What is this Fourth of July?

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered one of the greatest speeches in American history. Titled “What to the Slave is the Fourthof July,” Douglass slammed the hypocrisy of self-congratulatory freedom nostrums in a nation in which more than 4 million were held on bondage. About halfway through, Douglass hammered home his point with a poignant zinger:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

We have, of course, ended the scourge of slavery addressed by Douglass, but have we really addressed its substance? Slavery, as Douglass, W.E.B Du Bois, Dr. King, Malcolm X, and a host of others reminded us, was but the institutional form of racism, and racism an ideology of self-interest we construct to take one class of individuals and deny them an equal place at the American table.

July Fourth often makes me feel a bit melancholy–especially lately. It reminds me of the old Tom Lehrer satirical song “National Brotherhood Week,” a lampoon of the idea that for one week of the year we’re supposed to pretend we like each other. July the Fourth is like that. We gather beneath the Stars and Stripes, pump our fists to a rousing John Philip Sousa march, ohh and ahh over fireworks, and worship the Founding demigods: Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Paine, Madison–all men, by the way, of the Enlightenment who had profound doubts about the whole deity thing.

But never mind that. What unsettles me is the presumption that a few hollow civic rituals serve to mend all the fractures in American society. We can set aside our differences and revel in our common national oneness. Sometimes it feels as if we should figure out a way musically to segue from “The Star Spangled Banner” to “Kumbaya” and give each other a collective national hug.

That would be nice, if July 5 didn’t arrive to set us back upon our path of dividing brother from brother, sister from sister, black from white, wealthy from poor, straight from gay, immigrant from nativist, men from women, the faithful from the free thinkers, and those with power from the powerless. It would be very nice indeed if “USA, USA” meant something more palpable than a chauvinistic chant at an international sports match, or a drooling affirmation of military adventurism abroad.

When I read Douglass’ speech, it saddens me to think upon the timeless words in his speech, especially the references to hollow rituals and hypocrisy. I see the hate-filled faces outside the abortion clinics of Boston, on the border with Mexico, at Tea Party rallies, among the sexist leaders of the military, at Westboro Baptist protests, in suburban malls, and in the halls of Congress. My Kumbaya moment passes and I feel alienated, not a member a United States. I think upon a Scottish acquaintance who once told me that he and I had more in common than I had with most of the Americans he met outside of New England. I, like Douglas, find myself musing upon Scripture: As ye do unto the least of these, so you do unto me. And, frankly, all the freedom talk makes me think about how much of it is just as elusive now as it was 162 years ago. As the songwriter Eric Bogle put it:

            Chains, chains, chains–how many souls have died in freedom’s name?

            To some it is a way of life, to others just a word,

            To some it is a snow-white bird, to others a bloody sword.

            But until the last chain falls,

            Freedom will make slaves of us all.

Life in These Postmodern Times Part One

Those who read this blog know that I sometimes have issues–serious issues–with the way things (fail to) work in what John Prine calls the ‘big old goofy world.’ So here’s what I’m sure will be a semi-regular installment about things that amuse and/or piss me off.

Among the things that are just wrong!

1. Who was the genius that decided that men’s shorts can’t be? I’m tired of looking for actual chill-out pants only to encounter ‘shorts’ so long that they make me look like a land mine victim. To the hip-hop/NBA crowds who think these monstrosities are ‘fashion,’ one small suggestion: check out the mirror, dude!

2. While I’m on a trouser rant, who decided that every man in America has an even-sized waist size? Or that inseams start at 34”?  Don’t tell me I can just hem long pants, because that’s not true. I’m a freakin’ 29” inseam, so even if I find pants for my odd-sized waist, the crotch is roughly half way between my actual goolies and my knees.

3. One more for the fashion file. I can’t think of a single thing that makes me worry about national security more than the sight of some guy clad head to toe in camouflage who has a butt the size of Wyoming and a belly a blue whale was happy to lose. How about a national law that forbids the sale of military garb in sizes that would deem a recruit unfit to serve?

4. We know that oil and water don’t mix. Apparently oil and sanity don’t either. You’ve seen those mall come-ons where they display new cars in the aisles.  Today I saw several that gave me pause. The first was for a Fiat smaller than most people’s ovens that got a whopping 28 mpg.  Its ad copy bragged of a high-performance engine. First of all, there’s not enough room in that pile of tin for a high-performance cigarette lighter, let alone a big engine; second, is there anybody on the planet who thinks ‘Fiat’ and ‘high-performance’ in the same sentence?  Alas, that’s only the second dumbest car pitch I saw at the local mall. Our grand prize loser was a Jeep that seems to have been crossbred with a Brink’s truck and gets 14 mpg. So we’re fighting wars to secure soon-to-be-exhausted oil supplies so some egoist with a pimple for a brain can exercise his ‘freedom’ to poison the Big Blue Marble? Enough already. Time to put away the stupid toys and pass a law mandating every new car and truck must get at least 50 mpg–no exceptions.   

5. I was chatting with a friend about Michael Lewis’ new book about Wall Street. Among other subjects, Lewis looks at the use of fiber optic technology that gives the Big Money Boys a head’s-ups on what stock prizes will be a nanosecond before anyone else. In computing terms, a nanosecond is a long time—plenty, in fact, to allow those with the capacity to make millions. Everyone agrees the practice is unethical but, alas, it’s not illegal. So can someone explain the difference between the computer-assisted programs and old-fashioned insider trading, which is illegal?

6. NFL gridiron or World Cup football? The latter please.  Don’t be deceived by flashy promos and the NFL’s current awash-in-cash status; insiders are worried that American-style is an endangered species. It hasn’t caught on outside of the U.S. and Canada, and kids are gravitating toward soccer for several very good reasons: it’s cheaper, safer, and global. The more we learn about concussion syndromes, the less attractive football becomes. To be sure, football remains king in lots of places, but its future doesn’t look so rosy. If you live in one of those places trying to raise mega-millions to build a gridiron palace, you’d be in your civic right mind to work with groups opposing it.

Dwight and Nicole: Unchanneled Talent

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DWIGHT & NICOLE

Shine On

www.dwightandnicole.com

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TV viewers might recognize Nicole Nelson from The View, where she did a stunning version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." That's on her new album with Dwight Richter and the two of them are obviously quite talented. That's the good news. The bad is that this Burlington, Vermont duo hasn't really found a discernible groove. Richter's tastes are eclectic–Roy Orbison, funk, R & B, rock, jazz…. He's pretty good at drawing inspiration from all these roots, but he doesn't put his stamp on any of them. "Smile," for instance, has a splash of reggae but that's it–just enough to make you damp, not enough to soak you in the talent pool. Ditto "Plead," which could have crunched with some serious grunge, but instead crackles like rice cereal. There are three really good songs on this album, Nelson's Cohen cover, her cool jazz "Colorful Girls," and–my personal favorite–"Saturday." The last of these is bouncy, infectious folk-pop and it shines because she and Richter keep things simple and let the tune drive the arrangement. Too many of the tunes try too hard to impress and in so doing, sound generic. Nelson has a supple and powerful voice and, when he's on, Richter is as smooth as silk. I can't help but feel, though, that Nelson's métier is jazz and that Richter simply needs to find his own voice instead of channeling influences from here and there. I know it's a cut-and-paste world these days, but not all collages work. –Rob Weir

Jaro Milko and the Cubalkanics

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JARO MILKO & THE CUBALKANICS

Cigarros Explosivos!

Asphalt Tango Records 4614

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Let's see–a Czech expatriate living in Switzerland who plays grunge-laced surf guitar and fronts a band specializing in Balkan music by way of Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil, and Peru. It's a mashable world, baby. The opening track is called "Cumbia Griega," but though cumbia hails from Colombia, you can be forgiven if this tune makes you think Dick Dale was hijacked by a group of belly dancers. It's followed by "El Topo," with fuzzed-out guitar and rolling organ notes evocative of an electric Kool-aid acid test somewhere south of the border. Milko really has the surf music/reggae thing going on in "All the Past," serves up mariachi-influenced blaring brass in "Belly's Bounce," and turns to some tongue-in-cheek Django jazz in "Nah Nah Nah." If you're looking for the Cuban parts implied by the band name, you'll find it in the swaying chorus of "Miseria," but you'll also hear some dance hall and studio tricks thrown in to keep you slightly off stride. Once he's got you there, he knocks you completely off your pins on "Danza Mentirosa," which comes across as intergalactic experimental music. Even the cover art and album title signal that Jaro Milko is more interested in making a joyous, offbeat record than in pleasing purists. If there is a downside, it's that Milko sometimes goes too far. This is particularly the case with his growly vocals; he's either trying to lampoon Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello, or he simply can't sing a note. But we can overlook this on an album that covers more ground than National Geographic. 

Rob Weir

Colleen Raney's Stunning New Release

COLLEEN RANEY

Here This is Home

LITTLE SEA RECORDS 004

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In a sea of Celtic chanteuses, Portland (OR)-based Colleen Raney floats to the surface. Hers is a voice both youthful and muscular, capable of fragile beauty ("The Boys of Mullaghbawn"), but also of dark tones ("The Nightingale"), or sheer exuberance ("The Granemore Hare," a bouncy hunt song). What she doesn't do is whispery little girl voices, something she signals out of the gate with a killer cover of the Nic Jones version of "Canadee-i-o." She is literally poetic in places, gracefully interpreting Irish poet Vincent Woods' verses in "Stand Up for Love" and "Sanctuary," both of which guitarist Aidan Brennan set to music. Brennan also produced the album and that alone ought to be an endorsement–Brennan has worked with heavyweights such as Kevin Burke, Johnny Cunningham, Alaisdair Fraser, and Loreena McKennitt, and Susan McKeown, which is to say he's particular about the projects he chooses. Among the many remarkable features of this, Raney's fourth release, is the interplay between musicians and singer. In addition to Brennan we find folks such as Trevor Hutchinson on bass, Steve Larkin on fiddle, Aaron Jones on bouzouki, and Johnny B. Connolly on accordion. Add percussion and keyboards and it's an ensemble that could take down the roof. Instead, both instrumentalists and Raney are in perfect control. Though it sounds an oxymoron, the feel is at once bold and subdued. Exile songs such as "Craigie Hill" are sufficiently wistful, but never dreary. Overall Raney strikes a wonderful pop/trad balance that makes even familiar songs fresh, especially in "Cruel Brother," which she converts into a hoppy number. Here This is Home is one of my favorite recent releases. One can but wish Ms. Raney the success she so richly deserves.   Rob Weir

Invention of Wings a Superb Historical Novel

THE INVENTION OF WINGS (2014)

Sue Monk Kidd

Viking, ISBN 978-0670024780, 384 pp.

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If you took Kathryn Stockett’s The Help out of the 20^th century and set it during slavery, you might end up with something like The Invention of Wings and you’d get a much better book in the bargain. Sue Monk Kidd’s novel is similarly based on an improbable black/white friendship. She takes us to Charleston, South Carolina in 1803, the year the 11-year-old daughter of a wealthy plantation family received an unorthodox birthday present: her own slave, 10-year-old Hetty (known as Handful in the slave quarters). The birthday girl in question was Sarah Grimké, who shocked her family by trying to free Hetty on the grounds that it was immoral to own slaves. At 11, Sarah was too young to carry out her will, as she would be in adolescence when she insisted she wanted to be a lawyer, but as an adult Sarah Grimké would become a pioneering abolitionist and feminist.

Kidd takes us inside the slave quarters, where we feel the horrors, smell the smells, and vicariously experience yearnings for freedom. There is no happy slave pabulum in this novel; its very title references an African story told by Hetty’s mother Charlotte of how their ancestors developed wings to fly from danger. Charlotte is the Grimké family seamstress and she screws on her compliant face around Mary, the tyrannical mistress of the Grimké household, but privately she reminds Sarah that she promised to free her daughter and intends to hold her to that promise.

The novel shows how Sarah and Hetty developed an unbalanced friendship—one in which it’s not always clear if Sarah is being true to her principles when she does things such as defy the law by teaching Hetty to read, or merely using Hetty as an outlet for a rebellious spirit she’s too scared to exercise around her strict parents. The theme of real versus imagined rebellion is driven home though the overlapping story of Denmark Vesey, a free black man who tried to start a slave uprising in 1822. Coming just three years after Sarah accompanied her dying father north against her will, we begin to wonder if she is all talk and no action. Up to that point, her single biggest act of free will was to insist that she unconventionally be named her sister Angelina’s godmother when the latter was born in 1805.

We know, of course, that Sarah does break out. After numerous trips back to Philadelphia she became a Quaker minister—an act of feminist pluck that sabotaged her marriage plans—and, in 1827, went back go Charleston to take Angelina away from the South and into a life of abolitionist and feminist agitation. (Angelina married another famed abolitionist, Theodore Weld.) This part of the story is documented; Kidd’s skill lies in imaging the lives of the slaves left behind based on fragmentary evidence, and in stitching history and imagination into a brightly colored fictional quilt that both enlightens and entertains. (A quilt plays a key part in the novel, by the way.)

Among the novel’s many revelations is its focus on the slave culture: its inner codes, its folklore, its acts of everyday rebellion, and the lengths to which slaves went to preserve dignity in the face of barbaric injustices. Without knocking us over the head, Kidd also challenges the ingrained Southern myth that Stockett perpetuated in The Help—that many black people came to love and cherish their masters. Hetty and Charlotte, for example, knew that even as a child Sarah wanted the best for them, but they also knew you couldn’t trust white folks and that there were huge structural obstacles in the way of good intentions. Again without being overt about it, Kidd raises the question of whether true friendship is even possible when power relations are skewed—something Sarah discovers in her life among male Quakers, who were sure that slavery was wrong, but were pretty comfortable with patriarchy.

Let me emphasize that this is a novel, not a history book. Kidd demonstrates great skill in developing scenarios, inventing dialogue, and filling in history’s gaps. The novel runs over 380 pages but, like the wings in its title, it flies. Add this book to other recent efforts such as The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair, and it’s clear that Ms. Kidd is poised to take her place among the leading ladies of letters.—Rob Weir

Warning: I did not read or listen to the Oprah Book Club version of this novel, but there are many warnings that it should be avoided. Apparently Winfrey interjects her own commentary to the print and audio versions in an intrusive manner that breaks the narrative. Look for versions that say “unmarked” or “without commentary.”

Anton Scalia and the Catholic Conspiracy

Is Justice Scalia serving the wrong master?

My history undergraduates are surprised when I tell them that, in 1960, John F. Kennedy bore a nearly insurmountable burden: he was a Roman Catholic. There were many Americans who doubted that a Catholic could lead the nation. Would Kennedy consult the pope in matters of policy? If war loomed, would the American commander-in-chief delay action until he consulted the pontiff in Rome? Kennedy's victory over Richard Nixon was razor thin and his faith was one reason why. Kennedy's inaugural address is best known for its killer sound bite–"ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country"–but its most important lines were those with which he closed his speech: "With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own."

Kennedy's grand rhetorical flourish assuaged fears by subtly shifting the focus from Rome to home. Notice that conscience, history, and nation come before God in the speech, and that it ends with an emphasis on human deeds unmediated by popes or confessors. Kennedy's presidency put to rest a century's-old myth that Catholics were disloyal. It's hard to imagine anyone today raising fears of Vatican control of America, right? Not so fast. In Bruce Allen Murphy's new biography Scalia: A Court of One (reviewed in the June issue of The Atlantic), Murphy argues that what people feared about JFK in 1960 is true of Justice Anton Scalia in 2014. Scalia is more than the most rightwing of all Supreme Court justices–he's also one who takes more cues from the Vatican than from the Constitution in issues such as abortion rights, contraceptive policies, gay rights, gender equality, school prayer, and separation of church and state. Murphy notes that Scalia's views are nearly 100% in accord with those of Vatican, the glaring exception being that Scalia supports the death penalty.

Were Scalia really a court of "one," there would be little cause for alarm. Alas, as we can readily observe, "faith" has become a conservative touchstone and a (nonexistent) "war on religion" a rallying cry. Scalia serves the intellectual-in-residence for at least three other justices. To pick just one potentially chilling example of Scalia's faith-driven positions that might hold sway, he has already signaled he will vote to grant Hobby Lobby petition for exemption from Affordable Care Act provisions guaranteeing contraceptive coverage in employee insurance plans. Hobby Lobby's conservative Christian owners claim paying for contraceptives violates their religious beliefs. If the private beliefs of Hobby Lobby's owners prevail over the public health rights of its employees, the floodgates will open for all manner of faith-based (or faith-faked) objections.

As I have argued on numerous occasions, the very survival of American religious freedom demands separation of church/synagogue/mosque and state. American democracy is endangered when the religious beliefs of any one faith is privileged over other beliefs. This ought to be a clear violation of the First Amendment's opening line: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…" There is not a word of the right of individuals to model national policy according to religious doctrine. They are free to "exercise" individual beliefs "freely," but the prohibition of "an establishment of religion" implies that public government and private belief must remain separate. The freedom to believe is not the same as the freedom to act.

It's clear, though, that Scalia thinks the doctrines of Roman Catholicism supersede the U.S. Constitution. Maybe that sounds right and you agree that faith is paramount. How far do you want to take that? Should Muslims who carry out "honor killings" be exempt from murder laws? Should polygamy laws be repealed? Can satanic cults engage in human sacrifice? Some faiths sanction child marriage, are you okay with that? Naked Wiccans in the public square anyone? Can Quakers withhold taxes that go to the military? Is it okay to practice anti-Semitism in the name of religion? Race discrimination?

Anton Scalia is a Catholic. I respect his right to practice his religion. I like Catholics and Pope Francis seems like a really good guy to me. But I'm not a Catholic and I don't want the Vatican's fingerprints on my country's laws. Scalia might be a brilliant man, but John Kennedy had it right. If Scalia wants to be a priest, take off the judicial robes and don a surplice.