Reader Tips

Reader Tips 51 Comments

Lieber and Stoller are one of the most prolific, talented and successful songwriting teams in history. Last Saturday’s amusement featured one of their lesser-known songs; tonight’s selection is their most unusual song, a definite singularity for the team that wrote Hound Dog and Stand By Me. Based on Disillusionment, a 19th century short story by German writer Thomas Mann, the song manages to take a narrator’s world-weary, almost apathetic outlook and metamorphose it into something resembling liberation and spiritual emancipation.
A brilliantly audacious song, and an improbable Top 40 hit. From 1969, here’s North Dakota Native Miss Peggy Lee singing Is That All There Is?
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51 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. Terence Corcoran in yesterday’s Financial Post:
    “As the committee adjourned, (Liberal MP Dan McTeague) voted in favour of a motion to continue to force Canadians to complete a census form or face a fine of up to $500 or up to three months in jail.
    “Does Mr. McTeague think there are votes in that proposition? Apparently, and apparently it’s OK for him and the Liberals to try to score political points by gathering data on unpaid housework and marital sex at the point of a gun. But if the Conservatives want to take up the contrary position — that data collected under threat of jail is offensive and intrusive — Mr. McTeague calls them narrow partisans catering to some fringe libertarian crowd of nutbars.”

  2. This recording of “Is That All There Is?” was arranged by the then 26 year-old Randy Newman who had, at that time, only one album under his belt. This recording, with this arrangement, turned my 17 year-old, previously rock-focussed musical appetites completely around.
    Great song. Great recording.
    Thanks for the memories, SDA.

  4. I have no idea why my last comment was caught in the spam filter … none … almost.

  5. Mal, I did not know that Randy Newman wrote the orchestral arrangement. The word “brilliant” is overused, but it IS a brilliant arrangement, and a huge part of the song. Even when it suspends – hangs in time – it keeps marching, somehow.
    Infinity squared: I have no idea. I’m pulling apart the wires behind the console right now trying to get to the bottom of it…
    RT: New York Democrat Congressman Mike McMahon’s rival, Republican Mike Grimm, has done well in fundraising for his campaign.
    So…
    “In an effort to show that Grimm lacks support among voters in the district, which covers Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, the McMahon campaign compiled a list of Jewish donors to Grimm and provided it to The Politicker.
    “The file, labeled ‘Grimm Jewish Money Q2,’ for the second quarter fundraising period, shows a list of over 80 names, a half-dozen of which in fact do hail from Staten Island, and a handful of others that list Brooklyn as home.
    “‘Where is Grimm’s money coming from?’ said Jennifer Nelson, McMahon’s campaign spokesman. ‘There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees.'”
    And his point is…

  7. “Crime gangs in France say they intend to kill police and the government has withdrawn them from sensitive areas. Arms seizures and rumors of rocket-propelled grenade launchers indicate that the risk is serious.
    “Residents were brutally awakened at 2 a.m by the sound of automatic arms fire thudding into the walls of their apartment blocks. The bullets came from the occupants of cars down in the street and some of them crashed through apartment windows. The attackers then fled. The same residents had been attacked early the morning before in the same way.
    “During the same 24-hour period, another attack using the same tactics occurred in another part of the city. Again, the assailants fled, although one of them was captured some time later. That area had been attacked ten days before and three people were injured in the shootout.
    “That may look like a report from a war-torn African or Middle-Eastern country, but it isn’t. Most of those incidents happened in the last 48 hours in two different areas of the sprawling Northern Parisian suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis….”
    (…)
    “An SMS has spread like wildfire amongst policeman all over the country warning them that intelligence from informers and wiretaps has indicated that a contract had been taken out on the BAC and that revenge for the killing of one of their leaders would be avenged ‘with a rocket-launcher if necessary.’
    “According to le Point, at least one rocket-launcher is inside the zone controlled by local gangs, and le Figaro reports that a local authority building in Grenoble has been destroyed by fire to avenge the arrest of a bar owner suspected of hiding a stock of handguns and automatic pistols on his premises.
    “’We’re sliding into a mafia system, with areas controlled by thugs who are ready to kill policemen to avenge one of their members’ says Patrice Ribeiro of police syndicate Alliance. ‘We were shot at here by people using live rounds for three consecutive nights. The will to kill is there.’”

  8. Is That All There Is, while definitely “different”; I always found it kid of gloomy and “hopeless”. Give me “Fever” any day. Sizzle, sizzle. That’s the exact opposite, it’s all about life. Peggy Lee had oomph and she owns that particular song!

  10. “Is That All There Is” is a beautiful melody to the ears, but the words make me sad in that it portrays a person who seems to have nothing to live for.

  11. Step three…
    “The police union for the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) stunned Germans this week when it announced it would bring policemen from Turkey to help patrol the turbulent streets of some immigrant neighbourhoods in NRW cities. With this announcement, the state’s police administration is admitting domestic police forces can no longer handle violent Turkish and other youths of immigrant backgrounds inhabiting these quarters.
    “’It can’t go on like this any longer,’ said the union’s chairman, Erich Rettinghaus, in the German national newspaper, Die Welt. ‘Perhaps it is a good measure. One should try it out. The new NRW Interior Minister is from Duisburg and knows the problems.’ According to Die Welt, the Turkish police would patrol the immigrant Turkish areas in their own uniforms together with German policemen.”
    (…)
    “Naturally, no German politician has commented on the police union’s proposal let alone resigned or been fired for allowing German civil authority to become so deeply discredited. One German observer probably captured their attitude of appeasement best when he wrote, ‘The priority is that Germans support with tolerance and good will the formation of these Turkish areas.’
    “Ignoring the implications and significance of the police union’s announcement also keeps the fiction of Germany’s official multicultural policy intact, in which some Germans, including politicians, unfortunately still believe. Others, however, are much more cynical about multiculturalism. Concerning the arrival of foreign police on German soil, one observer sarcastically wrote: ‘This is what multicultural enrichment looks like.'”

  12. Excerpt from Theodore Dalrymple’s Prison may not work for them, but it works for us, at Spectator.co.uk:
    “An important feature of sentimentality — one that is disastrous in deciding policy — is the mistaking of a wish for the fact. We would like there to be some better method of dealing with criminals than imprisonment, therefore there is, and must be, such a method.
    “Another important distinguishing feature of sentimentality is that it often manifests itself in a conspicuous display of feeling greater than that which is actually felt by the person displaying it. The sentimentalist often wants to deceive himself as well others. One might almost say that sentimentality is the tribute that indifference pays to compassion…”
    The whole thing here.

  13. Two Russian TU-95 bombers were intercepted on Wednesday within 90KM of Canada’s Eastern coast. NORAD scrambled two CF-18 fighters from CFB Bagotville in Quebec to intercept the Russian bombers. Peter McKay made the announcement.
    Not to worry: “There is much less to this than meets the eye. I think the government is over-hyping this. It’s nothing to get excited about. This is a little bit of saber-rattling… from Ottawa to try and justify more arms budget.”
    These words from a “defence and foreign affairs analyst.” Who is this wise and knowledgeable analyst?? Why is is non other than Eric Margolis.
    http://news.sympatico.ctv.ca/home/canadian_jets_repelled_russian_bombers_mackay/a9bf09b2
    Bull

  14. Good thing Margolis wasn’t around in WW II. No doubt he would have thought building the corvettes or the aircrew training plan would have been unnecessary saber-rattling.

  17. Black Mamba, I’ve released your comment on the other thread. Here’s a tip that might be occasionally helpful for you, and for everybody: *any* live-linked URL (and most typed out URLs) that has both an “&” and an “http” will always get caught in the filter. In the case of any Youtube link, you can get around this problem by simply removing the “&” and everything following it; all the stuff after the “&” pertains to the embedding of the link on the site you got it from, and not to the video itself. So, for example, the link –
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSSWLOO5M34&feature=player_embedded
    – won’t get be-filtered if it’s
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSSWLOO5M34
    – which is the actual YouTube link.
    While we’re on the subject, here’s another tip: almost all comments – and ALL links – with the word “online” in it gets filtered. So links to the Wall Street Journal, for example, and to David Warren’s site, get caught up; in those cases, just provide the author, the title of the piece, – and the site, obviously, without the “online” part – and readers can find it in a couple of seconds by Googling it.

  18. EBD;
    Tks for the “post it” tips. I now understand what happened to some of mine.
    And if I may,
    Congrats on the way you’ve handled the the new gig re Readers Tips and DJ. Well done.

  19. “They’re behind Sarah Palin and one of their “prophets” has become the de-facto prayer leader for the Republican Party.
    While America has fixated on the Tea Party movement, a radical, right-wing charismatic evangelical movement is burrowing into the power structures of major American cities, such as Newark, NJ [1, 2], and even entire states, such as Alaska and Hawaii.”
    http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/147640/right-wing_crazies_who_fight_witchcraft_and_demons_are_taking_over_a_state_near_you/

  20. Thanks EBD – although I’m not sure anyone should have to risk watching that twice.
    (Actually, I feel kind of bad for mocking him for being a dorky dancer. On the other hand, he is pandering frantically in public – and it is very funny…)

  21. “Reconciliation is a lovely idea for the sentimentalist. How much value is it to actual victims of genocide in Rwanda?… more»
    (a&l daily)
    …-
    “Living with the Enemy
    By Susie Linfield, July 2010
    Applying the ideas of Holocaust survivor Jean Améry to present day Rwanda, our author argues that reconciliation after genocide is just another form of torture.
    “Reconciliation” has become a darling of political theorists, journalists, and human-rights activists, especially as it pertains to the rebuilding of postwar and post-genocidal nations. Nowhere is this more so than in the case of Rwanda. Numerous books and articles on the topic—some, though not all, inspired by Christian teachings—pour forth. It can plausibly be argued, of course, that in Rwanda—and in other places, like Sierra Leone and the Balkans, where victims and perpetrators must live more or less together—reconciliation is a political necessity.
    Reconciliation has a moral resonance, too; certainly it is far better than endless, corpse-strewn cycles of revanchism and revenge. Yet there is sometimes a disturbing glibness when outsiders tout the wonders of reconciliation, as if they are leading the barbarians from darkness into light.
    Even worse, the phenomenological realities—the human truths—of the victims’ experiences are often ignored or, at best, treated as pathologies that should be “worked through” until the promised land of forgiveness is reached. This is not just a mistake but a dangerous one; for it is doubtful that any sustainable peace, and any sustainable politics, can be built without a better, which is to say a tragic, understanding of those truths.”
    http://www.guernicamag.com/features/1853/linfield_7_1_10/
    …-
    More: search.
    “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada”
    “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa”

  23. Left-liberalism’s Royal WetDream World.
    Left-liberals live in a fantasy world.
    Liberal Ziffy is a wanna-be King?
    Ask Liberal MP, Glen Pearson, Ziffy’s PET Loyalist-Royalist, whom he would prefer as King?
    The reality:
    Think Prince AGW-Chuck Charles as King? OMG!
    …-
    “Chelsea Clinton prepares for America’s ‘royal’ wedding
    Telegraph.co.uk”
    …-
    “Liberal Glen Pearson: “We are in the presence of Royalty”
    Trudeau mobbed at Liberal rally”
    http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=70720
    http://www.bluelikeyou.com/2010/07/30/little-bus-tour-about-nothing/#comment-86975

  24. Posted by: beagle at July 31, 2010 4:59 AM

    They claim to be able to raise the dead and cause miracles, such as the multiplication of Thanksgiving turkey dinners. They burn “witchcraft items” and “idols.” They hold mass exorcisms to cast out alleged evil spirits they say cause lust, pornography, addiction, homosexuality, bisexuality, and perversion.

    Thank God they didn’t mention Tsunamis and tectonic plate earth shifting.
    If those two groups ever got together we would be in deep Shiite.

  25. I think a key factor missing in ‘how we live in a society’ is that some people are just plain bad. Even more, they are evil.
    The notion of ‘evil’ is, to the postmodern Western view, as ephemeral as the words in which the postmodernist exists. Remember, the postmodernist rejects the real hard world and lives entirely, completely, within the words and images he fabricates. Therefore, evil doesn’t exist for the postmodernist.
    IF someone does something ‘bad’, then, the cause is some linear link: bad parents, bad government, poverty, being called names and so on. The fact that these cannot be linked to malevolent behaviour is irrelevant to the postmodernist. For this view feels that IF you can control for these ‘bad influences’..then..the ‘essential goodness’ of the individual will emerge.
    This essentialist view of humans (that they are all, naturally, goodwilled..and any aberrations are strictly due to external influences) is a very mechanical view. Can you imagine?! Postmodernists are actually mechanical thinkers! They feel that X causes Y! But, but..don’t they reject science as mechanical?
    The facts are, that some people do most certainly wish ill on their fellow citizens. Think of the vapid rhetoric we hear from the political activists (and Obama) against ‘the greedy rich’, against ‘the police’, the state, the…whatever. Think of how they justify their smashing windows and looting at the G20.
    What all countries need to do is reject multiculturalism, which actually sets up separate domains in the nation where the common rule of law does not exist and where a separate ‘state’..with rules probably not even found in the ancestral state, operate.
    My point is that we cannot declare that these multicultural domains ought to be left alone because they are simply living ‘the ancient way’ and we ‘must be tolerant’. The ancient way could not tolerate vicious murders and constant internal and external battles..and, an insistence that the inhabitants don’t work but reply on welfare. Work would have been a necessity. Getting along within the domain would have been a necessity.
    Our multicultural states are actually enabling the vicious fights in Germany, in France, etc because we expect nothing from these people.
    Australia has it right. Each and every entrant, even on a visa, must sign and acknowledge they are in the Australian state and must obey its common laws, gender equality, tolerance, use of English etc. If you don’t sign – you don’t get in. If you sign and breach the rules, they have the legal right to kick you out. This approach ought to be copied everywhere. Canada is starting to do it for immigration but we need to emphasize this.

  28. Am I one of the few, possibly deranged, who feel that Judge Bolton’s ruling, seemingly against Arizona’s new immigration law – was NOT a victory for Obama and his gang, but actually, for Brewer and Arizona? Think about it.
    IF the judge had ruled in favour of Arizona, then, Obama would have been able to leap on his white charger, and rush to the defense of all ‘immigrants’ and all ‘non-white peoples’.
    After all, Obama ran his 2008 campaign on race and continues to evoke race as a strategy to control the people. He brings it up constantly, constantly..whether in having his minions define the Tea Parties as racist (NAACP); in his NASA agenda of ‘reaching out to Muslims’; in Hodder’s remarks and in constantly referring to himself and his difficulties.
    This would have been an incredible anchor for Obama – to set himself up, and he loves to do this, as the messiah and saviour of the ‘besieged coloured people’.
    But this ruling denied him that propaganda. Instead, it put the federals strictly on the line. They were told lthat it was their responsibility to secure the borders. And, since Obama refuses to do this…then..it shows him up as failing to protect America.
    I know it sounds crazy but I consider it a win for the American people vs Obama. He’s got to show that he will do his constitutional duty and secure the borders.

  29. ET, you might be onto to something there. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Obama’s poll numbers keep slowly sliding and could be going into the 30% range.

  30. Et,I think you are grasping for a silver lining in Arizona. I believe if the law was not changed and implemented as desired by Arizona,it would have been effective without the sky falling.

    If the neighbouring states saw a rise in their ‘illegals’ numbers,there may have been pressure from the legal residents to pass similar laws.

  31. Chelsea Clinton is getting married and the cost is only 3 to 5 MILLION DOLLARS. Democrats only act like Democrats when they want your vote.

  32. ET re Arizona:
    I do see where you’re coming from in terms of the mid-term elections this November. Governor Jan Brewer was on Dennis Miller’s show yesterday and everyone calling in had complimentary things to say to her. Later in the day, Mark Levin was ranting about the ruling big time.
    So you are right in that the ruling has created a big rallying point for conservatives. This will generate much support for Republican candidates this Fall, except perhaps for John McCain unless he’s successful at pretending that he was against the ruling.
    But in the bigger picture I tend to sit back with Wally and wonder how this ruling is good for America.

  33. Robert W.,If you’re gonna sit back with me,it’s best that you bring a few cold ones.Make that ,more than a few.

  36. wallyj- No, I’m serious. I am fully and completely in favour of the Arizona law, but Obama’s reaction to it was a clear signal that he would use it to further polarize racial divisions and use that for his endless campaign strategies.
    Obama’s first response to the law was not to acknowledge the problem of illegals, but to insert racism. Remember his declaration that Arizona would ‘pull you over’ if you were dark-skinned and walking along eating an ice cream cone? How’s that for a presidential response?
    And his minions – Hodder and Napolitano, also with the racist attack – even though neither of them had read the law!
    So – it was a full-scale racial attack by the White House. They absolutely refused to acknowledge the criminal element, indeed, tried to deny it by declaring ‘crime is down’; they ignored the massive influx of illegals, by diverting the concern to the term ‘immigrant’ rather than ‘illegal’. That is, they refused to differentiate between legal and illegal ‘immigration’!
    Thus, they kept the focus on ‘racism’ – i.e., Arizona was ONLY making this law, not because of crime, not because of immigration, but because of skin colour.
    Then Arizona twiddled with the law to emphasize that the focus was on the illegal entrant. Obama’s Gang backed off, and made what I claim is a tactical error..in refocusing it on ‘federal duty’. Heh. But the feds haven’t been doing their duty. Here’s an article pointing out some flaws in the Bolton ruling.
    http://article.nationalreview.com/438924/the-hilarious-arizona-ruling/rich-lowry
    Again, a major strategy in the triad of manipulation tactics that Obama uses, is racism. He almost automatically brings that up. In hypothesizing the result of a favourable ruling, Obama would almost 99% have moved into a racist tactic and appealed the ruling on the basis of race. He’d do it – because he’s losing support now among blacks and hispanics and he’s desperate to find some tactic to get them back to his side.
    This ruling blocked that…although watch him; Obama will bring up race in some other area.
    As for other states following Arizona, they can do that anyway – to put pressure on the federal govt to do its duty: secure the border.
    Furthermore, Obama is refusing to support the law. A basic reality is that immigration to a sovereign nation is – by law. Not by running over the border. Obama is refusing to support the laws of immigration in the US, and refusing to secure the border. And refusing to protect the American people against the drug and gun violence of these illegals..who have rendered US territory in some parts of the south, off-limits to Americans!
    So – I’m serious. I think it would have been worse if Obama had lost and Arizona had won. Obama would have instantly used it to set federal vs states, and above all, attack it on the grounds of racism..and..use it to put through his amnesty bill (that is circulating in Washington now). He would have put through that bill as an ‘executive necessity’..without the OK of Congress…to prevent ‘racist violence’ in the US. Just watch him.

  37. It’s Mathematically Impossible for New Jersey to Keep its Public Pension Promises
    This morning on the Corus radio stations, Michael Campbell spoke at length about this story. Here’s a key segment:
    Eileen Norcross, a George Mason University researcher who issued a report on the New Jersey pension system last month, is succinct: “It’s mathematically impossible to pay this out. It’s too large.”
    How New Jersey arrived at this moment in time is not a mystery. The decisions by governors, state legislators and union leaders have been chronicled by newspapers and in policy reports for two decades.
    Experts and leaders by and large agree on what happened and why. In short, politicians looking to win elections, or just balance the state budget, either promised richer benefits or failed to find a way to make the necessary contributions each year for the benefits that would someday come due.
    New Jersey may very well be the first to raise the white flag but it certainly won’t be the last. California and New York seem to be in the same boat. Perhaps every U.S. state is? And I suspect that more than a few Canadian provinces are as well. So is the same with every country in Europe.
    One thing is for sure: The coming decade will be an “interesting one” to say the least!

  40. I have read that bambam seeks to give ‘fast track’ citizenship to those that have graduated Grade 12. The estimate I saw was 50,000 in Arizona.
    The enforcement still continues but without federal funds. Arizona still has State laws in force and it is having an effect.
    I think it is a matter of time until there is an armed incursion that takes on the police. When or rather if that happens, the Feds are going to wear it. They are allowing the situation to fester. Even the 500 NG he authorized won’t be there for awhile, uh, actually no one knows because no one has told them they are going.

  41. E.T. I beleive the Arizona law will prevail if it finally goes to the Supreme Court, it might even win in the most liberal appeal court – the 9th Circuit in its next appearance. I also agree for the mid terms it helps the Republicans win on this. However, I don’t think Obama gives a rats patootie, as he will have the lame duck Congress, and being “himself” his only concern is his reelection in 2014, some Democratic casualties – too bad!

  43. Some readers may be interested in this
    “There is only one just compensation for the long history of suffering, say the Palestinians and their allies: turning the clock back to 1948. This would entail ending the “Zionist hegemony” and replacing it with a single, secular, democratic state shared by Arabs and Jews. All Palestinian refugees—not just those still alive of the hundreds of thousands who fled in 1948, but their millions of descendants as well—would be allowed to return to Jaffa, Haifa, the Galilee, and all the villages that Palestinian Arabs once occupied.
    “Such a step would mean suicide for Israel as a Jewish state, which is why Israel would never countenance it. At the very least, then, the Nakba narrative precludes Middle East peace. But it’s also, as it happens, a myth—a radical distortion of history.”

  45. EBD, many thanks for the fine Spectator article by the very fine Theodore Dalrymple.
    The destructive sentimentality he derides has deep roots in our public school system, where schools are quite safe–for the bullies.
    I wonder what it’s going to take for our unenlightened elites to “get it”–if they ever do. By then, I fear it’ll be too late.

  46. mikewa – I tend to agree with you; I think the Arizona law will prevail in the Supreme Court and I think it should go to that court.
    It’s an important issue; can the states assist the federal govt in carrying out federal duties? The thing is, apparently Rhode Island does exactly this – which is why the Bolton ruling, which ignores RI, is so ‘allusive and illusive’.
    I think that this ruling helps the GOP in the short term and the long term..is the Supreme Court. As for Obama, I think it harms him because he can’t get on his racist white charger and, he can’t introduce his Executive Amnesty Bill that bypasses Congress.
    I certainly agree that Obama is throwing Congress under the bus. But Obama has always shown the greatest contempt for Congress, i.e., The People. He has constantly urged them to pass His Bills without reading or debating them, which is effectively, insulting to Congress and The People.
    That is, to Obama, the Congress and people are not the govt. He is.
    As for 2012, I still have my doubts whether he will run. I think the Democrats may try to ditch him; they’ll find him a UN job where he can pontificate all he wants and no-one will listen to him.

  48. ET, This move may be ultimately bad for the Divine One,but I think that what is bad for Obama does not necessarily mean that it is good for America.

  49. OT but on Saturday I saw a report that NHL tough guy and former Edmonton Oiler, George Laraque has been named as deputy leader of the Green Party. My first thought was WTF?

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