A Belated Gustav Thought

The national media has understandably moved on to Hurricane Ike's devastation, but overlooking Hurricane Gustav because there was minimal physical damage is wrong. Its economic impact on New Orleans has been brutal. Think of it this way - the entire city was forced to go on vacation at the same time whether people had money to go or not. That forced many people to spend money they didn't have, which meant they came back needy and in danger of missing bill, mortgage and loan payments. That also meant the city's businesses for the most part lost a week of business, and because people were financially strapped after the storm and evacuation, no one did good business after opening with the exception of places like Sam's Club and Wal-Mart. That sort of financial blackout at the end of the worst time of year for New Orleans - the summer - may not be devastating on the order of Katrina, but it has been much harder on the city than anyone who isn't living here realizes.

What to Do, What to Do?

A friend and I have often half-joked that the last person who can tell what's happening in a piece of art is the artist. Right now, I'm facing the question of what to do with the memoir-like liner notes for Carla Bley's new Appearing Nightly, her version of a big band album. Typically, such notes make writing about an album easier, but what if she's not being entirely truthful? I saw her twice in Toronto a year apart, and she played one piece that she hadn't recorded at the time - I think she introduced it as "Battleship" - and when she played it the second time at an outdoor venue on the shores of Lake Ontario, she announced that she composed the piece the night before after seeing a nearby ship. Since that sort of sly humor and riffs on genres and tropes are central to her work, I didn't - and still don't - find her lie anything but entertaining, and it played on the notion that somehow something said in introduction to a piece helps us get any closer to it. Even if she were telling the truth, would the idea that a song was inspired by a ship tell us anything about the song?

In Bley's case, she makes her art - and by extension, her career - sound like a prolonged adventure in stumbling from right move to right move through luck and intuition. There's probably as much truth in that as there is for most musicians, but there's also a defense mechanism in that similar to one I encountered when I interviewed her with a friend who introduced me to her work. After 10 or so minutes, she decided she was more interested in him and interviewed him about his research - he is a scientist - instead of talking about herself. I asked the question in the recent Dylan piece that I wrote: Who really wants to explain themselves? At least in her case, she deals with the issue entertainingly ... which Dylan still does too in his post-modern way. Can any of it be taken seriously? Is there anything real in her discussion of her days as a bad lounge pianist? Probably. Enough to hang a review on? Maybe, but there are better ways to go.

By the way, I'm dabbling in Jonathan Cott's anthology of Dylan interviews, and what's interesting is how Dylan's mechanisms of avoidance changed over the years, but also how some voices have hung on. He seems more friendly and open when he talks to Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner after the release of John Wesley Harding, but he deflects Wenner's questions at every turn, seeming "Aw shucks" about everything, as if the world's a crazy place that's confusing for a country boy. A variation on that voice turns up in Chronicles.

Maybe We're Wrong on Sarah Palin and Foreign Policy

Maybe she is the part of the ticket with the foreign policy moxy. Maybe the ability to see Russia from your shore gives you insight. Evidently John McCain's years in politics haven't done him much good. Here's the transcript of his interview with a reporter from Spain's El Pais newspaper. In it, he's either not sure who Spain's president is, or where Spain is, or he's prepared to screw Spain as an ally.

QUESTION: Senator, finally, let's talk about Spain. If you're elected president, would you be willing to invite President Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero to the White House to meet with you?

MCCAIN: I would be willing meet, uh, with those leaders who our friends [sic] and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion, and by the way, President Calderon of Mexico is fighting a very very tough fight against the drug cartels. I'm glad we are now working in cooperation with the Mexican government on the Merida plan. I intend to move forward with relations, and invite as many of them as I can, those leaders, to the White House.

QUESTION: Would that invitation be extended to the Zapatero government, to the president itself?

MCCAIN: I don't, you know, honestly I have to look at relations and the situations and the priorities, but I can assure you I will establish closer relations with our friends and I will stand up to those who want to do harm to the United States of America.

QUESTION: So you have to wait and see if he's willing to meet with you, or you'll be able to do it in the White House?

MCCAIN: Well again I don't, all I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us, and standing up to those who are not, and that's judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America, and the entire region.

QUESTION: Okay... what about you, I'm talking about the President of Spain?

MCCAIN: What about me what?

QUESTION: Okay... are you willing to meet with him if you are elected president?

MCCAIN: I am willing to meet with any leader who is dedicated to the same principles and philosophy that we are for human rights, democracy and freedom, and I will stand up to those that do not.

Much has already been made of that gaffe, but the other disturbing part of this is this quote:

I would be willing meet, uh, with those leaders who our friends [sic] and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion

The idea that we only meet with allies is insane. It has been the Bush way, and look where that got us.

Wearing Out a Point

Today, NPR's "Morning Edition" included tape from a McCain/Palin appearance, and during it, a woman gave Palin a chance to explain her foreign policy bona fides. I'm paraphrasing the answer - but not that much - and said she's ready because she believes you have to be ready and we have that readiness. If I, a writer by trade who last took science classes in Grade 11, argued that I'm ready to remove your appendix because I believe I am and I have to be ready when I put scalpel to skin, would you let me cut?

One of the more insidious ways that the Bush White House has injected spirituality into public policy is to reduce everything to a matter of belief - the central tenet of Christianity. Facts are the things he believes; the things he doesn't believe are subject to debate, and Palin is more of the same in so many ways. Thankfully, every time Palin opens her mouth on foreign policy, the emptiness of that approach becomes evident.

Bobby Charles

My story on Louisiana songwriter/legend/man about music Bobby Charles ("Walking to New Orleans," "See You Later, Alligator") is in the new Blurt digi-zine. I've interviewed him twice now, and he's one of those guys who seems to know everybody - Dylan took a break from the Rolling Thunder Revue to party at his house in Abbeville, he helped Neil Young pick out a beach house, he's known Willie Nelson since forever - and has a million stories. Getting him to connect all the dots and tell you how he knows them all is tougher.

The First Casualty of Elections

As I finish my morning blog-reading, I'm naturally depressed by the possibility that the country really doesn't give a shit about the truth. At The Nation, Ari Berman refers to a Ron Suskind piece from 2004 in which a Bush aide said:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Also at The Nation, Adam Howard celebrated the tough-ish questioning John McCain received on The View, which emphasizes the point that the way to reach voters is not through CNN or traditional news outlets, and the voters people are after aren't reached or appealed to through traditional means.

I hope the Obama campaign is shifting out of Sarah Palin mode, and rather than catching her in lies - which obviously isn't working - use her to illustrate John McCain's shaky judgment. With all the Republican talent available to him - male and female - he chose one of the least known and least prepared to assume the presidency should something happen.

Don't Stop Believin'

I've attributed Bush's election and re-election to the fact that no voter feels stupid next to him - a variation on the idea that people voted for the guy they'd most like to have a beer with. I understand comfort and how it's a more driving force than anybody would like to admit, but seriously - are you qualified to run the country? Are any of the people you drink with at the bar? At the coffee shop?

Today's transcripts of Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin show the shortcomings your buddy, the candidate. The news today is that she doesn't know the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive defense, and how she inadvertently put America's foreign policy in the Middle East in the hands of Israel, and by admitting Georgia and the Ukraine to NATO drawn America into war with Russia. But let's go beyond such trivialities as details. Joan Walsh at Salon.com made this connection:

Talking to Charles Gibson tonight, Palin sometimes reminded me of poor Miss South Carolina, who, asked why many Americans can't find the U.S. on a map, famously said: "I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps. And I believe that our education, like, such as in South Africa and the Iraq, everywhere, like such as, and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., or should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our children."

This statement from Palin about Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is better, but not hugely: "I believe that under the leadership of Ahmadinejad, nucular weapons in the hands of his government are extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe, yes. We have got to make sure these weapons of mass destruction, that nucular weapons are not given to those hands of Ahmadinejad, not that he would use them, but that he would allow terrorists to be able to use them. So we have got to put the pressure on Iran."

I thought more of another, more generic sad sack when I read this transcript:

GIBSON: Governor, let me start by asking you a question that I asked John McCain about you, and it is really the central question. Can you look the country in the eye and say "I have the experience and I have the ability to be not just vice president, but perhaps president of the United States of America?"

PALIN: I do, Charlie, and on January 20, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, will be ready. I'm ready.

GIBSON: And you didn't say to yourself, "Am I experienced enough? Am I ready? Do I know enough about international affairs? Do I -- will I feel comfortable enough on the national stage to do this?"

PALIN: I didn't hesitate, no.

GIBSON: (INAUDIBLE -- Didn't that take some hubris?)

PALIN: I -- I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can't blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can't blink.

The gobbledygook logic of that last statement - her rationale for believing she's ready to be vice-president and if necessary president - boils down to, "I believe in me because I believe, and I have to believe." Usually we hear some variation on that logic from a teenager talking to Ryan Seacrest just before he or she walks into the American Idol tryout room to be crushed and sent to therapy by Simon, Randy and Paula. Or on the tryout show for America's Next Top Model, where the poor underfed dears explain that they're going to be America's next top model because they really want to be America's next top model. Not surprisingly, the women who actually win have more reliable attributes like good bone structure, a consciousness of their bodies and a sense of how they present themselves for photos.

We've just spent eight years with a president who reduced every issue to a matter of belief; another candidate who believes because she believes really isn't change.

Here's the interview.