Back to the Future: Sinclair Lewis & Robert Penn Warren Were Dead On About Donald Trump . . . Just Ask Huey Long (#1,013)

Redgrave, Witty and Lockwood in Alfred             Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938)

This coming Thursday I will be concluding a  6-week film class at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, entitled Knights and Dames: Cinematic Royalty.  What links the six films together is that each is produced, directed, or written by, as well as  starring titled Brits such as Barons Laurence Olivier, Richard Attenborough and Bernard Miles; Knights Sir John Mills, Sir Peter Ustinov, Sir David Lean and Sir Michael Redgrave and Dames Celia Johnson, Judy Dench, Angela Lansbury and Maggie Smith. The last of these films the one I shall be screening this Thursday, is a classic 1938 mystery starring Sir Michael Redgrave, Dame Mae Witty and Margaret Lockwood (CBE) and directed by no less than Sir Alfred Hitchcock. The film bears - in light of this Tuesday’s national election and where your political sentiments may reside – a title which is either hopeful or deeply eerie: The Lady Vanishes.      

Thank G-d for my film courses . . . as well as the literally dozens of hours I spend each week vetting medical research protocols and consent documents; performing rabbinic functions; and researching and writing at least one 1,000+ word blog article. Otherwise, I would be even more involved in the various political races than I already am. Like you, I receive tons and tons of email requests every hour on the hour from candidates begging me to save democracy by donating as much as I can . . . which I do. I pray that there will be a significant drop-off in the texts and emails after this Tuesday. Like many, I rise and fall with each new poll - although after after spending more than a half century in and around the political world, I should know better; polls are mere snapshots, not chronicles. I too cringe at every gaff, distortion, verbal attack or sign of incipient dementia coming from IT, while glorying at V.P. Harris’ ability to charm, inform and uplift a crowd. Likewise, I wonder how anyone with half a brain (or a passionate love for America, warts and all) could ever vote for a twice-impeached, misogynistic, convicted felon whose psychopathology would have caused Sigmund Freud to change professions.    

When it came to thinking about what my final pre-Election Day essay should be, I began feeling a brain cramp of agonizing proportions welling up and soon to be enveloping me.  Call it PEDM (“Pre-Election Day Malaise”) I knew that,  were I to manage to put all I’m thinking, feeling, fearing and fretting about into a single piece, it could easily require 50,000 words, as well as a minimum of a case-and-a-half of Martini & Rossi Sweet Vermouth. Believe me: writing while imbibing can only lead to incomprehensible gibberish.  And so, after much thought, I’ve decided to republish an essay from June, 2020 . . . during the last presidential election.  Any prescience it may show is purely unintentional; I do not own a crystal ball, just a smattering of knowedge.

And so, without further ado, let’s go "forward into the past” and meet up with a cast of characters known to most political cognoscenti.  The original title was Sinclair Lewis & Robert Penn Warren Were Dead On About Donald Trump . . . Just Ask Huey Long:   

Shortly after his September 10, 1935 assassination at the hands of Dr. Carl Weiss, Louisiana Governor/Senator Huey Long’s final work (and second biography), My First Days in the White House was published by The Telegraph Press. Unlike his best-selling autobiography Every Man a King, My First Days in the White House is more of a novella (barely 100 pages) in which “The Kingfish” (as he was commonly known) outlines both his presidential platform and precisely who he would name to his Cabinet. In many regards, Long comes off as a Socialist. The main thrust of his presidency would be his “Share the Wealth” program, which called for higher taxes on the wealthy (which would provide every American with a guaranteed annual income of $5,000.00, universal healthcare, and increased spending on public works, education and old-age pensions. His favorite slogan was “Everyman a King!”

Long was the kind of politician Americans either loved or hated. The poor and downtrodden loved him for his populist progressivism; the middle-class and wealthy abhorred him for the autocratic means by which he sought to get what he wanted. In his 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, novelist Sinclair Lewis used Long as the model for Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a charismatic and power-hungry politician who wins the  1936 presidential election on a populist platform, promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness, and provide each citizen $5,000 a year.  Once elected, he rapidly outlaws dissent, incarcerates political enemies in concentration camps, and trains and arms a paramilitary force called the Minute Men. They terrorize citizens and enforce the policies of Windrip and his "corporatist” regime.

11 years later (1946), Pulitzer-prize winning poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren turned the Kingfish into Willie Stark, the lead character in All the King’s Men. In this novel, Willie, like Huey, is a small-town southern lawyer who, starting out as a man-of-the-people populist, climbs the political ladder, eventually becoming the dictatorial governor of his state, backed by his own military. Like Huey Long, Willie Stark is assassinated by a doctor who in turn is killed on the spot by the governor’s bodyguards. In passing, it should also be noted that the 1953 film A Lion Is in the Streets, adapted from Adria Locke Langley’s 1946 novel, starred James Cagney as the Huey Long-like southern populist politician Hank Martin, was also based on the Kingfish.

To date, there have been more biographies, novels and movies based on Huey Long than any other Louisianan. He captures our attention because of his audacity, the adoration showered upon him by the little guy, his dangerous turn towards autocracy and the fact that he came the closest to being America’s first dictator. Sinclair Lewis, Robert Penn Warren and Adria Locke Langley all understood just how dangerous the man and his movement was . . . and how much divisiveness some politicians can foist upon the nation.

In many regards, Donald J. Trump shares both character strengths and flaws with the Kingfish . . . and his literary doppelgängers. Both are self-centered egotists whose personal insecurity makes them more fearful of losing than hopeful of winning. Both share a type of charisma which is alluring to many, and repellant to many more. Unlike Donald Trump, Huey Long - and Willie Stark and Hank Martin - are well disciplined and, for the most part, manage to stay on message most of the time.

Not so ‘45.

This point was forcefully made in a recent interview in which Fox entertainer - and Trump favorite - Sean Hannity threw a nerf ball question 45’s way. Here’s the transcript of both question and answer:

Hannity: If you hear in 131 days from now at some point in the night or early morning, ‘We can now project Donald J. Trump has been reelected the 45th President of the United States’ - let’s talk. What’s at stake in this election as you compare and contrast, and what are your top priority items for a second term?

Trump: Well, one of the things that will be equally great: you know, the word experience is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience. I’ve always said that. But the word experience is a very important word. It’s a very important meaning. I never did this before. I never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington I think 17 times, all of a sudden, I’m President of the United States, you know the story. I’m riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our First Lady and I say, ‘This is great.’ But I don’t know very many people in Washington, it wasn’t my thing. I was from Manhattan, from New York. Now I know everybody. And I have great people in my administration. You make some mistakes, like you know an idiot like Bolton, all he wanted to do is drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to kill people.

We can see that when asked what his top priorities items were for a second term, Trump did not articulate a single item. Instead, he offered a stream-of-consciousness narrative about the importance of the word “experience,” explained how he hadn’t spent much time in Washington prior to becoming president, and derided John Bolton (his former National Security Advisor, who had just published an embarrassing book (The Room Where it Happened) about his experiences in the Trump administration) as an “idiot.”

Compare this to Huey Long, who even before he announced his candidacy for the 1936 Democratic presidential nomination, published a novella in which he clearly laid out what his priorities would be, what direction he wished to lead the nation, how he would deal with the rest of the world, and who his advisers would be. Audaciously (and perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek) Long named General Smedley Butler Secretary of War, former President Franklin D. Roosevelt Secretary of the Navy, former President Herbert Hoover Secretary of Commerce, and Isolationist Idaho Senator William Borah Secretary of State.

One wonders who will be the first novelist/satirist or screenwriter to turn Donald Trump into a fictional character.  That character definitely will not be a poor southern good-ole-boy like Willie Stark, nor a New England everyman like Buzz Windrip.  And unlike Huey Long, he will definitely not be an avowed enemy of Wall Street and the hyper wealthy.  Whoever that fictional character will be, one thing is certain: he will, incongruously, have the devotion of middle America - what Nixon and now Trump refer to as the “Silent Majority,” and Buzz Windrip as “The Forgotten Men.”  It will remain for future historians to figure out just how it was that a lying, larcenous, immoral supposed multi-billionaire could earn the undying allegiance of the undereducated, the hyper-religious and the believers in conspiracy. . . 

(It should be noted that there is a recently released (well, sort of “released”) biopic about IT’s early pre-political days called “The Apprentice,” starring Sebastian Stan as IT, Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, and Mark Rendell as Roger Stone.  Even more fascinating than the movie (which currently has a 7.2 rating on IMDB and 82% on Rotten Tomatoes) is the backstory of the near impossibility of getting the film released due to the fear that the film’s eponymous pitchman would do what he does with such gay abandon: sue, sue, sue).

Lastly, a brief clip from Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, where his character, Charles Foster Kane’s staff is waiting for election results: 

And so here we are, back in the present and waiting for the future.

See you next week.  I wonder if we will be any closer to knowing who “won” the election . . . 

Copyright©2020, 2024, Kurt F. Stone

"Democracy Dies in Darkness" (#1,012)

    Edward Gray, 1st Viscount of Fallodon (1862-1933)

Back in 1897, Adolph S. Ochs, the owner of The New York Times, created the famous slogan “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” which still appears on the daily print edition’s masthead. (In recognizing that “The Times, they are a-changing’” the slogan on their digital edition has been changed to “All the News That’s Fit to Click”). In 1897, the then 39-year old Ochs (1858-1935) wrote that the paper’s front-page slogan would serve as a declaration that it was his intention that The Times’ would forever more report the news impartially. (When Ochs purchased his first newspaper, the Chattanooga Times, at age 20, he told the folks of his hometown that his paper would “. . . give the news impartially, without fear or favor.” Eventually nicknamed “The Gray Lady,” Ochs’ the New York Times - which is, in 2024 - owned and published by AG Sulzberger, the Great-Great-Great Grandson of Adolph Ochs, has long been globally accept as “America’s Paper of Record” . . . to almost everyone except, It who considers it to be nothing more than “a failing rag of a paper. . . . fake news.”  Sorry, It, but you are wrong, wrong, wrong.  The NYT still publishes “without fear of favor.”

A brief tour through American newspapers will find a ton of slogans . . . some heartfelt, others absurd.  Here’s a handful:

• The Wall Street Journal: “The daily diary of the American dream.”

• The Scripps Company: “Give light and the people will find their own way.”

• The New York Sun: “It shines for All.”

• The Hartford Courant: “Older than the nation.”

• USA Today: The Nation’s Newspaper.”

• Long Island’s Newsday: “Truth, Justice and the Comics” (a nod to “Superman”).

• Detroit Free Press: “On Guard Since 1831.”

• The Atlanta Journal Constitution: “Covers Dixie Like the Dew.”

• Aspen Daily News: “If you don’t want it printed, don’t let it happen.”

• The Washington Post: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

This last slogan - that of The Washington Post - is unique.  How so?  Well, to begin with, the Post, which had been founded in 1877 by Stilson Hutchins (1838-1912) - a Southern sympathizer and an outspoken racist against African Americans, Asian Americans and immigrants - had never carried a slogan until February of 2017, a month after IT  began his first (and, some of us pray his only) term as POTUS. In other words, it took Jeff Bezos, the owner and publisher of The Post (who had purchased it for $250 million from the Graham family), less than 30 days to adopt a slogan that seemed to be sending a loud warning to the 45th POTUS; to wit, that they were on to him, to his lies, mistruths and total unfitness for leading a Representative Democracy.  At first, it seemed as if Bezos (1964- ), the founder, president and CEO of Amazon, and one of the world’s richest people (c. $205.6 billion as of 2024) would a watchful challenger; a beacon of light in what promised to be an ever-darkening world. 

One of Bezos’ first steps was to beef up the paper’s column - “The Fact Checker” - described as a "truth squad.” In the four years of IT’s presidency, the squad catalogued and published 30,573 lies - an average of more than 50 per day, 365 days a year. 

But something must have happened, because just the other day, Jeff Bezos exercised one of his inalienable rights as publisher, by turning out the very lights by which Democracy survives: he refused to endorse either IT or V.P. Kamala Harris for President.  Writing in The Conversation (a highly recommended online journal)  Denis Muller  said that Bezos’ decision not to endorse either of the two “. . . disgraces journalism, disgraces the papers’ own heritage and represents an abandonment of civic responsibility at a moment when the United States faces its most consequential presidential election since the Civil War.”  Whatever in the world led Jeff Bezos to such a craven decision?  My guess is a mixture of cash and cowardice.  In a joint statement, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, called the decision “surprising and disappointing;” 2 columnists, Robert Kagan and Michele Norris, resigned in protest.  And thousands of subscribers (myself included) cancelled their subscriptions.

But it wasn’t only the Washington Post that withheld an endorsement . . . thereby losing longtime editorial writers and subscribers.  Two days before the Post’s Bezos decided that his paper would remain neutral, the Los Angeles Times which, like the Post, is owned by Dr. Soon Shiong, M.D., a multi-billionaire without a nanoparticle’s worth of journalistic experience,   let it be known that likewise his paper would not be endorsing a candidate in 2024. According to Dr. Shiong’s daughter Nika said, in a statement to The New York Times that the reason for the non-endorsement was V.P. Harris’ continued support for Israel: “Our family made the joint decision not to endorse a Presidential candidate. This was the first and only time I have been involved in the process,” Ms. Soon-Shiong, who has no formal role at the paper, said in her statement. “As a citizen of a country openly financing genocide, and as a family that experienced South African Apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children.” 

When asked to respond to his daughter’s statement, Dr. Shiong merely said “Nika speaks in her own personal capacity regarding her opinion . . . She does not have any role at the LA Times, nor does she participate in any decision or discussion with the editorial board.” He further added that his decision not to offer readers a recommendation would be “less divisive in a tumultuous election year” . . .that he "feared that picking one candidate would only exacerbate the already deep divisions in the country.”  

In other words, there no way of knowing precisely what led the owner of the Times (like the owner of the Post) to withhold their papers’ endorsements.  And so we are left to figure it out for ourselves.  I for one believe the two billionaire owners are first, participating in anticipatory kowtowing; they are worried sick that if elected in November, IT will make good on his continual promises to extract retribution from those who have been disloyal to him.  Second, people like Bezos and Schiong want something from IT  should he wind up back in the White House.  We already know that back in 2017, Dr. Schiong, a transplant surgeon who made his first billion by inventing the drug Abraxane (which is  one of the medical world’s best-selling, most-used chemo drugs for lung, breast, and pancreatic cancer) contributed a ton of money to a MAGA PAC in the hopes of being named the newly-elected President’s “Health Czar.”  So far as what Bezos might want . . . perhaps we need look no further than his latest business venture: Amazon Prime “One Medical.” 

What Bezos and Schiong have done at the very tale-end of the 2024 campaign is nothing short of what might be called either “an act of journalistic sedition” or the “euthanizing of Democracy.” Compare their death by a thousand cowardly cuts to the pride and patriotism of The New York Times’ ringing 1,925-word endorsement of Kamala Harris precisely one month ago. It begins with words meant to shock and shame:

It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump. He has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest. He has proved himself temperamentally unfit for a role that requires the very qualities — wisdom, honesty, empathy, courage, restraint, humility, discipline — that he most lacks.

and ends with 6 words meant to bring light back to the world:

Kamala Harris is the only choice.

Symbolically, the Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times have gone dark at a time when America needs now, more than ever, to continue being a beacon of light for world.  This is the worst possible time for the light to go out.  It is reminiscent of a remark made 110 years ago by Britain’s longest-serving Foreign Minister,  Edward Gray, 1st Viscount of Fallodon (that’s him in the painting at the beginning of this essay).  Just as England was about to enter the “Great War,” as WW1 was then known, Sir Edward remarked to a friend:

The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

There are but 8 days left until Election Day. May we be the torch-bearers who continue providing light for the world, and with all due apologies, to Sir Edward . . . as well as the likes of Bezos and Schiong . . . prove them to have been terribly, terribly wrong. For as we know, Democracy does die in Darkness.

 Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone