I wrote about this piece of remarkable TV history back in 2014, and it remains one of my favorites.  Though there's some background music in it, it's not about music at all, but it will nonetheless sit for today's Holiday Music Fest, mainly on the Fest part.  Back in my initial posting on this site about Kukla, Fran and Ollie, I wrote about how the show's brilliant creator, puppeteer Burr Tillstrom won an additional Emmy Award that was not involved with KF&O, but for his work on his own.  It was for one of the "hand ballets" that he performed on occasion for the satirical news series, That Was the Week That Was.  

That Was the Week That Was was a smart, pointed, very sharp British sketch-comedy show which was brought over to the U.S. in the early 1960s.  Among other things, it introduced to American audiences one of the original British cast members, David Frost.  It's also the show that introduced Tom Lehrer to most Americans.  He wrote periodic songs for the series, and then recorded them for his now-classic hit album, That Was the Year That Was.

And it also brought Burr Tillstrom into the national spotlight in a way people hadn't seen or expected.

​His hand ballets were little vignettes that didn't use any puppets at all, but merely Tillstrom's bare hands, using them alone to evoke some story in the news he wanted to get across.  It was done with great artistry, often movingly.  And one of them so artistic and moving that it won him an Emmy Award.

In 1963, two years after the Berlin Wall had been erected, a very brief concession was made.  The Wall would open for the Christmas holiday and allow those in the West to travel into East Berlin and visit family and loved ones, needing to return a few days later.

This is what Burr Tillstrom did a hand ballet about shortly after.  And --

-- I found the video of it.  It is one of the favorite videos I've been able to find.  I'm thrilled

The quality of the video is a little rough, especially at the beginning, but it's fine.  And ultimately, as you watch -- one brilliant artist using only his hands -- the quality of the video won't matter one whit.  

And if anyone ever wonders where the humanity of Kukla, Fran and Ollie came from, to bring such life into puppets, now you'll know.

When I posted this last year, I got a perturbed note from a reader who found nothing worthwhile about the video, and took me to task for wasting his time.  In the spirit of the season, I will refrain from anything ad hominen.  I will just say that I feel completely comfortable in recognizing the legend of this piece, and anything else is an understandable matter of personal taste.  Wherever that may lie.  I say this knowing that it's not just my opinion on this, but the members of the of the Television Academy who voted Tillstrom the Emmy Award.

But to be fair, I guess I should add a disclaimer.  If anyone doesn't like old black-and-white video or just looking at hands for three minutes, or politics and history, or quiet, thoughtful, emotional storytelling with the sparsest of action or jokes, centered instead on pure artistry, I get it, and so by all means avoid this.

For everyone else, here it is.

It turns out that Dennis Prager has a video out with him "pontificating wisely" (tm) in front of a fireplace with a personal observation that he tries to make oh-so very clear is not for every man but...well, but for "some," and not just some, but "enough that I can make this point" -- so, despite his insistence, it's clear that this pertains to a lot.  A LOT.  And it's that "enough" men today are growing beards because "feminism and the Left have crapped on masculinity" and they need to say "hello, I'm not a female."

Interestingly, that is the exact same reason that was given for men having beards in 19th century England! And also in 1250 B.C. Jerusalem.

And Donald Trump Jr. and Ted Cruz in 2019.

And Santa Claus.

And Abraham Lincoln, father of the Republican Party.

And Jesus.

Reading or listening to what Dennis Prager has to say is an ethereally mind-numbing experience.  Not always.  Some of the time.  And enough of the time that I can make this point.

Actually, now that I think of it, it's most of the time.  I was just being polite before.

And it got me to thinking of an article I wrote about Mr. Prager on the Huffington Post back in 2010.  It was the result of an exchange of emails I had with a friend who's a reasonably well-known public figure, very right-wing and a friend of Prager.  Initially, when I decided to re-post this here, it was only because I think "enough" of what Dennis Prager writes and says is crushingly empty, made under the seeming guise of sage advice, and I wanted to follow-up on his little video chat with my encore from the past.  But as I re-read the article, I realized that in many ways the two pieces are connected, that indeed both of them have a similar theme of Mr. Prager -- a total mis-understanding of historical fact, and insistence that the cause of the world's ills, which tend to be things different from him as seen through his small, myopic view of life, are due "enough" to liberals.

By the way, this is an especially-ludicrous perspective to have, given that conservatism is about protecting what's good about the past, and liberalism is about finding what's good about changing and progressing into the future -- and 10,000 years or so of history have shown that, in fact, life actually changes.  A lot. 

But then, as I said, not understanding history and the reality of life is so-very Dennis Prager.  Well, okay, not understanding some of it.  And enough of it to make this point.

June 3, 2010
​
                       Dennis Prager:  Making the World a Crueler Place, One Word at a Time



A conservative friend has me on his mailing list.  He forwards me diatribes from his circle about how the world will end because of liberals, a term loosely defined as "anything that isn't conservative."  

These articles have two things in common.  One is that they all border on fear, and the other is their relationship to facts is similar to P.T. Barnum's.  

What is unfortunate is that my friend - and his circle - accept them all on faith.  And the problem of accepting temporal matters on faith is that it doesn't develop the power to think for oneself.

The other day, the latest forwarding was an article by Dennis Prager.  It was an essay that, on the surface, appeared to discuss a philosophic argument comparing religion to the evils of the secular world.  In reality, it was just bulldozing facts to make a political point. 

This below isn't whole article by Mr. Prager.  In fairness, I only got through the first four paragraphs.  But I include those four, so that what follows would be in context.

                                                                            *   *   *       
    
May 25, 2010 

The World Is a Cruel Place -- and If America Weakens, It Will Get Crueler
By Dennis Prager

One of the many beliefs -- i.e., non-empirically based doctrines -- of the post-Christian West has been that moral progress is the human norm, especially so with the demise of religion. In a secular world, the self-described enlightened thinking goes, superstition is replaced by reason, and reason leads to the moral good.

Of course, it turned out that the post-Christian West produced considerably more evil than the Christian world had. No mass cruelty in the name of Christianity approximated the vastness of the cruelty unleashed by secular doctrines and regimes in the post-Christian world. The argument against religion that more people have been killed in the name of religion than by any other doctrine is false propaganda on behalf of secularism and Leftism.
 
The amount of evil done by Christians -- against, for example, "heretics" and Jews -- in both the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity --  was extensive, as was the failure of most European Christians to see Nazism for the evil that it was. The good news is that Christian evils have been acknowledged and addressed by most Christian leaders and thinkers.

But there were never any Christian Auschwitzes -- i.e., systematic genocides of every man, woman and child of a particular race or religion. Nor were there Christian Gulags -- the shipping of millions of innocents to conditions so horrific that prolonged suffering leading to death was the almost-inevitable end.
 
                     =================================================
  

This is as far as I got.   It was either keep reading or stop before my head exploded.  I opted for the latter.

The problem, you see, is that there are a great many things Mr. Prager far too self-comfortably and intentionally overlooks.  Like, for example, giving a pass to the Spanish Inquisition and its Auto-de-fe torture.  He does this by conveniently (and simplistically) self-defining religious mass murder on his own very-limited terms, as systematically killing "every" person of a religion.  Of course, in reality, even Nazism didn't systematically kill "every" Jew by his own definition, any more than Spanish Catholics did in the 356 years of the Inquisition.  But what the Inquisition did during those 3-1/2 centuries was pretty darn systematic and massive.  Not to mention that it was torture.
 
And though he eases his conscience by insisting, "Nor were there Christian Gulags...", he again intentionally (because if not intentional, it is ignorantly) overlooks 800 years or more of horrors that cumulatively likely were crushingly worse than any Gulag since they defined nearly a millennium of daily culture.
 
But mainly, I didn't get that far because Mr. Prager showed an unacceptable lack of history and reality when he wrote, "The argument against religion that more people have been killed in the name of religion than by any other doctrine is false propaganda on behalf of secularism and Leftism." 

While this statement sounds authoritative, it is of course backed up by…nothing.  Not a single word of it is backed up by - anything.  It is words strung together.
 
I actually read history.  I have no doubt that Dennis Prager does, as well.  But I can't speak to what he reads, or chooses to remember, or include.  But honestly, his above is a numbing statement.  Last year, I finally finished reading Will and Ariel Durant's brilliant and legendary 11-volume Story of Civilization.  Probably around 8,000 pages.  Up until about the year 1600, probably the bulk of wars were religious-based, and many wars beyond that, through 1800.  National governments were religious for much of history, as kings ruled their nations by divine right, and fought off opposing armies for fear of another king's religious encroachment.  The Holy Roman Empire dominated Europe.  Muslimism, Hinduism, Buddhism dominated much of the rest of the world.  Pure secular rule only came later.  Villages of 20,000 people - 30,000 or 50,000 people - would be wiped out without a thought, becoming almost commonplace, century after century for a thousand years or more, from the beginning of history through the early 17th century.  (In the early volumes, Durant writes of such ghastly massacres with eloquent horror.  Later, as they continued through the centuries, the historian instead wearily addresses them as almost footnotes before moving on to the next.)  The continuing Crusades of Christianity against Moslems were almost unendingly devastating to the society it crossed and ravaged.  For over 200 years, there were 11 of these Crusades, all of them religiously-approved wars.
 
But more than that, as Mr. Prager tries to whitewash what was done specifically to Jews throughout history by focusing on Nazis, let me offer a passage from Volume 6 of the Durants' history, "The Reformation."  Pages 730-731.  An important thing to keep in mind is that this was written in 1957.  After World War II.  After the Nazis.  Written by a renowned historian who made it his life work to study the history of mankind.  Durant begins the passage this way --
 
"The Black Death was a special tragedy for the Jews of Christendom.  The same plague had slain Mongols, Moslems and Jews in Asia, where no one thought of blaming the Jews; but in Western Europe a populace maddened by the ravages of pestilence accused the Jews of poisoning the wells in an attempt to wipe out all Christians."
 
Durant then continues with a lengthy tale of how such "fevered imaginations" swept across all of Europe.  "Nevertheless, some Jews were tortured into confessing that they had distributed the poison...Merciless pogroms broke out in France, Spain and Germany.  In one town in southern France the entire Jewish community was cast into flames.  All Jews in Savoy, all Jews around Lake Leman, all in Bern, Fribourg, Basel, Nuremberg, Brussels were burned."
 
(If Dennis Prager is looking for "systematic genocides of every man, woman and child of a particular race or religion," that long list of "all" is a good place to start.  But I digress...)
 
And then, after this lengthy passage describing these many dark years, Will Durant concludes by writing -- and I repeat, this was written a decade after World War II by a man who made it his life work to study the entire history of man -- 
 
"It would be hard to find, before our time, or in all the records of savagery, any deeds more barbarous than the collective murder of Jews in the Black Death."
 
So, while Dennis Prager wants to whitewash history for the sake of making a political point -- shame on him.

Shame on him.

And his shame extends further.  It's when Prager writes, "The good news is that Christian evils have been acknowledged and addressed by most Christian leaders and thinkers."

"Good news"??  That's the good news?
 
Yes, to Dennis Prager in his political, high-wire, contortionist act, that's the "good news."  It all makes up for the Inquisition and a thousand years of torture and persecution.  Good news indeed!  "Sorry we tortured you and killed you and wiped out entire villages for hundreds of years.  Our bad."  Good news?  That's great news!  Of course, it would have been even better news if all Christian leaders and thinkers acknowledged Christian evils, and not just "most" of them, which could mean only 51 percent...  But hey, who am I to quibble?

Mind you, all Dennis Prager says is that most Christian leaders and thinkers merely "acknowledge" these "Christian evils" - not that they are horrified, repulsed and mortified by them, or ever did anything to make up for them.  Just that they "acknowledge" their existence.  Okay, sorry, "most" do.  (However many "most" is.)   Given that "it would be hard to find," as Will Durant said, "in all the records of savagery, any deeds more barbarous than the collective murder of Jews in the Black Death," I guess that in Dennis Prager's politically conservative world the best we can get is to accept that as "good news."  Swell.

I got no further than these opening paragraphs.  To be fair, maybe in the rest of his article Dennis Prager had a complete change of viewpoint.  But I didn't have it in me to keep going and see if such a miracle had occurred.  Because I was reading empty and dishonest words.  All designed to misinterpret history to make a political point.

None of this is to criticize religion or praise secularism.  There is room for an honest discussion of that.  It is, instead, to note solely that what Dennis Prager wrote is not acceptable.  

Actually, what he wrote is pathetic.  And I'm sorry my friend and others accepted it as the truth.  Because it ignores the reality of history.  If a person wants to share the same political beliefs with Dennis Prager or with anyone amongst themselves, that's fine.  But one should still be willing to tell those you otherwise agree with that they're wrong when they are very wrong.

"Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters," said Albert Einstein, who knew something about pursuing the truth carefully, "cannot be trusted with important matters."

Dennis Prager says the world is a cruel place.  Maybe it just looks that way when you are so careless with the truth.
 

Around when I was perhaps in the third grade, I remember reading in class about the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.  It's where prehistoric animals got trapped, and then other of their fellow creatures would see them struggling and easy prey -- and going in to get them, they in turn would get caught.  Only the lucky few got out.  The site was discovered in 1901, with excavations beginning in 1913.  Though I wasn't big dinosaur fanatic as a kid, I was nonetheless seriously impressed.  Even at that age, I thought it was remarkable that one of civilization's great archeological locales was in the middle of the (then) third largest city in the United States.

When I came to Los Angeles for graduate school at UCLA, there was a small handful of places I wanted to see.  Disneyland, of course was one.  A movie studio was another.  I think Catalina Island may have been up there.  And I really couldn't wait to see the La Brea Tar Pits.

Time passes.  Several decades, as it happens.  And during all that time, I never went to the La Brea Tar Pits.  I passed by it a hundred times.  I thought about going regularly.  It's next door to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which I don't love but I'm a member of and go to periodically.  But for reasons I can't explain, I'd never gone to the La Brea Tar Pits.

Until yesterday!

Whatever the reasons I never had gone before, I finally got fed up and set aside a day, bought my ticket online, and went -- finally.

O huzzah!
​

Afterwards, I was talking with a friend who had a somewhat similar situation, and he was extremely disappointed by the experience.  Coming from New York and having seen the Natural History Museum, he found the museum there almost nothing.  I felt differently.  I grew up going to the Field Museum of Natural History there, and it's impressive (though a bit dry) in it's own right, but I still was thrilled to be at the La Brea Tar Pits.  It's not that it's a great museum -- it's not -- but that's not the point.  It's that it's one of the great archeological sites in the world that's located in a major city.  And it was a joy being there.

Actually, the site is divided into two parts -- the George C. Page Museum, which they charge for, and the Tar Pits area with the excavation areas which is free.

The Museum is fairly small and, no, not impressive, but the history of what's their is wonderful, and so is what they display. For instance, I enjoyed stopping by their Fossil Lab where a lot of the research is open to the public, and you get to watch the scientists at work, studying the material unearthed on the grounds.

There were some pleasant displays and short movies, though a lot of it seems more focused on kids.  (They have a longer 3-D movie, but I passed on that.)  However, the reconstruction of prehistoric animals is what stands out.  One of the more surprising skeletons is Harlan's Ground Sloth.  We think of sloths and small, sort of cuddly creatures.  They have have been cuddly, up to a point, but back in prehistoric days, the sloth was anything but small. 

My favorite was the Columbia Mammoth.  The bones are all from fossils discovered on the grounds, though not from the same animals.  The tusks however were added separately.

I wasn't sure what the difference was between a mammoth and mastadon.  It turns out that the latter is small and more compact.

Bizarrely, though the Page Museum has its own collection that covers over five million artifacts, some of what was on display there the day that I went was part of a traveling exhibition -- from the Field Museum of Chicago!!!  (Not most of what was on display, and not the Columbia Mammoth above.)  The outside grounds are really the historic site.  There's nothing overly majestic about it -- most of the pits, in fact, have been mostly-covered up over time, though you can still see the a bit of the tar still seeping through, with occasional methane bubbles.

(By the way, it's not actually tar.  It's asphalt, which is a natural material.  Tar has additives, but it's the name that stuck over the decades.  Brea means "tar" in Spanish.)

New pits crop up all the time, though.  One area was such that they had to carve out the "tar" and what was caught in it, and then crated.  The crates have been moved to the Project 23 area, which is where the work reclaiming the fossils takes place.
​

Currently, the part of the grounds where most of the active excavating is going on is Pit 91.  The bulk of what has been found there is fossils from Sabre-Tooth Cats and what they call ancient horses.

As I said, the La Brea Tar Pits (and its adjoining Page Museum) is most definitely not a great exhibition.  What it is, however, is a historic part of civilization.  And for that reason I had a wonderful time.  I wish there was more, but I was not let down after waiting to get there since I was eight years ago -- and driving by it regularly for decades.  I have no idea why I waited -- in one regard it's like any sites that are famous in a city, but second nature to those who live in their midst because "they're just there" and a part of your daily life -- but I wanted to go.  And continued to want to go.  But didn't.  

Until I did.  Finally.  And was thoroughly glad for it.

This week's Ron Burgundy podcast is a big treat -- at least for me.  But I also think it should be for most people, especially is they like history.  She's always a wonderful, lively interview, but far more than that Is one of my handful of favorite historians, Doris Kearns Goodwin -- who Ron describes as his ex-girlfriend...which they actually discuss at length.  She wrote the wonderful book Team of Rivals, which served as the foundation for the Spielberg film, Lincoln.  Won the Pulitzer Prize for No Ordinary Time about FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt.  And the paperback edition of her latest history, Leadership: In Turbulent Times, has recently been released.  The interview is full of wonderful stories, a great deal of charm, and much humor.

I had something else planned for this morning, but because of a bizarrely-slow Internet connection while on the road -- more of that Grant Park Orchestra rehearsal in Chicago -- I'll have to put it off and see if I can address it later.

​In the meantime, being on the road, I figured that an appropriate replacement would be this On the Road piece from Charles Kuralt about Thomas Jefferson.

​And no tanks or flyovers were involved.

Four years ago, I posted this article (with one updated-change today made for dates...).  It seems thoroughly appropriate to repeat it today..​

For those who like to look at the calendar for such things, today is the 75th  anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944.  I thought it would therefore be especially appropriate to post this video.  It's the wonderful theme to the movie, The Longest Day, sung and performed most appropriately by the Cadet Glee Club of West Point, along with military band.
 
It's a particularly well-done video that begins with a minute of General Dwight Eisenhower's message to the troops before the invasion began, and interspersed with some excellent photos and archival film from the day.
 
By the way, the timpani you hear before the song begins is not only recognizable as the beginning of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, but more to the point, it's the Morse Code for “V” for Victory.
 
Also, in case you weren't aware, the main theme for The Longest Day, used throughout the film not just in the end titles, was written by pop-start heartthrob at the time, Paul Anka.

Even with the revelations of the Michael Flynn deposition about the seemingly-blatant obstruction of justice from Trump's lawyers and a member of Congress, and news of various material getting unredacted from the Mueller Report from separate judges, I don't want to talk Trump at the moment.  That news will have to stand poised in its importance.  Instead I want to drop several levels and bring up another disaster.  The HBO mini-series on "Chernobyl."

At first I wasn’t interested, but I was visiting my cousin and his wife who were discussing if they set the recorder to get the next episode.  It was nothing more than that, though I knew they were very interested in most things Russia.  (His wife's name is Olga -- you do the math.)  I kept thinking about it, and when I got home I figured I might as well check it out.  I went to the On Demand setting and watched the first episode -- which was spectacular.  Just a seriously impressive production on every level.  The cast isn't well-known -- the two most recognizable actors are Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgård -- but everyone is impeccable.  And all five episodes are grippingly written and directed by Craig Mazin (best known for highly-successful goofball comedies and his outspoken, public hatred of his college roommate Ted Cruz), and John Renck (who until the past few years had mostly done commercials and music videos) respectively.  Their work here is substantive and rich.  In fact, surprisingly (if not shockingly) subtle for its scope and epic disaster.  And last night I got up to date just finishing episode #2 which was almost as good.  It goes into levels that most of the public hasn't known, including how close things came to wiping out all of Europe.

If you get HBO, it's exceedingly worth checking out these first two episode before #3 airs next Monday, May 20.  For other folk, put it in your Netflix queue for whenever the DVDs are released.
 
This trailer gives a good sense of the high quality of the mini-series and overall production, but effective as it is doesn't do it justice.  A trailer by its nature quickly cuts together pieces of importance.  The show itself is methodical and absorbing.

Here's a good idea of what I mean.  This is the sequence where the nuclear reactor explodes.  When you think "nuclear reactor explodes" and its aftermath, there are probably a lot of images that immediately come to mind.  I'm guessing few to none would be put together like this, or perhaps as impactful.  And it only builds from here.

After last year's event, the  White House Correspondents organization kowtowed to Trump and decided not to get a comedian this year because, well, gee, comedians are so mean and it’s so divisive.
 
Meanwhile, Trump still didn’t show up and ordered those on his administration staff not to show up.
 
Instead they got historian Ron Chernow.
 
And Chernow was…masterful.  Often as funny as a comedian.  Often as scathing.  And overloaded with rich substance based on historical reality.

What was interesting was reading comments about his speech on YouTube from people marveling at this guy they didn’t know – unaware that he was the person wrote the Alexander Hamilton biography that Lin-Manuel Miranda based his musical on.  I haven't read that, but did read his biography of George Washington which was wonderful.

If you didn't see Chernow's speech, here it is.  It's about 25 minutes and eminently watchable.  Often very funny, as I said, and even self-effacing, but mostly about the historic relationship between the press and President, filled with fun and fascinating stories to support his points.  He's blunt and charming, and what's interesting, as well, is seeing the people there who clearly do not like his bluntness.  But he speaks with a gravitas that gives it all so much more more support.

Talk about distortions!  Man, alive.  First of all, there is NO evidence we've been presented that Trump "works late."  For that matter, there isn't really much evidence that he works during the day either, especially given that we've often seen his daily schedule and it's largely empty.  Sleeping late is one thing, if you are, in fact, working late. Further, the issue isn't that Trump sleeps late -- indeed, that doesn't seem to be the case -- but rather that when Trump gets up...he doesn't do anything.  He just seems to lounge around, watching TV and (supposedly) reading the paper, which is more likely skimming to see if his name is written.

Second -- Churchill??  Churchill????!!!  Newt Gingrich is trying to compare Trump to...Churchill?!!!!!  Talk about "pathetic."  Winston Churchill WROTE 30 books on history, many of them acclaimed -- far more than ace historian Gingrich has written, by the way -- and I don't know if Trump has read 30 books. And I'm not being facetious.  Further, many of those books were written by Churchill while in Parliament, and several of his famous and admired books on the history of World War II were written by him while he was Prime Minister the second time, after 1951.

Additionally he was an accomplished artist and turned out many paintings while in office, and published collections of his speeches -- which he himself wrote or delivered extemporaneously.

And he lead England through World War II, and with Franklin Roosevelt helped save the world from Nazism and actually help protect Democracy.

That he took a nap in his pajamas seems a pretty reasonable thing to do, and hardly a substantive point to address, even if you were trying to making meaningless points.  And further, Gingrich is wrong (well, there's a shock) -- Churchill did not "sleep late."  In fact, he started his work day at 8 AM.  That's the reason he took naps, by the way -- because he worked so late, and woke at a normal time, the late afternoon nap was necessary.  In fact, researchers say that taking an afternoon nap is good for one's health.

Meanwhile, Trump watches TV, keeps a short schedule, and plays golf.

Distortions and pathetic, thy name is Newt Gingrich.

And so we come to the last episode of "Bag Man," Rachel Maddow's wonderful seven-part podcast about the known and (until now) unknown history surrounding the investigation and resignation of former Vice President Spiro Agnew.

If you've missed any of the previous episodes, you can click on the links below to catch up --

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5 
Part 6


Episode 7:  You Can't Fire Me -- I Quit
Disgraced Vice President Spiro T. Agnew officially becomes a private citizen and addresses the nation one last time... as a convicted criminal. Agnew continues his attacks on the press and the prosecutors right to the end. But his sudden resignation leaves questions-- unanswered-- that echo 45 years later. Can a President or Vice President actually be criminally indicted while in office? And if not, what sort of pressure can be brought to bear... to force them out?