These Days: Saturday, July 1st, 2017
POTOS: It is so difficult to be even handed with Trump, even if he was right he sounds wrong. He is just completely inappropriate and so the conversation, which be hard enough if he wasn’t a spoiled rotten septuagenarian. But given his extremely unpopular Healthcare and Immigration policies for half the nation (at least: Healthcare has a 12% approval rating), his inability to instill trust and respect in ANYONE makes it twice as hard. If he was smart, he’d hand foreign policy to the armed forces and internal policy to the GOP and back up. Trump should turn himself into the Queen Of England, a figurehead who leaves the actual governing to others.
New Music: Jay-Z s 4:44 (Grade: B) is a little better than I thought yesterday, whereas stuff like “Smile” and “Family Feud” are both unacceptable from a Familial insight on married life, with the single worst moment in Jay-Z’s entire career when he has the audacity to sing “Let me alone, Becky” (Jay-Z as a weak man be tempted by white women is to laugh). But near the beginning, , he manages a great and important song about racism in 2017. The video (I am including a speeded up version to hide from copyright restrictions) uses the imagery of 1940s racist cartoons, Dylan Mars Greenberg performed a similar connect in his direction of “Some Ol’ Dolls”. Greenberg used old racist cartoons and put Tomas Doncker in blackface, Jay-Z made a new toon using the overtly racist avatar’s Dylan had also used. Once it is available at the right speed, I plan to connect the two more closely, certainly at face value, there is a positioning of the past being the present, the old stereotypes inescapable. As Jay-Z puts it “still nigger,” he reposits to that old claim that he wasn’t black, he was O.J. Jay-Z uses his fame and fortune to explain with caustic horror that with everything he is and has and is perceived of, it doesn’t change anything. Both songs are masterpieces.
More New Music: did Jay-Z really rap “You know why Jewish people own all the property in America…? ” nah, got a copy of the The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion I can borrow?
Old Music: Getting ready for James Taylor next week except… I have to get started on new releases and I am not doing well…
Concerts: Enrique Iglesias was a revelation last night, he was a terrific one man cover of a romantic paperback or a telenovela but Pitbull was a little bland and my niece Kristin DIab didn’t like him “chasing the bare butts every song”. Personally, I thought the worst thing was the interminable breaks between sets. It ruined Dead And Company, it ruined U2 and it ruined Pitbull.
Sports: I’m going to Yankee Stadium on July 4th and I am very much looking forward to it, they (we?) won yesterday so they are settling into a .500 club which is about what I expected. The Mets also won, they are currently a .600 club but whether that is enough is a different question…
