THE JAZZ SINGER PREMIERED ON THIS DAY IN 1927: It is usually regarded as the first feature-length “talkie” (though it contained only a bit of actual talking).

Starring Al Jolson, who performs several scenes in blackface, the film is the story of a Jewish boy, Jakie Rabinowitz, who longs to be a jazz singer. His father, on the other hand, wants him to follow the family tradition and become a synagogue cantor. Jakie eventually runs away to follow his dream of show business stardom.

Alas, just as he is about to make it big, he finds out that his father is on his deathbed. Young Jakie is thus needed to sing the Kol Nidre for Yom Kippur in his father’s stead. If he fails to show up for the premiere of his big show, his fledgling career will likely be ruined.   But who will sing at the Yom Kippur service?  (Yes, I know … it’s probably a bit too melodramatic for the 21^st century, but whatever ….)

With Justin Trudeau and all, blackface has been a big news item lately.  Here is an aspect of the issue that I did not realize until recently (though it doesn’t surprise me): Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer were both very popular with African Americans. When the film played in Harlem, Harlem’s newspaper, the Amsterdam News, called it “one of the greatest pictures ever produced.” About Jolson, it wrote: “Every colored performer is proud of him.”

I also did not realize that Jolson had been such a champion of African American performers. Here is what Wikipedia says:

While growing up, Jolson had many black friends, including Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who became a prominent tap dancer. As early as 1911, at the age of 25, Jolson was noted for fighting discrimination on Broadway and later in his movies. He promoted a play by Garland Anderson, which became the first production with an all-black cast produced on Broadway. He brought a black dance team from San Francisco that he tried to put in a Broadway show. He demanded equal treatment for Cab Calloway, with whom he performed duets in the movie The Singing Kid.

Jolson read in the newspaper that songwriters Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, neither of whom he had ever heard of, were refused service at a Connecticut restaurant because of their race. He tracked them down and took them out to dinner, “insisting he’d punch anyone in the nose who tried to kick us out!” According to biographer Al Rose, Jolson and Blake became friends and went to boxing matches together.  …

Jeni LeGon, a black female tap dance star, recalls her life as a film dancer: “But of course, in those times it was a ‘black-and-white world.’ You didn’t associate too much socially with any of the stars. You saw them at the studio, you know, nice—but they didn’t invite. The only ones that ever invited us home for a visit was Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler.”  …

Jolson’s physical expressiveness also affected the music styles of some black performers. Music historian Bob Gulla writes that “the most critical influence in Jackie Wilson’s young life was Al Jolson.” He points out that Wilson’s ideas of what a stage performer could do to keep their act an “exciting” and “thrilling performance” was shaped by Jolson’s acts, “full of wild writhing and excessive theatrics”. Wilson felt that Jolson “should be considered the stylistic [forefather] of rock and roll.”

Interesting.

WHAT DID THE NEW YORK TIMES GET WRONG ABOUT SLAVERY IN ITS “1619 PROJECT”?:  A lot.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, LET THIS BE A PARODY:  “Woke Math in Seattle.”

HERE’S ANOTHER ONE:  “Girl Who Claimed Hair Was Cut in Racist Attack Admits She Made It Up.”

HOOVER DAM: On this day in 1935, Hoover Dam was officially dedicated.  At the time, it was the most expensive public works project in American history. Today it continues to supply power for over a million homes (and reliable water too). I am told my house in San Diego is usually one of them.

Just starting on this epic undertaking required building a railroad from Las Vegas to the site, constructing an entire town—Boulder City—to house the workers, and temporarily diverting the Colorado River through four diversion tunnels. All of this had to be done in a place where summer temperatures frequently top 110 degrees.

Among the many thousands of workers were the so-called “high scalers”—some of whom had been circus acrobats.  Their job was to climb down the canyon walls on ropes and remove all loose rock in preparation for building the actual dam. Jackhammers and dynamite were their tools.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation web site tells this story:

Perhaps the most famous feat any of the high scalers ever performed was a daring midair rescue. Burl R. Rutledge, a Bureau of Reclamation engineer, fell from the canyon rim. Twenty-five feet below, high scaler Oliver Cowan heard Rutledge slip. Without a moment’s hesitation, he swung himself out and seized Rutledge’s leg. A few seconds later, high scaler Arnold Parks swung over and pinned Rutledge’s body to the canyon wall. The scalers held Rutledge until a line was dropped and secured around him and the shaken engineer was pulled, unharmed, to safety.

I know I’ll forget by tomorrow, because it’s the 21^st century and it’s hard not to take electrical power for granted. But today at least I’m going to try to remember all those who worked on the dam—including the hundred or so who died—when I flip on a switch and a light comes on.  It’s a tribute to how lucky I am that I am likely to forget even before lunchtime.

HAPPY 118TH BIRTHDAY TO PHYSICIST ENRICO FERMI:  In 1942, he conducted the first human-made, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction at Stagg Field on the campus of the University of Chicago.  It was the Manhattan Project’s first major step toward creating the atomic bomb.

You might want to ask why they did this in the middle of the country’s second largest city.  Why not a lonely desert somewhere?  The answer is that those in charge trusted Fermi’s calculations, which indicated that it would be safe.  I’m … uh … glad he was right.

BACK WHEN SAN FRANCISCO LOVED STRAWS: On this day in 1937, a patent was issued to Joseph Friedman for the “Bendy Straw.” Friedman watched his little daughter struggling to use a straight straw at a soda fountain in San Francisco, so he decided to help her out. He inserted a screw and then used dental floss to create corrugations into the straw. He then removed the screw and floss and voilà—a flexible straw. The straws were first marketed to hospitals for bedridden patients, but eventually became popular with children and … well … everyone.

Little did he realize that the plastic version of his cute little invention would eventually be blamed (along with other plastic straws) for destroying the planet.

BUT YOU CAN STILL DO IT OUT OF LOVE:  The New York Post reports that New York City bans calling someone an “illegal alien” out of hate.   Or reporting an illegal alien to the immigration authorities out of hate.

THE CASE FOR BREXIT with DANIEL HANNAN:  Dan Hannan, Member of the European Parliament and author of Why Vote Leave (among other things), is coming to the University of San Diego to discuss Brexit on Monday, October 7th at at 2:00 p.m.  If you are in Southern California, this should be a great opportunity.  Yours truly will be introducing our honored speaker.

HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOMS KEEP CLOSING: A large part of the reason is that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) requires hospitals with emergency rooms to treat uninsured patients regardless of ability to pay (until they are “stabilized”). Hospitals without emergency rooms don’t have to.

(Alas, EMTALA was a Reagan Era innovation. And the number of emergency rooms has been decreasing ever since.  The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.)

ST. PAUL TEACHER WHO WAS FIRED FOR SPEAKING OUT AGAINST RACE-DRIVEN SCHOOL DISCIPLINE POLICY GETS OVER $500K IN LAWSUIT SETTLEMENT: And rightly so. It’s shocking to me how tenaciously the identity politics crew sticks to the narrative that everything is due to racism. And how flat out wrong they are about the facts underlying the school discipline issue.

TITLE IX FOR ME BUT NOT FOR THEE: With (1) all the Title IX “violations” that were never intended by Congress to be Title IX violations and (2) all the discrimination against men in scholarship and other program eligibility, it’s curious that the one area where women really are discriminated against (admissions) gets no attention.   Whatever …

WILL HISTORY REPEAT?: Roger Simon writes about how candidates are repeating the lie that an overly aggressive police officer murdered Michael Brown.   Historically the problem was mostly the other way around: Overly passive police displayed little interest in protecting black communities from crime. We seem to be re-entering the passive phase.

KURSAT PEKGOZ IS A WARRIOR FOR MEN’S RIGHTS ON CAMPUS: He has done wonderful work attempting to hold colleges and universities responsible for what is often blatant sex discrimination in scholarships and other programs. Is that why, by letter dated August 28, 2019, the University of Southern California has dismissed him from its Ph.D. program in English Language and Literature? I worry that it might be.

JOHN FUND:  Justin Trudeau, Identity Politics Hypocrite.

WELL, OF COURSE:  Big three ignore Kavanaugh correction.

POWERLINE ON THE SHAPE OF THE RACE:  Not only has Elizabeth Warren moved into second place in the polls, she is in first place among the candidates for “combined first and second.”  (Just don’t vote for her because  you think her well-known study on medical bankruptcy was fair and accurate.  It was neither.)

DOING PHYSICS WHILE BLACK:  John Rosenberg tells us about Stanford’s efforts to “diversify” physics.

JULIAN CASTRO  IS THE LATEST CANDIDATE TO LASH OUT AT  “ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM”:  Interestingly, when the Commission on Civil Rights went looking for evidence of racism in the location of coal ash dumps, it found that they were disproportionately located near whites.  It’s funny how the world is more complicated than our political slogans …

PETER WOOD ON THE NYT’S 1619 PROJECT:  Teaching that America Is Hopelessly Racist.

AEI HAS SOME POLLING DATA ON SCHOOL DISCIPLINE:  E.g.: Only 28% of adults support a federal policy prohibiting school from disciplining students of color at higher rates than other races, while 49% oppose.  The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights didn’t get the message. Fortunately, Secretary DeVos did.

THE COMMISSION WRITES ITS REPORTS FIRST AND GATHERS ITS FACTS LATER, IF AT ALL:  In 2015, the Commission on Civil Rights issued a ghastly report that purported to find egregious conditions at immigration detention facilities.  (Maggots in the food!  Torture!  Or … uh … rather something that seems to us a little bit like torture!)  Interestingly, the draft was largely written before that anyone from the Commission had visited any of these centers.

I hope you’ll agree that my dissent made it clear just how misinformed that report was.  

The Commission will release an “update” to that report in a few weeks.  This time its members didn’t bother to tour a facility at all.  I had to arrange a tour in my private capacity.

This post is a shout out to the ICE officers who gave me and a USD colleague of mine a tour yesterday morning of the Otay Mesa Detention Facility here in San Diego County.  Thank you!  

I won’t be able to write as much this time.  The Commission has seen to it that I won’t have enough time.  But I will get something out.

ON THIS DAY IN 1957: The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was signed into law by President Eisenhower. It was the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, and on the surface its purpose might seem relatively modest–to create two new institutions, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and the Commission on Civil Rights (on which I currently sit). But those institutions were extremely important to the history civil rights.  Without them it would have been a lot hard to eliminate Jim Crow.

Does the Commission on Civil Rights continue to serve a good purpose?  That’s a question for Congress, not me.  In 2007, I testified about the Commission to a Senate Committee celebrating the Act’s 50^th anniversary. Alas, I was much too optimistic about the Commission’s ability to turn out useful reports. My defense is that I was new to the Commission then. These days I’m tickled to death when I can just get it not to embarrass itself.

On the other hand, it’s not impossible for the Commission to do good work. While it’s always an uphill battle, we’ve done it a few times in recent years.

ON THIS DAY IN 1986, FLIGHT ATTENDANT NEERJA BHANOT DIED SAVING THE LIVES OF PASSENGERS ON PAN AM FLIGHT # 73: She was just two days short of her 22^nd birthday.

Flight #73 originated in Mumbai and was ultimately bound for New York. It was initially carrying 394 passengers, 9 infants, 19 Indian flight attendants and an American pilot and co-pilot.

During a stopover in Karachi, four heavily-armed hijackers—part of the Abu Nidal Organization–stormed the plane. Alerted to the hijacking, the pilot and co-pilot escaped from the cockpit via the Inertial Reel Escape Device, thus leaving the aircraft immobilized on the ground.

Realizing that the plane was pilotless, the hijackers sought out an American passenger, eventually singling out a 29-year-old Californian named Rajesh Kumar. Kumar was ordered to kneel facing the front of the aircraft with his hands behind his head. They threatened to kill him if Pan Am’s negotiators did not send them a flight crew immediately.

Bloodthirsty and dissatisfied with the speed of the negotiators’ response, the chief hijacker shot Kumar in the head and dumped him onto the tarmac. He died before he reached the hospital. Thereafter, they told the negotiators, a passenger would be executed every 15 minutes until a pilot was produced.

The hijackers then turned to purser Neerja Bhanot, who remained calm and collected even when a gun was put to her head. They demanded that she and the flight attendants under her control collect the passports from all passengers. Believing that the hijackers intended to kill the more than 40 Americans on board, she had the flight attendants hide some of the American passports in the seats and dumped the rest of them down the rubbish chute.

For a time, the hijackers considered executing a British national instead, but ultimately did not.

Meanwhile, Bhanot surreptitiously handed a passenger the instructions, hidden in a magazine, for how to open the door and deploy the slide in case the opportunity arose.

The hijackers were stymied. By late evening, the auxiliary power unit shut down, causing all but the emergency lights to come down. At that point, the hijackers tried to set off the explosive belt one of them was wearing. If they’d been successful, they could have blown up everyone on board. Instead, the explosion was rather puny. Immediately, they began shooting their guns and throwing grenades. With bullets ricocheting off the walls, passengers were dying everywhere.

In the bloody melee, Bhanot was able to open one of the aircraft doors. She could have escaped herself, but instead one-by-one she assisted passengers out the door. She died as a result of wounds suffered shielding three children from the hail of bullets.

(The passenger who had been slipped the instructions by Bhanot got his door open too and was able to deploy the slide. So Bhanot gets credit for causing two doors to open.)

Sources differ slightly on the number of dead and injured. I am going with 22 dead, including Bhanot, and 140 injured. Without her, the carnage likely would have been a lot worse.

All four hijackers were arrested, convicted and imprisoned in Pakistan. In late September 2001, Pakistani authorities released the chief hijacker, but he was picked up by American law enforcement authorities shortly thereafter, apparently with the blessing of the Pakistani government. He is currently serving 160 years in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. His fellow terrorists were released in 2008 over the objections of the United States. One was reported dead in a 2010 drone strike, but his death is unconfirmed.

A movie called Neerja was made about Bhanot’s heroism in 2016.  (Unlike most real-life figures portrayed by gorgeous actors or actresses, Neerja Bhanot was drop-dead gorgeous herself. But beautiful or not, she had the right stuff.)

Rest in peace, Neerja.  Americans in particular have reason to thank you.

CHARLES LIPSON ON FISA ABUSE:  What to expect.