What’s the Matter with Appalachia? Nothing that Joe Biden — and Tyler Childers — Can’t Fix
During the Great Depression, FDR solidified the generational allegiance of working and unemployed families in the South by funding major federal projects there, like the Tennessee Valley Authority. By bringing electricity — and jobs — to the forgotten and hollowed out corners of the South, President Roosevelt won the deep loyalty of poor Southerners, who stuck with the Democratic Party until it sided with the civil rights movement. (Race, it always divides and conquers working Americans.)
Now President Biden has declared he will go beyond his hero by retraining the tens of thousands workers who earn their living in coal mining, fracking and other dirty energy fields and giving them unionized jobs in the green future. Unlike President Roosevelt, he will massively invest in clean energy jobs that will benefit both white AND black workers. “Today is climate day in the White House, which means that today is also jobs day in the White House,” stated Biden yesterday, making it clear that he won’t allow Republicans to also do their divide and conquer act on workers and environmentalists.
This is the best possible way for Democrats to win back the South, especially deep red states like West Virginia, which gave Trump his biggest vote percentage in the last election — nearly 70 percent! Coal-mining Kentucky and Ohio also gave Trump healthy margins in November, and must-win Pennsylvania was closer than it should’ve been because of Trump’s embrace of fracking and other dirty energy.
Who wants to hang onto the old ways in the blasted terrain of coal country? Not the mayors and healthcare workers and labor unions (what’s left of them) — they see every day what a declining economy tied to a 19th century fuel source is doing to the people of Appalachia. Last year, for the first time, renewable energy accounted for more jobs than coal. In the place of a vibrant economy and a proud, unionized labor force, these fossil fuel states now have pills, booze, guns and Trumpism. It’s a deadly brew.
But now President Biden is pointing the way to a new future for Appalachia. And so are young musicians like Tyler Childers. I began listening to the songs of this young son of eastern Kentucky in recent weeks, though he’s been touring and recording for several years. His father was a coal miner and his mother a nurse — somehow a perfect combination for this ravaged region. Listening to his soulful songs, I can’t think of my white brothers and sisters from the South as the enemy. And, in the middle of America’s trauma last year, Childers released a video that made clear how deeply connected white and blacks are in this country — and said loud and clear that the races must no longer be divided and conquered.
I’m a skeptical journalist. But Joe Biden gives me hope. Tyler Childers gives me hope. Watch him perform these songs; watch his video. They’re bleak, they’re heartbroken — but they’re deeply real. And they make me believe in America again.
Tyler Childers on video:
“Keep Your Nose on the Grindstone” (and out of the pills). Damn, this song gives me chills every time I hear it.
“Whitehouse Road” — Self-annihilation as liberation. “It’s a damn good feeling to run these roads”
“Tattoos” Black and blue heart.
Tyler Childers’s unpreachy sermon about America’s racial divide. A remarkable statement by this white son of the South.
The Proud Boy Informer
The Reuters scoop about Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio — revealing that he worked undercover for the FBI and local law enforcement in Miami for years, starting in 2012 — is intriguing. Recent reports have indicated that extremist, right-wing groups are heavily infiltrated by law enforcement agents. Tarrio, who was arrested in Washington DC on gun charges and for burning a Black Lives Matter flag, was conveniently run out of the capital two days before the January 6 insurrection. Is he still under the FBI’s protection?
The liberal media has been trying to lionize the FBI and the U.S. security apparatus for many years — certainly since the post-9/11 patriotic surge and, even more desperately, during the reign of Trump, despite ex-FBI chief Robert Mueller’s deflating investigation of the tyrannical ex-president and other lame “deep state” efforts to bring down Trump.
But independent journalists and civil liberties watchdogs have long regarded the FBI and other security agencies with a jaundiced eye. Considering the FBI’s long, dark track record on infiltrating and subverting militant domestic groups (going back to J. Edgar Hoover’s nefarious COINTELPRO tactics in the 1960s and ‘70s), it would be unsurprising if many leading members of the white nationalist movement were working clandestinely for the bureau.
The infiltration tactics employed by the FBI and police agencies don’t always work. They’ve sometimes created monsters. They’ve often crossed legal lines. It would be good to know more about the true identity of Enrique Tarrio and the other far-right extremists who are calling for war in America. Who’s pulling their strings and what’s their game?
The Cancel Culture Is Coming For You
There’s wailing on the right. Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who brought you Fox News, recently denounced “the awful woke orthodoxy” from his Cotswolds estate in England where he’s sitting out the plague (and getting ready for the next season of “Succession”). Murdoch’s New York Post also featured a front-page fulmination by Senator Josh Hawley headlined “The Muzzling of America,” raging against Simon & Schuster for canceling his book contract after Hawley led the Senate battle to disenfranchise the majority of Americans who voted for Joe Biden and then fist-saluted the violent insurrection while it was in progress at the Capitol. It’s hard to sympathize with Murdoch and Hawley’s cries of censorship, when they have ready access to a sprawling media empire, which includes the dominant TV channel in news and opinion.
It’s also difficult to take up the right’s crusade against the cancel culture when right-wing extremists — like the ones who threatened the lives of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and his family, as well as the lives of other prominent progressive legislators like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — are the biggest “cancelers” of free speech in America. Threatening to murder public figures — and their spouses and children — is the ultimate in cancel culture.
But yes, the left has its own problem with free speech — and with erasing history and public figures in the name of political correctness. Take the San Francisco Board of Education — please! These illustrious public servants have just followed through on their threat, voting to strip the names from 44 public schools in the city. I’m all for changing the names of schools that honor notorious slaveholders, colonialists, conquistadors, imperial generals, butchers of Native Americans, mediocre presidents and other humdrum public servants.
For instance, George Washington, the “father of our nation,” was indeed a notorious slaveowner on his Virginia plantation. Marquis de Lafayette — the young French general who was like a son to Washington — thought he convinced the first American president to free his slaves, but was bitterly disappointed when he did not. “I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America if I could have conceived thereby that I was founding a land of slavery,” Lafayette later declared. So yes, strip Washington’s name off the high school — and rename it maybe after Lafayette… or Frederick Douglass?
But why rename Robert Louis Stevenson Elementary School? Stevenson wrote and spoke out against imperialism and colonialism, especially in his final years when he lived with his wife Fanny on the island of Samoa. Stevenson’s classic “Treasure Island” inveighs against the lust for gold that drove European explorers mad and his “Kidnappped” is a passionate embrace of Scottish independence against bloodthirsty British invaders.
The San Francisco Board of Education was guided (or misguided) by a task force, which supposedly deliberated for months on the question of which schools should be renamed. But the board entertained little public input, and its members could’ve used far more historical sophistication and learning before they made their haphazard decisions.
So yes, the cancel culture — on the right and the left — has spun madly out of control. It’s the job of the level-headed American citizenry — and yes, there’s millions of us out there — to restore reason in the land.
British Costume Drama Escapism
We all have our secret pleasures — especially during the pandemic purgatory. (I won’t call them “guilty” pleasures because I agree with Fran Lebowitz that there should be no such thing). For me, it’s British costume dramas (among other “vices”). But forget the new Masterpiece Theatre offerings — the one about the Victorian female detective, which manages to stuff every cliche into its stillborn drama; and the new “All Creatures Great and Small,” with its snivelly lead character and its obsession with penetrating cows’ bum holes. Instead, I recommend digging back into the streaming treasures of yesteryear — when fortunately I wasn’t yet watching British TV or it was unavailable in the States.
Here are two of my favorite gems from the past:
Bleak House — the 2005 BBC production of the Charles Dickens classic, adapted by the talented writer Andrew Davies, and featuring an all-star cast, including Gillian Anderson, Charles Dance (nobody plays a better villain), Denis Lawson and Anna Maxwell Martin. Dickens brilliantly drew character roles — the conniving and the buffoonish (or combined) — and Burn Gorman as the oily Guppy and Phil Davis as the cartoonish Smallweed nearly steal the 8-episode show.
Cranford — a 2007-2010 BBC series about love and intrigue in an 1840s English village, based on the novellas of Elizabeth Gaskell and featuring another all-star cast, including Judi Dench, Jim Carter and Michelle Dockery (later of “Downton Abbey” fame), Eileen Atkins, Tom Hiddleston, Jonathan Pryce, Imelda Staunton, Michael Gambon etc. Part of the joy of this two-season series is just recognizing actors you’ve long admired strut their time upon the “Cranford” stage.
See also: “Detectorists” and “W1A,” two comedies I’ve hyped before; the remake of “Upstairs, Downstairs” and the historical farm documentary series (the Victorian farm, Edwardian farm and Wartime farm (WW II). Scholars Ruth Goodman, Alex Langlands, and Peter Ginn have become as adorable to me as the performers in beloved drama.
The Vaccine Needs to Go Viral
Everyone I know is getting the same runaround. Even though close friends and I fit the profile (late 60s to late 70s, preexisting health conditions etc.), we still can’t get immunized against COVID. I registered with the San Francisco vaccine site and was notified that I qualify for a shot, and was directed to my health provider. But a recorded message at my clinic — Mercy Doctors, connected to St. Mary’s, one of the biggest hospitals in SF — informs patients that the vaccine has still not been delivered to them and suggests... you guessed it, that we contact SF.gov. In other words, the old runaround.
Yes, the vaccine distribution system is a mess — a cluster fuck of problems that started because Trump was too busy trying to pull off a coup to make the medical emergency a top priority. A few people I know have managed to get the vaccine, by being lucky, by donating money to a hospital, by driving to a different county, by jumping the line. In other words, like always in this dog-eat-dog country, you have to hustle, to know somebody to get inoculated against the deadly disease. To live.
I don’t want to elbow other people out of the way who are more deserving than I am — those who are 75 and older, medical workers and other frontline heroes, nursing home residents and employees — and prison inmates, for god’s sake, who’ve been sacrificed to the pandemic. But when it’s my turn — and according to the SF.gov guidelines, it IS now my turn — I want to get my place in line without working the system like a K Street lobbyist.
But it’s not just a distribution problem, it’s a production bottleneck. Pfizer and Moderna, the two pharmaceutical manufacturers whose COVID vaccines are approved so far, have stated they will produce enough shots for 100 million people BY APRIL. That’s not good enough. We need over 200 million Americans immunized as soon as possible. The Biden administration needs to intervene under the Defense Production Act and vastly increase the vaccine supply by contracting with other pharmaceutical companies to produce the government-approved vaccines. During medical emergencies like this, no pharmaceutical company should have monopolies on supply.
The old, the frail, the incarcerated, the at-risk workers should not have to hustle to survive the plague.
The Politics of the Super Bowl
After being an ardent NFL fan (and a high school football player), I stopped watching football a few years ago. The head injury crisis (particularly after my own brain trauma in 2017) simply made the game unenjoyable for me. Then the Covid eclipse made pro sports even more invisible for me. But I have to admit, when I heard that Tom Brady — who will turn 44 this year and has won a staggering seven Super Bowl rings — is going to star in another Big Game (as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers QB this year), it made my head, yeah, explode.
As a hardcore 49ers fan back in the day, I used to bemoan the team’s failure to sign up the Bay Area boy wonder, who could’ve kept the post-Joe Montana, post-Steve Young dynasty going for years more. I assumed that, like Joe, Tom Terrific was a good San Francisco values kind of guy. But then I heard he was a Trumpie — and Brady joined my enemies list. While I was still watching football, he became the player I loathed the most — a loathing made easier by the ruthless, robotic personality of Coach Bill Belichick and the win-at-any-cost ethos of the New England Patriots.
And now Brady is a Buc, but he’s just as easy to hate. A Florida resident (like you know who), he recently bought a mansion in the same exclusive neighborhood as the even more repulsive Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
Facing off against Brady in this year’s Super Bowl will be Kansas City’s 25-year-old QB Patrick Mahomes, who has appeared in a Black Lives Matter video, joined LeBron James in a 2020 voter registration drive, and spoken out forcefully for “equality” in our nation.
If I end up watching the Big Game on February 7 — which I admit I just might — I know which team I’ll be rooting for.
Stand Back and Stand Ready… to Protect Democracy
That should no longer be just a Trump message to the Proud Boys — it should be the motto of democracy’s defenders. It’s now brutally clear that Donald Trump tried to defy the will of the people and declare a dictatorship… up until the final hours of his administration. As the New York Times just revealed, not only was Trump leaning heavily on state officials and judges to overturn the vote and inciting an insurrectionary mob, he was also conspiring with Justice Department Jeffrey Clark to overthrow democracy through extra-legal machinations. (And how many other seemingly milquetoast bureaucrats like Clark are there interspersed throughout the federal government, waiting for their big treasonous moment?)
The Times also reports today that a broad progressive coalition formed immediately to defend the results of the presidential election. This is a bracing evolutionary step for the American Left, which has tended in the past to sheepishly accept whatever authoritarian power grab that Republican wolves engineer. Less encouraging were the members of the progressive coalition, like a woman identified as a leading liberal “messaging” expert, who cautioned strongly against using the word “coup” to describe Trump’s post-election aggression. Well, excuse me, but that is precisely what Trump was attempting until the midnight hour. Why sugarcoat a fascist putsch?
The front page of the Times (which is especially compelling today) also carries a sobering report on the January 6 Capitol invasion and how it inspired a global network of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, QAnon conspiracy freaks and other far-right militants. These anti-democratic forces, by and large, don’t see the spasm of Washington violence as an inglorious defeat, but rather as a harbinger of what their power can accomplish if it’s fully organized (and weaponized).
Most of the MAGA base still regards Trump as their leader — and Trump himself has made it clear that his dark political ambitions are far from vanquished. This is another reason why it’s vital for American democracy to convict Trump in the Senate — and then pursue him until the end of his days in state courts for his endless crimes. If Trump makes a political comeback, or if he acts as kingmaker (or rather dictator-maker) for a demagogue smarter than he is, then American democracy might finally die.
Under these dire circumstances, Democrats should hold their noses and cut a deal with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. Yes, he’s an oozing pustule on the body politic, but McConnell also came to loathe Trump and rightly regards him as poison for the Republican future. Our only hope to convict Trump in the Senate next month — and to drive him from the electoral arena — is by cutting a deal with McConnell.
More important, the forces on the left — and I’m talking about everyone from antifa street fighters to liberal members of Congress — must stay mobilized and on high alert against further attacks on democracy. Those in the post-election progressive coalition who advised against sending Protect-the-Vote protesters into the streets as Trump attempted his coup were probably right. These counter-demonstrations might have played into Trump’s hands by allowing him to scream "Anarchy!” and declare martial law. The system — even Republican election officials — did hold. Democracy’s defenders didn’t have to pour into the streets this time, until Joe Biden was officially declared the victor — and then the demonstrations were dancing in the streets jubilation.
But there will be fire next time — and there WILL be a next time. And we can’t be caught soft and asleep. Yes, as I argued yesterday, channel your passion into the system now — keep pressuring the Biden administration to do the right thing, instead of adding to the nation’s sound and fury. But stand back and stand ready. If Biden fails or is foiled — and if the forces of fascism again threaten U.S. democracy — we must be prepared to fight.
Give Peace (and Biden) a Chance
I understand the continuing rage of the militants and anarchists in Seattle and Portland, one of whose leaders denounced Joe Biden as a “feckless” tool of the power elite, as radical protestors in those cities again took to the streets and battled with police. The Pacific Northwest has a LONG history of radical activism (see the recent novel, “The Cold Millions”). But now is the time for the American Left to channel its understandable fury into pushing the system forward, instead of further destabilizing it. The left-wing echoes of right-wing tropes in these recent protests (with radicals carrying the same “Not My President” signs that MAGA rioters wielded as they stormed the Capitol) were, to put it mildly, unnerving.
Yes, Joe Biden is a creature of the DNC, a longtime spear carrier for corporate centrism. But he also strikes me, at age 78 and after suffering more personal anguish than most Washington politicians, as a decent man who wants to lift America from its dark hole. Who wants an FDR-like legacy before he dies. A man who has already signaled in his first days in the White House that he will be a bolder, more progressive president than Obama or Clinton.
Should leftists therefore just pack up their battle gear and go home? No, that would leave the field to the MAGA army, which remains fully mobilized. But we need to engage with the Biden administration in forceful but constructive ways. This will not be easy for the left, which has been in combat mode (or AWOL from mainstream politics) for a long time. But it’s essential.
As I write in “By the Light of Burning Dreams,” the forthcoming book by my sister Margaret and me, nearly a half century ago Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda left their comfortable New Left bubble and harnessed the growing antiwar ardor of heartland America, slashed Congressional funding for the Vietnam War, and helped finally end that long conflict. Hayden and Fonda accomplished that historic feat, while other radical leaders were going underground or burning out, by learning to trust their fellow American again, and by building a coalition that included seven religious denominations, labor unions, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, veterans groups and farmers. In his memoir, “Reunion,” Hayden wrote of the night when their hard work finally paid off in the Capitol building. After cheering the war budget-cutting vote from the House balcony, Hayden and his Indochina Peace Campaign comrades “walked into a starry Washington night, thanking the heavens for our trust in the process.”
We need to revive Hayden’s and Fonda’s radical will to revive American democracy. And rebuilding a peace movement — to align itself with Black Lives Matter and the Sunrise environmental movements — should be a top priority. President Biden is off to a generally good start on social justice and the climate emergency because of strong grassroots pressure in those areas. But a nationwide peace movement is still missing in action. As as result, Biden’s national security appointments have been from the hawkish wing of the Democratic Party.
My point is that especially in areas where Biden is tilting right (like national security), we need to build broad coalitions and to pressure power — not just scream and trash in the streets. Tom Hayden was forced into the streets for a time, he was branded an “ideological criminal” by the Nixon administration and put on trial for conspiracy in Chicago. But then Nixon was toppled from power (with several of his top aides going to prison) and Hayden saw the historic opportunity to organize middle America and end an endless imperial war.
We need the same bold vision — and organizational discipline — today.
Whatever Happened to Elizabeth Warren?
Looking back on the 2020 presidential race, Joe Biden was probably the only Democrat who could’ve beaten Trump (a depressing assessment of America’s political psyche), but Elizabeth Warren was clearly the best candidate to lead the country out of its economic morass. I understand why President Biden can’t pluck her out of the 50-50 Senate for his Cabinet or some other high post. (Massachusetts weirdly has a Republican governor who would tip the Senate back to Mitch McConnell’s control if Warren vacated her Senate seat.) But why did Senator Amy Klobuchar get picked as the host of the Inaugural ceremony instead of Warren? I’d much rather have seen the solid voice of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in that high-profile ceremonial role than the bland voice of Midwestern centrism — a woman who not only drew fewer Democratic primary votes than Warren, but had to drop out of the running for VP because of her racist record as a Minneapolis DA. (A woman of color who eagerly locked up black people when SHE was a prosecutor proved more politically acceptable.)
Elizabeth Warren came to mind again because a recent article in the January 18 issue of The New Yorker reminds us that Senator Warren has been fighting for working people for a long time. Back in 2015, she introduced the Schedules That Work Act, which would’ve prevented service employers from firing their workers for asking for regular hours and compelled them to give two-weeks notice of any changes to their schedules. “The bill never had a chance of passing,” Jill Lepore notes in the magazine. It never even came up for a vote in the Senate millionaires club, even after it was reintroduced in 2017 and 2019.
Warren has tilted at windmills on behalf of working people for many years. Even before she was in the Senate, she clashed with then Senator Biden over the crushing power that the credit card industry — which Biden championed — wielded over struggling Americans. Biden graciously gave her props for putting up a good (if losing) populist fight. Old Joe is nothing if not gracious, even when serving the financial elite. But now, as he tries to be the new FDR to revive America’s blasted economy, he needs to surround himself with true-blue progressives like Warren.
So, yes, keep Elizabeth Warren in the Senate, because we need every Democratic senator (especially progressive ones). But let’s also bring her into the White House limelight where she belongs as an influential economic advisor. Warren was a Biden loyalist when it counted, after she dropped out of the race, much to the fury of Bernie supporters. She was effusively loyal again after Biden’s inauguration, declaring, “Here we sit tonight, and we have a decent man as president of the United States, one who believes in the competency of government.”
It’s time for Biden to repay the compliments. Colorizing the Cabinet was a good move on Joe’s part. But he must also bring smart, aggressive progressives into his brain trust. It’s the only way he can deliver on his bold economic promises and undercut the phony populism of MAGA Republicanism.
Lovely Day One in the White House
That’s a beautiful picture of President Joe Biden (below), standing next to the new First Lady and holding his youngest grandchild, eight-month-old Beau (named after his dead oldest son). The Bidens seemed at home right away in the White House. (I hope it was properly fumigated to get rid of Covid contamination and exorcise the sulfurous fumes of the Trump cabal.) The nation’s first grandparents didn’t seem to miss the round of canceled inaugural balls; they didn’t need to slow dance like the sexy Obamas on their inaugural night. It was reassuring enough to have old Joe and Jill in the people’s house where they belong.
President Biden immediately signaled the reversal of the Trump reign by signing a flurry of executive orders and declarations aimed at ending “the Trump policies that were deeply inhumane and did not reflect our country’s values,” in the crisp words of new national security advisor, Jake Sullivan. Together, these 17 new presidential commands state that grandpa Joe actually cares about little Beau and the next generations of humanity. That singular lack of concern about future generations has been the dark hallmark not only of Donald Trump, but of Mitch McConnell and the entire Koch brothers’ corporate sponsorship of Republican rule. These rich and powerful men just don’t give a damn about future life on the planet, even their own flesh and blood, only their bottom lines and reelections.
So let’s take a minute to celebrate President Joe Biden’s day one, history-making flurry of proclamations — and the dawn of a new day in the United States and the world.
Here’s a partial list of what Biden accomplished yesterday with a wave of his presidential pen:
Returned the U.S. to the Paris climate accord; terminated the Keystone XL pipeline carrying dirty shale oil from Canada; rescinded Trump rollbacks to auto emission standards; imposed a moratorium on oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; reestablished a working group on the social costs of greenhouse gasses.
Established more coordination for federal response to the coronavirus pandemic; restored the directorate eliminated by Trump that oversaw global health threats; terminated Trump’s efforts to leave the World Health Organization, sending Dr. Anthony Fauci to a WHO executive board meeting today.
Overturned Trump’s ban on travelers from Muslim countries; protected DACA “Dreamers” from deportation and established a path to citizenship for other immigrants; reversed Trump order to exclude noncitizens from the census count; stopped construction of Trump’s Mexican border wall.
Directed federal agencies to make equity a top priority and eliminate systematic racism; canceled Trump’s 1776 Commission, which attempted to rewrite American history and whitewash the national stain of slavery.
Extended a federal ban on evictions and foreclosures; called for Congress to cancel up to $10,000 in individual student debt.
Now it’s our job to continue pushing the Biden-Harris administration to keep doing the right thing — against the iron resistance of the GOP-corporate lobby that has already begun the fight. We have to win — for all of our little Beaus.
America, the Infomercial
Yes, I was often moved today — how could you not be? Four years ago, I was watching in shock and horror as Donald Trump (!) was sworn in as president. Today, as Van Jones put it, in addition to Joe Biden’s at times stirring speech about the need for national unity (while also crushing white nationalist extremism), America’s “cultural firepower was back on line.” After the cultural wasteland that began on Trump’s inauguration day, when to his fury he couldn’t get any A-list entertainers to celebrate his takeover, we were treated on Joe and Kamala’s day to an all-star cast.
Some of this evening’s highlights for me: Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters singing “Times Like These.” Yo-Yo Ma playing “Amazing Grace” (but one rendition of this overused hymn would’ve been enough), and whoever sang Leonard Cohen’s equally omnipresent “Hallelujah.” Fran Lebowitz says there’s no such thing as guilty pleasures — why feel bad about something that makes you feel good? — but I also took guilty pleasure in John Legend singing Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” and Justin Timberlake and Ant Clemens teaming up on “Better Days.” OK, and even Jon Bon Jovi’s rendition of “Here Comes the Sun.” Hey, I wanted to feel good tonight. We all did.
But still, thanks to Jake Tapper for keeping it real tonight. While even Van Jones was sounding heavily dosed with X (“after the rain comes the rainbow” — yeah, man), Tapper was the only CNN talking head to point out some dark truths. There was no peaceful transition this time, like his happy-talk colleagues kept chirping. People died just two weeks ago at the Capitol crime scene. Tapper said he didn’t want to be Professor Buzzkill, but he also pointed out that “if we whitewash what happened, it can happen again. And next time, it could work.” Indeed, Tapper continued, if it weren’t for a handful of decent and honorable state officials around the country, Trump could’ve stolen the election and turned America into a dictatorship.
So yes, fireworks good. The Black Pumas — an Austin band I never heard before tonight — good. Essential frontline workers, diligent schoolteachers, kids who bundle care packages for elderly shut-ins… all very good. But fascism bad. And the wolf is lurking out there, maybe even next door. If Joe Biden and Kamala Harris deliver on their promises to a devastated America, then democracy triumphs. But if this administration stumbles or sells out, then Trump was just the dress rehearsal, the comic relief before the real horror.
The Biden inauguration’s missing verses
Even when America is on its best behavior, as it was today in Washington for Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration (ding dong, the Don is dead), there’s something always left out. Yes, Biden hit many fine notes during his speech (more on that later) before he collapsed near the end in a mishmash of rhetorical cliches. But the celebrity high points came during Lady Gaga’s triumphant version of “The Star Spangled Banner” (wisely she left out Francis Scott Key’s vituperatively racist stanza about hunting down slaves who sided with the British during the War of 1812) and J-Lo’s tacky medley of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land"” and “America the Beautiful.” J-Lo also left out a couple key verses from the classic Guthrie folk song — the same ones that have been excised from the schoolroom version of the song which has become an alternative national anthem. The missing verses from the song. which Guthrie wrote during the Great Depression, seem strongly relevant these grim days. So let’s remember them here:
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.
The sign was painted, said: 'Private Property.'
But on the backside, it didn't say nothing.
This land was made for you and me.One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple,
By the relief office I saw my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering if
God blessed America for me?
Book of the Week
I’m starting to think of the Show as small-scale Salon, the politics and arts publication I started with a group of of other disgruntled dreamers back at the dawn of the dotcom era. Salon was originally conceived as a books journal, because we felt that even then books didn’t receive enough media attention, and that you could write about the entire universe by writing about books. The publishing industry keeps churning out books, but little effort or money is spent on marketing them — and as book sections disappear or downsize, only the top commercial titles get much attention.
So the Show will do its small public service each week by bringing your attention to the one book (some weeks maybe more) that avid readers should know about. You can help out by alerting fellow readers in the Comments Section below to books you’ve recently enjoyed.
Some of the books that we’ll be highlighting here are written by friends or authors I know. But I wouldn’t highlight them unless they were worthy of your attention. This is true of today’s Book of the Week. Author Philip Gefter is a friend of many years. I’ve been honored to know some very talented people. The author of this review, Karen Croft, is also a longtime friend — and colleague — of mine. I’m very pleased to welcome her today as a guest to the Show.
What Becomes a Legend Most
A Biography of Richard Avedon
By Philip Gefter
HarperCollins, 2020
Reviewed by Karen Croft
Once upon a time, not everyone took photographs all the time.
This book is about that time—following the Second World War—when great artists walked the streets and knew each other and were regularly featured in glossy magazines. The photography in those publications (Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue and many other coffee table galleries) were not just shiny—they were often a hybrid of editorial, commercial and art work that is hard to find today.
This kind of photography was not about “taking pictures” as much as “making” pictures—after much thought and preparation, and with painstaking technical and artistic skill in processing and editing them afterwards.
For students and lovers of photography, Philip Gefter (a writer and editor at the New York Times for more than 15 years) has composed a biography of one of photography’s greatest practitioners. Gefter’s intelligent—often philosophically poetic—prose is delicious, making this a rich peek into a lost world.
But even if you think you don’t care about photography, this is a great American success story—complete with the angst and tragedy that implies—and perfect therapy for the harsh times through which we’re suffering today. It is encouraging, and calming somehow, to read about a time when hard work, years of experience and deep talent actually mattered—and was valued in America.
“What Becomes a Legend Most” (a reference to one of Avedon’s most famous ad campaigns) is a biography told through a series of sharply observed stories that portray a man who was in the right place at the right time, and knew how to take full advantage of it.
In 1955, Avedon was in Paris shooting for Harper’s Bazaar on the set of the movie “Trapeze” starring Burt Lancaster, which was filming at the Winter Circus. Avedon met the animal trainer, whom he cajoled into lining up elephants (!) as a backdrop for the lithe model Dovima (in YSL for Christian Dior of course). The logistics seem impossible and so does the perfection of the photos; they are as astounding as the inspiration to create them.
https://www.avedonfoundation.org/the-work
Gefter allows us to wallow in the luxury of mid-century creativity, when mere mortals lived on the same planet with the likes of Francis Bacon, Truman Capote, Rudolf Nureyev, Leonard Bernstein, Diane Arbus, Andy Warhol, Charlie Chaplin, and the Beatles. Each vignette is more incredible than the last, as Avedon—who was regarded as an obsessively controlling studio photographer—moves through the world seemingly destined to run into the most photogenic and fascinating talents of his time.
Avedon happened to be in Paris in 1961, when Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union. Asked to take publicity photos by a mutual friend, he agreed on the condition he could use them for Harper’s Bazaar. Avedon then banished everyone from a studio he had rented, and spent hours with the dancer, establishing a rapport based on mutual passion for the arts, and made pictures (there and later in New York) which are Michelangelo-like in their rapturous portrayal of the sculpted male body.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/10/08/wild-thing-2
Earlier that same year, Avedon was in Palm Beach to photograph John F. Kennedy before his presidential inauguration. It was January 3, the day the US officially severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, and Kennedy was absorbed in communications with President Eisenhower’s office as Avedon set up his equipment. Secret Service men and stylists filled the room as JFK dictated memos to his secretary. Avedon later said of President-elect Kennedy: “When I’d ask him to look around, he’d stop dictating. But the moment I finished he’d start in where he left off. I’ve never seen such a display of mental control in my life.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2011/01/03/132616931/kennedys
Avedon also took riskier trips. In 1971, he went to Vietnam to work on a project of his own. He called it “Hard Times,” saying, “All the people I have photographed in the last year and a half have been affected by Vietnam—as has all of American life. Vietnam is an extension—oh, unfortunately—of every sick thing in America.” He was dropped into the jungle to join a U.S. infantry platoon. Later, he waited seven weeks in steamy, decadent Saigon to shoot “The Mission Council”—the PR group for the war—which he considered his definitive portrait of U.S imperial power.
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/55502
Richard Avedon, a native New Yorker, died in 2004 at 81, after living through and chronicling one of the most fascinating epochs in history. As Gefter says of Avedon’s work: “It is a remarkable collective observation—a large artistic gesture across the American century.”
You can buy the book here
The Winter of Democracy
In Washington DC, over 20,000 soldiers occupy the capital the day before our unpeaceful presidential transition, while Trump — in his last hours in the White House — frantically stuffs the Defense Department, NSA and CIA with loyal moles, executes as many poor and black people as he can, and sells pardons to war criminals and rich felons at a closing day clip. In Russia, the astonishingly courageous dissident Aleksei Navalny gets thrown in prison again, following a kangaroo court hearing in a police station, immediately after he arrives home from a German hospital where he miraculously escaped death at the hands of Putin poisoners. Meanwhile, in Uganda, former rap star Bobi Wine is imprisoned inside his gated compound after challenging the suspicious election victory of Dictator for Life Museveni. Democracy is always a wilting flower, barely kept alive by a few heroic leaders and the people’s stubborn will.
The American people were aroused in 2020 — and remain so into 2021. Millions of people still fervently believe in the cartoon fascism of Donald Trump — a blind loyalty that bared its fangs on January 6. Meanwhile, record umbers of people — even in Georgia, God bless them — turned out at the polls to topple the toxic reign of Trump and Mitch McConnell. The electorate for and against democracy has never been so mobilized in my lifetime.
And now what about the Biden presidency? Will progressives go to sleep again, like we did after Barack Obama’s election? We know how that slumber turned into a national nightmare. Or will we stay mobilized, pressuring Biden to deliver on his economic, environmental and social promises — i.e. his progressive agenda, the only way to demobilize Trump’s populist base?
Putin’s Russia, Museveni’s Uganda — we were only two or three state vote counts away from continuing in that dark direction under a second Trump administration. The threat is still there — we can see it in the number of active-duty, reservist or retired military officers and soldiers involved in the bloody Capitol riot; in the far-right echo chamber that keeps alive the stab-in-the-back lies about the election; the members of Congress who pack guns and embrace wild QAnon theories about the world; and the ruthless demagogues who are willing to say or do anything to become the next Donald Trump.
Lady Liberty or the Tiger? The choice is still in the hands of the American people.
“But I thought David Talbot is rich”
Um, sadly no, I’m not. And yes, that’s another reason you should donate $25 today (or $50 if you’re a big spender) to keep this little ship afloat. I know, I know — we just survived an Election Year, and politicians are STILL begging us for cash. Then there’s the pandemic, which has devastated our economy and left many of us scraping for food and rent. There are many demands on our limited funds.
But here’s the thing: we need an independent flow of information and ideas. That’s the lifeblood of free societies — that’s how they live or die. So, along with contributions to my favorite candidates (and, hey, we did pretty well in recent months), I’ve decided to pay my share for The Guardian, Common Dreams, Democracy Now, 48 Hills, Journal of the Plague Year and other publications I frequently read. I’m also mulling over subscribing to the newsletter of Matt Taibbi, whose reporting and insights I’ve valued over the years.
It took me years to finally get off Facebook, and I still use it as a redirect page, so I’m not going to lecture you about the evils of the social media giants. (The New York Times has at least two pieces today about how Facebook and Twitter enabled the metastasizing white nationalist Trump culture.) But you should know that I’m no longer going to join the conversations on my Facebook page. I’m determined to recreate the liveliness of that chatter on these pages. Here at the David Talbot Show we’re just one click away — so join us.
Now, back to my fortunes as a journalist and author — or lack thereof. This is not a whine. How tedious that would be. I made my choices in life, to remain outside the velvet coffin of corporate journalism, and I’ve been happy to live with the consequences. Even my beleaguered family adjusted to the ups and downs of this life. So this is simply a factual report on the bank account of an independent media maker.
It’s true that I’m the son of a once-famous Hollywood actor, Lyle Talbot. (That’s Lyle below with Loretta Young, one of his real-life romantic companions, in “She Had to Say Yes,” a racy, pre-Code movie.) And my late father had his flush years, as well as his lean ones. Hey, he was an ACTOR. I read somewhere while he was still doing the occasional TV show that something like only 5 percent of the membership of the Screen Actors Guild (which he cofounded back during the Great Depression) actually made a living from acting. So I was amazed that my dad was able to keep the roof over our family of six (sometimes barely). And when he died at the advanced age of 94, after a very full life (read all about it in my sister Margaret Talbot’s lively biography, “The Entertainer”), Lyle was able to leave each of his four children with an inheritance of $50,000.
Most of my windfall promptly went to paying off debts that my wife Camille and I had accrued as we built our own family. But easy come, easy go. My father, who was a bit like Dickens’ Mr. Micawber, always echoed him during hard times in his show biz career. “Something will turn up,” he’d confidently say.
Camille and I often echo his plucky remarks whenever we’ve hit a challenging time: when I leapt into the unknown in 1995 to start Salon, despite nagging debts and mortgage and young kids; when I had to borrow money to finish “The Devil’s Chessboard”; when I had my stroke and Camille had to indefinitely delay her own book to care for me. No one got rich off Salon, including me. We were always a prayer away from bankruptcy, despite all the dotcom hype. And I’m here to tall you that earning bragging rights as a “New York Times best-selling author” (twice) doesn’t earn you a dime in royalties. But through it all, our mantra remained “Something will turn up” — and it almost always has.
That’s why I’m still doing what I do — voicing news and opinions that seldom get aired, and giving others a platform to do the same. If we stick together, if we help each other thrive, we’ll never be silenced. Please donate today. The Show must go on.
Biden Beat Trump… and Now Obama?
During his first days and weeks in the White House, Joe Biden is signaling that he will go bigger than he and President Obama did during the economic collapse of 2008-9. Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion relief package, if it gets through Congress relatively intact, will immunize 100 million Americans in 100 days against the rampaging coronavirus, put $1,400 more dollars in the hands of Americans, expand Obamacare by making it more affordable, rescue flailing local and state governments, and help schools open classrooms again by making them safer. On the global level, Biden is promising that the U.S. will immediately rejoin the civilized international order by embracing the Paris accord and making the climate crisis a top priority, rescinding the travel ban on Muslim countries, and reuniting children caged at the Mexican border with their families.
Biden can be another FDR, as he’s been promising, because the post-Trump times seem even more devastated than the economic crisis that President Obama inherited from George W. Bush. Biden is also the first Capitol Hill creature to take over the White House in decades, so even Republicans are praising his deft touch as a “finger-tip politician.” The GOP, of course, has its own deep problems — but while the party sorts out its post-Trump identity, some Republican legislators might find it useful to be seen as being cooperative with can-do Joe during a medical and political crisis that has torn apart the country.
Biden, as opposed to the more cerebral Obama, seems like the right POTUS for these wrong times. Obama, as the the first African American president, was also under more pressure to appease the political establishment — and power centers like Wall Street — than Biden will be. Biden is poised to use his crisis as more of an opportunity, funneling government aid to the people who really need it, not just to the big banks.
I was a Bernie-Elizabeth Warren enthusiast. Both of these Democratic candidates thought much bigger than Biden on the campaign trail, and I was excited at the prospect of either one of them going all the way. But Democratic primary voters — traumatized by Trump — decided that old Joe was the best shot at winning in 2020. And they were right. Now Joe Biden also seems like the best hope we have for redirecting America and actually getting some big legislation through Washington’s long gridlock.
Go. Joe, go. Three cheers from the left of the Democratic Party as you get sworn in this week and pursue the art of the possible.
Farewell, Margo St. James
San Francisco has lost another legend — sex worker rights advocate Margo St. James. There are coyotes roaming the streets of the virus-blasted city these days, but no more COYO)TE (Call Off Your Tired Old Ethics), the prostitutes union founded by St. James in 1973. With each death of a monumental figure from San Francisco’s wild years, the howl continues to fade in the city. I knew many of these larger-than-life characters, through my newspaper work or demimonde wanderings — or from writing “Season of the Witch,” for which St. James sat for a long interview. Carol Doda, Patrick and Terry Hallinan, Marty Balin, Spain Rodriguez.. I miss you all and the city loses more of its luster with each fadeout.
The obits have been filled with many of Margo’s greatest hits, and I won’t repeat them here. But allow me to stress what a tough, politically astute woman she was under the smiling, farm-girl veneer. Among her clients back in the day were members of the San Francisco police force — good Catholic boys who nevertheless used the services of St. James or her colleagues. One night, a friend of hers on the force tipped her off that disgruntled cops were going to kill progressive Police Chief Charles Gain that night. St. James tracked him down at a local college where he was scheduled to give a speech and told him to go home, “The cops are going to bump you off,” she warned the police chief.
St. James was able to save Chief Gain’s life — but not that of Mayor George Moscone, who had hired him, or his progressive ally Supervisor Harvey Milk, both of whom were assassinated by ex-cop Dan White in 1978.
Margo St. James’s more colorful antics got her regularly in Herb Caen’s column. But she was a serious if eccentric and unpredictable woman. Late in life, she married newspaper reporter Paul Avery, another gutsy San Franciscan who had pissed off dangerous people, including the cops and the increasingly unhinged Black Panther leader Huey Newton. I knew Paul too, briefly working as his editor in the colorful San Francisco Examiner newsroom — though nobody could really manage the buccaneering Avery, who continued to smoke himself to death through wracking, lung-scraping coughs.
Margo St. James… Paul Avery… they don’t make them that way anymore in the City by the Bay. Her ashes will be spread with Avery’s on her beloved Orcas Island during a ceremony this summer. (That’s Margo in the middle with supporter Jane Fonda.)
“Thank you, but fuck you for being there.”
That’s Washington DC Metropolitan police officer Michael Fanone in an interview with CNN. And that is exactly the right response to the Capitol rioters who were preparing to kill Fanone with his own gun, after yanking him into their mosh pit by his helmet. Fanone, a 40-year-old father of four who suffered a mild heart attack during the melee, wrestled for his life with the stormtroopers. “It was like a medieval battle scene,” said Fanone, one of the outnumbered riot cops who faced thousands of Trump attackers outside the Capitol on January 6. The desperate Fanone finally pleaded that “I have kids” — and a few of his tormentors took pity on him and escorted him back to police lines. So, yes, thank you — but fuck you.
I believe that our shattered U.S. democracy needs a strong dose of law and order now — or the next assault on our system of government will be even more catastrophic. So, yes, power to the FBI agents who are now rounding up the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, QAnon quacks and other fanatics who violently overran the Capitol building last week — some with murderous intent.
And all power to a righteously furious Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who announced yesterday that she not only intends to hold Trump accountable for incitement, but any members of Congress who were accomplices of the bloodthirsty mob. The snakes are clearly in the marble halls of Washington, not just swarming outside. And Congressional leaders need to impose law and order in their own building first and foremost. Any fanatic who whipped up the mob, gave them directions and targets, tries to carry firearms onto the floor of the House or in any other way defaces or disgraces democracy needs to be removed from Congress and prosecuted.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/01/15/dc-police-officers-capitol-riot-prokupecz-newday-vpx.cnn
The Best Movie of the New Year
“One Night in Miami” is a dazzling word display, based on a true meeting between Malcolm X, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke and Cassius Clay — on the night in February 1964 when the 22-year-old boxer beat Sonny Liston to become world champ (and would soon become Muhammad Ali). With a screenplay by Kemp Powers based on his play and directed by the great actress Regina King, “One Night in Miami” is more than a harmonic clash and convergence of four American icons — it’s a deeply moving love letter to African American men. The film portrays Malcolm X as a vulnerable and haunted man, instead of the steely orator who inspired a new generation of black men and women and struck fear into white America.
British actor Kingsley Ben-Adir turns in the film’s standout performance as Malcolm, who was facing the combined wrath of the Nation of Islam leaders, from whom he was breaking at the time, and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI — and this malevolent alliance would assassinate him the following year. I loved reading in today’s San Francisco Chronicle how Ben-Adir — during his research for his role — tapped into Malcolm’s bravery and anguish: “The most important conversation I came across was Malcolm with (comedian and activist) Dick Gregory that around this time he felt weak, he felt hollow and that no one knew the torments that he went through.”
The movie ends with this prophetic quote from Malcolm: “It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That's the only thing that can save this country."
The film just premiered on Amazon’s Prime Video.
