A world gone mad: the Wokesters are once again ignoring the use/mention distinction and my head will soon pop

The Absurdity of the Backlash Against Joe Rogan
Does anybody really think Joe Rogan is a racist?

From the American Spectator

Excerpt:

...Does anybody really think Joe Rogan is a racist? Of course not. But because, in the thousands of podcast hours he’s archived, he’s used the N-word a few dozen times, he’s a juicy target for the cancel-culture commandos. Never mind that he’s used the word consistently in discussions of the word itself — discussions, that is, of why it’s a bad word. 

Yes, the N-word has a very fraught history in American culture. Joseph Conrad, one of the great novelists in English, used it in the title of one of his novels. Flannery O’Connor, perhaps the most distinguished American short-story writer of the 20th century, used it in the title of one of her best stories. The black comedian and activist Dick Gregory used the N-word as the title of his 1964 autobiography. 

 McWhorter: "This business of not attending to the difference
between using [the word] and referring to it is childish."

Soon enough, and for very good reasons, that sort of thing became a no-no. Still, in the classic NBC sitcom Sanford and Son (1972-77), Redd Foxx used the N-word as part of at least one hilarious gag that I still recall vividly half a century later. Richard Pryor, one of the top comics of all time, put the word in the titles of no fewer than three of his comedy albums, in 1974, 1976, and 1982. As late as 1996, Chris Rock, another all-time great stand-up, used the word — or, rather, the form of it that ends with an “a” — as the centerpiece of a 12-minute monologue that is one of anyone’s funniest bits ever. Other brilliant stand-ups, not all of them black, have used the N-word to terrific comedic effect. 

But Rogan isn’t even being accused of doing that. The video compilation posted by online this weekend by India Arie, an R&B singer whom I’d never heard of, consisted of 23 clips, no more than a second or two long apiece, of Rogan saying the N-word. The word itself is bleeped every time. The contexts are not all clear, although in several cases you can hear enough of the conversation to recognize that he’s discussing the word as a word. Arie seems to acknowledge this. She doesn’t care. That’s not good enough. “Don’t even say the word, under any context,” she demands. “Don’t say it.”….

[Continue reading HERE.]

SEE ALSO:

Dr. Laura and the use/mention distinction 

Philosopher Roy Bauer in Dissent the Blog, August 13, 2010

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND THE USE/MENTION DISTINCTION 

Linguist Bill Poser, January 25, 2008

Use-Mention distinction fading; Idiocracy ascendant   

Computer Scientist Douglas Moran, Jul 21, 2018

JOHN MCWHORTER: “[Rogan] was using [the n-word] in quotation marks … He wasn’t lobbing the word; he was—he was referring to the word or imitating people who use the word the way, until ten minutes ago, many white kids would chant their hip-hop lyrics. To me, there’s a huge difference between the two [things?] and, as I’ve said and written often, I think it’s absurd that we’ve gotten to the point that we’re treating it as a taboo sequence of sounds as if we were worshipping some sun god … and [what Rogan's done] should have no effect on his career. Maybe he wouldn’t choose to [say] those things now but, frankly, when he was doing it then, he wasn’t hurting anybody, and this business of not attending to the difference between using it and referring to it is childish, and … we don’t need it. I don’t see why [universally condemning saying the word is] necessary, although there’s a certain kind of black person who claims to be deeply injured every time that sequence of sounds is uttered for any reason. I think it’s a pose. I don’t like this [outcry] at all.”

Mel Mermelstein, Holocaust survivor who fought the Institute for Historical Review and won, dies

Mel Mermelstein has died. The local Holocaust survivor who, according to various headlines around the world:

Washington Post: "challenged Holocaust deniers"

LA Times: "took on Holocaust deniers and won"

NY Times:"Holocaust Survivor who sued deniers"

Jerusalem Post: "Holocaust Survivor who won case against deniers"

The Forward: "who fought Holocaust deniers"

And then here's our own local Register's headline: "who legally proved the Holocaust happened" which, to Rebel Girl's sensibility, lands a little oddly as if, before this, despite say, the historical record and, say the Nuremburg trials, some doubt remained until this 1981 legal decision. But Rebel Girl is so touchy lately, living as she is in these days of science denial and, dare she say it, historical revisionism. 

Sigh.

Mel Mermelstein arrived at the little college in the orange groves a few years after Rebel Girl did, in the mid-90s, as an occasional special guest and speaker in a Humanities class, Understanding the Holocaust, taught by Dr. Richard Prystowsky. Those visits, the topic of Prystowsky's popular course and Prystowsky's ties to the ADL soon became part of the great struggle on campus. The class came under fire by college trustee Steven J. Frogue, who also taught history (or a version of history) at Foothill High School. Frogue's proposed seminar on the JFK assassination scheduled for Saddelback's campus and featuring a speaker tied to the Insititute for Historical Review, the Holocaust denial group successfully sued years earlier by Mermelstein, brought national attention to the district. Soon college board meetings were besieged by neo-Nazis who supported Frogue along with his critics. The meetings went on for hours. Recall efforts were launched twice and failed twice. Frogue eventually resigned in 2001. Frogue seems to remain active in a local Sons of Confederate Veterans. Of course. His son served as Trump's senior health advisor in 2016. Right.

Benjamin Hubbard, a professor of Comparative Religion at Cal State Fullerton, weighed in on the crisis at the college district with his essay, "The Truth Must Be Shown When the Holocaust Is Denied."  Published in the LA Times in 1996, the article begins: "If someone denies the Holocaust, is it better to ignore the insult or to respond vigorously? Recent events at Saddleback College have shifted the question from the theoretical realm to the practical." He points out that "While Frogue may not deny the Holocaust outright, he appears to have swallowed the revisionist line of the so-called Institute for Historical Review, now based in Newport Beach, which raises questions, for example, about whether Jews were actually gassed at Auschwitz." 

It doesn't take long for Hubbard to note that "It is amazing that this pseudo-institute continues to question the gassing of Auschwitz inmates in light of the landmark 1985 case, Mel Mermelstein vs. Institute of Historical Review et al."

His conclusion refers to one of those raucous board meetings:

Holocaust denial/revisionism is a sickness, a form of anti-Semitic hatred of the most vile type. It is a suppression of the truth of one of the most exhaustively documented events in history...Frogue and some of the bigots who spoke on his behalf at the Jan. 20 public meeting of the college district would do well to talk to survivors or visit one of the museums. Or they might consider taking one of the fine courses on the Holocaust offered at UC Irvine, Cal State Fullerton or Chapman University, or Prystowsky’s at Irvine Valley College.

If the truth of the Holocaust is denied or minimized, then other unpleasant truths--about slavery, the treatment of Native Americans or the genocide of Bosnian Muslims, for example--might be next.

Over his lifetime, Mermelstein collected artifacts from the Holocuast which played a role in his famous lawsuit and were displayed in a museum he operated near his Long Beach home. The LA Times now reports that Newport Beach's Chabad's Center for Jewish Life will now house the collection. Huntington Beach High School English teacher Josh Anderson who worked with Mermelstein:

"recounted the story of how, when Mermelstein was a teenager in Auschwitz, his father told him and his brother they would have to split up, to increase the chances that one of them would make it out alive and live to tell the story of the Holocaust so the world would never forget.

'He did that, and he lived to 95,' Anderson said. 'Now, it’s Edie’s [Mermelstein's daughter] job, and my job, and the board’s job and all the teachers in Orange County’s job to tell his story.'

We've got a job to do. It's a good job. It's always been our job. Let's do it.

Mel Mermelstein died of COVID at age 95.

Moby Grape: a great forgotten band

A great Bay Area band, ca. late 60s

Moby Grape's career was a long, sad series of minor disasters, in which nearly anything that could have gone wrong did (poor handling by their record company, a variety of legal problems, a truly regrettable deal with their manager, creative and personal differences among the bandmembers, and the tragic breakdown of guitarist and songwriter Skip Spence), but their self-titled debut album was their one moment of unqualified triumph. Moby Grape is one of the finest (perhaps the finest) album to come out of the San Francisco psychedelic scene, brimming with great songs and fresh ideas while blessedly avoiding the pitfalls that pockmarked the work of their contemporaries -- no long, unfocused jams, no self-indulgent philosophy, and no attempts to sonically re-create the sound of an acid trip. Instead, Moby Grape built their sound around the brilliantly interwoven guitar work of Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis, and Skip Spence, and the clear, bright harmonies of all five members (drummer Don Stevenson and bassist Bob Mosely sang just as well as they held down the backbeat). 

As songwriters, Moby Grape blended straight-ahead rock & roll, smart pop, blues, country, and folk accents into a flavorful brew that was all their own, with a clever melodic sense that reflected the lysergic energy surrounding them without drowning in it. And producer David Rubinson got it all on tape in a manner that captured the band's infectious energy and soaring melodies with uncluttered clarity, while subtly exploring the possibilities of the stereo mixing process. "Omaha," "Fall on You," "Hey Grandma," and "8:05" sound like obvious hits (and might have been if Columbia hadn't released them as singles all at once), but the truth is there isn't a dud track to be found here, and time has been extremely kind to this record. Moby Grape is as refreshing today as it was upon first release, and if fate prevented the group from making a follow-up that was as consistently strong, for one brief shining moment Moby Grape proved to the world they were one of America's great bands. While history remembers the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane as being more important, the truth is neither group ever made an album quite this good. (AllMusic Guide)

LISTEN MY FRIEND: I remember Mike Douglas. What an idiot. But he did have some great guests—e.g., John Lennon, Frank Zappa, Moby Grape.

1967, Monterey Pop: Tommy Smothers introduces the first act: Moby Grape. (Hear more from that concert here.)

Guitarist Jerry Miller remembers the band, and the loss of Skip Spence to LSD. (Both Spence and Mosely were eventually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. LSD didn't help.)

A cover of the band's "Naked If I Want To" by Cat Power, one of my favorite singers

Would you let me walk down your street
Naked if I want to?
Can I pop fireworks on the fourth of every single July?
Can I buy an amplifier, oh, on time
My sweet time?

Well I ain't got no money
I will pay this time
And I ain't got no money
But I will pay you before I die

And would you let me walk down your street
Naked if I want to?
Can I pop fireworks on the fourth of every single July?
Can I buy an aeroplane while I'm high in all the sky?

And I got no mercy
I will pay this time
And I got no mercy
I will pay you before I die

(Jerry Miller)

All but forgotten

LA Building on a Friday

 See you soon!

Online: the absence of transfiguration

It’s been odd, to say the least, teaching from home, laptop in hand, trying to do via Zoom and the web what is normally done in a classroom. These days, it is difficult, if not impossible, for me to attain a sense of the class—the students of the course—and students seem to make no effort to view me, their instructor, as a person who wants to improve them in some way. I seem to be a theoretical entity to them or perhaps a mere functionary or bureaucrat, an inessential conveyer of factoids.

That’s not good. 

In conversation—I haven’t actually seen her for two years!—Rebel Girl occasionally opines that our current crop of students are a special sort, namely, students who have never experienced the college classroom and who are, therefore, essentially the same unimproved creatures who populate today’s high schools with their notoriously low standards and evident indifference to discipline or excellence. RG isn’t quite so negative as I am, but that is the gist of her observation. 

(A few years ago, I briefly substituted for an instructor teaching at a local high school; I was stunned to find that the default state for these high schoolers is enthusiastic, incessant chatter. As soon as my presentation dipped into the less-than-forceful, these kids inevitably and immediately toggled to their default state, an abandonment of seriousness, an embrace of aimless, swirling "Tower of Babel" blather, a routine and familiar condition not easily overcome by any outside force.) 

Normally, such students, upon at long last experiencing the actual college classroom, are somehow osmotically influenced to shut-the-fuck up and get serious, at least to a degree, for that classroom is typically controlled by a forceful and earnest person who is in some sense an intellectual with a rich sense of the possibilities of learning and awareness and a conviction that what they have to offer is important. A good college instructor gets in his or her students' faces.

But that precious process doesn’t seem to be occurring these days, and the new normal among students is horrible. Unmodified and unimproved by the routine college classroom "get serious" transfiguration, many students instead further entrench in a dullard's concept of academic conscientiousness, focusing intently on an enumeration of the course “information” factoids and the identity of the specific subset of factoids that will appear on the next test or quiz. "What's the information for the test?" they ask, unashamedly. "What's the material?"

“Information”—I favor banning the concept from all things academic—is a horribly inadequate word for what many of us attempt to convey or teach in the college classroom, which is a rich and multi-faceted “form of life,” to use Wittgenstein’s phrase (for a way of being and living); it is a way of life, not a box of discrete knowledge nuggets, smallish verbal bytes that can be expressed as mottos or slogans and that can be embraced or rejected at whim. I deliberately come to the classroom manifestly interested in, and even excited about, all sorts of endeavors and phenomena about which most students seem clueless: the history of ideas and the relevance of that history, the constant need (among the rational) for justification, the imperfection of human thought and artifice, the particularity (not universality) of our world view, the unfairness and cruelties of the world, the glories (and horrors) of past thinkers and movements, the random emergence of genius, the awesome cosmos, the endless, imminent availability of catastrophe, and so on. My strategy, as a teacher, is to model someone enthusiastically working on a lifetime project of attainment of “understanding” about all this. I assume that at least some among my charges will catch the bug of intellectualism, that hunger for understanding about science, philosophy, and art. And, in my experience, I have always found that some do always catch that bug, not only because of me but because of the many instructors, in various fields, who endeavor to lay out that richer and wider conception of understanding and attainment to which students have simply not been exposed. Indeed, they have been counter-exposed, and often continue to be thus cloistered, even as they trudge indifferently through years of college instruction. 

It’s hard to model enthusiasm and wonderment over the possibilities of thinking and living even in the best of times; imagine attempting so fine a thing when one’s “online” audience seems to take every opportunity to behave badly (cheating via novel online tools) or simply to drop the ball: attending fewer and fewer lectures, failing ever to concentrate or to think, always aware that, at any moment, they can simply turn off that suspect "college" thing and tap back into familiar and comfortable uncritical mindlessness. As an instructor I think: better to be there, in the room immediately before them, looking straight into their eyes, demanding attention. It’s a subtle thing, this power we normally have over students and their attention, in the classroom. And that subtle thing is now largely absent. 

Don’t look now, but, in higher education, we’re going to hell in a hand basket. Let us return to the classroom asap (i.e., when safe)!

"I'd love t0 turn you on": remembering John Lennon (1967)

The Kinks, 1970: I've always loved Dave's harmony singing to Ray's lead. This song always makes me sad somehow. Love it.

1971: An uber-cool rocker. From the start, Ray saw our brave, new world and found much to object to

1968: Another great Kinks song: simple and wonderful about now and back then and the residue of our long-ago past

And it rocks

The Bottle Rockets: Insert with Care

Like an intelligent Lynyrd Skynyrd but with a punk-like attack.

One of my all-time favorite "undeservedly unknown" bands, the Bottle Rockets:

 

Festus, Missouri's Bottle Rockets became one of the leading lights of the 1990s roots rock/alt-country revival, thanks to a sound that bypassed the punk heritage proudly upheld by most of the band's contemporaries in favor of a full-bodied fusion of Southern boogie, country-folk, and crunching rock & roll. (AllMusic)

If Neil Young had played guitar and written songs with Lynyrd Skynyrd, it might've come out something like the (1993) eponymous debut by Festus, MO's own Bottle Rockets. Raw and spirited, with a guitar attack that burns furiously, this record was recorded and mixed in a couple of days. (AllMusic)

Sometimes I wonder if we could go back
I guess it's just too late for that
There's not much left to hold on to
These days my heart's better than broken
Not as good as new

For about two years in the mid-'90, it looked like the Bottle Rockets were going to break out of the alt country underground and take their ragged-but-right Dixie-fried hard rock to the larger audience they deserved. But after Atlantic Records dropped the promotional ball.... (AllMusic)

Brian Henneman (born July 17, 1961) is an American musician best known as the frontman of the alt-country/roots rock band the Bottle Rockets, with whom he has been active as lead singer, guitarist and songwriter. Artists such as John Prine, Neil Young and Merle Haggard have influenced his songwriting style. Henneman began his musical career in the mid-1980s with the bands The Blue Moons and Chicken Truck, and also spent time as guitar tech/additional musician with peers Uncle Tupelo from 1990 before forming the Bottle Rockets in late 1992 (Wikipedia)

A documentary:

A concert:

Check out the band doing Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer” in Germany. 

Then there's “If Walls Could Talk,” which deserves to be a country classic.

Wednesday evening comin' down

1970: John Lee Hooker

 

"At the age of 14, Hooker ran away from home, reportedly never seeing his mother or stepfather again. In the mid-1930s, he lived in Memphis, Tennessee, where he performed on Beale Street, at the New Daisy Theatre and occasionally at house parties.

He worked in factories in various cities during World War II, eventually getting a job with the Ford Motor Company in Detroit in 1943. He frequented the blues clubs and bars on Hastings Street, the heart of the black entertainment district, on Detroit's east side. In a city noted for its pianists, guitar players were scarce. Hooker's popularity grew quickly as he performed in Detroit clubs, and, seeking an instrument louder than his acoustic guitar, he bought his first electric guitar." (Wikipedia)

1964: Robert Nighthawk

"Nighthawk never achieved the success of his more celebrated pupils, Muddy Waters and Earl Hooker, finding himself to be much happier to be working one nighters in taverns and the Maxwell Street [Chicago] open market on Sundays.... 

Recorded by Norman Dayron live on [Maxwell] [S]treet (you can actually hear cars driving by!) in 1964 with just Robert Whitehead on drums and Johnny Young on rhythm guitar, Robert Nighthawk's slide playing (and single-string soloing, for that matter) are nothing short of elegant and explosive. ... Nighthawk sounds cool as a cucumber, presiding over everything with an almost genial charm while laying the toughest sounds imaginable." (AllMusic)

2020: Jack White

"[A]nd on the show-stopping "Ball and Biscuit," seven flat-out seductive minutes of preening, boasting, and amazing guitar prowess that ranks as one the band's [White Stripes'] most traditionally bluesy (not to mention sexy) songs." (AllMusic)

1969: Jimi Hendrix

"Are You Experienced was an astonishing debut, particularly from a young R&B veteran who had rarely sung, and apparently never written his own material before the Experience formed. What caught most people's attention at first was his virtuosic guitar playing, which employed an arsenal of devices, including wah-wah pedals, buzzing feedback solos, crunching, distorted riffs, and lightning, liquid runs up and down the scales. But Hendrix was also a first-rate songwriter, melding cosmic imagery with some surprisingly pop-savvy hooks and tender sentiments. He was also an excellent blues interpreter and a passionate, engaging singer...." (AllMusic)

1970: Peter Green

"Peter Green was regarded by some fans as the greatest white blues guitarist ever, Eric Clapton notwithstanding. Born Peter Greenbaum but calling himself Peter Green by the age of 15, he grew up in London's working-class East End. ... When [Peter] Green left [John] Mayall in 1967, he took [John] McVie and [Mick] Fleetwood with him to found Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. Jeremy Spencer and Danny Kirwan joined shortly afterward, giving Fleetwood Mac an unusual three-guitar front line. Green was at his peak for the albums Mr. Wonderful, English Rose, Then Play On, and a live Boston Tea Party recording. His instrumental "Albatross" was the band's first British number one single and "Black Magic Woman" was later a huge hit for Carlos Santana. But Green had been experimenting with acid and his behavior became increasingly irrational, especially after he disappeared for three days of rampant drug use in Munich. He became very religious, appearing on-stage wearing crucifixes and flowing robes. His bandmates resisted his suggestion to donate most of their money to charity, and he left in mid-1970 after writing a harrowing biographical tune called 'The Green Manalishi.'" (AllMusic)

1936: Robert Johnson

"As success came with live performances and phonograph recordings, Johnson remained tormented, constantly haunted by nightmares of hellhounds on his trail, his pain and mental anguish finding release only in the writing and performing of his music. Just as he was to be brought to Carnegie Hall to perform in John Hammond's first Spirituals to Swing concert [1938], the news had come from Mississippi; Robert Johnson was dead, poisoned by a jealous girlfriend while playing a jook joint. Those who were there swear he was last seen alive foaming at the mouth, crawling around on all fours, hissing and snapping at onlookers like a mad dog. His dying words (either spoken or written on a piece of scrap paper) were, "I pray that my redeemer will come and take me from my grave." He was buried in a pine box in an unmarked grave, his deal with the Devil at an end." (AllMusic)

See also Johnson's magnificent "Love in Vain" & "Crossroads"

2009: Susan Tedeschi

[My favorite living female blues singer. —RB]

"...Eventually Tedeschi was opening for John Mellencamp, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, The Allman Brothers Band, Taj Mahal and Bob Dylan. In 2000, Just Won't Burn (1998) reached Gold record status for sales of 500,000 in the United States, rare for a blues production. She recorded two tracks with Double Trouble band members Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon for their album.

She opened for The Rolling Stones in 2003 and played in huge venues, gaining national exposure. Somewhat surprisingly, the gig wasn't financially lucrative. According to Tedeschi, 'They pay, but it's not great. I don't make any money 'cause I've got to pay all my sidemen. I'll be lucky if I break even.'" (Wikipedia)

And some plain fun:

A cover of the great Joe Tex hit (1967)

A song from Susan's first album

A cover of the great Sam Cooke hit (1962).