Haley and AIPAC

 

I. Haley

Aaaaaaaand it's out.

I don't think it's a big deal. It's Student fucking Government. It was a joke then, it's a bigger joke now. I loved every minute of College Student Government for exactly that reason. Every experience in the AU Student Confederation was hilarious: from Z.... C....... trying to break the rules so he could rule AU as a student according to conservative principles, to the D-day level coup d'etat formed to overthrow him, to hearing J... F....... try to become President by insulting everyone at a nominating convention, to how certain College Republicans kept setting P...... K........'s posters on fire, to the way everybody talked a huge game about trying to run President Ladner out of town only to completely cowtow to him when they got the chance to interview him. I didn't go to regular high schools. There was barely a student government and there was certainly no Model UN, this was my chance to finally be a regular high school nerd.

But my favorite memory of all: April 2003. I left for a cousin's Bat Mitzvah in Chicago on a Friday and missed the SC transition by fifteen minutes. I boarded the shuttle from the subway when I got back, and heard from J... H... what Haley just did.

I laughed so hard I might have soiled my pants. Everything about student government was pathetic, it was idiotic, I loved every second of it.

Aside from bragging that I took her one year to Founder's Day (our College Homecoming, AU was weird...), I've been trying to hold my tongue about Haley for years. She called me when she was planning on running, ostensibly to catch up but of course I knew the real reason. She had no reason to worry about me trying to spill the beans, I was utterly apathetic about trying to use Haley's tiny bit of dirt to ignite a journalistic career that obviously wasn't going anywhere.

So instead, if anybody ends up caring about this deeply stupid issue, I ought to write in a little bit to defend her. Believe me, I have no impetus for doing this from the Stevens campaign. I'm utterly out of politics, and I doubt I would be much of an asset to any movement with which I'd associate.

We knew each other very well back in the day. Maybe she's just a politician, but she was literally the first person to respond when I sent out a notice that my father died. She was not a non-entity in my life, and perhaps I kid myself but I doubt I was a non-entity in hers. When I moved to Israel after college, I was a bit mad at her for not coming to my goodbye events so I ignored her goodbye calls, and I remember listening to my messages as I was driven to the airport as a shrill midwestern voice yelled 'TUCKER! PICK UP THE PHONE! TUCKER!!!'. We would literally stay up until all hours of the night talking philosophy, history and personal lives long after everyone went to bed. She was a fascinating person, incredibly intelligent but whose mind darted from topic to topic so quickly that I couldn't believe she had enough concentration to memorize a politician's script.

But the irony is that she was almost 180 degrees from how she presents herself now. Everything about Haley back then seemed to advertise that she was completely blithe about the DC rat race. Back in 2003, she seemed to be in the same Patagonia sleeveless fleece every day, her tall (next to me) bearing presented with short gym shorts that clearly weren't worn to blend into the crowd, but I just figured she was an extravert who wanted to be liked: be it the intellectuals she could clearly run with, or the stoners and slackers with whom she clearly felt some sympathy. Like me, at the beginning of AU, she was a borderline socialist. Every college student is. Until our generation, it was a given that the vast majority of liberals moderate out, and Haley would seem to have moderated out more than many in this generation when nobody's making enough money and everybody's tempted to radicalize--including me, though I will continue to resist for years hence.

I don't quite buy Haley's transformation. I never bought it. I don't think we've seen the real Haley Stevens in Congress: I don't think it's her fault, and I guarantee the real Haley Stevens, knowing how to work the levers of power, would be more effective for progressive causes than yet another progressive socialist who stands on ceremony.

Haley did not stop surprising me after that. I remember having a lunch with my erstwhile nemesis turned good friend W... M.... at my beloved Krupin's Deli, where we reminisced about the old days. To my surprise, there was Haley four tables over, suddenly in a dark business pants suit. She was cleraly in a meeting so we didn't try hard to interrupt her, but we both got up at the same time, so we asked what she was doing these days: it was 2008, and she was working for Hillary.

Haley Stevens working for Hillary in 2008??? The Haley we knew was made to work for Obama! Somehow she never got on that train. I don't know the story, I would imagine it's a story of which political connections were better: this is the unfortunate reality of politics that never changes. But she was able enough to rise through the party without the help of Obamaland. She clearly had connections with the auto industry, and ended up in the Biden camp, which, as we later learned, was populated with some very different people than Obama had. She worked on the auto bailout, which quite literally saved American industry. Whether or not you agree with the particulars of Haley's positions, she did more for workers by the time she got to Congress than most socialists have in their lives.

I'm sure that beneath everything is not some kind of moderate Eichmann but just another good student who did exactly what her teachers and parents and bosses told her to do, and probably felt not a little trapped by it all. She's a bit like Pete Buttigieg that way, and the people who seem to hate Haley these days have hated Buttigieg for years. The thing is, I would put any amount of money (redistributed) on the idea that Buttigieg-like politicians will be far more successful at progressive reform than any number of social democrats: who stand on ideals while right wingers plow over them, wonder why nothing gets done, until the left within their left grows so sick of inaction that they radicalize from soft socialists into something hardened and dangerous.

Is Haley a person of fallible integrity? Of course. She's a politician! As you can see from Bernie's behavior with "Der Oyster" in Maine, there is no such thing as a successful politician who doesn't sell their soul. I understood why Sanders had to stand by this lowlife. It's the price of admission, and the sooner Democrats get that into our heads, the sooner we start winning elections again. Haley proved she has what it takes to win, and she proved it by her self-transformation. This other guy probably doesn't, and even if by some miracle he does, he certainly doesn't have what it takes to pass legislation.

Unfortunately, we live in the real world. Politicians have both more and less integrity than we think they do. No matter who they think they are, circumstances force them into lanes, and if they want to keep their career going, they generally have to stay in those lanes. There is, however, a chance to change lanes occasionally. Progressives, when disciplined by the realities of power, often become the most effective public servants of all.

If this becomes a scandal, it will be the dumbest scandal in American history. Compare it to what's come out about other Bernie candidates. If this is the worst about Haley, Michigan will do great with her as a candidate, but given the track records of all the other Bernie candidates: not just "Der Oyster" but many others, are Democrats really willing to take a chance on yet another Bernie Bro?

You may say, "I don't care, I want someone who would sooner have no career than someone who would sell their beliefs out." There's no such thing. A person who would have no career rather than sell their beliefs out is a politician who will have no career.

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II. AIPAC

But Haley was, and is, in a very bad bind.

I find it deeply hilarious and sad that Haley is more deeply involved in the internecine wars of my people than I am, a kid raised to speak both Yiddish and Hebrew. I'm just a pygmy, I don't expect my opinion to carry any weight, but the idea that Haley Stevens is being raked on the coals for supporting Israel is a bit tragicomic.

Even I find the extent of her support a bit much, but her hands are tied. Haley disappointed a lot of people, myself included, by endorsing Michael Bloomberg. Being no leftist anymore, I think Bloomberg was a darn good mayor. Nevertheless I hate him in my bones. I'm no leftist, but nor am I a moderate, and to me, Bloomberg is the epitome exact sort of faux-impartial faux-pragmatic Jewish moderate that enabled the rise of the Jewish right, and so hypercontrolling that I secretly think he longed for a country to rule as a dictator.

I think Bloomberg would rather this country be run like Singapore, but he was just an example of how generations of ostensibly liberal older Jews sold out the liberal tradition they inherited, and these are the people who laid a direct path into Netanyahu's bombed out traintracks. Until recently, liberals correctly stood up for Israel. They did not, however, speak up for a LIBERAL Israel. Behold the results.

The generation of our parents pretended we were all still living in 1967 and the Prime Minister was Levi Eshkol. Israel is not the charming social democracy anymore, it is one of the most powerful countries on earth. But all powerful nations eventually fall, and what kills them is hubris. Israel is still endangered, but there is no permanent solution but a negotiated settlement, and there is no temporary solution but a once-every-five-years lawnmowing. Regime change is always chaos, and chaos kills to unprecedented levels.

There is no point in a Jewish state that starts an endless series of wars until it finds an enemy it can't vanquish and hits back with as much force as Israel hits. It could start nothing short of a world war. Leaving aside any questions of mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and any word that starts with "G" or "A", there is no point to a Jewish state so bellicose that it may lead to a Shoah Bet.

Whether J Street. or something else, there MUST BE a liberal Jewish counterlobby to AIPAC that exists to promote an Israel that can get rid of its Prime Ministers more than one year every twenty, can listen to its own intelligence forces, can pressure to promote moderate factions in Palestine, can promote center-to-left Zionist parties in Israel, and lobby Israel as well as the United States for liberal causes. Whatever J Street's problems, they dwarf the problems of AIPAC in this era of Jewish decadence, and we're reaching a point when AIPAC is a long-term impediment to Israeli survival. AIPAC deliberately snuffed out any liberal alternative to it, and the end result is that millions who would have supported J Street now support the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace.

So bearing that in mind: I'm absolutely positive that, back in the day, Haley she endorsed Bloomberg because she wasn't going to win her Congressional election without his donations. She gave a endorsement, she got a war chest, perhaps in perpetuity, and in exchange, I believe she was sworn to moderation, and particularly to support of Israel, regardless of how she actually thought.

So far as I remember, we never discussed Israel in much detail, so I have no memory of her actual beliefs about it, but I cannot imagine someone as smart as Haley does not see the deep-seated facts on the ground, and would ditch AIPAC at the first opportunity had she any means to do so.

Hashem said to Avraham: "I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." Bless you for your support Haley, but Jews are no more a monolith than America, nor is Israel a monolith. There are millions of Jews currently unrepresented, and would bear any burden for a leader that represents us.

Haley: whether you win or lose, lead us. Call for a liberal Zionist lobby to counterweight a lobby that, whatever it was in the past, has clearly chosen the Right. Somebody's got to do this, and on it may depend the future of Israel, of Jews, of the Middle East, maybe even the world (1%?). The world is currently faced with the birth of an authoritarian Christianity every bit as dangerous as authoritarian Islam, abetted by a Jewish community willfully repressing that we are meant to be the front line soldiers in someone else's battle.

There is an opening here, you have a very unique opportunity and the eyes of the whole country are on you for the next while.

Haley, please: lead us.

#Zinman90

 I hope my childhood hero has a happy 90th. It is unfair he's around when my father is gone, but their personalities in my mind were very similar. Hysterically funny but blunt, utterly controlling yet democratic. He was my musical father. They met once and I remember the utter shock of seeing them next to each other. I announced to him at 8 years old my intention to become a conductor. He said: what do you play? Violin and piano. Well, that's a good start.

Here he is in what he did best and what he never recorded: he was as great a Mozartian as anyone in history, and here's a motherload. A truly idiomatic Mozart, so rhythmically alive that you hear every rhythmic irregularity, full of vocal line after a slightly over precise overture, with a perfect accompaniment of singers as he always was for soloists. Unfortunately, the radio is compressed and you can't get a sense of Zinman's extraordinary dynamic range--always planned with an intentionality that would elicit envy from Petrenko or Jurowski. This is a concert from the Minnesota Orchestra's summer season, which of course means that rehearsal time was compressed, and to get this level of playing in the summer for a full opera is something only a true maestro can do. I'd imagine there would be perkier tempi with more rehearsal time, but you can't have everything.

He probably should have left us for Minnesota after Edo De Waart left. If you read articles of the time in the Baltimore Sun, it basically seemed a done deal that Zinman would go to Minnesota and Ivan Fischer would replace him in Baltimore: IVAN FISCHER!!! But Minnesota went with an unknown gamble in Eiji Oue, music director of the redoubtable Erie Philharmonic, and while these unknowns can occasionally turn out revelations, it was generally thought a big disappointment (though there were a few nice records). All's well that ends well. Vanska gave them another golden age, Zinman became a quasi star in Zurich, and Ivan Fischer became Ivan Fischer.

The music world never got the true sense of the man. He should have been a massive star in America, he had the precision of Maazel with the soul of Bernstein, but we did not value what he did best. He was a better communicator even than Lenny--just as articulate and 100x funnier. If he ever got a TV show to explain music he'd have been a star of his generation equivalent to Abbado and Haitink, but most stars of the time were not only taller but had auras of unapproachability. Sometimes quietude like Abbado and Hatink, sometimes fear like Muti and Maazel, whereas Zinman was utterly approachable. He'd have been much more popular in the internet era.

He was both a comedian and a very serious musician. The fooling around always concealed an utterly by the book adherence to the basic rules of musicianship: every attack was precise, every line was heard, every chord was in tune, every dynamic marking was respected unless it obscured linear clarity: the vocal line was everywhere in a way that never came through over recording, but it was always over a rhythmic framework of iron. He was at the forefront of research into historically informed performance, and followed it almost too literally: when you hear the results in, say, Schubert, the insistence on dogmas of period tempi and attacks obscures the lyricism in a way more introspective conductors like Abbado don't fall for, even if they respect the research of historically informed performance.

He was a very physical, almost Carlos Kleiber-like conductor--every gesture conveying an encyclopedia of information--and his best repertoire was in the physical world. He was an extremely competent but unidiomatic conductor of most Austro-German classics. He enjoyed life too much to be a metaphysician. He was a light hearted dynamo like Beecham, but the lightheartedness also concealed a Dorati-like seriousness; almost dark and oppressive. In the end result, I always thought he was less like his mentor Monteux than he was like a warmer, wittier George Szell, whom he must have heard quite a bit when he went to Oberlin for undergrad. He was best in Haydn and Mozart, the colorful rep of France and Russian, even numbered Beethoven and Richard Strauss, 20th century rep like Stravinsky and the eclectic Americans of his generation for whom he did so much in Baltimore.

May he return to the podium, get a victory lap, and continue making music many years hence.

Mozart's "Die Zauberflöte" (Minneapolis, 1991)

Another ((((ing list of Another ))))ing list.

Absolute Essentials to Experience the American Spirit:

OK: Take 2... there will likely be a take 3...

Absolute Essentials to Experience the American Spirit:

1. River of Dreams

2. Skimbelshanks the Railway Cat

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The Canon:

The Simpsons: Seasons 1-8 (f*** off it's my list...)

Citizen Kane-- dir. Orson Welles (a lot more entertaining than you remember)

West Side Story

Our Town by Thornton Wilder (I put it over Death of a Salesman as the Great American Play)

Stephen Sondheim:

Company

Follies

Into the Woods

Assassins

Gypsy

Merrily We Roll Along

Stephen Sondheim is the center of the American canon, the greatest of all American artists, what we have that competes with Shakespeare.

The Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Alan Lomax Collections (collected recordings of often anonymous folk musicians, just dip in)

Louis Armstrong Hot Five & Seven:

West End Blues

St. James Infirmary

Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy

New York City

Diego Rivera Detroit Murals (does for America what Michelangelo did for the Vatican)

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

A Love Supreme by John Coltrane (jazz)

Mad Men (TV)

Do The Right Thing--dir. Spike Lee

Nobody Knows When You're Down and Out, Backwater Blues, by Bessie Smith (blues)

My Antonia by Willa Cather (The Great American Novel: a novel of deep connection between immigrants and the native born)

Old Man River (the Great American Song)

The Grand Canyon

On Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Boston Public Library

Runagate Runagate and Middle Passage by Robert Hayden (poems about slavery)

A Good Man is Hard to Find, Everything that Rises Must Converge, Revelation by Flannery O'Connor (short stories)

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (novel)

Mahalia Jackson (Gospel)

Move On Up A Little Higher

How I Got Over

Precious Lord Take My Hand

Come Sunday

Vietnam Veterans Memorial: designed by Maya Lin

Hellhound On My Trail by Robert Johnson (blues)

Scott Joplin (ragtime)

Bethena

Solace

The Cascades

Maple Leaf Rag

New York Movie, Early Sunday Morning, Gas, Automat, Nighthawks by Edward Hopper

Charles Ives (orchestral music)

The Unanswered Question

Central Park in the Dark

Decoration Day

4th of July

Three Places in New England

Symphony no. 4

Cane by Jean Toomer (interconnected short fiction)

Nina Simone (Nina Simone)

I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free

Sinnerman

Four Women

The Black Saint and Sinner Lady by Charles Mingus (jazz album)

Peanuts by Charles Schultz

Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne (short story)

The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Martin Scorsese:

Mean Streets

Goodfellas

The Irishman

Taxi Driver

The Age of Innocence

Killers of the Flower Moon

Peace Piece by Bill Evans (jazz)

Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground by Blind Willie Johnson (blues)

Rear Window=dir. Alfred Hitchcock

Harlan County, USA (documentary)

The Stanley Brothers: They're so much more than bluegrass.

Rank Stranger

Angel Band

Little Maggie

O Death

Glory Land

I'm a Man of Constant Sorrow

George Carlin: Jammin' in New York (standup)

Aretha Franklin (soul)

Think

Do Right Man/Do Right Woman

I Never Loved a Man

Chain of Fools

How The Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis (photography book)

Maus by Art Spiegelman (graphic novel)

Hellhound On My Trail by Robert Johnson (blues)

Porgy and Bess by George and Ira Gershwin (opera/musical)

The Last Picture Show--dir. Peter Bogdanovich (New Hollywood movie about small town Texas)

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson (short stories about small town life)

Nashville--dir. Robert Altman (movie: a cinematic democracy)

Mississippi River

Randy Newman:

Baltimore

Louisiana 1927

Marie

Dixie Flyer

Kingfish

Rednecks

Feels Like Home

Losing You

The Civil War (Ken Burns documentary)

Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange (photo)

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

The Searchers--dir. John Ford

Rear Window--dir. Alfred Hitchcock

Prayer in Open D by Emmylou Harris

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (essays)

Duke Ellington (jazz-classical)

Reminiscing in Tempo

Black and Tan Fantasy

Mood Indigo

Creole Rhapsody

American Graffiti--dir. George Lucas (not the other one...)

Cosmos with Carl Sagan (TV show)

The Godfather Saga--dir. Francis Ford Coppola (TV edition putting both movies in chronological sequence with an hour of restored scenes is the best version)

George Bellows:

Cliff Dwellers

Stag at Sharkey's

Pennsylvania Station Excavation

New York

Both Members Of This Club

Grand Central Terminal: New York

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Companion Room:

Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville (philosophy/travelogue that predicts the American future)

Henry Cowell (piano music)

The Tides of Manaoun

The Harp of Life

The Fairy Bells

The Banshee

The Fairy Answer

Lambeau Field: Green Bay (football--American)

Anthology of American Folk Music--compiled by Harry Smith

Steven Spielberg:

Jaws

ET

Schindler's List

Lincoln

Close Encounters

The Fabelmans

(If you want to experience West Side Story for the first time, Spielberg's movie is the way to go)

Touch of Evil--dir. Orson Welles

Golden Gate Bridge: San Francisco

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee (photoessay book about the Great Depression)

The Wizard of Oz--dir. Victor Fleming

Pryor: Live in Concert (standup comedy)

The Education of Henry Adams (autobiography)

Appalachia Region

Emily Dickinson:

This World Is Not Conclusion (her greatest IMneverHO)

I heard a Fly buzz--when I died

Because I could not stop for Death

Much Madness is Divinest Sense

Lincoln Memorial: DC

Maus by Art Spiegelman (graphic novel)

Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (comic novel)

The Florida Project--dir. Sean Baker

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (graphic novel)

On Experience, The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson (essays)

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

Louis CK: One Night Stand (standup)

Martin Scorsese:

The King of Comedy

Last Temptation of Christ

Silence

After Hours

Bringing Out the Dead

USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos

Robert Altman (movies)

McCabe & Mrs. Miller

The Long Goodbye

Thieves Like Us

California Split,

Short Cuts

Groundhog Day--dir. Harold Ramis

US Capitol: DC

This is Spinal Tap--dir. Rob Reiner

I'll Take You There, Respect Yourself, I am His by the Staples Singers

Try A Little Tenderness, I've Been Loving You Too Long and Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding

One for My Baby sung by Frank Sinatra

New Orleans

Raging Bull

Sunrise--dir. FW Murnau (America's greatest silent film)

We Can't Make It Here Anymore by James McMurtry

Chinatown--dir. Roman Polanski

King of the Hill (Animated TV Comedy Series)

Apollo Theater: Harlem

St. Louis Blues by WC Handy (blues)

African American Spirituals: Deep River, Go Down Moses, Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child

Cross Road Blues, Hellhound On My Trail, Love in Vain by Robert Johnson (blues)

A Veteran in the New Field, A Visit from the Old Mistress by Winslow Homer (paintings)

The Truman Show--dir. Peter Weir

The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr (theological historiography)

Vertigo, Psycho, Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, The Wrong Man, -- dir. Alfred Hitchcock

Duck Soup--dir. Leo McCarey (Marx Brothers movie)

Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya (novel)

Miss Lonelyhearts and Day of the Locusts by Nathaniel West (novellas)

This Land is Your Land, Pastures of Plenty, 1913 Massacre, by Woodie Guthrie (folk)

Contract with God Trilogy by Will Eisner (graphic novels)

I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, I Saw The Light, Lost Highway by Hank Williams (country)

Absalom, Absalom! and Light in August by William Faulkner (avant-garde novels)

Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner (short story collection)

Word Association--Saturday Night Live--Richard Pryor & Chevy Chase

Norm MacDonald: Hitler's Dog (I know he's Canadian...)

The Manchurian Candidate--dir. John Schlesinger

The Sopranos

Eddie Murphy: Delirious (standup)

Washington Square and Daisy Miller by Henry James (brief novels)

The Sweet Science (boxing), The Earl of Louisiana (local politics) and Between Meals (food) by A J Liebling (journalism)

Barbecue

Madison Square Garden: New York

Niagra by Frederic Edwin Church

Poems by Robert Frost: Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, Mending Wall, Home Burial, The Road Less Travelled,

Strange Fruit, God Bless the Child by Billie Holiday (jazz--vaguely)

Hiroshima by John Hersey (journalism)

Boston Public Library

Ah-Um by Charles Mingus (jazz album)

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (novella)

Ellis Island: New York

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (long picaresque novel)

Guardian Building: Detroit

The Fillmore: San Francisco (rock venue)

Can the Circle Be Unbroken by the Carter Family (country)

M*A*S*H: both movie and the sitcom

String Quartet 1931 by Ruth Crawford Seeger

Blue Yodel No. 1 by Jimmie Rodgers (country)

Cheers (sitcom)

Ohio, Find the Cost of Freedom by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (weird supergroup with a Canadian...)

Matt Foley--Saturday Night Live (Chris Farley)

Sugarshack by Ernie Barnes (painting)

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer (Yiddish short fiction)

Boulder to Birmingham, Red Dirt Girl, To Daddy by Emmylou Harris

The American Political Tradition, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter (history/essays)

The Right Stuff--dir. Philip Kaufman

The Nutcracker choreographed by George Balanchine (ballet)

It's An Honor by Jimmy Breslin (article about the man who dug President Kennedy's grave)

Freaks and Geeks (TV comedy)

Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood--Saturday Night Live (Eddie Murphy)

Eyes on the Prize (Civil Rights documentary)

Robin Williams: Live at the Met

The Apartment, Ace in the Hole, Some Like It Hot--dir. Billy Wilder

The Great Plains

Tender Mercies--dir. Bruce Beresford

Paris, Texas--dir. Wim Wenders

Church Lady--Saturday Night Live (Dana Carvey)

Tap Dancing

Studies nos. 21, 37, by Conlon Nancarrow (music for player piano)

The Vietnam War (Ken Burns Documentary)

Blue Velvet and Mulholland Dr. dir. David Lynch

Make Our Garden Grow by Leonard Bernstein and Lilian Hellman (opera ensemble/showtune)

The Audition Sketch: Mr. Show (David Cross and Bob Odenkirk)

The Power Broker and The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro (long biography of Robert Moses, multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson)

Six Feet Under (TV)

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The Gallery:

Revelations: chreographed by Alvin Ailey

Fascinating Rhythm, The Man I Love, But Not For Me, George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin (cocktail)

Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland and Martha Graham (ballet)

Billy the Kid, Rodeo, El Salon Mexico and Fanfare for the Common Man by Aaron Copland

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (nature writing about pesticides, called 'biocides' in the book)

Village Vanguard: New York (jazz venue)

Statue of Liberty

Night of the Hunter--dir. Charles Laughton

Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens (poem)

The Wild Bunch--dir. Sam Peckinpagh

Boyhood--dir. Richard Linklater

Sun Treader by Carl Ruggles (orchestral music)

Carnegie Hall: New York (classical venue)

Psycho, Vertigo--dir. by Alfred Hitchcock

Ebbets Field--Brooklyn (lost)

Pennsylvania Station--New York (lost)

Ten Days that Shook the World by John Reed (eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution)

Hollywood (the place)

Errol Morris: (documentaries)

The Thin Blue Line

Gates of Heaven

The Fog of War

All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (political novel)

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--dir. Milos Forman

The Bridge by Hart Crane (book-long poem)

It's Alright, Ma, I'm Only Bleedin', A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, Chimes of Freedom by Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan)

The American Language by H. L. Mencken (cultural commentary)

Preservation Hall: New Orleans (jazz venue)

The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald (autobiographical essays)

All in the Family (sitcom)

Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion (new journalism)

Swing Dancing and the Lindy Hop

Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra, La Komo Sutro, Solstice, Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan by Lou Harrison

American Tune by Paul Simon

Mississippi Burning--dir. Alan Pakula

Disney Hall--des. Frank Gehry

Call It Sleep by Henry Roth (novel about Jewish immigration, trauma and abuse)

America Today by Thomas Hart Benton (mural series)

The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois (sociology)

Northern Exposure (TV)

Fight the Power by Public Enemy (hip-hop)

Negro Folk Symphony by William Dawson (orchestral music)

Beloved, Song of Solomon, Sula by Toni Morrison (novels)

What's Goin' On by Marvin Gaye (soul)

The Guns of August, The Proud Tower, The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman (history)

The Gross Clinic and The Agnew Clinic by Thomas Eakins (paintings)

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware (graphic novel)

Friday Night Lights (TV)

Little Nemo in Slumberland (newspaper comic)

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor (novel)

Serenade and Agon: chreographed by George Balanchine (ballets)

Working by Studs Terkel (oral history)

Rockefeller Center

A Worn Path by Eudora Welty (short story)

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold by Gay Talese (long profile of Frank Sinatra)

Trinity Church: Wall Street

The American Family (70s reality show on PBS)

The Crowd--dir. King Vidor

The Awakening by Kate Chopin (short feminist novel)

Roots (TV miniseries)

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (long, half-avant-garde novel)

Richard Cory and Miniver Cheevy by Edward Arlington Robinson (poems)

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

Truman, John Adams,1776 by David McCullough (biographies)

The Best Years of Our Lives--dir. William Wyler

Kindred by Octavia Butler (science fiction)

Las Vegas

The Message by Grandmaster Flash (hip-hop)

For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell (poem)

Eve's Hollywood by Eve Babitz (memoir)

Reservation Dogs (TV)

In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway (short story collection)

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (new journalism)

Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin (short story)

Midnight Cowboy--dir. John Schlesinger

America Trilogy by Philip Roth (American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, The Human Stain)

The Art of Losing by Elizabeth Bishop (poem)

These Truths by Jill Lepore (history of the US that dares to suggest the American experiment failed)

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson

I'll Fly Away (TV drama)

You'll Never Walk Alone and If I Loved You from Carousel (showtunes)

Hoop Dreams (documentary)

American Playhouse (PBS versions of American theater)

American Gothic by Grant Wood

Chimes of Freedom, It's Alright Ma I'm Only Bleeding, Tangled Up in Blue by Bob Dylan

Symphony no. 2 "Mysterious Mountain" by Alan Hovhaness (orchestral music)

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall by Katherine Anne Porter (short story)

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (history of the Great Migration)

9 to 5, Travelling Man, The Bargain Store by Dolly Parton

Some Enchanted Evening from South Pacific (showtune)

Rectify (show on SundanceTV)

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (horror short story)

American Photos by Walker Evans (Great Depression photos)

Patrice O'Neill: Elephant in the Room (standup comedy)

Taliesin West--des. Frank Lloyd Wright

The Wonder Years (TV)

Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber (string music)

Paul Thomas Anderson: (movies)

Boogie Nights

Punch-Drunk Love

Licorice Pizza

One Battle After Another

Salesman (documentary)

Thunder Road, Jungleland by Bruce Springsteen

Killer of Sheep--dir. Charles Burnett

Woolworth Building: New York

The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam (historical journalism)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (comic novel)

American Splendor by Harvey Pekar (graphic novels)

Treme and Homicide (TV drama)

Nova (PBS Nature documentaries)

Black Angels by George Crumb (avant-garde chamber music)

The Mojave Desert

All About Eve--dir. Joseph Mankiewicz

No Country for Old Men, Inside Llewyn Davis,

Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou, A Serious Man--dir. The Coen Brothers (not under protest)

Symphony no. 1 by Florence Price (orchestral music)

It and The Stand by Stephen King

John Ford (classic Hollywood, mostly Westerns)

Stagecoach

How Green Was My Valley

My Darling Clementine

The Quiet Man

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance-

Hester Street--dir. Joan Macklin Silver

Woody Allen (apologies...)

Radio Days

Purple Rose of Cairo

Bullets Over Broadway

Zelig

The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote (no apologies)

Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell (interconnected vignettes of non-fiction about the old New York)

Eddie Murphy: Delirious (standup)

Paths of Glory--dir. Stanley Kubrick

Music for 18 Musicians and Different Trains by Steve Reich (modern classical)

Monument Valley

The Graduate--dir. Mike Nichols

Oklahoma (musical)

Brooklyn Bridge

Luck be a Lady and Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat from Guys and Dolls (showtune)

Five Easy Pieces--dir. Bob Rafelson

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (detective novel) or movie dir. by Howard Hawks (and written by Faulkner)

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Empire State Building

Zap Comix by Robert Crumb

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown (history of Native Americans)

Gateway Arch: St. Louis

First Cow--dir. Kelly Reichhart

Fallingwater: designed by Frank Lloyd Wright

Matewan, Lone Star--dir. John Sayles

Red Rocks Amphitheater: Colorado (outdoor rock venue)

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett (crime novel)

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False Canon--doesn't mean it's bad. Does mean it feels, in some way, spiritually 'false':

Quentin Tarantino

Seinfeld (this one hurts)

Girls (Lena Dunham)

Jackson Pollock

Ye

The Eagles

Easy Rider--dir. Dennis Hopper

Mount Rushmore

Fight Club--dir. David Fincher

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Dr. Horrible--dir. Joss Whedon

Marvel Movies

Taylor Swift

Howl by Alan Ginsberg

On The Road by Jack Kerouac

Hamilton

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Noah Baumbach

La-La Land--dir. Damien Chazelle

Robert Rauschenberg

Royal Tenenbaums--dir. Wes Anderson

The End of History by Francis Fukuyama

The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington

The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker

Annie Hall and Manhattan--dir. Woody Allen

late Henry James

John Hughes

Norman Rockwell

Modern Broadway

South Park (this one hurts)

Breaking Bad (my mind is arguing with itself on this one)

Star Wars

Indiana Jones

Game of Thrones

Aaron Sorkin

B F Skinner

Howard Zinn

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I Know There's Sublimity Here But I Don't Get 90% Of It:

Bob Dylan

Moby Dick

2001

As I Lay Dying

There Will Be Blood

Blood Meridian

Gravity's Rainbow

Infinite Jest

No Country for Old Men

Edgar Allen Poe

The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth

Frank Zappa

Captain Beefheart

The Sun Also Rises

Seven--dir. David Fincher

Nine Inch Nails

Steely Dan

John Rawls

Henry David Thoreau

Mark Rothko

Bill Hicks

Dave Chappelle

Stevie Wonder

The Grapes of Wrath