A trip back in time: Gingrich

The New Neo Posted on by

I find this article from 1995 quite disturbing for what it reveals about Newt Gingrich’s psyche. And by the way, that has nothing to do with whether I like his politics or not. I would find the sort of information disclosed there disturbing even in a candidate I otherwise supported.

Since the article is a PBS Frontline product, you might protest that it’s obviously a liberal hit piece on Gingrich, using the usual “disgruntled employees.” But there sure are an awful lot of them—and the article does a pretty good job explaining why. And many of the worst quotes there are from Gingrich himself. Even more importantly, it seems to me that Gingrich’s psyche and behavior as described in the article is almost perfectly concordant with his utterances and actions during this 2012 campaign.

It’s worth reading the whole thing. Here’s a sampler from it:

“I’m a mythical person,” says Newt, no stranger to revolutions. “I had a period of thinking that I would have been called ‘Newt the McPherson,’ as in Robert the Bruce.” He is referring to his childhood, when he strongly identified with his biological father, Newton McPherson.

“Robert the Bruce,” Newt continues, “is the guy who would not, could not, avoid fighting…He carried the burden of being Scotland…

“It’s not altruism! It’s not altruism!” he proclaimed to The Washington Post in 1985. “I have an enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I’m doing it…Oh, this is just the beginning of a 20-or-30-year movement. I’ll get credit for it…

Dolores Adamson, Gingrich’s district administrator from 1978 to 1983, remembers, “[Gingrich’s first wife] Jackie put him all the way through school. All the way through the P.h.D…He didn’t work.” Adds Adamson, “Personal funds have never meant anything to him. He’s worse than a six-year-old trying to keep his bank balance…Jackie did that.”

When I ask Marianne [his wife at the time of the article] if she keeps the checkbook for the man determined to balance the nation’s budget, she laughs quietly: “Yes, I do a lot of our finances…I pretty much handle the money.” She acknowledges that at the time of their marriage, in 1981, Newt was in great personal debt, “so we had to work our way out of it,” a feat she says was accomplished only last year [1994]…

Newt Gingrich is hardly the first young politician to exhibit relentlessness or tenacity. But from the beginning there has been an overheated quality to Gingrich’s ambition that has caused remark. It still does. “He’s the man overtaken by his own energy,” says Mary Kahn. “He’s just all over himself. It’s like ‘Take a pill. Calm yourself down.’ If he calmed himself and could be more thoughtful, then perhaps he could be more effective.”

Dot Crews calls Newt “a frenetic psyche.” Frank Gregorsky, who began working for Newt in 1978 while still in college and served as his chief of staff in the early 80s, says, “All of his colleagues have had the rug pulled out from under them enough to know that Newt’s a bright bulb with no dimmer switch. It’s either on or off…either pitch-black or you’re blinded by the light…He can’t modulate or nuance or taper.”…

“Newt read books,” says Eddie Mahe. “He doesn’t do friendship.” …

Unlike Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich cannot easily transmit empathy to the camera or a gathered audience. Like Nixon, he does not easily communicate sympathy, trustworthiness, or compassion. His eyes do not meet the camera. He meets the world with the gaze of an outsider whose attention is inwardly engaged. People willingly give to Newt for quite an extended period of time because they are electrified by his tenacity and vision. But as time passes and they expect their relationship with the man to deepen, it doesn’t. And when he is finished using them, he moves on, discarding former loyalists like so much used ammo. Gingrich routinely dismisses any negative public statements as the work of disgruntled former employees, but the depth of feeling among his former allies is remarkable. “There are no former disgruntled employees,” says Dot Crews. “We’re all just sorry that we ever went to work for him in the first place and that we didn’t get out sooner.”…

Echoes Dolores Adamson, “He would say, ‘You have to understand that I am a think tank, I can save the West, and when I come up with a new idea, we need to move on it immediately.’ We’d have this big project going, and all of a sudden it just faded away. Everybody went into swarms to try and get something accomplished. And then he turned on them and did something else.”…

Of course, there’s also a lot in there about Gingrich’s marriages and sex life, all of it unpleasant. I’ll skip it; it’s not my focus here. But I can’t help but note one very interesting (and prescient) detail, considering that the piece was written in 1995, five years before Gingrich’s divorce from second wife Marianne. After revealing the rather sad fact that, when she first met Gingrich and started her affair with him, Marianne had been involved with another married man whom she ditched for Newt, the author writes—in one of the strangest juxtapositions ever, considering how things have turned out for both women mentioned:

But in Washington there are many demands on the Speaker’s time. Since Newt became a national celebrity, he has no shortage of female admirers –from Callista Bisek, a former aide in Congressman Steve Gunderson’s office who has been a favorite breakfast companion, to the ubiquitous Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington, who has become a self-appointed guardian to the newly desirable Newt.

Marianne Gingrich, however, doesn’t see her husband very often.

Here’s another oddly prescient observation, in light of 2012:

One well-known television interviewer recently observed Newt at very close range. “When Gingrich was being made up for his interview, he looked beat, lifeless, exhausted.” Once the interview started, he came to life. “But you know from seeing people that wrung out and still under high pressure, their judgement isn’t great and they can make disastrous decisions,” says the interviewer. “I think Gingrich will inevitably self-destruct.”

[NOTE: If you read the whole thing you may wonder, as I did, what’s up with all these fatherless presidents? Clinton, Obama, and wannabee Gingrich? Either that or fathers who were very much present and larger than life: Bush and Romney.

And almost as soon as I wrote that, I saw that Michael Medved had made the same observation.]

Watch out for this baby

The New Neo Posted on by

I hear he’s a real hustler.

I have no explanation for how this kid can do that. It doesn’t seem to be a trick, either, except for the fact that his father has to get the ball in the right zone in order for the baby to hit it. But there’s no question that the baby’s hand-eye coordination is almost impossibly advanced for his age.

Here’s his nearest competitor. Not in the same league. Although dad’s aim isn’t bad:

Romney and emotional intensity

The New Neo Posted on by

In yesterday’s thread about Romney and the conservative message, commenter “kolnai” had an observation about Romney’s conservatism that I found interesting:

I don’t believe [Romney when espouses conservative thoughts]. But I’m going to vote for him.

So what’s the difference? I’m resigned to his inevitability, if not to him.

Why don’t I believe him? Because, to me, he’s not believable. That’s it. He seems like a cipher, a throughput for weird alien forces and focus groups. I guess that can be an advantage if he winds up like Jonah Goldberg said, a transactional guy. But it doesn’t change my opinion of his conservatism. If he genuinely believes what he says, then he is truly a singular creature on this big blue ball. I have never in my life seen someone speak as unconvincingly on behalf of his convictions as Romney (if they are his convictions). That, dear friends, is quite a talent indeed.

We’re humans but animals too. And we have animal ways of inferring the content of other people’s minds based on cues. All I can say is that every single cue ”“ with no exceptions I can think of ”“ that I have received from Romney has not just suggested, but screamed with glass-shattering violence that he doesn’t believe a word of what he’s saying. He doesn’t even know how to believe what he’s saying.

How do we decide whether people are believable or not when they are speaking? For the artificial purposes of this discussion, let’s take away consideration of their past actions. Right now, we’re just talking about their words and their affect, and how we evaluate the truth of the first based on the second. It’s very similar to the sort of thing that trial lawyers call a witness’s demeanor, composed of a thousand or more verbal and non-verbal cues regarding emotion.

We all rely on these signals in our day-to-day existence. I certainly do—and I will continue to do so, despite the fact that research has shown that the vast majority of people are quite bad at spotting liars. Unfortunately, it’s an iffier proposition than we like to think it is.

But back to Romney. I have a different impression of him than kolnai does, although I understand what kolnai’s talking about. I happen to believe Romney (at least, as much as I believe almost all politicians, and maybe a bit more than some). I “read” his acknowledged emotional stiffness as just that: emotional stiffness. He seems earnest to me, and perhaps awkward. But there’s nothing there that I read as dissemblance.

You may disagree. In fact, I fully expect many of you to disagree. That’s okay; judging demeanor is awfully difficult. But while I was researching this post I came across a video that I’d like you to watch. The following conversation took place in 1994, during Romney’s debates with Ted Kennedy for his Senate position. Please take note that, in the very liberal state of Massachusetts, Romney appears to be articulating some conservative thoughts here, and he does it with what I would submit is both sincerity and intensity. Plus, what reason would he have to say these things if he didn’t believe them, since he was running in ultra-liberal Massachusetts?

I’m curious to hear your opinion:

[NOTE: (I realize that now I’m talking about acts rather than words—that’s why this is in a note rather than the body of the post.)

For those of you who might say that Romneycare violated some of these things that Romney says in the video that he’s against, I want to point out that when Romneycare was passed in 2006, twelve years after his debate with Kennedy, Romney was quite consistent in being against those same things; the legislature inserted some of them anyway over his strong objections (and/or his veto; the vote was almost unanimous):

Romney…hated the employer mandate and vetoed the provision that employers of 11 or more offer coverage or face a penalty of $295 per employee. This veto, and seven others aimed at less controversial aspects of the law, were easily overridden by the Democratic Legislature.

Romney considers the Massachusetts plan needlessly gold-plated; he would have pushed for a much cheaper version that allowed minimal coverage options.

He believes the Massachusetts health connector, the insurance exchange which the Obama plan would emulate, has created an excessive regulatory burden, imposing too many requirements on what commercial insurers must offer for a policy to qualify as “minimum creditable coverage’’ under the law. His proposal, to require only a bare-bones policy that covered hospitalization and catastrophic illness, was rejected by the Legislature…

Romney also wanted a way for those of means to opt out of the mandate by posting a bond ”” essentially a promise to pay for future uninsured health care costs. Critics called it a “fig leaf’’ and Romney concedes that few would have taken advantage ”” just as only a handful choose a similar option to post a $10,000 bond rather than buy compulsory auto insurance in Massachusetts.

But the principle mattered to him, and the failure of the Legislature to agree still rankles…

And as for those on the economic margin, Romney thought that no one, however poor, should get insurance for no cost at all. He advocated a small premium, even a few dollars a month, for the neediest, but the Legislature balked.

Today, under the Commonwealth Care program, about half of the 160,000 receiving subsidized coverage pay no premium because their incomes fall below certain federal poverty level guidelines.

“When you give something away that is entirely free, people don’t value it as much as they should,’’ Romney said.]

Gingrich: no more Mr. Nice Guy

The New Neo Posted on by

Even though I keep vowing to lay off Gingrich, he keeps tempting me and pulling me back in. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

The title above is somewhat ironic, of course. But Gingrich has made periodic vows to be positive, although those vows seem to be about as sacred as his marriage vows were in the past.

But I have to say that this repels me even further from the man:

In some of his harshest words yet, Newt Gingrich explained Friday why he didn’t call rival Mitt Romney after the former Massachusetts pulled a decisive Florida primary victory earlier in the week.

Pointing to Romney’s post-South Carolina campaign strategy, which turned noticeably negative against the former House speaker, Gingrich said Romney didn’t earn any kudos.

“They outspent me five to one to quote destroy Newt Gingrich?” Gingrich said in an interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.” “You know, I think that doesn’t deserve congratulations. I think that’s reprehensible, I think it’s dishonest, and I think it’s shameful.”

I know this isn’t what Gingrich meant, but the way the sentence is constructed it sounds like he thinks the reprehensible, dishonest, and shameful thing is that Romney outspent him.

Among other things, Gingrich is a whiner. And he doesn’t seem to understand how statements and actions like this reveal that for all to see.

And the positive Newt is nowhere in sight.

Post-February 2nd reflections: how long does Bill Murray spend in Ground Hog Day?

The New Neo Posted on by

One blogger’s answer: “8 years, 8 months, and 16 days.”

Director Harold Ramis replies:

I think the 10-year estimate is too short. It takes at least 10 years to get good at anything, and alloting for the down time and misguided years he spent, it had to be more like 30 or 40 years”¦ People [like the blogger] have way too much time on their hands. They could be learning to play the piano or speak French or sculpt.

After the election, Harold, after the election.

But I’ll go on record as saying that I always felt it was a time way longer than a human life. First, the character had to master his depression and rage and acting out before he could even begin to learn any skills at all. Then, I always figured the skills we actually see in the movie are just the tip of the iceberg of what he knows. In addition, he’s memorized the movements of everyone in town on that day, and also everything about the Rita character’s likes and dislikes and history.

Maybe not infinity. But definitely a long, long, super-long time.

Romney and the conservative message

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “gcotharn” writes that Peggy Noonan wants Romney to give a fuller picture of his thoughts in order to woo the Republican establishment, but gcotharn (who thinks that Romney needs to win the “first principles” conservatives as well) says:

My creeping suspicion of the problem, with Mr. Romney giving a fuller picture of his thoughts, is that Mr. Romney’s thoughts are less sophisticated and less wise than, say, Governor Perry’s thoughts. And we saw how far that got Governor Perry. In fact, let me restate: my suspicion, of Mr. Romneys shallowness, is not creeping, but rather is a runaway herd of wild horses. Mr. Romney reminds of Barack in this way: Mr. Romney is doing his best to impersonate a blank slate. He sees no reason to reveal who he, in actuality, is not. As in: a person of philosophic depth.

Later on he quotes Noonan as adding that another problem is:

…[Romney’s] insides are unknown to them. They don’t know what’s in there. They fear he hasn’t absorbed any philosophy along the way, that he’ll be herky-jerky, unanchored, merely tactical as president.

I agree that’s the perception of Romney. But I don’t think it will be changed by any speech or further elucidation of his principles. That’s because I’ve seen him state conservative principles many times and it’s either ignored or treated as a lie or rejected for other reasons.

For me to go into examples of this right now would be to expand this post to book length, and it’s already going to be plenty long. So suffice to say that other examples aren’t hard to find. My point is that conservatives and many “establishment Republicans” already don’t trust Romney, and there’s virtually nothing he can do to change that.

Why? Both groups don’t like him much because of what they perceive as his wooden personality, his slick “Ken-doll” near-perfection in the physical realm, and the fact that he was governor of an ultra-liberal state and had to make major concessions to that during his administration. Everything he says is now filtered through the prism of his personality and that particular history, which sticks in their craws and makes them doubt his conservatism. But in my opinion, the more he states that conservatism, the more many people who already distrust him may say, “Look what a hypocrite he is, on top of everything else!”

You might say that with a candidate so flawed, why nominate him? And a year ago I’d have agreed. But a year ago I thought a host of other people I thought would be better candidates would enter the fray. However, as we all know, they didn’t, and I have very little doubt that the flawed Romney is the best of the even-more-deeply-flawed candidates remaining (and I’m not going to debate that issue in this post either, for that afore-mentioned length reason).

But at least one of those Romney flaws for conservatives has the paradoxical quality of appealing to many independents. No, I’m not talking about his personality—although his looks are a draw for some women in particular. No, I’m talking about the fact that Romney was able to function as the governor of liberal Massachusetts and to work for the most practical (and, actually, the most conservative) solutions possible at that time for that state and that legislature.

Independents like a practical man who shows a bit of flexibility, rather than a doctrinaire ideologue who will not budge no matter what. Most “first principles” conservatives would probably prefer the latter. And that is one of the paradoxes inherent in national elections.

“Ah, but what about Ronald Reagan?” you ask. “Now, there was a man who could state conservative principles and appeal to independents at the same time. All we have to do is find someone like that.”

Well, another Reagan might be nice, but good luck in finding one. Not this year anyway, for sure. Sometimes I think that Ronald Reagan’s presidency hangs like a millstone around the necks of conservatives. Or maybe that’s not the right analogy. Perhaps a better way to put it is that the situation resembles that of a person who had a wonderful marriage and then the spouse died, and he or she is looking for another spouse as close as possible to the first one (or to memories of the first one). But that can be a futile quest, and a dead end.

There’s a notion on the right that Reagan’s great strength was his ability to elucidate conservative values in a way that people could understand, follow, and admire. I’d love to take the time to go back and look at Reagan’s addresses and see where he did that, and then look through many of Romney’s speeches and see how they measure up. Maybe some other time; certainly not now or that book will be written again.

And I’ll also skip the part of this post where I list some of the things Reagan did, both as governor of California and president, that went against those values and principles; I’ve done that before and so have others. And don’t think I’m saying he didn’t have those basic conservative values, and that they weren’t elucidated at times, and that it didn’t matter at all when he did. But he didn’t always follow them; he was a practical man, as well.

I think Reagan’s rhetorical statements of conservative principles meant a lot to some people, especially the sort of people who read blogs, and that it did inform many of his decisions, too. But I also think that most people did not gravitate to Reagan and vote for him and then revere him and respect him because of those statements of values. You politics geeks may not like it, but most people make voting decisions based on other reasons.

Reagan had an unusual combination of attributes besides those values, and the ones that appealed to a lot of voters were personality characteristics he projected: calm, optimism, strength, decisiveness, trustworthiness. It didn’t hurt that he was very good-looking in a grandfatherly way, but not too good-looking either. He also was an actor, and had learned to speak well and convey the affect he wanted to convey (he was mocked for that by his enemies, but it was a stupendous skill). In addition, he had a record of executive accomplishment to point to, and little personal baggage other than a prior divorce, which hardly meant anything in the face of his long-term and solid second marriage.

Plus—and do not underestimate this fact—the public was heartily sick of Jimmy Carter. Without this factor, Reagan wouldn’t have had a chance of election, for all his pluses. And without a record that was basically positive during his term as president, it all would have been so much hot air. Most people want to see results, too.

Flash forward to the present, and Mitt Romney. There are some seeming similarities between then and now: a handsome ex-governor candidate facing a liberal president who’s become unpopular in his first term, as well as an economy with grave problems. His record and his personality are different, however, as are his strengths.

For those who would like Romney to elucidate conservative principles more, I’d like to know which ones you want to hear that he hasn’t mentioned already. Romney has written an entire book entitled, “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.” I haven’t read it yet, but you might want to if you’re interested. But it wouldn’t take too long to familiarize yourself with Romney’s stump speech. Part of it goes like this:

President Obama boasts that he will “fundamentally transform” America. I want to restore America to our founding principles.

I believe that our founding principles are what made America the greatest nation in the history of the earth.

Among those core principles is what the founders called the “pursuit of happiness.” We call that opportunity, or the freedom to choose our course in life. That principle is the foundation of a society that is based on ability, not birthright.

In a merit-based society, people achieve their dreams through hard work, education, risk-taking, and even a little luck. An opportunity society produces pioneers and inventors; it inspires its citizens to build and create. And these people exert effort and take risks, and when they do so, they employ and lift others and create prosperity.

Their success does not make others poorer. It makes all of us better off.

President Obama sees America differently. He believes in an entitlement society.

Once we thought that “entitlement” meant that Americans were entitled to the privilege of trying to succeed in the greatest nation in the world. Americans fought and died to earn and protect that entitlement. But today, the new entitlement battle of this president is over the size of the check you get from Washington.

President Obama has reversed John Kennedy’s call for sacrifice. He would have Americans ask, “what can the country do for you?”

Just a couple of weeks ago in Kansas, President Obama lectured us about Teddy Roosevelt’s philosophy of government. But he failed to mention the important difference between Teddy Roosevelt and himself. Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.

In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to others. And the only people who truly enjoy real rewards are those who do the redistributing””government.

The truth is that everyone may get the same rewards under that kind of system, but virtually everyone will be worse off.

President Obama’s entitlement society would demand a massive growth of government. To preserve opportunity, however, we have to shrink government, not grow it.

It goes on in that vein. Let me repeat: that’s Romney’s stump speech—not a one-shot deal, but his basic message, although the details and exact words may change now and then.

Now, how many of you believe he means it? I do. Will he be able to execute it as president? Darned if I know. But I think he has the best chance of doing so of all the Republicans now running.

Note…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that so far today, I’m avoiding politics. We’ll see whether I succeed.

But just because I’m trying to take a day off from the fray, that doesn’t mean that you have to. Here’s a nice open thread for you. Tempting, isn’t it?

Cheeks are the new breasts

The New Neo Posted on by

Now that I’ve got your attention—

Have you noticed the latest fashion in cheeks? Now I know there didn’t used to even be fashions in cheeks, but with the ubiquity of cosmetic surgery that wonderful day has come to pass.

Why do I compare the new cheeks to breasts? Because breasts also used to be a natural thing, and if a woman was relatively well-endowed or not it was pretty much genes (or, at the very most, the temporary fix of a padded bra) that were responsible. With the advent of breast implants not only did that change, but the very nature of the desirable breast shape became different, especially for the young and those who pay attention to these things.

Models and movie stars are the traiblazers, and as we gaze on them more over time the new unnatural becomes the familiar and then the standard. For example, is there an unaltered breast in the entire Victoria’s Secret catalogue? I can’t say I know; but I suspect not, because the combination of very slender body and very full breasts exists only rarely in nature, and breasts that are the shape of grapefruits or tennis balls not at all. But these have become the thing to emulate now, and whole websites are devoted to showing young women what natural breasts look like, because so many of them fear that their own unenhanced ones are abnormal.

Now the cheek has followed suit. Cheek implants and fillers were originally designed to offset the ravages of age, when the cheeks can lose subcutaneous fat and droop. But now even the young have them, especially if in the public eye, and the additions are so noticeable and generally odd-looking that they give their bearers an alien yet almost-familial resemblance to each other. They are intended to “simulate the look of high cheekbones,” but it ain’t necessarily so.

I suppose this post should be illustrated with a ton of photos. But it makes me too sad to start searching for examples of what I’m talking about, especially in the young, so this example will have to suffice:

The lady above is now thirty-nine years old. I suppose that’s a dangerous age for women who fear the ravages of time. I barely remember it, it seems so young to me now. But I do know that, young or old, the faces I see in Hollywood are becoming more ghastly and otherworldly, with a fierce bright sharpness and definition that partakes more and more of the cartoon as opposed to the human.

Simply put, it creeps me out.

Which made me think of this, even though cheek implants have nothing to do with it:

The Cat (Stevens) came back

The New Neo Posted on by

The singer formerly known as Cat Stevens is nothing if not controversial. It’s hard to write about him even now without generating a firestorm of hatred. But I’m going to try.

Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) is hated by a lot of people mainly for two reasons. One, he became a Muslim, and in the early days of his conversion he seemed to support the fatwah against Rushdie (he later said the remarks were a joke, but not many buy that). Two, he left performing after he converted, dismaying his devoted fans—although it was Steven’s intensity and spirituality they’d always liked in the first place (as well as his music, of course), which made the extremes of his commitment to his chosen faith a bit less surprising but no less disturbing.

A few years ago Stevens returned to performing. In more recent clips of his concerts, it appears that he has lost some of his intensity, which is not all that surprising. What originally drove it? Youth was probably a good part of it, and there would be a natural diminution of energy as he aged. But I think some of that early energy was fueled by his spiritual quest which, according to his Wiki entry, was a search Stevens had been on for quite some time.

When a person finds what he’s looking for he can lose some of that edge. Stevens’ edge was never all that edgy to begin with, though; he was sincere and touchy-feely, but not saccharine. That’s part of what made him great—that slight hint of bite combined with the sweetness in his lovely and immediately distinctive voice.

Even before Cat’s conversion he showed an almost trance-like quality in many of his performances. projecting a seemingly unselfconscious sincerity in surrendering to this religiously-inspired feeling that is unlike that of any performer I’ve seen. If you look at the comments at YouTube on many of his old videos, many people write “I love him!” and I think it’s because Stevens used to seem emotionally naked when he performed, even though he had all his clothes on. And his nakedness did not have as its source—as with some performers, such as for example Janis Joplin—the emotion of anguish. It seemed, instead, to spring from ecstasy.

Like most great singers, Stevens has an instantly recognizable and unique voice, now somewhat deepened with time. Here he is in his heyday, performing his signature piece (which he did not write, by the way; it’s a Christian hymn written in the 1930s and set to a traditional tune):

And here he sings the same song much more recently. You can see (and hear) the difference:

Here’s another before-and-after. In this case one of the oddities of the song “Oh Very Young” is that, although Stevens wrote it when he was very young, the words are more suited to an older person. I love this early version, despite the gratuitous and random still photos that the compiler of this video has chosen to add:

Here’s the same song from the perspective of age (I left in the intro because I wanted to show that the old guy still looks awfully good):

I defy you to find a cover of “Morning Has Broken” that can compare to Stevens’ original version. And I defy you to find an even halfway decent cover of “Oh Very Young” at all. Most YouTube cover versions of the latter song—as well as the cover versions available through iTunes, which number quite a few—are too sweet, icky sweet and slow, unlike Stevens’ original, with its rhythmic drive and verve. “Oh Very Young” is a song about the transience of life, but Stevens makes it energetic and upbeat whereas other performers seem to just make it syrupy. Yuck. When Stevens sings the song it may sound simple, but it most assuredly is not, and his rhythms always surprise.