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Home » Open thread 5/2/23

Open thread 5/2/23

The New Neo Posted on by

This is a long documentary, but I’ve excerpted only about two minutes, featuring Michael Tilson Thomas and then Leonard Bernstein talking about Gershwin:

Comments

Open thread 5/2/23 — 34 Comments

  1. An interesting article on the beer business, and the deep and widespread damage Bud Light has done to not only the brand, but the whole company and its biggest distributors. It was encouraging consolidation, and stronger distributors have been buying out smaller family distributorships at high prices, because the brand was so strong. Now saddled with debt and with sales crashing, many may not survive.

    https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/01/the-untold-story-of-the-bud-light-fiasco/

  2. I got a signed letter from a Dem asserting that I should be jailed and placed in solitary confinement because I oppose the Dem party line on transgenderism.

  5. Cornhead,

    I’m no lawyer, but I would be consulting one if I had received such a letter.

    Kate, great article, thanks for the link

  7. Cornhead is a lawyer, I believe. I wonder if his idiotic correspondent has legal training. Such a letter might be just stupid, or it might be actionable.

  8. About the Bud Light issue. I hate boycotts.

    Yes, AB-Inbev made a huge mistake. The boycott has been quick and damaging. So, what about all the regular folks who are distributors? They’re being damaged for a political mistake made by some sales exec high up in the company. I understand the rage and desire to boycott, but I hate it because it hurts innocent regular folks who need to make a living.

    It’s what we military folks call “company punishment.” You can’t single out the guilty person, so you punish everyone. A lot of innocent people get hurt. It’s a preferred method of the left, but it’s not right or fair. I wish there was a better way to send a message and hold the actual guilty party accountable.

  9. Kate:

    It was mildly amusing, but at the same time disturbing. Everyday members of the Left want to jail their political opponents. I’m expecting all sorts of Bar grievances against me this month. All over this trans business.

    I misunderestimated how crazy the Left has become. But I should have known better. My own brother thought it was okay when the police in Canada shot some guy for not wearing a mask. (At least that was the press report. And I believe it to be generally true.)

    The Women and the Law section of the NSBA proposed a new speech code rule for lawyers. My conservative opinions could be subjected to grievances by members of the public if this rule is adopted.

    I read all the public comments by my fellow lawyers to this speech code proposal. That was a shocker! Libs never quit, but they should know that they could be punished too.

  10. JJ:

    I read a piece on Tucker being relieved of his duties. The author noted that for a long time the Class A advertisers have avoided Fox for some time. That’s why all the My Pillow and Nature’s Balance ads. They pay a lower rate than GM, P&G and the rest.

    Something like 75% of Fox’s broadcast revenue is from subscription fees; only 25% from ad revenue.

    If Tucker doesn’t run for president, his new media platform needs to be on the cable platforms. The subscription fees are where it is at. I don’t think Glen Beck pulled it off. And I can imagine the cable providers (e.g. Cox) are just as woke as the rest of Corporate America.

    Frankly, I’d like to boycott every company that advertises on CNN and MSNBC.

  11. JJ, your point is well-taken regarding innocent people being harmed by boycotts. A friend of mine made a point of shopping at Bed, Bath and Beyond stores as she determined citizens in her area were employed by that enterprise. Additionally the retail spaces that are leased end up vacant. There are a lot of reasons why retail is suffering, but nonetheless, you and my friend shine a light on unintended consequences.

  12. Nice excerpt, neo.

    I had no idea Michael Tilson Thomas was such an engaging, intelligent fellow — not to mention that he loved Gershwin and played piano so well.

    I only knew him as that guy who seemingly conducted all the baroque classical music one ever heard on NPR.

    Gershwin, my goodness.

    In my 20s I moved to New Orleans and it was sort of my Paris. I was young, romantic and deeply unhappy in a rundown, magical place, being exposed to so many beautiful things — tant de belles choses — it seemed every day.

    One of those beautiful things was the intro to Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

  13. Kate–

    Thank you for the link about the Bud Light distributor fiasco. The latest development in this saga is that the Alphabet People are attacking Bud Light from the left– for “validating trans hate.”

    Bud Light is now getting Cancelled and Boycotted by members of the LGBT and Trans community. A prominent LGBT magazine, Advocate, is accusing the beer brand of “validating trans hate.” In an article in the magazine, LGBT PR Exec John Casey accused the brand of being “inauthentic” for failing to defend Dylan Mulvaney in the midst of the backlash. He said: “Anheuser-Busch poured alcohol all over an extremist’s fire, and that will continue to singe our community.”

    https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1653406195342794753

  15. Kate–As the saying goes, “that’s going to leave a mark.”

    But this time, I think that this is not just going to leave a transitory mark, this is going to be more like a permanent wound.

    Anheuser-Busch and, in particular, Bud Light haven’t just been “dinged,” the Bud Light brand has been and is still being destroyed under an unforgettable and–thanks to the Internet–permanent tsunami of ridicule that “Tranheuser-Busch” has called down upon itself.

    For Bud Light it’s going to be like the smell of skunk spray on a carpet that never really goes away.

  17. I do have sympathy with the A-B distributors. They’re going to lose a lot of money and maybe go bankrupt because of a foolish misstep by the beer maker. It’s a shame. Maybe they can sue Anheuser-Busch.

    What we can hope for is that fewer companies will so badly misjudge their customer bases and involve themselves in “causes” that have nothing to do with the product they make and market. The Bud Light ex-VP actually said, on video, that she didn’t like the current customers and wanted to find some news ones.

    Now if we can persuade sports leagues to go back to the business of entertaining sports fans and not calling them “bigots” we’ll really be making progress.

  18. What’s to prevent “Biden” from shoveling big bucks back to A-B to make up for the considerable financial hit they took and likely will continue to take?
    After all, A-B did EXACTLY what “Biden” was encouraging WRT WOKE, both publicly and financially.
    A-B can just tell “Biden”, ‘Look, we did what we were supposed to do. Backfired, but it ain’t our fault. We took one FOR THE TEAM. We don’t deserve these losses.’
    And “Biden” will say, ‘Yep, yer absolutely right. You’ll get your money back. It’s only fair. It’s the least “we” can do.’

    Which would mean that those greenback printing presses will once again be put in overdrive and the taxpayer may well once again be on the hook for the grand “Biden” distribution of wealth, via inflation and “Biden”‘s specialty: discriminatory taxation.

  19. Barry M. – No doubt ‘we the people’ will ‘save’ A-B like we are ‘saving’ millions of ‘migrants’, Ukraine, etc. Thinking back how Trump had to beg/borrow/steal funds for the border wall. Strange how things like that work.

  21. On US money for “transgender education” in Pakistan, does our government never learn? Just before the fall of Kabul in 2021, the embassy was tweeting out rainbow flags and LGBT-etc. propaganda. In neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan is this kind of thing culturally appropriate.

  22. The Gershwin story almost always excludes discussing his actual life, which I find a bit irritating. These were a couple of talented Jewish kids from New York, and they were full of hustle. The music scene during their teens was during the first development of the modern popular music industry. Many homes had pianos, but only the wealthy had Victrola’s. George picked up work as a song plugger, playing tunes in order to increase sales of a given piece of sheet music. These were hard-working, creative kids and they were a unique version of the American mixing-pot success story.

    One of my favorite music collections are the re-mastered piano rolls of Gershwin playing both his own later music and some of the songs that he plugged early on. They are enhanced rolls, i.e. there are more than 10 Gershwin fingers at work. But they’re pretty terrific. Gershwin was a real virtuoso on the keyboard. I think the 2 CDs are still available, and of course it’s downloadable at Amazon too.

  23. Aggie:

    Are you saying that Gershwin plagiarized from these hustling Jewish kids?

  24. Thinking of Henry Fonda (“Separated at Birth” topic) and watching a doco on Ernest Hemingway and Gary Cooper, “The True Gen.”

    I didn’t realize Hemingway and Cooper had a longstanding friendship before Cooper played in the film version of “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” In fact Hemingway based the Robert Jordan hero of FWTBT on Gary Cooper. Then Hemingway actively lobbied for Cooper to play the movie part.

    Nor did it occur to me that Indiana Jones might owe a debt to the Gary Cooper persona in “The General Died at Dawn.”

    https://www.movieposterdb.com/the-general-died-at-dawn-i27664/6d62d3be#&gid=1&pid=1

  25. I hate boycotts….A lot of innocent people get hurt. It’s a preferred method of the left, but it’s not right or fair. I wish there was a better way to send a message and hold the actual guilty party accountable.

    So, do nothing? Sounds like a (bad) plan.

  26. As I recall, “The True Gen” was actually a biography of Hemingway.
    I even recall having enjoyed it…but then, I went through a Hemingway phase, perhaps like many—a “phase”, as it turns out, that has lasted quite a while, actually. Those last kinky novels from the mid-50s were more than a bit weird and frankly trying…though it seems, no matter how hard this might be believed, that they were based on real-life episodes** in EH’s truly larger-than-life life. (Nor might the writing about killing lions be everyone’s cuppa tea, But face it, genius is genius—to be sure, “de gustibus”, etc….speaking of which, “A Moveable Feast” is lotsa fun, ESPECIALLY if one is interested in Paris in the 20s through the eyes of certain perceptive American expats…)

    ** https://www.thearticle.com/the-second-mrs-hemingways-afterlife

  27. I don’t open Victory Girls blog all that often, but when I do….
    ‘From The VG Bookshelf – “Saved” By Benjamin Hall’—
    https://victorygirlsblog.com/from-the-vg-bookshelf-saved-by-benjamin-hall/

    He’s the Fox reporter who could easily have been killed early on in the Ukraine war. His two companions were.
    Lost a leg, a foot and an eye. Was able to get himself out of the car he was in before it was blown to bits.
    This is a short but acute review.

  29. And the Maple Syrup State with an innovative, entrepreneurial “outside-the-box” approach to increase post-Covid tourism:
    “Vermont Becomes First State to Open Assisted Suicide to Out-of-Staters”—
    https://www.nationalreview.com/news/vermont-becomes-first-state-to-open-assisted-suicide-to-out-of-staters/
    (Would seem that one advantage of being so close to Canada is that infectiously inspiring ideas such as these just waft across the border….)

    No doubt, major selling points are “dying in the bosom of nature”, “breathing one’s last breath enveloped by soulful tranquility”…and for the more practical and thrifty, “no need to buy a round-trip ticket”.

  30. Barry.
    Hall’s escape from Ukraine was enabled by an astounding set of connections, amateurs and intel guys in one or another country.
    He wrote a book on it. I’m to the point where he’s in a hospital and will no doubt start on his multiple surgeries and what not. Been there, Valley Forge ’71, so I’m going to skip that part.

  31. I never sought out Gershwin but, over the years, I’ve heard his stuff here and there. Nice to know what his “sound” was.

    I was once invited to a Brahms concert, but, considering his most famous composition, I thought I might embarrass myself so I declined.

  32. Gorge Gershwin ‘s music used to be a staple in American concert halls.

    But in the past two decades, he’s almost disappeared.

    What happened?

    Could it have been generational change, combined with the sudden decline in teaching about Americana in schools?

  34. The Albany Symphony has a few Gershwin selections programmed this season.

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