The number one single today in 1969 reached number one because of both sides:
The number one album today in 1986 was Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s “Live/1975–85”:
No comments on Presty the DJ for Nov. 29
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David French:
I knew it. I knew the instant I saw Twitter erupt in outrage at the use of tear gas to disperse a crowd of people charging our southern border that someone would find an example of the Obama administration doing the same thing. And sure enough, there it was, shared far and wide within minutes, a San Diego Union-Tribune story from November 25, 2013:
A group of about 100 people trying to illegally cross the border Sunday near the San Ysidro port of entry threw rocks and bottles at U.S. Border Patrol agents, who responded by using pepper spray and other means to force the crowd back into Mexico, federal officials said.
Twitter existed in 2013. I was on it, and I certainly don’t recall an eruption of outrage, followed by days of think-pieces explaining the horrors of pepper spray and the deep betrayal of American values.
In fact, that November incident was hardly unique. As the Washington Times reports, “the same tear-gas agent that the Trump administration is taking heat for deploying against a border mob this weekend is actually used fairly frequently — including more than once a month during the later years of President Barack Obama’s administration.”
But that was then. Sensible people understood that you can’t just let a mob rush the border, and Border Patrol agents can and should use non-lethal means to protect themselves from rocks and bottles. And the pictures of kids in cages in the Obama era?
Well, there was an “enormous spike” in kids crossing the border, and we “didn’t have enough shelter facilities.” So kids had to be put in Border Patrol lock-ups. But that was temporary. The Obama administration took good care of kids after they left the lock-up, right? Well, not exactly. Some children faced a terrible nightmare. Here’s a paragraph from a 2016 Senate report:
Over a period of four months in 2014, however, HHS allegedly placed a number of UACs [Unaccompanied Alien Children] in the hands of a ring of human traffickers who forced them to work on egg farms in and around Marion, Ohio, leading to a federal criminal indictment. According to the indictment, the minor victims were forced to work six or seven days a week, twelve hours per day. The traffickers repeatedly threatened the victims and their families with physical harm, and even death, if they did not work or surrender their entire paychecks. The indictment alleges that the defendants “used a combination of threats, humiliation, deprivation, financial coercion, debt manipulation, and monitoring to create a climate of fear and helplessness that would compel [the victims’] compliance.” [Emphasis added.]
One of the more frustrating aspects of our current political debate is the extent to which differences from administration to administration are exaggerated and distorted. Let’s take, for example, media coverage of the Obama administration. To this day, the inaccurate picture of his presidency haunts American discourse. While there are obvious differences with the Trump administration, Obama was not exactly the man who many millions of Americans think he was.
He was a peace president who ordered ten times more drone strikes than George W. Bush. He was the peace president who left office with American boots on the ground in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, and scattered across North Africa. His administration refueled Saudi jets to enable the indiscriminate Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen. Oh, and he droned American citizens abroad without even a nod to due process.
He was the environmentalist president so hostile to fossil fuels that he presided over an extraordinary boom in domestic oil production:
He was the compassionate president who admitted a grand total of fewer than 2,000 Syrian refugees in the first five years of the Syrian civil war. He was the compassionate president whose deportations peaked at an average of 34,000 people in fiscal year 2012.
I share these facts not to argue that there aren’t distinct and important differences between Barack Obama and Donald Trump. There are. And those differences manifest themselves in each of the policy categories outlined above. But when discussing differences, gravity and proportion matter. And they matter greatly.
Indeed, I’d argue that both conservative and liberal media outlets had an interest in amplifying Obama’s progressive credentials and advancing a fundamentally flawed narrative about the nature and character of his presidency. Exaggerating his progressive virtue (or vice) kept partisans engaged. It kept ramping up the stakes of our political conflicts, and it contributed immensely to the Flight 93 mentality that dominates politics today.
How much time did conservative media spend debating Obama’s willingness to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” even while he was droning, bombing, and shelling terrorists from Afghanistan to Libya? How much time did the liberal media spend amplifying Obama’s desire for peace with Iran even as he helped Saudi Arabia wage its proxy war against Iran in Yemen, at a simply enormous toll in innocent human life?
By failing to provide perspective, the media creates a sense of outrage when none is justified and inoculates the public against injustice when injustice is real. The Left looks at the tear gas on the border and believes norms are being violated when they’re not. The Right looks at critical reporting about Trump and starts to presume that it’s illegitimate, even if the facts are egregious.
All too often, we act as if the immense American ship of state lurches from right to left with each new election, when the reality is often that the turns in crucial areas are gradual. Partisans who forget this fact find themselves condemning their opponents for behavior their own side engaged in when confronted by similar challenges. Reality has a way of constraining a government’s options, even when very different people occupy the Oval Office. Comments
Again, I’m not arguing there aren’t important differences in the presidents. There are, and in some areas those differences are quite profound. It’s worth exposing those differences, and it’s worth debating those differences. At the same time, we cannot abandon historical perspective, a perspective that can and should grant a degree of humility.
The lesson? Before you express outrage at any politician for his egregious violation of “norms” or his “radical” departure from the rule of law, check recent history. You might be surprised by what you find.
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The number one single today in 1960:
The number one (for the second time) single today in 1963:
The number one single today in 1964:
The number one British single today in 1970:
Today in 1991, Nirvana did perhaps the worst lip-synching effort of all time of its “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the BBC’s “Top of the Pops”:
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Readers of my previous blog may hazily remember that 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney had the Secret Service handle of “Javelin,” after his father, George Romney, who ran American Motors Corp. before he was elected governor of Michigan.
(I’d say here that we owned a Javelin, but you knew that.)
On Monday, GM reported plant closings and layoffs, which prompts the Goldwater Institute (whose namesake, Sen. Barry Goldwater, owned both an AMC AMX and a Chevrolet Corvette, so he was the man) to observe:
“Let Detroit go bankrupt,” former presidential candidate Mitt Romney wrote in 2008, arguing that the federal government should not bail out the failing domestic auto industry for their poor management decisions. Vilified for turning his back on America’s autoworkers, Romney lost the argument, Barack Obama won the election, General Motors got its way, and U.S. taxpayers got stuck with an $11.2 billion bill to keep the company alive.
Today’s announcement from General Motors that it will close two plants in Metro Detroit and lay off 14,700 workers helps prove Romney right, albeit ten years later. Romney wrote that with a bailout, the American automotive industry’s demise “will be virtually guaranteed” because it would not be forced to undergo radical restructuring to be competitive in the marketplace. By subsidizing failure, the federal government would be gambling with taxpayer dollars and forestalling the inevitable.
This wasn’t the first time the government had bet heavily on General Motors at citizens’ expense. In a story much like recent efforts by state and local governments to give away billions of dollars to win a new Amazon headquarters, the cities of Detroit and neighboring Hamtramck teamed up in the early 1980s to win a new General Motors factory, chasing the promise of jobs and renewal of depressed and blighted neighborhoods. The Detroit News reports:
General Motors and Detroit Mayor Coleman Young hatched a plan: If the city would get the land, the auto company would build a state-of-the-art plant, crossing the border with Hamtramck, employing 6,000 people and providing a glittering example of what the auto companies and their suppliers could do in the city of their birth.
Residents who had lived in the targeted neighborhood would be given offers to sell their homes and move to make way for “progress,” but as the Detroit News reports, not everyone wanted to sell. In the face of protests and a legal challenge, the city moved forward with the plan, and a Michigan Supreme Court decision upheld the city’s decision to raze the site for General Motors. The factory was built, and decades later the court decision was overturned, but today, some 37 years later, that factory will be closed as General Motors fights to save costs.
One Detroit-area politician is feeling particularly burned by the decision. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat who was elected to Congress in November, decried the decision on Facebook:
“[M]ake no mistake, this is a perfect lesson illustrating that corporations are not your friend, and handing them tax breaks and incentives is a losing game. Taxpayers bailed GM out with billions just a few short years ago – and now they cut jobs to make bigger profits?
“What’s worse, Detroit tore down the vibrant Poletown neighborhood for GM, destroying a community, displacing hundreds of families, and a couple decades later this is how we’re rewarded.”
Hoping for rewards in exchange for corporate welfare can come with a high cost, and General Motors’ story should be a cautionary tale about government picking winners and losers with taxpayer dollars—and in taking private property for a supposed “public purpose.”
In a paper for the Goldwater Institute, economics professor Shirley Svorny wrote about the high costs of government subsidization of private businesses—and who pays the cost when if those companies fail:
There are limited, specific situations where local government can improve on private-sector outcomes. A political decision to redirect tax dollars so that benefits accrue to individual firms is not one of those situations…The company bears none of the costs if it fails in its effort or chooses to move elsewhere. That burden falls on taxpayers.
The thousands of autoworkers who lost their jobs today—and the homeowners who lost their property to General Motors decades ago—know that lesson all too well.
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The number one album today in 1965 was Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’ “Whipped Cream and Other Delights”:
The number one single today in 1966 was this one-hit wonder:
The number one British album today in 1976 was Glen Campbell’s “20 Golden Greats”:
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The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel interviews Gov. Scott Walker:
Gov. Scott Walker on Thursday returned to the public eye since losing an expensive and hard-fought bid for a third term — telling reporters he doesn’t know what’s next but doesn’t see his loss as a “rejection.”
“It was without a doubt a big election — bigger turnout than ever before — but the numbers we received a week ago Tuesday would have won the election four years ago, would have won the election eight years ago,” Walker said in a 25-minute, wide-ranging interview. “In no way do I see it as a rejection, but rather just a larger electorate than we’ve ever seen in the past.”
Following Walker’s defeat, some Republicans have questioned the City of Milwaukee’s late counting of more than 47,000 absentee ballots, which propelled Gov.-elect Tony Evers to a win. Walker said Thursday he had a team of lawyers look into it, but said it came down to “incompetence as opposed to corruption.”
Walker, 51, said he isn’t sure what he will do after leaving public office in January for the first time in two decades, but said he isn’t planning to join President Donald Trump’s administration.
He said instead of taking a trip to decompress after the Nov. 6 defeat, he spent the time helping his mother move into a new apartment following his father’s death in October.
“More important than getting away from it all is getting into it,” he said of spending time with his mother after the election loss. “I really don’t have much of an interest at this point in going to Washington.”
Walker said he would consider proposals from Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) to approve in his remaining days as governor, but suggested none of the measures would be major.
“What have we not done?” Walker said, referring to major legislation altering the state’s landscape for manufacturers, public employees and residents on welfare. “We’ve been such a reformer, I may have reformed myself out of a job.”
Walker again pushed for lawmakers to pass a $70 million incentive package for papermaker Kimberly-Clark Corp. and said if the Legislature doesn’t act by the end of November, “those jobs will be gone.” …
On the prospect of Evers rolling back measures Walker championed, including possibly eliminating the state’s job agency Walker created or altering the contract with Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn Technology Group, Walker downplayed the idea of significant change.
“The state of Wisconsin is not going to go backward,” he said. “If I just chose not to run and decided to serve out my term without an election, I’d be very proud of what we’ve done in this state.”
Perhaps we should revisit this in four years, when the state will be infinitely worse off and Evers’ incompetence as an administrator (based not on my opinion, but on what people whose jobs include working with Evers and DPI have said) becomes apparent even to Democrats. -
Today in 1967, the Beatles’ “Hello Goodbye” promotional film (now called a “video”) was shown on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Show. It was not shown in Britain because of a musicians’ union ban on miming:
One death of odd note, today in 1973: John Rostill, former bass player with the Shadows (with which Cliff Richard got his start), was electrocuted in his home recording studio. A newspaper headline read: “Pop musician dies; guitar apparent cause.”
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Today in 1969, John Lennon returned his Member of the Order of the British Empire medal as, in his accompanying note, “a protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria–Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against ‘Cold Turkey’ slipping down the charts.”
The number one single today in 1972 should have been part of my blog about the worst music of all time:
Today in 1976, The Band gave its last performance, commemorated in Martin Scorsese’s film “The Last Waltz”:
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On Wisconsin magazine, which we UW alumni get:
As he had done at the end of countless UW Marching Band practices, director Mike Leckrone stood on top of a ladder on a hot, sunny August afternoon. The band’s veterans, along with rookies who had just won a coveted spot, crowded around to listen.
It had been a year since Leckrone had lost his wife of 62 years, Phyllis. Seven months before that, he had undergone heart surgery. Today, he would tell the band of the decision he had shared with only a few senior university officials: he was ending his remarkable half-century reign. He would lead them through one more football season, followed by hockey and basketball and the spring concert.
In this moment, Leckrone told his musicians what he expected of them.
“You must maintain the traditions, the intensity, the desire, and everything that everybody for the last 50 years has brought to this group,” he said. “I would be sorely disappointed if I see that doesn’t happen, because it’s in your hands to do that.”
Later that day as the news quickly spread, alumni band members began posting decades-old photos of themselves in their band uniforms on Facebook with the hashtag #IMarchedforMike. In September, the annual alumni band day — when former members march during the football pregame and halftime shows — drew record numbers. So many people wanted to play under Leckrone’s direction for one last time that organizers had difficulty creating a routine that would fit more than 500 people on the field, all wearing red T-shirts emblazoned with his name.
“Any one of us whose paths have crossed Mike’s feel that … he deeply touched us and continues to do so,” Sarah Halstead ’87, a cymbal player who spent four years in the band, said shortly before the alumni band took the field. “We’re here to honor him and, in some way, say, ‘Thank you.’ We’ve heard so many times from him — ‘Just one more time.’ And this really is the last time.”
It may seem strange to think now, but Leckrone could have spent decades performing the University of Minnesota fight song.
Every Badger fan who has attended a home basketball, football, or hockey game since 1969 knows the man wielding the baton — a beloved, charismatic musical leader who exhorts crowds to shout, “When you say Wis-con-sin, you’ve said it all!” So it’s hard to picture Leckrone leading a stadium full of Gopher fans through their signature chant of “M-I-N-N-E-S-O-T-A.”
But in 1968, seeking a step up from his job as marching band director at Butler University, Leckrone looked to the Big Ten and applied for openings at Minnesota and Wisconsin. Both schools turned him down.
A year later, the UW called and asked if he was still interested. Leckrone said yes, even though it did not have the makings of a dream gig. At that point, the band had cycled through three different directors in as many years. And in the last 20 games, the football team had logged 19 losses and one tie (see page 13). The band’s ranks had dwindled — from around 130 participants to just 96 — and they frequently played to partially empty stands. It was also the height of the antiwar protest era on campus.
“It wasn’t really politically correct to put on a uniform and march around campus in those days,” says Leckrone, 82, an Indiana native and the son of a marching band director.
Unimpressed with the band’s lack of energy, Leckrone changed its marching style. He made the switch to a high step, which requires a musician’s knee to hesitate while lifted at 90 degrees, which he calls “stop at the top.” Leckrone stressed pride in the band and worked on small details like the snap of the “horns up” movement. Gradually, more students joined and, by his third year, the band began to transform into a cohesive unit.
Initially there was some resistance, recalls Ray Luick ’73, the band’s drum major when Leckrone took over. Luick played tuba his freshman year in 1968 before serving as drum major for the next three seasons.
“He had such a clear idea of what he wanted to do and we didn’t have a clue. Here’s a guy whose lifelong ambition was to be a Big Ten band director, and we were just part of the group he inherited,” says Luick, who returns each year with his drum major baton to lead the alumni band.
Fifty years after watching Leckrone take over the band, Luick is not surprised to see the director in charge this long.
“He has never lost the enthusiasm or the realization that this is just a lot of fun for a lot of people,” Luick says. “I think that recognition of how all these insane pieces fit together is very important to him and allowed him not to see this as 50 years of work but a continuation of something he enjoys doing.”
When he was hired, Leckrone figured he would transition to an administrative role in the School of Music within 10 years. But he enjoyed the marching band so much that, within a few years, he put aside thoughts of taking off the black uniform he wore for football games.
He says he’s lucky Minnesota turned him down. With a smile, Leckrone explains that Wisconsin has a much better fight song.
“Part of that is the cleverness [songwriter William] Purdy used in the song. That first four-note interchange — da, da, da, dum — you can turn it into all sorts of musical ideas. It doesn’t sound forced. It has a flow to it,” he says.
It has been decades since Leckrone struggled to find enough players to fill the band’s ranks. About 300 students make up the current band; 230 march at halftime. Others, usually freshmen, serve as alternates ready to step in for an injured player.
When you say Wisconsin …
The UW band first played its rendition of one of its signature songs more than four decades ago, when rowdy Badger hockey fans wanted to hear a polka.Leckrone instructed the band to play the Budweiser jingle, but switch up the drum beat to make it sound more like a polka. At the next hockey game, fans chanted, “We want a polka!” The band responded by playing “You’ve Said It All,” also known as “The Bud Song.” Soon, Wisconsin replaced Budweiser in the lyrics, a substitution Leckrone suggested for fear “the crowd would get the wrong idea of the drinking habits of the band or the audience.”
Fans demanded the song throughout the season as the men’s hockey team played its way to the 1973 NCAA championship. Gradually the band began playing it at other events, including football games. But worried fans, who did not like the way people jumping and dancing to the song made Camp Randall’s upper deck sway, complained to Athletic Director Elroy Hirsch x’45, who asked Leckrone to stop playing it.
Leckrone had another idea.
“Wouldn’t it be fun if you make a production of it, and announce the band will not play the song right after the game, but give five minutes for those of you who are faint of heart [to leave the upper deck],” Leckrone says. “Elroy thought it was fun. So we did it, and it just blossomed from there.”
And so, “You’ve Said It All” became the cornerstone of the Fifth Quarter.
To his musicians, Leckrone is more than a band director — he’s a mentor and coach who instills the necessity of hard work and having fun. And as the fortunes of Badger sports teams have soared and sunk over the years, there’s always been one constant: the appeal of the band.“Mike is without question one of the most beloved figures in the history of UW–Madison. He has made a significant impact on campus, in Madison, throughout the state, and beyond,” says UW Athletic Director Barry Alvarez. “When we speak with officials from bowl games each year, I tell them that Wisconsin will bring the whole package — team, fans, and band. Mike’s leadership of the band has certainly been an important part of that package for our school for many, many years.”
Although it might look seamless to fans at Camp Randall, each band performance at home games represents much thought, planning, and practice. Leckrone is one of the few — if not the only — college marching band director to continue to arrange all the band’s music as well as write charts for the pregame and halftime shows.
In addition to leading the marching and pep bands at sports events, Leckrone also teaches classes and conducts the symphonic band. A fan of big band music, his jazz and pop music courses are popular because of his encyclopedic knowledge and his infectious excitement for the tunes of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and other early jazz legends. During a lecture on his favorite jazz artist — trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke — Leckrone has been known to dramatically rip open his overshirt to reveal a “Bix Lives!” T-shirt.
“It’s pretty amazing to keep up with his schedule. He’s a very energetic guy. I hope I have at least a quarter of his energy when I’m his age,” says assistant director of bands Darin Olson, who’s some 50 years Leckrone’s junior.Leckrone knows the students who crowded around his ladder in August are the last group of young adults he’ll lead at the UW. They are the ones who will play his last football games at Camp Randall. They will tell the musicians who join the band next year and the year after that, what it was like to play for a legend.
He reminded them to keep up the intensity — but, most of all, to have fun.
“You have provided me with so many moments of happiness,” an emotional Leckrone said during his August address. “I can’t even begin to thank you. I will tell you those moments of happiness have gotten me through difficult times. I hope they can do that for you. Live for those moments of happiness.”Then Leckrone climbed down and sang “Varsity” with his band.
I have heard this phrase “moments of happiness” numerous times this fall. I honestly do not remember him ever saying that in the five years I was in the band. (Which, let us remember, are part of the first half of Leckrone’s epoch at UW.) There was another phrase I do remember, one we came up with — don’t do what he says; do what he means.
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The number one single today in 1968:
The number one single today in 1973:
The number one British single today in 1976:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 