Here is your open thread for March 7, 2020.
Townes Van Zandt was born 76 years ago today:
Today would have been Tammy Faye Messner’s 78th birthday. She’s most famous, or infamous, as the former long-time cohost of The PTL Club with her then-husband Jim Bakker. Bakker has, again and again, proved that he was exactly what he appeared to be. Tammy Faye wasn’t. If you haven’t seen it, check out the 2000 documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye. (That’s also the name of an upcoming biopic, starring Jessica Chastain, with Andrew Garfield as Jim and Vince D’Onofrio as Jerry Falwell Sr.)
The late great Arthur Lee would’ve turned 75 today.
Matthew Fisher — who played organ on Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale” and toured with Bowie as a Spider From Mars — turns 73. So does rocker Peter Wolf. Ernest Isley (the youngest brother) turns 68.
Hall-of-fame Pittsburg Steelers Franco Harris (69) and Lynn Swann (67) celebrate birthdays today. Swann made some nifty receptions for the Steelers, but none of them were immaculate.
Bryan Cranston turns 64 today. Cranston has won two Tony awards and six Emmys. None of the latter were for his voice work on The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, but that did earn him the prize of having the Blue Power Ranger, Billy Cranston, named after him.
Today is the 60th birthday of both Joe Carter and Ivan Lendl. Lendl is an all-time great, a hall-of-famer who won eight major titles and was the top-ranked tennis player in the world for 270 weeks. But there’s no way he hits that home run off of Mitch Williams in Game 6.
Taylor Dayne turns 58. Very funny comic — and my former neighbor in Everybody’s Hometown — Wanda Sykes turns 56. Academy Award-winner Rachel Weisz hits the big 5-0. Jenna Fischer turns 46 (turns to look at the camera).
Finally, March 7, 1965 — 55 years ago today — was “Bloody Sunday,” the day of the first march from Selma to Montgomery. Alabama state troopers, some wearing anti-American traitor-flags on their helmets, greeted hundreds of lawful, unarmed, nonviolent marchers with teargas, clubs, and gleeful violence. The citizens of the march responded by continuing to demand their rights as citizens, marching again two days later.
We’re taught this as ancient history, but consider that many of the club-wielding thugs serving as troopers on that bridge are only in their 70s or 80s today. They’re still alive, still angry, and determined to vote for Donald Trump in November.
One galvanizing image from Bloody Sunday was the sight of one of its main organizers — Amelia Boynton, beaten unconscious by those troopers and then being beaten again as she lay there.
Boynton’s uncle was Robert Smalls — a U.S. Representative who was elected in South Carolina during Reconstruction. Boynton herself lived until 2015. She lived long enough to attend the 50th anniversary of the Selma march, which is to say she lived long enough to see the Roberts Court dismantle the Voting Rights Act she sacrificed so much to get passed in 1965.
Talk amongst yourselves.
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