I’m being mildly sarcastic about the title of this post, which will mostly be about violence. And violence in the inner city, but the sarcasm comes because I have become increasingly annoyed at how the local public classical channel is making a big thing about highlighting classical composers of color and making a big thing about how they are noted composers of color. They’ve been doing the same thing about female composers, too, which accounts for the sax element. Even if those composers involved are perfectly adequate composers of the classical genre, I’m increasingly annoyed by how the fact that they were female and/or of color is being banged on about, most often in a mini lecture about how hard it was for them to get any respect at all because *insert brief lecture du jour*. It’s April and almost May, FFS: Black History month is done and dusted, and so is Woman’s History Month. I’m pretty much done with hearing about all of that. Just say “this *insert name of American composer of color* is an American composer of the umpty-umpth century, or this *insert name of female composer* is a German/Austrian/French/Luxemburgian composer of the umpty-umpth century and give the social actions-approved mini-lecture a freaking rest.
So it seems that the mob has gotten the justice that they wanted when it came to the verdict in the matter of one Floyd, George, he of the massive fentanyl overdose while in police custody. Minneapolis, Minnesota has reaped the progressive whirlwind that they planted. The progressive mob demanded a human sacrifice; the rule of law need not apply when the mob bays for blood, local prosecutors go along with the mob, and corrupt hack politicians like Maxine Waters add their voice to the chorus demanding a blood sacrifice. No wonder that progressive school districts are omitting To Kill a Mockingbird from reading lists; too many bright teenagers would absorb the implications and recognize a lynch mob when one presents in real life. It also appears that the attempt to raise a new mob after the death of Ma’Khia Bryant at the hands of a white police officer in Columbus, Ohio. Except that Ma’Khia had a steak knife in hand, was lunging at another woman with apparently murderous intent, and the Columbus police department had the wit to release video footage of the encounter almost immediately, although certain pertinent questions have yet to be answered – like, why was she in foster care in the first place, who called 911, and what exactly set off the whole imbroglio.
As for myself, I don’t live in a place like Minnesota, although I will concede that it did look like a nice place, back about the time that the Mary Tyler Moore series was set there; full of nice, tolerant and well-intentioned people. I don’t ever intend to go there now, although I understand that there are still some people who love the place and deeply mourn what it has now become. Sympathies are a bit strained on my part, as I suspect that they voted, all unknowing, for the progressive feebs that made this civic disaster all possible. The sensible folk there seem to be making plans to get outta Dodge … sorry, Minneapolis, and other long-term managed Democrat-Party ruled states, a good many of whom appear to have been civic pits of dysfunctional despair since the last election of a Republican mayor and city council. This was, in many cases, decades ago. A one-party ruling establishment without any balancing counter is not a healthy situation in the long run, any more than one ruled by the fickle wishes of a mob. Comment as you wish.
Dittos on the classical gassing– it’s all very fine to give “margarinized” people their due, but really . . . Nothing against the Chevalier de St George, or Clara Schumann, mind you.
My son’s best girl pal (like the daughter we never had, almost) moved to Minneapolis for her career in journalism, and is doing well; I suspect she’s pretty pro-BLM now, or at least has to make the noises to maintain viability.
Oddly, given the history and image, and the more than average share of poverty in the Bluff City, we have (so far) had very little upheaval. Keeping fingers crossed.
We are just home from a 7 hour drive from CA visiting children and grand children. We listen to audio books driving. My wife loves Caro’s LBJ biography and we listened to the story of the 1948 Senate election driving over.
The parallels with 2020 are startling. Ultimately, Lyndon won out because DC liberals were worried about the presidential election and Truman vs the Dixiecrats. A crook like Lyndon rode in on the coat tails of Truman just as the crook Biden rode in on the ocean of money spent to defeat Trump and the Trump voters. The 1948 Democrats ignored Ballot Box #13 just as 2020 Democrats ignored Dominion and the 5 ballot stealers.
As for the war on classical music, not by the Chinese by the way, I consider it part of the “Maya Angelou Syndrome.” Samuel Johnson referred to women doing something well as analogous to a dog walking on it hind legs. Ta Nesi Coates, or however he spells it, is another example.
No wonder that progressive school districts are omitting To Kill a Mockingbird from reading lists; too many bright teenagers would absorb the implications and recognize a lynch mob when one presents in real life.
That’s a good point. Students are supposed to absorb and repeat back the narrative, not think about it. So don’t give them an opportunity to potentially do some of their own thinking. I am once more reminded of the left’s takeover of education. Curse him as you may, Bill Ayers made an astute move when he decided to go into the Ed School business. He got a lot farther with bombast than he did with bombs.
the local public classical channel is making a big thing about highlighting classical composers of color and making a big thing about how they are noted composers of color.
Why couldn’t they just do some stuff on Duke Ellington? I count myself privileged to have heard Duke twice.
I have felt equally annoyed by the classical radio station blather regarding race/sex. I’ve been listening for years and as of 2008 it has been my escape from the madness. So it is especially irksome to even have this arena of calm marred with the propaganda du jour. As Dennis Prager has said, “everything the Left touches, they ruin.”
Reference the local classical channel oversell – I’m reminded of a rule of thumb from my youth (especially teens & 20s but really all my life). The guy who felt the need to keep telling everybody how good or popular or smart they were, usually wasn’t. The harder they tried, the more pathetic they sounded. If you really were good or popular or smart it was apparent to everyone and you didn’t have to say anything.
So every time I hear “I’m a strong, empowered woman” or “I’m a powerful and successful black man” or whatever the formulation, it doesn’t make me suddenly realize how I undervalued these awesome individuals. It makes me think the opposite because I hear that pathetic adolescent trying desperately to convince himself (and hopefully others) that he’s not the total loser he fears he is. They may actually be successful and empowered, but to keep repeating the statement argues otherwise.
As for sprinkling (or inundating) the music with identity politics, who cares. There are a lot of black and female auto mechanics out there, too. I couldn’t care less. I just want to know if you can fix my car.
So with all this identity politics nonsense, I have an off the wall question: If we ever end up having to pay reparations, will Barack Obama have to pay himself since he’s half white?
I’m more the passive Ra’z al Guhl type. Let these cities collapse under the unsustainable financial and political burdens their Democrat leaders have heaped upon their peoples. The cities will either descend into morbid decay a la Escape From New York or elect leaders who will actually uphold their primary oaths of protecting the public and not the criminals. NYC Mayor Giuliani is a prime case in point. Or, they will continue to get what they vote for good and hard.
I grew up in the Boston area and lived there for forty years before moving to NH. Most of my relatives live up here now. Boston has seen war and destruction before. Let their people hash it out, peacefully or otherwise. I say that last because where law enforcement leaves a vacuum, violent crime and resultant vigilantism a la Bernie Goetz is inevitable. History is a cruel teacher for those who refuse to learn from it.
You know, if I recall it right, MTM was a reporter.
I wish someone would do one of those Hitler “Downfall”
parodies using those characters covering the present riots…
}}} and other long-term managed Democrat-Party ruled states, a good many of whom appear to have been civic pits of dysfunctional despair since the last election of a Republican mayor and city council. This was, in many cases, decades ago
The REAL problem is that many of them remain idiot leftists, and continue to vote for the same moronic policies that ruined the state they fled from. This is how the mainly conservative/Republican states of Arizona and Nevada are becoming lefty hellholes, too, as Calidiots move there. They appear to be shifting things in traditionally conservative Florida and Texas, as well.
As I’ve noted in other places, two things apply:
1 — the Liberal Midnight Reset Button®, which makes them absolutely incapable of learning anything from the past.
2 — the notion that the single unifying factor of true liberals is the absolute incapacity to learn anything from experience (see 1, above) … if there was a “Wisdom Quotient” test to match the IQ test, liberals would consistently fall in the bottom one third of the resulting bell-curve.
Hence, the fact that these imbeciles are moving out of the states they’ve destroyed is most emphatically NOT a good thing. This is nothing short of the social cancer (literal, not figurative) of PostModern Liberalism metastasizing.
The problem isn’t with Blue State refugees who flee of their own volition. Most of those will be sensible people. The problem is when Red State politicians bribe big corporations to relocate, who then bring in lots of new employees who don’t actually care about the place they are moving to for a job. That’s the phenomenon that is causing the problem, I think.
The problem with the theory of collapse finally bringing sanity to leftist hellholes is that Democrats, if they can “win” national elections, will bail out those hellholes with money from the rest of us. I continue to believe that the 2022 election will be the determining event. One, the voters must be seeing the nightmare that I see. Two, can it be possible to steal 535 elections at once ?
I will grant that some are so convinced of their ideology that no amount of evidence will overcome prejudice. The question is “How many of them are there?”
The problem is when Red State politicians bribe big corporations to relocate, who then bring in lots of new employees who don’t actually care about the place they are moving to for a job. That’s the phenomenon that is causing the problem, I think.
That is a lot of the problem with Arizona, I think.
I was disappointed when I got here and discovered the title was “sAx and violins”.
sigh
And, yes, focusing on anything other than the quality of a composer’s work is stupid. I also think it’s stupid to qualify some piece as “amazing” or “great” just because it’s technically hard to play. We had to do some of those in band because “Oh, he’s a great composer!” but the music – when you actually listened to it – sucked.
Mike K – Two, can it be possible to steal 535 elections at once ?
Stealing them all isn’t really necessary. Only 33 Senate races will be contested in 2022 and the majority of those are held by Republicans now. General voting patterns put a floor under the number of Democrat House seats of around 175 by my guess. Given the control that the House Speaker has and that could be aggregated to the Senate Majority Leader if the filibuster is substantially curtailed, the Democrats really only need to keep their small majorities in both chambers. They might need to ‘influence’ the results in 2 or 3 Senate races, and maybe 25 to 30 House races in order to keep control.
There’s really only massive cheating in a few big cities, and it was strongly incentivized in the few states they thought they could tip the state–so they cheated like crazy in Milwaukee, Atlanta, Detroit, and Phoenix, but there’s no reason to do so in Baltimore, Boston, etc. It will be interesting to see how brazen various states get with gerrymandering now–who will release their maps first, and what courts will allow from each side. Expect massive lawsuits that the corrupt judiciary will as always show a massive tilt towards the Dems. But it seems almost certain that the GOP will easily gain the House–the economy is going to be terrible, and the Dem base is obviously going to still be pushing for widespread anti-covid measures that most people will be long since tired of. The Q is can they get in some non-GOPe types who can actually do what the base wants. And most important for 2024, can they get governors and other statewide positions in the most corrupt states from last time–WI, PA, GA, etc–who can reduce the amount of fraud that will be allowed to happen next time.
I’m frequently amused by seeing again a “meme” image:
• Text saying “If you want to have this”
(illustrated by a picture of the Philadelphia Orchestra in performance with the choir of Westminster-College); above:
• Text saying “Then you have to have this”
(illustrated with a bunch children from a Glaswegian primary-school, wearing cute British School Uniforms and holding miniature violins and such).
It was assembled by a Scottish pressure group called “Change the Tune” that exists to get music instruction in schools funded by the Scottish government, rather then being a non-‘core’ part of the curriculum funded (or not) at the whim of local authorities.
(I’m enough of a pedant and literalist, that I really have to restrain myself from responding each time that impact on the Philadelphia Orchestra of education funding choices in Scotland is minimal. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are one or more Glaswegians in the orchestra or who are Choir Scholars at the nearby Westminster College, but still . . .)
All the above as a way of pointing out that Classical musicians in the USA are aware that without an audience there are no jobs, and that most of the existing audience developed their interest in Classical music by participating in music in school. So decisions by political leaders to require (or not require) music in the curriculum, to fund (or not fund) the acquisition of instruments, music, and equipment like pianos and music stands, are attributed great importance.
But holy smokes, the current climate is not really great for asking that tax money should go to an elitist European artform where nearly all of the notables until recently were white and male.
So this fear is percolating over into all areas of classical music, with promotors wanting to over-emphasize any ‘notable’ who is ‘underrepresented’, in hopes that the whole business will be perceived as less ‘European-Culture’ and more ‘World culture’ and ‘BIPOC-(other-than-Asian)’, less “European Heritage” and more “something ‘diverse’ people are doing now”.
Agreed that 535 seats was an exaggeration. Still, if Dominion has perfected wholesale vote stealing, why not hold the House for the left ? Orange County CA was a GOP stronghold in deep blue CA. In 2018, ballot harvesting was successful in defeating all but one GOP House member.
Similar methods were used in Phoenix to elect Mark Kelly, a Houston TX and CA funded ringer. The AZ GOP has a ballot audit going but the Democrats have just managed to get the judge presiding to recuse himself and a Democrat judge (from Perkins Coie!) assigned who will no doubt shut down the audit.
I hope a relatively honest election can occur next year but I would not bet a lot on it.
Your problem is obvious, Sgt. Mom. You’re just not listening to the right genre. Here, try this:
https://www.br.de/static/radioplayer/player.html#/mediathek/audio/br-heimat/br-heimat-audio-livestream-100~radioplayer.json
I love listening to Bavarian folk music (except for the brass), and so far I’ve never heard them allude to any callously ignored contributions by persons of color.
Seriously, puffing black composers of classical music has to be one of the most absurd forms of virtue signaling. Gringo hit the nail on the head. The greatest musical genres created in the New World – rock, blues, rag time, hip hop, reggae, not to mention jazz – would either not exist or be greatly impoverished absent black composers and artists, and anyone who takes more than a passing interest in them knows who those people are. No fawning hero worship on NPR is necessary.
Well, the other day I did hear “Latinx” actually said out loud for the first time, on NPR of course. I always thought it was something like “la-tinx” or something, but apparently it’s said “La-teen-X”, which is somehow even dumber than I had imagined.
Brian
Well, the other day I did hear “Latinx” actually said out loud for the first time, on NPR of course. I always thought it was something like “la-tinx” or something, but apparently it’s said “La-teen-X”, which is somehow even dumber than I had imagined.
Choosing that pronunciation merely indicates how Anglocentric the Woke Crowd is.”Latinx” is a corruption of “latino,” a Spanish word. As such, one would have expected “x” to have been pronounced as it is in the Spanish language. The letter “X” is pronounced “ek-ees” in Spanish., So, the Spanish language word “latino” changed into “latinx,” using Spanish language rules would be pronounced “latin-ek-ees.”
I am reminded of the Sandalistas from the 1980s,many of whom, before their Political Pilgrim trips to Nicaragua, couldn’t have placed Nicaragua on a world map if you had cut off the Eastern Hemisphere and South America. The Sandalistas made a big show of pronouncing that country as “Neecarrrrragwa.” Which was probably the second word in Spanish many had learned, after “tortilla.”
(My rule of thumb is that if I am more accustomed to hearing a Spanish language place name in English, I pronounce it in the English language manner. If I am more accustomed to hearing it in Spanish, I may pronounce it in the Spanish way. I have heard “Nicaragua” more in English. But, I have heard “Buenos Aires” more in Spanish, so it goes bway-nos-ay-rrays for me.)
If they nationalize the police, we’ll have State Police. The politicization of the FBI is a warning.
If they nationalize elections, they will be a lot easier to manipulate.
And boy, didn’t Tim Scott do it well? No token there, no special standards – he was just damn good.
And with the music, it’s like saying there aren’t enough minorities in Stem but ignoring the importance in our culture (and in any pay scale) of professional sports.
I’m so tired of feeling like we need to walk on egg shells – that’s no way to live.