UPDATE IV: Grammy Awards: And The Winner Is … Auto-Tune (Quality Vs. Longevity)

Art, Music, Pop-Culture

The tartlets I watched “sing” at the Grammys would have been even more inaudible and tuneless were it not for the Auto-Tune: the “holy grail of recording,” that “corrects intonation problems in vocals or solo instruments, in real time, without distortion or artifacts.” (See “Antares.com”) With the exception of Lady Antebellum, a group that was passable compared to the rest, the In Memoriam segment featured the event’s better talent (all passed, sadly). (I missed the classical section.) I had never before heard Rihanna, Katy Perry, and Gaga, who with all her pretentious Yoko Onanisms, actually proved, surprisingly, more hard-working and polished than the first two. This is not saying much, I know. But, as a studio musician explained to me, this T & A line-up (to which you can generally add Talor Swift, the Britney Spears of country music) would be reduced to embarrassing grunts, out-of-tune yelps, and bedroom whispers, if not for the Auto-Tune. As to “The Suburbs”/Arcade Fire as Album of the Year: For once, I’m without words to describe their sheer ineptness.

I did not catch the entire thing, but Iron Maiden are good.

UPDATE I (Feb. 16): TRY TRUE TALENT. Mike D: You might like “Arcade Fire,” but they are G-d-awful as musicians. They sustain one or two pitches and exhibit zero proficiency on any of the instruments they belabor. The guitarist strums wildly, producing a cacophony with almost no melodic momentum or variation. One of his guitar strings was broken, but it made no difference. Not only are their songs lacking any chord progression, but, again, they cannot play their instruments. Why learn to play like virtuoso Tony MacAlpine plays guitar (and piano), when you can get a contract and sell your crap without it?

Standards are dead. To those who wish to reclaim a feel for such an unhip concept, here’s a start:

Here’s the same chap, who’ll never get honored for artistic achievement at the Grammys or the Trash House, playing Chopin, no less (bloody difficult):

UPDATE II: WOW: Thanks to Graham who sent a clip of Gaga “before she went gaga.” Not half bad. I knew my instincts for music were good (was brought up listening critically to music—everything from the Beatles to chamber music from a tender age), when I wrote above that “Gaga, with all her pretentious Yoko Onanisms, actually proved, surprisingly hard-working and polished.” Stephanie Germanotta was okay, at least far better than Madonna (although I thoroughly dislike the wailing and the agonized style of singing, in general).

UPDATE III (Feb. 17): QUALITY VS. LONGEVITY. Robert, you too seem to confuse the immutable quality of art with its longevity. Most young people can’t tell you who Bach is. If the Idiocracy has the upper hand, in 100 years or so, he too will have been forgotten despite his unparalleled genius.

“Arcade Fire” are categorically horrid as far as music goes. But they were sweet. Quebecers are nice. Very un-American. Regular folks. Not arrogant, and without airs and graces. Perhaps there is an art to being pleasant?

UPDATE IV (Feb. 18): Michel, thanks for the invite to Montreal. I adore that city; spent time there in 2003. What food! What sweet people. So beautiful too; good-looking and thin folks; what’s not to like? However, I was not prepared for the cold.

UPDATED: Poor Pollyanna & The Liberal Media (Logan Assault Cover-Up)

Crime, Feminism, Gender, Islam, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Middle East, Sex

CBS reports a shocker (not): The glorious revolution in Egypt was marred by the “brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating” of their chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan (via Erik Rush).

Someone has to say this: So deeply silly is the prototypical, progressive female in her fantasies of rescuing the world, that she discards reality. Logan’s rescuers, a couple of clever—presumably local—sisters, were no doubt clad in the traditional nosebags. Local sisters are not so careless as to dress immodestly in a country in which the majority (82 percent) supports executing adulterers. The left-liberal women of the West imagine they can walk around Africa or the Middle-East as free as birds, burdened only by overwhelming love for the locals.

The assault occurred on “the day Mubarak stepped down.” This poor, poor Pollyanna, and the men and women of the liberal media, will return armed with assorted rationalizations intended to solve inner-conflict: the rapists were Mubarak’s men; should be forgiven because of the circumstances, etc.

UPDATE (Feb. 17): Diana West questions the Logan assault cover-up, during which the 39-year-old journalist was called “Jew, Jew”:

Why CBS kept mum for four days about the brutal sexual assault of network correspondent Lara Logan by a Tahrir Square mob on Feb. 11 we just don’t know.

Did Logan, flown out of Cairo by a network-chartered jet to a U.S. hospital hours after the attack, request secrecy as a brutalized victim?

Were news executives, or even Logan herself, concerned that the bombshell news of the assault, which took place almost exactly as Hosni Mubarak was relinquishing all powers, would detract from the “jubilant” crowd’s “democracy” drama? Such a news blackout is hard to imagine if, for example, a star correspondent had been similarly violated by a mob of tea party-goers at, say, a massive Glenn Beck rally – and particularly if other correspondents had previously suffered unprecedented assaults and threats from the same crowd. A keening outcry would have arisen from the heart of the MSM (mainstream media) against the mob, accompanied by a natural zeal to investigate cultural or other reasons for the brutality. Not excuses. And not disinterest.

But in this singular Logan case we’ve seen both. First, only after news queries indicated the story was breaking did CBS on Tuesday release a brief rap sheet on the Friday crime. We were told of Logan’s accidental separation from her crew in the crowd. The prolonged assault by over 200 people “whipped into a frenzy.” The rescue by a group of women and 20 soldiers. What CBS didn’t mention – what was later attributed to an unnamed network source – was that as the thugs assaulted the 39-year-old journalist and mother of two, they shouted, “Jew! Jew!”

…

“Missing is any acknowledgement of the fact – the overwhelming, highly upsetting but nonetheless unavoidable fact – that Islam’s teachings on women and particularly Jews are literally hateful. And that’s the Quranic truth, as copiously expressed by the late Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, grand imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, approximately Sunni Islam’s “pope.” As he put it, and with plenty of canonical support: Jews “are the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs.”

Read more: Media hushes up Islamic misogyny of Logan assault http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=264941#ixzz1EHiFNRTV

UPDATED: Bono Gives Go-Ahead to ‘Kill The Boer’ Chant

Crime, IMMIGRATION, Justice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Racism, South-Africa

I know that few in the developed world care about the undeclared, ad hoc, genocidal, ethnic-cleansing of rural Afrikaners in South Africa, my old homeland (a least so the major, cowardly conservative publishers assure me). But (from their positions of relative safety), my American countrymen do care about Bono, the great benefactor of mankind, and are surely interested in what he has to say about the incitement to kill the Boers. (Fore more about these killings see “‘Kill The Fucking Whites’ On Facebook”)

Anyhoo, Bono is a chap who fronts a three-chord band of unimpressive droners. His ignorance about the teachings of the late Lord P. T. Bauer, the foremost authority on foreign aid, has catapulted him to a position of great prominence on matters concerning the undeveloped world. This is, after all, the Age of the Idiot.

On tour in South Africa, and amid the ongoing assault against the beleaguered Boers, Bono told the BBC that the ditty “Shoot the Boer,” “which was sung during the fight against apartheid” [and at practically every political rally since] had folkloric pride of place in South Africa, “like music supporting the Irish Republican Army.”

G-d must be otherwise indisposed. (I’m not a believer, but I know many of my readers are. “Respek.”) The God of the Jews was vengeful, when it came to meting out justice. If he were fully “engaged” (and I’m being as delicate as I can), he would surely have struck the bonehead Bono down for giving the killing of a vulnerable people the go-ahead.

Given the mesmerizing, often murderous, power of the chant—any chant—in African life, this is in fact what Bono has done. Does anyone remember the “‘Kill them before they kill you” slogan that helped excite Hutus to massacre half a million of their Tutsi neighbors? Apparently not.

Of course, banning an incitement to murder will do nothing to excise a dark reality embedded deep in the human heart. It is this reality that must be discussed openly vis-a-vis South Africa. I do this in
my book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons From South Africa from Post-Apartheid South Africa. It will be published on May 10, 2011.

UPDATE (Feb. 15): No matter how many times I write or reply to the question of, “Why don’t South Africans up and leave,” I get the same insular, derisive responses, or repeat questions. Again and again. The penny never seems to drop. So, I will excerpt again from “The Immigration Scene,” where it was explained that highly-skilled and educated South Africans can petition destination countries to emigrate. The rest haven’t a hope in hell of getting into the USA. However, even highly-skilled immigrants are weeded out indirectly in the American immigration system, which,

“selects for low moral character by rewarding unacceptable risk-taking and law-breaking … An example should clarify what I mean by ‘select for low moral character’: Most of our South-African friends, all highly qualified, upstanding family men and women, have opted to go to Australia or the UK. Why? Well, legal immigrants to the U.S. don’t ‘wait their turn,’ as the uninformed pointy-heads keep chanting. It is usually their qualifications that, indirectly, get them admitted into the country. The H-1B visa, for one, is a temporary work permit—and also a route to acquiring legal permanent resident status. However, if one loses the job with the sponsoring company, the visa holder must leave the U.S. within ten days. What responsible, caring, family man would subject his dependents to such insecurity and upheaval? As I say, most of the people we know would never contemplate breaking the law by remaining in the US illegally. And not because they’re dull or unimaginative (an ‘argument’ I’ve heard made by Darwinian libertarians, who praise immigration scofflaws for their entrepreneurial risk-taking, no less). But because they have the wherewithal—intellectual and moral—to weigh opportunity costs and plan for the future, rather than say ‘mañana’ to tomorrow and live for today. Unhip perhaps, but certainly the kind of people America could do with.”

The H-1B visa or the O-1 ‘Extraordinary Ability’ Visa are the most popular in gaining entry into the USA. They are predicted on a job offer and are not easily attained (as you will see, if you bother to read the above-linked article).

Other work visas are easily obtained if you’re a law breaker, speak Spanish, are uneducated, and are not Caucasian—there are very few rational ways of getting into the US. The US simply selects for low moral character and a lack of professional accomplishment in its immigration-policy proclivities and sympathies.

As for the family reunification system, in the case that a candidate has family in the US (see “Please, Can My Sister Become An Illegal Immigrant?”), old parents can come right away. The younger, productive siblings of a permanent resident, such as my sister, are last on the legal waiting list. With backlogs running to 4 million cases, she may have to wait well over a decade, if not two, to come to the US legally.

Since Third-World immigrants have larger families, they will crowd out the smaller family units of the Afrikaner or Anglo- South African in vying for this category of visa. Thus, the US immigration policies also favors the Third World.

Please search my blog– and articles archives under Immigration and South Africa if you want to find out more about how near-impossible it is for some of the hardest working people in the world to come to the USA legally. You can purchase my book, out on May 10, and read up about the odd illegal white South African being sent packing back to South Africa by American justices.

But do wake up about America; it opens its arms only to a certain kind of oppressed refugee.

Barack’s Budget

Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, Media, Uncategorized

The man with the revere-Midas touch has submitted his $3.7 trillion budget, which he, age-appropriately, justified before a suburban Baltimore middle school, this morning. Barack Obama’s definition of fiscal conservatism is guarding the status quo. Obama’s budget is the same budget as last year’s. The tax proposals are the same. Entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Defense) remain untouched, an exemption that included the new healthcare monstrosity. Discretionary spending Obama has vowed to freeze for five years at a very high rate, but, as Doug Holtz-Eakin, former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, reminded the Obama adoring Norah O’Donell, the president has a (short and savage) history of ferociously fighting the enforcement of the very freezes he proposes.

Holtz-Eakin: This budget is “a political documented oriented to getting him reelected. The American worker needs jobs. There is no greater threat to the economy than the accumulation of deb this budget promises. This budget is good political positioning,” which guarantees the continued issuance of debt at a rate of $50,000 a minute (the median income of the average American), or $12,000 per family.

With a flick of his forked tongue, Obama once beguiled media groupies such as MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell. No longer. She seems persuaded by the warnings of former CBOaf to big spender President George W. Bush.