Fifty Years Since that One Small Step

“In these eights days of the Apollo 11 mission, the world was witness to not only the triumph of technology, but to the strength of Man’s resolve and the persistence of his imagination. Through all times, the moon has endured out there, pale and distant, determining the tides and tugging at the heart, a symbol, a beacon, a goal. Now, Man has prevailed. He’s landed on the moon; he’s stabbed into its crust; he’s stolen some of its soil to bring back in a tiny treasure ship to perhaps unlock some of its secrets.

“The date’s now indelible. It’s going to be remembered as long as Man survives—July 20,1969—the day a man reached and walked on the moon. The least of us is improved by the things done by the best of us. Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins are the best of us, and they’ve led us further and higher than we ever imagined we were likely to go.”

–Walter Cronkite, the legendary television journalist,
at the conclusion of his live broadcast coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing

Today’s date is indelible. At least for those of us who care. My fear is that, these days, those of us who care are a distinct minority, a niche fandom like Trekkies or model train enthusiasts, just a bunch of aging white guys who indulge their inner 12-year-olds with a basement room in which they display their collections and imagine a world different than the way it is. If this day were a national holiday, as I’ve proposed before, maybe it would be different. Maybe people would remember and get excited and talk about the meaning of it all, and even become a little misty-eyed, as I do myself. But then… maybe not. Maybe a national holiday honoring the Apollo astronauts — and by extension all explorers, in my vision — would become just one more day for car dealers to hold a sale, and for families to grill some hot dogs without a second thought as to why they have this day off.

And then there’s that bit about “as long as Man survives” (forgive the outdated sexist usage in reference to the whole human species; it was 1969, after all). There are those who believe we humans don’t have much time left, that climate change and the bees dying and the oceans filling up with plastic will snuff out our collective flame by the end of the 21st century, if not a lot sooner. I’ll confess that on my more depressive days, I worry about that too, and I feel an absolutely crushing sense of futility. It’s on those days, more than any other, that I wish people would think about the Apollo program. That they would remember what human beings managed to do, and that they did it in a ridiculously short period of time, going from almost no idea of how to put people into space to putting them on another world in just slightly over one decade. Humanity can accomplish immense, glorious things if we put our minds to it. If we work together. If we restrain and channel our destructive impulses toward better, nobler, common goals, for the good of everyone and not just for the shareholders. Human beings built the pyramids, not aliens. And human beings did go to the moon, using technology that wasn’t much more sophisticated than stone knives and bearskins (to borrow a famous line from an old episode of Star Trek). The conspiracy theorists and the casual doubters who think it was all fake… these people infuriate me. Not because they’re scoffing at something I’ve always been fascinated by and excited about, although that is plenty irksome. But because they’re disparaging the one truth I firmly believe about our miserable little ape selves: that we can achieve greatness. That we can solve the big problems. The thing is, though, we need to believe that we can do it. We need to have the optimism that there is a way and that we can find it. And we need to be willing to spend the damn money.

Will humanity solve — or at least adapt to — the multiple environmental crises that seem to be looming higher and higher over our heads? I don’t know. I really don’t. Will we someday return to the moon? I don’t know that either, although it seems more likely right now than it has for many years. Honestly, I don’t even know anymore whether we should go back there, or if we should devote our efforts to Mars or to asteroid mining or to figuring out how to build O’Neill colonies in deep space. All I know is that we shouldn’t give up on the big things. On the hard things. That’s the real meaning of Apollo 11, the message we should take away from those fuzzy old black-and-white images of Neil and Buzz shuffling and hopping through the dust of another world. The lesson that we ought to be pounding into every school kid’s head every single day: the triumph of technology … the strength of Man’s resolve and the persistence of his imagination…

We need that spirit right now. Now more than ever. I hope we can summon it soon.

Jul022019

I’m Going to Have to Live Forever

I’ve lately been revisiting Larry Niven’s Ringworld, a science fiction novel I first read back in high school, or perhaps even middle school. My understanding at the time was that it was considered one of the great classics of the genre, but now, thirty-some years later, I rarely encounter any mention of it. That baffles me, a bit, but I suppose it speaks to the impermanence of everything, including prestige. That’s an idea that’s been very hard for me to accept even as it’s become more and more obvious to me. When I was younger, I naively believed that so many of the things I loved were timeless and would never go out of fashion or become irrelevant to the generations that would follow mine. I believed it as much as I believed the sun would come up tomorrow. Well, time has proven me wrong; in the past 30 years, just about every bit of art or media I ever loved has been remade, deconstructed, found lacking, or just plain forgotten. Even tangible things like cars no longer carry the same importance to young people that they did to my generation, and certainly to our parents. But that’s probably a full post in itself, and I’m here to talk about Ringworld.

It’s been interesting to discover what I remember and don’t remember about this book. For example, I very clearly recalled the opening scene, in which our protagonist, Louis Wu, tries to prolong his 200th birthday by using teleportation to jump around the globe, keeping one hour ahead of midnight for as long as possible. I remembered the alien race known as “puppeteers,” something like two-headed ostriches whose entire species are congenital cowards who are obsessed with absolute safety. I also remembered that the puppeteers moved their entire homeworld and several supporting satellites through space, rather than building spaceships, and that their idea of a weapon is something called a “tasp,” which stimulates the pleasure center of the target’s brain to render them passive and harmless, essentially an orgasm gun.

But there was one passage early on in the book that truly startled me. It’s brief, only a single paragraph, and I had no memory of it. Not a line, not a word, has stayed with me over the years, at least not in my conscious memory. But the meaning of this paragraph is so close to my thinking and to things I’ve actually said over the years, that I wonder if maybe it did stick in my unconscious all those years ago. Maybe it’s been lurking there for three decades, influencing my feelings. Or maybe it’s just coincidental, and it stands out to me now because it mirrors a thought and a feeling that I long ago came to of my own accord. The endless mystery of literature, I suppose… does it influence us or does it resonate with us because it strikes a chord that already exists?

Anyhow, here’s the passage that I’ve been mulling over for several days:

Long ago, Louis Wu had stood at the void edge of Mount Lookitthat. The Long Fall River, on that world, ends in the tallest waterfall in known space. Louis’s eyes had followed it down as far as they could penetrate the void mist. The featureless white of the void itself had grasped at his mind, and Louis Wu, half hypnotized, had sworn to live forever. How else could he see all there was to see?

How many times have I thought that there simply isn’t enough time in a scant human lifespan to do and see everything there is to do and see? That’s the fundamental appeal to me of stories about immortal beings, like Highlander or Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles… the ability to see and do and be many different things. My bucket list is as long as my leg, travel destinations primarily, places and things I want to see… and the list only seems to get longer over time, not shorter, in spite of my not-inconsiderable efforts to check items off. I’ll be 50 years old in only two months… not yet old, there’s still time, but I’m considerably down the road. Far enough to see that the road is limited. And how am I going to be able to see all there is to see when the end of the road is just down there a-ways?

Heavy thoughts from an old science fiction novel on a hot summer afternoon…

Jun282019

Friday Evening Videos: “Magic”

Last Friday was the official first day of summer, but it didn’t really feel like it, since temperatures here in the SLC were only in the 60s. By contrast, this afternoon is breezy and in the low 90s, with a completely empty steel-blue sky, so I think it’s safe to say now that we’ve arrived in summertime. Which means I’ve been thinking about summer-themed songs.

“Magic” isn’t strictly about summertime — it’s by The Cars, which means the lyrics are utterly opaque and could be about anything — but it does mention summer in the opening lines, and I always associate this song with hot days, cheap plastic sunglasses, sleeveless shirts, hanging at the mall, and dragging State in my old Galaxie. Released on May 7, 1984, just as I was finishing my freshman year of high school, the song failed to crack the top 10 — it only rose as high as 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart — but it was seemingly ubiquitous all through the season that followed, and it’s always been a favorite of mine. (I much prefer it over the next single from the Heartbeat City album, “Drive,” and especially over the single that came after that, “Hello Again.” That’s the one with the nonsensical babbling thing in the middle. Not really a bad song, but weird. Just… weird.)

The Cars were an interesting band. They emerged from the same East Coast post-punk scene that also birthed Blondie and the New York Dolls, so they’re often categorized as New Wave. Certainly, the band looked more like Wavers than rockers, especially lead singer Ric Ocasek, whose oversized jackets draped on a too-thin frame and goofily awkward movements were about as far from rock-and-roll swagger as you could get. But The Cars’ musical style included enough crunchy guitar sounds — very evident on “Magic,” for example — that they weren’t out of place on hard-rock stations, while their pop sensibilities and knack for catchy hooks welcomed them into the top-40 format as well. In short, The Cars were chameleons who transcended rigid genre categories. Pretty much everyone I knew back in the day liked The Cars. I still do.

So here’s a little something to listen to as you step out into this balmy summertime evening. Hope you find some magic there…

Jun272019

Heinlein on Whether It Could Happen Here

“As for … the idea that we could lose our freedom by succumbing to a wave of religious hysteria, I am sorry to say that I consider it possible. I hope that it is not probable. But there is a latent deep strain of religious fanaticism in this, our culture; it is rooted in our history and it has broken out many times in the past.

“It is with us now; there has been a sharp rise in strongly evangelical sects in this country in recent years, some of which hold beliefs theocratic in the extreme, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific, and anti-libertarian.

“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics. This is equally true whether the faith is Communism or Holy-Rollerism; indeed it is the bounden duty of the faithful to do so. The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit tolerance of heresy to be a virtue.

“Nevertheless this business of legislating religious beliefs into law has never been more than sporadically successful in this country — Sunday closing laws here and there, birth control legislation in spots, the Prohibition experiment, temporary enclaves of theocracy such as Voliva’s Zion, Smith’s Nauvoo, and a few others. The country is split up into such a variety of faiths and sects that a degree of uneasy tolerance now exists from expedient compromise; the minorities constitute a majority of opposition against each other.

“Could it be otherwise here? Could any one sect obtain a working majority at the polls and take over the country? Perhaps not — but a combination of a dynamic evangelist, television, enough money, and modern techniques of advertising and propaganda might make Billy Sunday’s efforts look like a corner store compared to Sears Roebuck.

“Throw in a Depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negrosim, and a good large dose of anti-“furriners” in general and anti-intellectuals here at home, and the result might be something quite frightening — particularly when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority distributed as pluralities in enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington.”

— Robert A. Heinlein,
“Concerning Stories Never Written” (the afterword to Revolt in 2100)

It is worth noting that Heinlein wrote those words in the 1950s. And also that in his “Future History” cycle of science fiction stories, which includes Revolt in 2100, he pegged the late 20th century and much of the 21st as “The Crazy Years” when America becomes a puritanical theocracy, and spaceflight and other technological and scientific advancement all but ceases. With today’s Supreme Court decision not to put a stop to partisan gerrymandering, anti-abortion and “freedom of religion” laws springing up all over the place, Mitch McConnell’s heavy-handed and nakedly obvious power plays, and of course a president who has made it plain he’d rather rule as a dictator than govern as an elected official bound by rules and procedure, I fear we are living through the early phase of The Crazy Years right now…

Jun062019

Being Human

We are sensual beings. We are sexual beings. We are joyous beings, if we let ourselves be. Being gay is just one way to be human. Based on the evidence, LGBTQ+ people are a useful and important part of the human species. [Gay people’s] experience is valuable — not just for ourselves, but because we are a way for others to learn more about what it means to be truly awake and aware and human.

— David Gerrold, science-fiction writer, commenting on Pride Month

For the record, I am not gay myself. I’m about as cis-hetero as they come, aside from a teeny little man-crush on Chris Hemsworth. Once upon a time, as shameful as it is to admit this, I probably would’ve qualified as a homophobe. Back in the Awesome ’80s, when I was a painfully insecure teenage boy, I routinely used the word “fag” as an insult and pronounced things as “gay” when I meant “uncool,” the same as all the other insecure teen boys of that era. But here’s the thing: I didn’t actually know any gay people then, at least none that I realized were gay. (Even now, I have a fairly wonky sense of “gaydar.” Often, I just can’t tell until someone does something really gay.) I don’t think I even fully understood what “gay” meant. I was speaking and acting from a place of ignorance.

The first time I was aware of being in a gay man’s company was… uncomfortable. Especially when he remarked how well I filled out a pair of jeans. But you know what? It wasn’t that uncomfortable, and I later realized he wasn’t hitting on me as I’d initially believed, he was just giving me a compliment, and what was so terrible about that? I had to admit to myself that it wasn’t terrible at all; it was flattering. As the years went by, I had more experiences with gay people, and a few trans people as well, and none of those experiences were terrible either. I worked with them, I friended them, I shopped in their stores, and I went to parties at their homes. I became a fan of Armistead Maupin and his very gay Tales of the City books. I saw Brokeback Mountain and Milk and was deeply moved by both. In 2008, Anne and I had an incredible vacation in San Francisco, and you want to know what our favorite neighborhood was? The Castro… the notorious gay neighborhood, the one where we were the exception, the token straight couple. And in 2015, I cheered when gay people finally won the right to marry those they love.

I’m not recounting all of this to make myself look good. I know that I’m no hero. I am, by my own admission, a guy who used to be a bit of a jerk, if never a truly malignant one. But I also know that I’ve become a better person, a better human, because of my interactions with LGBTQ people and a growing understanding of their struggles. (I still have a long way to go on that front, but I am trying.) I’m a bigger, more compassionate person than I used to be, I’m a lot more comfortable with myself, and I find that my world has more colors in it than it used to.

In other words, I am what Mr. Gerrold is talking about in the final sentence of that quote at the top of this post. A quote that resonates strongly with this old Star Trek fan, and not just because Gerrold wrote a popular episode of that show. At its core, Star Trek — true Star Trek, not the watered-down action-oriented product that it’s become — was about the way fear and prejudice disappears when you get to know other people. About human beings evolving beyond their petty, childish fears of “the other.” Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

I believe in that slogan more now than at any other point in my life. It’s a shame there are still so many who don’t.

May242019

Friday Evening Videos: “Kristina” (Orchestral Version)

So, my main man Rick Springfield has a new album out that I’ve really been enjoying for the past couple weeks. It’s called Orchestrating My Life, a collection of 10 hits, two beloved album cuts, and a new song Rick wrote when his mom passed away, all of them recorded with a symphony orchestra accompanying Rick’s band. The cynical might sniff that the symphony thing is just a gimmicky way to repackage the same old tunes, but I’m finding that the symphonic accompaniment lends a great deal of depth and freshness to some very familiar material.

Consider “Kristina,” for example, a cut from his 1982 album Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet. Although it was never released as a single, it’s become a fan favorite over the years and is always a highlight of Rick’s live performances. It’s one of my personal favorites as well, with its infectious guitar hook, a throbbing bass line that encourages you to nod your head and pump your fist, and lyrics that play with two of my favorite subjects, cars and sex. As much as I love it, though, it’s… well, it’s familiar. Adding the symphony takes a straight-ahead rocker of which I know every note and fills it with sheer unadulterated joy. This version of the song is just plain fun to listen to.

Turn it up loud, kids, and have a great holiday weekend…

(The original recording is here, if you want to compare.)

Apr092019

“She May Not Look Like Much, But She’s Got It Where It Counts…”

We’re about to go deep into the nerdy weeds here, kids, so consider yourself warned.

Still with me? Okay then. You must be my kinda people.

So, anyhow, earlier tonight I was reading a Star Wars comic book, one of the new series that began in 2015 when Marvel reacquired the license for the first time since the 1980s. The story was all right, building pretty organically from the end of the original movie and featuring decent artwork, imaginative set-pieces, good banter between Han and Leia, and some spooky Darth Vader action. (Let’s just say things don’t go well for the stormtrooper who accidentally sees the Dark Lord without his helmet!). But there was something bugging me throughout the story, which was this: the Millennium Falcon is disabled and Leia keeps making little jibes about the ship being unreliable.

But Bennion, you’re saying, that’s the Falcon. That’s the running gag in Star Wars, right, that the Falcon is a piece of junk? Um, no, actually, it’s not. The gag is that she looks like a pile of junk but isn’t really. “She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid.” That’s how Han Solo responds when Luke Skywalker first lays eyes on the ship that made the Kessel Run. And for a change, he’s not boasting. She performs flawlessly throughout the film. In the six movies in which the Falcon prominently appears, she’s only majorly on the fritz in one, The Empire Strikes Back, and that’s only because Han and Chewie were in the middle of an overhaul and had to throw her back together in about an hour instead of being able to take their time.

Even in The Force Awakens, when she’s been parked in the Jakku scrapyard for who knows how long, there’s nothing seriously wrong with her that a quick rewiring on the fly doesn’t solve. (I have major issues with that scene, by the way, but that’s a rant for another time; you know, like the tale of how Anakin Skywalker’s old lightsaber, which should have been in about a million pieces at the bottom of Cloud City, instead ended up in a weird old lady’s steamer trunk on a completely different planet. Friggin’ JJ Abrams.)

It’s not even a running gag among the characters. In the entire saga, I can think of only four times — four — when people put down the Millennium Falcon: Luke calls her a piece of junk when he first lays eyes on her; Leia says, “You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought!”; and Rey calls her “garbage” in a deliberate callback to Luke’s first reaction. In all three of those cases, they’re proven wrong almost immediately. The fourth example is Lando calling her “the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy,” and that’s obviously an affectionate comment from someone who knows what she’s really capable of.

And yet, it’s become a trope, a cliche even, that the Falcon is always breaking down or threatening to. It was a constant thing in the Expanded Universe novels and comics that Disney has now reclassified as apocryphal “Legends,” and it always drove me crazy because it just wasn’t accurate to what we actually see in the movies.

See, here’s the thing: The Millennium Falcon is the equivalent of what car enthusiasts call a “rat rod.” That’s a hot rod that’s specifically built to look like it was cobbled together out of random bits of found machinery. The creativity in their physical appearances can be truly inspiring, especially in the ones that look the worst, if that makes sense. They’re usually painted in drab colors or left with a natural patina of rust. Dents and even bullet holes are part of the look. But if you get one built by someone who knows what they’re doing, they’re ungodly powerful racers. Sound familiar? I wish more Star Wars writers understood the Falcon in those terms…

It’s just a peeve of mine. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

Mar282019

It Is Not Okay

Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat from California and Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, responded today to Republican calls that he resign for supposedly spreading conspiracy theories against the man in the White House. His defiant words are nothing short of inspiring:

My colleagues might think it’s okay that the Russians offered dirt on the Democratic candidate for president as part of what’s described as the Russian government’s effort to help the Trump campaign. You might think that’s okay. My colleagues might think it’s okay that when that was offered to the son of the president, who had a pivotal role in the campaign, that the president’s son did not call the FBI, he did not adamantly refuse that foreign help — no, instead that son said he would ‘love’ the help with the Russians.

You might think it was okay that he took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that Paul Manafort, the campaign chair, someone with great experience running campaigns, also took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that the president’s son-in-law also took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that they concealed it from the public. You might think it’s okay that their only disappointment after that meeting was that the dirt they received on Hillary Clinton wasn’t better. You might think it’s okay. I don’t.

You might think it’s okay that, when it was discovered a year later that they had lied about that meeting and said it was about adoptions, you might think it’s okay that the president is reported to have helped dictate that lie. You might think it’s okay. I don’t.

You might think it’s okay that the campaign chairman of a presidential campaign would offer information about that campaign to a Russian oligarch in exchange for money or debt forgiveness. You might think that’s okay. I don’t. You might think it’s okay that that campaign chairman offered polling data, campaign polling data, to someone linked to Russian intelligence. I don’t think that’s okay.

You might think it’s okay if that the president himself called on Russia to hack his opponent’s emails, if they were listening. You might think it’s okay that, later that day, the Russians in fact attempted to hack a server affiliated with that campaign. I don’t think that’s okay.

You might think that it’s okay that the president’s son-in-law sought to establish a secret back-channel of communication with Russians through a Russian diplomatic facility. I don’t think that’s okay.

You might think it’s okay that an associate of the president made direct contact with the GRU through Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks, that is considered a hostile intelligence agency. You might think it’s okay that a senior campaign official was instructed to reach that associate and find out what that hostile intelligence agency had to say, in terms of dirt on his opponent.

You might think it’s okay that the national security adviser-designate secretly conferred with a Russian ambassador about undermining U.S. sanctions, and you might think it’s okay he lied about it to the FBI.

You might say that’s all okay. You might say that’s just what you need to do to win. But I don’t think it’s okay. I think it’s immoral, I think it’s unethical, I think it’s unpatriotic and, yes, I think it’s corrupt, and evidence of collusion.

Now, I have always said that whether this amounts to proof of conspiracy was another matter. Whether the special counsel could prove beyond a reasonable doubt the proof of that crime was up to the special counsel and that I would accept his decision, and I do. He is a good an honorable man and he is a good prosecutor.

But I do not think that conduct, criminal or not, is okay. And the day we do think that’s okay is the day we will look back and say, that is the day America lost its way.

And I’ll tell you one more thing that is apropos of the hearing today. I don’t think it’s okay that during a presidential campaign Mr. Trump sought the Kremlin’s help to consummate a real estate deal in Moscow that would make him a fortune. According to the special counsel, hundreds of millions of dollars. I don’t think it’s okay that he concealed it from the public. don’t think it’s okay he advocated a new and more favorable policy towards the Russians, even as he was seeking the Russian’s help, the Kremlin’s help, to make money.

All of that happened. It’s real. It’s on the record. Like I said the other day, maybe Mueller couldn’t connect the dots to make a legal case (or maybe he wasn’t given the time he needed to make the connections, which is what I strongly suspect), but that doesn’t mean the dots aren’t there, or that they don’t stink.

See, here’s the thing: I make no secret of the fact that I’m a liberal Democrat. Many people would take that fact and assume that my feelings about the man currently occupying the Oval Office are simply partisan, that I must hate Trump because he is a Republican. Not so. I would despise Donald Trump regardless of what party he ostensibly belonged to, and in fact I did despise him long before this national nightmare ever began. I despise him because he is so transparently corrupt, so transparently hungry for power, so proudly ignorant, and so thoroughly lacking in empathy or anything resembling grace, class or dignity.

But you know what? I think I despise the Congressional Republicans who are defending him even more. Because they know what he is and what he’s doing, and they don’t care. These same Republicans who genuflect to the Constitution, who weep at the sight of the flag, these upstanding “family values” people who are so quick to weaponize the smallest transgression made by a Democrat and who will not ever let go of anything… these same people turn a blind eye to the sins of Donald J Trump. They claim that any question at all about the man’s behavior is all “conspiracy theories” and sour grapes for a lost election. “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” they call it.

Nope.You’ve got that wrong, guys.

What has us liberals so angry is the goddamn double standard that Republicans so easily traffic in… that, and the stink of corruption that Donald Trump has carried into the White House like dogshit on his shoes, and the stench of decay that’s growing stronger day by day as it oozes across our entire nation.

I try to be optimistic about the future, about the institutions and ideals that knit this scattered collection of populations and geographies into the thing we call America, but I have to be honest: I just don’t know how we’re going to come back from this. The America I thought I knew when I was young began to die when those idiots drove their planes into the towers. The bleeding accelerated when Americans cheered at the invasion of a country that hadn’t attacked us, chuckled at the images of people being tortured and scoffed at the thought that the Geneva conventions actually applied to us. I naively thought the fever might be breaking with the election of Barack Obama and the strides toward a more truly equal nation that were made under his administration. But then came the backlash. Then came Trump. Then came the racists and the homophobes and the gun-nuts and god-knows how many other kinds of reactionaries and regressives. And now the gleeful nihilists who read Ayn Rand in their teens and took her warped selfishness to heart are knocking out the pillars that hold everything up and half the population actually thinks it’s a good idea.

I’ve said it before many times, usually in reference to my feelings of having taken a wrong turn in my own life, but I’d really like to know just when and where I stepped through that wormhole into a parallel universe. And how the hell can I get back?

I want my country back.

No comments on this one. Not that I ever get any these days, but… yeah. No comments.

Mar252019

Nothing Has Changed

Today the president’s supporters are practically orgasmic with their gloating and trolling, while Democrats are rending their garments, shaking their fists at the unfair heavens, and crying out, “Why? Why?!” But the truth is, nothing has really changed. No, really, it hasn’t. We still don’t know what’s actually in the Mueller report. We’ve just been given a summary of what it supposedly contains, a summary that was crafted by a political appointee who got the job after writing the president a letter about how terrible the Mueller investigation was. So… yeah. Not the most trustworthy intermediary, in my opinion. Until the American people actually see the full report with our own eyes, I’m not changing my opinion that, for someone who’s supposedly done nothing wrong, the president certainly acts like a man with something to hide. Consider these reminders from Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo:

Based on the publicly available information, the President betrayed his country and serially lied about his involvement with Russia and his knowledge about the Russian interference campaign. We know that despite all denials, throughout the campaign the President was trying to land a multi-hundred million dollar real estate deal that required the assistance of the President of Russia, one that required the end of sanctions. We know his campaign manager was handing over campaign data to a man the FBI judged was a Russian intelligence asset. We know his campaign had a back channel to Wikileaks and appears to have coordinated the timing of the leaks. We know that his top campaign officials had numerous contacts with Russian officials and intermediaries offering campaign assistance and welcomed the assistance. Finally, we know the transition [team] worked with Russia to undermine the sanctions intended to punish the interference campaign.

By any standard, simply these known facts are profoundly damning and constitute a massive national betrayal. The Trump campaign knew about, profited from and encouraged Russian assistance. Putin also appears to have been dangling a massive payoff in front of him the whole time. Russia helped Trump; Trump helped Russia; they were in contact via intermediaries throughout the campaign.

Presumably the report explains the details of these dealings and how they did not constitute either conspiracy or coordination. That is the information, the analysis we need to see. I’d suggest we know very little until we see this information, which is to say, until we see the report.

Mueller may not have been able to connect all the dots within his mandate, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Trump is sitting in the Oval Office (when he bothers to go into work, that is) because of the Russians. Yeah, yeah, Hillary was a less-than-ideal candidate, and Democratic infighting, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the vagaries of the electoral college all played a role, but the thumb on the scale that tilted things over the line belonged to Putin. Whether he made an actual deal with the Russians or not, they did everything they could to install him in the White House, either in hopes that he’d quid-pro-quo away those sanctions or just because they knew he’d generate so much barking chaos that it would tear the U.S. to pieces. Well, mission fucking accomplished, comrades.

Mar222019

Friday Evening Videos: “Thing Called Love”

For her first 18 years as a recording artist, roots rocker Bonnie Raitt was essentially a cult act. The critics loved her but few people beyond a small circle of hardcore fans had even heard of her. That all changed with the release of her tenth album, Nick of Time, her first on the Capitol Records label and also the first that she made while sober (according to Bonnie herself).

Nick of Time would hit number one on the Billboard 200 chart within months of its release, and go on to sell some five million copies. It earned Bonnie Raitt four hit singles and four Grammy Awards, but more importantly, it rescued her flagging career. Nick of Time was my introduction to Bonnie, who became one of my favorite musicians of the ’90s, and its mixture of authentic, analog-style R&B, blues, pop and country pointed the way ahead for my musical interests when the pop music of the ’80s morphed into something that no longer spoke to me, and grunge emerged from the shadows to kill off rock and roll.

The album also became an unlikely soundtrack for one of the most pivotal years of my life. I was 19 going on 20 in the summer of 1989. I started my first real (and in many ways still my best) job, working at that infamous multiplex movie theater I’ve mentioned so many times. I was making new friends, I still believed in my dreams for my future… and I was in love. The first single from Nick of Time, “Thing Called Love,” was the background for these good times. And then later that year, when the weather grew cooler and the good times started to curdle, the plaintive sounds of the album’s second single “Have a Heart” articulated all too keenly what I was feeling. So keenly in fact, that I had to stop listening to Nick of Time for a while.

But let’s not dwell on that. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Nick of Time — good lord, how can it be 30 years since that summer?! — let’s instead listen to “Thing Called Love.” This was actually a cover of a John Hiatt song, but Bonnie takes full possession of it through her sassy delivery and slinky slide-guitar playing. It was her biggest hit to that point, peaking at number 11 on the rock charts. I imagine the video added a bit of lift, thanks to an unexpected appearance by Hollywood hunk Dennis Quaid and the joyful, flirtatious energy passing between him and Bonnie. God, how I loved this song. On the strength of this one song, I went to see Bonnie Raitt live that summer, when she opened for the Steve Miller Band at an outdoor show that was cut short by a torrential rainstorm. I didn’t buy the full album until after that, from what I recall.

One final observation: in the video, Quaid wears a t-shirt that sports the logo of Sun Records, which is of course the legendary Memphis recording studio that hosted Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis, among others. Quaid would star as Jerry Lee Lewis in the biopic Great Balls of Fire later in that very same summer of 1989. Everything is connected, man…

If I’ve piqued your interest at all with my little rambling here, I recommend this oral history that’s all about how Nick of Time came to be… fascinating stuff for a true music lover!

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