The Golden Jet is Out of Fuel

 The Chicago Blackhawks recently decided to drop 83 year old former star Bobby Hull as an “ambassador” to the club under the pretext that they were re-evaluating the ambassador role after the recent deaths of Blackhawk legends Stan Mikita and Tony Esposito, and claiming the departure was mutual. 

In 2008, John McDonough brought Hull, Mikita, Esposito, Chris Chelios and Denis Savard back to promote the team after “Dollar” Bill Wirtz had served up a mediocre product for years and wrecked the team’s image.   By the time Wirtz died, and son Rocky took over, the city was largely indifferent to the team.  It reached a nadir in 2004 when the team honored Keith Magnuson after his tragic death in a car accident.  I was at that game, and it was sad to see Magnuson’s family introduced at the United Center which was only about 1/3 full.

McDonough wisely understood that there was a latent residual attachment to it left over from the early 1970’s.  Along with signing some top talent to make the team competitive again, he brought back these players to rekindle that fan base.  And it worked.  The Blackhawks were able to recharge the team, fill the United Center and win three Stanley Cups.  Even better, the team upgraded its fan base from a bunch of rowdy drunks to families, business people and young guys taking their girlfriends out on dates.

But Blackhawks’s fortunes have changed in recent years as they have sunk back to mediocrity.  The team aged out and the Hawks fired Joel Quenneville, the coach that took them to their cup victories.  Worse, the Hawks were plagued by the scandal of player Kyle Beach, who was sexually assaulted by a staff member, and the assault was covered up by the organization, who apparently gave Brad Aldrich a favorable send off, where he purportedly assaulted another player at Miami of Ohio.

Jettisoning the Golden Jet comes shortly after Rocky Wirtz’s horrendous press conference in which he aggressively and brusquely shut down questions about what the Blackhawks were doing to ensure that another Kyle Beach situation would not occur.

After the termination of Hull, several sports commentators jumped on board, saying that Hull was a “terrible person” and that the Blackhawks were right in severing their relationship with him, citing his assault on a police officer that tried to intervene in the domestic abuse at his home.  Hull apparently was a repeat abuser and some of the reported incidents were ghastly. He also is quoted as saying that “Hitler had some good ideas” and that the “black population in the U.S. was growing too fast.”

Now, I hardly wish to defend Hull for these things, or excuse it.  Domestic abuse is a very serious thing.  And, if true, those quotes were abhorrent.  No doubt about that.

But I find it a bit disingenuous of the Wirtz family to suddenly decide that Hull presents an image problem for them.   These were facts that were known to them AT THE TIME THEY ENGAGED HULL as an ambassador back in 2008.  None of this was new or recently discovered.

Hull was adored by Chicago fans. Wirtz was more than happy to overlook these flaws when the franchise was intent on rebuilding its brand and reviving a moribund team.  Now that the Blackhawks are on a steady downward slope, Hull is no longer useful to them.

I find it ironic that it is exactly 50 years ago that the Blackhawks organizing turned its back on Hull.  In 1972, Hull received a competing offer to play in the competing WHA.  Hull later said he would have accepted less money to stay in Chicago but old man Arthur Wirtz didn’t bother to speak to him or make a counteroffer of any sort.   To the shock and dismay of Chicago fans, he up and left the city that loved him.

Fifty years later, the Wirtz family abruptly does it to Hull again. 

Since the mid 80’s, there have been no reports of bad behavior on the part of Hull, so perhaps he  has changed his ways.

The Wirtz family, however, has not changed theirs.

Babbitt

 Of my many quirks and idiosyncrasies, I like to read books that coincide with anniversaries.  I read Willa Cather’s My Antonia and Karel Capek’s R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) on the 100^th anniversary of their publication and Laura Dassa Walls’s biography of Thoreau on the 200^th anniversary of his birth.  2022 is the 100^th anniversary of the publication of Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt, the satirical novel of middle class life in America. While 2022 is also the 100^th anniversary of James Joyce’s Ulysses, I thought Babbitt might be more digestible.

A 100th or 200^th year span is enough to give you a broad, sweeping perspective on things.  I am fascinated to see what things have changed and what things have not and what challenges and issues the characters wrestle with.

Babbitt centers on the life of a middle aged real estate broker, George Babbitt, an average guy trying to carve out a reasonably successful life in the fictional growing Midwestern city of Zenith. He has a dull marriage to a nondescript woman, Zilla.  Babbitt is torn between becoming a pillar of the community and accepted and welcomed into the upper echelons of the town, and becoming somewhat of a rebel, an outsider, a rulebreaker.

Struggling to find meaning in his desultory life, George Babbitt eventually breaks down and has what has come to be known as a mid-life crisis, has an affair, starts hanging out with a racier crowd and rejects the more staid, conforming upstanding society.  He eventually returns to his wife, and, after initially rejecting membership to the country club, back to the community after veering off course.

Like Capek’s R.U.R. (presciently dealing with artificial intelligence and robots), I find Babbitt’s continued relevance most interesting.  Today, there are millions of Babbitts earning a living in transactional businesses in a modern, interlinked economy in sales, law and a myriad of professions, whose existence is merely to facilitate transactions and these people try to find some meaning in their work.  The velocity and technology may have changed but the emptiness and the need to fill that emptiness has not.

The wariness of “the other” is still with us and has not changed much over the past century.   Mores have changed.  Sinclair Lewis’s use of the “n” word and his disparagement of Jews (he uses the word “Jew” as a verb in dialogue) jolt the modern day reader, but many themes remain the same.  Babbitt says this about blacks:

“I don’t know what’s come over these n****s, nowadays.  They never give you a civil answer.”

“That’s a fact.  They’re getting so they don’t have a of respect for you.  The old-fashioned coon was a fine old cuss—he knew his place—but these young dinges don’t want to be porters or cotton-pickers.”

These quotes might be shocking to modern sensibilities, but the underlying tensions are still with us, especially as we wrestle with critical race theory in schools and in large corporations.

Babbitt also contains dialogue dealing with the right level of immigration, and how to assimilate those immigrants.

Similarly, in the post-WWII period, we took for granted that the path to middle class or upper middle class life necessarily went through college.   As we see the degradation of standards and degrees in universities, and the recognition that truck drivers and skilled electricians may have a bigger role to play in our day to day lives than middle managers in banks, and the out of control costs of college, conventional wisdom is being questioned once again.   As Babbitt observed a century ago:

I’m a college man—I know!  There is one objection you might make though.  I certainly do protest against any effort to get a lot of fellows out of barber shops and factories into the professions. They’re too crowded already, and what’ll we do for workmen if all those fellows go and get educated?”

Reading these century old works is a real treat.  Certainly, much has changed.  But in many ways, many of the issues are still here in American life.  Babbitt is an interesting lens through which to view America in 2022.

 

Death of Sports

 

Our society is being roiled and torn in more directions than at any time since the Great Depression and perhaps the Civil War.  Indeed, last week the New York Times Book Review reviewed two books that address a possible civil war in the U.S.

One of the cultural institutions that had always acted as an adhesive is sports and now that is being devoured by its own mismanagement and new devotion to Wokeness.

The N.F.L. began with allowing the kneeling of Colin Kaepernick and advanced to raising money to spring convicted felons from prison.  The same league that refused to allow the Dallas Cowboys to put the names of assassinated police officers on their helmets, now promote “social justice” slogans.  And now Wokeness is going to devour the N.F.L. because you can never be Woke enough.  Fired former Miami head coach Brian Flores is suing the NFL, alleging racial discrimination and that he had “sham” interviews in which a candidate had already been chosen.  Now, I don’t know if this suit will go anywhere, but it’s a bit of karma after the N.F.L. had John Gruden “canceled” after some arguably racist emails were made public.  The league that tolerates wife beating, disrespect for the flag, and subsidizes the release of criminals is getting a taste of its own medicine.  Now, Commissioner Goodell is turning to race baiter and grifter Al Sharpton to advise him on correcting the imbalance of black coaches in the NFL.   I’ve given up on this hopeless league that is consuming itself with Wokeness.

The Olympics this year are a grotesque extravaganza showcasing the Chinese Communist Party that continues to threaten Taiwan and run concentration camps for Uyghers.  Dubbed the “Genocide Olympics, not since Berlin 1936 has the world acquiesced to such evil.   This is a regime that either negligently or, perhaps even intentionally, unleashed a contagion two years ago that had the effect of dropping nuclear warheads on several cities, and then actively covered up its tracks.  We have gone from the US track team holding up its fists in protest in 1968 to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warning our athletes not to offend the CCP because “they are ruthless.”   I have not, and will not, watch a second of the Beijing Olympics.

Then there is the whole controversy over Lia Thomas, the transgender swimmer at Penn that is smashing all of the womens’ records, alienating teammates with “her” penis flopping around the locker room and setting back the progress of womens’ sports.  As Abigail Shrier put it, “she” is vandalizing womens’ swimming records.  Between the anti-patriotism of Megan Rapinoe and the intrusion of biological men into womens’ sports, Wokeness has shattered the interest of those of us that have supported womens’ sports over the years.

Finally, there are the Blackhawks.  After settling a lawsuit by Kyle Beach, who was sexually assaulted by a staff member of the organization, owner Rocky Wirtz angrily dismissed a logical question from the press, “What steps has the organization taken to ensure something like this will not happen again?”

It is a question that he should have been preparted for, but Wirtz snapped, “I’m going to answer that question.  I think the report speaks for itself.  The people that were involved are no longer here.  We’re not looking back to 2010.   We’re looking forward.  And we’re not going to talk about 2010.   We’re not going to talk about what happened.  We’re moving forward.  This is my answer!  And what’s your next question?”

[Son Danny tries to interject]

“No! That’s none of your business,” he continued angrily at the reporter.  “ That’s none of your business! That’s none of your business!  What we’re gonna do today is our business.  I don’t think it’s any of your business.  You don’t work for the company.  If someone in the company asks that question, we’ll answer it.  And I think you should get on to the next subject.”

It was 50 years ago exactly that grandpa Art Wirtz let star and fan favorite Bobby Hull slip away to the competing WHA without so much as a counteroffer.  The Wirtz family once again revealed itself with its disdain for Blackhawk fans.  I was dismayed then as I am now.  Rocky said, “We’re moving on.”  Yes, and so am I.

Sports used to be something that brought us together.  It was part of our shared culture and experiences.  From Babe Ruth to Babe Didrikson Zaharias. From Gordie Howe to Wayne Gretzky.  From Mark Spitz to Michael Phelps.   Sports and sports heroes have been part of the fabric of our society.  But Wokeness and corruption have so corroded sports that sports is tearing us apart and becoming unwatchable.

Up, Down and All Around

 If you are feeling disoriented and topsy-turvy right now, take heart.  You are not alone. We are experiencing the most wrenching changes since WWII, and while the global discord has not gotten very violent yet, it is just as disconcerting.  The media is telling you that men can get pregnant, vaccinations are so effective, they have to force you to get one, and all white people are irredeemably racist.  The rebellious old rockers now are all behind censorship, compliance and Big Pharma.

The consequence of all this is that old alliances and friendships are breaking apart, and new ones are forming.  Individuals are in the midst of a great rearranging, as Jodi Shaw noted in a tweet (responding to a friend that had whittled her friendships from 85 to 2:

You are  not alone.  This is a major transition and like all major transitions can be painful.  I would rather be part of an authentic, connected community than a fake and fearful one.

Things are being shaken up.  As an old Reagan Republican and Cold Warror, I find it fascinating and humorous that the thought leaders that I now follow most closely are old fashioned Jewish liberals- Bret Weinstein, Abigail Shrier, and Bari Weiss.  I’m sure none of these folks voted for Reagan and I’m sure that I would have several points of disagreement with them on a variety of issues.  But each of them is passionately devoted to free speech and work hard to support their positions with facts and data.  They are all intellectually honest and open minded. 

In addition, I never miss the conversations between John McWhorter and Glenn Loury (Self described as the “Black Guys”).  They sometimes disagree with each other and are uniquely qualified to address criminal justice, racial preferences, and voter “rights.” Glenn Loury teaches at Brown and originally hails from the South Side of Chicago. 

So, I’m listening intently to Jewish liberals on some issues and on criminal justice and other issues related to race, to a Black Guy from the South Side.

Go figure.  It’s 2022.  All the pieces are getting rearranged.

Here’s who’s up and who’s down.

Who’s Up.

Truckers. 
Particularly Canadian ones. What is going on in Canada is magnificent.  For most of my adult life, I held college professors and MD’s in higher esteem than truck drivers.  I have seen the error of my ways.  College professors led us down the racist path of CRT and into the unholy, immoral relationship with the CCP.  Truck drivers are now leading the convoy of liberty in Canada and have driven Woke WEF disciple Justine Trudeau into exile.  The protest of the truck drivers is the Boston Tea Party of the north. The truck drivers in Canada have made me wholly repentant of my heretofore intellectual snobbery.

Megyn Kelly
Megyn Kelly succumbed a bit to Icarus and Daedalus Syndrome.  She flew too close to the sun and attempted to capitalized on her “rock star” status by signing a huge contract with NBC.  All it took was one innocuous comment about doing “blackface” when she was a kid, and she was cut loose.

 Now, we naturally like to see people that seem to get a bit too full of themselves to get their commupance.   But Kelly is smart, ambitious, and talented.  Her podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show, is a great reinvention.  Because podcasts are longer and more nuanced, they allow for more interesting discussions and Kelly is actually a better podcaster than a broadcaster.  You see more of her best self.

Who’s down

Claire Lehmann
The editor in chief of Quilette, which promotes itself as “Where Free Thought Lives” and a center of “Heterodox Ideas,” Lehmann has picked unnecessary fights with Bret Weinstein and has failed to see the dangers of the tyrannical Australian lockdowns.  Her tweet last week belies a naivete, or at least a lack of knowledge of Venn diagrams, as the people that are true believers in these three are one and the same:  "It is possible to decouple your opinions on social justice activism, vaccination & climate change.  Just because you agree with someone (or some group) on one of these, doesn't mean you have to agree with them on all."

Lehmann has a penchant for showing off her legs and midriff online and, would probably be the first to decry the objectification of women.  Her act has worn thin.

NPR
I was a faithful listener to NPR throughout the 80’s and into the 90’s.  I got my news from Carl Castle, Scott Simon and Susan Stamberg and got my arts and culture fix from Terry Gross.  Always tilting left, NPR has joined the unethical MSM.  Most recently, based on unnamed sources, NPR tried to put forward a story about a dust-up between Justices Sotomayor and Gorsuch over masking.  The Supreme Court issues a statement refuting the story.  In August, after the Rittenhouse verdict that acquitted him, the first commentator used the term “far right” 8 times during her response.  Even Fresh Air has gotten boring, Woke and largely unlistenable.

The University of Chicago
Sadly, one of the last bastions of free thought and free speech is being overrun by the forces of Woke.  It began when Geoffrey Stone, co-author of the Chicago Principles and law school professor made a small concession and agreed that he would not offend students by using the “N” word as an example in his 1^st amendment class.  Fast forward to today, when the once venerable University of Chicago is contemplating establishing a Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity Department (the first clue was using a word that almost no one in common society uses (how many time have you used the word “Indigeniety”).  This is not scholarship.  It is activism.  If established, this department will attempt to assert itself as a supra-department and attempt to police every other department for “indicia of racism” and, without a doubt will seek to revise the Chicago Principles on Free Speech.  Kudos to Dorian Abbot, Harald Uhlig and the students at the Chicago Thinker for opposing this nonsense.  But the harsh reality is that I have yet to see a school or organization so embedded with the forces of Woke be able to reverse course. 

Black Lives Matter
Well, it turns out that BLM funneled $6.3 million to buy a mansion in Canada.  This is after founder Patrice Collor bought four high end homes for $3.2 million and then quit.  Now, the “charity” is missing $60 million and no one is apparently in charge.  And we can’t name a single project that it undertook to improve actual black lives—not a health center, a program, a donation to a HBCU—nothing. 

The Deal Changed

 A friend of mine confided to me that although he was college educated, and had a graduate degree and a professional career, that his actual lifestyle was not as good as his father’s- a career military guy that had not gone to college.   My friend lived in a smaller house, worked longer hours, took fewer vacations, did not have a second home, and was much less secure.

How did this happen?

I posited that one reason was that the State (writ large) and academia had conspired to extract his excess productivity and wealth creation.  Between taxes and college tuition that far exceeded the inflation rate, any of his gains were being soaked up by government and higher education.

He is not alone.

Just as the deal has changed with respect to living in an urban area, the deal with higher ed has changed.

Faced with inflation, companies would often reduce the size of the contents and the serving size—as if you wouldn’t notice a chocolate bar that is 1/3 smaller.  Higher ed has done the same thing.

Not only has it increased the price (since 1985, tuition increases have been roughly twice the inflation rate), but the product has been watered down, especially with the advent of Wokeness over the past decade.  Critical thinking is out. Woke is in.  History is out.  Grievance studies is in.  Tuition is so egregiously expensive that “working your way through college” has become an anachronism.

Look, we all bought into it.  I did.  I sent both of my kids to college.

The deal has changed.

First, the cost is prohibitive.  If you have to graduate with huge debts, and have to count on “debt cancellation,” it’s probably not worth it.  First of all, there is no such thing as “debt cancellation.” Debt that will not be paid back ends up running through someone’s income statement.  And that should not be the federal government.  Second, by permitting students to borrow money that cannot be paid back, academia is avoiding cost containment that every other industry has had to confront.  Third, academia has watered down its offerings.  A “gender studies” major at a liberal arts institution has hardly prepared a young person to earn a decent wage in a competitive economy.

With colleges at the forefront of “safe spaces,”  “trigger warnings,”  “preferred pronouns,” speech codes and such lunacy that inhibits critical thinking, the entire model is now questionable.  Instead of educating kids,  higher ed is enfantilizing them.  Almost all social science, literature and history departments are heavily liberal.   A conservative historian has almost zero chance of a faculty job anywhere in the US.  Postmodernism has a tight grip in academia, so the chances of getting exposure to a wide range of views is almost nil.  The lowering of standards to get the right gender and racial makeup has degraded these places as the price has gone up.

Finally, the COVID restrictions, vaccine mandates remote learning have really changed the deal.  Putting aside the morality of forced vaccines (with unknown long term consequences) on a healthy population and either masked or remote learning is hardly worth the tuition price.

I read with great pleasure Jonathan Cole’s 2009 book The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensible National Role, Why It Must Be Protected.   Cole’s 2009 book asserts that the US higher education is a marvel of the world.   A mere 13 years later, I wonder if Cole holds the same view.   My old professor, Daniel Pipes clearly does not.  He sees a painful and abrupt reckoning on the horizon for higher education in his March, 2021 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

https://www.danielpipes.org/20318/the-future-of-us-higher-education

Even at my alma mater, which had codified its principles of free speech, Wokeism has chipped away at its edifice.  Free speech, free thought is the essence of a liberal education.  And it is being systematically suffocated at most universities.

Finally, there is China.   The pernicious influence of the CCP throughout higher education cannot be understated.  From the recent conviction of Charles Liebman, head of the chemistry department at Harvard to the China BiWeekly Seminar on Public Economics at The University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute, the CCP has infiltrated throughout higher education.  We have between 300-400 thousand Chinese students here every year.  Why are we educating Chinese youth, while neglecting our own?  These students will become the foundation for the regime that seeks to upend the U.S.  One only needs to look at the NBA to see what happens to free speech and free thought when an industry becomes dependent on Chinese money. 

The deal has been changed.  As with urban living, we need to rethink our deal with higher education.  The quality has gone down.  The price has gone up.  It has been repurposed for aims that are anti-Enlightenment.   And it has allowed the CCP to take residence.   In the parlance of the Woke, higher ed needs to be deconstructed.

 

Re-Traded

 

One of the most fundamental concepts in the study of economics is tradeoffs.  As the wise Mick Jagger put it years ago, “You can’t always get what you want.”   Choices almost always involve tradeoffs.

We are experiencing the largest shift in “the deal” since the Dust Bowl.

Where you and your family choose to live involves a series of tradeoffs.   There are three basic choices (and some subchoices)--- large urban metropolitan area, small town, and rural.

The deal has been shifting for some time, but with Woke DA’s being installed in most large metro areas coupled with the arrival of COVID, they changed the deal.

Many of us accepted the tradeoff of living in a large metropolitan area and the deal was this:   You accepted a certain amount of congestion, pollution, a little crime, higher taxes, and yes, a bit of corruption.  In return, you were part of a large labor and employer pool and consequently made more money, had access to better health care, cultural institutions and events, and a wide variety of restaurants.  

But the deal has been changed fairly dramatically over the last two years, and the documented flow of people out of California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois confirms it.  And because it takes planning to move (need to find suitable employment and housing), this flow is likely to turn into a flood.

In cities like Chicago, the crime has gotten so out of control that the cultural institutions and restaurants are pretty much off limits unless you want to take your life into your hands.  One friend of a friend of mine was shot coming home from a Blackhawks game this fall.  A retired teacher was shot and killed on the way home from a White Sox game last summer.  Two Blackhawks players were carjacked in the West Loop recently.  A graduate student was stabbed to death on a Sunday morning near Sears Tower.  A recent University of Chicago graduate was shot and killed in the afternoon in Hyde Park.   There were over 1400 carjackings last year in the city and only 106 arrests.  And when they do get arrested, they are out on cashless bail.  Violent criminals roam the streets on electronic monitoring. 

To give you a flavor of how bad things have gotten, I participated in a Moby Dick read-a-thon at the Newberry Library just north of downtown three years ago, in which I was scheduled to read my chapters at 3 am.   There is no way in the world I would do that today.  Recently, one old friend of mine wanted to get together with me for drinks, but asked if I could join him late in the afternoon.  Because of the danger, he makes it a point to be out of the city by 6 p.m.

The deal has changed in major U.S. cities--- Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, LA, San Francisco.  Rampant crime (along with COVID restrictions) have made it much less likely that people will enjoy the restaurants and culture offered by the cities.   Remote work has made it possible for many professionals to be employed at relatively high wages without experiencing the congestion of a commute. 

Two basic government functions are to protect your person and your belongings and to provide K-12 education.  In these cities, the police are under severe restrictions and the DA’s don’t prosecute.  The union-controlled school systems either miseducate or, in places like Chicago, don’t educate at all.  Escalating taxes are paying for what, exactly?  A school system that won't teach and a police force that is prohibited from protecting you.

A few years ago, a logical move for empty nesters would be to sell the home in the suburbs and get a condo downtown so they could walk to the office, restaurants and cultural events.   That is now off the table.   In the summer of 2020, those people cowered in their building as they hear glass smashing on the first floor during the George Floyd riots.  There is no credible plan in any of these cities to restore a modicum of order.   Moving downtown is now off the table.

The deal got re-traded and isn't likely to be restored anytime soon.  The flow out of these cities to small towns and rural areas is about to become a torrent.

Next, I will write about the re-trade in higher education.

2021- The Best Of

 

It was a weird year,  the second full year of COVID19 restrictions.  During this topsy turvy year, the Vatican slapped restrictions on saying the Latin Mass.  The Illinois Holocaust Museum made “show me your papers” a requirement for admission and then squelched dissent on the internet.   At least it didn’t have a loudspeaker at the entrance, barking “Mach schnell!” to give it the full effect.  That’s where we are now.

There was an attempt to return to normalcy by summer.  Baseball was played.  Ravinia had somewhat of a season, although it was very lightly attended.  Movie theaters re-opened. 

It this tentative and somewhat abbreviated year, there were some highlights, nonetheless.

Film

I have to confess, I have some catching up to do.  I saw relatively few films this year and I will try to catch up during the icy months.

But of the films I saw, I liked Minari, a film about a young Korean family that emigrates to Arkansas after immigrating from Korea and tries to make a go of it by working the land.   It’s somewhat of a remake of The Grapes of Wrath story, with all the family drama.  A Quiet Place II wasn’t bad, especially since there has been a paucity of good sci-fi and horror films lately.

Nomadland received best picture at the Academy Awards but I thought it was awful- dark, depressing, spartan with uninteresting characters.  It was especially tedious since we are living through a dark, depressing, dystopian period.   Similarly, Land was predictable and tedious, and I had high expectations for it.

The more interesting medium were a few mini-series that I liked a great deal.  At the top of the list was Queen’s Gambit, starring Anya Taylor-Joy.  Queen’s Gambit was magnificent.  The acting was very good.  The writing was excellent and the character development was superb.  Anya Taylor-Joy was a wonderfully complex character.  The writers were able to translate a slow moving game into a riveting experience.  The Beth Harmon character was a bit of a composite of Bobby Fischer and Janis Joplin.  Marcin Dorocinski played her Russian nemesis, Vasily Borgov.  Dorocinski is actually Polish and is one of a raft of excellent Polish dramatic talent that surfaced in the last couple of years.

World on Fire was a WWII drama and PBS mini-series, starring Helen Hunt.  The first installment was centered on early WWII.   It was a sweeping project, developing characters on several continents.  Like Queen’s Gambit, I found it to be quite authentic (except for a couple of Woke nods).   Helen Hunt was outstanding and the scenes in Poland were done by Polish actors, headed up by the young, beautiful and talented Zofia Wichlacz.   I’m very much looking forward to Season 2. 

PBS Masterpiece also pulled off another masterpiece with All Creatures and Small.  The beloved James Herriot books were wonderfully done in this remake.   Season 2 starts soon and can’t get here fast enough. 

Books

Fiction

This was a tossup.  I really liked Should We Stay or Should We Go by Lionel Shriver.  This novel is about an older couple that makes a mutual suicide pact to avoid the inevitable decline and expense of old age. The twist is that Shriver ingeniously provides alternative endings.   Shriver’s biting and incisive intellect just drips out of this novel.  Also very inventive was Klara and the Sun by Kazou Ishiguro.  In this futuristic (but not far off) novel, a family purchases a synthetic companion for their chronically ill daughter.

Both these novels deal with themes that baby boomers will likely have to confront in the near future.  And both authors handled these issues in very original ways.

Nonfiction

There were several excellent candidates in this category.  We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State by Kai Strittmatter was very good as was This is How the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth.   Nuclear Armageddon is no longer our sole humanity ending dread.

But my vote for best nonfiction book goes to the dean of American History, Gordon S. Wood for his short and very readable concise volume, Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution.  In less than 200 pages, the 87 year old Wood spins out an essential primer on our great Republic.  In seven short chapters, he lays out an essential foundation of how we came into being, and the origins of our Constitution.  Best of all, Wood devotes an entire chapter entitled Slavery and Constitutionalism to destroying The 1619 Project and the falsehoods being propagated by Nicole Hannah-Jones without even naming her or The 1619 Project.  He utterly upends her basic argument:

The Revolution changed everything: unfreedom could no longer be taken for granted as a normal part of hierarchical society.  Almost overnight black slavery and white servitude became conspicuous and reviled in ways that they had not been earlier.

He goes on later to assert:

With independence, nearly all the independent states, including Virginia, began moving against slavery, initiating what became the first great antislavery movement in world history. The desire to abolish slavery was not an incidental offshoot of the Revolution; it was not an unintended consequence of the contagion of liberty.  It was part and parcel of the many enlightened reforms that were integral to the republican revolutions taking place in the new states.

And just like that, Hannah-Jones argument is laid waste.

I had an opportunity to hear Gordon Wood speak and meet him a couple of years ago.  With Samuel Eliot Morison, Page Smith, Edmund Morgan and Bernard Bailyn gone, Wood is one of the last to hold up the candle of the miracle of the origins of America.  American History departments have been shrunk to almost nonexistence and have been stuffed with the gender studies and grievance studies people.   Wood is a treasure and, at 87, this may be his last, but best effort.