I want to thank C. Liegh McInnis for commending The Burial — the new movie streaming now that’s based on true events in the 90s. The film tells how Jeremiah Joseph O’Keefe (Tommy Lee Jones) — a white Mississippian with a legal team led by a black lawyer, Willie E. Gary (Jamie Foxx) — sued Loewen funeral company, a Northern corporation looking to establish monopoly control over the death-industry in parts of the American South. Along the way, one of O’Keefe’s lawyers, Halbert Dockins Jr. (Mamadou Athie), amped up his client’s case by zeroing in on the full ugly of Loewen’s deals with clergy who sold overpriced funeral packages to black churchgoers.
Nation
American Midnight: Last Century’s Brush with Patriotic Frenzy
Watch Adam Hochschild’s book talk here. This is a version of the presentation Hochschild gave last month at Princeton which Stanley Corngold termed: “the most nearly perfect lecture performance I have attended—modest, courteous, and full of intellectual gold—of unforgettable news, very nearly life-changing.”
The mainstream media completely missed the story when reporting on Trump’s visit to the South Carolina gun store
Candidate Trump’s stop at a gun store in South Carolina on Monday wasn’t just an offhand visit: His eight SUV convoy doesn’t do anything without advance planning days or even weeks ahead of any event Trump attends or location he visits. He made a decision to stop at Palmetto State Armory in Summerville, South Carolina, because he knew that that specific gun store was where the racist shooter in Jacksonville, Florida bought the guns he used to kill three Black people at a Dollar General store in late August.
Breakdown
The rich take a plane or hire a car,
but our power is only waiting hour
after hour at the cancelled
bus station, waiting for the backup bus
to heave its way down from Tampa,
while the driver in cigarette-
stained undershirts waits with us,
repeating over and over, he “didn’t
f-up.”
Honey
My father died at the age of eighty. One of the last things he did in his life was to call his fifty-eight-year-old son-in-law “honey.” One afternoon in the early 1930’s, when I bloodied my head by pitching over a wall at the bottom of a hill and believed that the mere sight of my own blood was the tragic meaning of life, I heard my father offer to murder his future son-in-law. His son-in-law is my brother-in-law, whose name is Paul. These two grown men rose above me and knew that a human life is murder. They weren’t fighting about Paul’s love for my sister. They were fighting with each other because one strong man, a factory worker, was laid off from his work, and the other strong man, the driver of a coal truck, was laid off from his work. They were both determined to live their lives, and so they glared at each other and said they were going to live, come hell or high water. High water is not trite in southern Ohio. Nothing is trite along a river. My father died a good death. To die a good death means to live one’s life. I don’t say a good life.
I say a life.
“Little Women,” “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” and America’s Progress
The absolute favorite books of my childhood were strictly for boys, written by Alexandre Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers and its numerous sequels, which I devoured, or by James Fenimore Cooper, the author of The Last of the Mohicans and its own sequels, which likewise I devoured. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, was, by contrast, strictly for girls. I knew this because, unlike the works of Dumas and Cooper, which sat on my own shelves, Little Women sat on my sister’s shelves, together with other works by Alcott. But there was no bar to my taking a peak, and the illustrations enticed me, and the pages turned, and somehow I devoured Little Women, too.
Mugs’ Game
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Trump calling into Newsmax to say “I’d never heard the words ‘mugshot’ — they didn’t teach me that at the Wharton School of Finance” is one of his greatest lines.
Mountains Beyond Mountains
In the New Republic‘s August 10th issue Katherine Stewart published a long and learned account of the now openly anti-democratic polemicizing at the Claremont Institute, titled “The Claremont Institute: The Anti-Democracy Think Tank” (https://newrepublic.com/article/174656/claremont-institute-think-tank-trump) pointing out that what was once a sort-of normal conservative think tank has since 2015 become something much uglier: “In embodying a kind of nihilistic yearning to destroy modernity, they have become an indispensable part of right-wing America’s evolution toward authoritarianism…Claremont represents something new in modern American politics: a group of people, not internet conspiracy freaks but credentialed and influential leaders, who are openly contemptuous of democracy. And they stand a reasonable chance of being seated at the highest levels of government—at the right hand of a President Trump or a President DeSantis, for example.”
With a couple of trivial caveats, this seems right.
Brother Minds: Kafka and Obama
The nausea produced by Trump’s “alternative facts”—which are neither facts nor viable alternatives to facts, being merely lies–has led to a good deal of finger-pointing. Is the seeming legitimacy of such lies owed to advanced (post-modern, “post-truth”) literary theory? For, here, it’s said, readings for the truth of complex texts result in nothing more than a vertigo of indetermination. We have no decisive outcomes but only different hypotheses, having unfathomable degrees of validity, that vie for primacy with no end in sight. It’s not my remit to do a history of the concept of truth-skepticism, but we did not need Foucault and Derrida to introduce us to this great negation. There are paramount exemplars of such concerns in German thought, from at least the 18th century on: Doubts about the accessibility of truth abound, but they are not given equivalent status with lies. The polymath G. E. Lessing acknowledged “the diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process.”[1] We have a kind of modern radicalization in Kafka’s skepticism: “A certain [kind of] truth might be found only in the chorus … or choir (im Chor) (emphasis added).[2] Bottom line: we did not need to be vexed by literary theory to declare that “alternative facts” may not be turned into a chorus of part-truth viewpoints and opinions.
As we return finally to another anthropological order, we find the suggestion that criticizing Trump “for not being consistent, reliable, or rational is to misunderstand his leadership philosophy.” Is that true? I’d aver that he has no detectable “philosophy,” unless it’s to have none. By contrast, it’s tempting to invoke, as possibly redeeming, the mind of another ex-President: Barack Hussein Obama.
Fanboy James & The Utilitarian Nature of the Blues
Last week on What Did Prince Do This Week?, someone mentioned the documentary, Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown. That caused me to remember when B. B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland were on Soul Train in 1975 to promote their joint album, B.B. King and Bobby Bland: Together for the First Time, which is my favorite blues record of all time (here). It doesn’t hurt that King and Bland open the album with King’s seminal song, “Three O’clock Blues.” The first time that I got my hands on the album, it took me a month to listen to the entire thing because I just kept playing “Three O’clock Blues” over, and over, and over, and over until my mother finally yelled from the back of the house, “Boy, if you don’t let the rest of that album play, I’mma come up there and knock you into Three A.M.!” Even though I had the studio version (45”) of “Three O’clock Blues,” this live version was the most amazing thing that I had ever heard. Interestingly, this appearance by King and Bland on Soul Train is also a bonus scene on the Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown DVD. More than just the music, it’s wonderful to watch James Brown, at the height of his popularity, become a fanboy over King and Bland. When I first saw this performance years ago, it was something to see a man the stature of Brown become almost childlike in the presence of King and Bland.
R.I.P. to a Man’s Man
On Cunningham Street in the Upper Brickyard of Clarksdale, Mississippi, Clement Edmond was a man’s man—respected and beloved by all as a bedrock of his community. He reminded me of my pops in his ability to express every aspect of what it means to be a leader and fully human. He was a traditional husband who worked while his wonderful wife, Louise, kept a safe and loving home for their thirteen children.
Use Him
In February 2023, music producer Ian Brennan traveled to Mississippi to record with the prisoners of the notorious Parchman Prison, which has a rich musical history. (Former inmates include Son House, Bukka White, Mose Allison and Elvis Presley’s father, Vernon Presley.) The bureaucratic process behind Brennan’s visit took over three years: “Granted approval a little more than a week before, Brennan caught a red eye flight to be there on a Sunday morning for the few hours he was allowed to record.” Parchment Prison Prayer belongs to the honorable tradition of song-catchers searching for unchained melodies in penitentiaries. This time around, Brennan may have caught at least one song for the ages…
“I give myself away,” sings the vocalist to his personal Jesus (as he makes the piano chime), “so you can use me.” That’s the gospel truth. The singer/pianist is the only Parchman prisoner/performer recorded by Brennan who chose to remain anonymous.
Danny Lyon, Journey West
This short film was made on the occasion of this summer’s ABQ Museum show, Danny Lyon – Journey West.
A True Pro-Life Movement Has Never Been Tried
In Ohio, this Tuesday, voters in a special election will decide on a scammy state constitutional amendment. “Are you sick of constitutional amendments? Vote yes on Issue 1 and you won’t have to put up with them anymore!” Issue 1 makes the process of amending our state constitution significantly harder. Since 1851, proposed amendments to our constitution needed a simple majority to pass. Issue 1 would up the required majority to 60%. If you take supporters’ word for it, shadowy interest groups from outside the state have set their eyes on Ohio and our big, beautiful constitution. “They” seek to shred it so as to turn us into another Democratic shithole like Chicago or California. We need a special instance of living constitutionalism to protect the original intent of the constitution (or something).
Yard Politics
Four days a week, I wake at 4:50 a.m. and start my exercise routine. Thursday is the only day that I don’t exercise. I still wake at 4:50 a.m., but I mow the yard and wash both cars. I’ve been doing that since I was in my twenties, when I was renting a house before I purchased my own home. The Thursday routine was instilled in me by my pops who always cut his yard on Thursday, mostly because his work as a juvenile youth counselor and a member of the Mississippi Democrat Executive Committee meant that his weekends were too busy for yard work. However, the notion that mowing one’s yard and maintaining one’s home is a primary responsibility of a citizen was instilled in me from the womb by my pops, grandpops, and just about every person in my Clarksdale and Jackson communities.
Benificence
A couple of comments on Florida’s new history standards. I use the word “standards” loosely, of course.
But first a tweet that I give my highest compliment. I wish I had written it.
Larry Sabato: “So far Ron DeSantis has run a failing campaign. But here’s the good news: DeSantis has developed skills which, in some instances, can be applied for his personal benefit.”
Loss is More (Ali Siddiq’s Latest)
Ali Siddiq does some of the best acting I’ve ever seen in his new standup show. The whole thing is full of felt WTF’s that have made him America’s reigning ghetto existentialist. Like post-accident Richard Pryor, Siddiq consigns comedy to the ashes when he relives the loss of his half-sister, Ashley Rae Mitchell, who died when she was eight years old. Per Siddiq, her exit had a killer upshot: “I’m so dead inside I’m a fucking monster in the streets.” Siddiq isn’t being slick. He’s not out to excuse his own crimes even as he makes art out of collateral damage.
You can cut to the “chapter” where Siddiq recalls the death of his baby sister below (beneath the video of his whole show).
Yet more evidence that this Supreme Court is the most corrupt in history
In his egregiously wrong Supreme Court decision ending affirmative action in college admissions, Chief Justice Roberts appended a sneaky little footnote exempting the nation’s service academies — West Point, the Naval Academy, and the Air Force Academy. Roberts doubtlessly thought he was being crafty when he noted that there are “potentially distinct interests that military academies may present” that necessitates exempting them from the decision. Earlier in his opinion, Roberts wrote that because the 14th Amendment affords citizens “equal protection under the laws,” it forbids discriminating between them on the basis of race. “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Roberts wrote.