Once Upon a Time: Batman and Robin in Tennessee

11/7/2015

Fred Thompson and Sen. Howard Baker

Fred Thompson’s obituary reminded me of another time and place, when fewer public figures made me feel, well, I think the word is icky.

In the very early ‘70’s, I was a New York Times Appalachian correspondent based in Louisville.

There were giants in those days, who believed in government. Some of them were Republicans. I got to write about Sen. John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, Mayor Richard Lugar of Indianapolis and a young United States Attorney from Western Pennsylvania, Richard Thornburgh, who gave me a private seminar in jury selection that informs me to this day.

One lovely fall day, I took a ride around Nashville with Sen. Howard Baker, who was running for re-election. He brought along his campaign manager, tall and droll, Fred Thompson.

I don’t remember a word. My story included Baker’s Democratic opponent saying Baker was too liberal toward the antibusing movement. I only remember good conversations in the car and Fred Thompson’s pipe. For a lefty from New York, I was not at all surprised to see things from their perspective, and to enjoy their company.

The Watergate break-in had taken place three months earlier. It was not mentioned in my story. None of us had any way of knowing Baker would be a major figure in the hearings, and that Thompson would become famous for whispering to Baker, as one of his chief assistants.

I was not the slightest bit surprised when Baker was seen as a stalwart, honest man who examined the evidence against President Nixon.

I followed their careers, as Thompson became an actor – well, he was always an actor – and a senator himself.

Recently, I came across a story I had written in 1972, about possible legislation to limit strip mining – ripping coal from the surface of hilly Appalachia. The two proponents were Sen. Cooper from Kentucky (who was about to retire) and Sen, Baker from Tennessee, both Republicans, from coal states.

I thought about the way current senators grovel in front of coal -- Joe Manchin of West Virginia (a nominal Democrat who sometimes seems like a nice guy) and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (who does not, ever.)

In the year of Trump and Carson and the nebbish Bush and the twerp from Florida I call El Joven, I remember a sunny day driving around Nashville with Howard Baker and Fred Thompson – and not feeling like I needed a shower afterward. What has happened?

Tim S

11/7/2015 09:43:23 am

As you know, what happened was Reagan begetting Newt begetting Rush begetting Cheney begetting dark chaos.

George Vecsey

11/7/2015 10:19:56 am

Yeah. It's been interesting reading Bush 41's comments. Thanks, GV

Brian Savin

11/7/2015 10:46:38 am

Amen, George, amen.

George Vecsey

11/7/2015 10:54:02 am

Brian and Anybody Else:
In the interests of brevity, I never even mentioned Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, one of the solid legislators of recent years -- held some great committee hearings during the steroid scandal. He got out in 2008, as chronicled by Peter Baker in the NYT. "Tom Davis Gives Up." Everything that is wrong. Worth reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/magazine/05Davis-t.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0

Brian Savin

11/7/2015 11:33:00 am

It's a very good and true rendition of recent history, but, alas, only half the story. Hope and change came and went. The rich get richer and the poor multiply in vast numbers as the middle class disappears like water on Mars. And the printing presses producing get out of jail free cards never missed a beat all the time since. Even on the one maybe, sort of accomplishment, single payer wasn't even allowed to be debated on the floor of Congress. Nobody had the nerve........ The best we're set up to get is an all too common choice: the Crook or the Stupid Guy? Take care, Bernie, it was nice to see ya.

John McDermott

11/7/2015 08:49:15 pm

I admired Baker very much. It will not surprise you to learn he was a very serious and good photographer, which may have something to do with my view of the man. Thompson I also admired, especially for his career versatility. He acted. Sometimes well. And sometimes he overacted. But I always had the sense he was playing himself. What a pity then that his last gig was as a shill doing tacky commercials aimed at senior home owners for the reverse mortgage "industry". I could have done without seeing a former US Senator stooping to doing something like that.

John McDermott

11/7/2015 08:54:56 pm

A friend asked me where all the decent Republicans went. I thought about it. And it seems they are almost all dead. No Warren Rudman's or Howard Baker's on the scene these days. The current crop of GOP crackpots and parrots would probably consider them closet Democrats. But they, and others like them, were, like Poppy Bush, fundamentally decent men who were committed to doing good for the country, not just for their party and their friends.

George Vecsey

11/8/2015 09:12:21 am

John, all true, but then again, clearly these strange birds appeal to the anger and frustration of some segment of the population. Think of the people who have been Tea Partied out. Eric Cantor, known as The Putz in front of my TV set, got tossed out in his district. Yikes I mean, these people don't exists in a vacuum.
Saturday Night Live could not bring out anything likable or positive about Trump -- just a bad actor playing a part.
It was even worse for anybody who saw the one-hour re-run from 1976 SNL earlier.
Talk about giants in the old days....
GV

Brian Savin

11/8/2015 10:07:10 am

I fell asleep during SNL. Connecticut Public Television aired the great West Side Story. Earlier in the evening. That movie, which I hadn't seen in decades, refreshed my recollection of the controversies and challenges of immigrants, from their relations with "natives" to their relationship to the police. Nothing much has changed.

George Vecsey

11/8/2015 01:49:49 pm

Brian: 12.04 AM. Click. I think they hit Trump with the elephant stun gun, robbed him of his nastiness shtick.

West Side Story was on Ch. 13 in NY, too. We saw it a couple of times a few years ago, and I just can't. It's just too good. The dance in the gym brings tears to my eyes -- most beautiful depiction of love at first sight.

I was going for cheap thrills Saturday, but Trump couldn't even deliver that.

GV

Brian Savin

11/8/2015 02:33:04 pm

West Side Story in my opinion is a better play than the Shakespeare play on which it is based. I remember when the Magnavox console stereo was delivered to our home at the dawn of hi fidelity. It came with audio recordings of Shakespeare plays and a book with wonderful but minimalist notes by poet and scholar Mark Van Doren. His progeny live in my town. His notes were all about capturing Shakespeare's brilliant references and word meaning twists which communicated on multiple levels. Those notes taught me the genius of Shakespeare and as a kid I decided that the only thing a writer could do to equal or top Shakespeare was to communicate all these nuances in modern language. In my experience that happened once: West Side Story.

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QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Once Upon a Time: Batman and Robin in Tennessee

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