The Zeitgeist

  

Bob Crane as Col. Hogan, Steve McQueen in The Great Escape and Frank Sinatra as Col. Ryan

Hogan’s Not-Heroes and Trump’s Wild Card Rants

As a kid one of my favorite TV sitcoms was Hogan’s Heroes. Set in a German POW camp during World War II a group of really sharp Allied prisoners of war (most of them fliers who were shot down or parachuted to safety) were humorously and cleverly outsmarting their dimwitted and bumbling Nazi jailers. Colonel Robert Hogan proudly wore his air force leather jacket and hat through each episode. It never occurred to me that these Allied POWs were anything less than heroes, if even fictionally.

Other cinematic POW high water marks of the time were the movies The Great Escape and Von Ryan’s Express. In both of these films ensemble casts of major Hollywood stars stood up to, undermined and escaped from their enemy captors. It didn’t dawn on me then and it still doesn’t register now that Steve McQueen, James Garner, Frank Sinatra and others were portraying characters that were not heroic by dint of their having been captured by the Krauts. And McQueen and Sinatra both looked as dapper in their Air Force leather as did Bob Crane as Hogan.

But clearly all of my received wisdom from a lifetime of reality and cinema was wrong. Because Donald Trump has decided that John McCain is no war hero for having spent five and a half years as a tortured guest of the North Vietnamese.

McCain was no hero for having become a naval aviator (Top Gun, anyone?) at a time when many, including the aforementioned Mr. Trump used any and every means at their privileged disposal to avoid military service. He was no hero for being shot down while over Hanoi (Trump says he has more respect for those who aren’t captured) and somehow surviving life threatening injuries. He was clearly no hero for enduring sustained physical and psychological brutality because his father was a four-star Admiral serving at that time in the Pacific. He was obviously no hero for having survived what would have surely crippled lesser men, returning home and building a life of accomplishment. What then is heroism to Mr. Trump? Getting shot in the chest or head instead of out of the sky and walking away from that? I suppose that McCain should surrender his medals for having had the temerity to survive being shot out of the air.

In the Tony-award winning show Fiddler on the Roof, there’s a song called “If I Were a Rich Man,” where the show’s hero, the very poor Tevye the Milkman muses about what his life would be like if he had the riches of Croesus (or Trump) at his disposal. There are a few verses that are very apt when applied to Mr. Trump:

The most important men in town would come to fawn on me!
They would ask me to advise them,
Like a Solomon the Wise.
"If you please, Reb Tevye..."
"Pardon me, Reb Tevye..."
Posing problems that would cross a rabbi's eyes!

And it won't make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong.
When you're rich, they think you really know!

Trump gets ink and airtime not because he’s a greater thinker or leader but because he’s a very, very rich man who doesn’t mind employing his money in the service of espousing his views and because he always says wild and outlandish things. That he’s causing immense damage to the Republican Party must be delighting the magicians and viziers at Hilary Campaign Central.

It should be stated that I’m no big supporter on John McCain the politician. For that matter I’m no fan of John Kerry, our Secretary of State who has had his own military service impugned and maligned. My Dad, 88, served for a little over a year towards the end of World War II in the Naval Air Corps but he was not a pilot and never saw combat. He built and taught others to build machine guns and he also welded planes back together. Because he, McCain, Kerry and millions more men and women donned the uniform of our country and put themselves in harm’s way to defend our freedom, they’re all heroes and no one’s honorable service should be belittled and denigrated.

The bottom line is that being Commander-in-Chief requires a sober and considered temperament because the President makes life and death decisions for service members and for the country as a whole. His or her finger is on the literal button that could send us all to kingdom come. Does Trump have that sober temperament? GOP voters should tell Trump “you’re fired,” and expunge this circus sideshow from serious discourse on the future of our nation and of the world.

The Zeitgeist

 

The Season two cast of True Detective, Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams, Taylor Kitsch and Vince Vaughn. 

Season one starred Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey

Un-True Detective:

HBO Noir Series Misses the Mark

Although the second season of True Detective on HBO has a lot of the same names attached to it behind the camera, the new iteration of the title which just premiered bears scant resemblance to last year’s bravura bayou noir mini-series.

Season one was strikingly original – set in hazy, humid and swampy Louisiana – a venue unfamiliar to most Americans, it starred a Southern tag team so captivating that even if Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson had Confederate Stars and Bars license plates viewers still would have loved them. McConnaughey and Harrelson played incredibly intense, driven and seriously flawed police detectives and human beings. Awash in cheap bourbon, cheap women and even cheaper beer, their reprehensible self-destructive behavior was both pitiful and pitiable. And there is difference number one between season one and season two. That McConaughey and Harrelson were on a crusade to find the creepy ritual killers of young girls made you root for them every step of the way. That you couldn’t see the plot twists coming made for riveting television. Season two has no such redemptive underpinnings.

In Season two the producers have also spared no expense to bring us a group of big Hollywood stars – probably too many and not the right ones. Where McConaughey and Harrelson were a believable couple, season two has four key characters seemingly only connected by the murder of someone we probably will never care about. In season one, rescuing virginal girls being flayed alive for a pseudo religion is something everyone can get behind. Punishing their captors and killers is something everyone can root for. In Season two we have a dead corrupt City Manager of a tiny industrial Southern California armpit. Why become emotionally invested in that?

Series Creator/Writer Nic Pozzolatto dishes out three troubled dissolute Southern California cops played by Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch. Thrown into the mix is a quasi-legal casino owner and would be shtarker (tough criminal mastermind) played by Vince Vaughn. On paper, this should be a winning quartet, but the instruments are out of tune and the metaphorical musical score, i.e., the plot and the script is never going to make the Billboard Top 10.

Farrell, who was brilliant in 2008’s In Bruges as a damaged neophyte incompetent hitman is plunged in True Detective into the depths of self-despair and self destruction after selling his soul to Vaughn. Wallowing in Johnny Walker Blue Label, there’s nothing about his character that is remotely redeeming or worth rooting for. Farrell’s American accent just isn’t as interesting as when he speaks like a Brit or an Irishman.

McAdams is also asked to wallow in a self-loathing so palpable that it’s just shocking. The producers took the glam Queen Bee from Mean Girls and butched her out to an almost unrecognizable degree – and also to a non-credible level. She’s hard to believe in the role and is stretched well beyond her many talents. She can’t pull off the Charleze Theron mud-and-blood slathered tough trash role.

Kitsch seems to have peaked dramatically as Tim Riggins in Friday Night Lights, nothing he’s done since evinces the same level of passion and pathos. His beefcake starring roles in 2012’s John Carter (the Water World of its time) and Battleship ran aground faster than a deep keeled yacht in three-foot waters. In True Detective he’s suffering (naturally) from the psychic after effects of military service and is also looking for ways to punish and even maybe even kill himself. Kitsch is so remote and introverted that even his steamy hot girlfriend can’t crack through, so why should the audience bother?

Finally, Vaughn, utterly likeable and believable in such wonderful comedies as Wedding Crashers, Dodgeball and Old School is as miscast in a “heavy” mob boss role as Tom Hanks would be if he were also asked to play a gangster.  Vaughn is a terrific comedic actor because of his easy sardonic wit and everyman demeanor. Henry Fonda could convincingly play evil (and against type) in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West. Vaughn is no Henry Fonda, but then Fonda really couldn’t do comedy that well either and he didn’t try very often. In suppressing his natural likeability, Vaughn becomes not just unlikable but also uninteresting.

Pozzolotto in situating season two in Southern California begs comparison with scads of other L.A.-based noir classics such as L.A. Confidential, Chinatown and Double Indemnity, to name but a few – and True Detective comes up short and wanting in comparison. Where season one nailed rural Louisiana, season two misses the mark in Southern California. Season two is the wrong story, with the wrong characters and the wrong actors playing against type unsuccessfully. Let’s hope that Pozzolatto wasn’t a one-hit wonder with season one.

The Zeitgeist

 

A typical Jewish tombstone (left) and a Yahrtzeit (memorial) candle.

The End of Mourning:

Closure on a Year of Remembrance 

The Ba’al Tefila (prayer leader) was old, probably in his 80s, his complexion wan, his hair snow white and thin, his posture stooped, but his voice was strong enough to reach every part of the large main sanctuary. You could hear a pin drop as he commenced the haunting Yizkor (remembrance) prayers on the last day of Passover. What emanated from his essence was the sound of long ago, the echo of days and worlds that are no more – the cadence, accent and pronunciation were forged as a youth in some long vanished shtetl in Eastern Europe, most of who’s residents are now but dust and ash.

As the Kail Ma’aleh Rachamim (merciful G-d on high) wafted around the room, the deep Yiddish-inflected words penetrated the hearts and entered the souls of all those assembled to pay honor to their lost parents, siblings, spouses and sometimes their children. You see, the old man was a Holocaust survivor – one of the dwindling few who still tread this earth and the grief in his every note was tangible and palpable – an authentic cri de coeur that punctured the stoic reserve of most present and set the tear ducts in motion.

Attending Yizkor for a relatively recently deceased parent can be a gut-wrenching experience as it was with me last week. In a few days will be the Yahrtzeit (anniversary of passing) for my late mother. The Yizkor service so close to the end of my year of mourning dredged-up a matrix of emotions that thankfully have dramatically receded, especially over the last six months. Judaism demands that parents be honored in death as well as in life, even if it makes you uncomfortable or if it’s inconvenient.

The ancient Jewish stages of mourning have been engineered to help you process grief, help you deal with it and then help you move on and have closure. At the end of the year one is expected to completely rejoin the world of the living and lock the door to your sadness over the demise of a close loved one, at least until the next Yizkor service.

Mom has been gone for nearly a year now. As an observant Modern Orthodox Jew, that has meant saying a whole lot of Mourners Kaddish. When I mean a lot, we’re talking about at least six times a day, seven days a week for 11 of the 12 months of the year-long mourning period. It means showing up for three prayer services a day, the shortest of which can still last 15 or 20 minutes. It means saying the Kaddish prayer so often that you can recite it in your sleep, and sometimes you do.

The Mourners Kaddish is a prayer for the dead but it’s really for the living to affirm their belief in God in the face of great sorrow and loss – and affirm you do day in and day out come rain, sleet, snow or dark of dawn or night – you affirm it in ancient Aramaic with at least nine other Jewish men above Bar Mitzvah age. Business calls, emails and meetings have to be put on hold at midday, breakfast will have to wait in the mornings and working out will sometimes have to take a third back seat. Kaddish means that quite often you lead the whole prayer service from beginning to end, you’re not just a spectator, you’re the main actor on the stage (bima) and the star of the show.

It needs to be said that for my entire life I always assiduously avoided doing anything as outlandish as leading services (davening), but thrust into the footlights, somehow I let my anxiety over leading the services compete headlong with my anxiety over the loss of my mother – and those dueling anxieties, in time, miraculously and thankfully nullify one another for the better on both fronts. Teach a kid how to swim? Just throw him in the water.

Like any thespian in the spotlight, there are going to be critics of your performance. No end of early bad reviews came from my New York rabbi who scolded me for my lack of “choreography” (Bob Fosse should have been consulted, clearly) and “dry delivery,” meaning no Eastern European Yiddish-accented sing-song cadence to my recitation of the prayers (I use an arid Israeli Hebrew style with an American accent, the worst of everything in some religious circles). Initially I had many words pronounced incorrectly, not looking at the punctuation vowels (dots) below the letters. A gabbai (sexton) in New York asked me, “don’t you read the vowels?” I replied, “no, I go by word recognition the way Israelis do.” So, I had to look at vowels again to avoid brickbats and tomatoes from the crowd. Eventually, I got every word right. Two-thirds of the way through the year I relocated to Florida to escape the Polar Vortex and thankfully the clergy and congregation at the synagogue there was hyper-Americanized, very Zionistic and consequently tolerant of my Hebrew style.

The biggest criticisms when leading the davening (prayers) arise from speed or the lack thereof. In the mornings especially, people are rushing off to work, to catch a train, to conquer the universe or what have you, so speed is of the essence. On an average weekday you get kudos for plowing through something like 60 or 70 pages in the siddur (prayer book) in well under 30 minutes. On Mondays and Thursdays when the Torah (bible) is read, you’ve got around 85 or 90 pages and 35 minutes is the max before you hear audible shuffling and groaning in the pews. So, not only are you reciting a lot of Hebrew and Aramaic aloud, you’re doing it at warp speed. It reminds me of the vocal velocity employed by cattle auctioneers or that fast-talking guy in the old FedEx commercial from 1981 where business was conducted at the speed of sound.  Speed and accuracy are the prized skills of a mourner. You try to be like Jesse Owens on the track and Mark Spitz in the pool – average velocity doesn’t cut it, especially with the tough morning crowd. After leading services for enough months you’re so busy and focused on the task at hand that your grief gets pushed to the back burner, which is probably the main point of it all.

The famous 1981 FedEx commercial where business is conducted at the speed of sound. Leading morning prayers in synagogue can be analogous to this experience and speed skills are highly prized.

Then, suddenly, you stop – like slamming on the brakes at high speed. At the end of 11 months you are to lead the services no more, you are to recite the Kaddish no more. What had been an integral part of your consciousness has to cease and you return to being just a face in the synagogue crowd. You get one more shot at the Yahrtzeit to lead again, but then you retreat to the back benches thereafter.

The end of the year means you can now go hear live music, you can attend celebrations like weddings and bar mitzvahs, you can buy new clothes, you can let your mother go. The Angel of Death ensures that a steady supply of mourners will take your place at the ammud (podium) and you try to be there for them as the other congregants were there for you in your time of intense pain and sadness. You come to appreciate the kindness of strangers and hope you can give back in turn.

I’m proud to say that I didn’t miss a single day of davening during this past 12 months.  I’d committed to be there for Mom as she’d been there for me during my whole lifetime – but more importantly, I renewed my commitment to live my life in a way that would be a credit to her memory and give honor to the effort she put into me. It sure wasn’t easy at times to extricate myself from bed or a business meeting but it was probably the most meaningful experience I’ve had as a Jew. Judaism forces an end to things but it also creates a new beginning for a life rooted in the memory and values of the loved and lost. That their values endure ensures there’s forever a piece of them here on this earth.