In concert, Steve Goodman used to borrow a cowboy hat from someone in the audience and then wear it when he sang his comic song “You Never Even Call Me By My Name” (which had been a hit for David Allan Coe in 1975). But one night no one had a cowboy hat, although someone offered Goodman a motorcycle helmet. So Steve came up with this set to go with that headgear:
Thrills and chills: the Bee Gees’ medleys
At their concerts, the Bee Gees usually – maybe even always – performed at least one medley. They had so many hit songs that singing a shorter version of a lot of them in succession was one way to please the crowd.
Medleys also took them back to their roots as a vocal group, which was to sing surpassingly beautiful harmonies in their natural voices while standing together at one mic. They often said that using one mic was the way they preferred to sing and to record, because it gave them more unity. Barry Gibb, now the sole survivor of the three brothers who made up the Bee Gees for nearly five decades, has said in later interviews that when he performs solo (which he’s only done after the others died) he can still feel their presences and even their breaths.
Here’s a medley they performed as part of a 1989 concert in Melbourne, Australia. I’ve noticed that they always seem to be in particularly good spirits in Australia, the place where they did much of their growing up.
All three are around forty years old here. It’s about twenty years after their first success as a baroque pop group, and ten years after their disco years abruptly ended. In the early 80s they didn’t tour, having experienced a backlash (primarily in the US) towards their extraordinarily popular disco music, and instead they wrote smash hits for other singers and produced many of the records on which those hits appeared. The late 80s marked their return to live performances, and I think that’s another reason they seem so happy and relaxed here among their Australian friends and admirers.
The medley begins with a few of their 60s hits, songs that I loved at the time they came out but had no idea the Bee Gees had written and performed. Then they sing one song from the disco years that is not a disco song, “Too Much Heaven.” After that, they sing several of the hits they wrote in the early 80s for other people, and then back to songs from the late 60s and early 70s.
During the 60s song “Holiday,” which features only Robin and Barry, Maurice takes the opportunity to fool around a bit, as he sometimes did. It’s one of those brother things; he’s trying to crack Robin and Barry up, and although they smile, their consummate professionalism means that their voices aren’t affected at all. As children, they learned to sing through anything, even the bar fights that sometimes went on in the audience during their gigs as boys in Australia.
The entire medley is done in their regular chest and head voices, not a falsetto to be heard (although Barry sings a single line in a sort of breathy high head voice). On “Too Much Heaven,” for example, a song originally recorded in the studio with all three in falsetto, in this medley they are singing in normal voices instead. But the song remains one of their loveliest.
I have no idea how the Bee Gees achieve their soothing yet soaring quality, but they make it look and sound effortless. This medley gives the listener an opportunity to hear both Barry and Robin in solo or together, Barry and Maurice together in one song, and of course at times the threesome. Many of the songs cleverly build that way to a feeling of completeness: first one, then two, then all three of the brothers.
As one YouTube commenter says: “nobody sings better, nobody blends better, nobody wears jeans better.” That latter Bee Gees attribute might not matter to you – the audio is definitely the thing – but the visuals are very pleasant icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned.
Another commenter adds:
I saw an interview today where Maurice was asked if they also got chills from their harmonies. He said they did and always had. This was especially true during the acoustic medleys. That made me happy to know they also feel it.
I had seen that interview a while ago, too, but I haven’t been able to find it again since. I recall that in it Maurice describes the very first time the brothers tried singing harmony, when the twins were about five years old and Barry eight. They could do it naturally, right from the start. He said that the first time they heard the sound they were able to make all together, they got chills. Right then and there I think they became hooked on singing together. Even as young children they decided that’s what they wanted to do with their lives and that’s what they were going to do with their lives, an endeavor they pursued with extreme energy and dedication.
And with a great deal of joy, as I think you can see here:
The language of the left
[Hat tip: commenter “Griffin.”]
Andrew Sullivan is one of those writers of whom you can say that when he’s good, he’s very very good, and when he’s bad he’s horrid. In this essay he’s good:
And that is the only recourse an average citizen has when buried by this avalanche of abstraction: ask the language-launderers what they are really talking about. When some doofus apologizes for the “terrible pain” they have caused to the whatever community, ask them to give a specific example of that “pain.” When someone says “structural racism,” ask: what actual “structures” are you referring to? How do they actually work? Give concrete examples.
When someone calls American society “white supremacy”, ask them how you could show that America is not a form of “white supremacy”. When someone uses the word “Latinx”, ask them which country does that refer to. When someone says something is “problematic”, ask them to whom? When you’re told you’re meeting with members of the BIPOC or AANHPI communities, ask them first to translate and then why this is in any way relevant, and why every single member of those communities are expected to have the same opinion. And when you’re told that today is IDAHOBIT Day, ask them if you can speak to Frodo.
…[W]e do not have to speak this debased and decadent language. It is designed to overwhelm and confuse and smother and subdue. And the more it is used by elites, the more normal Americans, still living in the real world, feel utterly alienated by their masters, and the deeper our divide goes. Reclaiming our discourse from these ideological contraptions will make our writing better. It will help us think more clearly. And it could help re-start a genuinely national conversation. In everyday English, the language of democracy.
You often hear or read the sort of language Sullivan is describing, coming from the left. Such language is indeed designed to “to overwhelm and confuse and smother and subdue.” But even more than that, it’s designed to indoctrinate and to make a certain sort of attitude automatic. The confusion it induces makes it difficult to even think clearly about what’s being said, and therefore tends to block an effective public response or even a private one.
If an offense is not even properly described, it becomes formless and pervasive. How can something that amorphous and slippery be fought against? It becomes a Gordian knot that cannot be untied but can only be cut.
The sort of language Sullivan describes dominates academia and school administration. It is becoming more common in corporations that issue diversity and other social policy pronouncements. You can also read it in the many apologies that have been issued by those attacked on social media for thoughtcrime. It has become a form of quasi-religious dogma, to be repeated and repeated and taken on faith.
The Biden administration does what leftists do: they purge
[Hat tip: commenter “AesopFan.”]
Mollie Hemingway explains:
In a stunning violation of precedent, Biden’s National Security Agency (NSA) placed General Counsel Michael J. Ellis on administrative leave pending a Defense Inspector General investigation of his recent appointment, as well as an unspecified claim of mishandling of classified information. Ellis has maintained a top security clearance, without any blemish, for more than a decade. He is a trained classification official both as a military officer and civilian.
While Ellis has prominent defenders from his many years of service in the intelligence community, his detractors include high profile participants in the Russia collusion hoax, proponents of former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s attempt to publish classified information in a book, and some of the individuals who orchestrated the Ukraine impeachment effort…
The Lawfare blog, a primary mouthpiece for the architects of the Russia collusion hoax, disgraced former FBI Director James Comey in particular, has led the campaign to oust Ellis from his role. Mimicking the nebulous language once used to push the debunked Russia collusion hoax, Susan Hennessey wrote that “While important details remain unclear, media accounts include numerous indications of irregularity in the process by which Ellis was selected for the job, including interference by the White House. At a minimum, the evidence of possible violations of civil service rules demand immediate investigation by Congress and the inspectors general of the Department of Defense and the NSA.” Neither she, nor the media accounts she referenced, provided credible evidence for the claims.
In fact, the selection process for the general counsel position began a year ago. Multiple sources confirm that Ellis was found to be qualified for the position by a panel of career lawyers before any political appointee was involved in the process and he was interviewed by a panel that included a career intelligence lawyer. None of the partisans who oppose Ellis have put forth evidence of improper influence on the selection process…
The refusal to appoint Ellis was in violation of merit system principles until it was ordered by the acting secretary of Defense. Pelosi and Schiff have justified their political interference in this career intelligence community position, normally considered off limits for political interference, by asserting without evidence that Ellis’s appointment must have been political.
Democratic activists on the Hill and at Lawfare have three main claims and complaints about Ellis. They claim that he was involved in Rep. Devin Nunes’s discovery of hundreds of instances of Obama-Biden officials unmasking Trump transition team members. The unmasked material frequently ended up leaked to media figures…
Another criticism of Ellis is that he found former National Security Advisor Bolton to be attempting to publish classified information in a book attacking President Trump. That’s true, and career intelligence professionals up to and including the NSA director himself agreed with Ellis’s findings…
The final complaint offered by Ellis’s critics relates to the effort to leak the contents of Trump’s call with the president of Ukraine in order to foment a scandal and impeachment push. Byron York’s book “Obsession,” on the first impeachment, details how the only person on the call to have a problem with the call was Vindman…
Ellis was one of the officials allegedly trying to thwart the leaking, which angered Vindman.
I assume that Ellis is far from the only target of this sort of activity. That’s the way the left has consolidated its power over the years, and much of the process has flown under the radar.
The left is about power, power, and more power, and right now they’ve got plenty of it and they aim to make it impossible for the opposition to ever change that.
Open thread 6/5/21
Glenn Greenwald on the suppression of liberties in the name of fighting terror
Glenn Greenwald isn’t on the right, nor is he a Trump supporter. What he is is intelligent, thorough, and devoted to the cause of liberty and the criticism of its suppression through the mechanism of fear. He’s been writing excellent pieces in the past year or so, and here’s a recent example.
In that essay, Greenwald criticizes the Bush administration for the extent of its curtailment of liberty in the wake of 9/11. At the time it was happening, I took issue with a few of these things, but most of them seemed justified to me back then. However, at this point I’d be inclined to take an attitude closer to Greenwald’s. When the NSA spying came out during the Obama administration – due in part to Greenwald’s efforts to publicize Snowden’s work – I disagreed with the method through which it was uncovered but I ultimately became shocked by the extent of the government spying on American citizens.
In the present essay, Greenwald tackles the ginned-up war on the right that’s being waged by the left in the name of fighting domestic terrorism:
Before Joe Biden was even inaugurated, he and his allies knew they needed a new villain…
Pending Domestic War on Terror legislation favored by the White House — sponsored by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) — would simply amend the old War on Terror laws, which permitted a wide range of powers to fight foreign terrorist organizations, so as to now allow the U.S. government to also use those powers against groups designated as domestic terror organizations. Just as was true of the first War on Terror, this second one would thus vest the government with new, wide-ranging powers of surveillance, detention, prosecution and imprisonment, though this time for use against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.
Even while that legislation is pending, the U.S. government is already waging an aggressive new domestic war on terror that has largely flown under the radar. Grave warnings from DHS are now just as common, vague and unreliable — but also fear-inducing — as they were in the days of Tom Ridge. Domestic surveillance is also on the rise. Last month, CNN reported that “the Biden administration is considering using outside firms to track extremist chatter by Americans online, an effort that would expand the government’s ability to gather intelligence but could draw criticism over surveillance of US citizens.”
…Meanwhile, one of the most repressive features of the first War on Terror — due-process-free no-fly lists against American citizens — is now back in full force. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) have both been demanding that the FBI ban January 6 protesters and other “domestic extremists” from air travel without being convicted of any crime or even given a hearing to determine whether this prohibition is justified. Rep. Thompson even demanded that Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) be put on the no-fly list, then took to Twitter to boast of how proud he was of this demand…
Beyond the DHS bulletins, that agency and other intelligence operatives continue to issue reports, for both public and classified consumption, warning that the greatest national security threat the U.S now faces is domestic extremism…
Online censorship, of course, is also rapidly increasing in the name of stopping the threat of domestic extremism…
The dangers of the first War on Terror were grave enough. Transferring it to “the Homeland,” as President Biden calls it, is bound to be far more dangerous still.
Please read the whole thing.
More thoughts on the Wuhan lab leak coverup
Today I noticed this headdline at Hot Air: “The media’s lab leak debacle shows why banning ‘misinformation’ is a bad idea.”
No, it most assuredly does not show that, although banning misinformation is indeed a bad idea because misinformation is rampant, will always exist, and is spread by social media like wildfire. There is literally no way to effectively ban it even if you want to. No, the only remedy is better information and allowing a free flow of ideas. Once you get into banning misinformation, the policy can and will be misused by those in control of the levers of information.
So yes, it’s a bad idea. But what the COVID lab leak “debacle” shows is something quite different. It’s only a debacle to the right, and only the subsequent uncovering of the original cover-up is any kind of misfortune for the left. It’s no “debacle” even for the left if it doesn’t cause a great many people on the left to change their minds about trusting the left and the press in their anti-right propaganda. I doubt it will do that for a significant number of people.
Actually, the coverup served its purpose very well – its purpose being to make excuses for China, tar Donald Trump and the right as conspiracy theorist liars and as anti-science (and hurt their chances in the 2020 election), and also enable the draconian encroachments on liberty that we’ve seen with COVID. All were successes in terms of politics – until now, and perhaps for quite a long time to come.
We see this dynamic again and again with the lies of the left. So at the risk of being boring, why do I repeat myself here about this topic, over and over, as each new revelation comes out? One reason is that I keep getting enraged. Another is to document the existence of these lies, in case I get into discussions with liberal/left friends and family on one topic or another. It helps to be able to refer to a post if I’m quizzed about that topic months or years later, which does happen.
I keep trying to change minds, if I see even a small opening for it. I acknowledge that it may be a futile endeavor. But sometimes the slow drip drip drip of this sort of information can be effective in engendering doubt in some Democrat voter who never had doubt before. The process can be cumulative – it certainly was with me.
Once again , the NY Times lies about Israel
Creative lies such as these:
The New York Times posted the photo of a child who allegedly died in Gaza in 2021, in fighting between Israel and Hamas, which rules Gaza and fired thousands of rockets into Israel. But it wasn’t a photo of that child. Hussein Aboubakr Mansour says it was “a random photo from ‘cute Muslim toddlers’ online photo stocks that have been circulating for many years. … Hamas and @nytimes are literally trolling the world.”
The same photo was used in 2017 for another child who allegedly died in Gaza, notes law professor David Bernstein. As he observes, the “angelic photo” supposedly of this child published in the New York Times in 2021, was previously used in 2017 for a child with a different name, who supposedly died in that year. As Bernstein notes, “this is what happens” when “the Times ‘reaches out’ to a terrorist-tied organization for information.”
Oh, and there’s also the use of a false map that the Times’ deputy opinion editor, when challenged, described this way:
This artwork is not meant to represent any historical boundaries and it is not meant to serve as a literal, factual map — our data graphics department would handle such maps. This was an illustration conveying a sense of shrinking space for Palestinians. It is art…
I’m sure that everyone reading the Times is aware that maps published there aren’t meant to be true, but are instead creative fiction. Maybe they should just consider, as a default position, the notion that everything published in the NY Times is creative fiction.
Unfortunately, they don’t know that, although most people on the right do. In fact, just yesterday I was speaking to a very intelligent Democrat-voting relative who mentioned that his main source of news is the Times. He is hardly alone.
More on that artistic map:
As Shany Mor points out, the map is highly misleading, because it radically understates the percentage of land held by Jews in 1946, prior to the creation of Israel as a country in 1947. It does so by wrongly “labeling every single patch of land not owned by” the Jewish National Fund in the 1920’s — when Jews owned a smaller fraction of land — as being “Arab or Palestinian” in 1946. As he observes, much of the land not held by Jews was desert land owned by no one…
The Times knows exactly what it’s doing, and has been doing this for decades. That’s how you get people such as Kamau Bobb, who are ill-informed on this and many other topics and probably haven’t a clue as to the extent of the deception.
Open thread 6/4/21
Ozzy Man again. Warning for language again:
Rand Paul gets to say…
…a very satisfying I told you so.
I wonder how much this Wuhan lab coverup story will filter down to the rank and file Democrat voter, and whether it will matter. If past experience is any guide, it won’t make any difference. But a person can hope.
The great Wuhan lab leak story coverup
I really don’t know what’s most astounding about this story.
Is it the fact that it appeared in Vanity Fair, of all places? Is it the fact that it appeared at all? Or is it the fact that the secret was kept for so long? I think of myself as having become cynical and suspicious, but apparently I have a ways to go before I become cynical and suspicious enough.
The above link is to a story that goes like this:
The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins –
Throughout 2020, the notion that the novel coronavirus leaked from a lab was off-limits. Those who dared to push for transparency say toxic politics and hidden agendas kept us in the dark.
It’s apparently a case of “now it can be told.” But why now? I hardly think it’s because journalists finally got some integrity.
More:
Since December 1, 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 has infected more than 170 million people around the world and killed more than 3.5 million. To this day, we don’t know how or why this novel coronavirus suddenly appeared in the human population. Answering that question is more than an academic pursuit: Without knowing where it came from, we can’t be sure we’re taking the right steps to prevent a recurrence.
And yet, in the wake of the Lancet statement and under the cloud of Donald Trump’s toxic racism, which contributed to an alarming wave of anti-Asian violence in the U.S., one possible answer to this all-important question remained largely off-limits until the spring of 2021.
Behind closed doors, however, national security and public health experts and officials across a range of departments in the executive branch were locked in high-stakes battles over what could and couldn’t be investigated and made public.
A months long Vanity Fair investigation, interviews with more than 40 people, and a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents, including internal memos, meeting minutes, and email correspondence, found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19’s origin at every step. In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it.
So let’s get this straight – the coverup was because the US was implicated waist-deep in this stuff. But it was also because Orange Man Bad Evil Racist, and an enormous truth had to be suppressed because of that so it’s really his fault.
But actually, the notion that Trump is a racist and that he spoke about the possible lab origin of the virus in order to make some sort of racist statement is a wholly imaginary artifact of the left/liberal mind. The left has been suppressing many truths, and the fact that Trump is not a racist is among them.
The lengthy and detailed article goes on to describe a situation in which – among other things – the former head of the CDC received death threats for saying the origin of the virus might have been in a lab.
The lengths to which the Democrats, the left, the media, and “scientists” (I put it in quotes now because it’s clear that they value leftist politics above scientific truth and the safety of their fellow human beings) will go to defeat the right is extraordinary and dangerous. We already knew that, but the extent of it is tremendous and pervasive.
Again, why is this coming out now?
[ADDENDUM: Ace has a lot to say on the matter.]
Google comes up with a tepid halfway solution for Kamau Bobb
Yesterday I wrote a post about some of the opinions expressed by Google’s “diversity head” Kamau Bobb a few years ago in a blog post of his. One of the many things he’d written was, “If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.” Interesting sentiments for a head of diversity, but really quite unsurprising these days.
On the other hand, it’s at least somewhat surprising that Google decided to do anything negative to Bobb as a result of learning about that old blog post of his. I wrote “learning,” although it’s something they probably should have found and certainly could have found before they hired him. Perhaps they did already know, and just didn’t care until it came to public light and they got some flak about it.
At any rate, here’s what Google did with Bobb:
Google announced it’s removing its global lead on diversity strategy and research from his post after it was discovered he’d made antisemitic comments in a past blog post.
Kamau Bobb will be reassigned to a STEM research role after The Washington Free Beacon uncovered a 2007 blog post by Bobb titled “If I were a Jew.”…
In a statement released Wednesday evening, Google said it “condemned the past writings by a member of our diversity team that are causing deep offense and pain to members of our Jewish community and our LGBTQ+ community.”
“These writings are unquestionably hurtful,” the statement continued. “The author acknowledges this and has apologized. He will no longer be part of our diversity team going forward and will focus on his STEM work.”
I missed the LGBTQ part, but perhaps the comments of Bobb’s that offended that group were in another blog post of his.
I actually don’t care whether Bobb is head of diversity or in a STEM role at Google or not, because I wouldn’t be surprised if he were replaced by someone with similar views who has had the foresight to keep them to him/herself. The left is the left, and the things Bobb wrote about Jews are pretty much in the mainstream on the left and probably at Google as well.
What I do think is of interest is that Google did something about him but couldn’t bring itself to fire him, although Google had no hesitation in firing James Damore for his infamous internally circulated memo questioning Google’s hiring and diversity practices. Perhaps you remember Damore:
“Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber”, commonly referred to as the Google memo, is an internal memo, dated July 2017, by US-based Google engineer James Damore about Google’s culture and diversity policies…
The company fired Damore for violation of the company’s code of conduct. Damore filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, but later withdrew this complaint…After withdrawing this complaint, Damore filed a class action lawsuit, retaining the services of attorney Harmeet Dhillon,alleging that Google was discriminating against conservatives, whites, Asians, and men. Damore withdrew his claims in the lawsuit to pursue arbitration against Google.
James Damore was spurred to write the memo when a Google diversity program he attended solicited feedback…Calling the culture at Google an “ideological echo chamber”, the memo states that while discrimination exists, it is extreme to ascribe all disparities to oppression, and it is authoritarian to try to correct disparities through reverse discrimination. Instead, the memo argues that male to female disparities can be partly explained by biological differences. Alluding to the work of Simon Baron-Cohen, Damore said that those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait). Damore’s memorandum also suggests ways to adapt the tech workplace to those differences to increase women’s representation and comfort, without resorting to discrimination.
The memo is dated July 2017 and was originally shared on an internal mailing list. It was later updated with a preface affirming the author’s opposition to workplace sexism and stereotyping.
Compare that to Bobb’s screed. And yet it is Bobb who’s been retained by the company in contrast to Damore’s firing. And the action against Damore occurred after feedback was solicited by the diversity program. It is ironic that the subject of Damore’s memo was Google’s diversity practices, and it would have been even more ironic had Bobb been head of Google’s diversity program at the time of Damore’s firing (apparently he was hired about three years ago, so probably not).