Teabags

Has anyone else noticed that "teabag" rhymes with "fleabag"? Just sayin' is all.

I thought I'd do my patriotic duty today and at least drive by a couple of Teabag Parties. It took some doing to find them. The official Republican party web site wasn't much help, but after some digging and googling I found the Official Tax Day Tea Party web site. It claimed to provide locations and directions, so I checked out the opportunities on the Eastside of Seattle. The first turned out to be at an apartment complex, so I skipped that. The second try advised me that "We were not able to locate the address," but did provide a couple of possible intersections, albeit with an incorrect zip code.

An errand took me near the one of the intersections, so I went there first. A lonely American flag marked the spot, but I didn't see any partying. I turned up a driveway and found 8-10 people huddled around an ice cream stand. At the foot of the driveway, a couple of guys were taking names. For all I know, they were writing down the license plate numbers of suspicious cars like mine, which still has its Obama/Biden and Save NOLA bumper stickers.

The next intersection I went to -- at Avondale and Union Hill -- turned out to be where the action was. Around 30-50 protesters occupied all four corners waving signs like the one that said "Keep Government Out Of The Free Market." Um, didn't we try that once? Didn't that get us where we are today? Well, I suppose that high principle can't stoop to answer such prosaic questions.

Now, 30-50 conservatives -- none of whom dressed as an Indian, possibly out of sensitivity to the numerous Western Washington tribes -- may or may not sound like a lot, but in fact it's pretty lame turnout. Once the bastion of Western Washington Republicans, Seattle's Eastside now trends inexorably blue. The party goers commandeered one of the busiest intersections in the Puget Sound: Thousands of cars pass through it every day; few of the drivers will find a place to park so that they can join the Teabag Party. Twenty years ago, the demonstrators may well have clogged the intersection...

While looking for Teabag Party locations, I stumbled upon this gem: georgewbushstore.com. It has everything from "Thank You, President Bush" bumper stickers (I haven't seen one yet) to a limited edition commemorative cigar (not Cuban, I assume). I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there hasn't been a run on this merchandise...

Susannah Powers: The art of convenience...

Citizen K. is off to NYC today. On Friday, my son and I are going to a Yankees game in the afternoon and a Mets game at night. Saturday, we have tix for West Side Story.

Just A Song: Joan Baez and Paul Robeson sing "Joe Hill."

Fighting Javelinas everywhere say "Give us back our good name!". Here, the Texas A & I Fighting Javelinas marching band plays the best fight song ever, "Jalisco":

Potpourri

Paul Krugman writes that all the teabag parties prove is that the Republicans haven't changed one bit...

Semana santa...

Just A Song: Thea Gilmore wants an old soul...

Hey, man -- don't you know who I am? I'm a United States senator who consorts with some of the most expensive prostitutes in Washington, D. C. So drop everything, ignore security regulation, and let me on that damn plane...

Brussels in bloom (the city, not the sprouts)...

It would be easy to say that on Gulf Coast Highway, Eric Lindell sounds like Louisiana's answer to Delbert McClinton. Except that there's plenty of Felix Cavaliere there, too, not to mention the ghost of Doug Sahm on Lindell's cover of Willie and Waylon's "I Can Get Off On You." Listening to Lindell's blue-eyed R&B makes me yearn for summer more than usual...Speaking of the late great Mr. Sahm, The Krayolas channel Sir Douglas at top of his game in Long Leaf Pine (No Smack Gum). Improbably, Long Leaf Pine surpasses last year's La Conquistadora via terrific horn charts that show off San Antonio's rich musical heritage by blending R & B with the mariachi sounds of South Texas. The tragedy recounted in "Corrido Twelve Heads In A Bag" notwithstanding, Gulf Coast Highway and Long Leaf Pine make for some of the best driving and cruising music in years...

"I'm the grandmother of the kid who killed those cops." Sylvia From Over The Hill writes more about the gun culture that curses our country here...

Michele Bachman must make the people of Minnesota's Sixth District so proud. It isn't easy to make Dave Reichert look like John Locke, but she has pulled it off...

Daring Sea Rescue Unhinges Rushbo

(Painting by Ima Wizer)

While the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates induced a sigh of relief from hundreds of millions of Americans, one man became positively unhinged over what he called "puking reporting by the drive-by media." During the first hour of his show, Rush Limbaugh raved incoherently about President Obama's role in the rescue, hitting his stride with an idea for a movie called President Obama Turns On Somali Counterparts:

I have an idea -- preliminary idea here on the movie that will be made by Hollywood that will immortalize this brilliant episode in American foreign policy led by President Obama. [Note: One can only imagine the snarling cynicism and sarcasm that accompanied this remark.] I don't -- we don't have a working title of this movie. I've been thinking about President Obama Turns On Somali Counterparts. The merchant marine organizers, the Somali version of ACORN, and yet President Obama rose to the occasion and saw to it that the Somali merchant marine organizers would not get away with the same tactics that the domestic American organizers get away with.

Rushbo hit the ground running to start of the second hour of his show, resigned to the fact that the rescue of Captain Phillips would almost certainly drive up Obama's approval rating. Rushbo darkly predicted that Obama would use the rescue to justify a domestic agenda hell-bent on crippling capitalism, robbing Americans of their individual liberties, and generally ending life as we know it. He even offered proof in the form of this statement from President Obama:

Now, as we work to ensure America's safety out on the seas, I want to discuss what we're doing to restore economic security here at home -- to revitalize our nation's infrastructure and create good jobs across America.

Thank God for Rush Limbaugh: Without him, we might have gone about our day completely ignorant of the Stalinist subtext in this remark. As it is, we can oppose rebuilding our infrastructure and the creation of jobs knowing that our opposition serves a higher purpose: The preservation of truth, justice, and the American Way. (BTW, has anyone ever noticed that this phrase implies that truth and justice are not part of the American Way?)

By the time Rushbo lurched into the final hour of today's program, even the dittoheads had become confused. Was Rush -- he of the "big juicy brain" -- being sarcastic in his praise of Obama or did he mean it? And, when you get right down to it, what was wrong with rescuing Captain Phillips? Well, for one thing, the rescue of a single American meant that Obama had "flipped the bird" to the international community because he hadn't taken their input into account. When Rushbo decided that response of the international community to anything was worth considering remains an open question. Equally open is why this particular incident merited the setting aside of American Exceptionalism, a concept to which Rush is deeply devoted.

The undeniable highlight (if you want to call it that) came when Rushbo compared the Somali pirates to Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean before offering this unique perspective:

Now, these pirates are kind of disappointing me. The Somali merchant marine organizers actually sound like they're entitled. Their feelings are hurt. They think they're entitled to these ransoms that are being paid, and I get the impression listening to them that they expect to be told, "Good job, pirate. Good job." They're acting -- they're acting offended as hell here that our captain was rescued by our president, ordered by the Navy SEALs to rescue, and they didn't get the ransom as though they're entitled to it. These people have an entitlement mentality. I could have sworn that they are originally Americans who maybe fled. Maybe they were illegal immigrants or something who got here, come here with an entitlement mentality, didn't like it, fled the scene because Republicans drove them out of the country in the last election, so they went over to Somalia and started pirating things. Because they have the attitude of entitlement just like a lot of American citizens do.

There you have it: Somali pirates = American citizens. This begs the question of why, then, Captain Phillips needed to be rescued at all if were being held by like-minded compatriots. With any luck, Rushbo will address that tomorrow...

Eight pounds of crawfish, a six of Dixie, and thou...

Beautiful debris...

R. I. P., Mark Fidrych. Bird, we hardly knew ye. More here and here...

Eostre Sunday Funnies & Arts

Happy Eostre!

As always, click to enlarge. For more Doonesbury, Pat Oliphant, Mother Goose & Grimm, Tom Toles, Zippy the Pinhead, Tony Auth, and Tom Tomorrow, go here, here, here, here, here, here, and here...

Just A Song: Luka Bloom's "Diamond Mountain":

Unlike emigres from most other European countries, the Irish viewed leaving their homes as a form of exile, even amidst the starvation and disease of the Famine. In "Diamond Mountain" -- one of his best songs -- the Irish singer/songwriter Luka Bloom captures this sense of dislocation...

Opening Day at Fenway Park, Boston:

Ima Wizer reveals the Big Fat Idiot in all his malevolence and deceit:

Citizen K. can't wait to hear what the BFI makes of the rescue of the ship captain from the Somali pirates: Rushbo was on Obama's case about he so hilariously called "merchant marine organizers" all last week...

Vintage sugar...

Susanna Powers' close-up of Resurrection Ferns has an abstract quality...

Marcella's Cookery brings genuine New Orleans cooking to Seattle...

New Orleans (1947). D: Arthur Lubin. Arturo de Cordova, Dorothy Patrick, Richard Hagerman, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Woody Herman. By any definition a low-budget B movie with C-list Hollywood talent, New Orleans is nonetheless worth watching for the brilliant jazz performances of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday and for its tentative (and possibly subversive) treatment of race and art. Set against the backstory of the closing of Storyville, New Orleans tells the story of gambler Nick Duquesne (Cordova) and the WASP-ish Miralee Smith (Patrick), a classical music singer who falls in love with Nick and with jazz, both to her mother's (Irene Rich) consternation.

The direction of the film plods until Armstrong and Holiday appear, at which point it perks up considerably. Holiday's performances of "Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans" and "Farewell to Storyville" are luminescent. There's an extraordinary sequence during which Armstrong introduces his band while prowling and slithering among them, the camera following and looking over his back the entire time.

At the same time, the film remains mired in 1940's attitudes toward race and music. Certainly, one must applaud it for Armstrong's and Holiday's performances and interesting scenes like the one in which Holiday takes Patrick slumming in Storyville. But jazz is finally acceptable only when Patrick, the white Woody Herman, and a classical musical orchestra perform "Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans" in a Carnegie Hall knockoff. It's only then that Miralee's mother relents in her opposition to the romance with Duquesne the gambler turned jazz promoter. Jazz has become safe, acceptable to the middle- and upper-classes, perhaps even reinforcing their staidness.

Much of this rises not from any particular ideology on the film's part, but from the producer's interpretation of what the film needed to present in order to make money. The film's presentation of Armstong's and Holiday's material is so superior that it's possible that the actual message is more subversive: We're giving you this white bread because we have to, but make no mistake about where the nutrition is. Thus, it's to New Orleans' credit that it provides plenty of actual jazz even while bowing to the pressures of profit. It's said that no one can serve God and Mammon, but New Orleans makes a worthy attempt...

The credits and opening scene of the film telegraph its dilemma. A chorale group sings "Do You Know What It Means" over the opening credits. Upon their completion, the camera immediately cuts to a Storyville afternoon graced by Armstrong's "West End Blues":

Sunday Gospel Brunch: It's not exactly gospel, but this performance of "Stand By Me" assembled by Playing For Change sure has the feeling:

Weekly Address

This week President Obama discusses the multitude of problems and opportunities before the world through the prism of Passover and Easter:

These are two very different holidays with their own very different traditions. But it seems fitting that we mark them both during the same week. For in a larger sense, they are both moments of reflection and renewal. They are both occasions to think more deeply about the obligations we have to ourselves and the obligations we have to one another, no matter who we are, where we come from, or what faith we practice...

Len Bahr has more on LSU's termination of coastal scientist and Hurricane Katrina expert Ivor Van Heerden here. Bahr dismisses the limp lie that Van Heerden lacked experience for his position and adds that

Hurricane Katrina created a number of local and even national heroes, some of whom I am proud to know and Dr. van Heerden is high on that list. If having the cajones to blow the whistle on the most catastrophic and expensive coastal disaster in recent US history is grounds for firing, what can possibly be grounds for advancement?

In a devasting quote from a UC Berkeley Engineering Professor Raymond D. Seed, Bahr also exposes LSU's academic cowardice:

My own University (U.C. Berkeley) was also approached [by the Bush Administration] in an inappropriate manner during that same Winter of 2005-06, but such untoward pressures were simply rebuffed. That, in the end, probably goes right to the heart of what really separates a top-flight university with one of the top Colleges of Engineering in the nation (and the top-rated Department of Civil Engineering in the nation) from a university like LSU.

Academic research often leads the researcher into unknown and controversial areas. He must know that, above all else, that his institution has his back. By bowing to crude threats and dismissing such a leading and distinguished voice, LSU failed Van Heerden, itself, its students, its alumni, its faculty, and the state of Louisiana in the most fundamental way possible...

Gitmo = A loooot of fun...

What's bad for trees is good for Bank of America. For the life of me, I don't know why we should bail out banks who practice usury...

Scarred For Life

Ivor Van Heerden, the Louisiana coastal scientist whose forensic investigation team probed the causes of the flooding in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, has been denied tenure by Louisiana State University and fired as deputy director of the LSU Hurricane Center. While the University has declined to comment, citing confidentiality requirements, this reeks of the worst kind of academic cowardice.

As leader of Team Louisiana, Van Heerden oversaw a report highly critical of the Army Corps of Engineering, reaching conclusions that he echoed in public statements. LSU, apparently fearful of losing federal grants, "asked" Van Heerden to desist public statements on the grounds that he lacked the engineering qualifications to make them. Now, consider a couple of points:

• whatever statements Van Heerden made came not from some arcane LSU academic committee but from his capacity as leader of a state task force investigating one of the most significant events in Louisiana history;
• as head of the task force, Van Heerden was practically obligated to be its public face. His criticism of the ACE were informed by the collective expertise and conclusions of Team Louisiana and were not a result of him playing cowboy. (That was President Bush's job.)

Above all, an academic researcher must feel free to go where the facts lead him or her. That LSU bowed to real or imagined pressure from the Bush Administration -- when its proper role was to have Van Heerden's back -- is a stain on its reputation. For shame. (Editilla and Foxessa have more here and here.)...

Team Louisiana researchers discuss forensic developments at a section of the 17th Street Canal breach (photo: Team LA 2005)

The GOP and the Christian Right: The greatest threat to marriage as we know it...

The Obama Administration has ordered the "decommissioning" of secret CIA prisons and the immediate termination of contracts with the private security firms guarding the prisons...

The Department of Defense has begun testing returning combat troops for brain injuries. The Obama Administration expects to increase funding for the program...

Rushbo Stupidism of the Day (and it's choice):

In the first place, we're making a big mistake by calling them the Somali pirates. These are not pirates. These are merchant marine organizers. They are using the same techniques that community organizers like ACORN and others in this country use. So, from now on, to be totally, purely accurate, the Somali pirates on this program -- I'll probably slip up a couple times and call them that -- but, they're going to be known now as the merchant marine organizers.

What a wit...

Friday's Choice: The great Aussie band Rose Tattoo is "Scarred For Life":

City of Nets

City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940's, Otto Friedrich

Friedrich's erudite mix of history, criticism, and anecdote serves up an era of a Hollywood on the cusp of decline. City of Nets has an impressive sweep, ranging accounts the German expatriate community to the blacklist, from stories of near-illiterate film executives more lucky than good to the antics of neurotic stars, from the back story of epics like Gone With The Wind to the wartime propaganda films that few people actually wanted to see.

The stories of the expatriates who fled Hitler's Germany and wound up in Hollywood resonates ironically against the practices of loutish and mostly Jewish film executives like Louis B. Mayer. The composer Arnold Schoneberg languished on the faculty of UCLA, poorly paid and yet possessed of enough dignity to decline film score opportunities because they came with too little control. The novelist Heinrich Mann lived off of the generosity of fellow expats while his brother Thomas gained international acclaim and wealth. In the end, both left an America that they regarded as essentially philistine. The Austrian refugee Billy Wilder, on the other hand, rose from menial contract positions to become perhaps the signature director of the era. Mayer, meanwhile, screams at underlings, taking particular pleasure in calling the Jewish ones "kikes."

Friedrich is at his best when drawing contrasts. During the blacklist era, the pressure to offer friendly testimony (i.e., name names) to the House Un-American Activities Committee often became unbearable. Actor John Garfield died of a heart attack while the vocal anti-Communist Ronald Reagan put into place what became the beginnings of his remarkable political career. Imprisoned members of the Hollywood Ten watched fresh hearings on television with fellow inmates who disdained the stool pigeons who ratted out their colleagues.

City of Nets is a must for film history buffs, especially fans of the era. It's bound to swell Netflix queues with its accounts of classics and cult favorites. Friedrich strips bare the myths surrounding executives like Mayer, the Warner brothers, and the Cohn brothers -- he portrays them as ignoramuses in charge of a business that simply couldn't fail -- at the same time that he cements the reputations of talents like Wilder and Preston Sturges. Highly recommended...

According to Friedrich, William Faulkner disliked Hollywood as profoundly as he needed the money he made cleaning up scripts. One of Faulkner's favorite dodges was to get permission from a producer to work "at home." While the unsuspecting producer assumed that Faulkner meant his Hollywood apartment, Faulkner instead decamped to Mississippi.

While in Hollywood, Faulkner did strike up a friendship with the director Howard Hawks, which led to an encounter with Clark Gable:

Hawks liked to take Faulkner on hunting expeditions, and when Clark Gable heard one day that the director was setting off for the Imperial Valley early the next morning, he asked to go along. Hawks agreed. The three of them were driving through Palm Springs, as Hawks later recalled, when the talk turned to writing. Gable, whose ignorance was almost classic, idly asked Hawks' gray-haired friend who he thought were good writers. "Thomas Mann, Willa Cather, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, and myself," Faulkner said. Gable seemed mildly surprised.

"Oh, do you write, Mr. Faulkner?" he asked.

"Yeah," Faulkner admitted. "What do you do, Mr. Gable?"

The kicker is that Hawks was not completely certain of Faulkner's sarcasm:

"I don't think Gable ever read a book, and I don't think Faulkner ever went to see a movie. So they might have been on the level..." (p. 240)

Faulkner received few actual credits for screenwriting although he apparently cleaned up quite a few scenes for Hawks. Faulkner did receive partial credit for Hawks' brilliant The Big Sleep, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The plot of The Big Sleep is so famously tortuous that even Raymond Chandler, who wrote the novel, couldn't figure out who had committed one of the murders. Watch it and see if you can spot the unsolved murder...

Hype & Glory: I've written a new entry on my Just A Song blog about Hank Williams' "Ramblin' Man'.

The sidewalks of New Orleans...

Fred Kaplan writes that Obama did just fine in London:

Obama seems to be aware of the tension between interests and ideals without letting it paralyze policymaking. In this sense, he is like most presidents in American history—and his foreign policy, or for the moment his approach to foreign policy, signals a restoration of what was once called statecraft: literally, the art of conducting the affairs of state. The term has always implied a meshing of interests and ideals with reality while navigating the shoals of a dangerous world. Leaders can try to reshape an agenda, but they can't toss away maps or ignore laws of physics to get there. They have to deal with the world as it is, and that's what Obama seems to be doing...

Let My People Go: Don't miss Another Old Movie Blog's analysis of the gospel scene from Sullivan's Travels. Citizen K. featured that scene in his March 29 entry...

This makes me want to buy one of the guy's CDs. Or at least download "Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone" and "Crystal Chandeliers"...

Just because it's Easter doesn't mean the party stops in New Orleans. It's time for Chris Owens' French Quarter Easter Parade, the Cocktail Film Festival, Easter on the Avenue, and the Gay Easter Parade...

R. I. P., Bud Shanks, West Coast jazz pioneer and improviser of the flute solo in "California Dreamin":