Obama Homers; Republicans Strike Out. Again.

Last night, President Obama hit the ball out of the park with the seeming effortlessness of a Ken Griffey, Jr. home run swing. In ringing, confident tones, he called on the Congress and the American people to regard the economic crisis as an opportunity to get things done, to recognize and fix the problems created and left in place by the Bush Administration, and to create a better future by ending decades of political procrastination and tackling the issues of health care access and energy independence. Obama gave a sweeping, epic performance that once again displayed his remarkable connection with the American people: CNN's instapoll showed that 92% of people who watched Obama at least somewhat approved of the speech (68% strongly approved).

Throughout, Obama linked individual accountability -- from teenagers to bank executives -- as a critical to national recovery. In this way, he involved all Americans in the success of his enterprise in a way Bush never did. At the same time, he successfully co-opted what is left of the tattered Republican mantra of personal responsibility, extending it from would-be dropouts to the conservative constituency of bankers and executives. By the time Obama finished, the message to the Republican party was clear: We the people are taking the country in a new direction. You are welcome to join us -- and he offered the Hatch-Kennedy bill promoting volunteerism as a means of getting on board -- and if you don't, that's your problem. It was a bravura performance, one that actually left T. and I clapping...

The MSM and the punditocracy has been moaning all week that Obama was not being "positive" enough about the economy. As he has many times before, Obama showed how far ahead he is of them and standard political analysis. At no time during the speech did he paint the economic challenge facing the country as anything but extreme. He was positive about the ability of his administration and the American people to meet the challenge. IMHO, that's the kind of optimism voters respond to. Claiming that things look good when they plainly do not appears out of touch because it is...

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's broadly panned response to Obama exemplifies the Republican political dilemma. First of all, the 37-year old came across as callow, glib, and insubstantial; if this is the best of the Republican bunch, then they have a mighty thin bench. But even more telling were two failed attempts at humor, the first of which taunted Democrats for including funds for volcano monitoring in the stimulus bill. As Thom Hartman pointed out on Air America this morning, the bill indeed includes money that allows the United States Geological Survey to upgrade and maintain equipment left to rot by the Bush Administration. Among many other things allowed by the bill, the USGS can upgrade equipment used to monitor volcano activity.

But here's the thing: Those of us who live in the shadow of a volcano want the USGS to have modern, functioning equipment. We don't think of it as pork; we think of it as essential. To us, Jindal's jibe came across as a typically divisive Republican remark aimed at blue states intent on wasting the hard-earned tax dollars of red states. This kind of politics went down to defeat last November, and it's telling that the Republicans can't articulate an alternative.

Then there was the bizarre lesson Jindal drew from the Bush Administration's botched response to Hurricane Katrina, namely, that the federal government cannot be counted on to deliver on anything at all. Now, one might suppose that the actual lessons lay elsewhere: That Republicans can't be counted on to respond successfully to a crisis requiring massive federal intervention, and that the government's ability to respond to crisis must be continuously monitored and maintained. Oh, and that the head of FEMA probably ought to be someone with experience in disaster response and not a political flunkie with a background in horse breeding. Just saying, is all.

And there's another level to consider as well. Many political analysts have concluded that the Republicans lost the 2008 election in September 2005, when the Bush Administration responded so poorly to Katrina. And yet here's the governor of the state most harmed by the Katrina fallout using this catastrophe as fodder for a lame attempt at a right-wing joke. How out of touch can you get?

The Republican party is in trouble, and the full dilemma of their self-made predicament is not well understood, most of all by them. There has been no shortage of helpful statements of the obvious -- I could tell them that they are short on cash and need to attract minority and younger voters while moving to the center. For that matter, so could my grandmother, who died in 1979. But how do they get there when their base regards Arlen Spector as a flaming liberal? Or when a majority of the electorate regards them as both out of touch and incompetent? And when their every action confirms that they in fact are out of touch and incompetent? (How many people who saw Bobby Jindal last night would be comfortable with him running the country? One, two, three...that looks to be about it.)

Last month, for Oklahoma congressman and original Heritage Foundation fellow Mickey Edwards -- who represents the shrinking Republican intelligentsia as well as anyone -- penned a self-serving op-ed piece in which he cloaked himself and those like him in the mantel of Ronald Reagan and then washed his hands of the hard-right base of the Republican party. The party, he wrote accurately if hypocritically, 

that is in such disrepute today is not the party of Reagan. It is the party of Rush Limbaugh, of Ann Coulter, of Newt Gingrich, of George W. Bush, of Karl Rove. It is not a conservative party, it is a party built on the blind and narrow pursuit of power.

In other words, "Don't blame me. It isn't my fault." And wouldn't it be pretty to think so. 

Except that Edwards and Reagan and the rest of the Heritage Foundation ilk are culpable. After all, it was Reagan who began the practice of bringing ideologues into the executive branch. It was Reagan who encouraged ridicule of the opposition. It was Reagan who opened the GOP to the Christian right, encouraging the assumption that these people could always be controlled. It was in the Reagan Justice Dept that the careers of John Roberts and Samuel Alito took off.

The GOP of today did not spring out of whole cloth. Its genesis lies in the tactics of Lee Atwater and Newt Gingrich, and it first expressed itself in a major way with 1995 government shutdown and the 1998 impeachment of Bill Clinton. I don't recall the Heritage Foundation jumping up and down to oppose either.

Its supposed noble heritage of classic European liberalism notwithstanding (Edwards actually claims this), the GOP's ugly secret is that it has been a haven for yahoos and know-nothings since the days of Joe McCarthy. (BTW, The Coldest Winter, David Halberstam's excellent book about the Korean War, successfully captures this period in GOP history.) This crew has finally taken over, ruined their party, and left the likes of Mickey Edwards wringing their hands from the ivory towers of Harvard while Rush Limbaugh cheers for Obama to fail.

Which brings me to the final horrid Republican miscalculation: They've gone all in hoping for the failure of a president that the country wants and needs to succeed. This is too much for even a mossbacked, theocratic stegosaurus like Pat Robertson, who pointed out the obvious:

That was a terrible thing to say. I mean, he's the president of all the country. If he succeeds, the country succeeds. And if he doesn't, it hurts us all. Anybody who would pull against our president is not exactly thinking rationally.

This is what the Republican party has come to: Pat Robertson is the voice of reason...

A film is in the works about the last days of Hank Williams. IMHO, the indie approach gives it a better shot at honesty and empathy than a full-blown Hollywood treatment...

More on Bobby Jindal's brutal performance here. My personal fave:

Fortunately he has a lot of time to improve his delivery. In the year 2040 he will still be younger than McCain was in 2008.

NOLAmotion remembers Antoinette K-Doe...

Her morning elegance...

High Praise!

This morning, I received a very nice email praising my recent review of a Hank Williams collection. The writer added that he had linked to the review from his blog, called A Hank Williams Journal. I checked out the blog and found that not only had he linked to my review, he wrote that 

A blogger known as Citizen K has written the best review of “Hank Williams The Unreleased Recordings” that I have read yet.

I’m including in this opinion the articles written in major national and international publications which I posted links to in an earlier post.

Wow! Talk about making my day! Anyway, check out A Hank Williams Journal. A great place to start is the two-part entry about Williams and Leonard Cohen, here and here...

OK, enough about me. This morning, Barack Obama held his third press conference in three days. As usual, he was poised, confident, and articulate. Among other things, he gave the right answer to a question about why he has turned to veterans of the Clinton Administration for part of his economic team. Obama reminded the questioner that this was the only Democratic administration since 1980 and that he was hardly going to keep on members of the current administration. Obama added, correctly, that had he not looked to experienced Democrats, he'd be criticized for the lack of expertise on the team. Then he got to the real point, which is that Barack Obama will be president, not the members of his team, and that he will set direction. Obama added that he wanted a mix of experience and new blood to advise him and that he had gotten just that...

Listening to Obama, I wondered how George Bush was taking all of this. Whatever delusions Bush may hold about the vindication of history, he knows that the country repudiated him. And as far as his replacement is concerned, Bush can't invoke the "majesty of the office" stuff, and has to deal with Obama as peer. And even the stunted, entitled mind of George Bush must have figured out that his successor is in every way his intellectual superior. I'll say this much: Watching Obama in action is a reminder of the great extent to which Bush has been in over his head. People aren't missing that, either...

Speaking of people in over their heads, don't miss today's Doonesbury (click to enlarge):

Then there's this TV ad -- apparently on the level -- slated to run today in Alaska and cable outlets:

What can you say? It's like watching an episode of Green Acres, only minus the comparative drollery...

He Walked Alone

Hank Williams, The Unreleased Recordings. The camera pans the single street of a desolate north Texas town. The ripping wind of a blue norther flings clouds of dust and debris in random directions. A truck motor coughs and backfires. In the truck, a teenager stomps on the clutch, shoves in the starter, and rubs his frozen hands. The eternal wind rips and whines. The boy pauses to turn up the radio so that he can hear Hank Williams singing "Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used To Do." He works the starter again, the protesting engine finally starts, and the truck pulls away from the curb. So begins Peter Bogdanovich's great film The Last Picture Show.

Besides being terrific cinema, this scene encapsulates Hank Williams’ stark vision of loneliness and spiritual isolation. Since seeing that scene, I like to listen to Hank in my car, preferably when it’s cold out. That's the ideal way to appreciate that mournful, inimitable voice pondering such unknowables as "Why can't I free your doubtful mind/And melt your cold cold heart"?

1951 was Williams’ breakthrough year as a recording artist, but it was also a miserable time personally. Wracked by excruciating back pain, he saw his marriage fall apart, spurred on by his binge drinking. He barely made it through 1952, dying a lonely, drug-addled death on New Year’s Day 1953 in the back seat of a car. He was 29 and our first great post-War songwriter, leaving behind him a canon ranking with any in the American songbook.

Hank Williams knew a terrible secret, and he revealed it in his songs and performances. He knew that humans have a core of fear where love is a fleeting and treacherous thing, where redemption lies in death, and where loneliness and isolation is the human fate. In Hank Williams: The Unreleased Recordings, he fearlessly explores this core, leading us on the harrowing journey that ultimately claimed his life.

The 3-CD set comprises a series of live studio recordings Williams made for broadcast on Sunday mornings. The liner notes don’t say so, but surely this explains why over a third of the songs are gospel numbers. In Williams’ hands, collectively these become a Biblical epic of the wanderings of a lost soul. To Hank Williams, the search for spirituality is not a collective experience found in a megachurch: It is a lonely road traveled by prodigals who quest for redemption that probably isn’t there but that at least offers the hope of self-knowledge before the release of death.

One can divine William’s preoccupations by the names of the songs he chose: “Low and Lonely,” “Drifting Too Far From the Shore,” “The Prodigal Son,” “I’ve Got My One Way Ticket to the Sky,” “Searching for a Soldier’s Grave,” “Why Should We Try Any More,” “May You Never Be Alone,” Lonely Tombs,” and “The Pale Horse and His Rider.” Collectively, they form a cinematic impact evoked perfectly by the opening scene of The Last Picture Show.

He turns the campfire song “Cool Water” into a Conradian odyssey, a tale of a parched soul pleading for deliverance only to find that redemption is a mirage. Through this performance, Williams reveals his ultimate fear: That the journey is not the reward, but just another part of the horror. Even so, moving on beats standing still, which leads to madness. Accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, a fiddle, and the occasional whisper of a pedal steel guitar, Hank’s deliberate phrasing summons a paradoxical sense of inevitability. It’s a bravura performance, arguably Williams’ finest vocal, and by itself worth the price of admission.

Small pleasures abound: A spirited romp through “Cherokee Boogie,” the pellucid steel guitar solo in “I’ll Sail My Ship Alone,” the occasional bit of faux jive that passes for between-song banter, the first-ever appearance of “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still I’m Still In Love With You),” a Korean War verse added to “Searching For A Soldier’s Grave.” And since the early ‘50’s was a time when country and bluegrass cross-pollinated, the four-part harmony of the high lonesome graces many of the performances, an adornment that perfectly augments Williams vocal style.

Some of the beloved favorites are here, but mostly Williams delves into a catalogue of rural Americana that he knew and loved and felt from the deepest parts of his soul. Hank Williams understood loneliness as an essential part – maybe the essential part –  of the human condition, the surest path to the true self. He feared loneliness but couldn’t resist its embrace; in his exploration of loneliness, he ironically touched the most fearful part of us all. Perhaps the knowledge that someone else understood that part of us and could expressed it as art eases our burden and lightens our step. Certainly, such empathy allowed one soul the redemption it never knew in life...

R. I. P., Preacher Roe, Boy of Summer...

A Hot Rod Ford And A Two Dollar Bill

The filmmaker's camera pans the single street of a desolate north Texas town as a the ripping wind of a blue norther flings vague clouds of dust and debris in random directions. The camera rests on a truck coughing and backfiring futilely. So begins Peter Bogdanovich's great film The Last Picture Show. In the truck, Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) stomps on the clutch, shoves in the starter, and rubs his frozen hands. The wind rips endlessly. Sonny pauses to turn up the radio: It's Hank Williams singing "Why Don't You Love Me Like You Used To Do." Sonny works the starter again, the protesting engine finally starts, and the truck pulls away from the curb.

Ever since I saw that scene, I like to listen to Hank Williams in my car, preferably when its cold out. It's the ideal way to appreciate his stark vision of loneliness and disappointment. Has anything ever evoked the feelings of frustration and resignation than that mournful, inimitable voice wondering "Why can't I free your doubtful mind/And melt your cold cold heart"? "Ramblin' Man" might be the spookiest song I've ever heard, especially when I'm driving alone on a cold dark night. There's nothing like it.

Now, thanks to Time-Life Records, I can listen to Hank's actual radio broadcasts. They've released 3 CDs of songs he recorded for a Sunday morning program. As such, there's a preponderance of gospel, most of which I've never heard. I'm only through one CD so I'm not ready to review it, but so for I'd give it about seven stars out of a possible five...

The opening seven minutes of The Last Picture Show:

And, yes, that's  21-year old Jeff Bridges at the end of the clip.

The Tower Of Song

Charles Schulz famously wrote, "I love mankind. It's people I can't stand." As I grow older in a world of greed, war, genocide, torture, starvation, homelessness, and moral certitude, I find myself drawing the opposite conclusion: People are great; it's the world that sucks. Still, tremendous individual efforts and acts of courage, deep friendships and connections, familial and romantic love also characterize this same old world. I'm not much of a believer any more, but Jesus had it right: When the corruption and stench of Rome dominate the known world, meaning and redemption lie within the individual.

I find meaning in my family and friends, like my Irish friend Pat, shown here. Pat is a farmer, landscaper, and singer living here in the west of Ireland. He's the hardest working man I know. Two evenings a week -- on Friday and Sunday -- he and his friend Mick take their guitars and banjos to play gigs at McHale's and The Towers in Westport, Ireland. They sing traditional tunes, popular songs, and songs they happen to like. Patrons join in, and occasionally someone steps forth with a favorite of their own. Sunday night at The Towers is the best: At around 11:00, people drift in for one last pint, a few more songs, and a final hour of ease with their fellow man before the work week begins.

Songs have been my connection to the ineffable since I was a boy listening to my parents' Broadway musical soundtracks. Eventually, The Beatles and Dylan and Paul Simon beckoned, transporting me to a new galaxy of perception. In college, I turned to the likes of Jackson Browne, Willie Nelson, Leonard Cohen, and Bruce Springsteen. Today -- whether because of the Baby Boom or a special need to respond to the times -- there is a veritable Big Bang of wonderfully talented singer-songwriters. The best of them contribute in his or her own way to what Robert Hughes called the basic project of art: Individuals making some sense of the world and creating meaning by closing "the gap between everything that is you and not you."

Today's entry singles out some twenty contemporary songwriters whose work I've come to respect and admire. There are more men than women, but not for any reason other than I explore where the reviews and recommendations take me. The last two names on the list aren't contemporary, but the impact they had on a genre of music obscures their prodigious songwriting talents enough that I wanted to highlight them. Click on a name and you'll get their web site (which often includes free downloads and samples). Click on the recommended CD name to hear samples from it. Enjoy.

Patricia Barber, Verse

Luka Bloom, Amsterdam

Greg Brown, Further In

Grayson Capps, If You Knew My Mind

Hayes Carll, Little Rock

Slaid Cleaves, Wishbones

Steve Earle, Transcendental Blues

Cliff Eberhardt, Twelve Songs Of Good & Evil

Mary Gauthier, Between Daylight And Dark

Patty Griffin, Children Running Through

Jimmy LaFave, Road Novel

Lonesome Bob, Things Fall Apart

Rex Moroux, Royal Street Inn

Elliott Murphy, Coming Home Again

Mark Olson, The Salvation Blues

Beth Orton, Pass In Time

Steve Poltz, Traveling

Todd Snider, East Nashville Skyline

Melvern Taylor, Fabuloso

Todd Thibaud, Favorite Waste Of Time

and

Robert Johnson, The Complete Recordings

Hank Williams, The Ultimate Collection

If there's anyone out there reading, add to the list via a comment. You can't hear too many good songs.