Van Gogh at Anvers

Van Gogh spent the last months of his life at Anvers, a village along the Seine. He is buried there, with his brother, Theo, and it's where he did some of his best known paintings and some of his best work, as he spiraled out of control toward his death.

Walking past various spots in the village, the Phantom would stop and say, "Hmmm, that looks familiar. Either I've been here in a former life, or..." Sure enough, there was a painting you can dredge up.

Van Gogh's brother believed in him, and in fact, it was Theo who told Vincent he needed to shift from the dark brown palate to a more colorful palate if he ever hoped to sell a painting. Vincent did, and Voila! Quelle difference!

This tale of brotherly advice resonated with the Phantom and his brother, who walked around the village with the Phantom. On many occasions, over the years, brother had given the Phantom advice, which the Phantom initially resisted, but ultimately followed with success. Going into medicine was one such, but just as important,  a variety of pointers for catching passes in football against a brick wall defense, ("Dive!") hitting in baseball, ("If you do not  swing that bat, I'm going to walk right out there and kick your butt at home plate, in front of everyone." Three hits that day.)  But the piece de resistance concerned a change in his swimming stroke, which the Phantom insisted would never work, but finally relented and tried what brother advised, and the very next week beat the county champion (by a nose), thus cementing brother's status as a savant.  

Brother is entitled to be buried in a Veteran's cemetery--having been shot at in his swift boat, he is very entitled--but looking at those two graves, he clearly started thinking anew about his final resting place. 

Theo died not long after Vincent, and their headstones are protected by a patch of ivy.

The New Woman: Mandy Rice-Davies

Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler 

One of the Phantom's fondest memories of the two months he spent in London his fourth year in medical school was reading the obituaries in the London Times, which he read in the Royal Brompton Hospital cafeteria every morning, to start each day on the right note. In those days, the cafeteria tables were covered with pink table cloths, and a lady came up to pour your tea for you and to bring you biscuits. It was a most civilized way to begin the day.

The Times' obits were wonderfully opinionated and dwelt as much on the controversies in the lives they were describing as on the triumphs. By contrast, those of the New York Times , are dull affairs, but today's piece on Mandy Rice-Davies is a happy exception. 

Ms. Rice-Davies came to public attention in 1963, because she was having an affair with an aristocrat, Lord Astor, which he denied and when asked why she should be believed when Lord Astor denied it, she simply said, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?"

Years later, she explained her willingness to go on public record over the years by simply saying she did not want to be remembered as a prostitute, for the sake of her family.  In those days, she explained, "Good girls didn't have any sex at all and bad girls had a bit." 

Which brought back that time to the Phantom in stark relief--it was actually true then: In the 60's women were expected to be virgins at marriage. Their first sexual experience was supposed to be their wedding night. Can you imagine? Fortunately, today's adolescents can likely not imagine what that was like. For most American women born after 1963, with the exception of some Catholics, this notion of there being virtue in a lack of sexual experience has been discredited. A friend and colleague of mine, who was born in 1945, once remarked at a dinner party she had only ever had sex with one man, her husband. Now, her husband was a very good looking and glossy guy, a television personality, a former Navy flyer, an all around heart throb, but my wife, once we were alone in the car together, could hardly contain her contempt: "Can you imagine being proud of that? Good Lord, that's like being happy you had only had sex once for each child! Let us never have dinner with them again." 

Even then, the Phantom thought that good girl thing a very morbid idea, but proper people were scandalized and turn red whenever he voiced that opinion in polite company.

As Ms. Rice-Davies aged, she became a successful business woman and her third marriage was decades long.  "My life," she said, "has been one long descent into respectability."

Noah Cross makes something of the same point, in "Chinatown," when he says, "Politicians, old buildings and whores all get respectable, if they last long enough."

Ms. Rice-Davies, of course, was no whore. She simply enjoyed the benefits of a sexual relationship with a wealthy older man, just as that man's wife did, but without the official blessing of church and state.

It is a great blessing that attitudes toward what women should be have changed dramatically since those dark days in the 1960's.  The double standard has finally disappeared from the thinking of today's youth. If boys can enjoy sex, so can girls. Hallelujah!  Claire Underwood, in "House of Cards" explains her attitude when she describes how Francis proposed to her:

"He said, 'Claire, if all you want is happines, say no. I'm not going to give you a couple of kids and count the days until retirement. I promise you freedom from that. I promise you'll never be bored'...He was the only one who understood me."

When his own sons were growing up and the Phantom expressed such sentiments, he was told, "Oh, just wait until your boys are old enough to notice girls: You won't be so liberal then." And the Phantom responded, "I hope they start having sex as early as possible." Fortunately, the Phantom's wife, who worked at Planned Parenthood, was with him on all this and handed her sons condoms as soon as she became aware of girlfriends entering the picture--and this was to their sons'  great embarrassment, initially, but they did not turn them down. Mother simply waved off the protests, with a dismissive: "It's either has happened or will  happen. Don't be caught unprepared."  Something about her frank approach simply dissolved all the drama and likely reduced some of the drive toward sex. They both seemed to make the transition from pre sexual lives to sexual lives with a minimum of distress, although, not without zero distress. 

Their experience  had to be better than what preceded them in their parents' generation.

For the Phantom, there has been the problem of fearing that all his best sins are behind him, but he is grateful things have moved in a direction of freedom and honesty, and people like Many Rice-Davies, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Maud Gonne, Simone DeBouvier, Erica Jong, Mary Gordon and May West all contributed to that movement.

Along with the progress in racial relations, the progress, at least in the Western world, toward regarding  women as full human beings, with equal  rights and protections, has been one of the great achievements of American and European civilization over the past 50 years. 

This has benefited men every bit as much as it has benefited women. 

House of Cards: Welcome To Backstage Washington

Is Madmen really what Madison Avenue was like in the 60’s?

The Phantom cannot say. He wasn’t there. It feels authentic. But he cannot know.

Is House of Cards what Washington is like?

Again, the Phantom cannot say. He grew up in that town, but never worked on Capitol Hill. His knowledge of what the people depicted in House of Cards are really like is indirect. Conversations at the swimming pool or at the occasional cocktail party with various Congressmen, media types. And, of course, there were patients from the Hill, the White House, various agencies and departments. A sort of peripheral exposure.

But from those experiences, over time, Mad Dog did get a  sort of backstage look and sound of what these people are like, how they speak and what they do and do not say. And from that, the Phantom thinks House of Cards is pitch perfect.

The new season will start February 1, and the Phantom is re-watching early episodes to get reoriented.

What makes it all so fun is the intimate glances from Francis Underwood to the camera, where he tells you what he is really thinking, what other people are really thinking.

Washington always has people who never seem to let their guard down. They say stuff like, “Well, it’s the least we can do for these heroes. After all, they are fighting to keep us free.” And you think, “Does this guy think I’m going to quote him on the evening news?”

Much more fun are the folks who will tell you what they really think, often the sly way Francis does. You feel you’ve been admitted backstage; you feel you have a friend.

Of course, that friendship is not without its limitations, but it is fun.

You learn early people who depend on someone for their livelihood are not going to say anything, not going to reveal anything about the boss—that’s understood. You do not explore that territory. They will reveal themselves before they will expose their boss.

The Phantom had some patients, who became friends, who would never have said anything about the President or the Secretary or the senator they worked for. They would skewer some opposition leader, but they never would even mention their boss, and certainly not relate what he had said. That was an area you simply did not go to. The Phantom, who has never been very good at filtering and editing, had to exert much self control to not ask, but he did not ask.

Francis Underwood, however, takes us into his confidence. His willingness  to divulge secrets, to reveal his basic values draws you in. He is taking a risk, but he is saying, “You are worth the risk.”  And he reveals himself, not completely, discretely, as he strangles a dog:

“Moments like this require someone like me. Someone who will act. Who will do what no one else has the courage to do. The unpleasant thing. The necessary thing.”

He tells you, in an aside, he loves his wife more than anything--"I love that woman. I love her more than sharks love blood"-- and you learn that he loves her precisely as sharks love blood; he is playing a blood sport in Washington, and with everyone he runs across.  As you see their relationship evolve, you see it’s not an Ozzie and Harriett type relationship; they are sharks circling, an intimate team, each dangerous, both to those around them and to each other.

Returning home to find discover  Zoe Barnes with her husband,  Claire looks over Zoe as Zoe exits and says, “Does the push up bra and V neck sweater still work?” In one withering line, she reduces the fetching reporter who has just tried to seduce her husband, to a cliché.

Actually, the one false note House of Cards hits is Zoe’s use of a cell phone photo which captured Francis looking at her fetching rear end moving in a revealing dress, as she passed by him at the Kennedy Center. She is saying, “I know you’re attracted to me and I have this embarrassing photo to prove it.”  But men look at women all the time, especially when the woman wears a dress which demands it. 

Francis, to his credit looks unfazed and amused, and you can see his mind working. “I might be able to use this woman.” There ensues a little cat and mouse before Zoe gets down to business and Francis says, "Oh? Is the foreplay over?" 

What is really stunning is how each episode heightens the effect of sucking you into this world. Episode Three, which has one of the most powerful, seductive, edgy, intense, significant scenes in the history of American literature,  where Francis Underwood addresses the issue of how a benign and loving God can permit horrific things to happen, is beyond magnificent. And the really amazing thing is, there are other scenes in this episode which almost match it. The whole episode is such an integral whole, it is simply mind blowing.  Anyone who thinks they do not have time for another series must simply watch the first three episodes, and if they are not hooked, one has to wonder about their priorities.

House of Cards may be the closest thing we have to Shakespeare in American literature. The Sopranos approached that bar. House of Cards may leap over it.