Celebration of the Music of 1973, Part 1

Last year I dropped two posts celebrating the 50th anniversary of the music of 1972. Those posts can be found here and here. They were so well received that I've decided to turn the celebration into an annual event. 

When it comes to popular music, 1973 (like 1972) represents the high point of the classic rock era. The remarkable creativity of the music of that time period was the result of three main factors. First, artists benefited from advances in studio recording technology pioneered by 1960s bands like the Beach Boys and the Beatles. Bands or individual singer/songwriters with enough of a production budget could take the time necessary to make recordings as provocative as possible. What might have been a simple folk song in 1953, with a three-chord guitar arrangement, by 1973 could be an elaborate score featuring string or horn arrangements, the synthesizer, and/or a variety of special effects. 

Second, record company executives at the time took risks on artists that marketing surveys or focus groups might have told them to avoid. The risk paid off: 1973 ended up being quite profitable for the record companies, as it turned out that the baby boomer audience really dug all of the fresh, original sounds. 

Third, FM radio was generally excellent at the time. Even smaller market stations featured DJs who loved the music and did not spend every day updating the weather and running through stale playlists. The best jocks were music lovers, and they used their shows to educate listeners about the uniqueness of bands, singer/songwriters, albums, and individual songs. (Former WNEW-FM DJ Richard Near's book is must reading on this topic.). 

This post identifies 25 noteworthy albums from 1973. Later this year, part II will identify another 25. 

#50: Sly and the Family Stone, "Fresh". The last top-10 album recorded by this legendary funk-rock outfit, "Fresh" is today widely recognized as a funk classic. Pop culture critic Eoghan Lyng's 50th anniversary review says the record, "didn't disappoint, an album that was contemporary yet as scintillating as anything heard on the rock airwaves." My favorite song on the album is "If You Want Me To Stay," a funk-rock-pop classic that the Red Hot Chili Peppers did a spectacular cover of in 1985. 

Sly and the Family Stone: If You Want Me to Stay

 

#49: Joe Walsh, "The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get". In between guitar legend Joe Walsh's stints with the James Gang (1968-1971) and the Eagles (1976-today), he released three great albums, the second of which was his breakthrough "The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get." The album's most famous song, "Rocky Mountain Way," gives us a guitar riff that's every bit as iconic as Clapton's "Layla" and Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water." In 2012 Walsh revealed to Howard Stern how the song came about. 

Joe Walsh: Rocky Mountain Way

#48: Ellen McIlwaine, "We the People". The late Ms. McIlwaine (died 2021) was one of the most underrated singer/songwriter/slide guitar players in the history of music. In the 1960s she was a popular act at Manhattan's famous Cafe Au Go Go, opening for some of the great blues musicians of the time. "We the People" demonstrated her eclectic mix of blues, gospel, pop, and rock. The most heard song on the album was "I Don't Want To Play," a tune that best represents her vocal, lyrical, and slide guitar style. 

Ellen McIlwaine: I Don't Want to Play 

#47: Billy Joel, "Piano Man".  Billy's breakthrough album that put him in the same league as Elton John, Paul Simon, and other noted singer/songwriters of the era. The title track is probably the most famous, but for me "Captain Jack" is the tune that makes the entire album worth the price of admission. The song's message about a bored, 21-year-old suburbanite masturbator whose mom still makes his bed and who has to visit heroin dealer "Captain Jack" to get a thrill in life was 50-years ahead of its time. 

Billy Joel: Captain Jack 

#46: The Allman Brothers, "Brothers and Sisters". One of the Allman's most popular albums from their classic period, "Brothers and Sisters" was a breakout record for guitarist/singer/composer Dickie Betts. Two Betts penned tunes, "Ramblin' Man" and the instrumental "Jessica" became staples on FM radio and in the band's live performances for many years. The Allman Brothers defined the southern rock sound and inspired scores of artists in the genre. 

The Allman Brothers Band: Jessica

#45: The Marshall Tucker Band, "The Marshall Tucker Band". Want an example of an Allman Brothers inspired band?  How about the Marshall Tucker Tucker Band? From Spartanburg, South Carolina, their debut album in 1973 incorporated blues, jazz, country, and pop elements. "Can't You See," written and sung by lead guitarist and main songwriter Toy Caldwell (died 1993) remains as one of the towering tunes in the southern rock genre. 

The Marshall Tucker Band: Can't You See

#44: Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Pronounced 'Leh-'Nerd 'Skin-'Nerd". Want another example of an Allman Brothers inspired band? Lynyrd Skynyrd's first album was one of the most popular debuts in rock history, with a number of songs that got heavy airplay on FM radio throughout the 1970s and beyond. After a tragic 1977 plane crash killed lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and other band members, the song "Free Bird," with its poignant lyrics, soulful Van Zant vocals, and Gary Rossington's jaw dropping guitar runs, took on added meaning for the band's legion of fans. 

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Free Bird

#43: Bruce Springsteen, "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J." When this debut album by Bruce was released, it was popular with music critics who saw him as the new Bob Dylan. It wasn't until two albums later, with the release of "Born to Run," that Springsteen became a household name. "Greetings From Asbury Park" actually survives as one of his best albums, with songs that remain in his concert set list to this very day. 

Bruce Springsteen: Growin' Up

#42: Steely Dan, "Countdown to Ecstasy". The second album from probably the greatest jazz-rock outfit of all time. The innovation and creativity that Steely Dan band leaders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker brought to popular music--both lyrically and instrumentally--was remarkable in its time, inspired generations of musicians, and still sounds as fresh as anything you will hear on the radio today. 

Steely Dan: My Old School 

#41: Paul McCartney and Wings, "Band on the Run". In 1973 all of the former Beatles released solo albums. "Band on the Run" defined McCartney's post-Beatles sound, included a number of radio hits, and is still his most successful post-fab four recording. 

Paul McCartney: Band on the Run

#40: Ringo Starr, "Ringo". After the breakup of the Beatles, the world learned that drummer Ringo Starr was actually a pretty good songwriter. He had a number of hits in the early 1970s; several of them appeared on this album. 

Ringo Starr: Photograph

#39: George Harrison, "Living in the Material World". George's 4th solo album, "Living in the Material World" gives us the former Beatle at his most preachy and spiritual. 

George Harrison: Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)

#38: John Lennon, "Mind Games". Not John's best album, but still a significant part of his catalogue. The title track has always fascinated me because on it John plays slide guitar in a way that sounds like a full orchestral arrangement. If someone told you that the London Symphony Orchestra was playing on the song you would believe it. 

John Lennon: Mind Games

#37: The Pointer Sisters, "The Pointer Sisters". The debut album from the legendary girl group, The first song on the album, a cover of Allen Toussaint's "Yes We Can Can," is a soul-funk classic. 

The Pointer Sisters: Yes We Can Can

#36: Tanya Tucker, "What's Your Mama's Name". Released when she was just 14 years old, "What's Your Mama's Name" was Tanya Tucker's country teen-idol classic. She was a big influence on modern stars like Taylor Swift, and really all artists that got their start as teens. 

Tanya Tucker: Blood Red and Goin' Down

#35: The Eagles, "Desperado". The Eagles' second album, featuring the country and folk influences that were the Eagles' brand in those early days. Thanks to the Seinfeld episode in which Elaine's boyfriend is mesmerized by the song "Desperado," I've never been able to listen to it again without chuckling. 

The Eagles: Desperado

#34: Aersosmith, "Aerosmith". The first album by the Boston-based band led by lead singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry. The album became most known for the mega-hit "Dream On" which was, paradoxically, the song least typical of the Aerosmith sound. The song that best represents the Aerosmith sound, for me anyway, is "One Way Street," a rockin' blues based tune that shows the band's Rolling Stones and garage rock influences. 

Aerosmith: One Way Street

#33: Suzi Quatro, "Suzi Quatro". The first album from a groundbreaking artist. Before Suzi Quatro, hard rock had been a mostly male-dominated field. With her funky bass playing and raunchy vocals, Suzi showed that women could rock with the best of them. Her cover version of "All Shook Up" might be the best one ever recorded. Elvis liked it so much he actually invited Suzy to Graceland. 

Suzi Quatro: All Shook Up

#32: Steve Miller Band, "The Joker". Steve Miller is a guitar legend. In the 1960s he mostly recorded and performed psychedelic rock in tune with the hippy vibe of the era. "The Joker" did not really deviate from that formula, but the songs were less spacy and more radio-friendly. The title track is one of the first songs I remember hearing as a 12-year-old, and at the time I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever heard. It certainly was the first time I had ever heard the word "pompatus." 

Steve Miller Band: The Joker 

#31: The Doobie Brothers, "The Captain and Me". One of the best albums from the original Doobie Brothers. "Long Train Runnin'" was one of those monster hits that was rockin' enough for FM radio but catchy enough for AM. It features the great Tom Johnston at his vocal high point. 

The Doobie Brothers: Long Train Runnin'

#30: The Spinners, "Spinners". The first album released by the Spinners after they left the Motown label, "Spinners" is a classic example of the "sweet soul" sound. In 1973 "I'll Be Around" and "Could It Be I'm Falling In Love" were in heavy radio rotation. 

The Spinners: Could It Be I'm Falling In Love

#29: Little Feat, "Dixie Chicken". Thanks mostly to lead singer, songwriter, and guitar player Lowell George (died 1979), Little Feat had one of the most unique sounds in rock history. They were a kind of funk, country, R & B, jazz, pop, rock hybrid that has never been recreated. "Dixie Chicken" was the band's breakthrough album, and created a loyal fan base. 

Little Feat: Dixie Chicken

#28: New York Dolls, "New York Dolls". The debut album from a band that had great impact on the "glam" rock movement of the early 1970s and the punk rock movement that would start later in the decade. The entire album is a high energy, rockin' good time. 

The New York Dolls: Personality Crisis

#27: Jim Croce, "I Got A Name". Folk singer Jim Croce died tragically in a plane crash at the age of 30. "I Got A Name" was released after his death. It includes some of his most popular songs, including the title track and "I'll Have to Say I Love You In a Song." 

Jim Croce: I Got A Name 

#26: Chicago, "Chicago VI". How popular were the jazz-rock-pop band Chicago? In the 1970s they released five consecutive albums that reached #1 on the charts. Chicago VI was the second of them, and also the last one to include all the original band members. Other bands have produced songs with great horn arrangements, but Chicago had a way of doing it in a Beatles-esque fashion that appealed to serious as well as casual listeners. 

Chicago: Feelin' Stronger Every Day

Sometime before the end of the year we will post the to-25 of 1973.  Have some suggestions? Feel free to reply to this post or email me. 

Artificial Intelligence, The Free Market, and Joyless Culture

In late May, hundreds of industry leaders, scientists, academics, and others intimately involved in the development of advanced artificial intelligence signed on to this statement: "Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war." The statement follows a period of fairly intense media and government scrutiny of A.I., including a May 23, 2023 headline grabbing hearing on the matter by the US Senate Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law.

Sam Altman, the 38-year-old co-founder of OpenAI, told a US Senate Committee, "if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong , , , We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening."

Mainstream media coverage and punditry tends to focus on the emergence of A.I. with a tone that makes audiences feel as if A.I. represents the coming to fruition of the warnings of generations of science fiction writers. We've all heard the dire scenarios: artificial intelligence will take away our jobs, enable even faster and more devious spread of disinformation, further dumb down our children, turn humans against each other, and/or make us completely irrelevant. Lisa Joy Nolan, co-creator of HBO's popular sci-fi epic "Westworld" (which imagines a world of sentient robots that eventually mirror the "real" human capacity for violence and revenge), now believes that the show should be considered a "documentary film" as opposed to fantasy. 

As someone who works in higher education, I have more than a passing interest in the implications of ChatGPT and other A.I. devices for teaching and learning. The Chronicle of Higher Education has published a number of recent essays on the topic, with titles like "How Will Artificial Intelligence Change Higher Ed?," "How ChatGPT Could Help or Hurt Students With Disabilities," "Will ChatGPT Change How Professors Assess Learning?," "ChatGPT is Already Upending Campus Practices, Colleges are Rushing to Respond," and so on. On my own UW Oshkosh campus, A.I. sparked a spirited discussion among instructors on an email distribution list, been the topic of a guided discussion on Zoom, been brought up for discussion in virtually all academic departments, and will probably be a major subject of faculty/academic staff senate and/or administrative policy initiatives in the near future. 

In the hit HBO program "Westworld," Evan Rachel Wood's character Dolores Abernathy is a sentient robot who mimics the human capacity for ruthlessness and revenge. Much reporting and punditry about A.I. imagines a world overcome by intelligent bots. 

My own observations of the dominant perspectives on A.I., both outside and within higher education, is that for the most part they tend to see A.I. as more causal than symptomatic. It's very similar to the mainstream view of cell phone usage; "the phones have made us more distracted and less able to live in the moment" is a common refrain. Maybe that's true. But can anyone point us to the Edenic period when the majority (or even a significant percentage) of humans stayed focused on tasks at hand and lived in the moment, especially in radically individualistic cultures like the United States? As someone who has now been teaching for forty(!) years, I promise you that American college students have NEVER had an easy time staying task focused and in the moment. Thus a strong argument could be made that problematic phone behavior was and is a symptom of the human tendency to seek distraction and do anything to avoid the real hard work of communicating in the moment with other human beings. 

When it comes to artificial intelligence, I see the abuses as symptoms of two major features of modern society: (1) the uncritical acceptance of the idea of the free market, capitalist economy as best suited to serving human needs; and (2) the joyless culture that results from mass-level allegiance to the values of that economy. Obviously this is a big topic that deserves book-length treatment. In this rant I will only sketch out a few ideas. I promise that none of them have been generated by ChatGPT. 

Artificial Intelligence and the Free Market

When the Soviet Union broke down in the late 1980s and early 1990s, western media immediately adopted the Reagan Administration's framing of the upheaval as the victory of democracy and the market economy over tyranny and communism. More rigorous reporting would have exposed the over simplicity (and absurdity) of this framing. It would not have required defending the corruption and cruelty of the Soviet empire builders to point out that their defeat did nothing to minimize anti-democratic tendencies in the west, and nothing to challenge what Eisenhower called the "unwarranted influence" of the military-industrial-complex. Indeed, more than thirty years after the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the only thing Democrats and Republicans in Washington can agree on is raising the military budget. As noted by journalist John Nichols, "there's never a debt ceiling for the military-industrial-complex." 

The market economy that rose from the ashes of Cold War, technically called "neoliberalism," is essentially a global version of Reaganomics. Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein in her 2014  book This Changes Everything succinctly identified the three main policy pillars of neoliberalism as "privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and the lowering of income and corporate taxes, paid for with cuts to public spending." 

The impact of neoliberalism on blue-collar workers should no longer be up for debate. The so-called "free-trade" deals empowered corporations to engage in the never ending quest for cheap labor, with devastating results for American manufacturing. Promises that workers would be retrained to participate in a much-hyped high wage business service economy turned out to be hollow. Instead what we've had is a mostly bipartisan enabling of low road economic practices. The Democrats became so overtly associated with these practices that millions of Americans impacted by them somehow imagined Donald Trump as a potential solution. Some Dems, like Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, have recognized the "wreckage" of neoliberalism and advocated for reforms that would move the economy toward a high road. 

Absent some kind of radical reforms of our economy, artificial intelligence systems will easily wipe out huge swaths of the white-collar economy. And why wouldn't it? Does anyone honestly believe that multinational corporations--eager to exploit foreign labor abroad while betraying blue collar workers at home--will not eagerly do the same thing to college educated, white collar workers? The fact that most white collar workers, in the 1990s up to today, showed little solidarity with those victimized by the low road economy will make the road to reform more difficult. 

If the global, neoliberal economic order remains intact, then the vanguard leading that economy will make sure artificial intelligence benefits them exclusively. At the same time, they will gaslight the masses with a rhetoric of how "A.I. disrupting the work force in the short term is a necessary condition for long term growth." In such an environment our only real hope is to engage in grassroots organizing rooted in an international spirit of solidarity across lines of class and race. This will not be easy, and the odds of failure are much greater than success. But if the alternative is to trust that the same vanguard that got us into this mess will somehow be more moral and mindful when it comes to A.I. impacts, then we are fooling ourselves. 

Artificial Intelligence and Our Joyless Culture

Here I will focus primarily on academia, as that is the realm of existence I have most familiarity with. My experience has been that every time a new technology is introduced that has implications for education, academics divide into two groups. The "neo-Luddites" are usually slow to accept or adapt to technological change, want strict policies put in place to deter student cheating, and resist any suggestion that "tried and true" methods of education (e.g. the lecture, the lengthy term paper, the essay test, etc.) might be anachronistic. The "Futurists" do not dismiss any of the neo-Luddite concerns, but generally see technological change as something we should embrace and shape to help meet the requirements of sound pedagogy. The Futurists are the kinds of instructors who might address student cell phone use not by banning it entirely, but by using phone apps in classroom activities so that the technology can be put at the service of learning. Similarly, the Futurist might have a policy in place to punish irresponsible use of A.I., but they are also more likely to educate students on "smart" uses of it. 

Most teachers, myself included, have both neo-Luddite and Futurist tendencies. What has always frustrated me, whether in the relatively low-tech classroom of my early teaching days or the more high-tech environment of today, is what seems like a high percentage of students who simply do not get joy out of the act of creation. When I tell students that I have been writing a column of at least 900-1000 words every month for over twenty years, and a huge reason for that is the sheer joy I get out of thinking, creating, and provoking, I often get perplexed looks back at me. Many of my colleagues across campus get similar reactions when they talk about their own creative output, whether it is peer recognized scholarship, artistic performance, or any number of expressive works. 

I've come to the conclusion over the years that the problem is we somehow created a culture that places a high premium on behaviors that do not correlate very highly with joy: getting the "right" answer, repeating back "authoritative" knowledge, and doing everything on-time. I often require students to come see me to talk about paper or speech assignments, and those meetings are fascinating because students frequently expect me to tell them what to write or say. I try hard in those meetings to provoke them to come out with some original thoughts, and then praise them lavishly when they do in the hope that they will get a feeling of joy from creating something that someone else perceived as fresh and original. Sometimes I unwittingly do end up giving them an idea for a paper or speech, in large part because I am experiencing joy in thinking about the topic while we engage in conversation. Obviously there are exceptions to what I am describing here; a number of students get joy from the act of creation. But the exceptions always seem to prove the rule.  

Student support systems on campus, all of which are run by extremely competent and well-meaning professionals, sometimes reinforce the joylessness. For example, when students are having difficulties with course material, they are often told to go talk to the professor to find out "what they want." Or when told to seek academic advising, they are told that the meeting should be strictly about "what courses to take." In a real sense, the students are being prepared for the neoliberal economy described earlier, in which their material success will be tied to their ability to appease power. If you think the lack of joy in education is confined to higher ed, you should read Susan Engel's excellent 2015 piece in the Atlantic called "Joy: A Subject Schools Lack." 

A number of schools have already banned ChatGPT. The argument of this rant is that moves to ban A.I. systems minimize or ignore the cultural issues that make A.I. attractive in the first place.

In a joyless culture, using A.I. to write a paper makes total sense, does it not? If I get no joy out of creating original work; if my only real value is the extent to which I can repeat back existing knowledge, and do it on time, then why not use A.I? In this culture, the joy of creativity is simply not part of the equation. As of January 2023 nearly 1 in 3 college students reported using ChatGPT on written assignments, and I expect that to rise substantially in the next few years. Academics, especially the neo-Luddites, will rush to create policies to deter and/or ban A.I. usage, but they will be missing the point: as long as we continue to prioritize and reward joyless behaviors, even our "best" students will continue to be content with "getting shit done." The joylessness of school work was a problem before A.I. and will continue to be in the future unless we make a concerted effort to rethink our dominant cultural values. 

Of course what I am describing is not just a problem for students or for education in general. I read an article in the New York Times recently in which a lawyer representing a man who sued an airline used artificial intelligence to prepare a court filing. The lawyer's legal submission, which will now be subject to a hearing to discuss possible sanctions, was "replete with bogus judicial decisions, with bogus quotes and bogus internal citations.” The lawyer in question did not promise to never use artificial intelligence again. Rather, he "will never do so in the future without absolute verification of its authenticity." 

No doubt that lawyer will claim that he simply was overwhelmed with work and ChatGPT presented a quick way to get the court filing in on time. When academics are caught using A.I. to write scholarly articles they will probably say the same thing, as will journalists and any other professional whose work relies on message creation. In a joyless culture that is the product--at least in part--of the unforgiving and predatory economy in which we exist, we should expect nothing less. 

Wanting to mitigate the risk of extinction from A.I. makes total sense. Thinking we can do that without addressing the serious deficiencies of the culture that created A.I. makes NO sense. 

July 2, 2023 Update:  In today's New York Times, writer and podcaster Evgeny Morozov has an op-ed called "The True Threat of Artificial Intelligence" that also makes a connection between AI and the neoliberal economy. --Tony Palmeri

Songs of Summer

Matt King and I recently recorded a podcast in which we each list what we think are the top-ten summer songs of all time. Not surprisingly, a few songs appeared on both of our lists. Here's the podcast, followed by links to the songs:

 

Eddie Cochran, "Summertime Blues": Eddie Cochran died tragically in 1960 at the age of 21. He remains a giant of early rock-and-roll, a representative of the energetic and gritty rock that shook up the boredom of late 1950s culture. "Summertime Blues," with its theme of a rebellious youth getting hit with rejection from all the "adults" in society, is for me the archetype of the great summer song. 

Led Zeppelin, Dancing Days: We wanted at least one heavy metal tune on the list, and Zep obliged. "Dancing days are here again, as the summer evenings grow." This song actually has a line in it that has perplexed Zeppelin fans for decades: "I saw a lion he was standin' alone/with a tadpole in a jar." Sounds like a dream. Or an acid trip. 

DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, "Summertime": Before Will Smith became a famous actor and Academy Awards ceremony pugilist, he was the rapper known as The Fresh Prince. "Summertime," a nostalgic reflection on growing up in Philly, was one of his and DJ Jazzy Jeff's biggest hits. 

Dick Dale and his Deltones, "Misirlou": What would a list of great summer songs be without including at least one from the Surf genre? Quite possibly the greatest rock guitar player in history, Dick Dale absolutely tore it up with his cover of an old Middle Eastern tune called "Misirlou." Dale's version is now over 60 years old (it was released in 1962) and it still sounds as dynamic and fresh as ever. Amazing. 

Lana Del Rey, "Summertime Sadness": Lana Del Rey, the Queen of Melancholy, gives us a summer song that is 180 degrees from the typical cheeriness of that season's songs. This is not a song you want to request the DJ play at your best friend's August wedding. 

The Beach Boys, "All Summer Long": Before the release of the transformational "Pet Sounds" in 1966, the Beach Boys were know as the ultimate west coast pop band, writing and singing mostly upbeat and cheerful tunes that reinforced the image of California as the youth mecca of the world. "All Summer Long" is one of those tunes. 

The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City": Released in 1966, this tune was not typical for the Lovin' Spoonful, whose output up to that point had been a kind of folk-country-pop-rock hybrid. "Summer in the City" features John B. Sebastian's most soulful vocals, and unlike most summer songs it actually laments the daytime heat. 

Olivia Newton John and John Travolta, "Summer Nights": We include this song in honor of the late Olivia Newton-John, whose performance as Sandy Olsson in the 1978 film "Grease" becomes more iconic with each passing year. Every cisgender high school boy had a crush on Olivia in 1978. Trust me, I know. 

Alice Cooper, "Schools Out": "School's Out" was one of the first songs I remember hearing on the radio, and as a middle-schooler at the time I found it amusing. Today it's hard to imagine an artist writing a fantasy about a school being "blown to pieces" without being accused of somehow advocating for it to happen. 

Seals and Crofts, "Summer Breeze": Released in 1972, Jim Seals' and Dash Crofts' "Summer Breeze" was an early 1970s anthem symbolizing America's movement away from the turbulence of the 1960s. In that sense it was very much like the Eagles' "Take It Easy" which was released in the same year. I remember hearing them frequently played back-to-back on AM radio. 

Bob Marley, "Three Little Birds": From the 1977 album "Exodus," Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" is classic reggae. Marley's politically charged anthems (e.g. "Redemption Song," "War," and many others) make it easy to forget that a large part of his art was and is a simple celebration of life. "Three Little Birds" is a wonderful representation of that part of him. 

Bryan Adams, "Summer of '69": Canadian rocker Bryan Adams' summer classic came out at the height of the electro-pop music revolution inspired by MTV going on at the time. Not only did "Summer of '69" represent a worthy contribution to the summer song genre, but it also assured the rock audience that rock-and-roll was not dead. 

The Go-Go's, "Vacation": Billboard magazine called this 1982 song the "perfect summer record" that was "uptempo, optimistic and the aural companion for lazy days at the beach." The Go-Go's hated making music videos, and guitar player Jane Wiedlin claims that in the "Vacation" famous water skiing scene the band members are actually drunk.

Norah Jones, "Sunrise": In 2005 Norah Jones won a Grammy Award for best pop vocal performance for this poignant folk ballad. If we think of summer mostly as the season of love, this song would have to be the anchor of the soundtrack. 

Mungo Jerry, "In the Summertime": Mungo Jerry leader Ray Dorset claimed that he wrote this 1970 catchy summer classic in 10 minutes. In this #metoo era, the song's sexism does not come off as funny and irreverent as it might have in 1970. However, there is one lyric in the song that we should probably all take to heart: "Life's for living." 

The Drifters, "Under the Boardwalk": For anyone's who's ever had or contemplated having a summer tryst, the Drifters' 1964 will always bring back that feeling. 

Glenn Frey, "The Heat Is On": The late Glenn Frey recorded this song in 1984 for the hit movie "Beverly Hills Cop" starring Eddie Murphy. Given that the climate crisis has made summers much hotter for many around the world, "The Heat Is On" might be a contender for the 21st century International Anthem. 

Martha and the Vandellas, "Dancing in the Street": Martha and the Vandella's glorious 1964 version of this song is perhaps the greatest example of the sound of the Motown House Band, the Funk Brothers. Given the emergence of street protests in support of civil rights in the early 1960s, this song can rightly be heard as a metaphor for the political activism of the time. 

On Tucker Carlson, Broken Clocks, and Media Strategy

When Fox News founder Roger Ailes passed away in 2017, I wrote a piece called "Roger Ailes and the Eristic Revival." That piece made three main points: 

1. Fox News did not originate but did magnify the worst tendencies of post-World War II news media in the United States.
2. The real significance of Fox is its revival of the ancient “eristic,” an intoxicating mode of argument rooted not in the civil exchange of ideas for the purpose of arriving at sound public policy, but in the desire to defeat and humiliate opponents.
3. The end and tragic result of Fox’s magnification of the news media’s worst tendencies and revival of the eristic has been the death of political conservatism as a force for generating new ideas or reformulating old ones.

Fox's recent termination of its most popular pundit, Tucker Carlson, gives us another opportunity to opine about the network. With the possible exceptions of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, no one exemplified the Fox formula as well as Carlson. That formula, summarized aptly some years ago by NYU journalism prof Jay Rosen as "resentment news," shows no signs of going away at Fox even though it was at the root of the shoddy "journalism" that cost the network $787.5 million to settle a defamation suit with Dominion Voting Systems. Though released text messages and emails show conclusively that Carlson knew the Trump alternative universe claims about election fraud were utter bullshit, he continued to amplify MAGA conspiracies and resentments on air because "our viewers are good people and they believe it." When Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact checked a Trump tweet alleging voter fraud and concluded the Trump claim was inaccurate, Carlson texted Hannity and Laura Ingraham: 

“Please get her fired . . . It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”

Why did Fox's stock price go up during the Carlson years? A New York Times analysis of over 1,100 Tucker episodes found an "apocalyptic" world view featuring a fear instilling narrative of "they" want to control "you." "They" are the "ruling class," invoked in over 800 shows the Times analyzed from 2016-2021. It's an intoxicating narrative, one that has deep roots in what historian Richard Hofstadter famously called the "paranoid style" in American politics.  As noted in the Times analysis, Carlson "often begins segments with a grain of truth or an accurately quoted study, but then he distorts a concept to fit his narrative." Apocalyptic rhetoric made Tucker the most watched pundit on cable television. 

That Tucker Carlson uttered an occasional "grain of truth" and often mocked the mainstream punditocracy made it tempting for some with small-d democratic leanings to want to see him as something other than a white supremacist enabler. As noted by Lee Harris and Luke Goldstein in the American Prospect, some of Carlson's sensible populist rants reflected views not stated or emphasized on nightly news shows that reject toxic nativism. Thus, Carlson's show would be literally the only place on cable to hear such views. 

For example, since making his populist turn Carlson regularly says things that used to be associated with the political left, such as: "Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You’d have to be a fool to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite.” In 2019 he even ended up endorsing Elizabeth Warren's economic policies, telling his mostly MAGA audience that the Massachusetts Senator's critique of multinational corporations was a message abandoned by the mainstream Republican party and reflected "Trump at his best." MSNBC and CNN certainly have talking heads sympathetic to the political left, but it's more of a political left as it exists within the Democratic Party. 

Carlson's populist persona even allows him to take on the National Security State, something that during the George W. Bush years was the province of mainstream Democrats. Pseudo-left, libertarian substackers and podcasters like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Briahna Joy Gray, and Jimmy Dore--all of whom make sensible critiques of how cozy mainstream media have become with security state officials--are all persona non grata at CNN and MSNBC even though their takes on the CIA/NSA/FBI attempts to infiltrate the public sphere were once common in so-called left circles. Carlson had Dore on to say something that is no longer uttered on those networks friendly to Democrats: “Your enemy is not China. Your enemy is not Russia. Your enemy is the military-industrial complex.” Even if we agree, as most people do, that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is illegal and cannot be justified on any moral grounds, do we REALLY believe that Russia is a bigger threat than the military-industrial-complex? The fact that the Russia-Ukraine war is being used by the national security state to resuscitate the images of people who gave us debacles in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places is distressing. And it's absolutely pathetic that a resentment merchant like Tucker Carlson is one of the few pundits with high visibility willing to call that out. 

Tucker Carlson is not going away any time soon, and even without the backing of Fox he will continue to command a large audience. What does that mean? Should people genuinely concerned about the abuses inflicted on society by market capitalism, or worried about the national security state inching us ever closer to World War III, or bothered by government censorship--should anyone taken with those and other issues that so-called progressives used to be outspoken about give kudos to Tucker and share his videos when he espouses a sane position? Assuming Tucker reemerges with a program on which he will have guests, should people who genuinely believe in progressive causes ever appear on his show? 

The short answer is, "it depends." It is true that when Tucker Carlson says something sane, just as when Donald Trump says something sane, the most logical response is that old quote dating back to the1700s:"Even a broken clock is right twice a day." I can certainly understand the school of thought that says appearing on Tucker or sharing his rhetoric, even if it is to promote a good cause, ends up providing cover for his brand of resentment politics. 

On the other hand, I think Nathan Robinson in 2022 made a good point that an authentic left movement should be "ruthlessly strategic" on such matters. Robinson used the example of Chris Smalls of the Amazon Labor Union, who took much criticism from the online left for appearing on Tucker even though his appearance probably reached a significant number of Amazon warehouse workers who share his critique of the corporation. As argued by Robinson: 

Carlson is indeed a truly loathsome individual, who uses white nationalist rhetoric and tries to scare white people into fearing “gypsies” and other immigrants. But in believing that Carlson’s loathsomeness should automatically preclude speaking on his show, we see a lack of attention to the kind of strategic thinking that differentiates what we might call “union organizer mentality” from “media critic mentality.” I am sure Chris Smalls is aware that Tucker Carlson and Fox News are the enemy—Smalls is a revolutionary labor organizer. The value of appearing on Fox is instrumental: there are Amazon warehouse workers who watch Fox News and listen to Tucker Carlson . . . For Smalls, the question of whether to go on Fox News is: “What does it do for the ALU?” It is not “Is Tucker Carlson a good or bad person who deserves credibility?” In other words, Smalls’ choices are outcome-driven rather than an expression of moral preferences. 

Carlson may be the ultimate broken clock, but if in his post-Fox career he continues to command large audiences, then critics of the market, labor organizers and critics of the national security state need to be reflective about the consequences of appearing or NOT appearing on his program. People on the political left--whether they call themselves liberals, radicals, progressives, or whatever--should be very angry with a mainstream "liberal" media that forces this kind of strategizing. How is it possible that critiques of capitalism, rejection of the apparatchiks who gave us Iraq and Afghanistan, and critique of the military-industrial complex are more welcome on Tucker than on traditional "liberal" platforms? It's long past time for the so-called media left to reclaim those positions so that a resentment based broken clock like Tucker Carlson cannot continue to use those positions as a shield to cover for his overall apocalyptic world view. 

Love For All, Hatred For None

[Note: The Ahmadiya Muslim Community in Oshkosh invited Mayor Lori Palmeri and other distinguished Fox Valley leaders to speak at their 2023 Iftar. Mayor Palmeri could not make it, and she asked me to attend in her place. The Ahmadiya leaders graciously asked me to say a few words. Below is a transcript of my remarks.]

My name is Tony Palmeri. I’m a professor of Communication Studies at UW Oshkosh and former  member of the Oshkosh Common Council.

My spouse Lori Palmeri is the Mayor of Oshkosh, and she was recently elected as the Representative in the State Assembly for this 54^th District.

Unfortunately, she could not be here tonight due to a prior commitment—she is at an event honoring firefighters in our community. Her term as Mayor ends on April 18^th, and she will not be returning to that position. She asked me to remind you to vote for a new mayor and council on April 4^th!

Mayor Palmeri sends her greetings. She wants me to tell you that she has always respected and admired the Adhmadiya Muslim community, and her respect and admiration has grown in her four years as Mayor.

She is especially appreciative of your spirit of openness and tolerance, of your support for the city’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and your deep commitment to the values of family, community, and civic engagement.

Most of all, Mayor Palmeri has been moved by your profound and simple message: Love For All, Hatred For None.

The Mayor and I try to live that message, but like all human beings we sometimes fall short. We all fall short at times, don’t we? In a world filled with so much negativity, with so many bad faith actors trying to keep us divided, it is sometimes difficult to remember that we must always have love for all and hatred for none, even when there is so much pressure moving us off that path.

In Oshkosh we are blessed to have YOU to remind us of that profound and simple message. Love for all, hatred for none.

And you have had impact. Allow me to share with you just one example. In 2010 I was on the Oshkosh City Council. That was the year the city received your request to turn this building into a house of worship.

When your request became public, members of the City  Council started receiving phone calls, emails, and other communications. Much of it expressed concerns about noise and traffic congestion and other things that were sincere and certainly not trivial, but did seem exaggerated.

As I started communicating with people who were expressing concerns, it became clear to me that what we were at least in part dealing with was a fear of Islam, which was not surprising given the political climate of that time and the mostly irresponsible media coverage of Muslim people in the first decade of the 21^st century.

As the date of the vote on your request got closer, much of the communication the council was receiving got more angry, and some of it had a bullying or threatening tone. One person approached me in the grocery store and said “if you vote for the mosque I will never vote for you again.” I know some of my colleagues on the council received similar communications.

But your demeanor in those days inspired me.

Even though your motives were being questioned, you did not respond with anger even though it would have been understandable had you done so.

You had the facts and the law on your side but did not immediately threaten lawsuits, even though it would have been understandable had you done so.

You did not refuse to meet with anyone, including people making irrational statements, even though it would have been understandable had you done so.

Instead, you went out of your way to address every concern and to accommodate concerns in whatever way possible.

No matter what was thrown in your direction, no matter what obstacles were placed in your path, you responded with love for all, and hatred for none.

So, in 2010 in our own little corner of the world, right here in Oshkosh, we had a contest between fear and love.

And love won.

Love won.

I believe Love can and must win at the global level. The peace and security that we all seek is not possible without love.

But the victory of love is not inevitable.

We must act. We must act.

For love to win we must practice what political theorist Danielle Allen and others call political friendship. Political friendship is not a shallow display of civility.

Political friendship means treating all human beings, even strangers, as we treat our closest friends. With our closest friends we act in good faith, we listen, we take turns, we compromise, we problem solve, and most importantly we sacrifice individual preferences for the greater good.

If we can practice that kind of friendship with ALL human beings, then love will win. And we can have the peace and security we crave.

I want to close by thanking you for the friendship you have shown Mayor Palmeri and me, and for the friendship you’ve shown the entire community,

Representative Palmeri wants Oshkosh and Wisconsin to be known as places that stand for love for all and hatred for none. She looks forward to partnering with you to make that happen.

Thank you. 

Media Should Call Out Xenophobic Showboating

American leaders should never minimize, make excuses for, or enable human rights abuses around the world--no matter where such abuses occur, and no matter if a nation committing abuses is a "strategic partner" of the United States. That includes China, whose human rights abuses are well documented. 

Unfortunately, more often than not American leaders' critiques of foreign governments are hypocritical, self-serving, mindless, and ignorant. This is especially true when the critiques are bipartisan. Post-World War II, bipartisan agreement on the evil of a foreign adversary is typically a grotesque form of groupthink benefiting not the cause of freedom as much as bottom line military-industrial-complex interests. When foreign policy stupidity reigns in Washington, we should remind ourselves of George Washington's Farewell Address admonition to "guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." 

The new Cold War with China is bipartisan; Wisconsin Republican congressman Mike Gallagher (right) and Illinois Democratic congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi lead the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Gallagher seeks "ideological warfare" with China, which he claims is a "lost art." 

The new bipartisan Cold War with China does not feature a morally upright United States Congress standing tall for global democracy and human rights. Rather, this Cold War is primarily an inane and paranoid theater of the absurd in which lightweight congressmen from safely gerrymandered districts think they are sounding tough when they "boldly" call for a Tik Tok ban. Remember, these were the same characters (especially the Republicans), who told us during election time they were going to be "laser focused" on inflation and jobs. Most of them worry about the Chinese Communist Party using nefarious digital means to dumb down our youth and undermine the future of democracy. But the same people either minimize or have nothing to say about an actual attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power on January 6, 2021. 

One of the main offenders in the New Cold War era is Wisconsin congressman Mike Gallagher. The new Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, whose name appropriately enough is "McCarthy," appointed Gallagher as Chair of the "Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party." If you had a dime for every time Gallagher says "Chinese Communist Party," you would be quite rich. Gallagher refers to "ideological warfare" as a "lost art" and longs for a return to the Reagan era with big military budgets backed up by black v. white views of the world. (Note: We are already approaching a trillion dollar a year defense budget.). At a time when the United States and China should be working together on climate mitigation initiatives, poverty eradication, helping to negotiate peace in the Russia v. Ukraine war, and other initiatives that might actually benefit humanity at-large, our new Cold Warriors are getting us prepared for a new arms race. 

Gallagher opposes President Biden's budget because it fails to (you guessed it) "combat the threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party." He's upset that the budget allegedly "increases spending on domestic progressive priorities at more than double the rate of defense . . . and shortchanges the Pentagon at the worst moment possible." At the same time, he introduced a bill to "ban Biden from cancelling student loans." 

While Gallagher's Select Committee on China called to mind the worst of the red-baiting Congressional excesses of the 1950s, for pure comedy it was no match for a recent hearing held by the Energy and Commerce Committee. Chaired by Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state, the hearing was called "Tik Tok: How Congress Can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children From Online Harms." Listening to and watching the hearing, you would think that Tik Tok is uniquely awful in the big tech world, or that surveillance of private data is something invented by the Chinese Communist Party. As noted media law scholar (and my former student) Chris Terry might say, "I know journalism is hard," but someone should ask Edward Snowden if the Chinese Communist Party invented private data surveillance. 

The most hysterical part of the hearing, in a pathetic way, was congressman Dan Crenshaw's (R-Texas) questioning of Tik Tok CEO Shou Zi Chew. Crenshaw's comments, like so many of his colleagues that day on both sides of the aisle, represented what digital rights activist Evan Greer calls "Xenophobic Showboating." Crenshaw started off his remarks by sarcastically thanking Chew for "bringing Democrats and Republicans together." At one point Crenshaw clearly was trying to "own" Chew by pointing out that under China's 2017 national intelligence law, Chinese citizens must cooperate with Chinese intelligence and are bound to secrecy. Chew interrupted to say, "Congressman, first, "I'm a Singaporean." Did Crenshaw know that Chew was from Singapore? I don't think he did, and he tried to cover it up by suggesting that it did not matter. Crenshaw closed with a paranoid rant about Tik Tok being part of a Chinese Communist Party conspiracy to weaken America from within, through controlling our youth. A full transcript of this mostly shameful hearing can be found here. 

Only a handful of members of congress, including Wisconsin's Mark Pocan and New York's Jamaal Bowman, had anything rational to say about Tik Tok. They rightly condemned the "hysteria" over Tik Tok, and argued--correctly in my view--that discussions about the platform should be placed in a larger context of data manipulation by Big Tech in general. These points are reinforced by investigative journalist Julia Angwin: 

But when you dig into the national security allegations against TikTok, it is telling that most of the charges could just as easily be levied against the U.S. tech giants. And most of the tech companies’ exploitation of data has not been curbed by the government . . . [Yet]securing data from internal threats has been a problem for all the Big Tech companies. Google has fired dozens of employees for data misuse, including obtaining user data. Microsoft admitted to snooping in a blogger’s Hotmail account to see who was leaking internal documents. At Twitter, internal controls were so lax that an ex-employee was convicted of using his access to spy on Saudi dissidents, and a whistle-blower said that the company had hired an employee in India who had used his access to spy on Indian dissidents.

Evan Greer argues that the red scare is no substitute for better data privacy laws:  “TikTok uses the exact same surveillance capitalist business model of services like YouTube and Instagram. Yes, it’s concerning that the Chinese government could abuse data that TikTok collects. But even if TikTok were banned, they could access much of the same data simply by purchasing it from data brokers, because there are almost no laws in place to prevent that kind of abuse. If policymakers want to protect Americans from surveillance, they should advocate for strong data privacy laws that prevent all companies (including TikTok!) from collecting so much sensitive data about us in the first place, rather than engaging in what amounts to xenophobic showboating that does exactly nothing to protect anyone.”

What is the role of big media in the New Bipartisan Cold War? Not surprisingly, but still tragically, big media are allowing xenophobic nonsense to be put forth as a legitimate political position. What we need from big media (and from all media, actually) is an independent spirit that calls out human rights abuses on all sides, and refuses to be the stage on which xenophobic showboating performs. As I've written about before, during the McCarthy period of red baiting in the 1950s, only a small group of journalists and commentators (especially Edward Murrow of CBS, Bill Evjue of the Madison Capital Times, and independent journalist George Seldes) had the backbone to take on McCarthy and his enablers throughout the government. We need a new generation of principled journalists and commentators to do the same today. 

In Memory of a Populist Political Scientist

My friend and mentor, Dr. James Simmons, passed away recently at the age of 76. Jim was a widely published scholar in the field of Political Science, a UW Oshkosh campus leader, a community activist, and much loved by his family and friends. Through his example he inspired me in many ways, some of which I will describe in this post. 

When I arrived on the UW Oshkosh campus in the fall of 1989, three people made an immediate impression on me: Doug McClain, Barbara Sniffen, and James Simmons. 

In the 1990s and 2000s I produced and co-hosted (with former Oshkosh Mayor James Mather) a public affairs television program called "Commentary." Jim Simmons was a regular guest. In the picture are (from left) Jim Simmons, me, local author Dan Rylance, and Mr. Mather. 

The late Doug McClain was an Assistant Dean of Students. A deeply spiritual man with an infectious smile who could not say a bad word about anyone, Doug taught me that academia at its best stands for the love of great ideas and the love for all humanity. On the basis of just a few short conversations Doug recognized in me a passion for helping people to become their most authentic selves, and so he recruited me to work with student leaders on developing their communication and leadership skills. Doug passed in the late 1990s, yet to this day whenever I find myself getting cynical about the prospects for positive change, I remember Doug's radiant optimism for the inspiration I need to get back on track. 

The late Barbara Sniffen was as close to a Mother Jones figure as I will ever meet. A History professor by trade, Barb was a first class hell-raiser. Passionate about labor union activism, she was known for her assertive recruitment of faculty and staff to join the Wisconsin Federation of Teachers. By assertive I mean "in your face." Though they would never admit it, UW administrators walked in fear of Barb; she was the gadfly who stood up to them on all major issues, all of the time. After I was in Oshkosh for about a year, Barb chased me down on campus and said, "Tony you're smart and a good public speaker. You need to do more to fight for justice around here." At first I was offended, but then I realized she was right. When she passed away in 2003 I called her a fighter, mentor, and friend. 

And then there was Jim Simmons. He also arrived at UW Oshkosh in fall of 1989, and from the first time I met him (at a new faculty orientation) I was blown away by his vast knowledge of history and politics, two topics that I've always been consumed with. In one of our earliest conversations I happened to mention to him that I had recently seen a picture of the Ku Klux Klan marching across the Main St. bridge in Oshkosh in the 1920s. Jim proceeded to give me a lengthy, awe inspiring lecture on the history of the Klan in the Midwest, which was fascinating and terrifying at the same time. People who know Jim will remember that intense sparkle he got in his eyes whenever he riffed on something he had a good deal of knowledge about. I remember leaving that interaction--and dozens of future interactions--thinking that I needed to do a hell of a lot more reading just to keep up with him. 

Around 1996 Jim and I became close friends. That year the city manager of Oshkosh announced he was retiring. The form of government in Oshkosh always appeared strange to me, in large part because placing executive power in the hands of an unelected bureaucrat seemed to run counter to the basic principles of representative government. Given that the city manager was retiring, I wondered if it might be a good time to change the form of government to be more like Appleton, Green Bay, Madison, and many other cities that place executive power in the hands of an elected mayor. Changing the government at that time, I reasoned, would not require firing a city manager. 

I had absolutely no idea how anyone would go about changing the form of government, so as was typical for me at the time, I called Jim Simmons. He responded to me as if he had been waiting for the call for years, providing me with an incredibly detailed overview of the history of government in Oshkosh. Inspired by our conversation, I wrote a letter to the local Oshkosh Northwestern arguing that the City Council should hold off on starting a search for a new city manager, and should instead ask the voters if they wanted a stronger mayor position instead. Within days, I received numerous emails and phone calls from people who had been involved in previous attempts to change the form of government. They were mostly older men who in their lives had been everything from city workers to assembly line workers to small business owners, and they told me how they had been condemned by the local media as "two percenters" every time they tried to expose the problems with the government. 

Jim suggested that we arrange a meeting at the Oshkosh Public Library to see how much interest there was in the issue. About twenty people showed up at the first meeting, which shocked me. We ended up calling ourselves "Citizens of Representative Democracy" (CORD), and put in place a process of getting the thousands of petition signatures necessary to put a change of government referendum on the ballot. Jim put an unbelievable amount of work into that effort, not only collecting signatures, but also developing promotional literature, wording the referendum so it would pass legal muster, and handling all media inquiries. His wisdom and eloquence kept all CORD supporters motivated. It was really in this time period that I began to see Jim for what he was: a Populist Political Scientist with a genuine love for people at the grassroots level. His interaction with the CORD activists--few of whom had college backgrounds--was grounded in a deep respect for the "little guys and gals" whose names rarely get mentioned in the press, but who are the true salt of the earth. 

The change of government referendum came close but did not pass. For his efforts Jim took a beating in the local media (which supported the manager form of government), but he gained the admiration and respect of many for the way he spoke truth to power. For me, he did something even more important: he spoke truth to the power-less, which is not something the typical academician does. Jim was a public intellectual in the best sense; guided by political science theories and scholarship, he helped people at-large solve practical problems. He was acting in the best tradition of what has been referred to in the UW as the "Wisconsin Idea." 

 

I interviewed Jim Simmons numerous times. Here is a typical sample of our conversation (recorded in 2014) from a program produced by Cheryle Hentz called "Eye on Oshkosh". 

Some years after the CORD movement, I wrote a Media Rants piece for the SCENE newspaper called "Deonstructing Don Kettl." Jim was always a fan of the Media Rants column, and in that particular year (2004) he happened to be the editor of the Wisconsin Political Science Association Journal. He liked the Kettl column, and asked me if I would be willing to write an expanded version of it for the WPSA journal. I was honored that he liked the piece and of course said yes, but I asked him if he was concerned about possible pushback. Professor Kettl after all was Republican Governor Tommy Thompson's favorite UW professor, and a respected scholar at UW Madison. My problem was not really with Dr. Kettl as much as Thompson's use of him to provide a kind of intellectual cover for his "reforms" of state government--most of which were supported by the monied interests that run the state capitol. I remember Jim saying, "don't worry about pushback.It's a good piece and it belongs in the journal." 

Well, after the piece came out a few University of Wisconsin Madison faculty went apoplectic. The main argument of my piece was that professor Kettl had become a symbol of the tendency of the modern professoriate to become tools of power as opposed to challengers of it. The critics could offer no rational response or counterpoint to that argument. Instead they called on Jim to resign as journal editor, and launched a number of personal attacks at me. It was a bizarre display of a kind of academic thin skin that made it painfully obvious why governor Thompson--who brought big money and big business influence to Wisconsin--did not fear the professoriate. Of course Jim Simmons did not resign as journal editor, and he pointedly defended his own and my integrity throughout the process. Jim truly had my back, something I will never forget. 

Jim Simmons' book "What Government Can Do," co-authored with Ben Page in the year 2000, argued that government can and should create policies to reduce poverty and inequality 

If an honest history of the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh campus is ever written, Jim Simmons should occupy a prominent place in it. He was a master of faculty governance who could cite complex handbook language from memory. He took on administrative bullies, and never compromised the shared governance principles that are supposed to frame administrative, faculty/staff, and student interaction. He kept reminding university employees--including the faculty--that they were WORKERS with interests that must be fought for. Jim had a great career, but he was not a careerist; it was more important for him to search for truth and lend his expertise to worthwhile causes than it was to gain academic status or rewards. 

Thank you James Simmons for all you did to make Oshkosh a better community, UW Oshkosh a better campus, Wisconsin a better state, and the United States a better nation. You will not be forgotten, and your legacy will continue to inspire generations of future scholars and activists.