Moritz von Schwind, Schubertiade, 1867

I thought I ought to follow the example of my friends at Maggie’s Farm and, by way of sharing some personal knowledge of high points of the recorded repertoire, start making a regular practice of posting a link to particular performances and recordings.

This particular lieder performance by Elly Ameling is truly remarkable, indubitably the best single performance of Hirt auf dem Felsen ever. I found immediately, simply glancing through references on-line, that my own opinion is widely, and very articulately, shared.

The mp3 on YouTube is, alas! a pale shadow of the CD, which is, in turn, a pale shadow of the old LP version, but such is life.

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Reviews:

N.A. writes in a 1990 Gramaphone review:

Few, if any Schubert song recitals, have given me as much pleasure over the years as this one by the Dutch soprano, Elly Ameling. Originally… issued (on a long-playing record titled a) “Schubertiade.”… Ameling’s voice was perhaps at its very best at this time. ..

Der Hirt auf dem Felsen [features] the clarinettist, Hans Deinzer, playing an elderly instrument of unspecified provenance. … Ameling is sensitively accompanied… by Jorg Demus whose intimate playing on a fortepiano tuned with exquisite imperfection has proved over the years an indispensable ingredient of the Schubertiade. Demus brings more expression to the accompaniment than most, with beautifully judged rubato and delicately shaded dynamics. Ameling, fervent and wistful, with faultless intonation, impeccable diction and a rare warmth of sentiment leaves an indelible mark on the sensibilities; it’s a performance to treasure for a lifetime.

At Amazon, Russell F. Scalf of Berkeley, California writes:

Elly Ameling’s breathtaking performance of The Shepherd on the Rock just goes right through me. This may be my ‘island’ recording. You know, if you are banished to an island with just one recording forever, which one would it be? Maybe this one.

D Bullock of Newtown, Massachusetts, adds:

One of Schubert’s last and greatest songs (and that’s saying a lot for arguably the greatest songwriter of any era) was The Shepherd on the Rock (Der Hirt auf dem Felsen). This song, in which the soprano is joined by piano and clarinet, is very long and extremely challenging, because there are three distinct moods to be communicated by the singer, to say nothing of the sheer vocal gymnastics. I have long regarded the song as a bitterly unfair test for merely excellent sopranos, and I have great sympathy for any soprano courageous enough to attempt it in a live recital. It’s nearly impossible to bring off. I have purchased around 10 recordings of the song, all by famous sopranos, and all except one — Elly Ameling’s triumph on this CD — have notable shortcomings in one or another of the three phases of the song. When I listen in awe to Ameling’s glorious version, I sometimes imagine that Schubert, who died at far too young an age, has been granted a “second visit” to earth, and that he appears in the modern age, just there, on the sidewalk in front of my house. I run out and accost him on the street. “Mr. Schubert, there is something you must come to hear IMMEDIATELY. A soprano named Elly Ameling finally mastered every note and nuance of that (almost) impossible song!”

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Elly Ameling, soprano; Jörg Demus, piano; Hans Deinzer, clarinet

8:52 video

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Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, D 965
(The Shepherd on the Rock, D 965)

(The first four and the final verses are from Wilhelm Müller, verses five and six are by Karl August Varnhagen von Ense)

Wilhelm Müller – Der Berghirt

Wenn auf dem höchsten Fels ich steh,
ins tiefe Thal herneider seh,
und singe, und singe,
fern aus dem tiefen, dunkeln Thal
schwingt sich empor der Wiederhall,
der Wiederhall der Klüfte.

Je weiter meine Stimme dringt,
Je heller sie mir wiederklingt,
von unten, von unten.
Mein Liebchen wohnt so weit von mir,
drum sehn ich mich so heiß nach ihr
hinüber, hinüber.

(The Mountain Shepherd

The farther my voice carries,
The brighter it echoes back
From below, from far below.
My sweetheart lives so far away,
That’s why I long to be with her,
Over there, over there!)

Varnhagen – Nächtlicher Schall

In tiefem Gram verzehr’ ich mich,
mir ist die Freude hin,
auf Erden mir die Hoffnung wich,
ich hier so einsam bin,
ich hier so einsam bin.

So sehnend klang im Wald das Lied,
so sehnend klang es durch die Nacht,
die Herzen es zum Himmel zieht
mit wunderbarer Macht.

(Nocturnal Sounds

The sound of longing heard in the wood song,
The sound of longing through the night,
Lift hearts up to heaven
With miraculous power.)

Wilhelm Müller – Liebesgedanken

Der Frühling will kommen,
der Frühling meine Freud,
nun mach ich mich fertig zum Wandern bereit.

Je weiter meine Stimme dringt,
je heller sie mir widerklingt

(Love Thoughts
But now Spring is on its way,
Spring, that gladdens my heart,
And I make myself ready
To go out walking.

The farther my voice carries,
The brighter it echoes back.)

Newsweek is for sale. Why?

Bloomberg:

Newsweek, the magazine that Washington Post Co. said this week is for sale, reported a 31 percent decline in first-quarter revenue.

The weekly news magazine’s sales fell to $29.4 million from $42.7 million a year earlier, according to a statement today. Washington Post Chief Executive Officer Donald Graham said May 5 that Newsweek would continue to be unprofitable this year after losses from 2007 through 2009.

Washington Post hired investment bank Allen & Co. to help with a possible sale of the publication, which it’s owned since 1961. Newsweek’s advertising sales plunged 30 percent in 2009 and the magazine cut its guaranteed circulation by 42 percent to 1.5 million as part of a redesign last year.

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Iowahawk is issuing a commemorative reprinting of the satirical piece he wrote back in May of 2009 when Newsweek’s new swing left was announced.

Are they gone?

God, I thought those idiots would never leave. Finally, we can be together — just you and me baby. Do you realize how long I’ve waited for this moment, how much I’ve lusted for your beautiful hipster demographics? How long I sat there on the rack at Barnes and Noble, watching in silence while your fingers slowly caressed the pages of The America Prospect and New Republic and Mother Jones, dreaming that one day you’d actually notice me and take me over to the coffee bar? Baby, I wouldn’t even have cared if you spilled hot macchiato on my table of contents, that’s how much I am into you.

God, it’s such a relief to finally give up that stupid facade of objectivity and tell you how I really feel. It’s like I was trapped in some sort of circulation prison with that clueless 55+ slightly upscale middle America demographic. Sure, they brought home the Lipitor and Viagra accounts, but did you know they actually voted for Bush? Seriously, I’m not kidding! For the last 8 years I’ve tried sending them and you signals that I wanted out. God, I think I must have run 100 covers on Barack and Jon Stewart trying to let you know I was available.

All that’s changed, and I can finally be me. With them out of the picture, you and I can have happiness together. I know I’m not as cool as your other progressive news magazines and websites right now, but I can change. I promise! Look, I know how you like your magazines thin and opinionated. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve lost over 20 pages in the last year. And with my lower circulation, I know I can lose another 15 pages before Fall, just in advertising! Guess what? I’ve even picked out a sexy, flimsy little editorial policy that lets you see everything. (Including my boho bourgeois socialism, which I had Swedish-waxed… just for you :D).

Just wait baby, I’ll make you forget all your old magazines. I’ll be cooler and thinner and more sanctimonious and money-losing than all of them. Even Harpers. And no more awkward meetings at the dentist office! I’m done with these suburban strip mall dumps. From now on you’ll want to pull me out of your messenger bag at Intelligencia Coffee, and introduce me to all your cool friends who have crushing student loans and interesting haircuts and jobs at Kinkos. And after that, maybe we can get Thai, and…

Read the whole thing.

Thursday was a painful day to be a democrat. Minnesota Senator Al Franken, recently promoted from Hollywood clown to legislative Solon, delivered firm evidence of his worthiness for high office by delivering a nine minute speech endorsing the Dodd “Financial Reform” bill in the course of which he pointed to a Washington Post Tom Toles cartoon as evidentiary proof of the need for the bill’s passage.

Franken then actually proceeded to elucidate the cartoon at length, explaining to his fellow senators exactly what each detail represented and just how the whole thing should be interpreted: “There you see an apple core. A fishhead skeleton. A banana. You don’t want those on the ice, you just don’t want that. That’s bad.”

If anyone ever doubted that Franken was playing himself as the baggage handler in Trading Places (1983), there you are.

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Full version video

George Smiley speculates, from a professional perspective, on how the Times Square bomber was so rapidly apprehended.

Remember how angry the left used to be about Bush Administration warrantless eavesdropping? There is a pretty strong likelihood that something very much of the kind may have recently occurred.

Shortly after Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad was apprehended, various accounts began to circulate about how the authorities managed to track him down. One of the most intriguing appeared on the WCBS-TV website (and has since been removed). It suggested that intelligence assets were involved in tracing Shahzad’s cell phone conversations. We instantly regretted not saving a copy of the story, but The Talkmaster saw the same item, and offered this summary:

They knew he had one of those throw-away cell phones, and they knew the number. It was the number he used to call the lady who sold him the SUV. So, as I understand it, our intelligence people had some “assets” in the air over New York City that were intercepting cell phone calls and sifting through them looking for this one number. Finally they caught this guy making a phone call to the reservations number for Emirates Airlines. Like I said, pretty scary, and impressive.

If we recall correctly, WCBS originally reported that “Army” intelligence aircraft were used in tracking the suspect’s cell phone conversations. If that’s the case (and no one has actually confirmed the original report by Channel 2), the most likely candidate is the RC-12 Guardrail, a Corps-level Army SIGINT asset that collects communications and electronic intelligence. Operating in groups of three, Guardrail aircraft can collect over a wide area and transmit their “haul” to ground collection stations. …

[Thereafter, who knows? certain ground signals platforms might have] beam[ed] their collection directly to the National Security Agency for further analysis and dissemination. .. If you’re looking for a single cell phone–in a sea of millions–it’s quite helpful to have NSA and its massive collection and identification capabilities on your side.

Still, using an organization like NSA to assist in the hunt for a terrorist (who happens to be an American citizen and is inside our borders to boot) puts the government on shaky legal ground. In most operations of this type, the Justice Department would have to go to the FISA court for a warrant, authorizing electronic surveillance for Mr. Shahzad. But, as we’ve learned in recent years, it sometimes takes two or three weeks to obtain that type of warrant–too slow to nab a suspected terrorist who may be trying to flee the country.

How would the feds overcome that legal obstacle? This is pure conjecture on our part, but in this type of scenario, something called Echelon would be quite useful. To be sure, the existence of the program (an information collection and sharing agreement between NSA and its British, Canadian and Australian partners) has been widely debated. Officially, NSA has refused to confirm that the program was established and remains operational.

So, for argument’s sake, let’s say the program exists, and provides significant collection and analysis for the western SIGINT agencies. We’ll also speculate that this arrangement is largely transparent, with data being collected and exchanged almost instantaneously. With those capabilities in place, it would be possible for Britain’s GCHQ (their version of NSA) to run collection against Faisal Shahzad, then tip U.S. authorities when he made that call to Emirates Air. That would give the feds actionable intelligence, allowing them to converge on JFK Airport, and remove the suspect from the Dubai-bound flight.

We should also mention that the “seamless” relationship allows organizations like GCHQ to receive and analyze information collected from U.S. platforms, like the RC-135. While the raw data was gathered by an American aircraft, the analysis is done by British specialists, who can then pass it on to their U.S. counterparts. It may sound like an unnecessary “extra” step, but if you’re under enormous pressure to find an American suspect on U.S. soil–and you don’t have the time to dot every “i” and cross every “t” in FISA court, this arrangement can provide an effective work-around? …

[The original surveillance by airplane report was from] WCBS-TV. Either the story was completely off-base (a distinct possibility), or a federal official spoke a little too freely and the station was asked to spike the story. Additionally, we later managed to find a copy of the station’s original report at the left-wing website FireDogLake:

Shahzad, 30, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen, has been in custody since shortly after midnight. He was hauled off a plane in the nick of time as it was about to fly to the Middle East. CBS 2 obtained air traffic control recording intended to stop the pilots from taking off. The controller alerts pilots to “immediately” return to the gate.

In the end, it was secret Army intelligence planes that did him in. Armed with his cell phone number, they circled the skies over the New York area, intercepting a call to Emirates Airlines reservations, before scrambling to catch him at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

We don’t often agree with the folks at FireDogLake, but they got it right in noting that the original WCBS report raises some rather interesting questions. We won’t hold our breath waiting for answers.

We probably won’t be seeing cartoons like this one, though.

video frame shows XM25 round exploding just inside window target

The Army’s equipment development and procurement office, Program Executive Office (PEO) Soldier, was kind enough to invite Wired’s Nathan Hodge to the Aberdeen Proving Ground to test a variety of toys including the XM25 (25mm) grenade launcher, a non-lethal green laser, improved night-vision goggles, a new easily-changed (no headspace or timing adjustment needed) barrel for the ever-popular M2 .50 caliber Browning machine gun, and a Modular Accessory Shotgun system, consisting of a straight-pull bolt-action 12-gauge shotgun that can be used as a standalone weapon or as an under-barrel accessory on a rifle or carbine. The shotgun makes a useful tool for opening locked doors and is an effective close-range definitive argument as well.

Let’s hope PEO Soldier adds NYM to its list of journalist invitees next time. I’m not too far from Aberdeen.

Flooded neighborhood, Monday, May 3

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The flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 obsessed the media and produced a storm of criticism for an insufficiently massive and rapid federal response that turned national opinion finally against George W. Bush, making him into a lame duck for the rest of his second term, and presaging democrat recovery of both Congress and the White House. The New Orleans flood was treated as terribly important.

Recently, the Cumberland River crested Monday at 51.9 feet, 12 feet above flood stage, spilling over its banks into the city of Nashville, Tennessee, flooding a historic downtown, producing billions of dollars in damages and killing at least 30 people. Meanwhile, national news coverage has focused instead on an oil spill in the Gulf which had not even yet reached shore, and a car bomb in Times Square that did not even explode.

Why the differences in perceived significance and coverage? Andrew Romano explains that it’s a herd thing. They all cover what everybody else covers and they have a seriously limited attention range.

As you may have heard, torrential downpours in the southeast flooded the Tennessee capital of Nashville over the weekend, lifting the Cumberland River 13 feet above flood stage, causing an estimated $1 billion in damage, and killing more than 30 people. It could wind up being one of the most expensive natural disasters in U.S. history.

Or, on second thought, maybe you didn’t hear. With two other “disasters” dominating the headlines—the Times Square bombing attempt and the Gulf oil spill—the national media seems to largely to have ignored the plight of Music City since the flood waters began inundating its streets on Sunday. A cursory Google News search shows 8,390 hits for “Times Square bomb” and 13,800 for “BP oil spill.” “Nashville flood,” on the other hand, returns only 2,430 results—many of them local. As Betsy Phillips of the Nashville Scene writes, “it was mind-boggling to flip by CNN, MSNBC, and FOX on Sunday afternoon and see not one station even occasionally bringing their viewers footage of the flood, news of our people dying.”

So why the cold shoulder? I see two main reasons. First, the modern media may be more multifarious than ever, but they’re also remarkably monomaniacal. In a climate where chatter is constant and ubiquitous, newsworthiness now seems to be determined less by what’s most important than by what all those other media outlets are talking about the most. Sheer volume of coverage has become its own qualification for continued coverage. (Witness the Sandra Bullock-Jesse James saga.) In that sense, it’s easy to see why the press can’t seem to focus on more than one or two disasters at the same time. Everyone is talking about BP and Faisal Shahzad 24/7, the “thinking” goes. So there must not be anything else that’s as important to talk about. It’s a horrible feedback loop.

Of course, the media is also notorious for its ADD; no story goes on forever. Which brings us to the second reason the Nashville floods never gained much of a foothold in the national conversation: the “narrative” simply wasn’t as strong. Because it continually needs to fill the airwaves and the Internet with new content, 1,440 minutes a day, the media can only trade on a story’s novelty for a few hours, tops. It is new angles, new characters, and new chapters that keep a story alive for longer. The problem for Nashville was that both the gulf oil spill and the Times Square terror attempt are like the Russian novels of this 24/7 media culture, with all the plot twists and larger themes (energy, environment, terrorism, etc.) required to fuel the blogs and cable shows for weeks on end. What’s more, both stories have political hooks, which provide our increasingly politicized press (MSNBC, FOX News, blogs) with grist for the kind of arguments that further extend a story’s lifespan (Did Obama respond too slowly? Should we Mirandize terrorists?). The Nashville narrative wasn’t compelling enough to break the cycle, so the MSM just continued to blather on about BP and Shahzad.

Iowahawk‘s latest is a Bloomberg Holmes classic detective, with Eric Holder playing the role of Watson!

“What have we here, officer?” Holmes inquired of the chief constable on the scene, pausing to alternately suck in his left and right nostrils and shudder in deep contemplative satisfaction.

“Open and shut case, you lordship,” said the man, whose badge bore the name Sainsbury. “Roight. Now if you look here, this is a late model Nissan sport utility brougham, registered to a man what goes by the name of Faisal Shahzad, and what soaped up these signs in th’ windows that says ‘death to those who insult the prophet,’ all written up in the Arabic nice-as-you-like. Now if you look, the vehicle is parked pretty-as-you-please in front of Parker & Stone’s…”

“Parker & Stone? Do you mean those ghastly men who produce the South Park penny dreadfuls that have so offended the city’s peaceful Muhammedans?” I inquired. “I thought they were to be taken in for questioning.”

“Patience, Holder. It is the next item on my agenda after shutting down the sodium dens,” said Holmes. “Go on, officer.”

“Roight. It seems our Mr. Shahzad is a member of the mosque of the cleric what read him a death fatwa against Parker & Stone. Now sir, if you look inside the brougham you’ll see what is some wires that is set up to this bomb, ready to go off with this mobile telly, and a basket of baklava and a note what says ‘Dear Faisal, good luck with the big infidel cartoonist killing, Love, Mum.’ Ah, there’s our suspect now!”

Our discussion was interrupted by another constable, an affable Chinaman by the name of Ming, accompanied by a swarthy ululating young man whom he had entrapped in handcuffs.

“Pinched ’em sarge!” enthused the man’s captor. “An’ just in th’ nick of toime. Just as you said, the scoundrel was down at the docks tryin’ to stow away on a tramp steamer to the Suez.”

“Well well well, what ‘ave we here?” said Constable Sainsbury, reaching into the man’s pocket without so much as a warrant. “A mobile telly what has the number of the bomb telly on the old speed dial. Book ‘im, lad!”

“Unhand this man at once, you incompetent fools!” exhorted Bloomberg Holmes, angrily smacking the Nissan with his magnifying glass. “He may be speaking and gesticulating in a tongue strange to our ears, but it is quite obvious he is protesting his innocence!”

“…but sir…” stuttered Sainsbury.

“But nothing, Sainsbury. Why would a guilty man so vehemently maintain his innocence, particularly one who is a devotee of the religion of peace?”

“but sir, I assumed…”

“And quite obviously assuming makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘Ming.’ With its own constabulary engaged in such blatant racialist profiling, is it any wonder our city’s peaceful Mohammedans are occasionally driven to piques of frustration? If nothing else, that cavernous hole in lower Gotham should stand as a monument to the consequences of such blithe and ignorant bigotry.”

“I… I don’t know what to say, your Lordship,” said Ming, head held low in shame.

“Say nothing more,” said Holmes. “Release this man at once, and turn in your badges. On the morrow, you shall report for mandatory diversity training. Consider yourselves fortunate if you are reassigned to the anti-sugared drink enforcement squadron. As for you, Mr. Shahzad, please accept my sincerest apologies for interrupting your evening activities, and my personal invitation to serve as Grand Marshall in the gala Macy’s parade. If you would like to file a discrimination suit over this unfortunate incident, my friend General Holder will be delighted to assist you.”

I tipped my silk hat to the young man and handed him my calling-card.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

During WWII, we intentionally targeted civilian population centers for bombing raids and Axis enemies hiding behind civilians would never have worked because Allied troops would have opened fire anyway and shrugged off civilian casualties as simply collateral damage and the enemy’s fault anyway.

No one would have considered sacrificing a single American life to allow the enemy to get away with hiding behind civilians.

Today, in the age of the domestic war critic, Western military commanders are starting to balance their own casualties against the harm to the cause they are fighting for that can be inflicted by stories about injury to innocent civilians eagerly disseminated by journalists. The enemy hiding behind civilians works just great and is rewarded with immunity.

Yahoo News:

NATO commanders are weighing a new way to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan: recognizing soldiers for “courageous restraint” if they avoid using force that could endanger innocent lives.

The concept comes as the coalition continues to struggle with the problem of civilian casualties despite repeated warnings from the top NATO commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, that the war effort hinges on the ability to protect the population and win support away from the Taliban.

Those who back the idea hope it will provide soldiers with another incentive to think twice before calling in an airstrike or firing at an approaching vehicle if civilians could be at risk.

Most military awards in the past have been given for things like soldiers taking out a machine gun nest or saving their buddies in a firefight, said Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall, the senior NATO enlisted man in Afghanistan.

“We are now considering how we look at awards differently,” he said.

Mona Charen warns that the only thing likely to save democrats in future years is the alienation of a Hispanic vote that naturally belongs to the GOP by nativism and law-and-order games over immigration.

Imagine yourself inside Democratic National Committee headquarters, in the department of long-term planning. Huddling in the no longer smoke-filled room, stocked no doubt with eco-friendly coffee cups and whole-wheat snacks, the savants are pleased with themselves. In the great game of buying constituencies for more government, they believe that the gargantuan health care law is the greatest coup in history. Not only did it create millions more mendicants, but with the new legislation weighing in at 2,000 pages, endless new work for two other favored groups – lawyers and bureaucrats. Brilliant!

Pushed to the back of their minds are disquieting facts such as these: The health reform law remains deeply unpopular, with 55 percent (Rasmussen) saying they would like to see it repealed. The Congress that pushed it to passage has approval ratings of 23 percent (Gallup). President Obama’s approval ratings (Bill Clinton’s confident pre-vote predictions to the contrary notwithstanding) have not rebounded since passage.

Never mind, the Democrats reason, by hanging Wall Street around Republicans’ necks and by reviving the immigration controversy (with a great deal of help from the state of Arizona), Democrats will win out. Maybe not in 2010, as off-year electorates tend to skew older and whiter, but certainly by 2012, when President Obama stands for re-election.

The financial reform bill has yet to fully play out. But by stoking controversy over immigration, the Democrats are making a shrewd move. If Hispanics vote in 2010 as they did in 2008, it would be virtually impossible for a Republican to win.

John McCain won 55 percent of the white vote in 2008. Bravo for him. Even with 95 percent of African-Americans voting for Obama, McCain would have taken the oath of office had it not been for the lop-sided Hispanic vote that went for Obama by 67 percent. While it is true that estimates of the total Hispanic vote percentage have often been overblown (the total Hispanic vote in 2008 was 8 percent, not the 15 percent widely cited), the vote can be crucial in some key states. In California, Hispanics comprised 16 percent of the vote in 2008. In Florida, it was 14 percent, and in Colorado 13 percent.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 74 percent of California Hispanics voted for Obama, along with 61 percent of Hispanic Coloradans, and 57 percent of Hispanic Floridians. …

Hispanics are not ideologically committed. Not yet. George W. Bush received a respectable 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004. As Clint Bolick outlined in the Hoover Digest, a 2006 survey by Latino Coalition found that 34.2 percent of Hispanic voters considered themselves conservative, while only 25.8 called themselves liberals. More than 53 percent agreed that it was more important for Hispanics to become integrated into American society than to preserve their native cultures. Offered a choice between higher taxes and more government spending or lower taxes and less government spending, 61.2 percent favored the latter. Moreover, like other Americans, Hispanics tend to vote more Republican as they age.

Hispanic voters do feel very differently from many conservatives about immigration. Pew found that 53 percent of Hispanics worried about deportation in 2007, including 32 percent of the native born, and also that 55 percent opposed verification of citizenship before obtaining driver’s licenses.

Hat tip to Kenneth Grubbs.

Algis Valiunas, in Commentary, places the garbage can lid on the tomb of Norman Mailer, who was back in the day widely regarded as a great American writer.

Mailer’s career mirrored the poses and vacuities of 1950s Beat culture, 1960s radical culture, and the fretful decadence and narcissism of the establishment community of fashion over several decades. In the end, Valiunas concludes, a writer’s art has an intimate connection with what he believes and how he lives. In Mailer’s case, it cannot be entirely surprising a depraved personal life and a melange of simplistic ideas produced bad art.

His vulgarity was a more significant factor in his allure than whatever he possessed of high aspiration. The way his most serious ambition was joined to his crassest need made him singularly appealing to a literary public that fed on nonsensical political ideas and fantasies of artistic superstardom, with its fabulous perquisites of cultural ubiquity, wealth, and hot sex.

He fancied himself one of the big thinkers, and most of his ideas were not only bad but appalling; for he lived largely for the body’s pleasures, actual and vicarious, and adopted ideas that serviced those pleasures. T.S. Eliot remarked that a great writer creates the taste by which he is appreciated; Mailer helped create the moral confusion amid which he was glorified—not quite what Eliot had in mind.

Until he is forgotten, Mailer should be remembered not only in a fool’s cap and bells but also in a scoundrel’s midnight black. For in an age crawling with intellectual folly, he was one of the reigning dunces, even his best works were shot through with adolescent fatuities, while the worst of his words and deeds were stupid and vicious without bottom. One is torn between wishing that his memory would disappear immediately and wanting his remains to hang at the crossroads as a lasting reminder to others.

The democrats are in charge up in my home state of Pennsylvania, and this is what you get:

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Some days it’s easy to be happy that I don’t live there anymore.

A lot of taxpayers’ money was wasted on this impressive entrance

Yahoo News:

The Supreme Court is closing its iconic front entrance beneath the words “Equal Justice Under Law.”

Beginning Tuesday, visitors no longer will ascend the wide marble steps to enter the 75-year-old building. Instead, they will be directed to a central screening facility to the side of and beneath the central steps that was built to improve the court’s security as part of a $122 million renovation.

Two justices, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, called the change unfortunate and unjustified.

Breyer said no other high court in the world, not even Israel’s, has closed its front entrance over security concern. …

Other justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, have spoken fondly of being able to walk up the steps and through the 1,300-pound bronze doors at the center of the court’s columned entryway. Justice Anthony Kennedy told C-SPAN last year that the steps and the words, written by building architect Cass Gilbert, were intended to inspire visitors and justices alike.

The court said the new entrance grew out of two independent security studies in 2001 and 2009.

The fortress-mentality that has taken over all the court houses I’ve visited in recent years has finally reached the Supreme Court of the United States.

The monumental entrance is just not ideally conducive to electronic searches, so it will no longer be used for its intended purpose.

In my lifetime, we’ve gone from the America of Norman Rockwell to the Amerika of Franz Kafka and the security state that makes you remove shoes in airport boarding lines. Arriving visitors and attorneys will get to slink in some subterranean bunker entrance where they can be properly channeled through security stops. Our courthouses are not open to the public any longer. Who knows? Someone might try to rebel and attack the authorities. All our officials need constant protection from us.

I can remember just a bit over a decade ago being in the Clinton County Courthouse in Lock Haven (Pennsylvania) researching a few deeds in the Recorder’s Office. There were some good old boys in camouflage, their shotguns leaning on the wall, practicing turkey calls in the corridor while the ladies in the sheriff’s office critiqued their performances through the open doorway.

Today, you get searched every time you walk into a courthouse. The first time I ran into this kind of crap outside the big city was in Danbury, Connecticut in the mid-1990s. The rent-a-cop demanded I remove my belt, and in my outrage and frustration I delivered an indignant ex tempore sermon on the subject of the decline of freedom in the United States to the general population in the hallway.

The security guard scoldingly informed me that I should be grateful that he was protecting a mere civilian like me against someone coming into the building with a gun and injuring me. He then warned me against openly challenging official policies.

My wife wasn’t present, and I got a little more angry.

“Why exactly is somebody carrying a gun such a big deal?” I deliberately responded. “You have a gun, you little pipsqueak.” I observed, “I don’t, and I’m not afraid of you.” I then leaned toward him, invading his personal space and grinned, implicitly offering him an invitation to reach for it, feeling quite sure I could swat him before he could clear his holster. He thought seriously about it for a few seconds, and decided not to try.

I got some mixed reactions from the crowd. Several people gave me some very fishy looks. A few guys grinned. The security guard did his best to look intensely occupied, and the moment passed.