Impromptus

The greatness of Britain, &c.

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The Coronation Procession travels along The Mall following the coronation ceremony of King Charles III and Queen Camilla in central London, May 6, 2023. (Gareth Fuller / Pool via Reuters)
On the coronation; Disney vs. DeSantis; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; Jerry Springer (R.I.P.); and more

On Saturday, many Americans rose very early in the morning to see King Charles coronated in London. I was still abed — but I had a memory of 1981. July 29, in particular. I was between my junior and senior years of high school. And I got up very early to see the wedding of this new king and Lady Diana. That was generous of me, in that she was marrying another man. Every male my age was in love with Diana, I can tell you.

Since the 1720s, the principal coronation anthem has been Zadok the Priest, by Handel — George Frideric Handel, who was born Georg Friedrich Händel and became an honorary Englishman. (He was also a master of Italian music — Italian opera, especially.) Zadok is a great anthem. See it played and sung here, for Charles on Saturday.

Many of us, wherever we live, are Anglophiles, and for good reason: Britain is a mother of liberty, and liberty under the law: ordered liberty. She (Britain) gave birth to the United States. Without her, no us. Great Britain means a lot to a lot of people in the world — whether they know it or not — and long may she wave.

• Want to see Charles, then 21, with the then U.S. president?

• A news story begins this way:

Brazilian police are investigating whether former president Jair Bolsonaro tried to deceive American authorities into believing, incorrectly, that he had been vaccinated against the coronavirus so he could enter the United States . . .

Sure. Bolsonaro is a full-blown populist, which is why he is adored on the American right today. Early in the pandemic, he said, “The Brazilian needs to be studied. He doesn’t catch anything. You see a guy jumping into sewage, diving in, right? Nothing happens to him.”

Right.

Later on, Bolsonaro said, “I am sorry about the deaths” — meaning the deaths from COVID. But “we are all going to die someday.” And “we have to stop being a country of maricas” (i.e., “faggots”).

This is the kind of thing that gets hearts pumping at CPAC, Turning Point, etc. But let me remind my fellow conservatives: There is a difference between populist falderal and conservatism. Beware.

• Another issue: “How DeSantis accidentally handed Disney a potent weapon against him.” (Article here.) How did Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, do this? How did he hand the Walt Disney Company a potent weapon against him? Because he admits in his new book, over and over, that he moved against Disney because the company had criticized him.

Disney has filed suit against DeSantis. Here is an excerpt from the company’s complaint. Some will chafe at it. Some will go, “Hmmm.” Some will say, “Right on.” Anyway, here it is:

Much of American life is tribal — that is certainly true of our politics. I have a question: If a government led by Democrats waged a vendetta against a private enterprise that had criticized it, would Republicans support the enterprise fervently? Would Democrats defend the government? Of course, right? The game is red jerseys versus blue jerseys, always. Principle is on the sidelines.

You might ask yourself: If Disney executives had praised Governor DeSantis to the skies — or simply remained silent about his administration — would any of this be happening? That gives the game away, doesn’t it?

DeSantis mused about building a prison next to Disney. Anyone who thinks that the governor’s actions have been anything but retaliatory is wearing the political equivalent of beer goggles.

Gerald Ford liked to quote an old saying: “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” We may like it when a government punishes people we hate. But that government, in other hands . . .

The conservatives I learned from, way back, always stressed process: democratic procedure; the rule of law. Illiberals on left and right wanted brute power. Beware government that is mercurial, partial, and personal. The old conservatives were right.

There are many conservatives, in politics and the media, who are disquieted about what DeSantis has done, vis-à-vis Disney. They were disquieted, too, when the governor forbade private enterprise to require vaccination during a pandemic. There is often a price to pay for deviating from whatever the Republican line of the day is. But I hope more will pipe up.

Freedoms exist for our use!

• Let’s turn to the world of sports. “What is a sweeper? A look at the pitch taking over MLB.” Geez. A pitch is having “a moment.” What’ll be next? The slider?

• In baseball, there is a stat for everything — and everything for a stat:

A reader shared with me this wonderful clip:

• From the golf world, a story begins,

Just hours after Tony Finau captured the Mexico Open title on Sunday, the PGA Tour posted a video of Finau carrying two golf bags while out on Vidanta’s lighted par-3 course with sons Jraice and Sage.

The video, says the story,

went viral as Finau had just finished 72 holes over four days and was set to play again at this week’s $20 million Wells Fargo Championship. But as Finau has expressed countless times in the past, he’s a “part-time golfer, full-time father.”

One more thing: Tony Finau is not the kind simply to let his kids win. “Man, I cleaned house last week,” he said. Speaking of one of his sons in particular, he said, “I beat up on my boy, fortunately, all week on the par-3 and then was able to take the trophy at the Mexico Open.” So, “it was a good all-around week in golf for me.”

I love it. (So do Finau’s children, I have no doubt.)

• Love this, too — file it under “Fun with Vegetables”:

• Maybe a little language? Flight attendants, when speaking to passengers in exit-row seats, say they need to have a “verbal response.” A nod, for example, won’t do. They need to hear the word “yes.”

“Verbal” does not mean “oral,” only. But people tend to use it as a synonym for “oral.” The verbal includes writing as well.

Reminds me of “diction.” A lot of people take “diction” to mean “elocution,” or “enunciation.” It does. But it also means “word choice” — the use one makes of our vocabulary.

I could go on . . .

• Here is a headline: “Willie Nelson, Missy Elliott and George Michael among Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees.” (Article here.) As a rule, I think museums, halls of fame, and other such institutions should “stay in their lane.” These institutions can be spread too thin. A lot of non-rockers are being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Is the hall due for a name-change? Or does everyone assume: “This is popular music, in its multifarious forms”?

• I knew Jerry Springer as a pioneer in tabloid television. And a onetime mayor of Cincinnati. There was also a musical written about him, called “Jerry Springer: The Opera” (2003). But I was amazed to read more about him, in this New York Times obit, by Neil Genzlinger.

His family relocated to the United States when he was 5. In a commencement speech at Northwestern in 2008, Mr. Springer evoked the moment of arrival.

“In silence, all the ship’s passengers gathered on the top deck of this grand ocean liner as we passed by the Statue of Liberty,” he said. “My mom told me in later years (I was 5 at the time) that while we were shivering in the cold, I had asked her: ‘What are we looking at? What does the statue mean?’ In German she replied, ‘Ein tag, alles!’ (One day, everything!).”

The obit ends,

In 2008, some students objected when Mr. Springer was invited to give the commencement address at Northwestern.

“To the students who invited me — thank you,” he said. “I am honored. To the students who object to my presence — well, you’ve got a point. I, too, would’ve chosen someone else.”

“I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a comfortable measure of success in my various careers,” he added, “but let’s be honest, I’ve been virtually everything you can’t respect: a lawyer, a mayor, a major-market news anchor and a talk-show host. Pray for me. If I get to heaven, we’re all going.”

At this late date — a posthumous one — I find myself (somewhat) endeared.

• I have always been endeared to Menahem Pressler, the pianist. He has died at 99. In the Times, Robert D. McFadden wrote,

At 14, Mr. Pressler hid on Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, as Nazi thugs smashed his father’s shop. When World War II began in Europe, his Jewish family landed in Haifa, in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. Traumatized, he nearly perished at 16, but he found the will to live in a haunting Beethoven sonata.

Some more about that:

Tormented by loss and dislocation and unable to eat, he grew thin and weak. One day, playing Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 31, he fainted. But it was a turning point.

“It has idealism,” he said of the sonata. “It has hedonism, it has regret, it has something that builds like a fugue. And at the very end, something that is very rare in Beethoven’s last sonatas — it is triumphant. It says, ‘Yes, my life is worth living.’”

I’m so glad Menahem Pressler lived. So long, everybody, and have a good week.

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