Has an American president ever expressed such implicit hostility toward his own nation's pre-eminence in world affairs? Or so relished in recalling its failings, or so readily elevated himself and his own virtues over those of his country?...
"For those who question the character and cause of my nation," Obama said, "I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months." In other words, he's the redeemer of a nation....
Ugh. Sigh. And I thought Gaddafy was the clown. But that was yesterday, as I watched TV with the sound off, under the influence of post-toe-op drugs.
I'm torn. I was just thinking that Obama would have been so much better if he had made foreign policy the centerpiece of his presidency instead of perversely investing his reputation in complicated health care puzzles. Now, I'm thinking perhaps we're better off that he's gotten hopelessly distracted by insoluable insurance problems.
***
You know, Lowry's description made me think of Mr. Van Driessen on "Beavis and Butt-Head." I was going to embed some apt video clip of the hippie teacher — maybe something with him lecturing the boys about world peace — but all I could find was this and my inner Nancy Pelosi scolded me about this balance between freedom and safety.
I was thinking about that lyric from the Lovin' Spoonful song "Nashville Cats" this morning as we were talking about the old days when you might stay up late at night to pick up the signal of a distant radio station that played music that you couldn't hear during the day.
In that song, John Sebastian sings of a radio station that captivated him when he was 13:
And the record man said every one is a yellow Sun Record from Nashville And up north there ain't nobody buys them And I said, but I will
And so the boy from the north fell in love with country music. Me, back in the mid-1960s, I liked some college radio station that came in from Fort Wayne, Indiana. I heard songs they didn't play on WABC in New York City. Indiana seemed like a cooler place than NYC. (Oddly, I still think that sometimes.)
I used to write down the names of the artists they played that I'd never heard before. I remember, listening that way, late at night, hearing "I Got You Babe" for the first time and wrote down "Sonny and Cher."
That was my little experience. Did you have anything like that?
Dewey Phillips was on the air in Memphis around 1950. He was an anomaly at the time: a white DJ spinning regional rhythm and blues hits for black audiences. Rick Wright says Phillips and his African American contemporaries up the dial on Memphis' WDIA helped elevate disc jockeying to an art form.
People like Nat Turner, a young B.B. King, and, one of Wright's favorites, Rufus Thomas. "Now, Rufus comes in, 'Hey baby, this is Rufus Thomas, WDIA Memphis, Tennessee, where you can cop a smile about a quarter mile provided you've got time and don't mind this drive time line we're gonna try.'
Wright says that one Nashville station, WLAC Nashville was owned by the Life and Casualty Insurance Company - L-A-C. He says that that station would take this music and this DJ style to places it had never been. He says the course of American cultural history was changed one Saturday.
"And they were playing, basically, records by Guy Lombardo or whatever and it was that era of a 50,000-watter trying to find itself with no audience," says Wright. "And there were some African American students from Fiske University who had gotten past the security and got up to the station and brought a bunch of 78s with them."
And they walked into the studio and started talking to the DJ. "Mr. Nobles, can you play some of our folks' records on your radio show?"
And Nobles said sure, hand them over. Records of Fats Domino and Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Etta James, Laverne Baker.
And he played them.
"All of sudden," says Wright, "the phone started to ring, and the letters and cards were coming from all over the place. And they established that night, one of the real, first, mainstream R&B formats on a major powerhouse radio station. WLAC 1510 Blues Radio Nashville, Tennessee. The only full time R&Ber at night with 50,000 watts."
At night, 50,000 watts get you very far. Bob Dylan has said he owes much of his musical inspiration to listening to WLAC as young teenager all the way up in Minnesota.
***
It was the "Moonstruck" clip that I blogged last night that set me off thinking about Cher and the first time I ever heard her sing. It was observed that I love Cher, and I confessed to my longstanding affection for the durable diva. I loved Cher since the first time I heard 'I Got You Babe' on a radio station from Fort Wayne, Indiana, I said.
I remembered answering some questionnaire at the time about what famous person I would like to be. It was 1965, so I was 14. I said Cher. And it wasn't just that I wanted to be a female pop star. I was entranced by the strong affection that Sonny and Cher showed each other when I saw them on TV.
I searched YouTube for an early appearance — perhaps their first national TV appearance — when the two were singing IGYB while sitting at a little table. They were petting and kissing — a real public display of affection. There are, of course, a lot of clips of them doing that song, but I couldn't find that one or any other where they were transgressively pawing at each other, the PDA I'd seen when I was just 14.
So let me go in a completely different direction and show you this instead:
That sent me looking for the great old "Citizen's Arrest" episode of the Andy Griffith show, but I got distracted by the less-remembered, but hilarious "Citizen's Arrest" episode of "Beavis and Butt-Head":
And, yes, the Code Pink woman commits a crime in that video. And a tort.
1. Pulp Fiction (1994) 7. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) 10. Moulin Rouge (2001) 11. This Is Spinal Tap (1984) 12. The Matrix (1999) 13. GoodFellas (1990) 14. Crumb (1995) 15. Edward Scissorhands (1990) 16. Boogie Nights (1997) 17. Jerry Maguire (1996) 18. Do the Right Thing (1989) 19. Casino Royale (2006) 23. Memento (2001) 24. A Room With a View (1986) 32. Fight Club (1999) 33. The Breakfast Club (1985) 34. Fargo (1996) 44. The Player (1992) 77. Sid and Nancy (1986) 91. Back to the Future (1985)
From the TV list:
1. The Simpsons, Fox, 1989-present 2 The Sopranos, HBO (1999-2007) 3 Seinfeld, NBC (1989-98) 5 Sex and the City, HBO (1998-2004) 6 Survivor, CBS (2000-present) 12 South Park, Comedy Central (1997-present) 14 The Daily Show, Comedy Central (1996-present) 17 The Office (U.K. version), BBC2 (2001-03) 18 American Idol, Fox (2002-present) 21 Roseanne, ABC (1988-97) 22 The Real World, MTV (1992-present) 28 The Larry Sanders Show, HBO (1992-98) 30 Late Show With David Letterman, CBS (1993-present) 38 Beavis and Butt-head, MTV (1993-97) 39 Six Feet Under, HBO (2001-05) 43 Late Night With Conan O'Brien, NBC (1993-present) 45 Curb Your Enthusiasm, HBO (2000-present) 49 Twin Peaks, ABC (1990-91) 55. Pee-wee's Playhouse, CBS (1986-90) 63. Mystery Science Theater 3000, Comedy Central (1989-96), Sci Fi (1997-99) 64. The Osbournes, MTV (2002-05) 69. The Colbert Report, Comedy Central (2005-present) 75. Project Runway, Bravo (2004-present) 79. The Comeback, HBO (2005) 83. Absolutely Fabulous, BBC2 (1992), BBC1 (1994-2004)
From the book list:
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995) 5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997) 7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991) 11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997) 28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997) 33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005) 66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997) 72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
(The book list is heavily weighted toward fiction.)
From the style list:
1. Madonna at the MTV Video Music Awards (1984) 2. Sarah Jessica Parker in the opening credits of Sex and the City (1998) 3. Michael Jackson in the ''Thriller'' video (1983) 4. Sharon Stone at the Oscars (1996) 5. Kurt Cobain and grunge style (1991) 7. Amy Winehouse's frocks, bold bras, and sky-high bouffant (2007) 13. Tom Cruise's Ray-Bans and tighty whities in Risky Business (1983) 16. Courtney Love's vintage slip dresses, Mary Janes, and home-grown dye jobs (1995) 17. The leather trenches and Neo-style shades in The Matrix (1999) 48. The goth look of Robert Smith and the Cure (1987)
From the tech list:
3. TiVo (1999) 4. iPod (2001) 5. YouTube (2005) 7. Digital Video Cameras for Consumers (1995) 9. Satellite-Radio Stations (2001)
From the video games:
1. Tetris (1985)
Ha ha. Sorry, I'm old!
From the stage list:
21. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (1998)
Sorry, I've seen a lot of these — the most expensive of these cultural pleasures — and didn't like them very much.
Romantic gestures (these aren't numbered for some reason):
• John Cusack blasts Peter Gabriel outside Ione Skye's window in 1989's Say Anything... • Ewan McGregor breaks into ''Your Song'' while wooing Nicole Kidman in 2001's Moulin Rouge (2001). • After her beloved Pedro (Marco Leonardi) dies making love to her in Like Water for Chocolate, Tita (Lumi Cavazos) eats matches, literally igniting her inner flame and burning her whole ranch to the ground.
The Devil Wears Prada The 40 Year-Old Virgin Jungle Fever The Silence of the Lambs
Death scenes:
• Steve Buscemi + a woodchipper + the pure white snow of 1996's Fargo = arguably the most hilarious ooky death on film. • Mel Gibson, sans intestines, bellows ''Freeeeedommmmmm!'' in Braveheart (1995). • Warring exes Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner fall to their doom on a chandelier in 1989's The War of the Roses. • Jack telling Rose not to say her goodbyes before freezing to death in Titanic (1997). • Lucy Liu losing her head to Uma Thurman's blade in Kill Bill Vol. One (2003).
Arthur Godfrey! You're quoting Arthur Godfrey?! Well, Governor Huckabee wins the prize for least hip candidate in the '08 race. That is beyond square. Truly weird! It was incredibly square and old to like Arthur Godfrey 40 years ago... 50 years ago!
MR. RUSSERT: You said this to the Des Moines Register: “Let’s face it. In our lifetimes, we’ve seen our country go from ‘Leave it to Beaver’ to ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ from Barney Fife to Barney Frank.” Why, why include Barney Frank, a gay congressman, in that reference?
GOV. HUCKABEE: I think it was a matter of a rhetorical device...
Ack! Static! I can't hear anything he's saying at this point. Even the "Beavis and Butt-head" reference is old, old, old. (Note: I'm older than Mike Huckabee.) And the gay-baiting? So tawdry, however much you like traditional values. And, anyway, was Barney Fife a positive masculine role model?
Back to The Bee:
I just completed a book in which I talk about the difference between horizontal politics, where everything is left or right, everything is liberal or conservative, everything is Democrat or Republican. I think the American people are hungry for vertical politics, where we have leaders who lift us up rather than those who tear us down.
That "Think.Respect." post got me thinking about students perceiving threats everywhere and sent me looking for that classic perceiver of threats:
Here's the original Cornholio episode. Don't miss the teacher, who seems very Madison, Wisconsin to me. Love his "Human Rights. Capitalism" diagram (which Beavis walks out on). And that quivering administrator... how apt.
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