Sarah Palin: Cynical Master Manipulator

What do Sarah Palin, the right-wing Republican quitter; Bernard Madoff, the engineer of a Ponzi scheme of epic proportions, and Charles Cullen, a nurse who murdered a slew of hospital patients, have in common?

At first blush, the answer would seem to be nothing. But look a little closer and a pathology emerges: All three were and are cynical master manipulators.

Cullen, a former registered nurse, manipulated the very people who should have stopped him. Madoff, a former financier, manipulated investors and regulators. Palin, an about-to-be former governor, manipulates her political peers, the people of Alaska, the news media and even her own family while blaming anyone within moose-gun range when she doesn't get her way or acts stupidly.

* * * * *

Cullen, an RN at hospitals in Northern New Jersey and Northeastern Pennsylvania, told prosecutors he killed about 40 people with intentional drug overdoses. Like Madoff, he did not fit the cliché about psychopaths who commit crime after crime. Hardly anyone suspected anything, although some people found his behavior to be unusual and even suspicious but failed to act on that.

In a 2004 New York Times profile, reporters Richard Perez-Pena, David Kocieniewski and Jason George document how Cullen was able to continue victimizing patients:

"It was his guile, in part, that allowed him to elude capture all those years. Mr. Cullen is suspected of choosing jobs and drugs that made it possible to kill without drawing much attention.

" . . . Mr. Cullen was able to continue mostly because of systemic failures, and his career reveals gaping holes in hospital and government systems for weeding out people who harm patients.

"Supervisors and government officials who were looking over his shoulder also failed. . . . Employers did not report him to one another, to oversight agencies, or to law enforcement, often because they were not required to. Some even brushed off allegations by victims' families or his co-workers."

Then in 2008, Times reporters Julie Cresswell and Landon Thomas Jr. profiled Madoff, writing that it is obvious that he was a greedy manipulator, but:

"[S]ome analysts say that a more complex and layered observation of his actions involves linking the world of white-collar finance to the world of serial criminals.

"They wonder whether good old Bernie Madoff might have stolen simply for the fun of it, exploiting every relationship in his life for decades while studiously manipulating financial regulators.

" 'Some of the characteristics you see in psychopaths are lying, manipulation, the ability to deceive, feelings of grandiosity and callousness toward their victims,' says Gregg O. McCrary, a former special agent with the FBI who spent years constructing criminal behavioral profiles."

No one would accuse Palin of being a psychopath like Cullen and Madoff, but she is reliably incoherent and a serial prevaricator who lies constantly, including lying about things that there would seem to be no need to lie about. She never plays anything straight, especially when it concerns herself. As Todd Purdum notes in a recent Vanity Fair profile:

"Palin is a cipher by choice. When she chooses to reveal herself, what she reveals is not always the same thing as the truth. Her singular refusal to have in-depth conversations with the national media -- even Richard Nixon and Dick Cheney, among the most saturnine political figures in modern American history, each submitted to countless detailed interviews over the years—has compounded the challenge of understanding who she really is. . . .

"More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of 'narcissistic personality disorder' in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -- 'a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy' -- and thought it fit her perfectly. When {son] Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God's, and signed it 'Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.' "

While Cullen and Madoff have not revealed what drove them to commit their crimes and candor is certainly not part of Palin's kit bag, I'm going to suggest that all three did what they did and do what they do simply for the narcissistic thrill of it, all the while cynically exploiting and manipulating relationships through deceptive behavior and allowing nothing to stand in the way of their own ambitions.

If Palin is different, it is because of her relentless victimhood. And that her own cynicism as a No Nothing (as opposed to the Know Nothings of the mid-19th century) was more than matched by the cynicism of John McCain, who chose a person he knew was unprepared for higher office.

Both Cullen and Madoff are behind bars for life. By quitting her day job, Palin has shot her political wad in grand style and probably couldn't be elected dogcatcher of Wasilla, let alone president of the United States. For that we can be thankful.

Top photo by Paul J. Richards/Getty Images via Vanity Fair

Cartoon du Jour

Michael Ramirez/Investor's Business Daily

Yup, Barack Obama Is Still Black

Has racism worsened since we elected our first black president?

Quote du Jour

Sayeth Jeffrey Goldberg: "Jews are floating around in the Persian Gulf with nuclear weapons in German subs that are aimed at the new Hitler. If you step away from your personal feelings about it, it's just fascinating."

Photograph by Joris Machielse/Flickr

It Was A Dark & Stormy Night All Right

I am putting the finishes touches on a book which has a rather dramatic opening paragraph and pray -- please! -- that someone doesn't enter me in next year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which awards prizes for the worst opening paragraphs.

The 2008 winner:

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

Sigh.

Image by Angelcheto

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

LAST SONG
By Vicarious

Anchors Aweigh! Why It's Time For The United States Navy To Shape Up

Artist's conception of a stealth aircraft carrier

I have prattled on in the past about whether we even need an Air Force any more. I happen to think not, but the Navy is another matter. It's mission has changed with the times and if anything is more important than ever, but it has not adapted. Consequentially, it is long past time for the most hidebound of armed services to get with the 21st century program.

This was painfully obvious in the April siege involving an American container ship captain held by Somali pirates, which came to a successful end when Navy Seal snipers positioned on the fantail of a destroyer took out three of the hostage takers and a fourth was taken into custody. This is exactly the kind of asymmetrical warfare that is the stock in trade of 21st century terrorists and other troublemakers, but was the USS Bainbridge (photo, left) the appropriate ship for the job and can the Navy do that job consistently and successfully?

As Fester noted at Newshoggers, the Somali pirate incident was:

"basically the equivalent of having a SWAT van riding the beat with 10 cops in full body armor and equipped with sub-machine guns playing cards until they chase after a pick-pocket. The appropriate use of resources in that analogy would be the beat cop should be the guy chasing after the pick-pocket while calling for potential assistance from SWAT."

Trouble is, the leaner destroyers more suitable for the job have been retired as the Navy grapples with having to perform several tasks that are sometimes at odds with each other because of the ship size and level of firepower needed. The result is that:

"The US has made a decision that an expeditionary navy that can assert sea control in most areas is in support of vital national interests. I agree with that concept although I will quibble with execution and procurement. From this assumption of interests, the procurement strategy will produce large and expensive ships that are over-gunned for most non-expeditionary warfare needs."

Indeed. Thomas Ricks, the nonpareil military writer, puts it this way:

"If the global commons (sea, air, space, cyberspace) really is gonna be contested, why does anyone think conventional aircraft carriers and short-legged fighter aircraft are the answer? I think it is time to commission the UCAV carrier the USS Obama, whose hull and aircraft would both be stealthy. With perhaps a crew of fewer than 500 sailors. (Most controllers of aircraft could fly them from Virginia.)"

While it doesn't strike me as plausible that a stealth carrier -- if built -- will be named for a sitting president, let alone Obama, there are signs that his administration is serious about shaking up the Navy.

The Quadrennial Defense Review is the likely jumping off point.

Meanwhile, Back At The Other War

Eleven NATO troops, including seven Americans, have been killed by bombs, grenades or small arms fire during the past two days in Afghanistan. And did you know that 25 Danish troops have been killed there? That's an awful lot for a little country.

Photograph by M. Lukasiewicz/Flickr

Cartoons du Jour On Robert McNamara

Tony Auth (top) and Pat Oliphant/Universal Press Syndicate

Turd Blossom Skips Jackson Memorial

Karl Rove is deposed for eight and a half hours behind closed doors before the House judiciary committee. But did he say anything?

Oh, and Gonzo finally gets a job. teaching poly sci at Texas Tech. Maybe he can explain what Sarah Palin's "Department of the Law" is. (Cough, cough.)

Think any of his students will have the cojones to answer "I don't recall" to his test questions?

Google OS: Be Careful What You Wish For

In what IT industry pundits are calling a "nuclear bomb," Google is releasing a PC operating system called Chrome later this year that eventually will take on Microsoft's Windows. Were I a betting man, I would predict that Chrome will kick Windows in the butt once it's fully up to speed.

If you're weary of Microsoft's serial missteps, including the fatally flawed latest generation Window's Vista, then you're elated at the news, but Google is already so immense -- and by extension so powerful -- that I am chary of joining in the high-fiving.

More here and here.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

SHADOWS AND LANDSCAPE
By Lars Klottrup

Are We There Yet? All About The Real Jobless Rate As Recession Lumbers On

Riddle me this: How can there be an economic recovery without jobs? The answer, of course, is that there can't be, which makes last week's unemployment numbers so bloody bad following guarded optimism that the recession might finally be grinding to an end because of a drop in new claims in May.

The June numbers reflected the loss of another 467,000 jobs, predominately in construction, manufacturing and business and professional services, while the unemployment rate edged up to a supposed 9.5 percent.

But that's not the half of it -- literally.

A more accurate figure may be a forehead-smacking 18.7 percent, which is the Effective Unemployment Rate as calculated by Leo Hindery.

The economist arrived at that rate this way: While there are currently 14,729,000 official unemployed workers, this does not include a combined 15,443,000 workers from the euphemistically named "labor force reserve" (people who have stopped looking for work), the underemployed (who are working part time of necessity), and other marginally attached workers.

This brings the real number of unemployed to 30,172,000.

So riddle me this, as well: At what point does Barack Obama begin sharing the blame for a recession that has resulted in fewer jobs than in May 2000 when the last economic downturn ended but has 12.5 million more workers?

Not yet, but at some point the recession will be his if the free fall isn't checked.

As Vice President Biden helpfully noted over the weekend, the White House certainly knows that, and it is looking increasingly like the seemingly lavish stimulus plan wasn't nearly enough, while it appears that these billions are not getting to where they're needed fast enough.

So were the signs of recovery a few weeks ago a false dawn? Not necessarily, but you know that they say: The darkest hour is just before the dawn.

Chart from Calculated Risk

Overdosed On The Killa From Wasilla

One day I can't get enough Sarah Palin and the next I can't stand the mere mention of the woman.

She is so actively, utterly and completely an idiot -- and a dangerous one, at that -- that it comes as no surprise that she blows off the governorship of Alaska, earnestly exclaims that she's be there for the citizenry until her last day in office and then departs on a fishing trip.

Meanwhile, for the half dozen or so of you who don't read Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, he has put up a compendium of "The Odd Lies of Sarah Palin." Even though it's obvious that Palin has the ability to look at white and call it black, it's jaw dropping stuff.

Photo by Robert DeBerry/Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman via AP

Cartoon du Jour

Lisa Benson/Victor Valley (Calif.) Daily Press

Innovation, Preservation & Lots Of Glass

I will spare you the jokes about people who live in glass houses, but Philip Johnson's is probably the most famous anywhere.

The late great architect spent most of his life in this Canaan, Connecticut structure, appropriately called the Glass House, which is even smaller than it appears. It is not my cup of architectural tea, although the setting is gorgeous and the outbuildings that the mercurial Johnson designed on the 47-acre estate are far more interesting. Go figure.

More here.

Photograph by Witold Rybczynski

Behold The 67 Horsepower Aston Martin

KINDA CUTE, NO?

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

Bobcat mama and cubs water at an Arizona condo. More here.

Remembering McNamara's Catharsis: A Mortal Man Cast Into A Giant's Role

Is it revisionism or an old man who speaks with the wisdom of age and hindsight?

-- JEN ROSENBERG

With the death yesterday of Robert S. McNamara, the JFK-LBJ era defense secretary and Vietnam War architect, my thoughts segue quickly to another vilified defense secretary and another unnecessary war. I speak, of course, of Donald Rumsfeld and Iraq.

The similarities between the two men are stunning, but there is a big difference that sets them apart.

Like Rumsfeld, McNamara was a control freak who thought he had all the answers, pushed policies that lacked the crucial element of common sense, surrounded himself with sycophantic acolytes, did not take kindly to dissenting generals, was a technocrat who worshipfully embraced sophisticated weaponry, projected an unshakable faith that he was doing the right thing, communicated poorly in public forums . . . and turned out to know jack about how to run a war.

And like Rumsfeld, was forced out or quit depending upon whom you talk to.

But in a major departure from Rumsfeld's modus operandi -- at least to date, from what we know of his forthcoming and unapologetic memoir and in all likelihood for all time -- McNamara had a catharsis some 15 years before he laid on his death bed.

That catharsis took the form of In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, a candid reflection that exploded on the haunted members of my generation -- whether they be Vietnam era veterans like myself or antiwar activists -- like a long forgotten Claymore mine.

McNamara has never explained the circumstances of his catharsis, that point at which he realized his manifold failures as defense secretary and the immense suffering, death and deprivation that he and LBJ were responsible for. One can only assume that it did not come to him in the middle of the night a la Ebenezer Scrooge and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, but rather in a drawn out metamorphosis befitting a man of his intellect and analytical skills.

McNamara never actually apologized for his role in the Vietnam debacle, but clearly was haunted by it, and his mantra became "We were wrong, terribly wrong."

Rumsfeld, of course, has not apologized and it is difficult to forsee that he will ever do so. But is he too haunted by Iraq?

Nearly 16,000 Americans had been killed in Vietnam when McNamara left the Pentagon in 1968; by the time the United States finally withdrew in 1975, the number stood at over 58,000.

Nearly 3,000 Americans had been killed in Iraq when Rumsfeld bailed; the number now stands at over 4,000. And continues to grow.

* * * * *

Apropos to the Bush torture regime and the time in which we live, a question is being asked anew: Was McNamara a war criminal?

McNamara never answered the question directly, but did have this to say in Erroll Morris's The Fog of War in the context of his work as a young officer evaluating the effectiveness of Army Air Force missions over Japan for General Curtis LeMay, many of which were firebombings that wrought enormous death and destruction:

"I don't fault Truman for dropping the nuclear bomb. The U.S.-Japanese War was one of the most brutal wars in all of human history -- kamikaze pilots, suicide, unbelievable. What one can criticize is that the human race prior to that time -- and today -- has not really grappled with what are, I'll call it, 'the rules of war.' Was there a rule then that said you shouldn't bomb, shouldn't kill, shouldn't burn to death 100,000 civilians in one night?

"LeMay said, 'If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.' And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?"

McNamara was onto something, while I cop to historical context and draw on my knowledge of World War II, Vietnam and Iraq, in trying to answer the question without resorting to the Welcome to the Platinum Tier of Hell indictments ricocheting around the blogosphere.

The War in the Pacific had to be fought. Oh, and paybacks are a bitch. The sadism that the Japanese inflicted on Americans and their allies, as well as disregard for the lives of their own infantrymen, fliers and subjugates invited the Yankee payback.

The history of the Vietnam War is less forgiving on whether the conduct of McNamara, as well as LBJ, was criminal.

That history did not begin with the defeat of the colonial French army at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, but rather all the way back in 1947 when a young Ho Chi Minh all but begged the U.S. to support him in a nationalist independence movement and was blown off. U.S. troops began to trickle into Vietnam under false pretexts and the Johnson administration shifted from rationale to rationale and strategy to strategy before Richard Nixon finally conceded defeat in 1975.

Furthermore, and as McNamara admitted in In Retrospect, he knew that the war was futile, if not wrong.

In all three wars, "mortal men [were] cast into giants' roles," to use historian Max Hasting's term. Can it be that McNamara was not a war criminal as an advisor to LeMay but was regarding Vietnam? Yes, despite his candor about the former and contrition about the latter. Can it be that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are war criminals as regards Iraq? Definitely.

'Fear To Bring Children Into The World'

MASTERS OF WAR
By Bob Dylan

Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just don't want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
While the death count gets higher
Then you hide in your mansion
While the young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

Your Daily Dose of Snark

What Happened To Margie Profet?

Margie Profet is not your ordinary evoluntionary biologist. For one thing, she has no formal training. For another, controversy has followed her like flies to . . . you know what because of her theories that Darwinian evolution plays a role in allegies, menstruation and morning sickness.

Now the 40-year-old scientific "It Girl" is making waves again. She has vanished without a trace.

No one seems to know why -- not her family, not her friends, not her colleagues. All they know is that one day Profet was at Harvard University and the next day she wasn't.

Gwyneth Bites The Hand That Feeds Her

Gwyneth Paltrow is sooo English and purdy cute too if your idea of an attractive woman is a stick figure in 7-inch heels. But she has an annoying habit of dissing Americans for, well, being so American, perhaps not realizing that she is biting the hand that enables her to have a second (or third or fourth?) home in places like Spain.

Ah, Spain.

Gwyneth opines that it's "so different from the United tates. It seemed to have a history, and the buildings are years and years and years old. Here in the United States an old building is about 17 (years old), and over there it's from 500 B.C. Also, the way people live over there. They seem to enjoy life a little bit more."

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

NIAGARA FALLS
(1840)
By Hugh Lee Pattinson
Hat tip to Woods' Lot

Robert Johnson: An Appreciation

(ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN NOVEMBER 2008)

When the train / Left the station / It had two lights on behind / Well, the blue light was my blues / And the red light was my mind. / All my love's in vain.

-- ROBERT JOHNSON

Son House, the great blues singer and slide guitarist, delighted in telling people that when he first met Robert Johnson, he couldn't play guitar to save his life. But the young man was persistent and after disappearing for a few months was again pestering House, Willie Brown and the other Mississippi Delta bluesmen in his company to be allowed up on stage.

House relented one Saturday night -- the year may have been 1929 or maybe not -- and left Johnson to play to the tables and chairs while he and his buddies stepped outside to take in the air. A devastatingly brilliant sound suddenly came from inside the roadhouse unlike anything House had ever heard.

Said House of Johnson: "He sold his soul to the Devil to get to play like that."

Indeed, there are few stories about Johnson that don't include references to the Devil. And what stories there are about a man whose extraordinary skills influenced so many musicians are usually short on details (let alone there being only three photographs of him extant; two of which are reproduced here).

Johnson had an ineffably shadowy life so poorly documented that there are entire books and a movie or two not about his life but about how little is known about it.

We do know that this life included the recording of 29 landmark tracks under the guidance of Don Law in 1936-1937 before Johnson's death in 1938 at age 27 possibly by a jealous lover who poisoned, stabbed or shot him. (Pick one.)

As film director Martin Scorsese says in his foreword to Alan Greenberg's Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson, "The thing about Robert Johnson was that he only existed on his records. He was pure legend."

In fact, the legend is far more interesting than Robert Leroy Johnson's upbringing in Hazlehurst, Mississppi as one of 10 children born to Julia Major Dodds, a brief interlude in Memphis and then a return to the Mississippi Delta region where he got a relatively decent education and was remembered for playing the harmonica.

According to the legend -- one that plays perfectly to white racial stereotypes -- Johnson lived on a plantation.

Burning with desire to become a great blues musician, he was told to take his guitar to a nearby crossroad at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil, of course) who took the guitar from Johnson and tuned it, giving him mastery of the instrument before handing it back to him in return for his soul.

Never mind that only six of Johnson's songs mention the Devil and he was much more preoccupied with sex.

* * * * *

What Son House heard that night is only one third of Johnson's extraordinary legacy -- that intense guitar chording that could make him sound like an entire band.

Add to that a high and deeply emotional singing voice (that one critic said made him sound "like he's about five minutes away from the electric chair") and lean but staggeringly powerful songwriting, and it's easy to see why Johnson had such an influence on musicians as disparate as Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, Dion, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan.

One of the better pieces on Johnson and the blues in general was written by Greil Marcus in Mystery Train. While his prose can by hyperbolic to the point of breaking glass (he was older then, he's so much younger now), Marcus understands that the blues grew out of the need to survive in a brutal world:

"Unlike gospel, blues was not a music of transcendence; its equivalent to God's Grace was sex and love. Blues made the terrors of the world easier to endure, but blues also made those terrors more real. For a man like Johnson, the promises of the church faded; they could be remembered -- as one sang church songs; perhaps even when one prayed, when one was too scared not to -- but those promises could not be lived. Once past some unmarked border, one could not go back. The weight of Johnson's blues was strong enough to make salvation a joke; the best he could do was cry for its beautiful lie."

When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips and play what his audience asked for and not necessarily his own compositions, let alone the blues. As fellow bluesman Johnny Shines (photo, right) noted, Johnson also was interested in jazz and country and had the ability to pick up any tune at first hearing, be it a polka or Bing Crosby hit.

Shines (photo, below right) told Samuel Charters, the author of Robert Johnson, that he first met Johnson in 1933:

"Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know. And I hung around Robert for quite a while. One evening he disappeared. He was kind of peculiar fellow. Robert'd be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody's business. At about that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money'd be coming from all directions. But Robert'd just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn't see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks . . . So Robert and I, we began journeying off. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along."

Those journeys took them out to Texas and up to Memphis, St. Louis and Chicago, and to Greenwood in the Delta in August 1938 where he was murdered. As befits Johnson, his exact gravesite is not known and there are three different markers bearing his name at three different burial grounds outside of Greenwood.

* * * * *

There are many claims on who "invented" rock 'n' roll. My own view is that there was no single progenitor, but Johnson must be given a share of the credit when you consider all of the great rock musicians -- black and white -- who have been moved by him and covered his songs, and that his influence on pre- pre-rock black music during his life was minor.

In fact, the era of the Delta blues had pretty much ended by 1940 and his records were out of print from then until 1961 when John Hammond, the hugely influential music producer, persuaded Columbia to release King of the Delta Blues Singers, the first album-length collection of Johnson's music. The album was a modest hit -- not bad for a dead guy who consorted with the Devil that one had heard of -- helped spark a blues revival and caught the attention of many young rock musicians, including Mick Jagger, Robert Plant and Eric Clapton.

"Robert Johnson, to whom we all owed our existence, in some way," is how Plant of Led Zeppelin calls his influence on rock.

And as Marcus notes, who can deny the inescapable pull of Johnson's music when Mick Jagger used to bring down the house singing "Love In Vain" in the middle of a Rolling Stones concert.

I never could.

An Index To Kiko's House Appreciations

There may have been better slide guitar players technically than DUANE ALLMAN, but none approached his improvisational abilities. And the band he led had no such thing as a creative peak -- they just kept churning out great records and great live performances. (11/20/07)

HOAGIE CARMICHAEL was an unlikely virtuoso because most of his greatest work came not in an artistic center like New York or Paris but on the campus of an Indiana college. Yet he is considered the most talented, sophisticated and deeply jazz-oriented of the many pop music composers in the first half of the 20^th century. (12/27/07)

It is no exaggeration to say that JOHN COLTRANE and Miles Davis literally reshaped modern jazz. The ultimate testament to their greatness is that they continue to deeply influence jazz musicians of all ages. (9/23/08)

CYD CHARISSE had the finest legs in Hollywood, was the greatest dancer – and unquestionably the most sensuous -- to ever grace the silver screen in a skirt and was every bit as good as the great Fred Astaire and the almost as great Gene Kelly. (6/18/08)

It would be nice to say that while BRUCE COCKBURN is best known for his socially conscious songs, he also is a great guitarist. But unless you dwell at the left end of things -- whether it be politics or the FM radio dial -- it is unlikely that you've ever heard of the Canadian singer-songwriter. (10/19/08)

The great American composer AARON COPLAND probably did more than anyone to liberate classical music from its European roots. His embrace of popular music was not unprecedented, but the way that he integrated folk music and jazz into his compositions certainly was. (11/14/07)

Writing about MILES DAVIS is daunting, if not downright intimidating. For one thing, the legendary trumpet player probably has been written about and analyzed more than any musician-composer this side of Beethoven. For another thing, a word like "legendary" does not begin to capture the enormous influence that Miles exerted on jazz. (5/4/09)

It is a hallmark of jazz virtuoso vocalese master and BOB DOROUGH's seven-decade career that many people have heard him but didn't know it. (12/4/08)

I grew up in a house where ELLA FITZGERALD was a favorite, but it took me years to come to understand her genius as an interpreter of the Great American Songbook. Geoffrey Fidelman said it well: "Play an Ella ballad with a cat in the room, and the animal will invariably go up to the speaker, lie down and purr." (4/25/08)

JERRY GARCIA did not seek out fame. A gentle soul who just wanted to play music, fame found him. And despite a long career as an extraordinary guitarist that brought him adulation, gold records and eventually wealth, happiness remained elusive and fame finally killed him. (3/18/09)

Concert impresario BILL GRAHAM was known for three things: Foul language, picking up trash wherever he encountered it, whether backstage at his own venues or elsewhere, and a deep and abiding love of music -- if not necessarily musicians -- that he parlayed into what is without question the most extraordinary run of concerts in rock 'n' roll history. (1/8/08)

There is no more emotionally evocative musical instrument for me than the violin and no more emotionally evocative jazz violinist than STEPHANE GRAPPELLI, who had a distinctive style that mixed tender lyricism, seemingly effortless swinging and hard-edged riffing with extraordinary harmonics. (12/7/07)

There's a guy in virtually every organization who is a pop-off, and DAVID HACKWORTH fit that description perfectly. But unlike most pop-offs, this man – the most highly decorated soldier in American military history – was on target. (5/3/08)

LEARNED HAND is probably the most influential American judge you never heard of. A philosophical pragmatist, his landmark rulings on free speech, tax law and economics are widely considered to be among the formative statements of contract and tort law. (1/27/08)

Delta Blues legend ROBERT JOHNSON had an ineffably shadowy life so poorly documented that there are entire books and a movie or two not about his life but about how little is known about it. (11/15/08)

JACK KEROUAC had many of the ingredients that make up the tortured artistic soul. That is obvious from the body of his work, some 25 or so novels and other books in all, but does not explain why his prolific but relatively short life produced so little that arguably is worth reading today. (3/18/09)

More than anyone else, and that includes a lot of awfully good directors, screenwriters and actors, we may have legendary film critic PAULINE KAEL to thank for making American cinema as good as it is. Kael, who reviewed over 5,000 movies, took no prisoners, abided no fools and left no movie that she thought was bad unscathed in her distinctly colloquial and opinionated writing style. (6/15/08)

RON "PIGPEN" McKERNAN had a rough, often off-key voice and was a mediocre piano and organ player, but he packed more soul and attitude into the Grateful Dead than the rest of the band put together. And while he was the roughest-edged player in this eclectic menagerie he was nevertheless the gentle soul who brought the band and their rapt fans back to earth from their cosmic voyage at night's end. (3/8/08)

Being young is to love JONI MITCHELL's music. Growing older is to understand why you do. Mitchell may be the ultimate musical catagory breaker. but what is so extraordinary is that her songs are so powerful that early on musicians were drawn to them before she had even recorded them herself. (6/10/09)

I have no idea of the color of LAURA NYRO's eyes, but she was the first exemplar of blue-eyed soul that I heard and remains one of the finest despite a career largely spend in the shadows by her own choice and that ended prematurely with her death in 1997. (10/18/07)

Our historic memory being what it is, and growing shorter with each succeeding generation, it is easy to forget that there was a woman political trailblazer 60 years before Hillary Clinton. ELEANOR ROOSEVELT was the first First Lady in the modern mold -- a hands-on presidential helpmate and a force in her own right. (11/7/07)

It would have been a damned shame if TENNESSEE WILLIAMS couldn't write, because I can't think of any man of letters whose family and friends provided so much rich material. This gifted playwright and not bad short story writer drew long and hard from the deep well of tormented and eccentric souls who populated his life and appear in various guises in his best known works. (2/25/08)