IN MEMORIAM: Steve Allen & Ring Lardner Jr.

by Harvey Wheeler

I need to share my sadness over the deaths of Steve Allen and Ring Lardner Jr.

I was on Steve's show after Fail Safe was published. Later he became a firm supporter of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions

He attended one of my conferences and that night played piano until very late at the San Ysidro Ranch. He was a loyal supporter and I think he got his idea for the NPB series of dialogues with the Great Philosophers.

His activism increased with the appointment of Malcolm Moos as Director. Macolm and I stayed with Steve and Jayne in their Encino house prior to a large Center meeting at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

Ring I got to know at the author's party when Fail-Safe was published in paper by Delacorte. He threw a big party celebration party for progressives at his penthouse. Lots of names were there - Myrna Loy! What a surprise! Grammy Loy, underslung, thick ankled, and just as sweet as you could imagine. I left early -- as did she and we talked at and in the elevator. I was due at an after party party in the Village - at the quarters of Zero Mostel. He was doing "Funny Thing..." and was rehabilitated for sure. Fat as could be an absolutely swarmed over by bimbo's.

I'd met Ring Jr. at Delacorte's and we exchanged personal stories. He liked the my story about getting fired from Johns Hopkins for publishing Lattimore The Scholar.

I liked his courage (and of course his dad). So at Zero's we got in a corner and talked long and hard. MASH was on it way, but still some time off. He was just a damn good guy.

If he'd have grown up in Indiana like me he'd probably have been my kind of radical; and if I'd grown up where he did I might have been a New York Marxist -- ugh...

Not really though because early on I figured out where Marx went wrong --"OWNERSHIP of the means of production...." Basic with him, right?

And: Politics is "epiphenomenal" -- he Marx, right?

So Politics could not be primary; causal; or even effective...right?

But what is "ownership"? Economics? No way! It follows Law, right? Property, right? Politics? right?

Karl, baby, you fouled it up -- see. You studied Hegel!

Better you should have stuck with Kant - who studied my guy, Verulam! Bacon!

Yup, Karl; You didn't read Bacon. That was your main problem.

If you had you could have followed the lead of Coleridge, and could have read Plato "backwards" like Bacon and Kant did!

Instead of Hegel!

Try and turn Hegel on his head and you get all mixed up. Just like you did.

Too bad, Karl. But not to worry - I'm trying to fix things.

Yeah, Ring was a great guy. We'll miss him.

Harvey Wheeler, author of Fail Safe with Eugene Burdick, is a frequent contributor to The Idler.