Sep 3rd, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Endgame
Do you think its gonna make him change?
— Ronald Dworkin on health care.
— Richard Nixon’s universal health care plan is pretty fantastic.
— Anatol Lieven on the Afghan elections.
— Joe Scarborough hits conservative talk radio.
— Let’s hope criminals don’t read this post.
— Falun Gong versus Iranian internet censorship.
Song of the Day: Pavement “Cut Your Hair”.
36 Responses to “Endgame”
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September 3rd, 2009 at 6:31 pm
I’m just a boy with a new haircut.
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:41 pm
OMG, the Nixon health care plan is amazing. I mean, it’s basically the French system.
Crap, now I have to like Nixon. Wow, that would be such amazing healthcare to have now. Those cards that he was going to put blood type on…I mean, today they’d be a link to an electronic medical record. And when I showed up in a doctor’s office, they’d be like “oh, let me pull up your mammogram…ah, these are 3 years old, we should do another one. Because your last doctor didn’t like the look of that upper left quadrant and so let’s just rule out something bad, right?”
AARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!! We could have had better health care for my entire life. So frustrating, an entire generation lost.
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:42 pm
I went through a Pavement phase but then decided it was a bunch of bloodless, arch bullshit. My epiphany came in a record store in Bellingham where they were playing Pavement over the PA and Steve Malkmus was singing something about Geddy Lee’s voice, and I realized I didn’t care about Geddy Lee’s voice, or anything else Pavement had ever sung about. All the cool kids listened to them but they didn’t get my blood pumping at all. A lazy person could say they were like REM, but REM were a bunch of sensitive shy art school types who actually had something to say (even if you couldn’t figure out what it was) and some passion and never would smirk through an entire record the way Pavement seemed to do again and again. I understand Pavement got the 90s indie ball rolling but I never got their appeal.
And a lot of the twee indie rock that has come since is even worse. I think Steve Malkmus has a lot to answer for. if you’re looking for good godfather-of-indie bands to worship, Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, and Guided by Voices all crush Pavement like a grape.
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:46 pm
“Do you think its gonna make him change?”
Sure. Trial balloons are trial balloons.
They can be left to fly, or they can be shot down.
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:02 pm
“I went through a Pavement phase but then decided it was a bunch of bloodless, arch bullshit.”
Pavement wrote quite a few catchy, rich and occasionally lovely melodies. Exhibit A: Gold soundz
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Spokeytown: On the other hand, Pavement are great.
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:16 pm
MA/Tomemos;
They made some pretty awesome stuff occasionally; I remember being really impressed with Stop Breathin and Fight This Generation, for example. So I guess it’s an overstatement to say I never cared about anything they sang about. But there were so many songs of theirs that came across like a cleverness exercise and it just didn’t grab me after a while. Meanwhile Modest Mouse was putting out hostile drunken resentful passionate stuff, and Built to Spill was putting out gorgeous passionate stuff, and GBV was putting out about 10 records per month full of catchy beautiful loud passionate stuff, and lots of other bands were doing the same, and I decided the occasional gem from Pavement wasn’t worth sifting through the dreck.
Not to say that y’all are wrong, and even though I think Pavement sucks they still deserve credit for sucking in new and interesting ways. Which is more than most bands can say.
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Rational health care. What a concept.
Rational American health care? When you pry my bankruptcy proceedings from my cold dead fingers.
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Good choices for godfather-of-indie bands? Insofar as I’m concerned that title would rightfully belong to the likes of Husker Du, The Replacements, Sonic Youth, or the Pixies.
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Anan;
Agreed, although I’m thinking 90’s bands while you’re going back further. Also REM belongs on your list.
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:04 pm
this is an egregious lie.
GBV could’ve been something. but they didn’t bother focusing their talents until they ran out of ideas. and talk about “sifting”… 30 songs in 40 minutes ? here’s an idea: half as many songs, twice as much attention to each.
MM has two songs: the STOMPSTOMPSTOMPandSHOUTSHOUTSHOUT song and the wispy and faintly psychedelic broke-down folk-rock song. one of those songs is good. the other is nearly intolerable.
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:05 pm
spookeytown -
True. Life’s Rich Pageant was hugely influential. Also, you can’t forget The Minutemen/fiREHOSE.
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Spookeytown -
I should also note that if I’m inclined to focus on the 80’s antecedents, it’s mostly because that’s what I’m most familiar with. Despite living in Olympia, Washington during the early and mid nineties, I almost entirely missed out on the Indie-Rock train. I’d already given up in despair.
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Tricky as Dick was, he was the last of the cloth-coat presidents and he didn’t take joy in pissing on the little guy and telling him it was raining. He wasn’t Reagan.
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:37 pm
What about the voice of Geddy Lee
How did it get so high?
I wonder if he speaks
like an ordinary guy…
“I know him, and he does.”
Then you’re my fact-checkin’ cuz.
It is no understatement to say Pavement made James Gary who he is today. Smirk on! Cleverness exercises forever! Bloodless, arch bullshit to the far horizion!
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Spookeytown: Passionate isn’t an adjective I’d apply to Pavement. But, speaking for myself, Pavement does “speak” to me. It’s “arch” lyrical and musical attitude–which seems to me ironical but also whimsical–pretty well expresses my sense of the relation I have to the world–as marginal and bemused but sort of personally optimistic. So, Pavement, to me, is true to life in that way, more than just a set of empty hipster gestures.
“Dont worry- were in no hurry
Schools out, what did you expect?”
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Oh hipsters, why can’t we all just get along? Pavement, GBV, Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, Pixies and Sonic Youth pretty much describe my ipod. In fact, I think I’m going to go for a fun just to listen to them in the name of hipster harmony.
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:22 pm
I can’t cut my hair. I’m growing it for Wigs For Kids.
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Nixon. Now More Than Ever.
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Anatol Lieven’s piece was very good.
Email me when Obama does anything like that.
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:24 pm
That’s “Lifes Rich Pageant.” (For some reason!)
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Oh hipsters, why can’t we all just get along? Pavement, GBV, Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, Pixies and Sonic Youth pretty much describe my ipod. In fact, I think I’m going to go for a fun just to listen to them in the name of hipster harmony.
I’m tardy to this party, but that is basically my iPod as well. I would also add in Fugazi, if you’re down with that. And unlike the rest of those bands, Fugazi actually believed in stuff.
Pavement have a lifetime get out of jail free card with me for writing Zurich is Stained and Here, but I find them much more uneven than the other above-mentioned bands.
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:58 pm
OH, also: I went to a MM show last week. Pretty good stuff.
September 4th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Man, the only thing I’ve listened to this entire summer has been Pavement or the Jicks. It seems to me that you can reach a stage in your life when only Stephen Malkmus, arch-dick that he is, can do anything musically for you, and I don’t know if that is a bad or a good thing. I will say, though, that you are a heartless, heartless individual if you can listen to Shoot the Singer or Painted Soldiers or You Are a Light and not feel a special something within.
September 4th, 2009 at 1:10 am
Everybody is so quick to qualify their loves around here. Pavement is great. Their music is gloriously loose and silly.
September 4th, 2009 at 7:42 am
That piece on crime was in NRO? I wouldn’t have expected such a post on NRO.
In re the NR article on Fulan Gong, etc. — a suspicious attack occured on US soil that likely was linked to a foreign power? Way to keep the US safe Bush & CO. BTW … (and this probably happened on Clinton’s watch), why the hell were US companies allowed to give such potentially important technology and support to a foreign government? One that is repressive, is at the center of the axis of evil, etc?
I’m not actually a China hawk and think we should even continue to trade with them etc. But considering their links to Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, etc., I don’t think we should be allowing companies to give them such technology.
When random d00ds don’t keep their laptops secure enough and info falls into Chinese hands, that’s a scandal, but when major US industries directly help the Chinese repress their populace that isn’t? What gives?
In re Nixon in Health Care: this is the sort of thing which brought Nixon down, actually. He was fundamentally a moderate/liberal Republican. But the other moderate/liberal Republicans didn’t like him because he wasn’t one of them, i.e. not a blue-blood. He thus hitched his political star to the far right, but they didn’t like him because he was actually NOT a wingnut. And certainly liberals didn’t like him because he was a not quite trustworthy and unrealistic “realist”.
So when he did get into trouble, who did he have to support him? Moderates/liberals who didn’t trust him? Conservatives would go to bat for someone proposing socialized medicine and similar things? Since nobody had his back, he had to back out.
What’s the saying about being paranoid when people are out to get you? Sometimes that’s true (c.f. Hoffman, Abby). Sometimes paranoia is a self-fulfilling prophecy (c.f. Nixon, R.M.).
September 4th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Was I the only one confused by the “we haven’t seen a spike in crime in major American cities despite the economic downturn” line? Crime doesn’t seem to be countercyclical; some researchers have found that it might be slightly procyclical.
September 4th, 2009 at 9:39 am
On the page on Joe Scarborough, I luvs me the way some of the commenters call Scarborough a liberal. Anyone who disagrees with the latest and greatest crazy notion is called a liberal. Even St. Dutch.
I’d love to be wrong, but I think we’re headed for serious violence. This many crazy people? When in human events have this many violent opinions been so widespread and violence hasn’t followed? And these people love violence.
September 4th, 2009 at 9:55 am
@Jeffery Davis,
Sounds like a proposed wager to me …
September 4th, 2009 at 10:17 am
re: 29
OK. Winner gets a meal at Applebees; loser has to sing “I’m a Little Teacup”?
September 4th, 2009 at 10:49 am
And people always look at me strange when I call Nixon the “last liberal”…
EPA, OSHA, EEOC, increases in SS and medicare, got rid of the Gold Standard, opened China, supporter of universal healthcare, and on and on… Christ, the man was an ERA supporter!
It’s no wonder he was such a paranoid weirdo – no matter what he did substantively, the liberals would never forgive him for outing that commie stooge Alger Hiss…
September 4th, 2009 at 10:59 am
re 9:
Good choices for godfather-of-indie bands? Insofar as I’m concerned that title would rightfully belong to the likes of Husker Du, The Replacements, Sonic Youth, or the Pixies.
You’re not wrong, but if we’re going to look back, let’s look way back: The Stooges and The Velvet Underground. (The WIpers, The Sonics…)
(Consider this an invimatation to look even further back.)
September 4th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
godfather of indie bands?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZGM1q_udUQ
September 4th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
#2: This is also the guy who signed into law OSHA, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, etc.
I’d trade this presidency for that one in a heartbeat. Not the people, just the actual circumstances.
September 4th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
re 30:
Hey, I’m not too much of a snob to say no to free food.
September 4th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Great Post, DAS. I have always felt what brought Nixon down during Watergate was a lack of a true political base. Its worth noting that I think National Review only endorsed him once during his three Presidential runs. As Bob Dole said about Nixon, the most amazing thing he ever did was become President. He lacked all of the things modern pols have: Charisma, Political Base, Money, etc.