Notes From D. R.

Want Some Wood?

I guess I was a Republican even before I realized it.

In the fall of 1988, my sixth-grade woodworking class was given an assignment: make a small sign with a foot-long piece of wood and some carving tools. We were told that we could use whatever slogan or trademark we wanted, so long as we did not make use of profanity.

I knew most of my fellow students would make signs with Coca-Cola symbols and the like, so I wanted to do something different. I ran through several different ideas before I decided upon a political slogan. My teacher had a copy of that morning's Boston Herald on his desk, and George H. W. Bush was on the cover, so I decided to use the slogan "BUSH '88" with large letters.

Now keep in mind that at this point, I didn't know the difference between a Democrat and a Republican. I had nothing against Mike Dukakis, though I was aware that the Herald had run numerous stories about his poor stewardship of the state's economy. I hadn't even paid that much attention to the Presidential election; I only wanted Bush to win because he seemed much nicer than Dukakis.

It took me about a week to finish carving and painting the sign. When I finished and showed it off to the class and teacher, I received nothing but horrified stares. I didn't say anything, but I couldn't understand why they were so shocked that I had made a pro-Bush sign. It was several years before I realized what had happened; in this predominately black middle school, many of the teachers were hardcore Democrats, and many of the students had been raised in environments in which Bush and other Republicans were routinely denounced as racists.

Despite the negative reaction I received, I was immensely proud of the sign, and displayed it in my room for several months before I accidentally damaged it in 1989. I couldn't repair the sign and had to dispose of it, but I'm still proud of the effort I put into it, and the fact that I didn't back down in the face of scorn.

Even before I became a Republican, I always respected Bush; I could never understand why he and Dan Quayle were subjected to such harsh ridicule from entertainers and certain folks in the press. Between 1989 and 1992, It was considered "cool" to be against Bush and Quayle; since I felt the attacks on both men were unfair, I preferred to be "uncool." Looking back, I guess that was a sign.

Weekend Box Office: Big Night

Night at the Museum tops the charts for a second week.

Purple Reign

While Prince's relationship with Warner Bros. Records ended on bitter terms, it's hard to deny that his 19-year tenure with the label represented the most fruitful period of his career. During his time with Warner, Prince not only became a pop-culture icon, he also set new standards for excellence in an industry that seemingly revered mediocrity.

The Minneapolis musical prodigy signed with Warner in 1977; the label was reportedly the only one to accede to Prince's demand that he produce his own songs. In April 1978, he released his first album, the solid For You, which yielded the minor hit "Soft and Wet." Prince went over budget on the first album, and was under pressure to deliver a hit with his next one: his self-titled 1979 follow-up featured such a hit, the classic "I Wanna Be Your Lover" (as well as another song, "I Feel For You," which became a hit five years later when it was covered by Chaka Khan.)

Prince's most striking (for its time) song was "Bambi," an account of a young man who discovers that the female object of his affection "...had another lover/[who] looked just like you." It's impossible to imagine an artist getting away with this song today; "His Royal Badness" endorses an extremely carnal version of conversion therapy, declaring "Bambi, can't you understand?/Bambi...it's better with a man!" However, the striking sexuality of this song was nothing compared to what would come next.

1980's Dirty Mind is considered Prince's first true classic; it is still stunning for his raw emotion and jaw-dropping sexual imagery. The album is disturbing when one hears it for the first time; Prince seems completely consumed by the pursuit of sexual freedom, the desire to destroy anything considered "traditional," the need to remake the world according to his rules. It's fitting that the album ends with "Partyup," an antiwar anthem; the entire album is, in essence, an attempt to rekindle the fires of the "Make Love Not War" era.

Prince backed away from overt sexuality with 1981's Controversy; even the album's most famous track, "Do Me, Baby," seems more concerned with making love than with mere screwing. The album is essentially Prince's response to the Reagan Administration; Prince seemed to represent the views of those who came of age during the hedonistic '70s, and couldn't figure out how to function in a new, culturally conservative era. Despite its provocative title, "Sexuality" does include some "traditionalist" advice: "Parents, don't let your kids watch television/before they know how to read/or else all they'll know how to do/is cuss, fight and breed!"

The next year brought Prince's second classic album, 1999, a masterwork that brought the artist to the forefront of American consciousness. The album represented every aspect of his personality: Prince the politician (the title track), Prince the sex machine ("Little Red Corvette," "Automatic," "Let's Pretend We're Married," "International Lover"), Prince the epicure ("D.M.S.R."), even Prince the patriot ("Free," a brilliant song that has never received its just due). Even if Prince had never recorded anything else, this album alone would have solidified his status as a musical genius.

Fortunately, he continued to record; his next album, the soundtrack to his film Purple Rain, supplanted Michael Jackson's Thriller as the most influential album of its era. Purple Rain matched 1999 in terms of artistic perfection and scope; the album is an emotional tour, from the opening monologue of "Let's Go Crazy" to the stirring conclusion of "Purple Rain." The album's creative flawlessness made it even more memorable than the film itself. (Rain's fifth track, "Darling Nikki," is one of modern music's most infamous songs; Tipper Gore, who had purchased the soundtrack for her daughter, was so horrified by the depiction of female masturbation in the song that she led a crusade to have parental advisory labels attached to albums with sexually charged lyrics.

Prince's next two albums, Around the World in a Day and Parade: Music from the Motion Picture Under the Cherry Moon were controversial for different reasons: some of Prince's fans felt that he was deliberately moving away from "black-themed" music in order to pander to the white audiences he attracted between 1999 and Rain. Despite such backward criticism, both albums were memorable; in addition to such popular songs as "Raspberry Beret" and "Kiss," the albums featured such outstanding compositions as "Condition of the Heart," "Pop Life," "The Ladder," "Mountains," "Girls & Boys," and "Sometimes It Snows in April."

1987's Sign O' The Times was Prince's third classic; it is still considered the absolute best album he has ever released. A combination of various projects conceived in 1985-86, Sign is the 1999 of the late-80s, a showcase of Prince's political (the title track), sexual ("It," "Hot Thing," "Slow Love," "If I Was Your Girlfriend") and spiritual ("The Cross") sides. With this album, Prince firmly placed himself in the history books alongside James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and Marvin Gaye as one of the most gifted artists of the post-1950s.

Later that year, Prince planned to release the so-called Black Album, an apparent response to those who felt Parade and Around the World in a Day were attempts to abandon his black audience. However, one week prior to its planned November release, Prince ordered all copies of the album to be destroyed, supposedly because he had a vivid dream in which God told him not to release the album. (The album was widely bootlegged, and was ultimately given an official release in November 1994.) Prince decided to "replace" the Black Album with 1988's Lovesexy, another brilliant album depicting Prince's struggle between his devotion to God and his devotion to sex. The tracks "I Wish U Heaven," "Anna Stesia," "Glam Slam" and "Dance On" rank among Prince's finest work. While Warner Bros. hoped that the album would be a Purple Rain-style success, Lovesexy underperformed, largely due to controversy over the album cover, which depicted Prince completely nude, with his thigh hiding his genitalia.

Prince's next two albums were solid but unspectacular soundtracks: 1989's Music from the Motion Picture Batman and 1990's Music from Graffiti Bridge. Other than "The Future," "The Arms of Orion" and "Scandalous," the Batman soundtrack is unremarkable. Graffiti Bridge is a manifestly uneven work, featuring moments of greatness (the energetic "Can't Stop This Feeling I Got") and garbage (the wretched "We Can Funk," with such profound lyrics as "I'm testin' positive for the funk/[And] I'll gladly pee in anybody's cup...")

Prince got back on the ball with 1991's Diamonds and Pearls, an underrated album featuring such superb tracks as "Thunder," the title track, "Cream," "Gett Off," "Daddy Pop," "Insatiable," "Willing and Able," and "Strollin'." While there is some filler on the album (the horrendous "Jughead" and "Money Don't Matter 2 Night," an anti-George H. W. Bush track that comes across as the world's worst protest song), the good far outweighs the bad.

The only truly substandard album of the Warner Bros. era was 1992's Love Symbol, a bizarre attempt at a Tommy-style rock opera that failed to satisfy either casual Prince fans or devotees. Despite such solid songs as "Love 2 the 9s," "And God Created Woman," and "Damn U," Love was a creative step backward overall. It seemed as if Prince had nothing left to prove musically, and had now decided to devote himself to oddball interests.

That same year, Prince signed a new, highly lucrative contract with Warner Bros. Shortly thereafter, the relationship between the artist and the label fell apart; Prince reportedly felt that Warner Bros. had deceived him on issues such as the number of albums he would be allowed to release during a calendar year (Prince, one of the most prolific artists of all-time, had wanted to release more than one album a year; Warner Bros. apparently felt otherwise, claiming that releasing more than one album a year would damage overall sales). The feud between Prince and Warner became quite bitter; at one point, Prince declared himself a "slave" to the label, and performed with the word painted on his face. He also announced that he would no longer record under the name "Prince," since Warner Bros. legally "owned" the name. (He would use the so-called Love Symbol as his name; since the symbol was unpronounceable, the press referred to him as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.")

In 1993, Prince released a greatest-hits box set; the next year, as he attempted to get out of the contract, he released Come, another underrated album whose dark, sexual lyrics led some reviewers to declare it the Dirty Mind of the 1990s.

By 1995, there were reports that Prince would be released from the contract after producing two more albums. That September, he released The Gold Experience, another classic album; it was hailed as a comeback and his finest work since Sign O' The Times. The album could be considered the concluding portion of a trilogy of "personal" Prince works, the first two being 1999 and Sign. The political, spiritual, and sexual sides of Prince were on display again, but this time with a new maturity: "We March" was a more energetic sequel to Sign's title track, "Gold" matched "Purple Rain" in its emotional depth, and "P Control," "Endorphinmachine," "Shhh," and "319" depicted Prince as an older but far wiser lover. "Billy Jack Bitch," "Eye Hate U" and "Dolphin" (which Prince debuted in a stupendous December 1994 appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman) should be included among Prince's top 25 greatest compositions.

Prince's final Warner album, 1996's Chaos and Disorder, was critically trashed upon its release, but looking back it wasn't nearly as bad as Love Symbol. Other than the rap-rock botch job "I Rock, Therefore I Am," the songs are uniformly good; the album was likely condemned because people expected all of Prince's songs to be uniformly great. "Into The Light" is a solid a spiritual song as Prince has ever produced, "Dinner with Delores" is a light, humorous track, and "I Like It There" is Prince with a slightly less Dirty Mind ("And like an embryo, baby/Don't abort this dire need for you...")

Four years after Prince left Warner, the label's legal rights to his name expired, and he dropped the Love Symbol as his official billing. By the mid-2000s, Prince had returned to major commercial success on the strengths of his albums Musicology and 3121. He is still an innovator, a risk-taker, a record-breaker, a classic-maker. He is still on the throne, continuing a reign that began with Warner nearly thirty years ago. When it comes to music, he was, is, and always will be American royalty.

Performance

The New York Times profiles actress and pro-life activist Patricia Heaton.

The Content Of Our Character

A federal appeals court in Michigan upholds a statewide ban on racial quotas. More from Power Line.

Turn Around, Bright Eyes

An effort is underway to bring "liberal talk radio" back to Boston. Don't these geniuses realize that liberal talk radio--i.e., National Public Radio--is already on the air in Boston? More from Bryan Maloney.

Show Me The Money

The official motto of Massachusetts Gov.-Elect Deval Patrick's administration should be: "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash." More from the Boston Globe.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, outgoing Governor Mitt Romney builds momentum for a White House run.

Hang Time

Rest in peace, Saddam...not!

UPDATE: Saddam Hussein, the "Butcher of Baghdad," passes away at 69. More from Captain's Quarters, the Washington Post, National Review, the Boston Herald, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

To Be Loved

A. R. Gurney's popular 1988 play Love Letters features a scene in which the male character, Andrew, receives a letter from his female friend, Melissa, congratulating him for being elected to the US Senate--but expressing horror over the fact that he is a registered Republican. In an attempt to mollify Melissa, Andrew writes back to inform her: “I’m a liberal Republican, with a strong commitment to women’s rights! Does that count?”

There are quite a few Republicans who find themselves in poor Andrew's predicament. As American culture grows more and more liberal, those who consider themselves political and cultural traditionalists face subtle and, in some cases, blatant pressure to "prove" that they're "with the times," that they're not "stuck in the mud," that they're not "intellectual dinosaurs." In short, conservatives in liberal environments must demonstrate that they're really not that conservative in order to "fit in."

This is a mere observation, not an attempt at victimization. The conservative philosophy is inherently anti-victimization, and the "peer pressure" of liberal culture is hardly social oppression on the level of, say, Communist Russia. However, it is interesting to observe how certain conservatives try to "fit in" with the liberal culture.

Some on the right were shocked when Bruce Willis, who famously endorsed George H. W. Bush in 1992, declared earlier this year that he was not a Republican. However, upon reflection one shouldn't be surprised by Willis' statement at all. Willis is merely reading the tea leaves: he didn't have to worry about offending the sensibilities of liberal Hollywood executives (and former costars such as Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep) when he was a box-office untouchable, but now that his career has cooled, he has to be on the good side of the Hollywood shot-callers. What better way to do that then to publicly dump on the GOP? After all, do you think Kevin Costner would still get work in Hollywood if he were still affiliated with the Republican Party?

The career of John McCain is a textbook example of how to win liberal friends and influence liberal people. There's a method to McCain's madness: despite his recent call to send more troops to Iraq, McCain will always be admired by the left for his anti-conservative actions. From giving the religious right a rhetorical smackdown in 2000 to his cheerleading for so-called "campaign finance reform" in 2002, from his involvement with the "Gang of 14" in 2005, McCain can always be counted on to sabotage anything the right desires, and thus to receive hosannas from the editorial pages of liberal newspapers. McCain is evidently obsessed with being considered a GOP "voice of reason," a "rational thinker" in a party allegedly filled with right-wing crypto-fascists and Bible-thumping dolts. The right has little use for him because he spends so much time sucking up to those who have no use for conservatives. McCain may not be the next President, but he is a genius at pandering to the "wisdom" of the liberal age.

McCain's Senate colleague Lindsey Graham is perhaps the "finest" example of a conservative who's figured out how to come across as a "good guy" to liberals. In the late-1990s, Graham was despised by the left for his role in the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. Perhaps having been scarred by such slurs, Graham has "evolved," and his current role as an "independent Republican voice" has garnered four-star reviews from left-wing bloggers. Graham has joined the "Iraq is a quagmire" chorus, denounced President Bush's terrorist surveillance program, and suggested that the US is too harsh in its treatment of terrorist suspects. Graham, like his friend McCain, realizes that being considered a "high-minded" Republican will get you fawning media coverage and praise from "progressive" websites. In Graham's case, it will also allow former enemies to become his friends.

Willis, McCain and Graham are nothing if not shrewd. They realize that the stereotype of Republicans as "racist, bigoted, sexist, homophobic, ignorant theocrats" has become permanent in American culture, and are doing everything within their power to avoid being affiliated with that stereotype. Principles? Values? Core beliefs? What? Who wants to fight for those silly things, when it's so much easier to kiss up to the liberal powers-that-be?

Willis, McCain and Graham are not evil people. However, they are calculating opportunists willing to do and say whatever is necessary to gain favor in liberal American culture. I just hope they have a strong commitment to women's rights.

Dolemite

As we remember the legacy of Gerald Ford, let's not forget that his running mate in the 1976 Presidential election matched him in terms of character, dignity and humility.

It's hard to believe that it's been a decade since Bob Dole made his final bid for the Presidency. Dole, who had previously run in 1980 and 1988, was a strong favorite to receive the GOP's nomination in 1995-96; although he faced strong challenges from such contenders as Pat Buchanan and Steve Forbes, he ultimately secured the nomination--though he ultimately could not defeat incumbent Bill Clinton.

Dole's nomination was the subject of much mainstream media scorn at the time, and it's still joked about today. However, I've always believed that the Fourth Estate's anti-Dole sentiment was uncalled for. Here was a man who served his country honorably in World War II before setting a standard for statesmanship in the House of Representatives and Senate. Was there any need to denigrate him personally?

As much as I admired Dole, it's fair to say that he was the right man at the wrong time, and not because of his age. Dole challenged Clinton during a time when the American electorate accepted the notion of politician-as-celebrity; in many ways, Clinton was the Barack Obama of his day. Dole couldn't compete with Clinton's charisma and couldn't overcome the effort by the Democrats and the mainstream press to paint all Republicans as "right-wing nut jobs." Dole's selection of quasi-conservative Jack Kemp as his running mate didn't do much to rally the GOP base. A portion of the electorate was still fascinated by Ross Perot, who had decided to make his second third-party run for the Presidency.

Dole ran his campaign with the same class and honor that defined his political career, but there was nothing he could do to stop the Clinton juggernaut. On November 5, 1996, Clinton defeated Dole to win a second, controversy-scarred term.

There was a time when a candidate of Dole's qualifications would have enjoyed a landslide victory, but by 1996 that time had long passed. Dole was a man of honor in dishonorable times. Had he won, we would have been spared the sordid carnival that was the Lewinsky affair. However, Dole's victory was not to be.

Quite a few young Republicans were hoping against hope that Dole would pull it off. We hoped that the electorate, having just given the GOP control of House and Senate, would see through Clinton's slickness and return to the White House a man of decency and conviction. We hoped that Clinton's 1992 victory over George H. W. Bush would go down in history as a fluke. We believed in Dole, saw him as a good man, hoped that other voters would come to the same conclusion.

Other voters did decide that he was a good man. They just decided he wasn't good enough.

Dole became a pop-culture icon in the late-1990s, an ironic turn of events for someone once written off as unable to relate to American youth. He was once denounced as a right-wing demagogue; now he is viewed as an example of American political civility. Like Ronald Reagan, he has become a symbol of the industrious, optimistic American Spirit.

Dole only lost an election ten years ago. Today, he has won America's respect. It's a victory that is much deserved, and long overdue.

Hail To The Chief

Former US President Gerald R. Ford, who served from August 1974 to January 1977, passes away at 93.More from the New York Times, Boston Globe and the Washington Times.

UPDATE: The day he took office. Plus, more from Power Line, Jon Keller, Fred Barnes, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe and Captain's Quarters, plus an appreciation from National Review.

SECOND UPDATE: More from the Washington Times, New York Times, National Review and the Washington Post. Additional commentary from Power Line, Jules Crittenden and Captain's Quarters.

THIRD UPDATE: More from Power Line and Peggy Noonan.

Whatever...

The Boston Globe, which spent most of the year kissing Deval Patrick's ass, names the Massachusetts Gov.-Elect its Person of the Year.

UPDATE: More from the Globe.

SECOND UPDATE: More from Hub Politics, the AP and the Boston Herald.

Hang 'Em High

An Iraqi appeals court says Saddam Hussein must feel the pain.

The Culture Of Death

The mainstream press hypes up the fact that more Americans have been killed in Iraq than were murdered on September 11, 2001. Lord love a duck...

A House Divided?

If there's one thing the left wants more than anything, it's a split between socially conservative Republicans and their libertarian brethren.

The left recognizes that if the two main factions of the Republican Party are at odds, it will make it easier for the Democrats to achieve victory in upcoming elections. This, the left has endeavored to find more opportunities to set conservative and libertarian Republicans against each other.

The left loved the civil war within the Republican Party over Terri Schiavo in 2005. The Schiavo controversy pitted Republicans who believed that all efforts should be made to preserve Schiavo's life against Republicans who believed that Florida law should be obeyed, even if it meant that Schiavo would die. The intra-party acrimony over the Schiavo matter died down soon after she passed away, but "progressives" would love to stoke those fires once again.

Right now, the left seeks to split the right by attempting to force Mitt Romney out of the 2008 Presidential election via a series of sleazy media attacks. If Romney is forced to withdraw as a result of ginned-up mainstream media "scandals," there will be only two theoretically electable Republicans left in the race: John McCain and Rudy Guiliani. Since McCain and Guiliani are both insufficiently conservative for the GOP base, it's very likely that a McCain v. Hillary Rodham Clinton or Guiliani v. Clinton race would result in her victory, as a result of conservative voters deciding to either stay home (or the grounds that both major candidates are left-wingers) or supporting a conservative third-party candidate.

One can easily envision a scenario in which libertarian Republicans, comfortable with the views of McCain and Guiliani, excoriate conservative Republicans for refusing to support either man's bid for the White House, causing a full-scare war that the Democrats and the mainstream media can exploit. The press would love to see a full-on brawl between "Northeastern" Republicans and "Southern" Republicans, a political death match involving the Olympia Snowe/Susan Collins wing of the party and the Newt Gingrich/Mitch McConnell faction. The ultimate goal of the mainstream press is to have conservatism removed from the arena of ideas (witness the over-the-top media attacks on such conservative figures as Rush Limbaugh); what the Fourth Estate desires is to have a series of political "conflicts" between libertarians and "progressives," with "progressives" prevailing at every turn.

If conservative voters don't have a candidate who reflects their views, they won't be motivated to support a non-conservative nominee. Granted, conservatives supported George H. W. Bush in 1988, but Bush, while far from a "right-winger," was not nearly as liberal as McCain and Guiliani. In 2008, it's hard to envision the GOP base getting behind either McCain or Guiliani, since neither man seems interested in fighting "culture war" battles (as Romney is clearly willing to do). Some libertarians have already argued that fighting the war on terror takes precedence over every other concern, and that McCain and Guiliani can be trusted to continue the fight against extremist Islam. However, it's hard to see the conservative base even accepting that premise.

The mainstream media's War on Romney will intensify in 2007, as the press will stop at nothing in their quest to drive Romney out of contention and thus force the electorate to accept either McCain or Guiliani as alternatives to Clinton. The Fourth Estate is already making plans to have conservative and libertarian Republicans fight each other until they're exhausted--so that Hillary can beat the GOP nominee without breaking a sweat.

UPDATE: Will the Boston Globe knock it off? Plus, Human Events interviews Romney.

The Godfather

Iconic musician James Brown passes away at 73. More from the Boston Globe and Boston Herald.

UPDATE: More from Power Line, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Globe.

SECOND UPDATE: More from the AP.