QUARANTINE BLOG # 410

May 14, 2021

After a Limerick and a note about gasoline shopping, the rest of today’s blog will feature a great musical, South Pacific.

👉  In Wednesday’s blog we observed National Limerick Day.  I invited submissions and got this one from Amy:

        There once was a boy named Mac

        Who had a father named Jack

        He likes Legos and Nerf guns

        Loves to play and to run

        And that you can take as a fact!

Anyone else?

👉  Today is Friday.  On Wednesday people in Augusta were lining up at the pumps, panic buying gasoline because of the attack by the Russian cyber terrorist group “Darkside” against the Colonial Pipeline.  I showed you a photograph of a gas shopper here in Augusta.  I do not know where these next two were taken, but the first is a picture of unmitigated greed, the second is a picture of total stupidity.

And this last one, a screen capture from my phone yesterday, is meant to say there was something wrong with a video a local TV news station tried to show, but the error message, not deliberately to be sure, says more than the station's web app intended.

👉  I just heard the warning bell, and the lights have flickered.  That means the play is about to start, and today we are going to go to South Pacific, a musical composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein.  The work premiered in 1949 on Broadway and was an immediate hit, running for 1,925 performances.  The plot is based on James A. Michener’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book “Tales of the South Pacific.”  Rodgers and Hammerstein believed they could write a musical based on Michener’s work and, at the same time, send a strong progressive message on racism.

The plot centers on an American nurse stationed on a South Pacific island during World War II, who falls in love with a middle-aged expatriate French plantation owner but struggles to accept his mixed-race children.  A secondary romance, between a U.S. Marine lieutenant and a young Tonkinese woman, explores his fears of the social consequences should he marry his Asian sweetheart.  The issue of racial prejudice is candidly explored throughout the musical, most controversially in the lieutenant’s song, “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.”

Sung by the character Lieutenant Cable, the song is preceded by a line saying racism is “not born in you!  It happens after you’re born.”

While the show was on a tour in the Southern United States, lawmakers in Georgia introduced a state bill outlawing entertainment containing “an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow.”  One legislator said that “a song justifying interracial marriage was implicitly a threat to the American way of life.”  Rodgers and Hammerstein defended their work strongly.  James Michener recalled, “The authors replied stubbornly that this number represented why they had wanted to do this play, and that even if it meant the failure of the production, it was going to stay in.”

This clip is not from the play, but rather is an historical archive.  Oscar Hammerstein introduces “You've Got to be Taught” during The National Conference of Christians and Jews Brotherhood Week.  The date was February 14, 1952.  What a message this song has for 2021!

“Some Enchanted Evening” has been described as “the single biggest popular hit to come out of any Rodgers and Hammerstein show.”  It is sung by the show’s male lead, Emile de Becque, a middle-aged French expatriate who has fallen in love with Ensign Nellie Forbush, an optimistic and naive young American navy nurse.  He says that when you find your “true love,” you must “fly to her side, and make her your own;” otherwise, all your life you will “dream all alone.”

“There Is Nothing Like a Dame” is sung by the sailors because they all long for women in their lives.  The song is broken up in the middle when the nurses run by, jogging down the beach, and Nurse Nellie Forbush asks for her laundry.  A great comedy moment.

“I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” is sung by Nellie Forbush.  She is fed up with Emile De Becque, and sings energetically in the shower, claiming that she will forget about him.  And then he comes on the scene.  In the original stage version, Mary Martin, who plays Nellie,  washed her hair onstage eight times a week.

👉  I Know What You Are Against

I first published this piece in The Augusta Chronicle, June 28, 1997.

Baptists Boycott Disney! Film at eleven! But you can not watch it if it is broadcast on ABC, ESPN, A&E or Lifetime, or read about it if it is published in Discover, Skin and Allergy News, or Family Fun magazine. Disney owns or controls those business and a three-page list of more besides.

After the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) resolution was passed, Disney issued a statement saying it could not understand how a group could ask the company to deny health benefits to anyone, a reference to Disney’s extending health-care benefits to the homosexual partners of its employees. Disney’s critics say the company’s position is inconsistent since Disney does not make the same offer to the live-in partners of its unmarried heterosexual employees. Disney clearly discriminates in favor of homosexual partners, they say.

While the SBC resolution recognizes that “Boycotts are a legitimate method for communicating moral convictions,” there needs to be something more.

The scene is Rogers and Hammerstein’s musical South Pacific. Captain George Brackett is trying to convince a civilian, Emile de Becque, to lead a mission to a nearby island. The island is held by Japanese forces.

When all reasonable arguments have failed Captain Brackett cries out, “We’re against the Japs!”

De Becque responds, “I know what you are against. What are you for?”

That is the problem with a “moral” boycott, no matter what religious group organizes it. What do you do to make the statement which the boycott sends – and it is a needed statement – a positive witness? What steps will the leaders of the boycott take to deliver that message?

I remember a cartoon in a church bulletin. Two boys were talking. “What do you believe?” asked Jim. “I believe what my church believes,” replied John. “Well,” said Jim, “what does your church believe?” “My church believes what I believe,” replied John. “Tell me,” asked Jim, “what do you and your church believe?” John answered, “We both believe the same thing!”

In a parody of folk songs, satirist Tom Lehrer declared, “We’re against poverty, war, and injustice!”

In sales it’s called “The Ben Franklin Close,” or “The 5 & 10 Close.” The customer is invited to list reasons why he does not like the product and reasons why he does likes the product. The salesman hopes that the positive features will outnumber the negative aspects so he can ask, “Then why not take it home today?”

If we tried “The Ben Franklin Close” in the church, which list would be longer, the positive or the negative? Or in Emile de Becque’s words, the things we’re against or the things we’re for?

Nineteen years ago I worked under a church overseer who told me, “You do not preach enough against sin.” I asked on what basis he made that statement, since he had heard only two of the almost 100 sermons I had preached in that city. He replied, “You do not preach enough against sin.”

I thought I’d try a different tack. Remembering an illustration from the ministry of Charles Spurgeon, I said, “If I had two sticks, one crooked and one straight, would it be necessary for me to point out all of the twists and turns to demonstrate the crooked stick? Or would it not be better to lay the straight stick beside of it and the differences would become immediately apparent?”

Sounded good, I thought.

Well-reasoned, I thought.

Flawlessly logical, I thought.

He replied, “You do not preach enough against sin.”

That man was representative of a great many people in the Christian Church. They can tell you everything they are against. They find it difficult to tell you anything they are for. They spend so much time telling you how bad you are that they forget to tell you how good Jesus is.

One day Jesus was traveling to the home of Jarius, a ruler of the synagogue. Along the way, a woman who had been sick for twelve years touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and was healed instantly.

Recording the story Mark says, “She had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing better, but rather grew worse.”

The woman had a fatal blood disease. It was killing her. She knew it. Every physician to whom she went confirmed that she was sick. If 100 doctors declared that she was dying, diagnosis number 101 would not heal her. Knowing how sick she was would never make her better. She needed healing, not further diagnosis.

Make no mistake. Sin must be confronted and condemned, but the message of the Gospel does not stop there. The way Jesus told it, the message has never stopped there. The full Gospel message says, “The wages of sin is death; BUT the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

I know what you are against. What are you for?

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