You and What Army

HARDBOWL

    Just had to include the transcript of Chris Matthews' first of many discussions of Barack Obama's bowling score at an alley in Altoona back in late March.  It's all completely inane, hilarious-but-pathetic reading, but for those of you with busy schedules I've bolded some of the more egregious howlers.

The cast:  Hardball host Chris Matthews, Newsweek reporter Howard Fineman, Congressional Quarterly reporter Jonathan Allen, and MSNBC political analyst Michelle Bernard (who, it helps to know when reading this abysmal exchange, is African-American).

MATTHEWS:  We‘re back with the round table for more of the politics fix.  Howard, I want to ask you about bowling today.  I want to ask you about bowling.

FINEMAN:  Just because I‘m from Pittsburgh.

MATTHEWS:  No, no, no.  It‘s so interesting.  Here‘s a guy trying to break into the white ethnic voting crowd, so he goes and plays the sport most associated I think with regular folks in the big cities and small towns.  You and I grew up doing a little bowling.  We know what a pathetic score is.  Neither of us have ever done a 37, I think it‘s fair to say.

FINEMAN:  To fair to Barack, it was over seven frames.  OK.  But that still isn‘t much.  I mean, he definitely needs some bowling less sense [sic].  He should do what we used to do in Pittsburgh, all night bowling for a dollar, really work on your game.  I think he did get Frank O‘Harris [sic] and he did get Jerome Bettis, the Bus, to endorse him.  He‘s traveling around on the bus with the Bus.

If you can‘t do something like that, you shouldn‘t do it.  He should have stuck to shooting hoops, which he‘s very, very good at, by the way, which translates racially too, especially during the NCAA basketball tournament.  Don‘t do something you‘ve never tried before in front of a national television audience.

MATTHEWS:  Michelle, this gets very ethnic, but the fact that he‘s good at basketball doesn‘t surprise everybody.  The fact that he‘s terrible at bowling makes you wonder.

BERNARD:  It doesn‘t surprise anybody black, I can tell you that.

MATTHEWS:  Is black—I guess everybody bowls.   

FINEMAN:  This is killing him, Chris.  Don‘t show it over and over again.

MATTHEWS:  This is a killer. Look at this killer.  It isn‘t the most macho form there.

FINEMAN:  He can‘t challenge Hillary.  I think he doesn‘t dare challenge Hillary, because Hillary‘s from Chicago.  She might actually be able to get over triple digits.

MATTHEWS:  I‘m waiting to see if Hillary challenges him to a bowling match.  It might be a thrilling—you know what, what would get a higher poll, a higher rating do you think, Jonathan, a higher television rating, a bowling match between Hillary and Barack or another debate?

ALLEN:  The bowling match absolutely would, because everybody would be watching to see when they went in the gutter.

FINEMAN:  You got to do HARDBALL bowling, Chris.  You got to do it.

BERNARD:  He gave a good response today when he was talking about his failures as a bowler. I think he probably picked up some points from people who felt sorry for him who didn‘t know what he was doing.

HARDBALL FOLLIES

    Time to rant about MSNBC's Hardball, hosted by Chris Matthews. Today's episode was based not in the studio but at the kick-off event of the new NBC prime-time schedule, which has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with sucking up to the parent company.  Why would Matthews do such a thing?  Probably because, according to his recent (and damning) New York Times magazine profile, "Friends who have known him a long time say he worries that 'the suits' at NBC want him out."  Two competitors are breathing down his neck: David Gregory's new 6:00 show already duplicates Matthews' turf and MSNBC mega-regular Rachel Maddow recently announced that she is "gunning" for her own show.  Maybe that's also why Matthews recently dyed his hair.
    Matthews often uses his allegedly uncompromising show for strictly personal ends.  A self-described film buff, Matthews has inexplicably based Hardball episodes at Sundance and gratuitously hosts Hollywood stars like Ben Affleck, Russell Crowe and Matt Damon, typically when they have a movie to shill for, and has them pontificate about politics.  100 to 1 he has a manuscript that he hawks to them after the show.
    Then there's his blatant on-air sexism, which is extensively catalogued here.  Also check out his truly creepy treatment of CNBC's Erin Burnett.  Ewwwwwww.  Note the oddly high likelihood that female guests on his Sunday morning show will be attractive blondes like Katty Kay, Kathleen Parker and Michelle Cottle, or that during the 2000 presidential election fiasco, Matthews spared no opportunity to opine that democracy-defiling Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris was a "beautiful woman" and a "very attractive woman."  Matthews has repeatedly claimed that Hillary Clinton should not raise her voice during speeches because women sound "shrill" and "strident" when they yell.
    And how about Matthews' OCD-like proclivity for repeating his own bon mots as if nobody heard him the first time: his countless designations of Jeremiah Wright as an "albatross" for Obama, that the Clintons always want a "mulligan" whether it's playing golf or running a political campaign, that Obama's poor bowling skills mean he's out of touch with working people, or Matthews' belief that when Bill Clinton wags his finger he's lying.  He is clearly so pleased with these piercing apercus and sparkling witticisms that he believes they're just as good the tenth time he says them.
    Finally, let us not forget that Chris Matthews was one of the foremost culprits in the ceaseless and inane yammering about Jeremiah Wright.  And not a word of apology or regret when polls revealed that it mattered very little to voters in North Carolina and Indiana.
    Oh yeah, and why does he always call Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party for the presidency of the United States, by his first name?

FEAR AND LOATHING IN SOUTH PHILLY

    It's rather amazing that a white multimillionaire who went to Wellesley and Harvard and has enjoyed the perks of being married to a man who's been an extremely powerful government official for 32 nearly consecutive years whines about being disadvantaged, while her African-American counterpart has not complained one bit about the powerful prejudice he's endured — and, as I recently found out first-hand, still endures.
    This past weekend I canvassed for Obama in South Philadelphia with my friend Shonali.  We were in a down-at-heel, all-white working-class neighborhood, mostly decrepit two-story homes faced with crumbling stucco or fake brick.  A volunteer dropped us off at our location, and we began walking down sunny S. 2nd Street, our arms loaded with Obama signs and flyers, excited to spread the good word about the most exciting politician of our lifetimes.  Less than a minute later, some guy passed by in a black pick-up truck and hollered out the window, "Fuck that n*****!"
    In some respects, I've led a sheltered life – I've only heard that word used in anger once before — so maybe some people are more inured to it than I am.  But when that guy yelled at us, I felt like I'd been shot through the chest with an arrow.  I felt anger, sure, but it was more just profound disappointment.  In the 21st century, nearly 150 years after the first Emancipation Proclamation, this kind of thing – and much, much worse -- still goes on?  It boggles my mind that anyone could be so unabashedly hideous.
    It's funny, when Shonali told the two young African-American women from the Obama office in South Philly about the incident — I couldn't bring myself to tell them — both of them just laughed heartily.  That was really inspiring and made me feel a lot better.  Still, when one of those women came to meet up with us in that neighborhood, she brought along her large boxer dog.  In South Philly, you can never be too careful.

AT-BAT MUSIC: NOTHING BUT THE HITS

    Last summer, I went to a party where everyone played their "at-bat music" – what song you would have on the P.A. system as you stepped to the plate at a major league baseball game.  I chose the Portsmouth Sinfonia's rendition of "Also Sprach Zarathustra," an aural experience like no other.
    Ostensibly, the purposes of at-bat music are: a) getting the batter psyched by playing his favorite music, b) pumping up the crowd, and c) thus intimidating the pitcher.  It's kind of like the way fife-and-drum bands were intended to strike fear into enemy soldiers.  (These days, it's comical to think of fife-and-drum music as being scary, but I suppose even the Mr. Softee ice cream truck jingle would strike fear in my heart if it signaled that I was about to be shot at.)
    At-bat music is a step on the road to self-actualization, or what Humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow called "the esteem needs," "where the individual will desire a sense of competence, recognition of achievement by peers, and respect from others." Having a personally selected fanfare every time one emerges into the view of perhaps hundreds of thousands of people both simulates and induces the perception of competence, recognition and respect, qualities which, in sports, are particularly intertwined.  And it's true -- you have to respect anyone who has the nerve to make everyone in the stadium listen to "Who Let the Dogs Out?" each time he steps to the plate.
    But I wonder if self-actualization isn't actually a means to an end that is quite removed from what's transpiring on the field.
    As leading athletes make increasingly more money from endorsements than they do from playing the game, imaging has become exponentially more essential to their financial success.  That's because the more vividly etched an athlete's image is, the more he or she becomes an identifiable commodity that can be exploited.  Music is a supremely effective and time-honored tool for staking out just such an identity.
    And in sports, identity can be very tightly bound to music.  Metallica's "Enter Sandman" has become so closely associated with ace Yankees reliever Mariano Rivera that Mets pitcher Billy Wagner raised some hackles when he selected it as the music to be played as he walked to the mound.  When he was a rising star on the team, Mets third baseman David Wright used David Bowie's "Fame" as his at-bat music.  Choosing "Fame" — despite the song's ambivalent lyrics — is a great example of commercial self-actualization, since becoming the kind of celebrity detailed in the song would jack up Wright's endorsement fee.
    At-bat music, then, is an exercise in co-branding, a way of wrapping oneself in a powerful set of associations.  It just makes good business sense.

MADAME, HAVE YOU NO SHAME?

    Below are four well documented statements by Hillary Clinton which indisputably prove her to be dishonest, hypocritical, and just plain craven.  I'm sincerely curious about this: knowing that all these things are incontrovertible fact, how on earth could anyone justify supporting such a person?

    A video posted on Clinton's official site complained that the other candidates were waging "the politics of pile on " against her.  Later, she complained that the press was giving Obama an easy time.  But then, after the Philadelphia debate, she castigated Obama for allegedly complaining about tough treatment from the press.  "If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen," she crowed.  Can you say "hypocrisy"?  (On top of that, Obama wasn't complaining about tough questioning, he was pointing out – as countless media observers and literally tens of thousands of people posting on the ABC site agreed -- that the questions avoided the major issues of the day in favor of inane queries about lapel pins and speculating about other people's degree of patriotism.)

    In February, she vehemently cried "Shame on you, Barack Obama" to protest Obama's claim that she supported and promoted NAFTA.  Then, after she released her official schedule as first lady, it emerged that… she had supported and promoted NAFTA.

    Clinton tried to get the Michigan and Florida primaries to count even though she had signed an agreement acknowledging that they would not count.  Per agreement with the Democratic National Committee, Obama's name wasn't even on the Michigan ballot. “The results of those primaries were fair and should be honored,” Clinton told the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.  Then she had the gall to claim that the DNC was disenfranchising voters in those states by disqualifying the results of the one-sided election.  How about the voters who stayed home because Obama wasn't even on the ballot?  Aren't they disenfranchised too?

    She claimed – four separate times, in scripted remarks – that she had flown to Bosnia in 1996 and arrived under sniper fire.  When confronted with video footage that directly contradicted her statement, she refused to apologize for a week, then said she "misspoke."  "Misspoke"?  Is that French for "deliberately lied"?  (Later, her husband said that she had only made the claim once, "late at night," and that the campaign had apologized "immediately" – none of which was true.)

    Those are just a few examples of Clinton's indisputable moral and ethical bankruptcy.  So I really want to know: what are the mental gymnastics required to continue to believe that this person is worthy of leading the free world?

CIRCLE JERK

    Sometimes people ask me why I've never given a paper at the Experience Music Project Pop Conference.  I think this page explains it better than I ever could.

I GOT YER TORCH RIIIIIIIGHT HERE

    It so happens that I'll be in San Francisco when they run the Olympic torch there on Wednesday, and I look forward to protesting along the route.
    I can't believe anyone is still trying to argue that the Olympics aren't political.  Obviously, they're being held in Beijing because China is trying to establish itself as a global economic power and to get itself some good p.r. after all their human rights abuses.
    Let's not kid ourselves: China is patently using the event for political purposes and the International Olympic Committee is letting them.  Why else would they hold athletic events in a place where the air is not fit to breathe?
    There are several protest events being held in San Francisco that day, and mayor Gavin Newsom has said that people are quite welcome to voice their disapproval along the torch route.  I will be delighted to take him up on that.

-- A group of Burmese monks and Burma supporters will gather for a Peace Walk at 9:30 AM at Vista Point to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.

-- Team Tibet will meet at 10 AM at Ferry Park to protest the Olympic torch relay in San Francisco.

-- The Olympic torch relay begins at 1 PM. at McCovey Cove at AT&T Park.

-- The Olympic torch closing ceremony is at 3:30 PM at Justin Herman Plaza.

KLAUS DINGER R.I.P.

    Attention must be paid to the March 20th passing of Klaus Dinger, 61, original drummer with Kraftwerk and then the co-founder and drummer of Neu!, the brilliant and visionary experimental band of the '70s.  Dinger was the mainspring behind Neu!'s famous "motorik" sound, a minimalistic and propulsive eight-note beat tailor-made for extended cruising on the Autobahn.
    Tracks like "Isi," "Für Immer" and "Hallogallo" achieved a kind of animated stasis, a serene velocity that must have been something of an emotional breakthrough for post-war Germany.
    It's not hard to see the continuum between motorik and various strains of punk and post-punk, and it resurfaced in bands like Stereolab and Tortoise, while Dinger's next band, La Düsseldorf, was an acknowledged influence on David Bowie's Berlin trilogy.
    In Dinger's various obituaries, Brian Eno has often been quoted:  "There were three great beats in the '70s: Fela Kuti's [well, really Tony Allen's] Afrobeat, James Brown's funk, and Klaus Dinger's Neu! beat."  Prefix magazine's Jim Allen nailed it:  Dinger was "the Bo Diddley of Germany, a man who defined not just a style but a groove."
    "Motorik" means "machine-like" in German, but there was a transcendent humanity to Dinger's pulse, a nobly vain quest for perpetual motion amid Neu!'s winding drones, that lifted the music into the spiritual.
    And how great is it that the drummer was named Dinger?

AVOID BY:LARM LIKE THE PLAGUE

    As I mentioned in an earlier post, I attended a music convention in Oslo, Nonway, called by:Larm.  I also spoke at the conference and would receive an honorarium for that.  Unfortunately, payment was not forthcoming, so I had to remind them to pay not once but twice.  I asked to be paid by check, but they said they had to pay me by direct deposit.  Then they promised to pay me that week.  No payment.
    Then they said they needed my bank information, which I promptly provided. Still no payment.  I piped up again after a week or so.  Behnam Farazollahi, my contact there, said he'd been "on holiday" in Milan and would get right on it.  Still no payment, so I piped up again.  This time, Farazollahi claimed he had a "heart illness" and had been out of the office.  Payment would arrive soon.  Guess what never arrived.
     I finally had to send Farazollahi and a bunch of people at by:Larm an angry e-mail demanding payment.  They eventually paid — kind of.  Inexplicably, they sent $20 less than we agreed on.  Oh, and I also had to pay a $15 wire transfer fee -- because by:Larm didn't want to send me a check as I requested.  Needless to say, no explanation to date from by:Larm about the discrepancy.
    My advice to musicians and journalists is this:  avoid by:Larm like the plague.  The bands there are laughably provincial, blatantly aping artists like Tom Waits and the Sugarcubes as if nobody would notice; the dollar is absurdly weak there, meaning meals and hotels are exorbitant; and the food in Norway sucks.  And heaven help you if by:Larm owes you money.

CELLULOID HERO

    OK, this might be one of the more unlikely pieces of graffitti I have seen on the New York subway: a tribute to '30s-'50s handsome-guy film star Tyrone Power.  Or maybe it was someone named Tyrone proclaiming his power.