Is it possible for a lay thinker to reasonably evaluate the appointed experts of the “elite”? Is it acceptable for anyone who is not an expert in a field to evaluate an expert in that field?

Last week, Anthony Fauci, testifying to the U.S. Congress, invoked his right to be free from self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution over one hundred times. This week, a U.S. Senate committee will vote on whether to hold him in contempt of Congress. There are reports that his private journal contains passages in which he admits he was lying to the general public (I have not read the reports or any journal excerpts). A Senate panel has reportedly obtained a copy of his covid-era iPhone, which they plan to investigate. Many critics are repeating criticism of his recommending the drug AZT, used to treat AIDS, which the critics say did more harm than good, or even caused deaths that would not otherwise have happened. Of course, there are similar criticisms of the covid vaccines Fauci exhorted the general public to obtain. So, if it is ever appropriate for non-experts to evaluate an expert—and I think it often is, for reasons explained below—this would be as appropriate an occasion as any. How does Fauci look as a public health figure throughout his career? Is he consistent? Does he come across as competent? Is it proper to criticize him? Are his mistakes honest?

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Thirty years ago, TWA Flight 800 exploded over the Atlantic Ocean near Long Island. All two hundred thirty people on board died. It was, at the time, the largest aviation disaster in American history, and it changed the way airplane crashes were investigated.

Scott Holleran, a mentor for a long time whom I’ve read even longer, was nearly on the flight, and so were his parents. Scott landed in Rome and was informed his parents had died on the flight. Always inquisitive and rational, Scott thought about what the government official had told him without evidence and he doubted and questioned the claim.

Fortunately, Scott was right, and the government official was wrong. Scott’s parents missed Flight 800 by about fifteen minutes.

Classic Chicago magazine published Scott’s essay, “Mind the Mystery of TWA Flight 800”, on Sunday. You can read it here.

Read my commemorative introduction posted on Flight 800’s thirtieth anniversary, “TWA Flight 800 Thirty Years Later”, here. Read part one of my interview with Scott here, in which he remembers that day and the Flight 800 passengers he met in the TWA terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport shortly before he departed for Rome. He also remembers landing, the shock of being told his parents had died in the crash, the immediate aftermath of the news and his reaction to it, and reuniting with his family (whom he was with when he encountered the same airport official outside the Vatican a few days later).

Read part two of the interview here, in which Scott remembers what his father told him about his and his mother’s experiences traveling that day as well as Scott’s writing and investigating in the years following the crash.

Read part three of the interview below to learn about the response to Scott’s writing, positive and negative, and his influence on subsequent writing about and investigation of TWA Flight 800.

Jeffrey Falk: One of your readers, who was also a writer, was the late Objectivist blogger William Greeley, aka Myrhaf. I don’t know if you remember him, but he wrote that he believed this was an Islamic terror attack that the Clinton administration covered up to avoid war with Iran during an election year. Another writer on Substack, whose name is Jack Cashill, is convinced it was an accident—a friendly fire training mishap. Do you incline toward one of those explanations or perhaps a third?

Scott Holleran: I initially leaned toward the friendly fire missile theory and wrote a number of scrutinizing commentaries for many newspapers. The Riverside Press-Enterprise in Southern California published exemplary articles by a journalist named David Hendrix on the friendly fire theory as a possible cause of the crash of Flight 800. Five years after the crash of Flight 800, following the Islamic terrorist attack on New York City and Washington DC, I seriously reconsidered everything that I thought about friendly fire. As I wrote in Sunday’s essay, I don’t know and I don’t claim to know what happened to TWA 800. I don’t know and I don’t claim to know the cause. I now tend to lean toward Islamic terrorism as being a more likely possible cause of the crash if there is another non-mechanical explanation, as I suspect there could be—because, philosophically, historically—and history and philosophy are sciences—there’s so much prior evidence that jihadist Moslems are trying to annihilate us with particular emphasis on commercial aviation, whether it’s the Bojinka plot in the late 20th century …

There’s also the explosives-based Millennium plot carried out by Ahmed Ressam who was apprehended at the border of Canada and the United States in the Pacific Northwest. It was discovered that Ressam had maps and major explosives in the car trunk which a female border agent found. Customs and other U.S. agents identified Disneyland, the Space Needle and the Transamerica Building in San Francisco as potential targets for attack—as I recall, they were three of about 20 targets which have rarely been publicly reported or discussed. There was great concern around Y2K computer problems but Ressam’s arrest was extremely serious.

And then, of course, on so-called 9/11, which I call Black Tuesday, the term coined by Leonard Peikoff, Islamic terrorists attacked America. Bojinka, Millennium, Black Tuesday—all involve either bombs, missiles or rockets or commercial airliners as weapons of mass death and, of course, going back to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which was founded with support from Soviet Russia—in Moscow in 1964—commercial aviation was a major part of their theatrical terrorism as a tactic, as a technique.

I think there’s so much evidence that commercial aviation is tethered to this modern wave of Arab nationalism and Islamic jihad against the West. This merits a serious look per TWA 800 and, of course, it was the week before the Atlanta Summer Olympics, and there were known threats against the United States and a deadly bomb explosion in Atlanta’s Millennium Park with regard to the Summer Olympics, leaving aside the injustice of what the U.S. government did to Richard Jewell, speaking of the “FBI investigating”. And the film Richard Jewell is another excellent Clint Eastwood film—probably his best motion picture about injustice against the individual.

This is why I do lean towards Islamic terrorism more than so-called friendly fire, although I wouldn’t rule that out—if you consider the death of Arizona Cardinals athlete and U.S. Army Ranger Pat Tillman. What an outstanding young man he was—he quit being a professional football player for the Arizona Cardinals to become an Army Ranger after the attack on America on September 11th—and it’s conclusively been found, and reported in the documentary The Pat Tillman Story, that he died by friendly fire, likely by fellow Army Rangers that were jealous or envious of him for being a high profile hero. Pat Tillman was such a decent, honorable man. So friendly fire does happen, as we know, and there appeared to have been assets and materiel relevant to U.S. Navy exercises conducted in or near New York City and Long Island at that time, whether in conjunction with threats against the U.S. before the Olympics …

I don’t know and I’m not making any specific claims at all. But you’ve asked which theory I lean toward, and, right now, I have to say it’s closer to supposing the crash could be related to an act of Islamic terrorism, but that’s speculation based on the accumulated knowledge I have of what’s happened with regard to commercial aviation in recent history. I don’t have any evidence and I don’t claim to. The TWA 800 aircraft cabin seats later did test positive for explosives, though investigators claimed that that particular aircraft had been involved in prior military testing with civilian aircraft, which are used from time to time, I had not known that, but that is what the government investigations claim. I don’t have any reason to doubt that.

I’m not a physics expert. I’m not an aviation expert. I’m not an aircraft expert. The breakup of the aircraft became a contentious issue. The government’s account of the physics, particularly challenged by eyewitnesses, and there were hundreds of eyewitnesses that reported seeing a streak of light arcing up toward the 747, was disputed, especially the CIA’s animation video that counter-explained the streak of light eyewitness accounts as the actual breakup of the aircraft. Many, if not most, eyewitnesses came back and said no, we weren’t seeing the plane come apart—we were seeing a streak of light—some insisted they saw a missile or rocket—and by most accounts there was still plenty of daylight because it was sunset. Witnesses said they clearly saw a single light arcing up toward that aircraft and hitting it, and then it was like fireworks.

There were some eyewitnesses that even claimed they thought it was fireworks in East Moriches. Over 200 eyewitnesses were taken seriously by the FBI and NTSB, and that’s a small percentage of the number of eyewitnesses there really were. There were hundreds more witnesses that the government had ruled out, including many people on Long Island, many who complained about the FBI’s process of elimination who said the FBI interviewed them once and asked them stupid questions and immediately dismissed their accounts—they thought unfairly or unjustly. So, there’s information out there. It was only 30 years ago. Witnesses are still alive. There’s some photographic evidence. The most famous photo’s by Linda Kabot, as I recall, of what appears to be a long missile traveling. I think she was with her husband on a beach. The government dismissed or ignored that, saying, “Well, we can’t prove this or that about that photograph or that claim, but it doesn’t fit any other model.” They’re quoting to not take it seriously. So there’s a wealth of material. The Internet was established even though it was in its early years in 1996.

Photography was relatively advanced. It was a summer night at sunset. There was still daylight. There were a lot of people out in Long Island, including a military helicopter pilot witness named Frederick Meyer who supported the missile theory. He was one of the closest eyewitnesses. He’s considered one of the more credible eyewitnesses. There were other airline pilots of other aircraft nearby that saw the breakup of the aircraft and rejected or disputed the CIA video. The CIA animation alone was highly unusual and their involvement in a video made the investigation somewhat suspect to me. So, I lean toward Islamic terrorism as a potential cause.

One other factor I want to mention is the Clinton administration, which, according to the PBS series Frontline, which is how I learned about this—on PBS, not Fox News, not the Wall Street Journal, not the Epoch Times—Frontline on PBS, government-sponsored or partially subsidized journalism, which disclosed that Bill Clinton as the President of the United States declined to kill chief 2001 Islamic terrorist Osama bin Laden in the 90s when our military greenlighted it and said, “Mr. President, we have an opportunity to kill the terrorist who’s threatening to attack the United States”—Clinton refused because the Islamic terrorist was situated in a tent with missiles which had been surveilled, photographed in satellite images that proved that bin Laden was in the tent with artillery and weapons, or at least weapons, on the grounds that the tent—a terrorist tent!—had been designated as a mosque. Clinton refused to kill bin Laden before 2001 and this was when some accused Clinton of “wagging the dog”, after the Lewinsky affair, when he was accused of concocting a military attack as diversion from the sex scandal. The evidence that the Clinton administration was irrational in defending the United States against the military threat of Islamic terrorism is abundant. Those are two examples right there. Time and again, including attacks before Flight 800, such as the Khobar Towers attack in Africa on the American military, within weeks of July 17th, 1996—and that was an avowed, Islamic terrorist attack on America—Clinton failed to defend the U.S. So just the fact of the presidential administration at the time appeasing Islamic terrorism is another legitimate point or factor in judging the veracity, authenticity or credibility of the investigation into the crash.

And all of it has to be seen in the context of the first attack on the Twin Towers in February 1993, three years before the crash of Flight 800, eight years before the towers were downed. History is a story as John David Lewis taught; it’s a sequence of events. Flight 800 must be considered in proximity to the attack days earlier at Khobar Towers, a few years earlier in the Twin Towers truck bomb attack of 1993, and the act of war on America in 2001. These events have to be seen as part of a series, sequence of events or chain reaction. They’re not necessarily related. But they could be. If we want to have a free country, we must explore connections.

JF: In Ayn Rand and Song of Russia: Communism and Anti-Communism in 1940s Hollywood, Robert Mayhew pointed out that the idea that governments could legitimately lie to citizens is at least as old as Plato. He also quoted Ayn Rand, who was adamant in her view that the U.S. government should never lie to Americans. Unfortunately, Plato’s ideas are much more in vogue today than Rand’s. How honest in general do you think the U.S. government has been in the last 30 years and in this specific event in their investigation and reporting; do you think they were honest here, whether they were mistaken or otherwise?

SH: That’s a good question. Some people were, some people are honest. I don’t have any doubt about that. There are good people working in the U.S. government. I know many of them. There are honorable people. If I have to judge as a whole, I think the government is dishonest. Not honorable, perhaps through no fault of any individual’s own necessarily. Except people like Janet Reno, the attorney general and others, such as Bill Clinton. Certainly President Clinton had some upsides, too. I think they were incompetent with regard to TWA Flight 800, like the Italian airport official. Almost every major advancement in the investigation came to light after independent reporting. Almost every major disclosure came after the press reported it first. And the press was pressured to report on the crash—chiefly because of people like me. I don’t say that because it’s self-serving, but because it’s true. Me and a band of other independent researchers, physicists, military men, engineers, retired pilots and aviation workers—people that worked in the hangar—where the aircraft was reconstructed—who would leak information about like the bomb residue that only came to light because someone reported that the seats which had been recovered from the ocean tested positive for explosives residue. So would we even know that if someone hadn’t leaked it? I don’t think so. So, when people say, “Well, a conspiracy would have come out by now, somebody would have said something, you can’t cover it up forever.” Would we really? I have doubts about that.

During my active investigation for years after the crash of Flight 800, which wasn’t some reaction to emotional trauma on July 17th—and I don’t expect anyone to take my word for it, judge and prepare to be judged—by my reckoning, almost every major disclosure in the crash of Flight 800 came about because the government was caught lying, concealing or not disclosing. Whether it was David Hendrix’s reports in the Riverside Press-Enterprise or my original op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, which David told me inspired his reporting and I think was extremely influential—mine was the first article in a major newspaper to question the investigation and it was published in April of 1997, months after the crash, eliciting a response from the NTSB which contained discrepancies and errors as far as I know that raised questions among many decent Americans.

Pierre Salinger, a former press secretary for President Kennedy, famously or infamously, depending on how you look at it, propagated the missile theory; he claimed he had evidence that turned out to be nothing, but he trusted his judgment and he was convinced that a missile had downed the aircraft based on what his sources had told him. He had no reason to advance that theory without an honest account of the facts. He didn’t have a history of being a so-called conspiracy theorist. He’s a former correspondent for ABC News for years in good standing, in good stead after his service in the Kennedy administration. So there’s a history there, too, and I don’t think in answer to your question that the U.S. government’s investigation stands up as a model for good investigation.

I think it’s very important that people question, scrutinize, and doubt because people’s lives are at stake. That’s why I bring it back to the people that were on that airplane: Brent Richey, the children from Montoursville, Ralph Kevorkian, the flight’s captain—I wish I could remember all of their names. They all deserve to be treated as individuals and remembered. That’s why I end the essay the way I do, because I was almost one of them and so were my parents. Would anybody remember my name if I’d been on that aircraft? And if I had been, would anybody know about it, let alone doubt its “probable cause”? I don’t know. I don’t want to sound like I have an inflated sense of myself, but it’s something I’ve thought about over the years.

That’s why I wrote the part about grief and trauma because, regardless of whether you’re interested in what happened to that airplane, the discerning reader ought to be challenged to think about trauma you may have experienced as an individual—I think almost everyone’s experienced something traumatic in their lives—which is triggering. Perhaps it’s nothing other than that Black Tuesday in September, but whatever in your life was troubling to you, pay attention to it. Just because you experience strong emotions about it doesn’t mean it’s irrational or subjective—doesn’t mean it’s something you should dismiss or “get over.” It’s something to process, think about, contemplate, study, and understand. You can grow from it.

I’d like to think that’s what I’ve done. Whether it was Elian Gonzalez being seized in the early hours of April 22, 2000 or the nation being attacked—I remember where I was when I heard the Twin Towers were bombed in 1993. I was in Santa Barbara on vacation. I remember thinking, This is it, this is what Leonard Peikoff’s been warning about. This is it. Here we go. And few people believed me. People said, “It’s just a bombing, why are you acting like it’s Armageddon?” I remember even then, thinking that the purpose of naming, identifying, and assimilating major news is to better understand what kind of life you, your children, and your grandchildren can have and learn what you need to be prepared for realistically, so you can find the joy in spite of horrible things happening.

I’m still enjoying my life 30 years later. I just debuted in my first movie [Henry Dances] and wrote and published my first book [Long Run: Short Stories Volume One]. I’m writing new short stories. I’m not letting disaster get me down, but I’m 100 percent focused on the facts of reality, too. You can be both. Pretending bad things aren’t happening, which I think too many Objectivists and Americans do, stems from not wanting to have a look, not wanting to recognize facts of reality. It’s easily mistaken for seeing things as bleak and hopeless. But that’s wrong; you can find the good in your reaction to the bad. It’s right there.

JF: I do have a question about your writing on Flight 800 and one final question that I think you’ve already mostly addressed. But is there a piece you’ve written about Flight 800 that is a favorite or one of which you are proudest?

SH: The one I just wrote. I think that’s my favorite. I’m proud of all of the work I’ve done. Some I probably could have skipped—some essays were different ways of saying the same thing. New editors and audiences showed demand and took interest over the years, though, and I gave newspapers permission to publish the essays. I posted some articles on my author website because I thought it was important, whether a book review of major books about the crash, including one by former CNN journalist Christine Negroni, who wrote a book, and another titled In the Blink of an Eye, which I reviewed for the Dallas Morning News, by Pat Milton, the Associated Press aviation reporter who covered TWA 800, which was awful. I reviewed these major books for major newspapers. I didn’t have to write those reviews and I wasn’t paid a large sum of money for those reviews, but editors and audiences sought a different perspective, and I thought it was important to offer a voice of dissent to these women’s status quo positions. Again, I wanted to establish a record saying: I object, I dissent, I disagree—and I do so based on facts in evidence. Some of my writing is workmanlike, so I don’t love those. But I had to write those articles because I wanted to stimulate curiosity and keep momentum of interest in the crash. I think this is important as a journalist, as a thinker, as a writer—to be provocative.

I’m proud of the Wall Street Journal essay. I worked with Max Boot, who was one of my editors. He’s since become an author, foreign policy analyst and major Trump opponent. I worked with David Asman, a Fox Business anchor and Fox News Channel personality. I worked with other editors at The Wall Street Journal. My essay went through quite a process before it was published and the fact that it was published in The Wall Street Journal was an achievement, not merely because it was my first and only article in the nation’s top newspaper but because it was a risk for the nation’s leading newspaper to publish my article and question the government’s investigation into the worst aviation disaster in American history at the time.

It was controversial. I had the impression that Boot hated my article. On the left or right, I had the sense that the editors didn’t like the fact that I was questioning the investigation, but somebody wanted my article to get published and it went to press and made questioning the crash investigation acceptable. My essay was the first major journalism to question that investigation, and I’m a pioneer in that way, so I am proud of that article. “Flight 800: The Mystery Continues.” That’s the title, which was not my original title, but it was a title I could live with. So, I signed off on that and consented to publish the final version. I am prouder of the piece I just wrote in Classic Chicago magazine. There is the Chicago connection to the crash, as you know—it’s my mom and dad, whom I love—and it’s comprehensive, personal and ties in the objective with the anecdotal in a way that’s compelling and interesting. Mine’s an interesting story which is a part of our history as a nation—especially now when we’re at war with an Islamic terrorist regime. So I think it’s very relevant, more than ever. I’m still one of the few people writing about this topic.

JF: On this 30th anniversary, fewer people read anything with every passing week. It’s almost a crisis-level drop in reading habits. How do you think we can honor those who died and what is the best way to raise awareness and get people who were alive 30 years ago to remember TWA Flight 800 and raise awareness in younger people that this happened, was important, and is, as you said, still relevant and unsolved? Do you have any ideas?

SH: I do. One thing to know is that yours is the pressing question. I think this is the best question in this interview, which has been excellent. I’ve probably gone on too long and it’s not your fault. Your interview is very good. This question is excellent. This is the central question.

Read and write. You answered it in your own setup. Read books, read articles, read stories—above all, read and don’t concern yourself with whether anyone else is reading. If no one else is, or fewer people are, concern yourself with the few people that do read, even if it’s one person. Read or re-read the introduction Ayn Rand wrote to the 25th anniversary edition of The Fountainhead, particularly how she ends that introduction, appealing to the one, the lone individual reader who gets The Fountainhead. That’s her audience.

This is what I say to the Weight Watchers members I coach every week in my San Fernando Valley workshop, whether it’s three people or one person or a hundred who show up in class. You matter as the individual. You’re the most important person in the world. That’s your audience if you’re a creator, whether you’re a sculptor, a dancer or a singer or a DJ or a writer, journalist, blogger or podcaster. Whatever type of intellectual or artist you are, be the new intellectual and write for the individual. Write for the one person who does strive to know whether they have a nose or a nipple ring or they’re 90 years old or they’re somewhere in between. Whether it’s a feminist at a literary press in Ohio or a punk rocker with tattoos in Atlantic City. I don’t care whomever it is. Don’t judge a book by its cover. Calm yourself and write for the individual and read, study and know and reach out to the individual.

Let me give you an example. I recently sent a short story I wrote to someone who I’m acquainted with—a friend who I had no reason to think was remotely interested in my fiction writing, but the topic—a nominal topic of the short story, infectious disease—is one I had reason to think would interest this friend of mine, who’s an infectious disease doctor. He read my short story and, to my surprise, liked it and wrote the first review of my story, “The Reading Room,” which debuted in Classic Chicago magazine. He told me he shared it and sent it to his friends, one of whom he said loved it. I would not have guessed that outcome. I sent the story because I’d written a short story involving infectious disease which is his passion and it turned out that he was interested in the story as a story. So that’s my answer to you, Jeff, and to The Most Endangered Species as a free press and to your readers, fans, and admirers. Make that call. Send that message. Send what you create to the person you think might be interested in what you made—whatever you’re creating.

Take a stand and reach out, particularly to the individual. If I could send some of my TWA 800 writings to Brent Richey’s mom and dad or to anyone that was at his wedding with his beautiful bride—and maybe I will, maybe I will do that after this interview—I would knowing that reaching out matters. You don’t know who will connect with what you make.

I encourage the artist and intellectual reading this, especially the new intellectual, to reach out to the individual as the individual. Don’t write for the masses. Write for the individual. Don’t worry about numbers. Stop looking at metrics. Stop looking at statistics, numbers, charts, graphs, and algorithms and analytics and all the jargon and look at the impact you’re having, including emotionally, on the individual. How does it make a woman feel? If you make someone feel something, that’s activating a legitimate part of being human and it’s not incompatible with reason. In fact, it’s the byproduct of reason—if you’re living rationally and that makes all the difference.

You and I are talking because of something someone wrote. That’s how we know each other because of a woman who chose to pick up a pen and write—it’s the only way we know each other—and writing changes the world. Reading changes the world, so read, write, and reach out—connect. Talk to somebody in line at Starbucks. This is one of the reasons I like reading what you write, Jeff. You write about a range of topics: music, politics, conspiracy, events in history. You’re one of the few journalists that takes an interest in TWA Flight 800. That’s the best answer I can give: Appeal to the individual and make that expenditure of effort, like Rudyard Kipling writes in his poem If—, to strive especially when you’re weary and tired, though Kipling, he doesn’t put it quite this way, but I think this is part of the meaning of that beautiful poem, which is the poem Ayn Rand chose to be read when she died. Make that extra effort, reach out to another person, with something you’ve created. Dance for them, sing for them, write for them, send that link. You have no idea what impact this can have on someone’s life. That’s what makes things better and the world can change fast like that.

JF: This interview tonight, I appreciate it.

SH: Thank you. Did you get what you needed?

JF: Yes.

Judicial Watch recently produced this compelling documentary. Experts interviewed include Jack Cashill (who has authored books on the disaster) and retired TWA captain Al Francis, who flew and inspected the aircraft shortly before July 17, 1996.

Interview with Scott Holleran on TWA Flight 800

Part Two

Thirty years ago, TWA Flight 800 exploded over the Atlantic Ocean near Long Island. All two hundred thirty people on board died. It was, at the time, the largest aviation disaster in American history, and it changed the way airplane crashes were investigated.

Scott Holleran, a mentor for a long time whom I’ve read even longer, was nearly on the flight, and so were his parents. Scott landed in Rome and was informed his parents had died on the flight. Always inquisitive and rational, Scott thought about what the government official had told him without evidence and he doubted and questioned the claim.

Fortunately, Scott was right, and the government official was wrong. Scott’s parents missed Flight 800 by about fifteen minutes.

Classic Chicago magazine published Scott’s essay, “Mind the Mystery of TWA Flight 800”, on Sunday. You can read it here.

Read my commemorative introduction posted on Flight 800’s thirtieth anniversary, “TWA Flight 800 Thirty Years Later”, here. Read part one of my interview with Scott here, in which he remembers that day and the Flight 800 passengers he met in the TWA terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport shortly before he departed for Rome. He also remembers landing, the shock of being told his parents had died in the crash, the immediate aftermath of the news and his reaction to it, and reuniting with his family (whom he was with when he encountered the same airport official outside the Vatican a few days later).

Read part two of the interview below, in which Scott remembers what his father told him about his and his mother’s experiences traveling that day as well as Scott’s writing and investigating in the years following the crash.

Jeffrey Falk: What did your parents tell you about what they were told happened to you?

Scott Holleran: I later estimated that my parents’ flight from Chicago to New York at JFK was landing about 15 minutes after TWA Flight 800 exploded, broke apart and crashed off the coast of Long Island about 15 minutes after takeoff. My father later told me that he looked out the window as they were landing and saw helicopters circling, hovering over the water. Having been in the Korean War, which was very helicopter driven. My dad was a decorated combat veteran, a sergeant in the army who lost many of the soldiers under him who were wounded and killed. Helicopters, like on M*A*S*H, were a key part of recovery operations in the Korean War. So my dad immediately knew from his Army service in Korea that something was wrong when he saw all those helicopters over the water. He said: “I knew there was a crash, I knew something had gone wrong.” Sitting next to my mom, he excused himself because he didn’t want to alert and alarm my mother, who knew I was traveling on TWA that day with my partner to New York City, where we’d planned to rendezvous. My father said he spoke with a stewardess in the galley and she discreetly confirmed, because she didn’t want to alert other passengers, that there had been a crash. He told me she was very upset because she knew many TWA employees were on that flight—as I recall, there were like 10 or more off-duty TWA employees on Flight 800 who were killed. She also told him that I was probably on that flight.

How and why she told him that I don’t know, but she did. There is also something interesting that I haven’t discussed which is worth mentioning, only because you’re asking for details. About 15 minutes into my flight from New York City to Paris to Rome—and, remember, about 15 minutes into my flight is when I calculate flight 800 crashed—I heard my last name being mentioned by the stewardesses on my flight. I distinctly overheard my last name, which is not a common last name, in three syllables. I was seated near the galley in first class and heard my name mentioned in the galley section of the first class cabin behind me. At the time, I turned around because I thought someone was summoning me. I saw four stewardesses huddled in the galley section. They emerged as I was turned around looking and they made eye contact with me and immediately looked down at the aisle, avoiding eye contact. I thought to myself later: as soon as TWA 800 crashed, they probably were notified by the captain of my flight—perhaps something to the effect that “We just lost one of our aircraft, be on alert,” because they didn’t know if it was terrorism or whatever. And, knowing I’d inquired when I boarded about holding the flight for my parents connecting at JFK from Chicago O’Hare, they realized that my parents would likely be on that flight. In fact, when I’d first inquired after boarding, a stewardess told me: “Don’t worry, Mr. Holleran. Your parents will be on the next flight out of New York, which is flight 800.”

My biggest concern on that day was that everything that we had all worked so hard for, my parents and partner and I, was to travel together to Europe for our first vacation together and the flight cancellation and disruptions meant that was being derailed. So when I got on that flight, I asked the stewardesses about my parents connecting as I boarded: “Are we gonna take off on time and is there any chance that my parents will be able to make the flight? They’re coming from Chicago,” and that was the plan. That was the goal—for the four of us to travel together and the flight crew were very polite and said, “We’ll do our best.” I took my seat knowing that they’d either make it or not.

People tend to remember me because I am very direct, outgoing and assertive. You’ve been with me, so you know that about me. But I think what happened was that when they got the news that the plane which was Flight 800 had crashed, they immediately made the connection that my parents were probably on that flight. I think that’s why they said my name. I think they got together and realized, you know, “Oh my God, that passenger who asked about his parents, Mr. Holleran, his parents are probably on the plane,” and that’s why I heard my name. I think that’s what happened.

So that was something I didn’t put together until, of course, hours later, after we landed, after that man met me in the vestibule. So when my dad finally was reunited with me, he informed me that he’d seen the helicopters hovering over the ocean and made the connection. After speaking with the stewardess and her telling him that I was probably on the flight, my dad thought I was killed with my partner in the crash—he was immediately thinking, Do I have [my partner’s family’s telephone numbers] and How can I arrange for my son’s funeral? How am I gonna tell my wife our son is dead? He told me he was making my funeral arrangements. My father never did tell my mom that story. He only told me.

JF: When did they realize you were fine? When they landed in Rome?

SH: Rome? Good question. I think they knew sooner because they were in touch with other family, who had separately, successfully reached me at the hotel in Rome. And so through that connection, they were able to confirm—probably from pay telephone or TWA courtesy phones, as nobody had cell phones at that time—that we were alive and checked into the hotel. So I think they knew with greater certainty than I did who was alive because I asked them that later because I was hyperaware of the impact on everyone. I was aware of my partner’s family and the impact on them. I was working the phones from the hotel in Rome. I was calling everyone, making sure everyone was up to speed, knowledgeable. It is some degree of reassurance. I didn’t let anything slow me down. When I spoke with my family, I would say, “As far as I know, my parents are OK,” or as soon as I was getting information, I was passing it on to others, I was kind of command central to the best of my ability. That was my way of staying active and dealing with the trauma.

JF: You mentioned you started to doubt and question everything you were hearing about this disaster. Did that lead to your rethinking other government proclamations about other historical events, such as crashes? The government officially concluded this was likely an internal fuel tank explosion and hundreds of eyewitnesses who reported seeing a streak of light going up to the plane disagreed. Has this experience and your writing about the event, which we’ll talk about shortly, caused you to go back and reconsider other events?

SH: Yes is the short answer, though it was a long, slow and arduous process both of doubting the investigation on the most narrow, specific level. On a wider scale, which is what you’re asking about per other events, it’s caused me to think twice. I’m not a conspiracy theorist—the way that that term is commonly understood—and yet, as Leonard Peikoff said in an episode of his talk radio program on conspiracy theories, which is excellent—I was working as his production assistant and writer on The Leonard Peikoff Show at the time—he kind of debunked the badmouthing of the term.

As I recall, he basically defended someone who questions the government’s version of things and thinks that accusing someone of having a conspiracy theory is a way of painting with a broad brush and dismissing rational doubts and concerns. I had never been especially dubious of flight investigations before the Flight 800 trauma. It was a pivotal moment in my thinking and in my career. My writings discredited me among some of my detractors—including for writing the article for The Wall Street Journal—and all the other articles I wrote, particularly among Objectivists, some of whom claim, though rarely to my face, that it’s irresponsible to speculate and to write about personal matters in any way that’s meaningful about a fact of history or an event in history; I disagree 100 percent with that position.

The trauma definitely did make me think twice. In the narrowest sense, days into the crash and after the crash, I began to notice multiple discrepancies in the government’s version almost immediately. The counter-argument is often, “Well, that’s common in any investigation.” It’s striking to me how quickly certain people defend government investigations. They’ll grant or tend to grant the widest berth of goodwill to the government on almost any claim or assertion or discrepancy. But they’ll grant almost no consideration to the individual who scrutinizes or doubts such claims. These people are more scrutinizing of the individual who doubts than they are of government officials in the corrupt, mixed welfare and surveillance state they often purport to denounce. They—this includes Objectivists—desperately want to believe their government,.

JF: And this is a movement of people with a reputation for otherwise casting aspersions on much of the government.

Scott Holleran: Yes, or at least questioning the proper role of government. I mean, one of Ayn Rand’s most well-known writings is “The Nature of Government”, in which she’s radically opposing the current structure and role of government, and that was decades ago. Or read “The Fascist New Frontier” by Ayn Rand. These are people that claim to adhere to her philosophy. So I was just questioning—that’s all I did in my Wall Street Journal op ed—and casting doubt on the investigation. Some people had a problem with that, saying in effect, “Well, you can’t really call it a mystery until we know more.” I did revisit issues such as President Kennedy’s assassination—and you and I may disagree on this—and I agree with Vincent Bugliosi and Gerald Posner among others who think the assassin was Lee Harvey Oswald. I do accept that. I’m not a scholar on the Kennedy assassination by any stretch, but I don’t think everything is a conspiracy, yet I know in fact, as a student of history and as a journalist, that conspiracies exist in our nation’s history, such as the Lincoln assassination. That’s a fact. That’s an uncontroversial fact.

Jeffrey Falk: —Most people seem to be unaware that the United States government hanged four people for conspiring to assassinate Lincoln, and John Wilkes Booth was not one of them. So yeah, it’s a contradiction of sorts that people will be completely dismissive of even the idea of a conspiracy—

Scott Holleran: —That’s right—

Jeffrey Falk: —Conspiracies happen.

Scott Holleran: They do. Strictly speaking, there’s no conclusive evidence that there was a conspiracy to shoot down Flight 800 or that the government’s been covering up the nature and cause of the crash. But there’s doubt and discrepancy, which is what I’ve argued for 30 years. To question, scrutinize and doubt the government’s investigation, and I stand by that conclusion 100 percent, even if you’re someone who tends to take the FAA, the NTSB and the alphabet soup of government bureaucracies pertaining to commercial aviation at their word.

If you accept that NTSB probable cause conclusion after a four-year, $40 million investigation, the most expensive and involved in American history until 2001 as far as I know, then why aren’t there more examples? I mean, I was there on July 17, 1996 at JFK International Airport. I remember the heat. I remember the sunset. I remember—I was there. Why weren’t other 747s having electrical problems that caused sudden explosions shortly after takeoff after sitting on the tarmac?

How many other airplanes have crashed in commercial aviation history in the years since the Wright brothers had that first flight in North Carolina that were caused by some kind of faulty electrical wiring in the center in any fuel tank? I can’t recall a single record of any plane crash with the same cause under similar conditions. There may be one but I don’t know. Given how ubiquitous commercial air travel was in major passenger jets such as the 747, which was once a dominant aircraft, if the NTSB’s conclusion is an acceptable, plausible, probable cause, I think it’s reasonable to ask: Why aren’t there other prominent examples?

Why would a high-degree sunset in Long Island result in a catastrophe in the country’s worst aviation disaster? What made that electrical wiring spark from the center wing tank to the center fuel tank. I mean, I don’t have the report in front of me and I’m not citing it chapter and verse, but it strikes me as unusual. Now, I’ve had aviation people, including pilots and people you’ve probably heard of, tell me: “Well, it does happen—just because it’s unusual doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.” I don’t dispute that there’s a first time for everything, but it doesn’t mean it did happen, either, and the government did not conclusively prove, let alone explicitly state that that is the cause of the crash.

Now, some say, “Well, the NTSB always hedges in their final investigation reports.” That’s probably true, but is that acceptable? And if it is true, perhaps we ought to question a lot of downed aircraft investigations. Look at Sully, an excellent movie directed by Clint Eastwood based on Captain Sullenberger, who landed a passenger jet—a crippled US Air jet—on the Hudson River. That film is brilliant partly because Sully went up against the commercial aviation bureaucracy investigating that crash. So there’s an example of someone who challenged authority and he was right—100 percent right—and yet all of the official conclusions were going against him and blaming him. The principle is that we ought to doubt and question the government’s version, which is what I’m arguing in the new essay I wrote and what I argued in the op-ed I wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 1997. By the way, that op-ed led to a direct response in stern disavowal by a top government bureaucrat with the National Transportation Safety Board—I think the assistant director of the NTSB—and his letter was also published in the Wall Street Journal denouncing my op-ed. His letter apparently contained, as I recall, another major discrepancy in his claims and this led a retired airline pilot, or someone in the aviation industry, to create an independent investigation which led to a group of serious, scholarly research and a documentary with new evidence or claims about the crash. So, I think my journalism on this topic has been constructive. I’ve asked rational, intelligent questions, which have led to constructive dialogue and other questions by other people who are more knowledgeable than I am about the military, aviation, missiles and terrorism, as well as engineering, physics and ballistics. Eyewitnesses to the crash of Flight 800 or its aftermath propagated the missile theory or at least thought it was worth investigating and researching. So it’s not a bunch of crackpots, which is how it’s often been characterized.

JF: Your writing on TWA Flight 800 necessarily includes some speculation—which some would call hearsay and anecdotes. I knew you as a reader long before we met and I know that objectivity is of paramount importance to you as a thinker and as a writer. How do you reconcile speculation with objectivity?

SH: After 2001, I had decided to be more emphatically personal in my writing as a new intellectual. Credit partly goes to the late Professor John David Lewis, who was a friend of mine, a military historian and one of my paying patrons—a paid subscriber to the war newsletter I created after the attack on America in 2001. John was enthused and supportive of my work as a writer and journalist and he urged me, after he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, to be more personal in my writing.

I decided to go public in this recent essay and in previous essays, but especially this most recent one for the 30th anniversary, with anecdotes that I haven’t widely, previously disclosed, such as the sighting of the Rome airport official at the Vatican.

These are my personal experiences with this investigation, and when I’m gone, I want there to be a record that Scott Holleran said or wrote what he recalled happened—let it be out there. Let people read and judge for themselves, come what may, whatever comes to light about this airplane crash that claimed the lives of 230 people. I want a record of what I recall because I have reason to think it may be relevant at some point in the future. I could be wrong and I’m not afraid of being wrong. And if I’m wrong and I am dismissed as a crackpot or it somehow diminishes my reputation in some other way, I can live with that. I can die with that. I don’t take it lightly. I know what I know and I know the evidence of my senses, so I’ve thought about this—I’ve thought a lot about this for 30 years, but especially in recent months leading up to the 30th anniversary.

I decided to write about the fact, for example, that certain CEOs told me or those I know that they were informed, for example on major conference calls, that TWA Flight 800 was shot down by a missile in the hours after the crash. Because I want it to be known if those people come out or their children or grandchildren in the future do, and discuss more or come across records or papers in the basement or the attic at their parents’ homes, or those involved in that $40 million investigation, people with the U.S. Navy, pilots, divers, whatever. I want there to be some corroborating evidence that, well, there was a journalist who questioned certain conclusions.

The more information out there, the better, as long as I’m not reckless, as long as I’m rational, as long as I’m going by the evidence and my judgment to the best of my ability—in the name of the best within us. That’s what I’m doing. No one else is writing about TWA 800 generally speaking, particularly people who have firsthand knowledge and experience as I do. It took me, and that’s why I emphasize long and slow in answer to your earlier question, years, to get the attorney for Trans World Airlines (TWA) on the phone.

He finally relented after not returning my calls for years. Refusing, probably because he was afraid I was going to sue, which was not my intention (and I never sued or threatened to sue TWA). He told me—and only then did he go on the record—that the FBI had seized the passenger manifest immediately after the crash. Now, some say, well, the FBI seizes the passenger manifest after any major plane crash in which terrorism is suspected. Well, that may be customary now, but this was 1996. This is a week before the Atlanta Summer Olympics, so the context matters.

TWA, which went out of business largely because of that crash, which he probably knew would happen when he told me—he probably knew that TWA would cease to exist—could’ve saved itself. Why didn’t he tell me that sooner? Why didn’t TWA try to save their airline and say, look, we didn’t know who was on that airplane because we didn’t even have access to the manifest, which is basically what he eventually told me. Because I kept asking why didn’t TWA just tell me they did not know who was on the plane? Why did TWA apparently leave it to a Rome airport official? I wanted to know. And he basically said we didn’t tell you, Scott, because we didn’t know and we didn’t know because the government seized our records. Well, that would have been news. That would have been front page news if a major airline executive had admitted that back in 1996 or even in 1997 or 1998. The story of TWA 800 was a major news story for at least two to five years after the crash—and that’s rare. It’s rarer now with today’s news cycle, but it was rare in 1996, too.

So that’s partly why I decided I can be objective—not unlike a movie review, in which I write that this is my perspective—this is how I remember what happened. You can be the judge, you, the reader, the listener. I don’t think it serves anyone, and this is where I credit Professor Lewis, to conceal what I know, everything that I recall that happened, thinking that, just because it happened to me, it must be dismissed. That’s not being objective. It wouldn’t be objective to tell every little detail either, but I haven’t done that. I’ve been, I think, and, again, the reader can be the judge, relatively judicious.

I want the record to be out there because it’s unusual. It’s not typical. It’s a rare pre-2001 major aviation disaster in which there were threats by Islamic terrorists. Initially, the missile theory centered around the friendly fire theory, as you may know, in which there were reportedly U.S. Navy exercises and there were discussions of lasers and Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) military technology being tested from U.S. naval aircraft and ships. There was a P-3 Orion in the area. There was a radar track which was never identified that kept moving out to sea after the crash.

Other aviation officials that support the government’s investigation tell me, “Well, it’s not uncommon to have an anomaly in radar.” Maybe that’s true, though shouldn’t we investigate to the best of our ability? I understand you can’t endlessly investigate—I realize that—but we should at least keep asking questions, whether it’s Deep Throat, the Lincoln assassination, or the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. In any arena in which there’s a major mystery, we should keep asking questions and seeking the truth.

As we’ve learned with the Innocence Project at Northwestern University and the innocent accused criminals who have been exonerated through DNA testing, we can continue to pursue the truth in the name of justice. Regardless of how much money’s been spent and how police, the courts or the government is invested in an outcome that contains reasonable doubt. I’m not saying it’s “deuces wild,” as Leonard Peikoff might say. I’m not saying we should just investigate everything at random, and you can never know anything with certainty and everything should be perennially questioned and doubted. That’s never been my claim.

But I think there’s enough reason for doubt and scrutiny with the crash of TWA 800 again, if for no other reason than the fact that such a “probable cause” is not common, it’s not something anyone had reasonably considered that a 747 could explode 15 minutes after takeoff and break apart with the first class cabin falling into the ocean as the rest of the plane keeps rising—all because a faulty electrical wiring ignited a fire in the center fuel tank. No reasonable person even thought of that in the days and weeks and months after the crash of TWA 800.

To be continued …

Thirty years ago last night, at dusk, Trans World Airlines (TWA) Flight 800 exploded shortly after takeoff over the Atlantic Ocean near Long Island. The flight departed from John F Kennedy International Airport bound for Fiumicino Airport in Rome with a stopover at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. All two hundred thirty people on board died. It was the worst aviation disaster in American history up to that point.

The United States government investigated the disaster and officially concluded it was an accident, a result of a fuel tank explosion due to faulty wiring.

My friend and mentor Scott Holleran, whom I did not know at the time, was traveling to Europe that day. He was, at one point, scheduled to be on the flight. He was on a version of the passenger manifest. He met several of the passengers of the flight at Kennedy Airport shortly before they all departed. Scott departed on another flight about fifteen minutes before Flight 800. I interviewed Scott about Flight 800, his connection to it, and more on Tuesday, July 14, 2026. As you will read below, he landed in Rome and was informed by an airport official that his parents had died on Flight 800.

Scott’s experience that day, starting with the airport official asserting that his parents had died on Flight 800, inspired him to scrutinize and question officials. Finding many questionable aspects of the disaster and the government’s assertions about its investigation of it, Scott, as a professional journalist, published several articles questioning the official conclusions, including in The Wall Street Journal and Capitalism Magazine. His latest, “Mind the Mystery of TWA Flight 800”, will be published at Classic Chicago tomorrow. I encourage all to read it (I will share a link to it when available). All of Scott’s writings on Flight 800 are inestimable companion pieces to this interview. Think of those who lost their lives that evening. I also encourage all to come to their own conclusions about what happened on July 17, 1996.

Below is the first part of my stunning, exclusive two-hour interview with Scott.

Jeffrey Falk: Please explain how you, your partner, and your family were placed on the manifest for flight 800 and why you all missed the flight.

Scott Holleran: Oh, it’s convoluted as far as I know. Of course, I can’t say definitively because I never did discover the final answer for exactly how my name ended up on the manifest, which I only know through my former assistant and my late brother who told me they had been informed that I was probably dead because my name was on the passenger manifest. And I don’t know how and why my parents’ names were on it. I can only suppose. Thirteen people whose flight originated in Los Angeles were on the final Flight 800 manifest—I know this through my own research—including the flight’s captain, Ralph Kevorkian, who lived in Glendale, where I lived at the time. We’d been booked on a flight that would originate in Los Angeles, connecting, as I recall, in [TWA’s hub] St. Louis, and then fly to New York City’s JFK Airport, then to Paris, then to Rome. At about three in the morning we received a telephone call. This is before cell phones, and it was a landline phone call. I chose to answer the phone. It was alarming, disturbing and unusual to get a call from the airline the night before a flight. The flight was a morning flight that we’d been scheduled to take, and we had scheduled a driver to take us to LAX. But Trans World Airlines, TWA, called, which had never happened in all of the traveling I had done, including my international travel. They said, “Your flight’s been canceled and you have an option—you can either take a later flight or you can take an earlier flight, in which case you’d have to leave like right now for the airport.” This is at, again, at two or three in the morning.

So I discussed it with my partner. We decided what the hell, let’s just get up. We’re already awake. This was so unpleasant, so not how we wanted the four of us to travel to Europe with my parents for the first time. We were concerned that we would miss the rendezvous with my parents in New York because we had discussed and planned, with great effort, the four of us traveling together from America to Europe for the first time, for our first vacation together as a family. So we knew that no matter what choice we made it was likely that the togetherness was going to be in jeopardy.

So we opted for the earlier flights just thinking, Well, let’s just get it out of the way. I later pieced together, and I could be wrong, that if we had said we wanted to sleep in and take that later flight, we would have ended up on Flight 800. My theory is that everyone in LA who opted for the second departure time, the later flight, ended up on Flight 800–the people that chose when they got that call at two in the morning to sleep in. I could be wrong, I have no way of independently verifying it, but I’m pretty sure that all of those people who said, “we’ll take the later flight”; they’re the ones that ended up on Flight 800 because there were so many. I mean not a huge number of the 230 passengers and crew, but 13 is a sizable number from L.A. including a young newlywed couple who were going for their honeymoon. I think Brent Richey was the young man’s name, and I think he lived in Sherman Oaks. I remember because I later went over the passenger list of who died, studying and thinking about them as individuals, especially the people from Southern California. He was with his young bride. I had in mind that they were getting the same phone call that we were. They lost their lives. I think that’s how we ended up on the passenger manifest.

My parents, I think, were more likely to have ended up on the flight. I think the only reason they ultimately weren’t on the flight is due to a weather delay in Chicago. There were three passengers, and this I’m more certain of, the third being a school teacher from Beloit, Wisconsin, whose names were on the final Flight 800 passengers list. I think I’m the only one or one of the few journalists that really tracked that information down—exactly who missed the flight in New York, Flight 800, due to inclement weather in Chicago. I later determined, and again this is as I recall, I want to emphasize that, that we took off from JFK about 15 minutes before Flight 800 exploded. This explains why I was so puzzled when we landed in Rome. I didn’t even know there’d been a plane crash because this was before Wi Fi on airplanes and [before] the Internet was ubiquitous. When my parents landed at JFK, my father noticed military helicopters circling about 15 minutes after the crash. So, in a way, we missed each other by a half an hour. But we took off before the crash of the 747 and they landed just after. I’ve always thought that was an interesting bookend, with close proximity. Part of this detail that I’ve given you is based on the fact that I waited for a relatively long period of time at the TWA terminal, which is a beautiful landmark in New York City if you’ve been there.

JF: Unfortunately, I haven’t.

SH: It’s considered one of the state-of-the-art modern buildings in airport architecture. I think it’s designed by the same architect who designed the St. Louis Arch, the gateway to the West, in St. Louis, [Eero] Saarinen, I think, a Finnish architect is his name. And it’s beautiful inside. Now, it’s a hotel, as I wrote in the essay that’s coming out on Sunday. I waited there with all those Flight 800 passengers in the same terminal, a huge international terminal. We all waited together because we were all going to Paris and Rome on different flights. So that’s where we would all be at similar gates. I remember the French Club students from Montoursville, Pennsylvania.

JF: Yes, I wanted to ask you about that.

SH: They’re the ones that I spoke with. I spoke with many of the passengers from Flight 800. We were there for hours because flights were delayed. TWA’s whole schedule, for whatever reason, was off that day. All of the flights were affected or canceled or delayed. I don’t know the original cause, but all of the flights seemed to be off. It was unusual that an airline would call and tell you your flight was canceled in 1996.

JF: Yes. That’s a lot of strange coincidences that day, and it’s all very sobering to think about, especially for you. It’s reflective enough for me. You mentioned that you remember the French Club at the gate. What do you remember about them? Would you describe it as a haunting memory?

SH: What do you mean?

JF: Does it make you ponder your own mortality or how fortunate you were that day? It doesn’t haunt you?

SH: It does, though not for that reason. It does haunt. It’s very sad, tragic, bittersweet—because my memory of them is so pleasant. Particularly the children, but all of the Flight 800 passengers I encountered. Because there was this glow—and I go into detail in my new essay—this aura or glow about the terminal, like we were all together bonded in this shared yet disrupted journey; everyone was excited. Now, I know that’s pretty typical of any day in air travel. People are excited to go, generally, to wherever their ultimate destination is, usually for an affirmative reason such as vacation. Sometimes it’s a funeral or a divorce or some kind of unpleasant scenario, but, I think for most people, especially the French club students, this was exciting—their first time visiting Paris. They had studied French at the high school in Montoursville [Montoursville Area High School]. So I remember the young people and talking with them and asking them, just chatting with them, about their journey. I remember how enthusiastic they were, the boys, the girls. As I write, it’s sobering, even humbling, in the best sense of the term, that I was able to bear witness to a small part of the last day of their lives, the last minutes and hours of their lives. And an older couple holding hands. And others.

Even though we were all tired and complaining or wanting to complain or kvetch, everyone was pretty sanguine, pretty relaxed. I think the sunset had something to do with that, and of course the crash or the explosion happened right around sunset. So it’s very sad and tragic. But it doesn’t make me think about my own mortality per se. Except to the extent the whole experience does. I didn’t find out until much later that my brother had been told that I was dead, that my assistant had been told I was dead. The fact of life and death didn’t occur to me until later, in the hours after the crash—after landing in Rome, of course. The news was jarring. I was shocked. And there was a particular kind of shock, I think, that has to do with not knowing there was a plane crash. I followed the news closely then—as a journalist, I followed the news very closely—and this is before the Internet and social media feeds, before this moment-by-moment news cycle we have now, but it was already a 24-hour news cycle, even though it was pre-2001. It was already ubiquitous then. Breaking news was already a banner on cable news. MSNBC had debuted months earlier. Fox News existed. Of course, CNN was a leader in cable news. CNN, I think, took the lead on covering the crash. So the whole concept to me of there being America’s worst aviation disaster that I didn’t know about moments or hours after it happened was bizarre to me. That’s why I was in disbelief. When [an airport official] met me in the vestibule, I thought, How could there be a major breaking news that I don’t know about? That’s not possible. I didn’t even believe him at first when he said ‘there’s been a plane crash.’ I thought, No, there hasn’t, because if there was, I would know about it, because I was that on top of the news. The whole experience was disorienting.

JF: What do you remember about the man who told you your parents died on the flight?

SH: He was short and obese. He didn’t strike me as a high-ranking official. I remember his tag: Roma. The language was all Italian, because, basically, as he claimed and his badge read, he was an employee of Rome International Airport. I recall that he was evasive. I don’t know if his evasion was deliberate, necessarily, and English was not his first language. He appeared to try and answer my questions, as far as I could tell. I gave him the benefit of the doubt at the time. But he wasn’t answering my questions, whether because he was unable to speak English or he didn’t want to. I don’t know. But he wasn’t knowledgeable at all. He wouldn’t or couldn’t answer who sent him to meet me. I kept asking. When I disembarked, he intervened with a poster that had my last name and, when I stopped, he looked behind me at first and said, “and your parents are traveling with you??” Like [he was] assuming they were right behind me on the vestibule. I replied, “Oh, no. They’ve missed the flight and they’re not on the plane.” Soon, it was clear he was sticking to this position that my “parents are gone.”

JF: It’s odd. It’s almost as if he wasn’t sure what was happening.

SH: That’s exactly right. And that’s part of what fueled my puzzlement, concern and doubt. I wondered, Why are you telling somebody that their parents may be dead when you don’t know if they were on the plane? Apparently, part of the reason you’re here is to determine whether they were on the plane. And if that’s the case, my thinking went then and later, then why wouldn’t you just disclose to me, there’s been a crash, we’re trying to figure out who’s on the plane, and I need your cooperation. Your parents may not be on the plane. It’s not that difficult to do that. Why would your starting point be that they’re dead? And his response was prepared or practiced, as far as I could tell, rehearsed or scripted. He kept saying the same phrases over and over. “Your parents are gone”, and, especially, “the FBI is investigating”. And it was puzzling to me that he didn’t seem to know what he was talking about, which made the whole encounter bizarre and mysterious because he was sent with this certainty to not just meet me but meet me in the vestibule. Unless he was defying orders, though he didn’t strike me as defiant.

He met me inside the vestibule, putting me in the uncomfortable position of having to grieve my parents in front of passengers disembarking at the same time. They had to be inconvenienced by moving around us in the vestibule, and our carry-on luggage. It was uncomfortable and unpleasant, and I became self-conscious because I was becoming emotional. The whole thing was unpleasant and very mysterious. Then, he guided me toward baggage claim. I remember walking down to baggage claim with him and my partner, thinking as I rode down the escalator. An image of a funeral started to flash in my mind. The first full flash was my parents’ bodies floating on the ocean’s surface. I immediately stopped myself from thinking that thought and ceased visualizing that, and I thought, I’m not going to let that thought into my head right now. Something prompted me to not accept that and doubt and think, No, I have no real evidence that that’s happened even though that’s what I’ve been informed. And I’m not gonna go there. I’m not going to let that into my head.

There were nuns everywhere, priests and nuns everywhere, because I had never been to Rome, so I didn’t know that the Rome airport would be full of priests and nuns. Being raised Catholic, it was disorienting. Because the Vatican is located in Rome. So, the whole airport seemed to be filled with hundreds of priests and nuns everywhere while I was finding out that my parents were dead and I was being shepherded to baggage claim. Again, to your earlier question, if you’re sent to tell somebody that his parents are dead, is there no backup? Is there no one to retrieve the luggage for the bereaved person? Is there no logistical support? That person has to stand there and wait for luggage? I was becoming unnerved by waiting for my luggage. We were there, in Europe, traveling for a period of time, so we checked luggage. I’m waiting for my luggage, and I found it absurd that I was having to wait for my luggage for forty-five minutes after being told that my parents were killed in a plane crash. And that the FBI was investigating. Standing there, waiting for checked luggage with other passengers whispering, gawking and pointing which felt like an invasion of our privacy, I was upset.

So I did something probably not uncommon for people who are in grief and shock. I got up. I asked the Rome airport official who stayed with me. “Where is my luggage? Can you get my luggage? I want my luggage right now. I wanna go to the hotel right now and talk to the authorities and find out what’s going on.” And he was unable, of course, to answer. He said, “We’ll get there. We’ll go to the hotel. Just wait for your luggage,” and that wasn’t satisfactory to me. Standing there was so disorienting for me that I stepped onto the conveyor belt [of the baggage claim area] and started walking back into the section where they handle the luggage because I was gonna go talk to the baggage handlers myself and ask that they find my luggage so that I could leave that airport and get out of there. That’s when the Rome airport official said, “Don’t do that. I’ll have your luggage sent to the hotel.” And I don’t know if he walkie-talkied or what, but suddenly he became more competent. I had taken this radical action, stepping onto the conveyor belt and literally going back into the luggage area where they handle the luggage.

JF: This is the baggage claim belt, basically?

SH: Correct. And part of it was that other passengers were there [invading my privacy]. They were staring at me because I was the guy in the vestibule that had been told that there was a plane crash and my parents were dead. People heard. And they were consoling me, and looking at me with pity. I didn’t want to experience that. It was humiliating and uncomfortable. I wanted privacy. And it was inconceivable to me that the Rome airport was going to ask me to wait for my luggage after telling me something so extreme and devastating. And then, of course, he backed off as soon as I went back to get my own luggage and said, “Oh, we’ll have the bags sent to the hotel.” And I thought to myself, Why didn’t you do that in the first place? You come to tell someone their family is dead, and you don’t plan to have the luggage retrieved and sent once you confirm? It didn’t seem organized. I mean, I suppose I’m sounding harsh, but it was so unpleasant.

So, that’s how I remember him—as a kind of helpless person. And he really wasn’t effective. And then, days later, when I was at the Vatican, and we had recovered somewhat—I had reunited with my parents, they were alive and, skipping over that part—we were happy to be waiting to gain admission to the Vatican and see the Sistine Chapel, which is the main purpose in visiting Rome. And I looked behind me and there he was, the same airport official, standing in line. This is something I’ve rarely written about or discussed. My first reaction was sort of friendly. I was happy, you know, because I’d confirmed my parents were alive, they’d confirmed that we were alive, and we’d been reunited, so I was in a good mood.

I’d been learning about the crash, of course, reading about it in newspapers, USA Today, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the typical dominant English language newspapers that they would have in a major international city. And so I was finding out facts of the crash to the extent they were known. I was feeling better about being informed and knowledgeable, and I looked behind me, and, about thirty people behind me, there he was in civilian clothing. I said to my family, “Oh look. That’s the guy that met us at the airport.” I went to talk to him, but he’d already turned away from me—turned his back on me. He was looking at me when I looked at him. When I noticed him, he was looking right at me, and I think that’s part of why I noticed him. There was this short, heavy Italian man staring at me from thirty people behind me, and I thought, Why is that man staring? And then I thought, Wait a minute. I know that guy. I’ve never been to Rome. How do I know that guy? Wait—that’s the guy that met me in the vestibule. What is he doing here?

JF:Did your mother and father talk to him or just you?

SH: Just me.

JF: And he basically wouldn’t tell you what he was doing there?

SH: Right. He acted at the time like he didn’t speak English, which was strange because he’d spoke some broken English days earlier at the airport and someone had dispatched him to meet me at the airport. What are the chances that he was there in line at the Vatican on his day off? There was no one else with him as far as I could tell. He was by himself in civilian clothes. The line was moving and we were getting into the Vatican. We were already pretty close to getting in when I saw him. I can’t tell you how many hundreds or thousands of people are waiting to get into the Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel. In the summertime, you know, it’s a lot of people. We’d been waiting for a long time and we’d arrived relatively early. And there he was.

Just to back up a bit, he had taken me to the hotel in Rome with my partner and made sure we got checked in, then he left. So that was the end of him on July 17th or July 18th, whatever day it was in Italy. Then, later, that we were in line at the Vatican. We had partially recovered. We’d caught up on jet lag and sleep. We had rested. We had cried tears of stress and joy. My parents didn’t get in until later on a separate flight which wasn’t on TWA because world air travel was severely disrupted, of course, after the crash. We were happy and reunited—and then I saw him. When I went over and spoke with him, I said, “What are you doing here?” I treated him like an old friend. He had turned his back on me as if to conceal himself after he had made eye contact with me—the moment he saw me notice him, he turned his back.

JF: Do you have any idea what he might have been doing there?

SH: Well, in the hours, days, and weeks afterwards, I thought to myself, He was surveilling me. My conclusion had been, shortly after I encountered him and since, that he was sent because he was a follower of orders, not independent—he didn’t strike me as an independent person. He wasn’t a private detective. He wasn’t identifying himself as a policeman. He wore the badge of a Rome airport official, like he was an employee of the Rome airport, a low-level government worker for Rome Airport. I thought: someone had assigned him to find out who was on the plane, first and foremost, and then to surveil me and watch me. And what does that mean? The most innocuous explanation could be, well, he wanted to confirm that I was reunited with my parents and he sought to do so in a non-intrusive way that let our family have some privacy and then he would file a report that the Holleran family was reunited and lived happily ever after; everything was fine and they went about their visit to Rome and had a lovely time. That would be the most innocuous conclusion one could come to. But, if that were the case, why wouldn’t it be handled more officially, more genuinely, more benevolently? Why wouldn’t you come up and say, “Hello, my name is Vittorio,” or whatever, and say, “I just want to confirm you’re all doing well, you’re all reunited. Is there anything I can do during your visit?” Why wouldn’t you be an ambassador?

JF: He could have been forthcoming.

SH: Right. And he wasn’t. He was the opposite, quite the opposite, and well after the crash of Flight 800. Again, this began to feed my doubt.

To be continued …

Thirty years ago today, Trans World Airlines (TWA) Flight 800 exploded over the Atlantic Ocean. The flight was bound for Fiumicino Airport in Rome from Kennedy International Airport in New York. All two hundred thirty people on board the Boeing 747 died. At the time, it was the worst aviation disaster in the history of the United States.

Eventually, the United States government concluded that the explosion and crash was an accident, the result of an internal fuel tank explosion.

Hundreds of eye witnesses reported a streak of light rise from the surface of the water to the aircraft that reached the aircraft at the moment of the explosion.

My friend and mentor, Scott Holleran, has a personal connection to this flight. (I did not know Scott at the time; I think I was already one of his readers). He was traveling from Los Angeles to Rome that day, hoping to connect with his parents in New York, who were delayed due to inclement weather in Chicago. He, his family, and his partner at the time, almost boarded Flight 800. Scott was apparently on an early version of the passenger manifest. He interacted with many passengers on Flight 800 in TWA’s terminal at Kennedy Airport shortly before they boarded. He departed for Rome approximately fifteen minutes before the passengers of Flight 800 departed for Europe. When he landed in Rome, he was (erroneously) told that his parents had died on Flight 800.

As I wrote three years ago today: “The government’s forty-million-dollar investigation concluded that the disaster was ‘probably’ caused by a fuel tank explosion; Scott properly points out that that raises the question of what caused the fuel tank explosion. Many experts, from former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Thomas Moorer to Vernon Grose, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, went on the record stating a missile likely shot down the aircraft. Even future ‘Obama pilot’ Andrew Danziger has concurred.

“Scott reported a mysterious radar track right underneath the aircraft, three nautical miles away, that has never been identified. While most ships in the area sailed to the wreckage site to assist, this one did not. Scott and others also wrote that hundreds of eyewitnesses reported a streak of light. Nearly one hundred of them insisted it originated from the Earth’s surface.”

On Tuesday, July 14, 2026, I interviewed Scott for two hours about TWA Flight 800; his connection to the flight; his experience traveling to Europe that day; his interactions with the passengers of that tragic flight; his subsequent, controversial investigations and reports on the crash as a professional journalist (including for such publications as The Wall Street Journal); his thoughts about the government’s investigation of the tragedy; possible causes of the disaster; and more. Scott’s story, his travels thirty years ago, his subsequent doubt and scrutiny of the government’s assertions, and his reporting, are all remarkable. I will publish his stunning interview in the coming days.

“New York City is the center of the universe, and there is no New York City without Jesse Malin.” Bille Joe Armstrong (Green Day)

Some artists are personifications of their time and place while remaining universally relevant. The Beach Boys and John Steinbeck brought different parts of California to life in different parts of the twentieth century. Iron Maiden is a quintessentially British band. Victor Hugo defined nineteenth century French romanticism in his manifesto “Introduction to Hernani” and in his other works (unfortunately, precious few have been inspired by his method in other times and places).

Jesse Malin, one of today’s most important recording and performing artists, has published a memoir that demonstrates, inter alia, that Armstrong is right about Malin’s importance to New York (and, not unrelatedly, the rest of the world). Almost Grown: A New York Memoir by Malin with Debra Devi (Akashic Books) is a riveting, rapid read. It is teeming with stories from Malin’s earliest memories as a child in New York and New Jersey in the early 1970s to his teenage band Heart Attack in the 1980s to later bands like D Generation and his current solo career. Alternating between rollicking stories of wild rock and roll, juvenile antics, and touring along with more sober, poignant reminisces of family, friends, triumphant, loss, and heartache, the book has the contrast and relief Frank Zappa emphasized in his work—and the heterogeneity and rhythm of a great Malin album or live show. It is required reading for any Malin enthusiast, and any reader will find new revelations as well as new details on some familiar stories. Remembering his parents’ divorce and both sides of is extended family’s influence on him and his work, Malin brings an evolving (or actually devolving) New York with vivid detail. Scenes in the pre-Nineties New York of grit and Times Square’s peep show underworld precede accounts of Rudolph Giuliani’s 1990s New York. Malin was arrested for “open container” in accordance with Giuliani’s “broken windows” policing policy immediately after attaining a lifelong dream of opening for KISS at Madison Square Garden with D Generation on July 25, 1996. Unfortunately, he spent an entire weekend in jail at “The Tombs”, the Manhattan Detention Complex on White Street. Malin recounts this and other statist injustices with his trademark “PMA”—positive mental attitude. He relates how people, including his late mother Enid Malin and Bad Brains vocalist H.R., influenced his PMA. Some of the most salient passages of Almost Grown are these. His mother liked to say, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” He remembers Bad Brains, their disposition, and their lyrical content fondly as an exception to the dark nihilism that was encroaching on the culture at the time. Malin’s benevolent PMA is just one reason he is one of today’s most important artists (and may be one reason he has not attained the commercial success he deserves).

In addition to family, friends, and romantic interests and their influence on his songs, Malin remembers a New York and international scene and its luminaries, including his friends Joey Ramone and Joe Strummer, as well as cult artists like Richard Hell (Richard Hell and the Voidoids), David Johansen (the New York Dolls), and Nick Marden (The Stimulators). Other highlights include Malin’s advice to Bono on treating his vocal problems before U2’s 2000 Saturday Night Live performance when Malin attended as Ramone’s personal guest. Another is Malin stage diving on camera during Fear’s Halloween 1981 Saturday Night Live performance. (His teacher commented in class Monday morning: “Isn’t that past your bedtime?”)

Some of the mistakes of the adult Malin can be disappointing to a reader, but he deserves credit for addressing them. At Madison Square Garden on July 25, 1996, he invited two different women he was seeing, Jenny and Raffaele, both of whom inspired later songs of his. Each knew each other but thought he was no longer dating the other. He positioned each of them on opposite sites of the stage, thinking the size of that stage precluded them seeing each other. Raffaele saw Jenny, and she left in disgust. This was not only unfair to the women. When Malin used his one phone call from jail later that night, she hung up on him. So, he spent the weekend in jail. Fortunately, a judge dismissed the “open container” charge on Monday morning. (I saw KISS for the first time at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, July 28, 1996. Unfortunately, The Nixons, not D Generation, opened.)

The adult Malin reflects on his youth with candor. Remembering his time as a (left wing) “anarchist” along with his girlfriend at the time, he now regrets the humorless political correctness that was a part of their “anarchism”. He discarded his sexist Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin albums. He now knows the excesses of their attitude affected their relationship. “In the end, our judgmental bullshit controlled us as much as any government ever could.” He doesn’t elaborate on his (former?) anarchism, but, in fairness, his lifelong do-it-yourself ethos, crashing on friends’ and fans’ couches on tour, etc., is not all that dissimilar from working outside the system and the status quo.

Malin doesn’t pay much attention to it, but an attentive reader will notice how the government’s encroaching power changed New York for the worse, affecting its music scene and quality of life. Malin noted that in his youth, nobody in New York checked identification at clubs. This undoubtedly helped the young Malin become the seasoned performer he became. Malin also recounts finding an apartment in Manhattan for under $500 per month as recently as 1999 or 2000. (I was skeptical about that, but that’s what Malin remembers.) The inflated cost of living has also had a ruinous effect on the music scene in New York and beyond.

This reader’s biggest disappointment is that the narrative stopes early. His solo career, generally mellower and more introspective than his harder edged bands, is given short shrift compared to the rest of his career. Recent losses of his father and bandmates Todd Youth and Howie Pyro, as well as his mysterious, paralyzing spinal stroke, its possible cause, and his experimental stem cell treatment and partial recovery are all barely mentioned in the epilogue. Some facts about this period I didn’t know: Malin’s humorous “bits”, between-song, usually autobiographical stories, developed during his early “solo” era. He felt awkward in the silence tuning his acoustic guitar during these more introspective, intimate shows, and he started telling stories accordingly. Also, Malin’s solo debut The Fine Art of Self-Destruction (2003) was recorded live in the studio. Fortunately, he covers his collaboration with Bruce Springsteen on 2007’s “Broken Radio” with extensive detail. Co-producer Rob Caggiano (then Anthrax’s guitarist) was something of a taskmaster, like legendary producer Bob Ezrin. Malin was mortified when Caggiano exhorted Springsteen, in his own home studio in Colts Neck, New Jersey, to sing take after take like the producer had with Malin and company on the rest of that album (Glitter in the Gutter). Caggiano knew what he was doing. Springsteen acquiesced, and the song, inspired by Enid Malin, is a highlight in a catalog full of them.

Almost Grown is the latest highlight in a remarkable career and a companion to Malin’s albums. It is required reading for anyone interested in Malin, New York, its music scene, or the music business in general.

“Oppressive taxes, overreaching and intrusive governance, sprawling, imperialistic foreign policy. These were the principal characteristics of government America’s founding fathers sought to free its population from when they drafted and signed the Declaration of Independence.

“It’s what countless brave citizens and ragtag, mostly untrained “soldiers” died for during the revolutionary war. Our forefathers believed that government should be small and limited in its power, and they openly called upon citizens to rise up and revolt should government ever overextend its reach.

“I daresay, our founding fathers and those brave men who gave their lives for the ideal of a society based almost solely on the sovereignty of the Individual, would have not risked everything if they could have foreseen the reality of today’s government.

“I, for one, am happy they could not. Regardless of the result, their bold endeavor proved to be one of the most critically important turning points in human history. In addition, their works and writings are inspirational and remain, to this day, truly revolutionary.

It’s sad that most Americans have very little to no appreciation for the vast intelligence, wit, and logical prowess with which our founding fathers spoke, argued, wrote, and utilized to propel their vision into existence against overwhelming odds.

“I observe Independence Day as a memorial to them, and to what they so bravely attempted to create. However, I cannot look upon this day as a current celebration of any kind. It is a salute backwards in time, and in a sense is a mourning for the disintegration and irreparable corruption of their core ideals.”

Chris Aldred, my friend since kindergarten, on Facebook

Two hundred fifty years ago today, the Second Continental Congress formally adopted Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence with a unanimous vote. This radical, revolutionary act against Great Britain, a comparatively benign, gentle master, was considered treasonous. It led to the establishment of the freest and, consequently, greatest nation in world history.

That this happened at all is certainly cause for celebration. The unprecedented culture, industry, wealth, prosperity, and technology it unleashed, vestiges of which still surround us, is also cause for celebration.

But is it cause for unqualified, unrestrained, unreflective celebration?

Is America fundamentally the same nation today?

Is it a nation in which the citizen is sovereign, not the government? It is a country that recognizes the freedom of the individual from state power? Is it a country that consistently recognizes and celebrates independence of any kind?

Read more

Culture, nationally and internationally, was different in the nineteenth century. It was more benevolent, more optimistic, saner, and freer (particularly in the century’s later decades). The Age of Enlightenment was already past, but its kindling rays still shone. They were particularly evident in the century’s art. The nineteenth was arguably the greatest century in terms of aesthetics, as romanticist art flourished in literature, music, and sculpture (and, to a lesser extent, theater).

Many books, including Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City and Leonard Peikoff’s The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America, describe the century in vivid, stark contrast to what followed. Another book recounts the stunning history of one of the century’s most inspired and inspiring works of art, ending the narrative before the century’s turn but presenting an intercontinental culture with striking warmth in its artists and writers.

One of those monumental cultural achievements, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi’s Liberty Enlightening the World, still stands on Liberty Island (formerly Bedloe’s Island) in New York Harbor. It is better known as The Statue of Liberty, but its original, formal title is more appropriate and, well, enlightening.

Elizabeth Mitchell’s Liberty’s Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty (New York: Grove Press, 2014) is a story of a statue and a biography of its architect and creator, and it debunks some of the myths about both while revealing little-known details. The saga, which spanned two countries and multiple decades, included some of the most prominent figures of the time, from Victor Hugo, Gustave Eiffel, and Joseph Pulitzer to multiple U.S. presidents and lesser known but important figures like General Charles P. Stone.

The enigmatic French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi spent his formative years dreaming of designing a colossus. One of his earliest designs, for an Egyptian khedive, was for a large statue of a slave woman bearing a torch at the entrance to the Suez Canal. A drawing in Liberty’s Torch illustrates that it was a precursor of and model for Liberty. The design was never realized, but, perhaps galvanized by that loss, the sculptor spent the better part of his life drawing, designing, overseeing, and raising funds for his vision and masterwork, a gift from his country to America that would also (eventually) be a lighthouse. For a short time, it was one of the tallest structures in the New York area.

Mitchell’s recounting includes Bartholdi’s life story and the artwork’s realization from Bartholdi’s sketchbook to the years when, for fundraising purposes, the incomplete statue’s head and crown would be displayed in Paris while her arm and torch would be displayed in New York and Philadelphia. Despite early approval from President Ulysses S. Grant, those with money and influence in both countries were generally reluctant to allocate funds, especially public funds, to the work for most of the period leading up to its final assembly.

Some of the photographs reproduced in Liberty’s Torch help disprove a longtime myth about the inspiration for the statue’s visage. While Bartholdi was devoted to his mother Charlotte, Mitchell notes that the statue does not resemble her at all despite popular legend. The statue does bear a striking resemblance to Bartholdi’s brother Charles (whom the sculptor tragically committed to an insane asylum).

Mitchell’s details include some of the statue’s features less emphasized in popular accounts, such as Lady Liberty stepping forward, a broken chain at her foot, dramatizing the human race finally discovering liberty and casting aside age-old, hidebound forms of servitude (including the slavery finally abolished in the U.S. a few decades earlier). According to Mitchell, the copper statue retained its penny-like sheen for forty years, until the mid-1920s.

While Mitchell does not emphasize it, her story recounts an America that was much more circumspect about the (necessarily coerced) raising and allocation of public funds as well as statesmen much more scrupulous in their observance of constitutions, federal and state. As Mitchell writes, “Public opinion didn’t favor government aid to the statue.” Before he presided over the executive branch of the federal government at the time of Liberty’s dedication, Grover Cleveland, then Governor of New York, declined to disperse any state funds to Liberty because he considered it a violation of the New York Constitution to dispense state funds for federal purposes. (Cleveland was one of the greatest statesman, especially Democratic statesmen, in the nation’s history. He was one of the few H.L. Mencken remembered with respect.) When the dust settled, the statue’s construction was financed entirely by voluntary contributions and subscriptions (from France), and the pedestal/base was financed entirely by voluntary contributions and subscriptions (from the United States). This was consistent with the statue’s theme. Public funds would only be used for its final assembly on Bedloe’s Island, a location personally selected by Bartholdi, and for its lighting and maintenance. (Public funds were a harbinger of changing times.)

During the long design, construction, and fundraising process, the statue’s champions, which inspired the eventual public support that ensured its finance and completion, included Eiffel, who oversaw much of its engineering; Hugo, who wrote a dedication for a plaque at its base (which unfortunately wasn’t used); and poet Emma Lazarus, whose “The New Colossus” eventually became the statue’s theme. Joseph Pulitzer, a rising journalist at the time, oversaw what was, according to Mitchell, the first professional fundraising service to help finance the pedestal. Another unsung hero in the statue’s eventual unveiling was Stone, the controversial general who oversaw the assembly of the statue on Bedloe’s Island and rehabilitated his reputation among the general public. He died shortly after Liberty’s unveiling.

The October 1886 unveiling was a spectacular event, comparable to the 1986 centennial celebration, and Mitchell describes it in detail. The parade through New York that day was technically the first ticker tape parade, and the statue’s dedication had what was the nation’s largest gun salute at the time.

Liberty’s Torch does have a few shortcomings. Mitchell doesn’t spend much time on the political details or their implications and differences with today’s political culture, ironic considering the statue’s theme. Concomitantly, she shares some of the typical and trendy ideas redolent of the “progressive” movement that started around the 1880s and unfortunately continues to this day, referring to productive nineteenth century business giants as “robber barons”. More important, she gives the statue’s formal title, and the enlightened integration it represents, short shrift. Liberty Enlightening the World is barely mentioned as a title. The Statue of Liberty is a more banal, simpler name. Liberty Enlightening the World not only enshrines liberty’s roots in the Age of Enlightenment; the title and sculpture dramatizes the enlightening effect liberty and America has on the world. The seven spikes of her crown represent the seven seas and seven continents, and the torch is a beacon shining outward, liberating the rest of the globe. This integration was common prior to the twentieth century, and another master of it was Hugo himself. Mitchell refers to Hugo as a “poet” throughout; Hugo is properly better known as a novelist. She erroneously refers to one of Hugo’s famous works as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a translator’s title Hugo loathed. Hugo titled his novel Notre Dame de Paris as a tribute to architecture in general and the Notre Dame cathedral in particular. His synthesized novel had the structural integrity of a building, and it was to literature what the cathedral it celebrated was to architecture. Both were monuments to the human spirit. If the novel has a titular character, it is Esmeralda (“our lady of Paris”), not Quasimodo the hunchback. (Even thought Quasimodo was the protagonist, Hugo dramatized the transformative power of women on men. It is not irrelevant that Bartholdi’s statue is female.) Since Bartholdi’s statue and its name is another example of this non pareil nineteenth century structural integrity, complexity, and integration, one can’t help but think there was a missed opportunity here.

The book also has relatively few details on Bartholdi’s hands-on activity (or lack thereof?) during the statue’s long construction. There are accounts of him overseeing certain things and giving some direction, but there is a vague impression (not really stated) that his work and involvement after the initial design was minimal.

Despite these omissions, Liberty’s Torch rivets a dedicated reader.

As America celebrates a milestone anniversary, the nation is compromised, polarized, and weakened, and antipodal demagogues and tyrants stand where worthier statesmen once stood. While the country is a political mess, one can thankfully see its essential spirit here and there. Part of that spirit still lifts her (refurbished) lamp beside the golden door on Liberty Island. With some refurbishment, she has withstood hurricanes; blizzards; a deleterious culture of neglect, apathy, and entropy; and, now, earthquakes. The fact that she still stands is a(nother) testament to human ingenuity. If the nation can start the cultural and later political rebuilding process, Liberty Enlightening the World will be a crucial inspiration for and part of that process.

Liberty’s Torch is an important tale of the giants who made the new colossus possible.

Thanks to art historian Lee Sandstead and to literature scholar and professor Shoshana Milgram for some of the ideas and insights in this review.

When the late Alan Greenspan was a young economics and philosophy student in New York, he became acquainted with Ayn Rand. Rand, almost instantly, ascertained that he was a lugubrious, malevolent, morose individual, marinating in the trendy, bad ideas that have saturated culture since Immanuel Kant ended the Age of Enlightenment circa 1781. Due to his saturnine disposition at the time, Rand called him The Undertaker. She would engage him in discussions. He would say he wasn’t certain of anything. Her riposte was along the lines of: “Are you certain of that? Surely you know you exist.” He reportedly said, “No, I can’t be sure I exist.” And Ayn Rand responded along the lines of: “Then who is this ‘I’ you’re mentioning?”

While talking to their mutual acquaintance Nathaniel Branden, Rand would quip, “How’s The Undertaker? Does he know he exists yet?” (Rand had a sharp, sapient sense of humor.)

Eventually, Greenspan changed his mind due to Rand’s persuasive arguments. He came around to Rand’s rational, benevolent philosophy and learned wisdom, for a time. He was an Objectivist (someone who agreed with and practiced Rand’s philosophy). He contributed invaluable essays on politics and economics for her publications The Objectivist Newsletter and The Objectivist, some of which were anthologized in her books, particularly Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. In some of those articles, he argued that the Federal Reserve—the central bank that has wielded tyrannical control over the economy of the United States, and concomitantly the globe, since 1913—should not exist, and that no one should be the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Rand and Greenspan remained friends for the rest of Rand’s life, and Rand visited the White House during the administration of President Gerald Ford, when Greenspan was an economic advisor to Ford.

Unfortunately, at some point, Greenspan changed his mind. When President Ronald Reagan first nominated him for the position of Federal Reserve Chairman in 1987, he accepted the nomination and allowed the U.S. Senate to confirm him.

It is also unfortunate that Ayn Rand, who died in 1982, was no longer around to either talk him out of it or repudiate him in the event her usually persuasive arguments failed to convince him of the folly of accepting the position—which was an action unequivocally inconstant with her intransigent, radical philosophy of reason, egoism, individual rights, and laissez-faire capitalism.

it was equally unfortunate that Greenspan remained Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board until 2006. His meddling with and manipulation of the economy for nearly two decades not only caused irreparable damage. In the minds of a confused, ignorant culture, he was still an Objectivist—despite accepting a position no reasonably consistent Objectivist would ever accept, and every reasonably consistent Objectivist would know would lead to catastrophe no matter who accepted it (as Greenspan knew—or claimed to know—in the past). Yaron Brook—a more consistent admirer of Rand’s philosophy—has noted the absurdity of the U.S. economy “at the beck and call of one man”. I will note the even more absurd idea that this could be consistent with Rand’s political philosophy and its emphasis on the separation of economics and state.

It is even more unfortunate that Greenspan betrayed his philosophic and economic principles in recent decades. In a culture in which people generally don’t think deeply, sagaciously, or consistently, Greenspan’s association with Rand and Objectivism was generally considered to be evidence that his governmental shenanigans were consistent with Rand’s philosophy, or even the epitome of her philosophy applied politically and economically. Those who understood her philosophy knew that any exercise of such tyrannical power was the antipode of her pro-liberty, pro-capitalist philosophy. This was true even if a misguided, confused person accepted the position thinking he could minimize the havoc wreaked by such a system as a pro-capitalist “mole” in the system.

And it is still more unfortunate that the vast majority of an entire culture still believes that Greenspan, because he still claimed to espouse Rand’s ideas, was acting in consonant with those ideas as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and that his deleterious legacy was consistent with her philosophy even though it was actually antipodal to her philosophy. Whatever Alan Greenspan was in the 1960s and 1970s, he was no longer that by 1987 (whatever he thought he was). He was a statist—the opposite of a capitalist and individualist—and his actions wreaked the havoc they did because he was a statist. That millions of people take his word that he was still a capitalist despite his contradictory actions just reminds the moiety of sentient, consistent observers that the culture is irrational. It doesn’t change the fact that Greenspan, in his later years, was, in fact, a statist, not a capitalist (and certainly not an Objectivist).

Rand has been criticized for “excommunicating” former associates, especially Branden. Most of this criticism is exaggerated, but Greenspan is the most salient example of why she had to occasionally “excommunicate” former associates. No matter how inconsistent their actions were with her views, she would be blamed for their inconsistent actions by a careless, dishonest culture. If Alan Greenspan is not the most obvious example, I don’t know what possibly could be more obvious. It should be obvious, but in this culture, in the minds of most, Greenspan’s actions were a repudiation of Rand’s ideas even though his actions were consonant with the opposite of Rand’s pro-liberty, pro-capitalist, limited government ideas. Being antipodal, Greenspan’s behavior vindicated Rand.

I wish I could remember the name of the Objectivist or fellow traveler who compared and contrasted Greenspan to the unphilosophical libertarian economist Milton Friedman many years ago. Friedman was instrumental in bequeathing the payroll tax, which unfortunately afflicts us to this day. He intended it to be temporary; he thought it was the only way (or the best way) to finance the Second World War. This is probably why he reportedly later said or wrote, “Nothing is more permanent than a temporary government program.” Friedman, like Greenspan, also talked Reagan out of returning the U.S. to the gold standard, a currency backed by gold and not the increasingly worthless fiat scrip manipulated by the Federal Reserve. Reagan wanted to return to the gold standard during his first term. (Those much more knowledgable in economics than I have told me that that would have been a good thing, not “too much too soon” or a shock to the system as Greenspan apparently told Reagan. It was certainly another betrayal of his alleged free market or Objectivist principles.) Contrasting Greenspan with Friedman, the aforesaid commentator wrote, “Friedman I can forgive. He was never philosophical. But Greenspan? That man is worse than a thousand Paul Krugmans.” (One Paul Krugman is more than enough.)

Alan Greenspan deserves all the opprobrium and disapprobation of just about any other political figure. His legacy may be the most disastrous. Whatever his intentions, his actions were diametrically opposed to the advancement of freedom and capitalism—while commentators, some confused, some dishonest, insisted that his actions were the result of freedom and capitalism (and Objectivism, and Ayn Rand’s influence). He probably did more damage to the cause of reason, individualism, capitalism, and rational philosophy as any non-philosopher. That is his legacy. And his actions should be considered in that context—statism. If he did convince himself he was still a capitalist or Objectivist, in fact he was the opposite—a statist. The antidote to his traitorous compromising is to refuse to have anything to do with the statist system. Then, advocate to reduce the size, scope, and power of the government, eliminate the Federal Reserve Board, return to a gold standard, and watch the liberating effects of freedom and capitalism. That is what an Objectivist or capitalist would have done.

The above should be obvious, but these days, it is necessary to be redundant. (Rand wrote that the term “individual rights” was a necessary redundancy in modern times, and history has shown that that was a necessary redundancy, too.) There are honest ways to debate the validity and efficacy of capitalism, Objectivism, etc., but considering the Federal Reserve era Greenspan as some sort of Objectivist, or capitalist, is a prima facie contradiction, or should be considered one.

Alan Greenspan, at least as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, was the antipode of a capitalist of Objectivist, and his legacy is disgraceful because he abandoned and reversed his capitalist principles.

(Note: This review includes some “spoilers” of the play.)

Recently, I had the privilege to attend a performance of Václav Havel’s play Protest. One of Havel’s Vaněk plays, the production was directed by Jeffrey Carpenter and featured Robert Anthony Peters (Vaněk) and Steven Schub (Staněk). Staged in a lovely private residence atop a hill overlooking the city, the play is set in Soviet-ruled Czechoslovakia in the 1970s. The set replicates the somewhat plush home of Staněk, a writer who compromises with the Soviet regime, writing for state television. More details on the production are below (including opportunities to help stage it in the future).

Václav Havel (1936-2011) rose to fame in his native Czechoslovakia in the 1960s as a playwright. His first major work was The Garden Party (1963). He became one of the leaders of the liberty movement when Czechoslovakia was under Soviet control, and his plays were banned in the country for many years. Dissidents staged clandestine, samizdat performances of his plays in homes and other private spaces. His quondam friend, novelist Milan Kundera, left for Paris and criticized Havel, who easily could have left for New York or elsewhere, for pointless and dangerous martyrdom—a form of what today would be called “virtue signaling”. Havel spent extended periods in prison, but he loved his country and refused to leave it, resolved to staying and fighting. Kundera was best known for the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and his feud with Havel inspired part of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and at least one of Havel’s plays. Havel was a lifelong fan of Frank Zappa, and his fellow dissidents included musicians like The Plastic People of the Universe, a band inspired by Zappa’s Mothers of Invention composition “Plastic People”. (I performed the song at an “open mic” night in Pennsylvania many years ago.) Havel was an architect of Charter 77 (1977), a key document in the Czech freedom movement. Havel was incarcerated at the time. It was around this time that he outlined his play Protest in his prison cell.

Havel was a key figure in the nonviolent Velvet Revolution that overthrew the Soviets in 1989, and he was elected the last president of Czechoslovakia in 1989. After Slovakia seceded from the country, he became the first president of the Czech Republic in 1993. He invited Zappa to advise him. So impressed was Havel by pro-capitalist Zappa’s ideas for market reforms that Havel announced that Zappa had become an official representative to the country on trade, tourism, and cultural issues. Unfortunately, then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker intervened. Baker’s wife was a co-founder (along with Tipper Gore) of the Parents’ Music Resource Center in 1985, a controversial organization Zappa testified against in Congress. The Czech government caved, and Zappa never became a formal advisor or negotiator.

Protest is one of “The Vaněk Plays”. Havel wrote three plays in the 1970s with an autobiographical writer character named Vaněk. Like Havel, Vaněk was a writer and sometime political prisoner who worked in a brewery. Also like Havel, he is an intransigent dissident who will not compromise with the Communist regime.

Recently, the Bricolage Production Company produced all three Vaněk plays. Based in Pittsburgh, Bricolage, led by co-artistic directors Carpenter and Tami Dixon, specializes in immersive theater experiences where the audience can feel like they are part of the drama. They hold a discussion with the audience and actors after every performance, debating the play’s theme and implications. They also recreated the Samizdat experience, sending ticket holders the private location of the performance only just before the performance date and asking each a series of questions, including whether they were followed to the location. (Frankly, the country comes across more like those dark totalitarian days with almost every passing year.)

I attended one of the four performances of Protest (first produced in 1978) on the evening of Saturday, June 6, officially titled Samizdat: Play #3 in accordance with the recreation of the samizdat atmosphere. (It was the third and final production of Bricolage’s Vaněk Play series.) Directed by Carpenter, the one-act, two-role play featured Peters as Vaněk and my friend Steven Schub as Staněk. (I was a fan long before we met. To date, he is the only guest writer at this page.) There were performances the previous two evenings and one final performance the following afternoon.

Protest is a complex play. It is set at the fairly prosperous home of Staněk, another writer who decides to deal with the Communist regime in the antipodal manner of his openly and outspokenly rebellious companion Vaněk. He compromises and works on state television productions, delivering content congenial to the regime and avoiding confrontation. Vaněk visits him shortly after being released from prison. Staněk asks him about his time in prison, and the contrast between the experiences and fortunes of the two is palpable. Staněk even criticizes Vaněk’s defiance, telling him he talked in that prison more than necessary. At one point, the two discuss an imprisoned dissident popular singer named Javůrek. Staněk’s daughter is expecting a child with him. Staněk had invited Vaněk to write something on behalf of Javůrek, and Vaněk presents him with an already written petition for his release which he asks him to sign. Staněk responds with a prolix monologue in which he considers the reasons to sign or not to sign the petition, deliberating over the potential effects of each decision in an impassioned attempt at justifying his ultimate decision—continuing his quiet, clandestine activity of working within the system, trying to use his influence and connections behind the scenes to affect change. He refuses to sign the petition, appealing to the safety of his children (he also has a son). The phone rings, and Staněk learns that Javůrek has been released without the petition. Vaněk responds that Staněk’s machinations within the system worked in Javůrek’s favor. The play ends with silent tension, Staněk affecting bonhomie and rationalizing his behavior and the congenial Vaněk voicing agreement. Vaněk expresses relief that they had not written the petition a few days earlier as the regime would have stubbornly refused to release Javůrek; Staněk replies that there is always a chance one can do more harm than good. The cast subtly and skillfully dramatizes the complex, strained relationship between the two. In Havel’s writing, the specific thoughts and feelings of each character are ambivalent and open to some debate, but there is an impression of significant silent tension. There is ambiguity in the play though less, I think, than some readers and viewers state.

Experiencing Bricolage’s production is incomparably more revelatory than merely reading Havel’s play. It is truly immersive, as if the viewer were the metaphorical fly on the wall in Staněk’s house, and the thespians embody their characters appropriately, reifying their conflict more than is possible from the most careful, repeated reading. Peters’s Vaněk is laconic and understated while Schub’s Staněk is intense and feverish. Different readers and viewers react to Staněk’s compromises and justifications for those compromises differently, as was evident in the discussion Peters led after the performance. Some think that Staněk is a dishonest poltroon evading the consequences of his actions. Others consider the dilemma hopelessly complicated. My view is essentially the former. Staněk, if not quite a villain, is certainly an antagonist to the more heroic Vaněk, enabling the regime, and there is no question that his justifications are rationalizing more than they are rational. Parenthood does complicate things, and being a dissident or contrarian, even in a relatively free country, can have consequences for one’s children. (Ask Mark Steyn, or George Carlin or even Frank Zappa when they were alive.) But enabling a despotic regime can have disastrous long term consequences for those children—and for the parent.

During the post-show discussion, Schub pointed out the long term implications of these decisions with one (realistic) example from fiction and one from history. In the play, the characters mention a mutual friend named Pavel Landovský. Landovský was a real playwright and actor who wrote his own Vaněk play. In his play, Staněk ends up in an insane asylum. The real Havel eventually became president of a liberated Czechoslovakia.

According to Schub, “Protest is more than a political play; it is a philosophical and deeply moral one whose theme is the price of cowardice. The protest itself—the petition—is merely a symbol, a metaphor. And though the meaning of the play’s climax might seem ambiguous, or perhaps even cynical, at first glance, there are two relevant facts that I think provide fuller context.

“Havel’s best friend, the actor Pavel Landovský, wrote a kind of sequel to Protest called Closed for Disinfection. In that play, my character, Staněk, has been sent to a mental institution—my guess is as a result of his obsessive evasions and the psychological agony of his total self-betrayal. Meanwhile, Vaněk, in real life (a.k.a. Václav Havel himself), goes on to become President of the Czech Republic.

“The message, to me, is clear, and it reminds me of a quote by the philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand, a woman who, like Havel, experienced life under a Communist dictatorship: ‘I am not brave enough to be a coward. I see the consequences too clearly.’

“I know that is a sentiment Havel himself would endorse. Vaněk lives it, Staněk fails to, and both reap what they have sown. Thus, Protest serves as both a warning and an inspiration.”

If one has the opportunity, seeing—or even helping produce—Bricolage Production Company’s Protest is emphatically recommended.

Thanks to Jeffrey Carpenter, Tami Dixon, Robert Anthony Peters, and Steven Schub

Bricolage Production Company website:
bricolagepgh.org

Robert Anthony Peters website:
robertanthonypeters.com

Steven Schub website:
stevenschub.com

Note: Bricolage aims to bring this production of Protest to schools, universities, theaters, conferences, dinner parties, and living rooms across the world. If you are interested in bringing Protest to a venue of any kind, please contact Jeffrey Carpenter at: jeff@bricolagepgh.org

(The images in this post ensure that it is too long for E-mail; please click through to read on the Substack page or app.)

Bear Run is a four-mile mountain stream in rustic, rural Fayette County, Pennsylvania. In 1890, a group of Masons started the private Masonic Country Club there in 1890, building cabins for vacation purposes. (It would later be acquired by the Syria Improvement Association, another Masonic group, and become the Syria Country Club.) In 1916, Kaufmann’s Department Store, the largest department store in Pittsburgh, began using it as a summer camp for its “fellows and executives”.

At the time, Pittsburgh was the dirtiest city in America. Due to steel production, streetlights were illuminated as early as early afternoon to illuminate soot-blackened streets. Kaufmann’s Department Store, owned by Edgar Kaufmann, Sr. and his wife, Liliane, was a twelve-story building that took up an entire block. A rustic, rural getaway undoubtedly appealed to a significant number of their employees. The Kaufmann family particularly gravitated to Bear Run.

During the Great Depression, the camp fell into desuetude. The Kaufmanns continued to visit and took ownership of the camp; they referred to their private cabin on the property outside of the town of Mill Run as The Hangover. Meanwhile, their son, Edgar, Jr., was an architectural intern at Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural school in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The family asked the maverick architect to design a summer home for them on the property. He was receiving few commissions during the Depression, and he gladly accepted the offer in 1934.

Wright asked for topographic maps showing the elevations and outcroppings in the area. Consonant with his views on form following function, Wright designed a cantilevered structure that looks as if it is as much a part of nature as the stream and outcroppings themselves, with the stream running underneath the building. The series of cantilevers, where a beam or girder is supported only only one end and hangs over there air on the other, is one reason the house, Fallingwater, is one of the most famous architectural marvels in the world.

Wright designed the house to his specifications and interests. Edgar Kaufmann, Sr. wanted a view of the stream next to his house. Wright reportedly thought such a view was prosaic and unnecessary and decided to place the structure on top of the stream. During design and construction, the Kaufmanns attempted to change many aspects of it; Wright usually prevailed, ensuring his vision was enacted. Construction began in 1936. It was completed in December of the following year, when the Kaufmanns moved in.

Unlike so many today, including ideological environmentalists, Wright did not see humans as a scourge, a plague, or something apart from nature. He thought man should be integrated with nature, and his design for Fallingwater is a testament to those harmonious views. Wright also designed most of the home’s furniture, and Fallingwater is the only Wright home with intact furniture accessible to the public.

After his parents’ death in the 1950s, Edgar, Jr. donated the property to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which runs it to this day. He and his life partner, architect and industrial designer Paul Mayén, helped to design and build a Visitor’s Center, which opened in 1980. Kaufmann’s intention was that Fallingwater be open to the public and look as if the family had just left and would return in ten minutes. The Conservancy has maintained the property for decades, including a recent one year, seven million dollar renovation. The house, which was prone to leaky roofs in the past, is finally leak free. Fallingwater is open for tours every day except Wednesday. More information is available at the Conservancy’s Fallingwater website.

On Sunday, I took part in the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy’s Guided Architectural Tour of Fallingwater. Advertised as one hour and limited to the house’s first floor only, it was actually closer to one-and-a-half hours and included the entire house. Eugene, the Conservancy’s knowledgable, amiable docent, led a small group, among hundreds or thousands who would visit that day, through the landmark. Other than a lack of adequate signage (I had difficulty finding the visitor’s center from the parking lot and difficulty returning to the visitor’s center and parking lot later), the Conservancy does a remarkable job preserving Fallingwater and informing visitors. In addition to the visitor’s center, there is a café, a gift shop, and an exhibit of photographs of the Kaufmann family and Bear Run’s history.

Thanks to Emily Nichelson, Fallingwater’s Visitor Services Representative, and to Eugene, of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Thanks also to my friends the Karams and Steadmans for recommending that I visit Fallingwater during my trip to the Pittsburgh area.

On X last night, Ian Miller, author of Unmasked: The Global Failure of Covid Mask Mandates and Illusion of Control: Covid-19 and the Collapse of Expertise, reported on election results in one relevant district in the Los Angeles mayoral race. In Pacific Palisades, he noted that Spencer Pratt had received 60.6% of the vote. Adam Miller was second with 14.6%. Karen Bass had 14.1%.

Unfortunately, Pacific Palisades is an outlier. Apparently, more Los Angeles residents—more residents everywhere in a myopic, Pragmatist culture—need to experience catastrophe directly and personally to understand change is necessary. But, Pratt is second in the citywide vote, far ahead of Nithya Raman. Protracted counting of mail-in ballots, another twenty-first century cultural and political devolution, is one reason it is difficult to state anything with certainty right now, but, contra some dubious reports of wishful thinking, Pratt will likely advance to the November runoff election with Bass.

Miller attributes Republican Pratt’s outcome in Pacific Palisades solely to contempt for Bass due to her policies before, during, and after the 2025 wildfires that ruined much of the district. I’m sure that has more than a little to do with it, but I do know that Pacific Palisades is a traditionally Republican area. When George Carlin lived there in the Seventies, he later wrote that he was the only non-Republican in his neighborhood. As recently as 2003, an acquaintance running for governor as a Republican in that year’s recall election campaigned there because he thought it was one of the few parts of the metropolitan area receptive to him (by that point). However, I am certain the district is less Republican than it was twenty years ago, and Pratt’s performance, if only by default, is impressive considering how monolithically Democratic the city and state has become.

How did other races and ballot initiatives fare for those concerned about government inexorably growing in size and scope?

As of the last report I read, Steve Hilton, former Fox News personality, is ahead (not second). Xavier Becerra is second. Billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer, who squandered millions (again) in this election, is a distant third.

Throughout the state, ballot initiatives from San Francisco to San Diego that would have raised taxes even more were soundly defeated.

I am unfamiliar with Hilton. I don’t watch Fox News when Mark Steyn isn’t onscreen. It is unfortunate that only television stars seem willing and able to make a dent as non-Democrats in the once-Golden State, but, regardless of the fallout from mail-in ballots, Tuesday’s election was some kind of turning point. Aside from the exception/aberration of Arnold Schwarzenegger (another star, of course), California is sort of a two-party state for the first time in three decades, since the re-election of Governor Pete Wilson, and the far-left candidates Raman and Steyer will hopefully end up with mortifying defeats pending mail-in ballots, legitimate and otherwise. (Voter fraud is another scourge tolerated everywhere by far too many. Two different teachers of mine in Pennsylvania in the 1990s matter-of-factly told their classes that dead people and vacant lots vote in every Philadelphia mayoral election. The question is not whether there is voter fraud in California in 2026 but how much of it there is.)

Just imagine how much better the results would be with better candidates.

It is unfortunate that many voters receptive to other policies and other parties have died or left the state during its years-long population decline. As I noted before, the Spencer Pratts of the world waited too long, and the remaining swing voters have been complacent for too long.

The Republican Party cannot be relied on to save the country or any part of it, and California Republicans can be particularly odious. They include Robert Dornan and Earl Warren. Even the most famous of them, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, were significantly worse when they left the state for national politics (especially Nixon). This has nothing to do with partisan politics. California has been heading in the wrong direction for decades, one party has been in charge, and that monopoly needs to be broken.

Has it been broken already? Does Pratt stand a chance against Bass, or will Raman really come from behind and secure a second place showing? Neither seems likely right now. Reality always has its way, and the status and statist quo will eventually collapse into something better or worse. Does another catastrophe like last year’s wildfires need to occur before more residents act (if they do even then)?

Time will tell, and hopefully not too much time.

Read Part One here.

“The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.”

H.L. Mencken “Note on a Cuff”, the Baltimore Evening Sun, December 9, 1929

Can Los Angeles be saved at this point Can it be helped? What would it take? Are either of the three frontrunners for mayor likely to help?

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Spencer Pratt is a star of “reality television”. Earlier this year, he announced that he is interested in another dubious job—mayor of the City of Los Angeles in the twenty-first century.

Pratt is best known for The Hills. In 2009, he eloped with Heidi Montag, his co-star on The Hills. A year later, Montag filed for divorce, but the couple subsequently called off the divorce, stating it was a publicity stunt of sorts to draw attention to Montag’s diminishing career. Later that year, Pratt was arrested in Costa Rica for attempting to board an aircraft with hunting weapons. He was subsequently legally barred from entering Costa Rica. On January 7, 2025, the Pratts’ home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles burned down during the highly predictable, highly preventable, and high profile conflagrations that destroyed innumerable buildings in the City and County of Los Angeles. Pratt says that the fire and the civic mismanagement before, during, and after it is the reason for his campaign. Officially “independent” prior to this year, he has registered as a Republican. He and his family (Pratt and Montag have two children) have been living in a rented house in Carpenteria, some distance from Los Angeles in Santa Barbara County. Pratt is challenging Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. While several candidates have declared, Pratt and Democratic City Councilor Nithya Raman are receiving the most attention; the three are considered the leading contenders for the office. If Pratt wins the election, he will be the first Republican mayor of Los Angeles since the late Richard Riordan, who left office in 2001. (Mayoral races in the City of Los Angeles are technically non-partisan, but, like so much else, it is only a technicality.)

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Evelyn Beatrice Hall (writing as S.G. Tallentyre), The Friends of Voltaire, 1906

Free speech—even dissent—used to be a bipartisan, near-universal, uncontroversial view.

Now, increasing numbers of people on all sides of the conventional “political spectrum”—and growing numbers of those who are apolitical—are apathetic or hostile to freedom of speech.

One series of headlines last week suggested another corner has turned in the incremental decline in what used to be a bedrock principle of societies quaintly known as “free”.

According to several reports, unprecedented numbers of death threats have occurred during Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour 2026. Springsteen has been criticizing President Donald Trump, apparently riling some of Trump’s supporters to the point where they are threatening Springsteen’s life. According to reports, it is enough of a problem that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is “concerned”.

It’s possible there have been similar reports in the past that have eluded my notice, but, as someone who pays close attention to music tours in general (and Springsteen’s in particular), I am unaware of anything like this happening in the past.

It should be attracting more attention.

Criticizing elected officials used to be a routine, even quotidian aspect of American life, from innocuous, anodyne cartoonists like Garry Trudeau to the more scathing invective of H.L. Mencken and Frank Zappa. Indeed, it was, to use a trite phrase, as American as apple pie. Death threats happened, too, including against Zappa, but I don’t recall them happening often enough that security for a tour had to be significantly heightened.

While I am also not a supporter of the current president (or any of the past several decades), I don’t agree with Bruce Springsteen about much else, politically—which is irrelevant in this context.

One hundred twenty years ago, Evelyn Beatrice Hall, in one of her biographies of Voltaire, articulated a principle that was still just about uncontroversial, at least in most of society outside the most radical enclaves of ivory towers and totalitarian movements. Voltaire was a spokesman of the Enlightenment, the cultural-philosophical movement that transfigured the world. It emphasized reason as the essential means of human knowledge and persuasion as the essential means of dealing with other humans. It led to unprecedented, if inconsistent, liberty around the globe. Freedom of speech was perhaps the most cherished of the rights recognized by Enlightenment thinkers and enshrined in the new constitutions of nations and, more importantly, in general human thought and custom. (This general thought and custom had to change before significant political change was possible then, and it will have to change again before significant political change is possible now.)

Are today’s attacks on freedom of speech endemic to Trump’s MAGA movement—or “conservatives” in general? Of course not. They have been increasing in just about every large movement in today’s culture, among “nerds on the left” and “nerds on the right”, as Zappa would put it. Examples among the former include environmentalists shouting down and curtailing the speeches of critics of environmentalism—and demanding that those whom they call “climate change deniers” be jailed (or even executed). Examples of the latter include religious conservatives advocating suppression of cultural works they regard as obscene or blasphemous. (In his book Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert Bork included a chapter titled “The Case for Censorship”. Ronald Reagan nominated him for the U.S. Supreme Court. Fortunately, he was not approved.)

Are attacks on freedom of speech systemic among Trump’s MAGA supporters? I don’t follow them, but I don’t think so. But it is enough of a problem that it is starting to become alarming, just as the number of threats against—and even attempts at harming—Trump are alarming.

Both are examples of the continued fading of the Enlightenment. They are reasons why I and others refer to modern times as the counter-Enlightenment or Endarkenment.

To his credit, Springsteen is abjuring violence against Trump. He’s even beginning concerts with prayers for Trump’s safety. While hardly consistent, politically or otherwise, he is demonstrating that he is more enlightened, and Enlightened, than many of his peers, including the moiety of Trump supporters threatening Springsteen’s life.

Right or wrong, criticizing and boycotting is an acceptable response to disagreement. As Mark Steyn—one of my favorite Trump supporters—frequently writes, there are only two fundamental ways to deal with people—by persuasion or force. When a culture abandons the former as a principle, there can be only one recourse left.

More people, from musicians to merchants to stay-at-home parents, must learn and understand Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s paraphrasing of Voltaire’s views. It is a basic, fundamental principle of human life. Its eclipse is leading to what some philosophers defined as hell—the impossibility of reason.

Ike Willis has died. Best known for his long stint as a vocalist (and occasional guitarist and percussionist) in Frank Zappa’s band, Willis was seventy. Former Zappa bass guitarist Arthur Barrow reported that Willis, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2021, died last night.

Born Isaac Willis on November 12, 1955 in St. Louis, Missouri, Willis met Zappa when he was a student at St. Louis’s Washington University in the 1970s. Likely on October 2, 1977 at Zappa’s concert at Washington University’s Quadrangle, Willis volunteered to work as a roadie. He introduced himself to Zappa and offered his services as a vocalist. A short time later, he successfully auditioned for Zappa’s band in California and was part of almost every Zappa tour (and many recording projects) until 1988, when Zappa suddenly fired most of his band (including Willis) mid-tour due to complicated internecine conflicts that had developed. Willis joined Zappa’s band (which included Barrow at the time) for a tour that commenced in August 1978. For some reason, he suddenly left the tour on October 15, the day after a show at The University of Maryland at College Park, but he returned at the beginning of 1979. He sat out Zappa’s tours of 1981 and 1982 so he could be present for the birth and infancy of his children, but he returned in 1984 and was present for every remaining regular rock concert for the rest of Zappa’s too-short life and career.

Willis’s presence and performance was immense and inescapable during that final decade of Zappa tours. He was known for both profound, soulful singing in Zappa’s more serious tunes and pawky, improvisational humor in his more satirical ones. A personal favorite example of the former is “Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up” from Zappa’s masterwork Joe’s Garage: Act I, II, and III (1979). “Planet of the Baritone Women” is a standout of the latter style from Broadway the Hard Way, recorded in 1988 on the last tour. “Any Kind of Pain” from Broadway the Hard Way is an amalgam of both styles/approaches. Willis’s performance on “America the Beautiful” at what turned out to be Zappa’s last North American concert is also outstanding.

Willis sang and played the titular character in Joe’s Garage, Zappa’s prescient story about the decline (and even censorship/criminalization in some areas) of music inspired by Iran’s ban on popular music in 1979. It presaged Tipper Gore’s Parents’ Music Resource Center hearings of 1985, at which Zappa testified. Willis’s many vocal highlights on the Joe’s Garage album(s) include “Joe’s Garage” and “Outside Now”. (Zappa considered Joe’s Garage to be one work. Due to economic malaise, including an oil embargo, Zappa decided against releasing an expensive three-record set at the time, so it was originally released as Joe’s Garage: Act I in September 1979 and Joe’s Garage: Acts II and III in November 1979. In the 1980s, the work was reissued as Joe’s Garage: Acts I, II, and III.) Written by Zappa, “Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up” originally appeared on Jeff Simmons’s album of the same name (produced by Zappa), but Zappa brilliantly integrated it into the plot of Joe’s Garage (as he did with other old songs like “Stick It Out”). While the studio version is good, a live version on You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore: Vol. 3 is the one I consider definitive. Recorded at the Bismarck Theatre in Chicago on November 23, 1984, no one captured anguish over love that had suddenly become unrequited like Ike Willis. (The song perhaps works even better outside the Joe’s Garage context than it does in that context.) It is one of the most emotional moments of Zappa’s oeuvre.

In later years, Willis kept busy with his Ike Willis Band, playing more guitar than he did with Zappa, and guesting with Zappa tribute acts like Project/Object, Pojama People, and The Stinkfoot Orchestra.

It is tragic and more than a little ironic that both Frank Zappa and Ike Willis were struck down by prostate cancer, typically one of the most treatable forms of cancer, with a sky-high survival rate when caught early. Together, they left behind some of the most inestimable music of modern times, or all time.

Robert Fripp is eighty today. Known for his work with King Crimson, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, Daryl Hall, etc., the innovative guitarist recently started a Substack page of his own: See here. Outside of King Crimson, Fripp is probably best known for David Bowie’s “Heroes” and Peter Gabriel’s first two albums, the second of which he produced. (He played on Gabriel’s first tour, hidden from the audience; he was credited in the tour book as “Dusty Rhodes”.) I published this review of a King Crimson performance at my defunct weblog Twenty-First Century Digital Boy on June 28, 2017.

When King Crimson released In the Court of the Crimson King: An Observation by King Crimson (Atlantic) in 1969, Yes were a pop band covering The Beatles and The Byrds, Genesis were still Jonathan King’s Bee Gees knockoff, and Rush were covering Cream in church basements. That debut album is to progressive rock what Elvis Presley (RCA, 1956) was to rock and roll. It was the beginning. It was a lodestone and inspiration to Yes, Genesis, Rush, and many other progressive rock legends.

Unlike the artist behind Elvis Presley, King Crimson flourishes again—or one of its many incarnations does, anyway. Longtime members and prog legends Adrian Belew and Bill Bruford are not touring with them, but erstwhile member Tony Levin, the incomparable bass guitarist and Chapman Stick player, has returned. The current model has flourished on a couple of recent live releases, and they are flourishing on tour this summer. And, while they acknowledge their past (including that august debut), they distinguish themselves from the baby boomer nostalgia circuit and other superfluous, fatuous tripe cluttering what’s left of the culture with new material and fresh arrangements and performances of older tunes, all of it with a relevant artistic flourish.

Guitarist Robert Fripp, the band’s only constant, leads an eight-piece ensemble that is crossing North America on its Radical Action Tour 2017. The tour is named after last year’s deliciously and appositely named three-disc set Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind (DGM). Recorded on tour in 2015, Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind consists of new tunes and older ones, some long-unplayed, appropriately rearranged for the band’s current instrumental components. Mixing out the audience, the listening experience is akin to a “virtual studio album”.

A few weeks ago, the band released the EP Heroes: Live in Europe 2016 (DGM). Bookended by two different edits of a performance of David Bowie’s “’Heroes’”, it also includes even more recent recordings of three pieces also represented on Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind: “Easy Money”; a pared-down “Starless”; and the drum trio “The Hell Hounds of Krim”. This time, the enthusiastic audience is audible. Both recordings are essential to any rock fan—perhaps any music fan—fighting the obscurantist Endarkenment and its simple, shallow dreck. Listening to them, these days, is a radical action that will unseat the hold of monkey mind (on an individual and cultural level). And, as of this writing, both releases are streaming for free on Spotify—and are eminently worthy of purchase as well. Both are equally delightful to newcomers to the progressive rock legends as well as experts (I am closer to the former category).

There have been slight lineup changes since 2015, but a core band has stayed largely the same since then, highlighted by Fripp; Levin; guitarist and vocalist Jakko Jakszyk; and woodwind player Mel Collins. The melodies and trademark discordant chords are augmented by three lead drummers: The specific drummers have changed a bit, but longtime drummer Pat Mastelotto is a constant.

Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind’s three discs are labeled “Mainly Metal”, “Easy Money Shots”, and “Crimson Classics”, respectively. Disc one is a bit of a misnomer. Although some of it is certainly puissant, much of it is anything but metal. Overall, the disc is more jazz fusion than metal. The latter style is evident in the suite of new pieces “Radical Action (to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind)”/“Meltdown”/“Radical Action II”, a highlight of the set. Like much of King Crimson’s material, the “Radical Action” sequence is instantly infectious despite the band’s musical complexity—it manages to both immediately hook and reward with repeated listenings. There are apparently no studio iterations of the new material—their last studio album was The Power to Believe (Sanctuary, 2003). “The Light of Day”, banal and bland, is one of the few weak spots on the entire set. “The ConstruKction of Light” is faintly Zappaesque; one can hear hints of his “King Kong”. Indeed, the band is one of the few keeping Zappa’s improvisational and sprawling, somewhat loose approach to live performance alive. Highlights of disc two include a performance of 1973’s “Easy Money”, now a showcase for Jakszyk’s smooth baritone which includes scatting and sound effects. “Easy Money” is a stellar exemplar of a trademark Crimson arc of a relatively straightforward song that develops into a manic instrumental jam and returns to the relatively straightforward theme. While this template of sorts often works well for the band, it is never formulaic. While each member of the band is virtuosic (on this song and others), none is ever ostentatious. Disc two also features the Nineties piece “VROOM”, in which Collins’s jaunty, honking saxophone is juxtaposed with Fripp’s angular, foreboding guitar to eminently listenable effect. The result is unmistakably King Crimson. Less characteristic is the recent “A Scarcity of Miracles”: gentle and dulcet, with Jakszyk singing his own lyrics and Collins approximating a smooth jazz style, it is something of a contrast and companion piece to the also-recent and more typical sound of “Suitable Grounds for the Blues”. The titles speak for themselves; Jaksyzk apparently knows his Endarkenment. The set even has a few drum trio pieces which continue to highlight the band’s current live sets. The classics disc rounds out the set, including a few from In the Court of the Crimson King. The debut has moments where it sounds like a creature of its crazy era, but “The Court of the Crimson King” is no longer a period piece here, with its emotive vocals and three drum sets. “21st Century Schizoid Man”—one of their most famous “songs” and the first track from the debut—is not as forceful and frenetic as its studio counterpart. In the context of these times and the age of some of the musicians, this one is a welcome reinterpretation, but it is familiar to all who are familiar with the tune, even without the caustic feel of Greg Lake’s original vocal. The set even has a few drum trio pieces which continue to highlight the band’s current live sets.

Heroes: Live in Europe 2016 is a much more compact statement. Fripp played on David Bowie’s “Heroes” and, while he didn’t receive a writing credit, he reportedly substantially influenced the arrangement and recording with his tones and performance. Since Bowie’s death, King Crimson has performed the song regularly. This version of this song doesn’t sound much like King Crimson, but is has a warmth that is nearly ineffable—the kind of warmth that can brighten the darkest night and the loneliest, most rankled soul, massaged from the instruments (including voice). You need to listen to it. It will surely save someone’s life if it hasn’t already.

Last Wednesday, I had the privilege of seeing portions of King Crimson’s astounding Radical Action Tour 2017 show at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. Anyone with the slightest interest in King Crimson, progressive rock, jazz, or increasingly rare first-rate musicianship should seriously consider attending at least one show if they can. (See tour dates below.) Keep your phones away until the very end; signs on stage before each set warned that anyone using any kind of camera or recorder may have been asked to leave. As the group took the stage, a recording played of the droll Fripp explaining the camera/recorder/phone policy. Fripp noted that Tony wanted to take pictures of the audience. When he would reach for his camera after the music ended, the audience should consider that a cue to finally take pictures of the band. He added, “Let’s have a party!”—a curious way to describe a King Crimson concert.

Party or not, the concert was stupendous.

Three drum kits stood downstage. Behind them stood an elevated platform for the other performers. Mastelotto took the stage right kit, Jeremy Stacey sat behind the center kit which also contained his keyboards, and Gavin Harrison drummed closest to stage left. Above and behind them, from stage right, were Collins, Levin, keyboardist Bill Rieflin (one of the drummers on Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind), Jakszyk, and Fripp. Collins and Fripp were ensconced behind sound baffles. Fripp, who sat on a stool with headphones, also had some keyboards. A black curtain hung behind them all. They dress not like a rock band but like the middle-aged professionals they are. Perhaps the neckties are a bit much, but they are as refreshingly independent sartorially as they are musically.

The Radical Action 2017 setlists vary somewhat every night, but they generally continue the recent approach of concentrating on the 1969-74 period and very recent material while downplaying the Adrian Belew eras of the eighties, nineties, and zero decade. The few Belew pieces they’re playing are instrumentals or instrumental sections of longer works. Without completely spoiling the sets, highlights from that first period include “Pictures of a City” and “Easy Money”—both of which are on the live box set—and a few that are not which the band started playing this year for the first time since the mid-seventies. In addition to some of the recent songs from the box set, there is “Radical Action III”—a working title for a new song. “Radical Action III” is evidence, if any were needed, that King Crimson remains a creative force. I wish I were more familiar with their work, but I believe “Radical Action III” was the showstopper that had young Greek Theatre staff, most of whom are likely much less familiar with their work than I, spellbound. (Since they are not allowing recording, and it is brand new, “Radical Action III” is hard to find on the Internet.) It is quite a spectacle to see these eight players produce this unclassifiable music. They are remarkably focused and barely move onstage, despite the earth-shattering art they are making. Most of the physical movement came from the virtuosic Collins’s and Levin’s constant juggling of instruments. The show had something for everyone—very old songs, old songs, new songs, instrumental music, vocal music, drum trios (while the other five players sat out) … and “Heroes”. Classics like “Easy Money”, “Starless”, and “21st Century Schizoid Man” were both recognizably similar to their recent live iterations and very much live and in the moment. After “21st Century Schizoid Man”, Levin picked up his camera and conspicuously held it up. A glorious display of flashing phones followed from the audience.

At merchandise stands, the band are selling “tour editions” of Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind and Heroes: Live in Europe 2016, among other live and studio vinyl and compact discs. The EP is apparently not available as a tangible disc anywhere else yet. [Edit, 07/04/17 12:22 AM PDT: Heroes, as it is technically titled--the subtitle does not appear on the disc or packaging--is now available as a compact disc though not a vinyl record., unfortunately.]

Culture has changed detrimentally, and perhaps irreparably, since King Crimson took their first hiatus around 1975. A few more generations of progressive-inspired education have dulled the minds and attention spans of music fans, and a myopic music industry has devolved into predictable baby boomer nostalgia shows offering carbon copies of radio hits (assuming the aging popinjay can still hit the notes) and American Glorified Karaoke Idol pop tarts offering carbon copies of radio hits. Shows like America’s Got Talent show that America’s got ballast more than talent. King Crimson are an exception. They are heroes in an age of anti-heroes and villains, continuing to take radical action to unseat the hold of monkey mind.

You should see them and listen to them.

King Crimson

Greek Theatre

Los Angeles

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Radical Action 2017 (for Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind)

first set:

Neurotica

Pictures of a City

Radical Action III

Cirkus

Lizard

c) The Battle of Glass Tears

Red

Fallen Angel

Islands

second set:

Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part One

The ConstruKction of Light

Easy Money

Indiscipline

The Letters

Meltdown

Radical Action II

Level Five

Starless

encore:

“Heroes”

The Court of the Crimson King

21st Century Schizoid Man

Remaining Radical Action 2017 dates:

June 28 Chicago, IL Chicago Theatre

June 30 Rochester, NY Kodak Hall (Rochester Jazz Fest)

July 3 Montreal, QC Montreal Jazz Fest

July 5 Toronto, ON Massey Hall

July 7 Quebec, QC Centre Videotron

July 9-10 Red Bank, NJ Count Basie Theatre

July 14-19 Mexico City, Mexico Teatro Metropolitan

Update (July 20, 2017): “Easy Money” from the June 21 Greek Theatre concert is now available as a free MP3 and $0.99 FLAC download at dgmlive.com (downloading requires free registration). “Easy Money” varies significantly in length and content every time it is performed:

https://www.dgmlive.com/tour-dates/2029

The title of this post was originally the title of a short story I planned to write that would be set several decades in the future. Even I did not expect that it would be an apposite title for a non-fiction piece set approximately a decade after my idea’s inception.

A front-page Los Angeles Times article by Stacy Perman and Samantha Masunaga published Sunday quotes several entertainment industry veterans, most now retired or recently deceased, describing the ruin. The article is titled “Businesses that helped build Hollywood face ‘decimation’”; it can be read here (and elsewhere).

“Decimation”, historically, refers to the culling of one out of ten people for punishment purposes, or reducing a population by ten percent. What these veterans describe is incomparably worse than that, closer to reducing southern California’s entertainment industry jobs to ten percent of “pre-pandemic” levels—or reducing them by ninety percent.

Read more

Last night, a perennial local favorite of the Monmouth County, New Jersey music scene returned.

Stringbean and the Boardwalk Social Club have been a regular highlight of the Asbury Park boardwalk for at least four years. Ensconced at Low Dive every Monday night in the warmer months since Low Dive opened (it was Asbury Park Yacht Club), the band plays jaunty, warm folk rock, a sort of Traveling Wilburys sound with shades of The Beach Boys’ cult classic Seventies era. Led by Kenny “Stringbean” Sorenson—so named for his frame—the core band includes M.J. Hancock on bass guitar and Richie Blackwell on auxiliary percussion. They sometimes play as a trio during the colder months, including at Tenth Avenue Burrito in Belmar. Another mainstay of the Boardwalk Social Club is keyboardist Bill Henry. The rest of the lineup tends to rotate. Last night, it included Sim Caine on drums and Joe Murphy on guitar. (Hancock and Murphy are Stringbean’s sons-in-law.) Blackwell is best known for studio and live work with his lifelong friend Bruce Springsteen; he played on the first and last tracks on The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle (1973) and has been a vital part of the local scene ever since.

Last night’s set included familiar tunes like “We’re on the Side of the Planet” (a.k.a. “Right Side of the Earth”) and “Stop That Train” (I was unable to confirm this is the official title). The group also performs select covers, including Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released”, always a highlight. Last night, Paul Whistler, another local journeyman known for Whistler and the Wheels in the 1970s, joined the band again for his original “Cadillac Back”. The band plays two sets, beginning at 7PM, every Monday from the beginning of May until sometime in October. Typically, they perform outside on the boardwalk. If weather is inclement, they will perform inside on the Low Dive stage, as they did last night (presumably because of a fairly low temperature).

Stringbean has been performing locally for many years and has written an impressive catalog of songs, including recent singles “Fiery Words” and “I Can’t Wait for the Summer” (both 2025). They can be found on the streaming services and YouTube but are best experienced brought to life in a live setting. (Stringbean is not to be confused with the late country singer David Akeman, as Apple Music does.) Stringbean and the Boardwalk Social Club can be seen in various incarnations year-round, including at Asbury Park’s R Bar and Palmetto, Low Dive’s sister venue (and restaurant) next door. But they are best experienced outdoors at Low Dive on a crisp, warm Monday evening, perhaps after an early boardwalk dinner.

The tri-county area of Monmouth, Middlesex, and Ocean is known for its globetrotting superstars. Stringbean and the Boardwalk Social Club are a reminder that the legendary scene can be experienced every week and that residents and visitors alike should experience these and other locals. The rest of the culture may decline, but these inestimable staples of the local culture remain robust.