Caitlyn Jenner and California, &c.

On the latest reality-TV star and tabloid celeb in politics; the status of Alexei Navalny; a song for Mother’s Day; and more

T here is some enthusiasm for Caitlyn Jenner, who’s running for governor of California. This gives me a memory. Some readers aren’t going to like it — but I’m going to relate it anyway.

In September 2000, Governor George W. Bush of Texas was trailing Vice President Al Gore in the presidential race. On a Tuesday, Bush went on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show. Two days later, on Thursday, he went on Regis Philbin’s. Bush was judged to have made a fine impression on each of those shows. He rose in the polls, drawing even with Gore.

A friend of mine — an intellectual who is closely attuned to politics — commented, “What a stupid country.”

Now, I know many will take offense at this. They’re sick of hearing the country run down. (Unless they themselves are doing the running down, for their own reasons.) But my friend is as patriotic as the day is long. More patriotic than almost anybody. And he was very much in favor of Bush and the Republicans in that election.

He simply wished — and wishes — for a more serious polity. Government is serious business, like it or not.

When I behold the boomlet for Caitlyn Jenner, I think, “What a stupid country.” This is a reality-TV star. A tabloid figure. She is part of the whole Kardashian world. As Bruce Jenner, she was a great athlete, true — one of the greatest in the world. Today, she is famous for being a transgender woman (if I have used the right language). (Every time you refer to the transgender world, you step into a minefield. I really don’t care. I am heedless of the bombs going off around me.)

Governor of California, mind you, is a damn important position.

“But what about Ronald Reagan!” you might say. Yeah, what about him? He was in the movies, and his first elected office was the governorship of California.

Well, he was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild seven times — from 1947 to 1959. (He is the only labor head ever to be elected president of the United States.) He was intensely political. This was one of the complaints of Jane Wyman, by the way. (Nancy Davis would share Reagan’s taste for politics.)

Reagan gave essentially political talks on the circuit for General Electric over the course of many years. At the end of the 1964 presidential campaign, he gave an important speech for Goldwater (“A Time for Choosing”).

Way back in the mid 1940s, he campaigned for Hubert Humphrey, who was running for mayor of Minneapolis. In 1948, Reagan supported Truman for president and Humphrey for U.S. senator. Listen to him. Listen to him here.

“This is Ronald Reagan, speaking to you from Hollywood. You know me as a motion-picture actor. But tonight, I’m just a citizen, pretty concerned about the national election next month — and more than a little impatient with those promises the Republicans made before they got control of Congress a couple of years ago.”

Reagan proceeds to make a straightforward Democratic speech, knockin’ the big corporations and standin’ up for the Little Guy. But whatever you or I may think of the speech, it is a serious one, in substance and tone.

Did Donald Trump — a reality-TV star and tabloid figure, like Jenner — ever make such a speech, before he rose to the presidency? How many did he make after? How many has he made to this day?

Caitlyn Jenner, another Republican, made a video about the fall of California that many are wild about. Well and good. Kevin Faulconer made such a film, too — terrific. I wrote about it at the beginning of a piece about him last month, here. Faulconer is a Republican, too. He has a record — a long, substantial political record. For eight years, he was on the San Diego City Council, and then he was mayor of the city, for six. He had to make decisions — executive decisions. He is tested.

Yet he may well be eclipsed by Jenner. The eclipse may have already occurred.

I trust you see what I’ve been driving at. I fear that the country is drunk on celebrity — on tabloid celebrity, at that — and this makes me worried about the future, and about the present, for that matter.

Before leaving the subject of California, I’d like to say something about that state’s recall process. I think it’s screwy — absolutely asinine. Republicans tend to like it, because they were able to oust a Democratic governor, Gray Davis, in 2003. They got Arnold Schwarzenegger (a movie star, one of the biggest). You know how many candidates were on the recall ballot that year? One hundred and thirty-five.

Come on.

This year, Republicans are hoping to oust Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor, in a recall. The regular gubernatorial election is scheduled for November 2022. And California has an impeachment process, for official corruption and what have you.

I think the recall road is absurd, and I think Republicans would recognize it as such, if they weren’t the ones benefiting from it.

But: When Jeff Jacoby talks, I listen. He is my old friend and colleague, a veteran columnist for the Boston Globe. He is staunchly pro-recall. As you will see, he considers it “a jewel in the crown of California’s democracy.” So, a Jacobyan point of view.

And if Caitlyn Jenner becomes governor, I hope she’ll do a good job. But — geezum.

My Republican critics will call me snobbish. But if it were Democrats, instead of Republicans, going for tabloid celebs, the Dems would call me snobbish, and the R’s would cheer me: “Damn right, get serious, morons!” We don’t have politics in this country so much as tribalism. Rank, raw tribalism.

• Anthony Gonzalez is a GOP congressman from Ohio. He was a football star at Ohio State, and then went to the NFL. He is an unusual GOP congressman in that he was one of the few — ten — who voted to impeach Donald Trump last January.

As a result, the Ohio Republican Party has censured him and called on him to resign. Read about it here.

Some of my friends and colleagues get bent out of shape when someone suggests that the GOP has devolved into nothing but a personality cult around Trump. But you can see why people do the suggesting . . .

• In some writing about Liz Cheney last week, I quoted Gonzalez: “If a prerequisite for leading our conference is continuing to lie to our voters, then Liz is not the best fit. Liz isn’t going to lie to people” — which can be a big handicap, you know?

Into the breach steps Elise Stefanik, the GOP-er from New York. She is campaigning against Cheney by going on the talk shows of Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka. This tells you where the juice in the Republican Party, and the juice on the right, is.

• In recent weeks, I’ve written about Alexei Navalny and Amnesty International. Navalny, as you know, is the Russian opposition leader, currently imprisoned. AI, as you also know, is the world’s best-known human-rights organization. AI designated Navalny a “prisoner of conscience”; then they yanked the designation; now they have restored it. To read AI’s latest statement, go here. I think that statement is weaselly — but it is welcome nonetheless.

“Prisoner of conscience” is an AI designation. I mean, they came up with the phrase, way back. So who am I to adjudicate it? Who am I to tell AI who’s a prisoner of conscience and who’s not? I can only plead that I am a bit of a student of AI and of the designation “prisoner of conscience.” Both come up in my history of the Nobel Peace Prize — frequently. AI, as an organization, won the prize in 1977.

In the original understanding, a “prisoner of conscience” is this: someone imprisoned for what he thinks, not for what he does; someone imprisoned for his views, and the expression of them, not for his deeds.

An aside: AI could not, and did not, classify Nelson Mandela as a prisoner of conscience. They assisted him — and of course the general anti-apartheid cause — nonetheless.

• Feel like some language? Some culture, some society? Have a look at this wonderful obit of Lloyd Price, the early rock-’n’-roller, or rather, proto–rock-’n’-roller. It is from the New York Times. Take a look, in particular, at this sentence: “Mr. Price found success with Black and white audiences alike.” Does the incongruity of capitalization seem jarring to you? Even silly? It does to me. I wonder whether the Times will reconsider, and revert.

• John U. Bacon is my fellow Ann Arborite and my fellow Huron High School River Rat. He is a prominent journalist and best-selling book author. I loved his Mother’s Day offering, “Tribute to a Hockey Mom.”

• On Twitter, I have developed a little Mother’s Day tradition. I offer a song, “Benedeit die sel’ge Mutter” (“Blessed Be Your Mother in Heaven”), by Hugo Wolf. I mean, I don’t sing it, for goodness’ sake — I have Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau do it, as here. It is one of the most beautiful songs ever penned.

Lately, I have been writing about Christa Ludwig, the great mezzo-soprano, who has just died at 93. In an interview, she told me that she retired from singing without tears — without regrets. She was ready. Except in one respect: It killed her not to be able to sing Hugo Wolf anymore. She loved him so. He was her No. 1.

Which one can well understand.

• Just a splash of white blooms, on a sunny Sunday morning in Central Park? Here you go:

• You’ve heard of SEAL training, I trust. How about seal training? Less arduous than the former. And more treats are involved. Here’s another shot of Sunday morning, in Central Park:

(There’s a zoo in the park, I should note.)

Thank you for joining me, everybody. Have a rockin’ Monday, or at least a tolerable one. See you next time.

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