His biography suggests an extraordinary life:
"Alan Stang was one of Mike Wallace’s original writers at Channel 13 in New York. A talk show host. In Los Angeles, he went head to head nightly with Larry King, and, according to Arbitron, had almost twice as many listeners. He was a foreign correspondent. Alan wrote hundreds of feature magazine articles in national magazines and some fifteen books, for which he has won many awards, including a citation from the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for journalistic excellence.
"One of Alan's exposés stopped a criminal attempt to seize control of New Mexico, where a gang seized a court house, held a judge hostage and killed a deputy. The scheme was close to success before Stang intervened. Another Stang exposé inspired major reforms in federal labor legislation.
"His first book, It’s Very Simple: The True Story of Civil Rights, was an instant best-seller. His first novel, The Highest Virtue, set in the Russian Revolution, won smashing reviews and five stars, top rating, from the West Coast Review of Books, which gave five stars in only one per cent of its reviews. 'Alan lectured in every American state and around the world and has guested on many top shows, including CNN’s Cross Fire."
On the day he died, Alan's family posted a column he wrote several months ago. It encompasses what made all his columns so appealing to us -- a belief in a powerful and loving God, intimately present in the affairs of man, a God whose passion continues through time, but a God who ultimately triumphs.
We believe this good knight and servant of the King is now in the presence of the one he served so well. His final post follows. May he rest in peace:
Why We Shall Win: How I Know
First there was Paul Potts. Even his name was prosaic, mundane. In America he would have been called Joe Shmo from Kokomo. When he walked out on stage in nearly dead England, viewers smirked. He was overweight and flabby, his manner diffident. He would have made a Savile Row suit look like a sack. He needed dental work. His job was selling mobile phones. Would you believe he hails from a place called Fishponds? I was watching because many email mentions of his name had inspired my curiosity. What on earth could this archetypical nerd do?
The smirks became groans when he told the Britain’s Got Talent panel he wanted to sing grand opera. His presence onstage was contradiction enough; now he had made it preposterous. Britain’s Got Talent, like its U.S. counterpart, “American Idol,” is the sanitized Anglo-Saxon version of the old Roman Colosseum, where competitors incapable of embarrassment offer themselves to be slain.
He named the aria he would do now: “Nessun Dorma.” No! “Nessun Dorma” is my favorite aria. I don’t know why. Maybe its electronic frequencies are sympathetic to my own. Whenever I hear it, an exquisite chill along my spine makes me shiver. What would this nerd do to it?
The music began. I cringed. Mobile phone salesman Paul Potts began to sing. And in an instant Paul Potts became Placido Domingo, tall, handsome, completely assured, and, most important, singing the beloved aria sublimely. The usual chill was shivering my spine. Surely this was a species of miracle and by now you know the rest of the story. Paolo Potts has become an international star.
Now here comes Susan Boyle, a name as prosaic as a number, as pedestrian as Paul Potts, like everything else about her. (Apologies to the rest of the empire’s Susan Boyles.) The poor lady lives alone with her cat. She is 47 “and that’s just one side of me,” but has never been kissed, maybe because her hair looked like what you use to scour a pan. The Salvation Army would have refused to sell her ensemble.
We do not need to belabor the rest of her appearance. The stout English words “frump” and “dowdy” suffice. So she was the female version of Paul, and vice versa. Like his, her lost figure was never coming back. Interviewed before she sang, she bumbled, tongue tied, like Paul. English eyeballs were rolling throughout the hall.
Susan said she wanted to be as successful as Elaine Paige. I had never heard of the lady. The even faster rolling eyeballs told me that she must be a super star. (Research reveals her to be exactly that.) Susan said she would sing “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Miserables.” But that song is a show stopper, requiring considerable expertise. If you don’t stop the show with it, you fail.
Many years ago, in the mists of antiquity, before most still living members of our species were born, I wrote a show at NBC in New York and routinely received tickets to Broadway opening nights. I was there at seventh row center when Pat Suzuki stopped the premiere of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Flower Drum Song” with her version of “I Enjoy Being a Girl.” In today’s corrosive atmosphere of belligerent lesbianism, would you believe that a New York audience would stop the show and give a standing ovation to a rendition of a song with such a title? It happened. I was there.
Now, Susan Boyle, who has never been kissed, was saying in effect that she would do something similar in dying England, where Britain’s Got Talent but little else. But by now, the audience was united against her. Who did this uppity twit think she was? Elaine Paige, indeed! The music started. Susan Boyle opened her mouth. Now the crowd would administer her comeuppance. She would fall on her face.
You saw what happened along with tens of millions of equally astounded You Tubers. In that magical moment, never been kissed Susan Boyle became Ethel Merman, the “Merm,” became Edith Piaf, for whom fifty million Frenchmen would happily have died; went nose to nose with gorgeous Elaine Paige. Susan Boyle “laid them in the aisles.” Had there been a show to stop, it would have stopped. In those few minutes she turned the audience completely around.
Piers Morgan, one of the panelists, said he was “stunned” and had never heard anything like it in three years on the show. Amanda Holden’s eyes were as big as easy over eggs. Her mouth fell open. I could see all the way back to her molars. Of course, Simon Cowell, ever the smart Alec, said he had expected something extraordinary and was right as usual.
In the beginning, of course, there was Rocky. Remember? A club fighter, a palooka, chosen by the Heavyweight Champion of the World to fight him merely because of his preposterous name. The “Italian Stallion?” A man who doesn’t know the difference between condoms and condominiums? You’re kidding, right? You seriously think you can get into the ring with the undisputed, the undefeated Apollo Creed, the one, the only Master of Disaster?
It was to be a public relations masterpiece Creed had concocted. He would give a local boy the American Dream. It would take place on Independence Day in Philadelphia, the birth place of the nation. Creed would enter the arena wearing a Yankee Doodle suit. He would carry the Stallion a few rounds, give the fans a good enough show and then put him away. Remember? We are talking about “Rocky I” and “II,” among the greatest movies ever made. So where am I going with all this?
God. God created Creation for His pleasure. How do we know that? Scripture. That is what it says. God has an exquisitely subtle sense of humor. He takes pleasure in astounding His creation. What is the theme that binds all my examples together? Remember, Piers Morgan says he was “stunned.” Something had happened that couldn’t happen, that defied the laws of physics. Any occurrence that defies the laws of physics is by definition a miracle.
Yes, Paolo and Susan are great voices. But there are other great voices. Had Placido Domingo and Elaine Paige walked on stage instead, we would have enjoyed their performances thoroughly, but we would not have been surprised. We would have expected them to be great. What stunned the world here was the momentary cancellation of physical laws. Who can cancel physical laws?
God erupts at the most unlikely times in the most unlikely places. Scripture tells of many times He temporarily suspended His own rules, the laws of physics. I believe that however bad it gets, He will do so again. However much dictatorship we suffer, He will confound it for His pleasure. Why? Because He can, because He is a God of endless, overwhelming, inexhaustible power. Please do not mistake me. I do not subscribe to a Pollyanna prediction that He will preserve us from discomfort.
To see what could easily happen, read, for instance, Tortured For Christ, by Rumanian pastor Richard Wurmbrand. God will not preserve us from discomfort, but, when it pleases Him, He will shake the Obamatron suppuration like dust from His shoes. But first we may have to spend a season in H-e-c-k that many will not survive.
For those who have ears to hear and eyes to see, God erupts in many ways that are apparent. For instance, I do not believe a thing like Beethoven could have happened by itself, by accident. The only sensible explanation for something like the Eroica, the Emperor and the rest is that God intervened, because Beethoven is the voice of God speaking through a man, which God sometimes elects to do. To underline His authorship, the Lord invoked His sense of humor by making Ludwig deaf.
Notice that the critics, the phony intellectuals, the worshippers of man have always disdained Rocky, a disdain compounded by his annoying habit of falling to his knees in prayer before the fight. I awaited such an expression concerning handsome Paolo Potts and the beautiful Miss Boyle.
And, sure enough, here comes the always reliable Slime magazine: “Ugly duckling stories really do not get any better than this. And Britain’s Got Talent milked them for all they were worth, cutting away to eye rolls and snickering by the audience and judges before the two wow-inducing performances. (Eye rolls and snickering, of course, can be taped at any time and edited in later, but never mind.) . . .”
Paolo and Susan tried and failed, tried and failed. Slime (Time) makes a point of the fact that they were not entirely untutored and untested, as if that obvious fact dilutes the effect. The story apparently would be unblemished for Slime only had they sprung fully matured from the temple of Zeus. Of course, Slime must be cautious in its disdain, because these new super stars are so well liked.
Of course they had some training and experience! That was obvious. So what? Without those things, their performances would have been impossible. Try it some time. To the normal mind, they enhance the story, along with Paul’s major bicycle accident and the fact that Susan had to care for her aging parents. She is an observant Catholic. Thank God she didn’t do a Rocky before her song. Would they have kicked her out?
Why are the phony intellectuals so disdainful? Why, for instance, do they still hate Rocky so much? Because Rocky and the others are what the twisted media publicly claim to revere but do not: individuals, mold breakers who rise up from the bottom and circumvent the orthodox, akin to scientific and inventive geniuses who lack academic credentials, not members of the tidy little group of approved Pharisees.
For such adventurers, today’s zombie “liberals” experience a visceral disgust. Raised in Communist schools to worship government, they do descend, as they say themselves, from monkeys – look at Ted Kennedy – unlike the rest of us, yet they worship themselves as gods. You want roller coaster terrifying? Imagine, say, Whoopi Goldberg worshipping herself, a monkey descendant worshipping a monkey.
But always, despite the horror satanic men have made of things, the spirit hovers, waiting, watching; God, total power, serene, inexhaustible, overwhelming power, preparing to confound them for His pleasure.
Rejoice! He rises!
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