Let Bobby V be Bobby V

Let Bobby Valentine give the hook to Red Sox underachievers.

Word out of Boston is that the collection of overpriced whiners and immature horses’ posteriors known as the Red Sox has petitioned ownership to fire manager Bobby Valentine. Apparently Bobby V has embarrassed several of them. (Gee, I would have thought their horrendous play would have done that!) I’m not a Red Sox fan, nor do I think Bobby Valentine was a good choice for the Red Sox. (Sigmund Freud would have been better.) Those who read my spring blogs know that I predicted Valentine would be a bad fit in Boston. But the problems with the Red Sox are not Bobby Valentine’s fault.

Bobby V probably isn’t the right type for today’s game and maybe a change is needed, but if I’m the general manager, that change comes in the offseason (as do many other changes). I know that Sox fans hang on to every scrap of hope, but let’s face it–2012 is a lost season. As I type these words, 45 games remain in the season and if the Sox won 30 of them (a seldom-achieved .666 pace), they’d have but 87 victories and that’s highly unlikely to get a Wild Card. (The wildcard-leading Orioles and Rays need to go just 25-21 to reach 88 wins) My advice would be to unleash Bobby Valentine–let him take off the kid gloves and call out lousy play in public. Let him say what everyone can see: that Josh Beckett has given up. Let him be feisty and get into scraps with his players á la Billy Martin. In fact, the Sox’s hated rival, the New York Yankees, is a good role model for what to do with Beckett.  

If the team can, it should dump Beckett as soon as possible–perhaps even for an A.J. Burnett-like deal: eat most of his salary and get a bucket of balls in return. If Boston can’t swing such a deal­–Beckett is due nearly $32 million for the next two years and can veto any deal he doesn’t like–the Red Sox should do what the Yankees did to Ken Holtzman in the late 1970s: bury him in the bullpen out of harm’s way. The Yanks brought Holtzman to New York after five fabulous years in Oakland in which he won 91 games. The 30-year-old Holtzman proceeded to stink up the Bronx and the Yankees banished him to the pen and made him a forgotten man. When he reemerged with the Cubs in 1979 at age 32, he got one more year in MLB before he was released. The Yankees did the same with Kevin Brown, though throwing nearly $16 million at a 39-year-old was insanity in the first place. The Yanks also banished Kei Igawa in the minors before cutting him this spring.

If the Sox have the guts to play hardball with Beckett, they can. Pitchers generally have their peak ERA years at age 29 and their peak win years at 30. Beckett, 32, appears to have peaked earlier. He had 67 wins between the ages of 26 and 29, but just 24 since. His current ERA is over 5 and he is, to put it very mildly, a disruption. Send him to the pen for mop-up duty. He would be 35 when he hits free agency again and I will guarantee you no one will offer him $16 million per.

The Sox, of course, have other issues. Bobby Valentine should be unleashed to tell the press that Adrian Gonzalez wasn’t brought to Boston to be a singles hitter, that Jon Lester can’t mail it in, and that if Jacoby Ellsbury can’t play through nicks and pains they’ll give his roster spot to someone who can. He should privately remind Dustin Pedroia that if he’s going to go behind his back, he’s got a guy named Pedro Cirisco whose natural position is second base and is currently hitting .333, 50 points higher than he. (Note: Pedroia has publicly disavowed a spat with Valentine, either because it never happened, or because his agent told him to STFU.) 

As I said, odds are good that Valentine will be let go this winter, so why not give it a whirl? The Sox are going nowhere and the now-sainted Terry Francona couldn’t rule this bunch by kissing their butts. Let Bobby V kick them instead. It can’t get any worse.

Aimee Wilson CD Musically and Lyrically Ambiguous

AIMEE WILSON

Unto Us the Sun

Self-Release

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Aimee Wilson’s Unto Us the Sun is a clever play on words as a title; as an album it feels like music in search of a fronting play or movie. Her material is nouveau medieval-meets-introspective folk. Think Loreena McKennitt meets Suzanne Vega and Tori Amos. It’s very dramatic like McKennitt, though Wilson’s band and backup singers don’t have as much going on as McKennit’s solid troopers, nor does Wilson have McKennitt’s vocal chops. (In fact, way too many of her vocals are awash in aural soup that renders them indistinct.) Like Vega and Amos, many of the lyrics exude an ecumenical spirituality and like them, what it’s all supposed to mean is more clear in Wilson’s mind than it is to the listener. “Suri,” for instance has been the name a Muslim ruler, but also an Indian clan, a flower, and poet. I’m guessing Wilson intended to reference the poet, but the lyrics sound more like it’s  a goddess.   At its best, Wilson’s music sounds like the kind of compositions Robert Einhorn scores for silent movies; at its most pretentious it’s what one sees on PBS with middle-aged audiences nodding and fawning, though they’ve actually not a clue what any of it means.

My comments are a bit tough because this is, indeed, the sort of album one loves or hates. It’s also the kind that harsher critics than I call the folk equivalent of rock operas, though the label I’d use is New Age. Like most music in that genre, it’s inoffensive even when it’s over-the-top, and a lot of it has a soothing quality. I can’t say any of it grabbed me. As I said in my opening remarks, it felt like music that needed another context to bring it to life. If your cup of tea is chamomile, you might find more enjoyment than I.  My brew of choice is strong coffee. –Rob Weir

An NL Team for Boston?

Time to merge caps? 

I’ve been doing some research in Cooperstown, so naturally I’ve been thinking about the National Pastime. A lot of my research involves professional baseball’s early years–back when there were teams in places such as Troy, Hartford, Providence, and Worcester. Those teams are long gone, as are franchises such as the Brooklyn Dodgers, the St. Louis Browns, the Washington Senators, the Montreal Expos, and the Boston Braves. The latter has me thinking.

Boston is a very good baseball town. You have to know someone (or pay a scalper) to get a ticket at Fenway Park, which is sold to 101.5% capacity. The newspapers, local TV, and radio crackle with heated discussions about the Red Sox. In my estimation, Boston cares enough about baseball that MLB ought to consider placing a second team in the Old Towne. Or, more specifically, a new team ought to be just outside the Boston limits–maybe a new park in Foxborough to draw from both the ‘burbs, southeast Massachusetts (New Bedford, Fall River), and from nearby Providence, RI.

Expansion? No way! The talent pool is already clouded by bottom-dweller lineups more suited for AAA than MLB. I’m thinking take a page from the old days and move a team. My prime candidate would be the Tampa Bay Rays. Sooner or later MLB needs to face the fact that Floridians don’t care for major league baseball after April 1. The Rays, a very good team, are 29^th in attendance, which what they were last year. They’ve never been better than 22^nd, and they continually rank near the bottom of putting bottoms into seats. The average attendance is a pathetic 20,609 per game, slightly above Cleveland. (Cleveland, by contrast, has ranked as high as 4^th in attendance in the past 10 years.) Oakland also lurks near the pits, a problem that eventually be fixed by shifting the franchise out of the ghetto to nearby San Jose. The Rays, though, are a hopeless case–bad stadium, an apathetic public, and two cities (St. Petersburg and Tampa) that simply aren’t major league towns. Move ‘em to Boston, I say.

The Red Sox would do everything they could to keep the Rays out of Boston and cry territory infringement, but this can be gotten around. First of all, move the Boston Rays (or whatever they are renamed) to the National League East, thereby creating a second Boston-New York rivalry. To balance the divisions, a team from the NL East would have to move to the AL East–Atlanta would be a good candidate.

MLB has some other critical franchises it may need to address eventually. I think taxpayer money was wasted in Miami, another team perennially at the bottom in attendance. It is averaging 28,405 per game this year–in a brand new stadium! As the slogan goes, wait’ll next year. The park is in Little Havana, a part of the city that (rightly or wrongly) makes Anglos nervous, but even if it was in the heart of Yuppie Miami, Floridians still won’t support the team. Mark my words–in four or five years there will be discussion of relocation. Kansas City could use a change of scenery too–to some city that has entrepreneurs with enough money to spend to put a competitive team on the field. Other candidates for a relocated team: Montreal with a new stadium, Memphis, Louisville, Buffalo, and Monterrey, Mexico. But let’s start small; for heaven’s sake move the Rays to someplace that will support them–like Boston. 

Beasts of the Southern Wilds Magical and Thought-Provoking

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD (2012)

Directed by Benh Zeitlin

Fox Searchlight, PG-13, 93 mins.

* * * * *

Hushpuppy is nobody's meat! 

The year is 2005, the setting The Bathtub, a small and insular bayou community that lies beyond the New Orleans levies. It’s called The Bathtub for a good reason–its marshes, tidal streams, swamps, and steamy weather are the watery barriers that define life in a sump hole that seldom sees or trusts outsiders. The residents depend upon the waters to provide the crawfish, alligators, and seafood that sustains them. The Bathtub’s also a place of unimaginable poverty and squalor where skin color is irrelevant­–black and white intermingle (and cohabitate) freely in a slice of mud and water that time forgot. There is no town as such, just an old cargo box converted into a seedy bar by Jean Baptiste (Levy Esterly), a wreck of a white guy who might be 40 and might be 70. The Bathtub is where dreaming off island involves staring across the bay at a distant lighthouse beam if you’re a child, and an occasional boat trip to the roadhouse that’s there for a visit to cheap hookers and expensive liquor if you’re an adult.

The Bathtub is also where six-year-old Hushpuppy–the amazing Quvenzhané Wallis–lives with her father, Wink (Dwight Henry). Wink is a single father whose wife skipped the island when Hushpuppy was an infant. He’s bitter–Hushpuppy lives in her mother’s shack amidst the moldering remains of her things­–and he has no idea of how to raise a child­–a rope connects their separate residences, which he rings to tell Hushpuppy it’s time “to come to eats.” Hushpuppy’s major role model is Miss Bathsheeba (Gina Montana), the local teacher who is half educator and half juju mistress. Her science lessons include the message that everything and everybody in natural realm is “meat.” But Hushpuppy needs no encouragement to imagine; she has a gift for reading nature’s signs, for envisioning the interconnectivity of ecosystems, and for bringing to life fantasy images. Her senses tell her that something very bad is about to happen, an inkling she gets by listening to clams, feeling leaves, and imaging the awakening of extinct aurochs. She’s right on two levels–her father is seriously ill and Hurricane Katrina is about the make The Bathtub overflow and wash away the little that locals had.

This is an astonishing film that takes us to both physical and imaginary worlds we could not enter on our own. It freely mixes recent history and magical realism as if it were literary sociology. Wallis is a revelation, a child who can make her six-year-old face look as old as creation, or cast a fierce look that stops adults in their tracks. I would yield to those who might criticize the caper-like feel of the last 20 minutes of the film, but the rest is so good that I simply didn’t care. It raises all manner of questions about community, survival, and caring. It raises two big ones: Is it kind or cruel to force people to live in the 21^st century? Has humankind authored its own ecological demise? (Think an intelligent version of Waterworld.)

This amazing film has no stars–Henry was discovered running a bakery across the street from director Zeitlin’s casting office and Wallis was literally pulled off the street. It’s a subject that sounds odd to some and the topic of an endangered child is off-putting to others. Do not be deterred; this may be the film of the year. Moreover, it does not ask for your approval–merely that you think about The Bathtub and the big issues raised by simple people who may have a better take on the planet that you. Are the aurochs coming? --Rob Weir

The Poor Know: Government Works

The poverty rate for 2011 hit 15.1% but it's only partly Obama's fault.

I can hear the howl from rightwing radio without tuning in. A new US Census report to be released this fall will show that the 2011 poverty rate reached 15.1% and hit its “highest level since the 1960s." Expect Limbaugh, Beck, Medved, Hannity, Savage, and other Ignororamuses of the Airwaves to seize upon this as further proof that “socialism” and “government” don’t work. Once they get a good lather going they’ll up the ante to “Obama’s tax-raising socialist Big Government programs.”

They will conveniently leave out the rest of the announcement, which says poverty has spiked “since the 1960s.” Let’s be precise; it should say “since 1964.” (or 1983--read on.) 1964 was the year that President Lyndon Johnson–who would be on Mt. Rushmore if he had possessed the wisdom to walk away from Vietnam–announced his “war on poverty.” At the time, about 36 million Americans lived below the poverty line. That was more than 18.5% of the population of the day. Conservatives seldom tell you that during the “golden age” of the 1950s, poverty was over 20%. In 1959, it hit a stunning 22.5%.

Enter LBJ and Big Bad Government. Johnson, to borrow a phrase loved by conservatives, threw a lot of money at the problem–tax money. He, to use Huey Long’s words, soaked the rich. The top 1% of taxpayers had rates from 43%-67% and the top .01% paid a 91% tax rate some of their income.  These figures, it should be noted, were only somewhat higher than they had been in the 1950s, when the richest paid 84% when they hit the ceiling of $400,000 ($3 million in 2012 dollars).

Did the U.S. economy collapse form Johnson's crippling taxes? Did rich people send their assets to the Cayman Islands (to pick a random example!)? Did companies seek to move job overseas to take advantage of cheap labor and get away from job-killing labor unions? Nope. The US economy boomed in the 1960s. Moreover, Vietnam was the major reason for tax increases of any sort; without runaway military spending that was a parasitical drain on the economy (ahem!), the nation would have been wading in cash.

But surely all that money spent on welfare, job training, urban renewal, and antipoverty programs was wasted, right? To be sure, some was squandered in inefficient programs. Hell, some of it was probably given to welfare cheats. But the bottom line is that poverty was cut in half from its 1950s peak. In 1971, poverty dipped to 11.1%. In my estimation, a nation as rich as America has no business having any sizable percentage of poverty, but this was a stunning achievement. It’s simply a load of mule dung to say that throwing money at poverty has no effect.

“But it didn’t last,” cry rightwingers fearful of losing tax breaks for their third homes. That’s correct, but it wasn’t for the reasons they say. The horrifying stagflation of the 1970s took its toll, but despite double-digit inflation, soaring prices, and job loss, in 1979 the poverty rate stood at 12.4%. If you’re wondering how it got so high after the prosperity of the Clinton years, the answer is simple: we stopped spending money on poor people. Blame Ronald Reagan, not Barack Obama. The culprit was Reagan’s profligate spending on the (nonproductive) military sector and his ideology-driven, budget-killing tax cuts.  Reagan increased the debt by 189%, a move that necessitated cutting social spending given the steep decline in federal tax revenue. The poor were the easiest targets for cuts and by 1983, the poverty rate hit 15.3%. (Yes, the advanced announcement is wrong. Poverty was higher in 1983 than in 2011.)  The rate was 13.3% when Reagan left office, and hit 15% again during the recession of the 1990s. Clinton prosperity? The president who “ended welfare as we know it” saw poverty dip a few ticks, but nothing like what was seen under LBJ. That's because the deficit has continued to grow (high military spending again being a major reason why) and no president has had enough spare change to throw into the collective poverty bucket.

It will be tempting to “blame Obama” for the 15.1% rate for 2011, which is exactly what conservative (and Neanderthal) commentators will do. The sheep­–formerly known as the American masses–will probably believe it. To the degree he hasn't spent enough money on the poor, the charge is true. Yep--the real reason for persistent poverty is that we don’t throw enough money at it. The biggest lie ever told was Reagan’s “government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.” Tell it to the poor. They know that government works.   

Caroline Herring"s Camilla a Gutsy and Marvelous Release

CAROLINE HERRING

Camilla

Signature Sounds 2050

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Caroline Herring has come a long way since the Austin Music Awards proclaimed her the best new artist back in 2002. In 2012, she made the list of the top 50 Texas singers of all time! For those who don’t know, she sings with a clear voice and a vibrato quaver that makes her the Joan Baez of country music. So why isn’t this woman a major star? The answer may lie with her gutsy determination to take on the big issues that modern country music buried under a mound of nostrums and slick production. Camilla is largely a theme album, with many of its songs touching upon the third rail of Southern society: the civil rights struggle. The opening track is catchy and energetic, made all the more so by Fats Kaplin’s stellar fiddle and peddle steel contributions, but the song’s content packs a bigger wallop. It’s about one black woman’s determination to stand up to Georgian injustice no matter the cost. She returns to such themes on “White Dress,” and again on “Maiden Voyage,” a song that takes the piss out of redneck patriotism á la Woody Guthrie.

Need more evidence that Ms. Heering takes chances? How about an a cappella song based on a Eudora Welty short story? Of course, it helps if you turn it into a harmony with Mary Chapin Carpenter and Aoife O’Donovan! Herring enjoys changing moods. “Fireflies,” a plea to let old “traditions burn down” has a bluegrass/stomp feel, “Flee is a Bird” is plucked from the 1840s, and “Joy Never Ends” an anthem-like happy song vocally backed by Kathryn Roberts. With Herring, you’ve always got to listen to the lyrics. “When she sings “Bye baby, baby bye” on “Black Mountain Lullaby, it’s the environment she mourns and the baby’s future she fears. Smart stuff, amazing voice, superb backup, and considered production. Give this a listen; if you’re not already a Caroline Herring fan, you will be.  

The NRA Lies and Americans Die

Before you call him a liberal weenie, this is Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City calling for gun control!

Okay, I promised I’d not say anything more about the Aurora shooting, but the pro-gun cult has been so vociferous they provoked me into another rant.  Let me take you back to 1993, folks, when the Brady Bill was passed, a bill the NRA tried its best to sandbag, but couldn’t. Civics lesson: The Brady Bill is a pathetic and mostly symbolic gun control bill named for Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, who suffered permanent brain damage when Reagan was shot in 1981. It’s the bill that requires a background check before buying a gun. How horrible! Reality check: It’s way harder to register to vote or get a Social Security card than it is to buy a gun in America.

The Brady Bill was the last time Congress seriously discussed gun control, but let’s put that aside for a math lesson. Can you add these figures? Below is a list of mass killings since the passage of the Brady Bill. The first figure beside each mass shooting is the number of dead, the second the number of wounded. Can you add these figures?

1994            Fairchild Air Force Base, Ark.         5/23

1994            Jonesboro, Ark                                 5/20

1999            Columbine, CO                                 13/21

2002            Beltway sniper                                   11/6

2004            Columbus, OH                                     4/7

2004            Fresno, CA                                           9/0

2005            Red Lake, MN                                    10/5

2006            Univ. of Northern Illinois                     6/21

2006            Amish school, Lancaster Cty.            6/5

2006            Golita, CA Post Office                         5/23

2006            Seattle                                                 7/12

2007            Salt Lake City                                       6/4

2007            Crandon, WI                                          6/11

2007            Westroads Mall, Omaha                      9/4

2007            Virginia Tech                                       32/17

2008            Kirkwood, MO                                        6/2

2008            Covina, CA                                          10/3

2009            Binghamton, NY                                  14/4

2009            Kinston, AL                                           11/6

2009            Carthage, NC                                         8/3

2009            Fort Hood, TX                                       13/29

2010            Appomattox, VA                                     8/0

2011            Carson City, NV                                     5/7

2011            Tuscon, AZ                                             6/13 

2011            Cooley Twp., OH                                   8/1

2012            Oikos Univ. Oakland                             7/3

2012            Aurora, CO                                            12/58

While you’re punching numbers into your calculator, I’ll save you some research. How many of the above incidents saw an alert NRA member jump into the fray and take out the assassin, thereby averting greater carnage? Answer: zero, as in not a damn one of them. If there is a bigger load of hooey than the argument that a gun-packing citizenry making the streets safer, I’ll be hornswoggled if I know what it is. As a historian, though, I recall that the same argument was advanced long ago in places like Tombstone, Arizona and Dodge City. I’ve yet to unearth a document proclaiming them as great places to raise a family.

My take away message from the above list of blood and tragedy is simple. The last time we tried gun control, there was a short period (1995-99) where the mass murder rate declined. But now the NRA is back in the saddle and the blood flows faster than Mitt Romney’s assets to the Cayman Islands. Each time we bury the dead, the NRA tells us to resist gun control because guns make us safer. How’s your math coming along? There’s more evidence to support the theory that Casanova was a virgin than the NRA’s assertion that guns protect us.

So why do we fall for this canard time and time again? What about the old adage that if you keep trying the same old thing and getting the same old result, there’s little likelihood that trying it again will yield a different one? We’ve tried the NRA way and it yields death. If your math looks anything like mine, you might conclude that taking away the guns can’t make it much worse than it already is. The NRA says gun control doesn’t work. I call that hypothetical BS because we’ve never seriously tried it. Fragmentary evidence suggests than even minimal efforts, like the Brady Bill, make some difference. Look, I can’t guarantee you that gun control would make Americans safer, but isn’t it worth testing? If it fails, we can always go back to the way it was and I’ll personally write an apology letter to the NRA and promise never again to refer to it as the Nazi Rifle Association.