“I think if you see that no one is going to laugh at you for it, I think the concept of living nicely will be infectious. I believe there is room for the absence of cynicism. This is my final dream before I take the last cab.”
— Mitch Leigh, Broadway composer best knows for the music of “Man of La Mancha”-–and “The Impossible Dream,” of course, in an interview with the New York Times last year, quoted by the Washington Post in the obituary today for Leigh, who finally caught that cab.
The context of the quote was Leigh’s ad for a residential community he tried to launch on land he had bought in New Jersey. His ads seeking businesses and suburbanites requested that only nice people move in.
Leigh didn’t write the famous lyrics of “The Impossible Dream”—-Joe Darion did. He was clearly influenced by the song, however, beyond the fact that it made him rich. Maybe a society with less cynicism where people put a premium on being nice is an impossible dream; certainly the United States has been treavelling in the opposite direction. As an “unreachable star” to reach for, however, it’s not a bad one at all. In the Sixties, people were inspired by “The Impossible Dream.” Now pretty much everyone snickers at them.
You can’t convince me that’s progress.
“
Ethics Alarms 
One of the greatest songs ever!
I knew I could count on you to appreciate it!
Full Disclosure: It was the unofficial anthem of the 1967 Boston Red Sox, who won the American League pennant that year after finishing last the year before (sound familiar?), in the closest season-long pennant race in baseball history, on the lat day of the season…and gave me what will always be the best summer of my life.
One of my favrorite songs (and musicals).
We had a society in which “niceness” was a virtue – back when Manners were taught rigorously.
But along came the Cultural Revolutionaries. The “old ways” were automatically wrong, that meant Manners too. We won’t get that back with the prevailing attitudes engendered by the cultural revolution still guiding pop culture and politics.
Some may say that the cultural revolution was inevitable given the materialism born out of our economic success and now the only appropriate course is to develop a new set of manners applicable to the material age. But I shudder what those could be that doesn’t involve utter insularity of the individual (not to be confused with individualism).
I find his dream of a “nice” neighborhood somewhat fanciful, given the pretext of inviting only “nice” people.
a) everyone thinks they are nice (for the most part)
b) if his goal is for nice people to not be ashamed of being nice, then moving to a nice only neighborhood and thereby hiding from the non-nice people somewhat defeats the call to be unashamedly nice regardless of those around.
This dates me, but Man of La Mancha was my high school’s graduation theme the year I graduated. The Impossible Dream. My dad got more than a few chuckles over that. I still love the song and the soaring idealism it portrays.