Facebook follies

January 27th, 2012

The two things friends aren’t supposed to talk about–religion and politics–pertain to Facebook friends as well.

The advantage of being atheist removes one of the anathemas. I’m surely never going to bring up religion as a conversation starter, though I do make religious references from time to time, most recently, the other day when I saluted the many responsible Jewish community leaders who quickly condemned the owner of The Atlanta Jewish Times after he suggested that the Israelis assassinate Obama. Also, a month or so back I commented on how the nicest guys in my Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood were Muslim, citing specifically the Yemeni grocery store owners and the Egyptian food truck guy.

I wanted, of course, to stand up for good people of different faiths on both counts; to this end, I often retweet the great Southern gospel singer/comedian Mark Lowry, and the big guy he works for (no, not that Big Guy), Southern gospel artist/impresario Bill Gaither–so as not to seemingly slight Christians.

Regarding politics, unfortunately, I can’t–or refuse–to shut up. My guess is that 99.9 percent of my FB friends are liberal, if not as far left as I am. I liberally tout my liberal positions and comments to FB via Twitter (as I do everything else), and usually it’s preaching to the choir. But I do have four, maybe five FB friends who are conservative, with one, maybe two who are active in responding snidely or rudely to my posts. I hedge on the exact number because I think I’ve finally managed to alienate one friend into unfriending me, which is fine: I think I’ve only asked two people to be my FB friends, both people I didn’t know but needed to get to them for information. As I use FB strictly for self-promotion and not networking, I don’t want to inflict myself on others, especially real friends–but if they sign up on their own accord, they bring it on themselves and this is what they get, so again, I’m perfectly fine being unfriended.

And I’m fine being criticized, but I find disrespectful mocking of this president, almost always with convoluted reasoning at best, intolerable. Frankly, I’m not much of a debater, nor am I as knowledgeable as I should be on most issues, hence I try to be as open-minded when it comes to challenging Obama’s–and my–positions and opinions as I would hope those on the other side would be to my arguments. But eventually reality must be faced: Very few conservatives play fair, it seems; they invariably resort to bullying bordering on paranoia if not thinly disguised racism, unable to substantiate any of their contentions with facts or words other than red flags, i.e., socialist, radical, Democrat, liberal, progressive–and to this add now Saul Alinsky.

But there is one area where the radical left and radical right come together–the newly discovered third thing friends can’t talk about: The Kennedy assassination(s).

Here the paranoia couldn’t be more pronounced. Last week’s Martin Luther King Day observation brought forth a new round: From a FB friend, inspired by my scornful response to his original post and those of his like-minded friends who followed, specifically, that a two-year-old could have killed Kennedy: “At this point in history, believing that the Kennedys, MKL, MX [Malcolm X] were killed by ‘lone-nuts’ (or, in MX’s case, religious fanatics) is like believing that the Tooth Fairy left those quarters under your pillow.”

This lone-nut was quickly joined by a long thread of fellow travelers, one of whom somehow found a way to inject his contention that Obama was “a complete sell-out.”

To me, an Obama-roader, them’s fightin’ words, so I responded, boldly, if I may say so myself, “I’m proud to support the president.” When this didn’t detonate the desired dynamite, I followed with the one surefire rejoinder: “Oswald acted alone.”

It didn’t take long.

“Mr. Bessman… Finally, someone who knows that Lee Harvey was able to change the motorcade route the day before JFK got there to include a 90 degree turn and a 120 degree turn directly in front of the build where he worked! BTW… Happy New Year.”

Before I could counter with my own new-year greeting, I was quickly double-teamed: “Oswald acted alone????How’s the weather on the planet you live on? Watch Black Power Mixtape. It talks about just what [name deleted to protect the stupid] is saying. Once MLK changed his message from racial injustice to economic injustice, the 1% decided he had to go. Also, MLK’s and Malcolm X’s death had nothing to do with each other, aside from being black.”

Well, good to get corroboration from such a knowledgeable researcher that MLK and MX killings weren’t related–though I still haven’t watched the Black Power Mixtape. But wait! There’s more: “JFK was shot by 3 Corsican gangsters hired by the CIA.I think they may have been older than two [years old].”

Okay, they may have been older than two. But you sure you’re not confusing the JFK and RFK assassinations–it being my understanding from another real friend (as opposed to Facebook) that RFK was killed by three spooks? And what about the Umbrella Man?

But what really set me off was a blanket condemnation of “the so-called Warren Commission whores.”

“One of my best friends,” I posted, “was one of ‘the so-called Warren Commission whores,’ and you sir, are an idiot.”

That didn’t go down well.

“The Warren Commission were not whores,” said one scholar, giving me hope–for half a second. “They were men in fear for their lives. They were ordered to come up with a plausible scenario for one shooter by the same people who had killed JFK, the same people who ‘supervised’ the autopsy.”

Okay, in the interest of selling my dear friend Bill Carter a few more books–and I’m proud to say I wrote the foreward to his memoir Get Carter–Backstage In History From JFK’s Assassination To The Rolling Stones (available at Amazon!)–I will say that Bill, a Secret Service agent for Kennedy and Johnson, is the most decent, law-abiding, upstanding citizen you’ll ever know, but please, don’t take my word for it. Go to the top line on Page 2 of Keith Richards’ Life to see how he single-handedly saved Keith and the Stones–on more than one occasion.

Bill also went on to manage Reba McEntire, Rodney Crowell, and numerous other country artists, and for many years has produced events for Bill Gaither–which is how this atheist is so blissfully and blessedly involved in Southern gospel. I once hooked Bill up with a Nashville record company exec who was a major Kennedy conspiracy buff, and knew, as did everyone, of Bill’s involvement in the investigation. Bill wasn’t in Dallas that day, but he was immediately dispatched to put Marina Oswald under protective custody.

The record company guy, of course, was bewildered to hear Ole Bill calmly and clearly state that there was no conspiracy, that yes, Oswald acted alone.

“But don’t you know that the Secret Service kidnapped Marina Oswald?” the exasperated guy blurted out.

“Yeah, I know it!” bellowed Bill, in his bigger-than-life Rector, Arkansas drawl. “I’m the one that did it!”

But I’ll say this: Bill will be the first to tell you that the Warren Commission was flawed. Very much so, in its haste to come to a conclusion. But he’ll also tell you that the conclusion was correct: “At that time, it was very easy to get to the president,” he once told me–and he wasn’t talking about shaking hands.

Not that it’s not still easy to get to the president, but back to the original point: Why was Martin Luther King assassinated?

“Because in early 1968, he started to espouse the belief that race was not the bottom line issue,” proclaimed the original poster. “Poor white kids were dying in Vietnam, too. It was about wealth vs. poverty… and the killing effect of poverty on all races. This was an extremely dangerous thing to point out. At that point, the powers that be/were decided ‘enough of this negro troublemak­er’. Ditto Malcolm X. He had started to speak of the economic injustice visited on all Americans just weeks before he was hit. The first two 99%-ers were killed for their revelations.”

My answer, and it was final, was Buffalo Springfield: “Paranoia strikes deep. Into your hearts it will creep….”

It prompted the inevitable, all-knowing response: “‘Paranoia strikes deep’ was about teenagers protesting curfews on the Sunset Strip….when I saw Ruby kill Oswald I knew the JFK assassination had been a conspiracy, I saw it happen & I knew!”

But of course!

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Reflections on Nick Ashford–Part 1

November 20th, 2011

I’m flying back to New York from L.A. this morning as I write this on November 20, 2011, thinking back some three months to the last time I flew back from L.A., Monday afternoon, August 22, 2011—a date which will live in infamy in my life and others, no doubt, very many others.

Infamy, says Merriam-Webster: evil reputation brought about by something grossly criminal, shocking, or brutal. Fitting for Pearl Harbor, as FDR so historically proclaimed.

Evil reputation brought about by something grossly criminal. And while I knew it was coming, it was still so grossly shocking, brutal beyond words and comprehension, to this day and for all days.

The death of Nick Ashford.

I knew it was coming, I just didn’t know when. But no one really did, at least not until Monday morning, when Liz Rosenberg called. She had only found out he’d been seriously sick a week or so earlier. I’d known pretty much from the beginning, but didn’t know exactly what it was—or that it was going to end like this.

So I kept it quiet. I asked Val about him regularly, and thought whatever it was, he’d get better and it would be okay. I had no reason to think anything worse.

It couldn’t have been much more than three months that I’d spent time with him last, hanging at the Sugar Bar on a Thursday night Open Mic. He was fine then, at his center table upstairs in the Cat Lounge, watching the performances on the wall monitor, graciously receiving friends and fans, posing for pictures with anyone and everyone who asked.

There’s always a rose, now, in a vase on the table. Sometimes a glass of champagne.

The last time I saw him was at Aunt Bea’s funeral, Valerie’s aunt who died a couple months before him. Aunt Bea always made the greatest cakes that us lucky ones got to taste after everyone else left at the day-long “white parties” Nick and Val hosted on the Saturday nearest July 4, when they had their place in Connecticut. Everyone wore white, everyone ate and drank and lounged around the pool and enjoyed the wondrous A&S vibe–and a few of us had our Aunt Bea’s cake and ate it, too.

Nick came late to Aunt Bea’s funeral and left early and I didn’t get to speak with him but he looked great. He always looked great.

So I thought he was okay, and hadn’t kept up the way I should have, overwhelmed by my own problems. When Liz called frantically I called Val immediately for an update, and while she didn’t say it was good, she also didn’t let on that it was almost over. But I don’t think she knew that, either. I’m sure she didn’t.

Really, we were all in denial. We all still are.

I called Miss Tee Sunday afternoon from the beach. Altamese Alston. Miss Tee. Ashford & Simpson’s longtime assistant. If I said she was the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever been around, I’d still be understating it.

I’d always call Tee from the beach in LA, just to check in—and give her the opportunity to joke about how well I must be doing, being that I’m calling her from the beach in L.A. She sounded glad to hear from me but didn’t say much, gave no indication of what was really going on—as I knew she wouldn’t. Val once said of Tee: “If you tell something to Tee that you don’t want me to know, don’t worry—I don’t know it.”

But I pretty much knew it anyway. I was staying with Bob Merlis, Liz’s longtime West Coast cohort at Warner Bros. Records publicity, and working out of his office. He was about to take me to the airport for the 1:30 p.m. flight back to New York when the call came in.

She hadn’t heard any word from Val or Tee in days, she said, and couldn’t take it anymore. She finally called the house.

Tee answered and said things weren’t good, that the paramedics were there.

I got an email from Liz an hour or so later on my Blackberry at LAX.

“You’ll be up in the sky… so perhaps you’re in a better position to talk to the man/woman above–should one be up there,” she wrote. “So say a lot of prayers and for now, we are not allowed to indulge in freaking out as we have to keep it together for them. But we will freak out to each other of course. Just when things couldn’t get better……”

Now one of my closest friends, Liz was Nick and Val’s publicist when they first came to Warner Bros. (long before Madonna) and remained close with them ever after. I became close to Liz within a year after moving to New York in 1982 and seeing Ashford & Simpson for the first time.

I saw them at Radio City and it remains one of the maybe five most memorable shows I’ve ever seen. It was their High-Rise tour, “High-Rise” being the name of their 1983 album—their second for Capitol after leaving Warner Bros.—and its hit titletrack single.

I was working at Cash Box magazine, a long gone record business trade. The man who hired me got four tickets; besides us, there might have been that many other white people in the full house.

I’ve never forgotten it and obviously never will: The stage had an Empire State-looking edifice in the middle, and when Ashford & Simpson’s crack backup band struck up the single, a hidden ramp unfolded and lowered from the center of it, revealing the beaming A&S standing there in all their glory.

Now reduced to the words of a novice concert reviewer, “the crowd went nuts” as Nick & Val descended the steps and progressed into a show I would eventually see with Liz so many times that in her booklet essay accompanying the 2008 two-CD Ashford & Simpson set The Warner Bros. Years: Hits, Remixes & Rarities, Val said that Liz and I might as well just do their show for them, since we both knew it better than they did.

Waiting to board, I responded to another email from Liz that said “No news” in the subject, the message saying: “From A&S world. Safe travels. Love.” I keyed the Blackberry: “Thank you. I’m freaking the fuck out. Boarding in half hour. Love you so very much.”

I got on the plane and ordered the inflight Internet service. I had maybe four hours of battery on a full charge.

I did some work in those four hours, and kept checking emails with mounting dread. I was still a couple hours out of Kennedy when the laptop ran out of juice.

I looked out the window into the darkness–except for the flashing light on the wing tip. Should there have been a man/woman above, I’d likely be the last one he/she would want to hear from at this or any time—atheist sinner that I am. Rather I kept hoping to see the William Shatner gremlin form the classic Twilight Zone episode making faces at me and driving me into sheer madness or utter horror. Anything would have been preferable to the helplessness/hopelessness I was feeling now.

When the wheels touched down I powered up the Blackberry and held my breath as the afternoon’s emails steadily added up. The one I hoped against all hope not to see had been sent at 7:45.

Liz’s subject was “Our Nick has left us.”

The message was “E or call when you land. I’m at house.”

It was after 11 when I walked into Nick and Val’s East Side townhouse. I had on cargo shorts and short-sleeved cargo shirt, an Obama-Biden inaugural ballcap, and my luggage.

There were at least 30 people there. I hugged Liz, then Val.

“I lost my honey today,” said Val.

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Posted in Music, Nick Ashford, Observations, Personal | No Comments »

The genius of Hank Williams, Jr.–who didn’t go to Harvard

October 13th, 2011

I’m not sure anyone could have followed Hank Williams, Jr. after his unceremonious dumping by ESPN (or as he claims, his quitting) after his now infamous Obama-Hitler analogy, but I’m sure Barry Sanders wasn’t the guy, gal or group I was going to give up Lawrence O’Donnell Monday night to watch.

But just because I’m an MSNBC fan doesn’t mean I’m not a Hank, Jr. fan. I’ve said it before–many times–and I’ll say it again: I’ll take Hank, Jr. over Sr. any day–and I ain’t alone, and it ain’t just rednecks and good ole boys who will stand with me on this one, and trust me: I could name names, but I don’t have all day.

This doesn’t mean I agree with Bocephus politically, or won’t call him out for gross insensitivity, at the very least. But if agreeing with people’s politics was a prerequisite for appreciating their art, well, I’d be listening all day to Woody Guthrie–instead of just a good chunk of the day.

So I’ll take Junior at his word, as expressed Tuesday on The View. When Joy Behar suggested that maybe Hitler wasn’t the best analogy for him to use in relation to Obama, that Stalin, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun would have brought Hank little condemnation, he played it dumb: “I didn’t go to Harvard, I’m not smart enough to know the difference. It was the first word [Hitler] that came out.”

He’s a genius songwriter, but true, he didn’t go to Harvard. Not smart enough? But he then trotted out a Harry Truman quote (“Never kick a cow turd on a hot day”), then a Spanish-American War reference–though neither really made a whole lot of sense other than the Spanish-American War being “history,” he said, an analogy, and here an appropriate one, for his termination and/or resignation from ESPN and Monday Night Football.

But Hank’s real failing–and it’s one he shares with just about everyone who gets into this kind of public relations mess–is that he just couldn’t leave it at that. Asked by Elisabeth Hasselbeck if he’d wished he’d used a different name than Hitler “at this point,” he paused, then answered “at this point, I really don’t”–though Behar coaxed him into agreeing he should have served up “Stalin.” Whoopi Goldberg finally went all the way and directly asked if he was comparing Obama to Hitler–to which he emphatically said no. But he still fell back on his rant on Fox News about that golf foursome (Obama, Biden, Boehner and Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich) and their “inappropriate [and] absurd…juking and jiving and high-fiving” as an excuse, before once and for all conceding that using Hitler as an analogy was a bad idea.

“I just grabbed it,” he admitted, uncharacteristically sheepishly.

So the View gals got a begrudging admission out of him–to their credit and his. That Hank, who famously supported Sarah Palin during the last election (and whose catalog includes, as Jon Stewart noted in defending Hank, the Southern culture-promoting “If The South Woulda Won”), would appear on the left-leaning kaffeeklatsch was even more remarkable, except that Goldberg and Behar, both unabashed liberals, had his back from the beginning.

“Hank is a musician, and he’s always been provocative,” Goldberg said on the show, echoing Stewart. “He could have chosen his words more wisely, but as someone who steps in it quite often, we all do it. Those among us who are without sin, cast the first stone.” [Here she also echoed, unknowingly, no doubt, the line in Hank's great duet hit with Waylon Jennings, "Leave Them Boys Alone": "If you don't like the way they sing, who's gonna cast the first stone?"]

“Whoopi and Joy understood what I was saying,” Hank responded on his website.  “After watching the clip of their show, I knew I needed to talk to them first.  Who knows Whoopi may run for president and I’ll be her vice president…now that will really stir it up!”

It will indeed, considering that Goldberg’s a lot closer in politics to Obama than Palin, or Cain–whom Hank’s expressed support for. Then again, everything’s topsy-turvy with Hank all of a sudden: His hastily written new single “Keep The Change” garnered 150,000 free downloads in just over one day.

“The Williams’s can write songs, and it didn’t take long for me,” Hank told The View. More shocking than his songwriting speed, though, is how he went after Fox as well as ESPN in the lyrics:

So Fox & Friends
Wanna put me down
Ask for my opinion
Then twist it all around
Supposed to be talkin’ about my father’s new CD
Well two can play that “Gotcha Game” just wait and see
Don’t tread on me.

Palling around with liberals and putting down the bastion of anti-liberalism/intellectualism would hardly seem to be Hank’s way. Then again, at least on the intelligence side, he’s a brilliant lyricist–if not always correct politically. Again, from “Keep The Change”:

This country’s sure as hell been goin’ down the drain
Yes, we all agree on that.
We know what we need
Yeah, but I’m not sure we agree on it.
We know who to blame
You blame me. I blame you.
United Socialist States of America
Don’t ya just love that name?

Say what?

“Bocephus thinks we are headed for socialism? If only!” wrote one Facebook friend who used to work with Bo during his Warner Bros. Records days.

If it were my song I’d call it the United Fascist States of America–except then I’d be straddling that same line Bocephus crossed with the Hitler analogy.

No, I’ll stick with Hank’s inclusionary classic “Young Country,” where “Old Waylon” peacefully and respectfully co-exists with “Van Halen.” Or better yet, “I’m For Love.”

But I’m for love and I’m for happiness
And I’m for “if you don’t like it can’t you just let it pass.”

Now if only I could get Hank on O’Donnell….

 

[You might also like "Hank Williams, Jr. and the Obama-Hitler analogy" at  http://www.examiner.com/local-music-in-new-york/hank-williams-jr-and-the-obama-hitler-analogy]

Posted in Music, Observations, Television | No Comments »

Tiger’s Nike commercial and Jay Leno’s stupid question

April 8th, 2010

The dumbest question ever asked of a celebrity is also, for some dumb reason, the most celebrated.

“What were you thinking?” Jay Leno asked Hugh Grant when he appeared on the Tonight Show following his 1995 bust for a publicly lewd act with a prostitute. Leno was probably the only man in America who didn’t know what Grant was thinking when it occurred to him that not only did he want a blow job at that specific moment, but that he had the money on hand to pay for one.

And now Tiger Woods is asked, by way of his long dead father, “Did you learn anything?”–which along with the rest of Tiger’s ghastly, ghostly new Nike commercial, is right up there in stupidity.

The question is prefaced by Old Man Woods, speaking offscreen in the austere tone of a psychologist, stating the objectives of his inquiry, most significantly, “I want to find out what your thinking was….”

Again, obvious. The well-media coached Boy Tiger said it himself, in his mid-February speech: “I thought only about myself…I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt I was entitled.”

And what do I think?

The commercial shows that Woods and Nike will stop at nothing, exploiting the dead to prolong the commercial life of a terminally discredited brand. And note how Tiger never changes his blank, cadaverous expression, offering no answer, not even a facial tick of response to the billion-dollar endorsement question, Did you learn anything?

“I think you know in life what’s a good thing to do and what’s a bad thing, and I did a bad thing. And there you have it,” was the way Grant answered Len–and it was a dumb answer to a dumb question.

But at least he said something.

Posted in Observations, Sports, Television | No Comments »

Tiger Woods

February 22nd, 2010

I started writing a post about Tiger Woods a number of times back when the scandal first broke but it kept getting bigger and bigger so fast that I had to keep scrapping my initial conjecturing and finally just said to hell with it. Probably should have said that to begin with and just let it go. But the media couldn’t, and I couldn’t either.

It was clear from the second day after the crash—and I said as much in a Twitter tweet–that no matter what really happened, we would never look at Tiger the same way again. Something smelled bad from the get-go, though the extent of the spreading stink was then unimaginable—even for those relatively few of us who nevcr bought into his squeaky clean TV commercial role model corporate sponsor image.

But I’m a Jack Nicklaus fan. And Tiger may yet achieve his magnificent obsession of breaking Jack’s record of 18 major championships (he’s stalled at 14 now), but I’ll always argue that Jack was the greater player—and now no one can argue who was the greater sportsman.

This part’s easy—though easily overlooked in Tiger’s media-built role model façade. I’ll never forget the end of the 1980 U.S. Open, which Jack won with a record 272, beating his playing parter for an astonishing all four rounds, the relatively unheralded Isao Aoki from Japan by two shots. Now 40, he had few big victories left in his bag (he’d continue playing sporadically until 2005), and when he cinched his fourth and final U.S. Open win by draining his final putt for birdie the crowd erupted with joy.

But since, Aoki, too, could break the previous record by making his birdie putt—thereby earning big bonus money—the ever-alert, ever-sporting Jack (whether in victory or defeat), waved off the throngs and hushed them to allow Aoki to make his birdie in respectful silence. Contrast this with Tiger’s typically sullen demeanor as he was clearly about to lose to the relatively unheralded Korean golfer E.Y. Yang at last year’s PGA Championship, the year’s fourth and last major: It’s customary for the apparent losing member of the final twosome to putt out on the 18th green of the final day and let the champion-to-be have the  last, winning putt—and the cheers that go with it. But Tiger not only forced Yang to putt first—which was technically within the rules, since Yang was further away from the hole—but then even more unceremoniously bogied the whole after Yang birdied for the win.

But Yang’s win, one of the biggest upsets in golf history, was more noteworthy in that it was the first time Tiger lost a major after holding the lead going into the final round. And it ended a year that was amazing for Tiger in one respect, but perhaps the beginning of the end in another.

Coming back from reconstructive knee surgery, he won six times on the PGA tour last year and was named PGA Tour Player of the Year for the 10th time. But in his all-important major championship quest he went winless for the first time since 2004. He missed the cut at the British Open, and the way he lost to Yang in the PGA was most telling: For the first time maybe ever, a golfer refused to back down against Tiger; indeed, relaxed and enjoying himself, Yang took the fight right to him. He said afterwards that he had observed how others always seemed to choke when paired with Tiger or when Tiger invariably topped the leader board.

“I’ve visualized playing against the best player quite a few times and always sort of dreamed about this,” he said. “So when I was at home watching Tiger, I’d try to visualize and bring up a mock strategy on how to win if I ever played against Tiger. When the chance came, I sort of [felt] that, Hey, I could play a good round and Tiger could always have a bad day. I guess today was one of those days.”

The fact is, Tiger has had scant competition throughout his career. Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh—there were very few golfers remotely of his caliber to challenge him, and they did so rarely. Yes, this shows that he has been far and away the best player of his time, and it also testifies to the intimidating nature of his game and his presence. Jack Nicklaus, meanwhile, regularly had to overcome the historic likes of Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, Seve Ballesteros and Greg Norman. To quote blogger Tank Jones, “Nicklaus’ competition would not be hyperventilating when Woods teed off.”

Yang may have actually exposed Tiger as the Mike Tyson of his era of golf. Tyson was considered to be the greatest boxer ever by those too young to know better, who were understandably awed by his fearsome power. But after a second-rate fighter like Buster Douglas refused to buckle under Tyson’s baleful glare, the truly exceptional champions Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis put him away for good.

But there’s another performer who comes to my mind when I reconsider Tiger Woods: Michael Jackson. Tiger apologists, like Michael’s, like to excuse his “irresponsible and selfish behavior”—to use Tiger’s own words from the first paragraph of Friday’s manufactured “press event,” for lack of a better term for it—by blaming it on a domineering father who deprived his boy of a normal childhood as a price for forcing him on the demanding path to superstardom in his field. Hence, neither Tiger nor Michael had the opportunity to grow up.

Sure enough, the New York Post’s enlisted “crisis-control expert” Robert Zimmerman rightly observed that Tiger “looked like an adolescent who was forced to wear a jacket” at the rigidly staged and controlled event. “He was clearly not comfortable in his clothes, and the set looked like a youtube video.” Body-language expert Mary Dawne Arden added, “He had an awful deer-in-the-headlights look.”

Sincerity issues aside, the speech (“the greatest bar-mitzvah speech of all time,” said Howard Stern) was too long, poorly written (likely not by him) and delivered. But there were revealing moments.

Like “I knew my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules didn’t apply”: How did he “convince” himself—and why, oh why can’t I? And his sense of entitlement, i.e., “I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. I felt I was entitled.” True, no doubt, but sounds too much like someone else wrote it to score points with the corporate sponsors.

His therapy, he said, has taught him “the importance of looking at my spiritual life and keeping in balance with my professional life.” Say what? Spiritual life? Like in Madonna and kabbalah? Tom Cruise and Scientology? Sounds like rich man’s Buddhism to me.

“So I can say the things that are most important to me: My marriage and my children.” Well, congratulations! Except you know what? Too much information. Yes, it is personal stuff that’s none of my business. You’re not the president–even if the stop-everything-else attention of the event seemed like a presidential press conference. Not my spiritual leader. You haven’t killed anyone. It’s not Afghanistan. It’s not health care.

Then again, as my favorite writer, the New York Post’s Phil Mushnick says, “I suppose that if a fellow accepts millions of dollars in endorsements, payments predicated on an image that turns up fraudulent, that has to be at least some of our business, no?”

Mushnick pointed out yesterday, too, that since he admitted taking controlled substance Ambien, he was driving under the influence when he crashed his Escalade and therefore should have been arrested.

“I don’t get to play by different rules,” Tiger said, but he’s always been allowed different rules, not just by Florida law enforcement but by the golf authorities and media ever since he first came on the scene.

“We can never allow it to be only what it is,” Mushnick wrote a few days after Tiger’s November 27 mishap. “Tiger Woods is the greatest golfer in the history of the game. We can’t stop there. No, he’s also the world’s greatest human. And to suggest anything less means you’re the one with the problem. Hmmm, perhaps you even have a problem with the color of Tiger’s skin. Team Tiger, you may recall, dropped that hint, early. So if you know what’s good for you, stick with the story, especially you TV guys: Greatest golfer, greatest human. Got it? Now don’t forget it.”

Mushnick has long documented how the sports media has bent over backwards in hyping Tiger, even going so far as to artificially move his name up to the front page of the leader board rather than following tradition by listing players with the same score alphabetically. He’s written how Tiger was taught to beat the rules from the time he was 15, when his amateur career was funded underhandedly by his IMG rep firm. How he beat the PGA Tour rules disallowing appearance fees.

“Even his first TV ad, in 1996 for Nike, days after he turned pro, was disturbingly dishonest,” wrote Mushnick. “Golf’s most privileged amateur–he’d previously claimed that he didn’t want to be thought of as a minority golfer–spoke of himself as a victim of racial discrimination, unable to play certain courses. While no such fact existed–not for him–black pros who’d suffered genuine racism–Jim Thorpe among them–scorned that ad for what it was: insulting.”

Sportswriter/author Dave Zirin rightly compared the nature of Tiger’s private imbroglios with Bill Clinton’s, then documents a number of truly impeachable offenses in Tiger’s financial entanglements with truly offensive entities like Chevron (“if Woods had a shred of social conscience, this partnership would never have existed”) and Dubai (“a city that has been built over the last thirty years by slave labor”)—“business as usual for Tiger who would sooner swallow a five-iron than take anything resembling a political stand.”

But none of this, of course, jibes with the carefully created and maintained Tiger Woods corporate image. Wrote Mushnick: “What soon became obvious on TV–Woods threw foul-mouthed tantrums on the course–was ignored, excused or admired as evidence of his great desire. Such misconduct from others was condemned as inexcusable.”

None other than Tom Watson said pretty much the same thing in a recent CNN report.

“I feel that he has not carried the same stature that other great players that have come along like Jack, Arnold, Byron Nelson, the Hogans, in the sense that there was language and club throwing on the golf course,” said Watson. “I think he needs to clean up his act and show the respect for the game that other people before him have shown.”

Which brings me to the most important thing, really, that Tiger said Friday.

“When I do return, I need to make my behavior more respectful of the game,” he said.

If you don’t watch or play golf, you might not know that it’s a game where respect is built in—along with responsibility and honor. The player is responsible for his own score, and is expected to be honest at all times (if you cause a ball to move and no one sees it, you’re still expected to count it as a stroke). You repair your ball mark on the green, you replace your divot on the course, you rake the sand in the bunker. You don’t walk through a playing partner’s putting line or let your shadow cross it.

It’s a gentleman’s game, and Tiger, despite his extraordinary talent and ratings draw, has been no gentleman to it.

Only time will tell whether he will beat Jack’s record, though even with what was shaping up to be the perfect 2010 for him in the majors department—half of his majors wins have occurred at the 2010 majors courses—the cracks in his armor that appeared at last year’s majors are more likely than not only going to widen as the 34 year-old ages, as younger players come up, and as he deals with all the new pressures brought on by the disintegration of his personal life.

Jack, who, incidentally, showed his usual class in  declining comment on Tiger’s personal life other than to note that “time usually heals all wounds,” only won six majors after turning 34. But even then, he was well into his oft-stated mission of “giving back to the game what the game has given me.”

In his statement Tiger referenced his Tiger Woods Foundation and its developmental programs for kids.

“Parents used to point to me as a role model for their kids,” he noted. “I owe all those families a special apology. I want to say to them that I am truly sorry.”

He concluded: “Finally, there are many people in this room, and there are many people at home who believed in me. Today, I want to ask for your help. I ask you to find room in your heart to one day believe in me again.”

I would suggest that he first needs to go back to the basics of the game itself. Not the mechanics—which he has mastered—but the ethics.

Posted in Observations, Sports | 4 Comments »

Robert Schimmel News!

January 29th, 2010

I got together with my old friend Robert Schimmel for coffee at Bis.Co.Latte yesterday, a few hours after he dropped a bombshell on Howard Stern: He needs a kidney transplant.

Go to examiner.com to read my account: Cancer in remission, now comic Robert Schimmel needs a liver transplant. http://bit.ly/blUTSa

Posted in Bessman News | No Comments »

God is great

November 13th, 2009

Awful fucking night.

First time, maybe in 25 years, I wasn’t in Nashville for the CMA Awards. Couldn’t afford it. Couldn’t afford going to Nashville once this year when I used to go at least three times. That’s what happens when you work in a dead business with a dead medium. [Once again, I shamelessly implore any readers here to subscribe to my page there and click every time they alert you to a story. You don’t have to read it. Just click on it. They pay by the page view!]

What made it worse than having to sit at home and watch the CMAs on TV last night (actually, I watched it on DVR, since I was at a screening of the God-awful rock movie “Pirate Radio”) was having to also miss the BMI Awards dinner the night before, when Kris Kristofferson was given the BMI Icon Award. Kris and his wife Lisa are the most wonderful people in the world. I’ll always feel that my CD booklet notes to “The Essential Kris Kristofferson” (2004) is one of my career highlights; just knowing this great singer-songwriter/humanitarian is a top career achievement in itself.

I walked into one of the neighborhood deli’s that night to buy a bag of discounted chips and grimaced when the Arab owner asked, “How are you, Brother?,” then feigned a smile and asked how he was. “Life is good, God is good,” he smiled. The newspapers he sold were still full of the Fort Hood massacre. The suspect reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar!” —”God is great”—before opening fire. Many in the papers wanted all Muslims kicked out of the military.

“Thank you, my Brother,” I said as I took my change and headed home to watch “House of Bamboo,” Sam Fuller’s 1955 crime drama in post-war Japan, which shows cooperation between American and Japanese anti-crime forces in dealing with a vicious American criminal gang.

The CMA Awards fell on Veterans Day. Big military presence on the show—lot of thankyou’s from artists to “our soldiers.” Presumably, no one wondered what they’re doing or why. Those questions, however, were voiced Monday night at the Riverside Church memorial for Mary Travers, which I attended—when I should have been in Nashville at the SESAC Awards dinner. I wrote about it for examiner.com (and implore you again to go there and click on it. You don’t have to read it!). But I will tell you that the big song that night was “Blowin’ in the Wind,” that God was not mentioned once as a justification for killing innocents of any pursuasion—nor was he/she thanked for siding with an award winner. And I got to personally thank George McGovern, a decorated World War II hero, for his service to the country (didn’t get the chance to do the same to John Kerry and Max Cleland, who also attended and spoke).

The CMA’s opened bad. Everything I hate about award shows. An arena full of bored music buzzers and screaming fans/shills wildly cheering TV network celebrity presenters, artificial artist matchups, poorly scripted co-host drivel and fake banter, and typically overblown production numbers.

It all worked against the night’s big winner, Taylor Swift. Her “Forever & Always” opener—a news show interview start followed by the silliness of her throwing chairs and sliding down a pole and into a Madonna floor pose—sounded bad and was surprisingly low energy, especially considering it was shamelessly trying to ape the MTV Awards vibe. She took this to the extreme when she returned to do “Fifteen” while swarmed by young teen girls waving themselves at her; then again, that’s her audience, not ornery old men like me who grew up listening to Conway Twitty, when country songs really were about “real people with real life feelings that make them truly timeless,” as Brad Paisley told his co-host Carrie Underwood before they joined in some tiresome song parodies of in fact truly timeless country songs like “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” (a predictable slap at Kanye West) and “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” (okay, Brooks & Dunn are splitting up—I get it).

Maybe if Brad and Carrie stopped goofing and smelling each other up they could have fit in a few more country classics. And no, I don’t mean “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” that the Zac Brown Band covered. Even though they pulled out all the stops, the music bizzers looked rightly bored (give it up for Kris and Lisa, though: They stood up and cheered at the end and I know it was genuine). I don’t mean “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool,” either. I’m happy enough for Barbara Mandrell’s induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, even though she was never a Loretta or Tammy or Dolly. Indeed, her kind of country was pretty bland for the most part. But “IWCWCWC” did give Martina McBride a chance to sing, and a second chance to the perennial George Strait, whose earlier performance of “Twang” was one of the few true twang moments of the night.

And it was wrong that Mandrell got to speak and fellow new inductee’s Charlie McCoy (who did get to play harmonica on “IWCWCWC”) and Roy Clark (who wasn’t even there) didn’t. Wronger was that Strait and the always wonderful Vince Gill were the only Hall of Famers who got to perform (not counting Little Jimmy Dickens, whose comic Kanye bit with Brad and Carrie was the only one that worked, and Kristofferson, who at least got to co-present).

Speaking of Gill, his duet with Chris Daughtry was surprisingly good–even if Gill can do no wrong. Also among the older guard, Reba McEntire was solid, and it was great to see The Judds again–if just as presenters. And speaking of presenters, the most important ones were clearly “Good Morning America”’s Robin Roberts and the clueless stars of “The Middle” (“This award show totally rocks!” said the woman)—whoever they were, whatever the show. They were all from ABC-TV, and that’s all that matters when it comes to “country music’s biggest night.”

But Kid Rock actually was an appropriate presenter. He’s shown more love for traditional country music than any of them, and returning to join Jamey Johnson on “Between Jennings and Jones” made perfect sense.

And the rest of the performances? Nothing memorable in the trumped-up “once in a lifetime” Kenny Chesney-Dave Matthews duet on “I’m Alive.” Billy Gibbons’ teaming with the retiring Brooks & Dunn was okay—which is about the best that can be said for the young country artists, though Tim McGraw’s “Southern Voice” was one of the best songs of the night, if marred by too-busy camerawork and constant flashing lights. And Keith Urban’s “‘Til Summer Comes Around” was quite good, if more of a nod to the Eagles than Alabama. Same with Miranda Lambert’s “White Liar,” though its tunefulness and her performance had greater impact.

But Billy Currington’s “People Are Crazy” is the song that really resonated with me—all things considered. Not because it’s such a great song or he’s such a great singer, but because of the timeliness of its all-encompassing line:  “God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy.”

Posted in Music, Observations, Television | 2 Comments »

Warning: Don’t Come Home Stoned with Twitter on Your Mind

September 2nd, 2009

I made the mistake of immediately checking my Twitter page upon returning from a night of trying out a vaporizer for the first time.

First I sent out the following Tweet: “Just back from BB King’s for Asleep at the Wheel. Paul Shaffer sat in on the encores. AATW never better.”

For you non-Twitterers, as soon as you click the Twitter “Update” button, your Tweet is added to the top of the list of your sent and received Tweets. Ultra-stoned state that I was in, my gaze naturally dropped down to the next Tweet on the list: “Graham Norton, on Brendon Fraser: ‘His cock is like a Ferrero Rocher.’”

I frantically felt a terrible twitch in my gut. “My God! Did I just write that? How could I? What on earth was I talking about? How fucking embarrassing!”

Then I quickly realized that this was a Tweet sent from “dceiver”–the Twitter name for Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post. I love Jason’s intensely scornful political posts on HuffPost, but I really need to cancel his Tweets since I’m so prone to this type of scare–maybe because his Tweets don’t have his picture: So I see my Tweet with my picture (taken, by the way, at June’s Songwriters Hall of Fame induction dinner, which is why I’m in a tux) and my impaired mind can’t distinguish that the next Tweet is from someone else because it doesn’t have an identifiable picture.

Luckily the Tweet after Linkins’ was Sandra Bernhard’s: “Elegy with penelope cruz ben kingsley based on philip roth’s dying animal excellent a grown up film with great performances, watched at home.” So reassuring, especially since it had her picture!

If you follow me on Twitter you know that I’ve been way more involved there than here, and that a goodly portion of my Tweets announce new posts at examiner.com. Which brings me to a shameful plug: Every time someone clicks on one of my examiner.com pieces, I stand to make between half and a full penny! So I urge all jimbessman.com readers to help me pay the rent by clicking, clicking, clicking on my examiner.com stories–even to subscribe to my page! It doesn’t cost you anything, and you don’t even have to read anything. Just click, click and click again–or is it scream, scream and scream again?

Last word–for now–on Twitter: I’d been making steady progress in the eight months or so since signing up–and especially in the four months or so that I became Twitter-active–in gaining followers at a clip, sometimes, of two or three a day. Then I hit 117 in June and pretty much died. I even lost a few, dropping all the way down to 110 before inching back up, two steps forward and one step back, until I’m now up to 133–my highest mark ever!

Now as I’m sure you know, I don’t promote this site other than Tweet up new posts–like I do with examiner.com. And I don’t make the best use of Twitter–I really don’t know how to. But I was so blasted when I got home last night that I was inspired to use Twitter to comment more creatively on the AATW show, and then hail a TV commercial I watched for the first time (T-mobile’s spot using a Cat Stevens song).

So I also implore all readers who haven’t already done so to sign up for my Twitter updates! There’s no money in it (not even half to a full cent!), just the warm feeling I get inside when someone actually twitter-cares!

Posted in Observations | 1 Comment »

“Post Grad”

July 23rd, 2009

Add to the growing body of noteworthy soundtrack albums released by the legendary ABKCO Records label (including “The Darjeeling Limited” and “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” in addition to ABKCO’s classic album catalog starring the likes of Sam Cooke, Rolling Stones and Phil Spector) that of the upcoming “Post Grad,” starring Alexis Bledel and Zach Gilford.

In keeping with the young adult comedy, the soundtrack boasts established new artists like Lily Allen (“Take What You Take” is a lively leftover from her “Alright, Still” debut album) and Gym Class Heroes (“The Queen and I,” lead track from the group’s hit album “As Cruel as School Children”), along with such noteworthy newomers as Nashville-based singer-songwriter Erin McCarley, whose lovely “Pony (It’s OK)” is the soundtrack album opener, and Cleveland folk-rocker Joshua Radin (his “Brand New Day” no doubt fits into a key “Post Grad” scene).

But Lucy Schwartz really wrote “Turn Back Around” for “Post Grad,” and the International Songwriting Competition award winner not only turns in the set’s best song, but likely the most relevant.

Posted in Album Reviews, Cinema, Music | No Comments »

Walter Cronkite

July 18th, 2009

I was a CBS Evening News junkie growing up and remained so through the troubled Dan Rather news anchor regime. He and his predcecessor Walter Cronkite were my heroes, along with Eric Sevareid, and later, Bob Simon.

I highly recommend renting Good Night, and Good Luck to learn about the great tradition of CBS News—a tradition that is sadly long gone. It focuses on the legendary Edward R. Murrow, the man who virtually built the CBS broadcast news division. Murrow recruited the iconic Cronkite, who would host the network’s evening news from 1962 to 1981 and become known as “the most trusted man in America.”

I saw him in person three times.

The first time was at a record store signing of a box set of vinyl LPs that he was involved in, historic moments of the 1960s, I think. The second was a press promotion for a home video documentary about the first moon landing. He spoke about the 1969 event–which he covered, of course—and said something to the effect that it was the most important story he had ever covered, or the one he was proudest of, or the one that was his favorite.

I was deeply disappointed.

I tried to track him down after his presentation to complain but to no avail. But luck struck some time later, when I attended what must have been Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner’s 40th birthday party, in 1986.
I didn’t know Jann and I wasn’t invited. But he had the good sense to hire my friends Beausoleil, the premiere Cajun band, to perform, and I went in with them. It was at some trendy restaurant downtown that didn’t have any outer signage saying what it was or even the address. I was way out of my element.

All the big record company people were there, and the literary likes of Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, Tom Wolfe. I was very excited to meet the late Israeli singer Ofra Haza there. And to get a second crack at Walter Cronkite.

I went up to him and introduced myself and told him I had seen him at the moon landing home video press gathering. I told him how he had been such a hero, such that I could not accept his citing the moon landing over his momentous coverage of Vietnam (his famous commentary expressing doubts about the chances of winning the war, which he made on camera in 1968 after returning from a trip to Vietnam, was a major turning point in popular opinion) and the Middle East (he brought Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat together to launch the peace process).

His response was unforgettable, if to this day enigmatic.

“Well,” he said, pausing. I think he was embarrassed. I probably should have been.

“Asking what my favorite story is, it’s kind of like asking, ‘What’s your favorite soup?’”

Posted in Cinema, Observations, Politics, Television | No Comments »

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