Have a wonderful holiday!
“Mr. Bojangles”
[NOTE: Some commenters requested I write about different versions of this song, so your wish is my command.]
Here’s Jerry Jeff Walker, who wrote the song:
The song is based on a true encounter Walker had with a man in a New Orleans jail cell. I’d always conceptualized the Mr. Bojangles figure in the song as an old black man, although I was well aware that it wasn’t Bill Robinson. But Walker has made it clear it was an old white man; no matter, the song is one of those classics that’s been covered by tons of people. Here’s Walker’s version (Walker was born Ronald Clyde Crosby, and try as I might I couldn’t find a reason he’d change his name to Jerry Jeff Walker from the seemingly equally serviceable Ronald Clyde Crosby):
I give Walker major respect for writing this wonderful song that paints such a vivid picture and has such a lovely tune. But I have to confess that even though I very much like his version, and even though I often prefer originals to covers, this isn’t one of those times. I think the reason is that I just don’t find his voice tremendously interesting, although it’s fine.
The first version I ever heard was the one that became most famous, from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. And it remains my favorite. Perhaps it’s that way for you, too. There are two main reasons I really like it: the high harmony that comes in the second half of the song (I love harmony, as you know) and the mandolin. The arrangement is genius, and adds poignancy and punch:
The story of how the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band came to record “Mr. Bojangles” is stranger than the story of how Walker came to write it (from 00:18 to 4:49):
I also heard Neil Diamond’s version early on and liked it. It seemed improbable to me that his voice would be well-suited to the song, but it was, and the arrangement has a guitar part that I find especially wonderful at 1:25-1:42, setting up a theme that repeats several times throughout the rendition:
I suppose I should mention Sammy Davis, Jr., who made the song a sort of anthem for himself. He did a very show-biz version that doesn’t appeal to me, but the song obviously meant a lot to him, probably because of his own vaudeville roots (he started as a toddler in a family act, traveling around the country with his father and uncle). For Davis – unlike the other singers – the dance aspects of the song loomed large.
So here he is:
I see that John Denver did a version, too; I hadn’t known that before. I couldn’t quite picture that crystal clear high voice singing this song, but I was surprised at what he does with it. It’s an understated version with a very simple guitar arrangement, both beautiful and touching:
It’s not really a woman’s song, but Nina Simone is always interesting and is incapable of singing anything that’s not good:
But for me it’s still the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band that leads the rest.
[ADDENDUM: Funny thing – this thread really brings home to me something I already knew, which is that reactions to any sort of art or performance (and perhaps especially music) are highly individual and differ greatly. But for me, this song is not especially maudlin or even sentimental – although I may be in the great minority in that reaction.
For example, the part about the dog has nothing to do with the song’s appeal for me, although when I researched this post I learned that the dead dog looms large in the minds of many who love the song (possibly for that reason) and in the minds of many who hate the song (possibly for that reason).
I’m very fond of dogs, but I barely noticed the dog in the song. Why do I like the song? As I said, I like the tune and the high harmonies. I also find the song somewhat moving, but the moving part for me has to do with the idea of art. The song is set in a jail cell for people rounded up for public drunkenness. The guy being described is basically an old vagrant drunk, but he’s got a skill: dance. That skill is something that means a lot to me. And so he entertains by dancing a bit in front of the other drunks cooling off in the cell. And they enjoy it.
That’s what the song’s about to me – the power of skill and art to persist in the face of decline, and to continue to mean something to people.]
The attack on Georgia isn’t really about Georgia
Georgia passed a recent voting reform law that was criticized sharply by the Democrats and Biden; I wrote about it already in this post, so I’m not going to go into those details again. In retaliation, however, we have major league baseball pulling the All Star game from Atlanta, where it had been scheduled to take place, and we have Delta Air Lines and Coca Cola, both based in Atlanta, speaking out against the law and calling it “unacceptable.”
That’s actually pretty ironic, considering that the legislature of Georgia – elected by the people of Georgia, unlike the CEOs of Delta or Coke – passed the law and found it quite acceptable. It’s also interesting that the companies had made previous statements about the law that were far less critical. What happened? This:
The statements came as Georgia companies faced growing threats of boycotts from voting rights advocates who say local corporations should have done more to oppose the legislation before it was signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp last week. Tens of thousands of social media posts carrying the hashtags #BoycottDelta, #BoycottDeltaAirlines and #BoycottCocaCola proliferated on Twitter in recent days…
Kemp said that at “no point” did Delta raise objections with his office about some of the controversial provisions in the measure before he signed it into law.
“Today’s statement by Delta CEO Ed Bastian stands in stark contrast to our conversations with the company, ignores the content of the new law, and unfortunately continues to spread the same false attacks being repeated by partisan activists,” said the first-term Republican.
The Republicans of Georgia exerted a little bit of pressure themselves, although they haven’t followed through:
…[T]he Georgia House retaliated by narrowly voting to end a lucrative tax break on jet fuel during the final, frenzied day of the legislative session. The measure never came up for a final vote in the Senate, where leaders are more lukewarm on overtly punishing Delta.
This is just another example of a trend we’re seeing more and more of lately, in which companies that used to stay out of politics are making bold statements that align with the present-day Democrat narrative. In the case of the new Georgia voting law, that narrative is a familiar one that has been used to challenge (often successfully) any laws that attempt to ensure voting security and eliminate fraud: that the law is racist.
Or, as Biden put it recently, that it’s “Jim Crow on steroids, what they’re doing in Georgia and 40 other states.” That has to be one of the most audacious, egregious lies I’ve heard the man utter, and that’s saying a lot. It trivializes past discrimination, and labels as much worse discrimination practices such as voter ID laws that are designed to promote the integrity of elections, have been in place in many states previously, and are commonplace all around the world.
Any thinking person, anyone who knows history, anyone who knows how voting works, should know that the statement of Biden’s is an outrageous lie. And yet here we are – the president of the United States says it, various corporations and major league baseball go along with it, and it is highly possible that Congress will pass a law forbidding legislation such as Georgia’s and the various bills those other states are considering.
The Democrats, who hold Congress very narrowly, are determined to take away states’ ability to discourage fraud in federal elections. In an attempt to get the public to buy the idea (a public 72% of whom currently favor voter photo ID laws), they are trying to convince people that such things are inherently racist. Article after MSM article about such laws call them “voter suppression,” which makes it sound like their aim is to keep valid voters from casting ballots.
That’s where Biden’s “40 other states” comes in. Whether he thought of the statement himself or whether he was told to say it by others, or whether he or they have a clue what is actually in each state’s proposed law, what he’s actually saying is that 80% of states in the US are trying to pass voting laws that are more racist than those of the South during the bad old days of Jim Crow.
They’re not just talking about Georgia; that state is merely an example that’s being made to the others. Not only do the Democrats intend to pass HR1 and make laws such as Georgia’s illegal if they can, but if HR1 fails in the Senate (for example, if the filibuster stays in place), they have already demonstrated to all states that the costs will be high if they try to pass laws such as Georgia’s. That’s why the participation of baseball, Coke, and Delta are important, both as examples and threats to other states. That’s a nice state economy you’ve got; shame if you were to lose it.
Democrats feel that their goal of permanent power (or at least very long-term power) is so close they can taste it. And they are willing to do nearly anything to secure it.
Open thread 4/3/21
Something to take up in your spare time.
Breaking story: attack near Capitol, the perp and one Capital Police officer are dead
We don’t have much information yet on this incident, but here’s a summary:
A U.S. Capitol Police officer was killed and another injured after a man drove a car into a security barricade at the Capitol complex on Friday, Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman said.
The driver was shot after jumping out of the car with a knife and failing to respond to verbal commands and “lunging” at the officers, Pittman said. The suspect was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead a short time later.
Four senior law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation identified the suspect as a 25-year-old from Indiana named Noah Green….
Robert Contee, acting chief of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, said that his department would take over the investigation. “It does not appear to be terrorism related,” Contee said.
This article makes it more clear it was the car that caused the police injuries rather than the knife, and that the perpetrator attacked the officers before ramming the barricade:
“The suspect rammed his car into two of our officers and then hit the north barricade barrier. At such time, the suspect exited the vehicle with a knife in hand. Our officers then engaged that suspect. He did not respond to verbal commands,” Pittman said. “The suspect did start lunging toward U.S. Capitol Police officers, at which time U.S. Capitol police officers fired upon the suspect.”
From this I conclude (for the moment, anyway) that it was the attack on the officers that was the perpetrator’s goal rather than the ramming into the barricade. That’s a reminder that cars can be used as lethal weapons. It’s unclear how close to the Capitol this was, and we don’t know a whole lot about the killer yet.
Heavy purports to tell us a few things, though:
He is a Nation of Islam follower, according to MSNBC, although police have not specified a motive.
…“NBC’s Pete Williams reports on @MSNBC: The suspect in Capitol Police incident is a 25 year old Indiana man named Noah Green. May have lived in Virginia. On his Facebook page, he notes that he is a follower of the Nation of Islam. Suspect is now dead,” MSNBC’s Jesse Rodriguez wrote on Twitter.
I imagine Noah Green will be a difficult person to frame as a white supremacist Trump supporter – probably he is both black and a Muslim (if only of the Nation of Islam variety) – but where there’s a will there’s a way. I suppose, if this identifying information pans out, we’ll be told by Democrats and the press that Trump drove him to it because of Trump’s terrible racism.
More:
Contee said it doesn’t appear to be terrorism-related but police will continue to investigate. MSNBC reported that police don’t believe Green was tied to a larger plot, at least preliminarily.
If it turns out that Green was a black Nation of Islam follower, he will not be labeled as an insurrectionist.
As soon as I heard the initial reports, it reminded me of this incident from October of 2013. Note that it was during the Obama administration:
Law enforcement authorities still don’t know why a Connecticut woman tried to breach a barrier at the White House, setting off a high-speed car chase that put the Capitol on lockdown and ended with her being shot dead by police.
Officials identified the female driver as 34-year-old Miriam Carey, of Stamford, Conn. She was traveling with her 1-year-old daughter who avoided serious injury and was in protective custody late Thursday.
The incident began at about 2:30 p.m. at the White House gates at 15th and E streets NW. Police say Carey had attempted to ram a temporary security barrier outside the White House with her car, then struck a Secret Service uniformed division officer. She then fled the scene, leading police on a chase…
The U.S. Capitol was placed on lockdown for about an hour, and police officials said they will review their response to security breaches…
Carey’s motives remain unknown. The incident appeared to be isolated and was not related to terrorism, said U.S. Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine.
Carey was black, by the way, and I don’t think her motives were ever known although mental issues were suspected.
The legal situation of the Jan 6th Capitol “insurrection” defendants
So far it seems that in the main they will be charged with trespassing:
“There is a natural cycle to an event like this,” the defense attorney added. “People will say it was the end of the world, then things will calm down, and they’ll begin looking at cases back on what people actually did.”
That’s no accident, of course. What’s left out of that statement is which “people” are saying what, and why. If the “event” is one that features leftists as the alleged perpetrators, the entire episode is trivialized and considered “mostly peaceful” even at the outset. But if it’s people on the right who stand accused, well that’s when the “end of the world” cries go out from the Democrats and their mouthpieces in the press.
That sets the narrative so that evidence that might later come out in a legal proceeding concerning what people actually did has already become irrelevant to the public. Even if no one or only a relatively few people end up being charged for their actions on January 6th, many Democrats will either say that proves that the legal system is biased in favor of the right and against the left, or they won’t even get the news at all. Either way, almost all will continue to think there was and still is a huge and dangerous insurrection afoot among people on the right, including all Trump supporters, and that just about anything is justified in order to stop it.
And prosecutors are facing pressure from judges to either back up their tough talk about sedition or put a lid on it. Michael Sherwin, the former lead Jan. 6 prosecutor, found himself rebuked by other senior prosecutors and Judge Amit Mehta last week for publicly flirting with the possibility of sedition charges when none had actually been leveled.
No matter what happens, I don’t think Biden or his spokespeople or any Democrat leader will ever admit this wasn’t an insurrection. Way too much is riding on that perception. They worked hard to plant that idea in the heads of the public, and it serves them in good stead. Why let facts get in the way?
DA George Gascón’s latest attempt to turn LA County into a scene from a dystopian movie
LA County’s DA George Gascón is going to be “downsizing” and “renaming” the Hardcore Gangs Unit of the office he heads, and the reason for his deicision is certainly not that there are fewer hardcore gang members in the LA area or that the gangs there have gotten less violent [emphasis mine]:
The Hardcore Gangs unit is one of the oldest units in the office and it’s responsible for prosecuting the most heinous and complex gang-related crimes in the country. In Melugin’s report from two weeks ago, prosecutors had said they feel they’ve already been hamstrung by Gascón’s decision to ban them from using gang and gun enhancements. With that in mind, prosecutors told Melugin earlier in the month that disbanding the Hardcore Gangs unit will be a disaster waiting to happen, given the surge in violent crimes across Los Angeles.
“We can already hear in jail calls and interviews with officers on the street telling us that the gang members are laughing at them, I mean it’s undermined the credibility of law enforcement in its entirety,” one of the prosecutors told FOX 11 earlier in the month.
Why wouldn’t the gang members laugh? They’re watching the DA destroy the police and prosecutors’ ability to fight gangs – for no logical reason except radical leftism plus his own hubris and perhaps animus towards the law-abiding people of LA as well. A lovely combination.
Eric Siddall, the vice president of the union representing the prosecutors in the LA County DA’s Office said Gascón’s decision isn’t a surprise.
“He made political promises to certain fringe groups and it’s payback, so yeah it makes sense in terms of that. Legally and in terms of public safety issue, no, it makes no sense,” Siddall said.
Gascón’s office never responded to FOX 11’s requests for comments on Wednesday. However, his supporters, like local Black Lives Matter activist Akili, agree with the DA’s decision.
Of course they do. They are most likely among the “certain fringe groups” to which the DA is beholden and with which he is simpatico.
More:
“We have called for the disbandment of that unit because we saw how it was abusive, how it was used to criminalize people in neighborhoods, and we saw that it was ineffective,” Akili said. “[Gascón] is simply doing what the people have been asking for, that’s why he was elected.”
“The people” – well, probably some people, such as gang members and radical leftists such as Akili. And don’t you love that word “criminalize”? That’s probably what the “renaming” is all about. Let’s not call them “hardcore gangs” because it hurts their feelings, you see, and if we call them “community affilliative social clubs for young people suffering from white oppression” that will make the whole situation better.
Also revealed on Wednesday is that the LA County DA Office’s Major Narcotics unit will also be downsized, possibly being cut by half.
Major narcotics – this isn’t petty stuff, we’re talking the hard stuff and plenty of it. Good move, Gascón.
More:
Following Wednesday’s news, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department issued the following statement:
“While gang members are busy driving up LA county’s homicide rate, DA Gascón is now dismantling the Hardcore Gang Unit that works in collaboration with local law enforcement. This can only serve to add gasoline to a raging fire of gang violence that threatens the safety of all. This is not reform, it’s beginning to look more and more like a suicide pact.”
Not suicide. Gascón will be fine. It’s a mass homicide, not a suicide.
This is the unit that prosecutes the most serious gang offenses, such as murder. “Black Lives Matter” indeed. There are 700 cases in progress right now. How many will be dropped or neglected as a result of Gascón’s latest decision?
The move comes after an increase in homicides and shootings in 2020 which the LAPD said was caused by gang feuds.
There were 349 killings last year, the first time the number surpassed 300 since 2009 and an increase of 38 per cent on the previous year.
I guess Gascón didn’t think the increases were high enough.
Lately the news has been so terrible that it’s hard to escape the feeling that we’re presently living in a madhouse.
[NOTE: I’ve written about Gascón and his background and philosophy before, in this post in particular. And here’s the status of the Gascón recall campaign. Meanwhile, we have stories like this.]
Open thread 4/2/21
Here are the Bee Gees on Australian TV at around ages 13 or 14 for the twins and around 16 or 17 for Barry, who wrote the song.
This is three or four years later, in England. Big changes. Here they’re 17 for the twins and 20 for Barry. Barry and Robin wrote this classic R&B song together:
“My Son Hunter”
And speaking of how the MSM and social media control what people know, please watch:
Now, it’s certainly possible that he edited out all the well-informed Biden voters who knew the Hunter story. But although there may have been some, I would bet they were few and far-between.
The MSM and social media know exactly what they’re doing, and it’s very effective. How big a win would Trump have gotten if they had fairly covered this story? We don’t know for sure. But there was this poll, for what it’s worth:
The survey results report that 17 percent of Biden voters would not have voted for the Biden-Harris presidential ticket if they had known about at least one of the eight news stories that were suppressed by big tech and mainstream media outlets.
“This is not happenstance. This is not coincidence. This is not oversight and this is not just a mistake,” president and founder of Media Research Center Brent Bozell said at a press conference Tuesday. “These were deliberate decisions that were made thousands of times, literally thousands of times, to either twist or to not cover it at all, which we found in this case.”
The survey, conducted online by The Polling Company with a +/- 2.34 percent margin of error at a 95 percent confidence interval, asked 1,750 Biden voters living in seven swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) if they were aware of certain issues surrounding Biden, his family, and some of the Trump administration’s successes.
Some of these topics include former Biden staffer Tara Reade and her sexual assault allegations against Biden, the Hunter Biden scandal, VP Nominee Kamala Harris’s extreme liberal voting record in the Senate, the U.S.’s economic jump in the third quarter, millions of jobs added, America’s energy independence, Operation Warp Speed successes, and Trump’s facilitation of multiple peace deals in the Middle East…
Over a quarter of Biden voters said they didn’t know Sen. Harris had the most liberal voting record in the Senate in 2019, and nearly half of all Biden voters polled, 49 percent, said they were unaware of the U.S.’s remarkable economic recovery in the third quarter, doubling the previous record.
One in six Biden voters polled, 17 percent, said they would have changed their vote had they been aware of these stories. The report also found that without even voting for Trump and simply refusing to vote for Biden, “these voters would have handed all six of these states, and a second term, to the president if the news media had properly informed them about the two candidates.”
Don’t ever underestimate the importance of the media. Of course, you can say that it’s a voter’s responsibility to inform himself or herself by reading widely and in depth, from sources on both sides. But the reality is that few people do that, and few people will – either because of time constraints, laziness, ignorance, confirmation bias, or disinterest. And the media knows this as well – that’s why they make sure to pack a lot of propaganda into the headline and the ledes of their stories, and to block competing information. Social media is very much into blocking information as well, as we already know.
Trump the Gorgon
When I was a child I was very fond of reading, and one of my favorites was a book of ancient myths, with beautiful pictures. I read it over and over, but the stories I liked best were the tales of Ceres and Persephone, Cupid and Psyche, and Icarus. The grieving mother searching for her abducted daughter and neglecting her earthly tasks so much that she caused winter, the young woman who doesn’t trust her mysterious lover, and the man who flies too close to the sun exerted a pull and fascination I felt but could not quite explain.
For the other stories in the book, it was more the drawings that held my interest. That was true of Perseus and the snake-haired Gorgon Medusa. The book’s illustrator had chosen to draw, not the bloody denouement that most illustrations and statues feature, but the moment in which sword-weilding Perseus is looking at the Gorgon in the mirror in preparation for the kill, having been warned (this is the quote I remember from my book, which must have been rather old even back then), “Thou canst not look on the Gorgon’s head and live.”
Wish I had that book now, because almost all the illustrations I can find online are of Perseus holding the bloody head aloft. Mine was more subtle; the moment before the blow, with Perseus setting up by looking in the mirror in preparation for the kill. The idea that there was a creature so dangerous that merely glancing at her face could turn you to stone was quite a lot to wrap my little mind around, and it certainly made an impression.
Why am I writing about this? Well, for one thing, I remember that book fondly. But the real reason is that last night I read this RedState piece entitled, “Social Media Removes Interview With Donald Trump Because the Sound of His Voice Has Been Banned.” So Donald Trump has become the auditory Gorgon, whose very voice is so dangerous it can turn people to stone and against which they must be protected:
As reported by the New York Post, both Instagram and Facebook took down a conversation between POTUS 45 and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.
Lara posted the screenshot of an email she received concerning an episode of The Right View With Lara Trump.
The message from Facebook employee “Katelyn” read as follows:
““We are reaching out to let you know that we removed content from Lara Trump’s Facebook page that featured President Trump speaking.”
Why was it shown the door?
That’d be because of how it sounds — it features noises emanating from The Donald:
““In line with the block we placed on Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, further content posted in the voice of Donald Trump will be removed and result in additional limitations on the accounts.”
They don’t explain why his voice is so dangerous, but my guess is that, if asked, they would cite something about the supposed “insurrection” he supposedly “incited” – which would be ironic, considering that both of those assertions could be considered “misinformation,” if stated as fact rather than as a positions or opinions.
But leftists don’t want to have to argue against positions or facts with which they disagree, allowing the give and take of open discussion. They have decided it’s much simpler and easier to just eliminate those facts and arguments they don’t want to engage, and label them “misinformation” – which of course is a conclusion rather than an argument or discussion. Arguments from the right can be so upsetting that it might make the leftist hearer turn to stone, and so speakers like Trump must be silenced. The combination of social media and the MSM hasn’t been able to utterly silence him yet, but they can certainly come very very close to doing it because they control so very much of modern day mass communication.
Biden announces glove mandate
Two days ago Joe Biden called for mask mandates to stay in place:
“I’m reiterating my call for every governor, mayor and local leader to maintain and reinstate the mask mandate,” Biden said in remarks to the nation on Monday afternoon.
“Please, this is not politics. Reinstate the mandate if you let it down. And business(es) should require masks as well. The failure to take this virus seriously, precisely what got us in this mess in the first place, risks more cases and more deaths,” Biden said.
“Mask up. It’s a patriotic duty. It’s the only way we ever get back to normal.”
Today he announced the addition of a glove mandate, something that hasn’t been tried before:
“Prove you’re really serious and enforce a universal glove mandate,” Biden said. “After all, a hundred and fifty years ago, people used to wear gloves almost all the time. Don’t you remember? I certainly do. They knew what they were doing.”
And in fact, gloves do have a lengthy history [emphasis mine]:
By the time of the fourteenth century gloves had become an almost essential item for all members of polite society and even for the majority of the lower classes.
…[G]loves were worn in a particular fashion or at a specific moment as a symbolic gesture and failing to do so could be seen as an insult to ones hosts (specifically in high society)…
Men wore gloves to protect their hands while in battle or hunting but also as a display of wealth.
Women wore gloves as a protection from disease and to keep their hands soft and feminine.
So there is excellent precedent.
I hadn’t known the following:
Between 1500 and 1700 rich women would wear gloves at night to help keep their gloves soft and supple (coarse hands were seen as a sign that you were involved in manual work). These gloves were extremely thin and commonly made from chicken skin or for the extremely rich the paper-thin skin of unborn calves.
Chicken skin gloves? Ugh. At least we won’t have to deal with that.
In a surprise move, Biden named his son Hunter as the head of the glove initiative. When asked why, Biden repeated his earlier observation that Hunter is “the smartest man I know.”
And they both know gloves:
Glove manufacturers are ecstatic. They expect to sell a lot of nifty mask-and-glove combinations like these little rhinestone numbers:
Republicans pounced, as they usually do. Ted Cruz tweeted, “Where will it stop? Hazmat suits?”, while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez replied, “That’s the first good idea you’ve ever had, Ted. You’d look a lot better in one.”
Open thread
