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John Houseman in his Paper Chase role.

My daughter, who is proving to be the teacher my friends once told me I could be, has a super power. It’s networking. She put it to good use last week as Denfeld’s theater adviser asking me me to paint a sign for their sold-out musical Legally Blonde. If you missed it, that’s your loss. It knocked my socks off. 

I told my grandson, who got a leading role without his mother’s help, “Hell, I’d marry you and I wasn’t on the witness stand.” 

That’s an inside joke for anyone who saw the production.

I was just one of dozens of carpenters, song and dance teachers and techies who pulled off a big production that would have done a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland movie proud. “Hey kids, let’s put on a show and take it to Broadway!” 

Those movies were a 1930s antidote to the Depression and, boy howdy, Denfeld’s theater kids’ pizzaz lit up the grim new era we seem to be entering. 

Reagan Kern got top billing as the blonde. Surrounded by a big cast that multiplied her infectious standards, Denfeld put on a breathtaking performance. 

My task was small. I just painted a Harvard Law sign at the Lincoln Middle School auditorium while volunteers built a stunning set. As I puttered, Garlands and Rooneys practiced their dance moves on a stage full of construction debris; between turns at painting the set Barbie pink.

I was especially delighted to paint the sign because of Harvard’s courageous refusal to kowtow to Donald John’s assault on free speech and democracy. Our president has a chip on his shoulder the size of the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. 

The musical was new to me but I saw the 2001 movie. Here’s a 30-word summary: Not-so-dumb blonde follows her love to Harvard, giving up fashion merchandising to slam dunk the LSAT to become an improbable and ruthlessly tormented outsider in Harvard’s world of would-be sharks. 

I’ll admit to becoming a little jaded by Ivy League elitism myself, but there is more to our first university than rich kid legacies and insider status. There’s also a lot of history. 

After the show I thought back to another movie I saw in my college days that emphasized the treasure Harvard Law is. 

1973’s Paper Chase, starring Timothy Bottoms, is the story of a University of Minnesota grad who makes it to Harvard Law. He’s pitted against the best and brightest, especially in the Contract Law class taught by a brilliant take-no-prisoners attorney rather, like the prof in Legally Blonde. There’s a love story but it’s used mostly as an excuse to give the eager Minnesotan a peek at the walnut-paneled home office of his teacher. He marvels at mementos and photos of the prof chilling with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Supreme Court justices and other luminaries from a historic career. That’s the world our Minnesota boy aspires to.

Coincidentally, the prof was played by John Houseman, who worked as a producer of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater productions and his 1941 feature film debut Citizen Kane. 

The power-hungry man Kane was modeled on was newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst., who ordered his newspapers to neither advertise nor mention Citizen Kane. 

It wasn’t easy to shut Orson Wells up. Three years before Citizen Kane, Mercury Radio Theater company put on H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and famously convinced thousands of Americans that Elon Musk’s Martians were attacking Earth. 

John Houseman went on to a be an acclaimed Broadway and Hollywood producer. Forty years later was his first acting performance as Prof. Charles Kingford in The Paper Chase, winning himself a best supporting actor Oscar.

The fake Republicans who grovel at Trump’s feet love to say that Democrats “aren’t like they used to be.” They mean they aren’t New Dealers looking out for the little guy. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal gave little guys Social Security, union rights and created a safety net that Trump is trying to cut a hole through. Who do the Republicans think they’re kidding? The GOP AIN’T like it used to be. After failing to stop the New Deal, they got used to representative government being a guard rail for voters down on their luck. 

Now Elon Musk is gutting Social Security and the IRS while his DOGE team sends American’s most private data to cheap data centers in India where Russian hackers are stealing it to hack into Social Security.  

If I called the first Republican, who fell on his face running against FDR, to the stand you’d get an earful. 

First, a disclaimer. Kansas Governor Alf Landen appointed my grandfather George S. Robb to the vacated-by-death office of State Auditor. Like my grandfather, Alf had been a great supporter of FDR’s equally progressive uncle, Teddy Roosevelt. Fox News pundits like Glenn Beck love to dis Teddy who, as a progressive Republican, favored civil rights, corporate regulation, National Parks, social justice and campaign finance laws. 

Good Republican soldier that he was, Landen challenged Teddy’s popular nephew Franklin in the depths of the Depression when the Republican’s brand was mud. He knew he’d be clobbered and he was. It was the most brutal loss ever up to that time. He took it on the chin and remained the loyal opposition.

Not long ago I read that as he approached 100 someone asked him what he thought of the man who, like Lincoln, pioneered an activist federal government during the depths of a worldwide depression worsened by trade-killing tariffs that turned many nations to authoritarian government. Alf said something to the effect of: Thank God for Franklin Roosevelt. 

That’s my kind of Republican and that’s my case for the defense.

The curse of Trump means never running out of things to complain about. You’ll find mine at lincolndemocrat.com.