The Second Act of Robert Byrd, RIP

Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, died today at the age of 92. Paul Begala in The Daily Beast takes a look back at his long and complicated career:

The dumbest thing F. Scott Fitzgerald ever wrote was that there are no second acts in American life. In fairness to Fitzgerald, that line came from notes for a novel he never finished. One believes if he’d had time he would have tossed that sentence in the trash, because if there is anything we know about America, it is that it’s the land of the second chance.

Robert Byrd had a second act. And he used it to stand for equality and opportunity and against an unjust war and unconstitutional usurpations. The longest-serving senator in American history has passed, and as we look back at the arc of his life it is a testament to the dynamism of the American story.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman constitutionalist, orator and Consul, said “Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.” Byrd was no idiot. He made his mistakes, but he refused to persist in them. Indeed, the legacy of Robert C. Byrd is not that when he was young he was so closed-minded, but rather that when he was old he was so open-minded. His second act was political theater at its best.

Really Big if Predictable Show

The Kagan confirmation hearings begin today. You can watch C-Span's live streaming coverage here. Any plot twists in this show?
From Real Clear Politics:

Democratic senators are planning to put the right of citizens to challenge corporate power at the center of their critique of activist conservative judging, offering a case that has not been fully aired since the days of the great Progressive Era Justice Louis Brandeis...They will be pushing the narrative away from the hot-button social issues that have been a distraction from the main game: the use of the Supreme Court as a redoubt against progressive legislation, the right of plaintiffs to call corporations to account before juries, and the ability of the political system to protect itself against corruption.

And it's unfortunate George Will isn't on the Senate Judiciary Committee, because he's got a lot of questions, including:

You have said: "There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage." But that depends on what the meaning of "is" is. There was no constitutional right to abortion until the court discovered one 185 years after the Constitution was ratified, when the right was spotted lurking in emanations of penumbras of other rights. What is to prevent the court from similarly discovering a right to same-sex marriage?

The Blackening of Broadway

Broadway sees benefits of selling to black audiences. From the NY Times:

Broadway shows about black characters often draw black theatergoers, but the producers of “Memphis” and “Fela!” as well as producers of some coming shows are particularly going after African-Americans, given that Broadway’s overall attendance has been on the decline, down 3 percent for the 2009-10 season. Whether black theatergoers become a larger, reliable part of the Broadway audience remains to be seen, as do the range and quality of the shows that are offered to appeal to them.

Yet producers clearly sense a market that has not been tapped out: This fall’s Broadway lineup already includes two new musicals about black men, “Unchain My Heart: The Ray Charles Musical” and “The Scottsboro Boys,” and possibly the new two-character play “The Mountaintop,” about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., depending on whether the producers can land the stars Samuel L. Jackson and Halle Berry.

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis talk about August Wilson:


Interesting to see what this does for African-American playwrights. As Denzel says, "If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage."