I’m back from a few days in Florida with an unreliable web connection, so I’m just getting the news about the passing of Jimmy Giuffre. Darcy has the best blog roundup, of course. Not sure if anyone else has mentioned it, but one of the least discussed items in the Giuffre/Bley/Swallow catalog is Fly Away Little Bird, recorded in 1992 for Owl and reissued by Sunnyside in 2003. It’s the early ’60s magic revisited, but with Swallow on electric bass. I’d say it’s essential Giuffre, but so is nearly everything the man recorded.
A tip of the hat, while I’m at it, to the mystery blogger Judeosphere, who is shutting down after several years of acidulous and useful commentary about antisemitism and other foolishness. I had some disagreements with him (her?), but that’s inevitable, and I was always happy to be on the blogroll. Have a look at Judeosphere’s Top Ten Double Standards on the Middle East, because they’re not going away anytime soon.
Speaking of which, my plunge back into TV news happened at baggage claim this morning, and it was Jeremiah Wright on CNN issuing a fulsome defense of Louis Farrakhan, saying that Farrakhan declared Zionism, not Judaism, a “gutter religion.” So we’re to understand, it seems, that Wright considers this ok.
I still think Barack Obama did the right thing in his Philadelphia speech: denouncing Wright’s more outrageous statements, explaining his loyalty to Wright as a pastor and a person, urging Americans to look beyond the Fox News hysteria at deeper political realities. Well, no good deed goes unpunished. Wright has now embarked on a self-congratulatory public speaking campaign that may do irreparable harm to Obama’s electoral prospects. An Andrew Sullivan reader put it best: “Jeremiah Wright fucked Obama today and fucked him good.”
Wright’s Q&A at the National Press Club clarified that this isn’t really about religion, or the black church, or whatever red herring Wright wants to throw up. It’s about the huge divide between the liberal, pluralist, democratic vision that Obama’s campaign has put seriously on the map for the first time in my adult life, and the regressive ultra-left orthodoxy that Wright embodies. “[Wright’s statements] don’t represent my views and they don’t represent what this campaign is about,” Obama has announced, and he’ll need to press the point in the coming weeks. Not because he needs to pander to the right. Because he needs to counterattack the hard left. I’ll have more to say about this as the drama unfolds.
Comments are closed.