"Stone became a kind of blinkered realist. His down-in-the-basement singing could sound depressed."

"Among the most pungent moments on these later albums is a version of 'Que Sera, Sera.' Stone makes it a gospel dirge, this smoky funeral march. It’s a touch bitter and sopping with rue. 'The future’s not ours to see,' he sings, as each verse unspools a childhood anticipation of what might happen someday. Stone imagines a baleful, shrugging acceptance of what is, rather than what’s possible. Possible, this version seems to ask, what’s that?"

Writes , in "Sly Stone and the Sound of an America That Couldn’t Last/The influential musician, who died on Monday at 82, forged harmony — musical and otherwise — that he wasn’t able to hold together on his own" (NYT).

Beautiful version of a song that one usually associates with Doris Day. Here's Day singing it as loud as possible in "The Man Who Knew Too Much." Here's how she sang it when it wasn't an incredibly intense scene in a Hitchcock movie. And here's a beautiful version by 2 young women on TikTok.

From the Wikipedia article about the song, I figured out that I'd heard the Sly and the Family Stone version before — every time I've seen the darkly comic movie "Heathers." It plays over the closing credits. A more cheerful version of the song plays over the opening credits.

The seeming lightness of the song has made it useful in dark comedy:

Goodbye — and thank you — to Sly Stone.

 

NYT obituary: "Sly Stone, Maestro of a Multifaceted, Hitmaking Band, Dies at 82/Leading Sly and the Family Stone, he helped redefine the landscape of pop, funk and rock in the late 1960s and ’70s" (free-access link).

"You think you’re woke but you’re sleepwalking through a nightmare" — slogan for the Time to Get Organized for an Actual Revolution National Tour.

"I’m with the Time to Get Organized for an Actual Revolution National Tour. We’re touring all across the country to organize thousands into the ranks of the revolution," said "a teenage-looking boy" in the "Free Speech Zone" near a Trump fundraiser in Beverly Hills.

Quoted in "'No Celebrities': Embarrassing Turnout at Trump’s Beverly Hills Fundraiser" in The Daily Beast.

I wonder, who was embarrassed? Was it the people at The Daily Beast imagining that Trump ought to be embarrassed? He doesn't seem like a guy who gets embarrassed. Especially about the lack of "celebrities." Isn't it embarrassing that Democratic Party candidates get all the celebrities?

Here's an article from late November 2016 in Vanity Fair, "Did Celebrity Endorsements Contribute to Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Upset?/The divide in celebrity endorsements between candidates was as large as ever in the 2016 presidential election—and the candidate with the most lost":

The gulf between celebrity endorsements on the Democratic versus Republican side is stark during every election, but this year, the rift seemed infinite. Hillary Clinton had Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and even Lebron James. #ImWithHer hashtags decorated social output from Ariana Grande, Jennifer Lopez, the Kardashians, and Rihanna, as well as YouTube stars like Tyler Oakley. Clinton carried far and away the majority of celebrity seals of approval....

Many of the celebrity P.S.A.s this year leaned into the idea that no one wants to hear about politics from a Grammy/Oscar/Emmy winner. Lena Dunham’s parody of the earnest P.S.A., “Sensual Pantsuit Anthem,” tried to promote Hillary Clinton and voting through an attempted self-aware rap....

[Trump] removes middleman when it comes to endorsements. Instead of the transitive property of Katy Perry (“I’m a Katy Perry fan; Katy Perry is a Hillary Clinton fan; I’m a Hillary Clinton fan"), there’s the much simpler “I’m a Trump fan” equation, for better or worse.

Trump is his own celebrity. Is that better or worse than having other people to be your celebrities? Please, before answering, watch this video, which came out a few days before the 2016 election.



And come on, let's talk about what's embarrassing!

You think you’re woke but you’re sleepwalking through a nightmare...

ADDED: When the system tries to bring you down, listen to this, which was the actual soundtrack to this post, here at Meadhouse:

Beyond dehumanizing Trump officials and on to dehumanizing Trump opponents who merely caution against the dehumanization of Trump officials.

Yesterday, we looked at Jennifer Rubin's creepy approval of disrupting the restaurant meals of Trump officials such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I say "creepy," because Rubin assures us that she's above such uncouth behavior, but she certainly understands the new trend in political expression and subtly nods permission: "[I]t is both natural and appropriate for decent human beings to shame and shun...".

Less than a day after Rubin's column went up in The Washington Post, the newspaper published an editorial, "Let the Trump team eat in peace." The editors made clear that they think the "terrible violations of human rights at the border" — "demonizing immigrants" — is "no ordinary policy dispute," but...

We nonetheless would argue that Ms. Huckabee, and [Kirstjen] Nielsen and [Stephen] Miller, too, should be allowed to eat dinner in peace. Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?

Down that road lies a world in which only the most zealous sign up for public service. That benefits no one.

That is, they might not mind if the interference with restaurant life could be limited to political officials who do things that WaPo editors think are truly hateful, but if ordinary people assume the authority to decide what counts as "no ordinary policy dispute" and to act out in restaurants, then eating in restaurants will lose its charm, and Washington will fill up with those awful characters who only want to get work done and will forgo the pleasures of fine dining.

Imagine the zealots who will take over! You need the kind of people who care about going out to restaurants, people like WaPo editors, who certainly don't want anyone screaming "Baby murderer!" in their face.

But let's look at the comments on that editorial. I'm sure the editors thought they'd expressed firm opposition to Trump alongside their carefully reasonable plea for peace in restaurants. Here's the highest-rated comment:

Oh shut up with the groveling, Fred Hiatt [WaPo's editorial page editor] or whoever wrote this drivel.

These Trump collaborators are the "Good Germans" of the day and they deserve every bit of public shaming and shunning they get. They're lucky they don't get spit on when they slither out in public.

Another commenter responds:

Drivel indeed ... they deserve no peace.

There is no rest for the wicked.

And another:

Well... This admin certainly has given us NO peace or rest since day 1 of the orange "American carnage". But they certainly have been busy amassing the "piece" for themselve and their filthy rich donors. Each new day is full of new absurdities, lawlessness and outrageous lies and ignorant tweets. And now thousands of faceless, defenseless kids lost in the Trump Baby Prisons...

So... We let them eat in peace until when? When they start delivering children MADE orphans to work farms? When they start dumping the undocumented children in the middle of nowhere in C America in the dark of the night? When they start carting them to the ovens? When would it be okay? When?

Another highly-rated comment is: "Give them hell and spit in their food.. They are not welcome in polite society," which is followed up by "like 'the help'" (a reference to a movie where shit is baked into chocolate pie).

ADDED: On reread, I'm seeing that I wrote "if ordinary people assume the authority to decide what counts as 'no ordinary policy dispute.'" My ordinary writing policy is not to let a word repeat like that unless there's a good reason, but one "ordinary" is in quotes and I can't think of a good synonym for the "ordinary" in "ordinary people" — even with the assistance of Meade's singing "Everyday People" — so I'm racking my brain for a justification for the repetition.



And different strokes for different folks/And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo-bee/Ooh, sha sha/We got to live together...

Jeff Buckley covers the great Sly and the Family Stone song "Everyday People."

Jeff Buckley died in 1997 but there's an album coming out of covers — including "Just Like a Woman" — and "Everyday People" has been made available for streaming here.

The original version can be heard here. And here's the Wikipedia article on the great song:

The song is one of Sly Stone's pleas for peace and equality between differing races and social groups, a major theme and focus for the band. The Family Stone featured Caucasians Greg Errico and Jerry Martini in its lineup, as well as females Rose Stone and Cynthia Robinson; making it the first major integrated band in rock history. Sly & the Family Stone's message was about peace and equality through music....

Hillary's Everyday People theme continues: Her van is named "Scooby."

The Guardian offers a tidbit about the road trip (which we are already discussing in the previous post):

The campaign also leaked other snippets intended to humanise the trip, including that the former first lady had nicknamed the van “Scooby” because it resembles the vehicle from the cartoon.

It is unclear whether the folksy narrative will immediately alter perceptions of Clinton, who has been at the top of the political elite, as first lady, senator and secretary of state, for more than two decades....

Clinton’s current location and planned itinerary is unknown. However, she is scheduled to arrive at a community college in Monticello shortly after 1pm on Tuesday, for what the first in what her campaign is billing as a series of “conversations with everyday Iowans.”

See? There's that word again — "everyday" (the adjective).

I pulled out the "Everyday People" theme, I said in the previous post, not only because Hillary is striving to seem like one of the common people, but also because "When I hear 'everyday' used as an adjective, I think of the song 'Everyday People' by Sly and the Family Stone." Well! I nearly fell off my chair when I saw that the van was named "Scooby." You may think only about the cartoon "Scooby-Doo," but the name "Scooby-Doo" comes from the song "Everyday People." The song has a line — repeated 3 times — "And different strokes for different folks/And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo." "Scooby-Doo," the cartoon, began in 1969. "Everyday People," the song, was a big hit in 1968, when Hillary Clinton was 21....



Now, get in the van. Oh sha sha, we got to live together....

Hillary's Everyday People campaign begins with a roadtrip to Iowa in a van — with spontaneous (-looking?) stops along the way.

Politico reports: 

While she has no planned pit stops on her road trip — which was her own idea — the candidate stopped by a gas station in Pennsylvania on Sunday. She later tweeted a picture of the stop, saying, “Road trip! Loaded the van & set off for IA. Met a great family when we stopped this afternoon. Many more to come. -H”

Clinton asked top aides whether a road trip was feasible about a month ago, one of her staffers said. Instead of a motorcade, she is traveling in a three-car caravan, the smallest possible arrangement given the former first lady’s security constraints.

I'm calling it her Everyday People campaign, because "everyday" is the word that jumped out of Hillary's announcement video, which I summarized yesterday like this:

There are a whole lot of people in it saying this and that about their lives, but take my word for it, Hillary Clinton shows up in the end and says something about her life... that's she's running for President:

There's some connection between "everyday Americans" and Hillary Clinton. That's the idea to be planted in your head. It's just an ad. It could just as well be a Coca-Cola ad. Good people, going about their everyday lives, and then The Product! There's no sense or reason to any of it, but why should there be?

She said "everyday Americans," but I'm saying "Everyday People," because: 1. The connection being made is from the lofty, elite Hillary to the common people, and there's no stress on the distinction between American people and people elsewhere, and 2. When I hear "everyday" used as an adjective, I think of the song "Everyday People" by Sly and the Family Stone: "I am no better and neither are you/We are the same whatever we do/You love me. you hate me, you know me, and then/You can't figure out the bag I'm in/I am everyday people...." Seems fitting!

So here she is tweeting "Road trip!" like a freewheeling young person, when the truth is that she hasn't driven a car since 1996. She can't really be spontaneous and everyday, but that's the image she wants you to see (and you can't figure out the bag she's in). "Instead of a motorcade, she is traveling in a three-car caravan..." Do everyday people understand the motorcade/caravan distinction?

Having written about the new ad, I was drawn in by a headline at Vox: "Hillary Clinton’s announcement video is surprisingly bold, fascinating filmmaking." Despite the headline, most of the analysis of Hillary's video — by Todd VanDerWerff — is like mine (though VanDerWerff shows more enthusiasm):

The first things we see in "Getting Started" aren't anything we'd associate with campaign imagery. They are, instead, a bunch of people going about their daily lives. And that goes on for most of the ad....

We're meant to be pleased that they're taking control of their lives — everybody in the ad has some big goal they're working toward — but also think that we could just walk up to them and start having a conversation. Like we could with all of these people!...

[The ad] subtly reinforces [Hillary's] connection to everybody else in the video. They're all part of the same movement, the same goal. The woman who's moving so her daughter can go to a better school has a dream that is no better or worse than Clinton's ambition of running for president.

VanDerWerff's article veers deeply into film-studies material about the placement of the figure in the frame and the colors and shapes. The headline is misleading because this sort of thing is only "fascinating" to people who are into that sort of close inspection. It would be more accurate to say: Come on, let's get film-studies geeky about Hillary's video. Or really: ... about Hillary and Rand Paul's videos, because much of the article is about 2 Rand Paul videos. I had not seen either of those, and they really are very different from Hillary's video... and different from each other. But that's material for another post, so I will stop here.

"High-End Stores Use Facial Recognition Tools To Spot VIPs."

Surely, this is the moment when we find ourselves on the cusp between the old and the new.

The Old: There was etiquette and common courtesy, and you felt called upon to regard everyone as a very important person. Sly and the Family Stone sang it best: "Everybody Is a Star." And Jesus said: "Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me."

The New: Everyone will have Google Glass with facial recognition and everyone, high-end or not, will know the identity of everyone, celebrity or not. Everyone will know that you know who they are, and your ability to recognize anyone will say absolutely nothing about your character and discernment.

Wikipedia Sentence of the Day.

"The line 'And so on, and so on, and scooby doobie doo' would in 1969 at least partly inspire the naming of the title character in the popular Saturday morning cartoon series Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!."

Classic Wikipedia, in style and substance.

I was reading about the great Sly and the Family Stone song "Everyday People" — which, by the way, Dolly Parton covered — only because Meade happened to say "Sometimes I'm right and sometimes I'm wrong" after the internet resolved a dispute in my favor. The dispute was over the phrase "raising the bar." What bar?

What bar we were talking about raising is another matter? Any bars you think should be raised?

A little convention simulblogging.

I don't really want to watch the phony display that is a political party convention, but others in my household have turned it on, as I sit here with my laptop. So I'm blogging by accident. Al Gore just spoke in his strange, overheated way. I say he reminds me of the kind of guy in an old movie who would be trying to marry W.C. Fields's daughter. Og Oggilby. John says you should blog that. I'm thinking, who thinks about Og Oggilby?

Next, there's a horrid version of "Proud Mary" (the Tina Turner version, not the Creedence Clearwater version), with terrible new words: "working for the people every night and day," etc.

Now, they've lined up all the women. Barbara Mikulski is yelling out the words on the teleprompter, while every other Democratic woman Senator, including Hillary Clinton, stands in a line behind her. Nearly all wear colorful pantsuits and clasp their hands in front of them. Why must people--like Mikulski right now--speaking in a large auditorium always use an oratorical yell, as if there were no microphones? It's so irritating when you're sitting at home. When women seek power, by the way, it's not about power for themselves, it's about power to make a difference, here at home ... and abroad!

Now a huge group of children, making no effort to sing in tune, sing "This Land Is Your Land." The Senate women are still on stage, because, of course, what goes with children better than women? They clap along with the kids and smile and smile.

Time for seniors now. An elderly woman doctor, piped in from Little Rock, enunciates her way through a teleprompter speech. Kerry will be great for seniors because he'll help with a prescription drug benefit.

More music, and once again it's back to the sixties: "Everyday People." At least they don't change the words this time:

I am no better and neither are you
We are the same whatever we do
You love me you hate me you know me and then
You can't figure out the bag I'm in.

Yes, that's right: you were for the war, and then you were against the war. I can't figure out the bag you're in. And what a comfort it is to go back to the good old days when we did apply our mental efforts to the determination of what bag people were in.

Whoops, now it's "Tennessee Waltz." Because we want the votes of the pre-Boomers too. Or is it the rural voters we're trying to extend a hand to now? Or is it just Tennessee, that state Al Gore so famously lost last time around?

Governor Richardson now. Another speaker who seems not to notice there is a microphone. His attempt to shout to the last row makes his voice unpleasantly harsh. John (my son) says: "It's not just the tone of his voice. He sounds like the school principal giving a speech."

A little film about Carter. Carter in the flesh emerges. He served in the military, he informs us, and I slip back into my semi-coma, as it's clear where this is going. He served under two Presidents, Truman and Eisenhower, who had themselves served in the military, and because of this they had the proper judgment about how to use the military, judgment that is sorely lacking now under Bush. And presumably under Clinton, but let's not mention that. (And was Carter for Dole?) And let's not even think about what we would say about this principle of military service if a woman candidate seeks the Presidency some time in the future. This year, the principle will be treated as an eternal verity.

Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, wearing a hot pink suit jacket, takes the podium, and reminds me of how everyone who has spoken tonight has delivered a sequence of stock phrases. Has there been one fresh expression? Did you know that we want an America that is stronger and more united? Did you happen to realize that we should seize the promise of the future?

They play the original Chuck Berry recording of Johnny B. Goode. Happy people in the audience dance and clap as if rock 'n roll was invented yesterday.

Tammy Baldwin! A cheer goes up in Madison. The local kids are gathered in the Nitty Gritty restaurant to watch her on TV together. [Someone who attended comes in wearing a button that says: "Dated Dean, Married Kerry."] Tammy looks pretty and emotes her way through the speech like Reese Witherspoon in "Election."

Rep. Bob Menendez is speaking. Someone who wasn't in the room back when John made that comment about Gov. Richardson observes, "That guy sounds like the school principal." Menendez pronounces "nuclear" "nucular."

Glenn Close is called upon to talk about 9/11, Hollywood-style: "It all began on an ordinary, cloudless day ..." A mother of a 9/11 victim reads a speech from a piece of paper. There are shots of people looking appropriately grief-stricken in the audience. A sixteen-year-old boy plays "Amazing Grace" beautifully on the violin and everyone in the crowd holds up a cigarette lighter flame.

Rev. David Alson, who served in the military with Kerry, gives a rousing speech. He wears a striped suit that has a wicked moiré effect on TV.

Hillary Clinton arrives as a saxophone plays "New York State of Mind." She's wearing a light yellow pantsuit and the official jewelry of the Democratic Convention: a pearl choker. Blah blah blah health care blah blah drug prices blah blah stem cell research. She highlights the names of the wives of Kerry and Edwards. She talks about 9/11 in terms of its effect on her. I thought she was only going to speak for 5 minutes. I guess she's caught some of Bill's tendency to run overtime.

And out comes Bill Clinton, and the Fleetwood Mac music kicks in, so people can feel fully nostalgically thrilled to get that old 1992 feeling again. Bill looks slim and well-tanned and has a neat short haircut that has been tinted blond. (Are people noticing this? It's quite clear. You can see he's left some white at the temples, and the contrast is clear. He's gone blond!) Ah! Clinton is an immensely engaging speaker. (Is Al Gore still there, watching in some back room or back at his hotel? Is he regretting not using Clinton in his own campaign?) The most interesting thing Clinton says is that he's jealous of Edwards. He sees himself in Edwards.

Oh, enough of all this. Time to watch "The Daily Show." No, it's a rerun. We'll have to wait until tomorrow for their convention coverage. Time to shut off the TV. End of post. Really.

P.S. Thanks to Instapundit for linking to this while I was still in the middle of writing it!