On this day in 1968, computer scientist Douglas Engelbart gave what came to be known as The Mother of All Demos. In this single 90-minute demonstration, he introduced the world to, well, basically all the things that distinguish the computer you are using today from the computers people were using at that time (and for a bit more than a decade after that). These include:
Graphics
Windows
Mouse
Hypertext
Collaborative editing
And quite a lot more.
It was a demonstration of his own designed “oN-Line System.” It is known as NLS. Why? Because computer scientists are cruel people. Trust me, I’ve worked with them for decades. It’s a good thing we have them working on computers, because it would be ugly if they go into politics.
Anyway, that image above is the first prototype of a mouse. You may not be able to tell, but it is one-dimensional. That is a cylinder and not a sphere underneath. But it doesn’t matter. That’s actually what I like about computer scientists as compared to programmers. The scientists are just interested in concepts. Leave the details to the programmers.
I particularly enjoy reading P M Carpenter when he writes about language or literature. On politics, he’s very liberal. But on these other issues, he’s a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. But that’s okay. So am I in my own idiosyncratic way. Sunday, he wrote, Language Crimes and Misdemeanors. (How do you not like a guy who references Woody Allen films in his article titles?) It is about the big happenings at The Washington Post. It seems that they are changing their style guide in a mad rush to catch up to the publishing world of 2000!
The big news is the move from “e-mail” to “email.” This brings back nightmares of the “Internet” Capitalization War. I don’t especially care, but it seems that simpler is always better if clarity is not harmed. And there could hardly be more clarity than “email”; I think “e-mail” is a bit clunky. Another change is from “Web site” to “website.” That one is especially repugnant to me. First, who capitalized “web” after 2006? Second, two words? Not even a hyphen?! At this point a website is something distinct from a site on the web. It deserves its own word, just like “gravesite” (which many websites represent).
But for pure silliness, The Post has decided to switch from “Wal-Mart” to “Walmart.” The truth is that the corporation’s name has been “Wal-Mart” since 1969. But the company calls itself “Walmart,” and has done so for a very long time. That’s the thing about style guides: they are autocratic. But all autocrats should know the limits of their powers. And continuing to call something by the wrong name is, well, wrong. We can argue all we want about capitalizing “internet,” but people and institutions have names. They define them — not the copy editor at The Washington Post. (BTW: I format The Post’s name like that because that is what it calls itself; I try to do that with all names.)
Carpenter doesn’t have a problem with these changes, but he doesn’t seem to be keen on them either. He describes the changes in the terms of war, “There are tactical moments, however, when ground should — and perhaps must — be ceded…” This is more or less, “I’ll give you ‘website’ but you can have ‘internet’ when you pry my cold dead hands off that capital I!” Fair enough. But what is this war being fought over? If The Washington Post gives up “Internet,” will it lead to George Will writing sentences like, “Me and him gone down to the fishin’ hole”? It’s absurd.
To me, it is always about clarity first and ease of writing second. As a result, unlike Carpenter, I am fanatical about the serial comma. Why? Because it is often necessary for clarity (“Jack Benny, Groucho Marx, and Burns and Allen”), and it is easier for the writer to simply put it in and not worry about whether it is or is not necessary. So these are what guide me in writing. The problem is that a stubborn commitment to past practice is very often an impediment to clarity and ease of writing.
I try, in my writing, to get things right — as defined by intelligent opinion. But that’s clearly third on my list of priorities. As for style guides? They are more about branding than grammar.
Yesterday, Paul Krugman wrote about the Federal Reserve’s almost certain coming interest rate hike. I’ve been very gloomy about this and you all may be very bored with my obsession. But it is really important. And Krugman added an extra bit of gloom. He said that the Fed could very well be wrong about the economy — causing it to stagnate. “And this would be much more serious than a modest uptick in inflation, because it’s not at all clear what the Fed could do to fix its mistake.” That sentence sent a chill down my spine.
The issue isn’t really interest rates; it is rather the expectations of the business community. It doesn’t take much for the economy to go on tilt. A few businesses start laying off workers and it starts a cascade. And the Fed does what? Lower interest rates?! The interest rates wouldn’t be high enough for that to have much effect. The vast majority of businesses are just reacting to the businesses that reacted badly to the first Fed rise. Sure: it will all sort itself out. Eventually. But I’m old enough to take Keynes’ maxim very seriously, “In the long run we are all dead.”
Let’s suppose that Janet Yellen and Partners, LLC does get it wrong. Let’s suppose they raise interest rates and the economy stagnates or goes into recession. That will mean millions of people who should have had jobs won’t.
Krugman has written a lot over the last several years about how inexplicable it is that policymakers continue to listen the advice of people who have been “wrong every step of the way.” But I don’t really understand his confusion. Isn’t it clear enough that it is the policymakers themselves who want to do what has been shown to be “wrong every step of the way”? I am not inclined to give the Fed much credit here. It is an institution of, by, and for the bankers. It isn’t raising interest rates because it thinks this is what the economy needs right now; it is raising them because it wants to and now it can get away with it.
But let’s suppose that Janet Yellen and Partners, LLC does get it wrong. Let’s suppose they raise interest rates and the economy stagnates or goes into recession. That will mean millions of people who should have had jobs won’t. But I can tell you some people who won’t be out of a job: Fed Chair Janet Yellen; Fed Vice-Chair Stanley Fischer; Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo; and so on. None of them will be held to account. People like that are never held to account.
Krugman wrote, “But those critics have been wrong every step of the way. Why start taking them seriously now?” A better question might be, “Why do they even have jobs?” The truth is a professional fire fighter who was terrible at his job would not be a professional fire fighter. That goes for pretty much every job that regular people have.
I was recently on the periphery of the firing of a writer at my day job. I feel bad about it because I was at least party to blame: I complained about him a lot. The truth is that he was turning in crap work. Yet the work was passable. He never did anything that seriously damaged the company. But if the Fed seriously damages our economy, no one will be fired.
On this day way back in 65 BC, the great Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known to us English speakers as simply Horace, was born. Most people know of him because of one line from one of his poems Odes Book III, Poem 2: Dulce Et Decorum Est. The line itself is, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” A straight translation is, “Sweet and decorous it is for the fatherland to die.” Now Horace is exhorting his fellow Romans to man up. You can read the whole poem in English at Poetry in Translation. Today, we know the line from Wilfred Owen’s poem of the same name where he quotes the line. This is how he ends his poem:
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
I learned a great deal about Latin from reading Horace. All my life, I had heard that Latin was a perfect language. Yet here was this famous line that ends with an infinitive. It sounded vaguely like German to me. What I learned is that there is no such thing as a perfect language. And no language is superior to another. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. I run into grammatical problems all the time that simply can’t be solved in English, but that is built right into other languages. It is very much like programming languages. The best language depends upon what you want to say. And that can change clause by clause. But one cool thing about Latin: it really isn’t that hard. If I had a child, I would encourage her to study it.
For some reason, I found myself reading Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. It’s an odd book to read at this time, because it is primarily an effort to explain the Vietnam War. But even more, I found myself wondering why she was making such a big deal out of the folly of humans. I mean, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Humans are awful, even though individual humans are mostly all right. It is the way we work as a system — which has been critical to our success or macro-organism — that allows us to be far more stupid and less humane together than apart.
She starts by asking, “Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests?” Unfortunately, she really does not discuss the Trojan War. Instead, she provides a short chapter about why the Trojans brought the wooden horse inside the city. If anything were fanciful in Homer, it is that. The real question is why the Greeks started that war. So Menelaus could get his wife Helen back? The women he plans to kill once the Trojans are defeated? Not that I’m suggesting that this is any more true than the wooden horse. But Homer presents the Trojan War as a tragedy for Greeks as well as the Trojans.
I was watching Bettany Hughes’ documentary, The Minotaur’s Island, which is about the Minoans. At one archaeological dig, a human sacrifice seems to have been caught in action. An earthquake destroyed the temple, killing the priest and entombing him with his two victims. It makes me wonder if the temple’s collapse wasn’t the result of an aftershock, and that the human sacrifice wasn’t a reaction to the original earthquake. I’ll admit, I love the irony of that. But regardless, priests didn’t do sacrifices of any kind just to be mean. They did them for a purpose — whether that was to assure a good harvest or calm the earthquakes.
But here is where I think folly is well on display. I’m sure that in various places for short periods of times, priests actually thought that human sacrifices were a really great way to get the gods to give you what you wanted. But I can’t imagine that they didn’t quickly notice that, actually, the human sacrifices were irrelevant. But a priest who realizes this is in a bind for a couple of reasons. First, it would seriously damage his reputation. But second, and I think more important, is the social expectation of the sacrifices.
A leader is every bit as much a “poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage” as is some guy sleeping in the drunk tank in the local jail.
Imagine the priest goes to the people and says, “You know, these sacrifices are not what the gods want.” And then there is a bad harvest or an earthquake. If the priest had done the sacrifice? Well, at least he tried. We all know the gods are fickle. But he didn’t even try! He just made up this story about human sacrifices being unnecessary, and now look at us? We’re starving! That priest is almost certainly going to die very painfully, very soon.
I think most forms of individual human power are illusory. I’ve noted this a lot about the speakership of John Boehner. He had power, but only if he didn’t use it. In the end, he swapped his appearance of power (he lost his speakership) for exercising the tiny bit of the real power he actually had. And that is human social interaction in a broader sense. We are involved in a kind of huge negotiation. A leader is every bit as much a “poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage” as is some guy sleeping in the drunk tank in the local jail.
And I know that some will saw, “Yeah, but the leader does get some measure of power.” But I don’t think that’s true. Leaders become so at the pleasure of the masses. Just like Peter Jennings would never have been allowed to anchor World News Tonight if he didn’t instinctively know what would get him fired, leaders instinctively know what will make the masses literally tear them apart limb by limb. We, as a macro-organism, get the leaders we want. And when they do supremely stupid things, it’s because we are at very least, okay with it — and more likely cheering it on. Because “we” are far more stupid and inhumane than you and I ever will be.
I don’t know how many times people have given me the stock market [argument]. Well, that’s great if you own a lot of stock. But that’s almost no one. Invariably, when I say that, reporters are really taken aback, “What do you mean?! I own stock! My friends own stock!” I go, “Yeah! Like I said: almost no one.” You have a lot people who are writing on economic issues that are incredibly out of touch with what the economy is for most of the country.
This tweet came to my attention via the great Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns & Money, The Environment in Which Trump Can Thrive. I don’t follow Erick Erickson, because he is not only a vile man, he’s also an idiot. He’s the sort of guy who would never have a writing job if he were liberal. He’s the poster-child of conservative affirmative action. The last time I wrote about him was all the way back in 2013, when he was saying if only the Republicans had kept the government shutdown going another day, week, month, year, then they would win!
But this tweet is a level vileness and stupidity that, while not exactly shocking coming from Erickson, is at least notable:
Growing up, I remember my parents never letting us have Asian food on December 7th. They were children of WWII.
There are two issues here. The first took me a moment to see, because it is so part of the conservative ethos that it tends to be invisible. It’s racism. This has nothing to do with World War II or “December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.” It is just throwing together a huge group of people and blaming them for Pearl Harbor. The fact that Erickson’s parents would feel this way is understandable, I suppose. What is only explicable because Erickson is a vile and stupid man, is why he would proudly repeat this bit of bigotry.
It’s also worth noting that Erickson was born in 1975. So his parents are almost certainly not from the Silent Generation, but from the Baby Boomers. If Erickson’s mother was 30 when she had him, she would have been born just in time for the end of the World War II. If that is a child of World War II, then we are all children of World War II. (And to some extent, we are; that makes Erickson’s claim all the more silly.) In addition, this has to be in the late 1970s and early 1980s. That’s a real grudge to hold.
But the second issue is the real reason I’m writing this. It was Japan that attacked on on this date 74 years ago, not “Asia.” In fact, China was an ally and was savagely abused by Japan — costing the lives of 14 million Chinese people during the war. Now maybe Erickson means “Japanese food.” After all, he seems to have come from a somewhat affluent family (they moved to Dubai when he was five). But as Lemieux noted, “I would bet dollars to beef and broccoli lunch specials that the ‘Asian food’ the Ericksons were abstaining from was Chinese food.”
Right. You know: food that kinda sorta comes from the country that was our ally in the war that Erickson’s parents were children of. This reminds me of the way that bigots during that time equated Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and so on. And now they equate Arabs, Persians, Indians, and so on. But it is amazing that someone so important in the conservative movement would make this kind of mistake. You may remember that the conservative movement used to have people like William Buckley.
Afterword
As I write this, Wikipedia has already integrated this tweet into his bio. It sounds to me like it was done by someone ridiculing him. But it could instead have been added by someone who simply has no idea about narrative flow:
Erickson was born in Jackson in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, moved to Dubai, United Arab Emirates when he was five, and returned to Jackson when he was fifteen. Erickson’s parents refused to let his family eat Asian food on December 7th, the anniversary of the Attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Navy. Erickson attended the American School of Dubai, previously known as the Jumeirah American School.
It’s kind of like: “Eric was born in Louisiana. He had a turtle named ‘Prigsby’! He went to school in Dubai.”
Well, as every American school child knows, this day in 1941, was “a date which will live in infamy.” Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. Two quick things. First, I’m sure FDR was thrilled, because he had been itching for a reason to get into the war because our UK allies were involved in it. Second, what we did to the Japanese in the following years decreases “infamy” to something more like “rudeness.” And don’t bother me about it. Just because modern warfare is accepted by much of the world does not mean that I have to accept it. Was the Pearl Harbor attack on civilians? No. Okay, on to more pleasant subjects.
On this day in 1972, one of the most famous pictures in the history of humanity was taken: The Blue Marble. It was shot by the crew of the Apollo 17 — the same day that the mission was launched. It was the last time that we went to the Moon. We had gotten really good at going to the Moon, so Americans didn’t care. On the other hand, when we were fighting a pointless war in Vietnam, you have to wonder if they weren’t right.
Regardless, the picture is spectacular. It makes Africa look kind of small. But more than that, it makes humanity look small and fragile. It makes me wonder about everything we fight over. There are currently 27 armed conflicts ongoing on in Africa. That’s half as many as there are countries in Africa. It’s just sad. It makes me wonder if this is why we die relatively young. Who could suffer the pain of watching humanity for hundreds of years?
But at least the image makes me think of a beautiful song:
I find myself more and more cynical these days. A lot of people have taken to calling Donald Trump a fascist. And he is. But as Jonathan Chait wrote last week, “A nominated Trump would be a different figure.” His point is that the reason the mainstream press feels as though it can call Trump out is because the Republican establishment is attacking him. If Trump gets nominated, the Republicans will fall in line and the mainstream press will be back to, “Trump says most immigrants are rapists, and Clinton says they aren’t. Who can’t say?! It’s a postmodern world!”
But the basic outline of fascism is what we humans naturally are. What Hitler did was only remarkable because we don’t do it so much anymore — at least in such clear ways. But fascism used to be the norm, not the exception. And the broader issue is just our tendency toward hierarchy. I was reading about spotted hyenas this morning. They are the most social of hyenas, with a rigid hierarchy. (There is an interesting twist that the lowest of females is dominant over the highest of males.) It is also passed on from generation to generation; that is, if mom was top hyena, so are you. The hierarchy is based on allies and it is rare for there to be a reversal of rank.
Now, all of this should sound very familiar. This is generally how things work with primates — most especially humans. Forget Donald Trump, let’s talk about Dick Cheney. On Friday, Glenn Greenwald wrote, US First Shields Its Torturers and War Criminals From Prosecution, Now Officially Honors Them. He noted, “Yesterday, the House of Representatives unveiled a marble bust of former Vice President Cheney, which — until a person of conscience vandalizes or destroys it — will reside in Emancipation Hall of the US Capitol.” You can bet whoever vandalizes the bust will do jail time — unlike the man being honored.
This went along with a presentation where the avuncular Joe Biden said, “I actually like Dick Cheney… I can say without fear of contradiction, there’s never one single time been a harsh word, not one single time in our entire relationship.” Of course there hasn’t! Dick Cheney may be a war criminal, but he’s “our” war criminal. He may be one of the most vile humans on the planet, but he’s “our” vile human. And by “our,” of course, I don’t me you or me; I mean the power elite; I mean people of Dick Cheney’s rank; I mean the hyena allies.
I’ve always been a bit bothered by the Nuremberg trials. I’m all for justice. But there was certainly an enormous amount of hypocrisy going on. What we saw was what we always saw: the winners of the war calling out all the bad behavior of the losers. Certainly the Allies had committed war crimes. According to one recent estimate, US troops alone raped almost 200,000 women. But there were also massacres and torture. And there was the firebombing of cities. War is hell, but there is not hell to pay if you win.
And so, of course Obama was never going to prosecute people in the Bush administration. And given that, it follows that there would eventually be statues honoring Dick Cheney. That’s because Obama, Biden, Bush, Cheney, Clinton, or any other major political figure will never hold one of the others accountable. They may do different things to get our votes, but they know they need each other. Hyena allies.
On Friday, we got the new jobs report. Usually, I anxiously await the first Friday of the month, but I’ve gotten to see it as pointless. I want to see good numbers — for the economy to continue to create jobs. But what does it matter? We really do not live in a democracy; we live in a plutocracy. And that is nowhere as clear as it is with the Federal Reserve. It is a group half made up of people whose only qualification is that they are rich. And these people aren’t looking out the best interests of the country — much less the American worker.
So if the economy looks like it might be taking off — like workers might be able to demand a more just share of the nation’s productivity — the Fed is right there to stop it. After years during which the rich capitalists have made scads of money and workers have seen their pay stagnate and even decrease, the Fed is unwilling to allow even a hint of “dangerous” inflation that might hurt the rich. It has now be years that the Fed has been wanting to raise interest rates. And they have quite literally been looking for any excuse to do it. The data do not drive the policy; the data are just tools of Fed apologetics.
We are looking at raising interest rates. Why? Sad to say, a lot of it has to do with this fact: the last time the Fed raised interest rates was June 2006. It’s like people are unnerved by this or something…
Consider that the standard U3 unemployment rate is 5%. Back in 2000, Janet Yellen was certain that this was full employment — the level that you do not go below for fear of accelerating inflation. But Alan Greenspan — admittedly a bit of a crank — said no and allowed unemployment to get down to 3.9%. You may remember that period as the last time you got a raise. And there was no accelerating inflation. So hooray! We learned something: 5% is not full employment.
But it is 15 years later, and now Yellen is in Greenspan’s position. But apparently, she learned nothing from the past. Or, she is just a hack for the financial industry — which is probably the more accurate reading of it. I’m not saying that full employment would be 3.9% now. I don’t know what it is. But the truth is that there is absolutely no sign of inflation, yet we are looking at raising interest rates. Why? Sad to say, a lot of it has to do with this fact: the last time the Fed raised interest rates was June 2006. It’s like people are unnerved by this or something — like they aren’t aware of just how bad the collapsing of the housing bubble was.
I listened to the beginning of Marketplace on Friday. In the segment about the jobs report, Linette Lopez of Business Insider is obviously giddy about the Fed raising interest rates. Sudeep Reddy of The Wall Street Journal just seemed to be resigned towards it. Regardless, lots of people are going to go without jobs because the Fed is going to raise interest rates. But none of these kind of business reporters seem all that aware of it — or at least care about it.
And it is worse than I’ve stated. As Dean Baker noted, in addition to an unchanged unemployment rate, “There was also no change in the labor force participation rate or the employment-to-population ratio, both of which remain far below pre-recession levels.” So the truth is that there is incredible slack in the economy. But the Fed must raise interest rates, because the rich might lose a couple of pennies. And besides, they haven’t raised rates in such a long time!
And so we start another week of Morning Music. I’ve been reading, Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man. So I thought we ought to feature him. He was an amazing talent. He died far too young. And he spent far too much time otherwise engaged, releasing no work. Still he left the world a great deal of work: 13 studio albums.
Given that he isn’t that well known, I think we should start with his breakout song, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” off his first album, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. I first heard it when I was in my very late teens, working graveyard as a baker. It blew my mind. For one thing, I had long been interested in a kind of chanting or talk singing. And I had long been told by people that you just couldn’t do that. Well, here was someone doing that and it was electrifying.
Note a couple of things about this. First, not all his work is like this. He was quite varied. Much of his music is very jazzy, as the song I’m going to feature tomorrow off his next album. Second, this is the original version. If you want to hear his recording of the song with a full band, it is on YouTube. I prefer this one:
Cover of “Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man” licensed under fair use.
Pieces of a Man
Today we listen to the title track of Pieces of a Man. Gil Scott-Heron wrote it with jazz composer Brian Jackson — who he would do some of his best work with.
The song is the perfect combination of music and lyrics. It sounds like a jazz standard with lots of major 7th chords. It is highly evocative, even as it tells a fairly concrete story about a man destroyed by his economic difficulties. In particular, it highlights the importance of having a paying job to a man’s self-esteem. “He was a good man and a strong man, yet he went to pieces.”
I especially like the line, “And for some unknown reason, he never turned my way.” I know that experience. Men of that generation did not like to cry. But this feeling was especially true when it came to crying in front of their sons. They felt like they had to be strong for their sons. Although as this song indicates (but it is not autobiographical), sons still saw their fathers as strong. Regardless, that’s such a wonderful way of rendering the scene — explaining exactly what was happening with very few words.
Jagged jigsaw pieces Tossed about the room, I saw my grandma sweeping With her old straw broom. But she didn’t know what she was doing. She could hardly understand, That she was really sweeping up Pieces of a man.
I saw my daddy meet the mailman. And I heard the mailman say, “Now don’t you take this letter to hard now Jimmy, Cause they’ve laid off nine others today.” But he didn’t know what he was saying. He could hardly understand That he was only talking to Pieces of a man.
I saw the thunder and heard the lightning, And felt the burden of his shame. And for some unknown reason, He never turned my way!
Pieces of that letter Were tossed about that room. And now I hear the sound of sirens Come knifing through the gloom. But they don’t know what they are doing. They could hardly understand That they’re only arresting Pieces of a man.
I saw him go to pieces! I saw him go to pieces! He was always such a good man! He was always such a strong, strong man! Yeah, I saw him go to pieces. I saw him go to pieces.
We will slide smoothly into Gil Scott-Heron’s third album, Free Will. I’m making no effort to stay away from his better known tunes, because none of his work that that well know. And even people who have heard these tunes may not know who did them. Today, I feature, “The Get Out of the Ghetto Blues.”
One thing that was interesting about the black power movement was how self-critical it was. In that way, it was exactly what conservatives like David Brooks and Paul Ryan claim the African American community should be. (In my work with a local Baptist church, I can assure you that this never went away.) But, of course, white America was terrified of black power. And, of course, we aren’t just talking bigots in small town Mississippi. We are talking northern white suburbanites — most of whom did not consider themselves racists.
“The Get Out of the Ghetto Blues” is very simple. It’s about self-empowerment — by way of hectoring. It also has an awesome guitar part by David Spinozza.
In 1973, Gil Scott-Heron released what I think is generally considered his masterpiece, Winter in America. And that’s saying something, considering the amazing quality of his work throughout his career. And I really think you should take eight minutes to love yourself by listening to “H²Ogate Blues.” Get it? It is an amazing musically accompanied rap. It is intense and insightful. But what it reminds me of is Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” because it is so clear that the musicians are having such a great time. It can’t help but cheer you up, and you don’t even have to think of Nixon and Vietnam. Although “Just how blind, America?” still cuts like a new razor.
But instead, let’s do a song that wasn’t on the original release of Winter in America: “Winter in America.” I’m sure it was meant to be on it. It was on his next album. And it has been on reissues. It starts with the line, “From the Indians who welcomed the pilgrims.” And I’m sure to most people, the response will be, “Yes, it probably did feel like winter in America in 1973.” But I think Scott-Heron is still right. Nothing has changed. It’s just that we are more delusional than we used to be. We pretend that we aren’t at war because we use machines to prop up our empire. Americans may not be dying, but I think it is pretty clear that America is dying.
Forgive me. By definition, weeks only have seven days, and it is impossible to squeeze into that the whole career of someone as great as Gil Scott-Heron. So I’m just going to jump to his last album, I’m New Here. We’ll spend our last two days on it.
It is not even a half hour long, but it packs a punch. In one way, it is totally different from what he’d done before. There’s a lot more atmosphere. But fundamentally, it is another Gil Scott-Heron record — in many ways as good as anything he ever did.
Me And The Devil
What we’re going to listen to is a video of two works on that album. The first song is his amazing cover of Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil Blues.” I don’t really know what to say. You’ve got to hear it. It’s fantastic. And then, there is his song “Your Soul and Mine.” It is Scott-Heron reciting “The Vulture” off his first album, with atmospheric music underneath. “Standing in the ruins of another black man’s life…” The two songs go perfectly together:
I’m New Here is probably Gil Scott-Heron’s most personal album. Or at least it feels that way. A friend mentioned that it was interesting that he should fall into the very trap of drug addiction and jail that he preached against. But I noted that this is actually a misreading of his work. Any hectoring that he did was loving. His real attacks were against the system that destroyed people. The fact that the system, to some extent, destroyed him almost seems appropriate to me.
The good thing about it is that he was able to write from both sides of it. For example, “The Crutch” presents what I think of as a very knowing portrait of a heroin addict, even though that was not his drug of choice. But I want to share with you a very raw blues number, “New York Is Killing Me.” It is both personal and social. And it is eternal. I am apparently not the only one to think that, because there are a lot of derivative songs based on it. But here is the album cut:
Gil Scott-Heroin 1990
We come to the end of our week of Gil Scott-Heron, and as usual, I’ve chosen a live set for this Saturday. I had a hard time choosing. The truth is that there are kind of two Gil Scott-Herons. There’s the young firebrand. Then there is the older and wiser man. Being older and wiser myself, I identify much more with the latter. But it is often great to spend time with the firebrand. It doesn’t really matter. I love it all.
The big problem is that I can’t find any live performances that are really late. They are more in the late 1990s and early 2000s when he was struggling. These performances make me a bit sad, even though they are still very good. This is the third time I’m posting a live performance. They keep being taken down. It’s from 1990.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdqLAeyqVr8
Cover of “Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man” licensed under Fair Use.
Popcorn, Bottle, and Gil Scott-Heron
Many of you may know of my fondness for Gil Scott-Heron and his funky proto-rap. I remember the first time I heard him, I was working as a baker in my late teens. The one nice thing about that job was that I was alone and so I could listen to the local alternative radio station. And on came “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” It was a revelation, “The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal… The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner because the revolution will not be televised.”
Earlier today, my friend (and sometimes writer for this site) Will sent me a link to Scott-Heron’s song “The Bottle” with a note, “Doesn’t the bass line sound like corn popping?” I had to admit that it did. But going back over a lot of his work, that’s more generally true. That’s part of what makes his work funky. There is no funk guitar, so it all comes down to the bass and the percussion. But the bass on “The Bottle” does sound more like a popcorn machine than any other song I’ve heard.
The song itself is deadly serious despite a really catchy tune and pleasant production. It’s about hopeless people who find their only solace in alcohol. It could be anything though. The bridge is slightly different each time, but the lyrics are:
Don’t you think it’s a crime The way, time after time Friends of mine In the bottle There’s people sure ‘nough In the bottle
But the song offers no solutions, and not even much in the way of context. Maybe in the three years between “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and “The Bottle,” Scott-Heron had become a bit more cynical. I don’t actually think so. But it is certainly true that Small Talk at 125th and Lenox with “Revolution” and “Whitey on the Moon” is more strident than Winter in America. I prefer the former, but musically the latter is better.
Anyway, here is “The Bottle”:
Conclusion
Gil Scott-Heron was one of the rarest of things: an idiosyncratic artist who was incredibly skilled. Every time I’m forced to listen to some American Idol screetcher, I’m reminded of the authentic beauty of Gil Scott-Heron’s work. In a way, I think of him as our Jacques Brel. But his work is so much more relevant to my life. I wish he were still alive. He’d only be 68 as I write this. It would be a different thing if his last album was weak, but it was some of his strongest work. He had so much more to offer us.
But I am extremely grateful for the work that he did leave to us. And I recommend that you check him out. There is lots of his work on YouTube. And you can still buy his albums at Amazon or your local record store. Listening to Gil Scott-Heron is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself!
On this day exactly 150 years ago — 6 December 1865 — the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. It abolished slavery, except as punishment for a crime — a loophole the south would use against African Americans in very clear ways. And thanks to the “war on drugs,” it has come back in a big way. Still, this was an important amendment. But it’s odd that it is more symbolic than anything else.
It is, of course, the Fourteenth Amendment that created the modern United States. This is something that I find conservatives just don’t understand. The United States was founded. It was pretty screwed up. But we had an amendment process. The Fourteenth was part of that. They might want to wish it away so they can go back to the good ol’ days of a weak federal government. But this is what America is, based upon its founding documents; if you don’t like it, you don’t like America. It’s as simple as that.
Perhaps the reason that the Thirteenth Amendment is not more important is that the Constitution never directly claimed that slavery was legal. Again, conservatives may be unhappy that Obama issues executive orders (though they didn’t have a problem when Bush did so). But they too are part of the government, and because of the way the Constitution was originally set up, Lincoln was able to free all the slaves in the Confederacy with the Emancipation Proclamation. But again, it was good to clarify that slavery was done. Plus, there were still slaves in Union states.
The whole thing is nicely ironic — and I think entirely typical of conservatives — that if the Confederate states had not been so pigheaded, the should would have been able to keep it’s “peculiar institution” for a lot longer. I know I’m rambling, but I keep remembering this line from Ken Burns: The Civil War. When poor southern soldiers were asked why they were fighting, they replied that it was because the northern soldiers were there. Well, first: they weren’t northern soldiers, but the soldiers of all of them. Second: isn’t that typical that the elites could convince poor southern whites to fight and die for an institution that doubtless made them poorer than they would have been? Nothing changes.
On this day in 1968, computer scientist Douglas Engelbart gave what came to be known as The Mother of All Demos. In this single 90-minute demonstration, he introduced the world to, well, basically all the things that distinguish the computer you are using today from the computers people were using at that time (and for a bit more than a decade after that). These include:
I particularly enjoy reading P M Carpenter when he writes about language or literature. On politics, he’s very liberal. But on these other issues, he’s a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. But that’s okay. So am I in my own idiosyncratic way. Sunday, he wrote, 
Yesterday, 
On this day way back in 65 BC, the great Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known to us English speakers as simply 
I don’t know how many times people have given me the stock market [argument]. Well, that’s great if you own a lot of stock. But that’s almost no one. Invariably, when I say that, reporters are really taken aback, “What do you mean?! I own stock! My friends own stock!” I go, “Yeah! Like I said: almost no one.” You have a lot people who are writing on economic issues that are incredibly out of touch with what the economy is for most of the country.
This tweet came to my attention via the great Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns & Money, 
Well, as every American school child knows, this day in 1941, was “a date which will live in infamy.” 
I find myself more and more cynical these days. A lot of people have taken to calling Donald Trump a fascist. And he is. But as 
Now, all of this should sound very familiar. This is generally how things work with primates — most especially humans. Forget Donald Trump, let’s talk about Dick Cheney. On Friday, Glenn Greenwald wrote, 
Many of you may know of my fondness for Gil Scott-Heron and his funky proto-rap. I remember the first time I heard him, I was working as a baker in my late teens. The one nice thing about that job was that I was alone and so I could listen to the local alternative radio station. And on came “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” It was a revelation, “The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal… The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner because the revolution will not be televised.”
On this day exactly 150 years ago — 6 December 1865 — the 
