“Richards and Her Hair Have Their Cultural Moment - New York Times” plus 1 more

Richards and Her Hair Have Their Cultural Moment - New York Times

Posted: 18 Dec 2010 06:46 PM PST

Bob Daemmrich/The Texas Tribune

Ann Richards, celebrating her victory in 1990 at left, is the subject of a play as well as a book and documentary film.

Among the many photos of Ann Richards on the wall of Holland Taylor's dressing room was one in which the former Texas governor's dark wardrobe blended into the photo's dark backdrop, leaving the focus solely on Ms. Richards's face and her chalk-white swirl of hair.

It was perhaps a frame of reference for the wig an assistant was positioning on Ms. Taylor's head last weekend at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre in San Antonio. Ms. Taylor, 67, had just finished penciling on eyebrows for the second night of a 10-show run of the witty and inspirational one-woman play she wrote and performs, "Ann: An Affectionate Portrait of Ann Richards."

"It's a pain," Ms. Taylor, the Emmy Award-winning co-star of television's "Two and a Half Men," as well as a veteran of stage and screen, said of the wig.

"There's just not enough spray net in the world to make someone's hair do that," Cecile Richards, one of Ms. Richards's daughters, had said days earlier.

Ms. Taylor's play is one of three interpretations of Ms. Richards's life that are cropping up 20 years after the progressive, feminist Democrat whupped the good ol' boys of both parties and became the second female, after Miriam "Ma" Ferguson in 1925, to seize the state's highest office.

These projects — a biography and movie are the others — aren't so much a reaction to the George W. Bush and Rick Perry years of Republicanism that followed, their creators said, as an attempt to articulate the legacy of Ms. Richards, a complex public figure who died of esophageal cancer in 2006 at the age of 73.

"She was an imperfect human being," Cecile Richards said. "She was an alcoholic, she was divorced — and yet she just kept going. She would never want to be portrayed as some Joan of Arc."

Ms. Richards was also an underdog who championed fellow underdogs in her opposition to the death penalty, advocacy of the arts, and promotion of women, minorities and gay people. A successful four-year-old charter school is named for the governor, a teacher by training: the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, which serves a largely at-risk student population. And she was a real pistol who drawled truth to power, stripping politics of pretense.

Expounding on this is an as-yet-untitled biography by Jan Reid, whose remembrance of Ms. Richards in the November 2006 issue of Texas Monthly was a springboard for the book, to be published next year by the University of Texas Press.

Given Mr. Reid's long history with Ms. Richards — he met her at a "gonzo bridge party" in 1980, and Dorothy Browne, Mr. Reid's wife, worked for Ms. Richards — he was surprised to discover something new about her: correspondence between Ms. Richards and Edwin "Bud" Shrake — a writer and close friend — on "Far Side" cartoons and facsimiles. They started in 1988, four years after Ms. Richards and David Richards divorced, around the time of her speech at the Democratic National Convention, where she famously cracked that George H.W. Bush was born with a silver foot in his mouth.

"It was really fascinating to see this really intimate set of letters — just taking a ride," Mr. Reid said.

"Backwards and in High Heels," meanwhile, is a forthcoming documentary that will emphasize the role humor played in Ms. Richards's career.

"Ann's amazing charisma and character are great mechanisms for a filmmaker to examine some of the more abstract themes about women in political life," said Adam J. Fowler, the film's director.

So why all the interest in a governor who did not even win a second term?

"I can't tell you the number of women I run into who met Mom in an airport, or saw her shopping for pantyhose, and feel like they had some deep connection with her," Cecile Richards said.

Ms. Taylor's lone interaction with Ms. Richards — over lunch with their mutual friend, Liz Smith, the gossip columnist — was one such chance encounter. Four years later, the result is Ms. Taylor's play, which was workshopped in Galveston this summer and will head to Austin and Dallas next year.

"I think that people are finally able to say, 'Well, we had Ann and she was great, and we learned a lot from her, and we can still continue to learn from her,' " Ms. Taylor said.

Ms. Taylor throws herself on the skillet introducing her play in Ms. Richards's backyard. And she sizzles — not only because her script is full of zingers that pander to Texans' egos, but also because Ms. Taylor's homage is critical, as shown through her depiction of Ms. Richards's tough treatment of her staff.

"I have to be smarter than I am for two hours," Ms. Taylor said.

And powering her through the bravura performance is that wig — that hair with its own legacy, that hair that is represented in the headstone in the Texas State Cemetery, in an East Austin neighborhood as eclectic as the marginalized beneficiaries of Ms. Richards's governance.

"The stone that's there, it's either her hair or the top of a Dairy Queen dipped cone," Cecile Richards said. "I don't know exactly what she was thinking."

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Political, Cultural Fights Remain - Wall Street Journal

Posted: 18 Dec 2010 04:59 PM PST

By NATHAN HODGE

Proponents of ending the military's ban on gays serving openly in uniform are cheering a Senate vote Saturday in favor of repealing the policy, known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." But the policy remains in force, and implementation promises more political fights.

For gay-rights advocates who mobilized in support of passage, the Senate vote represented a clear victory.

Joe Solmonese, the president of Human Rights Campaign, said passage of the bill marked the end of a "failed and discriminatory" policy. Gays and lesbians, he said, "will soon be able to serve with the full honor and integrity the uniform demands."

Associated Press

New Yorkers watch as news of the Senate approving the repeal of 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' is displayed outside on Times Square.

Robin McGhee, co-founder of gay-rights group GetEqual, said, "We are thrilled today that the Senate has taken one more step toward full legal equality for all Americans." Pop star Lady Gaga delivered a message on Twitter. "Can't hold back the tears+pride," she wrote. "We did it."

The American Civil Liberties Union also applauded the vote.

"For nearly two decades, gay and lesbian service members have been forced to hide who they are in order to serve their country," said Laura Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington legislative office. "That will soon end. The significance of this vote should not be underestimated and should serve as confirmation that we should not and cannot codify discrimination into our laws."

Some conservatives, however, registered strong disappointment. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the current policy "has proven to work providing good order and discipline to our nation's military" since it was introduced in 1993. "As the old adage goes, why fix something that isn't broken?" he said.

Key Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee urged that the Pentagon to carefully weigh the impact of implementation on those currently serving overseas. Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon (R., Calif.), the current ranking member of the committee, said the department should "stand firm to ensure the implementation process does not create any distractions for our troops fighting on the frontlines in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.), the top Republican on the committee's military personnel panel, said, "There is much more information to examine and many more conversations to have with military leaders in order to ensure there is no impact on military readiness, recruitment, and morale going forward."

For some observers, implementation will be the real test of the policy change. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, the senior adviser for the left-leaning think tank National Security Network, said the military could enforce the new policy without losing focus on their core mission. "Our armed forces have the discipline many times over to conform to repeal and integration without becoming distracted, and I have absolute confidence in our Secretary of Defense and our service chiefs to prepare the force for implementation," he said.

Passage of the measure may also spur broader debate about issues like gay marriage rights. Kate Kendell, the executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said debate over the military policy "ignited a national conversation not just about the ability of lesbians and gay men to be good soldiers, but about the underpinnings of all sorts of government-sanctioned discrimination," she said.

—Geoff Fowler contributed to this article

Cultural

Saturday, December 18, 2010