Children now in third grade might graduate from high school without ever experiencing a totally Romney-free day. This is not something I’m happy pointing out. For one thing, I don’t want to believe I live in a country that would seriously consider bestowing the nation’s highest office on a man who once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car. ---Gail Collins, New York Times
Two pieces in the New York Times this morning kind of sum up something about the zeitgeist, using two people from totally opposite ends of the spectrum, Hank Williams and Mitt Romney. Williams has been dead for 58 years, and is still a factor in American life. That's made really obvious by a new project, Bob Dylan's collaboration with poets, seers, prophets and troubadors to bring a box of unfinished songs written by Hank to life. While it seems like Romney has been bothering us for 58 years or so, the gollum from Michigan-Massachusetts-Utah-New Hampshire really hasn't been on the national stage that long. His major accomplishments have been downsizing and eviscerating American communities and industries, losing badly to Teddy Kennedy and getting health care reform passed in Massachusetts because he's such a strict constructionist. Yea, team...
Collins recommends giving your Republican friends cookies as they come to the realization that Romney's probably the one. A Romney - Pawlenty ticket looms and I'm sure that from Kennebunkport to the OC, from the Chamber of Commerce to the John Birch Society, nothing but glee abounds. MITT MITT MITT MITT. I suspect a pint of Everclear might be more appropriate.
Speaking of which, Hank Williams is a far more interesting person and source of inspiration. I'd like to thnk that 50 years from now, Mitt Romney will be a footnote in history -- also "ran for President based on a sense of entitlement and weaselliness in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020. Died in 2022. Ran for President in 2026, 2030." But, fifty years from now, Hank Williams will still be haunting us. If you play guitar and sing American music, it's probable that at some point you've tried to do a Hank Williams song; if you listen to country, rock, blues, jazz, folk you've listened to Hank Williams songs. If you've been in love and had it go wrong, you've lived Hank Williams songs.
So, this will be an interesting project with great players. I know I'm ordering it right away, and I recommend that you do too. Years ago, I had the stereo on in my office in Germany playing some Hank Williams, and a bunch of my young black soldiers came in and sat and listened. They were taken by it-- "I'm a rolling stone, all alone and lost; for a life of sin, I will pay the cost; when I walk by, all the people say, there goes a guy on the lost highway..." They thought I was listening to country blues, like Robert Johnson -- well, I was...
Comments