Tuesday, April 22, 2003 :::
 
Predator Conservation Alliance...Wilmington, NC...Bernard Lewis...Stupid Multi-culti...What Drives Pop Stars Off the Deep End...A Quick Note on JPII...

e-mail: amindthatsuits@yahoo.com

There is something called the Predator Conservation Alliance. They work to protect the habitats of predators large and small. Their website makes reference to scientific research, but their list of accomplishments seems to fall entirely in what they call "administrative and legal avenues," i.e., they lobby and go to court. The Predator Conservation Alliance is currently working to help prairie dogs, the most adorable member of the squirrel family. Mall sprawl has transformed them from pests to a quickly disappearing species, and the Predator Conservation Alliance wants to save them. Wait a minute: predators, courts, pests...didn't that used to be called the American Bar Association?

There has got to be a better way to run this railroad. A Mind That Suits spent another delightful weekend in Wilmington, NC, known to most of you as home to TV's Dawson and his gang. It is a wonderful area, separated from the rest of North Carolina by miles and miles of marshes and pig farms. Nice place for a relatively inexpensive getaway. It's even cheaper if your Dad retired there. TV exposure and a large Corning plant have turned it into a small economic dynamo. There's only one problem: it has exactly two main roads, US Hwy 17 (the old coast highway) and a long business loop that runs to its East. Coming from lunch on Friday, A Mind That Suits took his father's suggestion and tried to avoid traffic by going over to the business loop, only to get stuck in a mile-long traffic jam caused by a serious accident. Coming back into town for dinner, A Mind That Suits had to slow down for emergency vehicles racing to another accident, just up from where the business loop rejoins 17, and traffic was again backed up, this time for miles. So the same stretch of same road in the same direction was shut down at lunch and at evening rush hour. With barely 100,000 people, WIlmington has achieved Washington, DC-ness, and, conservative Republican though A Mind That Suits indisuptably is, he must enter an objection to the notion that there is nothing wrong with an automobile-based economy.=.

Two Essential Books on Islam and the Middle East. This weekend was given over in part to absorbing Bernard Lewis's latest fasinating book, The Crisis of Islam. His legendary knowledge of the history of Islam and an eye for the telling detail combine to make it the most informative book on the whole subject that A Mind That Suits has seen, at least since, 'What Went Wrong? ,an account of the difficulty the once mighty Islamic civilization had in absorbing modern culture, written by...Bernard Lewis. Whether you feel that your waiter's personal woes give you an insight into a fascinating culture, an insight that has escaped the entire US government, or whether you feel that the Middle East is dominated by hopelessly backward countries that will only cause us trouble, a few hours with Lewis will do serious harm to your preconceptions. Both books are short--around 200 pages--and elegantly written.

Stupid Multiculturalism. That's the phrase that A Mind That Suits uses to describe most of what passes for intellectual discourse in the universities these days, and he simply must come up with a better name. It will do for now. There is real multiculturalism, which assumes that other cultures actually do things differently, and understands that learning about them can be hard and rewarding work. That is almost unheard of in school these days. The indispensible Diane Ravitch, who has studied the history of educational fads and their effect on our schools for many years has now produced The Language Police, an account of words forbidden in school textbooks. She seems to have done her usual thorough and insightful job, and A Mind That Suits is looking forward to reading it and getting really, really angry.

e-mail: amindthatsuits@yahoo.com

What Drives Pop Stars Off the Deep End. It seems to have done in Michael Jackson and Garth Brooks. Lionel Ritchie and U2 both caught themselves in time and gave it up. There are too many others to mention who were, at least, tempted by it.

"It" is competing with Paul McCartney. What these artists all admitted to at one point or another was a desire to unseat the Beatles from the Total Record Sales throne. Some would owe a great debt to them musically, and some would try their hardest to be different. All of them have failed; some of them have gone into hiding; and some have gone into a kind of hiding. Prince, e.g., may well have put himself image-repositioning hell because his own--often brilliant and original--music is so indebted to the Fabs.

The Beatles as a collective entity still pack a wallop. Over the 1999-2000 Christmas season, while the music business was searching for the latest trend, the Beatles topped the charts, and every young person I know seems to love them. So the Beatles' total record sales keep going up. The goal post keeps moving, and no one can even cross into field goal range.

But it's more than that. The era of mass entertainment is coming to a close; we are entering the era of global private entertainment, where specialized services cater to every taste and no one knows what anyone else is listening to. The music industry is being devastated by file downloading, so entertainers will have to depend on touring. There may be no more "household names" like Bruce Springsteen or Frank Sinatra. And one man really rules the record book from the closing era.

As it happens, A Mind That Suits is a much bigger fan of John Lennon and George Harrison, but one giant fact is unavoidable. Paul McCartney had a little something to do with the Beatles' enormous success, and he then went on to be the defining pop music figure of the 1970's, even if in retrospect punk gets more respect and, towards the end, disco seriously did a number on the dominance of Wings' proto-hair-metal sound. (McCartney's highly successful if inane disco hit,"Coming Up," which came out, I think, in 1981, had an air of giving in to the inevitable about it.) Anyone who was alive and listening to the radio can testify to the ubiquity of Macca's distinctive airy tenor. Add the combined sales of McCartney's solo career and of Wings to those of the Beatles, and you can easily see why the artists who tried to grab for the title have given up.

On top of that, various dates on Paul McCartney's current farewell tour probably fill the entire Top Ten Most Quickly Sold Out Concerts in History. As it happens, A Mind That Suits saw one of the only Paul McCartney concerts in the last 40 yeras that has not sold out, a July 4th show at DC's venerable RFK Stadium in 1989. A strange thing to be able to brag about, I guess, but it was a great, great show. (A Mind That Suits was in the company of the proprietor of clubbeaux, who is not a big Beatles fan, but you should check out his blog anyway.) As this tour is proving yet again, the concert stage has always been his best friend, and it will continue to be as long as he wants to keep playing.

The farewell tour is better than the late '80's tour, if only because the famously control-happy McCartney took some risks and played more obscure songs, and he is no longer driven to stay at Number One. But can there be shades of magnificence? There are certainly annoying McCartney-isms--too many to list here--but his popularity is built on a real record of accomplishment that covered a quarter of a century.

This reflection was inspired by a little gift-giving this weekend. A younger friend is moving away, and he is the most enormous Beatles fan you can imagine. When I told him I had seen the farewell show, he scrunched up his face and asked, "Did Paul McCartney do anything good after the Beatles?" I supppose that makes up for all the teenagers in 1975 who were amazed to discover that Paul McCartney had been in some other band than Wings, but it is a sign how much he has slipped out of the public consciousness in the last 12 years.

So this weekend, in lovely Wilmington, NC, I bought my friend, as a going away gift, McCartney's new greatest hits compilation, Wingspan: Hits and History. Lots of people hate Paul, or say they do, but he has a stunning array of songs that make those same people say, "I'll admit that's a great one." Wingspan has many of them, and it is worth a listen if you have forgotten just how great Paul McCartney is.

On a Much More Serious Note A Mind That Suits helped a reporter friend sort through the latest encyclical from John Paul II, and so got to see the press copy a few hours before it became public. As it made great Easter reading, I read it through pretty much every day. It is well worth reading, for those of you who are into such things.. A synopsis is available here. Click on "in inglese."

For my previous discussion of John Paul II and this encyclical (before I saw it), please go to the related blog, The Fullness of Him.

Yes, it's funny that you have to know the word for "English" in Italian before you can read the English.
e-mail: amindthatsuits@yahoo.com


See you tomorrow...

::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 12:21 PM


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