The Three Crucibles of American Jazz: New Orleans, Kansas City & Where?

Clifford Brown (top) and Betty Roché

Steven Leech and I have several things in common: We're writers, bibliophiles, lovers of jazz and were born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, which along with New Orleans and Kansas City was the third -- and routinely overlooked -- crucible of American jazz. Following are excerpts from Leech's recently published Wedgehorn Manifesto: A Cultural Treatise From the Underground:

When Clifford Brown's star rose for four short years in the early 1950s, it had shone over a long legacy of jazz from Wilmington that stretched back to the time when band leader Paul Whiteman took jazz out of saloons and speakeasies and into the concert hall. Yet Wilmington's jazz past is shadowy and nearly unknown. It lives on as mostly the talk of reminiscing old-timers. But on Wilmington's first and only radio station during the Jazz Age in the late 1920s it was alive and vibrant and grew and matured in the 1950s and early 1960s when it slipped into America's jazz mainstream.

Wilmington arrived late with its own radio station, but when WDEL went on the air in 1928 it hit the ground running and played the music of the city's jazz artists. On Thursday nights in 1931, Daisy Winchester and Crash Peyton had back-to-back shows. Crash was Wilmington's answer to Bing Crosby and Daisy sang in the city’s speakeasies. . . . Another of Wilmington radio's jazz singers was Sarah Dean with piano virtuoso Marita Gordon.

Real history was made in both Wilmington jazz and radio when Henry "Peck" Morris' Radio Boys brought the sound of horns and drums to the air waves. The cats were out of the bag and, as it turned out, they were all over the city.

The early 1930s was a time of rapid and drastic social change. Prohibition was over by 1933, but the jitterbugs found they had no jobs. . . . Often the only gigs were private affairs called rent parties, raising only money enough to keep some poor soul from being evicted. When FDR's New Deal began to kick in in the late 1930s, people could go out again and the little out-of-the-way clubs started coming back. . . . Best among the artists was the Claude and Artie Wells Band with their star on sax, Coleman Allen. . . .

Wilmington's first notable jazz success grew up on East 12th Street. Her name was Betty Roché. When she was a teenager her parents moved to Atlantic City and it wasn't long after that Betty joined the Savoy Sultans, who played regularly at the Savoy Ballroom in New York City. When singer Ivie Anderson left Duke Ellington's band in the early 1940s, Duke was on the lookout for a good singer. He found her at the Savoy.

Betty's bad luck was that she sang with Ellington during World War II when there was a shortage of shellac to make records and the musicians' union held a long strike against the recording industry. . . . There are no commercial recordings of her and the Ellington band from this period. After a short recording stint with Earl Hines in 1944, Betty finally recorded "Take the A-Train" with Ellington in 1951.

Before World War II depleted the ranks of local jazz musicians, Wilmington was roiling with the sound of jazz. Clubs all over the East Side were pouring their sound into the streets where youngsters would sprinkle sand on the sidewalks to do soft shoe steps they called The Sand. . . .

The most exciting and long lasting of the East Side clubs was the Club Harlem at 9th and Poplar streets. The hottest of Wilmington's jazz bands played . . . like Jimmy Hinsley and His Maniacs, featuring singer Daisy Winchester. On another night you'd find Battell Curry and His Swingsters, featuring Bernice Burns, with a "Red Hot Floor Show." . . . A high point of these heady times was a recording that Daisy Winchester made with an up and coming band called the Tympani Five led by future superstar Louis Jordan. . . .

When Wilmington's service men and women returned from World War II, the jazz scene was back in full swing. . . . Shortly before V-E Day, the Club Harlem reopened under new management and became the Club Baby Grand . . . regularly featuring a new local band called the Aces of Rhythm. Daisy Winchester was back on the bandstand as singer. The band was formed by brothers Willie and Robert "Boysie" Lowery and included Mr. Horse Collar, Billy Jackson, Bud Lowery, Jimmy Turner and Robert Townsend.

Along with two music teachers from Howard High School, Harry Andrews and Sam Wooding, Boysie Lowery began to influence and teach a new crop of local jazz musicians, chief among them a young Clifford Brown. Even in high school "Brownie" showed talent enough to form his own jazz trio with Donald Criss, now known as Rashid Yahya, and Bobby Burton, who later had a short stint with Lionel Hampton's band. Some of Boysie's students later found success in the jazz mainstream like vibraphonist Lem Winchester and pianists Gerald Price and Matthew Shipp. . . .

It was on the Morrie Sims show in 1952 that the first commercial recording by Clifford Brown, a member of Chris Powell's Blue Flames, was played on local radio. The song, about a Wilmington woman, was entitled "Ida Red." . . .

The Club Baby Grand began to attract nationally known artists. Among them were Lester Young, Dinah Washington, Horace Silver, Stan Getz and Jimmy Scott. But it was a 1949 Dizzy Gillespie gig at the famed Odd Fellows Hall at 12th and Orange streets that would make history. When one of his trumpeters, Benny Harris, was a no-show, Dizzy's old friend Boysie Lowery suggested that a young Clifford Brown fill in. When Dizzy heard Brownie play the word began to spread, and the rest was jazz history.

Brownie took the jazz world by storm, helping to revitalize modern post-war jazz. He recorded with a veritable who's who of jazz over a span of four short years and contributed to a new sub genre of bebop called "hard bop," but his short and meteoric career ended tragically on June 26, 1956 in a car crash on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

. . . Tragedy continued to stalk Wilmington’s jazz scene. In January 1961, Lem Winchester died in a bizarre shooting accident at his first professional gig . . . A week later, Betty Roché recorded her final solo album on the Prestige label before succumbing to ill health. A year later, the East Side started to come down because of the Poplar Street A urban renewal project, decimating a vital part of the city's jazz scene as almost all of the clubs from the early 1930s were destroyed. . .

When riots and martial law wracked the city following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968, the death knell for Wilmington's jazz scene was sounded. But no death had occurred. Only a long retreat. . . . That place from which had sprung so much of our past culture, from Daisy Winchester and Alice Dunbar-Nelson to Betty Roché, Clifford Brown and Lem Winchester lay devastated with soldiers patrolling the streets as if it had been a war zone.

© 2008 Steven Leech. All Rights Reserved.

Sunday Kitty Blogging

The Dear Friend & Conscience came upon this enormous tabby sunning herself outside the Peirce House on the grounds of Longwood Gardens.

Why Liberation Never Felt So Good & Other Glorious News From Bush's Forever War

There are 796 more reasons why the folks who declared the Surge a success should hang their sorry heads in shame. That is the number of Americans (52) and Iraqis (744) killed during the month of April in an uptick in violence that was going to occur sooner or later because the Surge has not been a "success" by any appropriate use of that term.

As I noted back on February 1 and has been noted by others far more sage than I am since then, war is not a linear thing, but rather something that ebbs and flows in stops and starts. This is especially true in Iraq, which is why the military gains of the Surge were not only temporarily, they were illusory.

Spencer Ackerman, one of those sage heads, references OODA, a jargony mouthful coined by Air Force Colonel John Boyd, to make the point. OODA stands for “Observation / Orientation / Decision / Action,” and the bottom line is that the combatant who can achieve a faster OODA than his enemy can disrupte his enemy's OODA Loop:

Ackerman explains that:

"At the risk of saying something disputable, from 2003 to mid-2007, the insurgencies in Iraq had faster OODA Loops than the U.S. did. That’s not to say that there weren’t discrete tactical successes: there were, and lots of them. But those developments are coterminous with the concept of the Loop — you adjust and inflict pain on the enemy; but the enemy does so faster and more powerfully. Once Operation Phantom Thunder (the Surge) began in the late spring of 2007, lots of people on the right and on the fake-left declared, without using Boyd's term, that Petraeus and Odierno had finally broken the enemy’s Loop.

" . . . what Petraeus and Odierno actually did — and it is not a small achievement — was disrupt the insurgencies' Loops more than any other U.S. commanders were able to. They kept the insurgencies in a state of confusion for months and prevented successful orientation. But the rise in U.S. and Iraqi civilian casualties demonstrates that the insurgencies' Loops have now closed. To cash it out, the U.S. military under Petraeus and Odierno bought as much calm as possible, and Iraq has been so horrific for so long that half the horror could seem like paradise to the hopeful American. But even with half-the-horror, no strategic goal was achieved. And no strategic goal can be achieved now that the insurgencies' Loops have closed."

Ackerman further notes that by any definition there cannot be victory in Iraq, only mitigation. To which I would add, 100 years of mitigation in John McCain's case.

I RAQ, I RAN, THEN I RAQ SOME MORE

It cannot be emphasized enough that the U.S. policy toward Iran is for dead-enders and the policy as it applies to Iraq is not merely short sighted, it's myopic.

Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted last month that:

"In the past week, a parade of Bush administration officials have offered a new threat and new justification for prolonging America's errant war in Iraq: containing Iran.

"The ironic aspect of this is that Iran not only enjoys intimate relations with the Shiite government in Baghdad, but that its objectives in Iraq largely coincide with those of the United States."

As obvious as that irony is, don't expect to see it as a talking point from an administration in which foreign policy is predicated on bellicosity.

More here.

A MEA CULPA FROM THE DEFENSE SECRETARY

It has fallen to Defense Secretary Robert Gates to acknowledge what is an open secret: The care of returning combat veterans has been scandalous and the housing in which too many of them live is substandard.

In a visit to Fort Bliss, Texas, Gates announced a change in government procedures to encourage troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to seek treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) without fear of losing their security clearances and harming their careers.

Got that? People who may have head problems as a result of the twin wars are being threatened if they try to get help for them.

Gates' announcement came a day after closing arguments in a federal court case in which veterans allege the Department of Veterans Affairs is unable to deal with the growing number of PTSD cases.

Gates acknowledged not all of the more than 1.5 million military service members who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have received needed medical treatment and accommodations, but added:

"I know that the department is not perfect and mistakes have been, and will be made. Things happen too slowly. I share your frustration."

More here.

WHEN FOREIGN FIGHTERS RETURN HOME

Among the myriad unintended consequences of the Iraq war is that it has been a magnet for foreign fighters.

National Public Radio reports that 800 electronic files that were recovered recently identify individuals from 22 countries who entered Iraq through Syria as foreign fighters between August 2006 and August 2007, and they're not likely to be model citizens when they return home.

More here.

SANCHEZ ON RUMMY

History promises to be exceedingly unkind to Donald Rumsfeld, and the number of first-hand accounts of what a two-faced rat bastard the former Secretary of Defense was grows expedentially.

Now comes former Lieutenant General Richardo Sanchez, who was in charge of day-by-day operations in Iraq during the first year of the war.

Sanchez recalls leaving a Pentagon meeting:

"[S]haking my head and wondering how in the world Rumsfeld could have expected me to believe him . . .

"So it was clearly a pattern on the Secretary's part, and now I recognized it. Bring in the top-level leaders. Profess total ignorance. Ask why he had not been informed. Try to establish that others were screwing things up. Have witnesses in the room to verify his denials. Put it in writing. In essence, Rumsfeld was covering his rear. He was setting up his chain of denials should his actions ever be questioned. And worse yet, in my mind, he was attempting to level all the blame on his generals."

More here.

Merlin German (1986-2008)

MORE HERE AND HERE.

David Hackworth: An Appreciation

Hackworth (right) with S.L.A. Marshall in Vietnam (1966)

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 reliably on target. So much so that his career ended with the threat of a court martial because of his scathing criticism of the Vietnam War, but his legacy as an eccentric but fearless and brilliant officer and motivator of soldiers has lived on.

* * * * *

Hackworth escaped a rough childhood and juvenile delinquency by joining the Merchant Marine at age 14 as World War II was winding down, and at age 15 had a wino sign an affidavit stating the he had his father's permission to join the Army. He was a sergeant by the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950.

In Korea, Hackworth fought with the 25th Recon Company, 8th Rangers, and then the 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Light Infantry Division, winning a battlefield commission as a lieutenant and the first several of the many medals he would win for valor. Within a year, he was promoted to first lieutenant and then captain, picking up several Purple Hearts along the way.

Hackworth later famously remarked of the that "[General] MacArthur had said we had be home before Christmas; I guess his supply people believed him, because the Chinese caught us with our pants down and they were summer trousers."

He was demobilized after Korea but grew bored after finishing two years of college and reentered the Army in 1956.

He found that the Army, preoccupied with the Cold War, had become a rather different place, and spent several years on garrison duty in Germany sharpening his leadership skills before volunteering for the advisory company that President Kennedy ordered sent to South Vietnam in 1963. His request was denied on the extraordinary grounds that he had "too much" combat experience for the mission.

But within two years the Army was desperate for people like now-Major Hackworth and he was deployed to South Vietnam as an operations office and battalion commander, becoming the leader of the 101st Airborne Division's first Tiger Force. It was in this role that his notoriety as an eccentric but effective officer grew, in part because he figured in several books written by S.L.A. "Slam" Marshall, the famous combat historian and commentator.

After a stateside tour at the Pentagon, now-Lieutenant Colonel Hackworth co-wrote The Vietnam Primer with Marshall after returning to Vietnam in the winter of 1966-67. The controversial book recommended using some of the same tactics as Mao Zedong and Che Guevara, as well as the Viet Cong guerrillas who were giving the U.S. military fits despite its ever growing presence -- and number of casualties.

Inevitably, Hackworth soured on the war but refused to resign, feeling that it was his duty as a field grade officer to wage the campaign as best he could.

Hackworth put his theories about guerrilla warfare into practice in 1969 with a battalion of the 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta. He turned an underperforming unit largely made up of draftees into the counterinsurgent "Hardcore" Battalion (Recondo), but felt that the Army was not learning from its mistakes and was being undermined by a corrupt South Vietnamese Army officer corps.

In early 1971, Hackworth was promoted to the rank of full colonel and received orders to attend the Army War College, a stepping stone to a general officer-grade promotion. Utterly fed up with the war and the Army, he declined to go and in a June 1971 television interview on ABC’s "Issues and Answers" strongly criticized U.S. commanders in Vietnam, said the war could not be won and called for the U.S. to withdraw.

The interview enraged senior officers at The Pentagon and Hackworth was nearly court-martialed. Beset with personal problems, including a divorce, he retired and moved to Australia in an effort to rebuild his life.

In an improbable turn, Hackworth invested in a duck farm and popular restaurant near Brisbane and soon made a fortune through real estate investing, but he again grew restless and returned to the U.S. in the mid-1980s to work as a contributing editor on defense issues for Newsweek. He also made regular television appearances to discuss military-related topics, notably the shortcomings of the U.S. military, and was among the first people to speak out about the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder based on his own experiences in overcoming it.

In 1989, Hackwork published About Face: The Odyssey of An American Warrior with Julie Sherman.

The lengthy book is a must-read for any serious student of the Vietnam War (see the post below for other recommendations) and sheds a great deal of light on the enormous conflicts and complexities in the life of a man who was a natural-born killer yet abhorred war, could be a raving egomaniac yet humbled himself before his soldiers, decried the "perfumed princes" who rose to the top of Army yet was himself exceedingly ambitious.

In the mid-1990s, Hackworth investigated Admiral Jeremy Michael Boorda, then Chief of Naval Operations, questioning Boorda's wearing of potentially unauthorized V ( for valor) devices on his Navy Achievement Medal and Navy Commendation Medal. Boorda committed suicide before he could be interviewed by Hackworth, and questions later arose as to whether Hackworth had earned some of his many medals.

Hackworth was a frequent TV news talking head in the early days of the Iraq war. He was criticized for his declarations that too few U.S. troops had been committed and that they were unprepared for the challenges of fighting a counterinsurgency war because the lessons of Vietnam that he so well understood had never been taken to heart.

While certainly not a matter of having the last laugh, Hackworth was prescient about Iraq, although he did not live out the third year of the war. He contracted bladder cancer, possibly from his exposure to the Agent Blue defoliant used in Vietnam, and died three years ago tomorrow.

Hackworth earned over 90 decorations, including a Distinguished Service Cross with two Oak Leaf Clusters, a Silver Star with five Oak Leaf Clusters, and a Legion of Merit with three Oak Leaf Clusters. But he was most proud of his Combat Infantryman Badge, which he wore on the lapels of sports jackets in retirement.

Colonel David Hackworth is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

* * * * *

Click here for a contrarian view of Hackworth by James Joyner at Outside the Beltway.

This is the 15^th in a series of appreciations of the people who have moved and inspired me over the years. It is based in part on the Wikipedia entry on Hackworth.

Previous appreciations have included Duane Allman, Hoagie Carmichael, John Coltrane, Aaron Copland, Jerry Garcia, Bill Graham, Stéphane Grappelli, Learned Hand, Jack Kerouac, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Bob Marley, Laura Nyro, Eleanor Roosevelt and Tennessee Williams.

A Baker's Dozen: Best Books on Vietnam

Here are 13 books that are must reads for any serious student of the Vietnam War.

They range from a Bernard Fall classic published on the eve of the American build-up to the definitive Pentagon history of the war to a book on the secret bombing campaign in Cambodia to three fictional accounts of combat.

The latter three are included because they are great books and capture a common experience of the men and women who served in Vietnam -- that it was an often indescribable blend of fact and fantasy.

All are still in print and are likely to remain so for many years to come. My personal favorite of the batch is Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato, which won the 1978 National Book Award.

NON-FICTION

About Face by David Hackworth & Julie Sherman (1989)

Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic (1976)

Dispatches by Michael Herr (1977)

Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
by Frances FitzGerald (1972)

The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History
of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam (1971)

Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia
by William Shawcross (1979)

A Soldier Reports by General William Westmoreland (1976)

Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall (1964)

Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow (1983)

FICTION

Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien (1978)

The Quiet American by Graham Greene (1955)

A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo (1977)

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (1990)

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

Paul Rothemund has figured out a way to fold strands
of DNA into some really tiny pieces of origami art. More here.

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

DC Madam who ran a prostitution ring? Shamed, sentence to decades in prison, and now dead by apparent suicide.

David Vitter, Republican Senator who used said prostitution ring? Still a US Senator.

-- EZRA KLEIN

Baby boomers are leaving California because it's too expensive to retire here and Hispanics prefer Texas to California because it's too expensive to live here. Proving that other regions of the country don't have a lock on prejudice, the commenters want to blame the Hispanics for the state's financial woes. Oh, and the taxes that they have to pay. I remember the seventies and the taxes were higher. Of course we had good roads and even better schools. Hmm, do you suppose there's a connection?

-- DEB

Former U.S. baseball star Jose Canseco said he had lost his California mansion to foreclosure -- one of the first celebrities to publicly admit being a statistic in the U.S. housing crisis.

Canseco, 43, one of the most flamboyant U.S. baseball players until his retirement from the major leagues in 2001, told the celebrity TV show Inside Edition that it did not make financial sense to keep his 7,300 square-foot (678.2 sq-metro) home in the Los Angeles suburb of Encino.

Inside Edition said it had foreclosure documents showing Canseco owed a bank more than $2.5 million on the house.

-- REUTERS

Northwestern University has withdrawn its offer of an honorary degree to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright "in light of the controversy around" him.

-- SHAMUS TOOMEY

Given recent media narratives, it’s easy to lose sight of just how irrelevant the Indiana primary is to the overall nomination. It seems at times that Clinton is just an Indiana victory from storming back into contention. But she's not. Regardless of the ultimate outcome in Indiana, the delegates will essentially be split — and so a 5-6 point Clinton win actually sets her back, mathematically speaking.

But that said, Indiana is important in a different respect in that it may significantly delay Clinton’s ultimate — and largely inevitable — concession.

-- PUBLIUS

A pro-Obama union has ponied up $1.5 million for TV ads to begin softening up McCain in Ohio.

-- DAVID KURTZ

Behold the candidate as he tries to perform pirouettes with a dead weight chained to his ankle. . . . no, this is not about Barack Obama and his former pastor.

This is about John McCain and the Republican president who five years ago appeared beneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner and assured the American people that major combat in Iraq was over (at a cost of 138 military deaths). This would be the same McCain compadre who, just last week, set a new record for failure by posting the highest presidential disapproval rating in the 70-year history of the Gallup poll.

-- DICK POLMAN

The Democrats' domestic policies are an incoherent jumble: they want lower gasoline and heating oil prices, but they block the very things, oil drilling and the construction of new refineries, that would actually reduce them. At the same time, for reasons of 'climate change,' they want less consumption of oil and gas, which implies higher, not lower, prices." I think they want higher prices, but without taking responsibility for that outcome. In which case there's nothing incoherent about the approach at all.

-- JOHN HINDERAKER

If these solutions don't stop the tides of illegal flow in and out of our borders, a friend of mine has a Texas-tough alternative and answer to replace the government's virtual fence failure. In fact, he says, we don't need a security fence at all. All we need to do is to post signs and position manned trucks at key points, just like our government does at Area 51, the top secret military airfield in remote central Nevada, around which there are no fences or walls. There is never a breach or unwanted border crossing there, at least that we hear about! And why? Because the boundary sign reads and is never questioned, "Warning: Use of deadly force authorized.

-- CHUCK NORRIS

Cartoon by Mike Lester/Rome (N.Y.) News-Tribune

Jackboot Feminism: New Details Emerge On WVWV's Voter Suppression Scandal

"Hello, this is Lamont Williams. In the next few days, you will receive a voter registration packet in the mail. All you need to do is sign it, date it and return your application. Then you will be able to vote and make your voice heard. Please return the voter registration form when it arrives. Thank you."

That is a transcript of the robocalls that voters in predominately black districts, which is to say Barack Obama-leaning areas, received in a ham-handed voter suppression effort by Women's Voices Women's Vote that was clearly intended to try to help Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the May 6 primary in North Carolina.

WVWV president Page Gardner has apologized for any "confusion" caused by her group.

But it is obvious that Gardner is playing the news media and others for suckers because the more we learn about the high-tech suppression effort the more obvious it becomes that it was black North Carolinians whom the women's advocacy group was trying to confuse in the service of getting one of their own elected -- a proclaimed feminist who like them has mastered the manly art of dirty politics.

It is minorly ironic that Jeff Fecke over at Shakesville has been one of the bloggers to depants Gardner in providing details of WVWV's jackbooted approach to electoral politics. Ironic because certain Shakesville contributors expend considerable bandwidth pushing back against the perceived enemies of feminism, often in florid locker room language.

Anyhow, Fecke details the insidiousness of the WVWV effort, which is now under criminal investigation by North Carolina authorities:

* The robocalls made no allowance for people who already were registered to vote, merely stating that the recipients of the message must sign and date a packet mailed out by WVWV and return so they would be able to vote.

* The calls didn't note that the packets had zip to do with registering for the primary.

* Primary registration already was closed when the packets were mailed out and calls were made.

* The calls contained no identifying information such as a call-back number or mention of who was underwriting and making the calls, which is one of the several violations of state law perpetrated by WVWV.

So who the heck is Lamont Williams?

A "professional voice talent," according to WVWV. And whether a real or made-up person someone with a more typically African-American name for a reason even a "confused" person would understand.

Judging from her photograph, Page Gardner looks like she is an okey-dokey gal . . . er, woman who one can only hope won't have to trade in that smashing rust red outfit for a prison jumpsuit.

Now no one really expects that to happen, because she might cry and need the assistance of Sister Hillary, who has not disavowed WVWV's thuggery.

Speaking of ironies, there is none larger than the fact that North Carolinians of a certain racial persuasion and vintage could be forgiven for comparing the tactics used against them by women so desperate to succeed in national politics that they'll do anything to the tactics that the white cracker establishment used for decades when they tried to vote.

Facing South, which has been ahead on the story from the jump, reports that WVWV has used tactics that are at best questionable in no fewer than nine states this election cycle. In addition to North Carolina, they are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Facing South asserts that the group's modus operandi is the same in each state:

"Deceptive claims and misrepresentations of the law — sometimes even breaking the law. Wildly inaccurate mailing lists, supposedly aimed at 'unregistered single women,' but in reality reaching many registered voters as well as families, deceased persons and pets. Tactics that confuse voters and potentially disenfranchise them.

"For such a sophisticated and well-funded operation, which counts among its ranks some of the country’s most seasoned political operatives, such missteps are peculiar, as is the surprise expressed by Women’s Voices staff after each controversy."

Finally, a personal note: It really burns my ass when a virulent anti-feminist like Michelle Malkin and I agree on something and she uses my stuff to help make her point. At least my pain would be somewhat mitigated if Page Gardner was given the hook.

(Previous posts here and here.)

Newspapers I: On The Brink of Extinction?

When I came into the newspaper business in 1967 at the tender age of 20, most reporters and editors drank like fish and smoked like chimneys (on the job), lived and died for the news scoop, type was set on massive linotype machines using molten lead, and when the presses of morning and evening newspapers rolled it was like printing money.

Today newsrooms are like vegetarian cafeterias, the scoop is most often the purview of cable news channels, or Internet sites, the entire typesetting and printing process is electronic, and when the presses roll for the remaining morning papers (there are no evening papers as such anymore), one can only wonder how many years it will be before they are silenced.

The reasons for the long downward spiral of the industry are complex and multi-layered, but basically boil down to something that I was saying well before I wrote my last story and quit a few weeks before the 9/11 attacks:

Newspapers will not survive if they don't change and change damned quickly by embracing the Internet and hugging it to their collective bosom.

I take no satisfaction in being right. (And yes, it was weird to feel like a fireman without a ladder when the first aircraft slammed into the World Trade Center on that beautiful September morning.)

The New York Times, which has in fact embraced the Internet, although years too late, is leading the charge to oblivion. Its circulation fell another 4 percent in the last quarter and ad revenues were down 12.5 percent in March from the previous year. And perhaps the most important statistic of all: Its share price has dropped 20 percent since last July and its Standard & Poor’s debt rating is one notch above junk, while there are rumblings about hostile takeover bids.

The picture out on the hustings is just as ugly.

Average circulation for the 530 biggest dailies is down 3.6 percent in the past six months, and for Sunday papers 4.6 percent lower. Ad revenues are down 22.3 percent at Media General, one of the biggest chains, while total newspaper revenues fell to $42.2 billion in 2007.

The Economist does its usual thoroughgoing job of summarizing this slow-motion train wreck, but I think it misses the point in blaming much of the erosion on a banged-up economy. This is because newspapers were not in good shape before the economic slowdown.

But not all is doom and gloom. The Economist notes that:

"[Rupert Murdoch] bought the Wall Street Journal last year, and is investing in a vigorous expansion of its political coverage and international news. This foray on to the traditional turf of the Times seems to be working: the Journal’s circulation is rising. Another flourishing outlet is the web-only Huffington Post, which is fast evolving beyond a series of political blogs into a fully fledged online newspaper with liberal sensibilities close to those of the New York Times."

The magazine also had kudos for Brian Tierney, a former public-relations executive who led a group of investors that borrowed heavily to buy my former paper, the Philadelphia Daily News, and its big sister, The Inquirer.

While Tierney has since begun reviving the News and Inky with a vigorous marketing drive, the question remains: Given the extraordinary number of cutbacks and layoffs, did he have to destroy the papers to save them?

Illustration for The Economist by David Simonds

Newspapers II: The Decline & Fall of MoDo

When the history of the New York Times' long slide from grace and profitability is written, there should be a chapter for op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd, who has gone from being a must-read to an obnoxious crank.

Don't get me wrong. There are far too many op-ed political columnists who are as dull as dishwater (Broder and Collins come to mind), but agree with their opinions or not, there is usually some semblance of a factual underpinning for what they write.

Not so with Dowd. At least not any more, and to use an old newspaper term, she's been phoning it in for some time now. Translation: MoDo may go through the motions of researching a subject but merely throws a bunch of words together -- the edgier the better in her instance -- and presto! she gots herself a column.

My break with the Queen of Snark coincided with the collapse of the TimesSelect subscription firewall last September, when hers and other op-ed columns could again be read for free.

I had declined to pony up for TimesSelect and quickly found that I didn't miss the op-ed crew. (Frank Rich was an exception because, sentimental soul that I am, I have continued to buy the dead tree edition of the Sunday Times). Nevertheless, I was shocked when I resumed reading MoDo again and found that someone who was cogent and moderately amusing on her best days wasn't having good days any more and had become a bottom-feeding trivializer.

Grant you, Dowd has plenty of company and the 2008 presidential campaign has been a feast for journos and pundits for whom the fire has gone out but still can generate plenty of smoke.

John McQuaid says it well in an article at the Huffington Post titled The Political Media Freak Show: What Went Wrong?:

"What went wrong?

"I've been thinking about this for a piece I've written, not yet published. And it's a strange convergence of trends. One of those trends is . . . Maureen Dowd. More than anyone else, Dowd legitimized "character" -- not character, but a kind of flip shorthand for reading surfaces and political images that passes as insight into character. Twenty years ago, this was a great innovation -- you could write impressionistically about campaigns! You could dig underneath the carefully-crafted image, revealing some truth beneath the hucksterism! I loved Dowd for this, and still do -- but less and less these days. This technique -- call it ripping off the mask -- has become the alpha and omega of political journalism. It assumes the mask is a lie designed to mislead, and there is always going to be an embarrassing truth lurking underneath it."

Actually, I think McQuaid is being too deferential because MoDo has become to the liberal media what Ann Coulter is to the right-wing media, and that plain old sucks.

Hat tip to Will Bunch at Attytood

The Few, The Proud, The Bad

A few days ago, I blogged on the disturbing news that the number of waivers that the Army and Marine Corps had granted recruits with felony convictions had jumped in 2007. But I also noted that anecdotally – and based in part on my own experience in the Vietnam-era Army – people with criminal records didn’t necessarily make bad soldiers.

A new study would seem to confirm that. It found that the performance of soldiers who entered the Army with waivers for prior criminal convictions, no high school diploma or other reasons got into slightly more trouble, but assuming they made it through basic training without screwing up, they were more likely to be better soldiers.

More here.

'I'm On a Low Budget'

LOW BUDGET
By The Kinks

Cheap is small and not too steep
But best of all cheap is cheap
Circumstance has forced my hand
To be a cut price person in a low budget land
Times are hard but well all survive
I just got to learn to economize
I’m on a low budget
I’m on a low budget
I’m not cheap, you understand

I’m just a cut price person in a low budget land
Excuse my shoes they don’t quite fit
They’re a special offer and they hurt me a bit
Even my trousers are giving me pain
They were reduced in a sale so I shouldn’t complain
They squeeze me so tight so I can’t take no more
They’re size 28 but I take 34

. . .

Low budget sure keeps me on my toes
I count every penny and I watch where it goes
Were all on our uppers were all going skint
I used to smoke cigars but now I suck polo mints

. . .

Art takes time, time is money
Money’s scarce and that ain’t funny
Millionaires are things of the past
Were in a low budget film where nothing can last
Money's rare there’s none to be found
So don’t think I’m tight if I don’t buy a round

Hat tip to Deb’s Web / Image: "A Pair of Shoes" (Van Gogh)

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

DISTANCE II (Concord, Mass., 2005)
By Koichiro Kurita

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

If Obama is responsible for what Wright says, or anyone else for that matter, doesn't it follow that the victims of Catholic abuse are also responsible for the actions of their pedophile priests? After all, these priests were once the victim's "reverends" too.

-- IMPOLITIC

To make a calmer, more substantive point about what we're seeing in Iraq. The rhythm of any protracted war goes something like this: you do stuff; the enemy responds; you adjust; so does he; and on and on until a point of decision is reached. An Air Force colonel named John Boyd once coined a useful (if jargony) term for this: The OODA Loop, where "OODA" stands for "Observation / Orientation / Decision / Action." Boyd reasoned that the initiative in war goes to he who can achieve a faster OODA Loop than his enemy, and who can disrupt his enemy's Loop.

At the risk of saying something disputable, from 2003 to mid-2007, the insurgencies in Iraq had faster OODA Loops than the U.S. did. That's not to say that there weren't discrete tactical successes: there were, and lots of them. But those developments are coterminous with the concept of the Loop — you adjust and inflict pain on the enemy; but the enemy does so faster and more powerfully. Once Operation Phantom Thunder began in the late spring of 2007, lots of people on the right and on the fake-left declared, without using Boyd’s term, that Petraeus and Odierno had finally broken the enemy’s Loop.

-- SPENCER ACKERMAN

And you know what, rich people -- God bless us -- we deserve all the opportunities to make sure our country and our blessings continue for the next generation.

-- HILLARY CLINTON

We can legitimately debate whether McCain is right or wrong to believe that America can successfully fight its way to a longterm peacekeeping role, and whether the length of time it would take is worth the cost. But that's too nuanced for your basic 30-second attack ad, which requires that words be wrenched from context and used as a cudgel.

So the Republicans' annoyance is justified. And yet . . . OK, here's the thing:

They're the last people who should be crying in their beer about campaign falsehoods, given the fact that, over the past 20 years, they have perfected the art of distortion.

-- DICK POLMAN

I have been inspired.

Today I am announcing my support for Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States of America. I am changing my support from Senator Clinton to Senator Obama, and calling for my fellow Democrats across my home State of Indiana, and my fellow super delegates across the nation, to heal the rift in our Party and unite behind Barack Obama.

-- JOE ANDREW

[T]here is no denying the enormous attraction that candidate Obama brings to the table. He has that incredibly rare gift of being able to inspire people. His rhetoric on the stump touches something deep inside – so American, so seductive to believe that he really is "an agent of change" or that he is somehow a different politician who can bridge the chasm between the races, between ideologies, between all those who feel cut off from the body politic.

I think Obama is sincere in his desire to accomplish these miracles. The problem, of course, is that there is absolutely nothing in his past – absolutely nothing – that would give anyone not taken in by his post-racial, post ideological mantra any hope whatsoever that he has the first clue as to how to go about such a task.

-- RICK MORAN

His (Obama's) campaign is not being derailed by his race, it's being derailed by a person who doesn't want him to prove that we have made great advances in this country.

-- MIKE HUCKABEE

[A]ccording to the latest NBC/WSJ poll, the biggest political albatross heading into November is — drum roll, please — George Bush. In the poll, 43% say McCain being too closely aligned to Bush and his policies is a major concern. That's compared with 36% who say that about Clinton's apparent flip-flops; 34% who say that about Obama's bitter-guns-religion remark; 32% who say that about Wright and Bill Ayers; 31% who say that about Clinton's honesty and trustworthiness; 27% who say that about Bill Clinton having too much influence on policy decisions; 17% who that about Obama not being patriotic enough; and 16% who believe McCain might be too old.

-- JONATHAN STEIN

Cartoon by Tom Toles/Universal Press Syndicate

Of Presidents, Politicians & Expectations

No one survives being president of the United States without looking the worse for wear, but comparing George Bush's stock 2000 campaign photograph with the image above taken at a White House press conference this week is shocking. The man looks like he has aged 25 years in eight, although I suppose the more important question is how much we have.

I got into the habit of printing out and studying photos of the people about whom I was writing a few years ago. In fact, Osama bin Laden was one of the first as I tried to get the measure of a man about whom I knew next to nothing but whose name would be all over the next day's newspapers following the U.S. embassy bombings in West Africa in 1998.

In this instance I taped the Bush photo over my computer (right next to a street map of Baghdad) and looked at it long and hard. What, I wondered, was going on behind the hollow, crow's foot-accented eyes of a man who probably has always been the last one on the room to get a joke but has played an enormously sick one on the American people.

The upshot of this exercise was that I felt inextricably sad.

Sad for this lightweight who was so ill equipped to lead the U.S. into the new millennium, got such bad and often malevolent counsel in every crisis he faced (many of them of his own creation), has caused so much pain and suffering, and will slink home to Texas in a few months outwardly proud but inwardly humiliated. This is because he will know that he has squandered his legacy. And that his tenure will be picked over by historians who will conclude that he was a godawful president. Certainly one of the worst if not the worst.

That sadness eventually was supplanted by another.

Many of us are so caught up in the Sturm und Drang of the most contentious presidential campaign since forever that we lose sight of the fact that we're merely bogged down in the preliminaries before the big dance: That on January 20, 2009, a black man, white woman or grizzled war veteran will inherit a job that under the best of circumstances would be extraordinarily demanding, but will be doubly burdened with impossibly high expectations after eight years of a president who has been equal parts inept, corrupt, arrogant and capricious.

In that respect, and despite all of the talk of experience by the surviving presidential wannabes, none have the experience to repair all of the damage wrought by Bush and his puppet masters. Maybe Heracles, but certainly no mere mortal could.

That is why I believe that Barack Obama, who has the shortest resume of the three, nevertheless is best qualified to meet my expectations. This is because he is at his best and most presidential as a speaker of hard truths. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton and John McCain are hard insiders deeply invested in a dysfunctional Washington culture that makes them change averse.

For Clinton and McCain, the truth is an adjustable wrench to be set according to the political needs of the moment, and I am unable to muster even the most meager expectations for them to be better than the man they want to succeed.

Top photograph by Ron Edmonds/The Associated Press

McCain & Clinton Flunk Economics 101

Papa says he's gonna fill Ole Bessie up with some of that McClinton gas

John McCain's embrace of a summer gasoline tax holiday is an idea so economically unsound but is such terrific feel-good political theater that Hillary Clinton soon joined him in an effort to pander to voters that will be tough to top. But then it's still six months to the election, so who knows?

Why is suspending the federal gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day so unsound?

Because as any economics major knows, there are few commodities more affected by the law of supply and demand than gasoline.

Strong demand and a limited supply of gasoline has led to price increases. Artificially lowering the price will only stimulated more demand, which will inevitably lead to . . . you guessed it, class -- even higher prices.

More here.

(Updated) When Good Feminists Do Bad Things: WVWV's Scandalous Voter Record

By most accounts, the Washington-based advocacy group Women’s Voices Women’s Vote is a stand-up organization, but in its lust to help Hillary Clinton it has run afoul of the law in a most foul way in yet another state.

WVWV stands accused of waging a high-tech voter supression campaign in predominantly black, Barack Obama-leaning districts in North Carolina where residents have been receiving robocalls implying that they weren’t properly registered to vote in the May 6 Democratic primary.

The group has been caught red-handed, and WVWV president Page Gardner has apologized for any “confusion” caused by her group’s anonymous calls.

Ah yes, “confusion.” Kind of like the “confusion” that whites sewed in the Jim Crow South and other black voter suppression efforts since then.

Facing South reports that North Carolina is at least the fifth state where WVWV’s efforts have spurred investigations.

As has been her pattern, Hillary Clinton has not disavowed WVWV’s activities, although her North Carolina campaign chair did harrumph that they had no connection to the group. In fact, WVWV is chockablock with Clinton campaign ties.

No matter how deep the connections are, we certainly can’t say that Hillary approves of the group’s actions because we know that she has refused to stoop (cough) to negative campaigning (cough, cough), be it guilt by association, race baiting or outright character assassination. But this latest revelation certainly doesn’t burnish her already tarnished feminist credentials.

Unsung Heroes In A Forgotten War

More than 90 percent of the MEDEVAC missions at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan are to help Afghanis -- both national army soldiers and civilians.

Casualties typically are flown in from surrounding areas to Bagram's full-service hospital, which can handle everything from gravely wounded soldiers to critically ill children.

Writes Phil Peterson in the intro to a photo slide show at Long War Journal:

"The medics are as efficient as they are compassionate. Despite tight quarters, the medics attend to their patients' medical needs while making their patients as comfortable as possible. When patients are stable, the medics are able to provide comforting measures, like a stuffed toy for an ailing child or a pat on the hand for a wounded soldier. Even after the mission is over, the flight crews frequently check on the status of their patients."

Unsung heroes indeed.

Beautiful Photograph du Jour

HOMAGE TO HOPPER (Palouse, Washington, 2001)
By Robert Weingarten

Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

If you thought the war in Iraq would provide us with cheap gas, you were wrong. If you thought the war in Iraq would bring record corporate profits to the oil giants, you were right. It's a curious thing. Put a Texas Oil Man in the Oval Office and the same stuff keeps happening. But no matter how many times we try it, land wars in Asia are always a bad idea.

-- BOOMAN

Hillary Clinton’s decisive Pennsylvania primary win last week may have reinvigorated her campaign, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to the Republican Party. . . . From top to bottom, from McCain down to the youthful campaign and party staffers who work nearly around the clock to get him elected, the working assumption seems to be that the Democratic contest is over and Obama has won.

-- JONATHAN MARTIN

From soaring gas prices to weaker job prospects, Americans are gloomier about the economy than just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They’re so anxious that fewer people say they are planning to take a vacation than in 30 years. And those are worrying signs for the already deteriorating economy, since eroding consumer confidence foreshadows weaker spending.

-- ANNE D'INNOCENZIO

Perhaps just as important for Obama's attempt to regain control of his campaign was the fight he picked with Clinton and McCain over lifting the gas tax for the summer driving season. The other candidates have backed this crowd pleaser, but Obama labeled it as a phony Washington solution that wouldn't do much to help real people. "This isn't an idea designed to get you through the summer, it's designed to get them through an election," he said at a town hall meeting in Winston Salem, N.C.

-- JOHN DICKERSON

Having never met, lunched, or lectured with Bill Ayers, I'm feeling left out.

-- EZRA KLEIN

"The Federal Reserve's moves to prop up Bear Stearns Cos. will come to be seen as "the worst policy mistake in a generation," the Fed's past head of monetary affairs said. The action is comparable to "the great contraction" of the 1930s and "the great inflation" of the 1970s, said Vincent Reinhart, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who retired from the Fed last fall.

-- GREG IP

He wanted it to be New Politics vs. Old Politics but, as the states dwindle down to a precious few, Barack Obama is being tied in political knots by ancient divisions of race, culture and social class that are being exploited by the Clinton campaign, with some unexpected help from Obama's former spiritual adviser.

-- ROBERT STEIN

Cartoon by Pat Oliphant/Universal Press Syndicate