Work is its own award

                           Kevin Winter/Getty Images for the Recording Academy

     "Do you want to watch the Grammys?" my wife asked, several times over the weekend, leading up to the broadcast Sunday night.
     Honestly? I'm not sure I've ever watched the Grammys. They were always kinda vanilla, mainstream, pop treacle. Making news only for how woefully wrong and out-of-step the winners were. Year after year. 
     But why not? They're music, right? I like music.
     We tuned in late, just in time to hear Billie Eilish singing "What Was I Made For?" the  Grammy-winning — eventually — theme song from the "Barbie" movie.
     A melancholy tune that — Eilish said — took her and her brother a full 30 minutes to compose. I enjoyed it. I like Eilish — nice voice, arresting lyrics, weird in a good way.
     X told me we'd missed the show-stopping duet between Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs, the country singer who revived her 1988 hit "Fast Car" and sent it to the top of the charts — making Chapman to be the first Black woman to write a No. 1 country song, which is sad bordering on shocking. We caught the lovely performance on social media. I admired Combs for respecting the song and not changing the lyrics — like John Prine singing, "I am an old woman" in "Angel from Montgomery." The respect he had for Chapman was obvious, and it was encouraging to see these two people from different generations, races, areas of the country and orientations, making beautiful music together onstage.
     What I remember most about that album, when it came out, is it was one of the first CD's you bought to go with your new CD player — that, or Paul Simon's "Graceland." The pride of Cleveland, Chapman's career never developed much beyond the initial fully-formed talent she arrived on the scene with. But that was enough. To expect more seems ungrateful; though I do wonder what she's been up to for the past 36 years.
     I was glad to be passingly familiar with some of the artists — Lizzo, Olivia Rodrigo. I'd played the song she sang on the show, "Vampire" for my wife, pointing out the lyrics I admired — "You sold me for parts." She didn't much care for it. What intrigued me in the Grammy performance is there was a bit of business where she smeared some blood on her face — this was before the walls started bleeding. But only slightly. At first I thought she'd actually cut herself — it was just a little blood — then realized it was part of the performance. But the blood didn't quite work, and on such a vast stage, there's something refreshing in a bit of show business that goes awry. 

      I was excited to see Joni Mitchell perform. Ahead of time. When the moment came, though, I was unsure. She's 80, and picked the perfect song from her genius catalogue to sing. — "Both Sides Now." Her voice retains traces of its magnificence, and she pulled it off, there in her throne. But it was hard not to feel sorrow, to see her, after so many health crises and the ravages of time,  in that chair, tapping her cane. "Steadily life takes away from you, bit by bit, step by step, the quality of fresh involvement," Tennessee Williams once wrote.
     Otherwise, there was plenty of Taylor Swift, standing up, clapping. She won twice. I was taken aback when she first went up and accepted her award, noting this was her 13th Grammy and plugging her new album, announcing she was going to go and social media the cover. All business.
     Jay-Z came up with a young woman. "I hope that's his daughter," I said. It was.
     Toward the end, Billy Joel performed the first new song pried out of him after 17 years of recycling his old hits. It fell completely flat, for me, but then I never liked him much in his prime — "Piano Man," "Captain Jack," "Allentown" and quickly downhill from there. He always seemed like a downmarket version of Bruce Springsteen. "Did I wait too long?" he sang. Yes, Billy, you did. But in his defense, it's a bitch to get old. You lose your spark and have to coast on reputation.
     Thank goodness my mood was saved, by Taylor Swift of course, at the very end, accepting her record breaking fourth Album of the Year Grammy for "Midnights," passing Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder, who all had three. 

     "I would love to tell you that this is the best moment of my life, but I feel this happy when I finish a song," she said. In other words: This is nice, but what I really like is doing the work that leads to this. "For me the award is the work," she said. "All I wanna do is keep being able to do this. I love it so much, it makes me so happy."

     And the truth is, work is enough. Awards are nice — would be nice, I imagine. But even without the awards, the work is still enough, if you love it.

Saul Bellow to earn yet another honor Tuesday

     “Was I a man or a jerk?” Saul Bellow asked on his deathbed in 2005, as depicted on the opening page of Zachary Leader’s two-part biography of Bellow’s life.
     There is ample evidence to support either conclusion. Bellow’s writing certainly racked up several lifetime’s worth of plaudits — Leader calls him “the most decorated writer in American history, the winner, among other awards, of the Nobel Prize for Literature, three National Book Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, the Forementor Prize...” and so on.
     Add to that list being featured on a United States Postal Service stamp, to be unveiled Tuesday at his home base of more than half a century, the University of Chicago.
     Of course, given that U.S. stamps have honored Tweety Bird, Raymond Burr and popsicles, that might not be the accolade it once was, and that too is somehow fitting for Bellow, who liked to gnaw on his prizes to gauge their authenticity.
     If you read the James Atlas biography, the J-word certainly suggests itself. The moment burned into my brain is after Bellow won the Nobel Prize in 1976. In later years, when Nobel season rolled around again, he would fall into a funk.
     “Better watch out for Saul Bellow today; he’s in a bad mood,” a friend once cautioned a mutual colleague. “The Nobel Prize is being announced, and you can’t win twice.”
     Speaking of his “jerk” side, well, where does one begin? That he was married five times and had countless affairs is often mentioned prominently. He was an unaffectionate, absent father, according to his son Greg.
     Bellow’s own father certainly agreed he was a jerk.

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Flashback 2012: Barack Obama goes blue

     Last week, Joe Biden referred to Donald Trump as a "sick fuck" and a "fucking asshole." While I would argue that, considering the man in question, those phrases are mere dry, neutral descriptions, and no mere naughty words could touch the obscenity of The Former Guy's assault on the Capitol and democracy. But it did raise the issue of presidential propriety, and made me think of simpler, more decent times under a far, far better human being.

     The end of the interview is the most perilous part, as any politician will tell you and Barack Obama learned anew earlier this month.
As Rolling Stone journalists were leaving the Oval Office Oct. 11, one editor told Obama that his 6-year-old is supporting him.

     “You know, kids have good instincts,” Obama replied. “They look at the other guy and say, ‘Well, that’s a bullshitter, I can tell.’ ”
     Generally true, though kids can also have staggeringly bad instincts — they climb into old refrigerators, leap off roofs with towels pinned around their necks, set fires to school offices.
     Obama’s own instincts, though, were a little off in his unguarded slur of his opponent, Mitt Romney, because as much as our Internet-driven culture has shattered the old standards of polite political discourse — to the extent that they ever really existed — calling your opponent a dirty word, no matter how true, is like handing a stick to your foes and dipping your head to be struck by it.
     As soon as the story broke Thursday, the Drudge Report had a photo of Obama with the offending phrase headlined under him, leaving doubt whether it is referring to Romney, well-known as a chronic liar, or Obama himself.
     It is rare when a president swears to good effect — Harry Truman’s pledge to “give ’em hell” perhaps. Usually the mud he flings spatters back on himself. Such as the general public revulsion felt when the White House transcripts not only showed Nixon as a Machiavellian character plotting to unseat his enemies, but swearing a blue streak while doing so.
     This isn’t even a new problem for Obama. The president was cited on it in his first year in the White House — calling Kanye West a “jackass” while Vice President Joe Biden was quoted saying “Give me a fucking break.” And then there was his chief of staff, the famously potty-mouthed Rahm Emanuel.
     Three years ago, the thinking was that presidents weren’t swearing more, only the media was letting it through more. “Team Obama is no more crasser than administrations past,” Politico wrote in 2009. “It’s just that they are being quoted more accurately.”
     Oh right, blame the media. Only in this case, it’s a fair criticism — if it is a criticism. We’re not publicists — if the president wants to use what once was charmingly called “foul language,” who are we to clean it up? Toward what end? Maybe the problem isn’t that the president swears, but that the old-school media doesn’t, as much, yet.
     Forty years ago, Nixon’s curses were shielded from the public — the famous “expletive deleted” of the Watergate transcripts. Now it is mostly mainstream newspapers that feel the need to dash and obscure, while obscenity — often captured on video — is offered in all its unbleeped glory on the walls of the Internet. Yet the world does not crumble.
     And to be fair, the media has not been consistent in its sense of decorum. The word “bulls---” — as opposed to the thing itself — has already appeared seven times in the Sun-Times over the past 25 years, according to our computer library, the first time being in 1985, in a story from Forbes magazine about corporate firings.
     Every generation flatters itself that it has reached some new low of coarseness, when in reality a certain set of words is perpetually kept in reserve, in a roped-off taboo section of the dictionary, to be used under specific situations where a certain kind of emphasis or impact is needed. Obama let his guard down at the end of his Rolling Stone interview, and provided one of the million meaningless memes that have so defined this election, little moments each side can grab and assign meaning to — the Democrats will use the president’s slip into salty waters as a sign of his humanity, an example of his growing confidence, his newfound aggressiveness. The Republicans will use it as Exhibit No. 12,434 as to why Barack Obama is unfit to be president of the United States, focusing on the earthiness without ever touching upon the critique it makes of their candidate, the most thoroughly recognized prevaricator since Pinocchio.
     I swear a lot, when appropriate and sometimes when not, though never here, of course, but find it a useful arrow to have in my quiver. So while I don’t fault Obama for letting it fly, it seems to embody the second-rate campaign he has run in 2012, at least when compared to 2008, lacking the inspiring speeches, the exhortation to hope and progress, a stumbling slog that required periodic rescue from more skillful campaigners such as Bill Clinton and — gulp — Biden.

     So I’m fairly confident that in a little less than three months from now, when Obama is doing a very different kind of swearing — the swearing in kind — this moment will be just another bump in his bumpy ride to a second term. That said, it will rattle us for the next day or so, until the next bump comes along.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, October 25, 2012

Mailbag: "Politics is the art of the possible"

Jesus among the Doctors, by Albrecht Dürer (Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid)

    I have a habit of showcasing emails from the deranged, for their entertainment value. As fun as that is, the downside is that doing so leaves the impression that communication from readers is a rainstorm of batshittery. That isn't the case. I get many thoughtful replies, expanding on what I wrote, and I want to share this one, in response to Friday's column, "Left-wingers will not be ignored," on the far left undermining Democrats because it makes them feel better about themselves. Me, I prefer living in the world of the actual, as does this correspondent. 

Good morning, Neil,

     The circular firing squad ... apt. A couple of observations prefaced by me stating that I'm as libby-lib-lib McLibbington liberal as they get. That said:
     I'm 55 and after decades as an informed citizen participating in the American experiment, I've shifted views on some things, which I think is healthy and a sign of growth. Perhaps the biggest lesson is that politics is the art of the possible. I'll pick the Obamacare mention by one of the protestors: is it perfect? Heck no. Is it the European style public healthcare system the US needs and deserves? No way! Did it in all its imperfection help untold millions of Americans who did not have any kind of health insurance? Absolutely 100 percent yes. 

     The next step in our exercise is to look up the Congressional record for the vote on Obamacare. It passed the Senate easily, and we knew Obama would sign it. In the House, it passed with a thin margin of 3 votes to spare. Put simply, it was the most liberal healthcare bill that could have possibly passed in that iteration of the US House of Representatives. Should Democrats have abandoned it because it wasn't the European style plan the most liberal of us want? That's what this gentleman is suggesting. 

     As much as he's not entirely wrong about the Democrats feasting on that delicious PAC money and in some ways gravitating right, the quickest way to shove us right off the edge of Trump's flat earth into the chasm of fascist dictatorship is for Democrats to pout and do nothing instead of chipping away at the challenges that face us and make progress where it can be made: the art of the possible.
     It always depresses me to see the Republicans rally easily around each other's fear and hate. Someone that's all in on restricting rights for LGBT folks never seem to have an issue voting for a candidate that shares that view, but also hates immigrants. I guess as Mike Royko said, it's easier to be conservative than liberal because it's much harder to give someone a hand up than it is to push them back down.
     I hope those protestors realize at the end of the day that they don't have to stop being passionate about their ideals, but that throwing a tantrum and sitting out elections because Hillary wasn't pure enough is how you lose to Trump and let him appoint three justices that just so happened to take away the bodily autonomy rights you are now grousing about.

Best Regards,

Jim K.

Left-wingers will not be ignored

     There is a terrible inevitability to tragedy. The characters are locked in their roles in a way that, afterward, seems foreordained. Willy Loman goes out on the road, trying to sell his unnamed product. Mary Tyrone slips upstairs for more medicine. “Another shot in the arm!” her son shouts. Oedipus takes a wife.
     And while each struggles against the tightening bonds of fate, it’s as if they’ve been seized at the elbows by the marshals of implacable destiny and are being firmly escorted toward a grim appointment.
     Hard not to feel that way since New Hampshire anointed Donald Trump, while Republican VP hopefuls strain forward like a classroom of eager 2nd graders, arms waving, straining in their sockets — “Me me me!” — the tone of the mainstream media sags, like a newspaper left out in the rain, already damp with defeat.
     Meanwhile, Democrats assemble into their traditional circular firing squad. When I read an article by Audrey Hettleman in Wednesday’s Sun-Times about a group called Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws: Coalition for Reproductive Justice and LGBTQ+ Liberation planning a protest the day before the start of the Democratic National Convention in August, my first thought was: Why? Protest to whom?
     Aren’t the Democrats the good guys regarding reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights? Did I miss something? Maybe the BOUL:CRJ&LGBTQ+L would prefer to go to Milwaukee to bring their message to the Republican convention, but lack carfare. It seems a shoestring operation.
     ”For years the Democrats have taken us for granted, thereby enabling the far right’s attacks on us,” their press release stated.
     What’s that line from “Fatal Attraction”? “I’m not going to be ignored!”
     It can’t be mere wounded pride. Can it? I tried to follow their logic. So if only the Democrats had ... what? Taken them more seriously ... then those Republicans would ... I couldn’t quite make sense of it.
     Maybe they could offer insight. I caught organizer Andy Thayer getting into an Uber.
     ”We’ve had 50 years of the anti-abortion Hyde amendment,” he began. “Plenty of years when the Democrats had both houses of Congress and the presidency and could have repealed that.”
     The Hyde Amendment, for those just joining us, is a 1976 law restricting the federal government from funding abortion. Rather than repeal it, Congress has approved it, year after year. Then again, most Americans, while supporting choice for themselves, are against the government paying for other people’s abortions.
     Thayer argued that by assuming those on the left will fall in line, Democrats shift right, drawn by the gravitational pull of Republicans.
     ”Over the last half century, the Democrats have played a game of stealing the Republicans’ thunder,” he said. “The classic example of when President Obama took Romneycare, getting the Republicans to go even further right, denouncing their previous plan.”

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And you shall anoint your beloved with cheesecake

     February already. Which means that Valentine's Day is ... two weeks away. And you have done ... nothing, right? No idea what special to do for your beloved. That's okay. Well, sad, but also okay, because I am here to help you.
     And a good thing, too. Because left to your own devices you would ... what? Merely buy something. Something random, last minute. A trinket. Some thoughtless cheap crap that will indict more than delight. What a sad commentary on both you and your love. Or would be, if I didn't save you. Which, luckily, I will. 
     Instead of doing something half-considered, why not go to trouble and expense while telling a story old as time?
     Why not be inspired, by how, two thousand years ago, the ancient Romans had trachemata — "second tables" — that were set aside for what we could consider "dessert." Laden with pancakes, sesame seeds, wine. The Greek playwright Diphilus lists a few delectables: "some myrtle berries, almonds, a cheesecake."
      Cheesecake? But what sort of cheesecake? Here the glozing hand of history is kind to us. Cato the Elder sets down no fewer than three distinct cheesecake recipes in his De Agri Cultura, a guide to managing estates written 2200 years ago, Eugenia Ricotti calls Cato's favorite cheesecake, Savillium, "the oldest known dessert" in her Meals and Recipes from Ancient Greece and claims it was found in the tomb of Ramses IV in the Valley of the Kings. First you mix 14 ounces of ricotta cheese with one and a half cups of flour ... actually, it gets rather complicated. You need a cookie press or pastry bag, plus boiling fat. 

     Far easier to simply order an Eli's Cheesecake. You might have noticed the festive holiday ad at the left of my EGD home page. But if that choice is overwhelming — so many kinds — let me draw your attention to the Belgian Chocolate Hazelnut Heart, perfectly shaped for the holiday. Look at it. You could drive yourself crazy trying to make that. You could hole up with your Cato, translating from Latin, messing with jugs of olive oil and such.   Or you could plan ahead and have it tucked away and ready in your freezer Feb. 14. "Rich chocolate cheesecake topped with a crunchy hazelnut and chocolate confection, baked on a chocolate cookie crumb crust in an elegant heart shape." How could it not be received with gratitude? Who does not want to love with similar dark intensity? Or one of my favorites, the Salted Caramel Cheesecake, if only for how it echoes Homer, who in The Illiad praises "the sacred offering of the salted cake."  Of course the Romans took cheesecake from the Greeks, along with so much of their culture, including this holiday, Cupid being the Roman version of the Greek god Eros. 

     Salted caramel not your style? I recommend the Basque Cheesecake, its burnt parchment wrapped evocative of the rough simplicity that wealthy Roman philosophers like Seneca paid lip service to, along with simple baths and unadorned pottery. Red is the color of Valentine's Day — which began at the tail end of Roman times, first set on Feb. 14 to honor the martyred Saint Valentine by Pope Gelasius in 469 A.D., just before Rome fell and the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed ... anybody? Do they teach you nothing in these schools? ... seven years later, in 476. So you can't go wrong with Strawberry-Topped Cheesecake. Just look. Are these not the "flame-red berries" Virgil lauds in Georgics? Or Cherry Vanilla Bean Cheesecake. Just say it out loud. "I love you, and so bought us this Cherry Vanilla Bean Cheesecake for us to enjoy together in bliss. "A thick layer of housemade Montmorency cherry filling and Madagascar vanilla bean cheesecake, topped with tart cherry gelée, baked on an all-butter shortbread cookie crust." 

     I know what you're thinking: "Neil, was not Cato the Elder something of a prude?" Yes, you are correct, no doubt remembering Pliny's Life of Cato, particularly this passage:

     Cato expelled another senator who was thought to have good prospects for the consulship, namely, Manilius, because he embraced his wife in open day before the eyes of his daughter. For his own part, he said, he never embraced his wife unless it thundered loudly; and it was a pleasantry of his to remark that he was a happy man when it thundered.

     Does that last part not contain a mischievous twinkle you could appropriate and present as your own? And a private setting is entirely fitting to the holiday. Why go out to a restaurant, on amateur night — prices up, service and quality down — when you could enjoy Eli's Cheesecake in the secluded bower of your home? 

     You could mention, opening the box, that Cato's libum was a savory cheesecake intended to be an offering to the gods. But that, like Prometheus stealing fire from the workshop of Hephaestus,, you have spirited this divine dessert away from its home on Mount Olympus and brought it here, now, for you both to enjoy on earth. Let eagles rip your liver for all time as punishment. Your loved one is worth the sacrifice....

     Okay, maybe that's corny. Maybe it's better to say nothing. Maybe you should bear in mind Cato's famous dictum: "He is nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent."

     Wordlessly remove the cheesecake from its sturdy cardboard freezer box and set a perfect slice on your best plate. Take one fork yourself, hand the other to your soulmate. Or better yet, skip the forks. Lock eyes with your adored one and whisper that the ancient Romans, whether soldiers or slaves or senators, would eat with their hands. Give yourself and your heart's true passion permission to do so now in celebration of your timeless bond and Valentine's Day, and let nature take its course.    

Fighting fascism is in our bones

German American Bund leader Fritz Kuhn speaks at a meeting. New York, 1938.

     This newspaper was forged in the fight against fascism; born to serve as a soldier in the endless battle of freedom against totalitarianism.
      It’s a good story. In 1941, with war raging across Europe, the mighty Chicago Tribune was a voice for xenophobia and isolation. It was more than happy to let Hitler — whom the paper admired — keep Europe (as were, it should be remembered, the vast majority of Americans).
     So Marshall Field III begat the Chicago Sun, as a newspaper that would have President Franklin Roosevelt’s back as he tried to prepare a reluctant nation for the ordeal he could see looming ahead. The Sun rose on Dec. 4, 1941, and three days later, the Japanese attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, drawing the U.S. into the war.
     The bad timing — the paper lost its primary purpose 72 hours into its existence — is a reminder that newspapering was always a struggle. That is why, in late 1947, the flickering Sun joined forces with the Chicago Daily Times, which I usually identify as a scrappy, photo-packed, sports-obsessed tabloid begun in 1929. And leave it at that.
     But there was more to the paper. I did not realize until this week that the Times also went after fascism in a big way. Not until my attention was drawn to “Nazi Town, USA.” The latest installment of the PBS American Experience series dropped this week (You can watch free online). It looks at the German American Bund in the 1930s, a nationalist organization ready to remake the country.
     “The Bund’s vision was an America ruled by white Christians,” historian Bradley Hart says early in the program. “And they thought that Nazism was entirely consistent with American ideals.”
      Americans who aligned with Hitler tried to build an active support network for Nazism, drawing in families with a national string of wholesome-seeming summer camps. All the while vigorously denouncing Jews. Preparing an organization of eager traitors, ready to facilitate takeover when the Germans finished with Europe and decided it was our turn to bear the yoke.
     “They were against democracy,” says historian William Hitchcock, “and thought that America would be a kind of star in a constellation of pro-Nazi governments around the world.”

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