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! 

Is Radical Love Possible in the United States?

For a video summary of this post, click this link. 

Author/activist/spiritualist Marianne Williamson made some waves at the first "debate" between Democrats running for president by deviating from the traditional script for such gabfests. Traditional candidates use televised debates to go into full Aaron Sorkin "West Wing" mode: they spew stump speech platitudes, impress us with their knowledge of Spanish, display maximum outrage at child separation policies at the border, baffle us with bullshit when they can't dazzle us with brilliance, and take passive aggressive cheap shots at the alleged front runners. Williamson in contrast comes off more like Seinfeld's holistic healer: whatever wisdom she expresses gets undermined by stylistic quirks too easy to satirize. 

I'm not likely to support Marianne Williamson for president, but I found it telling that for the establishment, only her performance was "bonkers." Williamson may not be the person best able to inject a Martin Luther King style message of love power into a national political campaign, but on the other hand it's not clear to me that ANY person choosing to center on love, compassion, healing, etc. would get treated as anything other than a flake by the major party establishment and the cable profiteers running these so-called debates. 

Williamson's closing remarks, in which she directly addressed Donald Trump, made the establishment's collective head explode: “Mr. President, if you’re listening, you have harnessed fear for political purposes, and only love can cast that out. I am going to harness love for political purposes. And sir, love will win.” Even writers sympathetic to Williamson are not capable of writing about her without characterizing her sentiments as "weird,"  "bizarre" or "oddball." 

But is Williamson's love message REALLY all that weird? If situated only in terms of the wretched norms governing mainstream political discourse in the US, then yes of course her message is weird to the point of sounding like it comes from some mysterious astral plane. Put in a global context however, the message is not weird at all and might actually represent a realistic way of handling Trumpian-style polarizing populism. 

Consider the recent mayoral election in Istanbul, Turkey. Reform candidate Ekrem Imamoglu won the election in March, but after allegations of voting irregularities the election was held again in June. In the second election Imamogly won by over 800,000 votes against the candidate supported by Turkey's polarizing populist President  Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan has in the past claimed that whoever runs Istanbul effectively runs Turkey, though it remains to be seen if Imamoglu's victory represents an end to the divide and conquer politics of Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development (AKP) Party. 

Imamoglu's Republican People's Party (CHP) did not run for office the way opposition parties typically do. Instead of angry denunciations of Erdogan, the AKP, and Erdogan's  "deplorable" supporters, they took a stand for "Radical Love." In a fascinating 50-page document, the writer argues that "The main difference between radical and normal love is that the former denotes giving your love not only to those who already love you, but also to those who do not." 

"Radical Love" goes further and urges political activists to avoid "hubris," "sarcasm," "high politics," and "haste." The writer then provides candidates with a ten-point program for running campaigns, most of which are the opposite of how we run campaigns in the States: 

________________________________________________

1. Don't get provoked, don't be pulled into arguments. 
2. Don't talk conceptually, be concrete. 
3. Introduce yourself. 
4. Talk less, listen more. 
5. Don't use insults. 
6. Don't make insinuations. 
7. Don't lord over people, don't wag a finger. 
8. Don't have an idea. (By which they mean that candidates should recognize that ideas are rooted in communities, not in the individual mind of the candidate.). 
9. Smile. 
10. Don't forget that you're with the People's Party. 

Williamson channeled some of these principles in her debate performance, principles so rare in American political discourse that the candidate will almost necessarily sound "weird." (South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg sometimes espouses Radical Love type views, especially when he talks about fixing our broken democracy, but like Williamson he might be hurt by having a style that's too easy for more polished candidates to dismiss and for ill-motivated opponents to lampoon.). 

____________________________________

Radical love needs to be strong. United we stand. A nation that stands strong, and loves each of its members is a nightmare for hate-mongers.--From the pamphlet "Radical Love"

____________________________________________________________________

The "Radical Love" pamphlet calls hatred the "disease of our times," and says that "hatred cannot be overcome by hatred." It says that hatred is "easy to produce" and is "lucrative," and that "The only way to beat people who feed on hatred is to defend love with patience and perseverance."  "Radical Love"  is rooted in the idea of treating political opponents with deep respect--something that might seem impossible in the United States until we consider that it was considered to be impossible in Turkey until Imamoglu's successful campaign. 

The Turkish cover of "The Book of Radical Love." The book takes a spiritual approach to politics that seems increasingly out of reach in this era of bitterness and polarization perhaps best illustrated by the Trump phenomenon in the United States. Of all the Democrats running to replace Mr. Trump, Marianne Williamson most clearly states an intention to "harness the power of love" in politics. Williamson's style is easy to mock and make fun of, but there's a long history in the world of making fun of messages that challenge us to deal with things we would rather not deal with. 

Does the United States need a "Radical Love" style transformation in order for Donald Trump to be defeated in 2020? No. Given our 18th-century electoral rules, the Democrats merely need to find a way to flip some swing states (e.g. Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania) that surprisingly went for Mr. Trump in 2016 but in which his popularity is low and the Republicans did not do well in the 2018 midterms. But even if Trump is defeated, "Radical Love" teaches that unless there is some kind of transformation in the way we do politics, Trump-style scapegoating and demonizing of "others" will continue to play a large role in governing at all levels no matter who wins individual elections. 

Marianne Williamson is not going to be elected president of the United States, but she does deserve credit for trying to expose the fact that the man currently occupying the big house on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in DC is more a symptom of our sickness than a cause of it. Williamson's Seinfeldian New Age Guru style makes it easy to laugh off such views, but as Elvis Costello once sang (and the author of the Turkish "Radical Love" pamphlet would echo), "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?"

About that for profit scam . . .

I recently argued that Senator Elizabeth Warren's refusal to participate in a Fox News Town Hall because she did not want to support the network's "hate for profit scam" was understandable, though I wondered why she was not as bothered by the for profit scam that is at the root of all other corporate networks' coverage of the Democratic presidential primary season. As I put it: a for-profit scam is only marginally less offensive than a hate-for-profit scam, and it's still a scam. 

Last night was the first "debate" between contenders for the 2020 Democratic nomination. Patience Haggin and Nat Ives in the Wall Street Journal give us a sense of how much MSNBC stands to cash-in from these events: 

Advertisers were asked to pay up to $100,000 for 30-second spots on MSNBC during the Democratic presidential primary debates this week, according to people familiar with the matter, signaling that the network anticipates high viewer interest for its kickoff to the 2020 campaign season.

The figure represents a significant premium from the network’s usual sticker prices, according to the people. The actual purchase price wasn’t clear and could be lower, depending on a host of factors . . . NBCUniversal has been pitching marketers on research it says shows high engagement among viewers of political coverage, including during ad breaks.

The "historically diverse" group of moderators for the debate certainly understand profit: 

*Jose Diaz-Balart, the "Brian Williams of Telemundo," has a net worth of $5 million. 
*Savannah Guthrie, who took over as co-anchor on the Today Show after the network execs threw Ann Curry under the bus, has a net worth of $20 million and makes $8 million per year. 
*Lester Holt, who received mixed reviews for his 2016 moderation of a Trump/Clinton debate, has a net worth of $12 million and makes $4 million per year. 
*Rachel Maddow, an extremely competent journalist who unfortunately treated the Trump/Russia story in a manner that was like a center-left version of Glenn Beck, has a net worth of $20 million and makes $7 million per year. 
*Chuck Todd, who literally spoke more than 7 of the candidates in the first debate, has a net worth of $2 million. 
(Note: These folks are paupers compared to Fox's Sean Hannity, who has a net worth of $220 million and annual salary of $40 million.) 

The average journalist in the USA makes about $40,000 per year. My suggestion would be to allow at least one local journalist on the stage with MSNBC's millionaire celebs so as to increase the possibility that a voice of real people has a chance to be represented on the stage. 

Are we better off with these debates than without them? All things considered, probably yes. But let's not kid ourselves about the manner in which commercialism controls the structure of such events and severely limits their value in serving representative democracy in a truly meaningful way. 

Back in the Day: Commentary Highlights

In the early 1990s a UW Oshkosh media student named Chris Lee approached me and asked if I would like to work with him to produce and host a public affairs TV program for the campus "Titan TV" channel. Chris had been in one of my classes, enjoyed my takes on the need to elevate public discourse in broadcast and cable media, and essentially challenged me to "put up or shut up." I had become friends with former Oshkosh Mayor James Mather, and I asked him if he would like to co-host. He said yes. Chris suggested we call the show "Commentary."

The late Don Mocker (center) was Provost at UW Oshkosh in the early 2000s. Don was one of the few administrators who appreciated the program, I think in part because he was an Education professor by trade and he understood deeply how grassroots media when done well can serve a powerful educational purpose in a community. The picture above was taken in March of 2001. Mr. Mather and I had earned a "National Communicator" award, and Don came on the program to present it to us. He praised the show for its "scholarly treatment of public issues." 

Commentary was remarkably successful from around 1991-1995; Jim and I interviewed a range of candidates for public office, community activists, academics,journalists, and many others. We used to close the program with "parting shots," brief statements offering opinions on affairs of the day. After Chris graduated we had a number of students who volunteered to work on the program. The UW Oshkosh administration never liked the show, largely because of my tendency to tell the truth and name names, so it always seemed like a struggle to remain on the air. (Someday if I am up to it I will write about this in more depth.).

I suspended the program in 1996 because I was recruited to run for the state assembly--a major time commitment while continuing to teach full-time at the university. I lost the assembly race, but then became chairperson of the Department of Communication in 1997--another huge time commitment. So I thought Commentary was over for good.

Around 1998 or 1999 Doug Freshner, a UW Oshkosh videographer, asked me if I would like to re-start the program. Doug had been a fan of the show in its original inception, and he had a nice little studio in Dempsey Hall. I was able to get Mr. Mather to come back, and so we had another successful run from about 1999-2003.

The video below is a compilation of photos from some of the 1998-2003 shows. The highlight for me personally was 2002, when we were able to get most of the Democrats running for governor that year to actually come to Oshkosh for an interview. We also interviewed Ed Thompson (Tommy's brother), who was running as a Libertarian that year--he was one of the most engaging and funny people I've ever met.

Commentary was a good example of how to do local cable access media that matters. Mather and I took the program seriously, showed respect towards our guests by asking them questions that they perceived as thoughtful, and we stuck with it even in the face of petty bullying by administrators and other "powerful" people in the community.

Ten Bold Cover Tunes, Part I

In the history of popular music solo artists and bands have probably recorded thousands of cover tunes. There exists no completely accurate accounting of the most covered songs in history, though rock standards like the Beatles' "Yesterday" and the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" tend to rank high on most lists.

What makes for a great cover tune?  Like anything else related to the arts, it might ultimately just be a matter of personal taste. Talk to members of any local cover band in your town, and they will tell you that audiences pressure them to sound as much as possible like the original artist and tune being covered. In other words, audiences want karaoke versions of the songs. A lead singer of a local band once told me that she decided one night to perform AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" as "Highway to Heaven" and got met with a HELLISH response from the crowd. I'm guessing that's typical.

For me, a great cover tune has to be BOLD. By that I mean a few different things:

*In choosing to cover a song already identified with another artist, the cover artist risks professional humiliation. Just DARING to cover certain songs is an act of boldness.

*Taking the original version of the song and performing it in a unique way is one of the boldest moves an artist can make. When done well, the cover version takes on a life of its own and almost sends the original into obscurity.

The opposite of boldness when it comes to cover tunes are situations in which the cover artist merely mimics the original or simply records the cover for commercial reasons. That's called "selling out"  or exploitation and gives the whole business of covering other artists' tunes a bad name.

I know everyone reading this can name dozens if not hundreds of cover tunes that meet my boldness criteria. Here I'm only going to name ten (in no particular order):

#10: Elvis Presley's cover of Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right Mama". I'm fully cognizant of how racism in the music industry and the USA at-large resulted in phenomenal singer/songwriters like Arthur Crudup never getting proper recognition or royalties for their compositions. A good summary of the relationship between blues, rock-and-roll, and racism--written by sociologist David Szatmary--can be found here.

The reality of racism, however, does not diminish the impact of Presley's version of "That's All Right Mama." Of all the songs mentioned in this blog post, Presley's "That's All Right Mama" is actually the most karaoke-ish in the sense that Elvis is clearly channeling Crudup's attitude and style. But try to appreciate how RADICAL that music must have sounded to uptight white youth of the 1950s. Top hits in 1954 included sentimental ballads like Sinatra's "Young at Heart" and Eddie Fisher's "Oh! My Pa-Pa." When put in that pop-music context, Presley's "That's All Right Mama" was a kind of caffeine boost in a youth culture not quite awake yet.





#9: Peggy Lee's cover of Little Willie John's "Fever". "Fever" was written by R & B giants Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell, and recorded originally by Little Willie John. The song's  been covered extensively, including by Elvis, Madonna, Christina Aguilera, and Beyonce. Most of these artists perform the tune as an expression of lust; a raunchy tune designed to get the crowd rowdy during live performances.

Peggy Lee I think was the only artist who grasped that "Fever" is really about DESIRE, an emotional state that when experienced in a fully human way sees the object of said desire as an equal person. Pure lust, in contrast, is about seeing the other as strictly someone to fuck. To put it in terms of the song's lyrics, desire more than lust is a "lovely way to burn." Peggy's performance revived her career in 1958 and became her signature song.



#8: Nirvana's cover of David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World". In the early 1990s a myth developed around grunge-rock bands that they somehow had a contempt for earlier progressive rock. Pearl Jam's embrace of Neil Young and Nirvana's spectacular cover of one of David Bowie's more esoteric tunes effectively destroyed that myth. Nirvana introduced the tune to a new audience in a way that honored the original while signaling the obvious pain that would lead to singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain's suicide not too long after the recording.

 

#7 The Mamas and the Papas cover of Ozzie Nelson's "Dream a Little Dream of Me". This pretty ballad of love and longing is deceptively easy to sing, making it ripe for covers. I would advise readers not to listen to too many versions of it, because the butcheries of it can almost ruin the song. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong's 1950 cover of the song is first-rate outstanding, but Cass Eliot's rendition in 1968 is for me the definitive version against which all others should be judged. I'm especially partial to this version of the tune as a tribute to Mama Cass, who was the victim of some vicious, Trump-style misogyny and trolling decades before the Internet. (The lie that she "choked on a ham sandwich" for many years took attention away from her powerful vocal legacy and also the fact that she was a beautiful person.).


#6: Eric Burdon and the Animals cover of the traditional "Rising Sun Blues". The Animals'"House of the Rising Sun" was released in June of 1964, and fifty-five years later the opening guitar licks, eerie keyboards, and Eric Burdon's soulful vocals keep you hooked. The Rolling Stones are usually given credit as representing the grittier side of the British invasion in contrast to the cheerful pop of the Beatles, but I've always thought that credit should be shared with Burdon and the Animals. "House of the Rising Sun" proves the point.


 #5: Dick Dale and the Del Tones cover of the traditional "Misirlou". Dick Dale died in March of this year, just shy of his 82nd birthday. Some would argue he was the original guitar hero, known for soaring surf riffs and pioneering the use of the loudest amplification possible. He was a big influence on Jimi Hendrix and many others.

"Miserlou" was and is a remarkable example of how to take a Middle Eastern folk tune and rock it into another world. When Quentin Tarantino put "Miserlou" in his 1994 "Pulp Fiction" he exposed a new generation to the tune, and demonstrated how an audio track can grab a film audience's attention as much as a shocking visual.




#4: Linda Ronstadt's cover of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas "Heat Wave". In some ways Ronstadt's 1975 cover of a 1963 Motown classic is the boldest of the bunch. Imagine the audacity of even trying to cover such an acclaimed tune, sung with searing intensity by Martha Reeves, and backed up instrumentally by the Funk Brothers--arguably the greatest rhythm  section in the history of the world. But sometimes audacity is necessary for great art and, while Ronstadt does not surpass the original, her "yeah yeah! . . . yeah yeah!" shouts come off as her simply saying "I just love this song and I aim to sing it as best I can!" Andrew Gold's guitar playing does not try to upstage the Funk Brothers' horns in the original, but it gives the song a mainstream rock twist that perfectly complements Linda's vocal.

Heat Wave became Ronstadt's most requested song at concerts, to the point where she pretty much got sick of singing it. Sadly, she developed Parkinson's disease in the 2000s and since 2011 literally cannot sing at all. Even though she cannot sing, she still gives voice to human rights causes, including her passionate advocacy on behalf of migrants.




#3: Ike and Tina Turner's cover of Creedence Clearwater's "Proud Mary". I don't think there's a guitar playing storyteller alive who does not owe a debt to Creedence's John Fogerty, and one could also argue that there's some Tina Turner in pretty much every major female pop/rock artist of the last twenty years. So when Tina Turner tackled "Proud Mary," it was like one giant paying homage to another.

Due to legal hassles, Fogerty did not perform his own songs for many years. He claims that a conversation with Bob Dylan changed that. Dylan told him that if he did not start performing the songs again, the world would forever think that "Proud Mary" was Tina Turner's song. That's probably true, as Tina's version is so dynamic and unforgettable that it's almost hard to believe someone else wrote it. Fogerty and Turner did tour together in the year 2000 and performed "Proud Mary" as a duet.

#2: Richie Havens' cover of the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun". Beatles' songs are notoriously hard to cover, in large part because the band's recording studio innovations and distinct vocal styles make it difficult for even the most talented artist to tackle a Fab Four tune without bringing it down a notch. Richie Havens' cover of "Here Comes the Sun" is a dramatic exception to that rule.

Written by George Harrison, "Here Comes the Sun" is an extraordinary song both lyrically and melodically, one of two Harrison classics on the Beatles' "Abbey Road" album (the other was "Something"). The only way to cover successfully an extraordinary tune is to counter it with something at least equally extraordinary. Havens actually pulled that off, stripping the song down to guitars, bass, and conga drums from the Beatles' orchestral arrangement. Havens sings the song with such raw emotion and plays his guitar so free-wheelingly that the original song almost comes off as over produced. I love both versions of the song, but Havens' does strike me as a remarkable artistic achievement which really set a high bar for anyone attempting to cover a Beatles' tune.

 

#1: Johnny Cash's cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt." I think I'll let Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails front man and writer of "Hurt," do the talking on this one:

"[Johnny Cash's producer] Rick Rubin has been a friend for a long time, and he called me asking how I felt about Johnny covering "Hurt." I was flattered, but frankly, the idea sounded a bit gimmicky to me. I really didn't put much thought into it, as I was working on something at the time and was distracted. A few weeks later, a CD shows up with the track. Again, I'm in the middle of something and put it on and give it a cursory listen. It sounded... weird to me. That song in particular was straight from my soul, and it felt very strange hearing the highly identifiable voice of Johnny Cash singing it. It was a good version, and I certainly wasn't cringing or anything, but it felt like I was watching my girlfriend fuck somebody else. Or something like that. Anyway, a few weeks later, a videotape shows up with Mark Romanek's video on it. It's morning; I'm in the studio in New Orleans working on lack De La Rocha's record with him; I pop the video in, and... wow. Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps... Wow. I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore. Then it all made sense to me. It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. Some-fucking-how that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning-different, but every bit as pure. Things felt even stranger when he passed away. The song's pur-pose shifted again. It's incredibly flattering as a writer to have your song chosen by someone who's a great writer and a great artist."

There you have it, Part I of Media Rants' identification and interpretation of ten bold cover tune. Part 2 will appear when and if I get inspired to come up with another list!