UnBornAgain Yesterday

One of my favorite old films (I thought I had reviewed it here, but I can’t find it) is George Cukor’s 1951 remake of the Garson Kanin stage play Born Yesterday. It’s not that the film is so great, but Judy Holliday is worth watching again and again (she won an Oscar for the performance). She plays Billie Dawn, a New York chorus girl who gets lured into being the for-hire girlfriend of junk dealer and aspiring racketeer and all round shitheel Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford). Billie is loud and brash, a rough stone from a poor background who now finds herself with money via her millionaire boyfriend. Harry doesn’t really grasp how the adult world works, but he thinks he does and he imagines Billie’s ignorance is getting in the way of his success. So when a journalist shows up at his hotel suite to interview him—William Holden—Harry hires the guy to “smarten her up.” And they all learn that a rough stone might, when polished, turn out to be something very different.

It’s really a lovely little Pygmalion kind of story, buoyed as I said by Judy Holliday’s really fabulous performance—you really can’t take your eyes off her. Broderick Crawford plays his role splendidly well, but his character is frankly unattractive—boorish, loud, abusive to everyone, entitled yet out of his depths, critical of everything, over-rich yet not very competent.

It reminds me of someone, which fact kind of ties into today’s theme.

One of the elements of Billie’s awakening at the hands of her tutor involves his explaining the workings of American government. Harry and Billie are in DC so that Harry can buy some politicians, and Billie uses her lessons as an impetus to learn about how Washington works. And in the process—and via her tutor’s passions about the nation’s fundaments—she comes to see the glory of the system Harry is trying to break for personal riches.

Anyway, everything old is new again. History repeats again and again and again.

I thought of this film today as I spent a couple hours wandering the Capitol Mall in DC. I have a 36 hour layover in Baltimore, so I rode a local train an hour South to look around (I think it’s been more than 30 years since I was here last). I find myself hearing William Holden’s voice from the film, stirring words about the Capitol buildings as the cheesy patriotic music swells in the background.

At one point near the end of the film Harry runs into resistance from his much-abused lawyer who complains that Congresspeople cannot just be bought to suit Harry’s whims (though that’s exactly why they’re there). “Why not?” Harry asks. “Because these guys are honest,” the lawyer scolds.

Walking past these same buildings today I couldn’t help thinking what a sham the whole place is. The super-grandiose buildings (oddly mimicking architecture from 500 years before, as though the work done within won’t be taken seriously unless the buildings look MUCH older), the whole town trying like a theatre set to win us over by force of pretense; the armed guards everywhere; the black SUVs with smoked windows; the barricades and roadblocks. All of it, as it happens, protecting a failed exercise: one party bent on a malicious overthrow, the other unable to meet the challenge.

As I wandered the Capitol grounds the Senate had just failed to conduct a legitimate trial of the president for obstruction of justice and abuse of power—charges for which the House of Representatives impeached him a few weeks ago (only the third such impeachment in the country’s history). The Senate’s was a trial in name only. The Senate Majority Leader stated openly and in advance that he would scuttle the trial, and virtually every Republican lined up behind him: they voted almost to a person to refuse even to allow witnesses to be questioned. This despite the common knowledge that the president is absolutely guilty as charged—guilty of this and very much more.

The acquittal is an act of organized, pure partisanship—the latest chapter in an insurgency stretching back over 10 years now, with roots going back even before that, to Reagan. Partisanship is not necessarily bad; opposing Nazis, say, seems a thing that should be done without even-handedness. “Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” But this is partisanship without even the pretense of a social or civic purpose. This present act of partisanship is just a naked power grab, a nuclear-blast maneuver that will decimate representative self-government, maybe permanently. (I really don’t think that overstates it.) It fundamentally undermines our system of checks and balances such that the presidency becomes autocratic.

They know all this, but at this point they’ve stopped even trying to justify their actions. Journalists’ probing questions to officials are met with explosions of indignation and fury; press conferences have dried up entirely; journalists are being denied access unless they toe the propaganda line. The party’s goal at this point is to circle the wagons and keep the autocrat in power at any and all costs—even when the costs may well be catastrophic for the country. (At the very least they will have set the precedent that no president can be charged with any crime or removed from office for any reason. Hard to imagine this precedent would sit well with a rogue Democrat in the seat; the solution to that seems to be to just keep a Democrat from holding the office—by any means possible. There’s broad consensus that Russia—a foreign power decidedly hostile to American ideals—interfered maliciously with the the electoral process in 2016. And indeed, the president-elect invited the interference publicly, and then met repeatedly with the Russians before and after the election. Republicans, while admitting Russia’s hostile intent, refuse to acknowledge the interference or take steps to combat it, and the consensus is that Russia will try again in 2020–they’re at work already.)

So, the movie. It gives today’s events an unfortunate odor of deja vu: the boorish, ignorant, control-freak criminal trying to enrich himself no matter who or what is destroyed (indeed, the destruction and personal devastation are marketed as selling points to the propaganda-fed media consumer, who craves his Colosseum moment); the for-sale politician, the ignorant masses huddled behind the cartoon depictions of their noble government while donating to and voting for its destruction.

When I first saw Born Yesterday some years back I was shocked at how much the world had changed in 50 years—at least the Hollywood version. The Wikipedia article talks about the difficulties Cukor had in getting the film past the censors, having to skirt around their being lovers—they *certainly* could not share a bedroom!—or Judy Holliday having an actual woman’s body. But the real shock for me was Harry’s treatment of Billie which by any standard today is frankly abusive. It’s uncomfortable to watch. Judy Holliday is not allowed to show an inch of cleavage or tailbone or anything even remotely suggestive to the censors; but Harry’s violence toward Billie gets past with nary a protest.

But this is the world Republicans are striving to re-create, where white men run everything and everyone else’s citizenship is second-class—if that. Environmental regulation is scuttled to gleefully pander to the country’s most ignorant people, propaganda tells us what to think, profit takes precedence over virtually every other thing.

One wants to think that we actually have progressed, and on the surface we have made progress since 1951. I know the jagged edge of history trends broadly and inexorably toward progress and equality and fairness. But always there is a reminder that human nature contains much that is selfish and greedy and clannish and self-destructive.