Everybody Does It in Hawaii

Check out the view from our hotel room!

During our week in Hawaii, I was struck by the paucity of contemporary literature and music. The literature part I understand: Despite the inspirational setting and rich history, the island chain is isolated and had no written language until missionary Hiram Bingham helped devise a spelling system for Hawaiian and translated a number of books of the Bible. For these and other reasons, Hawaii has never been able to jump start a literary tradition. As near as I can tell, the best novel of Hawaii remains James Jones From Here to Eternity (1951), set in the Army culture in the days leading up to Pearl Harbor.

Music is another matter. Traditional Hawaiian music is rich, atmospheric, and sets a high bar for musicians and singers. It's fair to say that the Hawaiian guitarists of the early 20th Century virtually invented steel guitar virtuosity.

Collections of Hawaiian music from the late 20s and 30s reveal a musical tradition at the top of its game, a vibrant traditional base soaking up jazz, blues, and country influences brought to the islands by soldiers and sailors stationed at Pearl Harbor and Schofield Barracks. The music of that period is so good and so invigorating that you can practically select a CD at random and be rewarded. I'm partial to Hawaiian Steel Guitar Classics: 1927-1938; History of Hawaiian Steel Guitar, which includes a wonderfully illustrated booklet; Legends of the Ukulele; King Bennie Nawahi, Hawaiian String Virtuoso: Acoustic Steel Guitar Classics from the 1920's; and Roy Smeck Plays Hawaiian Guitar, Banjo, Ukulele, and Guitar, 1926-1949.

Today, the passing of contemporary slack key masters like Sonny Chillingworth, Ray Kane, and Gabby Pahinui appears to be an incalculable loss. I don't claim to be an expert in Hawaiian music, but music store racks look to include a preponderance of easy listening, New Age, Jawaiian, and every Iz Kamakawiwo'ole track ever recorded. Jawaiian, an effort to blend Hawaiian vocal styles with a reggae beat, is largely a misfire: Hawaiian tenors and harmonies and laid-back lyrics simply don't mix effectively with the revolutionary rhythms of Jamaican music. It's well-intended, certainly, but nothing I've heard is interesting or memorable. Kamakawiwo'ole is an undeniable talent whose act wears as thin as he was corpulent. As for the rest, the less said the better...

I can't help falling in love with you...

Paul Krugman explains why the California death spiral awaits us all if we don't get health care right...

The great E. J. Dionne writes that Democrats better get off the defensive and soon. I have some thoughts about this that I'll be developing in future entries...

The Sunday Funnies & Arts will be back next week! In the meantime, enjoy some classic Hawaiian tunes, starting with King Bennie Nawahi and "My Girl from the South Seas" (the photographs and vintage postcards are wonderful, too):



It's Sunday and Citizen K. hasn't posted any gospel music lately. Let's make amends with the Hawaiian gospel sounds of Bob Dylan favorite Sol Hoopii:





Finally, although not traditional, but here Merle Travis leads the dogfaces of From Here to Eternity in a chorus of "Reenlistment Blues":

South Carolina Senator Supports Slavery, Opposes Women's Suffrage, and Wants to Make You Quarter Troops in Your Home

At Thursday's CPAC gathering of wingnuts, South Carolina Republican senator Jim Demented allowed that the income tax should be done away with on the legally innovative grounds that the "...Constitution, when it was signed, it did not even allow a federal income tax.”

Assuming that what is good for one amendment is good for the rest, DeMint must also favor throwing out the entire Bill of Rights, since it was not ratified until four years after the signing of the Constitution. Which means that he also opposed even the right wing's cramped definition of the right to bear arms, as that is the subject of the Second Amendment.

Similarly, he would bid a fond farewell to the protections of the First Amendment (freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and the right to petition); the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery; and the Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote. And how will DeMint explain to fellow reactionaries his apparent opposition to the Tenth Amendment, which states-righters would have us believe is the cornerstone of the American legal system. However, this strict, strict, strict, strict constructionist undoubtedly believes that the Three-Fifths Compromise, counted each slave as three-fifths of a person, was and is a peachy keen idea.

OK, maybe the guy got caught up in the excitement of the moment and spoke off the cuff without thinking through the implications of his remark (what a surprise that would be). Or maybe it's the media's fault -- with Republicans, it usually is. On the other hand, Jim Demint is the author of the following jewels:

A free and stable Iraq will be a shining light against the shadow of Islamic extremism.

If a person wants to be publicly gay, they should not be teaching in the public schools. [I wonder which article of the sacred pre-amended Constitution deals with gay school teachers?]

Motorists who want to save money on gas will demand and buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. We should not limit their freedom with more government regulations.

Since the dawn of time, traditional marriage - the union between one man and one woman - has been the building block of civilization, and at no point in our nation's history has that foundation been under more severe attack than now.

President Bush has demonstrated tremendous courage and resolve in the past year. He has been the decisive leader these times have required.

Here, the senator from the state that lynched 156 black Americans from 1882-1968 rails against hate crime legislation as "patently offensive." In an incoherent leap of logic, DeMint connects hate crimes to "thought crimes" and warns against the imposition of an Orwellian Canadian "regime" on the United States. Really, he does.

So, were his remarks about the Constitution overheated, or was he just being Jim DeMint? You decide...

DeMint, so concerned about thought crimes, has created a committee to finance purges of politically incorrect Republicans so that voters may "have a choice of a new Republican — a real Republican" to lead them in a spirit of bold curiousity for the great adventure ahead (more, gloriously, here)...

Hawaii has employer-mandated health insurance, and guess what? It also has the lowest Medicare costs per beneficiary in the country, the second lowest premiums, the longest life expectancy, uncrowded ERs, and a much lower than average hospital admission rate. Of course, Hawaiians pay a terrible cost: Living longer and in greater security has after all cost them their freedom...