Montana Headlines!

What started out as a disinterested musing in the last post has turned into reality.

The Montana Headlines marketing team determined that adding an exclamation point to the blog title worked well in the 2-13, 20-21, and 85-92 demographics. These are key age ranges for us in working to expand market share, so it is time for a change:

Montana Headlines! it is!

About Town: Step Afrika!

Well, the MH cultural correspondent didn't make it to Umphrey's McGee -- some mumbled nonsense about a long day at work and needing some rest. We had hoped for better.

Still, the month hasn't been a complete wash. Step Afrika! was in town tonight.

Aside: How exactly was the punctuation supposed to work in that last sentence? Maybe we should be Montana Headlines! if for no other reason than to confound critics who might want to quote us unflatteringly, but who would be stymied at trying to decide how to punctuate sentences like: "Montana Headlines! really outdid themselves (him/herself?) in publishing hopelessly silly drivel."

But we digress. MH has tended, over the years, to attend mostly Billings Symphony Orchestra concerts at the Alberta Bair (although this season it was hard to find any performances to get excited about attending, given the goofiness into which that organization's programming has descended... seriously...,) supplemented by other classical or traditional music concerts. But man cannot live by classical music alone, so off to the Alberta Bair to see Step Afrika! it was.

One of the most impressive feats of the performers was their ability to maintain their composure and good humor when attempting to get an audience that was 99.9% white (white with little or no personal exposure to black culture, no less) to do audience participation things that required rhythm. Really, if someone thinks that the opening scenes of the Steve Martin movie "The Jerk" are purely caricature, well, everyone is entitled to their little delusions. (Not a terribly funny movie, overall, it must be interjected.)

Actually, with patience and repetition, the performers actually did a pretty good job of getting the audience to clap, snap, shuffle, and exclaim things like "Hoo-ah" from the diaphragm in something that resembled rhythmic responses. Even more complex tasks like responding to the call of "alright!" with "OK!" and vice-versa began to be mastered toward the end. A couple of brave audience members who got up on stage to learn some rudimentary stepping even ended up playing bit parts in a Zulu village dance scene. We must confess to being jealous of the guy who got to carry a skin-covered Zulu shield and a tribal spear. One thought of asking if one could borrow it for Montana spear-hunting season, but then we recalled that unfortunately there isn't going to be one after all. Sometimes our politicians are so lacking in humor, a spirit of adventure, or both.

So, back to the performance. In a word, it was superb. Pace the name of the dance-troupe, stepping didn't begin as a distinct dance form in Africa, but rather in black fraternities and sororities in the early 20th century here in America. Like most American cultural currents, however, the roots are indeed from the old country, filtered through a century or more of the black American experience.

We recalled during the performance having read a grotesque Robert Ludlum novel called The Matlock Paper -- our 3rd and final try at another Robert Ludlum novel after having read and enjoyed The Bourne Identity. The Matlock Paper made a convincing case that Ludlum apparently only had the one good book in him (good as in a good airport or beach or ski-trip novel.) Anyway, in the book, a pretty caricatured black fraternity organization makes an appearance, and the white protagonist has the rare privilege (as we recall) of getting to see an initiation ceremony at the frat house. Ludlum's version had some dangerous use of spears or some other sharp weapons as part of the ritual, and thankfully nothing like that happened at the Alberta Bair. Of course, that Ludlum scene probably originated not in careful research, but rather in Ludlum's need to create some pulp excitement in a book that even he had to know was tedious enough to have airport readers reaching for a Barbara Cartland novel out of sheer desperation to escape boredom.

Where were we? Oh, yes. Black fraternities. One of the scenes in tonight's performance was a portrayal of the role of stepping in said fraternity ceremonies. Their version was far more artistic than we recall Ludlum's being. Another scene was a portrayal of stepping competitions that happen between fraternities and sororities. Tonight it was men vs. women -- we thought the men narrowly carried the day, but the audience called it a tie. But then, everyone is a winner these days, aren't they? Unless winners are being declared losers...

We've already mentioned the Zulu village scene. And then there was the South African miner scene, doing the gum-boot dance (See photo above,) done wearing "gum-boots" -- or what the Brits call "Wellies." We've liked Wellies ever since seeing Felicity Kendal in them in the old Good Neighbors episodes on PBS in our younger years. But one struggles to imagine even the lively Tom and Barbara
in that show being able to cut a rug in long rubber boots the way the Step Afrika! performers did in recreating this bit of South African culture.

Energy, style, considerable dance talent, a flair for cultural education and a little well-applied attitude -- all in all a great evening with a performing company that one hopes will swing through Billings again in the future.

Step Afrika!

Umphrey's McGee comes to Billings

Didn't think Billings would ever make the Umphrey's McGee circuit, but here they are, playing two nights from now at the Babcock. Montana Headlines may just have to send a cultural critic to the concert to see if they are all they're cracked up to be by jam band aficionados.

Any band that claims King Crimson, early Genesis, and Led Zeppelin as major influences is bound to be serious. Their approach to presenting their music -- few albums, lots of live shows, and encouraging people to record their music in concert and distribute it for free on the internet -- has been unique and for the most part brilliant.

They are doing pretty well for themselves, and while playing as many concerts as they do has to be hard work, it can't be a whole lot worse than slaving in the recording studio and kowtowing to record company executives.

Anyway, we're glad to see someone in Billings got us on the tour, and hope to be able to report on the concert. Oh, and for the record, as far as jam bands go, Umphrey's McGee is to the String Cheese Incident what Johnny Cash is to Kenny Rogers in the country music world. This observation is based on watching and listening to extended video of the concerts of each.

When they go into a "Jimmy Stewart," it takes improvisation to another level. One critic puts it well:

This is what, in essence, sets apart Umphrey's from the major jam bands who've come before them; those cues keep the players on the same page even as they're freely improvising, a clear distinction from the aimless hippie jams of old.

Time for an update

What a difference 2 years makes.

In our last post, Montana Headlines mused that "We're still making up our minds about Gov. Sarah Palin."

Well, that mind-making-upper process has finished, and the answer to the question of "whether Gov. Palin is the right person to spearhead the GOP's comeback 4 to 8 years from now" has been unequivocally answered to the satisfaction of Montana Headlines.

No.

The fundamental question, as noted in our last post more than two years ago was whether then Gov. Palin had "the intellectual chops" to cut it. As we noted then, by very definition, any conservative will be labeled by the opposition in the Democratic party and in the mainstream media as intellectually deficient. We conservatives are Neanderthals, knuckle-draggers, hicks, dolts -- go ahead and choose your label. The best that we can hope for is to be thought of as having a sort of perversely evil cleverness when we successfully advocate for ideas that are wrong (i.e. conservative.) And the only hope one has for being thought of in any other way by the left is to "evolve." That is to say, move left or at least to stop advocating for conservative postions with vigor.

So while the left has the luxury of saying, "see, we told you from the beginning that Palin didn't have it between the ears," we conservatives have to take the time to judge for ourselves and sort out those who are not intellectually up to the task of high-level political leadership from those who are.

Unfortunately, Sarah Palin falls into the former category. We say unfortunately, because of her many manifest talents (see John Sullivan's comments in the previous post.) But there it is.

So who can carry the banner forward? Certainly not Mitt Romney -- why waste e-ink listing the long list of reasons why even a limping Obama would mop up the floor with him. Mike Huckabee, about whom we have written positively in the past, probably can't do it either. Mitch Daniels? Doesn't seem to want it, and if one thing is necessary to get elected president, it is a primal drive to attain the office. Haley Barbour will run into the double prejudices against Southern accents and the girth police (Chris Christie's accent allows him to stay in the running.) Tim Pawlenty we like a lot -- but does he have the charisma that would be needed to unseat an incumbent?

One of two things will happen. The most likely is that Republicans will follow their old playbook and nominate the next guy in line -- Mitt Romney will go down in blazing defeat and join Bob Dole as a "well, of course he would lose" Republican candidate. To be fair to Republicans, our list of such candidates is much shorter than is the Democratic list of sure losers (Dukakis, Kerry, McGovern, Mondale...) An unresistable aside: If Romney had the financial resources of Huckabee, would he even be on anyone's radar? He has enough money to buy the Republican nomination, but unfortunately not enough to buy the presidency.

The other possibility is that someone will rise to the fore as an unexpectedly effective candidate and leader, and that a hungry Republican base will recognize this and nominate the guy (can't think of any likely women at this point.) An unlikely scenario? Of course. This is the Republican party after all.

John O'Sullivan on Gov. Palin vs. Mrs. Thatcher

We're still making up our minds about Gov. Sarah Palin. Not, mind you, about whether she was a brilliant choice on McCain's part (she was,) whether she would have made a good VP and been capable of stepping into the Oval Office "on Day One" (she would have been at least as ready as many previous VP's and VP candidates in this century,) or whether she made McCain's uphill climb a harder one (on the contrary, she single-handedly got him back in the game, gave him a shot at winning until the economy went into melt-down, and probably saved him from a loss of 1964 Goldwater proportions.)

The question, rather, is whether Gov. Palin is the right person to spearhead the GOP's comeback 4 to 8 years from now. We must confess that since we are so steeped in the conservative movement's not inconsiderable intellectual heritage, our main question about Gov. Palin is whether she has the intellectual chops to make it happen. We unreservedly reject the condescending, haughty put-downs directed at her from her betters (after all, we heard the same sort of panicked attacks about Goldwater, Reagan, Thatcher, and Gingrich during their ascendencies, all of whom had intellectual chops far exceeding what they were then given credit for.)

But saying that the caricatures of elitist snobs (or of that even lower form of life, the elitist snob manqué) are grossly unfair is not quite the same thing as saying that Gov. Palin should be handed the Goldwater/Reagan/Thatcher/Gingrich mantle, post-haste.

In this vein, one of our favorite conservative writers, John O'Sullivan, has written a nice piece in which he comes to her defense:

Inevitably, Lloyd Bentsen's famous put-down of Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice-presidential debate is resurrected, such as by Paul Waugh (in the London Evening Standard) and Marie Cocco (in the Washington Post): "Newsflash! Governor, You're No Maggie Thatcher," sneered Mr. Waugh. Added Ms. Coco, "now we know Sarah Palin is no Margaret Thatcher -- and no Dan Quayle either!"

Jolly, rib-tickling stuff. But, as it happens, I know Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher is a friend of mine. And as a matter of fact, Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin have a great deal in common.

O'Sullivan, of course, is one of American conservatism's British expatriates, and brings a depth of knowledge about Thatcher that the casual commentator lacks. He was a special adviser to Thatcher while she was PM, and he retained a close relationship with her after her time as Conservative Leader in Britain, specifically in working with her to found the New Atlantic Initiative.

As befits one of the best minds in the conservative movement today (O'Sullivan is no intellectual slouch, having been WFB's handpicked successor as editor of National Review, and writing regularly for high and mid-brow periodicals like the New Criterion, the London Spectator, Policy Review, and the usual suspects like the NYT and Washington Post) -- O'Sullivan's appraisal is one that comes with eyes wide open, as they say. He notes many of the differences in the political education of these two ladies.

But he also notes some of the similarities, and illustrates them with various (now) humorous stories about Thatcher's "ineptitude" in her days before she became the Iron Lady of Britain -- no longer misunderestimated by either friend or foe. A couple of samples:

Mrs. Thatcher's most senior position until then had been education secretary in the government of Edward Heath where, as she conceded in her memoirs, she lacked real executive power. Her political influence within that government was so small that it took 17 months for her to get an interview with him. Even then, a considerate civil servant assured Heath that others would be present to make the meeting less "boring."

...she became almost as "controversial" as Sarah Palin. Heath, for example, made it plain privately that he would not serve under her. And Sir Ian Gilmour, an intellectual leader of the Tory "wets," privately dismissed her as a "Daily Telegraph woman." There is no precise equivalent in American English, but "narrow, repressed suburbanite" catches the sense.

Mrs. Thatcher attracted such abuse for two reasons. First, she was seen by the chattering classes as representing a blend of provincial conservative values and market economics -- Middle England as it has come to be called -- against their own metropolitan liberalism.

We learn that Mrs. Thatcher got some help -- including coaching from Sir Lawrence Olivier in preparing for the regular face-to-face verbal sparring at which British opposition leaders must excel, unless they are resigned to leading only from the opposition bench forever. And again, O'Sullivan makes it clear that one only knows what someone is made of after they have met the tests put before them -- Thatcher met hers and became a legend, while Palin's tests lie ahead and may be failed. But he does have this to say about one of the many similarities he sees between these two women:

But she shares with Mrs. Thatcher a very rare charisma. As Ronnie Millar, the latter's speechwriter and a successful playwright, used to say in theatrical tones: She may be depressed, ill-dressed and having a bad hair day, but when the curtain rises, out onto the stage she steps looking like a billion dollars. That's the mark of a star, dear boy. They rise to the big occasions.

Mrs. Palin had four big occasions in the late, doomed Republican campaign: her introduction by John McCain in Ohio, her speech at the GOP convention, her vice-presidential debate with Sen. Joe Biden, and her appearance on Saturday Night Live. With minimal preparation, she rose to all four of them. That's the mark of star.

If conservative intellectuals, Republican operatives and McCain "handlers" can't see it, then so much the worse for them.

Ayn Rand's relevance

Ayn Rand's novels, especially her more mature works such as Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, have been justly famous and influential. It is difficult to read those two books and look at the world in quite the same way again.

In a recent Newsweek interview, the current head of the Ayn Rand Institute discusses the alleged failure of free markets in our current crisis.

Traditional conservatism has a mixed relationship with Rand. On the one hand, her novels cut to the heart of socialism, collectivism, and government regulation in their various forms in a way that is readable and indeed gripping. A page-turner like Atlas Shrugged probably did more than the writings of a dozen prominent economists ever could, creating a healthy suspicion of "managed" economies and helping ordinary readers to understand the inextricable connection between the loss of economic liberty and the loss of all liberties.

Think of them as being similar to the recent, grittier movie adaptations of super-hero comic books such as the (quite impressive) Christian Bale Batman movies.

On the other hand, her hostility to traditional religion and her lack of any respect for tradition in general caused most thoughtful conservative thinkers, in the end, to reject her ideas as being just as flawed and potentially dangerous as were the communist and socialist ideologies she was mercilessly flaying in her writings.

That word -- "mercy" -- is actually apt, since the absence of anything resembling mercy and compassion in Rand's writings are one of their most striking features. Whittaker Chambers was perhaps being a little unfair in the most famous line of his justly famous piece in National Review (one that marked the "official banning" of Rand and her Objectivists from polite conservatism) when he wrote: From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: "To a gas chamber — go!"

Chambers did express appropriate sympathy for many of Rand's observations and sentiments, and he quite rightly concluded his essay with a more tempered statement: "the brew is probably without lasting ill effects. But it is not a cure for anything."

At the root of traditional conservatism's rejection of Rand is that her books are highly ideological, and as such, are inimical to how conservatism sees the world. Ideologies believe that they have arrived both at what is wrong with the world and at exactly how to fix it. The free-market supermen of Rand's novels portray her belief in the perfectability (or perhaps more precisely, innate perfection) of certain individual men, just as the Marxist thought she detested portrays the perfectability of human society.

By contrast, our American constitutional system of government is based, fundamentally, on the conviction that man is flawed (although without any hubristic notions that the exact nature of the flaws can be defined with precision, let alone remedied,) and must be restrained when governing others, lest too much power be placed in the hands of any individual or any interest. Conservative thought in the American context is likewise suffused with these ideas, and with the conviction that man's imperfections and limitations mean that radical changes will, by definition, bring radically unintended consequences that are at least as likely to be for ill as for good.

So where does this leave Rand's thought in these days of economic crisis? The Randian interviewed in the Newsweek article demonstrates a characteristic lack of humility regarding any possible flaws that the Objectivist strain of libertarian thought might have. But he (as we should also in fairness expect) has some acute observations, perhaps best summarized in this exchange at the end:

Q: With free markets now in disrepute, what's going to happen to the popularity of Ayn Rand's most famous book, "Atlas Shrugged"?

A: I think it's going to go up dramatically. I think it already has. [People] are saying, "We're heading toward socialism, we're heading toward more regulation." "Atlas Shrugged" is coming true. How do we get out? How do we escape?

Unfortunately, there is no escape. Businessmen are panicking, and I think they should be panicking. Many of them understand that this was not a crisis of free markets. There was no free market to fail. What we have is a regulated market, and the regulated market has failed. (Emphasis added)

This is unquestionably true. But at the same time, we have to understand that our economy has been regulated for a very long time, and there is no sense pretending that the path back to economic freedom could ever be a safe one, let alone easy.

Just as acts of regulation will have adverse unintended consequences that wise legislators will try to foresee, and then try to limit the damage, the same is true of deregulation. Deregulating a regulated sector of the economy is no less tricky than is detoxing a heroin addict, and one doesn't get the impression that our government adequately took that into consideration in some sectors of our economy. Freddie and Fannie, for example, knew they would ultimately get their next fix from the government if need be, so they didn't need to worry about taking ordinary precautions.

Which is why we should have been more cautious about getting our financial institutions addicted to taxpayer dollars and why we should be cautious about giving that first hit to the automakers. (Part of the current argument seems to run that automakers have just as much right to become addicts as bankers do -- out of a sort of twisted sense of fairness.)

Those of a progressive bent might seem to believe that the answer is just to call addiction normal, and make no attempt at withdrawal -- indeed that such "normality" should be expanded. Unfortunately, the Bush administration and the Republican Congress during their brief time in power couldn't decide whether to be Mr. Hyde the pusher or Dr. Jekyll the healer -- and all too often they were a hideous chimera combining the two.

Republican failures at the federal level have led to a situation where for the foreseeable future, we will have a government controlled by those who have no such confusion or internal conflict. As such, one fears that our economy will be made of industries and individuals who will resemble crack-house inhabitants scrapping over who gets the next fix while the dealers, lordlike, survey their realm, such as it is.

The duty of a rational human being in such a situation is, as much as is possible within the constraints of economic survival, to find little ways to "just say no."

Things are getting confused at LITW

It's one thing to let the folks at Left in the West take a victory lap or two -- hey, the lefties had a pretty impressive year, and they have earned the right to gloat and strut like peacocks for awhile as far as we're concerned.

But let's try to keep the facts straight when we're throwing around accusations, shall we?

First, we learn that it is all the GOP's fault that the auto bailout failed. Fair enough, since GOP Senators led the charge on this one.

Only two problems:

1. Jay Stevens groups Denny Rehberg in with those who voted for bailing out Wall Street but against bailing out the Big Three. Was John Driscoll the only Democrat who noticed that Rehberg voted against the Wall Street bailout package -- or does Jay think we just won't notice that he's not telling the truth about Rehberg?

2. Jay also forgot to check how Montana's Democratic Senators voted until later -- something you'd think he'd do before titling his heavily-breathing post "GOP kicks auto industry to the curb." Do you think he might go back and retitle the post "GOP, joined by Democratic Sens. Tester and Baucus, kicks auto industry to the curb"? Maybe? Naw.

The truth is, the only Montanan who deserved to get attacked for having a double-standard was Sen. Baucus, but apparently when you're in a hurry to try to slime Denny Rehberg, and are grateful for all of Max's cash (much of which he shook down from the financial industry -- duh) in the last election, a little sloppiness doesn't hurt.

Meanwhile, Tester gets an "at least he's consistent" from his netroots buddies -- why doesn't Rehberg get one?

Final comment -- why would Baucus and Tester vote against this one? One thought is that they saw the P-Base polls about what Montanans think of the idea of taking the secret ballot away from workers in order to make things easier for union bosses.

Both Senators know they are going to vote to take away the right to a secret ballot and will vote to make public the preferences of employees (both their employers and union organizers will know) about unionizing their shop. In other words, both Senators will roll over for the unions, in spite of what Montana voters think. Casting this vote with the Republicans will give them something to point at, showing that they won't vote down the line with unions on every vote (and what better time to do it than in an industry where there aren't any auto manufacturing plants in Montana?)

Just a theory.