English Charm Comes To Calcutta.

The above title appears on the cover of this month’s “The World of Interiors” magazine. It caught my eye for a number of reasons, none of them related to decorating. The last time English charm came to Calcutta was, I believe, during the Raj, when India was part of the British Empire. Among the charming practices of the time were being “blown from cannon,” in which an unlucky Indian was draped over the mouth of a cannon and it was fired. There’s also the infamous “Black Hole of Calcutta,” a fourteen by eighteen foot room in which one hundred and forty six British soldiers were imprisoned. By the next morning, heat, suffocation and exhaustion had claimed all but twenty three - or so the British would have us believe. "Thugees" were also active at the time. They were a cult of assassins, who worshipped the Hindu goddess, Kali. First, they befriended a group of British travelers, then strangled them all in their sleep. If you don't believe me, I refer you to the movies, "Gunga Din" (1939) and "Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom" (1984). All of which militates against linking the notion of “English charm” with “Calcutta.”

I’ve never been to the city in question, so I can’t judge its own level of charm. Yet, I think we can all agree that Calcutta has an image problem. What other place - in the world - is so closely associated with abject, grinding poverty and a quality of life that's abysmal? Mother Theresa could have gone to Patterson, New Jersey, but, no, she went to Calcutta. What’s more, she worked there for fifty years and only put a dent in the problem. There are still no movies called, “Honeymoon in Calcutta” and it won’t be knocking Cancun off the list of favorite vacation spots for a while. So I bought the August issue of “The World of Interiors” and read the article by Henry Wilson with more than usual interest.

The truth is deflating. All the more so for being, contrary to Oscar Wilde, pure and simple. The article is about a successful, English antiques dealer, David Earp, who moved to Calcutta in 1998 and devotes himself to helping street children. He started a charity, Shaktara, ten years ago and supports it, in part, by selling native shmatas, to fancy stores in London and New York. Since it’s a magazine about interior design, they show his home in Calcutta. A small, ground-level apartment, it’s furnished in a blend of English and Indian styles that could legitimately be called charming. But I can still dream about about British atrocities and Thugee assassins, can’t I?

Ruby Would Keel Over

Have you seen Forty Second Street lately? Not the musical, the street. It’s gone from sleazy to grotesque without passing through entertaining. A feat, heretofore, limited to reality television. How did this happen?

I don’t mean the United Nations/Ford Foundation end of East Forty Second Street. Go west, young man, and don’t stop at Bryant Park. I’m talking about the block between Seventh and Eighth Avenue. For years, it was a rank place with ranks of identical theaters playing what were, in all likelihood, identical pornographic films. A gloomy street that lighted marquees did nothing to illuminate. It’s only virtue being that it was easy to avoid. Now, it’s crammed cheek to bung with brightly colored, garishly lit structures, blown up to inhuman proportions. True, the street doesn’t resemble its old self. It also doesn’t resemble anything outside of a German Expressionist film. I’m not sentimental about the old Forty Second Street, but I do look askance at its current incarnation.

The theaters, predictably, have fallen on hard times. A very large one is boarded up, another has been turned into a MacDonald’s and a third suffers the misfortune of being named the American Airlines Theater. Who thinks that company is so profitable and well-run that they can afford this kind of vanity (or corporate generosity?) Especially in this economy? Anyone? A theater that used to show, “Horrors of the Wax Museum” is now, horrors, a wax museum. Welcome to New York, Madame Tussaud’s. Another example of going full circle is the new Cinema Multiplex on this block. Inside are ranks of identical theaters, showing what are, trust me, nearly identical movies.

What this street needs is a touch of hospitality. Unfortunately, the entrance to the Hilton Times Square is so small that you can barely see it between the moneychanger on one side and that temple among chain restaurants, Applebee’s, on the other. A touch of culture wouldn’t hurt, either. Fortunately, there’s a museum only doors away from the Hilton. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum. Okay, it’s a freak show and not as dignified as, say, The Museum of Natural History. Compared to the rest of the block, though, it’s an island of serenity.

It’s not just the buildings and businesses that disturb me. The people who visit Forty Second Street are no prize, either. In the old days, men would lurk in the shadows, which was fine because no wanted to look at them. Ratzo Rizzo earned his name. He and his brothers used to skitter about like rodents avoiding the light. Now, you have tourists and they’re shameless. They don’t even try to hide. Like the buildings, they are brightly colored and blown up to inhuman proportions. And they wear shorts.

What can explain this state of affairs? How did this poem of visual illiteracy get composed in the first place? I blame Las Vegas. That desert oasis was first to try and change it’s image from “Sin City” to a place for wholesome entertainment – to trade the “Rat Pack” for the fanny pack. They attempted this through a number of means. First, a series of family-friendly spectacles like exploding volcanoes and simulated pirate attacks. Then they filled a gallery with some of the world’s greatest paintings (not their most popular attraction.) Finally, they constructed a series of hotels designed to look like world capitals: Paris, Venice, Cairo and New York are all, today, within flooding distance of Hoover Dam. These hotels are built on the scale of Hoover Dam, too. Thus, families can experience city life without the inconvenience of real life. Why, when we live on an island bereft of volcanoes and chronically short of pirate attacks, someone brought this idea back to Manhattan is beyond me. It’s like translating from English into French and then back to English. The result is a garbled mess. You have policemen advising suspects of their right to see an avocado. (As for Las Vegas currently trying to revert back to its old, rakish image, that can only be explained as form of mid-life crisis.)

You may be forgiven for thinking that I feel superior to this stretch of Forty Second Street and the people who congregate there. I’ll admit it’s tempting, but also that it’s impossible. Too many of those people have seen me walking down the same street, wearing a funny t-shirt, gawking at everything and muttering to myself. I happen to be saying, “It’s gone from sleazy to grotesque without passing through entertaining,” but I could just as easily be saying, “Wow, look at the tall buildings” or in a less friendly mode, “Some day a rain’s gonna come . . .”

As Ruby Keeler would sing today, “Not naughty, not bawdy, not sporty, but gaudy Forty Second Street!”

Gates And Crowley: A Lot Of Crimson Faces.

Time to weigh in on L’affaire Harvard Square or Gatesgate. I think respect was involved more than race. The Police don’t get any respect. They may save lives, but that doesn’t impact their status any more than it does for nurses. Being on the Harvard faculty, though, is like having your own respect machine. It produces honors, titles, privileges, money and, sometimes, even fame. Put a Cambridge cop and a Harvard professor in a room, add suspicion and you’ve got a volatile mixture at the best of times. This wasn’t the best of times.

We don’t really know what happened in the house at 17 Ware Street and we can’t trust either party’s version because there is a natural tendency to improve the story in retelling. Yet, something caused the situation to escalate from a mere false alarm to an incident. We do know that, returning from a long trip, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. found his front door jammed and, with his driver’s help, broke his way in. Someone witnessed the break-in, reported it to the Cambridge Police and Sgt. James Crowley was dispatched to investigate. After that it gets fuzzy, but the consensus is that Prof. Gates engaged Sgt. Crowley and got a pair of bracelets in return. (You might call them an engagement present.) Why would Gates do that? You don’t need “street cred” to know that you don’t confront a police officer – especially when you’re under suspicion. If you don’t want to show respect, fear will do very nicely, thank you. On the other hand, why would Sgt. Crowley arrest a man, in his own home, for disorderly conduct? It’s not even domestic in nature because he lives alone. He wasn’t drunk or violent or destroying property or stopping traffic, so what would justify it? Being insulted? It’s possible that both men gave into temptation, but I would give the benefit of a doubt to Sgt. Crowley.

Police officers, chronically deprived of respect, must feel a strong temptation to enforce the law and their will at the same time. Especially when they have every kind of force, including deadly, hanging from their belt. Yet, surely they must be trained to resist such temptation, have techniques for dealing with provocation and rules for using force? Right? So, Sgt. Crowley would have to, at the very least, overcome some training to exploit his authority. Not so with Prof. Gates. We can be sure that the one thing they don’t teach at Harvard, to students or faculty, is humility. When the respect machine is going full-blast, it can easily drown out everything except the demands of ego and entitlement.

Still, it was an ugly, unnecessary situation and no one gets away clean. Sgt. James Crowley’s arrest was thrown out, he’s getting a lot of unwanted attention and has been insulted on a national - if not international – scale by the President of the United States, invitation for beer at The White House notwithstanding. As for Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., if he’s learned anything, it’s to be friendlier with your neighbors and let them know when you’re leaving town.

Lance Armstrong And Steven Hawking Go Into A Bar...

Lance Armstrong is in the news again. The coverage, naturally, focuses on his inspiring third place in the 2009 Tour De France after a four-year lay-off. Also his rivalry with the winner, Alberto Contador, and his plans to ride for a new team, sponsored by RadioShack. Nowhere does it mention his striking resemblance to the reknowned physicist and author, Dr. Stephen W. Hawking.

I missed it myself until they were both on the front page of The New York Times, four years ago. Dr. Hawking is often called, “The smartest man since Einstein” and Lance Armstrong is the greatest bicycle racer since Eddy Merckx, ”The Einstein of the Two-Wheelers.” The former is Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University (a post once held by Sir Isaac Newton) has twelve honorary degrees and made the headlines four years ago by disproving one of his own theories. Talk about a personal best. The latter shared the front page by winning the world’s most famous bicycle race, The Tour De France, an unprecedented sixth time.

Not that either is a slave to the work ethic. They both enjoy robust social lives. Dr. Hawking has been married twice, fathered three children, has one grandchild and, in 2007, experienced weightlessness aboard the same kind of flight used to train astronauts. Lance Armstrong had a long relationship with singer/composer, Sheryl Crow. Though not the death wish implicit in dating, say, Amy Winehouse, she did write, “All I Want To Do Is Have Some Fun” and no one can dispute that, as a group, rocks stars are high maintenance.

What makes their liveliness both admirable and remarkable is that they are alive. Each man has overcome a devastating and potentially fatal disease. Stephen Hawking has suffered for years from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis – also called “Lou Gehrig’s Disease” because it felled the mighty Yankee at the age of 37. No mere ball player, they called him, “The Iron Man,” because he held the record for playing consecutive games. The Iron Man. Yet, here is this weeny physics major from Oxford, who not only survives, but, paralyzed up to his nose, fathers kids and scientific revolutions with equal aplomb. Lance Armstrong was also stricken young, but with an advanced case of testicular cancer. He underwent aggressive chemotherapy and recovered before he won the Tour de France even once. More than survival, however, links Hawking and Armstrong. It's the way they use wheels to overcome their limits. By using them to beat the odds, the competition and, ultimately, themselves, they achieve a nobility in their mobility.

The Sun's Also Risible.

A new edition of A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway has just been published. A classic memoir of life in Paris during the 1920’s, it’s the last book he ever wrote and was published posthumously in 1964. The original was edited by his fourth wife, Mary, the current one by Sean Hemingway, grandson of his second wife, Pauline. I can’t speak for the relative merits of the new version because I haven’t read it yet. I have, though, read the original many times with great enjoyment. It is a great and lasting tribute to Paris and the best depiction of la vie boheme since La Boheme. It also confirms two things I’ve always believed about Ernest Hemingway: he is one of our best, but unacknowledged, food writers and one of the worst people it could ever be your misfortune to know. The only people treated with tenderness in this book are his first wife, Hadley, and his son, Jack, called Bumby. Everyone else is savaged. The more they admired and helped Hemingway, the worse they are treated.

By great coincidence, a revised edition of his novel, The Sun Also Rises, has also surfaced. I can’t vouch for its authenticity, however, because I obtained it through unorthodox channels. I bought it on the street from a man who was also selling incense, old Playboys and what he swore was a brand new Apple IPhone. All I had to do was plug it in. I reproduce the famous closing scene from The Sun Also Rises below. You be the judge.

Jake drank his gin and vermouth the way the mountain troops do in Friuli. Lifting the soup tureen to his lips, he drained it in one gulp. It went down warm. Warmer than grappa. Warmer than Brett when she wanted a favor. Not like she was now. Beautiful and cruel. He slammed down the heavy porcelain pot and looked across the table at her.

“To hell with you,” he said.

“You need some food. Harry will make us bistecca all fiorentina.”

Jake would rather look at the Arno. Rivers were good. They never changed course or said dumb things that ruined your evening. He wished he could see the river. He wished he could see.

“Damn wall. It shouldn’t be there. Nothing is where it should be.”

He ordered another martini friulani and saluted the waiter. A proper salute with a strait arm rising to the temple then dropping naturally, not snapping like some piss-elegant capitaine who thinks he’s a marechal.

“Let’s start with ribbolita and then have some pappardelle sulla lepra, okay.”

“I want carabinieri.”

“Those are policemen, Jake. You can’t eat policemen.”

“I knew this woman in Kansas City. . .”

“Go ahead. I deserve it.”

He pushed the table over. The breaking plates sounded like gunshots on a clear fall day when the partridges give themselves up like French soldiers.

“Oh, Jake,” she said, “we could have had such a damn good meal together.”

“Isn’t it pretty to think so.”

Brett dropped her head like a bull whose neck was full of banderillas. It reminded him of that summer in Pamplona when Pedro got gored in the feria. His feria bled for weeks, but that was okay. This wasn’t. Not after what she did. Forgiving her now would be like trying to eat a fish after it was mounted.

“When I said, ‘At least, your pants fit better,’ I was only trying to be nice.”

The End.

Mother Carey's Chicken.

Ever get lost in the dictionary? You start looking up one word and another one catches your eye. You read the definition, cross-reference and, before you know it, days have gone by and you haven’t eaten. (Okay, the last part is an exaggeration, epecially not eating. That’s never happened to me. Ever.) I was looking up the word “mortify” recently, overshot it by a page and discovered Mother Carey’s Chicken. Sounds like a recipe, doesn’t it? Something basic and hearty, probably involving cabbage and potatoes. Or, perhaps, it’s the bird that started the Chicago Fire. After all, a chicken is more likely to knock over a lantern than a cow. Besides, it was Mrs. O’Leary’s fault anyway. (“I’ll just put this lantern behind the cow’s leg – and surround it with nice, dry straw.”) According to the American Heritage Dictionary, third Edition, it’s “a petrel, especially a storm petrel.” A sea bird that flies close to the water. The name may come from the Medieval Latin, mater cara, dear mother or Virgin Mary. In Christian symbolism, the Virgin Mary and a bird, frequently flaming, are often seen together, but, to my knowledge, have never been mistaken for each other.

It is, therefore, extremely jarring to go four words down the page from a discussion of the Virgin Mary to what may be the premier example of ghetto slang. A compound word, beginning with mother, without which Richard Pryor would have been unlikely and Chris Rock, a complete impossibility. There it is – in all its glory – spelled out completely: mother_______. (I won’t spell it out completely, not from prudery or, heaven forbid, respect for other people’s feelings, but for artistic reasons: obscenities hog attention and do untold damage to tone.) American Heritage defines it as, “1) A person regarded as thoroughly despicable . 2) Something regarded as thoroughly unpleasant, frustrating or despicable.” These definitions fail in a fundamental way – they don’t convey the true meaning of the word. Try substituting them in a conversation and you’ll see what I mean. (“Did you hear about the man who found a wallet full of money and returned it?” “That thoroughly despicable person is crazy!” or “Why shouldn’t I take a taxi crosstown during rush hour?” “Because the traffic is thoroughly unpleasant and frustrating.”) The Urban Dictionary has seventy definitions and forty variations. Yet even the most extreme and fantastic come closer to the truth than AH.

On a more wholesome note, directly below mother_____ is Mother Goose, defined as, “The imaginary author of Mother Goose’s Tales, a collection of nursery rhymes first published in London in the 18^th century.” The imaginary part will come as a shock to Mary Goose (1665-1758) or anyone who has visited her grave in Boston’s Old Granary Burial Ground. The authorship of some of her tales may be disputed, but the woman herself is as real as John Hancock, Paul Revere or anyone else in the same cemetery.

By the way, mortify can mean to humiliate, to practice self-denial or to become gangrenous or necrosed. I’d tell you what necrosed means, but I’d probably get lost in the N’s.

Cronkite: He Was Our Anchor.

Walter Cronkite is dead. The man who could make the nation cry by taking off his glasses was 92. He died at home in Manhattan, Friday night, from cerebral vascular disease. Cronkite was anchor of the CBS Evening News from 1962-1981, a great responsibility at a time when the only sources of news were TV and newspaper. It was also one of the most violent times in our history, yet Walter Cronkite was always calm. We trusted him because he worked for CBS News and trusted them because of him. We depended on Cronkite because he was always there. We respected him because he was dignified and, unless you’re 93, always older than us. You could say he was a father figure, but that would be too intimate. He was more like an uncle, “Uncle Walter.” He will be missed, but we won't cry. We'll just take off our glasses for a moment.

Waiting In Line.

New Yorkers don't take waiting in line seriously, they take it personally. The British take it seriously. They even have a special word for it, "Queue." They queue up for everything in Britain and don't mind. In New York City, any line of more than three people is considered an insult. Waiting patiently is like meekly accepting a slur against your character. That's why the typical New York line looks like a chain gang making a break for it. It tends towards the horizontal. Everyone straining for advantage or so close to the person in front of them that no one can get in between.

You might think that Whole Foods has found a way to tame New Yorkers with their simple and sensible system for line management. Every cashier has a number and that number appears on a large screen in one of three clearly marked lanes that reflect the three clearly marked lanes on the floor. It's announced, too. But that wasn't enough for the man standing next to me. As I started to move, he punched me. Literally, punched me because he thought the woman to his left should go. He was wrong. I explained the system to him - briefly, bluntly and in the low and slow tone of voice that connotes suppressed rage. I gave him the eyes, too. He tried giving me the eyes back, but I could tell he didn't mean it. He was scared and didn't want to show it. Meanwhile, everyone else in line is giving us the eyes and the finger. So, I took my - now melted - ice cream to the cashier and paid for it.

There are exceptions, of course. Anyone in a wheelchair gets preferential treatment - and should. People with walkers can be very rude, so they have to ask nicely. Those big, scooter jobs - not motorized wheelchairs, the ones that look like golf carts - don't belong in New York City. I haven't seen anyone yet, who can ride one without smiling. Not a smile of enjoyment, either. A smug grin. If one of those people tries to get in line, they should be yanked from their vehicles and forced to show that they're immobile. Okay, it's not likely to happen, but they only have themselves to blame if it does.

To my knowledge there's only one naturally occurring instance of New Yorkers forming a straight line. Suppose there's only six people in a movie theater. Those six people will all sit directly in front of each other - forming a line straight up the center - because, after all, those are the best seats.

The Robert McNamara "Slay-For-Pay" Tour.

Robert McNamara died in his sleep at the age of 93, something he prevented a lot of people from doing. A so-called “Whiz Kid” when he was hired by The Ford Motor Company, he went on to be Secretary of Defense for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and President of the World Bank. Two things followed him throughout his career: a legendary ability to calculate and a line of cars with their lights on.

Robert McNamara studied systems analysis at Harvard Business School and applied it to the firebombing of civilians during World War II. He didn’t learn defense that way, but he learned the value of a good offense from Army Air Forces General Curtis “Bomb ‘em into the stone age” LeMay, perhaps the most offensive general since Philip “The only good indian is a dead indian” Sheridan. Then, he went to work for Henry Ford.

Not directly, since Ford retired a year before McNamara started and died a year later, but he worked in his shadow. A very dark shadow. Henry Ford hated Jews. He hated them so much that he published the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a dubious text claiming to be a plan by Jews to take over the world. He also published The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, which he wrote himself. Both documents were widely circulated in Nazi Germany, earning Ford a medal from Adolph Hitler. (He accepted.) Robert McNamara must have found this shadow cool and inviting because he worked at The Ford Motor Company for fourteen years, rising from manager of planning and financial analysis to President. He’d only been President for five weeks, however, when the son of Joseph P. Kennedy offered him a job.

Joseph P. Kennedy was a bootlegger, stock market swindler, movie producer and, like Henry Ford, a raging anti-semite. (He never received a medal from Adolph Hitler, but there were rumors of a job offer.) All of which conspired to keep him out of political office, an ambition that would later be fulfilled by his sons. Among them, John F. Kennedy. Handsome, charming and not-too-bright, JFK won, under dubious circumstances, a close and hotly contested election to become President of the United States, a job for which he had only meager qualifications. (Hmm, where have I heard that before?) President Kennedy asked Robert McNamara to be his Secretary of Defense and before you can say, “Napalm”, MacNamara was back firebombing civilians again - this time in Vietnam. What’s more, he was working with his old pal, General Curtis LeMay.

After five years of bombing Vietnam without success, Robert McNamara began to doubt the wisdom of it. What’s more, he harbored growing doubts about a positive outcome to the war. A year or so later, he shared those doubts with the current President, Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson, in turn, shared his doubts that McNamara should continue as Secretary of Defense. Six months later, President Johnson announced that Robert McNamara was resigning to become President of the World Bank. Before you think that moral authority or, at least, a degree of character is necessary to help the world’s starving masses, you should know that, twenty years earlier, the same job was held by John J. McCloy.

As Assistant Secretary of War during WWII - and, thus, McNamara’s boss - John J. McCloy refused to bomb the gas chambers at Auschwitz or the rail lines leading up to them. He claimed it was beyond the range of allied bombers even though they were flying over the concentration camp on their way to more distant targets. Once, they even bombed Auschwitz by accident when they were aiming for the factory next to it. He was also one of the principal figures behind sending Japanese-Americans to internment camps. After the war, as High Commissioner for Germany, he engaged in the wholesale pardoning of convicted Nazi war criminals including the industrialist, Alfred Krupp. What’s more, he was one of the loudest voices against reparations to the Japanese-Americans who were sent to internment camps.

After thirteen years, Robert McNamara retired from The World Bank and from public life. Looking back on his career, two things are immediately clear: one is that he served the most powerful business and political leaders of his day; the other is that he enabled more jerks than a serial bride.

But wait, you say, didn’t he save the world during the Cuban missile crisis? Yes, against great opposition, Robert McNamara convinced President Kennedy not to start a nuclear war. What was the alternative? Destroying all human life as we know it? If anything, we should be wondering what Kennedy and his advisors (Hello, Curtis) were thinking. Robert McNamara preventing nuclear war is like the President pardoning a turkey at Thanksgiving. It doesn’t mean he’s a nice guy.

Ahh, but he dared to oppose President Johnson on the Vietnam War and paid the price. Yes, he spoke up – after a while. We don’t know exactly when McNamara started having doubts about the war, but the record shows it to be around a year before he spoke to the President. We don’t know exactly how many lives were lost during that period, either. But someone knew.

If Robert McNamara is to be remembered as anything besides a bureaucratic blight or Agent Orange in wire-rim glasses, it will be as a brilliant man with no imagination. A sharp, but dull, guy, who could think of a million ways to go from A to B, but couldn’t even imagine C. Especially when it stood for consequences.

The Jackson Four.

The pan-racial pop star who dressed like a toy soldier and moved like a blob of mercury is dead. Michael Jackson was fifty-years old. News of his death covered the media and stayed like an unwelcome guest. His memorial service filled The Staples Center in Los Angeles. The cause of death has not been determined, but drug use is suspected. Propofol, for example. That’s general anaesthesia. Healthy people don’t always survive it and he was using it to sleep. The man was one step away from being embalmed every night. He needed ten Xanax to get through the day. That’s anti-hysteria medicine. Maybe he needed it to keep from laughing hysterically. Maybe not. Where’s Holden Caulfield when you need him? This little boy was running towards a cliff and there was no one there to catch him. No family, no friends, no colleagues. What a lousy way to go.

"Tube Stakes" Results.

I finally saw the new Oxygen series, “Dance Your Ass Off,” and it is as vulgar as any show can be that has “ass” in the title. But wait, there’s more. It is more bathetic than any show since ”Queen for a Day,” a fifties-era program in which a host who looks like he stole all the prizes, Jack Bailey, helps some escapee from a Faulkner novel fulfill her dream of owning a new refrigerator (or her first one.) All she has to do is make her life sound more depressing than the other contestants’ lives. (See post below.) In the first five minutes of “Dance Your Ass Off” (all I could take before my trembling hand reached the “stop” and “erase” buttons) morbidly obese individuals describe the fat- lined path that took them to this show. Death, depression and diabetes figure prominently. Now, for some reason, they all share a garishly-designed apartment in which a cupboard full of donuts and potato chips also figures prominently. No contest. Oxygen’s “Dance Your Ass Off” wins the first annual “Race to the Basement” (not "Race to Abasement," which would imply some humility) and is the officially recognized “Tube Stakes” champion. The only possibly redeeming thing about this show is that it holds, as it were, a mirror up to the nation. They should rename it (if it persists) “America’s Got Tallow.”

The Mother of All Reality TV.

Remember Queen For a Day? It was a TV program that ran from 1956-1964 and was the precursor of today’s “reality” shows. That means it was cursed at before people knew how bad things would really get. Queen for A Day was hosted by Jack Bailey, a man of a certain age with beady eyes and a pencil-line mustache. Four women were interviewed by Mr. Bailey and whoever told the saddest story about her life, as judged by the audience, would be named “Queen for a Day.” In addition to being crowned and wrapped in a royal robe, she would be awarded numerous name-brand products. I miss it.

Today, all game show hosts are young and handsome in a bland way. Back then, a louche quality was accepted, if not called for. Jack Bailey, in particular, looked as if his jacket was lined with hot watches and gold chains. The contestants were different, too. The nation was closer to the Depression then, so people were still pale and thin, not the obese ogres you see today. (See post above.) If, say, Euphemia McTrash, was named “Queen For a Day”, they’d drape her bony shoulders with ersatz ermine and, above her blubbering, announce that her dream of owning a new washing machine has come true.

Why do I miss a show that Howard Blake, one of its own producers, described as “…vulgar and sleazy and filled with bathos and bad taste?” Not that it was more innocent than shows on television today, it wasn’t. The premise may have been charitable, but the goal was entertainment. So, it may resemble The New York Times Neediest Cases, but it has more in common with a public hanging. Not that it was more original, either. It was merely the televised version of a show that had been on radio for the previous ten years. Partly, I miss it because, unlike shows today, it was simple and easy to understand. You tell us about your bad times and we’ll show you a good one. Done. Now, you have a smash hit about man who isn’t a millionaire, but is paid to act like a millionaire and if he succeeds in convincing some beautiful, young woman that he is a millionaire, they get to split a million dollars, so he might as well have been a millionaire. Mostly, I miss Queen For A Day because there was no collateral damage. It may have been, as Shawn Hanley writes, “exploitation of human misery, wrapped in commercial plugs,” but it was honest about it. You watched it for a good cry, then went about your business. Today, “reality” shows are so bizarrely contrived and dubious in purpose, that they beg all sorts of questions: is it reality or is it fiction, are the contestants serious or are they kidding and do the producers expect us to believe them, not believe them or just pretend to believe them? None of which I would care about except “reality” shows threaten to blur all these distinctions out of existence. It would be nice, of course, if journalists helped us by addressing these issues, but the “real” ones won’t touch them. Instead, we have hours of entertainment “news” about “reality” shows and that gets a little weird. So, if I’m nostalgic about Queen for a Day, it’s because, at that time, free television didn’t cost so much.