“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” Emerson
I am immersed in writing another of my concerts/shows in a series I call History in Song. This time the subject is The Life and Hard Time of the Blues. So far I’ve followed the blues from its birth in the dark, desperate holds of slave ships to the early days of the 20th Century.
These ventures are always a labor of love, but they are also very rewarding, not only because I get paid to entertain and educate, but because in the course of putting these shows together, I learn so much.
At the moment, I’ve learned that when it comes to moral hypocrisy and posturing, not much has changed in the last hundred years. Here’s an excerpt from The Life and Hard Times of the Blues that makes that point:
• • •
“In the cities, the blues started hanging-out with horn players and other low-lifes in juke joints and brothels. Before long, the blues fathered its first love-child – jazz.
Jazz had an unsavory reputation among uptight whites, who considered it race music. But it was the perfect accompaniment to the dizzying changes of the 20th Century. It gave joyful voice to the myriad hopes that came with the new millennium, and it expressed a longing for freedom from the moral hypocrisy and stultifying repression of the Victorian Age.
The Victorians did not give up easily, however. Hard as they tried, they weren’t able to outlaw jazz or sex, but they did manage to outlaw booze.
As always, be careful what you wish for. Rather than putting an end to demon alcohol, Prohibition increased demand for it. It also opened the door to organized and disorganized crime and turned most Americans into criminals.
It’s hard to imagine how that amendment ever got passed, until you realize that if the New Victorians get their way, birth control will be outlawed in the US. In that hopefully unlikely event, millions of Americans will again be turned into criminals.”
• • •
Prohibition accomplished the exact opposite of the aims of its supporters, and the proof is here. But statistics and reason will not dissuade the New Victorians from repeating that disaster with their present agenda to outlaw not only abortion, but contraception.
Those who believe themselves morally superior will continue to try to remove the splinter from the eye of the rest of us, no matter how badly their view is obstructed by the log in their own eye.
©2012 Tom Cordle
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Stacey Youdin
Steven J. Gulitti
Ben Sen
Bjorn Philip Beer
Saturn Smith
jmac1949
Salon.com
Comments
My friend's kid goes to a school where the kids are not allowed to keep their phones during class. They turn them into the office. Cool, kids should not be on phones during class. But the school secretary "accidentally" searched this kid's phone and found, horrors! that he had a few pictures of nekkid women sent to him by another kid. To her credit, the mom blew it off. "He's a teenage boy, I'd be worried if he never looked at porn." The family is still figuring out what to do about the school's fishing expedition into the boy's phone, which implicates privacy issues beyond what schools have been allowed to do in the past.
Rated!
The stranglehold is around the wrong necks.
We should keep the nukes and the nudes -- I'm bettin' they come after the nudes before the nukes
I think we can all agree that alcohol causes a lot more problems than any other drug. Problem is that during Prohibition consumption went up. And I guarantee you that if premarital sex was outlawed, there would be a sexual epidemic! In short, repression goes hand in hand with regression -- and often leads to insanity.
Am with you and the mom -- I'd be worried if a teenage boy wasn't interested in porn. As for the voyeurs at the school, I wonder -- when the New Victorians take over, will the principal at that school keep the keys to the chastity belts?
nodding back -- take away a man's -- or woman's -- source of pleasure or escape, and you may find their alternative is even less desirable.
`
Politics.
`
These politicos crawl up the chair-leg-stool - and wish to be some well-know`
`
Hot-Shot.
`
Yoi can know these low-self-esteem politicians need to become chair-man`
`
Stool-Sniffers.
`
R.W. Emerson?
I admit he was?
Less-Gross huh?
They sniff farts?
`
Politicos crave:
`
Flattery/flatulence`
and sniff\Stinkers`
Inner DC/'thinker`
Stinker/sell-outs`
`
The inner cliques`
seek stinky pants`
inner bitch-poop`
`
DC inner lobby`
crew crave lucre`
Oy, ay insecure!
`
Nice critique,
Ah! O, Tom C..
`
They seem ill.
They in grade?
8 or 9? Flunks!
`
speech writer
faxed to read
ay - 6th grade
`
or so-it-seem
`
a poem of the
would be chief
containing 4-`
Oscar Wilde's`
foot-notes too`
`
I agree. Oh. sad`
I wonder why a`
adult is pathetic`
`
as all-get-out, Oy!
I can't listen or I`
barf my pizza pie!
`
I ate that yesterday.
What happened, huh?
No potty training, huh?
`
The creeps need a gig?
Research the `Blues?
Sax horn, the Piano?
Study ornithology?
Oboe -Woody Guthrie?
Folk Singer,ay radical?
Politics. add footnotes.
`
Tom C.
I'd rather hear `bout
your song lyrics, huh
I barf - if I hear news
`
I'm sleepy. This clear?
I've been giggly today.
I'll read R.W.Emerson.
`
I do like his essay ref:.,
`
Politics . . .
`
rate?
Yeah, alright, rate. Although it seems it took about as much effort to write this piece as it did to put up this comment.
R♥
Just for you, I promise my next post will have some of my song lyrics.
Thanks. Living in the boonies as I do, the Internet is a godsend for research. And you're right -- that's a helluva band. Jorma was one of the original members of Jefferson Airplane, tho like a lot of us of that vintage, these days he looks like he was around when Jefferson was -- or at least that Jefferson Airplane must have been a bi-plane.
Thanks for damning with faint praise. Actually, one measure of good writing is that it looks effortless.
Thanks, I'm not sure what culture you're referring to as yours, but that saying was borrowed from the Man of Galilee himself. I always say, if you're gonna steal, steal from the best.
A good writer such as you decicated to the genre is an exciting idea. Good luck.
Yes, history teaches that while technological change is approaching our limits to handle it, cultural change tends to happen at a glacial pace -- if at all. That combination doesn't bode well for the future.
I suppose one reason so many are so disappointed with "the audacity of hope" is that they were hoping for rapid cultural changes. But to be fair, trying to undo three decades of moving backwards -- and with this recalcitrant Congress -- well, it really was too much to hope for.
My next post will be about music, I promise.
Yes, we are too rapidly approaching The Handmaid's Tale, I'm afraid. Conjugal visit -- is that anything like conjugating a verb? In my case, I think I'm stuck in past tense.
Lucky you -- that's quite a list. I've dipped my toe in the water, but nothing like that. Wish you could see the show in August. Better yet, come on along, and I'll put you in the band. And I don't wanna hear any lame excuses about being So Far Away -- my fiddle player has come from Seattle for the last four concerts.
And the splinter in the eye analogy---I wonder if Newt and the other boys in the clown car know where that's from.
The farce be with us
With a name like Jorma you gotta be good -- too bad he's not good enough to break thru and get a grammy -- barf!
God, I hope your right, but I just keep remembering that last time out thisclose to 60 million people voted for a doddering old man and a bimbo just because they had an R next to their name
Has Dr. Lee aged considerably or is it my imagination?
r
I don't know about sex in churches -- those pews can be awfully hard and narrow. Say -- I never thot about it, but all too often those hard and narrow pews are like the minds of the people sitting in them.
It takes a lot to make a record company executive blanch -- unless her last name is Dubois.
The name Hot Tuna was okay, but I think they should have gone with Hot Cross Buns. My favorite group name of all time? Blind Faith -- that says it all about the band "business". At this point in my life, I also like the name Old and in the Way, a sort of newgrass band with Jerry Garcia, Peter Rowan and others.
I agree with your assessment of the Rabid Wrong, tho beyond the obvious idiocy and hypocrisy of believing they have an obligation to the unborn but none to the born, it strikes me as strange that racists wouldn't be encouraging minorities to use birth control and have abortions. It there is an explanation for that logical inconsistency, I suppose it's that the Rabid Wrong hasn't thot this through. If that's the case, it's nothing new, and at least they're consistent in their inconsistency.
I also agree with your assessment of today's protestors, tho I think that's likely to change sooner than a lot of people think. The revolution will really begin when the Teapartians and the Occupiers find common ground -- and there's lots of it, particularly when it comes to economic issues. What Teapartians have been far too slow to figure out is that deficit isn't going away anytime soon, and in the meantime, they have to make up for what the rich don't pay in taxes.
I fear that where the Cracked Tea Pots and Occupiers may find common ground will not be a place where Blacks in large numbers will want to tread. I've seen some Liberals, Snoop Dogg, and some young college age Blacks saying they like his ideas. I dare say they are actually saying we can overlook those racist new letters, the fact that he speaks at John Birch functions, and there's a website dedicated to his top 10 most racists supporters. I've had people argue that oh those guys are third rate or the Southern Poverty Law Center calls everybody racist. One thing the Southern Poverty Law Center has said is that hate crimes are up. I wrote about one as you know. I'm about to write about another, and today I see the editors decided that the story of a swastika on a public billboard rated a pick. And in doing that they actually proved a point I made in one of my post, which was had it been anyone else people would flock to the post, and they did. Imagine that. All that to say that when the revolution comes my suggestion to my community would be sit it out, because I doubt we'll be fighting for ourselves, and we need all the strength we can muster for the fight afterwards.
I assume your referring to Small Paul, and I agree that he is not the kindly, doddering slightly kooky ol' grampa some of his supporters imagine. I've said it before, I'll say it again, he reminds me of Lewis Farrakhan and the Unabomber, that is to say, I can agree with his assessment of the problem, but his solutions are sheer lunacy.
As for the revolution, it it comes, I don't believe sitting it out is advisable. Hell, I doubt it would even be possible!
In the words of the immortal Cal Thomas, "if only their parents had practiced birth control"
Well, you could make the trip across the Big Water and taste those fruits live and in concert. Now that I've got the smartass out of my system, the truth is it's difficult enough -- if not impossible -- to compress 500 years or so of history into a 90 minute show, but I do try. To give somebody a real flavor of that in 3-5 minutes -- well, let's just say I'm not that good.
That only 10% favored Prohibition comes as no surprise to me -- change almost always happens thru the efforts of a dedicated minority. I used to sell Herman Miller office systems (in a previous life), and we were told that less than 10% of any population were what they called Change Agents. If you wanted anything done, you had always to convince those people first.
Most historians agree that only a minority of colonists favored revolution back in the day. Some give the estimate as a third in favor, a third loyalist, and a third didn't give a shit one way or the other. Sounds like not much has changed since.
When A law makes a mockery of reality, THE law itself tends to lose its moral authority. One of the tragic consequences of making criminals of the masses is that it legitimizes criminality. That organized crime flourished under Prohibition was no surprise.
We saw the same thing with marijuana use in the 60's and 70's, and god knows we will see more of the same if these fools get their way with birth control -- and the same goes if they recriminalize abortion. What is truly idiotic is that outlawing birth control is guaranteed to increase abortions.
Sorry (sort of) to say it, but these people are simply out of their minds.
You know, I might just do that one day. Gotta save some money first, though.
In the meantime, here's the plan: Once Tom Cordle's 90 minute History of The Blues Tour is on, you record a show and sell it on iTunes. Fame and fortune will surely follow.
Or not. But seriously: It sounds like a great project. Good luck with it! And remember to give us some updates on your progress.
Thanks for the encouragement. I'm actually ahead of schedule; my almost nearly possibly final draft is complete. Problem is it includes 18 songs, including several originals. At roughly 5 minutes per song that's 90 minutes right there -- and that leaves no room for history lessons, wry commentary on how history repeats itself (as above with Prohibition and birth control) and some witty repartee with the audience. Thank god it's a labor of love -- nobody could pay me to work this hard ;-).
I have never known a Mormon OR a Baptist or a Catholic anxious to prohibit VIA LAW and/or taxes my use of things that will harm me. There are four exceptions to this statement: abortion (which arguably affects more than one person), gambling, drug use, and same-sex marriage. Other than those, I think most of the "Victorianism" comes from the left.
Thanks for your post.
Your point is taken, but my view of history is different than yours. Those of us around in the Sixties fought for women's rights and other civil rights, including voting rights for minorities. Do you really think it was Liberals who kept women from voting until the Twenties? And do you really think if was Liberals who kept blacks from voting, especially in the South, until the Sixties? And do you really think its Liberals who are trying every way they can to keep them from voting now? And please don't waste my time with nonsense about voter fraud -- we're grown-ups here.
It's a fact that the Republican Party has based its political strategy on the vile Southern Strategy since the the early Sixties, and that it continues to follow that strategy. That's why I say the current Republican Party is the reincarnation of the American Independent Party. I trust you're aware of this -- if not, look up the so-called deathbed confession of former RNC chairman Lee Atwater.
As for the Religious Right, I prefer to call them what they are -- the Religious Wrong. The Prosperity Gospel is so far removed from the teachings of Jesus as to be utter heresy. I realize that heresy is mostly a functional of fundamentalist Protestants, but the Catholic Church has plenty of sins of its own to answer for, the least of which is the Pope's $800 velvet slippers, and the worst of which is to come down on Liberation Theology which IS the very essence of Jesus' teaching.
Yes, I'm afraid that Old Time Religion has become Big Time Religion -- and everyone wise man from Jesus to Jefferson has warned about the dire consequences when the Church gets control over the State.