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Sunday Singalong: Just A Little Bit

Starbucks has just released a collection of classic country (it's a follow-up, actually, to a well received set from about a year or so ago), and it got me to thinking about admitting my secret love of Nashville. And I don't mean just the sort of "alt country" many modern hipsters use to deflect any indication of liking corporate, mainstream music. I'm all into big, corporate Nashville, songs about Daddy, drinkin' and cheatin'. I don't know how it all fits together - I'm a little bit country... and a little bit rock and roll. It's all in me.

• Indigo Girls, Nashville and Southland in the Springtime. It's partly because, to me, all the lines start to blur: folk and country and bluegrass and acoustic rock and pop... it all meets, and in the best sense, one thing feeds off another, certainly in the most creative talents. Indigo Girls bridge a lot of those gaps, especially in this pair, the latter a straight up, pretty ballad from Emily Saliers about the beauty and calm of a spring day in the south, and Amy Ray's blistering, bitter backhanding of Nashville's worst corporate impulses (which probably comes from trying to push "Southland" to country radio).  I agree, to the extent that Nashville blands out and stifles edginess, it's a shame; but it would also be a shame to deny that Country, even at its most corporate, can be a sweet thing.
• Brad Paisley, I'm Still A Guy. Paisley's about as straight-up a corporate success as there is in Nashville today, but he does it with a sardonic edge that undercuts the usual expectations. As much as this paean to manliness ("My eyebrows ain't plucked, there's some guns in my truck") stomps right along, Paisley delivers the whole affair with just enough of a wink to let you know he's onto himself as much as you are. And few pop songmasters can do what Paisley does, song after song, with precise rhymes and smart lines as well as a lot of tasty guitar work.
• Reba McEntire, Sweet Dreams (Live). Of course, like any good gay boy, it's all about divas, wherever you go, and Reba's in a class by herself; it would be enough to point to the string of albums and singles since "Whoever's in New England" that cemented her hold on top of Country's charts, but Reba's turned out to be a competent actress and even a Broadway star - Annie Get Your Gun never had it so good. Like many, Reba's reverence towards Patsy Cline is obvious, but few have the sheer singing power to tackle Cline on her home turf... and a capella, in key the whole time. This used to be Reba's nightly encore. The first time I heard it, on her amazing live set, it gave me shivers. Still does. Just wait til she takes off at the end.
• Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors. I didn't get exposed - er, there's a double entendre for ya - to Dolly until the mid-eighties, by which point she was pursuing crossover stardom, and she won me over, easily with 9 to 5 and never stopped. But it was really only a few years ago that I went back and listened to Parton as a songwriter and to the music that she wrote when she was starting out, especially this lovely story song about being a poor girl in a rag coat her Mama sewed for her that the other girls thought was embarrassing. The purity - both in the lyric and Parton's spare, sweet soprano - is undeniable. And a reminder that country touches on an experience of being white and rural and poor that we just won't get from anywhere else.
• Kathy Mattea, 455 Rocket, Gretchen Wilson, Redneck Woman, and Terri Clark, Girls Lie Too. There's also a tough, plain-spoken aspect to country women singers that's also a corrective to the usual presentation of I love My Man or I lost my man type songs that are always out there. Whether it's being as deep into cars as the boys, admitting your common practical roots or even reveling in the cliches of girliness as you undercut them, country's audience clearly accepts women with complexity and a range of emotions - and some deep, throaty voices. 
• Tim McGraw, Live Like You Were Dying. I am a total sucker for pure country weepies - the sad songs about granpa's values, daddy's hands, and sad stories about dying, or the chance of it. McGraw's tale of taking the chances you wouldn't take soars (literally) above the fears and regrets and never fails to tear me up. And absolutely, it's slick and manipulative and manufactured... and give me more of it.
• Big and Rich, Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy. I could go on, but I'll just stop there, for now. I'm the only John Wayne left in this town. It's a party, y'all.

NY Politics, The River Rolls On

What's so depressing - disgusting, really, but that's not a word I use comfortably - about the unraveling of New York state politics is how predictable and overdue it all is. I haven't written about Governor Paterson's recent run of bad press - or, more precisely, the growing examination of his chief aide David Johnson - because it just seemed like piling more on top of a conclusion I reached months ago: there was no reason for Paterson to run for a full term, and he probably shouldn't be Governor at all.

It's this kind of obviousness, like the fact that, even this week, his closest political allies could barely muster the frank words to tell him its over, that says more about what really dogs New York politics than anything else. In the end, it's not the scandals, which are so plentiful, or the number of politicians who benefit from the rusty broken Democratic machine still churning away across the state... it's the depressing (disgusting) fact that there's almost no one who will to stand up and try to stop it.

With Paterson, it seems clear that the reluctance to really call him out had everything to do with, well, poltical correctness of the worst sort, the sort that causes Democrats to flinch at having to be critical of a black man with a disability for fear of offending someone. Wanting to see progress for black people, or smashing old notions of seeing disabilities as limiting, becomes meaningless when we can't set minimal standards for expectations of competence, never mind hold onto expectations of excellence. We will one day, find a wonderful blind black man who will amaze us as a great Governor. That man is not David Paterson.

We can comfort ourselves, in New York, with the fact that no one, really, elected David Paterson Governor; this isn't a state where we carefully look at our Lieutenant Governor candidates (though many will now, I suspect) and they have been fascinating disasters (remember, we produced Betsy McCaughey). We've long put up with the fact (I've been watching this for more than 25 years, and I remain amazed) that Albany is corrupt, poorly run, and seems to suck the life and decency out of almost anyone who goes there. You learn not to get your hopes up. You learn to pretend it's not so bad and that minor efforts at progress can be looked at as major accomplishments. And when the next scandal breaks, you shake your head, and remember... it's always been thus.

I think Eliot Spitzer up-ended a lot of that cozy, sleepy acceptance; his dynamism, his energy, really did cause a lot of people to hope for some shaking up of Albany with his election, and his spectacular fall caught almost everyone short. Even now, there's a hearty band who insists that a former Attorney General who basically broke the laws he was sworn to enforce can somehow "come back" into elected politics; hope springs eternal. We won't be getting Spitzer back, though; we'll be getting Andy Cuomo, who by name and by reputation represents little hope for a fresh approach to changing the culture or improving the operation of state government overall.

Paterson could yet resign - he's clearly the lamest of ducks, and further revelations of scandal are bound to come - but that leaves us with the dubious prospect of Richard Ravitch, who was "appointed" to the Lt. Governor spot in a controversial, not entirely constitutional process. Making him Governor - with all the promises that he'd "do no harm" and "just serve as a placeholder" - will never be as simple, or as benign as some suggest. It's just another example of how New York government keeps getting made up as it rolls along, heedless of any connection to rational standards, or, you know, laws. Just ask Michael "third term" Bloomberg.

Paterson's no isolated example; he's the latest in a long line of disasters waiting to happen, like the State Senate that collapsed under his watch, like the Senator - Kirsten Gillibrand - he will have saddled us with for years and years to come. A lot, I suppose, will unravel as the house of cards of our state budget implodes under a weight of debt and poor choices stretching back years and years (an $8 billion shortfall this year, and surely worse news to come, both statewide and at local levels). And, as a passionate Democrat, if it means an unraveling of the sad, sleazy spectacle of my state's party... like many, I won't mind that so much (it's not as if state Republicans, flailing around with choices like Rick Lazio for Governor and George Pataki for Senator represent any kind of improvement). The real fools, now, are the people convincing themselves, still, that it's not so bad, that hope lies just around the next corner, in the persona of our next shining new pol. The water churns, the river rolls on... and if we maybe keep our heads above the water, we can put off drowning just a little while longer. Nothing, really, will save us.

The Light That Failed

It wasn't the blackout that was so surprising; or at least, not the day and a half of living by candlelight and fire. It was the sudden switch from normal to disaster that was so unsettling. We were, at that moment, just beginning to watch the news coverage of the Health Care Summit, and then... darkness. And the priorities became much more clear.

The power came on at five this morning, a relief in so many ways - heat, hot water, a sense of normalcy restored. In just 36 hours I got a good reminder that I, for one, prefer our modern marvels to living without them. And I don't mean internets or cell phones; I mean more fundamental elements like electricity and central heating.

At work - and despite illness, I was grateful to have the chance to go there - it was all refugees from the storm's effects: every table, every power outlet spoken for. New customers arriving, looking crestfallen that their brilliant plan to beat the storm... was not just theirs.

We are a hardy band, we New Yorkers and northeasterners who live in snow country, it takes a lot to throw us; but now, like our Southern cousins, I suspect the one-two punch we've experienced has been about all anyone wants to have. The feet of snow, followed by the rain/snow mix, followed by another foot of snow... that's quite enough winter for now, thank you. We're all ready to move on. And dig out.

As I get reaquainted with modern conveniences, return to some sense of normal living, and return, really, to trying to recover from a lingering flu first and foremost, I will return to blogging about healthcare and politics and all the rest... shortly. For now, breakfast calls, the world awaits, and the light shines once more. Make the most of it, I say. You never know when disaster will strike.

Friday Evening Flotsam

jinb
 

The Summit: Liveblogging Part 2

The Wrap Up (a little late): Overall, I think it was interesting and informative (a real rarity in healthcare debates), and I don't think Republicans can be especially happy - much like Baltimore - with the net result of going up against a well informed, well spoken President. I'm not sure there's any clear path to finding common ground, but not because Obama didn't try; and that, I think, is why his talking about finding bipartisan approaches continues to be a strength, not a weakness. Then too, I don't think There's a good, clear path to passing either the Senate bill, or some compromise bill, or the Obama adjustments to the Senate bill, on Democratic votes alone. A Third way out of this, if it exists, strikes me as the only way to get reform done. But still. In the interesting times in which we live, this was an amazing moment.

And we're back:

• 4:15pm: Late in the day, the big unsaid word emerges: Medicaid. How we deal with coverage for the poorest people - people who already get covered by Medicaid, and people who fall just outside the poverty line and currently don't qualify - is the big issue. But how to pay for it, really, is the discussion that hasn't quite happened.
• 4:05pm: All day, conservatives have been selling the idea that they have "doctors in Congress" who make good serious experts. Senator John Barrasso, of Wyoming, managed singlehandedly to undo a good bit of that, with his cavalier suggestions that poorer people would do just fine with high deductible, mainly catastrophic care with sloppily chosen examples suggesting that desperate people who have to choose among expensive procedures is somehow a plus to choosing better care. That, combined with suggesting that wealthy foreigners fly here because we have the best, was easily shot down by Obama as elitist. More troubling, I think, was Barrasso's marginalizing of Mediciaid recipients as undesirable patients. That's just ugly.
• 3:40pm Getting caught up in tweeting more instant reax. I think Republicans have problems making malpractice reform such a big deal; until Republicans can admit that malpractice, itself, is a problem, the problem isn't just that "rteform doesn't save money... it's also that Republicans seem far more interested in protecting bad doctors than protecting patients from bad care.
• 3:15pm: Chuck Grassley just seems to get older and crankier with every public appearance. It's the "get off my lawn" approach to healthcare reform, but I don't think that's a solution.
• 2:55pm: Paul Ryan has probably just refocused this entire discussion in a way that's needed, but uncomfortable: the provisions about "paying for" the healthcare bills is the real hard part for Democrats to justify in terms of size and scope of this plan. At the same time, Ryan's only got boilerplate rhetoric to talk about any kind of alternative when he says he agrees the status quo is unsustainable. Unless Republicans have proposals that work better and cost less, then there's not much to debate.
• 2:45pm: I think conservatives were counting on Joe Biden to play the "Democrats Crazy Uncle" as his press tends to indicate: instead he's been silent, paying attention, and is now offering some substantive pull-together comments on the big picture. I always think Biden doesnt get enough credit for clearly being an incredibly bright thinker and analyst. He's one of those "who would you have at your wish dinner" people I would like to meet and talk to, because he'd damn well be interesting. It's a shame DC types think that's embarrassing, but probably a good indication of why DC is the way it is.
• 2:30pm: The "let's wrap up the insurance discussion" speakers drone on and on, Jay Rockfeller is more partisan and angrier than I ever imagined, and Marsha Blackburn is hopeless. Just hopeless.
• 2pm: After Mike Enzi gets things off to a nice start, Harkin just blows and blows like a lazy bag of wind. I guess explaining "succinct" is just impossible for this.

It's Today: Liveblogging the Health Summit

Now that they're seated and moving right along:

• 1:00 pm: and... we're off to lunch. More later.
• 12:50 pm: The back and forth between Eric Cantor and President Obama is probably one of the most central disputes here - I think Cantor wanrts to find some sort of solution here... but it's hard to see how you get what even he wants without admitting that a good deal of what Democrats have already done is a big part of it.
• 12:40 pm: And meanwhile, in real life... the snow is starting to pile up.
• 12:30 pm: One problem with a room this big and with having Congressional "leaders" in the room is illustrated with folks like John McCain - people who are here because they have to get attention, versus the people who are here to do the work of getting to some kind of discussion on the issues involved.
• 12:22 pm: One other side note, as I'm listening to George Miller about preexisting conditions - all of this talk about families and getting good care "for the children" neglects that the biggest insurance problems and obtaining care happen to single people lacking large support networks. I'd feel better about Dems getting what's crucial here, if they seemed less romantic about the old fashioned ntions of the suburban nuclear family of four.
• 11:58 am: and, as Obama takes apart Kyl's objections, it's worth noting that Kyl's list of grievances amounts to a list of nothing but deal breakers: this is where the "Party of No" stuff sticks, because Kyl's offering basically nothing that could bridge a gap and create a solution everyone could support. There's no give to anything he doesn't like, no "I could accept some of this if you took out some of that." That's not negotiating, it's flat-out resistance.
• 11:53 am: Kyl, too, arguing against mandates that would improve the quality of some sorts of insurance; this seems like a loser for the GOP when it's about things like length of hospital stays for C-sections.
• 11:40 am: a lot of back and forth about insurance exchanges and national mandates - but this seems key: Republicans fealty to insurers setting policies that shouldn't be regulated is a real loser position.
• 11:25 am: Discussing small business health insurance options strikes me as underlining the reality that there's only so many ways to do these reforms: what Republicans propose amounts to about what Dems put into the bill. Baucus, too, seems reasonable and well spoken.
• 11:15 am: Steny Hoyer - who BTW has always been this good - comes off much better combining the folksy every person stories with the bigger government issues than Pelosi or Reid.
• 11:12 am: Obama says, rightly, that there's already fraud and abuse provisions in the bill... and that they don't amount to a lot of savings. That, I think, is the real problem with making waste central to cost control.
• 11:10 am: Coburn's packed so much into his trunk, it's going to be easy to walk past his concerns. Better, I think, to pick, a few key items than to do, as he is, blame everything from junk lawsuits to school lunch programs.
• 11:05 It's sort of interesting: Tom Coburn's partisanship is one issue... but it's more telling that he can't seem to find a unifying theme for his concerns on cost control - he's blamed waste, fraud, emergency rooms, the government and the requirements of care... and that's just in the space of a minute.
• 11am... and, we're already disagreeing on the data analysis we're using to make our case. This, I think, is what's going to make this a long day.
• 10:53 am: Obama doesn't say he'd scrap the bill and start over... but he doesn't seem married to Dems ramming through the bill either. And now he starts off on cost control. Not where I would have expected him going...
• 10:48 am: Similarly, Reid doesn't seem entirely comfortable taking this kind of lead role: I think Republicans alreadyb look way smarter giving their leadership statement to a folksy, warm presence like Alexander, while Dems look insider-y, stiff, and less immediately playing to the public. Reid is doing a nice job resetting the storyline on reconciliation, but it's a "you did it too" approach that doesn't really lift the debate much.
• 10:37 am: As much as Republicans may manage turn people off with their opposition, Nancy Pelosi is a lousy saleswoman for the majority. It's fascinating how badly she seems to come off in these sorts of public appearances - the kind of thing that makes me wonder why people think she's rerally the right public face to serve as Speaker of the House.
• 10:32 am: Well, props to Lamar for firing the shot right away: "let's take reconciliation off the table" - it sounds so gosh darn folksy coming from Alexander, you'd almost believe him that it's just, you know, so <i>out there</i> to use budget reconciliation as the vehicle to make reform. (Just to be clear... I don't love the idea of reconciliation, and I don't love the Senate Bill. But the Republicans have about zero cred on this.)
• 10:27 am: "We don't do comprehensive well" - this is sure to be a central sticking point; I'm not sure it's helping Republicans to say they can't do the Big Picture very well.
• 10:24 am: Lamar Alexander says "we want you to succeed" to President Obama. Um, yeah... I see we're starting from a point of pure honesty, then.

Publish... Or Perish

The relative silence of blogs in discussing Amy Bishop is almost as odd as the collections of incidents leading up to her arrest.

Bishop - the University of Alabama professor who shot up the Biology Department faculty meeting - puts an interesting wrinkle on both workplace shootings and on mass events at schools. And all of it complicates the usual left/right divides on gun incidents, school politics and the mindsets of shooters.

For me the case has felt unusually intimate: my Mother was Chair of her department for pretty much all of my youth, and ran an undergraduate program until she retired. The ins and outs of tenure process, the dynamics and politics of faculty relations and the occasionally unpleasant employment dilemmas... all of these were part of my growing up experience, and inform a lot of views on higher education as well as my approach to interpersonal dynamics. The idea of a disgruntled faculty member resorting to violence never seemed to me to be an especially farfetched possibility.

And when Amy Bishop's arrest was announced - before anyone knew who the exact victims were - I said to my Mom, "she shot the Chair of the Department. And the head of her tenure committee." And she did.

Republicans, Hot Drinks, And Their Attractive Dude Problem

If CPAC seemed dull this year - did Ann Coulter say nothing? Could it have been that slow? - I think it's because a lot of the political news seemed abit foreordained, even down to the "stunning" but hardly surprising result that Ron Paul is popular with the further reaches of the right. Most of the speakers - Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney... surely Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich and George Will - were more about where CPAC has been then where the conservative movement is going. Those who did give some sense of that - Scott Brown and Marco Rubio for instance - tended to be afterthoughts; or in some cases, just didn't show up at all (Sarah Palin, notably, but also the much liked Mitch Daniels of Indiana).

More to the point, though, CPAC underscored a number of problems conservatives have taking advantage of the things that are supposed to be working, so thoroughly, in their favor: for all the talk of "Tea Party anger", CPAC was a good indication of how much of that anger has, predictably, cooled; and without the rage, it was kind of obvious that the right still has a leadership problem.

Consider that, only a few years ago, a pretty different set of characters ran the show: Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin... all seemed kind of tamped down and marginalized. Limbaugh's barnstormer of last year was replaced, quite similarly, by Glenn Beck (who Limbaugh, pretty clearly, can't stand). And while the right has constants like Newt Gingrich to repeatedly trot out... Gingrich, especially, embodies that special political skill that keeps such folks afloat: embracing this year's trendy cause while quietly disavowing whatever it is that's no longer getting applause.

Democrats get tagged, often, as the party with the short attention span: embracing every trendy cause, always trotting out some "Kennedy-esque" new face who reminds us of JFK. Being the party that produced (and destroyed) John Edwards, that can be understandable. But if Republicans have a crisis of leadership, it may be because conservatives have become some of the most fickle lovers of new faces: as fast as a new handsome dude (usually white, but occasionally tan) enters the room, their love of last year's model goes out the window.

Saturday Singalong: Soft And Easy

Hello, yeah, it's been a while... so perhaps we should just ease back into this. And I do mean easy... as in listening:

• England Dan and John Ford Coley, I'd Really Love To See You Tonight. I was mentioning, the other day, to a younger co-worker, that unlike the young people, when I get a song stuck in my head... it can very easily be soft rock from the seventies, music from when I was a kid. Too much adult contemporary radio, I guess, combined with the nagging, ear candy qualities of a lot of that period: you wanted to forget them, but the sticky, often saccharine sweetness of the sentiments tended to linger. Like this one, a paean to pickups and one night stands ("I won't ask for promises... so you don't have to lie"), that makes casual sex seem so... casual, and easy. You can, even now I think, see why the informality and relaxed groove seemed like a breath of fresh air, even as the air got stale.
• Orleans, Dance With Me. Of course, it was a terrible time for dance music, perhaps never shown better than this song, which is lovely for everything... except dancing. Light, tuneful, easy as a breeze, and it makes dancing sound like a lot of fun. Or maybe that's sex.
• King Harvest, Dancing in the Moonlight. No, really... you could do this for hours. It's such a fine and natural sight.
• Kenny Loggins with Stevie Nicks, Whenever I Call You Friend. It's easy to forget, amidst all the "Welsh Witch" business and the scarves that Stevie Nicks emerged as one of the key women in California soft rock because her voice had both sensitivity and strength. She was especially well matched with Kenny Loggins, who can sound a bit tinny at times, but is as rangy and powerful a singer as she is. And again, such a simple sentiment, stripped of complications and tensions. We should just think of it as being friends.
• Elton John and Kiki Dee, Don't Go Breaking My Heart. There's just such a tentative, fragile quality to seventies love songs, even ones that happen at a fast rock tempo. Things just don't last, love may not be the answer... don't go breaking my heart.
• Eagles, Take It Easy. Laid back, man, Totally laid back.
• Linda Ronstadt, When Will I Be Loved. It's actually a cover of an Everly Brothers song, and it's worth pointing out that Ronstadt's seventies career is heavy with rerecordings of other people's hits, but then, Ronstadt's skill was always interpretation, not originality. Which, by the seventies, was not a bad thing.
• Paul Davis, Sweet Life. Just to end on an upbeat note - the pleasures to celebrate are simple ones; it's remarkable to realize that it wasn't until the seventies that you got sensitive guys sharing their joys of having small children. It's sticky sweet... doesn't mean it's wrong.

Who's Sorry Now?

Just to be clear, I don't think Tiger Woods owes me an apology.

I'm not sure he actually apologized to me - there was a lot of talk about "the children" and his fans and his wife, but I wasn't clear if one of those "sorry" sentences lacked a clear predicate - but if he did, he needn't have bothered. Whatever gets you through the night... that's my motto.

(Okay, it's not my motto... but I always wish it was.)

But seriously... what was the point of that rambling, digressive, often counterproductive statement? Was the world - the golf world, the gossip world, our world, take your pick - breathlessly waiting for Tiger's apology? Seriously?

Professional PR people seemed nearly unanimous in calling the statement a mistake (in the post coverage I saw), and I tend to agree: as I said when the revelations first showed up, I don't think coming across as warm or sensitive is Tiger's long suit. He's a coldly efficient, methodical golf player; he seems to have been a methodical, coldly efficient skirt chaser. And now he seems a methodical, coldly efficient apologist. That's no fix for what ails ya.

More curious to me were the flashes of tetchy defensiveness and anger: don't take pictures of my kids (I'm guessing that request fell on deaf ears). Elin wasn't trying to assault me with a golf club (okay, dude... just your car. Whatever). Buddhism helps me find my moral compass (um, yeah... that seems to have worked out well so far). For someone who says he's contrite, embarrassed and learning things... he seems quite bound up in old approaches and rehashing past slights.

I tend to despair when celebrities newly involved in 12 step recovery feel the need to go public. Never mind that it tends to undermine the "anonymity" that drives twelve step work; it's premature, usually, and often quite naive. "I've realized the error of my ways" in the space of six weeks... doesn't amount to much learning. There's a lifetime to come. And a lot that can change. To say nothing of the likelihood that to recover, so publicly, is to invite the increased likelihood of relapse.

None of this is meant to suggest I don't believe he's sorry (though it's telling, I suspect, that he's apologized to everyone... except his various mistresses). I do. But "sorry" wasn't the issue, as far as I can tell, and won't salvage the stuff that's harmed his career as a corporate role model. And today's appearance strikes me as more dutiful work by the dutiful boy who seems to determined to do what others want of him, as I said before:

Indeed, his story strikes me as a reminder to ask, harder, about whether drilling kids into becoming child prodigies is a healthy activity; I've never been entirely convinced that Tiger's golf career wasn't more about pleasing others - his dad for starters - than about knowing what he wanted for himself. The tidal wave of affairs, pursuit of strangers... what's striking in the revelations, to me, is how they too reflect no clear sense of what he wants, but a somewhat juvenile interest in getting whatever one can, behavior of someone who's never entirely had to grow up. In the end, that's not a question of morals... that's just a question of maturing.

I concluded, then, by saying "who am I to judge" and the question lingers. And, quite honestly, I'm in no position to judge, nor would I want to be. I just think all this... well, sorry business is just so unnecessary, if not simply too soon. Save the sorry for later... in private, to the people who really deserve to hear it. Leaving me out of it is really just fine. I swear.