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December 26, 2006
Dirty Stockings: 2006
We live now in the dirty stockings of Adolph. That's how we saw it. No surprise there. As we await the Bullshitter-in-Chief's next maneuver to cement two legacies of his regime -- the genocidal war in Iraq and the BananaRepublic -- here's a year-end review of some political postings favored by readers:
To Our Pipsqueak Leaders
Bad Bargains
One More Ventriloquist Dummy
No. 1 With a Bullet
'I Am Me and Rummy's He ...'
Frankly, He's a Toad
Deja Prevu, or Just the Facts
President Neuman
No Parking for 9/11's Fifth
Tears of Bullshit
On a Bicycle and a Prayer
Banana Republicans
Pants on Fire
No Full Stop
Pass the Milk, Please
And Still Counting
The One True Person of the Year
Tomorrow: Postings on arts and culture.
Postscript: Ah well, tomorrow came ... and went. Mebbe later.
PPS: Later has come.
The staff fell down on the job this year. It posted only 160 or so items since last January, and just a fraction had something to do with arts and culture. Tant pis. To its everlasting credit, however, the staff did take note of some admired writers, artists, filmmakers and assorted crackpots for work they did, mostly long ago, and for the issues they raised. 
It was a narrow "some" -- William S. Burroughs, Nelson Algren, Norman O. Mustill, Henry Miller, Willy Wyler, Mary Beach, William Osborne, Ernest Hemingway, John Bryan, E.L. Doctorow, William Styron. Other notables were loathed.
Help yourselves:
Memorial for Mary, Au Revoir
Picture This
Forward Nails Lauder
Master of the Cosmodemonic
Deep Focus, Es Claro?
Dead Reckoning
For the Love of Algren
The Copycat and the Original Cat
The Good Old Bad Old Days
'Wild Side' Still Rocks
Forever and a Day
Repulski's Revenge
Hello! (Is My Boat Comin' In?)
Music of the Spheres
Take Two: Bill Burroughs & Tony Balch
Wo ist Die 'Opera Toilet'?
Like Father, Like Son
Human Wrongs
A Different Kind of Bushwack
William Styron, RIP
VPo + America - Blacks = (Classical Music x Cultural Racism)²
Posted by jherman at 8:23 AM
December 21, 2006
'Tis the Season
And now we defer to the merry holiday. For wicked wunnerful, ya can't beat "The Junky's Christmas." It's the perfect gift. Originally produced in 1993 and presented by Francis Ford Coppola, the film has just been released on DVD. It combines claymation and live action, and the pristine cinematography in black and white looks gorgeous.
William S. Burroughs, who wrote the tale way back in 1952, narrates. Christmas music swells as the camera tilts in on him, standing by the living room fireplace. He takes a book down from the shelf and sits in an armchair by the fire. Gifts beneath the decorated Christmas tree are waiting to be unwrapped. His eye watches, all-seeing, like a wise old elephant's eye. He reads from the book in a deadpan voice, his clipped Midwestern accent offering dry counterpoint to the swollen music:
It was Christmas Day and Danny the Car Wiper hit the street junksick and broke after seventy-two hours in the precinct jail. It was a clear bright day, but there was warmth in the sun. Danny shivered with an inner cold. He turned up the collar of his worn, greasy black overcoat.This beat benny wouldn't pawn for a deuce, he thought.
He was in the West Nineties. A long block of brownstone rooming houses. Here and there a holy wreath in a clean black window. ...
And so begins a tale to cherish. Jean Shepherd and Lenny Bruce would be jealous.
Incidental intelligence: The DVD also includes two VH-1 music films, "Ironbound" and "Traveling Light" -- neither one related to "The Junky's Christmas" and both, to my taste, fine examples of pretentious drek. No matter. Ya don't hafta watch 'em.
Postscript: realitystudio.org has posted a Burroughs expert's detailed review of "The Junky's Christmas." Verdict? "It's a small masterpiece."
Posted by jherman at 12:21 PM
Nobody Owns Headlines
Forget the substance, look at the form:
That's the subhead on a TV ratings item in today's "Arts, Briefly" column of The New York Times.
Now look at the headline on yesterday's item about the Vienna Philharmonic:
Posted by jherman at 9:20 AM
December 20, 2006
VPo + America - Blacks = (Classical Music x Cultural Racism)²
Having taken his latest whack at the sexist-cum-racist policies of the Vienna Philharmonic, which is, historically, Europe's most iconic classical orchestra, William Osborne relates its continued euphoric reception in the United States to "patrician rituals" and America's cultural racism.
Osborne is a composer, musicologist and social historian. He divides his time between New Mexico, where he was born, and Germany, where his wife Abbie Conant is a professor of trombone at the University of Tubingen.
Given the many European press reports about the Vienna Philharmonic's sexism and racism -- see articles in Der Standard and Profil magazine for two recent examples -- one might ask why the orchestra continues to be euphorically received in the United States. How can we explain that the Philharmonic's sexist and racist employment practices are largely overlooked? Does this acceptance have something to do with classical music and the nature of America's cultural life?
One of the most obvious answers involves the demographic of American classical music, which is overwhelmingly white and elitist. Forty years after the American civil rights movement began, the country's major orchestras are still 98% white; its conductors are still 99% white; the composers presented are almost 100% percent white; and the audience at least 95% white -- even though the urban areas where these orchestras reside are from 30% to 50% black.
Many Americans rationalize this situation with the naive (and smug) assumption that African-Americans have their own rich musical traditions and are simply not interested in classical music. Such views, of course, are absurd and racist. They represent a form of aesthetic segregation. It is grotesque that one would even need to explain that the talents of African-Americans are as manifest in classical music as in jazz and pop. We practice musical racism through bourgeois essentialism that presumes to define black and white forms of taste and ability.
These racially informed perspectives are strengthened by our plutocratic method of funding the arts. Most of our funding comes from donations by the wealthy, which inevitably allows a racially based class system to strongly influence our cultural lives. Elite white interests, as represented by institutions such as Lincoln Center, are where the money goes, while the cultural needs and identities of the poor and colored remain mostly ignored.
This is clearly illustrated if we look at the cultural status of areas such as Harlem. Due to its remarkable history, Harlem should be one of the great artistic centers of the world, a cultural Mecca visited by millions around the globe each year. The reality is almost the opposite. Instead of being the pride of New York City, for over half a century Harlem has been decimated by poverty, degradation, and neglect. The area must continually struggle to maintain its cultural existence. Our Eurocentric perspectives not only inure us to the sexist and racist values that shape institutions like the Vienna Philharmonic, they blind us to profound forms of cultural expression directly in our midst. And worse, they create forms of racist neglect and contempt that actually destroys culture.
With an irony so extreme it boggles the mind, whites have recently taken an interest in Harlem, but only as developers who want to make fortunes by gentrifying it. (These developers include Columbia University which plans to expand its campus into the area.) In an age-old pattern, as the real estate prices rise, African-American residents will be forced into yet another racist, cultural Diaspora that will weaken both their and New York City's cultural identity. (The destruction and rebuilding of New Orleans along elite white interests is another well-known illustration.)
None of this should be surprising. An ethnocentric and self-serving perspective is an inherent part of any racially informed plutocratic system of arts funding. While most concert halls in Europe, for example, are named after great cultural figures in their history, our halls are usually named after wealthy white people whose backgrounds are so mundane we don't even know who they really are. Even if these cultural institutions are built in areas where the poor live, they are surrounded by social barriers that allow for very little communal interaction.
An effective integration of our "minority" communities into classical music would require a commitment to education and accessibility that simply does not exist in the United States, and probably never will under its current system of funding the arts. Programs exist, of course, but they fall vastly short of what is needed. The problems represented by our extreme social dichotomies are simply not within the purview of corporate donors. And the wealthy alone could never solve such immense problems.
We also have to admit no solution is in sight. Our political culture refuses to acknowledge that our massive legacy of human slavery is a responsibility so large it can only be met and solved by our government. As a result, paradoxes abound. Why have we spent a trillion dollars to occupy and "rebuild" Iraq, for example, while leaving close to 30 million of our own citizens in ghettos where they live deeply deprived and degraded lives? Can it be any wonder a society like ours could easily overlook the racism of the Vienna Philharmonic?
The ironies of our one-sided cultural policies were vividly illustrated when New York's cultural elite built Rose Hall, a new venue for jazz at Lincoln Center, while continuing to ignore the decades-long cultural destruction of Harlem. On one hand, it is wonderful that African-American culture can be celebrated near the most privileged center of New York's cultural life. But, on the other hand, it cannot be overlooked that the entire orientation of the hall's programming has been shifted toward a conformist form of jazz stripped of its traditional sense of protest, and oriented toward consumption by a white gentry capable of paying for high-priced tickets. It is little wonder that cynical observers sometimes refer to Rose Hall as the Lincoln Center Jazz Plantation -- a terribly harsh metaphor, but not without an important point.
We are left with the vague but prevalent idea that black and Hispanic communities are little more than something over which an elevated freeway is built so whites can rush to their comfortable suburbs. It is simply not considered that those communities have rich cultural lives that should be supported and made a central and vibrant part of America 's cultural experience and identity. And it is not considered that these communities should receive the same opportunities for education in classical music made available to many whites (whether those whites use it or not.)
As a result of these social practices, a bizarre atmosphere surrounds places like Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall. In ways that have yet to be fully studied, the patrician rituals of classical music vicariously celebrate the highborn and racist character of our Eurocentric cultural heritage. In the euphoric reception of the Vienna Philharmonic, and in the large amount of funding it is given for yearly appearances, one senses a quiet, bourgeois celebration of the ensemble's sexism and racism.
There are many issues enfolded in this cultural landscape. We already feel the devastating loss of whole cultures within our culture. Can we move beyond a mere hip comodification of world music, to a genuine racial and cultural integration in classical music itself?
Posted by jherman at 9:30 AM
December 19, 2006
The One True Person of the Year
For his special comments, Keith Olbermann. Nobody in the media -- mainstream or meanstream, high or low -- has been more compelling or persuasive in voicing outrage at the arrogance, incompetence and rank stupidity of the Bullshitter-in-Chief and his regime of BananaRepublic cronies.
Olbermann's special comments are remarkable not only for their anger but for their boldness and literacy. They're more powerful, hands down (Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert notwithstanding), than any televised political editorials I know of. (Hell, even my print faves, Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, can't compete with him for charisma.)
If you missed last night's "Countdown" broadcast, a roundup of excerpts, you can have a look at them online one by one. Check them out from top ("Have you no decency, sir?") to bottom ("This hole in the ground"). It's not the same as having them fused together and beamed into your livingroom. Ya hadda be there. But it's a brilliant collection easily worth your time, the more so for offering them whole, and surely deserving of greater recognition than mine.
Posted by jherman at 9:10 AM
Techmeister
Time's Person of the Year is you? "Yes, you," the magazine declares. "You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world." Uh, not so fast. Here's the guy in charge:
He's manning the Help Desk.
Posted by jherman at 1:23 AM
December 17, 2006
Loud Whispers
Finally, an acknowledgment of Sunni genocide as the BananaRepublic's sub rosa policy in Iraq: "The Whispers and the Why Nots." Reported by Helene Cooper, "Whispers"⊗ is the lead story of the Week in Review section in today's New York Times.
"We shall call it the Darwin Principle," Cooper writes of the policy, also referring to it as "the Shiite option." One unnamed senior regime official is quoted as calling it the "stare into the abyss" strategy.
Although the policy is couched as a "proposal" in an ongoing debate within the Bullshitter-in-Chief's regime, as though it hasn't already been implemented, Cooper's report is explicit about the fact that Sunni genocide has been promoted at the highest Banana Republican level, namely by Darth Cheney's office.
Which confirms the worst suspicions we've had of a U.S. regime secretly bent on mass murder by way of proxies -- suspicions I must admit I had recently begun to doubt after reading so many news stories about the U.S. military's desire to root out the Shiite death squads.
⊗ The "Whispers" headline in the NYT print edition has been toned down on the Web site to "The Capital Awaits a Masterstroke on Iraq," a craven minorstroke of what I presume to be second thinking. Maybe the public editor will look into the change and explain it.
Postscript: A reader writes:
The Times article is likely not a report about whispers, but about "staged whispers" that attempt to post-date the decision to allow for genocide through civil war. I suspect this strategy was well-considered from the very beginning. See Robert Parry's article on Truthout. It illustrates that what is happening in Iraq is nothing new and that in fact we are very experienced at this sort of thing.
The Parry article, posted two years ago, discusses the "Salvador option" and notes that the Pentagon was "intensively debating" it as "a new policy" to pacify Iraq, according to a Newsweek report in January of 2005.
We've talked before about the "Salvador option" in Iraq. Here, for example. In any case, use of the so-called "the Shiite option" explains why the Saudis read Darth Cheney the riot act on his visit to Riyadh earlier this month. Given all the "surge" talk we've been hearing, you don't really believe the meeting was about a troop withdrawal, do you?
Posted by jherman at 9:24 AM
December 12, 2006
Deep Woodstein
Do we really need a book about the impact of Watergate on the lives and careers of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein? We already know what happened to them. Woodward went on to write a shelfload of best sellers about the government, told from the inside, and Bernstein joined the glitterati.
Well, Virginia, that's not the whole story. Alicia C. Shepard's new book, "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate," fills in the rest with nuances you probably don't know or never considered, and does it with enough thoroughly documented details to slake the curiosity of a news junkie like me.
Is that special pleading? So be it.
Shepard has scrutinized the pair's Watergate papers (bought by the University of Texas for $5 million in 2002). She has interviewed both guys, their wives and former wives, their editors, their competitors, and plenty of others including Alan Pakula, the Hollywood director who did his own interviews for the film version of the Woodstein book "All the President's Men."
All in all, Shepard has put in a prodigious amount of work. Yet "Woodward and Bernstein" is a swift read, its lackluster prose notwithstanding. Which left me feeling grateful -- even surprised -- given the sense I must admit having of a magazine feature padded out to textbook length for journalism courses.
Besides, who can resist the opening bars of the "Dance of the Knights" from Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" in a book promo that riffs on the emblematic scene of the Pakula flick?
Posted by jherman at 8:19 AM
December 8, 2006
Foodies on Iraq
Don't treat it as a "fruit salad," says James Baker. It's a "recipe for our defeat," says John McCain. At last we've come to the real terms of debate over the Iraq Study Group Report. It's a foodie fight.
Conservative jerks like McCain who support the war call the report a recipe for defeat as if the Bullshitter-in-Chief has ever offered a recipe for anything but. You have to wonder about their sanity and their tastebuds. Baker asked pols to eat the report whole, not to pick at it ("I like this but I don't like that."). You have to wonder about his fruity choice of language. (Arianne Huffington treats the thing more like a Big Mac®. She's for "cutting the fat.")
Foodies, feh!
As a British political analyst and antiwar activist, Milan Rai, pointed out this morning on Democracy Now!, the report offers a mere "modification of the occupation" of Iraq. The debate over the report gives the erroneous impression that real withdrawal is at stake, which is "not the case at all."
Posted by jherman at 10:57 AM
Still Delusional
It's always refreshing to see the news of the day told with accuracy, in this case the Bullshitter-in-Chief's reaction to the Iraq Study Group Report:
In light of the report's stark warning that the situation in Iraq was "grave and deteriorating,"Mr. Bush came close to acknowledging mistakesthe Bullshitter showed just how delusional he is. "You wanted frankness -- I thought we would succeed quicker than we did," the president said to a British reporter who asked for candor. "And I am disappointed by the pace of success."
That's from the fourth graph of the lead front-page story in this morning's print edition of The New York Times -- with our bold-face phrase subbed in, of course, per the postscript to yesterday's item, Here We Go Again.
Posted by jherman at 9:28 AM
December 7, 2006
Not Quite Cole Porter
But the lyrics have a certain swing, ring, sting.
Posted by jherman at 11:05 AM
Here We Go Again
When [the Bullshitter-in-Chief] insisted that the Iraq Study Group would not provide cover for the White House to chart a 'graceful exit' of American troops, he was missing the whole point.
By the way, the report is already on two best-seller lists. At the moment it's No. 3 at Barnes & Noble online and No. 6 on Amazon. I haven't read it yet, just the news stories about it.
To judge from the first sentence by the study group's co-chairmen -- "There is no magic formula to solve the problems of Iraq." -- my guess is that it's a pretty good sleeping pill. Anyone for calling in Houdini?
Postscript: Just got a huge laugh out of the Bullshitter's definition of failure in Iraq. "I am disappointed by the pace of success." Apparently still delusional, he thought he was auditioning for "The Daily Show" at today's press conference.
Q: Mr. President, the Iraq Study Group said that leaders must be candid and forthright with people. So let me test that. Are you capable of admitting your failures in the past, and perhaps much more importantly, are you capable of changing course, perhaps in the next few weeks?A: I think you're probably going to have to pay attention to my speech coming up here when I get all the recommendations in, and you can answer that question, yourself. I do know that we have not succeeded as fast as we wanted to succeed. I do understand that progress is not as rapid as I had hoped. ... You wanted frankness -- I thought we would succeed quicker than we did, and I am disappointed by the pace of success.
Such is frankness.
Posted by jherman at 9:13 AM
December 4, 2006
Old Leaks
The editor of Partisan Review, William Phillips, asked me to review Daniel Odier's "The Job," a book of interviews with William S. Burroughs from Grove Press. This was in 1970.
I wrote the piece and then thought I'd test the limits of the magazine, which had already entered its long dotage, by cutting up what I'd written and submitting the result.
I think Phillips was a bit dumbfounded. To his credit however, and that of the managing editor, Caroline Rand Herron, the review was published as submitted, although under the category of "Variety."
Why mention this now? No particular reason, except to note that the utterances that leaked out of the cut-up still seem as pertinent (dated references notwithstanding) as they did then.
For example:
We have heard children of the Jews on the way to the ovens. What are we a rerun already? The movie industry comes cheap. We live now in the dirty stockings of Adolph. Remember Apollo 7? Didn't (Frank) Borman coo the gideon bible? So let's stop praying.
Or this:
Didn't you tune in? We saw them armed with tanks and cameras alternatively under the dead stars of Vietam. Now throw back insult tapes. Betray & walk out! Joe Stalin's Dick Nixon's heavy camouflage alone forms that which it opposes. Namely you.
Or this:
Have you been fooled? It is only natural. For the police, actuality overcame theory to attack you. That is their fix with the Senator whose idea is not to be where you arrive.
The review began:
With the recent publication of The Job Burroughs writes who do not listen. He advances against inhuman Ike who made radioactive image junk for greed, conspiring against the daily life of the masses -- so the Authority habit and human smallness, whose methods were properly learned, became history with predatory intent. Can now be overthrown?
The answer, 36 years later, is: apparently not.
Posted by jherman at 10:18 AM
December 1, 2006
And Still Counting
Posted by jherman at 8:11 AM