Why Obama's "Community Organizer" Days Are a Joke

By Michelle Malkin
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/
September 05, 2008

Rudy Giuliani had me in stitches during his red-meat keynote address at the GOP convention. I laughed out loud when Giuliani laughed out loud while noting Barack Obama's deep experience as a "community organizer." I laughed again when VP nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin cracked: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Team Obama was not amused. (Neither were the snarky left-wingers on cable TV who are now allergic to sarcasm.) They don't get why we snicker when Obama dons his Community Organizer cape. Apparently, the jibes rendered Obama's advisers sleepless. In a crack-of-dawn e-mail to Obama's followers hours after Giuliani and Palin spoke, campaign manager David Plouffe attempted to gin up faux outrage (and, more importantly, donations) by claiming grave offense on the part of community organizers everywhere. Fumed Plouffe:

"Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed. Let's clarify something for them right now. Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies."

Let me clarify something. Nobody is mocking community organizers in church basements and community centers across the country working to improve their neighbors' lives. What deserves ridicule is the notion that Obama's brief stint as a South Side rabble-rouser for tax-subsidized, partisan nonprofits qualifies as executive experience you can believe in.

What deserves derision is "community organizing" that relies on a community of homeless people and ex-cons to organize for the purpose of registering dead people to vote, shaking down corporations and using the race card as a bludgeon.

As I've reported previously, Obama's community organizing days involved training grievance-mongers from the far-left ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). The ACORN mob is infamous for its bully tactics (which they dub "direct actions"); Obama supporters have recounted his role in organizing an ambush on a government planning meeting about a landfill project opposed by Chicago's minority lobbies.

With benefactors like Obama in office, ACORN has milked nearly four decades of government subsidies to prop up chapters that promote the welfare state and undermine the free market, as well as some that have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and voter fraud. Since I last detailed ACORN's illicit activities in this column in June (see "The ACORN Obama knows," June 19, 2008), the group continues to garner scrutiny from law enforcement:

Last week, Milwaukee's top election official announced plans to seek criminal investigations of 37 ACORN employees accused of offering gifts to sign up voters (including prepaid gas cards and restaurant cards) or falsifying driver's license numbers, Social Security numbers or other information on voter registration cards.

Last month, a New Mexico TV station reported on the child rapists, drug offenders and forgery convicts on ACORN's payroll. In July, Pennsylvania investigators asked the public for help in locating a fugitive named Luis R. Torres-Serrano, who is accused "of submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registration forms he collected on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now to county election officials." Also in July, a massive, nearly $1 million embezzlement scheme by top ACORN officials was exposed.

ACORN's political arm endorsed Obama in February and has ramped up efforts to register voters across the country. In the meantime, completely ignored by the mainstream commentariat and clean-election crusaders, the Obama campaign admitted failing to report $800,000 in campaign payments to ACORN. They were disguised as payments to a front group called "Citizen Services, Inc." for "advance work."

Jim Terry, an official from the Consumer Rights League, a watchdog group that monitors ACORN, noted: "ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain. Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama's political gain." With a wave of his magic wand, Obama amended his FEC forms to change the "advance work" to "get-out-the-vote" work.

Now, don't you dare challenge his commitment to following tax and election laws. And don't you even think of entertaining the possibility that The One exploited a nonprofit supposedly focused on helping low-income people for political gain.

He was just "organizing" his "community." Guffaw.

Sob Story

Tears from the Xcel press stand.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez
National Review Online
http://www.nationalreview.com/
September 04, 2008, 9:45 a.m.

Republican vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, holds her infant son, Trig, as she stands on stage with her husband, Todd, during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008.
(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

ST. PAUL — I cried Wednesday night at the Xcel Center.

I didn’t just tear up when Alaska governor Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, talked about her son, Track, who will deploy to Iraq next week. I didn’t just tear up when she talked about her beautiful daughters — including one who has to suffer seeing her most intimate mistake and challenge in the public eye. I teared up when this 44-year-old woman, with her proverbial hair down, felt completely comfortable and confident talking about her love for her husband in a packed arena: “We met in high school, and two decades and five children later, he’s still my guy.”

And, yes, when she spoke of her son, Trig, and about special-needs children, I cried. She said:

And in April, my husband Todd and I welcomed our littlest one into the world, a perfectly beautiful baby boy named Trig. From the inside, no family ever seems typical.

That’s how it is with us.

Our family has the same ups and downs as any other . . . the same challenges and the same joys.

Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge.

And children with special needs inspire a special love.

When you look at that beautiful boy and realize that in America, some 90 percent of parents would not have let him live, how can you not be both terrified for us and filled with joy for the love this little boy has? How can you help but be excited by the prospect that Americans might become more aware of the silent elimination of such blessings?

Without pandering, without sounding like a politician, Palin was able to say, essentially, I am one of you. I work hard. Love my family. Love God (“a servant’s heart”). We struggle, just like you. But we know what is right and what is wrong. And I am here today to make sure you can make the choices you need to do right by your family.

She didn’t have to spell it all out, she showed it to us Wednesday night. She showed us that even a small-town gal from Alaska can be successful and be a leader.

And she laid the groundwork for invigorating a movement. Immediately after her speech, National Review Online readers e-mailed me to tell me they had just watched the next Ronald Reagan, the long-awaited successor. What I think we’re seeing is a new generation of conservatism. As Mitt Romney laid out clearly in his speech earlier in the night, there are some real differences between liberals and conservatives, and with a passionate energy this young woman is on the road to leading the Right into the future, with great respect for those who have laid the groundwork before us.

Other readers asked me why Palin didn’t talk about “life.” Her entire speech was about it. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. American exceptionalism. With love and spirit and good humor.

I’ve not cried during a political speech since the pope and George W. Bush met on the South Lawn of the White House earlier this year. There they talked freely about good and evil, truth and falsehood, God and man, love and hate. They talked about defending what is important and essential — most essential: our very lives and liberty. They talked about the special opportunity that is American life. This is what Sarah Palin presented to Americans watching her, probably meeting her for the first time, Wednesday night.

There are miles to go yet in this election. But Sarah Palin has gotten off to an excellent start. And Americans — men and women reminded of what’s important, boys and girls inspired by her energy and accomplishments — are better people for having met her, this woman in love with her country, her family, her God, and this gift of life in America.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.

With a Smile on Her Face … and Steel in Her Spine

Sarah Palin taps into America.

By Andrew C. McCarthy
National Review Online
http://www.nationalreview.com/
September 04, 2008, 1:34 a.m.


The weather was awful, my flight was delayed, and I was late to the symposium — prototypical law school gasbaggery on whether captured terrorists were receiving sufficient due-process protections. So I missed the start of the professor’s keynote address, entering the hall as he railed about “the American Taliban.”

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, left, is joined by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, right, and daughter Piper at the end of her speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008.
(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

It was 2004. Naturally, I assumed he was speaking about John Walker Lindh, the U.S. citizen who’d been seized on the battlefield in Afghanistan and whose case was then very much in the news. But as I listened, it became crystal clear that, in this room, the traitor who’d thrown in his lot with enemies responsible for murdering thousands of innocent Americans was not the object of scorn. If anything, he was a figure who merited our sympathetic understanding — our self-examination about what we’d done to make him hate us so.

No, “the American Taliban” against whom this professor was railing was the United States Department of Justice under that well-known jackbooted thug, John Ashcroft. This leftwing gasbag was talking about me. Me and people like me who had worked night and day for many years, trying to ferret out threats to our country and prosecute the monsters behind them.

He was telling his audience of gazing law students and like-minded academics that we, not al-Qaeda, were the savages.

I couldn’t help thinking about that scene, which has been repeated more times than I can count, as I read commentary about the phenomenon that is Sarah Palin, who brought the house down with a barnburner at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night. Especially puzzling is the critique that the nominee for vice president was, at times, too biting, too sarcastic in her portrayal of the opposition.

I couldn’t disagree more. Palin is a natural. What we got is what she is: poised, sharp, charming, feisty, funny, and unapologetically patriotic. As she might have put it, the speech she gave in St. Paul is the same one she’d give in Scranton or San Francisco.

More importantly, the speech tapped into a teeming reservoir of repressed rage. Memo to Barack Obama: You’re right, many of us are bitter. We are damn angry about being framed as “the American Taliban” because we love our country and think it’s exceptional as is; because we think you deal with evil by defeating it, not cozying up to it; because the change we think we need is a government that shrinks and gets out of the way, not a confiscatory, will-sapping Leviathan; because we don’t see “patriotism” as the willingness — the eagerness — to catalogue America’s flaws while never acknowledging her greatness; because when it comes to “reputation in the world,” we think it’s the “international community” not the United States that has a lot of catching up to do.

But Sarah Palin didn’t court this anger with more anger. That would be a turn-off. What most frustrates Americans is that we are a happy, optimistic, can-do people ceaselessly harangued by media solons, delusional academics, post-sovereign Eurocrats, and the Democrats who love them. While we free and feed the world, they can’t tell us enough that we’re racist, imperialist, torturing louts. We know it’s a libel, an endless stream of slander. But we also know it’s an absurd libel. We’re tired of hearing it, but taking it too seriously would give it power it doesn’t deserve.

So Sarah Palin was sarcastic and biting. That’s how a happy warrior deals with absurdity. That’s how a happy warrior rallies the troops.

We are in a war against terrorists, and the other side has nominated a man who has been a friend and business partner of an unrepentant, America-hating terrorist. The press lauds Obama as post-partisan when even a cursory glance at his record shows he is as partisan as it gets. The press lauds him as post-racial, but he sat comfortably for years in Trinity Church, drinking in the racist ravings of Jeremiah Wright, and he sat comfortably for years in rough-and-tumble Chicago, playing by-the-numbers race-based politics.

Obama blathers about “change” but then chooses as his running-mate a Washington relic who has managed in 35 years to be wrong on just about everything while compiling a record nearly as slavishly Leftist as Obama’s. In an era of complex, vicious, asymmetrical threats, Democrats give us a “community organizer” without a shred of executive experience who, in his years as a state legislator, voted “present” when it was time to make the tough calls. Except, of course, when it came to life: In a nation repulsed by partial birth abortion, Obama decided to make his stand enabling the practitioners of infanticide.

It is positively absurd that such a candidate should have a snowball’s chance of becoming president of the United States. But he has a very good chance because Americans haven’t been rallied.

Well, they’ve been rallied now. And rallied, at long last, in a way that resonates: By an attractive winner with a smile on her face and steel in her spine. By a proud woman living the ups and downs of an American life — a woman the other side spent a week trying to destroy by coming after those she loves most. With grit and good humor, she brushed those critics aside like so many Styrofoam columns.

It wasn’t snide. Sarah Palin was grace personified. And now, finally, even we American Taliban have hope.

Sarah Palin Is My Girl

By Ted Nugent
http://www.humanevents.com/
09/04/2008


Republican vice presidential candidate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin speaks to the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota September 3, 2008.(Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

With grave suspicion and reservations, I nonetheless rejoice that the fading embers of conservatism may have indeed caught fire once more. That fireball is Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, I pray the next Vice President of the United States. Now I know why I have seen no one with any guts in the Republican Party in so long: the governor of Alaska has them all. Her speech last night was clearly a grand slam out-of-the-park home run. America, we have liftoff!

By selecting Gov. Palin to be his running mate, Sen. McCain has finally electrified the conservative base -- the very base he desperately needs to defeat Sen.Obama in November.

I, for one, am greatly relieved and inspired by her message, delivery, confidence, poise, class and grace.

To borrow a relative quote from Michelle Obama, with the selection of Gov. Palin, it’s the first time in quite some time that I’m proud of the Republican Party.

Gov. Palin is a true outsider, a real maverick. She lacks Washington, D.C. political experience. That’s good. No, that’s excellent. It is her lack of D.C. political experience that is the refreshing outsider change America so desperately needs and wants.

Palin made it clear that she is like the rest of us, noting how Fedzilla is bloated, broken, ineffective, and wasteful. Our professional politicians no longer work for us, but instead represent K Street bandit lobbyists. These scoundrels deserve our scorn, anger and contempt, and, quite honestly, a big, old pink slip, and Sarah appears to be the tough leader we seek to get the job done.

The level of disgust and distrust across America is appalling and, I believe, unprecedented. A recent poll indicated the Nancy Pelosi-led Congress’ approval rating is at an abysmal record low of nine percent. That it is even that high shows how clueless and disconnected the lunatic fringe is.

America needs more outsiders in Washington, D.C. now more than ever. We need more tough, standup hockey moms like Governor Sarah Palin. We need more ordinary Americans to springboard from small city councils to the halls of congress and beyond. We need welders, cops, teachers, ditch diggers, business people, construction workers, secretaries, auto mechanics, and guitar slingers to come to Washington, D.C. and replant the good old "We the People" tree.

Americans need to replace the professional politicians who have rigged and ruined the system to exclude ordinary citizens from participating in this experiment in self-government. My advice is to get angry and vote them all out. The professional punk politicians are the problem, not the solution.

We need fewer lawyers in Washington. Lawyers have created a masturbatory legal system by raping our justice system. It’s refreshing to see that neither Sen. McCain nor Gov. Palin is a lawyer. This could be a good start back towards an experiment in self-government. Count me in.

We need fewer bureaucrats who accomplish nothing but sustaining and growing Fedzilla. Bureaucrats create reams of regulations, rules, and requirements that strangle innovation and punish producers. I expect Vice President Palin to lead the charge with a battering ram to smash in the bureaucratic doors that impede progress instead of enabling it. I had a bumper crop of crowbars this year. I'll donate them all to those willing to swing them.

It’s wrong to suggest that just because Gov. Palin is not a career D.C. politician that she lacks the experience and intelligence to lead the nation. She clearly has more executive management experience than Sen. Obama, who has zero experience at running anything. He’s not qualified to run an all-night donut shop, much less America.

Gov. Palin is an executive. The mark of an effective executive is to surround herself with bright, talented, capable professionals who share her vision to accurately represent the people they work for: Americans. Chief Executive Officers need to be visionary leaders, not tacticians who micromanage. Her experience demonstrates she is prepared to lead if necessary.

Gov. Palin represents real hope and change. In her case, hope and change are not simply hollow words. As a city councilwoman, mayor and governor, she has achieved tangible results. She exudes energy and passion, has the experience and the skills, and is ready for the job. I couldn’t be more excited for America.

In addition to her executive experience, and based on unbiased, genuine research, Gov. Palin concludes that global warming is a fraud, supports drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, hunts and fishes, and is a member of the National Rifle Association. What’s not to like?

Those pundits and Fedzilla fanatics who proclaim Gov. Palin has no experience to run the country are the very punks who want to continue to feed Fedzilla. They advocate taking more of our paychecks, wasting more of hard earned money, and not being held accountable. I would like to buy these Fedzilla punks a one-way ticket on the express train to Hell.

President Reagan would surely be proud of Sen. McCain’s choice of Gov. Palin to be his running mate. President Reagan’s words so many years ago ring true once again: it's morning in America.

Last night, a political savior may have arrived. Ted Nugent at your service,Vice President-to-be Palin. I’m your biggest fan. Let’s rock.

- Rock legend Ted Nugent is noted for his conservative political views and his vocal pro-hunting and Second Amendment activism. He also maintains the Official Ted Nugent Site at http://www.tednugent.com/. Coming October 6th from Regnery Publishing is Nugent's new book Ted, White & Blue: The Nugent Manifesto, which can be pre-ordered at www.amazon.com.

THE BEST MAN TURNED OUT TO BE A WOMAN

Post-Speech Analysis From Ann Coulter:

"SARAH PALIN KICKED ASS! - I guess that ended the 'vetting' questions."

- QUOTATIONS FROM CHAIRMAN ANN
September 3, 2008, 11:11 PM


By Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/
September 3, 2008

John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, as his running mate finally gave Republicans a reason to vote for him -- a reason, that is, other than B. Hussein Obama.

The media are hopping mad about McCain's vice presidential selection, but they're really furious over at MSNBC. After drawing "Keith + Obama" hearts on their denim notebooks, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews stayed up all night last Thursday, writing jokes about Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, the presumed vice presidential pick. Now they can't use any of them.

So the media are taking it out on our brave Sarah and her 17-year-old daughter.

They claimed Palin was chosen only because she's a woman. In fact, Palin was chosen because she's pro-life, pro-gun, pro-drilling and pro-tax cuts. She's fought both Republicans and Democrats on public corruption and does not have hair plugs like some other vice presidential candidate I could mention. In other words, she's a "Republican."

As a right-winger, Palin will appeal to the narrow 59 percent of Americans who voted for another former small-market sportscaster: Ronald Reagan. Our motto: Sarah Palin is only a heartbeat away!

If you're going to say Palin was chosen because she's a woman, you're going to have to demonstrate that the runners-up were more qualified. Gov. Tim Pawlenty seems like a terrific fellow and fine governor, but he is not obviously more qualified than Palin.

As for former governor of Pennsylvania Tom Ridge and Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, the other also-rans, I can think of at least 40 million unborn reasons she's better than either of them.

Within the first few hours after Palin's name was announced, McCain raised $4 million in campaign donations online, reaching $10 million within the next two days. Which shortlist vice presidential pick could have beaten that?

The media hysterically denounced Palin as "inexperienced." But then people started to notice that she has more executive experience than B. Hussein Obama -- the guy at the top of the Democrats' ticket.

They tried to create a "Troopergate" for Palin, indignantly demanding to know why she wanted to get her ex-brother-in-law removed as a state trooper. Again, public corruption is not a good issue for someone like Obama, Chicago pol and noted friend of Syrian National/convicted felon Antonin Rezko.

For the cherry on top, then we found out Palin's ex-brother-in-law had Tasered his own 10-year-old stepson. Defend that, Democrats.

The bien-pensant criticized Palin, saying it's irresponsible for a woman with five children to run for vice president. Liberals' new talking point: Sarah Palin: Only five abortions away from the presidency.

They claimed her newborn wasn't her child, but the child of her 17-year-old daughter. That turned out to be a lie.

Then they attacked her daughter, who actually is pregnant now, for being unmarried. When liberals start acting like they're opposed to pre-marital sex and mothers having careers, you know McCain's vice presidential choice has knocked them back on their heels.

But at least liberal reporters had finally found someone their own size to pick on: a 17-year-old girl.

Speaking of Democrats with newborn children, the media weren't particularly concerned about John Edwards running for president despite his having a mistress with a newborn child.

While the difficult circumstances of Palin's pregnant daughter are being covered like a terrorist attack on the nation, with leering accounts of the 18-year-old father, the media remain resolutely uninterested in the parentage of Edwards' mistress's love child. Except, that is, the hardworking reporters at the National Enquirer, who say Edwards is the father.

As this goes to press, the latest media-invented scandal about Palin is that McCain didn't know her well before choosing her as his running mate. He knew her well enough, though admittedly, not as well as Obama knows William Ayers.

John F. Kennedy, who was -- from what the media tell me -- America's most beloved president, detested his vice president, Lyndon Johnson.

Until Clinton interviewed Al Gore one time before choosing him as his vice presidential candidate, he had met Gore only one other time: when Gore was running for president in 1988 and flew to Little Rock seeking Clinton's endorsement. Clinton turned him down.

To this day, there's no proof that Bill Clinton ever met one-on-one with his CIA director, James Woolsey, other than a brief chat after midnight the night before Woolsey's nomination was announced.

Barring some all-new, trivial and probably false story about Palin -- her former hairdresser got a parking ticket in 1978! -- the media apparently intend to keep being hysterical about McCain's alleged failure to "vet" Palin properly. The problem with this argument is that it presupposes that everyone is asking: "HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?"

No one's saying that.

Attacks on McCain's "vetting" process require the media to keep claiming that Palin has a lot of problems. But she doesn't have any problems. Remember? Those were all blind alleys.

Unfortunately, for the ordinary TV viewer hearing nonstop hysteria about nonspecific "problems," it takes a lot of effort to figure out that every attack liberals have launched against Palin turned out to be a lie.

It's as if a basketball player made the winning shot in the last three seconds of the game and liberals demand that we have a week-long discussion about whether the player should have taken that shot. WHAT IF HE MISSED?

With Palin, McCain didn't miss.

Today's Tune: Chris Knight - House and 90 Acres (Live)

(Click on title to play video)

Reviews: Chris Knight - Heart of Stone

Chris Knight
Heart of Stone
(Drifter's Church)
US release date: 2 September 2008
UK release date: Available as import

by Juli Thanki
http://www.popmatters.com/
August 27, 2008

Move over, Steve Earle: Chris Knight is hands down the best alt-country songwriter out there. On Heart of Stone, his sixth album in ten years, Knight’s lyrics are at their strongest. He’s a twangified mix of Earle, Bruce Springsteen, and John Mellencamp in their prime, i.e. minus their current tendencies toward windbaggy proselytizing. Each song is a self-contained vignette, full of hard luck folks and rambling men set to hard-driving guitars and lap steel. In short, this is Americana at its finest.

Despite his Kentucky address (can you get any more country than living in Slaughter, Kentucky, population 200?—the answer is “No"), musically Chris Knight seems like he might be more at home in a Texas roadhouse—not the romper rooms of Pat Green songs, filled with baseball-capped frat boys and Shiner Bock, but a Double Deuce-style roadhouse, complete with drunks trying to outrun their miserable lives, and maybe Patrick Swayze in the corner to keep the peace. Fans of Joe Ely and Robert Earl Keen will definitely appreciate Knight’s brand of swaggering roots rock, while Robbie Fulks and Ryan Adams listeners will be drawn to the sharp lyrics.

The standout track of the record—perhaps standout track of the year—by far is “Crooked Road”, a song that could easily be renamed “Coalminer’s Father”. Almost certainly inspired by Knight’s previous career as a strip-mine reclamation inspector, it’s the story of a man and his wife trying to pick up the pieces of their already not-so-great life after their son is killed in a mining accident. In tried and true country fashion, they try to find salvation in the open road, a Sisyphean task if there ever was one. Most heartbreaking of all is the chorus: “Damn these hard times / Damn the coalmines / Damn the good dreams gone cold / And while I’m at it, damn this crooked road”. Producer Dan Baird, formerly of the Georgia Satellites, keeps his hands to himself (sorry, but that joke, however lame, is irresistible), letting Knight’s powerful lyrics and whiskey-raw vocals do the heavy lifting with only an acoustic guitar to accompany them.

On the album’s opener, “Home Sick Gypsy”, Knight vocally channels the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women”, emulating Mick Jagger’s raspy howl to a T while singing about country music’s old favorite: the ramblin’ man. Now, Knight’s rambler is nowhere near as plaintive and lonesome as Hank Williams’, but I think Luke the Drifter would have appreciated the straightforwardness of Chris Knight’s lyrics. And we see just how straightforward Knight can be on the album’s closing track, “Go On Home”: “Stupid’s in the water these days”. ‘Nuff said.

This is what Americana is supposed to sound like. It’s free of the redneck chest-thumping and twee sentimentalizing that runs rampant in commercial country music, as well as the semi-recent groundswell of faux-Southern rock, while remaining unflinchingly honest about life, love, and hard luck. Heart of Stone isn’t exactly the feel-good record of the summer, but it’s certainly not one to pass up.


Chris Knight - Heart of Stone
http://ninebullets.net/
August 27, 2008

I was admittedly late in getting to the altar of Chris Knight. He had already released his fourth effort, Enough Rope, when I first came to know of him. I’ve since countered my tardiness by amassing his entire disc catalog and preaching his gospel every chance I get. Heart of Stone marks Chris’ sixth effort, and his music is still far too good for country radio and far too obscure for good taste.

On Heart of Stone, Chris sticks to what he does best by writing simple songs that carry the weight of the common man. Bringing Dan Baird (who previously produced Pretty Good Guy and The Jealous Kind) back into the fold brings a slightly more rocking edge to this album, but it’s still 100% Chris Knight. If you ain’t liking him at this point, you ain’t gonna like him after hearing Heart of Stone….and you’re pretty much an idiot.

The people of Slaughters, Kentucky (population 200) are lucky to have a songwriter of this caliber telling their story, and we’re lucky to get to hear it. 100% Essential Listening.


Chris Knight - Heart of Stone
posted by Chip Frazier in Reviews
http://twangville.com/
Mon, Aug 25, 2008 @ 11:05 pm

Suffice it to say that Chris Knight knows what Nashville has forgotten, that country music is the original narrative of the common man. It grew out of the Great Depression and forged a transcendent bond with its’ fans.

Country music turned the struggles of rural America into poetry that helped ease the pain of fans for decades. Knight hasn’t forgotten the ability of music to sing to the soul of listeners. Probably because he is from coal mining country in Kentucky, which has been in economic upheaval as the rest of America has prospered. Dr. Phil and Deepak Chopkra do not resonate with someone who loses their job or their land or perhaps both. However, the songs on Heart of Stone will speak to them.

There is a certain moral code on this album. Even when times are hard Knight does not glorify people who lose their perspective. Hard times are no excuse to cook meth in your basement ("Hell Ain’t Half Full”), or abandon your family ("Heart of Stone”). Conversly he also sings about hope on “Something to Keep Me Going.” The power of faith and the fight to keep it is at the heart of “Crooked Road.” The latter song is gut wrenching and powerful. In this one song, Knight goes through a lifetime of complex emotions with the central character, who is emerging from the depths with an eye on the future but carrying the scars of the past.

This record also rocks. Knight returned to work with Dan Baird of Georgia Satellites, who produced Pretty Good Guy and The Jealous Kind. In fact, the album comes out of the gate rocking on “Homesick Gypsy.” Another great rocker is the song “Another Dollar” that addresses the greed in our society. When people talk about the great songwriters they need to include Chris knight in the conversation. His body of work has earned him that distinction. He certainly sings to the common man in the manner of Cash and Haggard. The album was released on September 2nd.

Chris Knight - My Old Cars
Chris Knight - Heart of Stone
Chris Knight - Another Dollar
Chris Knight’s Official Site
Chris Knight on myspace
Buy Heart of Stone

DAWN BREAKS: Chris Knight finds other ways to tell hard-luck tales of the South

By Steve Wildsmith
The Daily Times (Maryville, TN)
http://thedailytimes.com/

Death just doesn't hold the same appeal for Chris Knight as it used to.

Not that Knight was a morbid guy -- he's not, and likely never has been, cut from the cloth of death metal or gothic rock or anything similar. He'd look about as natural wearing black eyeliner and painted black fingernails as The Cure's Robert Smith would in a weightlifting contest.

But Knight has always been drawn to the darker fabric of life in the South. Perhaps it was his rural, hardscrabble upbringing; perhaps it was the anger he felt at those who looked down there noses at a simple Kentucky boy who sought his way in the bright lights of bigger cities like Bowling Green or Nashville.

Whatever the case, Knight's early albums were dark and gritty portraits of shifty-eyed men, desperate women, hard times and rough nights. His songwriting was stark and vivid, his characters so real they seem to have been lifted from the corner market or small-town gas station or roadside honky tonk that most Southerners have drifted through over the years.

Somewhere around his record "The Jealous Kind," however, Knight lost his taste for the dark stuff -- the killers and bad men who populated his songs in the same way they do the stories of contemporary Southern gothic writers Chris Offutt, Tom Franklin and Larry Brown. His focus began to shift, and these days, he doesn't care too much about revisiting that well from which he drew his water.

"The story songs are probably less violent and intense, because I feel like I've covered that ground pretty good, and now I'm having to come at things from a little different angle," Knight told The Daily Times this week. "I'll start with a hook and write around it and try to stay away from previous topics. It's harder to come up with stuff to write about; I had all these stories I needed to write up until this point, but now I've got to look a little harder for ways to write a song.

"I just don't feel compelled to write about it so much. The older I get, the less angry I am, and I've got to leave some of that stuff behind. I haven't left it all behind -- I still love those songs, and I love to play them for people. I can play them night after night, and they don't get stale.

"But I can't go back to that same place," he added. "I can't go back to really being that guy in 'Down the River' anymore. I've written two or three songs with that guy in mind, and it feels like it's enough."

Knight's humble drawl and stoic attitude reflect the roughshod, ramshackle nature of his rural upbringing in Kentucky. Born in 1960, he cut his teeth first on the country of his mother and father, and later on the folk-rock music of master songwriters like John Prine and J.J. Cale. At 15, he took over his brother's guitar, and his sibling, who worked the second shift in the nearby coal mines, took notice of Knight's growing talent.

Encouraged by his family, he tinkered with music until after graduation from Western Kentucky University, when he threw himself full-time into writing. Working for the Kentucky Department for Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, he wrote on the side, submitting his songs to Nashville. Urged on by those impressed with his abilities, he took the plunge in 1994, quitting his job and landing work as a songwriter with a publishing contract.

But the music just didn't sound right without Knight's world-weary voice to lend it credence. Encouraged to cut his own record, he sat down and recorded a self-titled album in 1998. That was followed by "A Pretty Good Guy" and "The Jealous Kind," released in 2003 to critical acclaim. "Enough Rope" was released in 2005, followed by "The Trailer Tapes" -- a collection of early demos -- and "Heart of Stone," which hits stores on Tuesday.

"I used my road drummer and my guitar player, and we just went in there and sat down on the floor and played the songs as a band until we felt like we got the feel we wanted," he said. "Then we went in, everybody went in to their places, and we tracked them. We even recorded the practice stuff, so we could go back to something if we forgot how it went."

The album is as solid an effort as Knight has ever done -- and that's saying a lot, given his proclivity to capture mood and spirit and the human heart like a Kentucky-born version of Bruce Springsteen. There's a gift that good Southern writers have, an ability to see beyond the surface of things and connect the landscape in which they live with the raging tempest of the human spirit.

Such insight accounts for the term "Southern gothic," used to describe so many tales of the darker side of the South, and it's not limited to novelists. Knight possesses it, and it's one of the reasons his brand of country music is some of the best outside-the-mainstream traditional country being made these days. They're tales of stragglers and survivors, some from Knight's life, others a compilation of characters he's met over the years.

"When I was younger, I wasn't ever really angry, but I come from a real small town," he said. "I grew up in the woods, and when I went to college in Bowling Green, I never realized that people actually though I was dumb just because I came from real life. And so I started thinking, you know, that I would just stay quiet about it and let them think I'm dumb.

"All along, I was thinking that they're no better than I am, and I fed off of that kind of thing, that kind of anger, for a while. I still do once in a while, but that stuff's not as important to me anymore. It doesn't matter as much, so I'm not as intense about it anymore."

As he gets older, he said, he's turning his artistic eye more and more toward those characters and the lives they live rather than the darkness that lurks within their hearts. "Heart of Stone" is replete with such tales -- from the overwhelming melancholy of the title track, the story of a man who finds himself more like the hard-drinking father who abandoned him than he cares to admit ... to "Hell Ain't Half Full," about a methamphetamine manufacturer ... to "Miles to Memphis," a combination road song/lost-love ballad that a sublime combination of both.

Like many of his Southern contemporaries, both in the literary and music worlds, Knight tends to gravitate toward darker subject matter. It's not that he has a dour outlook on life -- it's just his gift, the ability to get across with three chords and few worlds the struggles of rural Southern life.

He's reluctant to look at his talent that way -- to him, it's not a gift, merely a way for him to channel his experiences and observations into something that others appreciate.

"I just want to keep writing decent songs that I want to record and people want to listen to," he said. "That's what's real important to me now. I hope I've got several more albums in me, and I've already written three songs I want to record for my next one. I just want to keep on making it work, and hopefully making people happy with whatever they get out of my music when they listen to it."

But as he's grown older, he's mellowed out some as well, he admitted. And while the dark side of life might always appeal to him, the darker side of human nature, on the other hand, is loosening its grip on his muse.

"I was writing with a guy a couple of weeks ago, and he had an idea for a song about a guy who had a terminal disease or something," Knight said. "I stopped him right there and said, 'I'd kinda like to stay away from death today.' So we wrote another song, which is better.

"I'm just seeing what else I can come up with. There's a lot of art involved in writing a good story-song, but there's also art in writing a good groove tune that people like, or a hook that makes them want to sing along, without it being fluff or plastic."


Originally published: August 29. 2008 3:01AM
Last modified: August 28. 2008 2:27PM

Scrutiny on the Trail

Who talks about change? Who implements it?

By David Freddoso
National Review Online
http://www.nationalreview.com/
September 03, 2008, 9:40 a.m.

St. Paul — The media is now applying an appropriate level of scrutiny to the political career of Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee. It remains an open question why they have not done the same thing to Barack Obama, who is, after all, a candidate for president.

Much of Palin’s record, as outlined in a 2006 opposition-research document from the campaign of her Democratic opponent for governor (obtained by Politico), is positive and impressive. As mayor, she fought against laws to shorten bar hours in Wasilla, and against unnecessary and arbitrary statewide laws limiting the hours of alcohol sales. She called for spending reductions and a hiring freeze in state government. She helped keep crisis-pregnancy centers — which provide support for women who might otherwise feel forced into having abortions — open by providing very modest city funding.

Conservatives should not overlook Sarah Palin’s faults. As mayor of Wasilla, Palin went to her state’s senators, congressmen, and state legislators with hat in hand. She asked for earmarks to build sewers and shelters in her town. As governor, she originally supported Alaska’s controversial Bridge to Nowhere. She would finally scrap the bridge when conservatives nationally highlighted it in their indictment of congressional earmarking. It is highly unusual for mayors and governors to turn down federal money on principle when congressmen and senators are willing to provide it. But Palin’s late conversion to the cause might still disappoint some fiscal conservatives.

Palin was also once accused of receiving two faxes in her city-hall office from the designer of a logo for her unsuccessful 2002 bid for lieutenant governor (of course, it is not really possible to block a fax). She was also accused of arranging a campaign trip from her city office, and of having an assistant take care of printing up her campaign Thank You notes while on the city clock.

But the most impressive part of Palin’s resumé, and the sharpest contrast with Obama’s, is how she has taken on Alaska Republicans, fighting against political corruption in her own party and taking on some of the biggest names in the state. She may not have as much time in elected office as Obama, but Palin at least has a reform resumé, something that Obama cannot legitimately claim.

Facing an environment much like Chicago — corrupt, one-party rule, dominated by long-entrenched incumbents and special interests — Palin has rocked the boat. This year, the powerful 18-term Republican congressman Don Young has been under investigation for gifts he may have taken from VECO, a corrupt and now-defunct oil services firm whose CEO had bribed several state legislators. Palin did not just endorse Young’s primary challenger, but she actually surprised and delighted attendees of the state party convention by announcing the challenge there for the first time.

This alone is more than anyone can say about Obama, who has never challenged the corruption of his city and has frequently backed its perpetrators. He has demonstrated a craven willingness to endorse anyone favored by Mayor Richard M. Daley, no matter how crooked or damaging to the city. Obama’s record has frequently placed him in opposition to the bipartisan reformers who have tried to clean up Chicago’s massive and systemic corruption problem. He endorsed Daley last year and in 2006 he endorsed Todd Stroger, whose cronyism and machine politics are well-documented in the Chicago press. In the 2006 primary, Obama endorsed Dorothy Tillman, an Alderman who pulled a gun on her colleagues during a redistricting hearing, and who (as was explained to me only recently) had in fact become a Daley ally out of necessity after opposing him earlier in her career.

Palin, in contrast, has fought Republicans when necessary. In 2004, she stuck her neck out when she backed Mike Miller in his primary challenge to Republican senator Lisa Murkowski. The moderate Murkowski’s appointment by her own father, Gov. Frank Murkowski, had broken the latter’s trust with voters, which he never regained. Conservatives cried nepotism. Miller lost that race, but two years later, Palin would challenge and defeat Gov. Murkowski by a 30-point margin. His administration was by then scarred with scandal — his chief of staff was forced to plead guilty for $69,000 in illegal in-kind help from VECO in the governor’s campaign.Palin also clashed with Randy Ruedrich, chairman of the state Republican party, and forced him off the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, where she served as ethics chair. She also tried, unsuccessfully, to have him replaced in his party position. Palin accused Ruedrich of seeking reimbursement from the state for partisan political activity. He had also colluded with energy companies that he was supposed to be regulating on the commission, leaking a confidential commission memo to them and at times acting like their unofficial spokesman in interviews and meetings with communities.

The Anchorage Daily News later reported how the issue was resolved: “[W]hen Ruedrich settled state ethics charges June 22 [2004] by paying a record $12,000 civil fine and admitting wrongdoing, Palin said she finally felt some measure of vindication for bucking Ruedrich and members of her party.”

The Democrats’ 63-page document on Palin’s experience as an executive contains none of the self-dealing that characterizes Sen. Barack Obama’s legislative career. Both in Illinois and in Washington, Obama has used his position to cosponsor legislation that rained millions of dollars upon Tony Rezko and his other major donors in the slum-development business, to obtain state grants for his private law clients, and to earmark funds for government contractors who donated money to his campaigns and even to his wife’s employer, which had just given her an annual $200,000 raise.

By way of contrast, Mayor Palin once tried to get the Wasilla city council to cut her own pay, because she had opposed and voted against a $4,000 mayoral pay raise when she served on the council.

Palin has a record. She has sided with reformers and even taken on her own former allies if they turn out to deserve it (Gov. Murkowski, for example, had once given her an appointment). It is certainly possible that she has done such things from ulterior motives. And she could have gone further, too — say, by finding and championing a serious candidate (if one exists) to run against the recently exposed and indicted Senate Republican Ted Stevens, who was until recently the biggest and most popular politician in the state aside from Palin.

But at least Palin did something about the corruption in her state and in her party. That’s a lot more than Barack Obama can say of his career in Chicago.

Funny man Jerry Reed was a guitarist's guitarist

Despite film roles, music was his life

By PETER COOPER • Staff Writer • September 3, 2008
The Nashville Tennessean
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage

Jerry Reed 1937-2008


Jerry Reed (L) with Waylon Jennings

Jerry Reed, country music's howling virtuoso and a star of stage, studio and screen, died Sunday just before midnight at his Brentwood home.

Mr. Reed, born Jerry Reed Hubbard, suffered from emphysema and was in hospice care. He was 71, and he leaves an unparalleled legacy of laughter and song.

"All of us pickers owe him so much," said recording artist and guitar player Brad Paisley. "Jerry Reed's instrumentals are required learning if you want to play country guitar. And every move he made was to entertain, and make the world more fun. Because he was such a great, colorful personality with his acting and songs and entertaining, sometimes people didn't even notice that he was just about the best guitarist you'll ever hear."

By the time Mr. Reed came to popular attention as Burt Reynolds' truck-driving sidekick "The Snowman" in the Hollywood Smokey and the Bandit trilogy, he was already a musical deity to the guitar players who admired the syncopated flurries he unleashed with a casual gleam. He also was a hit-making singer-songwriter by then, having topped the charts with "When You're Hot, You're Hot" and "Lord, Mr. Ford," and having written songs for Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Porter Wagoner, Brenda Lee and others. Then there was his work as session guitarist for Presley, Waylon Jennings, Bobby Bare and many others.

Mr. Reed enjoyed his comedic Hollywood roles (which included a part in the 1998 Adam Sandler film The Waterboy), and he often smiled when movie fans would ask for an autograph without realizing that he was a singer and guitarist of significance. Music was most important to him, though. Asked by interviewer Frank Goodman which facet of music he preferred — songwriter, solo guitarist, session man or entertainer — Mr. Reed said, "Hey, that's like trying to pick out your favorite leg."

"There's nothing on earth as powerful as music, period," he told Goodman. "I mean, it's pretty hard to fight and hate and be angry when you're making music, isn't it?"

As Mr. Reed's health declined in recent years, he focused on spiritual studies and on bringing attention to veterans' issues.

"For 50 years, all I'd done was take, take, take," he told The Tennessean's Tim Ghianni in 2007. "I decided from now on it is going to be giving. And I'm way behind. We're all way behind. We live this life like what's down here is what it's all about. We're temporary, son, like a wisp of smoke."

'Nothing else' mattered

Mr. Reed was born in Atlanta on March 20, 1937. He was the son of cotton mill workers Robert Spencer Hubbard and Cynthia Hubbard, who divorced in their son's first year. From fall of 1937 until 1944, the boy lived in orphanages and foster homes. He rejoined his mother when she married mill worker Hubert Howard in 1944.

Already transfixed by music, Mr. Reed listened to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio each Friday night, jumping around on a woodpile in lieu of a stage, and playing a hairbrush as if it was a rhythm guitar. Noticing his enthusiasm, Cynthia Howard bought a used guitar from a neighbor for $7, presented it to her son and taught him two chords. He began striking the strings with a thumb pick, a practice he continued throughout his career. When a guitar teacher told him to discontinue that method, an already headstrong Mr. Reed dropped the teacher rather than the pick.

Hearing finger-style guitarist Merle Travis play "I Am A Pilgrim" caused young Mr. Reed to aspire to something beyond simplicity.

"I thought when I heard it, 'Boy, there it is! That man is walking with the big dog. He knows where the bodies are buried, and I want some of that,' " Mr. Reed told Bob Anderson in a 1979 interview.

Another hero was banjo great Earl Scruggs, and Mr. Reed ultimately arrived at a guitar style that fused Scruggs' rapid torrents of notes with the rhythms heard in Ray Charles' "What'd I Say." That is the style that made Mr. Reed an inspiration to generations of guitarists. Though he would not fully realize his signature sound until the 1960s, he spent his high school years honing his musical and performing chops and displaying a talent and magnetism that set him apart from others at school.

In 1954, he played a self-penned song called "Aunt Meg's Wooden Leg" for Atlanta publisher and radio host Bill Lowery, who began managing and booking the young man. A 30-day tour opening shows for Ernest Tubb and the Texas Troubadours ensued, and the experience was enough to convince Mr. Reed that high school was of little use to him.

"I knew what I was going to spend my life doing," he later said. "Nothing else made any sense. Nothing else made any difference."

'It really broke his heart'

In 1954, a 17-year-old Mr. Reed played a show in Atlanta in honor of country star Faron Young, who had been discharged from the Army. Ken Nelson, who ran Capitol Records, attended the Atlanta show. Lowery, who had hired Mr. Reed as a disc jockey at Atlanta's WGST, told Nelson that Capitol could do worse than to sign the cotton mill boy from Georgia.

Reluctant to sign such a young act, Nelson acquiesced. He told Mr. Reed to wait until his 18th birthday before recording, and in October 1955 the men entered a Nashville studio and made a record. First single "If The Good Lord's Willing And The Creeks Don't Rise" made no great commercial waves, and neither did follow-up single "I'm A Lover, Not A Fighter." And neither did any others of Mr. Reed's Capitol recordings, as he flailed about for a form that rang true. He moved through country, pop and rockabilly, to little avail.

"My records were selling like hot cakes: about 50 cents a stack," he joked in later years.


Burt Reynolds and Jerry Reed at the CMA Award Show at Grand Ole Opry House. (10/13/80)

In 1958, Mr. Reed ended his association with Capitol. He enlisted in the Army in 1959, the year he married Priscilla "Prissy" Mitchell. Army brass thought Mr. Reed's talents better suited for a stage than a battlefield, and the would-be warrior became a member of the army's Circle A Wranglers band.

Brenda Lee — a member of both the country and rock 'n' roll halls of fame — remembered that Mr. Reed was in full military uniform when he saw her at the Atlanta airport and mentioned that he had a song that would be good for her. That song, "That's All You Gotta Do," was a Top 10 pop hit for Lee, and it was the flip side of Lee's wildly popular single "I'm Sorry." That success was a change for the better, as were a 1961 military discharge and the development of a unique guitar-playing method that would later be called "claw style."

"If (Merle) Travis' thumb and index finger picking style was first generation, and Chet Atkins' use of thumb, index and middle finger was second, Reed's use of his entire right hand to pick (the famous 'claw' style) was the wild, untamed and dauntingly complex third generation," wrote historian and journalist Rich Kienzle.

Mr. Reed switched from a steel-stringed acoustic guitar to a nylon-stringed Baldwin model, with an electronic "pickup" that allowed the guitar to be heard above a full band. He signed a Columbia Records contract in 1961, but that deal yielded no hits. His songwriting and session playing proved more lucrative, as he performed on hits for Bobby Bare and penned Porter Wagoner's 1962 No. 1 hit, "Misery Loves Company." And Mr. Reed attracted a high-powered fan in Chet Atkins, the guitar star who ran Nashville's branch of RCA.

"Chet and I had got friendly, and he told me, 'You ain't never going to have a hit recording what's not you. Just go in there and be what you are.' Chet thinks I'm funky," Mr. Reed told Morton Moss of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.

Atkins expressed interest in Mr. Reed's signing with RCA, and Mr. Reed broke the news to a Columbia executive that he would like to go to RCA. "It really broke his heart," Mr. Reed recalled later. "Took him about 30 seconds to let me go."

How to sound like Reed

Atkins was determined to record Mr. Reed as an atypical artist rather than molding him into a pre-established model. In his guitar work and in the songs he wrote, Mr. Reed revealed a humor and a wit that set him apart from other performers and endeared him to audiences.

The key was capturing that in a way that didn't dull spontaneity or intelligence, and Atkins figured quite correctly that he knew how to do this. Rather than asking Mr. Reed to write or record for a particular audience demographic, as he'd done on Capitol and Columbia, Atkins insisted that Mr. Reed be Mr. Reed.

"I owe almost every bit of success that has come to me to Chet Atkins," Mr. Reed told the Associated Press in 1999. "He's a nonconformist, and he suggested that I just play my guitar and sing my songs and he'd release singles."

The first best result of Mr. Atkins' prodding was instrumental showcase "The Claw," so named because of the way Mr. Reed's hand looked when playing in his intricate style.

Then, Mr. Reed came up with "Guitar Man," which showcased his guitar work, voice and storytelling ability. "Guitar Man" was followed by "Tupelo Mississippi Flash," which became Mr. Reed's first Top 20 hit, in 1967. "Tupelo Mississippi Flash" was a funky laugher that poked fun at an industry executive who didn't understand the power and reach of Elvis Presley.

In fact, Presley recorded two songs from Mr. Reed's pen, "U.S. Male" and "Guitar Man." Presley was unhappy with others' attempts to recreate Mr. Reed's guitar sound, and Mr. Reed received a telephone call from producer Felton Jarvis, asking how he did what he did. Mr. Reed told Jarvis that the only way to get the Jerry Reed sound was to have Jerry Reed on the session, asserting that most studio players are "straight pickers," while "I play with my fingers and tune that guitar up all weird kind of ways."

Jarvis, and Presley, took note, and Mr. Reed performed on the Presley sessions. It all made sense: The only way to sound like Jerry Reed was to be Jerry Reed.

A gentle 'wild man'

Mr. Reed wrote "Alabama Wild Man," a Top 50 country hit in 1968 that gave the native Georgian a fun but geographically incorrect nickname. Anyway, Bare said the only thing wild about Mr. Reed was his onstage persona.

"He was actually the opposite of the 'wild man' thing," said Bare, who spent hundreds of hours fishing with Mr. Reed on placid lakes where wildness isn't in demand. It should be noted that Mr. Reed, the product of a broken union, stayed married to Prissy Hubbard until his death.

"Jerry was as funny as the day is long, but he was a gentle, kind, sweet family man," Lee said. "He was precious."


Jerry Reed poses with his guitar during an interview on Feb. 15, 1999, in Nashville, Tenn. The 61-year-old singer and guitarist is promoting "Pickin," his first album of new music in nearly a decade.

A breakthrough career moment for Mr. Reed came in late 1970, when the funny, funky and swampy "Amos Moses" landed in the Top 10 of the pop charts and in the Top 20 of the country charts. An instrumental with Atkins won a Grammy in 1971, and the following year Mr. Reed won a best country male performance Grammy for his first No. 1 country smash, appropriately titled "When You're Hot, You're Hot." Two years later, he hit No. 1 again with the modern times lament "Lord, Mr. Ford."

During this time, Mr. Reed was also appearing regularly on friend Glen Campbell's Goodtime Hour, and television types took notice of his charisma. In 1974, he played a joke-cracking role in W.W. and the Dixie Dance Kings. His best-loved film role came in 1977, when he starred as Cledus Snow, aka "The Snowman," in the Reynolds flick Smokey and the Bandit. Mr. Reed co-wrote the movie's theme song, "East Bound and Down," which spent two weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard country singles chart.

"We were fishing out at Percy Priest Lake and Jerry told me about a movie coming out called Smokey and the Bandit," Bare said. "I didn't think too much about it at the time. We were chasing rockfish. But when I watched him on the screen, I realized he was a really good actor."

The Hollywood success and country hits provided smiles for Mr. Reed's casual fans, but musicians also took notice of the staggering virtuosity behind the records. Brent Mason, now a top session musician in Nashville, calls Mr. Reed "my favorite guitar player of all time."

"He called himself a 'guitar thinker,' not a 'guitar player,'" Mason said. "He would find new ways to play things, and you can play his songs over and over and hear something new inside them every time. I've been stealing from Jerry Reed for years. It was extraordinary, brilliant playing."
Mason and scores of others sought to decipher the secrets behind Mr. Reed's rocket-fueled licks. As Guitar Town struggled to catch up, Mr. Reed notched another No. 1 hit with "She Got The Goldmine (I Got The Shaft)" and a No. 2. effort with "The Bird," in which Mr. Reed displayed his spot-on impressions of Willie Nelson and George Jones.

In terms of chart runs and guitar innovation, that was it. Mr. Reed had no Top 20 hits after 1983, and his triumphs after that were limited to live performance and movie roles. But the sound he got out of his guitar in the years between 1967 and 1983 is an influence that is more than temporary, more than a wisp of smoke.

"Like Django (Reinhardt), Chet and a few others, Jerry Reed created a unique style of guitar playing, one which will be carried on by admirers for generations to come," said musician David Hungate. Scholar John Knowles told Thomas Goldsmith, "His playing has the complexity of classical music but the rhythmic sense that comes from country, rock and gospel." And bass man Henry Strzelecki, who played on "Amos Moses," "Lord, Mr. Ford" and other Reed hits, said, "Jerry brought rhythm and blues and country together, and it came out funk. He's one of the finest talents we've known. And he made people happy. You couldn't be sad around Jerry."

Mr. Reed's own assessments of his career involved smiling, head-shaking disbelief.

"I got to write hit songs," he told interviewer Calvin Gilbert in 2005. "And I got to be on phonograph records. … I'm a cotton mill boy, and I got to go to Hollywood. Can you imagine that? Why, yeah, my goodness gracious. Go figure."

There were plenty who never knew of Mr. Reed as anything more than "The Snowman," or as the coach in The Waterboy. He was funny, and an entertainer, and in terms of moviemaking that was enough. He fully understood that most of the general public didn't know that he was one of the most compellingly original guitarists of all time, and he fully understood that many session guitarists not only understood it but also attempted to replicate his feel and technique. And he was fine with all of that.

In the end, Mr. Reed sought neither acknowledgment nor celebration, to the point that he requested a quick and private funeral. He was buried Tuesday afternoon in Nashville. He is survived by wife Priscilla Hubbard, by daughters Seidina Hinesley and Charlotte Elaine "Lottie" Stewart, and by grandson Jerry Roe and granddaughter Lainey Stewart.

Mr. Reed's only regret regarding the guitar was that his declining health meant he could no longer play. Making music would have been a comfort in his final months. Instead, he enjoyed the company of family, and the visits from old friends like Lee and Bare.

They told stories and jokes, and Reed sometimes got to laughing so hard that he had to pause and try to be serious in order to catch his fragile breath. They talked about the good times and the dumb luck, and the fullness of some lives. And on an August day, Reed told Bare something he'd been thinking a lot about: the fact that everything he'd ever dreamed had come true.

Reach Peter Cooper at 615-259-8220 or pcooper@tennessean.com.

A Vote for Sarah Palin

A Vote for Sarah Palin
By Suann Therese Maier
http://www.firstthings.com/
September 3, 2008

Three memories have shaped my approach to this year’s general election.

Here’s the first. In the late 1970s, during a two-year break from teaching to raise our second son, an adopted child, I found myself at a Los Angeles dinner party filled with DINKs, the “double income, no kids” crowd who were just emerging as a self-aware and upwardly mobile social group. I fell to talking—or more accurately, listening—to a chatty young female attorney who said she was putting in eighty hours a week as a junior associate on a variety of important cases.

After twenty minutes or so, she finally noticed my silence and asked me what I did with my own time. So I told her. I told her about the young couple that had asked my husband and me to adopt their baby if we covered their hospital expenses. I told her about waiting outside the delivery room for our son to be born. I told her about the bureaucratic maze that came with finalizing the adoption of a newborn. I told her about borrowing money from friends so we’d look more solvent than we actually were to Social Service inspectors who checked our accounts.
“That’s wonderful dear,” she said. “You’re so lucky not to have a real job.”

Here’s the second memory. I remember my fourth child, our son Dan, being born one winter evening, purple and struggling for breath. I remember my husband pouring water over his head as we baptized him in my arms. I remember the young Filipina doctor rushing Dan to intensive care. I remember the ten days of his fighting for life. And I remember Dan’s diagnosis, when it finally came in: Down syndrome.

Here’s the third memory. I remember my father, a successful young Chicago attorney, telling me why the Democratic party was the party of “our people,” and why so many Catholics were Democrats, and why the party stood for the little guy, the poor and the defenseless. I remember listening as a young girl in our kitchen as Saul Alinsky organized my parents’ Catholic friends on racial and economic issues in our Chicago living room. And I remember the night in 1992 when Pennsylvania’s governor, Robert Casey, was denied a chance to talk against abortion at the Democratic national convention.

As I draw on those memories now, I reach certain conclusions. As a woman, mother, wife, and lifetime professional educator, I will vote, enthusiastically, for Sarah Palin as vice president this November. Even if the media pressure forces her from the ticket, I will vote against the Democratic party—partly because I respect John McCain and believe him to be the better candidate, but equally because I’m tired of the intransigence and condescension of the Democratic leadership on the abortion issue.

To read the entire essay click the link provided...
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1161

Suann Therese Maier, the mother of four and former director of non-profit support organizations for pregnant women and children with disabilities, is a teacher in Colorado.

Jerry Reed, Country Singer and Actor, Dies at 71

By BILL FRISKICS-WARREN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
Published: September 2, 2008

NASHVILLE — Jerry Reed, a popular country singer and movie actor whose larger-than-life storytelling and flashy guitar work vividly evoked Southern life, died early Monday morning at his home here. He was 71.


Via Associated Press
Jerry Reed in 1977.

The cause was emphysema, said Butch Baker, Mr. Reed’s friend and song publisher.

Best known in later years for his role in the movie “The Waterboy” (1998), starring Adam Sandler, and in the three “Smokey and the Bandit” adventures of the late ’70s and early ’80s, in which he played Burt Reynolds’s gear-shifting sidekick the Snowman, Mr. Reed was first and foremost a musician.

Mr. Reed accompanied himself on the three dozen Top 40 country hits he recorded under his own name from 1967 to 1983. Many of the songs also relied on his clowning persona, including his three No. 1 singles, “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot,” “Lord, Mr. Ford” and “She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft).”

“When You’re Hot, You’re Hot” spent five weeks at the top of the Billboard country chart in 1971 and crossed over to the pop Top 10. “Amos Moses,” Mr. Reed’s other big crossover hit, was a paean to life on the Louisiana bayou, featuring his “chicken-scratch” guitar playing and lines like “When Amos Moses was a boy his daddy would use him for alligator bait.”

“Amos Moses” earned Mr. Reed a 1971 Grammy nomination for best male country vocal performance, an award that he won the following year with “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot.” He and the producer and guitarist Chet Atkins received a Grammy in 1971 for best country instrumental performance, for their album “Me and Jerry.” Mr. Reed and Atkins won another Grammy in that category, for their CD “Sneakin’ Around,” in 1993.

The Country Music Association named Mr. Reed musician of the year in 1970 and 1971.

As an in-demand session guitarist in Nashville during the 1960s and ’70s, his staccato fingerpicking could be heard on Elvis Presley’s “Guitar Man” and “U.S. Male,” both of which were written by Mr. Reed, and on hits by the singer Waylon Jennings, among others.

“He had this style called ‘the claw,’ ” said Mr. Baker, noting that Mr. Reed, who had no formal musical training, also made a record by that name. “I’m not sure if anybody knew what he was doing — I don’t even think he knew what he was doing — he would just do these emotional things that came out through his hands. He was a true innovator.”

Jerry Reed Hubbard was born in March 20, 1937, in Atlanta. The son of cotton mill workers, he began playing the guitar in elementary school, later graduating to nightclubs and bars in and around Atlanta as a teenager.

After dropping out of high school to play with country stars like Faron Young and Ernest Tubb, Mr. Reed, then only 16, was introduced to the Atlanta music publisher Bill Lowery, who helped him secure a writing and recording contract with the country division of Capitol Records. Singers like Gene Vincent and Brenda Lee would go on to record his songs, but Mr. Reed’s own versions failed to reach the charts.

He parted ways with Capitol in the late 1950s and, after serving in the Army, moved to Nashville in 1962 to pursue a career as a songwriter, immediately finding success when Porter Wagoner had a No. 1 country hit with his song “Misery Loves Company.” Mr. Reed also started doing work as a session guitarist for Atkins at RCA, where his syncopated mix of fretted and open strings galvanized hits by everyone from Bobby Bare to Presley.

After signing with RCA in the mid-’60s, Mr. Reed began having hits of his own. He also began making regular appearances on the primetime TV variety shows hosted by Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell, and his affable stage presence and good-old-boy antics eventually led to roles in Hollywood movies. The first, in “W. W. and the Dixie Dance Kings” (1974), began a series of collaborations with Burt Reynolds that included the popular “Smokey and the Bandit” movies; their soundtracks also featured Mr. Reed’s music.

Mr. Reed is survived by Priscilla Reed, his wife of 49 years, and by two daughters, Sedina and Lottie, and two grandchildren, all of Nashville.

The hits stopped coming by the mid-’80s, but Mr. Reed continued to perform and to appear on television and in movies, including “BAT 21.”

Mr. Baker said Mr. Reed was especially proud of his final project, “The Gallant Few,” an album made to raise funds for wounded veterans.

Fred Ain’t Dead

Campaign Crawlers

By John Tabin
The American Spectator
http://www.spectator.org/
Published 9/3/2008 12:09:02 AM


Former Sen. Fred Thompson, of Tennessee, speaks during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008.(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

ST PAUL -- Fred Thompson is back.

At the Republican National Convention yesterday, delegates teared up as Thompson rendered John McCain's oft-told biography in the basso profundo that served him so well as an actor.

Thompson moved easily from defending Sarah Palin ("a breath of fresh air"), dismissing her detractors as "Washington pundits and media big shots," to lauding McCain and telling his moving story, to lacing into Barack Obama, who he called "a history makingnominee for president-- history making in that he is the most liberal, most inexperienced nominee to ever run for President."

As Thompson got rolling a common theme emerged in the reactions: Why wasn't he this good during his own campaign? (See, for example, Eric Trager of Commentary, Ramesh Ponnuru and Jay Nordlinger of National Review, and David Nitkin of the Baltimore Sun.)

Actually, Thompson had gotten pretty good on the stump by the time of the South Carolina primary, but by then it was already too late. He spent much of 2007 teasing the media about whether he'd enter the race, and when he finally limped in he barely made a ripple. Is his political career over?

Maybe not. Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard spoke to Thompson last week and wondered if he isn't laying the groundwork for another run at the White House.

Admitting to Hayes that he "discounted and underestimated the rulebook," Thompson is now launching a political action committee, called FredPac, to support conservative candidates and build the kind of relationships with local politicians that are essential to a successful primary campaign. And he's working on a book combining autobiography and policy proposals -- which sounds a lot like a campaign book.

Of course this all depends on how the 2008 election turns out. In 2016 Thompson will be 74, older than McCain is now (and McCain is the oldest ever major party non-incumbent nominee). That means that Thompson has arguably had his last chance at a serious run unless McCain loses.

But if McCain wins, there may be a role for Thompson in the administration. Hayes floats Thompson as a short-lister "for Attorney General and perhaps even Director of National Intelligence." He doesn't get into it in his article, but Hayes, who has done quite a bit of reporting about national security issues as well as about politics, was raving about Thompson's mastery of intelligence reform issues when I ran into him at a party in Minneapolis that the Weekly Standard co-sponsored Monday night.

Whatever happens in November, then, it's a good bet that we haven't seen the last of Fred Thompson.

John Tabin is a frequent online contributor to The American Spectator and AmSpecBlog.

Today's Tune: My Morning Jacket - One Big Holiday (Live)

(Click on title to play one hard-rocking video)

I Hate You Sarah Palin

Judd sets the stage.

By David Kahane
National Review Online
http://www.nationalreview.com/
September 02, 2008, 7:00 a.m.

A couple of months ago, you couldn’t drive anywhere in Los Angeles without seeing giant billboards that proclaimed, “I hate you, Sarah Marshall.” Well, we’ve all since long forgotten Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Judd Apatow’s not-quite-$100-million-comedy (if you look it up on IMDB.rpo, the first keyword is “penis”), about a nebbish whose hot girlfriend leaves him for a drug-addled rocker and they wind up at the same resort in, of all places, Hawaii, and hilarity ensues. Or, Hawai’i as we now call it, orthographically speaking.

But ever since that wrinkly old white dude with the numberless residences, John “the Senator from the Canal Zone” McCain, rained on Barack Hussein Obama II Barry Soetero Barack Hussein Obama Jr., a.k.a. the “Senator from Hinky Dink Kenna,” aka the Punahou Kid’s, parade with his insane, opportunistic, clueless, out-of-touch and breathtakingly audacious, game-changing pick of Sarah Marshall Palin to be his vice president, there’s another Sarah in town to hate.

Yeah, I’m talking about Sarah Barracuda, aka Hurricane Sarah. Where does she get off thinking she can be vice president of the United States? Up against the one million years in the Senate her opponent, Joe Biden, has logged in between expensive rides at taxpayer expense on the Acela, what can she offer? Mayor of a town of six people and ten caribou [sneer]? Miss Congeniality [sneer, sneer]? Illegitimate-child baby-grandma [sneer, sneer, sneer]? Poster chick for “family values” [sneer, sneer, sneer, sneer]?

Sorry, I’m running out of sneers.

But, seriously, just look at the negatives: she’s a popular first-term governor, she’s a woman, she’s happily married, she has five kids, one of them with Down’s syndrome, she’s a maverick, she’s from way beyond the Beltway, she’s taken on both the Republican Party and Big Oil, she shoots automatic weapons, she can kill a moose with a butter knife and fillet a sea lion with a smile, her husband’s a roustabout Eskimo snowmobile champ, she’s a hockey mom, she was Miss Wasilla, she looks like she should be playing Cecily, the saucy librarian, in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, and she doesn’t wear pantsuits. Heck, she hasn’t even appeared yet on Meet the Press! I mean, who in his right mind would vote for her?

Sure, if she were one of ours, not only would we have nominated her by acclamation, since she fulfills every trope of feminism except for her unfortunate and inexplicable opposition to murdering unborn children, we would also have made at least two TV movies about her life, celebrating her choice to have her fifth child and the announcement yesterday that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant and is going to marry the teenage father of her child. That’s the kind of heartwarming, inclusive, empowering story we love — she’s like Juno come to life as Juneau, set in Mystery, Alaska.

But she’s not a Democrat, which despite her va-va-va-voom appearance, means she’s not really a woman, which is one of the reasons we’ve spent the past four days since McCain unveiled her trying to tear her limb from limb. Just because she’s the governor of a state sandwiched between two obscure and unimportant countries, Canada and Russia, and spent more time in her first five minutes visiting American troops in Iraq than Evita Barry did during his entire Rainbow Tour, what could she possibly know about foreign policy? It’s not like she’s John Edwards or something.

So that’s why we’re having our Wellstone Funeral Moment at the moment. We mean well; we promised ourselves we wouldn’t go over the top with our outright loathing of the Neanderthals who preach “Christian” values while practicing Wiccanism and child sacrifice and who hate black people and gay people and want to destroy the environment just because they can, and want to amass more money than even John Kerry or Jon Corzine or Herb Kohl or Jay Rockefeller or Dianne Feinstein — the five richest senators — or Ted Kennedy or John Edwards or Nancy Pelosi have. That, usually, is the Kos Kidz’s job. Along with speculating exactly how Bush got from My Pet Goat to planting the depth charges that blew up the levees in New Orleans.

But sometimes the mask slips and you can see — whoops! — how much we hate you. Normally we’re against hate in all its forms, and embrace tolerance as one of our defining moral attributes. But when it comes to you conservatives, well, with the best will in the world, we just can’t tolerate you. You’re elitist, you’re judgmental, you’re hypocritical, and we know that deep down you hate us even more than we hate you. Therefore, by any means necessary, we will defeat you this fall. Voter fraud, “walking around” money, legions of lawyers, as many recounts as it takes — bring it on!

Because we need to take back our country. We need to take it back from fascists like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and give it back to its rightful proprietors, patriots like Henry Wallace, Sidney Hillman, Norman Thomas, Gus Hall, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Saul Alinsky, William Kunstler, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Bobby Seale, and, yes, my guy, the Talking Parrot, you know who.

And Sarah Marshall Palin stands in the way of all that. After we sent Bill n’ Hill packing with their twin gold watches in Denver, we thought we had a clear playing field. The sunshine of the uplands was ours. Mother Gaia had opened wide her arms to embrace us, shunning the Orcs and the Uruk-hai of the Anti-Slavery, Anti-Segregation, Anti-Secularism, Anti-Sedition and Anti-Surrender Party. We were going up against Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, Herbert Hoover and Whoever, Daddy Bush and Dan Quayle, Gerald R. Ford and, well, Bob Dole.

Piece of cake, walk on the beach, a Renaissance Weekend in a non-denominational heaven for atheists. Until Sarah Marshall Palin showed up, bringing with her 10 million bucks for the bad guys in three days, a level of enthusiasm not seen since Ronnie was a pup, and a clear shot to Republican dominance with her and Bobby Jindal and whatever seduced and corrupted minority group is coming next for eons to come.

So that’s why we hate you, Sarah Marshall Palin. We hate you because you remind the other side of their wives, their girlfriends, their daughters, and make them want to fight for you against our sneers and our smears. We hate you because you’re smart and accomplished and didn’t make your bones on the back of Monica Lewinsky. We hate you because you’ve made us forget that our last two candidates for vice president were Joe Lieberman and John Edwards, whoever they were.

We hate you because you’re smart and beautiful and we wish we had women like you on our side.

We hate you.

— David Kahane is the nom de cyber of a peaceful and tolerant liberal writer in Hollywood who loves his fellow men, and women, unless they’re closet conservatives or Jon Voigt or David Zucker or Kelsey Grammer or Robert Downey, Jr., or Angelina Jolie, or Bruce Willis or Jay Leno or Pat Boone or Orson Bean or a bunch of other people you used to like. You can cheer him on tell him how much you hate him at mailto:kahanenro@gmail.com

— David Kahane is a nom de cyber for a writer in Hollywood. “David Kahane” is borrowed from a screenwriter character in The Player.