Jazz pianist Garner / FRI 5-12-17 / Order repeated before hike / Record producer Pettibone / Civic animal / First lady after Lou / Beloved army leader

Constructor: Bill Clinton and Victor Fleming

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: sort of 

Theme answers:

• DON'T STOP / THINKING / ABOUT TOMORROW (lyrics from Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop," the (unofficial?) theme song of the Clinton/Gore 1992 US Presidential campaign
• "It's the ECONOMY, stupid!" (noted catchphrase of said campaign) 

NOTE:

Word of the Day: ERROLL Garner (44D: Jazz pianist Garner) —

Erroll Louis Garner (June 15, 1923 – January 2, 1977; some sources say 1921) was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His best-known composition, the ballad "Misty", has become a jazz standard. Scott Yanow of Allmusic calls him "one of the most distinctive of all pianists" and a "brilliant virtuoso". He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6363 Hollywood Blvd. (wikipedia)

Look, I voted for him twice, but this is not a very good puzzle and if I said it was I would get dragged from here to Natick and back because it's manifestly not. It's a vanity-theme puzzle masquerading as a Friday themeless. You wanna make a puzzle, make a *puzzle*—not whatever this winky, self-congratulatory thing is. It's not a satisfying themed puzzle, and it's really not a satisfying themeless. Neither fish nor fowl. Slightly inedible. I guess I briefly enjoyed noticing the Fleetwood Mac lyrics that are so closely associated with this puzzle's co-author's 1992 presidential campaign. Beyond that, there's not much to enjoy here, and deep in your heart (blue, red, purple, whatever color your heart is) you know it. This is a publicity stunt, as all these celeb co-authored puzzles are (though some have been better than others). Meanwhile, the quality of the puzzle on a day-to-day basis is way down, and (in a possibly related fact) constructor pay *languishes* at a dismal $300 (somewhat but not much more if you're a veteran constructor). I thought fair pay was an important issue for Democrats. Here's something from a recent WSJ article:

Last week, the New York Times reported a gain of 348,000 new subscribers—including 40,000 crossword-only subscribers—in the latest quarter.

And that's just since the 2016 election. To give you a sense of how badly constructors are paid, that bump *alone* (in crossword-*only* subscribers) would pay constructors fees for *all* constructors, *annually*, *many* *times* *over*.  It costs under $200K / year (!?!?!) to pay constructors right now. You don't wanna know what that represents as a slice of the NYT's overall crossword revenue, because that slice is nearly non-existent. At that level of inequity, I don't know why anyone even submits to the NYT any more, except for exposure or "prestige." So you see, Mr. President—it's the ECONOMY (I know better than to call you "stupid").

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]