"He remember... the night he thought his hair would turn white listening to the sound of Russian guards battering prisoners with fists and metal piping..."

"... knowing it would be his turn in the morning. Or the feeling of constant hunger, and the terrible disappointment of waking from a dream in which he was eating his favourite meal. Or the Russian pop song Forever Young, Forever Drunk, which one commandant would play as he selected who to beat...."

From "I was a PoW in Russia — guards played pop music before beatings/Ukrainians released in prisoner swaps with Putin struggle to understand or even remember the horrors they experienced" (London Times).

And here's a YouTube link, if you want to listen to Forever Young, Forever Drunk, the song chosen to intensify the fear of torture.

"Once the song was finished, we tried to get on television and the radio. But the BBC banned it."

"I think the people who banned it were intelligent people. They were just being protective. I don’t think it was because they felt it would create a revolution. It wasn’t about politics. There were no musicians or artists speaking about politics. There was nobody suggesting who you vote for. It was considered to be passé to even have a political stance then."

Writes Pete Townshend, in "'It Came From a Place of Resentment’/Pete Townshend began writing ‘My Generation’ as an anthem for his disaffected peers. Then the queen got involved" (NY Magazine).

Yes, my generation is passé. We're the ones who considered it passé to even have a political stance.

It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul's State of the State Address: pic.twitter.com/nFsb7Fowu0

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 17, 2025

"I’ve been writing lately about how American politics seem to have moved into a new dispensation — more unsettled and extreme..."

"... but also perhaps more energetic and dynamic. One benefit of unsettlement, famously adumbrated by Orson Welles’s villainous Harry Lime in 'The Third Man,' is supposed to be cultural ferment: 'In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.' There are certainly signs of ferment out there, in technology, religion and intellectual life. But I’m worried about pop culture — worried that the relationship between art and commerce isn’t working as it should, worried that even if the rest of American society starts moving, our storytelling is still going to be stuck...."

Writes Ross Douthat, in "Can We Make Pop Culture Great Again?" (NYT).

I got totally sidetracked by "dispensation." Here's my interaction with Grok that convinced me that Douthat didn't make a weird word choice. It's an excellent word choice, and I enjoyed reading about the religious meanings of "dispensation," including

How, indeed?

A headline pair on the front page of the NYT catches my eye.

"How a Naked Man on a Tropical Island Created Our Current Political Insanity" — The naked man catches my eye, but a quick glance identifies the naked man as Richard Hatch, winner of season 1 of "Survivor," and we know that "Survivor" led to "The Apprentice," Donald Trump's big lateral move into the nation's psyche:

The NYT article "Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce and a MAGA Meltdown" is a tad disingenuous.

The politics writer, Jonathan Weisman, informs us that Taylor Swift "is driving the movement behind Donald Trump bonkers" and then tries to explain why.

Just 3 days ago, I was blogging about a NYT article that went on and on about how fervently Biden supporters hoped for a Taylor Swift endorsement. I thought it was embarrassing and pathetic that the Biden people were resorting to stirring up hope for their failing candidate by touting the prospect of a pop star endorsement.

But now, here's an article about how Trump supporters are getting out in front of the potential endorsement with an effort that seems fine-tuned to serve either of 2 entirely rational goals: 1. Persuade Taylor Swift to withhold her endorsement, or 2. Minimize the value of any endorsement.

If the endorsement is as valuable as the NYT portrayed it in the article on January 29th — "Inside Biden’s Anti-Trump Battle Plan (and Where Taylor Swift Fits In)" — then there's nothing "bonkers" about the Trump preemptive strike.

I'd be inclined to advise Swift to stay out of politics. I'd quote Bob Dylan: "I think politics is an instrument of the Devil. Just that clear. I think politics is what kills; it doesn’t bring anything alive. Politics is corrupt; I mean, anybody knows that." You're an artist. Preserve your artist power. Don't squander it.

But there must be those much closer to her who are saying that another Trump presidency will destroy the world, and she could, perhaps, simply by saying one sentence, push Biden to victory. How can you not say that one sentence? How can you hold yourself aloof when you have the power to save us and all the world is crying out for you to say that one line?!

"Obviously leftists do not have to be as paranoid in their quest for messages supportive of the status quo as Christians playing their records backwards in the hopes of finding satanic content."

Writes Adam Kotsko, in "Moralism Is Ruining Cultural Criticism/The left has embraced an approach long favored by the evangelical right" (The Atlantic).

And of course we are a long way from having anything like the real-world thought police of Stalinism.... By contrast, it seems relatively harmless to hope that films and TV shows might reflect one’s own politics and to lament when they fail to do so. Yet the very fact that the demand is so open-ended that it is impossible to imagine an artwork meeting its largely unstated and unarticulated standards shows that something has gone wrong here.... 

Political problems cannot be solved on the aesthetic level. And it’s much more likely that people are consuming politics as a kind of aesthetic performance or as a way of expressing aesthetic preferences.... Just as the reduction of art to political propaganda leads to bad art, the aestheticization of politics leads to bad, irresponsible politics.....

"[Aaron] Rodgers’s appearances out on the town are part of a well-orchestrated campaign by him and his PR apparatus. But..."

"... what’s telling is that he’s making the effort in the first place. After all: Wasn’t Rodgers supposed to be a dangerous, rebellious, edgelord truth-teller? This is the guy who smugly (infuriatingly, really) lied about being 'immunized' during the 2021 NFL season. The guy who thanked Joe Rogan for his 'COVID-treatment plan,' who seemed to imply that Joe Biden isn’t a legitimate president, who wore a shirt on Pat McAfee’s show with the words Cancel Culture crossed out ... who actually claimed... that the government was releasing videos of UFOs to distract from the 'Epstein Files.' Rodgers’s pandemic-era torching of his own reputation was so extreme that, at one point, State Farm, whom he has worked with since 2011, pulled his ads off the air.... And yet he has been a very different person since he got to New York. He is acting like… a guy who doesn’t want to get canceled?"

I'm reading "Aaron Rodgers Really Wants to Be Liked Again" (Intelligencer).

With the death of the Queen, perhaps it's too somber a time to watch TikToks, so I cautiously offer my selection this evening. There are 8. Some people love them.

1. Two young girls encounter a landline telephone.

2. Experience an oranger orange than actually exists.

3. Is the bird oddly stoical or truly in love with the man and his piano?

4. Is morning beer a deplorable notion or something poignantly sublime?

5. When it comes to questions of politics, I wish more celebrities were like Elvis.

6. The ugliest piece of furniture or the most amusingly beautiful?

7. If this is the definition of a "toxic" person, then I am sure I know who is the most toxic person I have ever met. 

8. The Corn Kid — 25 years later.

"[O]ne of the unintended consequences of turning statesmen into standups [at the White House Correspondents' Dinner] was the election of Donald Trump."

"I’m referring to President Barack Obama’s roasting of Trump at the 2011 dinner. Obama 'lampooned Mr. Trump’s gaudy taste in décor,' wrote Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns of The New York Times. 'He ridiculed his fixation on false rumors that the president had been born in Kenya. He belittled his reality show, The Celebrity Apprentice.' And what was the result? 'That evening of public abasement, rather than sending Mr. Trump away, accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political world,' Haberman and Burns continued in their 2016 article. 'And it captured the degree to which Mr. Trump’s campaign is driven by a deep yearning sometimes obscured by his bluster and bragging: a desire to be taken seriously.'... As president, Trump boycotted the WHCD.... Today, I suspect that many Republicans would viscerally recoil at the notion of a GOP president self-flagellating for the amusement of people unwilling to give him a fair shake.... Booking Trevor Noah [to host this year's WHCD] screams out-of-touch progressive.... The WHCD is an antiquated relic that does more harm than good. We should have just let it fade from our collective memory, rather than trying to resurrect this monster."

From "Nobody Missed the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. Why Bring It Back? WHO IS THIS FOR? It’s is a grotesque, self-congratulatory, backslapping event for the elites, by the elites" by Matt Lewis at The Daily Beast.

"Someone must explain why celebrities running for office is a recurring nightmare we cannot seem to shake. The Rock, Caitlyn Jenner, Matthew McConaughey, Randy Quaid."

"They all have suggested lately that when it comes to running the country, they have what it takes. And they do: malignant narcissism," said Bill Maher on his show Friday night: 

"The last four years was a warning, not an inspiration. You were supposed to see that and think, 'I guess high-level government jobs should go to people who have trained for it and know what they're doing.'..." 

The problem with that is that we don't think people in politics know what they are doing. 

"Let me put it bluntly to you and all of these show biz candidates. You're not good enough, you're not smart enough, and, doggone it, it completely doesn't matter that people like you. They like you now because you're an entertainer and thus largely uncontroversial. Governing is the opposite. If you think you can unite the country, you're delusional."

I didn't personally transcribe that. I relied on the transcription at The Hill, but I made one correction: "doggone it." The Hill has "dog on it," which made me laugh... then made me wonder what "doggone it" represents. Are we supposed to see the word "gone"? It's not as though "dog gone it" makes sense. 

Grammarphobia writes: 

Bruce Springsteen (and Jeep) call us (the Super Bowl watchers) back to the middle, to "the ReUnited States of America."

 

We see Bruce in Kansas, the geographic center of the contiguous 48 states, and he's mourning about how "the middle has been a hard place to get to lately." It's not overtly political, but I get the feeling that we're being told that the person who is President now, is more or less in the middle, and we ought to come together and feel good about that.

This is — Variety tells us — the first ad Bruce Springsteen has ever done. He'd never even allowed his songs to be used in ads.

But Springsteen has been openly political. Here's a message he put out just before the 2020 election:

There’s no art in this White House. There’s no literature, no poetry, no music. There are no pets in this White House. No loyal man’s best friend, no Socks the family cat, no kids’ science fairs. No time when the president takes off his blue suit, red tie uniform and becomes human. Except when he puts on his white shirt and khaki pants uniform, and hides from the American people to play golf. There are no images of the first family enjoying themselves together in a moment of relaxation. No Obamas on the beach in Hawaii moments or Bushes fishing in Kennebunkport. No Reagans on horseback. No Kennedys playing touch football on the Cape. Where’d that country go? Where did all the fun, the joy, and the expression of love and happiness go? We used to be the country that did the ice bucket challenge and raised millions for charity. We used to have a president who calmed and soothed the nation instead of dividing it. And a first lady who planted a garden instead of ripping one out. We are rudderless and joyless. We have lost the cultural aspects of society that make America great. We have lost our mojo, our fun, our happiness, our cheering on of others, the shared experience of humanity that makes it all worth it. The challenges and the triumphs that we shared and celebrated, the unique can-do spirit that America has always been known for. We are lost. We’ve lost so much in so short a time. On November 3rd, vote them out.

So, Bruce got what he said he wanted, the President who calms and soothes us instead of riling us up. And Bruce is driving a Jeep in Kansas to call us back into a dreamworld of Americana.