Old School

Soul star Wilson Pickett, best known for "Mustang Sally" and "In The Midnight Hour," died Thursday, CNN confirms.

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One of things I used to love about soul/R&B back when I was a kid was the feeling of superiority it gave me over the white guys.

They had acid-rock, KISS and bands who worshipped Satan. We had the blended sounds of the Temptations of love, the rousing voice of Aretha Franklin and earthy blues from guys like Wilson Pickett.

Then rap came along and it proved, without a doubt, that when given the opportunity black teenage boys could be just as vile, foul and disrespectful as the white guys.

Don’tcha just love progress?

I remember when the Sugar Hill Gang came out with “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979, sort of a musical rap. It was light, funny and full of the pointless self-aggrandizement we now know and love so much in rap. “This is cute”, I thought, “it’s a nice fad for the next couple of months.” I was only off by a generation.

I hate rap. I hate yelling. I lost one of my first low end jobs as a young man when I slugged a boss who yelled at me. People usually ask, “What did he yell at you about?” My answer, didn’t care. Yelling is yelling, a punchable offense. So all the HOLLERING in rap just gets on my nerves. They could be reading the phone book at that decibel level and I’d reach for the shotgun.

Some say rap reflects urban anger. Not impressed. There’s nothing wrong with anger. Most great social movements come out of anger. The Rev. Dr. MLK Jr. was angry. Gandhi was angry. Cesar Chavez was angry. The difference between them and today’s posing rapper is that they did something constructive with their anger besides convince kids to waste money on team sports apparel and jewelry.

Yeah, I sounds like a grumpy old guy here. But I’m true to myself in that I’m not saying anything know that I didn’t say twenty years ago. I was just a grumpy old man in training.

Fortunately, with today’s media “Old School” lives on. Whole stations are devoted to the time when black folks actually had to sing to make money. And since folks who like “Old School” are probably more willing and able to find and hold decent employment than rap fans, the audience is surely attractive enough to enough advertisers to stay around for awhile.

So good-bye Wilson. The music is gone but not the memories. Now if I could just find that “Sly and the Family Stone” Greatest Hits CD somewhere, anywhere …

St. George

Overheard at the water cooler:

President George W. Bush was scheduled to visit the Methodist Church outside Washington as part of his campaign to get his programs through Congress. Bush's advance man made a visit to the Bishop, and said to him, "We've been getting a lot of bad publicity among Methodists because of Bush's position on stem cell research and the like. We'd gladly make a contribution to the church of $100,000 if during your sermon you'd say the President is a saint."

The Bishop thinks it over for a few moments and finally says, "The Church is in desperate need of funds and I will agree to do it."

Bush shows up and as the sermon progresses the Bishop begins his homily:

"George Bush is a petty, self-absorbed hypocrite and a nitwit. He is a liar, a cheat, and a low-intelligence weasel. He has lied about his military record and had the gall to put himself in a jet plane landing on a carrier posing before a banner stating 'Mission Accomplished.' He invaded a country for oil and money, and is using it to lie to the American people. He is the worst example of a Methodist I've ever personally known."

"But compared to Dick Cheney and the rest of his cabinet, George Bush is a saint."

MLK

Every MLK Jr. Day brings me back to the good ‘ol religion church my momma and daddy raised me in.

I find the reminiscences interesting in part nowadays because I compare them to the general assumption that anyone with a heavy dose of community religion and a politically involved minister has to be a right wing Bible thumper. My folks had both and were about as yellow dog Democrat as one can imagine.

Heck, I grew up thinking Republicans spoke German, they were so bad.

My parents generally assumed that their neighbors went to some church. Asking them which one was a normal part of an opening conversation, and inviting them to yours and being invited back to theirs was a common pleasantry as a result.

There was a class structure too. Methodists looked down on Baptists, Baptists turned up their noses at Pentecostalists and everyone though the COGIC (Church of God in Church) were nuts with all the hollering and tambourines. One COGIC met in a garage around the corner from me. I could hear the shake, rattle and roll half a block away.

Perhaps the funniest part of it all was watching the big-hatted church ladies fanning themselves on cool, foggy SF days, a snapshot of worshipping across the hot South. It was still important for the church to hand out the fans because the advertising on them which brought in money.

The critical difference is that my parents were African American (“were” because they’ve both passed on). The government, particularly the federal government, paid the key role in opening society up so that everyone had a shot to enjoy the American Dream. In 1964 a white woman who took my mother's seat on a train rolling through Texas had to give it back because state segregation laws didn't apply to interstate railroads. For her and others like her, the traditional conservative nostrum that the government was the route of all evil made no sense in this regard.

They believed in hard work and duty to country. Military service was considered honorable, both for the benefits it conferred but also for the respect it demanded from white Americans.

The critical difference is that they saw their religion as a foundation for social engagement and responsibility. Same faith, different interpretation. The good Rev. Dr. MLK Jr. saw this too. It wasn’t new. American reformist tradition has had a long history of religious inspiration. One author, whose name eludes me at the moment, opined that the biggest force behind the Abolitionist movement were all the daughters of Congregationalist ministers who went to college but couldn’t find comparable work in a sexist society. So they threw their education and energy into social reform, including Abolition but moving on to public health, education, women’s suffrage among other thing. (It also includes temperance but every movement has to get off a few errant salvos).

So there is a good question, which a good minister like the good Rev. Dr. might ask, as to who is truly closer to God. You’d think that the Socialist Right might be worried about this. In the Book of Matthew, Jesus says that those who don’t feed the hungry, clothe the naked or visit the imprisoned end up in everlasting punishment. If the Socialist Right finds themselves in the wrong line come Judgment Day or whatnot, they might have wished that they’d reviewed the fine print a little closer.

Dem vs. Dem

There’s a whole lot of yakkin’ going on about how the Democrats are fighting among themselves and not keeping a coordinated message and how there needs to be more discipline and all that. The idea is that if there One Great Leader with One Great Message, the Reps would be toast in the upcoming general elections and on the way, the Dems could win back a position in the national government.

I don’t think so.

Conservative pundit and NPR commentator David Brooks recently wrote that one of the secrets to conservatism’s success is that it didn’t insist on a one-size-fits-all creed or message. “Conservatism” became something that right wing Christian fundamentalists, economic libertarians and people who are just plain cheap can all see something in, even if (as these pages have noted) their particular flavor of conservatism might actually clash with another’s.

But all politics is indeed local, and the advantage of such descriptive flexibility is that the GOP could offer the particular brand of “conservatism” favored by a particular electoral district. I can admire that.

I think liberals and progressives should do the same. I already see the difference between my former Democratic majority homes in the inner San Francisco Bay Area and my current Democratic majority home in Sacramento, California. Gun control is a required position in my old stomping grounds. It’s not even on the radar here. Anti-growth down there is “smart” growth around here. But on other issues, like health care and defense, there’s not a lot of difference. Both Democratic, both alike in some ways, different on others.

Diehards might point out that failing to create agreed-upon lockstep positions while out of power results in fussing and fighting when you’re in power. This can happen. Current fights in the congressional GOP on spending certainly find that.

But isn’t it better to have the fight on the majority side of the aisle? I certainly think so. And I'd like to find out.

The War Between the (Blue vs. Red) States

On January 8, "Useless Eaters" commented:

If secession occurred then goes for the Canadians would be doubly true for us albeit without beautiful mountains, lakes, rivers, streams.

Have you thought what a Red State Nation would be like? Its not like they'll be stewing quietly in some weird collective fundamentalist gated community. These are the folks who want to hasten the Rapture by whatever means possible. They also have guns.

"The new ideology of the red-state bourgeoisie seems to actually believe that the US is God marching on earth – not just godlike, but really serving as a proxy for God himself." *When anticipating the level of cordiality between a Red USA and a Blue USA, Think Poland, circa 1939.

It may be that we have to accept living with meaningless health insurance, election fraud, fraudulent wars, and a dumbed down education system if it means that we keep the yahoos from killing us all.

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Yep. Because they'll "know", as Hitler down to the Romans did, that they'll get you if you don't get them first. If it comes to shooting, it really will be the Civil War all over again. Like that one was a fight between the 20th century (North) and the 18th century (South), this one's a tussle between progress and stagnation. History shows that progress usually wins.

But just because we're liberals don't mean we're sissies. We've got more people, the industry, the ports and a decent supply of food-making territory. We've also got 'em surrounded for the most part, completely if our brother nation waving the maple leaf comes on board.

Best of all, they've got the jihad thing about being willing to die. History shows that the people eager to die in a war usually end up doing the most dying, which is rarely the way to come out on top. General Patton, bless his Red State heart, was right about that, in the opening monologue of that cool, if inaccurate, movie about him.

But all that's messy, of course, so I go back to my original premise that the path to better Blue State living is to just smile at the Red Staters and go about our business within the glorious Federal Union. Let's let Bob marry George in our states and if they can't get it honored anywhere else, good, we'll get the business. I'm working on getting single payer health insurance to California (go here for even more about this). Business will come here because employees will be covered with less cost to the businessowner. We'll benefit, the Blue states will suffer. Let it be.

By an amazing coincidence, this post was interrupted right here by a pollster calling to ask my opinion about a health care provider.

Yes, it means we'll have to put up with certain annoyances as a consequence, like always starting behind in the Electoral College every presidential election. But as we've seen in the last two elections, if we can stop them from stealing the relatively small number of votes which push them over the winner's line, we can do it. But it shouldn't keep us from building our our Liberal's Garden of Paradise in our own back yards.

The Socialist Right does it. Whole developments are sold as "family-friendly" by Christian real estate missionaries. "Fast Food Nation" documents how the Rocky Mountains, which used to give us Mo Udall, Frank Church and Bruce Babbitt, were conquered by Christian missionaries from Texas and Orange County who took over the new suburbs which developed in the '70s and '80s. Colorado Springs, Colorado is reportedly conscious nest and informal "capital" of this silliness. Others have recently called to convert South Carolina, where the Civil War started of course, into a Christian colony. How that would look different from today, where George W. Bush is considered a moderate, is beyond me.

So if they can do it, why can't we? If they want to wallow around in a rotting imaginary snapshot of 1955, I say let 'em. The 21st century won't miss 'em at all.

Shock and Outrage

The American Decency Association (???!!) is outraged over the Detriot Lion's "dance team", a.k.a cheerleaders, supposedly racy and immoral calendar spread.

This correspondent scoured the Internet for a sample of said shamelessness, but alas, the Internet let me down. (On the other hand, I was absolutely amazed to find so many young women in college apparently meeting the tuition bill with a broad range of Webcams. Fascinating technology. But I digress.)

The outrage, of course, guarantees a hefty profit for the dancers.

That's the great thing about moral outrage. It does more to publicize salaciousness for free than anything else. Nothing like, "For God's sakes, don't look at that brazen immorality over there!" to make sure that legions of heads turn just to see what the fuss is about. Heck, when someone asked me what I thought about Janet Jackson flashing America during the Super Bowl a couple of years ago, I answered that her press agent just met his year's salary. Who the heck had even heard of Janet for years before that?

I was amazed at how many people I talked to aftewards who were too busy cleaning out the cheese dip to pay any attention to the halftime show logged on somewhere to see just what they'd missed. Ol' Janet sat in the headlines for weeks, no doubt jumpstarting a stalled career, thanks to the morally outraged.

The Terrell Owens - "Desperate Housewife" MNF preview thang later on came in a close second in the gain-from-shock derby. I missed it the first time 'round, but, again, thanks to the Internet, easily found it for serious up close analysis. That clip was actually pretty funny, and again, certainly gave "... Housewives" more than a few new vievers. Of course, the ABC network promptly expressed dismay, understanding, blah, blah, blah and then laughed all the way to the bank.

But we don't appreciate all that the ADA and their ilk do for us. Look at all the hard work they do for us, like tracking down the hottest NFL cheerleader calendars, that we'd have to do ourselves. Look at the reward they bring to the targets of their outrages, which just encourages them to outrage us even more. But do the sensible and reasonable among us take time to give them thanks and encouragement? No. We call them twisted, repressed little Puritans who probably can't go to the bathroom without the lights off. We don't give them -love-.

On the other hand, let's give them thanks but hold off on the love. If they get enough love, they'll stop being so worried about who else might be gettin' what they ain't. Then there's no use for them at all.

Life and Death

It was about this time last year that my then-six-year-old son's pet rat died after we had him just a few weeks, and I've never found out why. He had a respiratory problem before we got him, that may have been it. My son found him and was trying to "fix" him after he apparently died.

When I asked my son how the rat died, he thought a minute before answering.

"He died from not being alive," he replied.

Yeah, that'll do it every time. Whoever finds a way to lick this problem and patents it will probably make a fortune.

Me, I've learned to be careful around this subject. In mid-2002 I was diagnosed with cancer (since successful treated). I vowed then that I would never leave this world until the San Francisco Giants won the World Series.

Three months later the Giants won Game One of the 2002 Series. I politely asked whoever wherever might have overheard my earlier vow to please reconsider.

The Rose Bowl

This was a great game although it was mighty hard for me to figure out who to root for.

As Californian I can't root for Texas. As a Northern Californian I can't root for Southern California. As a loyal Brother I should root for the team with the black QB. But as a good football fan I hate these running backs disguised as QB's. But Vince Young can also throw the ball. Sheesh!

It weren't easy. So I took the easy way out and decided to root for whoever was behind at the time. If I didn't want either team to win, I'd just root for whoever happened to be behind at the time. Root for the underdog, no matter how momentary it might be.

I'm not a big fan of college football. I don't have anything against it. I just don't know who the heck these guys are. It's not like the NFL, where every water boysgets covered at least once a week on ESPN, Foxsports, CNN, NFL Network, local cable, wherever. There's a million college teams, who can keep track and still have a family?

But it's cold outside and the holidays are done, so the last few bowl games are a good way to pass the evening while Junior is still transfixed by his Christmas booty.

Some quick things came to mind while watching:

1. The Rose Bowl has traditionally been a test of power between the high flying Pacific Coast and cornfed Middle America. The BCS has messed with that, but this game still fit the general line.

2. The Texas cheerleaders had on some of the most ... interesting outfits I've seen on a college team. Usually these gals have the standard short skirt and sweathers, like most college teams. They rocked it up for the Rose Bowl, which pulled a staggering 22 percent share. The Texas tradition of pushing the line between cheerleader and can-can dancer was honored yet again.

3. USC should drop their experiment of lining up just seven guys on defense during the last couple of minutes. (What? They had a full complement? I didn't see 'em.)

4. Part of what makes college sports fun is the effect momentum can have on a game. College basketball teams can run off twelve unanswered points, leading to dramatic shifts in the game throughout the game. The Rose Bowl showed the same thing happening on a football field. Once Young had 'em on moving on the last drive, was there any doubt that Texas would score? The fourth and game scoring run didn't seem all that shocking given that USC was frozen in fear at the goal line.

5. USC is smart to have adopted the "Trojan" nickname. While the "Seminoles" and "Aztecs", among many others, get pounded on for adopting "demeaning" nicknames, USC takes the name of people who were slaughtered several thousand years ago.

6. Just like every black guy can't dance or slam dunk, not every black QB can run. But the stereotype still persists around the NFL. So It'll be interesting to see where Vince Young goes in the draft. Michael Vick is still seen as more running than thrower. The knock against "option" QB's is that their willingness and ability to run the ball keeps from sitting in the pocket and truly commanding the offense. However, Young is a good passer too. It'll be interesting to see if whatever team drafts him ties his feet together at training camp.

Btw, my favorite NFL player name has gotta be "Byron Leftwich", the Jaguars' QB. Tell someone to pick out "Byron Leftwich" in the team photo and how many would pick a colored guy?

7. How does 49ers' offensive coordinator Mike McCarthy, who oversaw one of the NFL's worst offenses in history, get rewarded with a head coaching job at Green Bay? Whoops, that's not really about the Rose Bowl. But its' so ridiculous that I just can't get it out of my mind.

Jehovah, a.k.a. "The Torpedo"

(CNN) -- Television evangelist Pat Robertson suggested Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine retribution for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

"God says, 'This land belongs to me, and you'd better leave it alone,'" he said.

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Funny. I thought the land belonged to Israel, and they were turning it over to the Gaza Arabs. I mean, the Israelis did have a deed, or an army, or something which said they held sway, didn't they? (It was both; some deeds, more army, but still clearly theirs.)

"Dividing" the land assumes it's one land, and only one land and can be only one land. So I guess the United Nations' (future abode of the world government Antichrist) 1948 decision to partition the British Palestine mandate into two separate states, one the new state of Israel, was unGodly because it "divided" the land. Only then it was Arab land. Or at least the Arabs thought so.

Or it was one piece of Palestine mandate land. Except that the concept of Palestine could also mean to include the east side of the Jordan River, which the British gave to some of T.E. Lawrence's pals for service rendered during WW1.

Of course, Gaza was taken from the Palestinian Arabs by Egypt after the Israeli War of Independence, along with Jordan taking the West Bank. One could argue that the Egyptians further divided the land by taking area previously "divided" for a Palestinian Arab state.

Whew! You wonder how God kept up with all of this. He must use a Franklin planner to keep track.

Maybe this is why he's smote so haphazardly over the years. In 1949 He smote the UN's Count Bernadotte with a Jewish terrorist, but that hardly seems fair, since Bernadotte was a henchman, not the guy who carved in the first place.

In 1950 He smote the king of Jordan for taking the West Bank, using a Palestinian Arab to do his dirty work this time, but he left the Egyptians alone. Maybe He was still feeling guilty about all those plagues and locusts and rivers of blood and murdering the first born the last time he got between the Egyptians and Jews and wanted to let it ride this time. Anwar Sadat finally got it when He finally felt a little better about all that and needed to make up for lost time.

Yitzhak Rabin bought it when another religious crazy,one of Pat's own, exercised the grim judgment of the Lord for the Oslo Accords.

Now, God apparently has decided to get rid of the middlemen and pull the plug Hisownself, through a massive stroke. Maybe it's just too hard to get good help these days. Given the likely pollution in Sharon's arteries and whatnot after years of stress and overeating, it probably didn't take much more than a divine sneeze to do the job.

Personally, I don't take all this business of divine wrath very seriously. I just bought this nice little Pat Robertson doll from Madame Damballah's Haiti.online "curios" shop, complete with pins, straight from Haiti as a ... keepsake. Maybe I'll have a little fun with it.

The Perspective Bowl

Every year we hear about how the nation “needs” a true college football national championship and how some type of playoff system is needed to make sure there’s no doubt whose number one at the end of it all. Dump the bowls, they say, and bring on an NFL-style playoff system.

Humbug, I say. Humbug!

The great thing about the bowl system is that everyone wins. Get a bowl invite and you’ve done well for the season. Win and it’s even better, but it’s not necessary. It’s a bowl game! Your fans and the other team’s fans will get to travel and party and have fun. Okay, some of the travel is to places like Shreveport (Independence Bowl) but then some is to cool places too (San Francisco’s Emerald Bowl).

They’ve even separated out the “real” championship game, playing it several days after New Year’s Day. Next year it’s a week after Bowl Day, because it’s in the NFL Cardinals’ new home and they need a week to get it ready. (I don’t know why, the Cards aren’t known as a particularly ferocious bunch; the worst damage on NFL game day will be the wear and tear on the backs of their uniforms.) The rest of the bowl world can now play in its own little world, away from the “Who’s Number One?” silliness.

Why do we need a “champion”? This is college, it’s not pro sports. They, and us, can and should be happy with a good clean game played with good sportsmanship. And it is only a game. It really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things how Screwball Tech does against Cornflake U. It doesn’t provide health care to the uninsured, defense against being spied on by our own government or peace in the Mideast. It’s a happy diversion from all these things.

So let’s treat it that way and let the kiddies play, and let them all be happy in whatever bowl they get into. Later, when they’re old and gray and they’re malnourished because the GOP and their corporate allies have cut retirement benefits down to Wal-Mart cat food level, it’ll give the old codgers something to take their minds off the gnawing scurvy. We can at least give them that.