What the Republican Party Has Rot

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No, I don't mean "wrought."  I want to discuss the smelly variety of the word. Those who have observed the Republican Party over the past few decades should not be surprised by Donald Trump's rise to the top of the garbage heap. GOP policymakers are alarmed, but the pile has been building for a long time. Call the party's current dilemma a compost heap begun by Kevin Phillips, with spades turned by Nixon, Lee Atwater, Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, the Tea Party, Anton Scalia, and Dick Cheney. It's called the "politics of division" and it works like a Madonna or Lady Gaga concert–once you obliterate the bar of acceptability, the pressure is always on to take a bolder step in the next act. Sooner or later, though, the only step left is off the precipice.

Political parties must walk a fine line between principles and inclusiveness—a party must have policies, but it must also appeal to broad enough constituencies to compete nationwide. Hot-button issues can temporarily boost enthusiasm, but unless they go mainstream they do long-term damage. This is where today's Republican Party finds itself. It has long ridden angry white men, evangelicals, and bourgeois suburbanites, but the elephant is now on its last legs, no matter how hard the mahouts beat it. If I might torture the metaphor a tad more, there's not enough hay left to feed the elephant–dumb white dudes, zealots, and greedy suburbanites are no longer a majority. America is a multicultural society whether anyone likes it or not.

Explain, pray, how Republicans can attract women when it supports privacy rights on guns, but not for reproductive rights. How do they intend to attract Latino voters and support curtailing immigration? African Americans? If the GOP gets 10% of their votes it's a surprise; 15% triggers an automatic electoral fraud investigation. How many college-age folks–call them future voters–are attracted to the GOP's obsession with school testing and free-market solutions to the college debt crisis? They want no part of evangelical calls to repeal gay marriage or dismantle Roe v. Wade, and they

are positively apoplectic over the GOP's stance on global warming. It drives angst-ridden privatizers crazy, but a whole lot of Americans like Social Security and other federal programs. As Mitt Romney discovered in 2012, it's hard to catch up when you write off 47% of the electorate. Moreover, Obamacare is all that stands between millions of voters—that word again–and a Darwinian survival of the fittest. (Even many GOP governors grudgingly accept this.)

Many Republican leaders are concerned by the reactionary turn the party has taken. Listen to its fire-eaters, and it sounds like Republicans are devoted to restoring the rural, Middle American values of 1956. Good luck with that–81% of Americans dwell in urban areas. I could go on, but it boils down to the fact that the GOP has become the party of an overly narrow base. Single-issue voters can tilt local and state elections, but the only way the politics of division work on the national level is through fear or disgust. These too have lost their power. One of the things Rove, Cheney, Scalia, et. al. left in their wake is cynicism. Cynical people are not pleasant, but they don't scare easily. Fear of terrorism has run its course and most Americans simply want the USA to mind its own business. Plus cynics tend to put things together pretty well–like maybe there's a connection between shrinking job opportunities and reflexive support for free trade, business deregulation, and reckless investing. (Blaming unemployment on immigrants doesn't work so well with white-collar workers.)

The problem is simple: the GOP's divide-and-conquer strategies have mutated into the politics of greed—not the 1% the left trumpets; more like the 38%, which means you have to fool quite a few of the remainder. Donald Trump is the ultimate expression of the politics of greed, but the GOP has no internal answer at this point. Ted Cruz? He's even less electable and nastier, albeit a bit less crude.  And here's the ultimate GOP nightmare—regulars switch to Cruz, Trump sues that under Article I Section 2 of the Constitution that Cruz is a Birther hypocrite who is ineligible to be president, gets a district court to agree, and a 4-4 Supreme Court fails to overturn that ruling. Then what?

Things have gotten so bad that old warhorses like John Sununu, Bill Kristol, and Ben Ginsberg are talking about forming a splinter party. That's probably words over a bad hairpiece, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that the mainstream GOP will jettison its dissident elements and reinvent itself. This is precisely what the Democrats had to do when it became clear that it could not be both the party of Dixiecrats and civil rights. That was a painful amputation that opened the door for the Reagan-GWH Bush era of 1981-1993, but Democrats have held the White House for 16 of the past 24 years and will have to be incredibly inept (even by Democratic standards) to lose it this fall. It's premature to speak of the death of the Republican Party, but it's not too soon to smell the gangrene.

For St. Patrick's Day, Give Dervish a Whirl

DERVISH

Thrush in the Storm (2013)

Whirling Discs

* * * * *

Happy St. Patrick's Day! If you want to celebrate in style, forget the green beer and bad bar bands—download a few tracks from one of Ireland's best, Dervish. This veteran band has been around since 1989, and Irish music doesn't get much better than what Dervish cranks out. And you can start with this: any list of great female vocalists that doesn't have Cathy Jordan's name near the top should be ignored as rubbish.

Thrush in the Storm came out in 2013, but it's gotten a new push as a download—either single tracks or the entire shebang. I'd recommend the latter, but here's some info for those wishing to discover Dervish one track at a time. If you like sets with complex overlays, check out the instrumental titled "Green Crowned Lass," in which flutes and whistles intersect, depart, and whip up a hearty musical stew. Another Dervish instrumental staple is the patching together of tunes that start humbly, wend their way to a bridge, make a split second stop, and then leap into a heart-stopping pace. "Maggie's Lilt" is a good example of this. Shane Mitchell's accordion appears first as a flash, then disappears, and reemerges when the lilt becomes a sprint. The title tune is another example. Dervish doesn't rush at you all at once. Their sets are like Lego blocks—the pieces snap together piece by piece until the small becomes mighty; in this case, until a slow hornpipe becomes a fast reel.

A lot of Celtic bands use songs to slow the pace. Not Dervish. When Ms. Jordan steps up to the mic, it's often with bodhran in hand as she intends to command the tempo in every way imaginable. Thrush in the Storm contains mostly traditional songs, but with Jordan's twist on them. She revives "Handsome Polly," in part because it's one of the rare trad songs in which the woman is left standing at the end. In this case a dragoon captain dies of a broken heart after being spurned by a comely maid. "Snoring Biddy," which Jordan fashioned from incomplete snippets, is more gruesome in that a husband murders his wife, but Jordan's tongue-twisting treatment is so robust you may be too busy tapping your toes to notice the tragedy. A personal favorite is "Baba Chonraol," which opens with a simple drone-like arrangement until the bouzouki comes in and Jordan's voice becomes what dance sounds like. The song then evolves into a kind of nouveau medievalism that's at once ancient, yet new. Like I said, Irish music doesn't get much better than this. --Rob Weir

10,000 Maniacs Still Cranking Out Entertaining Tunes

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10,000 MANIACS

For Crying Out Loud

Noisetrade

* * * *

Confession time: I really liked 10,000 Maniacs back in the 1980s, but when Natalie Merchant left the band in 1993, I followed her and ignored the Maniacs. (Merchant's 2003 House Carpenter's Daughter is among my favorites of the new century.) I was surprised when Noisetrade offered a free download to celebrate the band's 35^th year on the road, as I had assumed 10,000 Maniacs to be defunct. I'm happy to be wrong and I'm anxious to dip into a 2015 release titled Twice Told Tales, which consists entirely of covers of traditional songs.

The Maniacs have just two members left from the original 1981 lineup: bass player Steve Gustafson and keyboardist Dennis drew, though drummer Jerry Augustyniak has been with them since 1983. Merchant's replacement, Mary Ramsey, sang with the band from 1994 to 2001, left, and returned in 2007. Though she lacks Merchant's deeper dark tones, she compensates in the higher ranges and is quite a talent in her own right. As in the 1980s, you'll find 10,000 Maniacs called things such as: college rock, soft rock, folk rock, and alt-rock. My own handle for them is sunshine pop, by which I mean they are the kind of outfit that seldom challenges us, but are always entertaining—hummable songs wrapped in jangly guitar, heavy-on-the-first-beat percussion, soupy keyboards, smooth lead vocals, and harmonies that add more texture than power. For Crying Out Loud offers seven tracks from post-Merchant albums: the sweet "Ellen" from Earth Pressed Flat (1992), the dancey "These are the Days" from Our Time in Eden (1992), and "Shinning Light" and "Love Among the Ruins" from the 1997 album named for the second song (which enjoyed modest chart success). What is especially heartening, though, is that the album's best two selections are its most recent ones. "Triangle," from the 2013 album Music from a Motion Picture is both a lovely song and a well-crafted one that opens with an acoustic guitar/piano mix, subtly adds instruments, and builds to its swelling bridges. And I'm happy to report–as noted above–that 10,000 Maniacs are still infusing new life into old songs—their cover of "She Moved through the Fair" from the new record is moodily atmospheric and has thoughtful enhancements that interject just the right among of newness without destroying the song's time-tested integrity–like a flash of electrified fiddle and some soft blips that are the electronic equivalent of underpainting.

It's welcome back time for 10,000 Maniacs. They never strayed, but I went away for a few decades. Is this stuff cutting edge? No–but in an age of white noise, failed experiments, paint-by-the-numbers power pop, running-on-empty hip hop, and brain-dead major labels, there's joy in hearing a band that just gives us our money's worth.

Rob Weir

Effie Gray Fails to Rise above Namesake Dullness

EFFIE GRAY  (2014/15)

Directed by Richard Laxton

Sovereign Films, 108 minutes, PG-13 (brief nudity)

* *

Emma Thompson has many talents, but script writing is not one of them. Effie Gray tells the story of spirited Scots lass Euphemia Gray (1828-1897) and her disastrous marriage to English art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), one that took place in 1848 and was annulled in 1854. It is such a fascinating tale that it has been the subject of numerous well-received plays and books though, alas, this (rightly) is not among the highly regarded.

Effie is played quite well by Dakota Fanning, though Ruskin (Thompson's husband, Tom Wise) is miscast. Effie Gray begins like a classic case of cradle robbing, with Fanning looking to be about 16 and Ruskin a gray-templed man in his 40s who weds a girl of whom his parents disapproved. This is the first of numerous liberties taken. In truth, the Ruskins and Grays knew each other well, with the latter residing in a home in which Ruskin's grandfather had committed suicide. John Ruskin had literally known Effie since she was a child, but it wasn't quite as creepy as the film suggests–he was just nine years her senior, not decades, and such an age gap was hardly unusual in Victorian times. But it is true enough that Ruskin, though a brilliant intellect, was a distasteful man and likely impotent as well. Legend holds that when Effie disrobed on their wedding night, Ruskin was disgusted to see that she had pubic hair—unlike the Greek statues he admired—and never consummated a marriage that ended five plus years later with Mrs. Ruskin still intact.

The film gets the vibe of Effie's monastic existence right–the feeling of being a virtual prisoner in a life devoid of work, duty, or meaning. When she accompanies John to Venice and is allowed to explore the city, go dancing, and participate in society, the Italian light serves only to magnify her husband's coldness and Effie realizes her need to do something about her circumstances. (Hey, if you can't be romantic in Venice, carnality is off the menu!) Effie lapses into a neurasthenia made worse by the laudanum-laced  "medicine" with which her evil mother-in-law (Julie Walters) plies her and only starts to come back to life when she returns to Scotland with her husband and his protégé, pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais (Tom Sturridge). After her annulment, Effie married Millais and bore him eight children before his death in 1896.

Where to begin with the film's problems? Although the vibe is right, it's exceedingly dull to watch a film in which very little happens. Wise's Ruskin is so buttoned-down that he reacts to nothing; hence there are no big scenes and little drama other than that conveyed by Fanning's sad doe eyes. We get lots of nice scenery—Venice, the Scottish Trossachs, English manor houses–but we could get that from Google Images. Don't expect to learn a lot about art either; there's hardly a word about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and only a smattering of paintings filmed from British museum walls and snipped into the film. One is Millais's famed "Ophelia," and it's implied that Effie was its inspiration—and Ophelia's face does bear resemblance to Fanning's—but the model was actually Elizabeth Siddal, not Gray. Also wasted is a superb cast that includes cameos from heavyweights such as Walters, Claudia Cardinale, James Fox, Derek Jacobi, Emma Thompson, and David Suchet. Given the period setting of this film, one could say this is literally a case of a cast all dressed up with nowhere to go. And that's where this film went as well–after Thompson fended off two lawsuits from playwrights alleging copyright infringement, this $11 million film garnered weak reviews, and made just over $368,000 at the box office. That's a bomb by any measure.

Should you download it? It's up to you. Effie Gray isn't terrible, but that's largely because it takes more energy to create camp.  Rob Weir

Learning to Drive is Formula on Cruise Control

LEARNING TO DRIVE  (2014)

Directed by Isabel Coixet

Lavendar Pictures, 90 minutes, R (brief nudity)

* * *

 

Learning to Drive is a “small” formula picture. It has its charms, but only if you accept the idea that you’re along, so to speak, for a diverting little journey down familiar byways.

Bourgeois New York literary critic Wendy Shields (Patricia Clarkson) is dealt a shock when her husband Ted (Jake Weber) announces his intent to leave. Ted has philandered many times in the past, but Wendy­—now on the wrong side of 50—must face the truth that he really means it this time, that divorce is likely, and a settlement will probably entail selling her comfy Manhattan home. She’s not in a good psychological space for learning to drive, something she needs to do if she wants to spend quality time with her daughter Tasha (Grace Gummer), who is in ensconced in upstate Vermont trying her hand at organic farming.  

Enter Darwan Singh Tur (Ben Kingsley), a New York cabbie who moonlights as a driving instructor. He’s everything Wendy isn’t: calm, centered, patient, spiritual, and responsible. Darwan ekes out a downsized version of the American Dream. He was a professional in India before the post-pogrom of Sikhs following Indira Gandhi’s assassination made him a prisoner/refugee. In Queens, though, he’s just another working-class foreigner.

This is a very predictable film with just two surprises, one of which centers on the relationship between Wendy and Darwan. The other is that this is an American, not a British, movie. There are so many East-meets-West themed films in Britain that the de facto genre needs a name. Conventions reign in such films: moronic nativism, cross-cultural misunderstanding, the wisdom of the East, and the revelation that we’re all alike underneath our surface differences. You’ll find all of these in Learning to Drive, plus a few diverting twists: glimpses of Sikh rituals, a few inferred foodways, and the appearance of Jasleen (Sarita Choudhury) as Darwan’s family-chosen intended. Don’t expect a crash course in anthropology from any of this—you’d learn more by reading National Geographic photo captions.

There is a definite sense that director Isabel Coixet is padding the story to stretch it a respectable 90 minutes. Many of the film’s subthemes—illegal immigrants, female subcultures, the inability of Americans to tell foreigners apart—are little more than snap-ons devoid of developmental depth. Overall, Learning to Drive is a slight effort that owes whatever success it has to the performances of Clarkson and Kingsley, though I doubt either was overly taxed. Clarkson is physically and emotionally convincing as an urbane but world-weary sophisticate who realizes her head-turning beauty is fading, but knows how to present and flaunt what remains. Kingsley, of course, has the man of honor and hidden wisdom act down pat. There is strong chemistry between the two but, again, it’s probably not the kind you anticipate. If anything, though, the most important statement this film makes is something the script did not intend: both actors would be in much better films were it not for film industry ageism, sexism, and racism.

You need not ponder these things to enjoy Learning to Drive. It is what it is: a fluffy social comedy/drama hybrid. Call it an end-of-the-week-my-brain-is-shot diversion that goes down as easily as a glass of cheap, but satisfying, wine. In each case, we know we’re not dealing with vintage goods.  Rob Weir

    

J: A Dystopian Marvel from Howard Jacobson

J  (2014)

Howard Jacobson

Crown, 312 pages

* * * *

Howard Jabobson’s chilling dystopian novel J dares ask three questions: Can there be reconciliation without truth? Can there be history without memory? Can either love or hate exist within the other?

Jacobson—who won the Man Booker Prize for his 2010 novel Finkler—takes us to a future Britain that is failing to recover from a cataclysm so vague that it is always referred to as “WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED.” Britain already has a problem—basic linguistics theory has long held that naming is a necessary precursor to mastery. But before Jacobson probes this, he opens with a parable of a wolf and a spider in which the ravenous lupine falters and the patient arachnid survives. Readers need to be spiders as well, as Jacobson spins a web that emerges slowly before it takes shape. In fact, it’s not immediately clear at first we are in England, as opposed to Germany, Russia, or maybe Wales. And, of course, we're not sure what happened, if it happened. There are rumors of mass killings, but where are the bodies? If it happened, how can the victims have simply disappeared?

Jacobson’s dystopian Britain isn’t one out of Children of Men—it’s more terrifying and more English. After the thing that might not have happened, Britain is dying a death from a thousand paper cuts in a land that doesn’t “ban” things outright; one simply doesn’t do certain things: listen to jazz, travel abroad, read most books, collect fancy furniture, stand out, or think about the past. Especially the latter, which is dissuaded by public campaigns to “let sleeping dogs lie,” think of “memory as useless,” and view the past as an obstacle to thinking “about the future.” Powerful social conventions are (usually) passively enforced by Ofnow, an enforcer branch of government, which occasionally dissuades individuals directly. Mainly, though, society is held in check by an elaborate peer pressure network in which everyone is watching everyone else for any signs of “unusual” behavior, defined mostly as being vaguely unconventional or solitary. It’s as if every citizen is involved in a network that’s like a grassroots mash-up of Stasi and Savak.

Still another oddity: everyone has a Jewish-sounding last name, which we learn was the project of Operation Ishmael after WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED. The book centers on two individuals who must be suspect because they are unusual: Kevern Cohen and Ailinn Solomons. Kevern lives in Port Rueben, where he carves wooden spoons for the tourist trade—often under the tutelage of a mentor Professor Everett Zermansky, who heads the division of Benign Visual Arts. (It just isn’t done to make distressing expressionist or abstract art.) Kevern is a dour, naïve, and exceedingly cautious man more disposed towards being a hermit than part of a group think society. That suits Kevern fine—he was raised to be invisible by a cheerless mother and a disengaged father whose most notable trait was that he made a sport of placing two fingers in front of his lips before pronouncing any word beginning with the letter “J.” Kevern falls in love with the quirky, perky Ailinn, whose favorite book is Moby Dick. Love serves mainly to raise Kevern’s caution flags higher as he knows it’s unlikely for two “aphids”–a word used by those who think they are above the hoi polloi—to expect happiness. Moreover, why is Ailinn’s former roommate, the mysterious Esme, so invested in wanting the two of them to have a child?

How does one discover the truth of anything in a land where Densdell Kroplick, the village barber, is also the official local historian cranking out pamphlets that are piles of folktales and sanitized stories of artisan crafts? How does one recover the past in a place where memory is only two-generations deep? Is there a future in a land in which moroseness and violence are creeping upward? When Kevern and Ailinn travel to the capital city of Necropolis (London), they encounter a glum, dangerous, and shabby place—but mostly it exudes a gray soullessness that dissolves into a metaphorical obscuring mist that’s as foggy as what happened (and it’s clear something did).

What’s Jacobson on about? A clue comes in the fact that many in Necropolis are wearing keffiyahs. Another is the J word never spoken: Jew. And when a character begins to speak in obvious riddles—“What is a culture but ghosts?” “What’s Ahab without his whale?”­—and insist upon an “equipoise of hate,” an “H” word is suggested: Holocaust. Jacobson has been vocal in his denunciations of how Islamophobia is often invoked to excuse modern-day British anti-Semitism. Is Port Rueben a living museum, an incubator for a better future, a shtetl awaiting a new pogrom, or something sinister?

This is, simply, an amazing work of literature. Jabobson often writes is long, sweeping sentences and uses beautiful words—some of which will send you scurrying to your dictionary. I have seldom read such a chilling and gripping work in which tension is sustained in silences rather than actions, and terror looms most ominously in passivity.

Rob Weir

Atwood Jumps the Shark in Last Third of New Novel

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THE HEART GOES LAST (2015)

Margaret Atwood

Doubleday, 38 pages

* *

When it comes to dystopia, Margaret Atwood is a go-to name. Her 1986 novel, The Handmaid's Tale, is surely among the greatest works of that genre, and subsequent offering such as Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam are only a cut or two below. Atwood returns to things-fall-apart themes in The Heart Goes Last, but this time her major distinction is one I doubt she wants: one of the worst examples of a great writer thoroughly losing control of her creation. The first two-thirds of The Heart Goes Last has the makings of an important novel, but the last third spirals out of control in ways that can only be labeled "embarrassing." It's the kind of bad that if had been submitted in a fiction-writing class, the instructor would have handed it back with demands that it be reconceptualized and rewritten. 

[Warning: A few spoilers occur below.]

The best dystopian works build upon what is imaginable. Atwood has a killer premise–a not-so-distant economic collapse occasioned by greedy speculators has divided society into haves and have-nots (!). The have-nots are desperate–vast segments of the population live in Mad Max realms of thievery, rapine, and violence. At the center of this is a young couple, Stan and Charmaine. In better times they were the poster children for success–he a business high-flyer and she a medical social worker. Now they live in a used Honda, trying to scrape by with Charmaine's part-time job at a retirement center and Stan's ability to sense danger and move the car before gangs overtake them. Things are so bad that Stan must approach his brother Conor, a petty crook and fixer for bigger gangsters, for some cash.

Their life takes a turn when Charmaine hears a recruitment ad for a walled community called Consilience, with its promises of homes, clean sheets, showers, jobs, gardens, and community. There is, of course, a catch—as they learn when they attend the recruitment seminar: if you are accepted, you can't leave. Stan smells a rat, but yields to Charmaine's dreams of cleanliness and stability. Consilience is everything it's billed to be. The past is often a retreat when things go wrong, and Consilience is straight out of a gee-whiz view of the Golden Fifties: neat suburban homes with hedges and lawns, practical furniture, safe streets, and clustered neighborhoods. In fact, it's so Fifties that Consilience has banished things that might be viewed as disruptive—its entertainment options center on Doris Day, Bing Crosby, wholesome movies, and religious-values TV. But they quickly learn that Consilience is a literal con game. The Positron Corporation that runs the community has a motto: DO TIME NOW, BUY TIME FOR THE FUTURE. 

Consilience is just half of the community, the other half being Positron, a prison. The whole deal is run by Ed, a combination Svengali and Big Brother. His vision of a well-functioning society is unique: each home is shared by two couples, but in alternating months. For one month Stan and Charmaine are 50s-style homeowners, while their alternates—whom they never meet—do time in Positron. When the calendar month flips, roles reverse. Still, Positron is gender-segregated but humane, more like a college dorm with work requirements. Residents think this is how the company makes its money and Charmaine doesn't question it as she's a 50s kind of gal at heart. But production based on crocheted teddy bears, electric scooters, and soft goods literally doesn't add up. Nor does all that wholesomeness, and when Stan finds a sexy note left by "Jasmine" for her partner "Max," Stan begins to fantasize about their wild sex life in dangerous ways. Charmaine also worries–about Stan's grumpiness, her desires, and her Positron job in "Special Procedures."

Great stuff so far. Atwood could have done a great take-down of faux Fifties values–after all, the historical Fifties were more tin than golden.* Instead, she jumped the shark. Rule one for all writers: avoid jolting tone shifts. After building a bleak future, establishing ominous suspicion, and placing her characters in peril, Atwood shifts to humor of the lowest, sophomoric proportions. I'll say nothing about the narrative, but the book's resolution depends upon all of the following: out-of-control libido, sexbots, Vegas, Elvis and Marilyn Monroe impersonators (some of whom are gay for seemingly gratuitous reasons), a woman sexually fixated on a Teddy bear, a takeoff on the Blue Man Group, and another special procedure that makes the old Clovers' pop song "Love Potion No. 9" seem scientific by comparison. Does this sound promising? Kirkus called the novel "dystopian clichés played as farce," but that's too kind. It's simply bad.

Tell you what—read this novel up to the point where Stan is chosen to expose Positron, then email me: I'll tell you what happens so you don't have to cringe over each page that follows. Call it a public service on my part!  Rob Weir

* Historical footnote: The 1950s is often viewed by neo-cons are the golden past. It was also a time of paranoia, atomic nightmares, communist witch-hunts, brutal racism, patriarchy run amok, and pressures for conformity that led to rebellion. The Fifties, not the Sixties, was the true era of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Infidelity, divorce, delinquency, and sales of sex mags skyrocketed. Rock music emerged along with rebels such as Beats and civil rights activists. It was also the era with the greatest number of drug addicts in American history: pill-popping housewives!  (For the record, Millennials also have much higher drug consumption rates than Sixties' Baby Boomers.)