Tag: Vietnam

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Love It or Leave It: Again.

There’s this memorable lyric from Bob Dylan on his classic album Blonde on Blonde. Maybe I remember it so well because it came from his song, “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again,” which was recorded in Nashville in 1966. It goes:

“And I sit here so patiently/

Waiting to find out what price/

You have to pay to get out of/

Going through all these things twice.”

I have lived through LBJ, George Wallace, Richard Nixon, and the Vietnam era. I’ve seen the golden idol with the feet of clay — Ronald Reagan — say that “Government is the problem,” which was arguably the beginning of all our problems. I’ve seen the hapless Poppy Bush, the lascivious Bill Clinton, and the war-mongering Dick Cheney with his malleable puppet, George Bush “The Lesser.” But never in my life would I have expected to relive this “love it or leave it” bullshit. I thought we’d put that jingoistic, racist rubbish to bed along with “go back where you came from.” But then, I also believed in the evolution of man, a theory sorely tested by the current squatter in the White House.

The old “love it or leave it” slogan was the conservative redneck’s response to the anti-war protesters of the late 1960s. The “go back where you came from” probably dates from the post-Reconstruction era and into the Jim Crow South, when cracker assholes forgot that black people were brought here as slaves and had no place from which to go back.

I have heard these remarks — aimed at African Americans, hippies, feminists, and others — dripping from ignorant cretins all my life. Those who proclaimed it or repeated it were on the wrong side of history then and are on the wrong side of history now. And it will be remembered long after this bulbous, bilious aberration of a human being has been driven from his hideous presidency.

This latest horror began, as per usual, with Trump’s barely literate Twitter feed. After being provoked by a segment on Fox & Friends about the four freshman Democrats known as the Squad, the Ignoramus in Chief went off on an angry and racist Twitter tirade. I’ll reprint it here, but to avoid writing sic after every word, the punctuation and misuse of capitalization are all Trump’s: “So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democratic Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe … now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States … how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

The twits on the Fox & Friends couch laughed when they read the tweet and said that Trump is “very comedic” but he’s “making an important point.” Yeah, Trump’s a regular laugh-riot. He has since learned, or maybe not, that the congresswomen in question were all born in the United States except for Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who came to this country from war-ravaged Somalia and became a naturalized citizen at age 17. The common denominator is that these are four women of color and two are Muslims, an accelerant to Trump’s racist ideology. I agree with President Caligula on one point: They need to fix the totally broken and crime-infested places, which perfectly describes Trump’s White House, his corrupt cabinet, and his extended family of shameless grifters.

The “love it or leave it” idiocy emerged during one of Trump’s Nazi rallies in Greenville, North Carolina. Broadening his message to include anyone who disagrees with him, Trump echoed Richard Nixon, and after he verbally assaulted Representative Omar by name, the crowd of “Good Germans” went wild, breaking into a chant of “Send her back!” After hearing from some of his party members, who informed him that this mantra wasn’t quite as acceptable as “Lock her up,” Trump disavowed the chant, then changed directions, calling his enraged, aggrieved audience of red-hat-wearing Caucasians “great patriots.”

Even some members of the misnamed “Freedom Caucus” thought he went too far. Now that Trump’s annoying repetition of “No Collusion! No Obstruction!” has been disproven by the halting, monosyllabic testimony of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the bottomless well of prideful stupidity that occupies the Oval Office has ramped up his free-range racism to stoke the animosity and fear of his fellow travelers. Trump’s latest target for his vile abuse is another African-American congressman, Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland. 

After Cummings’ criticism of the inhumane treatment of immigrants at the border, Trump lashed out on another Twitter bender. Again, the bad grammar is Trump’s: “Rep. Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting & screaming … about conditions at the Southern Border…The Border is clean, efficient and well run … Cumming [sic] District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess … No human would ever want to live there.” Followed by: “The Democrats always play the Race Card, when … they have done so little for our Nation’s great African American people.”

Then Trump called Cummings, the son of a South Carolina sharecropper, “a racist.” A psychologist would refer to this sort of noxious ranting as “projection.” 

The Baltimore Sun editorial board responded in an editorial titled “Better to have a few rats than to be one.” It referred to Trump’s tweets as “undiluted racism and hate.” If there were any question before, there’s no doubt now that a very sick man is running the government, along with his lapdog “Moscow” Mitch McConnell and his legion of ass-kissers. Robert Mueller claimed the Office of Legal Council’s (OLC) opinion forbade him from indicting a sitting president. But the OLC’s opinions are just suggestions. As stated in their 1973 decision, the OLC reserves the right to “reconsider and modify or disavow that determination.” These are very perilous times. If no man is supposed to be above the law in this land, it’s time to disavow that archaic decision and show the proper justice to Trump that he so richly deserves.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

“All the Way” Comes Up Short at Playhouse on the Square

All the Way isn’t nearly as straightforward as it seems. It’s not a piece of naturalistic theater you can just stage. It’s not a musical either, but with grand themes, leitmotifs  of venality and an orchestra-sized cast, this overstuffed sausage-grinder about Lyndon Johnson’s first 11-months in the White House needs to be conducted like a tense modern symphony full of explosive tragedy and punctuated by brassy squawks, and soaring metaphoric strings. If careful attention isn’t paid to the show’s desperate melodies, and ever-shifting time signatures All the Way turns bloodless, like Disney World’s Hall of Presidents without the Morgan Freeman gravitas. Playhouse on the Square has transformed the show into a fashion parade of gorgeous vintage suits, and unconvincing wigs on a pink (marbled?) set that looks for all the world like it was wrapped in prosciutto. It’s a remarkable showcase of extraordinary talent grinding its wheels in a low-stakes historical pageant. When actors as sharp as Delvyn Brown and George Dudley can’t make historically large characters like Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson interesting, there’s something powerfully wrong with the mix.

I’m a fan of director Stephen Hancock, but have noted occasions where concept muddled clarity. The opposite is true this time around. Kennedy’s assassination can’t be treated like melancholy Camelot nostalgia. All the Way may open with a funeral march, but it needs to be bathed in horror and bubbling over with chaos that threatens to grow worse as the play progresses. The Gulf of Tonkin incident isn’t an aside, it’s an explosion. Every provision cut from the 1964 Civil Rights bill in order to get some version of the legislation passed before the election has to bleed real blood and stink of the strangest fruit.

George Dudley is a pleasure to watch. He’s whip-smart, and even when he’s badly used the man’s a damn powerhouse. But everything is different this time around. He’s not surefooted like he usually is. Like so many of the actors in All the Way, Dudley seems unfocused, and not entirely in control of his lines. Still, you can’t act height and vertical advantages aside, he’s still the only actor in Memphis I can imagine capturing Johnson’s crude and conflicted brand of Texas idealism. And when he’s on, he’s on fire.

‘All the Way’ Comes Up Short at Playhouse on the Square

For all of its shortcomings, All the Way is something of a landmark. I can’t recall when I’ve seen such a gifted assemblage of swinging D plopped down on a single stage. With a handful of exceptions, every noteworthy Memphis actor has been called on to do his patriotic duty, and most have answered with gusto. Curtis C. Jackson and John Maness stand out as NAACP leader Roy Wilkins and FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. Greg Boller relishes his time inside the skin of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. Michael Detroit makes a sympathetic, if never entirely convincing, Hubert Humphrey and John Hemphill, Sam Weakly, and John Moore all do some fine character work. The women of the 60’are finely represented by Claire Kolheim, Irene Crist and Kim Sanders, but they are outnumbered, outgunned, out shouted, and pushed to the edge of the picture. It’s an historically appropriate dynamic, of course, but it could stand crisper translation to the stage.

Regretfully, Robert Schenkkan’s script requires more than quality acting.

All the Way is a fourth wall breaker. At the end of the show Dudley asks the audience if anybody was made to feel uncomfortable about by the things they witnessed as ideation becomes legislation, slaw, then law. He asks if we wanted to hide our faces or look away. That moment should be the key to reverse engineering an American “teaching play” that lists ever so slightly toward German Lehrstücke. It should make us want to look away. Not because of the sad black and white photographs projected on enormous screens behind the actors, but because when politicians “make the sausage” people are the meat in the grinder.

And it’s always the same people in the grinder.

There’s a frequently repeated line in All the Way about how Johnson is the most, “sympathetic president since Lincoln [to African Americans].” It’s ordinary sloganeering, of course, and an uncomfortable truth when considered from even a relatively short distance. It’s also a helpful line for considering how easily mimesis fails this kind of play where dynamic interpretation makes the difference between horrorshow and hagiography.

Face full of Johnson. Michael Detroit and George Dudley in All the Way at Playhouse on the Square.

All the Way isn’t bad, it’s worse than that. It’s boring. It’s a play that should make us see that soldiers are blown up in boardrooms not on battlefields, and how even progressive politics can play out like a slow motion lynching. It should make us flinch and look away often. But it never does.

It’s an election year, of course — in case anybody out there in Flyer-land hasn’t noticed. I suspect there’s a certain crowd caught up in the pageantry who are in the perfect mood for a three-hour reminder of the “good old” “bad old” days when even an oil-funded politician as crude and bullying as Donald Trump could dream of a “more perfect union” and get elected. Once, anyway.

Even political junkies and policy wonks may wish to spend cocktail hour chugging coffee. 

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: Why Are We Still in Vietnam…er, Iraq?!

Let’s proceed from the assumption that there are winners
and losers in wars (although a case can certainly be made that wars create
nothing but losers).

Let’s further proceed from the assumption that every war is
fought for a purpose. And, let’s further proceed from the assumption (and,
sadly, it’s a big one) that the purpose of fighting a war is not to enrich the
people who inevitably get rich from fighting wars (in the case of Iraq, the
Blackwaters, Halliburtons, General Dynamics and Exxon Mobils of the world).
For a somewhat more contrarian thesis, read my article entitled

“Support the Troops?”

Given these assumptions, it is reasonable to assess the
success of a war by measuring it against its stated objectives. In Iraq, the
objective (supposedly) is not only to provide security and a stable, democratic
government in Iraq, but to prevail in what this administration likes to call the
“war on terror.”

And, since Iraq has been characterized by this administration
as the “central front” in that war, and since one of the stated purposes of
fighting on that “central front” is to “fight them over there so we don’t have
to fight them over here,” it is certainly valid to measure the success of all
those purposes and objectives against the results that have been achieved. That
measurement, and those standards, are sometimes referred to as “metrics.”

There is little question that the war in Iraq has, at least
thus far, failed to achieve the objectives the administration has set out for
it. Remember that, as a condition for implementing the “surge,” there were
“benchmarks” that were supposed to be achieved. Well, in September, the General
Accountability Office issued

its report saying that the majority of the benchmarks had not been achieved.

And it is generally acknowledged that the overarching objective of the war in
Iraq, namely political reconciliation, hasn’t been achieved, and, based on
statements made recently by Iraqi officials, isn’t likely to be achieved,

ever.

But there are other “metrics” by which the success of “war
on terror” may be measured. One of the standards by which that success must be
measured is the answer to the following question: is the U.S. being made safer
from terrorist attack by fighting in Iraq. If the “fight them there…fight them
here” slogan is to have any meaning, surely this is the first question that must
be answered.

Astonishingly, not even the folks who are in charge of
fighting the war, either on the battle front or on the intelligence front, can
answer that question. Who can forget General Petraeus’ startling admission,
during his

recent testimony before Congress, that he didn’t know whether the war was
making us safer.

Here is the man who is running this war, who is watching the
troops under his command be killed and maimed on a daily basis, and he can’t
even tell us whether their sacrifice is worth it. This is un-freaking
believable! Perhaps even more revealing was the recent interview conducted by
NBC’s Iraq correspondent, Richard Engel, with

the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Admiral Scott Redd.

This newly created agency is supposed to be, according to its mission statement,
leading the fight to “combat the terrorist threat to the U.S. and its interests”
When asked directly by Engel, “are we safer today,” and after a long,
uncomfortable pause (not unlike the one Petraeus exhibited in response to the
same question),

Redd replied: “tactically, probably not; strategically, we’ll wait and
see.”

What the hell does that mean? Wait for what, 3,800 more
American combat deaths? See what, al Quaeda continue to

use the war as a recruiting tool? Well, Admiral Redd won’t have to wait or
get to see anything (at least not at the NCTC): two days after he gave that
interview, he abruptly

announced his resignation from the NCTC.

Just another example of where
speaking truth to power gets you with this administration.

A

recent report issued by the American Security Project answers, with a resounding “no,” the question of whether we’re winning the war on terror. ASP is a
self-described “non-profit, bi-partisan public policy research and education
initiative dedicated to fostering knowledge and understanding of a range of
national security and foreign policy issues” (read: think tank) whose board of
directors includes Gary Hart (the former Senator), John Kerry (the former
presidential candidate), George Mitchell (also a former Senator) and General
Anthony Zinni (the former commander of CENTCOM, and long-time critic of the war
in Iraq).

It answers the question in cold, statistical fashion. Using ten
objective criteria for determining the results of the “war on terror,” the
report concludes, not surprisingly, that we are losing that war. From a
“massive and dramatic increase in Islamist terrorism since 2003” to “Al Qaeda’s
[expansion of] its reach globally,” to the increasing perception in the Muslim
world of the U.S. as an “aggressive, hostile and destabilizing force,” the
report paints a dismal picture of the effect of the war in Iraq on the “war on
terror.”

The report’s quantification of terrorist attacks is
startling. It finds that the number of such attacks, worldwide, has increased
exponentially. It does not suggest that just because the U.S. hasn’t been
attacked it is therefore safer, and therefore doesn’t need to worry about
terrorism elsewhere in the world, because those aren’t “American interests,” a
position espoused, either ignorantly or dishonestly (but most revealingly), by
the Vice President’s wife in a recent
interview with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.”

As the NCTC’s mission
statement acknowledges, even our intelligence community recognizes that our
“interests” go beyond our borders. And, of course, there is now the depressing
fact that the war in Iraq has resulted in the death of
more Americans than were killed on September 11th.

The mantra of the Vietnam era, equally applicable to the
current era, was most poignantly revealed in a song by the group known as
Country Joe and the Fish. The chorus of their song “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To
Die” included the question “And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting
for…” My question is: Joe, where are you now that we need you?

Categories
Music Music Features

Blues Travelers

As summer vacation season arrives, it’s hard not to immediately dread the rigors of travel — security-check congestion, speed traps, and, of course, escalating gas prices. Well, imagine that you’re a group of four dudes who look like members of the Charlie Manson Appreciation Society and you’ve been on tour since October, getting hassled along the way. Oh, and the name of your band is VietNam, which may or may not be an incendiary political statement. “Crossing the Canadian border was the worst,” says lead vocalist and guitarist Michael Gerner. “We got strip-searched and quarantined, and then they brought out this CSI-looking equipment to check the van.”

Gerner seems pretty laid-back about the grueling, extended tour. “Maybe it’s because I’m a military brat,” he says, “but I’m very comfortable being on the road.”

In fact, growing up in a military family also served to be one of the inspirations for the band’s name. Both Gerner and lead guitarist Joshua Grubb have parents who served in the Vietnam War. Gerner and Grubb, the core members of the group, met in Austin in the late 1990s when Gerner was at the University of Texas and Grubb was kind of hanging out. After moving to Philadelphia and back to Austin, the pair finally ended up in Brooklyn in 1998. They played under a couple of names before deciding on “VietNam.” Gerner recalls, “Our favorite band is Suicide, and, like them, we wanted a one-word name that packed a punch and had some significance.”

The other members, bassist Ivan Berko and drummer Michael Foss, helped the band arrive at a signature sound — druggy, blues boogie in the tradition of the Velvet Underground and Royal Trux. In 2004, they released an EP called The Concrete’s Always Grayer on the Other Side of the Street on Vice Records. The relationship between VietNam and Vice ended badly, and the band is tired of talking about it. The Vice entertainment conglomerate, which includes a magazine and a record label, has always represented everything hipper-than-thou. A backlash was inevitable. “I think it’s died down by now, though,” says Gerner.

A particularly mean-spirited review of VietNam’s self-titled debut on Kemado Records in The Village Voice earlier this year seems to indicate that at least a little of that backlash may still be there. In the review, critic Garrett Kamps writes, “These guys think they’re ripping off Derek & the Dominoes, but they’re actually jacking the Black Crowes” and “Throughout, guitarist Josh Grubb slathers on the reverb the way shitty cooks use too much butter, sounding more like Eric Johnson than Eric Clapton.” Ouch. Gerner refuses to get all riled up about the negative press, saying good-naturedly about the review, “That’s cool. I think we sound more like the Rolling Stones, though.”

The self-titled record owes its existence to an unlikely source of funds: Mickey Madden. That’s right, the bassist from Maroon 5, the nice-looking Hall & Oates revivalists who are currently sitting pretty on top of the Billboard charts.

“Josh met him through a mutual friend,” Gerner says. “Mickey was wearing a Moss Icon T-shirt, and they started talking.” Madden came to see VietNam, became a fan, and ultimately their primary patron. He paid for them to fly out to Los Angeles and record at the legendary Sound City and Sound Factory studios with vintage, analog equipment. He helped get vocal contributions from indie chanteuse Jenny Lewis and production help from “Farmer Dave” Scher and Rick Rubin’s protégé Jason Lader. Of the album and Madden’s help, Gerner says, “It definitely wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t come along.”

VietNam also has some unlikely connections to Memphis. When Rolling Stone asked Gerner to name some of his favorite records and influences, he listed Three Six Mafia’s Most Known Unknown. “I love their cadence and lyrics and their whole grass-roots origin,” he says. Another local tie-in is their cover of “The Dark End of the Street,” the classic soul song written by Dan Penn and Chips Moman in a Memphis hotel room and recorded by everyone from Elvis Costello to Dolly Parton.

“When we first started playing it live,” Gerner recalls, “people would tell us that they liked our Gram Parsons song. I told them I hadn’t even heard his version. I knew it from a Percy Sledge cassette that was one of four tapes that we had in the kitchen at a barbecue restaurant I used to work at back in Austin.”