Reflections on the Reflecting Pool

Curmie recognizes that the Reflecting Pool saga is no longer front-page news, but he went ahead with this post for two reasons.  First, it was mostly written before Curmie went on vacation with Beloved Spouse, and it seemed a shame not to finish it.  Second, and more importantly, the whole episode serves as an apt encapsulation of the entire Trump administration. 

Step 1: find a minor problem and amplify it to significance to distract from the hugely unpopular war with Iran, the skyrocketing gasoline prices, the Epstein files, and a host of other manifestations of administrative incompetence (or worse). 

Step 2: hire a couple of cronies at inflated prices with little if any regard for their actual skill-sets. 

Step 3: when they proceed to make things far worse than they were when they started their project, make utterly unsupported and almost certainly mendacious claims—in this case about vandalism, including arresting people for touching the peeled paint floating on the surface of the pool. 

Step 4: when no one other than the MAGA faithful believes your bullshit, shout even louder and with even less plausibility.  A 350-foot-long gash with no photographic evidence?  And yet another tarp to block the view of anyone but your minions? Really?  Lather, rinse, repeat.  If there’s one thing you can count on with this administration, it’s that they will never take responsibility for their own failures.

If nothing else, the Reflecting Pool debacle has provided plenty of fodder for satirists, comedians, cartoonists, and similar wags.  Curmie is quite fond of the cartoon you see here (credit to Living Blue in Florida).  When I read about the arrest of David Hearn, the first thing that came to mind was the Group W bench described by Arlo Guthrie in “Alice’s Restaurant,” one of the anthems of my youth.  I thought of this before seeing that someone had already had the same thought.  Curmie notes the irony of telling you, Gentle Reader, that you’ll have to trust him about that part in an essay that discusses the lack of actual evidence for an assertion.  (We’ll get there, I promise.)

There are the paint swatches of swampy green labeled “American Flag Blue,” the designation of the pool as the Strait of Warm Ooze, and the restoration project “The Art of the Peel.”  There’s a supposed poll that shows Dear Leader “Vastly Less Popular than Algae”;  you can buy a “Piece of Presidential History” (a chunk of peeled paint) for a mere $250.  There’s the wonderful meme about Goody Proctor throwing algae into the reflecting pool, and the one in which Dear Leader says all he can see is scum, to receive the reply that it is a reflecting pool.

Curmie’s favorite, though, may be the (slightly adapted) song titles:  CCR’s “Green River” and of course Kermit the Frog’s classic “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green” can go as is, but there are a goodly number of minor variants that still leave the original clearly identifiable: Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Resealed,” the Chambers Brothers’ “Slime Has Come Today,” Cyndi Lauper’s “Slime After Slime,” Jim Croce’s “Slime in a Bottle,” the Zombies’ “Slime of the Season,” the Doobies’ “What a Pool Believes,” Peter Frampton’s “Do You Peel Like I Do,” the Beatles’ “Scum Together,” Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Algae”… well, there are more, but that’s a good sample.  Someone added another suggestion Curmie particularly liked, but you’d probably have to be of his generation to get the allusion: it would be fun to hear the Hal David/Burt Bacharach song begin, “What’s it all about, Algae?”

Two points need to be made.  The first is that all the satire, punning, and the like are appropriate.  The whole process was (and is) a disaster: ethically, legally, environmentally, and financially.  And to call the contractors incompetent would probably be to give them too much credit.  There’s a good timeline on the NBC News site.  A few of the highlights: Trump, bypassing his legal obligation to involve Congress, announced the project in late April, saying it would cost between 1.5 and 2 million dollars, and would be done in “a week.”  The current cost is over $16 million, not counting the cost of the federal employees involved, and still isn’t complete three months later.

Two separate no-bid contracts were signed: one with Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the other with Green Water Solutions.  The former proclaims itself “a woman owned advanced coatings application company,” but the owner/VP is identified elsewhere as Curtis E. "Eddie" Wood, whose position is listed still elsewhere as CEO.  If you can make sense of all this, Gentle Reader, you’re way ahead of Curmie.  Oh, and they also remind us that “ALL the credit goes to Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!! Thank you!!”  <Sigh.>

The other contractor, Green Water, is headed by John Cafaro, who not only looks like the crime tsar in a gangster movie, but also acts like one, having pleaded guilty to bribing a Congresscritter and campaign finance fraud.  Needless to say, he was pardoned by Trump.  The $350,000 he donated to Trump’s ’20 and ’24 campaigns, plus apparently hundreds of thousands more to Trump-affiliated PACs, are of course totally unrelated to any of this.  😉  Oh, and the White House was not involved in selecting the contractors, and the folks who did were unaware of Cafaro’s… erm… largesse.  Hey, if you can’t trust a lackey from the Interior Department and a White House spokesperson, who can you trust?

The first step was to drain the pool, then to paint the bottom “American flag blue.”  There was a lawsuit filed to prevent the re-painting because changing the color would, among other things, make the pool less reflective.  The re-painting went forward, and the pool wasn’t as reflective.  Go figure. 

There are two separate yet equally important (go ahead, Gentle Reader, insert the “Law & Order” “dundun” here) problems here: the algae and the peeling paint.  The former has been a problem for a long time: direct sunlight, pretty much stagnant water, warm weather… that adds up to a pretty good possibility of algae accumulation, and that can happen very quickly.  Curmie can’t find a reliable source to support the claim that the pool was refilled with water from the Potomac, which would indeed have been colossally stupid and therefore, given this administration and its hirelings, quite plausible.  It’s not necessarily the fault of the administration or the contractors that things seem out of control now… well, except for the fact that Green Water was hired specifically to keep this from happening. 

The peeling paint, on the other hand, is directly attributable to the incompetence of the Atlantic Industrial Coatings team, who were clearly out of their depth (if you’ll pardon the expression, Gentle Reader) on this project.  Curmie claims no expertise in matters relating to reflecting pool maintenance and repair, and he knows better than to unhesitatingly trust some stranger on Facebook who claims to know what he’s talking about.  That said, the comments from people who say they’re professionals do make sense: here’s one example:

As a DC9 union painter with 30+ years in coatings, I’m looking at the failure not a conspiracy theory.  When a coating is lifting off in large sheets like this, that points to an adhesion failure: improper surface preparation, contamination left behind, the wrong coating system, poot recoat timing, or water introduced before the system fully cured.

A quality two-part epoxy system can perform well but the product is only as good as the prop and the application.  The substrate has to be properly profiled/cleaned, the specified primer or first coat applied correctly, recoat windows followed, and the full system allowed to cure before being put back into service.

That is not “vandals.”  That is a coating failure that deserves a real independent inspection and an explanation of exactly what system was specified and how it was applied.

That sounds pretty reasonable to Curmie.  He also suggests that driving a freaking convoy over the surface before it was fully cured might not have been the best idea in history.  Well, unless the whole thing was intended as a diversion all along.  Yes, that’s a totally unsupported hypothesis… which makes it more believable than anything coming from this administration.

A Matter of Context: Yes, That Float Was Tacky

The world’s first great democracy, ancient Athens, showcased the strength of its government and citizenry by a variety of means, not the least of which was self-mockery. At the Lenaea Festival and later even at the Great City Dionysia, the polis staged rowdy and vulgar satires that left no one free from the scathing wit of the likes of Aristophanes, whose barbs were aimed at everyone from the strategos Cleon (The Knights) to Socrates (The Clouds) to the demi-god Dionysus himself (The Frogs). Variations on the theme appear in other governmental systems as well: the Feast of Fools, for example, or the wide political latitude granted to the court jester.

The phenomenon may seem counter-intuitive at first glance, but a little reflection leads us to the simple fact that the ability to laugh at oneself is a sign of strength, not weakness. This phenomenon has also played out in this country’s fairly recent history. One of the most reassuring moments in the period immediately after 9/11, for example, was when David Letterman went back on the air in New York. But we knew we were really going to be all right when he started telling Bush jokes again.

So there is nothing whatsoever wrong with satirizing American politicians, up to and including President Obama. Except, well…

In Norfolk, Nebraska this 4th of July, a float carried on the back of a flatbed truck showed, in the words of the Omaha World Herald’s Hunter Woodall:

... a figure standing outside an outhouse labeled the “Obama Presidential Library”.…
The figure was dressed in overalls and standing next to a walker outside of the outhouse. The hands and head of the figure were greenish and appeared to be zombielike; the hands were pressed against the sides of the figure’s head. Miniature American flags were atop the float and on the truck.

As one might expect, there were two fundamentally different responses, or rather two fundamentally different sets of responses. There were those, like Gloria Kathurima, who regarded the float as “not OK,” and indeed as “not just political [but] absolutely a racial statement.” Kathurima, who immigrated from Kenya as a girl and is now a naturalized citizen, was, according to the NBC affiliate in Sioux City, IA (about 90 miles to the northeast), “deeply offended.” The station aired an interview with her in which she says, “[Some people were] laughing, some people were pointing, some people were clapping, and that’s when I really became scared. I was thinking ‘What are you guys laughing at? What's remotely funny about this?’ I don't see any sort of policy being argued. I don't see any sort of stance being taken.”

We can argue with the characterization of racism—see Jack Marshall’s piece at Ethics Alarms, for example—but in a town in which whites outnumber blacks by a ratio of about 55:1, an apparently gratuitous insult to a black man who also happens to be the President of the United States does take on a certain distastefulness. Couple that with Kathurima’s daughter’s experience in the local school district—descriptions of the other kids’ not liking her, always wanting to touch her hair: this speaks to an alienation, whether or not inspired by racial animus. Intended or not, that’s going to look a lot like “a racial statement” to a lot of people, especially those with a little more melanin than average in a small Nebraska town.

But even if we discount the racial element altogether, we’re still left agreeing with Jack Marshall’s list of adjectives: “wrong,” “harmful,” “ugly,” “inept,” “unfunny,” and “divisive.” Ms. Kathumira is unquestionably correct that there really isn’t a policy statement to be derived from the display: just contempt for the current President. And here’s where we get to the other group of people mentioned earlier: the ones who approved the float, the ones who laughed—these are not the cream of the nation’s intellectual crop.

But H. Dale Remmich, who designed and built this monstrosity, is a special kind of incompetent. He claims to have had two impetuses for his creation: the “ongoing issues of the Veteran's Affairs administration” and “the government's handling of the Bergdahl scandal.” OK, if you tell me that I’m looking for the former in this float’s satiric intent, I might be able to find my way there with a guide dog—I guess the figure could be taken to be a veteran whose benefits got bound up in VA incompetence. (Remmich claims it was intended to represent himself… why it was so intended is less than entirely clear.) But the Bergdahl case? How in the name of all that’s holy are we supposed to derive that particular meaning, based on this ill-conceived and poorly constructed monument to self-described “political disgust”?

For all this, Remmich is an intellectual giant compared to the judges who gave the float an award and especially to parade committee member Rick Konopasek and announcer Wally Sonnenschein, whose mental superiority to a decaying cucumber is not immediately apparent. Konopasek, having just said that floats could and would be denied for being “morally objectionable,” meaning, apparently, that anything sexual would be banned, immediately proceeds to claim that “If we start saying no to certain floats, we might as well not have a parade at all.” Uh, Rick… you are, presumably, saying no to certain floats.

The prize-winner, however, is Sonnenschein, who, it seems, was able to keep a straight face while declaring that “I really don’t see anything wrong with the Obama float and I’m kind of amazed anyone is complaining.” The first part of his statement is no doubt true, more’s the pity. The second part is either utterly disingenuous or ol’ Wally would come in third place in a battle of wits with a corn dog and an anvil.

The fact is that context matters. If this parade has a history of poking a little fun at political leaders, so be it. But no one seems to be defending the float on those grounds, meaning that this year’s entry was probably an outlier: one that should have been denied a spot in the parade for being out of tune with the purpose of the event. Analogously, when Representative Joe Wilson interrupted the State of the Union address a few years back to shout “You lie” at the President, he was rightly rebuked not because his accusation was inaccurate (although it was, at least in that particular moment), or that he didn’t have the legal right to object to the speech, but rather because expressing himself in that way, in those circumstances, was boorish, disrespectful of the presidency (not merely of the President), and a disgrace to his own constituency.

One of the things that stuck in my mind this Independence Day season was the number of friends who rejoiced in the fact that for this one day, at least, we get to cease being members of a particular political party or religion or race or socio-economic status and simply be Americans. Remmich, Konopasek, Sonnenschein and their ilk seek to deny us that unity, and we are all the poorer for that.

3C and The Right to Parody

Playbill reports that an Off-Broadway production of 3C, a new play by David Adjmi, ran afoul of lawyers for DLT Entertainment, the company that owns the long-defunct television series “Three’s Company.”

Really, all you have to do to see what has DLT’s communal skivvies in a twist is to look at the publicity shots by Joan Marcus on the Playbill website (one of them shown here). I doubt that I ever watched an entire episode of “Three’s Company,” but anyone who was around in the ‘70s and had even the slightest interest in popular culture knew the premise, the central characters, and the style simply by social osmosis. And what we see in the 3C photos looks pretty familiar.

The “cease and desist” order enumerated some 17 similarities between the old TV series and Adjmi’s play, including such high-tone observations as “Connie is sexy and jiggles just like Chrissy.” Yes, really, at least according to an open letter from the theatre community penned by playwright/screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz.

Adjmi estimates that he made a total of perhaps $2500 from the five-week run of his show, which according to the producers “received some wonderful reviews and played to sold-out houses.” He didn’t think he could afford legal representation, so although he never signed anything or returned the information demanded by Kenyon & Kenyon (the DLT lawyers), he also didn’t think it possible to extend the run of the show past its scheduled closing date.

But here’s the thing. Similarities or no, DLT has no case. None. Zero. Bupkes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re developing a stage version of the series (God help us) and 3C “damages” their property. Blah-de-blah-de-blah-blah-blah. First thought: what really damages the property (the Three’s Company stageplay) is the fact that it’s based on the “Three’s Company” series which, let’s face it, sucked.

Secondly, whereas there are clearly overlaps between the two shows, they go in totally different directions. Here’s Baitz:

Yes, David's play satirically invokes the sitcom in question as a template upon which to de-construct the mores and tropes of that time. It is clearly and patently and unremittingly parody, to the extent that it depends on Three's Company’s 1970s attitudes towards sexual relations, etc., in order to slyly examine the underlying brutality and bigotry attendant to American popular culture of that era. (And since then). The critical response to the play has generally acknowledged 3-C's exploration of the essential aloneness of the characters, and the toxic suffering they endure. Mr Adjmi's intentions are not to replicate Three's Company, but clearly and patently to mutate it into something dark and frightening, savage even.

More significantly still, parody is protected speech. That’s why there are shows like Dog Sees God or Forbidden Broadway. This fundamental interpretation of the 1st Amendment runs through the entire history of American jurisprudence. If Hustler can get away with their vicious attack on Jerry Falwell (a fake ad of the televangelist apparently having a drunken sexual affair with his mother in an outhouse), David Adjmi can put a big-breasted bubblehead in his play. (Does DLT really think that character was original with “Three’s Company”?)

The Dramatists Guild also points out that:

…the right of authors to make fair comment on pre-existing work (whether through parody or other forms of fair use) is a First Amendment safety valve in the copyright law, and one we wholeheartedly support, as do the courts. If the author contacts us, we will discuss the issue with him and see how we can help.

Note what Adjmi is doing isn’t like, say, the Wooster Group’s wholesale appropriation of the actual playscript of The Crucible for their production of L.S.D. (Just the High Points). It would be disingenuous to suggest that audiences for 3C aren’t supposed to make the connection to the television series. That said, the aesthetic intentions involved are radically different.

Remember, too, that a work need not even be specifically determined as parody to be protected. Such was the case, for example, in a copyright infringement case regarding Alice Randall’s novel The Wind Done Gone which uses Gone with the Wind in much the same way as 3C uses “Three’s Company”: to problematize attitudes once taken for granted. As Kyonzte Hughes writes on the First Amendment Center’s webpage:

Applying the elements of fair use, the appeals court recognized that Randall’s work was made for a commercial purpose. However, the court said that this factor was “strongly overshadowed and outweighed in view of its highly transformative use” of Gone With the Wind.

“Randall’s literary goal is to explode the romantic, idealized portrait of the antebellum South during and after the Civil War,” the appeals court wrote.

The appeals court also determined that the Mitchell estate had failed to show evidence that Randall’s book would harm the market value of Gone With the Wind’s derivative works or take away market demand for Mitchell’s book.

A concurring judge even pointed out that Randall’s book may “act as complement to, rather than a substitute for Gone With the Wind and its potential derivatives. The judge reasoned that readers of The Wind Done Gone “may want to refresh their recollections of the original.”

Kenyon & Kenyon is, pure and simple, engaging in legalistic bullying. This might not technically be a SLAPP suit (which would be illegal in New York), but it’s certainly a first cousin. DLT is doing this because they can, not because they are really stupid enough to think they could win if the case ever went to trial. “No one has ever heard of David Adjmi; let’s push him around a little.”

What DLT doesn’t understand—because they’re in this only for financial gain and perhaps a little self-importance—is that no matter how much we theatre types are inevitably in competition with each other, it’s rare indeed when we don’t take care of our own. David Adjmi, they might be able to take on. But not Jon Robin Baitz, Andre Bishop (Lincoln Center Artistic Director), Tony Kushner, Stephen Sondheim, Terrence McNally, John Guare, John Patrick Shanley, Jose Rivera, Craig Lucas, Jim Nicola (Artistic Director, NY Theatre Workshop), Terry Kinney (co-founder, Steppenwolf Theatre Company), Stephen Adley Guirgis, and nearly three dozen other signatories to Baitz’s letter: and that was before it really went “public” to the rest of us in the profession. Curmie has already added his name—for what little good it might do—to the quickly-growing list.

Would I like Mr. Adjmi’s play? Perhaps not. But Baitz answers that argument, too:

Whether one appreciates the work or not is immaterial; the principle at stake here is a basic one. Specious and spurious legal bullying of artists should be vigorously opposed, and that opposition must begin first and foremost with all of us in the New York Theatre community.

Preach it, JRB.