The Emperor's "No" Clothes

“I know more about the big bills. … Than any president that’s ever been in office. Whether it’s health care and taxes. Especially taxes. And if I didn’t, I couldn’t have persuaded a hundred. … You ask Mark Meadows [inaudible]. … I couldn’t have persuaded a hundred congressmen to go along with the bill. The first bill, you know, that was ultimately, shockingly rejected ... I know the details of taxes better than anybody. Better than the greatest C.P.A. I know the details of health care better than most, better than most. And if I didn’t, I couldn’t have talked all these people into doing ultimately only to be rejected.”

This long and winding road to nowhere is directly quoted from Trump’s recent unplanned NYT interview which embarrassed most White House personnel, probably including the maintenance staff. Trump rambles along in monstrous self-aggrandizement, sounding like what he is – that being the Emperor who is yet unaware of the fact that he’s naked.

In psychology, there’s an idea known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. It refers to research by David Dunning and Justin Kruger that found the least competent people often believe they are the most competent because they “lack the very expertise needed to recognize how badly they’re doing.” This dynamic helps explain comments like the one Trump makes here. 

Suggested New Year's Resolutions for Others.

         Proposed new year’s resolutions for others, since I’m just fine as I am (right!)

   1.   Stop using the words “crazy” and “insane” to describe thing which would better be described as simply “unusual,” “new,” or just “different.”

This is especially annoying when it shows up on those goddam “sidebar ads” as is “Crazy new …(whatever) ” takes 20 years off (insert your town here) woman’s face” Closely related to this is the use of the word “trick” or “hack” to describe the subject.

   2.   What the hell does “Hella” mean? I know the answer, but it’s still really annoying. Just stop it. This especially means you, Buzzfeed.  If an individual is a “Hell of a cook” just say so. Was using the word “of” so onerous that it just screamed for a Duck Dynasty sounding, semi-literate contraction? And Buzzfeed, while you’re regaining some sense of language, cut back about 97 per cent on the use of “as F**k” when applying superlatives.

   3.    Resolved: for 2018 and for eternity, for that matter, anything any person named Jenner or Kardashian does is simply irrelevant to the lives of real people. While you’re at it toss in Kanye West and Rush Limbaugh, too.

   4.    White House staffers get a one time dispensation for breaking the current Occupant’s thumbs in the interest of cleaning up the Twittersphere.

   5.    For 2018, and beyond, only facts are “facts.” They aren’t subjectively “inventable,” and no individual, no matter how highly placed in the hierarchy of mankind, is entitled to his or her own facts, just their own opinions.

    6.   As a nation, let’s all agree that, while veterans are to be commended for serving and thanked for their service, that in no conceivable way makes their opinions any more valid than anyone else’s. The fact that someone was in the military confers absolutely no cachet of foreign policy or science expertise.  Citing someone as “a vet” when recounting his tale of alien rectal probes at Area 51 makes you both seem bat shit crazy.

   7.   In the coming year, let’s be frank about the Religious Right, which is neither truly “religious” or “right”, as in correct. The mean-spirited belittling of those among us with social, emotional and physical differences by the afore mentioned Pharisees cripples our society and weakens our standing among the nations of the world. What is so troubling about this is that while these morons have strayed away from their putative leader’s (Jesus) precepts, they have become more like the radical Islamists they profess to detest. 

Just Another Sugar Whore

Story of a Sugar Whore

         Sooo......Marco Rubio, after voting for the Trump tax plan has had a belated attack of "conscience" ( this is probably an unwarranted assertion) regarding its favoritism of corporations? How odd it is that Florida's poster boy for "bend over and spread for Big Sugar" even pretends to really care about this issue.

         There just isn't, and cannot be, a rational or  economically valid defense of the sugar subsidy program, rabidly advocated by Rubio, which every year provides sweetheart deal loans to sugar processors at a guaranteed price-per-pound. If the market price is below the guarantee when they want to sell, the processors simply dump the crop on the U.S. Department of Agriculture as the loan repayment. To avoid that outcome, the USDA holds sugar prices artificially high by imposing tariffs on imports above an annual quota. As a result, as previously discussed, we Americans pay about twice what the rest of the world pays for sugar.

        The Coalition for Sugar Reform, which includes businesses that use sugar, says that for every U.S. sugar-growing job saved from high U.S. sugar prices, about three American manufacturing jobs are lost! You might want to read that again.  The U.S. candy industry has been hollowed out as companies have fled to places like Guatemala and Thailand where they can remain competitive by buying sugar at world-market prices.

Marco Rubio, on the other hand (the one that isn’t held out to take the donations from various “Big Sugar donors, most notably the Fanjul clan) explains his support with the last bankrupt refuge of protectionist scoundrels—"national security." Yep, we might have a "sugar gap" and then God only know what those sugar countries might do!  If the U.S. opens the market for sugar, according to Marco Rubio, “other countries will capture the market share, our agricultural capacity will be developed into real estate,” and “then we lose the capacity to produce our own food, at which point we’re at the mercy of a foreign country for food security.”

        Really, Senator?  And this man has a college degree? So, let's see; taking this to its logical conclusion....... If Americans don’t pay double the world price for sugar, Alfy and Pepe Fanjul (Alfy, by the way, actually a Spanish citizen) will sell their sugar acreage to home builders, who will pave over Florida and put us at risk of extortion from . . . Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic?  This national security line doesn’t even hold up for rare-earth minerals from China used for national defense, much less a basic farm commodity. This, of course, also fails as a reason, since Florida will own the land and the Fanjuls can go back to Cuba and be the Cuban sugar kings again.

       Since 2010, as before, we will continue to sit watching helplessly as nitrate rich crud from various sources, not the least of which is sugar fertilizer regurgitated back into Okeechobee, continues puking its way into the St Lucie Canal, the Kissimmee watershed remains a narrow, straight channel, and the River of Grass continues thirsty and under watered with clean water. Lake pollution continues threatening the South Florida water supply and who gives a shit?

 Apparently, it’s not the Senator or the Governor who is supposed to represent their interests.  Florida voters went to the polls in the 1990’s and agreed that Big Sugar must be held primarily responsible for cleaning up its pollution. It just hasn’t happened. Voters went to the polls in 2014 to pass a constitutional amendment — approved by more than 75 percent of Floridians — to buy environmentally important lands like those owned by US Sugar and the Fanjuls. it likewise, hasn’t happened.

       How odd would it be if finally the bitching of rich folks about the thick, green pus in the canal where their 60 footer is moored causes someone to do something re: big sugar other than put a hand out, drop trou and say "Thank you sir, may I have another?"  It would be even sweeter to see the voters of Florida reject both Rubio and morally bankrupt co-conspirator, Rick Scott. 

He Shoulda Slud!

He shoulda slud!

       The origin of the above semi intelligible phrase, as well as far too many others is the world of sport. It is actually a comment made by the late Dizzy Dean, Baseball Hall of Famer, turned broadcast “color man,” referring to what action a baserunner attempting to steal second base should have done. Dean is a good place to start because he was always good for a bad example. Perhaps it can be traced back to an incident which happened while Dean was still pitching (and winning) for the Saint Louis Cardinals. He had reached first base and when the next batter hit an infield ground ball, he ran to second base (and not sliding) trying to “break up” the double play. The throw from the infielder hit Ol’ Diz in the forehead, and he dropped to the ground. The trainer had to go out with a stretcher and as Diz was being carried off the field, his younger brother, Paul, sometimes called “Daffy,” was at his side. Following the game, a reporter asked Paul if his brother had been conscious while being carried off. Paul answered that he had been talking the whole time. When asked what he was saying, Paul responded “Nothin’, he was just talkin’”. Unfortunately, this is far from unrepresentative of both oral and written reportage from this area.

       I don’t know for sure, but it almost seems that the lowest of the low hanging fruit from Journalism/English lit classes gravitate to the world of sports reporting. Before I offend anyone, there are and have been, to be sure, some glaring and shining stars in the field. The late Grantland Rice, Rick Reilly, Bryant Gumbel, David Halberstam, and Michael Wilbon were, or are still, very good at what they do. In like fashion, conservative pundit George Will has written several brilliant baseball books. 

       Excepting the true literati of the genre, and at the local newspaper and TV level, as well as in the “color man” seat, this rapidly disintegrates into drivel and mangled syntax. What tripped my trigger this morning was a headline in the local rag which was actually an AP newsfeed. It was, I realized, so far removed from intelligible commentary that many would have no clue what was being reported in the body of the article based on the following: “Cowboys lasso Hokies!”

       Now of course, sports savant that I claim to be, I instantly knew that, far from being a rodeo article, the headline was attempting to convey that Oklahoma State University had defeated Virginia Tech in a football game.

      “Lassos?... Really?” I then realized that we have been reading similar words for “beat, defeat or win” for ages. They include, “edge, squeak, nip.” “Slaughter” is of course a perennial favorite, as are “massacre and annihilate.” Australians sometimes use “stoush” (sufficiently macho for some Australians to label World War One as the Big Stoush). We also see general war references such as “blast, blitz and blown away.” And if your team played badly, it was all a “shambles”, another word that refers to butchery, since before it became generally used as a synonym for mess, it originally meant an abattoir.

       More examples are from terms which otherwise are used to mean "hit". “Banjax, banjo, cane, clobber, knock out, thrash, lam, lash, lick, scupper, smear, thump, tonk, wallop, whomp and whop and whup.” From the domestic chore side, we mustn’t forget metaphors such as “clean out or clean up, roast, stuff, straighten, mop up, chew up, have for breakfast, take to the cleaners and wipe the floor with.” Workshop examples add “flatten, crush, mallet, nail, hammer, thump, shellac, screw and shaft.” This is by no means a comprehensive list.

       Equally annoying are the metaphors for the strategies and results of same which have crept into the jargon of sport. Examples include: “Win some lose some.” Really, no shit? Unless you’re the 1972 Miami Dolphins, that pretty much sums up the entire NFL experience, now doesn’t it?

       “Fumble the ball” is just one of a slew of gratuitous and unnecessary “add-ons” which the color men use. Of course, it was the ball, what else was he carrying?

       A subset of these are the really, really, stupid statements made in the booth and unfortunately not on tape delay. Here are several of the worst, some from the booth, some in response to questions from the booth:

      Joe Theismann, ESPN Announcer and Former NFL Quarterback: "Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." (and his brother Albert is even smarter!)

       Lee Corso, College Football Analyst: "Hawaii doesn't win many games in the United States." So where do they play, Coach, – China?

       Alan Minter, Boxer: “Sure there have been injuries and deaths in boxing—but none of them serious.” I always considered death as serious, if not fatal.

       Jason Kidd, NBA Basketball Player: "We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees." So, basically that would be a full circle and you would be back to where you started?

       Leon Wood, Basketball Player to Announcer Steve Albert: "Are you any relation to your brother Marv?" There are no words for this stupid.

       Greg Norman, golfer: “I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.” Who better?

       Charles Shackleford, NBA player: “I can go right, I can go left, I’m amphibious.” Wow! And he can do it under water!

       Bob Varsha, Formula One commentator: “The drivers have one foot on the brake, one on the clutch and one on the throttle.” Now that I’d like to see. He could probably win the three-legged race at the company picnic by himself, too.

       Brian Kerr, Irish football (Soccer) analyst on David Beckham: “In his interviews, [David] Beckham manages to sit on the fence very well and keeps both ears on the ground.” I’ve seen the man, great looking, guy, but with normal ears!

      NBA analyst (and apparent Nobel Laureate mathematician) Doug Collins: “Anytime Detroit scores more than 100 points and holds the other team below 100 points, they almost always win.” So, what has to happen for them to lose?

      And finally, from former MLB player, Carl Everett: “God created the sun, the stars, the heavens and the earth, and made Adam and Eve. The Bible never says anything about dinosaurs. You can’t say there were dinosaurs when you never saw them. Someone actually saw Adam and Eve. No one ever saw a Tyrannosaurus Rex.” It makes my head hurt trying to grasp the sheer stupidity implicit in the statement.

       Finally, there are the statements full of words, yet signifying nothing because they are so cliché that they’ve lost real significance. These are frequently captured by the sideline reporter who has just asked a truly dumb question right after a game.

       “I couldn’t have done it without the Lord above/God/ my faith in Jesus (pick one) because I’m just one man/one player/one component in a team game/concept.” Ever notice that losers seldom, if ever, say anything about God or Jesus after a loss? Is losing strictly a secular endeavor? Doesn’t the Heavenly Father also interfere when you throw interceptions?

       “We just need to make some plays/play at our tempo/go out there and execute/get better.” Yes? And…. would you care to be specific on how you plan to do that, Captain Obvious?

       “At the end of the day” ……” it is what it is.” Well…. yeah, I suppose it is. Or maybe it is what it isn’t, or it is what it once was, but is no more. Who really knows?

       “He’s good at making plays (or moves, or throws) in space.” I think I saw this one with Sigourney Weaver, right?

       "Play Michigan football/Villanova basketball/ The Oriole Way/The Patriot Way" (etc., ad nauseum” Just once wouldn’t you love to see the Chicago Bear’s Coach (currently winless) tell the sideline pest that “we need to get off this losing bullshit and play football the Patriots’ way?”


       This is just a sampling of such tripe, I hope “I played within myself, kept my game, and brought to the table” and, at the end of the day, wrote something which made you smile.

Gun control

This resulted from a post in today’s Villages Daily Sun. What follows is my (limited to 300 words) response. I will then append a bit more

“A recent letter attempted to deflect attention from the real issues of the “gun control” debate. The writer maintained that “An NRA instructor neutralized the shooter with a gun.”  The sentence immediately following begins with “Democrats……. spewed nonsense without knowing the details.” This isn’t a partisan issue. The details are: First, the shooter was discharged under behavioral and mental conditions which required the Air Force to notify federal and local law enforcement, which it failed to do. Second, Texas has no law requiring firearms dealers to initiate background checks prior to transferring a firearm if the buyer is licensed to carry or even a felon if five years gave elapsed since conviction. There is federal law, but not state law. Private sellers have no obligation to perform checks. Third, the weapon was an assault rifle which, off the shelf, can   hold up to 30 rounds of ammunition. 91 percent of Democrats, along with 76 percent of independents and 70 percent of Republicans, said they are for banning such assault-style weapons. Finally, the shooter was actually “neutralized” when he shot himself in the head.

       There is no real argument re: background checks. There is bipartisan agreement on the issue.  90 percent of Democrat and 81 percent of Republican gun owners support of mandatory federal data base background checks. Additionally, 72 percent of NRA members support them. The writer is in a small minority even within her own organization!

  

      In a final burst of whimsy, the writer styles herself and other gun owners as the “sheepdogs” protecting the rest of us from “the wolves.” No thank you, ma’am. As a 26-year, military retired, handgun certified, E-9 who wouldn’t have one in the house, don’t help me. It‘s the armed self-styled  “sheepdogs” who, in recent years, have shot fathers in front of their children in movie houses, threatened another’s dog in The Villages at a dog park, shot teenagers over loud car radios or  stalked and shot them in their apartment complexes,  and that’s just  in Florida.”

        There;  300 words on the nose!   Now for the “rest of the story” as the late Paul Harvey (yet another right-wing sycophant) used to say.

        The Texas shooter had a list of abuse and mental issues which were frightening, including fracturing his infant son’s skull while still on active duty. The Air Force, doing what the services generally do, gave him a military court martial with some less than vigorous punishment and then shoved him out and onto the laps of local law enforcement, except they forgot to tell local and federal authorities that they were saddling them with a violent abusive offender with serious mental status issues.

       Texas “allows” for voluntary background checks at point of sale of firearms, but has no state law requiring it. I cannot wrap my head around such a concept. If the prospective buyer lies on the local form, as the TX shooter, (intentionally not using his name) did, tough, who are you gonna check with anyway? Any claim to responsible gun sales in Texas is specious at best.  

        The other issues which ring increasingly hollow as we read of accidental shootings of innocents by well intentioned, but mistaken, gun owners are that much of the NRA argument (not over background checks as the statistics show, but from on high in the organization’s  leadership) is really two-fold. The first, more common among rank and file is the assumption that “We morally superior people are responsible and should have guns because of that superiority.”

 Naturally,  this assumption of the moral high ground is human nature. Our nation has nuclear weapons, but we lose our minds over that thought that another country which we don’t like might also develop them. Why? Well, because  we are a moral people (just ask us) who would never use such destructive force unless it was justified (insert: “in our national interest” here) but “they”…..?  In like fashion, the afore mentioned writer essentially brags about this fact on behalf of herself and her husband. Of course, the inference is that they are incapable of making fatal mistakes or losing their temper and shooting someone in the heat of the moment. When a gun is present in a situation of domestic violence, it increases the risk the woman will be killed fivefold.

Sadly, unlike the military or uniformed civilian services who are armed and trained by law, these persons never receive any meaningful training or definitive instruction in the use of deadly force and when it is authorized. This was a key part of watch stander training, even on submarines, where such a threat is relatively low. Here, in The Villages, there has been at least one verified instance of a handgun brandished at a dog park. A friend also reported a woman in her eighties with her handgun loaded on the seat of the golf cart beside her when going to get the mail at the lighted post office box kiosk. Ageism aside, who the hell knows what she might construe as a threat and who or what might get shot? Similarly, a retired policeman in Wesley Chapel shot a man to death in a movie theater as his wife and child watched. The victim was unarmed save for a bag of popcorn.

The other issue is the question of where the money comes from. While it is true that major corporations within the industry donate a lot (hundreds of millions over the years) this money cannot by law be used for the NRA’s Political Action Committee. That said, it can be used for the sort of propaganda which spurs private donations, by pandering to the scare tactic motivation that “freedoms” are in danger. The actual nature of such concerns is shadowy and irrelevant to the majority of NRA members, yet they donate. A call for assault rifle bans is morphed by the NRA spin machine as an agenda to take all guns, which no significant public figure has even suggested. Similarly, a call for mandatory federal criminal data base checks prior to allowing a purchaser to take possession of a gun is decried as some shadowy plot to “keep tabs” on the citizenry. Here’s your wake up call – “they” can already do that if desired, but having such checks mandated by every state might stop any number of mass shooters from accumulating the wherewithal to commit their crimes.

So what to do? According to a study by the Department of Justice, between 1994 and 2014, federal, state, and local agencies conducted background checks on more than 180 million firearm applications and denied 2.82 million gun sales to prohibited purchasers. To date, the background check system has blocked over 3 million firearm sales to prohibited purchasers… but not in Texas. Additionally, these checks are waived for gun “shows,” which translates as unregulated sales to God knows who for God knows what usage. As long as states can under -regulate firearms sales, the carnage can continue.

On a strictly personal note, The concept of doctor patient privilege serves a real purpose, however, when such confidentiality   endangers the rest of the population, I feel there should be a standard of the common good which allows a therapist or other mental health care professional to alert law enforcement in an attempt to remove the possibility that said unbalanced individual may obtain a weapon or weapons which threatens the welfare of innocents. Events in Colorado, Texas, Charleston and Virginia Tech might have been significantly altered if such a provision was in place.

No legitimate hunter, or target shooter’s access to weapons appropriately obtained, is, or has ever been, at risk or under threat, except in the fever dreams of the NRA hierarchy, which plays its members like a Stradivarius, Sadly, handguns are a different story, as they are involved more frequently in a spectrum of shootings, accidental , intentional and suicidal. The perpetrators and victims of accidental and negligent handgun discharges may be of any age. Accidental injuries are most common in homes where guns are kept for self-defense, and are self-inflicted in half of the cases. (So much for handgun safety training?)  Firearms are the most popular method of suicide due to the lethality of the weapon. 90% of all suicides attempted using a firearm result in a fatality, as opposed to less than 3% of suicide attempts involving cutting or drug-use.  The risk of someone attempting suicide is about five times greater if they are exposed to a firearm on a regular basis.  

Simply as a statistic worthy of note, The number of gun murders per capita in the US in 2012 - the most recent year for comparable statistics - was nearly 30 times that in the UK, at 2.9 per 100,000 compared with just 0.1 per thousand in the UK. If guns stopped crime, this would be of no matter, but they don’t. Weapons which the owners classify, usually loudly and proudly as for self-defense, rarely ever serve that purpose, and frequently involve the owner themselves getting shot. 

Sports Thoughts

Sometimes sports figures, even those with higher education who ought to know better, say things for public consumption which make one pause and say, “Huh?”  

Florida’s head basketball coach summed it all up this way in a recent media tidbit. “We aren’t very good on defense, we aren’t rebounding well, and we aren’t scoring.” in justifying his team’s recent loss string of three games in a row. Really, oh savant? Thanks for straightening that out for all of us who read the sports page and understand absolutely nothing about basketball.

Why is it that an American professional baseball player can be from almost anywhere in the country, have a good mind and yet when interviewed what we get is “I think I can he’p this ball club; it’s a good ball club, and I think I can he’p it!” All this, of course, drawled in a trashy mush mouth accent reminiscent of the love child of an Alabama sharecropper and Randy Macho Man Savage, even if the interviewee is from Minnesota. These guys then, off camera, revert to standard English. This a generalization, I admit, but far too common to reflect geographical distribution alone. I think it’s a side effect of pine tar, which may explain why American League pitchers seem less affected.

In much the same fashion, every person involved with the sport of football seems unable to just say “ball” or “team” or “game.” This is especially true of the ‘color guys” in the booth, who seem obligated to remind us every time the use of the word “game” is appropriate, that what we’ve been watching for the last 90 minutes has been a “football game.”  Or when the Quarterback is sacked, and a fumble occurred, we’re reminded that he didn’t protect the “foot” ball, as if we might assume he was protecting other ball(s?) Then of course we’re reminded that what we’re watching is a football game, as if we might think it was a tennis match gone strangely awry. As noted before, baseball players can apparently remember that the “ball” club they play for is a baseball team, but footballers seem determined to remind us that it’s a “good ‘football’ team”, so we don’t think it’s roller derby or something else other than football.

New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, after receiving a one game suspension for the mother of all cheap shots, “justified” it thus in his apology, “It was frustration and that’s what happened.”  The hit was blatant, late, deliberate and avoidable had Gronkowski even thought of not doing it. What has been very little mentioned in all this is that Gronkowski plays for the same team as the late Darryl Stingly, whose neck and career were shattered by a late hit. Jack Tatum’s hit on Stingley was, believe it or not, far less blatant than the lick Gronk laid on Tre’Davious White. One can almost see a domestic violence perpetrator telling the judge that, “Well, it was just frustration and that’s what happened, your honor.”

The Faux Hat

Ok, Ok, I guess I'd better get these little irritations and natterings off my chest as they come up, otherwise I'll probably just break out in terminal hives.

        I don't even remember who it was, but I finally saw one too many faux cowboys with the  mandatory straw hat singing with that nasal twang about how his best friend stole his dog, had sex with his truck, and took the tires off his wife (or something like that).

        Wearing "the hat" if you're actually baling hay in the sun or rounding up cattle makes sense. Wearing it to a dinner dance while dressed in a tux is simply grotesque and screams "poseur!"
       
        Not talking Woody Guthrie or Jimmy Rodgers, or Carter family  here, (real country folk with legit roots who lived the life) but rather calling out the degree holding, non-farm working (ever),  dudes who want the unwashed to think they're "good ole boys." Who, you ask, fits this category? Here are some names of frat boy college grads who "took up the hat", apparently to augment their skills. Jason Aldean, Tim McGraw (PKE  UL Monroe), Garth Brooks( BA Advertising), Brad Paisley (BA  Business admin), Kenny Chesney (BA advertising , LCA frat).

          The notable exception in the above  is Garth Brooks, who has legit vocal chops, can sing without the whiny nasal shit kicker twang, and has sold more certified platinum solo artist albums than any other American male singer, including one, a respectable rock effort,  in his alter ego as Chris Gaines. Of course the 29X platinum country- rock (minus the twang/straw hats) Eagles Greatest Hits, album eclipses any two Brooks albums in sales.

         This is, I freely admit,  an acquired distaste on my part for the  vast majority of country music, since I was raised in western Maryland in Hagerstown, a town right across the Potomac River from West, by God, Virginia,  where there were two radio stations, one of which played what we then called "hillbilly" music, the other which played the most bland mix of syrupy pap available, and neither of which was about to play rock and roll in the later 1950s. Like the BBC until, believe it or not, 1964 ,  many US mainstream stations cared not a fig for what the listening public wanted  to hear, choosing instead to air what they thought listeners "should" like and, would grow to like if it was all that was available. (this was actually stated as policy by BBC bigwigs!)  This phenomenon continued in the UK to the extent that many BBC listeners were forced to change to Radio Luxembourg ("Pirate" Rock and Roll radio from ships) to hear  "the New Music" which American kids were gradually being allowed to hear on prime time local radio.

        WARK,  aka the  "hillbilly" station (AM/FM in a time when few listened to FM anyway,  shamelessly broadcast the twangy, nasal, crap most of the day, with an occasional listenable flare of Patsy Cline, who today would be Adele, or Eddy Arnold, who had a likeable enough, plain vanilla, baritone.  But at night, I discovered, like so many teenagers trapped in similar situations did,  the phenomenon  known as ionospheric bounce. It was life changing.

         For the uninformed (or younger, lol)  FM radio transmission range is roughly "line of sight", like TV and, like TV, have about the same range. At night, they don't change much, but shorter (lower frequency) AM radio waves undergo skywave bounce under most nighttime atmospheric conditions and can extend far beyond the transmitter's usual range.

       For a youngster hungry for better listening fare in a sea of shit kicker and schlock, this meant that some pioneering Rock stations like WLAC in Nashville and WKBW in Buffalo, both 50,000 watters, were actually listenable at night. So, Listening to "John R & the Hoss Man" in Nashville I was introduced to Rhythm and Blues of a sort which would have occasioned cross burnings in Hagerstown, Md. Tom Shannon on WKBW in Buffalo played early White artist efforts. Had I known of its existence I could also have heard Alan Freed's  WJM (Cleveland, OH)  "Moondog Rock 'n Roll House Party" It was Freed who began calling "Rythm and Blues," which carried the race connotation,  "Rock and Roll."

        My parents, both trained musicians, may not have cared for the genre, but they, bless their hearts, appreciated that there were different styles and tastes and,  never once even attempted to negatively influence my choices.  Although the first record I actually bought myself (45 rpm) was Rosemary Clooney's (you remember, George's aunt?) "C'mon a My House," a decidedly  bland mainstream disc, the second was "Earth Angel" by the Penguins, a Black R & B quartet, heard late at night from Buffalo.

         Meanwhile, in Nashville, late night jocks, John Richbourg ("John R") and Bill  "The Hossman," Allen, apparently  left to their own devices to sell  late night airtime, sold some to "race record labels" and Gene Nobles, another WLAC jock, began playing records brought to him by black students hungry to hear dance music they liked on the radio. This was a time when most Black owned or focused labels/artists did a lot of business via mail order because mainstream record stores simply didn't (or wouldn't) carry them. James Brown was quoted as saying "WLAC was all we ever listened to."

        To the young kid listening to late night radio in bed it was an introduction to music which wouldn't be played locally on air for another 4 or 5 years. Ruth Brown, Faye Adams, and others were a revelation, but it was Little Richard, whose "Tutti Frutti" was riveting to me. The lyrics were nonsense, but the beat was inescapably catching. That was followed up by "Long Tall Sally" which I actually bought. (Interestingly enough I would eventually own covers of both by Elvis Presley, a White singer who didn't sound like it.)  At the same time Ray Charles, Bo Diddley and Fats Domino were forcing their way into the airwaves.

        By 1956,  White crossovers were penetrating and making the R & B category somewhat  more homogenous with market penetrations by  Elvis, and Carl Perkins, while Chuck Berry's reworking  of a song called "Ida Red" into "Maybelline" rose off the R&B charts into the white dominated Pop charts. In the UK, the only way anyone could hear any these was the aforementioned Radio Luxembourg pirate broadcasts or the increasing number  of  records smuggled by travelers.

        The common thread in all this music was authenticity, which I find lacking to a shameless degree in much of what is currently called "Country" music.  Flatt and Scruggs played country music, The Carter family and Hank Williams did country. While there are some genuine talents in the field, many of these artists are seemingly at their best when they do more mainstream pop.  Carrie Underwood would be a star in any genre and Taylor Swift has landed far, far from her original style, while singers like Darius Rucker, whose monotone drone made Hootie and the Blowfish so execrable and forgettable, has gone to country to maintain a career. On  a final bright note, genius picker Vince Gill, he of the great six string  skills and nice tenor voice  (and never, never with the faux cowboy hat) has crossed into the light with The Eagles.

        If you have read this far and disagree, I don't care. This was an opinion piece with a history lesson in the middle.