Wrap-up:

We've got a new "Think Again" column called "Who's Jailing Journalists?" here in which we wonder, aloud, why the United States has joined the alleged Axis of Evil in jailing journalists without charge.

And I did a piece for the Daily Beast on "The Death of the Neocons" here.

Slacker Friday

Charles Pierce
Newton, MA

Hey Doc--

"Couldn't stop movin' when it first took hold/It was a warm spring night at the old town hall/There was a group called The Jokers, they was layin' it down/Doncha know I'm never gonna lose that funky sound."

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click--"If You Want Me To Stay" (Big Chief Alfred Doucette)--OK, sorry. I was gone for a couple of days--off to Saskatchewan for some surfing, if you must know--and I failed to leave word with my staff to tell y'all how much I love New Orleans.

Short Takes:

Part The First: As the father of daughter who's in high school, I find this a blessed relief. As a lover of Amendments IV and V, and an observer of the current Supreme Court, I find it damned near miraculous. As a longtime observer of Clarence Thomas, I continue to  find him pretty godawfully revolting.

Part The Second: For all its gifts at wonkery, Josh's place also has shown a remarkable facility at good old political gossip. I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say that we still don't know the whole story about the strange journeys of Mark Sanford, the Luis Firpo of former 2012 GOP presidential contenders.

Part The Third: If it weren't for Kevin Drum, I'd have missed this bit of guerrilla theater over at The Corner. First, Andy McCarthy puts a bird on his head. Then, Rich Lowry, who has ambitions in this world beyond being the hall monitor at a home for public lunatics, gently suggests to Andy that he is wearing a bird for a hat. Undaunted, Andy replies that he is too wearing a hat and a lovely hat it is, even though what it is doing down the back of his neck is unpleasant and making people edge away from him. Your conservative intelligentsia, ladies and gentlemen!

Part The Fourth: Jesus H. Christ On The South Beach Diet, what are these idiots thinking? I don't entirely mean the two idiots on-camera, although someone is going to have to gently remind them that, just because Chris Matthews thinks you're funny, it doesn't mean that you are. (Hey, Dana. You couldn't get that guy from The Huffington Post drunk enough to do something this stupid. Pass it on.)  I also mean the upper-echelon  idiots at the WaPo who think this piece of sub-middle-school-theatrical was worth putting out there in public. I have given thirty years of my life to a craft that deserves better than this shabby piece of burlesque and, if my industry does go down, can't at least it go down with some dignity?

Part The Fifth: I don't know how I missed this glorious book last year, but I guarantee it will start more arguments in your head than any book of the past decade. Bring it to your local and prepare for flying crockery.

Part The Last: Another dispatch from hell from History's yard waste. I swear, every time they start getting the old Legacy Machine cranked up again, there are more tapes released and it's like Christmas in June!

I have lived through a number of political events in my life that were Bad Ideas. The pardon of the above-mentioned Trickster was a bad idea, so was the virtual  non-prosecution of the Iran-Contra hoodlums. The circus surrounding the death of Terri Schiavo was a very Bad Idea, indeed. You know what else was a really Bad Idea? The Pursuit And Impeachment Of Bill Clinton, that's what. And not just because it paralyzed the government, made clowns out of the elite media, and pretty much dinged up the legacy of a brilliant politician who nonetheless wasn't smart enough to keep it zipped for the paltry eight years during which he held the job he'd wanted from birth. It surely was a Bad Idea for all those reasons, but those are all reasons it was bad for the country. It has proven to be even worse for the Republican party. This was obvious from the 1998 midterms, when the country pretty much told the Republican majority that it had enough, and those worthies went ahead with the kabuki anyway, fully in the knowledge that they had no chance in hell of ever convicting Clinton in the Senate and, thereby, removing him from office. Even they're aware now that it was a bad idea. Know how I know that?

Remember all the high-flown rhetoric that got tossed around on their side of the aisle about standing up for the law--all those quotes from A Man For All Seasons and I'll bet the estate of Robert Bolt never saw a dime--and for future generations? All those speeches about doing what was right and not what was popular? We were told that the Great Fellatio Hunt was nothing less than a watershed moment in the country's history. And yet, at the three Republican National Conventions since Clinton left office, there has been nary a mention of this selfless and noble moment in the party's history. (By comparison, I seem to recall several references to Watergate at the 1976 Democratic Convention.) Where are the videos of Henry Hyde and Young Huckleberry Graham, generic hero music swelling behind them, fighting the good fight against illicit nookie on our behalf? I may be wrong, but I don't know any Republican politician who is still promoting with pride his role in this epic struggle. And, of course, nowadays, all the GFH has done is freeze an entire generation of young Republican hopefuls into the uncomfortable position of being unable to have a good old American midlife crisis of their own. Governor Gaucho down there in South Carolina is only the most recent--and the most comically complex--one, but there will be more. Turns out that the Great Fellatio Hunt has led the party all the way up the ol' Appalachian Trail from whose bourne no traveler returns but that he runs into the local media. And with e-mails, no less!

Name:    Terry
Hometown:  Cheyenne

I'm crazy about Madeleine Peyroux. So glad you saw her. Whatever her hybrid mix, and I do love her songwriting, amidst the places she goes, she always puts me in mind of Billie. Great artist. Par for the course, over the years, re mutual musical sensibilities. Hey, Eric.

Name:   Greg Panfile
Postal:  Tuckahoe NY

Thanks to Sal for the words on the George collection... my two essays on him (obit and songwriting style analysis/appreciation) are hopefully accessible through the page linked to my name on this posting. Missing 'Bangla Desh' is bad, missing the live version from the Concert therefor is worse. We assume the live versions of 'Something' and 'While My Guitar' are poor efforts at rounding out the collection with songs whose recorded masters couldn't be used due to their Beatle origin, and getting some real time Clapton on there, right?

It does appear, speaking to Sal's point about the mastering of the current CDs, that the Last Revelation will occur this fall when the mono mixes finally come out. This issue has long been a big one in Beatleland, of Swiftian proportions about which end of the egg to crack first. Given the impossibility of producing good stereo pictures when working from four-track masters with intermediate (reduction) mixes, and the participation of the band their own selves in the mono mixing but NOT the stereo mixing, there's a theoretical argument, and a strong one, in favor of the mono mixes. I for one spent years tracking them all down, after I had all the good bootlegs.

But really, all you need is ears. A/B, for example, stereo versus mono for such rocking openers as Magical Mystery Tour and Taxman. No contest, the mono rocks, the stereo is hollow. Also, there are actual subtle, detailed differences, as they are different mixes done by different people on different days. Hopefully this will get some attention when the remasters finally appear, and 'settle' the question forever. The Beatles emanate from the mono tradition of single- speaker transistor radios and the production values of noted monoists Brian Wilson and Phil Spector. When you see pictures of them at a console, they are doing a mono mix. Period. Exclamation point!

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