Taibbi Brings Back Clown Car Coverage

The always insightful and acerbic Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine is probably the best political journalist working today. Well at least he's one of my favorites. Forever independent and fiercely truth telling, Taibbi's bullshit-detector skills make him a clear enemy of establishment politics and politicians. He's got that rare ability to bring humor to political discourse in a way that helps highlight the absurdities of mainstream hacks in government and media. 

In 2016 Matt Taibbi's "Clown Car" coverage chronicled the rise of Donald Trump with some caustic tales of campaign shenanigans. Taibbi's reviving the Clown Car to cover the Democratic Party primary

In 2016 Taibbi's "Inside the GOP Clown Car" coverage of the Republican primary season helped many of us stay sane as we watched a well known huckster and scumbag (initials DJT)  prevail in a field of candidates filled with nutcases, nitwits, and nincompoops. Anyone reading Taibbi's work throughout 2016 knew that Hillary's campaign was in trouble. Unfortunately the Democrats like the Republicans would rather marginalize the Taibbis of the world instead of learn from them. 

Good news for political junkies: Taibbi has brought back the Clown Car coverage, this time focusing on the Democratic Party candidates for president. The first piece is called "The Iowa Circus." Money quotes: 

*Traveling hundreds of miles across Iowa, passing cornfields and covered bridges, visiting quaint small town after quaint small town, listening to the stump speeches of Democrat after would-be Donald Trump-combating Democrat, only one thought comes to mind:

They’re gonna blow this again.

*The top Democrats’ best arguments for office are that they are not each other. Harris is rising in part because she’s not Biden; Warren, because she isn’t Bernie. Bernie’s best argument is the disfavor of the hated Democratic establishment. The Democratic establishment chose Biden because he was the Plan B last time and the party apparently hasn’t come up with anything better since. Nothing says “We’re out of ideas” quite like pulling a pushing-eighty ex-vice president off the bench to lead the most important race in the party’s history.

*The Democrats had years to come up with an answer to Trump that is fundamental, powerful, and new, solving the problem the elder George Bush once called “the vision thing.” What’s mostly been shown instead is more of the same. Literally more, as in three times the usual suspects. The sequel even Hollywood would never make is now showing in Iowa.

*. . . much of what has passed for the Democratic Party debate to date has involved what campaign commentators call “moments" . . . There was Klobuchar dunking on Inslee, Harris thrashing Biden over his past stance on school busing, former Housing Secretary Julián Castro walloping O’Rourke for not doing his “homework” on section 1325 of the immigration code, and O’Rourke providing an anti-moment of his own in an agonizing marathon effort at speaking Spanish in his introductory debate segment.

*The presence of human scratching post Biden atop the field has contributed to the not-undeserved impression that the party does not know what the hell it is doing. Biden has not only been battered by nearly all of his Democratic rivals, he’s also been drawn into flame wars with Trump, reanimating the 2016 pattern of TV networks giving Captain Orange masses of free airtime to flail rivals for sport and ratings.

*Biden’s early front-runner flubs are reminiscent of Jeb Bush’s $150 million failure to handle Trump tweets. There are many such parallels. Biden is Jeb. O’Rourke, running in what the Times calls the “younger face” lane, is Marco Rubio. Unseen Steve Bullock is unseen Jim Gilmore. Bill de Blasio is the same “Why is he running?” New Yorker George Pataki was. And this election’s version of John Kasich, the embittered realist barking, “What are we doing here?” from the literal edge of the debate stage, is former Maryland Rep. John Delaney.

*Reporters show up at events with anxious smiles on their faces, like parents looking for a child at a department store. Maybe this one? How about her, or him? This is an extension of a phenomenon that began in the second half of the last GOP primary, when the press tried lavishing compliments on the “real” candidates they hoped would stop Trump. The internet remains littered with the wreckage of these efforts, in headlines like “Signs of ‘Marco-mentum’ for Rubio in New Hampshire.”

CNN will host Democratic "debates" on July 30 and 31. I refer to these hyped media events as For Profit Scams. You can find my explanation here and here. 

Then as now, in their zeal to find someone, anyone, to beat Trump, the press is once again too focused on the candidates themselves, ignoring warning signs that are almost always sitting right there in front of them, in the crowds.

*Williamson belongs to a category of candidate you might call the Ignored. They’re candidates blown off by national political wizards who don’t believe, or don’t want to believe, they can win. How anyone can think this way after 2016 is mind-boggling.

The list includes Williamson, entrepreneur and Universal Basic Income proponent Andrew Yang, Hawaii congresswoman and regime-change opponent Tulsi Gabbard, and, most conspicuously, Bernie Sanders.

I think it's critical that Democrat party King and Queen Makers take seriously Taibbi's final paragraphs, but I know they won't: 

*Four years ago, the rank inadequacy of the Lindsey Grahams and Scott Walkers and Jeb Bushes who tumbled into the pastures of Iowa made great sport for snickering campaign journalists, myself included. We dubbed the field of governors, senators, and congressgoons who couldn’t beat a game-show host the “Clown Car,” and laughed at what many of us thought was the long-overdue collapse of the Republican Party. The joke turned out to be on us.

The GOP error was epic in scale. The Republicans sent twice the usual number of suspects into the buzz saw of a Throw the Bums Out movement they never understood, creating the comic pretext for the Clown Car: twice the canned quips, twice the empty promises, double the rage, frustration, and eye rolls.

They may not lose - it will likely be close no matter what - but the point holds. Just like 2016, both politicians and campaign press are not in tune with how much they’re distrusted generally. Trump is expert on capitalizing on this and he is set up to do so again. https://t.co/6gFUn0N3uQ

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) July 26, 2019

Nobody will want to hear this, but Democrats are repeating the error. The sense of déjà vu is palpable. It might and should still work out, according to the polls. But a double catastrophe seems a lot less impossible than it did even a year ago. Lose to Donald Trump once, shame on the voters. Lose to him twice? It’s glue-factory time for the Democratic Party, and another black eye for America, which is fast turning its electoral system into a slapstick reality show.

Update: The 42 Gospels

Mariano Rivera, the greatest relief pitcher in baseball history recently elected to the Hall of Fame, has faced criticism recently due to his support for President Trump. In 2014 I wrote a Media Rants column comparing Rivera's autobiography with Jackie Robinson's. The comparison was appropriate because baseball had retired Robinson's #42, and Rivera was the last player allowed to wear the number. 

Click this link to see the column. 

State of the State Columns

For those of you who may not know, in addition to Media Rants I also write "State of the State" for the Oshkosh Independent. Some recent columns include:

Grand Chute Chair Calls Out Corruption: About Town of Grand Chute Chair David Schowalter's tense exchange with Representative Mike Rohrkaste (R-55th Assembly District) over the "Dark Store Loophole." 

Grand Chute Town Board Chair David Schowalter called out the state legislature's corruption in a tense exchange with District 57 Assembly Representative Mike Rohrkaste

Stuck in the 8th Congressional District: About State Representative Amanda Stuck's (D-57th Assembly District) decision to challenge incumbent Republican Mike Gallager in the 8th Congressional District. 

State Rep Amanda Stuck is trying to make an argument that her life experience makes her especially suited to represent the 8th Congressional District. 

Budget Process Shows Why Partisan Gerrymandering Must End: About how hyper partisan gerrymandered legislative districts helped undermine the biennial budget process. 

In 2018 Democrats won all the major statewide offices. In the state assembly, because of extreme partisan gerrymandering, they gained no seats even though their share of the statewide vote was higher than the Republicans'

The Trouble With Tweeting: About the awful state of social media use among Wisconsin's elected officials.

Republicans won with court-drawn maps in the 1990’s and 2000’s as well as in the 2010’s. The Democrats’ efforts are based on sour grapes because they haven’t won in 30 years no matter how the maps were drawn.

— Speaker Robin Vos (@SpeakerVos) July 16, 2019

A complete archive of my State of the State columns can be found here. 

RIP Justice John Paul Stevens

Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired from the Supreme Court in 2010, passed away yesterday at the age of 99. When he retired from the Court, I wrote this piece on his First Amendment legacy. Spoiler Alert: it's a mixed legacy.

Stevens was appointed by Gerald Ford, who sounded like an absolute statesman on the day he nominated him in 1975. Today it is virtually impossible to imagine a Republican president nominating someone on the basis of judicial integrity and fidelity to the rules of law.

Ten Bold Cover Tunes, Part II

In the first part of this series, I argued that a cover tune can be "bold" in a couple of different ways: (1) the cover artist dares to take on a tune firmly associated in the public mind with the original artist; and (2) the cover artist does something so unique with the song that they almost send the original into obscurity.

So here's ten more bold covers!

#10: Amy Winehouse's cover of the Teddy Bears' "To Know Him Is To Love Him." A few years ago in my "Rhetoric of Rock and Roll Course" I required students to read Greil Marcus' excellent book The History of Rock 'N' Roll in Ten Songs (Yale University Press, 2014). Yep, "To Know Him Is To Love Him" is one of Marcus' ten songs. The tune was written by Phil Spector and released by his doo-wop group The Teddy Bears in 1958. Winehouse released her cover in 2006, a powerful rendition that prompted Marcus to say that the song "took forty-eight years to find its voice." Writing about Amy's live performance of the song at the BBC studios, Marcus went further:

"In the three seconds that it took her to climb through the first five words, to sing 'To know, know, know him,' you were in a different country than any the song had ever reached before . . . each word as she sang it demanding to be the last word . . . the song expanded as if, all those years, it had been waiting for this particular singer to be born, and was only now letting out its breath."

#9: Suzi Quatro's cover of Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up." The song "All Shook Up" was composed by R & B legend Otis Blackwell. It became one of Elvis' signature songs, topping the Billboard Hot 100 charts for eight weeks in 1957.

Independent of this particular song, Suzi Quatro is one of the most important artists in the history of rock, in large part because she established an independent, rockin' female persona that ended up opening doors for women in the genre. Some might argue that Joan Jett, who is actually in Oshkosh as I write this on July 11, owes her entire act to Suzi.

Quatro has stated in interviews that Elvis called her in 1974 to say that her version of "All Shook Up" was his favorite. He invited her to Graceland but she declined to visit. 

#8: Cheap Trick's cover of Fats Domino's "Ain't That A Shame." Fats' original song did make the charts in 1955, but in that more wickedly racist era it took Pat Boone's painful cover version in the same year to make the tune well known nationally.

From Rockford, Illinois, Cheap Trick had been jamming tunes like "Ain't That A Shame" in Midwestern bars for years, then became popular in Japan, and then finally made it big in the States with their 1979 "Live at Budokan" album. What I love about Cheap Trick's cover of "Ain't That A Shame" is Bun E. Carlos' (born Brad Carlson) drumming in the first two minutes. If you're a fan of 1950's and early 1960's rock, in those two minutes you'll hear Bun E borrowing just about every drum lick from that era. Those two minutes represent one of the most ass-kicking attention getters in the history of rock and roll.

#7: Joss Stone's cover of the White Stripes' "Fell in Love With a Girl." When I first heard "Fell in Love With a Girl" in 2001, to me it sounded like Jack White imitating Jack White imitating Joey Ramone--or something like that. For me the fast pace and soaring guitar took away from the clever lyrics. But the song was widely acclaimed and became one of the Stripes' most popular, so what do I know.

Joss Stone's soul version ("Fell in Love With a Boy"), released in 2003 on her first album ("The Soul Sessions"), captures the craziness of this thing called love in what sounds like a more mature way than the Stripes' "from the gut" style. The irony is that Stone was only sixteen years old at the time of the recording.

#6: The Black Crowes' cover of Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle." You can't speak about soul music without Otis Redding entering the conversation. Redding died tragically in a plane crash in Lake Monona (Madison, WI). Some of his greatest music was released posthumously, including the landmark  album "The Immortal Otis Redding" (1968) which includes "Hard to Handle." As with most of Redding's work, his penetrating vocals accompanied by the great Stax Records house band made "Hard to Handle" an instant classic.

The Black Crowes' version of the tune is noteworthy because in 1990 it represented a resurgence of guitar-centered rock and roll after 10 years of MTV electro-pop dominating the airwaves. With "Hard to Handle" the Crowes introduced a new generation to the excitement of a mid-1960s style of rock.

#5: Canned Heat's cover of Henry Thomas's "Bull Doze Blues." Okay, so technically this might be considered an "adaptation" in the sense that Canned Heat's "Going Up The Country" borrows the melody and instrumental styling but added a rock beat and changed the lyrics. Still, the tunes are close enough that "cover" is appropriate as a descriptor.

"Bull Doze Blues" was recorded in 1928 and--like most recordings of that time period--has a remarkable authenticity to it. When people say things like, "back in the day artists were passionate about their art," they have pieces like "Bull Doze Blues" in mind.

Released in 1968, Canned Heat's "Going up the Country" became nothing less than an anthem of the Woodstock generation. There will never be another vocalist like the late Alan Wilson. Just an incredible adaptation/cover that has aesthetic, cultural, and even political significance. Imagining a place where the water tastes like wine, where WE can stay drunk all the time expresses a desire for community that will always exist as long humans inhabit the earth.

#4: Disturbed's cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence." 

"The Sound of Silence" was released in 1965, but I don't think I actually listened to it seriously until my first year in high school (1975). The song has everything a nerdy, alienated, big city high school freshman in Catholic school would find attractive: a paradoxical title ("silence" somehow making a "sound"), a critique of so-called modern civilization ("and the people bowed and prayed/to the neon god they made"), and a declared vision of people as cold and brain dead. I'm certain that this song and others like it helped motivate me to read serious literature in philosophy, religious studies, sociology, and other fields. My ultimate interest in Rhetoric and Communication Studies came out of a desire, I am quite sure, to find a way to put whatever wisdom I culled from that literature into some kind of action. So thank you Paul Simon for being one of the sparks!

I hope today there are some nerdy high schoolers reacting to Disturbed's "Sound of Silence" in similar ways. Singer David Draiman's vocals on this cover can only be called "epic." If Luciano Pavarotti had been a rock singer, he would have sounded like Draiman in this cover: impossible for any listener to tune out once the tune is in aural range. It should also be noted that Draiman and Disturbed chose a perfect time to release the song: in 2015 the world was arguably much more fucked up than in 1965, and the tune offered an unpleasant (but necessary) reminder of that.

#3: Imelda May's cover of Tiny Bradshaw's "Train Kept a Rollin." Irish rockabilly revivalist Imelda May is most influenced by Johnny Burnette's 1956 great cover of the tune, but I just want to be clear in these "Bold Cover Tunes" posts about where the songs originally come from. Tiny Bradshaw's 1951 original version is a kind of jump-jazz number that anticipated the excitement of early rock and roll. Maybe that's why Burnette covered it.

After Burnette there were two covers of the song now widely considered to be definitive: The Yardbirds' 1965 version with Jeff Beck on guitar and Aerosmith's amazing 1974 rendition.

It would be tough for any rock and roller to top Burnette's, the Yardbirds', or Aerosmith's energized versions of "Train Kept a Rollin." I don't think that May does top them--which is okay because the point here is that she is being BOLD. May's is the first really great 21st century performance of the song, with her and her band managing to honor the previous covers without devolving into karaoke. For me, the way she sings "New Yawk City" with a Brooklyn accent is by itself worth the price of admission.

#2:  Patti Smith's cover of Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall." In 2016 Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." No doubt the words to tunes like "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," Dylan's 1962 mysterious but vivid depiction of a post-apocalyptic planet, were what the judges were thinking of as they pondered whether a songwriter should get a prize for literary greatness. 

The song has been covered extensively over the years, by everyone from reggae star Jimmy Cliff to the legendary Bryan Ferry. 

Patti Smith has been performing the song for many years. Nearly 70 years old at the time, her performance at the Nobel Prize Award ceremony in Stockholm in 2016 was memorable in part because she got nervous about two minutes in and had to start over. In this era of lip syncing and other performance aids that often hide talent deficits, there was something refreshingly HUMAN about Smith's apology for the pause and the audience's super supportive response to her. In a way that was fully appropriate given the man being honored, the unpredictability of Smith's performance can absolutely be called "Dylanesque." By the last few minutes her performance brings me to tears. 

#1: Aretha Franklin's cover of Otis Redding's "Respect." Another Otis Redding cover! Rolling Stone Magazine gave Aretha's cover a ranking of #5 on their list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. I can't say it much better than Rolling Stone:

Otis Redding wrote "Respect" and recorded it first, for the Volt label in 1965. But Aretha Franklin took possession of the song for all time with her definitive cover, made at Atlantic's New York studio on Valentine's Day 1967. "Respect" was her first Number One hit and the single that established her as the Queen of Soul. In Redding's reading, a brawny march, he called for equal favor with volcanic force. Franklin wasn't asking for anything. She sang from higher ground: a woman calling an end to the exhaustion and sacrifice of a raw deal with scorching sexual authority. In short, if you want some, you will earn it.

Thank you for taking the time to engage part II in Media Rants' series on Bold Cover Tunes. Not sure if there will be a part III, but if you follow this blog  you will be the first to know!