Why Playing Chess With a Teabagger Is Irksome and Futile

Mr. Lincoln sez:

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail. Without it nothing can succeed. He who molds opinion is greater than he who enacts laws. • Abraham Lincoln

What Kind of Music Do You Make?

Dissent is healthy and noble. It challenges assumptions and clarifies ideas. Sometimes synthesis and synergy result from creative dissent.

Dissension is unhealthy and ignoble. Its adherents value conflict and annihilation over resolution and consensus. Opponents become enemies and enemies are to be afforded no respect. Dissension kills associations, movements, and even countries.

It does raise a lot of money and sell a lot of advertising spots, though.

PRESENTATION MATTERS: The Epstein File

“When Brian Met the Beatles”

Then Brian came in one morning and told me he’d seen this poster at the bottom of Mathews Street advertising The Beatles “direct from Hamburg”, and of course Mathews Street is where the Cavern Club was. We’ve been accused of knowing they were from Liverpool. Well, we didn’t. We weren’t interested in pop music. But he said, “I’m intrigued.”

So we decided to go see them during our lunch hour. It was an awful club. There was condensation running down the walls and it smelt. There were these four guys onstage in black leather, wearing what we call bomber jackets today, black trousers, black T-shirts, and they were so loud. There was smoking onstage and they were joking with the girls in the audience and it was just like, “Oh my God, what are we sitting here watching?” I mean we were in suits. And these guys were just so awful. They really were. It was quite appalling, really.

It took about half-an-hour for Brian to decide to manage them. We went for lunch and he asked me my opinion first, and I said I thought they were awful but there was something there. He said, “They are awful but I think they’re fabulous.” And then he suddenly said, “What do you think about me managing them?” And it was as quick as that. That was 9 November 1961.

WIKI

Although Epstein had had no prior experience of artist management, he had a strong influence on their early dress-code and attitude on stage. When Epstein discovered the band, they wore blue jeans and leather jackets, performing at rowdy rock ‘n’ roll shows where they would stop and start songs when they felt like it, or when an audience member requested a certain song.

Epstein encouraged them to wear suits and ties, insisted that they stop swearing, smoking, drinking or eating onstage, and also suggested the famous synchronised bow at the end of their performances. McCartney was the first to agree with Epstein’s ideas, believing it was—in part—due to Epstein’s RADA training. John Lennon was against the idea of wearing suits and ties, but later said, “Yeah, man, all right, I’ll wear a suit. I’ll wear a bloody balloon if somebody’s going to pay me”.

Epstein began seeking publicity by “charming and smarming... the newspaper people”, as John Lennon said in 1972. According to McCartney, “The gigs went up in stature and though the pay went up only a little bit, it did go up”, and that the band was “now playing better places.”

And from Brian Epstein’s alteration of the Beatles’ presentation, the trajectory of the universe was thenceforth permanently altered. Presentation does matter.

A Parable

Recently, a most disagreeable little man of my acquaintance (Let’s call him “Chaz Patricio”) burst into my living room unannounced and without knocking. Unsightly under the best of circumstances, Chaz was disheveled, unshaven, and it appeared that his clothing had been worn continuously for the previous 48 hours. He reeked of what smelled like equal part of body odor, stale urine, and rose water. He stomped his mud-caked boots across my Persian carpet, farted loudly, then abruptly dropped his weight into my antique silk-upholstered armchair. He lit a cigar and then launched into a vociferous denunciation of my wife and how she had been unfaithful to me.

When I told Mr. Patricio that I found his charges difficult to believe he lunged up from his seat, grasped my lapels and not only insisted that he was correct, he then demanded to know what I was going to do about it. At that point, I was angry and disgusted and demanded that Chaz Patricio get out of my home immediately. As I was leading him to the door he called me a “blue dog” and a “bully” and told me that my writing was “pedestrian”. (A commentary, I wondered, on my recent essay on walking the sidewalks of New York.)

Some time after that, I learned that my wife had not been altogether faithful. There were some extenuating circumstances and, it turns out, she had not actually slept with the guy but her inappropriate behavior caused some problems in our marriage that we’re still trying to sort out.

If Chaz had made a less repugnant exposition of his concerns, it may ultimately have made no difference at all. However, now I am angry, hurt, and disgusted at both of them. Presentation does matter a great deal when you’re delivering a message.

How Much Has Really Changed in 100 Years?

NEGRO MUSIC

This notice circulated in and around New Orleans during the mid-60s. White kids listening to "negro records"!? Which artists drove the author around the bend? Motown? Stax/Volt? Aretha? Jackie Wilson? My guess is that it was James Brown.

Of course, they were right. This is the music that changed America forever and for the better. Thank God for them.

SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH!

Note to President Obama's Critics on the Left

Our nation’s problems are so deep-seated and systemic that one person at the helm will be very limited in effecting change merely by the force of their* personality or the compelling moral rectitude of their positions. Does anyone really think that President Kucinich would be more successful in effecting a comprehensive progressive agenda? I don’t.

It’s sexy and exciting to get involved in the immediate thunderstorm of electoral contests. However, rather than merely suiting up for today’s weather, progressives would do much better to focus on the mid- and long-term political climate. We need to concentrate on two aspects:

1. Make our democracy more democratic. It is impossible to mount a viable campaign for office at any level without having to make accommodation not only with one of the major parties but also with the myriad special interests who provide the necessary financing to fund the endeavor. Make the parties and megadollars less necessary and candidates will be in a much better position to represent the people and (we like to presume) a more progressive agenda. At the very least, it will help break the grip of the corporatist oligopolies that dominate the governance of the U.S.A.
   


2. 
   Change the frame. For at least 30 years a critical mass—probably a majority—of American voters has bought into the narrative that government is intrusive and ineffectual, taxation in any form is to be rejected, and being pro-Businesses is the same as being pro-business. To stand for progressive ideals like green energy and social justice is to be contemptuous of “regular” (i.e., less-educated, low-information, non-urban White) citizens. To point out that the corporatist agenda is harmful to the interests of regular Americans is to invite heated denunciations of “class warfare”.
   

Unless and until we can find a way to bring about these structural changes, we will continue to chew the acrid cud of our Groundhog Day existence: (a) the bitter disappointment of losing most elections to the greater of two evils or (b) the cold comfort derived from the occasional victory of those whom you want to like but who cannot deliver on the agenda you want them to pursue. Nevertheless, trapped in the conundrum of Einstein’s description of insanity, we keep working the shopworn cycle and wondering why we don’t get better results.

Stop looking for the deliverer who will fix it for you. Change the system. Change the narrative. Accept that compromise, negotiation, and consensus are necessary to build the type of coalition that can break the grip of the status quo. Advocate specific positions and make it broadly known that there are more menu options available than the spectrum routinely presented by the mainstream media but remember that nobody will buy your dog food if their dogs won’t eat it.

I still yearn to transform America and the world into Dr. King’s Beloved Community. However, insisting on ideological purity and demanding more than you can reasonably expect may bring some small measure of personal satisfaction but do little to bring the change you desire. Throwing out barbs and childish insults (“President Shamwow”, really?) makes you not only irrelevant but quite immature. Leadership is essential to the process but in the absence of a popular buy-in we’ll just be strutting around admiring ourselves in a mirror. It’s really just a form of narcissistic masturbation.

*******************************
*Yes, I used the ungrammatical “their” as an alternative to the sexist “his” or the clumsy “his or her”. That is this writer’s choice.

God's Side

I am for peace & justice. I am for the peoples of our planet learning how to live in harmony and mutual respect. (OK, I’ll take surly tolerance if everyone gives up their blood feuds and other lingering grudges. We can get to the rainbows and unicorns later.)

If God exists . . . and if God has a side, then that is God's side, I am sure. Please do not attempt to persuade me to another side.