Frankie Valli is 90 today: Happy Birthday!
[Hat tip: commenter “artfldgr.”]
Time does fly.
You may find his voice grating. To me, he’s no Barry Gibb, but I’ve always very much liked The Four Seasons and they provided a major part of the soundtrack to my youth. I find it difficult to pick a favorite Four Seasons song, but this one comes to mind, although the choice is somewhat arbitrary:
There are a bunch of quite recent videos of Valli singing, but looking at a few I suspect they might be lip-synced. Oh, well, the guy is 90, so I’ll forgive him. Happy Birthday, Frankie!
And speaking of Barry Gibb, I can’t resist mentioning the song that is the intersection between the two men, because Gibb wrote it for Valli:
Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey had written a different title track for Grease for its original Chicago production, but the song was discarded when the show was picked up on Broadway. Barry Gibb was commissioned to compose a new title song for Robert Stigwood’s film of the stage musical.
… Gibb invited … Peter Frampton to play guitar on the Grease session, while also providing backing vocals himself. … Frankie Valli was approached to provide the vocals, due to his vocal range being similar to that of Barry Gibb, his being under the management of Allan Carr at the time, and his status as a popular singer from the pre-British Invasion era that Grease represented. Gibb had a long-standing respect for Valli as “one of the hallmark voices of our generation”. … When Valli recorded “Grease”, he did not have a recording contract, having been contracted to Private Stock Records which had folded earlier in 1978. After the single was released on the RSO label, which also issued the soundtrack, Valli quickly landed a deal with Warner Bros., which had Valli’s group The Four Seasons under contract at the time. …
“Grease” became a number-one single in the United States in 1978 and also reached number forty on the R&B charts in the same year. Later in 1978, Valli released a follow-up album, the title of which, Frankie Valli… Is the Word, echoes the “grease is the word” lyric contained in the chorus of “Grease”. “Grease” was Valli’s final Top 40 hit.
“Grease” never was a big favorite of mine, but Barry Gibb was a hit machine, and he certainly did right by Valli.
NOTE: I see from that Wiki entry that backing vocals on “Grease” were also provided by The Sweet Inspirations, a group I liked at the time and many of whose members were related to Dionne Warwick (an early member) and Whitney Houston. Another family loaded with musical talent.
Trump continues his NYC campaign
I have to say, Trump knows how to make lemonade out of those lemons he’s been handed. The latest:
Donald Trump dropped by a New York Fire Department station in midtown Manhattan Thursday to deliver pizzas after spending another day in court for DA Alvin Bragg’s case against the former president for falsifying business records.
The firefighters appeared to be pleased to see him, and in the video you can hear one or more say, “Save us, please save us.”
Trump was born and raised in New York and is really a New Yorker at heart. Although certain people in the city have turned on him, using the court system, and although the city’s voters are overwhelmingly blue, he’s not giving up on his hometown:
At the fire station, Trump reiterated his “love” for New York City.
“We’re going to come in. Number one, you have to stop crime, and we’re going to let the police do their job. They have to be given back their authority. They have to be able to do their job,” Trump said. “And we’re going to come into New York. We’re making a big play for New York, other cities too. But this city, I love this city.”
I don’t think Trump has a chance to take New York City. But I like his spirit. More importantly, can he take the swing states? Polls indicate the answer might be “yes,” but that would depend on voter turnout and the amount of “rigging” that goes on.
Victor Davis Hanson on the current campus unrest, and more
Hanson is always worth listening to, and this is no exception. I’m often struck by how well he sums up a situation and adds his own unique observations. This is long, but Hanson isn’t long-winded. He has a great deal to say that’s of substance. I would love to have taken a course from him in college.
If you’re pressed for time, though, watch however much you can. It also helps to click on “settings” and speed it up; I usually listen to talking-head videos that way:
Rutgers, like Northwestern, voluntarily takes on dhimmi status
Over thirty years ago, Allan Bloom used the phrase “dancing bears” to describe the capitulation of university professors to student threats of violence and the occupation of buildings. His original quote from The Closing of the American Mind involved the student uprising at Cornell in 1969:
Students discovered that pompous teachers who catechized them about academic freedom could, with a little shove, be made into dancing bears.
For a while now, however, universities have been so dominated by the left and unanimity of leftist thought that I doubt many professors catechize about academic freedom, except for their own. Students have been taught that the right has no say in the matter and that it’s all about power anyway. Therefore students – and a hefty number of “outside agitators” – probably are not the least bit surprised that their college administrators have turned into the most tractable of dancing bears.
Here’s what went on at Rutgers. Its aptly-named President Holloway gave in to the pro-Gazan demonstrators’ demands, which included: to consider divestment from Israel, to give ten “displaced Palestinian students” scholarships, to plan an Arab Cultural Center, to consider exchanges and study abroads with Birzeit University (in the West Bank), to form a Middle East Studies department (it surprises me that they don’t already have one; I assume that they already have courses in these subjects, however), to display flags of “occupied people” (does Rutgers have a flag? It could be included), amnesty for the demonstrators, and the following:
Rutgers–New Brunswick will work to develop training sessions on anti-Palestinian, antiArab, and anti-Muslim racism for all RU administrators & staff. We also commit to the hiring of a senior administrator who has cultural competency in and with Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian communities in the Division of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community.
In other words, Arabs and Palestinians will have pride of place in the school’s almost certainly already-robust DEI culture.
When Rutgers decides to dhimmi up, it doesn’t mess around.
Intrigued by the name of Rutgers’ president – which made me think of T. S. Eliot’s Hollow Men – I looked Holloway up. His story is an interesting one. He is Rutgers’ first black president, taking office in January of 2020. Here is some of his history:
Holloway was appointed Master (now known as “Head”) of Calhoun College (now known as Grace Hopper College) in 2005, and chaired the governing body of Yale’s residential colleges, the Council of Masters, from 2009 to 2014. As a Master, Holloway was respected for his approachability, charisma, and involvement in student life. For several years, he opposed the change of name of Calhoun, despite student demands, and noted the irony of his serving as the Master of that college; but he changed his mind as many students became more vocal in their opposition to the name in 2015.
So he caved on that.
More:
During the protests regarding Halloween costumes at Yale in November 2015, while he was dean, Holloway strongly supported the costume guidelines issued by his office (guidelines which some critics saw as unnecessary), calling them “exactly right.” Holloway is a supporter of affirmative action programs and reparations (albeit not cash transfers).
So, very “woke.”
More:
Holloway left Yale and became provost of Northwestern University on August 1, 2017.
So he was at Northwestern, too. Interesting, but perhaps just a coincidence.
I think, however, it’s not really about Holloway. The entire academic system is rotten through and through, and the rot goes way back and is hardly limited to black administrators, or female ones, or any particular demographic except woke and leftist.
I’ll close with the last lines of Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” – a poem I first encountered when I was about twelve and was much taken with:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
NOTE: My post about Northwestern can be found here.
Open thread 5/3/24
This may induce acute second-hand embarrassment.
And we learn where Biden & Co have been flying those illegal aliens
It was a secret. But the secret has been revealed:
Those 45 cities where the receiving international airports are finally came to official light via the House Homeland Security Committee …
The administration’s tightly guarded city airport locations confirm a Center for Immigration Studies report published on April 1, 2024, which disclosed that Florida airports by far led all other states in flight landings of 326,000 immigrants through March, distantly followed in still significant numbers by Texas, New York, and California. …
The new data also confirms prior Center reports that about 43 U.S. airports were taking in immigrants from international flights. …
“It is a secret because . . . they don’t tell us anytime somebody comes in,” DeSantis complained during an April 4 press conference when asked about the Center’s report of a few days earlier. “They don’t give us any information on it. They are not coordinating with state government at all. If they throw six people on a commercial flight coming from a foreign country, there’s no acknowledgement at all to state or local authorities. That’s just a fact.” …
Begun in October 2022 for Venezuelans and expanded in January 2023 to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Colombians, the program approves flight travel authorizations for aspiring illegal border-crossers still in other countries to instead arrange commercial airline passage for themselves over the southern border and then receive temporary but easily renewable “humanitarian parole” from CBP officers at the airport, with immediate eligibility for renewable work permits. The rationale for the program is to “reduce the number of individuals crossing unlawfully” over the southern border — by flying them over it directly into the interior and then releasing them on parole.
I wonder what the ratio of Venezuelans and Cubans is to other groups, because it occurs to me that Venezuelans and Cubans fleeing their leftist governments would be likely to vote for the political right rather than the left.
Legal Insurrection’s Equal Protection Project files a suit against Northwestern for favoring Palestinian students
The other day I wrote about Northwestern University’s craven capitulation to its hate-filled pro-Hamas pro-Palestine anti-Israel anti-Jewish demonstrators.
So I’m very much in favor of this move by the Equal Protection Project:
On April 29, 2024, Northwestern University struck a deal to have the pro-Hamas unauthorized encampment removed, with a twist not seen at other universities. Northwestern agreed to establish preferences for “Palestinian” students in accessing a new scholarship program and “MENA/Muslim” [MENA = Middle East North Africa] students in housing.
These ethnic, national origin, and shared ancestry preferences violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
On May 1, the Equal Protection Project (EqualProtect.org) filed a Civil Rights Complaint [full embed can be found at the bottom of the linked post) with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education. OCR has jurisdiction because Northwestern receives federal funding.
Specifically:
In violation of Title VI, the stated commitment of the University to provide five scholarships exclusively to “Palestinian” students illegally excludes and discriminates against non-Palestinian students based on their ethnicity, national origin, and shared ancestry. Additionally, the reservation of space and housing for “MENA/Muslim” students appears to be segregationist in nature, excluding at least in part students on the basis of ethnicity, national origin, and shared ancestry.
You can find out more about the Equal Protection Project at this link. You can donate there as well; it’s a worthy cause.
Can Democrats mention anti-Semitism without condemning Islamophobia?
It’s an Orwellian balancing act:
Last night, CNN spent its prime time segment decrying the Democratic president’s “radio silence” on the Gaza-related campus protests and chaos.
They must be realizing it doesn’t play well with the American public, and since they very much want Biden to win the election they want him to say something on the subject. And so he did:
"There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether its antisemitism, Islamophobia or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It's simply wrong," Pres. Biden says during remarks on campus protests. https://t.co/8o7HAK8j8x pic.twitter.com/Slq8PrStJo
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) May 2, 2024
The amazing thing, really, is that there isn’t more “Islamophobia” – which is not a phobia but is a reaction to the fact that a very significant number of Muslims (especially those in the Middle East) are in favor of enslaving the rest of the world, killing apostates, murdering homosexuals, raping and torturing and burning Israelis, and blowing Israelis and Westerners to bits. Little things like that.
And so now that Biden finally manages to say something about the horrendous hatred and violence unleashed against Jews, why is he generalizing about “hate” and why is he devoting so many words to “Islamophobia” and “discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans”? It’s not the issue at all right now and never was, and in fact Biden’s statement is very much the sort of thing that Biden falsely accuses Trump of having said in Charlottesville about good people on both sides (Trump was actually talking about the statue issue and not the anti-black demonstrations).
We know why Biden – and/or his speechwriters – is saying this. He is terribly afraid that any time he says anything nice about Israelis or Jews, a huge number of Democrat voters don’t like it. Many of those voters are those very same “Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans” who live in the swing state of Michigan – and by the way, Palestinians are Arabs, so the phrase is needlessly redundant.
Open thread 5/2/24
Some ladies are really hard to please:
Saying no to Biden’s Title IX declaration on trans participation in women’s sports
First it was DeSantis:
Gov. Ron DeSantis said Florida “will not comply” with the Biden administration’s update to federal Title IX regulations that adds protections for transgender students.
“Florida rejects (President) Joe Biden’s attempt to rewrite Title IX,” DeSantis said in a video posted Thursday on social media. “We will not comply, and we will fight back.” …
“We are not going to let Joe Biden undermine the rights of parents, and we are not going to let Joe Biden abuse his constitutional authority to try to impose these policies on us here in Florida,” DeSantis said. …
“We absolutely plan to challenge this betrayal of women in court,” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said in a statement.
Then Abbott of Texas:
Governor Greg Abbott today sent a letter to President Joe Biden condemning his recent revision of Title IX, which forces schools to treat biological men as women. The Governor also informed the President that Texas will not adhere to the new rules.
“Title IX was written by Congress to support the advancement of women academically and athletically,” reads the letter. “The law was based on the fundamental premise that there are only two sexes—male and female. You have rewritten Title IX to force schools to treat boys as if they are girls and to accept every student’s self-declared gender identity. This ham-handed effort to impose a leftist belief onto Title IX exceeds your authority as President.
Next we have Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, and Idaho:
Louisiana’s Republican attorney general announced Monday the state is suing the Biden administration over new Title IX rules … that [expand the definition] to include gender identity and sexual orientation.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and Louisiana K-12 Education Superintendent Cade Brumley railed against the new rules during a press conference at the State Capitol, arguing the new federal guidance guts historical precedence from the landmark civil rights legislation.
Louisiana is joined in the lawsuit by Mississippi, Montana and Idaho. The plaintiffs seek an injunction to stop the new rules from taking effect and a temporary restraining order to block enforcement while the lawsuit plays out.
Opponents of the new Title IX rule, which the U.S. Department of Education released last week, argue that conflating gender identity with sex would gut Title IX protections and harm biological women.
Good for them. This will almost certainly end up in the court system.
Not nostalgic for 1968-1969
And yet here we are.
In some ways it’s better than it was then. For example, the US isn’t actively at war abroad, and young people aren’t subject to the draft to fight in such a war. But in so very many ways it’s worse. The protesting students these days are far more likely to be ignorant and far more motivated by hatred (which is not to say there weren’t ignorant or hateful students back then). The students these days are far more likely to be highly organized and directed (which is not to say there wasn’t such organization and direction back then). And the authorities these days are even more likely to cave in to the students, many of whom are not even students (which isn’t to say there weren’t “outside agitators” back then and plenty of caving by administrations; see all my posts on Cornell in 1969).
I have no nostalgia for the 60s. I was young, and I guess that was nice. I certainly looked better. But the decade seemed to me to be another “low dishonest decade,” although the present time seems lower and even more dishonest. Then again, I wasn’t around in 1939, the decade in which the poem I just linked was written. It was awful, too, although for different reasons.
If you read the news – and just about everybody here does – you can easily see that the current pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic demonstrations are occurring at many many universities and cities, and seem very well-supplied and orchestrated. Authorities differ in their responses depending on their own politics. Ace has several good posts on this; please see this, this, and this, among others.
Last night I was looking at comments at Gerard’s blog, and a commenter there mentioned this post Gerard wrote about the Berkeley riots for the “People’s Park”, and the reaction to them, occurring way back in 1969. Gerard was there at the time, and his piece is entitled “Regarding My ‘Walk-On Part in the War.'” I think it’s well worth reading for “compare and contrast” reasons. Among other things, the Berkeley students and the “outside agitators” weren’t spouting anti-Semitic hatred. Among others, they were up against Ronald Reagan. And something I had forgotten – if I even knew it at the time – was that the police fired buckshot at the students and one student, observing from a roof, was killed by the buckshot. An excerpt from Gerard’s essay:
First, you had the Highway Patrol showing up who were not as gentle as the Berkeley Police. Then you had the Oakland Cops showing up. “Gentle” was not in their instruction manual. Instead, their first move was to open their trunks and take out their street-sweeping shotguns. Then they racked them and opened fire.
This resulted in a lot of loose buckshot wounds with one person blinded for life, and one person killed outright. (James Rector. I remember his name today after fifty years because he was shot on the roof right above me as I was running away from the shotguns at speed.)
I suggest you read the whole thing. It includes many photos, as well as a short news video with a brief cameo appearance by none other than the young (I believe shirtless, if I’m not mistaken) Gerard Vanderleun.