Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH
The latest brouhaha over comments of Barack Obama taken out of context brought to mind those famous words Jack Nicholson’s character used in A FEW GOOD MEN.
Something like them have cropped up in many films, usually in the mouths of hardnosed, conservative, realists, as in the movie THE MISSING when a government official explains to Jack Lemmon’s character how without secret and often oppressive and violent actions by our government, us citizens wouldn’t enjoy the good life.
But in my experience, it’s exactly those hardnosed, conservative, so-called “realists” who can’t handle the truth. If it doesn’t fit into their ideology, they can’t believe it, no matter what the facts may be.
Because the fact is, Obama was telling the truth—as he has often done better and more clearly than most candidates in my lifetime. A truth that may come to permanently harm him politically, or not, but nonetheless true for that.
Any survey, let alone anecdotal accounts many of us know firsthand, will show that many working-class voters around the country, particularly in the rust belt, but to some extent everywhere, who have seen their lifestyles deteriorate as a result of the loss of industrial economy jobs to cheaper labor forces in Asia and Mexico and other lands, and their real wages worth no more than what they were in the 1970s, and their lifestyles permanently altered by the need for both spouses to work, and maybe have to work more than one job in order to afford a home and the cars necessary to get to those jobs, and all the other realities of the changes that have turned many in the so-called “middle class” into working poor or struggling-to-get-by-lower-“middle-class,” while the rich get richer, are “bitter” about the loss of those jobs and their once easier and more comfortable lifestyles.
And they often blame it on immigrants and on other "alien" groups, and on “liberals” who support immigrant rights, and the rights of all people. Alot of these working folks have been tricked into believing that the very champions of the kind of political and economic policies that have led to all this loss and downward economic spiral (most but not all in the rightwing of the Republican Party) are the candidates who best represent them because they believe in “family values” which often stands for “gun rights,” anti-abortion postures, and fundamentalist religious beliefs, and that even “free trade” is the fault of liberal politicians, or “out of touch” Washington political elites (who the rightwing Republicans have managed, incredibly well I have to admit, to still characterize as out-of-touch “liberals” even though it’s rightwing Republican elites that have dominated Washington politics for years now).
Obama was just telling it like it is, as he was in his speech on “race” relations in this country. His choice of the word “bitter” in his recent comments is what has been pounced on most, because it makes these people sound hardened and sour in ways they don’t see themselves, nor do any people I know want to be seen as.
But the reality is that is exactly what the Republican rightwing plugged into, under Nixon first, and continues to to this day—bitterness over the loss of an image, if not a reality, of what life in “America” once was or should be. The so-called “Silent Majority” of Nixon’s election campaigns were tricked into believing that the damn hippies and blacks and “East Coast elite” were responsible for whatever ails you.
Nixon’s camp was the first to use the whole “East Coast elite” label on Democratic Party liberals (as well as on some of their own party’s more moderate members), though the Eisenhower campaigns were the first to use the anti-intellectual angle (against Adlai Stevenson and the implied “intellectual elite” he belonged to). “Egghead” was one of the most potent putdowns of the “I like Ike” years.
A lot of Nixon’s strategy came out of his own bitterness over losing to JFK in 1960, (and being unsupported by Ike himself in that campaign). JFK was the poster child for East Coast elite liberals, except his war service, his commitment to helping those less fortunate than himself and his family, along with his obvious intelligence and charm made him a difficult target.
But once he was out of the picture (and later his brother, RFK, was taken out as well), and Nixon was in charge, his people made a point of attacking not just the “East Coast elite” as it was then characterized, and the “hippies” and blacks (the code words being “drug culture” and “uban crime”) but also higher education in the form of most liberal arts colleges and/or East Coast elite schools.
Nixon’s point man in this anti-intellectual, anti-higher “liberal arts” education was his vice president Spiro Agnew, until he got indicted on criminal charges. I remember these attacks well, because at the time I saw them for what they were, a response to the educational benefits of the G. I. Bill (which I was in college benefiting from) making higher education accessible to more people from working-class backgrounds, and the generally positive results of government supported public education at the lower levels, creating an up-and-coming generation of well-educated voters who could reason and weigh the facts in ways that made them less vulnerable to manipulation.
As working-class people without the benefits of those educations—products of poorer rural public schools or of parochial schools where the kind of Age of Enlightenment reasoning, logic, and belief in the scientific method, etc., were not taught, or if taught not encouraged to be applied to politics and religious beliefs (believe me, I tried and it didn’t work)—saw their lives worsen in many ways, it was easy, or at least possible, to exploit their fears and worries by turning them into resentment toward those who seemed to be getting some kind of “free lunch”—welfare “queens” etc.—or extra help—blacks immigrants, etc.—or just had it a lot easier and didn’t seem like their kind of people—“East Coast elites,” etc.
Now Hilary Clinton’s campaign is using those same kinds of tactics. I think I heard she told an audience over the weekend that she believes life begins at conception. Well, there’s certainly a case to be made that the fertilized egg is “alive,” as there is that the cells in my skin are.
But she seemed to be implying, for the first time as far as I know, that the “right to life” people have it correct, even though from her record and from other comments she’s made over the course of her life, she’s never believed that before. And she’s smart enough—in fact as I’ve said before, one of the smartest candidates, if not the smartest (in terms of classroom-style learning), in the race this year—to know that scientifically speaking, if you make a case to defend the right for a fertilized egg to be treated legally the same as a “human,” than you have to make the case that almost all living things be treated that way too, since almost all living things, creatures and plants, are more advanced on the human scale than a fertilized egg or an embryo etc.
Casting Obama’s remarks as “elitist” and meant only for a closed-door meeting of San Francisco sophisticates (read far-out lefties) may prove to be smart politics by the Clinton camp. But, as has been said by many, about her camp’s tactics in recent weeks—ever since it became clear that she could not win enough delegates to beat Obama—they are taking a page from the worst tactics of the rightwing Republicans that have done so much to turn politics into a game of deception.
That doesn’t change the reality that the eight years of the Bill Clinton administration were not just years of peace and prosperity, where almost every bad statistic in this country went down, and almost every good one went up (crime down, teenage pregnancies down, etc. income up, employment up, etc.), but were pretty good for the rest of the world too, though not all (Rawanda e.g.) and that a lot of that reality was a direct result of having a really smart president with a really smart cabinet.
The best example is when the Mexican money crisis hit, or the Asian economies started tanking, (as well as many other examples), the Clinton administration stepped in to bail them out with loans that were favorable enough to make sense, because they got how interrelated the world’s economies had become and knew if they didn’t step in it might mean chaos, or at least worldwide recession.
Bill Clinton’s critics warned of dire consequences (Mexico going bankrupt and taking us down with them, etc.). But Rubin and other Clinton advisors turned out to be correct and the world markets were put back on track and the peace and prosperity continued for us and for most of the rest of the world. Until Bush junior was “elected.”
Now, because of crony and lapdog appointments by junior, and the stated and obvious goal of his administration to reduce big government not by reducing its size (it has grown under this administration and actually was downsized by Clinton’s administration) but by making it as ineffectual as possible, resulting in no one minding the store when catastrophe hits, whether manmade or natural (9/11, Katrina, etc.). And now we have another catastrophe in the so-called “mortgage crisis,” which is actually a banking and investment crisis, and which is having a worldwide effect, as real estate prices begin to plummet everywhere, not just in the U.S.
Add to that the oil crisis. Not for the oil companies, which are making historic profits, i.e. greater profits than have ever been recorded in the history of the world (!) while the world economy sinks because of those prices (the food riots now being seen around the world are the result of rising food prices caused mostly by rising fuel prices etc.).
These are the issues the Democratic candidates should be talking about, not whether a man who has dedicated his life to helping the poor and the disenfranchised and the underrepresented and to healing the divisions that have prevented “America” from leading the world into the future (rather than causing the world to be dragged back into the violence and economic upheavals of the past) instead of taking a cushy job in a top law firm, is an “elitist.”
And besides, hasn’t it always been the supposedly hardnosed, conservative “realists” who defend elites, like the elite class of people who figure out how to manipulate the political and economic systems to enrich themselves and their cronies while the rest of the world goes to hell in a bitter haze of resentments and outrage over the possible loss of their belief systems to some imaginary assault on them by a “liberal elite,” that if it really existed would have ended this campaign by now.
Something like them have cropped up in many films, usually in the mouths of hardnosed, conservative, realists, as in the movie THE MISSING when a government official explains to Jack Lemmon’s character how without secret and often oppressive and violent actions by our government, us citizens wouldn’t enjoy the good life.
But in my experience, it’s exactly those hardnosed, conservative, so-called “realists” who can’t handle the truth. If it doesn’t fit into their ideology, they can’t believe it, no matter what the facts may be.
Because the fact is, Obama was telling the truth—as he has often done better and more clearly than most candidates in my lifetime. A truth that may come to permanently harm him politically, or not, but nonetheless true for that.
Any survey, let alone anecdotal accounts many of us know firsthand, will show that many working-class voters around the country, particularly in the rust belt, but to some extent everywhere, who have seen their lifestyles deteriorate as a result of the loss of industrial economy jobs to cheaper labor forces in Asia and Mexico and other lands, and their real wages worth no more than what they were in the 1970s, and their lifestyles permanently altered by the need for both spouses to work, and maybe have to work more than one job in order to afford a home and the cars necessary to get to those jobs, and all the other realities of the changes that have turned many in the so-called “middle class” into working poor or struggling-to-get-by-lower-“middle-class,” while the rich get richer, are “bitter” about the loss of those jobs and their once easier and more comfortable lifestyles.
And they often blame it on immigrants and on other "alien" groups, and on “liberals” who support immigrant rights, and the rights of all people. Alot of these working folks have been tricked into believing that the very champions of the kind of political and economic policies that have led to all this loss and downward economic spiral (most but not all in the rightwing of the Republican Party) are the candidates who best represent them because they believe in “family values” which often stands for “gun rights,” anti-abortion postures, and fundamentalist religious beliefs, and that even “free trade” is the fault of liberal politicians, or “out of touch” Washington political elites (who the rightwing Republicans have managed, incredibly well I have to admit, to still characterize as out-of-touch “liberals” even though it’s rightwing Republican elites that have dominated Washington politics for years now).
Obama was just telling it like it is, as he was in his speech on “race” relations in this country. His choice of the word “bitter” in his recent comments is what has been pounced on most, because it makes these people sound hardened and sour in ways they don’t see themselves, nor do any people I know want to be seen as.
But the reality is that is exactly what the Republican rightwing plugged into, under Nixon first, and continues to to this day—bitterness over the loss of an image, if not a reality, of what life in “America” once was or should be. The so-called “Silent Majority” of Nixon’s election campaigns were tricked into believing that the damn hippies and blacks and “East Coast elite” were responsible for whatever ails you.
Nixon’s camp was the first to use the whole “East Coast elite” label on Democratic Party liberals (as well as on some of their own party’s more moderate members), though the Eisenhower campaigns were the first to use the anti-intellectual angle (against Adlai Stevenson and the implied “intellectual elite” he belonged to). “Egghead” was one of the most potent putdowns of the “I like Ike” years.
A lot of Nixon’s strategy came out of his own bitterness over losing to JFK in 1960, (and being unsupported by Ike himself in that campaign). JFK was the poster child for East Coast elite liberals, except his war service, his commitment to helping those less fortunate than himself and his family, along with his obvious intelligence and charm made him a difficult target.
But once he was out of the picture (and later his brother, RFK, was taken out as well), and Nixon was in charge, his people made a point of attacking not just the “East Coast elite” as it was then characterized, and the “hippies” and blacks (the code words being “drug culture” and “uban crime”) but also higher education in the form of most liberal arts colleges and/or East Coast elite schools.
Nixon’s point man in this anti-intellectual, anti-higher “liberal arts” education was his vice president Spiro Agnew, until he got indicted on criminal charges. I remember these attacks well, because at the time I saw them for what they were, a response to the educational benefits of the G. I. Bill (which I was in college benefiting from) making higher education accessible to more people from working-class backgrounds, and the generally positive results of government supported public education at the lower levels, creating an up-and-coming generation of well-educated voters who could reason and weigh the facts in ways that made them less vulnerable to manipulation.
As working-class people without the benefits of those educations—products of poorer rural public schools or of parochial schools where the kind of Age of Enlightenment reasoning, logic, and belief in the scientific method, etc., were not taught, or if taught not encouraged to be applied to politics and religious beliefs (believe me, I tried and it didn’t work)—saw their lives worsen in many ways, it was easy, or at least possible, to exploit their fears and worries by turning them into resentment toward those who seemed to be getting some kind of “free lunch”—welfare “queens” etc.—or extra help—blacks immigrants, etc.—or just had it a lot easier and didn’t seem like their kind of people—“East Coast elites,” etc.
Now Hilary Clinton’s campaign is using those same kinds of tactics. I think I heard she told an audience over the weekend that she believes life begins at conception. Well, there’s certainly a case to be made that the fertilized egg is “alive,” as there is that the cells in my skin are.
But she seemed to be implying, for the first time as far as I know, that the “right to life” people have it correct, even though from her record and from other comments she’s made over the course of her life, she’s never believed that before. And she’s smart enough—in fact as I’ve said before, one of the smartest candidates, if not the smartest (in terms of classroom-style learning), in the race this year—to know that scientifically speaking, if you make a case to defend the right for a fertilized egg to be treated legally the same as a “human,” than you have to make the case that almost all living things be treated that way too, since almost all living things, creatures and plants, are more advanced on the human scale than a fertilized egg or an embryo etc.
Casting Obama’s remarks as “elitist” and meant only for a closed-door meeting of San Francisco sophisticates (read far-out lefties) may prove to be smart politics by the Clinton camp. But, as has been said by many, about her camp’s tactics in recent weeks—ever since it became clear that she could not win enough delegates to beat Obama—they are taking a page from the worst tactics of the rightwing Republicans that have done so much to turn politics into a game of deception.
That doesn’t change the reality that the eight years of the Bill Clinton administration were not just years of peace and prosperity, where almost every bad statistic in this country went down, and almost every good one went up (crime down, teenage pregnancies down, etc. income up, employment up, etc.), but were pretty good for the rest of the world too, though not all (Rawanda e.g.) and that a lot of that reality was a direct result of having a really smart president with a really smart cabinet.
The best example is when the Mexican money crisis hit, or the Asian economies started tanking, (as well as many other examples), the Clinton administration stepped in to bail them out with loans that were favorable enough to make sense, because they got how interrelated the world’s economies had become and knew if they didn’t step in it might mean chaos, or at least worldwide recession.
Bill Clinton’s critics warned of dire consequences (Mexico going bankrupt and taking us down with them, etc.). But Rubin and other Clinton advisors turned out to be correct and the world markets were put back on track and the peace and prosperity continued for us and for most of the rest of the world. Until Bush junior was “elected.”
Now, because of crony and lapdog appointments by junior, and the stated and obvious goal of his administration to reduce big government not by reducing its size (it has grown under this administration and actually was downsized by Clinton’s administration) but by making it as ineffectual as possible, resulting in no one minding the store when catastrophe hits, whether manmade or natural (9/11, Katrina, etc.). And now we have another catastrophe in the so-called “mortgage crisis,” which is actually a banking and investment crisis, and which is having a worldwide effect, as real estate prices begin to plummet everywhere, not just in the U.S.
Add to that the oil crisis. Not for the oil companies, which are making historic profits, i.e. greater profits than have ever been recorded in the history of the world (!) while the world economy sinks because of those prices (the food riots now being seen around the world are the result of rising food prices caused mostly by rising fuel prices etc.).
These are the issues the Democratic candidates should be talking about, not whether a man who has dedicated his life to helping the poor and the disenfranchised and the underrepresented and to healing the divisions that have prevented “America” from leading the world into the future (rather than causing the world to be dragged back into the violence and economic upheavals of the past) instead of taking a cushy job in a top law firm, is an “elitist.”
And besides, hasn’t it always been the supposedly hardnosed, conservative “realists” who defend elites, like the elite class of people who figure out how to manipulate the political and economic systems to enrich themselves and their cronies while the rest of the world goes to hell in a bitter haze of resentments and outrage over the possible loss of their belief systems to some imaginary assault on them by a “liberal elite,” that if it really existed would have ended this campaign by now.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
JOE BRAINARD’S NANCY
THE SHOW:
It’s called “Joe Brainard The Nancys,” and it’s at Tibor De Nagy Gallery, 724 Fifth Avenue in New York City, until May 17th.
If you are anywhere near Manhattan in the next few weeks, catch this show.
It’s a small one, taking up only one small room of the gallery space, with probably less than thirty pieces in it. But it captures so much of what makes Brainard’s art uniquely delightful, as well as surprisingly challenging.
The “Nancy” of the title is the cartoon character created by the Bronx native Ernie Bushmiller in the 1940s (descended from an earlier newspaper cartoon series he had taken over, which starred the once flapper Fritzi, who became Nancy’s stylish Aunt in the “Nancy” series of cartoons that were very popular when Branaird—and I—were boys.
Joe began using Nancy’s image in his art of the early 1960s, but it was a series of “IF NANCY WERE…” pieces done in 1972 and an oil dypitch in ’74, that defined his art through the appropriation of the Nancy figure in ways that no other collection of his work could do as well or as completely, to my mind.
There’s collages (Nancy waving to us as she pops out of an empty pack of Tareyton cigarettes—Joe’s brand), throw aways (IF NANCY WAS JUST AN OLD KLEENEX—her image coaxed out of stains and curves of a crumpled up old Kleenex tissue, that you have to see in person to appreciate not just the whimsy of, but the skill of, and the subtly disturbing image of, and possibly message of as well, though I doubt Joe would have agreed with the latter), pastels and ink drawings, gouaches and etchings and graphite drawings (including several versions of how De Kooning might have depicted her), and two oil paintings (that form a diptych and put to rest any doubts about Joe’s work with oils, including his own).
THE BOOK:
It’s called The Nancy Book, and is published, and very beautifully, by a new press, Siglio. And it too is well worth checking out.
It not only contains more Nancy art of Joe’s than the show does (including several collaborations with various poets, e.g. Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, Robert Creeley, Ted Berrigan, etc.) but it also contains some of Joe’s writing about, or including, Nancy, and two essays about Joe’s Nancy art by two of his good friends, the poets Ann Lauterbach and Ron Padgett.
Ann’s essay is the more comprehensive and a good introduction not just to Joe Brainard’s Nancy art, but to his art and writing in general. She has some great insights into Joe’s use of Nancy as an icon to be played with and played off of, and some fine contextualizing, as they say, of the work.
One of the things she mentions, is Joe’s not doing much artwork (I think she says none, though I know that’s not entirely true) in the last fifteen years of his life, and, in my experience with him, making that decision in part because he felt he had failed to achieve the kind of art-world greatness that others had, or that he had envisioned for himself.
Ever since his death, over a decade ago, I’ve felt sorry that he hadn’t lived to see the outpouring of not just appreciation for his work (in every sense of the word, the prices have been rising steadily for one sign of increased value, at least in the eyes of collectors) but of genuine affection, even from those who never knew him.
His art was playful, and personal, in a way that was easily dismissed by the more serious practitioners of art-world politics and arbiters of art-world rankings. Unfortunately, Joe sometimes fell victim to judging his work through the eyes of others who didn’t get it the way the rest of us who always loved his work have always “got” it.
But Ann Lauterbach helps not only clarify the challenge for those approaching his work for the first time, despite its accessibility, but also the challenge to the art world to get it right, Joe Brainard’s place in their pantheon. A well deserved place, as time only continues to bear out.
And Ron Padgett’s essay—coming from one of Joe’s friends who knew him the longest, and has written the definitive memoir about him, called simply JOE (Coffee House Press) is shorter—I assume not to duplicate some of Ann Lauterbach’s explication, but his added comments on some of the realities of their shared boyhood that are relevant to Joe’s use of Nancy in his work, and his intimate knowledge of Joe’s life, make his essay equally enlightening.
The whole book is just one of those treasures that contain more than a book ever seemed intended to, and yet seem to fulfill what books ideally are most suited for.
I mean it’s a pleasure to read it, to spend time with the art work reproduced in it, to have my own little conversation with the contributors to it, as well as with the spirit of Joe himself, and to just simply hold it in my hands and feel the heft, the weight of its contents and importance, at least in my library, and sooner or later, hopefully, the rest of the world’s.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP?
Caught WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP recently on TV with my ten-year-old. We had to cut away during some scenes, but it was mostly just broad comedy with broad stereotypes being held up for ridicule, or to make some broader point about racism and ethnicity and stereotypes.
But as good as everyone was in it (Woody Harrelson, Wesley Snipes, Rosie Perez, Tyra Ferrell, et. al.) and as well intentioned as the humor seemed to be, it was totally outdated. I remember how funny it was when it first came out, and it still has its moments, but mostly it just seems like a movie that couldn’t be made anymore, because the stereotypes it’s based on we’re finally outgrowing.
And what a good thing.
Obama is on to something, whether he wins or not. Jokes about the basketball prowess of African-Americans may have been radically honest even ten years ago, but today, with the internationalization of basketball—as well as more visibility for so many super successful African-Americans in a broad spectrum of endeavors—they seem lame and beside the point. As do most of the other stereotypes in and out of this movie that have been fodder for entertainment and politics and niche causes etc. for too long.
The boundaries are shifting, the definitions becoming more difficult to pin down, or pin on to the specific. Like Obama. Or Hilary, for that matter. She’s more conservative than most liberals, more dependent on her relationship with her man than the label “feminist” used to imply. She’s ebullient one moment and stiffly withdrawn the next, critical and almost seemingly bitter, then joyful and seemingly grateful, even humble, then defiant, even arrogant.
Obama is even less definitive of some stereotypical man, or African-American, or even mixed-race American, for which the stereotype has yet to be satirized as successfully as Woody Harrelson’s white-man-without-a-clue (he could so play Bush junior in the story of the president without a clue).
Not that the stereotypes still don’t apply in some instances, some experiences, some expressions of an individual’s humanity. But the broader outlines of a more globalized concept of individuality, no matter how consumerized, is prevalent today in a way that cannot be denied, nor stopped.
That’s part of what Obama appeals to in his supporters, the way I see it. And the more those old stereotypes are broken down the better. It doesn’t change the fact that there are still too many “black” American men in prison (and still too many “Americans” in prison in this country period).
It doesn’t change the fact that a way too high percentage of “black Americans” are unemployed, or underemployed, or suffering from the kind of poverty that a country this wealthy and advanced should have wiped out generations ago (especially since less wealthy countries have managed to do it). Or that a lesser percentage of “white Americans” but a higher actual number still suffer from poverty as well (e.g. as I’ve pointed out before, we’re so far down the list in health care compared to other industrialized countries, we’re behind Latvia in infant mortality rates, etc.).
It just means any art that is based on skewering “reality,” or on honesty that’s so blunt it’s shocking and/or humorous, can’t rely on what seemed brutally honest only ten years ago, even five for that matter. For my taste, those kind of racial clichés were already out of date decades ago when I was writing letters to the editors of The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times every time someone wrote about “young black boys” having “no role models” other than “the pimps and drug dealers and gansta rappers” etc.
I wrote many a letter about how insulting it is to those—“black” and “white”—who risked their lives, and in some cases lost them, for the cause of ending the kinds of legal and extralegal segregation and oppression and inequality that still permeated society when I was coming up. To ignore the fact that there was an African-American Supreme Court justice before there was an Italian or woman, and the other ethnicities and categories that have yet to have a Supreme Court judge from their ranks, or to ignore the other obvious successes across the worlds of politics and business and sports and entertainment, etc. was to insult, as I said, all those who risked their lives in the fight to make that all possible.
If a young “black” man doesn’t have any “black” role models other than the various forms of “gangsta” culture, then that just means he hasn’t watched a TV show (even the ones that feature “rap” show more of the world than that narrow view) let alone been exposed to anything outside the world of that contrived image.
It ain’t true, despite the gangs and prison corralling of young black men. What’s true is that government policies of this administration, and previous ones to some extent, have created the corporate friendly atmosphere that has allowed the prison system to develop in ways that feed that system’s privatization and necessary need for more “clients,” and the “war on drugs” is happy to funnel bodies into that system.
And yes, it’s racist in that a much higher percentage of young black men get much longer sentences for drug offences than do most whites. (I just heard of a case yesterday of a white male I know being caught with a lot of cocaine in separate baggies after totaling his car, the way I heard it. He is getting a break because it is his first offense. Most “black” men would end up with decades of prison time for such an offense.) And within the system itself, there is a further fueling of racism by the lack of programs and serious effort to actually do some rehabilitation and education, and of enough guards and other personnel, so that prisoners need the protection of ethnically and racially segregated groups to survive. Etc.
And yes that carries over into the whole “gangsta” image and projection into the culture in general, and unfortunately too often into the standards of even well educated young black men (and women to a lesser extent) from financially-secure family backgrounds (as it often does for young white men, though usually with less harsh outcomes).
Nonetheless, we are rapidly becoming the multi-cultural society some have been claiming we already were. And Obama represents that inevitability more than the other candidates, and with a style, as well as substance, to his politics that prove, to my mind, he is the right person for these times.
Not all “black” men can jump, and some white men have proven they certainly can jump, as some women of all shades have also proven. What Hilary and Barack have both done with their very viable candidacies for the office of president is prove it’s a new world, and welcome to it.
But as good as everyone was in it (Woody Harrelson, Wesley Snipes, Rosie Perez, Tyra Ferrell, et. al.) and as well intentioned as the humor seemed to be, it was totally outdated. I remember how funny it was when it first came out, and it still has its moments, but mostly it just seems like a movie that couldn’t be made anymore, because the stereotypes it’s based on we’re finally outgrowing.
And what a good thing.
Obama is on to something, whether he wins or not. Jokes about the basketball prowess of African-Americans may have been radically honest even ten years ago, but today, with the internationalization of basketball—as well as more visibility for so many super successful African-Americans in a broad spectrum of endeavors—they seem lame and beside the point. As do most of the other stereotypes in and out of this movie that have been fodder for entertainment and politics and niche causes etc. for too long.
The boundaries are shifting, the definitions becoming more difficult to pin down, or pin on to the specific. Like Obama. Or Hilary, for that matter. She’s more conservative than most liberals, more dependent on her relationship with her man than the label “feminist” used to imply. She’s ebullient one moment and stiffly withdrawn the next, critical and almost seemingly bitter, then joyful and seemingly grateful, even humble, then defiant, even arrogant.
Obama is even less definitive of some stereotypical man, or African-American, or even mixed-race American, for which the stereotype has yet to be satirized as successfully as Woody Harrelson’s white-man-without-a-clue (he could so play Bush junior in the story of the president without a clue).
Not that the stereotypes still don’t apply in some instances, some experiences, some expressions of an individual’s humanity. But the broader outlines of a more globalized concept of individuality, no matter how consumerized, is prevalent today in a way that cannot be denied, nor stopped.
That’s part of what Obama appeals to in his supporters, the way I see it. And the more those old stereotypes are broken down the better. It doesn’t change the fact that there are still too many “black” American men in prison (and still too many “Americans” in prison in this country period).
It doesn’t change the fact that a way too high percentage of “black Americans” are unemployed, or underemployed, or suffering from the kind of poverty that a country this wealthy and advanced should have wiped out generations ago (especially since less wealthy countries have managed to do it). Or that a lesser percentage of “white Americans” but a higher actual number still suffer from poverty as well (e.g. as I’ve pointed out before, we’re so far down the list in health care compared to other industrialized countries, we’re behind Latvia in infant mortality rates, etc.).
It just means any art that is based on skewering “reality,” or on honesty that’s so blunt it’s shocking and/or humorous, can’t rely on what seemed brutally honest only ten years ago, even five for that matter. For my taste, those kind of racial clichés were already out of date decades ago when I was writing letters to the editors of The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times every time someone wrote about “young black boys” having “no role models” other than “the pimps and drug dealers and gansta rappers” etc.
I wrote many a letter about how insulting it is to those—“black” and “white”—who risked their lives, and in some cases lost them, for the cause of ending the kinds of legal and extralegal segregation and oppression and inequality that still permeated society when I was coming up. To ignore the fact that there was an African-American Supreme Court justice before there was an Italian or woman, and the other ethnicities and categories that have yet to have a Supreme Court judge from their ranks, or to ignore the other obvious successes across the worlds of politics and business and sports and entertainment, etc. was to insult, as I said, all those who risked their lives in the fight to make that all possible.
If a young “black” man doesn’t have any “black” role models other than the various forms of “gangsta” culture, then that just means he hasn’t watched a TV show (even the ones that feature “rap” show more of the world than that narrow view) let alone been exposed to anything outside the world of that contrived image.
It ain’t true, despite the gangs and prison corralling of young black men. What’s true is that government policies of this administration, and previous ones to some extent, have created the corporate friendly atmosphere that has allowed the prison system to develop in ways that feed that system’s privatization and necessary need for more “clients,” and the “war on drugs” is happy to funnel bodies into that system.
And yes, it’s racist in that a much higher percentage of young black men get much longer sentences for drug offences than do most whites. (I just heard of a case yesterday of a white male I know being caught with a lot of cocaine in separate baggies after totaling his car, the way I heard it. He is getting a break because it is his first offense. Most “black” men would end up with decades of prison time for such an offense.) And within the system itself, there is a further fueling of racism by the lack of programs and serious effort to actually do some rehabilitation and education, and of enough guards and other personnel, so that prisoners need the protection of ethnically and racially segregated groups to survive. Etc.
And yes that carries over into the whole “gangsta” image and projection into the culture in general, and unfortunately too often into the standards of even well educated young black men (and women to a lesser extent) from financially-secure family backgrounds (as it often does for young white men, though usually with less harsh outcomes).
Nonetheless, we are rapidly becoming the multi-cultural society some have been claiming we already were. And Obama represents that inevitability more than the other candidates, and with a style, as well as substance, to his politics that prove, to my mind, he is the right person for these times.
Not all “black” men can jump, and some white men have proven they certainly can jump, as some women of all shades have also proven. What Hilary and Barack have both done with their very viable candidacies for the office of president is prove it’s a new world, and welcome to it.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
NOT TO BE OVERLOOKED OR FORGOTTEN RECORDINGS
I don’t have an iPod yet, but my ten-year-old son does. I watch him downloading singles and remember when I was just a little older than him getting one of those new little 45 record players that were almost like toys and beginning my collection of 45s.
Thinking about 45 singles, as opposed to the long-playing records that became my obsession when I got older, and CDs in recent years, I began to consider what I might compile on an iPod if and when I get one.
That led me to last night, when having been woken up by the usual garbage collection commotion around 4AM, I tried making an alphabet list of recordings of individual songs that others might have forgotten or not be aware of, because they were either made by relatively unknown artists or are lesser known recordings by well-known artists.
In other words, obscure recordings that deserve, in my opinion, to be better known. This is what I came up with before I was in dreamland again (I wonder if most of these can even be found to download on an iPod):
ALORS ALLEZ performed by Disturbed Furniture (on a 45 from the NYC c. 1980 punk/new wave short-lived band, I knew the lead singer, Alexa Hunter, from an independent film we acted in together and saw them live at The Roxy back then and totally dug their sound)
BLUE MOON sung by Elvis Presley (on THE SUN SESSIONS CD, though I first heard it on his first RCA Victor album put out as two 45s in a folding cardboard “album”—it’s the song on which he does a kind of falsetto cross between yodeling and croon-scatting)
COUNTRY FIDDLE—C, THE played by Pete Seeger (banjo) and Jean Carignan (fiddle) (from the INDIAN SUMMER soundtrack LP)
DARK MOON, HIGH TIDE performed by Afro Celt Sound System (on the soundtrack for GANGS OF NEW YORK and probably on one of their CDs)
EVERYTHING HAPPENS TO ME sung by Frank Sinatra (the original 78 recording, when he was still almost a kid and sounded like it)
FAMINE spoken/sung/rapped by Sinead O’Connor (don’t remember which CD it’s on, but it’s almost all the Irish history lesson you’ll ever need, simply brilliant)
GUESS I’LL GO BACK HOME THIS SUMMER performed by The Glen Miller Orchestra (I think that’s the title, as sung on the original 78 recording by the great saxman and vocalist Tex Benecke, it’s about as poignant a heartbreaker anyone could ever sing jauntily, from a Great Depression/WWII perspective that gets me every time)
HOME COOKING performed by Spanish Kitchen (I love the bass groove on this 45, and not just because my oldest son Miles is playing it)
I’M GLAD I’M PREPARED FOR THE RECESSION sung by Terence Winch backed by The Fast Flying Vestibule (the brothers Winch band before they created the original Celtic Thunder, Terence wrote this tune back in the 1970s but it still applies), and I have to add one of the best original songs I’ve heard in the last decade or so that my daughter Caitlin turned me on to: Cheryl Wheeler’s rap/talking blues tune IF IT WERE UP TO ME (from her SYLVIA HOTEL CD)
MARAT WE’RE POOR sung by the cast of Peter Weiss’s MARAT/SADE as it was known in shorthand (from the 1966 cast-recording album, THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE and as good an expression of one aspect of the spirit of the 1960s protest years as anything else, though so much more than that too)
NEARNESS OF YOU, THE played by Nat Adderly (on his LP, NAT TO THE IVY LEAGUE, in which he “samples” old style—in other words he “quotes,” on his cornet, phrases from other songs, other musicians’ improvisations, and, in this case also TV commercials—it is a tour de force and defines for me one of the key elements of jazz improvisation)
O NOSSO AMOR played by Antonio Carlos Jobim and many others (all the several versions of this tune on the soundtrack of BLACK ORPHEUS, though the sweet MANHA DE CARNAVAL is the more memorable tune from this film in many ways, and I also love it, O NOSSO AMOR is the life of the film and a rousing expression of its spirit)
PISS FACTORY spoken/rapped/sung by Patti Smith (her first recording, put out on a 45 from the unfortunately now defunct best NYC literary bookstore, The Gotham Book Mart—or at least backed by them, as I remember it—c. mid-‘70s, it’s almost proto-rap, or a talking blues, about working in a South Jersey factory before she headed for the big city)
QUIET MAN THEME, THE played by the studio orchestra I assume (from the soundtrack, which I could never get a copy of so have to just dig it from the movie when it’s on; I guess I could buy the DVD and record it from there, and also find out who’s performing it for sure)
RED IS THE ROSE performed by Irish Fire (this traditional Irish tune as sung by Dominick Murray and Grace Griffith with both playing guitar I think and Dave Abe on fiddle is about as poignant a heartbreaker as the Irish can come up with, from their self-named CD IRISH FIRE)
SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE A MOTHERLESS CHILD played by Charlie Haden (bass of course) and Hank Jones (ditto piano) (from their STEAL AWAY duet CD of “spirituals, hymns and folk songs,” one of the all time great jazz and spiritual recordings ever, and a unique combo)
TOO MANY CREEPS performed by THE BUSH TETRAS (on a 45 by the NYC downtown all female punk band c. late ‘70s)
UNION STATION sung by Joe Stork backed by The Fast Flying Vestibule (the title song from the only FFV LP, UNION STATION, another tune written by Terence Winch, and as you can tell I’ve been listening to his early records lately)
VIVA LA VIDA performed by Trio Marimberos (from the FRIDA film soundtrack)
WHO FEELS IT KNOWS IT sung by Rita Marley (from the only LP I remember of hers, although I’m sure there was more than one, but I can’t remember the name of the album)
X?
YSABEL’S TABLE DANCE played (and composed) by Charlie Mingus and a host of great musical talents, including Ysabel Morel on castinets (from his TIJUANA MOODS LP)
ZIPPITY-DOO-DAH sung by Johnny Mercer, one of the few songs he recorded that he didn’t write the lyrics to (from the first “record album” I ever owned, the soundtrack songs from SONG OF THE SOUTH on 78 recordings in sleeves in an actual “album,” a gift when I was a little boy that I never forgot, despite the later criticism of that film as politically incorrect)
If you can download any of these, I’d be very surprised if most of you aren’t either delighted, moved, and/or thoroughly engaged by these performances.
Thinking about 45 singles, as opposed to the long-playing records that became my obsession when I got older, and CDs in recent years, I began to consider what I might compile on an iPod if and when I get one.
That led me to last night, when having been woken up by the usual garbage collection commotion around 4AM, I tried making an alphabet list of recordings of individual songs that others might have forgotten or not be aware of, because they were either made by relatively unknown artists or are lesser known recordings by well-known artists.
In other words, obscure recordings that deserve, in my opinion, to be better known. This is what I came up with before I was in dreamland again (I wonder if most of these can even be found to download on an iPod):
ALORS ALLEZ performed by Disturbed Furniture (on a 45 from the NYC c. 1980 punk/new wave short-lived band, I knew the lead singer, Alexa Hunter, from an independent film we acted in together and saw them live at The Roxy back then and totally dug their sound)
BLUE MOON sung by Elvis Presley (on THE SUN SESSIONS CD, though I first heard it on his first RCA Victor album put out as two 45s in a folding cardboard “album”—it’s the song on which he does a kind of falsetto cross between yodeling and croon-scatting)
COUNTRY FIDDLE—C, THE played by Pete Seeger (banjo) and Jean Carignan (fiddle) (from the INDIAN SUMMER soundtrack LP)
DARK MOON, HIGH TIDE performed by Afro Celt Sound System (on the soundtrack for GANGS OF NEW YORK and probably on one of their CDs)
EVERYTHING HAPPENS TO ME sung by Frank Sinatra (the original 78 recording, when he was still almost a kid and sounded like it)
FAMINE spoken/sung/rapped by Sinead O’Connor (don’t remember which CD it’s on, but it’s almost all the Irish history lesson you’ll ever need, simply brilliant)
GUESS I’LL GO BACK HOME THIS SUMMER performed by The Glen Miller Orchestra (I think that’s the title, as sung on the original 78 recording by the great saxman and vocalist Tex Benecke, it’s about as poignant a heartbreaker anyone could ever sing jauntily, from a Great Depression/WWII perspective that gets me every time)
HOME COOKING performed by Spanish Kitchen (I love the bass groove on this 45, and not just because my oldest son Miles is playing it)
I’M GLAD I’M PREPARED FOR THE RECESSION sung by Terence Winch backed by The Fast Flying Vestibule (the brothers Winch band before they created the original Celtic Thunder, Terence wrote this tune back in the 1970s but it still applies), and I have to add one of the best original songs I’ve heard in the last decade or so that my daughter Caitlin turned me on to: Cheryl Wheeler’s rap/talking blues tune IF IT WERE UP TO ME (from her SYLVIA HOTEL CD)
MARAT WE’RE POOR sung by the cast of Peter Weiss’s MARAT/SADE as it was known in shorthand (from the 1966 cast-recording album, THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE and as good an expression of one aspect of the spirit of the 1960s protest years as anything else, though so much more than that too)
NEARNESS OF YOU, THE played by Nat Adderly (on his LP, NAT TO THE IVY LEAGUE, in which he “samples” old style—in other words he “quotes,” on his cornet, phrases from other songs, other musicians’ improvisations, and, in this case also TV commercials—it is a tour de force and defines for me one of the key elements of jazz improvisation)
O NOSSO AMOR played by Antonio Carlos Jobim and many others (all the several versions of this tune on the soundtrack of BLACK ORPHEUS, though the sweet MANHA DE CARNAVAL is the more memorable tune from this film in many ways, and I also love it, O NOSSO AMOR is the life of the film and a rousing expression of its spirit)
PISS FACTORY spoken/rapped/sung by Patti Smith (her first recording, put out on a 45 from the unfortunately now defunct best NYC literary bookstore, The Gotham Book Mart—or at least backed by them, as I remember it—c. mid-‘70s, it’s almost proto-rap, or a talking blues, about working in a South Jersey factory before she headed for the big city)
QUIET MAN THEME, THE played by the studio orchestra I assume (from the soundtrack, which I could never get a copy of so have to just dig it from the movie when it’s on; I guess I could buy the DVD and record it from there, and also find out who’s performing it for sure)
RED IS THE ROSE performed by Irish Fire (this traditional Irish tune as sung by Dominick Murray and Grace Griffith with both playing guitar I think and Dave Abe on fiddle is about as poignant a heartbreaker as the Irish can come up with, from their self-named CD IRISH FIRE)
SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE A MOTHERLESS CHILD played by Charlie Haden (bass of course) and Hank Jones (ditto piano) (from their STEAL AWAY duet CD of “spirituals, hymns and folk songs,” one of the all time great jazz and spiritual recordings ever, and a unique combo)
TOO MANY CREEPS performed by THE BUSH TETRAS (on a 45 by the NYC downtown all female punk band c. late ‘70s)
UNION STATION sung by Joe Stork backed by The Fast Flying Vestibule (the title song from the only FFV LP, UNION STATION, another tune written by Terence Winch, and as you can tell I’ve been listening to his early records lately)
VIVA LA VIDA performed by Trio Marimberos (from the FRIDA film soundtrack)
WHO FEELS IT KNOWS IT sung by Rita Marley (from the only LP I remember of hers, although I’m sure there was more than one, but I can’t remember the name of the album)
X?
YSABEL’S TABLE DANCE played (and composed) by Charlie Mingus and a host of great musical talents, including Ysabel Morel on castinets (from his TIJUANA MOODS LP)
ZIPPITY-DOO-DAH sung by Johnny Mercer, one of the few songs he recorded that he didn’t write the lyrics to (from the first “record album” I ever owned, the soundtrack songs from SONG OF THE SOUTH on 78 recordings in sleeves in an actual “album,” a gift when I was a little boy that I never forgot, despite the later criticism of that film as politically incorrect)
If you can download any of these, I’d be very surprised if most of you aren’t either delighted, moved, and/or thoroughly engaged by these performances.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
LINKS
When I started this blog a year-and-a-half ago or so, I wasn't that plugged into the internet, except for email and occasionally looking something up on Google.
But thanks to my friend, the great poet and now great photographer, Kevin McCollister, who suggested I do my own blog and then set it up for me instantly, and to my great old friend and fellow musician back ih the day and still avid jazz fan (as well as a generous and honest lawyer, there are some), Tom Wilson, whose technical assistance continues to aid me in this endeavor, I've become not just a little more at ease in the world of the internet, but actually as enamored with it as any of the other pursuits and interests in my life.
I love the way people can email me links to anything I mention, and how equalizing the effect of youtube and other outlets for old video and film clips are, making small contributions by bit players on TV shows and in films as famous as the performances of the stars they were supporting.
And the access to music and filmed performances by the well known and the unknown is overwhelmingly satisfying. As well as lectures and artwork and humor and all the rest that friends send links to because they think I will be as entertained or engaged or educated or astonished by them as they have been.
It has, as for many others, replaced my morning newspaper. I have the NY Times headlines emailed to me and then select any story I want to pursue further, but my main hit of what's new for the day is the list of links to blogs down at the right of this page.
I start out with another new view of L. A. that not many would ever get to see if it wasn't for jimsonweed [THE JIMSON WEED GAZETTE]. Then my coolbirth [BIRTH OF THE COOL] update on jazz and new technology and other cool things I might not have noticed happening in the world (and on the web). Then I check into the rest of the list that includes a nephew working in the wilds of Alaska [MY ALASKAN ADVENTURES] with moose and other creatures we don't have so much down here in the lower 48. It's a taste of the natural world and, unfortunately, also the impact of the encroachment of humans on it.
Then the rest of the list which includes mostly old friends, like Peter Case [pcblog], but not just because they're friends, and not just because he's a reknowned singer/songwriter/guitar player, but also because he's a soulful commentator with updates on life on the road as well as ongoing autobiographical hits and takes on the music and creative activities of others.
There's other old friends, like Paul Harryn, whose blog [PAUL'S ART] on the life of an artist, the old fashioned kind who actually paints on canvas, among other creative acts, contemplates the world around him in ways unique to his Pennsylvannia countryside artist's soul. And newly added Jamie Rose's blog [JAMIE'S BLOG], an actor's take on the practice and challenges of that art with advice that anyone can find useful, not just actors.
And RJ Eskow's Nightlight [actually A Night Light], with insights into current politics from not just this regular contributor to the Huffington blog, as well as one of the most articulate and perceptive guest commentators on various TV shows, but also an accomplished musician and songwriter in his own right. Or Ron Silliman's blog [actual title: Silliman's Blog], the most visited poetry site in the history of the internet, with good reason. Ron is not only one of the most wellread poets you'll ever encounter, but his blog also has regular lists of links to just about any news article or commentary or essay or reference to poetry or the concerns of poets that anyone might ever find of interest.
English poet Tom Raworth's Notes [NOTES] blog keeps me up to date not only on his travels and interests and family and friends, especially in the British poetry world, but also has the most pointed and humorous takes on current events, usually with some collaged images or altered artwork, etc. that is not only perceptive and brilliant, but totally original.
There's other poetry blogs, like the newly added Charles Lambert [CHARLES LAMBERT], whose post on Jonathan Williams I found a link to on Raworth's blog and was so taken with Lambert's writing, I added him to the list just today. Or old friends E. Ethelbert Miller's poet's blog [E-NOTES] that comments on the DC poetry and other scenes, and everything else from sports to the endless campaign, and all from another unique perspective you won't find anywhere else, and poet and psychologist Nick Piambino's [fait accompli] original aphorisms and New York poetry scene updates and links to sites you won't find referenced too many other places, if at all.
It's a unique blend of what artists and friends I admire and respect are thinking about or concerned with or want to turn others on to, and it starts my day with a jolt of creative energy that matches my own and makes me feel part of a unique community fashioned by my own taste and interests as well as those of my friends or nonfriends whose perspectives I find refreshing, literally, as well as enlightening, and quite often challenging.
Ain't the wolrd wide web grand folks?
[PS: Old friend and poet Doug Lang's blogs [douglang'sdcpoetryblog, douglangsfilmblog, and dadaville] are also among my favorites. Though he has taken a hiatus from them in recent months, I still check in every day to see if he's back, and if you haven't read them, his past posts are worth checking out for his critical insights and terrific writing, as well as for the occasional autobiographical bit about growing up in Wales with a jones for music and literature. He's also hip to cultural artifacts few people are even aware of, and if they are, from an angle few people would think of.]
[PPS: As a matter of fact, pretty much everyone on this list takes the occasional break from posting, understandably, and some favorite sites have even ceased to exist, erasing themselves so that I no longer even list them, but that's another facet of the net that's so like life, things come and go, with few remaining permanent, so that our daily landscapes are forever changing. Life.]
[PPPS: I realized I listed these blogs by the authors' names rather than their blog titles, so I've revised them to reflect the actual blog names and inserted where they go in the post above. Another benefit of the web, you can edit whenever you want, or rewrite and not show the edits, but I prefer revealing the process. no matter how mundane]
[PPPS: Also meant to say, the rest of the list of recommended sites are mostly websites I think some of you might dig.]
But thanks to my friend, the great poet and now great photographer, Kevin McCollister, who suggested I do my own blog and then set it up for me instantly, and to my great old friend and fellow musician back ih the day and still avid jazz fan (as well as a generous and honest lawyer, there are some), Tom Wilson, whose technical assistance continues to aid me in this endeavor, I've become not just a little more at ease in the world of the internet, but actually as enamored with it as any of the other pursuits and interests in my life.
I love the way people can email me links to anything I mention, and how equalizing the effect of youtube and other outlets for old video and film clips are, making small contributions by bit players on TV shows and in films as famous as the performances of the stars they were supporting.
And the access to music and filmed performances by the well known and the unknown is overwhelmingly satisfying. As well as lectures and artwork and humor and all the rest that friends send links to because they think I will be as entertained or engaged or educated or astonished by them as they have been.
It has, as for many others, replaced my morning newspaper. I have the NY Times headlines emailed to me and then select any story I want to pursue further, but my main hit of what's new for the day is the list of links to blogs down at the right of this page.
I start out with another new view of L. A. that not many would ever get to see if it wasn't for jimsonweed [THE JIMSON WEED GAZETTE]. Then my coolbirth [BIRTH OF THE COOL] update on jazz and new technology and other cool things I might not have noticed happening in the world (and on the web). Then I check into the rest of the list that includes a nephew working in the wilds of Alaska [MY ALASKAN ADVENTURES] with moose and other creatures we don't have so much down here in the lower 48. It's a taste of the natural world and, unfortunately, also the impact of the encroachment of humans on it.
Then the rest of the list which includes mostly old friends, like Peter Case [pcblog], but not just because they're friends, and not just because he's a reknowned singer/songwriter/guitar player, but also because he's a soulful commentator with updates on life on the road as well as ongoing autobiographical hits and takes on the music and creative activities of others.
There's other old friends, like Paul Harryn, whose blog [PAUL'S ART] on the life of an artist, the old fashioned kind who actually paints on canvas, among other creative acts, contemplates the world around him in ways unique to his Pennsylvannia countryside artist's soul. And newly added Jamie Rose's blog [JAMIE'S BLOG], an actor's take on the practice and challenges of that art with advice that anyone can find useful, not just actors.
And RJ Eskow's Nightlight [actually A Night Light], with insights into current politics from not just this regular contributor to the Huffington blog, as well as one of the most articulate and perceptive guest commentators on various TV shows, but also an accomplished musician and songwriter in his own right. Or Ron Silliman's blog [actual title: Silliman's Blog], the most visited poetry site in the history of the internet, with good reason. Ron is not only one of the most wellread poets you'll ever encounter, but his blog also has regular lists of links to just about any news article or commentary or essay or reference to poetry or the concerns of poets that anyone might ever find of interest.
English poet Tom Raworth's Notes [NOTES] blog keeps me up to date not only on his travels and interests and family and friends, especially in the British poetry world, but also has the most pointed and humorous takes on current events, usually with some collaged images or altered artwork, etc. that is not only perceptive and brilliant, but totally original.
There's other poetry blogs, like the newly added Charles Lambert [CHARLES LAMBERT], whose post on Jonathan Williams I found a link to on Raworth's blog and was so taken with Lambert's writing, I added him to the list just today. Or old friends E. Ethelbert Miller's poet's blog [E-NOTES] that comments on the DC poetry and other scenes, and everything else from sports to the endless campaign, and all from another unique perspective you won't find anywhere else, and poet and psychologist Nick Piambino's [fait accompli] original aphorisms and New York poetry scene updates and links to sites you won't find referenced too many other places, if at all.
It's a unique blend of what artists and friends I admire and respect are thinking about or concerned with or want to turn others on to, and it starts my day with a jolt of creative energy that matches my own and makes me feel part of a unique community fashioned by my own taste and interests as well as those of my friends or nonfriends whose perspectives I find refreshing, literally, as well as enlightening, and quite often challenging.
Ain't the wolrd wide web grand folks?
[PS: Old friend and poet Doug Lang's blogs [douglang'sdcpoetryblog, douglangsfilmblog, and dadaville] are also among my favorites. Though he has taken a hiatus from them in recent months, I still check in every day to see if he's back, and if you haven't read them, his past posts are worth checking out for his critical insights and terrific writing, as well as for the occasional autobiographical bit about growing up in Wales with a jones for music and literature. He's also hip to cultural artifacts few people are even aware of, and if they are, from an angle few people would think of.]
[PPS: As a matter of fact, pretty much everyone on this list takes the occasional break from posting, understandably, and some favorite sites have even ceased to exist, erasing themselves so that I no longer even list them, but that's another facet of the net that's so like life, things come and go, with few remaining permanent, so that our daily landscapes are forever changing. Life.]
[PPPS: I realized I listed these blogs by the authors' names rather than their blog titles, so I've revised them to reflect the actual blog names and inserted where they go in the post above. Another benefit of the web, you can edit whenever you want, or rewrite and not show the edits, but I prefer revealing the process. no matter how mundane]
[PPPS: Also meant to say, the rest of the list of recommended sites are mostly websites I think some of you might dig.]
10 + THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT JOHN MCCAIN
I'm sure a lot of you have already seen these talking points going around the internet, originally posted by MoveOn I believe. But thought it worth while to post it here in case you haven't seen them.
(And as for the plus sign in the heading, here's two they didn't have on the list: McCain voted against a new G. I. Bill for Iraq veterans for education benefits, and against increasing other benefits for Iraq veterans, including medical!)
So, here's the original ten:
1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.
2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."
3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.
4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose. He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."
5. The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.
6. He's one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a "second job" and skip their vacations.
7. Many of McCain's fellow Republican senators say he's too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."
8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.
9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his "spiritual guide," Rod Parsley, believes America's founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a "false religion." McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church "the Antichrist" and a "false cult."
10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.
John McCain is not who the Washington press corps make him out to be.
Sources:
1. "The Complicated History of John McCain and MLK Day," ABC News, April 3, 2008
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04/the-complicated.html
"McCain Facts," ColorOfChange.org, April 4, 2008
http://colorofchange.org/mccain_facts/
2. "McCain More Hawkish Than Bush on Russia, China, Iraq," Bloomberg News, March 12, 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aF28rSCtk0ZM&refer=us
"Buchanan: John McCain 'Will Make Cheney Look Like Gandhi,'" ThinkProgress, February 6, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/06/buchanan-gandhi-mccain/
3. "McCain Sides With Bush On Torture Again, Supports Veto Of Anti-Waterboarding Bill," ThinkProgress, February 20, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/20/mccain-torture-veto/
4. "McCain says Roe v. Wade should be overturned," MSNBC, February 18, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17222147/
5. "2007 Children's Defense Fund Action Council® Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard," February 2008
http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/PageServer?pagename=act_learn_scorecard2007
"McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion," CNN, October 3, 2007
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/03/mccain.interview/
6. "Beer Executive Could Be Next First Lady," Associated Press, April 3, 2008
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h-S1sWHm0tchtdMP5LcLywg5ZtMgD8VQ86M80
"McCain Says Bank Bailout Should End `Systemic Risk,'" Bloomberg News, March 25, 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHMiDVYaXZFM&refer=home
7. "Will McCain's Temper Be a Liability?," Associated Press, February 16, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=4301022
"Famed McCain temper is tamed," Boston Globe, January 27, 2008
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/27/famed_mccain_temper_is_tamed/
8. "Black Claims McCain's Campaign Is Above Lobbyist Influence: 'I Don't Know What The Criticism Is,'" ThinkProgress, April 2, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/02/mccain-black-lobbyist/
"McCain's Lobbyist Friends Rally 'Round Their Man," ABC News, January 29, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4210251
9. "McCain's Spiritual Guide: Destroy Islam," Mother Jones Magazine, March 12, 2008
http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/03/john-mccain-rod-parsley-spiritual-guide.html
"Will McCain Specifically 'Repudiate' Hagee's Anti-Gay Comments?," ThinkProgress, March 12, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/12/mccain-hagee-anti-gay/
"McCain 'Very Honored' By Support Of Pastor Preaching 'End-Time Confrontation With Iran,'" ThinkProgress, February 28, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/28/hagee-mccain-endorsement/
10. "John McCain Gets a Zero Rating for His Environmental Record," Sierra Club, February 28, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/environment/77913/
(And as for the plus sign in the heading, here's two they didn't have on the list: McCain voted against a new G. I. Bill for Iraq veterans for education benefits, and against increasing other benefits for Iraq veterans, including medical!)
So, here's the original ten:
1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.
2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."
3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.
4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose. He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."
5. The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.
6. He's one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a "second job" and skip their vacations.
7. Many of McCain's fellow Republican senators say he's too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."
8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.
9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his "spiritual guide," Rod Parsley, believes America's founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a "false religion." McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church "the Antichrist" and a "false cult."
10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.
John McCain is not who the Washington press corps make him out to be.
Sources:
1. "The Complicated History of John McCain and MLK Day," ABC News, April 3, 2008
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04/the-complicated.html
"McCain Facts," ColorOfChange.org, April 4, 2008
http://colorofchange.org/mccain_facts/
2. "McCain More Hawkish Than Bush on Russia, China, Iraq," Bloomberg News, March 12, 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aF28rSCtk0ZM&refer=us
"Buchanan: John McCain 'Will Make Cheney Look Like Gandhi,'" ThinkProgress, February 6, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/06/buchanan-gandhi-mccain/
3. "McCain Sides With Bush On Torture Again, Supports Veto Of Anti-Waterboarding Bill," ThinkProgress, February 20, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/20/mccain-torture-veto/
4. "McCain says Roe v. Wade should be overturned," MSNBC, February 18, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17222147/
5. "2007 Children's Defense Fund Action Council® Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard," February 2008
http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/PageServer?pagename=act_learn_scorecard2007
"McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion," CNN, October 3, 2007
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/03/mccain.interview/
6. "Beer Executive Could Be Next First Lady," Associated Press, April 3, 2008
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h-S1sWHm0tchtdMP5LcLywg5ZtMgD8VQ86M80
"McCain Says Bank Bailout Should End `Systemic Risk,'" Bloomberg News, March 25, 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHMiDVYaXZFM&refer=home
7. "Will McCain's Temper Be a Liability?," Associated Press, February 16, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=4301022
"Famed McCain temper is tamed," Boston Globe, January 27, 2008
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/27/famed_mccain_temper_is_tamed/
8. "Black Claims McCain's Campaign Is Above Lobbyist Influence: 'I Don't Know What The Criticism Is,'" ThinkProgress, April 2, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/02/mccain-black-lobbyist/
"McCain's Lobbyist Friends Rally 'Round Their Man," ABC News, January 29, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4210251
9. "McCain's Spiritual Guide: Destroy Islam," Mother Jones Magazine, March 12, 2008
http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/03/john-mccain-rod-parsley-spiritual-guide.html
"Will McCain Specifically 'Repudiate' Hagee's Anti-Gay Comments?," ThinkProgress, March 12, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/12/mccain-hagee-anti-gay/
"McCain 'Very Honored' By Support Of Pastor Preaching 'End-Time Confrontation With Iran,'" ThinkProgress, February 28, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/28/hagee-mccain-endorsement/
10. "John McCain Gets a Zero Rating for His Environmental Record," Sierra Club, February 28, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/environment/77913/
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