Before Andrew Lloyd Webber destroyed Broadway with his tuneless operas, there was Stephen Schwartz who wrote the songs for two iconic musicals of the early 1970s: Godspell and Pippin. Then he more or less disappeared from Broadway until 2003 when it seemed he shocked the theater world with Wicked. Apparently, the audiences were impressed to learn that songs could be crafted that were memorable. I should be clear, though. I think Schwartz is a great songwriter. But it’s not like he’s always on. There is such a tendency for musical comedy songwriters to write for more than they should. That’s especially true of Webber, who really is a major talent but who has been doing little more than grinding out scores for two decades now.

Two years after Pippin, Schwartz wrote the music to The Magic Show, which was incredibly weak. And frankly, since then his work is mostly that kind of banal songwriting that we’ve come to know and hate from otherwise talented people like Randy Newman and Elton John. But all the cylinders were firing on those first two plays. And so I was pleased to see an add for a new production of Pippin.

The ad came on before a YouTube video. It was one of those things where you have to wait 5 seconds before you can skip it. And I almost did. I could hear “Magic To Do” playing, but that’s a song that is used for all kinds of things. It looked like it was being used for a circus. And that’s why I continued to watch, even though the commercial was slated to be over two minutes long. You see, Pippin is quite cleverly structured by Roger O. Hirson not as a story about Pippin but as a story of a group of actors performing a play about Pippin. It seems pretty clearly to be an homage to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. And just as in that play, it becomes a postmodern mess at the end. The difference is that Pippin is an entertainment and so all ends well. Stoppard’s play never clearly delineates what is supposed to be reality. (The movie version is more clear.)

The original production of Pippin had all this as subtext, with musicians and juggler and such. But this production takes this aspect to the extreme. Check out the video below. There are a few things that stand out. One is that we have Andrea Martin playing the original Irene Ryan part as Pippin’s grandmother. (Ryan died while in the cast.) Another is that this production has a woman as the Leading Player. And they do a great thing with hoops that recreates the original banner that is above. (Maybe they did that in the original; I never saw it; I was only 8 and I lived in California.)

On the other hand, there is something about all Broadway productions that bugs me. I would like to see this production because I love the book and songs. And it includes all the parts of a circus that I like. (What I like: everything but the clowns.) But there is a sense that theater tries too hard to be video. I saw a rock concert recently (I just noticed that I’ve forgotten to write about it!) and with all the effects and video screens and cameras, I thought it was a joke. In that case, I would rather sit in some bar listening to a guy with an acoustic guitar. And when it comes to theater, in general, I would prefer if the production would embrace its limitations. Because I think there are things you can only do live. For example, the one person show doesn’t really work on screen. There is something intimate that cannot be otherwise be recreated. And I think there are great untapped opportunities in the art form if only producers would try.

But Pippin was never supposed to be anything but an entertainment. What’s more, I understand the appeal of a production like Cirque du Soleil. And it looks like this production provides this—along with a number of catchy tunes and a very sweet story.

After two years, Neil Irwin looks back on the Standard & Poor (S&P) downgrade of the United States government from AAA to AA+. And he finds no evidence for it having affected the borrowing costs of the United States. But I’m afraid that Irwin is taking the whole thing too seriously. Even at the time, I don’t remember anyone thinking anything other than that it would not mean a thing. The only prediction I remember hearing was that S&P would embarrass itself. It turns out that S&P did not embarrass itself. It seems that everyone already knew that the ratings agencies are a joke.

There is a problem with articles like Irwin’s: they imply that the ratings agencies are held to some standards. But we know this isn’t true. Even before this ridiculous downgrading of American debt, we got the spectacle of the ratings agencies testifying in front of Congress after the financial crisis. All three of the ratings agencies had given investment grade ratings to subprime packages that shouldn’t have been rated above junk. But it wasn’t their fault. They were just exercising their first amendment rights to talk out their asses. It was just opinion and nothing more.

As far as that goes, I’m right with them. They have a right to charge people money for their useless opinions. The problem is not with them. I wish I were like them: I wish people would pay me billions of dollars for my opinion about investments. I have strong opinions about what’s happening in the tech sector. Anyone want one of my opinions for a few thousand dollars? In fact, I’ll offer a special to all you Frankly Curious readers: $999 and I will tell you what I think will happen in the tech sector or anything else. No takers? Well, you know how to get in touch me.

The problem we have more broadly is that those who run our investment industry are just a bunch of charlatans. I doubt that the people at Goldman Sachs think that the ratings agencies know what they’re talking about. But they use nice offices, drive nice cars, wear nice clothes. They can sell the ratings agencies as a sweetener to investors, “You don’t have to worry because these guys with nice offices, cars, and clothes say it’s safe.” And everyone on the inside feels good about this. Investment bankers say everyone knows the whole thing is corrupt. The ratings agencies know they are providing all the nice offices, cars, and clothes that the investment banks want. And the investors don’t find out about the scam until it’s too late.

After something like the financial crisis, you would think someone would step in and stop it. You know: someone like an umpire whose job it is to make the system fair for everyone. Someone who punishes the grifters and thieves. You know, some kind of governing body. If we had such a thing, I would think, after the crisis, they would have thrown some people in jail. They would have reorganized the whole system. They would have been clear that the farcical and inbred investment system had to change. It sure would be nice if we had such an institution.

I’m afraid that as well intentioned as Neil Irwin’s article is, it only feeds the beast that is our broken investment banking system. Because it may call out S&P in this one instant, but implies that the ratings agencies are something we can normally count on. And they aren’t. They are just a rotting core of pretend expertise that can never be held accountable.

See also: S&P and Anti-Meritocracy

So what is this stuff about Benghazi I wrote about earlier? Last Thursday, CNN broke a story suggesting that the CIA was running guns from Libya to Syria out of the Benghazi proto-embassy. This, supposedly explains the administration’s “cover up” of the attack. The big problem I see here is that the story is an answer to a question no reasonable person is asking. But okay, I’ll bite.

CNN claims that they’ve learned that “dozens” of CIA operatives were “on the ground” in Benghazi the night of the attack. I want to start with the vague number “dozens.” It literally means at least 24. Yet the article later claims that there were only 35 people total at the compound and that there were 21 at the annex, which is claimed to have been run by the CIA. Still, 21 is a lot of people. But why would this make us believe that it had (1) anything to do with gun running and (2) anything to do with the attack? CNN doesn’t even have a source for the first connection. All it says is this, “Speculation on Capitol Hill has included the possibility the U.S. agencies operating in Benghazi were secretly helping to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels.” Note all the weasel words here: speculation, included, possibility. As for the second connection there is nothing at all.

The article also gives major time to Frank Wolf. He believes that we need to have public hearings with everyone who was in Benghazi the night of the attack. I’m all for that, but I don’t think that Wolf is an honest broker here. This is a man, after all, who thinks that Edward Snowden is a traitor. He’s said some nice things against the surveillance state, but I suspect if a Republican where in the White House, he wouldn’t even go that far. It seems to me just another Republican witch hunt with the vaguest of targets. After all, even the CNN article provides no reason to believe that anything the CIA was doing had anything to do with the attack. So what would Wolf’s hearings be but an open ended opportunity for the Republicans to snipe at the Democratic administration?

The strangest part of the CNN report is its discussion of CIA agents being given lie detector tests. According to three unnamed sources, people who were in Benghazi have been tested much more than usual regarding leaks to the press. There’s a fundamental question here, though: wouldn’t these unnamed sources be afraid they will be caught by all of this internal surveillance? Over the weekend, Max Ehrenfreund discussed this part of the story in more detail:

I am open to there being something to this story. In particular, I think we should know if the CIA is running guns into Syria. But the whole Benghazi attack line is a bridge too far. How long is the press going to jump every time Republicans make another unsubstantiated claim? There is a law of information accumulation that goes along with the idea of entropy. If you gather enough information, eventually you will end up with contradictions. If you look for scandals long enough, you will eventually find something that looks kind of like a scandal—whether it is or not. At this point, CNN and the Republicans are going to have to come up with a bit more than, “There were CIA agents in Benghazi and they might have been running guns.”