WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER 3,374,995 VISITS IN ONE YEAR—65,000 VISITS A WEEK BY 985,281 VISITORS

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WPCNR White Plains Law Journal. Commentary By Doris Sassower. October 17, 2005:

President Bush’s recent nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court of Harriet Miers and John Roberts reflect serious flaws in the federal judicial nominating process, commencing with the so-called “vetting” of the nomination before it is made public by the White House.

 

Ms. Miers and for that matter now Chief Justice  Roberts, however qualified, and apart from any ideological considerations, could not be deemed unquestionably entitled to the lifetime jobs to which they were nominated, let alone the best qualified, as CJA believes our taxpaying public is entitled to. Our citizenry should not have to finance “on-the-job” training of a judicial nominee, simply because she or he is a friend of the President and closely allied to his right-wing conservative views.

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With all due respect, the People, have a right to expect that the Chief Justice of our nation’s highest court would be chosen from the ranks of the U.S. Supreme Court pool itself, if not from the pool of Circuit Court Chief Judges throughout the country, with seniority gained from long years of experience deciding federal cases involving constitutional questions.

 

It surely must be demoralizing to all those judges that someone without such expertise should be chosen for so pre-eminent and life-determining a position. Even more so in the case of Miers, who has no judicial track record at all, no constitutional law specialty, and whose obvious prime qualification is her longtime friendship with Southern Methodist University classmate Laura Bush, which gained her the position of  counsel to the President, a job encompassing the so-called “vetting” of all White House judicial nominees, her own included. 

 

 Unfortunately for our citizenry, the “vetting process” does not work, mainly because the President has arrogated too much power to himself in making nominations for the many vacancies that occur on the federal district and appellate courts, as well as the District of Columbia courts. He has no right to abuse that power by politically-motivated choices which by any objective standard are contrary to the best interests of our taxpaying citizenry. Neither do the Senate Committees involved in confirmation of presidential judicial nominees have the right to just “rubber-stamp” those nominations, based on superficial information, as they are all too prone to do.

 

A glaring example of the abject failure of the “vetting” process to protect the public from unfit judicial nominees is seen in the case of President Bush’s appointment of Brian Fernandez Holeman, then 46 years of age, to the DC Superior Court on April 22, 2003, the very same day  CJA Coordinator, Elena Ruth Sassower, (a resident of White Plains) was handcuffed, arrested and locked up in the DC Jail for exercising 1^st Amendment rights by respectfully requesting to present “citizen opposition” at a US Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearing considering the President’s nomination of Richard C. Wesley to the 2^nd Circuit US Court of Appeals.

  

The lawyer whose duty it was to “vett” the Holeman nomination was none other than Harriet Miers’ predecessor White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez, recently rewarded by the President with  appointment as our U.S. Attorney General. CJA checked into Judge Holeman’s background after his barbaric on-the-job performance as the judge presiding over the case of USA v. Elena Ruth Sassower, in which he sentenced CJA’s patriotic and valiant Coordinator to a jail term of six months on a transparently trumped-up criminal charge of “Disruption of Congress. Background documentation is available from our website at http://www.judgewatch.org/DisruptionofCongresscase.htm

 

After then White House counsel Gonzalez had endorsed the “vetting” of Holeman’s nomination, it was unanimously confirmed at a pro forma Senate Committee Hearing, where he was introduced as “well-qualified,” by a respected DC Congresswoman – notwithstanding Holeman not only had no judicial experience, had never clerked for a judge and had no law school distinctions, but also no criminal litigation experience as a practitioner.

 

More than that, our research showed that Holden had lied about his credentials in ways any reasonably competent investigator could have uncovered.  This included the fact that Holeman was not licensed to practice law in California, was not an Associate at the prominent law firm there, as he claimed, which did not list him as an Associate in that firm’s professional directory listing. After two years at the firm, Holeman went to work for the next four years in a non-legal position as claims man for the firm’s insurance clients, supportive of the belief that he did not pass the California bar.  The data Holeman himself provided in advance of his nomination showed also that he had nine (9) different legal employers in 17 years after law school graduation, winding up as a sole practitioner at the time of his appointment.

 

 Is it any wonder that one so beholden to the President for his clearly unmerited judgeship would be biased and abusive toward anyone whose name is synonymous with public interest advocacy dedicated to ending such flagrant perversion of the judicial nominating process?   

 

The numerous well-documented complaints by CJA and others against Judge Holeman, filed with the DC Commission on Judicial Tenure, for his flagrant misconduct as a judge and as a judicial nominee, that tax-funded public agency designed to police the conduct of District of Columbia judges and judicial nominees, resulted in their typical  “hands-off” dismissal of the complaints as “beyond the statutory authority of the Commission. So much for the “vetting” process as a mode of judicial selection and for judicial misconduct commissions which, rather than redressing legitimate citizen complaints of judicial abuse, are complicitous in the misconduct complained of.

 

 Doris L. Sassower, Director

 Member U.S. Supreme Court Bar

 

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WPCNR CAMPAIGN 2005. By John F. Bailey. October 17, 2005: John Carlson, candidate for Common Council accused the City of White Plains of  managing its budget in an “Enron like atmosphere” based on the city’s refusal to provide him with any form of final fiscal 2004-05 budget numbers. (To date, the city has said publicly they made their budget with a surplus of $1.5 million, thanks to increased mortgage taxes, but the city has not released even a preliminary spread sheet to the public or the media showing the final 2004-2005 results, even though asked by media. The city has also not published first quarter 2005-2006 results.)

 

JOHN CARLSON Holding News Conference at City Hall today. Photo by WPCNR News

 

Carlson said the Budget Department refused to give him 04-05 preliminary final budget numbers, quoting a Budget Department spokesperson as saying “We don’t do that.”

 

A call to the Mayor’s office asking when preliminary financials would be released, and if they would be released before Election Day (November 8) has not been returned.

 

Carlson, describing himself as a corporate banker professionally,  said this kind of “Enron-like atmosphere,” not reporting city financials in a timely, public manner did not make him feel comfortable. He criticized the city for not making three year expense budget and revenue projections. He said it was the Common Council’s job to ask for those numbers and scrutinize them.

 

In a wide ranging critique of city financials, Carlson accused the city of smoke and mirrors accounting, citing the city take over of the parking authority, and fund balance drawdowns, and increased parking fees and fines and ticket blitz as budget fixes, with no long term financial budget projections. He accused the present Common Council of being “bobbleheads” for not demanding and scrutinizing city budget trends, and allegedly accepting whatever city hall wanted to do.

 

Criticising the ballooning certiorari settlements the city has made, Carlson said the city Mayor’s Office should be more proactive in challenging the certiorari suits and make it clear to businesses filing for certioraris that these suits were not welcome. He did not say how he would do that. He did say that if he were on the Common Council he would with his other councilman members go toAlbany to lobby for legislation to make the taxation of commercial and residential properties equal.

 

Carlson questioned the city’s claims in a campaign brochure circulated by Mayor Joseph Delfine that crime was down 38%, citing Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics released this morning that violent crime in White Plains was up in 2004 over both 2003 and 2002. WPCNR is attempting to acquire those statistics released by the FBI to discuss them with the Department of Public Safety for clarification.

 

Carlson when asked by WPCNR,  said he had not called Commissioner of Public Safety Dr. Frank Straub to discuss the reasoning behind the Police Department statistics and the reasons why, (in Carlson’s opinion), the FBI says violent crime was up, and White Plains says it was down. Carlson said that by the city’s own information arrests were up which he said did not indicate to him that crime was down. Carlson said he wanted to know what was the truth.

 

 

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WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS. By John F. Bailey. October 16, 2005: After waiting a month, the Board of Education approved tax certiorari refunds totaling $1,146,969 last Tuesday evening in Executive Session, according to Terrance Schruers, Assistant Superintendent for Business. The board approved the refunds, $712,118 for Brook Hills Condominiums 1,2,3; $198,498 for Heritage Towers; and $236,353 for Crystal Towers.

 

The refunds brought the total amount of tax refunds the School District has had to pay back to businesses and condominium/coops (including Westchester One,  Bloomingdale’s and Nordstroms)  by the School District this year to $8,473,059 since January, 2005.

The latest round of certriorari settlements were approved by the Common Council of the City of White Plains in August. The School District tabled the approval of the settlements last month, pending discussion with counsel. However,  in Executive Session last Tuesday night approved settlements in those amounts

 

Schreuers said the refunds covered the last five years for Brook Hills, the percentage of taxes refunded ranging from 0 to 30% of taxes paid from 2000 to 2005;  refunds of taxes from 1998 to 2005 for Crystal Towers showed refunds of 6% to 34%; and 3% to 18% for Heritage Hills from 1997 to 2005. Schreurs reported the reductions in assessments will cost the district $226,000 in tax collections a year.

 

Schruers said the refunds were caused due to the lower rate at which condominiums are taxed as opposed to the residential tax rate. He added that there a number of condominium certioraris in litigation with the city that he expected would have a significant impact on the district budget, by forcing the school to bond more monies to pay for the larger certiorari amounts in refunds from previous years, plus loss of revenue in future years. Schruers said he expected more condominium settlements and applications for certioraris in 2006. The School District is allowed to bond without citizen approval for amounts up to $10 Million.

 

Based on previous payment policies established by the board earlier this year, the current certioraris will be paid out of money set aside and money raised from a  bond offering approved with the 2005-2006 School Budget.

 

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WPCNR On The Aisle. Review By John F. Bailey. October 15, 2005, UPDATED 11:41 P.M. With Historical Pictures, and Editor’s Note at close.  E.D.T.: The long awaited Saving Aimee, the show billed as the kind of show the WPPAC wants to bring to our town opened last night at the White Plains Performing Arts Center.

 

The musical is based on the controversial life of the first woman evangelist, Aimee Semple McPherson showcased to a celebrity studded audience.  Mayor Joseph Delfino was there. Councilman Larry Delgado was there. The Giffords, Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were there. So was  the 95 year old daughter of Ms. McPherson, for whom the “virtual curtain” was held thirty minutes. Writer and Lyricist Kathie Lee Gifford consulted extensively on the creation of the musical  with Ms. McPherson’s daughter. 

 

Maybe that is the problem. Authenticity does not for an Evita make.

 

 

Rather than celebrating Aimee Semple McPherson, Saving Aimee makes her into an unbalanced, self-centered, immature, unsympathetic martinet  of  a woman that in this reviewer’s opinion, fails to demonstrate Ms. McPherson’s hold on the multitudes she swayed in the 20s and 30s to the WPPAC audience. 

 

The brassy Broadway pro, Carolee Carmello as Ms. McPherson, , sings 15 of the 25 numbers in this show, but delivers tenacity without tenderness, intensity without intimacy, emotion that does not elevate,  and domination that demands only reluctant devotion.

 

Aimee Semple McPherson in Action, 1930s. Photo, The Funeral Guy Website

 

 

Her Aimee Semple McPherson does not appear to be a happy Aimee Semple McPherson, which is true-to-life, but does not endear her to the audience. Rather than making Ms. McPherson a character to be admired, the way Ms. McPherson is directed  by Eric Schaeffer, who directed Under the Bridge, Ms. Gifford’s other musical which enjoyed a short off-Broadway run, creates Semple McPherson as a character to be pitied, badly in need of therapy, and not to be emulated.

 

I want a heroine I want to look up to, and go to bed with,  not a character displaying neuroses.  Director Schaeffer apparently does not understand the difference between charisma and attitude. Carmello, who is very talented, delivers attitude and full-throated schmaltz, but I am not going to throw away my crutches for her. (Ms. Semple McPherson was credited and documented with thousands of “healings.”)

 

Ms. Carmello, playing all ages of Aimee, is a formidable stage presence. A little too formidable. She overrides her tentative vocal co-stars, with the exception of the sensual, very real and confident Aisha de Hass as  Emma Jo – the Kansas City Madam who holds her own against Carmello,  takes back the stage, and delivers terrific Tony quality supporting actress style. She has the show’s cutest, only toe-tapping number, A Girl’s Gotta Do What She’s Gotta Do which Ms. De Hass performs with elegant sassy gusto when she delivers  her “technique so to speak” in this Chicago style number.  

 

Another actor who comes through is James Moye as Brother Bob, the hypocritical rival evangelist with villainous delight, reminiscent of a pious Rush Limbaugh, slimy and chillingly sanctimonious. His Demon in a Dress is an intriguing tour de force of meanness in song. He is one of the few standout ensemble characters, “the fall guy”  as Gilbert and Sullivan would call him.  

 

The Angelus Temple, 1930s. A National Landmark, built by Aimee Semple McPherson. Photo, National Parks Register.

 

 

Aimee’s mother, played by Florence Lacey is appropriately dislikable, and her singing the title song, Saving Aimee is her highlight moment in the show, but purely from a writer’s viewpoint, a secondary character should not sing the title song. Mistake there.

 

Don Blovingloh as Ms. McPherson’s father plays out a touching scene of father saying good bye to daughter as she goes with the first love of her life, and then the play runs out of emotional moments, rushing to China, New York, Kansas City, California in a whirlwind, in a sense of “trying to get it all in” punctuated by the songs that portray moments in her life and frequent reprisals of  Why Can’t You Just Be a Woman? The strongest songs in the show are the rousing Stand Up!  which gets the production going; Follow Me and Why can’t She Just Be a Woman?  

 

Be a Woman  is reprised by each of Aimee’s husbands and delivers a strange mixed message. The production pretends to admire Aimee’s independence but when one of the kicker songs indicates that it is not a woman’s place to be independent, the audience does not know what to celebrate and is conflicted. Mixed messages are not good in a musical.

 

Aimee Semple McPherson’s Pulpit at The Angelus Temple. Photo, yahoo.com.

 

The lyrics by Ms. Gifford  are clever and well-turned, but poorly orchestrated with melodies that do not make you hit the street humming. Mr. Pomeranz and Mr. Friedman’s music is workmanlike, not virtuoso uplifting classic full-blown Broadway. A more diversified ensemble would have helped to let us know if the music is better than it sounded.

 

This a musical about an evangelist.

 

Carmello’s dominating  contralto and brassy pipes do not deliver the emotional charisma to win the audience over on Aimee’s side. If Ms. McPherson really was like Ms. Carmello, she would never have won such a following of gypsys and the Ku Klux Klan delivering gold at her feet (as reported in program notes), and if the casting is true  (and subsequent research by WPCNR shows it is not), to what Ms. McPherson was, then there has to be more grace, more emotion, more “Godliness” in Ms. Carmello’s delivery and performance.  

 

Interior of Angelus Temple, showing the great dome. Photo, LNV Website.

 

I have preached to crowds and been very effective in working the emotions of persons with the Holy Spirit. That ability to reach out  is missing here in Carmello’s portrayal. And it is a big miss. This show is about revivals! You have to be able to get an audience going. The revival scenes do not do this except at the beginning of Act II where the God Will Provide number gets the audience in the mood somewhat. The revival music lacks soul.

 

 I mean if you love doing God’s will, you should not be angry about it as Ms. Carmello is at the close of Act I.  Carmelo simply fails to inspire the audience to emotion. Admittedly, her actions and atittude on the stage are reflective of her medical problems, which are not explained in the musical’s script.

 

 

 

The human tragedies in this musical did not move me, and there are plenty of themes that should stir the emotions.  They evoke sorrow and understanding but no feeling because Aimee’s actions are often unexplainable and disdainfully cast aside by husbands and mother as being selfish, when actually she, I think, is searching for God. There are loose ends. You  never understand who takes care of her children for example when she runs away. (But, inexplicable circumstances are permissible in musicals.)

 

Scenes worth noting:

 

Aimee rebelling against a controlling mother, (where you start to like her and feel some sympathy, which is squandered by the rapid sequence of events in the rest of the show).  There is Aimee experiencing first love, whom she overwhelms in the  He Will Be My Home duet with Steve Wilson, the  handsome Irish tenor playing Robert Semple then her loss of him, then marrying again; being inspired by the Voice of God in her new baby’s cry, a ghostly well staged scene; Aimee’s time in a sanitarium after a third husband jilts her, where she sings The Silent, Sorrowful Shadows,  another production and acting highlight. 

 

 McPherson and her second husband, played by Jim Price and Carmello show no electricity. Mike McGowan who plays David, Aimee’s hunk in her religious reenactments lends some electricity as he and Aimee team for her third romance, and his reprise of the strong song, “Why Can’t She Be More Like a Woman” holds his own the best of the three male co-stars who sing it.

 

After a promising first two songs in the first act, which include the opening Stand Up,the second act, is solid. The stagings of Aimee’s theatrical act-outs of Biblical stories in her AngelusTemple in Los Angeles are amusing, evoking, I imagine her sermon style, and with the gift of a millions of dollars of budget to this production,  offer opportunities for the tourist-pleasing special effects staging that brings out the commercial audience on the Great White Way.

 

  There is the Moses bit starring Aimee’s young son as Moses, (the precocious Matthew Gumley in long sleeved robes and  with a staff) challenging Pharoah, and the half naked Mr. McGowan in loin cloth cavorting for Aimee’s appreciation as Samson with a sensuous Delilah.

 

 The court room trial in Act Two is the highlight of the show which features Matt Loney  as the Prosecutor Asa Keyes in a strong bit of writing here. As the prosecutor,  Loney  has the Hamilton Berger attitude and florid flamboyance to take your eye off Aimee Semple McPherson for the first time in the show.  

 

Here is where the show lets itself down, after this strong court scene where the audience is up and following the rapidfire dialogue and elaborate staging, (and the big song Payin the Price),  Aimee’s denouement follows and simply is not powerful enough in my opinion to send the audience home uplifted, only somewhat inspired.

 

  

The new musical with book and lyrics by Kathie Lee Gifford is trying out for Broadway in White Plains. According to the Program Notes this is the 88^th rewrite. It needs one more.  It has the Broadway length, it has some money and a lot of time sunk into this production, with the best thing about it at WPPAC being the light design by Chris Lee that painted emotions with hues, and transformed the  “no tricks” set into a train station, a cabin, a temple, a Kansas City brothel, and a courtroom (not necessarily in that order).

 

 It cut corners on the set and the music, relying basically on keyboards. You need more than keyboards on Broadway. The imposing four column set of four “to-the-ceiling” courtly columns, cast in a ghostly royal blue hue is stationary and achieves all its effects with Mr. Lee’s lighting.

 

Investors who can throw in bankroll to pay for a mobile set and razzle dazzle can schmaltz up the tentative book and give the special effects infrastructure to support a score that you are not exactly humming when you leave the theatre.

 

There were production mistakes: There was no overture. You gotta have an overture. (Perhaps because of the lateness of the “virtual curtain.”)

 

An actor about to be interrogated by a prosecutor appeared to miss a key cue in the first third of the second act when a second actor did not appear for their part in a running narrative bit that helped move the story along.

 

Three times the audio switcher did not get Ms. Carmelo’s cordless microphone turned on.

 

 You cannot have that in a musical. You have to walk out being uplifted in a musical. This is basic, friends. In Evita, the heroine died but everybody loved that show. In Jesus Christ Superstar, which this musical loosely resembles,  you went out with the sense of Jesus’ resurrection. The querying reporters bit, used to great effect in Jesus Christ Superstar, is used extensively through the musical to play up the tabloid sensationalism of the twenties and thirties.

 

There is no explanation as to the emotional pressures which lead Aimee to take the final action she does. She just does it. Or did I miss something? Is she tired? Is she lonely? Why is she depressed? Or is she inspired to go to her God? The final scene does not stand up to the strong emotional lift the audience gets from the court room scene and shatters the triumph in that court room scene that brought the first genuine good feelings of the evening. Musicals work the emotions, with the songs, the characters, the storyline. This had the elements but is missing the heart.

 

However, if Mr. and Mrs. White Plains want to see how Broadway is made and see a musical that is “Almost Broadway but may not stay” without the gimmicks, (though the lighting on this show is truly spectacular – the only spectacular part of the physical production) you will be quite happy.  Saving Aimee is an educational experience.

 

Artistic Director Tony Stimac told me before the show, “we’ve asked reviewers not to review the show because it’s a work in process.”

 

Well, where in the process are we, you might ask? If White Plains Performing Arts Center is indeed to be an incubator for shows where White Plains pays the production freight for possible Broadway vehicles, the shows have to be more ready and concious of what they have than this. If they do not want New York area reviews, if they’re afraid of them, maybe they should not do shows here.  They should try out in Philadelphia.

Saving Aimee plays through October 23, at the White Plains Performing Arts Center, tickets and show times are available by calling 888-977-2250.

Editor’s Note: Curious after writing this review, I did a web search and after listening to actual recordings of Ms. McPherson at the National Public Radio website, http://www.npr.org/programs/lnfsound/stories/991126.stories.html, WPCNR is very convinced that McPherson was actually far different from Ms. Carmello’s interpretation. Carmello could give you that sweetness, she has the talent, but that is not the way she plays it.

 

The real Aimee Semple McPherson’s voice was sweet, gentle, innocent and not the abrasive sharp demanding delivery that Ms. Carmello creates in the role. I heard no dogma, no bombast, just comfort in actual recordings of her. Her music is sweeter, too. Instead of giving audiences the true sound of Aimee Semple McPherson music, Ms. Gifford and her composers have given us pop tunes with none of the whole toe-tappin “country sweet sound” that can be heard on the actual recordings of her broadcasts and her revivals. The audience at White Plains Performing Arts Center has no idea what Aimee and her music really sounded like.

 

Thousands Gathering for Sister McPherson’s Funeral, 1944, Los Angeles at her temple. Photo, The Funeral Guy Website.

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WPCNR School Days. By John F. Bailey. October 13, 2005: At the Board of Education meeting at the high school Tuesday evening, the Board  introduced a draft of a new district-wide policy stating what content is permissible in holiday displays in classrooms and school buildings and grounds. 

 

Superintendent of Schools Timothy Connors told WPCNR that the policy was drafted as a result of complaints lodged by fifteen district parents about the contents of school displays that contained religious symbols. There are currently over 7,000 students attending school in the White Plains City Schools.

 

 

 Board of Education President Donna McLaughlin said the board considered first whether they should even attempt to come up with a policy, and when they did, they thought long and hard and have come up with the policy being introduced to the district for district-wide comment.  McLaughlin said the policy deliberately tries not to be specific as to what symbols are religious and are not, because, she said, inevitably, the policy would forget something.

 

Connors said that before the policy would be officially put in place, that the district welcomes comment from parents and the community and will review any comments or criticisms.

 

The policy sets conditions of display, requires statements making clear the historical significance of religious symbols and disclaimers that the district does not endorse any particular symbol.

 

The promulgation of the holiday policy sparked three comments from persons from the community expressing their concerns about promotion of religion, two expressing critiques of the policy, and a third saying there should be no policy at all because it would only serve to promote discord. This was the most public comments delivered in person at a Board of Education since the issue of the School District not rehiring their Athletic Director, Mario Scarano, one year ago.

 

Peter Bassano, Board of Education member noted that the holiday display policy would apply all year round and not just to the yearend holiday season.

 

The text of the policy under consideration reads:

 

Holiday Displays

 

The Board of Education of the White Plains City School District is proud of the diversity of White Plains and believes that the District has the responsibility as an educational institution to foster mutual understanding and respect in our students for the many beliefs and customs stemming from the varied religious, racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds of the members of our community.

 

With this goal in mind, the Board of Education will allow the District to acknowledge the cultural and historical aspects of religious holidays and to temporarily display secular and religious symbols in the school buildings to celebrate the diversity of the holiday season.

 

All holiday displays containing religious symbols must be non-proselytizing in nature and shall conform to the following requirements:

 

• The display of religious symbols (in a display) must be part of a larger configuration in an education setting which includes secular symbols and is representative of the diversity of the holiday season;
  
• The display of religious symbols must contain written statements supplied by the District explaining the symbol and its significance to cultural and historical aspects of the religious holidays presented in an unbiased and objective manner;
  
• The display of religious symbols must be temporary and limited to the duration of the holiday season; and
  
• The display of religious symbols must be accompanied by a written disclaimer of public sponsorship indicating that,

“This temporary display of secular and religious symbols is intended by the District to celebrate the diversity of the holiday season and should not be construed as an endorsement of any religion.”