Gary Hart's Electoral Failures Part 2: 1984 And His Battle Against Mondale For the Democratic Nomination

 

Before we begin, full disclosure on my part. I have always had a deep and abiding respect for Walter Mondale, far more than I ever had for George McGovern. Both men were the victims of the two greatest electoral landslides in history – and because Mondale was Carter’s vice president, he was actually a victim one that was just as devastating for the Democrats. But those who simply dismiss him as another failed Democratic candidate define him by his most infamous defeat rather than what he accomplished before that.

Mondale was one of the great liberal Democrats to emerge from Minnesota as it transitioned away from a Republican stronghold to the force in Democratic politics it has been today. He was drawn into politics, like many in Minnesota, because of Hubert Humphrey and was part of his famous campaign to get a civil rights statement on the Democratic Platform in 1948. The two men were friends for the rest of Humphrey’s life and even served together in the Senate during Humphrey second stint starting in 1970. It was fitting because when Humphrey left the Senate to become LBJ’s Vice President Mondale would take his vacated seat.

Like Humphrey he was always invested in civil rights and was a loyal member of the Democratic Party on every battle for liberalism. But by the time he came to the Senate America was now fully invested in the Vietnam War and the great liberal coalition that had been in existence since the New Deal was beginning to fracture. He worked hard for his friend in the 1968 campaign for the White House and never truly forgave what he considered LBJ’s betrayal of his running mate. He was one of the major fighters for liberal causes and was one of the voices who managed to change the rules for cloture in the Senate from 2/3 to 3/5 of the Senate to kill a filibuster. It was only the third time in history that the Senate had changed the rules on the filibuster and while he was troubled by the way the Republicans were using in his autobiography he held firm to the idea that repealing it was not the solution.

By 1975 after Nixon’s resignation many thought Mondale was a contender for the White House. But after nearly a year of touring the country he made it clear he wouldn’t make a bid. However when Jimmy Carter won the nomination Mondale was on the short-list for his chose for Vice President.

For all the issues with Carter both at the time and historically few argue that he set a high standard for selecting the Vice President. He knew that in order to win the White House he was going to need someone from Washington, almost certainly from the Senate and from the North. His first choice had been Frank Church from Idaho, who had beaten Carter in four primaries late in the race for the Democratic nomination. He held meetings with Church and six other prominent Democrats  Other choices included John Glenn of Ohio, Edmund Muskie of Maine and Henry Jackson of Washington.

Carter engaged first by having his staff vet every candidate and then a month later met with all of them. Mondale flew to Georgia and the two men had a civil conversation. Both men quickly formed a rapport and Carter eventually settled on it. Mondale was very active in the campaign, performing well in the first Vice Presidential Debate and his position on the ticket as a Northern Liberal was no doubt helpful to balance the doubts some voters had about the Southern centrist. Mondale’s presence carried Minnesota and probably Wisconsin in an election that Carter received 297 electoral votes to Ford’s 240.

Mondale was critical to Carter’s presidency in a way that no Vice President had been to that point. He was vital in helping provide an Amicus brief for what would be known as the Bakke case, which helped make affirmative action the law of the land by the Supreme Court (for a while) He helped try to work through the Carter agenda through Congress and acknowledged that he played a role in its appearance of ineffectualness. And in a major move he met with the prime minister of South Africa to make it very clear of the administration’s firm disapproval of their policy of apartheid. He also took critical roles in foreign policy, meeting in human rights on the Philippines and trade talks with China.

There’s an argument that the process Carter and Mondale set should be the gold standard of a working Vice President in the new era. And its clear that successful Democratic Presidents  - Bill Clinton with Al Gore and Barack Obama with Joe Biden – have learned how to use their Vice Presidents better than Republican President have during this same period. And after Mondale heard Reagan’s famous line in his inauguration speech: “Government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem” he resolved that he would run against Reagan in 1984.

In a sense Mondale was one of the last bastions of the old liberal order that had fallen with the Reagan Revolution. And while his battle ended up being disastrous and no doubt led to the Democrats officially abandoning it from that point on, it was a more noble cause and based more on a man who had fought his whole life – and with more success – then McGovern ever had. (McGovern himself would attempt to run for the Democratic nomination in 1984, but his campaign quickly fell apart.)

Mondale himself had a role in setting the rules. In July of 1981, under the leadership of Jim Hunt the commission of Presidential Nomination was Founded. The commission sought to increase the power of elected officials. This commission allocated 568 delegates, 14 percent of the total, to unelected superdelegates. 411 of the superdelegates were elected officials.

From the start Mondale’s campaign capitalized on this and gained support for Mondale from members of Congress. Mondale faced off against seven candidates for the nomination.

In June of 1983 Senator Alan Cranston of California won a series of straw polls in Alabama, California and Wisconsin. Mondale won a straw poll in Maine. There were many major names in the campaign but eventually it came down to three men: Mondale, Jesse Jackosn and Gary Hart.

Hart announced his run in February of 1983. He was so unknown that those who covered his campaign called him Gary Who? His recognition was less than 1 percent. Hart decided to campaign in New Hampshire, starting in September of that year. Hart criticized Mondale as an ‘old-fashioned’ Democrat who represented ‘failed policies’ of the past – the kind of argument that would not have been out of place with the McGovern campaign against Hubert Humphrey twelve years earlier. Mondale was better organized and better financed. But Hart had been down this road before.

Ironically for a man who would later take on the burden of being a deeply flawed candidate who seemed ill-equipped to understand politics Hart’s early campaign for the Democratic nomination showed a man who not only knew how to play the game but was playing it better than so many of the pros. The fact that so many of the states involved caucuses – the very area Hart cut his teeth in with McGovern – helped play to his advantage almost from the start. Compared to Mondale, who often gave the appearance on the campaign trail as stiff and stodgy Hart could make a convincing argument he was a new kind of Democrat.

It’s worth looking at Hart from the perspective of Mondale. As he wrote in his autobiography The Good Fight:

“Hart was talented, handsome and well-spoken and he claimed the represent the next generation of the party, a generation of new ideas… Early in the fall of 1983 we hired the pollster Peter Hart to survey New Hampshire voters on a set of hypothetical Democratic candidates…by an overwhelming margin, respondents chose a ‘Hart’ type candidate: young, Western and full of new ideas. From that day, we stopped assuming I was the front-runner and realized that, in effect, we were going to lose.

Hart’s first line of attack was that I represented the old crowd, the special interests that hung around the Democratic Party and that he represented the new generation. I never bought it and I don’t think his case ever went far with most Americans. It’s true that the party at the time was organized into caucuses – the unions, the teachers, environmental groups, women’s organizations. They all met separately and separately endorsed a candidate and every candidate sought those endorsements…That’s the funny thing – only after Hart failed to win their endorsement did they become the ‘special interests’. Until that moment, they were the greatest people he had ever known.”

Mondale could not have better encapsulated the hypocrisy of every primary campaign that has existed, Democratic or Republican in the last half-century. It makes one truly question all of those primary campaign where candidates, whether they be Bernie Sanders or Mitt Romney, Trump or Elizabeth Warren, will proudly argue that they are against the ‘special interests.’  Mondale shines a light on this arguing that this may just be purely a campaign strategy.

But Mondale admits the charge did draw blood and it ended up showing as much in Iowa. Mondale managed a sweeping victory in the caucus with 49 percent of the vote. But Hart finished second with 16 percent when no other candidate could manage more than single digits.

It was in the New Hampshire primary that all of Hart’s skills both organizational and personal came to full flower. He’d spent a lot of time on the ground there but it wasn’t until his second-place finish that the media – and the public – took a real look. And during those two weeks between Iowa and New Hampshire everything seemed to work for him.

One of the iconic moments in campaign history came when Hart attended an axe-throwing contest. These are the kind of small ball campaigning that every politician tries to engage in when they are in a primary state. They tend to always look awkward at best and horrible at worst. A legendary story came when George Romney, running what would be a doomed attempt for the GOP nomination in 1968 went to a bowling alley. He knocked over the first nine pins with two balls. He then joked that he would stay around until he knocked down the final pin. It took him more than thirty attempts to do so and it seemed to sum up everything the public thought about George Romney.

The same started with Hart. He threw an axe at a log and it went over the log by a small margin. Hart asked for another chance. And on his very next throw he hit the bulls-eye. Everybody cheered. “The first one was Iowa,” he told the onlookers. “The second one’s going to be New Hampshire.”

Things played out better in one of his first national broadcasts. Asked about his prospects Hart said he was hoping for a strong finish. “But what happens if you win?” he was pressed. And Hart burst into laughter, as if the idea was as baffling to him as it was the media.

Then Hart managed to win New Hampshire with 37 percent of the vote to Mondale’s 27 percent, utterly shattering the national perception. By that point John Glenn, who many thought would be the front runner was basically out of contention and while George McGovern stayed in the race until Massachusetts (the only state he carried in 1972 as the Democratic nominee) it was down to Mondale, Hart and Jesse Jackson.

For the rest of March Hart kept moving forward. He won the Wyoming and Maine caucus, Mondale took New Hampshire. But the problems with Hart’s campaign were already becoming clear. Mondale’s campaign was better funded and Hart hadn’t been able to file for adequate delegate slates on many of the states and the rules of proportion could be strange. On March 13^th – in what was then Super Tuesday Hart managed to beat Mondale in Florda, getting 41 percent of the vote to Mondale’s 35. But because of the delegate slates Mondale got 57 delegates and Hart only got 36. By contrast in Georgia Mondale narrowly beat Hart but Hart got 28 delegates to Mondale’s 24. Jesse Jackson managed to get 17.

This led to one of the bizarre twists of the campaign. On Super Tuesday Hart managed to win seven primaries and caucuses. Mondale by contrast managed to win just Alabama and Rhode Island. Yet somehow the television broadcaster ruled that Mondale had ended up ‘winning Super Tuesday’ something that the political journalists couldn’t fathom. And yet somehow frontrunner status went back to Mondale.

Hart’s organizational strength paid off mostly in the caucuses as opposed to primaries. Hart actually managed to win 26 states to Mondale’s 22. (Jesse Jackson won South Carolina and D.C). But in what was a pattern eerily similar to McGovern’s run in 1972, Mondale did far better in the larger states than Hart’s campaign managed. Mondale swamped Hart in Illinois and New York, outflanked him in Pennsylvania, managed a dead heat in Ohio and swamped him in Texas. Only in California – the same state McGovern narrowly won in 1972 – did Hart managed a significant victory. (He also carried New Mexico and South Dakota; the same states McGovern did that day. Mondale managed to win New Jersey and West Virginia.

Hart’s problems were summed up famously in a televised debate when Mondale referred to Hart’s new ideas with the iconic line: “Where’s the Beef?” But during that same debate he made a mistake that was almost entirely unnoticed. Asked what he would do if an unidentified airplane flew over the Iron Curtain from a Warsaw Pact nation, Hart said that he would send up an Air Force plane and instruct them to determine whether or not it was an enemy plane by looking in the cockpit window. John Glenn, who knew of where he spoke, stated this was physically impossible.

Hart continued to show his flaws up until the last moment. Before the primaries ended and Mondale clearly had enough to win the primary Hart was maintaining that unpledged superdelegates that had claimed support for Mondale would shift to his side if he swept the final day. That very well might have happened had he not committed a major faux pas while on the campaign trail in California.

Trying to make a joke he said: “the bad news was that he and his wife had to campaign separately. The good news for her is that she campaigns in California while I get to campaign in New Jersey. When his wife, who clearly had more savvy than him said that she got to hold a koala bear Hart replied, “I won’t tell you what I got to hold samples from a toxic waste dump.” Hart had been leading in the polls in New Jersey by as much at fifteen points. The vote totals aren’t clear but the delegate count is Mondale received 104 delegates. Hart just one.

On July 11^th in what must have been a blow to him McGovern endorsed Mondale and released his 23 delegates. It was icing on the cake.

One of the ironies about Hart’s run was that he must have felt the same way the Democratic elders did after he had helped McGovern win the nomination 12 years previous. The overall popular vote was extremely close. Mondale received just under 7 million votes at a little more than 38 percent of total votes cast, while Hart received 6.5 million votes and just a shade under 36 percent. But Mondale managed to win 1929 delegates in what amounted to 22 primaries and caucuses  to Hart’s 1164 in 26 primaries and caucuses. And there was a sense of unfairness among the Hart voters: a later poll indicated that a third of the people who Hart supporters in the primary would vote for Reagan in the general election. That probably didn’t make a huge difference in the final count, however,  considering that Mondale lost by nearly nineteen million votes and only carried Minnesota and DC.

Mondale it should be noted did make some progress compared to McGovern. He was trailing Reagan by 25 points after the convention and managed to lost by ‘only’ 17 points. And he does deserve credit for being the first Presidential candidate to nominate a woman for the Vice Presidency. That it didn’t end up helping his electoral prospects doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve the credit for it: Kamala Harris almost certainly wouldn’t have gotten to where she is if Mondale hadn’t been willing to go out on a limb for Geraldine Ferraro.

Since Hart became the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 1988 due both his coming up short for the nomination in 1984 and Mondale’s massive defeats, it’s worth at least speculating on what could have happened had Hart been the nominee in 1984.The obvious answer is very little: just like Nixon in 1972 Reagan was almost certainly going to win 1984 regardless of his Democratic opponent. One could also argue the flaws that did much to go against Hart even before the Monkey Business affair in 1987 would have hurt him just as much in 1984. But rather than deal with those problems, let’s engage in some magical thinking.

The first problem is the exact same problems that plagued the McGovern campaign in 1972 were just as present for Hart’s primary campaign. With the sole example of Georgia Hart didn’t win a single Southern primary or caucus. Combined with his problems with the major electoral prizes he would have the same trouble McGovern did. But Hart does have one major strength that McGovern didn’t that could have worked for him – and perhaps shifted the Democrats going forward.

In the history of Presidential politics there has never been a major party nominee for a Western state. (Texas has always crossed the border between Southern and Western and by the time Nixon was nominated by the Republicans, no one could say it had the same values as Wyoming or Idaho.) Hart came the closest of any candidate from a Western state to winning the nomination. And it is worth noting that he had managed to sweep all of the Western caucuses or primaries, including New Mexico.

Ever since Eisenhower’s landslide in 1952 with the exception the 1964 LBJ landslide the West has been exclusively Republican territory. It has taken until only the past decade for the Democrats to make progress in Western states at all when Joe Biden managed to carry Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado along with the three Pacific Coast states. It is at least possible Hart could have managed to carry all of them and certain other Western states. It would have been easier for a man with his Western credentials to carry states such as Idaho and Montana then any other Democrat since then and many of those states did still have a Western based. And while the South might have been out of reach he probably could have carried quite a few of the New England states and the Midwest states that returned to the Democratic fold. Other states that were still in the Democratic column  such as Massachusetts, New York, West Virginia and Hawaii would have gone his way too. I can’t, however, see California going to Hart: it wouldn’t shift to its reliably blue status until the Clinton years.

There’s also the fact that a third of Hart’s supporters claimed they voted for Reagan in 1984 and while that may have only amounted to two to three million votes that’s not insignificant. And more important would have been the fact of youth. Hart would have been the youngest candidate for a major party since JFK in 1960 and he would have been running against the man who to that point was the oldest nominee by a major party. Reagan might have been able to land a punch at the debate about inexperience but he wouldn’t have wanted to argue youth to a man who was a quarter of a century younger than him. It worked against Walter Mondale because Mondale was a Washington fixture for so long; it wouldn’t have had the same resonance against a man who was campaign on New ideas – something that Hart could have used to much better effect against Reagan.

And unlike the McGovern campaign of 1972 Hart would have had far more of the establishment behind his campaign than McGovern did. Hart had not isolated the Democratic elders the same way McGovern did in his campaign and he’d done a far better job at reaching voters than McGovern had. Hart was also more popular with the press at the time and far more photogenic.

None of this I should be clear would have likely led to a Democratic victory in November because of the biggest problem the Democrats had in Presidential elections from 1968 until the end of the 20^th century. With the exception of Carter’s win in 1976, no Democratic candidate was able to get more than 46 percent of the popular vote. Clinton was only able to get 43 percent of the popular vote in 1992 and almost certainly won because of Ross Perot’s strong showing. (Clinton benefited from incumbency in 1996 so I left that one out.) Humphrey had only gotten 43 percent of the vote in 1968; Jimmy Carter got 41 percent when he ran against Reagan in 1980 (in fairness John Anderson’s third party run ciphered votes from his campaign more than Reagan’s) and Dukakis’s came up with just 45.5 percent. None of these Democrats lost as horribly as McGovern or Mondale and Clinton was able to win but it does show how unpopular Democratic Presidential candidates were until Clinton’s second term.

It’s very hard to see Hart coming within anymore than ten points of Reagan regardless of how good a campaign he ran. Remember that the theme for Reagan’s reelection was: “It’s Morning in America” the most positive campaign slogan and approach that has happened in modern history. Reagan was still immensely popular and he had an enormous ability to deflect criticism. Hart could have made inroads against Reagan that Mondale couldn’t but I doubt even he believes that would have translated to a win in November.

However if he had managed a closer race he might very well have taken the shine off Reagan’s halo both at the time and in the eyes of Republicans. So much of Reagan’s legacy among the Republican party is not so much his accomplishments but his electoral mandate from the voters. As I wrote before when you received 1015 electoral votes against 59 by your opponents its hard to argue with that form of Republicanism. However if Reagan’s reelection had been closer – had he been held to under 400 electoral votes or fewer in 1984 – then it has the appearance of the same kind of wins Eisenhower received.

That argument would have held weight based on how Congress turned out. It’s worth remembering that Reagan’s landslide didn’t lead to a Republican majority in Congress: the Republicans only gained 16 seats in the House and actually lost two in the Senate. Had Hart been the nominee, it’s conceivable those margins would have been even smaller. Given the narrowness of some Republican wins they might have taken the Senate back. And considering that the only gain Republicans made in the Senate was Mitch McConnell’s very narrow win in Kentucky, the national repercussion would be felt to this day had he lost.

And had Reagan had both Houses of Congress be under Democratic control for all of his second term rather than just the last two years of it  much of his domestic agenda might very well have been died before it got started. Considering that one of them was legislation to preempt the FCC decision to repeal the Fairness Doctrine – which Reagan famously vetoed in 1987 – the world might well have be a different place had Democrats had a larger majority starting in 1985.

None of this would have been in the minds of most Democrats in 1984. All that mattered were three distinct but related factors.

1.      Mondale’s sweeping defeat meant that the brand of liberalism he had spent his career preaching was no longer capable of winning the Presidency. This was proven by the fact Mondale had gotten just over 37.5 million votes for President while Democratic Congressional candidates had gotten just under 43 million votes nationwide.

2.      Had someone else been at the head of the ticket the Democrats would have likely taken both Houses of Congress.

3.      1988 was going to be a Democratic year.

 

The first two were theoretical; the last was not. Aside from the era of FDR, the last time a political party had won three consecutive elections was from 1920 to 1928 and even that had been based more on the death of Warren Harding in 1923 which led to Coolidge’s assent.

And now the argument for Hart becoming President loomed large in everyone’s mind. Hart himself believed it. Rather than seek reelection in 1986, he chose to step down in order to seek the Presidency again. His successor Tim Wirth was one of eight new Democrats to win election in the 1986 midterms as the Democrats regained control of the Senate. Among those elected were Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Harry Reid of Nevada, both of whom would be future majority leaders in the Senate. It looked certain that the Democratic nominee for President would win the White House.

In the next article I will deal with the numerous character flaws of Gary Hart, how they set him up for trouble and how his own failings, not the press or the system ended his run for the Presidency in 1988 – sort of.

 

Constant Reader September 2024: You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott

 

One of the first books I reviewed for this segment was The Turnout what was then the most recent best-seller by Megan Abbott arguably one of the greatest writers of female-centric noir, a genre that has all but exploded in the 21^st century. Having read more than my share of her novels I know Abbott has a unique place in this genre. Her female protagonists are not trying to solve mysteries the way one expects from Gillian Flynn or Paula Hawkins. She bares a closer resemblance to the work of Laura Lippman, whose novels I’ve also read extensively over the past couple of years and who herself will be a subject of a review in the near future. Even then the similarities are thematic: the novels are female centric and do involve suspicious deaths but usually the woman is the cause of the crime and is frequently targeted by other women. That’s never been Abbott’s sweet spot either: there is always death and violence in her novels but the crime is almost incidental to a character study and is frequently unsolved by the end of the novel.

Maybe that’s why I was disappointed with Abbott’s most recent novel Beware the Woman. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a riveting read as dark and unsettling as the best of Abbott’s works and I highly recommend it. But even as I read there was something off about it that I couldn’t pick up on until I finished an earlier novel of hers You Will Know Me when it hit me like a ton of bricks.

I won’t spoil that novel because it should be read but I will say that my problem with it is not so much the tale but the teller. Beware the Woman is far more allegorical than any of Abbott’s previous works and is no doubt a justifiable reaction to the many accelerating threats to women’s freedom in the past decade. Abbott does have as much a right to tell this story as anyone else and she does a superb job telling but my problem is that Abbott is not Margaret Atwood and I don’t mean just because her specialty is noir and not dystopian fiction. No the problem is that at the center of the novel is bodily autonomy and if you’ve had the pleasure of enjoying Abbott’s previous work you know that so many of her novels argue that when women have all the choice in the world, they can do horrible things to their body that have nothing to do with sexual freedom.

I find this theme underlying the best of Abbott’s work. Dare Me is a novel about the rivalries between a teenage cheerleading team. The Turnout deals with the discipline it takes to become a ballerina and how those can linger not after you stop dancing. And You Will Know Me looks at the world of competitive gymnastics, a small niche that I guarantee you if anyone reads it and is considering their young daughter for some kind of athletic career will finish this book and practically demand their child start dating boys as soon as possible.

You Will Know Me is at least on the surface the story of the Knox family told by Katie, the mother of Devon a child who is clearly a prodigy at gymnastics who seems headed for the very top of her profession and what happens when a young man they all know ends up dying in a hit and run. Below the surface, however, is the portrait of the kind of family that has a special kind of dysfunction one that is so deeply buried that they don’t seem to recognize it and not even the death seems willing to shatter it.

Reading this book I couldn’t help but be reminded of  I, Tonya and see so much of Alison Janney’s character in Katie Knox. To be clear Katie is devoted to her daughter, wants to protect her and is willing to sacrifice everything for her daughter’s happiness and well-being in a way that Janney’s character isn’t. But the deeper you read You Will Know Me you see a different kind of mother, one who is just better at lying to herself than Janney’s character is about the kind of parent she is.

Early in the novel we learn that Devon was running in the lawn and then had an accident with the lawn mower that did permanent damage to Devon’s foot. Neither of the parents talk about it but Katie has spent her life blaming her husband for that incident and destroying her child’s life. It is that event that leads to Devon discovering gymnastics and its clear from the start how talented she is  But once they realize how good she is, the two of them decide that they will devote their lives to making sure Devon realizes her dream. That leads them to BelStars and Coach Teddy, who after she tries out tells them that he sees potential and waves a word in their head: “Senior Elite’. He tells them that Devon has a once in a generation talent that will put her track for Olympic gold. He tells her: They need to commit.”

So both they and Eric decide, almost without speaking that they will do anything they can, spend any sum, do anything possible to help Devon realize her dream. They never talk about how much of this is based on guilt: that one accident has ruined Devon’s childhood and they will do anything they can to make it better. There doesn’t even seem to be any real discussion as to whether Devon wants it at all. Indeed Devon is almost a cipher in the book, forever putting on a stoneface and rarely seen outside of workouts or training.

This is deliberate by Abbott because as the novel progresses its clear that whatever Devon might want personally has been buried by everyone else. From her coach to the parents to the Boosters who raise the money for the gym. Even her own parents see her more for her talent than as a person. Over and over during the novel whenever Katie refers to Devon it is extraordinary, perfect, and elite. Whenever she defends her daughter, it’s always talked about in terms of her talent and what she can do rather than who she is a person. Late in the novel a character refers to Devon as ‘a thoroughbred’ and Katie says that her child is not a horse. But its almost a reflex from someone who has spent Devon’s entire life seeing her for her talent rather than as a girl.

The novel centers on Ryan Beck, a handsome young man who installs a pit and is brought into the lives of Belstars. Haley, Coach Tim’s niece and fellow instructor becomes attached to him quickly and the two become a couple. Many think the two will get married someday. All of the mothers find him attractive and at the gathering that starts the novel they all spend time flirting with him. By the end of the first section of the book Ryan is dead, the victim of a supposed hit-and-run.

We get the sense very clearly what kind of book this is when Coach Tim, who is shattered by the death, cancels practice for the day. That night both Katie and Eric are home at the same time and Katie can’t remember the last time it’s happened. They’ve spent so much of their lives to Devon’s dream that they don’t know what to do with their free time. Then things get darker when the coach stalls practice for the funeral. The other parents start getting antsy. There’s a meeting where they consider getting another coach. The attitude is sure a young man is dead but finals are coming up. Priorities.

This tone underlies so much of what happens as the investigation into Ryan’s death begins to take a while. The parents increasingly become nervous until the police decide to center their investigation on Hailey who’s been acting erratic since the funeral. When Coach Tim tries to help his niece it doesn’t dim the furor for him one bit. The parents practically start holding practice on their own.

Of course as you’d expect there’s more to it than that but I’m not going to spoil because in an odd way, it’s irrelevant to the novel. What is relevant is how the death reveals so many of the horrible flaws around children training to become athletes and perhaps more horrifyingly, the way their parents begin to marginalize them.

I think the title of the novel comes from the fact that Katie really believes she is a good mother. If anything’s, she’s convinced she’s the better parent, holding on the grudge that Eric is responsible for Devon’s accident, a believe that as the novel comes close to an end, may be another lie she’s told herself over the years. Katie’s convinced she’s a good mother because she’s sacrificed everything for her child.

This becomes very clear with Devon’s younger brother Drew. Katie is convinced that she’s a great parent to Drew and Drew is a good child. But it’s clear from the start of the book that this only relates to the fact he never complains about being secondary to Devon. Halfway through the novel Drew develops scarlet fever and Eric’s reaction is that Devon has to leave the home rather than risk infection. Katie is far more upset that she’s losing Devon than how this will affect Drew.

Indeed we see how horrible a mother she is when she and Drew are on their own and she basically drags her sick child from place to place in her car while she pursues what happened to Ryan – and more importantly, how Devon might be involved. At one point she says she’s going to leave him alone for a few minutes and she’s gone for an hour and a half. On another occasion she goes to Devon’s school and Drew leaves the house to try and find her. Her solution is to keep abandoning Drew with a neighbor and plop him in front of the TV. It’s telling that late in the book when she’s talking about her family she calls them: We three against the world and then has to correct herself. We four. The deeper it becomes clear that her family is very involved in what happened to Ryan, she increasingly seems not angry about the crime but that she wasn’t included in the discussion.

Throughout the novel Katie shows no regard for her daughter, regularly looking at her diary, looking at her phone, prying into every aspect of her daughter’s life. She keeps telling herself that she’s doing this for Devon to protect her. But eventually we learn a dark truth that I am going to reveal because it’s more on point for so much of her work.

Katie and Eric’s marriage was based on a whirlwind romance. At one point she was pregnant and there was a period when she planned to terminate the pregnancy but on the night before the appointment Eric showed up on her door and said he wanted to marry her. On their wedding night, despite not being supposed to drink she has three glasses of champagne and they have sex in the backseat of the car. That night she  thinks to herself: “I’ve got him now. Now he is mine.”

At a critical point in the novel Eric tells Devon that the biggest mistake you can make in life is giving in to sex. And the thing is by that point Eric actually thinks he’s being a good father by telling her. It lays bare everything the Knox family truly is and its telling that by the end of the novel Katie has chosen to ignore it.

And what makes all of this all the more horrible is that we see what the cost of this is. Late in the novel Katie comes to a practice where all the girls are gathered and she looks at all of these gymnasts “It was as if Katie were wearing glasses for the first time in her life, the world suddenly brought into sharp focus.”

 

Devon, whose toes pointed out as she slept. Whose ankles cracked as she walked up the stairs. Who, before she performed, would, one by one, crack all her joints, fingers, knuckles, neck, toes, hips and ankles.”

Katie sees what she has done sees it as “some irrevocable wrong” and then she shuts her eyes. In a sense she’s been doing that Devon’s entire life and she keeps doing it.

The few insights we get into Devon are heartbreaking. All she cares about is being the best. There is an essay she writes in which she gets an A in which she describes her most formative experience in which she makes it clear that her being perfect has been tied to her parents love. On it is drawn a stick figure of Devon with the words ‘Freak!’ on it. Katie sees Devon with girls her own age and she is struck by how beautiful they are: “They were women or close enough.” Then she looks at her daughter:

 

“….stallion thighs stretched against the denim of her jeans, her face small and wan. Her feet, misshapen and scarred…Nearly sixteen. Fearless. Extraordinary. Like no one else. Only herself. Whoever that was. “

Even worse is when Devon leaves class and is teased mercilessly by all of the boys and walks away never looking and you know she’s heard all of this all her life.

And what makes all the more galling is how small the stakes seem to be. At the coda of the novel the Knox’s are at Elite:

“There was no grandstand, no booming sound system, no grease lined concession. No bleachers, even…It was just another convention center, dropped ceiling….long tables and metal folding chairs in the middle, between the beams and bars, judges seated there, Styrofoam coffee cups in hand, watching.”

This is what Devon and the Knox, everyone in their orbit have been aiming for years. This is what their children have trained and sacrificed everything for, their parents have gone into debt for, destroyed their lives for. Even if you discount that most people aren’t willing to coverup the life of a young man and bury his death, this is as anticlimactic as possible for all the work that’s done. And it’s not even the end of the journey for Devon. The book ends before Devon actually begins her event but it doesn’t matter if she succeeds or if she fails. You Will Know Me is a novel that’s about the sacrifices we make for perfection and its clear by the end of the novel Devon herself has been sacrificed. The last line of the book is “Her body was their heart.” But what about her soul? Whatever Devon was, what she might have been was ground into dirt for something that she may never have wanted but will now have blood on her hands for the rest of her life. Even if she makes the Olympics, even if she wins a dozen medals, nothing will make up for that.

But the saddest part is that Katie doesn’t seem to realize that even at the end of the book. “Was one meant to pay forever for a fleeting mistake?” is one of the book’s last lines and by that point it’s not clear what mistake – or whose – Katie is talking about. By the end of the novel she knows the cost of perfection and that’s a price she’s willing to pay. The fact that Devon is paying for it as well doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

That’s why I think there’s an irony of the title. Katie Knox starts the novel sure she knows who her daughter is because she knows her talent. By the end of the novel she knows the truth about who Devon really is and she’s decided she wants to believe the lie instead. She’s placed the entire world on her daughter’s shoulders and by the end of the book she’s just made it exponentially heavier.

 

Before Season 3 Begins We Have To Be Clear The White Lotus Is NOT A Drama

 

 

Right now the biggest debate surrounding the Emmys and awards show is the fact that so many people are convinced that The Bear is not a comedy. I’ve devoted multiple articles to this subject, one most recently as last week, as to why I’m certain that The Bear without question is a comedy. I could add to all of those people who want to qualify The Bear as one if they are comfortable considering it in the same breath as, among other series that will be coming back this year House of The Dragon, Severance and Squid Game. However that is not the purpose of this article because there’s a more pressing and, to use an inappropriate term, serious issues the Emmys are going to have confront in 2025 – one that was all but ignored when it happened the last time.

I am covering some familiar ground for readers of mine and I do apologize if I’m beating a dead horse. But it didn’t escape my notice that for all the mumbling that there’s been about The Bear not being considered a comedy over the past year, no one seems to have even blinked at the idea that The White Lotus is a drama. So let’s revisit this particular argument because a lot has happened since Season 2 of The White Lotus aired.

A brief refresher course for those who might have forgotten: the biggest winner of the 2022 Emmys was The White Lotus which even having aired a full year before the Emmy nominations came out still managed to win an incredible ten Emmys, including Best Limited Series, Best Directing, Best Writing (Mike White won both) Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series for Murray Bartlett and Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series for Jennifer Coolidge.

While I expressed some dismay that every single member of the cast seemed to be nominated I had no problem with any of the wins the show got. I was already eagerly anticipating the second season which we were already seeing trailers for on HBO and was scheduled to premiere that October.

The second season was, if anything, more highly acclaimed then the first with TV Guide naming it the Best Show of 2022. I didn’t hold with that distinction – my choice was the final season of Better Call Saul  - but I saw no signs of the sophomore slump in Season 2. The second installment was full of some of my favorite actors and actresses (F. Murray Abraham and Michael Imperioli in the male category; Aubrey Plaza and Meghann Fahy for the females) and it was just as hysterical watching these absolutely clueless millionaires spend all their time in Italy giving into their worst impulses, not learning a single lesson and being completely bamboozled by two Italian courtesans. When ‘the gays tried to murder’ Tanya I was overjoyed and I was sorry to see Jennifer Coolidge die, though of course that was her own fault as much as Armond’s had been in Season 1.

It was clear to me by the end of 2022 that The White Lotus was just as assured another sweep to the Emmys in the Limited Series nominations and wins in 2023. At that point I hadn’t seen much of the competition but by the end of the year the only other serious contender was Dahmer, a show I had absolutely no interest in watching and couldn’t understand why anyone would. (If you remember my columns you know that not only did I see but did a complete mea culpa by the time 2023 Emmys finally happened.) There wasn’t much else in the way of competition from other networks in the leadup to the end-of-year awards and certainly nothing that worked up much enthusiasm among critics: no one found much joy in Fleishmann Is In Trouble (the right call) Welcome to Chippendale’s (the wrong one) and the other major contender was Black Bird (an absolutely worthy choice)

I was paying closer attention then some to the 2022 Golden Globes that year, which were in a state of crisis and by the middle of 2023 would dissolve its current system when the controversies that had surrounded the Hollywood Foreign Press since the pandemic ended caused it to completely go under. As someone who was watching it for the purpose of the Emmys only I was looking for bread crumbs.

That year Jeremy Allan White won what would be the first of an endless stream of Best Actor awards for his work in The Bear. No one seemed to object that was nominated as a comedy back then, perhaps because Abbott Elementary was the big winner of the night. It won three Golden Globes for Best Comedy, Best Actress for Quinta Brunson and Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy or Drama for Tyler James Williams. The White Lotus was nominated for Best Limited Series (something it hadn’t managed the previous year) and won that prize. Jennifer Coolidge took Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or TV/Movie and no one objected certainly not me.

Later in January the Critics Choice Awards took place. For the first time The White Lotus had been listed in the Best Drama awards. I paid this little mind for two reasons: the Critics Choice has always been eclectic with what shows it nominates and where and more importantly Jennifer Coolidge was the only nominee for the series. I was somewhat annoyed when Coolidge beat Rhea Seehorn for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama but that was barely a blip because Better Call Saul essentially won everything else it was nominated for that night, including Best Drama. When Liz Merriwether accepted her prize for The Dropout and the first people she thanked was The White Lotus for choosing not to compete in this category I laughed with her. The idea of The White Lotus being a drama was, to put it mildly, laughable.

Then the SAG nominations came out and I had to start taking it seriously. I’ll be honest; even then I could at least partially understand the logic. For whatever reason SAG-AFTRA has never given a prize for Best Ensemble in a Limited Series or TV Movie. Considering that they fundamentally  haven’t changed their basic awards at all for television since they were founded in 1994 I think this is an incredible blunder on their part. So I assumed that The White Lotus had decided to compete in the Best Drama category because a series that had arguably the best cast in all of 2022 deserved recognition in some form. The wins for it both as Best Drama ensemble and Best Dramatic Actress for Jennifer Coolidge I could accept but I still figured it was an anomaly.

Then the Emmys officially ruled that because of Coolidge’s presence in both seasons The White Lotus couldn’t compete in the Best Limited Series category this year. If you’ve read my columns during that period I was irked at the Emmys for this issue and truly thought this was a mistake on their parts. I now realized I wasted a lot of time an energy pointing my guns in the wrong direction.

Because it’s one thing to argue that The White Lotus doesn’t meet the qualifications of Best Limited Series or Anthology. I’d say that the Emmys have been very strange about this rule – they never seemed to have a problem when it happened for Fargo and there was a connection running through the first three seasons at least – and I did think this was the smallest of nits to pick. But the fact that HBO chose to nominate The White Lotus as a Drama – that’s an even bigger joke that anything we saw in two seasons and not at all funny.

I defy anyone to look at just the other HBO series that were nominated for Best Drama that year – Succession, The Last of Us, House of The Dragon – and tell me with a straight face that they all deserve the same classification. Even the comparison to Succession, which many considered a black comedy as much as it was a drama, doesn’t come close to applying when one considers the final season. The people at Waystar Royco may be rich people with no moral compass but if you think Logan Roy’s death deserved to be considered the same way Tanya’s does, you’re really lost – and yet the Emmys nominated both for Best Writing. (To be fair White was nominated for writing the entire series which in itself is a sign that the two shows don’t belong in the same category.)

And look the other nominees: The Diplomat, Better Call Saul, Yellowjackets, The Crown. Even the most diehard fan of The White Lotus has to acknowledge that putting this show up against The Crown or Yellowjackets is ludicrous.

Indeed there’s a better argument that The White Lotus is more of a comedy than some of the comedies that were nominated by the Emmys that year. Setting aside The Bear, which in Season 1 was far closer to a comedy than Season 2, Barry was so dark in its final season many people wondered if it should be classified as a comedy at all. Jury Duty was so format-breaking it could have been more comfortable in a reality show series and Wednesday is closer in spirit to The Last of Us then Only Murders in the Building. If The White Lotus had been nominated instead of the latter two shows in that category, I certainly wouldn’t have questioned it and neither would anyone else. Yet no one seemed to blink at the idea of The White Lotus in the drama category.

And by the way let’s get back to some of the nominees for writing. Does anyone truly think that any of the moments in all of Season 2 deserve to be in the same category as the series finale of Better Call Saul? ‘Conor’s Wedding? The already classic ‘A Long, Long Time’ episode of The Last of Us?! To put them in the same breath is a louder obscenity than anything Logan Roy ever uttered when alive.

And that’s before you get to the biggest crime of all: everyone in the cast seemed to get nominated in the Best Supporting Actor and Actress category. Set aside everyone from Succession who was nominated in the former category. I realize as much as people love the double act of Cousin Greg and Tom, we all know that the reason Matthew MacFayden won his second consecutive Best Supporting Actor award had everything to do with the knock down, everything on the table argument he and Shiv had in the ‘Tailgate Party; episode where they finally laid out every horrible thing about their marriage that had been building for four seasons. We know that because that’s the episode Sarah Snook almost certainly (and deservedly) won her Emmy for. All of the work in The White Lotus is brilliant – but if you’re trying to tell me its at a level of drama on display here, no. I’ve seen F. Murray Abraham deliver brilliant dramatic performances in Homeland; we all saw what Michael Imperioli can do. Nicholas Braun is a clown but he’s comic relief in a dramatic show.

And the same is definitely true of The White Lotus. As I said before I am  huge fans of both Aubrey Plaza and Meghann Fahy. I wanted them to be nominated for Emmys and I advocated for it. But I did so under protest because in good conscience to compare their work with Elizabeth Debicki or Rhea Seehorn was a travesty in my mind. And the idea that Jennifer Coolidge – who won a prize from the MTV Movie and TV Awards for Best Comedic Performance just two months before the Emmys for her work here – has to share the spotlight with them is crazier than anything we saw Tanya do.

And all of this is before you consider that with the presence of these nominees and Succession’s overwhelming presence there was no room for any of the supporting cast in any other drama that aired in 2022-2023. Setting aside my issues with ignoring Saul which I’ve already beaten to death – nothing for any of the incredible female performances in Yellowjackets? Nothing for the brilliant supporting performers in The Crown including Lesley Manville and Jonathan Pryce? Nothing for the cast of House of The Dragon, which many were sure would see nominations for Matt Smith and Paddy Considine? Nothing for John Lithgow, who’d already received a Golden Globe and Critics Choice nomination for Supporting Actor for The Old Man? Some of these actors did get another bite at the apple by the time of the 2024 Emmy nominations and others are likely to get a chance again as these shows return to contention. Others like Considine and  Juliette Lewis never will.

So the question is with all that in mind, how could anyone think The White Lotus deserves to be considered a drama in the first place? It can’t possibly be the fact that it’s an hour long instead of half an hour: Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was nominated in this category that same year and no one was questioning its comedy credentials. And this past year the Emmys nominated Palm Royale for Best Comedy where the title place is for all intents and purposes a White Lotus resort in 1960s Florida. For the record it takes itself and its characters more seriously than Mike White does, even with the same attitude towards rich white people. No one had a problem nominating it as a comedy.

It;s clear the Emmys must correct course with The White Lotus. There is precedent for this: Shameless was submitted in the drama category the first five years it was on the air before the creators decided to nominate it as a comedy for the rest of its run. The voters seemed willing to make the leap: they nominated Joan Cusack for five consecutive Emmys for Best Guest Star in A Drama and then William H. Macy for four Emmys for Best Actor in a Comedy. And of course Orange is the New Black had absolutely no difficulty being shifted from Comedy in its first year to drama in its second.

I’d say there’s still a valid argument that The White Lotus deserves to be considered as an anthology series and that the disqualification that forced it out of the limited series category was one of the biggest technicalities in Emmy history – and this is an organization that almost never deals with technicalities when it comes to nominations. Season 2 was in a completely different setting, had a completely different theme and an almost completely different cast of characters: to change it because one character was in both settings really is stretching the boundaries of it and seems incredibly subjective.

But failing that when The White Lotus finally debuts the Emmys and all other awards show have to put it in the comedy category. The White Lotus is many things, but it is not remotely serious. Even the character deaths are not considered as such. And considering how bright and shiny and buoyant every technical aspect of it is, you’re breaking your own definition of what prestige dramas are. The theme music alone tells you what you’re in for.

So let’s do that for the next year’s Emmys. And hey, as a result, there will be a gap in the drama nominations next year. Maybe we can talk about putting The Bear in and see just how well it does against Stranger Things and The Gilded Age.

Dexter Retrospective: How The Supporting Cast First Registered

 

 

The consensus of most fans of the series is that Dexter peaked after Season 4 and not coincidentally when Clyde Phillips, the man who’d been the showrunner and head writer, departed claiming creative exhaustion. I don’t hold that the subsequent four seasons were all as bad as the critical consensus argues – until the last one most of them had superb moments and performances all the way through – but I do concur with the majority opinion that after Trinity killed Rita in the fourth season finale, the series lost the power it once had.

I also agree that one of the bigger flaws of the last four seasons was that Dexter chose to complete erase the façade that Dexter had built to that point – husband, father, living in the suburbs – and essentially focus all of its time and energy on the killers that Dexter and Miami Metro were hunting down. By doing so much of what made Dexter fascinating in the first four seasons – his attempt to be both a member of society and the monster he was – and simply concentrate on the hunt. This made the series  far more formulaic and took away a lot of the zest and energy that we’d gotten from the first four seasons.

What isn’t talked about as much when it comes to rating Dexter’s decline is how the series also decided to fundamentally stop building up all the character growth we’d seen throughout the supporting cast over the first half of the show and essentially have them only there as in reaction to how they affected Dexter personally. This was a mistake for several reasons but perhaps the most frustrating one was that Philips – if he was the man responsible for it – had spent a significant amount of time during those four years trying his best to give all of the other characters more layers than just being foils for Dexter. This was as important to the show’s early success. Philips and his writers understood that for all of Miami Metro to miss the fact that there was a serial killer working for them, it couldn’t be because of their incompetence. Which as we saw so many times in the first four years none of detectives were. The show actually worked very well as a procedural during the first four seasons, mainly because it showed that the Squad was as good as Dexter when it came to catching the serial killers that he was.

 In truth that was a large part of the fun during those seasons. When Dexter was himself the target in Season 2 the task force managed to narrow the field slowly but patiently and managed to figure out that the man they were searching was right under their nose. Indeed Dexter was called before the FBI with his slides in front of him and was sure he was caught – before he was told they were chasing Doakes. Even then there’s a very good chance that Lundy might have realized that they were chasing the wrong man had Dexter and fate not intervened. None of these people were the kinds of fools who worked for the Daily Planet for years and couldn’t tell that Superman was really Clark Kent.

The reason that Dexter was also able to get away with what he did for so long was something that he commented on frequently but that most viewers might have ignored: while he had a life beyond being a killer everyone else on the show did have other attachments. And it’s clear that from the start of the series the show’s writers make it very obvious that part of the reason why so many people who work at Miami Metro appear blind is really the normal concentration of their everyday lives. And because Original Sin has made it clear that we will be seeing younger versions of many of these characters in it, I think we should look at the three characters who are the most prominent in Dexter’s life at work: Sgt. James Doakes (Erik King) Angel Batista (David Zayas) and Maria LaGuerta (Lauren Velez). Interestingly all three actors had worked together on the fourth and fifth seasons of OZ: King played Death Row inmate Moses Dayal, Zayas’s Latino gang leader Enrique Morales and Velez had played Dr. Gloria Nathan.

Before we begin a literary note. Anyone who’s read the Jeff Lindsay novels Dexter is based on knows that unlike with other series such as Game of thrones, the writers used the characters in the first book as a jumping off point and then went in a completely different direction even before Season 1 ended. In the biggest change in Darkly Dreaming Dexter the Ice Truck Killer (who I won’t reveal yet because he will come up later in this retrospective) survives his confrontation with Dexter and LaGuerta is killed off at the end of the novel instead. I only mention this because that means that almost every character in Dexter the series by necessity ends up in a different place then they do in the books which gave the showrunners creative license to expand them.

I’m going to start with Doakes. As is made clear in the pilot Doakes is the only person who works at Miami Metro who can see, even dimly, through the mask Dexter has put up for years. It takes him until the end of Season 1 to realize that there is something far darker to Dexter than meets the eye and by the time Season 2 is over he is fully aware of the monster Dexter is. In another series Doakes would be the hero of the show. In Dexter not only do we have to consider him the heavy, we’re supposed to breathe a sigh of relief, if not cheer, when Doakes is killed at the end of Season 2 and everyone believes that he is the Bay Harbor Butcher.

We don’t get a clear picture until the end of Season 7 as to how Doakes became suspicious of Dexter Morgan in the first place, perhaps because the writing forces him not to realize that. What is unsettling is that throughout the early episodes Doakes can tell far more than anyone else that there’s something creepy about this man who can’t pick up the normal cues that everyone else ignores, can tell there’s something off about him whenever he’s on a crime scene and notices the hesitations that Dexter takes before he says anything. In a sense Doakes is the most brilliant detective we’ll see on the show because he knows without even having to be privy to what we see Dexter do on a nightly basis that there’s something not right about this man. And everyone on the squad thinks that there’s something wrong with Doakes.

Why does everyone, even LaGuerta who was his first partner (and as we learn, also a lover), take everything he says about Dexter Morgan as just a sign that Doakes is jumping at shadows? The easy answer would be that Dexter is white and Doakes is African-American but the show never draws that conclusion and besides with the exception of Deb everyone else who works with Dexter is a minority themselves.

Another reason may be Doakes’s personality. Erik King was perhaps too good at making Doakes seem like a man who was mad at the world, both the criminals and the people he worked with. It’s worth noting this is a common attitude for most police given the situations they face and as we see throughout the series almost every law enforcement official during this period has their own ways of dealing with the horrors that they see on a daily basis. Doakes just can’t hide it as well as the rest of them and takes his frustration and rage out more vocally than anyone else.

What’s clear is that particularly in the first season the writers did a lot to show the humanity behind Doakes. In the second episode an undercover cop is thrown off a highway. Doakes and LaGuerta go to inform his wife and find her badly wounded on the floor, unable to breathe. She later dies of her wounds. Doakes is compassionate with her in a way we never see anywhere else and we learn at the end of the episode he was an affair with her. She was going to leave her husband before he went undercover and he didn’t know about it.

During the next two episodes Doakes is involved with the pursuit of Guerra, the Colombian drug lord who authorized Guerra’s murder and who had the man who did it killed on his orders. Doakes attends the funeral with her brother (Scott Winters, another OZ alum) who that night asks him to help unwind. Late that night they go to one of Guerra’s lieutenants’ house and beat him to a pulp over Doakes objections. He threatened Guerra earlier and he knows this will fall back on him. The brother knows this: “You f---ed her. You f---ed a cop’s wife. Now you’re just f---ed.” Doakes is tailed by the cartel for the next episode and is genuinely afraid for his life. Indeed Guerra abducts him and is about to kill him when he is busted by Miami Metro – this was an operation meant to get Guerra.

And while Doakes can be hostile to his colleagues he is not blind the way some of them are. After Deb is promoted to homicide he spends much of the first episodes degraded her and openly scorning her ideas, which include blindfolding the one survivor of the Ice Truck Killer to that point. But when Deb calls him on his bullshit – the first time she’s tried to do that – he not only backs down but agrees with her. Doakes’s is never as one dimensional as he appears; he’s just frustrated because of investigations and he takes it out on everybody.

Angel takes a little longer than some of the other characters to develop. It’s clear from the start of the show that he’s a savvy detective himself, capable of recognizing so much of what is wrong with the brass’s theories. But he’s also smart enough to know that nothing is gained by direct confrontation. When LaGuerta makes the assumption that Tony Tucci is the Ice Truck Killer, he realizes very quickly the evidence doesn’t support it. But he doesn’t confront LaGuerta directly the way Deb does and he doesn’t go over her head. Batista may not like the chain of command but he respects it.

Zayas’s gift over eight seasons (he’s one of the few regulars to make it from the pilot to the final episode) was to be the measure of restraint. He was capable of being angry and frustrated but he never showed it with the rage that Doakes does. He also believes he’s Dexter’s friend in a way that Dexter doesn’t understand at the start of the series (I’ll get to that) but as the series goes on it’s clear that Dexter does respect him and doesn’t want to see him harmed by his actions.

Angel also has the ability to be a diplomat, something that none of the other characters at Miami Metro have the capacity to be: LaGuerta’s too political, Doakes too angry, Deb (at least at the start of the series) too inexperienced. When LaGuerta is proven wrong about her mistake in misidentifying Tucci, he shows no need to rub salt in her wounds the way that Deb does. He’s also incredibly compassionate, something that is scarce among the detectives at Miami Metro when the series begins.

We get the clearest sense of Angel’s personal life during the first season then any other character. Throughout the fourth episode while everyone is pursuing the Ice Truck Killer, he keeps coming to Dexter asking whether the jewels he’s bought as an anniversary gift for his wife are appropriate. Dexter, who doesn’t understand these kinds of things, keeps showing his view of what’s objectively wrong with that rather than just saying how pretty they are. (This is very funny by the way.) Eventually Angel turns to Deb who tells him the right thing. But then he shows up on his wife’s doorstep – and we learn they’ve been separated for three months. That Angel can’t seem to get this is sad; when we see him give the diamonds to his young daughter, it’s genuinely depressing. In the next episode Angel gets drunk with Dexter (not Dexter’s idea) and Dexter has to bring Angel to his home – and is the first to learn that Angel doesn’t live there anymore. Something he is unequipped to deal with on any level he seems more concerned about Angel crashing on his couch and finding out what’s behind his air conditioner.

For reasons that escape me LaGuerta has never received the level of contempt on the internet the same way that the two other major female characters on the show have. Part of it may be her eventual fate but Rita suffers a far more tragic end and she’s still considered naïve fifteen years later.

There’s an argument, at least in the first season, that LaGuerta is far more deserving of contempt then any character on the show. LaGuerta is established at the start of the series as someone who gave up being a cop long ago and is only interested in climbing the political ladder. She makes it very clear, particularly in the later seasons, that she will double cross anyone she can in order to protect her agenda, including the people she loves. I think there’s an argument that LaGuerta was failed the most by the writers during the second half of the series. As the show moves through the second half of Season and to the end of Season 4, the writers do an exceptional job of painting LaGuerta as not only a very skilled detective but a good friend and even capable of love. After Season 4 she regresses more than any other regular other than Dexter and by the time she is tracking Dexter down in Season 7, we’re not as upset if something happens to her as if something would to Doakes.

The writers don’t do LaGuerta a lot of favors early on. In the Pilot she’s shown as openly dismissive of anything Deb suggests (even though she’s clearly right) refuses to use Deb even when she finds evidence and openly refuses to acknowledge her flaws when she chooses to launch a manhunt for Tony Tucci. When she learns that the real killer has cut off Tucci’s hand and left it to taunt them, you can see in the scene with Matthews she really doesn’t want to back down before he tells her what an idiot she is. The fact that she seems to have a crush on Dexter in the early episodes (she’s openly flirting with him when we meet her) does little to redeem her in our eyes: the head of Miami Metro is too busy making gooey eyes at her blood spatter specialist to realize what a killer he is.

To the writers credit they do their best to humanize her in the early episodes. After her screwup LaGuerta is forced by Matthews to apologize to Tucci’s mother, in order to try and offset whatever lawsuits they’re might be. She is clearly untethered to see not only that Mrs. Tucci doesn’t seem to blame her; all she wants is for them to bring her son home so she can bury him. When we learn it that episode that Tucci is clearly alive, it blindsides Maria as is the fact that she finds Mrs. Tucci and a candlelight vigil, thanking her for giving them hope. At the end of the episode when Tucci is found alive, the last shot of LaGuerta is her lighting a candle at a church. It’s the first effort to make her fully dimensional and while it doesn’t work as well as later efforts, it does make her more than an ice queen she appears to be.

All of these characters are part of what makes Dexter work as well as it does in the first half of its run. Because none of them interact with Dexter the same way that his family and loved ones do, we tend to view them from the outside more than everyone else in his orbit. The writers understood that it might be fun to watch Dexter stalk his prey week after week but it would quickly become boring if the other characters around him then to be stick figures that Dexter had to avoid to literally get away with murder. At least part of the problem with the second half of the show was that essentially that is what all of them became as the serial killers and just as important the guest stars became more central to the series then the people who’d started with it.

That would become particularly maddening because so many of the killers that the show dealt with in the first half were far more interesting because we were invested with the people hunting them. That will become very clear in Season 1 as Miami Metro, like Dexter himself, starts to hunt the Ice Truck Killer in earnest.

 

Decision 2024: Why It Won't Change A Single Vote Whether Caitlin Clark Endorses Anyone

 

 

One of the baseball players I admire and respect the most was the great Cardinal pitcher Bob Gibson. Gibson was one of the most dominant pitchers of the 1960s and possibly the most fearsome one in baseball history. The latter is said by all of the players who played alongside him and those who had the misfortune of batting against him.

In his career from 1959 to 1975 Gibson won 251 games and struck out 3110 batters. When he retired that number was second only to Walter Johnson in the all-time record books. Gibson managed to win 20 games or more five times during his career – not an easy feat considering that the Cardinal offense was incredibly stingy when he pitched. This could not be made more clear in regard to his historic 1968 season, when he registered the lowest ERA in National League history: 1.12.  He threw thirteen shutouts, struck out 268 batters and threw 28 complete games. He went 22-9 mainly because the Cardinals were only able to average three runs every time he started. Had he gotten four runs in each start, he would have gone 30-2.

Even in the era of the extended postseason it is highly unlikely many of the marks he set during the three World Series he played in will ever be broken. He set a record for most strikeouts in the 1964 World Series with 31 against the Yankees, a record he broke against the Tigers four years later with 35. He struck out 17 Tigers in Game 1 of the 1968 World Series, a record that will surely stand forever. He won all seven of his World Series starts consecutively – each of them a complete game. He threw eight complete World Series games, two shutouts and in the 1967 World Series won three complete games in which he gave up just fourteen hits total. In all of the World Series history only Christy Mathewson matched him when he threw three shutouts in five days. For his efforts Gibson is one of only three men in history to win the MVP in two World Series, a record that has only been matched by Sandy Koufax, Reggie Jackson and Cory Seger.

Gibson would never be able to have the record he did today for another reason: he threw at batters. A lot. And he went out of his way to hit them. Bill White had been Gibson’s roommate when they were on the Cardinals. However when White was traded to Philadelphia he knew the first time he faced Gibson, White was going to hit him. And it didn’t surprise him. Gibson was telling him: “We’re not roommates anymore.”

Gibson was also the first African-American pitcher to earn the label of superstar. And he could be fierce with everybody. This included the media. In a world where race was becoming more and more a militant issues among African-Americans Gibson was not particularly political. In fact after attending a Black Power meeting during the 1960s, he made it clear that wasn’t for him. “Really sounds like Black Power isn’t really any different from White Power,” he is quoted in David Halberstam’s iconic baseball book October 1964. This was keeping much with the attitude of baseball as a whole not just in the 1960s but historically: Baseball was America’s game but it was never as political as so many other sports were becoming.

What made Gibson polarizing -  at least among the media – was that he was never humble about his achievements, never polite. Roger Angell remembered after what was his crowning achievement: after setting the strikeout record in Game 1 of the 1968 World Series. Everyone believed Gibson would be humble or modest having set this mark. Instead in the press conference afterwards he was exactly the same.

A reporter asked him: “Are you surprised by what you did today?” Gibson didn’t pause. “I’m never surprised by anything I do.” According to Angell, the entire crowd of reporters went dead quiet as if everyone was thinking: “What did he say?” In the aftermath of a World Series win, you were supposed to be humble and polite. This victory did nothing to soften Gibson’s edges.

But for all Gibson’s brilliance, I am always impressed by his bluntness and his candor. There’s a remark he made when a reporter decided to ask him if he considered himself a role model. And he took it very personally.

 

“Why should I be a role model for your kid? You be a role model for your kid.”

 

I really think that is the only answer any athlete in any profession should ever have to give. It is hard enough to make it to the professional in any sports, harder still to become a regular, even harder to become a superstar. Trying to be a professional athlete takes a level of dedication that most of us can’t even conceive of. To ask them to do anything more – particularly when it comes to such issues as politics – has always struck me as going to far, and for an African-American athlete in white America – particularly professional sports which is still almost entirely controlled by white men – has struck me as the kind of risk most athlete shouldn’t be asked to take. They have nothing to gain from it, and everything to lose.

Gibson is never listed among the athletes known for his political views but he wasn’t blind. He would have seen the consequences that befell Muhammad Ali when he refused to fight in Vietnam and John Carlos and Tommie Smith when they raised a black power salute at the 1968 Olympics. He also knew that while the times they were a changing, in baseball in the 1960s, nothing had at all. Baseball players were still horribly underpaid due to the reserve clause and had no power with management. Before spring training Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale had engaged in a hold out from the Dodgers where they demanded a million dollars apiece, wanted to be dealt with through their agents, not with them and as a unit, not separately. Koufax and Drysdale had collectively won 49 games in 1965 and the Dodgers had narrowly won the National League Pennant by 2 games and had won a total of three of the World Series game over the Twins in 1965. They rightly concluded without them pitching, the Dodgers would finish in the cellar.

But Walter O’Malley the Dodger owner refused to even entertain the idea. Because of the reserve clause no other team was going to even considering making an offer for either pitcher no matter how much they would have wanted them. The fact that the Dodgers would be out of contention without them was irrelevant: owners would rather lost the pennant then give the players any freedom and with the reserve clause, they had the ability to just wait them out. Which is exactly what happened. Drysdale and Koufax eventually gave in and at considerably less than what they wanted.

Things have improved immensely for athletes at a financial level, no one will argue that now. But what hasn’t changed for any professional athlete is the window you have to be a success. It will depend on the sport you play – for baseball or basketball, you might have fifteen or twenty years; for football, you’re often lucky to have ten – but it’s never as long as you want and  there’s only so much money you make. That’s of course, assuming you can remain healthy your entire career which never happens. It’s risky enough surviving a career as an athlete. So why should you want to risk it for any outside factor?

Back in 1990 North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, a Republican senator who could politely be considered polarizing, was up for reelection. His opponent was the former Mayor of Charlotte Harvey Gantt, an African-American. Much has been made of the fact that Gantt’s team wanted Jordan’s endorsement because they belied that the endorsement of Jordan – an African-American from North Carolina – would put Gantt over the top. Jordan famously said: “Republicans buy sneakers, too” when he chose to stay out of it.

Many consider that as a sign that Jordan betrayed his race. I’d argue he was incredibly diplomatic. Jordan knew very well what happened to African-American athletes who took stands during the 1960s all the way up to 1990. Jordan was already one of the best basketball players in the game but he was nowhere near the superstar he would become. Indeed during that same period the Bulls kept losing to the Pistons in the postseason; they would not get their first championship until 1991. Jordan had been in basketball for six years, and he was already one of the games most iconic figures – but he was also very aware that he served at the pleasure of the owners and not the other way around.

White ownership in any sports has never been kind to African-American athletes. (They’re also not kind to white athletes or other minorities.) Owners have always considered their players employees, albeit very rich ones. But that doesn’t mean they won’t discard them when they get old, trade them for younger players, or get rid of them rather than pay their exorbitant contracts when they become free agents. And they also don’t want to do anything that might cause their box office to suffer  - and they will do anything when they see something that might hurt it.

Jordan might have been more truthful had he said: “Republicans buy Bulls tickets, too.” Jordan was not yet in a position to be able to command the public attention – and to be clear, that was not something professional athletes did in the 1990s. Jordan’s concerns in the fall of 1990 had to be getting the Bulls to the Finals; whether or not a Democrat could become Senator in North Carolina had to be at the bottom of his priorities. And what evidence was there that Jordan’s endorsement would mean anything in North Carolina? Why wouldn’t it have been met with mutterings that he was a carpetbagger, interfering with state affairs, or being ‘uppity?” There’s just as much chance someone working for Helms would have told Jordan to shut up and dribble. Asking for Jordan’s endorsement cost Gantt’s team nothing. Giving it could have cost Jordan everything – and there’s no proof it would have worked.

This is a point that Lebron James has made in the last decade as he has become the most prominent voice for athletes in all of sports. He even used Jordan’s cowardice in a documentary series he produced for Showtime called ‘Shut Up and Dribble’. The thing is, it is easy for James and all of his followers to revere him now and admonish Jordan in hindsight. James was a child in 1990 and he didn’t live through the eras that Jordan did or have to see what so many other athletes in that era had to. James can advocate from his position and I don’t deny he doesn’t have a right to use his platform.

However I would remind him – and indeed all those who argue athletes should take the same courageous stands that James can now – of the words of Chris Rock in his 2004 standup special Never Scared.

 

“If you’re black, you can do well in America. You can be successful in America. You can even get rich in America. But you had better not make anyone bad doing it…or you will be cut down in a heartbeat.”

 

Jordan knew that very well in 1990 and no one will even pretend its not still true today. For my first witness I call Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick might say he’s fine being an icon and celebrated but I will guarantee you at least once a day he really wishes he’d been willing to just play ball symbolically so he could play it literally. He will not say so in public but he must be thinking it.

America will tear anyone down it doesn’t like. And I should mention this is true on a world stage as well. The silver medalist at the 1968 Summer Olympics Peter Norman, like Smith and Carlos, was wearing a badge from the Olympic project for Human Rights, a movement among athletes supporting the battle for equality. Australia was heavily segregated and Norman was blackballed from competing in future Olympic events. Australia’s greatest sprinter, he wasn’t even invited to participate in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Norman was white but in the eyes of the world he was made just as much an outcast.  Taking a stand might be something that puts you on the right side of history but if you are banned from the sport you love and can never find work for the rest of your life because of it, the personal costs may far outweigh what you do.

So when I hear that someone thinks that Caitlin Clark owes it to the country to make an endorsement in the 2024 election I genuinely wonder what this person is thinking. Caitlin Clark has been in the WNBA for less than a year and has already become a polarizing figure among women’s basketball fans and African-Americans. To call her a superstar at the level of James is ludicrous on so many levels, not the least of which is the pay disparity. The highest paid star in the WNBA doesn’t make a fraction of the sixth man of any NBA team. Clark is supposed to sacrifice her entire career so  she can get more followers from the right people on Twitter? I hate to break it to these people but Clark’s endorsement has no more chance of turning Indiana blue than Taylor Swift does of turning Tennessee blue. And don’t pretend for a moment that Clark has anywhere near the same fame as Swift; she certainly doesn’t have the financial cushion to survive if she was blacklisted.

It's difficult enough to be a professional athlete; to ask them to use their platform to try and win hearts and minds is not only unfair, it’s ridiculous. They have nothing to gain from doing this except being cheered online in the right circles momentarily. The long term consequences to them are all too easy to imagine and play out time and again. Their job primarily is to focus on their team winning and making the playoffs. Everything else not only is secondary and is too much to ask of them. And it’s not their jobs.

And what is the argument that these people make? That by endorsing Harris and Democrats they are helping lay the groundwork for a better nation? Well, I think Bob Gibson said it best and I’ll paraphrase it:

 

“Why should I make a better world for your kid? You make a better world for your kid.”

 

It was true half a century ago. It’s just as true today.