April 28, 2006

NOBODY ASKED US BUT

"It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion."
--William Inge

        Horsefeathers returns after a sabbatical from the blogosphere’s world of dueling ideologies, during which time we enjoyed some of the pleasures of popular culture: baseball, lively conversation with friends, 24, movies and jazz--and more baseball. After all, if our civilization is embarked on a downward slide, why not enjoy it while we can? As we advance in age, we better understand the appeal of fiddling while Rome burns. Especially now that the fiddling can be downloaded to your ipod.

        After celebrating Billie Holiday’s birthday with our annual ritual of listening to all of her available recorded music, we were gripped by nostalgia for another, mostly forgotten, jazz-blues, pop singer. We were reminded of her by the sound track of a movie, The Best of Youth, which will commend itself to those who want a break from the hyped up pace of modernity. Turn off your computers and sink into this 6 hour epic Italian film which traces the fortunes of a family over 40 years. It unfolds in a leisurely way, like a slow baseball game in midsummer, but packs a cumulative power that made this viewer wish it were longer. The perfect voice to complement the story is Dinah Washington’s. Her piercingly true singing, with its never since equaled diction, singing a 1947 Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne song, Time After Time, makes that tune hauntingly melancholy and profound. Somewhere back in the ‘60’s singers forgot how to deliver lyrics so as to be understood. We next created a playlist of Dinah Washington songs on our ipod and settled in for more musical enjoyment; then we reflected on the possibility that such peak expressions of Western Civilization are at stake in World War IV, and a substantial number—the leftist Fifth Column-- in the West seem not to care.

        Refreshed and feeling mellow, we caught up on the news of the day. Most of it is, by now, unsurprising. The wolves are snarling louder than ever, and we in the West are passing resolutions in favor of vegetarianism. A Persian Hitler issues threats and the West dithers, as it did in the 1930’s. 9-11 seems long ago, and the West has fallen back to sleep. Nothing further need be said, so with acknowledgment to the all time best sports writer for the New York tabloids, Jimmy Cannon-

Nobody Asked Us But:
When an academic writes something critical of Israel and then insists he’s not anti-semitic, he probably is.

When did intellectual cowardice become a requirement for tenure in academia?

We prefer outspoken Jew haters, like Mr. Ahmadinejad, to dissemblers like Tony Judt who argues that the Jewish state should cease to exist---for the good of the Jews, naturally.

When Mr. Ahmadinejad detonates an atom bomb over Tel Aviv, completing the second Holocaust, will the New York Times welcome the end of the ‘cycle of violence’?

If Axis Sally were alive today, how many Pulitzers would she receive for news commentary?

The test of an Italian restaurant is linguine with white clam sauce.

We’d rather listen to Dinah Washington sing the phone book, than Ella Fitzgerald sing the Cole Porter Songbook.

I assume that if the noise level in a restaurant is high, they're trying to distract you from the food.

Jack Bauer's girlfriend Audrey sounds like she has been taking whining lessons from Mo Dowd. She needs to have an 'accident' so Chloe can make her move.