Dan Riley's Blog, page 45

Standing in the Doorway

It's Bob Dylan's 72nd birthday today, and as I have for nearly 20 years, I give thanks that Bob was not the one to butcher Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in Brentwood that grim summer night in 1994. If he had, I'd have stopped listening to Bob's music that long ago, and not only would have had to give up all the dazzling old stuff that provided me with emotional, intellectual, and musical sustenance since I first heard "Like A Rolling Stone," but the great new stuff that has since come from Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times (assuming, of course, Bob was still writing songs after committing double murder....Orenthal James Simpson was still playing golf after committing those double murders, so anything is possible). Would I really have gone cold turkey like that? I guess it would depend upon Bob's behavior after the killing. If he had been filled with confession and remorse, I probably could've been fine with letting the law mete out the requisite punishment. As loyal readers know, The Nobby Works approves of reconciliation. It would have been an entirely different matter, however, if he had taken the Odious James Simpson route (note, since the trial I take quiet offense when people refer to him by the endearment OJ, and I'm moved to write angry letters when sports lackeys still call him Juice...that would be you, Bryant Gumbel).
Perhaps, it's worth taking a moment here to ponder what if Simpson had taken the Dylan route in dealing with his suffering. What if rather than taking a knife to the woman who broke his heart, he had taken out a guitar and written something like "Standing in the Doorway"? Would merely ruminating in verse whether he would kiss her or kill her have been enough to stanch his aching heart and save two lives. Is the simple twist of fate here one man born to express himself intellectually and one born to express himself physically?


Don’t know if I saw you, if I would kiss you or kill youIt probably wouldn’t matter to you anyhowYou left me standing in the doorway, cryingI got nothing to go back to now...Maybe they’ll get me and maybe they won’tBut not tonight and it won’t be hereThere are things I could say but I don’tI know the mercy of God must be nearI’ve been riding the midnight trainGot ice water in my veinsI would be crazy if I took you backIt would go up against every ruleYou left me standing in the doorway, cryingSuffering like a fool
In any case, Simpson did not occupy the same lofty level in my personal pantheon as Dylan does. I admired him immensely, however, even though he played for a team that regularly beat down my team and he had some of his greatest games against the Patriots. He was truly wondrous to behold on a football field. His running style was a stunning blend of power and speed that transcended team loyalties. His deft comic turns in the Airplane movies confirmed the general impression of a uniquely talented and supremely likable human being. Then came the murders and the bloody details of what he did to those two human beings strolling home from dinner that night. And the hideous trial in which 1 in 170 million odds were turned into a shadow of a doubt, where a cop's loose tongue was turned into an indictment of an entire justice system, where black racism rushed into the arms of white racism for a danse macabre, and where a rich man's lawyers and money could sell ordinary citizens on the intellectual pornography that is jury nullification... that they could balance the scales of racial injustice by setting him free.
I probably put more energy into thinking about whether I would boycott Dylan if he had had ever killed someone like Simpson killed Ron and Nicole than seems normal. But I do it because I'm really perplexed by the question of how much leeway we give our heroes before their  transgressions negate the joy they provide us. I'm particularly keen to this issue because, as I've posted in the past, three of my personal heroes have tread a very fine line between being, let's say, eccentric in their behavior and personalities and being reprehensible. And I'm always curious where I and others draw that line. How much margin for error do we give them and deny others? And what about where we draw that line does it tell us about ourselves and our biases? 
For instance, I've found it personally revealing to self examine how I reacted to the sins of Cat Stevens and Phil Spector respectively. After Stevens, now  known as Yusuf Islam, seemed to endorse the Iranian Ayatollah's fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1988, I immediately stopped listening to his music. Admittedly, depriving myself of Tea for the Tillermanand Teaser and the Firecat was not at the same level of deprivation as forsaking Highway 61 Revisited and Blood on the Tracks, but I really did like the man's music and it called on all the willpower of my childhood Lenten days to resist playing "Morning Has Broken" when I would awake with it on my lips. On the other hand, when creepy megalomaniac Phil Spector shot woebegone actress Lana Clarkson in the head and was found guilty of second degree murder, it never occurred to me to turn my back on his Wall of Sound. Spector's crime was clearly the more heinous, and unlike Yusuf Islam he didn't even attempt a lame and muddled explanation for his actions. Yet, for me, what Yusuf did was a betrayal of a fellow artist...and artists in general...who have struggled against totalitarianism and fundamentalism for centuries. That touched a nerve with me. My willingness to abandon Yusef's music until his acts and words finally rebalanced the scales clarified for me how highly I value honor among artists to support the free expression of other artists.
The murder of Lana Clarkson, sadly, falls into the long tawdry line of celebrity scandal that never quite rises to the level of moral cause. No matter their transgressions, we routinely consume the product of wife beaters, pedophiles, drug addicts, bullies, cheats, liars, killers, etc. without mounting our high moral horse. But every once in a while, someone famous crosses a line that we will not tolerate and we mount up. When we do that, we're revealing much more about our own values and morals than we are about those we condemn. 


Video excerpted from Martin Scorsese's documentary No Direction HomeMusic, "Standing in the Doorway" by Bob Dylan, Time Out of Mind album

Also, Man Gave Names to all the Animals

For about the umpteenth time I was watching Passione, the John Turturro documentary on Neapolitan music that inspired last week’s Mother’s Day post, and as happens each time I watch it, one of the songs catches me in a new way. This time it was Era de Maggio. And what struck me about it was how much the two lovely singers, Misia & Peppe Servillo, resembled birds. It’s spring of course, and we are surrounded by birds so I’m more aware of their infinite and beautiful variety of song than usual. So while I’m more than happy to have another opportunity to plug Turturro’s film in this blog, I must confess that the wonder of all those Neapolitan singers rendering all those gorgeous melodies really seems a bit derivative of what I’m hearing from the birds around me these days. As they say, birds do it. And if mere feathered creatures could fill the air with exquisite music, what’s really the big deal about humans doing it, too. (Hey, Turturro, you wanna see melodies really take wing, bring your camera crew to our place.)
Anyway, watching those birdlike Neapolitans sing about springtime love made me start thinking about what is it that our human species can do that other species cannot do. The answer was not build cities and land on the moon because I believe a sound argument can be made that those advanced achievements are more than matched by what goes on in ant colonies and the winged migration of geese—our industrial prowess equaled by the industry of beehives; our science and technology trumped by the caterpillar that comes into being equipped with all the science and technology it needs to metamorphose into a butterfly; and even our darkest genius for dealing death in all manner of hideous and violent fashion really can’t compare to what a humble virus or bacteria can do to the healthiest, wealthiest, most beautiful human body.
So, to find anything they can do, we can do better is not as easy as the song implies. Then, presto! I was no more than an hour into this inquiry when a friend posted a cake his granddaughter had decorated, modeled after Van Gogh’s Starry Night, and I exclaimed, “Eureka!” That was something we humans could do that our cousins in the animal kingdom cannot. A mad, dead Dutchman can inspire a young woman half a world away and a hundred years in the future. That brought me back to those Neapolitan singers. The wonder wasn’t that they could sing like birds, but that the songs they were singing did not come natural to them. They were not literally born with these songs in their hearts as birds are--no matter how much we try to romanticize otherwise. Humans learn songs, often written by other humans…sometimes written by humans who cannot sing a decent note themselves. They are often humans the singers never know, who may live in a time and place the singers will never know. Human singers, unlike birds, get to choose which songs they’ll sing. The oriole cannot choose to sing the cardinal’s song, but the Neapolitan can sing the African’s song or the cowboy’s song.
And that led me to another unique thing we as humans can do…we can and do go outside our boxes. As depressingly herd-like as we often can be, there are still many among us who actually do what those animals are always trying to do in countless children’s tales and Pixar movies…connect with people and lifestyles that are not native to us. Lions lying down with lambs may be nothing more than a metaphor in the animal world, but in the human world Chinese girls lie down with Bolivian boys; Catholics lie down with atheists; James Carville lies down with Mary Matalin. We go on Facebook and establish connection with folks whose faces we may never see in the flesh. The most fully evolved amongst us are always open to foreign affairs and entanglements.
And for all the bloody wars these encounters with aliens have brought upon us over the centuries, there are still those among us who struggle nobly and tirelessly to create a world where might does not make right.  As frustrating as it is watching the fucking Middle East year after year turn the survival instinct on its head, it’s still worth noting that there will never ever be a lion-wildebeest peace process. There will never be a cobra-mongoose peace accord. As hopeless as the NRA seems, regulating, restraining, or reasoning with the tsetse fly is far more difficult. 
Which brings me to this endearing human trait…our ability to weave stories about ourselves that promise us--or our children or our far distant posterity--a better world. Whether it’s the Greek myths that abound in the work of Homer or the Christian myths that abound in the Bible, the sayings of Confucius or the tales of Aesop, our persistence in passing on life lessons and morals to future generations no matter how much daily experience suggests that it’s all in vain is truly a sweet and charming behavior that is beyond the ken of the cutest little kitten that ever lived.
And because the overriding mission of The Nobby Works is to extoll the virtues of Love’s Body--both as philosophy and living, breathing thing--how about a word or two about what a very wonderful thing it is?  The jaguar can run faster, the dolphin can swim further, the monkey can climb better, but how many of the lower creatures can master a medley of physical skills not just for survival, but for well-being, pride, and sheer entertainment?
As we receive constant reminders of how we’ve bollixed up our planet, it gets increasingly tempting to get down on worthiness as a species. Could…would…a planet of the apes do it better? Only if a human imagination made it so in a book, a movie, or a Broadway musical. 

How Your Mother Made You

As the Nobby Works heads into a third glorious year of existence (it has now attracted almost as many visitors in the first half of this year as it did in its first two years…if my posts had been marijuana plants I’d be able to supply the entire state of Colorado by now), I realize what an essential partner Youtube has been…the best kind of partner actually….it asks for nothing in return for its invaluable links. I have no idea how many of this growing community of readers make a point of following the links and actually viewing the Youtube videos. I try to write so it’s not really necessary, though there are a few of those videos that I believe add considerably to the enjoyment and comprehension of the posts that follow. In that category, I'd put this one, and this one, and this one. None, however, are as essential to the post as the Youtube linked above. Without viewing it, what follows makes very little sense. So let's pause a few moments for anyone who hasn't taken 2:29 to view the video to view it now. 

Ah, one...ah, two...ah, three....
The clip is from the magical John Turturro film Passione about the music of Naples (in Italy, Floridians). It’s must viewing for all Italophiles like me and for world music lovers in general. There is not a weak musical moment in the entire film (and I’ve already made use of another favorite in one of  The Nob's most heavily trafficked past posts). But this one hits The Nobby Works' sweet spot…the glory and sheer joy of the body…over ga-ga spirituality, churchly morality and cheap sentimentality. The Nobby Works main man Norman O. Brown made his bones maintaining that carnality, not spirituality, was the main path to salvation, and as a student of the genre, I don’t know as I’ve ever seen an example in pop culture that makes the case any better than Turturro’s filming of the Neapolitan classic Comme Facette Mammeta ("How Your Mother Made You"). This is no Hallmark card Mother's Day hearts & flowers kind of thing...this is pure Love's Body as Nobby would have it: 

The world is our mother…To explore is to penetrate; the world is the insides of mother…The dance of life, the whole story of our wanderings; in a labyrinth of error, the labyrinth of this world…And the wandering is all in the mother… 

The news leading up to this Mother's Day was filled with horror stories of the subjugation and rape of women. An argument could be made...indeed has been made...that the sight of women dancing as they do in the Turturro video contributes to their being victimized by sexual predators...or as gruesome statistics reveal...by abusive mates. But I would argue the opposite. I believe the portrayal of women in Turturro's video is of females who own their sexuality, and take pride in that ownership. I think that's an intimidating, rather than enticing, image for sexual bullies. And--at the risk of standing on  ground as shaky as the ground under Naples--I'd go so far as to venture that the typical Mother's Day portrayal of mom as a submissive, sacrificing....sacrificial...figure may inspire as much, if not more, abuse as any dirty dancing.

In any case, as much as all us children hate to do this, it might be healthy this year to remember mom at least once as her own sexual agent and not just the depository of our virgin fantasies. Watch Comme Facette Mammeta again, and this Mother’s Day make a different wish for your mom…dare to wish that it was as good for her making you as it clearly was for Turturro’s dancers. 

The lyrics: 
Comme Facette Mammeta?
How Did Your Mother Make You? Quanno mammeta t'ha fatta When your mother made you Vuo' sape comme facette Do you know what she did? Pe' 'mpasta sti ccarne belle To knead this nice flesh Tutto chello ca mettatte? What did she put in it? Ciento rose 'ncappucciate Dint' a martula mmescate A hundred rosebuds She mixed with a mortar Latte, rose, rose e latte Te facette 'ncoppo fatto! Milk and roses, roses and milk She whisked you up in the blink of an eye! Nun c'e bisogno 'a zingara P'andivina, Cunce' It doesn't need a gypsy To figure it out, Cunce'  Comme t'ha fatto mammeta 'o ssaccio meglio 'e te! Just how mother made you I know better than you! E pe' fa 'sta vocca bella And to make that lovely mouth Nun servette 'a stessa dose There were other things she added Vuo' sape che nce mettette? Do you want to know what she put in? Mo te dico tuttecosa Now I'll tell you all Nu panaro chino, chino Tutt' e fravule 'e ciardino A basket filled to the brim With all the strawberries from the garden Mele, zuccaro e cannella: Te 'mpastaje 'sta vocca bella Apples, sugar and cinnamon To make that lovely mouth Nun c'e bisogno 'a zingara P'andivina, Cunce' It doesn't take a gypsy To figure it out, Cunce' Comme t'ha fatto mammeta 'o ssaccio meglio 'e te! Just how mother made you I know better than you!
Happy Mothers' Day to all the once and future hot mamas. 

Nihilists

I

Neil Armstrong 

Neil Diamond

Neil Kinnock

Neil O'Donnell

Neil Jordan

Neil Sedaka

Neil Simon

Neil Young

Neil Gaiman

 II

Eugene O'Neill

Tip O'Neill

Jennifer O'Neill

Paul O’Neill  

 Paul O' Neill (2)
III

Neal Cassady

Neal Stephenson

Neal Boortz 

IV

Neil Patrick Harris

Neil deGrasse Tyson

V
Patricia Neal

Charlie Neal

VI
A.S. Neill
Sam Neill

VIIAlice Neel
Louis Eugéne Felix Néel
VIIICam Neely
IXNils Lofgren

nilsson

X
Niels Froleicher

(happy birthday, Niels) 

It's Gotta Good Beat and You Can Weep to It

Once in another lifetime, one of toil and blood…
Stop the music! It wasn’t that bad. In fact I had the sweet pleasure back then of teaching three high school courses based on lyrics of rock ‘n roll songs. The one that was in place when I started at the school was called "Poetry as Rock" (it was the 70s…things like that were possible). The immense popularity of that course allowed me to create and teach two (ahem) advanced courses…one based on the Beatles and one based on Bob Dylan. This was the great “They pay me for this!” period of my life.
I would hand out the lyrics (which I generally had to transcribe myself after repeated listens of the records, which is why some of my students have gone through life thinking the line in Idiot Wind is “I ran into the fortune-teller, who said beware of leopards that change stripes” instead of “I ran into the fortune-teller, who said beware of lightning that might strike”). We would play the song and then I would lead the class through a discussion of the song. Invariably there would be a student who, when challenged by me on his or her interpretation, would ask, “How did I know that I was right?” Or, “How did I know what was in the songwriter’s head?”
My answer to the first question was that it was not a matter of being right; it was a matter of logically supporting your interpretation with evidence found in the lyrics. You cannot suggest that Eleanor Rigby, for instance, is a song about marriage just because there’s a verse in it about a wedding.
To the second question, I would answer that art is the meeting of the artist’s imagination and the audience’s imagination. Artists plumb their hearts and souls and experiences to create things for us, and we consume the art because it speaks to our hearts and souls and experiences, though maybe not always in exactly the same way the artist intended.  That’s what makes art art and not math—there is no right answer because people can and do bring to their appreciation of the art what they will.
Having said all that…indeed, having lived by that…I am nonetheless in a constant state of bafflement over the oft-times preposterous use of Leonard Cohen’s magnificent composition Hallelujah. The song is now the go-to song in tragedy…9/11, Haiti, Sandy Hook. It happened again just last week when the folks at Fenway Park chose to use it as the soundtrack for a big screen montage of the traumatic week of the BostonMarathon.
Musically speaking, I am a lyric man first and foremost (which is why for most of my life I’ve been able to dismiss the nit-picking over Dylan’s voice—a little like complaining about Meryl Streep’s nose as far as I’m concerned). I realize that most people take their music melody first. This was certainly true of my students. The most satisfying feedback I ever got…and I got it over and over again…was that the classes made them suddenly aware of this poetry that was in their ears all the time. The music was no longer something simply to move to or get lost in but to think about.
Still, the judgment of those 16-year olds from American Bandstand prevails. Whenever Dick Clark would play a new record for them and ask their opinion, approval was always the same: It’s gotta good beat and you can dance to it.
Nothing else quite explains the inexplicable use of Hallelujah as a spirit-lifting anthem in times of trouble. It’s a song that lyrically is about seduction, sex, betrayal, anger, and vengeance, with a chorus dripping in irony. Yet masses of people insist on hearing it as a song about healing and grace. I had to wonder in watching last week what would happen if they scrolled the lyrics on the big screen at Fenway so the crowd could sing along. Would anyone notice what they were singing about:
Well I heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do ya? Well it goes like this The fourth, the fifth The minor fall and the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Ironically it starts with an appropriate bit of condescension: there’s secret in the music, but you don’t get it, do you?
Well your faith was strong but you needed proof You saw her bathing on the roof Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you She tied you to her kitchen chair And she broke your throne and she cut your hair And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
And now there’s a verse that earns the song its place high on the Nobby Works' playlist, as our Norman O. Brown would have it in Love’s Body: the triumph of body/sensuality over soul/spirit.
Well baby I've been here beforeI've seen this room and I've walked this floorI used to live alone before I knew ya I've seen your flag on the marble archLove is not a victory march It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Okay, I was alone before you came along, and now I’m alone again. You beat me…now do your touchdown dance and get the hell out of here (but a flag is mentioned, so there's that).
Well there was a time when you let me knowWhat's really going on belowBut now you never show that to me do you?And remember when I moved in you?And the holy dove was moving tooAnd every breath we drew was Hallelujah
In the 60s there was a great faux scandal over the Kingsmen’s version of Louie, Louie. If I can recall my high school days through the haze, one of the offending, though non-existent, lines was, “I’ll never screw you again.” If Leonard Cohen had recorded Hallelujah back then, the scandal would've been real. This verse alone would’ve alerted the lyric cops, and they’d have been burning copies of the record from Birmingham to Boston.  
Well maybe there's a God aboveBut all I've ever learned from loveWas how to shoot somebody who'd outdrew yaAnd it's not a cry that you hear at nightIt's not somebody who's seen in the lightIt's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
There's a line in a Dylan song that's similar, though not so subtle: "Don’t know if I saw you, if I would kiss you or kill you." Dylan, always with an ear for the treasures of others, was the first major artist other than Cohen himself to sing Hallelujah. Before John Cale’s world-weary version and Jeff Buckley’s ethereal version, Dylan performed a driving, pounding version in concerts, and this verse made it a comfortable fit with his own finger-pointing songs. He sings the chorus, “Hallelujah, Hallelujah…,” with much the same disdain he brings to “How does it feel?” I think Bob got it right. And at the risk of coming off elitist, I'd say that if Dylan--or the similarly vocally challenged Cohen--were the only ones ever to sing the song, it's unlikely that anyone but the their fans would ever know of its existence. 
Cohen is often opaque on what his original intention was with Hallelujah. Whatever it was, I can’t believe he ever thought for a moment he was composing a song that would become a stand-in for The Star-Spangled Banner, God Bless America, and We Are The World all rolled into one whenever the nation needed a song to get it through a dark time. It would be as if Eleanor Rigby suddenly became the stand-in for Here Comes the Brideand We’ve Only Just Begun. Cohen is no doubt happy with the money and fame the song has brought him…and well he should be (though the maudlinization of it must concern him). It is--despite the misuse and overuse--one of the most sublime masterpieces in music recording history. Its wild, bewildering appropriation by Canadian Tenors, American Idols, TV producers, church choirs, first responders, Shrek (!), etc. etc., etc…all underscores the truth of a lyric by another pretty good songwriter: "Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest…lie, la, lie." 

Bloomberg's Money

Wayne Lapierre, is that a throbbing pink Bushmaster up your ass? Or are you just happy to be the biggest freaking monster in the United States of America?
What if you had a million dollars?

That used to be one of our favorite games when I was a kid....long before a million dollars could barely buy you a light-hitting utility infielder. Hell, there was even a TV show called The Millionaire where we got to indulge the fantasy, long before reality shoved fantasy and imagination into Sunday nights on HBO.
Today of course the show would have to be upgraded to The Billionaire, as in Michael Bloomberg, the benevolent monarch of New York City who's able to bend the voters' will with a wave of his hand and a show of his net worth. Well, not all the voters of course...there are limits to the power of money, even in the land of money. Mayor Bloomberg has spent millions from his personal fortune to combat gun violence, an issue closer to his heart than limiting the serving size for soft drinks (though media coverage makes it seem the opposite). Yet, in the recent US Senate vote on background checks for criminality and mental illness among gun purchasers, all Bloomberg's millions went for naught. The tepid, bi-partisan bill went down to defeat at the hands of 42 typical Republicans and 4 craven Democrats. Bloomberg reacted to the defeat by calling it a vote for criminals.
He's right of course. It was a moment in our recent American history when it wouldn't be much of an stretch to say the nation really is now run by organized crime--the NRA, and any member of that gang of bullies who believes their dues go for the civic good has an extremely liberal and permissive view of society that includes giving mental cases the freedom to gun down classrooms full of little kids. Adam Lanza is the NRA's poster boy.
Mayor Bloomberg seems pretty committed to the cause of saner gun controls, and no doubt will continue to spend much of his money on the cause, funding media ads and underwriting legislative initiatives--which is all civil and good, but I wonder if it's the best use of his money. ([Sen. Max] Baucus, who has raised $5 million for his re-election bid, chuckled, saying that he has no concern “whatsoever” about any attack ads from Bloomberg’s group. He said he doubts any will air in his state.)

I wonder what I'd do if Bloomberg's money was my money.
Here's one idea I might consider. I might take a page from that great old Shirley Jackson story, The Lottery, about the small town that conducts an annual ritual where they all draw lots, and the loser is publicly stoned by everyone else. The ritual is based on the belief that the stoning will assure a good harvest for the year. Well, as the man says, everybody must get stoned, but I would never be so...well, so violent as to suggest the stoning of a fellow human being. But I might go for dropping the names of the 41 Republican senators who voted against background checks into a hat and making a big, showy spectacular of drawing a name. And that name would then become the target of the most focused and relentless political campaign in human history, with round-the-clock, 30-second ads featuring every crazy I can pull off the streets to advocate for guns, with every relative of a gun victim collecting voter registration cards in front of shopping centers, with every child marching down Main Street of the incumbents hometown carrying placards reading, "Help me get this bad man (or woman, Kay Bailey Hutchinson) out of office." My money would be dedicated to making an example of this legislator, and letting his or her cohort know that win or lose, the next name in the next lottery could be theirs.
Okay. But what if this turned out to be one of those situations where you had to fight fire with fire...where to beat the NRA you not only needed to have as much money as they do, but as little conscience as they do. What if they really mean it when they say if you want their guns you have to pry them from their cold, dead hands? I must ask myself: If I'm squeamish about stoning people, am I really up to this task? Perhaps, like them, I have to check my moral compass at the door to achieve my greater end. Perhaps my lottery has to be, let's say, more persuasive. I've got the money. I can hire a hit man maybe--a Ukrainian or Sicilian...someone with experience in these matters...and hand over a picture of Wayne LaPierre and say, "Here's your target." (I could maybe even hire an NRA marksman...make it an inside job...surely they can't all be principled Second Amendment advocates. There must be at least one sell-out in the ranks.) I'd put the shooter on retainer, so that if eliminating LaPierre doesn't change the electoral calculation, we could go after whoever replaces him as the face of the NRA...and then the next one, and the one after that. Hell, with Bloomberg's money, I could do it myself. Buy my own cache of guns. My own shooting range. My own sharpshooter skills. After all, if the only defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, why not moi? Bad guy: LaPierre; Good guy: me. I can become the Batman of American mayors, dedicated to removing the vermin from our streets.
But would it be wrong to kill someone for a greater good? That's a question that has occupied dorm debates for generations. It also occupied Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the true martyrs of the 20th century. Bonhoeffer once wrote, "The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves its children." He wrote that before he joined a plot to kill Hitler and was hanged for it.
But OMG! Did I just make a Nazi analogy and break Godwin's Law? I think I did. So damn me, damn me to hell. That's a sure sign I've been ruminating on this subject too long.
But here's the thing...if you believe as President Obama does that this bill was defeated through lies...if you believe as Mayor Bloomberg does that it was a victory for criminality...if you believe as former congresswoman and gun violence victim Gabby Giffords believes that we should use any means necessary to right this wrong...if you believe that upwards of 90% of Americans wanted a law passed that would make America a marginally safer and saner place for them to live and raise their children, but our democratic desires were defeated by a cabal of gun manufacturers and their political stooges, then you know we are fast approaching a moment truth.
Will we be there for it?
Time to fight the cynicism and despair...time to fight the NRA:

http://americansforresponsiblesolutions.org
https://pol.moveon.org/donate/gunsafe...
http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/html/home/home.shtml
http://thenobbyworks.blogspot.com/2011/11/tipping-point.html

Too Easy to be Hard

I'm driven back to the subject of reconciliation again by the recent death of Elwin Wilson, a self-acknowledged racist who stepped forward in 2009 to accept responsibility and make apology for being one of a mob that beat up 21-year old seminary student John Lewis in 1961. Lewis, a hero of the Civil Rights movement and a long-time Georgia Congressman, accepted Wilson's apology, forgave him, and together they launched a two-man reconciliation tour. I'm ashamed to say I never heard of this before Wilson's obituary drew my attention. Had I, I may not have been so quick as I was in my earlier post on this subject to question the fertileness of American soil for reconciliation.
This is, after all, a land that often appears overwhelmed by its grudges...surely by its biggest one. The continued inability of much of the American South to move on from the Civil War it started, it lost, and ithas long been forgiven for has become a nasty pustule on our national body politic. Dixie's ugly, treasonous flag; its endless whining about states' rights and nullification; its shoot-first-ask-questions-later disposition cloaked behind a phony honeysuckle smile reveal, in secular terms, an inability to grasp how reconciliation works. In non-secular terms it reveals a deep, dark truly un-Christian inclination to keep hate alive. Thus we often seem to be a nation locked in a vicious cycle of fighting our oldest and bloodiest battles over and over again. (Taxes. Race. Immigration. Property rights vs. human rights. The national pastime is neither baseball nor football; it's Whack-A-Mole. )
Yet, as with John Lewis and Elwin Wilson, there are isolated acts of genuine, uplifting reconciliation playing out here and there throughout the land. Lewis, again, was at the center of what may have been one of the most salving when Kevin Murphy--the chief of the Montgomery, Alabama, police--presented him with a badge and public apology for the past behavior of the force which refused to protect Lewis and his fellow protest marchers on the day they were attacked in 1961. Said Chief Murphy in the ceremony last March, "You have friends in the Montgomery Police Department...This symbol of authority, which used to be a symbol of oppression, needs to be a symbol of reconciliation." 
On a more intimate scale, there appears to have been sweet reconciliation in the Anthony Weiner household (oh, do come home again, Anthony). Disgraced former Congressman Weiner and wife Huma Abedin appear on the cover of The New York Times Magazine this weekend talking openly about how they were able to reconcile after Anthony's proclivity for sending pictures of his penis to women not his wife became public. This appears a prelude to Anthony seeking reconciliation with the voters of New York. And if they're anything like the voters of Massachusetts who forgave Ted Kennedy his reckless negligence, the voters of DC who forgave Marion Barry his crack habit, the voters of Louisiana who forgave David Vitter his diaper fantasies.... hell, the voters of America who forgave Bill Clinton his serial dalliances...well, Anthony might as well order up those Win With Weiner buttons right now.
Yes, we love our grudges, but we love our prodigal sons, too. As they say, it's complicated.
Speaking of the man we lovingly call the Big Dawg--and one can only wonder if Monica ever called him that, as in: "Big Dawg.... Big Dawg.... oh, yes, yes, Big Dawg." But I digress. It was uplifting to see Bill and Chelsea together on the Colbert Report this past week. No doubt I’ve seen them together at some time or another over the past 16 years, but it was only this week with so much reconciliation in the air that it occurred to me that there had to have been a Kumbaya momentin that relationship. That all powerful Clinton husband and wife duo, which towers over so much, has pretty much overshadowed the fact that at some point since the world's most famous blow-job, there must have been a dad and daughter reconciliation, too.
As the father of two daughters I can only imagine how difficult that must have been.... for both of them. Though, oddly, in that regard, I relate more to Chelsea than Bill. My father was more likely to misbehave than I ever was (though I hasten to add for mom's sake and faint hearts everywhere, not in the same way Bill misbehaved). My father was a gusher of apologies, and sometimes I thought apology came a little too easy to him. It was his personal Get Out of Jail Free card. Yet I was always happy to get those apologies, and whether I was, as they say, enabling future apologies never entered my mind. I simply wanted an end to the disharmony that his misbehavior had visited upon the family, and always took great comfort in that he was as quick and easy with an apology as he was with the fuck-up that made it necessary in the first place. Better that than the alternative.
Since my earlier post on this subject, I've been schooled in the finer points of reconciliation. I’ve learned that there are those who feel that reconciliation is like a gourmet meal that must meet the exacting standards of a world famous gourmand, say, like Hannibal Lecter. I’ve learned that a truly appetizing reconciliation should be offered up like an exquisite soufflé. Served too soon and it will come off as a mushy goo of expediency. Served too long after the buzzer, and it will come off as a nasty crust of too-little-too-late.  As for the ingredients…they should be of the highest quality: perfectly ripe berries, precisely aged cheeses, the absolutely freshest of tripe, and only the purest of motivation, remorse, and pound of flesh.
Aaron Lazare has written a very good book on apology, called, coincidently enough, On Apology. If I can fault the book for anything it is in that it spends much more time on making apology rather than accepting apology, which seems to me a dying art in our society…and an art we really cannot allow to die. Lazare directly addresses the tendency of critiquing apologies that too often seems to come between the aggrieved and reconciliation with those who try to acknowledge their errors. (And here’s a point I must emphasize…reconciliation is about someone coming forward and saying, “I was wrong and I’m sorry for it and hope that you’ll accept my apology.” I was baffled after my last post at how many misunderstand reconciliation by confusing it with apology itself. Kids, nobody’s asking you to apologize for something you did or didn’t do…just have the grace to forgive those who want to apologize for something they did…it’s that simple…and that decent.) Anyway, Lazare writes:

“I believe that…“strategic” apologies--motivated by the offenders' attempt to change how others perceive them or keep their relationships intact or enhance their social stature-- are valuable even if the offenders do not exhibit or experience shame, guilt, and empathy. How can we argue against social harmony among individuals, families, and nations? How can we argue against the avoidance of war? ...To believe that a "pragmatic" apology is somehow less truthful or less effective than a more impassioned one is to value style over substance, as if we believe that the manner in which an apology is delivered is more important than the goals it seeks to achieve. I believe such an attitude shortchanges both the personal and social value of the apology process. As long as an apology meets important psychological needs of the offended, or, by being public, it reestablishes harmony and reaffirms important social values, we should not diminish its effectiveness by becoming critics. We can also learn from the Japanese and Chinese cultures that reestablishing social harmony is often the major function of apologies."

A very dear friend recently told me about her gay brother’s deathbed reconciliation with his mother, who believed since his coming out that her son was condemned by God. Just before she died, she called her son in and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing more?” I asked my friend.

“My brother didn’t need anything more,” she answered.

John Lewis. Anthony Weiner’s wife. My friend's brother. 

Odd, isn’t it, that oftentimes those most hurt find forgiveness quicker and easier than those of us on the sidelines?  

Nutcase Red-ass Americans

It doesn't quite cover the shame of the US Congress, but this week I was proud to call Connecticut my home. 

Baby, Baby, Baby, Where Did Our Love Go?

Me & The Spaceman, 1978
With the opening day of baseball season upon us, I felt it was time to check out the Red Sox roster. A few names jumped out at me...Brock Holt, Graham Godfrey, Mike Carp. They jumped out at me because I had never heard of any of them, which may not seem odd to the typical Nobby Works aficionado who comes here for the metaphysical ruminations, provocative philosophical discourse, and the high falutin' body talk. But to those who knew me in my pre-blogger days as a baseball nut to a certifiable degree, this must raise serious questions. Like, "Dan, how can you not know that Graham Godfrey was the 1020th player chosen in the 34th round of the 2006 draft by the Toronto Blue Jays and in his major league debut in 2011 pitching for the Oakland A's against the Chicago White Sox he gave up 5 runs on 9 hits in 4.1 innings?" That stuff used to just roll off my tongue. For much of my life, getting a player onto the Sox roster who I didn't know as well as his own mother knew him was (as they said about getting a fastball  by Hank Aaron) like getting a sunrise past a rooster.
Alas, as anyone who read my recent Nobby Post on loss knows, my passion for the Red Sox is one of those things that I've lost. How and why that happened, I'm not entirely sure (the easy answer is that I finally grew up...but seriously you don't outgrow baseball). I have a clearer idea of where my passion came from in the first place. It began, as it does with most fans, with my father. He took me to my first Sox game when I was 11, though we took a circuitous route to get there. Not only was the ballpark empty when we got there, but so were the streets around it. It was like a scene out of that post-apocalypse Harry Belafonte movie, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. True, the scene around Fenway Park was post-apocalyptic itself in those days. But there was allegedly a team still playing games there. The park Dad had taken us to with that peculiar sense of direction typical of most American dads was Braves Field, which the Boston Braves had abandoned for Milwaukee four years prior.
Because the Sox were a one-trick pony in those days--albeit a magnificent pony named Theodore Samuel Williams--there was still plenty of parking and good seats available by the time we finally found Fenway (and seats cheap enough to fit comfortably into my father's mill worker's salary). The game between the Sox and Orioles that day made an indelible impression on me...the lush green sights and crystalline sounds of walking into that park for the first time....the exotic Baltimore pitcher that day, Connie Johnson (exotic because he was Negro) and the exotic Baltimore right fielder, Al Pilarcik (exotic because he wore his glove on his right hand)...and Ted, the only thing Red Sox fans had worth living for back then. He drove two fierce liners off Johnson to right, which Pilarcik hauled in at the warning track before finally singling sharply against the shift. I remember that hit as vividly as I remember losing my virginity. (And like sex, the Sox became a source of enormously maddening pleasure.)
From that day forward, the Red Sox became an indispensable part of my life. I rode my bike, cut grass, studied algebra (badly), engaged in heavy petting (sorry, Linda) with an earplug linking me to the avuncular voices of Curt Gowdy and Ned Martin for about 130 games a year. During the '67 World Series, the game where Yaz hit two homers, my earplug became disconnected from my transistor, interrupting my college Ed. Psych. class with a Narragansett commercial and casting my entire teaching career in jeopardy. (Hey, professor, have a 'Gansett.) I had my first publishing success with a book about the Red Sox (see The Red Sox Reader below), and once went on assignment for a now defunct skin magazine to interview The Spaceman, one of my all-time favorite Red Sox. That little coup landed me in the Sox locker room amid my semi-naked heroes in '78 and brought me face-to-face with the most splendiferous of splinters of all, the wondrous Williams.
In '86 I stormed out of the house in the 9th of the League Championship to avoid watching them lose to the Angels. I madly rode my bike around the neighborhood like a juiced up Lance Armstrong trying to scale Heartbreak Hill. When I returned home, assuming the worst was over, I was greeted at the door by my daughters who insisted that I keep riding. They knew me, and I knew what they were getting at, so I obeyed. And thus I missed Dave Henderson's dramatic homer in the top of the 9th and game winning sacrifice fly in the 11th. But the Sox won...as they did again in 2004 when I stopped watching after they lost game 3 of the ALCS to the Yankees 19-8.  I sacrificed watching in real time all four of their wins in the greatest comeback in baseball history...not to mention the greatest sacrifice any fan ever made for a team. That's how they did it. There are fans everywhere who wouldn't miss a pitch of their team's games. There are few, like me, who would give up watching an entire three games if it will help them win. How'd the Sox finally break "The Curse of the Bambino"? Ha! 
The last game I went to with my father was as memorable as the first. It was 1975, the year the Yankees gave notice they would be the biggest, fattest pigs at the free agency trough by signing both Catfish Hunter and Bobby Bonds. The Sporting News awarded New York the pennant that year months before the first pitch of the season. If indeed the Yankees were to win that year, they would have to do it under the awkward circumstance of playing all their home games at Shea Stadium while Yankee Stadium was undergoing renovations. That's how Shea Stadium, a National League park, became the most unlikely reunion place for my father, my three brothers and me. It was a double-header where the Sox would pitch their two lefties, The Spaceman and the more tragically spacey Rogelio Moret. Lee, a reliable Yankee killer until a few years later when Mickey Rivers suckered punched him and Greg Nettles tore his arm out during a wilding at home plate, pitched a six hit shutout, 1-0. The game was saved on a catch for the ages in the bottom of the 9th when the balletic Fred Lynn did a grand jeté over a tumbling Jim Rice to rob nasty Nettles of a possible triple. Moret pitched his own 6-hit shutout in the less suspenseful nightcap, winning 6-0. So it would be the Sox who would go on to win the American League pennant that year and meet the Reds in one of the classic World Series of all time. But not before my father would become involved in what baseball people call a brouhaha with the Connecticut State Police over a disagreement he had on the way home with a rest stop vending machine that refused to give him his change. It could've been worse. Better to have been crying police brutality at home in Connecticut against public servants sworn to uphold the law than angry Yankee fans sworn to exact revenge on itinerant, drunken Boston fans.
This Monday it's Sox vs Yankees on ESPN at 10 a.m., Pacific time. Once upon a time it would have been an occasion for calling in sick and ordering up a box of donuts and triple espresso. But I'm beyond all that now. I'll record it instead and watch it later at 5 with a salad and a sparkling water.
Lettuce. Rabbit food. Maybe that's what killed the passion play. Happy Easter.    

The Prodigal Son's Big Brother

The Prodigal Son by Pompeo Batoni

One of the more positive episodes in modern history was the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the 1990s where blacks and whites from both sides of the apartheid divide stepped forward publicly and in exchange for owning up to past crimes were granted amnesty for those crimes. The hope behind the TRC, chaired by Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu, was that it would bring about reconciliation between the races so their country could move forward from its violent, racist past.
The liberal propensity for throwing cold water on ants trying to move rubber tree plants compels me to point out that the TRC was by no means a resounding success. Some whites felt the burden of guilt fell disproportionately on them; some blacks felt the burden of forgiveness fell disproportionally on them. The family of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko rejected the constitutionality of the TRC all together and refused to forgive Biko's killers. And as exemplary as the TRC was--close to 20 nations created similar structures to deal with their internal demons--it did not bestow lasting harmony on South Africa, which even without apartheid remains one of the most violent societies on earth. But this is one of those instances where, without benefit of a parallel universe, we can only imagine how much worse things would've been without this open and communal opportunity to expiate the sins of the past.
During the past week, I was thinking of how difficult it would be to conduct such a noble exercise in the United States. The week marked the 10th anniversary of the Bush war on Iraq, and a number of folks who had enabled that war through their punditry or politics stepped forward to try and give an accounting for themselves and offer apologies of varying degrees of directness. But what was depressing about this flurry of penance-seeking was the contempt it drew from the left. Rather than accept the apologies with even a trace of grace, or at least settling for the crasser satisfaction that comes with being able to say, "I told you so," many of my liberal brethren chose to rub the penitents’ noses in their past transgressions. Rather than a week of truth and reconciliation, we essentially got a week of "I was right and you were wrong, nyah, nyah, nyah, so go away and kill yourself."
This can only be a position for folks who have never been wrong about anything and who don't have a charitable bone in their bodies. Once upon a time all such people seemed to be gathered on the rightwing of the political spectrum, but rage envy, I suppose, appears to have enticed many of my comrades on the left to go Old Testament God on their fellow humans when they’ve found them lacking in some way.
And it's not just the manufactured war of choice that brought out the worst in liberalism. During the same week, Ohio Republican Congressman Rob Portman announced that he had changed his stance on gay marriage since his son had come out of the closet to him. Again, the fatted calf of welcome and forgiveness was left in the cooler as my liberal brethren chose to serve up 16-ounce cups of spite and bile instead. Many on the left (except for Rachel Maddow, the one liberal who knew better from personal experience) castigated Portman for waiting to change his position for two years after his son came out...allegedly after his chance to be Mitt Romney's running mate had passed (in reality that was probably not something Portman thought he could keep secret, even from the obtuse Romney).
This is not only unbecoming behavior for a liberal on a spiritual level--about which hardcore liberals may care little--but unbecoming and stupid on a secular level.  Studies on our social connectedness make abundantly clear that changes in attitudes within tightly formed communities--normally resistant to outside influences--usually only happen from within, say, when change happens to a member of that community. And the more influential that changed member is within that community, the greater the chance of making change for the community at large. Conventional wisdom among liberals is that the enormous change in the nation regarding gay marriage is due to their favorite politician giving a speech in favor of it or their favorite sitcom featuring a gay couple. In truth it has more to do with thousands of families like the Portmans dealing with it on a personal level in their own homes and then sharing their enlightenment with their friends and relatives at happy hour, at the hairdressers, and at the country club. 
Liberals traditionally understand the value of having the repentant drunk driver who rolled a car and killed three friends address the high school graduation class. They intuitively get why reformed gang bangers make the best counselors for the boys in the hood. Why is it, then, that they can’t get why it’s good to have wayward war cheerleaders and homophobes come into the fold and give witness to the wrongness of their pasts? Why don’t they take these conversions as something to celebrate rather than mock and scorn? Why do they choose to act like the older son in the parable of The Prodigal Son, all righteous and petulant? (As someone who got the Iraq War "right," as it were, I rather like getting affirmation of that from folks who got it wrong...and would gladly share a veal cutlet with them.)

Hmmm, The Prodigal Son…that reminds me…it’s Lent, a good time to turn, turn again to that worthy parable. Maybe deliverance for my dyspeptic liberal friends can be found in the Bible. So, take it away, Rev. Jagger...