E lee high

That 1985 concert – with the likes of Barbara Cook, Mandy Patinkin, Elaine Stritch, George Hearn and Lee Remick – is a milestone in the Sondheim annals. Burnett could still chuckle at the memory of her misapprehension as she reminisced last Sunday in an elegant meeting room at the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons in Northern Virginia. The next day, Signature Theatre would bestow on her its Stephen Sondheim Award, whose past recipients have included Angela Lansbury, Harold Prince, Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald.

The pandemic delayed the honoring of Burnett for two years, and then in November the revered Broadway composer died, at 91. One poignant result is that Burnett – who met Sondheim six decades ago, when both had just begun to make their marks – is the last person handpicked by Sondheim to receive the award.

Reminded of that fact, Burnett grew misty. Behind tinted glasses, she teared up. “I know, and it just breaks my heart,” she said of the turn of events. “I’m thrilled about this award, because he picked me.”

At 89, Burnett – a Broadway baby to her core but more lovingly remembered for “The Carol Burnett Show,” the hour-long variety show she headlined on CBS for 279 episodes from 1967 to 1978 – remains as sharp and engaging as ever. For the tribute to her that Signature orchestrated Monday night at the Capital One Hall in Tysons, the performers included Peters, the first person she ever asked to appear on the TV show, after seeing her in an off-Broadway musical, “Dames at Sea.”

“When no one else would have me, you hired me,” Peters recounted from the stage, after serenading Burnett with “Old Friends” from Sondheim and George Furth’s “Merrily We Roll Along.”

Friends of more recent vintage showed up, too: Tony-winning actor Santino Fontana, for whom Burnett flew in from California for his opening night in the stage version of “Tootsie,” and political satirist and social media sensation Randy Rainbow, with whom Burnett became email chums during the pandemic – and finally met him (and his mother, Gwen Rainbow) in person Monday night.

“We bonded,” Randy Rainbow told the crowd, “over our shared love of Sondheim and cats – the animal, not the musical.”

Burnett has an impressive trophy case filled with Emmys and Golden Globes and Kennedy Center Honors, but a Sondheim Award justifiably pegs her as in that inner circle of performers and directors and musicians whom the composer cherished. She famously emerged as a musical theater star in 1959, playing Princess Winnifred in “Once Upon a Mattress,” a spoof of “The Princess and the Pea” fairy tale, with music by Mary Rodgers, daughter of Richard. Her trademark song was the risible “Shy,” a misapplied adjective to both Winnifred and Burnett. (It was reprised Monday night by D.C. actress Awa Sal Secka.)

Burnett told me a story about just how not shy she was. Back in the mid-1950s, after she landed in New York, fresh from UCLA with the name of one Broadway actor with a tangential personal connection, Eddie Foy Jr., she showed up at the stage door of the St. James Theatre, where Foy was appearing in “The Pajama Game.” She talked her way in and after Foy finished the curtain call, met him and explained she would like to get an agent.

Foy politely indulged her, she recalled. “He said: ‘What do you? Do you sing?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m loud.’ He said, ‘Do you read music?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Do you dance?’ ‘I can jitterbug.’ He said, ‘Maybe I could get you the chorus.’ I said: ‘I’m really not good enough to do that. I think I’d have to have a featured role.’ ”

Her first encounter with Sondheim was in 1960. Burnett was rehearsing for a Thanksgiving TV special with Dick Van Dyke – she sang a number as a character who would become her trademark, the charwoman. “And this young man came up to me and introduced himself and said, ‘I’m Stephen Sondheim, and I really liked what you were doing.’ I had no idea who he was.” Only later would she realize that he wrote the musical whose run-through she and other Broadway actors had been invited to the previous year. That show was “Gypsy,” and he was its lyricist.

Their paths would converge to mutual benefit on her variety show, which she often used to feature his work. She sang “Broadway Baby” from “Follies” on one occasion; on another, she performed an 11-minute mini-musical built around “Side by Side by Side” from “Company” with Peters and Tony Roberts. Burnett ended that elaborate production number, set in a diner, with a spotlight on a large, autographed photo of Sondheim.

“It wasn’t like, ‘I’m gonna do this so you’ll know who Stephen Sondheim was,'” she explained. “I just did it because I love what he did.”

Over the years, their friendship deepened. Courtesy of that 1985 delivery of “I’m Still Here,” Burnett sealed a reputation as a leading Sondheim interpreter, a status reaffirmed by her casting, at the composer’s request, in the 1999 Sondheim revue “Putting It Together.” Staged by Signature’s former artistic director Eric Schaeffer, it ran on Broadway for 101 performances. Then again in 2005, she got the plum (and challenging) assignment of singing the eternally tongue-twisting “Getting Married Today” from “Company” at the star-studded 75th-birthday celebration for Sondheim at the Hollywood Bowl.

“It was hard, but I had time to learn it,” Burnett said of the song. “So that once you get it right, it’s in there. I even do it sometimes when I can’t go to sleep.”

You can tell that committing Sondheim’s lyrics to memory has been for Burnett a facet of a more profound commitment – just as he was committed to her. He spelled that out in a 2019 letter he had written to Signature in support of Burnett’s entry into the pantheon of Sondheim Award recipients, a letter read Monday night:

“We all know, Carol Burnett is a multitude of talents. To begin with, she can sing, and I mean sing! Her singing in fact is the most underrated gift she has. Then she can act, and not only that, sing and act at the same time, which is not as easy as it sounds. Especially if you also happen to be one of the funniest women alive. And then, of course, there’s her graciousness, which is one of the reasons that people love her as much as they do.”

Lately, Burnett’s public life has shifted from performance to reminiscence: Several times a year, she tours with a show that includes the question-and-answer format that memorably began each episode of “The Carol Burnett Show.” Remarkably, she said, YouTube and reruns on cable have kept her old TV show alive.

“A couple of years before the pandemic, there was a little boy in the second row who raised his hand that I called on,” Burnett recounted. “I said, ‘What’s your name?’ He said, ‘Andrew.’ And I said, ‘How old are you, Andrew?’ He said, ‘Nine.’ And I said, ‘You know who I am?’ And there was a pause, and he said, ‘Surprisingly, yes.’ ”

For right-wing activists who previously brought criticisms of critical race theory (CRT), diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and social emotional learning (SEL) to the forefront, it’s the latest acronym-based source of outrage to find a home at rallies, in conservative media and in legislatures.

ESG has yet to take hold as mainstream political messaging, but backlash against it is gaining steam. Last week, former Vice President Mike Pence attacked the concept during a speech in Houston. And on Wednesday, the same day he said on Twitter he planned to vote Republican, Elon Musk attacked it after Tesla lost its place on the S&P 500′s ESG Index. He called it a scam “weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”

The concept calls on investors to consider criteria such as environmental risk, pay equity or how transparent companies are in their accounting practices. Aided by recently proposed disclosure requirements and analysis from ratings agencies, they have adopted the principles to such an extent that those who use them control $16.6 trillion in investments held in the U.S.

In response, Republicans — historically known for supporting fewer regulations — are in many places attempting to impose new rules on investors. Their efforts reflect how members of the party are willing to distance themselves from big business to push back against those they see as ideological foes.

“I don’t think we’re the party of big business anymore. We’re the party of people — more specifically, we’re the party of working people. And the problem that we have is with big banks and corporations right now trying to dictate how we’re going to live our lives,” West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore said.

Opponents criticize ESG as politicized and a potentially costly diversion from purely financial investment principles, while advocates say considering the criteria more accurately accounts for risk and promises steadier returns.

“We focus on sustainability not because we’re environmentalists, but because we are capitalists and fiduciaries to our clients,” Larry Fink, CEO of investment firm BlackRock and a leading proponent, told clients in a letter this year.

But Moore and others including Utah’s Republican state treasurer Marlo Oaks argue favoring green investment over fossil fuels denies key industries access to the financial system and capital. They have targeted S&P Global Ratings for appending ESG scores to their traditional state credit ratings. They worry that without changes, their scores could make borrowing for projects like schools or roads costlier.

In an April letter, Oaks demanded S&P retract analysis that rated Utah as “moderately negative” in terms of environmental risk due to “long-term challenges regarding water supply, which could remain a constraint for its economy … given pervasive drought conditions in the western U.S.”

The letter was co-signed by the governor, legislative leaders and the state’s congressional delegation, including Sen. Mitt Romney, whose former firm Bain Capital calls ESG factors “strategic, fact-based and diligence-driven.” It said ratings system “attempts to legitimize a dubious and unproven exercise” and attacks the “unreliability and inherently political nature of ESG factors in investment decisions.”

Though he likened ESG to critical race theory, Oaks said he was mostly concerned with capital markets and what he called attempts by fossil fuel opponents to manipulate them by pressuring investors to pick businesses with high ESG scores.

“DEI, CRT, SEL. It can be hard to keep up with the acronyms,” he wrote on an economics blog last month, “but there’s a relatively new one you need to know: ESG.”

Investors making carbon neutral or net zero criteria common were, in effect, Oaks said, limiting access to capital for oil and gas businesses, hurting their returns and potentially contributing to gas price spikes.

In more than a dozen red states, officials dispute the idea that the energy transition underway could make fossil fuel-related investments riskier in the long term. They argue employing asset managers with a preference for green investments uses state funds to further agendas out of sync with constituents.

In statehouses, anti-green investing efforts are backed by conservative groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Heartland Institute, a think-tank skeptical of scientific consensus on human-caused climate change that has backed bills that either divest state funds from financial institutions that use ESG or forbid them from using it to score businesses or individuals.

In Texas, West Virginia and Kentucky, lawmakers have passed bills requiring state funds limit transactions with companies that shun fossil fuels. Wyoming considered banning “social credit scores” that evaluate businesses using criteria that differ from accounting and other financial metrics, like ESG

After conservative talk show host Glenn Beck visited the Idaho Statehouse and referred to ESG as critical race theory “on steroids,” the Legislature passed a law in March prohibiting investment of state funds in companies that prioritize commitments to ESG over returns.

The American Legislative Exchange Council recently published model policy that would subject banks managing state pensions to new regulations limiting investments driven by what it calls “social, political and ideological” goals.

Though the policy doesn’t mention it outright, Jonathan Williams, the group’s chief economist, said ESG’s mainstreaming amid broader trends of political correctness was a driving force. He said his research shows that incorporating factors beyond traditional financial metrics can lower the rate of return for already underfunded state pensions.

Sustainable investing advocates deny that charge and say considering the risks and realities of climate change amounts to responsible investing.

West Virginia and Arkansas recently divested their pension funds from BlackRock in response to the asset manager adding businesses with smaller carbon footprints to its portfolios. Moore, West Virginia’s treasurer, hopes more will follow.

Though it’s drawing enthusiasm, the green investment discourse differs from recurring debates over gender and sexuality or how history is taught. Both proponents and detractors acknowledged they’re surprised pensions, credit ratings and investment decisions have become campaign rally fodder.

Last month at the Utah state party’s convention, thousands of Republicans roared when Sen. Mike Lee described green investment in similar terms to critical race theory — another acronym-based foil: “Between CRT and ESG and MSNBC, we get way too much B.S.,” Lee said.

Bryan McGannon, a lobbyist with US SIF: The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment, said opponents were wrong in framing sustainable investing trends as political. If states refuse to reckon with how the future will likely rely less on fossil fuels and limit how environmental risk can be considered, he said, they’re making decisions with incomplete information.

“If a state’s not considering those risks, it may be a signal to an investor that this might not be a wise government to be putting our money with,” McGannon said. “Investors use a huge swath of information, and ESG is a piece of that mosaic.”

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Associated Press writers Stan Choe in New York and Lindsay Whitehurst in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.