Lily Salter's Blog, page 969
October 27, 2015
Bob Schneider’s rabid Taylor Swift jealousy: “It’s so great I want to hate her. I want to hate everybody. It’s so f**ked up. Especially if they’re more successful than me”
My wife and I used to go out to a lot of live music. It was kind of our thing. Then along came a kid, then another and another, and before long live music was something we reminisced about. The single exception to this embargo-by-way-of-exhaustion has always been Bob Schneider. The Austin-based songwriter is almost impossible to categorize as a musician, or a human being. He writes more songs in a month than most musicians do in a decade. He makes stunning visual art that is regularly displayed in galleries. He plays more than 150 shows per year. To witness Schneider in concert is especially mind bending, because he and his band careen through genres like other bands change chords. At the show I caught a week ago, outside Boston, Schneider and his five-piece touring ensemble ripped through a set list that included Americana, arena rock, bluegrass, folk, funk, hip hop, jazz, mambo, pop, punk, R&B, salsa, and zydeco. Oh, and just a dash of death metal. For loyal cultists like myself, the big question surrounding Schneider has always been why he isn’t more famous. He’s got radio-ready songs, the looks of a matinee idol, and a passel of high-profile fans. What Schneider also has is an absolute intolerance for the duties of large-scale fame. He refuses to devote his energies to publicity. He releases albums only when the mood suits him. And he says virtually anything that strikes him as true or funny, regardless of whom he might offend. Upon the release of his new album—actually, a trio of EPs called "King Kong Volumes 1-3" —Salon called Schneider to see what America’s most profane polymath had to say about Taylor Swift, Kenny Rogers, paternal sadism, and playing with a broken arm. Naturally, he was on his way to a gig in Easton, Texas. What’s the deal with the new record? Why release it as three EPs? The original idea was that there would three chances to generate media, to get me into a magazine or on a late-night show or whatever. But basically nobody gives a shit when I put out a record, except for my fans. I haven’t done a single story for this record except for some newspaper in, like, Bend, Oregon. I will tell you this, though. I’ve learned to appreciate how unsuccessful I am. Because what it does is allow me to do what I love to do, which is write songs and hang out with my family and perform whatever songs I feel like performing. Your marketing plan seems predicated on having just enough success to keep you desperately creating art. Absolutely. Have you considered doing a cover of an entire album? Like Ryan Adams did with Taylor Swift’s 1989? Wait, do you know who Taylor Swift is? Yeah. Of course I know who both those guys are. I have heard 1989. But only because my wife, who’s 23 years younger than I am, is a huge Taylor Swift fan and she played it for me. And it’s great. It’s so great I want to hate her. I want to hate everybody. It’s so fucked up. Especially if they’re more successful than me. If they’re less successful I find it much easier to not hate someone. But there are so few people less successful than me that I wind up hating a lot of people. The idea of Ryan Adams covering that album makes me feel bad as well, because it will give Ryan Adams more exposure and people will talk about him and he’ll get in people’s consciousness and they’ll check out his music and they won’t be checking out mine. It makes me mad at myself for not thinking of it first. Couldn’t you choose another album? I might take a crack at George Michael’s Faith. That record sounds like shit. And I’ll tell you another artist—Prince. If you ever listen to the Best of Prince, that shit is really rough, because it was the Eighties and everything was synthesizers and they were recording on digital tape and they hadn’t figured it out yet. The problem is that my favorite albums, like Rain Dogs by Tom Waits, or Randy Newman’s Sail Away or A Charlie Brown Christmas by Vince Guaraldi, they’re done perfectly. Anything I did to those records would be an abomination. Is it true that your dad forced you to play drums in his band as a kid? That’s 100 percent true! My dad was, like, no joke. I was scared of him. I was like this ten-year-old kid with tiny little arms. The drumsticks were as big as my arms. And I’d be crying. Tears would be running down cheeks. There were no breaks. So the lesson I got was that the show must continue no matter what. To the point that I once I broke my arm onstage and I finished the set with a broken arm. Wait. Did your dad break your arm? [laughs] No. This was later on in my life. I was in a band called the Ugly Americans and we were playing the Horde Festival and I jumped off the stage into this concrete parking lot. It was raining and I slipped and broke my forearm. They gave me a sling and I finished the set, then went to the hospital to have the bone set. There were maybe 50 people in the crowd. They wouldn’t have cared if I quit. But I was like, ‘No. I’ve got to finish this!’ I’m the same way with my band. No matter what happens, you keep playing. If you break a string. If you vomit. If you’re sick as a dog. There have been times that I’ve had full-blown panic attacks onstage. I just want to get out of there. But there’s that voice: ‘You finish the set, motherfucker!’ I’m basically terrified all the time. That’s the reason I became a good performer. I figured if people loved me enough, I’d be safe. You also write songs constantly. Yeah, I still make myself write a song a week. That’s the mandatory minimum for me. Before that, it was two or three songs a week. Sometimes a song a day. Sometimes more than that. I considered releasing this project called the Demo Bible, because I have 1,000 unreleased songs. But people would immediately dismiss it. They’re going to figure, ‘This guy has 1,000 songs lying around? That just has to be one huge, horrendous pile of shit.’ But I have to have new songs to play at shows because what happens is I like all my songs at first, but after I play them over and over they get pretty tapped out. So I have to write new ones to play. Won’t you eventually get to a point where you hate all your songs? No, because some hold up. About a year ago I decided I wanted to do a twelve-hour solo show of all originals. I felt like I could do that— Wait, what possessed you to try such a thing? Was it like an EST thing? No, I just read on the Internet that someone said the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest show was 36 hours. It was some German piano player. So I sent the Guinness people a letter asking them what the record was for someone playing all originals. They sent a letter back saying, we don’t have to time to confirm that they’re all originals, so it’s just about length. I wasn’t going to play for motherfucking 36 hours if I didn’t make the book, so I settled on twelve. That’s like 160 to 180 songs. Did you make it? Oh yeah. I thought I would run out of energy but what ended up happening was just the opposite. Every two hours, I took a ten-minute break to catch my breath. But I was so amped up from the last set I was afraid I was going to have some sort of nervous breakdown. Fortunately, the exhaustion kicked in, so I got through it okay. There were a lot of people there for the last four hours, because people just wanted to see me crash and burn. They wanted to see me die onstage. This is probably the wrong time to bring up that you just turned 50. Yep, it’s pretty fucked up. And I have a little daughter who’s eight months old. Of course, if I do the math it’s really bad. I’ll be 70 when my daughter is 20. I don’t want to be like Kenny Rogers, where I’m 70 and I’ve got a five year old. You gotta know when to hold em— Yeah, that’s the other thing I’ve learned in life. People will tell you shit that you should do and they’re the ones who need to learn that lesson. Kenny Rogers has been spewing that line for 40 years. But I’ve never been happier. I do feel like, for first time in my life, my family is more important than my music. In the past, if I had to choose between music and relationships or kids, I always chose music, because that was the thing that was going to save me. I know you’re been making visual art for as long as you’ve been making music. Can you talk about the cover art for the new EPs, those giant collages? When my son Luc was three or four we started doing art projects. One day he had this idea to cut some heads out of magazines and draw the body. So we cut out some heads and he did this basic stick figure drawing and it was perfect. I spent the next six months trying to do something as cool as he did in, like, five seconds. Without even thinking about it. So anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing. Now people are wanting to put those images in gallery shows, and buying them. But I never had that in mind. I was just trying to get back to where Luc was. Because the thing about kids, I’ve discovered, is that they don’t think, ‘Who’s going to like this?’ They don’t have a critical voice in their heads yet. They just do what’s right. I don’t think I’ll ever get back to that pure state. Maybe if I did heroin. But art is a lot safer.
Censored UN paper calling for decriminalization marks beginning of the end of drug war as we knew it
Recently, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime quietly circulated a remarkable document not only calling "decriminalising drug use and possession for personal consumption...consistent with international drug control conventions" but stating that doing so "may be required to meet obligations under international human rights law." The paper's language was sober but its critique of drug criminalization devastating, noting that a law-and-order approach to drug use "contributed to public health problems and induced negative consequences for safety, security, and human rights," pointing to the limitation on access to clean needles and the resulting spread of HIV and hepatitis C, overdoses, vulnerability to physical and sexual abuse and, of course, incarceration, which disproportionately impacts poor and minority people. Then, all of a sudden, the paper was censored—or maybe retracted or disavowed, depending on what story you buy—just before it was to be presented at last week's International Harm Reduction conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. But it was too late: the paper had already been circulated, including to reporters. The BBC published it as part of a story looking into the drama, as did Virgin's Richard Branson, who serves on the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Soon, drug policy reform advocates began exploring the theory that the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy had shut it down, pointing to a short "world briefing" New York Times article (erroneously conflating legalization and decriminalization, it declared: "U.N. Report Did Not Endorse Legalization of Drugs, Agency Says"). An agency spokesman told the Times that "a question about the paper posed to the White House Office of National Drug Policy [sic] by The New York Times last week had been passed to the agency, alerting officials that the paper was being presented as more important than it really was." The paper was reportedly developed by Dr. Monica Beg, the head of UNODC's HIV/AIDS section in the context of growing pressure on the the law enforcement-oriented body to join other UN agencies in embracing decriminalization ahead of next year's major UN General Assembly special session on drug policy, UNGASS 2016. A UNODC official dismissively told the BBC that Beg was "a middle-ranking official" acting without approval of higher ups. But some advocates don't buy that explanation. "I honestly can't speculate as to why UNODC decided at the last minute not to distribute a document that, by its own admission, was planned for public release at our conference earlier this week," says Rick Lines, executive director of Harm Reduction International, in an email. "But any observer of the UN will tell you that agencies do not add their logo to, and recommend press circulation of, draft documents or positions in development. This was not a 'rogue' document, as UNODC comms has now suggested to the press in the wake of its decision to stop publication. The document was clearly intended for international public and media release at our conference this week, and it was pulled back at the 11th hour." The UNODC referred me to a statement posted on their website, which "emphatically denies reports that there has been pressure on UNODC to withdraw the document" in part because "it is not possible to withdraw what is not yet ready." It also stated that the paper was "neither a final nor formal document from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and cannot be read as a statement of UNODC policy." It's hard to make much sense of this spin. The paper's first sentence reads: "This document clarifies the position of UNODC." And how was a paper "not yet ready" if the same statement acknowledged that it was "intended for dissemination and discussion" at last week's conference? An ONDCP source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told me that the White House office had nothing do to with it. Either way, hundreds of advocates and health experts gathered in Kuala Lumpur seized on the paper's conclusions, victoriously holding copies in the air and demanding that it be released. Whether the paper gets released or not, however, is immaterial to its striking conclusions, which are carefully grounded in international law: the UN's global drug war arm conceded not only that criminalization was a mistake but also that it violates human rights. "The behind the scenes politics here is less significant than what the document says - UNDOC, the lead UN agency responsible for drug control, has called for the removal of criminal penalties for use of drugs and the possession of drugs for personal consumption," says Lines. "This is perhaps the biggest news in international drug policy we've seen in a long, long time." It's a big deal for a few reasons, both in the U.S. (Americans' typical disregard for the UN notwithstanding) and globally. Other UN agencies have already embraced decriminalization. But the adoption of that position by UNODC, a more law-and-order minded agency, "is kind of the final piece in the UN jigsaw in terms of achieving crosscutting support for decriminalization across the UN family," says Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at the UK-based drug policy think tank Transform. He attributes the internal pushback to "die hard drug warriors within the UNODC" who prioritize "enforcement indicators like seizures and arrests" over public health. At a meeting later last week, in what may have been a show of support for the suppressed UNODC paper, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein and UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé issued sharp critiques of criminalization. “Criminalization of possession and use of drugs causes significant obstacles to the right to health,” said Ra’ad Al-Hussein in a video message. “Drug users may justifiably fear that they would be arrested or imprisoned if they seek health care. They may even be discouraged about seeking information about safe practices for drug use.” If the U.S. also played a role in the paper's suppression, Rolles wouldn't be surprised since "it was the U.S. that imposed a global prohibitionist framework on the world." In addition, he says, it wouldn't be the first time it has happened: in the 1990s, the U.S. reportedly pressured the World Health Organization to pull a study challenging conventional wisdom about the dangers of cocaine, threatening to pull funding for agency research if they went ahead with publication. Today, the Obama Administration finds itself in a very awkward position because the marijuana legalization taking place across the U.S. may violate the global treaties of which the U.S. has historically been an adamant enforcer. "The U.S. is potentially in violation of these treaties that they helped set up," says Hannah Hetzer, Americas policy manager at the U.S.-based Drug Policy Alliance. "Previously if any country even tried to discuss alternatives to drug prohibition they'd be met with a less than positive response from the United States...When they gave the green light to some states to legalize marijuana they then had to extend that green light to foreign governments to some extent." Fear of hypocrisy, however, hasn't stopped the U.S. from repeatedly decertifying Bolivia, a procedure that allows for the denial of foreign aid, because of its government's support for the traditional coca cultivation. That said, the UNODC paper adds to the growing international pressure for the U.S. to come to terms with the global push toward decriminalization. And that pressure may reach the boiling point at next year's General Assembly meeting. A change in the U.S.' global drug policy—an increasing necessity given the move toward marijuana legalization at home—would create new political space for reform both domestically and around the world (though continued zealotry from Russia, China and other countries will continue to be an obstacle). The calls not only for decriminalizing drug use but also for creating legalized and regulated form of drug sales, which the Global Commission on Drug Policy has suggested, are growing louder. The 2016 General Assembly meeting, organized at the behest of Latin American leaders critical of the drug war, is the first such special session since 1998. That year, the motto was "A Drug Free World - We can do it!" Times have certainly changed—enough, perhaps, that the Obama Administration will next year announce a bold and pragmatic new direction. The war on drugs still defines global drug policy. But its political support worldwide is crumbling.
Kung fu crime-fighting: Nunchucks-wielding California cops expected to be less lethal, more Bruce Lee
The Anderson Police Department in Northern California announced it will start equipping its officers with nunchucks instead of batons as nonlethal means of fighting crimes.
According to the Los Angeles Times and TV station KRCR, Anderson — with a population just below 10,000 — has a per capita crime rate more than double that of the state of California. The department found a solution in connecting essentially two batons with a nylon cord, giving its 20 officers the option of lassoing their perps.
“These were designed … to be more of a control weapon,” Sgt. Casey Day told ABC7 KRCR. “They work very good as an impact weapon. But we try to emphasize a control tool over impact.”
Day says he hasn’t used his nunchucks yet, but understands “the value and safety they bring to me.”
Of course, proper nunchucking isn’t a common skill set this side of the Pacific, so APD officers will be required to pass a 16-hour training program before they're released onto the Anderson streets.
Officers will also be allowed to opt-out, should they prefer more standard methods of battery.
Watch the full report here.
[image error]
The Anderson Police Department in Northern California announced it will start equipping its officers with nunchucks instead of batons as nonlethal means of fighting crimes.
According to the Los Angeles Times and TV station KRCR, Anderson — with a population just below 10,000 — has a per capita crime rate more than double that of the state of California. The department found a solution in connecting essentially two batons with a nylon cord, giving its 20 officers the option of lassoing their perps.
“These were designed … to be more of a control weapon,” Sgt. Casey Day told ABC7 KRCR. “They work very good as an impact weapon. But we try to emphasize a control tool over impact.”
Day says he hasn’t used his nunchucks yet, but understands “the value and safety they bring to me.”
Of course, proper nunchucking isn’t a common skill set this side of the Pacific, so APD officers will be required to pass a 16-hour training program before they're released onto the Anderson streets.
Officers will also be allowed to opt-out, should they prefer more standard methods of battery.
Watch the full report here.
[image error]
“This is what GOP surrender looks like”: Right-wingers lose it over budget deal between Congress and White House
Governing has returned to Washington, D.C. and House Republicans are not happy. After five years of stalemate, Republicans in Congress and the White House have reached a new budget deal raising the debt limit through March of 2017 and avoiding a government shutdown. "I think this process stinks. This is not the way to do the people's business," House GOP savior Paul Ryan told reporters on the eve of his Speaker nomination, complaining of the closed door process. The likely next House Speaker said he wanted to “see what it looks like on paper” before coming to a conclusion but defended the proposal as a "good deal" all things considered. CNN reports that rural Republicans on the agriculture committee are upset with cuts to the crop insurance program, threatening to vote against the deal if the cuts are not removed. North Carolina House Freedom Caucus member and longtime Boehner detractor Mark Meadows called on all candidates for Speaker to oppose the deal:
Leadership's determination to ram through this legislation days before we reach the debt limit, with zero input from rank and file Members of Congress, demonstrates precisely what is wrong with Washington, D.C. [...] Anyone who supports this legislation is complicit in supporting “the way things are” in Washington. We are at an important crossroads in the House of Representatives. We have an opportunity to bring about real reform and fundamentally change the broken system in place on Capitol Hill. Therefore I call on all candidates running for Speaker of the House to oppose this legislation and go on record showing they do not support this approach to governing.Kentucky Republican and outspoken Paul Ryan critic Rep. Thomas Massie sounded resigned to the prospects of another loss for House conservatives. "I mean I don't think there's anything you can do at this point ... We can't stop it. He's in league with the Democrats," he said, referring to Speaker Boehner. But Rep. John Fleming, R-La., seemingly less dejected, said he plans to "whip against it." The National Review has blasted the deal as "awful" and having "no pretense of fiscal responsibility whatsoever." The conservative Washington Examiner decried the bipartisan agreement as "GOP surrender":
[S]ometimes there's a need to compromise and recognize the art of the possible. But this isn't compromise. This is utter capitulation. Boehner said this deal is intended to "clean out the barn." He hopes to go out as a martyr for the establishment, clearing the decks for likely incoming speaker Rep. Paul Ryan and essentially swearing off any combat with Obama or Senate Democrats during the 2016 elections. In reality, this is a betrayal of everything Republicans ran on in 2010 — fittingly negotiated behind closed doors and rammed down members' throats.Meanwhile, conservatives on Twitter lashed out against the budget deal, with many using the hashtag #ZombieBudget: https://twitter.com/RMConservative/st... https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/sta... https://twitter.com/DanFosterType/sta... https://twitter.com/DrewMTips/status/... https://twitter.com/DeanClancy/status... https://twitter.com/davidharsanyi/sta... https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/6... https://twitter.com/DrewMTips/status/... https://twitter.com/Heritage_Action/s... https://twitter.com/pmbasse/status/65... https://twitter.com/ChristieC733/stat... https://twitter.com/rrothfeldt/status... https://twitter.com/danholler/status/... has returned to Washington, D.C. and House Republicans are not happy. After five years of stalemate, Republicans in Congress and the White House have reached a new budget deal raising the debt limit through March of 2017 and avoiding a government shutdown. "I think this process stinks. This is not the way to do the people's business," House GOP savior Paul Ryan told reporters on the eve of his Speaker nomination, complaining of the closed door process. The likely next House Speaker said he wanted to “see what it looks like on paper” before coming to a conclusion but defended the proposal as a "good deal" all things considered. CNN reports that rural Republicans on the agriculture committee are upset with cuts to the crop insurance program, threatening to vote against the deal if the cuts are not removed. North Carolina House Freedom Caucus member and longtime Boehner detractor Mark Meadows called on all candidates for Speaker to oppose the deal:
Leadership's determination to ram through this legislation days before we reach the debt limit, with zero input from rank and file Members of Congress, demonstrates precisely what is wrong with Washington, D.C. [...] Anyone who supports this legislation is complicit in supporting “the way things are” in Washington. We are at an important crossroads in the House of Representatives. We have an opportunity to bring about real reform and fundamentally change the broken system in place on Capitol Hill. Therefore I call on all candidates running for Speaker of the House to oppose this legislation and go on record showing they do not support this approach to governing.Kentucky Republican and outspoken Paul Ryan critic Rep. Thomas Massie sounded resigned to the prospects of another loss for House conservatives. "I mean I don't think there's anything you can do at this point ... We can't stop it. He's in league with the Democrats," he said, referring to Speaker Boehner. But Rep. John Fleming, R-La., seemingly less dejected, said he plans to "whip against it." The National Review has blasted the deal as "awful" and having "no pretense of fiscal responsibility whatsoever." The conservative Washington Examiner decried the bipartisan agreement as "GOP surrender":
[S]ometimes there's a need to compromise and recognize the art of the possible. But this isn't compromise. This is utter capitulation. Boehner said this deal is intended to "clean out the barn." He hopes to go out as a martyr for the establishment, clearing the decks for likely incoming speaker Rep. Paul Ryan and essentially swearing off any combat with Obama or Senate Democrats during the 2016 elections. In reality, this is a betrayal of everything Republicans ran on in 2010 — fittingly negotiated behind closed doors and rammed down members' throats.Meanwhile, conservatives on Twitter lashed out against the budget deal, with many using the hashtag #ZombieBudget: https://twitter.com/RMConservative/st... https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/sta... https://twitter.com/DanFosterType/sta... https://twitter.com/DrewMTips/status/... https://twitter.com/DeanClancy/status... https://twitter.com/davidharsanyi/sta... https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/6... https://twitter.com/DrewMTips/status/... https://twitter.com/Heritage_Action/s... https://twitter.com/pmbasse/status/65... https://twitter.com/ChristieC733/stat... https://twitter.com/rrothfeldt/status... https://twitter.com/danholler/status/... has returned to Washington, D.C. and House Republicans are not happy. After five years of stalemate, Republicans in Congress and the White House have reached a new budget deal raising the debt limit through March of 2017 and avoiding a government shutdown. "I think this process stinks. This is not the way to do the people's business," House GOP savior Paul Ryan told reporters on the eve of his Speaker nomination, complaining of the closed door process. The likely next House Speaker said he wanted to “see what it looks like on paper” before coming to a conclusion but defended the proposal as a "good deal" all things considered. CNN reports that rural Republicans on the agriculture committee are upset with cuts to the crop insurance program, threatening to vote against the deal if the cuts are not removed. North Carolina House Freedom Caucus member and longtime Boehner detractor Mark Meadows called on all candidates for Speaker to oppose the deal:
Leadership's determination to ram through this legislation days before we reach the debt limit, with zero input from rank and file Members of Congress, demonstrates precisely what is wrong with Washington, D.C. [...] Anyone who supports this legislation is complicit in supporting “the way things are” in Washington. We are at an important crossroads in the House of Representatives. We have an opportunity to bring about real reform and fundamentally change the broken system in place on Capitol Hill. Therefore I call on all candidates running for Speaker of the House to oppose this legislation and go on record showing they do not support this approach to governing.Kentucky Republican and outspoken Paul Ryan critic Rep. Thomas Massie sounded resigned to the prospects of another loss for House conservatives. "I mean I don't think there's anything you can do at this point ... We can't stop it. He's in league with the Democrats," he said, referring to Speaker Boehner. But Rep. John Fleming, R-La., seemingly less dejected, said he plans to "whip against it." The National Review has blasted the deal as "awful" and having "no pretense of fiscal responsibility whatsoever." The conservative Washington Examiner decried the bipartisan agreement as "GOP surrender":
[S]ometimes there's a need to compromise and recognize the art of the possible. But this isn't compromise. This is utter capitulation. Boehner said this deal is intended to "clean out the barn." He hopes to go out as a martyr for the establishment, clearing the decks for likely incoming speaker Rep. Paul Ryan and essentially swearing off any combat with Obama or Senate Democrats during the 2016 elections. In reality, this is a betrayal of everything Republicans ran on in 2010 — fittingly negotiated behind closed doors and rammed down members' throats.Meanwhile, conservatives on Twitter lashed out against the budget deal, with many using the hashtag #ZombieBudget: https://twitter.com/RMConservative/st... https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/sta... https://twitter.com/DanFosterType/sta... https://twitter.com/DrewMTips/status/... https://twitter.com/DeanClancy/status... https://twitter.com/davidharsanyi/sta... https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/6... https://twitter.com/DrewMTips/status/... https://twitter.com/Heritage_Action/s... https://twitter.com/pmbasse/status/65... https://twitter.com/ChristieC733/stat... https://twitter.com/rrothfeldt/status... https://twitter.com/danholler/status/...
Sam Brownback is a harbinger of national doom: Bleeding Kansas’ scary lesson for America
This weekend brought the hilarious news that the approval rating for Sam Brownback, governor of Kansas and multi-year winner of the award for “Midwestern Republican Politician Who Most Resembles an Undertaker,” has fallen to an amazing low of 18 percent, while 48 percent pronounced themselves “very dissatisfied” with him. Most humiliating of all for Brownback? In this heavily Republican state, Barack Obama is outpolling him by double digits, with 28 percent of Kansas residents pronouncing themselves “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the president’s job performance. One cannot overstate just how badly Brownback and his pet Republican far-right legislature have wrecked Kansas in just a few years. The governor came into office in early 2011 promising to turn the state into a “real live experiment” for trickle-down economics that involved cutting tax rates to goose economic growth, which would fill the state’s coffers with so much revenue that Kansans would be literally swimming through seas of cash to get to Jayhawks basketball games. In other words, the usual supply-side plans that conservatives cling to no matter how many times they have crashed and burned at the national level. To the surprise of absolutely no one who lived through the 1980s under Reagan or the 2000s under George W. Bush, Brownback’s economic plans have not worked out. This year the state found itself with a budget deficit of somewhere around $600 million. It has an annual job-growth rate almost four percentage points below the nationwide average. In June, after an exceptionally long legislative, Brownback signed a bitterly fought-over budget that requires the state to slash education funding and raid its highway fund in order to bring it into balance. Enjoy your potholes, Kansas! Even getting to a balanced budget required the raising of taxes somewhere. Brownback refused to even partly repeal his income tax cuts that contributed to the whole budget mess in the first place. He did agree to an increase in the state sales tax, along with consumption taxes on items like cigarettes. These are regressive tax increases because they hit the state’s poor and working class residents the hardest. So Kansas is trying to dig out of the mess it made for itself on the backs of its poorest and most vulnerable residents. While also denying many of them health care, since Brownback refused Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, which the federal government would have paid for. If I were Sam Brownback, I’d issue an executive order for law enforcement to confiscate all the pitchforks in the state. And we haven’t even gotten into the social issues. Brownback began his political career as an evangelical, but then he converted to Catholicism. In terms of religious conservatism, it’s a distinction without a difference. He has crusaded against gay marriage and any gun control. On abortion, he signed a bill banning all abortions after 21 weeks on the scientifically dubious grounds that fetuses can feel pain. A judge had to order him to approve a budget item granting a little over $300,000 in family-planning funds to Planned Parenthood on the grounds that the state had unfairly targeted the organization. Brownback has been so terrible, particularly on economic issues, that when he ran for re-election 2014, a group of over 100 Kansas Republicans got together to endorse his Democratic opponent, Paul Davis. It was one of the great shocks of the 2014 cycle that he managed to win re-election. Though based on this weekend’s poll results, one suspects the people of Kansas would like a do-over. Brownback’s fortunes mirror those of another Midwestern Republican governor, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who took office at the same time in 2011. Like Brownback, Walker turned his state into a laboratory experiment for trickle-down economics, slashing income and property tax rates and promising in return that Wisconsin would see blazing economic growth. Instead the tax cuts blew a multi-billion-dollar hole in the state’s budget and led to education and social-services cuts, a result predicted by anyone who understands basic math. Which would eliminate most Republicans, I guess. Kansas’s woes have attracted less attention than Wisconsin’s, perhaps because Brownback did not become a national figure by trying to destroy his state’s labor unions. (He did try to destroy a teenage girl who tweeted something unflattering about him, proving again that no fee-fees are as delicate as right-winger fee-fees.) But they do offer a warning to the rest of the country about the consequences of electing Republicans to both the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress next fall. (The biggest mystery about Brownback at this point is that he has been such an awful governor, it’s a wonder he’s not running for president.) This is not a perfect analogy – there are differences in the mechanics of governance between the state and federal levels. But Kansas is at the very least an object lesson in voting for the party, not the candidate. No matter what one thinks of either Democratic candidate, the dangers of turning both the White House and Congress over to the Republican party should be even more frightening.
Charles Koch’s Frankenstein problem: He created the Tea Party monster — and now he’s horrified with the results
I’m a big fan of irony, which is why I enjoyed this Wall Street Journal profile of Charles Koch so much. In an interview with Patrick O’Connor, Charles – evidently the more diplomatic half of the two most politically active Koch brothers – spoke somberly about the tone of the 2016 presidential race and of political discourse more generally. “It’s mainly about personalities and ‘your mother sucked rotten eggs,’” he lamented to O’Connor. On the one hand, I understand Charles’s frustration. After all, he and his brother are looking to invest $750 million on this election. When a man, his brother, and 450 wealthy donors build a national network of umbrella organizations in order to dictate political outcomes via dark money, they expect to get the results they want. Here’s the problem: The Koch brothers, whether they know it or not, got exactly what they paid for. If the tone of our politics has sunk to Cro-Magnon levels, it’s because the process has been flooded with money and propaganda and rabid right-wingers who’ve coarsened the discourse and made compromise impossible. Everything about our politics took a dark turn around the time of Obama’s election in 2008, which is precisely when the Koch brothers’ political machine exploded into being. As O’Connor writes:
In 2003, Mr. Koch convened about a dozen like-minded conservatives in Chicago with the goal of becoming more overtly political. Those efforts took hold early in Barack Obama’s presidency amid voter unease with the bank bailout signed by President George W. Bush and with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Groups financed by the Kochs and their alliance spent more than $400 million in 2012…In that year’s presidential election, Americans for Prosperity and two other Koch-financed groups spent a total of more than $50 million on television ads.The “lack of substance and civility” about which Charles complains began in earnest with the rise of the Tea Party between 2009 and 2010. To the extent that the Tea Party is a centralized movement, it is so because it has been mobilized by the groups Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, both of which are Koch-financed. As it happens, these groups were formerly a single organization, called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded in 1984 by, you guessed it, the Koch Brothers. The Tea Party, from the very beginning, was designed for disruption, and it was a pet project of the Koch brothers (they actually created the first national website for the movement). Charles Koch says he’s interested only in advancing “free-market, small-government ideals,” but what he’s done is manufacture a faux-populist movement that has whipped the conservative base into an anti-government frenzy. In the process of serving his narrow and self-interested ideological ends, he allowed the worst elements of the conservative movement – the xenophobes, the nationalists, and the theocrats – to hijack the Republican Party. Initially this worked, because it sent obstructionists to Congress whose only mission was to shut the government down. But, over time, it’s created a political climate in which it’s nearly impossible to govern. And it’s prepared the way for someone like Donald Trump (whose campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is a product of Americans for Prosperity), who exists only because he’s been able to tap into the sentiments let loose by the Tea Party movement. Hence the incredible irony of a Charles Koch bemoaning what’s become of our political process, a process he, as much as anyone, helped engineer. [image error]I’m a big fan of irony, which is why I enjoyed this Wall Street Journal profile of Charles Koch so much. In an interview with Patrick O’Connor, Charles – evidently the more diplomatic half of the two most politically active Koch brothers – spoke somberly about the tone of the 2016 presidential race and of political discourse more generally. “It’s mainly about personalities and ‘your mother sucked rotten eggs,’” he lamented to O’Connor. On the one hand, I understand Charles’s frustration. After all, he and his brother are looking to invest $750 million on this election. When a man, his brother, and 450 wealthy donors build a national network of umbrella organizations in order to dictate political outcomes via dark money, they expect to get the results they want. Here’s the problem: The Koch brothers, whether they know it or not, got exactly what they paid for. If the tone of our politics has sunk to Cro-Magnon levels, it’s because the process has been flooded with money and propaganda and rabid right-wingers who’ve coarsened the discourse and made compromise impossible. Everything about our politics took a dark turn around the time of Obama’s election in 2008, which is precisely when the Koch brothers’ political machine exploded into being. As O’Connor writes:
In 2003, Mr. Koch convened about a dozen like-minded conservatives in Chicago with the goal of becoming more overtly political. Those efforts took hold early in Barack Obama’s presidency amid voter unease with the bank bailout signed by President George W. Bush and with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Groups financed by the Kochs and their alliance spent more than $400 million in 2012…In that year’s presidential election, Americans for Prosperity and two other Koch-financed groups spent a total of more than $50 million on television ads.The “lack of substance and civility” about which Charles complains began in earnest with the rise of the Tea Party between 2009 and 2010. To the extent that the Tea Party is a centralized movement, it is so because it has been mobilized by the groups Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, both of which are Koch-financed. As it happens, these groups were formerly a single organization, called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded in 1984 by, you guessed it, the Koch Brothers. The Tea Party, from the very beginning, was designed for disruption, and it was a pet project of the Koch brothers (they actually created the first national website for the movement). Charles Koch says he’s interested only in advancing “free-market, small-government ideals,” but what he’s done is manufacture a faux-populist movement that has whipped the conservative base into an anti-government frenzy. In the process of serving his narrow and self-interested ideological ends, he allowed the worst elements of the conservative movement – the xenophobes, the nationalists, and the theocrats – to hijack the Republican Party. Initially this worked, because it sent obstructionists to Congress whose only mission was to shut the government down. But, over time, it’s created a political climate in which it’s nearly impossible to govern. And it’s prepared the way for someone like Donald Trump (whose campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is a product of Americans for Prosperity), who exists only because he’s been able to tap into the sentiments let loose by the Tea Party movement. Hence the incredible irony of a Charles Koch bemoaning what’s become of our political process, a process he, as much as anyone, helped engineer. [image error]I’m a big fan of irony, which is why I enjoyed this Wall Street Journal profile of Charles Koch so much. In an interview with Patrick O’Connor, Charles – evidently the more diplomatic half of the two most politically active Koch brothers – spoke somberly about the tone of the 2016 presidential race and of political discourse more generally. “It’s mainly about personalities and ‘your mother sucked rotten eggs,’” he lamented to O’Connor. On the one hand, I understand Charles’s frustration. After all, he and his brother are looking to invest $750 million on this election. When a man, his brother, and 450 wealthy donors build a national network of umbrella organizations in order to dictate political outcomes via dark money, they expect to get the results they want. Here’s the problem: The Koch brothers, whether they know it or not, got exactly what they paid for. If the tone of our politics has sunk to Cro-Magnon levels, it’s because the process has been flooded with money and propaganda and rabid right-wingers who’ve coarsened the discourse and made compromise impossible. Everything about our politics took a dark turn around the time of Obama’s election in 2008, which is precisely when the Koch brothers’ political machine exploded into being. As O’Connor writes:
In 2003, Mr. Koch convened about a dozen like-minded conservatives in Chicago with the goal of becoming more overtly political. Those efforts took hold early in Barack Obama’s presidency amid voter unease with the bank bailout signed by President George W. Bush and with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Groups financed by the Kochs and their alliance spent more than $400 million in 2012…In that year’s presidential election, Americans for Prosperity and two other Koch-financed groups spent a total of more than $50 million on television ads.The “lack of substance and civility” about which Charles complains began in earnest with the rise of the Tea Party between 2009 and 2010. To the extent that the Tea Party is a centralized movement, it is so because it has been mobilized by the groups Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, both of which are Koch-financed. As it happens, these groups were formerly a single organization, called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded in 1984 by, you guessed it, the Koch Brothers. The Tea Party, from the very beginning, was designed for disruption, and it was a pet project of the Koch brothers (they actually created the first national website for the movement). Charles Koch says he’s interested only in advancing “free-market, small-government ideals,” but what he’s done is manufacture a faux-populist movement that has whipped the conservative base into an anti-government frenzy. In the process of serving his narrow and self-interested ideological ends, he allowed the worst elements of the conservative movement – the xenophobes, the nationalists, and the theocrats – to hijack the Republican Party. Initially this worked, because it sent obstructionists to Congress whose only mission was to shut the government down. But, over time, it’s created a political climate in which it’s nearly impossible to govern. And it’s prepared the way for someone like Donald Trump (whose campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is a product of Americans for Prosperity), who exists only because he’s been able to tap into the sentiments let loose by the Tea Party movement. Hence the incredible irony of a Charles Koch bemoaning what’s become of our political process, a process he, as much as anyone, helped engineer. [image error]
October 26, 2015
The man who warned us about Donald Trump, Fox News and the rise of the idiocracy
Gore Vidal, one of America’s greatest literary renaissance men and the master of the acerbic witticism, once said to an interviewer near the end of his life, “Anyone stupid enough to worry about how he will be remembered, deserves to be forgotten.” With Jay Parini’s new biography of Vidal earning high praise, and the recent documentary on Vidal’s bitter feud with right wing dean of letters, William F. Buckley, Jr., still attracting attention, many critics and commentators are considering the question of Gore Vidal’s legacy. Those who take the fate of American democracy seriously should use the abundant and abrasive opportunity of Vidal’s literature to inspect the danger of the country falling into every steel claw trap Vidal warned of existing on the ruinous road to empire. An examination of Vidal’s art and politics is insufficient if it does not acknowledge the secular prophecy pulsating throughout the best of his novels and essays. It is not enough to merely enumerate the ideas Vidal helped introduce to American culture, or telegraph the time jumping bravery and brilliance of Vidal’s innovative artistry, but that is a good place to begin. In 1948, Vidal wrote the first American novel to depict a same-sex love affair without any pathology or condemnation. “The City and The Pillar,” inspired by his own early affair with a classmate at his boarding school, ages well as a romantic story of youthful affection, simultaneously full of ecstasy and terror. For his trouble, shortly after the book’s publication, the New York Times announced on the pages of its books section that it would no longer lower itself to mention, much less review, another Vidal novel. Given that the New York Times set the standards for American journalism and cultural commentary during that decade, nearly every other major newspaper and magazine marched along with the boycott. Until the Times lifted the ban, Vidal wrote a series of mystery novels under a nom de plum, and moved to Hollywood, where he authored several screenplays for film and television, including “Ben-Hur.” The American author soon became a public intellectual of such gravitas and grace that a Canadian academic would eventually devote an entire book to analyzing how he engineers a connection between entertainment and erudition in a televisual era of superficiality. “How To Be an Intellectual in the Age of TV: The Lessons of Gore Vidal” by Marcie Frank delineates a subtle style of engagement with the camera that seems alien to contemporary cable news, but helped propel Vidal to triumphant heights. He would risk it all again with the publication of “Myra Breckinridge,” a 1968 novel about a beautiful woman of bewitching power who slowly reveals herself as transgender. The forward thinking and openness of Vidal’s early embrace and expression of sexuality stands in stark contrast to the dueling Puritanisms of the present age, where right wing moralists castigate sex in religious language, and left wing moralists prefer to warn of the dangers of sex in therapeutic terminology. Vidal considered himself a man not so much of the left, but of antiquity. Claiming inspiration from Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, and writing one of his best novels, “Julian,” about the apostate emperor who tried to remove Christianity from Rome and restore paganism, Vidal personified the hedonism in existence before the influence of monotheism, and an unwavering loyalty to the early Athenian conception of representative democracy. The cosmopolitan classicism of Vidal injected his contribution to political and literary culture with wisdom. The wisdom creates an unbreachable divide between Vidal, and for example, William F. Buckley. “Best of Enemies,” the recent documentary on their feud, treats them as equals. In reality, the record shows that unlike Vidal’s fine wine political positioning, Buckley’s retrograde views suffer decay and infirmity with each passing year. He opposed the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, and the gay rights movement, and he celebrated Joseph McCarthy, supply side economics, and the war in Vietnam. The connection pundits continue to trace between Vidal and Buckley, which precedes even the release of the documentary, is a small but significant illustration that America is either incapable or unwilling to learn from history (including its own), its past sins and errors or perspectives alternative to American exceptionalism. One of the lessons Vidal would use his rhetorical ability and agility to amplify was the historical warning of Ancient Rome: “A nation cannot be a republic and an empire at the same time.” The respect Vidal showcased for America’s founding fathers emanates from the same point of caution. George Washington advised the nation against “foreign entanglements,” and John Adams considered “unnecessary war” society’s “greatest guilt.” Vidal’s most ambitious literary venture was to retell American history while making it palatable for an American public with declining rates of literacy and interest in literature, by keeping focus on his country’s disastrous transformation from republic to empire. “Narratives of Empire” is a series of historical novels Vidal wrote to take readers from the early days of America’s independence all the way to the Truman administration, and the creation of the National Security State. An increasingly bloated bureaucracy – the Pentagon – gains more power as America repeats the errors of its imperial predecessors, extending itself further and further into every planetary corner while causing collapse within. President Eisenhower’s farewell address articulating the dangers of the “military-industrial complex” would prove too little too late, as America would soon start spending over half of discretionary dollars on the military, maintain over 800 military bases on foreign soil, and discard trillions of dollars and thousands of lives on largely pointless wars in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The bloodshed, limbs lost, and fortunes burned on imperial ambitions and foreign adventures compile hideous evidence validating the worst fears of the founders. Vidal’s novels map the treacherous path America took to lose its “golden age” – what Vidal calls the period immediately following World War II, when America was at peace for five years, the middle class was strong and stable and the arts flourished in cities from coast to coast – and the state of “perpetual war for perpetual peace” in which America is forever committed to vanquishing phantom threats belonging to the “enemy of the month club,” to use some of Vidal’s phrases from his essays. The diversity and quality of Vidal’s essays earn him classification as one of America’s best purveyors of the medium. Reading his correspondences from his home in Italy on subjects ranging from sexuality to American history often feels like one has discovered a treasure chest full of letters from a wise and witty friend. Essays like “The Day The American Empire Ran Out of Gas,” “The National Security State” and “How We Missed the Saturday Dance” aggressively condemn a nation fast losing its bearings. Vidal had little patience for party partisanship or excuse-making for the right-ward drift of the Democratic Party. Republicans, of course, face even greater demolition at the hands of Vidal’s pen. “Armageddon?” and “Monotheism and Its Discontents” eviscerate the influence of religion on American politics and culture with more grace and nuance than Richard Dawkins could dream, and blunt force equal to the late Christopher Hitchens. Twice Vidal attempted to battle the rise of despotic government and the degradation of political culture from the inside – running for Congress in New York, and the Senate in California. Long after he lost both races, he concluded that those defeats might have served him better than had he won: “A writer’s job is to tell the truth. A politician’s job is to not give the game away.” Vidal once said that as a writer he chose to “make America his subject.” “I didn’t spend my life writing about the summer I lost tenure in Ann Arbor, because I ran off with the au pair girl,” he continued with characteristic sarcasm. His obsession with the early conception of America as a Republic with “only interests,” as Washington put it, earned him friends on the left – Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Susan Sontag – and the paleoconservative right – Pat Buchanan, Bill Kauffman. Vidal was fond of quoting Benjamin Franklin, who after the passage of the United States Constitution remarked “A republic; if you can keep it.” It is easy to criticize the military-industrial complex, self-serving politicians, religious bullies, and mediocre journalists more adept at propaganda than reportage, but Vidal showed true courage and despair when he wrote with the realization that the people are part of the problem. Unlike Chomsky and Zinn, and more like Buchanan and Kauffman, he lost confidence that the American people were just enough information away from wrestling the country out of the arms of the elite and reclaiming the Republic. In one of his final essays from 2006, Vidal wrote that America had “entered the Dark Ages.” “What we are seeing,” he explained, “are the obvious characteristics of the West after the fall of Rome: the triumph of religion over reason; the atrophy of education and critical thinking; the integration of religion, the state, and the apparatus of torture—a troika that was for Voltaire the central horror of the pre-Enlightenment world; as well as, today, the political and economic marginalization of our culture.” None of the horror is possible without, at least, the tacit approval of a large percentage of the American public. Polls reveal that Americans are comfortable with drone killing and torture, that they do not believe in evolutionary biology, and that they no longer read much. Vidal once quipped, “Half of the American people read a newspaper. Half of the American people vote. Let us hope it is the same half.” According to a recent Pew report, the percentage of Americans who claim to regularly read the newspaper – in print or online form – has now fallen to 29 percent. Only a fool would believe that the early success of Donald Trump, the sensationalism of cable news, and the celebration of ignorance that defines much of political debate are developments coincidental with the lack of curiosity and knowledge of the American people. Vidal was no fool, and his greatest fear near the end of his life seemed to be that the levers of power to pull for change were no longer accessible. It was the public – not so much the leadership – that was responsible for their destruction. Any examination of Vidal’s life must take into account his role as not just critic, but in language he would appreciate, a more modern Paul Revere. Only in Vidal’s art and letters, he was not crying out for Americans to look out their window at the British, but rather to look in the mirror at the invasion they have already allowed. Jay Parini’s new biography of Vidal, although well-written and fascinating in its chronicle of Vidal’s colorful life, does not spend much time on Vidal’s Revere-like role and his alienation from the American public. The title, however, gives an important insight through contrast. “Empire of Self” could refer to Vidal’s mountainous ego, but it could also refer to the self-earned elegance belonging to people who take the time and invest the effort and energy to truly discover themselves. Rather than allowing himself to be subsumed by the empire of mass culture – political propaganda, religious dogma, low-brow entertainment – he created an “empire of self” through political independence, free thought, and literature. Ralph Waldo Emerson – another American original – wrote that in our society, “The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion.” The self-reliance of Vidal personified the romantic, American notion of individuality. Oddly enough, it is that form of individuality that is in such rare practice now, as it was when Emerson wrote his timeless essay on the subject. In his progressive views on sexuality, his condemnation of American foreign policy, and his criticism of American voters, Vidal constructed an “empire of self” through the hard work of rebellion – a rebellion that provides a prototype for citizenship in a democratic culture. It is that exact rebellion America so desperately needs from its citizenry at this precise moment when too many Americans prefer to think of themselves as consumers rather than citizens. The almost artful irony is that Vidal’s work makes clear it is that rebellion which is least likely to occur.
Calm, confident, crazy Ben Carson: The “subtle form of arrogance” that’s pushing him ahead in the polls
It doesn’t matter if he’s comparing Obamacare to Nazi Germany or abortion to slavery, or denying The Big Bang and evolution, Ben Carson tends to deliver his lines in a calm, mellow tone that differs significantly from the style of many other politicians. Especially those in his own party. Carson's manner strikes some as odd, but Iowa voters seem to love it. “That smile and his soft voice makes people very comforted,” one told the New York Times in a story about Carson’s secret weapon. “He is kind when he speaks,” another says. (No mention that some of his ideas are, let's be honest, utterly crazy.) Carson, it’s worth pointing out, has no political experience at all: He is running on an inspiring back story, and on being untouched by the corrupt world of politics. But temperament clearly plays a role in his support as well. What’s the role of calmness in politics past and present, and human interaction in general? Salon spoke to Justin Frank, a psychoanalyst at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. -- and the author of “Obama on the Couch” and “Bush on the Couch" -- about the appeal of calmness in unsteady times. The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. Ben Carson is polling very high in Iowa. The New York Times argues that it’s partly his mellow manner that is drawing people to him. Does that sound feasible to you? Yes – that’s very likely, and very feasible. I think people who are calm inspire confidence. And there’s a difference between calm, like Ben Carson, and low energy, like Jeb Bush: He does not inspire confidence, because he is saying he can’t take it, that he’d rather do something else. Ben Carson inspires confidence because he’s calm, everyone knows he’s smart. He’s been a very important surgeon at Johns Hopkins, and people have confidence in him because of his steadiness. I also think that there’s a calmness that people are not as willing to admit to themselves: Barack Obama has been a calm president. In the face of attack from all kinds of people, he’s remained steady. He can transform the barbs into thought, so he’s not just reactive. He’s able to process attacks, take them seriously. In that way he’s stronger than Ben Carson, who sticks much more to a set of political beliefs. Theres’s two kinds of calm, then. [There's] the calm that can tolerate cognitive dissonance, that can tolerate more than one idea in one’s mind that might be conflicting with another. And then there’s calm like Ben Carson, which is confidence, but it’s the confidence that comes from being sure he’s right. Yeah – there’s a smugness to it. Yes – it’s a subtle form of arrogance. It reminds me of my days in medical school – we used to walk across the street and say, “Don’t hit me, I’m a doctor,” to the cars. There was an arrogant jokiness. It’s something Carson, I think, has maintained over the years. People confuse calmness with steadiness and intelligence. He has a defensive attitude toward certainty. Some people are more tolerant of not always being certain. But people like their leaders to be certain. That’s been one of Obama’s problems – he thinks, so people think he’s weak. But Carson gives a sense of being certain and being calm. I find certainty, as a psychoanalyst, as a defense against anxiety. And he’s an absolutist. That is very appealing, compared to Trump, who seems to be all over the place. You’ve mentioned Obama and Carson as demonstrating two different kinds of calm. Can we think of other political leaders, American or otherwise, whose support has come partly because of a calm manner? I actually thought the way Hillary dealt with the Benghazi hearings changed a lot of people’s minds. I have friends on the left who are enamored of Bernie Sanders, who didn’t really like Hillary before [the hearings], but they were surprised at how calm and controlled and knowledgeable she was – she’s a person who does her homework. [People like this] can be very reassuring and affirming. She can listen… it makes her more like Obama than Ben Carson. At the top of the GOP we have two very different temperaments. I don’t know what it tells us, but we have Carson’s smug calmness, and we have Trump’s truculence and impulsiveness… They have something in common. They are both viewed as what-you-see-is-what-you-get. They’re viewed as not hypocritical, as authentic. Most candidates are not viewed as authentic – they say one thing and do something else. There’s a sense that both Trump in his bombast, and Carson is his calm steadiness, convey who they really are. They’re reliable, they don’t have anything to hide. While all the others are politicians. Look at Christie, what he’s had to hide with Bridgegate, [and] Rubio… they all have stuff. The big rap against Hillary, until the hearings, was that she wasn’t trustworthy. While with Bernie Sanders, “he is who he is.” The appeal of this sort of calm confidence must be built into human nature – it’s trans-historical. But I wonder if Carson, for instance, is benefitting from the fact that so many voters – this is probably true on both the left and the right – think we live in unsteady and vexing times. To what extent is this about our manic and polarized moment? I wouldn’t call it manic. I’d call it paranoid. We live in a paranoid and polarized world right now – where one side doesn’t trust the other… There’s a need for calm more than before, because of gun violence, stridency, instability in the Middle East, and I think – there’s no evidence of this, but speaking as a psychoanalyst – there’s a lot of unconscious anxiety that transcends the parties around climate change. People aren’t able to articulate that, because it’s not always available to people. But there’s an underlying anxiety about tornados, [extreme temperatures], everything.It doesn’t matter if he’s comparing Obamacare to Nazi Germany or abortion to slavery, or denying The Big Bang and evolution, Ben Carson tends to deliver his lines in a calm, mellow tone that differs significantly from the style of many other politicians. Especially those in his own party. Carson's manner strikes some as odd, but Iowa voters seem to love it. “That smile and his soft voice makes people very comforted,” one told the New York Times in a story about Carson’s secret weapon. “He is kind when he speaks,” another says. (No mention that some of his ideas are, let's be honest, utterly crazy.) Carson, it’s worth pointing out, has no political experience at all: He is running on an inspiring back story, and on being untouched by the corrupt world of politics. But temperament clearly plays a role in his support as well. What’s the role of calmness in politics past and present, and human interaction in general? Salon spoke to Justin Frank, a psychoanalyst at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. -- and the author of “Obama on the Couch” and “Bush on the Couch" -- about the appeal of calmness in unsteady times. The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. Ben Carson is polling very high in Iowa. The New York Times argues that it’s partly his mellow manner that is drawing people to him. Does that sound feasible to you? Yes – that’s very likely, and very feasible. I think people who are calm inspire confidence. And there’s a difference between calm, like Ben Carson, and low energy, like Jeb Bush: He does not inspire confidence, because he is saying he can’t take it, that he’d rather do something else. Ben Carson inspires confidence because he’s calm, everyone knows he’s smart. He’s been a very important surgeon at Johns Hopkins, and people have confidence in him because of his steadiness. I also think that there’s a calmness that people are not as willing to admit to themselves: Barack Obama has been a calm president. In the face of attack from all kinds of people, he’s remained steady. He can transform the barbs into thought, so he’s not just reactive. He’s able to process attacks, take them seriously. In that way he’s stronger than Ben Carson, who sticks much more to a set of political beliefs. Theres’s two kinds of calm, then. [There's] the calm that can tolerate cognitive dissonance, that can tolerate more than one idea in one’s mind that might be conflicting with another. And then there’s calm like Ben Carson, which is confidence, but it’s the confidence that comes from being sure he’s right. Yeah – there’s a smugness to it. Yes – it’s a subtle form of arrogance. It reminds me of my days in medical school – we used to walk across the street and say, “Don’t hit me, I’m a doctor,” to the cars. There was an arrogant jokiness. It’s something Carson, I think, has maintained over the years. People confuse calmness with steadiness and intelligence. He has a defensive attitude toward certainty. Some people are more tolerant of not always being certain. But people like their leaders to be certain. That’s been one of Obama’s problems – he thinks, so people think he’s weak. But Carson gives a sense of being certain and being calm. I find certainty, as a psychoanalyst, as a defense against anxiety. And he’s an absolutist. That is very appealing, compared to Trump, who seems to be all over the place. You’ve mentioned Obama and Carson as demonstrating two different kinds of calm. Can we think of other political leaders, American or otherwise, whose support has come partly because of a calm manner? I actually thought the way Hillary dealt with the Benghazi hearings changed a lot of people’s minds. I have friends on the left who are enamored of Bernie Sanders, who didn’t really like Hillary before [the hearings], but they were surprised at how calm and controlled and knowledgeable she was – she’s a person who does her homework. [People like this] can be very reassuring and affirming. She can listen… it makes her more like Obama than Ben Carson. At the top of the GOP we have two very different temperaments. I don’t know what it tells us, but we have Carson’s smug calmness, and we have Trump’s truculence and impulsiveness… They have something in common. They are both viewed as what-you-see-is-what-you-get. They’re viewed as not hypocritical, as authentic. Most candidates are not viewed as authentic – they say one thing and do something else. There’s a sense that both Trump in his bombast, and Carson is his calm steadiness, convey who they really are. They’re reliable, they don’t have anything to hide. While all the others are politicians. Look at Christie, what he’s had to hide with Bridgegate, [and] Rubio… they all have stuff. The big rap against Hillary, until the hearings, was that she wasn’t trustworthy. While with Bernie Sanders, “he is who he is.” The appeal of this sort of calm confidence must be built into human nature – it’s trans-historical. But I wonder if Carson, for instance, is benefitting from the fact that so many voters – this is probably true on both the left and the right – think we live in unsteady and vexing times. To what extent is this about our manic and polarized moment? I wouldn’t call it manic. I’d call it paranoid. We live in a paranoid and polarized world right now – where one side doesn’t trust the other… There’s a need for calm more than before, because of gun violence, stridency, instability in the Middle East, and I think – there’s no evidence of this, but speaking as a psychoanalyst – there’s a lot of unconscious anxiety that transcends the parties around climate change. People aren’t able to articulate that, because it’s not always available to people. But there’s an underlying anxiety about tornados, [extreme temperatures], everything.
Weezer is the absolute worst: Is Rivers Cuomo just trolling us all?
Man, Weezer’s new single sure is weird. It’s called “Thank God for Girls,” and that last word standing out like a dare to thinkpiece writers everywhere. The cover features a photo of the Pope, because people on the Internet sure do like the Pope. The first verse is about a woman—I’m sorry, a girl -- who works at a pastry shop and makes cannolis that may or may not be sexual innuendos. “She’s so energetic in her sweaty overalls,” Rivers Cuomo sings, obviously describing a real person. Later, he raps—yes, he raps—about how he gives this girl sweaty palms and how God created Eve by throwing Adam’s rib into a centrifuge. Meanwhile, the band shout the title in distorted voices, as though singing through telephones, and the guitars crunch and wail in a parody of guitars that crunch and wail. “Thank God for Girls” is the worst kind of weird. It’s weird for the sake of weird. Calculated non sequitur. Scripted strangeness. The song could have been created in a lab; it’s genetically engineered to go viral because cannolis and sweaty overalls, right? And it probably will go viral. In fact, right now people are posting that self-consciously zany video to their social medias, even though the song itself is a non-song that touches on enough hot topics—gender equality, dragons, Creationism, pastries—to sound like it might actually be saying something about something. But “Thank God for Girls” isn’t subversive or substantial or anything at all. Worst of all, it’s not even fun. This is not a new thing. Weezer practically invented that sad new format called meme rock with their 2008 video for “Pork n Beans,” which featured the Numa Numa guy, the Leave Britney Alone guy, the Evolution of Dance guy, the Chocolate Rain guy, and Dramatic Hamster. Ostensibly Cuomo was praising the unpolished idiosyncrasies of these unlikely celebrities as a way to tell his own fans that hey, it’s okay to be weird. Just be yourself. It’s a nice message, very empowering and very Ben Folds, but “Pork n Beans” was never actually about you and me. No, Weezer are singing about themselves and how weird and wacky and lovable they are. Rather than celebratory, it comes across as cynical. That’s the operative word with this band. More than 20 years after they formed and nearly 15 years after they re-formed, Weezer have become the most grossly cynical band around. They’re worse than Nickelback, who don’t maintain the same veneer of respectability, and they’re worse than One Direction, who at least know their way around a hook. Even when their '90s alt-pop peers have resigned themselves to nostalgia tours and/or complete obscurity, Weezer are still going strong, at least as actual rock bands go. They still release event albums, still sell well enough in their first week, still fall off in their second, still tour large venues, still play shows under that ironic winged W. But their popularity, aside from their pandering antics, isn’t based on listeners’ nostalgia for a time when rock bands actually commanded attention and sales. Instead, they’re coasting on the good will of their first two albums: 1994’s charmingly eccentric “Weezer” (known far and wide as the Blue Album) and 1996’s disarmingly confessional “Pinkerton” (known far and wide as the album that rips your soul out). To be fair, Weezer were great when they were underdogs. Two decades ago, they mixed semi-heavy riffs with witty lyrics and trenchant self-loathing, and even at a time when rock-and-roll exorcisms were all over the radio dial, Cuomo dispensed messy emotions via precisely structured pop songs. The success of early singles like “Undone (The Sweater Song)” and “Buddy Holly” nearly trashed their underdog status, but Pinkerton, so misunderstood in its time, immediately sent them back into semi-obscurity. It tanked, of course, but at least Cuomo owned up to some of the uglier aspects of relationships. His less-than-glowing self-assessment was refreshing during a decade when well-meaning but—let’s face it, dumb—bands toyed around with knowingly misogynist perspectives and got way in over their heads. Think “Sex Type Thing” by Stone Temple Pilots or “Push” by Matchbox 20. Weezer could get away with a song like “No One Else” or “El Scorcho” because Cuomo delivered each line with an implied “sorry.” The resurrection of Pinkerton from sophomore slump to generational milestone is still a pretty remarkable story, even if the band had to shed its underdog status once and for all. Their 2001 comeback, “Weezer” (aka Green Album), was slammed for being impersonal and overproduced, which may have been the entire point. In retrospect, it sounds like a retreat from the emotional kneecapping of the would-be career wrecker, but at least it had “Island in the Sun,” as wistful and as dreamy a tune as Cuomo has ever penned. He played the part of the rock-and-roll loser beautifully on those first two albums, but since then, Cuomo has never been especially convincing as a rock star, perhaps because the role was thrust upon him and accepted only reluctantly. That predicament alone could fuel a thoughtful and provocative album, perhaps even a long and productive career, but Weezer’s output in the twenty-first century has been so consistently, aggressively, inventively awful that it’s almost impressive. Their last six albums—starting with 2002’s “Maladroit”—have been almost comically bad, each sporting some variation of the same slick, expensive-sounding sonic palette and some of the most moon/June rhymes imaginable. Cuomo apparently forgot how to put songs together and the band forgot how to rock without quotation marks. “Beverly Hills” and “Dope Nose” and “I’m Your Daddy” weren’t just bad. Those singles sound like someone put real effort into their badness. So the best part of last year’s “Everything Will Be Alright in the End” was that it sounded like the end: the culmination of more than a decade of wrongheaded tendencies, boneheaded lyrics, and half-assed gambits. It sounded, in other words, like the final Weezer album, one last attempt to set things right before they finally put the band out of our misery. Cuomo directed most of the songs to his fans, as though feinting toward an apology: “Back to the Shack” was an attempt to hit the reset button and start all over again, while “Eulogy for a Rock Band” served as an epitaph after “fifteen years of ruling the planet.” It almost sounded like a mea culpa, but “I’ve Had It Up to Here” suggested otherwise: “If you think I need approval from the faceless throng,” Cuomo sang, unbowed and unbroken and unbelievable, “well, that’s where you’re wrong.” Weirdly, the album received glowing reviews. So the band keeps going. “Thank God for Girls” no doubt heralds a tenth album and possibly the extinguishing of the sun. As the highs of the 1990s recede further and further into the dark past, one thing does grow clearer and clearer. Weezer haven’t been flailing about these past fifteen years, searching in vain for some direction and inspiration. At a certain point, they must have decided to become the worst band in the world. Forget meme rock. They’re troll rock.Man, Weezer’s new single sure is weird. It’s called “Thank God for Girls,” and that last word standing out like a dare to thinkpiece writers everywhere. The cover features a photo of the Pope, because people on the Internet sure do like the Pope. The first verse is about a woman—I’m sorry, a girl -- who works at a pastry shop and makes cannolis that may or may not be sexual innuendos. “She’s so energetic in her sweaty overalls,” Rivers Cuomo sings, obviously describing a real person. Later, he raps—yes, he raps—about how he gives this girl sweaty palms and how God created Eve by throwing Adam’s rib into a centrifuge. Meanwhile, the band shout the title in distorted voices, as though singing through telephones, and the guitars crunch and wail in a parody of guitars that crunch and wail. “Thank God for Girls” is the worst kind of weird. It’s weird for the sake of weird. Calculated non sequitur. Scripted strangeness. The song could have been created in a lab; it’s genetically engineered to go viral because cannolis and sweaty overalls, right? And it probably will go viral. In fact, right now people are posting that self-consciously zany video to their social medias, even though the song itself is a non-song that touches on enough hot topics—gender equality, dragons, Creationism, pastries—to sound like it might actually be saying something about something. But “Thank God for Girls” isn’t subversive or substantial or anything at all. Worst of all, it’s not even fun. This is not a new thing. Weezer practically invented that sad new format called meme rock with their 2008 video for “Pork n Beans,” which featured the Numa Numa guy, the Leave Britney Alone guy, the Evolution of Dance guy, the Chocolate Rain guy, and Dramatic Hamster. Ostensibly Cuomo was praising the unpolished idiosyncrasies of these unlikely celebrities as a way to tell his own fans that hey, it’s okay to be weird. Just be yourself. It’s a nice message, very empowering and very Ben Folds, but “Pork n Beans” was never actually about you and me. No, Weezer are singing about themselves and how weird and wacky and lovable they are. Rather than celebratory, it comes across as cynical. That’s the operative word with this band. More than 20 years after they formed and nearly 15 years after they re-formed, Weezer have become the most grossly cynical band around. They’re worse than Nickelback, who don’t maintain the same veneer of respectability, and they’re worse than One Direction, who at least know their way around a hook. Even when their '90s alt-pop peers have resigned themselves to nostalgia tours and/or complete obscurity, Weezer are still going strong, at least as actual rock bands go. They still release event albums, still sell well enough in their first week, still fall off in their second, still tour large venues, still play shows under that ironic winged W. But their popularity, aside from their pandering antics, isn’t based on listeners’ nostalgia for a time when rock bands actually commanded attention and sales. Instead, they’re coasting on the good will of their first two albums: 1994’s charmingly eccentric “Weezer” (known far and wide as the Blue Album) and 1996’s disarmingly confessional “Pinkerton” (known far and wide as the album that rips your soul out). To be fair, Weezer were great when they were underdogs. Two decades ago, they mixed semi-heavy riffs with witty lyrics and trenchant self-loathing, and even at a time when rock-and-roll exorcisms were all over the radio dial, Cuomo dispensed messy emotions via precisely structured pop songs. The success of early singles like “Undone (The Sweater Song)” and “Buddy Holly” nearly trashed their underdog status, but Pinkerton, so misunderstood in its time, immediately sent them back into semi-obscurity. It tanked, of course, but at least Cuomo owned up to some of the uglier aspects of relationships. His less-than-glowing self-assessment was refreshing during a decade when well-meaning but—let’s face it, dumb—bands toyed around with knowingly misogynist perspectives and got way in over their heads. Think “Sex Type Thing” by Stone Temple Pilots or “Push” by Matchbox 20. Weezer could get away with a song like “No One Else” or “El Scorcho” because Cuomo delivered each line with an implied “sorry.” The resurrection of Pinkerton from sophomore slump to generational milestone is still a pretty remarkable story, even if the band had to shed its underdog status once and for all. Their 2001 comeback, “Weezer” (aka Green Album), was slammed for being impersonal and overproduced, which may have been the entire point. In retrospect, it sounds like a retreat from the emotional kneecapping of the would-be career wrecker, but at least it had “Island in the Sun,” as wistful and as dreamy a tune as Cuomo has ever penned. He played the part of the rock-and-roll loser beautifully on those first two albums, but since then, Cuomo has never been especially convincing as a rock star, perhaps because the role was thrust upon him and accepted only reluctantly. That predicament alone could fuel a thoughtful and provocative album, perhaps even a long and productive career, but Weezer’s output in the twenty-first century has been so consistently, aggressively, inventively awful that it’s almost impressive. Their last six albums—starting with 2002’s “Maladroit”—have been almost comically bad, each sporting some variation of the same slick, expensive-sounding sonic palette and some of the most moon/June rhymes imaginable. Cuomo apparently forgot how to put songs together and the band forgot how to rock without quotation marks. “Beverly Hills” and “Dope Nose” and “I’m Your Daddy” weren’t just bad. Those singles sound like someone put real effort into their badness. So the best part of last year’s “Everything Will Be Alright in the End” was that it sounded like the end: the culmination of more than a decade of wrongheaded tendencies, boneheaded lyrics, and half-assed gambits. It sounded, in other words, like the final Weezer album, one last attempt to set things right before they finally put the band out of our misery. Cuomo directed most of the songs to his fans, as though feinting toward an apology: “Back to the Shack” was an attempt to hit the reset button and start all over again, while “Eulogy for a Rock Band” served as an epitaph after “fifteen years of ruling the planet.” It almost sounded like a mea culpa, but “I’ve Had It Up to Here” suggested otherwise: “If you think I need approval from the faceless throng,” Cuomo sang, unbowed and unbroken and unbelievable, “well, that’s where you’re wrong.” Weirdly, the album received glowing reviews. So the band keeps going. “Thank God for Girls” no doubt heralds a tenth album and possibly the extinguishing of the sun. As the highs of the 1990s recede further and further into the dark past, one thing does grow clearer and clearer. Weezer haven’t been flailing about these past fifteen years, searching in vain for some direction and inspiration. At a certain point, they must have decided to become the worst band in the world. Forget meme rock. They’re troll rock.
