Calling Upon Downton

I recently started watching Downton Abbey on PBS.  And while the series isn’t the most revolutionary, I was amazed at its immense popularity.  At its basic core, Downton Abbey is nothing more than a period soap opera, but beyond that its appeal can be summoned in one word: civility.  This trait is a very telling aspect of its audience who longs to see fiction turned into reality.

Set between 1912-1920, Downton Abbey focuses on the relationships between the Crowley family and their servants.  Unlike popular soap operas of the past, Dallas, Day of our Lives and Dynasty, Downton Abbey’s plots and characters never stray into the cheap and tawdry.  Quite the opposite, instead the family’s patriarch and leading servants, strive to instill and display values of integrity and honor to everyone who enters the estate that is Downton.

Watching the series is a master class in British etiquette, and yet it is so sad to see customs that have fallen aside.   Downton Abbey maybe a fictional world of manners, but something must be said in that it has captured the attention of so many.  And yet, this degeneration of social mores in our culture has not just filtered into our personal relationships, but our politics, mass entertainment culture and business practices.  In Washington it’s crippling our ability to self-govern and paralyzing our dreams for the future.

With Republican Convention set to begin next week, and the Democratic Convention the week after, I would urge party strategists to take note.  After the absurd chains comment by Vice President Biden, and the absolutely stupid rape statement made by Representative Aiken, it’s time for both parties to take notice.  Americans are frustrated with Washington’s continued mission to ideologically divide this country and with the juvenile gotcha moments that seem to drive both parties’ daily agenda.

As each nominee finalizes his convention speech, let their respective nights be a moment of statesmanship.  Between fiscal cliffs, a disappearing middle class, and uncertainty throughout the world, time is too precious to focus on distractions and wars of media messaging destruction.  President Obama and Governor Romney should take a page from Downton Abbey, and exhibit the best of American politics, not the worst.  There is no shame, only honor, in restoring our values.

The Music and Marvin

Composer Marvin Hamlisch is being remembered today as one of the saviors of Broadway.  In yesterday’s New York Post, theater columnist Michael Reidel paid tribute to Hamlisch saying, “It was, as his song ‘One’ goes, a ‘singular sensation’ that saved the Great White Way — and, in some ways, New York City itself.”  And while Hamlisch may forever be associated with his musical A Chorus Line, I’ll forever remember him and his music for the guidance they provided my life during a time of uncertainty.

When I was 20 years old I moved to New York City for a summer.  I had just worked on Rick Santorum’s 2006 senate campaign, where we lost by 16%.  The loss broke me, and really made me question whether a life in politics, in public service, was really worth it.

On my first night in New York City I saw A Chorus Line at Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.  Towards the end of the show, there’s a song called, “What I Did Love” where the auditioning dancers are asked, how would you feel if you could no longer dance?  One of the aspiring chorus girls, Diana, steps forward and sings:

Kiss today goodbye,
And point me t’ward tomorrow.
We did what we had to do.
Won’t forget, can’t regret
What I did for love

Even though I was standing in the last row of the orchestra, behind a packed house, I felt that song was directed at me.  The message that life’s passions are worth fighting for, that ups and downs will occur, that I should never regret a choice, struck a chord with me.  Politics was always my first love and if I was going to make a difference, I had to preserve through difficulties.

A Chorus Line was groundbreaking for a myriad of reasons, but I feel none more than for its honesty.  The show’s portrayal of the so-called ‘gypsies’ of Broadway, the dancers, was so honest and real.  Everyone who ever saw A Chorus Line related to their dreams, struggles, hopes and failures.  We may all not have been dancers, but we understood what it meant when life puts us on the line.

The Great White Way paid tribute to Marvin Hamlisch last night when Broadway marquees were dimed in his honor.  I’ll always remember him for the life lesson his music taught me about persevering and never losing sight of my dream.  After leaving New York, I returned to Washington, DC for a political job that would forever change my life.  However I did so remembering that I won’t forget, can’t regret, what I did for love.

Marvin Hamlisch was 68.

In Memoriam: Gore Vidal

Playwright, author, activist and politician Gore Vidal died on Wednesday.  A few months ago I had the thrill of seeing his 1960 play The Best Man on Broadway, where it continues to play in a star-studded revival.  And while Vidal may have been an outspoken left-wing activist, I appreciated his brutal portrayal of politics and honesty with the audience about the consequence of making public service a zero-sum game.

Gore Vidal and I shared differing political beliefs.  I viewed him as a leftist, arrogant, faux-intellectual.  Even though we never met, I’m sure Mr. Vidal would have had choice words for me as well.  And while I disagreed with his politics, I respect the passion in which he communicated his thoughts and beliefs.

In my April review of The Best Man I praised the prophetic nature in which Vidal foreshadowed the future of American politics.  The play can be hard to swallow because it doesn’t feel like we’re watching theatre, rather instead an episode of Meet the Press.  Good theatre shouldn’t just entertain, it should move us.  Seeing The Best Man accomplishes that, and makes us reckon the ongoing consequences currently endured by the tone of our politics.

Our nation is at a point where politics, and politicians, are held in such low regard that the American public is desensitized to the ongoing divineness.  Indeed Gore Vidal once said, “Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won’t be.”  I doubt any voter truly believes that either President Obama or Governor Romney can really solve the malaise that has fallen over our capital.

And while Vidal may have hated the tone of American politics, he was fond to quip, “There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”  So this weekend, in a tribute to him, go see The Best Man on Broadway or watch the 1964 movie version with Henry Fonda.  But while doing so remember, that while we can’t change a play/movie, we can change the present.  Perhaps that is Vidal’s lasting legacy.

The Best Man will close on September 9, 2012.  Tickets and further information maybe found by visiting: http://thebestmanonbroadway.com/

To learn more about Gore Vidal, please visit: http://www.gorevidalnow.com/