The recent passings of Deborah Kerr and Joey Bishop on consecutive days has, for myself, been the exclamation point on a year of loss of truly outstanding and creative talent. Notwithstanding Kerr and Bishop, this year has seen the passing of Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, movie producer Robert Clark, Marcel Marceau, and saxophonist Michael Brecker. This is just a small group of a larger list. For me personally, there was the suicide of singer Brad Delp of the rock group Boston, and Tom Snyder, whose "Tomorrow" show and "Late Late" show never failed to bring intelligence to late night television, which I saw a lot of during my youth. Late night television, that is.
   The marks left by these individuals on the culture have also been historic, to a degree. Kerr's scenes with Burt Lancaster in "From Here to Eternity" and with Yul Brynner in "The King and I" are indelibly etched in memory. Mailer and Vonnegut leave behind bodies of work that, while somewhat dated, will probably still be required reading by leftist academic professors well into the next century. Clark's perennial "A Christmas Story" runs as a 24 hour marathon on WTBS at Christmastime.
   These deaths stand in stark contrast to another class in Washington, D.C. that simply imagines itself possessed of some sort of creative capacity. A quick glance at the approval ratings of the Pelosi-Reid congress speaks for itself. Congressional gridlock is, in reality, a good thing. Congressional inertia is less than uncreative, it is downright dangerous, especially in these times.
   As for the recently departed, aside from Vonnegut and Mailer, I have no notion to their respective politics. But having seen the end results of their works, I can offer the belief that any sort of partisanship they might have carried around took a back seat when they were in the throes of the creative process. Let's hope that the political class comes to its own creative senses very soon and actually starts working together, even though the reality is that it will take the American electorate to bring that about.
   Let's also hope for a new wave of creation in the culture wars. Regardless of how soon it comes, it has a tough act to follow.