Political Culture: We Said We Wanted a Revolution…
Thursday, November 20th, 2008 by Jon Cummings
“Eighty percent of success in life is just showing up.” – Woody Allen
For a few years there – as George Bush “won” a pair of shady elections and then repeatedly defied the Constitution, the will of the people and any decent measure of common sense – Americans disenchanted or disgusted by his reign could be forgiven for wondering if some sort of coup might be required to remove the Republicans from power. Such a measure seemed unlikely, of course, and not just because violent overthrow is about as un-American as, say, torture. It’s worth noting that, in order to stage a coup, a large number of us would have needed to get our asses up off the sofa and take to the streets! Instead, we spent seven years watching dejectedly, furiously – but, for the most part, passively – as Bush and his minions screwed up every single thing they touched.
In the end, however, electing Barack Obama and ending the Bush era didn’t require violence, or even civil disobedience. All it required was the force of our better ideas, the inspiration of a great young leader – and the resolve to stand steadfast against a stream of vitriol from politicians (and their dwindling core of followers) who couldn’t believe their house of malfeasance and misanthropy was at long last crumbling around them. American democracy finally proved capable of withstanding even Bush and the modern GOP – assuming, that is, that Bush and Dick Cheney actually vacate their residences on January 20.
We did stand with Obama this fall, and we did it in huge numbers. It’s been a big year for big crowds – big, peaceful crowds, fortunately. Since the beginning of this election cycle we’ve all marveled at the turnouts for Obama’s rallies, from 15,000 freezing souls at his announcement speech in February ’07 to a convention crowd of 90,000 in Denver, 100,000 in St. Louis, 200,000 in Berlin, and 250,000 in Chicago for his victory speech. Guesstimates of the turnout for his inauguration are already off the charts; officials are preparing for an onslaught of up to 4 million celebrants on the National Mall.
Of course, Obama’s big crowds were never a perfect measure of his qualities as a candidate. They certainly did bear witness to his charisma, and his strength as an orator. More than that, though, I believe they were a testament to Americans’ pent-up desire to express ourselves politically, to participate in the act of changing this country, simply by virtue of Showing Up. It was a spirit of urgency and, yes, patriotism that also led millions of us to click a button on the Internet and send Obama another $10 or $100 every couple of months, and led many thousands to volunteer in campaign offices, on the phone and around our neighborhoods.
I’ve been thinking about those crowds a lot lately – and not just because I’ve been weighing the question of whether or not to fly cross-country and join the revelers on the Mall. (I’m currently leaning against it, though if Clooney or Spielberg has a couple seats open on the Gulfstream I’m willing to rethink.) The real impetus has been my recent viewing of a wonderful documentary, The Singing Revolution, that is being readied for DVD release in early 2009. It recalls the people of Estonia’s inspiring efforts to keep their culture alive through decades of Soviet occupation and even genocide, and shows how they finally gained their independence without spilling a drop of blood – by expressing their national pride through song, and by simply Showing Up in large numbers, unarmed, to assert their right to freedom. (more…)



A decade ago this past summer,
But 10 Things was much more than a showcase for Ledger and Julia Stiles, the co-star who also used the film as a springboard to greater fame and fortune. For all the contrivances of its Shakespearean plot, the film is among the most sensible and believable of the teen genre, full of warm and funny performances from a terrific supporting cast. Grown-ups Larry Miller and Alison Janney get some of the best moments, happily – particularly Miller as an Ob-Gyn so paranoid about his daughters dating that he forces them to “wear the [empathy] belly around the living room” before they leave the house. “Kissing? That’s what you think happens [at the prom]? I’ve got news for you. Kissing isn’t what keeps me up to my elbows in placenta all day long.”
I couldn’t agree more with that analysis, but I would take it a step further: Obama must also take great care to ensure that we don’t forget his poet’s heart. Americans face tough times over the next few years, despite our newfound optimism in the wake of Obama’s election; chances are pretty good that, no matter what new policies he implements after his inauguration, our downward economic spiral will continue well into his term. Chances are excellent, meanwhile, that as Obama chooses his battles and launches his new initiatives, critics on the left will ask why he’s not doing even more, while critics on the right will simply dismiss everything he’s doing as pointless and misguided (if not Socialist and anti-American).
“It’s like riding a bike!” Kay Hanley exclaimed last Saturday night, acknowledging the audience’s raucous response to her reunion with Letters to Cleo at the Roxy in West Hollywood. Eight years had passed since the band’s breakup, yet – with the benefit of just three days of rehearsals in an L.A. warehouse – Hanley and her mates managed to pull together an almost impossibly tight performance as they resurrected their power-pop sound of the ’90s.
But it wasn’t until the close of Obama’s magnificent victory speech, after the pageantry and the big extended-family waveathon … it wasn’t until everyone else had left the stage, and Obama turned back and gave one last salute to the crowd, that I began weeping uncontrollably. A headache I had been nursing all day finally dissipated, and the tension I’d been carrying around for two months … for two years … for eight years, really, finally seemed to melt away.
What’s the big deal here? you might ask. After all, voters in 26 states already have written such restrictions into their constitutions – why not California? The difference is this: On Tuesday, for the first time, a state’s voters will be going to the polls with the power to take an existing marriage right away from same-sex couples. That is, Californians will be deciding whether to tell more than 11,000 couples who have exchanged wedding vows since last May that their marriages are no longer legally valid. Each voter’s moral and ethical decision on Prop 8 will not be made in the abstract, as those decisions were in other states, but will have real and immediate consequences.
Don Dixon may never quite achieve the lofty stature of rock and roll’s Great Men, but there’s no questioning that for nearly 40 years he’s been one of the industry’s great guys. He’s a repository of well-told tales about musicians famous and forgotten; a producer of renown who midwifed some of the ’80s’ greatest “college-rock” hits; and co-godhead of a cult following that blossomed over years of onstage magic he created alongside his wife, singer Marti Jones. Through all of that, Dixon also has built a small but diverse catalog of recordings under his own name. His songs have explored themes ranging from the personal to the momentous to the ridiculous, but even as his work has matured Dixon has never forgotten the value of a great pop hook.
Most of the Girls Like to Dance But Only Some of the Boys Like To (1985)
There’s a faction of music fans out there who are annoyed by Ray LaMontagne, and it’s not too difficult to understand why. Here’s a guy who refuses to behave like a pop star, or even a traditional frontman, after taking 50 bucks of your money. Onstage, he occupies one edge of his band’s semicircular setup and rarely moves from his spot, meaning that patrons on the right side of the auditorium may never see his face in full. There’s no spotlight on him, no between-song communication with the audience, and LaMontagne seems so shy … not so much shy, actually, but occasionally uncertain of his surroundings and his place within them … that a listener can be forgiven for wondering if one more obnoxious “whoop” or song request from the audience will spur poor Ray to pack up his guitar and go back to that shoe factory in Maine, never to be heard from again.
Well, maybe that’s an overreaction to the fact that his vocals were mic’ed just barely above his accompaniment, and some of those patrons (this wasn’t the youngest crowd the Wiltern has ever hosted) probably were straining just to hear them. Nevertheless, there’s much to be said for a person of such immense talent who insists upon immersing himself in his band’s groove, rather than dominating it. And LaMontagne, whose L.A. gig came near the end of a six-week nationwide trek, clearly has found his comfort zone (and his preferred decibel level) within the confines of his rhythm section (Jennifer Condos on bass, producer Ethan Johns on drums), keyboardist Chris Joiner, and particularly within the open and elastic sounds of guitarist and pedal-steel virtuoso Eric Heywood.
Whether you were a child of the ’60s or (like me) of the ’70s, the Beatles’ perpetual presence on the radio seemed something of a birthright. Every “official” Beatles single between “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “The Long and Winding Road” reached the Billboard Top 40, and for five years after the band’s 1970 breakup all four members were reliable fixtures on AM radio. That omnipresence began to fade in 1975 as John Lennon went into retirement, George Harrison’s hitmaking became hit-or-miss, and Ringo … well, Ringo seemed to lose his mojo right around the time he found producer Arif Mardin.
A couple of funny things happened to Macca on the way to the ’80s, however. Sixteen days into the new decade, he was handcuffed at Tokyo International Airport while trying to smuggle a rather large quantity of weed into the country, and instead of giving him a slap on the hand and looking the other way, Japanese authorities locked him up for nine days and threatened to throw away the key (before eventually relenting). He returned home to find erstwhile bandmate Denny Laine exploiting the event with a single called “Japanese Tears,” and suddenly Paul found himself without a band once again.
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