An Airshow Early in the 20th Century

Early Flight Showbiz

   The more I read in that first volume of Reiner Stach’s biography of Franz Kafka, the more I recognize how unusual it is. For example, many pages are spent on a vacation visit to Brescia of two weeks or so, very early in the 20^th century, by Kafka and a couple of friends. The destination was an event of which there could not have been many.
   On the occasion of a flight in a small plane across the English channel, a “convention” that was put together of show off small planes (one seaters) by the people in attendance who flew them and took care of them, though the account points out that not much of a distinction was made between pilots and persons active in other roles.

   The spectator-audience could see all the flying events, since they went neither high nor far. Kafka clearly had a good time and was no doubt typical of the public who attended the rare event. (It took much time and determination to make that trip to Northern Italy.

   Why a rare occasion? Because there were not many years when flying airplanes remained close enough to the ground so that even when up and flying, they could be observed. I would guess that there were not many gatherings that paid attention to aviation in that very early era. Only a few years later, the aviators went up higher, flying faster, having a very different impact on the spectators on the ground.

   Both Kafka and Max Brod wrote accounts of their impression and in that way recouped some of the cost of the trip.

A Great Many Years Later

   I’m now reading, in its English translation, the first volume of Reiner Stach’s biography of Franz Kafka. What makes three volumes plausible is the almost incredible scope of the author’s canvas. It’s not exactly “life and times,” since no more than the usual amount of attention is paid to the “larger” events of the times being talked about. Rather, Stach lavishes a great amount of prose on friends or colleagues of Kafka, such as Max Brod, or to the insurance company—and, indeed, industry—when he discusses the beginning of Kafka’s “working” career. You learn much more than about its nominal subject when you read this Kafka biography.

   I was startled, when at the early teens of the 20^th century, a familiar name popped up. The actor Bassermann (Albert B., thanks to the Wikipedia article I just looked up) makes several appearances; he’s then in his forties and very well known and highly regarded.

  Yes, a familiar name! In the late 1940’s or very early 50’s, I think (don’t ask for precision about my life) I went to see a performance of Goethe’s Faust, in German, in the auditorium of some midtown hotel. Uta Hagen was the only performer I had known, having seen her as Desdemona   
in a famous performance with Paul Robeson in the title role of Othello and José Ferrer as Iago.

   In that Faust, Uta Hagen was Margarete who announced before the beginning that the Mephistopheles would be Albert Bassermann, now in his eighties. I had not heard of him, of course, but Uta Hagen made it clear that Bassermann’s participation was a big deal. Only now do I know why.

Not Pence

Not Pence for President

   This is a note about a subject that could take up pages. That’s what it did in the New Yorker of  October 23. Jane Mayer, a long-time writer for the magazine, wrote a substantial article on Vice President Pence, putting each stage of his career into a broader context.  Read it by all means, even if your time or patience requires you to skim. Here I want to express my own surprising conclusion:

   Don’t agitate for Trump’s impeachment, but hope that he will serve out his term.

   Have I become enamored of our President? Certainly not. But, alas, I have learned what it means to support the lesser of two evils—not an easy lesson to digest.

   What Trump will do next is mostly unpredictable. What Pence would do in his place is here revealed: just about surely the wrong thing—from the perspective of liberals like me.

   I’ll take wackiness and uncertainty before certain wrongheadedness. Half a cheer for Trump—at most.

Sex in the Press

I’m not obsessed with sex. And never was, even at a much younger age. Moreover, I never paid much attention to the ingredient of sex in news stories. That has changed, per forza, since I now get my news via the internet, including from the NYTimes, making for a different kind of reading. Given those reports, I am truly astonished at the role sex plays in American politics. It’s not just that there are the big cases, like that of Harvey Weinstein, but there are, just about daily, a great many more mundane ones. My point here is to get you to look at what is available to you—if you do indeed look.

   Conduct an experiment. Read your news account on the internet—in my case mostly the on-line NYTimes—and “censor” the story of the portion of the account devoted to some aspect of sex. I bet you will have significantly thinned out your reading material.

   Yes, sex makes the world go ‘round, but not everywhere to the same degree. It’s my guess that accounts in the US will beat out reportage in the countries of Western Europe. It by no means follows that couples in US beds are friskier than those in other lands. 

The Private and the Public

“The Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research at Harvard University has announced that it is revoking an honor it gave Harvey Weinstein in 2014. He had been awarded the Du Bois Medal for contributions to African-American culture. In the last several weeks, Weinstein has been revealed to have been sexually harassing women for years, and some women have also come forward to accuse him of rape.”

I find it difficult to say what I am about to put forward, but I believe I must say it. To be utterly clear, I find the recent revelations about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual behavior to be unqualifiedly reprehensible. I wouldn’t have him to dinner, if that were a possibility. But what does that have to do with his role as a movie mogul or his support of liberal politicians? Benvenuto Cellini was a murderer, Richard Wagner was a virulent anti-Semite. Just to name two cultural heroes of the past.

   When there is enough temporal distance, sins are not so much forgiven, but ignored. Alas (for Harvey) , his return to grace—his resurrection, so to speak—will come after he is dead. There is something to be said in support of the view that distinguishes between a person’s private life and his public accomplishments, if any.

Sex In America

I'm puzzled about something that should be obvious. I read the NYTimes and very little else about what’s going on. I find that these reports about doings in the US are most frequently about sex, even before Weinstein, but emphatically since. then. I’ve concluded that sexual activities are a big topic in the American ethos (no news). Not remotely as much as in that of Western Europe. Even conceding that I don’t hear the “worst” about Europe in what I read, there don’t seem to be any Weinsteins to talk about. What accounts for the difference, assuming I got that right? A feeble answer is that that European scene includes far less of that “primitive” protestant reaction to modernity, witness the fact that there is much less of a reaction there to Darwin’s account of the story of mankind.   

PS

Just to be clear, Harvey Weinstein is also Jewish. He makes it into the papers, these days, as a serial sex offender. Beware of statements like  “All Jews are x.”

Jews and Nobel Awards

Nobel Winners Who are Jews

“Nobel Prizes have been awarded to 887 individuals, of whom 195 were people of Jewish descent, although people of Jewish descent comprise less than 0.2% of the world's population. As of 2013, people of Jewish descent constituted 41% of economics, 28% of medicine, 26% of physics, 19% of chemistry, 13% of literature and 9% of all peace awards.”

   When I found out that the current winner of the Nobel-equivalent in Economics was Jewish (he doesn’t look Jewish!), I decided to do a minimal amount of research. The lines above tell you what I found. Pretty astonishing. I don’t talk much about it, but I am very aware of who is and isn’t Jewish. It’s built into my heritage, having spent the first dozen years of my life in a Germany that became Nazi when I was in third grade.

   I’ve thought a lot, really a lot, about what is the cause of this special status (and it is that), but have never come up with a satisfactory answer. I still think about it, but I no longer have what it takes to deal with the issue in a scholarly fashion..

   Somebody, somewhere may have plausible answers. But I’ll let others dig them up. Let me hear from you.

My Presidents, II

My Presidents, II

  Just a couple of presidents left, but because they are closer, they loom larger, much larger. Bill Clinton: I was favorably disposed toward him when he became president and was somewhat taken aback when my best Pittsburgh friend, John Craig, retired as the boss of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, spoke very reprovingly of Clinton’s sexual escapades. That made me conscious of the need to distinguish the public persona from the private one. Historians routinely do that; why not contemporary commentators as well? It may all come down to the fact that titillating news sells, whereas it gets buried in historical accounts unless truly flamboyant or in some other way significant.

   I think of Clinton as a president who coped with an increasingly bifurcated country; in my view he leaned to the right more often than he had need to in order to survive. His sexual escapades that led to an absurd impeachment “trial” is another example of Americans’ preoccupation with sex. I have some idea of the historical roots of my fellow-citizen’s allegiance to a gun culture comes from, but I am puzzled about how earlier religious injunctions have survived to this day.

   Next came George W. Bush, whom I rashly labeled as our worst president ever. He lost that title in favor of today’s incumbent, Donald Trump. I won’t comment here on the current scene except to hope that the pendulum will swing back.

   To conclude this excessively breezy overview. I mostly agreed with Obama’s actions and proposals and think of him as one of our best presidents. His successor, Donald Trump, is undoing much of Obama’s good works. Trump’s successor, I am quite sure (think of the swing of the pendulum) will revive Obama’s measures, as having only been sleeping, not permanently killed. Call me an optimist.

    

My Presidents, I

My Presidents, I

   I’ve just come to realize that Donald Trump may well be the last president of my life. That’s something of a shock, but plausible, alas. I’ll be 94 when he steps down, assuming, as I hope, he doesn’t run for a second term or doesn’t achieve it if he does.  Therefore, the odds are that Trump will be “my” worst president, even beating George W. Bush, though that may be not giving enough significance to the war with Iraq.
   On the whole, I’ve been pretty fortunate with my presidents. I arrived in America in 1939 (age 12) and really didn’t become aware of FDR until that Sunday in December 1941, when he announced that his response to Pearl Harbor would bring the US into the WW II.
   My second president was the first one I voted for; by then I was politically quite alert. It was not until I was in the voting both that I decided to cast my vote for Harry Truman. My alternative was not Dewey---I have never voted for a Republican—but Norman Thomas, the Socialist. I had eliminated Wallace as being in the pocket of Stalinists; my views were liberal or even to the Left of that, but I was never attracted to communism with its Marxist’s doctrine. But not voting for Truman would have been throwing away my vote, making this an occasion where I opted for what I took to be the realistic rather than the ideal solution. A purist I ain’t.

   Next came Eisenhower. I was, like many intellectuals, enamored of his opponent, Adlai Stevenson’s, eloquence; I twice voted for him, but the country thought otherwise. I was not a fan of Kennedy before he became president, but of course much regretted his murder. Of the next batch, only two stand out in my memory: Reagan and Nixon. I disliked both, with Reagan already in my sights when he was governor of California and a meddler in the affairs of the State Colleges, when I was active on the faculty of San Francisco State. I underestimated his accomplishments in foreign policy, but probably correctly disapproved much of his domestic policy.

  Nixon is the complicated one in the role of my presidents. It was de rigueur for us liberals to detest him, with me aboard. In retrospect, however, I have become more favorably disposed. There is not only China, but the two Endowments—of Arts and Humanities—and other good things, most of them probably initiated for purely political reasons. Perhaps I did not take his Watergate sins seriously enough—see my comments about President Clinton in the next installment.