ABCDE OUTLOOK sunday, december 19, 2010
INSIDE White House
holiday cheer Season’s greetings from the First Family. B3
BOOKWORLD,B6-8 The making of genius What do da Vinci, Einstein and Woolf have in common? B7
Jefferson vs. Madison One bold, one tempered. One funny, one cosmopolitan. B6 Reading the Middle East Reza Aslan’s anthology of literature amid turmoil. B6
5 Who had the The Fix’s Chris Cillizza presents
worst year
or the better part of this past year, we have had the enviable task of scouring the wreckage of our nation’s capital in search of that person, place or thing thathadthe absoluteWorstWeek inWashing- ton.
The “winners” have ranged from sports stars (the Redskins’
Albert Haynesworth, the Nationals’ Nyjer Morgan) to little- known bureaucrats (MineralsManagement Services head Eliza- beth Birnbaum—remember her?) to, of course, a laundry list of politicians including President Obama, Senate Minority Leader MitchMcConnell and Rep. Charlie Rangel. A bad week is one thing. (We all have them every once in a
while.) But picking the one person who had the absolute Worst Year inWashington is a farmorechallengingendeavor.Havingan awful year isn’t enough. It has to be both awfulandconsequential — telling us something we didn’t know about this town or reminding us of something elemental that we had forgotten. The easy answer would have been
Obama.The president spent
much of 2010 on the defensive, and he watched Democratic control of Congress
slipfromhishandsthisNovember.Yethealso oversaw major legislative victories on health care and financial regulatory reform—twoW’s that convinced us to keephimout of the winner’s circle. Instead we settled on themanwho was put in office to serve as
the Republicans’ answer to Obama but wound up, more often than not, serving as the punch line of a joke: RepublicanNational Committee ChairmanMichael Steele.
worst year continued on B4
Chris Cillizza is editor of “The Fix,” a Washington Post political blog, and managing editor of
postpolitics.com.
And who had a good year in Washington? A so-so year? A better-than-expected year? And the best year of all? B4 BOOKREVIEW When Sinatra had the world on a string BY LOUIS BAYARD I
t’s not the voice — or it’s not just the voice. Other male popular singers have had greater instru- ments: Tony Bennett, Luther Van- dross, Roy Orbison — hell, Vic
Damone. What makes Frank Sinatra standout is not simply tone or diction or phrasing but . . . okay, what is it? Here’s James Kaplan’s theory: “The
indefinable something composed of loneliness and need and infinite ambi- tion and storytelling intelligence and intense musicality andHoboken,” not to mention an overtone or two of Sinatra’s redoubtable mother, “Hatpin Dolly,” who earned her living as a midwife who performed abortions and had the rap sheet to show for it. It’s all those things, or maybe it’s just
this:Whenyou’re listening to Sinatra in his prime, you’re hearing the truth. The truth of a particular song and the man singing it and that whole complicated dance between an art work and its
interpreter that makes you wonder where one leaves off and the other begins, until you realize it doesn’t mat- ter.
Frank Sinatra’s effect on American ADAM BUTLER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
FRANK The Voice By James Kaplan Doubleday. 786 pp. $35
pop culture was as nuclear as Elvis Presley’s or the Beatles’ or Michael Jackson’s, so let’s dispense first of all with the notion that we don’t need another book about him. Or that the job of anatomizing his mystery should be left either to the gossip-hounds (Kitty Kelley, J. Randy Taraborrelli) or the sycophants (daughters, valet, fan club president, etc.). Let’s accept the implicit contention of “Frank,” that a big star needs a big book—this is the first of two projected volumes — something that can situate him both horizontally, in the expanse of his times, and vertically, down to the itchiest layers of his soul. IsKaplan’sbookthatbook?It certain-
ly aspires to be. A hernial sound rises from each page, as if the author were hoisting a world of scholarship onto his
sinatra continued on B5 Louis Bayard is a reviewer and novelist. His new novel, “The School of Night,” will be published in March.
On gay marriage, stop playing the hate card
BYMATTHEWJ. FRANCK I
n the debates over gay marriage, “hate” is the ultimate conversa- tion-stopper. Some stories from recent months: A religion instructor at a
midwestern state university explains in an e-mail to students the rational basis forCatholic teaching on homosexuality. He is denounced by a student for “hate speech” and is dismissed fromhis posi- tion. (He is later reinstated — for now.) At anothermidwestern state university, a department chairman demurs froma student organizer’s request that his de- partment promote an upcoming “LG- BTQ” film festival on campus; he is denounced to his university’s chancel- lor, who indicates that his e-mail to the studentwarrants inquirybya“Hateand Bias IncidentResponseTeam.” On the west coast, a state law school
moves to marginalize a Christian stu- dent group that requires itsmembers to
pledge they will conform to orthodox Christian doctrines on sexual morality. In the history of the school, no student group has ever been denied campus recognition.But this one is, and theU.S. Supreme Court lets the school get away withit. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a
once-respected civil rights organiza- tion, publishes a “report” identifying a dozenor so“anti-gayhategroups,” some for no apparent reason other than their vocal opposition to same-sex marriage. Othermarriageadvocacygroupsareput onawatchlist. On a left-wing Web site, a petition
drive succeeds in pressuring Apple to drop an “app” from its iTunes store for theManhattanDeclaration,anecumen- ical Christian statement whose nearly half-million signers are united in de- fense of the right to life, the tradition of conjugal marriage between man and woman, and the principles of religious
hate continued on B5
Matthew J. Franck is director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution of the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, N.J.
EZ BD
myths about
school food. B3
inWashington? F
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