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Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Today's Tune: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Born to Run (Live)
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Springsteen's age meaningless, since his music's timeless
By GRETCHEN C. VAN BENTHUYSEN
ASBURY PARK PRESS STAFF WRITER
September 22, 2009
http://www.app.com/
Go ahead and wish Bruce Springsteen a happy 60th birthday today, but don't expect him to act like an old man any time soon.
"I think turning 60 is a milestone of some sort," said rock 'n' roll photographer Danny Clinch of Toms River. "It sure makes people who are 45 like me look bad when he can run around on a stage for 3 1/2 hours a night."
Tim Donnelly of Seaside Heights, who produced Clinch's current exhibition "Be True: Bruce Springsteen in New Jersey 1999-2009" in Asbury Park, agrees.
"When you see him perform, you know he can rock at any age, that you can't put a number on it," he said.
So why are people making such a big deal about it?
Not only is Springsteen on the cover of AARP magazine, hundreds of educators, journalists, historians and fans are expected to descend this week on the Stone Pony in Asbury Park and Monmouth University in West Long Branch for "Glory Days, a Bruce Springsteen Symposium."
Among them will be Robert Santelli, executive director of the new Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. Recently he signed to be the curator of the Michael Jackson Touring Exhibition opening in London and traveling to Tokyo and New York City.
"Bruce is a significant American music artist," said Santelli, a former music correspondent for the Asbury Park Press. "He's among American music titans such as Dylan, Muddy Waters, Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson.
"Both his life and his legacy have impacted the American culture," Santelli said. "But most of those people have passed or been embedded into American music history. Bruce is still making history. He's active and participating."
Santelli was a Monmouth University student when the Stone Pony opened in 1974.
"I spent at least three nights a week there, religiously getting a music education seeing Springsteen and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes," said Santelli, who returns Thursday for a panel discussion at the now internationally known rock club. On Friday, he is on the symposium panel titled "Tribute to Danny Federici."
Still relevant
Also there in the early years was Lee Mrowicki, whom Santelli nicknamed "The Voice of the Stone Pony." Mrowicki said he was playing demo tapes of Springsteen's music on Monmouth University's radio station long before his first record came out.
"Springsteen's music is still relevant today," Mrowicki said. "He's made the transition without really saying that he feels older. He's writing for us as he always has, whether we're in our 20s, 30s, 40s . . . and now 60s."
For people who live at the Jersey Shore, he said, Springsteen's music has more resonance.
"He's lived the same life we've lived," he said. "We see the same boardwalk and ocean, know the places in Freehold and Asbury and the blue-collar lifestyle.
August 25, Saratoga, New York
"Everything we have in our lives he's written about — the situations, the romance, the ups and downs — we can all relate to that."
So can about 84,000 other New Jersey residents expected to turn 60 this year as well. When they were born in 1949, Communism was on the march around the world, the Red Scare was gaining ground in the United States with celebrities such as Helen Keller being named, David Ben-Gurion becames Israel's first prime minister and both the Federal Republic of Germany and Republic of Ireland were founded.
"Any time you have a birthday with a zero at the end, it's a milestone," said Mark Bernhard, director of continuing and professional education at Virginia Tech and the "Glory Days" conference planner. "I think the older we get, the less the number really means, and we can certainly see that, in concert, Bruce doesn't act 60.
"It's amazing he's been so relevant and vibrant for so many years," he said. "His music and lyrics have influenced our culture, and that's pretty neat."
Healing powers
Donna Dolphin, a professor at Monmouth University with expertise in American roots music, sees Springsteen as our national healer.
"In times of our greatest crisis, Bruce Springsteen speaks up for us and articulates our collective pain and suffering," said Dolphin, who will address the issue as part of the symposium on Saturday. "He's becoming for us a great empathic educator."
Although Springsteen may seem ageless, she said, his music has matured as he's grown older and he's embraced the "hurt song," seen in "The Rising" after the Sept. 11 attacks and "The Seeger Sessions" after Hurricane Katrina.
"His music has become politicized, but not the finger-pointing, critical kind of stuff," she said. "He's trying to heal wounds and fractured communities by making us all feel the experience."
In other words, she added, "He's just getting better and better and better."
Now, what 60-year-old wouldn't mind getting that as a present?
Springsteen ages gracefully, work ethic intact
By MICHAEL RILEY
ASBURY PARK PRESS STAFF WRITER
September 20, 2009
http://www.app.com/
Bruce Springsteen saw this coming from way back. The Boss is turning 60 on Wednesday, Sept. 23, and there's plenty of evidence that this landmark has not snuck up on the Freehold native or scared the bejezus out of him.
August 19, Hartford, Connecticut
Rock stars are not known for this kind prescience, and the ones who die young and leave a drug-ridden, vomit-covered corpse are at least spared looking like the fools who pass their prime and keep on playing the same old stuff or new stuff that is indistinguishable from the past stuff.
Exhibit A in the "how silly it all looks now" department has to be Pete Townshend's 1966 nihilistic ode to youth, "My Generation," with its infamous line:
"Hope I die before I get old."
Oops.
Too late.
At what point in his long career did Townshend realize his prayer went unanswered?
Of course, in some ways, you can't blame young artists for their Rimbaud-like poses. It's easy to want to die early when you believe you're immortal and indestructible.
Still, contrast Townshend's half-hearted death wish with Springsteen's hope in "Glory Days":
"I hope, when I get old, I don't sit around thinking about it, but I probably will ... "
Those are two entirely different hopes.
It was 25 years ago when he wrote that song, and as he performed it in concert, he often ended it with a kind of riff with his on-stage foil, E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons:
"Don't ever be stopping. Because I hear that big clock ticking away, every minute of my life, every day. It says, 'Boss, you're 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35.' Big Man ... we're adults!"
And Springsteen would shake his head ... and laugh.
Dealing with life
But you can go back to Springsteen's very first album to hear a young man in his 20s looking forward to the years ahead. In "Growin' Up" he sings:
"Well, my feet, they finally took root in the earth, but I got me a nice little place in the stars."
September 13, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
That's not to say that Springsteen's early work isn't full of the Sturm und Drang of adolescence — the end of the world romantic break-up, the pitched father-and-son battles — but nearly always, there is a sense in the words and music that somehow, we'll get through this.
But Springsteen is no Voltaire; he knows that this is not "the best of all possible worlds." Some of the folks in his songs come to bad and tragic ends.
Of course, his attention to detail, something that comes with maturity, if not always with age, puts that worst of circumstances into a world-weary perspective that cannot, finally, extinguish hope.
"For what are we without hope in our hearts?" he asks, even on the bleakest of his albums, "The Ghost of Tom Joad."
Maybe that kind of hope only comes with the passage of time.
It was Neil Young who told us that, "it's better to burn out than fade away."
Well, of course it is. Who would deny it?
But Springsteen is one whose career has been a reminder to us that those are not the only two choices. When Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, it was U2's Bono who gave the induction speech. Among the many nice things he said about his friend was this observation: "Bruce Springsteen, you always knew, was not gonna die stupid."
Bono was right, and here's why: When you frame your art in a way that keeps growing through the years, when the population of the world you've created ages as you and your audience age, when you take satisfaction in the value of good work done well, and when you make that move to bring the blessings you've banked over the decades to help others, then you've achieved something that fills your life with something close to joy.
Facing the inevitable
You get the sense sometimes, from his most recent work, that Springsteen may be, in the words of the old spiritual, ready to start "looking over Jordan."
A man does that at a certain age. Nothing wrong with that.
But at the age of 60, Springsteen seems ready to master the art of growing old. And those who are growing older with him, who have taken heart from his music for three decades now, those who understand that his anthem, "Land of Hope and Dreams," with its almost Biblical imagery, ends with the kind of excitement the Old Testament prophets tried to coax out of a hard-hearted people, that sense that Joel had when he wrote, "Old men shall dream dreams," and Isaiah's promise that all those who hope will one day "renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint."
And they will keep on singing.
Springsteen at 60: Not blinded by the light
By CHRIS JORDAN
ASBURY PARK PRESS STAFF WRITER
September 20, 2009
http://www.app.com/
Bruce Springsteen is a time traveler.
The essence of his early songs was the struggle to get to that next point in life, in the future, when things around him would make sense and he would feel secure in the center of it.
August 25, Saratoga, New York
That's what you have to do when you're young and bound and driven. You have to live outside yourself. Escape or explode. Springsteen, who turns 60 on Wednesday, Sept. 23, expertly articulated this — especially for his fellow New Jerseyans, whose part of the world felt like the most remote place in the universe. Back then, in the '70s, there was nothing but desperation and highways and bright lights in the distance, like the rides that flickered along the Asbury Park boardwalk. But were the lights a mirage or a destination?
While traveling into his future, the Freehold native has forged perhaps the most unique career in rock 'n' roll history. Consider his relationship with his fans, especially those in Jersey. We know the guy — he's one of us. We see him, we bump into him — who doesn't have a Springsteen story to tell? Maybe there is a PR machine at work to keep the focus on him as a regular guy, but even if there weren't, we feel — we want to believe — that the Springsteen the public sees is the real Springsteen.
There's been just enough tarnish for that to seem so. "Lucky Town" and "Human Touch" come to mind. There are other things, too, but they kind of serve to enhance a noble yet flawed character. Springsteen is the kind of guy the rest us can only pretend to be — modest, powerful, charitable, sympathetic and able to rock a stadium of 60,000 and ride away into the distance on his Harley.
Again, there's the destination. It's getting closer, but where will it be and what form will it take? Perhaps sensing this, Springsteen lately has been as active as ever and has maintained his highest profile since he started recording for Columbia Records in 1973. Life's journey doesn't last forever, and certainly Springsteen's ride with the E Street Band won't last forever either. The heartbreaking loss of band member Danny Federici in 2008 proved the tide of time is an insurmountable force.
So, too, is Springsteen, the once young time traveler who now finds himself in his future. He's a sage man who backed a future president, — no, not John Kerry — took on Ticketmaster and still rocks like a kid.
This is a busy moment, his 60th birthday. Springsteen — along with Robert De Niro, Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck and opera singer Grace Bumbry — will be celebrated at this year's Kennedy Center Honors Gala in December. More immediately, Springsteen and the E Street Band will perform the last concerts in the history of Giants Stadium from Wednesday, Sept. 30, to Friday, Oct. 9. Recently released tickets are available for the first four shows.
Related events include "Glory Days: A Bruce Springsteen Symposium," set to take place Friday, Sept. 25, to Sunday, Sept. 27, at Monmouth University in West Long Branch and surrounding areas and the "Be True" photography exhibit by Danny Clinch, featuring Springsteen photos taken from 1999 to this year in New Jersey. It's at the Third Avenue Pavilion on the Asbury Park boardwalk through Sunday, Sept. 27.
September 16, Greenville, South Carolina
Later, Springsteen and Jerry Seinfeld co-headline a benefit show on Nov. 17 for Autism Speaks at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
After this flurry of activity and the end of the current tour in November, the band will take a year or two off, said Steven Van Zandt in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.
"We're still making records, still making competitive records," Van Zandt said. "We just refuse to be a nostalgic act. Bruce has never stopped writing great songs."
The future is here for Springsteen, the man once dubbed the future of rock 'n' roll. The lights aren't so far off in the distance now. They've become illuminating, not disorienting.
Bruce Springsteen: Still Going Strong at Age 60
Paying Homage to a Rock Icon on his Birthday
By Louis P. Masur
http://www.popmatters.com/
21 September 2009
As Bruce Springsteen turns 60, music's durability - and his - are no surprise
By David Hinckley
New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/
Updated Wednesday, September 23rd 2009, 3:13 PM
Getty/AP
Bruce Springsteen performing in 1980 (l.) and in July 2009. He turns 60 on Wednesday.
Bruce Springsteen turns 60 today, an age at which the idea of still playing rock 'n' roll once seemed as remote as still primping for the prom.
Today, however, no one thinks Springsteen is defying any unwritten laws of nature by spending his birthday week prepping for five shows starting next Tuesday at Giants Stadium.
If there's a lesson here, it has more to do with the music and the fans than with Springsteen – because their durability is more impressive than even his.
Springsteen has done an extraordinary job of keeping his music vital and fresh, and keeping himself vital and fresh enough to sing it for two and a half hours.
But from all the thousands of bands who have played rock 'n' roll over the last 30, 40, 50 years, plain old statistical probability says a few would have the combination of skill, drive and luck to keep going. The Rolling Stones. Paul McCartney. Bob Dylan. Aerosmith. Elton John and Billy Joel. The Who. Others.
What more defies the odds is the music itself, which was almost universally written off almost from birth as the temporary fascination of flighty teenagers who would tire of it as quickly as they tired of ducktail haircuts.
"I tell you flatly," Jackie Gleason is said to have declared, "it won't last."
He wasn't alone. He also wasn't right.
All that happened was that rock 'n' roll stretched. Some of stayed forever young, some of it grew up with the fans it acquired along the way.
Millions of Americans in their 50s, 60s and even 70s still love rock 'n' roll – the same way, a few years from now, the same will be true of rap, another musical style that was crucified as an alien invader when it arrived.
Bruce Springsteen isn't competing with Beyonce and Katy Perry for top-40 airplay these days. He doesn't have to. He can survive – blossom, thrive – by playing to a whole different crowd.
And that's the real story for his birthday.
The idea of musicians and singers performing into their 60s and 70s is as old as music and singing. Frank Sinatra did. Joe Turner did it.
The two main reasons it's perceived as different for rock 'n' rollers is that first, rock 'n' roll is still sometimes considered teenage music, and second, a Bruce Springsteen or Mick Jagger stage show is a little more physically taxing than a Tony Bennett stage show.
It's true that some of rock 'n' roll was and always will be for teenagers. It's truer that a lot of it always spoke to post-teens, and that's become even truer as time has passed.
Springsteen's most powerful album this decade, "The Rising," was for grownups, people who have been around long enough to think about something like 9/11 in contexts ranging from personal and political to theological. Dylan's best record this decade, "Love and Theft," was written from the perspective of someone Dylan's age – in his 60s.
Springsteen still occasionally sings "Growing Up," an hilarious and at times painful reminiscence on being the odd duck in school. Songs like "Born to Run" and "Thunder Road," or "Fourth of July (Sandy)," were songs of young, restless love.
But other songs he wrote while he was still in his 20s, like "Promised Land" or "Badlands," are contemplating matters that go way beyond that. The only thing that's changed in the 30 years since he wrote them is that they've become true in more ways.
In general, the artists who have kept performing into their 60s wrote songs that weren't just for kids. Even Chuck Berry, who is 83 and still occasionally performs though he has no voice left, didn't only write the teen anthems that made him famous.
"Johnny B. Goode" or "Maybelline" are just good stories.
Jerry Lee Lewis, who turns 74 next week, just recorded a new album. But he can still sing "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," because it's a party song, and a whole lotta people in their 60s or higher either still enjoy a good party or remember fondly when they did.
The general impression of many artists who perform into their 60s is that they are primarily selling memories, and it's true that if you hear a show by the Temptations or the Harptones or some splinter Beach Boys group, you'll hear very few songs that are less than 40 years old.
But those who therefore dismiss early rock 'n' roll as "oldies" or "nostalgia," as if those are frivolous indulgences of no measurable value, are kin to the same people who said rock 'n' roll had no value in the first place.
No one criticized Sinatra or Lena Horne for singing songs that were 40 or 50 years old. They were "standards" and "classics."
Bulletin: So is a whole lotta rock. Even the teenage part. A great teenage love song doesn't stop being a great love song when the listener turns 20.
Fans sometimes sneer at the Rolling Stones or Paul McCartney for "only" singing their old songs, as if singing songs that strong and resonant is just a cynical exercise in making money.
It's true enough that "Sympathy for the Devil" doesn't sound the same now as it did 40 years ago. It's a different time, a lot of things have happened - and none of them erase or diminish "Sympathy for the Devil."
The same is true when McCartney sings "The Long and Winding Road," or even "I Saw Her Standing There." Those songs last because there's something solid at the center, and hearing them sung by their creators is something that – well, let's lay it right down – isn't going to happen forever.
What price would a fan pay to hear John Lennon sing "In My Life," or Jimi Hendrix play "The Wind Cries Mary" again? We can't. They won't.
Rock 'n' roll classics now well over 50 years old are imbedded in the American DNA.
Hearing Bruce Springsteen sing his as he turns 60, and sing them well as he does, is a great bonus. It's not a surprise.
ASBURY PARK PRESS STAFF WRITER
September 22, 2009
http://www.app.com/
Go ahead and wish Bruce Springsteen a happy 60th birthday today, but don't expect him to act like an old man any time soon."I think turning 60 is a milestone of some sort," said rock 'n' roll photographer Danny Clinch of Toms River. "It sure makes people who are 45 like me look bad when he can run around on a stage for 3 1/2 hours a night."
Tim Donnelly of Seaside Heights, who produced Clinch's current exhibition "Be True: Bruce Springsteen in New Jersey 1999-2009" in Asbury Park, agrees.
"When you see him perform, you know he can rock at any age, that you can't put a number on it," he said.
So why are people making such a big deal about it?
Not only is Springsteen on the cover of AARP magazine, hundreds of educators, journalists, historians and fans are expected to descend this week on the Stone Pony in Asbury Park and Monmouth University in West Long Branch for "Glory Days, a Bruce Springsteen Symposium."
Among them will be Robert Santelli, executive director of the new Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. Recently he signed to be the curator of the Michael Jackson Touring Exhibition opening in London and traveling to Tokyo and New York City.
"Bruce is a significant American music artist," said Santelli, a former music correspondent for the Asbury Park Press. "He's among American music titans such as Dylan, Muddy Waters, Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson.
"Both his life and his legacy have impacted the American culture," Santelli said. "But most of those people have passed or been embedded into American music history. Bruce is still making history. He's active and participating."
Santelli was a Monmouth University student when the Stone Pony opened in 1974.
"I spent at least three nights a week there, religiously getting a music education seeing Springsteen and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes," said Santelli, who returns Thursday for a panel discussion at the now internationally known rock club. On Friday, he is on the symposium panel titled "Tribute to Danny Federici."
Still relevant
Also there in the early years was Lee Mrowicki, whom Santelli nicknamed "The Voice of the Stone Pony." Mrowicki said he was playing demo tapes of Springsteen's music on Monmouth University's radio station long before his first record came out.
"Springsteen's music is still relevant today," Mrowicki said. "He's made the transition without really saying that he feels older. He's writing for us as he always has, whether we're in our 20s, 30s, 40s . . . and now 60s."
For people who live at the Jersey Shore, he said, Springsteen's music has more resonance.
"He's lived the same life we've lived," he said. "We see the same boardwalk and ocean, know the places in Freehold and Asbury and the blue-collar lifestyle.August 25, Saratoga, New York
"Everything we have in our lives he's written about — the situations, the romance, the ups and downs — we can all relate to that."
So can about 84,000 other New Jersey residents expected to turn 60 this year as well. When they were born in 1949, Communism was on the march around the world, the Red Scare was gaining ground in the United States with celebrities such as Helen Keller being named, David Ben-Gurion becames Israel's first prime minister and both the Federal Republic of Germany and Republic of Ireland were founded.
"Any time you have a birthday with a zero at the end, it's a milestone," said Mark Bernhard, director of continuing and professional education at Virginia Tech and the "Glory Days" conference planner. "I think the older we get, the less the number really means, and we can certainly see that, in concert, Bruce doesn't act 60.
"It's amazing he's been so relevant and vibrant for so many years," he said. "His music and lyrics have influenced our culture, and that's pretty neat."
Healing powers
Donna Dolphin, a professor at Monmouth University with expertise in American roots music, sees Springsteen as our national healer.
"In times of our greatest crisis, Bruce Springsteen speaks up for us and articulates our collective pain and suffering," said Dolphin, who will address the issue as part of the symposium on Saturday. "He's becoming for us a great empathic educator."
Although Springsteen may seem ageless, she said, his music has matured as he's grown older and he's embraced the "hurt song," seen in "The Rising" after the Sept. 11 attacks and "The Seeger Sessions" after Hurricane Katrina.
"His music has become politicized, but not the finger-pointing, critical kind of stuff," she said. "He's trying to heal wounds and fractured communities by making us all feel the experience."
In other words, she added, "He's just getting better and better and better."
Now, what 60-year-old wouldn't mind getting that as a present?
Springsteen ages gracefully, work ethic intact
By MICHAEL RILEY
ASBURY PARK PRESS STAFF WRITER
September 20, 2009
http://www.app.com/
Bruce Springsteen saw this coming from way back. The Boss is turning 60 on Wednesday, Sept. 23, and there's plenty of evidence that this landmark has not snuck up on the Freehold native or scared the bejezus out of him.August 19, Hartford, Connecticut
Rock stars are not known for this kind prescience, and the ones who die young and leave a drug-ridden, vomit-covered corpse are at least spared looking like the fools who pass their prime and keep on playing the same old stuff or new stuff that is indistinguishable from the past stuff.
Exhibit A in the "how silly it all looks now" department has to be Pete Townshend's 1966 nihilistic ode to youth, "My Generation," with its infamous line:
"Hope I die before I get old."
Oops.
Too late.
At what point in his long career did Townshend realize his prayer went unanswered?
Of course, in some ways, you can't blame young artists for their Rimbaud-like poses. It's easy to want to die early when you believe you're immortal and indestructible.
Still, contrast Townshend's half-hearted death wish with Springsteen's hope in "Glory Days":
"I hope, when I get old, I don't sit around thinking about it, but I probably will ... "
Those are two entirely different hopes.
It was 25 years ago when he wrote that song, and as he performed it in concert, he often ended it with a kind of riff with his on-stage foil, E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons:
"Don't ever be stopping. Because I hear that big clock ticking away, every minute of my life, every day. It says, 'Boss, you're 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35.' Big Man ... we're adults!"
And Springsteen would shake his head ... and laugh.
Dealing with lifeBut you can go back to Springsteen's very first album to hear a young man in his 20s looking forward to the years ahead. In "Growin' Up" he sings:
"Well, my feet, they finally took root in the earth, but I got me a nice little place in the stars."
September 13, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
That's not to say that Springsteen's early work isn't full of the Sturm und Drang of adolescence — the end of the world romantic break-up, the pitched father-and-son battles — but nearly always, there is a sense in the words and music that somehow, we'll get through this.
But Springsteen is no Voltaire; he knows that this is not "the best of all possible worlds." Some of the folks in his songs come to bad and tragic ends.
Of course, his attention to detail, something that comes with maturity, if not always with age, puts that worst of circumstances into a world-weary perspective that cannot, finally, extinguish hope.
"For what are we without hope in our hearts?" he asks, even on the bleakest of his albums, "The Ghost of Tom Joad."
Maybe that kind of hope only comes with the passage of time.
It was Neil Young who told us that, "it's better to burn out than fade away."
Well, of course it is. Who would deny it?
But Springsteen is one whose career has been a reminder to us that those are not the only two choices. When Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, it was U2's Bono who gave the induction speech. Among the many nice things he said about his friend was this observation: "Bruce Springsteen, you always knew, was not gonna die stupid."
Bono was right, and here's why: When you frame your art in a way that keeps growing through the years, when the population of the world you've created ages as you and your audience age, when you take satisfaction in the value of good work done well, and when you make that move to bring the blessings you've banked over the decades to help others, then you've achieved something that fills your life with something close to joy.
Facing the inevitable
You get the sense sometimes, from his most recent work, that Springsteen may be, in the words of the old spiritual, ready to start "looking over Jordan."
A man does that at a certain age. Nothing wrong with that.
But at the age of 60, Springsteen seems ready to master the art of growing old. And those who are growing older with him, who have taken heart from his music for three decades now, those who understand that his anthem, "Land of Hope and Dreams," with its almost Biblical imagery, ends with the kind of excitement the Old Testament prophets tried to coax out of a hard-hearted people, that sense that Joel had when he wrote, "Old men shall dream dreams," and Isaiah's promise that all those who hope will one day "renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint."
And they will keep on singing.
Springsteen at 60: Not blinded by the light
By CHRIS JORDAN
ASBURY PARK PRESS STAFF WRITER
September 20, 2009
http://www.app.com/
Bruce Springsteen is a time traveler.The essence of his early songs was the struggle to get to that next point in life, in the future, when things around him would make sense and he would feel secure in the center of it.
August 25, Saratoga, New York
That's what you have to do when you're young and bound and driven. You have to live outside yourself. Escape or explode. Springsteen, who turns 60 on Wednesday, Sept. 23, expertly articulated this — especially for his fellow New Jerseyans, whose part of the world felt like the most remote place in the universe. Back then, in the '70s, there was nothing but desperation and highways and bright lights in the distance, like the rides that flickered along the Asbury Park boardwalk. But were the lights a mirage or a destination?
While traveling into his future, the Freehold native has forged perhaps the most unique career in rock 'n' roll history. Consider his relationship with his fans, especially those in Jersey. We know the guy — he's one of us. We see him, we bump into him — who doesn't have a Springsteen story to tell? Maybe there is a PR machine at work to keep the focus on him as a regular guy, but even if there weren't, we feel — we want to believe — that the Springsteen the public sees is the real Springsteen.
There's been just enough tarnish for that to seem so. "Lucky Town" and "Human Touch" come to mind. There are other things, too, but they kind of serve to enhance a noble yet flawed character. Springsteen is the kind of guy the rest us can only pretend to be — modest, powerful, charitable, sympathetic and able to rock a stadium of 60,000 and ride away into the distance on his Harley.
Again, there's the destination. It's getting closer, but where will it be and what form will it take? Perhaps sensing this, Springsteen lately has been as active as ever and has maintained his highest profile since he started recording for Columbia Records in 1973. Life's journey doesn't last forever, and certainly Springsteen's ride with the E Street Band won't last forever either. The heartbreaking loss of band member Danny Federici in 2008 proved the tide of time is an insurmountable force.
So, too, is Springsteen, the once young time traveler who now finds himself in his future. He's a sage man who backed a future president, — no, not John Kerry — took on Ticketmaster and still rocks like a kid.
This is a busy moment, his 60th birthday. Springsteen — along with Robert De Niro, Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck and opera singer Grace Bumbry — will be celebrated at this year's Kennedy Center Honors Gala in December. More immediately, Springsteen and the E Street Band will perform the last concerts in the history of Giants Stadium from Wednesday, Sept. 30, to Friday, Oct. 9. Recently released tickets are available for the first four shows.
Related events include "Glory Days: A Bruce Springsteen Symposium," set to take place Friday, Sept. 25, to Sunday, Sept. 27, at Monmouth University in West Long Branch and surrounding areas and the "Be True" photography exhibit by Danny Clinch, featuring Springsteen photos taken from 1999 to this year in New Jersey. It's at the Third Avenue Pavilion on the Asbury Park boardwalk through Sunday, Sept. 27.September 16, Greenville, South Carolina
Later, Springsteen and Jerry Seinfeld co-headline a benefit show on Nov. 17 for Autism Speaks at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
After this flurry of activity and the end of the current tour in November, the band will take a year or two off, said Steven Van Zandt in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.
"We're still making records, still making competitive records," Van Zandt said. "We just refuse to be a nostalgic act. Bruce has never stopped writing great songs."
The future is here for Springsteen, the man once dubbed the future of rock 'n' roll. The lights aren't so far off in the distance now. They've become illuminating, not disorienting.
Bruce Springsteen: Still Going Strong at Age 60
Paying Homage to a Rock Icon on his Birthday
By Louis P. Masur
http://www.popmatters.com/
21 September 2009
The key to his success is that Springsteen believes in what he does, but doesn’t try to live inside the rock ‘n’ roll fantasy that glorifies wealth, fame, and superstardom.
Rock stars about to turn 60 aren’t usually seen playing 100 shows around the world, let alone successfully completing two-year tours. Whether it be Elvis, Jimi, Janis, or Michael, most fade out or pass away long before the milestone. Some notable rockers survive past 60, but their most popular and creative days are often behind them. In 1979, Neil Young said it best, penning an apothegm for rock’s fatal romantic ideal: “it’s better to burn out than fade away.”
As Bruce Springsteen approaches 60, he has achieved what few can. He is as visible as he’s ever been, and that’s saying a lot for a superstar who graced the covers of Time and Newsweek in 1975, whose Born in the USA was the second best-selling album of the ‘80s, who won an Oscar for “Streets of Philadelphia” in 1994, and whose The Rising in 2002 offered an enduring artistic response to 9/11.
In the past 24 months alone, Springsteen has released two albums, campaigned for Barack Obama, and appeared on a Super Bowl halftime show. Not only do baby-boomers attend his concerts, but so do a growing number of younger fans. Springsteen’s influence can even be found in a new generation of bands like the Arcade Fire, the Hold Steady, and the Gaslight Anthem, all of whom pay homage to the rocker nicknamed “the Boss”.
How is it that Springsteen has managed to surf the zeitgeist for more than three decades? Part of the answer lies in his devotion to his craft and in the savvy of his management team. Thanks to the clever protection of the Springsteen brand, “Born to Run” can be downloaded as a ringtone, but it will never be used to sell an automobile.
But skill and business sense constitute only part of the story. Neither would matter if it wasn’t for Springsteen’s lifetime commitment to rock ‘n’ roll’s original promise of liberation and redemption.
It’s also true that Springsteen has consistently proved a more dynamic live performer than studio artist, and it is in concert where the electricity crackles. Springsteen screams “is anyone alive out there?!”, and after three hours of blazing guitars and pounding drums we know that we are. Springsteen offers an emotional and physical experience, one based upon songs about finding love and faith, building community, and just having a good time.
The key to his success is that Springsteen believes in what he does, but doesn’t try to live inside the rock ‘n’ roll fantasy that glorifies wealth, fame, and superstardom. These elements are what destroyed Elvis, his hero. By the same token, Springsteen has never abandoned his faith in the saving power of rock ‘n’ roll, because it saved him. It gave him a purpose, an image, and a way out—as it has for so many others.
Springsteen was seven when he first saw Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show. Presley’s third and final appearance took place on January 6, 1957. On that Sunday night in 1957, Elvis smiled, smirked and played with the audience. Breaking from his usual attire, Presley came out wearing a bloused shirt and vest, with makeup painted around his eyes. That night Elvis sang hits like “Don’t Be Cruel”, “Love Me Tender”, and “Hound Dog”, shaking his hips and standing on his toes while girls screamed in the audience. And that guitar: it was a weapon and it was armor. This was the dream.
Watching the show, Springsteen felt mesmerized: “I couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting to be Elvis Presley,” he recalled. His mother eventually bought him a guitar and even set up lessons, but Springsteen’s hands were too small. He didn’t like structured instruction, and he put the instrument aside for sports (“I wanted to be a baseball player”).
Springsteen acquired his work ethic from his mother, Adele, along with his appreciation for working day after day. He especially enjoyed the stability, dignity, and community that comes from the commitment to one’s job. Springsteen’s relationship with his father, Douglas, was more conflicted. His father worked in a factory was something of a loner.
“I remember when I was a kid I always wondered what my old man was so mad about all the time,” Springsteen recalls. Douglas would often get in the car on Sundays and drive, family in tow, with no destination. “We would drive around the whole damned Sunday and come in the evening all exhausted,” Springsteen remembers. And yet, he also noted that the car trips were the only time his father would beam with joy. The memory would inform many of Bruce’s songs about people in cars and people on the move. He observed that “perhaps that kind of action was the only thing he needed after working the whole week at his machine in the plastics plant.”
Douglas Springsteen hated Bruce’s long hair, late hours, and endless guitar playing. It was through examining his father’s life that Bruce came to understand the underside of the American dream: “When I got to be about 16, I started to look around me and…I looked back at, I looked at my friends and tried to see what they were doing and it didn’t seem like anybody was going anyplace or had a chance of getting out of the kind of life they were living.” “When I was real young,” he said in 1981, “I decided that if I was gonna have to live that way, that I was gonna die.”
“My whole life,” Springsteen reflected, “was this enormous effort to become visible.” In 1975, he told Time magazine, “Music saved me. From the beginning, my guitar was something I could go to. If I hadn’t found music, I don’t know what I would have done.” “Music gave me something,” he added. “It was never just a hobby. It was a reason to live. The first day I can remember lookin’ in the mirror and standin’ what I was seein’ was the day I had a guitar in my hand,” he proclaimed.
Through driving ambition and limitless talent, Bruce got out, but never left his past behind. He wrote songs about place, work and religion. He wrote about the dream of escape and the longing for connection. He wrote about community and camaraderie. Most of all, he offered catharsis. He gave hope—however transitory—to those who couldn’t escape. Over time, Springsteen’s work became explicitly political, offering a critique of forces used to suppress weakened communities.
Now, after experiencing a long, successful career, Springsteen will celebrate his birthday doing exactly what he loves best—performing live. No two shows will be alike and no two set lists identical. In keeping with his likeness to the nine-to-five population, Springsteen is a working artist, searching each night for what makes the music come alive. It is that authenticity that unites him with his fans.
Springsteen still plays “Born to Run” at every concert, and the performance, most often with house lights on, levitates the arena. “The song,” he says, “transcends your age and continues to speak to that part of you that is both exhilarated and frightened about what tomorrow brings. It will always do that—that’s how it was built.”
When Springsteen was 46, someone asked him how much longer he intended to play. He replied that “at 60, I plan to be still doing it… The older you get the younger you are… It will be 80 in another five years.” Here’s hoping.
- Louis P. Masur chairs the American Studies program at Trinity College (CT) and is the author of Runaway Dream: Born to Run and Bruce Springsteen's American Vision (Bloomsbury Press, 2009).
Louis P. Masur
Runaway Dream: Born to Run and Bruce Springsteen's American Vision
(Bloomsbury Press; US: Sep 2009)
Amazon
As Bruce Springsteen turns 60, music's durability - and his - are no surprise
By David Hinckley
New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/
Updated Wednesday, September 23rd 2009, 3:13 PM
Getty/AP
Bruce Springsteen performing in 1980 (l.) and in July 2009. He turns 60 on Wednesday.
Bruce Springsteen turns 60 today, an age at which the idea of still playing rock 'n' roll once seemed as remote as still primping for the prom.
Today, however, no one thinks Springsteen is defying any unwritten laws of nature by spending his birthday week prepping for five shows starting next Tuesday at Giants Stadium.
If there's a lesson here, it has more to do with the music and the fans than with Springsteen – because their durability is more impressive than even his.
Springsteen has done an extraordinary job of keeping his music vital and fresh, and keeping himself vital and fresh enough to sing it for two and a half hours.
But from all the thousands of bands who have played rock 'n' roll over the last 30, 40, 50 years, plain old statistical probability says a few would have the combination of skill, drive and luck to keep going. The Rolling Stones. Paul McCartney. Bob Dylan. Aerosmith. Elton John and Billy Joel. The Who. Others.
What more defies the odds is the music itself, which was almost universally written off almost from birth as the temporary fascination of flighty teenagers who would tire of it as quickly as they tired of ducktail haircuts.
"I tell you flatly," Jackie Gleason is said to have declared, "it won't last."
He wasn't alone. He also wasn't right.
All that happened was that rock 'n' roll stretched. Some of stayed forever young, some of it grew up with the fans it acquired along the way.
Millions of Americans in their 50s, 60s and even 70s still love rock 'n' roll – the same way, a few years from now, the same will be true of rap, another musical style that was crucified as an alien invader when it arrived.
Bruce Springsteen isn't competing with Beyonce and Katy Perry for top-40 airplay these days. He doesn't have to. He can survive – blossom, thrive – by playing to a whole different crowd.
And that's the real story for his birthday.
The idea of musicians and singers performing into their 60s and 70s is as old as music and singing. Frank Sinatra did. Joe Turner did it.
The two main reasons it's perceived as different for rock 'n' rollers is that first, rock 'n' roll is still sometimes considered teenage music, and second, a Bruce Springsteen or Mick Jagger stage show is a little more physically taxing than a Tony Bennett stage show.
It's true that some of rock 'n' roll was and always will be for teenagers. It's truer that a lot of it always spoke to post-teens, and that's become even truer as time has passed.
Springsteen's most powerful album this decade, "The Rising," was for grownups, people who have been around long enough to think about something like 9/11 in contexts ranging from personal and political to theological. Dylan's best record this decade, "Love and Theft," was written from the perspective of someone Dylan's age – in his 60s.
Springsteen still occasionally sings "Growing Up," an hilarious and at times painful reminiscence on being the odd duck in school. Songs like "Born to Run" and "Thunder Road," or "Fourth of July (Sandy)," were songs of young, restless love.
But other songs he wrote while he was still in his 20s, like "Promised Land" or "Badlands," are contemplating matters that go way beyond that. The only thing that's changed in the 30 years since he wrote them is that they've become true in more ways.
In general, the artists who have kept performing into their 60s wrote songs that weren't just for kids. Even Chuck Berry, who is 83 and still occasionally performs though he has no voice left, didn't only write the teen anthems that made him famous.
"Johnny B. Goode" or "Maybelline" are just good stories.
Jerry Lee Lewis, who turns 74 next week, just recorded a new album. But he can still sing "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," because it's a party song, and a whole lotta people in their 60s or higher either still enjoy a good party or remember fondly when they did.
The general impression of many artists who perform into their 60s is that they are primarily selling memories, and it's true that if you hear a show by the Temptations or the Harptones or some splinter Beach Boys group, you'll hear very few songs that are less than 40 years old.
But those who therefore dismiss early rock 'n' roll as "oldies" or "nostalgia," as if those are frivolous indulgences of no measurable value, are kin to the same people who said rock 'n' roll had no value in the first place.
No one criticized Sinatra or Lena Horne for singing songs that were 40 or 50 years old. They were "standards" and "classics."
Bulletin: So is a whole lotta rock. Even the teenage part. A great teenage love song doesn't stop being a great love song when the listener turns 20.
Fans sometimes sneer at the Rolling Stones or Paul McCartney for "only" singing their old songs, as if singing songs that strong and resonant is just a cynical exercise in making money.
It's true enough that "Sympathy for the Devil" doesn't sound the same now as it did 40 years ago. It's a different time, a lot of things have happened - and none of them erase or diminish "Sympathy for the Devil."
The same is true when McCartney sings "The Long and Winding Road," or even "I Saw Her Standing There." Those songs last because there's something solid at the center, and hearing them sung by their creators is something that – well, let's lay it right down – isn't going to happen forever.
What price would a fan pay to hear John Lennon sing "In My Life," or Jimi Hendrix play "The Wind Cries Mary" again? We can't. They won't.
Rock 'n' roll classics now well over 50 years old are imbedded in the American DNA.
Hearing Bruce Springsteen sing his as he turns 60, and sing them well as he does, is a great bonus. It's not a surprise.
Concert Review: Everything is a hit when the Boss plays
By JOE LAWLER
Demoines Register
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
September 22, 2009
When times are hard, at least we have Bruce Springsteen to remind us that songs about hard times can still be fun.
Monday night, the Boss and the E Street Band ran through songs about murder, job loss, infidelity and more, but they managed to make it a party.
Not that the band doesn't have fun songs, but it's kind of amazing that a song like "Johnny 99," about a laid-off auto worker who kills a clerk and requests the death penalty, can get a crowd jumping, dancing and pumping its fists.
MARY CHIND/THE REGISTER
Bruce Springsteen performs beside Steven Van Zandt Monday at Wells Fargo Arena. Max Weinberg is seen behind on drums.
The E Street Band played its first central Iowa show in decades Monday, and Springsteen, just two days away from his 60th birthday, reminded the room of his incredible ability to craft music stories.
"We're going to build a house in the room out of music and out of spirit and out of noise," Springsteen told the crowd early on, pumping up the room with a revivalist's furor. He kept the crowd involved in the show, making them sing the opening of "Hungry Heart" and wandering into the crowd during the song.
He also wandered down to collect from the crowd what looked like signs, but were actually requests for the "Stump the Band" portion of the show. Springsteen made his selection, hiding it from the band and giving hints until guitarist Steven Van Zandt figured it out. Once Van Zandt knew it, Springsteen led the band into the E Street Band's first-ever performance of Dion's "The Wanderer."
The song selections ranged from all over the E Street Band's discography and Springsteen's solo material. Old favorites like "10th Avenue Freeze-Out" and "Badlands" bumped up against more obscure tunes like "Youngstown" off "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and newer material from this year's "Working on a Dream." Old, new, known, unknown, the crowd reacted like every song was a favorite.
Counting backup singers, there were 11 musicians on stage for the show. Most stayed relatively stationary, with Springsteen moving among them freely to sing into their microphones and play guitar next to them. Other than Springsteen, Van Zandt and guitarist Nils Lofgren were the only ones showing much movement.
A pleasant surprise for the evening was drummer Max Weinberg being on the skins. Weinberg's position as bandleader for "The Tonight Show" has meant he's had to miss a few shows on this tour, with his 19-year-old son, Jay, filling in. Max Weinberg's steady drumbeat is such a integral part of the band sound that it's hard to imagine the E Street Band playing without him.
As the band has aged, the stage presence of Springsteen himself remains remarkable. At one point, he hung from his mike stand in a position that most musicians half his age would be unable to pull off.
At a Springsteen show, the constant cries of "Bruuuuce!" can sound a bit like boos, but it's just a trick of the ears. There was not a "boo" to be had from the thoroughly satisfied crowd.
Setlist:
Tenth Avenue Freeze-out
Badlands
Candy's Room
Two Hearts
Outlaw Pete
Hungry Heart
Working on a Dream
Seeds
Johnny 99
Youngstown
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
Cadillac Ranch
The Wanderer
Incident on 57th Street
Rosalita
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
The Promised Land
Into the Fire
Lonesome Day
The Rising
Born to Run
* * *
Thunder Road
Hard Times
Bobby Jean
American Land
Dancing in the Dark
Glory Days
Demoines Register
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
September 22, 2009
When times are hard, at least we have Bruce Springsteen to remind us that songs about hard times can still be fun.
Monday night, the Boss and the E Street Band ran through songs about murder, job loss, infidelity and more, but they managed to make it a party.
Not that the band doesn't have fun songs, but it's kind of amazing that a song like "Johnny 99," about a laid-off auto worker who kills a clerk and requests the death penalty, can get a crowd jumping, dancing and pumping its fists.
MARY CHIND/THE REGISTER
Bruce Springsteen performs beside Steven Van Zandt Monday at Wells Fargo Arena. Max Weinberg is seen behind on drums.
The E Street Band played its first central Iowa show in decades Monday, and Springsteen, just two days away from his 60th birthday, reminded the room of his incredible ability to craft music stories.
"We're going to build a house in the room out of music and out of spirit and out of noise," Springsteen told the crowd early on, pumping up the room with a revivalist's furor. He kept the crowd involved in the show, making them sing the opening of "Hungry Heart" and wandering into the crowd during the song.
He also wandered down to collect from the crowd what looked like signs, but were actually requests for the "Stump the Band" portion of the show. Springsteen made his selection, hiding it from the band and giving hints until guitarist Steven Van Zandt figured it out. Once Van Zandt knew it, Springsteen led the band into the E Street Band's first-ever performance of Dion's "The Wanderer."
The song selections ranged from all over the E Street Band's discography and Springsteen's solo material. Old favorites like "10th Avenue Freeze-Out" and "Badlands" bumped up against more obscure tunes like "Youngstown" off "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and newer material from this year's "Working on a Dream." Old, new, known, unknown, the crowd reacted like every song was a favorite.
Counting backup singers, there were 11 musicians on stage for the show. Most stayed relatively stationary, with Springsteen moving among them freely to sing into their microphones and play guitar next to them. Other than Springsteen, Van Zandt and guitarist Nils Lofgren were the only ones showing much movement.
A pleasant surprise for the evening was drummer Max Weinberg being on the skins. Weinberg's position as bandleader for "The Tonight Show" has meant he's had to miss a few shows on this tour, with his 19-year-old son, Jay, filling in. Max Weinberg's steady drumbeat is such a integral part of the band sound that it's hard to imagine the E Street Band playing without him.
As the band has aged, the stage presence of Springsteen himself remains remarkable. At one point, he hung from his mike stand in a position that most musicians half his age would be unable to pull off.
At a Springsteen show, the constant cries of "Bruuuuce!" can sound a bit like boos, but it's just a trick of the ears. There was not a "boo" to be had from the thoroughly satisfied crowd.
Setlist:Tenth Avenue Freeze-out
Badlands
Candy's Room
Two Hearts
Outlaw Pete
Hungry Heart
Working on a Dream
Seeds
Johnny 99
Youngstown
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
Cadillac Ranch
The Wanderer
Incident on 57th Street
Rosalita
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
The Promised Land
Into the Fire
Lonesome Day
The Rising
Born to Run
* * *
Thunder Road
Hard Times
Bobby Jean
American Land
Dancing in the Dark
Glory Days
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Afghan agony: More troops won't help
By RALPH PETERS
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/
September 22, 2009
GEN. Stan McChrystal, an honorable soldier, has reported from Afghani stan: He wants more troops for a "classic" counterinsurgency strategy to secure the population, then win hearts and minds.
President Obama needs to make a decision: Either give the general the resources he believes he needs, or change the mission.
I'm for changing the mission. Concentrate on the continued destruction of al Qaeda and its allies. Nothing else matters in this mess.
Last spring, the president handed McChrystal an impossible mission: Turn Afghanistan into a prosperous, rule-of-law democracy cherished by its citizens. The general's doing his best. But we have zero chance -- zero -- of making that happen.
Meanwhile, we've forgotten why we went to Afghanistan in the first place. (Hint: It wasn't to make nice with toothless tribesmen.) Here's a simple way to conceptualize our problem: A pack of murderous gangsters holes up in a fleabag motel. The feds raid the joint, killing or busting most of them. But some of the deadly ringleaders get away.
Should the G-men pursue the kingpins, or hang around to renovate the motel? Common sense says: Go after the gangsters. They're the problem, not the run-down bunkhouse.
Yet, in Afghanistan, we've put the bulk of our efforts into turning a vast flophouse into the Four Seasons -- instead of focusing ruthlessly on our terrorist enemies. It's politically correct madness.
What we really need is just a compact, lethal force of special operators, intelligence resources and air assets, along with sufficient conventional forces for protection and punitive raids. More troops just mean more blood and frustration.
Those who suggest pulling out completely and striking from offshore don't understand the fundamentals, either: We still need some boots on the ground, within grabbing distance of Pakistan's wild northwest, to strike fast to kill or capture elusive targets. And cruise missiles can't bring back prisoners, DNA samples or captured documents.
Our hunter-killer task forces should be deployed on a limited number of strategically positioned bases supported by air. Don't worry about the Afghan government -- Afghans don't.
The other alternative -- sending still more troops to die for Washington's fantasy of a Disney-World Afghanistan -- is disgraceful. Stop building sewage systems. Take scalps.
What of the notion that a surge could turn Afghanistan around since a surge worked in Iraq? Iraqis switched loyalties (temporarily) because al Qaeda turned out to be a far less pleasant occupier than we were. We were lucky in our enemies.
But the Taliban's the home team in much of Afghanistan. The dominant ethnic group, the Pashtuns, won't turn against the Taliban because they are the Taliban.
Then there's the subfantasy of "training up" the Afghan military and police (who, after eight years of our efforts, remain operationally ineffective and abysmally corrupt).
A great old soldier recently reminded me that it took us eight years to build a capable South Vietnamese army (which was then betrayed by Democrats in Congress). The difference is that, except for the Montagnards and other back-country folk, Vietnam didn't have tribes.
The Vietnamese had a unified ethnic identity. In Afghanistan, we're asking Hutus to fight for Tutsis and Hatfields to guard McCoys.
During the Soviet occupation, there was a serious Afghan military of over 300,000 men equipped with tanks and helicopters. At their peak strength, the Soviets themselves had almost 140,000 troops and tens of thousands of civilian advisers on the ground. Moscow still lost -- and not just because of the Stinger anti-aircraft missiles we gave the mujaheddin (a core group of whom became the Taliban).
The Soviets and their Afghan cronies lost because their enemies were willing to sacrifice more -- to give their lives for their heritage, however backward and cruel.
Afghans are willing to fight. They're just not willing to fight for us.
Ralph Peters' new novel is "The War After Armageddon."
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/
September 22, 2009
GEN. Stan McChrystal, an honorable soldier, has reported from Afghani stan: He wants more troops for a "classic" counterinsurgency strategy to secure the population, then win hearts and minds.President Obama needs to make a decision: Either give the general the resources he believes he needs, or change the mission.
I'm for changing the mission. Concentrate on the continued destruction of al Qaeda and its allies. Nothing else matters in this mess.
Last spring, the president handed McChrystal an impossible mission: Turn Afghanistan into a prosperous, rule-of-law democracy cherished by its citizens. The general's doing his best. But we have zero chance -- zero -- of making that happen.
Meanwhile, we've forgotten why we went to Afghanistan in the first place. (Hint: It wasn't to make nice with toothless tribesmen.) Here's a simple way to conceptualize our problem: A pack of murderous gangsters holes up in a fleabag motel. The feds raid the joint, killing or busting most of them. But some of the deadly ringleaders get away.
Should the G-men pursue the kingpins, or hang around to renovate the motel? Common sense says: Go after the gangsters. They're the problem, not the run-down bunkhouse.
Yet, in Afghanistan, we've put the bulk of our efforts into turning a vast flophouse into the Four Seasons -- instead of focusing ruthlessly on our terrorist enemies. It's politically correct madness.
What we really need is just a compact, lethal force of special operators, intelligence resources and air assets, along with sufficient conventional forces for protection and punitive raids. More troops just mean more blood and frustration.
Those who suggest pulling out completely and striking from offshore don't understand the fundamentals, either: We still need some boots on the ground, within grabbing distance of Pakistan's wild northwest, to strike fast to kill or capture elusive targets. And cruise missiles can't bring back prisoners, DNA samples or captured documents.
Our hunter-killer task forces should be deployed on a limited number of strategically positioned bases supported by air. Don't worry about the Afghan government -- Afghans don't.
The other alternative -- sending still more troops to die for Washington's fantasy of a Disney-World Afghanistan -- is disgraceful. Stop building sewage systems. Take scalps.
What of the notion that a surge could turn Afghanistan around since a surge worked in Iraq? Iraqis switched loyalties (temporarily) because al Qaeda turned out to be a far less pleasant occupier than we were. We were lucky in our enemies.
But the Taliban's the home team in much of Afghanistan. The dominant ethnic group, the Pashtuns, won't turn against the Taliban because they are the Taliban.
Then there's the subfantasy of "training up" the Afghan military and police (who, after eight years of our efforts, remain operationally ineffective and abysmally corrupt).
A great old soldier recently reminded me that it took us eight years to build a capable South Vietnamese army (which was then betrayed by Democrats in Congress). The difference is that, except for the Montagnards and other back-country folk, Vietnam didn't have tribes.
The Vietnamese had a unified ethnic identity. In Afghanistan, we're asking Hutus to fight for Tutsis and Hatfields to guard McCoys.
During the Soviet occupation, there was a serious Afghan military of over 300,000 men equipped with tanks and helicopters. At their peak strength, the Soviets themselves had almost 140,000 troops and tens of thousands of civilian advisers on the ground. Moscow still lost -- and not just because of the Stinger anti-aircraft missiles we gave the mujaheddin (a core group of whom became the Taliban).
The Soviets and their Afghan cronies lost because their enemies were willing to sacrifice more -- to give their lives for their heritage, however backward and cruel.
Afghans are willing to fight. They're just not willing to fight for us.
Ralph Peters' new novel is "The War After Armageddon."
This time, bigger isn’t better for U2
MUSIC REVIEW
By James Reed, Boston Globe Staff
http://www.boston.com/ae/
September 21, 2009
FOXBOROUGH - Right after the triumphant first song, Bono explained what everyone must have been curious about early in the evening: What, exactly, was the massive green canopy with orange disks that arched ominously over the stage. Was it a spider? A tentacle?
“We got a spaceship,’’ the U2 frontman said last night at Gillette Stadium, “but we’re not going anywhere without you. Are you ready for the ride?’’
The nearly sold-out crowd was indeed, but the show, which repeats tonight, didn’t quite take off like it should have. Instead it revved its motor, flashed its headlights, and stayed firmly grounded as U2 stumbled over an unlikely hurdle: a sprawling stage setup that often dulled the sensation of a tight-knit performance.
If there’s any outsize band with the charisma, chops, and catalog to pull off a tour of this magnitude, it’s U2. And it certainly tried, relying on Bono’s magnetism and his bandmates’ inspired playing, not to mention an audience that was clearly stoked.
The insurmountable problem, however, was the expanse of the stage, which connected to an outer circular one where Bono and guitarist the Edge and bassist Adam Clayton roamed like satellites. At times each member, in his own spotlight, was working a different part of the stadium, to the point that they sometimes lost the intimacy of playing as a unit.
Granted, these guys are so good and seasoned that they don’t need to be rubbing shoulders to convey their camaraderie. But when they really connected - when Bono seemed awed by the Edge’s acoustic accompaniment and backup singing on “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,’’ or when Bono leaned into Clayton during the high point of “Elevation’’ - the chemistry was intense and contagious.
Entering to the swelling strains of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,’’ a fitting opus for a show that was supposed to shoot into orbit, the band tore into “Breathe’’ with the Edge wailing lyrically as Bono slowly surveyed his devoted flock.
The arena anthems, which at a U2 concert tend to be shouted rather than sung, came fast and furious, from newer (“Get on Your Boots,’’ “Beautiful Day’’) to older (“Mysterious Ways,’’ “Sunday Bloody Sunday’’). It’s hard to deny the charm and vitality of those classics, which inadvertently made some of the more recent songs, especially the ones from the band’s latest album, “No Line on the Horizon,’’ pale even more than they should have.
“Magnificent’’ and “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight,’’ with its playful dance-floor coda, felt like stadium rock for stadium rock’s sake. “Unknown Caller’’ dampened the spirited vibe mid-set with elliptical lyrics (“escape yourself and gravity’’) masquerading as self-help advice.
But even that misstep couldn’t deaden Bono’s charisma. He’s become the prototypical frontman who knows how to work stadiums; in fact, you suspect he’s at his best in front of 50,000 people. During “City of Blinding Lights,’’ Bono plucked a young girl from the crowd and essentially serenaded her as they walked the length of the outer stage, even putting his famous tinted glasses on her at one point.
It was a small gesture, a fleeting moment of intimacy, that reminded you of how magical Bono and his bandmates are when they connect to the audience - and with one another.
Fellow Irish lads Snow Patrol opened with a strong set that climaxed with their big hit “Chasing Cars.’’ Even lead singer Gary Lightbody acknowledged it was a daunting task to warm up the stage for his country’s most significant band. Risking a potentially embarrassing request from the crowd, calling it a “time-tested ritual of singing along to a band you don’t know,’’ he led audience members in a chorus of “shut your eyes and sing to me.’’ And they did, gladly.
James Reed can be reached at jreed@globe.com.
By James Reed, Boston Globe Staff
http://www.boston.com/ae/
September 21, 2009
FOXBOROUGH - Right after the triumphant first song, Bono explained what everyone must have been curious about early in the evening: What, exactly, was the massive green canopy with orange disks that arched ominously over the stage. Was it a spider? A tentacle?
“We got a spaceship,’’ the U2 frontman said last night at Gillette Stadium, “but we’re not going anywhere without you. Are you ready for the ride?’’The nearly sold-out crowd was indeed, but the show, which repeats tonight, didn’t quite take off like it should have. Instead it revved its motor, flashed its headlights, and stayed firmly grounded as U2 stumbled over an unlikely hurdle: a sprawling stage setup that often dulled the sensation of a tight-knit performance.
If there’s any outsize band with the charisma, chops, and catalog to pull off a tour of this magnitude, it’s U2. And it certainly tried, relying on Bono’s magnetism and his bandmates’ inspired playing, not to mention an audience that was clearly stoked.
The insurmountable problem, however, was the expanse of the stage, which connected to an outer circular one where Bono and guitarist the Edge and bassist Adam Clayton roamed like satellites. At times each member, in his own spotlight, was working a different part of the stadium, to the point that they sometimes lost the intimacy of playing as a unit.
Granted, these guys are so good and seasoned that they don’t need to be rubbing shoulders to convey their camaraderie. But when they really connected - when Bono seemed awed by the Edge’s acoustic accompaniment and backup singing on “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,’’ or when Bono leaned into Clayton during the high point of “Elevation’’ - the chemistry was intense and contagious.
Entering to the swelling strains of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,’’ a fitting opus for a show that was supposed to shoot into orbit, the band tore into “Breathe’’ with the Edge wailing lyrically as Bono slowly surveyed his devoted flock.
The arena anthems, which at a U2 concert tend to be shouted rather than sung, came fast and furious, from newer (“Get on Your Boots,’’ “Beautiful Day’’) to older (“Mysterious Ways,’’ “Sunday Bloody Sunday’’). It’s hard to deny the charm and vitality of those classics, which inadvertently made some of the more recent songs, especially the ones from the band’s latest album, “No Line on the Horizon,’’ pale even more than they should have.
“Magnificent’’ and “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight,’’ with its playful dance-floor coda, felt like stadium rock for stadium rock’s sake. “Unknown Caller’’ dampened the spirited vibe mid-set with elliptical lyrics (“escape yourself and gravity’’) masquerading as self-help advice.But even that misstep couldn’t deaden Bono’s charisma. He’s become the prototypical frontman who knows how to work stadiums; in fact, you suspect he’s at his best in front of 50,000 people. During “City of Blinding Lights,’’ Bono plucked a young girl from the crowd and essentially serenaded her as they walked the length of the outer stage, even putting his famous tinted glasses on her at one point.
It was a small gesture, a fleeting moment of intimacy, that reminded you of how magical Bono and his bandmates are when they connect to the audience - and with one another.
Fellow Irish lads Snow Patrol opened with a strong set that climaxed with their big hit “Chasing Cars.’’ Even lead singer Gary Lightbody acknowledged it was a daunting task to warm up the stage for his country’s most significant band. Risking a potentially embarrassing request from the crowd, calling it a “time-tested ritual of singing along to a band you don’t know,’’ he led audience members in a chorus of “shut your eyes and sing to me.’’ And they did, gladly.
James Reed can be reached at jreed@globe.com.
Irreplaceable Irving
A sparkling intellectual who was grounded in common sense and experience.
By Mona Charen
http://www.nationalreview.com/
September 22, 2009, 0:00 a.m.
Irving Kristol, who passed away last week at the age of 89, was like everyone’s favorite uncle — if the uncle were a transformative intellectual of empyrean stature. He was both a warm and approachable human being and a penetrating social critic. He was, in a very American way, a practical man, and his approach to ideas was always firmly and refreshingly reality-based.
Irving Kristol was born in New York in 1920, so it was inevitable that he would become, for a short time at least, a socialist. But even as a young socialist, Kristol was skeptical about the principal animating sentiment of the Left: a belief in man’s perfectibility. As early as 1944, Kristol wrote of his preference for “moral realism,” which “foresees no new virtues” and is “interested in human beings as it finds them, content with the possibilities and limitations that are always with us.” It was a Madisonian frame of mind and it would take him by degrees to the Right.
Though the term “neoconservative” has come to be associated with a muscular foreign policy (when it is not a thinly veiled code word for “Jew”), it began in the 1960s as a disparaging term for those liberals, led by Kristol and a few others, who were bent on doing something that made other liberals acutely uncomfortable: test whether their theories worked in the real world.
Through his quarterly journal, The Public Interest, as well as his indispensable column in the Wall Street Journal, Kristol turned his analytical attention to the programs of the Great Society. Did urban redevelopment really improve the lot of the poor? Did deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill work? Did welfare programs have unintended consequences? If these questions now seem obvious it is because Kristol offered an early and perspicacious critique that has since become conventional wisdom. “The problem with our current welfare programs,” he wrote decades ago, “is not that they are costly — which they are — but that they have such perverse consequences for the people they are supposed to benefit.”
In issue after issue, The Public Interest catalogued the failure of Great Society programs to achieve their goals and itemized the programs’ unintended and often baleful consequences. Empiricists who read Kristol tended to become neoconservatives and, eventually, unprefixed conservatives. Ideologues were of course unmoved, and some of Kristol’s most trenchant commentary concerned them. In 1972 Kristol wrote:
‘All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling,’ wrote Oscar Wilde, and I would like to suggest that the same can be said for bad politics. . . . It seems to me that the politics of liberal reform, in recent years, shows many of the same characteristics as amateur poetry. It has been more concerned with the kind of symbolic action that gratifies the passions of the reformer rather than with the efficacy of the reforms themselves. Indeed, the outstanding characteristic of what we call ‘the New Politics’ is precisely its insistence on the overwhelming importance of revealing, in the public realm, one’s intense feelings — we must ‘care,’ we must ‘be concerned,’ we must be ‘committed.’ Unsurprisingly, this goes along with an immense indifference to consequences, to positive results or the lack thereof.
Because he actually did care about ordinary people and their welfare, Kristol became one of capitalism’s great apologists. Capitalism had eased more misery and engendered more comfort than any other system in world history, he pointed out (and he knew his world history). But starting in the 1960s, Kristol became something else that discomfited liberals even more than a capitalist — a cultural conservative. As he wrote in “My Cold War,” a 1993 recap of his intellectual journey from left to right, “What began to concern me more and more were the clear signs of rot and decadence germinating within American society — a rot and decadence that was no longer the consequence of liberalism but was the actual agenda of contemporary liberalism. And the more contemporary, the more candid and radical was this agenda.” He believed, as he said on another occasion, that “this cultural nihilism will have, in the short term, only a limited political effect — short of a massive, enduring economic crisis. The reason . . . is that a bourgeois, property-owning democracy tends to breed its own antibodies. These antibodies immunize it, in large degree, against the lunacies of its intellectuals and artists.” Nevertheless, he warned, combating the cultural decay — a war on spiritual poverty — was even more important than winning the other Cold War.
Irving Kristol often praised the common sense of ordinary people and disdained the vanity and foolishness of intellectuals. He was that rarest of blends: a sparkling intellectual who was grounded in common sense and experience. It was a world-shaking combination.
— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2009 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
By Mona Charen
http://www.nationalreview.com/
September 22, 2009, 0:00 a.m.
Irving Kristol, who passed away last week at the age of 89, was like everyone’s favorite uncle — if the uncle were a transformative intellectual of empyrean stature. He was both a warm and approachable human being and a penetrating social critic. He was, in a very American way, a practical man, and his approach to ideas was always firmly and refreshingly reality-based.
Irving Kristol was born in New York in 1920, so it was inevitable that he would become, for a short time at least, a socialist. But even as a young socialist, Kristol was skeptical about the principal animating sentiment of the Left: a belief in man’s perfectibility. As early as 1944, Kristol wrote of his preference for “moral realism,” which “foresees no new virtues” and is “interested in human beings as it finds them, content with the possibilities and limitations that are always with us.” It was a Madisonian frame of mind and it would take him by degrees to the Right.Though the term “neoconservative” has come to be associated with a muscular foreign policy (when it is not a thinly veiled code word for “Jew”), it began in the 1960s as a disparaging term for those liberals, led by Kristol and a few others, who were bent on doing something that made other liberals acutely uncomfortable: test whether their theories worked in the real world.
Through his quarterly journal, The Public Interest, as well as his indispensable column in the Wall Street Journal, Kristol turned his analytical attention to the programs of the Great Society. Did urban redevelopment really improve the lot of the poor? Did deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill work? Did welfare programs have unintended consequences? If these questions now seem obvious it is because Kristol offered an early and perspicacious critique that has since become conventional wisdom. “The problem with our current welfare programs,” he wrote decades ago, “is not that they are costly — which they are — but that they have such perverse consequences for the people they are supposed to benefit.”
In issue after issue, The Public Interest catalogued the failure of Great Society programs to achieve their goals and itemized the programs’ unintended and often baleful consequences. Empiricists who read Kristol tended to become neoconservatives and, eventually, unprefixed conservatives. Ideologues were of course unmoved, and some of Kristol’s most trenchant commentary concerned them. In 1972 Kristol wrote:
‘All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling,’ wrote Oscar Wilde, and I would like to suggest that the same can be said for bad politics. . . . It seems to me that the politics of liberal reform, in recent years, shows many of the same characteristics as amateur poetry. It has been more concerned with the kind of symbolic action that gratifies the passions of the reformer rather than with the efficacy of the reforms themselves. Indeed, the outstanding characteristic of what we call ‘the New Politics’ is precisely its insistence on the overwhelming importance of revealing, in the public realm, one’s intense feelings — we must ‘care,’ we must ‘be concerned,’ we must be ‘committed.’ Unsurprisingly, this goes along with an immense indifference to consequences, to positive results or the lack thereof.
Because he actually did care about ordinary people and their welfare, Kristol became one of capitalism’s great apologists. Capitalism had eased more misery and engendered more comfort than any other system in world history, he pointed out (and he knew his world history). But starting in the 1960s, Kristol became something else that discomfited liberals even more than a capitalist — a cultural conservative. As he wrote in “My Cold War,” a 1993 recap of his intellectual journey from left to right, “What began to concern me more and more were the clear signs of rot and decadence germinating within American society — a rot and decadence that was no longer the consequence of liberalism but was the actual agenda of contemporary liberalism. And the more contemporary, the more candid and radical was this agenda.” He believed, as he said on another occasion, that “this cultural nihilism will have, in the short term, only a limited political effect — short of a massive, enduring economic crisis. The reason . . . is that a bourgeois, property-owning democracy tends to breed its own antibodies. These antibodies immunize it, in large degree, against the lunacies of its intellectuals and artists.” Nevertheless, he warned, combating the cultural decay — a war on spiritual poverty — was even more important than winning the other Cold War.
Irving Kristol often praised the common sense of ordinary people and disdained the vanity and foolishness of intellectuals. He was that rarest of blends: a sparkling intellectual who was grounded in common sense and experience. It was a world-shaking combination.
— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2009 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Irving Kristol, R.I.P.
By: Jacob Laksin
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Among the few compelling attacks on Irving Kristol from the political Left he once called home was the name of the intellectual tradition he helped guide to prominence. In 1973, the socialist critic Michael Harrington coined the term “neoconservative” to disparage Kristol and other former liberals who had moved right. Kristol, who died last week at the age of 89, happily accepted the label. But if its original meaning has become muddled by the partisan battles of recent years, the quality of Kristol’s written work, and his influence on the broader conservative movement, remains undimmed.
Kristol began his intellectual journey on Trotskyite Left, briefly joining the Young People’s Socialist League in the 1930s. Already skeptical of the socialist vision, Kristol abandoned it altogether after witnessing the brutalities of his fellow soldiers while serving in the Army during World War II. “My Army experience permitted me to make an important political discovery,” Kristol would later write. “The idea of building socialism with the common man who actually existed — as distinct from his idealized version — was sheer fantasy, and therefore the prospects for ‘democratic socialism’ were nil.”
It would be some time before Kristol defected to the conservative side. Yet, even as a liberal, Kristol managed to send ripples throughout his political circle. In a 1953 essay in Commentary, he dismissed Sen. Joe McCarthy as a “vulgar demagogue,” but challenged the mainstream Left to take a firmer stand against communism. If McCarthy was making an impression on the American people, Kristol noted, it was because “they knew him to be anti-Communist (as they were), whereas they knew no such thing about the spokesmen of the American liberal community.” The article triggered a firestorm of criticism from the Left, but Kristol refused to yield.
Instead, he grew ever more disaffected with liberalism. Like other neoconservatives (Kristol always insisted that it was more a “persuasion” than a movement), he began to question the consequences – as opposed to the promises – of liberal public policy. One formative issue was the so-called “welfare explosion” that plagued the country in the 1960s. For many analysts of the time, the growth of welfare in a time of prosperity was a mysterious paradox. In 1964, when unemployment was at a postwar low of 3.5 percent and the country was experiencing an economic boom, welfare rolls continued to swell. Social scientists offered the traditional leftist response: Deprived of opportunity and gainful employment under an unjust capitalist system, low-income workers had little choice but to remain on welfare. Kristol disagreed.
Rejecting the received wisdom, Kristol offered what was then a heretical answer. So far from being the fault of capitalism, the welfare explosion was the product of misguided public policies passed under the “War on Poverty,” which made it attractive for the poor to remain on the government dole, as well as of social workers and activist groups like the Welfare Rights Movement, who believed it was their moral duty to get the poor on welfare instead of helping them get off welfare. The passage of welfare reform in 1996 vindicated the neoconservative view, but as the malign influence of groups like A.C.O.R.N. suggests, the abuse of taxpayer funds by activist groups professing to aid the poor remains a persistent problem.
The perverse consequences of liberal compassion were at the heart of Kristol’s political conversion. It was no coincidence that, in his most celebrated insight, Kristol described a neoconservative as “a liberal who has been mugged by reality.” But if his political apostasy won him no friends on the Left, Kristol’s embrace of conservative economics – particularly the supply side tax cuts passed during the Reagan administration – earned him a lasting enmity among his former allies.
It is a measure of that enmity that the liberal reaction to Kristol’s passing has been to blame him for the large budget deficits of the Reagan years and the alleged failure of the tax cuts he championed. Kristol was familiar with the charge, to which he provided a forceful rebuttal in a 1995 essay. In it he pointed out that much of the fault for the “Reagan deficits” resides with the Democratic Congress, which authorized spending far in excess of economic growth – a growth made possible, significantly, by the Reagan tax cuts.
‘The reason these facts are either ignored or distorted,” Kristol wrote, “is that liberal politicians, the liberal media, and the substantial segment of professional economists do not want to encourage people to think that the activities of government ought to be considerably more limited than they now are.” For the same reason, one suspects, one hears little about today’s deficits – an expected $9 trillion over the next ten years – now that a Democratic president is in charge.
Although Kristol was an effective popularizer of supply side economics, he was never an uncritical booster of free market theory. Not for nothing did his classic essay collection propose only “two cheers capitalism.” Kristol’s argument, characteristically, was at once thoughtful and contentious. How is it, Kristol wondered in a memorable 1970 essay, “When Virtue Loses Her Loveliness,” that the radical critics of capitalist civilization, and particularly its American incarnation, fail to be convinced by its demonstrated record of success in driving social progress, whether through the unprecedented alleviation of poverty, the forging of racial equality, the expansion of individual freedom, or simply the astounding material abundance made it has made possible? Kristol’s answer – that radicals “are far less dismayed at America’s failure to become what it ought to be than they are contemptuous of what it thinks it ought to be” – would have flattered some conservative prejudices, but only partially so. For Kristol also suggested that capitalism’s critics had a point – that material enrichment alone was insufficient as a foundation for a prosperous and contented society and that a more philosophically profound basis was needed. Agree or disagree with the premise, it remains undeniably relevant at a time when the global economic crisis has not only exposed the flaws of certain financial sectors but once again called into question the validity of capitalism.
Learned, philosophically rich essays were Kristol’s specialty, but their influence was at least in part due to the incisive one-liners for which the author was equally famous. The onetime liberal may have been “mugged” by reality, but he did not lose his sense of humor in the process. An avid reader of the Leo Strauss, he shared the eminent philosopher’s “tolerant contempt” of intellectuals, quipping that “an intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence.” A keen observer of the contradictions inherent in the liberal worldview, Kristol wrote on another occasion that “the liberal paradigm of regulation and license has led to a society where an 18-year-old girl has the right to public fornication in a pornographic movie – but only if she is paid the minimum wage.” Not even his coreligionists were spared his sharp wit. Warning of the assimilationist tendency in the Jewish community, Kristol observed that “The danger facing Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them, but that Christians want to marry them.”
For all his service to the conservative cause, Irving Kristol would not have made an ideal figure for the current political moment. Against the increasingly determined and outraged opposition to Big Government, Kristol’s aims were more modest. He supported reforming rather than abolishing the welfare state, arguing that Social Security should be expanded and that “Medicare’s cost is not a conservative problem.” His preference for a “conservative welfare state,” meanwhile, likely would be as controversial among its intended audience today as when it was first proposed.
In other ways, though, Kristol’s presence will be very sorely missed. Kristol lamented that “with every passing year, public discourse becomes sillier and more petulant, while human emotions become, apparently, more ungovernable.” At a time when justified discontent about Washington’s ways has made even some on the Right forget that civility can be a virtue in itself, Kristol, urbane and respectful even when he was polemical, and all the more convincing for that reason, stands out as a model worth imitating.
Jacob Laksin is managing editor of Front Page Magazine. His email is jlaksin -at- gmail.com
Monday, September 21, 2009
Today's Tune: Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - I Hate Myself For Loving You
(Click on title to play video)
WORK. WHO NEEDS IT?
Mark Steyn on Britain and Europe
http://www.marksteyn.com/
Monday, 21 September 2009
HAPPY WARRIOR
from National Review (9/21/09 issue)
http://www.nationalreview.com/
“The Big Issue, mate?” came the cheery Cockney cry. It is a tradition, in London as elsewhere, for newsboys to hawk their papers on the streets of the city. The only variation to the ancient ritual was that in this instance the salesman for The Big Issue – a newspaper sold by and for “the homeless” – was pitching his wares to me while lying prone alongside a colleague on the sidewalk of a small side street off Piccadilly. I stepped over him and continued on my way. That was Monday. Tuesday he was there again, and Wednesday. And on Thursday he demanded to know why I was resistant to his charms. So I politely suggested that attempting to persuade Londoners to transfer the fruits of their labors to him while sprawled across the pavement was perhaps not a viable business model.
The homeless of London are often accompanied by dogs and they are sometimes selling publications like "The Big Issue".
He replied that, au contraire, apart from stingy bastards like me, most people were happy to “help” “the homeless”. I enquired in what sense, in a city with generous public housing provision, he was “homeless”, and it emerged that this was something of a term of art – in effect, a lifestyle choice for which the government paid him. All that week, every day, I stepped daintily over him and went to pick up a coffee at Caffe Nero, served by baristas from Poland who gossiped away between orders in their native tongue. At the stationer’s, I bought some notecards from a headscarved Muslim lady, and then went to the Post Office where I was served by a dapper Sri Lankan with whom I had a brief discussion on cricket. And in that hive of multiethnic commercial activity the only “English” sales clerk I encountered was the fit young “homeless” man lolling at my feet every afternoon.
As I write, the US unemployment rate is just shy of ten per cent, which is high enough to have commentators alarmed. In the United Kingdom, there are five million grown-ups – or ten per cent of the entire adult population – who have not done a day’s work since Tony Blair’s Labour Party came to power in 1997. Are they “unemployed”? Not exactly. For most of that period, Britain was booming. It still is, by comparison with most places, which is why the dulcet tones of Slavic languages ring out from every coffee counter. But not a lot of Cockney. It would be truer to say those five million Britons are not so much without employment as without need of employment: They exist in a world in which “work” is an increasingly foreign concept. In one-sixth of British households, not a single family member works. One-fifth of British children are raised in homes in which no adult works.
Remember Jay Gorney and Yip Harburg’s anthem of the Great Depression? “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” What he really wants is the restoration of his dignity, of his self-worth:
Once I built a railroad, made it run…
Once I built a tower to the sun
Brick and rivet and lime…
Once in khaki suits, gee, we looked swell…
The bloke on the pavement demanding “Brother, can you spare a quid?” of me every afternoon can’t boast that kind of resume. Never worked on the railroad, never worked in construction, never served in the army, never frothed up a decaf caramel macchiato. Never worked, because he never had to. One day those hardworking Poles will figure it out, too. A lot of immigrants already have. Two-thirds of French imams are on the dole. In the heavily immigrant Stockholm suburb of Tensta, one-fifth of women in their late 40s collect “disability” checks. Abu Qatada, a leading al-Qaeda recruiter, had 150,000 pounds (a quarter-million bucks, give or take) in his bank account courtesy of the British taxpayer before the drolly misnamed Department for Work and Pensions decided to cut back his benefits.
I confess a sneaking admiration for Mr Qatada, who was at least using his welfare payments actively to fund the destruction of western civilization, as opposed to just undermining it through sloth and inertia. When William Beveridge laid out his blueprint for the modern British welfare state in 1942, his goal was the “abolition of want”, to be accomplished by “co-operation between the State and the individual”. In attempting to insulate the citizenry from the vicissitudes of fate, Sir William has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams: Want has been all but abolished. Today, fewer and fewer Britons and Europeans “want” to work, “want” to marry, “want” to raise children, “want” to lead a life of any purpose or dignity. “Co-operation” between the State and the individual has resulted in a huge expansion of the former and the remorseless shriveling of the latter.
For a while, The Sun used to run a Shop-A-Sponger Hotline, fingering chaps like Alan Kenyon, who quit his last job in November 1973 and has lived since then on the government’s weekly “Jobseeker’s Allowance”, notwithstanding that, as the decades roll by, he has never attempted to seek any job. He passes his days playing his taxpayer-subsidized collection of 3,000 videos and 12,000 records. “Westerns are my favorite films,” he told The Sun. “I love Clint Eastwood.” Who doesn’t? A man of action, quick on the draw. A man of inaction, quick on the drawing of benefits, can happily watch that stuff decade in, decade out.
It happens so quickly. The “abolition of want” starts with the abolition of stigma. And once you’ve done that, it’s very hard to go back, even if you wanted to, which there’s no indication Britain’s millions of non-working households wish to do. But, if, say, you happen to be the one western nation not yet fully drugged into inertia by cradle-to-grave welfarism, you might want to pause before embracing the same fate.
http://www.marksteyn.com/
Monday, 21 September 2009
HAPPY WARRIOR
from National Review (9/21/09 issue)
http://www.nationalreview.com/
“The Big Issue, mate?” came the cheery Cockney cry. It is a tradition, in London as elsewhere, for newsboys to hawk their papers on the streets of the city. The only variation to the ancient ritual was that in this instance the salesman for The Big Issue – a newspaper sold by and for “the homeless” – was pitching his wares to me while lying prone alongside a colleague on the sidewalk of a small side street off Piccadilly. I stepped over him and continued on my way. That was Monday. Tuesday he was there again, and Wednesday. And on Thursday he demanded to know why I was resistant to his charms. So I politely suggested that attempting to persuade Londoners to transfer the fruits of their labors to him while sprawled across the pavement was perhaps not a viable business model.
The homeless of London are often accompanied by dogs and they are sometimes selling publications like "The Big Issue".
He replied that, au contraire, apart from stingy bastards like me, most people were happy to “help” “the homeless”. I enquired in what sense, in a city with generous public housing provision, he was “homeless”, and it emerged that this was something of a term of art – in effect, a lifestyle choice for which the government paid him. All that week, every day, I stepped daintily over him and went to pick up a coffee at Caffe Nero, served by baristas from Poland who gossiped away between orders in their native tongue. At the stationer’s, I bought some notecards from a headscarved Muslim lady, and then went to the Post Office where I was served by a dapper Sri Lankan with whom I had a brief discussion on cricket. And in that hive of multiethnic commercial activity the only “English” sales clerk I encountered was the fit young “homeless” man lolling at my feet every afternoon.
As I write, the US unemployment rate is just shy of ten per cent, which is high enough to have commentators alarmed. In the United Kingdom, there are five million grown-ups – or ten per cent of the entire adult population – who have not done a day’s work since Tony Blair’s Labour Party came to power in 1997. Are they “unemployed”? Not exactly. For most of that period, Britain was booming. It still is, by comparison with most places, which is why the dulcet tones of Slavic languages ring out from every coffee counter. But not a lot of Cockney. It would be truer to say those five million Britons are not so much without employment as without need of employment: They exist in a world in which “work” is an increasingly foreign concept. In one-sixth of British households, not a single family member works. One-fifth of British children are raised in homes in which no adult works.
Remember Jay Gorney and Yip Harburg’s anthem of the Great Depression? “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” What he really wants is the restoration of his dignity, of his self-worth:
Once I built a railroad, made it run…
Once I built a tower to the sun
Brick and rivet and lime…
Once in khaki suits, gee, we looked swell…
The bloke on the pavement demanding “Brother, can you spare a quid?” of me every afternoon can’t boast that kind of resume. Never worked on the railroad, never worked in construction, never served in the army, never frothed up a decaf caramel macchiato. Never worked, because he never had to. One day those hardworking Poles will figure it out, too. A lot of immigrants already have. Two-thirds of French imams are on the dole. In the heavily immigrant Stockholm suburb of Tensta, one-fifth of women in their late 40s collect “disability” checks. Abu Qatada, a leading al-Qaeda recruiter, had 150,000 pounds (a quarter-million bucks, give or take) in his bank account courtesy of the British taxpayer before the drolly misnamed Department for Work and Pensions decided to cut back his benefits.
I confess a sneaking admiration for Mr Qatada, who was at least using his welfare payments actively to fund the destruction of western civilization, as opposed to just undermining it through sloth and inertia. When William Beveridge laid out his blueprint for the modern British welfare state in 1942, his goal was the “abolition of want”, to be accomplished by “co-operation between the State and the individual”. In attempting to insulate the citizenry from the vicissitudes of fate, Sir William has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams: Want has been all but abolished. Today, fewer and fewer Britons and Europeans “want” to work, “want” to marry, “want” to raise children, “want” to lead a life of any purpose or dignity. “Co-operation” between the State and the individual has resulted in a huge expansion of the former and the remorseless shriveling of the latter.
For a while, The Sun used to run a Shop-A-Sponger Hotline, fingering chaps like Alan Kenyon, who quit his last job in November 1973 and has lived since then on the government’s weekly “Jobseeker’s Allowance”, notwithstanding that, as the decades roll by, he has never attempted to seek any job. He passes his days playing his taxpayer-subsidized collection of 3,000 videos and 12,000 records. “Westerns are my favorite films,” he told The Sun. “I love Clint Eastwood.” Who doesn’t? A man of action, quick on the draw. A man of inaction, quick on the drawing of benefits, can happily watch that stuff decade in, decade out.
It happens so quickly. The “abolition of want” starts with the abolition of stigma. And once you’ve done that, it’s very hard to go back, even if you wanted to, which there’s no indication Britain’s millions of non-working households wish to do. But, if, say, you happen to be the one western nation not yet fully drugged into inertia by cradle-to-grave welfarism, you might want to pause before embracing the same fate.
The Godfather, R.I.P.
Irving Kristol, realist, humanist, institution-builder, friend
By Myron Magnet
http://www.city-journal.org/index.html
18 September 2009
Irving Kristol, who died today at 89, was famously the godfather of neoconservatism, and he was the godfather of City Journal, too, having urged the Manhattan Institute’s then-president Bill Hammett 20 years ago to start a magazine. Ever practical and realistic, Irving knew that it wasn’t enough for conservatives to have good ideas; they also needed vehicles to communicate them. If the mainstream media—which in that pre-Internet era really had a monopoly on news and opinion—didn’t want to give conservatives a platform, there was no use complaining: we’d just have to start our own publications. Irving understood the power of ideas as well as anyone, but he also understood the power of institutions.
His own world-historically influential magazine, The Public Interest, bore Irving’s stamp of practicality and realism, indeed of realpolitik. It aimed, through its hard-headed emphasis on social-scientific data, to rise above mere theorizing and opinion into the realm of fact and proof. Ever the anti-utopian, in politics and in temperament, Irving was interested in the world as it is, not as some system wanted it to be. He’d had his youthful flirtation with left-utopianism and, disillusioned by experience, became a neoconservative—a liberal, as he defined it, who’s been mugged by reality. What he really meant, of course, was simply a liberal who’d been mugged—who’d seen that all the liberal, welfare-state ideals for the uplift of the poor, and especially the minority poor, had in the end produced a criminal underclass, exactly the opposite of the intended uplift. The good intentions counted for nothing with him and even sparked a certain dry contempt; it was the result that mattered.
For all The Public Interest’s hard-headedness, however, Irving—a New York Intellectual, after all—saw clearly the power of that very intangible reality, culture. He knew how perversely wrong Marx had been to think that economic relations mold the world, giving form even to our ideas. On the contrary, Irving understood, the ideas, beliefs, customs, virtues, even the prejudices that make up the tissue of our culture are the true shapers of reality. As he explained in his greatest essay, “When Virtue Loses All Her Loveliness,” which closes Two Cheers for Capitalism, Adam Smith, for all his greatness as an economist and philosopher, did not see how crucial to the functioning of markets as he described them was the Presbyterian culture of the Scotland that bred him, with its emphasis on probity, thrift, enterprise, and truthfulness. Even in the economic world, material reality is only part of the story.
As for virtue, how lightly and graciously Irving embodied it, in his storybook marriage to his intellectual equal, the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, as a father to his accomplished children, and as a beloved, endlessly fascinating, convivial friend, as I, for whom New York became a poorer and duller place when Irving and Bea moved to Washington, can feelingly attest. He had a disabused, open-eyed optimism: when a huge crack opened in his pretty, nineteenth-century London living room when he was editing Encounter, he turned to Bea and said with a twinkle, “Well, that means we don’t have to worry about the children this year.” His generosity, especially to young conservatives, was legendary. It was partly a matter of policy, for nurturing the talented and finding them influential jobs is the way to build a movement. But it was even more an emanation of the sweetness of his temper and the depth of his humanity. I was complaining to him about New York’s plague of aggressive panhandlers back in the 1980s, and he said, “If someone is so in need that he asks me for money, who am I to determine what’s driven him to it? I always give something.” The reality he always had before him was the human reality.
- Myron Magnet is City Journal’s editor-at-large and was its editor from 1994 through 2006. He is the author of The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties’ Legacy to the Underclass and a recipient of the National Humanities Medal.
By Myron Magnet
http://www.city-journal.org/index.html
18 September 2009
Irving Kristol, who died today at 89, was famously the godfather of neoconservatism, and he was the godfather of City Journal, too, having urged the Manhattan Institute’s then-president Bill Hammett 20 years ago to start a magazine. Ever practical and realistic, Irving knew that it wasn’t enough for conservatives to have good ideas; they also needed vehicles to communicate them. If the mainstream media—which in that pre-Internet era really had a monopoly on news and opinion—didn’t want to give conservatives a platform, there was no use complaining: we’d just have to start our own publications. Irving understood the power of ideas as well as anyone, but he also understood the power of institutions.
His own world-historically influential magazine, The Public Interest, bore Irving’s stamp of practicality and realism, indeed of realpolitik. It aimed, through its hard-headed emphasis on social-scientific data, to rise above mere theorizing and opinion into the realm of fact and proof. Ever the anti-utopian, in politics and in temperament, Irving was interested in the world as it is, not as some system wanted it to be. He’d had his youthful flirtation with left-utopianism and, disillusioned by experience, became a neoconservative—a liberal, as he defined it, who’s been mugged by reality. What he really meant, of course, was simply a liberal who’d been mugged—who’d seen that all the liberal, welfare-state ideals for the uplift of the poor, and especially the minority poor, had in the end produced a criminal underclass, exactly the opposite of the intended uplift. The good intentions counted for nothing with him and even sparked a certain dry contempt; it was the result that mattered.For all The Public Interest’s hard-headedness, however, Irving—a New York Intellectual, after all—saw clearly the power of that very intangible reality, culture. He knew how perversely wrong Marx had been to think that economic relations mold the world, giving form even to our ideas. On the contrary, Irving understood, the ideas, beliefs, customs, virtues, even the prejudices that make up the tissue of our culture are the true shapers of reality. As he explained in his greatest essay, “When Virtue Loses All Her Loveliness,” which closes Two Cheers for Capitalism, Adam Smith, for all his greatness as an economist and philosopher, did not see how crucial to the functioning of markets as he described them was the Presbyterian culture of the Scotland that bred him, with its emphasis on probity, thrift, enterprise, and truthfulness. Even in the economic world, material reality is only part of the story.
As for virtue, how lightly and graciously Irving embodied it, in his storybook marriage to his intellectual equal, the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, as a father to his accomplished children, and as a beloved, endlessly fascinating, convivial friend, as I, for whom New York became a poorer and duller place when Irving and Bea moved to Washington, can feelingly attest. He had a disabused, open-eyed optimism: when a huge crack opened in his pretty, nineteenth-century London living room when he was editing Encounter, he turned to Bea and said with a twinkle, “Well, that means we don’t have to worry about the children this year.” His generosity, especially to young conservatives, was legendary. It was partly a matter of policy, for nurturing the talented and finding them influential jobs is the way to build a movement. But it was even more an emanation of the sweetness of his temper and the depth of his humanity. I was complaining to him about New York’s plague of aggressive panhandlers back in the 1980s, and he said, “If someone is so in need that he asks me for money, who am I to determine what’s driven him to it? I always give something.” The reality he always had before him was the human reality.
- Myron Magnet is City Journal’s editor-at-large and was its editor from 1994 through 2006. He is the author of The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties’ Legacy to the Underclass and a recipient of the National Humanities Medal.
Obama helping Putin restitch Iron Curtain
Scrapping of U.S. missile defense plans hands big victory to Russia's new czar.
By Mark Steyn
Syndicated columnist
Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion
Friday, September 18, 2009
Was it only April? There was President Barack Obama, speaking (as is his wont) in Prague, about the Iranian nuclear program and ballistic missile capability, and saluting America's plucky allies: "The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles," he declared. "As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven."
On Thursday, the administration scrapped its missile defense plans for Eastern Europe. The "courageous" Czechs and Poles will have to take their chances. Did the "threat from Iran" go away? Not so's you'd notice. The dawn of the nuclear Ayatollahs is perhaps only months away, and, just in case the Zionists or (please, no tittering) the formerly Great Satan is minded to take 'em out, Tehran will shortly be taking delivery of a bunch of S-300 anti-aircraft batteries from (ta-da!) Russia. Fancy that.
Joe Klein, the geostrategic thinker of Time magazine, concluded his analysis thus:
"This is just speculation on my part. But I do hope that this anti-missile move has a Russian concession attached to it, perhaps not publicly (just as the U.S. agreement to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey was not make public during the Cuban Missile Crisis). The Obama administration's diplomatic strategy is, I believe, wise and comprehensive – but it needs to show more than public concessions over time. A few diplomatic victories wouldn't hurt."
Golly. We know, thanks to Jimmy Carter, Joe Klein and many others, that we critics of President Obama's health care policy are, by definition, racist. Has criticism of Obama's foreign policy also been deemed racist? Because one can certainly detect the first faint seeds of doubt germinating in dear old Joe's soon-to-be-racist breast: The Obama administration "needs to show more than public concessions over time" – because otherwise the entire planet may get the vague impression that that's all there is.
Especially if your pre-emptive capitulations are as felicitously timed as the missile-defense announcement, stiffing the Poles on the 70th anniversary of their invasion by the Red Army. As for the Czechs, well, dust off your Neville Chamberlain's Greatest Hits LP: Like he said, they're a faraway country of which we know little. So who cares? Everything old is new again.
It is interesting to contrast the administration's "wise" diplomacy abroad with its willingness to go nuclear at home. If you go to a "town hall" meeting and express misgivings about the effectiveness of the stimulus, you're a "racist" "angry" "Nazi" "evilmonger" "right-wing domestic terrorist." It's perhaps no surprise that that doesn't leave a lot left over in the rhetorical arsenal for Putin, Chavez and Ahmadinejad. But you've got to figure that by now the world's strongmen are getting the measure of the new Washington. Diplomacy used to be, as Canada's Lester Pearson liked to say, the art of letting the other fellow have your way. Today, it's more of a discreet cover for letting the other fellow have his way with you. The Europeans "negotiate" with Iran over its nukes for years, and, in the end, Iran gets the nukes, and Europe gets to feel good about itself for having sat across the table talking to no good purpose for the best part of a decade. In Moscow, there was a palpable triumphalism in the news that the Russians had succeeded in letting the Obama fellow have their way. "This is a recognition by the Americans of the rightness of our arguments about the reality of the threat or, rather, the lack of one," said Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Duma's international affairs committee. "Finally the Americans have agreed with us."
There'll be a lot more of that in the years ahead.
There is no discreetly arranged "Russian concession." Moscow has concluded that a nuclear Iran is in its national interest – especially if the remorseless nuclearization process itself is seen as a testament to Western weakness. Even if the Israelis are driven to bomb the thing to smithereens circa next spring, that, too, would only emphasize, by implicit comparison, American and European pusillanimity. Any private relief felt in the chancelleries of London and Paris would inevitably license a huge amount of public tut-tutting by this or that foreign minister about the Zionist Entity's regrettable "disproportion." The U.S. defense secretary is already on record as opposing an Israeli strike. If it happens, every thug state around the globe will understand the subtext – that, aside from a tiny strip of land on the east bank of the Jordan, every other advanced society on earth is content to depend for its security on the kindness of strangers.
Some of them very strange. Kim Jong-il wouldn't really let fly at South Korea or Japan, would he? Even if some quasi-Talibanny types wound up sitting on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, they wouldn't really do anything with them, would they? OK, Putin can be a bit heavy-handed when dealing with Eastern Europe, and his definition of "Eastern" seems to stretch ever further west, but he's not going to be sending the tanks back into Prague and Budapest, is he? I mean, c'mon …
Vladimir Putin is no longer president but he is de facto czar. And he thinks it's past time to reconstitute the old empire – not formally (yet), but certainly as a sphere of influence from which the Yanks keep their distance. President Obama has just handed the Russians their biggest win since the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Indeed, in some ways it marks the restitching of the Iron Curtain. When the Czechs signed their end of the missile-defense deal in July, they found themselves afflicted by a sudden "technical difficulty" that halved their gas supply from Russia. The Europe Putin foresees will be one not only ever more energy-dependent on Moscow but security-dependent, too – in which every city is within range of missiles from Tehran and other crazies, and is, in effect, under the security umbrella of the new czar. As to whether such a Continent will be amicable to American interests, well, good luck with that, hopeychangers.
In a sense, the health care debate and the foreign policy debacle are two sides of the same coin: For Britain and other great powers, the decision to build a hugely expensive welfare state at home entailed inevitably a long retreat from responsibilities abroad, with a thousand small betrayals of peripheral allies along the way. A few years ago, the great scholar Bernard Lewis warned, during the debate on withdrawal from Iraq, that America risked being seen as "harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend." In Moscow and Tehran, on the one hand, and Warsaw and Prague, on the other, they're drawing their own conclusions.
©MARK STEYN
By Mark Steyn
Syndicated columnist
Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion
Friday, September 18, 2009
Was it only April? There was President Barack Obama, speaking (as is his wont) in Prague, about the Iranian nuclear program and ballistic missile capability, and saluting America's plucky allies: "The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles," he declared. "As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven."On Thursday, the administration scrapped its missile defense plans for Eastern Europe. The "courageous" Czechs and Poles will have to take their chances. Did the "threat from Iran" go away? Not so's you'd notice. The dawn of the nuclear Ayatollahs is perhaps only months away, and, just in case the Zionists or (please, no tittering) the formerly Great Satan is minded to take 'em out, Tehran will shortly be taking delivery of a bunch of S-300 anti-aircraft batteries from (ta-da!) Russia. Fancy that.
Joe Klein, the geostrategic thinker of Time magazine, concluded his analysis thus:
"This is just speculation on my part. But I do hope that this anti-missile move has a Russian concession attached to it, perhaps not publicly (just as the U.S. agreement to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey was not make public during the Cuban Missile Crisis). The Obama administration's diplomatic strategy is, I believe, wise and comprehensive – but it needs to show more than public concessions over time. A few diplomatic victories wouldn't hurt."
Golly. We know, thanks to Jimmy Carter, Joe Klein and many others, that we critics of President Obama's health care policy are, by definition, racist. Has criticism of Obama's foreign policy also been deemed racist? Because one can certainly detect the first faint seeds of doubt germinating in dear old Joe's soon-to-be-racist breast: The Obama administration "needs to show more than public concessions over time" – because otherwise the entire planet may get the vague impression that that's all there is.
Especially if your pre-emptive capitulations are as felicitously timed as the missile-defense announcement, stiffing the Poles on the 70th anniversary of their invasion by the Red Army. As for the Czechs, well, dust off your Neville Chamberlain's Greatest Hits LP: Like he said, they're a faraway country of which we know little. So who cares? Everything old is new again.
It is interesting to contrast the administration's "wise" diplomacy abroad with its willingness to go nuclear at home. If you go to a "town hall" meeting and express misgivings about the effectiveness of the stimulus, you're a "racist" "angry" "Nazi" "evilmonger" "right-wing domestic terrorist." It's perhaps no surprise that that doesn't leave a lot left over in the rhetorical arsenal for Putin, Chavez and Ahmadinejad. But you've got to figure that by now the world's strongmen are getting the measure of the new Washington. Diplomacy used to be, as Canada's Lester Pearson liked to say, the art of letting the other fellow have your way. Today, it's more of a discreet cover for letting the other fellow have his way with you. The Europeans "negotiate" with Iran over its nukes for years, and, in the end, Iran gets the nukes, and Europe gets to feel good about itself for having sat across the table talking to no good purpose for the best part of a decade. In Moscow, there was a palpable triumphalism in the news that the Russians had succeeded in letting the Obama fellow have their way. "This is a recognition by the Americans of the rightness of our arguments about the reality of the threat or, rather, the lack of one," said Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Duma's international affairs committee. "Finally the Americans have agreed with us."
There'll be a lot more of that in the years ahead.
There is no discreetly arranged "Russian concession." Moscow has concluded that a nuclear Iran is in its national interest – especially if the remorseless nuclearization process itself is seen as a testament to Western weakness. Even if the Israelis are driven to bomb the thing to smithereens circa next spring, that, too, would only emphasize, by implicit comparison, American and European pusillanimity. Any private relief felt in the chancelleries of London and Paris would inevitably license a huge amount of public tut-tutting by this or that foreign minister about the Zionist Entity's regrettable "disproportion." The U.S. defense secretary is already on record as opposing an Israeli strike. If it happens, every thug state around the globe will understand the subtext – that, aside from a tiny strip of land on the east bank of the Jordan, every other advanced society on earth is content to depend for its security on the kindness of strangers.
Some of them very strange. Kim Jong-il wouldn't really let fly at South Korea or Japan, would he? Even if some quasi-Talibanny types wound up sitting on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, they wouldn't really do anything with them, would they? OK, Putin can be a bit heavy-handed when dealing with Eastern Europe, and his definition of "Eastern" seems to stretch ever further west, but he's not going to be sending the tanks back into Prague and Budapest, is he? I mean, c'mon …
Vladimir Putin is no longer president but he is de facto czar. And he thinks it's past time to reconstitute the old empire – not formally (yet), but certainly as a sphere of influence from which the Yanks keep their distance. President Obama has just handed the Russians their biggest win since the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Indeed, in some ways it marks the restitching of the Iron Curtain. When the Czechs signed their end of the missile-defense deal in July, they found themselves afflicted by a sudden "technical difficulty" that halved their gas supply from Russia. The Europe Putin foresees will be one not only ever more energy-dependent on Moscow but security-dependent, too – in which every city is within range of missiles from Tehran and other crazies, and is, in effect, under the security umbrella of the new czar. As to whether such a Continent will be amicable to American interests, well, good luck with that, hopeychangers.
In a sense, the health care debate and the foreign policy debacle are two sides of the same coin: For Britain and other great powers, the decision to build a hugely expensive welfare state at home entailed inevitably a long retreat from responsibilities abroad, with a thousand small betrayals of peripheral allies along the way. A few years ago, the great scholar Bernard Lewis warned, during the debate on withdrawal from Iraq, that America risked being seen as "harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend." In Moscow and Tehran, on the one hand, and Warsaw and Prague, on the other, they're drawing their own conclusions.
©MARK STEYN
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
The Other Catholic Higher Education
Since most Catholic colleges won’t do their job, bring the faith to secular schools.
By Gerard V. Bradley
http://www.nationalreview.com/
September 16, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
There are about 225 Catholic colleges and universities listed in The Official Catholic Directory. More than a hundred others have gone out of business over the last generation. I am confident that scores more will disappear — close their doors, merge, or officially declare themselves to be secular — over the next couple of decades. And even among today’s 225 institutions, most are no more than nominally Catholic. That will not change in the coming years.
This remarkable institutional meltdown is mightily affecting the Church. At precisely the time of life when young people are shedding their childlike faith and need to develop a mature, more critical, but more profound adult commitment, they leave home and encounter a brave new world of ideas and experiences untethered to Catholicism.
The meltdown also affects America. The intellectual formation of the nation’s 65 million Catholics has a profound influence on our culture and our politics. It is therefore worth asking: What happened to America’s Catholic colleges and universities? And what’s next?
Is it a simple case of supply contracting to match a shrinking demand? Not really. In this case, there has been a more complex, and largely reverse, dialectic. The reason is that demand for this particular good — a genuine Catholic education — must be stimulated by suppliers, in league with other Catholic authority figures. Unlike food and clothing and health care, this product satisfies no natural need. Nor does it respond to some culturally contingent requirement, as do cell phones or a bachelor’s degree from some — any — accredited institution. A genuine Catholic education is more like an orchid: Both its beauty and people’s appreciation of it must be assiduously cultivated. So when the supply of Catholic education plummeted in the late 1960s, so did demand. Many suppliers went out of business. That further decreased demand, so more suppliers quit. Four decades of this, and production of genuine Catholic education is a now a fringe, boutique enterprise.
It didn’t have to happen. America’s Catholic higher-education complex should have taken off when the baby boomers came of age. There were already hundreds of schools, and the mid-1960s brought a teeming cohort of potential patrons. Moreover, unlike most of their parents, these boomers were destined for college. Tragically, instead of reaping the reward of this bounty, the colleges began to shed their Catholic character — for a mix of reasons, good, misguided but understandable, and just plain bad.
One good reason has to do with the fact that dozens of these colleges were little more than finishing schools for better-off Catholic girls. Given that many of the top colleges, Catholic and not, were still male-only, and that these girls were mostly destined by cultural fate to be homemakers, the decent liberal education they received was perhaps suited to them. But when women began to look at college the way men do, and when they became admissible at all the best schools, it was lights out for the finishing schools. Some tried to adapt to the new ethos; few succeeded.
A misguided but understandable reason was money. In the late 1960s, many Catholic schools rapidly secularized for fear that the government money they thought they needed (in the form of scholarships and other grants) would be denied to “sectarian” institutions. The Supreme Court laid this fear to rest in decisions announced in the mid-1970s, but by then the schools were pretty far gone. Another misguided reason was faulty theology. Jesuit colleges in particular were captured by an alleged “spirit of Vatican II.” This wind blew them to the belief that a true Catholic education was one immersed in the nitty-gritty of contemporary thought and praxis. But since the contemporary world was largely pagan, so was the effect upon the colleges.
A just plain bad reason was rejection of the Catholic faith. Catholic intellectuals (among other Catholics) rebelled against the truths of Catholicism beginning in the 1960s. Many declared themselves no longer Catholic; others settled into permanent dissent. The ones in charge of colleges took their institutions with them.
The vast majority of America’s Catholic colleges and universities today are small, academically undistinguished, and struggling to make ends meet. They subsist — barely — on tuition income. They no longer have a market to themselves. Instead they compete with the whole array of private colleges and cheaper — much cheaper — public ones. They are losing ground. Today few college-age Catholics wish to be formed intellectually according to the truths of the faith. Few wish to be intellectually formed at all. They attend college for the same reason most kids do: to get a degree that will help them get a better job. How many 18-year-olds really understand the great intrinsic (that is, non-instrumental) value of a liberal education? How many grasp the sublime value of a distinctively Catholic liberal education?
Today’s young people are not much to blame. They see that Wall Street philosophy firms are not paying much these days (or any days), and they do not want to be unemployed poets. Of course the benefits of a genuine Catholic education lie elsewhere than in the job market, but they are largely invisible and long-term. Furthermore, acquiring a real education of any sort is very hard work. Who would be such a chump as to pay a premium for the privilege? When all you can get at a “Catholic” school is some pious platitudes wrapped around the same product that is discounted elsewhere, a savvy shopper makes the easy call.
The truth is and has always been that demand for Catholic education has to be stimulated from the top down. The challenge is that people who scarcely grasp a product’s benefits must be persuaded to buy it at a high price. This is not impossible. The history of advertising shows that people can be persuaded to pay for products they had not wanted and that do them no real good. (Remember Pet Rocks?) In the case of Catholic education, people — kids and their parents and potential donors — have to be persuaded by credible spokesmen that the Catholic faith, which they should hold dear, requires a major investment for its transmission and flourishing. This sales job calls for exertion and authoritative testimony to a subtle but unsurpassably valuable payoff.
It is not going to happen. Some of yesterday’s promotional tools are (thankfully) no longer in use. Young women are not “finished” any more; the best colleges no longer discriminate against Catholic applicants; bishops no longer preach against, much less forbid attendance at, non-Catholic colleges. (Justly so, given the sorry state of today’s “Catholic” colleges.) Lamentable but no less consequential is the waning of “feeder” parochial high schools, and the whole cultural devaluation of religious education for anyone who is not going into specifically religious work. And, as I said, the competition from cheaper public institutions is fierce.
The flagship Catholic institutions could arrest (up to a point) this decline in demand. Notre Dame and Georgetown could flourish today as bastions of a genuinely Catholic education. Their large, loyal, and generous alumni base protects them financially. They do not compete with public universities, at least not nearly as intensely and precariously as do the vast majority of Catholic institutions. If these leadership schools preached the gospel of Catholic education in and out of season, they could stimulate demand for it all the way down the academic food chain. High-school seniors denied admission to Notre Dame would still want what Notre Dame has to offer, and would likely seek it at another Catholic institution.
But the leadership schools have not stepped up to the plate. For the full story about Notre Dame, you should read my colleague Charlie Rice’s candid and powerful new book, What Happened to Notre Dame? Rice has taught at Notre Dame for almost 40 years and has long been an affectionate but acute critic of the school’s secular drift. His key point is expressed succinctly by Notre Dame philosophy professor Alfred Freddoso. In his introduction to Rice’s book, Freddoso writes that Notre Dame “is a university as universities go these days, and it is in some obvious sense Catholic. What it is not — and has not been since I have been here — is a Catholic university, i.e., an institution of higher learning where the Catholic faith pervades and enriches, and is itself enriched by, the intellectual life on campus.” Freddoso observes that “Notre Dame today is something like a public school in a Catholic neighborhood.”
The heart of a Catholic university — of any university — is its intellectual life: most importantly, the teaching and learning within its classrooms, and then the research and publishing of its faculty. If the truths of the Catholic faith do not suffuse these endeavors, the university simply is not Catholic. The difference between Notre Dame and other industry leaders (such as Georgetown and Boston College) lies in the comparative quality of the “Catholic neighborhood.” At Notre Dame, it is good.
Encouragingly, a handful of small colleges have kept the faith. Among them is Belmont Abbey College, of Charlotte, N.C., under the courageous leadership of its president, Bill Thierfelder, and its chief academic officer, Ann Carson Daley. Saint Vincent’s College, of Latrobe, Pa., is also on track, under the direction of Jim Towey (formerly President Bush’s assistant for faith-based social services and, for many years prior to that, legal counsel to Mother Teresa). The leadership team at Mount Saint Mary’s, in Emmitsburg, Md., is very strongly committed to its Catholic character, as is that at Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kans., where Stephen Minnis is president. These and the few other genuinely Catholic schools should be cherished, supported, and patronized. But they are a tiny slice of the whole pie of American higher education. And they are not likely to multiply.
We need a new paradigm for delivering Catholic higher education. It is time to go where the Catholic students are. More than 80 percent of them attend non-Catholic institutions, where the Church’s mission has long been limited to pastoral care: On campus or at nearby Newman Centers students attend Mass, go to confession, and meet other Catholics. We must ratchet this menu of options up — way up — to include serious and sustained intellectual formation. The goal should be to establish, at or near every college with a substantial Catholic student population, a free-standing center devoted to intellectual formation, to the cultivation of the Catholic mind.
This is the other Catholic higher education.
— Gerard V. Bradley is professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, and a former president of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.
By Gerard V. Bradley
http://www.nationalreview.com/
September 16, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
There are about 225 Catholic colleges and universities listed in The Official Catholic Directory. More than a hundred others have gone out of business over the last generation. I am confident that scores more will disappear — close their doors, merge, or officially declare themselves to be secular — over the next couple of decades. And even among today’s 225 institutions, most are no more than nominally Catholic. That will not change in the coming years.
This remarkable institutional meltdown is mightily affecting the Church. At precisely the time of life when young people are shedding their childlike faith and need to develop a mature, more critical, but more profound adult commitment, they leave home and encounter a brave new world of ideas and experiences untethered to Catholicism.The meltdown also affects America. The intellectual formation of the nation’s 65 million Catholics has a profound influence on our culture and our politics. It is therefore worth asking: What happened to America’s Catholic colleges and universities? And what’s next?
Is it a simple case of supply contracting to match a shrinking demand? Not really. In this case, there has been a more complex, and largely reverse, dialectic. The reason is that demand for this particular good — a genuine Catholic education — must be stimulated by suppliers, in league with other Catholic authority figures. Unlike food and clothing and health care, this product satisfies no natural need. Nor does it respond to some culturally contingent requirement, as do cell phones or a bachelor’s degree from some — any — accredited institution. A genuine Catholic education is more like an orchid: Both its beauty and people’s appreciation of it must be assiduously cultivated. So when the supply of Catholic education plummeted in the late 1960s, so did demand. Many suppliers went out of business. That further decreased demand, so more suppliers quit. Four decades of this, and production of genuine Catholic education is a now a fringe, boutique enterprise.
It didn’t have to happen. America’s Catholic higher-education complex should have taken off when the baby boomers came of age. There were already hundreds of schools, and the mid-1960s brought a teeming cohort of potential patrons. Moreover, unlike most of their parents, these boomers were destined for college. Tragically, instead of reaping the reward of this bounty, the colleges began to shed their Catholic character — for a mix of reasons, good, misguided but understandable, and just plain bad.
One good reason has to do with the fact that dozens of these colleges were little more than finishing schools for better-off Catholic girls. Given that many of the top colleges, Catholic and not, were still male-only, and that these girls were mostly destined by cultural fate to be homemakers, the decent liberal education they received was perhaps suited to them. But when women began to look at college the way men do, and when they became admissible at all the best schools, it was lights out for the finishing schools. Some tried to adapt to the new ethos; few succeeded.
A misguided but understandable reason was money. In the late 1960s, many Catholic schools rapidly secularized for fear that the government money they thought they needed (in the form of scholarships and other grants) would be denied to “sectarian” institutions. The Supreme Court laid this fear to rest in decisions announced in the mid-1970s, but by then the schools were pretty far gone. Another misguided reason was faulty theology. Jesuit colleges in particular were captured by an alleged “spirit of Vatican II.” This wind blew them to the belief that a true Catholic education was one immersed in the nitty-gritty of contemporary thought and praxis. But since the contemporary world was largely pagan, so was the effect upon the colleges.
A just plain bad reason was rejection of the Catholic faith. Catholic intellectuals (among other Catholics) rebelled against the truths of Catholicism beginning in the 1960s. Many declared themselves no longer Catholic; others settled into permanent dissent. The ones in charge of colleges took their institutions with them.
The vast majority of America’s Catholic colleges and universities today are small, academically undistinguished, and struggling to make ends meet. They subsist — barely — on tuition income. They no longer have a market to themselves. Instead they compete with the whole array of private colleges and cheaper — much cheaper — public ones. They are losing ground. Today few college-age Catholics wish to be formed intellectually according to the truths of the faith. Few wish to be intellectually formed at all. They attend college for the same reason most kids do: to get a degree that will help them get a better job. How many 18-year-olds really understand the great intrinsic (that is, non-instrumental) value of a liberal education? How many grasp the sublime value of a distinctively Catholic liberal education?
Today’s young people are not much to blame. They see that Wall Street philosophy firms are not paying much these days (or any days), and they do not want to be unemployed poets. Of course the benefits of a genuine Catholic education lie elsewhere than in the job market, but they are largely invisible and long-term. Furthermore, acquiring a real education of any sort is very hard work. Who would be such a chump as to pay a premium for the privilege? When all you can get at a “Catholic” school is some pious platitudes wrapped around the same product that is discounted elsewhere, a savvy shopper makes the easy call.
The truth is and has always been that demand for Catholic education has to be stimulated from the top down. The challenge is that people who scarcely grasp a product’s benefits must be persuaded to buy it at a high price. This is not impossible. The history of advertising shows that people can be persuaded to pay for products they had not wanted and that do them no real good. (Remember Pet Rocks?) In the case of Catholic education, people — kids and their parents and potential donors — have to be persuaded by credible spokesmen that the Catholic faith, which they should hold dear, requires a major investment for its transmission and flourishing. This sales job calls for exertion and authoritative testimony to a subtle but unsurpassably valuable payoff.
It is not going to happen. Some of yesterday’s promotional tools are (thankfully) no longer in use. Young women are not “finished” any more; the best colleges no longer discriminate against Catholic applicants; bishops no longer preach against, much less forbid attendance at, non-Catholic colleges. (Justly so, given the sorry state of today’s “Catholic” colleges.) Lamentable but no less consequential is the waning of “feeder” parochial high schools, and the whole cultural devaluation of religious education for anyone who is not going into specifically religious work. And, as I said, the competition from cheaper public institutions is fierce.
The flagship Catholic institutions could arrest (up to a point) this decline in demand. Notre Dame and Georgetown could flourish today as bastions of a genuinely Catholic education. Their large, loyal, and generous alumni base protects them financially. They do not compete with public universities, at least not nearly as intensely and precariously as do the vast majority of Catholic institutions. If these leadership schools preached the gospel of Catholic education in and out of season, they could stimulate demand for it all the way down the academic food chain. High-school seniors denied admission to Notre Dame would still want what Notre Dame has to offer, and would likely seek it at another Catholic institution.
But the leadership schools have not stepped up to the plate. For the full story about Notre Dame, you should read my colleague Charlie Rice’s candid and powerful new book, What Happened to Notre Dame? Rice has taught at Notre Dame for almost 40 years and has long been an affectionate but acute critic of the school’s secular drift. His key point is expressed succinctly by Notre Dame philosophy professor Alfred Freddoso. In his introduction to Rice’s book, Freddoso writes that Notre Dame “is a university as universities go these days, and it is in some obvious sense Catholic. What it is not — and has not been since I have been here — is a Catholic university, i.e., an institution of higher learning where the Catholic faith pervades and enriches, and is itself enriched by, the intellectual life on campus.” Freddoso observes that “Notre Dame today is something like a public school in a Catholic neighborhood.”
The heart of a Catholic university — of any university — is its intellectual life: most importantly, the teaching and learning within its classrooms, and then the research and publishing of its faculty. If the truths of the Catholic faith do not suffuse these endeavors, the university simply is not Catholic. The difference between Notre Dame and other industry leaders (such as Georgetown and Boston College) lies in the comparative quality of the “Catholic neighborhood.” At Notre Dame, it is good.
Encouragingly, a handful of small colleges have kept the faith. Among them is Belmont Abbey College, of Charlotte, N.C., under the courageous leadership of its president, Bill Thierfelder, and its chief academic officer, Ann Carson Daley. Saint Vincent’s College, of Latrobe, Pa., is also on track, under the direction of Jim Towey (formerly President Bush’s assistant for faith-based social services and, for many years prior to that, legal counsel to Mother Teresa). The leadership team at Mount Saint Mary’s, in Emmitsburg, Md., is very strongly committed to its Catholic character, as is that at Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kans., where Stephen Minnis is president. These and the few other genuinely Catholic schools should be cherished, supported, and patronized. But they are a tiny slice of the whole pie of American higher education. And they are not likely to multiply.
We need a new paradigm for delivering Catholic higher education. It is time to go where the Catholic students are. More than 80 percent of them attend non-Catholic institutions, where the Church’s mission has long been limited to pastoral care: On campus or at nearby Newman Centers students attend Mass, go to confession, and meet other Catholics. We must ratchet this menu of options up — way up — to include serious and sustained intellectual formation. The goal should be to establish, at or near every college with a substantial Catholic student population, a free-standing center devoted to intellectual formation, to the cultivation of the Catholic mind.
This is the other Catholic higher education.
— Gerard V. Bradley is professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, and a former president of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.
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