Homicide Rewatch: Deception

 

Written by Debbie Sarjeant ; story by Tom Fontana, Julie Martin and James Yoshimura

Directed by Peter Medak

 

'Deception' is a landmark episode of Homicide for many reasons.

First it is one of the most highly regard by fans of the show (see Notes From The Board) in large part because of how the arch nemesis of Homicide Luther Mahoney meets his end. Second is that this is arguably the most important episode of the entire series to this point: almost every storyline and character action for the next season – and arguably until the series ends – will end up being affected by Mahoney's shooting. And third is something more subtle: it disguises all of this in such a brilliant fashion that the viewer is blindsided in a way it hasn't been since 'Work Related'.

In later writings David Simon, now one of the staff writers, would argue how the end of the Mahoney saga bothered him: Mahoney had been built up as such a near superhuman figure but NBC was essentially making the argument that he had to be killed off for sweeps. This would be one of the impetus that would, after Homicide ended, be an impetus for Simon creating The Wire where as I've already indicated there are many parallels between Luther and so many of the drug dealers we saw during that shows incredible run.

While I understand Simon's logic in hindsight I've never fully agreed with it, in large part because of fans of Homicide know Mahoney's death doesn't mean that he stops being a problem for Kellerman and Lewis. On the contrary Luther dead will cause even more problems for the two of them when he was alive. That will lead, in a way that is clearly a preamble for what Simon will do in The Wire, a chain of events that will reverberate through the entire squad and lead to even more violence and death as a result of it. 

I'll deal with that when we get into Season Six but part of the reason I think the comparison to Work Related is valid is that the show does all of this is an episode that until the last five minutes, is basically another episode of Homicide. And when the episode ends I, like the average viewer in 1997, thought this was clearly the end of the Mahoney saga. That was how cop shows worked back then: bad guy takes a bullet in the chest, cops are cleared of the charges, we move on to the next case. But that's not what Fontana and Simon have planned. It takes longer for the shock to come then it does in Work Related' and it unfolds so gradually that it's not until much later you realize the trick the writers did. I have no idea if it was planned this way or circumstances forced the writers hands (we'll see in Season 6 why exactly) but either way it’s a magnificent accomplishment.

And it starts so simply with a random man from Nigeria dead with a smile on his face in a motel room. Munch doesn't care about it because it's not a murder. Cox finds 77 balloons of heroin in the mans stomach and passes it on to Stivers. They in turn pass it over to Lewis and Kellerman who have little interest until Stivers says its destined for Luther Mahoney. When she asks if they're interested Lewis says: "Mention the name Luther Mahoney we'll follow you to the end of the earth." Neither of them know (nor does the viewer) how badly it will end for all involved.

Once again they get tied to the feds as Gail Ingram is back certain she knows that if they get Brookdale they can get him to roll on Luther. Meldrick and Mike practically laugh at her. They know firsthand just how good Mahoney is at tearing down cases against him and they have no illusions that they'll get anywhere against one of his lieutenants. Ingram tells them they have a wiretap on Mahoney's phone for three months but they've gotten nothing in that time. Its Al Giardello who makes it clear what the stakes are: there are thirteen open murders tied to him to this point (some of them we've seen over the last year, some we doubtless haven't) and Al wants to end the story here.

Its here we see Al Giardello at his most reckless: he suggest the idea of substituting Mahoney's package with baking soda and see what happens. Ingram is understandably appalled at what might go wrong if every addict and slinger who buys double star bags ends up with dope that isn't dope. Here Al is as close to any of the bosses we will later see: he doesn't care about how much violence ends up following after so many dope fiends and dealer get violent, all he cares about is the man whose responsible for so much red under his name. We're reminded yet again that Homicide doesn't have any real interest in the drug war; it's only when people get killed as a result that it bothers them. If Mahoney wasn't so flagrantly killing people as well as flaunting it in front of the cops, he probably could have become the next Stringer Bell.

Indeed this episode does involve a wiretap though it reveals that Mahoney and his lieutenants have been talking in code: whenever packages arrives they talk in terms of the stock market. In typical fashion its taken the Feds three months to realize that Mahoney and his colleagues aren't interested in pricing the Dow. Still there's knowing and what you can take to court.

There's a sequence that plays very much like one we'll see on The Wire in a few years' time: we watch as the package is delivered, cut and eventually distributed and sold. Its intercut with Meldrick and Stivers waiting on the wire for something to happen. We here music fitting the scenario, we watch children delivering dope, finally we see the violence begin and we cut to Lewis and Stivers asleep with their heads on their shoulders when Mike and the FBI show up. (Their little flirtation is about to come to an end for very obvious reasons.) There's awkwardness afterwards, particularly for Terri. Perhaps she has a crush on Meldrick, perhaps she's afraid of what this might do to her reputation. The question is rendered moot because Luther's phone rings and he learns the stock is down.

For the first time since we've met him we get a sense of the Luther that his slingers and associates know rather then the face he puts on in front of the public. Immediately he turns on Brookdale and believes he is responsible for this and threatens to kill both him and his mother. Then he immediately calls his suppliers and makes it very clear that he holds them responsible. Luther is angry as hell and while the cops rejoice in this having forgotten exactly what happens when Luther gets pissed.

The meeting In Druitt Hill Park is fascinating, mainly because we see Luther in a position we haven't seen him yet: he doesn't know if he's been cheating and we actually see he's overextended himself. We're so used to seeing him being Teflon around the cops, this is the first time he's in his element and we see him as he must be: paranoid, arrogant, certain he alone can do everything. He is willing to kill a man who has worked with him for years the second he sense disloyalty (innocently killing a bystander) and then drives off.

Clark Johnson is incredible in a way we've never seen him before. Meldrick has always been the picture of equilibrium in the face of so much death. But when Luther shoots Brookdale and one other he kicks the window of a car open and jumps in it without a word but utter determination. Kellerman and Stivers are clearly terrified and drive after him.

Lewis gets angrier as they go, driving through the gate when they ask for identification. And the scene where he corners Mahoney in his apartment is extraordinary. Luther is caught cold, he knows he's done. All Meldrick has to do is slap the cuffs on him. The monologue he delivers may be Johnson's highpoint:

I'm a good cop. I'm an honest cop. That means I got standards. Never beat on a man half your size, they won't think it’s a fair fight. Never put an ass-whupping on a man unless you damn sure he got it coming to him. See I'm going to be beating on you for a long time. Drugs out there, we ain't gonna  win that. There's a hundred open air dope markets in this city and 50,000 drug fiends. And we are taking on human desire with lawyers and jailhouses and lockups. And you and I both know that human desire is kicking us in the ass. So, what I need to know, Luther, is why couldn't you just be happy with the packages? If they were just slinging drugs, we wouldn't be here. Would we? But the bodies. What about the bodies, Luther?"

As he beats him we see all the names of those killed in red on the board.

In a real sense Simon didn't have to write The Wire. The reason for the entire first season (at least) has been delivered in a single speech.  All the details matter, as we will find out, but its rarely been put up as eloquently and with such rage as Johnson does here. And its because it gets away from him that everything goes to hell.

The scene that follows would be repeated over and over at the start of nearly every episode on the 'Previously on Homicide' for the next year. It is one of the most powerful ones. A battered Luther manages to get his hands on Meldrick's gun. He holds it on him. Kellerman and Stivers run in and tell him to drop it. Meldrick seems to be almost presenting himself to Luther "What you gonna do detective?" he says with one last trace of his old arrogance. "Read me my rights?" There's a mix of hysteria in his chuckle

Kellerman doesn't blink. "You have the right to remain silent." BANG. Luther drops with that hysterical grin still on his face. Kellerman bends over his dying body and tells him "Before you die on me, I want you to know. We switched your dope." He turns to Meldrick. "Anybody got a problem?" Meldrick pauses before saying no. Stivers shakes her head and she's clearly shaken to her core.

 

What makes this episode work so well is that is that so much of it is old school Homicide. Munch gets a call from an inmate at Jessup named 'Punchy' Deleon who Bolander put away for murder a decade ago. This is a case of Bolander's that's come back to haunt Munch.

We get spend much of the episode in the wonderful company of Lewis Black as Punchy. Black is best known to viewers like myself for his over the top comedic rants on The Daily Show in the segment 'Back in Black' so viewers would be surprised how subdued and straight-laced Black plays Punchy. It's another in the line of comic actors giving superb dramatic performances, dating back to Robin Williams in Season 2, but its more surprising because Black has no real presence as anything but comic. It follows through a wonderful case that is perfectly fitting for Munch because it turns out to be remarkably Zen all while it is frustrating for John. Considering he almost always takes an attitude of snark there's something fitting about the comic also being subdued and showing his instincts, even though they lead him down the wrong path.

Black is so convincing in his delivery, sincere as to how much he wants freedom and to start with a clean slate. He talks with openness about how much he admired Pugliese, how he was his mentor and how he helped him buy an engagement ring the first day they met. He's so convincing about wanting to give his friend a proper burial – which is true. He just leaves out certain details.

Munch believes DeLeon, who is about to be released after 10 years in prison is going to hand him a closed case and asks for nothing in return. DeLeon tells him that he wants a clean slate and freedom and tells him that in October of 1987 a man named Jimmy 'The Shirt' Pugliese was shot twice and buried under the parking lot at Pimlico in Section C.  Of course he then tells him that if he finds the body, the rest will follow.

So Munch goes to Giardello and Howard who are understandably annoyed at how much it will cost to dig up an entire parking lot. "Not an entire parking lot, Section C," Munch says. To tap it off there's no missing persons report on Pugliese and while he has a criminal record it ended in October of 1987 right around the time DeLeon says he got killed. Cut to the parking lot being dug up and no sign of a body.

Munch then tells us about his conversation with Bolander (off screen.) Bolander says he was working another angle on the murder when Punchy just confessed. "He's a stand up guy and we can trust him." Pause. "As much as we can trust any of these lying son-of-a-bitches." Its striking how little John has learned since the Big Man left the department back in '95.

Eventually Munch manages to track down by calling the feds a lead on Jimmy Pugliese, an old girlfriend. And in fact there he finds a very much alive Pugliese. He wants to just throw the case to the wind and let it go – but he doesn't know what happened after he left. We see him in a spin trying to figure out, there's no body, the man's alive. When Howard tells him to drop it he's lost. Then his girlfriend shows up and Munch knows exactly where to go: 'Pimlico Parking Lot, Section C'

Even when Munch learns the truth there's something about Punchy's explanation as to why he put John through all this that makes your heartache. Jimmy caught Sam Noonan stealing and stabbed him in the throat. Punchy would go to Bolander and take the wrap and Jimmy would take care of his wife and kid. Pugliese immediately dropped out of the picture and Frances waited as long as she could, nearly three years but she left him and married one of the maitre'd's. Punchy did what he did out of love and loss. John knows he has to take him in. "10 years is a long time. A decade of my life for a murder I didn't commit. Now I've committed a murder but I've served my time. That's gotta count for something?1" You can tell Munch really wishes he didn't have to do this.

And in the midst of this Bayliss and Pembleton are working their way back to each other. They finish the paperwork on the Rader case, Frank mentions they worked well together on it and finally asks Bayliss if they want to partner again. Tim says yes. Unfortunately its undercut because when Frank gets a call Tim is nowhere to be found.

What Frank doesn't know and what shocks us is that Tim is back at his Uncle George's, having not only not taken it out on him but is taking care of him. He seems reluctant to do so but we see he's bought groceries and is willing to cook for him. Tim clearly doesn't like this but he feels a sense of obligation we don't understand yet.

In the final sequence before the musical montage. Kellerman tells Giardello that Luther held a gun on Lewis so he lit him up. Meldrick says it’s a clean shooting and that he has no desire to talk it through. Stivers says nothing. And Mike, for the first time since the season began, takes out a cigarette and lights it. It's the only sign that any of this bothers him.

The episode ends with Mike typing up his report with a cigarette in his mouth. He looks at Meldrick who can barely do that or look him in the eye. And yet despite that the viewer would initially come away with the impression that this is the end of the Mahoney saga, that Lewis and Kellerman who've been through the wars, will come out the other side and we'll move on to other things.

But this is Homicide. The story never ends with a well-placed bullet. That's where it starts.

 

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

In a 1999 survey by Court TV fans ranked this the eleventh best episode in Homicide's run.

Once again Meldrick Lewis meets another appropriately named man: Agent Ray Borders  from Customs. A little humor before the darkness.

When Cox reports "Then the condom broke" Scheiner walks by. "I hate when that happens." Leave it to Ralph Tabakin to make curmudgeon adorable.

"Detective Munch" Obviously there are no shortage of great Munch lines. I think it’s a tie between these two. After they unsuccessfully dig up the parking lot, a construction worker as Munch if there's anywhere else they want to dig. "Yeah. Here. Six feet down. Cover me over. Unmarked grave."   The second comes when Munch told that everyone laughs in his face does verbatim Joe Pesci's sequence from Goodfellas. "You think I'm some kind of clown? That I amuse you?" Except with John we know he's a clown.

Of all things Munch's case oddly parallels a story from Columbo. Both stories involve a killer duping a detective into digging up a parking lot in search of a body only to then bury it when the lot is repaved.

As the book points out the DEA agent is wrong when he says the capital of Nigeria is Lagos. In 1997 the capital was Abuja.

Hey, Isn't That…In addition to his standup career and work on The Daily Show Black has a rather interesting footprint in film and TV. He played Bernie on The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd and has done voiceover work in The Brak Show, Duck Dodgers, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law and Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated. His most famous voice work is as Anger in the Inside Out Franchise. He also played Gregory Perkins in the ABC adaptation of Madoff and worked with Barry Levenson in the Robin Williams Comedy Man of the Year.

On the Soundtrack: The episode brilliantly uses 'Evidence' by the band Faith No More in two separate montages.

 

 

Tristan Williams. What is The Next Great Jeopardy Player of Season 42?

 

 

In the final two months of Season 40 the three top winners of that year arrived in almost immediate succession. Adriana Harmeyer would win 15 games and $349,600 before being defeated by Drew Basile. Drew, in turn, would win seven games and $129,601 before losing on the last day of June in 2024. And less than three days after he lost Isaac Hirsch would come to the Alex Trebek stage and win 9 games and $215,300 before losing to Jay Fisher.

A similar pattern is forming in Season 42. Just before the eligibility requirements of the 2025 Tournament of Champions ended Harrison Whitaker would win 14 games and just under $374,000 before meeting the defeating on December 1^st. For an incredible 31 days Jamie Ding would dominate the Alex Trebek stage eventually finishing 5^th in both games won and money won in one's original appearance. And less than two weeks after Jamie's run came to an end the third best player of Season 42 has arrived, clearly not at the level of Harrison or Jamie but by any other standard another superb Jeopardy champion who might very well get to their level.

Tristan Williams is a data scientist from Lincoln, Nebraska who for reasons that only the internet can explain has been compared to Woody from the Toy Story franchise in his physical appearance. On Wednesday May 6^th he made his first appearance and he has yet to leave, notching 8 wins and $158,501 to this point a performance that would be remarkable in many seasons but compared to the super-champions we've seen in Season 42 pale in comparison.

He managed runaway victories in five of his first six wins but they were not the kind of runaways that Jamie managed to pull off early on. He's nowhere near as good with Daily Doubles as Jamie was or indeed many super-champions. He can find them but his track record with them has been decidedly hit or miss. He found all three in his first appearance but got two of them wrong. The pattern was set in Double Jeopardy when he found them back to back: he gained $4000 on the first one and lost $5000 on the next.

In his second appearance he was lucky to win as he was tied for second at the end of Double Jeopardy with $9200 with Robert Yan. He and Robert both responded correctly to Final Jeopardy but Tristan bet everything and Robert didn't. Helen Yoas, who was in the lead, responded incorrectly and Tristan's streak kept going.

He's had some impressive victories: getting 30 correct responses in his first win and 29 in his second  but he undoes his good work with incorrect response on Final Jeopardy. In fact he has responded incorrectly on four of the first six games he was in. Fortunately in all four of them he had a runaway so it hasn't cost him yet and he's managed to get three out of his last four correct, including two much closer games.

For much of Friday's game it looked like this was the end of the road. Chayce Griffith was close to him in the Jeopardy round (because Tristan missed yet another Daily Double) and moved into the lead early when he got the first Daily Double correct in Double Jeopardy. Then a few clues later Tristan changed his luck when he found the other Daily Double in LET'S TALK ABOUT 'X'. With $6000, which was half Chayce's total he bet $4500:

Examples include silent scream and working vacation. He figured it out: "What is an oxymoron?" With that he was close to the lead and on the next clue managed to move ahead for good. Chayce made him work for it and Tristan finished with $18,900 to Chayce's $12.800.

The Final Jeopardy category was PLAY CHARACTERS. This title character of an 1890 play is often called 'the female Hamlet'. Tristan was the only one to figure out it was Hedda Gabbler and finished with $25,601, to date his biggest pay day.

To compare Tristan to super-champions of this season is horribly unfair and it isn't even worth it to compare him to previous seasons. He's just has a mix of getting Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardys wrong and he's been lucky he's still with it as this point and he absolutely knows it. Yet that makes him more relatable in many ways because he's not nearly as dominant during his streak and he's just as humble about how he can play poorly. This was perhaps most obvious on Wednesday's game where he had his biggest lead going into Final Jeopardy yet with $20,200 to Bridget Palmer's $4400. Then came Final Jeopardy.

The category was FILMS OF THE 1990S. "In French this 1993 films is called 'Un jour sans fin'.  Bridget translated it: 'a day without end', and figured it out: "What is Groundhog Day?" If you only knew day that might have given you enough yet Tristan wrote down: "What is Braveheart?" The greater irony: he was a big fan of Groundhog Day and it cost him $10,000 because he couldn't think of it. (Hey, I didn't know it either and I've seen that movie as much as anyone. Jeopardy's in it, for crying out loud!)

If Tristan wins three more games he will officially join the ranks of the Jeopardy elite. That may very well happen; this is coming from someone who underestimated Jamie Ding's run the longer it went. At this points its difficult to Tristan getting that far: he just isn't dominant the way Jamie or Harrison were in any of their wins and he's averaging a little more than $19,000 a victory – good for many Jeopardy players, severely lacking for a super-champion. For that matter in eight games he isn't in the same ballpark in relation to where Paolo Pasco managed to win in seven games at the start of this season.

It's easy to say he's done better than Laura Faddah did when she won eight games last year: that's a record Laura would rather not have. But just look at him in a relation to the three eight game winners of Season 36 as well as well as two of the seven game winners from Season 35:

 

Kyle Jones: $145,403 (7 WINS)

Josh Hill: $163,721 (7 WINS)

Karen Farrell: $159,603 (8 WINS)

Mackenize Jones: $204,608 (8 WINS)

Jennifer Quail: $228,800 (8 WINS)

Tristan Williams: $158,501 (8 wins)

These are the closest parallels to Tristan in recent Jeopardy history. It's not a bad group to be a part of frankly: for much of the first decade after Jennings had his incredible run 7 or eight wins was an impressive total and it remained so right up until James Holzhauer rewrote the book. Unless Tristan manages to find his groove quickly both in Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardy – which again, very well might happen -  it's going to take him a while just to reach the level of earnings Isaac Hirsch managed in nine wins.

Still his otherwise superb play reminds us that the era of Peak Jeopardy continues. And as we may be waiting quite a while for the 2026 Jeopardy Masters or for that matter the next Tournament of Champions (I'll get to that later) it's good to know that we have players like Tristan reminding us why people like me watch the show in the first place.

I Got My First Piece of Hate Mail As A Critic Today!

 

 

A few years ago when I wrote a piece in my blog where I was vague critical of a certain person on Jeopardy I received a personal explicit and fairly impressive email from that subject.  My reaction might puzzle some but would be familiar to any critic: it meant I'd officially arrived. I printed the email out and saved it as a badge of honor.

If you're a critic by definition you have to have a thicker skin then most which may be part of the reason I've been able to increasingly laugh off so many hate-filled comments I've received whenever I say something vaguely centrist over the last few years. So I was first shocked, then puzzled, then overjoyed when someone who was the subject of one of my TV reviews chose to post a comment on them.

The part that puzzled me was who it was. I've never been shy about certain writers and shows that I feel a withering, visceral contempt for and if Shonda Rhimes or Sam Levenson – two of my more frequent targets – had chosen to comment I would have expected it more.  What makes this all the odder is that the comment came from someone who is associated with a show that I've been writing about for about a year and a half personally and nearly three years in general terms well before that in some of the most overwhelmingly positive tones possible.

Those of you who've read my blog are aware of how big a fan I am of NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street,  a drama I would be more than willing to say was the best of the entire 1990s and certainly one of the greatest TV shows of all time. This is a consensus held both by contemporary critics and those decades later. In the fall of 2024, right around the time Peacock and Amazon began streaming it, I began to do a rewatch of it for my blog going episode by episode. These columns while not as overwhelming popular as some of the others I write about still do get a significant readership which I find impressive considering that this is a show that aired 30 years ago.

Now because I'm not the kind of writer who will kiss and tell  when people disagree with me and even write offensive things I'm going to be speak generally from this point forward. I'm not going to name the episode in question nor anything else associated with it.  What I will tell you is a few months back I reviewed an episode in less then favorable terms. It wasn't a pan and I didn't excoriate it the way I have been known to do Shondaland shows, series like Succession or Ray Donovan or the way I did Adolescence last year. All I said was that this particular episode wasn't at the usual high quality of most episodes, particularly given the caliber that I was used to from this writer. This opinion, I need to be clear, doesn't originate with me: other critics who've written about the show such as Tod Hoffman have spoken negatively about it and in far stronger terms. I posted it and I moved on.

Now earlier this morning I got a post in regard to this episode. Now if I am to believe what I see – and the profile of the individual gives me no information to confirm or contradict this – the poster in question wrote the episode I'm talking about. For the purposes of this article I'm simply going to call him X.  Roughly three hours ago in response to it he wrote:

Go f--- yourself. You have no idea what you're writing about.

Not Shakespeare but his point was made.

My first thought was: "My God! One of the writers of this show reads my blog!" Second reaction: "Thirty years later and he's still sensitive about criticism? From a guy whose only got up 1000 readers a  month ago?"

The third reaction, I'll be honest, was: "Did he not read all of the other articles I've written about Homicide for the last two years – many of which praise his ability as a writer to great extent? Or is he the type whose so sensitive to criticism that he ignores the raves and only acknowledges the pans?"

To be clear I said that this episode was weak only in comparison to some of X's other writing on the show both prior to this episode and well after it. I consider X's work on this show some of the greatest writing in TV history no question. And I thought I made it clear that the episode in question wasn't even that bad.  There were quite a few parts of it I found incredibly impressive and registered very powerfully with me.

And more to the point its not like every single piece of work a writer does on TV is gold a hundred percent of the time. This is true for many of the writers on Homicide both on the show and in later work. (I won't name them because I don't want to reveal who my secret admirer was even by process of elimination. To be clear his name's on the site himself but I'm not going to highlight it.) And to a larger point its true of every writer: David E. Kelley had his share of stinkers on The Practice and Ally McBeal; Howard Gordon had some lousy episodes on The X-Files before he wrote for 24 and Homeland and he had some bad ones there too and Aaron Sorkin is a genius but shows like The Newsroom were almost unwatchable. I don't expect perfection from every writer on every show; that's too high a standard even if they can, occasionally, meet it.

Again this episode wasn't a terrible one. Even a mediocre episode of Homicide was still better than 75 percent of what was on television in the 1990s. And even if it was a stinker – which it was not –  writers are allowed to have episodes of shows that don't work. I assume that it is through failure you find a way to improve on your next episode and this writer absolutely did in the episodes that he did that followed. Hell I'm going to be raving about X's work on Homicide in a few weeks' time, so its not like he didn't improve.

To be clear I'm not offended in any way, shape or form by X's comment. If anything I'm impressed that he found me writing on my column and cared enough to send a meaningless, irrelevant in the grand schemes of this website a post of such vitriol. It may just have been eleven words long, but in a weird way it means more to me than any long rave from anyone else could. (Although if you feel that way about my writing and some of you have made it clear you do, by all means send long meaningful raves. I welcome them.) Someone connected with something I love read my reviews and cared enough to tell me that I was a clueless idiot who had no idea what he was writing about. That's practically a love letter for a critic.

To be clear my opinion of X's work or Homicide has not altered one bit because of this note. It is still a great show and X is still a great writer. I will continue to write reviews of this show with the hope of earning praise from X or perhaps even more visceral condemnation of how clueless I am. Hey people called me horrible names when I suggested that Natalie Portman and George Clooney didn't know anything about politics. Compared to that X's comment was barely a glancing blow.

But this is a bigger badge of honor then almost anything else I've received as praise in nearly a decade of writing. To be clear it doesn't mean quite as much as the fact that at this point over a thousand people are reading my blog regularly but it matters in a different way. Its good when people appreciate what you write and if you're a critic like me, you're going to get comments like this. It's taken a while, but I've arrived. Let the hate mail begin in earnest. (That's a joke, but one that critics will understand.)

Coalition For the Sane: I'll Believe in Your Theory Only if It Works in Practice

 

I am a very scholarly person but I'm also a very pragmatic one.  I believe in what I see in the real world rather then what is discussed in so many academic circles. In order for me to accept a way of thinking you can't just make the argument that our current system is broken beyond repair and we need to throw it out completely and start all over.

First of all most of these 'thinkers' never have any direct proof that a system like capitalism is broken beyond repair. Their argument, for the loud bellowing and some statistics is basically: "the rich people have too much money and there are too many more people, therefore we have to get rid of capitalism."

To be clear every system of economic theory all has rich people and poor people.  That was just as true with every communist country and every socialist one. The argument that countries like China or Cuba or Venezuela is that they're not 'real communist or socialist countries'.  This is denying the evidence of your eyes as well as demonstrating that you prefer the academic bubble of theory to the real world. Anyone who thinks that way is an idiot, no matter how many degrees they have in front of them.

And for the record just because you are a very intelligent person doesn't mean you aren't capable of believing in dumb things. During the first part of the 20^th century a lot of smart people believed in the very racist theory of eugenics including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Margaret Sanger and John Muir. Does this negate all of the good they did in the real world? Not to most people. To many current smart people, it puts all of their works in a shadow of doubt to the point that they believe we should disregard them from our studies all together or make sure that the historical portrait features 'a fuller picture'.

That is the believe of the leftist historians ranging from Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky all the way down to Nikole Hannah-Jones. They operate in a theory known as 'deconstruction'. Their academic writings are ostensibly to pain a fuller picture of our society so that we 'question authority'. All of this is popular among academics and almost no one else, particularly conservatives and Republican politicians.

They use these arguments to make the political point that the  left hates America and is trying to make school children not have respect for their country. These academics argue that because the Republicans are trying to suppress their work, they must therefore being telling the correct version of events and therefore it must be true.

But unlike in the academic world or the political one, two things can be true at once. Having read so many of these books, the only point of them seems to be to argue that America or the Western world is empirically flawed to the point that no citizen should have any reason to respect it.  The fact Republicans are using it to score points with their base doesn't negate that truth.

 

And I'm fully aware the right has more then its share of ridiculous academic theories that do not work in practice. The one that we've seen the biggest effect of is 'trickle down economics'. Stripped away of the scholarly or political thinking it doesn't work from the standpoint of human nature.

If I were to have a million dollars, this theory states, I should be allowed by tax laws to keep as much of it as possible because I would spent it and the money would eventually reach other people through what I buy. But I know in practice that if were to happen I would keep as much of it for myself in a bank and buy very few luxuries with it, if at all.

Its own value was political: it was a way to convince the wealthy to support Republican politicians in order for them to keep more of their money. Viewed that way, it had real world value. As economic  policy it had none.

There's truth to that with so many of the other scholarly theories of the right, such as originalist doctrine for judiciary and the grand unitary theory of the executive. At their core, they're just fig leaves for the conservatives to hold on power. They are junk theories, completely. But the thing is I'm pretty sure most of the scholars know that and are using them for the practical application of Republicans and conservatives to hold power.  So in a very, very twisted way, you can say these theories have real world applications. I have yet to see that in so many of the theories on the left side of the aisle.

I haven't really discussed critical race theory in my articles for a simple reason: I have no idea what its about. I think at its core its just a wedge issue for conservative politicians to try and rile up its base which they basically do at every election. So I decided to try and separate it from the political arguments – very difficult – and just look at a dictionary definition of it on Wikipedia. I'm aware that being a cis, white male I will likely be considered racist if I don't give universal approval of it but at this point it basically comes with the territory.

The thing is just looking at a basic description it really does seem as much junk theory as so much of the academic writing that I've seen from originalist opinions by Scalia and Roberts over the years. More to the point its one of those theories that exists in such big terms that not only is there no way to prove it, there's no way to disprove it. If someone argues as critical race theory does, that racism is systemic in laws and rules rather than just individual prejudice, the burden is on those to prove that it's not. Everything about critical race theory seems to argue everything about it is so subtle that the scholar can prove any example to fit its version of events.

And its worth noting that even before Republicans began attacking it, many academics were arguing against it. They said it was based far less on events and reason and based more on academic storytelling, rejected concepts like truth and merit, and most importantly undervalued liberalism. Indeed much of it involves revisionist interpretations of the Civil Rights act itself, arguing that because its political interest undervalued any good it did. This is part of so much left-wing theory which argues any good that is done must be done purely for an altruistic reason rather than a political one and if it doesn't it count. In other words if Lincoln believed preservation of the Union was more important then freeing the slaves, the passage of the 13^th Amendment should not be considered a good of his administration.

Critical Race Theory once had to do with law, which is the only practical application it would have. Now its basically moved on to analyze power structures in society no matter what laws are in effect.  Its only purpose seems to be to argue that 'equality is impossible and illusory in the US." In other words America is a racist society.

What it has essentially been for half a century is an academic series of studies that seem design to make this the point rather than any way to make America less racist. So I guess my real problem with critical race theory is that it doesn't seem to have any real word applications beyond so many of the academic deconstruction ones.

To be clear multiple academics were attacking well before conservative politicians got on board. The Encyclopedia Britanica have called it 'postmodernist inspired skepticism of objectivity and truth' and has a tendency to 'interpret any racial inequality or imbalance as proof of institutional racism and as grounds for directly imposing racially equitable outcomes in those realms."

In a 1997 book law professors Daniel Farber and Suzanna Sherry criticized CRT for basing it claims on personal narrative and for its lack of testable hypotheses and measurable data. The scholars then accused this criticism of representing 'dominant modes within social science which exclude people of color.' In other words anyone who criticizes critical race theory proves that it exists.

More importantly Farber and Sherry argued that the anti-meritocratic tenets in CRT, critical  feminism and critical legal studies, may unintentionally lead to antisemitic and anti-Asian implications, arguing that the success of Jews and Asians within what critical race theorists posit to be a structurally unfair system may lend itself to allegations of cheating and advantage taking. Bluntly, it might cause racism. The scholars argued in response that there's a difference between criticizing an unfair system and criticizing individuals who perform well inside that system. Which is a nice way of say: "If people read our work and reach the conclusion that certain people are breaking the system, that's not our fault, its there's."

Because of the conservative attacks, particularly by so many increasingly right-wing politician and speakers it has become far easier for proponents of CRT to argue that anyone who disagrees with it is a racist themselves. But they've been doing this even when academics who work within the system criticize them, even well-meaningly. This is typically within the way left works overall: as early as the 1960s students were accusing anyone who was an opponent of their beliefs as racist.

My basic problem with CRT is simple: what's the real world application of it? Even a cursory look at some of the writings basically seem to have it no different then so much other leftist writings. It makes vague discussion of things that can be done and spends ninety percent of its time reaching pre-ordained conclusions. I acknowledge racism exists in our society and I'd like a plan to try and rectify it. CRT essentially seems to argue that there's nothing anyone can do, and if you even suggest there is, you yourself are part of the problem.

I'm all for having curriculums that discuss a more realistic portrayal of race in our society and some of the bigger problems. But I'm a realist. I have no illusions that if high school students or college students are taught this forty minutes a day five days a week, it will end the problem. I don't think there's anything wrong with them learning about the flaws in our society; I do think that being told in the reductive language of the left that your country is irrevocably broken is the best way to fix them.

 And I also don't believe that just because you're not being taught something in a classroom means that knowledge is somehow erased from existence or that the world is engaged in a conspiracy to keep you from 'learning the truth'. No its still there. You just have to work a little harder to find it. I find it insulting that so many smart people believe the only reason problems in our society exist is because it isn't part of a course in grade school or high school.  Trust me, even before the internet was on every phone, ninety percent of the student body only cared about whether it would be on the exam.

I think my biggest problem with Critical Race Theory is that its labeled a 'theory'. Most theories are put into real world application and then put in practice. This isn't a theory in the way that trickle down or originalist or any scientific theory or hell, communism. There's no way to prove it, no way to test in a real word setting, no way to figure out how we move forward. I agree racism exists in America and its never going to ever truly go away. But not because laws or the system is racist but because it involves people and you will never be able to complete eradicate it from the human mind, much as we might want to. It's not a pleasant truth to acknowledge but its one we have to face.

CRT seems to use a lot of words and fancy terms to tell you that racism will always exist in our society. I could have told you that in thirty seconds. Where I disagree with our proponents is that I believe its incumbent on all of us, of all races, to do as much as we can to try to make it less so. Not eradicate it, we'll never do that, just less. That's this cis, white male's opinion. You want to call me racist for saying that? Well, the proponents do that anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why Celebrity Jeopardy Basically Proves Why No One Should Take Hollywood As An Authority On Anything (Jeopardy Champions, On The Other Hand…)

 

 

If you came of age in the 1990s and perhaps even if you didn't you are doubtless aware of one of the most hysterical recurring sketches on Saturday Night Live during that period. I'm speaking of the hysterical Celebrity Jeopardy parodies in which Will Ferrell played an Alex Trebek who couldn't even bother to hide how exhausting it was to have Burt Reynolds, Sean Connery and anyone from Minnie Driver to Phil Donahue to Adam Sandler proving just how incredibly dumb they were when it came to answering the easiest Jeopardy questions imaginable.

By the 1990s I was regularly watching Saturday Night Live and I found all of these sketches examples of what might have been called cringe comedy. And that was because I was a Jeopardy fan by this point and I was painfully aware then the average SNL viewer that, if anything, the writers were being generous to how incompetent celebrities were when they appeared on Jeopardy.

I've written about this before a few years back but I may have left out the personal aspect of it. And I have to tell you during this period when I was a teenager every time Celebrity Jeopardy took place it became painful for me to watch each year. Think how embarrassing it must be to be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old and watching celebrities you have seen on TV and admire immensely demonstrating over and over and over again that they are incapable of answering questions that you know very well.

I'll admit part of my problem was that they didn't seem to be taking the show that seriously. Even at a young age I took Jeopardy as almost a ritual and watching them clown around on stage, delaying answering clues and then constantly faulting each other and themselves on their inadequacy seemed very close to heresy. It tells you something that in thirty plus years of watching Jeopardy it is only the celebrity contestants who never take the show with any seriousness. I've seen middle schoolers on Back to School Week who took the show with a greater level of maturity then so many famous people in their fifties and sixties.

Now I'll grant you it might have to do with the fact everyone else was playing for actual money and the celebrities were just playing for charity.  That falls apart when one looks at the Jeopardy Masters and see James Holzhauers and Mattea Roach's of the world knowing that they will be playing for charitable donations as well as everything else and they take it with a competitiveness and respect that it deserves.

More to the point there is the fact that it was clear early on – I think by the time of 1994 at least – that the writers realized that the average celebrity did not, to put it charitably, know as much as the average Jeopardy contestant. That essentially meant them bending the rules until they broke. Ed Begley or Brett Butler finish in the negative at the end of Double Jeopardy? Give them money so they can compete in Final Jeopardy. The questions keep getting easier and easier and with few exceptions they keep getting them wrong. Guarantee them a $10,000 minimum if they finish Final Jeopardy with less than that – or for that matter, no money at all. (That happened a lot during the 1990s and beyond.)

Perhaps that's the reason I appreciated Will Ferrell's work as Trebek during those sketches in a way I didn't always like or enjoy much of his comedy on SNL during that period. He wasn't even trying to imitate Trebek or his cadences but as someone who wondered what had to be going through Alex's head during each of these weeks I thought Ferrell might actually be saying the quiet part out loud.  Alex was always a trooper no matter who the contestants were and I've often wondered how much effort it kept for him to keep that poker face. So I took a certain pleasure every time Ferrell would say some of the clearly dumbed down categories like "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Word That Rhymes With Star' or told Minnie Driver "Are you English or just retarded?" As someone who watched these tournaments during this period there are so many times I had similar thoughts.

Now I'm not saying every celebrity who appears was a raving moron who couldn't tell the difference between Rutgers and Princeton and thought that a great tennis player was Andrew Agassi. There were some very intelligent Celebrity Jeopardy players who did the stage proud. Many of them, I should mention, were former SNL alum such as Jane Curtin or Michael McKean or sketch comedy veterans such as Cheech Marin. The cast of Law & Order was very capable at answering questions involving Ghastly Operatic Demises. Levar Burton and Kareen Abdul-Jabar proved their mettle multiple times. And obviously Ike Barinholtz has become something of a gold standard from this point forward.

But there's a reason that by the early 2000s I'd stopped watching all celebrity tournaments on Jeopardy. It was becoming exhausting watching some actors I admired – whether it was Steve Harris or Camryn Manheim on The Practice, Wendie Malick or Joseph Gordon Levitt, embarrass themselves. They say never meet your heroes; I'd say seeing Thomas Haden Church or Lynn Redgrave play horribly on your favorite game show counts.

I should argue this applies just as much to many political figures. During the 1990s and up until 2016 (perhaps for good reason) Jeopardy would invite many figures of note in the world of cable news or even politics at a certain level to appear on Jeopardy, usually in DC. If anything, they were more embarrassing then so many TV actors. And this was true no matter what side of the political spectrum you were on. Chris Matthews and Al Franken, Tucker Carlson and Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper and Bob Woodward, they all performed so ludicrously badly – often, I should add, on historical and political questions – that they made me wonder if any of them actually knew anything that wasn't on a teleprompter.

 The polarization of today's politics pretty much stopped these weeks from happening because Jeopardy has always been the kind of show that doesn't actively seek out controversy. We make the argument that the tribal nature of politics has gotten rid of rational debate; these weeks make me wonder in hindsight if many of these people were ever capable of it to begin with.

All of which brings me to the title of my article as you might expect. Earlier this year around the time of the Golden Globes Ricky Gervais reposted made a joke about how celebrities are not authorities on anything. "You know less then Greta Thunberg." (After awards season he added the comment: "They didn't listen."

Now I've made multiple arguments as to why celebrities should stay in their own lane for years. It didn't occur to me until recently that well before Hollywood felt it was their moral duty to talk about all things political, I actually had videotape evidence of how little they knew about anything.

Am I saying that all of the celebrities who make dumb comments today were incapable of answering trivia questions on Jeopardy? Well the first year I saw it Rosie O'Donnell and Ed Begley, Jr two of the most left wing celebrities then or now played. Begley finished at -$1100 and O'Donnell finished in the lead with $2000. Along with Robert Gulliame they combined for 33 correct answers and 18 incorrect ones. 17 clues were left uncovered in both rounds. That night I missed the first three minutes. I still cleaned their clocks. I was thirteen.

Throughout my teenage years I regular defeated in combat Larry King, Kelsey Grammer, Dean Cain, Elayne Boosler, Sandra Bernhard, Eartha Kitt, Buzz Aldrin, Keith Olberman (he was with ESPN then) and Meredith Viera. To be fair I didn't do as well as Kareen-Abdul Jabbar, Jon Stewart or Cheech Marin and Alicia Witt got Final Jeopardy right on me once.

You'll notice that quite a few of these celebrities are still loud voices and some of them, such as Cain, Grammer and Rob Schneider are fairly regular on conservative talk shows these days. As a teenager I could beat them at Jeopardy. I'm not saying I could do it today but their track record on certain subjects makes me question why I should listen to any of them when they claim to talk with authority about the Middle East, economic inequality, racism in America or really anything that doesn't have to do with Hollywood. And since some of them can't seem to answer questions that directly refer to them and their field I'm not sure how much we can trust them on anything. (Bob Woodward missed a clue on Jeopardy that had to do with the film All The President's Men. All I'm saying.)

There may be those who argue that how an actor performs on a quiz show shouldn't be the sole measure of their intellect. I'd argue what measure do you want me to use that would be fair? Speaking as someone who has the greatest respect not only for Jeopardy but for all of the great players, super-champions or five day ones, who have walked on the Alex Trebek stage for the past four decades and continue to dazzle millions of viewers with their breadth of knowledge to this day. Are you telling me an actor should be held to a different standard then teachers, attorneys, students, accountants, bartenders, journalists and the average person Hollywood claims they either speak for or know better then?

In 1999 Eddie Timanus a man who was totally blind won five games on Jeopardy and his total of $69,700 was the most of any player in the 2000 Tournament of Champions. He was a semi-finalist in the 2000 Tournament of Champions and has been invited back three times to compete in Jeopardy 'Postseason tournaments before there was a postseason. The only thing accommodation he ever needed in his original run was that at the start of every round they handed him a card with the categories in Braille. The rest was up to him and he was pretty good at it.

In every single game in the Celebrity Jeopardy tournament that followed a few months later with the exception of Andy Richter played with a far better score then anything of them. For the record Rosie O'Donnell was invited back that year; she finished in a distant third and actually did worse then the previous invitation six years earlier. Eddie was, needless to say, answering questions much more difficult then any of the celebrities invited for that year's tournament.

I'm not saying that de facto makes Eddie smarter more than O'Donnell or more accomplished. I am saying that should Eddie Timanus choose to say something about the state of the country (which as far I know, he has not) I'd be more inclined to treat his opinion with respect and admiration then I have anything O'Donnell has ever said.

That brings me to a related point. After his incredible run on Jeopardy concluded a few weeks back Jamie Ding has been in the national spotlight the way that many Jeopardy champions tend to be when they do well for an extended period. He's spoken how important he considers his job as a state employee and how significant his accomplishments mean as a child of immigrants and a person of color.

I'd argue that Jamie Ding has earned his right to speak on certain subjects in a way that no one in Hollywood has. Because unlike them he is an average American who has had the spotlight thrust upon him.  So much of our society is built on so many people claiming to be speaking to the average citizen but we rarely do and most of them will never get a platform to talk about what they think. That is worth paying attention to in a way that all of the actors and athletes and celebrities really don't.

So if Amy Schneider or Mattea Roach were to talk about the issues that members of the LGBTQ+ community face (and both have) I'm fine with it in a way that I chafe when Asia Kate Dillon talks about how important gender neutral awards are. And if Jamie wants to talk of what it means to be a person of color in America he's earned it in a way that John Leguizamo's demands for representation in his industry don't land with me.  They're less insulated from what happens in this country then the bubble that surrounds Hollywood and I think we should hear their opinion.

As my writing has indicated I have a respect for Jeopardy champions in a way I hold for very few other people. I admire what they have accomplished in a way that's more relatable for me in a way that for all my respect for the craft of Hollywood and TV I don't think most people can. As someone who still wants to be on Jeopardy some day (I keep meaning to take the anytime test but never get around to it) I genuinely admire their intelligence, grace under pressure and humor in a way that I frequently find lacking in so many actors especially now. They are the average person who has to earn their fame in a way that the majority of those in Hollywood have long forgotten. When I talk about the Masters or the Invitational as 'the real Celebrity Jeopardy' for me there's a real truth to it that I think every fan of the show has.

Maybe the only way I could respect a celebrity would be if they were to appear on regular Jeopardy. I felt that way for Ike Barinholtz and even though they didn't do nearly as well, I respected the efforts of Lisa Ann Walter and Kamau Bell. If you're willing to be onstage with the average Jeopardy champion and risk a certain humiliation that does make you more human in a real way to me. I'm not saying that for me to take the Mark Ruffalo's or Hannah Einbinder's more seriously they'd have to appear on Jeopardy against the Jamie Dings and Harrison Whitaker's of the world, but it would earn my respect in a way their loud pronouncements from social media just don't. Most of you will go on SNL. You're halfway there already.

 

How The Landslide Defeats of Goldwater And McGovern Explain Both Parties Today, Part 1:Goldwater's Failed Strategy and How It Showed Success Four Years Later

 

 

In 1964 Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater became the Republican nominee for President, largely because of a grass roots effort by conservatives to take the party out of the hands of the moderates who'd controlled for half a century. The result was an electoral disaster as LBJ would win in November with more than 61 percent of the popular vote and 486 electoral votes to Goldwater's 37 percent and 52 electoral votes respectively.

Eight years later George McGovern managed to win the Democratic nomination for President backed by a similar organization of the coalition of the New Left whose strategy in the primaries had taken the nomination out of the hands of the bosses. The results were just as disastrous: Nixon would win reelection with nearly 60.8 percent of the popular vote and 49 of 50 states while McGovern would carry just Massachusetts and DC in what was the biggest defeat a Democratic candidate had ever had in electoral history to that point.

For much of the 21^st century academics have been trying to argue that there are complicated, deep-seated explanation as to why the conservative revolution which began just four years after LBJ's landslide and dominated politics ever since took place. In truth the explanation has always been ridiculously, almost ludicrously simple if viewed a certain way and it shows the clear difference between the conservative movement and the liberal one immediately after that period.

For the Republicans they viewed the world as so many right-wingers do: purely in a matter of political power absent any true moral consideration. They saw a way to get a hold on a geographic base of electoral votes in their column and took it. Everything they have done since then has made it easier for them to win elections and it began to pay off almost immediately after doing so.

The Democrats would spend much of the time since then playing catch up, particularly in trying to win back this group of voters while trying to keep their coalition of new voters together, something that became clear after McGovern's incredible electoral defeat. They spent the rest of the 20^th century on a patchwork strategy that gave them some success, suffered a momentary loss after 2000,  found a way to recover from it and then inexplicably chose to reject that strategy in the aftermath of a single  election that they chose to tie in with the McGovern disaster that seemed a solution only in hindsight and that was never part of McGovern's original strategy to begin with.  Their embrace of that strategy was perhaps the most illogical and counterintuitive the party has made in a long history of poor decisions and its not clear if they can change course even if they were to acknowledge how much its fallen apart in the last election in particular.

If there is any hope for the Democrats to try and become a national party once Trump leaves office in 2028 they need to stop listening to the ridiculous complex arguments of an increasingly left-wing branch that views the world strictly in a moral lens and look at it from a purely political one. That involves making the kinds of detached decisions the left has made it clear it will not tolerate and trying to win back the middle that they continue to argue is too conservative for their tastes.

So in this series I'll look at why both campaigns failed, the lessons that each party took away from them and how the Republicans learned how to turn their failure into success almost immediately and the Democrats tried to learn from their failure until the losing side framed it – bizarrely – as a formula for a success.

 

One of the more interesting thing about these two diametrically opposed Senators was how much they had in common. Theodore White, describing Goldwater in Making of the President: 1964 said: "He preaches: he does not direct. He arouses emotion. He does not harness it."

So much of the Goldwater campaign was based on immense organization within young conservative groups such as the Young Republicans and little to do with Goldwater himself. So much of the campaign was done as early as 1961 with no real push from Goldwater himself, he repeatedly rejected them on their first meeting and future ones. Goldwater had no real belief he could win the Presidency at any time. The most he ever believed was that if he ran against Kennedy he might be able to come within five percent of beating him. Anything else would be a disaster for the conservative cause. By November of 1963 many believed that magic 45 percent number could be reached.

When Kennedy was assassinated Goldwater lost all heart for it. He respected Kennedy and he detested LBJ. He wanted the campaign dismantled because he had assumed – correctly – that a shattered electorate wouldn't be able to stand three different Presidents in the course of a year. When he finally decided to do so in January of 1964 he did so out of a sense of obligation to the cause more than any sense he could win.

The Goldwater campaign was based fundamentally on the issue of race. One had been one Goldwater and his followers had put forth four years earlier; one became more evident as 1964 unfolded.

Four years earlier in Chicago Goldwater had tried to persuade Richard Nixon for a more moderate platform on civil rights then ended up being part of it. The argument was basically one that Theodore White, a liberal himself put forth:

If they adopt a civil rights program only moderately more restrained then the Democrats, the South can be there's for the taking, and with the South, if it comes permanently to Republican control could come such electoral power as would make the Republicans, as they were for half a century, the majority power of the nation and the semi-permanent steward of the executive branch. Furthermore, since the Northern Negro now votes habitually for the Democratic Party by overwhelming margins, why seek to outbid the Democratic Party where they can not be outbid? Their philosophy should be considered one of trade: let us give the Northern Negro for the Democratic Party and we shall take the Old South for ourselves.

Goldwater would try to persuade Nixon of this approach and part of the reason his campaign likely failed was that he couldn't decide if he wanted Northern or Southern electoral votes more.

For Goldwater and his acolytes it was simpler. Goldwater would frame it as "Let's go hunting where the ducks are." As the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 made its way through first Congress and then the Senate, LBJ and Northern Democrats would lean as hard as possible on Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen to whip Republicans to vote for it. Only seven chose not to and one of those seven was Barry Goldwater.

Whether Goldwater was racist or genuinely believed that the Civil Rights Act was constitutional overreach depends on who tells the tale. Johnson knew all too well what the consequences were when he signed it to the law. "I think we just handed the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come," he said. The 1964 election was the first example.

The other hope Goldwater had was a consequence of the battle for civil rights and it was unfolding in the North. During the summer of 1964 a series of race riots began in the North in New York City, New Jersey, Chicago and Pennsylvania. In these Goldwater hoped to capitalize on a new movement in politics "backlash"

There had been signs of it even before the riots in the insurgent primary campaign of Alabama Governor George Wallace. Wallace, as White makes clear, "wanted to see whether racism could magnetize votes in the North as well as the South." The answer was, for a stunning number of people, it could.

In Wisconsin, Wallace got 34 percent of the vote. In Indiana, 30 percent. And in Maryland he scared the hell out of Johnson's campaign by getting 43 percent.  This vote illustrated as White put it "the fear white working class voters have for the Negro."

Goldwater hoped to utilize this tactic to win voters in the North as well as the South. But because his campaign had already isolated the majority of the Republican voters in primaries as well as the moderate leaders, because his rhetoric was so outlandish it scared so many voters (especially after they heard his acceptance speech at the Cow Palace that summer) and most importantly because LBJ was able to argue both for prosperity and equality in his campaign – while engaging in horrible negative advertising as well – Goldwater never had a chance and he knew it almost from the start.

Goldwater would only carry Arizona and five Southern States – Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Georgia. The only other states he came close to carrying were Florida (where he got 48.9 percent of the vote) and Idaho) where he got 49.1 percent. Goldwater had been humiliated everywhere.

But the fact that Goldwater had made a dent in Dixie in a way that no Republican ever had – no Republican had ever carried Georgia, not even during Reconstruction – was an ominous sign. And as White pointed out Wallace's campaign, even more than Goldwater, shows somber implications for Democratic leaders.

For years – ever since the days of FDR – the Democratic power base in the big cities has been an alliance of the workingmen in their unions, the minority ethnic community and the Negroes. Backlash implied that this power base could be dissolved at the polls if the working man were examined realistically.

It was a warning sign for those who paid attention. And Republicans paid more than Democrats.

 

There's an argument as early as 1968 the Republicans had found their winning formula and it came at the hands of Richard Nixon.

Nixon was many things – the majority of them horrible – but the one thing you couldn't say was that he didn't learn from his mistakes and those of others. In 1960 he had tried to balance Northern black votes and Southern white votes and he'd narrowly lost to JFK. So in 1968 he decided to only concentrate on Southern white votes.

After the 1960 census offered 162 electoral votes in the South.  Goldwater had managed to get 45 in 1964. The problem for Nixon was that Wallace was running as a third party candidate. So Nixon spent much of the leadup to the 1968 convention wooing Southern leaders like Strom Thurmond with a plan to try and split as much of the South with Wallace as he could going into the fall campaign.

The other part of his strategy relied on the 'backlash' movement, which was now all the bigger because of the riots that plagued the nations whether they were race riots or on college campuses in regard to the Vietnam War. The fissure in the Democratic party, first with the McCarthy candidacy and the series of events that led to the riots in Chicago, all made clear the liberal coalition that had led to a landslide for LBJ was splintered hopelessly.

Nixon's strategy involved winning as many states as he had carried in the 1960 election as possible, being able to split off votes from the South and that the blue collar voters from Northern states would defect from the Democrats and go to Nixon rather than Wallace. That strategy was based on dog whistles, lies and chicanery. But it worked because dissatisfaction over the war had pushed an enormous number of regularly Democratic voters across the country out of the party for that election and in many cases for good.

White noted just how much a change this was in his Making of the President series for 1968. In 1964 LBJ had carried 61 percent of the popular vote and 486 electoral votes. Just 4 years later Hubert Humphrey would get just 42. 7 percent of the popular vote and carried out of just 14 states and 191 electoral votes.

The only reason the results appeared to be  close as they were was because Wallace carried 5 Southern states with 45 electoral votes. Nixon's electoral vote total was 302, barely enough to stop the election from going into the House of Representatives. Furthermore the Democrats maintained control of both houses of Congress, the first time in 120 years a President had been elected with both houses of Congress in control of the opposing party.  As a result many Democrats and liberals were able to engage in a kind of magical thinking that it was only history and circumstances that led to Humphrey's defeat.

But the message could not have been clearer. Combined Nixon and Wallace had gotten 57 percent of the popular vote. LBJ had gotten 43 million votes in 1964; Humphrey had got 31 million votes for years later. The liberal coalition of the Democratic Party had cracked and America had made it clear that they were moving more to the right. One could argue that Nixon was lying about having a plan to end the war in Vietnam but he sure as hell had one to win the Presidency and he maximized it.

The fact that the war kept going anyway and the protests kept going and that America was about to enter a period of economic decline might very well have given the Democrats an opening. Unfortunately for them the wrong man stepped in.

In the next article I will look at how McGovern's campaign was disastrous from start to finish and if there was a path to victory from it, it was only one seen with a bizarre hindsight marked with a ridiculous number of asterisks.