The Masters

I have loved The Masters since I was a little boy; I watched my first one in 1969 when I was eleven years old. It holds an allure, a charm, unlike no other sporting event, always slightly edging out the World Series in my mental rankings. It's not that The Masters is always better than the World Series, or other sporting events - there have been duds here and there, last year included. I simply look forward to it more. The only other events that possibly rivalled it in anticipation were the heavyweight championship bouts of years gone by - Ali, Frazier, Foreman, etc. But boxing is now not only a dead sport but a farce, and championship bouts are won and lost these days without my even taking notice.

Alas, The Masters too is no longer what it once was. The course changes at Augusta may have made it a better course but they've made the tournament less fun. The extra length, the rough, the added trees, the lightning-fast greens that were never meant to be that fast, have combined to make Augusta a beast - and that's the problem. Augusta was always difficult, owing mostly to the slope and speed of its greens - the greens were always Augusta's last (some said only) line of defense. But its wide-open fairways allowed players to put themselves in position to score, if they executed. If they didn't, the trouble on and around the greens could mean disaster. It was the greatest risk/reward golf course ever set up and the drama it created year-in and year-out was riveting. Back-nine 30s would set the place abuzz; back-nine 40s would break golfers - and their fans - hearts. It was exciting - it was simply SO MUCH FUN!

No more. The course won't allow hot streaks like it used to. The tournament has become a grind rather than a shootout with consequences. Risk-taking on so demanding a course is suicidal in most cases. So the golfers play it safe, calculating their way around the course like it was a U.S. Open set up. They pick their spots. This is not The Masters I grew up with and came to love. Zack Johnson's win last year - at +1 - bordered on the boring. He played excellent golf, no doubt, but there were no charges, no heartbreaks, and little excitement.

Don't get me wrong. I'll still watch every minute of the broadcast, including Wednesday's first ever showing of the par-3 tournament. I'll be online during the non-televised portions of the event, checking out the scores. It's still a great tournament played on an outstanding course by the best in the world. It's just not as fun. My ardor leading into this year's Masters is a bit muted from past years. I hope I can come back next Sunday evening and tell you I was a complete idiot for posting this and that the 2008 Masters was the most exciting ever.

Well, except for Jack's win in 1986. Nothing ever has or ever will top that.

Obama's questionnaire - and the questions it raises

The publication by politico.com of the questionnaire Barack Obama filled out in 1995 before running for his first elective office should be big news in the mainstream media, for it tells us much about the candidate and his beliefs. But it's clear that the MSM is now back in the bag for Obama, after a few weeks respite where it had no choice but to cover the Reverend Wright episode. The questionnaire story is nowhere to be found. Certainly Hillary, who had an opening, is partly to blame for this herself, with her idiotic sniper stories. It gave the press the opportunity to drop the Wright story in favor of Snipergate, after which they were free to return to schmoozing their one true love, Senator Obama. When it comes to the mainstream media, Hillary is now the woman scorned.

But the questionnaire is important. Read through it and try to find a single instance where Obama does not toe the liberal line. Remember while doing this that this is a man who promises to bring us all together in harmony, a man who promises a new politics, one in which we go beyond old divisions and come to new understandings. Remember too that Obama is a political neophyte about whom little is known - and the press obviously means to keep it that way. Rather than do there due diligence and report to the American people news that may help explode the myths Obama is selling, the media ignores anything that may intrude on the storyline they want to deliver.

So I, and probably a few others, would like to know if Obama still believes the following:

My top priority is ensuring that our young people are nurtured and supported through fully-funded public schools, and that a coherent job creation strategy is instituted at the state level to create more jobs at livable wages.

There are so many things troubling about this citation that I am bound to miss some of them. Let me acknowledge that I realize Obama was then running for the Illinois state senate while he is now running for president, so his 'top priority' is obviously going to have changed. But I want to know if Obama still believes this is the job of a state senator - to 'nurture' young people? I would also like him to explain what he means by 'fully-funded' public schools. Is the $10,000 a year or more per pupil that inner city schools regularly spend on public schools not considered 'fully-funded'? How much more should we spend? Who is it that will decide when we are finally 'fully-funded'? And what does he expect this extra funding to achieve that the vast amounts already expended have not?

Furthermore, is it the job of government to 'create more jobs at livable wages'? What is a livable wage? Again, who decides? How much money must be spent by the government in order to achieve these livable wage jobs and where will the money come from? How will the program work? After all, job programs have been a hardy perennial of local, state, and national budgets since the Great Depression, and few of them can claim success. How will Obama's be any different?

Also, there's this:

I am a strong supporter of affirmative action programs.

Well, yes, of course he was. But I want to know, is he still? To what extent? Will he seek to expand affirmative actions programs as president? If so, how will he bring along those, like myself, who are implacably opposed to such government-sponsored favoritism?

In the 'Finance' section of the questionnaire, Obama says he favors a graduated income tax; increasing the $1000 personal exemption as part of a shift to higher income tax; increasing income taxes to relieve or replace local property taxes; increasing state funding to at least 50% of public education costs; and public financing of election campaigns. He opposes school vouchers. Later, in the 'Labor' section, he says he favors 'comparable worth' for state employees and an increase in the minimum wage; his solution to improving the present mental health program is '[i]ncreased funding'; he supports medicare funding for abortion; insurance coverage for abortion for state employees; he may support parental notification of abortion but only for extremely young teens, i.e. 12 or 13 years old (I suppose a fourteen year old is, in Obama's opinion, capable of making this decision on her own); he supports no other restrictions on abortion. He supports state legislation that would ban the manufacture, sale, and possession of handguns. What I want to know, and what the mainstream media seems disinterested in, is whether his positions on these issues have changed at all in the past thirteen years? And, whether they have or not, how will he bring us together on them?

I have only touched on it; read the whole document. In every area, Obama supports increased taxes and more government control. Could he have changed his opinion on these issues? Certainly, though his voting record since reaching the U.S. Senate would indicate not. We may never know - at least until it's too late- due to the media's irresponsibility.

Let's get something straight about Obama and his so-called ability to bridge the gap between right and left - it's nonsense. No politician can, no matter how much high-falutin rhetoric he throws around or how many gauzy, gassy platitudes he invokes. Political parties exist because there are fundamental differences in people's philosophies regarding government's roles and responsibilities. Some want more government involvement, some less. Obama wants more than most, I want less than most. To be frank, I have no interest in coming to some sort of rapprochement with the person who filled out this questionnaire. On the contrary, I am happy to be on the other side, doing my best to ensure that people with beliefs such as Barack Obama's are kept away from public office. I'll be here until the election.

Talking To Myself

There are few things in life that get me more excited than the discovery of a new writer. Now, I read lots of writers, mostly good ones, because I do my research beforehand. But I am not referring here to just your general excellent writer. Here I reference the kind of writer who comes along - or whom one discovers - only once every few years. The kind of writer who, within the first ten pages, you realize is something special. Who, ten pages later, has you wondering how many other books they've written. Who, after still another ten, has filled you with delight.

I have discovered Joseph Epstein. If you are familiar with his work you may be thinking, "well, what took you so long?", for Epstein is now in his seventies and has been publishing since the 1960s. Certainly I had heard of him, and his reputation. But when you are like me, and always have a list of twenty of more books you are dying to read (most of which you secretly know you'll never have time to get to), some books and writers are bound to get lost in the shuffle. Epstein's Friendship: An Expose has been on a list in my wallet for a few years now but I never took the bait. Earlier this week, after having reread Terry Teachout's review of Epstein's latest book In a Cardboard Belt!: Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage, and brandishing a Borders Books gift card I received for my birthday, I bit. I'll never regret it.

Epstein, as the title of his latest makes clear, is an essayist - an essayist supreme. I love the format of the short personal essay - ten or twenty pages about a particular subject from the author's unique point of view. I'm not sure anyone does it better than Epstein. You make think the opinion premature when I announce I've read only the introduction plus five of the essays from In a Cardboard Belt!. But those entries are of such high quality and so entertaining - so much fun! - that I can't imagine the rest will be of diminished quality. As I alluded to above, with some writers it is immediately clear that they are perfect at what they do, and Epstein is one of them.

So far I've read Epstein's personal takes on turning seventy, his father, eating out, his career as a teacher, travelling, and his more than thirty years of keeping a journal. The last piece's title is "Talking to Oneself", from which I appropriated this blog post's title. Now, I don't mean to compare myself with Epstein in any way, shape, or form - he is a writer and thinker of genuis, while I am a poor scribbler who has rarely, if ever, had an original thought. It just occurred to me while reading the piece that I myself am keeping a journal of sorts here in my blog so what Epstein has to say about his own daily journal entries has some resonance with me. After speaking of his journal's origination, his goals for it, how it has changed over the years, others who have kept journals and their own opinions about them, he turns to the subject of the reader of these supposedly private thoughts:

But who is the ideal reader of a journal or diary? Harold Nicolson laid it down that "the purely private diary becomes too self-centered and morbid. One should have a remote, but not too remote, audience." Nicolson thought this would be one's (still unborn) great-grandson. Chips Cannon, the Chicago-born English politician, was one of the great snobs of the past century. He adored royalty, and once, overstimulated by having two actual queens in his house, got so drunk he had no memory of the event. "I sometimes wonder why I keep a diary at all," he wrote. "Is it to relieve my feelings? Console my old age? Or to dazzle my descendants?" Dawn Powell, who had no descendants beyond her retarded son, wrote, "The reason I write is because there is no one to talk to and I might as well build up a completely private life."

In the ideal journal or diary, one is talking to oneself but with the understanding that others are welcome to eavesdrop, after one is dead. Eavesdropping would normally be the last thing one would think one would want, given the ostensibly private nature of journals and diaries. In melodramas, it used always to be a serious violation to read, without their awareness, young women's diaries. Nowadays they try to publish them and as soon as possible.

That last line made me laugh, but then, there are a couple of laughs per page when reading Mr. Epstein. He ends the essay thusly:

Keeping a journal or diary, once begun in earnest, becomes more an addiction than a habit. I cannot now imagine abandoning mine. I continue to scribble each morning, living my life at a second remove, with nothing in it quite real until it has been scrawled out in my increasingly poor handwriting. "When all is said and done," Siegfried Sassoon wrote, "a good life is better than a good diary." No doubt, but please note that Sassoon makes this observation in his diary. You may think this essay has at last come to its conclusion, but it will really only be done tomorrow morning, when, in my journal, I write, "Finished essay on journals and diaries. Am, as usual, uncertain of its quality."

While I understand the uncertainty completely myself, I can assure you that Mr. Epstein has no need to worry about the quality of his own work. He is the genuine article. In have read that Mr. Epstein has nineteen books to his credit, ten of which are collections of essays. I have a lot to look forward to.

Jerome Kern

Has anyone ever wrote more lushly beautiful melodies than Jerome Kern? We saw Show Boat at the dinner theatre last night and I was reminded once again of Kern's supreme talent for crafting a tune. I was also reminded of what transitional forces both he and Show Boat were in the history of the Broadway musical. From the show's Wikipedia entry:

Show Boat is generally considered to be the first true American "musical play" — a dramatic form with popular music, separate from operettas, light musical comedies of the 1890s and early 20th century (e.g., Florodora), and the "Follies"-type musical revues that preceded it. In many ways, it took the plot-and-character-centered "Princess Musicals" that Kern had developed with Bolton and Wodehouse in the previous decade and broadened their scope.

Of Kern himself, I've heard it said that he had one foot in the old world - that of the 19th century European operetta style - and one in the new - that of a purely American style of songwriting. In that sense, Kern bridged the gap between Gilbert and Sullivan and Richard Rodgers, between The Pirates of Penzance and Oklahoma!. His familiarity with the old Victorian high-style of musical theatre and songwriting probably had a lot to do with the pure prettiness of his tunes. There is a sentimentality to his melodies that harken back to the old days, a sentimentality you would never find in a Rodgers tune, or a Gershwin. The titans who followed Kern on Broadway in the years after Show Boat - Berlin, Rodgers, Gershwin, Cole Porter, etc. - scrubbed their music clean of the old-world emotions and crafted a style based, both musically and lyrically, on wit, self-control, a relaxed charm, a serene nonchalance. There was a emotional distance to their music, and they were never mawkish. Only occasionally would they attempt to go deeper emotionally, Berlin for instance in a song such as "What'll I Do?", or Cole Porter (who, along with Richard Rodgers and Larry Hart, epitomized the newer style) in songs such as "So In Love" or "After You, Who?" But mostly they stayed away, appropriately, as they crafted those utterly new and interrelated art forms called American Musical Theatre and American Popular Song. Along with jazz, rock and roll, and the movies, they are this country's enduring contributions to 20th century entertainment.

Kern was a contributor and an innovator of this form. Today, we remain in debt to him for Show Boat, and for some of the most memorable melodies we know; "They Didn't Believe Me", "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", "All The Things You Are", "Long Ago and Far Away", "The Song Is You", "The Last Time I Saw Paris", "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", and, probably the most recognizable song in his canon, and one of the most romantic songs ever written, "The Way You Look Tonight".

iPods, Cell Phones, and Mozart

I celebrated a birthday recently, for which my lovely bride presented me with a new eighty gigabyte iPod. I have been using a four-gig iPod for the past three years during my morning workouts but it is filled to capacity and I need more space. Hence my request for the eighty-gigger, for which I am much obliged.

That's the only time I use the iPod, to help me through my workouts. You will not see me walking down the street with the plugs in my ears. For that matter you won't see my walking down the street talking on a cell phone, or with my nose buried in it, checking messages or text messaging someone. Nor will you see me talking on a cell phone while I am driving (which, by law I assume, must be done in the left-hand lane, going five miles an hour under the speed limit, while remaining utterly oblivious to everyone else being forced to pass on the right.) The main reason for this is because I don't own a cell phone; I've never felt the need. I don't feel the need to always be in touch with the world. In fact, when I am out on my own I want to be unreachable. If I'm on the golf course, for instance. That's another thing that you'll never see me do - pull out a cell phone on the golf course. My golf buddy Jim and I used to agree that anyone who does so should be flogged. If they actually keep talking while they are away, thereby keeping the rest of the group waiting, they should be put out of their misery with a single bullet to the head, and left to lie there with a sign around their neck as a lesson to others.

The other reason you'll never see me do these things is philosophical, though I'm not sure I can explain it well to someone who's not equally as ornery as I am. I just don't want to be one of those guys. You know the type? I was flipping channels a few weeks ago and came upon a Ben Stiller movie called Night at the Museum. It was fluff, but entertaining fluff, so I hung around. Paul Rudd, who's a very funny guy, has a bit part in the movie as Stiller's ex-wife's new husband. And he plays one of those guys, the guy who walks around - even at home - with a bluetooth headset permanently attached to him. The scene where Rudd's character is introduced as the prototypical one of those guys guy gave me my only belly-laugh of the movie. He's meant to be ridiculous here, and he is. So at least I'm not alone in finding this technology-geek character somewhat comical. Some people in real life combine this type with the another type; the I'm-on-the-phone-while-walking-down-the-street-and-I'm-talking-really-loud-so-I-must-be-important type. That guy is really funny.

Anyhow, I think cell phones are a plague. But that's not where I was going with this post. I digress, as usual. My original intent was to mention that with the eighty-gig iPod, I can now add music to my heart's delight. My four-gigger had 722 "songs". I put "songs" in quotes because that's how the iPod itemizes any musical entry. This is fine for modern music but I would hardly call the first movement of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto a "song". Now that I think of it, Benny Goodman or Count Basie probably wouldn't have referred to their music as "songs". They called them "numbers." My dad used this terminology - "that's a great number, huh, bud?" But that's a different way of speaking and for an age and by a type that has now completely disappeared. That would be a good subject for a future blog post - the way the old-timers talked, their language peppered with slang and idioms, a certain street patois, that now exists only in memory. My dad was the last of the breed that talked this way. Anyhow, where was I? Oh yes, now we have songs. For lack of a better term, I had 722 musical entries on my four-gig iPod. Some simple math now tells me that, all else being equal, I can now have approximately 14,000 entries on the new device. I don't think even I can fill that.

I've already added a bunch of music this week, mostly Mozart, who had been sadly neglected on the previous device. Most of what I added were his chamber works so yesterday I listened to third movement of the "Kegelstatt" trio, K.498, for piano, clarinet, and viola, and the whole of the Clarinet Quintet, K.581, both of which I adore. I am looking forward to getting reacquainted with Wolfgang, and with others. Since most of my music listening time now occurs during my morning workouts, the new iPod device will allow me to add a lot of old stuff I haven't listened to in awhile, and probably spur me to search out some new stuff. I'll keep you posted.

Great minds....?

I posted this this morning:

Do we want a president who, after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declares the Holocaust a myth and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, is still eager to sit down and negotiate with Iran? Does Obama think Ahmadinejad just went a little too far in his rhetoric, like Wright?

And Mark Steyn has this to say in his column today:

You can understand why Obama is so anxious to meet with President Ahmadinejad, a man who denies the last Holocaust even as he plans the next one. Such a summit would be easy listening after the more robust sermons of Jeremiah Wright.

It's always good to be on the same wavelength as Mark Steyn. Of course, Mark states the case so much better than I ever could. Read his whole column here.

Notes on the Obama speech

I watched Barack Obama's Reverend Wright speech on Tuesday and was immediately convinced it was a failure. Of course, I'm not a very good focus group for the Senator, especially on this issue. As I said last week, how do you explain such bigotry and America-hatred? You can't. So I went into the speech convinced that there was no explaining a close, twenty-year relationship with a man such as Jeremiah Wright.

But Obama's speech made things worse, from my perspective. The thrust of the speech turned out not to be about his relationship with Wright, but on race relations in general. He switched the focus from himself onto the rest of us; he had no explaining to do, we did. The subtle, unspoken message was that he was not guilty, we were. If we couldn't understand what went on each Sunday in Wright's church, or similar churches, it was due to a lack of imagination and understanding on our part. Wright, given the era he had come of age, was justified in his rage - oh, perhaps he went too far sometimes, but who was he to judge? In Obama's eyes, Wright's racist rants were no different than his white grandmother's reservations about passing young black men in the street. Or Geraldine Ferraro's unremarkable comment that Obama is in the position he's in because of his race. That comment may not be perfectly true - Obama has obvious talents that are certainly in part responsible for his success. However, without his racial makeup those other talents would not be enough to propel him to the brink of the Democratic party nomination as a post-racial candidate. So while Ferraro's comment probably needs some slight amendment, it is still innocuous. Does Obama truly believe it comparable to Wright's "God Damn America!" comment? Or his accusation that the United States government created the AIDS virus in order to destroy blacks? I don't think he does but the fact that his explanation fell back on moral relativism - it is a virus among the left and has been for fifty years - is more evidence that his mind-set is saturated with the orthodoxies of leftism.

One more comment. The speech is already famously known as the "throw your grandma under the bus" speech. It has been duly noted that denigrating the woman who helped raise you (and who is still alive) during a speech is unchivalrous at best, and more likely a sign of low character. I agree. It is appalling in retrospect - casting someone close to you in a bad light in order to score political points. When he said it during the speech, I reflected back to Al Gore using his sister's death from cancer for political benefit. During that same campaign he also used his son's car accident to gin up sympathy and to prove to voters he had a heart. It was truly grubby behavior but at least Gore wasn't actually criticizing those relatives he spoke of. Obama, with forethought, actually found it acceptable to commit his grandmother to history and public opinion as a mild bigot. The more I think of it, the more astonishing I find it.

But I may have my own explanation for it. Did Obama not even realize he was criticizing grandma? Just as he didn't realize that Wright's lunatic sermons were not particularly controversial? He said he wasn't criticizing grandma - that she is simply a "typical white person." His speech let it be known that he thinks Wright is a typical black person of his era. So the question is, is no behavior unacceptable? Can justifications be found for everything? And do we want a president who thinks like this? Do we want a president who, after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declares the Holocaust a myth and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, is still eager to sit down and negotiate with Iran? Does Obama think Ahmadinejad just went a little too far in his rhetoric, like Wright? This whole Wright episode, the speech, and its aftermath, have convinced me even further that Barack Obama is unfit for the presidency.