From The Wall Street Journal Online:
Springsteen Looks Back
On 'Born to Run'
By Ashley Kahn
November 10, 2005
"You want the earth to shake and spit fire!" Bruce Springsteen exclaimed earlier this year. He was inducting U2 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, preaching of the messianic results all great rockers must aspire to when they record. "You want the sky to split apart and for God to pour out!"
He offered a litany of examples -- recordings by Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, the Beatles. "'The Sun Sessions,' 'Highway 61,' 'Sgt. Pepper's'… 'Born to Run.' Whoops, I meant to leave that one out."
Clarence Clemons and Bruce Springsteen in a 'Born to Run' publicity photo from the session that produced the iconic, feel-good album cover.
It was a smile-inducing, double-take sort of moment. Mr. Springsteen -- known for being hyper-sensitive to rock-star hype -- comfortably mocked his own legend with brimstone and bombast. Yet the sly self-reference held truth as well. Thirty years ago, a generation witnessed in wonder as his breakthrough album, "Born to Run," did indeed split the sky.
Wired with poetic precision and operatic intensity, the album exploded onto American radios and turntables with its streetwise Sturm-und-Drang in late 1975, fueled by the carefully crafted drama on story-songs like "Jungleland," "Backstreets" and the ubiquitous title track. It saved Mr. Springsteen's then-floundering career and, in the same week, landed him on the covers of both Time and Newsweek. It focused his musical vision and honed the sweat and fury of his legendary stage performances.
Three decades on, the 55-year-old rocker still pulls out all the stops when backed by his band -- or downshifts a bit when alone and unplugged. But when he sings the classics from "Born to Run," with or without his group, a devotional intensity is palpable. "They're always going to have a particular place, no matter how I do them," Mr. Springsteen said recently from Richmond, Va., while on his current solo tour. "But with the band I basically play them just the way that I like to hear them, which is the way we recorded them."
One proof of the lasting appeal of "Born to Run" is in its constancy at the top of greatest-albums-of-all-time lists, as well as its consistent performance in Mr. Springsteen's extensive catalog on Columbia. "It's just been a very steady record over these years, but not as great as 'Born in the U.S.A.,' which is his biggest from that point of view," says Mr. Springsteen's manager, Jon Landau, the former music journalist who first joined the rocker as co-producer of "Born to Run."
Perhaps the best measure is that moment in concert when Mr. Springsteen sings "The screen door slams" and thousands recognize the opening lyric to "Thunder Road." Or when they lock onto the guitar riff to "Born to Run." "It's pretty electrifying," Mr. Landau notes. "There's no sense of a diminished interest on the part of the audience, which includes younger and younger people who obviously were not around in 1975."
Much can be said of the year that "Born to Run" was released, the midpoint of a decade scarred by divisive issues. Mr. Springsteen, himself, detects a lingering angst in the album's mix. "One of the telling lines on the record is 'you're scared and you're thinking maybe we're not that young anymore,'" he says. "I mean, I'm a 24-year-old kid writing that. Later on I realized this was how the country felt after Vietnam and Nixon. Nobody felt that young anymore.
"On 'Born to Run,' there's that sense of longing to break free -- but to what? Longing to move forward and ahead -- but to where? Through 'Devils and Dust' I've been trying to answer those questions. 'Born to Run' was very pivotal in that it expressed my most hopeful feelings and some of my desires." He pauses, and adds with a laugh: "All backed with an enormous dose of fear, of course."
That "Born to Run" was born out of fear -- the fear of being dropped by one's record company -- is one of the most familiar chapters of the Springsteen legend. His first two albums on Columbia Records had done well critically, but sold poorly. By 1974, the pressure to produce a hit for the label was paramount. A demo of a tune called "Born to Run" persuaded Columbia to give him one more chance. Late that year, Mr. Springsteen entered the studio with his group the E Street Band, a few half-written songs, and the conflicted emotions of youth.
"At that age, you're a combination of things. I had the big ego, the belief in my abilities, the intensity of desire. But the flip side of that is, 'Man, am I about to be collared and sent back on a bus to where I came from?'" And by the time Mr. Springsteen completed 'Born to Run,' he was ready to hop in any vehicle. "We had spent months of long hours and gone through an insane working process," he says. "On the last day we stumbled out after four days straight of recording, into the car to our first concert of the tour. It was like, 'Hallelujah! Thank God I'm any place but in that studio!'"
The tale of the band awash in the recording technology of the time is covered in a new DVD documentary executive produced by Mr. Springsteen himself. Titled "Wings for Wheels," it relates the making of "Born to Run" through footage of the sessions, playbacks of alternate takes, and interviews with Mr. Springsteen, Mr. Landau, and longtime band members like guitarist Steve Van Zandt and drummer Max Weinberg.
Anecdotes and revelations abound. Mr. Springsteen, the perfectionist, tossing a test-pressing of the album into a swimming pool. ("I could only hear the things that I felt were wrong with it at the time.") Mr. Springsteen, the referee, mediating the squabbles between his then-manager, Mike Appel, and Mr. Landau, who would take over Mr. Appel's job. Mr. Springsteen, the tireless craftsman, recording saxophonist Clarence Clemons's famed "Jungleland" solo again and again, meticulously splicing together the best parts into a seemingly natural whole. ("Music, film, all that -- it's the world of illusion. I'd rather sound spontaneous than be spontaneous.")
"Wings for Wheels" is part of the "Born to Run: 30th Anniversary" three-disc boxed set that arrives in stores on Tuesday. Packaged with the documentary is a remastered CD of the original album (no studio chatter, scratch takes or other recording detritus); a booklet with never-before-seen images by Eric Meola, the photographer who shot the album's iconic, feel-good cover; plus a DVD featuring a full, never-released London concert from 1975.
There's much to recommend in this refreshingly less-than-excessive collection, but it's that video of Mr. Springsteen's first appearance outside the U.S. that is the archival gem of the package -- catching the New Jersey rocker in his scruffy, unshaven glory, winning over the Brits with frenetic energy and tune after winning tune, mostly from "Born to Run."
"We came out at the Hammersmith Odeon with a set list I dare any young band to match," Mr. Springsteen says proudly. "We wanted to have great songs and a great, heart-stopping show. We wanted to rivet people and make them crazy, because that's how music had affected me."
Not visible in the performance video is another legendary moment from the Springsteen story. Arriving for the soundcheck that afternoon, he freaked at the plethora of promotional materials covering the London venue. In a pique, he began tearing down the posters, bristling at the star status that the success of "Born to Run" had already assigned him.
"I got there and I said, 'Gee, this is a little more than I bargained for,'" says Mr. Springsteen today with a chuckle. "I was too young to realize that it was exactly what I had bargained for."
Mr. Kahn is a music journalist and author of the book "A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album."
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Danny Ocean Defends the Rather Network
by Ann Coulter
Posted Nov 10, 2005
The most cosseted, self-indulgent, worthless people in the universe are worried their suffering has been downgraded.
For 50 years Hollywood drama queens have churned out plays, movies, TV shows, books, poems, allegories, museum exhibits, personal testimonials, dioramas, interpretive dances, wood carvings, cave paintings, needlepoint wall hangings and scatological limericks about their victimization at the hands of a brute named Joe McCarthy. Schoolchildren who will learn nothing about George Washington, Thomas Edison or Paul Revere are forced to read chapter and verse about the black night of fascism (BNOF) under McCarthy.
But half a century of myth-making later, one little book comes out and gives the contrary view—and Hollywood thinks it’s Treblinka.
George Clooney, writer and director of the rebuttal, claims he was driven to make the movie Good Night, and Good Luck because “a book came out about how great McCarthy was.”
Q: Ann Coulter’s Treason?
GC: Yes.
Liberals haven’t been so alarmed by a book since Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Still, I was shocked. I did not know that George Clooney could read.
So, apparently, we must revisit the BNOF under McCarthy one more time. (Ethical dilemma: Would you write a book to set the record straight on Joseph McCarthy knowing that it might give rise to yet another lame George Clooney movie? )
Clooney said of his small contribution to the “McCarthyism” industry: “I realized that we had to be incredibly careful with the facts, because if we got any of them wrong, they could say it’s all horse****. So I had to double-source every scene.”
I don’t intend to see his movie because—except for the McCarthy parts—it sounds like a snoozefest. (Half the reviewers so far have said “good night” to Clooney, and the other half have said “good luck.” ) And despite all those “double-sources,” in addition to getting the big facts wrong (about America and about the Soviet Union), Clooney got all the little facts wrong, too. I guess he borrowed some of Al Franken’s “fact-checkers.”
As even liberal reviewers have noted, it was hardly an act of bravery for Edward R. Murrow to attack McCarthy. The New York Times was attacking McCarthy, The New York Post was attacking McCarthy and The Washington Post was attacking McCarthy. Every known news outlet was attacking McCarthy. McCarthy was in a pitched battle for his life, his career and the fate of the nation. Murrow merely jumped on the liberal bandwagon—and rather late in the game. (You want bravery? Try sitting all the way through Solaris. )
I gather the movie’s two examples of McCarthy’s perfidy are the cases of Annie Lee Moss and Milo Radulovich. As described in detail on Pages 62-64 of Treason, Moss was a proved Communist Party member—who happened to be working in the Code Room of the Pentagon. It was an act of sheer madness, like, say, putting a member of al Qaeda at the Pentagon today or putting Pat Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee Oh wait ...
Moss put on a big Amos ‘n’ Andy show for a Senate committee, delighting racist liberals who happily proclaimed Moss too simpleminded to be a Communist. Only thanks to McCarthy, who ignored the barrage of calumnies from liberals, Moss was moved to a less sensitive position at the Pentagon.
As for Milo Radulovich, he had absolutely nothing to do with McCarthy. McCarthy never mentioned his name. So maybe liberals have finally found the one liberal in the ’50s who was not on the payroll of the Soviet Union. I don’t know and I don’t care.
Amusingly, Clooney said in an interview that Alger Hiss was “probably” a Communist spy. By now, I believe even the Nation magazine has been forced to admit Hiss was more than that. But, Clooney says, the point is McCarthy “was wrong about 99% of them.”
If McCarthy was “wrong about 99% of them,” when are we going to get a movie about one of the 99%? I might go see that movie.
Clooney reverts to the standard Hollywood talking point, saying: “More important than that, [McCarthy] was wrong every time he denied people their civil liberties.”
Ah, yes, the old civil liberties canard. Apparently, the only period worse than the BNOF under McCarthy is the current BNOF under President Bush. This was followed by the usual number of specific examples of civil liberties that had been denied: zero.
Liberals churn out hysterical slander daily, but insist on acting like they are the ones under attack. Come to think of it, the current BNOF is a lot like the original BNOF under McCarthy.
The only people being tortured are those of us forced to endure the egos of Hollywood fantasists who profess left-wing views to prove they are deep thinkers.
by Ann Coulter
Posted Nov 10, 2005
The most cosseted, self-indulgent, worthless people in the universe are worried their suffering has been downgraded.
For 50 years Hollywood drama queens have churned out plays, movies, TV shows, books, poems, allegories, museum exhibits, personal testimonials, dioramas, interpretive dances, wood carvings, cave paintings, needlepoint wall hangings and scatological limericks about their victimization at the hands of a brute named Joe McCarthy. Schoolchildren who will learn nothing about George Washington, Thomas Edison or Paul Revere are forced to read chapter and verse about the black night of fascism (BNOF) under McCarthy.
But half a century of myth-making later, one little book comes out and gives the contrary view—and Hollywood thinks it’s Treblinka.
George Clooney, writer and director of the rebuttal, claims he was driven to make the movie Good Night, and Good Luck because “a book came out about how great McCarthy was.”
Q: Ann Coulter’s Treason?
GC: Yes.
Liberals haven’t been so alarmed by a book since Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Still, I was shocked. I did not know that George Clooney could read.
So, apparently, we must revisit the BNOF under McCarthy one more time. (Ethical dilemma: Would you write a book to set the record straight on Joseph McCarthy knowing that it might give rise to yet another lame George Clooney movie? )
Clooney said of his small contribution to the “McCarthyism” industry: “I realized that we had to be incredibly careful with the facts, because if we got any of them wrong, they could say it’s all horse****. So I had to double-source every scene.”
I don’t intend to see his movie because—except for the McCarthy parts—it sounds like a snoozefest. (Half the reviewers so far have said “good night” to Clooney, and the other half have said “good luck.” ) And despite all those “double-sources,” in addition to getting the big facts wrong (about America and about the Soviet Union), Clooney got all the little facts wrong, too. I guess he borrowed some of Al Franken’s “fact-checkers.”
As even liberal reviewers have noted, it was hardly an act of bravery for Edward R. Murrow to attack McCarthy. The New York Times was attacking McCarthy, The New York Post was attacking McCarthy and The Washington Post was attacking McCarthy. Every known news outlet was attacking McCarthy. McCarthy was in a pitched battle for his life, his career and the fate of the nation. Murrow merely jumped on the liberal bandwagon—and rather late in the game. (You want bravery? Try sitting all the way through Solaris. )
I gather the movie’s two examples of McCarthy’s perfidy are the cases of Annie Lee Moss and Milo Radulovich. As described in detail on Pages 62-64 of Treason, Moss was a proved Communist Party member—who happened to be working in the Code Room of the Pentagon. It was an act of sheer madness, like, say, putting a member of al Qaeda at the Pentagon today or putting Pat Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee Oh wait ...
Moss put on a big Amos ‘n’ Andy show for a Senate committee, delighting racist liberals who happily proclaimed Moss too simpleminded to be a Communist. Only thanks to McCarthy, who ignored the barrage of calumnies from liberals, Moss was moved to a less sensitive position at the Pentagon.
As for Milo Radulovich, he had absolutely nothing to do with McCarthy. McCarthy never mentioned his name. So maybe liberals have finally found the one liberal in the ’50s who was not on the payroll of the Soviet Union. I don’t know and I don’t care.
Amusingly, Clooney said in an interview that Alger Hiss was “probably” a Communist spy. By now, I believe even the Nation magazine has been forced to admit Hiss was more than that. But, Clooney says, the point is McCarthy “was wrong about 99% of them.”
If McCarthy was “wrong about 99% of them,” when are we going to get a movie about one of the 99%? I might go see that movie.
Clooney reverts to the standard Hollywood talking point, saying: “More important than that, [McCarthy] was wrong every time he denied people their civil liberties.”
Ah, yes, the old civil liberties canard. Apparently, the only period worse than the BNOF under McCarthy is the current BNOF under President Bush. This was followed by the usual number of specific examples of civil liberties that had been denied: zero.
Liberals churn out hysterical slander daily, but insist on acting like they are the ones under attack. Come to think of it, the current BNOF is a lot like the original BNOF under McCarthy.
The only people being tortured are those of us forced to endure the egos of Hollywood fantasists who profess left-wing views to prove they are deep thinkers.
To quote Neil Diamond, "Hell, yeah..." From Human Events Online:
Bush Leaves GOP in Crisis
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Posted Nov 10, 2005
With the rout of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's initiatives, Democratic victories in New Jersey and Virginia, and President Bush’s free fall in national polls on job performance, credibility and character, the Republican Party is in imminent peril of losing the country.
Indeed, since 9/11, the party has indulged in a willful self-delusion that it has become America’s Party. The Bush triumph in 2004, talking heads brayed, settled the matter: Red State America has triumphed over Blue State America. The future belongs to us.
This was always hyperbole. Where Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan rolled up 49-state landslides in re-election runs, Bush won 31 states, losing every state north of the Potomac and east of Ohio, two of the three great industrial states of the Midwest, Michigan and Illinois, and he was skunked on the Pacific rim. Had Kerry hammered him on trade and lost jobs in Ohio, Bush would be a one-term president.
What killed the first Bush presidency and is ruining the second is the abandonment of Reaganism and his embrace of the twin heresies of neoconservatism and Big Government Conservatism, as preached by the resident ideologues at The Weekly Standard and Wall Street Journal.
Under Bush I, taxes were raised, funding for HUD and Education exploded, and a quota bill was signed under which small businesses, accused of racial discrimination, were made to prove their innocence, or be punished, in true Soviet fashion.
Under Bush II, social spending has exploded to levels LBJ might envy, foreign aid has been doubled, pork-at-every-meal has become the GOP diet of choice, surpluses have vanished, and the deficit is soaring back toward 5% of GDP. Bill Clinton is starting to look like Barry Goldwater.
Both Bushes abandoned the economic patriotism that had put America and Americans first—for free-trade globalism. Result: the most massive trade deficits in U.S. history, the gutting of our industrial base, the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs, and the largest wealth transfer of all time with technology, factories, high-tech and high-skilled jobs pouring out of America into Asia.
Working America and the middle class have been sacrificed on the high altar of the Republican Moloch of Free Trade. And how have our Chinese brothers reciprocated our magnanimity?
Both Bushes embraced the “open borders” immigration policy the Wall Street Journal has trumpeted for two decades. Result: We have 10-15 million illegal aliens in our country, among whom gangs like the murderous Mara Salvatrucha are proliferating. Native-born California taxpayers are fleeing the Golden State, as Third World tax consumers pour in. So great is the crisis on the Mexican border even the liberal Democratic governors of New Mexico and Arizona have declared states of emergency. Meanwhile 35,000 U.S. troops stand guard—on the border of South Korea.
The late editorial editor of the Journal, Robert Bartley, once said, “I believe the nation-state is finished.” He and his progeny have surely done their level best to bring that about.
As the country we grew up in becomes unrecognizable, we still hear the Journal, that good and faithful servant of the U.S. Business Roundtable, warning us not to oppose open borders. Meanwhile, our very own Dr. Pangloss, Ben Wattenberg, warbles on about our being the “first universal nation” and, in echo of M. Dominic de Villepin, burbles, “Isn’t diversity wonderful!”
In foreign policy, Bush I was an internationalist out to build a “New World Order” after the Cold War. However, post-9/11, Bush II converted to a neoconservatism that calls for unilateral American intervention in the Middle East and the Islamic world, to bring down dictators and establish democracy.
Thus, in March, 2003, Bush, in perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history, invaded an Arab nation that had not attacked us, did not want war with us, and did not threaten us—to strip it of weapons we now know it did not have.
Result: Shia and Kurds have been liberated from Saddam, but Iran has a new ally in southern Iraq, Osama has a new base camp in the Sunni Triangle, the Arab and Islamic world have been radicalized against the United States, and copy-cat killers of Al Qaida have been targeting our remaining allies in Europe and the Middle East: Spain, Britain, Egypt and Jordan. And, lest we forget, 2055 Americans are dead and Walter Reed is filling up.
True to the neoconservative creed, Bush launched a global crusade for democracy that is now bringing ever closer to power Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, and Shia fundamentalists in Baghdad and Basra.
Democratic imperialism is still imperialism. To Arab and Islamic peoples, whether the Crusaders come in the name of God or in the name of democracy, they are still Crusaders.
When Ronald Reagan went home to California, his heirs said, “Goodbye to all that,” and embraced Big Government conservatism, then neoconservatism. If they do not find their way home soon, to the principles of Taft, Goldwater and Reagan, they will perish in the wilderness into which they have led us all.
Bush Leaves GOP in Crisis
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Posted Nov 10, 2005
With the rout of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's initiatives, Democratic victories in New Jersey and Virginia, and President Bush’s free fall in national polls on job performance, credibility and character, the Republican Party is in imminent peril of losing the country.
Indeed, since 9/11, the party has indulged in a willful self-delusion that it has become America’s Party. The Bush triumph in 2004, talking heads brayed, settled the matter: Red State America has triumphed over Blue State America. The future belongs to us.
This was always hyperbole. Where Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan rolled up 49-state landslides in re-election runs, Bush won 31 states, losing every state north of the Potomac and east of Ohio, two of the three great industrial states of the Midwest, Michigan and Illinois, and he was skunked on the Pacific rim. Had Kerry hammered him on trade and lost jobs in Ohio, Bush would be a one-term president.
What killed the first Bush presidency and is ruining the second is the abandonment of Reaganism and his embrace of the twin heresies of neoconservatism and Big Government Conservatism, as preached by the resident ideologues at The Weekly Standard and Wall Street Journal.
Under Bush I, taxes were raised, funding for HUD and Education exploded, and a quota bill was signed under which small businesses, accused of racial discrimination, were made to prove their innocence, or be punished, in true Soviet fashion.
Under Bush II, social spending has exploded to levels LBJ might envy, foreign aid has been doubled, pork-at-every-meal has become the GOP diet of choice, surpluses have vanished, and the deficit is soaring back toward 5% of GDP. Bill Clinton is starting to look like Barry Goldwater.
Both Bushes abandoned the economic patriotism that had put America and Americans first—for free-trade globalism. Result: the most massive trade deficits in U.S. history, the gutting of our industrial base, the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs, and the largest wealth transfer of all time with technology, factories, high-tech and high-skilled jobs pouring out of America into Asia.
Working America and the middle class have been sacrificed on the high altar of the Republican Moloch of Free Trade. And how have our Chinese brothers reciprocated our magnanimity?
Both Bushes embraced the “open borders” immigration policy the Wall Street Journal has trumpeted for two decades. Result: We have 10-15 million illegal aliens in our country, among whom gangs like the murderous Mara Salvatrucha are proliferating. Native-born California taxpayers are fleeing the Golden State, as Third World tax consumers pour in. So great is the crisis on the Mexican border even the liberal Democratic governors of New Mexico and Arizona have declared states of emergency. Meanwhile 35,000 U.S. troops stand guard—on the border of South Korea.
The late editorial editor of the Journal, Robert Bartley, once said, “I believe the nation-state is finished.” He and his progeny have surely done their level best to bring that about.
As the country we grew up in becomes unrecognizable, we still hear the Journal, that good and faithful servant of the U.S. Business Roundtable, warning us not to oppose open borders. Meanwhile, our very own Dr. Pangloss, Ben Wattenberg, warbles on about our being the “first universal nation” and, in echo of M. Dominic de Villepin, burbles, “Isn’t diversity wonderful!”
In foreign policy, Bush I was an internationalist out to build a “New World Order” after the Cold War. However, post-9/11, Bush II converted to a neoconservatism that calls for unilateral American intervention in the Middle East and the Islamic world, to bring down dictators and establish democracy.
Thus, in March, 2003, Bush, in perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history, invaded an Arab nation that had not attacked us, did not want war with us, and did not threaten us—to strip it of weapons we now know it did not have.
Result: Shia and Kurds have been liberated from Saddam, but Iran has a new ally in southern Iraq, Osama has a new base camp in the Sunni Triangle, the Arab and Islamic world have been radicalized against the United States, and copy-cat killers of Al Qaida have been targeting our remaining allies in Europe and the Middle East: Spain, Britain, Egypt and Jordan. And, lest we forget, 2055 Americans are dead and Walter Reed is filling up.
True to the neoconservative creed, Bush launched a global crusade for democracy that is now bringing ever closer to power Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, and Shia fundamentalists in Baghdad and Basra.
Democratic imperialism is still imperialism. To Arab and Islamic peoples, whether the Crusaders come in the name of God or in the name of democracy, they are still Crusaders.
When Ronald Reagan went home to California, his heirs said, “Goodbye to all that,” and embraced Big Government conservatism, then neoconservatism. If they do not find their way home soon, to the principles of Taft, Goldwater and Reagan, they will perish in the wilderness into which they have led us all.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
From the UK Telegraph:
Early skirmish in the Eurabian civil war
By Mark Steyn
According to its Office du Tourisme, the big event in Evreux this past weekend was supposed to be the annual fête de la pomme, du cidre et du fromage at the Place de la Mairie. Instead, in this charmingly smouldering cathedral town in Normandy, a shopping mall, a post office, two schools, upwards of 50 vehicles and, oh yes, the police station were destroyed by - what's the word? - "youths".
Over at the Place de la Mairie, M le Maire himself, Jean-Louis Debré, seemed affronted by the very idea that un soupçon de carnage should be allowed to distract from the cheese-tasting. "A hundred people have smashed everything and strewn desolation," he told reporters. "Well, they don't form part of our universe."
Maybe not, but unfortunately you form part of theirs.
Mr Debré, a close pal of President Chirac's, was a little off on the numbers. There were an estimated 200 "youths" rampaging through Evreux. With baseball bats. They injured, among others, a dozen firemen. "To those responsible for the violence, I want to say: Be serious!" Mr Debré told France Info radio. "If you want to live in a fairer, more fraternal society, this is not how to go about it."
Oh, dear. Who's not "being serious" here? In Normandy, it's not just the cheese that's soft and runny. Granted that France's over-regulated sclerotic economy profoundly obstructs the social mobility of immigrants, even Mr Debris - whoops, sorry - even Mr Debré cannot be so out of touch as to think "seriously" that the rioters are rioting for "a fairer, more fraternal society". But maybe he does. The political class and the media seem to serve as mutual reinforcers of their obsolete illusions. Or as the Washington Post's headline put it: "Rage of French youth is a fight for recognition".
Actually, they're very easy to "recognise": just look out the window, they're the ones torching your Renault 5. I'd wager the "French" "youth" find that headline as hilarious as the Jets in West Side Story half a century ago, when they taunted Officer Krupke with "society's" attempts to "understand" them: we're depraved on account of we're deprived. Perhaps some enterprising Paris impresario will mount a production of West Eid Story with choreographed gangs of North African Muslims sashaying through the Place de la Republique, incinerating as they go.
In fact, "rage" seems the least of it: it's the "glee" and "contempt" you're struck by. And "rage" in the sense of spontaneous anger is a very slapdash characterisation of what, after two weeks, is looking like a rather shrewd and disciplined campaign. This business of car burning, for example. In Iraq, the "insurgents" quickly got the hang of setting some second-hand Nissan alight at just the right moment so that its plume of smoke could be conveniently filmed from the press hotel balcony in time for NBC's Today show and Good Morning, America. For a while, every time you switched on the television in America, there'd be some doom'n'gloom anchor yakking away in front of a live scene of a blazing Honda Civic - as reassuring in its familiarity as that local station somewhere or other in North America (Thunder Bay, I think) that used to show a roaring fireplace as its test card all night. What the Aussie pundit Tim Blair calls the nightly Paris car-B-Q looks great on television, but without being sufficiently murderous to provoke the state into forcefully putting down the insurgency.
Indeed, it's an almost perfect tactic if your aim is to have the entire French establishment dithering in grievance-addressing mode until you've extracted as much political advantage as you can. Look at it this way: after two weeks, whose prestige has been more enhanced? The rioters? Or Mayor Debré, President Chirac and Prime Minister de Villepin? On every front these past two weeks, the French state has been tested and communicated only weakness.
As to the "French" "youth", a reader in Antibes cautions me against characterising the disaffected as "Islamist". "Look at the pictures of the youths," he advises. "They look like LA gangsters, not beturbaned prophet-monkeys."
Leaving aside what I'm told are more than a few cries of "Allahu Akhbar!" on the streets, my correspondent is correct. But that's the point. The first country formally to embrace "multiculturalism" - to the extent of giving it a cabinet post - was Canada, where it was sold as a form of benign cultural cross-pollination: the best of all worlds. But just as often it gives us the worst of all worlds. More than three years ago, I wrote about the "tournante" or "take your turn" - the gang rape that's become an adolescent rite of passage in the Muslim quarters of French cities - and similar phenomena throughout the West: "Multiculturalism means that the worst attributes of Muslim culture - the subjugation of women - combine with the worst attributes of Western culture - licence and self-gratification. Tattooed, pierced Pakistani skinhead gangs swaggering down the streets of northern England areas are as much a product of multiculturalism as the turban-wearing Sikh Mountie in the vice-regal escort." Islamofascism itself is what it says: a fusion of Islamic identity with old-school European totalitarianism. But, whether in turbans or gangsta threads, just as Communism was in its day, so Islam is today's ideology of choice for the world's disaffected.
Some of us believe this is an early skirmish in the Eurabian civil war. If the insurgents emerge emboldened, what next? In five years' time, there will be even more of them, and even less resolve on the part of the French state. That, in turn, is likely to accelerate the demographic decline. Europe could face a continent-wide version of the "white flight" phenomenon seen in crime-ridden American cities during the 1970s, as Danes and Dutch scram to America, Australia or anywhere else that will have them.
As to where Britain falls in this grim scenario, I noticed a few months ago that Telegraph readers had started closing their gloomier missives to me with the words, "Fortunately I won't live to see it" - a sign-off now so routine in my mailbag I assumed it was the British version of "Have a nice day". But that's a false consolation. As France this past fortnight reminds us, the changes in Europe are happening far faster than most people thought. That's the problem: unless you're planning on croaking imminently, you will live to see it.
Early skirmish in the Eurabian civil war
By Mark Steyn
According to its Office du Tourisme, the big event in Evreux this past weekend was supposed to be the annual fête de la pomme, du cidre et du fromage at the Place de la Mairie. Instead, in this charmingly smouldering cathedral town in Normandy, a shopping mall, a post office, two schools, upwards of 50 vehicles and, oh yes, the police station were destroyed by - what's the word? - "youths".
Over at the Place de la Mairie, M le Maire himself, Jean-Louis Debré, seemed affronted by the very idea that un soupçon de carnage should be allowed to distract from the cheese-tasting. "A hundred people have smashed everything and strewn desolation," he told reporters. "Well, they don't form part of our universe."
Maybe not, but unfortunately you form part of theirs.
Mr Debré, a close pal of President Chirac's, was a little off on the numbers. There were an estimated 200 "youths" rampaging through Evreux. With baseball bats. They injured, among others, a dozen firemen. "To those responsible for the violence, I want to say: Be serious!" Mr Debré told France Info radio. "If you want to live in a fairer, more fraternal society, this is not how to go about it."
Oh, dear. Who's not "being serious" here? In Normandy, it's not just the cheese that's soft and runny. Granted that France's over-regulated sclerotic economy profoundly obstructs the social mobility of immigrants, even Mr Debris - whoops, sorry - even Mr Debré cannot be so out of touch as to think "seriously" that the rioters are rioting for "a fairer, more fraternal society". But maybe he does. The political class and the media seem to serve as mutual reinforcers of their obsolete illusions. Or as the Washington Post's headline put it: "Rage of French youth is a fight for recognition".
Actually, they're very easy to "recognise": just look out the window, they're the ones torching your Renault 5. I'd wager the "French" "youth" find that headline as hilarious as the Jets in West Side Story half a century ago, when they taunted Officer Krupke with "society's" attempts to "understand" them: we're depraved on account of we're deprived. Perhaps some enterprising Paris impresario will mount a production of West Eid Story with choreographed gangs of North African Muslims sashaying through the Place de la Republique, incinerating as they go.
In fact, "rage" seems the least of it: it's the "glee" and "contempt" you're struck by. And "rage" in the sense of spontaneous anger is a very slapdash characterisation of what, after two weeks, is looking like a rather shrewd and disciplined campaign. This business of car burning, for example. In Iraq, the "insurgents" quickly got the hang of setting some second-hand Nissan alight at just the right moment so that its plume of smoke could be conveniently filmed from the press hotel balcony in time for NBC's Today show and Good Morning, America. For a while, every time you switched on the television in America, there'd be some doom'n'gloom anchor yakking away in front of a live scene of a blazing Honda Civic - as reassuring in its familiarity as that local station somewhere or other in North America (Thunder Bay, I think) that used to show a roaring fireplace as its test card all night. What the Aussie pundit Tim Blair calls the nightly Paris car-B-Q looks great on television, but without being sufficiently murderous to provoke the state into forcefully putting down the insurgency.
Indeed, it's an almost perfect tactic if your aim is to have the entire French establishment dithering in grievance-addressing mode until you've extracted as much political advantage as you can. Look at it this way: after two weeks, whose prestige has been more enhanced? The rioters? Or Mayor Debré, President Chirac and Prime Minister de Villepin? On every front these past two weeks, the French state has been tested and communicated only weakness.
As to the "French" "youth", a reader in Antibes cautions me against characterising the disaffected as "Islamist". "Look at the pictures of the youths," he advises. "They look like LA gangsters, not beturbaned prophet-monkeys."
Leaving aside what I'm told are more than a few cries of "Allahu Akhbar!" on the streets, my correspondent is correct. But that's the point. The first country formally to embrace "multiculturalism" - to the extent of giving it a cabinet post - was Canada, where it was sold as a form of benign cultural cross-pollination: the best of all worlds. But just as often it gives us the worst of all worlds. More than three years ago, I wrote about the "tournante" or "take your turn" - the gang rape that's become an adolescent rite of passage in the Muslim quarters of French cities - and similar phenomena throughout the West: "Multiculturalism means that the worst attributes of Muslim culture - the subjugation of women - combine with the worst attributes of Western culture - licence and self-gratification. Tattooed, pierced Pakistani skinhead gangs swaggering down the streets of northern England areas are as much a product of multiculturalism as the turban-wearing Sikh Mountie in the vice-regal escort." Islamofascism itself is what it says: a fusion of Islamic identity with old-school European totalitarianism. But, whether in turbans or gangsta threads, just as Communism was in its day, so Islam is today's ideology of choice for the world's disaffected.
Some of us believe this is an early skirmish in the Eurabian civil war. If the insurgents emerge emboldened, what next? In five years' time, there will be even more of them, and even less resolve on the part of the French state. That, in turn, is likely to accelerate the demographic decline. Europe could face a continent-wide version of the "white flight" phenomenon seen in crime-ridden American cities during the 1970s, as Danes and Dutch scram to America, Australia or anywhere else that will have them.
As to where Britain falls in this grim scenario, I noticed a few months ago that Telegraph readers had started closing their gloomier missives to me with the words, "Fortunately I won't live to see it" - a sign-off now so routine in my mailbag I assumed it was the British version of "Have a nice day". But that's a false consolation. As France this past fortnight reminds us, the changes in Europe are happening far faster than most people thought. That's the problem: unless you're planning on croaking imminently, you will live to see it.
From the eBullet:
**** Remembering Beloved "Fun Girl" Jean Carson (1923-2005) ****
All of Mayberry (and Mount Pilot!) are greatly saddened by the death
of Jean Carson on November 2, in Palm Springs, Calif. Jean suffered a
stroke in late September and was partially paralyzed after that.
Though always a fighter, Jean never gained traction toward recovery
after the stroke. She had experienced poor health off and on during the
last several years. She and her family very much appreciated the good
thoughts and prayers of her Mayberry family of friends and fans during
her illness.
Fans all across the entertainment world adored Jean for the talented,
lovely person she was. Her portrayals of lady convict Naomi and her
three episodes as Mount Pilot "Fun Girl" Daphne endeared her to Mayberry
fans most of all. Her gravel-voiced "Hello, doll" became her signature
line. Jean seemed to enjoy the fun of saying the line just as much as
fans loved hearing her say it.
Indeed, I would say that no Mayberry star ever enjoyed being a part
of Mayberry and its continuing legacy more than Jean did. She loved
staying in touch with Mayberry fans through correspondence and phone
calls, and in person. She cared for her fans every bit as much as they
loved her. She took the time to remember names and learn about families.
Her enthusiasm was obvious at reunion events where she delighted in
donning both convict and polka-dotted Fun Girl wardrobe. She especially
enjoyed recreating favorite scenes with David "Mayberry Deputy"
Browning, Allan "Floyd" Newsome and Kenneth "Big Maude" Junkin. My
responsibility in her "Convicts" sketch was to provide the break-away
bottle (to be used as a vase) for Jean to smash over Allan's head in a
re-creation of her classic scene in O'Malley's cabin with Floyd. I have
one more break-away bottle left. What I wouldn't give to see Jean do
that scene just one more time. And I know Allan would like to have one
more shower of shattered sugar-glass fall around him, too.
Jean was so enthusiastic about Mayberry and her fans that she even
spear-headed an attempt to bring a Mayberry event to the Palm Springs
area over a period of several years. Pulling off any Mayberry event
from scratch is a tough prospect, but it's especially difficult in a
place as far removed from the base of Mayberry fans as Palm Springs.
The palm nut ultimately proved too tough to crack, but it wasn't from a
lack of heart or determination by Jean.
Jean's friends and fans extended far beyond Mayberry. Born in
Charleston, West "By God" Virginia on February 25, 1925, Jean first
started acting in her hometown before going to Pittsburgh to study drama
at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie-Mellon University). After graduation,
she headed to New York where she worked in live radio and theater,
including many shows on Broadway, where she starred with the likes of
Robert Preston, MacDonald Carey and Melvyn Douglas and was nominated for
a Tony Award.
It wasn't long after arriving in New York that she also began to get
work in the early days of television. Over the years, she worked with
everyone from Ronald Reagan and Jack Lemmon to Red Buttons and Jerry
Lewis. Hollywood and work in films dovetailed with her success on stage
and television. Her first film was the acclaimed "Phenix City Story."
She followed that with the sci-fi cult classic "I Married a Monster from
Outer Space," a movie with a title that fit right in with Mayberry.
Sci-fi audiences also admired her performance in a "Twilight Zone"
episode titled "A Most Unusual Camera." Rod Serling wrote the script
with her in mind as the star. Jean appeared in countless TV episodes
from the forties through the sixties. Her film work continued until the
late 1970s. In her later years, Jean was very active with the community
and little theaters in the Palm Springs area. She thrived on helping
young performers cultivate their talents and interest in acting.
Through it all, Mayberry was always closest to her heart. She
considered her Mayberry episodes and working with the TAGS company to be
among her most pleasurable acting experiences.
Her being able to recall those satisfying times at various Mayberry
reunion shows during the past 15 years and to see how the joy of those
episodes resonated with fans always greatly pleased Jean. She was
humbled by the devotion of her fans and felt a real pride and duty to
continue to honor the show and never disappoint fans.
Especially in her more frail later years, Jean had to be careful not
to push herself to the point of exhaustion in her dedication to greet
fans at events, but she usually pushed herself anyway. She wasn't
satisfied until every fan who wanted to meet her had the chance to do
so. That often took many hours. We loved Jean as the Fun Girl, but all
fun aside, she was an incredibly hard worker who genuinely cared about
other people.
Jean's survivors include sons Carson Parlan and Tracy Alexander, and
Tracy's wife, Nancy. Our deepest sympathies go out to all of Jean's
family. Personal condolences may be sent to the family c/o son Tracy
Alexander at 59105 Lincoln Street, Thermal CA 92274.
Also check for comments (including personal messages from Jean's
family and a last message to fans on behalf of Jean) at her Web site at
http://www.hellodoll.com. The site has information about a memorial
service planned for Jean in Palm Springs on December 4. There's also a
message board on the helldoll.com site for leaving your comments about
Jean to be read by the family and all others who visit the site.
Fans of film and TV will be able to cherish Jean's performances for
generations. Those who were blessed to meet her in person and to get to
know her can treasure special memories of the great "fun" she brought
with her wherever she went. Friends and family can have comfort in
knowing that Jean had a strong religious faith that gave her peace and
strength as she faced her last days of this life.
It is with tremendous sorrow that we have to say, "Goodbye, doll!"
But we can all smile with the knowledge of what were no doubt Jean's
first words at her next greeting.
-Jim Clark
**** Remembering Beloved "Fun Girl" Jean Carson (1923-2005) ****
All of Mayberry (and Mount Pilot!) are greatly saddened by the death
of Jean Carson on November 2, in Palm Springs, Calif. Jean suffered a
stroke in late September and was partially paralyzed after that.
Though always a fighter, Jean never gained traction toward recovery
after the stroke. She had experienced poor health off and on during the
last several years. She and her family very much appreciated the good
thoughts and prayers of her Mayberry family of friends and fans during
her illness.
Fans all across the entertainment world adored Jean for the talented,
lovely person she was. Her portrayals of lady convict Naomi and her
three episodes as Mount Pilot "Fun Girl" Daphne endeared her to Mayberry
fans most of all. Her gravel-voiced "Hello, doll" became her signature
line. Jean seemed to enjoy the fun of saying the line just as much as
fans loved hearing her say it.
Indeed, I would say that no Mayberry star ever enjoyed being a part
of Mayberry and its continuing legacy more than Jean did. She loved
staying in touch with Mayberry fans through correspondence and phone
calls, and in person. She cared for her fans every bit as much as they
loved her. She took the time to remember names and learn about families.
Her enthusiasm was obvious at reunion events where she delighted in
donning both convict and polka-dotted Fun Girl wardrobe. She especially
enjoyed recreating favorite scenes with David "Mayberry Deputy"
Browning, Allan "Floyd" Newsome and Kenneth "Big Maude" Junkin. My
responsibility in her "Convicts" sketch was to provide the break-away
bottle (to be used as a vase) for Jean to smash over Allan's head in a
re-creation of her classic scene in O'Malley's cabin with Floyd. I have
one more break-away bottle left. What I wouldn't give to see Jean do
that scene just one more time. And I know Allan would like to have one
more shower of shattered sugar-glass fall around him, too.
Jean was so enthusiastic about Mayberry and her fans that she even
spear-headed an attempt to bring a Mayberry event to the Palm Springs
area over a period of several years. Pulling off any Mayberry event
from scratch is a tough prospect, but it's especially difficult in a
place as far removed from the base of Mayberry fans as Palm Springs.
The palm nut ultimately proved too tough to crack, but it wasn't from a
lack of heart or determination by Jean.
Jean's friends and fans extended far beyond Mayberry. Born in
Charleston, West "By God" Virginia on February 25, 1925, Jean first
started acting in her hometown before going to Pittsburgh to study drama
at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie-Mellon University). After graduation,
she headed to New York where she worked in live radio and theater,
including many shows on Broadway, where she starred with the likes of
Robert Preston, MacDonald Carey and Melvyn Douglas and was nominated for
a Tony Award.
It wasn't long after arriving in New York that she also began to get
work in the early days of television. Over the years, she worked with
everyone from Ronald Reagan and Jack Lemmon to Red Buttons and Jerry
Lewis. Hollywood and work in films dovetailed with her success on stage
and television. Her first film was the acclaimed "Phenix City Story."
She followed that with the sci-fi cult classic "I Married a Monster from
Outer Space," a movie with a title that fit right in with Mayberry.
Sci-fi audiences also admired her performance in a "Twilight Zone"
episode titled "A Most Unusual Camera." Rod Serling wrote the script
with her in mind as the star. Jean appeared in countless TV episodes
from the forties through the sixties. Her film work continued until the
late 1970s. In her later years, Jean was very active with the community
and little theaters in the Palm Springs area. She thrived on helping
young performers cultivate their talents and interest in acting.
Through it all, Mayberry was always closest to her heart. She
considered her Mayberry episodes and working with the TAGS company to be
among her most pleasurable acting experiences.
Her being able to recall those satisfying times at various Mayberry
reunion shows during the past 15 years and to see how the joy of those
episodes resonated with fans always greatly pleased Jean. She was
humbled by the devotion of her fans and felt a real pride and duty to
continue to honor the show and never disappoint fans.
Especially in her more frail later years, Jean had to be careful not
to push herself to the point of exhaustion in her dedication to greet
fans at events, but she usually pushed herself anyway. She wasn't
satisfied until every fan who wanted to meet her had the chance to do
so. That often took many hours. We loved Jean as the Fun Girl, but all
fun aside, she was an incredibly hard worker who genuinely cared about
other people.
Jean's survivors include sons Carson Parlan and Tracy Alexander, and
Tracy's wife, Nancy. Our deepest sympathies go out to all of Jean's
family. Personal condolences may be sent to the family c/o son Tracy
Alexander at 59105 Lincoln Street, Thermal CA 92274.
Also check for comments (including personal messages from Jean's
family and a last message to fans on behalf of Jean) at her Web site at
http://www.hellodoll.com. The site has information about a memorial
service planned for Jean in Palm Springs on December 4. There's also a
message board on the helldoll.com site for leaving your comments about
Jean to be read by the family and all others who visit the site.
Fans of film and TV will be able to cherish Jean's performances for
generations. Those who were blessed to meet her in person and to get to
know her can treasure special memories of the great "fun" she brought
with her wherever she went. Friends and family can have comfort in
knowing that Jean had a strong religious faith that gave her peace and
strength as she faced her last days of this life.
It is with tremendous sorrow that we have to say, "Goodbye, doll!"
But we can all smile with the knowledge of what were no doubt Jean's
first words at her next greeting.
-Jim Clark
Monday, November 07, 2005
Paris Burning: How Empires End
By Patrick J. Buchanan
The Romans conquered the barbarians—and the barbarians conquered Rome.
So it goes with empires. And comes now the penultimate chapter in the history of the empires of the West.
This is the larger meaning of the ritual murder of Theo Van Gogh in Holland, the subway bombings in London, the train bombings in Madrid, the Paris riots spreading across France. The perpetrators of these crimes in the capitals of Europe are the children of immigrants who were once the colonial subjects of the European empires.
At this writing, the riots are entering their 12th night and have spread to Rouen, Lille, Marseille, Toulouse, Dijon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Cannes, Nice. Thousands of cars and buses have been torched and several nursery schools fire-bombed. One fleeing and terrified woman was doused with gasoline and set ablaze.
The rioters are of Arab and African descent, and Muslim. While almost all are French citizens, they are not part of the French people. For never have they been assimilated into French culture or society. And some wish to remain who and what they are. They live in France but are not French.
The rampage began October 27 when two Arab youths, fleeing what they mistakenly thought was a police pursuit, leapt onto power lines and were electrocuted. The two deaths ignited the riots.
Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy, a candidate to succeed President Chirac, is said to have infuriated and inflamed the rioters. Before the rampage began, he promised “war without mercy” on crime in the teeming suburbs where unemployment runs at 20% and income is 40% below the national average. He has denounced the rioters as “scum” and “rabble.”
Like the urban riots in America in the 1960s, which the Kerner Commission blamed on “white racism,” Paris’s riots are being blamed on France’s failure to bring Islamic immigrants into the social and economic mainstream of the nation. Solutions being offered range from voting rights for non-citizens to affirmative action in hiring for the children of Third World immigrants.
To understand why this is unlikely to solve France’s crisis, consider how America succeeded, and often failed, in solving her own racial crisis.
While, as late as the 1950s, black Americans were not integrated fully into our economy or society, they had been assimilated into American culture.
They worshipped the same God, spoke the same language, had endured the same Depression and war, listened to the same music and radio, watched the same TV shows, laughed at the same comedians, went to the same movies, ate the same foods, read the same books, magazines and newspapers, and went to schools where, even when they were segregated, they learned the same history.
We were divided, but we were also one nation and one people. Black folks were as American as apple pie, having lived in our common land longer than almost every other ethnic group save Native Americans. And America had a history of having assimilated immigrants in the tens of millions from Europe.
But no European nation has ever assimilated a large body of immigrant peoples, let alone people of color. Moreover, the African and Islamic peoples pouring into Europe—there are 20 million there now—are, unlike black Americans, strangers in a new land, and millions wish to remain proud Algerians, Muslims, Moroccans.
These newcomers worship a different God and practice a faith historically hostile to Christianity, a traditionalist faith that is rising again and recoils violently from a secular culture saturated in sex.
Severed from the civilization and cultures of their parents, these Arab and Muslim youth may hold French citizenship and carry French passports, but they are no more French than Americans who live in Paris are French. Searching for a community to which they can truly belong, they gravitate to mosques where the imams, many themselves immigrants, teach and preach that the West is not their true home, but a civilization alien to their values and historically hostile to their nations and Islam.
The soaring Muslim population is a Fifth Column inside Europe.
Nevertheless, their numbers must grow. For not only do they have a higher birth rate than the native-born Europeans, no European nation, save Moslem Albania, has a birth rate (2.1 births per woman) that will enable it to endure for many more generations. The West is aging, shrinking, and dying.
Yet, to keep Europe’s economy growing and taxes coming in to fund the health and pension programs of Europe’s rising numbers of retired and elderly, Europe needs scores of millions of new workers. And Europe can only find them in the Third World.
Nor should Americans take comfort in France’s distress. By 2050, there will be 100 million Hispanics in the United States, half of them of Mexican ancestry, heavily concentrated in a Southwest most Mexicans still believe by right belongs to them.
Colonization of the mother countries by subject peoples is the last chapter in the history of empires—and the next chapter in the history of the West—that is now coming to a clos
By Patrick J. Buchanan
The Romans conquered the barbarians—and the barbarians conquered Rome.
So it goes with empires. And comes now the penultimate chapter in the history of the empires of the West.
This is the larger meaning of the ritual murder of Theo Van Gogh in Holland, the subway bombings in London, the train bombings in Madrid, the Paris riots spreading across France. The perpetrators of these crimes in the capitals of Europe are the children of immigrants who were once the colonial subjects of the European empires.
At this writing, the riots are entering their 12th night and have spread to Rouen, Lille, Marseille, Toulouse, Dijon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Cannes, Nice. Thousands of cars and buses have been torched and several nursery schools fire-bombed. One fleeing and terrified woman was doused with gasoline and set ablaze.
The rioters are of Arab and African descent, and Muslim. While almost all are French citizens, they are not part of the French people. For never have they been assimilated into French culture or society. And some wish to remain who and what they are. They live in France but are not French.
The rampage began October 27 when two Arab youths, fleeing what they mistakenly thought was a police pursuit, leapt onto power lines and were electrocuted. The two deaths ignited the riots.
Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy, a candidate to succeed President Chirac, is said to have infuriated and inflamed the rioters. Before the rampage began, he promised “war without mercy” on crime in the teeming suburbs where unemployment runs at 20% and income is 40% below the national average. He has denounced the rioters as “scum” and “rabble.”
Like the urban riots in America in the 1960s, which the Kerner Commission blamed on “white racism,” Paris’s riots are being blamed on France’s failure to bring Islamic immigrants into the social and economic mainstream of the nation. Solutions being offered range from voting rights for non-citizens to affirmative action in hiring for the children of Third World immigrants.
To understand why this is unlikely to solve France’s crisis, consider how America succeeded, and often failed, in solving her own racial crisis.
While, as late as the 1950s, black Americans were not integrated fully into our economy or society, they had been assimilated into American culture.
They worshipped the same God, spoke the same language, had endured the same Depression and war, listened to the same music and radio, watched the same TV shows, laughed at the same comedians, went to the same movies, ate the same foods, read the same books, magazines and newspapers, and went to schools where, even when they were segregated, they learned the same history.
We were divided, but we were also one nation and one people. Black folks were as American as apple pie, having lived in our common land longer than almost every other ethnic group save Native Americans. And America had a history of having assimilated immigrants in the tens of millions from Europe.
But no European nation has ever assimilated a large body of immigrant peoples, let alone people of color. Moreover, the African and Islamic peoples pouring into Europe—there are 20 million there now—are, unlike black Americans, strangers in a new land, and millions wish to remain proud Algerians, Muslims, Moroccans.
These newcomers worship a different God and practice a faith historically hostile to Christianity, a traditionalist faith that is rising again and recoils violently from a secular culture saturated in sex.
Severed from the civilization and cultures of their parents, these Arab and Muslim youth may hold French citizenship and carry French passports, but they are no more French than Americans who live in Paris are French. Searching for a community to which they can truly belong, they gravitate to mosques where the imams, many themselves immigrants, teach and preach that the West is not their true home, but a civilization alien to their values and historically hostile to their nations and Islam.
The soaring Muslim population is a Fifth Column inside Europe.
Nevertheless, their numbers must grow. For not only do they have a higher birth rate than the native-born Europeans, no European nation, save Moslem Albania, has a birth rate (2.1 births per woman) that will enable it to endure for many more generations. The West is aging, shrinking, and dying.
Yet, to keep Europe’s economy growing and taxes coming in to fund the health and pension programs of Europe’s rising numbers of retired and elderly, Europe needs scores of millions of new workers. And Europe can only find them in the Third World.
Nor should Americans take comfort in France’s distress. By 2050, there will be 100 million Hispanics in the United States, half of them of Mexican ancestry, heavily concentrated in a Southwest most Mexicans still believe by right belongs to them.
Colonization of the mother countries by subject peoples is the last chapter in the history of empires—and the next chapter in the history of the West—that is now coming to a clos
From Human Events:
George Clooney’s Clueless Movie
by Allan H. Ryskind
Oct 14, 2005
If George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck is the best shot the left can unload on Joe McCarthy these days, the famous Red hunter is well on his way to a thorough rehabilitation. Ann Coulter has already begun the process in Treason and Stan Evans’ much anticipated book—due out next year—is likely to boost the late Wisconsin senator’s stock even further.
The movie is really about CBS’s star journalist, Edward R. Murrow (played by David Strathairn), and how he went after McCarthy, who is featured only in film footage from the archives. As Clooney (and most historians) would have it, the senator was a vicious, unscrupulous bully who ruined the lives of scores of innocent people by labeling them Reds. So where are the bloody corpses in Clooney’s movie? They’re totally missing. In fact, Clooney—who directed and helped write the movie—doesn’t show a single person who was done in by the senator’s supposedly reckless charges. Not one!
Murrow’s Whitewash
Nor is it even clear from the movie that McCarthy ever seriously accused anyone unjustly. He might have, but Clooney certainly doesn’t prove it. There are hints that McCarthy may have been wrong in charging Annie Lee Moss, the Pentagon code clerk, with having been a Communist Party member. But the Clooney picture is actually opaque on that point and the truth is McCarthy was absolutely right in charging her with party membership (see more on Moss below).
The Murrow character, who uses the journalist’s real words, does suggest that McCarthy was engaged in smear-mongering when he laid the wood to the American Civil Liberties Union, insisting it had been labeled a “front” for the Communists. Murrow’s retort was that the ACLU was not on any subversive list of the federal government. In Murrow’s view (and clearly in Clooney’s), that rebuttal clinched the case that the Wisconsin lawmaker was an irresponsible demagogue. But, as we shall note shortly, the ACLU was rightly considered a subversive organization during the early 1930s, the period the senator was referring to.
What’s stranger still is that Clooney dwells at some length on the case of Lt. Milo Radulovich, on the verge of being ousted as a security risk from the Air Force Reserve because two of his relatives were radicals, possibly Communists.
The movie shows Murrow, the star of CBS’s “See It Now,” publicizing Radulovich’s plight. Weeks later, we find that he’s been reinstated and the charges dropped. Cheers all around at CBS.
A major anti-McCarthy victory for Murrow? Well, only in the eyes of CBS and Murrow and other anti-McCarthy zealots. For Radulovich was never a McCarthy case.
Indeed, the Clooney film—but just barely—acknowledges this far from insignificant fact, yet it suggests that the “ambience” of McCarthy’s Red hunting was somehow responsible. Clooney, it seems, couldn’t discover a single bona fide McCarthy victim, so the closest he gets to it is a “victim” McCarthy had nothing to do with!
That should strike some people as rather odd in a film accusing the Wisconsin senator of smears and innuendo.
Clooney, as noted, does include a lengthy segment on the Annie Lee Moss case. Murrow made much of this case as well, persuading masses of liberal intellectuals that McCarthy had badly overreached and that he may have accused the wrong Moss. Human Events has discussed the Moss hearing on numerous occasions, most extensively by Evans on May 23, 2003. But it should be reprised in light of Clooney’s latest effort to make it seem as if McCarthy smeared her. The film never quite says she’s innocent, but leads one to believe she probably is and is certainly not being treated fairly by the senator.
The March 11, 1954, McCarthy hearing, in truth, was a devastating indictment of Army security procedures—and Moss herself. McCarthy’s chief purpose was to find out how Moss, with her Red background, had been promoted from a cafeteria worker to a Pentagon code clerk with access to classified information.
During the hearings, Moss denied she was a Red, but admitted receiving the Daily Worker, the official organ of the Communist Party, at various addresses she had inhabited over the years. She conceded, after some prodding, the paper “might have been addressed to me” (instead of her husband). She acknowledged that Robert Hall, one of three top Washington, D.C., Communists, had visited her home and that she had lived, for a short while, with Hattie Griffin, an active party member who hosted Communist meetings at her house. Standing alone, this information should have been enough to raise questions as to why she had access to classified material.
Dues-Paying Communist
More damning evidence was produced. Moss, as the hearings revealed, had been identified as a dues-paying member of the Northeast club of the D.C. Communist Party by FBI undercover informant Mary Markward, and the committee’s majority counsel, Roy Cohn, stressed that Markward’s testimony had been “corroborated” in “a sworn statement” by another witness in executive session.
The clincher on Moss came four years later. The Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB), an agency of the federal government, held a hearing on Markward, partly to determine if she had told the truth about Moss. The SACB’s Sept. 19, 1958, verdict, based on board members’ viewing D.C. Communist Party records, such as dues rosters and members’ living residences, was that the exhibits “corroborate Markward’s testimony in the Moss security hearings.” The SACB, in short, found that McCarthy had bagged the right Annie Lee Moss, Murrow to the contrary.
There are other aspects of the film that don’t stand up to scrutiny. The movie shows Murrow savaging McCarthy for asking the State Department’s Reed Harris in 1954 about Harris’s getting help from the ACLU in the early ’30s after having been expelled from Columbia University. Harris acknowledged he had been supplied an ACLU attorney, and McCarthy then wondered if he knew it had been “listed as a ‘front for, and doing the work of’ the Communist Party.” Harris said he didn’t know it had been so listed.
Murrow tore into the Wisconsin senator for even suggesting that the ACLU was anything but patriotic. “The attorney general’s list,” Murrow intoned, “does not and has never listed the ACLU as subversive, nor does the FBI or any other federal government agency.”
Murrow’s response was accurate as to how the U.S. government viewed the ACLU in 1954, 14 years after the group had barred Communists from executive positions. But various government agencies, with cause, viewed the ACLU as subversive in the early 1930s—the period McCarthy was interested in.
The House of Representative’s “special committee to investigate communist activities in the United States,” a bipartisan panel, issued a report on Jan. 17, 1931. The chairman was Hamilton Fish, Jr., a New York Republican. Here’s what the report said about the ACLU: “The American Civil Liberties Union is closely affiliated with the Communist movement in the United States, and fully 90% of its efforts are on behalf of Communists who have come into conflict with the law.”
In testimony before the Fish panel, reproduced in the report, Roger Baldwin, the ACLU’s guiding light, said he favored the right of any citizen or alien to advocate “murder,” “assassination” and “the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence.”
The Fish panel also said: “The American Civil Liberties Union has received large sums from the Garland Fund, of which Roger N. Baldwin is one of its directors. During the trial of the Communists in Gastonia, not for freedom of speech, of the press or assembly, but for a conspiracy to kill the chief of police, of which seven defendants were convicted, the ACLU provided bail for five of the defendants, amounting to $28,500, which it secured from the Garland Fund. All of the defendants convicted jumped their bail and are reported to be in Russia.”
A committee of the New York Legislature, back in 1928, reached the following conclusion: “The American Civil Liberties Union, in the last analysis, is a supporter of all subversive movements; its propaganda is detrimental to the interests of the State.”
Even Liberals Pan Film
The film is littered with “facts” and “arguments” and “opinions” that never really add up when closely scrutinized. What’s especially interesting is that even honest liberals are not enthralled with the film’s message. Washington Post movie reviewer Stephen Hunter appears to dislike McCarthy, but he believes Clooney has left a lot out of his film, including Murrow’s own naïveté about Communists.
“In December 1948,” Hunter began his review, “the renowned broadcaster Edward R. Murrow went on the air to denounce the Red hunters of the U.S. government who had hounded his friend and mentor Laurence Duggan, a former State Department employee, to suicide.
“One can almost imagine the drama: The distinguished newsman, once the voice of blitzed London, hair slicked back, a nub of cigarette in his hand radiating vapors, face as rigid as an Old Testament elder, using that deep voice and crooning rhetoric to lambaste the puny minds of the House Un-American Activities Committee that had so besmirched Larry’s good name that the man had leapt in despair from a 16th-Street floor window.
“But you won’t find it in Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney’s mounting of the dramatic confrontation between the estimable Murrow and the abrasive junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy.
“One can readily see why. Duggan, as it turned out, was a Soviet spy, code-named...‘Frank’ and finally ‘Prince.’ He was, moreover, one of many Soviet spies embedded in the U.S. government at the time.
“That’s not all Clooney leaves out in his account of the Murrow-McCarthy fight: He leaves out the Cold War, the hot war in Korea, the Venona decrypts that proved how sophisticated and exhaustive the Russian intelligence initiative against the American target was.”
That’s not bad coming from a McCarthy foe. Now we need the Evans book to show us just how wrong the country has been about the Wisconsin senator.
George Clooney’s Clueless Movie
by Allan H. Ryskind
Oct 14, 2005
If George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck is the best shot the left can unload on Joe McCarthy these days, the famous Red hunter is well on his way to a thorough rehabilitation. Ann Coulter has already begun the process in Treason and Stan Evans’ much anticipated book—due out next year—is likely to boost the late Wisconsin senator’s stock even further.
The movie is really about CBS’s star journalist, Edward R. Murrow (played by David Strathairn), and how he went after McCarthy, who is featured only in film footage from the archives. As Clooney (and most historians) would have it, the senator was a vicious, unscrupulous bully who ruined the lives of scores of innocent people by labeling them Reds. So where are the bloody corpses in Clooney’s movie? They’re totally missing. In fact, Clooney—who directed and helped write the movie—doesn’t show a single person who was done in by the senator’s supposedly reckless charges. Not one!
Murrow’s Whitewash
Nor is it even clear from the movie that McCarthy ever seriously accused anyone unjustly. He might have, but Clooney certainly doesn’t prove it. There are hints that McCarthy may have been wrong in charging Annie Lee Moss, the Pentagon code clerk, with having been a Communist Party member. But the Clooney picture is actually opaque on that point and the truth is McCarthy was absolutely right in charging her with party membership (see more on Moss below).
The Murrow character, who uses the journalist’s real words, does suggest that McCarthy was engaged in smear-mongering when he laid the wood to the American Civil Liberties Union, insisting it had been labeled a “front” for the Communists. Murrow’s retort was that the ACLU was not on any subversive list of the federal government. In Murrow’s view (and clearly in Clooney’s), that rebuttal clinched the case that the Wisconsin lawmaker was an irresponsible demagogue. But, as we shall note shortly, the ACLU was rightly considered a subversive organization during the early 1930s, the period the senator was referring to.
What’s stranger still is that Clooney dwells at some length on the case of Lt. Milo Radulovich, on the verge of being ousted as a security risk from the Air Force Reserve because two of his relatives were radicals, possibly Communists.
The movie shows Murrow, the star of CBS’s “See It Now,” publicizing Radulovich’s plight. Weeks later, we find that he’s been reinstated and the charges dropped. Cheers all around at CBS.
A major anti-McCarthy victory for Murrow? Well, only in the eyes of CBS and Murrow and other anti-McCarthy zealots. For Radulovich was never a McCarthy case.
Indeed, the Clooney film—but just barely—acknowledges this far from insignificant fact, yet it suggests that the “ambience” of McCarthy’s Red hunting was somehow responsible. Clooney, it seems, couldn’t discover a single bona fide McCarthy victim, so the closest he gets to it is a “victim” McCarthy had nothing to do with!
That should strike some people as rather odd in a film accusing the Wisconsin senator of smears and innuendo.
Clooney, as noted, does include a lengthy segment on the Annie Lee Moss case. Murrow made much of this case as well, persuading masses of liberal intellectuals that McCarthy had badly overreached and that he may have accused the wrong Moss. Human Events has discussed the Moss hearing on numerous occasions, most extensively by Evans on May 23, 2003. But it should be reprised in light of Clooney’s latest effort to make it seem as if McCarthy smeared her. The film never quite says she’s innocent, but leads one to believe she probably is and is certainly not being treated fairly by the senator.
The March 11, 1954, McCarthy hearing, in truth, was a devastating indictment of Army security procedures—and Moss herself. McCarthy’s chief purpose was to find out how Moss, with her Red background, had been promoted from a cafeteria worker to a Pentagon code clerk with access to classified information.
During the hearings, Moss denied she was a Red, but admitted receiving the Daily Worker, the official organ of the Communist Party, at various addresses she had inhabited over the years. She conceded, after some prodding, the paper “might have been addressed to me” (instead of her husband). She acknowledged that Robert Hall, one of three top Washington, D.C., Communists, had visited her home and that she had lived, for a short while, with Hattie Griffin, an active party member who hosted Communist meetings at her house. Standing alone, this information should have been enough to raise questions as to why she had access to classified material.
Dues-Paying Communist
More damning evidence was produced. Moss, as the hearings revealed, had been identified as a dues-paying member of the Northeast club of the D.C. Communist Party by FBI undercover informant Mary Markward, and the committee’s majority counsel, Roy Cohn, stressed that Markward’s testimony had been “corroborated” in “a sworn statement” by another witness in executive session.
The clincher on Moss came four years later. The Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB), an agency of the federal government, held a hearing on Markward, partly to determine if she had told the truth about Moss. The SACB’s Sept. 19, 1958, verdict, based on board members’ viewing D.C. Communist Party records, such as dues rosters and members’ living residences, was that the exhibits “corroborate Markward’s testimony in the Moss security hearings.” The SACB, in short, found that McCarthy had bagged the right Annie Lee Moss, Murrow to the contrary.
There are other aspects of the film that don’t stand up to scrutiny. The movie shows Murrow savaging McCarthy for asking the State Department’s Reed Harris in 1954 about Harris’s getting help from the ACLU in the early ’30s after having been expelled from Columbia University. Harris acknowledged he had been supplied an ACLU attorney, and McCarthy then wondered if he knew it had been “listed as a ‘front for, and doing the work of’ the Communist Party.” Harris said he didn’t know it had been so listed.
Murrow tore into the Wisconsin senator for even suggesting that the ACLU was anything but patriotic. “The attorney general’s list,” Murrow intoned, “does not and has never listed the ACLU as subversive, nor does the FBI or any other federal government agency.”
Murrow’s response was accurate as to how the U.S. government viewed the ACLU in 1954, 14 years after the group had barred Communists from executive positions. But various government agencies, with cause, viewed the ACLU as subversive in the early 1930s—the period McCarthy was interested in.
The House of Representative’s “special committee to investigate communist activities in the United States,” a bipartisan panel, issued a report on Jan. 17, 1931. The chairman was Hamilton Fish, Jr., a New York Republican. Here’s what the report said about the ACLU: “The American Civil Liberties Union is closely affiliated with the Communist movement in the United States, and fully 90% of its efforts are on behalf of Communists who have come into conflict with the law.”
In testimony before the Fish panel, reproduced in the report, Roger Baldwin, the ACLU’s guiding light, said he favored the right of any citizen or alien to advocate “murder,” “assassination” and “the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence.”
The Fish panel also said: “The American Civil Liberties Union has received large sums from the Garland Fund, of which Roger N. Baldwin is one of its directors. During the trial of the Communists in Gastonia, not for freedom of speech, of the press or assembly, but for a conspiracy to kill the chief of police, of which seven defendants were convicted, the ACLU provided bail for five of the defendants, amounting to $28,500, which it secured from the Garland Fund. All of the defendants convicted jumped their bail and are reported to be in Russia.”
A committee of the New York Legislature, back in 1928, reached the following conclusion: “The American Civil Liberties Union, in the last analysis, is a supporter of all subversive movements; its propaganda is detrimental to the interests of the State.”
Even Liberals Pan Film
The film is littered with “facts” and “arguments” and “opinions” that never really add up when closely scrutinized. What’s especially interesting is that even honest liberals are not enthralled with the film’s message. Washington Post movie reviewer Stephen Hunter appears to dislike McCarthy, but he believes Clooney has left a lot out of his film, including Murrow’s own naïveté about Communists.
“In December 1948,” Hunter began his review, “the renowned broadcaster Edward R. Murrow went on the air to denounce the Red hunters of the U.S. government who had hounded his friend and mentor Laurence Duggan, a former State Department employee, to suicide.
“One can almost imagine the drama: The distinguished newsman, once the voice of blitzed London, hair slicked back, a nub of cigarette in his hand radiating vapors, face as rigid as an Old Testament elder, using that deep voice and crooning rhetoric to lambaste the puny minds of the House Un-American Activities Committee that had so besmirched Larry’s good name that the man had leapt in despair from a 16th-Street floor window.
“But you won’t find it in Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney’s mounting of the dramatic confrontation between the estimable Murrow and the abrasive junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy.
“One can readily see why. Duggan, as it turned out, was a Soviet spy, code-named...‘Frank’ and finally ‘Prince.’ He was, moreover, one of many Soviet spies embedded in the U.S. government at the time.
“That’s not all Clooney leaves out in his account of the Murrow-McCarthy fight: He leaves out the Cold War, the hot war in Korea, the Venona decrypts that proved how sophisticated and exhaustive the Russian intelligence initiative against the American target was.”
That’s not bad coming from a McCarthy foe. Now we need the Evans book to show us just how wrong the country has been about the Wisconsin senator.
From Long Beach Press Telegram:
A classic 30 years running
By Tim Grobaty
A BOSS BOX: What a brilliant summer day it was at August's end 30 years ago when we bolted from classes at college and biked to the record store to take a chance on this new record by this "new Dylan."
We came home with our purchase, slit the shrink wrap and rolled out the shiny black vinyl platter what a thrill it was to buy a new record in those days, especially one that's about to dominate your record-spinning time for several months running. We put it on our BIC turntable fairly fresh from the shelves of Pacific Stereo, and turned it up nice and loud. This was no time to be concerned with the feelings of neighbors. Anyhow, a little culture ain't gonna kill em.
It started slow:
"The screen door slams, Mary's dress waves. Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely…"
This could be the album that changes everything, was the advance hype of Bruce Springsteen's 1975 classic, "Born to Run," and the opening track, "Thunder Road," certainly delivered, with its novel-ready tale of rebellion and redemption as told by a guitar-slinging Jersey edition of James Dean, all spilled out within the E Street Band's soon-to-be-signature racket of tinkling piano, soaring organ, thunderous drums, back-bowing sax and awesome assault of guitars.
The record peaked, energetically and thematically, at track 5, the muscular title piece that reinforced the LP's opener:
"In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway American dream.
"At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines."
The album is still a glorious work today, even though the feeling of hearing Springsteen's "Born to Run" for the first time can't be recaptured a good thing, because we can't take that kind of excitement anymore.
However, the record, certainly one of rock's greatest, is being celebrated rather grandly in an impressive package being released Nov. 15 by Columbia Records.
The three-disc box set, "Born to Run 30th Anniversary Edition," features the remastered eight-song album, a "making-of" DVD documentary and a two-hour, 10-minute DVD of Springsteen and the E Street Band's stunning 1975 concert at London's Hammersmith Odeon.
The set will retail for about $40, but you shouldn't have any problem finding it discounted below the $30 mark. MEANWHILE…: While you're sitting around killing time waiting for the Boss box set to come out, you should tune your computer to longtime rocker and radioman Mike Stark's always-excellent "Rock 50" radio show from 11 a.m. till 1 p.m. Saturday on WPMD.org. On that program, Stark will salute "Born to Run" and its anniversary set with an interview with longtime Boss buddy and rock critic/writer Dave Marsh.
'Born to Run' was the record that turned me around to Bruce," says Stark. "A friend of mine played it for me, and I was hooked. Then I went and saw Springsteen at the Santa Monica Civic in 76, and it just blew me away.
"That show was the only time I'd used a scalper for tickets," says Stark. "And when he played again the next night, I was back at the scalper's in the morning. Springsteen is definitely the best live act I've ever seen."
In addition to chatting with Marsh about "Born to Run," including a bit about the evolution of of "Thunder Road" from its earlier version called "Wings for Wheels," Stark will play live versions of the eight songs that make up the record.
The show, originating at Cerritos College, is available only through the Internet at www.WPMD.org.
A classic 30 years running
By Tim Grobaty
A BOSS BOX: What a brilliant summer day it was at August's end 30 years ago when we bolted from classes at college and biked to the record store to take a chance on this new record by this "new Dylan."
We came home with our purchase, slit the shrink wrap and rolled out the shiny black vinyl platter what a thrill it was to buy a new record in those days, especially one that's about to dominate your record-spinning time for several months running. We put it on our BIC turntable fairly fresh from the shelves of Pacific Stereo, and turned it up nice and loud. This was no time to be concerned with the feelings of neighbors. Anyhow, a little culture ain't gonna kill em.
It started slow:
"The screen door slams, Mary's dress waves. Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely…"
This could be the album that changes everything, was the advance hype of Bruce Springsteen's 1975 classic, "Born to Run," and the opening track, "Thunder Road," certainly delivered, with its novel-ready tale of rebellion and redemption as told by a guitar-slinging Jersey edition of James Dean, all spilled out within the E Street Band's soon-to-be-signature racket of tinkling piano, soaring organ, thunderous drums, back-bowing sax and awesome assault of guitars.
The record peaked, energetically and thematically, at track 5, the muscular title piece that reinforced the LP's opener:
"In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway American dream.
"At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines."
The album is still a glorious work today, even though the feeling of hearing Springsteen's "Born to Run" for the first time can't be recaptured a good thing, because we can't take that kind of excitement anymore.
However, the record, certainly one of rock's greatest, is being celebrated rather grandly in an impressive package being released Nov. 15 by Columbia Records.
The three-disc box set, "Born to Run 30th Anniversary Edition," features the remastered eight-song album, a "making-of" DVD documentary and a two-hour, 10-minute DVD of Springsteen and the E Street Band's stunning 1975 concert at London's Hammersmith Odeon.
The set will retail for about $40, but you shouldn't have any problem finding it discounted below the $30 mark. MEANWHILE…: While you're sitting around killing time waiting for the Boss box set to come out, you should tune your computer to longtime rocker and radioman Mike Stark's always-excellent "Rock 50" radio show from 11 a.m. till 1 p.m. Saturday on WPMD.org. On that program, Stark will salute "Born to Run" and its anniversary set with an interview with longtime Boss buddy and rock critic/writer Dave Marsh.
'Born to Run' was the record that turned me around to Bruce," says Stark. "A friend of mine played it for me, and I was hooked. Then I went and saw Springsteen at the Santa Monica Civic in 76, and it just blew me away.
"That show was the only time I'd used a scalper for tickets," says Stark. "And when he played again the next night, I was back at the scalper's in the morning. Springsteen is definitely the best live act I've ever seen."
In addition to chatting with Marsh about "Born to Run," including a bit about the evolution of of "Thunder Road" from its earlier version called "Wings for Wheels," Stark will play live versions of the eight songs that make up the record.
The show, originating at Cerritos College, is available only through the Internet at www.WPMD.org.
From New York Daily News:
Bruce Springsteen was Born to Run, but grew to do much more
By David Hinckley
When Columbia Records recently confirmed it will release a 30th anniversary CD/DVD package of Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, it doubtless sparked a familiar cry in some corners of Bruce-land: "Finally! The Real Bruce again!"
It's a sentiment Springsteen has been hearing ever since he followed his anthemic The River album and tour with 1982's quiet, reflective Nebraska.
Some fans who would follow Bruce and the E Street Band off a cliff wouldn't walk across the street to hear him sing the acoustic stuff he's doing on his current Devils & Dust tour, which arrives at BankAtlantic Center on Thursday.
The Real Bruce, the man who can heal the sick and raise the dead, is Spirit in the Night, Badlands and Jungleland.
The guy on the road now strumming acoustic tunes about mother-son relationships and the desperate dreams of immigrants, well, they don't hate him -- they just figure they'll go out for a beer till the Real Bruce returns.
That doesn't mean no one is listening now. Other fans are enjoying this part of his journey. Critics adore the show and praise his decision not to take the easy path to the biggest dollars.
A Bruce ticket is still a sweet thing. These shows just produce less frenzy than the E Street tours, because fewer people want to reflect on the doomed pilgrim of Matamoros Banks than want to pump their fists for Out in the Street.
Does this bother Springsteen? To all appearances, not at all, because he has never wanted his songs reduced to fist-pumping triggers with content as an afterthought.
Yet he obviously approved releasing the Born to Run package as he wraps up the present tour -- knowing that in some eyes the BTR guy will overshadow his current self.
Specifically, the Born to Run package, due Nov. 15, will include a remastered copy of the record, a DVD of a previously unreleased 1975 show at London's Hammerstein Odeon and a 90-minute DVD documentary on the making of BTR.
It's a holiday feast for fans, and releasing it for gift-buying season makes, as usual with Bruce, perfect marketing sense.
But this set would sell no matter when it was released, and the fact he doesn't mind pitting his latest incarnation against his almost mythic younger self says a lot of things, all good, about his self-assurance as an artist.
Springsteen mixes up his music to some extent because he can. His success bought him that freedom. But it's also clear he wouldn't play just one style of music any more than he'd eat just one kind of food.
Like Dylan, Johnny Cash, Marvin Gaye and Duke Ellington, he draws from the whole musical well, and anyone who thinks Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town aren't related to Johnny 99 and Tom Joad just isn't listening.
The Real Bruce is all of the above
Bruce Springsteen was Born to Run, but grew to do much more
By David Hinckley
When Columbia Records recently confirmed it will release a 30th anniversary CD/DVD package of Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, it doubtless sparked a familiar cry in some corners of Bruce-land: "Finally! The Real Bruce again!"
It's a sentiment Springsteen has been hearing ever since he followed his anthemic The River album and tour with 1982's quiet, reflective Nebraska.
Some fans who would follow Bruce and the E Street Band off a cliff wouldn't walk across the street to hear him sing the acoustic stuff he's doing on his current Devils & Dust tour, which arrives at BankAtlantic Center on Thursday.
The Real Bruce, the man who can heal the sick and raise the dead, is Spirit in the Night, Badlands and Jungleland.
The guy on the road now strumming acoustic tunes about mother-son relationships and the desperate dreams of immigrants, well, they don't hate him -- they just figure they'll go out for a beer till the Real Bruce returns.
That doesn't mean no one is listening now. Other fans are enjoying this part of his journey. Critics adore the show and praise his decision not to take the easy path to the biggest dollars.
A Bruce ticket is still a sweet thing. These shows just produce less frenzy than the E Street tours, because fewer people want to reflect on the doomed pilgrim of Matamoros Banks than want to pump their fists for Out in the Street.
Does this bother Springsteen? To all appearances, not at all, because he has never wanted his songs reduced to fist-pumping triggers with content as an afterthought.
Yet he obviously approved releasing the Born to Run package as he wraps up the present tour -- knowing that in some eyes the BTR guy will overshadow his current self.
Specifically, the Born to Run package, due Nov. 15, will include a remastered copy of the record, a DVD of a previously unreleased 1975 show at London's Hammerstein Odeon and a 90-minute DVD documentary on the making of BTR.
It's a holiday feast for fans, and releasing it for gift-buying season makes, as usual with Bruce, perfect marketing sense.
But this set would sell no matter when it was released, and the fact he doesn't mind pitting his latest incarnation against his almost mythic younger self says a lot of things, all good, about his self-assurance as an artist.
Springsteen mixes up his music to some extent because he can. His success bought him that freedom. But it's also clear he wouldn't play just one style of music any more than he'd eat just one kind of food.
Like Dylan, Johnny Cash, Marvin Gaye and Duke Ellington, he draws from the whole musical well, and anyone who thinks Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town aren't related to Johnny 99 and Tom Joad just isn't listening.
The Real Bruce is all of the above
From The Express-Times:
Springsteen's anthem album a worthy tribute
By Adam Richter
November 04, 2005
Anniversary albums could be the cleverest marketing gimmick by the record industry since, well, records. Take a product 25 or 30 years old (or some other multiple of five), repackage it, add a CD and/or DVD of unreleased material and mark the price up four-fold. Just like that -- whammo! Instant nostalgia, perfect for gift-wrapping.
Sure it's crass and manipulative, but done judiciously -- please, please, please: no 20th-anniversary reissues of The Hooters' "Nervous Night" -- the practice of releasing old songs in new duds can pay off for the fans as well as the record labels.
That said, Bruce Springsteen's career-defining "Born To Run" is one album worthy of the nostalgia treatment it's receiving on Nov. 15, when the special 30th-anniversary edition box set hits stores.
Springsteen was already a successful rock-'n'-roll star in 1975 when "Born To Run" came out. But it's the album that shaped the rest of his career. The record marks the first time he carried unifying themes throughout every song -- in this case, cars and desperation, but not in that order.
Springsteen, who has been compared to folk poets like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, begins to show off his talent as a songwriter starting with the evocative opening lines of the first song, "Thunder Road:" "A screen door slams/Mary's dress waves/Like a vision she dances across the porch/As the radio plays."
It's a far cry from the frat-rock party feel of his first two albums. (Fortunately, though, Springsteen held on to that style throughout his career.) In "Born To Run," though, Springsteen doesn't just pen ditties: he writes stories and sets them to music.
In this way, "Born to Run" is similar to a lot of 1970s-era rock bands attempted "concept" albums with grand ambition and long songs. One major difference is his songs are all the right length for the tales he's telling, whether it's a three-minute song about escaping the drudgery of everyday life ("Night") or a nine-minute epic about a gang fight that ends in tragedy ("Jungleland").
Far too many bands tried creating the bloated, 9-minute rock-opera suites that resulted, for the most part, in fatuous, self-important garbage. (Exhibit A: "Tales of Topographic Oceans," by Yes; two albums, four songs. Exhibit B: "Thick As A Brick," Jethro Tull; two sides, one song. Really.)
"Born To Run" set Springsteen on the path that would define the rest of his career. With few exceptions, nearly every album had a thematic feel to it, crafted with the right mix of Springsteen's frat-rock roots and poetic sensibilities.
After three decades, "Born To Run" remains a classic. Each of the eight tracks talks about the need to escape one's surroundings and break free of the chains that make life ordinary and paralyzing.
The methods of that escape take different forms. In "She's the One," Springsteen sings in a rapid Bo-Diddley beat about finding refuge in the arms of a woman. He finds a different -- and probably illegal -- form of escape in "Meeting Across the River," a sparse ballad that leads into the more elaborate "Jungleland," which closes out the album.
"Backstreets," meanwhile, is less about escape and more about attempting to hide from your fate, and the ultimate futility of it all. No wonder Springsteen screams the chorus instead of singing it.
What makes "Born To Run" a classic is that the theme running through all eight songs still resonates in people today: the simultaneous need and inability to break free of our surroundings.
Springsteen cast himself early and often in his career as a Jersey boy, but the stories he tells on "Born To Run" could happen anywhere. If anything in the United States binds us together, it's that conflict between what we want and what we have.
He succeeds in sometimes making desperation sound fun, owing in no small part to the anthem title track, a staple of every show Springsteen performs with the E Street Band.
On that note: If anything makes the re-release of "Born To Run" worth the $40 price tag, it could well be the 2-hour concert DVD from 1975. Springsteen's shows have been legendary for the last three decades, and this glimpse at his early live performances would make a fitting supplement to the album.
Adam Richter is Assistant News Editor for The Express-Times. He can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at arichter@express-times.com
Springsteen's anthem album a worthy tribute
By Adam Richter
November 04, 2005
Anniversary albums could be the cleverest marketing gimmick by the record industry since, well, records. Take a product 25 or 30 years old (or some other multiple of five), repackage it, add a CD and/or DVD of unreleased material and mark the price up four-fold. Just like that -- whammo! Instant nostalgia, perfect for gift-wrapping.
Sure it's crass and manipulative, but done judiciously -- please, please, please: no 20th-anniversary reissues of The Hooters' "Nervous Night" -- the practice of releasing old songs in new duds can pay off for the fans as well as the record labels.
That said, Bruce Springsteen's career-defining "Born To Run" is one album worthy of the nostalgia treatment it's receiving on Nov. 15, when the special 30th-anniversary edition box set hits stores.
Springsteen was already a successful rock-'n'-roll star in 1975 when "Born To Run" came out. But it's the album that shaped the rest of his career. The record marks the first time he carried unifying themes throughout every song -- in this case, cars and desperation, but not in that order.
Springsteen, who has been compared to folk poets like Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, begins to show off his talent as a songwriter starting with the evocative opening lines of the first song, "Thunder Road:" "A screen door slams/Mary's dress waves/Like a vision she dances across the porch/As the radio plays."
It's a far cry from the frat-rock party feel of his first two albums. (Fortunately, though, Springsteen held on to that style throughout his career.) In "Born To Run," though, Springsteen doesn't just pen ditties: he writes stories and sets them to music.
In this way, "Born to Run" is similar to a lot of 1970s-era rock bands attempted "concept" albums with grand ambition and long songs. One major difference is his songs are all the right length for the tales he's telling, whether it's a three-minute song about escaping the drudgery of everyday life ("Night") or a nine-minute epic about a gang fight that ends in tragedy ("Jungleland").
Far too many bands tried creating the bloated, 9-minute rock-opera suites that resulted, for the most part, in fatuous, self-important garbage. (Exhibit A: "Tales of Topographic Oceans," by Yes; two albums, four songs. Exhibit B: "Thick As A Brick," Jethro Tull; two sides, one song. Really.)
"Born To Run" set Springsteen on the path that would define the rest of his career. With few exceptions, nearly every album had a thematic feel to it, crafted with the right mix of Springsteen's frat-rock roots and poetic sensibilities.
After three decades, "Born To Run" remains a classic. Each of the eight tracks talks about the need to escape one's surroundings and break free of the chains that make life ordinary and paralyzing.
The methods of that escape take different forms. In "She's the One," Springsteen sings in a rapid Bo-Diddley beat about finding refuge in the arms of a woman. He finds a different -- and probably illegal -- form of escape in "Meeting Across the River," a sparse ballad that leads into the more elaborate "Jungleland," which closes out the album.
"Backstreets," meanwhile, is less about escape and more about attempting to hide from your fate, and the ultimate futility of it all. No wonder Springsteen screams the chorus instead of singing it.
What makes "Born To Run" a classic is that the theme running through all eight songs still resonates in people today: the simultaneous need and inability to break free of our surroundings.
Springsteen cast himself early and often in his career as a Jersey boy, but the stories he tells on "Born To Run" could happen anywhere. If anything in the United States binds us together, it's that conflict between what we want and what we have.
He succeeds in sometimes making desperation sound fun, owing in no small part to the anthem title track, a staple of every show Springsteen performs with the E Street Band.
On that note: If anything makes the re-release of "Born To Run" worth the $40 price tag, it could well be the 2-hour concert DVD from 1975. Springsteen's shows have been legendary for the last three decades, and this glimpse at his early live performances would make a fitting supplement to the album.
Adam Richter is Assistant News Editor for The Express-Times. He can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at arichter@express-times.com
Sunday, November 06, 2005
From The Independent Weekly:
Courage under fire
Contemporary events are the unavoidable subjects of two historical movies
By Godfrey Cheshire
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently generated some online buzz by characterizing Americans as "the best-entertained and least-informed people on the face of the planet." As regrettably accurate as that complaint may be, it ignores the extent to which entertainment today is information, for better and worse.
In the week following 9/11, The New York Times summed up entertainment-biz wisdom that movies after the disaster would be more escapism-oriented than ever. To a large extent, that proved to be true. But, in entertainment as in many other areas, the second G.W. Bush administration is looking a lot different than the first.
Just lately, there's growing evidence that moviemakers of various sorts are looking to re-engage with the troubled landscape of contemporary reality rather than ignore it. The signs range from Steven Spielberg's upcoming Munich (about Israeli assassinations of Palestinians) to the films that Oliver Stone and Spike Lee are reportedly making about 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, respectively.
Of course, focusing directly on topical events isn't the only way of tackling the zeitgeist. Two films opening this week approach certain very immediate concerns obliquely, via metaphor and implication. Sam Mendes' Jarhead, in telling of a group of Marines caught up in the 1991 Gulf War, can't help but call to mind America's latest, far less compact and successful invasion of the Middle East. And George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck, which depicts the 1950s collision between witch-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy and crusading broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, very deliberately means to provide a lesson in journalistic courage for a press corps and a country lately unaccustomed to same.
Of the two, Jarhead is by the far less politically pointed, and that's hardly surprising. It issues from a major studio, Universal Pictures, and was set in motion in the spring of 2003. You remember the spring of 2003, don't you? That was when the United States invaded Iraq, a country that had neither attacked nor threatened it, on the basis of phony, manufactured evidence, and the country's corporate media rolled over and played cheerleader for the demented crusade. In the hyper-patriotic frenzy of the moment, any entertainer who dared whisper a discouraging word (bless thee, O Dixie Chicks) was threatened pillorying, crucifixion-by-Fox-News, or worse.
For Hollywood to launch an Americans-in-a-desert-war movie in that climate, it would almost have to be so far removed from the current moment's hot-button debates as to remain inoffensive no matter what political changes lay ahead. Jarhead fills that bill impeccably. Based on the bestselling memoir by former Marine Anthony Swofford, the film profiles a group of young soldiers in a gritty, realistic way that outwardly is very specific to the Gulf War, yet essentially speaks of hardships and trials common to the U.S. military of the last several generations. It would've played equally well whether the United States had triumphed conclusively in Iraq, or, as happened, became mired in a bloody, protracted insurgency.
When I say Jarhead plays well, I mean as an involving, sharply crafted entertainment, not as the more incisive, challenging--and yes, political--film that might have been made on the same subject. While I haven't read Swofford's account of his youthful exploits in the Marines (he was 18 when he joined the corps in 1988), I gather it owes its popularity to the author's punchy, pungent descriptions of the rigors, raunchiness, terrors and tedium faced by new recruits. The book was praised by many for its lacerating candor, although some veterans charged Swofford with self-serving exaggeration in various particulars. In adapting the book, screenwriter William Broyles Jr. (Apollo 13) reportedly distilled from its impressionistic chronology a more straightforward, A-to-Z narrative centered on the Marine's experiences prior to and during the Gulf War.
As Broyles shapes it, the story has a three-part structure. In the first section, Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) and other recruits endure the punishing ordeal of basic training under the demanding eyes of Sgt. Siek (the brilliant Jamie Foxx), a tough but consummately professional drill master. These aren't just ordinary grunts, as it turns out; they're trained as snipers, which gives them an elite edge when they're sent to Saudi Arabia in 1990 as part of Operation Desert Shield.
In the film's second section, the expected war turns into months of waiting in the desert, and the soldiers, starting to go a little stir-crazy, expend their pent-up energies in such self-defeating activities as arguing over the infidelities of wives and girlfriends back home. While the story's first part is as propulsive, gripping and blackly humorous as cinematic initiations into military life often are, the second proves the adage that it's hard to make a movie about boredom that's not itself a bit boring.
Momentum returns, though, when Desert Shield abruptly segues into Desert Storm and the troops finally get their taste of war's sound and fury. At least since Catch-22, surrealism has been a key element in the movies' way of conveying combat, and so it is here: As the Kuwaiti oil fields go up in flames, every landscape blurs into a weird orange haze, strange figures like an oil-covered horse stagger through the gloom, and the charred corpses of formerly fleeing Kuwaitis look like the doomed denizens of Pompeii, frozen in death along highways that go nowhere.
In this section of the film, we get hints of a reality that's obviously relevant to the current Iraqi quagmire: The young Americans we're watching are trained only to obey and to kill, nothing more flexible or subtle. Thus when the troops encounter a small Bedouin tribe in the desert, we inevitably fear that their incomprehension and fear will trigger a slaughter. (Here, though, we surprisingly learn that Swofford speaks Arabic: one of the ragged edges that mar Broyles' otherwise workmanlike script.) In another scene, an unhinged Marine gleefully mutilates the bodies of dead Iraqis, and we see how little prepared his fellows and commanders are to deal with war's grisly excesses. Yet such moments don't amount to a statement--much less an indictment--in part because they don't have time to. Four days flash by and boom, the war is over.
Appropriately, the main virtues of Jarhead are its cinematic spit and polish. Blessed with the collaboration of such master craftsmen as cinematographer Roger Deakins and editor Walter Murch (who long ago cut Apocalypse Now), Mendes mounts a production that's faultlessly controlled and elegantly realistic, with a visual plan that eschews master shots for grunt's-eye views of the action. He also has assembled an exemplary cast that, besides rising-star Gyllenhaal, who's both formidably bulked-up and impressively vulnerable as Swofford, includes the terrific young actors Peter Sarsgaard and Lucas Black as well older stalwarts such as Foxx and Chris Cooper.
The film's strengths, though, are notably confined to its streamlined surface, and there are a couple of reasons that viewers might end up feeling at once entertained and unsatisfied. One is that, like a lot of reality-based entertainment, Jarhead is all about sensation and superficial authenticity; art's job of probing experience to plumb its meaning is one that it doesn't even attempt. Perhaps an even more crucial reason is that Mendes, having made American Beauty and Road to Perdition, increasingly looks like a supreme technician whose very slight claims on an actual point of view (aka, artistic vision) lies in a kind of glib cynicism regarding the hidden motives in American life (he's a Brit). Which is hardly enough. While it self-consciously cites previous war movies like Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now, Jarhead simply isn't in the same league.
Although, as noted, George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck has a sharper political edge than Jarhead, that doesn't mean it's a better movie. In fact, it falls just as shy of genuine achievement, and for reasons that, if anything, are even more frustrating.
Let's say you were Clooney and you wanted to make a film about McCarthy-vs.-Murrow that had real artistic depth rather than mere polemical flash. What would you do? Given the subject, you might start by trying to flesh out both men, looking at the newsman's foibles as well as his courage, say, while also finding some hidden strengths behind the blustery façade of the commie-hunting senator. You might also look at the complexities of the geopolitical context, noting for instance the mounting worldwide threat posed by communism and the damaging espionage committed by various Americans like the Rosenbergs (the extent of such activities has only been known since the opening of Soviet archives in the '90s) as well as the excesses of zealots like McCarthy.
But Clooney's not out for art, obviously. As if running for chairman of the Hollywood Limousine Liberals Club, he mounts a simple-minded, 2-D morality play that, derived from liberal mythology of yore, gives us a valiant TV reporter on one side and a demonic demagogue on the other. In reality, of course, Murrow (played by David Strathairn) was smoking himself to death just as surely as McCarthy was doing the same with drink, and such parallels between the two haunted men might've given a real dramatist material for a tale rich in irony, paradox and the tragic complexity that transcends political slogans.
Clooney (a charming actor who appears here as Fred Friendly, Murrow's producer) has no truck with irony or complexity, alas. Yet his chief sin, in preaching solely to the converted, lies in failing to dramatize history in a way that's comprehensible and compelling to viewers who didn't witness it or have a prior emotional stake in it. While Clooney imagines he's providing a reminder of TV journalism's highest purposes (speaking truth to power), he mainly succeeds in demonstrating how solipsistic, marginal and frozen in the past American liberalism remains.
Courage under fire
Contemporary events are the unavoidable subjects of two historical movies
By Godfrey Cheshire
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently generated some online buzz by characterizing Americans as "the best-entertained and least-informed people on the face of the planet." As regrettably accurate as that complaint may be, it ignores the extent to which entertainment today is information, for better and worse.
In the week following 9/11, The New York Times summed up entertainment-biz wisdom that movies after the disaster would be more escapism-oriented than ever. To a large extent, that proved to be true. But, in entertainment as in many other areas, the second G.W. Bush administration is looking a lot different than the first.
Just lately, there's growing evidence that moviemakers of various sorts are looking to re-engage with the troubled landscape of contemporary reality rather than ignore it. The signs range from Steven Spielberg's upcoming Munich (about Israeli assassinations of Palestinians) to the films that Oliver Stone and Spike Lee are reportedly making about 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, respectively.
Of course, focusing directly on topical events isn't the only way of tackling the zeitgeist. Two films opening this week approach certain very immediate concerns obliquely, via metaphor and implication. Sam Mendes' Jarhead, in telling of a group of Marines caught up in the 1991 Gulf War, can't help but call to mind America's latest, far less compact and successful invasion of the Middle East. And George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck, which depicts the 1950s collision between witch-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy and crusading broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, very deliberately means to provide a lesson in journalistic courage for a press corps and a country lately unaccustomed to same.
Of the two, Jarhead is by the far less politically pointed, and that's hardly surprising. It issues from a major studio, Universal Pictures, and was set in motion in the spring of 2003. You remember the spring of 2003, don't you? That was when the United States invaded Iraq, a country that had neither attacked nor threatened it, on the basis of phony, manufactured evidence, and the country's corporate media rolled over and played cheerleader for the demented crusade. In the hyper-patriotic frenzy of the moment, any entertainer who dared whisper a discouraging word (bless thee, O Dixie Chicks) was threatened pillorying, crucifixion-by-Fox-News, or worse.
For Hollywood to launch an Americans-in-a-desert-war movie in that climate, it would almost have to be so far removed from the current moment's hot-button debates as to remain inoffensive no matter what political changes lay ahead. Jarhead fills that bill impeccably. Based on the bestselling memoir by former Marine Anthony Swofford, the film profiles a group of young soldiers in a gritty, realistic way that outwardly is very specific to the Gulf War, yet essentially speaks of hardships and trials common to the U.S. military of the last several generations. It would've played equally well whether the United States had triumphed conclusively in Iraq, or, as happened, became mired in a bloody, protracted insurgency.
When I say Jarhead plays well, I mean as an involving, sharply crafted entertainment, not as the more incisive, challenging--and yes, political--film that might have been made on the same subject. While I haven't read Swofford's account of his youthful exploits in the Marines (he was 18 when he joined the corps in 1988), I gather it owes its popularity to the author's punchy, pungent descriptions of the rigors, raunchiness, terrors and tedium faced by new recruits. The book was praised by many for its lacerating candor, although some veterans charged Swofford with self-serving exaggeration in various particulars. In adapting the book, screenwriter William Broyles Jr. (Apollo 13) reportedly distilled from its impressionistic chronology a more straightforward, A-to-Z narrative centered on the Marine's experiences prior to and during the Gulf War.
As Broyles shapes it, the story has a three-part structure. In the first section, Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) and other recruits endure the punishing ordeal of basic training under the demanding eyes of Sgt. Siek (the brilliant Jamie Foxx), a tough but consummately professional drill master. These aren't just ordinary grunts, as it turns out; they're trained as snipers, which gives them an elite edge when they're sent to Saudi Arabia in 1990 as part of Operation Desert Shield.
In the film's second section, the expected war turns into months of waiting in the desert, and the soldiers, starting to go a little stir-crazy, expend their pent-up energies in such self-defeating activities as arguing over the infidelities of wives and girlfriends back home. While the story's first part is as propulsive, gripping and blackly humorous as cinematic initiations into military life often are, the second proves the adage that it's hard to make a movie about boredom that's not itself a bit boring.
Momentum returns, though, when Desert Shield abruptly segues into Desert Storm and the troops finally get their taste of war's sound and fury. At least since Catch-22, surrealism has been a key element in the movies' way of conveying combat, and so it is here: As the Kuwaiti oil fields go up in flames, every landscape blurs into a weird orange haze, strange figures like an oil-covered horse stagger through the gloom, and the charred corpses of formerly fleeing Kuwaitis look like the doomed denizens of Pompeii, frozen in death along highways that go nowhere.
In this section of the film, we get hints of a reality that's obviously relevant to the current Iraqi quagmire: The young Americans we're watching are trained only to obey and to kill, nothing more flexible or subtle. Thus when the troops encounter a small Bedouin tribe in the desert, we inevitably fear that their incomprehension and fear will trigger a slaughter. (Here, though, we surprisingly learn that Swofford speaks Arabic: one of the ragged edges that mar Broyles' otherwise workmanlike script.) In another scene, an unhinged Marine gleefully mutilates the bodies of dead Iraqis, and we see how little prepared his fellows and commanders are to deal with war's grisly excesses. Yet such moments don't amount to a statement--much less an indictment--in part because they don't have time to. Four days flash by and boom, the war is over.
Appropriately, the main virtues of Jarhead are its cinematic spit and polish. Blessed with the collaboration of such master craftsmen as cinematographer Roger Deakins and editor Walter Murch (who long ago cut Apocalypse Now), Mendes mounts a production that's faultlessly controlled and elegantly realistic, with a visual plan that eschews master shots for grunt's-eye views of the action. He also has assembled an exemplary cast that, besides rising-star Gyllenhaal, who's both formidably bulked-up and impressively vulnerable as Swofford, includes the terrific young actors Peter Sarsgaard and Lucas Black as well older stalwarts such as Foxx and Chris Cooper.
The film's strengths, though, are notably confined to its streamlined surface, and there are a couple of reasons that viewers might end up feeling at once entertained and unsatisfied. One is that, like a lot of reality-based entertainment, Jarhead is all about sensation and superficial authenticity; art's job of probing experience to plumb its meaning is one that it doesn't even attempt. Perhaps an even more crucial reason is that Mendes, having made American Beauty and Road to Perdition, increasingly looks like a supreme technician whose very slight claims on an actual point of view (aka, artistic vision) lies in a kind of glib cynicism regarding the hidden motives in American life (he's a Brit). Which is hardly enough. While it self-consciously cites previous war movies like Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now, Jarhead simply isn't in the same league.
Although, as noted, George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck has a sharper political edge than Jarhead, that doesn't mean it's a better movie. In fact, it falls just as shy of genuine achievement, and for reasons that, if anything, are even more frustrating.
Let's say you were Clooney and you wanted to make a film about McCarthy-vs.-Murrow that had real artistic depth rather than mere polemical flash. What would you do? Given the subject, you might start by trying to flesh out both men, looking at the newsman's foibles as well as his courage, say, while also finding some hidden strengths behind the blustery façade of the commie-hunting senator. You might also look at the complexities of the geopolitical context, noting for instance the mounting worldwide threat posed by communism and the damaging espionage committed by various Americans like the Rosenbergs (the extent of such activities has only been known since the opening of Soviet archives in the '90s) as well as the excesses of zealots like McCarthy.
But Clooney's not out for art, obviously. As if running for chairman of the Hollywood Limousine Liberals Club, he mounts a simple-minded, 2-D morality play that, derived from liberal mythology of yore, gives us a valiant TV reporter on one side and a demonic demagogue on the other. In reality, of course, Murrow (played by David Strathairn) was smoking himself to death just as surely as McCarthy was doing the same with drink, and such parallels between the two haunted men might've given a real dramatist material for a tale rich in irony, paradox and the tragic complexity that transcends political slogans.
Clooney (a charming actor who appears here as Fred Friendly, Murrow's producer) has no truck with irony or complexity, alas. Yet his chief sin, in preaching solely to the converted, lies in failing to dramatize history in a way that's comprehensible and compelling to viewers who didn't witness it or have a prior emotional stake in it. While Clooney imagines he's providing a reminder of TV journalism's highest purposes (speaking truth to power), he mainly succeeds in demonstrating how solipsistic, marginal and frozen in the past American liberalism remains.
From The Tampa Tribune:
Back To The Future Of Rock 'N' Roll
By Curtis Ross
Columbia Records catalog number PC-33795, released Aug. 25, 1975; an eight-song album clocking in at just less than 40 minutes: the bland particulars of a record “that epitomizes what rock promised us from the beginning.”
That assessment of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” is courtesy of Gabe Echazabal, 38, manager of Vinyl Fever in Tampa; but it’s echoed by many other fans, some who have rubbed shoulders with Springsteen, others who know him from his albums and concerts.
A three-disc “Born to Run 30th Anniversay Edition” will be in stores Nov. 15. It features a remasterd version of the album plus two DVDs: one of interviews with musicians and others involved with the album, the other a live concert from 1975.
Springsteen performs solo tonight in Tampa. A mega-star now, Springsteen was, when “Born to Run” was released, a singer-songwriter whose first two albums (“Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.” and “The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle,” released in January and September of 1973, respectively) had failed to set the world on fire. He was, though, gaining a large following on the East Coast, primarily on the strength of his live show.
“He wanted to make a big record. He wanted to make the greatest rock record ever made,” says Jean Mikle, 44, a reporter for the Asbury Park Press. Something of a Springsteen expert, Mikle runs Rock & Roll Tour of the Jersey Shore. The tour takes Springsteen fans from as far away as Japan and Europe to landmarks in and around Asbury Park, such as The Stone Pony nightclub and the Palace Amusements building, mentioned in the song “Born to Run.”
Springsteen succeeded — the title track was his first Top 40 hit, and introduced the rest of the world to this East Coast cult hero. Remarkably, Time and Newsweek put him on their covers the week of Oct. 27, 1975. If Springsteen wouldn’t become omnipresent until 1984’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” he was finally and truly a rock ’n’ roll star.
The album regularly shows up near the top in surveys of the best rock albums of all time. But as much as “Born to Run” was the beginning of Springsteen’s ascent, it also marks a few endings — for one, the E Street Band’s lineup was changing. Keyboardist David Sancious and drummer Ernest “Boom” Carter, jazz- and funk-schooled musicians who played on the title track, left and were replaced by the solid rocking of pianist Roy Bittan and drummer Max Weinberg. Springsteen’s next album, 1978’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” would find him making rough-hewn rock ’n’ roll minus the orchestral and epic scope of “Born to Run.”
Springsteen’s lyrical focus changes as well. “Born to Run” was about youth, energy, passion, the desire to bust out of the small town “death trap” and follow dreams no matter what the cost.
On “Darkness,” the characters populating Springsteen’s songs were those who didn’t make it out, the ones left behind whose only recourse was the desperate, dead-end thrills of “Racing in the Street.” By 1980’s “The River,” they were left to wonder whether “a dream [is] a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse.”
“Born to Run” was the last flash of innocence before reality came crashing down — but what a sweet ride it was. Rock ’n’ roll glory, in eight parts:
Side 1
1. “Thunder Road”: The opening track suggests early Saturday night and the anticipation of sex, romance, rock ’n’ roll and escape, all seemingly promised by the wave of Mary’s dress. It starts slow with harmonica and piano and builds into one of the most passionate rock anthems ever.
Some people can’t be convinced. Audrey Glassman Vernick, 41, a writer from Ocean, N.J., recalls trying to sway her friend Lynne, whose record collection “was littered with unfortunate choices.”
“I remember trying to convince Lynne that Springsteen was worship-worthy, that she should join me on the path to obsessed fan,” Vernick writes by e-mail. “I kept lifting the needle straight up on her stereo and replacing it at the beginning, playing the opening of ‘Thunder Road’ over and over, making a case for the tinkling piano, for the slow build and release. Somehow, Lynne remained unconvinced. (Still, looking back, that album was there. She owned it.)”
2. “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”: Springsteen mythologizes the E Street Band’s origins. “As far back as 1969, I remember [Springsteen] was still the guy. To all of us musicians he was the man,” says Tony Pallagrosi of Allenhurst, N.J. Pallagrosi is a former trumpet player for Springsteen cohorts Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes. He and the other members of the Jukes’ horn section toured with Springsteen in 1976. He now runs the Starland Ballroom venue in Sayerville, N.J.
“I remember I had just seen the Stones [in 1969],” Pallagrosi recalls. Seeing Springsteen perform, “I remember thinking an almost blasphemous thought. I don’t know why, but this guy, in some way deeper than I can explain, he’s every bit as good as the Stones.
“He wasn’t as good a singer, he didn’t have the presence, he hadn’t written the great songs,” Pallagrosi says. “But there was something essential about him that was rock ’n’ roll. That core was as strong and vibrant and as big as the Stones’.”
Tenth Avenue intersects E Street in Belmar, N.J.
3. “Night”: The slightest track on the album is this prototypical working-class tale of busting loose on the weekend.
“‘Night’ was about the old circuit,” Mikle says. “The way I describe it is, if you’ve ever seen the movie ‘American Graffiti,’ it’s just like that: everyone cruising up and down trying to pick each other up.”
4. “Backstreets”: Teenage love becomes high drama in this epic side-closer. Still not sure what “tying faith between our teeth” means but it sure sounds romantic, as does the notion of a “soft-infested summer.”
“My favorite song was ‘Backstreets,’” Mikle says. “It’s almost like a movie. I can picture the whole scene.
“I saw him in ’78...when he was doing a 20-minute version of ‘Backstreets.’ That was a moment for me,” Mikle says.
“‘Backstreets’ has probably always been my favorite song on the album,” Vernick writes, “especially live, and especially in recordings from 1978. It’s not something you need to explain to another fan: ‘“Backstreets” ’78? Oh yeah!’”
Side 2:
1. “Born to Run”: With its twanging guitar, honking sax solo, pounding piano and racing-pulse beat, “Born to Run” sounded like everything that rock ’n’ roll wasn’t anymore in 1975. Its glorious production excess — dig that rockin’ glockenspiel — was miles away from the burgeoning minimalism of punk, but once The Ramones and Sex Pistols appeared, Springsteen was one of the few mainstream rockers who didn’t look like a bloated corpse in comparison. In 1975, it was possible to hear this song sandwiched between Neil Sedaka and Captain & Tennille on AM radio.
Hearing Springsteen count the band back in after the middle section’s breakdown is one of the most thrilling moments ever in rock ’n’ roll.
“Every time he would count off a song, you knew you were going down the ski jump, no turning back,” Pallagrosi says of playing with Springsteen. “You were gonna fly. You were gonna be airborne.”
“The greatest rock song ever written,” says Echazabal.
2. “She’s the One”: A sonic marriage of Roy Orbison and Bo Diddley; like very few post-British Invasion artists, Springsteen’s influences primarily were American: Elvis Presley, Gary “U.S.” Bonds, Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” productions and the R&B of the Stax and Motown labels. Tales of rock ’n’ roll lust rarely are delivered with this much heat and depth of feeling.
3. “Meeting Across the River”: Sancious doesn’t play on this number, but it seems possible this moody, jazz-influenced number was written with him in mind.
“You can’t discount the influence of the people in the band,” Pallagrosi says. “The way David played allowed Bruce to write in a different way. Bruce is an intuitive musician: He got how David played and wrote accordingly. When band members changed...the music changed accordingly.”
Lyrically, the song artfully sticks to details in its depiction of some desperate, illicit activity. Maybe it’s Spanish Johnny from “Incident on 57th Street” trying to make that one big score. Maybe it’s the guy from “Atlantic City,” hoping he doesn’t meet the same fate as the Chicken Man.
4. “Jungleland”: The epic closer names characters that could have been in “Blinded by the Light” or “Spirit in the Night,” only this time they’re in a pitched battle for their lives.
This song “sealed the deal,” Echazabal says. “That was so daunting to write a nine-minute rock song and expect it to rock. It went beyond my wildest expectations.
“Up to that point, nine-minute songs meant boring prog-rock or something,” Echazabal says. “There is no time wasted in that song. That’s the centerpiece. That’s one of my favorite songs of his of all time. That to me is pure Springsteen.”
Coda Springsteen’s popularity scaled even greater heights in the ’80s, but as his music and lyrics became increasingly down to earth, it was apparent he would never again soar as high as he did with “Born to Run.”
Three of his solo albums offer the most stark contrast. On 1982’s “Nebraska,” he writes about people who can’t afford to remember their dreams. On 1995’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad” and this year’s “Devils and Dust,” he writes of people so desperate they would give all they have for a shot at the dead-end lives the “Born to Run” kids wanted to escape.
People grow up. They discover the passions of their youth actually aren’t as all-consuming as they seem.
“I used to be very partial to ‘Thunder Road,’” Vernick writes. “Lately, it’s lost some of its appeal. It can’t always be easy to consistently bring life to a song you wrote 30 years ago.”
Springsteen himself warned about the futility of yearning for the past on 1984’s “Glory Days” — was he cautioning himself as well as us? “Born to Run” could only have been made by a young man. Would it resonate as strongly with someone who first heard it in adulthood instead of their teens or early 20s? It doesn’t seem likely.
But for those with the memories and a copy of “Born to Run,” you can go back, for just under 40 minutes.
Reporter Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568.
Back To The Future Of Rock 'N' Roll
By Curtis Ross
Columbia Records catalog number PC-33795, released Aug. 25, 1975; an eight-song album clocking in at just less than 40 minutes: the bland particulars of a record “that epitomizes what rock promised us from the beginning.”
That assessment of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” is courtesy of Gabe Echazabal, 38, manager of Vinyl Fever in Tampa; but it’s echoed by many other fans, some who have rubbed shoulders with Springsteen, others who know him from his albums and concerts.
A three-disc “Born to Run 30th Anniversay Edition” will be in stores Nov. 15. It features a remasterd version of the album plus two DVDs: one of interviews with musicians and others involved with the album, the other a live concert from 1975.
Springsteen performs solo tonight in Tampa. A mega-star now, Springsteen was, when “Born to Run” was released, a singer-songwriter whose first two albums (“Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.” and “The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle,” released in January and September of 1973, respectively) had failed to set the world on fire. He was, though, gaining a large following on the East Coast, primarily on the strength of his live show.
“He wanted to make a big record. He wanted to make the greatest rock record ever made,” says Jean Mikle, 44, a reporter for the Asbury Park Press. Something of a Springsteen expert, Mikle runs Rock & Roll Tour of the Jersey Shore. The tour takes Springsteen fans from as far away as Japan and Europe to landmarks in and around Asbury Park, such as The Stone Pony nightclub and the Palace Amusements building, mentioned in the song “Born to Run.”
Springsteen succeeded — the title track was his first Top 40 hit, and introduced the rest of the world to this East Coast cult hero. Remarkably, Time and Newsweek put him on their covers the week of Oct. 27, 1975. If Springsteen wouldn’t become omnipresent until 1984’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” he was finally and truly a rock ’n’ roll star.
The album regularly shows up near the top in surveys of the best rock albums of all time. But as much as “Born to Run” was the beginning of Springsteen’s ascent, it also marks a few endings — for one, the E Street Band’s lineup was changing. Keyboardist David Sancious and drummer Ernest “Boom” Carter, jazz- and funk-schooled musicians who played on the title track, left and were replaced by the solid rocking of pianist Roy Bittan and drummer Max Weinberg. Springsteen’s next album, 1978’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” would find him making rough-hewn rock ’n’ roll minus the orchestral and epic scope of “Born to Run.”
Springsteen’s lyrical focus changes as well. “Born to Run” was about youth, energy, passion, the desire to bust out of the small town “death trap” and follow dreams no matter what the cost.
On “Darkness,” the characters populating Springsteen’s songs were those who didn’t make it out, the ones left behind whose only recourse was the desperate, dead-end thrills of “Racing in the Street.” By 1980’s “The River,” they were left to wonder whether “a dream [is] a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse.”
“Born to Run” was the last flash of innocence before reality came crashing down — but what a sweet ride it was. Rock ’n’ roll glory, in eight parts:
Side 1
1. “Thunder Road”: The opening track suggests early Saturday night and the anticipation of sex, romance, rock ’n’ roll and escape, all seemingly promised by the wave of Mary’s dress. It starts slow with harmonica and piano and builds into one of the most passionate rock anthems ever.
Some people can’t be convinced. Audrey Glassman Vernick, 41, a writer from Ocean, N.J., recalls trying to sway her friend Lynne, whose record collection “was littered with unfortunate choices.”
“I remember trying to convince Lynne that Springsteen was worship-worthy, that she should join me on the path to obsessed fan,” Vernick writes by e-mail. “I kept lifting the needle straight up on her stereo and replacing it at the beginning, playing the opening of ‘Thunder Road’ over and over, making a case for the tinkling piano, for the slow build and release. Somehow, Lynne remained unconvinced. (Still, looking back, that album was there. She owned it.)”
2. “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”: Springsteen mythologizes the E Street Band’s origins. “As far back as 1969, I remember [Springsteen] was still the guy. To all of us musicians he was the man,” says Tony Pallagrosi of Allenhurst, N.J. Pallagrosi is a former trumpet player for Springsteen cohorts Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes. He and the other members of the Jukes’ horn section toured with Springsteen in 1976. He now runs the Starland Ballroom venue in Sayerville, N.J.
“I remember I had just seen the Stones [in 1969],” Pallagrosi recalls. Seeing Springsteen perform, “I remember thinking an almost blasphemous thought. I don’t know why, but this guy, in some way deeper than I can explain, he’s every bit as good as the Stones.
“He wasn’t as good a singer, he didn’t have the presence, he hadn’t written the great songs,” Pallagrosi says. “But there was something essential about him that was rock ’n’ roll. That core was as strong and vibrant and as big as the Stones’.”
Tenth Avenue intersects E Street in Belmar, N.J.
3. “Night”: The slightest track on the album is this prototypical working-class tale of busting loose on the weekend.
“‘Night’ was about the old circuit,” Mikle says. “The way I describe it is, if you’ve ever seen the movie ‘American Graffiti,’ it’s just like that: everyone cruising up and down trying to pick each other up.”
4. “Backstreets”: Teenage love becomes high drama in this epic side-closer. Still not sure what “tying faith between our teeth” means but it sure sounds romantic, as does the notion of a “soft-infested summer.”
“My favorite song was ‘Backstreets,’” Mikle says. “It’s almost like a movie. I can picture the whole scene.
“I saw him in ’78...when he was doing a 20-minute version of ‘Backstreets.’ That was a moment for me,” Mikle says.
“‘Backstreets’ has probably always been my favorite song on the album,” Vernick writes, “especially live, and especially in recordings from 1978. It’s not something you need to explain to another fan: ‘“Backstreets” ’78? Oh yeah!’”
Side 2:
1. “Born to Run”: With its twanging guitar, honking sax solo, pounding piano and racing-pulse beat, “Born to Run” sounded like everything that rock ’n’ roll wasn’t anymore in 1975. Its glorious production excess — dig that rockin’ glockenspiel — was miles away from the burgeoning minimalism of punk, but once The Ramones and Sex Pistols appeared, Springsteen was one of the few mainstream rockers who didn’t look like a bloated corpse in comparison. In 1975, it was possible to hear this song sandwiched between Neil Sedaka and Captain & Tennille on AM radio.
Hearing Springsteen count the band back in after the middle section’s breakdown is one of the most thrilling moments ever in rock ’n’ roll.
“Every time he would count off a song, you knew you were going down the ski jump, no turning back,” Pallagrosi says of playing with Springsteen. “You were gonna fly. You were gonna be airborne.”
“The greatest rock song ever written,” says Echazabal.
2. “She’s the One”: A sonic marriage of Roy Orbison and Bo Diddley; like very few post-British Invasion artists, Springsteen’s influences primarily were American: Elvis Presley, Gary “U.S.” Bonds, Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” productions and the R&B of the Stax and Motown labels. Tales of rock ’n’ roll lust rarely are delivered with this much heat and depth of feeling.
3. “Meeting Across the River”: Sancious doesn’t play on this number, but it seems possible this moody, jazz-influenced number was written with him in mind.
“You can’t discount the influence of the people in the band,” Pallagrosi says. “The way David played allowed Bruce to write in a different way. Bruce is an intuitive musician: He got how David played and wrote accordingly. When band members changed...the music changed accordingly.”
Lyrically, the song artfully sticks to details in its depiction of some desperate, illicit activity. Maybe it’s Spanish Johnny from “Incident on 57th Street” trying to make that one big score. Maybe it’s the guy from “Atlantic City,” hoping he doesn’t meet the same fate as the Chicken Man.
4. “Jungleland”: The epic closer names characters that could have been in “Blinded by the Light” or “Spirit in the Night,” only this time they’re in a pitched battle for their lives.
This song “sealed the deal,” Echazabal says. “That was so daunting to write a nine-minute rock song and expect it to rock. It went beyond my wildest expectations.
“Up to that point, nine-minute songs meant boring prog-rock or something,” Echazabal says. “There is no time wasted in that song. That’s the centerpiece. That’s one of my favorite songs of his of all time. That to me is pure Springsteen.”
Coda Springsteen’s popularity scaled even greater heights in the ’80s, but as his music and lyrics became increasingly down to earth, it was apparent he would never again soar as high as he did with “Born to Run.”
Three of his solo albums offer the most stark contrast. On 1982’s “Nebraska,” he writes about people who can’t afford to remember their dreams. On 1995’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad” and this year’s “Devils and Dust,” he writes of people so desperate they would give all they have for a shot at the dead-end lives the “Born to Run” kids wanted to escape.
People grow up. They discover the passions of their youth actually aren’t as all-consuming as they seem.
“I used to be very partial to ‘Thunder Road,’” Vernick writes. “Lately, it’s lost some of its appeal. It can’t always be easy to consistently bring life to a song you wrote 30 years ago.”
Springsteen himself warned about the futility of yearning for the past on 1984’s “Glory Days” — was he cautioning himself as well as us? “Born to Run” could only have been made by a young man. Would it resonate as strongly with someone who first heard it in adulthood instead of their teens or early 20s? It doesn’t seem likely.
But for those with the memories and a copy of “Born to Run,” you can go back, for just under 40 minutes.
Reporter Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568.
From Reuters/Billboard:
Young Springsteen sparks in 'Born to Run' reissue
By Jonathan Cohen
NEW YORK (Billboard) - When Bruce Springsteen handed over a wealth of unlabeled concert film footage from a 1975 show at London's Hammersmith Odeon to editor Thom Zimny in 2004, neither party knew for sure what was inside.
But after a year of painstaking restoration, the full show will be seen for the first time on Columbia's 30th anniversary edition of Springsteen's classic album "Born To Run," due November 15.
"Slowly but surely, we pieced it together song by song," Zimny said of the footage during a screening in New York Wednesday. Zimny spent months synching up silent film from a four-camera shoot with the 24-track audiotapes from the concert, the E Street Band's first on English soil.
"This was a young band that just finished a new album," Zimny said. "The energy comes across in the film. 'Born To Run' is not an anthem yet -- it's in the middle of the set." Indeed, dressed in colorful suits and hats, Springsteen and company are beyond exuberant on stage, storming through favorites like "Rosalita," "It's Hard To Be a Saint in the City" and "She's the One."
Although footage from several other notable shows during this era (including a stint at New York's Bottom Line) has circulated in bootleg form for years, Zimny says the Hammersmith film "is the best representation of 1975" that exists. The DVD also includes three songs from a 1973 show in Los Angeles, the original film of which was in such bad shape that it required frame-by-frame retouching in Photoshop.
Described by Springsteen as an album intended to capture the feeling of "one endless summer night," "Born To Run" also features a revealing documentary about its genesis, including newly shot footage of Springsteen explaining the songs at the piano interspersed with recollections from current and former E Street Band members.
"The whole score is made up of outtakes and demos," Zimny said. "Even the DVD menus have outtakes of them talking in the studio."
Present-day Springsteen is shown listening in wonder to the basic instrumental track that was recorded of "Born To Run," as well as other aborted versions of the song that included a string section and multi-tracked backing vocals.
Noting that the band spent six months hemming and hawing over a final take of the tune, guitarist Steven Van Zandt observes with a laugh, "A song should take three hours, not six months!"
Young Springsteen sparks in 'Born to Run' reissue
By Jonathan Cohen
NEW YORK (Billboard) - When Bruce Springsteen handed over a wealth of unlabeled concert film footage from a 1975 show at London's Hammersmith Odeon to editor Thom Zimny in 2004, neither party knew for sure what was inside.
But after a year of painstaking restoration, the full show will be seen for the first time on Columbia's 30th anniversary edition of Springsteen's classic album "Born To Run," due November 15.
"Slowly but surely, we pieced it together song by song," Zimny said of the footage during a screening in New York Wednesday. Zimny spent months synching up silent film from a four-camera shoot with the 24-track audiotapes from the concert, the E Street Band's first on English soil.
"This was a young band that just finished a new album," Zimny said. "The energy comes across in the film. 'Born To Run' is not an anthem yet -- it's in the middle of the set." Indeed, dressed in colorful suits and hats, Springsteen and company are beyond exuberant on stage, storming through favorites like "Rosalita," "It's Hard To Be a Saint in the City" and "She's the One."
Although footage from several other notable shows during this era (including a stint at New York's Bottom Line) has circulated in bootleg form for years, Zimny says the Hammersmith film "is the best representation of 1975" that exists. The DVD also includes three songs from a 1973 show in Los Angeles, the original film of which was in such bad shape that it required frame-by-frame retouching in Photoshop.
Described by Springsteen as an album intended to capture the feeling of "one endless summer night," "Born To Run" also features a revealing documentary about its genesis, including newly shot footage of Springsteen explaining the songs at the piano interspersed with recollections from current and former E Street Band members.
"The whole score is made up of outtakes and demos," Zimny said. "Even the DVD menus have outtakes of them talking in the studio."
Present-day Springsteen is shown listening in wonder to the basic instrumental track that was recorded of "Born To Run," as well as other aborted versions of the song that included a string section and multi-tracked backing vocals.
Noting that the band spent six months hemming and hawing over a final take of the tune, guitarist Steven Van Zandt observes with a laugh, "A song should take three hours, not six months!"
From The Orlando Sentinel:
Parents take another hit in the culture wars
By Kathleen Parker
November 6, 2005
Parents increasingly at war against a culture they find aggressively sexualized just lost another battle. This time against the local school board.
In a recent ruling, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (that be the Left Coast) determined that parents do not have a fundamental right to control when, where and how their children are taught about sex.
Rather the state -- in its far greater wisdom about what's right and wrong -- has ultimate power over your kids.
This is not a new battle, of course. Parents and school boards have argued for years about sex education. But this decision is especially offensive because the children involved are so young.
The ruling stems from a case filed by a group of Palmdale, Calif., parents whose elementary school children were given a questionnaire of dubious content. In their complaint, the parents said they would not have allowed their children to participate in the survey had they known of the sexual nature of some of the questions.
Kids ages 7 through 10 were asked, for example, to rate the following activities according to how often they experienced the thought or emotion:
"Touching my private parts too much."
"Thinking about having sex."
"Thinking about touching other people's private parts."
"Thinking about sex when I don't want to."
"Washing myself because I feel dirty on the inside."
"Not trusting people because they might want sex."
"Getting scared or upset when I think about sex."
"Having sex feelings in my body."
"Can't stop thinking about sex."
"Getting upset when people talk about sex."
Obviously, not every 7-year-old is ready to contemplate those kinds of questions. If you're a parent, there's no contest as to who should determine when such subjects are raised.
Parents should.
Not so fast, and not according to the 9th Circuit.
The court made clear that it was not passing judgment on the appropriateness of the questions themselves, but only on the constitutional questions raised in the case. Herewith, plaintiff's evidence as to why the law is, indeed, an ass and why what is "legal" is not always right.
Chief among the parents' arguments was that they were deprived of their fundamental right to "control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs."
Sounds reasonable to any attentive parent. Who else should decide when a child learns about something so intimately bound to moral values? Apparently, the state should.
Even though the Supreme Court has ruled that parents have a constitutional right to make decisions about the care, custody and control of their children, the judges in this case ruled that parents do not have an "exclusive" right.
(Not to worry. Those hot flashes you're feeling are perfectly normal. Anger is an appropriate emotion under the circumstances, even if it's not constitutionally protected.)
In other words, the state can determine what's appropriate for your children based on what the state decides is good for society. Given that we're all concerned about sexual abuse and domestic violence, we should be permitted to ask children questions that might shed light on such problems, right? So goes the thinking.
But as parents know, children are notoriously unreliable little scamps when it comes to answering questions honestly -- especially questions they're not emotionally or intellectually equipped to understand.
The most chilling piece of the ruling was this assertion: "We further hold that a psychological survey is a reasonable state action pursuant to legitimate educational as well as health and welfare interests of the state."
Really. So now the state is in the business of psychoanalysis. Never mind that posing phase-inappropriate questions to children might create psychological complications that didn't exist before the helpful questionnaire was administered.
While legal experts argue about whether the ruling is constitutionally correct, common sense tells us that the superior right of parents to instruct their children about sex is among the most fundamental of parenting concerns.
The idea that the state knows best is not only ludicrous, but also dangerous. Bit by bit, with rulings like this, the state gains greater power over family autonomy and, inevitably, over personal freedom.
As the implicit message sinks in that the state knows best and parents aren't to be trusted, advocates for private schools and voucher programs should have no trouble finding new recruits.
Parents take another hit in the culture wars
By Kathleen Parker
November 6, 2005
Parents increasingly at war against a culture they find aggressively sexualized just lost another battle. This time against the local school board.
In a recent ruling, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (that be the Left Coast) determined that parents do not have a fundamental right to control when, where and how their children are taught about sex.
Rather the state -- in its far greater wisdom about what's right and wrong -- has ultimate power over your kids.
This is not a new battle, of course. Parents and school boards have argued for years about sex education. But this decision is especially offensive because the children involved are so young.
The ruling stems from a case filed by a group of Palmdale, Calif., parents whose elementary school children were given a questionnaire of dubious content. In their complaint, the parents said they would not have allowed their children to participate in the survey had they known of the sexual nature of some of the questions.
Kids ages 7 through 10 were asked, for example, to rate the following activities according to how often they experienced the thought or emotion:
"Touching my private parts too much."
"Thinking about having sex."
"Thinking about touching other people's private parts."
"Thinking about sex when I don't want to."
"Washing myself because I feel dirty on the inside."
"Not trusting people because they might want sex."
"Getting scared or upset when I think about sex."
"Having sex feelings in my body."
"Can't stop thinking about sex."
"Getting upset when people talk about sex."
Obviously, not every 7-year-old is ready to contemplate those kinds of questions. If you're a parent, there's no contest as to who should determine when such subjects are raised.
Parents should.
Not so fast, and not according to the 9th Circuit.
The court made clear that it was not passing judgment on the appropriateness of the questions themselves, but only on the constitutional questions raised in the case. Herewith, plaintiff's evidence as to why the law is, indeed, an ass and why what is "legal" is not always right.
Chief among the parents' arguments was that they were deprived of their fundamental right to "control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs."
Sounds reasonable to any attentive parent. Who else should decide when a child learns about something so intimately bound to moral values? Apparently, the state should.
Even though the Supreme Court has ruled that parents have a constitutional right to make decisions about the care, custody and control of their children, the judges in this case ruled that parents do not have an "exclusive" right.
(Not to worry. Those hot flashes you're feeling are perfectly normal. Anger is an appropriate emotion under the circumstances, even if it's not constitutionally protected.)
In other words, the state can determine what's appropriate for your children based on what the state decides is good for society. Given that we're all concerned about sexual abuse and domestic violence, we should be permitted to ask children questions that might shed light on such problems, right? So goes the thinking.
But as parents know, children are notoriously unreliable little scamps when it comes to answering questions honestly -- especially questions they're not emotionally or intellectually equipped to understand.
The most chilling piece of the ruling was this assertion: "We further hold that a psychological survey is a reasonable state action pursuant to legitimate educational as well as health and welfare interests of the state."
Really. So now the state is in the business of psychoanalysis. Never mind that posing phase-inappropriate questions to children might create psychological complications that didn't exist before the helpful questionnaire was administered.
While legal experts argue about whether the ruling is constitutionally correct, common sense tells us that the superior right of parents to instruct their children about sex is among the most fundamental of parenting concerns.
The idea that the state knows best is not only ludicrous, but also dangerous. Bit by bit, with rulings like this, the state gains greater power over family autonomy and, inevitably, over personal freedom.
As the implicit message sinks in that the state knows best and parents aren't to be trusted, advocates for private schools and voucher programs should have no trouble finding new recruits.
Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands
By Mark Steyn
November 6, 2005
Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's about to go up. ''By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night,'' I wrote in Canada's Western Standard back in February.
Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday's edition of the Guardian reported in London: ''French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest.''
''French youths,'' huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as ''French'': They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive ''Arab street,'' but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.
The notion that Texas neocon arrogance was responsible for frosting up trans-Atlantic relations was always preposterous, even for someone as complacent and blinkered as John Kerry. If you had millions of seething unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city, would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting alongside the Americans? For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.
The French have been here before, of course. Seven-thirty-two. Not 7:32 Paris time, which is when the nightly Citroen-torching begins, but 732 A.D. -- as in one and a third millennia ago. By then, the Muslims had advanced a thousand miles north of Gibraltar to control Spain and southern France up to the banks of the Loire. In October 732, the Moorish general Abd al-Rahman and his Muslim army were not exactly at the gates of Paris, but they were within 200 miles, just south of the great Frankish shrine of St. Martin of Tours. Somewhere on the road between Poitiers and Tours, they met a Frankish force and, unlike other Christian armies in Europe, this one held its ground ''like a wall . . . a firm glacial mass,'' as the Chronicle of Isidore puts it. A week later, Abd al-Rahman was dead, the Muslims were heading south, and the French general, Charles, had earned himself the surname ''Martel'' -- or ''the Hammer.''
Poitiers was the high-water point of the Muslim tide in western Europe. It was an opportunistic raid by the Moors, but if they'd won, they'd have found it hard to resist pushing on to Paris, to the Rhine and beyond. ''Perhaps,'' wrote Edward Gibbon in The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, ''the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.'' There would be no Christian Europe. The Anglo-Celts who settled North America would have been Muslim. Poitiers, said Gibbon, was ''an encounter which would change the history of the whole world.''
Battles are very straightforward: Side A wins, Side B loses. But the French government is way beyond anything so clarifying. Today, a fearless Muslim advance has penetrated far deeper into Europe than Abd al-Rahman. They're in Brussels, where Belgian police officers are advised not to be seen drinking coffee in public during Ramadan, and in Malmo, where Swedish ambulance drivers will not go without police escort. It's way too late to rerun the Battle of Poitiers. In the no-go suburbs, even before these current riots, 9,000 police cars had been stoned by ''French youths'' since the beginning of the year; some three dozen cars are set alight even on a quiet night. ''There's a civil war under way in Clichy-sous-Bois at the moment,'' said Michel Thooris of the gendarmes' trade union Action Police CFTC. ''We can no longer withstand this situation on our own. My colleagues neither have the equipment nor the practical or theoretical training for street fighting.''
What to do? In Paris, while ''youths'' fired on the gendarmerie, burned down a gym and disrupted commuter trains, the French Cabinet split in two, as the ''minister for social cohesion'' (a Cabinet position I hope America never requires) and other colleagues distance themselves from the interior minister, the tough-talking Nicolas Sarkozy who dismissed the rioters as ''scum.'' President Chirac seems to have come down on the side of those who feel the scum's grievances need to be addressed. He called for ''a spirit of dialogue and respect.'' As is the way with the political class, they seem to see the riots as an excellent opportunity to scuttle Sarkozy's presidential ambitions rather than as a call to save the Republic.
A few years back I was criticized for a throwaway observation to the effect that ''I find it easier to be optimistic about the futures of Iraq and Pakistan than, say, Holland or Denmark." But this is why. In defiance of traditional immigration patterns, these young men are less assimilated than their grandparents. French cynics like the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, have spent the last two years scoffing at the Bush Doctrine: Why, everyone knows Islam and democracy are incompatible. If so, that's less a problem for Iraq or Afghanistan than for France and Belgium.
If Chirac isn't exactly Charles Martel, the rioters aren't doing a bad impression of the Muslim armies of 13 centuries ago: They're seizing their opportunities, testing their foe, probing his weak spots. If burning the 'burbs gets you more ''respect'' from Chirac, they'll burn 'em again, and again. In the current issue of City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple concludes a piece on British suicide bombers with this grim summation of the new Europe: ''The sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced by the nightmare of permanent conflict.'' Which sounds an awful lot like a new Dark Ages.
By Mark Steyn
November 6, 2005
Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's about to go up. ''By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night,'' I wrote in Canada's Western Standard back in February.
Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday's edition of the Guardian reported in London: ''French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest.''
''French youths,'' huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as ''French'': They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive ''Arab street,'' but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.
The notion that Texas neocon arrogance was responsible for frosting up trans-Atlantic relations was always preposterous, even for someone as complacent and blinkered as John Kerry. If you had millions of seething unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city, would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting alongside the Americans? For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.
The French have been here before, of course. Seven-thirty-two. Not 7:32 Paris time, which is when the nightly Citroen-torching begins, but 732 A.D. -- as in one and a third millennia ago. By then, the Muslims had advanced a thousand miles north of Gibraltar to control Spain and southern France up to the banks of the Loire. In October 732, the Moorish general Abd al-Rahman and his Muslim army were not exactly at the gates of Paris, but they were within 200 miles, just south of the great Frankish shrine of St. Martin of Tours. Somewhere on the road between Poitiers and Tours, they met a Frankish force and, unlike other Christian armies in Europe, this one held its ground ''like a wall . . . a firm glacial mass,'' as the Chronicle of Isidore puts it. A week later, Abd al-Rahman was dead, the Muslims were heading south, and the French general, Charles, had earned himself the surname ''Martel'' -- or ''the Hammer.''
Poitiers was the high-water point of the Muslim tide in western Europe. It was an opportunistic raid by the Moors, but if they'd won, they'd have found it hard to resist pushing on to Paris, to the Rhine and beyond. ''Perhaps,'' wrote Edward Gibbon in The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, ''the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.'' There would be no Christian Europe. The Anglo-Celts who settled North America would have been Muslim. Poitiers, said Gibbon, was ''an encounter which would change the history of the whole world.''
Battles are very straightforward: Side A wins, Side B loses. But the French government is way beyond anything so clarifying. Today, a fearless Muslim advance has penetrated far deeper into Europe than Abd al-Rahman. They're in Brussels, where Belgian police officers are advised not to be seen drinking coffee in public during Ramadan, and in Malmo, where Swedish ambulance drivers will not go without police escort. It's way too late to rerun the Battle of Poitiers. In the no-go suburbs, even before these current riots, 9,000 police cars had been stoned by ''French youths'' since the beginning of the year; some three dozen cars are set alight even on a quiet night. ''There's a civil war under way in Clichy-sous-Bois at the moment,'' said Michel Thooris of the gendarmes' trade union Action Police CFTC. ''We can no longer withstand this situation on our own. My colleagues neither have the equipment nor the practical or theoretical training for street fighting.''
What to do? In Paris, while ''youths'' fired on the gendarmerie, burned down a gym and disrupted commuter trains, the French Cabinet split in two, as the ''minister for social cohesion'' (a Cabinet position I hope America never requires) and other colleagues distance themselves from the interior minister, the tough-talking Nicolas Sarkozy who dismissed the rioters as ''scum.'' President Chirac seems to have come down on the side of those who feel the scum's grievances need to be addressed. He called for ''a spirit of dialogue and respect.'' As is the way with the political class, they seem to see the riots as an excellent opportunity to scuttle Sarkozy's presidential ambitions rather than as a call to save the Republic.
A few years back I was criticized for a throwaway observation to the effect that ''I find it easier to be optimistic about the futures of Iraq and Pakistan than, say, Holland or Denmark." But this is why. In defiance of traditional immigration patterns, these young men are less assimilated than their grandparents. French cynics like the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, have spent the last two years scoffing at the Bush Doctrine: Why, everyone knows Islam and democracy are incompatible. If so, that's less a problem for Iraq or Afghanistan than for France and Belgium.
If Chirac isn't exactly Charles Martel, the rioters aren't doing a bad impression of the Muslim armies of 13 centuries ago: They're seizing their opportunities, testing their foe, probing his weak spots. If burning the 'burbs gets you more ''respect'' from Chirac, they'll burn 'em again, and again. In the current issue of City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple concludes a piece on British suicide bombers with this grim summation of the new Europe: ''The sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced by the nightmare of permanent conflict.'' Which sounds an awful lot like a new Dark Ages.
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