Martin’s Summation of the George Bush Jr. Years:
“George Jr. got drunk, stole Daddy’s keys to the country and went for a joyride which ended in a wreck on Wall St.”
Browsing Posts tagged George
Marx once said that “religion is the opiate of the masses”. If one is to believe this graph:
it would seem to suggest that the poorer you are, the more inclined you are to be religious. Perhaps it’s not so odd that most religious television programs are constantly begging for money. However, they may do better by making their pleas for money to the aetheists instead of ‘preaching to the [poor] choir’ as it were.
Most interesting are the outliers on this graph. The US is more religious than its overall wealth would suggest, so perhaps George Bush does indeed hear the voice of God. Also note Kuwait which is highly religious and relatively prosperous compared to countries with similar levels of religiousity.
More information can be found here:
I typically shy away from watching American Idol. I find watching peoples hopes dashed by ‘judges’ akin to watching humans flayed by gladiators to the amusement of the dullard populace. Parenthetically, I wonder how the objectively questionable voices of legends: Louis Armstrong, Neil Young, Bob Dylan or Robert Plant would survive the scrutiny of the bastions of talent assessment found in judges: Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson, and Paula Abdul. Paula Abdul. My automatic grammar checker is telling me that the sentence “Paula Abdul.” on its own is a sentence fragment; I couldn’t disagree with it more in this context. In fact, I find it to be a full paragraph.While I find the show irksome, mustering the power to ‘turn the other cheek’ is about as hard as turning to another channel and as such, I haven’t, until recently, paid it much mind. However, when this show chose to wax moral, I perked up my ears because when a Fox Network program discusses morals, this is bound to be something I want to tune into. (Words fail to express the sarcasm of the previous sentence.) The Fox Network is the same network which brought you the tasteful tidbit “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?” and is the official station of George W. Bush and his war to eradicate weapons of mass destruction. (In a strange twist of fate, the largest [and only] weapon of mass destruction after the year 2000 in Iraq turned out to be George W. Bush himself.) This is the network that sought to sanction contestant Antonella Barba on American Idol after it was revealed she had some scandalous photographs found on the internet. Barba was voted off the show, but it was her voice that was cited as the final cause. Nonetheless, American Idol has previously removed a contestant “Frenchie” after pictures surfaced of her on an adult pay site.
A Google search of either girl will reveal an onslaught of the related pictures as well as 50 pop up adds suggesting you need a larger penis, methods for fixing the problem and several contests you’ve won which should provide funds for any such programs. After closing the fog of pop ups, the pictures that emerged were at best Maxim or FHM worthy. To those not versed in the realm, Maxim and FHM are to Playboy and Penthouse as light-filtered-cigarettes are to cigars. My initial reaction to the pictures was flaccid causing me to momentarily rethink closing all the previous pop ups. After that moment I realized that I was unimpressed because it was clear to me that these pictures had absolutely nothing to do with the talent of the contestants. For the record, Frenchie has moved on to a promising career on Broadway. Instead, these pictures had everything to do with our confused morals.
Some will immediately protest: “the show is called American IDOL” — emphasis on ‘idol’ — and hence part of the criteria must be if such people are worthy of being idols. As soon as we open this can of worms, it’s necessary for American Idol to somehow consider the morals of the contestants. Morals and ethics are complicated and I’m certain that the Fox Network lacks the acumen to address the issue. In fact, I find it very hard to determine if it was revealed that Barba mutilated puppies would it have received more or less press and attention? I hear the conservative drone say: “the children, the poor children, whatever will we do if they see those pictures?!” To such parents, I point out that what would happen to children if children watch the evening news? I will attend that point momentarily.
Only in such a state of moral asymmetry could we even begin to ask these sorts of questions. Let’s look at the issue. Pornography: bad, good, neither, both? Dr Phil’s ‘Occam’s Razor’ style argument on the topic goes like this: If you wouldn’t want your daughter involved in porn, then why would you watch someone elses’ daughter? Dr Phil, President Bush and the Fox Network are experts at providing short answers to complicated questions that sound reasonable and under scrutiny turn out to be faulty. At the risk of being guilty of the same thing I accuse Dr. Phil, the short answer to Dr. Phil is: I don’t want my daughter to be a sanitation maintenance engineer (the politically correct term for garbage man/woman) but that doesn’t stop me from taking my trash to the curb. However, let’s take a deeper look at the issue, and to do so, we’ll restrict the general porn issue to examining going topless at a beach. If anyone reading the rest of this article derives that I carte blanche advocate pornography, I invite them to reread the previous sentence.
(An unremembered comedian [likely Bill Maher or Robin Williams] once quipped that to, the overly simplified criminal justice mantra, “three strikes and you’re out” is the answer to gays in the military “four balls and you walk”?)
I’d like to ask Dr. Phil if he’d let his daughter go topless on a beach. I suspect strongly that he’d say no. Then I’d like to ask him if he’d let his daughter go topless on a beach in Brazil where the practice is commonplace (certainly more common place) and considered about as common as walking around in a bikini. I suspect he’d still say no, but the question would have got him thinking (and hopefully you as well). People will hem and haw over this point but that’s only because we’re dealing with the cusp of what’s currently considered ‘ok’. Then I’d ask him if he’d let his daughter wear one piece swim suit (not a bikini). I suspect he’d say yes. Then I’d finally ask him, if he lived in the 1800′s (when woman swam in the equivalent of a ‘Burka’) would he also let her wear a one piece swim suit? I’d like very much to hear his answer. Whether he says yes or no, he’d be forced to admit that his ‘morals’ have more to do with the time (society) he lives in than what is actually ‘right or wrong’. Star Wars got it right when George Bush gawks: “You’re either with us or against us” and Obe Wan Kenobi replies: “only the Sith believe in absolutes.” It’s my personal belief that the ‘Sith’ is a code for George Bush and the conservative lot (Sith = Simple Ignorant THeists).
Thus, questions of moral propriety are very hard questions to answer, and I sure as hell don’t want the Fox Network to even make the attempt. The question of where this moral confusion arose in the first place begs answering. I can only offer an answer in a form of an allegory of two presidents. First we have a story of an otherwise good president who had sex in the oval office; He was impeached. Next we have a story of a president who didn’t have sex in the oval office and sent a nation to war to get rid of weapons of mass destruction which didn’t exist. This president who sent thousands to their deaths for no reason at all was, was… was… Oh, nothing happened to him.
The take home message of all this confusion is that morals are hard. You’re going to have to turn off the TV and think about them if you want to have a chance of getting them right. In turn, the only take home message one can glean about the state of American morals from all this is that Americans are fine with boobs only so long as one doesn’t post pictures of them on the internet and instead elects them to office.
I attended the 3rd lecture on the Jewish Roots of Tin Pan Alley by Jordan Klapman. My notes on the previous lecture can be found here : http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/jewish-contributions-to-tin-pan-alley
The lecture series will continue with another 3 lectures in December of ’08.
This lecture centered around the success of “Bei Mir Bist Du Shein” (To Me You’re Beautiful) written by Jacob Jacobs (lyricist) and Shalom Secunda (composer). This overtly Jewish (Klezmer) tune was made famous by the Greek (Lutheran) Andrews Sisters. The number was brought to the Andrews Sisters by Sammy Cahn after he heard a performance of it at the Apollo Theater in Harlem sung in the original Yiddish by African American performers Johnnie and George.
The song brought the Andrews Sisters instant stardom with this, their first record. The song was recorded by many other notable artists of the day including Acker Bilk, The Barry Sisters, Buddy Clark, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland (who received coaching in cantorial style from none other than Sam Goldwyn of movie fame), Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller (who had previously passed on the tune), and Teddy Wilson.
There were many other attempts to bring overtly Jewish music into mainstream America. Klapman’s lecture featured many audio examples of such attempts. Regrettably, none of them met with the fame of Bei Mir Bist Du Shein. However, many spin offs of the success of Bei Mir Bist Du Shein resulted.
Within weeks of the meteoric success of Bei Mir Bist Du Shein, radio executives at WHN in New York created a radio review of this new Jewish-Swing fusion called “Yiddish Melodies in Swing”. The show featured the vocals of the Barry Sisters, the “Swingtet” led by Pianist/Composer Sam Medoff, and the clarinet of Dave Tarras. The show had and extended run broadcasting every Sunday for two decades outliving the Golden Age of radio and most of its original audience.
The mainstream born Jewish: Throughout the course of Klapman’s lecture there was a pervasive pattern of mentioning a performers name followed by the Jewish name they were born with. “The Barry Sisters, born Bagelman”, “Sammy Cahn born Samuel Cohen” and on it went throughout the night. It was as if the seeds born of European pedigree needed to shed the husks of their origins before they could sow roots in Western soil. As it was with the performers names’ of the day, so too it was with the music. While Bei Mir Bist Du Shein was a single exemplar of the success of an overtly Jewish tune, allusions to Klezmer in the form of derived motifs and riffs permeated mainstream music coming out of Tin Pan Alley.
In perhaps the finest example of one such fusion taken to the nth degree we have the example of the Wedding Samba recorded by Edmundo Ros selling 3 million copies in 1949. This tune was born of the a earlier English recording of the Wedding Samba in 1940. However, the story continues, this 1940 song was born, in turn, of the Yiddish Theatre song of that same year “Der Nayer Sher” (The New Scissor Dance) composed by Abraham Ellstein.
In a demonstration of the universality of music, Hitler upon hearing the Germanic titled “Bei Mir Bist Du Shein” thought the song was “Wunderbar” until he was told that the song was written by Jews from Brooklyn. This wouldn’t be the first time that Hitlers musical tastes clashed with his politics. He was a tremendous fan of Franz Lehar who had a Jewish wife. He was also a great fan of Emmerich Kálmán of operetta fame who fled the Nazis leaving Europe for America. Music can not only circumvent politics but it can also supersede the original impetus of its composers.
Take for example, “My Little Cousin” recorded by Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee in 1942 which tells the story of boy meets girl. The Yiddish song upon which it was based, “Di Grine Kuzine” (My Green Cousin), tells the story of the culture shock of the new Jewish immigrants to American and ends with “Let this Columbus’s land burn!” As Klapman puts it “recycling is not a modern invention.”
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- The lecture series will continue (tentatively) on December 3, 10, and 17 2008 with details to follow. Jordan Klapman performs with his ensemble at Jazz venues throughout the city including the Free Times Cafe.
- Jordan Klapman’s Klezmer group has a new CD out with details to follow at www.jordanklapman.com
- Jordan Klapman will appear in a free concert:
Sunday, April 27th 2008
The Jordan Klapman Trio
Scarborough Civic Center
Scarborough, Ontario Canada
2:00pm – 4:00pm - Klapman’s website and upcoming events can be found here:
http://www.jordanklapman.com/
http://www.jordanklapman.com/gigs/frameset.htm
