Showing posts with label LSU. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LSU. Show all posts

Friday, June 30, 2023

3 Chords & the Truth: Keeping score

I took me out to the ballgame. I took me out to the crowd.

I did not buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack (substitute Fritos walking taco, hamburgers and a brat here) but, ultimately, I did have to come back.

To the Big Show. You knew that I would.

STILL, the College World Series here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska was maybe the greatest that's ever been -- 11 days of outstanding contests, including the best baseball game I have ever witnessed. That would be the 11-inning pitchers' duel between my alma mater, LSU, and Wake Forest . . . that ended in the bottom of the 11th with a two-run homer to give the Tigers a crucial victory on their way to the national championship.

LSU's seventh national championship in baseball.

We, of course, will pay tribute to that in this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth. Is this Heaven? No, but it ain't half bad.

There also will be, during the show, the usual complement of mind-blowing musical moments, with a healthy smattering of "Can he DO that?" Yes. Yes, I can. It's my program.

Well, that's about it for the preshow promotin' and explainin'. Just one more thing to add, though.

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

Saturday, April 11, 2020

The records that made me (some of 'em): Labour of Lust


The rules of the album challenge on Facebook was that you pick (just) 10 that influenced you big-time, and this is No. 10 -- Nick Lowe's "Labour of Lust."

I loved Lowe's music the first time I heard it, probably a year before this came out in June 1979, right between me graduating high school and starting college at LSU. Before I'd figured out that he was one of the driving forces and producers behind the whole Brit New Wave scene that was saving American rock 'n' roll, one great college-radio single at a time.

And years before I figured out he and I share a birthday.
 

Nick Lowe is a hell of a songwriter, and he writes an even better hook. The man, in the late '70s, was the power in power pop. Four words: "Cruel to Be Kind."

By the way, did I mention Rockpile? And that Lowe produced the first five albums of Elvis Costello, who used to be a roadie for Brinsley Schwarz, the pub-rock band (1969-'74) from which all things New Wave and power pop flowed (including Nick Lowe).


HOW BIG an influence is Nick Lowe in my musical world? Let me elucidate: 10a, 10b, 10c and 10d on my list probably would be Costello's "My Aim Is True," "This Year's Model" and "Armed Forces," then Lowe's 1978 LP "Jesus of Cool," which in this country became "Pure Pop for Now People" because the suits remembered what happened to the Beatles in 1966.

That about cover it, Skipper?

Seriously, by 1978 or so, rock 'n' roll was a bloated, self-satisfied son of a bitch, and (once again) needed the Brits to come to the rescue, mind the bollocks, then pry ours out of a corporate vise. As much as anyone, Nick Lowe took on what was a dirty job amid a music scene that couldn't be unseen, and made the extraction quite painless, actually.

There's an "American Squirm" joke in there somewhere, but I'm just not seeing it right now.

The End.


Friday, April 10, 2020

The records that made me (some of 'em): Calcutta!


This influential LP came later in life -- as in, I-was-over-50 later in life. But influential is influential, a revelation is a revelation no matter how delayed, so here goes No. 9 on the list -- "Calcutta!" by Lawrence Welk.

As a Baby Boomer of a certain age, I absolutely was force-fed a diet of The Lawrence Welk Show every weekend. Saturday night on the network . . . Saturday or Sunday afternoon in syndication, you could count on Lawrence, Myron, Joe, Norma, Arthur, Bobby, Cissy, Gail and Dale to cheese up the living room TV set so much, all you really needed was a box of Ritz crackers for your evening to be complete.

Mama and Daddy loved The Lawrence Welk Show. And Mama and Daddy controlled the television when it counted -- the precise times for 1) Lawrence Welk on Saturday afternoons, 2) The Gospel Jubilee on Sunday mornings, and 3) whenever The Porter Wagoner Show was on -- maybe Saturday, maybe Sunday afternoon.

Unfortunately for my force-fed self, The Lawrence Welk Show was . . . was . . . was. . . .


A half century later, I am at a loss for words.

I, however, can show you:



NOW YOU KNOW why folks got one toke over the line.

In short, Lawrence Welk represented, for all of my youth, a big, lame joke. When it wasn't being the Abomination of Geritol Nation.

Well into married life, my wife -- subjected, in her youth, to the same Welk abuse as myself -- and I would watch reruns of the show on public TV for the sheer irony and hathos of it all. Sometimes, we still do.

Then at an estate sale one Sunday, one of the LP treasures of a passing generation presented itself to me. "Aw, what the hell," I told myself as I grabbed "Calcutta" for ironic listening enjoyment.

I cleaned the vintage 1961 vinyl, plopped it on the record player, and immediately a huge problem jumped right off the grooves and into my smug, superior little shit of a face.

The @#&%!$*!# album was good.

The Welk orchestra almost . . . Dare I say it? . . . No, I CAN'T! . . . Go on, say it, you little frickin' WIMP! . . . DON'T YELL AT ME!!!! . . . the Welk orchestra almost . . . uh . . . swung. It was really tight. And the "Calcutta" Welk was so much more fun than that Geritol- and Serutan-fueled weekly video constitutional might suggest.

YOU DON'T EXPECT, at least not in one's 50s, for it to be so earthshaking to discover one's parents -- well, at least kinda sorta -- were right. But on a matter involving such a deeply held principle? About something that strikes at the core of Boomer generational solidarity?

Consider my earth shaken, if not also stirred.


God help me, the title cut was fun. (I was already familiar with the "Calcutta" single, just not with the idea that it was "fun.") "Perfidia" was even better. Exquisite, even.

God help me, I had to give Lawrence Welk his due. I had been influenced.

And I wasn't even one "modern spiritual" over the line.


Thursday, April 02, 2020

The records that made me (some of 'em): The B-52's


Well, I am up to No. 3 in the post-pictures-of-formative-albums challenge. So far, so good.

Now watch me forget No. 4.

The year: 1979. The guy: Idiot, 18-year-old me, spending much time at carrier-current WLSU (soon to be on FM as WPRG, then eventually KLSU). The album: "The B-52's." (Really, is the distinction between plural and possessive really that hard to decipher?)

The LP arrives at the station, and it starts getting airplay -- "Dance This Mess Around" was the first radio cut. I think my first reaction was along the lines of "What the FUCK is THIS SHIT?!"
My first exposure to the B-52s (B-52's? I give up) left me thinking that Yoko Ono had taken some really bad shit, man.

Then "Dance This Mess Around" started to grow on me. And grow on me. And grow on me.

 
I MEAN, "Why WON'T you dance with me? I AIN'T no Limburger!" That pretty much sums up the life of a college freshman.

And thus I learned -- not for the first time, certainly not for the last -- a great life lesson: "You may hate it now, but wait till you drive it!" In this case, the B-52s (sans apostrophe) turned out a hell of a lot better than the Family Truckster.

Bought the album in the fall of '79. Still have it today.

By the way, did you know there's a moon in the sky called the moon? You learn something every day.


The records that made me (some of 'em):
Darkness on the Edge of Town


If I somehow had never heard of John Prine, this would be No. 1 in my (actually) no-particular-order list of record albums that had the most influence on me: "Darkness on the Edge of Town" by Bruce Springsteen -- channeler of the young man's angst in 1978.

I was turned on to The Boss by Loose Radio (God rest its amazing FM soul) and an old friend back at Baton Rouge High School. I was a megafan on contact, and "Badlands" became my personal anthem for a long, long time.

John Prine was the consummate chronicler of the universal human condition, but Scooter and the Big Man had the key to my restless teenage American heart and gut (which I had a hell of a lot less of back in the day). In short order after buying "Darkness," I acquired "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J." and "The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle" and "Born to Run."

And I pounced on "The River" as soon as it hit Kadair's (or was it Leisure Landing?) in 1980, my sophomore year at Louisiana State. Then I was in the crowd when The Boss played the LSU Assembly Center on Nov. 11, 1980. Still have the ticket stub somewhere.



I SAW The Who earlier that year (they blew up the stage, and I still have the tinnitus to prove it -- I had great seats), but Bruce and the band was better. That's saying something.

Another thing I have to say: Another high-school friend somehow got onto the stage -- and to Bruce. Or, as (God rest its newspaper soul) the State-Times' Laurie Smith reported in the next day's review "one girl got through to Springsteen before she was pulled away."

My friend obviously had somewhat better seats than my girlfriend and I did.

It was the best concert I'd ever seen . . . until I saw John Prine a couple of years later at the LSU Union Theater. It was a damned close concert competition -- maybe it was the Union Theater's relative intimacy that gave Prine the edge.

Who cares? It was all GREAT.

I cannot remember if I cried when Springsteen sang "Independence Day" at the show. Probably not -- I was with a date, don't you know?

I sure as shit cried when I first heard that song on "The River," in the privacy of my bedroom. Bruce had the same relationship with his old man that I had with mine -- complicated. Real complicated.

I SUPPOSE it says something about LSU and the Gret Stet that the Springsteen lyric I set in headline type and posted on my bulletin-board space at The Daily Reveille kept getting taken down:

I wanna find one place, I wanna spit in the face of these
Badlands you gotta live it every day
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you've gotta pay
Well keep pushin' till it's understood
And these badlands start treating us good
Well, if Bruce taught us all anything, it's that shit happens. Often.


The records that made me (some of 'em): Bruised Orange


A Facebook friend (also a non-online one of decades) tagged me on one of these Facebooky things the other day -- this one to post a picture each day of 10 record albums that have influenced your life. Well, I can do that.

The reason for my social-media tagging seemed to be the crap ton of vinyl and CDs engulfing the house) to post a cover a day of 10 albums that shaped my musical consciousness. Oy. Just 10? Just post the picture and not gas on about the choice? Not a chance.


Will I forget to keep doing it after No. 3?

Stay tuned. Here's No. 1.


Gris-Gris, Feb. 9, 1977
I BOUGHT this LP in the fall of 1978 from the record bin at the LSU Union Bookstore during a break from the state high-school journalism conference -- I was a senior at Baton Rouge High. I'd heard much about this John Prine guy (and seen all the ads in the local alt-weekly, Gris Gris, for his NORML benefit concerts), and I was officially intrigued.

After I got home and ensconced myself in my room (and my pride-and-joy stereo setup that I still have and use . . . the Marantz 2226 receiver, at least), I dropped the needle on this record and had my horizons radically expanded by one of the greatest songwriters this country ever produced.

Frankly, I think he edges out Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, the man who gave words to my townie angst and desire to get the F out of "these Badlands."

When I had finished listening to "Bruised Orange," I understood the meaning of "transcendent" a little bit better. I had just lived it, and I was filled with a desire to get all the Prine that I could manage.

I had been eclecticized, and I hope one day to tell Mr. Prine in person what he's meant to so many of us. He damn well better get well from this damnable COVID-19 thing.

Please, God? OK?


Sunday, September 17, 2017

East of Yoknapatawpha


It was an embarrassing, dismal night for my Tigers in StarkVegas on Saturday. So, I'm reaching for a little LSU gridiron perspective here.

Some "my native state" perspective here. This otherwise is known as a "rant." A justified one, but a rant nonetheless.

But I prefer "perspective."
Such as . . . I wish to holy hell that Louisianians were as mortified by a failing, dysfunctional and violent state as they are about the mere mediocrity of the flagship university's football team.

I mean, I meaannnnnn . . . how come no one has fired the whole goddamned Louisiana Legislature and all the state's incompetent and venal constitutional officers? (I'm looking at you, Attorney General Jeff Landry.)

How come nobody is firing their whole slew of short-bus refugees, otherwise known as your local city council or parish police jury?

And what about your racially riven, squabbling school boards? Why are those assholes still sucking at the taxpayer teat? I mean, is not an 0-and-forever record sufficiently bad?

While I'm at it, did you ever think there might be reasons some kids don't learn well and become problems -- reasons apart from "It's them commerniss teachers' fault"? Did it ever occur to you that if dismantling public schools were the answer, you might be seeing improvement by now?

Can anyone tell me what the hell this man is saying?
THEN, of course, you have your local cops, who manage to shoot an alarming number of people -- mostly black but not all -- who aren't actually trying to shoot them first. How come y'all can't even fire most of 'em, much less prosecute them?

And speaking of violence and guns, did you ever wonder what the hell has gotten certain heavily-impoverished communities in Louisiana to the point where murder and mayhem is something of an epidemic? Didja ever wonder what gets people -- black, brown, purple, green or white -- to the point where life is that bloody cheap?

If your response is to gloss over the "purple, green or white" part and just hit me with "That's just what n*****s do," thank you for participating, and here's your parting gift -- an official cast-iron, pineapple shaped MP3 player preloaded with Florida-Georgia Line's greatest hits. Just pull the pin and let loose of the handle, and you're good to go!

Finally, did you ever wonder how come football has all kinds of "boosters" with all kinds of cash but, in Louisiana, the folks working in actual university classrooms and decrepit university libraries and woebegone parish K-12 schools . . . not so much?

Has a math major with a pocket protector ever gotten a $100 handshake?

Middleton Library, LSU. Photo by Bob Mann
WHY IS THERE the fancy Cox Center for LSU athletes to occasionally study, but just the moldering Middleton Morass for the poor schmuck you're going to be counting on to take care of that bum heart of yours someday? Assuming he or she doesn't look around too closely, decide (in the eloquent words of ex-Tiger coach Nick Saban) "F*** that shit!" and haul ass two seconds after graduation.

This is my attempt at football-fanatic perspective tonight. Yes, I've been drankin' a little, and thus feel free to tell the God's honest, God-forsaken truth.

Amen.

Friday, September 15, 2017

Radio and dance in an age of theology and geometry


In 1941, WJBO -- 1150 on Your Dial! 5,000 watts! -- was the only radio station in Baton Rouge.

But at Louisiana State University, "WJBO" was a modern-dance composition, too.

I'm unsure what the LSU WJBO says about the state of modern dance 76 years ago in a sleepy, Deep South state capital. But I damned well can tell you that, today, listening to Rush Limbaugh on your average denuded talk-radio station (enter the 2017 incarnation of WJBO) might inspire me to do many things, but dancing isn't one of them.

Alas, in 1941, radio was radio, and dance was dancing, and my parents and grandparents were spared the likes of what stations like WJBO have become.

The State-Times (peace be upon it), gave its readers a preview of this exciting danse electronique, in which collegians chase electrons to and fro:

"WJBO," illustrating in the dance the various types of programs available from the push-button radio, will open the recital. Elizabeth Green of Haynesville, graduate student, is the composer. First there will be war news, with dictators presented against a background of sorrowing women and children. Another push of the button will bring the serial, a very usual sort of triangle story which will be interpreted by David Stopher and two girls of the dance group. Next will be the symphony, which Miss Green will give, and at the conclusion Linda Lee's social column of the Air, to be presented by a group.
MY PARENTS' generation, God bless it, obviously did not yet lack for theology and geometry. I scarcely can picture what a contemporary "WJBO" might look like. I assume it would involve a fat guy waddling around with a microphone, pantomiming a conniption fit as a large troupe rhythmically evoked opioid abuse and falling IQs around him.

In the second movement, the microphone may or may not be placed where it was not designed to go.

I'm not sure about the third and final movement. I don't think anyone would stick around that long. Kind of like AM radio today.


That concludes your news from May, 14, 1941. I'm your Mighty Favog. Next, Your Esso Reporter. Good night.

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Whitewashing history to keep living a lie


Here's the problem with us white Southerners, as succinctly as I can put it: We don't know who or what the hell we are apart from defining ourselves by the most horrific sins of our forefathers, then trying to whitewash that evil because it was our kin what did it.

Above, behold the truth of the antebellum South before our defeated ancestors managed to sanitize the whole unholy thing into "the Lost Cause" and -- in a triumph of what passed for "fake news" in the 1880s and 1890s -- turn the Civil War into a glorious-yet-doomed campaign against Yankee usurpers in the name of states' rights. A completely logical and fair question to ask here would be "States' rights to do what, exactly?"

The answer you would not get from the originators of Lost Cause mythology then, and the answer you will not get today from the patently racist defenders of "Southern heritage" and "history," is one reflecting the truth. The plain truth you will find in the original source materials, or from talking to any serious historian of the "War Between the States," is that, in 1861, the 11 seceding Southern states wanted to maintain the "right" of whites to hold blacks in bondage, buy and sell them like you would lumber or cotton, and then -- if Satan so moved them -- whip the "property" until their backs looked like this famous 1863 photo of an escaped Louisiana slave known as Gordon or "Whipped Peter."

The source materials and the photographic record tells us that the mutilated Gordon is a far better representative of the South's antebellum and wartime reality than the "history" and "heritage" peddled by Southern snake-oil salesmen since 1877, when Reconstruction ended at least a couple of generations too soon.

In 1961, when I was born in Baton Rouge, Southern "heritage"consisted of moonlight, magnolias and -- as Randy Newman correctly put in in his seminal "Rednecks" -- "keeping the niggers down." Or, as Alabama Gov. George Wallace put it in 1962:
"In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
Today, being that our parents couldn't stop the feds from giving blacks the vote, preserving "Southern heritage" and "history" centers on venerating the Confederate battle flag and preserving the "Lost Cause" monuments to the generals and founding fathers of the Confederate States of America -- tributes in cement and stone that started going up as soon as the last Yankee soldiers got out some 140 years ago.

In my native state, Louisiana, brainwashed Lost Causers of the Deep South booboisie are figuratively (and perhaps literally) losing their minds now that New Orleans is actually removing the first of those whitewashed tributes to treason and tyranny that rose with the Jim Crow reassertion of white supremacy. The first to go -- in the wee hours of Monday, as SWAT snipers and New Orleans street cops guarded helmeted, masked demolition workers clad in flak jackets -- was the Battle of Liberty Place monument.

It's "fascism and tyranny," one Lost Cause dead-ender yelled at the "cowardly" work crews, who also covered up the company name on their vehicles and removed the license plates. Of course, the workers wore masks and the company name was covered because every firm that so much as bid on the job faced a barrage of abuse and death threats in the name of "history" and "heritage." The owner of a Baton Rouge firm that originally won a contract discovered that his $200,000 sports car had been turned into a molten glob of metal in his parking lot -- burned.

He declined the job.


THE FAKE NEWS about Liberty Place we Louisianians were taught for a century or more was that the victory of 5,000 White League combatants over the 3,500 from New Orleans' integrated Metropolitan Police and units of the state militia represented the beginning of the end of rule by carpetbagger "usurpers." The reality was that the deadly September 1874 insurrection aimed to overthrow the Republican governor of Louisiana following a disputed 1872 election, and the White League succeeded in capturing state offices as Gov. William Pitt Kellogg took refuge in the Customs House and begged Washington for help.

Three days later, the Pelican State putsch ended when President Ulysses S. Grant sent in the U.S. Army and the White League slinked away.

The Liberty Place monument went up in 1891, erected by the Jim Crow city government. Inscriptions noting the battle's importance in establishing white supremacy were added in 1932.


From The New Orleans Advocate:
The removal was delayed, however, as the city found itself tied up in court battles that lasted until earlier this year, when the 5th Circuit ruled that the city could move forward while a trial on the monument backers' suit played out.

That case also was resolved on Monday, when U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier dismissed claims made by several groups led by the Monumental Task Committee, ruling that the plaintiffs had not shown they could succeed on the merits. Among their arguments was that the committee should have a say in what happened to the monuments because it had done work over the years to clean and restore them.
[New Orleans Mayor Mitch] Landrieu was not spotted at the removal itself, and other city officials there were not allowed to comment to the media, leaving the city’s official comments to a release issued two hours after the process began and then Landrieu's news conference.

“Our past is marked by racial divisions. Today we are moving to a place of healing,” Landrieu said.

That event was held at the police memorial in front of NOPD headquarters, a deliberate choice by the administration to accentuate the fact that the White League killed members of the city’s biracial police force during its rebellion.

Emphasizing the city’s focus on security, members of the media had to email city officials before even being told where Landrieu would speak.

“Of the four we will remove, this is perhaps the most blatant affront to the values that make New Orleans and America strong today,” Landrieu said of the Battle of Liberty Place monument.

“We will no longer allow the Confederacy to literally be put in the heart of our city. The removal of these statues sends a clear message, an unequivocal message to the people of our nation that our city celebrates our diversity,” he added.


The Liberty Place monument has always been a flashpoint of controversy and was a site of rallies years ago by white nationalist David Duke and protests by civil rights leader Rev. Avery Alexander, something that may have contributed to Monday's level of security.

This is also the second time the monument has been removed. It was taken down from its original spot on the Canal Street neutral ground during roadwork in the late 1980s and was put up again only on orders from a federal court. It was placed in a less conspicuous spot at the foot of Iberville Street, between a garage and the floodwall.

The timing of the statue’s removal came as an odd historical coincidence in a debate focused on the Civil War and its aftermath.

Monday was Confederate Memorial Day in Mississippi and Alabama. It also marked the 155th anniversary of the day Union ships under the command of Capt. David Farragut managed to pass two Confederate forts on the river in Plaquemines Parish, an attack that started at almost exactly the same early morning hour as workers began taking down the monument. Once Farragut’s squadron made it past those forts, New Orleans, the Confederacy's largest city, was left defenseless. It surrendered without a fight four days later.

Exactly 15 years later, federal troops would leave the city on April 24 on the order of new President Rutherford B. Hayes, marking the end of Reconstruction.

The end of that federal oversight, which ushered in the Jim Crow era, was commemorated on the Liberty Place statue itself in 1932 with a plaque that said “the national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state.” Less inflammatory language was added when the marker was moved to Iberville Street.
THIS IS HISTORY.  The monuments are propaganda, erected to obscure history, not to shine a light on the fraught past of the American South. The Liberty Place marker and the ones yet to come down -- massive statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, who fired the opening salvos on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, as well as the biggest of all, that of Gen. Robert E. Lee in Lee Circle -- say nothing about why the South fought or what it all meant.

All they do is cloak the ugly reality of a sick culture and a wicked economy built upon the exploitation and dehumanization of an entire race . . . and the culpability of the men who led 11 states into treasonous rebellion to defend the indefensible.

"History" to people either too racist or too brainwashed to comprehend the obvious is, instead, nothing more than a crude attempt to bestow a patina of dignity upon a people's and a region's ignominious and total defeat. The only relevant history involving these tributes to a well-lost cause would be that of the how-tos of disinformation and cultural brainwashing on a civilizational scale.

The "heritage" they represent is a God-damned abomination.

Once upon a time, as a well and good brainwashed son of the South, I'd be offended at all the little digs and insults from Yankees about my home place. But when you step back and look at the enormity of the South's sin and the enormity of the South's delusions -- even to this day -- you start to realize those humiliations haven't been nearly bad enough or often enough.


Frankly, there ought to have been a de-Confederafication of the South at least as extensive and long-running as the de-Nazification of Germany after World War II. Confederate symbolism should have been made as unacceptable and untouchable as the swastika became for postwar Germans.

Being charitable to vanquished enemies is one thing, but bygones-as-bygones isn't an option when the real enemy is cultural and ideological. You can rebuild the ruined land, but you damn well cannot allow the rebuilding of the toxic, deadly ideology.


The federal government, however, damn well allowed the rebuilding of the South's toxic, deadly ideology. And here we are in 2017, with loyal sons and daughters of the Southland still making excuses for the sins of their forebears -- when they can bring themselves to acknowledge America's original sin at all.

IF MITCH LANDRIEU were to ask me what to do with Lee Circle after that most prominent of the Lost Cause love letters comes down, I'd tell him that I think the city should replace the statue of Robert E. Lee with a monument to that whipped Louisiana slave whose photograph caused such a stir in the North. There should be a gigantic memorial to Gordon, or "Whipped Peter," or whoever that suffering soul was.

According to the Wikipedia entry for the famous Civil War picture, Gordon joined the Union Army after the Emancipation Proclamation -- first as a guide (he was captured by Confederates, tied to a tree, beaten, left for dead . . . and then escaped) and then as a sergeant in the Corps d'Afrique. He fought bravely at Port Hudson (La.), the first battle where black troops took the lead in a Union assault.
 

Where the soon-to-be-removed monument to Lee stood, I would erect a wall several stories tall. On one side, a relief of that picture of the scarred, disfigured slave who fled a plantation near Krotz Springs, La., and made it to safety in Union-occupied Baton Rouge.

ON THE OTHER SIDE of the wall, there would be a relief of this woodcut -- the Union sergeant named George, who fought as the equal of any white man at Port Hudson. And I'd rename Lee Circle something a lot more fitting . . . and inspiring.

Resurrection Circle.

I also would point out to the mayor that this Southern boy has Southern skin in this. My great-great grandfather, François Seguin, was a Confederate soldier at Port Hudson. And there he died.

In the name of a God-damned abomination.

(Later, we can discuss Louisianians' bitter refusal to honor LSU's founding superintendent . . .  William Tecumseh Sherman. Not one thing on campus is named for him. James Carville thinks the Parade Ground should be named for him; I think it should be the Union. I have skin in that controversy, too. For one thing, I am a Louisiana State graduate. Then there's the matter of another of my great-great grandfathers, Ulysses Broussard, a Confederate soldier from Louisiana who fought . . . in the Battle of Atlanta. Which is where he is buried.)


THAT'S the thing about wicked ideologies and sick cultures -- one way or another, they kill everybody without prejudice.

Caucasian sons and daughters of the South owe it to ourselves, our ancestors and history itself to, at long last, live in truth. A people and a region have no identity at all if the one they claim is a lie -- a lie that manages to both dishonor and ignore the history and humanity of fellow Southerners dehumanized, enslaved, abused and killed for the sake of "Southern heritage."

Then again, if history so far is any predictor, my people will stick with the Southern status quo of livin' the lie and partyin' like it's 1899. In that case, allow me to put a record on the turntable. You may have heard it -- fella used to live in New Orleans.


We're rednecks, we're rednecks
And we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground . . . .

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Trumpiana


Alas, alas . . . whither my poor alma mater, Louisiana State University? Yet another semester, yet another budget cut, in all likelihood.

Bigly.

With cuts right around the corner, the president of LSU warned Louisiana lawmakers Wednesday that his university cannot handle many more budget reductions.

“Another cut to higher education furthers the dire straits that we're in. I don't know how much more efficient we can become,” President F. King Alexander told the House Appropriations Committee.

For the 16th time in nine years, LSU is once again preparing for the legislative knife.

“It's endless, it's like Ground Hog Day,” said Rep. Larry Bagley, R-Stonewall.
In order to fix the state’s $313 million shortfall left over from last year, higher education will like have to endure another multi-million dollar cut. Back in November, the governor proposed about $18 million in cuts to higher education overall, with more than $8.5 million from LSU. Those could be enacted through executive order. Any changes to that plan could be announced Thursday, at which time legislators could also vote to increase cuts to education.

Over the last decade, LSU has cut back on courses while freezing faculty salaries time and time again, according to Alexander. Meanwhile, competing universities have lured away their LSU faculty by offering them better pay. Overall, Alexander said budget cuts have led to a net loss of 500 faculty members over ten years.

“We would take notice if we were losing football coaches,” Alexander told the committee.

With regards to how much the university spends per student, LSU currently ranks near the bottom. The school is 46th out of the 50 flagship schools across the country and 12th out of the 14 SEC schools, according to Alexander.

“This day is the worst day of hearings every year because we talk about what should be the hope of the future of our state, and then we talk about how dramatically we've dis-invested in it over the last nine years,” said Rep. Walt Leger, D-New Orleans.

Added to that, the shortfall is holding up maintenance projects. The LSU system current has a backlog of $750 million in upkeep projects that cannot be completed under current budget restrictions. About $500 million of those projects are on the main campus.

When it comes to TOPS, which is only partially funded in the spring, Alexander said it is unclear how it will impact enrollment. His bigger concern, he said, is next fall and beyond.

“The uncertainty of all this has the potential to drive the best and brightest out of the state,” Alexander said.
THERE REALLY isn't much to be said about this ongoing tragedy any longer. It all has been said, and we're all getting tired of repeating ourselves.

Here, though, is one thing I don't think has been repeated to the point of ineffectiveness.

You want to know the best way to describe my woebegone home state? This way.

Louisiana is just like its favorite politician, president-elect Donald Trump: It spends its life acting like a stupid asshole, then it goes bankrupt.

Trumpiana, for short.

That is all. That's enough.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Mike is dead. Long live Mike

Mike VI, October 2011
Mike VI lost his fight with cancer today, and the LSU community mourns.
 
He was a good boy.


Mike also brought untold joy to countless Tiger fans, and to anyone else who had the privilege of visiting this beautiful animal. He wasn't just a mascot, he was like your dog or cat at home -- part of the family.

He fought hard, and we will miss him terribly.

From The Advocate:

Mike, April 2015
As if to punctuate what has already been a tumultuous and emotional football season for LSU, Mike the Tiger – who many considered to be the living embodiment of the team's spirit – died on Tuesday at the age of 11.
Mike VI was euthanized by his attending veterinarian David Baker, ending what may be the world's most famous case of a tiger battling cancer.

"It's an emotional thing," said LSU sophomore Staci Shelby, shortly after hearing the news. "A lot of people associate the tiger with football and school spirit and things like that."

Over the past few months, Mike VI encountered a lot of firsts. He was already one of only two live tigers mascots for a university team in the nation. And in May, the famous feline was diagnosed with a spindle cell sarcoma in his face after caretakers noticed his eye was bulging.

It was thought to be the first such diagnosis of the rare, incurable cancer in a tiger.

Then Mike became the first such tiger to receive treatment for the cancer in an attempt to extend his life.

LSU Vet school officials, in conjunction with the Mary Bird Perkins-Our Lady of the Lake Cancer Center, treated Mike in June with stereotactic radiotherapy, something that is often used for humans but had never been used on a tiger. Stereotactic radio therapy uses a beam of X-rays pinpointing the tumor while providing minimal damage to surrounding cells.

It was a massive undertaking, one that required an after-hours police escort, to anesthetize the 420-pound tiger and bring him across town to the hospital for the treatment.

The treatment was considered an initial success, as scans found the tumor had shrunk. Baker optimistically hoped Mike would live for another year or two.

But two weeks ago, just days after LSU coach Les Miles had been fired, Mike was treated for a sinus infection.

A scan found that the infection was attributed to the resumed growth of the tumor, which started blocking the sinus cavity. The cancer had also aggressively spread throughout the tiger's body. Smaller tumors were found on Mike's neck, hind leg, and throughout his lungs.

Medical staff determined that additional cancer treatments would not save Mike.

(snip)

LSU sophomores and friends Ella Ruth Hill and Victoria Dekerlegand were in their mass communication class when they saw on their phones the news Mike had died.

They watched the news make its way around the room as other students whispered about the latest to one another.

After class the two were among the many who trickled by Mike's empty enclosure, adorned with cards, balloons and flowers from the tiger's many fans.

"With everything that's happened this season, with football and Les and everything, Mike is something that's so precious to the students, and he's so sweet," Hill said.

Dekerlegand added that a live tiger on campus makes LSU unique.

"Mike is a constant," she said. "Nobody else has a live tiger."

LSU Student Government announced it would host a memorial Wednesday in front of the habitat.

"Mike taught us how to fight like tigers and we are forever grateful for the opportunity to make him a part of our lives as LSU students," said Student Government President Zack Faircloth in a statement.

Mike was born on July 23, 2005 and came to LSU when he was two years old.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Freedom of speech for me, but not for thee


Above is a thing that actually ran Wednesday in the college newspaper for which I wrote and edited more than three decades ago.

The headline: Free speech argument should not be used to justify hate speech. The headline soft-sold the column, actually.


Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor. Obviously, The Daily Reveille at Louisiana State University ain't what it used to be.

Let me put it this way: I read Anjana Nair's column in the Reveille, but I'm having a hard time believing that a piece arguing against freedom of speech and the First Amendment -- and let's be clear, if you're against free speech, no matter how distasteful, you are against the First Amendment -- appeared in a newspaper that would not exist but for the linchpin of our Bill of Rights.

(Trust me. This is Louisiana we're talking about . . . and LSU. Without some serious constitutional badassery covering its 6, the Reveille likely wouldn't have made it past 1934. Actually, the Reveille almost didn't make it past 1934. Interesting story. Anjana Nair probably never heard about it.)

Milo Yiannopoulos
This . . . this because of Donald Trump, Republicans behaving badly and . . . and . . . Milo Yiannopoulos was coming to town! (Cue the panicked population of Tokyo fleeing from Godzilla.)

Apparently, Milo Whocaresopoulos is some sort of ragingly gay, alt-right media whore who specializes in Internet misbehavior and pissing progressives off. And he likes Trump.

And Trumpkins like him because all the right people really, really hate him. The latter group includes Anjana Nair.


So, allow me to throw some quotes at you from this opinion piece that I have a hard time believing actually ran in a newspaper at an institution allegedly devoted to unfettered inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge.

QUOTE:
"I once thought I loved free speech. As someone involved in media, the First Amendment was my best friend. That is, until I faced the reality that people, like they do to all good things in the world, abuse it and use it as justification for reckless and hateful behavior."

QUOTE:

"Walters says it is unreasonable to limit free speech just because someone is afraid of getting their feelings hurt. In the real world, he says, there are no safe spaces or trigger warnings. 
"Walters is partly right: To stop a message because it might offend someone is not a justification for censorship. What is justification, though, is the fact that the free expression of hateful ideas has led to an environment of tension between the groups who are perpetuating such speech and the groups who are targeted by it. This in turn leads to an atmosphere in which only the ones inflicting the harmful speech feel comfortable.
"Let’s be real: The only people who feel the need to defend their freedom of expression behind the First Amendment are those who are clearly misusing it as a platform to attack censorship in its entirety.
"Even Walters admits that there are limits to free speech, such as not being able to yell 'Fire!' in a movie theatre when there isn’t one. Why does that exception exist? Because it causes a sense of panic and fear when there’s no justified reason for it — just like hate speech."
QUOTE:
"When the First Amendment was written, it couldn’t have accounted for Twitter battles and social media showdowns influencing human opinion and behavior. It couldn’t have foreseen the existence of people like Yiannopoulos and Trump, who force us to define what abusive speech is." 

END QUOTE. (Thank God.)

Oh, mercy me. Pass the smelling salts; Generation Y has the vapors.

Really? Loutishness is a modern construct unknown to our forefathers?

REALLY???

Come now. Public reprobates, demagogic invective and "hate speech" hardly were unknown in 1789.

In fact, by Miss Nair's standards, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams should have been locked up for being mean in public, what with all the "hate speech" flying around during the campaign of 1800:
Negative campaigning in the United States can be traced back to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Back in 1776, the dynamic duo combined powers to help claim America's independence, and they had nothing but love and respect for one another. But by 1800, party politics had so distanced the pair that, for the first and last time in U.S. history, a president found himself running against his VP.

Things got ugly fast. Jefferson's camp accused President Adams of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." In return, Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward. Even Martha Washington succumbed to the propaganda, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was "one of the most detestable of mankind."


AND THEN Adams' people got around to l'affaire Sally Hemmings.

It may be a novel concept to those who cannot remember a time when "social media" didn't exist, but hateful people always have been quite effective at hounding the "vulnerable." Perhaps a bit more slowly than today, but effectively nonetheless.

The only difference today is that there seems to be a market for professional cranks like Milo Whateveropoulos to get onstage somewhere and say out loud what my generation's halfwits used to scribble in men's room stalls. Yet that so threatens our precious snowflakes on college campuses that they're willing to upend our entire constitutional order to stamp out societal angst.

Yeah, that should work out really well in reducing tension on campus.

The only conclusion I can draw from this column being published in an actual newspaper on an actual college campus is that today's morally preening hand-wringers stand as complete reprobates next to yesteryear's utter libertines. I think the following Oscar Wilde quotation is apt when considering the Trumpkins and Milo Whositsopoulos:
"I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.”

COME TO think of it, it applies pretty well to this Reveille column, too.