News of the Week

By Distributorcap

While the dog days of summer doldrums may be arriving early on the east coast in the form of a record 104 degree temperature in New York's Central Park, the rest of the world continues to plunge into insanity at its own record pace.

Insane congresswoman (and someone who has passed NO legislation and has NEVER governed anything) continues her 2012 presidential campaign in the Corn Belt.

Amy Winehouse: RIP.

Boner and Obama, the last of the foot stomping whiners, continue to soak up local color by battling for control of the whine vat.

Governor Rick Perry consults with his mentor about a potential run for the 2012 Republican nomination.

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch proved one too many people has skied over this mogul when he testified in front of the British Parliament and basically told the world "he knew nothing."

Marcus Bachmann and one of his most famous ex-gays figure they could make a few extra bucks pitching for Abercrombie & Fitch.

Even in jaded NYC, the street vendors realized that they should beware of Greeks bearing coffee cups.

Betty Ford (1918-2011)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The former First Lady died on Friday at the age of 93. There are a lot of obits out there to read, but allow me to recommend one by journalist Robert Stein:

She came to the White House unexpectedly and never stopped being herself, unlike those before her who could have passed for inflatable life-sized dolls permanently positioned to stare adoringly at their husbands.

Betty Ford spoke openly about everything, from equal rights for women to abortion to what she would do if her 18-year-old daughter were sexually active. Even more, by example, she went beyond politics and set new standards for openness about her own life.

*****

Betty Ford, who died today at 93, was one of the most honest and caring women ever to live in the White House.

Honest and caring, courageous and influential. The legacy of Betty Ford will live on.

Gil Robbins of The Highwaymen (1931-2011)

Music on Sunday @ The Reaction

By R.K. Barry

Gil Robbins died on Tuesday (April 5th). He's the one in the middle of the picture to the right with the oversized Mexican six-string guitar.

For some, this is notable for the fact that Mr. Robbins was a member of a folk music group in the early '60s called The Highwaymen, which had some success with songs like "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore" and the Lead Belly classic "Cotton Fields." 

Others might note his passing in part because he is the father of well-known actor Tim Robbins, who has not been averse to making use of the folk genre as a part of his performing personae. I am thinking here of the wonderful satirical mockumentary Bob Roberts, which plays on the relationship between conservative politics and American populism -- proving the sad fact that populism can be co-opted for any number of contradictory political and social ends.

But enough about Tim, who has gotten plenty of ink in his lifetime.

The Highwaymen were one of those groups, which came to prominence in what has become known as the Folk Revival of the late '50s and early '60s. Other groups like The Kingston Trio and solo artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and so many more are associated with the period. Hard to believe, but for a few short years folk music was pretty hot.

Needless to say, folk music has never really gone away. It's just been repackaged and renamed to make it appealing to a mass audience. James Taylor, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and every other modern-day troubadour with an acoustic guitar owes a great debt to those who came up in the middle part of the twentieth century either to sing classic, frequently beautifully harmonized folk songs or to write their own singer-songwriter fare much in the tradition.

For those who might not know, folk music is alive and well today, and not just for those of us who can play a few chords and sing in the living room amongst friends -- although that is an important part of my life.

There are countless folk festivals all over the world. There are thriving, albeit small, record labels recording and marketing the music. There are more commercially successful artists who may characterize their music as something else but still fit comfortably under the folk banner.

Importantly, because of the ease with which recording can happen and micro-markets can be accessed, folk music is probably doing better now than in much of the past.

Anyway, folk music is a thing with me. And I like to recognize the passing of those who helped it along the way, as Gil Robbins obviously did.

(By the way, just to avoid confusion, in the mid-'80s and early-'90s a "country supergroup" came along also calling themselves The Highwaymen. The group consisted of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson. While they did a fairly consistent menu of country songs, they didn't mind doing covers like Woody Guthrie's "Deportee" or Steve Goodman's "City of New Orleans" -- folk songs by any measure. Yeah, it's hard to keep these music categories straight. Makes me wonder why we should bother, unless we intentionally want to keep a bunch of traditional music enthusiasts up all night arguing over the definition of folk music -- but I don't recommend it).

Here's the Highwaymen doing "Cotton Fields":

(Cross-posted at Music Across the 49th.)

Geraldine Ferraro (1935-2011)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Geraldine Ferraro, the U.S. representative from New York's 9th District from 1979-85 and the first woman to to run on a major party presidential ticket, losing with Walter Mondale to Reagan and Bush in 1984, has died at the age of 75:

Geraldine A. Ferraro, the former Queens congresswoman who strode onto a podium in 1984 to accept the Democratic nomination for vice president and to take her place in American history as the first woman nominated for national office by a major party, died Saturday in Boston.

She was 75 and lived in Manhattan.

The cause was complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that she had battled for 12 years, her family said in a statement. She died at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she had been undergoing treatment since Monday.

"If we can do this, we can do anything," Ms. Ferraro declared on a July evening to a cheering Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. And for a moment, for the Democratic Party and for an untold number of American women, anything seemed possible: a woman occupying the second-highest office in the land, a derailing of the Republican juggernaut led by President Ronald Reagan, a President Walter F. Mondale.

I don't wish to speak ill of her, but I never much cared for her. She was never all that liberal and in fact called herself a conservative (and, at least early on, "a tough Democrat," that is a right-leaning Democrat who leaned Republican at least in terms of temperament). And she was simply appalling in her support for Hillary (and in her various attacks on Obama) during the '08 Democratic primaries, proving to be something of a racist, and ending up just embarrassing herself and being dumped from the campaign.

Still, she was a remarkable woman in many ways, and what she did was undeniably remarkable, too. It wasn't easy to be a prominent woman politician at that time, just as it still isn't, but she broke new ground by running on the national stage and, even before that, was a powerful voice on issues such as gender equity, the plight of seniors, and the environment. She was certainly conservative on a number of other issues, and her record was pretty much the record of an ideologically-fluctuating moderate from a fairly socially conservative district, but, whatever her flaws, she was one of the most significant political figures of her time.

David Broder (1929-2011)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Now is not the time to rehash all the old points about David Broder's inside-the-Beltway centrist hackery. The so-called "dean of the Washington press corps" died yesterday at the age of 81. And that's sad no matter what you thought of him.

I've written numerous posts on Broder, all of them extensively critical. For example:

-- "The bungling of Broder" (April 2007);

-- "David Broder, idiotic dramatist" (April 2008); 

-- "Acid recriminations: The media's new narrative against Obama, pushed by David Broder and the WaPo" (March 2009)

-- "Idiocracy in the Beltway: David Broder's mad crush on Sarah Palin" (February 2010);

-- "Democracy denied: David Broder, John McCain, and the delusional politics of difference-splitting centrism" (August 2010); and

-- "David Broder calls for 'showdown' with Iran" (November 2010).

Needless to say, I didn't much care for his work, whether it was his column in The Washington Post or his many appearances on the Washington talk-show circuit, particularly Meet the Press. (See also Creature's posts, "Apples and oranges" (August 2008), "It takes a village to cover up crimes" (September 2009), and "Not a pox on both houses (April 2010).)

Still, he was by all accounts, or at least by the accounts of other Beltway insiders, a hugely well-respected and indeed towering figure, an excellent reporter and political correspondent, and a good and decent man. And he obviously, in terms of his work, he had his finger on the pulse of something. I rarely found him convincing, but he was clearly an extremely important commentator and pundit.

On this, I agree with my friend Steve Benen:

Regular readers know that I was often critical of Broder's columns, but my critiques were driven in part by high expectations -- the man was a giant of political journalism.

And even when I disagreed with his analysis, it was impossible not to respect his tenacity and his decency.

Best wishes go out to his family and friends.

Even to those of us who didn't know him at all, and, yes, even to those of us who were deeply critical of his work, his death is a huge loss.

Duke Snider (1926-2011)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm much too young to remember the playing days of Duke Snider, the great Hall-of-Fame outfielder for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers (1947-62) whose career ended in 1964, but I remember well his many days as one of the voices of the Montreal Expos, from 1973-86.

As a huge Expos fan growing up in Montreal, his was one of the key voices of my childhood. I was still much too young in 1973, but by 1978 and '79 I was listening regularly to Snider and partner Dave Van Horne (the latest winner of the prestigious Ford C. Frick award), and they were wonderful together, at a time when the Expos were a competitive and successful franchise.

Not showy, not flashy, not sensationalist, they were true baseball men, and they knew their stuff. The fact that I'm still such an enormous baseball fan today owes a great deal to them both.

As for Snider, what can I say? He played on some pretty great Dodgers teams, including some memorable Brooklyn ones in the '50s that would have won more World Series than the one they did win (in 1955) had it not been for the damn Yankees, to whom they lost in 1947 (with Snider mostly in the minors and not playing in the World Series), 1949, 1952, 1953, and 1956. (They moved to L.A. in 1958 and won again, with Snider, in 1959.) He didn't put up incredible numbers by Hall standards (.295, 407 HRs, 1,333 RBI), but he made eight all-star teams (1950-56, 1963) and was a superb player.

Here, watch this:

Jazz legend George Shearing dies

By J. Thomas Duffy

(Ed. note: It's been a long week. This is a sad post, marking the death of a music legend, but let's also take the time to bask in some great music. -- MJWS)

I heard this on the radio the other morning, and it shadowed the beginning of the day in sadness:

George Shearing dies aged 91 

Announcing the death due to heart failure at Shearing's home in Manhattan, his agent, Dale Sheets, said: "He was a totally one of a kind performer. It was something wonderful to see, to watch him work."

I had the good fortune to catch Shearing a few times, both in club and festival settings, and it was always a delicious treat, the crowd hushing to the point you could hear a pin drop, settling in for the unique Shearing sound.

Peter Keepnews explains:

The Shearing sound — which had the harmonic complexity of bebop but eschewed bebop's ferocious energy — was built on the unusual instrumentation of vibraphone, guitar, piano, bass and drums. To get the "full block sound" he wanted, he had the vibraphone double what his right hand played and the guitar double the left. That sound came to represent the essence of sophisticated hip for countless listeners worldwide who preferred their jazz on the gentle side.

[snip]

By his own estimate Mr. Shearing wrote about 300 tunes, of which he liked to joke that roughly 295 were completely unknown.

He nevertheless contributed at least one bona fide standard to the jazz repertory: "Lullaby of Birdland," written in 1952 and adopted as the theme song of the world-famous New York nightclub where he frequently performed. Both as an instrumental and with words by George David Weiss, it has been recorded by everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Bill Haley and His Comets, who improbably cut a version called "Lullaby of Birdland Twist" in 1962.

And who else remembers the television commercial (for a Pioneer LaserDisc), featuring Ray Charles, delivering the punchline "I liked it so much, I got one for my friend, George Shearing" -- the joke being Shearing was also blind.

RIP George Shearing, it was great having you around.

George Shearing - "Lullaby of Birdland"

And here's a personal favorite:

George Shearing playing "It Never Entered My Mind"

(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)

A conflicted life ends -- Last Tango in Paris actress Maria Schneider dead at 58

By J. Thomas Duffy

It was quite a surprise to see the name of actress Maria Schneider in the obit column today.

As much for remembering the long-ago crush, as for how long she has been out of the news, the limelight dimmed for quite some time.

Last Tango in Paris

Maria Schneider, Brando's "Last Tango" costar

Ms. Schneider died yesterday in Paris "following a long illness," a representative of the Act 1 talent agency said, but declined to provide details.

Ms. Schneider was 19 when she starred opposite Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci's racy "Last Tango in Paris." In it, she played Jeanne, a young Parisian woman who takes up with a middle-aged American businessman, played by Brando.

Full of explicit sex scenes, "Last Tango" was banned in Italy for obscenity for nearly two decades, returning to cinemas there only in 1989. In the United States, the movie still has an NC-17 rating for its sexual content, meaning it can't be seen by children under 17 years of age.

I'm quite sure anyone over the age of 18 back in 1972 either (A) flocked to the movies to see the film Last Tango in Paris, or (B) was aware of the controversy surrounding its explicit sex scenes, or (C) rushed to the record store to get the smoking soundtrack featuring the great saxophonist Gato Barbieri.

I indulged in A and C of the above.

In her youth, Maria Schneider was incredibly beautiful, which was likely the factor in getting her two big roles. Three years after Tango, she starred with Jack Nicholson in The Passenger).

All the obituaries mention "a long illness," which included drugs and, as a few referenced, "mental illness."

No doubt, Last Tango in Paris was perhaps the beginning of what seemed to be a troubled life:

In the film, Jeanne enters into a brief but torrid affair with a recently widowed American, played by Brando. Their erotically charged relationship, played out in an empty apartment near the Bir Hakeim Bridge in Paris, shocked audiences on the film's release in 1972, especially a scene in which Brando pins Ms. Schneider to the floor and, taking out a stick of butter, seems to perform anal intercourse on her. The Motion Picture Association of America gave the film an X rating.

The role fixed Ms. Schneider in the public mind as a figurehead of the sexual revolution, and she spent years trying to move beyond the role, and the public fuss surrounding it. "I felt very sad because I was treated like a sex symbol," she told The Daily Mail of London in 2007. "I wanted to be recognized as an actress, and the whole scandal and aftermath of the film turned me a little crazy and I had a breakdown. Now, though, I can look at the film and like my work in it."

The famous butter scene, she said, was not in the script and made it into the film only at Brando's insistence. "I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci," she said. "After the scene, Marlon didn't console me or apologize. Thankfully, there was just one take."

It still brings about a veil of sadness.

RIP Maria Schneider.

********** 

Last Tango In Paris trailer

Gato Barbieri -- Last Tango in Paris

(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)