Tony....or Anton as Maria softly utters while holding him....is dead and lying on the concrete. The Jets are to the left....with clenched fists....and the Sharks to the right....ready to fight. Maria grabs the gun used to kill Tony....and points it first to the Sharks and then to the Jets....and then collapses in sorrow. The authorities arrive....and three of Tony's Jets struggle to pick up his body....whereas two of the Sharks jump in to help carry with respect this member of the hated Jets....a hope for some kind of reconciliation at the end of the film....after the damage is done.
The Academy Award Best Picture winner....along with nine other Oscars....was released almost sixty years ago. I saw West Side Story as a twelve year old....in Baltimore....tagging along with an older cousin who did not want to go to movies alone. It's odd how some memories stick with you....as at a stop sign on the way to movies....the radio announced the death of Marilyn Monroe.Famed Pentecostal Preacher David Wilkerson grew up only a few houses away from where I would a few years later spend the summer of 1963....with a different cousin....this being Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania. His book had just come out....The Cross And The Switchblade....of which I would know nothing about until twenty years later. The film starring Pat Boone would come out in 1970....as the Jesus Revolution was just beginning....but I was in the army and more interested in the blasphemous Jesus Christ Superstar....the album of which I listen to in Vietnam.
I had spent the summer of 1968 in rapt attention to Robert F. Kennedy....collapsing also....so to speak...on that Wednesday morning when informed that he was shot in the continuing violence and hate overtaking our nation.
Back to October of the year....1962....where we would experience the world on edge over the island of Cuba. The goal back then....and for decades after....was to avoid a world war with nuclear weapons. Saner heads prevailed. In the past five years we seem to have moved away from the goal of preventing a world war....to demanding from around the world every penny due us. We use the words freedom and liberty all the time....but those words seem hollow. I wrote for years in these posts of the dangers of Communism....and had remarked at times that talk radio would not even use the word....but now it is on their lips every day. (see the addendum blow) Is this for ideology....and the love of individual freedoms....for they are more than a little bit late in their alarm....or is it only the latest political card being played....or is it somewhere in between....stumbling confused in the cloud of dust from the collapse of institutions?
Apparently we are going to need to see....'Tony'....lying dead on the concrete....and 'Maria' crying over his dead body....before we see that our pride....when not kept in check....can lead only to death and sorrow. We all have our switchblades out and gleaming in the lights of the television studio. Seeking glory is our goal today....but if we are going to glory in anything....it can only be in the cross of Jesus Christ.
Addendum: I wrote these words in a December 2017 post.... as every show for the whole year....was three hours of the 'Russia Hoax'....and defending Trump. "Gentlemen....ladies....of conservative talk radio....read Paul Kengor's The Politically Incorrect Guide To Communism. It won't tax your mind. It's like a month of sports pages. You will then have an idea of what has gone on [elsewhere in America] and be able to actually help your audience once again. It's time to tell us just exactly what the term 'the Left' means."
