NYCweboy

The Curious Case of George W Bush

Speaking of guys who offered up some eyebrow raising remarks on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, we also have the bracing words of George W Bush:

"On America’s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor’s hand and rally to the cause of one another. That is the America I know. At a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely, I saw Americans reject prejudice and embrace people of Muslim faith. That is the nation I know," he said.

"At a time when nativism could have stirred hatred and violence against people perceived as outsiders, I saw Americans reaffirm their welcome of immigrants and refugees. That is the nation I know," he said. "At a time when some viewed the rising generation as individualistic and decadent, I saw young people embrace an ethic of service and rise to selfless action. That is the nation I know."

It was, yes, a lovely speech, and a graceful, not to mention, pointed, reference to the events of January sixth. Bush's remarks were welcomed as a strong corrective to the tendency among conservatives these days to try and whitewash 1/6 and continue to play Trump's apologists. Bush, for his part, was yet another Republican refusing to mention Trump by name when discussing the bad aspects... but his language was surprisingly direct.

All of that said... no one should let Bush get away with absolving himself of either his behavior after 9/11 or the way his actions and of the people around him also helped get us to exactly where we are now.

"At a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely..." really? Do we really want to reexamine the arrests of random people with arabic names after 9/11? The rounding up of people? The immediate increase in threats to mosques in the days weeks and months after 9/11? The work of the Bush administration to insitute permission to torture suspected terrorists? How about the Iraqi prison where they were tortured? Or the Black sites? Or bloody Guantanamo Bay...WHICH IS STILL THERE???

How about Bush's cowboy mentality and his threats to hunt down and kill terrorists in caves? How about starting a war in Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11? How about starting a 20 year war in Afghanistan with no clear sense of the mission to be accomplished or plan to leave? How about "Mission Accomplished" and Bush landing on an aircraft carrier?

George W. Bush would like nothing better than for you to forget that 9/11 both happened on his watch and led to the kind of anti-Muslim paranoia on the right that Trump managed all too easily to exploit on his way to winning the White House. Bush would probably like, even more, to forget that he helped create a Republican Party aimed mainly at propping up his fragile ambitions, over anything resembling a coherent approach to governance of any kind... or that the hollowing out of the Republican Party (firmly accomplished by Karl Rove on the way to winning 2004) left a party scrambling to find its way and left open to the repeated work of opportunists and their personal interests.

As I said (rather presciently), in 2009:

By sheer force of emotion - not will - he remade the Republican Party in his image: anti-intellectual, inconsistent, too concerned about the image, and not enough about the details. He replaced conservative ideals with cant, and then doubled back and destroyed the cant by, as his family does, wavering in the face of failure.  He called himself a strong believer in free markets... and engineered the largest government takeover of the banking industry. He called himself a compassionate conservative... and then let the Gulf Coast drown.

And he lied. He lied about getting into war, then he lied about staying in the war, then he lied about getting out of it. He lied - and still lies - about 9/11 (Saddam Hussein... not involved). He lied when it would have been just as easy to tell the truth.

And really, I suspect... he lies to himself. It's easier that way.

I welcome anyone, including and especially the former President, who wants to call out the current conservative movement and insist that it has to be better and do better. I will not, however, stand idly by and let George W Bush recast himself as some kind hearted warrior for justice who had no hand in creating the Republican Party as we see it today. This is very much his fault. He was there, and he had a hand in making it what it became, and how it became the party of Donald Trump. 

Just because we were united in grief doesn't mean that we deserved a needless, preventable tragedy. Or so mcuh of what came as a result of it. And no one bears the responsibility for how we got here the way George W Bush does. Never forget that. And never let him get out from under it. 

Alone, Yet Not Alone

I'd been trying - as part of my general "time to reboot consistent blogging" strategy - to put together a piece on Justin Bieber, because his arrest really caught my attention.

And then Philip Seymour Hoffman died.

There's been the usual mix of sarcasm and disdain expressed for Bieber's behavior, a sadly familiar spectacle of acting out and getting caught. It's been harder (though not nonexistent) to find those who worry about the kid (he's only 19!) and hope he gets himself some treatment.

There's an awkwardness in America to discussing and dealing with drug use, abuse and addiction issues, a remnant of our distant history of puritanism, a distinctly American sense of privacy and suggestions that difficult family matters be kept behind closed doors. We are at once a people who want uncomfortable matters swept quietly aside, yet fascinated with the intimate details of each other's lives. It doesn't help that popular culture both rewards and gives notoriety to bad behavior and acting out, our fascination with a life that dares to color outside the expected lines vexing our expectations that people stay within those lines at all times.

When a drunken celebrity - often a young woman - is caught on camera stumbling and slurring and causing a scene, it's the mix of fascination and revulsion that propels it, often, into our national consciousness. Less consideration is given to how we (or more to the point, the person doing it) got to that moment, or what happens next. We talk vaguely of "the downward spiral of child stars" as if its an interesting abstraction, and less the painful trajectory of actual people and their actual lives.

I've been thinking about this a lot in the couple of weeks since Bieber's arrest in Miami, about signs and warnings, and downward spirals. Those who follow celebrity gossip closely - or not even, since I really don't invest the time in it writing like this might suggest - could tell you that Bieber's slide has been widely seen and discussed, bubbling just beneath the kind of coverage that happens once an arrest is made, or the problem becomes impossible to hide. Like Lindsay Lohan, Bieber's early life has been carefully dressed for PR purposes as less chaotic and tumultuous than it might seem on closer examination, the kind of warning signs of someone at risk long before the fame and the easy access arrives.

Addicts tell surprisingly similar tales of pain, isolation and loneliness leading to use and abuse of substances. I've thought about that as well with the Bieber story, how sad can it be to have all that he seemingly has, yet to seem so alone, so fragile, so determined to anesthetize oneself?

But what also comes to mind is a grim reality that's less discussed, partly because, I suspect, Bieber's kind of success doesn't necessarily evoke sympathy, or a certain kind of respect. One can miss the kid's obvious talents, his appealing singing voice, the grace of his dancing, his natural ability as a performer. Some talents, once squandered, can be lamented and and missed. Whitney Houston, or Heath  Ledger come to mind. But a Bieber, whose celebrity has trumped his talent... that lament can seem less obvious. But it's still there.

The sad reality is that Bieber's career has been the first, most obvious casualty of his behavior. Though he's toured successfully in the past few years, his status as a teen idol has been almost completely eclipsed by newcomers (One Direction, as well as newer teens like Austin Mahone and Cody Simpson) and established acts (Justin Timberlake, most obviously, has reasserted himself as the kind of heartthrob act Bieber aspires to be). His arrest occurred on the eve of the Grammys, where he was hardly missed, and in no contention for any award. The music world has already moved on, and so has much of the listening public. He hasn't charted a single, or released new material in some time. It's hard to see how he can collect himself, or his thoughts, for a project anytime soon.

That's where, to me, this story of Bieber intersects with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Amidst the lamentations for the loss of a prolific, widely admired actor, there's been the kind of immediate reassessment that happens with death, where the work takes on a fresh glow, and critics tend to emphasize the good and ignore the rest. Hoffman was indeed an actor of amazing range and depth, but he hadn't necessarily enjoyed anything like a career renaissance in recent years. His performances in The Hunger Games were not entirely well received, and underscored a kind of typecasting he endured as a smug, especially cold villain in big budget films. He had more opportunity to showcase his ranginess in smaller dramas, yet even there, it's hard to point to exceptional work in recent years.

Many will protest "but what about The Master?" No doubt his work was intense and skilled; but the film is chilly, dense, hard to love, and failed to find an audience. That's not a failure of the performers, per se, but it goes to a question that lingers about Hoffman, his addiction issues, and his admitted spiral into relapse. What choices might he have made had his addiction been less present, his sobriety more certain? Sober choices are smarter ones, more thought out, riskier yet also less dangerous, based upon more than a check, or a need to prove oneself. Onstage, his turn as Willy Loman was similarly curious, not a bad choice, necessarily, but an awfully big bite for an actor so young, in some ways still maturing and finding all of his potential. It's telling, that the reactions were so mixed, and so extreme; those who loved it, those who didn't have the heart to say it didn't really work.

It's hardest, I think, to have such a phenomenal talent, one that's expressed so young and so well and so naturally that it seems effortless. Hoffman's early roles have a sureness to them that really was breathtaking. Or think of Whitney Houston as Clive Davis found her, such an amazing raw talent for singing and interpreting a song just waiting to fly. And yes, Justin Bieber and his soaring young tenor, that need to be in front of an audience, that eagerness to please and to succeed. Judy Garland always spoke of the inner resources and energy it took just to be the Judy Garland audiences came to expect, capable of singing and performing others just couldn't touch. It should be easier, effortless, not isolating and difficult. And that's not really the case. It isn't easy. There's a lot of effort. And sometimes, it's easier to just fake it. Go onstage a little drunk. Phone it in. When you're that good, you can get away with it. At first, for a while, maybe before people notice, or suspect. For a while anyway. Especially when they don't look. Or pretend not to see.

We'll never know, now, what might have been, the actor Hoffman might have become, the actor he might have been in a more sober state. That loss is genuinely painful to contemplate, as is that question of what or who could have intervened, or knowing that no one could stop a path of self destruction unless he decided himself. If Hoffman's death is a cautionary tale, can someone get it to caution Justin Bieber, to help him see that there's no one to stop him self destructing except himself? I wish he would. I hope he does. The alternative remains too tragic. But not unthinkable, or unforseeable. If we choose to look.

Related articles

RIP Phillip Seymour Hoffman

Miley Cyrus Advises Bieber, Brags About Never Being Locked Up

The epidemic we were ignoring before Philip Seymour Hoffman died

Reports: Bieber's plane searched; pop star questioned - Houston Chronicle (blog)

Justin Bieber Arrested for DUI, Smiles in Mugshot

The Ed Show

"Don't speak ill of the dead," my mother said, or words to that effect (maybe "everyone's entitled to a positive view in death'), so perhaps it's no surprise that over the course of today, Ed Koch went from New York's fairly contentious ex-Mayor to a loveable curmudgeon who just loved his old home town.

I don't want to speak ill, but I do think we shouldn't completely leave reality behind. When Rudy Giuliani ran for Mayor in 1989, he very clearly positioned himself as the alternative to the New York That We Just Had... and then he promptly lost to David Dinkins... who had just defeated Koch in his bid for a fourth term in the primaries.

Giuliani turned around and ran nearly the exact same campaign in 1993, defeating Dinkins; and that time, many Democrats - especially the political Clubs in Harlem which produced Dinkins - felt Giuliani's approach was racial code. It was, kind of... but mostly Giuliani was still running against the New York of Ed Koch, with Dinkins playing the Koch stand-in. And again, New Yorkers liked the appeal of that message.

New York City in the eighties was the time of Ed Koch; and though we may tell this story differently now, at the time New York was a tough, gritty town with plenty of problems, and knowing the right people, in and out of government, could smooth out a some of them. That's what Ed Koch gave us, and by 1988, it was not a New York that people necessarily liked.

Koch was in many ways part of the last gasp of a generation of postwar white male politicians who helped build and maintain the urban Democratic political machines of many major cities, especially North and East. Like William Donald Schaeffer in Baltimore, he was a "confirmed bachelor" who seemed to do little more than eat, breathe and sleep political machinations. They, and other men of their age presided over the late seventies and early eighties rot in city governments that tended to end in scandal, often over patronage. And gradually, the cities they led, and the machines they built, moved to let women and minorities (and eventually, Republicans, in some cases) in to the machines, or the machines broke (and perhaps the ultimate ironic proof of the problem is Boston, where for all the liberal broadmindedness, minorities cannot wrest the Mayoralty from the Irish and Italians).

Koch's scandals, by the late eighties were numerous. There was Donald Manes, the Democratic leader of Queens, involved in an enormous kickback and bribery scandal out of the Parking Violations Bureau. Then there was Bess Myerson, the former Miss America, appointed ot Koch's City Arts Commission, who bribed a judge in a personal matter by hiring the woman's daughter to work in a patronage, do-nothing job. Let's not start on OTB. This is the New York of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, the New York that coddled and crowned Donald Trump, the New York of the eighties-era banking zillionaires, real life Dynasty types whose crass consumerism crashed in 1987. 

Ed Koch was Manhattan triumphant; he came out of Greenwich Village and made it all the way up the East Side. AIDS? Homelessness? Crime? Don't be a downer. Don't ask questions. Half of what Koch is being credited with - the balancing of New York's books - was both required by the Financial Control Board he didn't control and solved by the tax money that rolled in with the stock and bond boom. The other half, the part where he's credited with bringing New York "back from the brink" didn't even happen under him; to the extent that New York has reduced crime and "cleaned up"... well, that's how we got Giuliani, and what he gave us: a safer, less gritty, less edgy, and arguably less interesting city. And we, us real deep down urban types may pine for that gritty edginess... but we don't really want Ed Koch's New York back, not really. Remember Westway? We just wish you didn't have to trade a sense of safety to get back cheaper rents and a livelier arts scene. And how upper middle class are those aspirations, really?

I met Ed Koch once, at this thing I was working on back when I did phramaceutical marketing. This was in his ex-Mayor phase, where he could be had for a small fee and a nice lunch to speak, where he tende to sell himself as... well, you know, that lovable old curmudgeon who just loved NYC to bits. I got him a little riled by quizzing him on why he would favor ending rent controls and stabilization. But hey... how often does one get the chance to ask? I remember being struck by how tall he was, how he really did come off larger than life in person. And that he was a pretty tough customer.

Like I said, I don't come to decimate Koch... just to keep it real. My adopted hometown, the city I love, the Manhattan that still glitters and gleams... I love the town that produced Ed Koch and appreciate the big personality it takes to be that town's Mayor. Ed Koch, for better and worse, helped make New York what it was and what it is, and I can't imagine one without the other, either. It's a shame to see the Ed Show end, but let's not add to the Disney-fication of New York by pretending he was Uncle Walt. He deserves better than that.

Winter Land

Mom and I are off on our new family tradtion, a post New Year's gathering in Maine at my Aunt and Uncle's, including my two cousins. Like last year, Mom and I broke up the drive, spending the night around Portland.

This morning I walked outside to get my hair dryer (I hate packing hair dryers in my suitcase; I need a separate piece of luggage for technical, maintenance type equipment. Or something), I was welcomed by a pleasant blast of crisp, cold winter air. I've mentioned, for years now, how much I like the change of seasons, and the weird world we have now, when the reality of global warming pushes winter further and further out of reach. 

Still, I was struck by the visceral joy of the cold weather today. Seeing my breath, bundled up yet my puffy cat unzipped. It's only in the high thirties, and while many would find it weather to complain about, on a sunny morning with little wind and low humidity, it's really very pleasant. It's the morning I understand the people who drive miles to ski, when I miss those fun winter days in the city, walking around window shopping, enjoying the cold.

Things simply aren't that cold anymore, not very often, and not for very long. I am not someone to wade deeply into the politics - or even the science - of climate change; I worry less about the sense of impending disaster than I do simply mourn the loss of the things I genuinely like - a cool day, snow on the ground, leaves off the trees, when those limited hours of sun really brighten a day. A good and proper winter.

So, rather than watch it wistfully out the window, I'm off to walk around in it. More later.

Men On The Net(Works)

I am truly embarrassed to admit this, but I used to keep this (especially exhaustive) list of men I found attractive in a little notebook I kept hidden in my room. After I came out, the point of this lst was much more clear; but at first, you know, it was just an interesting diversion.

Apparently... I'm not alone in this: Via World of Wonder, James St. James directs us to Matthew Rettemund's exhaustive list of the 50 hottest men on television. This makes perfect sense since James, Matthew, me, and the rest of my gay generation kind of all kept this list, with many of the same men on it. I'm not sure it's the same for the kids these days, but that moment of recognition, that "you thought he was sexy too?" conversation was like a feminist click of "I'm not crazy" and "I finally fit in with the others."  It was not just, simply, the leering and lust... but goodness, aren't they talented?

Rettemund (who has the "nice work if you can get it" of being Professionally Gay) covers pretty much all the bases, and does a nice job of filtering in some of the more recent examples to a list that he's clearly been caring about for years. I don't make a physical list anymore (or even an Excel soreadsheet)... but one does, you know, keep track. And these days, when every TV show has that "hot guy who drips sexy" role, that isn't always easy.  Thank Goddess for IMDB.

A lot of this fascination can be traced back to the late seventies, when increasing gay visibility made frank depiction and interest in male beauty less of a social taboo (and the seventies were pretty sex-mad, anyway). Rettemund covers most of the bases - though he misses, most egregiously, Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy of The Hardy Boys - with a little heavy emphasis on youth, even for my tastes. I'm not sure Blair Underwood is am especially brave choice, either. But Rettemund does capture, in pictures, that glorious moment when Tony Danza and John Schneider were as hot as street trade (and don't think they didn't know it).

One can nitpick this sort of thing to death (shortlist: Ian Somerhalder, Paul Wesley, Cam Gigandet, No Dawson's Creek?, Patrick Dempsey, Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki... I mean, jeez), and that's without diving deeply into daytime soaps (he does namecheck Brian Bloom!), but this list will serve as a fine, fresh start. And Rettemund rescues the show that nearly every gay man can remember even if the show was barely watched: the CW's Summerland, where the male beauty was simply freaking ridonkulous. If nothing else... thank you for Ryan Kwanten!

Oh, and yes, this is just TV. Film is a different story altogether. And yes, this is really gay, too. But Betty, how could I resist? And hey.... Merry Christmas!

Related articles

Jared Padalecki & Jensen Ackles: Serious for 'Supernatural'!

Jared Padalecki And Jensen Ackles Looking Intense On 'Supernatural' Set [PHOTOS]

Sunday Singalong: You'd Be Amazed How Much I Love You So

From the time spent reminiscing:

Donna Summer, Dim All The Lights. It's not even my favorite song, but it's a prime example of the kind of disco music that came to define the era: the slow jam opening to an extended sped up note, the percussive rhythms, the connecting bridge, followed by repeats of the chorus to the end. It's Summer's longest held note (a pop music record at the time for number of bars held), and lyrically, it's arguably one of the best of her songs from that era, sexy without being sleazy, a clear idea expressed from start to finish. For me, it's a reminder of the weird, wonderful sophistication of my childhood: the things we were exposed to at 11, 12, 13... gee whiz. They played this at junior high school dances, for goodness sake. I keep saying we were the generation that was 40 before we were 25. One other thing - it's this song, in many ways, that also turned the "disco" concept into pure formula; in many ways, this song is simply an improvement on the structure, lyrics and instrumentation of Last Dance. From there... you could list a raft of songs that essentially did the same thing (for artists such as Cher, Streisand, France Joli... I could go on). And that, as much anything, goes a long way to explaining why disco kind of wore itself out.

Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand, No More Tears (Enough Is Enough). Neither of these women did all that many duets; even more rarely were they ever paired with a singer anywhere near as strong (Summer may have married Bruce Sudano, but she could sure outsing him). Aretha Franklin has always had a similar problem. So this duet is remarkable, if nothing else, for how well matched these two are, both technically and in terms of range. Indeed, it's rare to have a duet where both the voices are fairly high sopranos. And the song is a marvel - never mind the pyrotechnics, just listen to them harmonize on "and we won't waste... another tear," with complete care and precision. Technically, I'm among those who think Summer wins this one, if we have to judge a contest; she's more naturally suited to the material, and Streisand can get strident. But it's a close call, and calling it a contest is to miss the point: this is just an amazing song, a remarkable duet, and it holds up amazingly well (consider how theatically similar it is to "I Will Survive" and how that song has been more or less been played into the ground.

Donna Summer, Last Dance. There's this moment, towards the end of every version (Casablanca edited the song a number of ways over the years), when Summer is doing the final repeat of the refrain "I need you by me, to guide me, to guide me..." (she apparently forgot "beside me"), and it's a long song and she's working it hard... and still, she sounds amazing. More than that, over a complicated orchestral arrangement (listen to the way the strings swirl, and the horns climb), she never gives the impression of the arrangement leading her, instead she's focused, in control, and very much in charge of where all this energy is headed.There's a reason this song became, commandingly, the song that sums up the end of an evening of dancing: it's not just the universal notions of the lyrics, or the obviousness of the title; it's that Summer gives it the authority it deserves. When she says "I need you..." and all the rest, the sense of need is actually palpable, and only one more dance can possibly satisfy. And so, come on baby... there's that dance. Yeah....

Donna Summer, Love Is In Control (Finger on the Trigger). J, my best friend, was the first person to point out to me that thinking of Summer as a "disco died" casualty was a mistake: even as disco vanished from radio and clubs, Summer was back in the Top 40 with The Wanderer, a fairly adventurous album that was actually well received. That was followed by a self titled album, including this single. Objectively, Love is in Control isn't necessarily great - you can hear the heavy hand of Quincy Jones in the instrumentation which borrows heavily from the similar work he was doing for Michael Jackson, and I realized, today, that Summer's voice is barely present for half the track. But she wins again, because her growling, fearsome delivery of lines like "you better raise your sights up high..." offer no room for hesitation. 

Donna Summer and Musical Youth, Unconditional Love. It's also easy to forget that Donna Summer was actually a very versatile singer who could easily handle a wide variety of genres and styles; on top of disco, she was actually one of the artists to help bring reggae into mainstream pop musical culture, both with State of Independence, and with this charmer, done with the then trendy, kind of a flash in the pan act Musical Youth. The song lopes along genially, and Summer's "ya mon" diction may be somewhat mannered, but underneath it all... she gets it, and it shows. Plus, the duet softened her image tremendously, taking her from the saucy siren image of the seventies into a more wholesome, Earth Mother type presentation (which was probably the most natural fit).

Donna Summer, This Time I Know It's For Real. When word began to drift out that Donna Summer was in London working with producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman, the anticipation, especially among knowledgable gays, was palpable. Proven hitmakers, S-A-W had already made dance music stars out of Rick Astley, Bananarama, Kylie Minogue, and a number of others. And when "This Time" showed up, the wait was worth it. However lightweight lyrically, the song was a revival of the kind of upbeat dance music not seen since disco's heyday, and as it turned out, lots of people liked it, and missed it. Summer's so in her elements, it's hard to know where to begin about why this song is simple perfection. You'd be amazed... how much I love you so. 

Donna Summer (with Bruce Roberts), Whenever There Is Love (the Junior Vasquez mix). In the early days, a disco track wasn't really a "remix" effort, not in the way we see them today. Producers started out recording long tracks, and simply cut them down for radio, editing out instrumental breaks, and even verses. Go back, and you can hear an enormous difference from the seventies era songs (they're fuller, more fully arranged), then a lot of the early "remixes" where songs were lengthened or sped up artificially after the fact of their initial recording. That means that much of Donna Summer's hits were never touched, at the time, by the deejays who became remix stars. It was years before Summer joined the ranks of artists with multiple remixes of one song by different deejays... and naturally, they all wanted the chance to work with the Queen. This song, for the forgettable film Daylight, was the first time Junior Vasquez (legendary, dear) worked his magic... and magic it is. At his best, Vasquez plays with the dynamics of the singer, but never loses sight of the song's overall structure, and here, he's in top form. So is Summer, and it hardly matters that Roberts (who wrote it) is more or less blown away as a result.

Donna Summer, Love Is The Healer (Thunderpuss mix). But the part that kind of defies explanation is buried, deep down, in Summer's success: it's the connection she made, on the dance floor, with the dancers, in their hearts, down to their souls. Oh sure, maybe you just danced to Last Dance at your cousin's wedding. Fun... right? That's not the half of it. It's that late night, 2 in the morning moment when a group of ecstatic revelers - probably gay men, but whoever - were lifted that much higher by the voice of a Goddess who spoke to their deepest feelings. The place where love is eternal, we are all one, and everything is possible. This is not stuff for amateurs. It's dance as a religion, the communion of true believers. I am on a mission... a mission of love. "Love is the mission, baby," Summer says in this song's spoken break, and it's the priestess, speaking to her flock, open and ready to receive. Thunderpuss, a remixing duo, are naturally up to the challenge of translating this into the realm of anthem - there's similar ecstasy to be found in their remix of Whitney Houston's "It's Not Right, But It's Okay" - but it's Donna who reigns. That's why she was Queen.

Forever Donna

Somehow, I never expected to live through one year where two of pop music's greatest singers died.

Donna Summer was the lifeline of my childhood, the Queen of Disco who made the world safe for teen age gay boys yet to come out. She was beautiful, insanely talented, and she put dance music on the top of the pop charts. 

Of course she was much, much more than that. She was a stage performer. She was a survivor, one of the brightest examples of a seventies cocaine casualty rising from the ashes. She survived the "death" of disco and rode the return of dance music wave of the late eighties and early nineties back to her rightful place in pop history. 

I am blessed, in my life, to have known one of her most ardent fans, my best friend. His love became my love; his joy in her music became mine. I am chocolate... but I don't like the heat.

She was the greatest of gay stars, a career created and supported by gay men, who managed to say "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve"... and still managed to make it right in the end. It helps that, you know, she wasn't necessarily a genius... but man, could she sing. So that's mostly what she did.

People will talk about Last Dance and MacArthur Park and Dim All The Lights - the longest sustained single note in a number one song by a singer - but my two favorites are earlier and simpler. No one has, or will ever improve on "I Love You" and "Heaven Knows."

I am a dancer. I love to dance, to feel the rhythm on the dance floor. I have been dancing to Donna Summer since I was 12, and almost consistently ever since. And we will dance again to her music. And it will all be all right.

 

 

Andrew Breitbart... And the Angry Legacy

I was thinking just today that writing about people who passed for me can seem like an exercise in actresses and diva singers, and that's not really all I'm about.

Of course, that doesn't mean I had a lot of thoughts on the passing of Davy Jones, either.

But Andrew Breitbart just died. Which seems odd, and sudden, and somehow too soon. 

Breitbart will be known as the "conservative firebrand" who launched James O'Keefe, him of the "outlaw journalism" of exposing liberal "conspiracies" like ACORN... and the census. Even after O'Keefe was arrested (and pled guilty to) pranking the New Orleans office of Senator Mary Landrieu, Breitbart didn't quite give up on O'Keefe... though, in the long run, he seemed to put a little more distance between them.

I kept up with Breitbart because he seemed terribly energentic... and terribly angry. And I was never entirely sure as to why. 

Conservatives - many of whom seem to have known him, but not well - talk about him as kind and generous in private. He benefitted tremendously from being in the right place at the right time, working with Matt Drudge on a very thorough approach to news aggregation that pointed to the real power of the internet, not as a vehicle for conservatism, but the real possibilities in sharing information on a global, massive scale. His most succesful follow up was a similarly thorough aggregation of news wire feeds at his own site, combining the AP and Reuters and others into a super news service. For a news junkie generalist like me, those things were indeed admirtable, even brilliant.

His politics, though, were odd: he gave voice to the kind of "muscular conservatism" that rose with talk radio, and he shared a lot of their biases and myopia; from Whitewater on, he seemd determined to expose liberal frauds with every breath. But he could be defensive when conservatives were challenged (never mind himself), and nowhere near as rigid, or thorough. He claimed a role as a serious "conservative journalist", yet couldn't seem to either define it well, or make of it more than angry screeds and trumped up exposes into the seedier aspects of people's private lives.  If those he exposed were, some of them, no saints, Breitbart was never made more virtuous exposing them, either.

Ultimately, I tend to think that you get back what you give in the world; and the bitterness, anger, divisiveness and unhappy responses Breitbart generated (and which, despite claims to a thick skin, seemed to eternally annoy him), seemed evenly matched by what he put out. His "Big" websites - Big Journalism, Big Hollywood, etc - seemed small, cranky, eccentric exercises in shallow putdowns and knee jerk explosions of contempt. In some way, I think Breitbart knew that he could, and should, try to do better, be better, stuck in a dilemma of perpetual notoriety, lobbing grenades from the fringe. Anger, like any emotion, can be the fuse to light a fire which leads to political action. But as I keep saying, anger alone probably won't get you much in the way of results.

Breitbart will be remembered, I suspect, for all those angry things; all that he opposed, all that he disliked, all that he tried to discredit and deny. I personally can't think of a thing, not one, that I ever heard him focus on positively. And that's conservatism as it currently stands, isn't it? Not what you are for, but what you are against, what you can dislike, and demean, and dismiss. In his place will surely come others, with more of the same. More Shirley Sherrods! More Anthony Weiners, more scandals, small and mean spirited, one and all!  And that's like a legacy, kind of... just not a good one.

Saturday Singalong: And It Hurts Me More Than You Know, So Much More Than It Shows...

Because today is her funeral, and because I am still not over it:

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday Singalong: I Don't Know Why I Like It, I Just Do.

May she rest in peace:

Whitney Houston, Saving All My Love For You. Possibly one of the most straightforward jazz tunes to make it to the top of the pop charts, Saving was the followup to the knockout of You Give Good Love, itself breathtaking. But Saving was unnerving because so much of Whitney's range was apparent in just the two songs - few women can negotiate the singing personas of both girlfriend and the Other Woman. Saving is a classic Other Woman song, and while her singing is techinically perfect, what's astonishing is the depth of emotion, when she says, at the end, "we'll be making love the whole night through" you don't just believe her, it's that she captures the reality of having to live, emotionally, on just though stolen moments. Critics carped, early on, that Whitney couldn't possibly be all these women... but I think that's the amazing thing about the true divas - the ability to connect emotionally with material when you don't think they have the life experience for it.

Whitney Houston, So Emotional. By the time of So Emotional, Whitney had done nothing but release #1 singles; this one, in fact, tied the record of the Beatles, at six (the next, a pure safety play so she would have the record, was "Where Do Broken Hearts Go"; not her best moment). This also works if you pretend, as the charts did, that "All at Once", which got a lot of radio play, was never officially released as a single. But regardless, So Emotional is one of those real change of pace singles that show her versatility: percussive beats, screaming rock guitars and probably her first completely straight up dance beat. Not necessarily lyrically daring ("I get so emotional, every time I think of you"), but Whitney infused with a playful urgency that somehow made "shocking" actually work. I don't know why I like it... I just do.

Whitney Houston, Didn't We Almost Have It All (Live; the VH1 video). She would be forever tagged as the Power Ballad champ of the eighties, both good and bad, but that's more than a little unfair; the fact that she could sing the hell out of a ballad and that she could vocally stand up to enormous orchestrations shouldn't be tagged as liabilities, and anyway, her discogoraphy is much wider than that (but there's a reason I'm not putting "Greatest Love of All" in this mix). When Whitney came out, it was clear that Didn't We was an obvious single choice, and it went to #1, but critics, again, suggested that it was only her pull out the stops reading of it that made it work (truthfully, by then, Michael Masser's heavy ballad productions were starting to grate). And the song, really, is an especially strong construction (a standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus). But Houston wasn't one to let that slide, and in concert she completely re-approached the song, starting gentle and light ("Remember when we held on in the rain?") and gradually building to the overwhelming emotional moments, until "Didn't We? Didn't We?" became a plaintive wail over love and loss. Take that, haters.

Whitney Houston and Jermaine Jackson, If You Say My Eyes Are Beautiful. Pure, by the numbers duetting, one of those "they didn't even record it together" trade-offs of verses, a little harmonizing on the chorus, and done. But gee whiz! Jermaine's an underrated singer, but like many, he could barely keep up with her. The song is all about Whitney's sections and an especially pretty lyric. And it never quite got the play it should have, I think.

Whitney Houston, I'm Your Baby Tonight. By the time of Whitney's third album, it had been nearly seven years since her debut, and the world of pop had changed, in no small measure because of her. And the real challenge was could she find her way doing different material? The answer, amazingly, was yes, as Houston began a long, and productive relationship with producer Babyface. It's not just the explosiion of drums at the opening that signals the real shift of this single, but the loping, slightly backwards beat throughout. And Houston shows herself entirely up to the challenge of a complicated rhythm track, drawing out a sly sexiness, and leaving a lot of the vocal tricks at home. But then, we already establsihed that she was good at Other Woman songs, too.

Whitney Houston, Queen of the Night (the CJ Mackintosh mix). Houston had a mixed history as a dance diva - her power ballads, naturally, didn't work on dance floors, and that put a lot of weight on her uptempo numbers (you can't really dance to "I Wanna Dance With Somebody"... nor could she). When you get a chance, go back and seek out "Love Will Save The Day" which also never quite got the moment it deserved. But as she matured, the possibilities of her in dance music also opened up. Queen, as a single, is an overproduced, top heavy rock number... but CJ Mackintosh found a deep house gem within it, playing with the lines of the chorus ("stuff that you want... thing that you need... more than enough... to make you drop to your knees") until they swirled into dizzying harmonizing ear candy. Rule the dance floor, indeed.

Whitney Houston, I'm Every Woman. Really, she was capable of almost anything. And there's nothing even especially wrong with Chaka Khan's original, yet there's Whitney, making it an anthem's anthem. And of course, you hadn't lived until you were surrounded by a sea of gay boys, hands in the air, claiming to be every woman, with it all in them. World peace, baby.

Whitney Houston and The Georgia Mass Choir, Joy To The World. In truth, she was a gospel singer, by training and by preference. Surely at some point, that's what she would have recorded, had there been time. As it was, only The Preacher's Wife soundtrack put her on truly religious material, and those gospel moments lift the album well above where it would be otherwise. The choice of Joy to the World was also, somewhat subtly, a dig at Mariah Carey, who had combined the orginial with Three Dog Night's song on her own Christmas album. Houston's response: who needs it? When she coos her way though the slow, nearly acapella opening, stopping to fully explore "heaven and nature"... it's a diva throwdown: don't come for me, honey, cause I'll crush you.

Whitney Houston and George Michael, If I Told You That. There's plenty of ways to go with the later career - even as her voice failed her, she found a second life singing full on in her mid range. The top notes might be elusively out of reach (which is why I don't immediately go to "I Will Always Love You"), but the trick turning was never what it was all about. When she turned, "It's not right, but it's okay" into a get the hell out statement, it was the power of interpretation and emotional connection that shown through. But what I loved was the sinewy magic she found working with Darkchild. Originally recorded for My Love is Your Love, If I Told You That became a sharp, stylized duet when she paired up with George Michael, two of the eighties icons united as survivors. Even if we didn't realize at the time how true that really was.

Whitney Houston, The Star Spangled Banner. In the end, though, it comes down to this: no one, but no one, could take the familiar and make it seem new the way she did. She did it, repeatedly with her own songs... so why not do it to the national anthem? Listen to her caress the word "ramparts", taking an emotional breath before soaring on "rockets red glare"... by the time she cruises up the extra high note on "Land of the Free", it's all over; she had the audience well before that, and that note is really just icing. Effortless. I just threw that in because I can. At the height of the Gulf War, she made the jingoistic patriotism that grated so much into an irrelevancy. It was all her. The National Anthem didn't become a top ten single because of the war, it was because of her.