Professor Marvel and Professor Hill are nowhere in sight

“I’m an old Kansas man myself.”

The Wizard of Oz

I’m a big fan of Turner Classic Movies generally speaking, but during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, it became binge-watching fare. Sports and other freshly concocted content wasn’t available. Well, there was news, but during that time, its shelf life before tiresomeness set in was particularly shortened.

One evening, TCM presented The Wizard of Oz, about which I really don’t need to say much at this late date. We all know the lineage beginning with L. Frank Baum’s stories, the 1902 Broadway production, and, of course, the 1939 MGM film version, with its marvelous score by Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg – and all those timeless performances by the cast.

Two weeks later, it showed The Music Man, the storyline, the score and the lyrics of which were largely the brainchild of the singularly creative Meredith Willson.

The two movies share a common theme.

A clearly phony huckster – in the case of Wizard, the Frank Morgan character who is a patent-medicine guy – Professor Marvel – in Kansas (brought home toward the end of the film when he says, “I’m an old Kansas man myself”) and later on the Wizard of Oz, who gets exposed, by Toto, of all the characters, as being just a guy frantically manipulating a multimedia board. He then has to come up with something to make these desperate sojourners’ trek worthwhile, so he digs deep inside himself and comes up with these medals that he pins on each of them, addressing what they see themselves as lacking. Similarly, in Music Man, at the end, Harold Hill is shown to be a complete phony, but when he has to conduct the boys’ band before the entire town of River City, Iowa, he rises to the task and the band is thereby transformed into a resplendent marching ensemble – with nothing less than 76 trombones!

The inflection point for those characters was when the people who were depending on them turned to them and said, “Okay, you, us, everybody knows you’re an utter phony. But we need for you to be the real deal now.”

Destiny plucked them from the predicament caused by their fraudulence and assigned them a greatness-conferring mission.

In the ensuing two years, I’ve given thought to the application of this common theme to our present time.

We have no shortage of loudmouth, hollow hucksters, do we?

At the top of my own list would be Donald Trump and just below him I’d place any number of his sycophants. But one could easily find room for our current president, who has always been an empty suit, given to grandstanding, fictional embellishments of his resume, zinger lines in his speeches geared toward firing up the base (“He’s gonna put y’all back in chains.”) and high-profile junkets.

And here I would caution those who justifiably admire particular House members who were willing to sacrifice their futures in that body, and withstand vicious slander about their motives, to expose the threat to our Constitutional order in the waning days of the last administration. The temptation to lionize them is undeniably great. Let’s all remember, though, the extensive track record of disappointment we’ve experienced in recent years. We’re all fallen creatures, a fact that can rise to bite us if not handled carefully.

Could a figure like either of the professors rise from among us and publicly work out his redemption while restoring our national wholeness?

It doesn’t seem likely. Even if someone realized he or she were so called, the scrutiny with which modern technology lays bare each and every second of our lives would make it extremely difficult for the call to ripen into a springing into action.

But then Professors Marvel and Hill didn’t have the luxury of contemplating their new destinies in solitude. All the eyes in Oz and River City were upon them.

One can hope.

The task before us, in the absence of such a figure, is to fend off jadedness as we make our way through the wilderness.

About the best we can do is keep Philippians 4:8 in the forefront of our minds as we put one foot in front of the other and continue our slog through the barren landscape. There’s a real parade in a real Emerald City at the end of this road.