I went downstairs to eat lunch and realized that I couldn’t leave Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” out of the discussion started in the last post.

It may not be one of the 40 saddest songs of all time, but I know this: Marlene Dietrich’s performance of the anti-war ballad was the most emotional performance of any song I have ever witnessed in my life. She used “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” as the encore in her concerts, and the combination of her unique voice, amazing face, and what we know of her activities during the war, made the whole package overwhelming.

Here it is, essentially the same performance I saw live, almost 20 years later.

I know, I know: these slideshows are clickbait. That’s no excuse for presenting what is supposed to be a definitive list when you haven’t done any research, talked to anyone with more perspective than you, or bothered to even think hard about what you are doing.

A web hack named James Cannon purported to have a slideshow of the 40 “saddest” songs “in history,” —someone may have even paid him for it—but as is usually the case with such stunts, “history” meant the obscenely narrow band of this guy’s experience, Because he didn’t know what he was talking about, he had to resort to filler, including songs that aren’t sad by any standard, like “It’s a Wonderful World,” while somehow missing classic songs that are world famous as heart-breakers. like, for heaven’s sake, “Danny Boy,” written by English songwriter Frederic Weatherly in 1913, and set to the traditional Irish melody of “Londonderry Air.” The song is still played at funerals, which would be a big hint, if Cannon performed a modicum of due diligence before making readers culturally and musically ignorant.

My objective isn’t to argue about all 40 songs; he’s as welcome to his list as I am to mine. But if your category is “history,” you can’t limit the field to recent pop music, which is, with a few (and seemingly arbitrary) exceptions what he does. You can’t make the list he purports to have made and completely stiff country western music, which is famously sad. This Hank Williams classic isn’t on the list of 40, for example:

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I bet everyone has forgotten about this series, which began on Ethics Alarms almost a year ago. I haven’t.

The first metaphor for the Trump Presidency was that of the passengers in an airplane navigating a storm voting to let a dog (in some versions, a chimp) try flying the craft. The metaphor was apt, and it’s still apt, even though moral luck worked its magic, and not only did the plane not crash, the dog turned out to a better pilot than anyone could have predicted. It was still irresponsible for this country to permit a man with Trump’s well-documented character flaws and proven proclivities both and executive and a human to be given such control over the destiny of the nation.

The second metaphor was from “Animal House”:

As I wrote:

A segment of the population decided that the system was rigged against them, that Democrats and Republicans were both involved in a massive, decades long con in which their primary goal was not to do what was in the public interest, but what was most likely to keep them in power and eventually line their pockets, and that their voices were not just being ignored, but that they were being insulted while being ignored. The so-called “deplorables” were mad as hell, and they weren’t going to take it any more. Voting for Trump was an “Up yours!” to the elites, the sanctimonious media, the corrupt Clintons, the hollow Obamas, and obviously corrupt Democrats like Pelosi and Harry Reid, machine Republicans like Mitch McConnell, and pompous think-tank conservative like Bill Kristol…It’s idiotic, but the message isn’t. It’s “Animal House”! and “Animal House” is as American as Doolittle’s Raid….In Germany, The Big Cheese says jump and the Germans say “How high?” In the US, the response is “Fuck you!” Obama never understood that…. I love that about America. And much as I hate the idea of an idiot being President, I do love the message and who it was sent to. America still has spunk.

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Yesterday, I commented on the depressingly incoherent and poorly reasoned defense of Will Smith by Denzel Washington, who, based on his performances, I had assumed could beat the Scarecrow in “The Wizard of Oz” at Scrabble. Maybe not. “It was another reminder, and I have had many in my career, that even actors who excel at portraying complex characters and who can radiate perception, depth and wisdom in screen and stage roles are too often just not very bright,” I wrote.

This puts into perspective how absurd and destructive it is that these celebrities actually have influence over public opinion. One bit of proof that they are so often a couple of ice cream scoops short of a sundae is that some of the most dim and vocal Hollywood celebrities actually think they are smart, so they keep opining publicly on matters they know nothing about. Ron Perlman—he’s the “Beauty and the Beast” and “Hellboy” star whose defining characteristic is that he can play monsters and freaks with a minimum of make-up—provided a great example yesterday, when he tweeted,

Dear Gov. De Santis:

Don’t say gay? ‘Don’t say’ as the first two words in sentence spoken by a political leader in a state in the United States of America? Don’t say? Don’t fucking say, you Nazi pig? Say, the First Amendment. Read about it, then run for office you piece of shit.

See, Ron’s brilliant colleagues and peers referred to the new Florida parental rights law as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and he, trusting them implicitly, was certain that the law actually was about prohibiting people from saying “gay.” He didn’t bother to read the law, which doesn’t mention the word gay or the topic of homosexuality, nor prohibit saying anything.This is, of course, monumentally stupid.

Ron’s embarrassing blunder was spectacular, but not much worse than those made by such luminaries as Robert De Niro, Bette Midler, Alyssa Milano, Rosie O’Donnell, Jane Fonda, Leonardo diCaprio, Rob Reiner, and many, many others, all of whom have impressive talents in their own realm, but as much business expounding on public policy as John Lennon would have had teaching philosophy.

Then there is Whoopi Goldberg. In attempting to explain why the Oscar audience should be excused for giving a roaring ovation to a colleague who had just unapologetically committed assault and battery and had the gall to expound on the value of “love” from the same stage, Whoopi thought and thought and concluded that it was because her friends were “stunned.”

Oh. When in doubt, wildly applaud! That never occurred to me. Continue reading →