Have you thought about the nightmare for homeless schoolkids zapped by the economic meltdown? Joe Sestak has

"We must do everything we can to ensure that we do not break the American Dream for hundreds of thousands of homeless youth who are the unfortunate victims of the economic crisis. One of the most unfortunate consequences of our current economic downturn and foreclosure crisis has forced more of our people out of their homes, particularly an alarming increase in children. If we as a nation allow hundreds of thousands of children to slip through the cracks, they will continue to suffer from homelessness through no fault of their own."

-- Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak, in a Senate
campaign position "e-paper" sent out yesterday

by Ken

Back on Martin Luther King Day, I mentioned in a post the steady stream of e-mails I receive from PA Rep. Joe Sestak's Democratic primary campaign against incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter, the now-and-then Democrat. I tried to point out two things: (1) that the campaign has for months now been putting out a voluminous quantity of substantive "e-papers" on a wide range of subjects generally unrelated to the hot-button issues that seem to be all we ever hear about, and (2) despite our ritual claim to want more substance in political campaigns, we hardly ever pay any attention to campaigns that try to do it.

I made clear that I consider myself as guilty, or almost as guilty (at least I raised the question) as anybody. I barely glance at these e-mails, even though they seem to be solidly based, addressing real-world issues with attempts at real-world solutions. When I noticed yesterday that my e-mailbox had a new e-mail from the campaign -- on a Saturday! -- I determined that this time I would read the damned thing. In case maybe you would like to read it too, here it is:

Joe Sestak Joins Effort to Help Homeless Youth

Numbers of homeless youth in public schools is nearing one million as a result of current economic crisis

MEDIA, PA - In response to staggering new statistics reflecting the growing population of homeless youth in school districts across the country, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Congressman Joe Sestak announced plans to join his Education and Labor Committee colleague, Congresswoman Judy Biggert of Illinois, in introducing legislation to ensure access to education for youth effected by homelessness.

The number of homeless children in our nation's public schools is growing at an alarming rate. In 2007-08, the number was 794,617, an increase of 17 percent from the previous school year. All evidence shows that this number is continuing to increase. The legislation would act as a companion to S. 2800, a bill introduced in the Senate by Patty Murray of Washington and Al Franken of Minnesota, that expands upon and strengthens the provisions of the McKinney-Vento Education for Homeless Children and Youth program (EHCY).

"We must do everything we can to ensure that we do not break the American Dream for hundreds of thousands of homeless youth who are the unfortunate victims of the economic crisis," Joe said. "One of the most unfortunate consequences of our current economic downturn and foreclosure crisis has forced more of our people out of their homes, particularly an alarming increase in children. If we as a nation allow hundreds of thousands of children to slip through the cracks, they will continue to suffer from homelessness through no fault of their own."

Homelessness subjects children to instability and trauma that makes it difficult to achieve academically in the best of circumstances. The chances of academic success are further decreased if the student is forced to move schools as a result of homelessness. Research has shown that homeless children and youth are more likely to suffer from health and/or mental health problems, developmental issues and subpar academic performance.

The bill aims to make the public school system a source of stability for children experiencing homelessness by addressing shortcomings in our current federal laws, which make educational success difficult for homeless youth due to issues of legal guardianship, residency, record keeping and lack of transportation. By ensuring that homeless children have access to the academic resources they will need to avoid poverty and homelessness as adults, the legislation aims to stem the tide of generational homelessness.

Specifically, the bill:

* Strengthens the academic support programs for homeless students within schools by providing additional funding for professional liaisons for homeless youth within school districts and expanding access to summer school programs and early childhood education.
* Additionally, the bill takes steps to keep homeless students in their original schools by increasing the authorized funding level to help assist with the costs of transportation and provide resources to speed up the enrollment of homeless students who may not have access to the necessary paperwork.
* Importantly, the legislation focuses on outreach and identification for homeless students by requiring wider dissemination of information relating to homelessness and the services available to homeless students and families.

"A recent report from the U.S. Conference of Mayors stated that family homelessness in Philadelphia rose 4 percent in 2009, a figure which likely underestimates the true effects of the current economic crisis," Joe said. "Failing to address this reality risks the future success of our nation by depriving more children of the educational opportunity they need to succeed."

I don't know about you, but I haven't given a lot of thought to the problem of homeless schoolchildren as exacerbated by the economic meltdown. It appears that Joe Sestak has. Of course he's a member of the House of Representatives, so this is just the sort of thing he ought to be concerning himself with. I don't know that this means he deserves to be a U.S. senator (although it didn't take much to persuade me that he would represent a decisive upgrade over the incumbent), but it does seem to me a better qualification than I'm aware of from an awful lot of people currently occupying seats in that august chamber.

I'm just saying.

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You Have The Right To Complain All You Want-- But Do You Deserve That Right?

Of course you do! Your ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War (on the anti-conservative side), right? And closer relatives fought in the Civil War (on the anti-conservative side), right? My family tree doesn't have American roots that deep. My great grandfather fought against the czar in Russia and my grandfather fought against industrialists for the right of working people to form labor unions here in America. I never thought that gave me any special rights to bitch about anything though-- just some inspiration to do something about social and political injustice.

We keep reading how the Democratic base is as let down as the GOP base is fired up. Democrats didn't bother turning out to vote in Virginia, New Jersey or Massachusetts-- 3 states Obama won last year-- because they are pissed off that a Democratic president with gargantuan majorities in the Senate and House is either unwilling or unable accomplish what made them vote for him, volunteer for him, donate to his campaign. I lost count months ago of how many e-mails, Facebook messages and comments here at DWT I get from ex-Obama supporters.

Back in 2007 I let Jamil, a young friend-- the son of old college buddies-- talk me into taking a less anti-Obama line at DWT. At the time I warned him that if Obama were to win the Democratic nomination and then the presidency, his record clearly indicated that he would be a tremendous disappointment to anyone who was reading too much into that "Change and Hope" campaign slogan thing. Castigating Hillary Clinton for talking out of both sides of her mouth on environmental issues, I pointed out that Obama was every bit as bad. (Remember this is in 2007:)

A consistent and craven compromiser on almost every progressive value or principle he's had to confront since being elected to the Senate (from Republican "tort reform" to legalizing credit card usury), Obama's environmental record has clearly been "one of accommodation to big corporate interests" and "his 'new kind of politics'" is nothing more than a charismatically delivered sham: "the old kind of influence peddling, caution, and smallness that most Democrats [at the grassroots level] reject." His environmental record is nothing Bush Republicans need to fear.

He is the Senate's leading Democratic supporter of "coal to liquid," a technology that can make gasoline out of coal. Only problem: it produces double the global warming pollution that regular old dirty oil does. As if that wasn't bad enough, Obama actually voted for George Bush's energy bill despite more than $27 billion in subsidies for the oil, nuclear and coal industries, its weakening of clean air and water laws, and the fact that it gave electric companies the power to charge consumers high rates while doing almost nothing to tackle global warming or increase consumer protections.

Why is Obama so willing to "trim his sails" so often-- despite the consequences to working and middle class Americans and the environment? It's not just that he apparently believes accommodation-- even of right-wing extremists-- can be both right and politically useful. It's something deeper. In his autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, Obama admits he has a hard time feeling a truly pressing sense of urgency about the great issues of the day.

He's not the leader America so desperately needs to clean up after the worst presidential regime in history, no more than Hillary Clinton is. It's not enough to drive Republicans out of government, even if that is a well-deserved and worthwhile first step. It's just as important to find BETTER Democrats. Substituting horrible, compromised Republicans with horrible compromised Democrats, symbolized by Insider hacks like Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer, who control the Democratic House caucus, will solve little if anything.

As you probably heard, after he won, Emanuel was Obama's first high level pick for his fledgling Administration. It was hard not to despair on the spot. At least, I thought at the time, he's off the fast track that would have led to the Speakership. He's done more than enough damage, though, bolstering and amplifying all of Obama's worst flaws.

Sure progressives are complaining! How could they not? Anyone who wanted unending war voted for McCain and the Republicans. People who wanted peace voted for Obama and the Democrats. There's a disconnect there. So what's the answer? It's still the same-- complain all you want; sign petitions, write letters to editors, curse, scream, bang your head against a wall. But unless you leave the plethora of bad Democrats to rot with the Republicans who make up the other half of the Establishment and actually do something real to help elect the kinds of BETTER DEMOCRATS who really believe in fighting for a better America and a better world, it won't do you or anyone else a bit of good. You've had a chance to see what happens when we elect men and women like Alan Grayson, Donna Edwards, Jeff Merkley, and Jared Polis. They fight the Establishment and that includes not just taking the battle to the craven defenders of the status quo in the Republican Party and the Blue Dog caucus, but also standing up to Obama when he goes off track.

There's a lot of frustration, hopelessness and anger in the country right now. It's what helped elect Scott Brown in Massachusetts and it's helping a snickering and manipulative Establishment to propel the right-wing, Know Nothing populist movement (i.e., Teabaggers). But it's also an anger that can be turned against the Inside-the-Beltway Democratic Establishment that has saddled us with the Ben Nelsons, Joe Liebermen, Blanche Lincolns, Tom Carpers and Mary Landrieux in the Senate and Blue Dogs who have voted again and again with the GOP on important matters before the House, from newly minted anti-family spoilers like Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC), Glenn Nye (Blue Dog-VA), Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL) and Frank Kratovil (Blue Dog-MD) to longtime, confirmed reactionaries like John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA), Jane Harman (Blue Dog-CA), Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS), Jim Marshall (Blue Dog-GA), Ed Case (sleazebag-HI), Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA) and Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN). The anti-incumbent mood of the country is something that should help us defeat Blue Dogs like Harman, Barrow and Holden, each of whom has a progressive challenger and to defeat Blue Dog and DCCC-backed hacks like Lori Edwards in Florida. Blue America is helping to identify them and make sure they're the real deal. Please take a look at the Send The Democrats A Message They Can Understand page and ask yourself if today might be a day to chip in as little as $5 or $10 to help give fighting progressives like Alan Grayson and Donna Edwards and Dennis Kucinich and Raul Grijalva some company and some back-up when they're taking difficult stands against the Rahm Emanuel-Joe Lieberman-Harold Ford wing of the Democratic Party.

Yesterday we saw Ohio bloggers celebrate a huge victory, not just driving horribly reactionary and bigoted ConservaDem Jennifer Garrison out of the Secretary of State race, but out of politics entirely! We can do this; we must.

Sunday Classics: Still Mahler -- Warning: St. Anthony's preaching to the fishes has strong politico-religious importance

From the Christmas Day 1967 Young People's Concert, with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, we first hear Christa Ludwig singing Mahler's "Rheinlegendchen"; then at 3:29 Walter Berry sings the song we began listening to last night, " Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt" ("Anthony of Padua's Fish Sermon"); and finally at 7:18 Ludwig and Berry together sing "Verlorne Müh'."

German-English texts for "Rheinlegendchen":
http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=4552
German-English texts for "Verlorne Müh'":
http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=4609

"Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt"
("Anthony of Padua's Fish Sermon")
[German text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn]

Antonius, arriving for his sermon,
finds the church empty.
He goes to the rivers
and preaches to the fishes;

They slap their tails,
glistening in the sunshine.

The carp with roe
have all come here,
have their mouths wide open,
listening attentively.

No sermon ever
pleased the carp so.

Sharp-mouthed pike
that always fight
have hurriedly swum here
to hear the pious one;

No sermon ever
pleased the pike so.

Also those fantastic creatures
that are always fast,
the stockfish, I mean,
appear for the sermon;

No sermon ever
pleased the stockfish so.

Good eels and sturgens
that banquet so elegantly
even they took the trouble
to hear the sermon:

No sermon ever
pleased the eels so.

Crabs too, and turtles,
usually such slowpokes,
rise quickly from the bottom,
to hear this voice.

No sermon ever
pleased the crabs so.

Big fish, little fish,
noble fish, common fish,
all lift their heads
like sentient creatures:

At God's behest
they listen to the sermon.

The sermon having ended,
each turns himself around;
the pikes remain thieves,
the eels, great lovers.

The sermon has pleased them,
but they remain the same as before.

The crabs still walk backwards,
the stockfish stay rotund,
the carps still stuff themselves,
the sermon is forgotten!

The sermon pleased.
They remain as always.

by Ken

In last week's Sunday Classics post, I cited baritone Iván Paley's interesting description of the common thread running through the Mahler songs based on poems from the folk-poetry anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn): "how man is transformed through the experience of joy and pain." I did, however, add a qualification: "Or, sometimes, not transformed, but then, we can think of 'not transformed' as an extreme point on the continuum of transformation."

The qualification was entered with explicit reference to the song we began listening to last night, the delicious "Anthony of Padua's Fish Sermon." Because, of course, each of the river-dwelling contingents that takes in St. Anthony's sermon brings with it its set of character flaws and vices and then leaves feeling mightily pleased, even uplifted, by the good father's preaching -- and with all those character flaws and vices miraculously intact.

St. Anthony finding himself faced with the problem of an empty church -- hmm, this doesn't by chance ring any bells, does it? Of course, it didn't occur to our Anthony, good Christian that he was, to compromise his mission of faith. He simply went out into the world in search of would-be parishioners, and it appears no other men of faith were working the rivers. Okay, there is the small matter of the after-effect, the utter ineffectualness of his preaching, in terms of in any way changing the bad behavior of his new flock.

Essay Topic 1: On the other hand, look how happy and invigorated St. Anthony left all of his sermonizees. Could we reasonably ask for more from a preacher?

Essay Topic 2: How might all of this relate to the experience of late-20th- and early-21st-century American churches? (Hint: An essay that incorporates terms like moral bankruptcy and Crap Christianity seems apt to be on the right track.)

MAHLER: "Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt"


Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Leonard Bernstein, piano. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded live in Vienna, Apr. 24, 1968

One interesting point about the "Fischpredigt": More than any of Mahler's other Wunderhorn songs, I think, it's pretty neutral when it comes to the gender of the singer taking it on. I imagine that anytime the Wunderhorn songs are performed or recorded as a group, there's a certain amount of tension -- sometimes kept under wraps, sometimes open -- between the male and female soloists for possession of this potential show-stopper.

Since the subject is, after all, St. Anthony's sermon to the fishes, the gentlemen seem to get semi-automatic dibs. When Leonard Bernstein performed, and made his incandescent first recording of, the Wunderhorn songs, in 1967, with the still-married Christa Ludwig and Walter Berry and the New York Philharmonic, the "Fischpredigt" went to Mr. Berry. (We've got video of their performance above.) Now he happens to have been quite an earthy and witty fellow, so this song was right up his alley.

However, one thing we never do actually hear in the "Fish Sermon" is any of the actual preaching. So there's really no reason why it needs to be sung by a man. When the Ludwig-Berry-Bernstein team did a recital of the Wunderhorn songs with piano accompaniment in Vienna in 1968 (happily recorded live by Columbia), the "Fischpredigt" was sung by Ms. Ludwig (as we heard a moment ago!). What's more, when LB did his later DG Wunderhorn recording (both audio and video), it went to the soprano soloist, Lucia Popp:


Lucia Popp, soprano; Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live October 1987

Clearly the ladies have done fabulous things with the song. I'm not sure I've ever heard a more sheerly wonderful performance of this most sheerly wonderful Mahler song than Maureen Forrester's:


Maureen Forrester, contralto; Vienna Festival Orchestra, Felix Prohaska, cond. Vanguard, recorded May 27-June 1, 1963

Still, much as I treasure Forrester's performance, it's hard not to regret that we didn't get to hear it sung by her partner in that memorable Vanguard Wunderhorn recording, the elegant yet commonsensical Swiss bass-baritone Heinz Rehfuss. Of course this works both ways. Here, for example, is a performance that I really like by the bass-baritone John Shirley-Quirk (and I love the seemingly effortless, everything-in-place beauty of the playing of the Concertgebouw -- not only a great orchestra, but one with a long Mahler tradition -- under Bernard Haitink; as in the Bernstein/DG recording, for that matter):


John Shirley-Quirk, bass-baritone; Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded April 1976

Nothing to complain about there, is there? Except that this meant we didn't get to hear Shirley-Quirk's Philips teammate, Jessye Norman, do the "Fischpredigt," which I seem to recall hearing her sing with enormous gusto.


MAHLER IN 3/4 TIME (1967)
LENNY B EXPLAINS MAHLER TO YOUNG PEOPLE (1960)

As noted in the caption for the video clips at the top of this post, they're from one of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts. Me, I hated the YPCs as a kid, though I realized, when I saw a bunch of them a few years ago, that this must have been in good part the result of being forced to watch the first couple, which really were kind of ponderous, before Lenny B got his rhythm with them. Incredibly, he did them all without a script (or a Teleprompter, when they came into use).

This particular YPC -- as noted, from Christmas Day 1967 -- benefited from some inspired scheduling. The concert was titled A Toast to Vienna in 3/4 Time. (Both the New York an thed Vienna Philharmonic thes were celebrating their 125th birthday.) Presumably the Vienna-born Berry and adoptively Viennese Ludwig were in town for the performance and recording of the Wunderhorn songs. What a cunning inspiration to incorporate these three songs into the "Vienna in 3/4" YPC. One happy result is that 40-plus years later we have this precious Mahler video.

Contrary to what you might think, that wasn't Mahler's first appearance on a YPC program. On Feb. 7, 1960, the year of Mahler's 100th birthday, LB devoted an entire concert to: "Who Is Gustav Mahler?" This was the time of the orchestra's famous Mahler Festival, a key event in the composer's belated path to public acceptance.

The program included bits of the Resurrection Symphony, with soprano Reri Grist and alto Helen Raab taking the solo parts in a duet excerpt from the finale, and of the Fourth Symphony, including the whole of the fourth movement, the setting of the Wunderhorn song "Heavenly Life" (six days after Ms. Grist, LB, and the Philharmonic had ventured to Brooklyn's St. George Hotel to record the complete Mahler Fourth), which was our jumping-off point for these Mahler posts, and which we heard quite a lot of last Sunday. Ms. Raab also sang the "final stanza" of the sublime half-hourish finale of Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), "Der Abschied" ("The Farewell"). (Earlier, tenor William Lewis had sung the shortest and most stylized movement of Das Lied, "On Youth.")

The "Farewell" was an astonishing choice for a concert for young people. The maestro tells his young audience that he was warned he was crazy to think of performing such music for young people, who would find it too slow, too depressing, too boring. As a matter of fact, however, the young people -- admittedly well prepared by their presenter -- seemed to really love it. "I know my kids," Lenny had said.

LENNY B EXPLAINS MAHLER TO HIS KIDS

Earlier in the program, before the performance of the finale of the Fourth Symphony, the maestro had observed: "I think young people can understand Mahler's feelings even better than old ones. Once you understand that secret of his music, the voice of the child, you can really love his music.

"That's the main secret about it. He was struggling all his life to recapture those pure, unmixed, overflowing emotions of childhood. I'm sure you've all had emotions like that, like that filled-up feeling that nature sometimes makes you have, especially in the spring, when you almost want to cry because everything is so beautiful.

"Well, Mahler's music is full of those feelings, and full of the sounds of nature, like birdcalls and hunting horns and forest murmurs, which are all part of his idea of beauty, childlike beauty."

I think Lenny would have agreed that this is only part of the truth about Mahler's music, but it's unquestionably an important part, and one his young audience was well able to absorb as a point of entry for an audience of young people. (Note: Kultur has issued a nine-DVD setcontaining 25 of the YPCs, which Amazon merchants are offering as cheap as $90. Treat yourself.)

By the way, one of the works included in the 1960 Mahler YPC was the beginning of the "Fischpredigt," sung by Ms. Raab.


MOVING ON WITH OUR MAHLER
WUNDERHORN PROJECT

The period of Mahler's infatuation, if not actual obsession, with Des Knaben Wunderhorn is also the period in which he composed the Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies. And in case you hadn't figured it out, our not-all-that-secret project these last couple of weeks has been to take some of the Wunderhorn songs, and also applying our earlier contemplation of Mahler's great symphonic adagios, and stitch together sizable portions of these three symphonies.

We've already assembled the second half of the Fourth Symphony this way, throwing in the first two movements as an unearned bonus. And now we can put together two movements of the Second. We've just "acquired" the scherzo (movement no. 3), and I hope you noticed the way it trails off at the end, just the way the song version of "Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt" does. In ending the song that way Mahler presumably meant to suggest: "and so forth." In the symphony, it sets the stage for our old friend the sublime Wunderhorn song "Urlicht" ("Primal Light"), which, as I've mentioned, is meant by the composer to lead without pause into the gigantic finale, the "Resurrection" movement, and which (you may recall) itself begins with no instrumental introduction.

We've already heard "Urlicht," twice, sung about as sublimely as I can imagine -- by Maureen Forrester (with Glenn Gould conducting, left-handed!) and Christa Ludwig. Now, as we put our two movements together, I'd have to say that in this Bavarian Radio performance Janet Baker maintains our standard.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection)

iii. In ruhig fliessender Bewegung
(In calmly flowing tempo)


iv. Urlicht ("Primal Light")

[German text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn]

O rosebud red!
Man lies in the greatest need.
Man lies in the greatest anguish.
Far rather would I be in heaven.

Then I came to a broad path.
Then a little angel came and wanted to send me away.
But no! I didn't let myself be sent away.

I am from God, I want to return to God.
Dear God will give me a little light,
will light me all the way to eternal blessed life.

Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded live Jan. 29, 1965
[Note: This is not Klemperer's 1961-62 EMI studio recording, with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Although eventually released by EMI, this live perfomance was recorded by Bavarian Radio.]

We've also put together the last two movements of the six-movement Third Symphony. We'll revisit them next week, but now we're in position to add one more piece to that gigantic puzzle.

In last night's preview we heard how Mahler took the musical materials of what I've called his "most wonderful" song, "Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt," and transformed them into the scherzo of his mighty Second Symphony, the Resurrection (so called because in the final movement he undertook a huge, heaven-storming musical setting of Klopstock's "Resurrection Ode").

Today I come clean about one of the two early Mahler Wunderhorn settings I made the subject of Friday's preview. Not "Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald" ("I walked with joy through a green wood"); that was there for sheer love of the song, and in particular for Christa Ludwig's splendid 1959 recording. (If you missed it, I encourage you to follow the link back to it.)

No, the "plant," as I'm sure seasoned Mahler hands recognized immediately, was the minute-and-a-half ditty "Ablösung im Sommer" ("Replacement in Summer"). Just to remind you how it went, here it is again, in the Berio orchestration.

MAHLER: "Ablösung im Sommer"
("Replacement in Summer")

[German text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn]

Cuckoo has fallen to its death,
From a green willow!
Cuckoo is dead!
Has fallen to its death!

Who then, all summer long,
Will while away the time?
Cuckoo!

Hey! Mistress Nightingale will do that!
She sits on a green twig!
Small, fine nightingale,
The dear, sweet nightingale!
She sings and jumps, is always happy,
When other birds are silent!

We're waiting for Mistress Nightingale,
Who lives in the green hedge,
And if Cuckoo is done with,
Then she'll begin to pulse.

Thomas Hampson, baritone; Philharmonia Orchestra, Luciano Berio, arr. and cond. Teldec, recorded October 1992

And just as Mahler transformed "Anthony of Padua's Fish Sermon" into the scherzo of the Second Symphony, he used "Replacement in Summer" as the basis for the even larger scherzo of the even more massive Third Symphony.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 3:
iii. Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast.
(Comfortably. Jokingly. Without haste.)


Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Armin Jordan, cond. Erato, recorded live Apr. 20-22, 1994


Royal Scottish Orchestra, Neeme Järvi, cond. Chandos, recorded Oct. 20-24, 1991
(By the way, this may solve the mystery of why the two different orchestrations of the song we heard bear such a strong resemblance. Obviously both orchestrators were bearing in mind Mahler's own orchestration in this movement of the Third Symphony.)


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The current list is here.

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Pashtunwali-- Integral To The Unfolding Tragedy In Afghanistan

When I got to Afghanistan in 1969, the Hippie Trail wasn't all that crowded; there weren't any commercial operators, and there were probably not more than a couple hundred private vehicles a year making the trip from London across Asia to India. There was no train, and in some places of eastern Turkey and western Iran there really wasn't much of a road either. I had my own relatively spacious VW van, which wound up being virtually the only means of transportation for lots of hippie travelers taking time out from the trek to or from India and resting in pre-apocalyptic Kabul.

My van was the way to get to Bamian to see the still unobliterated Buddhas, Bagram, the Paghman Valley, anything beyond the brand-spankin'-new Salang Tunnel, Shahr-i-Zahak, and beautiful Chaharikar. One evening I filled it up with a happy bunch of hippies and we drove up into the mountains above the city to get high and look down at the city lights. Most of us were smoking incredibly powerful opiated Mazar-i-Sharif hash (Balkh shirak). A barefoot Australian couple, hitching their way back to Oz from London, were on acid they had brought with them. We bumped along the unmarked road trying to get as high as we could.

Eventually we came to a flat place overlooking Kabul and piled out. Within seconds we were surrounded by angry-looking men with angry-looking weapons... pointed at us. They were screaming in Dari, some of which I could make out since I semi-spoke Farsi, which is like a modern version of Dari. But they weren't speaking slowly or carefully enough and didn't seem to care if I understood or not. They didn't ask us for anything, just demanded we keep our arms over our heads. We did that for around half an hour while they carried on, and then the Australians started laughing and took down their arms. The Afs started screaming, but the Australians laughed louder. Then all the Afs put their guns down, started laughing and hugging us and invited us for tea and hash.

Americans don't understand Afghans. That was the first thing that popped into my mind today when I read how two young American soldiers were shot at pointblank range by their angry Afghan interpreter in Wardek, just west of our little encounter, where people tend to speak more Pashto than Dari. Other soldiers then shot the interpreter. The military described him as a "disgruntled employee," rather than a terrorist or militant. No doubt-- but, believe me, it was surely the Americans who didn't understand Pashtunwali, the traditional code the Pashtuns live by. Their entire mindset is based on it, and it's virtually impossible to deal with them intelligently without comprehending it.

For example, one of the values most highly regarded among Pashtuns pertains to namuz, what we might call "honor." Its defense, even in the face of certain death, is absolutely obligatory. The "disgruntled employee" might have felt his honor as a man had been insulted by these two soldiers, probably unschooled in the local customs. Boom, boom, boom. Three more dead men in a place where the U.S. military does not belong.

Eventually Obama, or whoever follows him in 2013, will probably understand that the simple-- and far cheaper-- way out of the mess in Afghanistan is another venerable old custom: baksheesh, something we all learned about on the Hippie Trail. But it has to be done right. As Ron Moreau pointed out in Newseek yesterday, the way NATO has been going about it so far just doesn't hit the right chords at all. And it's not going to work with the hard-core Taliban leaders.

One of the problems is that Karzai and his government, widely viewed as Western puppets if not quislings, have no credibility at all.

No one trusts his promises, and they regard his government as an evil thing, a heretical, apostate regime... Karzai is hopeless. He reads from a script he knows will please his Western patrons: new drives for good governance, transparency, narcotics suppression, the building of the Afghan security forces, economic development, etc. Nevertheless, for the past eight years he and his appointees have been incapable of delivering a fraction of what he has promised, and there's no reason to think the next year or two will be any different. He's a nice guy, is not corrupt, and doubtless means well. But he is not a leader or a judge of men, and he has no vision. He promises everything to everyone, as he did in the last election, but nothing comes of it. No one in his administration gets fired or jailed for egregious behavior.

That's who Obama has thrown his lot in with. It's absolutely hopeless-- and replacing him with another puppet (as we did in Vietnam, and the Russians did right there in Afghanistan) will be equally unfruitful. Sooner or later Obama and the ruling Establishment here in America are going to realize that the solution in Afghanistan is withdrawal and leaving those people alone.

Most Taliban seem genuinely convinced that they are carrying out the will of God. One sign of that faith is the apparently endless supply of suicide bombers. The Americans still seem not to have grasped the full import of this. The Taliban are not fighting for a share of power; they want to restore Islamic law throughout the country, with no talk of compromise. They despise their nominal ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has said that suicide bombings are not justified under Islam and who talks of possible power-sharing deals with Karzai. A "son of dollars," they call him: someone who cannot be trusted, someone who does not share their goal of reimposing Sharia over all of Afghanistan. . . "You can't buy my ideology, my religion. It's an insult."

Not even the Russians were willing to just completely obliterate the country, which is really what it would take to "pacify" the place. Do you think Obama or the American people will go for that? Me neither. I think I heard Hillary Clinton saying she won't accept a second appointment as Secretary of State if, somehow, the Republicans manage to defeat themselves in 2012. In that case Obama should go all out to appoint Alan Grayson to the job. His explanation of what to do in Afghanistan is still the best one I've ever heard: Just leave people alone:

I think that the aid program is a fig leaf trying to make Congress and the American people feel better about the war and about killing. I think that diplomacy in the areas of fig leaf to try to make the American people think that there is some constructive alternative to the war when the war itself is destructive and not constructive.

I think that the basic premise that we can alter Afghan society is greatly flawed. Afghanistan is simply the part of Asia that was never occupied by the Russians or the English in the Great Game. It’s not a country; it’s not even a place. It’s just an empty place on the map. It’s terra incognita. People who live there are a welter of different tribes, different language groups, different religious beliefs.

All over the country you find different people who have nothing to do with each other except for the fact that we call them Afghans, who don’t even call themselves Afghans. They’re Tajiks, or they’re Pashtuns, or they’re Hazzaras or someone else. The things that hold them together are simply the things that we try to create artificially.

The idea that we could transform that society or any other society through aid, I think, is entirely questionable. I’ve never seen it happen; probably never will happen. If you go to the Stan countries north of Afghanistan, and I’ve been to all of them, what you find is that the way that the Russians altered that society was by crushing it. Stalin killed half a million Muslims in Kazakhstan, in Turkmenistan, in Kyrgyzstan, in Uzbekistan.

He simply sliced off the head of that society in order to remake it in the image that he wanted. And I think that we would have to do no less if we wanted to remake Afghanistan in our image. We’d have to destroy it in order to save it, and I don’t think the American people are ever going to do that to anybody. So I think that the underlying premise is simply wrong.

I’ve been to 175 countries all around the world, including Afghanistan and every country in that region, and what I’ve seen everywhere I went is that there are some commonalities. Everywhere you go, people want to fall in love. Everywhere you go, people love children. Everywhere, they love children. Everywhere you go, there’s a taboo against violence. Every single place you go. And everywhere you go, people want to be left alone. And that’s the best foreign policy of all. Just to leave people alone.

Grayson was one of the 32 members of Congress who stood up on June 16 and said "NO!" to more war funding. It's more than a promise; it's something he did. Blue America is hosting a page, No Means No!, seeking to encourage members of Congress to put their feet down and help end the occupation of Afghanistan. Please visit the page and consider making a contribution to Grayson or any of the other courageous members of Congress on the list.

Sunday Classics preview: St. Anthony preaches to the fishes, as imagined by Mahler

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, accompanied by the noted conductor (and spiffy pianist) Wolfgang Sawallisch, sings "St. Anthony's Fish Sermon," in 1974.

"Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt"
("Anthony of Padua's Fish Sermon")
[German text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn]

Antonius, arriving for his sermon,
finds the church empty.
He goes to the rivers
and preaches to the fishes;

They slap their tails,
glistening in the sunshine.

The carp with roe
have all come here,
have their mouths wide open,
listening attentively.

No sermon ever
pleased the carp so.

Sharp-mouthed pike
that always fight
have hurriedly swum here
to hear the pious one;

No sermon ever
pleased the pike so.

Also those fantastic creatures
that are always fast,
the stockfish, I mean,
appear for the sermon;

No sermon ever
pleased the stockfish so.

Good eels and sturgeons
that banquet so elegantly
even they took the trouble
to hear the sermon:

No sermon ever
pleased the eels so.

Crabs too, and turtles,
usually such slowpokes,
rise quickly from the bottom,
to hear this voice.

No sermon ever
pleased the crabs so.

Big fish, little fish,
noble fish, common fish,
all lift their heads
like sentient creatures:

At God's behest
they listen to the sermon.

The sermon having ended,
each turns himself around;
the pikes remain thieves,
the eels, great lovers.

The sermon has pleased them,
but they remain the same as before.

The crabs still walk backwards,
the stockfish stay rotund,
the carps still stuff themselves,
the sermon is forgotten!

The sermon pleased.
They remain as always.

by Ken

Change of plan: What I had originally intended as tonight's preview wound up, when it was more or less finished, blown up to the scope of a full post, so I'm dumping much of that into tomorrow's regular post, which means we're going to need another week to get where we're headed with the Wunderhorn-saturated portion of Mahler's creative career -- perhaps next week, though I worry about straining the patience of readers who'll have had their fill with two weeks of Wunderhorn=period Mahler.

Last night I promised you Mahler's "most wonderful" song, and tonight I offer you "Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt" ("Anthony of Padua's Fish Sermon"). As I said last night, "For sheer wonderfulness, this one's hard to beat." It's a whirlwind tour de force that hardly ever fails to delight audiences.

We can surely hear its "folk poetry" origins in its basically repetitive structure. If we think back to "Das irdische Leben" ("Earthly Life"), which we heard in the initial "preview" post from last week devoted to the world of Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn), the anthology of "old German songs" assembled by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brenatno, the structure of the poem was ridiculously simple: The child whines for bread and the mother puts him off, over and over and over. In "Anthony of Padua's Fish Sermon," we learn successively about the arrival of the various species of fish, singly or sometimes in groups, to hear St. Anthony's wonderful preaching. They just keep coming and coming, and enjoying and enjoying. In both of these songs Mahler takes full advantage of the opportunity to ininsuate his wonderful musical materials in our imagination, but also rises to the challenge of constantly varying his setting to maintain and enrich the music's hold on the imagination.

We're going to hear a lot more of the song tomorrow, and talk about it a bit more. For now, let's hear the song again. First as sung by a woman, and in a luxuriously spacious, ruminative performance.


Brigitte Fassbaender, mezzo-soprano; John Wustman, piano. Acanta/Black Hole Music, recorded 1986

And finally we do of course need to hear the song in its full orchestral garb. While Mahler indeed initially composed nearly all of his later Wunderhorn songs with piano accompaniment, that represented a step toward realizing them in full orchestral form. And here's a suitably flavorful performance.


Thomas Quasthoff, baritone; Berlin Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado, cond. DG, recorded February 1998


TAKING IT ONE STEP FURTHER

Mahler used the "Fischpredigt" as the basis for the scherzo of his first super-symphony, No. 2, the Resurrection. Without further ado, here's what resulted.

Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection):
iii. In ruhig fliessender Bewegung
(In calmly flowing tempo)


New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Feb. 17-21, 1958


Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Bernard Haitink, cond. CSO Resound, recorded live Nov. 20-25, 2008


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The current list is here.

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Somehow the delicate sensibilities of bigots and right-wing activists have become a right that trumps all other public interests

Focus on the Family's 30-second Super Bowl spot hasn't been released but is known to feature 2007 Heisman Trophy-winning University of Florida QB Tim Tebow expressing thanks that his mother chose not to abort him -- a private family decision that you'd like to think wouldn't be anybody else's business, not to mention irrelevant to the agonizing decision other women face. CBS can't understand why anyone's upset that the network has broken the long-standing ban on Super Bowl advocacy ads for this.

"To recap: CBS wouldn't allow a group to criticize Bush, wouldn't let a religious group promote its own tolerance of LGBT families and considers a light-hearted dating ad out of bounds. But CBS is perfectly happy to allow Focus on the Family to promote its conservative social agenda."

-- from Credo Action's campaign to persuade CBS to reject
Focus on the Family's pro-choice Super Bowl commercial

by Ken

Poor CBS. The Super Bowl, now just a week away, is supposed to be nothing but a cash-generating bonanza. As the commercial rates go up and up, even in a crappy economy there seems to be no difficulty selling all that time.

But when there's so much money on the table, you can be sure there are going to be problems. As you've surely heard, CBS has gotten its balls caught in a bad squeeze over the issue of advertising acceptance and what is or isn't "within the Network's broadcast standards for Super Bowl Sunday," by breaking its own -- and every other network's -- long-standing rule against advocacy advertising on the Super Bowl.

CBS: Don't air anti-abortion Super Bowl ad

The broadcast networks that air the Super Bowl have historically rejected advocacy ads. Yet CBS, which is airing the Super Bowl this year, has accepted an anti-choice ad by the ultra-conservative group Focus on the Family.

Focus on the Family's "celebrate life" (read: anti-choice) ad features Heisman Trophy-winning college football star Tim Tebow. And CBS approved this anti-choice ad, even though the network has repeatedly rejected advocacy ads in past years including a 2004 MoveOn.org ad that went after then-President Bush's fiscal irresponsibility and an ad the same year from the United Church of Christ showing them welcoming a gay couple who had been turned away from another church.

Sign the petition to CBS insisting they follow their no-advocacy policy and reject the Focus on the Family ad before the Super Bowl on February 7.

More recently, on Friday CBS rejected an ad from a gay dating site showing two men discovering a mutual attraction when their hands brush in the potato chip bowl. The actors then pantomime a comical make-out session. But CBS says the ad "is not within the Network's broadcast standards for Super Bowl Sunday."

So to recap: CBS wouldn't allow a group to criticize Bush, wouldn't let a religious group promote its own tolerance of LGBT families and considers a light-hearted dating ad out of bounds. But CBS is perfectly happy to allow Focus on the Family to promote its conservative social agenda.

We must call CBS out on its hypocrisy and demand that it also reject the Focus on the Family ad. The Super Bowl is America's annual most-watched television event; more than 98 million Americans tuned in last year. And as anyone who's ever been to a Super Bowl party knows, the ads can be even more closely watched than the game, which is why CBS must not unfairly allow anti-choice commercials while rejecting those for other causes.

Sign the petition today urging CBS to follow its own anti-advocacy policy, reverse the decision, and deny Focus on the Family's anti-choice ad.

What really alarms me here is that we now seem to have enshrined a double standard for "acceptability" at both the corporate and the judicial level: What's "acceptable" in advertising or other decisions involving competing claims for respect is who stands to be offended.

In case after case, such decisions, whether made by corporations or courts, seem based on the premise that there's one segment of the American public whose rights, not to mention feelings and beliefs, can be trampled on with utter impunity, with hardly even a second though, while there's another segment of the American public whose delicate sensibilities must always be protected.

It seems to underlie court decisions as to whose privacy must be protected when it comes to making public personal information about issue-campaign donors. (The privacy rights of crusading bigots get a whole lot of respect, while the efforts of people to secure equal treatment under the law are sneered at.) Or again, the Supreme Court's (predictably 5-4) decision struck down Judge Vaughn Walker's plan to experiment, as permitted by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, with limited video coverage of the trial of the constitutionality of Prop 8 seems to have come down to the need to protect the privacy of God-fearing American bigots who would be taking the stand to defend continued legal institutionalization of their bigotry. Apparently they're willing to testify, but they're afraid of being seen doing so, and once again the delicate sensibilities of safely-in-the-box bigots trumps all other public interests.

Whether its private citizens like the CBS censors or legal hoodlums like the Supreme Court majority, there seem to me to be two processes at work, and they're both hateful and unacceptable.

(1) It takes literally no thought to discriminate against people or ideas that are outside the box of orthodoxy.

When you discriminate reflexively against groups or classes of people other than your own, or against ideas that are different from your own, just because you don't have to think about it doesn't make it not discrimination. After all, that's the level on which most discrimination and bigotry occurs.

People don't stop to think, "If I prefer not to offer this person a job, or allow him/her to rent an apartment, or patronize my business establishment, or date my daughter, because of the person's skin color or religion or sexual orientation or political beliefs, that would be bigoted, but dang it all, I'm going to do it anyways." Well, maybe sometimes they do, but by and large that's now the way discrimination and bigotry are accomplished.

If your words or actions are discriminatory or bigoted, it doesn't matter whether you planned it that way; it doesn't matter whether you thought about it for weeks or didn't give it a moment's thought -- it's still discriminatory or bigoted. This seems so blindingly obvious that I'm almost embarrassed to have to point it out, but an awful lot of people either have forgotten it or never knew it. When, for example, you discriminate on the basis of, say, race, your action really and truly doesn't have to be accompanied by a sworn affidavit saying, "I sure as s--t hates me them effin' N-words," to qualify as discrimination.

(2) There's hardly any price to pay for causing offense to non-orthodox people or ideas, while causing offense to orthodox people or ideas can bring you worlds of unwanted attention and even economic distress.

And the defenders of orthodoxy work very hard to make sure that this is as true as they can make it. When the people in charge of accepting or rejecting TV advertising, for example, reject content that will offend only people they see as "dirty fucking hippie" types while accepting content that will offend people who are known to organize dangerously loud and disruptive countermeasures or to actually jeopardize their revenue streams by pressuring customers or advertisers or the like, it's understandable but not OK, ethically or (one hopes) legally.

Today's defenders of discrimination and bigotry have become sophisticated enough to claim that they're just protecting everyone's First Amendment rights. But of course usually that's exactly what they're not doing. They're "protecting the rights" of people and ideas they either agree with or are afraid of, while cavalierly dismissing protections for people and ideas they don't agree with or fear. The whole point of the First Amendment is to protect unpopular or non-mainstream ideas. Orthodox ideas don't often need protection.

As I said, both of these thought processes seem to me repugnant to any concept of fairness and/or decency, and as far as I can see, neither has any foundation or even measure of acceptability in law. They need to be stopped.

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McCain May Hope To Ride To Re-election On Homophobia But Joe Sestak Slaps Him Upside The Head

New polling data in Arizona suggests that McCain may be a lot closer to the assisted living facility beckoning him that he believed. According to Phoenix's New Times, "For the first time since 1994-- when he was recovering from the Keating Five scandal-- John McCain's approval rating has hit 40 percent. Maybe Cindy or Meghan should run instead. McCain feels that aggressive gay bashing is his way back into the hearts-- or whatever they have-- of the wingnut base threatening to abandon him for Hate Talk Radio host and defeated former Congressman J.D. Hayworth. Teabaggers can't think of a worse epithet to tar a Republican candidate with than to point out that he (or she) will be "another John McCain."

McCain likes nothing more than to revel in his carefully crafted legend as a great military leader, which is nothing short of silly considering his actual record of one disaster after another, almost every one of them due to his unrelenting insubordination. Rep. Joe Sestak, on the other hand, is a successful Naval officer who served for 31 years and who doesn't have to invent heroic talltales to bolster his image. He's the real deal. And he's man enough to stand up for equality for all American fighting men and women, When McCain, seeking to curry favor with homophobic teabaggers, attacked gay men and women fighting on the front lines for America's defense Admiral Sestak came to their defense:

"As the senior ranking military Veteran in Congress, I am compelled to respond to Sen. McCain's opposition to President Obama's commitment to allowing all American troops to serve their country openly and honestly. How can a policy that has dismissed more than 13,000 trained, able, and honorable American servicemembers-- including upwards of 800 troops with "mission critical" skills, like Arab linguists-- be viewed as successful?

"Especially in a time of war, when our military is overstretched and our troops and their families are under unprecedented strain, we cannot afford to lose any more troops that the American people depend on for our national security. I agree with Sen. McCain that our military is the best in the world and the best in our nation's history. That's precisely why I have faith in the leadership capabilities of our officer corps and non-commissioned officers, as well as the dedication, professionalism, and integrity of our troops, to handle this transition without detriment to readiness or capability.

"The men and women who wear the cloth of this nation should be entitled to the rights they so heroically defend."

You may have noticed that one of McCain's closest friends and allies in the Senate, Arlen Specter, didn't make a peep on behalf of gay people when McCain went on the attack. Time to replace Specter with Joe Sestak before Specter's political lineage as an antecedent of both Coakley and Deeds delivers Pennsylvania's Senate seat to a Republican far, far to the right of Scott Brown.

More GOP hissy-fit headlines we'll never see: Bringing down Alito

"[A]s usual, the disingenuousness levels are off the charts: imagine the reaction if Ruth Bader Ginsburg had done this at George Bush's State of the Union address."

-- Glenn Greenwald, on right-wing blithering that the bad actor in the SOTU controversy was not Justice Alito but President Obama

by Ken

This is Glenn Greenwald playing his version of our favorite game, If the Shoe Were on the Other Foot. Of course Justice Sonia Sotomayor hasn't been on the bench for a Republican president's SOTU, but just imagine the response of the moron jackals of the All Lies, All the Time Right if she did such a thing. Which leads us logically to our next batch of GOP Hissy-Fit Headlines We'll Never See, which concern the now-famous incident:

GOP Leaders Urge "Politicized" Supreme Court

Justice Alito to Quit, Talk About Impeachment

"Slammin' Sammy" Alito Says He Will Recuse

Himself From All Cases That Involve Obama

Embattled Activist Justice Alito to Step Down,

Apologizes for Lying at Confirmation Hearings

In case you don't get what the fuss is about, after all he just shook his head a little and mouthed "not true," it is in fact an inviolably accepted reality that members of the Supreme Court and the Joint Chiefs of Staff do not react in any visible way during the SOTU. At this point let's turn the floor over to Glenn G, who by the way actually agrees -- on First Amendment free-speech grounds -- with the Court's Citizens United ruling, and who prefaces these remarks, in his post, "Justice Alito's conduct and the Court's credibility," by repeating his view that Rep. Joe Wilson's shouting "You lie" was no big deal since both he and the Obama were political figures in a political arena, makes the case in what seems to me pretty unshakable fashion:

[T]he behavior of Justice Alito at last night's State of the Union address -- visibly shaking his head and mouthing the words "not true" when Obama warned of the dangers of the Court's Citizens United ruling -- was a serious and substantive breach of protocol that reflects very poorly on Alito and only further undermines the credibility of the Court. It has nothing to do with etiquette and everything to do with the Court's ability to adhere to its intended function.

There's a reason that Supreme Court Justices -- along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- never applaud or otherwise express any reaction at a State of the Union address. It's vital -- both as a matter of perception and reality -- that those institutions remain apolitical, separate and detached from partisan wars. The Court's pronouncements on (and resolutions of) the most inflammatory and passionate political disputes retain legitimacy only if they possess a credible claim to being objectively grounded in law and the Constitution, not political considerations. The Court's credibility in this regard has -- justifiably -- declined substantially over the past decade, beginning with Bush v. Gore (where 5 conservative Justices issued a ruling ensuring the election of a Republican President), followed by countless 5-4 decisions in which conservative Justices rule in a way that promotes GOP political beliefs, while the more "liberal" Justices do to the reverse (Citizens United is but the latest example). Beyond that, the endless, deceitful sloganeering by right-wing lawyers about "judicial restraint" and "activism" -- all while the judges they most revere cavalierly violate those "principles" over and over -- exacerbates that problem further (the unnecessarily broad scope of Citizens United is the latest example of that, too, and John "balls and strikes" Roberts may be the greatest hypocrite ever to sit on the Supreme Court). All of that is destroying the ability of the judicial branch to be perceived -- and to act -- as one of the few truly apolitical and objective institutions.

Justice Alito's flamboyantly insinuating himself into a pure political event, in a highly politicized manner, will only hasten that decline. On a night when both tradition and the Court's role dictate that he sit silent and inexpressive, he instead turned himself into a partisan sideshow -- a conservative Republican judge departing from protocol to openly criticize a Democratic President -- with Republicans predictably defending him and Democrats doing the opposite. Alito is now a political (rather than judicial) hero to Republicans and a political enemy of Democrats, which is exactly the role a Supreme Court Justice should not occupy.

In the matter of the appropriateness of the president's remarks on the Court ruling, Glenn amplifies his own comment ("Many of the Court's rulings engender political passions and have substantial political consequences -- few more so than a ruling that invalidated long-standing campaign finance laws. Obama is an elected politician in a political branch and has every right to express his views on such a significant court ruling") by directing us to a comment from a commenter of his, casual_observer:

Article II, Section 3

He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."

First, it's not only allowed that the president would give his views on the 3rd branch's ruling, it is a constitutional requirement, if he feels it needs consideration by Congress.

Second, Obama is absolutely correct that, regardless of how you stand on the court's ruling, it is an important ruling and unarguably merits consideration by congress.

Third, the SCOTUS is a guest at the SOTU. They are there by courtesy. The constitution clearly states that the business of the communication is between second and first branches.

Fourth--Alito's behavior is exactly what one would expect from an activist judge. One so unrestrained that he cannot control himself even at an event where he plays no role and has no function.

And in the matter of precedent, Glenn directs us to Yale Law Prof. Jack Balkin's report that: "About a fourth of [Franklin D.] Roosevelt's 1937 State of the Union Address was devoted to criticism of the Supreme Court for striking down New Deal legislation and asserting that the Court should adopt a different method of constitutional interpretation."

About the only counter I can imagine to Glenn's case is that no real damage was done, since we already knew what Alito is -- and Scalia and Thomas and Roberts as well (and whatever the heck Kennedy is, it amounts to almost the same thing). If Alito's partisan hackery reduces respect for the Court, that's only as it should be. (I think of Peter Sagal's quip this morning on Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me! that after Justice Alito's performance, Justice Scalia threw him a herring.)

Of course, there's no easy way for the Court ever to regain the lost respect, but then, neither is there much prospect either of the Court deserving more respect at any time in the foreseeable future. After all, the justices that President Obama is most likely to be faced with replacing are soon-to-be 90-year-old John Paul Stevens and ailing 76-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg, bulwarks of the Court's centrist bloc (as I keep noting, there is no "liberal" bloc; for that matter there's hardly even a "conservative" one -- it's now pretty much honorable centrists and wild-eyed wackadoodles, and, oh yes, one wackadoodle wannabe), and given the dynamic of the Sotomayor appointment and confirmation, it now appears that she is the farthest-left candidate now judged appointable.

There is of course no established limit as to what constitutes "too far right." If you point to that wackadoodle before his time Robert Bork, it's true insofar as Bork's judicial beliefs were all a matter of record. Far from trying to conceal them, at least until it came to his actual confirmation hearings, Bork had been ostentatiously public about them. Of course he didn't seem too happy when his own words were quoted back to him, a trait that has come to afflict Republicans generally, who ever since have referred to this scandalous practice as "Borking." After all, how dare they be held accountable for the stuff they say and write? Talk about dirty politics!

PARENTHETICAL ASIDE: IS THIS WHEN THE GOP
FORMED ITS UNDYING HATRED FOR THE TRUTH?

And swore their eternal vow to obliterate truth from all public discourse, a project that finally came to fruition in the 2008 Republican presidential campaign? (And of course has endured as the guiding principle for all Republican speech during the Obama administration.)

Of course the wackadoodles have greatly refined their technique since the days of Bork. Now they find stealth wackadoodles, on whom nothing can be "pinned" except via the "known associates" file. Most of what we thought we knew about High Court nominees Smilin' John Roberts and Slammin' Sammy Alito was based on who they'd been close to throughout their careers, although in both cases there were more than enough incriminating writings to hint at the wrecking-crew mission they planned to undertake on constitutional law.

So it's now established that Supreme Court nominees will say essentially nothing in their confirmation hearings. This included then-Judge Sotomayor, of course, and that drove the Judiciary Committee Republicans (admittedly a selection of the most cretinous and corrupt life forms knuckle-dragging the earth) just nuts, as if they didn't know where the strategy had come from. Those same buffoons had, after all, grinned from the depths of their tiny brains as Roberts and Alito, even while saying hardly anything of substance, still managed to lie their stinking carcasses off through their confirmation hearings.

A colleague passed along these nuggets gleaned from the transcript of Day Two of Slammin' Sammy's Senate bullshit slingfest. Here, in response to a question from that paladin of judicial restraint Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, "Does that mean that the Supreme Court should perhaps be even more cautious, even more self-restrained, since there is no appeal from any errors that they might make?," he said:

I think that's a solemn responsibility that they have. When you know that you are the court of last resort, you have to make sure that you get it right. It is not true, in my judgment, that the Supreme Court is free to do anything that it wants. It has to follow the Constitution and it has to follow the laws. Stare decisis, which I was talking about earlier, is an important limitation on what the Supreme Court does. And although the Supreme Court has the power to overrule a prior precedent, it uses that power sparingly, and rightfully so. It should be limited in what it does.

Just to be perfectly clear, he added later:

Because a constitutional decision of the Supreme Court has a permanency that a decision on an issue of statutory interpretation doesn't have. So if a case is decided on statutory grounds, there's a possibility of Congress amending the statute to correct the decision if it's perceived that the decision is incorrect or it's producing undesirable results. I think that my philosophy of the way I approached issues is to try to make sure that I get right what I decide. And that counsels in favor of not trying to do too much, not trying to decide questions that are too broad, not trying to decide questions that don't have to be decided, and not going to broader grounds for a decision when a narrower ground is available.

I dunno, maybe the Slambang Boy was just trying to be funny?


POSTSCRIPT: ABOUT THOSE "UNPROTECTED" JUSTICES

One superficially sensible-sounding complaint that's been registerd about the president's SOTU remarks on the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision is that the Court was left unprotected, with no way to respond. But of course anyone who says this is truly too stupid to live, let alone be flapping his/her gums.

The Constitution expressly gave Supreme Court justices lifetime tenure for this exact purpose.

Short of committing impeachable offenses, Supreme Court justices can't be touched in any way. Even Wall Street and bankster crooks under the protection of the Treasury Dept. and the Fed don't have this kind of protection. I suspect that, once confirmed, Supreme Court justices are protected even if it's shown that they flat-out lied in their confirmation hearings.

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