The New York Times worries sick about immigration patriots, whom its editorial Know-Nothings go all out to libel and marginalize as xenophobes. With bankruptcy looming, that ought to be the least of their worries. The proliferation of vulgar, vapid columns like this one (excerpts via VDARE.com) over the pages of the Old Gray Lady ought to be far more disconcerting.
“The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs, and then he was being yelled at by my husband, Max, for smoking in the house.”
And: “Barack and Michelle Obama look like they have sex. They look like they like having sex … often. With each other.”
Update (Feb. 9): The teenybopper president is … weighing on one hefty issue: Jessica Simpson’s weight. Peeved that a portrait of Himself and the Holy Family was bumped from the canonical US Weekly’s cover in favor of Simpson’s apparently expanding frame, Obama muttered: Jessica is “in a weight battle, apparently.”
Shallow Americans will soon discover that behind the high-flown banalities is quite a mundane, if supple, mind.
Or maybe they won’t. The media is covering for the King, so none will be the wiser. “He was taken out of context” came the blanket explanation. Okay, “Let’s replay it”:
“You got replaced by Jessica Simpson,” Matt Lauer said.
“Yeah, who’s losing a weight battle apparently,” Obama said, according to the NBC transcript of the interview. “Yeah. Oh, well.”
First, Obama wants to throwdown with a radio talker, now he’s jostling for media space with a starlet.
That’s the celebrity president and his empty-headed acolytes for you.
I’m not even going to bother being legally correct and prefacing this with an “allegedly.” (Okay, I will, if I must.)
Coldplay, a crappy band of unmerry noisemakers, about whom I wrote the definitive piece, “Coldplay’s Contrapuntal Incompetence,” has allegedly ripped off Joe Satriani’s instrumental, “If I Could Fly.” (He sure soars musically.)
Although these knaves claim Frida Kahlo inspired “Viva La Vida,” it’s abundantly clear that coldcrap’s muse came not from the Marxist, Mexican artist, but, allegedly, from a good old American boy’s brilliance.
Listen (and resume reading after the clip):
This is an outrage I feel with every fiber, etc., etc. As when one reader wrote in to say a big-name radio talker was practically reading one of my WND columns on the air, claiming the words (chords) and ideas (chord progression) as his own.
As I once wrote, “The marketplace doesn’t adjudicate the quality of art or pop culture—it does no more than offer an aggregate snapshot of the trillions of subjective preferences enacted by consumers. Aguilera (Christina) probably sells more than Ashkenazy (Vladimir) ever did. Britney outdoes Borodin. For some, this will be faith-inspiring, for others deeply distressing.” (February 7, 2003)
Mediocre minds need to feed on their less-known betters. More often than not, the former have managed to climb to the top by catering to vulgar, popular tastes. (For example: The taste for blood Boobus developed facilitated not only the Iraq invasion, but careers for many a war harpy.)
They can steal with impunity from their betters, who’ll never attain the power to be able to sue.
But now the parasite has enraged the host.
Satriani’s law suit is gratifying, although I don’t expect Coldplay to lose face. They’ll be graced, rather than disgraced–much like Paris Hilton after copulating in public.
For fans of good, neoclassical, instrumental rock, I’ll ask the spouse, a formidable composer and instrumentalist himself, to say a word or two about Satriani. He agrees, though, that I’ve covered Coldplay quite adequately.
“Coldplay plays only one or two chords. When they get going, the band musters three. It’s the equivalent of ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,’ maybe ‘Three Blind Mice,’ although these nursery rhymes reveal better melodic progression. Indeed, some harmony might have helped Coldplay’s caterwauling, but consonance, like counterpoint, is nowhere apparent in their ‘music.'”
“The front man also fancies himself a keyboardist. He doubles over the instrument with immense concentration, leading the listener to expect some virtuosity. The sounds that escape from beneath stiff digits are as tortured as a toddler’s hammering away on a play-play piano.”
“Slackers like Coldplay deserve cold contempt. Colorlessly they drone on, sustaining one or two pitches and exhibiting zero proficiency on any of the instruments they belabor. The bassist picks notes in a pedestrian fashion and the guitarist strums simplistically, producing a cacophony with almost no melodic momentum or variation. At the guitarist’s feet lie 10 to 15 effects pedals. But a slight echo in the monotone is the only evidence that he makes use of these sonic supports.”
“The singer openly boasts that to record one of their trills, the band needed hundreds of takes—so many that they eventually gave up. Incapable of playing such simple dirge from beginning to end, our towering talents resorted to a computer to help them piece the bits together. Audiences cheer their admission of incompetence much like they revel in the president’s unfamiliarity with the English language.”
George Putnam, the “greatest voice in radio,” has died at the age of 94. Mr. Putnam’s was the greatest voice not only because of its sonorous quality, but because of how incisive, smart and principled the man behind the voice was.
“Former President Nixon, speaking on videotape during a 1984 roast of Putnam given by KTTV to celebrate his 50th anniversary in broadcasting, said of the outspoken newscaster: ‘Some people didn’t like what he said; some people liked what he said. But everybody listened to George Putnam. That is why he has been one of the most influential commentators of our times.'”
Read about Mr. Putnam’s inspiring life, and life’s work, here.
I was immensely privileged to have been a guest on Talk Back, George Putnam’s nationally syndicated show, on October 9 of 2007. I came away feeling I had been graced by a great American.
At the time I wrote the following: “Mr. Putnam is a national treasure, who should be on TV to remind Americans how incisive, sonorous and super smart some of their media mavens used to be. (Now none of them are.) I was also touched by Mr. Putnam’s graciousness about me and my work. This is a man whose counsel Nixon and Reagan sought, and who ‘has a star on the Hollywood Boulevard ‘Walk of Fame.’ Again, an honor.”
Our good friend Chuck Wilder has been doing a splendid job of hosting the syndicated show on CRN Digital Talk Radio. Chuck continues the tradition of reasoned, civil, politically incorrect debate. I wish wonderful Mr. Wilder continued success.
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)
So goes a chorus to G.F. Handel’s piece of heaven, “Messiah”—all the more heavenly when sung by the great “Mormon Tabernacle Choir.”
This section gives me goose bumps (okay; such sublime beauty actually makes me weep).
“The Child,” the fist-bumping fan of rapper Ludacris, has probably never heard this bit of transcendence, composed as it was by a Great White. Still, the media, who’ve described their Anointed One Obama as “cerebral” and “intellectual,” made an important announcement today:
It’s His 47th birthday.
Notices were carried in all newspapers working for His election; bells tolled across the country, and town criers announced the occasion in places where rube-hicks were too busy firing their guns and shooting their mouths off against foreigners (while thumping their bibles) to hear.
