It’s been several weeks since Carl Reiner passed away, but I recently read a brief blurb in Parade Magazine (of all places!) by comedian Judy Gold that highlighted something I’d never really considered before: the fact that he wrote a part in The Dick Van Dyke Show for a female writer on the fictional TV show within the show.
Just one more reason to love — and respect — this titan of comedy.
(The full Judy Gold feature is here. She has a new book out called Yes I Can Say That and also makes several other reading recos.)
I don’t watch much TV (even during lockdown), but I’ve enjoyed the heck out of Schitt’s Creek, which recently wrapped up its sixth and final season. It’s a comedy about a family that goes from fabulously rich to terribly poor overnight, and is forced to leave their pampered lifestyle behind and move to a rundown hotel in a tiny town that the patriarch of the family bought as a joke.
(Netflix promo photo)
The mom and dad are played by Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy. ‘Nuff said. They’ve been cracking me up since their SCTV days, and of course they were great in the Christopher Guest mockumentaries (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind).
Separately, they are great character actors… together, they are pure comedy gold!
The actors who portray the family (O’Hara, Levy, his real-life son Daniel and Annie Murphy) all were nominated for Emmys this year.
The show was a slow burn, and Catherine O’Hara thinks that contributed to its success:
We got to build the show and develop the characters without worrying about expectations, from anyone. We got to make the show the best we could make it. CBC did a great job of building an audience in Canada and then Pop TV picked it up and it wasn’t a big audience but it was a nice, loyal audience, and then Netflix brought it out to the rest of the world. There’s so many projects that get a ton of attention right at the beginning, maybe before they’re even quite ready for it, and then it’s kind of downhill attention-wise from there. We’re so lucky to do the show we wanted and, apparently, leaving people wanting more.
Catherine O’Hara’s character, Moira Rose, has developed quite the fan following. This excellent Yahoo article describes her as the “the self-dramatizing, language-massaging, ultimately touching mother.”
Moira is hilarious (her ‘wall of wigs’ alone is worth the price of admission) but there’s plenty of heart underneath all the character’s histrionics.
O’Hara, who is 66, is also talks about her own late-career recognition, and I think it’s sound advice for anyone in the 50+ age bracket:
I’m happy to be a late bloomer, I always have been in my life and I’m grateful for it. You have to have a bit of patience in life or just don’t have any big expectations, just carry along and do the best you can and maybe someone will notice, maybe they won’t but if you enjoy the work itself, then that’s enough of a gift.
From the same Hollywood reporter article
Do your best. Be patient. Don’t worry about what others think of you. Enjoy the journey. I’ll drink to that!
In Arkansas, the state where I grew up, they’re big on killing birds. Tyson Corporation, based in Springdale, AR, is the country’s top poultry processor, and Mountaire Farms Inc. (HQ in Little Rock) is the 6th largest. This article in The New Yorker is a fascinating read about Mountaire, its reclusive, arch-conservative owner, and the chicken industry in general.
Working in a chicken processing plant is one of the most hazardous jobs around, and the “reward” for taking on that risk is pay that’s 44% below the national average for manufacturing jobs. Oh, and it’s even more hazardous during the pandemic… but companies like Tyson and Mountaire convinced Trump to issue an executive order to keep those processing plants running (even though many had experienced coronavirus outbreaks… and they were still exporting plenty of dead birds to other countries). Not only that, but these corporations now have a free pass to speed up the processing line… from 140 B.P.M. (that’s birds per minute – ponder that for a moment) to 175 B.P.M. As a union rep says in the article, “It’s like the ‘I Love Lucy’ episode at the chocolate factory.” And they don’t even have to report their COVID-19 numbers.
Mountaire made $1 billion more in revenue in 2019 than it did in 2010. Rest assured the profits aren’t trickling down to the workers, the vast majority of whom are minorities, including a lot of recent immigrants. Instead, Mountaire’s owner Ronnie Cameron is shoveling millions to Trump, other Republican candidates, and ultra-conservative causes.
In 2004, he set up a private foundation, the Jesus Fund. Given the poverty of many Mountaire workers, the size of the fund is striking: according to the most recently available federal tax statement, the book value of the Jesus Fund’s assets in 2018 was three hundred and twenty-seven million dollars. The sole donors were Cameron and his company.
From The New Yorker article cited above
I guess Ronnie’s foundation missed this nugget from Jesus:
Yes, I know it’s his money and he can do whatever he pleases with it. But there’s more than chicken blood on his hands.
“It matters how he treats his workers, because he’s making money off the backs of these people and is donating it to Christian causes—so there’s a moral connection.”
Warren Throckmorton, an evangelical Christian and a psychology professor at Grove City College, as quoted in The New Yorker article.
If companies cared as much about their workers as they do about their chickens, we’d be a better country.”
David Michaels, a professor of public health at George Washington University, who headed OSHA during the Obama Administration
Meanwhile, a couple of lawsuits against 10 or more of the largest poultry companies allege that they conspired to hold down workers’ wages and to fix prices. Not surprising when you consider that the top 10 poultry companies control about 80% of the market.
At present, Mountaire is trying to bust the union at their Delaware plant. Check out this paragraph from the article:
The gulf between Cameron’s spectacular wealth and his workers’ meagre circumstances echoes the findings of a recent study by two Harvard economists, Anna Stansbury and Lawrence H. Summers, the former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama. In the paper, “The Declining Worker Power Hypothesis,” Stansbury and Summers argue that, in the past four decades, the single largest driver of income inequality in America has been the decline in worker power, much of it stemming from the collapse of membership in private-sector unions. Since the fifties, the percentage of private-sector workers who belong to unions has declined from thirty-three per cent to six per cent. As a result, there has been an upward redistribution of income to high-income executives, owners, and shareholders. The economists argue that this decline in worker power, more than any other structural change in the economy, accounts for nearly all the gains in the share of income made by America’s wealthiest one per cent.
I’ve been a vegetarian for 30 years, but I’ve bought plenty of “cheap” chicken to feed my kids. Now I have a better understanding of the true costs. And a better idea of how that paradigm can change.
That statement is: “I care about my fellow citizens.”
OTOH, not wearing a mask also makes a statement
That statement is: “I’m a self-centered idiot.”
The math is pretty simple. Suck it up for a few months and get the transmission rate below 1 (translation: brush fire vs. current raging inferno). Or go unmasked and rant about “personal liberty” while tens of thousands of people needlessly die.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has estimated that if there were 95% compliance with mask-wearing in the United States, there would be about 33,000 fewer deaths from COVID-19 between now and Oct. 1, 2020. To put this in perspective, in 2018 (the last year for which data are available), there were 16,214 homicides in the country. Between 2001 and 2019, there have been a little fewer than 2,500 active military personnel killed in Afghanistan. Both of these are tragic losses of life, yet both are dwarfed by the number of lives that could be saved in just three months with near-universal mask wearing.
If your moral compass is broken, here’s the “save the economy” capitalist argument for masks:
Wearing a mask doesn’t just save lives, it can also help people save money. If the United States were to mandate that all Americans wear masks, it would save the country from deleterious economic lockdowns that would reduce the gross domestic product by 5%, or about $1 trillion, according to an analysis by Goldman Sachs.
And please spare me the “government overreach” argument. During World War II, all Americans had to make sacrifices to fight the enemy – food, gas, even clothing was rationed. We’re at war again, against an invisible enemy. Wearing a mask is patriotic, Bubba. It’s a minor, temporary inconvenience that saves lives AND saves jobs. So get one on your face and get over it.
“Good Lord, people, you have to wear a seatbelt. You have to have a driver’s license. You can’t drive while you’re drunk,” she said. “There are all sorts of rules and regulations that you have to follow every single day. This is not some infringement on anybody’s rights.”
Karen Keith, commissioner in Tulsa County, Oklahoma, in this NYT article
My buddy Craig called me a few weeks ago (he’s been very good about staying connected in the age of coronavirus) and we wound up chatting about a wide range of subjects. Somehow, the topic of the India-China border spat came up. (“Somehow” = I brought it up.)
In case you’re not up to date on silly international skirmishes (the list is rather long), apparently India and China have been bickering over a border for decades. Yes, decades. (1962 Sino-Indian War, to be specific.)
The disputed border has the Monty Python-esque name of “The Line of Actual Control.” Or maybe it sounds like something from the old Get Smart TV show.
It would be laughable… if it weren’t for the fact that people are still dying fighting over a patch of dirt. On June 15th, Chinese and Indian troops clashed at the border. More than 20 soldiers died.
soldiers wielded iron bars and threw rocks and punches on the steep, jagged terrain. Many of the deaths occurred when troops fell off mountain ridges
Will we ever get to a day when these border arguments end? You’d think that a pandemic would make us realize how interconnected we are. I keep thinking of the great lyrics of the song “Territories” from Rush:
In every place with a name They play the same territorial game Hiding behind the lines Sending up warning signs
The whole wide world An endless universe Yet we keep looking through The eyeglass in reverse Don’t feed the people But we feed the machines Can’t really feel What international means….
The final couplet really sticks with me:
Better the pride that resides In a citizen of the world Than the pride that divides When a colourful rag is unfurled
Craig sent me a text earlier this week with the line “you can sleep a little easier now” and this image:
Thank heavens they’re working toward “peace and tranquility.” But why has it been going on since 1962?
Maybe, eventually, both sides will realize that there is no Line of Actual Control (literally and figuratively). Much of life is complete chaos. Can’t we respond with kindness, instead of rocks and clubs?
Colleges have come rushing forth to announce that they will be inviting students back to campus this fall. But as I’ve spoken to college officials over the past few weeks — usually not for quotation — I’ve been struck by the difference between their public optimism and their private uncertainty.
Many university leaders aren’t sure how well on-campus living and in-person classes will work during this pandemic. Some acknowledge it may not work at all.
It will require radical changes to the normal campus experience, like canceling many activities, rotating which students can return (to keep dorms from being too full) and continuing to hold classes online (to protect professors).
This approach is likely to frustrate students — and it still might not prevent new coronavirus outbreaks. Nearly all distinctive parts of a campus experience, including parties, meals and extracurriculars, revolve around close social contact, often indoors.
So what explains the surge of “We’re open!” announcements? Competitive pressure, in part. Many colleges will face serious financial problems if they lose a year of tuition and other revenue.
Now professors and administrators have begun publicly criticizing reopening plans:
“My suspicion,” Susan Dynarski, a University of Michigan economist, wrote on Twitter, is that “colleges are holding out hope of in-person classes in order to keep up enrollments.” She added: “If they tell the difficult truth now, many students will decide to take a year off,” which “will send college finances into a tailspin.”
Carl Bergstrom, a biologist at the University of Washington, noted that the new class of Army recruits at Fort Benning recently suffered a major outbreak, despite universal testing there.
“Colleges are deluding themselves,” Michael J. Sorrell, the president of Paul Quinn College in Dallas, wrote in The Atlantic. Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University psychologist, wrote a Times Op-Ed arguing that the reopening plans were “so unrealistically optimistic that they border on delusional.”
There are no easy answers. Telling students to stay home in the fall also has big downsides. And it’s possible that students will do a better job wearing masks and remaining socially distant than skeptics like Steinberg expect.
But the path that colleges are choosing comes with big risks. American higher education is about to embark on a highly uncertain experiment.
Geez, they even cribbed their final sentence “experiment” language from my blog post header:
Maybe the Giant Cheeto in D.C. is telling the truth for the first time ever… the Times must be “failing” if they are getting story ideas from this blog. Sad!
Looks like it’s time to sic my law firm on the Old Gray Lady…
And we’re adding a tagline to the Dubbatrubba masthead: All the news you’ll find elsewhere a week later.
(To be fair, while all the other articles and tweets linked in the NYT briefing were published after my post, the Atlantic piece, by Michael J. Sorrell, the president of Paul Quinn College in Dallas, was published in mid-May. So he really scooped the rest of us.)
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to the hard-hitting, insightful, industry-leading journalism for which this blog is now known.
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
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