William Agee, CEO...

...of Bendix Corporation in the 1970s whose relationship with a female subordinate made him famous, died at age 79.

For those of us who were around back then and kinda, sorta paying attention to business news, it was a big story. From his New York Times obit:

As it turned out, it was a recruiting decision — the hiring in spring 1979 of a bright, promising female employee named Mary Cunningham — and Mr. Agee’s subsequent handling of their relationship that largely defined his business career, touching off a national discussion about workplace behavior that reverberates today.

Mr. Agee originally hired Ms. Cunningham, who also had a Harvard M.B.A., as his executive assistant. She quickly moved up the ranks at Bendix, becoming vice president for strategic planning within 15 months.

Soon after that, however, she was forced to leave the company under pressure amid allegations that she and Mr. Agee were having an affair — something they both denied. They later divorced their spouses, and they married in 1982.

The Name of the Day...

...belongs to Adam Looney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Martin Ransohoff, the producer...

...of The Beverly Hillbillies and other television shows and movies, died at age 90.

There were so many good scenes in the Hillbillies, but one of my favorites begins at about 3:00 in the above clip.

Donald Trump has been in office...

...for almost a year now and so far there hasn't been an economic collapse or a nuclear war with North Korea or Iran (or anyone else) and really no major domestic or international crisis to speak of. And the Affordable Care Act is still the law of the land. That's the good news.

The bad news is that pretty much everything else Trump has touched has turned to *mud*. (This is a "family" blog.) Neil Gorsuch replaced Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court, the administration has nominated a number of conservative (and in some cases clearly unqualified) judges to lower courts, gutted the EPA and other regulations, imposed a ban on some Muslims, demoralized the State Department, FBI and CIA, given moral aid and comfort to Nazis -- yes, Nazis! -- and . . . oh, heck, the list is too long. Besides, I'm sure you're as well aware of it all as I am. No need to get even more depressed.

And, now, as Christmas approaches, the Donald is about to score his first legislative "W": the incredibly regressive tax "reform." Ugh. So what is one to do?

Well, you could recite that famous quote, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," and be reassured that this, too, shall pass.

But you would also have to remember what John Maynard Keynes said, "In the long run we are all dead."

And that's the problem: that moral universe you've heard so much about can take a long, long time to bend.

Take slavery, for example. That quote has been attributed to a Unitarian minister by the name of Theodore Parker. A famous abolitionist, Parker made that observation before at least 1853 and died himself in 1860, five years before the Thirteenth Amendment was passed.

In other words, slavery, which existed in the English colonies since 1619, was finally abolished almost 250 years later. That's a heck of an arc! (And, in truth, blacks lived in almost de facto slavery under Jim Crow in the south until at least the 1960s and didn't have it a whole lot better in the north.) So while it's comforting to think that the arc of history bends toward justice, a lot of slaves -- and Parker -- never lived to see the "justice" part.

Or think of it another way. Germany has existed in one form or another for about a thousand years. The Nazi era only lasted for twelve of those years, from 1933-45. In the grand scheme of things, that's a very short time, a little over one percent of all German history. But if you were, say, 40 years old in 1933, the Nazi period -- assuming you lived through it -- would have taken up almost a quarter of your life by the time it was over. That's a big chunk of a person's life.

Now, I don't know how long Trump is going to be president (although I bet he gets reelected in 2020) but four, or eight, years can be a long time when you're living through it. (Just ask some of those Germans, if there are any left, about that 12-year Nazi period.) And, while I would think that the pendulum would swing back at some point, that could be a long time from now. I'll be 60 years old next year. I only have about twenty or thirty good years left. So I don't have all day; about two-thirds of my life is over. That moral arc had better hurry up!

If there's a God -- or any justice in the world -- the Democrats will take back the House next year and the Senate and White House in 2020. But I'm not so sure. There aren't a whole lot of swing districts left in Congress so between gerrymandering and voter suppression I'm not holding my breath. Although I suspect there's a younger and more charismatic version of Bernie Sanders out there somewhere, I doubt if he'll emerge soon enough to take on Trump in 2020. And any other Democrat -- Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, or any other of a number of ten or twenty potential candidates -- will be demonized with such a fervor by Fox News and the rest of the right-wing echo chamber that I'll bet Trump skates to victory by an even larger margin next time around. (Yep, you read that right. Think Nixon in 1972.)

Once again, the arc of history bends toward justice, but it can be an awfully long wait, and in the long run we're all dead, remember? So that's not a whole lot of comfort for a Never Trumper like me. And I'm afraid that pendulum I mentioned above isn't going to swing back anytime soon.

Oh, well. Merry Christmas!

Vincent Nguini, guitarist...

...with Paul Simon’s band, died at age 65.

Listening to the Sandals...

...on YouTube the last couple of days brought me to this video of a guy named Junior Brown whom I don't think I had ever heard. Who is this guy?, I thought, and what the hell is he playing?

From Wikipedia:

Jamieson "Junior" Brown is an American country guitarist and singer. 

Aha! That explains it.

Brown's signature instrument is the "guit-steel" double neck guitar, a hybrid of electric guitar and lap steel guitar.

I have to admit, I've never heard of that.

In 1985, Brown created a new type of double-neck guitar, with some assistance from Michael Stevens. Brown called the instrument his "guit-steel." When performing, Brown plays the guitar by standing behind it, while it rests on a small music stand. The top neck on the guit-steel is a traditional six-string guitar, while the lower neck is a full-size lap steel guitar for slide playing. . . Brown has stated that the invention of the guit-steel was always a matter of convenience so that he could play both lap steel and lead guitar during live performances and not directly motivated by a desire to be a "one man band."

Finally,

Although Brown plays such neotraditional country styles as honky-tonk, Western swing, etc., few of his performances will finish without some blues and Tex-Mex tunes playing as well as surf rock instrumentals.

Cool.

Pat DiNizio, lead singer...

...and songwriter for the Smithereens, died at age 62.

Bruce Brown, whose...

..."documentary The Endless Summer, which followed two surfers on an epic adventure in pursuit of the perfect wave, became an unlikely hit when it was released nationally in 1966," died at age 80.

It's actually a very cool movie, with excellent surf music from the Sandals.

The Name of the Day...

...belongs to London Breed, the acting mayor of San Francisco.

When I saw the title...

...of Noah Smith's piece in Bloomberg, "Nurture Counts as Much as Nature in Success," you know I clicked on it right away.

If you're not a regular reader of this blog you wouldn't know that "Nature vs. Nurture" is one of my favorite topics. If there's a heaven, and if I get there (stop laughing!), one of my first questions will be what is the correct ratio in that debate. (Two others would be, "Who killed Kennedy?" and, "Are markets efficient?")

My current guess -- yes, current -- is that Nurture has some role, perhaps ten or twenty percent, but that it's far outweighed by Nature. No matter how hard I worked at it, for example, I was probably destined to never make the NBA. Conversely, they probably should have just given me a college degree at birth because there was really never any doubt I'd get one someday. (Or was that nurture? I was born into a solidly middle-class family in which all four of my older siblings graduated from college.)

Mr. Smith begins his piece by saying (all emphasis mine):

As a result, it’s hard to know what people really think about the nature-versus-nurture question. My impression is that most Americans subscribe to a casual, reflexive faith in the primacy of inborn ability.

And, right away, I have to take issue with that. I'd say that most people believe just the opposite: that with hard work, etc., one can do or be anything one wants. Isn't that right? Haven't you ever heard someone say, "If I had only done X (or hadn't done X) I'd by Y today"? Or, in relation to their kids, "If we'd only pulled this lever or pushed that button our kid would have turned out [better]"? I mean, really, isn't that human nature? If someone puts a pot of water on the stove, turns on the gas, and the water boils, aren't they correct in assuming that they "made that happen"? And don't people feel they have that kind of control over just about everything else in life? I'll bet my parents went to their graves thinking it was their fault somehow that their kids didn't turn out perfectly. "If only I had done [fill in the blank]..."

Smith goes on to say:

...people whose parents are inventors tend to become inventors themselves.

And while he uses this as an argument for Nurture, I think it could cut both ways. When I was growing up, if someone became a doctor or a lawyer people would often say that "his father was a doctor (or a lawyer)" as if to imply that the child observed the parent close up, liked what they saw, and decided to become a doctor (or a lawyer) too. But couldn't Nature be the reason? If someone is a doctor, they were probably good at math and science and worked hard in school. Couldn't those traits be hereditary? If a doctor's kid became a doctor, wouldn't it be a reasonable assumption that he or she was also good at math and science and had a tendency to work hard in school (and not screw around like I did)?

Smith concludes by saying:

So many different kinds of nurture matter in determining success. Effort matters. Education matters. And social environment matters. Americans discount these factors too much. The country would be a better, richer, more equal place with less emphasis on natural talent and more on humans’ potential to improve each other and themselves.

Yes, it would. And the country might be a better place if everyone had a pony. But this reminds me of what my friend Jamie (who grew up in Scotland and has lived all over the world, including Chicago) once told me: America's greatest strength is also one of its greatest weaknesses -- the idea that anyone can grow up to be anything. It's obviously a strength because, unlike the Old World, an individual isn't stuck into the class in which he was born, but through hard work and determination can become president of the United States (think Bill Clinton), a billionaire (think Steve Jobs) or pretty much anything he or she wants. It's a weakness, however, in that people are also led to believe that anyone can achieve these things despite not having innate intelligence, innate social skills, etc. and it makes for a lot of very disappointed people. And a lot of people who -- wrongly -- blame themselves for not achieving such dizzying heights of success. This, in turn, leads to a lot of discontent.

So, should I beat myself up for never having made it to the NBA? Probably not; I'm only 5'7". (But maybe with a little more hard work I could have made my high school team. Or is the tendency to work hard innate? And, anyway, I was never very passionate about basketball in the first place. Is that something you can change about yourself?) Should I hold myself responsible for never having become a billionaire? Maybe. I don't know. What do you think?

Tracy Stallard, famous...

...for serving up Roger Maris's 61st home run in 1961, died at age 80.

Mr. Stallard's life wasn't all that noteworthy other than that one pitch, but his name has some significance for me. You see, growing up (and even today, if I'm honest), I was always conscious of having a girl's name for a last name.* (It could have been worse; I once knew a guy named Rick Lisa.) Even more than some jackass asking me if I had a brother named Dick ("Yes, as a matter of fact I do!" "Really?" "No!"), I always worried that having a girl's name for a last name would somehow make me less . . . manly. So even though Tracy as a first name is probably more often a girl's name, I was always prepared to trot out Tracy Stallard as an example of a man -- a professional athlete, no less -- with the first name Tracy.** So imagine my relief when Tracy McGrady came along and became such a star. I thought for sure that every mother in America would want to name her firstborn son Tracy. "Tracy is a girl's name? Are you crazy? Haven't you ever heard of Tracy McGrady? Sheesh."

P. S. My wife has run into her own trouble concerning our last name. "What's the name?" "Tracy -- Julie Tracy." "Okay, Tracy..."

* Maybe that explains my obsession with unusual names, hence my Name of the Day feature.

** Turns out Tracy is actually Mr. Stallard's middle name. Same with Tracy Kidder. Shhh!

William Gass, a writer...

...whom you may have never heard -- and I admittedly haven't read -- died at age 93. I remember his name from a college English class in connection with his work, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. From his New York Times obit (my emphasis):

Since his first novel, “Omensetter’s Luck,” was published in 1966, Mr. Gass was one of the most respected authors never to write a best seller. (He wrote only two other novels but many novellas, short stories and essays.)

He received a raft of awards, including two National Book Critics Circle Awards for collections of criticism and philosophy: “Habitations of the Word” in 1985 and “Finding a Form” in 1997. He won four Pushcart Prizes, the Pen-Faulkner Prize and a $100,000 lifetime achievement award from the Lannan Foundation in 1997.

The novelist John Barth, a fellow practitioner of metafiction, predicted that Mr. Gass would someday rank high in the history of American arts and letters. “If he doesn’t,” Mr. Barth said in 1999, “it will be history’s fault.”

As I said, I've never read anything by Mr. Gass. Since I recognized his name, though, I read his obituary with anticipation. And I found it encouraging; here was a guy content to live in obscurity writing works of fiction that he thought had real value, rather than best sellers that would have made him rich. I've started novels by writers like Stephen King and John Grisham and just couldn't get very far. It's not that I'm some kind of literary snob; I actually don't read much fiction. But I just don't like wasting my time on pulp fiction. So I admire someone like Gass who decides he's not going to write for a popular audience but instead aspire to create the highest quality art possible. Looks like he never got rich, but he lived comfortably. I hope he gets the recognition he deserves some day.

I used to think Fox News...

...was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, problems in America. Yep, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report and now Brietbart. Those, I used to think, were the biggest problems in America. It was right-wing media, I reasoned, that dumbed-down the Republican Party base, giving us first the tea party, and now Donald Trump.

But now I think just a little differently. And a piece in Bloomberg this morning, "What If the Courts Were Filled With 'Little Scalias'?," reminds me why (my emphasis):

The left has lately been in a panic at the realization that President Donald Trump has so many vacancies to fill on the federal bench, a panic hardly abated by conservative proposals to add a lot more seats. The fear, as one of my Yale colleagues puts it, is that Trump will appoint lots of “little Scalias” -- a reference to Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016 and was succeeded on the Supreme Court this year by Neil Gorsuch.

Whom, you might ask, are all these "little Scalias"? And the point is, it doesn't matter: they're out there, apparently, and just waiting to be appointed to the federal bench. And the point, further, is that they weren't created by Trump or Jeff Sessions or even Fox News. And neither were Fox News's viewers. No, they were out there all along and merely there for the taking. Do you think, for example, that Sean Hannity's recent paranoid conspiracy rantings are costing him viewers? Then think again.

So my final point is that Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and, yes, Donald Trump, wouldn't exist without a ready and willing audience to support them. A nation of over 330 million people is bound to have a few jackasses like Sean Hannity and Donald Trump. (It's probably a bell curve.) The problem -- the main problem -- here is that over 60 million adults in this country thought Trump was qualified to be president. As Pogo famously said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Or, as Jerry Seinfeld put it:

"I will never understand people."

"They're the worst."

That's the problem with America -- Americans.

The Name of the Day...

...is actually a tie, and can be found on the same page of the print edition of the New York Times.

Robert Youngentob, at top, is president of the Maryland-based real estate developer EYA, and Barry Swatsenbarg, above, is a senior vice president for Colliers International.

Neither name is particularly funny, just a mouthful.

Why didn't someone years ago, for example, shorten "Youngentob" to just plain "Young"? Gary Hart's last name was originally Hartpence. That's not as bad as Youngentob. Imagine:

"Table for four?"

"Sure; the name?"

"Youngentob."

"Youngen . . . [maitre d' looks up] what?"

"Never mind; Young."

"Oh, yes, right this way, sir."

Just sayin'.

John Anderson, who ran...

...as an independent candidate for president in 1980, died at age 95.

I voted for Mr. Anderson that year -- it was my first-ever vote for president -- and, looking back on it, don't regret it. From his New York Times obit (my emphasis):

Mr. Anderson refused to pander, telling voters in Iowa that he favored President Jimmy Carter’s embargo on grain sales to the Soviet Union after it had invaded Afghanistan. He called for a gasoline tax of 50 cents per gallon — when a gallon cost $1.15 — to save energy.
___

Early on, when all six of his rivals for the Republican nomination assured the Gun Owners of New Hampshire that they firmly opposed gun control legislation, Mr. Anderson said, “I don’t understand why.”

“When in this country we license people to drive automobiles,” he added, “what is so wrong about proposing that we license guns to make sure that felons and mental incompetents don’t get ahold of them?”

He was roundly booed.
___

...he had harshly criticized President Richard M. Nixon, a fellow Republican, over his handling of the Watergate scandal. 
___

He was a leader in the passage of open housing legislation in 1968 and in setting campaign contribution limits in 1974, and he worked with his Democratic friend, Morris K. Udall of Arizona, to create 10 national parks in Alaska, protecting 100 million acres.
___

But he grew increasingly impatient not only with the House but also with the growing strength of the right wing of his own party.

“Extremist fringe elements,” he complained in 1977, “seek to expel the rest of us from the G.O.P.” He warned, “If the purists stage their ideological coup d’état, our party will be consigned to the historical junk heap.”
___

He left Congress so he could seek the presidency in 1980, then considered another presidential run in 1984 but ended up supporting Mr. Reagan’s Democratic challenger, Walter F. Mondale, the former vice president. He backed Ralph Nader’s third-party run in 2000 and disapproved of the Tea Party movement, telling The New Yorker in 2010, “I break out in a cold sweat at the thought that any of those people might prevail.”
___

Though Mr. Anderson’s candidacy had little impact on the outcome of the 1980 election, his campaign was memorable for its candor. Appearing in Des Moines with six rivals for the Republican nomination, Mr. Anderson was alone among them in saying something specific when asked if there was anything in his career he would take back if he could.

“It would have been the vote that I cast in favor of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution,” he said, referring to the 1964 congressional measure that gave President Lyndon B. Johnson license to widen the war against North Vietnam.
___

He was equally forthright in defending his call for an emergency excise tax on gasoline, unpopular though it might have been.

“I did it as a security measure, to be sure,” he told the September 1980 debate audience, “because I would rather see us reduce the consumption of imported oil than have to send American boys to fight in the Persian Gulf.”

Even though Jimmy Carter is probably the best former president of the United States, he really was a uniquely ineffectual chief executive. (A cautionary tale for true outsiders.) I guess I could have voted for Carter anyway, but it didn't really make a difference -- I lived in Minnesota at the time and the state went solidly for the incumbent. And after reading some of those excerpts from Mr. Anderson's obituary, I don't feel so bad about supporting his quixotic candidacy back then. If anything, maybe it foreshadowed my own -- gradual -- conversion to progressive causes.

Mitch McConnell just said...

...something that might actually be true. (I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day. Or, in Mr. McConnell's case, at least once in a lifetime.)

From "For McConnell, Health Care Failure Was a Map to Tax Success" in the Times (my emphasis):

“[The Democrats] are convinced it is good politics to be against [the tax bill], and we believe it is good politics to do it,” he said. “We either get the growth rates or we don’t. In other words, one of these sides is going to be proven wrong.”

And that to me is the silver lining to the story of this tax bill. (And maybe to this entire era of political polarization in which we live.)

In today's world, unlike the past, when you vote Republican or Democratic at least you know what you're getting. And, as demonstrated by this Congress, more and more the party in power is able to enact their policies and we're able to find out once and for all if they work or not. (I'd argue that the "Kansas experiment" of the last few years has already answered it, but now the whole country is going to see for themselves.)*

Despite projections the legislation could cost the government $1.5 trillion, [McConnell] insisted it ultimately would not add to and might even shrink deficits because of the economic expansion he expects it to generate.

“We are pretty confident this is going to get the country up to a higher growth rate, which will improve wages because demand for employees will go up and improve the government revenues as well, which makes the deficit shrink,” he said.

And, again, Mr. McConnell is right: we'll actually get to see if this radical approach improves wages and government revenues and makes the deficit shrink. I happen to think not, but at least we'll all have our answer. (And, if I am indeed wrong, I hope I have the maturity to say so, and be happy that the country is prospering.)

But if I'm right, then hopefully the Democrats will take back the House and Senate, the White House, most state legislatures and statehouses and eventually the courts. (That sounds like a lot to take back, doesn't it?) And if there's any justice in the universe (or at least this country) that will happen and more progressive policies will be put in place. (Although between gerrymandering and voter suppression I have my doubts.)

Am I angry about the process? Absolutely. (Just as I'm angry about the whole Merrick Garland affair.) But, as they say, paybacks are a bitch. And the Democrats, who will surely ride the pendulum back to power at some point, will probably be just as ruthless as the Republicans. My guess? The filibuster will be toast and legislation will be passed in the Senate by simple majority rule. (Say hello to Medicare for all.) And that's ultimately a good thing. Voters will know what they're voting for, they'll get it, and we'll all get to see if it works or not.

P. S. Here's a good thread on "process."

* Still not sure if the "Kansas experiment" was a success or not? Then ask yourself, why is its architect, Gov. Sam Brownback, leaving office early to be the nation’s "international ambassador for religious freedom" (whatever that is)? If it worked, wouldn't he be sticking around to take bows for it?

Mitch Margo, an original member...

...of the Tokens, who sang "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," died at age 70.

Although I especially like the woman's voice in that video, I always preferred this version by the Weavers:

 From the Times:

[The] song was based on a 1939 recording, "Mbube" — Zulu for "The Lion" — by the South African musician Solomon Linda and his group the Original Evening Birds.

Pete Seeger recorded a version in the 1950s as “Wimowe,” which is how he sang the original lyric “mbube” (pronounced EEM-boo-beh). The American songwriter George David Weiss reworked it in 1961, adding the lyrics “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.” That’s the version made famous by the Tokens.

While I'm at it, I always liked this song too:

It was Mr. Margo’s idea for the Happenings to do an up-tempo version of the Gershwin brothers’ “I Got Rhythm,” his nephew Noah Margo said. The record reached No. 3 on the Billboard singles chart in 1967.

Another star of a great...

...sitcom from my childhood has passed away. Jim Nabors, who played Gomer Pyle in Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. from 1964 to 1969, died at age 87.