Byrd-Watching

(reprinted from a June 2004 piece that ran on Richmond.com)

by F. T. Rea

"Today was a good day," said Tony Pelling, referring to the $4,000 in contributions that had arrived on June 28th in the mail. That brought the total in the Byrd Theatre Foundation's growing kitty to $82,000.

"The City is making a grant for $150,000," chimed in Bertie Selvey.

The Byrd Theatre Foundation, with a 501(C)(3) status that makes donations to it tax deductible, has a clear mission: "... to implement and support the procurement of funds for the purchase, renovation, and ultimately the operation of the Byrd Theatre and to insure its continuation as a movie palace."

Pelling assumed the role of the foundation's president in January 2004. He and Selvey are two of 22 board members. Selvey also heads up the Byrd Watchers, a lively group of volunteers that stages fund-raising events -- auctions, concerts and you-name-it -- to benefit the foundation.

"We've started to negotiate with the heirs [the family that inherited the building]," said Selvey, with obvious satisfaction. She explained that several options are being discussed.

The foundation's reason for wanting to buy the Byrd Theatre as soon as possible -- with its 16-by-36-foot movie screen, its two-and-a-half-ton Czechoslovakian chandelier, its Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ and its 1,396 seats -- is that the current operator Duane Nelson is not in a position to guarantee the Byrd's future. Although Nelson, who has operated the cinema since 1984, generally takes in enough revenue in box office receipts and concession sales to get by day-to-day, he has not been able to put aside the kind of money it would take to stave off an emergency; let alone restore the 76-year-old cinema.

So, as it stands today, with any bad luck involving the Byrd's ancient equipment, or the roof, etc., and the screen could go dark. Hopefully, for the sake of the theater's regular audience for second-run movies, the foundation will get its ducks in a row before anything like that happens.

The total price tag to buy the building and equipment, then to restore it to its original splendor is $3.5 million. Among other things that would include a new roof, refurbished seats, new carpets, repairs to the pipe organ, a thorough cleaning, and putting its neon marquee back in place.

The Byrd Theatre, at 2908 West Cary Street, was built in 1928 for $900,000 by Walter Coulter and Charles Somma. During its initial four decades of operation the Byrd was considered to be the premiere movie house in Richmond.

In the '70s the Byrd fell onto hard times when national trends essentially moved the motion picture exhibition business to the suburbs in every town. During that time most of the Byrd's remaining counterparts, urban movie palaces built just prior to the Depression, closed. Many were destroyed.

Today the Byrd's Mighty Wurlitzer is one of only two still being played for American audiences on a regular basis; the other is housed in New York City's Radio City Music Hall. In addition to special events Selvey's Byrd Watchers have a number of plans to accommodate film buffs who want to hop on board the bandwagon to rescue and restore the Byrd.

Meanwhile, Pelling looks forward to seeing more good news arrive in the mail. Their optimism is both refreshing and contagious. The show must go on.

*

To contact the Byrd Theatre Foundation call (804) 342-9100, or email gjw1995pel@aol.com. The Byrd Watchers can be reached at (804) 358-9901, or by emailing bertieselvey@earthlink.com.

-- 30 --

Denial City

After President Bush’s strange interview on Meet the Press yesterday morning, does the D.C. that follows Washington now stand for Denial City?

Then comes the New York Times to weigh in on Bush's performance:

“Yesterday, in an interview with NBC's Tim Russert, after a week in which it became obvious to most Americans that the justifications for the war were based on flawed intelligence, Mr. Bush offered his reflections, and they were far from reassuring. The only clarity in the president's vision appears to be his own perfect sense of self-justification.”

“Mr. Bush’s explanation of how he reconciled the current activities in Iraq with his 2000 campaign rejection of ‘nation building’ was simply silly. (American troops are building a nation in Iraq, he said, but they are also ‘fighting a war so that they can build a nation.’) And it’s very hard to take seriously Mr. Bush's contention that he was not surprised by the intensity of the resistance in Iraq.”

The one thing that I noticed most about Bush’s performance from the Oval office -- his obvious discomfort -- the Times neglected to mention. The usual presidential smirk had faded into an odd expression that made him look as if he was sick to his stomach. Perhaps he's had to eat so much crow in the last week that he was suffering from a touch of the avian stomach flu.

Click here to read the Times editorial.

Remember the Alamo?

"Knowing what I knew then and knowing what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq," President Bush is reported to have said today to an audience of military personnel and cadets in Charleston, South Carolina.

Then, according to unnamed Internet sources, Bush went into a rant that made Howard Dean sound like Mr. Rogers (if Mr. Rogers was still alive, of course):

“Hey, Spider Hole Saddam was such bad man that he had to go, WMD’s, or not. After all, didn’t the Hitler of the Middle East grind up and eat Iraqi children by the millions? How disgusting is that? Now, do you want us to let him go, so he can eat our babies, too? Didn’t the man bury left-handed people alive? Don’t you know someone who is left-handed? Didn’t he mock me -- me! -- the president of the greatest nation in history? Didn’t he try to kill my daddy? Remember how he gassed the nerds, er, Kurds?

“Hey, forget about what liberals say about my missing National Guard records. They’re gone. Gone! And, who cares? Don't side with Saddam. Remember the Alamo!”

Meanwhile, AP reports: "In his first public defense of prewar intelligence, CIA Director George Tenet said today that U.S. analysts had never claimed Iraq was an imminent threat, the main argument used by President Bush for going to war.

Mirth of a Nation

Mark Katz once had a rather unusual job; he used to write jokes to be sprinkled into the speeches of a sitting president. Now Katz has penned a book about his adventures at the White House called “Clinton & Me.”

Washington Monthly has published a piece that features excerpts of the book. In it Katz writes, “He opened the door and I jumped to my feet. Watching the president of the United States enter the room is always a startling sight. Of course, the sight he encountered might have caught him off-guard too: a nervous guy in a tuxedo secluded in a dimly-lit holding room with a stack of pages in one hand and an egg timer in the other. Although this was the fifth humor speech I had prepared for President Bill Clinton since he'd taken office, we were about to have our very first one-on-one meeting.”

Progressives Weigh In

“National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice took to the airwaves yesterday as the latest Administration official to defend the White House’s hyping of intelligence, inflating of the Iraqi ‘imminent/urgent/immediate/mortal threat,’ and failure to find the WMD it said there was ‘no doubt’ Iraq possessed.”

Yet, she repeatedly rejected calls for an independent investigation.”

The Center for American Progress is a good source of info if you’re running short of reasons to distrust President Bush and his merry band of neocons and Neanderthals.

Kerry Keeps On Keeping On

John Hall, a veteran reporter based in DeeCee, is the senior Washington correspondent for Media General News Service. He’s hardly a flaming liberal and his regular columns, which appear in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, are known for their uncluttered and penetrating analysis. In Hall's piece today (Jan. 29) he recalls being in the room in 1971 when a passionate 27-year-old Navy officer in green fatigues, who was the head of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“[John] Kerry was articulate and spoke in complete sentences. A product of St. Paul’s prep school and Yale, Kerry had volunteered for the Navy in the age of the military draft and survived the most hazardous kind of mission that the service had to offer -- leading a five-man crew patrolling the Mekong Delta in a small craft.

“[Senator] Symington identified, one by one, each of the ribbons on Kerry's chest. This was no campus radical, but a highly decorated service member who had turned against the war.”

That was the day now Sen. John Kerry began his career in national politics by asking the gathered senators this question: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Treading in Red Ink

It sure is a good thing George “Bring-It-On” Bush is an avowed fiscal conservative, who consistently calls for a smaller, less intrusive federal government. Or, else we the people might wake up to find ourselves drowning in blood red ink.

As we, the aforementioned, tread mightily to stay afloat in the drink, the Bush administration’s version of a lean and mean conservative machine only missed balancing the books this year by about a half a trillion bucks.

Yikes! USA Today reports, “The federal budget deficit will reach $477 billion this year, the biggest ever in dollar terms, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday.”

Still, the sitting president -- who has been eagerly spending the people’s money like a drunken sailor on liberty -- is calling for more tax cuts for his super wealthy campaign contributors. If the prez gets his way that will ultimately mean more states and cities will be forced to raise their taxes to cover their shortfalls.

So, the bottom line puts the bite on the chumps in this story -- America’s middle class. Let’s see, just which of the three nutshells of disinformation did President Bring-It-On put the dried pea of fiscal conservatism under?

More of Kay's Say

Former chief weapons sleuth David Kay has testified that Iraq documented the destruction of its WMD’s, well before the pre-invasion threats issued by President Bush. Naturally, that has put the White House on the defensive. Since Kay’s resignation on Friday, he has basically said that Bush's chief justification for launching the war was bogus. Like, the Democrats who have suddenly found their backbone, Kay is calling for a full scale investigation into what went wrong.

‘“If the weapons programs existed on the scale we anticipated,’ Kay said, ‘we would have found something that leads to that conclusion. Instead, we found other evidence that points to something else.’ Kay reiterated his view that 85 percent of the Iraq Survey Group’s job has been completed and that ‘the major pieces of the puzzle’ have been covered.”

Unlike the Dems, Kay still holds Bush blameless, nonetheless. Read more in the Washington Post article summing up Kay's comments.

Clues in the Numbers?

For a look at the Washington Post’s table of exit poll info on the New Hampshire primary results click here.

More News About the News

Opinion polls and focus group numbers have gained the sort of sway over our lives that we would not have willingly given up. Stories about the results of political opinion polls substitute for news of events every day. Such desk-bound reporting, for the most part, is news about the news industry itself. In other words, you don't have to go out and search for the news if you can whip it up in your own shop.

All of which leads to the definition of the word “news.” And, in this case the news industry is perfectly situated to establish the most accepted definitions for most of the words that are in the pop political lexicon. The same news industry is the largest player in branding all fresh ideas and positions on new issues as being “liberal” or “conservative.” Which, of course, does much to shape the discussion.

Yet, scoff at polls as we might, such surveys still record an on-the-fly grainy snapshot of a moment that will pass as evidence of a quick and dirty truth. So, we grumble about polls, remind readers of their evil and we watch them avidly. And, we do our part to shape the argument, when we can.

Readers can keep up with the Donkey Derby's latest poll numbers at the pollster's own web site Zogby International.

Neo-Con-Men

To gain more insight into the rather twisted history of the neoconservative movement in America this piece by Brian Giles is useful. Wouldn't you like to know more about where the likes of Rove and Wolfowitz got their ideas?

Surprisingly, in the 1960s, Richmond’s own much-admired Supreme Court Justice, the late Lewis F. Powell, Jr., played a role in the story, according to Giles.

"The term 'neoconservative' makes less and less sense the more it is explored. Conservatism is based on preserving the status quo and opposing progressive changes, but the neocons were radicals at heart, defying the very meaning of 'conservative.'"

Read the story on the Weekly Dig: The Best Little Paper in Boston.

Politics Is Fun Again!

So far the best line I’ve heard on the Howard Dean Iowa meltdown rant has come from the movie critic, Tom Shales, who appeared on MSNBC to characterize the lathered up doctor as, “Yosemite Sam as Captain Ahab.”

Along those cartoon lines I can see Dean as an exasperated, red-faced Elmer Fudd reacting to one of Bugs Bunny’s carrot-crunching, got-you-last, “Neyahh… What’s up doc?” cracks.

Ray McAllister hits the headlines-to-satire ball of opportunity out of the park with his column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The premise has politicians, local and national competing on an imaginary TV show in which they sing various songs. The fun is in sticking the right pol with the most appropriate pop hit.

“‘Howard Dean scores big with "Dancin' In The Streets" and its memorable chorus:

“They’re dancin’ in Chicago, down in New Orleans, up in New York City. Not only are we dancin’ in New Hampshire, we’re dancin’ in South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico. . . . And don’t forget the Motor City.’”

There’s more on Dean and others. Check the column out for more comic relief.

Internet Reaction to Dean in Iowa

Popular blogger Kos has been a Howard Dean supporter of the first order. To see the reaction to Dean’s Iowa concession speech on that site click here.

“Dean’s biggest problem right now is his high negatives. Those stem in large part from his Rebel Yell, but also from his reluctance to show his private side. In modern politics, people need to peek behind the veil to make the necessary emotional connection with their candidate. And meeting the spouse is a critical component of making that connection.”

Blather and More Blather

President George Bush’s State of the Union Address was a good example of a strategy that football fans may recognize. As the incumbent, Bush is not unlike a team with a big lead, early in the game. And, last night he seemed to be a guy who was playing not-to-lose.

Bush said nothing that mattered. He was boring and the old smirk was back.

Did the Democrats recognize his “prevent defense” and take advantage of the opportunity it presented?

No. The Dems' response, delivered immediately afterward by Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle, was so tepid that they made Bush’s tack look smart. Perhaps the candidates in New Hampshire will do a better job of taking him to task. If they don't they deserve to lose.

Stay tuned…

Going for Broke

One of the most articulate voices being raised, these days, against the smoke and mirrors being used by the Bush administration to befuddle the public is that of Paul Krugman. Krugman, a prize-winning economist and Princeton professor, writes regular OpEd pieces for the New York Times.

Here’s part of his Times piece anticipating George Bush’s speech tonight:

“Mr. Bush's relentless partisanship has depleted much of the immense good will he enjoyed after 9/11. He is still adored by his base, but he is deeply distrusted by much of the nation. Mr. Bush may not understand this; indeed, he still seems to think that he's another Lincoln or F.D.R. "No president has done more for human rights than I have," he told Ken Auletta.

“But his political handlers seem to have decided on a go-for-broke strategy: confuse the middle one last time, energize the base and grab enough power that the consequences don't matter.”

Click here to read the rest of it.

After Iowa

by F. T. Rea

With Iowa's results in, it seems Howard Dean may be playing the role in 2004 that Eugene McCarthy played in 1968. McCarthy was the insurgent then. And, his candidacy changed history, but surely not in the way he would have wanted or imagined.

Senator McCarthy (D-Minn) was out in front of most in his party in his outspoken criticism of the Vietnam War policy of his fellow Democrat, President Lyndon Johnson. Then McCarthy had the temerity to run against Johnson in the New Hampshire primary in that pivotal year.

It was McCarthy’s remarkably strong showing in N.H. that prompted Robert Kennedy’s sudden entry into the presidential sweepstakes, only days afterwards.

All that set in motion the events that led to Johnson announcing he would not run for reelection, which came as a shock to many. Then Sen. Kennedy (D-N.Y.), originally from Massachusetts, began to pick up momentum like a runaway train. RFK seemed well on his way to winning the Democratic nomination until the train flew off the tracks in California, where Kennedy was shot to death immediately after winning the primary there.

Post-Iowa it seems Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass), a decorated veteran of the war in Vietnam, may be the biggest benefactor of Dean having defined the anti-war issue.

Running against Bush, legitimate war hero Kerry would be in a good position to underline the absurdity of the sitting president's flight-suited pose while declaring victory in Iraq.

Perhaps, too, now Kerry needs to watch his back.

McGovern Likes Clark

The Democrats' defeated peace candidate of the 1972 presidential race, former-senator George McGovern, has endorsed former-four-star general Wes Clark. It’s interesting to note that McGovern, who was characterized by his Nixon-following opposition as an utter wuss because he opposed the war in Vietnam, was a decorated bomber pilot during WWII.

"I am here to endorse, with all my heart and strength, General Wes Clark," the three-term senator from South Dakota told about 500 people gathered at a pancake breakfast at Keene Middle School. McGovern said it was "important" for Democrats to "recover" the White House from President Bush, a Republican.

Read the CNN story.

Bloggers Changing the Rules of Politics

“They call themselves bloggers. Their mission: to remake political journalism and, quite possibly, democracy itself. The plan: to run an end around big media by becoming publishers on the Internet.”

Kathy Kiely examines the blogging phenomenon in USA Today.