Today in 1964, the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” hit number one and stayed there for 14 weeks:
Today in 1973, George Harrison got a visit from the taxman, who told him he owed £1 million in taxes on his 1973 Bangladesh album and concert:
One week ago I wrote about the ridiculous new National Museum of African American Culture exhibit that claims that these attributes demonstrate “whiteness.”
Chacour Koop follows up:
A Smithsonian museum apologized for a chart listing hard work and rational thought as traits of white culture.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture said in a statement Friday that it was wrong to include the graphic in an online portal about race and racism in America.
“It is important for us as a country to talk about race. We thank those who shared concerns about our ‘Talking About Race” online portal. We need these types of frank and respectful interchanges as we as a country grapple with how we talk about race and its impact on our lives,” the statement said. “We erred in including the chart. We have removed it, and we apologize.”
The educational resource released by the Washington D.C. museum is intended to serve as a guideline for discussing race.
It includes a section about “whiteness.”
A chart included in the section titled “Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness in the United States” included the culture traits, which included “hard work is the key to success” and “objective, rational linear thinking,” Newsweek reported.
“White dominant culture, or whiteness, refers to the ways white people and their traditions, attitudes, and ways of life have been normalized over time and are now considered standard practices in the United States,” the graphic says. “And since white people still hold most of the institutional power in America, we have all internalized some aspects of white culture — including people of color.”
According to the chart, those aspects included self-reliance, a nuclear family where the husband is the “breadwinner” and the wife is a “homemaker,” “no tolerance for deviation from single god concept,” respecting authority, planning for the future and “bland is best” in aesthetics.
The museum says it is reviewing policies to ensure quality of digital materials.
“Education is core to our mission,” the statement said. “We thank you for helping us to be better.”
The museum’s apology comes at a time when people across the United States are calling for better race relations in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died in police custody on Memorial Day. His death has sparked protests nationwide that led to the removal of statues tied to slavery and racial stereotypes in the business and sports worlds.
None of which have actually improved race relations. It also seems doubtful that “talk about race” is going to improve race relations given that that “talk” (based on personal observation) has devolved into a set of demands by Black Lives Matter supporters, one of which is that non-whites talk and whites only listen. Dialogue is not one-way.
Those of us who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s probably watched, at some point, film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on Chicago public TV’s “Sneak Previews” and then the syndicated “At the Movies” and “Siskel and Ebert and the Movies.”
The huge irony here is that Ebert wrote scrips for nine movies.
Ebert wrote about the first in 1980, 10 years after the movie was released, and five years before Ebert won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism:
Remembered after 10 years, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” seems more and more like a movie that got made by accident when the lunatics took over the asylum. At the time Russ Meyer and I were working on “BVD” I didn’t really understand how unusual the project was. But in hindsight I can recognize that the conditions of its making were almost miraculous. An independent X-rated filmmaker and an inexperienced screenwriter were brought into a major studio and given carte blanche to turn out a satire of one of the studio’s own hits. And “BVC” was made at a time when the studio’s own fortunes were so low that the movie was seen almost fatalistically, as a gamble that none of the studio executives really wanted to think about, so that there was a minimum of supervision (or even cognizance) from the Front Office.
We wrote the screenplay in six weeks flat, laughing maniacally from time to time, and then the movie was made. Whatever its faults or virtues, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” is an original — a satire of Hollywood conventions, genres, situations, dialogue, characters and success formulas, heavily overlaid with such shocking violence that some critics didn’t know whether the movie “knew” it was a comedy.
Although Meyer had been signed to a three-picture deal by 20th Century-Fox, I wonder whether at some level he didn’t suspect that “BVD” would be his best shot at employing all the resources of a big studio at the service of his own highly personal vision, his world of libidinous, simplistic creatures who inhabit a pop universe. Meyer wanted everything in the screenplay except the kitchen sink. The movie, he theorized, should simultaneously be a satire, a serious melodrama, a rock musical, a comedy, a violent exploitation picture, a skin flick and a moralistic expose (so soon after the Sharon Tate murders) of what the opening crawl called “the oft-times nightmarish world of Show Business.”
What was the correct acting style for such a hybrid? Meyer directed his actors with a poker face, solemnly, discussing the motivations behind each scene. Some of the actors asked me whether their dialogue wasn’t supposed to be humorous, but Meyer discussed it so seriously with them that they hesitated to risk offending him by voicing such a suggestion. The result is that “BVD” has a curious tone all of its own. There have been movies in which the actors played straight knowing they were in satires, and movies which were unintentionally funny because they were so bad or camp. But the tone of “BVD” comes from actors directed at right angles to the material. “If the actors perform as if they know they have funny lines, it won’t work,” Meyer said, and he was right.
The movie was inspired only incidentally by Valley of the Dolls. Neither Meyer nor I ever read Jacqueline Susann’s book, but we did screen the Mark Robson film, and we took the same formula: Three young girls come to Hollywood, find fame and fortune, are threatened by sex, violence and drugs, and either do or not do win redemption.
The original book was a roman a clef, and so was “BVD,” with an important difference: We wanted the movie to seem like a fictionalized expose of real people, but we personally possessed no real information to use as inspiration for the characters. The character of teenage rock tycoon Ronnie “Z-Man” Barzell, for example, was supposed to be “inspired” by Phil Spector — but neither Meyer nor I had ever met Spector.
The movie’s story was made up as we went along, which makes subsequent analysis a little tricky. Not long ago, for example, I was invited up to Syracuse University to discuss Meyer’s work, and the subject of Z-Man came up. (Readers who have seen “BVD” will know that Z-Man is a rock Svengali who seems to be a gay man for most of the movie, but is finally revealed to be a woman in drag.) Some of the questions at Syracuse dealt with the “meaning” of Z-Man’s earlier scenes, in light of what is later discovered about the character. But in fact those earlier scenes were written before either Meyer or I knew Z-Man was a transvestite: that plot development came on the spur of the moment. So, too, did such inspirations as quoting a “Citizen Kane” camera movement from a stage below to a catwalk above, or the use of the Fox musical fanfare during the beheading sequence.
They asked at Syracuse if Meyer’s use of the Fox trademark music was a put-down of the studio system. Meyer’s motive was much more basic: By using the music, he hoped to establish a satiric tone to the scene that would moderate the effect of the beheading and help protect against an X rating.
In the event, of course, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” was rated X anyway. There is a story about that. If the movie were to be rated today, it would probably get an R rating with a few small cuts. It was a very mild X. That was because Meyer and the studio were aiming for the R rating. When they didn’t get it, Meyer believed the ratings board had felt obligated to give the “King of the Nudies” an X rating, lest it seem to endorse his movie to the Majors.
Because the movie was stuck with the X, Meyer wanted to re-edit certain scenes in order to include more nudity (he shot many scenes in both X and R versions). But the studio, still in the middle of a cash-flow crisis, wanted to rush the film into release. Meyer still waxes nostalgic for the “real” X version of BVD, which exists only in his memory but includes many much steamier scenes starring the movie’s many astonishingly beautiful heroines and villianesses.
The visit to Syracuse was a chance for me to see BVD again for the first time in a few years. The movie still seems to play for audiences; it hasn’t dated, apart from the rather old-fashioned narrative quality it had even at the time of its release. It begins rather slowly, because so many characters have to be established and such an ungainly plot has to be set in motion. (The story is such a labyrinthine juggling act that resolving it took a quadruple murder, a narrative summary, a triple wedding and an epilogue.) But the last hour has a real kinetic energy, and the scenes beginning with Z-Man’s psychedelic orgy and ending with his death are, I must say on Meyer’s behalf, as exciting, terrifying and dynamic as any such sequence I can remember. That stretch of “BVD” is pure cinema, combining shameless melodrama, highly charged images of violence, sledge-hammer editing and musical overkill. It works.
And the movie as a whole? I think of it as an essay on our generic expectations. It’s an anthology of stock situations, characters, dialogue, clichés and stereotypes, set to music and manipulated to work as exposition and satire at the same time; it’s cause and effect, a wind-up machine to generate emotions, pure movie without message. The strange thing about the movie is that it continues to play successfully to completely different audiences for different reasons. When Meyer and I were hired a few years later to work on an ill-fated Sex Pistols movie called “Who Killed Bambi?” we were both a little nonplussed, I think, to hear Johnny Rotten explain that he liked “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” because it was so true to life.
Today in 1964, a member of the audience at a Rolling Stones concert in the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, England, spat upon guitarist Brian Jones, sparking a riot that injured 30 fans and two police officers.
The Stones were banned from performing in Blackpool until 2008.
Today in 1965, Bob Dylan released “Like a Rolling Stone,” which is not like said Rolling Stones:
Today in 1967, the Beatles and other celebrities took out a full-page ad in the London Times calling for the legalization of …
… marijuana.
A new Cato national survey finds that self‐censorship is on the rise in the United States. Nearly two-thirds—62%—of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive. The share of Americans who self‐censor has risen several points since 2017 when 58% of Americans agreed with this statement.
These fears cross partisan lines. Majorities of Democrats (52%), independents (59%) and Republicans (77%) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share.
Liberals Are Divided on Political Expression
Strong liberals stand out, however, as the only political group who feel they can express themselves. Nearly 6 in 10 (58%) of staunch liberals feel they can say what they believe. However, centrist liberals feel differently. A slim majority (52%) of liberals feel they have to self‐censor, as do 64% of moderates, and 77% of conservatives. This demonstrates that political expression is an issue that divides the Democratic coalition between centrist Democrats and their left flank.
What’s changed? In 2017 most centrist liberals felt confident (54%) they could express their views. However today, slightly less than half (48%) feel the same. The share who feel they cannot be open increased 7 points from 45% in 2017 to 52% today. In fact, there have been shifts across the board, where more people among all political groups feel they are walking on eggshells.
Although strong liberals are the only group who feel they can say what they believe, the share who feel pressured to self‐censor rose 12 points from 30% in 2017 to 42% in 2020. The share of moderates who self‐censor increased 7 points from 57% to 64%, and the share of conservatives rose 70% to 77%, also a 7‐point increase. Strong conservatives are the only group with little change. They are about as likely now (77%) to say they hold back their views as in 2017 (76%).
Self‐censorship is widespread across demographic groups as well. Nearly two‐thirds of Latino Americans (65%) and White Americans (64%) and nearly half of African Americans (49%) have political views they are afraid to share. Majorities of men (65%) and women (59%), people with incomes over $100,000 (60%) and people with incomes less than $20,000 (58%), people under 35 (55%) and over 65 (66%), religious (71%) and non‐religious (56%) all agree that the political climate prevents them from expressing their true beliefs.
50% of Strong Liberals Support Firing Trump Donors; 36% of Strong Conservatives Support Firing Biden Donors
The survey found that many Americans think a person’s private political donations should impact their employment. Nearly a quarter (22%) of Americans would support firing a business executive who personally donates to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign. Even more, 31% support firing a business executive who donates to Donald Trump’s re‐election campaign.
Support rises among political subgroups. Support increases to 50% of strong liberals who support firing executives who personally donate to Trump. And more than a third (36%) of strong conservatives support firing an executive for donating to Biden’s presidential campaign.
Young Americans are also more likely than older Americans to support punishing people at work for personal donations to Trump. Forty‐four percent (44%) of Americans under 30 support firing executives if they donate to Trump. This share declines to 22% among those over 55 years old—a 20‐point difference. An age gap also exists for Biden donors, but is less pronounced. Twenty‐seven percent (27%) of Americans under 30 support firing executives who donate to Biden compared to 20% of those over 55—a 7‐point difference.
32% Worry Their Political Views Could Harm Their Employment
Nearly a third (32%) of employed Americans say they personally are worried about missing out on career opportunities or losing their job if their political opinions became known. These results are particularly notable given that most personal campaign contributions to political candidates are public knowledge and can easily be found online.
And it’s not just one side of the political spectrum: 31% of liberals, 30% of moderates and 34% of conservatives are worried their political views could get them fired or harm their career trajectory. This suggests that it’s not necessarily just one particular set of views that has moved outside of acceptable public discourse. Instead these results are more consistent with a “walking on eggshells” thesis that people increasingly fear a wide range of political views could offend others or could negatively impact themselves.
These concerns are also cross‐partisan, although more Republicans are worried: 28% of Democrats, 31% of independents, and 38% of Republicans are worried about how their political opinions could impact their career trajectories.
Americans with diverse backgrounds share this concern that their employment could be adversely affected if their political views were discovered: 38% of Hispanic Americans, 22% of African Americans, 31% of White Americans, 35% of men, 27% of women, 36% of households earning less than $20,000 a year, and 33% of households earning more than $100,000 a year agree.
Some are more worried about losing their jobs or missing out on job opportunities because of political views. Those with the highest levels of education are most concerned. Almost half (44%) of Americans with post‐graduate degrees say they are worried their careers could be harmed if others discovered their political opinions, compared to 34% of college graduates, 28% of those with some college experience, and 25% of high school graduates.
But this educational divide appears largely driven by partisanship. Democrats with graduate degrees (25%) are about as likely as high school graduates (23%) to be worried their political views could harm their employment. However, a major shift occurs among Republicans who attend college and graduate school. About a quarter of Republicans with high school degrees (27%) or some college (26%) worry their political opinions could harm them at work—but this number increases to 40% among Republican college graduates and 60% of those with post‐graduate degrees. A similar trend is observed among independents. The share of independents who have these concerns increases from 18% among high school graduates, to 35% among those with some college, 41% of college graduates, and 49% of post‐graduates.
Younger people are also more concerned than older people, irrespective of political viewpoint. Examining all Americans under 65, 37% of those under 30 are worried their political opinions could harm their career trajectories, compared to 30% of 30–54 year‐olds and 24% of 55–64 year‐olds. But the age gap is more striking taking into account political views. A slim majority (51%) of Republicans under 30 fear their views could harm their career prospects compared to 39% of 30–44 year‐olds, 34% of 45–54 year‐olds, and 28% of 55–64 year‐old Republicans. Democrats reflect a similar but less pronounced pattern. A third (33%) of Democrats under 30 worry they have views that could harm their current and future jobs, compared to 27% of 30–54 year‐olds, and 19% of 55–64 year‐old Democrats.
These data suggest that a significant minority of Americans from all political persuasions and backgrounds—particularly younger people who have spent more time in America’s universities—are most likely to hide their views for fear of financial penalty.
A particularly surprising finding was that Americans who have these concerns are somewhat more likely to support the firing of Biden or Trump donors. A third (33%) among those who worry that their political views could harm their employment supported firing either Biden or Trump donors, compared to 24% of those who were not worried about their views impacting their jobs. This suggests that those who fear reprisal or economic penalty for their political views are not entirely distinct from those who seek the same for others.
Implications
Taking these results together indicates that a significant majority of Americans with diverse political views and backgrounds self‐censor their political opinions. This large number from across demographic groups suggests withheld opinions may not simply be radical or fringe perspectives in the process of being socially marginalized. Instead many of these opinions may be shared by a large number of people. Opinions so widely shared are likely shaping how people think about salient policy issues and ultimately impacting how they vote. But if people feel they cannot discuss these important policy matters, such views will not have an opportunity to be scrutinized, understood, or reformed.
Today in 1963, high school student Neil Young and his band, the Squires, recorded in a Winnipeg studio a surf instrumental:
Today in 1965, the Beatles asked for …
The number one single — really — today in 1966:
Today in 1979, Iran’s new ruler, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, banned rock and roll, an event that inspired a British band:
There are honorable and honest ways to oppose your own party, and to leave it. As a conservative who took the Never-Trump path and voted for Evan McMullin in 2016, I will grant the good faith of a lot of lifelong Republicans and conservatives who believe that they must support Donald Trump’s opponent on the grounds that Trump is unfit for office. And people are entitled to change their minds about what they believe. But it is also important to be honest about what you’re doing, and to take responsibility for your own choices. Neither the Lincoln Project nor John Kasich is doing this.
First up, the “Lincoln Project,” a political action committee founded by three former Republican campaign consultants — Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, and John Weaver — and former Republican lawyer George Conway. You may know Schmidt mainly as John McCain’s 2008 campaign manager and for helming Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2006 reelection campaign as California governor. Weaver was instrumental in McCain’s 2000 campaign (the 2008 campaign only took off after ditching Weaver), and the 2012 Jon Huntsman and 2016 John Kasich campaigns. In between, he theatrically left the Republican Party once before over George W. Bush. His Huntsman and Kasich campaigns veered heavily into sneering-at-Republican-voters-for-media-plaudits territory. In 2019, Weaver registered as a foreign agent for a Russian state-owned energy company..
Still, these men are entitled to their view of Trump. They are entitled to their idiosyncratic strategy of running ads aimed primarily at getting Trump’s attention and trying to hurt his feelings so that he lashes out, rather than ads aimed primarily at persuading voters. They are perhaps less entitled to present themselves as disaffected Republicans while catering to a donor base of Democrats — much less the questionable, murky financial transactions that Steve Stampley’s piece this morning details.
Where the Lincoln Project leaves behind any pretense at being a Republican or conservative project at all is in concentrating its efforts heavily on mainstream, moderate, and otherwise very not-Trumpy Republican Senators — Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Joni Ernst, Martha McSally, and Thom Tillis — and doing so mainly by running ads attacking them from the left, not the right. Some of these folks hold seats that, if won by the Democrats, would be extremely hard to win back. And if your claim is that Republicans need to be defeated to learn some sort of lesson, there is no evidence that burning down the Republican caucus on Capitol Hill by removing its more moderate and temperate members will make it less Trumpy. As I predicted in 2018, that was not the lesson taken by House Republicans from losing power, and it is not how the Republican Parties of California, Virginia, or New York have responded to losing power. What moderates the party is the need to pursue the building of majorities, not the experience of the wilderness, where performative rage is more lucrative.
Also, stocking the Senate with Democrats while Joe Biden builds a lead in the polls is a recipe for removing checks from the Democratic agenda rather than building checks on Trump. Does that concern the Lincoln Project? Quite the contrary. In an interview with the Washington Post’s left-wing writer Greg Sargent, Weaver not only pledges to support the Democrats’ election-law agenda after Biden’s election, but to demand that Republican senators back the Democratic policy agenda more broadly:
Will [the Lincoln Project] revert to a traditional GOP donor-friendly advocacy posture, one that drives opposition to the Democratic economic agenda? Or, as former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer somewhat jokingly predicted, the Lincoln Project will run “ads attacking President Biden for raising taxes on oil companies in early 2021.” “We’re not gonna do that,” Weaver told me. … Weaver insisted the group would actively work against Republicans who obstruct a Biden presidency. … “He will have a mandate to clean up the mess that Trump has created with the help of his enablers,” Weaver said of a Biden presidency. “That shouldn’t be held up. We intend to do all we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
I asked Weaver what the Lincoln Project would do if a President Biden and a Democratic Congress tried to raise taxes on the rich to help fund a multitrillion-dollar rescue effort. Weaver said he couldn’t directly address this until he saw specifics, but said: “We’ll be generally supportive of trying to get this country moving forward.” . . . “We will not stand on the sidelines if an attempt to bind the wounds is held up,” Weaver told me. “We plan on participating in that debate.”
The absolute last person who would ever have taken this approach is Abraham Lincoln. Yes, Lincoln’s presidency was the product of a time period when his original party (the Whigs) unraveled and was replaced by a more principled party (the Republicans). This is what some of the Lincoln Project folks say they would like to see. But it is where the similarity ends. In 1848, the Whigs nominated Zachary Taylor for president. While parallels between Taylor and Trumpare overstated, Taylor was a political novice of vague political principles, and because he was a large-scale Louisiana slaveholder who would not campaign against slavery, Charles Sumner and other “Conscience Whigs” refused to support Taylor. The Conscience Whigs were, in 2016 terms, Never Taylor. Lincoln didn’t join them. He and William Seward, later his secretary of state, both remained faithful Whigs and stumped for Taylor against Lewis Cass, a northerner running on a “popular sovereignty” platform more favorable to the expansion of slavery. As it turned out, Taylor in office was much more hostile to the pro-slavery Democrats than anticipated — like Trump, he was politically radicalized by partisan opposition — and grew to detest his former son-in-law Jefferson Davis.
In fact, Lincoln would be one of the last Whigs to abandon his party; only when it was clearly no longer a useable vehicle for pursuing his causes did he turn to the Republicans. The Republican coalition he built in 1860 was constructed on standing together to do common things; Lincoln was careful to make room in his tent for anyone who agreed with him, even slaveholders and former anti-immigrant Know-Nothings. He did not hold personal political grudges. In 1854, as the Whigs were unraveling, Lincoln was arguing that the best defense against expanding slavery into the territories was to defend the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, even with all of their flaws (including the Fugitive Slave Law). He gave a speech in Peoria in October 1854 arguing that those who wished to preserve the Union should work together and not turn up their noses at standing with people they otherwise disagreed with — so long as they stood together on issues of agreement:
Some men, mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration, lest they be thrown in company with the abolitionist. Will they allow me as an old Whig to tell them good humoredly, that I think this is very silly? Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong. Stand WITH the abolitionist in restoring the Missouri Compromise; and stand AGAINST him when he attempts to repeal the fugitive slave law. In the latter case you stand with the southern disunionist. What of that? you are still right. In both cases you are right. In both cases you oppose the dangerous extremes. In both you stand on middle ground and hold the ship level and steady. In both you are national and nothing less than national. This is good old Whig ground. To desert such ground, because of any company, is to be less than a Whig — less than a man — less than an American.
You can take this stance and argue for working with Democrats on common issue ground, and you can take it and argue for working with Democrats to remove Donald Trump from the White House. But you cannot take the Lincoln stance and argue for getting rid of Republican senators just because of whom they have stood with before. You cannot take the Lincoln stance and demand that Republican senators must work with Democrats to do things they do not believe in, just to strengthen the Democratic Party. Lincoln, who spent 1857 and 1858 arguing for defiance of the Dred Scott decision, would never have demanded that Republican senators give James Buchanan or Stephen Douglas a blank check in office.
Charles Sumner might be a better historical model than Lincoln. Sumner’s anti-slavery principles before the Civil War, and his pro-civil-rights principles after it, were genuinely admirable. His political judgment was not. Sumner’s most influential success was getting a South Carolina Democrat so enraged by personal insults that the congressman beat Sumner to a pulp on the Senate floor in 1856. In 1872, Sumner would re-enact his Conscience Whig days by breaking with the Republican Party to support Horace Greeley (another ex-Republican) running to oust Ulysses S. Grant from office. Sumner had his causes: He was a critic of the corruption of the Grant administration and had led a successful fight against Grant’s plan to annex the Dominican Republic. Sumner declared that the Republican Party was “becoming the instrument of one man and his personal will” and that Grant must be opposed to avoid subordinating the nation and party to “the personal pretensions of one man”:
I protest against him as radically unfit for the Presidential office, being … without aptitude for civil duties, and without knowledge of republican institutions, — all of which is perfectly apparent, unless we are ready to … boldly declare that nepotism in a President is nothing, that gift-taking with repayment in official patronage is nothing, that violation of the Constitution and of International and Municipal Law is nothing, that indignity to the African race is nothing, that quarrel with political associates is nothing, and that all his Presidential pretensions in their motley aggregation, being a new Cæsarism or personal government, are nothing. But if these are all nothing, then is the Republican Party nothing, nor is there any safeguard for Republican Institutions …
But Sumner and Greeley, by going Never Grant, were taking sides with the enemies of Reconstruction. Sumner’s old friend Frederick Douglass, deeply pained by Sumner’s abandonment, campaigned for Grant, and swore that he’d blow his brains out before switching parties: “If as a class we are slighted by the Republican Party, as a class we are murdered by the Democratic Party.” Had Greeley won, the policy consequences would have been the exact opposite of everything Sumner once stood for.
Donald Trump is even less like Ulysses S. Grant than he is like Zachary Taylor, of course. But Frederick Douglass, like Lincoln, understood what Sumner never did: Personal quarrels are no substitute for remaining focused on the goals at the end of your political party and movement. Anyone pledging to elect Democrats in the Senate and support a Democratic agenda even after Trump is gone is simply a Democrat and owns everything that comes with that.
Next up is John Kasich, the former two-term Republican governor of Ohio and nine-term Republican congressman, who is reportedly planning to speak at the 2020 Democratic convention. Kasich’s opposition to Trump in 2016 was a textbook example of what a failure of political courage looks like. Hardly anyone has less credibility in criticizing Trump today.
Ira Stoll:
Anyone hoping that electing Vice President Biden president is going to turn America’s clock magically back to the end of the Obama administration is in for an unpleasant surprise. Even if President Trump loses his re-election campaign, Trumpism is here to stay.
Sure, Mr. Trump does have a significant chance to pull off a come-from-behind victory like the one he won in 2016. Yet imagine, just for the sake of this analysis, that Mr. Trump is defeated.
On a whole range of issues foreign and domestic, even a one-term Trump presidency will have been enormously consequential, constraining Mr. Biden’s options and setting America on a course that will be in certain ways impossible to reverse.
This is less a verdict on Mr. Trump’s leadership, though it has been bold, than on the global situation and public opinion, which have both shifted considerably since the Obama-Biden administration took office in 2008.
Managing the relationship with China is perhaps the most pressing foreign policy challenge America faces. Sanctions against China for its treatment of Hong Kong passed the House and the Senate unanimously before Mr. Trump signed them into law this month. Mr. Biden is running by attacking Trump for being too soft on China.
Mr. Biden’s recently released “made in America” manufacturing plan vows to “use taxpayer dollars to buy American and spark American innovation, stand up to the Chinese government’s abuses, insist on fair trade.” It promises to “Bring Back Critical Supply Chains to America so we aren’t dependent on China.” It faults “China’s government” for “an assault on American creativity.” It’s far closer to Trump’s “America First” agenda than to a George H.W. Bush or Clinton administration-era approach to Beijing.
In the Middle East, Mr. Biden is similarly hemmed in. The vice president has said he would not reverse Mr. Trump’s move of America’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. He has said he’d try to strengthen the Iran nuclear deal rather than reverting to the exact Obama-era one that Mr. Trump exited.
On corporate tax rates, Mr. Biden’s plan would increase the top federal corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%. Even if that tax increase gets past Congress, which is no sure thing, it’d still be considerably below the 35% top rate that was the law during the Obama-Biden administration, before Mr. Trump won reductions.
Even Mr. Biden’s efforts to combat the coronavirus won’t markedly differ from that of Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden won’t have the power instantly to defeat Covid-19. Mr. Biden will depend, as Mr Trump has, on state and local government efforts to slow the spread of infection and on private-sector companies working on vaccines, therapeutics, and testing.
As for the idea that Mr. Biden’s Scranton, Pa., roots will somehow miraculously reunite the Democratic Party with lunch-bucket private-sector working families who backed Nixon, Reagan, and Trump, good luck with that one. Mr. Biden connects well with such voters, but his administration will be staffed with progressive activist veterans of the Warren and Sanders campaigns.
They will be joined in the administration by Jonathan Gruber types — highly educated, low humility technocrats from prosperous coastal cities and college towns who operate on the idea of “the stupidity of the American voter.”
Which is the problem anti-Trump Republicans and conservatives refuse to acknowledge. You never vote only for a presidential candidate; you vote for all the left-wing parasites the president brings to Washington with him.
Anyone who thinks Biden will put an end to bitter Trump-era culture wars has forgotten the role Biden played in blocking Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination and in attempting to keep Clarence Thomas off the Court.
Speaking of judges, any attempts by the Mr. Biden administration to push the progressive boundaries will eventually collide with 53 Trump-appointed appellate judges, nearly as many as were confirmed in the eight years of the Obama-Biden administration. Those judges and their district court colleagues, with lifetime appointments, are another long-lasting legacy of the first Trump term.
The present racial tension over police actions won’t be cured by changing presidents, either. The protests over the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., occurred during the Obama-Biden administration.
This is not to argue that the stakes of this election are insignificant, or that a Biden administration would not change a thing. If Mr. Biden does win, he’d likely pursue some policies — putting America back in the World Health Organization, pursuing aggressive action on climate change, nominating more liberal judges, welcoming more immigrants and refugees to America, expanding ObamaCare — that deviate significantly from what one woud see from a second-term Trump administration.
Even in the event of a Biden victory, though, many of the potential Republican presidential contenders in 2024 — Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, Senator Tom Cotton — would either be veterans of the Trump administration or its ideological allies.
Elections can change the occupant of the White House. But, with rare exceptions, America’s challenges tend to outlast presidential terms. Just as Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford all dealt with the war in Vietnam, and just as Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama all dealt with violent Islamic terrorism, Trump-era America, for better or worse, will outlast Mr. Trump.
Birthdays start with the indescribable George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic:
Rick Davies played keyboards for Supertramp:
Estelle Bennett was the older sister of Ronnie Spector, and both were part of the Ronettes:
Don Henley of the Eagles:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kslHr7_9Zac
The stories behind Chicago’s vaunted appearance at Tanglewood is almost (but not quite) as fascinating as the performance itself. The original headliner for this date of the late Bill Graham’s Fillmore At Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts was purportedly Joe Cocker, but neither he nor alternate choice Jimi Hendrix was unable to make the date. Now, it’s not a given the latter’s refusal of the booking led to Chicago’s, but it is known the guitar icon admired the guitar work of the late Terry Kath, so…
Adding further mystique to this piece of rock and roll history is its ready availability via the web: even though it’s never been formally sanctioned for release by Chicago itself, perhaps due to licensing issues with the estate of the aforementioned rock impresario. Such minutiae, however, turn trivial in the context of the group’s stellar performance this July night at the summer home of the Boston Symphony: even with the band on the cusp of widespread fame, based on singles culled from their sophomore album released earlier in the year, members of their burgeoning fanbase probably couldn’t expect anything so visceral or complex.
This venue’s flat sight-lines notwithstanding, as the ninety-minutes plus show progressed, the audience inside the open-air shed, as well as those further populating the lawn, no doubt found it increasingly riveting. Before too long, virtually all the attendees knew they were watching and listening to a band that was not only firing in all cylinders but also well aware of the elevated level of its musicianship. July 21, 1970, was one of those transcendent experiences music-loving concertgoers dream of.
Spurred on by Kath (who would die in 1978 in a tragic firearms accident), Chicago was equally tight and versatile as they traversed material from their debut album, Chicago Transit Authority, as well as Chicago II. And while “Make Me Smile” and “Colour My World” had not yet fully catapulted the band into the mainstream, the group’s dawning realization of their combined power and its effect on the attendees only added atmosphere to the event.
Chicago ran the gamut of composition and style during the course of this comfortably warm, crystal-clear night. Near-perpetual touring since the release of their debut album the previous spring had honed the ensemble’s musicianship, without leaving it rote or mechanical, so the dynamic shifts taking place in this single extended set ran the gamut: from near fifteen minutes of “It Better End Soon” to the comparatively short but sweet “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?,” hard-driving horns of “25 or 6 to 4” gave way to “Free Form Piano” and only then did the septet transition smoothly into the rousing suite titled “Ballet For A Girl In Buchanan.” including the aforementioned future hits.
The unified power in the playing had its corollary in the personal camaraderie among the band members. Taking the form of verbal acclamation of each other as well as regular rounds of delighted smiles, Chicago may have been surprising itself with the splendor of its playing here in the Berkshires, but that only heightened its infectious impact on the attendees and to a great degree helped elicit (and no doubt increase the volume of) the thunderous ovation(s) and call(s) for encore(s). Judging by the wan sound of promoter Graham’s farewell to the audience (readily available to hear on the various aforementioned internet versions, there’s little doubt everyone present was fully satiated and thoroughly drained by the time this evening concluded.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 