My Impromptus column today is headed “Backlash babies, &c.” “Backlash babies”? I have sometimes called myself one. Two days ago, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by a senior at Princeton University, Adam S. Hoffman: “My Liberal Campus Is Pushing Freethinkers to the Right.” Very familiar.
In today’s column, I also discuss the defamation case that Dominion Voting Systems has brought against Fox News. A recent filing in the case is chockfull of internal communications at Fox: texts, e-mails, and so on from executives and on-air personalities. Highly interesting.
I end my column with some musical notes. Do you know that Kiss is staging a farewell tour? The band was formed in 1973. In my column, I ask — McCarthy-style — “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Kiss Army?”
In 2012, I interviewed and wrote about Michael Hersch, one of the leading classical composers of today. Here is an excerpt from that piece:
Hersch’s parents weren’t musical, and there was no piano in the house . . . The family would listen to the radio on their frequent car trips: bluegrass, rock, Casey Kasem’s American Top 40. Michael appreciated everything he heard. “I joined the KISS Army in 1978,” he says. He would have been six or seven then. There were also bands like Bad Brains and Corrosion of Conformity.
I first heard of the Kiss Army — “KISS Army”? — from the lips of Michael Hersch.
My column yesterday was headed “The president as national mayor, &c.” A reader writes,
Jay,
You reminded me of the old expression “Don’t make a federal case out of it!” This expression occurs to me whenever I think about the expansion of the federal government into things that should be handled by state or local government, or by private groups.
I got to wondering about the origin of the expression. And Barry Popik has the answer.
Popik is an American etymologist, and he writes,
New York City-born comedian Jimmy Durante (1893-1980) used “Why the guy’s making a federal case out of it” on his radio show with Gary Moore, The Durante-Moore Show, broadcast about 1944 and printed in a book published in 1945. The phrase was picked up by other New York writers (Walter Winchell, Evan Hunter, George Axelrod, Jerome Weidman) and it appears likely that Durante coined the expression of “making a federal case.”
You know what else Durante is responsible for? It’s kind of related to the question of government and its duties: “Everybody wants to get into the act!”
I’ll tell you something about “make a federal case out of it” — something I learned from a musician at the Metropolitan Opera: When the late conductor James Levine cautioned you against overemphasizing a note, a phrase, or a moment, he would sometimes say, “Don’t make a federal case out of it.”
Again, for today’s Impromptus — full of interesting and touchy subjects — go here.