Chutzpah! Obama's Shameful Black Caucus Speech
09/27/11 09:29 AM
President Barack Obama told blacks on Saturday to quit crying and complaining and "put on your marching shoes" to follow him into battle for jobs and opportunity. AP
Follow him? If the President wants anyone to follow him, he had better start leading -- something he has consistently failed to do since his inauguration. He did not lead while the health reform debate devolved into a national joke and coughed up a bill that Americans still do not understand. He did not lead the march for job creation when the economy proved to be in much worse shape than his economic advisors had forecast. As a matter of fact, he did the opposite: he publicly made the Republican case for job-killing austerity measures while trumpeting his willingness to weaken entitlements on which the middle class depend.
Read the rest at Huffington Post.
With Traditional Publishing Dies the Passive Writer-Victim
07/17/11 03:39 PM
It had been a longtime
dream; I had thought about it and wanted it since
childhood. But then, with my dream in hand, my only
response was a small nod and a sotto, "oh, alright."
Akin to a tepid "how nice." My book was to be
published by a well-regarded NY publishing house, and
I couldn't even muster a facade of enthusiasm. I
assumed I was numb; that it hadn't sunk in yet. So I
went about my business and I waited for the thrill to
fill me up.
It never did. The process had been long—a cryptic agent who condescended to take my once-a-month call, a fake chuckle to hide her irritation as she complained about having to hold clients' hands. It was on one of my monthly calls that she told me that I had sold a book. I wonder if she would have bothered to mention it if I hadn't phoned. I guess I'll never know.
The production process was—subliminal. I spoke with the book's ostensible editor for a grand total of about 5 minutes—in my entire life. A proof showed up with a picture of a flirty, naked black woman on the cover—when the only black female character died before the beginning of the book and she wasn't the flirty type. It was a nice cover, but it had little to do with the book beneath it.
The publicist sent the requisite press release to the usual suspects, who probably gave it the attention it deserved (They ignored it). Gamely, I stepped into the breach, purchasing some cheap online ads, hawking the book to reviewers, etc., all to middling success, but infinitely greater satisfaction than I got from any other stage of the process save the writing. Finally, I had some control, and I began to suspect that I was a sophomoric cliché of the passive writer-victim—passively awaiting my agent's actions; passively awaiting publisher response; passively awaiting for someone to design my book, passively awaiting critical and commercial reaction. Yes, I began to suspect... but I was still to programmed and scared to do anything about it.
As the next novel hit editors' desks (from a new, and altogether more suitable agent) and I passively awaited reaction, my agent received notes like these:
Each of these statements preceded a "pass." One editor told my agent that "the market" was telling her that only frothy, "feel good" books have a chance at sales success today. This was an odd statement, considering that it presupposes that the publishing industry has a good idea of what "the market" wants. I quote author and business writer Michael Levin from Forbes Magazine:
Levin further points out the antediluvian hilarity of the publishing "business model," in which "the publisher bears the entire risk of buying, editing, printing, and shipping copies of the book to bookstores all over the country on a 100% returnable basis. If your local Barnes & Noble doesn’t sell a particular book, it goes right back to the publisher, at the publisher’s shipping cost, for a full refund. Especially in the Internet era, you can’t make money putting books on trucks and hoping someone buys them."
After my first book was released, I was scheduled for a radio appearance. The day prior, I was informed that Amazon was out of my book. Publicity can generate sales. It's bad form to generate publicity for a product, and then inform prospective buyers at a primary outlet that the product is unavailable. When I screamed loudly about this to my agent and editor, the editor said, and I quote, "If they want the book badly enough, they'll wait for it or find it." My jaw dropped. Apple Computer can afford to be that lazy and arrogant. James Patterson can. Leonce Gaiter and Carroll & Graf Publishers could not. This man was so clueless to business realities, he expected people to seek out or wait for a product about which they knew little or nothing from someone they had never heard of. To him, the reader had to do all the work. Our job was to look pretty while we sat back and waited for them to do it.
I read reports from one of the large book conferences in which a major editor insisted that the "intrinsic value" of a book justified their exorbitant price tags. ($12.99 for an ebook? Fuck you! Even Amazon wanted to sell them for $9.99.) Again, the ignorance is blinding. In a market economy, no product qua product has "intrinsic value." Suggesting that it does stinks of the arrogance of decay drenched in decadence. See also this shamefully smug op-ed.
With respect to my own work, I had to realize that some NY Editors are sufficiently egotistical to believe that they are so advanced in their educations and outlook that a book they find "fascinating" could not possibly engage a more general audience (unless it includes vampires or comes with pictures, of course). That, and the fact that their marketing sense and infrastructures are as outmoded and inefficient as the rest of their business, so they only have the ability to sell books that run the gamut from A to C to audiences that are equally diverse.
Finally, I had to accept both the death of my romantic vision of publishing and the gross facts of the corporate publishing reality. With my agent's help and blessing, I found the tools and mustered the will to do things differently.
Ingram, the major book distributor, owns Lightning Source, which gives authors access to distribution channels similar to those the publishing houses get, and at reasonable prices; your book can be available for print-on-demand from any bookstore, online or off. That takes care of the physical books. Ebooks, of course, are also within any author's grasp; between Smashwords and Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, you can pretty much cover the territory. This time, I chose my own physical book's format, dimensions, and I laid out the text within the appropriate template myself. A wonderful designer I know provided the marvelous cover art. The novel is mine, soup to nuts. I feel an ownership and pride that never even teased me with my traditionally published book. From an economic standpoint, if the book sells as well as my largely-ignored traditionally published novel, I will make three times the money from it. Carroll & Graf put a $24 price tag on my first book. Consumers will be able to buy this one for less than $10.
How can you not recommend this option to authors? With today's tools, the idea of waiting for approval from the minions of a multinational sounds as lazy and self-defeating as a band that won't burn CDs until they get a major label record deal. Just as musicians have to know their way around a sound board, writers need facility with the layout and design software used to create books, the ins and outs of formatting for ebooks; they need design sense enough to guarantee that their book looks good inside and out.
We used to wait passively for the pearly gates to open and then gratefully pass our manuscripts through to hallowed ground. In music and in books, those days are gone forever. And good riddance.
It never did. The process had been long—a cryptic agent who condescended to take my once-a-month call, a fake chuckle to hide her irritation as she complained about having to hold clients' hands. It was on one of my monthly calls that she told me that I had sold a book. I wonder if she would have bothered to mention it if I hadn't phoned. I guess I'll never know.
The production process was—subliminal. I spoke with the book's ostensible editor for a grand total of about 5 minutes—in my entire life. A proof showed up with a picture of a flirty, naked black woman on the cover—when the only black female character died before the beginning of the book and she wasn't the flirty type. It was a nice cover, but it had little to do with the book beneath it.
The publicist sent the requisite press release to the usual suspects, who probably gave it the attention it deserved (They ignored it). Gamely, I stepped into the breach, purchasing some cheap online ads, hawking the book to reviewers, etc., all to middling success, but infinitely greater satisfaction than I got from any other stage of the process save the writing. Finally, I had some control, and I began to suspect that I was a sophomoric cliché of the passive writer-victim—passively awaiting my agent's actions; passively awaiting publisher response; passively awaiting for someone to design my book, passively awaiting critical and commercial reaction. Yes, I began to suspect... but I was still to programmed and scared to do anything about it.
As the next novel hit editors' desks (from a new, and altogether more suitable agent) and I passively awaited reaction, my agent received notes like these:
"It’s an impressively gripping story, and a fascinating story about a time and topic I knew little about."
"I can see what you mean about the strong pacing of Gaiter’s narrative, and the novel’s strong sense of place, which seems to stem from deep research into and thorough knowledge..."
"I thought this was a really well-written and fascinating story. I loved the historical details and enjoyed the book on a personal level."
Each of these statements preceded a "pass." One editor told my agent that "the market" was telling her that only frothy, "feel good" books have a chance at sales success today. This was an odd statement, considering that it presupposes that the publishing industry has a good idea of what "the market" wants. I quote author and business writer Michael Levin from Forbes Magazine:
...the books that publishers choose are almost entirely of zero interest to actual book-buyers. After 9/11, there were a ton of books about 9/11, which nobody bought. Same thing with the Iraq War, the rise of Obama, the economic meltdown... Or the books are rehashed business lessons, religious truths, sports clichés, motivational babble, exercise fads, weight loss techniques, or pandering to the political left or the right. Who wants these books? Almost no one.Most of the major publishers today are owned by international conglomerates who, at some point, will awaken to the realization that English majors in their employ are spending millions of dollars on books that no one wants to read.
Levin further points out the antediluvian hilarity of the publishing "business model," in which "the publisher bears the entire risk of buying, editing, printing, and shipping copies of the book to bookstores all over the country on a 100% returnable basis. If your local Barnes & Noble doesn’t sell a particular book, it goes right back to the publisher, at the publisher’s shipping cost, for a full refund. Especially in the Internet era, you can’t make money putting books on trucks and hoping someone buys them."
After my first book was released, I was scheduled for a radio appearance. The day prior, I was informed that Amazon was out of my book. Publicity can generate sales. It's bad form to generate publicity for a product, and then inform prospective buyers at a primary outlet that the product is unavailable. When I screamed loudly about this to my agent and editor, the editor said, and I quote, "If they want the book badly enough, they'll wait for it or find it." My jaw dropped. Apple Computer can afford to be that lazy and arrogant. James Patterson can. Leonce Gaiter and Carroll & Graf Publishers could not. This man was so clueless to business realities, he expected people to seek out or wait for a product about which they knew little or nothing from someone they had never heard of. To him, the reader had to do all the work. Our job was to look pretty while we sat back and waited for them to do it.
I read reports from one of the large book conferences in which a major editor insisted that the "intrinsic value" of a book justified their exorbitant price tags. ($12.99 for an ebook? Fuck you! Even Amazon wanted to sell them for $9.99.) Again, the ignorance is blinding. In a market economy, no product qua product has "intrinsic value." Suggesting that it does stinks of the arrogance of decay drenched in decadence. See also this shamefully smug op-ed.
With respect to my own work, I had to realize that some NY Editors are sufficiently egotistical to believe that they are so advanced in their educations and outlook that a book they find "fascinating" could not possibly engage a more general audience (unless it includes vampires or comes with pictures, of course). That, and the fact that their marketing sense and infrastructures are as outmoded and inefficient as the rest of their business, so they only have the ability to sell books that run the gamut from A to C to audiences that are equally diverse.
Finally, I had to accept both the death of my romantic vision of publishing and the gross facts of the corporate publishing reality. With my agent's help and blessing, I found the tools and mustered the will to do things differently.
Ingram, the major book distributor, owns Lightning Source, which gives authors access to distribution channels similar to those the publishing houses get, and at reasonable prices; your book can be available for print-on-demand from any bookstore, online or off. That takes care of the physical books. Ebooks, of course, are also within any author's grasp; between Smashwords and Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, you can pretty much cover the territory. This time, I chose my own physical book's format, dimensions, and I laid out the text within the appropriate template myself. A wonderful designer I know provided the marvelous cover art. The novel is mine, soup to nuts. I feel an ownership and pride that never even teased me with my traditionally published book. From an economic standpoint, if the book sells as well as my largely-ignored traditionally published novel, I will make three times the money from it. Carroll & Graf put a $24 price tag on my first book. Consumers will be able to buy this one for less than $10.
How can you not recommend this option to authors? With today's tools, the idea of waiting for approval from the minions of a multinational sounds as lazy and self-defeating as a band that won't burn CDs until they get a major label record deal. Just as musicians have to know their way around a sound board, writers need facility with the layout and design software used to create books, the ins and outs of formatting for ebooks; they need design sense enough to guarantee that their book looks good inside and out.
We used to wait passively for the pearly gates to open and then gratefully pass our manuscripts through to hallowed ground. In music and in books, those days are gone forever. And good riddance.
Is the 'Planned Parenthood is Racist' line Racist?
04/30/11 08:55 AM
The religious right and
its conservative enablers are seeking support among
blacks for their anti-Planned Parenthood crusade.
They blame Planned Parenthood for high abortion rates
among African American women, calling it a kind of
“genocide” against blacks. A group called Life Always
ran grossly condescending billboard ads saying,
“Every 21 minutes, our next possible leader is
aborted,” that bore a picture of President Obama.
They note that many Planned Parenthood sites are in
minority neighborhoods, but don’t mention that a mere
3% of their services are abortion services. The other
97% are pregnancy prevention, sexually transmitted
disease testing and treatment, breast exams and Pap
tests. Thank the gods they’re in minority
neighborhoods; with all of the preventative health
services they provide, they are welcome.
But let’s look at the group that wants us to ignore all of the services Planned Parenthood provides to minority women. Life Always is run by Brian Follett, a white, conservative business owner linked to Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. Black pastors provide cover for the group, but Follett owns it. It’s only sane to be suspicious when a group (like white, right wing conservatives) with an ongoing history of tolerance for race hatred claims a sudden, overwhelming massa-like concern for little ol’ us.
Let’s run this down:
These are the same conservatives who worry that we might lose a “leader,” like the one they regularly vilify as less than human because he’s black. Odd that this seeming haven for haters turns on a dime and professes its big love for some black babies so bad that they can’t bear to see one negroid blastocyst not be born so they can call it everything short of a “nigger.” Just seems downright hard to believe.
It’s easier to believe that they discount the black lives saved by Pap tests and breast exams received at Planned Parenthood; how many unwanted pregnancies are avoided through birth control received at Planned Parenthood; how many well black babies result from Planned Parenthood care. Perhaps somewhere deep down they believe that denying black women the care they need to live healthy lives and bear healthy children has a value. Perhaps the idea of black women having children they cannot afford to raise well, financially or emotionally will ensure that more of us remain poor, ill, imprisoned, desperate and befitting their bottomless contempt for us, to which they cling so desperately it seems among the things that gives them meaning.
But let’s look at the group that wants us to ignore all of the services Planned Parenthood provides to minority women. Life Always is run by Brian Follett, a white, conservative business owner linked to Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. Black pastors provide cover for the group, but Follett owns it. It’s only sane to be suspicious when a group (like white, right wing conservatives) with an ongoing history of tolerance for race hatred claims a sudden, overwhelming massa-like concern for little ol’ us.
Let’s run this down:
- In recent memory, the right wing religious conservative Governor of Virginia declared a Confederate History Month. He chose to declare a celebration of treasonous movement founded upon the principle of the rights of white men to, at their whim, buy, sell, kill, rape and maim black men, women and children.
- According to a mid-April CBS News/New York Times Poll, 45% of Republicans believed the President was born abroad--despite the facts and the voluminous evidence to the contrary. Almost half of Republicans (that’s the conservative, “Christian” party in case you’d forgotten) considered the black President an illegitimate usurper. Conservative Fox News, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh and conservative politicians like Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) and Michele Bachmann (R-MN) have been milking “birtherism” for all it was worth. Now - finally - even the conservative-deferent Beltway Media is acknowledging birtherism as nothing more than veiled race hatred. Even conservative David Frum asked, “How did this poisonous and not very subtly racist allegation get such a grip on our conservative movement and our Republican Party?” (Only a willful idiot would even pretend not to know the answer, but you get the point.)
- The cartoonish Mississippi Governor, Haley Barbour, a bulwark of southern religious conservatism, recently recalled that Mississippi under Jim Crow “wasn’t that bad,” and praised Klan-associated “Citizens Councils” of the time.
- A leader of the Orange County Republican party sent an email depicting the President as the offspring of animals. Among conservatives, this is a veritable chestnut - right up there with “pull my finger.” To them, it just doesn’t get old.
- The head of the GOP in Virginia Beach, Virginia resigned after emailing a racist joke.
- Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams was expelled from the National Tea Party for a racist letter he sent “supposedly from ‘the Colored People’ to President Lincoln praising slavery.”
- Rusty DePass a conservative GOP activist and former chairman of the South Carolina state elections Commission suggested on Facebook that Michelle Obama was descended from (you guessed it) a gorilla.
- Signs at conservative Tea Party events depicted Obama as a witch doctor and accused him of advocating “white slavery.”
- This is just the very recent past. Must we be reminded of conservative Republican Trent Lott praising Strom Thurmond’s segregationist policies? Must we be reminded of the Big Daddy of modern conservatism, Ronald Reagan, opening his presidential bid with a peon to states’ rights near the town in which three civil rights workers were murdered for that cause? Must we be reminded of the racist “Southern Strategy” which built modern conservatism.
These are the same conservatives who worry that we might lose a “leader,” like the one they regularly vilify as less than human because he’s black. Odd that this seeming haven for haters turns on a dime and professes its big love for some black babies so bad that they can’t bear to see one negroid blastocyst not be born so they can call it everything short of a “nigger.” Just seems downright hard to believe.
It’s easier to believe that they discount the black lives saved by Pap tests and breast exams received at Planned Parenthood; how many unwanted pregnancies are avoided through birth control received at Planned Parenthood; how many well black babies result from Planned Parenthood care. Perhaps somewhere deep down they believe that denying black women the care they need to live healthy lives and bear healthy children has a value. Perhaps the idea of black women having children they cannot afford to raise well, financially or emotionally will ensure that more of us remain poor, ill, imprisoned, desperate and befitting their bottomless contempt for us, to which they cling so desperately it seems among the things that gives them meaning.
Obama's Presidency Can't Be "Transformative;" He's a Democrat
06/06/10 09:17 PM
Frank Rich wrote a
progressive line that is becoming as clichéd and
hilarious as the conservative’s “I am not a racist,
but…”
The line is: “If Obama is to have a truly transformative presidency…”
The line assumes (or accepts the statement that) Obama wants to provide a transformative presidency. It’s time to face the fact that he really doesn’t. “Change” was his slogan, but his taste runs to slow sips of consensus-fueled incrementalism. As Rich himself points out, he has a shocking faith in the powers-that-be, and an unhealthy respect for the status quo. There is nothing transformative about him—except his skin color in contrast to the house he inhabits.
Running for the presidency with a slim resume and black skin was a bold move. We assumed it bespoke a bold temperament, but it did not. It was a bold personal move. The decision to run for President challenges no entrenched interests save those of other candidates and only in the abstract (you might prove a great challenger, or no challenge at all). Simply running for president does not diminish any group’s power or purse. It is a totally personal move. Governing, on the other hand, is a public, political process in which there are numerous winners and losers earning and suffering in real time.
Obama’s running represented a bold, outside-the-box political calculus. Winning was audacious, even against a seemingly developmentally challenged opponent who chose a fame whoring cretin as his running mate.
By now, however, it is obvious that Obama’s personal boldness does not cross the blood/brain barrier into governance. By all indications, he simply does not (a) have a taste for upending existing preconceptions or institutions and (b) does not believe he has the right to do so even if he believes it should be done.
Bush, Reagan, Cheney and their conservative ilk govern with a zealot’s belief in their own Divine rightness. It lights them from within. They impart a sense of their own leadership destiny. ‘God wants me in charge,’ they seem to say. That’s the “Daddy” aspect that glows to many like a lighthouse beacon. It animated much of the early thrall with the simplistic George W. Bush. Such men believe that their own best interests are inherently the country’s. Even if they plan to represent only the top 1% of wage earners, they fervently believe that enriching that group is the right thing to do; and they will move heaven and earth to do it. (Imagine the yowls if Barack Obama likewise decided that enriching a much larger group—say, African Americans—was in the pressing national interest.) This is not politics. It is religion, and conservatives will lie, cheat, steal, and impoverish to forcefully convert us all (see 2000 election recount. See Bush tax cuts).
Obama, on the other hand, displays no such sense of noblesse oblige—no self-regard bathed in the Divine Right of Princes. He knows that he’s not “supposed” to be President and therefore does not grant himself the right to impose his view on a nation. He simply can’t do “Daddy.” Race plays into this but it is not all. His political team (despite their insulting bullshit that race never plays into their political calculations) know that Obama will face a telegenically white, less-insane-than-McCain “Daddy” candidate come 2012 (think Romney). They dare not upset the applecart too blatantly and have their rich, establishment sponsors abandon their ironically hued White House occupant.
But that’s only part of it, A recent poll showed Obama’s disease to be shared among the majority of Democrats, who, unlike Republicans, want their politicians to compromise with their political opponents. Democrats, it seems, do not want transformative change.
In early 2007, right after Democrats had retaken Congress, Pew found (PDF, page 16) that self-identified Democrats preferred politicians who compromised, while self-identified Republicans preferred politicians who stood by their beliefs:
Three and a half years later, in a poll released yesterday, Pew has confirmed this finding. Republicans do not like politicians who compromise, but Democrats do (emphasis mine):
Democrats simply don’t share the conservatives’ ideological evangelicism. We doubt our own political prescriptions and are not willing to stand by them despite opposition. We’re just chronically not sure.
Thus Obama’s and his team congratulate themselves on passing a health care “reform” bill that does more for the insurance industry than it does for Americans. It simply means that if you happen to be poor or lose your job, not only will you be unable to afford health insurance, you’ll be fined for the privilege of being unable to afford it—while the insurance industry gets a vast new pool of mandatory customers to rip off. Yipee! (and I can’t resist, [and let’s face it, neither can you]… all together now….) Change We Can Believe In. Yes We Can!
For those of us who never bought this man’s bring-us-all-together/MLK schtick, this is not surprising. It’s been there since the beginning, most just let the Obama campaign’s beatific visions of magic negritude dazzle them.
Time has passed and it’s time to deal with it: Obama ain’t “transforming” shit. Never wanted to. Never will. He accepts that some progressive ideals are beneficial, but hasn’t sufficient conviction to fight decidedly for them. In that, he represents his party. In that, he is a typical Democrat.
The line is: “If Obama is to have a truly transformative presidency…”
The line assumes (or accepts the statement that) Obama wants to provide a transformative presidency. It’s time to face the fact that he really doesn’t. “Change” was his slogan, but his taste runs to slow sips of consensus-fueled incrementalism. As Rich himself points out, he has a shocking faith in the powers-that-be, and an unhealthy respect for the status quo. There is nothing transformative about him—except his skin color in contrast to the house he inhabits.
Running for the presidency with a slim resume and black skin was a bold move. We assumed it bespoke a bold temperament, but it did not. It was a bold personal move. The decision to run for President challenges no entrenched interests save those of other candidates and only in the abstract (you might prove a great challenger, or no challenge at all). Simply running for president does not diminish any group’s power or purse. It is a totally personal move. Governing, on the other hand, is a public, political process in which there are numerous winners and losers earning and suffering in real time.
Obama’s running represented a bold, outside-the-box political calculus. Winning was audacious, even against a seemingly developmentally challenged opponent who chose a fame whoring cretin as his running mate.
By now, however, it is obvious that Obama’s personal boldness does not cross the blood/brain barrier into governance. By all indications, he simply does not (a) have a taste for upending existing preconceptions or institutions and (b) does not believe he has the right to do so even if he believes it should be done.
Bush, Reagan, Cheney and their conservative ilk govern with a zealot’s belief in their own Divine rightness. It lights them from within. They impart a sense of their own leadership destiny. ‘God wants me in charge,’ they seem to say. That’s the “Daddy” aspect that glows to many like a lighthouse beacon. It animated much of the early thrall with the simplistic George W. Bush. Such men believe that their own best interests are inherently the country’s. Even if they plan to represent only the top 1% of wage earners, they fervently believe that enriching that group is the right thing to do; and they will move heaven and earth to do it. (Imagine the yowls if Barack Obama likewise decided that enriching a much larger group—say, African Americans—was in the pressing national interest.) This is not politics. It is religion, and conservatives will lie, cheat, steal, and impoverish to forcefully convert us all (see 2000 election recount. See Bush tax cuts).
Obama, on the other hand, displays no such sense of noblesse oblige—no self-regard bathed in the Divine Right of Princes. He knows that he’s not “supposed” to be President and therefore does not grant himself the right to impose his view on a nation. He simply can’t do “Daddy.” Race plays into this but it is not all. His political team (despite their insulting bullshit that race never plays into their political calculations) know that Obama will face a telegenically white, less-insane-than-McCain “Daddy” candidate come 2012 (think Romney). They dare not upset the applecart too blatantly and have their rich, establishment sponsors abandon their ironically hued White House occupant.
But that’s only part of it, A recent poll showed Obama’s disease to be shared among the majority of Democrats, who, unlike Republicans, want their politicians to compromise with their political opponents. Democrats, it seems, do not want transformative change.
In early 2007, right after Democrats had retaken Congress, Pew found (PDF, page 16) that self-identified Democrats preferred politicians who compromised, while self-identified Republicans preferred politicians who stood by their beliefs:
Three and a half years later, in a poll released yesterday, Pew has confirmed this finding. Republicans do not like politicians who compromise, but Democrats do (emphasis mine):
Democrats simply don’t share the conservatives’ ideological evangelicism. We doubt our own political prescriptions and are not willing to stand by them despite opposition. We’re just chronically not sure.
Thus Obama’s and his team congratulate themselves on passing a health care “reform” bill that does more for the insurance industry than it does for Americans. It simply means that if you happen to be poor or lose your job, not only will you be unable to afford health insurance, you’ll be fined for the privilege of being unable to afford it—while the insurance industry gets a vast new pool of mandatory customers to rip off. Yipee! (and I can’t resist, [and let’s face it, neither can you]… all together now….) Change We Can Believe In. Yes We Can!
For those of us who never bought this man’s bring-us-all-together/MLK schtick, this is not surprising. It’s been there since the beginning, most just let the Obama campaign’s beatific visions of magic negritude dazzle them.
Time has passed and it’s time to deal with it: Obama ain’t “transforming” shit. Never wanted to. Never will. He accepts that some progressive ideals are beneficial, but hasn’t sufficient conviction to fight decidedly for them. In that, he represents his party. In that, he is a typical Democrat.
Our Media Are "Post-Reason," and We Dutifully Follow
05/25/10 09:11 PM
The web is a
visual medium. It grows more similar to
television while it severs ties to traditional
reading and increases its dominance of our
political conversation. It is the bitterest of
ironies that a format once touted as heralding a
new era of enlightened participatory democracy
(remember Thomas Friedman's Lexus and the Olive
Tree?)
is picking up where television left off and doing
infinitely more to erode traditional American
democratic ideals than to promote them. The web,
with its short, choppy text bites and reliance on
imagery and video is just as ill-suited to the
complex language of American democracy as
television. It is more dynamic when (and better
utilized to) convey unreasoning kick-in-the-gut
emotionalism than Enlightenment era abstractions
on the rights of men.
The web only promotes the democratic impulse if you limit the definition of "democratic" to mere participation. But if you mean the American ideals of democratic governance, you could not be more wrong. Americans passively watch the denigration of constitutional ideals via warrantless searches, gross expansions of presidential power, secret government kidnappings, arrests and torture. Some insist that we're happy to sacrifice these traditional freedoms for the sake of safety, but that's only part of it. We no longer walk the complex linguistic landscape in which to refute them. We speak through media that are inherently passive, emotive, and unthinking and we react accordingly. Fear trumps reason. The medium is dictating both the content and the quality of the message--and it's dictating both downward.
When reading we decipher complex symbols (letters) into more complex words into even more complex meanings. It is an active, intellectual process with minimal sensual input.
Image-based media, including the modern web, function more like music. They wash over us and affect us viscerally. Their appreciation is based on emotion, not reason. In web design, text is the enemy. To more quickly engage the restless viewer, we accentuate the sensual and the sensational. Blocks of text are kept as short as possible and imagery and video are emphasized. Check out any news site from CNN to Newsweek to the BBC for examples.
Sociologists and other researchers use images to gauge subjects' true feelings because images are so good at bypassing the rational mind. Viewing them in quick succession, we're more likely to spill the naughty truth before our rational minds kick in to censor us. Ask a person if he's a racist and he'll say, "no." Show him images, and you'll have a good chance of getting a different answer.
In fact, image media are thoroughly amoral. They can turn what our reason finds repellent into something emotionally attractive. Leni Reifenstahl's Triumph of the Will and D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation are both classic examples. They dazzlingly manipulate composition, imagery and montage to engage our emotions in favor of the grotesque: the Third Reich and the KKK respectively. We "root" for the D.W. Griffith's Klansmen because the filmmaker makes us share their emotional point-of-view, not because we agree with their intellectual outlook. Our preferred media function best in the realm of "post-reason." And we adapt.
You are twenty times more likely to be struck by lightning than to face a terror attack aboard an airplane, yet we obsess on the latter. Our new media stoke our emotions (fear in this case) and sever the conduit through which we could reason our way back from the emotional brink. Our democratic principles are based on abstract, Enlightenment era concepts. Our media thrive on visceral, gut-level impulses. The two don't jibe.
These ignorant media to which we're addicted not only dictate how "the message" (whatever it is) will be conveyed, they dictate whether the message will be sent at all. Thus, we edit and even censor ideas and discourse to fit within today's most prevalent and fast-growing frameworks, which are excellent at the wide dissemination of information, but very poor at presenting complex intellectual concepts and the reasoning behind them. They are a far cry from Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.
Irony among ironies: the web is enabling a more participatory democracy that Founders like Alexander Hamilton feared. Today, we all have TV- or web-fueled opinions on topics that in a print-based era would have seemed obscure and arcane (please, how many of us understand the bond ratings, debt-to-GDP ratios and international economic machinations that comprise the national debt; but we all have our opinions, don't we?). The ignorant and telegenic Sarah Palin's every utterance is adoringly captured and disseminated. She makes no sense, but TV loves her smile and the web gorges on her moronic bowls of verbal soup. (Rand Paul transcripts read like those of her illegitimate offspring.)
"We The Rabble" now have dominant information media that, unlike the word, we're wholly comfortable with and so control. With secret prisons, torture, a President with the right to assassinate American citizens with no due process of any kind, and diminishing realms in which to rationally discuss them (versus emotionally react to them), the results are looking as dangerous as Hamilton feared.
The web only promotes the democratic impulse if you limit the definition of "democratic" to mere participation. But if you mean the American ideals of democratic governance, you could not be more wrong. Americans passively watch the denigration of constitutional ideals via warrantless searches, gross expansions of presidential power, secret government kidnappings, arrests and torture. Some insist that we're happy to sacrifice these traditional freedoms for the sake of safety, but that's only part of it. We no longer walk the complex linguistic landscape in which to refute them. We speak through media that are inherently passive, emotive, and unthinking and we react accordingly. Fear trumps reason. The medium is dictating both the content and the quality of the message--and it's dictating both downward.
When reading we decipher complex symbols (letters) into more complex words into even more complex meanings. It is an active, intellectual process with minimal sensual input.
Image-based media, including the modern web, function more like music. They wash over us and affect us viscerally. Their appreciation is based on emotion, not reason. In web design, text is the enemy. To more quickly engage the restless viewer, we accentuate the sensual and the sensational. Blocks of text are kept as short as possible and imagery and video are emphasized. Check out any news site from CNN to Newsweek to the BBC for examples.
Sociologists and other researchers use images to gauge subjects' true feelings because images are so good at bypassing the rational mind. Viewing them in quick succession, we're more likely to spill the naughty truth before our rational minds kick in to censor us. Ask a person if he's a racist and he'll say, "no." Show him images, and you'll have a good chance of getting a different answer.
In fact, image media are thoroughly amoral. They can turn what our reason finds repellent into something emotionally attractive. Leni Reifenstahl's Triumph of the Will and D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation are both classic examples. They dazzlingly manipulate composition, imagery and montage to engage our emotions in favor of the grotesque: the Third Reich and the KKK respectively. We "root" for the D.W. Griffith's Klansmen because the filmmaker makes us share their emotional point-of-view, not because we agree with their intellectual outlook. Our preferred media function best in the realm of "post-reason." And we adapt.
You are twenty times more likely to be struck by lightning than to face a terror attack aboard an airplane, yet we obsess on the latter. Our new media stoke our emotions (fear in this case) and sever the conduit through which we could reason our way back from the emotional brink. Our democratic principles are based on abstract, Enlightenment era concepts. Our media thrive on visceral, gut-level impulses. The two don't jibe.
These ignorant media to which we're addicted not only dictate how "the message" (whatever it is) will be conveyed, they dictate whether the message will be sent at all. Thus, we edit and even censor ideas and discourse to fit within today's most prevalent and fast-growing frameworks, which are excellent at the wide dissemination of information, but very poor at presenting complex intellectual concepts and the reasoning behind them. They are a far cry from Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.
Irony among ironies: the web is enabling a more participatory democracy that Founders like Alexander Hamilton feared. Today, we all have TV- or web-fueled opinions on topics that in a print-based era would have seemed obscure and arcane (please, how many of us understand the bond ratings, debt-to-GDP ratios and international economic machinations that comprise the national debt; but we all have our opinions, don't we?). The ignorant and telegenic Sarah Palin's every utterance is adoringly captured and disseminated. She makes no sense, but TV loves her smile and the web gorges on her moronic bowls of verbal soup. (Rand Paul transcripts read like those of her illegitimate offspring.)
"We The Rabble" now have dominant information media that, unlike the word, we're wholly comfortable with and so control. With secret prisons, torture, a President with the right to assassinate American citizens with no due process of any kind, and diminishing realms in which to rationally discuss them (versus emotionally react to them), the results are looking as dangerous as Hamilton feared.
The Legacy of White Christian Chauvanism in Arizona's Ethnic Studies Bill
05/13/10 03:31 PM
As I sat in a pew in
Catholic church, I stared up at the enormous crucifix
suspended from the ceiling on which a distinctly
white man gazed theatrically toward the heavens. I
looked around at the other black folks sitting around
me in the pews, and realized that even then, in the
heyday of the Civil Rights Movement, even as Martin
Luther King used the language of Christianity to
shame the majority into treating other men as men—I
realized that, for black Americans, Christianity was
like the atom. Tearing it apart might heat your
house, but that doesn’t lessen its potential
lethality.
Arizona’s outlawing of ethnic education revived this memory. Just as black Americans have historically ignored the more toxic aspects of the Christianity foisted upon us by our former slave masters, that toxicity continues to infect not only us, but the descendants (literal and figurative) of those who enslaved us.
Mainstream Christianity rests on the belief in an historical Jesus. By any American standards, this living, breathing man would have been classified as “white”—swarthy yes, but white. Of course, Europeans recreated him in their own image, blond and blue-eyed. But even when historical reality crept it and Jesus’ skin took on a bit of a taint and his hair a bit more curl that was strictly Nordic, it was not that much of a stretch. “White,” he remained.
God chose a ‘white’ man to bear his image on earth. Thus, white men are clearly closer to God, dearer to God, more in his image than any black-skinned being with nappy hair. Christianity has always borne this toxic underpinning of white supremacy due to its historical pretensions. Jesus is not an allegory who can be effectively transformed to suit the occasion. He is both the son of the One True God and an historical fact—and he is white.
Europeans used this aspect of Christianity to justify varying forms of brutality and enslavement. Americans used it in the founding of this nation, in drafting its Constitution, and in its official governance for most of her history.
That history of violence is not easy for some white Christians (most of whom would call themselves “conservatives&rdquo
to accept. The Godliness of their
image precludes the possibility of centuries of
monstrous behaviors. God has singled them out as
most like Him and he has granted them dominion
over the earth and its creatures. The idea that
they lustily participated in butchery, rape,
murder and dehumanization vicious enough to give
most historical perversions a run for their
money… that simply cannot stand.
So they deny. They declare certain sections of the past off limits even as they revel in others. It is fine to dwell on the past of the confederacy, but off limits to dwell on the past of slavery and Jim Crow. The former is considered healthy respect for one’s forebears, the latter an incitement to resentment against white people.
Clearly, shame and arrogance comingle here. It is the shame of those who know the facts paint them unkindly. It is the arrogance of those who believe themselves inherently superior in the eyes of their God; who believe that lesser men have no right to shame them, who believe somewhere deep down that they had the right to commit those heinous wrongs.
If Arizona’s white legislators want to erase ethnic-specific education, they should close every school in the state, for most of their curricula are white-specific. But of course, the goal is to ensure that black and brown children continue to see the world only from the majority’s point-of-view, continue to see the majority through the traditional American Christian prism—closer to God, good and pure—clean and right.
Arizona’s outlawing of ethnic education revived this memory. Just as black Americans have historically ignored the more toxic aspects of the Christianity foisted upon us by our former slave masters, that toxicity continues to infect not only us, but the descendants (literal and figurative) of those who enslaved us.
Mainstream Christianity rests on the belief in an historical Jesus. By any American standards, this living, breathing man would have been classified as “white”—swarthy yes, but white. Of course, Europeans recreated him in their own image, blond and blue-eyed. But even when historical reality crept it and Jesus’ skin took on a bit of a taint and his hair a bit more curl that was strictly Nordic, it was not that much of a stretch. “White,” he remained.
God chose a ‘white’ man to bear his image on earth. Thus, white men are clearly closer to God, dearer to God, more in his image than any black-skinned being with nappy hair. Christianity has always borne this toxic underpinning of white supremacy due to its historical pretensions. Jesus is not an allegory who can be effectively transformed to suit the occasion. He is both the son of the One True God and an historical fact—and he is white.
Europeans used this aspect of Christianity to justify varying forms of brutality and enslavement. Americans used it in the founding of this nation, in drafting its Constitution, and in its official governance for most of her history.
That history of violence is not easy for some white Christians (most of whom would call themselves “conservatives&rdquo
to accept. The Godliness of their
image precludes the possibility of centuries of
monstrous behaviors. God has singled them out as
most like Him and he has granted them dominion
over the earth and its creatures. The idea that
they lustily participated in butchery, rape,
murder and dehumanization vicious enough to give
most historical perversions a run for their
money… that simply cannot stand.
So they deny. They declare certain sections of the past off limits even as they revel in others. It is fine to dwell on the past of the confederacy, but off limits to dwell on the past of slavery and Jim Crow. The former is considered healthy respect for one’s forebears, the latter an incitement to resentment against white people.
Clearly, shame and arrogance comingle here. It is the shame of those who know the facts paint them unkindly. It is the arrogance of those who believe themselves inherently superior in the eyes of their God; who believe that lesser men have no right to shame them, who believe somewhere deep down that they had the right to commit those heinous wrongs.
If Arizona’s white legislators want to erase ethnic-specific education, they should close every school in the state, for most of their curricula are white-specific. But of course, the goal is to ensure that black and brown children continue to see the world only from the majority’s point-of-view, continue to see the majority through the traditional American Christian prism—closer to God, good and pure—clean and right.
Tea Partiers Battle Racism Claims--Far Too Late
05/13/10 03:15 PM
About 39 percent of Republicans think Obama should be impeached, and 29 percent aren't sure. This might be because 63 percent think he's a socialist, and only 42 percent think he was born in the United States.- Ezra Klein, Washington Post, Feb. 2, 2010
It's not true that... all Republicans are racists. That would be silly and wrong. But nowadays, if you are racist, you're probably a Republican. And that is quite different."-Bill Maher.
The Washington Post headline said “Tea Partiers Battle Racism Claims.” It will be a tall order for the Tea Party to free itself from that taint. It lurks in the DNA. The Tea Party isn’t the issue, it’s the brand of conservatism from which it springs.
According to a CBS News/NY Time poll, tea partiers “hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative”...”
Tea Partiers are desperate to “preserve” and “take back” America (from whom or what is the great wink and nudge). Meanwhile, elsewhere in modern conservatism, the Governor of Virginia declares his admiration for the Confederate cause (of white supremacy, one supposes). RNC Chairman Michael Steel, a con man extraordinaire whom I hope is fleecing Republicans to the tune of millions, declares that Republicans have been dining out on race hatred for 40 years. The Arizona legislature declares brown skin “reasonable suspicion.” Obviously, the problem did not begin with, and does not stop at the Tea Party.
Acceptance and support of the concept of white supremacy has been the cushion beneath modern conservatism’s great white rump since its founding. William F. Buckley, the father of modern conservatism, launched the movement’s house organ, the National Review, in 1955. In a 1957 editorial he infamously wrote:
The central question that emerges—and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal—is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.
National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way; and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence.
He glibly declares a society that would deny its own ideals in order to denigrate a people to be culturally “advanced.” It never occurs to him that true atavism is to deny supposedly God-given rights (he was a Christian) to an entire swath of the population because they do not share his hue. Ironically, Buckley declares himself and white men advanced through embracing the abject primitivism of white tribalism.
Buckley was attempting to re-enshrine what had been taken for granted and which was, suddenly, under threat: that Americanism and whiteness were synonymous, the same attitude that compels today’s “birthers,” desperate to deny Obama’s Americanness, and thus his legitimacy as President. McClatchy reported on a Field Poll:
Those who identify strongly with tea partiers are not at all sure about the president's true nation of origin. "It's an interesting phenomenon that they are not only rebelling against the growth and size of government, but they are actually questioning the authority of the president," said poll director Mark DiCamillo.”
Trace this confusion of whiteness and Americanness back to modern conservatism’s infancy. Buckley did not support stripping equal rights from white “undesirables.” His was not elitism based on merit or “individualism.” It was not defense against government intrusion. The greatest government intrusion was its collusion in stripping some citizens of the full benefit of the rights guaranteed them by law. But the victims of this grotesque government overreach were black, and so this brand of overreach did not signify. However, the government forcing a southern merchant to serve blacks--that was was truly menacing--Big Brother at work.
Lizard-brained tribalism, pure and simple, all gussied up for a Georgetown dinner party.
And the band plays on. Civil Rights legislation ran Southern conservatives into the open arms of the Republican Party, where they have settled in like grannies in their comfy chairs. In 1981 the late Lee Atwater described the Republican Southern Strategy:
''You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' -- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
''And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me -- because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'''
In 1980 Ronald Reagan opened his presidential campaign with a speech praising “states’ rights.” He gave the speech near Philadelphia Mississippi, the site where three Civil Rights workers were murdered for that cause. Those who call it happenstance suggest that their leader was a blithering fool.
In 2005, Republican National Committee Chair Ken Mehlman again admitted to the Southern Strategy and apologized for it. "Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization,” he said. “I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."
In 2010, current RNC Chair Michael Steele said, “For the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South.”
With the passing decades, new admissions, refreshed evidence, yet we still pretend it’s news that white tribalism and modern conservatism and its offshoots have been linked from the git-go.
Tea partiers believe that if they can just keep the “n-word” off their followers’ lips while the cameras whirr, all will be well. Think again. White tribalism is the conservative movement’s congenital soul sickness. Remember Trent Lott in 2006?
'I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had of followed our lead we wouldn't of had all these problems over all these years, either.
Strom Thurmond ran as a segregationist Dixiecrat.
Libertarian Ron Paul’s newsletters ran racist rants during the 90s.
Rush Limbaugh is often called the unofficial leader of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. It requires a lengthy web pages to catalogue his endless forays into white tribalism and outright race hatred.
Denying the long-standing link between white tribalism and conservatism may be “politically correct” within the DC bubble where press and politicians mingle and spit-shine each others’ images, but denial is the opposite of truth. There have been decades of conservative and Republican apologies and mea culpas regarding the exploitation of racism for political gain. For decades, conservatives have “battled” the impression that they provide willing shelter for white supremacist outlooks. But looking around, the movement has done a piss poor job of freeing itself from them. After all this time, I suppose you have to regard conservatism as unusually kind hearted, like a hotel that shelters the homeless in its lobby on frigid nights. They do it because if they did not, the racists would have no other warm place to go.
Bettye LaVette: The High Priestess of Love and Death
04/18/10 10:40 AM
I’ve thought a lot
about what it means to be Afro-American, i.e., born
to the culture of American descendants of African
slaves. We Americans, black and white, have been
taught to reduce it to a set of personal ticks
(speech patterns, handshakes, musical taste) and
socio-economic caste. Yes, black Americans are taught
in the same schools, read the same texts, watch the
same media as whites; and we have never held
ourselves in sufficient esteem to codify our culture
and teach it to our children free of the majority’s
blood-splattered filter, as have Jews, some Asian
cultures and others.
This used to be easier. When I was younger and the remnants of legal segregation still stood like the architecturally spectral twin tower remnants against the background smoke of devastation, when we had our own music that the majority often ignored and mostly attended our own schools, sheer immersion helped us recognize and reinforce our cultural distinctiveness. No, we never had the luxury of freeing ourselves from the toxins of the majority’s view of us, but we had refuge from it within a society that the most privileged of us could consider equal to, but separate from the majority’s.
Now, we swim in a bigger pond. The levies around our sub-cultural world shattered in the sixties for the better and the worse. Our cultural ether blended with that of the mainstream and the result was inevitable: We were diluted. The majority world overtook the best of ours. We adapted to it. The most obvious examples of our cultural uniqueness now worked for the majority, and not for us. The music grew more generic, the singers less honest, less unique and more emptily histrionic. The writers largely disappeared because venues became less interested in our peculiar worldviews now that we--the “black problem”--had been neutralized. We now mainly speak with the polite vagueries and platitudes of the ‘op-ed columnist,’ or the cloying emptiness of the self-help entrepreneur.
When it comes to music I have clung to jazz as one of the few outposts where—and this may sound odd—what I recognize in my soul as of me appears. Abbey Lincoln helped me through the 90s. With collections like “The Beautiful Ones are Not Yet Born,“ and “Metamorphosen,“ Branford Marsalis proved himself a master. An extraordinary young player like Jason Moran gives me hope for the future.
Then someone comes along and reminds me of what we can do in other forms. Bettye LaVette has been around since she was a teenager in the early sixties, largely ignored. She never, as she put it, “crossed over.” Opportunities were lost, missed, unrecognized or unfulfilled. Then, in 2005 she released “I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise.” The great Joe Henry produced. The songs came from a slew of fine female writers: Aimee Mann, Dolly Parton, Joan Armatrading, Lucinda Williams. Immediately, that voice slapped you. Unashamedly aged, rough, ragged and under absolute control. On the song “Just Say So,” she proved that she could find depths of longing and desperation in a lyric that the songwriters probably didn’t even know existed.
She then released the brilliant “Scene of the Crime” with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section. The first words she sings are “I’ve been this way too long to change now,” and goddamn! Real instruments slash in the background (Spooner fucking Oldham plays the organ for god’s sake) instead of today’s studio mixing board wash. This is the nastiest, dirtiest blues you are gonna hear. This is what singers like Janis Joplin dreamed they can be. This is music for folks willing to travel down the devil’s own road because they suspect that God went thatta way. She takes Elton John’s “Talking Old Soldiers” and deconstructs, reconstructs and reinvents it into something simply devastating. Not since Lena Horne chewed, spat and then licked up the remains of Charles Aznavour’s “Yesterday When I Was Young” have you witnessed such a work of musical alchemy.
That is, unless you happened to catch The Kennedy Center Honors presentation with Pete Townsend among the honorees. She walked on the empty stage, a slim figure, a simple gown draping it, and then the piano played a simple descending figure, and she moaned and growled “only love can make it rain like when the beach is kissed by the sea. Only love can make it rain like the sweat of two lovers laying the fields” You felt the silence in the hall. Rapt attention would be paid. There was nothing else but this voice and this music, an intensity almost hard to bear because it obviously held such truths for the singer, and for the rest of us. “Love,” she begged, “reign over me...” with a need that would shame a junkie. She turns the bridge into a blues etude and then she begs, pleads and finally demands, exhorting the sky to do her bidding, “Love, reign o’er me.” Pete Townsend sat in awe, as did we all. (Video here.)
This performance closes LaVette’s latest and perhaps greatest. Called “Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook,” (releasing May 25th) she takes tunes from The Beatles, The Moody Blues, George Harrison and others and performs her magic. There’s nothing of the archival about these performances. She is appropriately disrespectful of the original and respectful of her audience to make these her own. Sometimes, she does so to such an extent that it takes repeated listenings to wipe the originals from your head. She strips the oft-covered “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” of what every other singer has kept as its melodramatic highpoint. That’s not what she’s after. She’s digging a deeper truth out of it. It’s astonishing to hear what depths can be found in these songs; Ringo Starr’s “It Don’t Come Easy” a country-blues lament; The Stones’ “Salt of the Earth,” without its snarking irony; The Beatles’ “The Word,” a churchy revival with a 70s-era chucka chucka guitar.
The pacing here is astonishing. Each song adds to the one preceding it. If find myself living this record. LaVette inhabits these tunes, wraps her skin around them like some kind of song-eating monster. There’s something so deeply human going on here that it’s incantatory, so distinct that it’s indelible. So true that it dares to be ugly sometimes. So right that it can cause you pain.
There is something distinctly of me going on here: an Afro-American woman doing with a foundation in rhythm and blues what only such a woman could do. And what she does is gut-wrenching. This is the magic that music can make, and magic comes at a cost. If you’re looking for some disposable, distracting background, keep going. It’s not here. This is the tent in the carnival it kind of scares you to enter. It’s the gypsy woman who, from the look in her eye, you fear knows too much and might tell you something you dread to hear. You are entering the presence of Bettye LaVette, the High Priestess of Love and Death, and she demands that you honor all aspects of each. She demands, and delivers, nothing less of herself.
This used to be easier. When I was younger and the remnants of legal segregation still stood like the architecturally spectral twin tower remnants against the background smoke of devastation, when we had our own music that the majority often ignored and mostly attended our own schools, sheer immersion helped us recognize and reinforce our cultural distinctiveness. No, we never had the luxury of freeing ourselves from the toxins of the majority’s view of us, but we had refuge from it within a society that the most privileged of us could consider equal to, but separate from the majority’s.
Now, we swim in a bigger pond. The levies around our sub-cultural world shattered in the sixties for the better and the worse. Our cultural ether blended with that of the mainstream and the result was inevitable: We were diluted. The majority world overtook the best of ours. We adapted to it. The most obvious examples of our cultural uniqueness now worked for the majority, and not for us. The music grew more generic, the singers less honest, less unique and more emptily histrionic. The writers largely disappeared because venues became less interested in our peculiar worldviews now that we--the “black problem”--had been neutralized. We now mainly speak with the polite vagueries and platitudes of the ‘op-ed columnist,’ or the cloying emptiness of the self-help entrepreneur.
When it comes to music I have clung to jazz as one of the few outposts where—and this may sound odd—what I recognize in my soul as of me appears. Abbey Lincoln helped me through the 90s. With collections like “The Beautiful Ones are Not Yet Born,“ and “Metamorphosen,“ Branford Marsalis proved himself a master. An extraordinary young player like Jason Moran gives me hope for the future.
Then someone comes along and reminds me of what we can do in other forms. Bettye LaVette has been around since she was a teenager in the early sixties, largely ignored. She never, as she put it, “crossed over.” Opportunities were lost, missed, unrecognized or unfulfilled. Then, in 2005 she released “I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise.” The great Joe Henry produced. The songs came from a slew of fine female writers: Aimee Mann, Dolly Parton, Joan Armatrading, Lucinda Williams. Immediately, that voice slapped you. Unashamedly aged, rough, ragged and under absolute control. On the song “Just Say So,” she proved that she could find depths of longing and desperation in a lyric that the songwriters probably didn’t even know existed.
She then released the brilliant “Scene of the Crime” with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section. The first words she sings are “I’ve been this way too long to change now,” and goddamn! Real instruments slash in the background (Spooner fucking Oldham plays the organ for god’s sake) instead of today’s studio mixing board wash. This is the nastiest, dirtiest blues you are gonna hear. This is what singers like Janis Joplin dreamed they can be. This is music for folks willing to travel down the devil’s own road because they suspect that God went thatta way. She takes Elton John’s “Talking Old Soldiers” and deconstructs, reconstructs and reinvents it into something simply devastating. Not since Lena Horne chewed, spat and then licked up the remains of Charles Aznavour’s “Yesterday When I Was Young” have you witnessed such a work of musical alchemy.
That is, unless you happened to catch The Kennedy Center Honors presentation with Pete Townsend among the honorees. She walked on the empty stage, a slim figure, a simple gown draping it, and then the piano played a simple descending figure, and she moaned and growled “only love can make it rain like when the beach is kissed by the sea. Only love can make it rain like the sweat of two lovers laying the fields” You felt the silence in the hall. Rapt attention would be paid. There was nothing else but this voice and this music, an intensity almost hard to bear because it obviously held such truths for the singer, and for the rest of us. “Love,” she begged, “reign over me...” with a need that would shame a junkie. She turns the bridge into a blues etude and then she begs, pleads and finally demands, exhorting the sky to do her bidding, “Love, reign o’er me.” Pete Townsend sat in awe, as did we all. (Video here.)
This performance closes LaVette’s latest and perhaps greatest. Called “Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook,” (releasing May 25th) she takes tunes from The Beatles, The Moody Blues, George Harrison and others and performs her magic. There’s nothing of the archival about these performances. She is appropriately disrespectful of the original and respectful of her audience to make these her own. Sometimes, she does so to such an extent that it takes repeated listenings to wipe the originals from your head. She strips the oft-covered “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” of what every other singer has kept as its melodramatic highpoint. That’s not what she’s after. She’s digging a deeper truth out of it. It’s astonishing to hear what depths can be found in these songs; Ringo Starr’s “It Don’t Come Easy” a country-blues lament; The Stones’ “Salt of the Earth,” without its snarking irony; The Beatles’ “The Word,” a churchy revival with a 70s-era chucka chucka guitar.
The pacing here is astonishing. Each song adds to the one preceding it. If find myself living this record. LaVette inhabits these tunes, wraps her skin around them like some kind of song-eating monster. There’s something so deeply human going on here that it’s incantatory, so distinct that it’s indelible. So true that it dares to be ugly sometimes. So right that it can cause you pain.
There is something distinctly of me going on here: an Afro-American woman doing with a foundation in rhythm and blues what only such a woman could do. And what she does is gut-wrenching. This is the magic that music can make, and magic comes at a cost. If you’re looking for some disposable, distracting background, keep going. It’s not here. This is the tent in the carnival it kind of scares you to enter. It’s the gypsy woman who, from the look in her eye, you fear knows too much and might tell you something you dread to hear. You are entering the presence of Bettye LaVette, the High Priestess of Love and Death, and she demands that you honor all aspects of each. She demands, and delivers, nothing less of herself.
Bob McDonnell Blows the Racist Dog Whistle Really Really Loud
04/06/10 04:05 PM
Think of it a “Black
History Month” for proto-Klansmen. It’s like a
Freshman Young Republican hanging a white hooded
effigy from the second story dorm room window as a
conservative career builder.
Let’s consider: We are regularly invited to “celebrate” black history month (absurd as the idea may be in its conception and execution). Virginia’s Governor Bob McDonnell did not ask his state’s citizens to “celebrate” “Confederate History Month.” He simply “declared” its existence, leaving the celebratory aspect aspirated to the level of the dog whistle (an apt metaphor considering his audience).
If McDonnell had not wanted to be incendiary, if he had not wanted to suggest sympathy with the ideals of the confederacy, if he had not wanted to evoke an opposition to the idea of celebrating black equality, if he had, as stated, simply wanted to ensure that “a defining chapter in Virginia’s history should not be forgotten,“ he could have proclaimed “Civil War History Month,” and achieved that end. Instead, he uses language that, by association, inevitably implies ‘celebrating’ the confederacy, celebrating a world in which white men ruled black ones and fought for the right to enslave them, celebrating treason by the southern states, celebrating the instigation of a bloody war for the right to maintain a way of life both perverted and decadent.
McDonnell has a long history as an arch conservative. (And yes, in today’s America and today’s Republican party, “conservative” implies at least the passive recognition of the acceptability of race hatred; for instance, how many conservatives expressed outrage over this?) During his campaign for governor, McDonnell’s Regent University thesis came to light:
At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master's thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as "detrimental" to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators." He described as "illogical" a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples. - The Washington Post
McDonnell has clearly staked his conservative bona fides on abortion, homosexuality and women’s right. He had yet to imply his sympathy for white supremacy. Having done so, I sure he feels politically and personally complete.
Let’s consider: We are regularly invited to “celebrate” black history month (absurd as the idea may be in its conception and execution). Virginia’s Governor Bob McDonnell did not ask his state’s citizens to “celebrate” “Confederate History Month.” He simply “declared” its existence, leaving the celebratory aspect aspirated to the level of the dog whistle (an apt metaphor considering his audience).
If McDonnell had not wanted to be incendiary, if he had not wanted to suggest sympathy with the ideals of the confederacy, if he had not wanted to evoke an opposition to the idea of celebrating black equality, if he had, as stated, simply wanted to ensure that “a defining chapter in Virginia’s history should not be forgotten,“ he could have proclaimed “Civil War History Month,” and achieved that end. Instead, he uses language that, by association, inevitably implies ‘celebrating’ the confederacy, celebrating a world in which white men ruled black ones and fought for the right to enslave them, celebrating treason by the southern states, celebrating the instigation of a bloody war for the right to maintain a way of life both perverted and decadent.
McDonnell has a long history as an arch conservative. (And yes, in today’s America and today’s Republican party, “conservative” implies at least the passive recognition of the acceptability of race hatred; for instance, how many conservatives expressed outrage over this?) During his campaign for governor, McDonnell’s Regent University thesis came to light:
At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master's thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as "detrimental" to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators." He described as "illogical" a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples. - The Washington Post
McDonnell has clearly staked his conservative bona fides on abortion, homosexuality and women’s right. He had yet to imply his sympathy for white supremacy. Having done so, I sure he feels politically and personally complete.
Putting Aside a Scandal-Ridden Church, and Other Childish Things
04/03/10 05:24 PM
As a child, the
Catholic Church overwhelms you. It vice-grips the
imagination. High ceilings ringing with stentorian
echoes, all blood-red and gilt, intoxicatingly
incensed and aromatic, dotted with black and
red-robed men who seemingly glide a few millimeters
above the earth we mere mortals walk. Secretly, they
"transmogrify" matter in rituals creaking and
venerable with age and import.
It's like fairy tales with princes and dragons evoking lands long lost and golden -- touched with the luster of the unattainable. I went to Catholic schools back in the day when witch-garbed nuns shamelessly beat students with rulers if they failed the flash card quiz. The schools imposed a militaristic authoritarianism, enabled with outright brutality both physical and psychological. They beat you, promised heaven and threatened hell. Again, a perfect exploitation of a child's simplicity; great reward through heaven, unendurable pain through hell, and an absolute arbiter of your fate in the Church and its minions. Mindless authoritarianism at its most pure.
As I matured, I saw past the costumes and stage paint. The very aspects so entrancing to a child became repellent to a teen: The insistence on men of flesh and blood being greater than other men and snatching the right to dictate to them. Black and raised by southern parents, the notion of the god-made elect lording over the unwashed masses repulsed me. It bore such resemblance to home-grown American race hatred and the despicable behavior so many whites believed that god gave them the right to sling at me.
Further examinations into church history and doctrine only deepened my alienation. An institution that grants itself the power of "infallibility" was hilariously absurd on its face. An organization that insisted that I submit to its functionaries' wills was offensive in the extreme. My decision was easy. This institution did not have the kindness, the intellectual rigor, or the moral right to guide my walk through this life in any way.
The years worth of priest-abuse scandals and the Church's reaction to them only underlines my point. Now, with evidence that the current Pope enabled the rape of children by his priests through inaction, it is appropriate to examine the Church's suitability to dictate morality and spirituality to the rest of the world.
The Catholic Church is a government. Vatican City is an independent city-state with the Pope as its absolute monarch in which cardinals hold legislative authority. It is also a bank; the Vatican Bank is worth billions and faces accusations of money laundering while sitting on a past worthy of a particularly lurid pulp thriller.
Which of the sane among us would appoint politicians and bankers to guide our spiritual development? A creation of St. Paul that invokes the thin veil of Christ as self-justification, the Church is an international financial and governmental institution with a past both corrupt and bloody. Popes have instigated and financed unprovoked wars, committed torture and incest (among the supposedly celibate you might call that a 'twofer'), and sat mute in the face of the deportation of Jews by the Nazis. See here and, for a more sprightly take, here.
Yet, Church doctrine declares that itself and its Pope can be infallible. And the current Pope, in his tone deaf, tommy-gun barrage of pathetic and/or repellant self-defenses displays the ungodly arrogance of the rich and powerful when faced with facts that threaten their empires.
The institution that turned a blind eye to its priests, its holy men, serially raping children is the same institution that insists that we suffer unimaginable agonies for as long as possible as we die. It is the same institution that tells a woman that she must sacrifice her health, he family's well being, her sanity, her aspirations or even her life to the single-celled blastocyst she carries in side her as a result of being viciously raped in an alley. It is the same institution that insists that men or women loving each another is offensive to god. I have no doubt that such love is an offense to their god -- the one who condones child rape by the extravagantly self-titled and self-indulged.
After a point, an institution so besmirched by sin (by its own definition), cruelty and scandal must lose all right to claim moral and spiritual authority. That point has come.
It's like fairy tales with princes and dragons evoking lands long lost and golden -- touched with the luster of the unattainable. I went to Catholic schools back in the day when witch-garbed nuns shamelessly beat students with rulers if they failed the flash card quiz. The schools imposed a militaristic authoritarianism, enabled with outright brutality both physical and psychological. They beat you, promised heaven and threatened hell. Again, a perfect exploitation of a child's simplicity; great reward through heaven, unendurable pain through hell, and an absolute arbiter of your fate in the Church and its minions. Mindless authoritarianism at its most pure.
As I matured, I saw past the costumes and stage paint. The very aspects so entrancing to a child became repellent to a teen: The insistence on men of flesh and blood being greater than other men and snatching the right to dictate to them. Black and raised by southern parents, the notion of the god-made elect lording over the unwashed masses repulsed me. It bore such resemblance to home-grown American race hatred and the despicable behavior so many whites believed that god gave them the right to sling at me.
Further examinations into church history and doctrine only deepened my alienation. An institution that grants itself the power of "infallibility" was hilariously absurd on its face. An organization that insisted that I submit to its functionaries' wills was offensive in the extreme. My decision was easy. This institution did not have the kindness, the intellectual rigor, or the moral right to guide my walk through this life in any way.
The years worth of priest-abuse scandals and the Church's reaction to them only underlines my point. Now, with evidence that the current Pope enabled the rape of children by his priests through inaction, it is appropriate to examine the Church's suitability to dictate morality and spirituality to the rest of the world.
The Catholic Church is a government. Vatican City is an independent city-state with the Pope as its absolute monarch in which cardinals hold legislative authority. It is also a bank; the Vatican Bank is worth billions and faces accusations of money laundering while sitting on a past worthy of a particularly lurid pulp thriller.
Which of the sane among us would appoint politicians and bankers to guide our spiritual development? A creation of St. Paul that invokes the thin veil of Christ as self-justification, the Church is an international financial and governmental institution with a past both corrupt and bloody. Popes have instigated and financed unprovoked wars, committed torture and incest (among the supposedly celibate you might call that a 'twofer'), and sat mute in the face of the deportation of Jews by the Nazis. See here and, for a more sprightly take, here.
Yet, Church doctrine declares that itself and its Pope can be infallible. And the current Pope, in his tone deaf, tommy-gun barrage of pathetic and/or repellant self-defenses displays the ungodly arrogance of the rich and powerful when faced with facts that threaten their empires.
The institution that turned a blind eye to its priests, its holy men, serially raping children is the same institution that insists that we suffer unimaginable agonies for as long as possible as we die. It is the same institution that tells a woman that she must sacrifice her health, he family's well being, her sanity, her aspirations or even her life to the single-celled blastocyst she carries in side her as a result of being viciously raped in an alley. It is the same institution that insists that men or women loving each another is offensive to god. I have no doubt that such love is an offense to their god -- the one who condones child rape by the extravagantly self-titled and self-indulged.
After a point, an institution so besmirched by sin (by its own definition), cruelty and scandal must lose all right to claim moral and spiritual authority. That point has come.