Mary Tyler Moore…

was born in Brooklyn on this date in 1936 (some sources say 1937).

From The Museum of Broadcast Communications, The Encyclopedia of Television:

On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Moore played Mary Richards, a 30-something single woman “making it on her own” in 1970s Minneapolis. MTM first pitched her character to CBS as a young divorcee, but CBS executives believed her role as Laura Petrie was so firmly etched in the public mind that viewers would think she had divorced Dick Van Dyke (and that the American public would not find a divorced woman likable), so Richards was rewritten as a woman who had moved to the big city after ending a long affair. Richards landed a job working in the news department of fictional WJM-TV, where Moore’s all-American spunk played off against the gruff boss Lou Grant (Ed Asner), world-weary writer Murray Slaughter (Gavin MacLeod) and pompous anchorman Ted Baxter (Ted Knight). In early seasons, her all-male work environment was counterbalanced by a primarily female home life, where again her character contrasted with her ditzy landlady Phyllis Lindstrom (Cloris Leachman) and her New York-born neighbor and best friend, Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper). Both the show and Moore were lauded for their realistic portrayal of “new” women in the 1970s whose lives centered on work rather than family, and for whom men were colleagues rather than just potential mates. While Moore’s Mary Richards’ apologetic manner may have undermined some of the messages of the women’s movement, she also put a friendly face on the potentially threatening tenets of feminism, naturalizing some of the decade’s changes in the way women were perceived both at home and at work.

Best movies 2003 — some critics’ lists

Washington Post movie critic Stephen Hunter’s list of the 10 best films of 2003:
1. Cold Mountain
2. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
4. Lost in Translation
5. 21 Grams
6. Bus 174
7. Shattered Glass
8. Dirty Pretty Things
9. Open Range
10. Bad Santa

Post critic Deeson Thomson’s top 10:
1. City of God
2. Capturing the Friedmans
3. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
4. Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara
5. Kill Bill, Vol. 1
6. Dirty Pretty Things
7. Lost in Translation
8. American Splendor
9. Thirteen
10. Mondays in the Sun

New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell:
1. Pirates of the Caribbean
2. 21 Grams
3. The Triplets of Belleville
4. Elephant
5. Capturing the Friedmans
6. Lost in Translation
7. Raising Victor Vargas
8. American Splendor
9. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
10. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Times critic A.O. Scott:
1. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
2. Mystic River
3. The Son
4. Spellbound
5. The Barbarian Invasions
6. The Man Without a Past
7. The Triplets of Belleville
8. Finding Nemo
9. Bus 174
10. A Mighty Wind

And Times critic Stephen Holden:
1. Angels in America
2. Mystic River
3. The Fog of War
4. Capturing the Friedmans
5. Lost in Translation
6. House of Sand and Fog
7. The Barbarian Invasions
8. American Splendor
9. Thirteen
10. City of God

Thomas Woodrow Wilson…

was born in Staunton, Virginia, on this date in 1856.

After graduating from Princeton in 1879, Wilson studied law at the University of Virginia for one year. He received a Ph.D. in political science from Johns Hopkins University in 1886. Wilson remains the only American president to have earned a doctoral degree.

Wilson served on the faculties of Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University before joining the Princeton faculty as professor of jurisprudence and political economy in 1890. He became President of Princeton in 1902. His commentary on contemporary political matters led to his election as Governor of New Jersey in 1910 and as President in 1912.

Wilson was the second of two sitting American Presidents to win the Nobel Prize for Peace. (Theodore Roosevelt was the other.)

Michael Wilbon on Brett Favre

It’s a relief when anything good can come from so much physical and emotional pain. In the specific case of Brett Favre it was downright uplifting, to see a man so honor his father, who at one point had also been his coach, by not just playing 24 hours after his death, but by playing his best, by playing so magically he elevated his teammates and brought an opponent to its knees.

It was emotionally wrenching to watch Favre play Monday night, probably because it hit a little too close to home for some of us, losing a father at 58, losing the man who coached you before anybody else coached you, losing the first man you played catch with, the man whose approval you sought on the ball field or the court since you first grasped the notion of competition and how cool it was to share it with your dad.

Favre didn’t just bring honor to his own father, Irvin; he brought honor to all the kids and fathers who tossed the football or baseball in the backyard, particularly those who had to part before it was time. We already knew how physically tough Favre is. He’s Cal Ripken tough. He doesn’t miss a start, no matter what’s hurting. Nothing is revered in pro football like physical toughness and Favre has that in such abundance it’s scary. But what happened Monday night defines the NFL regular season that’s about to end, much the way baseball’s regular season was defined in large part by Barry Bonds hitting those late-summer, game-winning home runs after the death of his father and hero, Bobby Bonds.

The producers of all these silly reality shows think they can manufacture drama and emotion by locking some stiff in a box with snakes or forcing two teams of knuckleheads to spend a couple of weeks on a deserted island. They work every angle to create an outcome, to stage melodrama, and often draw millions of viewers in the process. Yet, their scripted junk can never, ever produce something as real, as unrehearsed and as compelling as Monday night in Oakland, when a 34-year-old man playing on adrenaline and memories threw for 399 yards.

This is what’s meant by the phrase, “the human drama of athletic competition.” Only sport gives you such reality. Only sport is so audacious as to ask, “Okay, Brett that was nice. So now, do it again.”

Read the whole column.

Boxing Day

The Writer’s Almanac provides this background on December 26:

Today is Boxing Day and St. Stephen’s Day in England, Canada, and several other countries. The origins of this national holiday are not certain, but it might come from an old custom of wealthy estate owners giving small gifts or money, wrapped in boxes, to their servants and those who worked for them. Servants were needed on Christmas Day to help with their masters’ holiday events, so they were often given a rest the next day. St. Stephen is honored today as the first Christian martyr, having been stoned to death for blasphemy.

Civil War, Take 2

The Washington Post reports on three University of Virginia professors assessing the historical accuracy of the new film Cold Mountain.

…[I]f you want to understand the way Americans process their past, the analysis of such fictional “history” is a perfectly reasonable enterprise. For, as real historians know all too well, the Hollywood Version has more influence on what we believe than all their efforts combined….

But Gallagher, who is one of the most prominent students of Civil War, knows what he’s up against here. “I think ‘Gone With the Wind’ has shaped what people think about the Civil War probably more than everything we’ve written put together, or put together and squared,” he says. Nobody thinks this film will have that kind of impact, but it will surely have more than his own work or that of any other academic historian.

Before this night’s discussion is over, Gallagher and his U-Va. colleagues will field questions about the film’s take on slavery, on the role of Civil War women, and on the nature of home-front vigilantism in “our beloved South.” Ed Ayers will respond in part by pointing out that Minghella’s movie is structured more like a western than a true Civil War film.

t’s an interesting, lengthy assessment of history and cinema.

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas

The Miami Herald: Biggest pop tune of all time is back

Before White Christmas, the holidays meant traditional carols and religious hymns. After it, secular tunes became part of the fiber of popular culture.

Rosen estimates 125 million copies of the three-minute song have been sold since it was first recorded in 1942.

”Is there another song that Kenny G, Peggy Lee, Mantovani, Odetta, Loretta Lynn, the Flaming Lips, the Edwin Hawkins Singers and the Backstreet Boys have in common?” writes Rosen. “What other tune links Destiny’s Child, The Three Tenors and Alvin and the Chipmunks; Perry Como, Garth Brooks and Stiff Little Fingers; the Reverend James Cleveland, Doris Day and Kiss?”

And Crosby’s performance marks a turning point in the music industry.

”It marks the moment when performers supplant songwriters as the central creative forces at least in mainstream American pop music,” he told NPR in 2002. “After the success of White Christmas, records become the primary means of disseminating pop music, and they replace sheet music. And the emphasis shifts to charismatic performances recorded for all time and preserved on records….

Some facts about the “hit of hits”:

• Bing Crosby first performed White Christmas on Dec. 25, 1941, on NBC’s Kraft Music Hall radio show.

• Crosby first recorded the song for Decca on May 29, 1942. He rerecorded it March 19, 1947, as a result of damage to the 1942 master from frequent use. As in 1942, Crosby was joined in the studio by the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers.

• The song was featured in two films: Holiday Inn in 1942 (for which it collected the Academy Award for best song) and 12 years later in White Christmas.

• Crosby’s single sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and was recognized as the bestselling single in any music category until 1998 when Elton John’s tribute to Princess Diana, Candle in the Wind, overtook it.

• Irving Berlin so hated Elvis Presley’s cover of White Christmas that he launched a fierce (and fruitless) campaign to ban Presley’s recording.

All NewMexiKen wants for Christmas is a train set like this one

From The Washington Post

Expecting a little roadside diversion, I’d stumbled onto what Guinness has called the biggest model railroad on the planet — and we were only a quarter of the way through it! Yet the spectacle of the thing kept me, my son and his grandfather enraptured. For Northlandz is an awe-inspiring world unto itself, a monument to one man’s obsession with trains. Forget any notion of shopping mall Christmas displays, or anything your uncle labored over in his basement: Northlandz makes a claim for wonder-of-the-world status….

And what a world. Room after room features enormous train displays that run nearly floor to ceiling. And everywhere you look there are intricately wrought scenes of small-town life, farm life, city life and railroad life. There are more than 100 trains — many running all day long — eight miles of track, 4,000 buildings, 400 bridges (one of them 40 feet long), a half-million “lichen trees,” a 30-foot mountain. Northlandz also features a 94-room dollhouse, a doll museum, a 2,000-pipe organ and a three-quarter scale replica of a steam engine that takes passengers on pleasant sojourns through the woods.

Literary Sleuth Casts Doubt on the Authorship of an Iconic Christmas Poem

From an October 26, 2000, article in The New York Times:

Every Christmas for more than 150 years, children have hung their stockings by the chimney with care and learned to thank Clement Clarke Moore for the tradition.

Moore, a wealthy Manhattan biblical scholar, went down in history as the man who in 1823 created the American image of Santa Claus as author of the “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas.” Better known as “The Night Before Christmas,” it became one of the most widely read poems in the world.

But did Moore really write it? In a new study of the poem’s early history, Don Foster, an English professor at Vassar College and a scholar of authorial attribution, accuses Moore of committing literary fraud. He marshals a battery of circumstantial evidence to conclude that the poem’s spirit and style are starkly at odds with the body of Moore’s other writings.

In a new book, “Author Unknown,” (Henry Holt & Company) Mr. Foster argues that “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” first published anonymously in a Troy, N.Y., newspaper in 1823, closely matches the views and verse of Henry Livingston Jr., a gentleman-poet of Dutch descent.

The article goes on to explain Professor Foster’s findings.

The Writer’s Almanac for today also discusses the poem and its origins.

Today is Christmas Eve, the subject of the beloved holiday poem that begins:

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugarplums danced in their heads.

The poem, now known as “The Night Before Christmas,” was first published anonymously in a small newspaper in Upstate New York in 1823, and its original title was “Account of a Visit From St. Nicholas.” It was a huge success, and it has been published in book form so many times that it now exists in more editions than any other Christmas book ever printed.

Fourteen years after its first publication, an editor attributed the poem to a wealthy professor of classical literature named Clement Clarke Moore. At first, Moore dismissed the poem as a trifle, but he eventually included it in a volume of his collected Poems (1844). A legend grew that Moore had been inspired to write the poem for his children during a sleigh ride home on Christmas Eve in 1822, and that he had based his version of Saint Nicholas on his Dutch chauffeur.

Recently, new evidence has come out that a Revolutionary War major named Henry Livingston Jr. may have been the actual author of “The Night Before Christmas.” His family has letters describing his recitation of the poem before it was originally published, and literary scholars have found many similarities between his work and “The Night Before Christmas.” He was also three quarters Dutch, and many of the details in the poem, including names of the reindeer, have Dutch origins.

But whoever wrote the poem, “The Night Before Christmas” changed the way Americans celebrate the holiday of Christmas by reinventing the character of Santa Claus. The name Santa Claus comes from Sinter Klaas, the Dutch name for Saint Nicholas. He was a bishop in Southwest Turkey in the 4th century and had a reputation for extraordinary generosity. He became known as the patron saint of children, and many European children began to celebrate St. Nicholas Eve on December 5th. On that day in Hungary, children leave boots out for St. Nicholas to fill with presents. In Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, children are visited by a man in bishop’s robes who listens to prayers and gives presents. In Holland, St. Nicholas arrives by steamboat from Spain, and travels around the country on a white horse, tossing gifts down chimneys.

“The Night Before Christmas” combined the celebrations of St. Nicholas Day and Christmas, and made children the focus of Christmas celebrations. The poem was also the first representation of Santa Claus as a magical, elf-like being who travels through the air on a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer.

After the publication of the poem, the ritual of gift giving became a boon to merchants, and they became Santa’s biggest fans. Stores began to launch Christmas advertising campaigns on Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving Day parades first began as Christmas shopping promotions. In 1939, the retail business community persuaded Franklin Roosevelt to set the annual date of Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November, which ensured a four-week shopping season each year. Retailers now count on Christmas for more than 50 percent of their annual sales. In Holland, children are now visited by St. Nicholas on December 5th, and on Christmas Eve they are visited by Santa Claus, whom they call, “American Christmas Man.”

Decline of Western Civilization

From the Tuesday Morning Quarterback

Proof on the Decline of Western Civilization

At 11 p.m. ET during the Pats-at-Jets broadcast, ESPN offered viewers an online poll. Within minutes, 215,120 voted. This means at least 215,120 people were watching television and using their computers simultaneously — at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night.

More Proof on the Decline of Western Civilization

Television ads for the new Nissan Titan mega-pickup say at the bottom in tiny type, SIMULATED DEMONSTRATION. A “simulated” demonstration? “Demonstration: the act of showing or making evidence; conclusive evidence, proof.” (American Heritage Dictionary.) “Simulation: an imitation, a sham; the assumption of a false appearance.” (American Heritage Dictionary.) Something that is simulated cannot be a demonstration; simulations are, by nature, phony.

Mike Price back

From the Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times

Former Washington State coach Mike Price couldn’t have been sure about getting another football job after his firing seven months ago by Alabama because of a highly publicized visit to a Florida strip joint and allegations — a majority of which he has vehemently denied — about a night spent with strippers.

But not only does Price have a new coaching job, at Texas El Paso, he’s in a town apparently willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Of course, that’s why he’s in El Paso and not going to Rose Bowls or rebuilding Alabama under the spiritual aura of Bear Bryant. Nobody else wanted him,” wrote El Paso Times columnist Joe Muench. “But UTEP needed him, and he’s willing to work for UTEP pay … and the Miners get a big-timer.”

Still, “Roll, Miners, roll!” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Last-Minute Shoppers, Looking to Buy Time

Joel Achenbach

So at the last minute you make one of those grab-and-go, search-and-destroy, commando-raid trips to the mall, an emergency strike — you have no time to shop so you’re just going to buy. This is the time of year when a shopper needs a carefully defined mission, a clearly stated objective, an insertion and exit strategy, and possibly a helmet and elbow pads. …

Semiprofessional consumers have turned the mall and the big box store and even an all-American crescent-wrench-and-lampshade-selling place like Sears into a hostile wilderness of choice. No one is allowed to buy anything without considering 500 variations on a theme, without pondering the different sizes, models, colors, special features, add-ons, auxiliary components, accessories, warranties and payment plans. In short, buying anything today is like buying a computer.

The Death of Horatio Alger

Paul Krugman

The other day I found myself reading a leftist rag that made outrageous claims about America. It said that we are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work; in which sons are much more likely to inherit the socioeconomic status of their father than they were a generation ago.

The name of the leftist rag? Business Week, which published an article titled “Waking Up From the American Dream.” The article summarizes recent research showing that social mobility in the United States (which was never as high as legend had it) has declined considerably over the past few decades. If you put that research together with other research that shows a drastic increase in income and wealth inequality, you reach an uncomfortable conclusion: America looks more and more like a class-ridden society.

And guess what? Our political leaders are doing everything they can to fortify class inequality, while denouncing anyone who complains–or even points out what is happening–as a practitioner of “class warfare.”

Krugman continues:

Put it this way: Suppose that you actually liked a caste society, and you were seeking ways to use your control of the government to further entrench the advantages of the haves against the have-nots. What would you do?

One thing you would definitely do is get rid of the estate tax, so that large fortunes can be passed on to the next generation. More broadly, you would seek to reduce tax rates both on corporate profits and on unearned income such as dividends and capital gains, so that those with large accumulated or inherited wealth could more easily accumulate even more. You’d also try to create tax shelters mainly useful for the rich. And more broadly still, you’d try to reduce tax rates on people with high incomes, shifting the burden to the payroll tax and other revenue sources that bear most heavily on people with lower incomes.

Meanwhile, on the spending side, you’d cut back on healthcare for the poor, on the quality of public education and on state aid for higher education. This would make it more difficult for people with low incomes to climb out of their difficulties and acquire the education essential to upward mobility in the modern economy.

And just to close off as many routes to upward mobility as possible, you’d do everything possible to break the power of unions, and you’d privatize government functions so that well-paid civil servants could be replaced with poorly paid private employees.

It all sounds sort of familiar, doesn’t it?

Excerpted from an article in the January 5, 2004, issue of The Nation.

Recent reads

Today Easterblogg describes a number of books he’s been reading. Among them:

Humboldt’s Cosmos by Gerard Helferich. On a five-year expedition that ended in 1804, adventurer Alexander von Humboldt became the first European to explore the Amazon basin, in the process cataloging thousands of plant species, gaining Europe’s first knowledge of the ancient Incas and climbing Chimborazo, a 20,600-foot volcano, needless to say, without oxygen tanks. Unlike Lewis and Clark, who traveled with a large government-funded party of assistants and cooks, von Humboldt and one companion trekked alone, hunting their own food, making indigenous friends, and managing to avoid severe injuries or disease. Upon his return, von Humboldt became one of the most celebrated people in Europe. His story is a great read….

The X in Sex by David Bainbridge. The author, a British researcher, devotes an entire book to the X chromosome, which in pairs causes womanhood. The X chromosome is much bigger than the Y chromosome that determines maleness, appears to have evolved differently and, Bainbridge asserts, contains so much more coding than male-determining chromosomes that “males and females are more different than they really need to be to play their roles in reproduction.” What does it mean that the X is so much bigger and richer than the Y? Maybe this is the leading edge of a long-term evolutionary trend. Men, you might want to look away from the page for the moment: Science magazine recently cited the possibility that “the Y is slowly fading as a chromosome,” eventually to be out-evolved in a science-fiction future in which all humans are primarily female. Men, read this book with a six-pack and a swimsuit calendar close at hand.

The Beast in the Garden by David Baron. In 1991, a mountain lion attacked and ate a 14-year-old boy jogging in the foothills of Boulder, Colorado. Five more people have since been killed in the United States and Canada by mountain lions, and dozens mauled. Baron explores what it means that lions are repopulating developed areas–with pollution declining, wilderness acreage expanding, and lion hunting forbidden, there will be ever-more bobcats, cougars, and panthers in American and Canadian exurban areas. Meanwhile, preservationists continue insisting that wolves and grizzlies be reintroduced into North America; the deep-green love of the grizzly seems to stem from the fact that it kills human beings, whom deep-greens detest. Lawsuits demanding the grizzly be reintroduced into the wild are at the moment a big political issue in the Rocky Mountain states and provinces.

Add this to NewMexiKen’s Christmas list

eBay: Historic Town of Tortilla Flat, Arizona

This is your chance to own your own historic town. Tortilla Flat is one of the last remnants of the old west. The school, general store, restaurant, old time ice cream & candy store and the post office have been restored or rebuilt. Tortilla Flat is located 18 miles north-east of Apache Junction, Arizona on highway 88 and is the only settlement between the “Junction” and Roosevelt Dam, a distance of 47 miles. The settlement is situated in the valley along Tortilla Creek surrounded by the mysterious Superstition Mountains, the legendary location of the Lost Dutchman’s Mine. To drive to Tortilla Flat is to pass through some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. Tortilla Flat’s fine restaurant, the Superstition Saloon, is famous for its killer chili, huge half-pound cowboy burgers and home-cooked Mexican food. It’s known throughout the world and regularly visited not only by local ranchers, cowboys and prospectors, but also by people from surrounding towns and travelers from all over the United States as well as the world. It is a destination place for Arizona. You are purchasing all the buildings/land is leased from the Tonto National Forest service call 1-888-299-6792 ask for Sherri Pack exclusive agent to request additional information.

Price: $5,550,000.

The Gift of the Magi

by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter), 1906.

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And
sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two
at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and
the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent
imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied.
Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven
cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the
shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which
instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of
sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

Continue reading The Gift of the Magi

A Christmas Carol…

was first published on this date in 1843.

Scrooge. a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

Hanukkah…

begins this year (5764/2003) this evening. According to
The Jewish Outreach Institute:

The story of Hanukkah is the struggle for religious freedom. Over two thousand years ago, the foreign rulers of the Israelites decreed that the Jews bow down to the image of their leader, Antiochus, whose statue was erected in the Temple.

But the Jewish people were forbidden by the law of God to bow to statues or idols. Inspired by Mattathias and led by his son, Judah, a small group of Jews called Maccabees (meaning “hammer”) rebelled. The Maccabees risked their lives to live according to Jewish law and to prevent this desecration of their sacred Temple. Although the Maccabees won, the Temple in Jerusalem, the Jews’ holy place, was destroyed. The Jews had to clean and repair the Temple, and when they were finished they rededicated it to God by rekindling the menorah, the candelabrum symbolizing the eternal covenant between God and the Jewish people and the continuity of tradition through the generations. But there was only enough olive oil to fuel the menorah for one night, and it would have taken eight days to make more oil. The legend of the miracle at Hanukkah says that the one day supply of oil burned for eight days and nights until more oil could be made.

There are eight days of Hanukkah corresponding to the legend of the miracle of the oil in the Temple. Foods cooked in oil are traditional, particularly potato pancakes, called latkes. Today, candles are used instead of oil. On each successive night, the number of candles lit increases by one. Prayers accompany the lighting of the candles.

Hanukkah is celebrated in the home beginning on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev. Even though it is not mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures, Hanukkah is widely celebrated as a major holy day of the Jewish liturgical calendar. Given its proximity to Christmas, Hanukkah has taken on importance in the United States and many other countries where Christmas has been commercialized.

It is traditional to give small gifts to children on each night of Hanukkah. The party atmosphere is enhanced with songs, games and toys such as a dreidel — a spinning top. Yet the religious celebration — the lighting of the candles with accompanying prayers — must come before the party.