By Hubie and Bertie
Gosh, we cats dislike Oscar season — mostly because we stopped going to movies in the theater with the pandemic (and haven't resumed). But also because there's precious little out there that doesn't involve comic books and superheroes. Which means that we've rarely seen any of the films that the members of the Academy have nominated. (Also, the lineup on Turner Classic Movies these days is very tiresome.)
But the run-up to the awards we don't care about has reminded us of this: Two extraordinary actors have portrayed the late Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee — Jason Robards in 1976 and Tom Hanks in 2018. (Robards won a best supporting actor Oscar for his trouble.)
The real Bradlee left the planet in 2014, which means that (lucky him) he missed the onset of Benedict Donald. And although he was still around when Jeff Bezos bought the paper, as a sufferer of dementia, he probably didn't have much of a handle on what was going on. Whatever information he was able to glean in his last days was most likely hopeful: In his early ownership, Bezos pumped money into the Post, recruited some excellent talent, and made the paper relevant again.
How the mighty have fallen.
Bradlee was far from perfect, but he was committed to some rock-solid principles. "I believe in hard work," he wrote to a high school senior in North Carolina after his retirement. "I believe in fighting all kinds of domination. I
believe in steering clear of the big shots. I believe in total honesty.
I believe in compassion." Good thing he's not around to see what's happened to his beloved newspaper today. We cats HISS.
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