Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 136

Paging Dr. Mencken

The two medical oncologists who advocated for a single-payer healthcare system in the pages of the Journal of Oncology last week got an immediate and shall we say spirited response from their fellow physicians, including one point-by-point rebuttal to everything in their editorial. So, after quoting H.L. Mencken's line that "for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong," the two oncologists, Ray E. Drasga of Chicago and Lawrence Einhorn of Indiana University in Indianapolis, offered their own 8-point rebuttal to the rebuttal.  
I especially like their response to the canard about "empowering" patients with free-market healthcare that gives abundant "choices":

People don't want to be free to choose between two or three or 300 overpriced, defective insurance products. They want to choose their doctors and know they will receive medically necessary healthcare if they become ill or injured. Private insurance with its "skinny" networks means that people have a limited choice of oncologists and may have to change doctors annually.

--Barbara Bedway

Night of the Deer

A few minutes ago seven of them going up and down the hill on street in front of our house...probably looking for food with snow covering ground for many days now.  Here's just one at left.

New 'Mystery Dance': On Tractors

Growing up in rural Ohio, I've seen plenty of tractor pulls in my life, but I've never even heard of a tractor square dance. Modern Farmer tells us "it's real and it's spectacular." Not only do the farmers  square dance on tractors--they do it in third gear. And yes, the act is really a square dance, although one where "four seated couples maneuver vintage tractors into daisy chains and do-si-dos in front of a live audience." Tove Danovich's article shows how they roll:

Tractor square dances always feature eight riders in their performances – four couples to make up the dance’s traditional 'square' — who often dress in exaggerated drag to play the male and female roles. Another important similarity between troupes is the colorful rhyming instructions of their caller, referred to as patter-call.

The  video accompanying the article features the legendary Farmall Promenade troupe from Nemaha, Iowa; the actual tractor dance starts about the 20-minute mark.
A quick Google search shows what I somehow missed: plenty of tractor dancing, Ohio style: "we know it's summer when the tractors come out dancing!"  --Barbara Bedway

Women Artists and Wikipedia-Edit-a-Thon

It's no secret that Wikipedia's crowd-sourced 3.5 million articles are written disproportionately by men. With more than 53 percent of adults who use the Internet regularly going to Wikipedia as a research source, it makes you wonder: What are they finding? Woefully few entries about women artists, for just one example. In 2011 Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikipedia Foundation, told The New York Times   that a British writer I particularly admire, Pat Barker, author of an acclaimed World War I trilogy, had a mere three-paragraph entry. Niko Bellic, the ex-soldier protagonist of Grand Theft Auto, has an entry five times as long. (Gardner has since added substantial background to Barker's page, which does justice to her literary importance.)
But as ARTNews reports, thanks to last week' s massive Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon, 600 volunteers spread across the globe increased Wikipedia entries about female artists by about 100, and enhanced 80 more.  The new pages include a wide range of artists--including  pioneering Australian modernist Dorrit Black, "The Bridge," left. 
Organizations including the National Museum of Women in the Arts have scheduled the next Women in the Arts edit-a-thon for March 30.  “You have someone you know a lot about? It takes ten minutes,” Ximena Gallardo C, a gender and film scholar at LaGuardia Community College, told ARTNews.  “This is the world brain. It’s just starting.”
Posted here are the artists--and other cultural figures and movements--that became a part of Wikipedia as result of the Art+Feminism initiative. -- Barbara Bedway

'Affluenza' Teen Still Avoids Jail Time

You may recall the uproar, a few months back, about a Dallas-area teen who killed four (see left) and badly injured two while driving drunk but got off easy after his defense team claimed he was the victim of "affluenza"--too much money and privilege.   In a follow-up ruling a judge has sent him to a locked-down facility for awhile but still no jail time.  So now: more outrage.  This piece claims we are creating a "society of Biebers."

Marley and Me: For Bob's Birthday

Still the greatest double bill I (or maybe anyone)saw: In 1973, several nights of the Wailers and Springsteen at Max's in NYC.  Sadly, not on video.  So here's incredible video from  that period from TV,  below that tremendous raw number from historic Jamaica 'peace'  concert.

What Critics Said About Woody and Mariel

Was chatting with my wife today and we agreed that back in 1979 we shared the same opinion about Woody Allen's Manhattan, which we probably saw together in New York  (yes we go back that far): Much of the film was very good but it was severely compromised by its depiction of Woody's character, age 42, having an affair with the Mariel Hemingway character, age 17, a senior in high school.  We recalled that we were amazed how few critics at the time expressed any concern or complaint about that.  Of course, the film critic crowd was then overwhelmingly male.  Yes, Woody at the end of the film decides that, hey, maybe she is too young, but still...

Did we recall correctly that very few critics shared our view?  I decided to  find out what leading reviewers did say about the film.  I knew it was a critical favorite.  (Indeed, I was a Woody fan at the time, thanks to Annie Hall and Sleeper.) Andrew Sarris called it the only great American film of the entire decade.   Time magazine put him on the cover, call him a "genius," and their piece (ouch) "Woody Allen Comes of Age."  And so on. 

Sadly, Google let me down, producing only a few reviews from that year.  I'll keep searching.  But for now, here are reviews from two leading male critics (which sustain our memory of how most critics responded) along with critiques from, ahem, two well-known women.   I'm excerpting only comments about the aging man's affair with the Mariel Hemingway character.  Note Canby's reference to Mariel as a "nymphet." More to come, I hope.

Vincent Canby, The New York Times, April 25, 1979:

"Manhattan" is, of course, about love, or, more accurately, about relationships. Among those who are attempting to relate to Isaac Davis are Mary Wilke (Diane Keaton), a journalist who carries on like an Annie Hall who has been analyzed out of her shyness into the shape of an aggressively neurotic woman doomed to make a mess of things, and Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), a beautiful. 17-year-old nymphet with a turned-down mouth and a trust in her 42-year-old lover, Isaac, that is also doomed...

Roger Ebert, January 1, 1979:

The story follows several characters through several affairs. Woody himself is twice-divorced as the movie opens -- most recently from a lesbian who is writing a book that will tell all about their marriage. He is having an affair with a seventeen-year-old girl (Mariel Hemingway). His best friend, Yale (Michael Murphy), is married and is having an affair with a girl he met at a party (Diane Keaton)....

I'm most disturbed by the final scene between Woody and Mariel Hemingway. It's not really thought out; Allen hasn't found the line between the irony the scene needs and the sentiment he wants his character to feel...

And yet this is a very good movie. Woody Allen is ... Woody, sublimely. Diane Keaton gives us a fresh and nicely edged New York intellectual. And Mariel Hemingway deserves some kind of special award for what's in some ways the most difficult role in the film. It wouldn't do, you see, for the love scenes between Woody and Mariel to feel awkward or to hint at cradle-snatching or an unhealthy interest on Woody's part in innocent young girls. But they don't feel that way: Hemingway's character has a certain grave intelligence, a quietly fierce pride, that, strangely enough, suggest that even at seventeen she's the one Woody should be thinking of during Gershwin's "Someone to Watch Over Me."

Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

What man is his forties except Woody Allen could pass off a predilection for teenagers as a quest for true values?" 

Joan Didion, August 16, 1979, The New York Review of Books

The characters in Manhattan and Annie Hall and Interiors are, with one exception, presented as adults, as sentient men and women in the most productive years of their lives, but their concerns and conversations are those of clever children, “class brains,” acting out a yearbook fantasy of adult life. (The one exception is “Tracy,” the Mariel Hemingway part in Manhattan, another kind of adolescent fantasy. Tracy actually is a high-school senior, at the Dalton School, and has perfect skin, perfect wisdom, perfect sex, and no visible family.)

Worth Preserving

Very cool poster just out for this year's JazzFest in New Orleans, with my favorite place, Preservation Hall, at the center of it.  You can order here. -- G.M.

Previewing Vietnam

Just found this documentary on the making of the great film (starring Michael Caine) based on my favorite modern novel, The Quiet American.   Much of interest re: Graham Greene and predicting America's disaster in Vietnam.  Also: opium.  -- G.M.

Angry Debate Over Woody Allen Abuse Continues

UPDATE: Now, in a lengthy People magazine take, Allen son Moses continues to defend Woody and accuse sister and mother of making it all up--and Dylan responds strongly against this and says her brother is now "dead to me." 

Earlier:  So let's review the past 10 days.  We had the Mia and Ronan Farrow tweets during the Golden Globe tribute to Woody Allen.  Then a widely-reported defense from Allen film biographer Robert Weide at The Daily Beast.   Followed by bombshell first-person account by Dylan Farrow at the NYT.  Then some prominent names in the media urging folks to review the Weide piece to maybe counter Dylan Farrow.  And now, at Slate, Jessica Winter wonders by those media folks are linking to Weide which his piece is so one-sided and full of holes.   PLUS:  Margaret Sullivan, NYT public editor reveals that Woody's people have asked if he can respond in print (they said okay)  and may do so.  To be continued.  -- G.M.