Trendlist: Althouse

Thursday, March 4, 2021

Althouse

"The doctors-facts-science mantras have become familiar over the past year. The experts tell us, expertly, what we need to know, and we do it."
"I went to England and in the course of us meeting the Beatles, I became friends with George. He was a very nice cat, very open..."
If you hadn't eaten inside a restaurant for over a year and you finally decided to dare to do so, where would you go and what would you eat?
"Well, I sang a song. And that's a part of shamanism. It's about — creating positive vibrations in a sacred chamber."
"Alarming revelations of threats to the Capitol and members of Congress prompted House Democratic leaders to wrap up their legislative work for the week on Wednesday night...."
"If a state decides to prematurely lift rules against the guidance of CDC, should it be eligible to receive federal help if it later needs it as a result?"
"Before covid-19 shut my office, I didn’t pay much attention to one of my most important workplace benefits."
At the Sunrise Café...

"The doctors-facts-science mantras have become familiar over the past year. The experts tell us, expertly, what we need to know, and we do it."

Posted: 04 Mar 2021 09:50 AM PST

"At least until all this science starts to fog up our mental windshields and we, the people, start to wear out. Our irritability mounts; our attention wanes; the guide-rope in our mouth starts to chafe. It is then that the bawdy obstreperousness and its odd twin, the glory hallelujah, of democracy come into view — a single unit; maddening, infuriating, nevertheless fused. And Greg Abbott or someone else steps up to lead the beast forward, by instinct if not by Hoyle... The love of democratic citizens for experts shouldn't be overestimated. The nature of democracy is preference for or deference to popular wisdom, however unwise that wisdom may prove in action. It's been a long time since this pandemic started. People are tired. People want to see, and relate to, each other. That's human nature. The human nature-affirmers like Greg Abbott, with a little luck and sense of timing, are likely to come out way ahead of their castigators and vilifiers, Robert Francis (Beto) O'Rourke conspicuously included."

Writes William Murchison in "Glory Hallelujah for Texas!/Gov. Greg Abbott takes a calculated gamble on we, the people against the experts" (The Spectator).

The Spectator is British, but Murchison is American. He even went to the University of Texas. I had to look that up because the use of "glory hallelujah" hit my ear as a foreigner's mistake. To me, the phrase — which you see in the title and the text ("its odd twin, the glory hallelujah, of democracy") — is entirely evocative of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and Texas was in the Confederacy.

Puzzling, I ran across this 2018 NPR article, "How 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' became an anthem for every cause":

There's an episode of The Johnny Cash Show from 1969 where the man himself makes a little speech with a pretty big error. "Here's a song that was reportedly sung by both sides in the Civil War," Cash says, guitar in hand, to kick off a performance of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic.... which proves to me that a song can belong to all of us."

Cash was wrong, but in the years after the Civil War, the song came to be sung in church, at football games, and at labor union events. And on all sorts of political occasions:

Anita Bryant, the singer and conservative activist, used to perform the song at anti-gay rallies. During the 1964 presidential race, Republican nominee Barry Goldwater had to disown a campaign film that posed the election as a choice between two Americas — an "ideal" America, where the tune of the "Battle Hymn" scored images of the founders and the Constitution, and a "nightmare" America, featuring black people protesting and kids dancing to rock music.

On the flipside, the day before he was killed in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech, which he ended by quoting the song's first line: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." His home church, Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist, took up the song after his death as an anthem to him and the civil rights movement.

"How people relate to patriotism is kind of how they come into the 'Battle Hymn,' " says professor Brigitta Johnson, an ethnomusicologist at the University of South Carolina who teaches in the schools of Music and African-American Studies. "For example, your white nationalists digging deep into heavy patriotism messages — they bring up things like 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and the 'Battle Hymn' and it becomes their battle cry, just as easily as it could become the battle cry for Ebenezer in Atlanta."...

"The kumbaya moment will not be happening across the aisles because of this song," [Johnson] says, "because it's really about supporting whatever your perspective is — about freedom or liberation, and having God as the person who's ordaining what we're doing. And 'glory, hallelujah' about that."

As Johnny Cash said in 1969, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is an anthem that belongs to everybody. But what really matters is what they're singing it for.

That meshes well with Murchison's point about human nature and human nature-affirmers.

"I went to England and in the course of us meeting the Beatles, I became friends with George. He was a very nice cat, very open..."

Posted: 04 Mar 2021 09:06 AM PST

"... a very decent human being. Invited me over to his house for dinner, that kind of thing. Hung out with us. Later on, he tells me that he's gone to India and met this teacher, this guru. George is smitten by him. I listened to what he was saying and I wanted to say to George, 'That's great, but take it with a grain of salt,' because usually when somebody comes on that strong that they've got the answer, it's bulls—. I wanted to say, 'Have some skepticism.' But I was too chicken to do it, because I had too much respect for George. So I wrote him that song. 'I thought I met a man who knew a man who knew what was going on.' And I ended it by saying, listen, I don't think he does know what's going on. I don't even know if George ever heard the song."

Said David Crosby, in an interview with the L.A. Times.

Here's the song, "Laughing":

That's from Crosby's 1971 solo album that the critics "just didn't understand," as Crosby puts it. "They were looking for another record that was full of big, flashy lead guitar and blues licks and screaming lyrics. It was not where everything else was going, so they thought it was irrelevant."

Lester Bangs called it "a perfect aural aid to digestion when you're having guests over for dinner." In 1971, that was a worse kick in the head than being told your music makes me want to vomit.

ADDED: Not only do I have a tag for Lester Bangs, the Lester Bangs tag appears on a post written on the first day of this blog, January 14, 2004. There is no other tag for a specific human being until the next day, when Herbert Muschamp and Dennis Miller appear. Interestingly, George Harrison shows up on January 17, 2004.

If you hadn't eaten inside a restaurant for over a year and you finally decided to dare to do so, where would you go and what would you eat?

Posted: 04 Mar 2021 08:28 AM PST

We went to Culver's and ate deep-fried walleye (and fried onion rings):

That was on our way home after hiking the Flintrock Trail in Blue Mound State Park.

"Well, I sang a song. And that's a part of shamanism. It's about — creating positive vibrations in a sacred chamber."

Posted: 04 Mar 2021 08:10 AM PST

"I also stopped people from stealing and vandalizing that sacred space, the Senate. Okay? I actually stopped somebody from stealing muffins out of the — out of the break room. And I also said a prayer in that sacred chamber. Because it was my intention to bring divinity, and to bring God back into the Senate."

Said Jacob Chansley, quoted in "'QAnon Shaman' claims he wasn't attacking the country in first interview since Capitol riot arrest/Jacob Chansley, the man seen wearing face paint and a fur helmet with horns during the January 6 insurrection, tells 60 Minutes+ he was trying 'to bring God back to the Senate'" (CBS News).

60 Minutes+ correspondent Laurie Segall pushed him: "But Jake, legally, you were not allowed to be in what you're calling the sacred chamber."

He responded: "And that is — and that is the one very serious regret that I have, was believing that when we were waved in by police officers, that it was acceptable." He also said he regretted not receiving a pardon from Trump and that "while he regrets entering the building 'with every fiber of my being,' he doesn't regret his loyalty to the former president."

"Alarming revelations of threats to the Capitol and members of Congress prompted House Democratic leaders to wrap up their legislative work for the week on Wednesday night...."

Posted: 04 Mar 2021 06:37 AM PST

"The immediate threat is intelligence related to a possible plot by a militia group to attack the Capitol on Thursday. Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory believe former President Trump will be reinaugurated on March 4, a traditional date for presidential inaugurations until 1933...."

MSN News reports.

How much evidence of a possible attack was there? Is vacating the building the right response to whatever this was? I presume it was something more than just people spinning theories that focused on a date that happens to have historical significance, but only the House is abandoning its workplace, not the Senate.

"If a state decides to prematurely lift rules against the guidance of CDC, should it be eligible to receive federal help if it later needs it as a result?"

Posted: 04 Mar 2021 06:24 AM PST

Asks NYT columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin (on Twitter).

A good answer: "Does your state allow steak to be served medium rare? No Medicare for you!"

A terrible answer: "What Biden should do is make clear now: Do what Texas and Mississippi are doing, lose ALL your federal funding. With the threat of loss of highway funding, that's how the legal drinking age went from 19 to 21 in 1985...."

"Before covid-19 shut my office, I didn’t pay much attention to one of my most important workplace benefits."

Posted: 04 Mar 2021 05:58 AM PST

"But nearly a year later, it's a perk I can't stop daydreaming about. Eight precious hours, five days a week, when I could forget the unfolded laundry, unemptied dishwasher and kid-related clutter from one end of the apartment to the other. In short, the luxury of being able to focus on my work.... If remote work is here to stay, will the proposed flexibility actually result in greater equity, employee satisfaction and retention — let alone provide the mental health benefits women need to do our jobs well? Smart policies — whether in the public or private sector — are those that consider intended and unintended consequences.... If [more women than men choose to continue to do remote work, more women] will miss out on the connections, networking and mentorship that lead to advancement. Meanwhile, they will experience increased loneliness and the stress that comes from feeling that the division between their work and their home life has eroded. So what should well-intentioned companies and managers do? If you think flexible work will boost equity, especially for parents, it is critical to consider what other policies and practices must be in place to advance this goal."

From "Hybrid and remote schedules threaten the progress we've made on gender equity at the office" by Sian Beilock, the president of Barnard College (in WaPo).

At the Sunrise Café...

Posted: 03 Mar 2021 04:54 PM PST