Ray, Perhaps, those who can do.
Those who can't - criticize. I wonder what "high culture" standard they will adopt? Harry ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ray wrote:
Check this out Harry:
The New Criterion, founded in 1982 by the art critic Hilton Kramer and the pianist and music critic Samuel Lipman, is a monthly review of the arts and intellectual life. Written with great verve, clarity, and wit, The New Criterion has emerged as America's foremost voice of critical dissent in the culture wars now raging throughout the Western world. A staunch defender of the values of high culture, The New Criterion is also an articulate scourge of artistic mediocrity and intellectual mendacity wherever they are found: in the universities, the art galleries, the media, the concert halls, the theater, and elsewhere. Published monthly from September through June, The New Criterion brings together a wide range of young and established critics whose common aim is to bring you the most incisive criticism being written today. (From the New Criterion Conservative Journal Website at newcriterion.com)
Sounds like a cult to me. How about you? "A staunch defender of the values of high culture", "scourge of artistic mediocrity and intellectual mendacity" This from the people who screwed up the NEA and whose attack on the growing culture movement together with their ignorance of the history of American culture and the depth of that culture in the past is beyond mediocre. Lipman at one point wrote that we have more opera companies today than ever before. We have 103 companies listed in opera America. At the turn of the 19th century there was probably more than that in New York City alone. There was 1,200 in Iowa.
Critics do not make good developers. Critics are Gatekeepers and don't know "beans" about anything but the tradition. The Conservatives intellectual unawareness of the place of tradition and its importance is the most appalling thing of all but the one thing that is for sure is that they use their political buzz words at least once in every thing they write. It is embarrassing to be reading something that shows that Lipman at least knew how to play the piano and had an understanding of the literature up through the early 20th century only to see him vear off into some favorite conservative topic to totally misuse his talent and musical knowledge. Harry, these people ARE a block of people. They eat together, play together, speak each other's language and enjoy only each other's company. Sounds like a cult to me.
They claim to be a majority of the country but I doubt it. They got less than half of the vote in the presidential election and they sat on their hands during the 2002 elections. I think most of those people who don't vote are NOT conservatives. I think Bush got out as big a vote as he's capable of getting and everyone else, including Democrats and old fashioned Republicans are just waiting for them to hit the wall. I think most Democrats (not in Congress or in politics) are sitting and waiting for the next big terrible thing to happen and they are glad Bush and his cohorts are at the reins because they will get the credit they so richly deserve.
The point that Hutton made that I think you all should seriously consider is the history of these "Conservatives". He said it was 30 years old. I think it seriously began in 1982 when Sam Lipman had that meeting with the business community where he drew together all of those examples of a "Liberal" press and scared the money out of their pockets (to fund the New Criterion) by telling them they had no voice whatsoever. Of course the people who ran those "immoral" "socialist" journals which came out of the Cold War, the CIA and spearheaded by the "Congress for Cultural Freedom Gang" are now almost unanimously at one with the New Criterion. They always were. It was a scam.
Lipman was a good musician and on occasion an insightful critic but a conflicted one who couldn't decide the difference between his teaching duties and the Gatekeeper function of the Critic. But he had the hardbitten discipline of the child pianist and he could raise money. He also served as their intellectual hero. (See Joseph Epstien's hymn to Lipman's "heroism" at the New Criterian Web site on Lipman's death titled "Lipman at the NEA vol.13 no.7 March 1995.)
Today's conservatives speak as if they have an unbroken line back through history to the beginning of the country. Of course when it comes to reparations for slavery or segregation Conservatives deny any connection to slavery or segregation (1954) but logic is not their strong point although they love maththink and statistics. They remind me of the Southern Baptist Books that I bought years ago which said that the SBs were the only true followers of Jesus and they even had a timeline that went all the way back to Jesus' "Great Commission." Except that isn't the history and they had to invent a sub rosa conspiracy that existed during the first 1000 years of the Roman Catholic Church and all of those others like the Albagensians. Socialist Realist history is alive and well in this new group and florishes in their "Propoganda Tanks" and Journals led by the National Review and the New Criterion. In fact if you look real close at them you will find that most of their parents were Socialists to begin with and they are "damned if they are going to follow those people who screwed them up."
REH
----- Original Message -----
From: "Harry Pollard" <<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Ray Evans Harrell" <<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Ed Weick" <<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Keith Hudson" <<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 6:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Sonny Bush
> Ray,
>
> Unfortunately, I had a clean out of old messages so have lost Hutton.
>
> I don't recall being particularly enthralled with it.
>
> Perhaps because "conservatives" are imagined to be a block of people like
> the "blacks", the "hispanics", the "liberals" the "Catholics" and so on -
> when each block contains individuals with all kinds of variations.
>
> Harry
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Ray wrote:
>
> >Harry, I would feel a lot better if you will answer the analysis of
> >conservative thought and judgments as written by Will Hutton. That is
> >about the most simple explanation for that kind of hyper moralism from
> >conservatives who say that although "I am immoral and irresponsible" for not
> >being rich they are "nice guys" and will still deign to speak to me.
> >
> >I personally think it would have been better for the Democrats in Congress
> >to invite the President or his surrogates to the yard where they could
> >settle the "who is the real patriot issue?" in a gentlemanly fashion on the
> >lawn with full TV coverage since that is the level of politics that this
> >group is playing. Hutton said it right and no one on this list bothered
> >to make the point that this is the root of the fundamentalism that says that
> >I am a villain because I don't sell my wife and daughter on their version of
> >Jesus, Moses or Mohammad.
> >
> >My point about the Boss was that the only reason he is Boss, is because he
> >carries the gun. That is the root of the evil that destroys both liberty
> >and Democracy. As for these wars, I believe Clinton was correct when he
> >just bombed those who would choose such things. The Republicans did
> >nothing in Bosnia until a beautiful country and society was essentially dead
> >and an outpost for Moslem extremists who did come in to help the beleaguered
> >and abused Bosnian Moslems. No one said that the Serbs and Croats were
> >lousy Christians or that Christianity was an immature screwy religion for
> >supporting such fighting in the first place. Clinton chose to bomb Kosovo
> >rather than send in troops. There is no reason to support craziness with
> >the lives of your own citizens unless it is a last resort.
> >
> >It would help if instead of these silly arguments about capitalism, real
> >religious folks would explore the roots of what each had to do with 9/11
> >including what American business does in the rest of the world. I'm not
> >supporting competitors who are just jealous but a little introspection and
> >following the rules of the book that they claim to use as their manual would
> >go a long way towards building a sense of the humanity of all of us.
> >Instead we get these "gotcha" arguments which I'm losing patience with.
> >
> >I've been spending a lot of time with an old coach of mine (in print) who is
> >now deceased and who started the New Criterion Journal with Hilton Kramer.
> >Sam thought he was building a better world for the music he loved but as his
> >group gained power his music lost power in the marketplace. He should
> >have taken the hint when William F. Buckley bought one of the remaining
> >classical radio stations and immediately turned it in for cash to a top
> >forties R & R station. I can't believe Sam was ignorant of the way the
> >wealthy elite in the 1880s in the middle of a depression, disconnected the
> >European poor immigrants from their musical heritage and left them only the
> >lowbrow commercial music to teach to their children and demonstrate a point
> >not lost even today, that when the "Nouveau Riche" take over they carry the
> >insecurities and prejudices of their less than genteel breeding with them.
> >Note how the hip-hop "artists" who have obtained immediate wealth begin to
> >speak as if they were still poor and exercise their "airs" against those who
> >didn't make it up the charts as well as the poor on "block." In the very
> >same year that the wealthy Higgenson bought out the Boston musicians,
> >America formulated the American Indian Religious Crimes Codes that both
> >disenfranchised Indian Religion and made it illegal and broke the back of
> >cultural resistance to the poor depressed Whites taking over the Indian's
> >well developed land in Oklahoma and taking the pressure off of the Robber
> >Barons in Washington, D.C. This group today is fond of saying that
> >morality is absolute. Given the miserable history of Capitalism's
> >morality where does that put the neo-classical economist who is decrying
> >today's moral relativism ala Weber and Leo Strauss?
> >
> >Let me say that as far as it goes, aesthetically I agree more with Sam than
> >I disagree but his breadth in musical taste is limited and his ideas of what
> >constitutes the art of performance and in particular its purpose I severely
> >disagree with. I have sat through mediocre performances by presumptious
> >friends out of loyalty and I have encouraged them because I know that
> >encouragement creates growth while criticism is meant basically to keep up
> >the standard or guard the gate. But America's gate resembles Freud's
> >definition of a toilet training problem. It is more than a little
> >retentive and so grows old stale and disgusting much of the time, strangling
> >anything that might suggest a healthy movement.
> >
> >Sam's information about the rise of classical music in America was
> >incorrect, although probably not his fault. His research was primitive
> >because Americans don't do much research on themselves and so the American
> >Performing Arts History is almost laughable in its shallowness. Everyone
> >shouts that we have more opera companies than ever before in history and the
> >truth is that the farm state of Iowa had almost as many opera companies in
> >1900 as the entire US does today. There were more Opera Patrons in a year
> >in San Francisco than attended all of the opera's in North America in 2003.
> >You can count old opera houses and research the town histories. In the
> >lead and zinc capital of Miami, Oklahoma before statehood in the old Indian
> >Territory there was a beautiful Opera House clearly visible for all to see
> >in the old pictures readily available, yes, on the internet.
> >
> >Capitalism is not all that reflective and people tend not to want to have
> >histories written about the way they obtained certain advantages. As my
> >father said to me: "There are times when you walk right on the edge of
> >legality and sometimes you fall over!" His best friend in high school
> >"fell over" and became one of the nation's most outrageous killers and bank
> >robbers. Goldie McKlintock was given the chair and he asked for my
> >father to spend the last hours with him rather than a minister.
> >
> >Harry, too often the histories are written by immigrants who are better
> >writers but whose flavor resembles the rather general interpretations of
> >Ozawa with his magnificent orchestral instrument. Sam and I agreed on
> >that as did we on Levine at the Metropolitan as well. In fact I used to
> >buy Sam's seat when he couldn't go in row M on the aisle. It was hard to
> >take sometime considering the alienation of too big a hall, too much
> >required forcing from the singers and too little musical intelligence in the
> >pit. But there was the music and I stayed for a time. I know a lot
> >about those times for I was the "fly on the wall" at many founding moments
> >in both the Conservative and the Soho folks. But that is for another time
> >and another writing, maybe a book, if I'm willing to take the abuse for
> >opening my mouth.
> >
> >As for the Demos laying a hand, it isn't a game. That creep Reagan ruined
> >much of my work with his tax structure. In the 1980s I had much less money
> >available for projects, scholarships and all of the other things that
> >artists must have to make serious art. Of course it was easier for the
> >commercial musicians and movie-makers. Even Reagan relented in the end
> >when he gave a big raise to the NEA after he didn't need to use it as a
> >whipping boy any more to get elected. Nixon tried the same but it is easy
> >to spot someone trying to use the Arts in politics just as it is in oil and
> >tobacco. Sam was on the NEA and I believe he pushed to get a Rabbinical
> >side on the NEA panels. Religious music is the other successful music in
> >America next to commercial music but the conservative's Art's policies have
> >been inept, and most of all un-Artistic.
> >
> >I've worked with a lot of cantors and rabbis in my thirty years in New York
> >and I doubt that Sam was interested in pushing Jewish music when that Rabbi
> >was incorporated. I would have supported the Jewish music as I do most
> >performance. There is a grand cantorial vocal tradition that deserves
> >preservation even supported by non-Jewish Americans. Sam ended his career
> >and his life complaining about the state of American music that is largely
> >the result of too little serious professional practice on the part of almost
> >everyone. If you have to eat then you don't have time to practice unless
> >you are just young but the young have very little art inside since, unlike
> >physics, you must have experience to build art upon. As America's artists
> >lose their lives - in the muddy waters of food and family in a society that
> >is addicted to the promise of babies but unwilling to pay for their
> >development - American art stagnates and American performers never evolve
> >but return instead to their colleges to teach and start someone else on the
> >road they couldn't finish. Sam never put the neo-classical economic
> >devaluing of the arts together with his conservatism. His works come
> >across simply as devious and guarded and more than a little angry
> >representing his personal unresolved emotional conflicts.
> >
> >Traits that I would identify with our current President as well. They may
> >think that the other side is as overtly devious and married to the people
> >who give them money as they are but they are wrong. In spite of the
> >corruption and the obvious wimpyness of so many Democrats I would choose
> >their ideals in a minute over the other side and although their artistic
> >values are not much better they seem to have their hearts in the right place
> >if not their intentions.
> >
> >Ray
> >
> >
> >
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "Harry Pollard" <<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >To: "Ray Evans Harrell" <<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Ed Weick" <<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
> ><<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ; "Keith Hudson" <<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2003 7:44 PM
> >Subject: Re: [Futurework] Sonny Bush
> >
> >
> > > Ray,
> > >
> > > Well said.
> > >
> > > Remember, we've come full circle from the alarming "he's a puppet in the
> > > hands of his gang" to the equally alarming "he's taking no notice of
> >anyone".
> > >
> > > As I've said, he seems to have done reasonably well at college. He has
> >been
> > > in the business world without particular distinction, but so have many. He
> > > became a jet pilot - something that requires skill and intelligence.
> > >
> > > He has shown himself to be not a bad politician in spite of being a late
> > > starter. He was re-elected with a landslide for his second term in Texas.
> > > He also took Texas comfortably during the Presidential election. (Both
> > > Clinton and Gore lost their states - which may mean something.) The states
> > > came back to the Democrats at the mid-terms when Clinton and Gore weren't
> > > an issue.
> > >
> > > He got past the close vote situation - apparently very well. Learned the
> > > ropes, which every President must do. (He's under the control of his
> > > ultra-right wing Cabinet. Whatever happened to "ultra-left wing"?)
> > >
> > > Took control. (He's a loose cannon who never listens to advice.)
> > >
> > > Has mostly played a cool game. The Demos haven't been able to lay a glove
> > > on him. The Iraqi situation is cool, but may be getting out of control. In
> > > spite of world-wide antipathy to war - there probably isn't a country that
> > > wouldn't be glad to get rid of Saddam. also North Korea's continual
> >threat
> > > of war. (More than a million soldiers at the border of North Korea.)
> > >
> > > Should we do nothing about Saddam, nothing about North Korea?
> > >
> > > What should we do other than go to war?
> > >
> > > You'll recall that the Europeans were twittering away and asking for
> > > American help in 1935 when Mussolini was introducing the Abyssinians to
> >the
> > > delights of Mustard Gas. Europe said US failure to join a League of
> >Nations
> > > action against this clear aggression nullified the League - made it
> > > useless. Yet, the Europeans should have taken action anyway.
> > >
> > > But, no-one wanted to fight. More British were lost in the resulting
> > > war than Americans - from a country with one fifth the population. An
> > > additional 100,000 were lost from the Commonwealth - all to stop something
> > > that perhaps could have been better stamped on early on.
> > >
> > > Could the enormous slaughter - wasn't it 65 million - have been stopped by
> > > a resolute resistance to Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland - or the
> > > Sudetenland, though that is more iffy.
> > >
> > > Well, no-one really wants war - not even the hawks. But could a firm
> >denial
> > > of the Rhineland by Britain, France, and the US - backed by force - have
> > > averted the later catastrophe? Maybe it would have merely delayed it.
> > >
> > > Could a firm stand against Suddam perhaps removing him - with force -
> > > prevent a later catastrophe? Maybe it would merely delay it.
> > >
> > > Problem now is that with support falling away, the only direction may be
> >war.
> > >
> > > A US that said sorry and brought the armies home would probably send those
> > > million North Koreans across the border.
> > >
> > > A Saddam that is buoyed by the apparent breaking up of the coalition
> >might
> > > get uppity - and the war is on.
> > >
> > > One hope is that the inspectors will find a smoking gun, or that an uppity
> > > Saddam will refuse an entry to Blix's Boys. That will bring the uncertains
> > > back and strangely enough make war less likely and allow Bush to breathe a
> > > little easier.
> > >
> > > Now, can our Bush baby handle all this? I think it's possible, because I
> > > haven't written him off as a spoiled child, a dumbo, an alcoholic, an
> > > addict, an egomaniac, or a gun slinging cowboy who uses comic books for
> > > serious reading.
> > >
> > > He is, however, a conservative.
> > >
> > > Harry
>
>
> ******************************
> Harry Pollard
> Henry George School of LA
> Box 655
> Tujunga CA 91042
> <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Tel: (818) 352-4141
> Fax: (818) 353-2242
> *******************************
>
>
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