Bob Dylan Cliff's Notes

update: While researching this I stumbled upon a Johnny Cash-Bob Dylan bootleg session from 1969. Good stuff.

Marshall McLuhan wrote that television was an appealingly flawed and incomplete “cool” medium, meaning that the fuzzy, grainy images drew the viewer’s subconscious into the picture to fill in the visual gaps. It was this facet of television that would capture the public's imagination and attention.

I don’t know if I buy that completely with respect to television, but I get the general picture. The most compelling visual art is that which leaves some work for the viewer. A gestural drawing is more compelling than a true to life rendering; a silhouette can be more dramatic and compelling than a 3-dimensional form. Part of the genius of art is to convey the image with as little work from the artist as necessary.

Pablo Picasso, after having mastered classical techniques, spent most of his career trying to paint like a caveman. The gaping holes he left in his work are precisely what make his work so compelling. The Cubists stepped sidewise with this idea, depicting primitive forms from multiple angles, inviting the viewer to consider an image from multiple angles in one go.

Great art is as much about what is left out as in. This brings me round to the main subject of this post, the musician Bob Dylan. The only reason I am writing this is for a certain someone in my life who loves music, managed record store years ago, attended hundreds of Indi concerts, but hasn’t listened much to Bob.

So what is there to say about the man’s art? His life and work has been dissected about a thousand different ways and almost every conceivable angle that there is to take has probably been taken. Well, one thing that I may bring to the table is perspective. Born in 1979, Dylan had already had a longer musical career than many musicians by the time I was born into the world. I started listening to music from an early age, my mother’s records mostly. I remember the Dylan-Susie Rotolo Freewheelin' album cover and that is about all; she had a lot of Beatles and Zeppelin albums. I started listening to Bob when I was about 20, but I didn’t quite get it. About 3 or 4 years ago I gave him another spin and for whatever reason, I was older, tastes changed, I don’t know, but I really got it. I mention my age only to point out that I am divorced from the personal context that many of his fans have evaluated him within – hopefully this will make more sense later. I’ve filled in a bit of detail about his life after reading his 2004 autobiography and seeing Scorsese's No Direction Home. I’ll add some of my interpretation of his career arc and some of the songs; I am probably going to be more or less wrong here to varying degrees, sue me.

Part of Dylan’s appeal is his voice, flawed and incomplete as it is. At first, his voice may be a turn off, it's not a gilded instrument, at times it is like a garbage disposal, other times like a broken whistle. But that is part of his appeal, once you get it. Who hasn’t tried something, whether some form of art, school, work, whatever, any goal, and felt insecure about their own abilities to get it done? If only I were stronger, or smarter, or had a steadier hand, more solid voice, skinnier fingers then I could run that marathon, finish this degree, draw a beautiful picture, sing a beautiful song, play the guitar with dexterity, etc. Point being, Dylan is an example of an iron will to success, damn the limitations or what other see as a fatal flaw, of turning that weakness into a strength. But enough about that, here is one man’s primer, a man who is out of time with what many consider Dylan’s golden and silver ages in the 1960s and 1970s, who isn't carrying all the nostalgia and personal baggage from that era.

I’ll break down Dylan’s work into specific eras and add a little color to each one along with Youtube tracks of songs that I particularly enjoy from that time.

The Folk Years
Discs: Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin Bob Dylan, The Times The Are A-Changin’, Another Side of Bob Dylan

Dylan started as a folk singer and from his humble beginning playing coffee houses in Greenwich Village he found himself thrust into the role of leader of the counter-culture, anti-war movement. He felt uncomfortable in this role, which is an understatement.

This era of his career is one of my least favorite, though he did write some powerful songs. His voice is nasally and the music is very folky. I enjoy much of it, but if he had stopped here creatively, I don’t know that I would be listening to his music today.

Many of the songs from this period speak directly to social issues and tell the stories of everyday people. While there are many great songs from this era, I’ll assume that everyone is familiar with songs like A Hard Rain, Masters of War, Blowin in the wind, and The Times are a Changing, so I’ll try to include some lesser heard cuts.

Don’t think twice, it’s all right,

When the Ship Comes in

The power and force of the songs from this era brought acclaim and admiration that Dylan would spend much of his career deliberately undermining. He felt uncomfortable being the leader of any movement, and more importantly, felt intimidated by strangers approaching him at home, breaking into his house, digging through his trash, mobbing him in public, writing nutty articles about him and generally invading his privacy.

Many of his more amusing and contentious interviews for the rest of his career would happen if the interviewer made the mistake of referring to him as a voice of the generation or counter culture icon. He wrote that he began to feel trapped by his fame and what people expected of him, he felt that his first obligation was to himself as an artist and though concerned with injustice, had no love for political movements. He decided to consciously undermine his status with calculated public embarrassments, appearing drunk to accept awards and insulting the hosts, pummeling a journalist who repeatedly rummaged through his trash, and most importantly from an artistic perspective, by taking folk music electric and braving the scorn and hatred of his fans who felt betrayed by his switch. He hinted at this coming change with My Back Pages and It Ain’t Me Babe from Another Side of Bob Dylan, the last album of this era. Back Pages is an expression of uncertainty, of getting older and realizing that you aren’t always as right as you once thought, that some of that idealistic fervor of youth may have been misplaced. This was a slap in the face to the earnest folk protestors. It Ain’t Me Babe is an inverted ballad to a lover, a song about not being able to meet a lovers expectations of flowers and chivalry, which could be read as a rejection of the folkies.

Rock and Roll
Discs: Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde
This era is one of my favorites. Bringing it all Back Home is the bridge from folk to rock. His voice has come down out of the nose for the most part. There is a great bootleg from this period at the Royal Albert Hall, 1966. Dylan comes out for the first set and plays acoustic to a wildly appreciative audience. The second set, Dylan goes electric. The audience is apoplectic, taunting and jeering him between songs, trying to interrupt the songs with clapping and heckling him. In between one break, someone can be heard yelling at Dylan that he is Judas. Dylan calls him a liar, then someone in the band (Dylan?) tells them to “play it fucking loud”, at which point they rip into Like a Rolling Stone, with Dylan drawing out the lyric, “how does it feeeeeel!”. The point is that he made the break at this time and I think he probably realized that the love of audience and critics was about as deep as the love one has for a jukebox. He was fearless after this, and freed up to explore any musical tangent that tickled his fancy.

He opens Bringing it All Back Home with Subterranean Homesick Blues, a rap song, and runs down the state of youth in short order. On the Road Again ridicules barefoot aesthetics and so called simpler ways of living. It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), Dylan reaffirms scorn for political organizations. It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, is a goodbye to the past, Dylan goes as far as to call his former supporters stepping stones.

Highway 61 Revisited is the album with one of his biggest hits, Like a Rolling Stone, but I personally feel that there are at least 4 tracks on there that are just as good or better. Here is one of them.

Queen Jane Approximately

From Blonde on Blonde, Visions of Johanna, a wonderfully evocative song about a rambling man pining for a lost lover, making do with whoever is with him. Ghosts of electricity howl in the bones of her face…

Folk-Country –
Discs: John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, Self Portrait, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
Dylan has hinted that Self-Portrait was a deliberate effort to tarnish his reputation and the expectations placed upon him. Pat Garret is a soundtrack. The best album of this bunch in my opinion is Nashville Skyline. Harding is a bit slow and folky for my tastes, though one track did inspire Jimi Hendrix to record one of the most definitive Rock & Roll songs of all time. Once again, Dylan's voice changed and took on a twangy, golden tongued quality. This is a recurring pattern, in every one of these eras Dylan’s voice takes on a different quality, he almost inhabits his musical role and changes to meet the sound that he expects from himself.

To Be Alone with You from Nashville Skyline.

Creative
Disks: New Morning, Planet Waves, Blood on the Tracks, The Basement Tapes, Desire, Street Legal
An interesting time in Dylan’s career, his style evolved at this point into a mash-up of influences. I don’t rightly know what to call it other than creative, it’s too electric for folk, too rock for country, to off-beat for rock. New Morning and Blood on the Tracks are my personal favorites. The Basement Tapes is a collection of 100 bootleg recordings; many are too rough and raw for me to listen to. Desire has the well known cut about Hurricane Carter; the White Stripes covered One More Cup of Coffee later and The Dead Weather took New Pony from Street Legal, so I am guessing that Jack White is a big fan of this period.

Day of the Locusts, about Dylan's reluctant acceptance of an honorary degree

The dreamy Isis from Desire, covered by The White Stripes.


And, what the hell, Tangled up in Blue from Blood on the Tracks.

Gospel
Disks: Slow Train Coming, Saved, Shot of Love, Infidels, Empire Burlesque, Knocked out Loaded, Down in the Groove

There are some strong tracks in here, but there is a lot of dreck. Dylan became a born again Christian and decided to make Christian music. I speculate that he became a born again to make Christian music, similarly to how a method actor takes his role as an identity to feel more authentic, as opposed to the other way around. The results were uneven, his voice kicked into high nasal, and it sounds like whoever produced him basically wanted his music to sound like Devo or something. In his biography he describes this period as the bottom of his career creatively.

Groom Still Waiting at the Altar, Knocked out Loaded.

I and I, Infidels (live).

Collaboration in the late 1980s– Travelling Wilburies, Grateful Dead
Dylan teamed with the supergroup Wilburies featuring Dylan, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Jeff Lyne and Roy Orbison, for two albums and released one live album with the Dead. The Dead album is lifeless. In his biography, Dylan wrote that he had lost his way onstage at this time. One day he was rehearsing with Tom Petty, who he was playing with, and lost it. He lied about taking a smoke break and took off, not intending on returning and feeling that it was time to retire from music. He stepped into a bar with a blues singer and something about the way he sung triggered Dylan’s brain. He recalled advice he received in the 1960s about a different way to order music and sing, things I do not understand, and suddenly he felt the doors, long shuddered, thrown open. He returned to the studio with Petty and began playing with these new techniques in mind. This paved the way for his comeback.

Here is Inside Out from the Travelling Wilburies, featuring Dylan on vocals.

A Comeback
Disks: Oh Mercy, Under the Red Sky

Oh Mercy is an utter revelation and the mark of a late career resurgence. The music is unlike just about anything else I’ve heard. It’s bluesy, gravelly, smooth, ambient, tight. Dylan took on the voice of a gravelly blues singer, which I once thought was a result of aging, but on some of the outtakes and bootlegs from this era Dylan sings with a much clearer voice, so who the hell knows. Under the Red Sky is considered a weak effort by critics, I think it is a solid album, but not the equal of Oh Mercy. In his autobiography, Dylan wrote that he was inducted into the hall of fame at this point, which he took to be an insult - the music industry was telling him that he was all but done. (Interestingly, he played Masters of War at the ceremony, on the eve of the first Gulf War.) No telling how much he used this as motivation to resurrect his career.

Here are some tracks from Oh Mercy

Where Teardrops Fall, Oh Mercy

Man in the Long Black Coat, Oh Mercy

Stripped Bare
Disks: Good as I been to You, World Gone Wrong
After a frustrating time in the studio with Oh Mercy and Under the Red Sky, Dylan pared things down and created these two folk albums, producing his own music and stripping the instrumentation down to the bare essentials. I think all of these songs are covers from oldies that he loves.


A cover of the Grateful Dead’s Jack-A-Roe from World Gone Wrong, live here

The haunting Blood in My Eyes from World Gone Wrong.

A Late Period Golden Age
Disks: Time out of Mind, Love and Theft, Modern Times, Together Through Life
The music once again defies my limited ability to define it. It is some parts Indie Rock, country, and the brassy sound of the harmonica is accompanied by an accordion in spots. This is my favorite of his incarnations, and my favorite album from this time is Time Out of Mind. After the acoustic cover albums in the early 1990s, Dylan returned to the studio with a full band and the producer from Oh Mercy (Lanois?) to record original music. His comeback was complete with his grammy winning performance of Love Sick. These albums are the legacy of an artist who may no longer be at the height of his physical powers, but has pushed through stumbling blocks, never became too satisfied with himself or complacent, and has no fear left. I suspect that the music is so unique sounding because few musical artists continue growing for 5-6 decades; most careers don’t last much longer than 10 years. It was hard to winnow down to just a few songs, but the point is to give a taste so I did it.

Cold Irons Bound, Time out of Mind.

The hauntingly mortal Not Dark Yet, Time out of Mind

The sarcastic take on hipster indifference, It’s All Good from Together Through Life (live)

Mercernaries

Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.

Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater’s ouster from the country, and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license
…
The Nisour Square shooting was the bloodiest and most controversial episode involving Blackwater in the Iraq war. At midday on Sept. 16, 2007, a Blackwater convoy opened fire on Iraqi civilians in the crowded intersection, spraying automatic weapons fire in ways that investigators later claimed was indiscriminate, and even launching grenades into a nearby school. Seventeen Iraqis were killed and dozens more were wounded.

The matter set off an international outcry and intense debates in Iraq and the United States over the role of private contractors in war zones. Many Iraqis condemned Blackwater, which they had long seen as an arrogant rogue operation, and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki declared that the Blackwater shooting was a challenge to his nation’s sovereignty

Blackwater Said to Approve Iraqi Payoffs After Shootings
Mazzetti and Risen
New York Times, November 11, 2009

U.S. firms seeking to do business in foreign markets must be familiar with the FCPA. In general, the FCPA prohibits corrupt payments to foreign officials for the purpose of obtaining or keeping business. In addition, other statutes such as the mail and wire fraud statutes, 18 U.S.C. § 1341, 1343, and the Travel Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1952, which provides for federal prosecution of violations of state commercial bribery statutes, may also apply to such conduct.

The Department of Justice is the chief enforcement agency, with a coordinate role played by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

US foreign Corrupt Practices Act

Cracking Up

So demand for crude is down so much that we’re actually closing refineries in this country, but the price of crude is up 150% since the beginning of the year. Makes sense, right?

Commodities Casino Keeps Rolling
Matt Taibbi

I’ve followed Matt Taibbi’s political reporting since Spanking the Donkey (2004), but he simply gets this wrong. Falling demand and rising prices are congruent. My interpretation of his statement is that falling demand should result in falling prices, and since this is not the case something fishy is going on in the commodities market. Well, the behavior is as expected, though there is probably some mucking around in the commodities markets.
There is this from the Guardian,

the "peak oil" theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment. "The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030 although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116m and then 105m last year," said the IEA source, who was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry. "The 120m figure always was nonsense but even today's number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this.

"Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources,"

The IEA whistleblowers are saying that the age of cheap, plentiful energy is already over, done, gone, finished. If this reality is pressing enough that it is leaking out like this, then you can bet the US government has already factored this into its equations. I wouldn’t bet on any timelines for complete withdrawal from Iraq or Afghanistan any shorter than 50 years, so long as we can afford it. Our government probably hopes to have a draw down from ongoing combat operations, but troop presence is to last indefinitely.

Coming back to Taibbi’s post, what has become obvious over the past 3-4 years is just how inelastic energy prices are. Double the price, lose 1% of demand. Double it again, shed another 5%. (You can do the math to see how profitable that is.) In economic terms, the demand curve for energy is almost horizontal with respect to price.

The reality of oil supply is trumping the American fantasy of ‘recovery’. Going forward, every time the global economy begins to regain its footing, the reality of limited energy is going to shake the ground underfoot. As I occasionally point out, the past couple of centuries may well be looked back upon as an aberration in human history, powered almost entirely by non-renewable energy resources. That era in human history is winding down. I would not be surprised if in 20 years there are more bicycles, rickshaws and horse drawn carriages than the occasional wealthy person’s car on American city streets, which is, in fact, how most of the world has looked even during the flush energy era. This brings me to my next point.

The comedown underway is felt most acutely by those societies of privilege and disproportionate wealth, such as ours. One of the most interesting aspects of Studs Terkel’s, Hard Times is how some people barely noticed the Great Depression, either because they were always living in hard times, or because they were sufficiently insulated from the economy as dilettantes. The working poor who lost what little they had generally relayed an ethic of self-sufficiency and stoicism. The hardest psychological blows landed on the wealthy and near wealthy who lost everything. What we are witnessing now from our political, media and economic elites is a form of mass denial. Cash for clunkers, home buyers tax credits, and loose talk of recovery – as though we can ‘recover’ to credit fueled bubbles and haphazard development of bridges to nowhere and housing projects with no walkable space, 60+ miles from economic centers of activity, in other words places that make no sense in a world of scarce energy supplies.

The U.S. is in an interesting position in this global realignment, the esteem its holds itself in is ripe for deflating. It has found out just how meaningless the exercise of military power can be, giving lie to the fantasy of acting as a world’s policeman, saber rattling, or maintaining ‘security’ with force. (And I have to maintain that on this point about maintaining liberty and the 2nd amendment, the domestic gun nuts have a point – if a bunch of homemade devices operated on garage door openers can bog down the US military in Iraqi sand, then if it things went down to the wire in the States all those rifle waving nuts could probably have a chance of winning a war while losing a series of WACO like battles.) The lone superpower is also in the throes of a series of domestic institutional crises brought on by a recurring struggle of reality overcoming myth.

The first institution is capitalism and the Horatio Alger up by the boot straps story that resonates in the American conscious. The reality is that the economy is hallowed out; people have experienced a several decades long declines in real wages, increasingly stultifying class structure (people are less likely to move up from where they are born) that is now the most rigid in the industrialized world and widening gaps between the rich and poor as measured by the GINI coefficient. The American auto industry, once a large source of pride, is in its death throes. The rapid expansion of the financial industry in our economy, from 18% in the 1980s to over 40% this decade, is something that is seen with distrust, a rigged game that continues sucking wealth out of the economy to the benefit of the priveledged few, whose bets are hedged. Heads, they win. Tails, the taxpayers lose.

A second institutional crisis is the American democracy and nature of our government. Having long maintained the myth of democracy, the reality is that the government is owned and controlled by wealth. People have no faith in the government to provide basic services; many express this with a weary cynicism. (This is not new, many politicians have played on this weariness by fronting as outsiders, at least as far back as Reagan who famously said the scariest words to hear were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”) Years of business propaganda have altered how people even conceive of government, who now see the government through the lens of a poorly run and inefficient business. Compounding the problem is the ongoing crack-up of one of the two major political parties.

Every mature political institution has a shared culture and hierarchy. In the middle and bottom is where the most devout true believers are found. At the top is where the most cynical and clear eyed thinkers sit, they need intelligence and some relationship to reality to make decisions and broker power. This is true of the old Soviet system, the modern Catholic Church or the modern corporation. When trouble comes, the true believers find openings to propel themselves into the real seats of power at the top, displacing the clear eyed rational thinkers. The Republicans are rapidly becoming a party of fanatics and purity, the wall between cynical manipulation of the electorate via rhetorical tricks and true believers has been breached. The crackpots have begun taking over, most of their statements are a set of disconnected clichés, already disproven myths and barely coherent expressions of anger.

A third institutional crisis is the news media. The newspaper and television media are cratering. The US once had a vibrant news media, with papers that covered working class issues along with financial press. The working class press died in the middle of the century, leaving the financial press as an institution of business and commerce. The troubles in the business world have bled over to the news media while the internet is a direct assault on their authority and power over information. The media has been left fighting a rear guard action against the internet and defending its front from declining advertising budgets. To offset declining revenues, the media has cannibalized its business, which only tightens the spiral. The effect for many people who follow the news is a declining faith in what news media have to say about the world, their lack of faith exacerbated by the mindless adherence to balanced (as opposed to informed) coverage, the disconnect from what is seen and felt in the real world. For example, the DOW is at 10,000 so the talking heads are abuzz on recovery, meanwhile unemployment is over 10%, and real unemployment that counts the under employed and those who have quit looking is probably closer to 20%. There is no shared outlook of the world; the narratives we all carry in our heads are more uneven and disparate than in previous eras; No one knows anything, which heightens anxiety.

This has left many Americans unmoored from the political process, atomized within a society and culture that is violent, superstitious, divided, and all too often confuses avarice for self-sufficiency, their lives squeezed on all sides by raging economic forces and resource pools that are drying out and in an age of information, ironically, we appear to know very little. Absent any reliable outlet for rage, change, or narrative, who knows what kind of wacky, violent bubbles are going to begin surfacing in this great melting pot we call the USA.

Weekend at Uncle Sam’s

A sizable chunk of the American population is rationally checked out of politics and has been for a great part of their lives. Every few years earnest youngsters, political junkies and civic scolds give them flack, but it’s easy enough to ignore them. Politically active means keeping up with the Sunday morning talk shows, knowing what the latest political scandal is and who the key players are, and yanking a lever every few years, maybe some jury duty. Across some lines it does not do to cross, as any Twittering anarchist holed up in his hotel with a stack of Buffy DVDs well knows. The earnest and respectable know to get into barbed wire ringed free speech corrals.

A superficial intellectual awareness coupled with emotional distance is a rational approach for all of us. To assume by default that we are getting screwed by both parties, that government is inherently bumbling and wasteful (compared to private enterprise, which as everyone reading blogs, email and celebrity news all day in their cubicle knows is a model of efficiency), and tune out is to pretty much get it right without having to expend any time or energy tracking specifics and trivia. Who gives a shit what this election or that mid-term referendum means for the Democrats or Republicans as a party, or the current head (actual topic seen on the gym television at approximately 4:30 AM this morning.) To paraphrase a poet, you don’t need Morning Joe or Brit Hume to know which way the wind blows.

The catch is that we are getting screwed and have been for some time, you can be pissed, sure, but what are you gonna do? Bitch about it to your friends and plod along in life, things aren’t so bad here - unless you lose your job, and then shortly thereafter your friends, possessions and then it’s a mad scramble for personal survival.

A small part of me wonders if the health care reform underway may eventually be seen as an inflection point. Most days our government’s actions, as horrific and controversial as they are, do not affect us directly, it is mostly someone else’s kid dying in Iraq or Afghanistan, someone else’s country getting blown to shit – or it’s your grandchildren paying for today’s largesse. The point is that as pissed as many may be, most remain far enough removed that it makes more sense to register vague hope, anger, maybe attend a protest, and move on than to risk personal or financial health taking some ill-fated action. The long cons are largely invisible from everyday life – I’m talking about each person’s daily routine now - like the bailout and Wall Street’s ongoing gouging of the public (see Sachs, Goldman) – there is sense of feeling jobbed, but the tax bill is not in the here and now, and what is there to do really as long as we still have bread on the table and whatever on the tube?

Health care is different because it affects a lot of people and on a short time line; we are not talking about your grandchildren’s future, or your neighbor’s kid in Iraq, but your health care. Couple this with the national anxiety over losing your job and insurance, and this is an issue that directly affects almost every conceivable demographic group immediately. Even the most rationally checked out is paying attention to this. And how exactly have things gone down?

What this issue has revealed for all to see is that the propped up corpse of American Democracy, which many mistook for a sick old man, is, in fact, dead. The debate has hewed so closely to the corporate agenda as to beggar belief even for the cynically uninformed who know intuitively that the government is officially fucked up. The rationally checked out have it easier than the ideologically committed and indoctrinated intellectuals who follow politics closely; for them this has been confusing and disappointing to the nth degree. Those political party true believers are faced with just how shut out they (and most everyone else) really are; they have seen the nickel’s worth of difference and are at a loss, probably feel betrayed. Don't worry, they will get over it, they always do.

In a functioning democracy with a government for the people, by the people and of the people, is there any doubt that health insurance companies would be nationalized or abolished altogether? Their main purpose at this date is to suck as much money out of the system as possible. Paying the bills and negotiating prices with care providers is their value added proposition, but the obvious economic incentive for insurance companies is to minimize how much they pay out – and this has led to rescission, denial of coverage, and sky rocketing rates.

I happen to work in health care on the R&D side. Yesterday we had a meeting to discuss what third party vendor we would contract with to secure payment from insurance companies and individuals paying out of pocket. As a start up with a new product coming to market, we have to establish a history of payment with insurance companies because there is no price point yet. A consultant advised us that the best strategy with insurance companies is to find the quickest path to ‘no payment’, their default position, so we can begin appealing, which creates costly paperwork for the insurance company. The name of the game is to inflict enough economic attrition with appeals to settle a price they will pay. No wonder the U.S. health care system is 21% of excess spending on administrative costs (McKinsey Global Institute).

A government not captured and owned by business interests; beholden to voter concerns instead, would abolish these anachronistic companies, the failed experiment of health insurance, and dramatically redraw the profit lines of health care. The entire debate thus far (and we are nearing the end game) has accepted the profits of insurance companies and pharmaceuticals as an unquestionable feature of the health care system. A widespread recognition in corporate America that health expenses, left unchecked, would eventually drown the American economy is what prompted this debate and reform; this is remarkable given their usual track record of going headlong into long term disaster while pursuing quarterly earnings. I have to give credit for that, at least.

The Democrats have worked an extremely business friendly plan with a few minor concessions for the sick who insurance companies would, quite rationally, rather dump than payout on. The Republicans have offered a joke of a counter reform, implicitly allowing practices like rescission to continue, allowing insurance companies to dump the insured if they determine that the insured misled them about existing conditions. (This means that if you get sick without insurance, or change jobs, or lose your job, then you are not likely to ever get and keep health coverage if you need it.) I am not going through the rest of the particulars of either bill as relayed in the press because that is not the point of what I am driving at here, but background and necessary context. What I am getting at is that the degree to which our government is willing to screw us on behalf of their wealthy patrons can no longer be a vague or distant proposition for the masses – health care is close to almost everyone in this country. The slide towards serfdom is not likely to be well met by a population jacked on amphetamines, MMA, football, violence and porn.

The bailouts for Wall Street and the banking sector exposed the lies of American capitalism and welfare at once; it ain’t the poor living large on the public dime and it ain’t the rich competing in a dog eat dog fight. Even if most people are reading articles like Matt Taibbi’s seminal Rolling Stone pieces, there has been a widespread recognition that this game is rigged to greater degree than previously suspected. This was the setup, because even watching this go down only did so much.

People are not going to take to the streets over health reform, but it could well be the moment when the widespread recognition of just how rotten and corrupt our government has become, how captured by business, just how false the choice between or two parties is, how hollow our civics courses are in school, just how nominal our nominal voices are heard becomes the new understanding (the bailouts, as bald a scam as they were, could be compartmentalized as one-off emergency measures, a hold your nose moment in the face of global meltdown.) I’d guess that no matter how cynical, cranky and half informed people were before now, many had no idea how bad it is; and as the socialized capitalist animal continues devouring itself, inevitably more and more muddling Americans are drawn closer to its teeth and claws – and its fast becoming an us against them, everyday, everyone type conflict.

McLuhan's Zombieland

A friend sends along this link

To recap for the link-click lazy, this is a prototype for simulation software that allows someone to sit at their console and ‘participate’ in a live competition, in this case racing. The software people canvas the real life playing field before the event and map you into a virtual car during the race so you can simulate participation. I presume they plan to add code to simulate your collisions, which would always affect you and never the real racers, obviously. Or, thinking ahead, you could participate in the play of your favorite football team, or call balls and strikes like an umpire in a baseball game, or try to catch your favorite pitcher, or participate in a SWAT team raid, or combat mission overseas. The software could be used for training as well as recreation for aspiring soldiers and athletes.

I instinctively recoil from this technology. It is not that the singular concept does not intrigue me, but the connected data points in this vein gives me pause. The sub trend of dissociative voyeuristic adventure is saturating our media. Video games and reality television are capturing a large market share of people who’d like to live a rich, adventurous and fulfilling life - as long as it is not their own. I may (probably am) overreacting a bit, and turning a minor anecdote into a trend as one commenter put it a few posts back, but this tuning in while tuning out is downright creepy. Our media is increasingly reflecting voyeuristic fantasy of non-participating participation. Some follow celebrity or reality television lives as closely as their own personal lives. We increasingly numb ourselves to our real lives with medications. These new technologies give us the feeling of having an experience without any experience at all. Like The Dude, I still jerk-off manually.

Let them Eat Cake Moments: Hypocrisy in plain sight

During an interview with Clinton broadcast live in Pakistan with several prominent female TV anchors, before a predominantly female audience of several hundred, one member of the audience said the Predator attacks amount to ''executions without trial'' for those killed.

Another asked Clinton how she would define terrorism.

''Is it the killing of people in drone attacks?'' she asked. That woman then asked if Clinton considers drone attacks and bombings like the one that killed more than 100 civilians in the city of Peshawar earlier this week to both be acts of terrorism.
''No, I do not,'' Clinton replied.

Clinton Faces Pakistani Anger at Drone Attacks
ASSOCIATED PRESS,October 30, 2009

An anarchist social worker raided by the feds wants his computers, manuscripts and pick axes back...

In a guns-drawn raid on October 1, FBI agents and police seized boxes of dubious "evidence" from the Queens, New York, home of Elliott Madison. A U.S. District Judge in Brooklyn has set a Monday deadline to rule on the legality of the search, and in the meantime has ordered the government to refrain from examining the material taken in the 6 a.m. search.

Madison, who counsels more than 100 severely mentally ill patients in New York, seems to have first drawn attention from the authorities at September's G-20 gathering of world leaders in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There he was arrested on September 24 at a motel room for allegedly listening to a police scanner and relaying information on Twitter to help protesters avoid heavily-armed cops -- an activity the State Department lauded when it happened in Iran.

A week later, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, armed with a search warrant and backed by a federal grand jury investigation, raided Madison's house, which he shares with his wife of 13 years and several roommates. The squad seized … Steampunk magazine, for one. Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs. Anarchist political-theory books. A needlepoint depiction of Lenin that belonged to Madison's wife's grandmother.

Twitter anarchist raided under 'riot' laws
CNN, October 24, 2009

When the US government sends missiles into an urban area from a remote controlled predator drone thousands of feet in the sky, like Zeus hurling thunderbolts from Mount Olympus, killing many innocents than targets by several orders of magnitude, that is not terrorism – by definition. When a dissident in Iran protests the government via Twitter, that is a high tech revolutionary. When a dissident in the U.S. helps people protest the G-20 from a hotel room via Twitter, time to call in the Terrorism task force.

Make no mistake, any time the government decides to create a label for some crime, a label that implies some motive a priori, it is a license to assert greater authority, the attendant force and violence that come with it, and trample civil rights. Don’t be surprised if the Hate Crime Bill that just passed turns out to be something along these lines.

Why we like stuff

During World War II a Dutch artist passed a progressively worse series of paintings as the work of one of the greatest masters of all time, Jans Vermeer, to the world. No less than one of the foremost authorities of Dutch art history in that day, a man who made his reputation by rediscovering a couple of genuine Vermeer paintings, certified the forgeries with genuine belief in their authenticity. The deception cut deeper – people came from to extol the aesthetic virtues of the new Vermeer paintings and gasped in astonishment before the paintings.

Meegeren's forgery"

The forger was eventually exposed due to a post-war investigator tasked with tracking down ill-gotten Nazi riches. Several large sums and a posh mansion tracked to the forger, Van Meegeren. Meegeren revealed his forgery, in part, to save himself. He wagered that it would be a forgivable offense if he was discovered to have bilked the Nazis for millions with a ridiculous hoax. Once his forgery was exposed, the spell broke immediately. People recognized the ugliness of the paintings at once, enthusiasm and hysteria gave way to revulsion and contempt. Meegeren explained that he could not paint as well as Vermeer, and to try to do so would never work. His alternative was to incorporate familiar visual cues and allow the viewer to fool themselves. After the first forgery passed, he took less care with subsequent pieces and they did, indeed, look progressively uglier and shabbier.[1]

It is a fascinating tale for a number of reasons, least of all as an insight into how we appreciate art of whatever form as a social activity. We do not listen to music or look at a painting in a vacuum. Our cultural context leaves us with a set of sensibilities, sure, but that is not what I mean. What I am getting at specifically is that our perceptions are shaped largely by how closely we feel in tune with our peers. Art is a social compact, a social event, even when you are listening to a new album with your iPod in a room alone.

None of this is revelatory, I know, but bear with me.

Several artists with troubled or criminal personal lives have made headlines recently. Michael Jackson, for dying. Roman Polanski, for getting extradited to face sentencing for raping a 13 year old girl. I have counseled in the past to do one’s best to separate opinions about the artist from evaluation of their art. But if we cannot separate our evaluations of art from our local cultural context, or social context, or even from our own personal history with the artist’s work, then how much can we separate an artist from their work? Not to Geek out too much on this topic, but I suppose our individual appreciation for art hinges on how we believe members of our social group will appreciate the work, how we believe members of those outside our social group will appreciate the work, what we think of the artist, and then a mess of subterranean cultural and personal contexts. Looking at art in a museum automatically imbues the art on display with credibility, a street artists' work is automatically taken down a notch. A band without a large following, playing in a small venue, attracts a certain audience, many of whom will abandon the band if it reaches a certain threshold of success or take some satisfaction in having heard them first. The Washington Post ran an article about Joshua Bell, a world class violin player, who set up in the subway disguised as a street musician, few people noticed the artist. In a concert hall they would pay rapt attention. Context matters almost more than the quality of the work itself.

All of this is to say that we shouldn’t close the door on any artist or their work. What works today may not work tomorrow and vice versa. If you find yourself hating on a song or painting, it’s an interesting exercise to probe your tastes.

When someone protests Dave Mathews Band or Coldplay because douche-bag frat boys listen to that stuff, what, if anything, does that say about the music - or does it say almost everything? Or if someone registers that this or that band has become a self-parody (usually said about bands that have been around for awhile like The Rolling Stones), what does that say about the music? Why do we resent some works of art for their audience or because the artists have aged with us and not given up the ghost yet?

Our own personal histories are a factor. Does a band or song remind you of someone or some place in your past. We remain loyal to artists that knocked our socks off when we were young past the point that they still rattle us, or we go the other way and resent them for sticking around and not recreating what no artist could because we are older, fatter, a little less enthusiastic, a little more tuned out and turned off and no longer have fresh senses.

Coming soon! – Music Meviews: volume III or so

Footnotes:
[1] Dolnick, Edward (2008). The forger's spell: a true story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the greatest art hoax of the twentieth century

Larval Democrats

Florida Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) on Tuesday apologized for calling a former Enron lobbyist-turned-Federal Reserve Board adviser a "K Street whore."

“This characterization of Ms. Robertson, made during a radio interview last month in the context of the debate over whether the Federal Reserve should be independently audited, was inappropriate, and I apologize," he added.

Grayson is hardly a stranger to intense media and political scrutiny, but his remark about Robertson in particular had earned him the criticism of the National Organization for Women, which demanded on Tuesday the congressman issue an apology.

"Would he have singled out a male lobbyist and said the same thing?" Erin Matson, a vice president at NOW, told the AP.

Grayson apologizes for 'K street whore' remark
The Hill

First, I think Grayson would have used that for a male too, the term "whore" applied to politicians and lobbyists has become as unsexed as an intrinsically sexist comment can become.

Second, Grayson is an interesting figure. He is a larval Democrat, he is making waves now by saying and doing 'outlandish' things, which really means that he is saying things that most of the clowns in Washington know that it does not do to say. Maybe he will learn in time not to say those things the hard way, maybe a senior democrat will pull him aside and talk 'sense' to him, or maybe he will go away after a frustrating term or two. If he does stick around, he won't survive in his present form, he will have to evolve into the cynic power player who trades on a long gone personal reputation for truth telling and combat... or perish.

Think John Kerry, perhaps.

Crunching the Numbers

U.S. national security adviser James Jones said last weekend that the al-Qaida presence has diminished and he did not "foresee the return of the Taliban" to power.

He said that according to the maximum estimate, al-Qaida has fewer than 100 fighters operating in Afghanistan without any bases or ability to launch attacks on the West.

Associated Press
Al-Qaida’s might fades in Afghanistan

Reporter: How many people who major in the same musical vineyard in which you toil, how many are protest singers? That is, people who use their music, and use the songs to protest the uh, social state in which we live today, the matter of war, the matter of crime, or whatever it might be.

Bob Dylan: Um... how many?

Reporter: Yes. How many?

Bob Dylan: Uh, I think there's about uh, 136.
[People around him giggle. Neither the reporter nor Dylan laugh]

Reporter: You say ABOUT 136, or you mean exactly 136?

Bob Dylan: Uh, it's either 136 or 142.

No Direction Home

Jim Jones’ claim about the number of Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan is bandied about as an example of our outsized efforts there. I wonder how he gets at this number.

The real answer is that he probably does not know, or that al-Qaeda is so amorphous and non-organizational that it does not make sense to think of it as we would a functioning and operational organization with a leadership structure, but Jones probably also knows that it is would not do to say this aloud as a public official given the cultural and political meaning of ‘Al Qaeda’ in the Western world. Or, maybe the number of militants our military classifies as 'Al Qaeda' is so large that it would be pessimistic to give a real answer - after all these years, billions spent, and we haven't made a dent?

Jason Burke’s depiction of Al Qaeda can more fully make sense of this, essentially Al Qaeda is a shorthand for disparate factions of disaffected radicals, militants and populations but has no meaning to describe as a top down, coordinated criminal organization like, say, the mafia. His model of Al Qaeda holds that there are members in the Vanguard, patrons with deeply held grievances and religious zeal. These are the 'leaders', but are not coordinated and when they do intersect are likely as rivals. There are also the militants, people who have crossed the threshold to violence and may or may not be religious. They come up with plans and find patrons in the vanguard. Then there are sympathizers but are not violent. Carrying this model forward a bit, one can see that there is little or no coordination, ideas and plans come from above and below, and that non-violent sympathizers might give support and shelter to others depending on their circumstances, and are recruited to become violent. In Iraq, the U.S. labeled one faction of militants Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, but it was never clear what this meant exactly or how they related to Al Qaeda. We have also managed to kill a lot of second and third in command lieutenants. And the mastermind, OBL, is who knows where or how involved he is outside of the occasional guerrilla video tape.

Back to James Jones's figure. Afghanistan is a mess, we have bought war lords to fight the Taliban, and bought some of the Taliban when that hasn't worked to perfection - so we are or have been in bed or warring with elements of every identifiable faction in Afghanistan, depending on local circumstances and the prevailing winds at the moment. The government we backed in Kabul is corrupt and widely considered fraudulent following their rigged election. Our propaganda machine has finessed this situation by defining Al Qaeda down to zero, we can get away with buying off the Taliban when needed, but putting money directly into what we believe is Al Qaeda's pockets would put the dagger into the beating heart of domestic support, even though what we commonly understand Al Qaeda to be is probably not very accurate.

Eating Cake

One pointless hobby of mine is to track ‘let them eat cake moments’, quotes and actions by elites that demonstrate in full force just how much they don’t get or give a shit about the majority of people. These moments are sometimes aggressively condescending, like Barbara Bush’s comment after Katrina destroyed New Orleans that the people taking shelter in the Astrodome were “underprivileged anyway, so this is working out very well for them.”

Others masquerade as praise and unintentionally reveal the class and power dynamics of the country, such as George W. Bush’s praise for a woman who said that had three jobs at a town hall event during his Social Security debacle.

Other comments are uttered in direct interactions with people as an attempt to leverage status and privilege; most cops have an amusing story or two about someone trying to play the “do you know who I am?” card to get out of a tight spot.

The New York Times periodically publishes articles on how the super wealthy are coping with the recession, renting out the guest house of their mansion, cutting back on law maintenance for their house in the Hamptons, etc.

Cake comments can also take the form of reasoned deliberation that are callously lacking in moral awareness, like Lawrence Summers’ infamous memo about the economic logic of dumping loads of toxic waste in lower developed countries because their life expectancies are not long enough to develop health problems.

Here is a Hank Paulson cake moment, which was so outrageous and lacking of self-awareness that his staff appears to have been shocked by it. (via Taibbi)

When cake moments come from the rich and not so powerful, like athletes or small businessmen and trophy wives, they are alternatively funny and irritating. When they come from the rich and powerful, they are cause for anger. These moments ultimately throw the egalitarian myth of American existence into stark relief with reality. They also serve to reinforce how powerless most of us are, after all, what are you gonna do about it? Goldman Sachs, by the way, is doing great, as is Wall Street. The Dow is skying.