Arthel Lane “Doc” Watson was born on March 23, 1923 in the hills of North Carolina. Stony Fork and Deep Gap to be more specific, if you know where those places are. Blinded by an infection before he was one year old, Watson earned the money for his first guitar by chopping wood with his brother and selling it to a tannery. It wasn’t his first musical instrument. That had been a hand made string instrument that his father gave him. It featured an animal skin sounding board.

Discovering his musical talent, Watson dropped out of the North Carolina School for the Blind after the sixth grade. He and his brother took to picking and singing on the street for tips. By adulthood he was playing electric guitar for a rockabilly band. But that gave way to his true love, flat picking on acoustic guitars. Fame found him after the 1963 Newport Folk Festival where his down home style and flat picking bluegrass-inspired tunes won over the crowds.

His best years were spent playing and recording with his son, Merle. When Merle died at the age of 36 in a farming accident, Doc considered retiring. Instead he began a new folk and bluegrass festival in Merle’s honor. Merlefest is held annually in Wilksboro, North Carolina.

Watson’s career highlights included seven Grammy’s and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1997 then President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts.

Watson is survived by his wife of 65 years, Rosa Lee Carlton and their daughter. Watson was 89, and still living in Deep Gap, when he was taken to the hospital where he died yesterday.

I was in one of those custom-made 1970s Pontiac convertibles, outfitted for Elvis and other rock stars with bull’s horns on the front bumper, rifles and handguns pasted everywhere inside and out, encrusted with silver dollars and bullets—-a NRA fever dream of a bygone America that had been fashioned by a Russian immigrant named Nudie Cohn, who started by tailoring outlandish suits and went on to outfit bizarre cars for American idols with no taste and too much money.

In that improbable vehicle, I was separated by a saddle from old friend in uniform, a Democratic activist, but we must have both looked like the dinosaurs who are now furnishing Romney with his lead over Obama.

Sitting there brought back memories of Elvis and Nixon and their strange 1970 White House meeting at which they agreed that the Beatles and drugs had endangered America. Elvis gave Nixon a Colt .45, and he reciprocated with a Bureau of Narcotics badge.

Seven years later, Elvis was dead on a bathroom floor of a drug overdose, and Nixon had resigned in the face of impeachment for White House crimes.

In this election year, ideological strife is back in new forms and the challenge for Barack Obama will be to win back older white men who long for an imagined America.

MORE.

She contends that Hillary Clinton faced a double edged, razor-sharp sword, and fell on it: the news media’s treatment of her was different as First Lady, Senator and as the country’s first viable female Presidential aspirant, not just because she was a woman, but because she was Hillary Clinton. She had some baggage to shed, started effectively shedding it, and Team Obama made it their mission to make sure they loaded her up with more of it.

Today, “The Hillary Effect” is more relevant than ever. There is increased speculation about whether Hillary Clinton will run for President one day. Conservative icon Rush Limbaugh’s near slanderous rants against law student Sandra Fluke? Sexism in the media — even from media types that Marsh would otherwise agree with (no one is spared whether they work at Fox News, Talk Radio or MSNBC like Chris Matthews) — is an underlying theme in “The Hillary Effect.” Mitt Romney’s allegations of “character assassination” by team Obama on the Bain Capital issue and the issue of GOP Super PACS trying to destroy Barack Obama by negatively defining him? A chapter in her book “Eating Your Own” puts the practice into context in factual and analytical detail. A small excerpt:

You certainly won’t get the view I saw of Obama versus Hillary from [Obama campaign manager] David Plouffe’s book….Because I assure you, the story Plouffe tells, while true for him, is only half complete…The Obama campaign was anything but a “new kind of politics,” but most of the media sucked it up like an intoxicating elixir though there were a very few exceptions who saw it…

She notes that Obama “was actually the establishment candidate, the media’s choice as well, with Hillary the outsider…” and later writes:

Barack Obama’s candidacy was obviously historic, but so was Hillary Clinton’s. They were both firsts — equal, except to the media covering the race. As with Plouffe’s rewriting of primary history, the Obama campaign’s negative campaigning got a pass. After all how else could he beat the bitch?

Marsh is also extremely tough on Republicans (which is precisely why on some book selling websites along with real reviews you’ll see some name-calling” reviews” partisans often put on to try and denigrate a book that they clearly have not even READ when written by someone on the other political side). And she’s also tough as nails on on Team Hillary for their catastrophic mistakes of judgment, hubris and campaign implementation which helped produce a President Barack Obama.

But the real meat of “The Hillary Effect” is Marsh’s analysis of the long range impact of what Hillary Clinton tried to do, failed to do due to her campaign’s mistakes and, in the end, actually did.

Marsh convincingly makes the case that The Hillary Effect’s impact was huge on America (much bigger than The O’Reilly Factor’s). Why?

If Hillary Clinton didn’t exactly break “the glass ceiling,” Marsh details how her primary wins broke the chandelier a few feet away from the ceiling — and how the shards of shattered chandelier produced opportunities for GOP conservative women such as the anti-Hillary Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. Marsh takes no prisoners when pointing out the sexist statements, sexist assumptions and behavior of many male political and media figures from both parties.

When you read “The Hillary Effect” you’ll find yourself saying, “Hey! That’s right! I never realized that before” — and you’ll increasingly notice how this pattern of sexist perceptions and sexist throw-away comments persists to this day (a baloney ceiling remains).

Marsh is supremely armed with the qualifications and skills to write this book. By 2008 she had evolved — and not by branding design — into the highest profile, most respected pro-Hillary blogger on the Internet, culminating in a Washington Post profile. Today, she calls herself a “recovering partisan.” What has not changed is her take-no-prisoners style of blunt writing; her interest isn’t in making media or political best buds to advance her career (she certainly won’t with the honestly in this book), but to give readers her best take.

And “The Hillary Effect” is the best take on Hillary Clinton’s campaign, its significance and its impact on what was to follow and is unfolding.

PERSONAL NOTE: I started linking to Taylor Marsh a few years after the December 2003 start up of The Moderate Voice. I didn’t always agree with her, but she always made her case with solid analysis rather than name calling or the kind of lash out posts (lashing out at parties, other blogs and blog writers) that you see on so many weblogs. About a year ago I invited her to cross-post some posts on TMV as a Guest Voice Columnist. I was and remain a fan.

When her book came out, I offered her an ad on TMV for free since we had one more remaining spot that we could give away for free. And then I ordered the book myself to read on my Kindle. She didn’t even know I had it until a few weeks later. A few months later I told her I loved it and had told my sister about it. I asked Taylor if she had an old copy she could mail to my sister to read.

So here is a disclaimer:
NOTE: Taylor Marsh provided a free print copy of her book to my sister and it’s my understanding she extended a free copy to just about anyone in media who would consider reviewing it or mentioning her book in a column.

This review was on my to-review list many months before she sent the book to my sister (FYI, I have 12 more items on my backlogged list for review here on TMV, including Robert Caro’s new LBJ book and the latest Godfather spin off novel).

How much do I like “The Hillary Effect?” This much: I read it once and it’s still on the front page of my Kindle because I’m reading it again so I can soak in the analysis and enjoy the no-nonsense, blunt, yet-supported-by-facts Taylor Marsh style.

So on yours truly there may be: “The Taylor Marsh Effect.”

On a TMV scale of five stars “The Hillary Effect” gets five stars (required reading for political junkies and aspiring and practicing journalists and bloggers).

That is the outlandish premise of Lillyhammer, Netflix first original series. And while the series abounds with cliches, it is hilarious as Johnny, played to perfection by Steve Van Zandt and backed by an all-Norwegian cast, soon discovers that being an unemployed immigrant is not easy. Johnny resorts to his old ways, which include buying a restaurant and getting what he wants through intimidation, when necessary, and sometimes worse.

Van Zandt is, of course, a legend. He played Silvio Dante in The Sopranos, is the longtime rhythm guitarist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band and has his own solo career.

Reviews have been mixed since all eight 45-minute episodes of Lillyhammer became available through webstreaming in February. Some critics were put off by the cliches (one local tells Johnny that “You seem to know a lot about guns and pistols for a restaurant guy”) and others found the subtitles annoying. Meh.

Van Zandt, who co-produced Lillyhammer, has described it as a “dramedy” and there indeed are dramatic elements. A local constable believes that Johnny is a terrorist in Norwegian mufti who was released from Guantánamo Bay and is up to no good, the mob boss he ratted out gets wind of his whereabouts, and other shenanigans. But it is over-the-top funny with only dollops of violence.

“We’re pushing the envelope as far as violence is concerned,” Van Zandt told an interviewer. “[The Norwegians] just don’t have any — they don’t allow it. You can have sex in prime time there, but violence is not cool.”

* * * * *

When I shuttered the pied-à-terre and I moved to the mountain retreat fulltime, I bid an unfond adieu to a $50 a month cable television bill. Beyond Turner Classic Movies, The Weather Channel and occasional sports, the other 80 or so channels had gone unwatched.

For about $1,000 — or less than two years worth of cable — I bought a 37-inch HDTV, a Blu-Ray DVD player, wireless Internet router and a Roku, a marvelous little box through which we webstream movies, television and other content that are mated to a 10-year-old Sony amplifier-tuner and Bose speakers and an eight-year-old MacBook laptop. Oh, and two ridiculously expensive HDMI cables, which are Digital Age counterparts of RCA cables.

Roku streams Netflix, Amazon, Crackle and dozens of other channels, including the estimable TED Talks. Netflix sets us back $16 a month for both DVDs and webstreaming, while Amazon is substantially free because we are Amazon Prime members, and Crackle, TED Talks and many other channels are just plain free.

There will be some additional expenses en route to webstreaming nirvana.

Speaking of the Olympics, we will want to watch the London Games this summer, but not what NBC Sports wants us to watch, which is lots of swimming, gymnastics, track and field and . . . did I say gymnastics? We will be able to cherry pick events and watch them at our leisure. Without commercial interruption.

Shaun Mullen is an award winning journalist and blogger. “Report From 20 Paws Ranch,”
which is the name of his mountain hideaway, usually appears on Mondays.

Since too much inequality can foment revolt and instability, the CIA regularly updates statistics on income distribution for countries around the world, including the U.S. Between 1997 and 2007, inequality in the U.S. grew by almost 10 percent, making it more unequal than Russia, infamous for its powerful oligarchs. The U.S. is not faring well historically, either. Even the Roman Empire, a society built on conquest and slave labor, had a more equitable income distribution.

To determine the size of the Roman economy and the distribution of income, historians Walter Schiedel and Steven Friesen pored over papyri ledgers, previous scholarly estimates, imperial edicts, and Biblical passages. Their target was the state of the economy when the empire was at its population zenith, around 150 C.E. Schiedel and Friesen estimate that the top 1 percent of Roman society controlled 16 percent of the wealth, less than half of what America’s top 1 percent control…

Schiedel and Friesen aren’t passing judgement on the ancient Romans, nor are they on modern day Americans. Theirs is an academic study, one used to further scholarship on one of the great ancient civilizations. But buried at the end, they make a point that’s difficult to parse, yet provocative. They point out that the majority of extant Roman ruins resulted from the economic activities of the top 10 percent. “Yet the disproportionate visibility of this ‘fortunate decile’ must not let us forget the vast but—to us—inconspicuous majority that failed even to begin to share in the moderate amount of economic growth associated with large-scale formation in the ancient Mediterranean and its hinterlands.”

In other words, what we see as the glory of Rome is really just the rubble of the rich, built on the backs of poor farmers and laborers, traces of whom have all but vanished. It’s as though Rome’s 99 percent never existed. Which makes me wonder, what will future civilizations think of us?

FOOTNOTE: I’ve known Pete Van de Putte of Texas for years. He has a delightful sense of humor and is owner of the famous Dixie Flag Manufacturing Company that makes superb flags and banners (I had one made years ago for my non-blogging incarnation and used it for many years at trade shows.)

Milt Priggee, www.miltpriggee.com

This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Donna Summer, who died Thursday, was the undisputed monarch of a musical genre that I tried my best to hate. Disco had none of the spontaneity and rough edges of rock ‘n’ roll, none of the rawness and authenticity of rhythm and blues, and yet it emerged from those sources like some sort of genetic anomaly. Disco was slick, polished, relentless. Intellectually, it was boring.

Viscerally, it was irresistible. To be on a dance floor in the late 1970s, before the mirrored ball became a cliche, was to be assaulted by thumping bass and screaming synthesizers until you surrendered and let the music carry you along. For all its space-age sheen, disco was all about music’s most ancient and primal element, the beat. It was about becoming what diva Grace Jones called a “slave to the rhythm.” Harmony and melody, for most artists, were afterthoughts.

But not for Donna Summer. Only a handful of vocalists had the pipes to sing with expressiveness, subtlety and control above the clamorous frenzy of a disco groove, and Summer was one of them. Her voice had what seemed like effortless power. You got the sense that if she wanted to crank it up, she could blow any band right off the stage.

And she had something to say. Songs such as “Bad Girls,” “Hot Stuff” and “She Works Hard for the Money” were anthems to female empowerment and sexual liberation. Whether she was playing the role of a saucy streetwalker, a club-hopping adventuress or an Everywoman shouldering the burdens of the world, she was always the protagonist, never the victim. “When I’m bad,” she famously sang, “I’m so, so bad.”

Unlike so many things from the disco era, Summer’s songs have endured. She released her last album in 2008, performed on “American Idol” that year and reportedly had been working on a new record before her final illness. She died of cancer at 63.

On Wednesday, we lost another seminal figure in popular music, the guitarist and bandleader Chuck Brown.

Around the world, Brown was perhaps best known for his 1979 No. 1 hit, “Bustin’ Loose.” Careful listeners might also be aware that he is one of the artists most frequently sampled by dance-music and hip-hop producers; snippets of Brown’s work can be heard, for example, on tracks by Eric B. & Rakim and in the rapper Nelly’s mega-hit “Hot in Herre.”

Here in Washington, however, Brown was known simply as the Godfather. He is credited as the inventor of the unique local sound known as go-go, a brand of syncopated funk distinguished by the central role given to percussion — congas, cowbells, rototoms, wooden boxes, plastic buckets, anything that goes bang or boom when you hit it. It’s hard to describe what distinguishes a go-go beat, but you know one if you hear one. It’s almost as if the drums are singing the melody and everything else is just along for the ride.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you’re not from around here. Go-go is a regional sound that never quite broke out into the mainstream; bands such as Rare Essence and Experience Unlimited, legends among the cognoscenti, draw a complete blank outside the Beltway. For me, the intensely local nature of go-go is a reminder that Washington is an actual place, not a political abstraction.

One important element in the texture of life in the nation’s capital was Chuck Brown. He appeared in television ads for well-known local institutions, such as the D.C. Lottery — and, I should add, The Washington Post. If you went to a baseball game and one of the Nationals hit a home run, Brown’s “Bustin’ Loose” was the celebration song. A city block near Howard University was named “Chuck Brown Way.”

He died at 75 after a battle with pneumonia. Wednesday night, as news of his passing spread, a large crowd gathered on Chuck Brown Way to remember a man whose talent, exuberance and generosity of spirit will be missed.

There is only one way to celebrate the legacy of these two legends: Get up and dance.

Eugene Robinson’s email address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com. (c) 2012, Washington Post Writers Group

Tammany Hall is gone, but now thanks to Citizens United, we are in the hands of the Koch brothers and George Clooney’s Hollywood friends. If that doesn’t make us feel warm and safe, it shouldn’t.

“Freedom of the press,” A. J. Libeling wrote back then, “is limited to those own one.” Now cable and the Internet have made publishers of us all, misinformation is spread more democratically by Rupert Murdoch and rabid bloggers, but do voters understand more than they did then?

To ensure they don’t, Democrats and Republicans will swamp them in a tide of money. The President’s campaign will try to match GOP Super PACs with a “Super-O-Rama” to offset Karl Rove’s Crossroads and the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity.

The TV commercials to be spewed out by such deformed spawn of the First Amendment will do nothing to further rational debate of issues, only becloud them with appeals to a national id of prejudice, political elitism and class hatred.

In contrast, the sound-bite circus of Obama-Romney debates will seem like Lincoln-Douglas.

MORE.

“This recession has been more brutal, the job losses steeper, politics seems nastier, Congress is more gridlocked than ever, some folks in the financial sector have been less than model citizens,” Barack Obama tells the class of ’12 at Barnard College.

The words sound realistic, but are we all in the 1998 movie, “The Truman Show,” in which Jim Carrey does not realize his life is not authentic but a 24/7 TV series managed and manipulated by others behind the scenes?

“We’ve become bored,” says the Godlike Producer, “with watching actors give us phony emotions. We are tired of pyrotechnics and special effects. While the world he inhabits is, in some respects, counterfeit, there’s nothing fake about Truman himself. No scripts, no cue cards. It isn’t always Shakespeare, but it’s genuine.”

Genuine, but under the control of forces with ulterior motives.

How much of today’s media world is “real” or just a production of the Obama and Romney campaigns with the contrivance of fake journalism machinery? Are we all watching a giant collaboration to persuade us this stuff is really happening?

Topic A now is gay marriage, which arose from Joe Biden’s Meet the Press “slip,” escalated into the President’s endorsement and ends now (perhaps) with Andrew Sullivan’s ode to Obama.

Topic B, Wall Street arrogance, is working its way through the machinery.

MORE.

Nearly everyone knows by now that “The Scream” — Edvard Munch’s iconic doodle of modern angst — broke auction records earlier this month when it sold for a few dollars shy of $120 million. In the weeks since, I’ve been thinking more and more about that sale and what it means.

I should confess right up front that I like both “The Scream” and the Norwegian artist from whose tortured mind it sprang more than a century ago. It’s probably not Munch’s greatest work. (That honor could go to “Jealousy” or “The Storm” or “Evening on Karl Johan Street” or any of a half-dozen others.) It’s not even a finely executed work of art by any standard. But who can forget it?

Still, $120 million represents a pretty hefty pile of American cabbage even for an unforgettable work of art, especially during a borderline depression. What else can you buy for $120 million these days? How about 120 vintage mansions at a million dollars a pop… or 3000 years of tuition at an elite American university… or 200,000 42″ flat-screen TVs… or a million hours of psychotherapy… or 10 million medium pizzas, each with two toppings of your choice… or (if you’re really conscientious) 60 million meals for poor people? You get the point.

The kicker is that the $120 million Scream wasn’t even the original that so many of us remember so vividly from our art history classes. In fact, it’s not even a painting. Munch created four versions of his most famous work, one of which was a crudely scrawled pastel imitation of the tempera original (which was pretty crude-looking to begin with). This pastel knock-off is the version that fetched the record sum at Sotheby’s earlier this month. (For that matter, the world’s priciest painting of all time, sold to the Persian Gulf mini-nation of Qatar last year for around $250 million, was simply one of five versions of Cezanne’s “Card Players.”)

Why would otherwise sane people pay a literal fortune for a second-rate copy of “The Scream”? It’s certainly not for the beauty of the image, the quality of the craftsmanship or the need to contemplate a profound expression of the human spirit (you could open an art book for the same experience). It’s not even for the chance to display such a famous image in your home and be the envy of your friends. Nobody would be reckless enough to leave a $120 million investment on the wall where burglars could snatch it, fire could consume it, or the cleaning lady could spray it with Endust.

So why would they buy it? For the bragging rights. For the investment value. Because they can.

For better or worse, the business of serious art collecting has always been the province of the economic elite. Why for better? Because only the elite can afford to lavish such extravagant sums on our struggling artists (especially after those artists are safely dead). From the Medicis to Henry Clay Frick to the faceless Japanese, Arab and American industrialists who keep smashing each other’s bidding records today, the super-rich have essentially run the art business since the dawn of the Renaissance. The more munificent plutocratic benefactors endow great museums or open their collections to the public, a favor for which the public should be decently grateful. By contrast, workers’ societies tend to favor public murals and propaganda posters.

Still, the incursion of today’s überwealth into the art world has produced some strange and unsettling trends…

Sticker shock. Of the 40 most expensive paintings of all time, all 40 were sold since 1987 — fittingly enough, as the Nouveau Gilded Age was taking shape under the smiling eyes of Ronald Reagan. And yes, the prices have been adjusted for inflation. The highest inflation-adjusted price previously paid for a work of art was $35 million for Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci back in 1967. (Not on the “top 40″ list, as you probably surmised.)

The disappearance of great art from public view. Yes, we can still pay our respects to the Mona Lisa and thousands of other great works in museums around the globe. But the tendency now is for mega-rich buyers to squirrel away their prizes and effectively make them vanish. Case in point: Back in 1990, Japanese paper manufacturing tycoon Ryoei Saito bought van Gogh’s beloved “Portrait of Dr. Gachet” for the then-record sum of $82.5 million ($146.5 million in 2012 dollars). The elderly Saito loved the painting so much that he expressed a desire to have it cremated with him when he shuffled off this mortal coil. Though the painting survived Saito’s demise in 1996, its current whereabouts are unknown. Saito’s recklessly whimsical desire raises a disturbing point: does the owner of a world-class work of art have the right to destroy it, the way a home buyer can tear down a historic house? Can he paint a mustache on it or cut it down to a more compact size if that’s what he wants? It’s his private property, after all. Entrusting great art to private collectors entails a great deal of trust.

A bias toward trendy, overhyped modern artists. Yes, painters of genius like Cezanne, Monet and van Gogh have fetched top dollar; that much is fitting and proper. I’ll even give the clever, overrated Picasso a pass as a groundbreaker of consequence. (He accounts for 10 of the top 40 priciest paintings.) But would you have guessed that the #2 and #3 spots belong to Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning? That’s right: in 2006, show-biz potentate David Geffen managed to unload a pair of their inscrutable daubings for $140 million and $137.5 million, respectively. Other “top 40″ artists include Francis Bacon, Jasper Johns, Mark Rothko and, of course, that ubiquitous poseur Andy Warhol. (His “Eight Elvises” sold for $100 million in 2008.)

The irrelevance of scarcity and merit. Are the Pollocks, de Koonings and Warhols of the art world really worth so much more than Leonardo? Of course not. And Leonardo has the advantage of scarcity on his side: his output includes only 15 indisputable paintings, some of which were abandoned in the early stages, while others (like The Last Supper) happen to be attached to walls. So why the outrageous sums for Leonardo’s latter-day inferiors? Demand, for one. The overpriced contemporary artists are sexier than Leonardo (in the loosest sense of the word; Warhol wasn’t exactly Don Juan). They’re sexy in the sense that they emit sparks of danger and in-your-face irreverence. And of course, sex appeal routinely outsells nobility or beauty in today’s free market.

The artificial inflation of reputations. A critical issue, and one that partly explains the absence of so many Old Masters from the “top 40″ list. Modern artists, like Hollywood celebrities and professional athletes, benefit from a vast, pervasive and free publicity machine that keeps their names in the public eye and inflates their value. When Angelina Jolie’s pillow-lipped face appears on half the magazine covers we see at the supermarket checkout counter, we assume that she’s worth something. No matter that we can’t remember more than one or two of her actual performances; the media continually tell us that she’s a commodity.

The same law holds true for modern artists. They generally don’t make the cover of People magazine, but their names achieve a similar currency within the smaller and tighter art community. Notable art critics and other tastemakers fawn over their works and interpret them for the rest of us. Galleries display their canvases reverently for all to see. Adoring art professors coo over them. Moneyed connoisseurs gab about them at fashionable parties. When a collector pays $140 million for a Jackson Pollock splatterfest, he’s essentially paying for the ultimate designer label in modern American art. Meanwhile, countless artists of superior talent languish in obscurity. They never made the right connections at arty New York soirees.

The influence of contextual pricing. Sounds like an arcane principle borrowed from an economics textbook, but it’s really a simple matter of habit: we become accustomed to paying much larger sums for some types of goods than for other types of goods. For example, I think nothing of spending $150 for a single night in a serviceable hotel, yet I balk at paying $12 for a tempting jar of lime-ginger preserves that could give me pleasure for the better part of a year. Why? Because I know that far too many decent hotel rooms fetch $200 or more a night, while I can enjoy a comparable jar of preserves (though maybe not lime-ginger) for $7 or so. We’ve grown accustomed to hotel rooms, restaurant liquor, college tuition, theater tickets and works of art being grossly overpriced… so we tend not to protest when we have to pay up. Maybe we should protest.

The widening gap between the super-rich and everyone else. Today’s outrageous wealth disparities account for much of the outlandish pricing. After all, we live in a society where Donald Trump commands $1.5 million for a one-hour speaking engagement while the wretches who write for online “content farms” earn $5 an article. Of course the Donald Trumps and their colleagues within the top .001 percent can part with $100 million plus for a work of art; that princely sum represents a few months’ income for their crowd.

In short, the billionaires rule the art world, as they rule over so much else today, from sports to banking to entertainment to politics. No surprise there. We have to appreciate the irony of struggling, perspiring, emotionally and financially tormented artists posthumously earning millions while feeding the egos of billionaires with money to burn. It might be a little more surprising that those billionaires actually take an interest in art. I suppose that’s a good sign, though of course they’ve forever lifted notable art beyond the budgets of petty-bourgeois players like you and me.

If we require any consolation, we always can open our art books or visit the local museum. Better yet, we can buy the works of talented, little-known artists whose works grace the walls of local galleries and coffee-houses. We even can buy ourselves a nice reproduction of “The Scream” for considerably less than $120 million. It’ll be Munch’s original version, too — not his shoddy pastel knock-off. And we won’t have to live in fear that the cleaning lady might spray it with Endust.

Over the years there have been many songs that honored mothers — with words that truly came from the heart. Here are a few — most of them written way before my time. Listen to the words.

Henry Burr – Mother 1916 – M-O-T-H-E-R (A Word That Means the World to Me)

Al Jolson,Mother Of Mine,I Still Have You,1928 (years go on Mothers Day I sent my mother this and when she heard the lyrics she wept):

George Jessel – “MY MOTHER’S EYES” (1929):

In the late 20th century, songs about mothers became been less idealized and dealt with bigger issues (mothers not being there for kids, etc or reflecting the generation gap of the 60s) or used them in different contexts. A few quick examples:

For example, on Broadway, Cabaret’s famous “Don’t Tell Mama” song by Kander & Ebb:

Paul Simon’s Mother & Child Reunion:

LL Cool J – Mama Said Knock You Out

Does Buzz Bissinger score a touchdown with you, or do you find him personally foul?

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (author of the 1988 bestseller and cautionary tale “Friday Night Lights”) has stirred up quite a firestorm with a recent Wall Street Journal article declaring “Why College Football Should Be Banned.”

Yes, he advocates a “scorched earth, cold turkey” approach, rather than attempts to rein in abuses and nudge athletics into the proper perspective. He finds college football to be “antithetical to the primary purpose of higher education”, bringing with it high costs, low benefits (for the average student), a high price for academics and (he’s still researching this) probably a bunch of polar bears floating haplessly on ice chunks.

(And in case you didn’t notice, not a single overpaid coach had the guts to order the hit on bin Laden!)

I don’t follow any college football programs, but I don’t like raining on anyone else’s parade, either; so I’ve enjoyed just sitting back and watching the arguments unfold.

College football supporters have a vague notion that the sport is a revenue cash cow, but Bissinger cites NCAA studies showing that maybe 20 schools earn money from football; two-thirds lose money. Supporters of the status quo are quick to point out the INTANGIBLE benefits of football. (“Football has a certain je ne sais…je ne sais…Dude! Now I wish they hadn’t cut the Foreign Language Department budget to buy the coach’s new Ferrari!”)

Bissinger fails to factor in the value of having a favorite team as a rallying point, as something for students and alumni to IDENTIFY with in this crazy world. (“Yes, sir, bolstered by tuition increases and nefarious recruiting violations, my alma mater has boasted a 2-and-11 season every year for the past…Hey, could somebody please STEAL my identity?”)

Bissinger decries the brutal exploitation of players who have little chance of graduation, even with watered-down requirements. He has no problem with bone-crushing NFL encounters but is protective of the health of college students. Perhaps the schools should do more to enhance retention, with a “Come For The Head Trauma, Stay For The Quadratic Equations” ad campaign.

Bissinger is relentless in hammering home the point that football takes away from the “core mission” of colleges and universities. I wonder how this “purity of purpose” mantra works in other aspects of life? (“Come on, honestly, what does the windshield really contribute to the core mission of the car’s getting you from one place to another? I think we should…bugs between the teeth…mmmmm…”)

At first I dismissed Bissinger as an ineffectual voice crying in the wilderness, demanding unrealistic cultural changes; but we’ve seen smokers become pariahs and the definition of marriage change, so maybe it’s time for everyone to take this seriously.

Football has a proud tradition of giving students a respite from the daily grind; but Bissinger thinks there is too much emphasis on fun in college, anyway. He feels students need to focus on studies so they can “compete in the brutal realities of the global economy.” For his sake, I hope the brutal realities leave room for paying a curmudgeonly journalist who sounds like your cranky neighbor on STEROIDS. (“Hey, you kids get off’a my 20-yard line! But leave the mascot. Them’s good eatin’!”)

©2012 Danny Tyree. Danny welcomes reader e-mail responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades”. Danny’s’ weekly column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc. newspaper syndicate and is licensed to run on TMV.

Lugar’s downfall is more 2010 Tea Party guillotining of long-time Republicans, but a search for ideological purity is so intense that even Ryan is forced to disavow his political patron saint Ayn Rand for being “an outspoken atheist [who]… felt altruism was evil, supported abortion and condemned Christianity for advocating compassion for the poor.”

An irony of Ryan’s retreat is the questioner who forced it could have been attacking him from the right or left, either representing Religious extremists or moderates not in harmony with Randian uber-selfishness. As in the unfortunate French unpleasantness of the past, the people’s tribunals are getting caught up more in the desire for blood than justice.

Ryan, who told voters in 2005 that “the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” now backpedals to “Just because you like someone’s novels doesn’t mean you agree with their entire worldview philosophy. She has a worldview philosophy which is completely antithetical to mine because she has an atheist philosophy…”

So much for hero worship…

MORE.

Well, not me exactly — but my namesake. Joe Gandelman (a different one, assuredly not as good-looking, wise or modest as me) was killed off in a great book I found by accident in one of my periodic searches on Amazon.com to see if there is anything with the name “Gandelman” on the market. I then stumbled upon Eric Wasserman’s superb novel “Celluloid Strangers” by accident on Amazon — and it turned out to the most delightful find ever.

The reason: Celluloid Strangers is a novel that’s absolute nirvana for ANYONE who loves books, movies or TV shows about organized crime, “The Godfather” or “The Sopranos,” Hollywood, the movie studios and their bosses in the 20th century and McCarthy era blacklisting. It’s top-notch and fast-paced writing that (no joke) makes the tired cliche “you can’t put it down” reality by vividly bringing alive the story about the four Gandelman brothers from the northeast, who went onto become a lawyer, a mobster, a screenwriter, and a shopkeeper after settling in Los Angeles after World War II.

It’s authentically exciting, moves as swiftly as a bullet train, and painstakingly researched and crafted. Wasserman has made it clear that it is not intended to be a history (liberties are taken) but for those fascinated with 20th century California, the old Hollywood Studio system that manufactured star images and protected stars, the sometimes corrupt Hollywood studio heads, mob-linked labor unions, organized crime and the assimiliation of immigrant families it’s the book you’ve been seeking for many years. I originally bought this book thinking, “Oh well, I’ll read it because it’s one of the few collections of pages about Gandelmans that I’ve seen since I thumbed through my bills for my taxes.” But it turned out to be one of my all time favorite novels — and I do NOT read a lot of fiction.

Fiction often loses me when writers get so wrapped up in their own writing style and words that they lose sight of plot and character. Celluloid Strangers works on so many levels: as a novel for entertainment, an example of fine writing, and a role model for writers who want to do novels that are compelling and accessible and communicate content versus writers’ ego. I enjoyed this so much I’m now carrying while on the road Wasserman’s earlier published work, a book of short stories.

Celluloid Strangers is also fascinating stylistically: it blends straight narrative, flashback, and (fictional) “transcripts” from House Unamerican Activities hearings as devices to make the mix compelling, gripping and highly accessible. Here’s an interview with Wasserman talking about his book and his characters. Here’s an excerpt from his book.

Wasserman and his book deserve the praise received such as this:

“Rich in detail, atmosphere, insight, and info. For readers who crave a thick slice of L.A. lore and Hollywood noir as tasty as James Ellroy—but without the hysterics—Celluloid Strangers will satisfy. Eric Wasserman conveys the kick and curse of history and the grit of real life, along with the arc of a dark fable. A big, wise novel to lodge in the head and the heart.”
—Wesley Strick, author of Out There in the Dark and screenwriter of Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear

“Celluloid Strangers wonderfully evokes a time and place in American life: Los Angeles before and after the HUAC hearings, blacklistings, and betrayals. It is rich in the way good novels are rich—in character and in story—and while it tellingly reminds us of why Hollywood looms so large in our lives, it also movingly depicts the dark underside of glitz and glamour. Eric Wasserman is a splendid novelist who has constructed a unique, memorable tale.”
—Jay Neugeboren, author of The Stolen Jew, 1940, and Before My Life Began

“With his big, ambitious, richly historical, and compulsively readable first novel, Eric Wasserman has delivered a knockout punch of a book. Celluloid Strangers puts our obsession with Hollywood in precise and intimate terms. Readers will relish its deeply moving story and remember it long after the final pages have been turned.”
—Frederick Reiken, author of Day For Night and The Lost Legends of New Jersey(less)

In fact, Celluloid Strangers deserves much more praise. And more than praise.

Celluloid Strangers deserves to be made into a movie.

And, if it is, I know of someone who can audition for the part of the older Joe Gandelman….

On a TMV scale of one to five, Celluloid Strangers gets FIVE STARS.

Dr Ryan Mathews discovered a cure for ovarian cancer. His company did not have the resources to do the human testing so he sold out to a large pharmaceutical company. Human testing commenced and the results were not good – it didn’t work. Ryan’s wife came down with ovarian cancer and she was part of the human testing. When the testing was canceled Ryan stole the last two doses his wife required. He was caught and fired from the large pharmaceutical. All of the tests indicated his wife was going to die within months so the decision was made to move to the Bahamas for the last few months of her life. His wife and children were killed in a plane crash on the way to the Bahamas and Ryan spent the next few years drinking in paradise. One day Ryan met another medical researcher there to spend some time with her aunt and uncle. When her relatives ship was blown up Ryan partnered with her to find out what was going on and the adventure began. Many murders and attempted murders in addition to many surprises. It came to Ryan’s attention that his drug had worked and the results had been tampered with. But why – the big pharmaceuticals don’t want to cure people. People who are well don’t buy drugs. More adventures and murders along the way and an ending that unearths an even more sinister plot.

A really great read that I had trouble putting down and the ending was a shocker.

Cross Posted At Newshoggers

Note:

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.