Coalition of The Sane:I'd Be Happier With The Democrats If So Many of Them Weren't Behaving Like Republicans(And Not the Way The Majority of Progressives Think)

 

 

There's this old standard about a Congressional Democrat during the long period after the Civil War when the Republicans were almost always in power. He said: "I am a Democrat still…very still."

Now unlike the overwhelming number of writers on this blog and quite a few so-called progressives I'm an institutionalist as well as a pragmatist. That means if you want to get things done you have to be loyal to some institutions and then especially includes political parties. In my lifetime it's never been easy to be a Democrat, mainly because we kept losing elections we should have won, because we kept letting the conservatives and Republicans frame the contours of debate, because to much of the time we believe in systems rather than the emotional reactions that drive politics. But I am a Democrat still – very still – mainly because in the 21^st century we've always been grownups in contrast to the increasing Republican insanity at a Congressional and particularly Presidential level. I admit that acting like an adult and being sane shouldn't be the sole qualification for being in political office but in an era where the loudest voices on the right were increasingly being the voices of lunacy I found it very appealing and I always do.

To be clear I long since stopped expecting that from the GOP  long  before the 2016 election occurred. If anything the years since have made me firmer in my commitment to the Democrats.  A Return to Normalcy helped lead the Republicans to a landslide in 1920 and it might well have been Joe Biden's slogan 100 years later. I realize now that it was probably a pipe dream for normal to ever come back but at the very least I would have preferred politics to be much less exciting and interesting, particularly from the Democrats.

Now I do get why after everything that happened in 2024 the decision to panic among the party elders and the loudest voices on that side was understandable. It wasn't held by more than a few Congressional Democrats and I really wish leadership had been willing to listen to the Jared Goldens and John Fettermans,  particularly given that the party was no longer in a position to really do anything. We were now a minority party in the House and the Senate and much as we might hate that fact the people had made their choices clear in that election. And particularly considering the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election there was something to be said for providing a contrast to the GOP in what was going to be a post-Trump America by acting with something resembling maturity and dignity.

That has not, by and large, been what Congressional Democrats have done in the last year and a half. On the contrary what their behavior reminds me of is that of the members of the Tea Party in the aftermath of the 2010 election and throughout the majority of Obama's Presidency as well as the behavior of the Freedom Caucus during Biden's administration. During that period the Democrats rightly called out this behavior as juvenile, undignified and unworthy of the political system. It now seems that's their new business model much of the time.

Because here are Congressional Democrats and state officials storming ICE rallies and courthouses and getting arrested. Here are Congressional Democrats and Senate Democrats shouting belligerently at Trump's cabinet members during their meetings before the Senate. Here they are walking out of confirmation meetings for Trump's judges to appellate courts.

Here they are shutting down the government in order to make political points with their base.

Now I'm sure that I will be told countless times over that this is what is necessary to make it clear just how horrible the actions of the current President are and that the Democrats will not stand for it, how he's running roughshod over the Constitutional process. I do get that. But the thing is, nothing the Congressional Democrats are doing is stopping his administration from rolling out their agenda and ripping up norms. Is it bad that the President is doing his agenda without input from Democrats from Congress? Sure. But he has the votes to do it.  And as I recall more than once from Democratic newsletters a minority of representatives standing in the way of the duly elected President to complete his agenda is an act of immaturity. I read that line more often then not in a group of Democratic fundraising emails during Biden's term. I didn't see in small print "Void when a Republican is President".

And I welcome anyone to explain to me what the difference between when in 2013 Republicans shutdown the government out of funding Obamacare for nearly a month and when Democrats have engaged in a similar shutdown of Homeland Security in order not to fund ICE. I'm sure I'll be told in no uncertain terms why the former was an act of immaturity and the latter is an act that is standing up to tyranny but the result is the game: one party is purposely not funding a vital part of the government for the sole purpose of scoring political points with their base in what is pure political theater. As it stands Majority Leader John Thune is in the process of forming a bill that will ended up completely funding ICE that will occur without any concessions to Democrats and will pass with solely Republican support. 

So two months have gone by with a vital part of our government not working – one that aside from ICE is vital to protecting America in countless ways and has been feeling the pinch across the board in our airports, in FEMA, in cybersecurity.  When it reopens the Democrats will have proved exactly what everyone knew at the start of the shutdown – that they are opposed to the President's policies.  In exchange they gave away their dignity, which is in short supply these days anywhere, and made it clear to civil servants who are already feeling under attack by the current administration that the Democratic Party is just as capable of using them as pawns to make points with their base as Republicans are.  All the damage that Republicans have doing to the civil servants who work in government agencies by tearing them down during the last two years, we're going to need help rebuilding them in the future – and how easy do you think it's going to be to do that now that they know either political party considers them as pieces that they will use in order to help them gain political points?

I've heard all of these arguments before – when Republicans make them. "Burn down the village in order to save it." "We have to go to the dark side." "The ends justify the means." I didn't buy them during W's administration or any Republican who has made them before and I sure as hell don't buy them when Democrats make that same argument.

But it's not merely that this demeans the Democrats and political dialogue that bothers me; it's that the very approach is the exact thing that will further isolate the average voter. Because the big difference between the Republican base and the Democratic one is that the extremists in our base have always had the effect of pushing people into the Republican tent while never winning a substantial amount of new voters to balance it out. This has been a large part of what has given the Republicans power for decades and while the left knows this, they don't really seem to think its  a problem. And I suspects that's because the loudest voices on their part are emotionally little better than toddlers.

Oh to be sure, many of them are college students, may have advanced academic degrees, write for prominent journals or have positions in the entertainment industry. But when it comes to politics they can barely comprehend it at a second grade level. And this has gotten exponentially worse with so much of how technology has changed and how much of our society is based on so-called planned obsolescence. For many of these people they think our Constitution and system of government because of its advanced age needs to be completely replaced or upgraded to a newer model. They really can't comprehend that one just can't download Constitution 2.0 on your iPhone nor that you can't bring about economic inequality or provide universal health care if you just check agree in the box and don't bother to read the terms and conditions. They think that institutions like capitalism and democracy are out of date and need to be completely replaced with something newer and by the way they view things – which is technology – better.  That you just can't trade these things in at your Apple store for better models nor that you can't ask Siri what form of government would work better and then make everyone else in the country – not just elected officials but everyone connected with the government – magically make it work isn't something they can understand. To them passing a law or amending the Constitution at most should be no more difficult then ordering a meal at Uber Eats and they get very cranky when you tell them it isn't.

No one will pretend – certainly not me – how much reform and repair our government needs and that much work must be done to do so. The problem is that too many people in this country if not the world have mistaken activism for governing. It is bad enough that one of our major political parties has essentially turned most of it into a circus; now too many members seemed determined that the only way to do gain power is to put up a rival act that is just as loud and equally destructive. That the majority of Americans either don't pay attention in the first place and when they do they are turned off by the whole thing should matter at least to the Democratic office holders. It definitely matters to me as a voter and I do think it matters to the vast majority of them, regardless of their party affiliation.

And after more than a decade on this blog I'm very clear that the loudest voices on the left can't be reasoned with on this matter and have no alternative solution to offer. Any attempt by the Democrats to appeal to them is a wasted effort because to these people everything they are doing is the bare minimum and they never credit to anybody for doing what they considers was the right thing anyway. They've made it clear they have no use for any of the Republicans or conservative commentators who have repented off their ways in the last decade which is as juvenile behavior as anything that the Justice Democrats have done. And as we saw when the Democrats attempted to shutdown the government the first time and finally agreed to reopen it all they received was contempt because "they had the GOP right where they wanted."

To be clear the Democrats had no leverage then any more then they do when they started to shutdown ICE two months ago. When the Republicans finally reopen the government even if it is done entirely absent Democratic votes they will get nothing from the left for what they've done. They've already moved on to shinier issues like everything in Iran and as I've written before, that's a whole other set of baggage the left has saddled the Democrats with for decades.

To its credit the Democrats have been doing other things that I'm in favor of it and have written about it when it comes to being focused on winning. They are attempted their most advanced campaign strategy for the upcoming midterms: one that involves competing at a state and local level in a way they really haven't since Obama became President. They have been getting back to what they used to be good at: trying to compete in states where they shouldn't be able and understanding that the strident left-wing models of the Squad and the Sanders' don't play in Iowa and Alaska. They understand something that the mostly activist wing of the party they represent refuse to comprehend: that playing the political game is the only way to bring about your goals. That it is more important to stand by your principles then forsake them for short-term goals.

We've seen this in the battles over gerrymandering in this past year. In Maryland the bluest state of the Union Governor Wes Moore attempted to lead the battle to redistrict Maryland to eliminate the sole Republican seat in the state. That movement failed because Democratic members of the statehouse refused to go along with this obviously partisan grab. If there was a sign of hope among the Republicans during this period it came in Indiana when members of the Republican state legislature refused to kowtow to their Republican governor and party and gerrymandered the state to eliminate Democratic seats.

The battle for redistricting in the last year has brought out the most juvenile aspects of both parties. You'll going to gerrymander Texas; we'll gerrymander California! You'll gerrymander Ohio; we'll gerrymander Virginia! Nyah-Nyah-Nyah! That the overall effect is to leave the voting public cold is not in consideration of either party.

It should be mentioned that while the people agreed to the referendum to redistrict Virginia, it was a much closer margin then the one in California, barely managing to pass 51 percent to 49 percent. That result, far more than the one in California, should be a message to Democrats that the voters don't think these battles matter as much to them as ones that will make their lives better economically. They wanted their elected officials to make their lives easier, not engage in political maneuvering for the national party and they were not thrilled by Governor Spangenberger's decision to do so. Spangenberger has always struck me as a mostly pragmatic woman and I can only wonder what it has to have been like to spend her first few months engaging in the kind of childish battles that won't help the people she's supposed to be leading but rather Congress who should be on her side anyway.

But she is a Democrat still…very still and she seems to have accepted reluctantly that this is how the game is being played by Gavin Newsom and Wes Moore. That both of these governors care less about being grownups and have ambitions for the highest office in the land is something that unnerves me as well. As I said if the last decade has taught me anything its that I want the grownups the run the country and by indulging in this kind of behavior governors like Moore and Newsom are only showing that they can be just as childish as the Republicans on a national stage. That shouldn't be a strength if you want to be leader of the free world.  I should know because I heard that argument the first time Trump ran for President from the Democrats.

I have to believe in my soul that the light at the end of the tunnel for America is not an oncoming train and that in a few years we will emerge on the other side, battered, heavily bruised but intact and hopefully smarter. Part of growing up is learning from the mistakes you've made and doing what is necessary to make sure they don't happen again. This is not an attitude that the left has ever held; its always been: "If you don't do exactly what I say, I'm not going to play with you anymore!" For too long my party has tried its hardest to indulge these emotionally stunted individuals who refuse to tell us what they want but are more than happy to share how much were ruining their lives just by existing. I think its well past time we told them to grow the hell up.

And that includes stop let the most childish members of the Democratic party outshout the grownups when it comes to strategy and attitude. Its time to tell Elizabeth Warren and AOC to stop acting like Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert. If they led their party off a cliff would you do the same thing? You're Democrats still, very still, and I think I speak for the electorate that we really wish you'd act like it.

Will Trent Just Had Its Most Shocking Moment Yet

 

(Spoilers for Season 4 of Will Trent as well as Slaughter's novels ahead)

 

I had thought that I was long past the point in my long career of watching TV of being surprised by character deaths. So it says something that the murder of Deputy Director Amanda Wagner – which I'll confess I was hoping against hope hadn't happened until the opening of last night's episode – ranks for me as the most stunning death since Howard Hamlin was fatally in the wrong place at the wrong time in the final season of Better Call Saul.

It's not that there have been more than their share of tragic deaths in that interim but in Will Trent it had a sting that I really didn't think the show would do and few TV shows that are based on source material have. Joel's death on The Last of Us was shocking but fans of the video game franchise had an idea it was coming and considering that Slow Horses is based on the books of Mick Herron, the readers had to know that every death is planned to an extent. And as anyone who is a fan of Slaughter's novels (and I'm one of them) Amanda Wagner is still very much alive after ten books.

To be fair the series has deviated quite a bit from the source material in its adaptation of ABC, not the least in Wagner's character. Not only is she of mixed race, something that was far from the case in Slaughter's version, Season 4 made it clear she was also bisexual. (No one knew if Amanda had a sex life in Slaughter's books.) And considering that in the first Will Trent novel Michael Ormewood was not only the killer but met his end in that book I've known for a while that this series is very much a loose adaptation of everything Slaughter has done since the first episode. Yet despite all of that I still really believed that Wagner had what is referred to as plot armor all this time.

But the thing is looking at Season 4 as a whole and where Will has been going since the season premiere, I'm  inclined to belief Amanda's death was necessary to show us how Will has been spiraling all season and really since the end of Season 3.

At the end of the third season Will has had to deal with multiple blows: he learned the identity of his biological father Cal Broussard (Yul Vasquez) he learned that Angie, the woman he'd had to arrest and torch his relationship with at the end of last season is pregnant with the child her new boyfriend Seth (Scott Foley) He ended season 3 waiting by Amanda's bedside saying: "You're my family."

Everything that's unfolded during Season 4 has been taking away every pillar Will has built his life on. It started when the man who killed his mother James Ulster escaped from prison and in order to save Cal's grandson he traded himself for him. Will then struggled with himself whether or not to kill James before they were abducted by one of Ulster's deranged prison girlfriends and when everything ended Ulster was dead. His last words were: "See you soon," and its clear they've been haunting him.

Will has been struggling with his demons all season, with Ulster taking more and more a position as it progressed. At the halfway point his Uncle Tony was in danger so Will ended up going to Puerto Rico and first encountered Adelaide who claimed to be an FBI agent. While that was going on his uncle was abducted and the two collaborated down a stretch that made it clear that whoever it was happened to be an acolyte of Ulster. By the end of the episode the horrible truth was clear: Adelaide was Ulster's biological daughter and she escaped him with Tony still in captivity.

Will has been getting deeper in Adelaide's head all season which meant getting into Ulster's. The following episode he was handed a phone from one of Adelaide's acolytes, perhaps the most terrifying thing the show has done since when it revealed he was a fifteen year old boy. Will has spent much of the season going forward waiting for that phone to ring and never truly letting the GBI in on it. He didn't know of the efforts Amanda was making to try not only to track down Tony but figure out who Adelaide was working with.  His decision to keep her out of the loop was a mistake – especially when Adelaide finally called two episodes ago.

Will spent most of last week claiming he was sick while he was trying to both get in Adelaide's head and prepare to track her down. It was clear by the time last week ended he was more than prepared to sacrifice his life for his uncle's because that's the kind of man we know him to be. Prior to that Amanda visited him, told him to get better, and then went on her own mission. As we now know that is what got her killed.

And in the most horrible of moments Will found Amanda's body on the ground dead and was horribly broken. Last night's episode showed not only that he but the entire GBI as well as the Atlanta police force had to deal with simultaneously.

If there is any justice in this world (and we all know there isn't) Ramon Rodriguez will be nominated for an Emmy for his work in 'One Last Dance' (which he also directed) We watched Will play out this entire episode going through every stage of grief. From having to close the eyes of Amanda as she was zipped into a body bag to his barely being able to function as he walked the halls of the GBI to his unstoppable rage when her superior who has been trying to get her job showed up – to express support.

Will took his rage out on the man who provided a distraction by beating him so hard he bit his tongue off.  Then as Adelaide's acolytes were being killed he encountered one of the teen ringleaders and gave an impressive speech in which he made it clear what the boy's choices were: either confess his sins or go back on the street and die. And he made it very clear considering that Amanda died because of this child's actions that he was perfectly fine letting that happen.

Eventually the reason Adelaide returned was, as always, horribly pedestrian. She'd run out of money and she came for Ulster's which had been moved. The final confrontation between the two was incredible. Even at gunpoint Adelaide still had the upper hand. She showed him his uncle was still alive and made her terms crystal clear: Either he killed himself and she'd let his uncle live or she'd kill herself and let him die, knowing the fact that this would torture him for the rest of his life would be the ultimate punishment.

Eventually Adelaide did break for it and was killed, making sure she got the last word. But Will did manage to find his uncle – nearly dead of hunger and thirst but clinging to life.

The thing is the final minutes made it clear that Will Trent is dead in a way he may never recover from. He arranged for his uncle to be sent back to Puerto Rico under armed guard because he is a reminder of guilt of everything he's done wrong in the last few months and a way to punish himself. He was notably absent from Amanda's wake. In the last minutes he turned on his tape recorder but couldn't find the words. And the last image of the episode was the camera pulling back from Will's office which had bars to resemble the prison he's put himself in.

Every season of Will Trent has ended with him undergoing a trauma he didn't think he could overcome and each time Amanda in some form has pulled him back from sliding into the abyss. Now Amanda is gone forever, Angie is married to Seth and he's pushed his uncle away. The only things currently tethering him to reality are his job and Faith and its not clear how much longer he can keep both of them near him.

Amanda's death is a gutting one, not just because of the loss of Sonja Sohn as part of the cast but because of the ripple effects it will clearly have on the title character.  I don't know how the season finale is going to play out but its only going to get worse – and for the first time I'm not sure it can ever get better for Will.

 

Hollywood Once Knew Who Michael Jackson Was. They've Clearly Forgotten It. How Pop Culture Has Reversed Itself on the King Of Pop

 

 

When I was growing up in the 1980s Michael Jackson was still considered the King of Pop but the older he got the more pop culture, particularly on Late Night, began to poke at the oddities in his character. Some of it might look in hindsight like the fact that they were being homophobic about Jackson's frequently effeminate and increasingly eccentric behavior.

That changed by the mid-1990s as the allegations around him began to become more audible By 1995 Saturday Night Live had taken the gloves on and not just the one Jackson was famous for. In an opening sketch Patrick Stewart played an advisor of trying to retool Jackson's image under the code name 'Operation Pedophile Not' which even by the standards of that show was incredibly cutting.

I was never a fan of pop music at any time in my life and I wasn't really that aware of music culture. But even then it was becoming clear to me that Michael Jackson was covering something. I remember the infamous kiss between him and Lisa Marie Presley at the VMAs when their engagement had been announced. I'm not sure I knew the meaning of the term 'marriage of convenience' at fifteen but I was pretty sure this marriage was being staged – and not just to cover any possibility that Jackson might just be gay.

Throughout the rest of the 1990s as Jackson became more known for his scandals and less for his music late night began to savage him. I remember an animated sketch on SNL by Robert Smigel where Jackson was walking to a courthouse and someone left a child on a window. Jackson caught the odor of it like it was a pie and like Yogi Bear in a Hanna Barbera cartoon starting to float towards it. It got darker from there.  Mad TV, which was for a brief time positioning itself as a rival to SNL was even more savage towards him, though it occasionally touched at the darker sides of his nature. They once did a sketch where he was painted as a serial killer, deciding to kill off other pop stars to revitalize his image in music – and by implication, distract from the scandals.

By the 2000s no one in Hollywood was blind to who Jackson was anymore. There are too many comedians who I can use examples of this but I'm going to give two of the very best standups of all time in two of their most iconic HBO scandals.

The first is Robin Williams in Live On Broadway which was filmed in the spring of 2002. One of Williams' opening bits was nearly four minutes in which he absolutely tore Jackson a new one:

Michael's screaming racism. Honey you got a pick a race first.

(After the laughter)

Girl, you gotta pick a gender, too. You were Diana Ross, now you've just left it all behind!

But Michael you're just surgically enhanced, and you've spent more money then the Vatican so let's just being quiet.

Then he came in for the kill:

If you go to Neverland, it says "You must be this high to ride Michael'.

That got the biggest laugh and groan combination to that point and after that Williams acknowledged:

At this point the lawyers for HBO, are going "Fuck" (and he mimed writing a check)

That was one of the funniest sequences in standup comedy I'd seen to that point even from Williams (and it only got better from there). The following year on his equally celebrated Never Scared special Chris Rock went in even harder and with even more rage:

"Michael went crazy. Another kid! I thought it was Groundhog Day!

What I think was the best part of this routine and arguably one of the high points in Rock's career is when he discussed an interview Jackson had done on 60 Minutes earlier.

"Ed Bradley tried to make Michael Jackson look like a mammal. He gave Michael the easiest GED questions in the world and Michael could not pass the test.

(Doing Bradley impression) Michael, do you think its normal for a 45 year old man to sleep in a bed with a thirteen year old boy?"

(Rock does a very MJ like expression)

"Yes!"

Rock as Bradley: "All right, I'll rephrase. Michael would you allow your son to sleep in a bed with a man who's been accused of pedophilia?"

Rock as Jackson: "Yes!"

(Back to normal)

Ed Bradley looked at him like he wanted to say: N---er, you crazy?"

Obvious mere transcription can't do justice to Rock's work in this routine and indeed the rest of it, you really need to see it for yourself.

By that point even Law & Order had gotten into the act. To be very clear they were incredibly indirect. Their stand-in for Michael Jackson was a thirty-ish former child star who was white. But the investigation began with him holding a child over a balcony, continued with him having an ice cream van where someone picked up young boys for him and made it very clear the parents were complicit in letting their son be molesting by this superior star and accepted a payout. And by that time if you ended up on Law & Order you were front page news.

As the 2000s continued it wasn't clear if Jackson was ever going to go to prison but the general consensus from Hollywood was that the jokes they were doing was the absolute minimum that he deserved.  For all we know he might well have ended up at least in court.

Then he died in 2009. And the narrative began to change around him almost immediately.

In hindsight the first sign got as to how Jackson's horrors were being pushed aside came during Season 3 of Glee when an entire episode was devoted to his music. The fact that a group of high school agent students were celebrating Jackson unironically struck me as questionable but I let it go.

 

Over the last decade there has been a sense of accountability in regard to so many of the great figures of our time and their horrible behavior, particularly in Hollywood. Not all of this is in regard to the 2016 election; there were signs of that accounting going on particularly when everything involving Bill Cosby became public starting around 2014.

Ever since both the left and Hollywood in particularly have been engaging in this kind of moral reckoning for so many of the biggest sacred cows, not just in Hollywood but in the world overall. Some of it, I will grant you, is long overdue; for more than I'd like; much is more about the left's deciding to constantly move to Overton Window so that something that was acceptable even last week is unacceptable today. But I don't want to just focus on that part yet and instead focus on pop culture.

During the last several years I've watched more than my share of documentaries on cable, particularly about notable figures in entertainment and sports. Many of them have enlightened me on tragic parts of our culture that I was unaware of. For the purposes of this article I want to only focus on prominent African-Americans.

I've seen Omit The Logic which makes it all too clear what a genius Richard Pryor was as a comic, the demons he fought his entire life and never truly beat and what an impossible man he was. I saw the story of Rick James, how his addiction to cocaine was horrible, how he was clearly sexually abusive and the reason he ended up in prison for assault. I saw Pariah: The Story of Sonny Liston arguably one of the greatest boxers of all time and who was viewed by society as a monster and bad man, not entirely inaccurately. And I saw W. Kamau Bell's incredible miniseries We Need To Talk About Cosby which made it very clear all of the good things he did for African-Americans and minorities, how significant and an entertainer he was and the imprint he made in pop culture while simultaneously showing how at every stage in his public life he was a rapist and sexual predator..

All of these documentaries and countless more are raw insights into people who most charitably can be called 'complicated'. It takes what is rare among people who makes these films: a utilitarian look at its subjects, arguing they did horrible things that has to be weighed against what they meant to many people in their public lives.  Many of them aren't easy watches but I'd argue their necessary ones.

All of them aired, I should mentioned, aired on Showtime, which has always been outstanding when it comes to documentaries.  And they aired one on Michael Jackson too. It celebrated the 40^th anniversary of Thriller.

Now I'm not saying that this isn't a very good documentary. If you want details on what is considered to this date the greatest music album of all time, Thriller40 is great. What strikes me as very strange is the tone.  All of the documentaries on Showtime have generally been no holds barred looks at the real life struggles of celebrities. In addition to the ones I've mentioned there was on Whitney Houston and the tragedies that befell her that is not only honest but more willing to look all the real triumphs and how they never were enough to overcome her demons. It debuted 2018 six years after Houston's overdose.

Thriller 40  first aired nearly fourteen years after Jackson died – and by contrast everybody in that film who's still alive has nothing but good things to say about him. Theirs none of the honesty that I see in so many of the films I mentioned above about the flaws in Jackson's character, which in many ways were worse than the ones above.

And this has been the rule rather than exception when it comes to anything involving Jackon even after nearly twenty years. We've already had a Broadway musical about him and this week we're getting a biopic that is one of the most anticipated films of 2026. And it's that part that I find the most troubling.

To be clear this film only got greenlit because of the Jackson Estate. Even then there are clearly limitations and the movie (according to critics) only goes as far as the late 1980s. By any definition we are getting the kind of biopic that so many critics despise as essentially love letters with no portrait of the real artist. I don't have a problem with many of them; I know that films like Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman are the most idealized versions of Freddie Mercury and Elton John, respectively but that didn't stop me from enjoying them.

I could not in good conscience do the same for Michael for a very good reason: it makes it clear it has no intention of telling the story that I really want to hear, the one that Hollywood is more than capable of telling and has been willing to when they are inclined. Peter Morgan has been more than willing to look behind the veil of royalty and Prime ministers with no hold barred over twenty years, Ryan Murphy was more than willing to look at  a realistic glare of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky and George & Tammy made no secrets of the real-life problems that drove both Tammy Wynette and George Jones. It's not like Hollywood couldn't have done the same for Jackson if they'd wanted to.

And as for not getting permission from the estate…well, I'm pretty sure the once and current president didn't give his blessing for The Apprentice last year and not only didn't that stop Hollywood from doing it they were more than fine nominated Sebastian Stan as Best Actor against Timothee Chalamet for playing Bob Dylan.  And that dealt with him the 1970s;  Jackson's real notoriety on the subject came much later. Needless to say Jackson is dead and Hollywood only wishes POTUS were.

I've written countless articles about Hollywood's repeated hypocrisy when it comes to their own sins in the last decade and will do so again because it is a gift that keeps on giving. Michael, however, is the most public admission of their own hypocrisy because not only does it show Hollywood backing away from a position it had during Jackson's life – a position which was most likely correct, for the record – it shows their complete willingness to engage in the cinematic whitewashing (play on words not entirely unintended) of a man whose crimes are likely as bad as the ones they've spent the last decade calling people out on. What makes it worse exponentially is that it now seems every fan of Jackson sees no conflict in going to see this film and their politics in everything else.

Because there absolutely should have been. The fact that not only did Hollywood greenlight this picture but at no time thought how this would make them look during everything that is going on with the allegations from the Epstein files just as the most prominent example of it.  How can the industry as well as the left who excoriates everything that involves the victims there in the same breath have no problem anticipating going to see this film. At this point I really think if there was a letter between the two men where Epstein told Jackson: "Thanks for the great time this weekend," Jackson's fans would shrug and say: "He must have liked his autographed copy of Thriller."

And to be clear that's just the most prominent example. As we speak California is removing Cesar Chavez's names from schools across the state because of the allegations of rape and assault by some of his followers.  I have no doubt the most prominent voices cheering this on will be seen in photos at the Michael premier and none of them will even blink at the contradiction. (Bill Maher, I should mention, pointed out this glaring hypocrisy. I'm glad to know somebody in Hollywood remembers the 1990s and 2000s.)

For me this is academic: I had no intention of seeing this film even before I learned the synopsis. And unlike everyone else on the left or in Hollywood I'm capable of separating the artist from the art. If this film were just an example of that I might be able to forgive its existence. But to not even deal even in a caption at the end of all of things Jackson did in his life that were horrible simply out of respect to his victims.

If nothing else Michael by its existence stands as cinematic proof of Hollywood and the left's blatant hypocrisy when it comes to being a moral authority on anything. It's one thing to make statements of tolerance and inclusivity and be anything but towards their enemies – that's not a flaw unique to anyone. But if you're going to make a multi-million dollar biopic of a man that many of you who are still alive justly mocked and privately condemned for the worst thing a person can do to a child, you no longer have the authority to wear pins condemning the administration on its policies, make public statements on anything political, and certainly not call out anybody in your industry or anywhere at all on behavior you consider immoral.

This isn't going to be enough to make me hand in my glove but its another reason why I feel completely justified in keeping them off when it comes to anything to say and do going forward.

 

 

 

The Audacity Is More Radical And Better Then You'd Think

 

 

Even before I saw the first episodes of The Audacity I realized something that has made AMC an outlier in the world of 21^st century TV.  Ever since the first season of Mad Men debuted way back in 2007 it has been one of the constants in great television. Yet that brilliance is almost entirely focused in drama.

I don't just mean that they don't have comic masterpieces; I mean that in 19 years they've made almost no real effort to try comedy at all.  Which is bizarre when you consider that almost every major cable network, pay or basic, as well as all streaming services usually get in comedy first before they get into prestige drama. It was certainly true of HBO, then Showtime and definitely FX made some experiments. You can make that argument with every streaming service today.

By contrast while AMC has working in many genres within the would of drama and has done even a few intriguing things with unscripted programming in nearly two decades I can count their attempts on comedy on one hand and all of them, no matter how much potential they had whether the dark battle of the sexes Dietland or the intriguing Bob Odenkirk vehicle Lucky Hank got canceled after one season. In the 21^st century the only one that I recall lasting longer is Kevin Can Go F--- Himself which was more of deconstruction take of comedy then an actual comedy and either way just ran two seasons.

Considering that these days AMC's original series are, with the exception of Dark Winds, either part of the world of Anne Rice or Walking Dead spinoffs I was pleasantly surprised to see ads for an original AMC program while watching the current season of Dark Winds. Furthermore while The Audacity bore the imprint of a writer from Better Call Saul and Succession it made itself clear from the ads that it was going to be a comedy. Clearly a very bleak one (that much was clear from the promos) but a comedy, nevertheless. And in an era where every service is taking fewer risks when it comes to television AMC had either enough confidence or bravado to renew it for a second season before it even debuted. And despite the fact the early reviews have been decidedly mixed and by the very high standards of the network that's the equivalent of a pan I found myself admiring and even enjoying the first two episodes of the show.

This came as a surprise even to me because it was clear from the previews and even more so during the actual series that this is the kind of show I've started to openly loathe. It's a very black comedy set among Silicon Valley, which means its asking us to spend time with not only billionaires but the kind that we openly acknowledge will likely bring about the apocalypse. It's a comedy asking me to laugh at the nastiest behavior of so many privileged people which as I've written before, was becoming tiresome a decade ago and I've grown even less fond of now.  And as my viewers know a connection to Succession is one of those things that I would consider a red flag rather than a recommendation. Throw in all of my issues with all things involving the internet, tech and social media and I should despise The Audacity on site.

Yet I didn't. I agree its not a masterpiece by any standards and it does play into almost every horrible trope we've come to expect from the Valley in real life. I get why so many critics and viewers might be turned off by it, especially now. Yet I find it entertaining and often very amusing after two episodes. The fact that it seems to have been review bombed a bit in advance (it has an imdb.com rating of 5.3 despite the fact the first two episodes all average around 7) has more to do with the fact that there are no doubt a bunch of left-wing people who are annoyed that this show exists.  (Or who knows? Maybe the Musk's and Zuckerberg's of the world are leading the campaign to try and kill it because of how it makes them look.)

The show is center on a tech wizard known as Duncan played to perfection as a stunted manchild by Billy Magnussen. At the start of the series Duncan has leaked information about a merger that wasn't true and it has led to his stock prize to sink. We see him trying to confide in his shrink Joanne (Sally Goldberg) but after their session ends he keeps trying to invade her privacy.

Duncan is all the parts of Silicon Valley woven into a horrible package. He openly cheats on his wife with his chief executive officer but can't stand it when she does the same. He has no real involvement in raising his daughter Jamison and has to be reminded that orientation for her most recent school is coming up. We learn in one session that he basically bullied his previous partner to the point that he killed himself and feels no remorse of it. Its pretty clear he's been getting his best ideas from an employee who's name he doesn't know but who he feels no remorse in bullying. And he absolutely is determined to use his tech to stalk the people he feels are against him, which is everybody. He thinks there are no boundaries in the world and he thinks it should be all about him.

All of these are things that should make him loathsome to me. The reason I don't hate Duncan with the same feelings I do anyone at Waystar Royco is that he's so pathetic and basically not good at anything.  He's Silicon Valley's master of the universe but its clear that his wealth has done nothing to stop his wife Lili (Lucy Punch) from belittling him, from his CEO to going over his head and for him to unable to engage even in basic human interaction with his own daughter. He thinks the world should work like technology does and he seems irritated when he's even momentarily hits a bump and the first two episodes are nothing but bumps for him.

It helps that his therapist is no saint herself. Sarah Goldberg was Barry's ray of light for four seasons and like almost every female character in the first two decades of TV she was considered a buzzkill even though as Hader himself kept saying: "Barry kills people." Goldberg endured and as Joanne is playing someone who by any rational standard is more unpleasant then Duncan. She's been using the intelligence from her sessions with Silicon Valley titans to engage in insider training in order to make money and when Duncan discovers her first reaction is to buy a gun. She then spends her next session with a client, scrolling through guns and ignoring him. When Duncan harasses her in public she then goes to a bank but its clear she doesn't want to admit the fraud – or give the money back.

Aside from this Joanne is as bad a parent as anyone from the Valley. When her son Orson arrives from Boston because of his father's (her first husband's) bad health, she basically puts him in a guest room in the basement. She wants to get him into a good school, but its one she uses as a status symbol. We learn she and his father have fought against having Orson in custody (something Orson now knows) and she's been out of his life for so long she can't even remember his birthday. There's more evidence, listening to her give her sessions, that she's not even that good a therapist really, even if you set aside the inner training bit.

The thing is, while there are quite a few miserable characters in The Audacity there are actually some pretty good ones. Right now they are represented by those work for the VA, most notably Tom played by that exceptional talent Rob Corddry. Rob used to work in Silicon Valley and is now reduced to shilling for VA and trying to help those who are suffering. He's essentially begging billionaires for money and eventually he ends up at Duncan's company – against Duncan's will. Duncan was trying to get good PR but he wanted to hang out with soldiers because he thinks military is cool. When his chief executive goes over his head because she still wants to do good with their data, he very reluctantly goes along – and is so disconnected from reality that when he learns so much of the VA's information is on paper and floppy disks he's angry not because of the state of affairs but because this means his company will have to do work and he shirks the idea.

But I have to tell you two episodes in if there's a heart to The Audacity it is the children, mostly in early high school who are broken in individual ways from the non-existent parenting that the rich grownups are giving them. Jamison is being bullied by her parents into being diagnosed with a spectrum disorder so it will make it easier for them to frame their donation to Stanford as less of a bribe.  The discussions they have are done completely over her head and its clear her mother has no interest in her input. When Duncan takes his daughter out for cheeseburgers (for the sole purpose of spying on another billionaire) Jamison says she can get in on her own because this feels like cheating. Duncan doesn't think this is an issue.  "Cheaters never losers and losers never cheat," he tells her daughter with sincerity.

The Audacity makes it very clear that Joanne is just as neglectful. In addition to everything else during the first episode Orson gets locked into a basement crawl space and has to break out of it on his own. Joanne naturally assumes someone broke in to their house and its clear Orson didn't tell because he's rebelling against her bad behavior. When she drops him off at school she gives a lecture about Icarus that is just horrible parenting and doesn't bother to deal with orientation. His father has forgotten to send his transcript from Boston and he has to spend the day in 'the dungeon'. By this time Orson has gotten to know Jamison quite well and its clear that he has a crush on her.

There's also another child in this Tess, the daughter of XO who has a reputation as a trouble maker. She's already got a problem with prescription drugs and is driven to school in a driverless car. In an act of rebellion she glues a traffic cone to the hood, which paralyzes it there and causes all of the adults to be clueless. This is one of the funniest scenes in the series so far.

If there's a flaw in The Audacity to this point its that it has yet to figure out how to use its impressive cast to its full potential. Paul Adelstein, who plays Joanne's current husband is a psychiatrist who caters to so many of the wealthy by diagnosing them with spectrum disorders. While he frequently seems to be a good husband the writers haven't decided whether he has empathy or is clueless in his own way.  Simon Helberg, who plays Martin, should be in his element here as someone trying to design a virtual friend for teens yet basically he's had nothing to do in two episodes. By contrast Zack Galifiankis has done a lot in the two episodes as Carl Bardolph, one of Joanne's other patients, whose issues seem more genuine but who is listed as a guest star and you wish there was more of him and less of the regulars.

Yet despite these flaws I think The Audacity shows more promise then those on the internet might be inclined to give it at first glance. I realize that given the mood of the country these days and how much tech has done to create a satire set in the Valley might well seem not only in bad taste but less bizarre then real life. But I don't hold with the argument of bad timing, considering that in the last decade we've had to endure so many bleak and miserable dystopian series that Hollywood is clearly doing to mirror their distaste at the America we live in.  If anything that so much of The Audacity is spent with those teenagers are just as neglected as those who are far worse off is the kind of story we need more of in our society.  Nor do I buy the idea that we're not prepared to laugh at the fictional antics of the rich and powerful considering that's essentially all comedy is basically done only at those of the rich and powerful. And frankly I find the jokes on this show far funnier then much of what I've seen on late night over the last few years too.

Don't get me wrong: The Audacity is not a masterpiece by the standards of AMC's best dramas. But the fact is, given everything that's been hitting cable over the last few years, there's something bold about the fact that AMC in particular is willing to experiment again with the kind of bold programming it did when it was at its peak in the 2010s.  Even if it ends up being a failure there's something, well, audacious about the fact that they're willing to give two seasons for a very black comedy. That should be admired if nothing else.

My score: 3.5 stars.

Beef Is Finally Back For A Second Season

 

Like the entire world I fell in love with Lee Sung Jin's Beef is the spring of 2023. The fact that the show had a predominantly Korean and Asian American cast did nothing to stop me from immediately identifying with the theme Sung Jin established of how anger and emotion cause to spiral in directions that lead us to do things we might not think we're capable of but that in our hearts we all could do. I named it the fifth best show of 2023 and celebrated every single award it won particular for the incredible leads of Ali Wong and Steven Yeun.

Naturally the show was renewed for a second season and Sung Jin made it clear from the start that it was going to be a completely different cast. This was in my opinion the correct move as so many brilliant limited series frequently fall in the trap of thinking that they can keep the magic going with the same cast the following year. I also approved of his cast for the next season who he announced as two of the most brilliant actors of this century: Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac. I didn't know until I watched the first two episodes (the new season finally dropped Thursday) that Sung Jin was trying a completely different approach to how he dealt with the themes he'd started in Season 2. In it he decided to show the ramifications of an argument but this time it was between a married couple who are played by Isaac and Mulligan and how it is viewed – and more importantly filmed -  by a younger twenty something couple played by two superb actors in their own right: Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny.

There are similarities between the conflict: like In Season 1 it deals with the struggle between two people who are struggling economically and a seemingly wealthier couple who themselves only have the appearance of economic success but in fact are similar dependent are far wealthier people. In this case Isaac and Mulligan play Joshua and Lindsay who work at a California country club in positions where they seem to have wealth and power. Spaeny and Melton play Ashley and Austin two millennials-Gen Z who are struggling with working class issues, they don't have health insurance and they're not making ends meet. They have no idea that their bosses are not only in the same economically bad position as them but have no more job security then they do. Nor do they realize that the fight that catch them in is just another in a long series of signs that their marriage is on its last legs but neither one can pull the trigger on it.

Now's where I tell you that, unlike in Season 1, all four of the leads are white people. (Melton's character, as in real life, is half-Korean.)That may have seemed obvious if you know who the actors are but I can imagination that for those who loved Season 1 because of how much it looked at a minority group that has struggled for representation onscreen, to change it to just looking at a bunch of angry white people might seem like Sung Jin is selling out. That's not the case. In fact I'd argue he's doing something he couldn't have really done as much in Season 1. Because of the increasing polarized America the first season of Beef resonated even more because it dealt with a minority that's had to struggle far more in this country as opposed to white people. That's why the figure that was seen as the true heavy of Beef was a seemingly progressive white woman played by Maria Bello, who was very much a member of the very rich and was cosplaying at being open-minded and loving.

The second season of Beef tests our sympathies by setting so much of the show at a country club where the rich and elite gather to play and treat both the managers that Josh and Lindsay represent with the exact same contempt they do those that Austin and Ashley do. These people are the real one percent and they basically see all four of these people as the help if they see them at all. This is the same theme that the first season of Beef visited but by looking at it through white people Sung Jin is making the same point as before: everyone is looking at the person a few rungs higher as the villain when none of them are really looking at the very top of the food chain. One of the better jokes is that the two younger people talk about late-stage capitalism as the villain and Austin wants to try and do it the right way and talk about reading books and voting. Ashley  just wants to blackmail Joshua and Lindsay because they're what she considers late stage capitalism and this is the shortest distance between two points.

Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan are two of the greatest actors working today. Twelve years ago the two of them starred in Inside Llewyn Davis; Isaac played the title role; Mulligan his more successful sister. There's a parallel in their marriage between the relationship in Llewyn Davis;  here Lindsay was an heiress from Britain and she clearly resents that he's dragged her down, causing her to lose her ambitions as well as much of her money.  The fight that takes place is caused for many reasons, both career wise and sexual. In the Season 2 premiere Lindsay complains they haven't had sex in a year. Going in we don't know what caused this drift but we see Joshua pleasuring himself to pornography online; something he's clearly been spending a lot of money on. Lindsay seems to be considering cheating on her husband yet again but that actually seems like a cover for a British noble she still follows on social media.

What makes both of these actors so ideally cast, apart from both their talent and former on-screen pairing, is that both have an equal measure of parallels of threatening and awkwardness. Isaac's height and build frequently make him look imposing (it's why he's part of both the Marvel and Star Wars franchise) but just as frequently there's someone whose uncomfortable in his own skin. Mulligan has a long history of playing characters who seem frail but are far stronger then they look beneath the surface: something that was clear with her breakout role in An Education and was made most clear in arguably her best role to date on film Cassandra in Promising Young Woman. Both of these elements play out perfectly in the early segments: in public they can be one thing and in private something far darker.

Spaeny and Melton have both been working in Hollywood for nearly a decade; Spaeny has worked in serious projects both on film and TV; in the latter she had roles in Mare of Easttown before breaking big in 2024 where she worked with Sofia Coppola, Alex Garland and starred in Alien: Romulus. She has a common thread of playing seemingly frail character. Melton played Reggie on Riverdale  but has occasionally done deeper roles, most controversially playing the teenage lover of Julianne Moore in the controversial Todd Haynes film May December. Melton's role in his most famous works serves him well as Austin: he's playing both the idea of teenage heartthrob who's aged out of his prominence but still believes in the ideals of love. Spaeny's seeming frailty with a misplaced sense of toughness also works well for her as Ashley. All four are contenders for Emmys in both lead and supporting acting awards right off the bat.

Another critical way that Sung Jin subverts things is how it goes out of its way to have both the female characters using bullying tactics to get things done in their own way. Ashley sees no problem in blackmailing Josh from going from the beverage cart to a higher up manager spot even though she didn't even graduate high school and has no ability to do anything that broad. She doesn't think once about getting anything for Austin for the first time, does everything wrong from the start, demands Austin essentially steal clothes for her (which he refuses to do) and only needs to receive token praise to do whatever Josh asks.  Josh himself refers to her an entitle, unqualified Gen Z who pays no attention to detail and has no problem manipulating her (more on that). She then decides to try and cozy up to the new owner of the club by saying her boyfriend is half Korean and that he's a physical therapist, which he absolutely isn't. As far as she's concerned if anything goes wrong she'll just blackmail Josh. Ashley really thinks the world should work without her trying.

Lindsay is no peach herself, though we're more sympathetic to her given how much she feels like an outsider at the club. She wants to perform surgery to look better for someone she's still flirting with online and essentially tries to first nudge a local tennis pro and when he won't give her a discount (which he can't afford) she blackmails him by saying he's sexually harassing the women at the club. "And you're making me feel uncomfortable to," she says casually. The tennis pro then immediately gives in because he knows how this work.

Both Josh and Austin are at least initially more sympathetic. Josh has been essentially embezzling money from his family to pay off various debts the two of them have but its also clear how financially precarious their position. There's also the very real way the male entrepreneurs not only bully Josh into doing what they want and openly talking about wealth as if it's nothing to them. Josh is trying to sell off some of the things they have to pay debts and he's finally realizing that trying to do things the honest way just isn't working. So he decides to engage in a series of scams that he intends to blame on Ashley, who clearly has no idea what she's doing or that she'd have to work this hard. Lindsey is so impressed by this that she openly kisses Josh and it looks like they might have emotionally connected for the first time.

After two episodes Austin is still the character who seems the most human. He was clearly a former athlete of some note once and now his career has failed. He's been trying to make it doing virtual workouts for rich people and that's going nowhere for him. He's clearly more in love with Ashley then she is with him and is willing to do anything for her. He still seems to have some kind of code of ethics that is driving him that to this point none of the other lead characters have.

Its worth noting there is still a Korean influence. The club that everyone works at has been bought by Chairwoman Park, someone who controls 2 percent of Korea's GDP. It's still not clear why she's bought this particular club but we also see in a sense her marriage is as much a joke as anything else. She married a man twenty years younger then her and she's basically left him in Korea. When he calls her in despair because he's killed a patient she can't really be bothered thinking he bought another gold Rolls-Royce. How this will play out later on I'm not sure yet but I suspect it will be yet another argument how the truly wealthy always evade the penalties of the law, no matter what country they live in.

Understandably the second season of Beef has not been as positively reviewed as the first by viewers even though critics have generally responded to it enthusiastically. I find it just as darkly entertaining, frequently hysterical and even more bleak then the first season was.  But because it looks at the white  working class of America as well as the more overt versions of the generational, gender and often political stereotypes – and just as frequently finds them things people use to get ahead or don't comprehend -  it very likely makes those same viewers more uncomfortable then they did during Season 1 when it was dealing with darker themes. The characters in Season 2 are just as desperate and angry as the ones in Season 1 and just as at mercy of the forces of wealth. But it was easier to applaud when it was with Korean and Asian American actors fighting each other instead of having Poe Dameron  jerking off to online porn and Reggie Mantle looking like he's gone to pot.

But for me it confirms why I truly loved Beef the first time around: even though I wasn't Korean, I recognized the emotional realities of the two leads as being universal. Here Sung Jin has changed the format from ten half hour long episodes to eight much longer ones, is dealing with images from European art rather than Asian and is more addressing the economic realities of the world then he did in Season 2. But that same rage that drives the leads is present here, always beneath the surface, always done against the wrong targets, always stopping those involves from recognizing that they have more in common with their opponents then they really thin. It might not be as comfortable as the last time but that's always the point.

My score: 4.5 stars.

Theodore White on The Campaign Trail: Nelson Rockefeller in 1960

 

 

In America In Search of Itself Theodore White does what so many people do at the end of their careers: he starts picking his favorites. In this case after  covering seven campaign trails from 1956-1980 in which by his own accounting he met 'a score of would be Presidents' he choses those who in his words 'seemed most qualified for the leadership denied him."

He names four men who are among the most significant political forces of that period of time: Nelson Rockefeller, Hubert Humphrey, Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver.

In one of my earliest series on politicians I covered Humphrey's long career in politics in detail and quote White's Making of the President series at great length as to advocate for it. Kefauver only appears in America in Search of Itself and while I may very well cover his career in a later series there isn't enough material on White to deal with it. That leaves Rockefeller and Stevenson.

Because Rockefeller was present in the first four books in White's series and was critical to Presidential campaigns in the first three it would seem beneficial to begin with him. I have long considered writing a series on him for multiple reasons, not the least of which I'm a resident of New York and Rockefeller is one of the longest and most successful governors of that sate of either party. For the purposes of this article Rockefeller's significance is that he was a controversial figure of the party when it was about to reach arguably the most critical point in its century long history.  He represented what had been the main center of power for more than two decades: the so-called Eastern Establishment, one that had given the party respectability if not the power it wanted after FDR landslided Alf Landon in 1936 and many believed the Republican Party would go extinct. This was the more moderate-centrist wing of the party, one that was anathema to the increasingly conservative wing in much of it.

To understand Rockefeller's failure to achieve the Republican nomination for President in three consecutive Presidential cycles explains what the party was like during that period and why the conservative movement began and would eventually take over the party so thoroughly that by the time Ronald Reagan was nominated for President in 1980 Rockefeller, who had passed away the following year, was not even mentioned at the convention.

So let's start where White did in the Making of the President 1960. This is how Rockefeller describes the party as he knew it 1960 – and in the first paragraph he refers to 'the spectacular Republican schizophrenia which has baffled all observers:

Within the Republican Party are combined a stream of loftiest American idealism and a stream of the coarsest American greed. These two political streams have mixed their waters from the days of the Party's birth when the undeniably pure New England abolitionists let their conscience be joined with the skills of some of the most practical veterans of the old Whigs to form a party that would end slavery.

He discusses its long proud structure, how the party irrevocably split during the Roosevelt-Taft civil war of 1912 which left the liberal wing in exile save for occasional victories – with the exception of New York state. He talks about Eisenhower's take over because of that Eastern establishment that gave them the Presidency in 1952 after twenty years in exile. And he makes it clear that by the 1958 midterms the Party has sunk to its lowest ebbs since the 1936 FDR landslide.  It is not just that Congress that is under a Democratic near supermajority in both houses; it is nationwide. The Republicans now have just 14 governorships and control only 7 of 48 state legislatures. (Alaska and Hawaii wouldn't officially join the Union until 1959.)

Richard Nixon, Eisenhower's Vice President, is considering his campaign for the nomination which will almost certainly be his given the state of just how few viable challengers there are in the Party. He knows there are only two Republicans who have come out on the 1958 midterms with the power to challenge him. Barry Goldwater, who has just won a massive reelection to the Senate in Arizona and is already the favorite of the more conservative branch of the party. The other is Nelson Rockefeller, who managed to win the governorship of New York by more than 573,000 votes over the Democratic incumbent Averill Harriman.

This is how White first describes Rockefeller personally, particularly compared to the solitary Nixon:

"(Rockefeller's attitude) is one of total security, total confidence, total cheeriness. Born into what is America's closest counterpart to a royal family, raised within the walls of the greatest private fortune known to man, Rockefeller has escaped the weight of wealth that makes all but one of his four brothers and sister such shy, withdrawn, reticent people, instead the assurance of wealth has made him radiant. Rockefeller is, in image and in actual person, one of the sunniest, most expansive and outgoing personalities of American politics….His constant smile is genuine, his great bear hug an authentic expression of delight in meeting people.

Rockefeller had already served in some form of politics under FDR, Truman and Eisenhower, but by early 1956 he had quit the administration out of his belief that it was drifting from crisis to crisis. He had served in appointive office for years but realized 'only the people, voting at the polls, give a man true power in American government. For that reason in 1958 he ran for governor because it was 'an executive post to be won from the people directly. Not lost on him was the fact that as White puts it 'in 21 national elections from the end of the Civil War and 1948 no less then thirteen times did one or the other (and sometimes both) parties choose its Presidential candidate a governor or former governor of New York. These included both Roosevelts, Grover Cleveland and Tom Dewey, Eisenhower's predecessor as Republican nominee for President.

Rockefeller knew that the pressure was on the moment he was elected governor. He was going to be 52 in 1960 and if a Republican won, then served two terms, he would be 60 in 1968. More than that 'he disliked Richard Nixon and considered him incapable in the role of President'. (Boy was he on point.)

In December of 1959 Rockefeller began to explore his options and his fortune as White says, "made it a far more efficient headquarters then the Republican national headquarters.' And if was efficient: Rockefeller was doing an exploratory campaign not trying to launch one.

It makes clear what Rockefeller was exploring: concern for the welfare of the United States which even then White acknowledge was more important to the liberal progressive wing of the party. The second was the mechanics and acquisition of delegates (more important then primaries in 1960) and third financial exploration.

In it White is very much on point to how Republican politics worked even in 1960:

The regular wing of the Republican party depends for support on the executive class of great corporations… in fact, they control it.

Rockefeller knew that his personal fortune was more then enough to finance a Presidential campaign; it was, if anything, large enough to dwarf the Kennedy fortune that was about to be launched to gain the Democratic nomination.  But he also knew even if he was successful, it would be politically worthless – and unlike so many wealthy Republican presidential candidates to come Rockefeller had the morality that he wasn't willing to buy it.  In any case he knew if business got behind Nixon he couldn't stand against him. So this part was important.

Rockefeller's business team then went to almost every major corporation, assuming that because they were the first family in business and because they had spent much of their fortune on funding the GOP, the favors would be returned. They were met with courtesy but the doors were closed.

As one of Rockefeller's in-group said in words of portent:

I'd always read these things Democrats say about us and thought they were naïve. But here was the club, not only against Nelson because he was a liberal but also committed to Nixon.

Business like Eisenhower and they believed Nixon would be good for business. More to the point Nelson's money hurt him – because he didn't need them.

Rockefeller made two scouting trips between October and December and the reaction was generally the same: the people liked him but the regulars who controlled the machinery ignored him.

So by mid-December the Rockefeller clan was ready for its report. Nixon had the regulars sewn up, the delegate brokers likewise and nothing from business.

Given the support he'd gotten on the trail Rockefeller might well have made contest of it had he taken the route of the primaries. But by this point he didn't want a primary fight, he actually wanted to be a good governor. So Rockefeller chose to take an approach that was almost impossible to think of today.

So on Christmas Eve Rockefeller read a statement:

"I believe…that the great majority of those will control the Republican nomination stand opposed to any contest for the nomination…Therefore any quest on my part for the nomination would entail a massive struggle in primary elections throughout the nation demanding so greatly of my time and energy would make impossible the fulfillment of my obligations as Governor of New York…My conclusion, therefore, is that I am not, and shall not be, a candidate for the nomination for the Presidency."

Everyone in Rockefeller's inner circle knew that this wasn't entirely true. Rockefeller didn't want to give Nixon a fight and knew if he did so the party would go more to the right. Besides there were seven months to the convention.

And the Nixon campaign was anything but thrilled by this. They'd planned for a primary battle against Rockefeller in which Nixon would be the active campaigner and Rockefeller the punching bag. They saw it as a way to enliven the spring, get the party invigorated for the fall campaign, take media time away from the Democrats "and above all, tune up the personnel and human machinery they would need for the fall election. All this was now denied them."

Rockefeller was a good governor for the next five months.  Then on May 1^st 1960 events began to intervene. Francis Gary Powers, while flying his U-2 plane over Russia, was shot down and captured the first acknowledged American spy seized by the Soviets. A summit that was scheduled between Eisenhower and Khrushchev collapsed before it began, ending the possibility of a disarmament summit. Relationship with the new leader of Cuba Fidel Castro collapsed as he welcome the support of the Soviets. All this and much more led to a decided shadow over the Eisenhower administration and its Vice President.

White would write about this affected every candidate for President still in the race. And Rockefeller began to speak out. Most notably he was eligible for a draft and his lieutenants then chose to freeze the state which at that point commanded the biggest delegate prize from Nixon to an uncommitted posture.

This movement, unknown to contemporaries but far more common then, had been used by the Democrats just eight years earlier to pick Adlai Stevenson, who hadn't sought the nomination, as their nominee on the third ballot and Wendell Willkie in 1940. White mentions this had to be part of Rockefeller's thinking but has no clear idea of anyone other than Rockefeller himself actually believed it a possibility however remote. Yet even then he refused to say if he was running for President.

Then on June 8^th he issued a statement in which he challenged the Republican party as being unable to meet the needs, issued a nine-point program which for all intents and purposes repudiated the Eisenhower administration. He gave a series of speeches over the next five weeks in the leadup to the convention which was for all intents and purposes "open warfare with the leadership of his own party and implicit denunciation of its conduct over the last eight years."

And while it was too late to realistically do anything there was clearly a public demand for it. A movement to Draft Rockefeller was formed and the RNC would be overwhelmed by telegrams and mail from the people demanding the delegates nominate Rockefeller.

Compared to the Democratic convention in LA there was no real suspense over who would become the nominee. The excitement as White makes clear, was over the platform.  It was being designed by a man named Charles Percy then a Republican businessman who in six years would be elected to the Senate in Illinois. Percy had worked on the platform for the past several months.

However when he flew to New York he was completely unprepared for the force that was Rockefeller:

Mr. Rockefeller had a wide range of national concerns, care for the aged, rights for the Negroes (sic) stimulation of capital investment for growth of the economy and national defense…most notably the Missile gap."

There was a problem:

In essence, Mr. Rockefeller insisted that the platform on defense cry: EMERGENCY!

But in essence the Republican administration of the country denied emergency.

White acknowledges something no politician would

In the hard life of politics it is well known that no platform nor any program advanced by either major American party has any purpose beyond expressing emotion…All platforms are meaningless: the program of either party is what lies in the vision and conscience of the candidate the party chooses to lead it…The platform committees are harmless exercises in both parties and flatter all the people appointed to platform committees, in the belief they are important.

(Perhaps certain people should have read this when they were so outraged that the 2020 and 2024 Republican conventions had no platforms. It was the inevitable end point.)

Percy spent the next early part of the convention trying to hammer out a compromise between the Nixon forces and Rockefeller's. Many of his own delegation -mostly from the more conservative upstate regions – were already annoyed by Rockefeller as governor and they knew that Nixon's nomination was a foregone conclusion. The question was how long could Rockefeller hold them before they broke to Nixon openly, thus humiliating the governor publicly.

On Thursday evening the Rockefeller delegation reviewed the draft of the platform and found it unsatisfactory. They demanded a floor fight and the possible of 'open civil war on the convention floor'. The following day Nixon called Herbert Brownell, one of the key strategist of Eisenhower's victory and a colleague of former governor Dewey. Brownell then called Rockefeller on behalf of Nixon to organize a meeting to discuss the platform, saying he agreed with all of Rockefeller's terms.

This meeting that took place in New York occurred in ignorance of the delegates in Chicago. What emerged was what White referred to as 'the 14 points compact of Fifth Avenue." The exact details are relevant more to historians: what matters for these purposes is what Rockefeller did afterwards.

He issued a statement in which he made it clear that he and Nixon had worked together to discuss the platform and where the two men agreed.

Two explosions took place simultaneously.  The most significant was in Chicago where the delegates on the committee were infuriated.  Back then there was already a belief that 'the Eastern Establishment' – then a code word for liberal as much for Republicans as Democrats – had conspired to force their values down the throats of so many Republicans. Barry Goldwater, already becoming their loudest voice, referred to it as 'the Munich of the Republican Party'.

Eisenhower was quieter but no less infuriated. For him this was a personal betrayal by a man who he had once considered a personal ally.

By Sunday the Republican convention was in chaos and Nixon was caught between the two extremes of the party as White said:

Unless the Nixon men demonstrated to Rockefeller that they could deliver a platform in the spirit of the Compact on Fifth avenue, Rockefeller could cry treachery and still take his fight to the floor. Yet if they rode roughshod over the platform committee, they would be expose to the outriders of Goldwater crying 'Treason' or 'Tyranny' from the right.

Eventually he came to take two critical positions that accommodated Rockefeller. What may have been the most costly, from an electoral standpoint,  was Rockefeller's position on civil rights. This was, it should be noted, a more advanced one then the Democrats because it advocated support for sit-ins and promised federal intervention to promote job equality.

White I should mention was very clear on how things were going to play out when it came to civil rights and the south:

If they adopt a civil rights program only moderately more restrained then the Democrats, the South can be there for the asking and with the South, if it comes permanent to Republican loyalties could come such solid addition of electoral strength that would make the Republicans again, as they were for half a century, the majority party of the nation and semipermanent stewards of the national executive power. Furthermore since the Northern Negro now votes habitually for the Democrats by overwhelming margins, why seek to outbid the Democrats where they cannot be outbid?

As we shall see, just four years later, that is exactly what Goldwater would do and it played out exactly as White said it would for the Republicans for the next sixty years. White is essentially saying what every single left-wing columnist has about what the GOP did after the 1964 election. But whereas they see it as purely a moral consideration and therefore evil, White sees it as 'one of trade: let us give the Northern Negro vote to the Democrats and we shall take the South to ourselves.'

White himself believes that by agreeing with Rockefeller on this it cost him the election, though he acknowledges Nixon couldn't decide whether to campaign for Northern Negro or Southern white and instead tried to get both. Say what you will about Nixon but he clearly learned that he had to choose one or the other and he chose one that he thought would win him the Presidency – and it did.

None of this concerned Rockefeller; he accepted the compromise and by Tuesday announced he was withdrawing from the race for President. What he didn't know was something White would tell us in the next volume.

Before the convention, they came to Goldwater, saying that they wanted to nominate him for President and that they could provide 300 delegates to do so on the first ballot. Barry Goldwater was many things but he was not idiot; he demanded those same conservatives give him the names of the delegates. They could only come up with 35, and he told them to back off. His address to the convention, with the famous words: “Let’s grow up, conservatives!” was less a declaration of interest for the Presidency and more of a warning to them about how they should do things going forward.

Nixon of course narrowly lost the election to Kennedy, seemingly ended his Presidential prospects for good. Rockefeller now believed he had a better chance for it – seemingly unaware of just how many enemies he'd made the first time around.

In the next article in this series I will deal with Rockefeller's plans for the 1964 nomination – and how his personal life would do as much damage as the upcoming civil war in the GOP would.