Catherine the Great was born on this day in 1729. Gossip columnist Hedda Hopper was born in 1885. Benjamin Spock was born in 1903. And the great Indian director Satyajit Ray was born in 1921.

David Suchet is 67 today. And Elizabeth Berridge is 51.

But by a nose, the day belongs to the great lyricist Lorenz Hart who was born on this day in 1895. With Richard Rodgers, he wrote such great songs as “Blue Moon,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” and “My Funny Valentine.”

Happy birthday Lorenz Hart!

I just watched what I think of as a deeply flawed but interesting documentary Puppet. It follows the Dan Hurlin production of a puppet play about the photographer Mike Disfarmer. My problem with the film is that it isn’t focused. It is kind of about the theatrical backstage, kind of a about the state of puppetry, and kind of about Disfarmer. Without a doubt, Disfarmer is the most interesting of the subjects.

He was a loner portrait photographer in a rural Arkansas town during the first half of the last century. Long after he died, he gained great acclaim for his work. It is stark without a hint of sentimentality. I urge you to check out this work at the official print website where you can buy his prints for $800 a piece. Or you could buy the book Disfarmer: The Vintage Prints for about $40.

The play that Dan Hurlin produced is called Disfarmer. Parts of it are shown in film, but of course, I haven’t seen the whole thing. It tells the story of Disfarmer’s last week alive. And during that time, his body shrinks. That’s rather interesting because it isn’t especially something you could do live with an actual human being. But other than that, it struck me as interesting but not really entertaining. That’s sad, because Disfarmer is a fascinating character.

A lot of the film is dedicated to various puppeteers justifying their art form. The one counter to this was David Sefton, the Artistic Director of UCLA Live. He complained that too much puppetry is for its own sake. Instead, he felt that puppets should only be a tool in telling stories. It may surprise you to learn that I completely agree with him. And that was well on display in the production of Disfarmer. Rather than start with the idea that they want to tell a particular story, the story they are trying to tell is limited to the techniques they want to use. To me, the subject matter begged to be done as a one-man play. I don’t necessarily mean something like Hal Holbrook or James Whitmore. Looking at what Hurlin’s group did, I thought they caught the mood of Krapp’s Last Tape, but didn’t seem to catch its emotional core.

As much as I love puppets, I have my own philosophy about them. Fundamentally, they allow a storyteller to cut costs. When Orson Welles did Dr. Fausus, he used puppets for the Seven Deadly Sins. That makes perfect sense. These characters are only on stage for about a minute each. Should one use seven actors with seven extra costumes as well as costume (and perhaps make-up) changes and generally greater logistical complexity back stage? But in most puppet productions, each puppet requires multiple controllers. I still can’t get my head around that: why would a producer use the talents of a half dozen experienced puppeteers just to create one character on stage.

Another issue I have with this kind of puppet use is that I don’t think it uses the strengths of the medium. I’ve run into this with my scripts for “The Post-Postmodern Comedy Hour.” One of the primary characters is a puppet. There are lots of reasons that I want to get rid of the puppet, most especially the enormous technical challenges. Unfortunately, the character is a kind of Peter Pan thing: he refuses to grow up. As a puppet, he is vaguely sympathetic; as a human, he’s just a dick. And that more than anything is why I like puppets: they don’t need to have realistic personalities—they can be stretched just about any way you like.

I suspect that the play Disfarmer would have been enjoyable to watch. I just think that the producers are going a very long way out of their way in order to come back a short distance correctly. As for the film itself, it didn’t make me want to learn more about the serious puppetry business. And it made me appreciate ventriloquists more.

Earlier this week, Ross Douthat wrote about the debate that has been going on between Ezra Klein and Ben Domenech about whether or not conservatives actually have an alternative to Obamacare. Douthat thus gave us, The Republican Health Policy Trainwreck. But don’t let the title fool you, it is basically an apologia for the Republicans. His basic point is: “I think the answer is pretty straightforward: a conservative alternative or alternatives, yes; an alternative that Republican lawmakers are ready to vote for, no.”

He claims there is a big rift between conservative policy wonks and conservative politicians. He points to a number of conservative policies that the think tanks have come up with but which the Republican Party will have none of. Oh well, Douthat is a conservative, so I guess he is allowed a little delusion. The fact is that this isn’t even close. As you may remember, the individual mandate (Obamacare) was a conservative policy idea. Once it became politically viable, all the conservatives turned against it—not just the politicians. Thus, I can’t see the new conservative ideas as anything other than a cover for being against any extant policies.

Most of the article is about how Eric Cantor tried to take discretionary money and give it to one of the under-funded high risk pools. And he couldn’t even get the other Republicans to go along with that, even though it was really just a way to make it harder for the government to help poor people. And that’s my point: even the “reasonable” conservatives are only willing to do something on healthcare if it can be used to more generally hurt government services. Regardless, these ideas are not alternatives to Obamacare, they are just Trojan horses meant to destroy the program. (BTW: the supposed alternatives are either changes around the edges of the pre-Obamacare system or ridiculous notations that “the free market” will fix everything. If that were the case, then we wouldn’t be stuck with Obamacare.)

Recently, a study was released that looked at outcomes of a sample of people who qualified for Medicaid in Oregon. Because it was underfunded, those who got it were picked by lottery. In the two years of the study, they found that healthcare outcomes weren’t significantly different for the two groups but financial outcomes were. There are a couple of things to note here. Those on Medicaid received far better preventive treatment. The effects of that treatment will generally be seen over a longer time period than two years. What’s more, the financial aspect is huge. I currently owe almost $200,000 for a hospital stay I had five years ago when I was employed with a company that promised health insurance next month for three years. Anyway, to my mind, the study shows that Medicaid is at minimum a great thing.

But not all people think that. Aaron Carroll and Austin Frakt over at The Incidental Economist report on how conservatives are greeting the study:

This is what the “reasonable conservatives” like Ross Douthat don’t want to admit: their allies (and maybe they themselves) don’t want healthcare reform. As always, they think that helping the poor is bad because: (1) it disincentivizes the poor to work; and (2) the poor are undeserving because they are morally inferior. And, to use a rhetorical trick that I learned from Matt Yglesias, that’s fine. If they want to hate poor people for being poor they should go for it. What they shouldn’t do is pretend that they are just trying to better serve the poor with all their great ideas for healthcare reform.

Paul Waldman wrote an excellent article over at The American Prospect, House of Representatives Now a Scene from “Life Of Brian.” It is based upon a Politico article that reported that the House Republicans are divided into two factions. Not moderates and conservatives. No, that would be too reasonable. One of the factions is comprised of hardcore “lower taxes and cut spending” types. The other is comprised of hardcore “outlaw abortion and kills the gays” types. And they do not like each others. “The only people we hate more than the Romans are the Judean People’s Front!”

The movie Life of Brian is not particularly about religion. It is mostly about extremists—in particular, revolutionary groups. My favorite part of the movie is the scene where they discuss what the Romans ever did for them. “All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?” That’s right out of a Tea Party movement. “What has the government ever done for us?”

What Waldman is getting at without explicitly saying so is that the Republicans have become a revolutionary party. They are not interested is governing. They think the entire system is invalid; they don’t want to reform it; they want to destroy it. Generally, they don’t succeed because people are smart enough not to give them power. But when they do it is very bad. When the Nazis gained control of the German government, almost the first thing they did was dissolve the parliament and make Hitler dictator. The point is that half measures don’t matter to these kinds of people. It is all or nothing. So until they have complete power, they have nothing to do but out-purity each other.

Waldman started his article with a claim that is music to my ears:

This is one of my pet peeves too. No one would ever say, “My drain is clogged; get me someone who knows nothing about plumbing!” But I think that Waldman is wrong to think that the dysfunctional Republican Party is the result of idiot outsiders who have taken over the party. Usually, there are norms that stop zealots from entering a party. In the past, such people would hook up with the Constitution Party or some other extremist group. But over the last 30 years, the Republican Party has become more and more friendly ground for radicalism. Eventually, there is a critical mass of crazy where only the crazy are allowed. And that is what we now have with the Republican Party. Note: contrary to what many say, this never happened to the Democratic Party. It is possible that the party became too liberal, but it never became socialist.

I worry that events will lead to a place where the modern Republican Party is in control in Washington. But even that will cause them to implode. There is no way that the Republican Party can continue on as it has. The internal conflicts and the unending search for purity will eventually destroy it. But even under the best of circumstances, this process will be very painful for those least involved.

A couple of years ago, when I first saw the movie 9, I thought I perceived in it a new kind of dramatic structure. Having just watched it, I see now that I was wrong. The film is structured as a number of clear sequences—seven or so (I haven’t studied the film). And as such, it is a pretty typical story structure. The only notable thing about it is that, as usual for animated features, it is much more tightly structured than most films.

Regardless of all this, it is a wonderful film—the kind of story that I am naturally attracted to. And it is beautiful to look out. There is more creativity in every frame than there is in whole Hollywood films. Take, for example, the funeral of 2 where the others send his body off on a boat in a body of water. Before he is sent off, however, the others put a coin over his eyes. That’s really wonderful: sort of Norse, sort of Greek.

What is wonderful about this film is the way that it uses archetypes. It has the Intellectual, the Hero, the Inventor. My favorite (as always) is the Mystic. There is an unfortunate unwritten rule that says the Mystic has to die at the end of the second act. See, for example, Lord of the Flies. But while watching the film, I had a sad thought. These stories are filled with interesting types of people, but in real life, most people are just slight variation on the Follower. And that especially applies to our so called leaders, who have all the originality of a Benny Hill rerun (with all due respect to the man).

I know that I’m coming off as elitist here. But I don’t think I am in fact elitist. There is just something about any society (and ours most especially) that kills individuality and therefore life. It makes most men of my age far too interested in professional sports and not at all interested in movie musicals from the 1950s. But that in itself would be okay if all that specialization of interest led to a deep appreciation. But it doesn’t. I think the vast majority of baseball fans have no more understanding (and often less) than I do. And that’s just sad.

No wonder I want to hang out with animated dolls like 6 and 2 and 7 and 5 and 9. They are all so alive.

Afterword

For the record: I really like baseball. It’s about the only professional sport I enjoy watching. But even still, I would rather watch the minor leagues.

Sean Trende over at Real Clear Politics has started the process of looking at the 2014 House elections. The article mostly concerns its title, Congressional Elections and the Sixth-Year Myth. This is the idea that the president’s party will lose big in the sixth-year midterm. To me, this myth is a little hard to understand. The House membership change for all the two-term presidents since FDR are as follows: -22%, -24%, -16%, -25%, -3%, +2%, -13%. I think people look at the big starting numbers and just go with it. To me, it looks like a downward trend: something that used to be that is no longer.

Well, that isn’t what’s going on. He showed (going all the way back to 1870) that in only one of the two midterm races, the president’s party loses big. It is very rare that it happens twice—in fact, it only happened once—to Grant in 1870 and 1874. Trende mentioned a number of reasons why this is, but one is by far the most important. And we know what it is. The biggest reason that the Democrats lost in 2010 was not Obamacare or any of that garbage. When Obama won big in 2008, he dragged a lot of House Democrats with him who were in marginal or even conservative districts. When turn-out was low in 2010, they all lost. So now in 2014, the Democrats hold very few marginal seats. So they will not lose big in the upcoming midterms. At least they won’t unless something dramatic happens.

Trend still thinks that the race favors the Republicans. He says the results will likely be somewhere between 5 Democratic seats up to 15 Republican seats up. The odds of the Democrats taking back the house (which would require that they win 17 seats) is very unlikely. In summary:

And I’ll take that hope—especially coming from a conservative outlet like Real Clear Politics!

Meet Jamestown Jane. Or as her friends in Jamestown may have referred to her, Juicy Jane. According to USA Today, in a presentation at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, her reconstructed face was presented as shown in the picture at the left. A lot of reconstruction was necessary, because she was apparently butchered for food during the a bad winter in 1609 when 80% of the residents of the colony died—mostly of starvation. Poor Jane had her skull based open to get to her high protein brain. No one can say whether she was specifically killed to eat or not. Regardless, pretty girl.[1]

This isn’t the first time that cannibalism has been associated with Jamestown. Accounts at the time claim that one man was put to death for eating his wife. I assume this is not a euphemism!

Reading about all of this made me wonder why it is we were all taught about the Plymouth Colony, when it wasn’t first. So I did a little research and came upon a bulletin board with a discussion of the issue. And I was shocked at the answers. Most people said we probably focus on Plymouth because the Pilgrims were fleeing religious persecution. Well that’s wrong and right.

It is wrong in the sense that it is absolutely false that the Pilgrims came to Plymouth to get religious freedom. They left England because of religious persecution. And they went to Holland (in what is today The Netherlands) and got religious freedom there. But it’s a funny thing about religious freedom: those who give it tend to give it to everyone. There was a whole big world of ideas and the Pilgrims didn’t much like that. The kids were getting new ideas in their heads and the Pilgrims were (Gasp!) losing their cultural identity. So off to Massachusetts. And good for them! But don’t say they went to get religious freedom when it was exactly the opposite.

But I think these bulletin board people are correct: this myth is the reason that grammar school children throughout the nation are taught about the Pilgrims. But I hated this kind of nonsense even when I was a kid. In the second grade, I was taught that Columbus discovered America. In the fifth grade, I was taught, well, Columbus really didn’t discover America. And in the seventh grade I was taught that, yes, in terms of westward migration, Columbus really did discover America. Was that so hard? Did I really have to go through three iterations of the story?

As for the story of western invasion, why not Jamestown with its war, disease, and cannibalism? Those are all critically important concepts to understand about the founding the United States. And at this point, I think the kids would choose Jamestown if they were asked. “Hey kids, which story do you want: Thanksgiving turkey or Jamestown Jane? They’re both nice a juicy, if a tad gamy!” I think the answer is perfectly clear.

Update (1 May 2013 11:17 pm)

I forgot to add this clip of the Reduced Shakespeare Company doing Titus Andronicus:

[1] Obvious joke: “I wonder what she’d look like with an apple in her mouth?”

This morning, I was reading Jonathan Chait about, The Obamacare Opposite-of-a-Train-Wreck Scenario. In it, he argued that even though next year’s implementation of Obama will likely have problems, these will be trumped by the fact that many millions of people will finally get health insurance. For a man who is too often mired in the middle, he is very blunt, “To the extent that the implementation brouhaha comes into any focus, it will shine a light on those people’s struggle to get needed help from the government. Republicans aren’t trying to get those people better help. They’re trying to screw them.”

As usual, I got to thinking about this. I remembered all of the brouhaha from conservatives about immigration reform. “We will be creating 11 million citizens who will all vote Democratic!” (Well, I guess they would say, “Democrat.”) I understand the concern and I’ve even argued that Republicans should not be fore immigration reform, given that they are unwilling to do anything else to court the immigrant vote. Maybe the Republicans are doing the same kind of calculation with Obamacare.

What am I thinking? We know that poor people don’t live as long as rich people. Part of that has to be due to the lack of good healthcare throughout their lives. By providing health insurance to everyone, the poor will live longer. The poor are overwhelmingly liberal. Therefore, Obamacare will make more liberals!

I know this sounds fanciful. And in truth, it is possible that the Republicans have not thought of this. There are, after all, a lot of reasons they hate Obamacare. The most fundamental one is that they think that the poor are morally inferior and they don’t believe in helping them at all. But Obamacare is clearly a good political strategy for the Democrats and poison for the Republicans.

The essayist and playwright Joseph Addison was born on this day back in 1672. King of Hawaii Kamehameha I was born in 1738. Writer and feminist Judith Sargent Murray was born in 1751. French Realist painter Jules Breton was born in 1827. American portrait painter Cecilia Beaux was born in 1855. Theo Van Gogh was born in 1857. The great painter Romaine Brooks was born in 1874. Jack Paar was born in 1918. Pacifica Radio founder Lewis Hill was born in 1919. And there are more, but I’m tired.

Judy Collins is 74 today. Rita Coolidge is 68. Director John Woo is 67. Unconscious plagiarizing songwriter Ray Parker Jr is 59. And director Wes Anderson is 44.

The day, however, belongs to one of my favorite novelists, Joseph Heller, who was born on this day back in 1923. Most people know him for Catch-22, but he was so much more. In fact, for those wanting to start reading him, I recommend avoiding Catch-22. I don’t say this because it is bad; it isn’t; it is fantastic. But there are so many characters and the plot moves along so fast that it is hard to figure out what’s going on. As I recall, I read the first 100 pages four times before I continued. I think his easiest novel is Something Happened. In addition to everything else, it is laugh-out-loud funny most of the way through. Of course, Heller was usually very funny, even when writing about King David. Anyway, if you haven’t read him, you are missing out.

Happy birthday Joseph Heller!