A passing

Last night I happened to watch Live from Lincoln Center on PBS. For once, it was not live. It was the celebration of the show's 30th anniversary, and it showed many of the great performances the show has aired over the past 30 years. At the end the host, Hugh Downs, announced that he would be stepping aside after all these years to pursue his "other passions."

I guess I became familiar with Hugh Downs when he was Jack Paar's Ed MacMahon. [But, to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen's response to Dan Quail, Ed MacMahon is no Hugh Downs]. That was a long long time ago in a place far far away, and thinking back to it makes me feel really old, which I guess is why this event kind of got to me. I, for one, will miss his comfortable colloquy throughout the performances.

My son was six when Live from Lincoln Center aired its first broadcast.

Somehow, all this seems to fit together with a book I have been listening to which takes me back to a period only a few years earlier. A neighbor, who is also a reader of this blog, lent me the audio tapes of John Dean's The Rehnquest Choice. It's the story of how Rehnquest was selected by Dick Nixon for the Supreme Court. Significant sections of the tape are taken directly from the infamous Nixon tapes with Nixon, Erlichman, Haldeman, and Mitchell plotting to destroy the country. Listening to those thugs in their own voices reminds me of how bad things were back then. Yet, in some ways listening to this is a sentimental journey for me, because as bad as things were back then, they're far worse today with Bush and his henchmen destroying what little is left of the democracy our founders envisioned.

Then, once Nixon resigned, we still had some hope. Now, I'm not so sure. As Paul Krugman concluded his column today in the NY Times:

Are we - by which I mean both the public and the press - ready for political leaders who don't pander, who are willing to talk about complicated issues and call for responsible policies? That's a test of national character. I wonder whether we'll pass.