February 2, 2024

Friday, February 2, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.

To read an article excerpted in this Roundup, click on its blue title. Each “blue” article is hyperlinked so you can read the whole article.

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Joe is always busy.

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Kamala is always busy.

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Ukraine.

EU leaders threatened, among many other threats, 1) to throw Hungary out of the EU 2) remove Orban’s right to vote at the EU. Then this happened.

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Toward a fairer world.

Virginia Moves to End Legacy Admissions at Its Public Universities.

The state legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill that ends preferences for children of alumni. The governor appears poised to sign it.

Virginia is on track to ban legacy preferences at its public universities, which give a boost to children of alumni who apply for admission.

The state’s House of Delegates unanimously approved a bill on Tuesday that would eliminate the preferences; the State Senate did so last week.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office signaled that he would sign the legislation, saying in a statement that he “believes admission to Virginia’s universities and colleges should be based on merit.” The law would take effect July 1, after admissions decisions have been made for the fall of 2024.

The ban, which would affect two of the country’s more selective public universities, the University of Virginia and William & Mary, is another indication that legacy admissions, which mostly benefit students who are white, wealthy and well-connected, are losing favor across the country. Virginia Tech, another prestigious public university in the state, announced last year that it would no longer take legacy status into account.

Legacy admissions became a target last year soon after the Supreme Court banned race-conscious admissions. President Biden said that legacy preferences expand “privilege instead of opportunity.”

After the Supreme Court decision in June, several highly selective private schools, including Wesleyan University, announced they would eliminate legacy preferences. And New York University said it would remove a check-off on its application asking if prospective students were legacies.

They joined several selective colleges that had already eliminated or had never used legacy preferences, including M.I.T., Johns Hopkins, Amherst College and the University of California system.

The state of Colorado has banned legacy preferences in its public universities, and similar legislation prohibiting the practice has been introduced in Congress and in states including Connecticut and New York.

But many elite private universities — including Harvard, Yale, and Brown — continue to give preference to the children of alumni. Data recently released by the Department of Education found that nearly 600 colleges and universities consider legacy status in admission.

Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania are the subjects of federal Department of Education investigations into their use of legacy preferences and whether the practice constitutes a civil rights violation. The Harvard investigation began following a complaintfiled by three advocacy groups.

The bill in Virginia, which must still undergo more legislative maneuvering before going to the governor for signature, would also ban the consideration of “donor status” in admissions to state institutions. Under that practice, wealthy parents or other relatives might secure admission for their children by donating funds for new buildings or programs.

Dan Helmer, a Democrat who sponsored the bill in the Virginia House, said the time had come to level the playing field.

“The vast majority of Virginians, regardless of whether they are Democrat, Republican or independent, want a university system that admits students based on who they are and what they’ve done, not who their parents are,” Mr. Helmer said.

Mr. Helmer, a West Point graduate, said that none of the state’s universities had taken a public position against the legislation, though he suggested that they may have lobbied privately. “It may be that a couple of universities have stopped by,” he added, “and I said, ‘If you want to go on the record publicly, you can.’”

The University of Virginia, where legacy admissions have sometimes accounted for as much as 14 percent of an entering class, recently tweaked its admissions application to eliminate a check-box for legacy status, but said students could still indicate in their admissions essays whether they were legacies.

In a statement on Tuesday, Brian T. Coy, a spokesman for the University of Virginia, said it was the university’s policy not to comment on pending legislation. “For decades, U.Va. has evaluated each candidate for undergraduate admission as an individual with a unique story and a combination of strengths,” he said, “rather than through weighted methods and check boxes.”

An organization of conservative Virginia alumni known as the Jefferson Council has not taken a position on the legislation, according to its executive director, James A. Bacon.

“We are of two minds,” Mr. Bacon wrote in an email. On the one hand, he said, intergenerational families tend to be more loyal, engaged, and generous to the university. “On the other, we support merit-based admissions based on character and academic achievement,” he wrote.

William & Mary also considers legacy admissions. In a statement, the university said it would comment on the bill’s possible impact after its final adoption. In the statement, a spokeswoman for the university, Suzanne Clavet, said the school’s data showed that accepted applicants who were legacies were more than twice as likely to enroll at the school as other accepted applicants were. (New York Times).

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Polls.

“Keep calm. Carry on.”

Repeating an update on recent polls. Adding an update.

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On Thursday, February 8th, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on whether the 14th Amendment disqualifies Donald J. Trump from seeking the Presidency.

Here 👇 is a panel where 2 experts express their opinions on this.

Expect to hear arguments like this at the Court.

Click on the blue link to read a transcript👇 .

Does the 14th Amendment bar Donald Trump from running for president? - Harvard Law School.

Click on the YouTube link to watch and hear. 👇

Video.54 minutes.
https://youtu.be/run7Oy75014

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February is Black History Month.

Touch 👇 to follow American history from the first slave ship on.

Touch 👇 to see some great Black Americans.

The 6888th consisted of all African-American women who were assigned to Birmingham England, Rouen, France and Paris, France during World War II. Their mission was to clear several years of backlogged mail in the European Theater of Operations.  They worked in cold, dirty, dark rat infested aircraft hangars with broken windows. Additionally, 7,500 pieces  of mail were addressed to Robert Smilth and some just to Junior, US Army. (Women of the 6888th.org)

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The 3 Point Challenge between the NBA’s Steph Curry and The WNBA’s Sabrina Ionescu is not intended to be 1973’s Battle of the Sexes.

The 1975 Match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King was promoted to humiliate women by a self-proclaimed male chauvinist pig.

Golden State Warriors Steph Curry supports women’s rights. This match was created to make clear how competitive a female athlete can be.

Stephen Curry vs. Sabrina Ionescu 3-point challenge set for 2024 NBA All-Star Weekend | NBA.com

NEW YORK – NBA all-time 3-point leader and Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry and WNBA single-season 3-point record holder and New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu will compete in “Stephen vs. Sabrina,” the first-ever NBA vs. WNBA 3-Point Challenge, which will take place on Saturday, Feb. 17 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis during State Farm All-Star Saturday Night.

The competition will air on TNT after the STARRY 3-Point Contest and before the AT&T Slam Dunk. State Farm All-Star Saturday Night will begin at 8 p.m. ET.

As part of the competition, Curry’s Eat.Learn.Play. nonprofit and Ionescu’s SI20 Foundation will receive a donation from the NBA and WNBA. In addition, each shot made by Curry and Ionescu will trigger a donation from State Farm to the NBA Foundation to support economic empowerment in the Black community. Each regular 3-pointer made will be valued at $1,000, the money ball at $2,000 and the “STARRY Range Ball” – a deep 3-pointer from 29 feet, 9 inches away – at $3,000.

“Stephen vs. Sabrina” will follow standard STARRY 3-Point Contest rules. Curry will shoot from the NBA 3-point line with NBA basketballs, and Ionescu will shoot from the WNBA 3-point line with WNBA basketballs.

Ionescu challenged Curry to a 3-point competition after she recorded 37 points (out of a possible 40 points) in the final round of the STARRY WNBA 3-Point Contest at AT&T WNBA All-Star 2023, setting a WNBA and NBA single-round event record and winning the contest for the first time.

Curry raised the challenge once again when he was mic’d up during Golden State’s Jan. 25 game against the Sacramento Kings on TNT. Ionescu responded on social media officially accepting the challenge.

https://x.com/nba/status/1750722997285961875?s=61&t=I_Od53CbnPTsbLcD0baXPg

Curry, a two-time NBA 3-Point Contest champion, has made an NBA-record 3,577 3-pointers in the regular season.  In 2023, Ionescu set a WNBA single-season record with 128 3-pointers. (NBA.com).

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Chita Rivera, the iconic Broadway Star who died earlier in the week at age 91, deserves more than one write-up in the Roundup. Don’t you agree?

Chita Rivera: Love and Love Alone.

"Journalist Patrick Pacheco, who collaborated with Rivera on her memoir, shares stories from their decades-long partnership. ... Chita knew she was talented, tenacious, hardworking and disciplined. But, like every great star, she also knew she was lucky. With equanimity, she talked about how she had not been the first choice, or even the second or third, for roles on which she’d place her indelible stamp. She knew she’d come up with hundreds of performers just as talented, but who’d fallen through the cracks. Gratitude poured out of her. She also wanted me to know in no uncertain terms that the canvas was unfinished. Chita dreaded birthdays. She had so much more to do." https://bway.ly/est5x5

Chita at 90 with Patrick.

I first laid eyes on Chita Rivera on a cold January evening in 1975 at the Grand Finale,  a noisy and dingy gay club on West 70th. The place was filled to the rafters — a mix of Broadway A-listers at ringside and young men in bomber jackets packed three-deep at the bar. I was just a cub reporter then for “After Dark,” a quasi-gay entertainment magazine. The anticipation was keen for the New York nightclub debut of “Chita Plus Two,” in which the star of the forthcoming musical, “Chicago,” was joined by Tony Stevens and Chris Chadman on a stage the size of a postage stamp. Chita had just returned to New York from a less-than-happy seven-year hiatus in Los Angeles, and there could’ve been no better welcome home than the raucous, whistling, stomping ovations which greeted the trio’s every bawdy, naughty, hip-swiveling, straight-to-the-heart number.

Chita became mythical to me that night, an awareness of a singular stardom which glowed even brighter after I saw her in “Chicago.” She remained that way until, years later, as a freelance journalist, I was given occasional assignments to profile her. The first thing Chita did when she met a writer was demystify herself. I was no exception. She was always eager to present herself as anything but a “star”—  just one of the chorus kids who happened to have moved into the spotlight. It was an image she cultivated, and it was sincere. But she had a star quality that was undeniable, even to her. Then in 2004, I received a call from the producer Marty Bell. 

“We’re going to do a show on Chita’s life on Broadway and Terrence [McNally] doesn’t want to do the underlying interviews for the [musical’s] book he’s writing. So Chita asked us to hire you.” 

What a gig! I was contracted for three interviews for ‘Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life.’ What followed were afternoons with Chita, drinking cosmopolitans at the West Bank Café and examining what was then over four decades of a career and 70 years of a life. She was funny. That throaty laugh, which would start somewhere deep down and slowly rumble up. She was also open and honest — up to a point. I got two of the three done when Bell said, “You don’t have to do a third. Terrence feels he’s got enough.” I felt like I had been kicked out of the playground. Worse, I thought I’d only begun to delve into someone who was a deeply private person behind the cheery bravado. 

I got the privilege and honor to delve deeper than I ever imagined when the idea of a book about her life came up many years later.  Chita was always reticent to write a memoir. “Who’d care?” she told me. But when Covid shut down the lights to which she had always gravitated, her unstoppable energy sought an outlet.

Our first meetings about the memoir were a tango of sorts. What overcame her skepticism was my insistence that she owed it to future generations to avail them of what she’d learned throughout her many years in the theater. She was a stickler that young actors and dancers coming into the business should know their history, the shoulders on which they stood as she herself had. But open up her private life? That she was not too crazy about. 

Then I asked her,  “After 70 years in the public eye, what is it that people don’t know about you?” She replied. “That I’m not nearly as nice as people think I am.” I replied, “Great! Let’s introduce the public to her. And let’s call her by your first name, ‘Dolores.’ What your mom called you when you got in trouble. Chita’s nice. Dolores is a bat out of hell.” She loved the idea. Among her many virtues, Chita always had an eagerness to laugh at herself. We were off and running. 

At her home, dressed in black silk pants and blouse with her hair wrapped in a headscarf, she’d make me a grilled cheese sandwich. Between bites of potato chips, we talked in the fading afternoon light (she was never an early riser). Her soft voice painted how she saw her life: a large canvas with spots, blotches, lines of color — like a Jackson Pollock — representing every sudden turn in the road: marriage, motherhood, love affairs, the geniuses she’d worked with and, especially, the lucky career breaks. 

Chita knew she was talented, tenacious, hardworking and disciplined. But, like every great star, she also knew she was lucky. With equanimity, she talked about how she had not been the first choice, or even the second or third, for roles on which she’d place her indelible stamp. She knew she’d come up with hundreds of performers just as talented, but who’d fallen through the cracks. Gratitude poured out of her.

She also wanted me to know in no uncertain terms that the canvas was unfinished. Chita dreaded birthdays. She had so much more to do. 

Last August, one of her final performances was at the Ice Palace, a gay club on Fire Island. Our lives together had sort of come full circle. She performed with Lisa Mordente, her daughter, in an act that sent an audience of all ages and genders into paroxysms of utter joy and delight. 

During one of our sessions, I had asked her, “Hey, Cheet, what ovation has meant the most to you in your career? You go to the Kennedy Center for the Honors and the President, cabinet members and all these bold-faced names give you a standing ovation. You go to the Tonys, same thing. All the shows, the club acts, the personal appearances. What stands out?” 

“I’ve never given it thought before, but since you asked,” she said, “when I came out for the opening night of ‘The Visit,’ the audience just went on and on, and it wouldn’t stop. My whole body filled with such love in a way I’d never felt before in my life.” 

“You wanna know why?” I asked. She nodded. 

“You go to the Kennedy Center, or to the White House or to receive all those awards on your mantle, and then you get in the car and go home and wait for the phone to ring,” I continued. “On that opening night of ‘The Visit,’ you knew that when that ovation died down, you’d work and earn that ovation, as you have time and time again for nearly 70 years. You’ve never lived for the awards or the acclaim. You’ve lived to give of yourself — body and soul — to whomever came through the doors of the theater, the nightclub, whatever, wherever.”

Chita thought for a while, her eyes glistening with emotion: “I guess you’re right. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I’ve been so lucky.”

President Biden (@POTUS): "Chita Rivera was an all-time-great of American musical theater, a pioneer whose magnetic performances in scores of Broadway productions brought joy to millions and captured the grit and grace of America. Our love goes out to her daughter, siblings, and generations of fans."

Chita Rivera’s tenacity made her one of the greatest Broadway stars.

Somehow Hollywood didn’t know what to do with her, but its loss was a win for decades of theater audiences.

Chita Rivera rehearses for her career-spanning show, “The Dancer's Life,” in 2005.

To watch Chita Rivera in her prime was to experience the rhapsody of theatricality in motion.


She was a Broadway star of the old school, a classically trained dancer who conjured sumptuous lines with her body and gusto with her eyes. Not for nothing was hers described as a career with legs. For Rivera bestowed upon us her gifts of athleticism and pizazz, in an oeuvre that spanned decades and eras. She could forever, to coin a phrase, razzle-dazzle ’em.


“America” in the original 1957 Broadway production of “West Side Story” belonged to her. So did “Spanish Rose,” in the original 1960 Broadway production of “Bye Bye Birdie.” So did “I Can’t Do It Alone,” in the original 1975 Broadway production of “Chicago.” So did the title song in the original 1993 Broadway production of “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” And so did, and so did, and so did …

Frailty, thy name wasn’t Chita. Tenacity was more her hallmark.

How else to account for the will and the grit to fight through the effects of a car accident that resulted in a compound fracture of one of those glorious gams? That crash left her, in her 50s, with 16 screws in her left leg, the kind of traumatic injury that finishes the exploits of pro kickers and Olympic skiers. But not Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero Anderson, who grew up on Flagler Place in D.C., taking ballet classes at the storied Jones-Haywood School. There were five more Broadway runs and four more Tony nominations to rack up, among the lifetime 10, which included wins for “The Rink” and “Spider Woman.”

Which is why her death on Tuesday, at the tender age of 91, came as a special shock. We all have to go, but somehow I wanted to believe Rivera’s lease on life came with endless extensions.

Obituary: Chita Rivera, quintessential Broadway musical star, dies at 91

Rivera performs at a 2003 concert in New York City.

How her eternal vivaciousness could be so infrequently bottled on film is an enduring travesty. What was it that Hollywood missed that theater audiences grasped ecstatically? Rita Moreno was an Anita for the ages in the 1961 movie of “West Side Story,” and Janet Leigh was a pretty good Rosie in 1963’s “Bye Bye Birdie,” but those were landmark Rivera creations. (Here’s one of those “What was that about?” turn of events: Puerto Rican Rivera’s Rose in the stage version of “Bye Bye Birdie” became White European Leigh’s Rosie in the movie. They dyed Leigh’s hair and made her “ethnic”!)

As far as major motion pictures go, though, at least we have 1969’s “Sweet Charity,” directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, in which Rivera played a rent-a-dancer in a seedy Times Square dancehall, alongside Shirley MacLaine. “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This,” by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields — one of the greatest Golden Age dance numbers ever captured on film — is performed with intoxicating élan by Rivera, MacLaine and Paula Kelly.

Watch it on YouTube, please, because it reveals musical theater’s renewable resource. The energy and joy of performance — the ingredients that turn lonely 12-year-olds into Playbill-hoarding superfans — are ideally harnessed by Fosse and his actresses. The sequence also happens to show off Rivera’s stunning combinations, of both the kinetic and emotional varieties. In a skimpy, sparkly mustard-colored outfit, she leads off the six-minute number, and sets the interlude’s yearning tone.

“I’m not going to spend the next 40 years of my life in the Fandango Ballroom,” Rivera’s Nickie tells the others. “I am not going to become the world’s first little old gray-haired taxi dancer!” And off we go, insistently, irresistibly, as the orchestra strikes up and the three women twirl and leap out of their tawdry dressing room and onto a New York City rooftop.

“There’s gotta be something better than this,” Rivera sings.

There’s gotta be something better to do

And when I find me something better to do

I’m gonna get up

I’m gonna get out

I’m gonna get up, get out and do it!

The musical may at other points condescend sentimentally to its title character, played by MacLaine, but in this number, you feel elementally connected to these women and the universal human craving they embody — for more. Rivera raises a flag for an entire community in the scene: a Latina actress playing a character both soft and tough, moving in unison with a Black dancer and a White dancer and all evincing the same artistry, and hope.

How Chita Rivera keeps dancing at 83, with 16 screws in her leg

She seemed to pop up in every nook and cranny of the hall of fame: working with John Kander, Fred Ebb, Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, Gower Champion, Leonard Bernstein, Neil Simon, Gwen Verdon, Liza Minnelli, Fosse. Her peers were the hoofers, the Verdons, the Reinkings, all belonging to a master class of Broadway dancers, in a line stretching from Ruby Keeler to Donna McKechnie. Roles for the great dancing stars, sadly, thinned out, as musicals in the contemporary era turned to more dramatic themes.

Rivera, center, dances beside choreographer Jerome Robbins, second from left, during rehearsals for the Broadway musical “West Side Story” in 1957.

Rivera never dwelled on what passed her by, or on the times she was overlooked. “I grew up in a household led by two very strong, generous and resilient women who never looked back in self-pity or regret,” Rivera wrote about her family in “Chita: A Memoir,” published last year. “‘Get on with it’ might as well have been a motto stitched into the del Rivero coat of arms. I’ve followed it all my life.”

We who love musical theater got to follow her. She played Velma Kelly, opposite Verdon’s Roxie Hart, in that “Chicago” that gave her yet another milestone part; the production was eclipsed in the banner year of 1975 by the blockbuster “A Chorus Line.” It would take a revival of Kander and Ebb’s “Chicago” on Broadway two decades later, starring Ann Reinking and Bebe Neuwirth, to cement the greatness of the musical. (It’s the version that is still running.)

But it is Rivera and Verdon’s double act that remains indelible. And if you were lucky enough to see it, you know Rivera’s sleek, sensuous turn in “Cell Block Tango” — possibly the most rewarding song about justifiable homicide ever composed — counts among her pinnacle moments. When you start to add all those moments up, they amount to one of the richest Broadway musical résumés.

Rivera and the cast of “The Visit” perform at the Tony Awards in 2015.

I got to see her many times, but in retrospect, most affectingly, for what would turn out to be the last big part she’d create, in Kander and Ebb’s musical version of Friedrich Durrenmatt’s absurdist tragicomedy, “The Visit.” Aptly enough, the 2008 Signature Theatre production directed by Frank Galati brought her back to the Washington area to portray Claire Zachanassian, a wealthy dowager bent on a ghastly revenge. It was a minor musical, but the occasion still felt major, by virtue of that magnetic quality Rivera retained, a radiance that might have been represented in that del Rivero coat of arms.

I happened to be with Matthew Gardiner, Signature’s artistic director, on the day she died. He was assistant director on “The Visit,” and he remembered Rivera as a generous force of nature, deflecting rather than demanding attention. Such was her effect on him, he said, that he still has the shoes Rivera wore as Claire as a keepsake in his office.

The lasting impact Gardiner talked about took me right back to “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This.” Because Rivera found that something better, the perfect platform for her talent, on the stage. Nickie in “Sweet Charity” declares definitively at the top of the song: “I am getting out!” Fat chance, Chita. We are all grateful that you never did. (Peter Marks, Washington Post).

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These 3 posts were cited in the Broadway Briefing. I couldn’t have chosen more wisely myself, so I didn’t.

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