George S. Will, passed on by a right-thinking gun and Corvette owner:
No comments on The offense industry
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The number one song in the U.S. today in 1961:
Today in 1962, the Beatles recorded “Love Me Do,” taking 17 takes to do it right:
Three years later, the Beatles had the number one single …
… which referred to something The Who could have used, because on the same day the Who’s van was vandalized and $10,000 in musical equipment was stolen from them while they were buying … a guard dog:
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The number one song in the U.S. today in 1955 was written 102 years earlier:
The number one song in the U.S. today in 1966:
Today in 1970, Arthur Brown demonstrated what The Crazy World of Arthur Brown was like by getting arrested at the Palermo Pop ’70 Festival in Italy for stripping naked and setting fire to his helmet during …
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Britain’s number one single today in 1972:
On the same day, the Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival was held on Bull Island in the Wabash River between Illinois and Indiana. The festival attracted four times the projected number of fans, three fans drowned in the Wabash River, and the remaining crowd ended the festival by burning down the stage:
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The Toronto Sun reports sad news for fans of brass rock:
Skip Prokop, the big-hearted drummer, co-founder and visionary behind Canadian rock band Lighthouse, has died. He was 74.
Band manager Brenda Hoffert, wife of Lighthouse co-founder Paul Hoffert, said the beloved musician died Wednesday in a St. Thomas, Ont., hospital. She said Prokop had been living with a heart condition and was ill for some time.
Born Ronald Harry Prokop, the Hamilton native had his initial taste of international success with Canadian psychedelic rock band the Paupers in the early 1960s. After the group disbanded, Prokop was an in-demand session musician for industry heavyweights including Carlos Santana, Janis Joplin and folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary.
But Prokop envisioned the creation of a rock orchestra infused with horns, strings and a rhythm session. He was able to realize his dream through a meeting with jazz pianist and film composer Paul Hoffert, co-founding Lighthouse in 1968. The duo teamed with guitarist Ralph Cole and some 10 other musicians from the jazz, rock and classical disciplines.
Brenda Hoffert said their first gig on May 14, 1969 at the Rockpile in Toronto was memorable for unexpected reasons. Lighthouse had been due to perform with the musical collective behind the album “Super Session” — but the other group didn’t show up.
“This was Lighthouse’s first gig and they only had a certain amount of material because it was their first gig, so they had to play their whole show twice in order to fill the time,” she recalled in a phone interview on Thursday. “But fortunately, Lighthouse was such an improvisational band that it wouldn’t have mattered, because Lighthouse has never done the same show twice ever.”
The band had chart success and was well-known for infectious tracks like “You Girl,” “One Fine Morning,” “Pretty Lady” and “Sunny Days.”
Lighthouse won Junos for group of the year in 1974, vocal instrumental group of the year in 1973, and outstanding performance of the year in 1972.
The band also earned an early celebrity admirer: Billy Bob Thornton.
In the early 70s, the musician and future Oscar-winning actor was a roadie for the band when they performed in Texas.
“He always remembered that moment,” Hoffert said of Thornton’s encounter with Prokop. “The reason that he did was that he just remembered how kind this guy Skip Prokop was. He was just a roadie with the venue and Skip let him play his drums and he never forgot that. He was just a kid, and this is the kind of thing Skip did all the time.”
More name-dropping: Singer Richie Havens recommended they take their first demo to MGM Records in New York. Their first gig was at the Rock Pile in Toronto, where they were introduced by none other than Duke Ellington, who said, “I’m beginning to see the Light … house.”
Where would you get an idea for something like Chicago with an orchestra? Ask the Canadian Pop Encyclopedia:
As a young boy, Skip Prokop served in RCSCC LION Sea Cadets Corps in Hamilton, Ontario. At the age of fourteen he became Leading Seaman/1st Class as well as Lead Drummer and Instructor in the Corps. Prokop was also one of two cadets chosen nation-wide to serve in the Royal Canadian Naval Band. His leadership qualities won him an offer of scholarship to the Royal British Naval Academy which he turned down to pursue his love of music. He moved to Preston, Ontario (now Cambridge) and played in the Preston Scout House Drum Corps.
One year later, he was accepted by the Toronto Optimist Drum Corps – the world famous Canadian National Champions. Prokop was encouraged to pursue a career in music and perfected his skill as a drummer. He won the prestigious ‘Canadian National Individual Rudimental Drumming Championship’ at the age of seventeen and later that year, placed in the top three (losing within tenths of a point below 1st and 2nd place) for the same title in the United States. A scholarship from prestigious Westpoint Military Academy was offered to him as the first Canadian to be sponsored by a U.S. Senator but turned it down.
While in Toronto, Ontario he graduated from Lakeshore Business College and took a position with the Metropolitan Toronto Police force in the Identification Bureau. Prokop was offered a position with the United States Air Force Blue Angels Presidential Drum Corps at the age of nineteen. At the same time he was perfecting his guitar and piano skills and had started to write his first musical compositions.
He then left the Drum Corps to establish his first rock group called The Paupers who, in very short time, became Yorkville Village’s media darlings and fan favourites. They became the first Canadian group to sign a major US record deal through Verve/MGM. After successfully touring internationally for 4 years on the back of two critically acclaimed studio albums – “Magic People” and “Ellis Island”, the group broke up.
Under the continued managerial eye of Paupers’ manager Albert Grossman (Bob Dylan, The Band, Janis Joplin), Prokop stayed in the US and became one of the most sought after live and studio musicians. He would work with Peter Paul & Mary, Alvin Bishop, Carlos Santana, Steve Miller, Mama Cass Elliot, Richie Havens as well as Al Kooper & Michael Bloomfield. In the summer of 1968 Grossman handed him the unenviable task of putting a band together for Janis Joplin post-Big Brother & The Holding Company (which found him face-to-face with the Hell’s Angels ‘welcoming committee’). But Joplin’s independent spirit found her drifting back to old habits and band-mates and Prokop found himself at loggerheads with attempting to assemble a professional act around an unpredictable circle of hangers on and undisciplined artistes.
Prokop decided to return to Toronto and assemble his dream band – one that would take the Blood, Sweat & Tears idea of a horn-based jazz rock combo and turn it into a full-fledged fusion orchestra with the additional of strings. Prokop had been kicking the idea around as far back as his days with the Paupers – discussing it occasionally with fellow Torontonian and Broadway keyboardist and arranger Paul Hoffert when they’d hang out in New York’s Greenwich Village.
He called Hoffert immediately when he arrived back in Toronto and set about building the musical dream machine. Prokop then called up American guitarist Ralph Cole who had been in a band called The Tyme – an act that opened many shows for The Paupers during their tours stateside in 1967 and 1968 – to let him know that there was an opening in his new group. Cole packed his bags and caught the first flight to Toronto. Prokop then canvassed his old Yorkville stomping grounds looking for additional players. Popular group A Stitch In Tyme were in their deathrows and Prokop snagged guitarist Pinky Dauvin and bassist Grant Fullerton to help round out the core of the group’s rock base.
Still, the focal point was going to be horns and strings so Prokop called around to find the cream of the crop in Toronto’s brass and string instrument players from CBC radio’s session men, producer Doug Riley’s Dr. Music’s session men and anyone else not already attached to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. After interviewing and auditioning dozens of potential players – and finding people that could grasp the idea of a rock orchestra (this was pre-Electric Light Orchestra days) – the first team to sign on were Ian Guenther (strings), Leslie Snider (strings), Don Whitton (strings), Freddy Stone (horns), Arnie Chycoski (horns), Howard Shore (saxophone, flute), Don Dinovo (violin), and Russ Little (trombone).
The 13-piece ensemble crammed into a small garage on Paul Hoffert’s property near the Lawrence & Bathurst area of Toronto where they soon discovered that the strings were all but drowned out by the rhythm section. They immediately set up finding someone that could build new violins and cellos with built-in pickups and solid bodies so that the instruments could be amplified. This was new territory and even amplification as going to be an issue for a 13-piece act on stage.
You’d think finding a stage large enough for 13 players — two percussionists, a keyboard player, a guitar player, a bass player, two trumpet/flugelhorn players, a trombone player, a saxophone player, a violin player, a violin/viola player and two cello players — would be an issue in itself. (However, a St. Louis radio station used the open of the song you’re about to read about to open its news. That would have been at the same time that a Washington TV station used the bridge to the last song in Chicago’s “Ballet for a Girl from Buchannon” as bumper music for its 1972 election coverage.)
This is Lighthouse, and apparently others, at Expo ’70 in Japan — (front, from left) Louie Yacknin, Skip Prokop, Ralph Cole,(back) Keith Jollimore, Howard Shore, Bruce Cassidy, Pete Pantaluk, Larry Smith, Don DiNovo, Paul Armin and Dick Armin. From the Lighthouse website. This very blog passed on this description of the group:
It’s often been said that watching The Beatles perform on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ in 1964 made a million boys buy guitars, but what made as many steal saxophones, trumpets and trombones from unattended high school orchestra lockers? Lighthouse’s massive one-hit-wonder, One Fine Morning, is practically evidence of criminal intent, the 1971 hit’s flowing groove, bass-slapping attack and hard rock guitar presaging its roaring brass bluster. As the band quakes below, the vocalist—who sounds as if he’s riding aloft a black stallion racing down the beach—shouts “As long as you love me girl, we’ll fly,” as over-stimulated harmony vocals and a breezy acoustic piano “bring it all back home,” as we used to say.
The Verdict: A massive hit single boasting a sky-cracking horn section that retains it majesty year after year (*** ½)
Besides the obvious similarities between Chicago and Lighthouse, one less obvious similarity is that both groups were invited to play at Woodstock, but didn’t. Chicago was going to go, but had a conflict created by promoter Bill Graham, who scheduled the group for his Fillmore West during Woodstock so the group he promoted, Santana, could go to Woodstock. Lighthouse turned down its invitation, though Prokop later regretted it, saying, “I knew it was going to be one big drugfest. I thought you’re not going to be able to get a glass of water without something in it.”
Both did go to the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, where 600,000 people attended. Both groups also recorded albums at Carnegie Hall in New York City (twice in Lighthouse’s case). And both houses had their early songs unforgivably hacked for American radio airplay due to their length. (The song in the next paragraph was used as news sounder music by a St. Louis radio station at about the same time that the Washington, D.C. CBS-TV station used the bridge to the last part of Chicago’s “Ballet for a Girl from Buchannon” as its bumper music for 1972 election coverage.)
Lighthouse’s best known, highest charting — it got to number 2 on the Canadian charts and 24th on the Billboard Hot 100 — and most popular according to its website poll is “One Fine Morning,” sung by later lead singer Bob McBride, who sounded something like a cross between David Clayton Thomas of Blood Sweat & Tears and Jim Peterik of the Ides of March:
Rolling Stone reviewed the album thusly:
Following the pop music scene in Canada teaches one many and myriad virtues, not the least of which is patience. Canadian groups, no matter how highly touted at the offset, seem to require a considerably longer period of time to mature than their English and American counterparts. …
Now, after considerable personnel changes, which have seen the group shrink to 11 members from 13 (with only five of the originals still with us), the now slightly older Y.C.R.F. is happy to announce that Lighthouse’s new effort, One Fine Morning, is everything he hoped and expected the first one to be.
The reasons for the new-found success are many. First off, the group now boasts a new lead singer in the person of Bob McBride, who shows considerably more flexibility and vocal power than his predecessor Pinky Dauvin could ever muster. Secondly, Skip Prokop and Paul Hoffert have now matured as writers to the point where they seem incapable of writing a song which isn’t both highly original and moving. Their more up-tempo numbers (“Love of a Woman” and “One Fine Morning” being the best examples), shake you as well, if not better, than anything ever written by any of their competitors in the neo-big band field to date. At the same time, their “production” type numbers, (“Step Out on the Sea,” and particularly “1849””), display a singular power and mood that almost makes you want to stand up and salute something (a tree, a telephone pole, the mailman, anything).
But probably the most important advancement the group has made is in its new tendency to allow every song to run to its logical conclusion. Previously, the group tended to make shorter two- and three-minute songs, and still attempt to crush all 13 members into each song. Thus, even a number like “The Country Song” from the third album would have horns strings squeezed into its 2:26. On One Fine Morning however, each song is allowed to have their own say without having to compete with the regular rock instruments for the listener’s ear. The result is not only that the record buyer gets and album that runs over 25 minutes on one side and 22 on the other, but also one in which each song has a power and sense of completeness that the previous efforts lacked.
I really can’t conceive of Lighthouse getting much better than this. They’ve been around long enough by now so that they’ve found their own relative level of the ozone, and will probably settle there, sending out music of an equal caliber to One Fine Morning for at least another year or so. But that’s plenty good enough, believe me. I can recommend this album to anyone without fear of getting it thrown back at me.
Unlike Chicago, Lighthouse broke up in 1976, three years after firing McBride for missing recording sessions. Also unlike Chicago, original members returned for live shows, and the group’s been back together since 1992, but fired McBride for the second time. McBride died in 1998, reportedly of substance abuse complications.
According to the always-accurate Wikipedia, Lighthouse has had 25 horn players, nine strings players, six percussionists, eight lead singers, six bass players, eight keyboard players, and three guitar players. Off the top of my head I can’t think of any group with that kind of lineup (though some are counted twice, such as Prokop on vocals, drums and, once, guitar). Lighthouse’s website has the listing of everyone by album.
Prokop’s son, Jamie, apparently took over after his father was too ill to continue with the band. I suppose that’s in the tradition of Julian Lennon, son of John; Jason Bonham, son of John; and Ziggy Marley, son of Bob. According to Lighthouse’s website, a stage show about the band is in the works, presumably not like “Mamma Mia,” which combined ABBA songs with an unrelated story.
Top 10 Flashback says about the subject of this blog:
How could classic rock radio call itself that and not include this song?
Oh, you’ll hear it in Canada. Lighthouse is one of Canada’s great rock bands and virtually a national institution. Here in Detroit, we’re fortunate enough to be able to hear AM 580, CKWW, with its unique blend of rarely played oldies, especially songs by Canadian artists, along with the usual oldies radio fare. In fact, most of the forgotten songs we’ve spotlighted here can be heard there. If you want to hear this bona fide rock classic on the radio in 2014, you have to tune to a 500-watt AM station across the border (or stream it – I highly recommend you do). …
This is a great song; a jazzy and brassy rock classic that truly deserves to be heard. Now I don’t have the playlist of every U.S. classic rock and classic hits station handy, but Detroit’s WCSX and WOMC are good examples of their respective formats, and you won’t hear it on either. No, you have to go to one of Canada’s last AM stations that still plays music, and we’re glad they could share it with us here. …
Wow, this is a remastered version and it sounds great! The horns cut right through to the forefront as they should, and it doesn’t sound brickwalled at all. Good job, remastering engineer!
And Michael Panontin adds;
The title track, leading off side two of this LP, is still Lighthouse’s finest moment, a buoyant paean to love riddled with crisp horns and blistering guitar, not to mention McBride’s lusty vocal performance. …Though Lighthouse would crack the lucrative juggernaut south of the border once again with the more radio-friendly ‘Sunny Days’, the torrid brass/guitar workout of ‘One Fine Morning’ will forever remain the band’s signature staple up here in Canuckistan. -
I read two websites on sports broadcasting, Sportscaster Life and Say the Damn Score, and there is a Facebook group for sports announcers.
One of the sites has a place where someone can write. That’s what prompted this, which may be shared on the other two sites.
My perspective does not come as one of the network announcers, or a major pro or college announcer. I have almost 30 years experience announcing sports part-time, on radio and cable TV. (Three games so far this season, with another tonight at 7 Central Time here.)
I am good enough at doing this to be employed part-time to keep doing this. I haven’t been hired to do this at a higher level. I’ve figured out that’s probably all right, because I’ve learned that while journalism has poor pay and long and irregular hours, broadcasting adds to it nearly nonexistent job security, where people get fired for no really good reason.
Other part-time announcers I’ve known had day jobs in customer service, a telephone company (remember those?), welding and education. Even though it’s part-time, though, it’s essential to treat it seriously, if for no other reason than to remain employed. That means taking game prep seriously, rather than just thinking you can show up at the game site and not suck.
Broadcasting Ripon College football on The Ripon Channel with former college hockey player Howard Hansen. If you’re doing this part-time, you’re probably paid per game. The key to getting paid more, therefore, is to do more games. Some of that is tied to how far the team you’re assigned to cover goes in the postseason; that’s out of your hands. Unless I really wasn’t available, I have always accepted a game assignment. That means I’ve done sports I wasn’t familiar with in announcing terms, including wrestling, volleyball and soccer. (Ironically, volleyball is the one sport I actually played in high school, but evidently I learned nothing about the game from sitting on the bench for two years. There is nothing quite like announcing volleyball on the radio for the first time, particularly if you lack the proper equipment and are in a poor broadcast position.) That also means doing games I wasn’t planning on doing when an emergency comes up and the radio station calls me. (And on the couple of instances where I became unavailable for a game, I arranged for my replacement a few days in advance.) Employers will stick with people who may be subpar in other areas if the employee in question is reliable.
Broadcasting Ripon High School football on The Ripon Channel with Marty Ernser, whose voice you can hear on the first video. Part-time or not, you should always try to improve. That means listening to or watching your games, whether you like to do that or not. It’s not an ego exercise; you are not likely to remember or realize something you did poorly until you hear or see yourself.
A UW–Platteville men’s basketball game on White Out Night, with former coworker Brian Roebke. You should always try to be more descriptive, to a point. Instead of “ground ball to short,” did the ball roll to shortstop, bounce high to short, dribble to short, roll like a cueball to short, or what? Instead of a three-yard run, did the running back slide through a hole, bang off defenders, spin off defenders, sweep outside, or what? But at the same time your description shouldn’t go over the heads of your listeners or viewers. I know some announcers have a thesaurus-worthy description of plays, but you’re probably overdoing it if your call makes listeners wonder what just happened.
Broadcasters are told to be themselves. (Which brings to mind the question of what happens when your self isn’t good enough, but never mind that right now.) The only way you can discover what your on-air self is, of course, to announce games. That’s easier than ever thanks to Facebook Live, from which comes broadcast example number three in this blog. Early-career announcers are likely to sound something like the announcers they watched or listened to, such as, in my case, Jim Irwin (Packers, Badgers and Bucks), Bob Uecker (who started announcing the Brewers when I was 7 years old), and Dick Enberg (who announced a lot of touch football in my neighborhood, though he probably doesn’t know that).
I’ve watched sports long enough to have figured out what I like and what I don’t like when I’m watching a game, and therefore what to avoid when I’m announcing a game. By now no one is probably completely original in a game call. (For instance: There are probably four acceptable calls for a goal in hockey — “GOAL!,” “SHOT AND A GOAL!”, “SCORE!” and “HE SCORES!” I don’t think I’ve heard any other goal call other than Pittsburgh’s Mike Lange’s “HEEEEEEEEE shoots and scores!,” which is a variation of the fourth choice.) The only catch-phrase I have that I can think of is my three-point call, which started as “Bango!” in honor of original Bucks announcer Eddie Doucette, but became “Bullseye!” because Mrs. Presteblog said no one would get the “Bango!” reference.
Later the same season as the aforementioned White Out game, UWP had an alumni night. I’m not a UWP alumnus, so I tried to figure out a look from my college days, which I guess here is a cross between Sonny Crockett of “Miami Vice” and “The Terminator.” I’ll be bock. I try not to yell on the air. I think the worst trend in sports announcing is the announcer who screams like a banshee, yells like his dog is about to run into traffic, or adds a fake growl or other pale imitation of boxing ring announcer Michael Buffer. The viewer or listener knows when a big moment is taking place in a game, and to quote the great Vin Scully, you have to announce with your head, not your heart.
I got to do a state soccer match with the house soccer player, which was a better experience than broadcast, though it went to overtime and penalty kicks. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with borrowing from another announcer if he’s doing something better than you are, even if you don’t otherwise care for that announcer’s work or style. Many basketball announcers use the term “top of the key” for a player in front of the semi-circle through which goes the free-throw line, because originally the lane was narrower than the free-throw-line circle, and it thus looked like an old-style key hole. I heard someone use “top of the silo,” and if you think about it the lane, viewed from above, does look like a farm silo, so I use that, since I do games in the agricultural Midwest. (You will not, however, hear me do the “5-4-3-2-1” countdown to the end zone in football, which is bush league and inaccurate.)
I try to remember to give the score at every new first down, or immediately after that, in football, and after every out at least in baseball. Legendary Tennessee announcer John Ward gave the score after every play of a football game.
One more thing: Enjoy what you’re doing. I go into games now mentally assuming the team I’m covering (assuming it’s not a neutral game) is going to lose, so I don’t sound crushed if they lose. But win or lose, there are few things as good as getting to announce sports, even if (maybe especially if) you’re doing it part-time. I’m announcing for people who can’t get to the game for one reason or another (including being out of state or, once, out of the country), as well as the players’ families thanks to the ability to record broadcasts for future viewing or listening. (I became one family’s personal broadcaster, sort of, after announcing a player’s four years in high school and four years of college.) That should be a fun responsibility.
I’ve gotten to announce state basketball, football and volleyball, NCAA tournament games, games on the way to state tournaments, and great regular-season games. More than once in the middle of broadcasting an exciting, thrilling game I thought to myself that I’m being paid to do this. (I’ve never offered to return my pay, however.)
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The number one song today in 1962:
The number one song today in 1984 announced quite a comeback:
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The Wall Street Journal:
Who says progressives don’t believe in religion? They may not believe in Jehovah or Jesus, but they certainly believe in Old Testament-style wrath against sinners. Real Noah and the Ark stuff. Witness the emerging theme on the media left that Texas, and especially Houston, are at fault for the devastation of Hurricane Harvey.
This has happened even faster than usual, perhaps because the Katrina II scenario of emergency mismanagement didn’t pan out. The state, local and federal governments have done a competent job under terrible conditions, and stories about neighborly charity, racial goodwill, the heroism of rescuers, and Big Business donating money and goods don’t fit into any agenda. Whinging over Melania’s heels also lacks political legs.
So our friends on the left have had to look elsewhere to score ideological points, and they believe they’ve found the right target in the political economy of those greedy Texans. Specifically, Houston is a global hub of the oil and gas industry, and it has allowed “laissez-faire” development without zoning laws. This has brought the righteous wrath of Harvey down on their own heads.
“Harvey, the Storm That Humans Helped Cause,” said a headline in one progressive bellwether as the storm raged. An overseas columnist was less subtle if more clichéd: “Houston, you have a problem, and some of it of your own making.” In this telling, Houston is the Sodom and Gomorrah of fossil fuels, which cause global warming, which is producing more hurricanes.
The problem is that this argument is fact-free. As Roger Pielke Jr. has noted, the link between global warming and recent hurricanes and extreme weather events is “unsupportable based on research and evidence.” Mr. Pielke, who is no climate-change denier, has shown with data that hurricanes hitting the U.S. have not increased in frequency or intensity since 1900, there is no notable trend up or down in global tropical cyclone landfalls since 1970, and floods have not increased in frequency or intensity in the U.S. since 1950.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently said that “it is premature to conclude that human activities—and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming—have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity.”
No less than the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it lacks evidence to show that global warming is making storms and flooding worse. But climate scolds still blame Harvey on climate change because, well, this is what the climate models say should happen as the climate warms.
In other words, Houstonians, you’d better go to climate confession, mend your sinful ways, and give up all of those high-paying oil-and-gas jobs. Maybe all those drillers and refiners can work for Google or Facebook .
Then there’s the political assault on Houston’s pro-growth development policies. “Harvey Wasn’t Just Bad Weather. It Was Bad City Planning,” shouts a piece in Bloomberg Businessweek: “Sprawling Houston is a can-do city whose attitude is grow first, ask questions later. It’s the only major U.S. city without a zoning code saying what types of buildings can go where, so skyscrapers sometimes sprout next to split-levels. Voters have repeatedly opposed enacting a zoning law.”
How dare those Texas hicks reject the political controls over building that zoning laws represent. How dare they prefer lower construction costs and affordable housing. The average rent on a one-bedroom home in Houston is 60% lower than in San Jose, Calif., in part because the city issues permits once builders satisfy a health and safety checklist. They don’t have many mandates that raise costs. Tens of thousands of people move to Houston and its swampy climate because they can get good jobs and afford to live there.
Zoning also has little or nothing to do with flooding. Some on the left blame roads built over wetlands. But according to Joel Kotkin’s Center for Opportunity Urbanism, the main problem is Houston’s topography. Its clay soil doesn’t absorb water well and the flat city doesn’t drain well. In the 1800s when there were no highways or parking lots, parts of the city were often flooded.
The loss of wetlands since the early 1990s has reduced Houston’s capacity to absorb water by some four billion gallons, but Harvey dropped trillions of gallons of rain. Harris County which surrounds Houston has expanded storm-water retention ponds. But no amount of flood control could have prevented damage from a once-in-500-years storm.
New York City has plenty of zoning and building limits, yet it suffered $19 billion in damage from Hurricane Sandy that dropped only a half inch of rain. Fifty-one square miles of New York were flooded by Sandy’s storm surge, 300,000 homes and 23,400 businesses were inundated. “Smart growth” plans didn’t prevent that.
All of this shows the folly of trying to force-feed natural disasters into neat ideological categories. Major storms cause major damage, and sometimes even the best mitigation plans can’t prevent it. No doubt Houston will learn lessons from Harvey about drainage and building that might reduce the damage the next time. Risk-based insurance for property would also help reduce taxpayer losses.
Texans are used to being sneered at by coastal elites, and we trust they’ll reject this attempt at their moral improvement too. Their rebuilding will be that much faster, and cheaper, because they have a resilient economy built on energy and zoning laws that make housing affordable. They also know the difference between an act of nature and progressive political opportunism.
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There are two main theories of Trump’s support. One is that a large minority of Americans — 40 percent, give or take — are racist idiots. This theory is at least tacitly endorsed by the Democratic Party and the mainstream liberal media. The other is that a large majority of this large minority are good citizens with intelligible and legitimate opinions, who so resent being regarded as racist idiots that they’ll back Trump almost regardless. They may not admire the man, but he’s on their side, he vents their frustration, he afflicts the people who think so little of them — and that’s good enough.
It’s disappointing that Charlottesville hasn’t changed their minds — but then it hasn’t changed my mind either. I still think the first theory is absurd and the second theory basically correct.
The first theory, if it were true, would be an argument against democracy. If tens of millions of Americans are racist idiots, how do you defend the popular franchise? That isn’t a sliver of reprehensible people who’ll be safely overwhelmed when elections come around. And there’s plainly nothing, according to the first theory, you can say to change their minds. Why even go through the motions of talking and listening to those people?
This sense that democratic politics is futile if not downright dangerous now infuses the worldview of the country’s cultural and intellectual establishment. Trump is routinely accused of being authoritarian and anti-democratic, despite the fact that he won the election and, so far, has been checked at every point and has achieved almost nothing in policy terms. (He might wish he were an authoritarian, but he sure hasn’t been allowed to function as one.) Many of his critics, on the other hand, are anti-democratic in a deeper sense: They appear to believe that a little less than half the country doesn’t deserve the vote.
The second theory — the correct theory — is a terrible indictment of the Democratic Party and much of the media. Why aren’t the intelligible and legitimate opinions of that large minority given a hearing? Why must their views be bundled reflexively into packages labelled “bigotry” and “stupidity”? Why can’t this large minority of the American people be accorded something other than pity or scorn?
Those who scorn Trump’s supporters might argue that none of their opinions are in fact intelligible or legitimate. After all, don’t their views on immigration boil down to racism and white supremacy? What about their idea that the Charlottesville protesters and counter-protesters were morally the same? Or their morbid fear of change? Or the hypocrisy of their opposition to “big government,” when everybody knows that Trump-voting states such as West Virginia are the biggest net recipients of federal money? If you read the New York Times, you know they have an endless supply of stupid, evil opinions.
In fact, this automatic attribution of stupidity and bad faith is just another kind of bigotry.
I’m a liberal on immigration — but it isn’t racism to favor tighter controls if you believe that high immigration lowers American wages. It sure isn’t racism to believe that the laws on immigration should be enforced, and that “sanctuary cities” violate that impeccably liberal principle. It isn’t racist to say that many of the Charlottesville counter-protesters came looking for a fight. Casting Trump supporters as fearful of change is risible — he was hardly the status quo candidate. And I cannot see what principle of political economy makes it stupid to be a fiscal conservative if you live in West Virginia.
It’s worth pondering that opposing the removal of Confederate monuments may soon make you a racist, if it doesn’t already. After Charlottesville, PBS reported that 86 percent of Americans condemn the rhetoric of the white supremacy movement, while six in 10 Americans, including a narrow plurality of African Americans, believe the statues of Confederate leaders should remain. This would seem to refute the suggestion that opinion on the statues has much to do with white nationalism. These findings were presented under the inviting heading “Confederate Statues and White Nationalism.”
For what it’s worth, I think the statues should go — read Ramesh Ponnuru on this — but most of those who support leaving them in place aren’t racist. It’s sad that this should even need saying.
Democracies that work make space for disagreement. You can disagree with somebody in the strongest terms, believing your opponents to be profoundly or even dangerously mistaken. But that doesn’t oblige you to ignore them, scorn them, or pity them. Deeming somebody’s opinions illegitimate should be a last resort, not a first resort. Refusing to engage, except to mock and condescend, is both anti-democratic and tactically counterproductive. Proof of that last point is the dispiriting tenacity of Trump’s support.
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Today in 1955, a London judge fined a man for “creating an abominable noise” — playing this song loud enough to make the neighborhood shake, rattle and roll for 2½ hours:
Today in 1968, Private Eye magazine reported that the album to be released by John Lennon and Yoko Ono would save money by providing no wardrobe for Lennon or Ono:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 