Grim Reader, July 22, 2011: Juan Maria Bordaberry, Magnus Malan and Gordon Lorenz
by Michael Schaffer
JULY 21, 2011 TAGS:
Greetings, Obit readers! Here’s the rundown of THIS WEEK IN DEATH: A dictator of Uruguay, estranged aides to dictator of Cuba and Guatemala, and a henchman for a dictatorship in South Africa. Plus: Media mogul Leo Kirch, old-time Hollywood star Googie Withers, and reclusive art collector Stanley Seeger. Grim Reader also happens upon a songwriter who didn’t want his name attached to classic 1960s hits he wrote for the likes of the Rolling Stones, and another songwriter whose obituarists seem to think he shouldn’t have wanted his name attached to his treacly musical ode to the Queen of England. Let’s turn to the obits:
A DICTATOR: Uruguay’s
“will be forever associated with the slow death of a democracy at the hands of those entrusted with its care,” says the Guardian. Bordaberry was an elected president when he signed off on what the Associated Press calls a “soft coup” that kept him in power but gave the military free reign to attack real and imagined leftist subversives. “Over the next three years Bordaberry ruled by decree, ratcheting up his anti-democratic rhetoric to appease his military masters,” says the Telegraph, but the military ousted him anyway. The Guardian’s take is quite different: “The armed forces ultimately balked at his fascist ideas, replacing him with pliant yes-men.” He retired to obscurity until a couple of years ago when he was prosecuted for murders that took place under his command. Ironically, military brass and left-wing rebels were covered by an amnesty.
THE LADY WHO VANISHED: Googie Withers is described by the Associated Press as a “Hollywood golden age staple.” Biggest role: In Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes. Her brief bio is rollicking: Born in Karachi, in then British India, she got her nickname from an Indian nanny; she died in Australia, where she’d lived for decades with her Aussie husband.
CASINO KINGPIN, SANS MOB TIES: When does a Los Angeles Times obit description of a “staid personality” count as a compliment? When you run a business previously known for its over-the-top mobsters. J. Terrence Lanni’s “buttoned-up demeanor amidst a sea of flamboyant gambling personalities in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, N.J., made him an appealing figure to both Wall Street and Washington,” says the Wall Street Journal. The Las Vegas Sun — which uses “gaming” rather than “gambling” to describe the hometown business — says he was recruited to bring “legitimacy and professionalism” to casinos. The Vegas outlet also credits him with foreseeing the downtown that has decimated the business. (Lanni helped his firm enter Macau, now the global gambling capital.)
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APARTHEID’S GENERAL: Magnus Malan was “one of the most hated figures of South Africa's apartheid regime,” says the Independent. The Guardian offers more detail, explaining how Malan OKed raids into neighboring countries, dismissed the notion of black political rights, and worked to destabilize the transition to democracy.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SWITCH SIDES, PART I: Guatemala’s Francisco Villagran Kramer was a left-of-center politician and internationally known legal scholar when he somewhat surprisingly joined a notoriously brutal right-wing military government. Two years later, he quit, going into exile and denouncing the regime. His turn-about didn’t expiate the sin: Years later, back in Guatemala under a better government, he was blocked from an international human rights post because of his service. Killer quote, from a Guatemala scholar in the New York Times: “It is probably what will be most remembered about him. He had no more credibility to do anything significant subsequently.”
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SWITCH SIDES, PART II: No such opprobrium greets Ernesto Betancourt, an ally of Fidel Castro who helped take over Cuba’s embassy in Washington, ousting representatives of the old regime. But Betancourt quickly broke with the emerging dictator. His official reason: He heard Castro say that if the Americans invaded and killed 400,000 Cubans, he wouldn’t care because he’d be a bigger hero than Jose Marti. Almost-too-good rejoinder, per the Washington Post’s obit: “I had not joined the revolution to be a grain of sand in anybody’s monument,” Betancourt is said to have told his wife. Safely in the United States, he became an anti-Castro activist and worked for the American-run Radio Marti.
BARRY BONDS’ LEAST FAVORITE SPORTSWRITER: The Washington Post catches the nearly month-old death of Rod Beaton, one of the original staff members of USA Today. Beaton was a top baseball writer back in the pre-Internet era, when his paper was known for comprehensive national sports coverage. “If you wanted to learn something about teams outside of your home market — next level stuff, from minor league prospects to potential trades — you read Rod Beaton,” remembers Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci. But a tussle between Beaton and now-disgraced slugger Barry Bonds — Bonds shoved Beaton, trying to kick him out of the locker room; Beaton slapped back — dominates much of the coverage. Later, as disease made it hard for Beaton to move, Bonds made amends by helping him up from a seat when others ignored him.
GERMANY’S MURDOCH: Obits for Leo Kirch show they either remember you for your rise or your fall. Here’s the Independent’s lede: “From nothing Leo Kirch built up one of the largest film and television companies in Europe, employing nearly 10,000 people.” Nearly everyone else opens along the lines of the Associated Press: “Leo Kirch, a German media mogul whose television-based empire unraveled in a spectacular bankruptcy nearly a decade ago.” A “towering business figure” and friend of statesmen, Kirch made a bad bet on pay TV.
HE WROTE FOR THE STONES: Songwriter Jerry Ragovoy penned “some of the most soulful ballads of the 1960s,” says the New York Times, including the Rolling Stones’ “Time Is on My Side” and Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart.” Fun fact from the Los Angeles Times: He wrote some of his best hits under a pseudonym, hoping to save his real name for an intended Broadway career.
HE MADE GUITARS FOR THE GRATEFUL DEAD: Travis Bean “reinvented the electric guitar,” says the Los Angeles Times. Which might be overstating it: His aluminum guitars were produced for only five years, the obit says. But buyers included Jerry Garcia, and the instruments “remain prized for their unique tone and durability.”
WHICH OBIT HEADLINE WOULD YOU PREFER? Both the New York Times and the Boston Globe run the same obit for Stanley Seeger. Here’s the Times’ headline: “Stanley Seeger, Who Collected, but Didn’t Discuss, Art, Dies at 81.” Here’s the Globe’s: “Stanley Seeger; recluse was a collector of art and houses."
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: The Obitsophere this week also catches news of Ed Flesh, who the New York Times says designed the “garish” set for Wheel of Fortune. Before Flesh, the wheel was small and upright. “Thousands of contestants would never have spun the ‘Wheel of Fortune’ were it not for Ed Flesh,” the obit declares. … John Mosca ran a “popular restaurant near New Orleans,” says the Los Angeles Times. Which is kind of underselling it: He was “an icon of cuisine in Louisiana,” declares a Boston Globe headline. But the status, to judge even from obits in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, may have owed itself not just to the crab salads enjoyed by the likes of Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill: Everyone mentions the lengthy profile of Mosca that Calvin Trillin wrote for the New Yorker last year. … And John Fisken is remembered as the most successful British Commonwealth fighter pilot in WWII’s Pacific Theater. After shooting down 11 Japanese fighters during the war, he went right back to raising sheep in New Zealand, says the Telegraph.
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MEAN-SPIRITED LEDE OF THE WEEK: “It's hard to write about Gordon Lorenz without being condescending” — from the Independent’s obit for the man who wrote “There’s No One Like Grandma,” “My Mum is One in a Million,” and other “easy listening music for the silent majority.” In fact, the paper’s coverage is not especially condescending: It straightforwardly says Lorenz was fat, made music “of dubious artistic merit,” and — for good measure — was repeatedly fined for not cleaning up after his dog.
CANADIAN FAINT-PRAISE ALERT: Loyal followers of Grim Reader know he’s sensitive to slights against our northern neighbor -- slights that are often unintended. Like this New York Times headline: “Pierrette Alarie-Simoneau, Canadian Soprano, Dies at 89.” All true! But, like the subsequent description of Alarie-Simoneau and her tenor husband as “the first couple of Canadian opera,” it kind of begs the question, Who was the second couple? Most of the memorable performances cited took place in New York.
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.
A DICTATOR: Uruguay’s
“will be forever associated with the slow death of a democracy at the hands of those entrusted with its care,” says the Guardian. Bordaberry was an elected president when he signed off on what the Associated Press calls a “soft coup” that kept him in power but gave the military free reign to attack real and imagined leftist subversives. “Over the next three years Bordaberry ruled by decree, ratcheting up his anti-democratic rhetoric to appease his military masters,” says the Telegraph, but the military ousted him anyway. The Guardian’s take is quite different: “The armed forces ultimately balked at his fascist ideas, replacing him with pliant yes-men.” He retired to obscurity until a couple of years ago when he was prosecuted for murders that took place under his command. Ironically, military brass and left-wing rebels were covered by an amnesty.THE LADY WHO VANISHED: Googie Withers is described by the Associated Press as a “Hollywood golden age staple.” Biggest role: In Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes. Her brief bio is rollicking: Born in Karachi, in then British India, she got her nickname from an Indian nanny; she died in Australia, where she’d lived for decades with her Aussie husband.
CASINO KINGPIN, SANS MOB TIES: When does a Los Angeles Times obit description of a “staid personality” count as a compliment? When you run a business previously known for its over-the-top mobsters. J. Terrence Lanni’s “buttoned-up demeanor amidst a sea of flamboyant gambling personalities in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, N.J., made him an appealing figure to both Wall Street and Washington,” says the Wall Street Journal. The Las Vegas Sun — which uses “gaming” rather than “gambling” to describe the hometown business — says he was recruited to bring “legitimacy and professionalism” to casinos. The Vegas outlet also credits him with foreseeing the downtown that has decimated the business. (Lanni helped his firm enter Macau, now the global gambling capital.)
APARTHEID’S GENERAL: Magnus Malan was “one of the most hated figures of South Africa's apartheid regime,” says the Independent. The Guardian offers more detail, explaining how Malan OKed raids into neighboring countries, dismissed the notion of black political rights, and worked to destabilize the transition to democracy.WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SWITCH SIDES, PART I: Guatemala’s Francisco Villagran Kramer was a left-of-center politician and internationally known legal scholar when he somewhat surprisingly joined a notoriously brutal right-wing military government. Two years later, he quit, going into exile and denouncing the regime. His turn-about didn’t expiate the sin: Years later, back in Guatemala under a better government, he was blocked from an international human rights post because of his service. Killer quote, from a Guatemala scholar in the New York Times: “It is probably what will be most remembered about him. He had no more credibility to do anything significant subsequently.”
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SWITCH SIDES, PART II: No such opprobrium greets Ernesto Betancourt, an ally of Fidel Castro who helped take over Cuba’s embassy in Washington, ousting representatives of the old regime. But Betancourt quickly broke with the emerging dictator. His official reason: He heard Castro say that if the Americans invaded and killed 400,000 Cubans, he wouldn’t care because he’d be a bigger hero than Jose Marti. Almost-too-good rejoinder, per the Washington Post’s obit: “I had not joined the revolution to be a grain of sand in anybody’s monument,” Betancourt is said to have told his wife. Safely in the United States, he became an anti-Castro activist and worked for the American-run Radio Marti.
BARRY BONDS’ LEAST FAVORITE SPORTSWRITER: The Washington Post catches the nearly month-old death of Rod Beaton, one of the original staff members of USA Today. Beaton was a top baseball writer back in the pre-Internet era, when his paper was known for comprehensive national sports coverage. “If you wanted to learn something about teams outside of your home market — next level stuff, from minor league prospects to potential trades — you read Rod Beaton,” remembers Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci. But a tussle between Beaton and now-disgraced slugger Barry Bonds — Bonds shoved Beaton, trying to kick him out of the locker room; Beaton slapped back — dominates much of the coverage. Later, as disease made it hard for Beaton to move, Bonds made amends by helping him up from a seat when others ignored him.
GERMANY’S MURDOCH: Obits for Leo Kirch show they either remember you for your rise or your fall. Here’s the Independent’s lede: “From nothing Leo Kirch built up one of the largest film and television companies in Europe, employing nearly 10,000 people.” Nearly everyone else opens along the lines of the Associated Press: “Leo Kirch, a German media mogul whose television-based empire unraveled in a spectacular bankruptcy nearly a decade ago.” A “towering business figure” and friend of statesmen, Kirch made a bad bet on pay TV.
HE WROTE FOR THE STONES: Songwriter Jerry Ragovoy penned “some of the most soulful ballads of the 1960s,” says the New York Times, including the Rolling Stones’ “Time Is on My Side” and Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart.” Fun fact from the Los Angeles Times: He wrote some of his best hits under a pseudonym, hoping to save his real name for an intended Broadway career.
HE MADE GUITARS FOR THE GRATEFUL DEAD: Travis Bean “reinvented the electric guitar,” says the Los Angeles Times. Which might be overstating it: His aluminum guitars were produced for only five years, the obit says. But buyers included Jerry Garcia, and the instruments “remain prized for their unique tone and durability.”
WHICH OBIT HEADLINE WOULD YOU PREFER? Both the New York Times and the Boston Globe run the same obit for Stanley Seeger. Here’s the Times’ headline: “Stanley Seeger, Who Collected, but Didn’t Discuss, Art, Dies at 81.” Here’s the Globe’s: “Stanley Seeger; recluse was a collector of art and houses."
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: The Obitsophere this week also catches news of Ed Flesh, who the New York Times says designed the “garish” set for Wheel of Fortune. Before Flesh, the wheel was small and upright. “Thousands of contestants would never have spun the ‘Wheel of Fortune’ were it not for Ed Flesh,” the obit declares. … John Mosca ran a “popular restaurant near New Orleans,” says the Los Angeles Times. Which is kind of underselling it: He was “an icon of cuisine in Louisiana,” declares a Boston Globe headline. But the status, to judge even from obits in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, may have owed itself not just to the crab salads enjoyed by the likes of Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill: Everyone mentions the lengthy profile of Mosca that Calvin Trillin wrote for the New Yorker last year. … And John Fisken is remembered as the most successful British Commonwealth fighter pilot in WWII’s Pacific Theater. After shooting down 11 Japanese fighters during the war, he went right back to raising sheep in New Zealand, says the Telegraph.
MEAN-SPIRITED LEDE OF THE WEEK: “It's hard to write about Gordon Lorenz without being condescending” — from the Independent’s obit for the man who wrote “There’s No One Like Grandma,” “My Mum is One in a Million,” and other “easy listening music for the silent majority.” In fact, the paper’s coverage is not especially condescending: It straightforwardly says Lorenz was fat, made music “of dubious artistic merit,” and — for good measure — was repeatedly fined for not cleaning up after his dog.CANADIAN FAINT-PRAISE ALERT: Loyal followers of Grim Reader know he’s sensitive to slights against our northern neighbor -- slights that are often unintended. Like this New York Times headline: “Pierrette Alarie-Simoneau, Canadian Soprano, Dies at 89.” All true! But, like the subsequent description of Alarie-Simoneau and her tenor husband as “the first couple of Canadian opera,” it kind of begs the question, Who was the second couple? Most of the memorable performances cited took place in New York.
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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