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Everybody Runs... Don't They?

Watching Josh Hawley furiously backpedal is, yes, hilarious, especially given that "white power" salute that got snapped just shortly before the mob descended on the Capital. But really... what else can he do? "In for a penny, in for a pound" has rarely been so true even in someone so literal.

Hawley's been stunningly lackluster at least since he managed to steamroll his way into winning Missouri's Attorney General seat, where he proceeded, we now know, to largely outsource the running of his office so he could focus on his next Big Prize, ousting Claire McCaskill from the Senate seat she'd managed, better than most, to hold onto in squeakers, largely by being down to Earth and moderate. It's safe to say Hawley's not that, and it's a measure of McCaskill's class that up until January 6th, she never spoke a word against him in public. The more telling thing, of course, is she had no need to say anything at all. The contrast was obvious.

Hawley's surfed the waves of the Trump years as well as anyone, setting himself up as the New Guard of Trumpism, whatever that was supposed to mean... which, now if not sooner, clearly means next to nothing. Obsequious, fawning, and keen to parrot any Trump position, Hawley got his wish to be an essential member of the Trumpist GOP, a great reminder to be careful what you wish for.... and to be really specific with the genie when he shows up from the lamp. Also, just a reminder: Everything Trump touches, dies.

There are plenty of people enraged about Hawley, his actions, his behavior in the aftermath, his endlessly smarmy demeanor. I find myself more bemused than enraged - I think it's maybe a function of age, watching someone so young make such poor, obviously regrettable choices, oblivious to even the mildest exhortations of "no, stop, don't..."  Ted Cruz, for all his blunderbuss self aggrandizement, does appear capable of at least a small amount of shame. Hawley, it seems, never meant a mistake he couldn't compound.

Even that foolish fist up salute is so determinedly, self consciously silly; it's the fratboy version of finding a cause, that level of distinction between fighting for justice and fighting for your right to party that separates the serious from the poseur. It's Hawley's knitted brow and crinkled forehead (did no one let him in on the secret of Botox?) that elicit the giggles. He thinks... apparently, he thinks this is what "gravitas" looks like. And... Oh, dear. And deep behind those vacant, vacuous stares that his smile never reaches, it just seems clear he knows... this isn't really working.

'The Republican Caucus of the House has any number of these unserious types - Lauren Boebert, of course, has outdone herself as a shrill stalker of the spotlight, but from Kevin "you know we can see you" McCarthy to Jim "shirtsleeves suggest passionate intensity" Jordan to Louie Gohmert and on down the line... gerrymandering and a willingness to say anything makes for ludicrous times there. But Hawley has leapfrogged a number of Senators in his race to the bottom, or I suppose he thinks... top. It's hard, finding a space to the right of Mike Lee and Rand Paul... so I suppose, well, that's something, anyway.

Today, in addition to compounding his ongoing attempt to pretend He's Not In Hot Water, Hawley managed to make himself (along with Lee) one of only two Senators who didn't think rejecting a well liked African American four star General might look, well, tone deaf. Hawley will, surely, manage to cast himself as the only Republican rejecting all of Biden's appointments and, well... it's a plan I suppose. Still, it's wildly out of step with the moment, but as securing the Trump base goes...

I suspect, really, that Hawley's brilliant plan is positioning himself as Trump's potential 2024 VP pick. Perhaps someone should tell him that's not going to happen... but why ruin a good show? Hawley's near pathological fealty to the Crazy Town portion of the Trump Sycophancy is just astonishingly beyond what anyone else would even think of as worth doing. And sure, it's hard arguing Biden is an illegitimate president while arguing in the next breath that you were just raising "legitimate concerns" about election operations... but why let that stop you? When you've been coasting, primarily, on wholesome good looks and a willingness to say anything the hard right wants to hear, your problem isn't internal coherence. No, your problem is that the last bus left Crazy Town without you on it. If Hawley doesn't commit to making himself King of the place he got himself stuck, he really does have just about nowhere to go.

Hawley's delusions of turning his Mayor of Crazy Town shtick into a presidential run may yet come to pass; stranger, and worse candidates have had their moment. But it may be hard to get that on track with a Senate Ethics inquiry breathing down your neck, a post presidential impeachment that could implode your lodestar, and a set of political positions just slightly to the left of survivalists in the outskirts of Idaho. It's hard to tell, at the moment, whether Hawley is just running for his next dream job, running from his ultimate comeuppance, or just, you know, dancing as fast as he can, because the real terror in his eyes lies in not knowing what might happen when he stops. And yet... why... why do they always run?

Got Til It's Gone

A day later and it can seem light years away, but try and recall that until he ducked out early yesterday morning, we did indeed spend 4 years with Donald Trump in the White House. He may have ended much the way he began - in chaos, disarray, and like a thief trying to get away with something - but if there's one thing we came to learn under Trump, it was that what you see is what you will always get.

A day later, it's hard to ask just what we got, since we want to pretend, as we often do, that nothing at all matters before yesterday. By noontime, with the assembled guests in their usual spots (or something like it, under Covid) we once again paraded out an Inauguration, hit the reset button, and gratefully welcomed the return of normalcy. You know, where you can't leave your house, masks are required at the store, and vaccines are impossible to find. That's okay, stay home and watch another chorus of randos sing that song from Rent you didn't need for the umpteenth time. Liberalism means never having to apologize for the theater kids.

A day later and we have our sense of humor back, our divisions, our obstacles to progress as firmly in place as ever... and that's good, isn't it?  Isn't it swell, isn't it?  Well, it's heaven, nowadays (sorry, I was those theater kids, once)... but we may, by day three, already feel deeply disappointed watching Democrats in Disarray. Because why change anything, when all we wanted back was our same old, familiar narratives?

Familiarity breeds contempt as they say, and by the end, Trump was nothing if not familiar. Even on his way literally out the door, stopping to harangue the reporters, dutiful as ever, gathered at their rope line for one final word. And then, sharply dressed wife at his side, he toddled off (Melania swapped her severe black Chanel for a colorful caftan on her arrival in Palm Beach, and literally never looked back as she got in her car to head into private life). It's remarkable, really, that Trump seems to have exited the national stage in a way similar to other ex Presidents, could we be that lucky? I think not... but it's hard to tell what outlet he would have available to pop up on, even if he wanted.

It's hilarious, this game we're playing of treating Trump as He Who Shall Not Be Named, just one day after he leaves the presidency, whether because it serves Joe Biden's "let's move forward" storyline, or the Republicans' need to pretend they never heard of him, or our own sense that if we just don't talk about him it will be like this never happened. It's another piece of family dysfunction after all - not talking about the bad stuff. Pretending everything is fine. They paved Paradise, and put up a parking lot... but it's fine if we just agree it's nice to have the extra space to park.

The reality of course is that it's not that simple, or that easy, and pretending won't make this go away. Trump will linger in our culture, whether we determinedly try to exile him or not, whether he tries to force his way back onto the stage, or not. Trump may be relegated to the interior pages of scandal sheets and gossip rags, the story may move to lawsuits and investigations and financial failure... but he won't just be gone. Even today, Republicans are grappling with one last piece of political mischief, as they try to tamp down his "I could start my own political party" - an idea so half baked and deviously destructive, we can only hope he sees it through, Surely, it's the best next long con he could possibly have created, a grift that could make him millions long before anyone realized it was a complete sham.

Then, too, there's Impeachment, a trial to be held that apparently is the magic key to figuring out how the 50-50 Senate will finally set up shop and get down to business. Because no one is "concerned about ending the filibuster" - that won't happen and doesn't have the votes to pass, anyway. But the timing of a trial, the need for Republicans to get rid of Trump without angering the base... there's no real answer about when a trial could be helpful, or what verdict brings actual justice (at least, not for their side - we know he's guilty as sin). The struggle is real. The answers are elusive. And it's only one half of an entire branch of government that gets held up trying to figure a way out.

Good luck with that, I figure. Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got til it's gone? I don't mean Trump = we knew what we got, with him. No, what we haven't begun to face - in our perfect, don't talk about the dysfunction way - is all the other stuff we got. From literally getting sick to all that's been broken, to all the disarray in putting our government back together, all the aftermath we have yet to unpack... and on and on. We are remarkable, as Americans, at all the things we can refuse to face when we out our collective energy towards it. We put him on a plane, we sent him away... a big yellow taxi came and took away our old man. Can't we just enjoy the Tree Museum and that shiny new parking lot?

The Best of What We Saw, 2020

Look, we all agree, it's been a weird year; and while no area has been untouched, it is sad and terrifying to realize just how deeply the performing arts has been up ended by a pandemic. Movies, obviously. But live theater, dance, classical music, indeed, pretty much all live performances of music... with performances spaces largely dark, it's been a horrific moment for those who love and care for life upon the wicked stage.

As i started reading year end summaries, I've been caught in up how fruitless and pointless the whole exercise can be: pretending we've had anything like a normal year at the movies, for instance, watching film critics assemble "best of" lists has been both frustrating for us and, well, embarrassing for them. What is that job, again, and why are you doing it?

For my part, I'm not here to clue you into obscure unseen projects; and I am surely not here to pretend Tenet is a "best of the year" when there wasn't really a year to speak of. This list, well, is what I made it... what most of us made -- a year primarily built on TV and streaming services, when we all just had to admit we were moving into a brave, new, somewhat uncharted, not entirely better, world. These, then, are the bright spots I found:

1. The Boys in the Band (Netflix) - I was leery of seeing the Broadway revival, even for it's Glorious Cast of Major Names, too afraid they'd be too easy star turns that lost the beauty of Mart Crowley's nuanced, challenging work. And I avoided the (re) filmed adaptation, at least at first... until my best friend peppered me with questions and I figured I would have to, if only for completeness sake (and theoretical loss of my Gay Card). What I found was... a happy surprise: a still nuanced, well done look at pre Stonewall Gay Life in the Big City, a reminder that new ensembles bring out new insights. Sure, Jim Parsons and Zach Quinto did sound work as the bickering Michael and Harold (and I dreamed of reversing them, just for actorly research), but Matt Bomer turned Donald into a revelation, and Andrew Rannells' Larry was such a fresh rethink of the role that much of the play's final third sang in a way I'd never even noticed. Even Charlie Carver managed to flip The Cowboy into a sweet, unforced charmer. Which isn't to say it was perfect: Robin DeJesus does what he can, but his Emory feels less essential, and Michael Benjamin Washington's Bernard just felt wan. But watch Rannells tear into the second verse of Heatwave for an actor living in a moment he was born to play. A real labor of love, that pays off, handsomely.
2. American Chaos (HBO via Max or Streaming) - Alex Gibney's 4 hour deconstruction of the "Russia Hack" and the story of the 2016 election puts fresh eyes on the familiar and, from everyone I know, brings a kind of clarity that's thrilling and scary and depressing all at once. From the assured lies of the head of Russia's RT to its unraveling of the Internet Research Agency to its revealing presentation of "Fancy Bear" and the Russian Intelligence operations behind it... American Chaos takes complicated topics and gives them the room needed to make sense. And none of your preconceived notions, whatever side you're on, will be quite the same after taking all of this in. For better, and worse.
3. Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (Netflix) - A multipart unraveling of the "Epstein Story" that makes fools of us all, for ever not seeing, or believing, that Epstein was anything other than simply a monster who molested large numbers of women and trafficked them around the world to other powerful men. Told largely by the women and the law enforcement folks who tried to help them, Filthy Rich is mostly one horrifying and depressing turn after another, but in the end he's dead and they're alive and they have come together to support one another in a way that just has to provide some measure of hope. Lord knows, that's all we have to hold onto.
4. The Undoing (HBO - Max and Streaming) - I'm with those who call it "Big Little Lies on the Upper East Side" and for whatever reason, watching Nicole Kidman swan abut Park Avenue penthouses (and yes, her fabulous coats!) is less immediately aggravating than watching her and others swan about Marin County. Kidman's wealthy psychotherapist heiress struggling to process the possibility that her pediatric oncologist husband might be a cold blooded killer was every bit as fascinating as her Big Little Lies performance, even when the scars are fully internal. Kidman's TV work has been profound, quality acting, ably assisted here by Donald Sutherland's complex portrayal of her patrician father and Hugh Grant turning his charming rakish qualities inside out. 
5. Bosch, Season 6 (Amazon) and Bosch generally (Amazon). Back when "they dropped another season this week" was more main event than pandemic last hope, the penultimate run of Michael Connelly's grizzled LAPD detective was just another great addition to a strong series run, this time unraveling a potential terrorist plot, a perplexing murder and Chief Irving's run for Mayor while allowing a host of other great roles (Honey Chandler, J. Edgar) to shine. And the performances, anchored by Titus Welliver in the role of his lifetime, remain first rate. As does the writing. Pandemic rescreening isn't just recommended. It's required. 
6. The Crown, Season 4 (Netflix) - The Crown crashed into modern memory, up aging its main cast and taking us through the twin poles of the Thatcher years and the Diana years on a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs. On the one side was Gillian Anderson's (brilliant) Thatcher, discovering that her sense of mission hadn't entirely anticipated that she was less enamored of Royal Toffs than her royalist ways suggested, and Diana discovering that her dreams of a fairytale romance didn't square with the hard realities of a deeply dysfunctional family. From Dickie's assassination to Fagan in the Queen's bedroom, the eighties as remembered by The Crown is darker and harder than one we may have gotten on TV at the time. But knowing how we got here, and why this is happening, infuses Season 4 with a knowing sadness that makes the tragedy more heartbreaking - everything happens for a reason, and could hardly have been otherwise. And The Queen soldiers on. 
7. Perry Mason (HBO - Max and Streaming) - HBO's reimagining of Perry Mason's origins is a return to, and squarely in the resurgence of, pulp noir, America's dime store book legacy of postwar darkness and deceit playing in our fervid imaginations. Miles from Raymond Burr's upstanding jurist, Matthew Rhys plays Perry as a down and out drunken PI with a decency streak hard up against the worst of Depression era LA. A brutal child kidnapping/murder, the involvement of an Aimee Semple MacPherson like faith healer and a set of compelling back stories eventually pulls Perry Mason into the stratosphere... but the early episodes are about as grim and dark and unpleasant as Peak TV can get. The payoffs, and the promise of of more, makes the journey altogether worth it.
8. Watchmen (HBO - Max and Streaming) - Damon Lindelof's reimagining of the seminal comic book series (and disastrous feature film) as a fresh way to reexamine the American moment was bravura television, exploding our past and present while blowing up its own preconceived comic conventions, a shining example of how our newfound interest in diversity, fresh casting and telling the unheard stories can result in our best art, not just bromides and easy answers. Regina King is a revelation in a cast full of stars and surprises. And each episode is its own mini movie of masterful storytelling. While it may be sad to see it as a one and done... the series is so ultimately satisfying that there really is nothing left to tell.
9. The Hunt and The HIgh Note (Streaming) - The last film I saw in a theater, and the first film I went out of my way to see opening weekend online have no real connection... except that what's happened to movies, and moviegoing, breaks my heart. The Hunt, the long delayed comic horror pic that offers (very) wry commentary on the Trump era was a surprisingly witty slasher flick, enlivened by strong performances and a series of faintly inspired twists. The HIgh Note offered Tracee Ellis Ross the role she was kind of born to do as an aging pop diva looking to reinvent her career and Dakota Johnson as the musical savant who could do it for her. Glorious visuals, and some inspired musicianship lifted a fairly standard music biz flick into the upper echelons, and a pleasantly surprising plot twist really does make the film sing.
10. The Plot Against America (HBO, Max and Streaming) - Philip Roth's foray into "what if" reimaginings of World War 2 posits Charles Lindbergh as the candidate capable of defeating FDR, sending America headlong into its own creative fascism and all that would up end. Set in a New Jersey all too familiar to my mother, The show reminds that the Depression and and waves of European immigration are not the hazy tale of a Greatest Generation we like to tell ourselves, but a messy melting pot of prejudices and old scores. All the more terrifying for its analogues to the Trump years, The Plot is a reminder that anti Semitism isn't as hard or as farfetched as we might like to believe, and the skilled, unnerving performances make everything all too plausibly possible. Sure, it's got Roth's familiar bugaboos of randy boys and stereotyped women, but the adaptation is sharp enough to see beyond even Roth's flaws. Between this and the Man in the High Castle, I think we've pretty much covered all the dystopian alternatives. Now do The Civil War!
11. Designated Survivor
12. Madam Secretary
13. The Blacklist (all, Netflix and/or Hulu) - my three choices for Pandemic binge redux, but fill in with your own comfort foods. For my money, watching Tea Leoni's work with greater care both restored my faith in our American government and the show's real skill in crafting worthwhile plots. Designated Survivor's "what if" scenario of rebuilding government after a massive attack had its charms (even Sutherland seems surprisingly understated). And giving The Blacklist a chance opened up some tasty spy thriller storytelling, if tinged with a bit too much violence and gore; but James Spader's scenery chewing turns out to work better than it really has any right to. And all 3 have enough episodes to make the trip worthwhile.
14. Titans (Season 1, Amazon; Season 2 DVD). DC's clever reworking of the Teen Titans franchise (and even cleverer kickoff via Teen Titans Go) is long on dark muttering and tortured beauties, and maybe a bit thin on avoiding plotted preposterousness... but the result is Saturday morning live action cartoon TV for growups, or at least overgrow kids. From its multiple Robins (Dick Grayson and Jason Todd) to origin stories for almost any Teen Titan you can remember, Titans provides just the right mix of lore and legend to give its less plausible turns a comic universe to call its own. Here's hoping pandemic production schedules don't throw it off kilter.

What didn't make my list? Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was nice but meh, Ryan Murphy's too preposterous for belief Hollywood insults any true Golden Age film lover, FX's "yeah but you should have been there" Mrs. America just didn't do it for me, the less than essential second season of Big Little Lies and the BBC's one too many Christie's of The ABC Murders on Amazon (which, by the way, don't get me started on how Branagh's Death on the Nile is either bravura or a disaster, no in betweens). And no, I didn't watch Tiger King or any reality TV (and that includes RuPaul's Drag Race trying to pretend a pandemic can be business as usual).

Parler Games

Nothing quite says "the spell is broken" more than Twitter's decision to impose a lifetime ban on Donald Trump. If one had to point to the one thing that defined this Era of Trump Madness, it was those omnipresent tweets (ones I explored daily and tagged with #EverythingHeSaysIsALie ) which substituted for any and every aspect of an actual presidency: policy conversation, press conference, daily schedule and insult magnifier rolled into one, ugly, endlessly venal hopelessly untrue steamroller of disinformation. Without it, really, was there anything there at all?

Just days later, it's abundantly clear.... not much really was there at all. A silenced Trump may rage alone in the darkened halls of the White House, but without amplification, his sycophants grow restless, his party is rudderless and his opponents know the sweet air of freedom. How much different would our world be, or have been, had anyone had the nerve to take these actions years ago... when, just an aside, it would have been more than appropriate.

Within minutes of the decision - and the parallel, not exactly simultaneous decision to block Trump on Facebook and all of its associated properties - the right wing pundits had their instant storyline, one which thankfully absolved them of facing the aftermath of insurrection head on. Instead, we were gifted with a storyline about the Death of the First Amendment, the Unreasonable Censoring of Conservative Voices, and the "who, us?" excuse making of trying to argue that no one, really, could call Trump, or any of his minions, directly responsible for inciting a riot.

The decision fixed a heavy, awkward spotlight on the fledgling alterna-network for the right, Parler. Hastily assembled and built, according to the tech savvy, mostly on the "paperclips and string" approach to coding... Parler was already a bit of a stumbling mess as Trump's access went down - a hub of privacy invasion, bad infrastructure, conspiracy theorists pushed off legitimate forums... and the odd convergence of QAnon and Saudi exiles too eager to push the propaganda needs of the Crown Prince. Any port in a storm? More like Port of Last Resort.

In a rational world, Parler might have been able to buy itself the time needed to get itself together and to get serious... but this is the age of Internet Madness, and Trump's implosion only made Parler's underlying problems that much more stark. Having spent months trying to fend off reasonable requests from Amazon (its cloud server host) to better police the content floating through its social network, Parler's role in the January 6th events was bound to come under scrutiny, and it's failure to offer even a modest "lick and a promise" intention to clean up left Amazon little choice. Parler's arguably in over their heads leadership has tried valiantly to spin their disasters as that much more Unfair Censorship to Silence The Right, but even a minimal amount of research suggests a company that was simply overwhelmed by its users interest in a forum that let any and every crazy rant run free. And that's being charitable, since Parler even now can't seem to indicate what content it would moderate if it even knew how.

The reality is that this era we've been living through is, in many ways, the cusp of en ending, not the beginning of a New Age: a "wild west" of disinformation and questionable content, the various social networks have been struggling for years, particularly after the 2016 election revealed a debacle of Russian interference, fake stories, false accounts and deliberate propaganda aimed at fomenting civil unrest. There are no heroes here; only corporate entities with too much influence and too little oversight, gamely attempting to put several genies back into bottles. And while conservatives may have a point that some innocents may be caught up in the new oversight, that too is a tangent to a problem they've had for too long and done too little to police - a refusal to draw lines, and rule out obvious problematic actors and content pushing White Supremacy, Militia based talk of Revolution, and QAnon conspiracy fantasies. Yes, it's true Facebook and Twitter have all sorts of problems, failed enforcement and bad content moderation... but that's with at least a modicum of effort. Parler, god love it, wasn't even trying. And that failure to even adopt a fig leaf of "please stop, that's bad" just made the failure especially stark. No one's going to race to your alternative social network for more puppy videos. They want the hard stuff, the mean stuff... the stuff nobody else will let them say.

In all of this Trump was more symptom than disease - simply the biggest, worst, most prolific and most profligate example of a systemic failure to take action against obvious disinformation and malicious content. Every day, week, month, that passed it was grossly, starkly obvious that Trump flouted every possible rule and convention for content. Twitter (and eventually, Facebook too) had to step in just to acknowledge that virtually everything Trump had said regarding the 2020 election was a gross falsehood, flat out misinformation or deliberate provocation. And even that did nothing to slow the manufacture of lies, the fomenting of violence, the egregious bullying pushing things ever further to the edge. And what edge? Well, we need not ask that, not after January sixth.

It will take time, and effort to get things under some modicum of control - to push the fringes back to the fringe, marginalize the marginal, undo the massive damage to our culture, our discourse, ourselves. Like everything else, this isn't about "going back to before" - we are in this new Internet landscape to stay. But we already know that Facebook and Twitter can and will evolve, that they will not be exactly what they were, and though it's not impossible, it is unlikely that one man will be able to construct what Donald Trump did with his unique combination of avarice, idiocy, falsehoods and self interest. I do tend to think that, for better and worse, Trump's incendiary rhetoric was never so much a brilliant plan as a dopey use of bombast and bullying to play with matches and gasoline everyone else could see as potentially disastrous, even as he couldn't, or wouldn't. Much of the defense of his actions on the sixth are of the "he probably didn't mean to" sort and they're right up to a point: I don't think he meant to create what actually went down. But mostly because, I don't think he had thought that far ahead. And that, really, is the definition of incitement.

As for Parler and these semantic games the right would like to play about "free speech," I think time is running out on this "outrageousness dressed up as constitutional liberty" sales pitch. It's a tiring game of wrapping up age old prejudices in History Channel or Civics Class doublespeak that misuses faux intellectualism to sell the most anti-intellectual arguments imaginable. This isn't about free speech or even the outlines of a healthy debate; it's about one side's ability to mouth off without consequences and the other's to just take it. And that's just bullying, which is the ultimate point.

 The jig is up, the game is over... whatever metaphoric cliche one likes, where we are isn't where we were even a week ago, and even with only about a week to look at, it's clear that Trump's absence, alone, from social media is already having an impact in ratcheting down the chaos and slowing down the fuse on its way to the powder keg of further internal conflict. Which doesn't make Facebook or Twitter heroes, just slightly more socially responsible than they had been. And that, alone, is the indication of a tide turning, that modest sound of us being our better selves, trying harder to get it right. Conservatives have a choice about whether to follow that tide or get washed away. We can't make it for them, I can't guess which way they'll go, but these pointless Parler games aren't really worth playing on the way to an outcome.

Math and Aftermath

"Off guard" is one of those odd phrases - unless one lives in some state of perpetual vigilance, we are, generally "off guard." And yet, how can one talk about those moments and world changing events that suddenly up end our day, our week, our lives with a sudden, crystal breaking clarity? Who knew that could happen? Why weren't we "on guard?" How did we miss that?

Already, people talk about January sixth as if what happened should have been obvious - how could you not know that thousands of hyped up, angry protestors would turn into a riotous mob, storm the Capitol, nearly do bodily harm to our Congress, take hours to stop? In the modern phrasing... "that's just math." And yet, the events of the day came at us, really, out of the blue. If anything, the days since have been coming out of shock - shock that it happened, shock that it could happen, shock that what did happen was so bad, and could have been much worse. We are, as Americans, prisoners of our cheerful societal naïveté - we may seem like the girl who knows too much and Already Did It, but often we're just the rich kids in clothes that are too mature for us, pretending to a maturity we don't really have, never entirely earned. January 6th will haunt us because, really, We Should Have Known. We're shocked that we didn't.

Personally, I have had a plan to restart blogging in earnest that got, well, a little waylaid by Christmas and the holidays... but last week was my week to settle down and back into it. And I thought I'd start with some posts about Trump in his waning days... what's it all about, what a strange time... yada yada. And then, on that Wednesday, things just blew up. I had decided to catch some of the "Arizona debate" on the Electoral College count, flipping between House and Senate C-Span channels. Things had been slow, so I'd also flipped to coverage of the "Rally" the Trumpist folks were holding, waiting for Trump when it was apparent he would speak to them live, not really paying attention to his remarks. But then the debates started in earnest, and I was flipping between Paul Gosar and Mitch McConnell when suddenly... bedlam.

I've done the "where were you" discussions of 9/11 and other historic days, but January 6th will be, I think, kind of a Next Level on that: it's not just where we were (home, mostly), but how painful, and slow, and terrifying it was to watch. Trying to figure out what we couldn't see. Realizing that our very democracy could be in peril, not really having a "Plan B" on our whole System of Government... these are not everyday discussions. Not here. Not by us. People wanted to have whole debates about What It All Meant all afternoon... but what was immediately apparent is we couldn't even have that discussion until we did something more like basic... like stop this, and get it under control.

So... it's under control. Now what?

There are a number of ways to break down and pick apart the events of the sixth; and the point, I think, is that What Happened is not one discussion. It's several discussions, all important, all with a bearing on our future, as a nation, as a people, as a Republic. That, too, is just math. No one discussion can cover all of what this is, what it means, what it will mean. Over the next week or two, I'm hoping to break down and break out some of the themes that I think will be meaningful as we move forward. It's not the blogging I intended... but Aftermath is a funny place. One I never expected to see. So here, roughly, are four areas that I think will matter as we look back on January sixth and move forward from it:

• The Mob - Trump Supporters, "the Insurrectionists," "The MAGA Crowd"... whatever we call them, whatever we thought of them before... this event changes that completely. Understanding what drove this, who drove this, their goals and beliefs, will all be hugely important, of course. Knowing their names, seeing, as we already are, the famous and the unknowns in that crowd, is a big story. I'm not sure it's entirely sunk in that we want to do this in order to isolate them and expunge them. But I think they will begin to realize that's what's happening, soon enough.
• Republicans and The Conservative Movement - The events of January 6th have enormous implications for the Right, as any have already started to note. But I think the early process we are seeing, the Anger, the Bargaining... signal that, in fact, something has died. I don't think anyone knows exactly what that means or just how it will play out... not yet, anyway. But a Republican Party that had to unwind the Trump Years anyway now has a much bigger soul to search - the Law and Order Party that enabled the Lawless in their midst, the Standard Bearers without standards... this is not a small earthquake. And it will not be neatly resolved and put away in short order.
• Security, Safety and the role of Law Enforcement - another obvious element of "how did this happen," we are bound to see months of Commissions, panels, in depth reviews and more trying to unwind the failures of the day. And this could be a healthy conversation about improving our sense of safety and yet another step towards engaging a broader conversation on Policing, generally. But... a whole lot of this could go very, very wrong. And that's not reassuring.
• Donald Trump, his family, and all the hangers-on. Impeached while Pence dithered on the 25th Amendment, events have moved quickly to sideline Trump if not remove him completely for his role in this mess... but we're nowhere near a full assessment of what 4 years have wrought, the aftermath of his lies, bullying and chaos-stirring. Nor have we unpacked the roles his family have played, or the (literal) Rogues Gallery of Accomplices, Apologists and Sycophants who also have earned their moments of deep scrutiny. "Justice" is no longer the only issue. As a nation, reclaiming our decency means looking hard at The Indecency among us. A good, hard look.

Two things that I don't think are major parts of this story of The Aftermath? "The Media" - who do need to show that they can take up these multiple threads, organize them, and look at them seriously, and who, yes, may well fall short. But trying to pin the events of January 6th on "culpable" or "complacent" media, I think, is to lose focus on the actual people in the actual mob that perpetrated the actual riot. Similarly, none of this is, or should be, about liberals, The Left, or the incoming Biden Administration. We have our own issues, our own story, our own role to play. And there's plenty of time to look at all of that. But this, this moment of real threat to Our Democracy, and to Our Way of Life is on their side, it's their problem, and they need to do the work. We cannot do it for them. But we can move to hold them accountable to do that very work.

One more thing: Be Unafraid. Yes, these are difficult, uncertain times. We have many problems. Bad things, very bad things, may yet happen. But if the January 6th Insurrection showed us anything, it showed us most how pathetic this whole exercise was. How sad and small, how incapable, how unserious. These bullies and miscreants are not something to fear; they are people to be pitied, marginalized, and brought to justice. They do not deserve to be given the power to scare us, to haunt us, to drive us into responding to fear rather than rising to our sense of Justice, Decency and doing right. They tried to break something at the very heart of who we are as Americans, it's true. But they only win if we act broken. We are not broken. We are many. And we are strong. And that... well, that's just math. Not Aftermath.

The Best Of What We Heard 2020

The easy excuse is to say I haven't done this in a while because I was busy... but let's be honest: pop music hasn't been in a great place for a while, and, if anything, composers and songwriters may be the biggest beneficiaries of the Pandemic in the arts: those who write have in many ways been gifted with the time and space to create in a way that there hasn't been in years. While performing artists have struggled, creativity and imagination aren't bound by a quarantine. And the steady, yet persistent appearance of a considerable amount of new music from musicians of all sorts suggests there's definitely been a flowering in the quarantine hothouse. 

For me, it was an amazing year to see pop, but especially dance music, rebound so thoroughly. By the end of the year, two major international stars had returned to their dancefloor roots. and several others were exploring the surprisingly alive, and not merely retro faddish take on classic disco. And I do mean classic... much of the work could have played through the heyday of 1978, and not in a cheesy way at all. And that, my friend, is progress.

In no particular order, but all with a lot of joy:

• Kylie Minogue, Disco. Kylie shot to stardom as a high eighties pop princess with Stock Aitken Waterman in Britain, then left them at the height of success... only to dip back into retro dance grooves (try "Light Years") and then neo New Wave ("Can't Get You Out of My Head"), before heading off into new and different directions, record after record and a string of smash world tours to boot. So it's hilarious and scary to see her loop back around... to a straight up retro seventies disco record that is also a Star at the height of her powers. Disco is pure ear candy of a sort Kylie has made a career on, each song more glittery and joyous than the last. For my money, the best grooves are some combination of France Joli meets The Sylvers at some intersection of Chic and Giorgio Moroder (Spotlight, I Love It)... but there's an embarrassment of riches here for diehard dance fans of all sorts.
• BTS, Dynamite. K-Pop's leading export has smoothly jumped into an American presence after "Boy With Luv" suggested that even a smidge of English splashed across their super sweet grooves would vault them to the top here as in the Far East. But Dynamite goes a step further, finding a new sweet spot in their own take on retro disco, while swiping the feel of Bruno Mars if he overdosed on starshine. If the lure of BTS remains primarily visual (the candy colored videos, spot on choreography and winsome good looks), Dynamite holds up, play after play after play...
  

• Harry Styles, Adore You. I'm not a fan of Styles' heavily overexposed "look at me I'm wearing a dress" attention seeking in Vogue and elsewhere... nor do I think his blandly pleasant (no current song stylist is less readily identifiable) singing is the biggest or best export from One Direction (I'll take Zayn or Liam -- see below -- any day). Which is why no encomiums to "Watermelon Sugar" or its saucy suggestiveness. That said, the man knows his way around good ear candy and Adore You swoops and soars on creamy harmonies and just within reach high notes. A little stalky? Sure. Still a bit oversexed? Absolutely. Without that dress, really, he's just one in a long line of pale male stars.
• The 1975, Notes on a Conditional Form. I find the 1975, and my love of them, hard to quantify... it's like if Yes woke up and decided to be Haircut 100, or something. There's definitely Art Rock in there, and a love of 80s synth pop that's breathtaking to behold... but what's remarkable, really, is how it all makes such brilliant sense. Proving that their run of success is no fluke, Notes on a Conditional Form builds solidly on all they've done so far and moves forward on the art rock, the glorious synths, and the angelic vocal harmonies that accompany them. Fuzzed up lyrics might be less than meets the eye... but is "Leave It" or "Owner of a Lonely Heart" really that deep? I think not... and isn't that really the point?
• Lady Gaga, Chromatica. She continues to go her own way musically, so after A Star is Born and "Shallow" why not... go back and reassert your dominance in dance music? The "larger than life and twice as natural" quality of Gaga can be... a bit much, but as dance divas go, this is a vastly more conceptual and complete record than anything Madonna's done in at least 10 years, and at least a "something for everyone" notion of songs. For my money, she's at her best when it's not trying too hard, which is why "Rain On Me" works best as that Ariana Grande single that shakes the guest's complacency, or why "Sour Candy" isn't so much "Gaga does K pop" as "BlackPink works in American too". Off the guest appearances (why Elton John, why?), "Free Woman", "Replay", "1000 Doves" offer solid grooves and just enough lyrical thoughtfulness to prove that good dance music can think, too. Not everything can be an instant stomper, but mad respect for aiming for the 3rd mezzanine every time.
• Post Malone, Circles. I don't know much, but when rap/hip hop stars are versatile enough to go acoustic eclectic, well, I'll totally show up for it. In a year when rap seems a bit lost (don't get me started on that "WAP" business), Malone made the best case that labels, at best, should mean nothing. "Run away... but we're running in circles..." is just about the best lyrical sum up for life, relationships, and a year like no other.
• Taylor Swift, Betty (and folklore). Swift couldn't quite contain herself, dropping "folklore" in the spring, and then whooshing out "evermore" at the end of the year. It's an overwhelming indication of her talent that she has 2 full (fuller than full, really) albums in her on a slow day... but evermore's endless flow of "sad pieces I wrote at the piano" could perhaps have used some time to percolate. But why quibble? folklore, on its own, isn't just a brilliant Swift album, it's a folk rock arthouse gem that silences virtually all the nitpickers at Swift's ability to stand tall with giants in the music biz. Not necessarily a singles album, and I don't need a "fuzzy sweater and cocoa" record, myself... but "betty" is masterful songwriting at its peak, no matter how you slice it.
• Dan+Shay and Justin Bieber, 10,000 Hours. Bieber is still very much a post rehab work in progress... but there's a lot to suggest he's on the right track.  "10,000 hours" benefits from his vocal drop in... but more than that, it's a reminder that Bieber's real strength as a vocalist doesn't often get the recognition it deserves. Wide open and exposed on this acoustic track, the warmth of Bieber's tenor and his ability to inhabit a lyric isn't anything bravura or showy... it's just stars, after all, are meant to shine.
• Liam Payne, LP1. Amidst a glut of One D solo efforts, Payne has run somewhat under the radar, dropping singles and building interest while the others jumped out fully formed. I'd say the wait was worth it... Payne manages to carve out a pop/dance space for himself that isn't as tortured as Zayn's, not the attention whore of Styles and not afraid to embrace the mix of sex and mass appeal melodies that made him a star. "Strip that Down" and "Stack it Up" aren't subtle... but they are minimalist surprises, while "Bedroom Floor" makes its point without overdoing it. But for me it's "Polaroid" and "Get Low" that suggest the party by way of Ibiza vibe that the others just miss. 

Other notes: I spent the year rounding out and revisiting my favorites: a slew of Jody Watley, moving Thompson Twins to my iTunes, Finally grabbing this Jackie Wilson tune and that Meghan Trainor song that Target used so effectively in ads. That, and I largely gave up on Top 40 radio. Which makes me sad, especially in a pandemic.