SETTING THE WAY FORWARD

getting back on track

     Our democratic republic is so far off track even serious, sober and reasoned people talk about the nation coming unglued. 

      Before we get into that, we pause for some natural remedy and fresh air.

California poppies at the coast

artisan bench at Fiscalini Ranch 

avoiding the rocks

correcting a foundation

     

    I've been driving by one of the older homes on Cambria's main street and wondering if it was going to be moved.  

      It has been jacked up and looked like it was ready for a drive. 

    Instead the old foundation has been removed, a new foundation has been built and the house has been leveled. 

     One of the men working on the crew said it looked as though the old foundation, which he described as very old, had been home made. Over time it began to fail and needed to be replaced.

is there a lesson here?

       I think the work above is a personification of what needs to happen to the American experiment-we need to level our house and shore up our foundational principles.

danger signs

      Endorsed insanity:There have always been extremists and kooks but when someone makes the alt right or liberty caucus look normal that is a signal of how deep a descent we are in.  QAnon is madness, real insanity but it is part of the boutique of Trump supporters. 

        Shameful behavior: Sara Huckabee Sanders refusal to say the media is not the enemy of the people is deplorable and will likely earn her a place of ignominy. I felt bad that she was denied service at a restaurant despite the fact that she is paid to lie and willingly works for a known liar. There may have been worse or more conniving press secretaries, but none come to mind. She may face a fate similar to her predecessor who no one takes seriously. Neither of them have a shred of credibility. But refusing to say what even the President's daughter acknowledged, what all but the most bitter and partisan of Trumpistas say, was a new low for a women already at the bottom.  

        Dangerous Behavior: From the first time I saw candidate Trump vilify and use the media contingent following his campaign I was worried. I've been on the receiving end of politicians scorn. We in the media are used to criticism. But when you get an arena full of angry people and you incite more venom, you are way out of bounds and you are pandering, even baiting violence.

         The most recent episode is chilling. Some of those who were taunting, cursing, gesturing obscenely and making threats looked as though they could and would do violence to people who are simply doing their job, fulfilling one of the roles this nation depends on. The press is in the Bill of Rights and is known as the Fourth Estate, the public's watchdog for scoundrels, despots, cheaters and liars. A force to keep politicians and leaders in check. 

        If you have not seen the clips, I urge you to look it up and imagine yourself in the media compound surrounded by those people.

        Playing with fire: Donald Trump chums the crowd and urges them to behave as poorly as he does. We should not be surprised if some horrible violence occurs. Many in the Trump core-base are angry. Listening to or reading their comments gives evidence they are woefully uninformed, poorly educated and easily led. I may be wrong here, but it seems many of them find a cathartic release for what may be disappointing lives. It is almost a perverted religious connection. The "Your Fired" star flipping off all of their own boogie men and enemies. Like a mob. Like the brown shirts.  

        As noted earlier his term "enemy of the people" is a communist party weapon and is used by dictators and strong men. He uses it intentionally to under cut those who challenge his excesses, his lies and his aberrant behavior.

       Flirting with his own demise:Trump's tweet telling Jeff Sessions he should end the Mueller investigation appears to many people more trained and much smarter than me to be an obvious example of "intent" to obstruct justice. Mueller is trying to learn how and how deeply the Russian government interfered with and/or rigged the election. That is something this nation must know. That Trump team mates have been indicted or have pled guilty only underscores why the president wants the investigation to stop. He's tried to discredit it from the beginning as he tries to discredit the media.

         The media is not perfect and errors can be made, but they are our best hope as they have been for more than 200 years to challenge, contest and adversarially try to keep the foundation of the republic level.

          Donald Trump is a horrible person. That he is a Russian stooge is evident. That he has no decorum, no sense of decency has been his life long biography. He has acted like a traitor. We need to know if he in fact colluded with the government that he gave secrets to and with whom he met privately. The Trump presidency is a disease and we need only pay a moments attention to learn how much sicker he is making this democratic republic. 

          See you down the trail.

When We Had Hair...

1969 Program from Hair-London

    There was a time we had hair (as in courage). We, the corporate we; a generation, media, people with ideas and vision.

     We make note it was 50 years ago this April when Hair opened on Broadway. Lana and I saw the London performance a year later. A few scenes follow below, but first  notes about how time has been unkind to the passions of conviction that mid wifed the birth of Hair the musical.

the woman with the curly hair and the stiletto mouth

   I agree with Matt Taibbi's take in Rolling Stone on Michelle Wolf's performance at the White House Correspondents dinner. She said nothing more gross than what the current President has said, except she spoke truth as well as rapier wit. 

   A few years ago several serious journalists and their organizations thought it was unseemly to mix and mingle in the smarmy climes of lobbyists and lawmakers and the press  swilling champagne, seeing and being seen and watching the power tables.

    We need a moment of historical clarification. The role of the media as the Fourth Estate of the American Republic is be a watch dog and monitor. It is by nature a cautious and adversarial relationship. There was a time when being friends with those you cover as a reporter was either out of bounds or were relationships that you built carefully and with ground rules.

    After Wolf did what she does, we witnessed the absurdity of some of these privileged A list alleged journalists criticize the jokes, the jokester and come to the aid  of a faux "victim."  Some of these folks are the very ones to whom the obfuscation, prevarication, and political hackery is directed. 

   The ballroom at the Hilton is as much about careerism, ego, social Darwinism, and pretense as it is about saluting young journalists, giving scholarships and roasting the current regime. 

   When I did my tour as President of one of the nation's oldest press clubs I wrestled with the philosophic issues that came with the job. Years before our club had been opened to non press, including government employees and lobbyists. They helped pay the bills and as nature divined it, the club was a place where a lot of off the record, background as well as observation occurred. But we had ground rules. 

   Full disclosure, over a career I became friends with some of those I covered. I played basketball with a governor, dined with other politicians, hosted spies, feds, and enjoyed adult beverages with any number of apparatchik. But we had ground rules. One of the guys called it "drunk back ground denial," a term of art more than fact. They knew that someday I might be after them. I knew that someday they might deny me information. We knew we could eventually take aim at each other. It was a tight rope walk, but a reality.

    One of the people who was most critical of Michelle Wolf is a person who was a romantic partner of a national security advisor, and who eventually married a chairman of the Fed. Good for them and no doubt there were advances on inside information, but for heavens sake don't apologize for a comic taking her professional shots at a woman who has lied, for her boss, another known liar. 

     Taibbi speculates that Wolfe hit too close to home when she told the alleged journalists in the room they made Trump into the monster he became and now they are advancing their careers, selling books, newspapers and television shows because of him. 

       Back in our day our Gridiron scholarship fundraiser featured a gag newscast-real fake news. The senior anchors and producers of the television stations would spend weeks writing phony and funny news stories, manipulating video tape and being outrageous. Yes, we were in the same kind of  clime with the politicians and the beautiful people but we delivered sarcastic, lampooning and withering ammo, that could be devastating, though appropriate, and got laughs. I can't recall any of our press corp apologizing to the governors, senators, congressmen, lobbyists, basketball coaches or state office holders. It was all about the jokes. But it was a different time. 

     There were no trigger alarms, or micro aggression alerts. But mostly there were no sacred cows and just maybe there was a greater dedication to craft and job and not so much obsession with celebrity.  

        One of the things some of the people who voted for the current President said they disliked was the elitist, insulated, privilege of "Washington." Well, the current regime has no shortage of privileged wealthy, some of whom have been caught taking advantage of the public coffers, so don't you think the press,  there to be a watchdog, should be more like a Michelle Wolf junkyard dog than a lap dog, or pussycat? 

      The Washington Monument will not fall, and the Republic will not dissolve if the Correspondents Dinner and the faux celebrity show it has become, were to change or go away.

it takes hair

    Eventual media giant Robert Stigwood was a mere 33 when he got behind the convention shattering musical playing the Shaftesbury.

       Hair created a stir and evoked lots of reaction. The nudity, sound of the music, lyrics, the frenetic energy and the story were non traditional. 

    Most of the casts, in the US and in London, were young.
We saw Tim Curry, #26 in his earlier personhood. Some of you may remember him from the later Rocky Picture Horror Show.

    

        

      The moon may have been in the Seventh House, and Jupiter may have aligned with Mars, when peace would guide the planets and love would steer the stars. But in 1968 the dawning of the Age of Aquarius had some other heavy players. 

        Hair opened on Broadway just a couple of weeks after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed. It was six weeks later that Bobby Kennedy was killed. It was a couple of months before the Chicago Police Department went on a riotous, rampage beating people at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It was at a time the Viet Nam war was killing thousands. It was the year Richard Nixon was elected President.

       That bold raucous, controversial, convention shattering Tribal Love Rock musical seems so innocent and 50 years later just as hopeful-

        "Harmony and Understanding

        Sympathy and trust abounding

        No more falsehoods or derisions..."

     

        Ready for the mind's true liberation?

        Ready to let the sunshine in?

       It takes hair, metaphorically! 

     See you down the trail.

RELIEF OR THERAPY?

     We are mindful of the weather misery being visited on so many places this winter, so as a momentary refuge we offer an image to warm you.

      Palm Springs in winter is a slice of heaven. We know the opposite. There were so many days when ice and snow crud slashed the view from my office windows, or when I bundled in extra layers and pulled on thermal boots to field an assignment that I would resort to looking at screen savers of California climes. For readers who find themselves needing a change of scenery, these are for you.

Photo courtesy of Marcos

        We wish you the best as you endure. Your summer scenes will return, in time.

      It was about this time of year when I wondered why pioneers and settlers pushing west didn't consider the assaults of winter back east, in the mid west, or in the Great Plains and decide to get the heck out of there as soon as spring arrived.

a tale of two women

      I try to avoid seeing Sarah Huckabee Sanders, deputy press secretary. I've watched decades of White House press briefers and she must be among the worst. Maybe she's smart, but it is not evident. Maybe she has class and a great personality, but again they are not in evidence. She's a horrible mouth piece and the fact she's working for who she does just lowers any skills she might possess and be hiding. 
      It happens I got a glimpse of one of her abusive sessions as I was about to take a stroll along Palm Springs' Walk of Fame. I guess I was grousing to myself about how far we have fallen when, serendipitously, I came upon a star, made poignant by a recent passing in Palm Springs.

what a difference

photo courtesy of uproxx.com

 sour

photo courtesy of allmusic.com

sweet

    I was 12 or 13 when I caught Keely Smith with Louis Prima on television. I was hooked. Rock was in its infancy and if we were tuned to the right radio station we could hear Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson, the Everly Brothers, Duane Eddy, Elvis, Little Richard, Jackie Wilson, and a lot of other stuff that wasn't rock. Female singers were rare. Connie Francis had a hit or two, but she did not smoulder like Keely Smith.

    Prima's band, featuring Sam Butera was hot. A hybrid of sorts-jazz, R&B, big band swing and all with a New Orleans accent and that beautiful Cherokee Irish lass. Hybrid indeed, my introduction to jazz and the start of a young teen lust for Keely Smith.

    In the mental mumbling and rambling I do at the turn of the year, especially this year, that juxtaposition between Huckabee Sanders and the Keely Smith memory lane underscored how much of a chasm there is between how a young lad thought things would turn out and the absurdist reality of the world today, especially datelined Washington.

     So here's some therapy-take a stroll back, even to black and white television when the future looked good, and the present felt good and when it sounded great-and maybe even a little sultry. These are all short-as songs used to be.

Bet they'll make you smile.

Just A Gigolo 

and here's the oldest version of Old Black Magic

(might have been what I saw on tv)

      See you down the trail.