Tilting at Windmills - a distaste for electronic musical instruments - this and other topics are discussed

Washington Monthly, Sept, 2000 by Charles Peters

Lady Rilke and Mrs. Miro * The Steward's Daughter * Johann, George Frederick, and Les The Managerial Metamorphosis * The New York Window

I HAVE A DEEP DISTASTE FOR musical instruments that have to be plugged in. Fifty years ago the only respectable musician who used an electric cord was the guitarist Les Paul. He was actually quite good but I now regard him as the beginning of a horrid trend that really exploded into dominance in the 1960s, with musical stages becoming a maze of wires and speakers. The latest outrage is that pipe organs in churches are being replaced by electric devices. Bach and Handel by synthesized sound! The last outpost of sanity seems to be the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music. It has rules prohibiting electric instruments.

IN JULY, CONNIE MARIANO, the Filipino-American White House physician was made an admiral. Her father had been a Navy steward, and therein lies a tale I am proud to tell. Thirty years ago, Timothy Ingram wrote an article for this magazine entitled, "The Navy's Floating Plantation." It described how Filipinos in the U.S. Navy were employed almost exclusively as servants to high-ranking officers and in the executive dining rooms of the brass. The result was the kind of impact we always want for an article but rarely occurs. Admiral Elm. R. Zumwalt, then the Navy's top officer, immediately issued an order opening up many more jobs for Filipinos. The end result of that order was the opportunity given to Connie Mariano. She recalls that her father had worked for six admirals. As a young girl, she sometimes accompanied him when he went to the admirals' houses: "Never by the front door. We always went through the garage, the backdoor, or the kitchen."

THE KOREAN WAR LASTED three years. Our next war on the Asian continent, Vietnam, was three times as long. Why the difference? One reason, I suspect is that in Korea, the sons and daughters of the influential were being killed, while in Vietnam the powerless did most of the dying. James Brady, a writer who fought in Korea, recently described his comrades: "Young men like Wild Horse Callan, off his daddy's New Mexico ranch; Doug Bradlee, the big, red-haired Harvard tackle who wanted to teach; handsome Dick Brennan, who worked in a Madison Avenue ad agency; Mack Allen, the engineer from the Virginia Military Institute; Bob Bjornsen, the giant forest ranger; and Carly Rand of the Rand McNally clan." Brady goes on to describe another of his comrades in Korea, John Chafee, the future governor of Rhode Island and U.S. Senator who died last year: "A college wrestling star, he dropped out of Yale at 19 to join the Marines after Pearl Harbor, fighting on Guadal-canal as a private, then made officers candidate school and fought on Okinawa." Any man who took part in either of these brutal battles would have a right to feel he had done his part. But after graduating from Yale and Harvard Law School, "he went back to commanding riflemen in combat [in Korea]. A man with money and connections (his great-grandfather and great uncle both had served as governor), he never took the easy out."

JOHN CHAFEE IS one of my heroes. Another, Paul Taylor, has an article in this issue. Paul, you may recall, is the former Washington Post political reporter who gave up a career that had him well on his way to journalistic stardom, to devote himself to the cause of campaign finance reform; trying among other things to deal with the failure of broadcasters to do their part. Recently a bipartisan national commission that Taylor had helped form recommended that each station give five minutes a night for 30 nights before the election to letting the candidates speak. They could be local, state, or national candidates, just so both sides were given a fair opportunity. Only two percent of the stations have agreed to make even this modest sacrifice even though their very existence is due to licenses given them by the public.

AS YOU MAY KNOW SAN Fransisco's Candlestick Park has been renamed 3Com Park. This is part of a general trend that has one sports team after another selling the naming rights to its stadium to a corporation. This violates a lovely tradition of evocatively named ballparks from the Polo Grounds to Fenway Park to the recently christened Camden Yards. The one time-honored exception to this rule permits the use of the name of the owner as with Wrigley Field in Chicago and the old Crosley Field in Cincinnati. I believe that this was also the case with Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. But I don't know. If anyone out there does know, please write.

REMEMBER OUR ITEM ABOUT HOW insurance corporations overcharged blacks? I am delighted to report that one of them, a very big one in fact, has agreed to make restitution. American General has agreed to pay $206 million to settle a class action suit brought on behalf of their black policy holders.

THE GREAT TRADITION OF women's magazines being on the take continues to this day. In the past they were notable for praising the products of frequent advertisers and the resorts, airlines, and cruise ships that gave their writers free trips. Now they're touting the plastic surgeons that give their writers free face lifts and tummy tucks. "There's little question," writes Anne Jarrell of The New York Times, "that accepting free treatment is widespread at women's magazines, where most articles about the booming fields of cosmetic surgery and dermatology appear." Does favorable coverage result? Just ask Dr. Patricia Wexler, a Manhattan dermatologist: "All the time I give free botox, collagen, chemical peels to journalists who will write about it. They quote me as if I were George Washington."