Chautauqua

In his book, The Life of Reason, George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.” Eight years after September 11, 2001, the matter is not whether we remember our past — but what we do with the memory.

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon marked the end of our innocence — or at least our insular naïveté — at least for a little while. We became citizens of the world’s vulnerability for the first time in nearly 60 years. We found grief and hope in the stories of loss and survival, happenstance and heroism, frailty and courage. We were served notice to take care of our own, while we can — at home, in the workplace, and in the world. We were taught the brutal actuality of a terrorist attack that claimed thousands of lives, destroyed billions of dollars in property, and wreaked havoc with our systems of transportation and communication, expectation and faith. Though it’s popular for us to think and be told otherwise, we continue to face a realization equally brutal, disarmingly real, and politically contentious: The continuing conflicts in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan notwithstanding — with nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran looming — such an attack could happen again. It can happen here. It did happen here.

Should this be cause for morbid apprehension or constant alarm? Clearly not. We won’t permit it. Even if the threat of another 9/11 warranted such edgy anticipation, we will not abide long-term interruption of our traditional distractions. We will not relinquish our gullibility for political promises. We will not be kept from the comfort of our daily routines, from the trivialities of our partisan quibbling, from our preoccupations with celebrity, notoriety, and the pursuit of things material and superficial. We’re Americans. We’ve earned the right to indulge ourselves in any way we see fit, thank you very much. Because we’re pragmatists, we’ll keep an eye on CNN, the newspaper headlines, and our RSS feeds. Because we’re idealists, we won’t do so at the expense of American Idol, Real Housewives, Survivor, and Dancing With The Stars.

In remembering the past, two seemingly unrelated but beautifully American questions obtain. The first was asked on Monday, September 10, 2001. At a benefit performance by the jazz pianist Marcus Roberts, a questioner asked, “What is jazz?” Marcus answered readily and succinctly, “Jazz is the history of a people expressing itself through adversity. It’s about living on the edge and maintaining sure footing.”

The second question has been asked repeatedly since the day that followed. America was attacked by religious fundamentalist terrorists (of course, we can’t call them that anymore). In the aftermath of that attack — especially in light of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the controversies they perpetuates — we continue to ask, “What do we do now?” The second answer is the same as the first, as ready and succinct: We express ourselves through adversity. We live on the edge and maintain our footing.

We do this by recognizing the luxury to which we’ve become accustomed in the United States:

• Recognizing that our right to be opinionated sarcastic, cynical, petty, superficial, materialistic, and unreflective — and to manifest all other evidence of our philosophical ennui — is an absolute luxury.
• Recognizing that our right to fritter our attention on form over substance, on the peccadilloes and proselytizing of entertainers, on the purchasing patterns of consumers, on the past weekend’s box-office receipts, and on all other evidence of our societal boredom is an absolute luxury.
• Recognizing that our right to create the demand that begets the supply of infomercials for Bowflexes, Butt Blasters, Thigh Rockers, Ab Rollers, and all other evidence of our capacity for self-absorption is an absolute luxury.
• Recognizing that our right to agonize over the isms that appear to divide us is an absolute luxury.
• Recognizing that the right to have a country free and open enough to make the attack of 9/11 possible is an absolute luxury.

Eight years after that attack — in between the latest political side-swipes and stock-market reports, as politicians dither and dodge over Gitmo, the CIA, and interrogation tactics — we maintain our footing through faith in the resolve that never leaves Americans. As we exercise our luxurious indulgences, we remain watchful over those with whom we work and share life every day.

Mindful of the past, we combine our idealistic conviction — as Americans, we believe we will prevail — with our pragmatic understanding that even idealism needs a Plan B. With neither morbid apprehension nor undue alarm, we maintain our footing through the shared though unstated conviction that — should the need arise again, as it did on 9/11 — we will do what otherwise opinionated, sarcastic, cynical, petty, superficial, gullible, materialistic, unreflective, bored, self-absorbed, divided, and free Americans do:

• We will come together in strength and determination to protect those rights and that freedom.
• We will instantly abandon our self-absorption to extend every healing hand to every hand harmed in any way by this consequence of our determination to live freely.
• We will instantly forget our boredom, reflecting only on those who need whatever help we can give, literally — be it blood, sweat, cash, comfort, or hope.
• We will instantly swap materialism for materials, sending equipment, food, clothing, and whatever else is needed on the front lines of the most immediate battle in this newly declared war.
• We will drop our luxurious pettiness to stand united and prepare ourselves for the sacrifices we will be asked to make in protecting our rights and our freedom.
• We will turn on our televisions and see citizens of every stripe, age, persuasion, and profession calling themselves Americans.
• We will save the energy it takes to be sarcastic and cynical because we know it will be needed later. While the illusions of peace might incline us to squander that energy on ourselves, we dare not cheat our fellow Americans should they need it.

L.P. Hartley said famously, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” September 11, 2001, proved the future will be equally foreign. They do things differently, quite unpredictably, and sometimes brutally there. They did something equally unpredictable and brutal here. Though politicians bid us to forget, we will remember. But we will remember in our own way.

Go ahead and call us opinionated, sarcastic, cynical, petty, superficial, gullible, materialistic, unreflective, bored, self-absorbed, divided. We are. We’ve earned every one of the absolute rights we have to be so — and to work out our problems in our own way and time. We’re free. As a free people, we express ourselves through adversity, just as we expressed ourselves through the adversity visited on us from the skies on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. And we will maintain our footing. We will. We do. We’re Americans.

If you doubt, test us.

Notwithstanding the myriad political diatribes that appear on this blog, it was never the intent of Chautauqua to comment on politics particularly or exclusively. Politics is part of a larger socio-cultural discourse — surely an inseparable part, possibly a catalytic part — but it is no more than a part.

Because of our curiosity for all things behavioral and linguistic (and the inextricable relationship of the two), we begin today a study of depression. The study is undertaken because of the proliferation of depression in the popular vernacular. This refers not to economic depression but to personal, psychological, perhaps clinical or biological depression. Economic depression may be related to other forms of depression. It may precipitate them. No one knows. At bottom, no one knows much.

The medical community can attribute biological depression to chemistry, to chemical imbalances in the brain — too much adrenaline or cortisol, not enough serotonin or norepinephrine. But it can’t explain the causes of the imbalances.  Are they genetic?  Are they psychologically predisposed responses to particular circumstances? Are they caused by the lack of constructive contemporary outlets for our hard-wired fight-or-flight mechanisms? With nowhere to run and no one to fight, maybe we hit internal walls that leave us feeling helpless, powerless, insignificant, wanting, unfulfilled, terrified, haunted.

Twenty years ago, the comedian, Louie Anderson, wrote a book called Dear Dad. Rather than synopsize, we’ll simply encourage you to buy the book. But we will offer this excerpt as a starting point for our discourse on depression:

I have this theory that all we deal with in life is loss. We lose the protective comfort of the womb. We lose our mother’s breast. We lose the right to mess our pants. We lose friends, teachers, relatives. We lose our hair, our teeth, and our youth. We keep losing all these things and never get them back, but we never really learn how to deal with the loss. We never say that it hurts, really hurts, and so we spend the rest of our lives trying to make up for it, holding on tightly to things that we should really let go of.

Given the prevalence of depression in Western societies — and notwithstanding our predilections for quick fixes, easy outs, and the pharmaceutical possibilities for feeling nothing at all — it’s as possible as anything else that our inability to accept cycles and the natural course of aging work against us. Perhaps our preoccupations with youth, vitality, and glamor render us unable to accept the realities of impermanence, the inevitability of loss, and the impossibility of stasis. Maybe because aging necessitates decline, we refuse to accept the passing of our connections to popular culture. Maybe the preoccupation with being young causes us to overlook the treasures of aging — wisdom, nobility, self-knowledge. Maybe all of our material, physical preoccupations are capable of inducing our failure to embrace the spiritual center of the human condition. So, we fight the inexorable and the inevitable futilely. And we do so at the expense of our psychological and emotional natures and well-being.

This denial of our maturation and our spirituality — and its consequences — is neither a new idea nor a new practice. In his invaluable treatise on world mythology, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, written in 1949, Joseph Campbell noted this:

It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back. In fact, it may very well be that the high incidence of neuroticism amongst ourselves follows from the decline among us to such effective spiritual aid.  We remain fixated to the unexorcised images of our infancy, and hence disinclined to the necessary passages of our adulthood. In the United States there is even a pathos of inverted emphasis: the goal is not to grow old, but to remain young … [but] looking back at what had promised to be our own unique, unpredictable, and dangerous adventure, all we find in the end is such a series of standard metamorphoses as men and woman have undergone in every quarter of the world, in all recorded centuries, and under every odd disguise of civilization.

Perhaps, then, the price of modern civilization is depression. As we invent ever more modes and methods of communication, so we become less communal. As we create ever more electronic connections, so we abandon our human ones. As we separate, so we fail to share. As we worship the physical, so withers the spirit. As we defy rites of passage, so we fight our inevitable passing. As we create more fears to fight, so we forsake joy.

Please share your thoughts. Your stories will help connect us. Please join this Chautauqua.

The events of the August Congressional recess provided so much fertile fodder for the Chautauqua Center for Political Poetry, we decided to extend the Summer Workshop (at taxpayer expense, of course). As a result, we’re proud to present this paean to profligacy:

Ode to Obamacare

If Congresswoman Jackson-Lee can lobby for a bill,
But not respond to questions from constituents until
She calls her Help Line just to find out what the hell is in it,
Why should we entrust her as our proxy for a minute?

And when she goes on CNN to sidestep and evade,
Why should we, as voters, brook her negligent charade?
Rick Sanchez ain’t conservative. His viewers all agree
That he’s not part of any vast, right-wing conspiracy.

But this will be okay with us. We’ll settle right back down,
Content to float while clowns in Congress try to help us drown
In complication, obfuscation, sophistry, and tax,
While tending to their union pals, entitlements, and PACs.

That’s how it’s done in Washington: they lie, and we all love it.
And if we don’t, too bad, my friends. They’ll tell us all to shove it.
‘Cause they know best, and they’re prescribing economic ruin.
So take the pills we voted for. It’s our own juice we stew in.

I’m beginning to accept the story of my life. Things that happen to other people just don’t happen to me. They can’t happen to me. I can’t get the circumstances, the math, the physics, or the pure illogic to work in my favor. Just as I never will be suspected of being naked, I’ll never embark on a 10,000-foot skydive and fall just 1,000 feet, like the gentleman in this story, reported by the BBC.

Aside from making me envious, this story makes me curious. An emergency medical technician, who attended to the fallen man at the scene, told reporters: “The man is reported to have fallen approximately 1,000 feet, spiralling to the ground following a 10,000-foot sky-dive.” So, let’s try to piece this together, shall we?

• If the man undertook a 10,000 foot dive and only fell 1,000 feet, what took place during the first 9,000 feet?
• Did he only fall the first 1,000 feet, regaining whatever he might have needed to regain for the remainder of the dive?
• When the BBC report says the man’s chute is believed to have malfunctioned, was it fine for 9,000 feet before going on the fritz?
• Did the chute fail to deploy for the first 9,000 feet, suddenly popping open for the last 1,000 but not in time to adequately slow the man’s descent?
• Was he attacked by dive-bombing buzzards on the way down?
• Was he the victim of a vast, right-wing conspiracy (see Clinton, Hillary)?

If I jumped out of a plane at 10,000 feet and my parachute malfunctioned, I’d fall 10,000 feet. I’d splat on tarmac or concrete. The BBC would never cover the story. A bored, local beat reporter might write that I fell like a stone and landed like a rotten watermelon. An ambulance would never be called. The clean-up crew would require just a sponge and a squeegee. That’s just how it works.

I’d be the ski-jumper who embodies the agony of defeat. I’d be the drag racer who never gets out of the chute. I’d be the kicker who shanks the field goal as the clock runs out. I’d be the Republican governor who becomes a goat after having an affair in Argentina, even though a Democratic President conducted one in the White House and remains a hero.

I don’t mean to mislead. Things actually go quite positively for me. I’ve been told on many occasions, by many people, that I lead a charmed life. I believe that to be true. But my fortunes never seem to soar as they periodically seem to for others. Though I accept it, I’m not sure how to explain it. I guess I have a bad altitude.

As we were wrapping up the Chautauqua Summer Arts Weekend, the participants in the Chautauqua Workshop for Political Poetry seemed to be working feverishly to complete a group project. Since we’re so proud of our members’ work, we present here the fruits of the Political Poetry group’s labors, a piece they’ve chosen to call, “Rhetorical Robbery”.  Please join me in extending thanks and congratulations to this industrious group for giving us this rhapsodic rune to ruin.

And so, without further ado:

Rhetorical Robbery

If Cash for Clunkers weren’t so foolish,
We’d be driving Ramblers.
Since rationed healthcare is so ghoulish,
Sick folks would be gamblers.

From auto parts to body parts,
Barack has all the answers.
Until it comes to wheels and hearts,
To brakes and common cancers.

“We’ll give you cars and cure your ills.
And this I guarantee:
We’ll run GM, prescribe your pills,
And do it all for free.”

Obamanomics draws the loop
But don’t a circle call it.
It panders to each int’rest group
While stealing from each wallet.

The loop that’s drawn will only close
When we’re all queued for service.
We’ll all hold hands, while lackeys doze,
And we become more nervous.

So, keep your car and keep your doc,
To lose them is a crime.
And wake up now. It’s not too late.
But we don’t have much time.

The Chautauqua Center for Musical Activism recently concluded a project, inspired by the contemporary political climate. We undertook to revise “America the Beautiful”, amending the lyrics  initially composed by Katharine Lee Bates, while retaining the original score by Samuel A. Ward. We imagine this new composition will be performed unless and until it is deemed free speech, fishy, or otherwise in opposition to the present administration’s totalitarian agendas of any stripe. Then it will disappear like an anti-Stalinist dissident.

All together now:

Obamica the Beautiful

O beautiful for specious lies,
Audacious hope in vain,
For purple prose and promises
Deceitful and insane!

Obmica! Obamica!
God shed His grace on we
Who now endure your fatal cure
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for union fraud
Whose rife corruptions spread
From auto plants to public schools
To bleed forthrightness dead.

Obamica! Obamica!
You revel in self-awe.
In your new role you now extol
A mockery of law.

O beautiful for healthcare schemes
That tax the nation blind,
That leave us sick and doctorless,
But leave your pockets lined.

Obamica! Obamica!
You have us by the cubes.
But don’t expect us to accede
While we go down the tubes.

O beautiful for patriot dreams,
For cherishing what’s ours,
For challenging your senseless schemes,
Foreshortening your powers.

Obamica! Obamica!
Be careful where you delve,
Or you’ll be outside looking in
By year two-thousand-twelve.

As any self respecting Three Stooges fan knows, “Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Syracuse.” (That’s a classic line delivered by Shemp Howard.) So, while we know Barack the Boundless shall one day engender myriad statues, monuments, and other artifacts of idolatry all over the world — nay, even the universe — it remains sadly true that even a guy as already exalted as he is (just ask him) has to pace himself.

Nevertheless, he’s off to a pretty auspicious start. Just 196 days into his reign, Barack the Bumptious has had the island of Antigua bestow this complimentary commemoration on our duly elected King-in-Chief. The magnificence of the honor is exceeded only by the proportions of its perversity. Let’s put this in perspective.

First of all, the place previously had been called Boggy Peak. If you were anyone else, having your name appropriated to put lipstick on a pig named Boggy Peak might cause you to look askance on such a dubious maneuver, especially if you were the President of the United States. On the other hand, if you had an ego so large you couldn’t look over it — askance or otherwise — with a periscope, you’d probably let it slide and even get a little puffy about it. We enter into evidence, Exhibit A:

Moving on, Antiguan Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer said the first black American president is a source of pride for the whole Caribbean. Hmm … a man born of a black, Kenyan father and a white, American mother is a source of pride to the Caribbean. By that logic — as the product of an Irish father and a Danish mother — I should be a source of pride for the whole Adriatic. With any luck, I’ll have the deed to a seaside magione in San Benedetto del Tronto named in my honor.  We enter into evidence Exhibit B, which I’m thinking might serve as a modest summer home:

We follow with some context; although, context becomes less desirable and material in these modern, celebrity-worshiping times:

There were a few grumbles of criticism over the change, with the head of the opposition Antigua Labor Party calling it “silly.” But Spencer didn’t need parliament’s approval and there was no formal campaign against the renaming.

Ah. There’s a pretty little revelation. It turns out Mr. Spencer not only had a sow in need of an extreme makeover, he also happens to be a fan of Barack the Bulldog’s Nike-like style: just do it. Convenience and caprice trump constitutionality. I like it.

And leave us not overlook this: The islands of Antigua and Barbuda are considered one, conjoining statistics on population, demographics, life expectancy, language, et al. (Barbuda actually comprises two discrete islands, Barbados and Bermuda. Mr. Spencer merged them because he felt like it. And he knew the King-in-Chief would do it if he felt like it.) The islands sport a total population of 85,632. Of that, 57,011 are between the ages of 15 to 64, making them the only ones likely or eligible to participate had there been anything like a referendum process.

The notion of such a process in this context, of course, exists somewhere on the scale between moot and ridiculous because we’re talking about a guy, Mr. Spencer, who has the juice to do whatever he wants to do — and the constituents who are gullible, apathetic, complacent, and snookered enough to let him do it. Sound familiar? Lord Acton said famously: “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He neglected to add, “A comatose electorate seduces the corrupt to power.” But that’s evident enough now, isn’t it?

Be that as it may, Mr. Spencer is a piker compared to His Kingliness. Railroading  50,000 people or so is nothing like bamboozling 150 million registered voters — out of the 207,643,594 who were eligible to register.  The 57,643,594 who didn’t bother to register were so certain His Kingship would save them from everything, including themselves and their intransigent torpor — and were so convinced by Barack the Beguiling’s perpetual promises that the government would take care of everything and everyone for nothing — they took the 2008 election season off. Presumably, they used the time to compile their wish lists for Barack the Bountiful. One can only hope they’re now holding their breaths for the illusory spoils.

The good news is we haven’t quite gotten to the point at which Barack the Blessed has yet been canonized.  We still have a little ways to go on that (I think) and a mid-term election by which we might slow down the King’s careening carriage. As evidence of the fact that it hasn’t yet gotten as frightful as it might, we enter into evidence Exhibit C:

But buck up, lest Happy Hour be reduced to bolting for the Drano cocktails. There is, as always, hope for the hopeful and the patient.

An old adage says, “Those who can’t do, teach.” The Chautauqua Center for Entrepreneurial Initiative espouses a corollary dictum: those who can’t make a living doing something constructive gripe about those who are making a living doing something constructive. Some jamoke named Glenn Greenwald is the latest in a rash of whiny nincompoops and public nuisances to whom that dictum applies. One could hardly catalog Goofy Glenn’s myriad delusions — nor would any constructive person spend the time — but here’s a beauty: he’s the author of a book called, How Would a Patriot Act? which is billed as a “critique” of the Bush administration’s use of executive power. What in the world would Gutless Glenn know about patriotism?

Pop Quiz #1: For fifty percent of your grade, do you imagine this clown will write a critique of the Obama administration, even though the topic is rife enough to require multiple volumes to cover the abuses of executive power in just the first six months of Obama the Omnipotent’s reign?

• Hint #1: Groveling Glenn’s a lawyer, too, just his like his buddy, Barack the Blameless.
• Hint #2: Not on your life.

The latest bug up Galled Glenn’s balmy bum is the fact that General Electric, which owns MSNBC, wants to muzzle Keith “The Crank” Olbermann. Who wouldn’t? The Crank hasn’t had a coherent articulation since he left ESPN. It seems MSNBC wants Olbermann to tone down his demented diatribes against Bill O’Reilly. Love O’Reilly or hate him, The O’Reilly Factor is the most-watched program in all of cable news. Why? Because O’Reilly makes sense to more people than does the lunatic Olbermann. Why wouldn’t GE want to keep the feathers of millions of prospective customers unruffled? But that logic escapes Gloomy Glenn. His beef is that he sees The Crank’s ranting and NBC’s corporate interests as being “unrelated”. Here’s a slice of his peculiar naivete:

[Olbermann's muzzling] was motivated by the belief that such criticism was hurting the unrelated corporate interests of GE [then Glenn abandons logical connections to write] … A G.E. shareholders’ meeting, for instance, was overrun by critics of MSNBC (and one of Mr. O’Reilly’s producers) last April [if the meeting was overrun by GE shareholders, how did MSNBC get unrelated to GE's corporate interests?] … So here we have yet another example — perhaps the most glaring yet — of the corporations that own our largest media outlets controlling and censoring the content of their news organizations based on the unrelated interests of the parent corporation.

Whew! I guess I feel better about the fact that Groping Glenn is clutching at straws to write incongruous gibberish for Salon, rather than trying to interpret the law for a corporation, the profit motives and employment potential of which he’d never understand. And I know I feel better for every poor schmoe he’s not representing in court. But come on. The dude’s 42 years old, and he’s this clueless?

Pop Quiz #2: For the remaining fifty percent of your grade, of which of the following concepts is Green Glenn utterly unaware:

1. Corporate policy
2. Organizational codes of conduct
3. Employees having to abide by 1 and 2
4. Any cerebral phenomena other than his feelings
5. All of the above.

Okay. So, I took it easy on you. You’re welcome.

One last question, which isn’t part of any exam but should have been part of Guarded Glenn’s education: How does a guy like this manage to remain so sheltered? I was introduced to the ways of the world and the reality of obeying rules at the age of three:

My family was going to the shore for a vacation. My father told me to stand on the sidewalk, which rose a foot or so above the curb, while he put my younger brother in the car. That was the rule. He always put my brother in first, then he lifted me in. Not this time. As soon as he turned his back, I took a step toward the embankment. I lost my balance, fell forward like a tree, went forehead first onto the edge of the door sill, and my noggin was as broken as the rule. We detoured to the emergency room on the way to the shore; and I received my first stitches, my first lesson in trial and error, and my first painful taste of breaking the rules. But that error didn’t keep me from trying again. And the breaking of rules neither eliminated them nor made me unfailingly heed them; although, the pain of that first break did teach me to respect them and to know them before I broke them.

Creating requires rule-breaking now and then. If you’re not creating, you’re waiting. If you’re not making, you’re taking. I have no idea what people like Gun-shy Glenn are waiting for. I have no idea why he doesn’t realize the buck Jeff Immelt is making for GE trumps the buck The Crank is taking from Jeff Imelt. But he doesn’t.

So, like all of the whiny waiters and takers we study here at the Chautauqua Center, he exercises his last resort: he blames it on the buck.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

E.B. White

If you don’t think the world’s become a giant soap opera — in large part due to the indiscriminate nature of electronic media, which, while ubiquitous and unending, still relies on the old stand-by of sensationalism to draw attention — you’re not really paying attention. Ironic, isn’t it? With the help of electronic media, the world’s become a soap opera because, along with sensationalism, modernity now operates on two abiding doctrines: popularity and celebrity. Those doctrines have replaced two others: the rule of law and minding our now business. As a result, we’d rather be saved than to save. And we’d rather savor sensationalism than do anything else. Witness the evanescent evolution of The New World Superman.

In our last episode, Gary “Area 51” McKinnon was fighting extradition to these here United States. Area 51 was hoping not to face the music for having hacked into 97 U.S. government computers in the altruistically humanitarian effort to steal the formula for environmentally pure UFO fuel. Because the circumstances of that episode were nowhere near absurd enough to satisify the lust for inanity and the existential ennui of our viewers, our writers have upped the ante by extending this story into one of U.S. politics as world theater. This serves to expand our story line and its subsequent plot possibilities ad infinitum. At the same time, it creates burlesque on a global scale — giving the charade of U.S. politics a global sweep and indicating the length of the strides our hero, Barack the Beknighted (BTB), is willing to take to save the world, as long as the world will continue to adulate him and let him do whatever he wants.

You may remember that, in a back story introduced during the Area 51 episode, BTB deigned to invite a beat cop, a Harvard law scholar, and Joe the Blowhard (JTB) to the White House to settle a matter of local ordinance and racial ignorance over a glass of suds. The gesture wasn’t intended to demonstrate BTB’s ego, his deference to a fellow Harvard law professor, his lack of a sense of prioritization suitable for the President of the United States, or that he’d gladly let his domestic and foreign duties go to Hell in favor of a Rose Garden photo opp. Rather, it was meant to be evidence of the fact that BTB can be all things to all people all the time.

BTB is the New Superhero for the New World. He’s the President of the United States as executive agent, sole agent, supreme agent. Yes, he’s Super Agent: faster than a creeping legislature, more powerful than the Constitution imagined, able to leap tall tales at a single bound. He’s Super Pol! Yes, it’s Super Pol, strange visitor from another … oh, no you don’t. We’re not touching that one with a ten-foot pole.

Anyway, in today’s exciting continuation, the mother of Area 51 appealed to our hero to save her son from the evils of  … well … the law. Speaking outside the British High Court, Area 51’s mum, Janis Sharp, said:

[Gary was] naive enough to admit to computer misuse without having a lawyer and without one being present. [Editor's note: It's only a good idea to tell the truth sometimes -- and sometimes only with a lawyer present -- especially if you know the law, have broken the law, and don't like the law.] We are heartbroken. If the law says it’s fair to destroy someone’s life in this way then it’s a bad law … He’s very ill, he’s got really bad chest pains, it’s affected him emotionally, mentally, every way, he’s terrified … Obama wouldn’t have this … He doesn’t want the first guy extradited for computer misuse to be … a UFO guy … I’m just praying, please hear us, Obama, because I know you would do the right thing.

That’s right. Janis Sharp, a woman who is not a U.S. citizen and, so, not a (legally) loyal subject of BTB, knows the former law professor has enough disdain for the law that he will simply ignore it to do the emotionally popular thing (see Wagoner, Rick). She knows BTB is above (well, of course he’s above it, he can fly) and bigger than the law. She knows that if it will curry favor, win votes, distract attention from his mathematically impossible and consequentially disastrous economic fiascoes, and pump up the ego that is the source of his super powers, he’ll do it.

Most important, she knows viewers will ignore his flouting the rule of law because … well … because he’s going to save us, darn it.

Stay tuned.

Think it not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou are an an unknowable individual; know what thou canst work at; and work at it, like a Hercules!  That will be thy better plan.

(Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, 1843)

If Live! marked Leslie’s long-overdue coming out, Dodgin’ The Dirt marked his coming of age. This is vintage Leslie, harnessing the strengths of his youth with the assured self-confidence of hard-won adult maturity. With a steadfastness matched among his peers only by Eric Clapton and Robin Trower, Leslie has remained faithful to his sonic vision and his gifts, while accommodating the growing perspectives of age, the advantages of improved recording and instrumental technology, and the maturing of his song-craft. The print ads for this disc, and its liner notes, claimed this was Leslie’s best work (up to the time of its release). I’d been sure that was behind him. I didn’t thinks so after hearing Dodgin’ the Dirt.

Among the highlights of Dodgin’ The Dirt: First, the weakness of some of the vocal performances on Live! are redeemed here. This is the primal, cat-screaming Leslie of old – full, confident, tortured, and celebratory. Second, his song selection (those both covered and self-penned) showed a new and remarkable breadth and diversity. As an example, his cover of Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” is a surprising take on a tune that Frank Sinatra once murdered, that I wouldn’t have cared to hear die at anyone else’s hands (or larynx). Leslie’s version is a singularly powerful treat.

But I don’t want to single anything out. This disc contains no ringers or filler. Among the highlights, “Sambuca” is a spirited run through Leslie’s riff-bag, featuring flights of melody, while joyously scraping the bottom of gut-bucket nasty. “One Last Lick” is an instrumental excursion over a standard (though menacing) blues progression – with some tasty surprises. “Cross Cut Saw” is a blues standard, given agile new treatment here. “Wasted Years”, by Van Morrison, is as much a biographical confession and a celebration of being alive as it is a beautiful cover of a touching song. In it – lyrically, vocally, and in his lead-guitar playing – Leslie acknowledges his own wasted years and touchingly celebrates his survival and arrival. And if “Wasted Years” is the pronouncement of that arrival, “Thunderbird” may be the proof.  This is as thoughtful and expressive as anything Leslie’s done post-Felix. He owns it; and he knows it. This just may be self-discovery as art.

Dodgin’ The Dirt’s final track, taped during the European tour from which Live! was compiled, is Leslie’s cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Red House”, which begins as a seeming knock-off of Live’s “Third Degree”. But the inclusion of this tune here is no afterthought. Despite forgetting the lyrics (again), Leslie uses everything from squealing bends to symphonic volume swells – from hair-raising single-note runs to chorused harmonics – to show why he’s always been the heavyweight champ of electric guitar: Anybody can plug one in. Only Leslie West is capable of this.

If the wait for this kind of work from Leslie was any indication, it had been a long road down the Mountain. If these two discs are any indication, it was worth every mile. The master had returned; and he’d never been better. It appears true from Live! and Dodgin’ the Dirt, just as Leslie sang in “Thunderbird” – “I’m stickin’ to my plan/I’ll be a happy man/While I can” – that he’d finally figured out what he canst work at. It’s clear now that his happy plan is to bring us much more music.

Long live the champ.