Chris Powell: 'God Bless America' because it can improve itself

Kate Smith in 1948

Statue of Kate Smith in Philadelphia, removed this month amid allegations she was racist.

Nothing demonstrates both the political self-satisfaction and the psychological insecurity of the present than the rush to take historical figures out of the context of their time and deny them any fair evaluation. Such is the case with the sudden proscription by the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Flyers of Kate Smith, the popular singer from more than a half century ago whose famous rendition of Irving Berlin’s song "God Bless America" lately was being played at Yankees baseball games and Flyers hockey games.

Smith became prohibitively politically incorrect the other day when it was discovered that in the 1930s she recorded two songs that are being described as racist, which is too harsh.

One song, "That's Why Darkies Were Born," was recorded not just by Smith but also by the black singer and civil rights crusader Paul Robeson. The song is more plausibly construed as expressing sympathy and admiration for black people for refusing to let their brutally unfair burdens crush them spiritually.

The other song, "Pickaninny Heaven," which Smith sang in a movie in 1933, uses that racially derogatory term and racial stereotypes in the course of her consoling black orphans about an afterlife in which they would see their mothers again. The song's stereotypes are awful but its intent was patronizing, not vicious.

While Smith was renowned as "the songbird of the South," she does not seem to have left much of a record in regard to racial issues. But she was a national heroine for providing encouraging music during the Great Depression and then, during World War II, for singing for the troops and helping to sell more war bonds than any other celebrity. So beloved was she that, introducing her to the king and queen of the United Kingdom in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said, "Miss Smith is America."

President Reagan seems to have more or less concurred, awarding Smith the Medal of Freedom in 1982.

Now all Smith's good work is apparently to be erased and a statue of her that was erected outside the Flyers' arena because she was a fan of the team has been removed as if she had been more politically retrograde than the rest of the country. But presumably the Yankees' and Flyers' box offices and vendors will continue making change with dimes, on which Roosevelt's image remains engraved, though he put U.S. citizens of Japanese descent in internment camps during World War II and was elected president four times with the support of the segregationist South. (At least Roosevelt won the war, thereby defeating a few monstrous tyrannies.)

With Smith's "God Bless America" banished, maybe Yankees and Flyers games will stick to the national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," though its tune is much harder to sing and though its lyrics were written by Francis Scott Key, who, even as he lauded "the land of the free and the home of the brave," owned slaves, just as George Washington and many other Founding Fathers did. Their statues aren't coming down yet.

Where does this politically correct nonsense end? Cannot most people understand that American history especially is part of what is called the ascent of man, the gradual if grossly uneven improvement of moral standards in pursuit of justice? If only the perfect can be honored or even remembered fondly, history has no point.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Don Pesci: All hail Chris Powell; Trump tax cuts may lift Conn., too

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities
 -- Voltaire

Chris Powell would blush to hear someone say it, but his retirement as managing editor of the {Manchester} Journal Inquirer in January will leave a gaping hole in Connecticut journalism. Fortunately, Powell’s voice will still ring out in columns. The press notice announcing his retirement was placed amusingly on the right side of the paper’s obituary page. {Mr. Powell is a frequent contributor to New England Diary.}

Powell’s columns, many of them analytical jewels, always have had in them just enough bite to awaken slumberous readers. Unlike some commentators, he has managed to keep himself out of his writings, which in the age of twitter may be a sign of saintliness. But of course a writer is always present in his work as, say, Cervantes is present in Don Quixote.  In the same way, a managing editor of a paper is present in his product. There are a number of fine journalists in Connecticut who have fallen out of Powell’s pockets.

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President  Trump may survive moves to eject him from his presidency, a consummation devoutly wished by two of Connecticut’s fiercest anti-Trumpers, U.S. Senators Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy. The state’s junior senator, Murphy, will be up for re-election in the New Year. Connecticut likely will suffer from that provision in the new tax-reform bill that will prevent high tax states – we have the distinction of being the third-highest tax state in the nation, lagging behind New Jersey and New York -- from offering write-off provisions for state taxes.
 

There may, however, be ancillary benefits to Trump’s tax reforms. Many economists familiar with President  Kennedy’s tax reforms, somewhat similar to those of Presidents Reagan and Trump, anticipate increases in job production and GDP growth, a rising tide that will, as Kennedy once put it, lift all the boats – including Connecticut’s seriously damaged dinghy. The one thing Nutmeggers may not see in the New Year is an attempt to recover from the expected consequences of the new tax reforms through a reduction of state taxes.

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The “Me Too” movement may ebb somewhat in the New Year, because nothing is so temporary as a temporary tax increase or a movement that has become fashionable in Hollywood. Proponents of chivalry will agree the movement has been cleansing in its effects and too long in coming. But Hollywood will survive this temporary setback to libertinism, because Hollywood always survives its breeches of good manners. It is uncertain at this point whether the “Me Too” movement will or will not signal a truce on the unending war between the sexes. Distantly related to the “Me Too'’ movement, some liberal Democrats who were not sufficiently enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign are now offering guarded apologies. Married to former a president, she too was a Me Too’er.

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Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, whose approval rating in Connecticut is a few points higher than Hell’s minor devils, will not be with us in the New Year, but he will have left behind, as a memorial of his passing, a load of wreckage. Bets are on whether a gubernatorial library will be erected to preserve Malloy’s destructive tendencies during his two terms on office, including both the largest and the second largest tax increases in state history. In certain quarters, the leave-taking of the most progressive governor in Connecticut since Wilbur Cross – discounting former Maverick Gov. Lowell Weicker -- will be celebrated with a moment of telling silence. Progressivism, which is state-socialism without the Gulag, will survive Malloy’s passing, because progressivism always survives.

Most recently Ben Barnes, Malloy’s budget guru, wrote a letter to his boss doubting whether legislators could restore cuts to a program that helps seniors and the disabled pay for Medicare insurance without seriously damaging a balanced budget that has mysteriously become unbalanced weeks after it had been written into law. Malloy wrote in reply that he was grateful for Barnes’s analysis, which “illustrates the difficulty of realizing significant savings on top of what we’ve already achieved with respect to overtime and ‘other expenses’ accounts. We must avoid a ‘fix’ to the MSP that relies on overly optimistic savings or unrealistic lapses, which would only exacerbate the larger, looming budgetary challenge we face.” The Malloy administration had during its run continually relied upon fanciful budget projections, thefts from this or that “lockbox” to be deposited in the general fund, and temporary “fixes” such as layoffs that Malloy’s SEBAC agreement would deny to future governors until 2027, the year when his union favorable agreement with SEBAC is due to expire.

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No one on Connecticut’s media laughs at such preposterous posturing. Karl Kraus -- Austrian writer and journalist, essayist, aphorist, playwright, poet, perhaps the most significant European satirist since Jonathan Swift, seriously thought the fate of civilization “may depend upon the placement of a comma.” Asked why he wrote, Kraus said “I have to do this as long as it is at all possible; for if those who are obliged to look after commas had always made sure they were in the right place, then Shanghai would not be burning.”

It is a thought serious journalists might want to bear in mind during the New Year.

Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based columnist.