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The Ghosts of Movies Past–The Uninvited
I originally thought of this title for a series about old films some time ago and I guess the title came to me by way of memories of “A Christmas Carol.” But I waited long enough to begin, that it now fits the season of Halloween. By “ghosts” here, I mean mostly the former, the lingering effect of films, both in the minds of individuals and in the rather ephemeral but I think important national subconscious-at least the subconscious of movie fans. So I begin with two kinds of ghosts to talk about, the effect of a movie and the subject of the movie itself.
“The Uninvited(1944), is, technically, an American film but it sure seems like a British one. Set in Cornwall in the spring-summer of 1937, it concerns a brother and sister(Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey)who, while on vacation, discover a large, long deserted house and become determined to buy it. He is a London music critic and composer and she is, apparently, independently well to do. They pool their resources and succeed in getting the house, purchasing it from the owner, a crusty old carryover from Victorianism(Donald Crisp), and also come into contact with his overprotected and somewhat intimidated granddaughter, Stella(Gail Russell).
The film, like most at the time, and fortunately, I think, in this case, is in black and white. It begins with a wide-vision shot of the sea and the audience gets to see white caps as the waters come ashore on the rocks. They also get to hear the sound of this. Meanwhile, they hear Milland doing a voice-over regarding the coasts of lands that border this part of the sea and their propensity for providing a background for ghostly events. This all sets the scene nicely and puts the viewer in an agreeable tingly mood.
I will not go into the film in great detail here, but you need to know a little of what happens. The granddaughter, much against her Grandfather’s wishes, makes friends, barely, with the two Londoners. She and Milland seem to have a quick, closeness between them, and the stage seems set for romance, particularly when Milland writes her a song. But instead there is uncertainty and fear(“Stella By Starlight” became a jazz/Great American Songbook hit–you still might hear Miles Davis’s and other versions of it on Sirius “Real Jazz”)
On the first night brother and sister are together in their new home, Milland hears the sound of a woman sobbing. His sister explains that during the weeks he was cleaning up details in London and she was civilizing the house, she heard this several times, and no, it’s not Lizzie, the housekeeper, whose cat behaved oddly and refused to go upstairs. “It comes from everywhere and nowhere,” she says. Yes, indeed.
Without going into revealing details, I will merely say that this is the beginning of a tense and compelling ghost story that does not terrify you with nut cases running around with chainsaws, but may make your hair re-arrange itself a couple of times and send through you a couple of chills, so you feel as if you had just come inside on a cold winter day. Questions are asked and not, immediately, anyway, answered. The history of the house is studied and eventually, after quite a bit of tension and suspense, there are a number of ghostly manifestations(along with some explanations, too).
If you check this out on-line you will find many people praising it. But some regard it as weak stuff, nothing like today’s “shock” films with noise, blood and violence. This is, in my opinion, a good thing. This movie is not about physical violence. It is about subtle, spiritual and psychological haunting and the different but still chilling fear it can bring. It is way more sophisticated than the gross chop ’em to bits type. It is by far my favorite supernatural film–“The Haunting” from the 1960’s would be second, but for all its qualities it is not equal to this.
Part of the reason for this film’s excellence is found in the efforts of the director, Lewis Miller. Every scene seems to fit, to be an integral part of the story. The appearance and atmosphere of the house are allowed to play a significant role, but one you see or sense in the background, just part of the scenery of chills. When the manifestations do appear, they are not clear–they are foggy and indistinct, like something from a dream or a surrealist artist, as if telling us that this is not just a matter of other people, it’s other people from outside our reality, but real and perhaps threatening all the same.
Given the movie’s age you might expect to creak a little bit–and it does, but only slightly. Some of the romance is a bit contrived and the attempts at humor are clearly several decades behind the curve. But these count little, they are a small part of the overall story, maybe 5% or less of the movie. And there is the brief presence of the elegant and unusual Cornelia Otis Skinner who in a very busy life acted a little bit and maybe should have more. Her teacher/counsellor is a combination of authoritarianism and doubtful sanity that you won’t forget.
This is not a movie for people who want to be “shocked” by violence and mayhem and screaming. It is about the mystery and spookiness of encountering the supernatural and trying to figure it out, and being both afraid on one hand and anxious to learn on the other. It’s a film for people who like mystery in the most serious and meaningful sense of the term, the kind that sneaks up on you after midnight, and spooks your mind and soul rather than threatening your body. In an era where so many movies have the grossest violence with almost no subtlety at all, it is a reminder of civilized behavior and presumes it can exist among both those of flesh and blood and the wandering spirits. Try it, you might really like it.
(Other than the common title, this film has nothing to do with the one made in the late 2000’s, maybe 2009 or thereabouts. I watched about 20 or 25 minutes of it once which was enough to determine that 1) The stories are not connected and 2) I was wasting my time)
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Panama, Canada, Greenland and Donald
As Trump gets closer and closer actually to being President anxieties are, I think, increasing among his non-fans about what he plans to do. The obvious split in his supporters between MAGA types and Musk types is to me not a cause for great joy in that it’s almost one of those contests where you wish both sides would lose. But not quite–I’ll take the Musk side, however reluctantly, in that one. But I just might criticize them too.
Among the more bizarre things Trump has said(or written)lately is that he would like the US to acquire Canada and Greenland, and “take back” Panama. I believe he talked about buying Greenland the first time around but our immediate neighbor to the north and our long time(if slightly reluctant)partner in running the canal are being so honored for the first time. My immediate reaction–that this was a typical Trumpish ridiculous policy has not changed much-I still stick with it more than 90% for reasons I think we’ll shortly see.
But I do call your attention to an article in Salon.com by its editor, Andrew O’Hehir which does give us a little more understanding and just a tad of nuance. It’s not that Andrew approves of Trump in any noticeable way. He describes Trump’s posts about these three places as “blatantly inflammatory and insulting, not to mention well beyond self-parody.” So he’s not a fan. He speculates that the President-elect is still somewhat affected by a few things he learned in school sometime about foreign policy and has “accidentally horseshoed himself into spectacularly ill-informed opinions that nonetheless capture something of the contemporary zeitgeist.”(O’Hehir writes well!)
In other words, Trump is now, perhaps somewhat subconsciously, saying things that reveal his mental dependence upon ideas of decades ago, a few of which have been updated a little bit and separated from their original context. It appears that in that context they have affected and appeal to the MAGA folks. O’Hehir says that Canada as a dependency or satellite of the US is an old idea, much predating the Trump era. This idea, he says, is “not quite true but also not entirely falsifiable,” and he suggests we solicit opinions from other lesser powerful nations with powerful neighbors, such as Ireland, Belgium, or Finland.
He then goes on to denote the ridiculousness of this idea which he says is “one million percent not going to happen.” If Canada were to become a US state it would be geographically bigger than the other 50 put together, but just about tied with California for the largest in population.
Going on to other Trumpian fantastic ideas– at one point the former President claimed Chinese soldiers were “lovingly, but illegally” running the Panama Canal. This leads our author to comment that “his pronouncements are ludicrous and his facts are wrong.” Trump said about 38,000 American were lost during the construction of the canal. The figure of 38,000 might not be far off overall, we learn, but only about 1% of them were Americans. Most were actually Caribbean laborers.
Getting Greenland is likely the most goofy of Trump’s “proposals.” It is, O’Hehir says, one of “the strangest places on earth.” Its “indigenous” people, the Inuits, arrived after the first Europeans did and today are about 90% of the population. For about 300 years Denmark has owned it outright, or at least been the ruling power. This situation lasted until fairly recently and some of it still remains. Forty some years ago Greenland got “home rule” and they now have “self government,” just short of full independence. But Denmark still plays a role in that it provides a close to $600 million a year block grant which is likely a good reason for not seeking full independence.(O’Hehir points out this is about 1/4 of the Greenland GDP)
Turning to Panama, O’Hehir says it is independent today “only” because the US plotted with anti-Columbian forces in the area(it was part of Columbia then)to bring about the rule of “a revolutionary” junta. He is mostly correct, but I question that this is the only reason Panama is independent now. There were other possibilities that could have happened if the US had not intervened.
But, as any student of US diplomatic history and/or of our most dominating President, Theodore Roosevelt, knows, O’Hehir is mostly right. TR, in one of his earlier displays of colonialist enthusiasm, schemed to bring about a “revolution” by a few Panamanian leaders who declared independence from Columbia. The TR Administration gave diplomatic recognition to the new regime in about a day, a speed only seen, to my knowledge, one other time in US History. In 1948 it took Harry Truman about the same amount of time to recognize Israel.
One could make an argument that Panama has not reaped an entirely bitter crop out of this. It has had advantages from being the friend of the US. But it has been at least guided (if not more)by our government. And O’Hehir is correct in that “Panama has gone through a dizzying array of interventions.” It has been independent for a long time but not always stable.
O’Hehir concludes with an interesting comment, particularly interesting in that some of the Republicans have been turning back towards isolationism again, and that Trump appears to have recognized and decided to take advantage of that change. This puts him in the to-some-extent semi-pacifist camp that many Republicans and the America Firsters slid into after WWII began but before we were in it.
O’Hehir doesn’t address this fact directly, but he does say the following–“If this pseudo-neo-imperialism doesn’t seem to fit with Trump’s supposed version of overseas military entanglements, it’s because that too involves a suspension of disbelief. Trump is only opposed to foreign wars after the fact, if they turn out to be painful and expensive. He’d be delighted to invade some small and powerless country that can’t fight back, and then hold an expensive victory parade.”
This is an excellent assessment, in my opinion, of Trump’s moral qualities and of how his mind works. Say what you think your supporters will like, do it if it appears to be a winner and stay out of it if you might lose. It may turn out as a contradiction, but MAGA people don’t much worry about contradictions as long as it’s their own guy who is making them. When it come to complicated things like foreign policy, just assume he’s right and support, him loudly, if unreasonably,
I hope the Trump foreign policy will be something better than this in the second term. But hopes in politics-well, you know, right?(By the way, I had not looked at Salon.com previously–check it out if you haven’t)
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New Author and Terrific Book
Meg Wolitzer-“Belzhar,” copyright 2014 by Penguin Random House 264 pgs
Well, OK, Meg Wolitizer is not exactly a new author. But she’s new to me as I’m not really conversant with all the latest stuff in the literary world. But I’d like to be. I might have found this book through such a connection. As it was I found it by chance and what a good fortune for me! It was in the “take it home for for free” part of the library because, I guess, no one was taking it– well, their loss, my gain.
I thought at first this looked, at a glance, as if it might be a mystery and/or suspense novel. It’s not in the usual sense of those terms. There is mystery in it about the backgrounds of five young people and it is definitely suspenseful in that you want to know what’s next. It’s often nearly impossible to stop at the end of a chapter and not find out what’s right around the corner. But it is the human story and the human heart you’re tracking here, not whodunit or howdunit(though I deeply respect those books and am reading one now.)
After reading a few chapters of “Belzhar” I took a look at Meg on Wikipedia and at a handful of her reviews. I was not surprised to find that this is a “young adult” novel, although she is mainly an “adult”(in the best and most mature sense of that much abused term)novelist. But don’t let that stop you. Here’s one old adult who enjoyed it immensely.
I was surprised to learn Meg is in her mid-60’s. Although one shouldn’t make these sorts of judgements and I am usually critical of people I notice doing so, her writing makes you think of a younger narrator. I guess this makes sense here since the narrator is a teen-age girl. So good for Meg at being able to do that.
The book is told first person by teenager Jam Gallahue. Jam, a New Jersyite is now in a school in Vermont. Its name is “The Wooden Barn” and it’s no ordinary high school. It’s a high school for teenagers having trouble dealing with “the lingering effects of trauma..” So the students there are special in an unusual type of way. They have survived bad things, things no teenager, or maybe any agers should have to go through. But they are young and looking forward(one hopes)to many more years of life and they need to deal with their trauma and get on with things.
Going there at the beginning of her junior year, Jam is also assigned to anomalous class, “Special Topics in English.” One of the unusual things about it is that students don’t choose to take this class. The class, or rather the instructor, chooses them based upon what she learns about the new class members every school year. She then makes her selections based upon her own criteria. It’s considered somewhat weird and somewhat of an honor to attend by most of the other students.
The teacher, Mrs. Quenell, is approaching retirement. She tells them in her introduction to the class she will retire at the end of the semester. She also tells them a number of other things about the class, about the responsibilities she expects them to take, and about what they will , she hopes, get out of the class.
She is not too specific in some respects, but she emphasizes that they will each keep a journal. They will write twice a week in their journals, write about whatever they choose. She will eventually have them turn their journals in to her and she will keep them, but NOT read them. So, there’s the weird part. They’ll write a lot and turn it in but the instructor won’t read it. So it can’t affect their final grades. So what’s the purpose? Well, as I said, in some ways this is a mystery.
So begins the tale, and, always(I hope)the good mystery critic I’m not going to tell you much of what happens after that. But I will tell you a little bit, as otherwise this whole thing would make no sense to you. Slowly, more or less class by class, we find out, sort of, what the students are writing about. And we find out something more–we learn, slowly, one by one, the traumatic event that placed them each in this unusual school.. And by this means we come to know them, particularly, Mag, very well. We know Mag, however, more by her musings about relationships and other puzzling aspects of life. Her “event” is not revealed until near the end.
There are, of course, parts of the book that do not, at least not directly anyway, deal with the class or the journals. There are jealousies and ambitions and likes/dislikes(of the personal kind, of course) which go on here as much as elsewhere. In some ways they’re a lot like their equivalents on what I guess we might call “the outside.”
But there’s something else too, the most strange and perhaps the most challenging thing in the book. When they write in their journals something odd happens, and we get a close up view or two of this in Jam’s case. When they write in the journals they literally go back in time, back more or less(if not exactly)to the traumatic event. And they get to live it over again and and cringe at the experience again. But they can’t stay in the past with those people, even though sometimes, despite the pain, there’s a temptation. They have to come back to the present world, the “real world” and deal with the whole thing.(There is apparently one exception here, but not one you’d want to take in my opinion-and theirs).
Now there is never an explanation of this. Some may regard this as a big shortcoming, but I don’t. I do, understand it, though. Of course we want to know what this thing is, how it works, what it means. Is God behind it? Is there such a being and does He care about us? Then why is the world such a big mess? How this whole thing happens and who/what is behind it is never explained in any detail, although I guess you’re free to speculate. Some will regard this as a shortcoming. They will want an explanation. And that’s OK–hey, I wanted one. Was God behind this, directly I mean? Was this an indication that there is another life, another realm? Anybody else we haven’t thought of and don’t know about? Does this mean there is another reality, whatever?
I don’t blame anyone for wanting to know. Hey, I want to know those things too. But Wolitizer never goes beyond hinting here, and hardly that very much. The trick is to learn from the experience, but not necessarily to understand it. And what they learn seems to me to be wisdom, wisdom about the world, about people, about that often mentioned but rarely described thing, human nature. It is about how do deal with problems; is it ever OK to give up? Is there a difference between giving up and ceasing to struggle? If so, what is it?
There are no miracles here, but there are some surprises. And we do see young people grow and expand their horizons and get ready to move on. And to that extent this is an optimistic book. But only to that extent. It may not be “happily ever after” for all of them. But they have learned to struggle with that, to give and seek warmth and comfort, to take responsibility and move one. Or at least they’ve learned how to do this most of the time. Not always.
And as a matter of fact, despite some pain and shock, some of them have a good time, temporarily anyway, along the way. If you like to speculate and wonder, and one of the things you wonder is why life is so painful and what you need to make it a little less, so–well, you might find some hints here. No final answers–no formulas. Not the Big Answer everyone seeks. But hints–and sometimes I think that’s the best we can hope for in many ways. That what Meg gives you. I suggest you give her a reasonable chance at it.
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The Republicans Go To the Bathroom
With the historically brief exception of 1792-1815, the House of Bourbon ruled France from the Middle Ages until 1830. This latter date was the end of the Bourbons, as rulers, largely because of Charles X, last Bourbon (reigning)King who ruled 1824-1830. Their fall came through a revolution brought on largely by Charles’s misrule, trying to use his power to oppress the state at large and to get revenge on his enemies.
It was said (wisely, I’d say) that the Bourbons never learned anything and never forgot anything. This phrase came into my mind recently after reflecting on our election and on what we’ve since seen of the anticipated beginning of a new Trump Administration. I had been hoping that we would see a new type of Trump rule–didn’t really expect it, but I hoped he would show a change. Those hopes were rather quickly dashed. He appears never to learn how to govern better or how to forget his past quarrels and lust for revenge against individuals or groups who have opposed, criticized or otherwise irritated him. And he appears never to abandon his tendency to do the outrageous just to be outrageous, or rather just to implant that idea in the public mind with the assumption that in his case it’s a sign of originality.
All this would be bad enough if it stopped there but it doesn’t. The more we learn about the appointments and the appointees, the less we trust the process, at least as done by this President-elect and his minions. They have given us so far a list of prospective leaders who are often of questionable qualification in personality and experience. That was discouraging enough. Now many of them seem to have lackings in morality, sense of honor and common sense which would be enough to disqualify them from high office.
Naturally, the Republican leadership in Congress has had to deal with this apparently unexpected though not unforeseeable(if your remember the first time Trump was President) situation. They seem to be able to do so, mostly only by a combination of irrelevant comments, distortions of facts and unfounded denials. And of course, the time worn Trump trick of doing something super ridiculous to hide the fact that several other appointments or whatever are merely ridiculous, not super so, leave them seeming almost acceptable.
But it has occurred to me that the Republicans have found a new part to this attitude, related to what they’ve done in the past, but still not really tried until now. When they seem to feel they’re in real trouble they go to the bathroom. Yeah, OK, so what do I mean?
Well, a time honored way(on both sides of the aisle) of avoiding dealing with embarrassing facts it to find a distraction, a fact alluded to above. But they have found a new way to do this using a new issue-this is trans-gender matters , particularly bathrooms and who goes where.
Now I am perfectly aware that I am treading on treacherous ground here. Many people have issues and problems and strong, serious feelings on these matters. I do not deny them their feelings or their right to express them. But I do wish to ask–well, when we’re dealing with things that might affect Gaza, the Russian-Ukrainian war. the stability of American society and the welfare of our middle class and others–do we really need to talk about who uses which bathroom at the same time?
It used to be that when faced with difficult issues members of Congress would say at least the equivalent of, “Hey, let’s go have a couple of beers,” or “OK, guys let’s go have coffee.” Now it appears to be , for the Republicans, “OK, folks, let’s go to the bathroom.” And that’s where they go, or at least their minds do.
Rep Nancy Mace, R-SC, was, I think, one of the first out of the starting gate in this race to the twisting of the political mind. She indicated she would “stand in the way” of Sarah McBride. Now as nearly as I can tell, Rep McBride has done nothing to incur Ms Mace’s wrath except be elected to the House as a Democrat and be trans, apparently the first “openly trans-member” of the Congress.
II haven’t seen much of McBride but have been suitably enough pleased by what I did see. She seems determined to stand her ground and do her job, but not to expect a medal for it. She said that if permitted, the House Republicans would see that “all we talk about is bathrooms.” A slight but understandable exaggeration.(“You say Iran just invaded Israel? Well, sorry, we got this bathroom identify crisis we gotta solve first”). She also said that she will abide by Speaker Johnson’s rules even though she disagrees with them.
Speaking of the Speaker, it appears that he does have, legally and according to House rules, the right to make a decision(which he did)to ban members from using a bathroom not in accordance with their “biological birth.” He included a plea that everyone be treated with “dignity.” I agree, but how about policies that make this easier, not harder?
Of course, speaking of off-the-wall House Republicans, Marjory Taylor Green got into the act. She threatened (unspecified) physical violence against her Delaware colleague whom she described as “mentally unbalanced.” Well, Marjory, speaking of “unbalanced”–it would appear that being called unbalanced by you would be tantamount to being called loud by a carnival barker.
No doubt some things still need to be worked out here and maybe we can hope for some balance and good will on each side. My hopes aren’t real high on that one. What do Johnson and Mace expect trans-members(McBride is the only one as far as I know now)to do while they work out a policy? Carry a Mason Jar? Bring their own port-a-potty? Raise their hand and ask the Speaker if they may go down the block to the nearest service station?
Well, whatever, the gathering of minds in the bathroom will reduce the pooling of intelligence or even less than intelligence on the House floor. And this may mean further delays in deciding on Trump’s carefully chosen(for ironic irritation)list of nominees, particularly the Hegseth and Gabbard type.
Speaking of that, I intend to follow up on this soon with a reflection on Trump’s nominees who are still “running.” Gaetz just dropped out a couple of hours ago which is a relief. Now about RFK, Jr …
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Racing and Guessing toThe End
This is Wednesday-the election is Tuesday. It’s coming, folks and while many have already voted. many others, perhaps the majority, have not. So campaigning is still important and we’re getting as much as you’d expect and maybe a bit more. And there are significantly important things happening now, mostly in the US and the campaign, but elsewhere too
Most importantly, Kamala Harris seems, perhaps only for the moment, to have seized the initiative and that big political imponderable, “momentum.” This has happened in recent days and there have been two important parts to it. The first was the Trump “rally”(or whatever it was at Madison Square Garden Sunday night.) The next was Kamala’s speech in DC last night. The two are worth comparing.
The Trump thing was a conglomeration of people, most of whom I’d never heard of before(I’ll bet most of the viewers were as ignorant of them as I). They were largely a disgusting lot, casting vicious bigotry and racial/social. ethnic insults all over the place. This was accompanied by a great deal of vulgarity. I don’t mind a certain amount of vulgarity in private conversation and I’ll even allow a little of it in public. But common sense and common decency suggest certain limits and they were not observed here.
One speaker almost outdid all the other by referring to Ms. Harris’s “pimps.” The implications for the candidate are obvious. But the one most remembered and who outdid the pimps guy was Tony Hinchliffe who identifies as “comedian.’ He took the cake for the evening by referring to Puerto Rico as an island of garbage.
Even the Trump campaign(though apparently not the candidate himself)thought this too much and disavowed it. But the rest of the bigotry, vulgarity and all round salute to bad taste was unchallenged by its organizational source So presumably it stands as their(and Trump’s)statement. As a Harris supporter that’s OK with me but overall, it doesn’t bode well for the country that they think this works.
The second big thing was Kamala’s speech last night at the Ellipse in Washington with its plethora of memories for Americans. In the first part she took on her opponents ideas and actions and essentially said, hey, enough, let’s get back to civilized behavior. In the second half she said something like I do have some plans and then proceeded to talk about them. She was masterful in her use of information and impressive in her use of language(she is one of the better speakers of recent American history).
But President Biden muddied the waters with a comment of his own. Attacking Trump(quite correctly, incidentally)he made a statement that sounded much like calling Trump’s supporters garbage. He said later he didn’t mean the people but the candidate’s policies and this would make sense, but it still sounds bad.
The White House later argued that you should imagine an apostrophe in “supporter’s” showing the President was referring to something pertaining to them rather that to their worth as human beings. But if you parse the sentence closely that doesn’t work. There’s no noun after “supporter’s” to justify the apostrophe.
Well, perhaps I parse too much. But this was an unfortunate choice of words by a good man who, I’m pretty sure, didn’t mean to demean anyone, but who just goofed. He has a very long history of this, of committing “gaffes.” Donald Trump’s reaction was that no one who was or wanted to be president should demean fellow Americans like that. He’s right, of course, but hey, look who’s talking. I hope he or his supporters will have that pointed out to them–on TV in the very near future.
In the meantime I hope that this will not be a third big thing which will dominate the end of the campaign. I suspect it will lose Harris a few votes, but not a lot– may make next to no difference. What she must do is to continue on her quest to prove her plans for the US and her differences with Trump. I think she still has the momentum, perhaps a bit slowed. It will be up to her and her advisors to keep it as the campaign finishes and election day looms.
Actually, as this all nears its ending both sides have to guess in a way. They must guess on which is the most important issue–the economy? immigration? women’s personal choice? democracy? national security? They’re all important, but it matters who emphasizes what. This is particularly true since it appears that one of the things that may decide the winner is who gets out the vote best. They each need to emphasize what will bring out their people in larger numbers, though they must not forget other issues as well. It likely depends mostly on turnout and on the way these difficult issues I have discussed here play out. Stay tuned and pay attention
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Story Tellers Change but Spenser Stories Stay the Same–Mostly At Least
“Robert B Parker’s Someone to Watch Over Me,” by Ace Atkins G P Putnam’s Sons, copyright 2020 306 pp
Robert B Parker was the leader of American mystery/detective fiction writing for a generation or more. Born in 1932, he began to publish in the 1970’s and he died in January, 2010. There were competitors, but none of them really came close as far as I know. He was widely regarded as the most legitimate heir of the great Raymond Chandler, author of the Philip Marlowe novels of the ’30s to the ’50’s and indeed he finished “Poodle Springs,” after the death of the founder of the genre.
Chandler’s genre, which Parker changed a bit and expanded some, but never betrayed was that of the hard boiled detective. He told the story first person and the reader presumably got to follow his thoughts and feelings as he worked his way through a case. He was ambivalent about relations with women, liking the women but hating the strings attached that went along with the relationship. He had a few friends, but not many and then often they served a professional purpose. And he had his own way of talking, often using clipped, quickly worded and not extravagant metaphors to get across his meaning.
The hard-boiled detective did not look for trouble but when he encountered it he know what to do. He was tough and resilient and could handle the baddies with his fists or, occasionally, with a pistol. He was introspective and considered the world pretty much of a mess. This was his world, however, and he did not consider it a raw deal necessarily for him or for most. It was just the way things were.
This description mostly is about Marlow and his innumerable imitated versions, most of them not too good, but at least one, Dashiel Hammett’s Sam Spade, reaching for the same height. Phillip and Sam were both from California which may or may not be important.
Parker’s very great contribution did change some things quite a lot, yet it kept most of the rules the earlier books had largely established. He wrote an immense number of books, pushing one hundred, I think, but is best known for the stories about Spenser, a Boston Private Eye. Spenser is a traditional tough guy PI with some changes,. Like Marlowe he is courageous and physically tough. He was once, briefly, a professional boxer and he was also a cop before the frustrations of cop rules drove him into private detecting.
Spenser has a large number of firearms in his collection and he is expert at using them all. But he is big and tough enough he can often handle bad guys with his fists. In many ways he is like Marlow and the influence of the earlier writer upon the later one is both obvious and admirable. But Spenser has some additional tidbits about him.
Unlike Marlow, who pretty much went from one woman to another,(but not a lot of them)Spenser is in a committed relationship with Dr Susan Silverman, a practicing psychologist and a Harvard Ph.D. Susan is sexy, brilliant, witty, insightful and independent. She met Spenser early in his career and they have shared their lives for several decades. But they keep separate apartments so don’t “live together” though they are obviously close to it. In many ways they function as a married couple, but not quite.
Both Susan and Spenser love dogs, both are gourmet cooks and based on Parker’s descriptions and I think meeting them at party or about anywhere would be quite intimidating. You would be meeting beauty, charm, brilliance, physical power, quick wit and towering intellect all rolled into one–well, OK, two. Spenser is surely the most intellectual of all the fictional private eyes. He likes to point out that his name is spelled like the English poet, though he never explained why he, an Irish American, had that English name, just as he never. for some reason told us what his first name was. He knows poetry, literature, art and some music and history.
He once confused a bad guy who asked what he was doing there. He said, “We’re studying the earlier works of Increase Mather.” Huh? Sam Spade never would have said that–or understood it. So Spenser is a great intellect as well as being physically strong, courageous, tender, at least with Susan and dogs, and and all round good man to have on your side.
When established mystery guy Ace Atkins took over the books(as requested by Parker’s family) not much changed. He caught Parker’s addictive, what-happens-next pacing almost perfectly and he didn’t miss by much on Spenser himself, or the minor characters, such as Quirk, a cop and former colleague and sort of friend. The only two people close to Spenser are Susan and Hawk, and if there’s anyplace Atkins doesn’t quite measure up to the master, it’s with them, though he does pretty well there too. Susan, I have already described. It does seem to me that Spenser’s relationship with this lovely, accomplished and strong woman is not quite as compelling as told by Atkins. This is particularly true in “Someone,” I think, but part of this is that she’s in the story less often than usual. Still, she comes through pretty loud and clear.
Hawk is one of the great creations of American pop lit. He is a black man a little young than I think Spenser is, but about the same age(be patient a minute here and I’ll comment a bit further on age) . He is a tough guy who also knows how to use his fists and weapons. He is at least as deadly as Spenser is and less inclined than Spenser to be restrained by moral compunctions.
What he did in the past is left somewhat vague, but for years he has been a professional tough man, who works out at the gym several times a week, keeps himself in shape for fighting or loving, and enthralls(usually only briefly) attractive and adventurous women. He works with Spenser when needed and is loyal and dependable. What he does for money other than be sometime partner to our hero is not entirely clear, but he obviously does well. Like Spenser he is a closet intellectual, though one hidden very deep in the closet. He does come up with startlingly intelligent remarks now and then.
The relationship of the two men in this book is also not quite like in the old Parker days, but seems closer than the one with Susan. Neither of them is developed here quite as fully as in Parker’s case, but it’s not really a serious flaw, just a slight decline from near perfection
Regarding age, by the way, for the first decade and a half or so, Spenser clearly identified himself as a Korean War veteran. That would have made him at least pushing 60 by sometime in the 1980’s and somewhere along the line Spenser’s past just dropped out of the stories. For a long time mystery writer there’s really no way other way to handle this. Note that Hercule Poirot was a retired detective in “The Mysterious Affair at Styles,(1920)This would have made him around 115 by the end of the series, but Agatha just kept him going along without comment and for her and the readers I’d say that was the right thing to do.. Eventually such characters exist in an admittedly imaginary but someone very real and poignant world understood by writer and reader if no one else.
I have read perhaps half of the Atkins’s Spencer novels and this is one of the later ones. Atkins has now returned to his own characters and stories. I think this book is actually better than a couple of the others, He keeps the story moving in the usual way and this is partly done by introducing a new character. This is Mattie Sullivan, who as a teenager a few years ago was helped and supported by Spenser through a very difficult time. She is now grown up and determined to be a PI herself. She works as a sort of combination gopher and investigative assistant to Spenser and is at least as dedicated(but less funny)than he is.
The story, which is turning out to be the lesser part of this article, is of another teenage girl. This one tells Mattie she was assaulted in a private club by a revoltingly decadent man and describes him and his practices in details that would possibly shock a Trump rally. The girl, Chloe, fled the situation but left her laptop and backpack behind and now needs them back to protect her privacy and to prevent possible personal disasters.
So this leads to Mattie and Spenser taking on the case, with Susan providing comfort and her usual psychoanalytic insights and Hawk bringing along the weapons and muscle. The other characters include a number of girls who have had similar experiences with the same man or his disgusting friends, “creepy old men,” as I remember one charter describing them.
This leads our friends from place to place and situation to situation around Boston. But the icky man at the top, Peter Steiner, is elusive. He is protected by a huge fortune and a lot of powerful friends, deeply connected in business, politics and law. It is difficult to touch him.
Steiner, however, owns his own island in the Bahamas and the chase to nail him, stop his depredations and bring him to justice leads Spenser and Hawk there eventually. After a careful and complicated approach they get on the island and into a position to free a lot of innocent girls and get their oppressor out of circulation. How this happens with what results I will not, of course reveal, but these are the basic facts you’ll be working with if you read this book. I recommend that you read it. It’ll keep your mind off elections and things of that sort. Anyway, it’s worth the time.
I should not stop here, not without adding that while the Spenser stories are what Parker is best know for he wrote a lot of other books. The best know of these would likely be the Jesse Stone novels. I tried one once and didn’t finish it, not because it wasn’t a good book but, hey, it just wasn’t right for the author(or the reader, I guess). He also began, late in his career, a series of novels about Sunny Randall, a female Boston PI. She lives in the same real and literary world as Spenser. She occasionally deals with one of the old colleagues of Spenser with the police and her psychoanalyst is Susan Silverman. These are basically stories asking you to imagine a female Spenser. The idea works.
Ace Atkins has been replaced by another top American mystery writer, Mike Lupica, who is apparently going to do both Sunny and Spenser books. I read a Lupica Sunny Randall novel recently and enjoyed it. If you have never read any of these people, I commend both Atkins and Lupica to your attention. But nobody beats Spenser–or Parker.
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Closing In On–Well, What?
I haven’t written much about politics lately. I guess my writing urges have been worn down by too much political use. But I need to speak–briefly, anyway–about what is going on now. It appears that Trump has slightly closed the gap between himself and Harris and it now appears, at least for the moment, one of the closest Presidential elections in history, at least looking at the potential popular vote.
It also appears to be getting stranger and weirder as the days roll along, mostly due to increasingly odd statements and even behavior from Trump and Vance, but also, to some extent, from media coverage and maybe some lackings in the Harris campaign.
I guess I want to boil this down to three main points–
1) Trump’s statements, often strange in the past, have gotten more so. It is difficult to tell(for me, anyway)if this is the result of careful calculation of what he thinks works with his base and/or potential supporters, of if he really believes all of it. As I believe I have suggested before it’s sort of hard to tell which would be worse. I’m inclined to go with the latter as worse. The former would merely mean Trump fell into the category of dishonest politicians, a category we’ve been familiar with for too long. He would be one of the leaders, of course, but still it’s a recognizable type(and understandable if you take a sort of super-cynical view of human nature and particularly of the US)
The latter choice, that he really believes all or at least some of this stuff is, I think worse. His thing about “The Enemy Within” gets to me(I wonder if he knows RFK, Sr once wrote a book with that as its title?). He seems to mean domestic traitors, particularly ones that mess with elections(anybody want to say “projection?”) and maybe some others. It’s sometimes hard to tell exactly who he means, because he is, possibly on purpose, not always too specific). He also is way over the top with many of his charges.
We all know the border is a mess and as a matter fact has been for decades. But what is this about how Harris has organized people from all over the world to come from prisons, mental institutions, etc and screw up the US as badly as possible? Unless he really is nuts, i.e. psychotic(which I doubt), he knows this is a lie. I have never heard or seen one piece of evidence which would prove this ridiculous charge or even suggest there might be some truth to it. Of course, as with so many other, uh, untruths, he seems, so far, to be getting away with it.
Then there’s his musical interlude Monday night at a rally. I guess we could just be glad he was listening to music instead of stating his usual stuff, but what kind of a candidate behaves this way? Again, is it a calculation or does he really think it appropriate?(The music wasn’t half-bad but I’ll bet it wasn’t his choice)
2) Somewhat pursuant to the above, I don’t think the Harris campaign or the media are handling Trump’s bizarness and lack of truth very well. One thing that has gotten under my skin lately is this–J D Vance and Trump and a lot of their supporters like to act as if Kamala Harris is responsible for everything that’s happened since Trump left office. Up until Joe Biden dropped out they were trashing the Biden Administration and usually using that name. After Biden pulled out of the race and Kamala rose to the top it suddenly became “the Biden–Harris Administration” in the words of many Republican speakers and interviewees. Well, this is a change of emphasis for obviously political reasons, but I will concede it can be argued that it is not an inaccurate description.
Then, from some speakers, I believe, the nation began to hear of something called the “Harris-Biden Administration.” I don’t think anyone has gone so far as to call it the “Harris Administration” yet, but wait a minute–maybe someone will. What really gets to me, of course, is that there’s a deep lie in all of this. Frequently Trump and his supporters make references to “when she was in power” or words to that effect. Well, she never was “in power” in this Administration. The President has power, the Vice-President, influence. That influence may be very important, maybe the deciding factor in some cases, but it’s still influence, not power. So a reasonable answer to the implied if not stated “why didn’t you do something.” could be, “Hey, I wasn’t President.. Have you read the US Constitution recently?”
I don’t expect that to happen. But it does seem to me that this particular bit of hypocrisy and distortion on the Trumpies’ part ought to be called out in writing or on TV or both. I would suggest the VP herself do it. Or maybe Gov Walz. But it would be OK for a TV reporter/interviewer to spend at least a minute or two on it. No, it’s not the biggest deal in the campaign, but it is indicative of a mindset among Trump and his people that I think is worth noting.
Then, of course, there’s the possibly most threatening thing about the Trump campaign, his repeated and repeated threat to use the government to restrict or entirely wipe out the freedom of his political opponents. He speaks of the national guard and the military and I think he may mean it. Of course his more immediate threat, to use them on election day or just after it is patently ridiculous. Even if he wins, according to the Constitution he would still have over a two month wait to actually assume the office. The sitting President would remain the sitting President until that time and I think Joe will behave with decency and common sense up to the end of his term
What he means by the rest is a little bit undefined, but he clearly means he would use his position as President to curb opposition and criticism and maybe even regular political activity(like seeking office). Whether he means this or is just bluffing I don’t know, but if it’s the latter it’s not only in poor taste, it actually may weaken the Republic and its traditional freedoms. If it’s not a bluff he would be risking serious conflict in the courts, the federal government and possibly the streets.
3) Despite a certain amount of exaggeration by the media and perhaps other commentators(to say nothing of the Trumpies), it is likely true that the Harris campaign needs to do some things differently. This process of change may be beginning now and if so, it needs to continue. Harris is so clearly Trump’s superior in intelligence, understanding, empathy, truth telling, ordinary human decency and common sense that it is ridiculous that this is a close race. But that’s what nearly all the polls show and I won’t deny it. Some of this is due to certain peculiarities of the social-economic state of the US and the opinions of some of its citizens and may have little to do with the candidates themselves. But then there’s this …
Harris has had trouble making herself known to the American people. I don’t exactly understand why, but they still feel, many of them, that they don’t know her as they do Trump, Biden or other contemporary political figures. She needs to continue “introducing” herself in public appearance, TV, in person, whatever. She also is having trouble explaining satisfactorily what she would do as President. I personally feel I already know enough about her to make a reasonable estimate of what her foreign and domestic policies would be. But many do not feel this way.
So she needs to tell everyone straightforwardly, “I would deal with the economy in the following ways…” ” I would take the following attitude with the Russian-Ukrainian war …”. Or with the Gaza disaster or whatever. Of course, she should not paint herself into a corner with too many specific promises, but she does need to give a better impression of what she is likely to do. There is, as noted above, some indication this is already a work in progress and if so, it needs to continue and even improve a little bit.
She is usually a very good interview and I trust this will continue. She does occasionally miss one as she did the other day on the issue of what she would do differently from Biden. I think a good answer would have been something like,”Well, the overall pattern would be about the same as he and I both want basically the same things for our country and for the world. There might be a few changes in specifics and I may discover some of these along the way.” Of course, it would be good to have one or two differences in mind to mention at the time of the question so as to avoid sounding just like another politician.
We should know more in a few hours. She is about to take on Fox News which is gutsy and I hope productive. Anyway, it shows a wish for honesty and it shows political courage. What would a Trump interview with Rachel Maddow be like? Don’t waste a lot of time on it just consider it. Happy speculation!
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Fall and Mysteries– a Good Match
G M Malliet, “The Haunted Season,” St Martin’s Press 2015
Richard Osman, “The Bullet That Missed”–Viking –2022
To a real mystery fan anytime is a good time to start reading one, but fall, my favorite season, and the one most given to Mystery is, it seems to me the best. I’ve got two I want to tell you about.
G M Malliet is an American author, British -educated(Oxford and Cambridge, no less) who still lives in the US but obviously knows the UK intimately. She often travels there and her books are(I think)all set there. She had two other series and may have plans for more of those two, but lately has been confining herself to her third series, that of Father Max Tudor.
She began this series about the middle of the past decade has about a half dozen, so far. “The Haunted Season” is the third or fourth one I’ve read and by far the best of them. All of them are good, but this one sparkles, a jewel in the crown of “cozy” mystery writing–but perhaps not quite all cozy at that.
First of all, understand that Max is a priest of the Anglican Church(Church of England), not a Roman Catholic. This will explain the wife and child and the absence of references to Rome. He is a still youngish man, but not without worldly experience. He was once a spy for MI-5, British rough equivalent of our FBI. He eventually became disillusioned with that kind of work and decided there was a better way. Following that thought to its conclusion he became a priest and it now at about 40, still somewhat new to the surroundings, but a quick learner and a man who feels (mostly) comfortable with what he is doing.
For several years he has been the clergy of a church in Nether Monkslip in southwestern England. (By the way, that is a fictional name, but not an unreasonable one for a small English village. The spell-check on this computer didn’t accept it as correct, but rural England is full of villages with similar unusual–to the American ear, anyway–names) In the earlier books(and years)in this series he began getting involved in mysteries of one kind or another and is now regarded as something of a detective as well as a clergyman. He has also met and married the lovely Awena Owen, proprietress of the town’s New Age shop and a practitioner of New Age as distinct from traditional Christian faith. The Church has accepted her as clergy wife-worthy, though not without some doubts. They have a baby, only a few months old at the beginning of the book.
As usual there is a large cast of supporting characters, some more familiar than others. As Max goes about his work, he finds himself being pulled into the small village/rural area social scene and then comes up against a crime.(Not unusual for him, naturally)
The socially prominent family in the area, and owners of Totleigh Hall, are Lord and Lady Baaden-Boomethistle. They are not a necessarily sympathetic pair, but then who would be with that name? Lord Boomethistle is well into middle age and was widowed a few years earlier. The new lady B is a beautiful, ambitious young woman of charm and well, maybe other things too.
Lord B’s two kids are a son, Peregrine and a daughter, Rosamund. Peregrine seems to be a discontented, irresponsible layabout with no interest in learning, growing up or anything else worthwhile and appears to be wasting his time at Oxford. Rosamund is the family intellectual and I love the author’s description of her, “a proud egghead among a family of fox-chasing morons.” A bit of a lack of charity there, but not an inaccurate description of the young lady’s thoughts.
For good measure we have the Dowager mother of Lord B who is an 80ish novelist of the Barbara Cartland romance type, rich, arrogant and willing to look down upon just about anyone. And then there’s Bill Travis, the estate manager and horse trainer who seems to have attracted young Lady B’s attention, and is possibly returning it. Gee, now what could go wrong here?
Actually quite a bit, and there are characters and complicated relationships I won’t go into here. Let me say, though, that despite the large cast(there’s a “cast of characters” list at the start) it’s a well told story with a certain amount of insight into humans and their foibles and also with Malliet’s usually gentle but sometimes cynical humor.
I will not describe the crime which occurs, but suffice it to say it is remindful of a famous early american tale in some ways and involves a great deal of imagination on the part of the perpetrator and, well, the reader. It is indeed puzzling, playing as it does on horses, riding, the social society of rural England jealousies, resentments and other delightfully nasty emotions.
I suppose I won’t be giving away a lot if I say that Father Max figures it out, but not without a lot of trouble and effort and learning about his town and its people. I thought the ending which unfolds rather slowly but suspensfully for a British cozy was very good, a long way from the traditional get ’em together in the drawing room and explain. (Not that that didn’t work scores of times for Agatha Christie and a lot of others.)
I was surprised that after finishing this book, I looked it and readers’ comments up on line and found quite a few negative comments from previous fans of the series. The statistics they show are not bad,(the number of likes, dislikes, etc) but they posted mostly negative views and I think it’s only fair to mention this. The only criticism I saw there that I thought had some merit was that a new character, a young female priest is introduced early in the book and then largely ignored until the end. True, but I’d say not really a big deal.
I thought the human relationships and the delightful British small town rural charm, plus the sense of menace in the back ground worked very well. If you like this kind of mystery I suggest you give it a try. By the way, despite the title and a deliciously creepily autumnal picture on the cover the book has little to do with Halloween. But that’s my only real criticism.
Richard Osman is a whole other story and his “The Bullet That Missed” an entirely different type book, thought also a British mystery and in many ways well into the tradition. I did a blog on his first book. “The Thursday Murder Club” not long ago and also have read “The Man Who Died Twice,” though I didn’t write about it. “Bullet” is the third in the series which he seems to be turning out once annually.
For the uninitiated, the title of the first book is actually the name of a club at an expensive British Retirement Home. It is made up of Elizabeth, their leader and a retired MI-6 officer (similar to CIA in US), plus Joyce, her friend and a retired nurse and also a compulsive and revelatory diarist. The two male members are Ron, a former labor organizer and Ibrahim, a retired psychiatrist. They meet for the purpose of trying to solve old, cold cases which have never been resolved. You will not be surprised to learn that they do this about once per novel. If you know mystery novels of this sort you’ll be even less surprised to learn that they always(so far, anyway)wind up in the midst of a mystery going on in Real Time.
The gang start out of the issue of a journalist, one Bethany Waites, who was apparently murdered nearly a decade ago. But no on was ever brought to trial for the crime and it eventually faded from public and police interest. Bethany had breen investigating a huge VAT racket(that is tax avoidance scheme) and there is a suspicion that was what led someone to get rid of her.
So they begin with the TV station and question Mike, the geniual host and old friend, and they question the detective who handled the case, and they meet Pauline, a TV makeup artist who falls for Ron. Their love story is soft pedaled to a large degree but is still and source of humor and sometimes real emotion.
But the group has now gotten started and as they should know by now once you start this sort of thing there may be no stopping it. Donna DeFrites and Chris Hudson, their two cop-friends from earlier cases show up and get involved. So does and mysterious and huge Scandanavian whose name remains unknown but whom Elizabeth calls “The Viking.” For not enitrely clear reasons he admits to involvement in the scheme. then orders Elizabeth to kill her friend, Joyce. He will kill Elizabeth, he says, if she refuses.
So now Elizabeth is twice- or really thrice-pressured. She is leading the effort to find out more about Bethany, she is (as always)dealing with Stephen, her demintia-stricken husband, and now has The Viking on her back demanding she kill a friend and threatening her life if she doesn’t.
Confused yet? Well, so is Elizabeth and so is nearly everyone in the story, It ranges from learning about ways of money laundering (some of the old ways don’t work anymore because of newer technology), about international “trade” of the most discreditable and deceiving kind, and the uses and limits of the British police photographs (CCTV) in solving crimes (This was a very big deal in the second book).
Elizabeth brings her determination and spy-training to bear on the issue and with the help of the others they begin, slowly, to figure it out. I will leave you to learn the details by reading this yourself. It would be a poor mystery critic who would put “spoilers” in a review, and anyway I wouldn’t want to try to explain the whole thing in any event. But to Osman, the explanation is in the end not that hard(for the reader–it’s tough on the characters) and even seems to make sense. Of course, you have to be patient with it and allow him to pull his usual last-minute tricks with surprises popping up like crab grass in the last few pages.
But the real reason for reading Richard Osman is not really the “mystery” part, although that’s good enough right there. But the biggest pleasure is in the characters he creates and in every book(so far)expands on bit by bit. We grow to love them and sympathize with them. We learn their feeling about age and its disadvantages and its few satisfactions. We learn how smart, determined people beat off the disadvantages, sometimes for years. And we also learn that as the Thursday people know nothing will last forever, not even their lives.
Osman can be uproariously funny at times, as I pointed out in my review of the first book. But I also said and repeat here, that I would not call this a “comedy-mystery.” It has elements of that kind of book in it and good ones too, but it has a lot from the darker side not only the things I just mentioned, but an often offhand, not fanatical explanation of how the world works and how much corruption, violence and greed play a part in it.
For all that I think I would recommend this as a morale booster if you’re feeling depressed. Osman is the most compulsively- readable author I know of writing just now and he is not to be overlooked.
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Nothing Before to Match This
It is less than two months now until election day. Of course, many votes will be cast before that, so the process has, to some small extent, already begun. I am always excited and awed by national US elections, especially Presidential ones. For one who follows public affairs it nearly always seems to be the most important election in memory. This year is just may be that that is so.
I have followed American politics closely, not to say compulsively, for decades now and I remember nothing to match this mess. There was intra party strife(1964), occasional calls for revolution (’60’s, early ’70’s), and serious political readjustments and changes of assumptions(’80’s & ’90’s). There have been scandals before and seriously inappropriate things said by candidates and/or their supporters. But I think it has been nothing like this.
Consider–The Democrats, the more “normal” of the two parties for the moment, at least, nearly went to the public with a man in his ’80’s who appeared to be succumbing to the frailties of age. If you have followed me at all recently, you know that I think Joe has been a good President and might continue. It’s the “might” part that is frightening.
After the disastrous June debate the President dug in his heels, but the overwhelming feeling within the party that he might end up not able to govern and even more likely would lose the election and not get the chance took its toll. So for the first time in US History a leading party set aside the candidate that was in all-but-name the official nominee. He himself picked his VP as his successor and the party with considerable(but not, I think inappropriate)haste moved to ratify his choice. She, in turn, quickly named a not very well known but highly respected midwestern Governor as her running mate.
At the same time, Donald Trump, the most bizarre President in history and the most unusual candidate too, is back as the GOP choice. He is running with a mostly inexperienced OH Senator who wrote one good book(I liked it), then, after some wandering in the Appalachian wilderness of his experience and his culture, decided he belonged with the Trump side of the Republicans and accepted Trump’s offer to be his running mate(I wonder if one or both of them is now regretful about this.)
We did not expect this to be relaxing or very edifying and It wasn’t. But most of us did not expect the extremes it has already gotten to. Unbelievably, two attempts on Trump’s life have already been made. There are nuts out there on both(or all or whatever you choose)sides and they have weapons of lethal power available to them. The idea of real political violence is frightening both in its immediate incidence and in what it might say about our country’s state of mind. But it is most disturbing in what it might portend for the US future, a subject I do not wish to pursue very much now.
But look at the rhetoric on each side. The Democrats’ is fairly normal and not too much inspired. I agree mostly with what they say. Sometimes it could be said more imaginatively. Kamala Harris is a compelling presence on stage and/or before a mic. It’s conceivable she could win in large part on that. But the Dems had better be careful.
Despite his occasional butchering of the language, and his frequent violence to logic, Donald Trump is a moving speaker to many. I am not among those moved by him, but clearly many are. And he does have a sort of swamp fox vigor in some of his speaking. And he has the trick of saying things that are absolutely absurd and getting away with it, at least to a very considerable degree.
The most recent and the most obvious of this Trump-fantasia world is the now too well known statement about Springfield, a small-medium sized city in the Western part of my home state. We all expect Trump to try hard to profit from the border mess and to make ridiculous statements about it(“they’re all criminals” etc), but we were astonished at the immigrant/ animal cannibalism statement. Now where did he get that? Well, actually I think he got it from an obscure(once)posting on the internet, but never mind. You would think that such absurdities would lose him enough votes to guarantee he will be defeated. Maybe they will, but don’t bet more on that than you can afford to lose.
Oh, yes, and now you may look forward to a lot of debate about having a debate. I think another one would be a good thing, but I won’t lean on anyone too heavily for that. It is obvious that Trump’s political instinct–functioning here–is telling him not to do it. That instinct may just be right. But if his campaign seems to be imploding he may regret not having the chancer to pull himself back from the brink of defeat.
In the meantime, the overall debate, which happens daily on the campaign trail, goes on. But where? Indications now are that it could take a turn toward foreign policy. Most of Trump’s people are uninterested in foreign affairs and, to tell the truth, the same may be true of the Dems. But with serious wars in both The Russian-Ukrainian mess and in the Mideast it just could become an issue, Particularly Israel may force the issue upon the US politicians by it’s recent apparent advances which have give them a way of turning smart phones into weapons.
So fasten those belts and pay attention. This could be a rough ride and end in a rougher landing for the American political system. In any events, it’s different.
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Debate Reflections
We’ve all had a day or two to reflect upon The Debate and to form opinions about it. The ones I’ve read or heard on TV tend to be fairly, though not absolutely, predictable. For the most part people on each side think(or say that they do)that their candidate won. Though I am admittedly not without my own prejudices and opinions in this matter, I offer my conclusions as follows–
—Going by any more or less normal and rational standards Harris “won”–Trump started out badly and got a good deal worse as he went along, eventually falling into pushing the idiocy of alleged Springfield OH animal consumption. This is beyond belief and, I think, just about beyond sanity. But he said it anyway on national/world TV. It is difficult to imagine his recovering from such a gross and recklessly silly(to say nothing of disgusting) statement. But he’s Trump-you never know. Still…
He had nothing, really, to say that was new or interesting(hardly expected that)or that was really relevant to the campaign and the nation’s issues. He touched on both domestic and foreign issues, but without depth or understanding on either one and with nonsense, often, on both. He appears to be still riding that horse about Democrats causing wars and offering comparisons to his administration.(Somewhat like the Republican isolationists FDR had to deal with in the 1930’s) Someone (media or Dems)needs to challenge him on this and point out that Vladimir Putin started the war in Europe, and didn’t ask permission first. Likewise Hamas in Gaza. And US Intelligence was all over this and predicted almost exactly what would happen and when.(Ukraine–Gaza was a shock to us all)
He turned up in the spin room areas himself after the debate, apparently not wanting(perhaps not without good reason)his “spinners” to get stuck on TV trying to explains the twists and turns of his mind and discourse. Trump did not look at all fully in command. In fact, he looked disorganized in his thinking and composure at first and declined as time went on.
Harris on the other hand was clearly in command from the start and this is how she won the debate by any reasonable measures. She smiled and looked confident and she presented herself with strength and optimism. She seemed to know exactly what she wanted to say and she said it–very well. This is pretty much exactly what the President failed to do enough of in his June debate failure. Trump hardly ever does it unless you count loud-mouthed blustering as a show of strength. Harris also obviously knew how to irritate Trump without being too obvious, and how to do in such a way that he would be unable to keep his temper.
Harris and Trump both, technically speaking, addressed real issues. But Trump did it only with his usual combination of shallowness and lying. Harris at least showed she grasped what the issues were and was seriously trying to consider ways to handle them. The main complaint heard about her is that she has not talked enough to journalists(print or TV) and has not offered enough specifics. As a matter of simple fact, this is true, but it is a fact that needs to be explained and analyzed.
Going far back in the American memory, presidential campaigns started well before the summer of the election. In the memory of the majority of voters now, they start even earlier–sometime the year before the election year. This gives the candidates time to get ready and to work on their presentations.
While Harris obviously would have considered this, particularly when you take into account Biden’s age and the increasing concerns about it, it did not appear this was going to keep him out. Opinions of observers were divided and this one did an article–during July, as I recall-in which I said I thought Joe should go but wouldn’t, in all likelihood, do so.
So, while the idea had no doubt been germinating in Kamala’s mind for some time, it was not until late July that she suddenly found herself as the Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. This means she has had only about a month and a half of a full candidacy. Others have had much more and, in many cases, used it much less.
Having said all that, it is nonetheless true that she does need to communicate more on specifics. She has done a little bit of this(note the ideas she has on tax policies and her differences with both Biden and Trump) but more is needed, particularly on economic policy. She and other Dems need to point out, with out exaggerating or distorting anything, that the RATE of inflation is dropping. They need to note that they realize inflation is still there and that this means pain at the pump and the supermarket check out line.
They also need to say that they will keep and eye on this and take whatever steps they deem necessary if the decline is not enough that people will be able to feel it quickly. It would be nice if the decline in inflation would be enough that it could be felt before the election. I have noticed that in Northeast OH gasoline prices have been falling lately. Here is an example of one kind of inflation in at least one areas of the US, which is actually disappearing. It would be nice if there were more.
There is much speculation now about the possibility of another debate, possibly even two of them. I would not suggest more that two because you don’t want to bore the public with too much of anything. But one or better two, would be a good idea. Trump’s people are likely having serious debates of their own weighing the need for him to explain himself better against the possibility. of more bizarre statements if they let him loose on the debate stage again. I wish them luck in deciding. To Harris and her people, I reiterate the above advice to deal a bit more in specifics. Other than that, perhaps the best choice is just to follow that hokey old adage about being yourself. Your self is so much better than Trump’s that you should win that part easily.
I also would add(and with thanks to a friend whose comments earlier today reminded me of this)one more suggestion. Trump and other Republicans are saying over and over “Why didn’t you …” or “Why didn’t she—“do this or that in 3 1/2 years of power. Well, as a matter of fact(constitutional fact)the President has the power, or about 90% of it. The VP’s only real power, per the Constitution is presiding over the Senate(which as Mike Pence knows sometimes is real power at that!) But that’s it.
Maybe she was the “last person out of the room.” Maybe this meant she was Biden’s primary advisor. But she wasn’t President, he was, and he made the decision. Calling Biden’s Administration the “Biden-Harris” Administration is silly and transparently(in the not good sense) phony. Referring to its decisions, as if they were her decisions, or even implying this is hypocritical. I hope KH calls them on it or has Walz do it. He seems to me suitably humorously sarcastic and ought to be able to handle the situation. I’ll bet he could handle it well. But I wouldn’t bet that it would work!
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john's thoughts 