Show Boat at the Lyric Opera

Chicago's Civic Opera House

The seminal work in American musical theater begins with loud, uncomfortable notes, filled with foreboding, as the curtain opens on black stevedores loading cotton while singing “Niggers all work on de Mississippi, Niggers all work while de white folks play ....”  Whoa!  Imagine sitting in the audience on opening night, December 27, 1927, expecting the usual light fare.  Mark Steyn writes in Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: “From that first shocking word, confronting mid-town Manhattan with aspects of their society they preferred not to think about, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II presented their audience with something new: drama in music, with neither element constrained by the other.  It is the ultimate opening number, because it is the opening number for all [in American musical theater] that follows.”   Show Boat was the first work to take serious themes and tightly integrate music and lyrics into the narrative, where they advance and expound on the story line, a serious story line – resulting in what Steyn calls “the most important work in American musical theater, [as] it sums up what’s gone before and points the way ahead.”  

Show Boat Backdrop on the Stage of the Civic Opera House

A couple of weeks ago at Chicago’s Lyric Opera I took in the season’s last staging of the work that became Hammerstein’s masterpiece – actually, the first of many for the greatest lyricist in musical theater and perhaps its greatest dramatist.  The production was well-done and spirited, although to bring the running time in at a brisk 3 1/3 hours it by necessity didn’t include every one of the many scenes and songs written by Kern and Hammerstein for the original and for various stage and film reprises (for that we have the excellent 1988 compilation by John McGlinn featuring Frederica von Stade, Jerry Hadley, Teresa Stratas, and Karla Burns, among others).  The singing and acting were very good and the music and lyrics, of course, incomparable, although the sparse set was disappointing for a Lyric production, granting the challenges of frequent scene changes and the invariable budget constraints.  The ensemble of supporting black singers and dancers was exceptional, and Ashley Brown as Magnolia and Angela Renee Simpson as Queenie particularly stood out. 

The narrative spans several decades, and, against the backdrop themes of racial privilege and discrimination and the timelessness of the River, at the core is the sad story of a young woman who, despite being warned of the danger of falling in love with a “no-account river fella” because when “a girl like you starts to love a man, she don’t stop so easy,” nevertheless falls in love with a no-account river fella who later abandons her and their young daughter, proving that indeed, to her lifelong detriment, she couldn’t help lovin’ dat man.  
    
R Balsamo

More Liberal Love & Lies From MSNBC About Healthcare in Repressive, Socialist Countries

Tom Friedman, the NY Times reporter who openly pines for the authoritarian control possessed by nominally-socialist dictators, which bestows an effectiveness unencumbered by the retrograde necessities of free elections and the rule of law, you’ve got more company.

One of the biggest lies used to impugn U.S. healthcare in particular and the American system of free-enterprise in general is that the infant mortality rate is much lower most everywhere else in the world, especially in those authoritarian, freedomless countries American liberals admire so much. 

Now comes propagandist Andrea Mitchell, who on MSNBC (link) “did a particularly fawning segment about Cuba’s health-care system”, referring to “the advantages of the Cuban system, the low infant-mortality rate, for instance, which is legendary around the world....  As the conversation continued, MSNBC splashed the headline ‘Cuba’s Infant Mortality Rate Is Better than the U.S.’ across the bottom of the screen."

I seriously doubt that anyone outside of the most deluded liberal precincts (which include MSNBC) truly believes that “Cuba’s Infant Mortality Rate Is Better than the U.S.”

From Ramesh Ponnuru (link):

[L]iberal columnist ... Cohen’s top reasons for thinking [the U.S. has] a crummy [healthcare] system are our relatively low life expectancy and our relatively high infant mortality rate....  As conservatives and libertarians have pointed out time and again, the health-care system is not the reason for these statistics. Here’s the way I put it a couple of years ago: “In this country, a premature delivery followed by death would be counted toward the infant-mortality rate; not so in some other countries. And whatever we think of our health-care system, it is not to blame for the fact that America has a lot of car wrecks and homicides. When health economist Robert Ohsfeldt and John Schneider adjusted for these factors, the U.S. had the highest life expectancy of any developed country. (And they didn’t correct for obesity rates, which would make our advantage look even bigger, just like our waistlines.)”

Scott W. Atlas, M.D., senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at Stanford University Medical Center (link), examines the data and reports and concludes:

The fact is that for decades, the U.S. has shown superior infant-mortality rates using official National Center for Health Statistics and European Perinatal Health Report data — in fact, the best in the world outside of Sweden and Norway, even without correcting for any of the population and risk-factor differences deleterious to the U.S. — for premature and low-birth-weight babies, the newborns who actually need medical care and who are at highest risk of dying.

In summary, the analysis and subsequent comparison of neonatal- and infant-mortality rates have been filled with inconsistencies and pitfalls, problematic definitions, and inaccuracies. Even the use of the most fundamental term, “live births,” greatly distorts infant-mortality rates, because often the infants who die the soonest after birth are not counted as live births outside the United States. In the end, these comparisons reflect deviations in fundamental terminology, reporting accuracy, data sources, populations, and cultural-medical practices — all of which specifically disadvantage the U.S. in international rankings. And unbeknownst to organizations bent on painting a picture of inferior health care in the U.S., the peer-reviewed literature and even the WHO’s own statements agree.

Oh, one more thing about Cuba -- another reason for its supposedly low infant mortality rate, which even to begin with is not believable:  “terminating the risky [pregnancies] at what may be the world’s highest abortion rate, with some reports indicating that it is more than 60 percent.” (link)

Let’s see where Mitchell goes for medical care the next time she’s really sick.  Any bets that it’s Cuba?  Where will her doctors have been trained?  Any bets on Cuba, or some other third world country?

Either Andrea Mitchell (like so many other liberals who bash America by falsely embellishing socialist countries) is stupid and unaware of the truth, or she’s lying in furtherance of her greater political cause.  My money’s on the latter. 

John M Greco 

Should Republicans Be a Strong Horse or a Weak One?

The estimable Peter Wehner calls out (link) Rick Santorum for pushing back hard against a New York Times reporter, and appears to endorse the squishy Britt Hume’s take on it all, as opposed to Sarah Palin’s.

I am not a particular fan of Palin, who often does herself no favors despite the horrible smear job she has taken from the liberal media (and sometimes from some conservative media as well, not to mention McCain and his campaign staff), and I have no knowledge of the specific Santorum incident.  However, having said that, it has been "sober, mature, thoughtful and reasonable" milquetoast conservatives, similar in nature to Hume, whose inability or unwillingness to stand up to the leftists and their agenda has enabled Obama and his ilk to bring us to where we are now.  Despite his considerable baggage, Gingrich showed, for a while until he lost his way again, how to push back against the overt and covert biased liberals in the media.  

When politically unknowledgeable or indifferent voters look at the parties, and, as a well-known political operative once said along this line, when they see one that looks like a strong horse and one that looks weak, they are naturally drawn to the strong horse.

John M Greco     

Unilateral Disarmament

During a visit to Afghanistan, Obama's top war leader Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had an audience of about 200 American troops  disarmed (link; link) before entering the large tent to boost their morale.  Panetta's aides brushed it all off as a harmless precaution, saying with all the talk among Democrats back in the States they got a bit mixed-up as to who was on which side, but they think they've got it all straight now, so no harm no foul.  Major General Mark Gurganus, an American, laughed it all off, saying "this is not a big deal," and in an unconfirmed report was heard to say that anyone can make a mistake and that the Panetta team was quickly brought up to speed on the connection between the Obama Administration and the American troops.  All's well that ends well.

John M Greco

"I pledge allegiance to Barack Obama, and ...."

A Florida Democratic Party county chairwoman flies over Party headquarters an American flag altered with President Obama's image in place of the stars, and sees nothing wrong with that (link), asserting that "certain elements cannot accept Barack Obama as president" and perhaps reasoning that it's easier for Democrats to pledge allegiance to the Leader when his face is on the flag. What a woman -- patriotism and brains.

John M Greco

Aida at the Lyric Opera

I took in Aida at the Lyric Opera the other day, and I do mean take in, for Aida one needs eyes as well as ears.  Outside of the vault scene perhaps not the most melodic of Italian operas, but is there one with more exotic pageantry?  Well, none that I’ve seen and this year’s offering at the Lyric does not disappoint.  New Lyric General Director Anthony Freud writes in the guide book that this production is “as sumptuous a vision of this glorious work as you will find in any opera house today.”  Chinese soprano Hui He was fantastic as Aida and received a very warm ovation; the program guide says she’s sung the role many times, including at the Met and the Verona Arena.  Amneris was sung by Russian mezzo-soprano Anna Smirnova, whom Jay Nordlinger in The New Criterion said “sang with aplomb and guts” last season at the Met in Don Carlo, another by Verdi on a large scale.    

I'm fortunate to have seen Pavarotti about 30 years ago at the Lyric as Radames.  The guide book says that this year’s production is the one by Joel/Halmen that premiered with Pavarotti in 1983, but then, I seem to remember, the doomed lovers sang to each other in a vault with the spurned and remorseful Anmeris standing over them, while this time she was beneath them.  Well, either way, the love duet is the musical piece most worth waiting for, and one has to wait a good while – Aida is a long opera.  Once again, no elephants, but stunning visuals, rousing choruses, spectacular processionals, just enough ballet, great voices, and an unbeatable finale – grand opera indeed.

R Balsamo

On Bernini: His Life and His Rome

Bernini: His Life and His Rome
Franco Mormando
University of Chicago, 2011

I’ve recently finished a fascinating account by Boston College professor Franco Mormando of the life of the leading Baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini and the Rome in which he lived and worked.  The city in the 17^th century was a highly political environment for an artist like Bernini, who maneuvered continually to secure and maintain the patronage of the very worldly Popes and their very rich, often feuding families. In Bernini’s time, Popes funneled much of what wealth they could acquire into public art to impress all with the majesty of the Church in Counter-Reformation Rome.  Rich and noble families such as the Borghese and the Barberini figure large in the story, as do sordid details of the intrigue, corruption, and scandals of Baroque Rome.

Bernini was born in Naples of a Tuscan father, a sculptor himself, and a Neapolitan mother, and is said to have gotten his artistry from the former and his temperament from the latter.  Before long his remarkable talent was discovered in Rome.  He perhaps best defines the Baroque emphasis on natural realism filled with the two elements that most come to my mind when looking at a Bernini sculpture -- emotion and movement.  Although he was primarily a sculptor and architect, he sometimes designed entire artistic presentations, perhaps best illustrated by The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, that combined sculpture, painting, architecture, and decoration into a beautiful whole called “bel composto.”

The backgrounds on his greatest works are well covered:  Apollo and Daphne (which, according to D’Epiro and Pinkowish in Sprezzatura, Bernini considered his “most virtuosic sculpture”), The Rape of Proserpina (Pluto and Persephone), David, The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, the Fountain of the Four Rivers, the Roman Jesuit church Saint’ Andrea al Quirinale (said to be his most self-satisfying composition, and what Mormando calls "the jewel of his architectural crown"), and of course his work at St Peter’s Basilica. 

Bernini became a wealthy man but by late in life he was somewhat reviled in Rome by the commoners as a living symbol of Papal extravagance amidst widespread poverty.  After his death, the Baroque style fell quickly from tastes in favor of the neoclassical, and Bernini’s status seems only to have revived in recent generations.  To me, his work is more appealing than some of the cold and stiff works of Renaissance and neo-classical artists. 

Completing the book over a period of a few weeks, and reading other books and materials concurrently as I typically do, I needed to resort to keeping notes on index cards to keep track of the Popes and other characters as well as Bernini’s major works in each phase of his life.  A detailed time line of events, a glossary of major characters, and a few maps would have helped immensely.  I also would have liked more detail about Bernini’s daily life and his family, with occasional “day in the life” portraits.  Nevertheless, Mormando’s story is engaging, informative, and well-referenced, and attractively bound in a rich cloth cover by the University of Chicago Press.

There is, surprisingly, no public memorial to Bernini in Rome, whose cityscape owes so much to the man’s influence.  Mormando closes by imagining an indignant retort by Bernini’s son and biographer Domenico:  “ ‘You seek a mere marble tomb?  A single, puny plaque?  A lone portrait to contain the memory of so colossal a genius?’  Instead, grandly sweeping his arm across the magnificent panorama of the city of Rome, he invites us with haughty but justifiable pride: ‘If you seek his monument, just look around you!’ ”

R. Balsamo

At the Movies = “Act of Valor” Hits All Targets

I saw the new movie Act of Valor and found it quite engrossing and engaging.  It tells the fictional story of a team of US Navy Seals in action at various points around the globe working to hunt down a group of terrorists, and reportedly uses real Seals to play those roles instead of actors (and most are pretty good).  The lasting impression to the viewer is the seriousness, dedication, skill, and selflessness with which these incredible men protect their countrymen.

The movie is well-paced with lots of action, and, given the current anti-American, Islamist-apologetic mindset predominant in Hollywood today, remarkably the bad guys are real-life bad guys (i.e., terrorists) and the good guys are real-life good guys (e.g., Navy Seals and the US government); notably, the good guys are not sympathetically-portrayed homicidal Islamists or third-worlders with grievances, and the bad guys are not higher ups in the US government (in a Republican administration, of course).  How original, how novel – and in a very entertaining movie to boot!              

John M Greco

A Chapter from the Liberal Media’s Brave New World

The Associated Press reports (link):

A jury ... found an Afghan father, his wife and their son guilty of killing three teenage sisters and a co-wife in what the judge described as "cold-blooded, shameful murders" resulting from a "twisted concept of honor" in a case that shocked and riveted Canadians....  Prosecutors said the defendants allegedly killed the three teenage sisters because they dishonored the family by defying its disciplinarian rules on dress, dating, socializing and using the Internet....  The jury [found] Mohammad Shafia, 58; his wife Tooba Yahya, 42; and their son Hamed, 21, each guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

In its 930 word report, there is no mention of Islam, leaving readers to speculate as to whether it played a role in the motivation of Mohammad and his "co-wife".  The Associated Press clearly thinks not. 

Also, toward the end the article eventually identifies the "three teenage sisters" as daughters of the man convicted of the "honor killings", and strongly implies that they were also daughters of the second wife.  "Honor killings" are known as murders in some circles outside the Associated Press.

Not much to see here, move right along.

J Greco

Obama in the Twilight Zone

We Americans start the new year with Democrat President Barack Obama continuing to show his utter disdain for truth and honesty and his inner totalitarian self.

Peter Wehner:  Obama Enters the Twilight Zone (link):

... To really enter the Twilight Zone​, consider these two priceless sentences from the New York Times story: “Winning a full-year extension of the payroll tax, [Obama spokesman] Mr.  Earnest said, will still be a top priority. He noted that House Republicans were now also arguing that it should be extended for a year, after some initially opposed extending it at all.”

Come again? On December 13, the GOP House passed a full-year extension of the payroll tax cut – and was promptly criticized by – you guessed it — the president. Obama favored a much shorter, two-month extension. House Republicans, under intense political pressure, eventually agreed to the two-month extension. Now the White House is declaring a full-year extension is a “top priority.” Yet as recently as three weeks ago the opposition to the president’s “top priority” came not from House Republicans but from Obama himself.

We are now reaching the point in which the president is running a truly post-modern campaign, in which there is no objective truth but simply narrative. Obama’s campaign isn’t simply distorting the facts; it is inverting them. This kind of thing isn’t unusual to find in the academy. But to see a president and his campaign so thoroughly deconstruct truth in order to maintain power is quite rare. The sheer audacity of Obama’s cynicism is a wonder of the modern world.

Meanwhile, after three years into the Obama presidency, the Gitmo prison is still open.  Remember liberals screaming about the "fierce moral urgency" to closing it down, which Obama promised would be one of the first things he would do if elected?  I do.  Where are those liberals now (link)?

And to top it off, when few were paying attention on New Year's eve Obama signed into law the controversial (link; link; link) National Defense Authorization Act which, inter alia, allows him to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial, with which I wholeheartedly disagree.  Apparently it was the Obama people who insisted (link) that this power over American citizens be included in the final version of the bill, and yet upon signing it Obama professes to have "reservations" about it.  He wants it both ways -- to be for it and against it at the same time.  Just part of Obama's continuing assault on truth in his personal Twilight Zone.

John M Greco    

Christmas Eve at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral

It’s Christmas Eve, and my mind’s eye looks back on my many Midnight Masses of years long past.  One church I’ve never seen on Christmas Eve is Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral, home base of the Roman Catholic Archbishop. 

It’s a beauty inside and out, described by Fr. George A. Lane, in his Chicago Churches and Synagogues, as a Victorian Gothic containing the official chair of a bishop, the cathedra.  The building was completed in 1875 of Lemont limestone and has undergone a number of alterations and renovations since.  Most striking to me is the unusual wood ceiling, described by Fr. Lane as “an elegant water-pegged black walnut ceiling, probably unique in the Chicago area.”  The cathedral features five bronze panels celebrating the Holy Name of Jesus by sculptor Attilio Selva, Stations of the Cross in bronze and red marble by Goffredo Verginelli, stained glass windows from Milan, and massive bronze doors designed by Albert Friscia.  Fr. Lane tells us that the wide-brimmed red hats hanging from the ceiling high above the sanctuary area are the galeros belonging to the previous cardinal-archbishops of Chicago, a custom dating to the thirteenth century; old traditions can live on in new places. 

Although this is one more Christmas Eve I’ll miss Midnight Mass at the Cathedral, I hope to once again at least catch it remotely via the annual local TV broadcast.    

From the Cathedral's website:

      

Holy Name Cathedral's website
Holy Name Cathedral at Wikipedia

John M Greco

Related Post:
Notre Dame Church in Chicago (and Christmas Eve)

Romney Looks To Be the Last Man Standing

Mark Steyn writes (link) of his concern about the political conservative bona fides of Mitt Romney, and suggests Republican primary voters persist in looking to other more reliably conservative candidates.  He has in the past expressed some enthusiasm for Michele Bachmann.  I have better hopes for Romney, but cannot gainsay Steyn's worries or speculations about him, or about Newt Gingrich for that matter. 

However, however, however, although I would vote for a diseased camel before the incumbent, my conversations with and sense of so-called independents convinces me that a social conservative cannot win.  For some inexplicable reason, in a president many "independents" seem to fear social conservatism more than one who has brought, inter alia, a crushing debt load, accommodation and sympathy towards radical Islam, and a general hostility to Western culture.        

That leaves out Bachmann and Santorum, who aren't strong candidates otherwise in my opinion.  Gingrich is really a big government program guy, too impulsive, inconsistent, and flaky, and carries way too much baggage; moreover, he has massive negatives among those independents and Democrats who could be tempted to vote for Obama's opponent.  Perry's bumblings disqualify him, and he as well appears to be a social conservative unclear about the proper role of government -- note his utter confusion in attempting to explain mandating the HPV vaccine viz-a-viz individual liberty issues.  Paul is a small government guy, yes, but seriously unstable -- just the other day he appeared on the Tonight Show and said to a national audience that Bachmann "hates Muslims"; he's now the John McCain of 2011-2012 -- the Republican who seems to hate Republicans and is always good for a negative quote that liberals love and can use in political ads, playing right into the Democrat media strategy of encouraging lethal internecine fighting among duped and dopey Republican candidates. 

Romney isn't my first choice by a long shot, but at this time there's simply no other electable candidate in this very disappointingly and surprisingly weak field.

John M Greco 

Heisenberg Humor & Football Cheer at the University of Chicago

Today is the 110th anniversary of the birth of Werner Heisenberg (link), the German physicist perhaps best known for his Uncertainty Principle (link), which boiled down to a quark says that we can’t be sure where anything exactly is. 
 

This brings to mind a graffito not-uncommon in science building washrooms at the University of Chicago in the 1970s, slightly bowdlerized here for public consumption:   

“Newton:  Screw You / Heisenberg: Screw Your Vicinity

It’s pretty clever, and such is popular stuff at the U of C, even whose unofficial football cheer, also from the 1970s, is, after all, a bit on the academic side:

Cosign, secant, tangent, sine,

Three point one four one five nine

Square root, cube root, BTU,

Sequence, series, limits too.  Rah.

 RB

Related:  All University of Chicago Posts

The Detestable Wages of Liberalism – A 7 Year Old Alleged “Sex Offender” Reported to the State by Boston School Officials; Steyn: Sometimes Societies Become Too Stupid To Survive

From the Boston Globe (link):

A Boston elementary school is investigating a 7-year-old first-grader for sexual harassment after he struck another boy his age in the groin.  But the mother of the accused said her son was fending off the other child, who had choked him in an altercation on a school bus….

Matthew Wilder, spokesman for the Boston public schools, declined to comment on the incident or why it has been classified as a possible case of sexual harassment….  “Any kind of inappropriate touching would fall under that category,’’ Wilder said….   

The interim school principal, Leslie Gant, did not return a phone call seeking comment….  [The accused boy’s mother] spoke with Gant, who told her the school had called the state Department of Children and Families to report the incident.   [The mother] said her older son came home from school with a letter from Gant, telling her that [her son] had been accused of violating codes of discipline related to sexual harassment and endangering the physical safety of another student.   

[The mother] said she does not want her son to ride the bus until school officials assign an adult monitor. She said officials have told her to come in … for a hearing regarding the incident.

Mark Steyn (link):

“… a seven-year old boy is about to have his life destroyed for kicking a schoolmate in the groin – as boys have done to each other throughout human history.  One can understand that a school board might wish to discourage such activity, but not that it is so irredeemably, obtusely perverse as to categorize such an act as “sexual harassment”. The response of the official school board spokesmoron, one Matthew Wilder, is not encouraging….  The mother said she spoke with the principal, Leslie Gant, who supposedly told her: “It doesn’t matter who hit who first… He said he hit him in the testicles. That’s assault. That’s sexual assault.”

If officials of the Boston public schools system genuinely believe that when a seven-year old kicks another seven-year old in the crotch that that is an act of “sexual harassment”, then they are too stupid to be entrusted with the care of the city’s children. If, on the other hand, they retain enough residual humanity to understand that a seven-year-old groin-kick is not a sexual assault but have concluded that regulatory compliance obliges them to investigate it as such, then they are colluding in an act of great evil.

Sometimes societies become too stupid to survive. If you’re wondering how a candidate’s presidential campaign can be derailed by allegations of “gestures” of “a non-sexual nature” that made women “uncomfortable” two decades ago rather than by his total ignorance of foreign policy and national security, well, this stuff starts in kindergarten.  

Such moronic adults are pouring acid on our culture, one no doubt they wish to corrode and reshape toward some utopian vision.  Such behavior must be fought by all means possible, ridicule being one of them.  Steyn offers "spokesmoron  Matthew Wilder" and I raise him "interim idiot Leslie Gant".

Where do such people come from, and specifically who put them in charge of children?

John M Greco

Obama Lawyers Flesh Out the The Obama Doctrine on Overseas Assassinations & Waterboarding

The Obama Doctrine:  Killing American citizens in the field on the order of the President without any warning and without any due process is perfectly fine, but waterboarding an Islamist suspected-terrorist fighter captured in the field in order to obtain information about an impending terrorist attack is morally reprehensible and a war crime.  We're in the best of hands.

From the Associated Press today (link):

Top national security lawyers in the Obama administration say U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida.  The lawyers were asked … about the CIA killing of Anwar al-Alwaki, a U.S. citizen and leading al-Qaida figure. He died in a Sept. 30 U.S. drone strike in the mountains of Yemen.  The government lawyers … said U.S. citizens don't have immunity when they're at war with the United States.  [One of the lawyers] said only the executive branch, not the courts, are equipped to make decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.

John M Greco

Related Posts:

Obama’s Chief Lawyer: Obama Can Kill an Unarmed Terrorist Just Fine, But Waterboarding Under Bush Is Morally Reprehensible

Liberal Fraudsters

I sometimes reflect on the hysteria of the Bush years, though not so often as before.  I remember liberals personally expressing to me their anger and dismay over the fierce moral urgency, in their minds, of such needs as addressing global warming, closing the Gitmo detention center, withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and revoking the Patriot Act.  Now, after almost three years into Obama's tenure, the anthropogenic global warming movement has been shown to be a fraud, Gitmo is still open, the Patriot Act remains, and not only are Americans still fighting overseas but Obama actually ordered a troop surge in Afghanistan.

What happened to the outrage?  Where is the anger and angst?  Gone, gone to graveyards every one.  We see now, and I knew then, it wasn't about the specifics, the facts -- it was cynical politics about smearing anything Bush was doing or not doing, no matter how damaging to the social and political fabric of America and its image abroad.  That has changed me, raising up an anger at those who would hurt America to hurt their politcial opponents.

Where are those liberals now, those contemptible liberals, who were shouting lies about American troops at Gitmo?  Where are those liberals now, those contemptible liberals, outraged just a few years ago over our foreign wars and the supposedly fascist Patriot Act?  Where were they when Obama committed American troops to the recent war in Libya?  Where are those liberals now, those contemptible liberals, screaming about the man-made global warming that even they by now, if they can dredge up even the slightest wisp of intellectual honesty, must know is only their unsubstantiated hope?

Victor Davis Hanson today (link) at National Review Online:

Given Climategate II, no noticeable heating of the planet during the last decade, and all sorts of questionable research … the man-made-global-warming movement is about done for now. We sometimes forget that the fad gained its traction during the Bush years …. hysteria attributable to Bush derangement syndrome. I say hysteria because, like global warming, there no longer seems to be much furor over, for example, guidelines on stem-cell research. Iraq has become one of the administration’s “greatest achievements.” Afghanistan is no longer the “good” war that we “took our eye off.” Renditions, Guantanamo, tribunals, preventive detention, Predators, and the Patriot Act are no longer destroying the Constitution. Bombing a Muslim oil-producing country is no longer a war crime.

It is as if all these -isms and -ologies of the early 21st century — and their representatives, from Al Gore to Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, and Sean Penn — were entirely ...valid simply because they were the opposite of what Bush was (or supposedly was) for or against. With Bush removed from the calculus, the progressive community is silent and sometimes even embarrassed about the issues that once inspired them…. and so the hysteria quietly subsided and is now being Trotskyized away.

John M Greco

Related Posts:

Why the Left Loves Global Warming, or, What’s It All About, Alfie?

Climategate Shows Global Warming Alarmism Is a Faith-Based Initiative

Horror in Happy Valley -- And Trustees Opt for Damage Control

After I first posted the other day on the developing Penn State sex abuse scandal, I didn’t anticipate commenting a second time, and when I did I really thought that would be the last.  But Penn State’s continued obliviousness draws me once again to the keyboard. 

Recognizing that we have only allegations at this point, but acknowledging also that we have certain facts like a 1998 investigation of the alleged perpetrator Sandusky by multiple authorities, I have written that “my guess is that when all the facts emerge this will come out as a 15 or so year conspiracy of silence involving Paterno and many others to cover up ongoing homosexual rape and other sexual molestation of young boys at Penn State, practically in plain sight.”

For so many, I suspect the horror of the depth and breadth of the allegations and facts known so far are incomprehensible, and perhaps some resistance to objectivity on the part of some longtime Paterno and Penn State athletic boosters is understandable.  But the University Board of trustees should be above that and past that.  

In the wake of continued University employment of the assistant coach who testified to the grand jury that when finding a boy being raped in a Penn State athletic department shower room he neither rescued the boy nor called the police, in the wake of the trustees’ new interim football coach Tom Bradley just praising Paterno as a man who “will go down in history as one of the greatest men....", in the wake of some oblivious students rioting in support of Paterno, the Board of Trustees met and appointed someone to lead the University’s internal investigation of this whole sordid affair.

Did the Penn State Board select someone independent of the school and its culture, with a background in investigation and law enforcement?  Well, by now we know the answer to expect given what we’re rapidly learning about the Penn State culture.  No it did not.  The Board chose a Penn State grad, an attorney, who’s an executive with a pharmaceutical firm.  No reported investigative experience.      

Is the Board first and foremost interested in the full truth, or some truth with a heavy dose of damage control?  But it doesn’t really matter now, anyway -- the truth will come out in due course, perhaps mostly in tortuous and torturous drips and drabs.    

We already have inconsistencies in the grand jury testimony of Penn State officials Paterno, Curley, and Schultz.  Eventually we will find out who knew what and when they knew it.  We will get answers to many questions, including these:

• Why were the 1998 investigations of two child sex abuse allegations against Sandusky dropped by the county prosecutor, the local child welfare agency, and the Penn State police department? 
• Why did Sandusky unexpectedly retire in 1999 as one of Paterno’s chief lieutenants?  Any why was a special retirement deal negotiated with him?   
• How many people in and around the Penn State athletic department had reasonable suspicions and concerns about Sandusky and his entourage of boys?  
• Why didn’t officials at the local school, at which Sandusky served as a volunteer football coach as recently as a few years ago, alert authorities when he was found in sexually suggestive situations with boys at the school?  
• Why did prosecutors wait until November 2011 to arrest Sandusky, the subject of an investigation for years, thus revealing then the explosive charges?  Was it just coincidence that the revelation came just days after Paterno set the record for most football wins as a college coach?  Who was responsible for the decision on the timing? 

In the end, I suspect that the ultimate motivation for what looks like a 15+ year cover up by many adults in many different agencies and departments will be the fear of what exposure would do to their money and glory.  I heard on Fox News yesterday that the CEO of Sandusky’s “charity” for young troubled boys has been paid $1.3 million since 1998, and I’ve heard it said that Penn State’s football program was one of the most lucrative in college sports. 

The truth will all come out eventually, but Penn State’s reactionary Board may not be the source of much of it.    

John M Greco

Prior Posts:

Paterno & Penn State Look Like Burnt Toast

Penn State Still Clueless in Happy Valley

  

Penn State Still Clueless in Happy Valley

The Penn State Board of Trustees has just replaced football coach Joe Paterno with a guy named Tom Bradley.  He's been a Paterno assistant for over 30 years, and apparently idolizes the old man.  That's the Penn State way of cleaning house.  Faced with what will likely be the biggest scandal in its history, 15+ years of child sexual abuse and its enabling and cover up by university staff and officials, the University remains blinded by the Paterno glow that is no longer seen by anyone else. 

If one reads the grand jury report (link) and then constructs a simple timeline, one quickly sees that the first clear point on the public record is the 1998 investigation of defendant Sandusky by both Penn State police and the county prosecutor for allegations of child sexual abuse.  For reasons as yet unrevealed, the local county prosecutor, in a rural area dominated by the University, declined to files charges against Sandusky, the well-known, prominent football assistant coach and Paterno protege.  Hmmm. 

Shortly after that, Sandusky unexpectedly retired at the very young age of 55.  Hmmm.  He was allowed by Penn State to keep all privilges of a retired coach, including access to athletic facilities.  At that point he also had been for years the head of his own charity for troubled young boys.  Hmmm.  Of course this looks all the world like people at Penn State made a deal with Sandusky -- retire quietly and don't embarrass the school and football program and we'll keep quiet about you and let you keep your perks.  This certainly looks like a cover up began no later than 1998.

Four years went by during which Sandusky continued as head of his charity for young troubled boys and was seen with them around the school.  Then, in 2002, a young assistant coach named McQueary comes upon Sandusky raping a young boy in the Penn State athletic facilities late one evening.  He didn't stop it, he didn't save the boy, he didn't call police.  Instead, he told Paterno the next day, who in turn yet another day later told the athletic director Curley and senior adminsitrator Schultz, who in turn later told university president Spanier.  None of these four called the police.  They all now, of course, deny being told the specific nature of the act, and now assert they thought that the naked Sandusky was engaging in some kind of innocent horseplay with a naked young boy in a Penn State shower.  Just before he was fired the other day, university president Spanier expressed support (link) for Curley and Schultz, who are now under indictment for perjury about this whole matter.  However, not one of them has yet to explain publicly his 2002 inaction in light of the 1998 Penn State university police investigation and report on Sandusky.

It is absolutely unbelievable to think that Paterno did not know, in 2002, of the 1998 child abuse allegations against Sandusky and the report of the investigation by university police.  After all, who if not Paterno would know why his chief assistant coach suddently retired in 1998.  In fact, it seems probable that, given his status at Penn State, Paterno played a central role in a likely cover up deal in 1998. 

Because Sandusky's alleged rape in 2002 of a young boy in a Penn State shower was not reported to police, and because of earlier inaction in 1998, he remained at large with full access to Penn Sate facilities, during which time he allegedly continued to molest young boys for years after that.

Now, with the scandal finally breaking out into the open, Penn State has just fired Paterno and university president Spanier.  Many more departures will follow.

Yet despite all that we now know, thousands of ignorant and misguided Penn State students have just protested Paterno's firing.  And yesterday, new interim football coach Bradley, reportedly a Paterno assistant for 33 years and the man who got Sandusky's specific senior coaching job in 1999, said this (link) about Paterno:  "Coach Paterno will go down in history as one of the greatest men...." 

From the University president, to the coaches, to senior administrators, is there any adult at Penn State not involved in the cover up?  The Board replaces Paterno with one of his acolytes who now praises him as a great man.  If the Penn State Trustees can't find responsible, sensible, and uninvolved adults to take over and clean house, then they should all resign themselves and let the state take over. 

As I said in my first post about this horrific scandal (link), "my guess is that when all the facts emerge this will come out as a 15 or so year conspiracy of silence involving Paterno and many others to cover up ongoing homosexual rape and other sexual molestation of young boys at Penn State, practically in plain sight. This whole scandal looks ugly now, and will likely look many times worse before this is all over."

John M Greco

Other Posts:
Paterno & Penn State Look Like Burnt Toast

Horror in Happy Valley -- And Trustees Opt for DamageControl

The Democrat Universal Solution To All Ills

New Democrat Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, formerly of the Clinton and Obama Administrations, faced with the usual big Democrat city challenges -- rising costs, decreasing revenues, and massive deficits -- stares down a massively bloated city budget, brimming with wasteful patronage jobs and drowning from an inestimable "corruption" tax, a populace still reeling from a recent straight-line Democrat-enacted state income tax hike of 67% on people and almost 50% on businesses (link), businesses feeling and threatening to flee the city and state (link), corruption everywhere with pensions and Democrat unions (link), now figures out what to do:  raise taxes (link).  Now that's real thinking outside the Democrat box.

Well, he could have staged a demonstration, like he's done before (link), except that Democrat-endorsed Occupy protesters are hogging all the media space.

John M Greco

Paterno & Penn State Look Like Burnt Toast

Much is being written about the incredible, horrific allegations of sexual abuse of minor boys over a more than 15 year period by a prominent assistant football coach at Penn State (link; link).  After reading many reports and comments to the story, the greatest focus with regard to Penn State's culpability is on the events of 2002, at which time an assistant coach alleges to have observed the defendant raping a young boy in a Penn State athletic facility shower and to have reported the observation to his boss, legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who then in turn apparently reported it only internally to his boss, the athletic director, and a senior University administrator.  Police were never called, in violation of the law, reportedly, and certainly of any sense of morality.

However, not much talked about is the fact that in 1998 the defendant was found at Penn State to have engaged in inappropriate behavior with at least one boy and investigations by University police and a prosecutor occurred.  Although no criminal charges were filed, not long after that the defendant retired from Penn State.  He was allowed to keep the perks of a retiree, including an office and access to University facilities, including showers in the athletic department, the site of some later abuse allegations. Notable is the fact that by this time the defendant, besides being a Penn State football coach, was well known to be the director of a youth organization he founded that brought him into daily contact with young, troubled boys, and that such boys were regularly seen in his company.

Joe Paterno, and others at the University, express shock over this whole affair and plead ignorance.  Paterno specifically asserts that when informed of the 2002 allegation he did the right thing by reporting it to senior Penn State officials, and somehow feels his responsibility was limited because his longtime former assistant coach was by then not a University employee. 

However, what's not at all clear is why the defendant suddenly retired in 1998 after the police investigation into abuse allegations at that time, years before the alleged 2002 incident.  If even only some of these allegations are true, then it would appear to me that Paterno and others at Penn State in 1998 realized, if not before then, that the defendant was a child molester, and to avoid embarrassment to the University and the football program they let him retire.  Perhaps in exchange for his silence and perhaps even for a sham promise to stop such behavior they allowed the defendant to keep his access to the facilities. 

If the allegations are verified, it is impossible to believe that the defendant could have had young boys frequently in his company for over 15 years at the Penn State athletic facilities, particularly after the known sex abuse investigation of 1998, without the entire coaching staff and other university officials seeing him and suspecting what he was up to. 

If the allegations are verified, Joe Paterno's name, and that of what may come to scores of other Penn State coaches and university officials, will be mud forever.  My guess is that when all the facts emerge this will come out as a 15 or so year conspiracy of silence involving Paterno and many others to cover up ongoing homosexual rape and other sexual molestation of young boys at Penn State, practically in plain sight.  This whole scandal looks ugly now, and will likely look many times worse before this is all over.

John M Greco

Subsequent Post:
Penn State Still Clueless in Happy Valley
Horror in Happy Valley -- And Trustees Opt for DamageControl