Bob Schwartz

Category: Uncategorized

January 6, 2015

Friends Lost and Found

We lose friends lots of ways. One tragic way is to allow friendship to fade over time.

Friendship is treated and valued differently by everyone. It is personal, individual, no right or wrong for everyone, no better or worse for everyone.

Friendships often begin by chance and happenstance, but then require intention, attention, and maintenance. The easy beginning is one reason we forget that, as we forget many important matters while tending to the inconsequential.

Friendships, of a certain deep kind, are able to seemingly pick up the moment a lapsed connection is renewed, even after years. It shows that the tissue of the original connection was so strong, so almost meant to be, that it could withstand neglect.

But that realization is bittersweet. In it are the lost laughs and mutual mirror and sharing that might have been. And that ultimately, at some point, might be no more.

Is it hypocritical to remind others to cherish and cultivate friendship, when you yourself have left some—many—of those struggling on the vine? Then consider it a morsel of wisdom and cautionary tale. You may have lots of friends or few. They may be friendships that are deep or shallow, new or aged. But if you look inside to see just what kind of friend and friendship it is, you will know. And if it is that special sort of friend and friendship, consider how unique it might be for you, how that friend is a piece of a treasure you maybe stumbled upon and can’t replace and won’t replace.

This Christmas I learned, in reply to a holiday message to a too much ignored friend, that he is dying. I tried hard not to be self-centered, thinking about what I had lost, the years of conversations that could have been had, that I missed, that would have been a joy. He was losing his life, and the petty me was sad for having missed what I might have, with a little more effort, had.

You can rationalize these lapses as the way things happen and the way life goes. You can say, as long lost friends often do, that it goes both ways, that A is just as capable as B of picking up the phone or sending an email. But as with all our sensible perspectives, sense doesn’t matter.

For what it is worth, here is the message I sent out to him that got the reply from his wife. It may sound like I knew something about what was going on in his life, and maybe I did. Maybe I just knew that all of us are dying. Mostly I knew what I know about true treasure and how tricky it can be to find and keep it. So keep it, please.

I don’t know what to say about the passage of time. But we both know, or at least I hold the conceit, that some friendships survive that, even if not well tended. Maybe I’m wrong. Don’t know how much if at all I am any part of you, but you, my friend, are always a part of me.

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December 18, 2014

How Good Is America?

CIA Interrogation

How good is America? A just released Pew Research survey about CIA torture tells us something.

More than half of those surveyed believe that the CIA interrogation methods were justified. An even greater number believe that the interrogation methods provided intelligence that prevented terror attacks—despite substantial testimony and evidence that they didn’t.

“Goodness” like so many other positive qualities is vague and undefined, but like those qualities, you know it when you see it. We seem to have slipped beyond “the ends justify the means.” Some are now willing to adjust perspective so that “the ideology justifies the means,” where ideology includes irrational emotion, prejudice, and unsupported opinion. This isn’t the first time in American and world history where people have gone there. And it isn’t the only sector of society where this pertains. But we know or should have learned this: it never turns out well.

More than that, it is never good. There may be exceptional times when doing bad is necessary to prevent the worse, but it is never wholly good to do that or be that. Anyone who was not disgusted by the report of the CIA methods, even those who consider them justified, are a concern. If the half of America in the survey was not disgusted, even as they answered the question, that is a concern. Disgust can be much more valuable than mindless fear, and when we push blithely past that disgust to make a point, that can’t be good, and neither can we.

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August 28, 2014

A World Worth Saving

Xul Solar - Puerto Azul

People are justifiably angry, frustrated, and confused when those with all the “advantages” of Western Europe and the United States join violent apocalyptic movements in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. But maybe we can learn a little by asking some related questions: Do these fighters believe the world is worth saving? Do your fellow citizens, friends, and neighbors believe it? Do you?

Almost by definition, those who are convinced to join movements aimed at turning the world upside down believe that the world as it is is beyond repair, and that the world as it is is not worth saving.

What might surprise you, if you think about it, is how many of the people around you, people you know, believe exactly the same thing. They don’t go halfway around the world to kill mercilessly to hasten the end of the status quo. But they do believe that this world is irreparably broken, that many other people (maybe even you) are complicit in maintaining and encouraging that disrepair—in feeding the beast—and that nothing short of the quickest possible end to this world will bring them to the rightness of that world.

We don’t talk much about whether this world is worth saving. There are those true believers just mentioned who think there is nothing to talk about, that it is dogmatic and axiomatic that this world is as good as gone. For others, it can be a bunch of words, about how we will make the ultimate sacrifice to preserve “the American way of life” or “freedom,” as if those were so self-evident that discussion would be at best useless and at worst seditious.

We have to talk about it, not just assume or demand the automatic answer “of course it’s worth saving.” One of the reasons we don’t talk about it is that we would have to think about it, and that is not easy or comfortable. We would, among other discomforts, have to admit shortcomings, some very serious.

When we don’t talk, we end up with some people easily persuaded that maybe this world is so broken that we should start creating a different one, even apocalyptically. That’s the bad news, ripped from today’s headlines.

The good news is that if we did talk about whether the world is worth saving, honestly, without dogma, with no “wrong” answers, we would almost certainly conclude that—with some minor and major adjustments—it is. It’s just getting to that conclusion that can be so difficult.

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March 19, 2014

Ukraine: What’s Happening on the Weak Side?

Basketball
The weak side in basketball does not suggest weakness. It is the part of the court away from the ball. This doesn’t mean that the players there are weak or that the action there is unimportant. On the best teams, there can be almost as much happening on the weak side as there is on the strong side. Players may be running around, positioning themselves to take advantage, either by scoring or by taking away the ball. On the lesser teams, weak side players sometimes seem to drift aimlessly, or just stand around, depending on someone else to somehow work it out. If you don’t have the ball, what else is there to do?

We know exactly where the ball is in the current Ukraine crisis. And we know exactly who has the ball. The question is what the players on the weak side are doing. Are there plays carefully diagramed by the coach, practiced for just such a situation? Is there a player away from the ball, away from the basket, just waiting to heroically steal and drive all the way down court? Or are the weak side players drifting, trying to remember plays they once learned or improvise new ones?

The shot clock is running.

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March 6, 2014

Better to Remain Silent

Abraham Lincoln
Most of us have quotes that we trot out frequently, because they say what we mean better than we could ever say it ourselves. And also because the speaker or writer has some stature that we will never attain.

This is one of the ones I repeat often. In addition to talking heads on hundreds of media outlets, we now have talking heads on millions of social media outlets (yes, including me and this one). Lots of sense, lots and lots of nonsense. I would put this on signs everywhere, as a reminder not only about other people (where the fools are of course found) but about ourselves (where foolishness can be found too).

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool
than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Abraham Lincoln

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October 15, 2013

Is America’s Past Better Than Anybody Else’s Future?

Millions of Americans believe that America’s past is better than anybody else’s future—including America’s own. That is inherent in an obsessive turning away from progress, from failing to adapt to twenty-first century (or even twentieth century) realities, and a strong longing for the comfortable but mythical past.

The irony is that civilizations with much more history than the U.S.—the youngest of all global powers—have had a much better time moving boldly and successfully into the future. This doesn’t mean that countries East and West have met all or most of the Herculean challenges they may face. And it doesn’t mean that there aren’t people there looking back to the “good old days.” But for the most part, these countries have avoided being distracted by the substantial complexities of who and what they were, and focused on balancing that with who and what they can and must become.

The substantial past of some of those countries may actually be the antidote to nostalgia that has allowed those nations to move forward. After so many centuries of arguments between the backward-lookers and the forward-lookers, the very practical argument wins: seeing where you are going is the best way to avoid crashes, falling off cliffs, or just standing still while everyone else advances around you.

Maybe what America needs is a few more centuries of arguments, where the reactionaries and regressives hold sway and drive the nation into a crash or off a cliff. Maybe then America will know what the older heads in the world already know—that evolution moves forward and not back (if you believe in any kind of evolution), that you have to keep your eyes open, that you have to adapt or die. Unfortunately, those of us alive today, standing by helpless, won’t be able to enjoy the fruits of that learning. We may only be here for the hard lessons.

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September 17, 2013

Why O.J. Matters

National Enquirer - O.J.

The National Enquirer has dropped an O Bomb:

Shocking bombshell evidence that proves OJ committed double homicide and  where he may have hidden the murder weapon REVEALED!

O.J. SIMPSON is shaken to the core because bombshell evidence that proves he murdered his ex-wife and her friend is hidden in his $500,000 Florida home – and it’s all about to be discovered because the house is headed for the auction block on Oct. 29.

The home has been in foreclosure, and the disgraced football star, now impris­oned in Nevada, is terrified that the new owner will discover the items – the knife used in the gruesome murders and the de­signer shoes that left bloody tracks around his former wife’s lifeless body.

Should anyone care? The families of the murder victims Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman might. O.J.’s own family might.

Nobody else should, but that doesn’t mean that O.J. doesn’t matter. His sensational and ridiculous 1995 murder trial is as culturally significant as any event of the generation—including Watergate and 9/11. Saying that does not invest it with any substantive importance, the kind that those and other profound events have. The O.J. trial is the birthplace of the modern media era, and practically everything that rational people don’t like about the current environment owes its origins to that.

Half of America watched some part of the trial. The “shocking” acquittal was by the end beside the point. The fact is that tens of millions of Americans, an unforgettable cast of characters (most of whom are now forgotten) and a mammoth of media conspired to make something colossal out of something not nearly as big. (Not entirely forgotten characters though: In an irony-defining development, the late Robert Kardashian was integrally involved in the events and helped defend O.J. In the spirit of making something out of nothing, Kardashian is now best known as the father of Kourtney, Khloe and Kim.)

We have never recovered from the O.J. trial. It represented an unprecedented gap in scale between actuality and the intensity of the coverage received and interest engendered. It was part, maybe the greatest part, of proportion going out the window. And now, no detail is too small or relatively unimportant, no story adequately covered, that more isn’t offered. Much more. Much much more, most of the time to the point of diminishing returns and dying brain cells. Too much is never enough.

And to think it call began with one man’s certain heartless brutality, and a missing weapon and pair of shoes that may now see the light of day.

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September 3, 2013

John Kerry’s Munich Moment: Is Political Reporting Too Polite?

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
Hunter S. Thompson

About a week ago, President Obama said that if Syria’s Bashar Assad was not stopped from using chemical weapons, we might find those same weapons used against America. When asked about this days later, a presidential spokesman ignored the question. This weekend Secretary of State John Kerry said that the decision to stop Assad’s use of the weapons was a “Munich moment.” Meaning: Just as the Munich Agreement of 1938 condoned Hitler’s occupation of Czech territory, emboldening and enabling his vision of global conquest, so would our failure to respond to Assad’s use of chemical weapons further his insidious master plan.

Experts who have bothered to talk about the prospect of these chemical weapons being used against America have dismissed it out of hand. As for the “Munich moment,” that requires a bit more nuance. Nobody claims, at least not yet, that Assad has any extra-territorial plans or delusions of regional grandeur. His plan seems to be simply to punish any Syrians who stand in the way of him and his family fiercely holding on to power. Garden variety despotry; Assad is no Hitler. If “Munich” means appeasing his inhumanity, that is also silly. The bulk of Assad’s inhumanity is also garden variety: guns, bombs, etc. Nothing that Obama has proposed is intended to take care of that.

The region really did have a Munich moment in 1990. Saddam Hussein invaded and annexed Kuwait. A thirty-four nation coalition, led by the U.S., pushed him back to his own borders. Both the history of the Gulf War and its aftermath—including the decision by Bush 1 to go no further and the decision by Bush 2 to finish the job—are beyond the scope of this note. This is just to say that if you want to know what a Munich moment looks like, that was it.

The authenticity and civility of our political life are always in question. We ask whether politicians and their supporters are speaking truth, saying what they mean, meaning what they say, and saying it all in a way that is reasonably respectful and polite. That’s a lot to ask of them, and our expectations are right now pretty low. It’s also a lot to ask of political pundits and commentators. Unconstrained by the limitations of office or election, some of them, left to right, go wherever their opinions take them. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.

Then there are political journalists. This is where things get tricky. Calling a political statement a lie or stupid, or calling a politician a liar or stupid, is supposed to fail the professional standard on a few scores. It supposedly puts a journalist’s objectivity in question; that sort of discourse is best left to political minions and commentators. And if not carefully couched or softened, it can come off as inappropriately impolite and uncivil, another professional faux pas.

We should all miss Hunter S. Thompson right about now. His suicide in 2005 left a gap in political journalism that hasn’t been filled and probably never will be. He didn’t begin as a political reporter. He came up as a writer during the time of the so-called “new journalism” in the 1960s (Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, et al), when the lines between the factual, the personal and the expressive broke down. By his own admission, Thompson was crazy, formally or informally; he was also a stunningly talented observer and writer. When he hit the political beat, it was right place, right time, right writer. If politics was an exercise in duplicity, venality and near-insanity, it needed a professional journalist just as insane. The collection of his Rolling Stone coverage of the 1972 presidential election, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, is not just on another planet from the classic campaign coverage up to then; it is in another solar system.

Thompson had a special relationship with Richard Nixon. He ended up respecting and applauding Nixon’s brilliant mind as an expert football strategist, but otherwise Thompson despised him. He wrote a 1994 obituary of Nixon.  In it he continues the case for that untempered loathing, but in this excerpt also explains why it is an appropriate attitude for a journalist:

Kissinger was only one of the many historians who suddenly came to see Nixon as more than the sum of his many squalid parts. He seemed to be saying that History will not have to absolve Nixon, because he has already done it himself in a massive act of will and crazed arrogance that already ranks him supreme, along with other Nietzschean supermen like Hitler, Jesus, Bismarck and the Emperor Hirohito. These revisionists have catapulted Nixon to the status of an American Caesar, claiming that when the definitive history of the 20th century is written, no other president will come close to Nixon in stature. “He will dwarf FDR and Truman,” according to one scholar from Duke University.

It was all gibberish, of course. Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more like Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill. He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, and he denied it to the day of his death. When students at Kent State University, in Ohio, protested the bombing, he connived to have them attacked and slain by troops from the National Guard.

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

It’s not that we don’t have good and great political journalists working today; we may have more than ever. And it’s not that there aren’t plenty of partisans pointing out gaps in someone else’s facts and reasoning.

It’s just that an amazing amount of stuff gets said and seems to get by far too unchallenged or challenged too narrowly or politely. It wasn’t so long ago that the Republican party produced a nominating spectacle that is widely characterized as a circus or a clown car. But at the time, journalists were unwilling to even hint at how ridiculous some of it was, as the party of Lincoln earnestly considered nominating Herman Cain or Donald Trump as their standard bearer.

Sure we need objectivity, maybe now more than ever in a social media enriched/poisoned environment. What we shouldn’t do is confuse objectivity with comity and politeness. If Hunter Thompson was shockingly blunt—and so much fun to read—it was to wake people up from the soporific effect of treating truth and lies, intelligence and stupidity, as rhetorical equivalents, in the name of objectivity, politeness and respect. In the name of keeping the peace. That would be the media Munich moment.

Update: Rereading this post, I have to add that the closest we come to Hunter S. Thompson’s “gonzo” political journalism is The Daily Show on Comedy Central. This revelation came watching the first few days of Jon Stewart’s return after his summer away, coming back to a grim and arguably ridiculous political crisis. The Daily Show’s trick is to protest (too much) that it is a “fake” news show, which gives it total license to completely get its facts straight while speaking truth to absurdity. And when, as this week, vicious jokes aren’t quite enough, Stewart vents his frustration directly and straight, no humor. Oh, to see what The Daily Show would have made of the Nixon Years.

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August 22, 2013

Lee and Nancy: Summer Wine and Some Velvet Morning

Phedre - Alexandre Cabanel
When Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra got together in the 1960s to create pop music (he to write and produce, she to perform and record), who could know that this very day, music fan, you would discover one of those tracks and go “pretty cool”, while the other would elicit “what the heck is that?”

Nancy Sinatra was firstly famous as Frank Sinatra’s daughter, and then as the singer of a string of big hits, most notably These Boots Are Made for Walking. She was never a great singer, but her voice did have an appealing quality (genes count for something), and the material and production were often irresistible.

Lee Hazlewood was the source of many of those hit songs. And then he began performing and recording some of his songs as duets with Nancy Sinatra. If you think that Boots or Sugar Town are all there is to Nancy Sinatra, a couple of these duets just have to be heard.

Summer Wine – Hazlewood’s songs leaned toward country pop, and Summer Wine was a duet in the vein of Jackson from Johnny Cash and June Carter, and scores of other such duets. His pop sensibilities make this work, as does the contrast between his gruff baritone and Sinatra’s sweet not quite innocence. How good is the song? Good enough for it to be well covered even now, including a 2010 collaboration between Andrea Coors and Bono.

Some Velvet Morning – If Summer Wine is cool pop, Some Velvet Morning is something else. Hazlewood is sometimes identified as Cowboy Psychedelic, and the accent here is on psychedelic—in the best possible way. To this day, people argue about whether the song means something or nothing. As usual, reading lyrics don’t do songs justice. But if you want to think about it and listen, consider this:

Lee:
Some velvet morning when I’m straight
I’m gonna open up your gate
And maybe tell you ’bout Phaedra
and how she gave me life
and how she made it in
Some velvet morning when I’m straight

Nancy:
Flowers growing on the hill
Dragonflies and daffodils
Learn from us very much
Look at us but do not touch
Phaedra is my name

Lee:
Some velvet morning when I’m straight
I’m gonna open up your gate
And maybe tell you ’bout Phaedra
and how she gave me life
and how she made it in
Some velvet morning when I’m straight

Nancy:
Flowers are the things we knew
Secrets are the things we grew
Learn from us very much
Look at us but do not touch
Phaedra is my name

Lee:
Some velvet morning when I’m straight
Nancy:
Flowers growing on the hill
Lee:
I’m gonna open up your gate
Nancy:
Dragonflies and daffodils
Lee:
And maybe tell you ’bout Phaedra
Nancy:
Learn from us very much
Lee:
And how she gave me life
Nancy:
Look at us but do not touch
Lee:
and how she made it in

(Phaedra, by the way, is a tragic figure of Greek mythology, in love with her husband’s son—which probably has nothing to do with the song. Or does it? Who can tell with a highly educated psychedelic cowboy?)

In 2003 The Telegraph named this the best pop duet ever:

1. Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra
Some Velvet Morning, 1968

Most pop music is quickly forgotten. All too rare are the songs that endure, whose sheer otherness takes your breath away, even 30-odd years after they were conceived. Some Velvet Morning belongs in that company. Around the time that Frank Sinatra sang Somethin’ Stupid with his daughter Nancy, she was making other duets which brought a hipper, bolder edge to the format, and which would influence countless subsequent pairings. Nancy conducted these with Lee Hazlewood, a laconic Oklahoman who had masterminded her kitsch anthem of women’s liberation, These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.

In 1967, he recorded songs with her for possible inclusion in her first TV Special, Movin’ With Nancy. One, incredibly, was Some Velvet Morning – one of the strangest, druggiest, most darkly sexual songs ever written. Somehow, perhaps as a sop to the new demographic opening up during the Summer of Love, it made it on to the show. There are “flowers” and “daffodils”, but it’s hardly Sonny and Cher. Hazlewood’s sonorous, old-manly tones tell of “Phaedra, and how she gave me life, and how she made it end”, the reverberating bass sounds surrounding his echoey voice like storm clouds.

The music changes to a skipping, childish rhythm, and Nancy chimes in as Phaedra, innocent but ever more menacing as the verses are intercut more regularly. It’s a song whose mysteries have occasioned numerous covers, most recently by Primal Scream, with Kate Moss “doing” Nancy. None, though, can rival the macabre atmosphere of the original – ambitious, beautiful and unforgettable.

As always, those are just words. The music is in the tracks. Please listen.

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July 22, 2013

Diana’s Grandson

Diana, William & Harry

An ecstatic caller to the BBC said that Diana would be so proud to see the birth of William and Kate’s son.

No one in the royal family, and few elsewhere, can be far from thinking about William’s mother, the most influential British royalty in recent history. She changed the culture of modern monarchy, making the most of her position even as she navigated the waters between outrageous global fame and real life. She also raised two decent young men under impossible circumstances, one of whom became a father today.

Diana would be a grandmother today. And she would be proud.

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