Bill Bolling Speaks in Charlottesville

Virginia Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling, a candidate for re-election this year, was the featured speaker at Saturday's monthly Albemarle County Republican Party breakfast at the Golden Corral restaurant on Seminole Trail.

Between 65 and 75 local GOP activists attended the breakfast meeting, including Delegate Rob Bell and Albemarle County Supervisor Ken Boyd. Bolling gave the gathering an election-year pep talk, telling them that despite recent losses, it is permissible to be disappointed but not to be discouraged.

Without mentioning him by name, Bolling took a swipe at his opponent for the Republican nomination, Patrick Muldoon, by saying that this is not the time for division and that the party should be unified in its efforts to win back the Governor's mansion and maintain its majority in the House of Delegates.

In this video, Lieutenant Governor Bolling is introduced by Christian Schoenewald, chairman of the Albemarle County Republican Committee.

Bolling continues his remarks here:

Wrapping up his stump speech, Bolling opens up the floor to questions here:

In this last segment, Bolling takes a question from Charlottesville GOP chairman Buddy Weber and then encourages the crowd to knock on some doors to promote the Republican ticket:

Update on the Ashton Lundeby Case

I would like to apologize to my readers for overreacting and jumping to conclusions in a blog entry early Wednesday morning about the case of Ashton Lundeby, a 16-year-old North Carolina homeschooler who was arrested by the FBI on March 5 and who has been incarcerated in a juvenile lock-up in Indiana since then.

It appears that I was misled, along with hundreds of other civil liberties-oriented bloggers, by the initial news reports that appeared on line. These news reports, from WRAL-TV in Raleigh and The Daily Dispatch (a local newspaper that covers Oxford, the Lundeby family's hometown), relied too heavily on the word of Annette Lundeby, Ashton's mother, and neglected to perform the due diligence that one expects from established news media outlets.

Fortunately, Wired magazine and other sources have done some additional digging into the case and have found that Annette Lundeby seems to be prone to both exaggeration and omission.

First of all, Ashton was not arrested under the terms of the USA PATRIOT Act. He was arrested and charged under a far older (circa 1939) statute addressing the making of threats using telecommunications equipment. (He may, however, still face other charges, and it is not impossible that the PATRIOT Act will be cited against him.)

Second, it appears that Annette Lundeby was aware that her son had been making bomb threats over the Internet (using voice-over IP software) and had warned him against it, even suggesting to him that if he continued to do so, he could run afoul of the law.

William Grigg of Pro Libertate, who was one of the first bloggers to break this story, has also updated his initial report to note that there are serious questions being raised about the veracity of Annette Lundeby's media outreach efforts.

Fortunately, there are professional journalists like Kevin Poulsen of Wired who take the time to check facts and do analysis beyond hysteria. It's embarrassing to have to admit to being victimized by a too-bad-to-be-true story of a peachfuzzed adolescent abused by the law and whose mother paints him with a halo over his head, but this seems to be the case.

I am not willing to agree that Ashton Lundeby is guilty of any of the charges he faces now or in the future, but I am willing to say that I wrote too soon, without having better knowledge of the case.

At the moment, however, I think I've been punk'd.

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Two Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Live Arts, Charlottesville's best-known, semiprofessional, community theatre, has announced its 2009-10 season, which includes Glengarry Glen Ross and Gypsy (which will be directed by John Gibson, who is retiring as Live Arts' artistic director next January).

The season will be preceded by a summer musical, Footloose, which promises plenty of opportunities for aspiring young performers from the Charlottesville area to sing and dance.

I reviewed Footloose in its pre-Broadway run at the Kennedy Center in September 1998. While I never did see the show after it reached the Big Stem, I understand that there were some changes made that might have caused me to write a less negative review. (I don't often pan a new musical, but I did in this case.) Testing a show out of town is meant to get rid of some of the kinks and to respond to the criticisms of reviewers and audiences.

It turned out that Footloose received four Tony Award nominations: for actress in a musical, book of a musical, choreographer, and original musical score. Four nominations, but no wins. Still, despite mixed reviews, the show had a respectable run on Broadway of just under two years and 709 performances. It also provided the Broadway debuts of 16 of its 34 cast members, which might be some kind of record.

Here is my review, as it appeared in The Metro Herald more than ten years ago:

Footloose: All Sizzle and No Steak
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

The choreography is excellent. The dancing is better. The sets are eye-catching. The songs are infectious. The costumes are colorful. So what makes Footloose, with its expectations of being a firecracker, such a dud?

The new musical at the Kennedy Center, based on the 1984 film of the same name and headed to a Broadway opening next month, simply does not live up to its promise. Despite individual aspects that are admirable, Footloose ends up being much less than the sum of its parts. It is flashy but ultimately empty. It is, to steal a phrase from advertising, all sizzle and no steak.

Footloose, the movie, produced a raft of hit songs, including the title number, "Almost Paradise," and "Let's Hear It for the Boy," which garnered an Academy Award nomination for composer Tom Snow and lyricist/librettist Dean Pitchford. It made Kevin Bacon a star. Its story about a small town in the Bible Belt where dancing is forbidden has become well-known.

Footloose, the play, fails on several levels, both in conception and execution.

One conceptual problem is present in both the movie and the play. The fundamental plot device is logically, if not dramatically, flawed. In both versions, newcomer Ren McCormack (Jeremy Kushnier), is told that the town of Bomont's ban on dancing was legislated after a car accident took the lives of four teenagers, at least one of whom was drinking, when they were driving home from a dance in neighboring Baylor County.

If the fatal dance was in Baylor County, why ban dancing in Bomont? It would make more sense either to prohibit dancing in Baylor County (an unlikely prospect for Bomont citizens) or to make sure that Bomont teenagers who want to dance and have a good time are able to stay close to home, supervised by caring adult chaperons, so that they will avoid the dangers of driving under the influence. This dancing ban makes as much sense as contemporary "zero tolerance" policies for alcohol use by the under-21 set, which is more likely to drive drinking underground (far from the moderating influence of adults) than to teach young people how to drink responsibly. (This may be a topic for another day.)

Moreover, the creative team -- Tony-winning director Walter Bobbie, whose smash hit Chicago revival played the National Theatre in Washington last year, songwriters Snow and Pitchford, and choreographer A.C. Ciulla -- seems to have been unable to make up its collective mind about Footloose's time-frame. Is it set in the ‘80s, like the movie? Most of the costumes suggest that. Or is it set in the ‘90s, today? At least one reference to the Internet indicates that. But perhaps it is set in the ‘70s? The formalwear in the final scene could be straight out of the new Fox TV comedy, "That '70s Show," and some of the stage sets could be straight out of a revival of Grease (which was, after all, a ‘70s phenomenon, despite its nostalgia for the 1950s). So there is this confusion.

Then there is the execution.

First, the plot and characters. For a show about dancing, with considerable "bells and whistles," as well as a score that's 50 percent rock-and-roll, Footloose lacks energy. There is nothing that drives it forward. Because the ending is predictable, the conflict that is meant to carry us along seems empty. The characters, as a consequence, seem shallow, two-dimensional. It is hard for us to care about them. Footloose is uncompelling.

Second, the songs: In addition to the songs from Footloose, the movie, Snow and Pitchford have produced nine new songs for this stage production. The movie songs are all written as Top 40 hits to be used as background music in a film soundtrack -- not that there's anything wrong with that. (As some have noted, Top 40 provides us, certainly in our teen years if not beyond, with the "soundtrack of our lives.") Yet in this context -- with the exception of "Almost Paradise," which fits well here -- the film's songs seem imposed from above on a structure that cannot support them. As a result, they feel uncomfortably disengaged from everything around them -- including the audience.

The nine new songs, however, are more "musical theatre" numbers. They fit snugly into their context and breathe life into the characters who sing them. They advance the plot and help the audience to understand what is going on. Especially good are "Learning to Be Silent," a duet for Vi Moore, the preacher's wife (Dee Hoty) and Ethel McCormack, Ren's mother (Catherine Cox), and "Can You Find It in Your Heart?," a solo number for Vi later reprised by her husband, the Reverend Shaw Moore (Martin Vidnovic). On the other hand, Ren's big number, "Dancing Is Not a Crime," his address to the town council pleading for the repeal of the dance ban -- what is it? Is it a patter song? Is it rap, is it hip-hop? Whatever it is, it doesn't work.

Despite this wealth of material -- unevenly distributed, to be sure -- the creative team seems to lack confidence in their product. One sign of this: The biggest hit from the movie, "Let's Hear It for the Boy" (ably sung by Stacy Francis, as Rusty, and the company), was greeted by applause from the audience within the first two measures of music -- a surefire crowd pleaser. One would anticipate a pre-written encore for this number. No such luck. Two scenes later, however, an amusing but unexceptional novelty number, "Mama Says" (sung by Tom Plotkin as Willard Hewitt, Ren, and three boys from the chorus), was given an encore, despite tepid applause after the first go-around. Go figure.

The biggest problem with the music, however, might simply be in its delivery. Songs sung by more than one person, especially full-company numbers, are almost incomprehensible. The sound was always muddy. This could be the fault of the sound designer, Tony Meola. Or it could be blamed on the vocal arrangements by Doug Katsaros.

More likely, the fault lies with electronic amplification itself. Electronic amplification -- especially the ubiquitous body microphones -- is the musical theatre equivalent of the aluminum baseball bat. It encourages laziness on the part of the performer, who should be using his or her full vocal faculties -- mouth, larynx, head, lungs, and body -- to project to the back of the house. To do otherwise actually damages the performer's voice. The size of the auditorium, even in a large space like the Kennedy Center Opera House, should be no excuse for over-reliance on electronic amplification devices. At best, microphones and speakers should be used as a minor enhancement for the sound from the stage, not as a substitute for vocal projection.

The contrast between the older and younger performers in this production is telling. Martin Vidnovic, who had his Broadway debut in 1976 in another failed musical, Home Sweet Homer, Dee Hoty, and Catherine Cox -- the principal adults in Footloose -- come through loud and clear. They know how to enunciate and how to project their voices properly. Their voices carry naturally through the auditorium so that electronic amplification supplements their natural talent rather than overpowers it. On the other hand, the younger cast members, including some of the principals, come across like a tea party of James Dean and Marlon Brando wannabes -- rhubarbing, mumbling, and swallowing their words.

What's the difference? Hoty, like Vidnovic and Cox (who played opposite each other as expectant parents in Baby, a short-lived 1983 musical whose cast album is now a cult favorite), grew up in the theatre in a pre-electronic era. The younger singers have grown to rely on microphones as a crutch. It shows.

Footloose is scheduled to open on Broadway in October, with a national tour planned for January 1999. If they want to draw audiences large enough to carry out their plans, the producers had better arrange multiple spots to plug the play on the "Rosie O'Donnell Show" and the "Late Show with David Letterman." In the meantime, Martin Vidnovic should start softening the blow for his enthusiastic young comrades, most of whom are making their Broadway debuts, by dusting off his anecdotes about working with Yul Brynner during the single Broadway performance of Home Sweet Homer.

Otherwise, the cast and crew should pray for the resurrection of Ed Sullivan, because only raw publicity of that magnitude can rescue Footloose from becoming a Broadway footnote.

Forgive me for liking my own work, but I love that reference to Home Sweet Homer. Like the legendary Moose Murders and the underrated Glory Days, it is notorious for having just one official performance on Broadway. I suspect this blogpost will show up on searches by people intrigued by Broadway trivia or those trying to settle a bar bet.

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Obama Administration Imprisons 16-Year-Old Boy Under PATRIOT Act

Why would a 16-year-old boy from Oxford, North Carolina, who has no criminal record, call in a bomb threat to South Bend, Indiana, more than 800 miles away?

This is a fundamental question the FBI and Obama administration Department of Justice have refused to answer in the case of Ashton Lundeby, who was pulled from his bed on the night of March 5 and whisked away from his home to a jail in Indiana, without access to his family or an attorney.

The administration is using the USA PATRIOT Act, passed in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, without being read by any Member of Congress. Legislators voted for the law under a veil of ignorance and assurances by the Bush administration that the law would never be used to violate the civil liberties of American citizens.

Ashton's story is told best in this news report from WRAL-TV in Raleigh, now available on YouTube:

Notice how the 16-year-old homeschooler's bedroom is decorated with a patriotic theme. Perhaps the Obama administration is following the lexicon published by the Department of Homeland Security (uncovered by the Washington Times) that defines "patriots" as potential terrorists. "Patriot movement," the DHS says, is:

A term used by rightwing extremists to link their beliefs to those commonly associated with the American Revolution. The patriot movement primarily comprises violent antigovernment groups such as militias and sovereign citizens.

In the only local print media report on Ashton's arrest by gun-wielding gangsters-with-badges, reporter William West of the Daily Dispatch wrote:

Annette Lundeby, a disabled widow, lives in a modern home and has three cats.

She told the Dispatch that, on the night of March 5, she was about to go to sleep, that her son was asleep on a sofa and that her 12-year-old daughter was in bed when the knocking on the door began.

According to Annette Lundeby, the authorities arrived in unmarked cars and remained on the property until roughly 1 a.m.-1:30 a.m.

And according to Annette Lundeby, at the time of the search she was prohibited from making any phone calls, including to an attorney, and that agents told her she had to be at her son's detention hearing the next morning in Raleigh.

And she added that she was unable to sleep after the authorities left and that her daughter was traumatized. Both of her children are home-schoolers.

Annette Lundeby maintains that a hacker — that is, one who is determined to seek unauthorized access to a computer — got her son's Internet provider address and used such access to both make crank phone calls and falsely give the impression of the calls coming from the residence.

She claimed the judge questioned an FBI agent at the hearing in Raleigh about whether one could hack one's Internet provider address and claimed the agent replied this was virtually impossible. And she claimed that the agent told the judge that he did not know of any computer software available on the Internet to hack an Internet provider address.

"Virtually impossible"? Apparently the FBI doesn't talk to other government agencies. In that DHS "Domestic Extremism Lexicon," there is this definition of "hacktivism":

(A portmanteau of “hacking” and “activism.”) The use of cyber technologies to achieve a political end, or technology-enabled political or social activism. Hacktivism might include website defacements, denial-of-service attacks, hacking into the target’s network to introduce malicious software (malware), or information theft.

In addition to incompetences like this, government law enforcement agencies are extremely shy about apologizing for mistakes. (They almost never do so, unless by court order.) So Ashton Lundeby, no matter how strong the case for his innocence is, will likely be kept in jail for years as the government tries out new and more ridiculous charges against him, until they find one that sticks or they wear Ashton down so thoroughly that he confesses to crimes he did not commit (and probably did not occur).

Under the USA PATRIOT Act, law enforcement agencies are not our friends. John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute recently wrote:

Since 9/11, it has become apparent that the federal government, unless it is kept within the bounds of the law, will develop into an immense monster that no one can curb. The end result will be that the American people will lose control of their government.

The Rutherford web site notes:

Our government is becoming more and more intrusive. With the passage of sweeping laws such as the USA Patriot Act many find themselves questioning whether we really are living under Orwell’s Big Brother government.

Annette Lundeby understands this quite well:

"We have no rights under the Patriot Act to even defend them, because the Patriot Act basically supersedes the Constitution," she said. "It wasn't intended to drag your barely 16-year-old, 120-pound son out in the middle of the night on a charge that we can't even defend."

If President Barack Obama genuinely wants to reverse the assault on civil liberties begun during his predecessor's administration, he can start by freeing Ashton Lundeby and sacking the idiot who approved the raid on the Lundeby family's home.

UPDATE: New information has come to light regarding Ashton Lundeby. Read about it here.

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The New S&M Meme?

Was it just a coincidence that two articles in the Outlook section of Sunday's Washington Post both ended with nearly the same sentence? Or, if not precisely the same phrase, at least the same sentiment? Should we be on the watch for this rhetorical device in the era of Obama?

Here is how Naomi Wolf ended her review of Jennifer Scanlon's new book, Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown (headlined "Who Won Feminism?"):

Surely we can find a way between the merely personal and the mostly political -- a synthesis of Brown and Friedan. If Michelle Obama's generation is getting closer to it, maybe Sasha's and Malia's generation will find it at last.

And then, a couple of pages later, in a symposium on whom the President might choose to succeed Supreme Court Justice David Souter, former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford said this in closing:

I hope there's a new litmus test: The court needs a broad thinker -- someone who will listen closely to the facts of cases, promote an even application of the law and not hesitate to engage fellow justices about the effect their decisions will have for future generations.

The president should be also mindful that Sasha and Malia could use another role model on the high court.

Liberals are fond of saying proposed laws to circumscribe peaceable adult conduct are "for the children." Will we, for the next four years, be stuck with the greater specificity of "for Sasha and Malia"?

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Jack Kemp

Americans heard the sad news on Sunday that former Congressman Jack Kemp had passed away the previous evening.

Kemp was one of the champions of economic liberty and, specifically, of the wisdom of supply-side economics during his years in Congress. He called himself a compassionate conservative before the Bush administration sullied that phrase, but Kemp lived up to the term.

He was passionate about issues affecting the urban poor, which led to his selection by the first President Bush as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and he had a unique and focused concern for Africa and for finding ways to reduce the endemic poverty of that continent.

Jack Kemp later went on to be Bob Dole's vice-presidential running mate in 1996, even after (belatedly) endorsing Steve Forbes for president that year. (Forbes himself decided to run only because Kemp removed himself from the race, saying that the field of candidates needed to include someone focused on tax reform and tax-cutting.)

I had just a handful of encounters over the years with then-Congressman Kemp, mostly at policy conferences and those weird Washington evenings that are a combination of business and pleasure.

On one of those occasions, in 1984 or 1985, I snapped a photo of Jack Kemp before he delivered a speech. (You can see the picture on the upper left of this column.) He is with Ernest W. Lefever (on the left) and Shelby Cullom Davis. Lefever was president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center at the time and was hosting one of the annual award dinners held under Mr. Davis' name. (This might have been taken the year that Jeane Kirkpatrick was given the Shelby Cullom Davis Award for Integrity and Courage in Public Life.)

Others can write more eloquently about Jack Kemp -- Leslie Carbone has a fine remembrance on her eponymous blog, as does sports business columnist Evan Weiner at the Examiner-- than I can. Suffice it to say that a man of Jack Kemp's intellect, passions, and determination will be sorely missed on the political scene.



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Hair Today -- and Yesterday

Tuning in to the last five minutes of The Late Show with David Letterman, I was pleased to see the cast of the new Broadway revival of Hair performing a couple of the show's signature songs: "Aquarius" and "The Flesh Failures/Let the Sun Shine." The performance proved that, more than 40 years on, Hair is still "with it."

Seeing the excerpts on late-night TV, I thought I would dig up the review I once wrote of a 30th anniversary revival of Hair in Washington, D.C. This production (at the Studio Theatre) was unique in its setting. Staged in what were really Studio's rehearsal halls, the audience had to follow the cast around from room to room as the scenes changed, rather than sitting in one place and watching the actors come in and go out.

This review appeared in The Metro Herald in August 1997. As it happens, the production of Hair reviewed here went on to win a Helen Hayes Award for Best Resident Musical for the 1997-98 season.

Studio's Hair Sizzles
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

Seldom performed these days, Hair seems as much a period-piece of the Sixties as Anything Goes is a period-piece of the Thirties. Both plays generated a number of songs that made the "Hit Parade" of their eras. From Anything Goes came the title song, "You're the Top," "All Through the Night," "Let's Misbehave," and others. From Hair came its own title song (a hit for the clean-cut family group, The Cowsills, models for TV's Partridge Family), "Easy to Be Hard" (Three Dog Night), "Good Morning, Starshine" (Oliver), "Aquarius" and "Let the Sun Shine" (The Fifth Dimension).

Hair's songs -- music by Galt MacDermot and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado -- have become so much a part of our shared popular culture that it is difficult to imagine how, at the time it opened in 1967, Hair was so innovative, controversial, and shocking. Perhaps that is why, despite its adult subject matter and nudity, this production at Washington's Studio Theatre attracted parents with their children. Considering that in the 1960s, Hair was considered to be rated "XXX", it shows how far along we've come that today's audience includes teenagers dragged along by their Baby Boomer 'rents. (One interesting Hair pair: a father and son with matching ponytails.)

The harsh language and situations that made Hair so shocking 30 years ago are hardly different from what one might find in a typical R-rated summer blockbuster today. Yet somehow Hair manages to rise above the vulgar and mundane to present an almost spiritual message. That may be why, shortly after the play opened on Broadway in 1968, the cast was invited to participate in a worship service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, recorded as "Divine Hair: Mass in F." At that event, the music and lyrics of Hair were interpolated among prayers and readings from the Book of Common Prayer to create a powerful, moving liturgical experience.

That power persists. Luckily for the Studio Theatre, the cast assembled by director Keith Alan Baker for the current production of Hair is vocally superior to the original Broadway cast. Thirty years ago, critics and audiences alike complained that the music was too loud, the lyrics mumbled and muffled, so that understanding what was said was nearly impossible. At the time, that did not matter much, because people went to see Hair for the total "Experience" -- the turning on, tuning out, be-in and love-in of a "tribal rock musical."

Today's audiences expect more, however, and Studio's cast delivers. The songs are articulated clearly and powerfully. Perhaps because of the intimate, environmental setting (a standing-room audience consists of no more than 75 or 80 patrons), it was easy to understand the actors both when they spoke and when they sang. (The intimacy does have its drawbacks, however: it was possible to smell the cast's make-up and to determine that the cigarettes they were smoking were certainly not made of marijuana.)

And the songs are what make Hair great. What little plot there is, is propelled by the music. The songs define the characters even as they define an era. Without the music, Hair would be another forgotten political protest play of the 1960s -- indeed, a play that would never have seen the inside of a Broadway theatre. The songs both make it memorable and give it its energy. It is hard to imagine a more powerful finale to any musical than the "medley" of "The Flesh Failures/Let the Sun Shine." No song has ever been written that better portrays the personal hypocrisy of some left-wing political activists than "Easy to Be Hard": "Especially people who care about strangers/Who care about evil and social injustice/Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?/How about a needing friend?"

Hair proved to be a model for hit musicals that followed. An obvious Hair-wannabe was Godspell, Stephen Schwartz's retelling of the Gospel according to St. Matthew. Here, too, the cast consisted of brightly-clad "hippies" who lived as a "tribe" and told stories through songs. (In Godspell, the music tended toward the folk-rock rather than the pure rock sound of Hair.) The final scenes of the two plays have too many parallels to be considered a coincidence. Even the last song in each consists of a single lyric repeated over and over (Hair: "Let the sun shine, let the sunshine, let the sunshine . . ." Godspell: "Long live God, long live God, long live God . . .") And Hair set the stage for other successful rock musicals like the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice shows Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita.

As anchored in its time as Hair appears, however, its themes are universal and timeless: Should I be loyal to my friends or my country? Will that boy think I'm cute? Why don't my parents understand me? Why won't my children behave? Aristophanes and Shakespeare would not have trouble recognizing the characters and ideas in Hair. (Indeed, Shakespeare provides the lyrics for one of Hair's songs, "What a Piece of Work Is Man.")

It's particularly appropriate that Studio Theatre should mount this 30th anniversary production of Hair, since the lyricists, Gerome Ragni and James Rado, both have Washington roots -- Rado being born here, and Ragni having studied at Georgetown University. Studio Theatre's Hair will live in memory long after the last chords are sounded on the show's last night. It's too bad that the small space at the Studio's Secondstage means that so few people will be able to enjoy this production. The irony, of course, is that in a larger space, the play would not be as good.

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President as Mameleh

At the opening of his 100-day news conference tonight, Teleprompter-in-Chief Barack Obama chided Americans as a mother might scold her 5-year-old child.

"Wash your hands," he said, and "cover your mouth when you cough."

At his next major press event, the President will likely tell us to "wipe your feet" and, "What? Were you born in a barn? Close the door behind you. I'm not paying to heat the whole neighborhood!"

Frankly, I want a president who does not condescend to his constituents.




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Me and Michael (Phelps)

I have (on very few occasions) met Olympic athletes in the past, usually people who competed on the U.S. Olympic team many years prior to our encounters. Their Olympic careers were pleasant memories by then, but not the defining characteristic of their lives.

Today, for the first time, I met someone who is not only a current competitor, but the person who represents Olympic competition and success more than any other: Olympic gold-medal winner Michael Phelps, who has participated in three Olympic Games (Sydney in 2000, Athens in 2004, and Beijing in 2008) and who shows no signs of slowing down.

The occasion was the presentation of the Male Athlete of the Year Award from the United States Sports Academy. My business associate, Joe Szlavik, is a member of the Academy's Board of Visitors. He is also president of the U.S. Sports Alliance, a Washington-based trade association, and I serve as that organization's communications director. I was asked to take photographs of the award presentation, which took place in the Mangione Fitness and Aquatic Center on the campus of Loyola College in Maryland.

The center is quite impressive. Out of 3,800 students enrolled at Loyola, about 60 percent participate in intramural sports or club sports. In any given week during the school year, at least 1,000 students will use the Fitness and Aquatic Center's facilities.

Michael Phelps himself was quite friendly and laid back. He arrived by himself -- no handlers in tow -- to accept his award. (He was the recipient of the same award in 2003; previous winners include Lance Armstrong [four times!], Brett Favre, Carl Sanderson, and Tiger Woods.) The presentation was informal, consisting mostly of posing for pictures. (They'll turn up in the newsletter of the United States Sports Academy and perhaps in some other publications, as well.) He has the biggest hands I have ever seen on a human being. (And no, I didn't ask about his reported relationship with Miss California USA, Carrie Prejean. I'll leave that to the tabloids and Perez Hilton.)

Here is the text of the news release announcing the award:

ACADEMY TO PRESENT MICHAEL PHELPS MALE ATHLETE OF THE YEAR AWARD

DAPHNE, Ala. – Swimmer Michael Phelps, the all-time leader in career Olympic gold medals, will be presented the United States Sports Academy’s 2008 Male Athlete of the Year award on Tuesday 28 April at 11:30 a.m. in Baltimore, Maryland, by Joe Szlavik, president of the U.S. Sports Alliance.

Phelps won the award after a worldwide online vote in December 2008 when more than 300,000 votes were cast on a ballot hosted by the Academy, USAToday.com and NBCSports.com.

Phelps, who had approached Mark Spitz’s all-time record of seven gold medals (1972) by winning six golds at the 2004 Games in Athens, blew Spitz’s mark out of the water at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, grabbing an unprecedented eight gold medals in a single Olympiad.

In his third Olympic appearance, Phelps broke the world record in four of his five individual swims, while all three of his relay teams also set world record times.

Phelps won the 400-meter individual medley with a time of 4:03.84, as well as the 200 individual medley (1:54.23), 100 butterfly (50.58), 200 freestyle (1:42.96), 200 butterfly (1:52.03), 4 x 200 freestyle relay (6:58.56), 4 x 100 relay (3:08.24) and 4 x 100 medley relay (3:29.34). All times except the 100 meter butterfly were world records.

To date, Phelps has 14 Olympic gold medals, more than any other Olympian, and a total of 48 career medals in major international competitions, spanning from the Olympics to the World Games to the Pan Pacific Championships.

The Academy Athlete of the Year ballot is the culmination of the Academy’s yearlong Athlete of the Month program, which recognizes the accomplishments of men and women in sports around the globe. The Academy Athlete of the Month is selected by an international voting committee comprising media members and representatives of sports organizations and governing bodies.

The United States Sports Academy is an independent, nonprofit, accredited, special mission sports university created to serve the nation and the world with programs in instruction, research and service. The role of the Academy is to prepare men and women for careers in the profession of sports. For more information about the Academy, call 251-626-3303 or visit www.ussa.edu.

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On Meeting McNally

Those readers who also follow my Tweets on Twitter will already know that I saw the new production of Ragtime at the Kennedy Center last Saturday night and that, to my delight and surprise, the Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally was in the audience, seated almost directly in front of me.

It turns out that the whole creative team of Ragtime was there to see the show last weekend. In addition to McNally, who wrote the book of Ragtime (based on E.L. Doctorow's novel), composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens were also present.

After the final curtain call, I had an opportunity to chat briefly with Mr. McNally. (I even obtained his autograph in my program. I may be a critic, but I'm also a fan.) While I was interviewing him for The Metro Herald, Mr. Flaherty also joined us; he signed autographs for other fans. I was also able to take a few photographs -- not in the best lighting conditions, but at least there is a record of the meeting. (You can see some of the results nearby.) Unfortunately, I wasn't able to reach the trifecta of also meeting Ms. Ahrens.

My review of the show is not yet complete (but you can see what I wrote about the original national tour and about the Broadway production as well). This does provide, however, an excuse to post a review of another Terrence McNally play (and movie) -- not a musical, but it does have some dancing in it -- Love! Valour! Compassion!

A sidenote: I saw the original Broadway production of Love! Valour! Compassion! in 1995. In the audience that night was veteran stage and screen actor Hume Cronyn. Though tempted to introduce myself, I was restrained (and polite) enough to let him have his privacy. At the time, I would not have even had the rationale of being a drama critic to justify being intrusive.

In any case, here is my review of Terrence McNally's Love! Valour! Compassion!, which appeared in The Metro Herald in June 1997:

A Study in Contrasts:
Love! Valour! Compassion! on Stage and Screen
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

How fortuitous for Washington-area drama lovers that the film adaptation of Terrence McNally's Tony-award-winning play, Love! Valour! Compassion!, has opened just when the area's premiere of the stage production is playing at the Studio Theatre. This gives us a rare opportunity to compare and contrast drama in its live form with its cinematic counterpart.

In a recent review of Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Hamlet (America, May 17, 1997, p. 22), film critic Richard A. Blake noted that Shakespeare's play is one of "introspection," in which "a gifted actor on a bare stage speaking lines of unparalleled power and beauty opens the character's alternating spasms of confusion and resolve." Movies, Blake asserts, "don't do that type of soul-searching very well. Film is a medium of action, of epic scope and visual symbol. Words have their place, of course, but the dialogue must fit the images; and dialogue, even lengthy verbal exchanges, provides interludes to explain motivation for action."

So, too, with Terrence McNally's film adaptation of his own hit play. With one exception (TV star Jason Alexander, cast for his marquee value when Nathan Lane refused to participate in the project), the cast is the same as that on Broadway. Love! Valour! Compassion! (hereinafter LVC!) is not a play of action. While not as introspective as, say, Hamlet, and not as motionless as Waiting for Godot, it is essentially plotless. Things happen, to be sure, but only as a means to define and delineate the characters and their relationships.

The characters, in this case, are eight gay men who come together on the three major holiday weekends of the summer at the country home of Gregory Mitchell, a celebrated choreographer (Christopher Wilson at the Studio Theatre; Stephen Bogardus in the film). The concept sounds cliched -- after all, didn't Mart Crowley introduce this conceit in his pioneering 1968 play, The Boys in the Band? Well, yes and no. McNally is a writer with far more universal appeal than Crowley ever had. Contemporaries they might have been, but McNally has built upon Crowley's foundation to create a combination of pathos, tragicomedy, and humanity wholly free of the venomous bile that characterized The Boys in the Band.

The movie fails because McNally has -- for commercial reasons? -- truncated the expository elements of his characterizations that make the play so appealing. In the play, we are given information that clearly establishes the web of relationships among these men: John Jekyll (Kirk Jackson/Studio; John Glover/film, repeating his Tony-winning performance as both John and his twin brother, James) is Gregory's rehearsal pianist as well as a failed Broadway composer; Perry Sellars (John Emmert/Studio; Stephen Spinella/film) is Gregory's attorney; Buzz Hauser (Floyd King/Studio; Jason Alexander/film) is the costume maker for Gregory's dance company. Moreover, Buzz was once (14 years earlier) Perry's roommate who met John the same day that Perry met his longtime companion, Arthur Pape (Michael Russotto/Studio; John Benjamin Hickey/film). None of this -- except a passing reference to Perry's pro bono legal work -- is explained in the film.

These details are not disposable. Without knowledge of these interlocking relationships, the film audience remains puzzled about why these men have come together for their holiday weekends. Why do they know each other? What do they have in common? Why do they tolerate the mean-spirited John? Audiences at the Studio Theatre can answer these questions.

Gore Vidal once wrote that "A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships." This is true of Terrence McNally, the playwright. It is not true of Terrence McNally, the screenwriter. (This was also evident in McNally's film adaptation of his play Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, which was incomprehensible when performed on screen with Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer in the title roles.)

The centrality of character in this play becomes clear, too, when one contrasts the performances of Jason Alexander and his colleagues, who came to the film directly from Broadway. Their months of rehearsal, exploration, and performance as the characters they portray provided them with a substantial depth that Alexander lacks. Alexander, despite his admirable theatre experience, comes off as superficial. (Eight years on Seinfeld may have retrained him to go for the quick laugh, the 23-minute punch that weekly sitcoms demand.)

To a certain extent, this may be explained by what British critic John Berger meant when he said that "Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown." Just as the relationships among the characters are much more strongly bonded in the stage play, the relationship between the characters and their audience is much stronger in the theatre than in the cinema. Theatregoers are required to participate much more in the stage production -- the barren stage induces them to use their imaginations. In contrast, the movie sets everything before the audience. For example, while Gregory's blind lover, Bobby Brahms (Sean Pratt/Studio; Justin Kirk/film) pantomimes his tactile exploration of the trees and flowers in the garden on stage, those trees and flowers are there, larger than life, on screen. When Bobby drops a milk bottle on stage, no prop is used but an off-stage sound effect alerts us to what happened; on film, the bottle and milk explode into myriad pieces. The lush realism of LVC! (the movie) detracts (and distracts) from the drama itself.

Here, then, is the irony: Movies require action to attract and retain their audience, which otherwise remains passive. Plays, being less action-oriented, require the audience to be active. The New Republic's longtime theatre critic, Robert Brustein, put his finger on this phenomenon when he noted: "Theatergoing is a communal act, moviegoing a solitary one." Few things are more dissatisfying than attending a live performance in an empty auditorium; being the sole member of a cinema audience is hardly ever disappointing.

In the end, LVC! on film fails for the same reasons it triumphs on stage. McNally's screen adaptation attempts, unsuccessfully, to impose a plot where none existed; to do this in two instead of three hours; and to sacrifice full understanding of each individual character before the (perceived) facile needs of a moviegoing public, assumed to be less sophisticated than the mavens of the Great White Way.

No one should endure this condescension. That is why we in the Washington area are so lucky -- we can take advantage of the Studio Theatre's excellent production of Love! Valour! Compassion! even as others across the country must settle for the inferior film version. This critic's advice: see the play now, while you can, and rent the video when it's released.

Love! Valour! Compassion! is not currently playing in Washington (2009) but Ragtime's run at the Kennedy Center has been extended through May 17.

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On the Columbine Anniversary

The past decade has seen many events that have overtaken most of our memories about the shocking massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999, precisely ten years ago. USA Today has a report on the commemorations taking place:

Tributes began Sunday evening with a candlelight vigil at the native Colorado stone monument in neighboring Clement Park, where the community left impromptu memorials in the days after the shooting. Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter ordered flags to fly at half-staff Monday. A formal commemoration begins at 5 p.m.Monday at the Clement Park Amphitheater.

"We cannot allow the lessons of this tragedy to fade with the passage of time," Ritter said in the statement.

In the immediate aftermath of the shootings at Columbine, I wrote an article for The Metro Herald, which appeared in its edition of April 30, 1999. In retrospect, I might have written something different, and I would not have had just this same reaction if these events happened last year or last month or last week.

We have learned more about Columbine itself, and we have experienced similar school shootings -- such as the one two years ago at Virginia Tech -- that have provided still more questions and more material for study, and thus for learning better techniques for prevention and response. Police tactics are different today because of Columbine, for instance.

Those caveats aside, much of the piece holds up after ten years, so I am republishing it here and welcome comments.

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON RANDOM VIOLENCE
Richard E. Sincere, Jr.
Special to The Metro Herald

Crime stories in the news seldom merit my attention. Yet the story of the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20 has kept me transfixed in front of my TV for days. The drama has been preternaturally compelling. The shattering news from Littleton has evoked hours upon hours, page upon page of reporting, analysis, speculation, and bewilderment. A book would be necessary to reply to all of the commentary on the shooting and its aftermath. (No doubt not just one book, but several, will be on sale soon, with movies and TV shows to follow.)

It is difficult to keep silent in the face of such tragedy. Although my preference would be to provide a comprehensive, coherent essay—and may still do so—what follows are some random thoughts about random violence.

We have heard that the mayhem at Columbine High School demonstrates that our culture is corrupt and depraved. This is simply not so. Precisely the opposite is true. What happened in Littleton was the work of two individuals (perhaps with accomplices), not that of our culture or our society. Two facts are important here. First, events like that of April 20 are exceedingly rare in the United States. There are more than 40 million children in school, and less than 10 percent of them will ever be affected by or observe violent acts of any sort in their schools. Rarity makes us take notice. Second, we have almost universally reacted to the Littleton killings with horror, disgust, and grief. The abnormality of the event, plus our proper reaction to it, provide irrefutable evidence that our culture is strong, that our society and we as individuals still possess a profound sense of right and wrong.

We have heard that school killings like this do not happen "anywhere else," that America is almost unique in experiencing such things. Sadly, this is not true, either. In other countries, such occurrences are all too frequent. In Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, events like this have taken place regularly and with more vicious cruelty. The difference from America, of course, is that there the massacres are carried out by governments or by those who want to control the government. The only comparable acts by the U.S. government since the end of the Indian Wars in the nineteenth century were the destruction of the home of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, in 1993, and of the MOVE rowhouses in Philadelphia a few years before.

We have heard that the Littleton massacre shows the need for more stringent gun control. Once again, a tragedy is being used by those who want to see the state extend its control over the lives of individual citizens. This is misguided, wrongheaded, and exploitative. It is easy to say that we must do it "for the children," but how do those children benefit if their rights as adults are circumscribed and violated by the time they grow up? Previous generations have spent their childhoods in a climate in which guns were pervasive. The difference was that children in those days were taught both to respect their weapons and to respect other people.

A retired police chief noted in a letter published in the Wall Street Journal that the problem at Columbine was that "only the bad guys had guns." Columnist Vin Suprynowicz of the Las Vegas Review-Journal points out that "in Israel, teachers and parents who serve as school aides go armed at all times on school grounds, with semi-automatic weapons. Since this policy was put into effect, terrorist attacks in Israeli schools have dropped to zero. The only recent exception was the tragic case of a group of schoolchildren who were murdered by an Arab gunman as they visited the 'Zone of Peace' on the Jordanian border. The Jordanians specifically requested that the Israeli teachers and chaperones leave their weapons behind—which they did. American schools are, on the other hand, 'gun free zones,'" by law.

We have heard that the tragedy at Columbine High School shows the need for more active intervention into the personal lives of students and parents, to prevent future such events. No amount of intervention is likely to help, and it will more probably result in unconscionable intrusion by government in the form of school authorities. The suspected gunmen, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, had had no disciplinary problems in school. In their one brush with the law, they were released from a community-service program with favorable recommendations. By all accounts, they came from good families, their older siblings had no problems, and they were not "loners" as initial reports indicated—they had friends, girlfriends, and even belonged to a "clique" of their own, the now-notorious Trench Coat Mafia.

Alienation and a sense of loneliness are typical of adolescence. Each of us felt it at some time during our high school years, but for the vast majority of us, it did not lead to crime or violence. The check lists we see about youth "at risk" for disturbing behavior sound like a list of answers to the question, Is your child between the ages of 13 and 19? The "warning signs" include things like: spending a lot of time alone in his room listening to music; rebelling against authority; disdaining being seen in public with his parents; acting "different" from a few years before.

The fact is, we can seldom know when such acts of violence are or have been prevented. An exception was last November in Burlington, Wisconsin, where local authorities received an anonymous tip that an attack on the local high school was scheduled to take place. A quick response led to the arrest of the students involved. In most cases, however, prevention will take place early and unknowingly, through the kindness of teachers and administrators, respect paid by parents or fellow students, by turning potential killers onto the right path of normal behavior. And we cannot know which of them might have been seduced by the dark side. Americans do not like to feel out of control. Randomness itself terrifies us. Random violence compounds the terror. But randomness is part of the price we pay to live in a free society. Only a dystopian sort of totalitarianism could eliminate risks completely, and none of us is willing to live under that kind of dictatorship.

Finally, a question: Why has no one pointed out that the school killings of the past few years—in Bethel, Alaska; Pearl, Mississippi; West Paducah, Kentucky; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Springfield, Oregon; and now Littleton, Colorado—have all taken place at government-run schools? Not a single incident like this has occurred at a private or religious school. That, perhaps, tells us more than anything else. It may tell us more than we want to know.

The next few weeks will bring us more solid knowledge about what happened on April 20. But the questions will linger for many years to come, as will the sadness and the pain. Fortunately for those who suffered, the first Sunday following the Columbine tragedy was "Good Shepherd Sunday" in the calendars of the liturgical churches. Across the country and in Littleton itself, congregations were comforted by the words of the 23rd Psalm: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want . . . Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil . . . Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever" (KJV).

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Teabagging in Charlottesville - Part III

Having posted my first set of videos from the Charlottesville Tea Party -- featuring former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, Tertium Quids president John Taylor, WCHV-AM radio talk show host Joe Thomas (in the persona of Thomas Paine), and Karin Agness of the Network of Independent Women -- late on Wednesday night (or was it early on Thursday morning), followed by a collection of photos from the same event, I am now able to post the last few video segments. I would have had more but my camera's battery died before the end of the Tea Party.

The first video features Delegate Rob Bell (R-58), who represents parts of Albemarle and Orange counties, as well as Greene County, in the Virginia General Assembly. He is one of the legislators whose districts cover part of the territory that was once represented by Thomas Jefferson, in his early public service career. (As a member of the Virginia legislature, Jefferson introduced the Statute of Religious Freedom, one of the three achievements he chose to note on his tombstone. The others were being the author of the Declaration of Independence and founding the University of Virginia.)

Delegate Bell was the only elected official invited to speak to the 1,500 or so people gathered under the canopy of the Charlottesville Pavilion for the April 15 Tea Party. According to emcee Joe Thomas, it was Bell's connection to Mr. Jefferson that led to the invitation. Here are Rob Bell's remarks, preceded by Thomas' introduction:

The chairman of the Jefferson Area Libertarians, John Munchmeyer, followed Delegate Bell to the microphone. He gave a wide-ranging address, framed by the analogy of the frog in the pot as illustrative of what expanding government is doing to its citizens. (As the story goes, if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, he will immediately jump out. If, however, you put him in a pot of cold water and then turn up the heat slowly, the frog will remain in the water until he is fully cooked -- and, therefore, dead.)

Munchmeyer spoke for about 20 minutes and I have divided his speech into three smaller segments. (The text of his speech is available at the Jefferson Area Libertarians web site: www.jalibertarians.org.)

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

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Teabagging in Charlottesville - Part II

Following up on my initial post on Wednesday's Tea Party in Charlottesville, I would like to share a few photographs that I managed to take that day.

A digression: Crystal Clear Conservative has a round-up of coverage by Virginia bloggers about the various Tea Parties around the state. She lists Tertium Quids, Bearing Drift, Deo Vindice, Virginia Virtucon, and yours truly. She also provides links to the opening and closing remarks at the Reston Tea Party by Leslie Carbone, author of the forthcoming book, Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform. There is also photographic and video coverage at the Jefferson Area TeaParty blog. Daily Pundit also has some good photos from the Charlottesville Tea Party. Finally, Norm Leahy has posted another round-up of coverage of Virginia Tea Parties at RedState, including not only bloggers but also mainstream media reports.

Let's start with some of the creative hand-held signs brought to the Tea Party by concerned citizens:

This one says "Let's scuttle the Beltway pirates too!! They're asking 10 trillion $$$$ ransom!!!!"

Here's a slogan for the ages: "Capitalism Rocks / Socialism Sucks" -- no doubt Adam Smith would approve!

A twist on an old joke (which I think originated with "The Wizard of ID" on the comics page): "Congress is revolting and so are we!"

Virginia's state motto: "Sic Semper Tyrannis" or, in English, "Thus always to tyrants"

What does "TEA" stand for? "Trillions Endanger America"

This young lady had a two-sided sign that seemed to refer to the notorious report issued by the Department of Homeland Security on April 7, which identified activists for smaller-government and respect for the constitution as potential terrorists. As recently as Thursday, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano was defending the report rather than admitting it is an embarrassment. Napolitano does not, apparently, believe (as does, for instance, Katrina Vanden Heuvel of The Nation) that "dissent is patriotic."

These signs say: "In 1773, I'm a patriot" and "In 2009, I'm a terrorist."

A slogan for the Age of Obama: "I'll keep my money, freedom, and guns. You keep your change."

Now for some photos of people at the Charlottesville Tea Party:

Former Charlottesville City Council member Rob Schilling, now a talk show host on WINA-AM, poses with Jim Moore, president of the Charlottesville Taxpayers Association.

Delegate Rob Bell (R-58), whose seat in the Virginia General Assembly was once held by Thomas Jefferson, was the only elected official to address the Tea Party multitude.

Charlottesville-area resident Lawrence Eagleburger, who served as Secretary of State under President George H.W. Bush, also addressed the crowd.

Just beyond the boundaries of the Tea Party area, on Charlottesville's downtown mall but outside the Pavilion, I caught these images:

The First Amendment Monument (which may, within the next few years, have to be renamed the First Amendment Memorial) was a beehive of activity while the Tea Party was going on.

Some bright wag chalked this thesis on the wall: "The problem with socialism is you run out of other people's money!"

Another teabagger put the case more crudely: "Taxes Blow"

How appropriate it was that the whole Tea Party enterprise was watched over by three of the Founders: James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe. Whether they watched with bemusement or pride -- or horror that such a protest was necessary -- is unknown.

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