Editorials and Opinions

Gary Tischler • February 1, 2016

These days, we’re having more than a few “days the music died.”

Natalie Cole seems like a little while ago. David Bowie, just last week. Glenn Frey.

Frey, co-founder with Don Henley (his collaborator and best bud, no question) of the Eagles, the soulful, rock-and-country-tinged super band-hit machine of the endless summers of the 1970s, died Jan. 18 at the age of 67 from complications from rheumatoid arthritis, acute ulcerative colitis and pneumonia.

Henley, who issued the evocative solo album, “Cass County,” last year, said, “He was like a brother to me, we were family, and like most families, there was some dysfunction. But, the bond we forged 45 years ago was never broken, even during the time when the Eagles were dissolved. … Glenn was the one who started it all. He was the spark plug, the one with the plan. … We are all in a state of shock and disbelief and profound sorrow. … I will be grateful every day, that he was in my life… Rest in peace, my brother, you did what you set out to do, and then some.”

A mega-rock band, is still a group, so that when one of its members passes, there’s a temptation to go into tribute mode for the whole band.  With Frey, it’s probably entirely appropriate to do just that.  While and Henley wrote co-wrote many of the songs, and the band members—the originals were Frey, Henley, Randy Meisner, Bernie Leadon, Don Felder, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit, Frey was probably its most dynamic, charismatic and resonant member, who set the band’s tone.

That tone and that amalgam of talent over the years produced a huge number of just downright perfect hit songs, in the 1970s  songs that were particular but also universal mode, one that was hard-driving, full of rueful melancholy, romantically cynical, regretful about last night, eager for the next night. Their music was one of the most successful attempts to marry rock attitude and beats to the best and most resonant kind of country content, tinged with frayed cowboy hats, hangover blues and stretches of long highways with road stops at diners and clubs and somebody else’s bedrooms.

Run that list through your mind sometimes:  if you heard one of their songs, you’re bound to hear them a thousand times, same as ever, the lyrics going into your blood stream like a straight shot of pure, 30-year-old scotch.

Here you go start your engines, alphabetically: “Already Gone,” “Best of My Love,” “Desperado,” “Doolin-Dalton,” “Guilty of the Crime,” “Heartache Tonight,” “Hotel California,” “How Long,” “I Can’t Tell you Why,” “I Don’t Want to Hear It Anymore,” “James Dean,” “Life in the Fast Lane,” “Long Road Out of Eden,” “Lyin’ Eyes,” “One of These Nights,” “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” “Take It Easy,” “Take It To the Limit,” “Tequila Sunrise,” “The Long Run,” “Wasted Time,” “Witchy Woman.” You get a drift in just the song titles, of what it was like for them in the 1970s and beyond. Frey was long considered the Warren Beatty of rock and roll and did not shy away from drugs.

The Eagles always seemed to be on the verge of breaking up and eventually did, only to reform years later and tour again.

But the two versions, while much the same, in terms of the music, didn’t  quite look the same, especially Frey.

Look at them, those early Eagles. They appear as if they came out of the shade of the summer of love, the long hair, the eager playing, the frayed shirts, all of that tanned look, but the guitar rolls are the same, and the pretty blonde hippie madonnas in the audience are bopping up and down. Years later, here they are again, Frey, minus the beard, a friendly but craggy look, short hair, pink shirt, blue suit, playing hard, singing with soul and clarity and the same girls are out in the audience, with their boyfriends (now their husbands?), smiling knowing smiles at the lyrics. In later life, Frye, who had a solo career, was into fitness and health food, looked like a guy who could give a power-point talk.

First point:  Take It Easy.

Last point: Take it to the Limit.

He did both—personified it all.
 

Gary Tischler • January 31, 2016

Remember what Dorothy said to her dog? “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

No, we’re not. We’re in Iowa.

It’s only hours until that singular once-and-once-only American political event, the Iowa caucuses where Iowans gather in each voting precinct, voting together on their preference for who should be their nominee for president.

On Monday, around 7 p.m., Iowa Republicans will head to one of 1,681 precincts around the state (there are some 120,000 Republicans in the state, according to Election Central) and talk about their preferred candidates and express their preference by voting.  The Democrats, too, will gather together in ways too complicated to explain, but which will also given a concrete determination by way of voting.

All this will translate into percentages, hard numbers and so much seer-like media, round-the-clock commentary that it will make you head for an NCIS binge marathon, if you have nothing else to do.

Last Thursday, Jan. 28, the Republican Party held its last debate before the Iowa decision in Des Moines—minus Donald Trump, the leader in the national polls.  (It’s a wonder they didn’t have a empty podium on the stage, but no matter.) Trump, because Fox News decided to keep Megyn Kelly, the Vanity Fair cover girl, on as one of the three moderators, and furthermore, because some network swag had sent out a snarky notice that made fun of Trump, had instead decided to hold a charity rally of his own only a few miles away around the same time, raising money for American veterans. Just before the debate, there was an undercard debate featuring former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Carly Fiorina, former Senator Rick Santorum and former Governor of Virginia James Gilmore.  (Remember him? Me neither, although he has the lowest poll numbers of any of the remaining Republican candidates).

At one point during the evening, if you were channel switching, you could watch Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio battle it out over who was weakest or strongest on immigration, who said legalization or citizenship, jump to CNN while Trump was introducing his wife at a distance and listen as four reporters in cutouts trying to explaining the tortured machinations surrounding reports of phone chats between Trump and Fox News President Roger Ailes.  Did Trump call once, twice or numerous times?  We shall never know for certain.  Meantime, somewhere in Iowa, Hillary Clinton and the Bern, aka Socialist-Independent Bernie Sanders were also criss-crossing the state and importuning would-be voters.  So far, there have been no rumors that Madame Secretary has offered to have a shot and a beer with anybody.

Is this Oz, or what?

Trump’s announcement and then decision that he would not take part in the debate sucked out all of the air out of political media discussions.  Trump, as is his wont, complained that Kelly and Fox had not treated him fairly, and said that Kelly was a third rate reporter and that he would not call her a bimbo (as he had previously).  

By the time the debate rolled around, the process of turning  the American political process into a circus,  with Trump as P.T. Barnum, was beginning to be realized. As one CNN reporter suggested, quite accurately, that in the beginning there was concern that the businessman-showman-shaman Trump might become too much the politician.  The opposite has happened—the election process, thanks in large part to Trump and the kind of attention paid to him by the media—has become show biz.

The debate, as was noted by just about everyone, was conducted in the shadow of Trump. This might have led to some discussion about Trump’s absence, policies, thinking, behavior or even hair style, but, Kelly aside, the candidates themselves barely noted his absence. Cruz, usually a noticeably humorless man, did start off by taking a lame shot at Trump, saying, “I’m a ‘maniac,’ and everyone on this stage is ‘stupid’, ‘fat’ and ‘ugly,’ and Ben, you’re a ‘terrible surgeon. And now that we’ve gotten the Donald Trump portion out of the way . . .”

Nobody laughed. Some people booed.

Other than that everyone behaved pretty much as they did during the first debate.  Kelly produced video selections from Cruz and Rubio speeches in which they appeared to be weak on immigration issues, videos that Rubio and Cruz danced around like, if Fred Astaire, at least as well as you’re average amateur hoofer.  Rubio distinguished himself with an increasing bellicosity that may guarantee that ISIS may never again attack anybody.  In Iowa, in Republican, a notably evangelist state, we had a Rubio who mentioned Jesus and God frequently and with great passion, as if he spent more time in church than he does in the Senate, which may account for his absences on Capitol Hill.  John Kasich once again pointed out how he balanced his state’s budget, the governor of New Jersey once again reminded us that he prosecuted terrorist as a district attorney, and Jeb Bush fought the good fight with Rubio.  For a long time, no one seemed to notice that Carson was even there.

Nothing was different except: Trump was not there.

He was elsewhere, which if you went to CNN, you could clearly see, as he greeted strays from the undercard, Huckabee and Santorum, who had wandered on to the stage for no apparent reason.

Why is all this and Iowa so important? The Iowa Caucuses are where voters will cast the first real votes in the 2016 campaign, that’s why.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my.

Gary Tischler • January 28, 2016

I don’t know if Sunday amounted to must-see TV, but if you want to see what television is about in America and how it’s become one big, interconnected reality show, you could do worse than peek in on what was up on the tube Sunday morning, afternoon and night on Jan. 10.

We had Donald Trump on “Meet the Press,” Washington Redskins fans singing “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” and getting it broken. On the Left Coast, we had Ricky Gervais pied-pipering a host of celebrities behaving badly, weirdly, interrupted only by the sound of silence at the Golden Globe Awards Show, the first and probably most silly and odd  of award shows leading up to the Oscars later this year.

There isn’t a great distance between the GOP front-running presidential candidate Donald Trump, who lists really rich tycoon and host of the television reality show “The Apprentice” on his resume, and the parade of presenters, nominees, winners besotten with themselves and each other, presided over by Gervais, who was invited back like a prodigal, profitable son to host the show, Hollywood’s brazened-out version of “Cabaret.”   Surely, one of these years, all made-up with white paint, piercings and suspenders, Gervais will return, singing in his oily fashion, “Willkommen, meine Damen und Herren . . . Willkommen.”

Of course, should things not work out for Trump with this president thing, hosting the Golden Globes might be a good thing for him. Think of how many opportunities to call people “loser” that exist among the overblown categories in television and movies, presented by a group of overseas journalists who rather loosely cover the entertainment business, if not the waterfront.

Sunday on television highlighted our national obsessions of game—playing and watching. There’s the game of politics as a kind of perverse unreal reality show, led by ringmaster Donald, played out as a form of not-too-informative entertainment on television in shows like “Meet the Press” and the recent roundelay of GOP and Democratic debates.

There’s  the game of professional football in which fans make an inordinate emotional investment in the fortunes of their home teams should they still be playing this time of the year. This was especially true of Redskin fans, who went all in, convinced the team under its new coach and resurgent quarterback had turned the corner. 

Last, but not least, there’s the game, not of thrones, but trophies, presented as an entertainment in which the “Today Show” crew, which also presumes to report on politics and news, fawn over their good friends and neighbors like Will Smith and his family, Leonardo DiCaprio, compliment them on their gowns and jewel. They then mercifully dismiss themselves so that Gervais can insult the audience, while the winners try to find their way to the podium, a journey increasingly more difficult as the evening went on.

Trump went on “Meet the Press” in person to spar with Chuck Todd, as opposed to being interviewed on the phone or as a hologram.  Todd—who seemed, intimidated, at least overly friendly, and not a little wary—didn’t lay a glove or a hand on Trump. You never know, of course, what might set Trump off. He always lets people know if they’ve treated him nice, or not, like Jeb Bush or Megyn Kelly, or that Muslin woman who stood silent in protest at one of his rallies recently.   Trump was fairly well behaved and allowed that he was in a tight race with Ted Cruz in the upcoming Iowa caucus, a fact he seemed somewhat puzzled by.  But he let it be known that he was also puzzled by Cruz’s citizenship problem and also explained that, because Hillary Clinton went after him for his alleged sexism, it was O.K. to go after Bill Clinton for his reputation.  “He’s an abuser,” Trump said and noted the word rape had been mentioned by somebody. 

The interview was singularly unenlightening on the issues, but it had the appearance of being entertaining. Meantime, the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire primary are heading at us like a train with no brakes.  In Iowa, Bernie Sanders is suddenly closing in on Hillary Clinton. Sanders also leads Clinton in New Hampshire, where Trump has a solid lead among GOP candidates.

Speaking of winners and losers, the Redskins did turn the corner into an alley, where they were mugged by the Green Bay Packers and their still proficient, efficient quarterback Aaron Rodgers. It’s not that the Redskins played badly or underachieved, it’s that in these kind of pressure-filled games, they flinched a few times too often.  This was an exercise of dashed expectations for the fans.   Truth be told, I was one of them, at least I was hoping.  It hurts a little more than losing the Powerball lottery, which is only like losing a couple of bucks you left out in your jacket pocket. Still, there, you did it again—you had visions of another Super Bowl in your head.  When an announcer cut in for a preview of the 11 o’clock news to note that “the Redskins are already planning for next season,” it occurred to me to want to say, “That’s because they haven’t got anything else to do.”

That would have been churlish.  For that, we turn to Gervais, who did his very best to make transgender jokes, to be obscene, as if political correctness had already been slain by Trump, to once again get into a mouth fight with Mel Gibson, who got the better line when he said, “It’s good to see Ricky every three years, it reminds me to get a colonoscopy.”

That was about the level of the humor meted out by Gervais, who went on throughout the evening holding a drink which could have been either a stale glass of beer or a urine sample. He mocked the nominees for wanting an award that he said wasn’t important when the award was “worthless.” And so on.  The evening was highlighted by pockets of silence—which presumably bleeped out even more tasteless matter than was actually spoken.

Still, there is something about this kind of show: the red carpet, the beautiful people, the stars, the awards, the way people remember to thank their agent, and their mother and father, their friends, their agent.  This show being set among groups of tables where food and alcohol were consumed, it was looser than say the Oscars where people are stuck in their seats.  You have to love it in some disturbing way: I’m sure tears were shed when Sylvester Stallone won for supporting actor playing Rocky Balboa one more time and Leonardo DiCaprio won his for “The Revenant,” remaining as always an elusive movie star.   There are always moments. Ridley Scott,  who was named best director for “The Martian” in the comedy category, responded to attempts to keep within the time limit by saying, “Screw you.” Lady Ga Ga, who won a best actress for award for “American Horror Story: Hotel,” walked up to the stage in a slinky black dress, all black and blonde, as if auditioning for a future role as Nora Desmond.  Matt Damon won for “The Martian,” his second space movie, and “Mr. Robot” won best drama series.

I kept thinking of  Russell Crowe in the 2000 film, “Gladiator,” at Rome’s Coliseum, bloody sword in hand, yelling, “Are not you entertained? Is this not why you are here?”

You bet, Maximus.

Gary Tischler •

This Monday, this city, this country will be celebrating the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who would have been 86 years old Jan. 15, had not an assassin’s bullet ended his life at the age of 39 in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4 in that tragic, momentous year of 1968.

One of the highlights of the day, besides the Martin Luther King, Jr., parade is Georgetown University’s annual celebration of King’s life at the Kennedy Center. Click here for details on the free 6 p.m. event on Monday. Click here to see the week’s events dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr., at Georgetown University—and beyond.

King moved through his life, compelled and propelled to be the leader of a movement for justice, for peace, for righteousness—the vanguard leader of the Civil Rights Movement, seeking justice and rights apportioned to all Americans  for African Americans.  When the times were changing, he and his compatriots in leadership changed the culture and face of America.

It was an evolutionary process as he and the country changed. It was a sometimes violent, dangerous struggle, with casualties, chief among them King himself. He moved from schools to lunch counters, to the back-to-the-front-of-the bus and from the 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, to the Nobel Peace Prize—and, finally, to “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, hours before he died.

He and we, and all of us evolved, and we celebrate his birthday, only days after Barack Obama, the country’s first African American President—a fact that speaks volumes of books that are still not closed—gave his last State of the Union address.  In it, he called for an end to obstructions placed in the paths of some voters.

Civil rights and their achievement and interpretations are ongoing, still moving forward, still sometimes sliding backwards, still sometimes extended to more and more groups and people who have been thus denied.

After the United State of America was born in the forge of an idea that “all men are created equal,” we then fought a bloody civil war to achieve it fully by ending slavery, if not racism, and then took another century to achieve in actuality by ending Jim Crow. The nation still bleeds at times from the wounds of its past. 

There is little point in wondering if King would be at the forefront, marching with the folks  proclaiming that “Black Lives Matter”, and that he would be encouraged by the demonstrations  against perceived and less obvious forms of racism on the nation’s campuses. He would; we can say that with certainty.   He might give cogent, inspiring answers to the folks—the Trump followers railing against political correctness, the immigrant and the “other.”

History has a way of changing itself and how we view it. It makes us see some things as new, the old as an affront to the now and new, the past as informing the present—and vice versa.  That is part of King’s legacy, part of the man whose life we celebrate.  The achievements hitched to the rhetoric and the life are permanent, the life human, full of struggle, doubts and expressions of courage and vision, the words stirring us to action still.  

A monument to the life, the man and his words and achievements now graces the National Mall in Washington, D.C. People by the thousands remain drawn to it and will no doubt show up Monday to give due honor and reflect—or perhaps to join hands and sing the old songs of the movement, bringing the statue to life.

In our mind’s eye, flickering images remain. The spirit does not die, and many people—thousands and through time millions—still have a dream: his and ours.

Mark Plotkin • January 20, 2016

First of all, all of you should be aware that former Mayor Vincent Gray knows the exact date of this year’s D.C. Democratic primary by heart. [Full disclosure: this columnist and the former mayor have known each other since their college days at George Washington University.]

During an exclusive interview with him last week, as I struggled with the precise date, he eagerly informed me that it was June 14. Is this not a harbinger of things to come?

Gray would not commit to stating he would definitely run for a seat on the District Council. But he did say the following: “I love public service.” Now, the question is: Will it be in his home ward (7) or District-wide (for an at-large spot)? I would bet it will be in Ward 7.

He bluntly said, “People want change out here.” The incumbent Council member Yvette Alexander, a former Gray protégé, succeeded him after he moved on to become Council chairman.

Some observers (including me) presume that if he wins the Ward 7 Council seat, he will use it as a stepping stone to run for mayor in 2018.

With some intensity, Gray told me that this was not his plan. When I pushed him, he made the point clearly: “No stepping stone.” But when asked if he would issue a Sherman (“If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve”), he refused.

The former mayor is upset and angry over the four-and-a-half-to-five-year investigation that he has endured. In a matter-of-fact tone, he said he looked on the entire matter as “nothing that complex” and “pretty straightforward.” It all came down to “Was I aware of the situation,” he said. “Was I involved?” To that central question, Gray emphatically has said, “I wasn’t.”

When I inquired about his repeated meetings with Jeff Thompson (who pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing), Gray said that Thompson first declined when he approached him to help out with Gray’s campaign. But then, Gray recounted, Thompson called him and said, “I’d like to meet with you.” Gray admitted that there were two more meetings with Thompson, but said that Thompson “never asked me for a budget, nor did I give him one.”

Gray accused former U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen, who investigated and indicted individuals associated with the Gray 2010 campaign, of practicing “voter suppression.” He feels that, because Machen held a press conference three weeks before the April 1 Democratic primary, voters in Wards 5, 7 and 8 assumed that Machen would charge Gray and said to themselves, “I won’t show up and vote. Why bother?”

Vince Gray is adamantly proud of his record as mayor, pointing to education reform, fiscal prudence (he left his term with the city having “$1.87 billion in the bank”) and economic development, especially in the “east end of the city.” He is no fan of Mayor Muriel Bowser. He starkly commented about her: “I haven’t seen a vision for the city.” The citizens of D.C. are “still waiting,” he said.

It’s my opinion that Gray feels wronged. The only way to make it up is for him to jump back into the fray. That the U.S. Attorney General for the District of Columbia closed the case was vindication—but that alone will not do. He seeks to be back in the game. Many, many years ago, I watched him play intramural basketball at the Tin Tabernacle at GW. He always went straight to the basket, and he usually scored. That won’t change.

Political analyst Mark Plotkin is a contributor to the BBC on American politics and a contributor to TheHill.com. Reach him at markplotkindc@gmail.com.
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Gary Tischler • January 13, 2016

Nothing exists in a vacuum.  Not even, and especially, presidential State of the Union addresses.

President Barack Obama’s SOTU stood out in the context of—and in contrast to—other SOTU speeches, it was framed against the political atmosphere of the national presidential election race in which Republicans and Democrats are trying sometimes desperately to find a candidate around whom to rally.  That fact alone made the House of Representatives chamber echo with a singular partisanship measured in applause or the lack of it.

The Jan. 12 speech at the U.S. Capitol came wrapped in character and expectations for it to be a kind of summing up, autumnal, and perhaps both stirring and resigned.  

It came in the context of real time and real events out in the world, where the television media was already announcing a possible world crisis after Iran ships took control of two U.S. Navy boats which had accidentally moved in Iranian-controlled waters in the Persian Gulf.   Predictably, several GOP candidates seized the opportunity to complain about the Obama administration-authored nuclear deal with Iran, which is anathema to the Republicans.

There was in Obama’s speech a flavor of both bravado and regret, and a warning, one surprisingly echoed by South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who had been chosen to give the GOP rebuttal speech.

The bravado came in Obama’s repeated claim that the United States was, in fact, economically surging and sound, that it was military strong and stronger than every other country in the world, that his health care legislation had hugely expanded care to millions not covered before and that there was reason to be optimistic about the future and proud of the accomplishments of his two terms.

Reactions to Obama’s claims  depended almost exactly on where you were sitting—in the case of the members of Congress, quite literally.  The smaller section housing the Democrat senators and representatives cheered loud and often throughout, the GOP section remained glumly and notably silent throughout except for at least one very singular exception.

At one point, the president said, “It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln and Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office,” no small admission for a president noted for his rhetorical abilities.

He said that change and uncertainty had activated “a particularly virulent strain our politics.” “When politicians insult Muslims, whether abroad or our fellow citizens, when a mosque is vandalized or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer. . . . That’s not telling it like it is. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. It betrays who we are as a country.” 

This brought some general applause and may have signaled, without calling him out by name, a risible rise against Donald Trump, whose consistently intemperate language and outrages on the campaign trail has fueled his rise to the GOP lead in the polls. 

More surprisingly, that theme—about Trump, but not by name—was also echoed by Haley, who warned that Americans should “avoid the siren call of the angriest voices.”  Haley’s voice was likely to be listened to since she came from a family of Indian immigrants to rise to the governorship of South Carolina, hardly a blue state.

Obama praised his “friend and partner,” Vice President Joe Biden, who flashed his big grin often and engaged in what seemed like comradely banter with the new and stern-faced Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Obama announced a national effort to find a cure for cancer, to be headed by Biden, who lost his son Beau to the illness last year.

Talking about common values and common ground, Obama called for a halt to gerrymandering.  He said that democracy “does require basic bonds of trust between its citizens. … We have to choose a system to reflect our better selves.” But he recognized the difficult of affecting change: “It won’t be easy. What I’m asking for is hard.”

The silence that greeted those comments from the GOP side, deep and consistent, shows just how hard it will be. It’s likely that Ryan won’t be much help if his posture behind the president is any indication.  He applauded, very lightly, only about three times, two of them obligatory. He maintained a thin smile throughout, appearing to be above the fray and inscrutable, like a Cheshire Cat disguised as the Speaker of the House.

While Trump twittered that he found the speech “boring and lethargic,”  Senator Ted Cruz, who is slightly ahead in the polls in the Iowa caucus, said ahead of the speech that he didn’t show up because he had “a Canadian curling contest to attend.”  “I think the speech will be a series of acts of demagoguery,” he said.

Obama’s SOTU wasn’t anything like that.  It seemed both troubling and urgent, even impassioned,  because the political divide that took up a large part of the content of the speech was in the context of an atmosphere of apparently intractable division and rancor.

But perhaps there was progress of sorts. Nobody yelled “Liar!” from the GOP seats.

In addition, the latest word had it that the Iranians had released those 10 U.S. sailors.
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Gary Tischler • January 11, 2016

It was only the third speech President Barack Obama had delivered from the Oval Office, and it was apparently meant as a signal to the nation on Dec. 6 as to just how serious he was about dealing with international terrorism and the Islamic State—especially in the wake of the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, which left 14 dead.

The Dec. 2 murders—perpetrated by the married Muslim couple, Syed Rizwan Farook, an American-born citizen and his wife Tashfeen Malik, who were both killed in a shootout—has been officially designated an act of terrorism by the FBI.  A horde of weaponry was found at the home of the killers, who had used two .223 caliber semi-automatic rifles in their killing spree at the work place of Farook.  It  was also discovered that Tashfeen Malik had apparently posted a Facebook pledge to the Islamic State.

Republican presidential candidates, especially Senator Ted Cruz, almost immediately blasted the president’s policies in dealing with the threat of ISIL.

Most of the candidates vied with each other in chin-and-chest-out bellicosity, while Cruz, in his by now customary flannel shirt, said at an Iowa gun range Friday at which he announced the formation of a Second Amendment Coalition, “You don’t stop bad guys by taking away our guns, you stop bad guys by using our guns.” New Jersey governor Chris Christy said, “What we’re facing is the next world war. This is what we’re in right now, already.”  Cruz said, “Whether the administration  realizes it, or is it willing to acknowledge it, our enemies are at war with us.”

The president apparently realized it saying that the shootings were an “act of terrorism”  and that “the threat from terrorism is real and we will overcome it. . . . We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us.”

Yet Obama announced no serious new military initiatives, but rather wants to continue on a coalition of nations, a U.S. special operations presence in the region, including Iraq and finding ways to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists. Such methods include banning weapons sales to people on flight watch lists, which would seem to be a no-brainer, but for which legislation was only this last week roundly opposed by all but one Republican in the Senate.

While acknowledging that terrorism—especially in the wake of San Bernardino and the terrorist attacks in Paris—posed a growing, serious threat and present danger to the United States—the president seemed equally committed to preventing divisions  in the United States which would lay the blame on Islam as a whole. The danger isn’t far-fetched: we’ve heard calls to arms, and the internet is on fire with reckless, hateful posts.

Add to that, the fact that guns—their use not only by criminals and terrorists as well as by law enforcement—are so central to this debate, one way or another. Their over use, say to speak, gives an increasingly feverish and fearful tone not only to the way people talk about things and debate but to the intensity of the talk and the tone.

To many people around the world, things feel out of kilter, as if a plague has been set loose, amorphous but loud.

In politics, it seems a time of fearful faction, where politicians running for president can ignore facts, caution, rationality and not be punished by the public. We’ve had the know-nothing party, now we have the rise, out there in the digital world,  of  the know everything-understand-nothing party.

We seem to be living in a worrisome, twisted story of the worst sort, in which no one knows what will happen next,  but everyone knows something, somewhere, is going to happen, some new outrage that will race through the body politic like wildfire.

In times like these, the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming,” and some of its lines echo like music as a shrill warning: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer/ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/The blood-dimmed tide us loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/The best lack conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”

Yates wrote that poem in 1919, one year after the end of World War I.

Gary Tischler •

In the waning days of the old year, death—which stops for nothing and everyone—took a little and a lot from our culture, and its aesthetics, to boot. 

The three persons we lost at the end of 2015—an American artist  with giant standing in contemporary art, a singer who escaped the shadow of her father’s stardom only to merge with it for arguably her biggest success, and the biggest star of a basketball institution which played the game for laughter and lightness even while amazing us with its difficulty—were contradictions in their fields and originals as well.

In the end, their lives exemplified the ideas that art is never simple, even when it seems that way, that music embraces the personal, no matter what the song, and that difficult games, when played and watched, are full of improbabilities and a gag and joke or two.

NATALIE COLE

Natalie Cole was the daughter of an American icon, not an easy thing to be under any circumstance, but when your father is Nat King Cole, an African American super-star in an time that had few, and when your dad’s song stylings are on television, jukeboxes and radio airwaves, and when the folks that visit at your house regularly include the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin and Duke Ellington and Count Basie, it leaves a mark both rich and heavy.

Natalie was Nat’s daughter to the core, even though she initially studied to be a child psychologist. Almost naturally, she  fell into music, mostly not because of her father, but because she had a singular voice and talent, and an appealing personality.  She began recording and soon had a huge R&B hit with “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love),”  a smooth number that’s a part of million of people’s soundtrack of their lives, along with “Unpredictable,” “I’ve Got Love On My Mind” and “Thankful.”

The career went up and down, along with an addiction problem, but then the work went supernova, and returned to the music of her father, in a recording of “Unforgettable” (which was a Nat King Cole super hit), duetting with her father on the track and a video.   The result was indeed unforgettable (it got a Grammy and a Song of the Year Award), and sold seven million copies, followed by an album.) She sang the song at the Grammies to and with a video image of her father . It was exhilarating (because it seemed like some kind of wizardry) and heart-breaking in a good way, because it was a kind of reunion, a love song.

Cole had a series of medical problems, including kidney issues and hepatitis C.  She died on the last day of 2015 at the age of 65 in Los Angeles.

ELLSWORTH KELLY

The American artist Ellsworth Kelly, who died at the age of 92 in New York on Dec. 27, became over time, and in a quiet manner, a giant in the field of Modern Art, partly by not joining the club: although his works could loosely be termed abstract, and sometimes pitched into total abstractions, they were also wholly his, not the representatives of a school, or pied piping for abstract expressionism.

Sometimes, Kelly, who spent a considerable time in post-war Paris where he loved the “gray” aspects of the city, would almost define what people either loved or hated about abstraction, but in the end, he defined and explained its roots.  Many museum or gallery goers, confronted by blank or monotone canvasses of distinct similarity that give art critics the status of high priests, feel left out, not because they’re keen on representational art and miss Norman Rockwell, but because the result is puzzling. It’s missing a connection.   Mondrian’s minimalist works are both admired and yawn-inducing, depending. 

Kelly seemed that way a little upon first view, especially exhibitions and works that emphasized the abstraction without context. But we recall a smaller exhibition of his works at the National Gallery of Art which was an eye-opener and explained exactly what Kelly meant when he said, “I don’t paint paintings. I paint objects and things.” He was in his own way and especially in his paintings a kind of reductionist, giving us, not the thing itself, but its source, common objects revealed as if presenting a flower with only its roots.

There was in his works—sculptures, too—the eye of an engineer, chunks of lines and math, a love for architecture, and a master drawer. He had an eye for the odd detail and made it fit and big and made it take wing: he was once after all an avid birdwatcher, a designer of camouflage patterns at other times in his life.

In a way you had to learn Kelly, not like a foreign language, but as a way of seeing things that were hidden, waiting for the insight, the ah or the oh, the bulb going off brightly in your line of sight.

MEADOWLARK LEMON

Basketball—the antics and commerce of the NBA aside—is a difficult, often grueling game.  It requires certain physical skills, peripheral vision, a magic touch of wrist and fingers, stamina of a kind that would wear a footballer and baseball out in the course of a couple of quarters of play.  At its best, it’s a precise game—the swish of the net, the perfect bounce pass, the fakes and moves, seeing things out of the corner of your eyes.  Above all, while it isolates stars, it is at its best a team sport—five-on-five, live.

Meadowlark Lemon was a tremendous basketball player. He was a Harlem Globetrotter—they did indeed globe trot and brought the game to world audiences, especially young people and people unfamiliar with the game.  He was the star of a team from 1954 to 1978 that said something else about the game—it’s a lot of fun to play, and maybe even more fun to watch. 

He was called the “Clown Prince of Basketball,” playing for an all-black team that almost always won against home-grown competition. The team and its members—driven by a whistling tune—laughed, joked, acted like magicians, played with  beauty and precision, although laughter was the soundtrack of their game.

“My destiny was to make people happy,” Lemon said.  That he did, and they were indeed happy.  There’s barely an ounce of sadness among the comments sections online about his passing, and none of the usual snark.  People reacting by saying that they broke out into a smile, instantly imaging him and them on a court.

Surely, if there is justice, there’s a basketball court in heaven, ready or not.

Meadowlark Lemon died at the age of 83 in Scottsdale, Arizona, Dec. 27. He was the father of ten—or two basketball teams.