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WHO TELLS YOUR STORY

In early 2015, soon after I retired, my hip-to-the-world daughter told me how excited she was about seeing a new production. 

To be fair, she always seems to be excited about new productions. In part, because, well, she’s an aspiring playwright and TV writer. 

But once she gets excited about an idea, she’s not going to let it go.

In that case, it was the oddity of taking Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton and turning it into a musical – OK, right there that’s a little weird – featuring a multiracial cast and rapping – which puts it in another zone of strange.

Well, more than a few of you have seen the musical, “Hamilton,” either on stage or on the taped version of it that runs of Disney+. 

But it took me more than 10 years to finally see it in person. Appropriately, with my daughter, who saw it for the third time and still found moments that moved her to tears.

You might have enjoyed watching “Hamilton” in the comfort of your home. But theater is meant to be seen live, in person. Because you can’t get the full impact of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s masterpiece unless your living it, in the moment, with as talented a bunch of performers as you can imagine.

It’s watching it unfold, as if it is something you’re living through in the moment, to make you realize that you are actually living through it even after the three hours you spend in the room where it happens.

Like so many theatrical and cinematic portrayals of history, “Hamilton” takes liberties with the true story – and not just the fact that Hamilton wasn’t Hispanic and Aaron Burr wasn’t black. If your kid sees the show prior to taking an American History quiz on the Revolution, there’s a chance he or she might get some things wrong.

That doesn’t affect the power of what you see. Or the fact that “Hamilton” is an essential way – particularly now – to convey some important concepts.

First, it’s often said that history is written by the winners. Those of us who think this period of history will go down as a dark mark assume we will eventually triumph over the forces arrayed against us.

That might not happen. Maybe Steven Miller doesn’t melt when you throw a bucket on water on him.

In the case of Hamilton, he lost the duel with Burr. But Burr wasn’t all that popular to begin with – that’s probably how things escalated to the point of pistols in Weehawken. So if, as the musical portrays, Elizabeth Hamilton tried to protect her husband’s reputation after his death, it wasn’t without help from the powers that were, including his long-time political foe, Thomas Jefferson.

Second, while I loved history as a kid, it seems that it’s among the least popular subjects for younger people.

To its credit, “Hamilton” is drawing a young audience – the crowd I was with had lots of students and their enthusiasm seemed to further inspire the cast. 

Miranda said he cast the musical the way he did because reflecting our nation’s current demography made it more relevant. In my eyes, and after seeing the show, he’s not wrong.

The actor who played George Washington, Tamar Greene, is a very tall Black man who looks nothing like Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of the Father of Our Country. It doesn’t matter – no actor I’ve seen captures the spirit of Washington as much as Greene did last night.

And that leads me to my third point: the saddest part of this show to me is when Washington tells Hamilton he will not seek a third term as president. That the country is bigger than one man, even one who is the pivotal figure in its very existence.

That doesn’t sound like 2025. I’d bet that if Trump saw the show, assuming he understood what was going on, that the whole idea of doing something for the good of the nation would be completely lost on him. 

Greene made me feel all that. His passion and complex emotions – determination to do the right thing, anguish at leaving something he clearly enjoys – shine through. When I was over, I wished Greene was president instead of this cluck.

Of course, the point Miranda wanted to make was about immigration. Hamilton came to what became the United States from the West Indies. He was an orphan and felt he had to work harder to achieve anything.

That’s a constant theme in the musical. And I’m not sure it resonates as well on TV as it does in the confines of a theater on West 46th Street in Manhattan – outside which could very well be the 21st-century Gestapo called ICE looking to snatch 21st-century Hamiltons off the streets,

It’s a reminder – as if we needed it – that this is a country of immigrants, more so than any other nation in the world. It is our superpower, the roux in our gravy, the pulse of our pulmonary system.

The idiots who think immigration is weakness have no idea what makes America great. And I while I reveled in what I saw on stage, MAGA types would watch “Hamilton” and merely see ensemble performers in tight pants and guys in dopey costumes.

It took me 10 years to see “Hamilton” live. It didn’t change my view about anything except to reinforce what I already felt about what I saw on stage. And how I so wish everyone in America could see what I see in the power of this musical.

Maybe I’ll get my daughter to work on them.

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15 – THE LOSS

In the military comedy “Stripes,” Bill Murray’s character tries to generate a laugh with a line aimed at inspiring his fellow screw-up recruits.

“But we’re American soldiers! We’ve been kicking ass for 200 years! We’re ten and one!”

A 1954 audience seeing that scene would be bewildered by the “one.” They’d be more bewildered by the fact that where it happened, Vietnam, was very likely in the newspaper they read that day.

On the day I was born, Vietnamese nationalists were laying siege to the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu in French Indochina. A month later, the French surrendered to the Viet Mihn forces loyal to Ho Chi Mihn, who had been fighting for independence since the end of World War II.

In July, the peace conference to end the conflict divided the nation at the 17th parallel, much as Korea had been divided at the 38th parallel the year before.

But Ho and his Communist allies were hardly ready to give up on the dream of controlling all of the country. A group that would eventually be called the National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong, began agitating against the South Vietnamese government, with the support of Ho and the North Vietnamese.

The United States, with France out of the picture and concerned about another Communist state in Asia, began supplying aid to the South Vietnamese under President Dwight Eisenhower. That aid became “advisers” under John F. Kennedy and troops under Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

The conventional wisdom was that American military might and superior tactics would overpower the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese – even if they had support from the Soviet Union and China.

We were assured that victory was close at hand. How could guys in black pajamas outfight the best-trained military in the world?

The answer was: They had a bigger reason to fight than we did.

They were fighting for their homes. We just didn’t want what we thought would be another Communist domino to fall, even if it was more than 8,000 miles away from the West Coast.

That was hard for Americans to grasp until the beginning of 1968. After hearing another rosy assessment as the year began, the nation was shocked when the Communists launched an attack timed with the start of the Lunar New Year, known as the Tet Offense. The Viet Cong came close to capturing the U.S. Embassy in Saigon before being repelled.

There had been an antiwar movement shortly after the U.S. escalation began – and it grew with the TV pictures of the Tet Offensive flashing in U.S. homes. 

And yet, the U.S. elected Richard Nixon as president in 1968. He was not inclined to immediately end the war as so many protesters demanded, claiming he wanted “peace with honor.” That led to even more conflict at home – at a level Americans hadn’t seen since the Civil War.

Eventually, Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated a settlement for North and South Vietnam to co-exist, and U.S. troops withdrew in 1973. Two years later, and six years after Ho’s death, the North overran the South and unified the nation.

Vietnam paid a high price for Ho’s vision. Between 1.5 million and 2 million Vietnamese died. The countryside was ravaged, some of it with chemicals dropped by U.S. bombers. And there was more conflict to come – opponents fled the country by boat, and the nations bordering Vietnam came into conflict with this emerging power.

But the U.S. was badly damaged. About 60,000 Americans died, about 50,000 in combat. More than 300,000 were wounded. Our prestige around the world was bruised badly.

And then there were the internal problems. Those who fought in Vietnam were not accorded the kind of heroes’ welcome American soldiers had come to expect. Some of those opposed to the war saw them as criminals. Some of those in favor saw them as drug-addled losers.

The divisions that occurred as a result of the Vietnam War never completely healed. They are perhaps at the core at the anger that drives so many to support Trump and the Republican agenda of grievance. 

This would have been a lot for someone peering into the future in 1954 to grasp. And there’s one other thing that might have stunned them.

It’s the sweatshirt I’m wearing as I write this. It was made for an American company in Vietnam. The two countries enjoy strong trading ties and have for most of this century.

Country Joe asked the right question. What were we fighting for? 

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50 – A THIRD-RATE SCANDAL

Richard Nixon eventually becoming President of the United States wouldn’t have surprised any adult in 1954.

He was President Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president and only 41 years old. And, obviously, very ambitious.

It would have a mild surprise that Nixon didn’t become president until 1969 – and a little more surprising that he won after losing in 1960 to John F. Kennedy and in 1962 when he ran for governor of California against Edmund “Pat” Brown.

So, would Watergate have been a shock to anyone had you explained it to them in 1954?

I think the answer is no and yes.

No, Nixon displayed some nasty tendencies even before he became Ike’s running mate. His Red-baiting campaigns for Congress in California displayed his bare-knuckles style. His shameless invocation of his daughters’ pet dog, Checkers, to avoid being thrown off the ticket for a potential conflict of interest showed his cunning.

But you have to think Watergate was among the dumbest scandals of all time.

Nixon’s path to re-election was pretty clear in 1972. While his people sabotaged the early Democratic front runner, Edmund Muskie, it would have been difficult for the Democrats to take back the White House. 

And by the time the break-in at the Watergate Hotel took place, the Democrats were weeks away from nominating George McGovern – maybe the best presidential candidate I’ve ever vote for, but a doomed candidate who couldn’t carry his home state of South Dakota.

However, here’s the thing that secures Watergate’s spot on this list:

It’s surprising that this is not close to being the worst political scandal of our lifetime.

That’s all I’ll say for now. Except, look around.

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