So thanks for nearly 40 years of music that is outside the ordinary. And in tribute, here’s one of my favorite songs of theirs.

In an early scene, Mitchum slaps co-star Jean Simmons in the face. During production, director Otto Preminger told Mitchum to slap Simmons a number of times. After about four or five takes, Simmons started crying.

Preminger called for another take, whereupon Mitchum casually strolled over to the director and clocked him with an open-handed blow that nearly knocked Preminger to the floor.

Then Mitchum calmly asked Preminger, “Is that what you want, Otto?” and walked off the set.

Pimp-slapping Otto Preminger? Yeah, that’s cool.

Our class divisions are increasingly framed by differences in marriage and family status, with rich and poor inhabiting entirely separate cultures. Rich and poor live apart, watch different television shows, attend different movies, and eat different kinds of foods. Classic class-mixing institutions (like the military or public schools) divide even further as the rich shun the military and either shun public schools or live in wealthy enclaves where there’s little difference between public and private education.

A (very) blunt instrument (think something like a cello) that has been used as a rough guide to this cultural Balkanization is the “bubble quiz” you may have seen floating around Facebook recently. It asks questions like “Can you identify this NASCAR champion?” as a way of identifying members of what Murray describes as elite and mass culture (and what Codevilla might call the Ruling and Country classes). On a scale of 0 to 20, higher numbers indicate greater exposure to mass culture. Full disclosure: I scored a 12, which marked me as (quoting someone whose identity I regret that I’ve forgotten) “a bit of a fancy lad, but beloved by the common folk”, not too surprising for an English prof from a non-elite family/educational background, working and living in Mondoville.

In some respects, Murray’s thesis is perhaps another form of shyster John Edwards’s “Two Americas” demagoguery (This is not a slam on Murray, but a simple reminder that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide people into two kinds and those who don’t). In others, it may be read as a continuation of the “self-segregation” Murray predicted in his controversial 1994 book, The Bell Curve (with Richard J. Herrnstein). In any case, quite a few folks are getting exercised about the whole thing, which brings us to something I think is a Very Bad Idea.

Like many Very Bad Ideas, this one comes to us from the NYT, and is perpetrated by the paper’s token conservative (YMMV), David Brooks. To his credit, Brooks makes some solid observations:

Murray’s story contradicts the ideologies of both parties. Republicans claim that America is threatened by a decadent cultural elite that corrupts regular Americans, who love God, country and traditional values. That story is false. The cultural elites live more conservative, traditionalist lives than the cultural masses.

Democrats claim America is threatened by the financial elite, who hog society’s resources. But that’s a distraction. The real social gap is between the top 20 percent and the lower 30 percent. The liberal members of the upper tribe latch onto this top 1 percent narrative because it excuses them from the central role they themselves are playing in driving inequality and unfairness.

It’s wrong to describe an America in which the salt of the earth common people are preyed upon by this or that nefarious elite. It’s wrong to tell the familiar underdog morality tale in which the problems of the masses are caused by the elites.

The truth is, members of the upper tribe have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids.

Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms.

Unfortunately, he goes off the rails in his conclusion, in which he calls for a National Service Program, and I get the impression he isn’t calling for a voluntary version — after all, we have those already:

We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years. We need a program in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement.

First of all (to get my cheap shot out of the way), I haven’t been real thrilled about previous efforts of that sort. I also note that when the punditti call for drafts of any kind, they tend to be outside the draftable class. Additionally, I oppose mandatory government service on 13th Amendment grounds (I know the Supreme Court disagreed with me when it came to the military draft in 1918 and thereafter. Fine; the Supreme Court is wrong.)

One of the things I wonder, however, is whether we’ve actually ever had some sort of monoculture to lose in this way — the high/middle/lowbrow divisions are old ones. If so, I would suggest that it is disappearing as the result of numerous factors — some good (a greater range of cultural artifacts with which to entertain/amuse/absorb oneself), and some more dubious (an emphasis on self-esteem that works against the value of concepts like shaming and shunning.) In neither case, however, do I see the necessity for still another top-heavy government program, and still another opportunity to submerge individual activity for the purpose of the State, even if the State is a well intentioned one.

H/T: Morgan K. Freeberg, via Facebook.

Xmas Woman

Well, I just got finished wrapping ‘bout an hour ago
Plugging in the tree to see how the lights glow
Drink a little egg nog while I sing about Rudolph’s nose

Are you a lucky little lady with no more need to shop
Or just another lost angel…On the tree top,
On the tree top, On the tree top, On the tree top, woo, c’mon

Christmas Woman, Christmas Woman
Cookin’ turkey through the afternoon
Cookin’ turkey through the afternoon
Cookin’ turkey through the afternoon
Makin’ your dressing
Candied yams too, candied yams too, yeah
Candied yams too, too, too
Candied yams too, ohh, yeah

I see your Yule log burnin’

Hearth contains the fire
If they say your stocking’s empty
You know they are a liar.
Reindeer on your rooftop
Cookies near the tree.

Mistletoe and spray-on snow
Never wanted fruitcake…
Close to me, close to me
Close to me, close to me
Office party,  parking madness;
Let’s change the mood to yuletide gladness,

Mr. Kristopher Kringle, Mr. Kristopher Kringle
Mr. Kristopher Kringle, Mr. Kristopher Kringle
Got to hear him jingle
Mr. Kristopher Kringle, Mr. Kristopher Kringle
Kristopher Kringle, gotta hear him jingle
Mr. Kristopher Kringle, gotta let him jingle
Jingle, jingle
All the Way (Hey!) jingle
I’m gonna jingle, jingle
I gotta jingle, jingle
Well, jingle, jingle
I gotta, wooo, yeah, jingle,
Woah, ohh yeah

Well, I just got finished wrapping ‘bout an hour ago
Plugging in the tree to see how the lights glow
Drink a little egg nog while I sing about Rudolph’s nose

Are you a lucky little lady with no more need to shop
Or just another lost angel…On the tree top,
On the tree top, On the tree top, On the tree top, woo, c’mon

Christmas Woman, Christmas Woman
Christmas Woman, you’re my woman
Little Christmas Woman, Little Christmas Woman
Christmas Christmas Woman Woman
Christmas Woman c’mon.

Although he supports Obama, he is intellectually honest enough to take positions that might alienate his allies, and this article in the Chronicle Review notes that he often needles folks on the left:

He writes that politics, like religion, binds people together “to pursue moral ideals and defend sacred values.” The value that liberals revere is defending the oppressed. But their devotion to victims blinds them to other concerns. They alienate with “a thin and tolerant morality that gives most Americans vertigo.” And they often commit “sacrilege,” making it easy for opponents “to mobilize moralistic outrage.” For example, they trounce authority by backing abortion without parental consent.

Another example Haidt uses to underscore the tribal psychology of political sacredness is the 1960s research of the liberal sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Harvard professor and public-policy expert. In a famous report to President Johnson, Moynihan used the phrase “tangle of pathology” to describe the black family, arguing that some of its problems stemmed from high rates of out-of-wedlock birth, not just from racism. That made Moynihan a pariah; other Harvard professors wouldn’t let their kids play with his. As Haidt tells the story, Moynihan committed “the cardinal sin”: “blaming the victim, where the victim is one of your sacralized victim groups.” He points out that sociologists are now gingerly saying, “He was right.”

It’s worth a read.

[The President] warned that colleges themselves need to do more to cut costs and not assume they can “just jack up tuition every single year.” Government “can’t just keep on subsidizing skyrocketing tuition,” said Mr. Obama.

“We should push colleges to do better,” said Mr. Obama, as he briefly touched on forthcoming proposals to overhaul the way billions of dollars in federal aid to colleges and students is awarded. “We should hold them accountable if they don’t.”

But surprisingly, given the fondness of many in academia for federal-level solutions, segments of the higher-ed community seem less than enthused:

While many higher-education leaders said they were grateful for the president’s attention, they were wary of many specifics: The American Council on Education’s Molly Corbett Broad raised concern that proposed changes to the aid formula it would “move decision-making in higher education from college campuses to Washington, D.C.”

The American Association of Community Colleges said a change to the formula would be welcome but worried about the “extraordinary difficulty” of developing measures of student outcomes in way that was fair to community colleges.

The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, the largest private-college group, said the answer to the affordability problem “is not going to come from more federal controls on colleges or states.” The association’s president, David L. Warren, also criticized the idea of “telling families to judge the value of an education by the amountng young graduates earn in the first few years after they graduate,” one of the same arguments raised by the for-profit college industry over a controversial new regulation introduced last year, the gainful-employment rule.

Sterner attacks came from some university presidents, including across the country, including the University of Washington’s Michael K. Young, who invoked Jeremy Bentham’s famous “nonesense on stilts” invective in decrying the ideas as political theater, according to the Associated Press.

So, the feds are wise enough to control other industries (health care, financial institutions, light bulbs), but when it’s time for higher ed’s own ox to be gored, now it’s a cause for concern and nonsense on stilts? I’m pretty sure there’s a term for that in the lit business…

Oh yeah. Poetic justice?

Aquinas is the patron of schools, colleges, and students, and he strikes me as a good friend to have, even if I’m on the far side of the Tiber.

As I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, I was born in Nashville, spent my first thirteen years (less six weeks) there, and returned for large portions of my summers until I was 21. My friends and I were in bands pretty much from elementary school on, and all of us still do music in one form or another. I can say the same of the people I hung with in high school and a lot of the folks I knew in undergrad and my first trip through grad school.

Now of all those people, only one does music as his sole means of support. He’s still based in Nashville, and music has not only been his living, it’s meant he’s had a taste of stardom-by-proxy, as he spent a few years in Gretchen “Redneck Woman” Wilson’s band at the height of her career. As for the rest of us, we plug away, weekend warriors, bar banders, and some for whom it’s something close to a second job.

I’d like to gather all those people together, go to New York City, and beat the hell out of Abner and Harper Willis. These two brothers, ages 22 and 25 respectively, are the core of Two Lights, an unsigned indie band, and the authors of one of the more irritating things I’ve read in a while — and remember, I read e-mails in academia.

The brothers have authored a piece for Time, in which they kvetch about how expensive it is to be them — although since Abner is finishing up at NYU (which ain’t cheap) and Harper works part-time as a freelance writer, they seem able (in Dorothy Parker’s words) to keep body and soul apart.

They itemize their (and their parents’) expenses (training since childhood, gear, rehearsal space, performing travel, promo, etc.) and announce they’ve spent about 100 grand chasing their dream of rock stardom. I think my favorite part of their list is this bit:

Living in New York City. Our cousin Abby lives in Atlanta in a house — a house! — with a couple of friends. They pay a third of what we pay for our combined living spaces. New York is absurdly expensive — but the band’s future demands that we live here rather than, say, our hometown in Maine. All told, we estimate that decision costs us an extra $1000 a month. Cost to date: $18,000.

Isn’t that precious? The band’s future demands that they live in an obscenely expensive location — Heaven knows they couldn’t possibly launch a music career from someplace like Iowa or Nebraska or Georgia or Michigan.

But even more charming is their explanation of how easy it used to be to achieve stardom (ellipses in original):

Once upon a time, the suits at the record labels funded the enterprise. Your band would play local clubs in a major city, make a buzz, and an A&R (artists and repertory) guy would sign you and write you a blank check. …These days, you have to build your own following first: Produce music, and prove you can sell it. Then maybe someone will kick in some cash. …Meanwhile, you have to pay your own way.

At this point, the guys with whom I grew up are either laughing hysterically or booking flights to NYC to join in the curbstomping. Had I only known how easy rock stardom was when I was playing in toilets in Lexington, KY and Cincinnati, I’d be typing this from my Gulfstream while singing duets with hookers and eating scrambled eggs off of Wayne Newton’s chest (the drugs would have addled me by now). But alas, my friends and I didn’t know just how good we had it.

Ah, well. As the saying goes, “To be beautiful, one must suffer.” Stay beautiful, Willis brothers.

The Ides Of March — “Life Has Been So Good To Us”. Not the famous one-hit Chicago-based band that did “Vehicle”, this was a snotty teen combo from Essexville, Michigan. I love the earnestness here, and the fact that the band pretty much trainwrecks the start of the second chorus (around 1:55 in), but just keeps going. This fulfills the garage rock motto: “Second takes are for sissies.” Frontman Tim Ward released one album a few years later under the name “Timmothy.”

The Len Price 3 — “Rentacrowd”. This is one of the Spawn’s favorite songs, and a frequent feature on drives to and from school. They hardly bother to file the serial numbers off the Who’s “Substitute”, but that’s part of the charm. These guys don’t just wear their influences on their sleeves; the drummer even looks a bit like Moonie. And no one in the band is named Len Price.

Pearls Before Swine — “Surrealist Waltz”. The final track on their first album, One Nation Underground, this song resonates with me like snatches of Richard Eberhart’s poetry, as wondrously fragile as a glass carousel. Strange, and I think beautiful.

All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves. One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn’t deserve credit for the mission. It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job — the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs. More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other —  because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s someone behind you, watching your back.

So it is with America. Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those fifty stars and those thirteen stripes. No one built this country on their own. This nation is great because we built it together. This nation is great because we worked as a team. This nation is great because we get each other’s backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard. As long as we’re joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.

Friersdorf’s response:

This is deeply wrongheaded.

Yes, we’re bound together as Americans in certain tasks, like defending the homeland and seeing that those who cannot care for themselves are provided with what they need. And there is agreement on certain broad goals: better educated children, safer infrastructure, etc. But a nation of 300 million free people doesn’t share a common purpose, nor should it; government’s role is to facilitate our ability to live as we see fit, not to bind us together like Navy SEALs on a military raid ordered up by our commander-in-chief. This nation is great because it affords such a diverse polity the opportunity to pursue happiness, not because “we built it together.”

(We didn’t in fact build it together.)

How can Obama say that the Bin Laden mission “only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other —  because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s someone behind you, watching your back,” and add, “so it is with America”? It just isn’t that way with America. Lots of people within our polity mistrust one another, as is inevitable; in the post-WWII period of prosperity that Obama earlier invoked, there was segregation and the Red Scare and all manner of Americans short on mutual trust, and while there isn’t anything wrong with calling for less unfounded paranoia, positing that only a trusting nation can succeed fundamentally misunderstands our past and our future.
The strength of our system — the free markets, the best of our regulations, our very culture — is that it brings about progress even if the leader doesn’t himself know what energy investments will pay off; if we maintain the system, we’ll prosper even if the federal government doesn’t adeptly line up the economically efficient community college training program with the right applicant and employer; folks will find jobs even if we never develop the single perfect web site for job searches; we’ll thrive even if our diverse passions and values create mistrust and infighting.

What I hear (and what I suspect Friedersdorf may hear), is the President’s effort to give his agenda a boost by invoking a militaristic solidarity in the name of some “moral equivalent of war”, a term the President didn’t use, but which the rhetoric seems to suggest — call it the emanation of a penumbra, if you like. At this point, I’ll turn to a 2008 column from the Major (Ret.)’s favorite columnist, covering some ground he explores in more detail in his book:

Ever since philosopher William James coined the phrase “moral equivalent of war,” self-described progressives have sought to galvanize the masses for collective purposes. They have loved the idea of war-without-war precisely because they want a public that follows in lockstep and individuals who will sacrifice their personal ambitions for the “greater good.” This is what John Dewey, James’s disciple, called the “social benefits of war.” Dewey, later a famous pacifist, supported WWI because he believed it would usher in an age of collectivism and crush laissez-faire capitalism.

The yearning for a moral equivalent of war is an understandable desire, perhaps even noble in its intent. But it is not democratic. It is fundamentally authoritarian[.]

And indeed, we have here a leader who encourages us to unify under a militaristic, authoritarian model (an interesting inversion of e pluribus unum) for a domestic agenda. What could he use as a symbol? Perhaps a bundle of sticks, which bound together is stronger than any individual stick? Meh… I think it’s been done.

I don’t really think the President is a fascist — but I do think Friedersdorf has a point in the title of his article. I think there are things the President fails to understand about the nature of the American idea. Last night was just the latest example.