Grim Reader, April 29, 2011: Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu, Poly Styrene and Madelyn Pugh Davis
by Michael Schaffer
APRIL 29, 2011 TAGS:
You could write an entire gender-studies dissertation by reading between the lines of this week’s obits for a former unofficial first lady of a country that no longer exists. In her prime, Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu, officially the hostess for her brother-in-law, South Vietnam’s unmarried president, was “‘the Dragon Lady,’ a symbol of everything that was wrong with the American effort to save her country from Communism,” according to the New York Times. The obits all evoke the palace politics of early-1960s Saigon, when Nhu thrived as the relatively weak President Diem navigated disloyal officers and coup attempts (and, oh yeah, a war in which Americans were getting ever more deeply involved).
The obits cast her as both a woman ahead of her time (she took part in the public game of politics in ways few women did) and a reactionary (she was a Catholic moralist who jammed through prohibitions on contraception, divorce, and dancing the twist). That doesn’t reflect a contradiction so much as the evolving view of her: “Initially welcomed by America as a potential Joan of Arc figure who would lead her country to victory against communism, it soon became clear that she had more in common with Lucrezia Borgia,” says the Telegraph. Her own quotes seem to back up the latter comparison. Per the Associated Press, here’s the official hostess on the self-immolations of monks protesting the increasingly authoritarian governance that Nhu championed: “another monk barbecue show.” And per the Guardian, here’s her favorite slogan. "Power is wonderful. Total power is totally wonderful."
Alas, the coverage also devotes sigificant attention to Nhu’s physical appearance. A “trendsettng” fashion icon, “Madame Nhu was often photographed with her bouffant hairdo and glamorous clothes, including a tight version of the traditional silk tunic known as the ao dai, which showcased her slender body,” says the Associated Press. The Washington Post’s obit seems to embrace the anachronism even in how it refers to Nhu, who is called “Mme. Nhu” on second reference, an unusual style in a paper that doesn’t generally employ foreign honorifics. The Guardian, though, manages to wrest power-game symbolism from Nhu’s fashion sense, too: “Even her carved ivory fan, used mostly for coquettish effect, could clack shut like a gunshot and be used to rap home a point,” says the Guardian. Grim Reader, though, prefers a New York Times quote from Nhu herself, uttered after a rival general vowed to depose the president and take her as a mistress: “You are never going to overthrow this government because you don’t have the guts. And if you do overthrow it, you will never have me because I will claw your throat out first.”
In the end, Diem was overthrown while Nhu was on a U.S. speaking tour. She blamed Washington, and spent the rest of her life in exile in Europe, moving to Rome to be near a relative who was a priest at the Vatican.
**
He wanted a handy Beethoven
In business terms, former Sony chief Norio Ohga’s biggest legacy was having led the firm’s “evolution from a transistor-radio and tape-recorder manufacturer into a consumer-electronics and content giant,” explains the Wall Street Journal. For the rest of us, it’s simpler: He developed the CD. An Associated Press obit describes how Ohga, who was educated as a musician, embraced a format that would allow him to have all of Beethoven’s Ninth on one disc, eventually enrolling music-world luminaries to popularize them. Sony printed the first CD in 1982; five years later, sales outstripped LPs. A nice Telegraph obit explains how CDs propelled the merger of computers and entertainment media, something Sony embraced as it bought up content-creation businesses, too. But the piece also explains how Apple, with its emphasis on creating a marketplace for content firms to reach customers, outdid the Japanese firm.
“People need gurus”
The guru Sathya Sai Baba had millions of followers, ashrams in over 100 countries, and seemed to have his image in every taxicab sun visor in India. But his death gets small play in the U.S., where both the New York Times and the Washington Post run wire service obits. The Los Angeles Times has a meatier staff-written obit for a man “known for conjuring jewelry, food and vibhuti, or sacred ash, out of the air, which devotees saw as proof of his powers and skeptics decried as sleight of hand.” In India, powerful pols, industrialists, and athletes wept, but the Los Angeles Times obit actually does a good job of avoiding the pitfalls of exotica and actually explaining why a guy whom smart-set types dismissed as a charlatan (and ex-devotees accused of sex abuse) remained so popular. For one thing, his belief system praised other faiths -- a plus in pluralistic India. For another, the country’s gallop towards modernity may have made the frizzy-haired holy man especially necessary: "People need gurus," a sociologist tells the paper. "Many people in uncertain professions, whether rich or poor, tend to put their faith in those who give assurances everything will be all right.” There’s no such scholarly nuance in India’s media: “Sai Baba's phenomenal mass appeal lay in his unswerving commitment to communal harmony, his encouragement of charitable activity and public-spiritedness, and his own example in building educational and health care institutions,” opines The Hindu, perhaps the country’s most professional newspaper. No mention of the allegations of fraud or abuse.
Answering an important question
There’s a trio of cool female musicians in the obits this week. Poly Styrene, nee Marianne Elliott-Said, had a “wobbly, discordant shriek,” according to the Telegraph. Styrene “wrote songs about consumerism, conformity, racism and alienation, and is widely acknowledged as an important influence on the ‘Riot Grrrl’ movement of the early 1990s,” says the obit. There’s an especially nice appreciation in New York Magazine’s Vulture blog, which describes hers as “a sound that answered an important question: How can a woman get onstage and be commanding without having to imitate masculine versions of ‘tough’? What's another way for a woman's voice to sound fierce — but also find audible, inspiring joy in the fact of speaking up? Her answer is very nearly contagious: There's such freedom and pleasure there that it's no surprise singers keep coming back to it.”
Walking away from fame
Just a few years older than Styrene, but seemingly of a different age, singer-songwriter Phoebe Snow “was one of the most dependably dynamic singers of her time,” says the Star-Ledger, “best known for her bluesy 1975 hit ‘Poetry Man,’ which reached the top five and helped define the ‘singer-songwriter’ music of that era,” according to the New York Daily News.
But Snow walked away from fame at the top of her career in order to care for a severely disabled daughter. She recorded albums but didn’t tour, and sang TV jingles to make ends meet. Many of the obits offer duly stoic quotes from Snow about how she treasured the 31 years she spent as the all-day caregiver for her daughter, who died in 2007.
Bluegrass pioneer
And the Los Angeles Times remembers Hazel Dickens as “a pioneering force in bluegrass music and a strong and eloquent voice for coal miners, the poor and women.” The Washington Post’s obit does the best job of conjuring the impoverished West Virginia childhood that inspired much of Dickens’ music -- three of her brothers, for instance, died from mining-related illnesses. Its obit also notes that while the singer never became a household name, she exerted major influence over several who did, including Emmylou Harris and Allison Krauss.
Helping Lucy stomp a grape
Also in a bunch: TV writers. The obits this week include Madelyn Pugh Davis, “who helped define the TV sitcom as the co-writer of every episode of ‘I Love Lucy,’ the 1950s series that showcased the grape-stomping, bonbon-cramming, health-tonic-swigging antics of a scatterbrained housewife,” according to the Washington Post. A Los Angeles Times piece calls her one of the most influential people in the evolution of TV and notes that Davis and her team would always try out their physical gags first to make sure they were safe for Lucille Ball. … And Sol Saks is remembered as the guy who wrote the pilot for Bewitched, the now-campy I-married-a-witch classic sitcom. He didn’t stay with the show, crafting a career built on scripting pilots. But the New York Times obit includes his classic rebuttal to critics who called the program derivative: “Go back to the Greeks, who had stories of gods coming down to Earth to live with mortals.” Meaning if it was derivative, it came from a good source. … Do you know the phone number for the carpet company Empire? Thank -- or blame -- Elmer Hauldren, the pitchman who wrote the infectious jingle that ends "5-8-8, 2-300, Empire!" The Chicago Tribune obit notes that Pearl Jam once played the tune at a Chicago concert.
Look at me when you’re talking
Finally, according to the Wall Street Journal, Hubert Schlafly considered his greatest innovation to be the now-ubiquitous 26-foot transportable satellite dish used to transmit TV broadcasts across continents. But most of the obits focus on a device fewer folks will ever use: The TelePrompTer, which “rescued decades' worth of soap opera actors, newscasters and politicians from the embarrassment of stumbling over their words on live television,” according to the Associated Press, which quotes an expert explaining that Schlafly’s invention “made the politicians look smarter because they were looking right into the camera." Politico, among others, offers a rundown of the device’s history in politics. And, naturally, since the idea that President Obama only sounds smart because he reads TelePrompTer speeches is a right-wing meme, a Dallas blogger uses the death to wonder why the chief executive isn’t presiding over the funeral.
Michael Schaffer’s Grim Reader appears Friday in Obit. He is the author of One Nation Under Dog, about culture and the American pet industry.
The obits cast her as both a woman ahead of her time (she took part in the public game of politics in ways few women did) and a reactionary (she was a Catholic moralist who jammed through prohibitions on contraception, divorce, and dancing the twist). That doesn’t reflect a contradiction so much as the evolving view of her: “Initially welcomed by America as a potential Joan of Arc figure who would lead her country to victory against communism, it soon became clear that she had more in common with Lucrezia Borgia,” says the Telegraph. Her own quotes seem to back up the latter comparison. Per the Associated Press, here’s the official hostess on the self-immolations of monks protesting the increasingly authoritarian governance that Nhu championed: “another monk barbecue show.” And per the Guardian, here’s her favorite slogan. "Power is wonderful. Total power is totally wonderful." Alas, the coverage also devotes sigificant attention to Nhu’s physical appearance. A “trendsettng” fashion icon, “Madame Nhu was often photographed with her bouffant hairdo and glamorous clothes, including a tight version of the traditional silk tunic known as the ao dai, which showcased her slender body,” says the Associated Press. The Washington Post’s obit seems to embrace the anachronism even in how it refers to Nhu, who is called “Mme. Nhu” on second reference, an unusual style in a paper that doesn’t generally employ foreign honorifics. The Guardian, though, manages to wrest power-game symbolism from Nhu’s fashion sense, too: “Even her carved ivory fan, used mostly for coquettish effect, could clack shut like a gunshot and be used to rap home a point,” says the Guardian. Grim Reader, though, prefers a New York Times quote from Nhu herself, uttered after a rival general vowed to depose the president and take her as a mistress: “You are never going to overthrow this government because you don’t have the guts. And if you do overthrow it, you will never have me because I will claw your throat out first.”
In the end, Diem was overthrown while Nhu was on a U.S. speaking tour. She blamed Washington, and spent the rest of her life in exile in Europe, moving to Rome to be near a relative who was a priest at the Vatican.
**
He wanted a handy Beethoven
In business terms, former Sony chief Norio Ohga’s biggest legacy was having led the firm’s “evolution from a transistor-radio and tape-recorder manufacturer into a consumer-electronics and content giant,” explains the Wall Street Journal. For the rest of us, it’s simpler: He developed the CD. An Associated Press obit describes how Ohga, who was educated as a musician, embraced a format that would allow him to have all of Beethoven’s Ninth on one disc, eventually enrolling music-world luminaries to popularize them. Sony printed the first CD in 1982; five years later, sales outstripped LPs. A nice Telegraph obit explains how CDs propelled the merger of computers and entertainment media, something Sony embraced as it bought up content-creation businesses, too. But the piece also explains how Apple, with its emphasis on creating a marketplace for content firms to reach customers, outdid the Japanese firm.
“People need gurus”The guru Sathya Sai Baba had millions of followers, ashrams in over 100 countries, and seemed to have his image in every taxicab sun visor in India. But his death gets small play in the U.S., where both the New York Times and the Washington Post run wire service obits. The Los Angeles Times has a meatier staff-written obit for a man “known for conjuring jewelry, food and vibhuti, or sacred ash, out of the air, which devotees saw as proof of his powers and skeptics decried as sleight of hand.” In India, powerful pols, industrialists, and athletes wept, but the Los Angeles Times obit actually does a good job of avoiding the pitfalls of exotica and actually explaining why a guy whom smart-set types dismissed as a charlatan (and ex-devotees accused of sex abuse) remained so popular. For one thing, his belief system praised other faiths -- a plus in pluralistic India. For another, the country’s gallop towards modernity may have made the frizzy-haired holy man especially necessary: "People need gurus," a sociologist tells the paper. "Many people in uncertain professions, whether rich or poor, tend to put their faith in those who give assurances everything will be all right.” There’s no such scholarly nuance in India’s media: “Sai Baba's phenomenal mass appeal lay in his unswerving commitment to communal harmony, his encouragement of charitable activity and public-spiritedness, and his own example in building educational and health care institutions,” opines The Hindu, perhaps the country’s most professional newspaper. No mention of the allegations of fraud or abuse.
Answering an important question
There’s a trio of cool female musicians in the obits this week. Poly Styrene, nee Marianne Elliott-Said, had a “wobbly, discordant shriek,” according to the Telegraph. Styrene “wrote songs about consumerism, conformity, racism and alienation, and is widely acknowledged as an important influence on the ‘Riot Grrrl’ movement of the early 1990s,” says the obit. There’s an especially nice appreciation in New York Magazine’s Vulture blog, which describes hers as “a sound that answered an important question: How can a woman get onstage and be commanding without having to imitate masculine versions of ‘tough’? What's another way for a woman's voice to sound fierce — but also find audible, inspiring joy in the fact of speaking up? Her answer is very nearly contagious: There's such freedom and pleasure there that it's no surprise singers keep coming back to it.”
Walking away from fame
Just a few years older than Styrene, but seemingly of a different age, singer-songwriter Phoebe Snow “was one of the most dependably dynamic singers of her time,” says the Star-Ledger, “best known for her bluesy 1975 hit ‘Poetry Man,’ which reached the top five and helped define the ‘singer-songwriter’ music of that era,” according to the New York Daily News.
But Snow walked away from fame at the top of her career in order to care for a severely disabled daughter. She recorded albums but didn’t tour, and sang TV jingles to make ends meet. Many of the obits offer duly stoic quotes from Snow about how she treasured the 31 years she spent as the all-day caregiver for her daughter, who died in 2007.
Bluegrass pioneerAnd the Los Angeles Times remembers Hazel Dickens as “a pioneering force in bluegrass music and a strong and eloquent voice for coal miners, the poor and women.” The Washington Post’s obit does the best job of conjuring the impoverished West Virginia childhood that inspired much of Dickens’ music -- three of her brothers, for instance, died from mining-related illnesses. Its obit also notes that while the singer never became a household name, she exerted major influence over several who did, including Emmylou Harris and Allison Krauss.
Helping Lucy stomp a grape
Also in a bunch: TV writers. The obits this week include Madelyn Pugh Davis, “who helped define the TV sitcom as the co-writer of every episode of ‘I Love Lucy,’ the 1950s series that showcased the grape-stomping, bonbon-cramming, health-tonic-swigging antics of a scatterbrained housewife,” according to the Washington Post. A Los Angeles Times piece calls her one of the most influential people in the evolution of TV and notes that Davis and her team would always try out their physical gags first to make sure they were safe for Lucille Ball. … And Sol Saks is remembered as the guy who wrote the pilot for Bewitched, the now-campy I-married-a-witch classic sitcom. He didn’t stay with the show, crafting a career built on scripting pilots. But the New York Times obit includes his classic rebuttal to critics who called the program derivative: “Go back to the Greeks, who had stories of gods coming down to Earth to live with mortals.” Meaning if it was derivative, it came from a good source. … Do you know the phone number for the carpet company Empire? Thank -- or blame -- Elmer Hauldren, the pitchman who wrote the infectious jingle that ends "5-8-8, 2-300, Empire!" The Chicago Tribune obit notes that Pearl Jam once played the tune at a Chicago concert.
Look at me when you’re talking
Finally, according to the Wall Street Journal, Hubert Schlafly considered his greatest innovation to be the now-ubiquitous 26-foot transportable satellite dish used to transmit TV broadcasts across continents. But most of the obits focus on a device fewer folks will ever use: The TelePrompTer, which “rescued decades' worth of soap opera actors, newscasters and politicians from the embarrassment of stumbling over their words on live television,” according to the Associated Press, which quotes an expert explaining that Schlafly’s invention “made the politicians look smarter because they were looking right into the camera." Politico, among others, offers a rundown of the device’s history in politics. And, naturally, since the idea that President Obama only sounds smart because he reads TelePrompTer speeches is a right-wing meme, a Dallas blogger uses the death to wonder why the chief executive isn’t presiding over the funeral.
Michael Schaffer’s Grim Reader appears Friday in Obit. He is the author of One Nation Under Dog, about culture and the American pet industry.
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