Thoughts on the media: Democracy Dies in Darkness

There were many enjoyable – and, yes, forgettable – commercials that aired during Sunday night’s Super Bowl LIII broadcast on CBS. Some were even thought provoking for their content or message.

One advert that drew my attention – and hopefully yours – came near the two-minute warning late in the fourth quarter of the New England Patriot’s 13-3 victory over the Los Angeles Rams. It lasted just 60 seconds, but it was a powerful and poignant minute. It was for The Washington Post newspaper, and its narrator was actor Tom Hanks.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper

If you think about it, though, this commercial was really about more than just a newspaper. Think democracy, think freedom of the press, and think about the importance that good and responsible journalism plays in our country.

As you watch, listen to the words that Hanks flawlessly recites while images of the World War II D-Day invasion and first moon landing are shown as well as clips of Fox News’ Bret Baier and CNN’s Anderson Cooper reporting from war zones and natural disasters. One of the final images gives special tribute to slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered last fall after entering the Saudi consulate in Instanbul.

“When we go off to war. When we exercise our rights. When we soar to our greatest heights. When we mourn and pray. When our neighbors are at risk. When our nation is threatened. There’s someone to gather the facts. To bring you the story. No matter the cost. Because knowing empowers us. Knowing helps us decide. Knowing keeps us free. Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

While this $10 million commercial (paid for by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, who also owns Amazon.com) was seen by millions of football fans and casual sports viewers from coast to coast – and, maybe, it will change a few minds, which good advertising does – imagine if the intended audience for this advertisement was just one person, who just happens to be the President of the United States.

Something to think about as the memory of this year’s Super Bowl game fades to black.

In Uncommon Type, Tom Hanks examines the human condition and all its foibles – and his love of typewriters

Tom Hanks is an American treasure. He's more than just a funny guy who makes great and memorable motion pictures like Apollo 13 and Forrest Gump. Now, the Oscar-winning actor, producer and director has turned to writing – and he's written a pretty decent book, Uncommon Type: Some Stories, about his obsession with typewriters.

Yes, typewriters!

Uncommon Type is a collection of 17 short stories written by Hanks on a variety of his vintage typewriters that examines the human condition and all of its foibles. He writes honestly and sensitively about many different subjects, including: a World War II veteran and his family in "Christmas Eve 1953," a rocket ship constructed in a backyard that takes four friends to the moon and back in "Three Exhausting Weeks," a California surfer kid who stumbles into his father's secret life in "Welcome to Mars," and a small-town newspaper columnist who shares his old-fashioned views while trying to remain relevant in an internet age in "Our Town with Hank Fiset."

In every story, Hanks sneaks in the machine of his obsession – the typewriter. In its review of Uncommon Type, The Guardian of London called his work: "nostalgic, conversational, fusty."

In praise of Uncommon Type, comedian Steve Martin wrote: "It turns out that Tom Hanks is also a wise and hilarious writer with an endlessly surprising mind. Damn it."

Interviewed by NPR Morning Edition host David Greene this week, Hanks admitted that sometimes the typewriter is merely a plot device.

"Sometimes it really does feel almost hidden," said Greene. "And in talking to Hanks, you learn that his thing with typewriters is not a gimmick – more like a love affair."


Here's how Hanks explained his obsession with typewriters:

"There something about it – I don't know, it's a hex in my brain – there is something I find reassuring, comforting, dazzling in that here is a very specific apparatus that is meant to do one thing, and it does it perfectly. And that one thing is to translate the thoughts in your head down to paper. Now that means everything from a shopping list to James Joyce's Ulysses. Short of carving words into stone with a hammer and chisel, not much is more permanent than a paragraph or a sentence or a love letter or a story typed on paper," said Hanks during his NPR Morning Edition interview.

In the current New York Times Book Review, Hanks was asked which short story writers he most admires and what makes for a great short story:

"The Cheever stories, the Vonnegut stories, the Salinger stories (especially those I had to find online, before he became THAT Salinger). Bukowski wrote short stories that were prose poems, yet I read them as the vignettes of life that, to me, rate as full-blown short stories," said Hanks.

I came upon an advance reader's edition of Uncommon Type last June while attending a library conference with my wife in Chicago, which provided me with a chance to read some of these graceful and moving stories that are both funny and whimsical as well as filled with the right touch of melancholy. As others have noted, one of the central qualities of Hanks's writing is its "poignant playfulness." I'm looking forward to seeing Hanks in conversation later this week at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., as part of a national tour in support of his book. Hearing him read aloud from Uncommon Type – a welcome new voice in contemporary short fiction – will be the next best thing to having him sit in my home reading it aloud to me.

Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks is published in the U.S. by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. $26.95.

Photos illustration and Tom Hanks photo: Courtesy of Google Images.

You've Got Starbucks!

A cafe mocha during my lunch at Le Pain Quotidien in Brussels.

Recently, while channel surfing, I caught a few minutes of the movie "You've Got Mail", the 1998 American romantic comedy film directed by Nora Ephron that stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. It's based on the play "Parfumerie" by Miklós László and tells the story of two e-mailing lovers completely unaware that their sweetheart is, indeed, a person with whom they share a degree of animosity.  The adaptation of "You've Got Mail" traces its lineage back to the 1940 film "The Shop Around the Corner" by Ernst Lubitsch.  There's even a bit of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" found in the relationship between the characters portrayed by Hanks and Ryan.

While watching "You've Got Mail", I couldn't help but delight in the scene that illustrated America's growing infatuation for Starbucks coffee in the late 1990s, as voiced over by Hanks' character, Joe Fox, whose family owned a chain of mega-bookstores similar to Barnes & Noble:

The original Starbucks, located
at Pike Place Market in Seattle,
as seen in my 2009 photo.

"The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee.  Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc.  So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino."

Perhaps, like Fox Books in the movie, Starbucks has tried hard ~ maybe too hard ~ to promote a sense of self. What they seemingly have created is a pseudo sense of friendliness and hip atmosphere in their stores and cafés, both in America and globally, in countries which they have penetrated the coffee marketplace. Sometimes, it's truly embraced, like I saw last month in Amsterdam on the bustling Leidsestraat near our hotel. There, the number of customers hanging out inside this colorful and particularly busy café, enjoying their cappuccinos in mugs while checking e-mail on their iPhones, far outnumbered those like me, who got their mocha in a to-go cup. To each his own, but I was in a walking mood, with things to see and places to go ~ and, it was lovely spring morning.

Enjoying a cappuccino with my
Saturday morning breakfast at 
Bagels & Beans in Amsterdam.

Thank goodness, during my recent travels in Europe, I discovered a world of coffee beyond Starbucks.  I saw this world in both Brussels and Paris ~ even in Amsterdam, too ~ and, over the course of 12 days, I tasted some very wonderful cappuccinos and mochas as they were meant to be enjoyed: in true café settings, and crafted by baristas, who took their time and turned coffee-making into an art form.  And, it was a delight to observe people unhurried, taking their time sipping and savoring their coffee. It added up to a most delicious and enjoyable experience.

All photographs by Michael Dickens. Copyright 2009, 2012. All rights reserved.