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St Valentine's Day Issues Philip V. Brennan Let's get this out of the way right now: I am not the father of the late Anna Nicole Smith's baby. Given her preferences in husbands, at the age of 80, I would have been too young to meet her age standards. That should eliminate one aspirant to the title, leaving only the remaining male adult population of the United States, the Bahamas, and that segment of the Teutonic nobility married to Zsa Zsa Gabor. For the past week or so, TV has been awash in commercials peddling all sorts of goodies men are urged do give their beloveds on St. Valentine's Day (note that lately he has been deprived of the title "St." he's just plain old Valentine nowadays). Not content with making Christmas and Easter purely commercial occasions requiring gift giving (that also means gift buying), America's ever-alert merchant class has decreed that the man who fails to give his loved one a gift on St. Valentine's Day is an unfeeling slob. Unsatisfied with merely vending greeting cards to mark the occasion, the gods of commerce have of late decreed that gifts to mark the holiday are now de regueur. Over the past week or so, viewers have been besieged with commercials urging men to give their ladies dolls — in this case a doll called the Vermont Teddy Bear. Women are shown squealing with delight over one of these playthings — their companions are green with envy, lamenting that their oafish boy friends had not shown the sensitivity to send them a teddy bear. The cads! Look, if your chosen one is so childishly shallow to go into ecstasy over a doll, get rid of her pronto, unless you're looking for a child bride in need of years of serious upbringing. If I had given my late wife one of these things, she'd have called in our local shrink to diagnose the mental disorder that led me to think that she, a grown woman and the mother of seven, wanted a doll as a symbol of my undying affection. That matter is an issue — something contentious to be argued about. Some may think it's a dandy idea to send dolls to allegedly grown up women, some may not — it's an issue to be decided. To some, like me, the idea of grown-up men giving grown-up women dolls is an indication of a societal problem — something to be solved. Note: you don't solve issues, you argue about them. You solve problems. Every morning when I listen to one of our local South Florida TV news broadcasts, I am informed by the weather lady that there are, or are not, any issues with the weather. She is trying to convey the information that there are, or are not problems with the local weather but what she is saying unknowingly is that there's nothing about the weather to argue about today. The traffic reporter then chimes in to tell us that there are no issues out there on I-95 — giving me the impression that there's nothing to argue about out there on the freeway today, just a little road rage here and there, and that's not an issue; it's a problem. Maybe I'm just being my curmudgeonly self, but this alarms me because it's a new symbol of the destruction of the English language now underway. It's a real problem and it has spread to network TV. It's an issue we need to fight over.
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As I write this in the background I'm listening to Broadway show tunes on a local cable channel that plays the music 24 hours a day. Almost all of the music dates back to a couple of decades when Broadway musicals were moving sagas in which the characters displayed genuine and lasting romantic emotions toward each other. Those lyrics spoke of undying love — not of some brief encounter — the love 'em and leave 'em kind of affairs celebrated in today's lyrics. They expressed the wonderment the characters felt over having found each other, of the respect verging on awe men felt for the women they loved ,and the incredible gratitude they felt over discovering that the girl they loved, loved them. They worshipped the ground their beloved walked on, and were not afraid of saying so. It did not in their minds diminish their manhood one iota. There was genuine understanding of what a romance entailed. The song "We have nothing to remember so far" spoke of the vital part memory plays in a romance, taking precedence over other rememberings — sweet musings one could revel in all of one's days. The sheer admiration a man feels for the women he loves was beautifully expressed the classic Kern/Hammerstein song "All the Things You Are": "You are the promised kiss of springtime that makes the lonely winter seem long. You are the breathless hush of evening that trembles on the brink of a lovely song." Who writes those kind of lyrics today? What lover in today's cynical atmosphere would dare express that kind awe?
The haunting lyrics of "If I loved you," from Rogers and Hammerstein's musical "Carousel," described the tentative exploring inherent in falling in love: "If I loved you, words wouldn't come in an easy way; Round in circles I'd go!; Longin' to tell you; But afraid and shy; I'd let my golden chances pass me by!; Soon you'd leave me; Off you would go in the mist of day; Never, never to know how I loved you; If I loved you." That was our song, and hearing it today takes me back to the very beginning of a romance that lasted nigh unto 50 years. In my version of the "If I loved you," saga I wrote from my Marine Corps barracks P.S. "In case you don't know it, I love you." I mailed that letter with hands shaking and when she replied by mail I ran through the barracks shouting "She loves me." It still fills me with wonderment. I doubt very much that what passes nowadays for love songs could awaken that kind of memory decades from now. And that's a pity. And an issue. And a problem. Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor and publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association For Intelligence Officers. He can be reached at pvb@pvbr.com.
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