Record Roundup for 2009: Pop

MIKA: The Boy Who Knew Too Much
Casablanca Records B002M9FWQE

And now for something completely different: an album to dance around the room in your underwear to. If we were uncertain as to that purpose, Mika gives us full authorization: he spends most of his time in the video “We Are Golden” dancing around the room in his underwear. It’s all about being young and impatient, sassy and unfocused, and by golly, few songwriters have done it better. (Especially the underwear part.)

The Boy isn’t exactly a sophomore slump — it’s chockfull of catchy melodies — yet it’s a step down from his debut album, Life in Cartoon Motion, and it represents what I presume to be a conscious scurrying away from Cartoon Motion’s surprising emotional depth and honesty. Indeed, The Boy is by far the cartoon-ier of the two.

What Mika knows too much about, I suspect, is fame. The first album was such a hit, and followed by such intense public scrutiny, that he changed the way he goes about his business. To cite but the most glaring example, with the album’s success came a tremendous public interest in his sex life. Every journalist inquired whether he was gay, and one fellow even threatened to kill Mika if he didn’t come out of the closet.

He wasn’t all that closeted, yet he didn’t want to speak plainly. The glam and pop artists of the 1970s who are his direct ancestors could gender-bend and play as coy as they pleased, and Mika must have believed he could follow their lead. He couldn’t. He has at last come out (about as directly as a boy can who doesn’t want to spoil — or halve — his chances of getting laid on a Saturday night), but to compensate for this violation of his privacy, he’s slammed shut a number of other doors.

It says something, I think, that after repeated listenings, I can’t remember more than a couple of lyrics. These weren’t Mika’s strongest suit, even on Cartoon Motion: he has a weakness for false rhymes, and sometimes one can’t be sure what he means, or what story he’s telling. In “Love Today,” from the first album, I defy anyone to tell me what’s going on in the verses — until you get to the unforgettable, instant-hit chorus: “Anyway you want to / Anyway you’ve got to / Love love me.” He tries a similar approach in “We Are Golden,” already a hit and probably the album’s best song. Yet please note that, when we arrive at the chorus of the new anthem, he’s talking about a lot of people — and not about himself alone.

Having made one of the most stirring arguments in favor of pop music in modern, Mika now retreats to the shallowness of the kind of pop that needed defending in the first place. He’s no longer a personal songwriter. That’s a pity. But he’s young — he’s got time and talent enough to grow — and you know what? There are times when you want to dance around the room in your underwear.

Another Kind of Cartoon Motion:
Mika in the Video for “We Are Golden”

He’s got a lot of energy, doesn’t he?

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Record Roundup for 2009: Vocal Recitals

IMPORTANT NOTICE FROM THE EDITOR:
This is not a picture of Vivica Genaux or Joyce DiDonato.
(But he has sung opera.)

Gone are the days when I worked at Opera News and took home dozens of new CDs each year (one of the very, very few perks of that job), and farther still the days when I worked at CBS, and made enough money to walk into Tower Records three or four times a month, and to walk out with a bright-yellow bag stuffed with music. For that matter, gone are the days of Tower Records and a robust recording industry, too, and I’ve been told that I’m an old fogey for continuing to buy discs instead of downloading from the Internet. (In my defense, please note that downloading is grossly unsuited to opera — where are the librettos? — and iTunes and other such sites are managed by nitwits who know nothing of classical music.)

So over the next two days, I offer a roundup of the new albums I’ve enjoyed this year. There are three of them, and they’re very nearly the only new albums I’ve gotten in 2009. I’ll start with the vocal recitals.

VIVICA GENAUX: Pyrotechnics
Vivaldi Opera Arias
Virgin Classics 50999 694573 0 2

Pyrotechnics is the latest album from mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux, who last week brought a selection of these arias to a concert here in Paris. Vivica looked gorgeous, as always, and I noted that, after a weekend when every Frenchman bitched about the cold, she walked onstage Monday in open-toed shoes. “But it wasn’t very cold up there,” she exclaimed. “I was fine!”

”Yes, but you’re from Alaska!” I pointed out helpfully.

Vivica’s album gathers a sampling of arias from operas by Antonio Vivaldi, and the ensemble Europa Galante, conducted by Fabio Biondi, joins the singer. Right off the bat, they announce that this is not going to be another “Pale-White, or Nymphs and Shepherds,” touch-it-with-a-tweezer Early Music performance: Biondi elicits polished fluidity from his players, and Vivica throws herself into each dramatic situation.

The trouble is that the situations aren’t terribly compelling: Vivaldi, an unsurpassed master of choral and orchestral writing, desperately wanted to write for theater, but ultimately was better-suited to the church. These arias aren’t bad, but they lack variety and insight into character. After an album’s worth, you find yourself wishing for Handel.

In compensation, you get the promised pyrotechnics, and plenty of ’em. The notes fly as furiously as snowflakes in a storm (which I have proven scientifically, by playing the album during the wintry weather that descended on Paris as Vivica left town), and her luscious timbre is like a mug of steaming-hot cocoa. The results are exciting, even festive, and you may enjoy the music even more if you forget about the lyrics and Vivaldi’s theatrical ambitions and consider this instead a kind of undiscovered Christmas cantata. (Why not? Doesn’t every one of the Four Seasons sound like sleigh bells?)

*

JOYCE DiDONATO: Colbran, the Muse
Rossini Opera Arias
Virgin Classics 50999 6945790 6

Richard Wagner (among others) used to complain that Rossini’s music disregarded the libretto: the characters in his operas sang the same way, regardless of circumstance or feeling. Rossini didn’t help his case much by assigning the same aria to different operas, as in the case of “Una voce poco fa,” which Rosina sings to comic effect in The Barber of Seville, but which was originally written as the Queen’s “Quanto è grato all’alma mia” in the melodrama Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra. (Yep, that’s Elizabeth I of England.)

In a really good performance, we’re unlikely to notice the disconnect between compositional style and characterization. Singers such as Marilyn Horne or Shirley Verrett wielded such authority, commanded the stage and score so completely, that every note rang true, and you thought, “Of course she’s singing this music at this moment.”

And then you get Joyce DiDonato, who focuses on Rossini the same laser-beam she brought to bear on Handel last year, performing a kind of musical microsurgery that yields the most penetrating psychological insights imaginable. She’s beyond an advocate for Rossini — she comes up with riches that he himself probably didn’t suspect were there. Pyrotechnics galore here, too, but also languorous caresses and quiet melancholy. To Hell with Wagner: Rossini knew his way around a theater, and so does Joyce.

Beyond that superlative combination of study and instinct, Joyce’s interpretations benefit from the particular quality of her voice. Beneath its shimmering surface runs a powerful current of sadness; this vocal chiaroscuro lends emotional complexity to any music. Joyce’s singing reminds us that even great joy is hard-won at great cost — or, more usually in Rossini dramas, doomed to brevity — and it must be seized and savored.

She is abetted by the tenor Lawrence Brownlee, whose performance in Rossini’s Semiramide at Caramoor last summer I missed, but whose Nemorino in Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore at the same venue was one of the most exciting events I witnessed all year. (Unbelievably, it was the first time he’d sung the role; he nailed that sucker.) He and Joyce have sung together onstage many times, and I’m looking forward to a long continuation of this fruitful collaboration.

Edoardo Müller conducts the Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia of Rome.* Some (Wagner-influenced?) conductors balk at bel canto, saying there’s nothing for them to do here, yet Müller makes one feel that he isn’t standing back but creating a space in which the singers can assert their creative forces. I admire that.

And speaking of Joyce and conductors, I draw your attention to the link to the new website of conductor Leonardo Vordoni, who, in addition to his manifold talents and accomplishments, is also Joyce’s husband.

TOMORROW: My Record Roundup for 2009 turns to Pop Music.

*NOTE: And by the way, wouldn’t you love to hear how Rossini would set a phrase such as “Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia di Roma”? A lot of triplets, I’m guessing.

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Suis-Je Français?

Often I’ve been known to say, “I’m French,” but usually as an excuse for my reflexive impulse to kiss both cheeks when I’m greeting a friend, or for my failure to recognize some megacelebrity of U.S. pop culture. (You can’t imagine my bafflement when I arrived in the States last spring to find “Jon & Kate” on the cover of every magazine.) On a more serious level, I do love this country passionately, and I can envision circumstances in which, yes, I would die for France and proudly. I may some day apply for citizenship. But do I consider myself truly French? No. Do my neighbors consider me French? Non.

In the context of the current debate on l’identité française, however, many people are asking what it is to be French. Having considered the question at length (two decades), I now propose a handy list of the most important traits that identify a true Frenchman.

To be French is to be born knowing all things — most especially that, if anything goes wrong, anywhere in the world, it is the fault of an American.

Hallyday: Le Plus Grand Français de Tous les Temps
Celui qui a dit “Yé yé yé!”

To be French is to be more interested in the health of Johnny Hallyday than in the Copenhagen conference, wars in the Middle East, world hunger, national politics, the weather, or, for that matter, the current debate on l’identité française. That Hallyday is partly Belgian (and until recently lived most of the year in Switzerland) makes no difference.

To be French is to go on strike at the least provocation, in a way designed to inconvenience the greatest number of people. At any rate, that seems to be the thinking of the transit workers, who voted to continue snarling up the suburban commuter rails through Monday at least — making it impossible for many people to do their holiday shopping.

Désolé, Madame, you will have to take the next train …
some time in January, peut-être.

Similarly, to be French is to profess tremendous faith in the collective wisdom of the state, but to take to the streets in protest any time the government actually attempts to wield power.

To be French is to expect that everyone else in France will uphold a rigid code of personal conduct, a combination of le respect and la politesse, without being told precisely what that code entails. The code differs from Frenchman to Frenchman, and by the way, it’s unlikely that he will uphold it with regard to you. (Especially on motorways.) But you, vous les autres, you’d better mind your manners.

To be French is to defend tradition from threats abroad: French bakeries and French cinema enjoy the “exception” that permits them to compete more advantageously both at home and on international markets. Meanwhile, it’s increasingly difficult to find an edible baguette, and the French line up to see every Hollywood blockbuster that comes down the pike.

Objet Volant Non-Identifié

Just so, to be French is to uphold the importance of la cuisine du terroir and the charm of the béret basque — while dining at McDonald’s and wearing a Yankees cap.

To be French is to enjoy Jerry Lewis and Jim Carrey movies in the confident belief that their behavior is typical of all Americans; and to enjoy Woody Allen and Roman Polanski movies more in the years since we discovered what sexual deviance they’re capable of.

Un Américain Typique

To be French is to mistrust one’s neighbors while spending as much time as possible with one’s family. They are the only people with whom one will ever discuss religion, politics, or money. The reason being that, in generations past, one’s neighbors have been prone to denounce and to inform on each other over questions of … politics, religion, and money. (Since there is no record of anyone’s ever being cast into the Bastille for supporting a football team, the French do discuss sports quite openly.)

However, with all that reverence for family, to be French is nevertheless to be perfectly willing to trade one’s grandmother for a really good truffle.

En avant, mes enfants! There’s a special on offal at the butcher’s!

To be French is to believe so fervidly in the Rights of Man that one believes with equal fervor that those rights extend to dogs, as well.

And on the subject of rights, to be French is to ignore any distinction whatever between entitlements and rights, or between rights and privileges, so long as we are talking about one’s own entitlements and privileges, and not somebody else’s. (See “Motorways,” above.) Indeed, this is the second-most important qualification for French identity.

The most important qualification is this: to be French is not to be American.

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So French

The French are currently engaged in a great debate — over whether to engage in a great debate. So far, the “Shut Up and Move On” contingent has the force of numbers behind it, according to a poll this week in the Nouvel Observateur magazine, but the “Let’s Keep Debating (Until Legislative Elections in March)” contingent has behind it the force of the President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and so onward we debate, whether the conversation does us any good or serves merely to drive us farther apart.

The subject is “l’identité nationale,” or what it really means to be French. On strictly legal grounds, the answer is simple: you’re either a native or a naturalized citizen, or else you’re not French. But that leaves out a lot of people (such as this writer), and it begs such questions as whether one can be taught to be French, and what the French state can reasonably expect from those who live here. At the moment, the government is scrutinizing displays of non-Christian faith, in particularly the Muslim veil in all its forms, and it’s a telling discussion.

For one thing, the separation of church and state has been the law of this land since 1905. (There were parties to celebrate the centennial.) Is it really within the government’s purview to ban, to permit, or even to question traditions of faith? And we had hardly begun to discuss the veil before we felt the shock, shock of remembering that many French Jews wear head coverings, too. If a Muslim woman can’t wear a veil, can a Jewish man continue to wear a yarmulke? And don’t Catholic nuns wear veils? Ooops. This is more complex than we thought, isn’t it?

Sarkozy: A soupçon of debate never hurt anybody, n’est-ce pas?

The debate wasn’t intended to round up the Jews (been there, done that), or even to touch them; neither was it intended to revive the anti-clerical measures of the Reign of Terror. Supposedly, it’s a security issue: how can the police identify you if you’re wearing a burqa? Yet at its heart, the present debate really asks “what to do” with the 5 million Muslims who live here. It’s a nasty question — neither Sarkozy nor any member of his government has phrased it this way — but a significant number of French people hear it clearly.

For among the French, in certain quarters, there’s a widespread mistrust of, and in some cases hostility toward, Muslims. We know who feels this way: in the Nouvel Obs poll, the oldest and the least educated registered the strongest support for the debate, which in turn legitimizes the expression of sentiments that, in a civil society, might better be kept quiet. A wave of terrorism in the 1990s, followed by 9/11 and the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran exacerbated the mistrust. These factors ostensibly elevate the debate now to a question of national security.

In turn, fears are growing (with cause) that some of these expressions of hostility will take the ugliest possible forms, from insults to desecration of mosques to ad hominem violence. And none of this — absolutely none of it — does anything to facilitate the integration of a vast population who are indeed French citizens, yet do not enjoy the rights, privileges and esteem that every other Frenchman takes for granted.

Villepin: Stop!

Among those calling for an immediate end to the debate are Dominique de Villepin, the former prime minister and Sarkozy’s onetime rival on the center-right; the entire Socialist Party, the principal opposition party; an assortment of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian leaders; and an impressive majority of those surveyed in the Nouvel Obs poll.

Fat chance that Sarkozy will listen — to Villepin, who may have engineered an attempt to frame him in a criminal scam a few years ago; to the Socialists, who needless to say do not have his best interests at heart; or to anyone else. He’s hoping to attract voters on the far right, especially those who might otherwise vote for the Front National. He’s been down this path before, and to appeal to the FN voters he covets, he has several times adopted stances that — more implicitly than explicitly — indicate that he’s as nationalistic, as anti-immigration, and as racist as they tend to be.

Security risk? Sarkozy with an Immigrant

It’s anybody’s guess why Sarkozy, a man whose own heritage is Hungarian (and in part Jewish), and whose wife is herself an immigrant (from Italy), seeks to broaden his base with this segment of the electorate. Does he really think he can reform them from within, or channel their fear and rage toward constructive ends? Or is it really about getting the biggest parliamentary majority possible? As I say, it’s no coincidence that Sarkozy’s immigration minister, Eric Besson, is expected to deliver his report on the debate just ahead of the legislative elections.

In a purely philosophical context — of a kind which does not exist in politics and government — there is much to be said for asking, “Who are we? What makes us who we are?” Some of my favorite works by Henry James and Mark Twain address what it means to be an American, and I daresay I’m a better person for having considered the question under their tutelage. France, predicated on geographical grounds, and only later devising political and philosophical reasons to exist as a nation, might profitably indulge in some self-examination — that is, if it were more honest than the debate Sarkozy has launched.

Waxing Philosophical: Sarkozy, with a friend,
engages in his favorite kind of debate.

TOMORROW: Are you French? A handy checklist will let you know.

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Julie Andrews

Alive

It’s snowing in Beynes, in flakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, while the coming of Christmas brings a remembered soundtrack of Julie Andrews’ recordings of carols. In Paris, the current stage production of The Sound of Music (a.k.a. La mélodie du bonheur) at the Théâtre du Châtelet mean that Andrews’ face and voice are popping up all over television these days. And so the first diva I ever worshipped has been much on my mind lately.


I met Julie Andrews backstage after a performance of Putting It Together, a Sondheim pastiche that represented her return to Broadway after a three-decade absence. You’d never have guessed she’d been away, however: she commanded the stage with total mastery. I couldn’t identify the secret source of her presence, but I could see the results, and while the piece wasn’t very good, she was phenomenal.

Scott Frankel, the show’s music director, introduced me to Andrews in her dressing room. I was terrified that I’d start gushing, so I kept my comments to a minimum and mostly listened while they discussed that evening’s performance, what had worked and what they agreed needed more work. Andrews was thoroughly professional about all this, but something more: she made clear that she admired my friend, and she took care to praise him in my presence. “Isn’t he a genius?” she asked me.

I was struck by her generosity. Yes, Scott is a genius, as it happens, but nobody was forcing Andrews to say so, least of all in front of his friend. This was the antithesis of stereotypical diva behavior, and I remember thinking as I left the theater, “I need to be this way, if ever I’m in anything like her exalted position in the world.” Not that there’s much chance, but I’ll try to remember the lesson.


By this point in his career, Scott had worked already with several legendary ladies of musical theater: Bernadette Peters, Teresa Stratas, Shirley MacLaine, Barbra Streisand. He wasn’t in awe of Julie Andrews, therefore, and as he told me, his boyhood idol was Streisand.* Was it something in our family backgrounds, we wondered, that made us gravitate toward the diva who most reflected our heritage? For just as Streisand is Jewish, so Andrews couldn’t be more a WASP.

I quite literally cut my teeth on Julie Andrews records, and when I was a baby, my mother used to sweep me in her arms and waltz around the room while listening to the My Fair Lady cast album. Evidently there were occasions when I did dance all night. And so deep was my infatuation with Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins that I used to dress up like her, grab an umbrella, and fly around the neighborhood.

Practically Perfect in Every Way

Her performances paved the way for my later explorations of opera, and some elements of her work continue to influence my taste: the clarity of her projection and the intimately conversational quality in her singing, and the precision of her diction are qualities I seek in other singers now. Sometimes, it turns out that these singers were influenced by Andrews’ technique: in the course of an interview, the wonderful Barbara Bonney told me excitedly of her early admiration of Julie Andrews, and indeed Bonney’s own bell-like soprano has often been heard in Salzburg.

Sitting around and wondering what simple folk would do.

As I grew older, my enthusiasm for Andrews diminished a bit, tempered not only by the mediocrity of so many of her vehicles but also by her limitations as an actress. She portrays only five emotions, as discrete as the gears on a car’s transmission, with comparably pronounced shifts between them. (Shifting into anger is especially difficult for her.) I found greater openness and truth in her singing — and in her writing, particularly her first book, a novel for children entitled Mandy.

Garn.

Nowadays she’s pursuing her writing quite seriously, and reportedly drawing great satisfaction from it — though the profusion of children’s stories arrives a bit late to do me much good. A pity she didn’t take up the pen earlier and more often: how many of her movies, in a bundle, would I trade for just one more Whangdoodle!

Yet when she was good, she was sublime, and if you have never found yourself on a green hillside, outstretched your arms and twirled around, then burst into song — you have never truly lived.

*NOTE: Streisand’s style was inculcated in Scott to such a degree that, when he worked with her on the Back to Broadway album, she sometimes turned to him to sing a particular phrase — that is, to show her how to do it her way.

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Michael Powell

Sole Man: Léonide Massine as the Shoemaker

A new production of Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann at the Metropolitan Opera and a screening at Film Forum of The Red Shoes evoke memories of Michael Powell, the British filmmaker (1905–90). When I met him, in 1980, his film adaptation of Hoffmann provoked me to inquire how on earth he could adapt this work without including its keystone: the revelation that Nicklausse is not merely the poet’s sidekick but also his Muse, and complicit in the sorrows heaped upon Hoffmann because she wants him (and the treasure of his art) for herself. Wannabe writers, like me, love this opera precisely because of that revelation: sure, we may be losers, but it’s worth it. Lose that theme, and all you have left is a grab bag of pointless fantastical anecdotes — and I said so to Powell.

He surprised me by instantly agreeing with me: of his collaborator, Emeric Pressburger, Powell said, “Emeric never understood that part, and he had the tendency to cut anything he didn’t understand. I probably should have stood up to him. At least I was able to keep Nicklausse’s little aria about the rooster.”

In the years since, I’ve wondered whether Powell meant what he said. It’s possible, however, that his apparent candor was merely a feint to deflect a whippersnapper who knew nothing about moviemaking and only a little about opera. At this point in Powell’s career, no longer forgotten but no longer making films, either, he toured college campuses to offer lectures and screenings, which is in fact what he was doing at the Brown Film Society when we met. Surely I wasn’t the first punk he’d run into. He must have developed keen survival skills — in this as in many other areas of his remarkable career.

Powell (foreground, far right) at work

I’d seen very few of Powell’s films, and prior to his visit to Providence, only The Red Shoes. That weekend in 1980, I saw Hoffmann and A Matter of Life and Death, as well. These films — wonderful as they are — couldn’t provide an adequate foundation for me to discuss Powell’s work intelligently, or to take much profit or advantage at all of the opportunity to meet an artist whose work I’ve grown to admire tremendously. It’s true that, even now, having seen many of his films, I’m not sure I have many questions — but I no longer have the opportunity to ask them of him.

To have seen only a few of his Technicolor extravaganzas is to risk misunderstanding him. If all you know is The Red Shoes and Hoffmann, you will (forgivably) think Powell a flamboyant showman. Digging deeper, however, we see an artist who matched an exacting pictorial imagination to (usually) the simplest storytelling means. What he leaves out of a story can be as compelling as what he lavishes on the screen: in Black Narcissus, for example, the serene face of Deborah Kerr (his muse and sometime mistress) conceals a roiling emotional subtext. A Canterbury Tale, in black-and-white, is really a shaggy dog story that derives a great deal of its suspense from a wartime backdrop: you constantly think something will happen much worse than what actually does.

The Dance of the Red Shoes: Robert Helpmann & Moira Shearer

While The 49th Parallel, in black-and-white, is a blatantly propagandistic appeal to Canadians to support the British effort in World War II (by hammering home the idea that, yes, this is Canada’s war, too), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, in glorious Technicolor, brings poignant melancholy to the fore. This war isn’t like its predecessors, Blimp realizes, and the kinds of border-blind friendship he once enjoyed with a German officer are no longer possible. (I discussed Blimp at length, here.)

Both The Red Shoes and Hoffmann, for all their riotous excess, are serious considerations of the life of the artist, and the very big, very simple question of what is sacrificed in love and happiness in the here-and-now, in exchange for immortality. But Powell pushes the questions of art and sacrifice even further in Peeping Tom, a thriller in which a photographer captures the facial expressions of his attractive female models at the exact moment of death. The film generated so much scandal that it effectively ended Powell’s career; at the time, critics compared it unfavorably to Psycho, by Powell’s friend Alfred Hitchcock. However, coming to Peeping Tom so long after it was made, I saw it as a challenge to Hitchcock — one that Hitch would attempt and fail to answer, in Frenzy, a few years later.

As Lermontov, the great Anton Walbrook,
who appeared in many Powell–Pressburger films.

Powell was rescued from penury and obscurity by the interest of devoted fans, notably Martin Scorsese. Maybe that’s why Powell showed so much patience with me, another, younger fan, who dared to question an oeuvre I but hardly glimpsed and did not understand at all.

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Bernie Birnbaum

Bernard Birnbaum died on Thanksgiving Day, at the age of 89. One of CBS News’ longest-serving and most valuable producers, he helped Charles Kuralt to create the popular “On the Road” reports, and he worked closely with Dan Rather on several important assignments, including coverage of the civil rights movement in the South, the aftermath of the assassination of John Kennedy, and the Vietnam War.

When I knew him, Bernie was an anomaly, an absent-minded professor in a corporate culture that favored appearance over intellect, action over thought, and speed over diligence. That alone was reason to like him, and I looked forward to his visits to our office — though I avoided visiting him in his, a cluttered nest of books and papers, from which it was said no one but him had ever emerged. He was so widely known as “Bernie” that to hear him now called by his full name was surprising: “Bernard Birnbaum? Who’s that?”

There was nothing he didn’t know about the stories he’d covered, and few details eluded him in the retelling, even decades after the fact. You didn’t mention the Kennedy assassination in his presence if you didn’t have a few hours free, because once Bernie started, he really couldn’t be stopped.

He devoted much of his career to investigating that crime, and he was prone to point out, whenever public-opinion surveys reported (as they so often do) that a majority of Americans disbelieve the Warren Commission Report, that a majority of Americans haven’t read the thing and don’t really know what it says. Bernie had read it, of course, as well as every other document in and about the case. He also interviewed many of the principal figures and hundreds of witnesses and experts; to conduct his own ballistics tests, he even rigged a life-size model of the motorcade route, with a six-story tower to stand in for the School Book Depository. No detective assigned to the case knew more about it than Bernie.

His conclusion chimed with that of the Commission: to believe any of the other theories about the assassination, he said, would require one to set aside some part of the hard evidence. And having examined every bit of that evidence, Bernie would not set aside a particle of it. Dutifully, he reviewed it again and again, as the News Division periodically prepared commemorative documentaries. Yes, he was willing to entertain new theories, even those that concluded that Oswald did not act alone, but to my knowledge, no other explanation ever passed his muster.

Short and stout and almost Muppet-like, he stumped through the halls of the Broadcast Center, his rumpled jacket stuffed with notes and papers. By the 1990s he’d renounced two trademarks from the 1960s: his cigars (and none too fondly recollected by his colleagues) and his “practical” footwear, the “moon boots” that Dan Rather was still teasing him about, decades later.

It’s telling, I think, that Bernie worked so closely with the two men in the building who most wanted to be writers: Rather and Kuralt. Words mattered to all three of those guys, in a way that they don’t matter to other people in television. Bernie was a throwback to a different kind of journalism, not just the print variety but the harum-scarum of TV news, when much of the technology and most of the forms hadn’t been invented, when everything but the truth was improvised. The News Division hardly knew what to make of him, by the time I got there, and though the network suits kept him on (after his lawyers helpfully reminded them of a little thing called age discrimination), they didn’t hire anyone else like him.

Probably there was no one, for he was singular. The news was better when he reported it — tougher, smarter, more caring and more honest. You’re going to miss him.

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