Doesn’t everyone”? Russell quipped.

Jacob Riis, a social reformer and muckraker, once estimated in 1890 that about 330,000 persons were living in one square mile on the lower East Side of New York City.

As bad as it was for many economically deprived workers and new immigrants to the city, the Gilded Age transformed American society in many positive ways that is often overlooked.

The steel industry expanding from 77,000 tons in 1870 to nearly 11.4 million tons by 1900 is often cited by historians as one of the chief reasons for the Industrial Revolution of the Gilded Age. Imagine, between 1870 and 1890 both money and real wages increased by more than ten percent.

The infrastructure of the big city also changed drastically during this time, especially with the invention of electricity, which brought light to homes and streets and added to the luster of nightlife. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876; this was followed by typewriters, adding machines, and cash registers, which served as a boon to the advancement of a burgeoning, industrial society. Houses were better built, sanitation improved as did the quality of food.

The Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883, which linked the five boroughs together, and helped make New York the biggest city in America and the second largest city in the world.

Mark Summers, Professor of History at the University of Kentucky, thinks that “in so many ways, the Gilded Age was a hard, unjust time.”  “But another part of me thinks,” Summers continued “what must it have been like to be the first generation to walk the streets under electric lights? Or be able to call across town on the telephone? Or to eat green peas and pineapple in the wintertime, with the coming of canned goods? Or drink pasteurized milk? Or, in the 1890s, to see the first few movies on a screen? To be able to go from New York to Chicago in barely a day, from New York to California in less than a week when your grandparents took five or six months to make the same trip?  To read a newspaper not just stuffed with political speeches, but sports news and human-interest features, and the very first comic strips? To be able to type a letter, rather than have to write one? “

Thinking along the same lines as Mark Summers, Caroline E. Janney, Professor of History at the University of Virginia, summed up the developments of the era by observing, the Gilded Age was “an urban transformation - skyscrapers and streetcars, but also a period marked by recurring strife around issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion. It was time that saw the rise of college and spectator sports from boxing to football. Finally, it was likewise a period when the US’s material progress led it toward empire building (Spanish-American War, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, etc.).”

Though the nouveau riche were known for their extravagant lifestyle and wasting money on frivolous and gaudy artifacts, many of the super-rich, especially the wives of industrial titans, used their money to help the less fortunate. Some of the rich, for example, created homes for destitute immigrants. Others helped advance temperance societies, so convinced were they that alcohol was the root of all evil especially among the poorer inhabitants of society. And still others sponsored the right to vote through women’s suffrage campaigns.

The monopolies, social inequality, obscene corruption, and lack of government interference that industrialists treasured so much when their wealth grew by leaps and bounds, came crashing down in the Panic of 1893. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad (both overextended) failed, which sparked an economic depression, lasting four years. The result was the stock market plunged, millions were suddenly unemployed and homeless. In some states, unemployment shot up to 50%

This ushered in a Progressive era, which put in motion federal controls, the curbing of corporate greed and most importantly--eliminating industrial giants from making vast amounts of money at the expense of the working poor.

Some of the reforms implemented, included: trust busting, labor reform, women’s suffrage, the formation of trade unions, tax reform, election reform, fair labor standards, and food and medicine regulations, among others.

Another critical slice of the Progressive era was the revolutionary reporting journalists and muckrakers championed in uncovering abuse and greed from the filthy rich. In 1890, reporter and photographer, Jacob Riis, exposed the horrors of the tenements in his ground-breaking book, “How the Other Half Lives.”  McClure Magazine journalist Lincoln Steffens (in 1902) exposed the corruption between city officials and crooked businessmen. Journalist, Ida Tarbell, investigated the scheming machinations of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, which brought Rockefeller’s monopoly (of the Standard Oil Company) to a screeching halt.

And, of course, Upton Sinclair’s highly celebrated 1906 book, “The Jungle” exposed the hideous working conditions of the meatpacking industry.

Like others, I look forward to see what the other seven episodes of the HBO’s the “Gilded Age” has to offer.  I roundly applaud Julian Fellowes for tackling such an ambitious project centering on such a significant time in America’s social history, when the obscene social economic gap between the rich and poor grew wider and wider.

--Bill Lucey

February 5, 2022

WPLucey@gmail.com

Recommended Reading

• “The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age” by Alan Trachtenberg

• “New York City in the Gilded Age” by Esther Crain

• “The Gilded Age: 1876-1912, Overture to the American Century” by Alan Axelrod

 

Debategate or Republican Paranoia?

President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden face off in Cleveland, Ohio for the first 2020 presidential debate.

Photo Credit: Associated Press

***

If you haven’t heard by now, Republicans have gotten their dander up over how presidential debates are run, railing they’re blatantly unfair, such as their chief argument that most of the panelists are composed of beltway eastern elite liberals out to make the Grand Old Party look foolish in front of a nationwide television audience.

White House correspondent for The New York Times, Maggie Haberman, was the first to report that the Republican National Committee (RNC) recently notified the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) that it plans to require GOP presidential nominees not to attend debates run by the commission going forward. 

Haberman did tweet out, however, that “none of this is binding—a nominee can do what they want, and the nominee controls the party. But unlike previous cycles, there is far more energy among GOP base behind it.”

"The RNC will initiate the process of amending the Rules of the Republican Party at our upcoming Winter Meeting to prohibit future Republican nominees from participating in CPD-sponsored debates," Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel wrote in a letter.

The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) was founded in 1987 under the joint sponsorship of the Democratic and Republican political parties in the United States. It has hosted general-election debates since 1988.

So, what exactly troubles the Republicans about the debates?

Former President Donald Trump has been one of the most vocal ring leaders in charging the debates are biased, anti-Trump, and saturated with liberal leaning panelists.

In 2020, Trump tweeted that the commission is “stacked with Trump Haters & Never Trumpers.”

On another occasion, Trump complained about the selection of moderators of the debate, especially Steve Scully of C-SPAN (no longer with the network), who consulted with former Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci on how best to question Trump.  What made it worse for Scully was that when the meeting was first reported, he lied about it. He ended up backing out of hosting the debate.

Trump additionally complained that former Fox News anchor Chris Wallace and the NBC News reporter Kristen Welker were biased against him.

Trump and other Republicans pushed to have the debates held earlier in the election cycle, but that request was roundly rejected by the CPD. Also rejected by the commission was having nonvoting representatives of either the RNC or the Democratic National Committee at the commission’s board meetings.

It’s worth noting that Republicans are still fuming that CNN’s debate moderator, Candy Crowley, (no longer with the network), corrected Mitt Romney during his town hall debate with President Obama in 2012. Her interruption of the Republican nominee was taken by many Republicans as displaying flagrant favoritism with the president.

Many contend that the reason Republicans are leery of debates is that we are now living in an age of instant fact-checkers. On a number of occasions, some Republican candidates have made outlandish charges, only to have their statements thrown back at them as ridiculous falsehoods.

Eugene Mazo, a nationally recognized scholar of election law at Seton Hall University doesn’t think there's any bias, but does think the CPD is a problematic organization. “It is privately run, and it has come under criticism in the past of all sorts.”  

Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), thinks two things are going on with the Republican complaints. “The whole idea here is victimhood-- make your base feel like you are being oppressed and discriminated against, and they will turn out in anger” “So the elites running the debate commission,” from the Republicans perspective, “have stacked the deck against us, and we are not going to take it anymore. And second, they don't really want to debate, at least it if is fair in any way.”

Whether the Republican charges of bias has merit or not, I think it’s time for a major change in the selection of debate panelists.

I suggest a panel consisting of people like Bill Gates, Peyton Manning, Keechant Sewell (Chief of Police of NYC) and other prominent newsmakers. There's no reason why they can't meet with fact checkers and researchers, like journalists do, to make sure they're asking the right questions and be prepared for follow up questions.  The panelists can flesh out their questions with each other by meeting, via Zoom, for a couple of weeks leading up to the debate.

Why should journalists be removed as debate panelists?

Not through any fault of their own, many times a small cluster of journalists during their long careers have had some working relationship with candidates. Steve Scully, for example, former C-SPAN anchor, was an intern for Joe Biden when he was in the Senate in 1978.

George Stephanopoulos, currently co-anchor on Good Morning America (GMA), was Bill Clinton’s communications director during the 1992 presidential campaign. He was also an active Democratic advisor before landing at ABC.

In 2015, it was reported that the then ABC News chief anchor, made three contributions to the Clinton Foundation, which was seen by many as a conflict of interest with his duties as a journalist. This revelation came before he was scheduled to moderate a debate among Republican presidential contenders in February, 2016. After the admission caused such an uproar, Stephanopoulos withdrew from moderating the debate.

Another compelling argument for removing journalists as debate panelists stems from the notion that most questions asked at these debates are mere “food fight” questions, asked to spark malice among the candidates instead of focusing on policy driven questions, questions that undecided voters hope to help them better understand issues facing them in their own lives. Networks, after all, are in a ratings war; the more questions they ask that will spark conflict, the more viewers they’ll generate. These short combative exchanges by the candidates make nice sound bites for the Twitter pages, but do little to resolve challenging issues facing the country.

A Pew Research survey, for example, reported that in 2016, only 10% of voters said they had conclusively made up their minds “during or just after” the presidential debates.

Many argue that the style of the debates too often resembles a “joint press conference” rather than a serious debate. Critics additionally charge that the panelists take too much time away from the candidates themselves.

Still others contend journalists tend to focus on the negative features of a particular candidate rather than zero in on a fundamental policy issue. Again, focusing on the negative, will most likely generate a ratings bonanza.

In 1992, the commission introduced a town hall format in which candidates are asked questions by undecided voters. Though this was a fine idea to hear the concerns of the average voter, the questions too often are softball questions, which the candidates spin by transitioning to their partisan viewpoint.

Having panelists comprised of prominent members of the country like Bill Gates (with his well-known climate change concerns) or Keechant Sewell (Chief of Police of NYC) asking how candidates hope to deal with police profiling or gun shootings within major cities, would go a long way in addressing some of the major concerns facing the country.  The “food fight” questions would significantly be removed from the equation.

The United States has evolved in many ways over the last ten to twenty years.

Abraham Lincoln once said “as our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.”

So too with presidential debates. I think it’s time for journalists to pass the baton and remove themselves from the debate forum.

Just a thought!

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

January 15, 2022

***

 

Nominate Liz Cheney for JFK's Profile in Courage Award

Rep. Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the new select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

Photo Credit: CNN

 ***

“The true democracy, living and growing and inspiring, puts its faith in the people — faith that the people will not simply elect men who will represent their views ably and faithfully, but will also elect men who will exercise their conscientious judgment — faith that the people will not condemn those whose devotion to principle leads them to unpopular courses, but will reward courage, respect honor, and ultimately recognize right.”

--John F. Kennedy

 

For the last several weeks, we’ve been witnessing a profile in courage—and haven’t paid much attention to it.

And it centers on Wyoming’s lone member of Congress: Liz Cheney.

The daughter of George W. Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, was first elected in 2016 on a platform of restoring America’s prestige in foreign affairs, with an aggressive conservative agenda of cutting taxes and regulation, and expanding America’s energy, mining and agriculture industries. Cheney serves on the House Armed Services Committee.

In 1954, John F. Kennedy, the junior senator from Massachusetts, took a leave of absence from the Senate while recovering from back surgery and wrote “Profiles in Courage,” which focuses on eight U.S. Senators who showed enormous courage under pressure from peers, and whose actions, moreover, were at odds with popular opinion.

The one-volume book earned Kennedy a Pulitzer Prize.

The senators under consideration to be profiled by Kennedy met the following criteria.

• pressure to be liked
• pressure to be re-elected, and
• pressure of the constituency and interest groups.

Since 1990, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation have presented “Profile in Courage” awards to individuals (often elected officials) who exhibited an exemplary act of courage based on the criteria outlined in Kennedy’s prize-winning book.

Past winners have included: John McCain, Gerald Ford, Edward M. Kennedy, Gabby Giffords, Barrack Obama, George H.W. Bush, and Mitt Romney.

Interestingly, as I was browsing through the JFK Library and Museum website a week or so ago, I immediately thought of Congresswoman Cheney when I glanced at the Profile of Courage Awards.

A few days later, I was listening to the Politics War Room podcast and co-host Al Hunt described Liz Cheney’s actions (as co-chair) on the House investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the nation’s Capitol, as bold and a “profile in courage” in pursuing the truth of what happened on that horrific day despite being banished within the Republican Party and quite possibly seeing her political career burst into flames.

Liz Cheney will be challenged in the Wyoming primary by Harriet Hageman, who unsurprisingly, has been endorsed by Donald Trump. At the beginning of the month, a poll by SoCo Strategies, shows Cheney is running about 18 points behind Hageman.

Because Cheney believes that “each of us swears an oath before God to uphold our Constitution,” she never bought into the “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. She was only one of ten Republicans who voted that Donald Trump should be impeached during his second impeachment trial for inciting an insurrection by urging his supporters to march on the Capitol building.

Consenting to Trump’s false assertion that the election was stolen from him quickly became a loyalty test within the Republican Party. Because she voted to impeach Trump, Liz Cheney was removed from her No. 3 post as Chair of the House Republican Conference and replaced with Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, (surprise! surprise!) a loyal supporter of Trump.

But that didn’t silence Liz Cheney, the “Iron Lady’’ of U.S. politics.

In September, she was selected as vice chair of the January 6 Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the nation’s Capitol. She has settled into her new position like a pit bull. Two loyal disciples of Trump, Mark Meadows (Trump’s former Chief of Staff) and Steve Bannon (Trump’s former chief strategist) have been held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with its investigation into the Jan. 6 attack.

Not only is Cheney only one of two Republicans on the commission, but she’s distinguished herself for her combative style in questioning witnesses. She’s skilled in interpreting the criminal code for the prosecution of violations.  In particular, Cheney has set her sights on  18 U.S. Code § 1512. The language of the statute states that whoever corruptly … “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”  The statute has represented the backbone of a federal abuse, which Donald Trump may have violated.

 What’s particularly fascinating about Cheney’s dogged pursuit of the truth of what happened on January 6 and her daring criticism of Donald Trump (with instigating the riot) is that this isn’t a personal vendetta she has harbored against the former U.S. President.

In fact, before the insurrection, she was a loyal supporter of Donald Trump’s agenda. In 2019, she was reportedly feuding with Rand Paul over who was the “Trumpier.”  She voted in line with Trump's position 92.9% of the time, supporting him “more consistently in House votes than even his former chief of staff Mark Meadows."

And it’s not as if Cheney is a moderate, out of sync with the ideals of the rest of the Republican Party. She has a 98% positivity rating from the conservative Heritage Foundation, which rates lawmakers based on their voting records.

What is driving Liz Cheney is not GOP talking points or being tethered to the party mantra: “to get along you have to go along.”

Cheney’s oath of office means more to her than being in with the in-crowd.

She refuses to acquiesce to the “Big Lie” and being relegated to one of Donald Trump’s loyal servants out of fear of being banished. In addition to speaking out in public, Cheney has tweeted the false claim is “poisoning our democratic system.” She additionally warned against falling victim to the “Trump cult of personality.”

Though she is considered a pariah within her own party, she does have a smattering of supporters within the Republican Party. Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, depicted Cheney as an “important leader" with the "courage" to act on her convictions.  Likewise, Senator Sue Collins, (R-Maine), has publicly stated that "Liz Cheney is a woman of strength and consciences…she did what she felt was right, and I salute her for that.”

Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough and co-host of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, gave her a ringing endorsement, when he said that “she doesn’t back away from unpopular positions.”

The whole point of the writing of Profiles in Courage for John Kennedy was to show his admiration for the courage exhibited by elected officials in “the face of adverse factions like their electorates, popular opinion, and political action committees that pull these elected men in different directions.” “This book,” Kennedy wrote 67 years ago was “a book about that most admirable of human virtues – courage. ‘Grace under pressure,’ Ernest Hemingway defined it.”

Liz Cheney’s political career is most likely over for not bowing to political pressure and joining the other Republican mouseketeers in showering praise on Donald Trump despite his obvious culpability with inciting a riot.

For that Cheney paid a heavy price.

As she stated on January 12, “none of this would have happened without the president. The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution."

Because of her devotion to the Constitution and the values it embodies, Liz Cheney was willing to exchange her political career for the truth of what happened on January 6 at the Capitol Building, which resulted in the death of five people with scores of injuries, including 138 police officers.

If that’s not a profile in courage; I don’t know what is.

Whoever has the power, please nominate Liz Cheney for a “Profile in Courage” award.

 

---Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

December 21, 2021

Most Viewed Online Stories of 2021

A mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump climb through a window they broke as they storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Photo Credit: Leah Millis/Reuters

***

Remarkably, most of us made it through 2021 in one piece with our Republic still intact despite an unprecedented Capitol Hill insurrection, which some equate to 9/11.

On January 6, a mob of protesters leaving a Donald Trump rally, upset from the results of the 2020 presidential election, which resulted in a Joe Biden victory, stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C., the cradle of democracy, and assaulted law enforcement officers, vandalized property and occupied the building for several hours. Five people died, including several being injured before order was restored.

Two days after the insurrection, Twitter suspended Donald Trump’s account in order to prevent any “further incitement of violence. "

Just when we thought we licked Covid-19 after getting our miraculous vaccine shots (the acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus), a Delta variant emerged threatening more lives and leading to more restrictions and safeguarding, including wearing more masks.

Combined with last year’s fatalities, the U.S. is nearing 800,000 deaths from Covid.

“Seventy-five percent of people,” The New York Times recently reported "who have died of the virus in the United States — or about 600,000 of the nearly 800,000 who have perished so far — have been 65 or older. One in 100 older Americans has died from the virus.”

Soon after President Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46^th U.S. President, he made good on his pledge to completely pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan after 20 years, a senseless engagement (to many) which cost the U.S. $2 trillion (Afghanistan and Iraq combined), with 2,461 U.S. service members killed, 20,000 injured, and another 3,846 U.S. contractors killed.

Despite the cancelling of the Tokyo Olympics last year due to the global pandemic, the Olympics finally took place in Tokyo (July 23-August 8) with the United States earning the most medals: 39 gold medals, 113 in total, while China finished second with 38 gold medals, 88 altogether.

The most disappointing blemish on the Summer Games was that no international guests (including spectators) were permitted to attend the Games, due to COVID travel restrictions.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, right, prepares to board a helicopter with his daughter Michaela Cuomo after announcing his resignation, Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021, in New York.

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Seth Wenig

***

Unquestionably, one of the most scandalous stories of the year that splashed across many page one headlines was New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigning his office (August 10) soon after New York Attorney General Letitia James released a report that found that the New York Governor sexually harassed 11 women, and according to the damning report, created a "hostile  work environment.” 

Before recessing for the Thanksgiving holiday, President Biden witnessed the successful passage of his ambitious infrastructure bill (“Build Back Better”) in Congress, which he described as a “once-in-generation investment in America.”

After a razor thin vote in the House of Representatives on November 5 (228-206) the infrastructure bill will invest hundreds of dollars to upgrade physical infrastructure, including roads and bridges, railways, airports, and water systems. The plan additionally invests tens of billions of dollars to modernize the U.S. electrical grid, aggressively embrace electric vehicles, and significantly expand broadband internet access.

The great Tom Brady clearly proved he’s the Eveready Battery of professional sports, who at age 43, won his seventh Super Bowl ring, leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a convincing 31-9 pounding  of the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV (55) at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, Florida. It was the first time in Super Bowl history a team has won in its home stadium.

So, those are just a brief assortment of the most dominating stories of the year.

To get an idea what stories interested readers the most in 2021, I checked in with some major news organizations to see what articles drove the most traffic to their home pages.

Here’s the list of news organizations who responded to my email.

CNN: January 6 Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

CNN’s Top Video: Surfside, Florida Building Collapse

Los Angeles Times: Tracking the Coronavirus in California 

Fox News: Democrat Jon Ossoff Projected to win Georgia Senate Runoff Election over Republican David Perdue

Open Secrets: Trump’s Political Operation Paid More than $3.5 million to January 6 Organizers

ProPublica: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax

The Marshall Project: The Controversial Version of the U.S. Flag has been Hailed as a Sign of Police Solidarity and Criticized as a Symbol of White Supremacy

Fortune: A Shock is Headed for the U.S. Housing Market

ESPN: Tiger Woods Recovering from Lengthy Surgery to Repair Significant Injuries to Right Leg

Weather Channel: Hurricane Ida: New Orleans to New Jersey

Texas Freeze

Hurricane Elsa

Western Wildfires

Megadrought in the West

Yahoo News: Trump Supporters Storm Congress, Halting Electoral Vote Certification Debate

Google: Year in Searches

Google: Top Trending News and Searches for the U.S. and Globally

GLOBAL: 

Searches 

1. Australia vs India
2. India vs England
3. IPL
4. NBA
5. Euro 2021
6. Copa América
7. India vs New Zealand
8. T20 World Cup
9. Squid Game
10. DMX

News: 

1. Afghanistan
2. AMC Stock
3. COVID Vaccine
4. Dogecoin
5. GME Stock
6. Stimulus Check
7. Georgia Senate Race
8. Hurricane Ida
9. COVID
10. Ethereum Price

U.S. Searches

1. NBA
2. DMX
3. Gabby Petito
4. Kyle Rittenhouse
5. Brian Laundrie
6. Mega Millions
7. AMC Stock
8. Stimulus Check
9. Georgia Senate Race
10. Squid Game

News 

1. Mega Millions
2. AMC Stock
3. Stimulus Check
4. Georgia Senate Race
5. GME
6. Dogecoin
7. Hurricane Ida
8. Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict
9. Afghanistan
10. Ethereum Price

Source: Global Communications and Public Affairs at Google

Twitter: Year-in-Review:

Tik-Tok Year-in-Review 

Meta (formerly Facebook): Widely Viewed Content Report: What People See on Facebook

Linkedin Year-in-Review: Data Facts

Spotify Year-in-Review

---Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

December 13, 2021

 

House of Representatives Has Become the House of Crazies!

Final vote tally for H.R. 3684-Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

Image Credit: House Television via AP

***

If there is agreement on nothing else in Washington, the one area, you would think, that we can all agree on is how bad (downright deplorable) the crumbling roads and bridges are in the United States.

For evidence, look no further than the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) report card for 2021.  It assigned a “C-” grade, up from a “D+” in 2017, the highest grade in twenty years. In addition, the United States faces an “infrastructure investment gap” of nearly $2.6 trillion this decade, which left unaddressed, could cost the United States $10 trillion in lost GDP by 2039.

 McKinsey & Company researchers say that $150 billion per year will be required between 2017 and 2030 to modernize the country’s infrastructure needs. 

President Joe Biden responded quickly to the alarm bells and developed a $2 trillion “Build Back Better” infrastructure plan, an ambitious plan, which he promoted as a “once-in-a-generation investment in America.”

The second part of Biden’s infrastructure plan (which hasn’t been voted on yet) is a social spending bill that includes hundreds of billions of dollars for child- and elder-care programs, which is considered “human infrastructure.” To fund this plan, Biden has proposed raising taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans.

After heaps of acrimony and uncivilized debate, Congress passed a $1.2 trillion, bipartisan plan, which will invest hundreds of dollars to upgrade physical infrastructure, including roads and bridges, railways, airports, and water systems.  The plan additionally invests tens of billions of dollars to modernize the U.S. electrical grid, aggressively embrace electric vehicles, and significantly expand broadband internet access. 

With the stroke of a pen, President Biden will sign the bill on Monday.

On the face of it, this should have all the makings of a grand celebration for America’s infrastructure, much like when President Dwight D. Eisenhower on June 30, 1956, signed a record $33 billion road-building program, a bipartisan authorization bill, which was met with little opposition in Congress. Sinclair Weeks, Secretary of Commerce under the Eisenhower administration hailed the bill as the “the greatest public-works program in the history of the world.”

Unlike Ike’s, the harmony in Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill was nowhere to be found. Most Republicans were dead set against it, labeling a socialist bill. Only 13 Republicans broke ranks and voted for it.

The final tally for the bill’s passage in Congress was 228-206.

The infrastructure bill was greeted a little more warmly in the other chamber, when Senate Minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and 19 Senate Republicans voted in favor of the infrastructure bill on August 10th of this year.

It’s practically unfathomable how vicious Republicans opposition to the bill were. FOX News commentator Laura Ingraham tweeted the 13 Republicans who voted for the bill had signed their “political death warrants. “

That was just the beginning.

The GOP House leadership quickly launched a malicious drive to strip committee assignments from the 13 Republican lawmakers who voted for the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.  

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., tweeted that those 13 Republicans "handed over their voting cards" to Nancy Pelosi to pass Biden's "Communist takeover of America via so-called infrastructure."

Why aren’t those members demonizing the 13 GOP members of Congress who voted for the bill being challenged by their own constituents and local newspapers for wanting to deny their state of badly needed infrastructure upgrades?

Why on earth would Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), want to oppose a bill that would deprive her own state of $12.5 billion in badly needed funding in Georgia over the next 20 years to maintain drinking water infrastructure. Georgia’s report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers additionally shows that Georgia has 374 bridges and more than 2,260 miles highway in poor condition.

Yet, Marjorie Taylor Greene likens the bill to communism and no one as much as bats an eye in her home state.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, (R-Fla) tweeted that he couldn’t believe Republicans gave the Democrats their socialism bill even though his own state of Florida has 408 bridges and over 3,564 miles of highway in poor condition.  From 2010 to 2020, the Sunshine State incurred 22 extreme weather events, which cost up to $100 billion in damages. The recently passed infrastructure bill will infuse $50 billion to help communities, like Florida, recover from disasters.

If I lived in Florida, I would be outraged that Gaetz wouldn’t support such a bill knowing how badly their state was slammed with weather disaster damages.

After reading such spiteful tweets, you became painfully aware how much the GOP has lost its purpose in Washington, abandoned its values and principles, and have forgot why they were elected, which is to improve the lives of their constituents through the enactment of better laws and to act as a strong voice for the crying needs of their communities.

Today, most members of the Republican Party, sadly, are more interested in tweeting the most outrageous comment on social media in order to elicit media attention and create a buzz on social media than they are in improving the lives of the residents they supposedly represent.

Their vicious attacks and vows of revenge against the 13 GOP members who voted their conscious and what was best for their state, was downright appalling. How do they live with themselves in refusing to be part of a bill that will repair the nation’s dilapidated infrastructure?

It really makes little sense to oppose such a bill when you look at the disturbing evidence of the condition of the country’s infrastructure.

Henry Petroski, a historian, in his book, “The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure” writes that poor infrastructure can impose large costs on the U.S. economy. In addition to catastrophic failures with bridge collapses or dam breaches, poorly maintained roads, trains, and waterways cost billions of dollars in lost economic productivity.

In addition to the gloomy report from the American Society of Civil Engineers, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that nearly one in four bridges are deficient, with 10 % considered as structurally deficient and 14 % functionally obsolete.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report in 2019 ranks the United States infrastructure at 13th in the world, behind France, Germany, Japan, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

Equally alarming, a 2020 Federal Communications Commission report finds that approximately 18 million Americans, most living in rural areas, lack access to any broadband network.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that drinking water and irrigation systems need $632 billion in additional investment over the next decade.

And yet the United States hypes itself as one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

Besides the desperate need for drastic improvement of roads and bridges, Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill will serve as a significant boon to the ailing economy in the post-pandemic United States.

By increasing efficiency and reliability and lowering transportation costs, analysts contend that investment in the nation’s infrastructure would improve “long-term U.S. competitiveness, insulate the economy from shocks, and create jobs.”

 Imagine, the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers estimates that $1 billion of transportation-infrastructure investment supports as many as 13,000 jobs for a year.

This bill should have been championed by both parties as a great American success story.  Instead, some members of the Republican House of Representatives (such as Rep. Fred Upton R-Mich.) are being demonized and receiving death threats because Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted many of their phone numbers on her Twitter page. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois reportedly received a call to slit his wrists and “rot in hell.” Another caller hoped Don Bacon of Nebraska would slip and fall down a staircase.

Because we live in an age when compromise is considered a dirty word and Republicans didn’t want to give Joe Biden legislative win, they were willing to neglect the needs of the nation’s infrastructure and were ok with denying potential jobs for constituents in their own state, all so they could embarrass Joe Biden.

As expected, former president Donald Trump demonized the bill, saying they [13 House members] should be “ashamed of themselves” for “helping the Democrats.”

Trump went mute over what the bill actually does for the country.

What kind of country have we become?

I never read about President Eisenhower being branded a socialist or communist for sponsoring and signing the Federal Highway Act of 1956, which gave birth to America’s interstate highway system. Eisenhower would later say that the Federal Highway Act was his favorite piece of legislation that he worked hard to get passed.

Everyone knows Washington is broken and dysfunctional; but even the Republicans, if they had any brains, would have subscribed to the timeless adage: “choose your fights wisely.”

Even Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell considered the infrastructure bill a “godsend” for his home state of Kentucky.

Jennifer Gosar, the sister of Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), told CNN’s Pamela Brown that she considers him a “sociopath”

***

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz) tweeted an image of someone killing progressive Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Soon after, Gosar’s sister appeared on CNN, calling her own brother a “sociopath.”

I’m sure It would come as little surprise to Jennifer Gosar to know that her brother isn’t the only sociopath in Congress.

Clearly, Republicans in the House of Representatives, at least most of them, are now members of the House of Crazies!

 

--Bill Lucey

November 14, 2021

WPLucey@gmail.com

Winston Churchill's Iconic Status Questioned in New Book

***

British statesman, writer, historian, and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1940-1945), Winston Churchill, once famously said, “history will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

Well, history hasn’t been very kind to Winston Churchill lately, because a trend is in progress with revisionists and other commentators looking back on history with a 21^st century progressive and moral lens—on a mission to shame history’s most decorated historical figures. Knowing a rebuttal for those accused won’t be coming because they’re no longer around to defend themselves, makes their case appear even stronger.

Most recently, journalist and historian Geoffrey Wheatcroft has taken to a public flogging of Churchill in broad daylight in his new book, “Churchill’s Shadow,” hoping to shatter all the hero worshiping and adulations given to the “British Bulldog” for most of the 20^th century and spilling over into the 21^st century.

Wheatcroft challenges readers to widen their net when looking at Churchill’s life by taking a sharper, more critical look at some of his unseemly characteristics which have largely been swept under the rug.

Readers are going to have to decide for themselves whether his account is a character assassination or an objective, non-partisan look at arguably one of the most worshiped figures of the 20^th century.

Peter Baker, Chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, recently reviewed Wheatcroft’s book, writing that “on both sides of the Atlantic, we are living in an era when history is being re-examined, a time when monuments are coming down and illusions about onetime heroes are being shattered.”

Between the covers, Wheatcroft, according to Baker’s account, underscores Churchill’s perceived racism, narcissism, heavy drinking, his unabashed imperialist tendencies, neglecting his own children, along with being a horrible judge of character, and, naturally, a shameless mythmaker.

In Wheatcroft’s book, he becomes the prosecutor, judge and jury of Churchill’s life and career without the former prime minister ever appearing on the witness stand.

While Baker might not be in perfect agreement with Wheatcroft demolishing the iconic status of Churchill, he does concede that Wheatcroft makes a compelling argument in unpacking the complicated features of Churchill, just not the ones we selectively choose to remember.

“History is not one-dimensional,” Baker wrote. “Churchill was indeed a complicated figure, one whose stirring defense of Britain at its moment of maximum peril — and by extension that of Western civilization — overshadows fewer worthy parts of his record.”

Roger Louis, an American historian and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and editor-in-chief of “The Oxford History of the British Empire” thinks “Churchill’s Shadow” was a book that needed to be written and according to him, an accurate reassessment. “It makes clear,” Louis told me, “what most authorities on Churchill would recognize as a long overdue account and concludes with a fair judgment: “he saved his country and saved freedom.”

Will Wheatcroft’s book significantly reshape Churchill’s legacy?

Not according to Richard M. Langworth, Senior Fellow at Hillsdale College’s Churchill Project.

“I think there is scarcely a dent in Churchill's legacy: first because most of the charges are false, and second because they ignore what really matters. Only a small fraction of people believes such things,” Langworth observed.

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has been making “the case for the defense” against blatant inaccuracies written about Churchill for years-- such as its “Truths and Heresies," department.

The Churchill Project additionally documents a selection of popular quotes wrongly attributed to Churchill. Followers of Winnie, for example, might be surprised to learn he never said: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: what counts is the courage to continue.” Nor did he say, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

In addition to Peter Baker, “Churchill’s Shadow’’ was reviewed by British historian and biographer Richard Aldous in the Wall Street Journal in which he praises Wheatcroft for the first part of his book, but takes him to task for the second part in which he belittles historian Andrew Roberts (author of “Churchill: Walking With Destiny,” 2018), along with other historians for their "Churchillolatry.”

“That’s a shame,” Aldous wrote, “not least because Mr. Roberts’s is a much better book—deeply researched in the archives and the product of decades of Churchill study.”

 Aldous is additionally puzzled that Wheatcroft questions the wisdom of the British state paying £12.5 million for the Churchill papers. “Those papers are now available digitally, though Mr. Wheatcroft seems not to have made much use of them,” Aldous wrote.

 Aldous contends Wheatcroft was correct in suggesting that so much of what Churchill believed in and championed has “withered away” as Britain lost its leadership prominence as the 20^th century came to a close. But Aldous is just as quick to point out that while Britain is no longer a superpower, it still maintains the fifth largest economy in the world, has a permanent seat on the United Nations Council, is a leading member of NATO, and is now part of the Aukus security alliance (with Australia and the United States).

“All these elements of status and power,” Aldous argues, “have their origins in the late 1940s and 1950s, a period Mr. Wheatcroft views so balefully. “

Chris Waters, professor of Modern European History at Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts) agrees with Wheatcroft that the cult surrounding Churchill since World War II emphasizing his “finest hour” speech too often dominates the “more problematic side Churchill’s character and politics,’’ which should be more thoroughly scrutinized.

Waters argues as Britain has lost its prominent status on the world stage, there’s a tendency to fall prey to nostalgia, especially about Churchill going to eyeball-to-eyeball with Adolf Hitler and standing tall after the Luftwaffe sprayed bombs on London for 57 consecutive nights between September and November 1940.

Waters believes, strongly, that we should “demolish the myth that has grown up around Churchill since the War, but we should not demolish the statues or fail to respect his many triumphs and contributions to the nation either!”

Since the main thrust of “Churchill’s Shadow” was to smash what Wheatcroft considered the blatant idolatry of Churchill in historian Andrew Robert’s 2018 masterpiece, “Churchill Walking with Destiny,” (published in 2018), it didn’t take long for Roberts to answer back.

In an article published by The Churchill Project , the biographer and historian highlighted some weaknesses or inaccuracies in Wheatcroft’s work.

Wheatcroft stated Churchill was not a well-travelled man. Quite the contrary, Roberts fired back. “Churchill visited America 16 times and Canada nine times, crossing both from coast to coast. He served for years in India and Afghanistan, fought in Cuba, South Africa, the Sudan and on the Franco-Belgian border, honeymooned in Italy, holidayed in France, Italy, Florida, Monaco, Madeira, Morocco, Bahamas and Spain, mountaineered in Switzerland, twice visited Stalin in Moscow, held conferences in Cairo and Tehran, watched army maneuvers with the Kaiser in Germany, cruised the Mediterranean and Caribbean, and also visited Palestine, Iceland, Turkey, Cyprus, Uganda, Belgium, Tanganyika (modern-day Tanzania), Mozambique, Kenya, Bermuda, Monaco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Malta, Holland, Trinidad, Jamaica and Greece.”

In another part of the book, Wheatcroft argues that Churchill’s judgement was strategically flawed. “Yet,” Roberts answers, it was Churchill and “Alan Brooke (senior officer of the British army) who not only came up with the Mediterranean strategy that liberated North Africa and Italy but also sold it to the Americans, and ensured no over-hasty return in force to the European continent before D-Day.”

In addition, charges that Churchill cultivated fascist leanings in the 1920’s isn’t supported by any reputable sources, Roberts claims, except political enemies of the “British Bulldog.”

Roberts argues, among other weaknesses of the book, that many of Wheatcroft’s sources are dubious, including the use of internet articles by the former journalist Johann Hari, who later had to return a journalism prize for inventing quotes.

In summing up Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s book, Roberts wrote that “never in the field of Churchill revisionism have so many punches been thrown in so many pages with so few hitting home.”

Winston Churchill addresses the House of Commons of Canada in 1941. 

Photo Credit: CP Archive

***

Admittedly, one of the biggest problems in assessing the life and times of Winston Churchill, much like Abraham Lincoln, is that he endured many failures and hardships before rising to the top when his country needed him most, during its darkest hour.

Churchill spent sixty years of his political life in the House of Commons. Taking a broad brush to Churchill’s accomplishments and failures over so many decades of service, isn’t fair. He entered the House of Commons in 1900, and over 19 contested elections, he was successful in 14 of them.

He failed miserably in 1915 as First Lord of the Admiralty in orchestrating the disastrous Dardanelles naval campaign, which resulted in the loss of thousands of British lives. As Chancellor of the Exchequer (treasurer) he blundered badly by restoring Britain to the gold standard, which resulted in unemployment, deflation, and a general strike. He also voted against self-rule for India, unable to let go of the romanticism associated with Britain’s imperial history. And much like Lincoln, he succumbed to severe bouts of depression, “The Black Dog’’ as he called it.

Imagine, Churchill was 65 years old when he became PM in 1940, about the time most are retiring.

Prior to leading Britain out of the dark storm, Churchill served in every important cabinet post except for Foreign Minister.

So, all those setbacks and failures he experienced may very well have prepared him for a time when the country needed a strong, resolute leader to face the menace of Nazi Germany. Churchill undoubtedly met the challenge as PM and as head of the Ministry of Defense.

“I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour," he would later write.

While all of us may fall prey to Churchill idolatry now and again, it’s hard to imagine how Britain and Western Europe could have survived World War II had not Churchill been in the right place at the right time, with decades and decades of experience under his belt.

I’m not reading many books that focus on Abraham Lincoln being defeated for the state legislature in 1832, his abysmal failings in business, being defeated for the U.S. Senate, not once (1854) but twice (1858), and being defeated in the nomination for the Vice Presidency in 1856.

But we do remember Lincoln’s Gettysburg address (November 19, 1863) in which he famously said: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

 Churchill, to be sure, possessed heaps of flaws, prejudices, and undoubtedly exercised poor judgement at times in his career, but do we honor Churchill today for his personality qualities and boorish behavior, or do we honor him for his indomitable courage and leadership in rallying the nation during arguably one of the most destructive conflicts in human history, when FDR and the United States was nowhere to be found.

 

--Bill Lucey

November 3, 2021

WPLucey@gmail.com

Early Prognosis: Baker Mayfield Likely Done for the Season

Cleveland Browns quarterback, Baker Mayfield, absorbs a punishing sack from Arizona Cardinals defensive end, J.J. Watt

Photo Credit:  Brownswire.USAToday.com

***

Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield is as tough and resilient as they come. There’s simply no quit in this unconquerable Texas native who’s in his fourth year as the Browns field general.

Typically, any setback he faces, only means he roars back the following week like a Category 4 hurricane, usually silencing his critics in a blink of an eye. If you remember, Mayfield was met with boos and hollers last year when he overthrew some easy targets early in the season. His confidence was never shaken and bounced back with some star-studded performances, leaving his critics speechless.

That’s the charm of this blue-collar quarterback playing in a blue-collar town: both were made for each other, a marriage made in heaven. Mayfield won’t be confused with Tom Brady or Joe Montana, but his work ethic, raw talent, and unabashed confidence is well suited to this Rust Belt city.

Unfortunately, as tough as he is, multiple shoulder injuries he sustained in the first few weeks of the young season--left him sidelined in week seven against the Denver Broncos who visited the shores of Lake Erie on Thursday night.

Not only were the Browns without Baker Mayfield, hamstring injuries sidelined their two workhorses in the backfield: Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt.

Thanks to the serviceable job turned in by backup quarterback, Case Keenum, (now on his 8^th NFL team since 2012) and the spectacular running performance of D’Ernest Johnson (rushing for 146 yards and 1 TD), the Browns broke their two-game losing streak with a 17-14 win to put them at 4-3 for the season.

The Browns now face three formidable opponents in the coming weeks: they’ll be in Pittsburgh on October 31 followed by two home games against Cincinnati (November 7) and New England (November 14^th). Two of those three opponents, of course, are division rivals.

The question now becomes will Mayfield be healthy enough to battle through his injuries and return as the Browns starting quarterback?

That’s been a mighty big question mark all week.

Mayfield suffered a fully torn labrum (cartilage that is attached to the shoulder socket rim) in week two of the season. He mentioned to reporters, he was experiencing some “fraying in the shoulder.” If that wasn’t alarming enough, the Browns quarterback recently admitted to reporters that he fractured the humerus bone at the top of the non-throwing shoulder when the Browns played the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 5 of the season, compliments of a J.J. Watt strip sack.

So, now Baker Mayfield is dealing with multiple fractures. Early indications are is that he’s determined to play though the injuries and schedule surgery after the season is over. Head coach Kevin Stefanski told reporters in his post-game press conference after the Denver game that he hasn’t made any decision on whether Mayfield will start on October 31 and will rely, heavily, on the advice of his medical team.

Curious about the severity of Mayfield’s injuries, I consulted with a few sports medicine specialists who deal with elbow and shoulder surgeries.

Not knowing all the minute specifics of Mayfield’s injuries, their prognosis, nonetheless, was not encouraging.

Josef K. Eichinger, an M.D. in sports medicine, shoulder and elbow surgery, and Professor of Orthopaedics at the Medical University of South Carolina, said that Mayfield should strongly consider surgery. “My money,” Eichinger told me, “would be on him being out for the remainder of the season.  The multiple dislocations are a real concern.  Cumulative dislocations can result in additional bone loss and can change the nature of surgery. “

Eichinger went on to explain that, typically, you can play through a torn labrum, but the fracture Mayfield suffered will require a minimum of 6-8 weeks (or longer to heal).

Amit Momaya, M.D. in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Heersink School of Medicine at the University of Alabama Birmingham, thinks players with greater tuberosity fractures can return as early as a few weeks.  “The danger,” Dr. Amit warns, “is that repeated dislocations can result in glenoid (socket) bone loss in terms of long-term damage, which can make surgery more involved. In addition, a repeat injury to a healing fracture may result in displacement, thus requiring surgery."

My guess is that Baker Mayfield will follow the sound advice of his medical team and opt for surgery immediately, meaning he’ll miss the rest of the season. With 10 bruising opponents still to come, I don’t see the sense of jeopardizing his long-term health so early into his promising career.

He’s still a young athlete, only 26, whose long-term contract still hangs in the balance. Why risk playing through the rest of the year with the chance he’ll never be the same again?

It’s a crying shame that Mayfield’s season is most likely over. He recently took to social media (as did his wife, Emily) to answer critics who made some vicious comments about his mediocre play in week four and five of the season.  It was during those weeks that Mayfield was suffering from a torn labrum (in his non-throwing arm) but never made it an excuse. He still faced toxic comments on Twitter after the Los Angeles Chargers loss in week five despite throwing for over 300 yards, two touchdown passes, and no interceptions.

What’s so ridiculous about all this back and forth about Mayfield and whether he’s a franchise quarterback is that we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if the Browns defense hadn’t played so poorly over the last few weeks.

Over the last three games, the Browns defense has surrendered 98 points. How’s a team supposed to be successful with those kinds of numbers, regardless of who’s the quarterback.  During the Browns lopsided loss (37-14) to the Arizona Cardinals in week six, the Cardinals offense scored on every possession in the first half. That’s just plain disgraceful, which raises serious questions whether this team is playoff bound with such a broken-down, disheveled defense.

Over the last few weeks, including the Denver win on Thursday, opposing quarterbacks just seem to be able to slice and dice their way through the Browns secondary without much effort, like a knife through butter. It’s simply painful to watch.

And yet, all the idle chatter among Cleveland fans is whether Baker Mayfield is a franchise quarterback.

The Kansas City Chiefs have dropped four out of their last six games. I don’t hear Chief fans calling for Pat Mahomes head--even though he’s thrown eight interceptions, five more than Baker Mayfield. Mahomes completion percentage (69.00), moreover, is just a tick above Mayfield’s (67.1).

The same goes for Aaron Rodgers, the Green Bay Packers quarterback.  Rodger’s completion percentage stands at 66.7, just below Mayfield’s. And while Mayfield might not have as many touchdown passes as his equals, few teams have the firepower in the backfield like the Browns have with Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt who have a combined nine rushing touchdowns this year. In baseball lingo, these two freight trains represent the Ruth and Gehrig of the NFL. Not many teams have the luxury that Mayfield does in having such a strong backfield to punch the ball into the endzone.

While Browns fans are railing against Baker Mayfield, they should be reminded that this team absorbed 12 consecutive losing seasons before last year. The last time they had a winning season, prior to 2000, was in 2007. In addition, the Browns, last year, with Baker Mayfield as their quarterback, advanced to the playoffs for the first time since 2002.  They upset the Pittsburgh Steelers, 48-37, in the NFL Wild Card game before losing to the Kansas City Chiefs (22-17) in the NFL Divisional round.

Browns fans should also remind themselves that before Baker came on the scene, there was a habitual defeatist attitude cascading through Northeast Ohio, so convinced that the Browns would never taste success. Mayfield changed the whole narrative in Cleveland. For the first time in quite some time, fans expect the Browns to win and win often. Mayfield is a no excuses type of guy, the first in the office in the morning, and the last to leave at night (as head coach Kevin Stefanski once explained), working his tail off to make Cleveland proud of the Browns again, much like it was during the glory days of Otto Graham and Jim Brown.

I’ll keep praying, that by some miracle, Baker Mayfield does return to lead the Browns this year. But if he doesn’t, the Browns can expect brighter days ahead if he’s signed to a long-term contract and made our franchise quarterback for many years to come.

Do we really have to count how many quarterbacks the Browns went through before Mayfield was drafted in the first round of the 2018 NFL draft?

If you insist on knowing, 28 different starting quarterbacks suited up for the Browns since 1999, the year they re-entered the NFL.

Given all that Mayfield has accomplished over the last few seasons in helping propel the Browns into a winning team, with a winning attitude, together with a tinge of swagger, I think he deserves a great deal more respect than what he’s been shown (by some belligerent so-called fans) over the last few weeks.

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

October 24, 2021

 

***

Baker Mayfield and his wife, Emily (Wilkinson) Mayfield took to social media to answer critics

 

Exiting a Never-Ending Civil War in Afghanistan

President Joe Biden speaking on the situation in Afghanistan and on the response to Tropical Storm Henri on August 22, 2021.

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

***

History wasn’t going to repeat itself on Joe Biden’s watch.

At least not if he had anything to do with it.

The 46^th U.S. President and fourth guardian of the war in Afghanistan was determined not to meet the same fate as Lyndon Johnson, when the tall, big-eared Texan left office in 1968.

Johnson biographer and historian Robert Caro reports that there were 23,000 Americans in Vietnam when LBJ took office. By the end of 1965, that number leaped to 184,000; by the end of his presidency, there were 586,000 American troops in Southeast Asia. 58,000 Americans were killed, 288,000 seriously wounded.

Was it worth it? Hardly! North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam (who the U.S. supported), surrendering in April, 1975.

By the time Joe Biden was sworn in as president, he was faced with the same difficulty bedeviling George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. All of these presidents wrestled whether to send in more troops, more money, more weapons in dealing with the Afghan civil war or end American’s participation in a tribal conflict and withdraw.

Biden had the courage to step forward and rip off the band aid and withdraw the troops. He chose such an action knowing full well the land mines he was about to confront.

“There never was a good time to withdraw U.S. forces” Biden said in his August 16^th address to the nation.

Biden could have kicked the can down the road, like three of his predecessors have, and left it to his successor to deal with the mess when he was out of office.

Instead, he did something novel-he took ownership of the war in Afghanistan.

“I am president of the United States of America, and the buck stops with me,” Biden said.

I’m sure the decision wasn’t an easy one, knowing leaving meant possibly the reemergence of the scourge of the Taliban, and more alarming still--the reemergence of the terrorist group, al Qaeda.

But to hear newspaper reports, opinion columnists, and nauseating television talking heads, you would think it was Biden’s war to begin with.

Why wasn’t the media asking what has been accomplished in the 20 years before Joe Biden assumed office?

The answer is fairly simple. The Taliban, after 20 years, is still alive and well in Afghanistan. They never really left, they were scattered in the crevices of the countryside, the villages, and small towns, particularly in the south of the country, their stronghold, while the U.S. military held the larger populated urban areas.

What does the U.S. have to show for it after 20 years? Glad you asked! 2,461 U.S. service members have been killed, 20,000 injured, another 3,846 U.S. contractors killed.

The final U.S. tab? Between the Afghanistan and Iraq--$2 trillion.

I wish the same journalists condemning Biden would discuss what are mission in Afghanistan has been?

After getting rid of terrorists who attacked on 9/11 and preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorists, it was to make the Afghans self-reliant by providing them with billions of economic assistance, the best military training in the world, along with state-of-the-art weapons.

Between 2002 and 2017, in fact, the United States reportedly gave the Afghan military an estimated $28 billion in artillery, including guns, rockets, night-vision goggles and even small drones for intelligence gathering.

An Afghan National Army soldier stands in afternoon formation awaiting instructions at a checkpoint in western Afghanistan, Dec. 31, 2019.

Photo By Jeffery J. Harris/U.S. Army

***

What else is to be done in a country divided with factionalism and tribal warfare? U.S. forces, after all, helped equip the Taliban with a convenient anti-colonialist rallying cry for others to join their crusade in rooting out foreign occupation.

Clearly, we overstayed our welcome!

It’s obvious now that the Afghans were never interested in autonomy or taking the baton from the U.S. to lead their country as they saw fit, far removed from Taliban influence.

Once President Biden announced he would abide by the deal President Trump struck with the Taliban to withdraw all troops, Afghan troops folded like a deck of cards.

Knowing the U.S. were heading to the exit doors, heaps of Afghan troops, instead of hunkering down and taking responsibility for their country, accepted cold hard cash from the Taliban and handed over their weapons, practically without as much as a whimper. Knowing the Taliban would eventually control the major cities, others surrendered without a fight in exchange for not being subject to harsh retribution once the Taliban reigned supreme.

Large pockets of Afghans additionally didn’t feel President Ashraf Ghani (before he fled the country) came to power legitimately; his presidency was tainted with fraud and corruption. And he didn’t accomplish what he set out to do, which was to unite the country. Before Biden was elected, Ghani, according to many observers, was prone to cruelty and spite. When the U.S. asked him to form a negotiating team in 2018, it took him two years. A senior Afghan leader told journalist Dexter Filkins (from the New Yorker) that Ghani was surrounding himself with people who were determined to “destroy the peace process.”

When Ghani was reelected in 2019, less than two million Afghans voted for him. Many Afghans didn’t feel waging war for such an ineffective leader was worth fighting for.

The U.S., in other words, flushed $83 billion down the toilet (in weapons, equipment, training) over the last 20 years with little to show for it.

Reuters reports that the Taliban control more than “2,000 armored vehicles, U.S. Humvees, and up to 40 aircraft potentially including UH-60 Black Hawks, scout attack helicopters, and ScanEagle military drones.”

Biden, correctly, said from the East Room of the White House that it’s up to Afghans to make the decision about the future of their country. “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves,” Biden stated on August 16.  “We spent over a trillion dollars.  We trained and equipped an Afghan military force of some 300,000 strong — incredibly well equipped — a force larger in size than the militaries of many of our NATO allies. “

What Joe Biden realizes now is what the Soviet Union came to realize when they finally withdrew its troops from Afghanistan in 1989. After 10 years of occupation, 13,000 of their soldiers had been killed, 40,000 more wounded and the public outcry for remaining in such a quagmire in a foreign land, propelled the Soviet Union to exit the country and direct more money toward fixing a deplorable health care system back home, work on arms reduction, and other freedom of speech initiatives that needed serious attention.

Similarly, Joe Biden realizes with an ambitious $1 trillion Infrastructure Bill passed by the Senate last month, the $2 trillion spent on Iraq and Afghanistan could have been spent much more wisely on American soil, including policies to address climate change, funding to expand high-speed internet access; much needed repairs to roads, bridges, and airports; modernization of the nation’s power grid, repairing and replacing aging public works projects and more mechanisms directed at  pollution control.

Biden also acknowledges the paradigm of U.S. foreign policy is changing, which means we have to change with it, which includes tracking and directing more of our resources toward al Shabaab (a jihadi militant organization in Somalia), al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Nursa (another jihadist organization fighting against Syrian government forces in the Syrian Civil War), along with monitoring ISIS attempts to create a caliphate in Syria and Iraq and establishing affiliates in multiple countries in Africa and Asia. All of these new global fears were articulated by Joe Biden in his remarks to the nation on August 16^th.

As Abraham Lincoln said in 1862: “As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.”

It’s almost hysterical that while Joe Biden is receiving the brunt of the blame for pulling out of Afghanistan, his boss for eight years, Barack Obama, receives hardly a mention for his deception.

On December 14, 2014, President Obama said, “thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, our combat mission in Afghanistan is ending, and the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion.”

Only it wasn’t the end.

Instead of reducing our troops to 5,500 as he told the American public, he ordered more U.S. boots to stay in Afghanistan in July, 2016. So that by the time Obama left the White House (January, 2017), 8,400 troops remained in Afghanistan.

Craig Whitlock, an investigative reporter for The Washington Post, reporting on national security issues wrote that the “Obama administration’s assertion that the fighting had ended was “among the most egregious deceptions and lies that U.S. leaders spread during two decades of warfare.” “The war,” Whitlock explained, “was nowhere near done, and Obama wasn’t willing to actually end it, lest he face exactly what Biden is facing right now.”

 Instead of attacking him and slinging arrows in his direction, many should be thanking President Biden for finally ending our presence in Afghanistan, saving American lives, and doing what Barack Obama promised but blatantly lied about.

 

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

September 7, 2021

Did Ethel Rosenberg Deserve the Electric Chair?

 

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in 1951.

Photo Credit: Not provided.

***

British author and journalist, Anne Sebba, who has written biographies on some shadowy British figures, including Jennie Churchill and Wallis Simpson, among others, traveled across the Atlantic to explore one of the most controversial characters of them all in her new book, “Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy."

In one of the most highly debated cases in American history, Ethel, along with her husband, Julius Rosenberg, were tried and convicted of espionage for providing the Soviet Union classified information on the Manhattan Project. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953.

Ethel Rosenberg was the first woman executed by the United States Government since Mary Surratt, an American boarding house owner, was hanged (July 7, 1865) for her role in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

The Manhattan Project was a code name attached to a top-secret project involving Allied scientists working to develop an atomic bomb. According to recorded testimony, British physicist Klaus Fuchs, working at Los Alamos, met with a Soviet agent (named Raymond) on two different occasions and transferred notes on the working design for the atomic bomb.

Fuchs would eventually be arrested and pressured to name his co-conspirators. He confessed to spying and passing to the Soviets information about the Manhattan Project.

There isn’t much debate surrounding Julius Rosenberg, the husband of Ethel Rosenberg. He was a card-carrying Communist party member since December 12, 1939, approximately six months after marrying Ethel in a small civil ceremony.

Mountains of court testimony, FBI records, and recently declassified cables, show irrefutably that Julius Rosenberg was a prime mover and shaker of a spy ring which involved transferring classified information about the development of the United States first atomic bomb from the Los Alamos Laboratory (New Mexico) to a courier, Harry Gold, who was alleged to have passed it on to the Soviets.

Testimony reveals David Greenglass, the brother of Ethel Rosenberg, passed a "sketch of a high-explosive lens mold" to Gold at Julius Rosenberg’s request; a sketch that was eventually transferred to the Soviets.

 Greenglass worked as a machinist-soldier stationed at Los Alamos. He was recruited by Julius Rosenberg to assist in this espionage ring.

 So, exactly how did Ethel become linked in this spy ring?

When the FBI questioned Greenglass on June 15, 1950; in addition to naming his wife Ruth and Julius Rosenberg in the spy ring, he told the feds that Ethel Rosenberg, the wife of Julius, was in Julius’s apartment room and typed hand written notes on classified information from him.

In fact, no handwritten or type-written notes were ever found and they were never presented in court, raising credibility problems for the prosecution’s case that Ethel Rosenberg was an accomplice to the spy ring. The charges that Ethel Rosenberg typed the notes, in other words, was unsubstantiated.

In exchange for their testimony, David and Ruth Greenglass were given appreciably lighter sentences.

It wouldn’t be divulged until 2008 that the Greenglass’s (both Ruth and David, active participants in the spying activity) lied in their original testimony about Ethel Rosenberg typing notes that would facilitate the spy ring. They later claim they were coerced by the prosecuting team, led by the ruthless firebrand Roy Cohn, to fabricate their story so they could force Ethel Rosenberg to disclose additional badly needed information about the spy ring.

In order to save his wife from prosecution, David Greenglass told journalist Sam Roberts that he was squeezed by the prosecution to commit perjury. His false testimony additionally saved his wife from prosecution.

David Greenglass was released from prison in 1960 after serving 10 years of his 15-year sentence. His wife, Ruth, was never charged.

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Groundless accusations against Ethel Rosenberg and the reason she was sentenced to death becomes the central focus of Anne Sebba’s fascinating book.

Most observers who have followed the Rosenberg case reach the overriding conclusion that threatening Ethel with a harsh punishment would make her share more information about the spy ring. She never offered prosecutor’s any more damaging information about the espionage activity because she wasn’t privy to such information. She was merely the wife of a Soviet spy, not a collaborator.

Martin Sobell, an American engineer, convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, told reporters in 2008 that Ethel was guilty only "of being Julius's wife.”

Anne Sebba writes that the true extent of Ethel’s complicity will probably never be clearly known, but points out, “it was not a crime under U.S. Law to approve spousal wrongdoing, either during the war or the time of the trial.”

The fact that Julius Rosenberg didn’t distance Ethel from the real crime capers during the intense questioning, left many historians and journalists scratching their heads why he wouldn’t save his own wife from possible execution.

Not all observers, however, are convinced Ethel Rosenberg wasn’t an active participant in the spy ring.

Mark Kramer, Director of the Cold War Studies Project at Harvard University, told me “the evidence against Ethel Rosenberg at the trial was overwhelming, and Soviet foreign intelligence documents that became available in 2005 provide conclusive evidence that she gave her husband invaluable assistance with his espionage ring.”   “She did not deserve to be put to death” Kramer concedes, “but she certainly was guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage and was justifiably convicted, despite the misdeeds of the prosecutors.” Kramer thought a sentence of 15 to 25 years for Ethel Rosenberg would have been more appropriate. 

Along with the dubious charges against Ethel Rosenberg, Anne Sebba drives home the critical point that the execution of the Rosenbergs happened during a time of heightened paranoia in the United States about Soviet aggression and Communist intrusion into leading American institutions.

At the time of the Rosenberg case, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, the prominent ring leader of the “Second Red Scare,” charged that the State Department employed over 200 Communist agents, triggering fear and suspicion, leading to the blacklisting of a number of individuals who were hauled in front of McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee and accused of unfounded subversion and treason charges.

“For one brief moment in time,” Sebba wrote, “hysteria overtook common sense and, in order to appear strong in the face of credible Communist threat, the American government allowed this profoundly moral woman to be executed, and in the most brutally incompetent manner.” “It is hard to imagine,” Sebba went on to write, “any other country, in Western Europe of the wider free world, where this terrible fate would have been inflicted on Ethel.”

The death penalty unquestionably met with the approval of a number of Americans at the time. As many as 68% respondents in a 1953 survey, supported the death penalty.

The death penalty might have been ok with a majority of the American public, but there was pent-up outrage, internationally, for the death sentence of Ethel Rosenberg, which Anne Sebba underscores.

At the time of the trial, for example, The New York Times printed a letter from German born physicist, Albert Einstein, who wrote: “My conscience compels me to urge you (President Eisenhower) to commute the death sentence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.”

The Vatican newspaper (L’Osservatore Romano) published a passionate plea from the pope not to execute the Rosenbergs. Before he left office, President Truman received as many as three million letters and telegrams asking the Rosenbergs not be put to death.

Further, U.S. Ambassador to France, C. Douglas Dillon, predicted (probably correctly) that the Rosenberg executions would be viewed, many years later, as a knee jerk reaction to McCarthyism. The majority in France, in fact, opposed the executions which they viewed as “unjustifiable punishment.”

For decades after the trial, the Rosenberg’s sons Robert and Michael Meeropol believed both their parents weren’t spies and fought vigorously to clear their names.

All that changed in 2008, when 91-year-old Martin Sobell admitted for the first time that he was a Soviet spy in a New York Times article. He additionally implicated Julius Rosenberg in the spy ring. According to the New York Times, “coupled with some of that grand jury testimony, Mr. Sobell’s admission bolsters what has become a widely held view among scholars: that Mr. Rosenberg was, indeed, guilty of spying, but that his wife was at most a bit player in the conspiracy and may have been framed by complicit prosecutors.”

After such a sobering revelation, the Rosenberg sons finally gave up the fight and acknowledged their father, Julius Rosenberg, was indeed a Soviet spy.

Both sons, however, continue to fight for the exoneration of their mother, Ethel Rosenberg. In 2016, they made an impassioned plea to President Barack Obama to clear her name without success.

Now that there’s a new president, I asked Michael Meeropol whether he and his brother would make a plea to President Joe Biden to decide for himself whether their mother was a spy?

Mr. Meeropol responded to my email only to say, “my brother and I are considering the possibilities, but we have not made any decisions yet.”

Thanks to Anne Sebba’s compelling narrative, readers are given an opportunity to decide for themselves whether prisoner number “10510” (from the Sing Sing prison overlooking the east bank of the Hudson River) really deserved to be executed shortly after 8 p.m. on June 19, 1953, along with her husband, Julius.

 

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

June 19, 2021