Boo Hoo in Boston Induces No tears Elsewhere

David Ortiz--who is not the problem--contemplates historic Sox collapse.


As a Yankees fan I’m in Dawg Heaven over the Red Sox collapse, officially the biggest choke since hanging was outlawed. If you’re a Sox fan, don’t look for much sympathy outside of New England. All that Red Sox Nation is a load of crap and the Old Towne team is just as hated as the one you like to call the Evil Empire, and it has considerably fewer fans outside the region. (The Yankees have the odd distinction of being both the most-hated and the most-beloved team in the country.) The big question is what next for the Sox. Heads will and should roll for a team that played as if the season began in May and ended in September. As a baseball observer, not a Yankees fan, here are a few things to watch for.

Reports out of Boston say that Terry Francona is on the hot seat. Are you kidding me? There is, simply, no better manager out there with the possible exception of Mike Scoscia of the Angels and he’s going nowhere. Francona isn’t the problem; I’d happily trade Joe Girardi even up for Francona. The anti-Francona nonsense reminds me of those who wanted Bruins’ coach Claude Juline’s head when the eventual Stanley Cup winners went down 0-2 to Montreal in the first round.

If you want a scapegoat, a better choice is GM Theo Epstein, who assembled this Yugo and tried to pass it off as a BMW. Theo the Boy Genius is another myth the magnitude of Red Sox Nation. The ’04 team that won was Dan Duquette’s team for the most part, as was the ’07 roster. Theo’s only real slam-dunk signing was Curt Schilling. How did the Daisuke Matsuzaka thing work out? Epstein is also the architect of 2011 signings such as John Lackey, Dan Wheeler, Bobby Jencks, and Carl Crawford. Just as important, he’s the guy who did not sign Victor Martinez or Adrian Beltre, and thought that a washed up Jason Varitek and a never-will-be Jarod Saltalamacchia could hold down the catching corps. He’s also the guy who thinks Marco Scutaro is an everyday shortstop. He’d better be; you heard it first: heir apparent Jose Iglesias will not hit MLB pitching. If you’re looking for help down on the farm, don’t; Theo gutted the system in free agent compensation and ill-advised midseason trades. (Did someone say Erik Bedard?) What the Sox have mostly are guys who’ve worn the “can’t-miss” tag for so long that it’s faded on their Pawtucket uniforms: Kyle Weiland, Michael Bowden, Felix Doubrant…. (I actually think the latter has promise, but the Sox have misused him as a middle reliever instead of back-of-the-rotation starter.)

I’m also hearing that David Ortiz may be non-tendered. My word! What more can that man do for the team? All he did was put up a line of .309, 29 dingers, and 96 RBIs. Do they think that September flash Ryan Lavarnway will duplicate that? He’d have to because few scouts think he’s an everyday catcher. If anyone has earned a Derek Jeter-like contract for past services rendered, it’s Big Papi, who will have no trouble finding work if the Sox cut him.

So who needs to go? You can forget about dumping Crawford; no one will touch that contract. Label him J. D. Drew Redux. Lackey, on the other hand, must go no matter how much of his contract they have to eat. In a rational world the Sox and Yankees would exchange bad contracts--Lackey for A. J. Burnett—in the hope that a change of scenery would get a decent year out of each. My thinking, though, is that he returns to the Angels with the Sox picking up about two-thirds of his salary in exchange for a few middling prospects. Two others who should go are Jed Lowrie and Josh Reddick. Each is a decent player, but Lowrie plays no natural position that’s open and Reddick would fetch a needed second-tier relief pitcher.

Many people call for Jon Papelbon to be dumped, but I think the Sox must squeeze another year or two from Pap because everyone else in the pen except Alfredo Aceves should go. My list includes the overhyped Daniel Bard, who should be traded before everyone in MLB figures out that his pitches are fast, but straight and Scott Proctor- hittable. Unless he’s hiding a cut fastball somewhere, this kid is not a future closer. The rest of the pen is yard sale material, if there’s a buyer. Otherwise, take a good look at next year’s Pawtucket bullpen. My pare-down list includes a sad call: Tim Wakefield is done. Wake is a class act, but all good things must come to an end. (Hatchet man Josh Beckett should have half of Wakefield’s class—among the Sox needs is a catcher who will protect the everyday lineup from tit-for-tat retaliation by reining in Mr. Beanball.)

How much wiggle room the Sox have is disputable. It’s very possible they may need to unveil Nomar Chapter Two and move a very popular player to fix the roster. Jacoby Ellsbury might win the MVP award, so he’s probably untouchable, and GMs will lowball the injured Clay Bucholz. Sox fans will cringe, but Dustin Pedroia is probably the team’s most-tradable commodity.

Elizabeth Warren Explodes Self-Made Myth

The self-made man: a total myth!

Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has the rightwing blogosphere quaking in anger (or is it in their hypocritical boots?) for a viral video in which she took a butcher knife to one of the most overfed sacred cows in American history: the Myth of the Self-Made Man. She rightly parsed the considerable difference between self-made and self-serving.

In case you missed it Warren said, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory….Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea — God Bless! Keep a Big Hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

I jumped for joy when I heard this if, for no other reason, I’ve been saying this for years. The Loony Right has, of course, accused her of fomenting “class warfare,” an absurd charge she preemptively addresses. Elizabeth Warren isn’t suggesting socialism, folks; she has something far less radical in mind: social contract. Or maybe it’s Biblical. Republicans love to wrap themselves in Scripture, but do any of today’s “faith-based” moralists bother to read Luke 12:28: “Everyone to whom much is given, of him much will be required….” The last politician I recall using this line was John F. Kennedy, and doesn’t that speak volumes about the erosion of the civic ideal in America? There’s class warfare going on, but it’s the war of the rich on the rest. Think I’m exaggerating? Explain to me why it’s a radical idea to eliminate a tax break for Americans making over $200,000 but perfectly okay to allow one to expire that affects only those making under $75,000.

Spare me the pious pronouncements (read unadulterated bullshit) about “job creators,” “rising boats,” and “investment capital.” These are lies we’ve been repeating since the Reagan Rhetorical Revolution of the 1980s. Warren got it right—all job creation depends on a favorable business climate that occurs when social capital intersects with investment capital. Do you think, for example, that the New York Yankees decided to build their new stadium in the bucolic Bronx out of the goodness of their owners’ hearts? Or did a billion dollars of city (and taxpayer- supported) infrastructure improvements and revenue enhancements have something to do with it?

Do people rise from adversity and dramatically improve their lives? Of course they do. I’ve done it myself (though let’s say that the under $75k tax break interests me more than the over $200k). Did I do it entirely on my own? No way. I am a product of sweat equity, but also of public schools, aid to poor families, federal educational grants, taxpayer-supported payrolls, insured mortgage programs, and government funding schemes that allow me to travel to jobs on public roads and burn cheap gasoline. (Take away federal trade policies on petrol and let me know how much driving you can afford!)

The self-made man myth is a misunderstood and pernicious threat to American society. The term has been around since the 17^th century, but its original meaning implied a person enterprising enough to take advantage of society’s opportunities (even if they came in the form of access to free land). Henry Clay is the person who began to bend the meaning toward crass (and mythical) individualism. In an 1832 speech before Congress Clay bragged that in Kentucky, “almost every manufactory known to me is in the hands of enterprising and self-made men who have acquired whatever wealth they possess by patient and diligent labor.” He said it, but he didn’t believe it. The legislative effort for which Clay was best known? He was devoted to a scheme dubbed the “American System,” a call for public dole money to support building canals, carving out new roads, funding the Bank of the United States, assuming state debts, and improving national defense. He also wanted high protective tariffs. In other words, his “self-made men” wanted someone else to pay for their transportation systems, underwrite their loans, guarantee their physical safety, and protect them from competition. Clay called this the American System, but stripped of the sound bite it’s called “federalism.”

So again I say, hurrah for Elizabeth Warren! At last! A Democrat for whom I can cast a vote without a clothespin on my nose! To those who actually still believe in the hoary old self-made myth I say: build your own damn roads, independently fund your own projects, use your Second Amendment right to protect yourself, and do not come crying to Uncle Sam for bailouts if disasters strike or a future Bernie Madoff runs off with your self-made gold.

Jokes, Jokesters, and Michael Graham

Have a good Michael Graham joke? Post it here.

I just read that Boston area shock jock Michael Graham is under fire for a series of dwarf jokes. As it so happens, I have a dwarf friend and have had an encounter with Graham. If this doesn't make me an expert, nothing does!

Among Graham’s “witty” remarks was the observation that he likes dwarf waitresses “because I can leave my dishes on their heads.” Is this funny? To me it ranks pretty far down the clever scale. It is mean and hurtful? Well, sure it is. So too are all of the short jokes I've experienced my entire adult life as a person who, though not a dwarf, am considerably less tall than the average American male, or “lummox,” as I like to call them. My choice of nouns in the previous sentence is meant to be glib, but also to remind us about a basic fact about humor: There is a butt to every joke. With all apologies to you well-intentioned folks who think that we need to be nicer to each other and should only tell jokes in which no one gets hurt, being nicer is a worthy goal, but your second wish is impossible. Take away the butt and there is no joke, no humor. We might as well face facts; the only politically correct jokes are those in which comics use themselves as the butt, or those that pick on white males. As I understand the PC crowd, it's not wrong to make fun of the hegemonic group as one is speaking truth to power. Yeah, right. You just keep telling yourself that!

This brings me to Graham. He's from the Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coulter/Bill O'Reilly branch of the evolutionary tree. Did he intend his dwarf remarks to be innocent? I doubt it. His shtick is outrage; or more to the point, that's the shock jock genre's shtick. Take away the screaming, the outrage, and the controversy and there is no reason to listen to radio shows such as his. Graham even creates enemies so they can be the butt of his jokes. He is to radio as the National Enquirer is to journalism; that is to say, entertainment, not news or serious political commentary.

I appeared on one of Graham's shows when I was teaching a controversial course on the 1960s. I knew what he wanted to do: make me look like a crazy professor out of touch with mainstream (defined by him as rightwing) values. If you've ever listened to or watched one of those shows, you know the trick: get the guest mad so that he engages in a shouting match with the host, who controls the microphone, the edits, and the ability to continue giving commentary after the guest is cut off. A lathered-up guest can give these folks material for a week. Why people go on these shows and think they can out-do the hosts at their own game is amazing to me; it actually confirms some of the arrogance that's alleged against "elitists," a favored put-down term for anyone with views to the left of Attila. (Apologies to all Huns.) My university, which felt it needed to address some of Graham’s allegations, forced me on the air or I would steered clear of the show. But I decided in advance that I simply would not play Graham's game. I laughed at his attempts at humor--like asking me if I passed out pot before each lecture--treated him with respect, and stayed completely calm. I knew that he hadn’t done any actual research--facts are boring, after all, so I filled in all the non-lurid detail. I even offered to email my syllabus to anyone who wanted it. In short, I made myself into a non-controversial guest; other than a single snarky post-interview comment, I was history as soon as I went off the air. Fine by me! I even got a few emails from Graham fans saying they thought he was out of line. I cherished those, but I also answered them respectfully.

So is Michael Graham a low-life? I don't know the man, but I suspect he probably isn’t. Graham and his ilk outrage those on the left, just as those on the right have spasms when they see Michael Moore or Jon Stewart. In each case, what we're really mad about is American culture. Those folks simply take advantage of what the capitalist market will bear, which makes it pointless to get mad at them. As I said, they're in the entertainment business. We should no more expect revelatory truth from these folks than we should expect a movie to show life as it really is. Don't we tune in to both in part because we seek vicarious thrills rather than the homemade kind? And, really, in a world of Bernie Madoffs, I just can't find within me the anger to think that a Michael Graham is tearing down American society. I try to reserve outrage for real things, not fiction.

Is Michael Graham funny? Not to me and not to my friend, but he has his fans. Should he lampoon dwarves? As my mother would say, pick on someone your own size, but maybe he ran out of professors. But do I want to lead the torch and pitchfork brigade to the radio studio? Nope. I know all of the arguments about how language is linked to power and how dominant groups use it to keep subordinates "in their place." I don't enjoy Graham's dwarf jokes any more than I would a racist joke. But like I said, there's always a butt, or there is no joke. You can get outraged by offensive jokes, but I think a more effective strategy would be to turn the offender into the butt of a counter joke. So fire away. Post your favorite Michael Graham jokes here.

Boubacar Traoré's Contemplative Blues

BOUBACAR TRAORE

Mali Denhou

Luafrica (distributed by Harmonia Mundi)

* * * *

Malian bluesman Boubacar Traoré knows that some times a good song take a while to unfold. Although many of the tracks on Mali Denhou open with guitar riffs that most players have to work up to, Traoré lets his songs unfurl at a pace that finds the seam between blues and trance. That effect is aided by a voice that’s more sexy than smooth, and the dreamy accents with which he adorns it.

Although Traoré is the headliner, harmonica wizard Vincent Bucher create such a musical pas de deux that the two often seem an African analog to John Cephas and Phil Wiggins. Traoré’s blues are smoother instrumentally and gentler in content, but he and Bucher know that meaty hooks and dazzling riffs are the soul of a great blues song. They open “Dundôbesse M’Bedouinato” with single glass-like guitar notes. Suddenly Traoré rips off a run, Bucher blows outs a melody line, and balafon artist Fassery Diabaté eases the tune into a groove. Finding the groove is pretty much Traoré’s stock and trade. Each time he rips off an impressive run it’s in the service of setting a contemplative mood. Check out his opening lines of “N’Dianamogo” and what happens next. All of this could get a bit tiresome, but Traoré has the good sense to know when to change the pace a bit. “Mondeou” has a chunky dominant line that would be at home in Chicago blues, but the melody of “Minuit” employs a folky rolling strum that feels like something Woody Guthrie might have played. Then there’s “Fama,” an instrumental that’s a mash between classical Spanish and West African guitar stylings.

This is an impressive release from a Malian legend who has been whipping out masterpieces since the 1960s. It’s all the more dazzling when you realize that there are no studio tricks involved. What you’re hearing is the first take. It’s almost frightening to think of what he’d come up with if he spent a lot of time. But then again, there’s no need to polish an already gleaming gem.

Here's an old number from Traoré.

Magic From West Whately (Wherever That Is)

Impressive music in an unassuming place.

Big or little? What’s the best venue in which to hear music? While not much can compare to the sensory feast and technical glitz of a big arena show, and a Woodstock-like festival can be like stepping into a parallel universe, when it comes down to hearing the music rather than having an “experience,” small is beautiful. I was reminded of this recently by three very intimate concerts in an unlikely venue in an even more unlikely place.

West Whately, Massachusetts could be the poster child for the old New England joke punch line “You can’t get there from here.” There is no there there. If there’s a village “center” I’ve never found it; West Whately is more of a geographic designation for scattered farms and homes that aren’t close enough to other towns to be counted as part of them. But it does sport a 19^th-century wooden church, the West Whatley Chapel. It sits at the end of a pond formed by an earthen dam, woods on one side and a tidy farm on the other. It’s also the site of Watermelon Wednesdays, a June through September concert series organized by a local, Paul Newlin, whose über-friendly black lab is a regular attendee. About a hundred folks gather weekly to sit on folding chairs and hear amazing musicians, many of whom record at nearby Signature Sounds. Think that life has gotten too complicated? Take in one of these concerts and step back in time. Lots of times the musicians don’t even plug in, but even when they do, it’s to the single thin amp that sits on the “stage,” a slightly raised platform where the pulpit once stood. There are no monitors, and the “stage lights” consist of clip-on lamps rigged together with extension cords. The chapel is a literal bats-in-the-belfry place. At intermission the audience goes outside to eat watermelon—free with your $15 ticket--and watch the bats dart out to the pond to feed. (Alas! White fungus disease has decimated their numbers as of late.)

So what kind of music can you hear? Grammy Award winner Laurie Lewis showed up in July with a passel of old-time songs and some fiddle prowess that shows why she’s also won some International Bluegrass Music Association prizes. The California-based Lewis was in her element in a place that could be transported to the Appalachians without culture shock. Her spare show reminded that music is supposed to be about voice and a few instruments—anything more and it’s spectacle.

August was ushered out by some locals who have made waves and have joined forces: Four Toads in a Basket. An odd name I grant you. It came from a (very) failed pick-up line used on Tracy Grammer, one of the “Toads” and a name just about everyone knows from her past partnership with the late, great Dave Carter, and her recent collaborations with the talented Jim Henry, another Toad. Their fellow wart-givers are the golden-voiced Ben Demerath, and producer/musician Dave Chalfant, perhaps best known for his bass guitar work with The Nields. Four Toads was playing just their second show, but they’re already playing as if they’re really enchanted princes and princesses. Or maybe angels in tight four-part harmony. Their work-in-progress repertoire is almost impossible to describe. Suffice it to say that it ranges from traditional songs to The Rolling Stones and they don’t miss many stops in between. Think Michael Jackson is dead? Listen to Demerath cover him before you draw that conclusion!

Several weeks later I went to hear Aoife O’Donovan, who is also the lead singer for Crooked Still and Sometimes Why, and a candidate for the coveted Tina Fey Cute Glasses Award. Her show was the opposite of the Four Toads in that just one voice, O’Donovan’s, was on display in all its sweet, willowy tones reminiscent of a less-nasal Alison Krauss. She appeared with three band members, including Ryan Scott, who wielded a mighty steel body resonator guitar, but true to the West Whately formula the two guitars/bass/drum kit ensemble made a powerful but controlled-volume racket. It was a lovely evening of ambient songs such as “The Burning,” a bit of grit (“Oh Mama”), and one of the best covers of Joni Mitchell’s “Urge for Going” I’ve ever heard.

The season’s almost over, but if you live anywhere nearby you’ll want to check out the Sweetback Sisters on September 28. The rest of you should plan a summer 2012 vacation to West Whately. Just don’t look for brochures at the travel agency.

Remembering 9/12, the Bigger Tragedy

The eagle we let get away.

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. I don’t want to add to the grief, the anguish, or the anger over 9/11. I want to talk instead about 9/12, a day in my view that should have become more important than 9/11. What, after all, can one really say about 9/11? That it was horrific? That it was unfair? That those responsible for it are barbaric? That it shattered the lives of survivors? That it shocked the nation? Tick all those boxes, but in my mind there was an even bigger tragedy: the squandering of 9/12.

Do we remember 9/12? We should. On that day nearly all of the world stood in solidarity with the United States and was ready to commit to a unified war on terror. The exceptions? Iran and Palestine, especially the latter. Lest we forget, thousands of Palestinians danced on the streets in celebration of the attacks. So what did the U.S. do? We blew it. We allowed jingoism, hypernationalism, and a cadre of evildoers in our own midst lead us astray. We made Osama bin-Laden into a hero and turned erstwhile allies into skeptics and enemies. We reelected a faux “war president” (or was it “elected” him for the first time) and allowed him to ruin the US economy, destroy American prestige, and trash what was potentially the greatest political alliance in human history.

Can we finally admit that the biggest security challenge facing the United States was the Bush administration? The idiotic decision to go to war against Iraq was based on personal pique, not credible evidence. We called it Operation Iraqi Freedom, but much of the rest of the world called it what it was: reckless cowboy adventurism. The cost has been enormous. As of September 12, we’ve spent nearly $800 billion on Iraq. Go to http://costofwar.com/en/ and watch America’s financial security melt away. If one factors in hidden costs such as the spike in oil prices since the Iraq invasion, interest on the national debt, weapons depletion, administrative costs, and other such like, the true cost is over $3 trillion—a sizable chunk of that debt Republicans created and over which they now cry crocodile tears. It has also cost 4,792 U.S. and “coalition” lives as of today, a figure that exceeds the loss of life associated with 9/11 by 1,816.

“Coalition” deserves to be put in quote marks. Other than assistance from Britain under the vacuous Tony Blair, the military alliance was a lie from the get-go, unless one actually believes that nations such as Tonga, Albania, Mongolia, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic are lean, mean, fighting machines. But at least there were 40 of them at one time; now there are none—not even Britain. Unlike the United States, citizens elsewhere demanded that troops be withdrawn. Talk about tragedies! I feel very badly for those who died, but there is simply no way to avoid it: Americans died in vain. There is no, as in zero, connection between their mission and American freedom. We may call them heroes if it makes us feel better, but history will judge them “victims” and add them to the 9/11 toll.

There is also the matter of over 100,000 Iraqi dead. It will be decades before any semblance of normality has a chance of being restored in Iraq and who would be surprised if an Islamist government emerges from the chaos. Was Saddam Hussein a horrible man? Yes. Was Iraq better off under him? Yes again. Was the US better off under Saddam? Yes a third time. As the old adage goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Congratulations Bush/Cheney/Rice—your stupidity created a power vacuum that destabilized the region and strengthened the two groups who like the US the least: Iranian clerics and Hamas. It also put more stress on our greatest ally: Israel.

These days we’re busy patting ourselves on the back for Arab spring; that is, the blind faith that democracy is about to bloom in the desert. Really? Has it escaped our collective notice that many of the groups seeking to topple their governments are those who don’t actually like the United States? Last week’s attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo and the steady stream of rhetoric coming out of the region suggests that Arab spring is giving way to Anti-Semitism fall. Much of it is led, of course, by Iran, the nation we made the de facto regional power by taking out its only serious regional rival: Iraq. Don’t get me started on the number of previously nonexistent terror groups that got their start, recruits, and sustaining capital because of the US invasion of Iraq.

Let’s not forget to add Hamas to the hates-America list. Palestine surges forward in its plan to bring an immediate-statehood plan before United Nations. It’s led by Hamas and please spare me the “it was democratically elected” line; Hamas led the 9/11 celebration ten years ago and would be even happier to witness the sequel. The US will surely veto Palestinian statehood under a Hamas government, but if the UN even debates the topic without making Israeli recognition a prerequisite for discussion, I say pull out and redevelop that valuable New York City real estate upon which the UN currently sits.

The UN probably will debate Palestinian statehood if, for no other reason, the US opposes it. Suggested movie title: “Hey, Dude, Where are My Allies?” Just who does stand with the US these days? Europeans have a debt crisis of their own, but no one worries about the impact of the value of the U.S. dollar on the Common Market economy. Nor do they sit around and wonder how the U.S. can help resolve conflicts in Asia Minor or the Balkans. The Chinese politely ignore overtures to pressure North Korea; Russia gives her tacit blessing to crackdowns against Syrian dissidents. And a single word sums up the manner in which the global war on terrorism has collapsed: Pakistan.

I mourn for those who died on September 11, but I keen and wail for the victims of September 12. We had a moment and we let it slip from our grasp.

Sarah Sample Best When She's Sarah Simple

SARAH SAMPLE

Someday, Someday

www.sarahsample.com

* * ½

Sarah Sample has a sweet voice with a lovely catch in it, the kind we want to hear. The open question, though, is whether we can hear it. Someday, Someday is a mixed bag of bulls eyes and misfires. Sample’s voice is what you might get if you added some twang to Cyndi Lauper and took away the gale force power. Sample airs it out from time to time, but there’s not a lot of grit to it. As a rule, this album dazzles when she keeps things simple, but stumbles when attempts at flash set off warning lights.

The album opens with the bouncy “I’m Ready,” a charming country pop song with a good hook. She follows with the simpler “Calling Your Name,” which isn’t as catchy, but is actually more suited to her voice. And so the roller coaster ride begins. “Shadows of a Song” is nice, but it calls for more sultriness than Sample musters, whereas the simple, stripped down “One Mistake” is gorgeous and affecting. The pop jazz treatment to “Be My Middle Ground” works really well, but the Wrecking Ball-like ambience of “Don’t Bury Me” serves mainly to remind that she’s no Emmylou Harris. The grunge-meets-country-meets hand jive “Staying Behind” is cool, but Sample’s voice gets drowned in the mix; whereas the finger-snapping ukulele-driven “Holiday” evokes 1920s flapper jazz and is pure funky fun.

Get the point that this CD is inconsistent? Don’t get me wrong; it’s definitely worth a listen. At the risk of a horrible play on words, you should sample Sample. There’s a lot of talent here, but in my view she needs to decide if her forte is west Texas or west LA.