Friday, May 25, 2012

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Paul Weller, 54. I'm not really a fan of the rest of his career. But I certainly am a fan of The Jam. If I thought that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was something to care about, I'd be outraged that they're not in. If The Clash is Hank Aaron, The Jam is Frank Robinson ...probably not quite as good or quite as important, but are you absolutely sure? (Analogy is for quality only, not career shape or type, obviously).

I seem to be sort of music-obsessed this week, birthday-wise; hope everyone doesn't mind to much. On to the good stuff:


1. Yesterday I linked to and discussed Sean Trende's article on Barack Obama and Appalachia; today I'll have to link to Ed Kilgore's very nice post on Trende. Gets it exactly right.

2. Conor Friedersdorf vets "The Vetting." As I've said, I think there's essentially zero chance that any of this stuff could have any effect on the 2012 election. And no question that the particular methods used by the folks he monitors are useless for anything, and certainly the best way to tell what Barack Obama is going to do in a second term is to study his public actions during his political career and, even more importantly, the Democratic party. But is it entirely useless to understand our presidents better? I guess my position is no, it isn't. My usual rule of thumb is that personality explanations for presidential actions should only be considered when other explanations (party, skills, political context) don't seem to help, but that doesn't mean that personality never matters.

3. Redistricting at the state legislative level seems to have been particularly rough on women, reports Sara Libby.

4. And I have to say that I really enjoyed the Tom Nawrocki's list of Top Ten Rock Hits With a Trombone Solo.

10 comments:

  1. Thanks, but that's "Nawrocki." N-A-W-R-O-C-K-I.

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    1. Argghh....sorry about that. Fixed.

      I blame Joey Belle, obviously.

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  2. The Jam would be more like Frank Howard or Greg Luzinski, methinks. Maybe Don Sutton. That stupid mod revival stuff works against them, though unfairly; obviously they were better than the Stray Cats. Also they weren't really a factor in America, which shouldn't matter but does. The Smiths, who were far more important and better, will have a hard enough time getting in. (and yes of course the Rock HOF matters even less than the Oscars, which themselves are fairly devoid of curatorial or custodial value).

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  3. Were it not for Breitbart, I might vote for a Democrat again. His work on stories like the N-word lies of Lewis and Carson,
    the guffawing AA racists of the Shirley Sherrod video, and the Dem response to these things was transformative. Politics in the US is about hate and spoils, so it's good to have someone clarifying what the opposition thinks of you and intends to do to you. Even if "the vetting" is nothing more than a fun team-building exercise for conservatives and hard libertarians, it's time well spent. Friedersdorf is a damp squib.

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    1. What does "the opposition" intende to do to you?

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    2. @backyard, Let's just have another civil war so you can actually shoot people on the other side legally. Wouldn't that be an even better team-building exercise?

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    3. The reason that liberals call people like me stupid, crazy, or racist is because we're arguing about when to point guns at each other. It's a tense situation. With my live-and-let-live worldview, I say that we should minimize the guns and that the point of politics should be to trend toward as little coercion as possible. Liberals obviously disagree... and they're perfectly willing to call me a racist to gain a tiny political edge in order to pass prog legislation. Breitbart's response was electrifying.

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  4. The Jam v. the Clash is an interesting comparison for the following reason: first, the Sex Pistols' flame out is notable in part because they went from channeling the anger of a generation to headlining the Kansas City Holiday Inn over a matter of mere months. Both the Jam (mod stuff) and the Clash (adult contemporary-type hits like Train in Vain and Should I Stay or Should I Go) would have seemed comfortable in the Kansas City Holiday Inn, performing for blue hairs, punk rock anger notwithstanding.

    The Clash is above The Jam in the pantheon, though, because while the mod stuff seems like an essential aspect of the Jam, you can listen to a Clash protest song like White Man in Hammersmith Palais, which somewhat uniquely blasts liberals and conservatives within 30 seconds; first the liberals ("white youth, black youth/better find another solution/why not phone up Robin Hood/and ask him for some - wealth distribution") and then the conservatives ("If Adolf Hitler/flew in today/they'd send a limousine anyway" - maybe their most famous line) - blasting both for about the same reason. When you hear that song, its easy to forget how cheesy the Clash could be. AFAICT, even when the Jam are punk rockers with a song like In the City, the mod stuff is always pretty much top of mind.

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    1. Actually I think it's really easy, and worthwhile, to listen to the Jam without picturing them in those silly Small Faces outfits. The songs hold up really well, and aren't obviously derivative of their influences (at least no more than "Clash City Rockers" is). Always loved Paul Weller's voice; obviously he was never Tony Bennett or Little Richard, but as soon as you heard him sing three syllables you knew it was him.

      Also never found the Clash's poppier songs cheesy ("I'm Not Down"? "Police On My Back"?), though their funk/rap efforts often struck me as decidedly cheesy.

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