Grim Reader, April 22, 2011: William Donald Schaefer, Grete Waitz and Bhawani Singh
by Michael Schaffer
APRIL 22, 2011 TAGS:
Big cities may not be what they used to be, but big-city politics still provide the sort of stage for larger-than-life personalities that you won’t find in any of those growing exurban counties. For evidence, look no farther than this week’s obits for William Donald Schaefer, the longtime Baltimore mayor who went on to be Maryland’s governor. The lead paragraphs all go straight to his persona: “Colorfully outspoken and combative,” says the Associated Press. “A political showman who captivated voters and infuriated critics,” says the New York Times. Schaefer “dominated Maryland politics,” the Washington Post says, “with a trademark style that was impatient, autocratic and sometimes offensive.
All the obits mention -- and the accompanying photographs depict -- particularly theatrical moments in Schaefer’s career: The time he put on a Victorian bathing suit and hopped into the National Aquarium’s seal pool to apologize for construction delays; the time he posed in an epaulet-adorned naval uniform to wave goodbye to his beloved Baltimore Inner harbor when he moved to the governor’s mansion; the time he responded to a letter from an angry taxpayer by sending a letter of his own, opening with the line: “I’m glad you have recovered from your lobotomy.” Likewise, everyone notes the frustration that ensued when a guy who’d played Baltimore like a piano had to deal with more aggressive critics in the state house -- critics who dubbed him the “governor of Baltimore.”
Grim Reader has a theory about all this theatricality. During the second half of the 20th century -- Schaefer’s dominant years -- theater was, in many ways, all that big city mayors had. The obits’ list of the pol’s accomplishments are mainly lists of magic tricks: Turning the decrepit docks into the Harborplace shopping complex; building a new baseball stadium atop an old rail yard; building what the hometown Baltimore Sun calls “the most fabulous fish tank in the country” in order to woo tourism to a place where industry once drove the economy. Schaefer’s predecessors of the previous half-century didn’t need to play media cheerleader to lead successfully. Thus the quirks that drive the obits were actually professional responsibilities.
At any rate, to get a sense of his oversized role in Baltimore, check out the list of Schaefer stories and columns in the Sun: “Schaefer’s vision changed Baltimore sports landscape;” “Schaefer took the time to listen;” “Schaefer made Baltimore ‘the best.’” These are headlines suggesting a successful pol, but maybe not such a robust city.
**
Proving women can run
Elsewhere in the Obitosphere this week, there are lots of obits for Grete Waitz, winner of nine New York Marathons and “a catalyst in the development of women's distance running,” according to the Chicago Tribune. The Norwegian had been a middle-distance runner when her husband goaded her into joining him in the 1978 marathon as a “rabbit,” someone who could set a fast pace early, and then fade. She initially feared she would not finish the race, her first marathon. Instead, according to the Associated Press, she set a world record -- her first of three. At the time, many people thought women were not strong enough to run long distances and stay healthy. The obits all play up her trailblazing role: “Without fanfare … she inspired women at all levels of ability to become runners,” says the Guardian.
Another oldest man
Grim Reader has now been writing this column long enough to have seen the deaths of more than one World’s Oldest Man. The latest to go is Walter Breuning, 114, of Montana. In keeping with oldest-person obit convention, the coverage includes reporting on his secrets to longevity (“embrace change, eat two meals a day, work as long as you can, help others and accept death,” says the New York Daily News) and an example of how much the world had changed since the dearly departed was young (“a bath for young Walter would require his mother to fetch water from the well outside and heat it on the coal-burning stove,” reports the Associated Press), not to mention the mildly patronizing statement from a politician (“he was wise even beyond his years,” Montana’s governor says, according to Reuters). Usually, there’s not a great deal about the geezer’s life, but this time, the Associated Press has a really stellar piece that goes into his career on the railroad, his marriage to a former telegraph operator, and various pieces of 20th-century cultural history he ambled through. Fun fact: Breuning bought the land for his house for $15.
The right’s godfather
Longtime National Review publisher William Rusher was “a godfather of the right,” says the Los Angeles Times. As with many obits for movement conservatives, the coverage locates Rusher’s place in the tale of how a fringe movement became a mainstream American persuasion. “If the paramount development in American politics over the last third of the 20th century was the shift of the national centre of gravity to the right, few did more to bring about that movement, and no one chronicled its history more clearly, than William Rusher,” says the Guardian. Rusher’s role wasn’t as prominent as his colleague William F. Buckley’s -- and, at least as far as the obit coverage goes, it didn’t include morally embarrassing embraces of racism -- but was classic all the same: Once a liberal Republican, Rusher moved right due to his concern about communism; he refused to endorse Nixon’s re-election due to the 37th president’s visit to China. Grim Reader was fascinated by the friend who tells the Times that Rusher believed communism would return.
Elsewhere in politics: The obits for former Congressman Harold Volkmer all reinforce the notion that, in congressional politics, every backbencher gets defined by one thing. Volkmer, in nearly every piece of coverage, is remembered as a “voice against gun-control measures,” in the Washington Post’s words. A nice Fox News piece does note that Volkmer, a Democrat, also enjoy an unrelated period in the limelight as a partisan warrior following the GOP’s 1994 electoral victory. “Historians assert that President Clinton was Newt Gingrich's foil,” it says. “But when it came to legislative combat on the House floor in 1995, Gingrich's foil was Harold Volkmer.” It didn’t last: Volkmer was unseated in 1996. ... And several notches to the north and to the left, there’s some interesting coverage for Canadian pol Allan Blakeney, who as a cabinet member in Saskatchewan “helped start North America’s first tax-financed universal health care system in 1962,” according to the New York Times. Nine of ten doctors in the province went on strike to protest, but within five years, every Canadian had health care.
The body as Stradivarius
In arts this week, the New York Times catches the death of Arthur Lessac, the unconventional voice coach to scores of actors. “Mr. Lessac believed one must train the entire body, itself an instrument, a resonant Stradivarius waiting to lift its voice in song,” the obit says. … And Roger Nichols was “the recording engineer who gave the music of Steely Dan the lustrous sheen that became the popular group's sonic signature,” says the Los Angeles Times. A former nuclear engineer, he went into the music biz and became an “engineer-as-artist, in the tradition of Phil Spector's engineer Larry Levine and Jerry Wexler's Tom Dowd at Atlantic Records in the 1960s.” ...
The New York Times also does a nice obit for someone whose art, such as it was, reached far more people than either of the above: Joseph Selame, the corporate logo designer behind brands like CVS and Kodak. Among his innovations: “Total brand integration,” wherein designers oversaw everything from naming to “visual character,” in the classic example turning New England’s Consumer Value Stores into the ever-present CVS. In another case, when three New York banks merged, Selame branded the result Apple Bank, with a friendly logo to match -- one of the first steps towards banks ditching their fusty old image in favor of a consumer-friendly one.
Palatial splendor
From abroad, the Telegraph brings a fun obit for Bhawani Singh, the last Maharaja of Jaipur and an legendary Indian dandy. Raised in palatial splendor -- his mother slept in an ivory bed with a 14-skin leopard rug -- Singh saw the family’s title and chunks of its wealth expropriated. But he lived to get rich again, as several of the palaces became five-star hotels. He was pals with Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger. … And the same outlet had an obit for Hans Tiedge, a West German agent who defected east in 1985. The piece has great detail on the Cold War spy game, but disappointingly little on what life was like for a defector to the side that lost. (Upon German reunification, Tiedge relocated to Moscow.)
Restrepo’s director
Finally, just ahead of Grim Reader’s deadline came the news that Tim Hetherington, the photographer-turned-director behind the film Restrepo, was killed while photographing fighting in Libya. Most outlets didn’t have formal obits as of yesterday, but the Guardian calls him the defining visual journalist of the post-9/11 age of warfare. Hetherington “defined a generation of reportage.... His eye and ability for capturing on film some of the most disturbing events of the past decade was as relentless as it was unsurpassed. With a great sense of self-deprecation and humanity, Hetherington was driven repeatedly to explore the ragged, violent margins of society to bring back portraits of people profoundly affected by conflict.”
Michael Schaffer’s Grim Reader appears Friday in Obit. He is the author of One Nation Under Dog, about culture and the American pet industry.
All the obits mention -- and the accompanying photographs depict -- particularly theatrical moments in Schaefer’s career: The time he put on a Victorian bathing suit and hopped into the National Aquarium’s seal pool to apologize for construction delays; the time he posed in an epaulet-adorned naval uniform to wave goodbye to his beloved Baltimore Inner harbor when he moved to the governor’s mansion; the time he responded to a letter from an angry taxpayer by sending a letter of his own, opening with the line: “I’m glad you have recovered from your lobotomy.” Likewise, everyone notes the frustration that ensued when a guy who’d played Baltimore like a piano had to deal with more aggressive critics in the state house -- critics who dubbed him the “governor of Baltimore.”Grim Reader has a theory about all this theatricality. During the second half of the 20th century -- Schaefer’s dominant years -- theater was, in many ways, all that big city mayors had. The obits’ list of the pol’s accomplishments are mainly lists of magic tricks: Turning the decrepit docks into the Harborplace shopping complex; building a new baseball stadium atop an old rail yard; building what the hometown Baltimore Sun calls “the most fabulous fish tank in the country” in order to woo tourism to a place where industry once drove the economy. Schaefer’s predecessors of the previous half-century didn’t need to play media cheerleader to lead successfully. Thus the quirks that drive the obits were actually professional responsibilities.
At any rate, to get a sense of his oversized role in Baltimore, check out the list of Schaefer stories and columns in the Sun: “Schaefer’s vision changed Baltimore sports landscape;” “Schaefer took the time to listen;” “Schaefer made Baltimore ‘the best.’” These are headlines suggesting a successful pol, but maybe not such a robust city.
**
Proving women can run
Elsewhere in the Obitosphere this week, there are lots of obits for Grete Waitz, winner of nine New York Marathons and “a catalyst in the development of women's distance running,” according to the Chicago Tribune. The Norwegian had been a middle-distance runner when her husband goaded her into joining him in the 1978 marathon as a “rabbit,” someone who could set a fast pace early, and then fade. She initially feared she would not finish the race, her first marathon. Instead, according to the Associated Press, she set a world record -- her first of three. At the time, many people thought women were not strong enough to run long distances and stay healthy. The obits all play up her trailblazing role: “Without fanfare … she inspired women at all levels of ability to become runners,” says the Guardian.
Another oldest man Grim Reader has now been writing this column long enough to have seen the deaths of more than one World’s Oldest Man. The latest to go is Walter Breuning, 114, of Montana. In keeping with oldest-person obit convention, the coverage includes reporting on his secrets to longevity (“embrace change, eat two meals a day, work as long as you can, help others and accept death,” says the New York Daily News) and an example of how much the world had changed since the dearly departed was young (“a bath for young Walter would require his mother to fetch water from the well outside and heat it on the coal-burning stove,” reports the Associated Press), not to mention the mildly patronizing statement from a politician (“he was wise even beyond his years,” Montana’s governor says, according to Reuters). Usually, there’s not a great deal about the geezer’s life, but this time, the Associated Press has a really stellar piece that goes into his career on the railroad, his marriage to a former telegraph operator, and various pieces of 20th-century cultural history he ambled through. Fun fact: Breuning bought the land for his house for $15.
The right’s godfather
Longtime National Review publisher William Rusher was “a godfather of the right,” says the Los Angeles Times. As with many obits for movement conservatives, the coverage locates Rusher’s place in the tale of how a fringe movement became a mainstream American persuasion. “If the paramount development in American politics over the last third of the 20th century was the shift of the national centre of gravity to the right, few did more to bring about that movement, and no one chronicled its history more clearly, than William Rusher,” says the Guardian. Rusher’s role wasn’t as prominent as his colleague William F. Buckley’s -- and, at least as far as the obit coverage goes, it didn’t include morally embarrassing embraces of racism -- but was classic all the same: Once a liberal Republican, Rusher moved right due to his concern about communism; he refused to endorse Nixon’s re-election due to the 37th president’s visit to China. Grim Reader was fascinated by the friend who tells the Times that Rusher believed communism would return.
Elsewhere in politics: The obits for former Congressman Harold Volkmer all reinforce the notion that, in congressional politics, every backbencher gets defined by one thing. Volkmer, in nearly every piece of coverage, is remembered as a “voice against gun-control measures,” in the Washington Post’s words. A nice Fox News piece does note that Volkmer, a Democrat, also enjoy an unrelated period in the limelight as a partisan warrior following the GOP’s 1994 electoral victory. “Historians assert that President Clinton was Newt Gingrich's foil,” it says. “But when it came to legislative combat on the House floor in 1995, Gingrich's foil was Harold Volkmer.” It didn’t last: Volkmer was unseated in 1996. ... And several notches to the north and to the left, there’s some interesting coverage for Canadian pol Allan Blakeney, who as a cabinet member in Saskatchewan “helped start North America’s first tax-financed universal health care system in 1962,” according to the New York Times. Nine of ten doctors in the province went on strike to protest, but within five years, every Canadian had health care.
The body as Stradivarius
In arts this week, the New York Times catches the death of Arthur Lessac, the unconventional voice coach to scores of actors. “Mr. Lessac believed one must train the entire body, itself an instrument, a resonant Stradivarius waiting to lift its voice in song,” the obit says. … And Roger Nichols was “the recording engineer who gave the music of Steely Dan the lustrous sheen that became the popular group's sonic signature,” says the Los Angeles Times. A former nuclear engineer, he went into the music biz and became an “engineer-as-artist, in the tradition of Phil Spector's engineer Larry Levine and Jerry Wexler's Tom Dowd at Atlantic Records in the 1960s.” ...
The New York Times also does a nice obit for someone whose art, such as it was, reached far more people than either of the above: Joseph Selame, the corporate logo designer behind brands like CVS and Kodak. Among his innovations: “Total brand integration,” wherein designers oversaw everything from naming to “visual character,” in the classic example turning New England’s Consumer Value Stores into the ever-present CVS. In another case, when three New York banks merged, Selame branded the result Apple Bank, with a friendly logo to match -- one of the first steps towards banks ditching their fusty old image in favor of a consumer-friendly one.
Palatial splendorFrom abroad, the Telegraph brings a fun obit for Bhawani Singh, the last Maharaja of Jaipur and an legendary Indian dandy. Raised in palatial splendor -- his mother slept in an ivory bed with a 14-skin leopard rug -- Singh saw the family’s title and chunks of its wealth expropriated. But he lived to get rich again, as several of the palaces became five-star hotels. He was pals with Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger. … And the same outlet had an obit for Hans Tiedge, a West German agent who defected east in 1985. The piece has great detail on the Cold War spy game, but disappointingly little on what life was like for a defector to the side that lost. (Upon German reunification, Tiedge relocated to Moscow.)
Restrepo’s director
Finally, just ahead of Grim Reader’s deadline came the news that Tim Hetherington, the photographer-turned-director behind the film Restrepo, was killed while photographing fighting in Libya. Most outlets didn’t have formal obits as of yesterday, but the Guardian calls him the defining visual journalist of the post-9/11 age of warfare. Hetherington “defined a generation of reportage.... His eye and ability for capturing on film some of the most disturbing events of the past decade was as relentless as it was unsurpassed. With a great sense of self-deprecation and humanity, Hetherington was driven repeatedly to explore the ragged, violent margins of society to bring back portraits of people profoundly affected by conflict.”
Michael Schaffer’s Grim Reader appears Friday in Obit. He is the author of One Nation Under Dog, about culture and the American pet industry.
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