A Glorified Lap Dancer Is Not a Musician

Art, Music, Sex

Gorgeous, entertainer, great dancer, great beauty, well-coordinated, fabulous at twerking, a glorified lap dance: Beyoncé is all those. A musician she is not.

At last, someone who is a musician calls it as it is. Carlos Santana stands firm (no apology tour, maestro), insisting that Beyoncé is no musician:

“With all respect to our sister Beyoncé,” he said, “Beyoncé is very beautiful to look at and it’s more like modeling kind of music—music to model a dress—she’s not a singer, singer, with all respect to her.”

What a lovely analogy! The girl models a song. All the video vixens act and model their “numbers.” Without the indispensable aid of the almighty Auto-Tune, Katy Perry would sound even more like a chipmunk. That’s fine. There’s a market for this. But please don’t call it music.

Santana stands against decades of pop-porn marketed as “music.” He knows that definitions matter. We need to know the difference between Santana’s playing and the two-chord wonders in most bands today.

And Santana’s not the best. This unknown neoclassical guitarist isn’t famous, but he’s far and away the superior player: exquisite compositions, stunning virtuosity (not sure Santana could play “Mushrooms of Fire.” It’s effing impossible. My fav. The short samples don’t upload in the Fire Fox browser. Try Microsoft Edge.)

“Dealer” from my favorite Album, “Inner Secrets”:

“Well All Right”:

RELATED: “Heavenly Al Jarreau, Rest In Peace And Rock The Heavens.”

UPDATED: Coequal in Tyranny: The Ninth Circuit’s Rules for Radicals

Constitution, Critique, Donald Trump, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Iran, Justice, Law, Neoconservatism

“Coequal in Tyranny: The Ninth Circuit’s Rules for Radicals” is the current column, now on Townhall.com. An excerpt:

Read the judicial rules for radicals issued by the United States Court Of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in affirmation of the ban on The Ban. It follows the Executive Order issued by President Donald Trump, with the imprimatur of 62 million voters, to protect the nation from foreign terrorists entering into the United States. Two states objected to the president’s undeniably badly written Order, which, while upholding negative rights—and neither denying natural rights nor minting positive ones—was nevertheless replete with administrative errors.

Acting as coequal partners in the administrative tyranny the president is trying to break, the two states issued a temporary restraining order against “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” (I can already hear the election midterm ads.)

In the corner for the Deplorables was a government lawyer. August Flentje Esq. had “argued” (if you can call it that) for an emergency stay of the Washington State district court’s temporary restraining order against the president. The three Ninth Circuit jurists who heard the case said no.

CAREER GOVERNMENT LAWYERS. If you’re good at what you do, you look to make it in the private sector (as our president did, before he did us a favor). If not, you seek sheltered employment (as President Trump’s predecessor did). Clearly, clerking for the Supreme Court, as August Flentje had done, doesn’t mean a whole lot.

In presenting the oral arguments for the president and the people, Flentje evinced a level of incompetence that spurred the Bench to the heights of usurpation. For example, when The Court caviled about an alleged lack of evidence for the necessity of the “travel ban,” not only did Flentje fail to provide it, but he failed to question the need for this evidence based on the scope of the president’s constitutional, executive power in matters of nation security.

Mr. President: You promised to hire the best. Alan Dershowitz is champing at the bit. Kris Kobach would kill it in any court. (Jonathan Turley is soft. Don’t touch Fox News’ tele-judges.)

Helped by the poor job stumblebum Flentje did in arguing the president’s prerogative and position, the Ninth Circuit judges usurped President Trump’s constitutional authority, substituting their own judgment for his. The three refused to lift the ban on the ban and reinstate an Executive Order that was never meant to be subjected to judicial review, in the first place.

GEORGE W. BUSH’S LAWYER. Those on the Right who opposed George Bush during his presidency (check) were vindicated yet again. In the nooks-and-crannies of our command-and-control judiciary, Bush had squirreled away a jurist as bad as John G. Roberts Jr.

Recall, Roberts, chief of the country’s legal politburo of proctologists, rewrote Obama’s Affordable Care Act. He then proceeded to provide the fifth vote to uphold the individual mandate undergirding the law, thereby undeniably and obscenely extending Congress’s taxing power. (Lazy government worker Paul Ryan still hasn’t come up with an alternative to ObamaCare, one that’ll prevent the Left from torching the country. Patience. It’s only been eight years.)

The unelected Bush appointee under discussion is from my State of Washington. District Judge James L. Robart, like Bush, would wrestle a crocodile for an illegal immigrant. Or, for potential immigrants, preferably from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan.

Having been granted standing by the Ninth Circuit to appeal President Trump’s Executive Order, Robart, as explained by a Daily Caller contributor, “hinged his entire ruling on a concept called parens patriae, …

… READ THE REST.  “Coequal in Tyranny: The Ninth Circuit’s Rules for Radicals” is the current column, now on Townhall.com.

Best tweet:

Best retort to #9thCircuit nutters: US can bomb the 7 Muslim countries. That's constitutional. It can't peacefully disassociate from them. https://t.co/c1JG0qdhgl

Posted by Ilana Mercer, Author on Thursday, February 9, 2017

FACEBOOK:

Noah Purcell, you don’t represent Washington State. You, the tech execs and social justice clientele are having a ‘moment.’ Enjoy! It won’t last! You didn’t even have standing to bring the case. You’re asserting the rights of people who are not even Americans. You’re a joke. The 9th circuit is a joke.

UPDATED (2/14): Heavenly Al Jarreau, Rest In Peace And Rock The Heavens

America, Art, Human Accomplishment, Music

Al Jarreau retired from performing last week. And then he died. Poetic.

Al Jarreau was perfection. A giant of music, in general, and of the soul-jazz genre, in particular.

By comparison, Gaga (who is indubitably the best in a bad bunch), Beyonce and Madonna are circus animals—nothing more than crass entertainers, who more often than not assault the ear.

You realize how rotten popular music is when you listen to this man.

Young in Spain:

Older in Spain. Al Jarreau is still perfection, as is Steve Gadd, both are sublime, better than anything that ululates and twerks on stage these days, and is nothing without the almighty Auto-Tune.

What a sweet sweet soul.

UPDATE (2/14): Facebook thread.

Tucker Carlson Is The Only Immigration Patriot @ Fox News

Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Labor, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Republicans

Tucker Carlson Socratically questions his Republican simpleton guest (6:10 in): “Our current understanding is that foreigners can come here until we can show they pose a danger to us. Shouldn’t our assumption be that nobody has the right to come here until they can show us the benefit of their coming here?”

Tucker went on to observe that “the People whom the congress is supposed to be representing are largely not in favor of resettling Syrian refugees. Only 36% in favor [and likely virtue signalling to the surveyors posing the questions. Survey methodology is notoriously confounded by a bias whereby, from the questions asked, the surveyed sense the “right” reply and oblige the individual questioning them]. People are not for this. Why wouldn’t the congress take this up? They’re supposed to be representing The People.” And, “Do employers have the moral right to low-wage labor?”

Tucker is an immigration patriot because he suggests restricted in-migration based on reasons other than “the security of the American people.” The latter is the sum total of the case made by all at Fox News other than Tucker Carlson.

Moreover, everyone at Fox News currently concurs that we have no problem with legal immigration, only with the illegal variety. It’s now mandatory to pair an objection to the invasion of the American Southwest with an embrace of all forms of legal immigration. The sole emphasis on border security has, in all likelihood, entrenched the status quo—Americans will never assert their right to determine the nature of the country they live in and, by extension, the kind of immigrants they welcome. The security risk newcomers pose is the only permissible topic for conversation. So I wrote in 2006.

Eleven years hence, and Tucker has broken the mold on Fox News.

Give Tucker time, and he’ll question “diversity.”


Moratorium:


Self-defense.


Deplorables love it. The country’s in favor:


All those Alexander Bells Keep Coming.


Dershowitz would do the job, too; he enjoys a challenge. Thought you hired the best, POTUS: