10. The War Between the Sexes and Emulating “Mr. First Nighter”

THE WAR BETWEEN THE SEXES AND EMULATING “MR. FIRST NIGHTER”

H.L. MENCKEN’SIN DEFENSE OF WOMEN

Give me a minute and I’ll list the advantages that accrue with aging. Unhhh. Can I have another minute? If the years provide any accumulated wisdom, it is buried under layers of scar tissue. The other, overrated reward of surviving seven decades, “experience,” was once defined as the residue of failure.

Strange, but it is in the war of ideas that senior citizen status brings some relief. Critics become less venomous when dealing with older folks. Which leads to Blumert’s Fifth Law:

“The assault on career and reputation abates as defamers move on to younger, more vigorous targets.” Or, put another way, why should the enemy expend energy and resources destroying the victim when the “grim reaper” will be doing it soon enough at lower cost?

“I’ve reached the age when nobody cares what I write about,” I advised a friend.

“Nobody ever cares what you write about,” he muttered.

“I’m free at last, and safe in my dotage. I can write on the most controversial subjects and nobody will care.”

“You can write on any subject and nobody will care,” the muttering continued.

“I’ll blow the lid off the hottest subjects: The Differences Between the Races; Stalin, Hitler, Roosevelt, and Churchill: Who Were The Real Criminals? Homosexuality: Is It Genetics, the Environment, or Moral Decadence?”

To begin our search for truth at any cost, consider this question: “What is the single greatest threat to the economic well-being of the average man?” Illness? Corrupt government? Wrong. The correct answer is, Woman.

Our exposé: “How Women Have Manipulated Men Economically And Generally Hoodwinked Them From Time Immemorial.”

There is little scholarship on the subject, no conferences, and the struggle between the sexes is so one-sided that the brainwashed victims are not even aware of their plight.

I have extensive files that conclusively reveal the insidious plot women have devised to dominate men. Unfortunately, my wife won’t let me use them. She has also confiscated my autographed picture of Jessie Helms and my Wilt Chamberlain sports card.

She thinks she’s in total control, but I smoke my cigars in the garage whenever I want to, whether she likes it or not.

But who needs my files? We have H.L. Mencken, America’s greatest essayist and man of letters, and his brilliant two-hundred-page book, In Defense of Women (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1918). The book continues to be controversial through its many printings. Mencken was perplexed that women viewed his classic as an attack. The point he was making was that it was the superiority of women that had led to their dominance over men in the important aspects of life.

Following, the great man makes his case and helps mine as well. All the quotes are from Mencken’s In Defense of Women.

H.L.M. ON WOMEN AND THEIR UNDERSTANDING OF MEN

“A man’s womenfolk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity.”

“She may envy her husband, true enough in certain details. She may envy him his masculine liberties, his invulnerable complacency, his talent for petty vices, his soothing romanticism. But she never envies him his puerile ego; she never envies him his shoddy and preposterous soul.”

H.L.M. ON MARRIAGE

“The very fact that marriages occur at all is a proof, indeed, that they are more cool-headed and more adept in employing their intellectual resources, for it is plainly to a man’s interest to avoid marriage as long as possible, and as plainly to a woman’s interests to make a favorable marriage as soon as she can.”

“He may want a cook and not a partner in his business, or a partner in his business and not a cook. But in order to get the precise thing or things that he wants, he has to take a lot of other things that he doesn’t want.”

“The truth is that, in a world almost divested of intelligible idealism, and hence dominated by a senseless worship of the practical, marriage offers the best career that the average woman can reasonably aspire to.”

“But of all things that a woman gains by marriage the most valuable is economic security.”

H.L.M. ON “GOOD LOOKS” AND HOW MUCH MORE SENSIBLY WOMEN DEAL WITH THE SUBJECT THAN MEN

“A shop girl, perhaps, may plausibly fall in love with a moving-picture actor, and a half-idiotic old widow may succumb to a college boy with shoulders like the Parthenon. Women know how little such purely superficial values are worth.”

“The weight of opinion among women is decidedly against the woman who falls in love with an Apollo. She is regarded, at best, as a flighty creature, and at worst, as one pushing bad taste to the verge of indecency.”

H.L.M. ON SENTIMENTALITY (MEN ARE AND WOMEN AREN’T)

“One frequently hears of remarried widowers who continue to moon about their dead first wives, but for a remarried widow to show any such sentimentality would be a nine days wonder. Once replaced, a dead husband is expunged from the minutes. And so is a dead love.”

“A man, speaking of his wife to other men, always praises her extravagantly. Boasting about her soothes his vanity—but when two women talk of their husbands it is mainly atrocities that they describe.”

H.L.M. ON WOMEN IN PRESENT AMERICAN SOCIETY (AND HOW THEY CREATED IT)

“If the average American husband wants a sound dinner he must go to a restaurant to get it, just as if he wants to refresh himself with the society of charming and well-behaved children, he has to go to an orphan asylum.”

“The result is that they swarm in the women’s clubs, and waste their time listening to bad poetry, worse music, and still worse lectures on Maeterlinck, Balkan politics and the subconscious.”

“It is among such women that one observes the periodic rages for Bergsonism, paper-bag cookery, the Montessori method—and other such follies, so pathetically characteristic of our culture.”

“She may neglect her home, gossip and lounge about all day, put impossible food upon his table, steal his small change, pry into his private papers—accuse him falsely of preposterous adulteries, affront his friends, and lie about him to the neighbors—and he can do nothing.”

“Let him undertake the slightest rebellion, over and beyond mere rhetorical protest, and the whole force of the state comes down upon him.”

“Today, by the laws of most American states-laws proposed, in most cases, by maudlin and often notoriously extravagant agitators, and passed by sentimental orgy—all of the old rights of the husband have been converted into obligations.”

H.L.M. ON HOW THEY DID IT

“I am convinced that the average American woman, whatever her deficiencies, is greatly superior to the average American man.”

“There was no weakness of man that she did not penetrate and take advantage of. There was no trick that she did not put to effective use. There was no device so bold and inordinate that it daunted her.”

“Women, as a class, believe in none of the preposterous rights, duties and pious obligations that men are forever gabbling about. Their habitual attitude toward men is one of aloof disdain, and their habitual attitude toward what men believe in, and get into sweats about, and bellow for, is substantially the same. It takes twice as long to convert a body of women to some new fallacy as it takes to convert a body of men.”

H.L.M. ON WOMEN AND THE LAW

“Women litigants almost always win their cases, not as is commonly assumed, because the jurymen fall in love with them but simply and solely because they are clear-headed, resourceful, implacable and without qualms.”

“Any man who is so unfortunate as to have a serious controversy with a woman, say in the departments of finance, theology or amour, must inevitably carry away from it a sense of having passed through a dangerous and almost gruesome experience.”

Today, In Defense of Women is sort of a reverse-cult classic. Women intuit that what Mencken disseminates is dangerous and sheds light on what their sorority would just as soon see remain dormant. The small group of men who discover In Defense of Women, usually too late to help themselves, pass tattered copies on to their sons.

If you buy one, conceal it as you used to your Playboy magazine.

If you get caught, blame me, as I’m over seventy and totally exempt from being indicted.

October 2, 2000

SHANGHEI AND MAO

MAO: THE UNKNOWN STORY
BURTON S. BLUMERT AND JUNE MORRALL REVIEW THIS SHOCKING BOOK

Like a bolt of lightening, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece Gulag Archipelago, published in 1974, destroyed in an instant over fifty years of lies and deceit about the Soviet Union and its leaders. Stalin would never again be seen as kindly Uncle Joe, but as a ruthless killer of millions.

Some scholars suggest that it was Solzhenitsyn’s revelations that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union rather than Ronald Reagan’s strategy of “spending the ‘evil empire’ into oblivion.”

Like the “Gulag,” we finally have this extraordinary work by Jung Chang and husband Jon Halliday that will forever end the web of lies that has insulated Chairman Mao from his true place in history as the worst murderer the world has known.

Mao: The Unknown Story (Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, New York: Knopf, 2005) is a step-by-step guide to how this evil man used terror as a tool to subjugate every Chinese citizen. Fear of a horrible, slow death, torture, and humiliation silenced every voice. Only what the Chairman said or thought mattered.

You must read this book.

It wasn’t fashionable to criticize Mao in the West, particularly in the US. In San Francisco’s Chinatown, only the local Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party, attacked Mao and they were marginalized as “reactionaries.”

During the hippie era of the 1960s, in many households, Mao’s Little Red Book was a popular Christmas stocking stuffer. Mao was thought of as a modern Confucius, a gentle peasant who had freed China from its corrupt warlords.

Was it the media that promoted this false image about the worst tyrant who ever lived? It’s time to know the real Mao.

You must read this book.

Clearly the authors despise Mao, so it was essential that they support their 650-page treatise with an additional 200 pages of meticulously researched notes. Not just scholarly citations, but countless interviews with people who worked for, or otherwise knew Mao personally, and survived the violence of his regime. The notes also include many official documents that have not been seen in the West before.

Mao wanted to impress Stalin and modeled his state after that killer-thug. He then proceeded to “one-up” his Soviet teacher. Stalin would wait for the right moment to use violence and treachery against his enemies. Mao was brazen and did not need a timetable. He used torture and murder on a daily basis to control fellow communists.

Chairman Mao made it known that his tactics were never on holiday. Often his punishment was meted out in front of huge crowds. This was certain to spread the news quickly. “Watch out! Everyone is a potential spy. And you could be next.”

The masses were easy to control. He simply starved them to death.

In the end, Mao had either killed or imprisoned, or sent to work camps so many of his former officials that he had run out of credible bureaucrats to run the day-to-day business of government.

He had no choice but to “rehabilitate” some that he had purged earlier, like the “Capitalist Roader,” Deng Xiao-ping. These men hated Mao, and the Chairman made a critical error in underestimating how they would undermine him as his health began to fail.

Most interesting was the revelation that the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek (who later fled to Taiwan) was thwarted in his earlier negotiations with Mao because the Soviets were holding Chiang’s son “hostage.” By appeasing Stalin and Mao, Chiang hoped he would get his son back.

During his reign of terror, Mao forced the peasants to grow huge amounts of wheat and eggs and other foodstuffs to give to Stalin in return for technical information on how to build The Bomb. Mao starved his already poverty-stricken people and conducted public executions if quotas were not met. Business as usual for Chairman Mao.

Mao turned the country into one big concentration camp and he was the gatekeeper, allowing in selected outsiders, controlling what they saw so that when they returned home they would glorify what the Chairman had accomplished for his people.

Mao had little difficulty locating western media whores who would promote the lies about Mao and life in Red China and spread them like a deadly virus. There should be a special place in Hell for these people.

If there is a deficiency in this book, Mao: The Unknown Story, it is that after hundreds of pages outlining Mao’s unspeakable cruelty, the reader becomes numb and desensitized. The fault is not the author’s, but with the endless crush of evidence present.

As an antidote to becoming desensitized, keep in mind that this is not about a madman like Pol Pot. Mao may, in fact, match the crazed Cambodian in savagery. But, there’s a major difference; Today, Pol Pot, often considered a protégé of Mao’s, is a statistic in the World List of Lunatics, while Mao retains his place as a great figure in world history. This remains true twenty years after the Chairman’s death. Well, until this Chang and Halliday masterpiece.

You must read this book.

Here are some tidbits from Mao: The Unknown Story:

•A conservative estimate is that 70 million perished—in peacetime—as a result of Mao’s misrule.

•During the famous, “Long March,” rather than trudging along with the troops, Mao reclined in an elaborate “litter” weighted down with his favorite books and other comforts, all carried by peasants forced to perform like pack animals.

•Mao spent about US$4.1 billion to create a Chinese atomic bomb. That money if spent on food would have saved the 38 million Chinese lives lost in the famine.

In a recent TV ad promoting the 2008 Summer Olympic Games to be held in Beijing, China, the camera focused on what appears to be Tiananmen Square. In the center of the screen, lo and behold, is a giant portrait of the despicable Chairman Mao.

Why do nations continue to show reverence for their tyrants?

Yes an economic miracle is taking place in today’s China. The by-product of such an explosion is always freedom. China is a long way from being a totally free society, but, if this book, Mao: The Unknown Story, leads to the Mao portraits finally being torn down, that will be a giant symbolic stride toward individual freedom in China.

And maybe in other countries as well.

August 18, 2005

THE QUEEN

PORTRAYED BY THE MAGNIFICENT HELEN MIRREN

The commute over Devil’s Slide was uneventful but I still sighed with relief as I pulled into the garage and shut down the engine. The fog was rolling in, Pumpkin days were behind us, and it was good to be home.

But, it was not to be.

“We can just make the 4:20 showing of The Queen in Palo Alto if we leave right now,” my dear wife said breathlessly. There was no negotiating. She’s all business when she dons those Grand Prix driving gloves.

“Look, isn’t this the movie about Queen Elizabeth I, who reigned in the sixteenth century?” I whined. “Wasn’t she beheaded, or locked up in the tower? In any case, do we really want to see a period piece movie, where they all talk funny?”

She rolled her eyes once or twice, and I noted that we were already on Highway 280 heading south.

The Queen, she sniffed, “is about Queen Elizabeth II, the present monarch, stars the great actor Helen Mirren, and is directed by Stephen Frears, whose 1985 film, My Beautiful Launderette, is a cult classic.”

My spirits improved as we exited at Page Mill Road. I was now minutes away from a large-sized popcorn with the hope that they used real butter and, more importantly, I reflected that Helen Mirren is one of the finest actors of our time. She was dazzling as Jane Tennison in PBS’s Prime Suspect series, and remarkable as the brilliant but difficult Russian émigré in The Passion of Ayn Rand. Helen Mirren does not disappoint as The Queen. She is at the top of her game.

The story line of the film covers those shattering events in the UK during 1997. Tony Blair, amazingly portrayed by Michael Sheen, has become the first Labour Prime Minister in about twenty years. He is young—Blair was born in 1953, the year Elizabeth ascended the throne—and handsome. Although raised in privilege and properly educated, he is a socialist “new man.”

His first official meeting with the Queen sets the tone for the entire film. Elizabeth, reserved, formal, but armed with a rapier wit, duels with Blair. She advises that he is her fourteenth Prime Minister. He is amused by the monarch, but remains respectful throughout.

Blair’s wife, Cherie, does not share this respect. She is in sympathy with the 25 percent of the British population who believe the monarchy is an expensive anachronism and should be abolished.

To the tradition-bound Elizabeth, Blair might as well be a rock-star.

And then . . . the dark event that turns our story from a gentle tale of a collision of manners to a political crisis that could threaten the UK’s constitutional monarchy:

Princess Diana is tragically killed in a motor accident in Paris.

To Elizabeth, this event is the final act of the dismal drama that Diana created for the Royal family. The movie, The Queen, does not dwell on the “sordid” events that led to Diana’s divorce from Prince Charles. The audience is reminded, however, that Diana has been “excommunicated” from the royal family.

The only potential problem Elizabeth sees is the need to protect the young princes, Harry and William, from the evil media. In this she is supported by her consort Prince Philip—well portrayed by American actor James Cromwell. Her mother, “the Queen mum,” is also quick to offer her full support.

The royal family never once considers that the young princes should be mourning the dead mother they dearly loved. Shut off the TV sets, hide the newspapers, this was the royal strategy. Prince Philip decides that fresh air is the best remedy and takes the boys hunting on the 40,000 acres that make up the Balmoral Castle grounds.

As the days pass the outpouring of grief for the dead princess rages like a forest fire. To the royal family this outpouring is incomprehensible.

The headlines begin to turn ugly; why is the flag at Buckingham not flying at half-mast? Why is Princess Diana not being afforded a royal funeral? When will Queen Elizabeth break her silence and acknowledge the tragedy of Diana’s death?

From this point, The Queen becomes an elegant nail-biter. On the one hand, we have the intractable Elizabeth and her royal entourage clinging to traditions and views forged through 1,000 years.

On the other—average Brits who revere a different stripe of royalty: Elton John, Madonna, Elizabeth Taylor, the Spice Girls, and even the likes of Tony Blair.

To these subjects, Diana was the real princess.

The Queen relies heavily on archived tapes and films. It is a sticky matter to successfully weave old images into a screenplay. Director Frears does it artfully.

First, we see old BBC tapes of an ocean of flowers placed by grieving Brits around Buckingham and the other palaces. Then, seamlessly, Mirren’s Elizabeth walking amidst the bouquets. She reads some of the attached messages and is stunned by the anger directed against the Royal family. She is in agony, yet, never buckles, never loses the royal demeanor that defined her life.

There is a sadness as Mirren’s queen grudgingly accedes to the pressures put upon her. She is powerless, yet, never loses her grace.

Finally, Helen Mirren’s Elizabeth realizes what we knew all along. We live in a “Pop Culture” and even tradition is fading fast.

This article first appeared on HalfMoonBayMemories.com.

October 31, 2006

BURT GOES TO THE MOVIES KICKING AND SCREAMING

When my dear wife begins to sound like her mother, I know there’s no room for negotiations.

“We’re going to see Million Dollar Baby on Tuesday and The Aviator on Thursday. I want to see these movies NOW, not on TV in 2008.”

“And, there’s no room for negotiations on this one, Blumert.”

“But, we were at the movies just last month,” I responded without much hope.

“Last month? It was the summer of 2003 and we saw Seabiscuit. How could you forget? Yours was the only review that panned that wonderful movie. The people at Bay Meadows Race Track, Seabiscuit’s ‘home,’ were so offended that they actually considered barring you from their track.”

“Just another example of the Power Elite suppressing dissenting views, but that’s history, and my present concern is dealing with two movies in one week. I have an idea. Let’s see them at the Drive-In. At least we can have a beer and a burger while watching, and if the movie drags a bit, I can take a nap. That Drive-In just south of Candlestick Park is my favorite.”

“The last Drive-In anywhere near San Francisco was mothballed by 1991. Get with it, Blumert. We’re going to see Million Dollar Baby on Tuesday at the Cinema 12 Multiplex in the Mall and on Thursday, The Aviator is playing at the new Cinema 47 Megaplex, downtown San Francisco. We will be there.”

“Look, it’s not that I don’t enjoy Clint Eastwood and DiCaprio, it’s the multi- and mega-atrocities they call theatres that I despise. They remind me of bus stations, where finding your movie is like locating the platform your bus departs from.”

In the old days, going to the movies was something special. It hardly mattered what film was showing. An evening at your neighborhood movie house was a social event. When I went I never failed to encounter neighbors and school chums. On special occasions, we went “downtown” to the “Roxy,” or “Paramount.” They were breathtaking examples of Hollywood’s Golden Age; magnificent movie palaces of the sort found in almost every major urban center. (A few have been restored, like the Paramount in Oakland, California.)

At New York City’s Paramount in the late 1930s and early ‘40s, the customer was treated to more than a First Run movie. You got an Organ Recital AND a star-studded variety show. This was my first taste of “live” entertainment. There they were, I could almost touch them: Louis Armstrong, Danny Kaye, and Sinatra creating memories that endured a lifetime.

Back to reality and Tuesday at the Cinema 12 Multiplex. As my wife had predicted, there we were, standing in the ticket line.

“Don’t forget to tell them that we want to see Million Dollar Baby in Theatre #7 and that you get a senior’s discount,” my wife reminded. On a past occasion, I had forgotten which movie we came to see, panicked when asked, bought the wrong ticket and suffered through Disney’s 101 Dalmatians, engulfed by screaming, microbe-infested children.

Our fellow ticket buyers were grim-faced. If you didn’t know otherwise, you’d think we were all waiting in line for a flu shot.

Built in the late 1960s, Cinema 12 was an early multiplex and like many similar across the nation, located near a Regional Shopping Center. I’m no construction maven, but I suspect that they were all slapped together cheaply and quickly.

The Men’s Room was too small; the popcorn too expensive ($4 for a small bucket) and the butter-like substance squirted on the popcorn, close to rancid. The candy bars offered came in super jumbo size only, at super jumbo prices, and every soft drink dispensed was different than the one before or after.

“Small, medium or large,” the youngster asked, pointing to varied red plastic cups.

“Can I get a bottle of Coke instead of that thing you’re mixing back there?” I snickered.

Her answer exposed me as a pretentious horse’s rear-end.

“Gee, sir, I don’t know if we have those, but I’ll ask my manager.

We finally located the small room they called “Theatre # 7,” which was showing Million Dollar Baby. It was so dark that we nervously groped our way looking for empty seats. In the process I stepped on one fellow’s foot and almost sat on his wife.

Fortunately, there was little danger of falling down as our shoes were glued to the floor by a sticky, sugary substance that is a nuisance to the moviegoer, but a deadly trap for small animals.

Local gossip has it that Cinema 12 is scheduled for demolition, and if true, it’s not a moment too soon.

“Don’t despair, Blumert. On Thursday, we see The Aviator at the brand new Megaplex in San Francisco. People are raving about the place.”

They’re “raving,” huh? Well, nobody’s asked, but here is my critique of that monstrosity; the most unusual aspect of watching a movie at the Megaplex is that you might be 800 feet above street level. As Tony Bennett might put it, you’re “half way to the stars.”

The facility is built vertically, with each of the 4 levels connected by hundreds of feet of escalator. As we ground our way up to level 4, I couldn’t shake the mental image of being a patron at the Megaflex 47 during an 8.5 earthquake.

The tub of popcorn is $6; the candy bars the most expensive in town and the fancy European-style coffee house, a resounding dud. We had our coffee and biscuits across the street at Starbucks after the show.

“I hate to admit it, Blumert, but I totally agree with your opinions about these dismal modern movie factories and how much more we enjoyed our neighborhood theatres.”

“Hold everything. I’ve got to get that on tape. Having you agree with me on anything qualifies for the archives.”

From the 1920s through the ‘50s every small town in America had a movie theatre on Main Street. In the larger cities, each neighborhood had its own version.

They are all gone; disappeared from the face of the earth. Well, almost all gone. San Francisco had forty-five neighborhood movie houses through the early 1950s. Remarkably, twelve still exist. The unusual cultural make-up of San Francisco’s neighborhoods may account for this anomaly, but that analysis is for another day.

Growing up in my neighborhood in New York City, the Waldorf Theatre was our entertainment Mecca. Any kid who could raise the 10 or 25-cent admission showed up for the Saturday matinee.

We got our money’s worth: an Errol Flynn swashbuckler and a Jean Arthur comedy, a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, a Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers chapter episode with the superhero facing sure death every week only to survive at the beginning of next Saturday’s Chapter, a black and white Newsreel, hosted by the avuncular Lowell Thomas that even entertained the kids—and “Coming Attractions” that gave moviegoers a peek into next week’s thrills and spills.

You could sit through the Saturday matinee show three times if you managed to avoid the dreaded “Matron.” She wore a white nurse’s uniform and was armed with a large metal flashlight that she’d shine on a guilty kid’s face with uncanny precision. She ferreted out those who had been there too long and swiftly rotated them through the exit door. They were not to be seen again until next Saturday.

At some point the more adventurous filmgoer started to cross neighborhood boundary lines and tasted the flavor of another neighborhood’s movie house. In order to keep their old customers and attract new ones, every theater manager became intensely competitive.

The “free set of dishes” promotion caught on fast across the nation. You’d buy a ticket for a movie and get a free glass dish. If you went to seventy-two movies you could build a complete set. If you missed a week, you might be short a butter dish. Acquiring one wasn’t easy.

I don’t recall many of the movies that I saw at the Waldorf, but I’ll never forget Camille (1936) starring the mysterious Swedish beauty, Greta Garbo. It was a tragic love story and not the sort of movie suited for an eight-year-old. I don’t know what I was doing there, but it was clear mother wanted me next to her.

Garbo’s Camille lies near death from consumption. Her lover, played by Robert Taylor, handsome as a god, conceals his grief at her bedside. The men in the audience suppressed their tears but the women were openly sobbing. At that heart-wrenching moment, my mother’s free soup dish slipped out of my hand and crashed to the floor. The sound of shattering glass resonated throughout the theater. I thought I would never breathe again.

Lew Rockwell tells me that today some of these cheap old dishes fetch big bucks on eBay.

As usual my wife summed up: “Well you’ve told us about grand movie palaces, neighborhood theaters, and your childhood—but you never said a word about Million Dollar Baby or The Aviator.

Ok, here’s my review: The Aviator is a technically brilliant depiction of aviation history, and Howard Hughes’s significant part in it. Beautifully acted, although a bit long, the film focused too much on some of the negative aspects of Howard Hughes’s life.

As for Million Dollar Baby, Hilary Swank’s work will be remembered as one of the finest performances EVER.

You’d better see them both.

February 5, 2005

THERE WAS LIFE BEFOREGILLIGAN’S ISLAND

Either Walter Cronkite, Ed Sullivan, Gilligan’s Island and dancing “Old Gold” Cigarette packages were part of your childhood, or they weren’t.

There aren’t many of them left, but a still-breathing minority of this nation’s population was born and toilet trained before there was such a thing as television. These folks are easy to recognize—they’re old.

Okay, I’m one of the above. A TV set never served as my surrogate parent, and the only 12-inch screen we had at home was built into the front door of our washing machine.

The “electronically weaned” majority accepts their birthright and regards those of us born BTV (before television) as old and irrelevant. It’s like being part of a victim group, and I don’t like it.

At times, the pressure had become so intense that I began to deny my own heritage and tried “to pass” as one of THEM.

Faking not being “old” was easy. I maintained my youthful appearance through the discreet use of botox and bourbon. Friends tell me I easily passed for under seventy.

I also polished my persona, becoming “TV hip.” My reaction to almost everybody and everything was a quiet snap of the fingers and a confident, “That’s cool.”

But I wasn’t fooling anybody.

There I was, adrift, near despair, at a San Francisco Book Fair, standing in line for a copy of Hillary Clinton’s book. I had hit bottom.

Then, a voice: It was “Captain Marvel” Marvin, one of California’s leading dealers of Collector Comic Books, seated behind a display table covered with treasures from the 1940s and 50s.

Captain Marvel Marvin (CMM): “Shazam! Blumert, you look awful. There’s botox on your shirt collar, you look well over seventy, and it’s clear that you’ve hit bottom.”

Blumert: “That’s cool, and ‘Shazam!’ to you Captain. It’s been a tough time pretending to be one of THEM.”

CMM: Never mind those TV-weaned wimps. This is your heritage,” he shouted, juggling musty comic book originals of “Superman,” “Batman,” and “Wonder Woman.”

Blumert: “I hated comic books. With all respect, Captain, it was the dumb kids who liked them.”

CMM: “Dumb kids, huh? And I suppose it was the REALLY dumb kids who didn’t throw their comic books away and now have collections worth millions?”

Blumert: “I meant no offense, but I was raised during the Golden Age of Radio. ‘Amos n’ Andy,’ ‘Fibber McGee and Molly,’ ‘Jack Armstrong, The All American Boy.’ And my favorites, ‘The Shadow’ and ‘Captain Midnight’.”

CMM: “Your luck is changing, Blumert. I have an original Captain Midnight Decoder Ring. For old times sake, I’ll let you have it for only $2,800. It’s a steal at that price.”

I hammered the price on the ring down to $2,500, thanked Captain Marvel, and left the Book Fair a new man. I didn’t buy Hillary’s book, and proudly wore my decoder ring although it was designed to fit a nine-year-old’s finger.

Oblivious to the hubbub at the Book Fair, I thought about those “Radio Days” and remembered Woody Allen’s warm movie carrying that title. It was one of his few good films in recent years.

During those golden radio years—parents knew their kids were safe listening to the zany feud between radio legends Fred Allen and Jack Benny. They also knew that radio heroes like Captain Midnight and The Shadow always treated women with dignity and respect.

Pornography was in the closet and obscenity considered tasteless.

I never outgrew radio, but as we kids ranged further from home the movies became the dominant influence. I stumbled through adolescence with Mickey Rooney and the “Andy Hardy” series, aspired to be a great American like Jimmy Stewart and had a teenage crush on the elegant actress Ann Sheridan which has endured a lifetime.

That was Hollywood’s Golden age.

Yeah, we had an occasional war or depression, but I think my generation had it better than the Gilligan Island TV Kids that followed us. This is a minority view, getting more minority everyday.

June 13, 2003

GERMS AND THE MOVIES

The anthrax scare has been very bad for Democrat politicians, the US Post Office and cocaine dealers.

Public health officials, on the other hand, seem to be doing just fine.

The official government line on anthrax is so bizarre it’s like a bad script for a B movie. Every day we get a fresh version, things gets murkier and the questions pile up.

Are the spores coming from Islamabad or Hoboken?

Is it natural anthrax or militarized?

What if the bug-bomber’s next virus of choice is smallpox? Do we have sufficient vaccine? Will the vaccine still work? Can the public be kept informed while at the same time unpanicked?

In search of answers I turn to that great font of truth, the American Movie. Hollywood’s treatment of epidemics and bugs over the past seventy years can surely provide us with some blueprint for the future.

With credit to Halliwell’s Film Guide, Google, and thousands of hours of movie-watching research during the mid-part of the last century, what follows is an evaluation of the quality and social impact of the selected films.

The bug movies fall into four categories.

1. THE GLORY DAYS OR, WESTERN CIVILIZATION 2: BUGS 0

In 1926, Paul De Kruif’s book, Microbe Hunters—required reading in many pre-WWII high schools—glorified man’s triumph over disease. In inspirational terms the powerful volume told how brave medical heroes often had to battle the existing order as well as the bugs.

The message was clear: science had no limits.

Hollywood picked up the celebratory theme of Microbe Hunters with the 1936 Paul Muni film, The Story of Louis Pasteur. This black and white drama portrays the great French biologist’s struggle to vanquish the bugs, a tale every schoolboy was familiar with.

In the same spirit, Hollywood produced the 1940 movie, Dr. Erhlich’s Magic Bullet. Erhlich, the German scientist, is portrayed by veteran actor Edward G. Robinson. The theme is a recurrent one—the brilliant bug-hunter encounters more difficulty with administrators than he does finding a cure for venereal disease.

In the 1950 Elia Kazan film, Panic in the Streets, the public health official tracks down a carrier of bubonic plague in New Orlean’s seamy waterfront district. Reflecting the times, this public health detective is a dedicated and respected public servant.

Note to the reader: Science’s conquest of bugs reached its pinnacle in the 1970s.

As decades go, the 1970s was no bargain. The Vietnam War had sapped resources and morality, but at least the killing had stopped and the troops were home. The Civil Rights legislation of 1964 and the social upheaval of that decade had set in motion an attack on property and a political correctness that endure to this day. Watergate mucked up the political scene, but it was a scandal either enjoyed or suffered by beltway and media insiders only. To most everybody else, it was simply good theater.

Medical science had earned our undying faith. Tuberculosis and polio were something only our grandparents remembered. Smallpox was nearly eradicated and “wonder drugs” reinforced the growing faith that science was omnipotent. The wonder drugs also helped create a perverse sexual revolution that would burn out of control until the end of the decade and the arrival of AIDS.

2. MOVIES ABOUT AIDS. SCORE: EVERYBODY LOSES

Although dozens of films have been made about AIDS, only The Band Played On (1993), based on Randy Shilts’s best seller, made a serious effort to discover the origins and spread of the killer virus.

All other movies like Parting Glances (1986) and Philadelphia (1994) were sentimental, politically-driven vehicles to raise consciousness and money for the virus’s lobbyists.

3. SCIENCE FICTION MOVIES. SCORE: SCI FI: ONE, BUGS: ONE

Two major films best represent the genre. The Andromeda Strain (1971) is a well-crafted adaptation of Michael Crichton’s best seller. The bug hunters are detectives seeking to find and stamp out a fictional killer. This deadly bug arrives in a spaceship and carelessness allows it to escape the decontamination process. Suspense builds, and the viewer is irresistibly drawn into the drama. (One wonders if Crichton had to import his killer bug from outer space because science had eliminated all the domestic varieties.)

In the 1953 film adaptation of socialist H.G. Wells’s book, War of the Worlds, our bad bugs do good things. In this epic, the inhuman invaders from Mars are terrorizing, ruthless, unfeeling, indestructible—and just when the earthlings are ready to pack it in, the Martian war vessels start to crash to earth, their occupants all dead.

The Martians were immune to any weapons earthlings could muster, but they were unable to deal with the lowest of Earth’s life forms, our bugs.

4. EBOLA. SCORE: EVERYONE LOSES

Ebola is the mother of all bugs. In the real world it’s a quick killing African virus. We don’t know the origins, we don’t know the cure.

What Aids does to its host in ten years, Ebola accomplishes in ten days, author Richard Preston reminds us in his bestselling book, The Hot Zone.

Outbreak (1995), based on Preston’s book, may be the only film dealing with Ebola. It’s no surprise that the movie version scares the bejesus out of audiences.

In the film Dustin Hoffman heads up the team of germ sleuths tracking the fictionalized version of the Ebola virus.

Although Outbreak won critical acclaim, after forty minutes of watching Dustin Hoffman mumbling in a space-like suit, this viewer began to root for the virus.

The movie is flawed. It presumes to be based on a real event, but as horrible as the disease is, there has never been an instance when its spread would be considered epidemic. For this reason it fails as a medical hunt, and it self-disqualifies as science fiction.

A physician friend asked if there were any movies dealing with the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic. There weren’t any, I told him, and wondered why he had asked.

He stunned me with the following data about the Spanish flu:

There were 25 million dead worldwide between August 1918 and March 1919—more than died during the bubonic plague 1347 AD–1352.

500,000 Americans succumbed to the dreaded flu. Not many cities or hamlets were spared.

Like the common cold, people learn to live with the flu, the runny nose, congestion, fever and cough. The discomfort is usually short-lived, however, and the victim generally recovers. (20,000 die annually from influenza.) Not in 1918.

Once stricken the victims of Spanish influenza suffered severe congestion and their lungs blackened. Bloody sputum and sudden nose bleeds soiled the bed linen. Within days the patient turned a tint of blue and was almost certainly dying. Health authorities had never encountered anything like it before. This flu spread more rapidly than any previous strain, and the recovery rate was dismally low.

Unlike the garden variety influenza that strikes the elderly and very young, the 1918 edition attacked healthy, young adults. It took a deadly toll on those American troops returning from Europe at the end of WWI. These troops were the primary carriers of the virus, something else we can thank the Apostle Woodrow for.

It’s one thing to ponder fictitious diseases and unlikely epidemics. It’s something else to reflect on a real worldwide disaster.

The vaccines they tried in 1918 proved useless. To prevent the spread of the disease gauze surgical masks were required in San Francisco, but they were an effort in futility.

The country was so devastated by the epidemic that the end of WWI was a secondary event and hardly celebrated.

Now you can understand why people are so quick to forget the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. It’s a case of plain old denial.

The nagging question is ever present: How would our society in the year 2001 handle a 1918 variety strain of influenza?

Not too well, I fear.

Yes, today’s medical environment could not have been imagined 80 years ago. We have better understanding of cellular structure, and made impressive strides in developing vaccines. But the influenza virus changes so rapidly that all our advances might not make a bit of difference.

So you thought anthrax was scary.

November 29, 2001

WHEW, THAT WAS A CLOSE ENCOUNTER

San Francisco Set To Add Sex Change Benefits
City would be first to include option
—headline San Francisco Chronicle, 16 February 2001

Damien: “Thanks for calling the San Francisco Health Services System. This is Damien and our motto is: ‘We can make a BIG change in you’.”

Burt: “Hello, Damien. I’m Burt Blumert from LewRockwell.com. I’m considering doing a story about San Francisco’s plan to provide sex change benefits, and the Chronicle advised that you were the fellow, excuse me, uh, the person to contact.”

Damien: “The last caller said he was from the New York Times but he didn’t fool me a bit and his sex change surgery is scheduled for next Thursday.”

Burt: “There will be no surgery on this dude, buster. I’m simply reporting to our readers and frankly, Damien, you don’t really want to know what they think of your San Francisco lifestyle, and this latest perversion.”

Damien: “You can cut out the pretense. You’re either a cross-dresser, a transvestite, or a transsexual, and it’s your civil right to have the City pay for your sex change operation.”

Burt: “This is ridiculous. I’m not calling to arrange for a sex change operation.”

Damien: “Ah ha. I finally understand. It’s not you. You’re calling on behalf of your domestic partner.”

Burt (indignant): “Please leave my wife out of this.”

Damien (hissing): “Wife? Wife? This is San Francisco. What kind of a weirdo are you?”

Burt: “Weirdo? We are taxpayers, that’s who we are. I don’t want to finance changing Jack into Jill.” (Blumert obviously pleased with his snappy retort.)

Damien: “Jack and Jill? What are you, from Utah? It would only cost $37,000 to turn Jack into Jill, and $77,000 to go the other way.”

Burt (curious): “Why would it cost almost double from Jill to Jack than from Jack to Jill?” (delivered in a compelling rap beat).

Damien (exasperated): “If not Utah, you must be from Idaho. Let me explain. In the first instance, the surgeon removes . . .”

Burt (turning a shade of green): “STOP. I withdraw the question.”

Damien: “It sounds to me as though you may still be in the closet, and I can’t give you any more time as there are needy people on ‘hold.’ By the way, where ARE you from?”

Burt: “Not from Utah or Idaho. I live right here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Can I ask one more question?”

Damien (suspiciously): “Yeah.”

Burt: “My doctor advises me I may require gall bladder surgery. Do you suppose there’s enough money left in the program to help me out?”

Damien: “Homophobe!” (hangs up).

February 20, 2000