Trying to CAP the Gulf Oil Well

LIVE: Watch the video streams as
BP tries to CAP the Gulf oil spill.
(You may need a plugin to watch the video streams.)

This is AMAZING stuff.

I can see them, right now, trying to cap the bleeding well, LIVE on the PBS site.

There are 12 video streams, 8 of which are live right now, 10 of which were live ten minutes ago, 1 of which shows oil still boiling out. All this over a mile down below the ocean with a pressure of thousands of pounds per square inch in water of just above freezing.

In the midst of all this, there are little fishes swimming in and about the well. "Hello little fishes." *waves to the fishies* I wonder how they'd taste on a cracker with a bit of cheese. Oily, I suspect.

Enjoy the show. With a bit of luck -- and by "a bit" I mean one hell of a lot -- the well might be capped this weekend.

Failing that, the two relief wells continue to be bored, with BP asserting they remain on track for a mid-August interception with the blown well. Hitting a target seven inches wide, after going through a mile of water and then digging down another four to five miles through rock, sand, and other nasty gunk.

Say what you will about BP -- Lord knows I've said plenty, starting with the word "fuck" and including the words "arrogant" and "assholes", repeated in varied combinations and grammatical forms -- however this kind of engineering genuinely amazes me.

Come on BP. Make it bloody happen. Today.
LIVE: watch for yourself.

H/T: Slate -- 20,000 Leaks Under the Sea: The insanity of deepwater oil wells.

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I Shall Be Released

Senator Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy—February 22nd 1932 ~ August 25th 2009

When the news slipped out two weeks ago that Senator Edward Kennedy was pressuring Massachusetts state officials to ramp up the speed of their succession plans for his eventual exit from the Senate, it didn't take a genius to surmise that things were probably not getting any better for him health-wise. In fact, when I heard the news, it was clear to me that it would probably be a matter of weeks when he would leave this mortal coil.

As it has tuned out, the remaining time was but days.

There will be eulogies and essays, and yes, an awful lot of grave dancing on the part of the lunatic fringe that is screeching about everything and nothing at all these days. These are the expected things when a political / pop cultural / American near-royal giant like Ted Kennedy passes away. For those who loved him and those who reviled him, the thing that is undeniable is his impact on this country over the last forty-plus years. He was pretty much the last of a class (and quite possibly a family) of politicians who practiced what is called “Noblesse Oblige”—the idea that those “to the manor born” owe a special something to those who were not. In the society and business worlds, Noblesse Oblige played itself out through philanthropy. In the political world, it manifested itself in people like Ted Kennedy's expending herculean effort to initiate, support, and ram through legislation aimed at leveling the playing field in America so that those who were not of means or having access to the levers of power could live their lives with an extra modicum of comfort.

Ted Kennedy did this with more gusto than anybody in the halls of Washington since the late Harlem Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Considering his pedigree and family fortune, he could have lived a life of absolute sloth, making nary a positive ripple in the world as we know it...but he didn't. He shepherded legislation that expanded education opportunities for the poor, increased access to health care, fought for a woman's right to control her own body, stood for those coming to our shores getting a chance to live the words at Lady Liberty's feet, went toe-to-toe against South African apartheid, sought an end to disability discrimination, and yes—stood against the opposition of Ronald Reagan and a supplicant press in fighting draconian cuts in government funding that would have damaged this country far worse than what the 40th President managed to do without his efforts. He was the last “classic” Fighting Liberal—of that New Deal-affected generation when those types...unabashedly wore that mantle and proudly kicked ass while sporting it. Kennedy was a iron-rooted bulwark against the country's rightward drift over the last thirty-five years, capable of either cagey parliamentary procedure to foil his retrograde opponents behind closed doors or calling down righteous verbal thunder in the well of the Senate to publicly rebuke, embarrass and sometimes chasten them into reconsideration.

Taken superficially, the whole of Edward M. Kennedy would make some think of him as having lived down from his potential. “He could have been more” is the mantra of those who skim the record carelessly. To look at the obvious—a royal-class ascension to the Presidency Brother Jack attained and left us all-too-young in, and Bobby seemed aimed and fired arrow-like towards before an assassin's bullet denied him—Ted's getting nowhere close could myopically be viewed as a failing. But a closer perusal shows us that his remaining a Senator for as long as he did, and in so doing, honing his skills as a dogged legislator unfettered by the constraints of appealing to all, but answering to a progressive constituency and ultimately the side of right for millions beyond Massachussetts may well have been a better thing for us all, and perhaps even for him. Because for all of his fire and drive, there was a blanket of humility over him, a denial of an destined omnipotence...a certain humbling partially born of the aforementioned Noblesse Oblige and clearly some innate selflessness. But what we all know of him as he lived his life in the fishbowl of a quickly maturing media (unlike Jack and Bobby who ascended when outlets were fewer and the presenters more...charitable, shall we say) is that un-hideable mistakes, a thrill-seeking recklessness and yes, fate were the things that while dashing those hopes for the ultimate prize, brought the hereditary Kennedy 'Presidentialomania' to heel and forced him to play the real-er, more performance-demanding part of 'Senator' on the smaller stage.

He was a functioning voluptuary—hopelessly sprung on the easy access to every bacchanalian excess his family's prominence and wealth facilitated. Food. Drink. Women. And all of the wild combinations therein. As the last in the procession of big-dreamed Kennedy boys, what with Jack having already claimed the golden ring, and Bobby's eye drawing a bead while on the political merry-go-round, Teddy thought he could afford in his youth to be a bit more loosey-goosey. This was not the case. The road is littered with all manner of reckless deeds that would blow up in his face...but none worse than the infamous Chappaquiddick incident. There are times in all of our lives when bravery must win out all costs, and many of those times in our human-ness...we fail. We maul ourselves for the rest of our days over these lost chances. For Ted Kennedy, the shame of Chappaquiddick could never be subsumed. Perhaps there was nothing he could have done to change the final, tragic outcome, but there would always be more that he could have been done that while difficult—would have been right, and shown far more integrity than the short-sighted machinations of that fateful evening.

He would labor under that cloud until the day he died. It would effectively short-circuit the more grandiose plans down the line for him. But it would humble him, and in many ways, force him to work harder than he ever thought he would.

He lived perhaps the most public life of blunt-force “Catholic Guilt” this country's ever seen. His every day public service was a bold penance for a personal life that was to put it mildly...more than a tad unkempt. He bobbed about in that guilt like some giant, furrow-browed, in-utero child surrounded by fluid. Oh, he would try to break free of the thing from time to time—as he tried one last time during the 1980 Presidential election season, but he knew even then that the bubble was inescapable. No one would forget—and really, no one should have. As to forgiveness, well...that was relative. Long-time haters who fairly hissed his family surname (for decades) would revel in crude and spiteful reminding of everyone about the incident. Friends and supporters would understand the human frailty in his panic and self-serving actions after the event, but still harbored more than a small amount of resentment over his cavalierly letting a chance of saving America from the scourge of the Reagan years slip away. “Yes...you screwed up Teddy, we understand that—but you also probably screwed us up too. 'Sigh!' ”

That guilt over perceived “let-downs” shone through in his mien for the last thirty-five years of his life—a shaggy, craggy almost over-thoughtfulness worn on his face every day. But that regret over roads untaken (and self-detoured) did not destroy him. He seemed to plumb meaning from those self-consumptive depths—knowing that he had taken so much from himself, he poured that energy into seeing to it that others who had less than he, would get more. It turned out that he, the most publicly flawed of the Kennedy princelings would in the end do the most as a public servant for the most people. Not merely because of fate's three-card monte game where he would end up pulling the longevity card instead of the ultimate power card, but due moreso to his need to atone, and a superhuman desire to be remembered for having done good things—repeatedly—for people who needed a voice and a hand on the levers of power to look out for them. Folks will always remember Jack and Bobby for the way they made them feel about America, and the grand, bold strokes they painted on history's canvas—the eye-popping awe of the JFK's NASA Space Program and Bobby's “Walk a mile in their shoes” empathy of his 1968 campaign tour of the country's socio-economic underbelly. Ted Kennedy was a long-form political pointillist, hashing out over the last thirty years or so of his public service a focused, progressive agenda stuffed with the aforementioned legislative highlights and a supremely impressive multitude of smaller, constituency-level crusades that brought his from-Olympus influence to bear on issues affecting the everyman—unlike many of his co-horts in the Senate who were bought and paid for and beholden to to the interests of fat cats alone.

I would find myself chuckling sometimes at the sentimentality of ‘folks” who hung those beatific portraits of JFK and RFK in their living rooms-cum-altars to their martyr-ific, tragic 60's majesty. Good men (for the most part) they were, but in the grand scheme of things, not quite the selfless, dutiful demi-gods our hagiographical, death-scarred memories make them out to be. If it were based on sheer quality and quantity of deeds done for those needing a pull upwards, a portrait of Sen. Edward Kennedy would be the one displayed above the others.

That will not happen, though. His foibles were too un-royal and too public to allow for such an anointing. Which in the end...is actually good...because we can judge him as a human being honestly and in the simple terms of his good and bad, and if you look at the record, said good not merely outweighs the bad, but is amplified in that it was almost invariably a selfless good. Let that be the “portrait” we display invisibly of him—of inalienable rights preserved, of illnesses that didn't bankrupt, of a poor person's college degree earned, or a racist system shattered by righteous opposition.

Hang that in the “living room” of your memory proudly.

Everyone sadly knew his diagnosis was a terminal one when we heard it last year. The hope from many was that he would live to see an America where his progressive idealism would wield the power to fix what had ailed—especially since the damaging Reagan years. He had held on...past Reagan, two Bushes and a Congress whose serrated pendulum swung hard against his causes, but this was his toughest fight yet. He willed himself back to the well of the Senate to fight for right, and then back to the podium to audaciously endorse then-Senator Barack Obama—and then saw him claim the Presidency that had ironically eluded him as the younger man hitched his star to the senior senator's own long-held beliefs. Beliefs a long-suffering America found herself belatedly ready to embrace at last this past November. It was but a matter of time for Senator Kennedy and that alarm he sent to his colleagues in-state was as close to a self-administered last rites as we've ever seen. His causes live on though...and it is up to those who are with us now...those who have benefited from his efforts and those who he thought worthy enough to continue the fight in his name and with his blessing. to do just that.

For Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy, the battles are at long last, done, and peace has finally come.

Godpseed Senator, on your journey home.

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Cockpit Tape - US Air Flight 1549

FAA Releases Audio Tape and Transcript

The transcripts are amazing. As are the audio tapes.

Especially

• New York Tracon
• Teterboro Tower Local Control
• Cab Coordinator Position

I read them all. The calm professionalism blew me away.

I've been in air emergencies -- low fuel, inside a hurricane, lost communications in IFR conditions, and worse. It can get VERY hairy up there very damn fast.

These people were SO damn fine.

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Every Voice Lifted And Singing

Yes, The Most Soulful White Man To Ever Dig Grooves Into Vinyl Was On The Mall Too...

In the bevy of events planned for this weekend / week-start of the whole world's singing “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” with the “B”-side of “Funky President”, the “We Are One” concert on the Mall was the one event I was not necessarily up for. Outdoor concerts just generally sort of leave me a bit cold. I hate how the elements can muck with the audio, and contending with huge crowds in the hundreds of thousands all trying to get home at once is a serious comedown. Did I say they leave me “cold”? Oh yes. They do. And in some cases, literally. Extreme heat is bad enough at an outdoor performance, as I found out at Diana Ross' infamous Central Park summer concert that was punctuated by a massive and sudden wind and thunderstorm, but ass-clenching cold is a whole other smoke. Or icicle if you will. If you've been in the northeast this week, you have no doubt felt the “Hawk's” bite as winter has moved in forcefully. It's cold here in D.C. too. Everyone who came down from New York brought ungainly-assed bags of extra coats and sweaterings. Getting about in the cold was going to be tough enough, but standing there in it for hours for a concert—I don't care WHO is singing—was going to be a bitch. But, with press credentials in tow for what would end up being amazing positioning, off we went.

D.C.'s Metro subway system is as I remembered it—pretty damned efficient, but still echoing of the seventies design styling so prevalent when it was primarily constructed. And folks, we used the hell out of it yesterday, and will today and tomorrow as getting around town by car is increasing in difficulty by the hour. Streets are being barricaded with huge cement slabs fork-lifted from flatbeds every few minutes to secure the place. We drove to the Hilton downtown, bailed there and walked down to Dupont Circle and nabbed the Metro to Metro Center where we transferred to the Vienna / Fairfax Blue (Orange) line and got off at Foggy Bottom—a place with a name so entertaining, that every American citizen should go there once, just to say “Yeah, I rode out to Foggy Bottom...yep.” in their lives. From there we trundled down to the Lincoln Memorial end of the National Mall where the concert was taking place. Let me amend that. Thanks to our press credentials, we were just off to the side of stage left and the orchestra pit. Close as all hell, and well within the view of the sharpshooters who binocular-swept the area for troublemakers. Press from all over the world was there, and some familiar faces, too. David Corn of Mother Jones stood next to me, peering over the riser at things going on, too. And then...

There was a bombastic blurt of the “HBO Feature Presentaion” theme from the loudspeakers, eliciting a massed leap of surprise from most, and perhaps a few sudden urine icicles of shock from others. Joe and Jill Biden came out from behind a moving, trompe l'oeil wall and I looked down the mall for the first time and saw the massive crowd in full for the first time—stretching all the way back to the Capitol dome. This was not Thursday night at Wingate Field in Brooklyn to see a much-decimated version of Morris Day and The Time kludge through four tunes with 5,000 folks “listening”.

This...was a crowd.



The Bidens stood at a podium and then The President-Elect and his wife were introduced and the Mall fairly twinkled like a Christmas tree as thousands of flashes went off to catch their entrance. The four stood there waving, and then went right—to their seats behind a bullet-proofed glass partition. No hates for the fellas as they sat with their wives and the adorable Malia and Sasha, who would tuck her head between her mom's left arm and side for warmth and a little extra love. Denzel Washington led off things as the first actor of many speak and quote Lincoln and other figures from history and how they related to the nascent Obama presidency.



These folks were interstitial—dropped in between the acts that performed. From a “Why him?” appearance by Kal Penn, to a “When Is he gonna break into a mock-metal guitar howl and air guitaring frenzy?” (But he never did!) Jack Black, to the odd but rewarding pairing of Steve Carell and Jamie Foxx for a reading, capped off by Foxx's eerie impersonation of Senator Obama's Grant Park speech, you never knew what was coming next. Tom Hanks' appearance brought not groans, but a few “Sigh! Well of course Tom Hanks. Mr. Gravitas...blah-blah-blah” from some in the crowd. But he was good. Typically every-mannish and good guy-esque, Hanks was Hanks and most said “Thanks”—for his statesmanly handling of his part.






The music though...the performers were a whole 'nother smoke.

The festivities kicked off with “The Boss” Bruce Springsteen doing the do with a live Gospel choir augmented blast of “The Rising”. Bruce was intense, guitar held high up, as is his want when he's really feeling it. A smart move to kick off with one of the best live performers in Rock over the last 25 years. A rousing start indeed!



Southern Soul Goddess Bettye LaVette and Jon Bon Jovi sang a stunning rendition of “A Change Is Gonna Come”—with LaVette's Memphis horn-like voice, sweet and squalling, and Bon Jovi's noting for me, (for the first time) an odd, Sam Cooke-ish influence (more on Sam later). Jon Bon Jovi can flat-out sing. And didn't seem to look at the massive, lyric-crawling TelePrompter even once. End of story, folks.



Will.I.Am and Sheryl Crow, who last teamed up in Denver for the convention were a little off with their rendition of Bob Marley's “One Love”. A flubbed note here and there and a bit of disconnection between the two kind of washed that performance out. Eh.

Usher's and Shakira's opening take on Stevie Wonder's “Higher Ground” was a tight-wire act, with many wondering if Usher would break into some of his signature moves—spins, spine-snaps and crucifixion poses, and the rest fearing Shakira's “hips not lying” and Michelle suddenly having to slap hands over Malia and Sasha's eyes over the ensuing display. Thankfully, this did not transpire, but what did next was stupendous. The song's scribe, one Steveland Morris, a.k.a. Stevie Wonder emerged on piano and was as Stevielicious as ever, elevating the song to the ground its lyrics inferred. When Stevie gets to hammering out block chords with his left and hitting those jazzy light counterpoints with his right while singing, he starts killing it, folks. He had Barack and Michelle on their feet stomping and clapping the two and four with more perfection than any other President and First Lady in memory—sorry Bill and Hillary. Stevie found the pocket, and took everybody else in with him. He ended his time with a melismatic acapella singing of Barack Obama's name to the tune of his “Take Me Up To Paradise” as he was led off. Just an impromptu, emotion-filled blurt that kind of summed up the feelings of many of the assembled.

Garth Brooks was a high point. I've never seen him live, but have heard that he is a blazing performer. You'd best believe that. His energy is next-level. He ran to the lip of the stage and you thought he'd perhaps stage-dive into the orchestra pit, he was so fired up. He did a pitch-perfect “American Pie”, roaring through the song and looking heavenward with glee. He medley-segued into The Isley Brothers' “Shout!” with the massed hundreds of thousands pogo-ing in all the right spots as you looked down the Mall. He turned and “conducted” the choir along, cajoling them into a frenzy with the crowd. He had the press section jumping as well, and I admit to being fully ready to fall on my back and “waterbug” like John Belushi in “Animal House” when the time came...but thankfully for all gathered, I chilled. He ended his segment with a heart-pumping “We Shall Be Free”, with him skipping across the stage, whipping off his wireless mic and hat, and again Toscanini-ing the choir into the D.C. sky with their voices. I don't like “Country” music, but this son-of-a-bitch rocked the bells yesterday. I now understand those who've raved about his stage presence. Totally.



And then, there was James Taylor. “JT” is one of my favorite all-time performers. He is for me, one of the most naturally “soulful” White performers who've ever released a record or mounted a stage. You see, “Soul” isn't a sound. It's a feeling. There have been folks like The Righteous Brothers' Bill Medley who could sort of get the sound, if not quite the feel, and those like the dreadful Michael Bolton who think that “Soul” is vocal stress, grimacing, and histrionics. That ain't soul, foilks. Soul is a bouncy, singing from the very heart—its beat and the whoosh of blood after its thump. It's easy and just sort of natural. It's never forced. It skates between beats and lands after a timed hover...justso and makes you go “Mmmmph!” when it's right. James Taylor does this easily (Along with George Michael and the much unheralded Boz Scaggs). There's a Country, folk-y sound to him and a simultaneous and free-flowing bit of the Sam Cooke sound to his style. Little vocal runs on a lyric, doubling the beat, adding breaths and ad libs and landing on that “Mmmmph!” note. Taylor came out alone with his baby blue Strat singing his classic “Shower The People” and sounding as good as ever, his slightly nasal twang curling the ends of his smooth tenor notes as we've always heard it do. He was joined by the ubiquitous John Legend and Jennifer Nettles. Taylor was able to do more with less (in my mind), complementing on his fills unlike Legend and his tendency to over-sing when he should be supporting as a background player. Legend's leads on the Taylor chestnut kind of reeked of, “Watch me take this song and make it my own with its owner right next to me!”

It didn't work John...sorry.

Taylor wrested his song back from Legend's tune-twisting hands and brought it back to the sing-along it was meant to be—and not the one-upmanship show it could have become. And he exhibited more effortless “Soul” than JL could conjure with far more work involved. Take a note, br'uh...and take it easy. It won't hurt you.


The show was capped off with Springsteen returning for a rousing “This Land Is Your Land” with one of its venerable old-school interpreters, Pete Seeger, plaid-shirted and banjo in hand as you've always remembered him. As the song hit the three-quarter mark, Seeger swapped with Springsteen, letting The Boss hit the main melody as he took the 'tween moments to presage the next line quickly, neatly and with such a breezy effervescence that you easily forgot that he was 89 years old—until you remembered he's had that white beard for the entire forty years since you first saw him on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour”. This unabashed former young Communist, and later civil rights activist whose decidely left-of-center views would hold him hard in the sights of wingnut central from the days of McCarthy until now...now stood at Lincoln's feet as a guest of a president and was ushering him into office on a musical wave of positivity. The Boss, feeling it again brought his guitar up high, to hear those notes up close, and he looked over at Seeger and smiled a “This is unbelievable!” smile and closed his eyes to strum a little harder seemigly savor the moment. Beyoncé would come out and lead all who performed—spoken and sung—in a well-turned “America, The Beautiful”, with Stevie chiming in on harmonica and everyone else assembled, including many on the Mall proper filling in “We Are The World” style in unison. The diva did not fail, saving up a big, high note whoop for the song's end while radiating an rare (for her) understated fabulousness. Not the most lyrically expressive singer, as she like Legend is also prone to over-tickle a melody to where nothing stands out, she turned in a nice job on this one. Still more eye candy to me (and what eye candy she is, honestly) than a voice to be reckoned with, she was surprisingly good. And that's a lot coming from me as I'm still hating on her a bit for her exuberant performance while in Destiny's Child for Bush's 2000 Inaugural Ball at the behest of Education Secretary and shyster from her home town of Houston, Rod Paige. The “Crazy In Love” video did a lot (ahem!) to move me into “B's” camp, but as for her singing, which can get a little screechy, I give her a thumbs-up here. Very “Inaugural-icious” as she might intone.

With that, we were done and backtracking on the Metro to our base in Arlington for the night. Travel back was much easier than coming in, thanks to the many native Washingtonians who were so courteous and helpful with us getting around. A stop in Dupont Circle for food, and then home for the night where we passed out after many, many hours runnin, plannin' and writin'.

In the end...it was worth every one of the recuperative forty winks we got.

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Obama Job Application Crosses The Line

Powder Cocaine. Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory, State of Alaska, June, 2008. Photographer unknown.

“Take This Job and Shove It”

The 63 question job application from the Obama team is insane.

Graphic The New York Times.

Raw Story

"If you have ever sent an electronic communication, including but, not limited to an email, text message or instant message that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the president-elect if it were made public, please describe."

Potential applicants are also asked to detail every speech, newspaper column or blog post they have written and must even provide the URL of any websites in which they feature including Facebook or MySpace.

They must also list every cohabitant for the last 10 years and say whether they have ever owned a gun.

Obama has also published stringent new rules governing the terms under which lobbyists who petition the federal government can work on his transition.

If they are not put off by the stringent personal disclosures required, potential government workers can pore through the "Plum Book," a listing of over 7,000 senior level government jobs released on Wednesday.

Four thousand of the jobs are political appointments, and 1,100 require confirmation by the Senate.

The listings by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee -- of which Obama is a member -- include such top jobs as US Representative to the United Nations and administrator for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The tough posting of US coordinator for Afghanistan is listed as vacant, as Obama insists that the United States must refocus its military strategy on battling Taliban and Al-Qaeda remnants.

But there are also more obscure appointments up for grabs.

Someone is wanted for the post of deputy assistant director for endangered species in the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

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The New York Times

The questionnaire includes 63 requests for personal and professional records, some covering applicants’ spouses and grown children as well, that are forcing job-seekers to rummage from basements to attics, in shoe boxes, diaries and computer archives to document both their achievements and missteps.

Only the smallest details are excluded; traffic tickets carrying fines of less than $50 need not be reported, the application says. Applicants are asked whether they or anyone in their family owns a gun. They must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages.

The application also asks applicants to “please list all aliases or ‘handles’ you have used to communicate on the Internet.”

The first question asks applicants not just for a résumé, but for every résumé and biographical statement issued by them or others for the past 10 years — a likely safeguard against résumé falsehoods, one Clinton administration veteran said.

Most information must cover at least the past decade, including the names of anyone applicants lived with; a chronological list of activities for which applicants were paid; real estate and loans over $10,000, and their terms, for applicants and spouses; net worth statements submitted for loans, and organization memberships — in particular, memberships in groups that have discriminated on the basis of race, sex, disability, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.

There are no time limits for some information, including liens, tax audits, lawsuits, legal charges, bankruptcies or arrests. Applicants must report all businesses with which they and their spouses have been affiliated or in which they have had a financial stake of more than 5 percent. All gifts over $50 that they and their spouses have received from anyone other than close friends or relatives must be identified.

Just in case the previous 62 questions do not ferret out any potential controversy, the 63rd is all-encompassing: “Please provide any other information, including information about other members of your family, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the president-elect.”

The answer could duplicate the response to Question 8: “Briefly describe the most controversial matters you have been involved with during the course of your career.”

For those who clear all the hurdles, the reward could be the job they wanted. But first there will be more forms, for security and ethics clearances from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of Government Ethics.

There's more...

This is bullshit.

Is this job application legal?

It goes WAY over the line.

Let's distinguish between Security Clearances and Political Vetting.

I'll tell the FBI, NSA, or Secret Service, anything they want to know. Their clearance processes work and they keep their files secure. If someone leaks a file, it's a felony.

That's not this.

The Obama team is vetting prior to hiring. To cover their political asses, they're saying, "Tell us ALL your deepest, darkest secrets; we'll tell you if we're hiring you."

Yeah... Right.

Like it makes sense to give professional political operatives, HR people no less, your deepest, darkest, most personal secrets, along with your medical and tax records going back years. Then TRUST THEM. Because they work for the President-Elect, so they won't fuck you over, no Sir, nuh-uh.

Other than the on the transition website, which goes further than the Bush Administration's, there's no assurance, absolutely none that they won't use everything you tell them to fuck you, your mother, your wife and husband, sons and daughters, your dog, and get you fired from your current job as well.

Some of the people on the transition team may have political grudges against you or may see an opportunity to fuck you or your organization over in order to gain points with some other political faction. And you'll never know who screwed you.

It isn't as if your Obama job application is a Top Secret FBI file with felony charges for violating national security. Because it's just a job application for political vetting, not a FBI security file; that only comes later AFTER you're hired.

So go ahead, hand some 20-30 year old political staff the political equivalent of blackmail video-tapes of you having a torrid affair with Bill O'Reilly, surrounded by luffas and candy you stole from children.

Do you even know if the Obama team's IT system is secure? The FBI system is. Any system the Obama team just designed, arguably is not. I'm just saying.

Do I really think the transition team is going to screw people over on this stuff? No, I actually don't. There are people on the transition team I know and trust. Trust deeply, actually. *waves*

But my point here is about CHECKS AND BALANCES. No one should be forced to submit to political vetting (and trust their public identity to non-existent assurances that their identity won't be destroyed by a trial balloon or a tactical leak for political purposes by the Obama team) on hiring decisions PRIOR to initial hiring.

Instead, the Obama team should make a conditional offer to folks, contingent on their being vetted successfully. It's also fine if people choose to be vetted in advance to speed things along, however these questions simply can not be taken for granted as just a step in the process; the questions are too intrusive, too personal, and the people reading them are too untrained -- this is the first Obama Administration. It isn't like the FBI who has been around a long, long time.

During the heyday of the Internet Boom in the 90s, kids in Silicon Valley used to think they should work 80-100 hour work weeks because they were building a new, brighter future. Their boss would bring in a foosball table, a cook, and all the Jolt Cola and pizza they could handle. Oh... and sometimes, their pay would be late. But what the heck; they were building a bigger, brighter future for the world. Most of those companies are still talked of... at fuckedcompany.com.

Same thing happened during the heyday of the Consciousness raising period in the 70s & 80s at est, at Lifespring, Mind Dynamics, Scientology, and hundreds more. People with good intentions volunteered collectively many thousands of hours...and the parent organization made a bundle, because the volunteers failed to distinguish between contributing to others and contributing to the stockholders. The volunteers weren't stockholders, you see. But to this day, almost all of the volunteers still talk about the "value" they got out of volunteering. The stockholders (if you can find one; they're rare) talk about all the damn money they made out of the volunteers. Amazing how that works. Except when they're around the volunteers. Then the stockholders talk about how much value they got out of their relationship with the volunteers. *laughs*

The Millennials have been raised that nothing is off limits, that there is no privacy, and that has impacted all of us who are now alive. They're wrong, and those of us who are middle-aged, know it. Lots of things are off limits, outside of family or a valid security or criminal investigation. Applying for a job should NEVER be an invitation to open up someone like a book.

To ask these questions of anyone in the context of a job interview is massively arrogant. Make a preliminary offer first, then run them through poltical vetting. But to demand all of this before making the offer bespeaks arrogance which is beneath Obama. (I'm betting this does not personally have his hand on it. Oh yes, he is that arrogant; he'd just never have set it up this stupidly. The process lacks elegance, it lacks taking care of people. It lacks Obama's personal touch. This was set up by staff who don't quite get his vision.)

There are incidents, issues, and areas in life which people have spent years to decades closing behind them, making the nightmares STOP. To have to rip all that open again for a jumped-up HR department, just so they can see if they are interested? Fuck them.

Is this even legal? I know it wouldn't be anywhere else. Or is this another one of those bullshit situations where the Executive and Congress have exempted themselves from the same laws the rest of the United States must live under. Because if I were hiring people for GNB, I sure as shit couldn't ask a potential hire these questions and base hiring decisions on them. I'd get my ass sued and rightly so.

Pretense, Social Hypocrisy, in pursuit of looking good, ass-covering, and Style over Substance... That is what REPUBLICANS do. It is what Joe Lieberman specializes in.

Obama was elected to knock this crap off.

An ENORMOUS number of the best people in the United States are too adult to EVER submit to this type of childish game playing.

I won't.

If this means I'll never work for the President, well, fuck it.

If President-Elect Obama with his cocaine use is too much of a chicken-shit to use me and grownups like me, then really, he and the transition team can shove it up their hypocritical asses.

There's more...

Campaign For America's Future

A New New Deal

This is where our beloved Sara writes, when she isn't at GNB.

Campaign for America's Future is a major progressive think tank, providing deep strategic work, as well as transformative policy initiatives.

Their slate of writers is among the best in the world.

On Election Day, Sara hit a home run. Go. Read. Now.

I read CAF daily. Highly, highly recommended.

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You Heard It Here First...

“Nearly Eight Months Ago Today, GNB Put The Gollum Meme In Play...”

A week or so ago, a “new” McCain comparative made the rounds in several prominent places media-wise.

It was a noting of similarities between the dangerously flawed John McCain and the almost pitiful Gollum / Smeagol character from Tolkien's “Lord Of The Rings” Saga.

Crooks and Liars noted The Daily Show's Jon Stewart picking up the mantle...

We loves the bill! We hates the bill! We loves the bill… hates the bill!

That’s an unfair joke…it’s an unfair joke because Gollum is an old man, corrupted by his quest for ultimate power and…oh.

And the Times' Op-Ed doyenne Gail Collins took her swings at the big, fat softball of McCain's obvious pop-culture twin:

Remember how we used to joke about John McCain looking like an old guy yelling at kids to get off his lawn? It’s only in retrospect that we can see that the keep-off-the-grass period was the McCain campaign’s golden era. Now, he’s beginning to act like one of those movie characters who steals the wrong ring and turns into a troll.

During that last debate, while he was wandering around the stage, you almost expected to hear him start muttering: “We wants it. We needs it. Must have the precious.”

Even my man Keith Olbermann teed up McCain for the tough Tolkien takedown last week:

“And now, our No. 1 story on the COUNTDOWN, McCain as Gollum in "Lord of the Rings." Bringing his own set of brush strokes, comedian Richard Lewis presently. It's not his name-never mind.”

I don't know what brought these folks all to this point last week, but we here at the Group News Blog can say unequivocally that we were on that angle MONTHS AGO. McCain as Gollum? February 8th, 2008, folks. Eight months ago.

Wanna see it? Well...here it go!

(CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE)



So, for the record Jon, Gail and Keith, perhaps it was just “great minds” thinking alike, but THIS was where that shpiel got its start—replete with the infamous disturbing graphic image. And to you, dear readers, know that this place you come to day after day is here for you, more often than a little bit, ahead of the curve—and we thank you for coming by every time...every mouse click through.

And you may NOT be alone in digging on this place for fun, opinion, and maybe a little bit of thought-provoking analysis.

Say “hi” to our possible “lurkers of prominence”, whydontcha?

“Hi, guys!”

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Still Waters Run Deep

A little bit of “me” died this past weekend when I heard about the passing of Levi Stubbs, the fearsomely talented lead singer of Motown's “The Four Tops”.

There are what you call “sense” memories. And one of my deepest sense memories is the piercing, emotional baritone (reaching tenor notes!) of Levi Stubbs singing at his peak powers. The beginning of my retentive memories starts at three years old—The Summer of 1966—and the voice of Levi Stubbs was not only ubiquitous, but hitting on all cylinders that year, thanks to his growing talent and to the rapidly maturing songwriting craft of Eddie and Brian Holland, and Lamont Dozier, Motown Records' hitmaking tunesmiths par excellence. The songs “Shake Me, Wake Me (When It's Over)”, “Seven Rooms Of Gloom”, “Standing In The Shadows Of Love”, the driving single “Bernadette”, and lastly, but not least, “Reach Out”—that ominous, pleading paean to devotion were all major mega-hits in that first year of memories for me.

Stubbs' voice leapt from curbside and window-silled speakers all over Harlem in 1966-'67, knifing through the oft-times murky Motown mono mixes he sang over. He was, one of the five best Soul singers of the 1960's (The other four being The Temptations' David Ruffin, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, and The Dells' Marvin Junior), capable of soft balladeering and the rough-and-tumble shout—sometimes within the same song. He had a pleading, cajoling tone, and was at his best amidst a swirling maelstrom of sound, his voice fighting through the wind if you will, especially on songs like the aforementioned “Standing In The Shadows Of Love“ “Bernadette” (with that almost screamed “Bernadette!” solo blast at the song's 7/8 mark) and the magnum opus “Reach Out”.

That last song stays with me to this day, with Stubbs embattled vocal declaring his faithfulness to the end—how no one, or no thing would stop him from being there for “you”. It was gruff and heroic, yet shot through with an almost “yelp” of human vulnerability. He powered through the tune's swirling sonics with that mighty, and near-inimitable voice of his (only “The Chairmen Of The Board's” General Johnson could come close stylistically—listen to their “Give Me Just A Little More Time”—a post-Motown Holland-Dozier-Holland gem sporting a decent Stubbs impersonation) and cemented it as a sixties musical landmark, epitomizing “The Motown Sound” with perfection.

His rich voice and deft handling of the challenging song (Stubbs' could do show tunes and soft-pop covers as well as the raspy R&B shouters and while he was a baritone, his Motown hits were written in tenor range, giving his sound a more insistent, edgy timbre) made it an automatic classic, but it was twenty-some-odd years later when hearing that song would give me chills all over again. Henry Hampton used it in a segment of his brilliant “Eyes On The Prize” documentary. I watched that segment, Chapter 7: The Time Has Come in rapt attention, but it was the climax of the “March Against Fear” footage in it when The Four Tops' “Reach Out” rises ominously in the audio mix. The song takes on a whole different meaning, almost anthemic in its sound and message.

Listen from the 1:40 point to 3:05 here:



It wasn't the first song of its time to serve “double duty” as pop tune and protest song, but it was one of the rare semi-unintentional ones (along with Martha & The Vandellas' “Dancin' In The Streets”). I asked a few people who were older than I about this song and to a letter, they noted it as a theme for the time, a couple of them citing Stubbs' indomitable sound as a near marching order.

But in spite of all the stupendous talent within him, Levi fought off the thing that claimed virtually every one of his contemporaries who led a major vocal group—namely the siren song of record company execs warbling tunes of solo stardom. As one of the best singers working, Stubbs was tempted numerous times to leave his fellow “Tops”. How could he NOT be? His sound was so distinctive, and a proven hit-machine—the Billboard™ Pop numbers show it unequivocally.

But he never did. Stubbs stayed with the group from its inception as “The Four Aims” in 1954 until 2000 when illness from cancer and a series of strokes would effectively silence his mighty sound. The lone surviving original member of the Tops, Duke Fakir had this to say about his old friend and groupmate.

“He had such power,” Fakir said. “He had a baritone voice and a tenor range. He could do anything with his voice. He could take you anywhere with it. He could take you to a love scene. He could take you dancing. He could take a great old standard and make you feel like you're right there in that song. Just an amazing voice, an amazing interpreter, an amazing man.”

Even more importantly, Fakir noted, Stubbs “was dedicated to us. He had many chances and many offers to be lured away into his own solo world, but he never wanted that. He said, 'Man, all I really want to do is sing and take care of my family, and that's what I'm doing, so all is well. Everything else that doesn't include you guys, it doesn't mean a thing to me.' That kind of character and commitment is really hard to find these days.”

He was as loyal as could be. Perhaps he could have done better had he gone solo, but Stubbs was an old-school group singer. I have a special respect for that. My dad was in a seminal R&B singing group so I know a bit about the pressures and dealings those folks go through based on my father's sharing about those numerous perks and pitfalls.

I think of how good Levi Stubbs was—a true, “no-drama” professional at his craft. He stood with very few others atop the pinnacle of greatness in the undeniable “Golden Age” of soul singers. A peer of both “Marvins”, gutbucket Otis and the mercurial Ruffin, and just a tick above the Smokeys, Curtises, “Wicked Picketts” and Jerry Butlers of his time. He would with The Tops continue to chart after that “peak” with one of my favorites, the now-rarely heard “I'm In A Different World” from the “Yesterday's Dreams” album (one of the coolest Soul album covers of my youth), the incandescent “Still Water (Love)”, “Ain't No Woman Like The One I've Got” (the first big post-Motown hit for The Tops and Stubbs), all the way up to 1982's “I Believe In You And Me”.

His voice was a rare blend of power, vulnerability, joy and yearning. It was a signpost for an era, and a deep and heartfelt sense memory for me. I know I'm not alone in missing him as he belonged a little bit to all of us who enjoyed his work, but Dammit...it pains me deeply as I see one by one, these icons of my youth fading out.

It hurts.

But again, thankfully, we have their performances preserved in the amber of video on YouTube. Forever young and vital, swaying and clapping, and moving the crowd.

Levi...baby, we'll miss your singing. Godspeed.

There's more...

Paul, Belatedly.

The Picture I Dreaded Running


It was, the worst kept secret in the entertainment community for the last three months.

There was nothing more that the doctors could do for Paul Newman. His cancer had spread and he was going home from the hospital to die.

My face stung and my eyes watered up just tapping out that rough truth.

News had leaked from the hospital he'd been at, battling that internal scourge. For all the confidentiality of medical records, those places leak like sieves when something goes on in them that's attention-getting. And the legendary Newman's sad diagnosis would certainly be categorized as just that.

There was a picture of Paul being wheelchair pushed down a leafy path near the hospital near the day of his release. When I saw it, I choked up. The man who bounced about the ring effortlessly as Rocky Graziano in “Somebody Up There Likes Me”, and peacock-strutted in Texas-macho glory in “Hud”, and yes, rode a bike balanced on one foot in “Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid” was now so frail that it made my own knees weak. He was pale, and drawn and small. I cried looking at that shot. Even with seeing in that rushing infirmity still, a hovering image of his smirking, boundless spirit above the small physical form.

The reports were grim. A “friend” of the family leaked the news supposedly. Newman's camp denied it—he was in spite of his ubiquity and place in Hollywood's firmament still a private man. There were whispers from “people who knew” that he'd quietly been giving away treasured things to true friends in recent months. Simplifying. Paring back. Making peace. The day after it was confirmed to me, I began assembling some photos of him for this inevitable post. Shots of him young and vital, grown and radiant, mature and in full flower, then aging well like wine.

And I felt guilty for this preparation. I felt like I was putting him in his grave while breath still came. I put the assembled written bits and pictures aside in a folder on the computer and tucked it away, maybe hoping against hope that his spokesman's “non-denial denial” could be true when I knew it was not.

I went into my own denial, I suppose.

You probably think it odd of me to have such feelings for a person I never met, who admittedly worked in an industry full of shallowness and artifice. But if you have read this blog beyond the political things I write, you'll know that I'm a film buff of the highest order. And a talent like Paul Newman's is a thing you cherish and then miss when it is no longer active.

Paul Newman is one of the last of his generation of strong and deep-charactered Hollywood leading men. Pretty much the last two of his time remaining are Robert Redford and James Garner. (Bob Wagner and Shatner were always more television animals, Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis were more true “pretty boys” and Eastwood while a bona-fide “star never quite had the depth and complication of Newman. Plus, he wasn't a “character-lead” like Jason Robards, Jim Coburn or Lee Marvin) The ones who've gone on from his class? Dean. McQueen. Lemmon. Brando. A veritable “Murderer's Row” of the male stars who bridged the gap between the studio system and the auteur / artiste's way of that second glorious “Golden Age” of American filmmaking.

Newman was of course, achingly handsome—yet, guilelessly so. The sparkling eyes and tousled hair, oh yes—and that smile that could widen from rueful to impish, to full-on ten-thousand watts of klieg-lit power was a helluva package. And is spite of all that, he wore those looks as comfortably as an old sweatshirt.

He had “it”. And so what? His pal Robert Redford, for all his own talent could sometimes be a prisoner of his chiseled and almost caricaturish beauty. He sometimes seems to almost be fighting against it for gravitas. Newman however simply bent with the force of his looks, and in that “bending” could exude an everyman's depth that few could match. George Clooney's taking that tack these days, bending with the force of those roguish good looks to reveal more at the root, but for the better part of fifty years folks... Newman has been Clooney before Clooney was Clooney.

Effortless seeming and complicated all at on once—the actor's holy grail. And Paul Newman appeared able to dash that off as easily as an autograph. But we all know that the doing it is a lot harder than it appears.

It helped that Newman didn't “agonize” as many of his method acting contemporaries often did, tearing at himself to validate the depth of a performance. Oh, he was deep. Well-deep. But he never bought into what I call the “making the elephant disappear off the stage” school of acting, where the hugeness of the trick / actorly athleticism of the performance left you gasping in wonder and in awe of the “magic”—as opposed to just enjoying the story and what this character you believe in does and why. He didn't so much transform, as he conveyed.

Two things made Newman “work” so well for film-lovers across the board.

One: He came across on- screen as “just a guy”. Those casually devastating good looks and his unpretentious personal nature never distanced him from the viewer. Newman was the guy women loved and guys wanted to hang out with. Not be, themselves as he made them comfortable in their own skin—but wanted to have as a friend...a pal.

Redford was almost so damned perfectly pretty at his peak that it was hard to picture yourself hanging with him. Those kinds of looks call for a crowd as beautiful as he is surrounding him. And again, he often appeared to fight those God-given (before the distressing botox) looks so hard to fit in that he commanded a sort of bubble around him to go to war in. A bubble viewers could not enter.

McQueen however, was the guy you wanted to be, as he fairly shot cool from his pores. But with that cool came a detached-ness, which precluded befriending by others. You wanted to be him. Not be with him. He was a loner—a cool loner—but a loner nonetheless. Notoriously prickly to his peers, as well as (I'm saying this about one of my favorite actors of all time here) famously prick-ish to boot. Paul Newman didn''t have broad physical range as a performer—although he was easily athletic and at home in his body on screen and off. He didn't buy into the school of altering one's self physically, but he could run the complex characters he played through his externally pleasing, but deep, emotional internal self. His characters oozed backstory without exposiition. I discovered this when I first saw his Oscar™-worthy turn in “Cool Hand Luke”. Without any exposition, I watched Newman's ol' “Lucas Jackson” early on in the film (my first time in my early twenties) and just gathered from little nuances in the performance that this character's father was just not there for him, and that his Mama was maybe a little bit overwhelmed. So when Jo Van Fleet showed up borne by that “near-death” wagon to see Luke that one last time, and those truths came out. I was kind of astonished. Paul's above-the-rim skill put that across for me. He fairly sweated a character's history while going through said person's daily paces, like real people do while living their lives. That's acting, folks. At its best.

The second thing that made Paul Newman so damned good was his ability and willingness to play characters with deep contradictions and oft-times moral ambiguities, but play them subtly and without the showy histrionics a lesser actor would fall back on. He could play scalawags and compromised men better than pretty much anyone of his generation, and did so with an honest realism that even if it didn't make you like these people, at least gave them a context—and thus an anchor for a viewer to believe them in.

His turns as the lout-ish, grasping Eddie Felson in “The Hustler”, the avaricious, boozy loser “Reggie Dunlop” in “Slap Shot”, and the cheating and con-crazy Henry Gondorff in “The Sting” were such compromised men. But human, too—with feelings and an ability to every once in a while, do right, and make you believe their reasons for doing so. And then,you get to two of my favorite Newman performances—in “Cool Hand Luke”, and of course, “Hud”

Newman's Luke was a jerk. A little bit a-moral, and yes, an unrepentant fuck-up. He played Luke as our selfish “id”—what we are when you strip away hope and dreams. A just-here blob of humanity trying to get by and stay a little bit happy doing it. But his severely compromised Luke—he was no saint for sure, and we catch him stupidly breaking the law in the first scene—still had that certain little spark of humanity in him. Enough to if not save himself, to at least inspire others. And for all of his fuck-ups, Luke's driving force was that of not letting the tyranny of authority steal his joy and break his soul. Yes, he was a Goddamned knuckle-head, but he was also about keeping the spark of life alive inside you—even when the darkness and weight of cruelty threatens to smother it like a flicker under a blanket. That smile and eye-twinkle of his throughout the movie, even as he's being carted off that last climactic time could have in the hands of less talented actors come off as smarmy. But Newman projected 'Yeah...I'm a fuck-up, but I'm just one little ol' man. Ya'll however represent a system that fucks individuals up. And I ain't gonna let you do that to me. No way, no how.' with that life-affirming grin.

His turn as “Hud” in the eponymous film was something else again. Hud was a classic example of what it is like when the devil is among us, and of us, and how we live and love one another in spite of that. His Hud...was a cold-hearted bastard. A cold-hearted, selfish bastard you couldn't look away from or ignore as God in his infinite wisdom made him just as seductive as he was morally damaged. He was a proudly “unprincipled man” as evidenced in these defining scenes where Hud, his nephew and father have discovered their herd of cattle may have the dreaded hoof and mouth disease.





“Well, I always say the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner...and that's what I try to do, Sometimes I lean to one side of it, sometimes I lean to the other.”—“Hud” Bannon

Newman's Hud was the capper on a trifecta of Hollywood portraits of what happens when misplaced Texas macho meets the lust for money—the other two portrayals being James Dean's Jett Rink in “Giant” and Bob Stack's wastrel oil scion in “Written On The Wind”. A spiritual Godfather to George W. Bush if ever there was one. And he played this heel for all he was worth. There was no redeeming feature in the character. In the movie he tries to rape Patricia Neal's Alma—a brutal, simple power-grab that is thwarted by his worshipful nephew Lon (as played by Brandon DeWilde), a move that effectively kills the hero-worship Lon has for in spite of his evil, magnetic (like a moth to the flame) Hud. What you do gather from Newman's swaggeringly blunt performance is that he's been on a hell-driven run for years. His venality is not new. His damage is deep. And he will not change. He is alone in himself and will ultimately end up that way. Yet...you'll still want to look in on him, because as said above:

“God in his infinite wisdom made him just as seductive as he was morally damaged.”

Newman plays both to a “T” here. No mean feat, either.

I love him in “Hud” and “Luke” and “The Hustler”. But his performances in his breakthrough “Somebody Up There Likes Me” as a marble-mouthed Graziano, “The Sting” as the sozzled Gondorff (He could play the hell out of booze-addled guys fighting back—as in “Slap Shot” and “The Verdict” as well) and his Butch Cassidy stay with me too. Even little gems, like 1960's “From The Terrace” wher he subtly plays a Cheever-esque young businessman disillusioned with his life is a wonder to behold. And as he aged, and wizened—that face acquiring craggy character and his voice a bit of rumble, you could see the actor in him that much more almost, as his nimble physicality waned. His twisted but sympathetic portrayal (“The Hud in Winter’ if you will) of mobster John Rooney in 2002's underrated “Road To Perdition” is an amazing one and was his last great screen role.

I loved watching him work. In his youth, I picked up on an actorly little tic of his—“The Newman Brood” I called it, where he'd mull over a line or a moment or two with his head downcast and a pronounced pout and blinks. (McQueen's tic was a blank “I'm giving you nothing while internally giving you everything” dead-eyed stare and mouth-shift, and Redford's was sudden eyebrow leaps from melancholy.) It was done un-self-consciously. That funny sort of face a person makes when they think no one is looking.

But we all were looking, weren't we?

He was also a devoted family man, and according to many anecdotes from just plain folks, a kind soul. Jesse summed him up as a man, nicely:

In well over 50 years, I am certain it was the journey and the people met along the way which were most valued, not the awards earned. Which is not to say that the awards were not valued, I am certain they were. At the time, I remember how much the Oscar for The Color of Money meant to Mr. Newman, to finally win a competitive Academy Award after so many nominations. He had even refused to show up -- politely of course, sending word he still hoped to win one in person -- when he was honored with an honorary Oscar. It took a while... a LONG while... but a number of nominations later, Mr. Newman had his very own, competitive Oscar. *smiles* And even nominations to follow.

Still, what I remember most about Mr. Newman is not his movies or his Oscars. Or even his timeless marriage, which, even with its ups and downs, clearly put family first and without question, women were equal in THAT home, long before they were in the rest of the country.

What I remember most about Mr. Newman is how gracious he always was. It did not matter to him if someone was a star, a day player, a grip, a star-struck fan, a waitress or waiter, or simply an ordinary woman or man trying to earn a living. Mr. Newman was kind and warm to everyone. He especially loved children.

What I hate about writing this is, it sounds like the kind of crap one writes in a hagiography, as if I am in the bag for Newman.

1. There are worse people to be in the bag for, than Paul Newman. And
2. Every word of this is the Gods' straight truth.

I am in the bag for Paul Newman. Proudly. I watched Turner Classic Movies this weekend as host Robert Osborne hosted a special memorial night of Newman's best film work. I saw “Hud”, “Cool Hand Luke”, “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof”and even his delicate directorial bow “Rachel, Rachel” starring his wife Joanne Woodward and reveled in all of that talent. What a night!

I never met Mr. Newman. I came close twice. I used to house-sit for a ridiculously well-off co-worker some years ago in Westport, Connecticut where he lived for the last forty years or so. Missed him as he peeled out of a gas station I was pulling in to in a trail of exhaust and the sound of canvas-ripping horsepower. I apparently also missed him at the Coffee an' Donut Shop up there, arriving a few minutes after he did for a cruller and a cup of joe. It would have been grand, and I would have been of course, a mess before such a mega-talent. I would have liked to have seen him in person and experienced those flashing blue eyes. Maybe even a handshake. He was an unabashed political animal too, and a friend of the left for many years. I remember his coming out for Ned Lamont against the execrable Joe Lieberman in 2006. Just one more reason to love him. I'll miss him, as we all will. Why?

Let George Kennedy's “Dragline” from “Cool Hand Luke” sum it up.

“He was smiling... That's right. You know, that, that Luke smile of his. He had it on his face right to the very end. Hell, if they didn't know it 'fore, they could tell right then that they weren't a-gonna beat him. That old Luke smile. Oh, Luke. He was some boy. Cool Hand Luke. Hell, he's a natural-born world-shaker.”

Yes indeed he was. Rest in peace, Paul.

There's more...

A Tough Weekend...

“He Wasn't Scared A' You!”

Bernard “Bernie Mac” McCullough—1957-2008


“Soul Man...Personified”

Isaac Hayes—1942-2008

I awoke Saturday morning to the news of the untimely death of comedian Bernie Mac, and to be frank, it hit me a lot harder than you might think.

I didn't know Bernie personally, but I came of age in the entertainment industry working alongside him during the “Black Comedy Boom” of the early nineties. I was working heavily in television at the time and had as peers people who would eventually write for his later television series and work as producers for it. I saw many of Bernie's Black comic contemporaries work the biggest stages—hundreds of them actually, and worked directly with many of the folks who opened for and toured with him on the eastern seaboard circuit back then. It was a wild time. I saw SNL's and “30 Rock's” Tracy Morgan make his first TV appearances, as well as Steve Harvey, and J. Anthony Brown while Bernie himself would break through downtown on the “cousin” TV project “Def Comedy Jam”.

Bernie was the natural heir to the late, great Robin Harris, who was the first Def Comedy Jam shooting star and also passed away tragically young (at the age of thirty-six). Harris' style was if you can imagine, the life experience of a blue collar slaughterhouse worker from a Howlin' Wolf song, poured through Rodney Dangerfield's self-deprecating “No Respect” filter, and then shaken vigorously with a double shot of Richard Pryor's rough verbal patois. Harris was on his way to mega-stardom, as the nascent hit show's host and thanks to a couple of scene-stealing turns in Reginald Hudlin's “House Party” (as “Pop”) and Spike Lee's “Do The Right Thing” (as corner-man “Sweet Dick Willie”) when he died of a heart attack during a bout of sleep apnea while on tour. Martin Lawrence would step into the Def Comedy Jam host breech and take the world by storm with his kinetic style, but it was Bernie who would continue mining the besieged everyman vein initially prospected by Harris.

From the moment he first took the stage, prowling nervously and then grabbing the mic and roaring at the crowd with paranoid eyes darting every-which-way,“I ain't scared a' you!”—and the audience knowing knowing full well there was more than a little fear there behind the bluster—he was a hit, playing the aggrieved, “why me” to the hilt, dragging the Dangerfield schtick through the South Side's back streets as Harris did with that extra dollop of paranoia.

He ragged on his advancing age and time's not being kind to him—particularly a waning sexual prowess, moaning ruefully “M' body tired...m' body weary..”. He wasn't going to be seen in the red leather suits Eddie Murphy sported, or work the slick “Player” angle of his S-Curled, MTV comedy star contemporary Bill Bellamy. He was the guy with problems, and he was gonna share 'em—warts and all. Ornery kids bugged the hell out of him, as did moochy, ne'er-do-well relatives. And he was hilarious re-counting it all in that blustery, “Foghorn Leghorn”-ish griot/storyteller style of his. He pretty much counted on playing the club circuit permanently, ironically joking about how the TV executives would never give him a show like his buddies Steve Harvey, Cedric The Entertainer and D.L. Hughley had gotten during the hilarious basketball court segment of the Spike Lee directed “Kings Of Comedy” film.

“BERNIE: (Wild-eyed and straight to camera) I vote. I still get hassled. You know, I been with my wife for 25 years—I ain't got NO outside kids. But do I get a—naw! Fuck that, I'm gonna tell ya'll...But do I have a television show? Naaaaawww! I ain't got no televison show. Why?! (Right up on camera now) Cause' you scared a' me! Scared I'm a' say somethin'! Henh! (BEAT) You mother-fuckin' right! Think I won't say somethin'? Lemme tell you somethin'!...Ya'll been fuckin' with me for a loooong time... you know? But I'm back! Shit, me an' Jim Brown'd tear this mother-fucker up!

CEDRIC: (Laughing, and then in a tepid announcer's voice) The comments made by Bernie Mac belong to him and him himself...

BERNIE: Now you (To Cedric) told—you told me to sat what I wanted to say! (Then suddenly contrite and despairing) White folks, I don't mean that...I'm just playin'. Ya'll can do...if you give me a chance, I'll take WB, I'll take UPN, I'll take USA (Networks). Gimme a chance to show ya.

STEVE HARVEY: You'll take The Food Channel.

BERNIE: Sure will! TNT!

STEVE: The Bernie Mac Cooking Show!

But of course, Bernie did land a show...and it was perhaps the best of the bunch among his contemporaries, expanding on his standup bit about parenting his cracked-out sister's kids—but with a sense of heart and the real flusteredness of raising kids in a modern world. “The Bernie Mac Show” was an award-winning hit in its first season. But alas, similar tensions between the star, the network and the show runner / Executive Producer to those that killed Chappelle's Show cropped up and the honeymoon was over by the middle of season two. The show would go on, thanks to the talents of the star himself (but no thanks to a bit of shortsightedness that made Fox's “Divide and Conquer” plan work to “T”, separating the series' brain—Larry Wilmore, from its soul, Bernie). Bigger movie roles would come—unlike his oily, profane preacher and and mouthy barber cameos in earlier, smaller films—for example his parts in Charlie's Angels and George Clooney's “Ocean's” franchise, as well as starring roles in “Guess Who” and “Mr. 3000”.

But Bernie's health was an increasing problem. He suffered from the auto-immune disease Sarcoidosis, which causes irritating and sometimes painful cellular lumps or granules (granulomas) to grow in organs and tissues, while also bringing on chronic fatigue and body pain. But it's those damned “granules” that do the damage—attacking the lymph nodes and lungs primarily. And diseases that compromise the pulmonary system (yes, sarcoidosis can adversely affect your breathing) make other pulmonary ailments like the pneumonia that killed him that much more intense and difficult to fight. You add in that rigorous TV shooting schedule he had, and the continual touring, probable lack of rest, bad eating and so on that is endemic to the working comic's life, and you have a recipe for disaster. His appearance changed drastically when a nasty flare-up (of Sarcoidosis) hit him in '04 and the drugs used to spell the disease (steroids) visibly blew him up and then dried him out, and Fox had to shut the show down for a month so he could get a handle on the illness. (He did and it went into “remission”) And then in '06, the show itself was cancelled, but his rigorous touring resumed. Taxing on anyone, that sort of running about really strains a person with sarcoidosis. Bernie's death hit home hard for me as one of my best friends for nearly thirty years and a fellow television writer also suffers from the illness, and has to take special care to stay healthy as the disease has a “cascade” effect when dealing with things like colds and lung-compromising viruses. Bernie was only fifty years old. My buddy, another veteran of that “Black Comedy Boom” is just a few years younger than that, so you can imagine the lump in our collective throats in the circle of friends upon hearing about Bernie's death and considering ourselves. Hearts go out to Bernie's family and surviving loved ones. This was a stunner.

And even more stunning was the second blow to America's pop-culture gut yesterday, as I was walking through Times Square in Manhattan, only to look up at the “Zipper” news crawl around a building to see that the legendary Isaac Hayes had also passed away. I stood there for a moment wondering...“Did I just see that?”, and waited for the news items to repeat. I saw it again, and my eyes filled with tears.

For those who don't know...Isaac Hayes was an awful lot more than a sultry baritone voice and “Chef” on South Park.

Hayes...was in fact, one of the architects of Soul music as we know it. He was a songwriter par excellence, contributing in no small way to fashioning the “Stax/Memphis” Soul sound itself, with his work (alongside his writing partner David Porter) on such classics as “Soul Man”, “Hold On, I'm Comin'”, “B-A-B-Y” (for Carla Thomas) and “When Something Is Wrong With My Baby”, just to name a few. Hayes was of a generation of great musicians that came through the Memphis public school system's music program (a veritable “Who's Who” of Jazz and R&B legends too numerous to cite here), who stayed in the city and re-vitalized it with his groundbreaking work at Stax. He fused the hard Blues with the roaring fire of Southern Gospel, while adding into the mix more than a little bit of the punchy Jazz style (particularly the horn charts—Basie-esque “smears” and “stabs” on the brass) endemic to the region.

And God, could he write melodies! Melodies that mated perfectly with the scary rhythmic sense he seemed to simply sweat. He had a “golden ear” for arrangements and balance, while having a special knack for building a jam “in-song” from a whisper to a roar, until the song was a big ol', almost living, amoebic thing—pulsing, flying here and there...whispering and shouting...all at once.

I first came to really know of Isaac when I heard his (in my mind) magnum opus—the eleven-minute cover /re-contextualization of Burt Bacharach's “Walk On By”. This was a pimp-tastic, psychedelic, sanctified, cinematic / operatic sonic workout, from the crackling opening snare hits, to the soaring strings in the chorus, to the flanged, crazy Hendrix-ish guitar trail-out. It was on the album “Hot Buttered Soul”, its cover placed prominently as if to say “Now Playing” atop the big Sylvania stereo console in our family living room. That big, gleaming bald head of his, looking like a NASA shot of a massive, brown planet on the cover always intrigued me. In the age of “The Fro'”, Isaac said “No.”, and went with his own wild “Star Child” look—the big goggle-y aviators, and his inversion of the chains of slavery into golden links of proud prosperity draping his hulking, onyx form.

Brother was bad-ass long before Shaft was “a bad mutha-shut yo' mouf!”

There were the pre-“Shaft” albums—“To Be Continued”, and “The Isaac Hayes Movement” (said sporting what was at that time the BEST art direction along with “Hot Buttered Soul” in the Soul and R&B record racks) that featured those amazing, long, long breakdowns / songs. These albums boasted maybe five tunes maximum, but there were usually two or three seven-minute-plus monsters on them—sprawling vanity / concept pieces that pre-dated Marvin's and Stevie's “What's Goin' On” and “Talking Book” masterpieces by a couple of years. “Walk On By” was one such beast, as were his covers of George Harrison's “Something”, and Jimmy Webb's “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”. (His original funk-opera “Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic” is another such wonder)

And then, there was “Shaft”, or rather “SHAFT—Music from the Soundtrack Composed and Performed by ISAAC HAYES”, as it is described on the three vinyl copies I—and probably you also own.

The Shaft soundtrack or score is more than just the ubiquitous tile track that has entered the pop-culture lexicon through it's driving rhythm and “Stagger Lee”-ish lyrics. It was—and in many ways still is the gold standard of film scores of the second half of the 20th century. The music, from “Shaft's Cab Ride”, “Ellie's Love Theme”, “Bumpy's Lament” and the sparkling, summer-y “Café Regio's” are near-perfect music beds for the scenes they support, working beautifully, but then when separated from the visuals, they are also brilliant individual pieces of Soul/Jazz/Blues that unlike the songs from the Bee Gees “Saturday Night Fever” didn't sound like pre-existing hits inserted into the movie. These were just great pieces of music that seemed to jump out of the score they were written for. I didn't even mention “Soulsville”, or “Do Your Thing”, and those strong tracks just add to the album's majesty. The other thing “Shaft” did was expand the palette of avenues for Black music and its pre-eminent composers to exploit, opening film music up to the more trenchant stylings of Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield, bringing those artists ever more into the “mainstream” and letting them explore their artistic souls more fully.

It all started with “Shaft”, and for that alone, Isaac Hayes would be a legend. But his Stax work as a producer and writer, as well as his pre-“Shaft” solo work just enhances his legend that much more, and makes his loss that much deeper.

Every artist peaks, and “Shaft” may well have been his—considering the rote-ish and occasionally ill-advised artistic choices that followed, along with a bit of fun self-parody late in his career—but what a climb to that peak it was!

It was a tough weekend loss-wise, losing these two. And them being gone makes life and art just a little bit sadder to think about. But that's the miracle of what they did. Thanks to technology, it lives on. And it's there to be enjoyed...even if they've gone from us.

So, dig into that Netflix queue, or that iTunes playlist and let what they did so well wash over you.

And bid them both Godspeed. Godspeed. Godspeed.

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