Visiting Column #28 -- Baby, It's Woke Outside

Dean Martin and Marilyn Maxwell.  Bing Crosby and Doris Day.  Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton.  Margaret Whiting and Johnny Mercer.  Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan.

I hope you're getting the idea.  As this Christmas season arrives, and we are deluged with as many seasonal songs as we choose to hear, those of us of a more traditional bent will periodically hear more than a few renditions of the 1944 Frank Loesser classic, "Baby, It's Cold Outside."  Chances are, the performers will be one or more of the couples mentioned above, all of whom recorded the song before I was in kindergarten, and I'm pretty old.

As often as I've written about music performance, I've tried to stress the idea that the performer of a song is taking you, the listener, on some type of journey (especially lyrical-themed songs), to suspend your disbelief -- that is, to make you forget that the people singing are, well, singing, and that the performer wants to put you, yourself in their story.

When I hear -- well, any of the performances I noted above -- doing that duet, I am immediately back in the 1940s, a time of sophistication (faux or real), a life portrayed in the movies.  It is winter, and the most sophisticated version of seduction is going on.  It is a combination of come-on, tease, back-and-forth innuendo.  Never is anything actually said overtly that talks of anything more than a kiss, even though the topic is obviously more so than that.

They're already at the guy's apartment, and it's cold out.  We all know what he wants, and she is trying to act the demure lady.  Duh.

Nothing in the preceding paragraphs, though is more important than this line: "We all know what he wants."  We don't need to be told, and we especially need to not hear it explicitly, because that is the 1940s setting in which the song was done, with everything subtle, understated, polite.  Even if the 1940s weren't exactly like that, the movies were, and that's key.  It is an image, a fantasy world.

So that is what is so ridiculous about a new, "cleaned up" version of the song, done by John Legend and Kelly Clarkson.  The intent, of course, is to remove the story from the realm of '40s subtlety and plunk it down into 2019 political correctness, straight out of the #metoo world of LA and NYC.  We are treated to lyrics like "Your body, your choice" which, while a perfectly decent sentiment, rips us right back into disbelief.

Oh, yes, Mr. "Legend", you're a wonderful example of 2019 woke maleness, who wouldn't touch a woman without her consent.  Zzzzzzzzzz.

Now, John Legend is not a virgin in the performance world.  He's surely familiar with '40s music and doesn't need me to explain to him what the subtlety in "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is all about.  And that's what makes it so contemptible that he feels the need to virtue-signal by tweaking lyrics.  He knows darn well that the song's core is the unspoken message of seduction, not the current sign-a-paper-that-says-it's-OK-to-touch-you message.  He knows better.  I'd hope that Kelly Clarkson does, too, but for sure Legend does.

I guess now we're in for it.  I was listening to the same SiriusXM channel ("Traditional Christmas") yesterday and they were playing an old recording of "Let it Snow."  Oh, my God, I hope that John Legend doesn't know that one.

The fire is slowly dying, and my dear, we're still goodbye-ing
But as long as you love me so, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

It's the same problem, folks!  Subtle seduction abetted by cold weather.  I can't wait for some other virtue-signaling #metoo type to rewicker that one into something that will, well, help make sure that Donald Trump gets reelected in a landslide.

Nothing subtle there.

Copyright 2019 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #27 -- Weirdest Takeaway from the Hearings

The strange Ukraine impeachment hearings run by Adam Schiff, that are weirdly being done in the House Intelligence Committee rather than in Judiciary Committee, are on air as I write this.

I'm not sure that I know all the nuance of all the diplomatic priorities issues buried in a lot of the testimony, particularly from long-serving State Department people.  You get the idea that they weren't too happy with the idea that President Trump, like all presidents before him, actually sets foreign policy, and that they only carry it out.

That might give them reason to oppose him, although perhaps not with the vehemence and injudicious prosecutorial misconduct of the Committee's chair, Adam Schiff.  But let's look at things a little more broadly.

We're talking about impeaching and removing a president.  Well, we're really only talking about impeaching him, because there is more chance that I'm going to wake up six foot tall in the morning than that the Senate would ever remove him.  But either way, it is an incredibly sensitive and serious topic.

That's what I'm struggling with.

You see, the points of fact that constitute "Aha! moments", or even which are claimed as "Aha! moments", frankly seem so far in the weeds that it is insane -- or hyper-political -- to regard them as subject for impeachment.

We understand that Ukraine was scheduled for a large amount of military aid, which their new president wanted.  We understand that it was held up by the USA for some reason we do not, at this point, know. 

We understand that in July, there was a phone call between President Trump and the president of Ukraine, where among a whole lot of mutual congratulations, Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to look into two areas of potential corruption, first regarding the 2016 USA election, and second in regard to the Ukraine energy company Burisma Holdings, which had added former VP Joe Biden's son to its board at a huge monthly salary despite his lack of knowledge of energy or Ukraine -- while Biden was in office. 

And we know that Biden had bragged publicly about suspending aid to Ukraine until they fired a prosecutor investigating a company that his son was being paid a ton by.

We know all that; it is all demonstrated, and not challenged by either side.

We also can see that Trump was heavily suspicious of Ukraine, given that he at least believed that they had expressed large support for Hillary Clinton in 2016, bashing Trump the candidate in articles and Facebook posts.  So it was at least understandable that he would want the new (and possibly more accommodating and friendly) Ukrainian leader to look into what he saw as corrupt.

But wait, there's less.

A president can only be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors."  It is a political process almost by definition.  The House has to vote on articles of impeachment that lay out those "high crimes and misdemeanors."

In order to impeach, you have to lay out those articles, and they have to be, well, actual crimes.  And that's my issue with the coverage.  CNN and the rest of the mainstream media breathlessly report that Ambassador So-and-So says that he or she "understood" that there was (or was not) some connection between the release of that aid and President Trump's request for Ukraine to state publicly that it was going after corruption.  That's their "bombshell", a word they use repeatedly.

Here's the thing, though -- that's not a crime.  And if it is not a high crime or misdemeanor, than why is there a hearing in the first place?

"Quid pro quo" is not only not a crime, it is normal practice in diplomacy.  Yet, oh, gee, it's a bombshell when anyone mentions it.

Bill Clinton lied under oath.  That's perjury, and he was caught.  Now, I get that there would not be a crime without an investigation, in his case, but at least there was a crime.  Perjury is a felony, and ultimately Clinton lost his license to practice law, and probably a few other things.  And he was impeached.  Not convicted, but impeached just the same.

The current impeachment hearings are impossible to understand.  You can't impeach, though, because of an "Aha! moment" (well, with Schiff, you can).  And the media don't seem to get that.  They know they can't get a crime assembled, because there flat-out wasn't one.  But for three years it has been fake bombshell after fake bombshell, with no effect and no crime, even as unemployment is historically low, we have seven million more jobs than unemployed people, and 401(k) accounts are hugely happy.

And that is the weirdest aspect to this.  The only Democrat "successes", to call them that, that occur in the hearings, are when there is testimony they like, always from someone not inclined to like President Trump.  Oh yeah, look, bombshell #254.  But none of it even skirts the outside of a defined crime, let alone one high enough to impeach a duly-elected president.

I read the account of the July telephone call at issue.  We can figure by now that it was LTC Vindman, who was on the call, who reached out to the whistleblower, Eric Ciamarella (I'm not the IG, so there's no law against naming him in this column), a Democrat operative, who then went straight to Adam Schiff -- who still claims that he doesn't know the identity of Ciamarella, though everyone in Washington does.  And here we are.

There is no crime, there are political and diplomatic disagreements.  We all understand that.  CNN understands that too, but that's not their bias, so no one is on CNN explaining that there is no crime, even though it is stated outright by pretty much every witness.

No crime.  No harm.  No foul.  No conviction.

Copyright 2019 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton

Visiting Column #26 -- Apparently I Can't Forget

I secretly enjoy the little pieces that I've written that make fun of me for things I have done in the past, not the least of which sitting on the knee of a well-known 75-year-old actor for reasons that ... ahhh, just read the link.

So often have I made fun of myself for things I've done in my life, that I fear I've repeated a story, and that would be pretty bad, even with my declining, 68-year-old memory.  But in this case, I did a search, and nope, I hadn't told this one.  So here goes.

It has now been 40 years since last I walked on stage in a professional theatrical performance.  Although I've been on stage hundreds of times since, it was never as an actor playing a part in an opera, show or play; that all ended in 1979.  By that time I was in the IT field during the day and, not coincidentally, starting to raise a family.

Through the '70s, though, I had performed in well over a hundred productions, including about 75 of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, as has been documented in other pieces on this site.  Their dialogue, the brilliant words and phrases of Mr. Gilbert, apparently remains with us, possibly longer than we'd like.

My career, as a defense contractor, took a fairly arc-like path, rising up to vice-presidency and senior vice-presidency with assorted contracting firms, and then a gradual decline into a consulting role when I decided to work from my home as I got older.

About ten years ago, nearing 60, I was on that glide path, managing a program for Northrop Grumman in Virginia at one of their main buildings there.  The building had an adjacent parking garage, with a walkway to the building itself on the second floor.  Where it came into the building, there was a little mini-Starbucks, and I often used that to meet visitors, since they didn't have to enter Security if we just met there.

And so it was that I had a meeting with a pair of representatives from a company that wanted to do business with the program I was running.  I had these types of meetings quite often, and since it was convenient, we just used the little coffee corner, grabbing a little table and a few chairs to talk.

I did not know the people beforehand.  One of them was maybe 30 or so, and he did a fair amount of the talking for their side, which was most of the talking for the three of us.  I had earlier introduced myself and my program, told them how we operated and what the parameters would be for any type of deal.  Then he took over for his presentation, and I asked questions and commented along the way.

After a half-hour or so, we were wrapping up the discussion and chatting on next steps, when the younger fellow who had done most of the talking asked, from out of nowhere, "Did you use to perform Gilbert and Sullivan?".

This was definitely out of context for the discussion that had just occurred, so my mind leaped to the logical conclusion -- he had seen me perform a lot and recognized me.  Then that selfsame mind did a little hasty computation, and figured that unless the young man had gone to a show prenatally, and had powers of perception beyond mere mortals, that wasn't the answer.

"Ah ...", I thought.  Clearly, I must have dropped a little pithy phrase that would have been in one of the operettas, and used it without thinking.  I certainly did not recall actually having done that, but I thought it at least possible that it had happened at some point in the half-hour previous.  Yes, that had to have been it.

"Why do you ask?", I said.  "Did I use a phrase from an operetta of theirs?"

"Well, yes", he replied.  "Three times."

I took a sip of coffee and nodded silently.  The implication was pretty bad.  If I dropped three such phrases in a half-hour of discussion on a completely unrelated topic, 30 years after the last time I performed any of those operettas, I must still do it, subconsciously, in every conversation that I have.

Yet another thing I have to work on.  For all the things I have to fix, well, you see, I've got a little list.  Oops.   

Copyright 2019 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around.  Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton