One of the co-authors, Strauss, just died the other day.
Bill Strauss, 60; Political Insider Who Stepped Over
Into Comedy
By Joe Holley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday,
December 19, 2007; B05
Capitol Steps founder Bill Strauss was a Harvard-trained lawyer and Senate
subcommittee staffer when he broke through the chrysalis of Capitol Hill
conventionality to become a musical satirist.
Mr. Strauss, who died Dec. 18 of pancreatic cancer at his home in McLean,
recalled the breakthrough in a phone interview shortly before his death at age
60.
It was Memorial Day 1981, he said, and he was hosting a party that ended with
a jam session around the piano. Party-goers riffed on parodies of Reagan-era
newsmakers.
Mr. Strauss discovered that night that he had a facility for impromptu
silliness and satire. He began to wonder whether, at age 34, he might be able to
make a living at it, even though his only musical training was a stint in his
elementary school orchestra.
During the next several months, when not worrying about nuclear proliferation
and other weighty matters, he wrote musical parodies. Enlisting other musically
gifted Senate staffers, he scheduled the group's debut at the annual office
Christmas party of Sen. Charles Percy (R-Ill.), Mr. Strauss's employer.
The group christened itself the Capitol Steps, an allusion to the location of
a late-night amorous moment enjoyed by Rep. John W. Jenrette (D-S.C.) and his
wife, Rita.
Capitol Steps was a hit from the beginning. For the next few years, the group
performed regularly for free at parties and in church basements. "We were
clinging to our day jobs," co-founder Elaina Newport said. "Frankly, we were
trying not to get in trouble."
Today, Capitol Steps is still performing, although not in church basements.
It's a $3 million-a-year industry with more than 40 employees who sing and
satirize at venues across the country.
The group's success was "totally out of the blue," Mr. Strauss said. "Neither
I nor anyone else was expecting it."
Mr. Strauss's more serious side found _expression_ in six books he co-authored
about American generations and as co-founder of Cappies, a high school critics
and awards program. He also wrote three musicals -- "MaKiddo,"
"Stopscandal.com." and "Anasazi" -- and co-wrote with Newport two books of
satire, "Fools on the Hill" (1992) and "Sixteen Scandals" (2002).
"He packed several lifetimes into his 60 years," Newport said.
William Arthur Strauss was born in Chicago and spent most of his childhood in
Burlingame, Calif., in the San Francisco area. He was a Capitol page in 1963,
during his junior year in high school, and graduated from Harvard University in
1969. He received a law degree from Harvard Law School and a master's degree
from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, both in 1973, but knew from
his first semester in law school that he did not want to practice law. The
summer his classmates took the bar exam, he and his wife were on a 40-day
honeymoon trip across Africa.
The couple moved to Washington in 1973, and Mr. Strauss took a position as a
policy aide for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now Health and
Human Services). He moved the next year to the Presidential Clemency Board,
where he directed a research team writing a report on the impact of the Vietnam
War on the draft-eligible generation.
A year later, he and Larry Baskir co-wrote "Chance and Circumstance" (1978),
a book about the Vietnam-era draft. Their second book, "Reconciliation After
Vietnam" (1987), was said to have influenced President Jimmy Carter to issue a
blanket pardon to draft resisters.
Mr. Strauss worked at the Department of Energy from 1977 to 1979 and then was
offered the position of general counsel of the Selective Service System.
Political objections derailed the offer: Someone pointed out that in the preface
to "Chance and Circumstance," he had admitted helping a classmate eat enough to
be too heavy for the draft.
The day Mr. Strauss heard about his rejection, he learned of an opening as a
committee staffer with Percy. When Republicans took control of the Senate a year
later, in 1980, Mr. Strauss became chief counsel and staff director of the
Subcommittee on Energy, Nuclear Proliferation and Government Processes.
He had grown up listening to political satirists Tom Lehrer and Stan Freberg
and had written a few political poems in college, but making a living with
Capitol Steps was, in Mr. Strauss's words, "a big entrepreneurial leap."
He would never lack for material, however -- from Sen. Gary Hart and "Monkey
Business" to Vice President Dick Cheney ("The Angina Monologues"). In the late
1980s, he perfected his backwards talk routine, "Lirty Dies," just in time for
President Bill Clinton ("Clinton's Libido Loco") and Monica Lewinsky ("My Mama
Told Me: You'd Better Sleep Around").
Made up mostly of Republicans, with a few Democrats and independents -- "to
spread the blame a bit," Newport said -- the troupe, at Mr. Strauss's
insistence, has always tried to be equal-opportunity satirists. "Generally
people wanted to be in the show," he said, even when they were the ones being
spoofed.
As Capitol Steps was taking up more of his time, Mr. Strauss was exploring
American history through the cycle of generations. With co-author Neil Howe, he
wrote "Generations" (1991), "13th Gen" (1993), "The Fourth Turning: An American
Prophecy" (1998), "Millennials Rising" (1999), "Millennials Go to College"
(2003) and "Millennials and the Pop Culture" (2005).
In 1999, Mr. Strauss received a diagnosis of an aggressive strain of
pancreatic cancer. The diagnosis prompted him to form the high school Critics
and Awards Program, known as Cappies. "I decided this would be my calling,
performing less and concentrating on starting this program," he said.
Cappies arranges for high school students to attend and review each other's
shows, with top reviews published in local newspapers. Sixty Washington-area
schools are involved with the program, as well as 17 additional schools in the
United States and Canada. Top Cappies winners perform shows at the Kennedy
Center, and student creative teams, under Mr. Strauss's oversight, have written
two musicals. The most recent, "Senioritis," has been made into a movie that is
to be released in March.
"He had so many different projects in the air," said Judy Bowns, his Cappies
colleague for nine years, "and the amazing thing is that they were completed
with a standard of excellence that was mind-boggling."
Survivors include his wife of 34 years, Janie Strauss of McLean; four
children, Melanie Yee and Rebecca Strauss of McLean, Victoria Hays of Fairfax
County and Eric Strauss of Reston; and one
granddaughter.