Obsidian Wings

jazz trigger alert

by russell

Barry Harris is a jazz pianist who came up in bop era.  He was one of a cohort of brilliant players who came up in Detroit, and over the years he's played with everybody.  He's 90 now, and is kind of one of the last guys standing from that time and generation.

Harris is probably best known as a teacher.  He has, for decades, run regular teaching sessions from a storefront in NYC.  They're basically open to anyone who wants to show up and study.  He runs a community choir, including a children's choir, that is open to folks with really no musical background, and he painstakingly teaches the choristers fairly complicated arrangements by ear.  He's still playing and teaching, now into his 90th year.

He is, briefly, a beautiful player and a beautiful person.

There's a pretty good film profiling Harris, and you for the month of October you can watch it for free on his website.  It's about an hour, but it goes by pretty fast.  If the weirdness and stress of daily life under Trump and COVID are getting to you, and you need a refreshing dose of lightness, love, and beauty, you can check it out here.

I don't think you even have to be a jazz fan to enjoy it.  :)

Art rewards love and devotion with beauty and an uplifted spirit.  If you don't think the jazz part will put you off, check it out and treat yourself to an hour in the company of a humble and humorous master.

Dig it if you can dig it!!

The wages of toxic masculinity

by liberal japonicus

Hope I'm not stepping on Ugh's (greatly appreciated) thread (and that's your place for your COVID bon mots), but I thought I would crack a thread open after a comment by novakant on my observation that a woman going up against Trump would have been the recipe for disaster. I was thinking of American female politicans, novakant suggested that some foreign women might come out better, which is hard to say. (Would Trump pretend he was fluent in German when talking with Merkel? Would the English that came out of his mouth be comprehensible to a non-native speaker? Though I did learn a lot of Japanese phrases when I could make them out)

Just to restate it for folks who just read the posts, I expressed my sympathy for what Hilary must have gone thru having to deal with Trump and I thought that Trump might have even come out as a 'winner' of the debate had he been against any of the previous female candidates (or indeed, any female US politician), because a woman behaving like Biden did would have had her marked as a bitch and any other kind of attempt to get Trump to adhere to some norms would have had the candidate marked as not strong enough to be the president. (one can only imagine the mansplaining) There was a previous potential parallel, when Keir Starmer was quarantined and Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader stood in for him at the PMQ, and BoJo seemed to really dial down his typical clownish behavior. Would that have happened with Trump? No one knows, and I hope everyone realizes that we have the nominee we have, so any refighting of that is a waste of time. (which I hope this post isn't taken as doing). I just find it to be a way to grant perspective if, when these situations come up, to imagine what would have happened had a woman been doing that.

To which novakant replied:

The interesting question is how much of this is due to Trump, US society at large and the current candidates - and how to get out of this bind.

My own take is that very little is "due" to Trump, he's just harnessing it. Likewise for current candidates, though that might have some suggest that it was the Marxist left's fault that they nominated Hilary 4 years ago, like it's the liberals' fault that Dreher votes for Trump. Whatevs.

I'd suggest that the problem is toxic masculinity. Some data, faintly connected. As you scan down the list of celebs who came out, you can notice the ratio of women to men. Of course this plugs into some typical notions of lesbian women (hawt!), gay guys, (not so much), which is nothing new to most of you. But clearly, it seems more of a problem for men to come out than it is for women, largely, I would argue, because masculinity makes the reaction worse.

And I'd juxtapose it with this article on Kimberley Guilfoyle that I think I got from a comment. I won't quote it, but it seems like Guilfoyle is behaving like any number of male execs have. I imagine that she believes (and possibly other women, presumably who support Trump do as well) that women's liberation means that women can act just as badly as men.

Which brings us to novakant's question-how to get out of this bind. The time-honored pattern for this in the US, it seems, is to demand the put upon group behave well enough so as to show the people doing it the error of their ways. Indeed, if the group behaves in any other way, they are disruptive, they don't understand norms, and therefore aren't deserving of enlightened behavior. That sucks imho. It also requires that the group treat themselves as a block. I have some foreign feminist friends who often lament why Makiko Tanaka or Yuriko Koike don't break out, yet to my jaundiced eye, the fact that they are women does not erase the taint of being in the LDP. It's like cheering on Michele Bachman as a representative of feminism. Ivanka got 3/4 of a million in consulting fees, free at last, Thank God almighty, women are free at last!

This takes on an added resonance when we start to deal with the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. This Lithwick piece hits a lot of these points in the context of feminism.

A lot to unpack, but maybe a place to talk about anything other than Trump and Covid.

These scriptwriters are overpaid

by Ugh

I mean, come on.  My 9 year old could have come up with that.  

I haven't been around in a while, I hope everyone is healthy and otherwise doing well.

Open thread.

"It smells like... victory"

by liberal japonicus

The other thread has turned to questions of accent (nothing wrong with that), but if you are like me, and can't help turning that shitstorm around in your head, here's another thread.

Some observations.
Biden was not on the top of my list, but it is hard to imaging a woman 'winning' that debate. Maybe Elizabeth Warren, but having to deal with all of that would probably, I wager, have made the woman come off as unlikable. Might even provide people with a rationalization. So it seems that to defeat an old white man, we had to put up another old white man. Which is telling, in and of itself.

This debate, if anything, has me keenly appreciate what Hilary had to go thru.

Word is that the debate commission is thinking about mic cutting. I cannot tell you how afraid I am if that happens. If Trump were cut off, and it was a situation where Biden could hear him and the audience couldn't, irritation and anger would peg Biden as the grumpy old man. Imagine, the fate of the election being decided by the sound engineer...

This USA today article was interesting
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/09/30/why-therapists-ibram-x-kendi-others-called-debate-triggering/3589329001/

The thing is, if you point this out, the own the libs crowd are going to claim that it is a case of not being able to handle the heat. In fact, it is interesting that all of this moves along the lines of standard abuse tropes, and suggests that these are buried deeply in our society.

I'm wondering what Biden could do. Some have suggested that Biden simply not accept again, though Harris said that Biden is not going to do that, and it is not hard to imagine how it would be spun. Similar would be things like Biden walking off the stage after trying to deal with it, doing something similar to what I heard Edward James Olmos did when asked to do a reboot of Miami Vice, which was to send a video tape of substantial length of him, just staring at the camera silently for the whole time. I know that I said that a woman probably could not 'win' a debate with Trump, but I do wonder what would happen if Biden just had Harris take over for him. Would it fluster Trump? Or would it have him behave even more atrociously?

So, in order to keep the language talkiing going over there, here is this.

Two men on a stage

by liberal japonicus

Here is the Guardian's live blog about it, feel free to drop your own observations here.

The returns

by liberal japonicus

There are people here who might have an informed opinion about what this means.

Tangential thoughts from RGB to Arthur Ashe

by liberal japonicus

This seems a bit too detailed for a comment. I'll start off with what a facebook friend wrote about RGB, which was observing something to the effect that RGB wasn't perfect, she only had one black clerk her entire tenure on the court. I don't know if this is true or not and I didn't really have the energy to check it out and the person didn't say it to dismiss RGB, just made the observation as a little resistance to her beatification.

This has had me thinking about attitudes and growth. Some very interesting quotes from this Dahlia Lithwick piece from 2019 that popped up in the comments
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/ruth-bader-ginsburg-jurist-evolution.html

But also, I think that in that period it seemed she was much less anxious because she wasn’t the only one. And she was very aware that the trailblazing had been done by Justice O’Connor. And then, when O’Connor left in 2005 to take care of her ailing husband—which is, by the way, a whole other feminist story because it was really a thing that the male justices would not have done, she felt—suddenly Justice Ginsburg is the only one, which is a long way of saying that in 2009, when the court argues a case about a little girl in middle school who’s been strip-searched for contraband ibuprofen, I remember sitting in the room for the oral argument, and everybody was making jokes. Justice Antonin Scalia was joking about whether they searched from the outside in or the inside out. And Chief Justice John Roberts was making jokes. And then poor Justice Stephen Breyer starts saying things about, “When I was in high school changing for gym, people would stick things in my underwear.” And of course everybody at this point is doubled over laughing.

And Justice Ginsburg, who never loses her cool, actually gets very angry. And she sort of tunes up her colleagues from the bench and says, “This is nothing like changing for gym class.” And she describes how this child was humiliated while the strip search was going on. And then, she gives an interview, while the case is pending, where she says to Joan Biskupic: I can’t believe that I’m the only woman on the bench who thought that was appalling. And if there were more women on the bench, it would not have been like that. And then she said, which is fighting words for RBG, I don’t think the men share my sensitivities on this. And by the time the case comes down, all the judges, with two exceptions, mostly have conformed entirely to her vision of this as an inappropriate search. But it was her wielding a kind of soft power, and I had never seen her do it until then. That, to me, is when I carbon-date how she started to change.

So how do we go from RGB to Arthur Ashe? Via this

[With guest Arthur Ashe], Cavett instigated the equal prize money debate and Ashe explained his position. “We’ve come to realize, like other sports, our appeal (as tennis players) is about 70% entertainment and 30% sport,” said Ashe on the 1980 telecast in a New York City studio. “And as such, the amount of money that we make or we can command in prize money, is directly related to our box office appeal. What I said was that women don’t deserve the same amount of prize money as men. They don’t. We are not out there making car doors for Ford Motor Company. One example that I like to use is let’s suppose that Caesars Palace (in Las Vegas) was going to have The Carpenters (perform a concert) one week and Frank Sinatra the next week. Now would you pay Frank Sinatra the same that you would pay The Carpenters? Obviously not. You’d pay Frank quite a bit more than you’d pay The Carpenters. For the exact same number of hours.”

“All I was saying was that the caliber or quality of matches put on by a draw of 128 women, in no way, right now in the Fall of 1980, equals the appeal of a draw of the best 128 men. One day the women might command more. But right now it’s not the same. But at the top, there’s no question that Chrissie or Tracy Austin, they are just as powerful as a Borg or a McEnroe. But, unfortunately, in the first round of 64 matches, the top women usually win those matches very easily. Chrissie Evert seldom loses more than two games a set before she gets to the quarterfinal. But it’s almost assuredly one of the sixteen seeds in the men’s will lose in the first or second round.”

The Guardian article on the Original 9 has this

“We’re talking about a different era,” says Julie Heldman, “We’re talking little housewife at home. We’re talking even the men tennis players at the time, who were really, genuinely good people, had this institutionalised misogyny. Arthur Ashe, who later said: ‘Oh boy was I wrong,’ his view was that there should not be any money for women players. Men get married and men should be supporting their wives.”

Everyone is wrong from time to time. It gets to be a problem when you can never be able to admit it.

some charts about demographics

by russell

How representative are the representatives?

The link above will take you to some simple graphs, comparing the demographic profiles of the population at large, vs those of the (D) and (R) members of Congress, for race, religion, and gender.  It will surprise no-one to find that the demographics of the (D)'s in Congress more closely reflect those of the population at large than those of the (R)'s, who are mostly white, male, and Christian.

The (R)'s currently hold the White House and a majority in the Senate.  They hold both in spite of the POTUS losing the popular vote, and (R) Senators representing 15 million fewer people than the (D)'s.  We are also on our way to a 6-3 conservative majority in the SCOTUS.

The (D)'s do hold a majority in the House.

There doesn't need to be a one-to-one correspondence of demographic details between the population as a whole, and the people who represent them in government.  But it does seem reasonable that, in a polity based on representative self-governance, the representatives should be.... representative.  At least approximately.

a few words about the filibuster

by russell

Federalist 58 :

It has been said that more than a majority ought to have been required for a quorum; and in particular cases, if not in all, more than a majority of a quorum for a decision. That some advantages might have resulted from such a precaution, cannot be denied. It might have been an additional shield to some particular interests, and another obstacle generally to hasty and partial measures. But these considerations are outweighed by the inconveniences in the opposite scale.

"In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority. Were the defensive privilege limited to particular cases, an interested minority might take advantage of it to screen themselves from equitable sacrifices to the general weal, or, in particular emergencies, to extort unreasonable indulgences.

Federalist 22 :

To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. ... The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good.

Thoughtful debate is fine.  Insuring that the concerns of minority interests are heard and considered is fine.

The filibuster has become a mechanism for requiring a supermajority for any and every controversial issue.  It's not a Constitutional issue, it's a matter of Senate rules, and it wasn't even a regular matter of Senate practice until well into the 19th C.

I'm not in favor of change for its own sake, and I recognize that changes to established practice often cut more than one way.  All of that said, it's time to get federal governance back to something approaching a functional state.

If getting rid of the filibuster helps make that happen, I'm all for it.

RBG

by liberal japonicus

My mother kept a diary when I was a baby. I've been trying to find it now, but if my memory is correct, it was all in the first person, i.e. my view of the world. However, the day that Robert Kennedy was assassinated, if I am remembering correctly, she changed and wrote half a page about waking up to the news. I'm not writing in anyone else's voice, but I imagine that how my mother felt is the way I'm feeling now.

A thread for discussion.