1. Duck ramp controversial in D.C.
2. Chanel $1,325 boomerang condemned as “cultural appropriation.”
3. Why Elvis’s status is plummeting.
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#3 is likely a real thing, and sadly so.
Millenial here, recommend me some elvis you think I might enjoy, it’s never clicked for me.
I would recommend watching his 1968 comeback special on youtube, particularly ‘heartbreak hotel’ and ‘love me tender’, which really display his easy charm and charisma. I too don’t care for much of his work, but I can recognize fine showmanship when I see it.
Elvis’s loss of status certainly does raise the much broader question of how many great cultural products will lose effective mindshare and result in near-total obscurity; as a young man myself, I have found that entirely too many of my peers outright refuse to watch black and white films, which I am sure is just the tip of the iceberg.
I spent last weekend with teenagers from our parish (our confirmation project). For the campfire one of the youngsters brought his smartphone and portable Bluetooth speaker (how times change …). In between much hip-hop he also played “Dancing queen”, “YMCA” and songs from “Saturday night fever”. Exegi monumentum aere perennius 🙂
I’m only in my early 30s but my biggest pet peeve with the “youths” is an apparent inability to just sit alone with their thoughts. So many people hiking up mountains with their Bluetooth speakers blaring. It’s not only inconsiderate (nobody wants to hear your music, this is nature not a pool party), it also shows a lack of mindfulness. Like you’re so afraid of silence that you have to drown out your inner voice with music. Or do you think your life is a reality show that needs its own soundtrack?
/rant
I grew up in a generation where Elvis and the Beatles were “oldies”, but some of my favorites by Elvis include “In the Ghetto,” “Burning Love”, “Suspicious Minds”, and “Are you lonesome tonight”.
His oldest single for 1954 seems to be “That’s Alright Mama” which has a different flavor and might give insight into the initial appeal. It’s a pretty striking vocal performance even today.
“Heartbreak Hotel”, “Don’t Be Cruel” “Hound Dog” and “I want you, I need you, I love you” from 1956 looks like they might’ve been his first #1 songs when he was breaking out and give good flavor.
Alot of his stuff I don’t really like though. I bought one of the collections with all of his tunes, and it’s difficult to listen through. It’s not really built to be consumed like many rock albums. Much more variance from song to song and not continuity (even moreso than today).
These are all pretty good: “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Are you lonesome tonight,” “now or never,” “all shook up”
My favorite Elvis song is “Love Me”, great slow ballad.
It’s the one Nicholas Cage sings to Laura Dern in “Wild at Heart”. That’s likely how it plays out, the actual artist will be forgotten and the simulacra of imitations will be all that’s left. Kind of like Jesus actually.
To be clear I’m not claiming the guy was as good as the Beatles, or Sinatra, or the Velvet Underground. But he was unique and important and I hope he’s remembered.
I never appreciated Elvis until I started listening to Sturgill Simpson and read some of his interviews in which he said Elvis was a big influence. I started to listen to a bit of Elvis and now I get it. Check out Elvis at Stax, but also listen to a little Sturgill.
Sturgills great too. I like to think good country is making a resurgence with strugill, Jason isbell and others.
might be better than pulp fiction chuck berry
I would guess it is real, but probably due to the fact that Elvis was a spent force creatively for the most part before 1964. The people who grew up with his music dominating the airwaves are the ages of my parents and older (in their late 60s and early 70s)- exactly the demographic not likely to even know what Spotify is. It is probably not quite fair to compare him to acts that hit in the mid 60s and later. I loved David Bowie’s music, but how popular will he be with young people in 2046? Also, with The Beatles, interest in them was intense for a couple of decades after their breakup simply due to the fact that all four of them had significant musical careers right through the 1970s and 1980s.
I was a big fan of Presley’s music growing up in the late 70s and early 80s, but it has been a long time since I even listened to any song of his that wasn’t playing on Sirius in the car. It is sad to think about that.
Why bother listening to Elvis when you can listen to the black musicians he was doing a pale impersonation of most of his career? Chuck Berry is better in ever possible way.
I was a fan of Chuck Berry’s guitar (I remember learning that cool intro to Johnny B. Goode when learning to play guitar), but he’s not much of a singer.
not much of a singer?
You should motorvate yourself to THIS:
http://www.vulture.com/2016/12/chuck-berry-invented-the-idea-of-rock-and-roll.html
I rather liked Chuck Berry: Elvis was dreadful, as was the great bulk of pop music between the demise of Swing and the arrival of the Beatles. Much of the Swing of the big bands was pretty feeble too but the same musicians playing in small groups could be wonderful.
Swing is making a techno comeback (per the 13 yo in the house)
I get what you’re saying, but I bet you $100 a 13 year old did not use the word “techno”.
The best way to guess someone’s age range is to play them a Calvin Harris song and ask what type of music they are listening to. Age 40+ says techno because it was called that in the late 90s and they haven’t kept up with the changes.
I have noticed a few shows on my local college radio station devoted to old time Big Band music pop up in the last few years. It’s kind of cool. Millennial culture is sort of retro in style (e.g. curly 19th style mustaches, craft beer) so I think there’s hope in the future that some lost art could find new interest.
There is no accounting for taste.
2. A little hint for CNN: If you want to know if an Australian feels offended or harmed by something, then it is necessary to actually ask them if they feel offended or harmed. Quoting Australians taking the piss out of something merely demonstrates that they are taking the piss out of it.
“Cultural appropriation” is the latest vapid fad of the left. Boomerangs, Elvis, hoop earrings, you name it, there’s plenty of new grist for the outrage and virtue signaling mill.
There is a new Sokal hoax doing the rounds – this time in gender studies: http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/
I tend to agree with Harold Bloom: – I do not give in to political considerations, however they mask themselves. All this business about gender, social class, sexual orientation and skin pigmentation is nonsense. I’m 81. I’m not prepared to temporise any more. I’ve been prophesying like Jeremiah since 1968, warning the profession that it was destroying itself. And it has. There are fewer and fewer people teaching English, or any other kind of literature, in American universities. Students don’t wish to study garbage and that’s all they’re offered.
” I sincerely hope that @Chanel is donating all the profits to underprivileged aboriginal communities,”
My question is are all aboriginals “underprivileged” ? Could it be that in fact some/many are “overprivileged”? What then???
That’s not quite how this works, mate. Twit cries on internet and corporation flacks apologizes. That’s news, fifteen seconds of fame for the twit and free advertising for fancy throwing sticks. Win, win, win.
I once got an import business to apologize for its involvement in an Irish kidnapping and trafficking scheme. It was bullocks. I made the whole thing up to make a point, but the company’s stock rose on its “sage” handling of the affair. I haven’t a bloody clue what they really trade, but better to apologize than ask permission I always say.
3. Australia has succumbed to the regressive left more than I would like, there is a law against causing offence to people on the basis of their race, while I’m completely against racism, I am also against a ministry of allowable language or a ministry of acceptable conversation/opinion. Unfortunately a false dichotomy has been accepted whereby you are either for censorship or for racism (with nothing in between).
2.*
Are you persuaded at all by the idea that we ran the experiment of lots of discriminatory language for centuries and it was a disaster for people like the Aborigines?
Only an idiot would be persuaded by that idea.
Germans would agree, but then, history is not really under dispute for them, so one assumes they are idiots, right?
Yes they are
Well sure, look at the nation that most fully committed itself to supporting a genocidal eugenics program.
The people following that period would have to be idiots to deny what happened, including the complete destruction of Germany’s cities, and really stupid to want to engage in a repeat performance.
Yes, the Germans are idiots who didn’t learn much about free speech, which is presumably why prior comes to an American blog to spew his 2 minutes of hate every day.
‘Yes, the Germans are idiots who didn’t learn much about free speech’
They learned more than most – slippery slope arguments for or against have no value in a place where genocidal mass murder, based on allowing the Nazis a full opportunity to use free speech in pursuit of their goals, actually occurred.
As an American, I fully support the 1st Amendment, and think that hate speech laws in the U.S. are thoroughly against the Constitution. On the other hand, when another nation has killed millions of people based to a major extent on the freely published words of a dictator, I think that nation has every right to try to avoid a repeat of such events. (As for Canadian hate speech laws – I’m not Canadian, but clearly the reason that they exist in Germany is not really relevant in Canada, in my opinion.)
And as a note – less of what I write would be deleted on a German web site than occurs here.
We all should have known what we were dealing with in Andre when he criticized Elvis above, on the basis of his white skin. Pretty gross Andre.
I suspect that everything good and bad was a disaster for someone. You are alive today (congratulations) but because of that someone who might well qualify for your job is unemployed. Does that make you complicit in his disaster???
But do tell; how does freedom of speech equate to a disaster for the aboriginals. I’m dying to hear this one…
Had a free I”m sure very intellectual debate about whether Aborigines should be able to raise their own children or not. The state decided not and a whole generation of kids were sent to orphanages, pretty disastrous if you ask me. This boomerang stuff is all talk, a hand full of tweets, and a statement from a corporation.
Who’s free speech is being curtailed anyway?
Late back to the discussion – free expression is being curtailed. Cultural appropriation is nonsensical, ‘cultures’ do not own things – what is being appropriated? and from whom? Geographical copyright is also a nonsense. Incidentally, the Aboriginal culture in Australia also have a unique form of cultural copyright, having ownership of parts of their own language etc.
In answer to your point Andre, I don’t agree because two wrongs don’t make a right – oppressing people as a means of making up for past oppression does not to me, seem like a very good idea.
When I was a kid my grandparents brought me back a tourist boomerang. I took it down to the school yard and threw it. It made a beautiful curving flight, and when it came back and I went to catch it, it hit me in the d*ck. I did the classic rag doll collapse. Somewhat embarrassing.
Maybe some spirit was offended by the whole tourist boomerang appropriation thing.
I would collapse too if I hit my favorite duck with a boomerang
Chuck Berry was a great song writer. Elvis was not. Chuck was a pretty good guitar player. Elvis was not. Elvis was a more distinctive singer than Chuck. Both mixed white and black music of various genres (Elvis sang gospel and blues, Chuck sang country and novelty pop tunes). Elvis was the King. Chuck Berry was not. Elvis did not impersonate black artists. He drew from his environment, sources, and inspirations and created his own unique sound. So did Chuck.
Elvis also had the benefit of black artist not being able to be played on the same radio stations as him or appear in the same venues. Both overly fond of 14 year old girls although only one hounded by the Mann Act. Quite the pair those two fellas.
“Elvis also had the benefit of black artist not being able to be played on the same radio stations as him or appear in the same venues. ”
Elvis sang and performed in a manner closer to black artists than did somebody like Pat Boone, so you can make the case that Elvis helped open the door for integrating music.
It’s also not a competition. Both black singers and Elvis can both be great.
I’m a big fan of Elvis singing, and his presence on stage is extraordinary. The sun sessions is still one of the greatest rock and roll albums of all time, as is Chuck Berry’s great 28. But a lot of his stuff is crap no doubt, as was Chuck Berry’s.
As the article states, the man was an icon and as generations move it loses its impact. Louis Armstrong is similar.
The famous story about Elvis is that Sam Phillips said he was looking for a white singer who could sing like a black and then Elvis walked in the door. The less famous story about Chuck Berry is that he used to work in white neighborhoods as a manual labor and he would listen to what white folks were playing on the radio. He said he realized that if he could sing black music like Perry Como, he could make some real money.
6. Guys get gibberish gender-studies paper into “peer-reviewed” journal:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/05/19/a-new-academic-hoax-a-bogus-paper-on-the-conceptual-penis-gets-published-in-a-high-quality-peer-reviewed-social-science-journal/
3. Elvis Presley’s roots were in gospel music, his talent in the blues, neither mentioned in the linked article. His fame was achieved as a cultural phenomenon, essentially a freak show that appealed to a mass audience. Elvis and Trump are two peas from the same pod, freak shows that appeal to a mass audience, which says more about the mass audience than Elvis or Trump.
How does this explain Elvis’s influence on the Beatles or Bob Dylan? Were they just taken in like a Trump voter?
CNN, NYT, WaPo, Guardian and Bloomberg. You are what you read, and it’s not very encouraging.
“Cultural appropriation” is a stupid notion to be sneered at. Should non-whites be told not to
speak English or other European languages? Why isn’t that “cultural appropriation”. Are the
many Asian classical musicians who play pieces by Mozart, Beethoven, and other Europeans
guilty of “cultural appropriation”?
You know the answer to that. Cultural appropriation is a farce of an academic idea, created to be a weapon to cripple expression by racial enemies. So no, the only group capable of cultural appropriation is western white people.
4. The lobster tail (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) is the farmer’s tale: when times are good, they are bad, and when times are bad, they are really bad. I’m not a lobster man; for me, like any self-respecting low country resident, it’s the oyster that is prized, and no oyster harvested in southern waters can compare to the succulent molluscs that are harvested in New England waters. I’ll take a bushel. For those who prefer Elvis or Trump, I suggest the Bodega Bay oyster, the freak show of molluscs, its enormous size ruining whatever appeal it may otherwise have.
#2
Nobody ‘culturally appropriates’ — and in the worst way — than progressives / leftist
Two examples:
– Adopting the ‘gluten free’ diet of a person with Celiac Disease even if you can digest gluten just fine. This causes harm because it demonizes gluten, a cheap source of healthy protein.
– Appropriating the concept of. ‘Trigger’ — which was from the psychological understanding of combat veterans — to apply it to college students who are offended by ideas. This trivializes the real trauma people in combat faced.
Re: triggering. Allow me to quote the influential artist, hero, and role model of the American and UK left, Lena Dunham. She sagely pronounced “white men can’t know what it feels like to be under attack.” Thid inspirational quote is now given out to the overwhelmingly white and male combat battalions of the imperialist US armed forces. What is a bullet compared to the privilege a Western Virginian white male has over Malia Obama? Perhaps one of our resident racist, sexist, Hillary voting hacks could illuminate us?
I’ll assume this isn’t satire, and treat it seriously. On the first point, who is being harmed? Some hard-core vegetarians have tried to demonize meat, though it appears the vast majority of people are still happy to scarf as much beef and pork and chicken as they can. The result, though, has been more ready availability of heathy, interesting, and tasty veggie fare, which is a win for everyone. Likewise, who is really harmed by the ‘demonization’ of gluten? People with celiac disease are thrilled – they can go to any grocery and shop without the problems they used to have, and go to many more restaurants than was possible just a few years ago. Meanwhile, I think you’d be very hard pressed to find a significant population that is protein deficient because of the proliferation of gluten-free products.
I suppose that misguided parents, who raise their children on gluten-free diets, are often doing their children a disservice. This is a problem that’s possibly real, but most parents who have the wherewithal to do such a diet are likely well off enough and educated enough to make sure their children get adequate calories. Possibly the lack of awareness of arsenic in rice could still be an issue, even with adequate calories. Still, a bigger issue is well-meaning parents who resist vaccinating their children, since they are harming other people’s kids, too. I’m pretty sure the gluten-free thing is a fad, and will pass. It will go back to being something for those with celiac disease, and for anxious adults who need something to obsess about.
And the ‘trigger’ concept didn’t come just from traumatized combat vets. It came from studies on PTSD, which can affect anyone who has experienced significant trauma. Combat is one major cause, but not as big a cause as violent crime, car accidents, and major natural disasters, among others. You’re right that a very small subset of entitled college students have latched onto the concept, but this too is a fad, and will pass. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t trivialize just the trauma of combat, but the real trauma that many many civilians have experienced.
1. The Festivus “airing of grievances” is a common theme used by Republicans to demonstrate their “hip” factor.
2. $1300! Is cultural appropriation the most alarming aspect of this story?
3. The 2016 movie “Elvis and Nixon” portrays the King as a buffoon. If you need a laugh following the Trump/Lavrov meeting last week, this might do the trick.
4. Boom and bust isn’t healthy for any economy. Ecological collapse is a dangerous trend in nature.
5. What a humbling thought. No matter how we seek to control our environment, we are ultimately at it’s whim.
For a long time I’ve wondered: If another asteroid was headed to earth and about to do what the Chicxulub one did, would it be wrong for us to try to stop it? Would that be interfering with nature? After all, asteroid strikes are natural.
“Would that be interfering with nature?”
Nature always wins, easily.
Nature will kill you and everyone now on this planet in a relatively brief time span… with or without asteroids
You are wondering if self-preservation is natural.
But what humans do is not natural, because nature is what is left after humans are subtracted (haven’t you watched any nature shows? listened to any talk about national parks?). Thus human self-preservation can’t be natural either. As we all know, the greatest danger to nature is humans growing food, cutting down forests, taking things from the seas, digging minerals from the earth. To the extent that those relate to human self-preservation, they are anti-natural.
Right?
2 Wait, you’re telling me that the boomerang is an Aboriginal tool used for thousands of years? I thought it was a fictional item invented by the Japanese to help Link from the Zelda series retrieve far away objects.
Are yo-yos cultural appropriation? Where is Ray Lopez when you really need him?
I think frisbees are safe, unless maybe their design was appropriated from flying saucers, and their advantage is they can double as a plate at a cookout.
3. Few of the current generation of Americans are aware of Jenny Lind, Lillian Russell, Ruth Etting, Betty Hutton or still-breathing Doris Day, all major stars at one time.Entertainment figures, even those whose careers were the result of effective promotion and electronic performances and recordings, are doomed to future irrelevance as their places are taken by others. Personalities make the world go around but their influence is, thankfully, temporary.
They have two threads about this phenomen on the Fortean Times Forum. It’s called “people you thought were dead” 🙂
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/peeps-you-thought-were-dead-part-2.16547/page-19
1. Pretty funny how someone thinks those ramps only cost 8$. Here’s the real cost:
Why wouldn’t they?
Sounds like those 3 people are on salary so the cost was probably $0.
BTW, how much did it cost the taxpayers to pay a Republican Representative to tweet his thoughts on plastic duck ramps while Trump sells out this country to Russia?
If the cost in lost productivity of farming out your salaried employees is $0, you may be a government agency.
“The ramps were installed by the Architect of the Capitol, an office that acts as the steward of the historic buildings and grounds on Capitol Hill.”
Seems like this guy’s job is to run the buildings so I’m not sure what productivity was lost by ‘farming’ him out. In the meantime, the President lurches towards impeachment and the Congress is basically a huge shitshow. The historic buildings in DC look pretty impeccable to me. Our problem is not that the Architect of the Capital is distracted from doing a proper job.
BTW, at our level of law and regulation, the less lawmaking lawmakers make, the lower the cost to citizens.
“Sounds like those 3 people are on salary so the cost was probably $0.”
Go ahead and explain that logic to your boss. See what happens.(Assuming, that is, that you don’t work for the government.)
I am the boss. At least when it comes to Congress and the White House and I say I’m perfectly happy with how the landmarks in DC are being run, those living in them are another story.
The marginal cost may be $8, after the work has been put in.
This is a much better way for environmentalism to proceed. The old model was “this highway interferes with snail migration, therefore no highway.” The new model is “for 2% of the cost of the highway we will make a snail bridge,” which lets things still get built.
The old model was issue a bond and build a highway and kick people out of their homes and put a toll on a the Brooklyn bridge. Like wen don draper built penn station, he said to just do it, just change the conversation.
What major highway was never built because of snail migration?
Elvis is safe. Some of his biggest fans were in love with him all their lives, and those people are dying off. Like Valentino, who nobody could pick out of a lineup now. But Elvis has an advantage in that his best, non-cheesy songs will always be played. The weird cult that sprang up after he died – and really it was only later, not immediately, it wasn’t that big a deal when it happened – was some Southern thing (a la Robert E. Lee, Dale Earnhardt) that for some reason captivated the kitsch-attentive hipster left for a time as boxing still does.
Elvis doesn’t depend on being remembered as a big joke.
And by the way, there’s a thing called Movies! Network – which must be a placeholder to keep a federal license – for people like me who are too lazy/cheap/old/stupid to figure out how to achieve more than a half-dozen TV channels via an antenna. Elvis movies dominate this channel. They have the benefit of dating from a stylish decade. So he may have a second, non-comic vintage life.
My wife’s parents lived in Midtown Memphis, and their neighbors were a local man married to a woman from Sweden. They met at Graceland — he was showing some out-of-town relatives around, and she had come over because she was president of an Elvis fan club in Goteborg.
The thing about Europeans is they tend to be in complete earnest about the aspects of American culture that they love.
Cultural appropriation happens when the appropriated version of a culture overshadows the culture itself. For example, you might frequent a tiki bar in San Francisco and conclude you know all there is to know about Polynesian culture. On visiting Polynesia itself your behavior will be bizarre to the locals, and when they realize that they are being treated in accordance with some distantly-generated stereotype rather than what they actually are, they are rightfully irritated. I’m providing a comical example for illustrative purposes, but it is a real thing with real consequences that are often negative for the cultures being appropriated.
I don’t think that a Chanel boomerang is going to result in anyone going to the Australian outback and being surprised by the lack of expensive handbags, so yes, this example is almost certainly overblown.
Actually, now that I think about it, if you really want to understand cultural appropriation, you might consider the foaming-at-the-mouth reaction of some Catholics to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, gay men who dress up as flamboyant nuns. Although in that case it’s the opposite of most appropriation cases, with the minority culture appropriating from a dominant one, in many cases the very culture that had persecuted them in the first place.
http://romancatholicblog.typepad.com/roman_catholic_blog/2007/10/the-sisters-of-.html
Why not dress up as priests? Unless misogyny is a particular motive. Are gay priests not funny? Will nuns always be hilarious, or do they have a shelf life like Elvis?
Dinosaurs are still alive, of course, and most of us see them every day. We call them birds.
(#5)
#1
https://www.tvsyd.dk/files/media/2017/04/andeplakat.jpg
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