It is as vivid today as it if happened last week. But it was ten years ago. Today. Prince Rogers Nelson died. Gone. Silenced. Forever. And by that evening I am sitting in the breakfast nook of my kitchen on a writing jag fueled by memory and grief, disbelief and anger, agony and plain shock It turns out in retrospect to be the purest of my writing. It is the one I bring out once a year, on this day, for now, shit, ten years, and still try to fathom. I can’t. I don’t expect to. Too soon. Not him. Not now. Prince died. Fuck. And my deadline loomed. Cover story. Write the requested eulogy. Just me. I’d written about Prince many times for the Aquarian Weekly. This was the plan. Because they’d sent me to a press-only Artist Formally Known as Prince event in 1997 at the Roseland Ballroom. I’m the guy to do it, my editor said. Little did he know. Little did my readers know, it was personal. And that’s how I started.
Ten years ago, somewhere in the late afternoon, I received an email from my sister-in-law, Shannon. Prince died. What? Although the news was shocking, and it was still a developing international story, it made sense it came from her. Shannon and I had shared Prince’s music at nearly every family gathering by then for nearly twenty years. Her sister, my beloved wife, is also a fan, but it was always Shannon who insisted we blast Purple Rain at certain periods of long weekends and would request a Prince song or five when we’d all inevitably be dancing around the living room with or without the kids. Shannon had to be the one to alert me.
Soon after, I received a text from my dear friend and drummer from my 1980s band, Anthony, who also shared in real-time those classic Prince and the Revolution songs and albums from the period – much of which I cover in my most recent release, Revolution – Prince, the Band, the Era.
Not long after, the call came for me to put down the shock and sadness I felt. Try and frame what Prince’s art had meant to me when music was my livelihood, and I held onto his genius, his madness, his dynamic presence as much as I could as a creative and later understood its impact further as a music writer. Moreover, I had to voice the anguish of millions of Prince fans. I had to dig deep. I had to mourn, it turns out, my youth. That is what the Boomers told me when John Lennon was murdered. Their youth was slain. They grew up with him, he spoke to them, he became a voice, an architype for their generation. Gunned down at forty. Distant memories of a time when the music mattered more than bills, taxes, commuting, the usual adult shit. Obliterated.
And so, I wrote about this and kept writing. I eventually just gave out and sent it to press by midnight, and it was widely read – on the cover – less than a week later. But I didn’t read it, would not read it, at least until the one-year anniversary when it dawned on me that I did, in fact, write about me in the thing. There’s stuff about Prince in there, of course, but this was ultimately a requiem to youth and how music takes us there and makes us think of those who were there too, who remember it all as if it were still happening because that is what good music does, what it always does and should always do. It is part of our DNA – our present and our past – what I have based my 300 Favorite Albums podcast on, that magical elixir of nostalgia meets immediacy. It is magic.
And Prince was, after all, a magician, and he never let us forget it. He was always on – the fashion, the sounds, the mystical mumbles that seemed to be prophetic and unhinged, as were the lyrics that were alien guideposts of a clarity unknown.
But enough of this rant. Why not unearth this cover piece one more time? Why not let this free-form regurgitation out of its cage once more? Okay. Sure. Below is what I wrote that day, and what I barely edited, because I didn’t want to write it much less read it. And although I still wince at its brutal, raw-boned honesty about my own sorrow, it still makes sense to me. Maybe it will to you.
In the late 1970s, before cable was a thing – at least in our home – we had something called Wometco Home Theater, which was a precursor to the HBO model of having closed circuit concerts and first run (and cheesey) movies streamed into your home. There was this separate audio box and a descrambler, and all that archaic stuff no one not old as hell remembers. Broadcast on there before the WHT switch-over was local TV – or what eventually became “public access” in the 1980s, where I got my second life in media – specifically Channel 68 out of Newark, the first station anywhere to air a barely controlled asylum called The Uncle Floyd Show.
Every night around six or thereabouts, without warning or context, would appear this extremely low-budget DIY variety “kiddie-style” show (pre-Pee Wee Herman satire) that had the look of a bizarre mix of a ransom video meets your neighbor’s cramped basement security footage. The damn thing was so Jersey, using the basis of the very early days of television (the innovative brilliance of Ernie Kovacs) that we grew up on in the 1960s (the jovial Captain Kangaroo), with the added irreverent and biting humor, music, and general mayhem of people screaming off “stage” and jumping in and out of the barely focused camera shots.
Bad jokes, ham-fisted songs, cheap toys as props, and a host of homemade puppets; I was smitten from the get. Hell, it changed my entire comprehension of words like entertainment, broadcasting, or presenting anything in traditional ways using this format forever. Uncle Floyd was my Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Mind blown. World changed.
Floyd Vivino, a master pianist and songwriter, has a place in Profonde Musique beyond my being smitten as a teenager looking to break into broadcasting, radio specifically. The Uncle Floyd Show was extremely musical, infiltrating the underground NY/NJ scene seamlessly. I first became aware of the Ramones on Uncle Floyd! What? Yeah, the Ramones set up in that confined space and tore through songs like nothing I had ever seen or heard before. The show’s connection to the band expanded over the years, as both lead singer, Joey proudly displayed an Uncle Floyd Show button on his standard-issue leather jacket, and guitarist, Johnny wearing his Uncle Floyd tee shirt on stage. Eventually, they dedicated a song to Uncle Floyd, “It’s Not My Place (In the Nine to Five World).”
Later, David Johansen of the New York Dolls appeared on the show, as well as a very young and un-famous Jon Bon Jovi, who, as I remember it, plugged his up-coming gigs and gave a shout-out to a music paper I would eventually write for, The Aquarian Weekly. I often wondered if Bon Jovi got their Slippery When Wet idea from a sign just above Floyd’s piano on his West Orange set. Another NJ original, the Smithereens made their television debut on the show, and later British pop band, Squeeze, former Turtles and protocomedians, Flo & Eddie, Peter Tork of Monkeys fame, and so many more. I think the last big-time rock act who appeared on the show was Cyndi Lauper, long before she hit with She’s So Unusual, who found Floyd’s twisted humor expressed her frustration with traditional pop culture and where she would go with her straight-from the-New-Yawk-streets image as an anti-pop star.
All the coolest people knew about Uncle Floyd. John Lennon, the ex-Beatle then in the midst of semi-retirement living in the Upper Westside of Manhattan, and by all accounts TV-obsessed, was apparently such an avid viewer, he told David Bowie about it, who loved it so much that years later, as you might imagine when considering his interest in fringe art, ended up writing a song about it, “Slip Away” for his 2002 album, Heathen, referencing Uncle Floyd and his puppets Oogie and Bones Boy in the song’s first verse. Bowie then told his pal and sometimes collaborator, Iggy Pop, who, again, when considering Iggy’s penchant for chaos, adored it.
Finally, alternative-rockers from Wayne, NJ, Dramarama, made their television debut on Uncle Floyd, later dedicating their own tribute in song, “Work for Food,” a 1994 review of their early days, inviting Vivino to appear (very quickly – you have to really pay attention) as his Cowboy Charlie character in its music video.
I ended up meeting Floyd in the late 90s when I was working as a writer for the adult men’s magazine, Genesis penning features on sports, entertainment, cigars, shit like that. By that point in my career as a journalist and a local television personality, I had been ripping off The Uncle Floyd Show in every which way on local cable, hosting live sports shows, wherein the crew would shout from off-camera, and working as part-time camera man on my friend, Al Quagliata’s wacky Exactly 29-Minutes, which was a homage to all those barely coherent underground comedy excursions.
Interviewing Uncle Floyd for a skin-mag made more sense than I realized, as he was a big hit at strip clubs and men’s clubs, and had a ribald and deviant side to him that was equal measure charming and disturbing. And Uncle Floyd turned out to be everything I hoped he would be, funny, insightful, and refreshingly honest, as we kept chatting long after I turned off my tape recorder about his brothers, Jerry, a wonderful sax player, who incidentally adorned my band, Satyre’s original rough-mix album in 1987, and Jimmy, who played guitar in Conan O’Brien’s talk-show band for years. At the time, Floyd was still touring the clubs with his persona taking on all manner of subjects in his bizarre and endearing way.
After the show wrapped up 1995, Vivino’s career was a peripatetic swing through music, comedy, and guest appearances, mostly around the tristate area, where he remained our NJ treasure. He was always dubious of his impact on a generation that stumbled on his daily mayhem that he would record in the middle of the night over five-hour periods (a full week’s worth in a marathon taping). As we parted ways, I remember him telling me, “We had no idea that we were influencing a whole comedy generation, we were just trying to survive.”
In 2013, my only work of fiction, Y was published, and at its core is a study of What is Art? What constitutes “performance” or “entertainment” and what level of subversion there is in sabotaging that for nothing more than joy’s sake. Always on my mind when I worked on the manuscript was The Uncle Floyd Show, the memories of which reminded me that borrowing from the best of the Dada movement or cabaret hijinks and morphing it with late 20th century sensibilities can make its mark – if not a monumental one, but a lasting one. For those whose minds were blessedly warped by Floyd Vivino and his cast of crazies, we shan’t forget it so easily. As Hunter Thompson was quoted and remains my mantra to this day, “When the going gets weird, the weirds turn pro.” And so went the art and legacy of Uncle Floyd, if not a true original, an original truth.
The week I am writing this, “Purple Rain,” a song composed by the late Prince Rogers Nelson, who died in 2016 at age 57, recorded by his band, the Revolution in August of 1983, and released in June of 1984, eventually topping out at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November of that year, has hit #12 on the pop charts. Its sudden reemergence is primarily due to soundtracking the epic penultimate scene of the popular Netflix series, Stranger Things finale. There is understandable chatter on how this worldwide phenomenon produced by Netflix – recently in a contentious battle over a controversial Prince documentary the network pulled under legal threat from the estate – managed to secure that song and “When Doves Cry,” which appears earlier in the finale, from said estate. But what I wish to discuss is the power and promise of the song itself and how its immense popularity has continued to resonate for the 42 years since its release, as the title track of a soundtrack that has sold over 25-million copies for a film that dominated the summer of 1984.
“Purple Rain” has become an American standard. It has overshadowed Prince’s wildly prolific nearly 40-year career, something he seemed to intuit, as many of his earlier masterful works faded into the background, while “Purple Rain” remained a constant in his performances up until his last shows. It is, as it was in 1984, a stirring piece of dramatic balladry, possessing the ingredients to any lasting piece of art: it moves people on both a personal and cultural level, as it reflects themes of redemption, forgiveness, vulnerability and conciliation. Musically, it’s a sneaky anthem, slowly building to euphoric levels, beginning as a forlorn self-examination of its narrator to slowly soar into an orgiastic celebration of spiritual enlightenment.
When Prince unfurled “Purple Rain” live for the first time – the actual version you hear today – at the legendary First Avenue club in Minneapolis, he stunned the Warner Bros. executives in attendance that night, many of whom had come to see what kind of film and album they were investing in. He also felled the film’s director, Albert Magnoli, by the nearly 14-minute performance of the song, so much so that he would take it as the movie’s title and demand the moment be recreated at its denouement.
There is no denying “Purple Rain” is a monumental pop music achievement, morphing rock with soul music, and even a tinge of gospel, a crossing of genres Prince did better than almost any artist before or after him. Its seemingly infinite hold on us is interesting on two fronts, which I cover in great detail in my latest book, Revolution, Prince the Band, the Era: “Purple Rain” is of its time and transcends it. We think back to the first time we hear it, and if we were young (I was 21 in the summer of 1984), then it takes us there with all the revisionist memories we attach to music, yet it still maintains its aural and lyrical powers as we age. The song, like all great art, evolves with us.
This is what the Duffer Brothers, the creators of Stranger Things, understood. The events of the series take place in the 80s, and from the very first episode, it celebrates the decade’s pop cultural touchstones, most notably Steven Spielberg films, which also have a similar effect on us. With each passing year, when we revisit Spielberg’s most beloved movies, (Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park) we are transported back to the first time these movies moved us while discovering new elements of their charm. Even though the ultra-dramatic scene in which the Duffers use “Purple Rain” takes place in 1987, the kids in the show hold the album in nostalgic reverence, specifically the young woman, Robin Buckley, played by Maya Hawke, who is one of two gay characters that come out in the series. Buckley, aka Rockin’ Robin, as she is a budding radio DJ, argues the group needs a monumental expression as part of an intricate plot to destroy the series’ main villain, because the cause and the moment demands music that reflect their heroic deeds.
The everlasting charm, if you will, of Stranger Things is the foundation of what makes “Purple Rain” a timeless classic. And so, we have in “Purple Rain” a narrator whose intentions are misunderstood – “I never meant to cause you any sorrow…” – that seeks to be understood – “I only wanted to be some kind of friend.” And that is what the Duffers present in nearly every main character in the series – misjudged outsiders, nerds, freaks, unable to blend into the real world and pulled into another one, The Upside Down. No spoilers here, you’ll have to dive in yourself (pun intended), if you’re one of the few who haven’t already, but suffice to say Stranger Things is about these lovable misanthropes finding their tribe to “save the world” in an alternate universe.
Prince, an insightful and world-building lyricist, used his songs to confront the upside-down bigotry, sexual repression, and spiritual upheaval in this universe, as well as any artist of his day. He pained over the lyrics for “Purple Rain,” adding and pulling verses from it, trying to best serve the song’s powerful refrain. Wendy Melvoin, guitarist for the Revolution, mused in my book that “Purple Rain” is ultimately a baptism, a cleansing, a view of the dawn as hope. The song’s drummer, Bobby Z, who’s steadily impassioned backbeat maintained the intensity of the bare arrangement, keeping it from sinking into mere melodrama, says at its core “Purple Rain” is “spiritual and inspirational that captures so much emotion.”
During the song’s miraculous third or fourth hook, the ooohh-ooohh-ooooh-ooooh part no one can resist singing, Prince implores the audience to express their understanding about a song that pleads for connection, “If you know what I’m talking about up here… come on raise your hands!” This thread from confusion to revelation in the communal expression of live music that fuses audience with song is the subliminal message the Duffers bring to the Stanger Things universe, a show ostensibly about otherworldly creatures and science run amok but is really about hearty souls on the fringes – divorced, abandoned, paranoid, aggrieved, picked-on, ostracized, introverted, queer, minorities who have been abused – forced to band together from bizarrely ominous circumstances to eventually find personal and cultural salvation.
And whether during dark times like today, the 1980s, or in the uncertain future of a world in which those on the fringes are perpetually threatened for their individuality, “Purple Rain” resonates. If anything, its message of forgiveness and conciliation is a reminder that the all-too human experience is stranger than any other thing.
TWO NOTES THAT CHANGED CINEMA The Theme from Jaws at 50
Two notes. An ostinato with a tonal shift; lower piano keys soundtrack approaching menace. The music moves ominously through dark waters with the predator. There is both a horizontal and vertical aspect to it that first denotes where the danger stalks – in the misty deep – but later intensifies with harmonies and layers that rise to the surface with the roaming beast and its imminent attack. The genius of those notes permeating our nightmares. The summer of 1975. Fifty years ago, when the groundbreaking film, Jaws broke pop culture, invented the blockbuster, and became one of the most important and best American films of all time. Its composer and director poised to dominate Hollywood for decades.
Two notes. Bah-dum. You know it. Bah-dum. E. And then… F
It’s cool when you sit down at a piano and find it. A kid can play it. Sends chills down your spine. Every time. Sure, that’s because it adorns a movie about a killer great white shark lurking beneath the surface and nudging our ingrained fear of the unknown. But it is the music that connects those fears to our aural center and captures our imagination.
Before the film opens, before we see any people, we hear that music. Submerged, we swim, as the camera swims, through the water, as the creature must. The forward motion, the forever hunter. Then a beach party, where the music stops. Instead, there are now sounds of revelry from ghostly figures drinking beer and playing guitars, flirting and laughing and being young, invincible. Then the break of the young woman and the young drunken man chasing her, displaying the feral history of humanity – man chasing woman. She becomes naked and returns to the primordial waters, dives into the dark, cold, undulating sea. He cannot follow. She is alone, free. Also vulnerable, as we are, as we sit in the dark theater exposed to the visual/aural nightmare to come. The music returns, and then that tug, the yelp, the fear in her face, the terror she cannot see, we cannot see. The attack, the feeding, and she is gone. Under. Forever. Like a trip to Hades. A senseless, irrational death.
Bah-dum. Bah-dum.
The low keys.
E. And then… F.
Steven Spielberg was 27 years-old when he was chosen to direct a film based on the hottest book on the market, Peter Benchley’s tale of a giant great white shark terrorizing a New England island town; a clueless city-dwelling sheriff, a frightened townspeople and their sinister mayor, a curious young oceanographer and a grizzled fisherman with a shark grudge. Spielberg had directed just two films; a TV movie, a thriller, Duel, and a comedy, The Sugarland Express. Both promising. Nothing spectacular. Yet, he possessed the balls to insist on filming Jaws on the unpredictable fury of the Atlantic Ocean instead of a controlled environment. Forced to work with a mechanical shark that did not work, he filmed most of it without the shark. The music was the shark. That is how he got around making a shark movie sans shark. One of the great feats in cinema.
This is why Spielberg has said the music of Jaws is half the reason for its colossal success, as it became the biggest box office movie of all time that summer. In an era when popular music or more minimalist soundtracks reigned, the director insisted on an orchestra and tapped John Williams, who was 43 at the time with an Academy Award for the score of Fiddler on the Roof in his back pocket, to compose and conduct it. Having worked together on Spielberg’s previous film, they formed a comfortable duo, so much so that when Williams first played Spielberg those two notes, the director laughed. This was clearly a joke, he thought. It sounded like a child’s impression of approaching dread. Yes! This was Williams’ aim. Get us where we are the most vulnerable, as children. The theme is our monster under the bed, except it is under the water. Always the places we cannot see, so it can creep up on us. That is when Williams told Spielberg to listen closer as he played those two notes again, and then the ensuing notes that he later described as “primal, but fun” as a leitmotif for Spielberg’s shark. Spielberg got it, later saying, it was “a stunning symphonic achievement and a great leap ahead in the revitalization of film music as a foreground component for the total motion picture experience.” Thank goodness for second takes.
And what of the origin of those notes? All composers, especially those for film deconstruct, borrow and use footprints from the masters and other brilliant conveyors of narrative through the instrumental – the clever use of brass or wind or strings like bassoons and French horns and tubas and cellos to shift moods and hint at danger, joy, tension and release. I am reminded of a video clip of the composer sitting across from musician, Sarah Willis, as she plays for him the third movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, the look of surprise on Williams’s face, as it reveals the two notes that will inform and inspire, even by osmosis, what he would turn into the most recognizable theme in movie history.
The pressure on the cast, crew, producers, and mostly Spielberg to make Jaws a huge hit following the best-selling book’s hype and ensuing fervor for a film was immense. During its making, which has become as much legend as the film itself, there was turmoil and chaos. As the weeks turned into months, the cast bickered, as the boat, weather, ocean, and especially the mechanical shark failed to cooperate. Yet, the young director forged on with one mission, scare the hell out of America and then the world. And it is within Williams’ music that he sought refuge, as he knew it would help him soar above the limits of mere vision to bring his masterpiece home.
Two scenes in particular best illustrate how Williams’ score, and more to the point, his crucial theme underscores the brilliance of Jaws. Early in the film, two fishermen, motivated by a reward to catch the shark, use a pot roast wrapped in a thick, metal chain with a black inflatable tube attached to lure the shark. Williams’ theme begins, as the black tube courses out to sea, being clearly pulled by the invisible shark. The power of its momentum tears the dock asunder, taking one of the fishermen and the audience with it, into the shark’s territory – the water, the real villain of Jaws. The music swells and then recedes. As the fisherman frantically swims for safety, the dock, representing the shark, turns slowly and begins chasing him. And as the dock skims above the water and then increases in speed – the inanimate becoming the predator – the theme returns with a vengeance and into a frantic and desperate build. As the dock/shark gets closer and closer those two notes underscore its furious momentum until the fisherman barely makes it to safety and the chase is abandoned, reducing in volume to a single ominous bass note. This man may be safe, but the waters are not.
Later, when there is a massive scare, as the paranoid authorities are forced to comb the waters because the myopic capitalist mayor keeps the beaches open despite the threat of a killer shark, they try and get swimmers out of the water safely. Predictably, people rush wildly to get back to land. Spielberg ingeniously switches his shots from below the water to above the ensuing madness, intercutting flailing legs and arms, as if hors d’oeuvres for the shark. Throughout, there is no music. No theme. No danger? We are not conditioned yet. The audience assumes there is a shark, but we find out it is just two wise-ass boys with a fake shark fin. But just then, there are screams from the inlet, and the actual shark, presumed by the theme once again, lurks, firing up the drama and tension once more without ever seeing the shark.
Williams’ Jaws theme was so impactful and ubiquitous before the summer is out it is on the lips of everyone, many of us singing it as we leave jam-packed theaters with lines around the block in cities across America. At twelve, I am ushered in by a neighbor’s mom, who halfway through the movie becomes so hysterical with fear, I am seriously concerned for her health. Later, I would take my mom to see it and put my hands over her eyes during scenes I know will freak her out, but it doesn’t matter, the music tells her all she needs to know.
Released as a single, “Main Title (Theme from Jaws)” reached a staggering #32 on the Billboard Hot 100. What? It’s true. I bought it. Wore it out, next to my Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney and Wings records. Ba-Dum/Ba-Dum was a certified hit. The soundtrack album reached No. 30 on the Billboard 200. Why? Well, in 1975, if you wanted to relive the thrilling moments of Jaws you needed the music, as we had no cable television, VHS tapes or certainly streaming where you can now see a film in a few weeks after its release. Soon, Jaws was gone. The theme, however, remained, like a distant echo. We needed that music to reignite our imaginations.
John Williams would go on to win his second Academy Award for Best Original Score for Jaws, and then create some of the most celebrated music themes in cinema history, not the least of which, the stirring theme to Star Wars, which evokes the heroic spirit in the listener as much as the Jaws theme instills terror. Spielberg would go onto reinvent blockbuster after blockbuster, becoming the most lucrative if not critically overlooked filmmaker of his or any time. And both he and Williams would continue to blow us away with visual/aural delights in among many other classics, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark,E.T. The Extraterrestrial, and Jurassic Park.
It all began fifty summers ago with a movie that was primed to be a smash and exceeded even the haughtiest of Hollywood prognostications. Jaws remains a definitive touchstone of American cinema. It has aged exceedingly well and because it reached our rawest emotions, it continues to dazzle and frighten and amaze. And as Spielberg has repeatedly and rightfully intoned, its theme, prologued by two notes, is its infinite calling card. A clarion for its infamous shark and the deep, dark infinite waters beneath our psyche.
I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member. Groucho Marx
Warren Zevon was one of the most unique and uncompromising singer-songwriters of his or any era – sometimes to his ultimate consternation and detriment. He was the troll under the bridge, the voice in the wilderness, the yin to pop music’s yang. Listening to Zevon is like taking an odd turn down the wrong street that either sends you scrambling back to the boulevard or being intrigued enough to be enveloped in imminent danger. It’s a strange combination of unsettling and comforting. Not for everyone. Not, so far, for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (42 years and counting) either. I think that is a glaring mistake. And I wish to discuss this further.
Now, as I have written in this paper before, the idea of a R&R HOF is idiotic on its face.
1) As an artform, rock and roll is supposed to obliterate institutional thinking. 2) Music is subjective and what constitutes greatness is elusive – there, of course, are perennials, but once we’re over four-decades of jamming artists of questionable and certainly debatable merit in there, things should have loosened up considerably. 3) There appears to be a consortium of shrouded judges deciding this, also antithetical to the ethos of rock and roll – the people’s music – and to be frank, the entire enterprise comes across as somewhat sketchy.
But if there is going to be a R&R HOF, then Warren Zevon needs to be included. Period.
Full disclosure: I did spend a few years of my life on a book about Zevon’s music, Accidentally Like a Martyr – TheTortured Art of Warren Zevon. Through the collection of essays therein, the goal was to find the man behind his songs, form a biographical underpinning within the lyrics and themes. So, I am, to say the least, a fan, and have been since my high school days – something I touch upon in the book – and coined a term that has taken off to describe the precious ownership of Zevon fandom, Zevonites. To be a Zevonite means to be all-in on the Zevon canon, and to shout about it from the nearest rooftop. I am pleased that I have put in my little contribution to the cause of getting more people interested in his work, but I do not speak today as that guy – although it is hard to separate this – because my reasoning (as opposed to the R&R HOF) is sound.
So, let’s cover the reasons that Zevon is not in there and refute them verily.
1) He did not sell enough records over his four-decades-plus career.
This is bullshit, since when I wrote about Alice Cooper and KISS not in the HOF back in 2010, I was told that record sales, of which both acts sold tons, was not a key prerequisite. “The influence and significance of the artists’ contributions to the development and perpetuation of rock and roll” (taken from the HOF web site) is paramount.
Warren Zevon was extremely influential. Probably his most powerful argument for inclusion. Everyone in the highly successful West Coast/California movement of the late 1960s through the 70s and 80s were shifted into different musical corners by Zevon. The Eagles play and sing on several of the tracks on Zevon’s eponymous first Asylum album, including its final track, “Desperadoes Under the Eaves,” a song using a hotel as a metaphoric prison. Three months later they record their seminal album, Hotel California, with the title track depicting a hotel as a metaphoric prison. Linda Ronstadt famously and beautifully recorded four of Zevon’s songs and named an album, Hasten Down the Windafter one of them. Neil Young, who also played on Zevon records and on stage with him, has cited Zevon’s effect on his songwriting. Bruce Springsteen, who counted Zevon as a friend and penned a song with him and covered his songs in concert often marveled at his diverse musical and lyrical pallet. Bob Dylan, who during the early aughts played a mini set of Zevon songs during his shows, dubbed Zevon “the musician’s musician.” And Jackson Browne, who told me himself that Zevon had awakened his ability to touch upon subjects previously beyond him after producing his first two albums.
This is not to mention many of the younger artists who over the years count him as a major influence; Dawes, Jill Sobule, the Wallflowers, Counting Crows, Dwight Yoakam, and many more.
2) Zevon was a lunatic drunkard during his heyday, who pissed off a lot of people, namely Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone, the man who started the HOF and despite being disgraced and tossed from the committee due to racist and misogynistic falderal a couple of years back, still holds sway on keeping him out.
The R&R HOF is filled with rapists, drug addicts, pedophiles, domestic abusers, murderers. In fact, the entire history of the genre is one big crime spree undertaken by immoral libertines. Let’s not get precious about one guy.
3) Aside from David Letterman, there is very little clamor about his absence.
I am not going to name the dozens of artists and celebrities that have been vocal about Zevon’s snub, but I will mention that two years ago when Zevon was put on the fan-voting ballot, he came in third behind George Michael, who won that year and was inducted, and Cyndi Lauper, who is going to be inducted this year. I worked hard with the Zevon family, especially his son Jordan, who is a friend, to help make that happen. We watched the ticker daily. Zevon got a shitload of votes, (from the people, not a dubious consortium) proving that there is indeed more than enough “clamor” to induct him.
Now, to the important stuff. Why is Warren Zevon eligible for the HOF?
First and foremost, he is one of the great songwriters of all time. As stated above, unique in his unflinching ability to cross into taboo subjects that both satirize and humanize much of humanity’s foibles, joys, humor, sadness and demons. Only Randy Newman (also in the HOF) has done more to expand the themes and subjects of songs in the pop music pantheon (both men had their biggest hits around the same time with lighter and kitschy songs – Zevon, “Werewolves of London,” and Newman, “Short People.”
This is why a bevy of authors (your truly) came to Zevon – Steven King, Hunter S. Thompson, Carl Hiassen, Dave Barry, Ross McDonald, Amy Tam, and more.
Zevon, beloved by those who understand the complicated expression of songwriting, stand in awe of him. One of the few composers and performers beyond the self-aggrandizing realm of prog rock to use classical motifs, Zevon was a tireless creator. Long after the music industry and greater public abandoned him, he continued to put out self-produced, stripped-down albums, toured solo, and played clubs and bars to keep going – never giving into the idea of “retiring” from his art despite personal and professional travails. He is an inspiration to those who don’t live on the charts, take harbor on magazine covers, or move through the talk-show circuit. And those albums he made were great through his becoming sober in 1986 until the end, when arguably his most lasting tribute to the craft was The Wind, an album he recorded when he was dying of inoperable lung cancer at just 55-years-old (he passed at age 56), a lasting legacy since undertaken by such legendary artists as Johnny Cash and David Bowie.
And finally, it is important that the R&R HOF not merely cater to the uber-famous and instead take the time to shine a light on those who expanded the genre and traversed outside its parameters. Zevon lived on the bleeding edge of those parameters and came back to tell us all about it in incredibly moving, funny, and raucous songs about love, loss, death and the occasional lycanthrope.
And finally, as I wrote in 2002 upon hearing of his diagnosis, Warren Zevon was one cool fucker, whose music and humor and pathos made life better, and remains one of the finest live performers I’ve seen with an uncompromisingly smart and, yes, sinister side that always made me smile. He would do the same for the crusty institution that so far has seen fit to keep him out.
Of course, never invited to the big parties and skulking in the shadows of more celebrated artists, maybe not being in the R&R HOF is a final tribute to the man.
This could have gone badly. As much as I adore and respect Sinéad O’Connor for her music, her socio-political stands, her commitment to her art and her causes, both real and imagined, she has been anything but a focused voice on any of them. Having battled mental and emotional illness most of her life while also displaying in her public persona a head-spinning level of mercurial behavior, when I heard she was penning a memoir I was as dubious as when Bob Dylan released what turned out to be a mostly fantasy-addled effort. However, my trepidations were happily proved unfounded. Unlike Dylan’s 2004 uneven Chronicles Vol 1,Rememberings is a brutally honest, and most importantly, consistent work. It reads like the imprint of a cruel world on the soul of a sensitive artist with just enough self-examination and personal epiphanies to induce awe.
Firstly, O’Connor is no writer, per sé. (To be fair, many of these rock and roll memoirs are hardly nods to literary devotion.) Still, there is a writer’s alacrity in the way O’Connor tells her story, bridging the gap between having spent decades burying the horrors of her childhood and her exploitation as a young singer-songwriter, and later MTV superstar in an age of shifting genres and interests, and her artistic integrity. All this transpired in a male-dominated industry that kicked her around for nothing more than its own willful ignorance and insecure self-preservation. O’Connor faces her demons and bravely shares the experience.
Parts of Rememberings is as poetic as its un-grammatical title. O’Connor uses her words and phrases to dig deeper into her psyche, allowing the reader a ringside seat. This is a frightening but rewarding endeavor that helps us understand that a portrait of a true artist is no walk in the park. Much of the myths and well-worn stories of her time under the looming control of her mentally ill mother or the nunnery for which she learned to use music to connect spiritually and psychologically with the world all the way to her weirdly framed wars with the Catholic Church, the U.S. government, and the music business are busted wide open.
AMERICA ALONE Welcome to the New Age of Isolation, Apathy & Defeat
I’m not sure what you would call this Trump Doctrine. Is it foreign policy? Not sure it would make the cut of any “policy” per se. Seems like most of this presidency’s maneuvers are knee-jerk, ad-hoc, half-ass what-the-fuck kinds of things that end up in ranting tweets and Nuremburg type rallies of bloviating mendacities and bumper sticker logic. Does it show a consistent measure, say, like the Bush Doctrine’s War on Terror or Reagan’s Geo-Political chess games or even Clinton’s piecemeal effect? I would argue no. Fact is, it appears that Donald Trump doesn’t know either, and more to the point neither does his drooling attack dog Mike Pompeo, a former CIA Director and cheap hood from Kansas whose only understanding about international affairs is assassination. It was the current Secretary of State who convinced the easily swayed Trump to illegally assassinate the top general of a sovereign state in a battle zone that was not specifically waged against the nation for which he toiled. Ensuing press conferences seemed to indicate that he was bad. And that is a very tenuous reason to conduct international murder.
It appears even to the mentally challenged that the erratic short-range planning on how to deal with international affairs falls mainly to a man whose woefully short attention span and fantastic inability to learn anything has been on dangerous display for three years. Some call this a method. In other words, the lack of planning or doctrine is kind of a doctrine, and I would grant them this misnomer, if not for the imbalance of enemy vs. ally that comes with who might “like” or “ego pet” or “placate” a single human being as opposed to the safety and advantage of an entire nation.
This is especially appalling because nearly two-thirds of the American people do no support this president. He has zero mandate, in the traditional sense. For whatever that is worth these days. And these kind of zig-zag irrational one-off decisions – like tweeting to pull U.S. troops from Syria last year without alerting those who are running the war, or worse still, the allies on the ground – tend to alienate America from the international community. This has happened with annoying regularity during Trump’s first term and while this gets the current 41-percent that support him the giddies it does leave America isolated globally. And this latest Iran goofiness has only exacerbated the problem. And although I couldn’t give nary a shit whether we have any kind of powerplay in the Middle East, I would guess that Iraq (“welcomed as liberators”) after eighteen years voting last week to kick the most powerful nation out of its country has to be a bad look to the rest of the world. Not to mention without a presence in the country we broke, a vacuum – already partially filled by ISIS and soon to be consumed with Iran, the very nation killing its lead commander was supposed to impede – will most certainly not be completed by anything approaching U.S. friendly.
That is not foreign policy, it’s the script of a horror movie.
This is why I took to Twitter – which I rarely do – to implore congress to cobble together a veto-proof halt to what will likely be an ongoing clusterfuck in the Middle East with Iran. The House, with mostly Democratic votes, predictably came with a feckless attempt to limit Trump’s war powers a few days later – I am not suggesting this was because of my tweet, but hey… – it was a show vote and not a binding resolution. At some point, I will argue until the face turns a bluish hue that the actual branch of government that has the constitutional powers to declare war needs to get their shit together and end what has amounted to over seven decades of abject stupidity from the executive branch, the Pentagon and the military. We suck at war. We have not won one since 1945 and that’s because congress was kept out of it since; in most cases illegally. This appears to have happened with Pompeo’s fancy assassination.
But I digress.
If I may, let’s take a look at non-binding, shadowy “agreements” that lunatics have entered into with this president in the past three years: More pertinently, Russian President Vladmir Putin, North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, Turkish President Recep Erdogan and Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bind Salman Al Saud. All of these leaders – Trump favorites – are despots, dictators and tyrants. All of them Trump has “trusted” over American intelligence agencies – the same agencies the administration and Pompeo ran to use as cover for murdering the Iranian general. Trump said, on foreign soil during the first year of his term with Putin standing beside him, that Russia probably had nothing to do with hacking our 2016 election, before his private meetings with him that did not include an American translator. He has had two meetings with Jong-un that resulted in no signed treaty, just a couple of what he described as “love notes.” Meanwhile North Korea continues to fire off missiles and thumb its nose at the U.S. Then there was the little nastiness of the Saudis murdering an American journalist that Trump excused after some shady rationale from the Prince.
Now, Trump, who tore up an actual Nuclear Pact that had assurances in writing agreed by a large part of the international community, is telling us “All is well” and that he’s got Iran’s assurance that this whole thing is a misunderstanding and whatever other nonsense he can garble in a pinch. No treaty. No negotiation. No international coalition. Just “I got this” from a guy who has trouble telling the truth about everything.
No question that what happened this past week in Iraq could have gone far worse. If anything, Iran acted as an international power with some restraint. But that’s if it is to be believed and that’s another story, because we have nothing in writing. There is no safety net. There is no “trust but verify”. Only trust, and oh, a crazy man taunting another crazy man on social media. Makes me sleep well at night.
One thing is certain, there has to be some stable direction with America’s foreign policy, because this kind of silliness is not sustainable. If this is a new era of isolationism, then let’s go with that. Anything would suffice over what is currently transpiring. Pulling out of treaties, reneging on promises, scuttling agreements and random assassinations with no explanation is wearing thin.
What the result of all this looks like is anyone’s guess. And that is not foreign policy, it’s the script of a horror movie.
In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals. The President’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well. – Opening statement in National Security Whistleblower Complaint, delivered 8/19/19 to Director of National Intelligence and reviewed by the U/S Congress, 9/26/19
Well, of course. How else could this possibly end? It was only a matter of time that this abomination of a presidency would finally sink us into a constitutional crisis and wind up in the embarrassment of impeachment. Because most likely Donald Trump isn’t going anywhere, unless we send him packing in November of 2020. The Senate Republicans are not going to convict a president with an intra-party popularity around 90 percent even if he “shoots someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue.” It is political suicide and that is the game they are playing here – not any hokey bullshit patriotic sworn duty to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law. That is a line you learn in middle school that pertains to none of what actually happens or has happened in Washington DC since they elevated a mosquito infested Southern swamp into the nation’s capital in 1790. Nah, Trump will stay with his shame and his historical marker as a hack criminal whose best work was saved for B-level television and the inside straight he pulled on November 6, 2016 that we now know occurred with ample assistance from the Russian government. You could see this coming from the start of this mess, as I wrote to friends within minutes of his Election Day victory, it was merely a “Countdown to Impeachment”. He would do something stupid and wrong, I reasoned, and he has done many things stupid and wrong since, but this latest Ukrainian shit will finally get that scarlet letter “I” painted on his bloated visage forevermore.
U.S. President Donald Trump addresses a joint news conference with Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., September 20, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
History is a bitch and it has come calling for Donald J. Trump. His unimpeded lunacy has a shelf life and it has reached its apex. Our national crisis of one; this bleating troll of a man whose check has bounced and the bank, well, the bank needs the money, bub. And El Douche knows all about that. His phalanx of failures resulting in a spectacular number of bankruptcies and sad-sack ventures has led to these secret tax returns he still uses an army of lawyers to prevent us from seeing. Oh, the tales they would tell: More embarrassments that will likely come crashing in once he set in motion the congress’s legal might to impeach. Oof, it has become a civic lesson for Donnie, who chose to run the United States like a casino and went belly up. Because belly up is the default position for him. Self destruction is his raison d’être. His art is masochism.
Ahhh, but The Donald thinks the dogshit in his fist is a sweet-smelling rose. This, and myopic racism is what his father gave him with a preternatural gift of denial and an unrivaled level of self-unawareness. And that’s probably best. It’s always a boon for the victim to not see it coming. My cats know that deal, but the president, well, he needs some education on how this whole system works when it has been cracked in pieces as he’s been stumbling through his Mr. Magoo governing style, careening into crime after crime and then telling us all about it on Twitter and national television. Remember when he admitted to NBC News that he fired the head of the FBI because of “the Russian thing”, which brought the weight of a two-year investigation that he tried to thwart at every turn? This, of course, and a mid-term thrashing handed congress over to his political enemies on a silver platter. That should have been enough to impeach, as the ten blatant instances of obstruction of justice that continues with this latest Ukrainian clusterfuck.
I mean, how stupid do you have to be to pull this shit and then evoke the Justice Department, the puppet attorney general, the vice president, and drag your mentally ill private attorney, who then fingered the entire state department, into this nonsense? There are so many fuck-ups in Trump’s attempt to mob-threaten a foreign country to investigate a totally ginned up bullshit story about the son of his likely political opponent, whom he is losing to in every poll since Joe Biden shuffled meekly into this race. Not the least of which is to put the whole affair into “a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature” according to the fancy whistleblower complaint released on 9/26 to congress, and “not the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials.” Only because…wait for it…this is the crap Hillary Clinton rightfully got for having a separate email server. Every time you hear Trumpites mention “Hilary’s emails” this is why. And well… duh.
Hey, you wanted a game show host to give this a try.
The most damning excerpt in the whistleblower complaint is the White House directing the “lock down of all records of the phone call”, which, (clearing my throat for effect) is an all-star super-duper topper most of the poppermost Cover Up. And it will end in the disbarment and perhaps jailing of Steven Engel, director of the Office of Legal Counsel, who blocked the whistleblower complaint from being handed over to congress, which is dictated by law, Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski, head of the criminal division, who brazenly passed on investigating the president’s crime, Attorney General Bill Barr, who not only denies having heard about any such call to pursue a conspiracy theory probably pitched by FOX News talk show host Sean Hannity that it was Ukraine not Russia that helped Trump win in 2016 despite the intelligence community and the Mueller Report conclusions, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who according to Joseph Maguire, acting director of national intelligence, put him in the “untenable position of denying the material to congress over a claim that it did not fall within his jurisdiction as leader of the intelligence community,” which is literally his job description, and Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolf Giuliani, whose erratic criminal behavior for months enthusiastically headed up this fiasco.
So, in very Nixonian fashion, this whole “getting dirt on the opponent” that took on national security alerts in 2016 with the Russian government basically entrenched in what would be the future president’s campaign, was taken to yet another country with the same crime and then, well covered up. Trump, descending into a state of complete doddering madness, had the bright idea to declassify a private conversation with the Ukrainian president that… wait for this one… totally incriminated him. This is what the president of the United States released to the public and an impeachment inquiry the day before the damning whistleblower complaint dropped: Trump to newly sworn-in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it…it sounds horrible to me.”
I think I’ve written this here before, but for the purposes of people who are still stunningly defending this recidivist criminal behavior: Game. Set. Match.
The president of the United States withheld funds appropriated for the defense of an American ally to gain dirt on a political opponent, got a half dozen White House lawyers to lie and cover it up and then proudly shared the evidence to bury him. Or a typical Tuesday afternoon in the Trump Administration.
Hey, you wanted a game show host to give this a try.
Really, I mean, given everything that has transpired up to this, is impeachment that much of a stretch?
HOW LONG FOOTBALL? The Decline in American Youth Football is Real and Increasing
The short answer to the above question is probably forever. But the long answer is not in any form you can recognize, and that part has already begun.
It is because of this march towards whatever the game is now and what it eventually will become that prompted me to stop watching football with any interest four seasons ago. And this is no small feat. Pro Football, really any football, was my favorite sport. I played when I was a kid. Absolutely fell in love with the gorgeous artistic propaganda of NFL Films, so much so that the iconic music they used on those stuck in my brain as deeply as any pop song from my childhood. I even applied to work for NFL Films right out of college. I did not get the gig. Bummer.
Giving up football fandom was tough at first, but it made no sense to watch something called pro football that was fast becoming… I don’t know how to describe watching a sport in which you have no idea what it happening: What’s a catch? What’s a touchdown? What’s a tackle? What is cheating? Man, I loved football, especially pro football, and it went somewhere else and I did not follow.
The main reason the sport has changed into something I no longer find the least bit interesting – beyond the rise in fantasy sports craze, video games that effected how the game is played and covered, and technology (replay stuff is intolerable nonsense) – is valid. Playing football causes brain damage. It is simple as that. This is something we should have known forty years ago as we watched behemoths (many of them jacked on amphetamines and later a phalanx of human growth hormones and anabolic steroids) smash their skulls into each other. Sure, they wore helmets and we thought that was fine. It turned out not to be fine. Many of the players went insane or died of brain-related diseases. Some got violent with spouses, their children and the general public. Some committed suicide. Then came the inevitable lawsuits and the National Football Leagues’ shameless but understandable denials. Gotta keep those bucks flowing.
This “deny the science” for self-interest thing is very big with business types. You know the deal: Coal poured into poison and then into your water is fine. American Jobs! The NFL is a microcosm of this. But eventually the cat scan was out of the bag and now the rules include not being able to lay a hand on anyone, much less tackle them, and because the great unwashed love scoring and not anything resembling the original concept of the game – defense and ball control – they just let it fly. The game is a joke.
Oh, we should point out that the question in the headline above is proffered merely because late this summer statistics were released that illustrated a serious decline in competitive group sports among high schoolers across the country. The main culprit is football. Parents, especially moms, want no part of their children’s brains scrambled as teenagers. Science has also discovered that while the head (with the brain in it – kind of an important organ) should not be used as a battering ram, it is really bad mojo for developing brains. And since .00001 percent of those kids ever go to college for free or make a living smashing their brains into mush and then committing suicide, why risk it?
If youth football factories are fading then so is the treadmill of talent that will fill rosters that fill schedules and thus fill stadiums to make money for colleges and the NFL.
From Forbes magazine last month: “According to the National Federation of High School Association’s (NFHS) latest participation survey, released in late August, eleven-player tackle football, numerically speaking, is solely responsible for the first decline in boys’ high school sports participation since 1988-89, and mostly responsible for the first decline in overall high school participation since that same school year.”
Let that read a three-percent decline, which is not astronomical, but it’s a decline in a sport that has been on a steady, unhealthy incline for a century. In fact, according to the same report, 26 percent of boys participated in HS football prior to the early ought’s, but since it is down to one in five. And those numbers have steadily declined over the past 15 years, even when considering Texas that has some fifty thousand people show up to HS football games. The numbers are more or less stagnant there, but no increase. Almost everywhere else in America football is waning.
What am I getting at? Well, if youth football factories are fading then so is the treadmill of talent that will fill rosters that fill schedules and thus fill stadiums to make money for colleges and the NFL. Of course, this could take generations, but then again, with every retiree dying young from brain disease or with every violent act or anti-social behavior exhibited by current HS, college and pro players of the game, and man it is an alarming number, the public relations gets darker and more and more people will became aware and want to protect their children from any of it.
A few years ago a friend of a friend and now someone I know, author, Steve Almond wrote an eye-opening book on all of this from a similar perspective, obsessive fan to serious skeptic,Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto in which he asks why do inner city kids or low-income country youth have to choose football as a route to a better life? Why couldn’t the 2009 film The Blind Side, which tells the true story of a poor Memphis black kid who uses football to rise above his daunting circumstances, be about a kid excelling in math or science or becoming (gulp!) a writer?
As a result of all of this, football may go the way of the aforementioned steroids. Congressional investigation, more lawsuits, you name it. But as long as there is gambling and beer to be sold and huge network contracts and every sports media outlet sucks up to the mighty NFL, then let’s face it, football ain’t going anywhere soon.
But it may be going at some point. And to write that is quite remarkable. But, hell, if I can bag it, so can America. I doubt there was a more obsessive fan than me. Four years of no football and counting. Try it.
THE MORAL LOW GROUND Conditions at Our Southern Border & What It Says About Our Country
Admittedly, the person who pens this column every week is either an asshole or a genius. Or both. The mantle I have chosen to drape myself in does not come with gray areas. I sometimes point out that hypocrites fail to see those in their black and white existence, but mostly I tend to work on the margins between beauty and disgust. Predominantly disgust. This is due primarily to my insistence on commenting on politics, but that is merely a subtext for the great human experiment, America. We’ll be celebrating its two-hundred and forty-third birthday this week, so this is where the asshole comes in: Sure, remind us of our shitty side when we’re about to merrily force-feed hot dogs at an alarming, get our dime-store mini flags out of mothballs and blow stuff up. But consider the genius of this. It is not unlike Dickens getting all up in your self-absorbed misery when you just want to get some eggnog and a new tie. Humanity is a tricky subject.
And it is of our humanity of which I write this week. Forget politics and countries and religion and the rest of that John Lennon song. Let’s concentrate on humans. For the purposes of the true grit here, children.
Theimages and news emanating from what amounts to concentration camps, or if you are Laura Ingram – a comedy show host from a cable network – “essentially summer camps”, has really struck me hard. From the very beginning when we became aware of what our government was doing with our money I tweeted daily, “There are children locked away in cages and we’re paying for it.” I thought this might cut through the usually self-absorbed hate-fest that is Twitter. After a time, even I thought it silly to keep bringing it up. Apparently, like perpetual war (Americans have been fighting in Afghanistan for eighteen years now and Iraq for sixteen), we have more or less come to accept this as our national normal.
Now, I am not here to cast blame. We know who is to blame, if you choose to blame anyone. Our president, who likes to say he runs everything, so get out of his way and get sick of winning, blames congress. Congress blames the game show host. Some people blame Mexico. Some blame past administrations. But I blame humanity. And if you’re reading this, you’re human, so yeah, us. Our government, that means us in this fancy American experiment, is putting fellow human beings in hot, clammy, lice-infected flu-cages in stifling heat under inhumane conditions. And that cannot sit right with anyone. Can it?
This always gets me to think about the moral high ground that America is supposed to, theoretically, or for some, theologically, stand for. In other words, if this were happening in the Middle East or Central America there would be debates on when the bombing should start. Yet, we’re paying for it. When I am done with this piece, I will send it to press, and then at the end of a period, I will get money. Then, at some point, I will pay taxes on that money. Those taxes will go to what doctors have recently described as “torture facilities”. Now, I have written extensively in the past about the kind of torture or “enhanced interrogation” methods our government used on apprehended terrorists at the beginning of this century. I believe for terrorists, anything goes. Once you choose terrorism, you’re essentially saying “no thanks” to society and its norms. If you wish to see those norms eradicated, then you kind of hand in your human card. However, not sure people escaping poverty and violence and sneaking into the country equals the same thing. Some argue it is. Those people have wildly exaggerated what they feel is an open attack on our nation and for them, this nightmare of caged children is justified. No tolerance. Stay home or get this kind of treatment.
Makes sense. But is it good? Or even moral? Or something we represent as a nation or as fellow members of humanity?
I blame humanity. And if you’re reading this, you’re human, so yeah, us.
What has always made me ill about the concept of morality is its vacillating institutional tool, religion, and especially its most bizarre creatures, evangelists. Mostly it is their sadly quixotic ways in which they flub the very idea of it. All religions are filled with this craziness, but Christians, when considering the source, do and say the most hateful and judgmental things. We can argue whether Jesus was an egalitarian and hated capitalism and money and property and welcomed the inclusion of all peoples against the ruling religious class or not. We can even assume him God. But I am not entirely sure how you balance what is happening to the children at the border with any level of comprehension about a Christ figure. Never mind Yeshua the Nazarene. Yet, there are a whole lotta Christians who support this policy and this administration, and I don’t get that. Never will.
I only bring this up because the No Tolerance Policy that led to these horrors was sold, predictably, by quoting Biblical scripture. Then Attorney General Jeff Sessions said “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.” Ignoring that the former Saul of Tarsus, a man known for torturing Christians as a weekend hobby before some shit happened to him on the road across the border, using the Bible to sell oppression and systemic criminal activity is as old as the damn thing. But that brings us back to our national morality, even a secular compassion for our fellow humans.
How do we, a nation so full of itself, so prideful of our accomplishments to assist the less fortunate and protecting the weak and needy, stand by and watch this happen?
I have no answer and that is not a rhetorical question. I want to know.
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