25 Days of Ad-vent, Day 4: You like him, he likes you

I've never been a big fan of 7Up, but there's something tremendously evocative about this ad. Between the vividness of the colors, the clear night sky, and the smoke swirling lazily up from the snow-covered chimneys, you can almost feel the crispness in the clear cold air. Even though I now live in Texas, this is still how Christmas should feel to me.

I'm confused about one thing, though - I always thought Coca-Cola was Santa's favorite soft drink!

25 Days of Ad-vent, Day 3: when Christmas meant sacrifice

Christmas during the war years was somber; with most families having loved ones in the line of fire overseas, not having many presents under the tree was the least thing to be concerned about.  Nevertheless, one of the things that I think has been missing during the "War on Terror" has been this sense of shared sacrifice; it's hard to appreciate the gravity of the situation when the response to the enemy is not a call to sacrifice, that we're all in this fight together, but instead urging us to buy more, to show that the terrorists can't bring our economy down. There's something very wrong about that...

Race-based protests against police show the ego: baby murder mills get more protection than merchants

T
he actor Page Falkenberg, known as the character “Diamond Dallas Page” from his time in fake combat in what my late father and his surviving brother in California called fake (and now I understand it is the ultimate fakery that is not worth $40 in a pay-per-view for things such as the Screwjob de Montreal), and in light of my college history paper research on the quiz show scandals makes the genre look worse, had a character known for his ego, with the call of a “self high-five” and phrase that would insult a 1990's radio talk show host (now retired – turned 85 this week and I still remember that theme music he used) calls improper grammar when you heard his tag line to start his radio show in its early years that played after the theme song (which was a #1 hit on the Billboard charts 30 years ago).

It shocked me on Thanksgiving night that we had to do our family reunion (my mother's side of the family has three grandchildren who live in the area, and they decided to shop in the Thanksgiving night sales that began before Carrie Underwood hated herself for loving you with a side to Farve the turkey – I was forced to attend and chose to be around the cousins that mattered, including a cousin who was a premature baby 20 years ago Thanksgiving Eve when she was born.  Those are the moments that mattered, even if they did not eat the heritage turkey smoked on a grill while doing a Thanksgiving Day race, fit in another workout with friends, and then ran ten more miles to finish a long run prior to my intended marathon in a few weeks.    Yet, as I pondered the evening after the impromptu reunion with family (Uncle Bobby, as she calls me, is one of the few that she recognises speaking Mandarin now that my grandmother (and her great-grand) died last year), the crowded lines, and even police stacked ten-deep at certain stores, the shocking news of what happened for major shopping events came down to make me ponder what was wrong.

In various places across the country, members of a well-known organisation formed in protest to a policeman shooting a person that stole $50 in tobacco and refused to follow directions have begun blocking roads and stores based on their hatred of police.  Now thanks to Clinton-era policies, if this was a baby murder mill, it would be a federal crime to block such entrances under the “Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act” (FACE), that this Administration enforces.  But no, FACE does not apply if these race-baiting, police-hating organisations (note their derogatory chants towards policemen that glorify their killing, comparing them to breakfast food) that refuse to see common sense and allow police to defend themselves against dangerous thugs with a single-minded mission, glorified in anti-police ditties, wish to block entrances to merchants, churches, or even restricted-access highways (as seen in the MSP area).  How would you like one of those activists blocking an entire highway when you're traveling at over 100 kph on the freeway or be blocked from home and forced to sleep in your car as these protesters block the entrance to the neighborhood, since the only places protected are baby murder mills?

The ego of liberal activists have proven themselves with the blocking of controlled-access highways in MSP, and the Chicago merchants whose entrances were blocked by these activists boasting of social justice.  So it's perfectly legal to block merchants, churches, and the works, but it's not legal to block access to a baby murder mill.  What gives in this era of relativism?  We have, in the view of the Pope Emeritus, fallen into a society of the ego, the self, that demands everything for themselves and nothing for anyone else that does not comply with their view.  The antics of the MSP road blocking, the numerous incidents during Black Friday sales, and the Chicago merchants being blocked display what the Pope Emeritus has referenced as part of the nation's downfall.  Similar to the “Diamond Dallas Page” character that enthralled us in my college days with a few “Diamond Cutters” that we later learned was a character all about selfishness, today's race-baiting organisations have pushed selfishness where if they cannot get their justice, everyone else pays the price, which is exactly how modern liberalism works – colour, perversion, or other types of behaviour work the same way.

25 Days of Ad-Vent, Day 2: throwing some light on the subject

I don't much care for GE products nowadays; I think they're overpriced and not as good as the competition, and I don't have a lot of time for the company itself. But when it comes to Christmas, I still have warm feelings, thanks to ads like this.  General Electric was, of course, the initial sponsor of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and used the animated special's characters in their seasonal ads. They also made the Lighted Ice lights, which probably give me the warmest nostalgic feeling. Perhaps I'll have an ad for them up later.

The 25 Days of Ad-vent

In the past, we've toyed around with some vintage Christmas advertising during December, but this year I'm stepping it up a notch, with something I'm calling "The 25 Days of Ad-vent." Get it? Well, I'm probably still suffering from a tryptophan hangover as I write this, but who cares? There's something about these ads that really speaks to the season; as I've mentioned at the TV blog, they show us an America that is by-and-large gone today but would have been easily recognizable back then, and they represent to us - both visually and in terms of the products being presented - what Christmas was like in that era. (Besides, I need to increase the number of blog articles for the year.)

Don't worry, though - we'll have regular articles as well, when times and topics demand. So it should be a busy month here - let's get started!

Hey, kid, you'll shoot your eye out!

Seriously, you have to like this - a remnant of America's pioneer spirit - the idea that children should be comfortable with the feel of a gun in their hands. Not a bad sentiment for today, if I do say so myself.

A Thankful heart

This from the local news about a thankful heart.  Been very thankful that I've known the Lewis Sisters for ten years.  Caroline the dancer has been my dance teacher and in recent years has been an adviser for me when I consider food, and her sister Joanna is just as much the foodie.  Their mother died two weeks after my father, and it's been a blessing to know both of them.  The elder of the two has mobilised the flood response campaigns in our area.

Flashback Friday: Opera for the masses

Since I've been known to have an affinity for German opera, it shouldn't be a surprise that I'm dipping into the Germanic oveure today. However, rather than Wagner, or even Strauss, I'm looking at an underperformed opera, one that should be performed more often than it is. It's Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny) by Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht, who more famously brought you "Mack the Knife" from the aptly named Threepenny Opera. (Which is in fact an opera, and not just a part of Bobby Darin's songbook.)

This is one of those pieces I think ought to appear more often; certainly it should be in the crosshairs of opera companies that would rather commission productions that, with few exceptions, won't see the light of day again. Mahagonny was written in 1930, but it's only been in the last 40 years or so that it's gotten anything like significant visibility. (It didn't premiere at the Met until 1979.)

Here's one of the signature moments from the opera: the "Alabama Song" ("Oh, moon af Alabama") from Act I, which is typically performed in English even when the opera is done in German. Valentina Valente is the lead, with Jonathan Webb conducting the orchestra of Teatro Valli.



Of course, you mmight remember the Alabama Song this way instead:



Ah, who says opera can't appeal to the masses?


Originally published March 24, 2011

From All of Us to All of You

A title from the weekend's headlines

This is a title that could have come from the headlines this weekend:

"Son of Indy 500 Champion Marries Drag Queen" 

Congratulations Graham and Courtney!  

Wish I'd written that

These are mediocre times. People are starting to lose hope.”

- Elijah (Samuel L. Jackson) to David (Bruce Willis) in M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable

Entitlement generation

Much has been said of a nationwide campus walkouts by college students starting in Missouri and Yale, claiming discrimination and demands of equality, which includes "sexual" equality (re: men in women's bathrooms, elimination of prohibitions on sex offenders, and of course, illogical thinking that requires us to pay for all forms of sexual perversion), racial equality (certain people are allowed to loot, dismissal of leaders opposed to their extremist views, and permanent repatriations that everyone else must pay certain people for slavery from over 150 years ago, and other types of absurd ideology that we are seeing in academia from such wicked worldviews.  They are demanding a "safe space" for their antics -- and the courts have forced the entire country to be a "safe space" for sexual perversion though majorities nationally (and over 75% in many states) have said no.  Now they are pushing it on every view they demand.  This is why ENDA and other "discrimination" laws are designed to force conformity with the sexual elites' demands for sexual freedom as the only freedom, and create a worldview apartheid that is worse than racial apartheid of South Africa.

The unruliness of the left's activists everywhere shows no boundaries.  They have automatic excuses for everything, and anyone opposed to them must be removed from campus.  In effect, they are using the campus to develop, in accord with the courts on their side packed with urbanites as noted by Justice Scalia, a dictatorship where all opposing views must be erased from the area and replaced with the one view these crybabies demand must be obeyed by everyone else, even if over 85% oppose it.  Isn't this what led to the Declaration of Independence?

The latest in protest rage has been against college professors such as Carol Swain, who called the modern extreme Islam a threat to security (see the rash of homicide bombers in Paris, Hannover, and other European cities), and other similar professors.  The protesters do not want anyone to read and think about the issues. Rather, they demand a total obedience to the left-wing orthodoxy that they see in Hollywood and certain academics, and most notably, the Executive and Judicial Branches of the government.  And if you do not believe in their ideology, you will be shouted down by the left wing activists in ways you would never believe.    It has become an expansion of Occupy Wall Street to a new generation of college students.

As I simmered over dinner, it dawned on me.  For the past 25 years, since Zell Miller's victory in Georgia, and his idea of expanded government by making the state a bookie through the form of state-run gambling, called a "lottery for education," where the money does not go to academics but instead goes more to the gambling service providers, states have been riding the bandwagon of "gambling for education".  Many states voted a certain way to push the state-run gambling racket.  They have been massive failures, and the result is with more "free" money for kids to attend college, the price of graduate schools and tuition for college as a general rule has gone up considerably because of gambling money funding certain students.  Add to that the Obamacare funding ruse where the government controls all student loans, and we have the perfect storm for disaster in academic funding.  This entitled generation that has been told government is everything demands the government forgive their loans.

Is that the problem in a nutshell?  An entitled generation protesting in college today has not had to work for their tuition; they have had their college allegedly paid by the state-run casinos and the the state-run bank under the socialised medicine programme that prohibits your local First Citizens Bank (North Carolina), South State (the only two banks where I live, I hold shares in both), Toronto Dominion, credit unions, or other well known banks from financing education.  When they learn they must work for it, they refuse and demand more.  Now think about it.  A state-run casino funds students' education, and state-run student loan financing is a monopoly.  They are taught government is their deity, and no education into the free enterprise system, but the virtues of the CCCP by the state-run everything, has created an entitlement generation.  When will they learn the government is the problem?

These students protesting need to be expelled, and the federal monopoly on student loans imposed in Obamacare must be abolished, along with the state casinos that fund education.

Flashback Friday: Our candidate for President

Has the political landscape got you down? Are you dismayed by your candidate's performance? Have falling poll numbers, garbled rhetoric, and missed opportunities driven you to the point of dispair? Are you just so cynical about the whole thing that you're not even sure you're going to vote?

Fear not. For those of you depressed, disenchanted, or otherwise disgusted by the whole thing, we have the change you can believe in.


Go here to read the true story of Car and Driver magazine's epic semi-mock 1964 presidential campaign for the great American race car driver Dan Gurney. David Davis says in his editorial, "As we sit in our office watching the parade of poltroons, charlatans, earnest amateurs and fuzzy idealists that constitutes the current assortment of presidential aspirants, we rebel. We will not let the major political parties lead us down the garden path again this year." Which once again goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same.


Originally published October 13, 2008

Wish I'd written that: why the internet is not the root of all evil

It's not that the internet has made us crazy. It's that the internet has allowed the crazies to make the debate crazy, because they are the loudest and the most loutish, even when they're dribbling thier bile-froth over the most exquisite pastry in amusing and fascinating designs."

- Lileks, today

Friends, it's as I keep saying: technology, at least most technology, is neither good nor evil, but morally neutral. It's how you use it, along with (sometimes) who it is using it.

La solidarité

As Terry Teachout tweeted tonight, "Beasts walk among us."

Throwback Thursday: The race hucksters

I promise you that none of what I'm about to say is made up. My opinions are my own, and as such they can't be taken as absolute fact, but as for the rest, I kid you not. Anyway, you've probably encountered this as well.

Apparently, although I was unaware of this until quite recently, there are people out there who think that everything – that’s right, every single thing there is – is somehow related to race. (I know, call me naïve. Or call me a cab.)

Proponents of this viewpoint – for the sake of our discussion let’s call them, oh, race hucksters – will steer you to something such as the following ad which Volkswagen ran a few years ago.


In case you can't make out the captions, the one below the black car reads, "Naughty?" while underneath the white care is the word "Nice?" According to the race hucksters, “what is quickly evident [from the ad] is that the ad at some level willingly plays on racial stereotypes. This is simply one tiny example of how pervasive race is embedded in society.” As support for this position they refer to comments from people who were shown the ad and were asked what conclusions they drew from it. “Black is naughty while White is nice,” said one, “Black is bad and White is good,” offered another, and “Black is evil,” opined a third. The moral of the story, such as it was, was that the ad was either racist or insensitive to those who might perceive a racial subtext to it.

Who knew? Me, I saw two cars: a black one and a white one, and wondered which one would be easier to keep clean. (Hint: black shows spots, white shows dirt.)

My most vivid experience with the race hucksters came a few years ago, when I was introduced to the concept of Unearned White Privilege. This is when I worked at the YMCA in Minneapolis, and I'm not entirely sure why we were subjected to the series of sessions at which we discussed these and other burning topics, such as how members of minorities can't be racists, even if they admit they hate people of other colors and creeds, and want to see them all dead. You see, racism is really oppression; ergo, only people in positions of power - white people, in other words - can be racist. Search me; I always thought being a racist meant you thought one race was inherently inferior to another, and deserved to be treated accordingly.

Actually, and I'm going to digress for a minute here, I do know why the employees of the YMCA were put through this Inquisition (like the one in Spain, except not as funny). It's because the daughter of the chairman of the board of trustees of the Minneapolis YMCA was the facilitator for this particular series of seminars, and he cajoled the Y into hiring her company to do this training in order to boost her sales. I don't think they really approved of my attitude toward the whole thing, since I managed to maneuver myself into the group that considered themselves discriminated against on the grounds that as a white man I was subjected to more quotas and obstacles than other employees. My boss at the time said that many people found it a life-altering, cathartic experience. Personally, I think they were probably having convulsions from vomiting, based on the bilge they were being fed.  Or maybe not; my lasting memory of these sessions was a sensitive, bearded young white man weeping and begging for forgiveness from his colleagues for having been so insensitive as to have been born white.

I have a firm notion of personal responsibility, and I've always considered myself dedicated to maintaining a good reputation (because, after all, you never get a second chance to make a first impression). However, my idea of personal responsibility does not extend to the actions which a segment of an element of society with which I happen to share the same skin color happened to do something horrible a couple of centuries ago.

In fact, what is quickly evident to me from this whole discussion is that some people simply don’t have enough to do, while others try their hardest to make a living from race-baiting. Think of it – if race weren’t an issue, they’d be out of a job.

We know who these people are. Think Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton – where would they be if they actually succeeded in their agendas? It’s actually to their advantage to fail – it keeps them employed. That's even better than being a TV meterologist. Show me a job like that and I’ll sign up in a heartbeat.

We know these people have an agenda, and what that agenda is. We’re not here today for an in-depth discussion of that agenda; it probably requires a book to even scratch the surface of it. But we are going to look at one small aspect – the infusion of everything with the stain of racism – and why it doesn’t hold water. For the sake of time, let’s focus on this ad, the ad that “at some level willingly plays on racial stereotypes.” So, white and black = good and evil = racial stereotype. True or false?

Far from being an example of racial stereotyping, the use of white and black as symbols of good and evil is one deeply ingrained in the human psyche, going back to the Bible. One need look no further than Psalm 51, in which the psalmist says, “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow." What better color against which to demonstrate the stain of sin than white? It may be difficult to tell the cleanliness of a colored background, but there can be no mistaking the dazzling brilliance of a clean white background.

To the extent that white and black are identified with light and dark (and anyone with eyes to see can make that link), the metaphors associated with these colors are unmistakable. For instance, in Matthew 6:22-23, Jesus says, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

Jesus seemed to think a lot of this symbolism; in Luke 11:33-36 He says, “No man when he lights a candle puts it in a secret place; neither under a bushel; but on a candle stick, that they which come in may see the light. The light of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is single or healthy, your whole body also is full of light, but when your eye is evil or diseased, your body is also full of darkness. If your whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle gives you light.”

Look, darkness is not in fact a metaphor for racism, but it refers to the ability to hide from the light of truth. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out, let alone a scriptural scholar. All it really requires is a little common sense.

In one of his early 60s television shows, Bishop Fulton Sheen recalls Christ’s words, “He who follows me shall not walk in the darkness" (John 8:12). Using his famed chalkboard, Bishop Sheen illustrates this point with a practical demonstration of the effects of light and shadow: when one walks away from the sun (or the Son, if you will), the light will be at your back, casting a shadow before you. The darkness from this shadow is twofold; it serves both as a cloak to hide your activities (and why would you hide them unless they shamed you?), and it also acts to block you from the illumination of grace and truth. On the other hand, the one who follows Christ walks toward the light. This means the shadow is now behind you rather than in front; you are casting off the darkness, exposing yourself to the brilliance of truth, living your life in the open rather than in hiding.

Thus endeth the theological lesson for today. (Want more? Go here.)

Could white and black be used in a racial context? Of course they could; nowadays, words can mean just about anything you want them to mean. But in challenging the basic symbolism linking white and black with good and evil, these race hucksters want to make you think there is something wrong with the whole analogy. Common sense will tell you otherwise. It will tell you that there are strong reasons for this symbolism, reasons that go beyond politics. It will tell you that the hucksters who peddle this nonsense have their own agenda, and in fact they’re hoping that the moral authority in which they cloak themselves will cast a shadow large enough and long enough to hide that agenda from you. And why not, for as John 3:19 says, “men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

In short, people who see this kind of thing in a racial subtext do so only because they want to. Or because it profits them to do so.


Portions of the preceding were originally published on May 14, 2009.

The students who suffer from SBS

Pardon the language in the graphic at right; I apologize if you're offended, but there seems to be no better way to describe the escapades of those wacky college kids nowadays. Rod Dreher and others - I mention him because I first heard it used by him - call them SJW, Social Justice Warriors.  You know, they way they're shutting down free speech on campuses, along with substantial help from their instructors. SJW.  That's good, but I think they suffer from SBS - Spoiled Brat Syndrome.  (There's also the fact that the last two letters make up BS, which is what I think their rhetoric is. So bonus points for that.)

This isn't the first time we've seen it, of course; in more recent times, the 60s gave us an epidemic of know-it-alls on campus.  This could be the last time, though, at least in the way we think of it. If they're successful in their goals of eliminating any and all opposition, the only revolutions we'll be seeing (if we're allowed to view them at all) will be of the internecine type; the revolution consuming its own. If you think SBSers are paranoid now, just imagine what they'll be like when they start being persecuted by their own kind for not being ideologically pure. Now that's paranoia\ - just ask Robespierre how that went. And since it's Veterans Day today, I'll just add that many men and women over the centuries have died to preserve freedom of speech. They are heroes. Those who try to destroy that freedom should be called by what they are; totalitarian monsters.

I'll have more to say on this tomorrow in our Throwback Thursday feature, but the idea that these people will eventually get what's coming to them is cold comfort for those of us who will get it from them first. I've been around them myself, not on campus but in the workplace, and in a way the thought that they're well-meaning people at heart makes them even more despicable, because they're either dupes, fools, or those who, like our French friend above, believe the ends justify the means. At least those in the third category believe in something; the rest of them don't believe in anything: they just feel.

And so I'll close for today with this quote from Lileks, which I thought was a terrific commentary on what these people are really like, down deep, and what it would be like to have a world full of them:

These people will produce nothing. They will create no great art, write no symphonies, conjure no novels that speak across the decades, sculpt nothing of beauty. The world outside the bubble is irredeemable. It cannot, of course, be remade all at once, but tomorrow's a new day. Rome wasn't wrecked in a day. 

Amen, brother. And that is just the beginning.

Flashback Friday: The integrity of the critic

In case anyone's looking for a story for a new opera, I have a suggestion: Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny. I don't think anyone's done an opera of that yet.  And in the starring role of Captain Queeg, the Caine's insane master with an obsession about strawberries, I have the perfect casting: Peter Gelb.

Peter Gelb, you see, is the General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, and a couple of weeks ago he made the extraordinary suggestion (read: order) that Opera News, the monthly magazine published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, stop reviewing productions done by the Met.  It seems as if Mr. Gelb was offended by some critical reviews of recent Met productions, and decided that the best way to combat this was to kill the messenger.

Criticism of Peter Gelb in this space is nothing new - you may recall his appearance on our Enemies List a couple of years ago.  And as a paying subscriber to Opera News, I read the specific pieces that appear to have been in question.  I remember thinking that at the time that hey were extraordinary pieces of criticism coming, as they did, from what many people consider the house organ of the Met.  And not only did I not see them as unfair, I agreed with them almost 100%.  While I'm sure this criticism had to hurt, especially since Robert Lepage's Ring has been Gelb's prize baby, neither of the articles said anything that hadn't been said already by other opera writers in many publications and forums. You'd think that Gelb might have taken this as a sign, but rather than admit he has no clothes, he chose to critics as best he could.

Predictably, the move backfired.  Such was the level of outrage (and, in many cases, vitriol), that Gelb was forced to resind his decision by the end of the day. This can only be good news for Opera News - as Terry Teachout commented, during the few hours that the ban was in effect:

In so doing, [Gelb] has guaranteed that nothing published in Opera News about the Met, be it positive or negative, will henceforth be taken at face value, and that no reputable music journalist will ever again agree to appear in its pages.

Now, I'll admit that Peter Gelb has done some things right.  The HD moviecasts, for example, have been a marvel.  But even within that silver lining there have been clouds, with more than one critic noting that the productions seem to be more and more geared toward the movie audience rather than the live audience at the Met, which makes for a very disappointing (and expensive) night at the opera.

Couple this with Gelb's desire to rid the Met of some of its most classic productions, such as the Zeffirelli staging of Tosca and the Schenk Ring, and replace them with vapid, minimalist settings; and the absence of James Levine, still suffering from poor health, and you have a situation where the Met has become, in the opinion of many, an increasingly stale institution.  Alex Ross discusses the Met's tarnished reputuation here. Gelb may be a brilliant marketer, but he seems singularly incapable of providing a steady hand on the tiller. (I particularly enjoyed critic Norman Lebrecht's suggestion that the men in the white coats may be coming to the door soon.)

And while on some level it's satisfying to see Gelb being savaged, ultimately I take no pleasure in it, because in the end we're not talking about one man alone, but an institution.  The Metropolitan Opera may not be the nation's best, or most creative, opera company - but it is its most visible. For many who were weaned on the Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts, the Met is opera in America.  Perhaps it's time for the board of the Met to take a closer look at Gelb's management of the company, and whether this kerfuffle is just an abberation, or the shape of things to come.  Because when the Met is diminished, all of opera, and all of us, are just a little bit diminished as well.


Originally published June 6, 2012

Grazie! Fiat gives Doblò to Marsha Familly, whose business was destroyed by flood, to rebuild

T
he Marsha Family at Forest Lake Fabrics, a fabric store devastated by the floods last month (see above), and good friends of mine both at tailgating and workouts (the daughter is a teacher at a studio owned by the daughter-in-law of a local auto dealer), was surprised by Fiat this morning.

A new Fiat Doblò has been presented to the family for the business.

Grazie!

Flashback Friday: Why do we choose sides?

Rod Dreher wonders why we feel compelled to pick a side in Ukraine:

Do you know who the good guys and the bad guys are in Ukraine? I do not. In Egypt, I was not sorry to see the Morsi government overthrown, but one should not be under any illusions that the Egyptian military are the good guys. Why do we have to pick a side? Are we sure we know enough about what’s going on there to do so? Some of us might; one of this blog’s readers is in Kiev, and he has clear and firmly held opinions about the Yanukovych government. I respect that, but it is clearer to me that America does not need to be picking sides in this fight than it is which side we should pick.

Well, the first thought that came to my mind is that we choose sides because we live in a culture today that forces us to choose sides.  The mentality is everywhere.  We love our sports, and we apply its terminology to everything.  Politics becomes a horserace, and it matters less whether a candidate can articulate an issue than it does that he’s scored points, he’s landed the knockout punch, he’s pulling away from the field or falling back into the pack.  Nobody wants to know about the substance of what’s discussed – they just want to know who wins and who loses.

ESPN’s motto on many of its shows is “embrace debate.”  Doesn’t matter what the issue is, there have to be two sides, and they have to be heard out – often at the top of their lungs.  Even if you don’t have a strong feeling one way or another, you take a side, because that’s what makes good television – and good entertainment.

Reality programming dominates television.  And what is it about reality shows that most often appeals to the viewers?  You have a winner and a loser.  And the viewer must take sides; no sane individual would watch a show like Survivor without developing a rooting interest for or against someone – for that’s the other side of the coin.  If you can’t find someone you like, someone to root for, find someone you hate, and root against them.  It’s just as much fun – try it.

Everything is personal.  You either agree with me, or else.  Whether it’s politics, religion, sports, restaurant cuisine: if you disagree with me, it invalidates not only your opinion on that issue, but on everything else as well.  See it on Facebook, read it on Twitter, it doesn’t matter if it’s your battle or not – the important thing is to choose a side, and make sure everyone else knows which side you’re on.  And if they’re on the other side, judge them for that.

Given all this, is it any wonder that we feel compelled to take sides?  Armed conflict is, for us, another form of entertainment.  War is a spectator sport, to be viewed on television in-between highlights of the Olympics and scenes from the most recent argument on Capitol Hill.  We take sides on those, why not on war as well?  It’s a zero-sum game; there has to be a winner and a loser, and Americans love a winner.

Remarkably, for a culture that seems reluctant to view morality in terms of black-and-white, we seem to have no qualms about doing just that when it comes to choosing sides.  It’s hard for us to believe that both sides in a conflict can be “the bad guys.”  The Egyptian rebels fighting to bring down Mubarak must be right; after all, isn’t Mubarak supposed to be a dictator?  So let’s support them, and the fact that there are some pretty bad dudes among them – well, we’ll look the other way on that.

We abhor a vacuum.  Even in a situation such as Vietnam, where antiwar sentiment was rampant, it’s not as if people refused to join sides.  Many of the antiwar activists were openly rooting for the Vietcong, and the conflict between pro- and antiwar sides became as much of a battle as the war itself.  Not choosing a side – there’s just something un-American about it.

We lead with our hearts, not our heads.  We’ve Oprahfied the way we look at foreign policy every bit as much as we have everything else in our world.  Who’s the scrappy underdog, which side has the most malnourished refugees, let’s cheer on the plucky rebels raging against the big bad machine.

You see how absurd this all is?  So when Rod asks this question – and I think it’s a very good one, a very telling one – why should we be surprised at what the answer is?  It is, after all, the world we created for ourselves. And after all - it's just entertainment, isn't it?


Originally published February 21, 2014

Auditions of game show hosts . . . you'd be surprised!

When CBS debuted three game shows in 1972 (The New Price Is Right*, The Joker's Wild, and Gambit),  the oddity of CBS Daytime executive B. Donald Grant's moves were in play.  CBS wanted Bob Barker to host The New Price Is Right, but Barker wanted The Joker's Wild instead.  CBS considered Wink Martindale, but he chose Gambit.  The network effectively was forced to have Jack Barry (though he had baggage from the quiz show scandals) host it when Barker accepted Grant's deal for New Price instead of his want of Joker.  We know the result for 35 years.  Then, when CBS attempted to audition a replacement for Barker in 2007, the network auditioned Todd Newton, Mark Steines, George Hamilton, Mario Lopez, Dave Price, John O'Hurley (who was hosting a syndicated game show at the time), and Marco Regil (Spanish language personality who hosted Mexican versions but was wanting for an English language break).  The surprise was when a summer primetime series game show host, who had semi-retired from television after the end of his sitcom and his US version of a British comedy show, was given the chance without an audition.  The rest, as we know, is history, though Drew Carey has proven he isn't afraid to be a team over me person, especially after Rich Fields' firing (which according to Fields, led to a Season 39 taping day lunch after Carey learned of his brother's death where Carey and Fields spent a considerable amount of time together that proved skeptics wrong).

That reminded me of a commentary on the Classic TV History blog, and you wonder what would have happened 41 years ago had he been given that chance.  The drunkenness of Edd Byrnes when he hosted pilots of an NBC Daytime show that would replace the long-running Jeopardy! was highly inappropriate.  Thankfully, he wasn't given the chance to do the show, but the host of the first pilot, which was considerably different than the show we now know, Chuck Woolery was, and lasted nearly seven years.  The rest, as we know . . .



When the show was still a daytime show, NBC was trying to audition replacements for Pat Sajak in 1988.  We know NBC went with a former Chargers player.  But who was on the auditions list? You'd be surprised who was auditioned by Coca-Cola (then owned Merv Griffin Enterprises) and NBC:



*The "New" tag was used until the summer of 1973, the show's first season.  The reference was made during the show's Season 44 Premiere Week, which featured throwback door designs shown on the giant monitor behind the audience except for the current decade, which used the new Season 44 pattern.

Wish I'd written that

There's writing and there's not writing. The latter time is spent preparing for the former."

- James Lileks, right as usual.

Flashback Friday: It's not what he said, but what it says about us

Let's start with this, from Bernard Goldberg yesterday.

But now that [L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling's] gone, I’m wondering who else among us has said things in the privacy of our homes that would get us in trouble if somebody recorded them and made our remarks public.

Rest assured, I’ve never ever said anything that might even vaguely be construed as politically incorrect.  But I’ll bet you have.

And I’ll bet a lot of players in the NBA have.

I’ll bet a lot of politicians have, too.

I’ll bet white people have and black people have and Latino people have and straight people have and gay people have.

So what lesson should we take of the public flogging of Donald Sterling, as deserved as it was?

How about this:  If anyone – an accountant, a garbage man, an MSNBC host, a college professor, an attorney general, a president, a truck driver … anyone! … says something racist in the privacy of his or her home, and if it somehow becomes public information, that person should lose his or her job and his or her livelihood – because racist words cannot be tolerated in America, not in 2014.

Exactly.  I'm no friend of Sterling; he's been one of the worst owners in sports for a good long time, and the recent success of the Clippers seems more in spite of rather than because of him.

But just where do we draw the line?  Is everything that everyone says, public or private, now subject to review?  And by whom?  And why stop at the spoken word - after all, the First Amendment absolutists assure us that burning the flag is an act of free speech, so shouldn't other acts be liable for our distain as well? Goldberg goes on:

I am confused, however, about why there is no universal condemnation of athletes who father children in every city in the league.  Or of athletes who beat up their girlfriends.  Or of athletes who drive drunk and kill people.  I guess none of those things warrant the moral outrage that bigoted words uttered by a foolish old man in private warrant.

But let me be clear:  I’m outraged over what Donald Sterling said.  Really, really outraged.  I say this because if anyone thinks I’m less than really, really outraged because of anything I’ve written here, I might get in really, really big trouble.

Let's suppose, for example, that I'm outraged by an owner who "had discriminated against Hispanics, blacks, and families without children in housing."  He said, among other things, that "black tenants smell and attract vermin.”  Mind you, he didn't stop with saying things; he acted on them as well.  Well, that owner would be none other than Donald Sterling - back in 2009.  Why suspend him now?  As Ben Shapiro notes in that article, "words speak louder than actions."

What about an owner who was recently spotted at a game wearing a "necklace medallion for the Five Percent Nation, which sees black men as gods and white people as devils."  And who freely uses the "N-word" for fun and profit?   Try Jay-Z, sports agent and former part-owner of the Brooklyn Nets.

And then there was at least one owner who publicly supported the right to abortion, including the grizzly partial-birth procedure, and even voted against requiring that a woman view an ultrasound before having an abortion?  That's former U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, who supported those issues while he was also owner of the Milwaukee Bucks.  I know abortion is a polarizing issue, but that stand sure as hell offended me.  It's one thing to talk down to your fellow man, to dehumanize him with insult and discrimination - but is it worse than killing him?

But why limit the discussion to sports?  If you're looking for people who know how to denigrate through their speech, we could cite virtually the entire on-air staff of MSNBC, some of whom have in fact lost their jobs over their comments, while others - cough-cough-Al Sharpton-cough - continue to thrive.  And I won't even get into that whole kerfuffle about Brendan Eich - I can only expect my blood pressure medication to do so much, after all.

The line between public and private, already blurred beyond recognition, is pretty much gone at this point.  In order to be really safe, to make sure that nothing you say can ever come back to haunt you, the best thing is probably to say nothing.  At all.  Ever.  Even in the bathroom.  Just keep your mouth shut.  As Rod Dreher points out when talking about the latest - whether or not the DeVos family, owners of the Orlando Magic, should be in trouble for funding ads in marriage referendum states - "Error has no rights."

I'll close this mild screed with a quote from Ben Stein, who after saying that "I hate, hate, hate racism," adds this:

But I also love individual liberty. I would much rather have a system where people are free to hate me because of my race as long as they don’t lynch me than one in which the government or the media tell me who I can and cannot hate. I loathe Donald Sterling for his comments and I do not want him near me. But I am terrified that a man can have such a level of media rage directed at him even though he violated no law. He expressed a hateful opinion and that’s a bad thing. But in a world where there are as many horrible things going on as in our world, the private conversations of one drunken old man would not seem to me to be worth this level of fury. Isn’t this “Thoughtcrime”? Does it scare you? It scares me. And I am really terrified that “anti-racism,” like “saving the earth” and “income inequality struggles,” will legitimate any level of anger. Isn’t there such thing as “the law”? Aren’t we supposed to be more worried about violence than private nutty conversations?

I can sum this up easily: Isn’t Mr. Sterling being punished for his privately expressed thoughts and not for any action? Isn’t this deeply unsettling? When did privately expressed thoughts become fair game for punishment? Where does it end? In “1984.” 

That's it.  What the Donald Sterling fiasco provides us is not a glimpse into him, but into ourselves, and an America that with every passing day seems to stand for nothing at all.  Donald Sterling has served his purpose - he's given us the opportunity for our Two Minutes Hate, and now we're ready to move on, feeling just great about ourselves.

Until we find the next person to hate, and a spare couple of minutes.


Originally published April 30, 2014

The finest moment from the Pope's trip to America

I don't deny that I've had my share of bones to pick with Pope Francis over the years, but I found this clip from his recent trip to America absolutely charming.  I'd meant to get to it earlier than now, but as someone once said, better now than later.  If you look closely, you can see the Pope bent backwards with genuine laughter - but then, who among us wouldn't be taken with a cute baby dressed up to look like you?


As I've said, I've been critical in the past, but this is not the time for that. I'll just note something that I've said before, which is that if I were lying critically ill in a hospital, I could do far worse that to have him sitting at my bedside comforting me. It has nothing to do with ideology or theology or the governance of the Church, but everything to do with how one interacts with people, and this is a pretty good indication of that.

KKKKKKKK proves McFly was wrong!

On the day that people celebrated McFly's predictions . . .

KKKKKKKK Proves McFly Was Wrong!

Joe, we hardly knew ye

Well, I have to admit I'm surprised that Joe Biden's not running for president. I suppose it might have something to do with Hillary's debate performance last week; I didn't see it, but the pundits said she'd done well, so there's that.  It's also possible that Joe discovered there wasn't as much support for him out there as he'd thought.  In any event, I would suspect this removes the last real obstacle to Clinton winning the nomination.  I don't presume to know where things go from there.

It's too bad, really, about Biden. Not that I was planning on supporting him; far from it. But I had this nice theory all worked out, you know - similar to the one I did on the Republican contest four years ago. Looking back on it, I still think that was a good analysis; I wouldn't change a word of it. And I was prepared for another good one for this campaign, one that coincidentally also hearkened back to the 1960s. (But then, doesn't everything?)

The way this one worked, Hillary Clinton was Lyndon B. Johnson - the presumptive nominee. Heavily favored, an experienced Democratic insider, but also highly controversial. Bernie Sanders was Gene McCarthy - the rebel outsider, the one daring to take on the party establishment. Thought too far out there to be a real contender, but picking up surprising support, especially with the young. And I had Joe Biden as Hubert Humphrey - presuming that Sanders took out Clinton in the same way that McCarthy did Johnson, and with an assumption by the party establishment that Sanders was too liberal to win in November, the party would have turned to Biden - a sitting vice president - in the same way that they did Humphrey. For if the conditions had existed in which Biden would jump into the race, I thought he would probably win the nomination.

There's really only one character remaining in this morality play, and that's Robert F. Kennedy. And here is where the analogy ends, unless things get more complicated for Clinton than they appear to be at this point. In looking at a candidate to model after RFK, one searches for someone who can tap into the emotion of a large wing of the party, one who has been urged to run but has refused, one who has the liberal credentials to command support without the same minuses of the others. (Notwithstanding some minuses of their own.) Hopefully, this wouldn't extend to being assassinated following the California primary, and I don't say that as a joke, because it appears that just about anything can happen in this country nowadays.

Bill Kristol was thinking along the same lines as I was, apparently, because a while back he'd come up with much the same scenario. (Another reason I should have done this earlier, but whatever.) His answer to this question makes sense, and so I'll plug it in and go with it: today's Robert F. Kennedy would have been Elizabeth Warren. And when you think about it, it does make sense, doesn't it?

Alas, with Biden's announcement today, unless he's really playing hard-to-get, I think we've seen the last of the analogies to the 1968 campaign. It's one of the most interesting campaigns of the 20th Century, by the way, and if you want to know more about it, I'd suggest one place to start is Theodore White's The Making of the President 1968. There are better historians than White, but few of them are as readable, and as an introduction, it gives you a vivid sense of where this country was almost 50 years ago.

Who knew?

When Andre Roussimoff, better known as Andre the Giant, was twelve years old, he was banned from riding the school bus because he was already the size of a large adult.  So in order to get to school, he had to depend on rides from their neighbor, Samuel Beckett.  Yes, the "Waiting for Godot" Samuel Beckett. (Is there another one?) As Brian Phillips notes, even if you're the author of a world-famous play, "It’s still useful to have a truck."

Throwback Thursday: change of Seasons (?)

Area Man Disappointed By "Jersey Boys" Four Seasons"Those little punks sounded nothing like Vivaldi"

(MINNEAPOLIS, MN -- April 16) Local theater enthusiast Sherman Fedwick came away from the latest Broadway-touring production in Minneapolis a bit confused and more than a little disappointed.

"I hear Four Seasons and I think classical, cellos, violins, Vivaldi, you know, the whole nine yards," Fedwick was overheard remarking to a companion after emerging from the Orpheum Theater, where the popular musical was playing. "I pay big money and what do I hear? Four teenagers in t-shirts and jeans singing on a street corner about crying girls and walking like a man. And using four letter words, no less. What's up with that?"

Walters expressed hope that his next theater ticket for the upcoming production of “Mama Mia" will meet his expectations. "You can always bet on Italian opera to deliver the goods,” he said.

Opera Wednesday: The sacredness of life

There are a few operas that, in an oblique way, make reference to contemporary issues even though they were written decades, or centuries, ago.  One such example is Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow), the magnificent 1919 opera written by Richard Strauss, with a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.  The crux of the story centers around an Emperor and Empress who are unable to conceive; this is symbolized by the fact that she is without a shadow. The King of the Spirit World decrees that unless she gains a shadow before the end of the twelfth moon, "she will be reclaimed by her father and the Emperor will turn to stone."

As the story progresses, a scheme unfolds to obtain the shadow by stealing it from a peasant woman, thus depriving this woman of motherhood.  The peasant woman is urged to "sell her expectations of motherhood, dissolve her marriage [to a husband who desires children] and pursue a life of individual self-fulfillment."  As this article indicates, the notes accompanying productions of this opera generally relate the moral of the story as being "one person's happiness cannot be bought at the price of another's," yet it is clear that a major component of the story - and its moral - concerns the ability of a woman to conceive, the glories of motherhood, and the existence of the souls of unborn children

[Spoiler alert!] The opera concludes happily, odd enough for an opera; the Empress decides to reject the stolen shadow ("I will not rob humanity from someone else"), the peasant woman's shadow is returned to her, and for her act of generosity, the Empress too receives a shadow.  Both couples  - the Emperor and Empress and the peasant couple - sing of their joy and humanity, and praise their unborn children.  On occasion, the chorus assumes the guise of unborn children, making the analogy even stronger.

Ten or so years ago, the Los Angeles Times, one of the worst newspapers in the United States, committed a hilarious error by changing a review of the opera, which the critic had described as "an incomparably glorious and goofy pro-life paean," replacing the term "pro-life" with "anti-abortion." One hardly knows where to begin with this comedy of errors; the mindless policy in the paper's style sheet, which apparently dictates that all references to pro-life should be changed to emphasize the negative; the blatant inaccuracy of the edit, since the abortion message in Frau is inferred when transposed to today's times and there is in fact no discussion whatsoever of abortion in the libretto; or the idea that being pro-life should be assumed to refer to abortion only and exclusively. You can read more about it here.  Idiots.

The point is, Die Frau ohne Schatten does not deal with abortion directly; it deals with the sacredness of human life and the importance of being open to its creation.  And while it is not an anti-abortion screed, as some might think, is explains one of the fundamental reasons why the sacredness of human life is important and why, among other reasons, abortion is wrong.

Anyway, enough with the politics.  Regardless of what you think, there is glorious music in this opera, which in the video below is provided by the famed Sir. Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic.  You can get other videos that include subtitles, through which the power of the story becomes even more apparent, but you won't find many guided by better than Solti.

Not quite when hell freezes over, but...

From Charles Pierce at Grantland, an instructional aid as to when one should start worrying about the end of the world:

According to some very reliable crazy people on the Internets, the world was supposed to end Wednesday night. It was something to do with the blood moon and the prophecies of an old Christian radio host. Proving that something beyond human understanding was afoot, the Chicago Cubs won a wild-card, win-or-go-home playoff game in Pittsburgh. But the odds are that fate or the universe is just playing us all for suckers. The world will not end until the Cubs are one strike away from winning the World Series. The last pitch will be halfway to the plate and the asteroid will come to call. Blood moons and superannuated radio preachers are one thing. The Chicago Cubs and postseason baseball are a whole different and deeper level of cosmic burlesque.

Is this the year that this story becomes obsolete?

Flood thoughts

While in the Flood of the Century here it seems, I've thought for a while about voices in singing, and even songs that discuss vocal parts.

Straight No Chaser, which does "Back Home Again in Indiana" at the 500, has their own take on "All About That Bass," making it a song about a vocal part in their own a capella style.  I am no fan of bad pop music, but it made me laugh about this version because as a tenor myself, note the putdowns on the tenors by the basses!



And of course, while the boys talk about low men, there is a song for girls about the low women.  And this lament is one that could make some of them unsuitable for Fox News, if you understand the network's dress code, and they want to be on Fox News!  Ben Moore wrote this song, "(I Can Be a) Sexy Lady" for Susan Graham, a mezzo lamenting her roles in opera.  It is part of the mezzo's repetoire, and often sung at recitals, as I've learned.  The first time I heard it was Kelsey Harrison in her recital (since Serena LaRoche had a part in that recital), and I wanted to know what the song was -- and it was a lament.  Now think about "(I Can Be a) Sexy Lady" and "All About That Bass (No Tenors)" and think of their low voice songs.



Hoosier Hysteria Retirements

So one "gospel" singer who has performed the National Anthem at the 500 in 1992, ironically the year that a famous motor racer who never won at the Brickyard despite seven career starts presented her that trophy for Female Vocalist of the Year for an 11th consecutive year.  Neither won in that premier class in their careers after that year.  The presenter retired after 2000.  That singer just announced she is on her farewell concert tour.

Add to that another Hoosier, a motor racer, with 20 years in major motorsport, who is hanging it up after 2016 too, and unfortunately, he fits in the same role as Doug Sanders, Lee Westwood, Sergio Garcia, and Colin Montgomerie do in golf.  He is the best driver in motorsport to never win a major, though he has won championships and other races, he never won an official INDYCAR or NASCAR Sprint Cup major.

Opera Thursday: The musical that belongs in the opera house

NINO CASTELNUOVO AND CATHERINE DENEUVE IN THE MOVIE THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG

A trend over the past few years has brought increasing numbers of musicals to the opera house.  I'm not talking about a road show performance or anything like that; after all, plenty of non-operatic entertainers perform in opera houses.  What I'm talking about is the inclusion in the regular opera season of musicals that in no way fall under the general category of "opera": Show Boat, Passions, The King and I, and other Broadway standards are among the works that have seen significant stage time at various world opera houses.  “The vast majority of musicals are not appropriate to opera companies, but there are a small number of titles that are enhanced by the skill and scale of an opera house,” said Anthony Freud, general director of Lyric Opera of Chicago. “I see it as an inherent part of our output. I don’t see doing ‘The Sound of Music’ with any less professionalism than in doing ‘La Traviata.”’  The Lyric is one of the major promoters of this trend, staging Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, Carousel, The King and I and South Pacific over a five-season period, but lest you think this a strictly American move, European companies are doing it as well: the Volksoper in Vienna has added Guys & Dolls and Kiss Me, Kate, while musicals such as Miss Saigon and Sunday in the Park with George have featured at other European houses.

In the interview with the late Jon Vickers to which I linked a couple of weeks ago, he mentioned how one of the main differences between opera and musical comedy is that "entertainment, for the most part, deals with the superficialities of life, and works usually become extremely dated because they relate to a certain society and a certain framework that has developed in a certain society."  Musical comedy, in Vickers' opinion, qualifies as "entertainment," and "If opera degenerates into entertainment, I would far sooner go and watch a good production of My Fair Lady or Brigadoon because I think it's much better entertainment than opera is."  In other words, you have to be very careful mixing the two genres, and Vickers felt that a true American opera would never develop out of the Broadway musical.

This is all appropriate, because in today's AV Club there's an example of the one musical that I think might be the exception to the rule, the piece that I'd have no trouble staging in the opera house: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, written by Michel Legrand and brought to the cinema by Jacques Denny.  I'll let you read A.A. Dowd's article to get the full flavor of Umbrellas, but two things have always stood out in my mind as justifications for staging this as an opera: its true-to-life subject matter recalls the verismo school of opera, and there is no spoken dialog - everything is sung as "a series of recitative song conversations."  To my mind, that alone puts it far ahead of the My Fair Ladys and Guys & Dolls's of the world.*

*You're probably wondering where that leaves something like singspiel; well, to tell you the truth, I think both The Merry Widow and Die Zauberflöte would profit from having their significant amounts of dialog converted to recitative.  As for Carmen, I've always preferred the version in which recitative replaced spoken dialog.  But then, that's just me.

I have seen The Umbrellas of Cherbourg included in the occasional opera season, but not often enough.  You've heard me complain frequently about the habit of commissioning new operas (many of which are never heard from again after their initial productions) when there are plenty of underperformed ones lying around; the same goes here.  If you've got The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, why bother with The Sound of Music?  This is not to criticize the great musicals which the American theater has given us, merely to point out there's a place for everything, and the opera stage is not the place for most of them.  No, the bigger question is this: am I making an exception for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, or is that where it belonged all along?

You may not think you recognize any of it's music, but I'll bet you do: here's the justifiably famous theme, "I Will Wait for You."