stan sinberg's Open Salon Blog

Where Does Al Green Have To Go?

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:04:24 -0400

THE REVEREND AL GREEN’S “GOT TO GO”

When Al Green performed at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2006, it turned out to be a pretty special event. Storms drenched the morning, and the rains stopped and the skies cleared shortly before Green took the stage, so one could almost believe that the sun shone on the Reverend’s behalf. Because of the downpour, the crowd was more intimate, and at the end, Green threw flowers out to the crowd. Lots of flowers, I recall.

So why did his performance this Sunday leave a bad taste in my mouth?

To begin with he was scheduled from 5:40PM – 7PM, and he left the stage at 6:40, exactly an hour later, probably down to the second. But what really rankled were his final three words as he exited. As “Love and Happiness” was winding down, Green shouted, “I gotta go.”

Clearly this was not true.

He was contracted for 20 more minutes, so Green was in no danger whatsoever of going “over.” If anything, some Jazz Fest bookkeeper should’ve pointed to his watch and chided him, “No, you gotta stay.”

Unless where he “hadda go” was the bathroom, but he wasn’t singing like a man holding anything back, or in, and anyway, if that was the case, he could’ve returned after doing his business.

Nope. The Reverend lied. He said “I gotta go” and he didn’t.

Green doesn’t speak much during his time onstage. After a song on lost love, he commented “I like stuff like that,” but it’s very sparse. So when he does say something, it carries a little weight.

This hastened “I gotta go” claptrap bristled more because a few hundred yards away, Bruce Springsteen was banging out a 2 ½ hour set, and he was going full-blast from the get-go, not even pausing between songs for the first 40 minutes or so. Springsteen sings about the human spirit and even squeezes in the occasional spiritual, but he’s never claimed to be religious, and certainly not a reverend. But of the two, Springsteen’s performance was far more righteous.

And by the way: for those of us who tried to catch both performers, whose times over-lapped, and timed it so we’d watch half of Bruce and an hour of Al, we really got sand-bagged.

After Green’s departure, I recalled that in 2006 Green also left the stage way before scheduled, but in that case his band kept on jamming, for 5, 10, 15 minutes. At first the audience expected that Green was going to come back for an encore. After a few minutes we thought, OK, he’s resting, maybe doing a costume change. But it gradually dawned on us that Green was gone and the band was playing out the contract. Considering the Reverend had us in a near-frenzy when he walked off the stage, it was quite anti-climactic. Eventually the audience just drifted away.

I’m guessing someone told Green “Don’t do that again.”

So he didn’t.

This time when he walked off, the band finished a minute later.

And that was it. No curtain call, certainly no encore.

And now, I gotta go. No. Really. I’m out of space.

The George Zimmerman Story is Over

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:04:35 -0400

As they say at crime scenes, “Move along. Nothing to see here.”

Now that George Zimmerman has finally been arrested in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, that is.

The story evoked world-wide outrage and became a media sensation because of the seeming travesty of justice of a self-styled vigilante walking away after gunning down an unarmed teenager for the apparent crime of “walking while black,” with the extenuating circumstance, according to Geraldo Rivera of, “being with hoodie.”

It seemed blatantly obvious that this was a flagrant misapplication of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, possibly containing more than a hint of racial bias.

Hence the outrage and protests and 24/7 media coverage. And it worked. A new investigation was opened and Zimmerman was charged, not with the lesser charge of manslaughter, but second-degree murder. Now he’ll go on trial and a jury of his peers will decide whether or not he’s guilty.

So aside from several residual matters, such as determining whether or not the Sanford police department’s investigation was criminally inept, and taking a hard look at the “SYG” law, the media can turn its attention elsewhere, and let the case proceed as millions of others do.

I kid, of course. That is NOT going to happen. As the Daily Show has already predicted, we can now “look forward” to months of frenzied pundit speculation about the verdict, not to mention hordes of reporters breathlessly tweeting and blogging about on the daily goings-on inside the courthouse once the trial begins.

But to what end? If the Sanford police department had done its job properly and arrested Zimmerman at the scene, we likely would never have heard of Trayvon Martin. Or it would have been a one-day story. Black teenager getting shot is not normally stop-the-presses news.

After all, even Martin’s parents have said that all they wanted was an arrest in the case. No one (except maybe Spike Lee and others who posted – or thought they were posting – Zimmerman’s address online) was calling for Zimmerman to be summarily punished. The issue was Trayvon Martin having his death be accounted for in the justice system. Mission accomplished.

So from now on, the tail will be wagging the dog. By not letting go of the story, and now focusing on the outcome, the media can only inflame the situation. By the time Zimmerman is ultimately convicted or exonerated, it will have morphed into another “O.J.” case, a Rorschach test on race and the criminal justice system, its original reason for lodging itself in the public’s consciousness all but forgotten.

But, as numerous commentators have said, only two people really know what happened that night, and one of them is dead. The trial might reveal a side of the story we haven’t heard yet. Or the Sanford police department’s not testing Zimmerman for gun powder residue or drugs and letting him keep his weapon might’ve compromised the evidence so much that a conviction is impossible. But we’re miles from that point yet.

For now, the egregious injustice has been righted, the justice system corrected itself and the case is proceeding through the courts.

The story is over. Time to move on.

The George Zimmerman Story is Over

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:04:29 -0400

As they say at crime scenes, “Move along. Nothing to see here.”

Now that George Zimmerman has finally been arrested in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, that is.

It seemed blatantly obvious that this was a flagrant misapplication of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, possibly containing more than a hint of racial bias.

For now, the egregious injustice has been righted, the justice system corrected itself and the case is proceeding through the courts.

The story is over. Time to move on.

The Rapture Predictors Got One Thing Right

Sun, 22 May 2011 11:05:58 -0400

The “Rapture” has come and gone – and while the world is still here, the ones who predicted that lives would be destroyed on May 21 weren’t totally wrong.

Ironically, though, it was their own.

Starting with Robert Fitzpatrick, the retired MTA worker who spent $140,000 of his own money on an ad campaign plastering New York City’s bus shelters, billboards and the like on spreading the word of the world’s imminent demise. Presumably this was close to his life’s savings – if you’re convinced the world is ending, there’s not much incentive to keep dough tucked away for a rainy day. He was so sure there was no tomorrow he kissed his 94 year old mother goodbye in her nursing home, and stood in the middle of Times Square waiting for it to happen, surrounded mostly by deriders who wished he’d disappear, as in, just go away. When 6:01PM came and the apocalypse didn’t, Fitzpatrick just shook his head, and said, “I can’t believe it didn’t happen.”

But other believers – some of them convinced by Fitzpatrick’s book, “The Doomsday Code”, or the crackpot-in-chief televangelist Harold Camping, aHa AFhDFASDAFJKLJDFSalso wrecked their lives in anticipation of the Big Day. Because if it’s one thing dumber than believing the end of the world was nigh on May 21, it would’ve been going to work a week or two prior, when you wouldn’t receive your paycheck till after the world ended. Some undoubtedly gave away their earthly possessions, since they were convinced they were leaving the Earth. Families divided. Children were scared out of their wits.

In Fitzpatrick’s case, perhaps it would’ve been asking too much to ask city officials to look into Fitzpatrick’s financials and cut him off from depleting his bank account on this loony-ness. Still, we demand bartenders cut off people who drink too much, so why not stop someone who’s ripping through his life savings on a crazy ad campaign?

It’s easy to laugh at them, of course, but let’s remember that deluded as Fitzpatrick was, he didn’t blow his life-savings on women and booze (Granted that would’ve left him stranded on Earth with the rest of us heathens), but on trying to save our souls. If the Rapture HAD come Saturday, today the Heavens would be full of disembodied people praising him for saving their souls. As it is, anybody his message converted probably needs some saving of their own right now. Of the monetary kind.

But believing in things that aren’t so isn’t a crime, and who among us has not believed stupid things? I believed some women loved me, who clearly didn’t. There were stocks I deemed “sure things.” Back when I was a lad and was introduced to Amway’s multi-level marketing plan, I boasted that I was going to retire by the time I was 30.

Speaking of misguided beliefs, no matter which religion – if any – turns out to be the “real” one, the vast, vast majority of human beings on this planet are betting their money – and their eternal souls – on the wrong one. Which means most of us are just as deluded as Fitzpatrick, only we don’t know it yet.

The world survived the apocalypse quite nicely. But it doesn’t mean everyone survived intact.

"Sanity" Clause: Why The Rally to Restore Sanity, Won't

Mon, 1 Nov 2010 13:11:19 -0400

It’s widely assumed that Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” was a counter-point to Glenn Beck’s “Rally to Restore Honor” two months earlier, with its attendant crazed government conspiracy theories and paranoia and delusions regarding all things Obama.

But in his desire to produce a “non-political” rally – perhaps tied in with his guise as a newsman – albeit “fake” – Stewart avoided blaming any one side for the acrimonious atmosphere in Washington, casting aspersions on Fox, MSNBC and CNN alike, for ratcheting up “fear” and doomsday rhetoric, and blaming Congress (but not solely Republicans or Democrats) for creating an atmosphere in which most of the times the parties find themselves at a knives-drawn impasse.

So Stewart was left with a rather heartfelt call for all sides to take it down several notches, to learn to work together and listen to each other. It was eminently reasonable, and who, after all, could disagree with such reasonableness?

Well, it turns out, a large portion of the rally-goers, who, if anything, blame Obama for wasting a year trying to placate Republicans on health care (and watering it down in the process) and who, in the end, gave him zero support, and who also criticize him in the same vein regarding the stimulus package, financial reform, global warming, gay rights, etc. In all cases, Obama is seen as someone who hasn’t learned that while it takes two to tango, it only takes one to tangle, and the Republicans have been doggedly determined to entwine and obstruct. In fact, if a definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, it can be argued that Obama’s continuing appeals to bi-partisanship are “insane,” and the only SANE response would’ve been to be more confrontational.

Stewart himself, when he interviewed Obama last week, chided the president, saying that his supporters expected more “audacity.” So even he acknowledges that “reasonableness,” i.e., reaching for compromise, has its short-comings.

As for the Republicans, their “Party of No” strategy seems to be working, if all the predictions for Tuesday’s elections hold up, and they’d be “insane” at this point to change strategies and become more accommodating. Same goes for Fox, who rule the cable news ratings.

The rally could almost be seen as progressives pleading with conservatives, “Look. WE want to be reasonable and work together. But YOU have to start! So, be reasonable, dammit!” The other side, needless to say, disagrees with this assessment, and sees no reason to concur, in any case.

Occasionally, Stewart also slipped into disingenuousness, as when he made the point that “Muslims didn’t attack us,” but rather, “Terrorists who happened to be Muslim” attacked us. While this is certainly true, it’s not a complete coincidence that suicide bombers are almost always Muslims, and it at least warrants making a simple distinction that some extreme factions of Islam believe such actions are a noble calling.

The other theme that Stewart avoided is the ill-informed nature of the electorate. Or, as one sign-carrier at the rally put it, ”Why do those who know the least know it the loudest?” Certainly a call to “sanity” might include a plea to be knowledgeable about what the heck you’re yelling about. Tea-partiers overwhelmingly believe Obama’s raised their taxes, when, in fact, he’s lowered them. They think health care reform is a “government take-over” and “socialism.” As another sign-carrier said, “I AM a socialist and I’m pretty sure Obama isn’t.” Obviously America is about everyone being entitled to their own opinions, but is it really asking too much to demand that if, say, you want to disbelieve in evolution, that you READ something about the evidence for it, or even know what a “theory” is, before angrily carrying placards and mouthing off in front of TV cameras? The same applies to anything one criticizes –whether it’s Islam, Christianity, the war in Afghanistan, and is certainly not limited to any one party.

Lord knows we need sanity restored to our political landscape: unfortunately, making an appeal to both sides to “come together” is not as reasonable as it sounds.