Thursday, November 28, 2013

3 Chords & the Truth: Save the last wing for me


Happy . . . Thanks . . . giving . . . from . . . W . . . K . . . R . . . P!

Or 3 Chords & the Truth. Whatever.

And as God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

And as God is my witness, when the fambly starts to bug the crud out of you this long weekend, you will have a place to escape and chill with some fine music.

That place would be the Big Show. Naturally.

Just stay the hell out of the parking lot when you make your musical escape. The gobblers are hitting the pavement like sacks of wet cement. Oh, the humanity!

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Friday, November 22, 2013

A speech ungiven in a language unlearned


Here's some of the beginning and then the conclusion of the speech John F. Kennedy never lived long enough to give at the Dallas Trade Mart that horrible day in November 1963.

It was written in a language little understood and, sadly, no longer spoken in the United States:
This link between leadership and learning is not only essential at the community level. It is even more indispensable in world affairs. Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country's security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America's leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason -- or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternative, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable.

But today other voices are heard in the land -- voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality, wholly unsuited to the sixties, doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory and that peace is a sign of weakness. At a time when the national debt is steadily being reduced in terms of its burden on our economy, they see that debt as the single greatest threat to our security. At a time when we are steadily reducing the number of Federal employees serving every thousand citizens, they fear those supposed hordes of civil servants far more than the actual hordes of opposing armies.

We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will "talk sense to the American people." But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this Nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.
(snip)
Finally, it should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society.

It is clear, therefore, that we are strengthening our security as well as our economy by our recent record increases in national income and output -- by surging ahead of most of Western Europe in the rate of business expansion and the margin of corporate profits, by maintaining a more stable level of prices than almost any of our overseas competitors, and by cutting personal and corporate income taxes by some $11 billion, as I have proposed, to assure this Nation of the longest and strongest expansion in our peacetime economic history.

This Nation's total output -which 3 years ago was at the $500 billion mark -- will soon pass $600 billion, for a record rise of over $100 billion in 3 years. For the first time in history we have 70 million men and women at work. For the first time in history average factory earnings have exceeded $100 a week. For the first time in history corporation profits after taxes -- which have risen 43 percent in less than 3 years -- have an annual level of $27.4 billion.

My friends and fellow citizens: I cite these facts and figures to make it clear that America today is stronger than ever before. Our adversaries have not abandoned their ambitions, our dangers have not diminished, our vigilance cannot be relaxed. But now we have the military, the scientific, and the economic strength to do whatever must be done for the preservation and promotion of freedom.

The strength will never be used in pursuit of aggressive ambitions -- it will always be used in pursuit of peace. It will never be used to promote provocations -- it will always be used to promote the peaceful settlement of disputes.

We, in this country, in this generation, are -- by destiny rather than by choice -- the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of "peace on earth, good will toward men." That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: "except the Lord keep the city, the watchmen waketh but in vain."

5 Decades & the Truth


A funny thing happened on the way to this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.

About half past noon this afternoon, I turned on the CBS News web stream of its coverage from Nov. 22, 1963 -- that day. Uncut, real time, starting at the moment of the first bulletin that shots had been fired at the president's motorcade in Dallas.

Within an hour -- live on TV -- America was forever changed. Over the next three days, television news grew up, making up how to cover the unthinkable, live and non-stop . . . as it covered the unthinkable, live and non-stop.

It did so, by today's technical standards, primitively and without formatic bells or whistles. Television also did so powerfully and occasionally artistically -- and without a surfeit of hairspray.

OF COURSE, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a powerful blow to a country -- to a people. The death of our young president and the images of his grief-stricken widow -- as well as television's reflection of our own grief -- hardly could fail to affect. Powerfully.

Let me put it this way. When President Kennedy fell victim to Lee Harvey Oswald's deadly aim, I was four months shy of my third birthday. I have memories of that day.

The sense of overwhelming sadness and loss endure after five decades. It comes storming out of the mists of time, as raw and fresh as yesterday. And it wasn't just the loss of what was; it was the loss of what might have been.
 
Too, maybe it was the loss of what might not have been. We are a greatly changed people from what we were Nov. 21, 1963. In some ways, that is a good thing. In more ways, I fear, that has been a bad thing.

We are a more cynical people since that day.

Great tragedy, should you survive it, can make you stronger. The aphorism to that effect did not come from nowhere.

Great tragedy, however, is just as likely to break you, too. That is a proven fact. Fifty years ago, I think, we were broken -- at least partly. I am 52, and I have lived my life watching the wheels come off a society. Not uniformly, but enough.

I've unfortunately done my part to make that so, Lord knows.

THAT'S WHAT is washing over my mind and through my soul as I find myself unable to pull myself away from CBS-TV, circa 1963. When Walter Cronkite once again -- through the time machine of videotape -- read the flash from Dallas confirming the death of the 35th president of the United States, I reflexively crossed myself.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In retrospect, that's not a bad reaction, even half a century hence. In that spirit, this sad anniversary isn't the time for jazz, rock 'n' roll or even blues in the night. That's what happened today on the way to the Big Show -- there won't be one. It just didn't feel right.

Stay tuned for a few days for a pre-Thanksgiving edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

God bless us, every one.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Joe Dean: Nothin' but net


Mr. String Music is dead.

But the legacy Joe Dean leaves behind as an LSU basketball great, Southeastern Conference hoops analyst on television who coined the famous phrase and, finally, longtime Tiger athletic director is, well . . . nothin' but net.

If you want to know the measure of the man, this anecdote from former LSU football coach Gerry DiNardo, now a Big Ten Network personality, pretty much sums it up. From The (Baton Rouge) Advocate:
Dean was a likeable and affectionate man, someone who bonded with subordinates and developed young up-and-comers. He always had time to talk, Dinardo said, even when the coach would walk into Dean’s office sweat-soaked after a long run.

“I’d go for long jogs and it was always hot and I’d be soaking wet and I’d go up to his office to talk about what I had thought about on my run,” said Dinardo, LSU football coach from 1995-99.

“I was soaking wet so I never could sit on his furniture. I’d sit on his floor and he’d lean back laughing because I’d have all of this I was thinking I was about to tell him. Sometimes, I was out of line, I was wrong, irrational, emotional, but he just sat there and listened.”

Dinardo was fired during the 1999 season. He met with Dean and then-LSU Chancellor Mark Emmert in the school’s alumni center, a way to dodge reporters, Dinardo said.

“Mark fired me and I stood up and Joe stood up and we told each other we loved each other and we hugged and I walked out,” Dinardo said. “Joe didn’t have to do that. This was a new chancellor. Why did Joe put himself at risk there? That was my last memory of Joe as my boss.”

Dinardo returned to Baton Rouge to visit his son, an LSU student, over the summer. The two had breakfast with Dean.

“Joe started out as my boss,” Dinardo said. “We winded up being great friends. He always had time for me.”

Friday, November 15, 2013

3 Chords & the Truth: The listening room


Long ago and (seemingly) far away -- during a time when vinyl ruled the world and the Internet was the Inter . . . WHAT? -- we had things called "music listening rooms," found in college unions and public libraries, and sometimes these things we called "record stores."

There, you'd find a central file of LPs, phonographs and speakers or headphones in little rooms with comfortable chairs . . . and people. Listening to music. Discovering music. Enjoying the latest sounds or rediscovering old favorites.

These were happy places -- relaxing places -- filled with music and the joy thereof.

I'D LIKE to think that's exactly what 3 Chords & the Truth is, only online and digitized for modern times. Pandora and the like are kind of like that, only on the Big Show, you have someone -- an actual human and not a computer server -- curating the whole thing for you. Turning you onto things you might not have thought about. Putting music together in ways that might not have occurred to you.

Or anyone. Because your Mighty Favog marches to the beat of a different drummer. Preferably Gene Krupa. Or Ringo Starr.

Maybe Buddy Miles.

AS LAGNIAPPE, I'm sort of like the "fun" uncle your parents warned you about. "I'm just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood."


There's a rock song for everything, you know. Or at least close enough for government work. Let the reader understand.

Anyway, that's what 3 Chords & the Truth is all about, this week and every week. This week, likewise, you mind is liable to be blown. In a good and educational way, of course.

So, ignore what your parents have told you about me and the Big Show. They're probably listening to that Foreigner album for the umpteenth time. Or the Worst of Fabian album they ordered after watching that K-Tel TV commercial in 1974.

Your Mighty Favog, he uses vinyl for good and not for evil.

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Right in der Führer's blackface


Buying a house all by your all-Aryan self to anchor your planned whites-only enclave in tiny Leith, N.D.: $5,000.

Finding out from DNA testing that you're actually 14 percent sub-Saharan African: Priceless.

And it's Heil! Heil! right in der Führer's face!
 

Monday, November 11, 2013

Well, there's always Viagra ads


First, the Silver Zipper jumped a 30-something-year-old trophy wife. Then he jumped the shark.

Or, to quote the Rolling Stones in the wake of Gov. Edwin and Trina Edwards' creeptastic reality-TV show getting axed by A&E, "You can't always get what you want." But if the 86-year-old ex-Louisiana governor and convicted felon tries sometimes, he just might find he gets what he needs.

In other words, can a Viagra commercial be the fallback position for these May-December lovebirds?

THERE AREN'T many reasons my hometown paper, The Advocate, is a must-read for me (I haven't lived in Baton Rouge since 1988), but among that small number is Louisiana gold like this:
After three weeks and a dwindling viewership, the fairy tale appears to be over for former Gov. Edwin Edwards’ reality show.

A&E announced Monday that “The Governor’s Wife” has aired in its entirety.

The network yanked the reality show from its Sunday night time slot this past weekend after the show lost thousands of viewers. Episodes chronicling the former governor’s release from parole and the birth of his son Eli aired in a block of back-to-back shows at the same time as Sunday morning church services.

“We believe in the show and appreciate all of the hard work that went into the series from the producers and the time and access the family provided,” Laurén Bienvenue, senior manager of publicity for A&E, said Monday.

Edwards’ wife, Trina, and the show’s creator, Shaun Sanghani, said “The Governor’s Wife” still could have a future chronicling the former governor’s post-prison life with his 60-something daughters, decades-younger wife, stepsons and newborn baby. They declined to elaborate.

Possibilities include “The Governor’s Wife” migrating to a network with a bigger audience of women. Reruns of the show aired on Lifetime.

“We made a time change for now, but you never can tell where we will end up,” Trina Edwards said by email.
 
VIAGRA commercials. Definitely Viagra commercials.

I'm just happy that a country that tolerates prime-time displays of Miley Cyrus twerking like an estrous baboon still has a few standards left -- that it still can be creeped out by something.

The bad news for my home state is that it seemingly is creeped out by nothing. Laissez les temps étranges rouler!

Saturday, November 09, 2013

3 Chords & the Truth: Name It and Claim It


It's time for "Name It and Claim It" on the Big Show!

If you're the first caller at Dickens 2-411 who can tell me the song featuring the following lyrics, I'll hook you up with a free episode of 3 Chords & the Truth -- free . . . absolutely free.
 
That's all there is to it, and if you buzz me off when you hear the busy signal, you will be the big winner of the latest episode of the Big Show

You ready?

Here we go! Mr. Music, please -- the lyrics to our mystery song on 3 Chords & the Truth!
I know a guy who's tough but sweet
He's so fine, he can't be beat
He's got everything that I desire
Sets the summer sun on fire

I want candy, I want candy

Go to see him when the sun goes down
Ain't no finer boy in town
You're my guy, just what the doctor ordered
So sweet, you make my mouth water

I want candy, I want candy

Candy on the beach, there's nothing better
But I like candy when it's wrapped in a sweater
Some day soon I'll make you mine,
Then I'll have candy all the time

I want candy, I want candy
I want candy, I want candy
REMEMBER, if you're the first to give me a shout at Dickens 2-411, you will be the big winner on Name It and Claim It . . . and the proud owner of a brand-new episode of this program. Good luck!

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Tuesday, November 05, 2013

The red dawn of a new day? Oy veh.


We Americans think "the social gospel" is just fine.

Just so long as it stays where it belongs -- between 30 and 33 A.D. The Bible talks about things from long ago in the Holy Land, allowing us plenty of time and distance to reframe both message and Messenger a bit more to our liking.

We can deal with that. Things were simpler then -- it was before Obamacare.

But if you really want to see the fit hit the shan, start preaching and teaching -- and, Dow Jones forbid, living -- "the social gospel" today . . . which is to say living "the gospel" today, because Christianity isn't an à la carte deal, it's a combination plate. That combination plate gave "orthodox" Judaism gas in 33 A.D., it gave the Romans gas for 280 years, give or take, and it gives everybody gas today.

Particularly, Pope Francis' renewed emphasis on "the social gospel" -- you know, "blessed are the poor" and "the meek shall inherit the land" -- has a whole lot of "orthodox" Catholics in a toot. The latest blow-up comes in the wake of a couple of American speeches given by one of Francis' trusted advisers, Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras.

There was, for one, writer and editor John Zmirak on Rod Dreher's American Conservative blog:
Cardinal Maradiaga’s vision of the future of the Catholic Church is really a yellowed snapshot of the past—of the recent past of the Anglican church, which has buried the clear and consistent doctrines of Christianity, in favor of social activism on behalf of foolish and counterproductive policies. The result was predictable; it became spiritually irrelevant, a decorative tassel hanging from the left wing of public opinion, while its most fervent believers split off to found new churches that actually taught the Gospel, or decamped for Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy. If the Catholic Church follows its lead, to the point where it throws infallibility into question, the same thing will happen. Expect a torrent of converts to the Orthodox Church—made up of the most active, fervent, believing, Catholics.

As a North American who is grateful for the relative religious and economic freedom that produced a successful country, I reject the Marxian bromides being offered by men whose countries have never known such freedom. Amidst all Maradiaga’s rhetoric about Gospel solidarity with the poor, I smell more than whiff of brimstone, of a national and regional envy that has no clue how to lift up the impoverished, but would happily settle for tearing down the prosperous.
WHAT WAS the pope just saying about the dangers of ideology? And what exactly prompted such a furious reaction?

Stuff like this: 
The Church is not the hierarchy, but the people of God. “The People of God” is, for the Council, the all-encompassing reality of the Church that goes back to the basic and the common stuff of our ecclesial condition; namely, our condition as believers. And that is a condition shared by us all. The hierarchy has no purpose in itself and for itself, but only in reference and subordination to the community. The function of the hierarchy is redefined in reference to Jesus as Suffering Servant, not as “Pantocrator” (lord and emperor of this world); only from the perspective of someone crucified by the powers of this world it is possible to found, and to explain, the authority of the Church. The hierarchy is a ministry (diakonia = service) that requires lowering ourselves to the condition of servants. To take that place (the place of weakness and poverty) is her own, her very own responsibility.
ME, I was thinking "About damned time!" 

I also was thinking "This model either would have made the Scandals a lot less likely, or it would have enabled lay Catholics to deal with them a lot more effectively -- through less clericalism and more ass kicking." But that's just me. I'm a Bad Catholic who can digest clericalism and humorless scolds on the religious right no better than I can soulless Marty Haugen ditties during Mass or cheap-gracers on the liturgical left.

If I were just smarter and holier, I would have been able to discern the Red Menace lurking beneath the surface of passages like this from the cardinal's Dallas address:
There is no possible reform of the Church without a return to Jesus. The Church only has a future and can only consider herself great by humbly trying to follow Jesus. To discern what constitutes abuse or infidelity within the Church we have no other measure but the Gospel. Many of the traditions established in the Church could lead her to a veritable self-imprisonment. The truth will set us free, humility will give us wings and will open new horizons for us.
If the Church seeks to follow Jesus, all she has to do is to continue telling the world what happened to Jesus, proclaiming His teachings and His life. Jesus was not a sovereign of this world, He was not rich, but instead He lived as a poor villager, He proclaimed his program – the Kingdom of God—and the great of this world (Roman Empire and Synagogue together) persecuted and eliminated Him. His sentence to die on the cross, outside the city, is the clearest evidence yet that He did not want to ingratiate himself with the powers of this world. Shattered by their power, He is the Suffering Servant, an image of innumerable other servants, defeated by the ones who rule and call themselves “lords;” but it was He, poor, silenced, and humiliated, who was designated by his Father as His Beloved Child and whom God Himself resurrected on the third day.
THE MAN even referenced that noted pinko, Blessed John Paul II:
In contemporary pontifical magisterium, we have two significant benchmarks: John Paul II’s 1990 Encyclical Redemptoris Missio, and the apostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, from the same pontiff, in 2001. “In Redemptoris Missio, the Pope teaches us that the Church is a mission. It is not that she has a mission, like she has other traits; she is herself a mission. Everything in the Church should be weighted and measured in regard to the mission of converting the world.” 
And in Novo Millennio Ineunte, Blessed John Paul II challenges the Church at the end of the Great Jubilee of the year 2000, to leave behind the shallow waters of maintaining the institution and travel to the deep waters of evangelization. That is what Jesus tells his disciples in Chapter 12 of Luke, adding: “Duc in altum, put out into the deep.” [Luke 5: 4] This means that the Church will convert the world not by argument, but by example. There is no doubt that doctrinal argument is important, but people will be attracted by the humanity of Christians, those who live by the faith, who live in a human way, who irradiate the joy of living, the consistency in their behavior.
FOR WHAT it's worth, my wife and I are converts to the Catholic faith. No one argued us into the church; a number of people loved us into it.

Meantime, the Rev. Dwight Longenecker worries that the gospel will get lost in a sea of "social work." Because, obviously, all you need isn't love. Or something like that.
I am not so much worried about what Cardinal Maradiaga said, but what he left unsaid.
And there the Church, in humble company, helps making life intelligible and dignified, making it a community of equals, without castes or classes; without rich or poor; without impositions or anathemas. Her foremost goal is to care for the penultimate (hunger, housing, clothing, shoes, health, education…) to be then able to care for the ultimate, those problems that rob us of sleep after work (our finiteness, our solitude before death, the meaning of life, pain, and evil…). The answer the Church gives to the “penultimate” will entitle her to speak about the “ultimate.” For that reason, the Church must show herself as a Samaritan on earth – so she can some day partake of the eternal goods.
Really? The Church’s foremost goal is to provide housing, shoes, health and education? Surely the church’s foremost goal is the salvation of souls. To be sure we must be engaged in feeding the poor, but in his talk on the New Evangelization the Cardinal does not mention the salvation of souls or the spiritual work of the church or the sacraments at all. Is he simply a social worker dressed in red, and does the red indicate more of his political opinion than his status as a cardinal?

REALLY? What part of "the answer the Church gives to the 'penultimate' will entitle her to speak about the 'ultimate'" is unclear?

Again, I am a convert. I was "penultimated" into the Catholic Church. After all, God meets you where you are, not where He thinks you need to be. Where you need to be is a process -- one lasting a lifetime.

By the way, I only can assume that the good father's cheap shot about Maradiaga being a "social worker dressed in red" or maybe just a Red, period, was for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls. I've seen stranger things done -- in all sincerity -- for the sake of kingdom come.

Ideology takes the invitation that is the Christian gospel and makes it into a hammer. Ideology takes suffering souls and turns them into nails -- into the proverbial Them.

Ideology say: Us, we so holy.

I'M NOT sure how much the cardinal's American trip told us about what direction the Catholic Church is headed. I fear the collective cerebral hemorrhage we're seeing so early in Francis' pontificate tells us a lot about the Catholic right.

"Cafeteria Catholicism," alas, is a bipartisan thing. And the cafeteria is getting crowded.