Moring Music: Rednecks by Randy Newman

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Good Old Boys - RednecksWhen I started this week of offensive Randy Newman songs, I knew I had a lot to choose from. But I had one song in particular in mind: “Rednecks” off his Good Old Boys album. The narrator is a redneck and he shows himself to be bigoted in the most offensive way. It starts talking about how the segregationist Lester Maddox was on television with “some smart-ass New York Jew.” As he’s discussing his own people, he notes that men go to LSU, “Went in dumb — come out dumb too.” And then there is the refrain, “We are keeping the niggers down.”

Now this is presented in the context of it being the way that northerners think of southerners. But he isn’t saying it’s wrong. He isn’t saying that the south isn’t like that. He’s saying that the north is hypocritical. The bridge is devastating. He says that the north has “set the nigger free.” And he provides a long list of how the African American is free, “Yes he’s free to be put in a cage in Harlem in New York City.” And it goes on that way. The song could be a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement, if the song weren’t such a muddle with every offensive word that was handy.

The Problem Isn’t the Rednecks

“Rednecks” was released in 1974. Since that time, the kind of overt, impolite, racism of the singer exhibits has mostly become a thing of the past. It is so much a thing of the past that even Sean Hannity finds it unacceptable. At the same time, mass incarceration of African Americans has become a far bigger issue. Words do matter. But they only go so far. We’ve created a society that is largely polite to African Americans. But not one that offers them opportunity.

We should have spent less time worrying about the rednecks and more time worrying about the system of racism our society is built upon.

Cover image licensed under Wikipedia.

Anniversary Post: Bloody Sunday 1900

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Explosion at Battle of Paardeberg - Bloody SundayOn this day in 1900, there was Bloody Sunday. I know what you’re thinking, “Aren’t there about five hundred ‘Bloody Sundays’?” Yeah, pretty much. This one had to do with the Second Boer War. It was the first day of the Battle of Paardeberg. And the British were destroyed. The South African Republic completely dominated that day. But the battle lasted over a week, and the British ended up winning decisively — capturing over 4,000 soldiers on the other side.

I love the Boer Wars! They are such great examples of the futility of war. In one of my all time favorite films, Dean Spanley, the elder Fisk asks, “Did we win the Boer War?” And Fisk the younger replies, “I believe we lost more slowly than the other side.” In that particular case, the slowly losing included the Fisks’ son and brother.

The British did win the war. Not that it really matters. In the end, it really all comes down to who is going to collect the taxes. There isn’t much more than that. Of course, to the British people, imperialism was a great burden that they did for the good of the world. It’s very much like I discussed in the Morning Music post about “Political Science.” The people of countries always think their governments go about the world doing great deeds, but it’s all propaganda to get the people to continue to support the war machine so the power elite can continue to expand their power and wealth.

Bloody Sunday: We Never Learn

But what Bloody Sunday really reminds me of is this:

Don’t declare victory too soon. One day. A couple of weeks. Even a couple of years. These don’t mean all that much. Bloody Sunday didn’t. Things change. And they especially change when you have done precious little planning. The British lost the First Boer War, although admittedly, it wasn’t much of a war. When people talk of the Boer War, they mean the second one. Less than a hundred men died in the first one. Roughly 30,000 died in the second one. But young Fisk was wrong. The British had a huge advantage in terms of troops and lost twice as many. But the war was devastating on the civilian population — both white and black.

War is hell. That really is true. But a lot of people have a hard time believing it.

W/ Bob & David Goes Mr Show One Better

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W/ Bob & DavidI finally got around to watching W/ Bob & David. I won’t pretend to be objective about the show. I am still a big fan of Mr Show. There are generally two ways that fans respond to these kinds of things: with great disappointment or great enthusiasm. I tend to come down on the enthusiasm side of these things. The gang’s back together and that’s all that really matters.

As I’ve noted before, however, Mr Show evolved over time. The first two seasons are really good. But it didn’t reach greatness until the third and fourth seasons. I believe that W/ Bob & David is every bit as good as those later episodes of Mr Show — and maybe even better. But I say that with full knowledge that they are doing something a little different here.

What really stands out in W/ Bob & David is just how subtle some of the humor is. It can get past you the first time through. Take, for example, the opening of the first episode. There is a big porta-potty on stage. We learn that after Mr Show ended, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross got into this time machine and set it for the year 2015. And now they were emerging.

They soon find out that all they’ve been doing is sitting in a box for the previous 16 years. They’ve aged just like everyone else. It turned out that their “real time travel machine” sold to them by Dr Gilly Fartsworth was in fact at “real-time travel machine.” That’s pretty subtle. I love it of course: it’s those grammatical details that get you every time!

So Bob and David go back to 1998 to have it out with Gilly Fartsworth. Now they are another 16 years older. Fartsworth explains to them the machine can, in fact, do what they want. They just had to push a red button labeled, “DE-HYPENATOR.” It’s silly stuff, but it’s hard not to think that it was written for me personally.

The rest of that show revolves around a bunch of friends at a poker game. They all admit to their new year’s resolutions. They are all absurd. John Ennis is going to Hollywood to become a director of “big budget, crowd-pleasing, award-winning films.” Jay Johnston, despite being on parole, is going to become a Circuit Court judge — start “nice and low.” But Paul Tompkins, whose doctor has told him he has to stop eating meat, has resolved to give up red meat. All the others consider this “over the top.” The episode ends with all the others having accomplished their resolutions with Tompkins having failed to stay off meat. He’s in a hospital bed, bites into a pepperoni sausage, and dies.

Most of W/ Bob & David is not really played for big laughs. There are moments, of course. I was particularly amused by David Cross as Judge Sandy “Some Nonsense” Whistleton in a parody television court show. It perfectly captured the capricious nature of the judges on these shows. And then there was a parody of the Larry the Cable Guy Prilosec commercials that was so vicious that I lost it. There is not nearly enough mockery of red neck culture, if you ask me.

But what was perhaps most remarkable was the segment on “Better Roots,” a new film that “takes on the most disgraceful chapter in American history: the showing of Roots.” The director does not like the “s-word” (slavery) and refers to slaves as “helpers.” It has scenes where the “helpers” get angry because the owner keeps making them stop for lemonade breaks and expressions of his thankfulness. What’s remarkable about this is that the shows first aired in November of last year. They must have been produced quite a lot earlier than that, because the production values are of feature film quality. So this must have pre-dated the revelation that Texas was using a school textbook that referred to slaves as “immigrants.” These guys are still on top of the cultural trends in this country.

There are only four episodes of W/ Bob & David. If you just want comedy, it seems to me that the strongest episode is the third with “Know Your Rights With Gilvin Daughtry,” about a guy who makes videos helping people stand up for their rights against the police. Unfortunately, the police he runs into are very nice. And there is another that may amuse me only because I so hate skiing. It’s about the legendary skier Waif Nickelson who revolutionizes the sport just because he hates it so much and is trying to get it over as fast as possible. (I’m laughing as I type this!) There is also a segment where Cross plays a Ronnie Dobbs style scumbag with the super power where whenever he calls someone a “cunt” she (normally, but not exclusively) shows up behind him. He is used by the FBI to find lost children and terrorists.

The main thing about W/ Bob & David is that it shows everyone involved in the show is still operating at the cutting edge of comedy. The show is not going back to the days of Mr Show, it’s moving forward. I hope they do more.

Image taken from IndieWire, licensed under Fair Use.

Michael Bloomberg’s Unconsidered Assumptions

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Michael BloombergDavid Dayen wrote what turned out to be an amusing article over at New Republic, Michael Bloomberg’s Target Voter: Himself. It is about his grumbling that the people are tired of the extremism of the two parties and what they really want is a “moderate” like himself.

Obviously, coming from a billionaire, this is the basis of high comedy. Michael Bloomberg reminds me of Malvolio in Twelfth Night smiling and dressing like a clown. It also reminds me of a story I had read told by an ex-slave about his master doing target practice in preparation for the Civil War. Those with great power are most prone to make huge fools of themselves because they have no one to keep them in check.

Dayen described the true situation:

An anti-teachers’-union, anti-gun, pro-nanny state, pro-Wall Street, pro-stop-and-frisk, pro-inequality, pro-immigration, pro-surveillance, pro-Iraq War neoconservative is almost surgically designed to repel practically every American voter on some level.

But even if you got rid of his gun and immigration policy preferences, conservative voters would still hate him. But this is all part of a larger issue about the class of people that Michael Bloomberg represents. They really do think they are in the “sweet spot” of American politics. They see gun right absolutists — people who think they should be allowed to carry machine guns into banks — as just the other extreme of people who think that the minimum wage ought to at least keep up with inflation.

Here’s the thing: if Michael Bloomberg ran for president, I’d be surprised if he got one percent of the vote. But he would get huge media attention because the elite media share his blind spots.

This is why I’ve long been against the New Democrats. The movement was all about keeping socially liberal policy, but basically accepting conservative policy on economics. (The net result was to push the Republicans to the extreme right on economic policy and create a new “left of center” economics that is decidedly right of center.) And this is what I like most about Bernie Sanders: he’s willing to say what establishment Democrats have been unwilling to say for 25 years, “Neoliberalism doesn’t work.”

But as Dayen noted, there are a lot of people in the New York and DC areas who just love what Bloomberg has to say. To someone like William Saletan, what Bloomberg stands for is not just his opinion — it is The Truth™. It is self-evident to this crowd that the society is working just great. All it needs are a few tweaks: get people to drink less soda, get rid of unions all together, and everything will be fine!

The truth is that the Michael Bloomberg crowd doesn’t see their pro-Wall Street opinions as opinions. It is unthinkable to them that we could have a system that works differently than the one that I am more than willing to admit works for them. It’s bad enough when people just go about their lives without examining their assumptions. But when we are talking about the most powerful people in the country, we have a real problem.

Here’s the thing: if Michael Bloomberg ran for president, I’d be surprised if he got one percent of the vote. But he would get huge media attention because the elite media share his blind spots. I think Dayen was wrong in one thing he wrote. He noted Bloomberg’s “sycophantic advisers.” But the problem is so much deeper than that. Thomas Friedman isn’t paid to be Bloomberg’s yes-man. Thomas Friedman has the exact same unconsidered assumptions. And he’s not alone.

As ignorant as the people may be, they are far better at choosing a president than these jokers.

Image cropped from one by Rubenstein – originally posted to Flickr as Mayor Michael Bloomberg, CC BY 2.0.

Morning Music: Political Science

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Sail Away - Political Science

My first introduction to Randy Newman was his album Sail Away. It belonged to the sister of a friend of mine and it was a revelation. It was probably the album that caused me to start writing songs because the second or third song I ever wrote was a clear ripoff of “Old Man” off the album — still a song I greatly admire. But today we are doing offensive songs and so I’m going with “Political Science.”

In general, when Randy Newman does a song in character, he takes it to extremes. But in “Political Science,” I think he’s pretty accurate. He’s presenting a kind of John Birch Society narrative that everyone is against us and we should just bomb them into the stone age. Sadly, what used to be a fringe position is now pretty standard in the Republican Party.

I keep hearing people talking about just bombing ISIS away. There is little understanding that ISIS controls lots of people who are far bigger victims of ISIS than we are. And in the name of our cowards’ being able to rest easy at night, we should kill all these innocent people?! Of course, when it is put like this, people normally backtrack. But still we hear about “carpet bombing” and making the “sands glow.”

In “Political Science” we have a similar cowardly, resentful outlook. It starts, “No one likes us; I don’t know why; we may not be perfect; but heaven knows we try.” Oh, how often I’ve heard that sentiment! In fact, I used to believe that. In the film The Killing Fields, Spalding Gray as the US Consul gives a little speech in which he talks about the noble aspirations of our country and how we have gone against them at every step in southeast Asia. Uh, no. That’s all grammar school propaganda. The noble aspirations are for the folks back home so that they keep the killing machine well funded.

I could easily write 10,000 words going over the song line by line. It is filled with so many conservative myths, it’s like a dissertation on movement conservatism in a two minute song. It’s filled with things like all the money we give to other countries (not true). And then there is what I think of as the Real Bush Doctrine: “Let’s drop the big one and see what happens.” Let’s just give it a try and hope for the best.

But as always when he is at his best, Newman is funny as hell in “Political Science.” That’s especially true in the bridge, “We’ll save Australia…” They got surfing too!

Cover by Source, Fair use, via Wikipedia.

Anniversary Post: Prohibition and the Blaine Act

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John J Blaine - ProhibitionOn this day in 1933, the Blaine Act was passed — named after Senator John J Blaine. It was the law that started the process that ended in the Twenty-First Amendment later that year. And that was a repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, ratified almost 15 years earlier. We are, of course, talking about Prohibition.

Here’s something: Prohibition was basically a liberal idea. People saw a real social problem with alcohol. And remember: the way people drink now is really quite moderate compared to the way they used to drink. And then, as now, alcohol led to all kinds of violence — especially domestic violence. The idea of Prohibition was a well-intentioned liberal idea.

What’s happened over the last century is that liberals have realized the limits of creating a perfect society. Conservatives have not. At the same time, conservatives continue to think that liberals are the ones who want a nanny state. But what are liberals actually asking for? Universal healthcare; a strong safety net; a humble foreign policy. It’s the conservatives who want to treat the poor as though they are school children who need to be proctored. It’s the conservatives who think that without government intervention, women will have abortions at eight months. Basically, it is conservatives who have utopian ideas.

Liberals continue to stands for our Constitution that’s stated intent is to make a “more perfect” union, not a perfect one. Of course, it isn’t all Republicans. We are talking mostly about conservative voters who are one of the most meddlesome groups of people on the planet. The Republican establishment doesn’t care what the people do, as long as they don’t start demanding things like fair pay and equal rights.

Still, it is amazing how quickly Prohibition died. It reminds me of the line about bankruptcy: slowly then suddenly. Of course, we learned only that one lesson from Prohibition: that we shouldn’t outlaw alcohol. We’ve destroyed many millions of lives by prohibiting other substances that people enjoy putting in their bodies.

Night of the Comet After All These Years

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Night of the CometIn 1984, the low budget film Night of the Comet was released. It was kind of like Valley Girl meets Night of the Living Dead. But that might give you the wrong idea. For one thing, the female leads in this film are incredibly strong. And for another, there are surprisingly few zombies. Although they are the cool ones like we saw in Omega Man. They can talk and wear cool sunglasses.

The plot of Night of the Comet is pretty straightforward. There’s a comet that circles the sun every 65 million years. Get it? Well, if you don’t, the movie tells you: that was when the dinosaurs went extinct. (For the record: I’m pretty sure a comet with that long a period would be theoretically impossible, given it would have to reach into other solar systems.) But most people think this is a coincidence, and everyone comes out to party to see the comet. (For the record: I’m not going to critique any more of the science in this film.) And almost all of them die. Those that don’t get turned into zombies. And those who were shielded by lead or iron or something survive.

The main plot is about a group of scientists who screwed up and got exposed, and are now living off the blood of the survivors until they can create a cure. Or something. The details of the plot don’t much matter. Night of the Comet is really about sisters (Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney) who have a very cool post-apocalypse. I saw the film at the time and I recall liking it, but not remembering much other than the ending when the cute boy drives up in a sports car, and the younger sister goes off with him, having a happy ending.

The film is silly but completely entertaining — exactly what it intends to be. It was written and directed by Thom Eberhardt. You probably know him for directing Captain Ron. I know him because he directed one of my favorite silly films, Without a Clue. His films have a tendency to be panned by critics — at least when they first come out. I think this is typical of critics who usually get caught up in what they think the film should be, rather than judging it on its own terms.

Of course, that wasn’t true of Night of the Comet. Eberhardt makes it so clear what he is doing that even film critics couldn’t miss it. And it’s a good thing. This is a film that deserved to be seen and deserves its cult status today. It is primarily a film about women. The three principal characters are the two sisters and Audrey White (Mary Woronov), the only one of the scientists who has a problem with killing people for their survival. In fact, if it weren’t for White’s actions, the sisters would have died and that would be that.

Night of the Comet is, in other words, the kind of film that conservatives would now claim was all PC. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, “Eberhardt wanted to explore the idea of strong female protagonists with his love of post-apocalyptic films set in empty cities.” At the same time, he doesn’t shy away from sexing the film up with a very revealing scene involving Maroney — and zombies! So maybe repressed conservatives would like it! Regardless, Night of the Comet is well worth checking out — even after all these years and even with all that early 80s music.

Night of the Comet Online

At least for now, there is a copy of the film online:

Image taken from Wikipedia. Licensed under Fair Use.

Party Differences and the RINO

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RINOPaul Krugman wrote a really good column on Monday, How America Was Lost. I highly recommend reading it. But he wrote one thing that was not a reflection of the wider reality, “I still encounter people on the left (although never on the right) who claim that there’s no big difference between Republicans and Democrats.” I suspect this is an indication that Krugman hangs out with a wide range of liberal people, but only the most marginal of conservatives. Because it is simply not the truth that Republicans don’t make the case that the parties are the same. Um, is the RINO extinct?

What we’ve seen over the last seven years, if not a lot longer, is that conservative voters are not ideological; they are tribal. This is why Donald Trump is doing so well. These Republicans don’t care about policy, they care about chest thumping. And that is why they think there really is no difference between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. Sure, the policies would be quite different. But they would both be standard issue establishment types who would treat the presidency as an office with a history and norms that ought to be followed. They are not, in other words, revolutionaries. (Note: I could make a case that Bush would, in fact, be a revolutionary and that his brother most definitely was.)

This all takes me back to 2011 when I was at the Sonoma County Fair and came upon the local booth for the Republican Party. And the biggest sign they had up was a “No RINO” sign. A RINO, of course, is a “Republican In Name Only.” This was the local GOP establishment and in a fairly liberal area: not just California, but one of the most liberal parts of California. You would think they would be interested in moderate Republicans. But no, they were holding the fort for the conservative revolution coming any day now.

If it appears to Krugman that Republicans don’t fall into the trap of thinking the two parties are the same, it is probably because the Republican Party has been so successful at banishing all RINO from being competitive for major offices.

Democrats have an equivalent term: DINO. But it appeared after and in response to RINO. But what it all means is that for Republicans, there really is “no big difference” between the vast majority of their candidates and the Democrats. That’s what purity is all about. This is why the Republican establishment brooks almost no variance from orthodoxy. It’s funny that people talk about how the establishment has lost control of the presidential race. Even the great Republican populist Donald Trump had to put out by far the most regressive tax plan in order to shore up his credentials.

If it appears to Krugman that Republicans don’t fall into the trap of thinking the two parties are the same, it is probably because the Republican Party has been so successful at banishing all RINO from being competitive for major offices. The conservative columnists at The New York Times would never claim that the Democrats and Republicans are the same. But we can’t go by that!

The more pure their party has become, the more paranoid the Republicans are about RINO in their midst. Last September, Free Republic published an article, John Boehner Caught Conspiring With Nancy Pelosi. It’s not a minor outlet. And the article tells us, “Functionally, there is absolutely no difference between Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner.” Clearly, at least one columnist doesn’t get out enough.

And it’s funny that Krugman would think that it is only Democrats who think the parties are the same given that he has been so prominent in the Clinton-Sanders war. But maybe that’s what’s blinding him. He’s so worried about the Sanders supporters that he can’t see the wider reality. But if he thought about it, he’d see that what’s going on is just that the Democratic base is having a fight over whether the party will be liberal or slightly more liberal. Sanders isn’t demanding purity and he surly isn’t saying that Clinton is the same as Bush. And neither are any prominent Sanders supporters. I do wish people would stop basing reality on Twitter and Facebook arguments.

But here’s something that I run into all the time in arguing politics with conservatives. Because I’m pretty knowledgeable about this stuff and I’m not arguing with Greg Mankiw, I destroy conservatives in these arguments. And their fallback is always, “Well, they’re all the same!” When I was a libertarian, and I made my fine tuned arguments against liberals, they never ended by claiming, “Well, they’re all the same!” So among the extremists on both side, you will hear that there is no difference between the parties. But it’s primarily in the Republican Party where you will hear ordinary voters making that claim.

Of course, Democrats have recent history to remind them:

Afterword: Michelle Goldberg and the RINO

Note that Goldberg’s argument here is still largely wrong. This is a video that Democrats need to watch. But pretty much everything she says about Democrats is true of Republicans. It is not “a particular pathology of the left.”

Morning Music: Lonely at the Top

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Randy Newman Live - Lonely at the TopWhen I first went to college, I discovered the album, Randy Newman Live. I loved it and most especially the song “Lonely at the Top.” There was something particularly wonderful and casual about it — just a man and his piano. It effected me in the same way that a lot of old blues does. I like the lack of production. In fact, I’ve gotten to the point where I really don’t like music production. It is just a kind of craftsmanship that is designed to hide the fact that the core art is soulless.

The album was recorded at The Bitter End. I remember in 1995, my girlfriend (eventually wife) took me to New York. She introduced me to all of these places that were mythical to me because of the music I had listened to — places like CBGB and The Bottom Line. (The Mudd Club had closed years earlier.) But what I most remember is walking into The Bitter End. That was it?! This tiny hole in the wall?! No wonder Randy Newman Live sounded so intimate; there probably weren’t more than 30 people in the audience. According to Wikipedia, it has a 230 person capacity. I find that hard to believe. Maybe you could get that many people in if you took out all the tables and people stood.

Frank Sinatra and “Lonely at the Top”

Anyway, Newman apparently wrote “Lonely at the Top” about and for Frank Sinatra. Not surprisingly, Sinatra refused to do the song — just as he refused to do any of Elvis Costello’s songs. I think it would be different today. In 1971, Sinatra certainly would have thought that he was making a fool of himself. Today, he would understand that it made him look cool and showed that he was in on the joke.

Of course, Elvis Costello really did admire Frank Sinatra. With “Lonely at the Top,” Randy Newman is firing straight at Sinatra, and I don’t really think he means it in a nice way. But it’s a damned funny song.

Album cover by publisher, licensed under Fair use, via Wikipedia.

Anniversary Post: Kyoto Protocol and the End of Global Warming

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Kyoto ProtocolOn this day in 2005, the Kyoto Protocol went into effect. And global warming was solved!

That image there on the left shows buy into the treaty. It was basically Europe. Of the advanced economies, the one really standout there is the United States — land of blind, home of the selfish.

The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference was far more successful than the Kyoto Protocol because each country set its own targets. Here’s the interesting thing about all this: those countries that address climate change are going to find themselves rewarded economically. It’s funny to listen to the Republican wonderboy Marco Rubio talking about how he’s the future, when he is more stuck in the past than my 83 year old father.

But it looked like the Supreme Court was set to mess up even this recent agreement in Paris. And then Antonin Scalia went and did the best thing he ever did for the world: he died. You see, the current attack on Obama’s executive actions are in the DC Circuit Court. It has a majority of Democrat appointed judges. That means it will likely find for the administration. (Don’t ever let anyone tell you the courts aren’t political!) And that means that if it goes to the Supreme Court, it will get at most four votes against — a tie. And so the circuit court finding will hold. Thank you so much Justice Scalia!

Who Needs the Kyoto Protocol or the Paris Agreement?!

Of course, we are approximately 20 years too late to be doing the little that we are now doing. We are now just over half way through February here in California. Normal rainfall for this month is almost six inches. We’ve only gotten a tenth of an inch this month. And this was supposed to be the big El Niño year. I’m in a constant state of outrage over this. But what are you going to do? There is the fate of civilization and maybe even the species on the one hand. And then there are the short-term profits of already really rich people on the other. I supposed we don’t have to come down on the side of the rich. It’s just our habit.

So the Kyoto Protocol and all other efforts to do something about global warming be damned.

Martial Arts Classes for Kids and Civilization’s End

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Martial ArtsI was walking to the local supermarket to get Gatorade because my right kidney has bee hurting and I just learned that Prilosec is only supposed to be taken for two weeks and I’ve been taking it for years. So I thought I would get some electrolytes in me and cut down on the tea and then start drinking water and maybe stay alive for another decade. And then I had the interaction with the martial arts girl.

In the same shopping center as the supermarket is a martial arts “academy.” I see all the little tykes in there doing their moves. They are kind of cute in their ways. But there are also olden children. And the girl was one of them. She was dressed up in her white fighting uniform with her big bag and she intimidated me out of her way, even though (1) I had right of way and (2) I am an old man.

This is not totally unusual for me. My life in public is very much one of trying to not be seen. And I generally find young people terrifying, but only because they are awful. But the encounter crystallized a question that had been vague in my mind for a long time: why would parents have their young children study martial arts?

I understand why people make their kids learn musical instruments. They do it because music is great. Learning an instrument provides the child with a lifetime of greater enjoyment of music. But on a more fundamental level, it allows them to play music: alone, with friends, in a band or orchestra. Are the parents who take their kids of martial arts classes expecting that their children will get into fights? Are they assuming that their kids will have to physically protect themselves later in life?

Now I know: all that martial arts stuff is tied into lots of ideas about honor and respect. I think that’s just compensating. For one thing, it’s never struck me as anything but affectation. But in all my years studying music very seriously, I never had an instructor give me a lesson about respect and the proper use of what I was learning. That’s because what I was learning did not involve breaking someone else’s nose.

The Paranoia of Martial Arts

We in the modern world get such a distorted view of the world because of the news. It is never reported that all the children from the local grammar school all got home safe and sound. So we end up with this skewed impression that the world is a very dangerous place. And when that leads to things like kids wearing bicycle helmets, that’s great. But I really do think that these parents are taking their kids to martial arts classes out of the same fear.

I understand that there are bullies out in the world. But martial arts classes are not the answer — they are the problem. Because if people think that it will just be the bullied who get this training, they are sadly mistaken. In fact, I suspect that the testosterone fueled environment of the martial arts class only encourages it. I think these parents are being shortsighted. And it’s ruining our civilization.

Image cropped from one by Jjskarate (own work), licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Why Media Debate Coverage Makes Things Worse

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Jeb Bush - Debate CoverageIf you’ve been reading me for a while, you probably know that while I have my problems with Vox, I also admire what they do. Some people there, like Max Fisher, are awesome. But even at its core of where it shows off its upper-middle class biases, it still provides reasonably good coverage. So when I see them make a clear conceptual mistake, it disturbs me because I know it is so much worse at The New York Times, much less Fox News. In this case, I’m talking about its debate coverage.

Dylan Matthews wrote one of their typical genre articles of debate coverage, 3 Winners and 2 Losers From Saturday Night’s Republican Debate. These are always interesting, even if I consider them wrong. The three winners were: Jeb Bush, the Democrats, and the moderators; the two losers were: Donald Trump and Marco Rubio. He felt that Rubio lost because he was just okay and he needed to shine. The Democrats won because, “The longer, the bloodier, and the sillier this campaign season is, the better it is for the eventual Democratic nominee.” And the moderators won because they did a reasonably good job.

Debate Coverage: Not Like Music Criticism

Matthews’ argument for Trump being a loser and Bush being s winner, however, are based on the same questionable analysis: the theater audience was clearly with Bush. Think about this from different perspective. You are a classical music critic and you are supposed to review Yoyo No Mas, the great tenor who hasn’t performed in over a decade. He’s performing in his hometown. And everyone loves his performance. But you are a professional and you know Yoyo No Mas has lost it: his rhythm is erratic and he’s flat when he hits high notes. Do you write a glowing review because the clearly biased audience ate it up? I don’t think so.

It certainly must have looked to many viewers at home that Jeb Bush had a feisty debate. But why should the media play along?

But that’s what Matthews did. And he isn’t alone. That seems to be the consensus of the debate coverage: Bush did well because, oh, how the audience cheered him and Trump did poorly because he got booed — a lot. Most of the rest of the media firmament may be unaware of the situation. They may actually think that the audience is indicative of South Carolina voters. But the truth is that Trump was right when he said, “That’s Jeb’s special interests and lobbyists talking.” And Matthews knows this! He wrote, ” Apparently only 600 of the 1,600 tickets to the event were given to the candidates, and the state and national party controlled most of the rest.” He added to this, “The result was an enthusiastically pro-Jeb crowd.”

Let’s Repeat the False Narrative!

Now I get this. If I were the Republican Party establishment, I’d do it too. It certainly must have looked to many viewers at home that Jeb Bush had a feisty debate. But why should the media play along? Isn’t it the job of the media to report that Jeb’s new more aggressive stance against Trump is mostly just a matter of stage lighting and make-up? Jeb Bush was only a winner if the debate coverage ignores this fact.

From my vantage point, Jeb Bush was better than he has been. But it’s just as easy to make the same argument about him that Matthews made about Rubio. And to me, every time the audience booed Trump, it made me think how pathetic the Republican establishment is. I suspect that this is even more true of Trump supporters. And it makes Jeb Bush look like exactly the weak guy that Donald Trump has portrayed him as: someone who needs his powerful family and establishment connections to win the race.

What the media need to understand is that they affect the game. A lot more people will see debate coverage than the actual debate. If Jeb Bush really was a winner for those who watched the debate, proclaiming him so only pushes a very fake reality that the Republican Party establishment has created.

Update (15 February 2016 11:07 am)

Check this out, Poll: Rubio Won Republican Debate. The placement from the CBS News overnight poll was this: Rubio, Trump, Kasich, and then Cruz. The Drudge Report readers’ poll had this placement: Trump, Cruz, and then Rubio. Notice anyone who’s missing for these polls? That’s right: Jeb Bush. And according to Dylan Matthews, he was the only Republican in the “win” category.

Image by Michael Vadon – Governor of Florida Jeb Bush at #FITN 2015, CC BY-SA 2.0.