The fuss about 'Hamilton' is well-deserved

By Michael J. Fitzgerald

The award-winning stage musical “Hamilton” is one of those clever shows that remain cemented in your consciousness well beyond the confines of the theater and last strains of music.

Nearly a week after seeing the play in San Francisco, the song “The Room Where It Happens” still rings in my ears.

Lin Manuel Miranda

It’s not just the catchy hip-hop lyrics, stunning dance choreography or haunting tunes. It’s how pertinent this Broadway snapshot of historical events from 200-plus years ago is today.

The life and times of Alexander Hamilton are likely hazy for people who haven’t been swept up in the mania generated by this musical or history buffs immersed in the founding of America.

To many people, he’s just the guy on the $10 bill.

But Hamilton was a key figure in the American Revolution, credited with creating the foundations of our modern banking and financial systems. He died famously in a duel fought with pistols with political rival Aaron Burr on July 11, 1804.

That’s an exceptionally bare-bones description of a very complicated life, detailed in an excellent 2004 biography written by award-winning author Ron Chernow.

It was Chernow’s book that inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda to spend six years writing the lyrics, music and pulling together the show that has been racking up an impressive stack of awards.

But the Hamilton tale reaches far out of the late 18th century into today’s headlines, featuring a racially diverse cast (reflecting 21st century America) emphasizing Hamilton’s humble early life and struggles.

He was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis. Illegitimate, and orphaned in his early teen years, he was a scrappy survivor using his writing skills to essentially pen his way out of poverty.

The play makes much of his intensity, offering in one pivotal scene that he authored 51 of the 85 documents we know as The Federalist Papers.

It also points out that Hamilton — and many other key figures in the American Revolution and among those drafting the U.S. Constitution — were immigrants.

“Immigrants! We get the job done!” Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette shout at one point in a song. The line gets a huge roar of approval in every “Hamilton” performance.

Chernow writes in his biography: “He embodied an enduring archetype: the obscure immigrant who comes to America, recreates himself, and survives despite a lack of proper birth or breeding,”

The heady victory of the colonists over the British gives way to darker scenes in the latter part of the musical. Political struggles among Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, take center stage.

If you follow today’s news from our nation’s capital, much seems hauntingly familiar.

Not much has changed politically in the last two centuries.

That the nation’s capital is Washington D.C. — and not then-favored New York City — is a product of Hamilton’s aggressive politicking. He engineered a compromise so the federal government would assume states’ Revolutionary War debts in exchange for locating the capital somewhere in the then-agrarian states of Maryland or Virginia.

Throughout the musical, Aaron Burr is ever-present, always in competition, never quite achieving the fame, fortune, or power that Hamilton garnered.

And Burr jealously competed for attention.

The Burr-Hamilton duel — one bit of American history still taught in schools — was preceded by a less-famous volley of pistol shots, resulting in the death of Hamilton’s oldest son, Philip.

Philip’s duel was over an insult spoken about his father by a political supporter of Jefferson. Philip died from a bullet wound he received at the same Weehawken, N.J. dueling area where his father would die three years later.

Maybe one of the most important lessons from “Hamilton” is that the history taught in most schools is a sanitized version of what really happened as our nation was being formed.

“Hamilton” is changing that.

Fitzgerald worked for six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for several news services. He splits his time between Valois, NY and Pt. Richmond, Calif. You can email him at Michael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his website at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com.

Golden Age of full employment for lawyers

(EDITOR'S NOTE: This column first appeared in the Finger Lakes Times newspaper in Geneva, NY)

By Michael J. Fitzgerald, columnist

The Donald Trump administration may one day be remembered as the Golden Age of full employment for lawyers.

In the 100-plus days since he took the oath of office, lawsuits and legal motions have flown like confetti at a New York City ticker-tape parade, keeping attorneys, judges, courts, legal staff — and the media — scrambling to keep up.

In just the first 10 days of the administration, 41 lawsuits were filed naming the new president. Many were related to his immigration ban. But there were others alleging violations of the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, suits to protect sanctuary city status and others against relaxing mining rules that will result in pollution of waterways.

Expect this tsunami of lawsuits and legal challenges to continue for the balance of Trump’s time in the White House, possibly including an epic legal blizzard if enough evidence is amassed to prompt Congress to vote for impeachment.

More important than these numbers, however, is that the new Trump administration is actually hashing out legal disputes via the legal system.

So far, anyway.

In the first days of Trump-as-president, much of the nation held its collective breath over whether he would try to bulldoze over the courts claiming his presidential power trumps (pardon the pun) any challenge to his authority.

Given his flamboyant rhetoric on the campaign trail last year, that fear was not ungrounded.

The pivotal moment came Feb. 3 when a federal judge blocked enforcement of a presidential executive order to implement a travel ban for residents of seven predominantly Muslim nations.

Although the president responded to the judge’s order with characteristically acerbic tweets, he didn’t attempt to enforce his executive order through extralegal means that could have triggered a national crisis.

Trump’s grudging recognition of the court’s authority — again, so far anyway — seems eerily reminiscent of staunch segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace standing in an auditorium doorway in 1963 at the University of Alabama to block the entry of two black students.

Gov. George Wallace, flanked by police

A federal court had ruled that segregationist policies that kept blacks from enrolling at the university were illegal.

After a long, tense confrontation Wallace, flanked by Alabama State Police, finally stepped aside, averting a national crisis.

In the Finger Lakes, groups like Gas Free Seneca and others use the legal system to protect the environment and promote a vision for the region.

Those who disagree with the vision of these groups — and/or believe many environmental safeguards are unnecessary — have their own legal knights on the courtroom chessboards, jousting via legal argumentation.

Peaceful protests are the norm. And civil disobedience is peaceful — and legal — too.

But 100-plus days into the new administration, there are troubling signs the president’s legendary impatience has reached its limit, with his legally questionable initiatives stalled under judicial review.

Adding to his frustration is that even with a heavy GOP majority in both houses, Congress seems hapless at passing Trump-supported legislation.

In speeches and interviews, the president has been speaking ominously about a need to consolidate power by changing legislative rules, like dumping the filibuster.

It’s making people nervous about what might happen in a major national emergency.

One fear is that Trump might attempt — by invoking national security — to suspend key democratic freedoms such as the rights to peaceably assemble, of free speech, and to have a free press.

Such a move, of course, could also suspend judicial power and get rid of those pesky lawsuits blocking Trump’s first 100-days worth of pending dictates.

A lot of lawyers could find themselves suddenly out of work.

And regardless whether you support the president or not, we could all find ourselves living in an unrecognizable United States of America.

Fitzgerald worked for six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for several news services. He splits his time between Valois, NY and Pt. Richmond, Calif. You can email him at Michael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his website at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com.