Dave Brubeck, fake it till you make it

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the things I’ve discovered through my recent delving into popular (and unpopular) music has been how many musicians have quirky, interesting life stories. In particular, so many came from a musical parent or parents, and so many were highly gifted even as children.

And quite a few couldn’t read music. The Beatles of course, as well as the Bee Gees, and Irving Berlin, just to name a few who were well-known (note also the prevalence of “B” names among pop musicians). They just had music in their heads, and that was that; they didn’t need to learn to read it in the conventional way.

Another highly successful musician (and another “B” name) who couldn’t really read music was Dave Brubeck, jazz great. Quite a few people mentioned him on the blog in the recent jazz thread. Unlike so many of the other music greats who couldn’t read music who were self-taught, Brubeck took lessons. From his mother. But he faked the ability to read music, and that deficiency continued with him in some form or another (such as failure to learn how to sight read) for quite some time [emphasis mine]:

Brubeck did not intend to become a musician (his two older brothers, Henry and Howard, were already on that track), but he did take lessons from his mother. He could not read music during these early lessons, attributing the difficulty to poor eyesight, but “faked” his way through well enough that his deficiency went mostly unnoticed.

Planning to work with his father on their ranch, Brubeck entered the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California to study veterinary science. He switched his major to music at the urging of the head of zoology, Dr. Arnold, who told him “Brubeck, your mind’s not here. It’s across the lawn in the conservatory. Please go there. Stop wasting my time and yours.” Later, Brubeck was nearly expelled when one of his professors discovered that he could not read music on sight. Several others came forward, arguing that his ability to write counterpoint and harmony more than compensated, and demonstrated his skill with music notation. The college was still concerned, and agreed to allow Brubeck to graduate only after he promised never to teach piano.

Is that not a great story?

His older brother Howard, by the way, apparently could read music, because he taught music at the college level as well as being the person who “transcribed, edited, and arranged much of his brother’s music for publication.” It’s also possible that Dave Brubeck learned how to read music somewhere along the line, although I’m not sure why he would need to bother.

Speaking of musical families, Brubeck had six children and four of them became professional musicians: one pianist, one cellist, one percussionist, one multi-instrumentalist, and several are composers as well. His wife Iola wasn’t a musician; she was a writer and she wrote lyrics to some of his compositions (and those of some other jazz musicians, as well). The story of Brubeck’s 70-year-long marriage is wonderful, too; You can read about it here, but this is an excerpt:

In college, Iola studied drama and radio production. She co-directed a weekly campus radio program called “The Friday Frolics”, on which Dave and a small band contributed the music. At the time, Dave frequently pounded his foot to the beat. Iola asked him to remove his shoes, because the pounding upset the audio balance. The only thing Dave could think to say in response was, “I’ve been thrown out of better places than this.”

Despite the rocky beginning, Dave asked Iola out to a dance. They danced just once, sat and talked in Dave’s car for three hours and decided to become engaged that night.

So they became engaged on their first date and had a 70-year-long marriage. When it’s really right, I guess it’s really right.

The left and its lies: “crossing state lines”

The New Neo Posted on by

The title of this post promises far more than I will deliver today. The left’s lies is a topic I’ve visited many times before, and probably will visit many times again. So consider this just a short sketch, and an opportunity for you to discuss it all in the comments.

The lies of the left in connection with the Rittenhouse case are egregious and long-lasting. They are told for a combination of reasons (and told even in the courtroom by the prosecutors) through several mechanisms.

Some of the liars are ignorant shallow thinkers who, parrot-like, repeat the lies of others.

For some of the liars it’s tactical: although they know the truth at least sketchily, it doesn’t pay for them to learn much of the truth because it’s easier to lie the less you know. This group purposely lies in order to create public perceptions that they believe will help them politically in a host of ways.

Some of the liars start out ignorant of the facts but later learn them, but then double down on the lies in order to cover themselves and hope that their viewers or readers don’t learn the truth. And since most of their viewers aren’t exposing themselves to news sources that are telling the truth, it often works just as planned.

As far as the very strange “he crossed state lines” accusation in the Rittenhouse case, it persists as a sort of vestigial organ left over from the original “crossed state lines to purchase an illegal assault rifle” accusation. That weapons violation accusation was too good to fact-check, and even when the court dropped charges related to the weapon and the MSM dropped part of the phrase, they kept “crossed state lines” as a sort of trigger for the same outraged perception that Rittenhouse is a lawbreaker.

“Crossed state lines” is of course legal, but it’s an element of the prosecution of certain federal crimes in which the crossing of the lines triggers the federal ability to prosecute. The Rittenhouse case is not a federal case, despite what Nadler says, and I doubt it ever will be although I believe the DOJ is trying to find a way to make it one. But “crossing state lines” sounds bad to a lot of people, and so it’s repeated over and over.

Rittenhouse post-verdict roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s an almost endless supply of topics related to the Rittenhouse trial and verdict. Impossible to cover them all, but here are a few that I find of special interest:

(1) The Rittenhouse case in a nutshell:

Of course, it wasn’t just the media that lied. It was lawyers such as Ben Crump and politicians such as Wisonsin’s Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and Joe Biden. But the press is supposed to act as a check on those lies, not to spread and amplify them.

(2) Here’s how the defense attorneys prepared Rittenhouse for the verdict:

(3) Why Rittenhouse took the stand in his own defense:

(4) The ACLU has issued some statements on the verdict that are still more indications (in a long line of indications) that the organization has become an Orwellian mirror-image of its former self. Almost every word issued by the group is a lie, including the popular “traveled across state lines on a vigilante mission.” I’m not going to bother to fisk the whole thing; you can easily do it yourself.

(5) Joseph Rosenbaum was not only a criminal pedophile, but he had a history of mental illness and extremely recent suicide attempts:

[Rosenbaum] had spent most of his adult life in prison for sexual conduct with children when he was 18 and struggled with bipolar disorder. That day, Aug. 25, Rosenbaum was discharged from a Milwaukee hospital following his second suicide attempt in as many months and dumped on the streets of Kenosha.

It occurs to me that Rosenbaum’s behavior the night he died wasn’t just aggressive towards others, but possibly a quest to die himself. His threats and his asking people to shoot him, as well as his behavior in chasing a man armed with a long gun and trying to seize it, seems self-destructive. In a suicidal person, there can be aggressive impulses that simultaneously go outward towards others and inwards towards the self. Was this the case for Rosenbaum?:

Prior to the shootings, Lackowski said Rosenbaum had taunted him and other armed men close by to shoot him and also “false-stepped” in their direction – a motion of stepping toward someone and then quickly stepping back.

I doubt we’ll ever know whether this theory of mine is correct, but I think it’s at least plausible, based on Rosenbaum’s behavior and history.

On the Rittenhouse case: a personal note

The New Neo Posted on by

For me, it started with the reporting on the Jacob Blake shooting. As a blogger, I have to cover these things in depth, and that means that I have to read a lot about each case right from the start and think about it deeply enough to write coherently and logically on it. I don’t like to be wrong, and so I try my best to get it as correct as I can early on.

With the Jacob Blake shooting, it seemed obvious fairly quickly that – as so often happens – “spokespeople” such as Ben Crump were lying and the MSM was lying and the left as a whole was lying about what transpired. I wrote this post just six days after the story broke, and in it I describe what we already knew about the case (which was almost everything) and how the left had lied about it, step by step, trying to stir up anger against the police. This prominently included the state of Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes (see the post for some quotes).

It was already clear that the police had probable cause to shoot Blake, but the Blake-positive and anti-police narrative was already hardened and set.

The same occurred with Rittenhouse. The truth was obvious even earlier in that case, in part due to the fact that there was a great deal of video record available almost immediately. I wrote this post about the case the day after the story broke, and if you read it now you’ll see that almost all the relevant details of the case were already known and the high probability of valid self-defense on Rittenhouse’s part was already clear.

And yet we all had to watch the slow torment of Rittenhouse, first by being precipitously charged with murder and detained in prison and defamed repeatedly, then released and defamed repeatedly while so much of the public branded him a cold-blooded killer. This escalated for me as the trial continued, and the utterly corrupted unscrupulous nature of the prosecution became clear, the relative incompetence of the judge and the defense were demonstrated, and then the jury took so long that it seemed as though it might be hung or even would render a guilty verdict on at least some of the charges.

This seemed unconscionable to me. As the trial had gone on it had seemed ever clearer to me how innocent Rittenhouse was, and how the prosecution was trying to railroad him or at least to get a mistrial declared so that they could try him again and continue the sadistic game. I became more stressed and agitated myself, with mounting frustration and anger.

On Tuesday I traveled cross-country and it was somewhat of a relief to be out of internet touch for a while. But when I arrived and saw that the jury had spent a second day deliberating without issuing a verdict, I started to lose hope of an acquittal.

I kept imagining Rittenhouse’s family and what they were going through, and my imaginings were very bleak. It got worse and worse until last night (Thursday), when for some reason I became hopeful. I’m not sure why that happened, although I think it was because I read rumors that there was only one last holdout keeping the “not guilty” verdict from coming in. I usually don’t believe rumors and pay them no attention, but for whatever reason the rumor last night buoyed me up. I went to bed with more peace than I’d had since the trial began.

Because I’m on Pacific time, I heard about the “not guilty” verdict in the morning. My reaction was huge relief, but by the time I read it I wasn’t really surprised. So there were no big explosions of tears on my part, just a very very deep but quiet satisfaction that the jury did the right thing, and a hope that this is part of a more generalized turning away from the vicious and destructive lies and policies of the left.

The left will never rest, and those who oppose the left should never rest, either. But we can raise a toast to justice, and to the preservation of our liberties.

The left reacts to the Rittenhouse verdict with its usual grace, class, and style

The New Neo Posted on by

Mary Chastain at Legal Insurrection wades through the cesspool of the left’s reaction to the Rittenhouse verdict so you don’t have to.

Their reaction is what you might have suspected. They also have a personal dog in this race, since they are now exposed to the possibility of defamation lawsuits from Rittenhouse, who could not have sued had he been found guilty. So they’re doubly unhappy.

In other responses, previous Defamer-in-Chief Joe Biden has yet to issue an apology, and I wouldn’t recommend sitting on a hot stove till he does.

In contrast, here’s a look back at what President Trump said not long after the August 2020 incident in which Rittenhouse shot three people, killing two. Turns out that, as usual, Trump was correct:

I also think that Judge Schroeder should be especially relieved at the verdict. He let the prosecution do a lot of things in this trial that should not have been allowed – certain evidence entered, for example – and if the verdict had been guilty or a hung jury he would have had some tough decisions to make about his next step. The jury took that burden off him.

I am hoping that at least one of the jurors – while preserving anonymity – gives an interview explaining what took so long. I am assuming there were a couple of holdouts for a while, but they were won over by something in the end – exhaustion? Logic? Some combination of the two?

Another hope I have is that Kyle Rittenhouse wins enough money in defamation lawsuits that he can easily hire excellent security for the rest of his life.

ADDENDUM:

Apparently Biden added that the verdict made him feel “angry and concerned.” I’d expect nothing less of him; it is almost impossible for Biden to take the correct position on anything.

Rittenhouse verdict: relief

The New Neo Posted on by

The photos and video tell the tale of Kyle Rittenhouse’s relief, and the extraordinary stress under which he’s been struggling for over a year:

The jackals won’t give up.

But it’s time to celebrate and be thankful that justice prevailed, in the narrow but very important sense of an acquittal.

In the larger sense, it shouldn’t have had to come to this.

–The media lies told about the shooting should not have occurred.
–The Kenosha and Wisconsin authorities should have controlled the riots and never have let them go on for long enough that a young man like Kyle Rittenhouse felt he had to step up to protect the city, its people, and its businesses from marauding mobs.
–Politicians such as Joe Biden should never have defamed Rittenhouse and called him a white supremacist or in any other way commented on the case except to offer hopes for healing and that justice would prevail.
–The judge should have taken better control of the trial.
–The prosecutors should not have been allowed to get away with their lies, tricks on the defense, or inappropriate evidence.
–The defense should have been better prepared. But at least they were good enough.

Kyle Rittenhouse has been through the crucible, and he’s been changed by it. I wish him and his family strength and healing, and hope that their suffering has at least had the effect of persuading a lot of people that the riots have to stop and the media lying has to stop.

And self-defense lives to fight another day.

KYLE RITTENHOUSE FOUND NOT GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t usually write all-caps headlines, but this news deserves it. The relief I feel is tremendous that the jury did the right thing.

And that relief that I feel is very small in comparison to how Kyle and his family must feel. He is an extraordinarily brave and strong young man who reluctantly did what he had to do that awful night in Kenosha, and then had to suffer persecution by the left and the state until today.

I hope he sues the pants off the press and all public figures who defamed him, and wins.

I hope he sits down some day with Nick Sandmann over a beer.

I hope ADA Binger gets disbarred, at the very least.

I hope this has opened the eyes of all thinking people who believed the MSM lies and later saw the reality revealed in the courtroom, and now doubt that what they read from the MSM is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

[NOTE: I will be posting much more today about this, but I wanted to get something out quickly.]

Will the Times and the WaPo return their Pulitzers for Russiagate?

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s the question Roger L. Simon asks here.

The question is rhetorical, of course. They should, but they won’t.

There’s the old “fools vs. knaves” question, too:

[T]o what degree [did] these people knew they were lying at the time? Were they merely victims of extreme Trump Derangement Syndrome? Did they believe the ends, in this instance, justify the means?

They allowed themselves to be conduits for lies. Did they ask serious questions? “Informants, almost always anonymous,” were telling them things. (Collecting those anonymous informants has been the stock and trade of establishment journalists since Watergate.)

The most obvious conclusion is they wanted to believe the lies they were hearing, so they did not question them. To be blunt, they were lousy reporters and remain so because. most of them, all to my knowledge on the linked [Pulitzer] list, have not publicly acknowledged their faults.

I believe most knew and didn’t care, because the particular facts don’t matter in the service of a Higher Truth. Plus, I doubt they ever thought they’d be found out, because once the MSM unites on a false story, it can be difficult for the rest of us to discover and prove the truth. They never expected Hillary Clinton to lose in the first place, and the Russiagate story was initially concocted to hurt Trump in the 2016 election, and so they never expected (I believe) to have to continue it for all those years of the Trump administration, because they didn’t think there would be a Trump administration.

But they rose (sank) to the occasion after his election, didn’t they? Give them points for dogged persistence.

Hiding Biden’s decline

The New Neo Posted on by

I find it hard to believe that a lot of people were actually fooled during the 2020 campaign into thinking that Joe Biden was not sliding towards dementia. But apparently they were. I suppose it could be the result of a combination of wishful thinking, desire to get rid of Trump and the paucity of alternatives, and a resultant lack of close attention to Biden’s actual few and far-between appearances. Another factor may have been nostalgia for the Obama years (I find that inexplicable, too, but I do believe it occurred).

Now a lot of those people are catching onto Joe’s awfulness, because there’s only so much you can hide even from those who would like it to be otherwise.

What were the operatives behind Biden’s candidacy thinking would happen, once he was elected? Perhaps they thought his unraveling would proceed at a more stately pace. Perhaps they thought external events would go better, and so people wouldn’t care that much about the condition of Biden himself. Perhaps those operatives thought they’d be able to commit fraud in the next election, and the next, and so it wouldn’t matter. Perhaps they thought that once Biden undid – by executive order, if need be – Trump’s changes, that would accomplish many of their goals. Perhaps they thought that Congress would be able to pass HR1 (remember that?) in order to change all state voting laws in their favor. Perhaps they thought Puerto Rico and DC would become states, giving Democrats a permanent majority.

And perhaps they thought that, if all else failed, they could remove Biden for health reasons and Kamala Harris would become president.

They didn’t bargain on Manchin and Sinema obstructing their plans – so far, anyway. But what they especially didn’t bargain for (IMHO) was that Harris would be perceived as so repellent so quickly by so many people.

That’s the main bind they’re in right now. They can’t go with the “replace Joe with Kamala” plan because the public might perceive the cure as worse than the disease.