Some friends have been kidding me about the basis for my latest lists of books and movies (they had to have “of” in their titles). So I figured I’d confirm that by adding a list of SONGS with “of” in their titles.
I came up with this last night to help me fall asleep. As always, they have to be things I dig, not just any old song with “of” in the title. And as these lists always do, it worked (i.e. helped me fall asleep).
ALL OF YOU (Sinatra) [woops, I meant ALL OF ME! thanx Tom]
BLUE MOON OF KENTUCKY (Elvis), BOOTS OF SPANISH LEATHER and BALLAD OF A THIN MAN (both Dylan), BRIGHT SIDE OF THE ROAD (Van Morrison) and THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (Terence Winch)
COMBINATION OF THE TWO (Janis & Big Brother) and CHAIN OF FOOLS (Aretha)
DUKE OF EARL (Gene Chandler)
EAST OF THE SUN AND WEST OF THE MOON (Charlie Parker on that album he made with strings)
F?
G? [of course: GREAT BALLS OF FIRE, can't believe I didn't think of that one, thanks Lonnie]
HEARTS OF STONE (The Charms, but I also dug the cover by The Fontane Sisters), HOUSE OF THE RISIN’ SUN (Eric Burdern and The Animals) and HEART OF GLASS (Blondie)
I’M SITTIN’ ON TOP OF THE WORLD (Les Paul & Mary Ford), [PS: left off one I did think of last night but then forgot to write here so am now: IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT (the Five Satins)] I LET A SONG GO OUT OF MY HEART (Monk’s version), I DON’T STAND A GHOST OF A CHANCE WITH YOU (Chet Baker), I GET A KICK OUT OF YOU (Clifford Brown & Max Roach), IN MY TIME OF DYIN’ (Dylan) and IN PRAISE OF THE CITY OF BALTIMORE (Terence Winch)
JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS (Bud Powell)
KEEPIN’ OUT OF MISCHIEF (Barbra Streisand) and KISS OF LIFE (Sade)
THE LONESOME DEATH OF HATTIE CARROLL (Dylan)
MEMORIES OF YOU (Sinatra) and MASTERS OF WAR (Dylan)
THE NEARNESS OF YOU (Nat Adderly)
OUT OF MY DREAMS (Shirley Jones) and OUT OF NOWHERE (Miles Davis’s version)
PIECE OF MY HEART (Janis & Big Brother)
QUEEN OF THE SLIPSTREAM (Van the man)
RIVERS OF TEXAS (The Bog Wanderers)
STRING OF PEARLS (Glen Miller), SOUTH OF THE BORDER (Bing and the Andrews Sisters), STUCK INSIDE OF MOBILE WITH THE MEMPHIS BLUES AGAIN (Dylan), SUNSHINE OF YOUR LOVE (Cream), THE STREETS OF BELFAST (Terence Winch), SHE’S OUT OF MY LIFE (Michael Jackson) and STAR OF THE COUNTY DOWN (Van Morrison with The Chieftans)
THESE ARMS OF MINE (Otis Redding), A TASTE OF HONEY (Streisand), THESE DREAMS OF YOU (Van Morrison) and TOWER OF SONG (Leonard Cohen)
U?
VISIONS OF JOHANNA (Dylan)
WHO WROTE THE BOOK OF LOVE (The Monotones?)
X?
YOU STEPPED OUT OF A DREAM (Glen Miller) and YOU BROUGHT A NEW KIND OF LOVE TO ME (Sinatra)
ZING WENT THE STRINGS OF MY HEART (Judy Garland)
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
EVAN MANN: GOOD MORNING MIDNIGHT
The title of Evan Mann's collection of photographs, GOOD MORNING MIDNIGHT, you might know as the title of a song most memorably recorded by Billie Holiday. Or the title of one of Jean Rhys's novels.
Both these previous works of art are in my personal canon. Now Evan Mann's book is too. I've added a link to his blog where some of his photographs can be found, like this one I attempted to scan to include here but couldn't do well without destroying the book.
Even is my sister-in-law's boyfriend (full disclosure), a Southern California native now living in Manhattan with Luloo and some other friends they share an apartment and a band with. They work in restaurants and bars to support their creative projects and interests and travels to exotic locations and landscapes.
He photographs moments from their lives and the lives of their friends and those they encounter with a ferocious precision that evokes an entire universe he allows us to glimpse in a way that sucks us in to each moment captured as if it were created just for our reaction, whether it be awe, or being disturbed and fascinated at the same time (you'll have to see the book for examples of those photos), etc. Here's another example.
I knew Evan was musically talented and could work a skateboard but I had no idea his photography was so potently arresting or startlingly original. You get the impact better from seeing them in this self-published (using the great gifts of the internet age the way we poets and other artists used the mimeograph machine and xeroxing when they were the quickest and cheapest means available for getting our work out to others) collection, partly because the book uses no titles for individual photographs, it lets the images speak for themselves and in their collective spontaneity and sometimes brutal honesty they create a narrative of what it is like to be young, adventurous and honest in these times.
I highly, highly recommend it. Go to his blog DISCREET INDISCRETIONS for ordering info.
Monday, October 12, 2009
BRIGHT STAR
When I'm sad, where I often find the most relief is in a dark movie theater. Since my childhood. Maybe that was one of the few places, surrounded by darkness and people restraining their tongues (at least for the most part, especially back then) where I could fully focus on the art object before me—the film.
So I went to the movies tonight. Many friends had recommended BRIGHT STAR, a film I already wanted to see, and it's playing right up the street from my apartment in the local movie theater so...
It's one of the most intense movies ever made about love. And it's rated PG. Which only made it more intense.
As you probably already know, it's the latest Jane Campion movie, the brilliant Australian filmmaker who made one of my all time favorites AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (though she's better known for THE PIANO).
Campion is one of the few people who truly earns the right to the often abused "a film by..." since she not only directed BRIGHT STAR but wrote and produced it as well.
No movie I've seen this year (or in most years) that concerns itself with the love between two adults can touch the passion and precision of this one. BRIGHT STAR is at the top of my list for any awards for 2009, beginning with Campion for writing and directing, Ben Whishaw for the part of John Keats, Abbie Cornish as his love Franny Brawne, Kerry Fox as her mother and Paul Scheinder as Keats' friend Charles Brown (a performance that challenges almost every expectation for this "supporting" role).
If you haven't seen it, don't wait for the DVD or to see it on TV, if you can, see it in a theater on a large screen in the dark where the beauty of some of the scenes will overwhelm you, at least they did me.
I laughed out loud, probably confusing the few other people in the theater, at some scenes, just because I was so delighted with how wonderfully they were framed and shot and directed. Exquisite.
Maybe too exquisite for those with a more jaundiced eye (and ear for that matter, as some of the dialogue is just lines from Keats's poems), but for me, it was two hours of movie heaven, not escape but affirmation of a lifetime of aesthetic pleasure from poetry and films and now here, tonight, combined into one deeply satisfying evening's experience.
Thank you Jane. I needed that.
So I went to the movies tonight. Many friends had recommended BRIGHT STAR, a film I already wanted to see, and it's playing right up the street from my apartment in the local movie theater so...
It's one of the most intense movies ever made about love. And it's rated PG. Which only made it more intense.
As you probably already know, it's the latest Jane Campion movie, the brilliant Australian filmmaker who made one of my all time favorites AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (though she's better known for THE PIANO).
Campion is one of the few people who truly earns the right to the often abused "a film by..." since she not only directed BRIGHT STAR but wrote and produced it as well.
No movie I've seen this year (or in most years) that concerns itself with the love between two adults can touch the passion and precision of this one. BRIGHT STAR is at the top of my list for any awards for 2009, beginning with Campion for writing and directing, Ben Whishaw for the part of John Keats, Abbie Cornish as his love Franny Brawne, Kerry Fox as her mother and Paul Scheinder as Keats' friend Charles Brown (a performance that challenges almost every expectation for this "supporting" role).
If you haven't seen it, don't wait for the DVD or to see it on TV, if you can, see it in a theater on a large screen in the dark where the beauty of some of the scenes will overwhelm you, at least they did me.
I laughed out loud, probably confusing the few other people in the theater, at some scenes, just because I was so delighted with how wonderfully they were framed and shot and directed. Exquisite.
Maybe too exquisite for those with a more jaundiced eye (and ear for that matter, as some of the dialogue is just lines from Keats's poems), but for me, it was two hours of movie heaven, not escape but affirmation of a lifetime of aesthetic pleasure from poetry and films and now here, tonight, combined into one deeply satisfying evening's experience.
Thank you Jane. I needed that.
CATHY LALLY FREITAS R.I.P.
My niece. The oldest of my siblings' (and my) children. Who I've known since she was born and became a sweet little girl and then a sweet woman, who always seemed to be doing her best to do the right thing, and usually did (actually, as far as I know, always did).
She had been battling a cancer that began over a decade ago. So we were lucky to have her these past years and I guess she was fortunate to leave after the suffering had become too much. But still. How can death even exist for our loved ones? It seems so impossible, at least emotionally, despite the reality our intellects can grasp or at least understand.
No matter how well prepared we might be, as my older son and I were saying last night discussing this loss, it still is inconceivable, a shock, a deep disappointment.
I'll miss her. I can't even imagine how her husband and children and mother and sister and brothers must feel. (Her father, one of my brothers, passed over a decade ago himself.)
But I am grateful that I got to spend time with her over the past several years and talk and laugh and hopefully make clear the love I felt, and still feel, for her. May she rest in peace.
That's her on her mother Catherine's lap shortly after her birth. I'm the kid in the back with the floral shirt, my brothers to my right—Tommy who by then was Father Campion, Jimmy (or "Buddy" as we called him to distinguish him from my father) Cathy's father in the tee shirt, and Robert, the brother-leaning-down, and his wife Marie (known to us as "Sis") all the way to my right. My two sisters, Irene and Joan, with the pixie cut, are in front of my mother and her mother, my father all the way to my left sitting on the edge of the couch. A moment in time, or "the eternal now" as my friend Selby used to call it. Always.
She had been battling a cancer that began over a decade ago. So we were lucky to have her these past years and I guess she was fortunate to leave after the suffering had become too much. But still. How can death even exist for our loved ones? It seems so impossible, at least emotionally, despite the reality our intellects can grasp or at least understand.
No matter how well prepared we might be, as my older son and I were saying last night discussing this loss, it still is inconceivable, a shock, a deep disappointment.
I'll miss her. I can't even imagine how her husband and children and mother and sister and brothers must feel. (Her father, one of my brothers, passed over a decade ago himself.)
But I am grateful that I got to spend time with her over the past several years and talk and laugh and hopefully make clear the love I felt, and still feel, for her. May she rest in peace.
That's her on her mother Catherine's lap shortly after her birth. I'm the kid in the back with the floral shirt, my brothers to my right—Tommy who by then was Father Campion, Jimmy (or "Buddy" as we called him to distinguish him from my father) Cathy's father in the tee shirt, and Robert, the brother-leaning-down, and his wife Marie (known to us as "Sis") all the way to my right. My two sisters, Irene and Joan, with the pixie cut, are in front of my mother and her mother, my father all the way to my left sitting on the edge of the couch. A moment in time, or "the eternal now" as my friend Selby used to call it. Always.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
POETRY AT THE ETHICAL
Did another talk/reading at the local Ethical Culture Society meeting hall. It was great fun and very satisfying. I was asked to speak on poetry and the internet, but as usual I didn't prepare, just thought of a few things as I was getting ready to go over there and grabbed a few books and winged it.
I love doing that. It's like the "blowing" (as Frankie Rios—Frank T. Rios on his books, the Brooklyn then Venice original "man in black" street Beat poet still was calling it ala jazz jams when I was back in L.A.)—i.e. spontaneous poetry improvised in the moment. I found a place to begin and had a general idea of where I wanted to end and then just filled in the middle for an hour of going off on related tangents that seemed to get farther away from the topic until I found a way to bring them back around again.
In those situations I rely a lot on what the audience is giving me, what's generating their interest and what's losing them. It is a lot like playing jazz, but more like the audience is the rest of the group you're jamming with. And a delightful audience it was, including a group of kids around pre-teen early teen I'd guess, for which I adjusted some of the poems I was thinking of reading for others not as graphic.
There were some friends and fellow poets there, as well as many strangers. An audience that filled the room nicely and bought a lot of books afterward which always makes me happy, the idea that my poetry and other writing is getting into the hands and heads and hopefully hearts of some more readers. You can see how much fun I was having by this photo one of the audience, Nancy Heinz-Glaser, took of me during it and e mailed to me:
I love doing that. It's like the "blowing" (as Frankie Rios—Frank T. Rios on his books, the Brooklyn then Venice original "man in black" street Beat poet still was calling it ala jazz jams when I was back in L.A.)—i.e. spontaneous poetry improvised in the moment. I found a place to begin and had a general idea of where I wanted to end and then just filled in the middle for an hour of going off on related tangents that seemed to get farther away from the topic until I found a way to bring them back around again.
In those situations I rely a lot on what the audience is giving me, what's generating their interest and what's losing them. It is a lot like playing jazz, but more like the audience is the rest of the group you're jamming with. And a delightful audience it was, including a group of kids around pre-teen early teen I'd guess, for which I adjusted some of the poems I was thinking of reading for others not as graphic.
There were some friends and fellow poets there, as well as many strangers. An audience that filled the room nicely and bought a lot of books afterward which always makes me happy, the idea that my poetry and other writing is getting into the hands and heads and hopefully hearts of some more readers. You can see how much fun I was having by this photo one of the audience, Nancy Heinz-Glaser, took of me during it and e mailed to me:
Saturday, October 10, 2009
NAT ADDERLY JR. & SINATRA
Last night, on the way back from our local ice cream shop (Hershey's, not my favorite but my little guy likes it), my now twelve-year-old son picked up his skate board and crossed our street to an elegant Italian restaurant that often features live jazz, and other music, in it's front room lined with French doors facing the street. When they're all open, as they were last night, the room's not only easily accessible but totally inviting, especially when there's live music playing.
I always dig it when my son shows interest in things I find important, like good jazz. So I followed him across the street. It was a trio—piano, drums and upright acoustic base—and they were very good. Some friends were at the bar for a night out and one was outside talking to his young son on his cell and called out "Lally" and handed me the phone so I could say hi.
Meanwhile my son was watching the drummer closely, his hands and sticks since our vantage point from the street was behind the drummer, sort of over his shoulder. When I handed the phone back I checked out the piano player who was crouched over the keys, his face almost touching them at times, wailing away. Sweet.
Then I noticed the portable sign outside with the chalked info on the evening: Live Jazz! Nat Adderly Jr. Trio. Turns out my friend with the phone who used to work for Luther Vandross knew Nat Jr. because he played piano for Luther!
I couldn't believe it. Nat, the coronet and trumpet playing younger brother of the better known jazz saxophonist "Cannonball" Adderly, is one of my alltime favorite jazz musicians, particularly for an overlooked LP from the very early '60s called NAT TO THE IVY LEAGUE. On one cut on it he plays "The Nearness of You" initially in the standard way of the time, a pretty straight forward rendering of the tune the first time through, then a relatively straight forward improv on the tune the second time through, but then he takes the song and basically—as I would use it for for years—gives a lesson in jazz improvisation. He not only uses what seems like an infinite variety of alternate melodies over the chord changes in each bar, he introduces quotes from all kinds of other songs, including a TV commercial jingle very well know at the time for Alkaseltzer.
It's so much fun and so easy to follow, it was the perfect introduction to what improvising is about for novice jazz fans. Now here was his son, older than Nat, it looked like, when he made that record. What was he doing across the street from my apartment playing jazz so that when my son and I finally went home so we could go to sleep, we could still hear it wafting across our street from the open French doors in the restaurant?
My guess is he lives in the area, at least somewhere in North Jersey. New Jersey has always been a home base for a lot of musicians as well as the birthplace for many of the greats (I based one of my many lists on that idea a while ago). Like the most famous or at least the greatest for my taste, Frank Sinatra.
So it delighted me even more when in the car today on our way to a highway discount store to get my son new sneakers (the last pair fell apart from the intensity of his skateboard tricks and trying to learn them) we were listening to the Jonathan Schwartz show on WNYC and he was doing a special mini-tribute to Sinatra by playing choice live recordings from different shows over the years, the most amazing set being one from the late '50s where he swings "Night and Day" with a blasting brass dominated band followed by one from '62 (in Paris if I remember correctly) where he does the same song only as a really slow, bluesy ballad with only a single guitar for accompaniment.
It was so startling and so original, more so than any of the recordings I've heard him do over the years (some of which are on my iTunes now) that I almost cried in appreciation. But what really got me was my little guy appreciating it too and proving it by comparing some unexpected, more-than-an-octave drops in tone Sinatra made at one point—changing the intent and even the meaning of the line, bringing out other colors and aspects to it than the way it was written, yet still incorporating the original intentions of the songwriter—and my boy not only digs it but excitedly begins comparing it to his doing skateboard tricks and the ways that too is like making a kind of music he says—the variations on the basic themes (though he said that differently but that's the way I heard it) and format is the thrill in not just learning known skate tricks but adding and changing them in your own unique way to make them yours.
He even used the term "feeling the board" in a way that I knew, as a musician, exactly what he meant. Thanks Frank, and Nat, and Nat Jr. and New Jersey and music and skate boarding and my youngest child for keeping it all meaningful and worth while.
I always dig it when my son shows interest in things I find important, like good jazz. So I followed him across the street. It was a trio—piano, drums and upright acoustic base—and they were very good. Some friends were at the bar for a night out and one was outside talking to his young son on his cell and called out "Lally" and handed me the phone so I could say hi.
Meanwhile my son was watching the drummer closely, his hands and sticks since our vantage point from the street was behind the drummer, sort of over his shoulder. When I handed the phone back I checked out the piano player who was crouched over the keys, his face almost touching them at times, wailing away. Sweet.
Then I noticed the portable sign outside with the chalked info on the evening: Live Jazz! Nat Adderly Jr. Trio. Turns out my friend with the phone who used to work for Luther Vandross knew Nat Jr. because he played piano for Luther!
I couldn't believe it. Nat, the coronet and trumpet playing younger brother of the better known jazz saxophonist "Cannonball" Adderly, is one of my alltime favorite jazz musicians, particularly for an overlooked LP from the very early '60s called NAT TO THE IVY LEAGUE. On one cut on it he plays "The Nearness of You" initially in the standard way of the time, a pretty straight forward rendering of the tune the first time through, then a relatively straight forward improv on the tune the second time through, but then he takes the song and basically—as I would use it for for years—gives a lesson in jazz improvisation. He not only uses what seems like an infinite variety of alternate melodies over the chord changes in each bar, he introduces quotes from all kinds of other songs, including a TV commercial jingle very well know at the time for Alkaseltzer.
It's so much fun and so easy to follow, it was the perfect introduction to what improvising is about for novice jazz fans. Now here was his son, older than Nat, it looked like, when he made that record. What was he doing across the street from my apartment playing jazz so that when my son and I finally went home so we could go to sleep, we could still hear it wafting across our street from the open French doors in the restaurant?
My guess is he lives in the area, at least somewhere in North Jersey. New Jersey has always been a home base for a lot of musicians as well as the birthplace for many of the greats (I based one of my many lists on that idea a while ago). Like the most famous or at least the greatest for my taste, Frank Sinatra.
So it delighted me even more when in the car today on our way to a highway discount store to get my son new sneakers (the last pair fell apart from the intensity of his skateboard tricks and trying to learn them) we were listening to the Jonathan Schwartz show on WNYC and he was doing a special mini-tribute to Sinatra by playing choice live recordings from different shows over the years, the most amazing set being one from the late '50s where he swings "Night and Day" with a blasting brass dominated band followed by one from '62 (in Paris if I remember correctly) where he does the same song only as a really slow, bluesy ballad with only a single guitar for accompaniment.
It was so startling and so original, more so than any of the recordings I've heard him do over the years (some of which are on my iTunes now) that I almost cried in appreciation. But what really got me was my little guy appreciating it too and proving it by comparing some unexpected, more-than-an-octave drops in tone Sinatra made at one point—changing the intent and even the meaning of the line, bringing out other colors and aspects to it than the way it was written, yet still incorporating the original intentions of the songwriter—and my boy not only digs it but excitedly begins comparing it to his doing skateboard tricks and the ways that too is like making a kind of music he says—the variations on the basic themes (though he said that differently but that's the way I heard it) and format is the thrill in not just learning known skate tricks but adding and changing them in your own unique way to make them yours.
He even used the term "feeling the board" in a way that I knew, as a musician, exactly what he meant. Thanks Frank, and Nat, and Nat Jr. and New Jersey and music and skate boarding and my youngest child for keeping it all meaningful and worth while.
Friday, October 9, 2009
MORE MEDIA MEDIOCRITY
I couldn't believe what I was hearing on the tube today from not just the usual rightwing misinformation and propaganda purveyors but the major outlets like say NBC news where the "White House Correspondent" as well as Brian Williams or whoever manages the Evening News there need a history lesson.
Treating the story of our president winning a Nobel Prize for Peace like it was unheard of in the history of the award for it to go to anyone who hadn't achieved some kind of major world peace agenda after a lifetime's effort was just plain silly, let alone ignorant or at least ill informed.
Who does the research for these guys, and isn't there anyone there who's old enough to even remember that Kissinger won the bleepin' Nobel Peace Prize while he was still running the then longest war in the history of the USA and one that was completely pointless in the end (as well as the beginning but not many saw it at the time except for "peaceniks" and lefties and such) and it went on for quite a while after the award (and parts of it were "secret" and even more illegal and killed millions who otherwise might still be alive even today were there any real "peace" achieved) and ended in a complete fiasco not in any Kissinger inspired or led peace!
Obama's already made more changes in the world visa vis "peace" than Kissinger ever did! Like the spokesman for the Nobel committee said in the announcement, just by changing the tone from belicose to open-to-diplomacy has altered the urgency of a lot of possible wars that haven't happened yet and may never thanks to his change in "tone" as they put it.
And if that means nothing to rightwingers who hate any achievement of Obama's and would rather see him lose anything than their country win anything (like the Olympics etc.) then they have just proven once and for all how unpatriotic they are and how little this country means to them. All they care about is seeing Obama fail and their rightwing cronies returned to power.
None of that was on the major newscasts about the award. Just speculations about what calculations were in the minds of the Nobel committee, like the new Meet the Press guy has some telepathic connection to the Swedes in charge. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
Where are the Cronkites and Moyers (oh yeah, the latter's on PBS doing great journalism)? The Murrows and Rathers (oh yeah, the latter got kicked out for investigating the last president's actual personal "peace" initiative, avoiding the Viet Nam war and even the duty he signed up for at home)? Rachel Maddow's doing a great job of exposing stuff the mainline media should be doing, and Keith Olberman did a great report on the healthcare situation the other night (which my COOL BIRTH old friend Tom noted and linked to yesterday).
But most of the rest of these posers. It's a shame, because I'm a news junkie and actually enjoy some good investigative journalism and sound reporting in the old evening news format. I know, I know, thank God for PBS and the BBC and a lot on MSNBC. But they don't have the coverage we used to get on the old network shows with their foreign correspondents (there's still a few great ones left, like Lara Logan on CBS and Richard what's his name on NBC). Oh well, I'm starting to sound like my grandmother lamenting what's passed and gone.
Hopefully someone out there's going to come up with a new format that still uses the basics of great journalism to do the research and base the story on actual facts and historic precedents rather than on speculation and horse race analogies.
[PS: Some folks didn't get that I was being a little tongue-in-cheek-ish about supposedly not knowing or remembering the names of NBC reporters Chuck Todd, David Gregory and Richard Engel, etc. as a way of demonstrating lack of research or knowledge in "reporting" etc.]
[PPS: For another valid take on all this, and a more reasoned guess at the Nobel Prize Committee's thinking go here.]
[PPS: Yet another, equally valid take, from Howard Zinn who I admire and appreciate and even read with not so long ago but who I don't entirely agree with in terms of absolutes.]
Treating the story of our president winning a Nobel Prize for Peace like it was unheard of in the history of the award for it to go to anyone who hadn't achieved some kind of major world peace agenda after a lifetime's effort was just plain silly, let alone ignorant or at least ill informed.
Who does the research for these guys, and isn't there anyone there who's old enough to even remember that Kissinger won the bleepin' Nobel Peace Prize while he was still running the then longest war in the history of the USA and one that was completely pointless in the end (as well as the beginning but not many saw it at the time except for "peaceniks" and lefties and such) and it went on for quite a while after the award (and parts of it were "secret" and even more illegal and killed millions who otherwise might still be alive even today were there any real "peace" achieved) and ended in a complete fiasco not in any Kissinger inspired or led peace!
Obama's already made more changes in the world visa vis "peace" than Kissinger ever did! Like the spokesman for the Nobel committee said in the announcement, just by changing the tone from belicose to open-to-diplomacy has altered the urgency of a lot of possible wars that haven't happened yet and may never thanks to his change in "tone" as they put it.
And if that means nothing to rightwingers who hate any achievement of Obama's and would rather see him lose anything than their country win anything (like the Olympics etc.) then they have just proven once and for all how unpatriotic they are and how little this country means to them. All they care about is seeing Obama fail and their rightwing cronies returned to power.
None of that was on the major newscasts about the award. Just speculations about what calculations were in the minds of the Nobel committee, like the new Meet the Press guy has some telepathic connection to the Swedes in charge. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
Where are the Cronkites and Moyers (oh yeah, the latter's on PBS doing great journalism)? The Murrows and Rathers (oh yeah, the latter got kicked out for investigating the last president's actual personal "peace" initiative, avoiding the Viet Nam war and even the duty he signed up for at home)? Rachel Maddow's doing a great job of exposing stuff the mainline media should be doing, and Keith Olberman did a great report on the healthcare situation the other night (which my COOL BIRTH old friend Tom noted and linked to yesterday).
But most of the rest of these posers. It's a shame, because I'm a news junkie and actually enjoy some good investigative journalism and sound reporting in the old evening news format. I know, I know, thank God for PBS and the BBC and a lot on MSNBC. But they don't have the coverage we used to get on the old network shows with their foreign correspondents (there's still a few great ones left, like Lara Logan on CBS and Richard what's his name on NBC). Oh well, I'm starting to sound like my grandmother lamenting what's passed and gone.
Hopefully someone out there's going to come up with a new format that still uses the basics of great journalism to do the research and base the story on actual facts and historic precedents rather than on speculation and horse race analogies.
[PS: Some folks didn't get that I was being a little tongue-in-cheek-ish about supposedly not knowing or remembering the names of NBC reporters Chuck Todd, David Gregory and Richard Engel, etc. as a way of demonstrating lack of research or knowledge in "reporting" etc.]
[PPS: For another valid take on all this, and a more reasoned guess at the Nobel Prize Committee's thinking go here.]
[PPS: Yet another, equally valid take, from Howard Zinn who I admire and appreciate and even read with not so long ago but who I don't entirely agree with in terms of absolutes.]
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