NO MORE TIME FOR SPECTATING

This opens a new chapter in our relations with all nations of this hemisphere.
The Lucksmiths: Great Lengths
(live; please bear with the slight distortion!)


Not so much antic despair as desperate antics.
The Lucksmiths: T-Shirt Weather (live)

I participated in an American tradition this weekend. I spent hours stuck in traffic getting the heck out of the city. Like many Americans, the other people in the car and I whiled away our time listening to music. I don't have a road trip playlist or anything, and anyway I wasn't so fortunate as to be driving. However, I did listen to Blur's Parklife for the first time in years. Still sounds good, even if the Syd Barretty stuff has worn a bit, and "Trouble in the Message Center" always felt a bit tossed-off. Nothing was better, though, than listening to Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville on a screened-in porch with friends, reading and overlooking a mountain lake.

Today education blog The Quick and the Ed basically did what offnotes does in reverse. Instead of starting off talking about some random thing or other and ending up talking about some random music thing (or other), blogger Kevin Carey gets music out of the way first, then talks about some edumacation thing. But not before dropping this pearl o' nugget:

"The challenge of the information age isn't in gaining access to information, it's making sense of it. It's not figuring out how to buy CDs, it's figuring out which CDs to buy--and which not to. Those are issue of judgement and taste, which only people can provide."

Exactly! That's why, ultimately, just racing to promote every old thing without stepping back to assess what really works is a doomed proposition. Yes, the MP3 era has probably changed listening habits in some ways permanently, but particularly if people's music collections continue to grow at such an exponential rate, listeners will still probably be interested in some help finding music that appeals to them. Given how irrational and subjective music fandom can be, I'm less confident than perhaps my colleague Chris Dahlen in the extent of technology's ability to meet the challenge.

I leave my pajamas to Billy Budapest.
MP3s: King Khan & the Shrines: "Welfare Bread" and "No Regrets"
[from the forthcoming What Is]

Jonathan Chait notes (free reg req'd, or bugmenot) that some right-wing thinkers are moving from "the conservatism of Paul Wolfowitz" to "the conservatism of Montgomery Burns." In other words, conservative thinkers are leaving behind the small-"d" democratic values the Iraq war was supposedly fought to promote, instead seeing the virtue of authoritarianism now that our own democracy isn't swinging their way. An economist from the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Kevin Hassett, rather enviously compares dictatorships to our democracy, noting that the former are "are not hamstrung by the preferences of voters for, say, a pervasive welfare state." Yeah, democracy really blows that way, don't it chief?

Lastly, I'd be remiss if I forgot to point out the great work Bob Somerby has done in the past week or so at the Daily Howler. (I know, I probably link to him every time, don't I?) In short: "Al Gore said our discourse is broken. And his critics rushed to prove that he's right." Somerby looks at the way reporters for the Washington Post and the New York Times have responded, as Gore wrote they would in his new book, not to the substance of his arguments, but with Maureen Dowd-esque irrelevancies. Chris Matthews is getting paid millions of dollars to speculate about Gore's possible plastic surgery (there, now even I have spread this rumor... this is how coverage of prominent Democrats works-- remember Gennifer Flowers? Kathleen Willey? "Clinton's New Girl Friend" that the Google Ads promise to tell me about? ...Botox?). Somerby has also written about the way Matthews, the Washington Post and others have rushed out to hype the possibility of negative info about Hillary Clinton in a pair of new books. In doing so, these high-paid pundits have treated former Timesman Jeff Gerth as a reputable source-- despite the fact the man not only concocted much of the Whitewater fable, but was eventually fired from the Times for his shoddy reporting in the Wen Ho Lee story. Look it up.


Waiting for you is like waiting for the man in the moon.
R. Kelly: The World's Greatest

RUDY GIULIANI IS THE ANTICHRIST

Snarky asides help to pay my bills.
The Tough Alliance: Silly Crimes

"Technological change is always a Faustian bargain," the late media theorist Neil Postman often said. For example, the automobile gave us the freedom to travel long distances quickly and independently, but it devastated urban downtowns and created sprawling exurban megalopolises (and robbed us of our legal prerogative to get good and soused). Shit, many people far wiser than I am have already observed how the Internet has not only democratized indie-rock fandom but also diminished its intensity; instead of handmade zines and brick-and-mortar stores, we have right clicks. Groovy.

More subtly, the online medium has also changed how we connect with our favorite bands. Web 2.0 hype aside, "interactive" doesn't necessarily mean a higher level of interaction. You've read this trend piece: To have an opinion on a band, all you need is facility with a search engine. To remove them entirely from your lives, just hit shift-delete. To be a fan...?

Hey guys, there's this Atlanta band called Deerhunter I really dig. Yeah like the movie. No, totally, pick up their CD! Buy that shit from my Amazon link! Instead of limiting themselves to the current (possibly doomed) model of "I make music, and you take it all from me for free and then shit on my memory when the next Joanna Newsom comes along," Deerhunter kinda let fans take their fandom to the next level. No, not like the prom.

Back when Blur were the most important thing in the world (who's going to take over the world when I die?), when I was in high school, I used to go into random record stores with import sections and look for their B-sides. This was before I was plugged into the music discourse that tells it's totally normal for sweaty, peach-fuzzed weirdos all over the country, THE WORLD EVEN, to look for B-sides in record-store import sections. And do you know what I would do? Why, sometimes I would even buy Blur import CD singles without previously hearing any of the B-sides!


I wanted to be an acquired taste.
Echo and the Bunnymen: Show of Strength (h/t: Dennis Cooper)

Maybe it's my blurred perspective as a critic, but it's hard to remember the last time I paid money for new music I didn't already know, from advance listening, I would like. Except, not. Deerhunter are one band that allows fans to return to the aforementioned pre-blogsearch (eff Technorati) fan scenario: People taking a financial risk on a band they like and getting to keep something to remind them of it (to put it crassly). Yeah, I suppose I could sell or throw away my Blur B-sides, but why would I? That would be like throwing away my 1981 Topps Joe Montana rookie card! Steve Albini has a bigger penis than I do!

Most famously, Deerhunter made their "Whirlyball" 7" available at only one store, as Pitchfork's twice-indefatigable Paul Thompson reported. A single, by a popular Internet band, that nobody on the Internet can get. I even have family in Atlanta, and I still haven't heard it (shut up, I don't have a family). So what if it might suck? Plenty of Blur B-sides did, too, though enough were golden to make the quest worthwhile.

More than that, Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox also has a solo project, Atlas Sound. Now, Deerhunter might be enough for most people, but any great band is also going to have some crazy fans who want to hear even more, so this is perfect. From MySpace listens, Cox's forthcoming Atlas Sound album is gonna be pretty sweet. But he also drops all kinds of 12"s and shit for total fanatics, like this split 12" with Mexcellent on Hoss Records, Fractal Trax. As with my Blur B-sides, once you own something like that, you've made an investment in an artist; you probably still won't like everything they do, but you won't abandon them for the next Zach Braff panty-dropper that gets seven and a half riffs from AllMachineStylusStone. You've interacted.

I finally got Fractal Trax in the mail yesterday. I ordered it with real money, but there was a press release in the box. Is that a standard thing these days? Apparently it's all Cox in his bedroom on four-track tape, playing guitars, percussion, and electric bass, plus manipulating tape. First track is "Axis I (F. Grey)", which perhaps unsurprisingly sounds like an outtake version of the title track to Deerhunter's Fluorescent Grey EP (kind of an inscrutable Excepter-ment to it, too); Cox's familiar vocal delay effects are everywhere, so I still can't tell what he's saying on the song's refrain. "Axis II" slips into some homemade beats akin to the outro of "Strawberry Fields" or that Sebadoh song that rips off the outro of "Strawberry Fields", with a heavy bass groove. I forget "Inhalents" right now, but then fourth track "'I Know, I Know'" seems to pick up the "was not seen again" melody of Cryptograms' "Heatherwood". A helium Battles/Dan Deacon voice goes, "I've seen where you and me part," and then Cox is all, "I know decay could swallow me," and "All your base are belong to us," and, like, Ian Curtis shit, man man.

You can't hear any of it online.

Maybe the RIAA should revert to vinyl.

I prefer my urinals to have dividers, thanks.


Thinking about what a friend had said, I was hoping it was a lie.
Frank Black: I Heard Ramona Sing (live, solo acoustic, 1993)

UPDATE: Yes! It's poppin'.

UPDATE UPDATE: Thnx to the also-indefatigable Brandon Stosuy, you actually can hear one track online. Once again, technology makes me look stupid.

EVERYTHING'S COMING UP PIZNARSKI

Famous-sounding words make your head feel light.
Pixies: Gigantic (live, 1988)

Clicks are currency here in the ad-sponsored online media Interzone, and that simple fact changes not just how we interact with content, but also what content we see in the first place. In 2007, is the concept of a Googleable name so newsworthy it belongs on the front page of The Wall Street Journal? Just a couple of years ago, was the notion of college kids eating cereal really so novel it merited an entire trend story in The New York Times? Magazines like Time have pandered hard with sex and religion covers for decades, but the online medium has only intensified the media's emphasis on easy sells over timely news pegs. The difference: It doesn't even matter anymore if people actually read the story, let alone find it worth money. The click is all that counts.

News websites have a few different ways to generate clicks. The most valuable to readers is breaking a fresh story, but while this may be the best strategy for maintaining long-term credibility, it requires resources (talented reporters with time to develop sources) and flexibility (you can't schedule scoops). Another way to generate clicks is to write a story with broad inherent appeal: No matter what you write about universal topics like sex, religion, or health, if you write an intriguing headline, people are going to click. Keep your common denominator low enough, and AOL or MSN might even throw links your way (= more advertising revenue). Finally, sites can run cultish stories targeting readers who make up in passion what they lack in numbers. Not everybody cares about Sirius stock (ticker: SIRI), but everybody who does seems to click on every Sirius-related news story.

From a news perspective, the effect of the latter two options is to trivialize and segment the dialogue even further than cable TV shoutfests have already done. Websites run stories that are the journalistic equivalent of Cosmopolitan coverlines: A Slate article on "Hillary's red-state accent" probably doesn't have any policy relevance, but that headline is like American Apparel near-nudity for grabbing clicks-- whether or not anybody actually finishes reading the durn thing. Further, Sirius might not be particularly important, but click-conscious editors will probably assign additional resources to them to keep up their numbers, and end up missing out on smarter, tougher, more important stories. At some point, forget investigative reporting.


Not only is a man in the cabinet, but the man is a midget.
Los Campesinos!: We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives (cross-posted from Pitchfork)

I'm beginning to believe that Web music discussion is affected by these same trends, though probably not as consciously (none of my editors have ever, ever broached the topic). Here, too, news portals and click-conscious bloggers must know they can get the most bang from their buck writing about topics with extremely broad appeal. Or topics with tiny but devout (often aka bored) followings. And this is where I get back to one of the things that's bold and awesome about Matt LeMay's band, Get Him Eat Him (although in response to Nick's post, I like the album but have no idea how I'd go about rating it-- knowing somebody involved with a band tends to make me worry both about being unfairly positive and about overcompensating for perhaps being unfairly positive): This is an environment where the Top 40, MTV, and American Idol acts still have cross-niche appeal to writers and readers; everybody likes and writes about the tiny amount of stuff that gets a national push from non-Internet media. It's also an environment where we, overloaded with information, devote an inordinate amount of time to albums nobody seems willing to admit they don't get (in fairness sometimes I probably just don't get 'em). The faltering mass culture and the above-reproach avant garde. [though: Why accept Clive Davis's story as credible? Doesn't it enhance a pop star's image to portray her as a rebel rather than a product?]

"ANYWAY" (hyuck hyuck) what Get Him Eat Him do is put together influences from unjustly undermentioned '90s indie-rock heroes like Chavez and Shudder to Think and write catchy songs and actually sing well. This is neither low-brow nor incomprehensibly outre. In fact it's so barely a few years ago ("Oh, I'm listening to an indie-rock band") it seems like the type of thing that could get overlooked in the New Promotional Order. A one-line post about a buzzed-about record you've never listened to in its entirety (but OMG it just hit oink) would be an easier, flashier lure for buzzers/ees. WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET PEOPLE TO LISTEN TO STUFF NOWADAYS??? Are we making music "work" or did the technology just get that way.


My Crystal Gayle shirt is ruined.
Jonathan Richman: Springtime in New York

Elsewhere:

Here's more on what I was getting at in the non-musical portion of the post that prompted this discussion with Dave Moore. If no journalism at least strives for objectivity (while inevitably failing), then we're further from a well-informed democracy:

"You can always dismiss a blogger, or a partisan paper like the New York Post, as biased. But The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal have long batted down this complaint. That's because it rings so empty. The MSM makes an earnest (albeit occasionally flawed) effort to achieve a neutral understanding of events, and that's the source of an authority and prestige that even its harshest critics in the political and corporate elite still must respect."

If you haven't gotten to Tom Ewing's latest Poptimist column yet, you should. Key point:

"[C]riticism isn't at the brass-rubbing stage quite yet. To fully avoid it, it seems to me as a reader that music critics will have to stop relying on their superior taste and expertise, and start trading on their ideas and the conversations they help spark."

One crazy addition: I read some of my favorite music writers also for the pleasure of their prose, savoring the vitality of their language as much as what the words convey (the way people can listen to an album that sounds good whether or not the lyrics match up) (cf. especially Meltzer, Bangs, and Xgau, yes he of the "Consumer Guide"). Good writing can function without necessarily being only overtly functional, right? (Not saying I can even achieve this, but ideally it's one more way we could make ourselves useful.)


Look at that, a bear mining for coal.
Yoko Ono and Cat Power: Revelations

FAITHLESS NOW, JUST GOT SOUL

Herds of nerds stubbornly compete to become king of a fantasy world.
Professor Brothers: History Lesson #1
(by Brad Neely, who also did this)


A reader recently e-mailed me with a smart question about my Pitchfork review of the great new Cub reissues.

READER: Just wondering what source you took the idea from for your conclusion on the Cub reissues review:

"It's been said that you can reason someone into believing in God, but you can't reason them out of it, and I wonder if it's the same way with true love: Once you've taken that leap of faith, does everything change?"

...[F]or some reason, the first part of your conclusion sent me off on some sort of mental/intellectual/odyssey thing...

I'd actually had a very specific piece in mind, and the e-mail caused me to go back and revisit it. I was thinking of a fantastic article by John Jeremiah Sullivan called "Upon This Rock", which appeared in GQ and was featured in Da Capo's Best Music Writing 2006. A lengthy feature on a Christian music festival, it includes the evocative passage below.

SULLIVAN: Belief and nonbelief are two giant planets, the orbits of which don't touch. Everything about Christianity can be justified within the context of Christian belief. That is, if you accept its terms. Once you do, your belief starts modifying the data (in ways that are themselves defensible, see?), until eventually the data begin to reinforce belief. The precise moment of illogic can never be isolated and may not exist. Like holding a magnifying glass at arm's length and bringing it toward your eye: Things are upside down, they're upside down, they're right side up. What lay between? If there was something, it passed too quickly to be observed. This is why you can never reason true Christians out of faith. It's not, as the adage has it, because they were never reasoned into it-- many were-- it's that faith is a logical door which locks behind you. What looks like a line of thought is steadily warping into a circle, one that closes with you inside. If this seems to imply that no apostate was ever a true Christian and that therefore, I was never one, I think I'd stand by both of those statements.

I hope I didn't just give away the ending.
Gui Boratto: Beautiful Life (cross-posted from Pitchfork)

Elsewhere:

Maureen Dowd on George Tenet: "If you have something deadly important to say, say it when it matters, or just shut up and slink off." Cool, but what if you've never had anything deadly important to say in an entire career as a professional political scrivener? Then you make up NASCAR-related quotes and call Democrats sissy girls. Dowd's not a misogynist, you see.

Fellow NYTer Frank Rich's Sunday column, "Earth to G.O.P.: The Gipper Is Dead" probably gets a pass from most of his readers because it bashes conservatives. Rich is playing for the right partisan team or whatever, but he's just so clearly unburdened by concepts like "truth" or "logic" that it's pretty hard to imagine what-- other than no doubt unparalleled social connections-- even qualifies the dude for his job. The Republican convention looks like a country club? Look at the Democratic candidates just eight years ago: white males only. Approving Matthew Dowd namedrop? Apparently, all supposedly cynical political journalists are required ignore the fact that a guy who changed from Democratic to Republican to work for now-President Bush might now, with Bush's poll numbers mired at Nixonian levels, have a professional motivation to turn on dear leader. Then there's Rich's bewildering construction on immigration.

RICH: The sole piece of compassionate conservatism that Mr. Bush has tried not to sacrifice to political expedience — nondraconian immigration reform — is also on the ropes, done in by a wave of xenophobia that he has failed to combat. Just how knee-jerk this strain has become could be seen in the MSNBC debate when Chris Matthews asked the candidates if they would consider a constitutional amendment to allow presidential runs by naturalized citizens like their party’s star governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger (an American since 1983), and its national chairman, Senator Mel Martinez of Florida. Seven out of 10 said no.

Um, so Republican presidential candidates wouldn't fulfill Chris Matthews' thigh-rubbing fantasies and tell him the muscular dude, not they, should be president. Why was he even asking this question, again? And does this really show "xenophobia"?

Ah, the true soul of your Washington press corps. David Broder, would-be Xgau of All Pundits, on one terrifying possibility of the upcoming Presidential primary schedule: "The time from February to Labor Day will be boring beyond belief." Priorities, priorities. (via Bob Somerby)


I've always dreamed of moving to Pakistan or India and becoming a cab driver.
Edwyn Collins and Paul Quinn: Pale Blue Eyes (Velvet Underground cover)


The New Republic's Clay Risen plays the role of a silly, logic-twisting political pundit: "Barack Obama is playing the role of the 'grassroots candidate'" he writes. "Obama plays the people's choice," Risen adds a graf later. In between, he cites the huge number of donors Obama boasts, indicating that the Illinois senator is, indeed, a candidate with grassroots support-- not just playing the role of one on TV. Oh no, some of the people who give to liberal Democrats are rich. Hedge fund managers, in fact. JOHN EDWARDS GETS EXPENSIVE HAIRCUTS! At one point, Risen even acknowledges that, in fact it's "somewhat inaccurate to lump [hedge fund managers] in with 'Wall Street,'" but two grafs later, he complains, "It's strange to see someone so young and so, well, liberal raking it in on the Street." Apparently, liberals are only allowed to get donations from poor people.

Meanwhile, TNR writer Thomas Edsall's report on the possibility Rudy Giuliani can not only win the Republican nomination, but reshape the party and win over Reagan Democrats is pretty terrifying to anybody concerned with civil rights and not going to additional misguided wars launched by complete fucking idiots. BTW, what's with Republicans and men who publicize their Viagra use?


Apparently "Mercury rising" is not a common expression everyone uses to indicate that they are going to get drinks and go clubbing.
Shop Boyz: Party Like a Rock Star (Tom Breihan's take)

Back at Pitchfork, Jess Harvell totally nails his assessments of two of the year's big albums, new LPs by Dan Deacon and Battles.

Woebot delivers a Panda Bear mix.

P.S. Anybody know how to keep the the blockquotes code in blogger from completely throwing off the font for the rest of a post?

I TRIED TO WAKE YOU WITH A REALLY LOUD COUGH

If I had the money to go to a record store, I would.
The Tough Alliance: First Class Riot (cross-posted from Pitchfork)

"STOP TREATING MUSIC LIKE IT’S YOUR STICKER COLLECTION."
- Chris Ott, guest-posted in Nick Sylvester's RiffMarket

In the early '80s, my cousin Kent gave me a 1981 Topps Joe Montana rookie card. Kent lived in Iowa, so he was more of a Green Bay Packers fan, and he knew that his younger cousin-- not yet old enough to appreciate the gift-- was a drooling San Francisco 49ers worshipper. Also, Kent is awesome. My mom, witnessing the destruction I had wreaked upon my collection of more contemporary cards from 1983 and 1984, wisely stashed the card away in a drawer, where it was never seen again until I was old enough to take care of it. I once sent it to Joe Montana himself to autograph; he demurred, saying that signing a rookie card can actually diminish its value. The card now sits beside the 1990 Pro Set card he signed instead, in a frame at my parents' house (until I'm old enough to take care of it).

At its early-'90s peak, as I recall, that beautiful slab of cardboard was worth more than $200, at least according to Beckett. Of course, considering I would never sell it, the card is both worthless and "priceless," like that 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card Bob Costas lugs around in his wallet. The value of the card lies in what it represents to me about my most beloved football team of all time, the Montana-era Niners, and the many happy hours I spent watching and obsessing over them. Is it a little pathetic to fetishize a piece of paper depicting a dude who named his first three kids Alexandra, Elizabeth, and Nathaniel so their full names would all have 16 letters, matching the number he famously wore as quarterback? Probably.

In conversation, I've complained as much as anybody about the current blog-o-matic tendency to treat bands like collectibles. Many writers seem to pack in as many posts per day with as many up-and-coming artists as possible, but their words usually show little love, appreciation, or understanding for the performers they so tirelessly promote. What are the Cold War Kids about? My Pitchfork review revealed one interpretation, but I'd never seen any of their supposed online fans ever give the idea much thought, something that to me seems irreconcilable with normal fandom. How do they sing along? Further, the obsession with collecting seems not just shallow but also narrow, excluding, as Ott notes and Nick observed recently in a piece on Matt LeMay's Get Him Eat Him, a broad swathe of great bands (more on this in a future rant).

All those criticisms still stand. But reading Ott's post, I'm beginning to wonder if the "sticker collector" gripe might not be, probably subconsciously, a proxy for bigger worries. After all, the phrase "record collection" is common parlance, and even if it implies something different than music appreciation or fandom, broad knowledge/ownership of records hardly seems like a negative (except perhaps in the case of "record-collector rock"). Aside from the superficial, no-commitments way many people approach this stuff, I'm not sure what's wrong with a record collection per se. Don't we WANT kids to listen to more music?

Now, I'm sure Ott is being sincere, but it's particularly convenient for a guy like him-- whose "collection" might be said to include the likes of Joy Division, the Clash, Pink Floyd, Arab Strap, Stephen Malkmus, the Constantines, and uh Carlos D.-- to tell today's fervent young music acquirers to cease and desist. Imagine the parallel: A geezer with a yellowing hoard of '60,'70s, '80s and '90s baseball cards starts insisting that people shouldn't bother collecting anything he doesn't already own. If people follow this dude's advice, his collection will become more valuable, and theirs will become worthless. It's common knowledge that more music is put out today than ever; so, too, will the old guy avoid having to learn and obtain the endless varieties of premium and superpremium baseball cards and inserts released in recent years. Lucky that guy!

But bands aren't baseball cards, obviously-- or pogs, or stickers. I've never claimed to have always known as much about music as the modicum I know even now, and Ott certainly wasn't born clutching a 1952 Mickey Mantle. Someone had to give it to him. Instead of wishing technology would slow down or telling young music fans how they suck (and sometimes they do!), it would be more productive to help explain to them why we value certain older records, to help them appreciate new and old music rather than merely compete to own it. This is the function of a good music critic. It's in all of our collective best interest to foster a new generation of people who care about music as passionately as we do, just as it's in-- pardon me for again comparing art and commerce-- the best interest of the National Football League to inspire the kind of passion I had for Joe Montana's 49ers.

Of course, it's always in the best interest of an individual critic to be a dick. Otherwise, how would you get other bloggers to whine about you?


We got our own jihad if you know what I mean.
Bill Richardson: Job Interview and Tell Me

Elsewhere:

Via Bob Somerby, Jack Welch's well-paid Nantucket boys make a joke of your Democratic and Republican presidential debates. Brian Williams, the guy who made you rich is a billionaire douchebag-- do you still let him kiss you good night?:

BRIAN WILLIAMS, OPENING QUESTION (4/26/07): Senator Clinton, your party's leader in the United States Senate, Harry Reid, recently said the war in Iraq is lost. A letter to today's USA Today calls his comments "treasonous" and says if General Patton were alive today, Patton would wipe his boots with Senator Reid. Do you agree with the position of your leader in the Senate?

CHRIS MATTHEWS, OPENING QUESTION (5/3/07): In the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, just 22 percent believe this country is on the right track. Mayor Giuliani, how do we get back to Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America"?

Williams tells us Patton would "wipe his boots" with a top Democrat, then asks Clinton if she supports such a treasonous wimp. Matthews implies the country was last on the right track under a Republican, using the Gipper's own marketing slogan. How do we get such utterly bizarre behavior from a so-called liberal media? Make your own inferences from a recent Poynter item: "Journalists shouldn't be part of a royal class in America."

A recent article in The New Republic by Joseph D. Becker raises important points about the growing divide between the nobles and the peasants in our glorious democracy:

BECKER: Last year, the president of the United States--the CEO of the country--was paid $400,000, with a $50,000 allowance for expenses and up to $100,000 for travel. The amounts are fixed by statute and do not vary with the success or failure of his administration. With responsibilities hardly comparable to the president's, the CEO of Citigroup made nearly $26,000,000 in 2006 (counting all benefits). He may have done better in his job than the luckless president did in his, but surely not 47 times better. Further, if the average annual wage of non-executive employees of Citigroup was, say, $50,000, the CEO made 520 times their salary. There are dozens of such astonishing cases. As a member of Congress recently said, "The average CEO makes more money before lunch than the average worker earns all year."

Becker goes on to call for a study group (how bold!) to look into ways to restrain surging public-sector compensation. However, his critics will point out that this will only cause executives to jump to the private sector, where their pay ISN'T restrained, or even public. And they'd be right. This problem goes way beyond Wall Street.

In a startling development, noted policy wonk Jonathan Cohn calls for more policy wonkery. I'm a big fan of Cohn's policy prescriptions, but I'm skeptical of the politics of this post. Earnestly or not, Cohn is basically the latest guy to carry the Edwards campaign's memetic water, insisting that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton need to give "details" on how they will implement their health care policies, when any honest answer at this early stage would have to be "it depends." Presidents don't enact health care legislation; legislators do. Matthew Yglesias gives an historical view of the subject.

Meanwhile, Colbert isn't just parody, folks. Wall Street Journal columnist Stephen Rademaker recently published a column attacking the "Blame America First" crowd. Subscription required, because people pay for this shit. Murdoch knows what's up.

Finally, there is no God: MC Rove might be an atheist. [UPDATE: He's also toast.]

RIGHT NOW MY JOB IS EATING THESE DONUTS

I will punish my body until I believe in my soul.
My Bloody Valentine: Lovelee Sweet Darlene

Is it weird that I like to hear Justice's "D.A.N.C.E." (vid) and "B.E.A.T." (stream), two sides of the same dance-pop single, as metamusic? In this jaded day and scene, their fun-oriented directness seems to me like a music-critical statement in itself. Where LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge" ironically challenged aspiring dance fans to wayback through hipster history (where kids' lack of taste-- "you don't know what you really want"-- would always keep them a little "behind"), the simple Jackson Five-Oh instructions of the Justice tracks return the dance floor from the heads to the hips. Even if those hips belong to wedding-reception grandmas who'd just as soon be wiggling to "Y.M.C.A.". Oy.

Frank Rich was wrong, as expected: Thus far, Don Imus's firing hasn't had a "chilling effect" on free speech, at least not on other talk radio outlets, the New York Times reports. To Rich's credit, he finally turns on the press myth of Saint Condoleeza Rice in today's column, though he continues to place Colin Powell on a long-since-undeserved pedestal. Oh, to be Rich.

Saint John McCain doesn't care about gay people. Mainstream media orgs don't care, period. (Also: Matthew Yglesias on McCain's infinite dumbness.)

FreakyTrigger's latest Poptimism podcast includes Simian Mobile Disco, Justice, Uffie, and a Robyn vs. The Cure mashup.

Kelefa Sanneh praises the virtues of nostalgia. I have a couple of quibbles, but I love that he recognizes the trans-genre importance of sentimentality to music fandom: "We fans are a flighty, easily distractible, gossipy, hopelessly sentimental bunch; our fondness for reunions only underscores the point. Fans of punk and postpunk once thought of themselves as different, but the current reconstitutional convention makes it clear that Pixies fans aren’t so different from Fleetwood Mac fans." (But surely Steve Albini is still better than Fleetwood Mac fans?)

Get Lonely: Bob Desper album download.

Barry Ritholtz lists famous wrong opinions: "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."

Oh and I forgot to link to my Patrick Wolf review at Playboy.com (Cleveland Steamer jokes get edited out even at Playboy, kids, sorry).

Surely you've listened to M.I.A.'s "Hit That" by now.

BOFA DEEZ.


It's about to get metaphysical.
Architecture in Helsinki: Heart It Races


Brian Williams wuvs Rush Limbaugh. I am so gonna keep blogging about your worthless millionaire ass, Williams.
Rush Limbaugh: Barack the Magic Negro

THE BUTTER WOULDN'T MELT SO I PUT IT IN THE HOT POCKET

I'm a great sucker for cheerful amateurism.
Primitive Radio Gods: Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with a Song Title That Makes for Easy, Invariably Awful Jokes

In case you needed any further evidence the '90s are back, some angry white man has a column in today's Wall Street Journal clucking about that foul specter, "political correctness." Daniel fox-in-the Henninger writes (reg. req'd):

"Some were brought down by it, and some have made a living from it. Today, there are people who even say that the satire on shows such as 'South Park' or the 'Daily Show' have made political correctness a harmless amusement. We have become so cool that we can simultaneously abide PC's merciless strictures against saying the wrong things about the right people even as we laugh at our subjugation to PC.

Despite the ironic mockery, political correctness still packs a punch. Say the wrong thing today and you can be gone tomorrow, your status as a top broadcaster, university president or politician obliterated. It happens in the small space of a sentence -- defrocked, banished, gonzo."

That's not what gonzo means! Henninger goes on to liken people getting pissed off at highly paid public figures saying fuckwit things to "burning witches"-- a comparison that certainly ought to be covered by Godwin's Law. I'm sure Henninger, as a white male and therefore someone who could potentially be called a "n***** guy," is sincerely concerned about this one disadvantage suffered by us white dudes: If you're wildly successful beyond your abilities but act like a moron, you might lose your easy, high-paying job. BOO. However, his reasoning is as dumb as a box of very small rocks.

It's hard to say, exactly, why Imus ever should've had a position of influence and power. But it's easy to see why he got fired: because he was acting like a douchebag, and because it's hard to say why he ever should've had a position of influence and power. If, for inst, Imus had had any real qualifications or special abilities to fall back on-- any unique redeeming qualities to offer the public-- perhaps he would've been spared. I mean,I didn't really care whether he lost his job or not, but either way some other talentless douchebag (or, novel idea: a talented, non-douchebag!) would be just as qualified to bloviate ignorantly about national affairs... So away Imus went. Yes, this could happen to other overpaid white guys. Eek!

Progressives need to start co-opting "political correctness"-- at this point an increasingly vague, invariably derogatory term-- and using it to describe the 21st-century PC police: all those who claim people who oppose the official White House foreign policy line (such as it is) are supporting the terrorists. The next time Joe Lieberman or Dick Cheney or The National Review or Brian Williams or Howard Kurtz calls patriotic Americans who disagree with them "traitors," the correct response is: "Take your 'political correctness' elsewhere, sir. Most Americans happen to agree with me on this. BTW, SUCK MY BALLS."

This dude totally doesn't watch Daily Show or South Park.


Oh I, M-B-V M-B-V M-B-V M-B-V M-B-V more M-B-V hi-fi.
Kraftwerk: Kometenmelodie 2

UPDATE: Jonathan Chait responds to the responders, and he and I agree: "My point is that the netroots have helped break down one epistemological prison but have created another. Neither the David Broder method of establishing truth nor the Markos Moulitsas method of establishing truth is very reliable. Yet the reflexive equivocators use the bloggers to justify their reflexive equivocation, and the bloggers use the reflexive equivocators to justify their reflexive partisanship. Alterman concludes that the netroots have made the country a better place, and my piece concurs."