On Jane Wyman, words, Trump, Biden, game times, Fred Sanford, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and more.
On Jane Wyman, words, Trump, Biden, game times, Fred Sanford, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and more
F or reasons I could explain, I was thinking of Marla Maples the other day — second wife of Donald Trump. And I heard a dog not barking. Unless I’m mistaken, she has been very quiet during these past four years. I haven’t heard anything from her. Have you? Same with the first Mrs. Trump, Ivana.
I thought of Jane Wyman — first wife of Ronald Reagan. (He was Wyman’s third husband. She would have five.) (I’m not making a judgment. Some lives are messy. Many are. I’m just observing these facts.)
She, too, was very quiet during her ex-husband’s presidency (though she was a TV star during this period) (Falcon Crest). In 1980, when asked what she thought about Reagan’s election, she said, “Marvelous.”
Democrats tried to use Wyman against Reagan. There was a bumper sticker, on cars all over the country: Jane Wyman was right. Such a nasty sticker.
Jane Wyman voted for Reagan both in 1980 and in 1984. When he died, she said, “America has lost a great president and a great, kind, and gentle man.” Wyman herself would die three years later, in 2007.
Let me tell you something that Bill Buckley related to me. Once, someone said to Reagan, “Well, you got divorced.” Reagan was indignant. “I didn’t divorce anyone!” he said. “She divorced me!”
That was a distinction — a fact — very important to Reagan.
I did love that man. (The Gipper and WFB both.)
• A statement came out of Pence’s office: “This morning, both Vice President Pence and the Second Lady tested negative for COVID-19.”
I don’t know about you, but I find that designation “Second Lady” ridiculous — also mildly insulting. Sort of like “second banana” or “second best.” If I had my way, America would ditch that weird, dumb title.
• Do you know this word “muh”? People use it to mean “my,” and they mean it derogatorily. A few days ago on Twitter, I saw this: “Republicans still cling to their ‘muh-free-markets’ dogmas.”
That came from a right-winger, but it could also come from a left-winger. To both sides, I want to say: Muh free markets have done a lot more for humanity than yuh government programs.
In the Washington Post, I read an article about the Virginia Military Institute: “At VMI, Black cadets endure lynching threats, Klan memories and Confederacy veneration.” Let me paste a paragraph:
In March, after a Black sophomore objected to incorporating Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s image into the design of their class ring, a fellow student denounced him by name on an anonymous chat app: “F—ing leave already. People like you are the reason this school is divided. Stop focusing so much on your skin color and focus on yourself as a person. Nobody i[n] your recent family line was oppressed by ‘muh slavery.’ ”
About “muh,” I feel more than meh. From what I can tell, its usage is obnoxious.
• Many people are predicting the imminent demise of Joe Biden — including President Trump. I don’t mean the political demise of Biden but rather his physical demise: his death. It’ll be two months, three months, a year — depending on the GOP-er you listen to.
I thought of something a historian once pointed out. Was it Gene Smith, author of When the Cheering Stopped: The Last Years of Woodrow Wilson? Could have been.
On Inauguration Day 1921, the outgoing president and the incoming president rode in a car together. The incoming president, Harding, was the picture of health. The outgoing president, Wilson, was the opposite: gaunt and ghostly. Who could have predicted that Harding would die first?
• Did you see a clip of Trump at an Arizona rally, calling up Martha McSally to speak? McSally is a GOP senator from Arizona, in a tough fight for reelection. To see a clip, go here.
Trump says, “Martha, come up, just fast. Fast. Fast. Come on, quick. You got one minute. One minute, Martha! They don’t want to hear this, Martha. Come on, let’s go. Quick, quick, quick. Come on, let’s go.”
They don’t want to hear this, Martha! Classic. What a guy, what a prez.
• Speaking at that same rally was Nigel Farage — whom Trump afforded more time than he did McSally. A foreigner, meddling in our elections? Farage likes to campaign for like-minded folk around the world. He is part of what he calls a “global movement.”
A globalist!
In 2017, he campaigned for the Afd — the Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany), a literal alt-Right — and then traveled to Alabama, to campaign for Roy Moore, the GOP Senate candidate. He told Alabamians that Moore’s election was “important for the whole global movement across the West that we have built up and we have fought for.”
There you go.
• At his rallies, Trump is stressing Barack Obama’s middle name. Obama is not on the ballot, but Trump evidently finds the middle name useful. “Barack Hussein Obama,” he keeps saying. “Barack Hussein Obama.”
Some of us find this dirty and un-American, but millions swoon to it.
• Jonah Goldberg penned a fine column — typically fine — with the title “It’s a Mistake for the GOP to Shun Big Cities.” He is singing my song. We have a saying in golf: “Never up, never in.” If you don’t get it to the hole, you have no chance of making the putt. If you don’t appeal to people — if you don’t try to persuade them, and show them what you got — you got no chance.
Twice, I interviewed Susana Martinez, the former governor of New Mexico. She is a Reagan Republican, and she went to parts of her state that had barely seen a Republican. She did not use the words “Republican” and “Democrat,” or “conservative” and “liberal.” She just talked about ideas — and saw heads nodding.
A smart and blessed way to go, in my opinion.
• Trump is the tweeter, but Biden occasionally issues one, and he issued the following, on October 23:
64 years ago today, freedom-loving Hungarians revolted against communist rule. Their spirit inspired the Prague Spring, Poland’s Solidarity movement, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. As president, I’ll always stand in defense of democracy and freedom at home and around the world.
I will do my part to hold him to it, if, in fact, he gets in.
• My young colleague Cameron Hilditch had a perceptive post headed “‘Christian’ Nationalism Leads to Extinction.” Let me give you one reaction. About ten years ago, I started seeing a lapel pin, combining the cross with the American flag. I gag at this pin. For one thing, it represents a corruption of religion, in my opinion. But opinions — like mileage — vary.
• I regret the evanescence of newspapers, and maybe local newspapers, in particular. Is this mere conservatism, mere nostalgia? Well, in part: but I think we have lost something — something real and tangible and meaningful — too. Let me recommend a beautiful, wise piece by my friend Andy Smarick, here.
• On Wednesday, KDW — Kevin D. Williamson — had a line that rises to the epigrammatic. He was speaking about our near future, after next week’s election: “Things in America will be what they always are: what we make of them.”
Read the whole thing (as they say), here.
• A little music? A tweeter who tweets under the handle “Super 70s Sports” said, “When you’re discussing the greatest TV theme songs, I’m coming to that party with Fred G. Sanford.”
Yes. There are a hundred great ones — great TV themes — but it would be hard to top “The Streetbeater,” by Quincy Jones, used in the immortal sitcom Sanford and Son.
Listen here.
The man behind “Super 70s Sports” is Ricky Cobb, written up in the Chicago Tribune last year, here.
Hang on, is “The Streetbeater” a song? Well, a song without words, you might say. There are no words to another great TV theme either: the one to The Simpsons, by the astonishing Danny Elfman.
I expect to do a piece on great TV themes. If you want to nominate, please lemme know at jnordlinger@nationalreview.com.
• A little more music? On Twitter, I was “followed” by Alex Webster, bassist of Cannibal Corpse. It took a while, but I have arrived . . .
• Eric Nelson, a publishing exec, tweeted,
I know I’m late to this, because I didn’t watch SEINFELD, and I’m only just finishing VEEP, but I don’t understand why no one told me Julia Louis-Dreyfus is ridiculously gorgeous.
You know, I always thought that was a flaw of Seinfeld: Her character was supposed to be one of the guys, basically, but this was hard to believe, because she was drop-dead.
• Settling in to watch the Michigan football game at 7:30 last Saturday, I thought of what Bo Schembechler said: “Toe meets leather at 1:05. You can put it on television or not, it’s all the same to me. But toe meets leather at 1:05.”
As the good Lord intended.
• Thank you for joining me, my friends. I would like to leave you with two superb fall photos. The first was taken by National Review’s Molly Powell, in New Hampshire. And the second by a friend of mine in Ohio. Have a good weekend!
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