23 | April | 2012 | Bob Schwartz

April 23, 2012

Chuck Colson: Teshuvah and Woody Allen

Chuck Colson (1931-2012) died this past weekend. His ruthless loyalty to Richard Nixon led to his central role in the Watergate scandal and to time in prison. That experience in turn led to his rebirth as an Evangelical Christian and to a lifetime of writing books (23 of them) and of helping the least among us—prisoners and others—to achieve fuller and better lives, at least by Colson’s religious lights.

If many were turned off by Colson’s politics before his conversion, it was not always easier after. Some questioned his sincerity. Others wondered whether any amount of transformation, however sincere, could balance his responsibility for helping to bring our democracy to its knees. Others saw the politics of his Christianity to be as socially destructive as the politics of his pre-Christian ruthlessness.

Two notes about Chuck Colson.

His first book Born Again (1976) is distinguished from all other books by participants in Watergate, from Nixon down through all his men. Most readers with particular political or religious inclinations didn’t read the book then, and even fewer do now. It is a compelling, candid, sincere confession of malfeasance and faith. Whether Colson’s work of the past forty years is to your liking or loathing, if you believe in the possibility of turning—in Hebrew, teshuvah—then you should believe in this. Personal transformation is not limited to those we approve of.

The second note is that Chuck Colson was a big Woody Allen fan. This was revealed last fall in an article by Washington Post religion writer Michele Boorstein. Theories of humor and religion aside, this really isn’t hard to understand. Funny and smart is funny and smart, and this is probably something Colson appreciated. There’s no evidence that Colson and Allen ever met (though Boorstein did uncover a tape of Allen interviewing Billy Graham!). If they had, maybe they would have shared their experiences and views about the power of turning and confession for everyone, including artists and political operatives.

April 23, 2012

Mitt Romney, Ted Nugent and Chevy Chase

The recent silliness regarding Ted Nugent’s endorsement of Mitt Romney, followed by Nugent’s seeming threats to kill the current President, brought to mind a classic movie moment involving Ted Nugent and another rich guy.

It wasn’t actually Ted Nugent. It was Chevy Chase in Fletch. In the movie, Fletch/Chevy Chase is a smart-mouthed investigative reporter who regularly cracks wise by using ridiculous names. In this scene, Fletch is disguised as a beach bum, and businessman Alan Stanwyk (played by Tim Matheson) offers him a deal:

Stanwyk: Excuse me. I have something I’d like to discuss with you.

Fletch: What’s that?

Stanwyk: We can’t talk about it here.

Fletch: Why not?

Stanwyk: Because we can’t.

Fletch: You on a scavenger hunt, or did I forget to pay my dinner check?

Stanwyk: Come to my house to talk.

Fletch: Wrong gal, fella.

Stanwyk: I’ll give you cash.

Fletch: What?

Stanwyk: Come to my house and listen to the proposition. If you reject the proposition, you keep the thousand…and your mouth shut.

Fletch: Does this entail my dressing up as Little Bo Peep?

Stanwyk: It’s nothing of a sexual nature.

Fletch: Yeah.

Stanwyk: One thousand just to listen? How can you pass that up, Mister…

Nugent. Ted Nugent.

Stanwyk: Alan Stanwyk.

Fletch: Alan, charmed. For an extra grand, I’ll let you take me out to dinner.

There’s no reason to believe that the one conversation between Mitt Romney and Ted Nugent went anything like this. Mitt Romney is much richer than the fictional Alan Stanwyk, and the fictional Fletch/real Chevy Chase is much funnier than Ted Nugent. But it is fascinating to speculate how that endorsement conversation really did go, and if it might have been as surreal as this.

Thinking about Fletch can’t help but bring to mind the scene where Fletch disrupts an American Legion meeting by singing an earnestly terrible version of our national anthem. And thinking about Chevy Chase can’t help but bring to mind National Lampoon’s Vacation and a dog being tied to the bumper of a station wagon. Idle thoughts, none of which have anything to do with Ted Nugent.

But if we were thinking about singing, Mitt Romney, and Ted Nugent, we might idly wonder which song—either Nugent or Amboy Dukes—Romney might choose the next time he sings or recites a song on the campaign trail (though it’s doubtful he ever will again).

Journey to the Center of the Mind (1968) was the biggest Amboy Dukes hit, but maybe the most interesting song on an album that combined blues and psychedelia was Why Is A Carrot More Orange Than An Orange?. Mitt Romney will not sing or recite it, of course, but it would be a memorable and humanizing moment:

First the world,
Then boy then girl,
Six days it took in all.
In His image he designed us
With no thought of flaw.

Now the question of perfection
Lingers in my mind.
Why is a carrot more orange than an orange?
Why are you greener than green?
Why do we sometimes believe
In things we’ve never seen?
Never doubt what it’s about
And you’ll get along fine.
But thy seeing the true meaning
Proves you’ve got a mind.
My suggestion is inspection of humanity.

I see why the ground is lower than the sky
And why sound can penetrate your mind.
But why is a carrot oranger than an orange?
Oranger than an orange?
Oranger than an orange?

Thank you, Ted Nugent.

April 23, 2012

Jackie Robinson and Sanford, Florida

Last week marked the 65th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s first major league game with the Brooklyn Dodgers, on April 15, 1947. This event was covered, though far short of the saturation coverage of stories such as the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case. But there is important common ground between the two stories—Sanford, Florida.

What brought this up was watching The Jackie Robinson Story, a biopic released in 1950 and starring Jackie Robinson as himself, while he was still one of baseball’s biggest stars.

It is not much of a film (though it includes a sweet performance by a young Ruby Dee as Robinson’s wife). But as a social document, it is essential, both for its candor about the obstacles he faced and for its occasional softening of history. One of those softened spots is Sanford.

In the spring of 1947, Robinson was playing for the Dodgers’ farm team in Montreal. Spring training was held in Sanford. There were concerns about what the reaction would be, and in fact some people in Sanford who denied Robinson the opportunity to stay there during spring training; he ended up living in Daytona Beach. In the movie, this episode is represented less heatedly, with a black lawyer simply meeting the bus in Daytona and taking Robinson to arranged housing.

Some take current events as proving that things haven’t changed, in Sanford and in general. But the year that Jackie Robinson transformed baseball, he became one of the most popular people in America—people, not just baseball players. It’s still pretty striking to watch the real Jackie Robinson standing one-of-a-kind in a fake clubhouse filled with white actors playing white players. The scene has now been replaced by clubhouses where that is unthinkable, for performance alone, if not for higher reasons of fairness and humanity. There’s little time to be comforted by achievements when faced with evidence of continuing race issues, in Sanford and elsewhere. But it’s okay to take a moment to appreciate progress where you find it, and then move on to the next fight.