Sununu, Weicker, and Wilder Appear at UVA

"Sununu, Weicker, and Wilder" might sound like the name of a new law firm. Instead, the three are former governors: John Sununu (R-N.H.), Lowell Weicker (Ind.-Conn.), and L. Douglas Wilder (D-Virginia). The trio appeared at the University of Virginia on April 16 in a panel discussion sponsored by the Center for Politics, under the title "The Presidency Reconsidered: should we change how we nominate and elect our chief executives?” According to the news release distributed before the event:

Each of the 21st Century's presidential elections has seen many constitutional issues come to the forefront of public consciousness. Some have suggested that the process of being nominated by the parties is in need of review. Should we attempt to alter this process by establishing regional primaries or some other system, or are we better served leaving the process to the discretion of each individual state? What is the role of the superdelegates, and does this process work as it was intended? Should anything be done to prioritize the outcome of the popular vote in the nomination process and/or the general election? Are there changes that might help build greater confidence in our system of elections for more Americans? Should we continue to disallow non-native born citizens from running for president? These topics and more will be debated at The Presidency Reconsidered.

I attended the event, invited in my capacity as a blogger, but also as a correspondent for The Metro Herald in Alexandria. I was there with video camera in hand, which makes it possible for me to transcribe the entire recording (a daunting task, which I did not attempt in toto) and thus permits me to use quotations that can be checked for accuracy rather than rely on scribbled notes.

I have already posted the entire 75-minute event to YouTube, and the video segments appear below. I also prepared an article for submission to The Metro Herald, which (with slight variations for the blog format) follows:

Governors Discuss Presidential Politics at the University of Virginia
Rick Sincere
Special to The Metro Herald

(Charlottesville, April 16) --- Three former governors – one Democrat, one Republican, and one independent – spoke at a forum sponsored by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville on April 16, addressing the question, “Should we change how we nominate and elect our chief executive?”

Moderated by UVA professor and political pundit Larry Sabato, the forum was attended by more than 450 people, who came to hear former White House chief of staff John Sununu (who earlier was Republican governor of New Hampshire), former Republican Senator Lowell Weicker (who later was an independent governor of Connecticut), and current Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder (who served as Democratic governor of Virginia from 1989 to 1993). Weicker and Wilder were also briefly presidential candidates themselves, in 1980 and 1992, respectively.

To initiate the discussion, Sabato asked the three panelists to predict who will be the Democratic presidential nominee and who will win the general election.

Sununu replied: “Frankly, I don’t care who wins the Democratic nomination, and I think the Democrats are going to be very surprised that this is not a Democratic year, that they have created a sufficient level of chaos that, I think, John McCain will be the next president.”

Speaking as a Democrat, Wilder said, “Barack Obama will be the nominee of the party and I will say that that if he were not the nominee of the party, John McCain would not win anyway.” He admonished, however, that “the malaise that we see spilling over in so many ways, is such that [the general election] is for the Democrats to lose.” Still, he concluded, “the nominating contest is pretty much over. I will not be one to say that it should end now … but I think that Barack Obama will be eventually proclaimed the nominee of the Democratic party.”

To break the tie, Weicker offered a pithy answer: “Barack Obama, Barack Obama.”

With that preliminary question out of the way, Sabato moved into the central question of the evening: Is the presidential nominating process broken and, if so, how can it be fixed?

Governor Sununu gave a lengthy but cohesive response, which focused on his own experience – and admitted bias – as the former New Hampshire chief executive and presidential campaign activist.

“I think people don’t understand that the nominating process,” Sununu said, “the primary process really should demand of our citizens an equal commitment to the election process as the general election.”

New Hampshire, he said, is different from the rest of the country in that it has a 400-member state legislature, and most taxes are imposed (and raised) at the local level, “so that every board of selectman, every school board, is one that can affect your pocketbook.” Moreover, New Hampshire has elections every two years, which means that “every two years, three or four thousand people are elected.” That, in turn, means that “six or eight thousand [people] run – there’s a winner and a loser.” Consequently, he noted, in a state of a million residents “it means that, over a lifetime, virtually you, your spouse, or one of your neighbors has run for office.” Responding to audience chuckles, Sununu emphasized: “That’s not an exaggeration; people tithe their time in the volunteer offices of the community. It is tremendously involving. That’s why people love their politics.”

This level of involvement in local politics affects how New Hampshire voters approach the presidential primary elections. The primary process in that state, Sununu said, “isn’t just … going to cast your vote on election day. It is a commitment by the citizens to be part of the process. They attend the coffees and the events not only of their own candidate but of the opposition, and sometimes they change their minds in the process.”

During the 2008 election, Sununu pointed out proudly, “over 75 percent of the New Hampshire electorate turned out for the primary. That’s commitment.”

In contrast, other states seeking to improve their position in the process by moving their primaries to an earlier date are missing the point of why New Hampshire has become so important in the process.

“I look at other states scrambling to change the date and [saying] ‘oh, we want to be early,” Sununu said. “But you look at the returns that most of them get – 10, 12, 13 percent – they don’t understand that it’s more than just changing the date.”

He added that he is “very partial to New Hampshire, but I suggest to you that if you want to replace New Hampshire, you ought to replace it with at least an equivalent state – someplace in which a candidate can come in without too much money and begin to get some political traction on the national scene, someone who can talk face-to-face with citizens who have serious questions and who will communicate the concerns that they have.” In other words, “replace it with a state where you are going to get a real turnout and you are reflecting the commitment of citizens to the process.”

Sununu did acknowledge that “Iowa has a very similar process. They have the caucus process that takes place earlier. But let me remind you: Iowa picks corn, New Hampshire picks presidents.”

With regard to the rest of the process, Sununu pointed to this year’s elongated Democratic primary season and suggested, with Pennsylvania and other states still to vote and have an impact on the final decision, “maybe it’s good to be last.”

“The point is,” Sununu said, “people have to understand that every component in the process is significant. Sometimes you clean out the chaff early, sometimes you clean out the second layer in the next round of primaries, sometimes you are there for sorting out between the last two.”

In terms of changing things, Sununu ended his response by saying that “the best way to handle it is to modify some of the crazy rules that one of the parties adopted, but don’t make dramatic changes. Let the struggle go on, let the states think that they have expectations of being very influential and change their dates for a while, and they will discover that an orderly process is best for everyone and I think you’ll see people sort down to a calendar that makes some sense. It doesn’t mean it will happen in the next cycle, but I suspect that within one or two cycles, sanity will return to the system.”

Taking his turn to answer the question, Governor Weicker had one succinct point to make. Noting that he had supported the move away from “brokered conventions” toward a more participatory primary process, he questioned the effect of the change.

“What’s been the effect?,” he asked, replying without a pause: “Absolutely obscene quantities of money spent on this process. So I have to question whether this has been a good thing.” He expressed some hope that “ ‘there might be some middle ground between the brokered convention and the primary,” but he was unsure about what form it might take. “Rather than throwing it open as it is now, you have got to do away with the hundreds of millions being spent on the process.” Part of this problem, he said, “is because the time period is so long. I would hope the middle ground can be found [and] that we alter the present system, because money is destroying the process.” (Weicker would return to this theme later in the discussion.)

Wilder began with an anecdote about his own experience as a Democratic presidential candidate. He said that the biggest ovation he ever received at a joint session of the General Assembly was when he began his State of the Commonwealth address by saying he was “no longer a candidate” for his party’s nomination. Throwing up his arms and smiling, he imitated the General Assembly members: “Hurray!”

That brief experience in the field, however, gave him some material to reflect upon. “I learned a great deal by going to Iowa and going to New Hampshire,” he said and, agreeing with Governor Sununu, added: “There has to be a commitment.”

Following up on Sununu’s comments, Wilder said: “I will say this about the people in New Hampshire, as well as Iowa: they are attuned to the issues. You go to those states, you’re going to have to talk to them not one time, not two times, nor seven times. They’re going to say, ‘when are you coming back to see me?’ After six times, ‘when are you coming to my house? When are we going to have coffee? When are we going to have a real sit-down discussion? I want to learn more about you.’” That measure of interest, he said, is “being lost around the country, in terms of that direct relationship with the candidates.”

Agreeing with Governor Weicker, Wilder also decried the influence of money in politics. “The unfortunate thing is,” he said, “when you have these early, front-loaded primaries, the media follows, and once the media follows, the money follows the media. It’s very difficult for a candidate to get any traction at all if the media’s not there.”

As a result, he continued, “It is obscene the amount of money that is being spent. You can’t imagine: running for office today, even at local levels, costs a ton of money … millions and millions of dollars.” In any campaign, he said, “You’ve got to have somebody for everything. You’ve got to have advance people … you’ve got to have position papers, you’ve got to have stylists, you’ve got to have people who tell you what you think and what you say and who you are.”

Wilder added ruefully: “By the time you go to measure it all, you see that politics is now a business, with very little about representing the will of the people, very little about what the [Founders] had in mind when they started to say we’re going to elect the president.” He concluded, therefore, that “something desperately has to change.”

Before this first round of questioning ended, Governor Sununu asked the moderator for a chance to respond to some of what had been said by his fellow panelists.

He noted that he agreed “150 percent with Governor Weicker and Governor Wilder on the impact of money in politics. It is something I don’t think any of us like.”

He added, however, that “having said that, I think all of the recent efforts to try to fix it have only made it worse,” explaining: “It is one of these constitutional rights -- a First Amendment right -- that people try and build all kinds of legal fences around, and [they] don’t realize that whatever they do, under the Constitution, people are going to have the right to do something else with their money and participate in the process.”

Sununu presented an alternative: “I just hope we stop focusing on trying to write laws that deal with the money issue, and create an attitude in America and an understanding in America about what really ought to be heard from candidates and trying to make our decisions independent of that.”

He concluded: “I know it is almost impossible for that wish to come true, but I can tell you this: It is more impossible for the wish that a piece of legislation will change the participation of money in politics. That is real,” he said, and “if we spend all our time looking at that we’re not going to be looking at other things that could make an impact on the quality of the electoral process.”

Governor Weicker then clarified his stance on how best to change the role of money in politics. He explained that he had recently joined the American Civil Liberties Union in challenging a Connecticut law that provides public campaign financing for candidates running for the state legislature in that state.

He joined the challenge because of the adverse impact on third-party and independent candidates under the new law. Weicker explained:

“The new law creates public financing, which goes very liberally to either the Republican or the Democratic candidate. If you happen to be an independent, you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to get any of that public financing. You’ve got to get an enormous amount of signatures, somewhere around one hundred to two hundred thousand signatures to even be eligible.”

Continuing, Weicker said, “before you start writing any laws as to how to fix politics in the United States, if we would allow competition in politics as we insist on having in our economics, believe me, you’ll clean up a lot of the mess. But right now you’ve got a duopoly between the Republicans and Democrats, and the independents are being excluded.”

In his own state, Weicker concluded, the legislature responded to people’s desire for campaign finance reform with a law that “was tilted in one direction, to legislate Republicans and Democrats into permanency.”

This thoughtful set of responses to Professor Sabato’s first substantive question lasted only about 15 minutes, with another hour to go in the discussion. Other questions addressed whether regional primaries would be an improvement over the current system; whether primaries are superior to caucuses; whether the parties – especially the Democrats – should continue or eliminate the “Superdelegates”; the role of the Electoral College and whether it is still relevant today; plus there were a variety of questions posed by members of the audience, including several high school and college students in attendance.

Those interested in seeing the entire panel discussion featuring John Sununu, Lowell, Weicker, and Doug Wilder can view it below.

Part I:



Part II:



Part III:



Part IV:



Part V:



Part VI:



Part VII:



Part VIII:



Part IX:



Part X:

UVA Today, an internal publication of the University, also has a report on this Center for Politics event.

The Pope Comes to Washington

Pope Benedict XVI arrives today in Washington, marking his first trip to the United States since he was elected as the 264th successor to St. Peter almost exactly three years ago. I have twice written about Pope Benedict -- most recently just over a year ago, in reference to his old-fashioned view of economics, and previously just after his election, when I looked into his choice of a papal name.

Today's arrival also marks the first time in nearly 30 years since a reigning Catholic pope has visited the U.S. capital. Pope John Paul II (often designated "the Great") came to D.C. rather early in his papacy, in October 1979. He met at the White House with President Jimmy Carter (the first pope to do so) and presided over an open-air mass on the National Mall. Fourteen years earlier, Pope Paul VI offered Mass at Yankee Stadium, an event memorialized in the play The House of Blue Leaves, by Georgetown alumnus John Guare.

I was fortunate enough to be one of the singers in the massed choir that sang at that October 1979 Mass. The musical selections that Sunday included familiar hymns like "All Creatures of Our God and King," with original lyrics by St. Francis of Assisi and Mozart's "Ave Verum Corpus," but also the premiere public performance of contemporary composer Tom Parker's "Praise the Lord, My Soul." (We were singing that one off photocopies of the manuscript.)

The "Gloria" and "Agnus Dei" were sung in Latin and drawn from Anton Bruckner's Mass in E Minor, which was written in the mid-19th century with a woodwind accompaniment designed specifically for performance outdoors, where stringed instruments tend not to carry well and pipe organs are unavailable.

The song for the preparation of the gifts was Randall Thompson's haunting "Alleluia." Harvard Magazine, in a 2001 biographical sketch of the composer (who taught at the University of Virginia but was also a Harvard alumnus), noted the origins of that piece:

To many music lovers, the name Randall Thompson '20 brings first to mind the lofty sounds of his most famous anthem, based on the single word "alleluia"--whether heard in church service, choral concert, or academic ceremony such as Harvard Commencement.

The work was commissioned by Serge Koussevitsky and the trustees of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the spring of 1940 for the opening exercises of the new Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood. The head of the center's choral department was Thompson's future Harvard colleague G. Wallace Woodworth '24. Koussevitsky wanted "Woody" to lead the entire student body in the new anthem to symbolize the center's mission: the performance of music.

The date for the opening was July 8. Thompson had been preoccupied with another commission, but from July 1 to July 5 he was able to turn to Koussevitsky's request. Woody had his large chorus ready to rehearse, but opening day approached and no music arrived. On July 8, with 45 minutes to go, it appeared. Woody got his first look at the score and reassured his charges, "Well, text at least is one thing we won't have to worry about." The performance successfully launched a tradition: to this day Alleluia is performed each summer at the center's opening.

The anthem's tempo mark of lento was very important to the composer. France had just fallen to the Nazis, and Thompson later explained, "The music in my particular Alleluia cannot be made to sound joyous...here it is comparable to the Book of Job, where it is written, 'The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.'"

Other songs included "Gift of Finest Wheat," which had been composed for the Eucharistic Congress held in Philadelphia during the U.S. Bicentennial of 1976, and the traditional German hymn, "Holy God, We Praise Thy Name." Other parts of the Mass included Clarence Joseph Rivers memorial acclamation ("Christ Has Died"), representing the African-American gospel tradition, and Alexander Peloquin's "Great Amen" from his oft-heard Mass of the Bells.

I have not yet seen the programs for Pope Benedict's masses at Nationals Park in Washington and Yankee Stadium in New York, but I suspect they will include hymns, anthems, and responses from a wider range of ethnic traditions, especially recognizing the greater number of Hispanic-American Catholics who make up the fastest-growing segment of the Church in the United States. (If one looks at the program of the October 1979 papal Mass on the Mall -- see images below -- the most striking thing about it is the absence of music from the Spanish-speaking Catholic communities, or any acknowledgment of their presence at all.)

Robert Thomson, who writes the "Dr. Gridlock" column for the Washington Post, noted some other changes in the scene in an article on Sunday, in this case in the area of transportation:

Back then, transportation planners were worried about whether there would be enough gas for the spectators and worshipers driving to see Pope John Paul II.

That was October 1979. The region was smaller, and so was its transit system.

The gas shortage had passed its crisis level, but, in that auto-dependent environment, the planners made sure 35 service stations on major routes received extra fuel.

Metrorail had opened in 1976 but was a scrawny version of today's robust 106-mile, 86-station system. For a Sunday afternoon papal Mass on the Mall, Metro stayed open from 6 a.m. until midnight and suspended the Farecard system, asking instead that riders throw 50 cents into barrels.

Passengers heading for Pope Benedict XVI's Mass at the new Nationals Park on Thursday will be riding to a station that didn't exist in 1979. Many will pay their fare with a $9 commemorative Metrorail Mass Pass.

So is our bigger, more sophisticated transportation system ready for the new pope? I think so, but it will require the public as well as the planners to pay attention.

The 1979 visit was on a holiday weekend. This time, the pope will be in the capital on four weekdays.

That weekend -- Columbus Day weekend, as it happened -- was exciting. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the Mall to see the Pope (perhaps fewer than were anticipated, as the weather turned overcast and chilly in the afternoon, despite a gloriously sunny morning); a week later, the Mall would host tens of thousands of gay-rights activists in the first-ever national march for gay and lesbian rights. No doubt the papal gathering gave the Park Police and other law-enforcement agencies practice for crowd control seven days later -- not that either crowd caused much trouble. (Ironically, given my later history, I attended the October 7 event but not the one on October 14 -- but what happened the weekend of the march is a story for another day.)

I had a primitive camera with me that day. Because of the location of the choir, the angle of the shots I took is rather odd, but I was able to snap one photo that actually includes Pope John Paul in it. Most of the others are pictures of large groups of priests and musicians.

Here you can see part of the crowd gathered along the street for a glimpse of the Pope, pre-Popemobile.

You can see how the wind had picked up in the mid-afternoon in this sole photo I took of the Pope himself; he is wearing green vestments (the Mass was in Ordinary Time) and has an elliptical line drawn around him. (Click to embiggen.)

Hundreds of priests concelebrated the Mass, and many dozens of seminarians (or more) participated as acolytes.

Here you can see some of the priests who were on the stage, which had a specially-constructed altar built just for this occasion.

It was easier for me to photograph the orchestra than other members of the choir, given the way we were perched off to the right of the stage.

Thousands of programs for the Mass on the Mall were produced. How many of them survived? At least one, the one I have kept for nearly three decades, and which I scanned a couple of hours ago in order to make this documentary artifact available for examination by my dear readers. Call me a pack rat, but here it is:

















Sadly, in this post-9/11 era, the chances of there ever being another papal Mass on the Mall are increasingly slim. The logistics of searching and x-raying every person in attendance are just too daunting.

If Romeo and Juliet Had Lived ...

One of the great stories in Western literature is that of Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers whose family feud led, ultimately, to their double suicide.

What if, however, Romeo had received Friar Laurence's message in a more timely fashion and he and Juliet had been whisked away from Verona without the bite of poison and dagger? That is, what might have happened if the most famous teenage couple of the Renaissance had lived?

A partial answer comes by way of the Rocky Mountain News, which reports a recent response by police in Commerce City, Colorado, to a domestic call involving a 21st-century teenage couple:

When Mom wears one set of gang colors and Dad wears another, conflict over how to raise the baby can cause irreconcilable differences.

At least that's what happened for one Commerce City couple.

Commerce City police were called to a disturbance Saturday at a Hollywood Video on East 64th Street, where a man reportedly was harassing his ex-girlfriend, who was working there.

The man knocked over a computer and a magazine stand and yelled obscenities at her, witnesses said.

He left the store before police arrived.

When officers questioned the woman, they learned that the two had been together for four years and were the parents of a child.

When police asked the woman why the two had separated, she said they have "different ideas about how the baby should be raised," according to a police report.

When officer Daniel Swift asked the woman what she meant by that, she said that the two belong to different street gangs.

"They could not agree on which gang the baby would claim," Swift said.

Whether Montagues and Capulets or Crips and Bloods, doesn't Romeo Jr. deserve an identity?

H/T: Chuck Muth

Listen to Your Radio

On "The Schilling Show" today on WINA radio (1070 AM), Jim Lark of the Jefferson Area Libertarians will be one of the guests discussing whether Virginia should ban smoking in restaurants and other public spaces. (Can you guess which side Jim will be on?)

Tomorrow morning "The Schilling Show" will repeat the segment from several weeks ago, when I debated David Swanson on the question of voting machine security. Rob Schilling says that it looked like the two of us would have started a boxing match right there on the air. This segment should be on during the 7:00 a.m. hour of the 3-hour "Saturday Special."

"The Schilling Show," hosted by former Charlottesville City Councilman Rob Schilling, can be heard from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. on weekdays and 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. on Saturdays.

You can see video segments from "The Schilling Show" -- if Don Imus and Howard Stern can do it, why not Rob Schilling? -- here and here.

A Look Back at 'Over & Over'

In my previous post, which was primarily a review of the new production of The Happy Time at Signature Theatre in Arlington, I mentioned in passing -- as did a cheeky Fred Ebb -- Over & Over, the musical version of Thornton Wilder's 1940s play, The Skin of Our Teeth. Signature produced the world premiere of Over & Over in early 1999. Always a troubled show, it had virtually no life after Signature, although a few attempts were made to improve it, even changing its title (to All About Us and reverting, at one point, to The Skin of Our Teeth).

The Skin of Our Teeth had a distinguished pedigree. The original production was directed by Elia Kazan and won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. (There were no Tony Awards in those days.) The original cast included Tallulah Bankhead as Sabina, Florence Eldridge and Fredric March as Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, and Montgomery Clift as Henry. Other roles were played by E. G. Marshall, Morton Da Costa (later a distinguished stage and motion picture director), Lizabeth Scott, and Dickie -- the future Dick -- Van Patten. There was every reason to believe that a musical version of Wilder's play would be an artistic and commercial success. While optimism remains, Over & Over -- whatever its iteration -- has essentially been abandoned.

Why this turned out to be the case is explained, at least in part, in my review of the show, which appeared in The Metro Herald (Alexandria, Virginia) on February 12, 1999:

Over & Over: Wilder 3, Adapters 1
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

There have been attempts to adapt three of Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Thornton Wilder's works to the musical stage. The first attempt was made in the mid-50s, with Our Town -- including a television adaptation featuring Frank Sinatra as the Stage Manager. It disappeared without a trace. Another musical adaptation of Our Town, called Grover's Corners (by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, creators of The Fantasticks) has been kicking around in workshops for the past several years, but still seems not to have found its audience. The second attempt came in 1964 with Hello, Dolly!, an adaptation of Wilder's The Matchmaker (it, in turn, an adaptation of his own play The Merchant of Yonkers), which was wildly successful, becoming the longest-running musical in Broadway history before being overtaken by Fiddler on the Roof.

Now along come Arlington's Signature Theatre, the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Steel Pier), librettist Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof, Zorba, Carmelina), and a cast and production team heavy with Tony-award winners and nominees. Their challenge: To adapt Wilder's 1942 play The Skin of Our Teeth as the new musical Over & Over. The result: A sense that The Skin of Our Teeth defies musical adaptation.

The material is not inherently unadaptable. After all, as composer-lyricist Maury Yeston (Nine, Titanic: The Musical) has noted, the single theme that runs through every successful American musical play is "optimism in the face of adversity." This is why, he says, a man without a penny in his pocket can sing "If I Were a Rich Man," or, one might add, a little orphan girl in the midst of the Depression can sing "the sun'll come out Tomorrow." And The Skin of Our Teeth is nothing if not a play about optimism in the face of adversity. In three acts, man (in the form of the Antrobus family) confronts The Ice Age, The Flood, and The War to End All Wars. Wilder wrote his somewhat phantasmagorical, anachronistic play just as the Second World War was at its low ebb -- all of continental Europe had fallen to the Nazis, Britain was enduring the Blitz, Stalingrad was under siege, and the U.S. fleet had just been destroyed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. Dark days, indeed. Yet Wilder wanted to emphasize that man had -- has -- an unmitigated capacity to endure.

So it seems that The Skin of Our Teeth has great potential as a musical play. It has colorful, eccentric characters. It has a love-match in George and Maggie Antrobus. It has voluptuous comic relief from Sabina, the maid. Yet somehow, as put together by Signature, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Granted, this is a work-in-progress, and it shows. Surely at this stage of Cabaret's gestation, audiences walked out of the theatre with puzzled expressions, too. There is a lot of promise here, but also a lot of dross.

Director Eric D. Schaeffer has inventively staged the material, and choreographer Bob Avian pulls what he can out of a score that is not particularly danceable. Yet much of Over & Over feels like a magician trying to pull a rabbit out of his hat, only to find a lot of silk handkerchiefs. Above all, the play lacks balance. It teeters one way, then another, yet never settles firmly.

For example, headliner Dorothy Loudon (who created the villainous Miss Hannigan in Annie almost a quarter-century ago) fails to live up to her obvious talents. It is clear from reading the pre-printed program that Loudon's role has been changed considerably from early rehearsals to today. She doesn't even play the role listed in the original program; instead, she has three small parts that are not particularly fitting. In Act Two, she has an amusing but gratuitous specialty number, "This Life," which describes the vicissitudes of being an aging bathing beauty -- and which hits disturbingly close to home for an actress who is clearly being retained in this cast for her marquee value, and not for her particular contribution to the success of the show.

While the play, as written, wants Sabina to be the center of attention, the true anchor, if there is one at all, is Maggie Antrobus, the matriarch played by Linda Emond. Steady, consistent, understanding, unwilling to throw away a line for a cheap laugh, Emond succeeds where the flighty (but talented) Sherie Scott fails as Sabina (in a role intended for Broadway star Bebe Neuwirth, who left during the rehearsal period in New York). Maggie's first act ballad, "He Always Comes Home to Me" clues us in on her character better than any of the other expository numbers, but more than that, it is an excellent song, similar in spirit and tone to Ragtime's "Back to Before," also sung by the Mother. Emond also sings the best single song in the show, "The Promise," in which she reminds her husband of his responsibilities and roles in life.

At the same time, David Garrison's George Antrobus is perhaps a bit too understated. While we want Mr. Antrobus to be an "Everyman," Garrison turns him into a philandering wimp, rather than the strong, confident, elected leader of the vertebrates.

Megan Lawrence is a nicely bratty Gladys Antrobus (carrying a Teletubby doll), while Jim Newman is simply malevolent as her brother, Henry (listening constantly to Marilyn Manson on his Walkman). His number, "Nice People," is biting and sardonic, and it hits hard as it should.

The current closing number, "At the Rialto" (sung by Sabina) is depressingly weak, and it is hard to grasp its connection to what comes before. The creative team simply must look for something better.

Sad to say, despite expectations to the contrary, Over & Over fails to deliver. Given the heavyweight talents behind it -- including 1998 Kennedy Center Honors recipients Kander and Ebb -- some more doctoring may save this play.

The complete run of Over & Over has been sold out since the day the box office opened. Last-minute returns and no-shows may free up seats on the day of performance. Tickets may become available during the hour before curtain. Performances continue through February 21, 1999, at the Signature Theatre, 3806 S. Four Mile Run Drive, Arlington, near the Shirlington exit of I-395. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m.

A Worthy Revival at Signature Theatre

A few years before his death, lyricist Fred Ebb -- who would have been 75 years old this past Tuesday, April 8 -- wrote to artistic director Eric Schaeffer of Signature Theatre in Arlington. In what proved to be a prescient note, Ebb's letter of May 6, 1999, said:

Due to popular Washingtonian demand, I'm including a copy of my first great musical play entitled "The Happy Time." I hope you will spare some of your precious time to read it. After you have finished reading "Come Back Little Sheba" and "70, Girls 70" I would suggest an entire season based on the works of Kander & Ebb, which would end with the return engagement of "Over & Over" for which all of Shirlington is clamoring.

Affectionately signed "Poopsie," this letter suggested what has come to pass this spring at Signature: the Kander & Ebb Celebration, which includes major productions of the Broadway hit Kiss of the Spider Woman, the Broadway semi-flop The Happy Time, and the East Coast premiere of The Visit, based on the play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, as well as various ancillary events. (It does not include a "return engagement of 'Over & Over," which was a musical based on Thornton Wilder's play, The Skin of Our Teeth. Watch this blog for an archival post of my review of that show, which Signature produced in 1999.)

The celebration has brought together some of the luminaries of the Broadway musical stage, as evidenced by this "class photo" taken to commemorate Signature's mini-season of Kander & Ebb works:


Sadly, Ebb himself did not live to see this tribute, having passed away on September 11, 2004, before his latest Broadway musical, Curtains, had been completed and opened -- and even winning a Tony Award.

The latest offering in the Kander & Ebb Celebration, The Happy Time, opened in Shirlington last weekend. Here is my review for The Metro Herald:

‘The Happy Time’ Lives Up to Its Title: Signature Produces a Sadly Neglected Musical
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

A shimmering new production of The Happy Time at Signature Theatre in Arlington proves conclusively that this neglected musical is undeserving of its neglect.

First mounted on Broadway in 1968, The Happy Time – with a score by the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, and a book by playwright N. Richard Nash – was badly misinterpreted by its director, Gower Champion, who turned an intimate family musical into a spectacular with dozens of happy villagers. Champion did this over the objections of Kander and Ebb who, despite their earlier success with Cabaret, were not yet KANDER & EBB and therefore lacked the clout to overrule the show’s director and its producer, impresario David Merrick.

The Happy Time also suffered from a poorly produced original cast recording, which left out not only some of the loveliest songs of the score – such as the non-love love duet reprise “I Don’t Remember You” – but also the songs that were substantively necessary to understand the show, like the 11 o’clock number, “Running,” and the parenting song “In His Own Good Time.”

The title song was a minor hit for star Robert Goulet, however, and with its lilting, merry-go-round sound left the (mis)impression that “The Happy Time” was all gauzy nostalgia – not exactly what audiences were looking for in the roiling latter years of the 1960s. The show closed after only 286 performances even after winning three Tony Awards and being nominated for seven others.

Consequently, for four decades, The Happy Time has had no Broadway revival and few significant regional productions – until now.

Under the direction of Michael Unger, Signature’s production of The Happy Time moves past all these 40-year-old mistakes and offers up a charming yet serious look at an upper-middle-class Quebec family in 1920.

The set-up is rather simple. Three generations of the Bonnard family live in one big house: widower Grandpere and his son Louis, his wife and three daughters; plus son Philippe, his wife, and son Bibi. A third middle-generation son, Jacques, is a globe-trotting photographer whose arrival back home puts the plot in motion.

Jacques is most delighted to be reunited with his godson, Bibi, a lad of twelve who feels repressed and out-of-place among his family, especially under the discipline of his father, a musical conductor in a burlesque house who – despite his profession – is the most staid and prudish of the Bonnard clan. (Bibi, of course, is no different from any other 12-year-old boy, but he doesn’t know that.)

To say this is a coming of age tale would be to express the obvious, except that it is not so much about Bibi’s coming-of-age as it is about Jacques’. The authors’ task would have been so much easier had they told the story from Bibi’s point of view but instead of this facile path they chose the more complex, layered perspective of Jacques, whose motivations are clouded and whose emotions, at just past 30 years of age, are equally as jumbled as his pre-teen counterpart’s.

Oddly enough, and unusual for a musical of this type and era, the women are more or less pushed off to the side. There are the wives of Louis and Philippe, and there is Laurie, a schoolteacher and war widow who is Jacques’ lost love; yet she seems to be little more than a foil for Jacques who can provide him with some of the impetus to claim his adulthood. Besides these three, you have Louis’ daughters, who do essentially nothing, and the “Four Angels,” strippers in Philippe’s burlesque show, who help provide the setting for Bibi’s sexual awakening.

The Happy Time is a story about male relationships: father and son, brother and brother, uncle and nephew, grandfather and grandson. Jacques wants little more in his life than a sign of approbation from his father, and in seeking independence for himself and for his nephew, he creates a rift between himself and his brother. How these situations resolve themselves is what makes the show go.

Michael Minarik, who plays Jacques, brings a voluble poignancy to the part. (The actor lost his own father within the past year.) At first detached and frivolous, Minarik builds his character arc incrementally, finally exploding with “Running,” a song that can best be described as a forerunner to “Being Alive” in Company, both thematically and musically.

As Jacques’ protégé, Bibi, Jace Casey (who is about to turn 13 in real life) handles a difficult role with poise and charm. The part of Bibi is written about a boy whose voice is still breaking, but the musical numbers assigned to him require a more mature, fully developed voice. Michael Rupert, who originated the role on Broadway, says in a program note that he was 15 when he played it (although his official biographies on IMDB and the Internet Broadway Database both agree he was 16 at the time), so he had to “play younger.” Casey is playing his own age, which is about the hardest thing to demand of an adolescent actor, and he does it well.

At the other end of the age scale, Grandpere (David Margulies) is all impish energy and twinkling eyes. Grandpere has already lived a long life and he has a carpe diem philosophy that extends through his relations with his sons, whom he criticizes for being too sober and serious when life is meant to be lived. (In this, Grandpere bears more than a passing resemblance to a later Kander & Ebb protagonist, Zorba.)

While the book underplays them, one cannot ignore Carrie A. Johnson’s Laurie and Tracy Lynn Olivera’s Suzanne (Philippe’s wife). As Laurie, Johnson helps to ground Jacques while as Suzanne, Olivera stands up to Philippe; both characters are mothers, and both understand the needs of adolescent boys better than the former adolescent boys do.

Director Unger has scaled down The Happy Time so that the book, music, and lyrics are the centerpiece. The set, such as it is, consists of little more than a few chairs, a curtain, and projected images on a screen hanging behind the stage. Just right, to the credit of scenic and production designer Todd Edward Ivins. The costumes, designed by Kathleen Geldard, are mostly in muted tones, with nothing to distract from the action or the words. So, too, Mark Lanks’ lighting design enhances the production without drawing attention to itself.

What may be the best touch is Unger’s choice about the music itself. With a trio for accompaniment (piano, bass, and drums, all under the musical direction of David Holcenberg) instead of a full orchestra, we can hear clearly what the actors are singing and – what’s more, to the pleasure of all – without amplification. It is so rare these days to hear an unmediated human voice in the musical theatre; the absence of body microphones is a welcome lacuna.

The Happy Time is itself a rare thing: a seldom-performed Broadway musical, a family-friendly story, a charmer with heft, a romantic and hummable score. Unless this production begets more revivals – as it should – run now to Signature Theatre to catch a performance before it slips away for another four decades.

The Happy Time is part of Signature Theatre’s Kander & Ebb Celebration, which also includes productions of Kiss of the Spider Woman (now playing in The Max) and the East Coast premiere of The Visit.

The Happy Time continues in The Ark through June 1. Performances are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 pm., Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m., and Sunday at 7:00 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m. For ticket information, call Ticketmaster at 703-573-7328 or visit www.ticketmaster.com. Signature Theatre is located at 4200 Campbell Avenue in the Shirlington section of Arlington; for more information, visit www.signature-theatre.org.

* * * * *

Photos, from top to bottom:

"Class Photo" -- From left to right, some of the Broadway luminaries in Signature Theatre's Kander & Ebb Celebration, March - May 2008. First row: Natascia Diaz, empty chair of the late Fred Ebb, Chita Rivera; Second row: David Margulies, John Kander;Third row: Terrence McNally, Eric Schaeffer, Will Chase, Michael Minarik, Hunter Foster, Mark Jacoby, George Hearn. Photo credit: Joan Marcus.

Michael Minarik as Jacques

Jace Casey as Bibi

David Margulies as Grandpere

(left to right) Amy McWilliams, Jace Casey, Kate Arnold (obstructed), Emily Levey, Lauren Williams, Michael Minarik, Carrie A. Johnson, Tracy Lynn Olivera, George Dvorsky and David Margulies in Kander & Ebb’s The Happy Time at Signature Theatre, April 1 – June 1.

All production photos of The Happy Time are credited to Stan Barouh.

A Visit to Hurley and Ironwood

Last July, during a cross-country trip that took me to Milwaukee and Los Angeles and points in-between, I made a long detour to Northern Wisconsin, where I visited mon ami ancien Gene Cisewski, who now runs a bed-and-breakfast inn in the small town of Hurley, near the Michigan border.

While Hurley now has a population of just about 1,200 residents, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a boom town. Hurley grew up as a market center for the iron mining industry that stretched across Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Novelist Edna Ferber, who had previously portrayed the American South of the same period in Show Boat (the basis for the musical play of the same name), spent time in Hurley doing research for a book that became Come and Get It (which itself became a movie and won Walter Brennan an Academy Award).

The Hurley that Ferber knew was a town of saloons and bordellos. One of Hurley's great mysteries continues to be "who killed Lotta Morgan?" (Morgan was a lady of easy virtue, and therefore one of the town's leading citizens, when she was murdered.) Al Capone's brother, Ralph, settled in Hurley, which was a popular summer destination for Chicago-based mobsters (as was Manitowish Waters, about 20 miles to the south, where John Dillinger had a shoot-out with the FBI).

The town is much quieter today, but it still is said to have the most bars per capita of any municipality in Wisconsin, and Silver Street, the main drag, seems to offer proof of that claim.

Innkeeper Cisewski is also a former member of the Iron County Board of Supervisors and now serves as president of the Iron County Historical Society. During our visit, Gene hosted an event at the Iron County Historical Museum, which is just about a block from his own historic home, the Anton-Walsh House on Copper Street. I captured some of the event, and a good number of the museum's exhibits, on video:

Someday I might also post the still-unedited video of that night's speaker, a writer who specializes in the history of Italian immigrants to the United States. (Italian-Americans make up an astounding 19 percent of Iron County's population.)

After the lecture and the reception that followed, I interviewed Gene about his house and the bed-and-breakfast business located there. The Anton-Walsh House was one of the first merchant-class homes in Hurley, and Gene ticks off the names of all the owners from the one who built it to the present. He also describes, in excruciatingly delicious detail, the foods he prepares and serves to his guests for breakfast every morning. (I can attest to the tastiness of the wild-rice and cranberry pudding, the various kinds of muffins, and the homemade jams and jellies -- some of which come from grapes grown in the Anton-Walsh House backyard.) Here's a chat with Gene Cisewski:

Nearby Hurley is its "twin city" of Ironwood, just across the Montreal River and the Michigan border. Ironwood has about twice as many residents as Hurley, but it seems to be far less robust, economically speaking. One can tell that it, too, was once a boom town, but today it has a faded, rundown look.

One thing that Ironwood has that nobody else can claim is a 52-foot, 8-ton, Fiberglas statue of Hiawatha, said to be the world's "tallest and largest Indian." (There is a statue of an Indian in Maine that is about ten feet taller, but it's not nearly as large or heavy.) The statue was erected in 1964 and refurbished in 2004.

According to the Ironwood Area Chamber of Commerce,

A giant statue of an Indian chief was felt appropriate as a symbol of the region, although ideas for a sculpture ranged from an iron miner, skier and Ironwoods Red Devil. The Indianhead signs had been a feature of the Gogebic County Highways for many years and had attracted widespread attention. Several larcenous tourists even carted off some of the Indian signs. It was unlikely anyone would be able to carry away the 50 foot Hiawatha.

That's an understatement!

The chamber's web site describes how the statue arrived in Ironwood, and the Erection Ceremony that followed:

Hiawatha was transported on a 70-foot trailer truck on a special route that would reduce the number of sharp curves and low bridges and any other obstacles in transit. The trailer was over 14 feet wide and required a special permit to transport it with a state police escort through each state. Hiawatha traveled on Highway 94, 63 and 77 to Hurley, then north on Highway 51 to US2. Delivery of Hiawatha was set to leave Minneapolis at 2:20 AM Thursday, June 25th and arrived in Ironwood late Thursday evening, a haul of nearly 12 to 14 hours...

Erection of the statue was set for Friday between 3:00 and 4:30 PM. Originally the plans had called for placing the statue on the foundation on Saturday, but due to the need of the large 80-foot crane by the Mauthe Mining Company, it had been advanced to Friday afternoon. The crane needed to extend 90 feet for lifting of the statue to go above the 26-foot beams on the site...

Shortly after Hiawatha arrived, workmen began attaching Hiawatha's right hand. The right arm was made in a slightly extended position and in order to avoid damage while traveling, the wrist and hand were detached when the statue arrived. The Hiawatha statue rested on a base that was eight feet deep and contained 55 yards of concrete and had 5,000 pounds of steel reinforcement mixed in with 15 yards of crushed rock.

There were cheers and hand-clapping from the large crowd of men, women and children that had gathered in the hot sun to see the huge image erected. Many curiously waited the full two hours to see what it would look like once it was firmly secured to its foundation. The raising of the statue was the highlight not only to the crowd, but also fulfilled the dreams of a group of businessmen, known as the Hiawatha Committee, who spent many months planning for the tourist attraction.

(I just know I'm going to start getting strange visits to this blog based on search terms like "men women children huge erection" and "hand-clapping erection ceremony.")

I first visited the Hiawatha statue nearly 41 years ago with my parents. In the video below, you'll see one photo of my mother and me (and two other, unknown children) from August 3, 1967; the rest were all taken on the evening of July 25, 2007:

In the 44 years since it was installed, the Hiawatha statue has become a gathering place for local skateboarders. (My video is not the only one on YouTube that demonstrates this fact.)

The Anton-Walsh House is located at 202 Copper Street, Hurley, Wisconsin 54534-1339; for more information, call 715-561-2065 or send an email to info@anton-walsh.com.

The Iron County Historical Society Museum is in the old county courthouse -- the one with the clock tower that chimes the hours -- at 303 Iron Street, Hurley, Wisconsin 54534. For more information, call 715-561-2244.

The statue of Hiawatha is on Suffolk Street in Ironwood, Michigan. The best directions can be found at RoadsideAmerica.com.

I previously posted video of another attraction close to Hurley, the Copper Peak Ski Flying Hill, under the title, "The 'Getting High' Series" -- which may soon have some addenda.

Average Is Just Not Good Enough

The National Taxpayers Union (NTU) released its annual ratings of Members of Congress on Tuesday, and Virginia's congressional delegation did not fare well. The averaged score among Virginia House members was 50 percent; in the Senate, that score was a dismal 33 percent.

All four Democrats who serve in Congress from Virginia earned an embarrassing "F" grade. The grades of the nine Republicans were all over the map.

First, some background. According to NTU's press release:

The multi-year decline of lawmakers' pro-taxpayers scores under Republican control of the House of Representatives and Senate entered a nosedive in 2007 with a new Democratic majority, according to the National Taxpayers Union's (NTU) 29th annual Rating of Congress. The scorecard, the only one to utilize every roll call vote affecting tax, spending, and regulatory issues, was based on a record 609 votes -- 427 in the House and 182 in the Senate.

"Despite campaign-trail promises from many Members of Congress to put Washington on a stricter diet, our 2007 Rating shows that, by and large, the only things shrinking on Capitol Hill are lawmakers' pro-taxpayer scores," NTU President Duane Parde said. "Overburdened taxpayers looking for an end to 'earmarked' spending, an extension of President Bush's tax cuts, and an honest entitlement reform plan won’t like what they see in Congress's performance so far."

Between 2006 and 2007, the average "Taxpayer Score" in the House fell from 39 percent to 35 percent. The Senate's average plummeted by 11 points, from 48 percent to 37 percent. This spiral takes scores closer to the all-time low (in 1988) of 27 percent and 28 percent, respectively, for the House and Senate. The highest marks were reached in 1995, when House and Senate averages were 58 percent and 57 percent, respectively.

Even though 2007's overall results were not the worst in the Rating's history, several other dubious records were achieved last year, including the lowest score ever (1 percent) and the largest number of single-digit scores (over 200 in the House and Senate). The latter result produced the lowest median scores (not averages) in the history of the Rating, and reflects tremendous political polarization between fiscally liberal lawmakers and the rest of Congress.

The scoring system used by NTU has long been considered an objective measure of how legislators vote on spending and tax issues. As the news release explains:

Unlike those of other organizations, NTU's annual Rating does not simplistically focus on a handful of equally weighted "key votes," but every roll call vote affecting fiscal policy -- appropriations, authorization, and tax bills; budget target resolutions; amendments; and certain procedural votes that could affect the burden on taxpayers. For this reason, it has received praise from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including former Sen. William Proxmire (D-WI), creator of the "Golden Fleece Award." A Member of Congress's "Taxpayer Score" reflects his or her commitment to reducing or controlling federal spending, taxes, debt, and regulation.

For the fifth consecutive year, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) was the top scorer in the House with a 96 percent rating -- bringing him one year closer to Rep. Ron Paul's (R-TX) record of six first-place finishes from 1979 to 1984. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) captured first place in the Senate for the second year in a row with a 93 percent rating. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) received the worst score in the Rating's nearly 30-year history: 1 percent. Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI) was the biggest spender in the Senate with a 3 percent rating.

The NTU scorecard can also be used to show which Democratic and Republican Members of Congress fell the furthest in their relative ranking from 2006 to 2007. Among Democrats, they are Rep. William Jefferson (LA), who dropped 156 slots in the House ranking, and Sen. Hillary Clinton (NY), who declined 30 steps in Senate rank. Rep. Tom Petri (WI) slipped the most among GOP House Members (75 places) while Sen. John Sununu (NH) lost 20 steps in Senate Republican rank. In 2005, Sununu was the upper chamber's top scorer.

Among members of the Virginia congressional delegation, only Representative Eric Cantor (R-7) earned an "A" grade and the designation "Taxpayers' Friend."

The full list of Virginia House members (in alphabetical order) shows the following grades and scores:

Rick Boucher (D-9) -- F and 5 percent
Eric Cantor (R-7) -- A and 87 percent
Tom Davis (R-11) -- C and 57 percent
Thelma Drake (R-2) -- B+ and 75 percent
Randy Forbes (R-4) -- B and 70 percent
Virgil Goode (R-5) -- B+ and 79 percent
Bob Goodlatte (R-6) -- B+ and 78 percent
Jim Moran (D-8) -- F and 5 percent
Bobby Scott (D-3) -- F and 3 percent
Frank Wolf (R-10) -- C- and 44 percent

STATE AVERAGE -- 50 percent

(I did not include the late Jo Ann Davis [R-1] or her successor, Rob Wittmann [R-1], whose votes were not reported by the NTU. Wittmann can count on being rated next year.)

On the Senate side, retiring Senator John Warner (R) earned a "C" grade and scored 55 percent, while first-term Senator Jim Webb (D) earned an "F" grade and scored 13 percent, for an average state score of 33 percent.

For those in other states who might be interested in their own congressional delegations or their own individual Members, NTU has a searchable database of scores and grades going back to 1992.

The middling performance of Virginia's Senators and Representatives brings to mind that famous quotation of Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska, who said with regard to failed Supreme Court nominee G. Harrold Carswell, "So what if he is mediocre? There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they?"

I guess we're getting mediocre representation in Virginia ... in spades.

Free Speech Tussles Revealed in 2008 Muzzles

The Charlottesville-based Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has announced the winners of the 2008 Muzzle Awards. This year's winners include the recipient of the second "Lifetime Muzzle" to be bestowed by the Center, the Federal Communications Commission. This year's list seems to have been announced a few days earlier than normal; in previous years, the announcement was tied more closely to Mr. Jefferson's birthday, which comes on April 13 (a Sunday this year, which might explain why the Center is jumping the gun).

In a news release on the Thomas Jefferson Center's web site, the organization's president, Robert O'Neil, notes:

This year, perhaps more than any other... the incidents on which the Muzzles are based range from the imperious to the ridiculous. On one hand, the display of nooses during a civil rights march and the standing on a U.S. flag during the funeral service of U.S. soldier serve as reminders of the fundamental principle that true freedom of speech extends even to protecting expression that most in our society would find repugnant. On the other, the idea that someone in the United States today could be criminally prosecuting for cursing in their own home at an overflowing toilet, or that a rape victim could be barred from using the term “rape’ at the trial of her accused assailant, strains credibility to such a degree it is difficult to believe it actually happened.

There was one local winner: the Cavalier Daily, the student-run newspaper at the University of Virginia. According to a report by Brian McNeill in the other Charlottesville daily,

This year’s sole local recipient was the 2007 managing board of UVa’s student newspaper, the Cavalier Daily. The students were selected because Cav Daily editors forced the resignation of cartoonist Grant Woolard after his comic strip “Quirksmith” sparked a sit-in protest of 200 students outside the paper’s newsroom last fall. Woolard’s strip, titled “Ethiopian Food Fight,” depicted nearly naked and emaciated African men fighting each other with sticks, pillows, furniture and other items.

“They forced a cartoonist out of his position essentially because people were offended,” said Robert O’Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center and a former UVa president. “I hate to fault student editors and I hate to fault a student newspaper. But they reviewed the cartoon. They published the cartoon. And then when there’s an outrage, the sacrificial party is the cartoonist.”

In explaining its "lifetime achievement" award to the Federal Communications Commission, the Center's news release states:

The FCC or its members have been considered for a Muzzle in almost each of the 17 years of the Muzzles, winning in 1993, 2005, 2006, and 2007. The standards of the FCC for determining what is “indecent” have been inconsistent at best, regardless of the political party in control of the Congress or the White House. Moreover, the manner in which the FCC has enforced its provisions has had a profound chilling effect on broadcasters.

Other winners this year include:

Ronald M. Zaccari, President of Valdosta State University (GA), for expelling a student for protesting the school’s construction of two parking garages by posting flyers, writing a letter to the school newspaper, contacting members of the state Board of Regents and posting items on his Facebook profile.

Brandeis University (MA) Administration for declaring professor Donald Hindley guilty of harassment after he explained to his class that Mexican migrant workers are sometimes pejoratively referred to as “wetbacks.” Action was taken after a student complained, though the nearly 50-year veteran teacher was provided neither a formal hearing nor written documentation of the claims against him.

Lewis Mills High School Principal Karissa Niehoff and Connecticut Region 10 Superintendent of Schools Paula Schwartz for not allowing a student to run for class office because she posted comments critical of school officials on an Internet blog.

United States Senator Jay Rockefeller for introducing a bill that would require the FCC to maintain a policy that the broadcast of a single word or image (i.e., regardless of context) may be considered indecent and therefore punishable. Rockefeller has also been at the forefront of several other repressive efforts to regulate broadcast content.

The Texas State Democratic Party for refusing to allow presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich on the state’s primary ballot because he refused to sign a pledge that he would “fully support” the eventual Democratic nominee.

But wait, there's more:

Sarpy County (Nebraska) Attorney L. Kenneth Polikov for pursuing charges of flag mutilation and negligent child abuse against a protestor at a military funeral. The defendant’s son–a minor–placed an American flag on the ground and stood on it during the protest.

US Attorney Donald Washington and acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division Grace Chung Baker for bringing federal hate crime charges against an 18-year-old man for hanging nooses on the back of his pickup truck during a civil rights march in Jena, Louisiana.

Lancaster County (NE) District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront for barring use of the words the words “rape,” “victim,” “assailant,” “sexual assault kit,” and “sexual assault nurse examiner” by witnesses (including the victim) during a trial of a defendant on charges of sexual assault.

The New York Department of Motor Vehicles for recalling vanity license plates without offering a reasonable explanation as to why. The NY DMV demanded the return of plates that read “GETOSAMA.”

Scranton (PA) Police Department for charging a woman with disorderly conduct for screaming profanities at an overflowing toilet inside her own house.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for staging a fake news conference about FEMA assistance to victims of wildfires in southern California. FEMA employees pretended to be reporters and asked soft and gratuitous questions, while notice was given to real reporters only 15 minutes before the conference. A call-in 800 number was provided for legitimate reporters, but it was a “listen-only” arrangement.

CBS Radio and MSNBC for allowing public criticism to control their programming by taking controversial shock jock Don Imus off-the-air for his on-air sexist and racist comment regarding the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. The networks took the action despite the fact they were aware Imus frequently made such provocative comments and they could have prevented the comments from being heard by utilizing delay buttons.

More complete background information on each of the winners can be found on the Center's special "Jefferson Muzzle Page."

For those interested in the dubious achievements of previous years, check out my posts from April 29 and April 12, 2005, and this post from April 6, 2006. Click on the label "free speech," below, for other articles on this general topic of protecting free expression.