My television is a 33-year-old Sony

UPDATE: I humbly thank Michelle Malkin and other bloggers who have linked to my little takedown of the TV Lady. It's been a big 24 hours for the Revolution 21 website. Geez, I'm not even a conservative . . . except when it comes to social issues.

But while you're visiting Revolution 21's Blog for the People, I beg you to read this and this -- a pair of entries far more consequential than anything I might have to say about someone so petty and, ultimately, unimportant as the TV Lady. Until and unless the TV Lady comes to love Jesus more than she hates whitey, there's not much that can be done for her.

LIKEWISE, until and unless all those in New Orleans like the TV Lady get a clue and get some perspective -- and this goes double for all those who use the TV Lady as cover for hating the poor, African-Americans or both -- there isn't much hope for a beautiful and once-great city. In that case, history will take care of them all. And all our outrage and witty takedowns of ungrateful morons really won't change anything and, thus, are unimportant.

In the grand scheme of things, for each one of us and for the good society we wish to build, what's important is this. And this.

We need to encourage young men and women to be like what I write about here. And here.

And we must mourn when the good die young. What once were important pieces of our hope suddenly aren't there anymore.

While cutting loose on scoundrels like the TV Lady can be important and instructive, cursing the darkness isn't nearly so important as lighting candles. Before you read my post about the TV Lady, I beg you . . . go here. And here.

Help people -- especially young people of every color, gender, class and ethnicity -- become good men and good women. Celebrate them.

And, as I do now, weep bitter tears when we lose them. God bless you, and merry Christmas.



This is rich. The public-housing Don Quixotistas down in New Orleans are chaining themselves to buildings scheduled for demolition and blockading federal offices to keep The Man from tearing down any more housing projects.

THEY CITE the need for affordable low-income housing post-Katrina but, the thing is, hundreds of rehabbed public units are going begging for tenants, according to local housing authorities. And the poverty petri dishes scheduled to come down got that kiss of death long before New Orleans got swamped.

From The Times-Picayune:

As housing activists continued to protest the proposed demolition of four public housing complexes, federal housing officials provided new details Tuesday about hundreds of public housing units available across New Orleans, with dozens of units ready for occupants in the B.W. Cooper, the former Desire and the Guste developments.

Housing officials said hundreds of private apartments where disaster or Section 8 vouchers can be used are also available to help meet the needs of displaced public housing residents, both in the short and long term.

Meanwhile, activists staged a protest on the steps of City Hall, saying procedural snags, as well as extra costs for utilities and security deposits, put those options out of reach for many poor people. Furthermore, some alleged "slum" conditions at those properties, and they have said they don't trust housing officials to make good on promises of mixed-income redevelopments that will welcome the poor.

Federal Department of Housing and Development officials said the local public housing supply outstrips demand. Currently, 1,762 public housing units are occupied and nearly 300 are available or within weeks of being ready at eight Housing Authority of New Orleans complexes and at scattered housing authority sites.

Another 802 public housing units across the city are being repaired and will be put to use in the coming year, housing officials said.

(snip)

If the council approves demolition, mixed-income developments would open at the St. Bernard, B.W. Cooper, C.J. Peete and Lafitte sites within months. In addition to the total of 900 public housing units, the three complexes would include 900 market-rate rental units and 900 homes for sale at the four long-standing public housing sites, according to current proposals. Many of the homes for sale would be reserved for first-time home buyers, with financial subsidies designed to allow former public housing families to become property owners.

But the target of 3,343 public housing units in New Orleans is a flashpoint because it represents a drop of about one-third from the 5,100 units occupied before Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

As the city repopulates, housing officials say, other demands for housing can be met through use of vouchers that can be used for private apartments, the quality of which is in dispute. HANO officials say they inspect private units, more than 500 of which are listed on the housing authority's Web site, but activists say poor conditions in many units deter renters.

SO WHAT GIVES? Apart, of course, from the existential angst of spoiled white kids for whom wearing Che Guevara T-shirts is not enough.

Beats me. It must be a New Orleans thang. Poor folks up here in Omaha want the projects gone.

Then again, maybe the core of lifelong public-housing tenants the Don Quixotistas seem to be advocating for have developed a taste for dungheaps, and they demand to live in dungheaps in the old 'hood, and they further demand that taxpayers pay for them to live in dungheaps in the old 'hood.

Or else.

If this woman interviewed in the Picayune is any indication, affordable housing is not the biggest problem here:

Sharon Jasper, a former St. Bernard complex resident presented by activists Tuesday as a victim of changing public housing policies, took a moment before the start of the City Hall protest to complain about her subsidized private apartment, which she called a "slum." A HANO voucher covers her rent on a unit in an old Faubourg St. John home, but she said she faced several hundred dollars in deposit charges and now faces a steep utility bill.

"I'm tired of the slum landlords, and I'm tired of the slum houses," she said.

Pointing across the street to an encampment of homeless people at Duncan Plaza, Jasper said, "I might do better out here with one of these tents."

Jasper, who later allowed a photographer to tour the subsidized apartment, also complained about missing window screens, a slow leak in a sink, a warped back door and a few other details of a residence that otherwise appeared to have been recently renovated.

At the City Hall protest, a crowd of people railed against "privatization and gentrification of the city," saying it would be a mistake to raze well-built public housing at a time when so many people need affordable housing. One of their leaders, Loyola University law professor Bill Quigley, said it's appropriate that advocates for the poor from across the country have gathered in New Orleans to help fight the demolitions.

"This is a national scandal," he said.

THESE ACTIVISTS ARE NUTS. See the picture above this post? Sharon Jasper sitting in her "slum house."

With her 60-inch, high-definition TV.

I think that apartment looks pretty good. I wish my house looked that good. I wish I had a 60-inch HDTV, too.

This is a picture of a TV just like the one we have in our living room, a 1974 Sony KV-1203:


I MUST ADMIT, this is our small television. The "big" television in the basement family room is a 1984 Sony 19-inch stereo model. We were so proud that we had the scratch to buy such a nice TV back in the day.

Maybe we ought to have demanded that the citizens of Springfield, Mo., (where we lived then) just buy a fuggin' Sony stereo television for us. And pay for our apartment -- which was NOT as nice as Sharon Jasper's -- while they were at it.

I'll tell you what. If the "slum lady" really thinks she'd be better off living in a van down by the river -- or in a tent across from City Hall . . . whatever -- don't let your slum apartment's warped door hit you in the ass as you hightail it to Nirvana.

And I'll take your "slum house." I'll even fix the faucet and hang a new door.

ALL I NEED is for somebody in New Orleans to hire me and my mad language and radio-production skillz for a fair wage -- enough to make rent, eat food and pay my bills.

Oh . . . while I'm thinking of it, Sharon, could you leave the big-ass TV for the wife and me? I mean, after all, there ain't no electricity down there at the homeless encampment.

You wouldn't even be able to watch your stories.

Six of the 'TV Lady,' a half-dozen of Michelle

I always know when Michelle Malkin goes on a toot about New Orleans. There's always a spike in traffic for this December post of mine.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the traffic. And the subject of that 2007 post, New Orleans' "TV Lady" -- the racist, rabblerousing public-housing queen who now occupies a subsidized apartment nicer than my house and who watches her stories on a 60-inch high-def television -- remains a living, breathing affront to basic decency.

HOWEVER.

I'm damned sick and tired of self-righteous, hard-hearted "conservatives" rolling out the bad example of the "TV Lady" (and, by extension, my blog post about her) to justify inaction -- or worse -- in the face of a national scandal. That national scandal, which centers on New Orleans, is threefold.

First, it's scandalous -- and criminal -- that the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth can't adequately build or maintain levees sufficient to protect a vital coastal port city. Or Midwestern river cities . . . or hundreds of thousands of acres of the U.S. corn and soybean crops.

Second, it's scandalous -- and criminal -- that more than 1,500 people died because the government of the United States of America is comprised, in large part, of incompetent hacks and political cronies who couldn't organize a one-car funeral cortege, much less a massive relief and rebuilding effort in New Orleans and across the central Gulf Coast.

IN A LAND of McMansions and SUVs -- governed by neoconservative nincompoops who think we have the right and the wherewithal to spend nearly a trillion dollars on the fool's errand that is Iraq -- fat and self-satisfied Americans three years ago were treated to the ultimate reality-TV program. Millions watched as thousands suffered and scores died . . . on camera . . . because Machiavellian blame-gaming was so much more a priority than was saving lives.

That the vast majority of those anguished faces belonged to African-Americans added insult to injury.

And finally, it's scandalous -- and criminal -- that a nation of such outlandish wealth would, before Katrina ever struck, tolerate the existence of a Third World enclave in its midst.

Asked two millennia ago to cut to the chase of what the Father would have us mortals do amid this vail of tears, His own Son -- the second person of the triune Godhead -- boiled it down to two simple things (Matthew 22:34-39):

34
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together,
35
and one of them [a scholar of the law] tested him by asking,
36
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
37
He said to him, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
38
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
39
The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

IT HAS BEEN SAID the opposite of love is not (as one might think) hate, but instead indifference. If that is so, and if massive indifference is the best America can offer a hardscrabble, basket-case city such as New Orleans -- one which America, through its incompetent government and lousy federal levees, bears the responsibilty for drowning -- where does that leave us?

We're antichrist. Not the Antichrist, an antichrist. But why split hairs?

That's not something we can face, however. No, far better for people like Michelle Malkin and the whole "F*** New Orleans Brigade" to justify their antichrist indifference by rolling out pathetic spectacles like the "TV Lady" to represent the city when a "defaulting deadbeat Dem" visits and expresses concern over its plight:

Someone send a clue to the New Orleans Times-Picayune! They missed the story. They missed the delicious spectacle of defaulting deadbeat Democrat Laura Richardson–she who lives sky high on the hog, leaving a trail of unpaid bills in her wake– parachuting into New Orleans and clucking about the plight of its people.

Rich, just rich. . . .

(snip)

Wonder if she’ll stop by 60-inch-tv-owning New Orleans “slum”-dweller Sharon Jasper’s place. I have a feeling these two would get along.

I'LL KEEP that example in mind if Michelle stubs her big toe and noted war criminal George W. Bush sends his condolences.

That ought to be reason enough to denounce her as a misanthropic, fascist harridan . . . before we haul out a rusty broadax to chop off her leg.

Blame the TV Lady

Would you like to know why, in New Orleans, this poor woman is screwed?

Why no one is going to listen to the people advocating for the right of all poor people to have decent housing?

Why, no matter how plain the moral scandal -- no matter how many vulnerable people die squatting in fetid Crescent City heaps for lack of affordable housing -- no one will care, and they will feel morally justified in not caring?

Two words: Sharon Jasper.


THIS IS HER. Sharon Jasper, a.k.a., "the TV Lady."

The woman whose Section 8 housing is nicer than my house, but not good enough for her to refrain from decrying it as a "slum house" almost two years ago.

The woman who can't afford to pay full rent but who can afford to have a 60-inch television.

The woman who spent her time protesting the demolition of rundown, crime-ridden public-housing slums so the city could replace them with mixed-income developments, designed to provide better housing while breaking up concentrations of poverty and violent crime.

The woman who, with a cadre of angry local and out-of-town "activists," spent her time protesting, yelling "Shut up, white boy!" during city council meetings and getting arrested for allegedly bopping a cop.

All this despite local housing officials' assurances there were more than enough subsidized-housing units for residents who would be displaced.

In a New Orleans Times-Picayune story this week, the head of a group that assists the homeless said hers is a race against death in some cases:

UNITY head Martha Kegel explained that the homeless people they met were placed on a waiting list and given priority according to how likely they were to die without housing. Quite a few already had died waiting for housing, she said.

"Is there a quick way to house people so that they're not dying on a list?" Farha asked. "What is the policy answer to address the immediate need?"

WELL, one policy answer might have been for local activist groups to not to jump on board the Sharon Jasper Express, which went full-steam for the right to live not in decent housing, but instead in a hellhole named Desire . . . or St. Bernard . . . or Lafitte. That is, before it jumped the tracks.

At top, Grace Bailey sits in her squat, as captured by Times-Picayune photographer John McCusker. In 2007, Sharon Jasper thought her nice Section 8 apartment with the 60-inch TV was a "slum house." I'll bet Bailey wouldn't mind trading up to Jasper's "slum" abode.

But she won't get to trade up to a house where she doesn't fall through the floor and where the mosquitoes don't swarm her as she sleeps. Justice -- and housing -- for the poor has been thoroughly discredited by many of those claiming to be their advocates.

Nowadays, the greedy and the callous in New Orleans can blow off "the least of these," and their cause, with three little words.

"The TV Lady."

The airwaves are alive with the sound of nitwits

Mein Gott, I haven't heard someone actually use the word "jigaboo" in, like, 25 years. But an anchor-blatherer at the Fox station in Cleveland just did this morning.

Like Kristi Capel on Fox 8, I was stunned at the vocal chops of Lady Gaga last night as I watched her Sound of Music medley on the Oscars. Like Kristi Capel, Mrs. Favog and I were thinking "Who the hell knew?"

We kind of had an inkling from her recent duet album with Tony Bennett. But apart from that and last night's TV performance, it's not like that phenomenal voice is evident from the music she usually performs.

But unlike Kristi Capel on the Cleveland airwaves, "jigaboo music" is not how we would choose to characterize Lady Gaga's normal fare. Then again, we're not perky, young TV blatherers . . . and we're old enough to know what the word means. We also are old enough to have sense enough not to use it.



IT'S LIKE Capel is the much younger, perkier reincarnation of the elderly Omaha neighbor who last used that word in my presence when describing folks who have more melanin in their skin than I do. Or he did. And I recall thinking at the time, more than two decades ago, "Who the hell uses that word anymore?"

It was almost more amusing than it was offensive, though offensive it was -- and is.

But wait, there's more. At least Mr. O'Hara didn't use the word when speaking to an African-American man, WJW co-anchor Wayne Dawson. Capel did. Behold the perils of TV-news "happy talk" as transcribed by Raw Story:

“It’s hard to really hear her voice with all the jigaboo music — whatever you want to call it — jigaboo!” Capel opined.

“She has a nice voice,” Dawson, who is black, said after a nervous laugh.

“She has a gorgeous voice,” Capel agreed. “I never knew. Very nice.”

I . . . I . . . I . . . uh . . . ummmmmmm . . . holy crap!

As God is my witness, I dearly wish Dawson had gone all Richard Pryor on her ass.

I REALLY, really do.

That said, I really cannot think of a better example of the "twit problem" American TV news has gotten itself into since the days of Ron Burgundy. Is it really too much to ask that the folks who purport of inform us on "TV news" actually, you know, know something?

This was Capel's response when viewers began to scream bloody murder. Really.

@John_Ferguson_ @fox8news I apologize if I offended you, I had no idea it was a word or what it meant. Thank you for watching.
— Kristi Capel (@Kristi_Capel) February 23, 2015

FURTHERMORE -- and this is a radical, radical thought, I know -- is it too much to ask that if television journalists have no idea what they're saying, they just say nothing at all?

We might all enjoy the peace and quiet.

Martin died for fools like this?

I guess the TV lady's stories weren't on today.

Instead, Sharon Jasper was at the New Orleans City Council meeting screaming "racist" at a white man who favored demolishing four of the city's housing projects in favor of mixed-income developments.

LATER, Jasper complained to the council that opponents were being treated "inhuman" and that she liked to have nice things, like anyone else.

She said she grew up in the projects, and her family always had nice things, because they wanted live well. She said that, in her now-abandoned apartment in the projects, she had a side-by-side refrigerator-freezer.

Because she likes nice things. Like her 60-inch TV. Inside the publicly funded apartment she occupies. Because she doesn't have the money to actually pay rent herself.

I guess it's racist to suggest that if you don't have the money to pay rent, you don't have the money to be buying big-screen televisions.

Hell, I would like a big-screen TV. Unfortunately, we have this thing called a "house payment." Unlike Sharon Jasper, the unwitting spokesmodel for What the Hell is Wrong With New Orleans. Well, at least a sizable chunk of what's wrong with New Orleans -- and a big, big part of why the rest of America has had it up the wazoo with the Crescent City.

You don't believe this ex-Louisianian who now lives in the Midwest? Check out the comboxes for any story having anything to do with Katrina and federal aid for New Orleans.

Can anyone say "extreme sense of entitlement"? How about "extreme outlook-reality disconnect"?

Then again, we're all just racists. Unlike the saintly souls engaging in a near-riot outside City Hall and the ones inside the council chamber shouting down council members and brawling with police.

Attacking police officers. At the city council meeting.

HERE'S A BIT of The Times-Picayune's liveblogging on the contentious council meeting way down yonder . . . in America's Chechnya:

11 a.m.: Meeting begins after several people ousted from chambers

The council finally opens the meeting, with the customary pledge to allegiance and the playing of the national anthem. At this time, several people have been removed by police, including rapper Sess 4-5, who when asked for his real name by a reporter, replies, "F---- off."

The chamber is filled and quiet, after the fracas that broke out in the center of the chamber near the podium.

10:54 a.m.: Protesters scream as they are forcibly ejected

Protester Krystal Muhammad is carried out of the chamber by a group of police and deputies. She screams repeatedly. "I'm not a slave!" she shouts. A second woman is also forcibly removed, as Fielkow calls the meeting to order, one hour late.

"Next time you'll be asked to leave," an officer tells the remaining crowd. "Plain and simple."

The Rev. James Smith gives the invocation: "May we never be lazy in our work for peace. May we honor those who have died in defense of our ideals....Help all of us to appreciate one another."

10:50 a.m.: Fights break out, police struggle to maintain order

A struggle breaks out in council chambers. Police officers race to break it up. At least three people are ejected, as shouting fills the chamber. A woman slaps at a cameraman's lens, drawing his ire.

"Security, security," Council President Arnie Fielkow says into the microphone. "If you do not obey the rules, you must leave."

Krystal Muhammad shouts out, "I'm not going nowhere."

10:42 a.m.: Protesters boo council members

Several protesters greet the council members with boos and slurs. Krystal Muhammad calls Council Member Stacy Head a racist. Head responds by blowing a kiss and waving to her.

Muhammad keeps shouting. "Stacy Head, she's the real devil in charge!"

Jay Arena shouts, "Jackie Clarkson, you're a sell-out."

10:37 a.m.: Council finally enters to howls from audience

Council members begin entering the chamber.

"Bring your coward selves out here!" Krystal Muhammad shouts. "Let the people in here. We've got plenty of seats in here."

Muhammad, who says she is with the New Black Panther Party, calls out to the council members: "You no good sell outs. I bet your house is still standing!"

10:30 a.m.:Lawyer criticizes council for limiting audience

City Hall officials stick by their earlier statement that they are limiting the crowd to 278 for safety reasons. Council members still haven't entered the room. The meeting was set for 10 a.m.

Attorney Tracie Washington accused officials of changing the rules for the public housing crowd.

"That's retarded," Washington says to Peggy Lewis, clerk of council. "You have to let these people in. You've got 800,000 police here. Ain't nobody going to do anything in here."

10:22 a.m.: Both sides wait for meeting to start, words exchanged

"I'm for the demolition and rebuilding," says John Ales, 42, a cook who lives in Mid-City. He is the man seated behind Sharon Sears Jasper, who minutes earlier had called him a "racist white man."

Meanwhile, the council members have yet to enter the chamber. A man is shouting in front of a bevy of video cameras about the homeless problem and how he is from public housing. "All of us are getting screwed," he shouts.

10:15 a.m.: Audience told they must take a seat, tempers flare

The meeting hasn't started yet. Council members haven't entered the chamber.

Civil sheriff's deputies continue to try and keep order, telling the people inside that they may not stand during the meeting and that everyone must have a seat. Tempers flare in one section of the chamber.

"You're a racist white man," Sharon Sears Jasper, a former St. Bernard complex resident shouts at a man seated behind her.

"Ma'am, the color of my skin isn't the issue," the man replies.

"Stop the demolition! Stop the demolition!" several people start chanting.

Gitchi gitchi ya ya Gaga

One of Britain's top hitmakers thinks, anymore, that pop music is one giant miss.

And that Gaga is no lady.

And that you'd be mortified to listen to any of what he calls "soft pornography" with your mum in the room.

Mike Stock, with co-writing or co-producing credits on 16 No. 1 records in the U.K., is mad as hell . . . and he's taking his anger to the pages of the Daily Mail:

The man who helped launch the career of Kylie Minogue yesterday condemned modern pop culture for 'sexualising' youngsters.

Mike Stock, one third of the legendary pop factory Stock, Aitken and Waterman, said: 'The music industry has gone too far. It's not about me being old fashioned. It's about keeping values that are important in the modern world.

'These days you can't watch modern stars - like Britney Spears or Lady Gaga - with a two-year-old.

Ninety-nine per cent of the charts is R 'n' B and 99 per cent of that is soft pornography.'

He continued: 'Kids are being forced to grow up too young. Look at the videos. I wouldn't necessarily want my young kids to watch them.

'I would certainly be embarrassed to sit there with my mum.'

Mr Stock, 58, pictured below, was behind the rise of Miss Minogue in the late 1980s when she stormed the charts with I Should Be So Lucky.

In the accompanying video, she wore a simple black cocktail dress. The lyrics were similarly innocent.

In contrast, 24-year-old Lady Gaga, who burst on to the scene two years ago, has regularly used crude metaphors in her lyrics as well as posing in revealing outfits.

Mr Stock believes that today's children are being 'sexualised' as a result of images put out by the pop industry of stars such as Lady Gaga.

He said: 'Mothers of young children are worried because you can't control the TV remote control.

'Before children even step into school, they have all these images - the pop videos and computer games like Grand Theft Auto - confronting them and the parents can't control it. Talking to mothers' groups, they were saying that even they have lost faith in brands like Disney.

THE PROOF in Stock's pop-tart pudding, however, just might be found in the comments on the story on the Mail's website:

"I'm a 17 year old girl and completely agree with this article. I don't watch these music videos, but other kids in my school do. With them having that image of what's 'cool' they make fun of everyone else who isn't like that. I'm part of the 'popular' group at school, but I'm still constantly made fun of because I don't have sex and I don't dress sexy," says Christina from Ohio.

But there's another big criticism of the whole pop-sleaze phenomenon no one has mentioned yet. It's boring.

It's stupid.

It's mindless.

And all in all, music built almost exclusively upon a foundation of disinterested, mechanical intercourse barely rises to the time-honored romanticizing of lust. Actually, this masterpiece of tediousness by Lady Gaga sounds more like a junkie's ode to the monkey on his back:

I'm on a mission
and it involves some heavy touching, yeah
You've indicated you're interest
I'm educated in sex, yes
and now I want it bad, want it bad
A lovegame, a lovegame

Hold me and love me
just want touch you for a minute
Maybe three seconds is enough
For my heart to quit it

Let's have some fun, this beat is sick
I wanna take a ride on your disco stick
Don't think too much, just bust that kick
I wanna take a ride on your disco stick

AND THEN the big finale:

Let's play a lovegame
Play a lovegame
Do you want love
Or you want fame
Are you in the game (Don't think too much just bust that kick)
Dons the lovegame (I wanna take a ride on your disco stick)

Huh!

OK, not a junkie's ode. Make it a crack whore's instead.

Huh! indeed.

The Sound of Jazz

In the creative arts, greatness does not lie in the impressiveness of one's tool box. Greatness, instead, is an affair of the heart -- and the soul.

Today, our materialistic and technology obsessed culture too often thinks greatness can be purchased . . . or, at least, manufactured if enough technological and computer wizardry is applied to the matter at hand.

A remarkable program that aired on CBS television 52 years ago this week belies that foolishness. The Sound of Jazz was broadcast in fuzzy black and white, using bulky equipment much less sophisticated than your kid's Flip video camera. Yet, more than a half century on, it is still regarded as one of the greatest musical programs ever -- a defining achievement of a very young medium that very much (still) was making stuff up as it went.

The program, part of CBS' Seven Lively Arts series of programs, featured probably the greatest collection of jazz and blues artists ever gotten into a TV studio. It saw the last ever collaboration of two old friends -- Billie Holiday and saxophonist Lester Young -- who had grown far apart and, as a matter of fact, would both be dead inside of two years.

But on Dec. 8, 1957, magic happened one last time, bygones were bygones for just a moment, and the power of that moment -- a moment that went out live coast to coast on a Sunday afternoon -- brought a control room full of jazz mavens and TV engineers to tears. And the power of that moment, captured on a fuzzy, grainy kinescope, can take one's breath away over the span of decades and societal transformations.

Watch closely. Greatness isn't as common as people would have you believe.

NAT HENTOFF, the great jazz critic and one of the advisers who assembled the program, remembered it this way for National Public Radio:

Billie Holiday didn't actually write songs. She thought of a melody, and she hummed it, and then her piano player or somebody else would orchestrate it — or arrange it, rather. And as for lyrics, she would write those, but then she'd consult with somebody like Arthur Herzog, who was the co-writer on "Strange Fruit," and he would sort of shape it into a more singable form.

So the theme of the lyrics of "Fine and Mellow" was infidelity, and Billie knew a lot about that. I don't know how you put this. She had a poor choice of men, and that was one of the reasons, I think, that she could sing this song and a lot of other songs that had to do with dreams and aspirations and fantasies and romance when they turned bad. She was an expert at that.

What made this the climax of the show was this: She and Lester Young — she had given him his nickname, Prez, and he was the guy who called her Lady Day, which other people came to call her. They had been very close for a long time, but then they stopped being close. They paid very little attention to each other while we were rehearsing the show.

Lester was not feeling well. He was supposed to be in the big-band sequence, but he couldn't make it. I told him, "Look, in the Billie section," which was a small group. She was sitting on a stool surrounded by just a few musicians. I said, "You know, you don't have to just sit down and play."

When it came to his solo, in the middle of "Fine and Mellow," Lester stood up and he blew the purest blues I have ever heard.

Watching Billie and Lester interact, she was watching him with her eyes with a slight smile, and it looked as if she and Lester were remembering other times, better times. And this is true — it sounds corny — in the control room, Herridge, the producer, had tears in his eyes. So did the engineer. So did I. It was just extraordinarily moving. I think for all the times she sang this song, on records and in night clubs, this was the performance that I think meant the most to her, and it came through on "The Sound of Jazz."

CONSIDER that today, one might see the "art" of television as the world translated through the lens of a sports broadcast. The Sound of Jazz, and much of television back then, was the world as cinema.

It is an important distinction, and it's one that actually might say a lot about who we are . . . and who we used to be.

And if one is tempted toward the position that the free market -- commercial interests -- in every case is the best way of fostering cultural and societal excellence . . . think again. And think on this, from the Dec. 23, 1957 edition of Time:

"The blues to me," said hard-luck Singer Billie Holiday sipping a cup of coffee, "are like being very sad, very sick—and again, like going to church and being very happy. We've got to do right by the blues on TV, because the blues deserve the best." At air time, Billie sat on top of a bare stool and cuddled up to an old jazz-cult favorite, Fine and Mellow ("My man don't love me, he shakes me awful mean"), and did just dandy by the blues. And, for the balance of CBS's one-hour The Sound of Jazz, the art got what it has so long deserved: a TV showcase uncluttered by the fuss and furbelows that burden most musical telecasts. In the murky, smoke-choked studio, more than two dozen of the best jazz vocalists and sidemen worked through eight of the best jazz numbers with the kind of love, wonder, almost mystical absorption they usually summon up in the most free-wheeling jam sessions.

Soon after the show, however. Seven Lively Arts's producers heard a long, sad note from CBS. In spite of some artistic successes after a faulty start, Arts had wooed no sponsors in five weeks. So CBS decreed that on Feb. 16—after only ten of its projected 22 shows, and a loss of $1,250,000—Arts will close shop. Executive Producer John Houseman blamed the lack of sponsors partly on the critics, added: "But if you fail when you're doing something that's fun and good, it doesn't matter."

GREATNESS IS NOT a popularity contest. It is what it is, and profit is wholly unconcerned with quality, but instead with whatever folks will buy . . . for whatever reason.

Period.

We are called -- by a Savior, no less, who was murdered by popular demand -- to better than that. Enjoy the rest of the show.

From garbled to Gaga

One o'clock. Time for Wednesday's much-hyped national test of the Emergency Alert System.

If this had been an actual national emergency, fjoeifjwf oisjfeo wp pwidp qw of eoijr qyuqw wqlkd pt wot tjwaki JK ksdt jlsa bah fleekum.

A nuclear atta . . . O doeiujf wqi djk you gottqa OSIFD dke eommd ss woww jkdp . . . all going to die, according eo al jdsa j New York Times:

At 2 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, during the first nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System, all television channels and radio stations in the United States were supposed to be interrupted by piercing emergency tones. Not a song by Lady Gaga.

But as tests often go, there were some failures, with viewers and listeners in many states saying they saw and heard the alerts at the scheduled time, while others did not. Some DirecTV subscribers said they heard Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” when the test was under way. Some Comcast subscribers in northern Virginia said their TV sets were switched over to QVC before the alert was shown.

The federal agencies charged with testing the alert system found that there were flaws, particularly in the system’s connections to cable and satellite distributors. In some cases, the test messages were delayed, perhaps because they were designed to trickle down from one place — the White House in this case — to thousands of stations and distributors.

In Los Angeles, some viewers said the alert, intended for 30 seconds, lasted for almost half an hour; in New York, some viewers didn’t see it at all. But many others reported that the alert arrived right on time and ended right away.

HERE IN OMAHA, otherwise known as Ground Zero with U.S. Strategic Command headquarters just south of town, the national EAS test started late and the audio was horribly garbled, like an aural Tower of Babel of static and overdubs. If this is technological progress in attack warning, perhaps it's time to resurrect Conelrad.

Conelrad, the nation's first broadcast-warning mechanism, at least passed several national tests, the first coming in 1953, shortly after its implementation. Here's a Sept. 21, 1953, Broadcasting-Telecasting account of the previous week's initial test of the warning system:


SURE, FM or TV stations couldn't stay on the air under the Conelrad system, but then again, the last sound you heard before being vaporized wouldn't be Lady Gaga, either.

That's not nothing.

3 Chords & the Truth: Fly, pigeon, fly

I shall share with you a scene from the week's hiatus of the Big Show. It starts with a stroll through City Hall Plaza in Chicago, a resumption -- after a 41-year delay -- of my Great Blues Brothers Tour.

 

Picture a walk-by of the site of Jake and Elwood’s last stand — along with its iconic Picasso sculpture.

 

A healthy (or perhaps, medically speaking, not) gathering of Big City Pigeons attracted my attention for a bit before I turned back to the Picasso. After a while, I was distracted by the sound of what only could be described as a pigeonado. This is similar to a sharknado, only oddly more impressive.

 

I entertained the possibility that this phenomenon might be even more impressive than what greets you weekly on 3 Chords & the Truth.

 

Likewise, I entertained the alternate possibility that this might be Armageddon, defying centuries of end-times Cassandras by starting in the Windy City. In fact, after witnessing this Avian Apocalypse, I considered this might be where Chicago got its nickname.

 

I will not pussyfoot around. There was a whole lot of flappin’ goin’ on.

 

IN THE CENTER of the maelstrom was not a cosmic cage match between the Son of God and the Prince of Darkness, but instead a little Asian lady tossing the last of a sack of rice into the whirlwind. Then, as suddenly as she appeared, she faded into the mists of time.

 

OK, that was hyperbole. 

 

Instead, she crossed the busy street and vanished into the evening hubbub.

 

Mrs. Favog and I struck up a conversation with a nonplussed bystander who explained what we had seen was, alas, not Beelzebub but instead the "Crazy Asian Pigeon Lady," a figure as determined as she is reviled by Chicagoans sick and tired of scraping pigeon crap off of sidewalks, downtown structures . . . and themselves.

 

ANGRY CITIZENS, exasperated property mangers and pissed-off members of Chicago’s Finest apparently are helpless against a determined woman and a bag of rice.

 

It's kind of similar to how radio and musical convention are helpless against the mind-blowing experience of this humble . . . ish . . . podcast, the Big Show.

 

Anyway, the fellow we talked to said the pigeon lady comes to feed the city’s flying rats every evening at 6 sharp. Also, pigeons can tell time. He noted, though, that she was a few minutes late that evening.

 

I blame climate change.

 

There is no word on whether the city of big shoulders will get serious about ending this crap — literally — once and for all with full deployment of the Chicago PD SWAT team, the Illinois National Guard, a sizable contingent of state police . . . and the fully strapped ghost of Carrie Fisher. (I told you this was a Blues Brothers tour.)

 

There also was no official confirmation that the dude who was way too happy to be considered of sound mind (or permanent address) as he danced amid — and perpetuated — the pigeonado, is, in fact, Da Screwtape.

 

Film at 11 on WBBM-TV, fortuitously positioned right across North Dearborn Street from the coming manifestation of the End of Days.

 

As you may be able to tell, Chicago is one of my favorite cities ever.

 

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

 

Your Daily '80s: Good eggs on breakfast TV

When Australian funny lady (and psychologist) Pamela Stephenson went on Britain's TV-am in December 1986, no one knew eggs-actly what the hell she was doing.

But at least weather presenter Wincey Willis was an egg-cellent ducker.


THAT YEAR, the independent-TV morning show crew got off easy.

On BBC 1, there were firearms. Enough said.

Simply '70s: Lady Gaga, meinen Arsch

How sad is American culture today?

Let's take a look at the score sheet: Marxist East Germany (1974) gives us Nina Hagen und Automobil. Capitalist America (2008) gives us a pale imitation, Lady Gaga und blecch.

Advantage, communism.


OF COURSE, the totalitarian state had its limits. Thus, the First Fraulein of Punk (der punken?) was not perfected until she fled the dictatorship of the proletariat for West Germany, and then spent time in pre-Thatcherite England amid the emergence of The Clash and the Sex Pistols.

Advantage, democratic socialism.

Above, we see Hagen during a 1979 TV appearance.


CALL ME when Lady Gaga has the guts to do this one.

Of course, back when I worked in Catholic radio, the sight of Nina Hagen singing a punk version of "Ave Maria" would have been cause for an epidemic of the vapors. Trust me, the good God-fearin' folk would be going all Rick Perry on the sacrilegious Kraut faster than Mother Angelica could say “Remember to keep us between your gas and electric bill.”

This is why I'm glad the good Lord got me out of there before I lost the rest of my faith. Trust me, it was close. (As always, your mileage may vary.)

But then you take a look at the translation of the German lyrics Hagen put to Franz Schubert's famous melody:

Ave Maria, Maria of whom I sing
We are asking you for mercy
For people who have already been waiting so long
Totally without hope
Totally without hope

See there, their unhappy lives
It hungers deep, from fear of death
Millions live here on the earth
Still yet, in greatest need

Ave Maria
Ave Maria, Saint Maria
Hear my prayers Maria
Where much suffering has already occurred
Why always does more hurt follow more hurt
Let the people have faith again
Let them understand and forgive
Then all peoples could become friends
And all the races could be brothers
Ave Maria

LIKE I SAID, let's see Gaga have the gu-guts to go onstage and belt out that one.

Notre Dame's actions belie its bull

"Woman, behold your son."

Thus said Jesus to Our Lady -- the Virgin Mary -- just before He died on the cross. What did Jesus say next?

A) "Remember, woman, that dialog is paramount, and you must not be doctrinaire. Pilate, after all, made a compelling point about truth."

B) "Always look on the bright side of life."

C) Speaking to John, "Behold your mother."

D) "Arrest him!"

If you answered A, B or (especially) D, you probably are an administrator at the University of Notre Dame -- the university of Our Lady. You long ago stopped contemplating what it means to be a Catholic school named for the Mother of God and, truth be told, you probably think Jesus was a sucker for turning down a devilish deal after 40 days in the desert.

Then again, we live in interesting times, and it should be no surprise to us that evil should roll in and out of Catholic chanceries and colleges like trains roll in and out of Grand Central Station. Or would if Amtrak were half as efficient as Beelzebub.

ANOTHER hell-bound train left the station Friday. Left the station named for the mother of Jesus.

After meeting at the front gate for prayer and speeches, Alan Keyes, a conservative politician and commentator, pushed a baby stroller onto the Notre Dame campus.

Two hundred feet past the front gate, he and 20 other protesters were arrested.

Keyes — a long-shot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, 2004 and 2008 — came to Notre Dame on Friday to protest the University's invitation to President Barack Obama to speak at commencement.

"We are walking onto this campus of people, visiting what ought to be a kingdom of God," Keyes told a gathering of about 75 who met outside the campus gate, "but instead has been a kingdom of darkness."

As two dozen students looked on, Keyes and the other protesters pushed the strollers — each containing a doll covered in stage blood — along the sidewalk shortly after noon. Officers, who had been waiting for protesters to enter campus, quickly stopped the procession.

THAT'S the South Bend Tribune's short version of events. The video above is the protesters' long version. And if you search YouTube, it's not difficult to find videos of Notre Dame security officials confronting Keyes, et al, outside the university gates -- on public property -- to forbid them from stepping on campus.

Leave aside for the moment that Alan Keyes is a well-known nutwagon and, in fact, is matched in the "their zeal consumes them" department by Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, arrested a week earlier on the Notre Dame campus. What the video shows is security forces stopping an understated, peaceful and prayerful protest march against abortion . . . on the campus of a Catholic university.

Cops, with paddy wagons standing by, busting up a protest against abortion by a bunch of Catholics praying the Rosary. Busting up the protest and arresting the protesters on the orders of a Catholic priest.

What's wrong with this picture?

ALAN KEYES DOES one thing in his life that's not marred by intemperate rhetoric or -- let's face it -- plain old crazy talk, and the president of the country's most prestigious Catholic university makes sure he goes to jail for it. All because Keyes and his band of protesters find it offensive that the Catholic academic, the Rev. John Jenkins, will honor a notoriously pro-choice president at his Catholic institution in defiance of the nation's Catholic bishops.

Imagine, if you will, Bull Connor as a regular at the faculty club. Fascist repression over brie and a tasteful chablis.

The pictures of peaceful Catholics being arrested on a Catholic campus for upholding Catholic teaching speaks louder than any of Notre Dame's public-relations bunkum in defense of its giving props to Pilate. One's gut can recognize evil when it is encountered, and sophistry thus can persuade no longer.

And it no longer matters that Alan Keyes and Randall Terry love TV cameras like a hog loves slop. It becomes irrelevant that PR-challenged yahoos are driving around -- and flying over -- South Bend with giant pictures of aborted babies.

IT'S ALL DWARFED by a single spectacle: prayerful Catholics being set upon by cops under orders from a priest, all because the prayerful Catholics had the temerity to insist that a Catholic university not render unto Caesar -- a Caesar with the blood of innocents on his policy prerogatives -- the blessing of an institution dedicated to the Mother of God.

Notre Dame. Our Lady.

Now back to that devilish deal in Matthew, Chapter 4:

8
Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence,
9
and he said to him, "All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me."
10
At this, Jesus said to him, "Get away, Satan! It is written: 'The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.'"

NOTRE DAME is prostrate. Has been for a while now. And it doesn't even have the kingdoms of the world to show for it.

Or, for that matter, a decent football team.

Notre Dame sits within the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend. And it is within the purview of Bishop John M. D'Arcy, who is boycotting the university's graduation exercises, to decide which institutions within his diocese may -- and may not -- call themselves Catholic.

Given the university's recent actions -- actions which follow a pattern over the past quarter century -- is it too much to ask that the good bishop put Notre Dame, at long last, out of our misery?