The Eyes that Watched Bette Davis’s Eyes
The first Davis movie I ever saw was "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" in about 1963 or 1964 when it was first telecast. I must have been eleven or twelve, and the film scared the heck out of me.
By Gerald Early
Yesterdays and the Long Goodbye
My sister’s death reminds me that life is about loss, learning to accept losing without rancor, without pity. I think that is what the blues are about, a persecuted people creating an art form about losing, the austere sublimity of losing, first slowly, then faster.
Miles Davis, Style Beyond Style
Miles Davis no longer belongs to his family. He belongs to the world and the family has no say in how the world wishes to treat him, how each new generation decides it wishes to understand him. This little speech had no effect. I was naïve to think it would.
What Our Campaign against Smoking Can Teach Us about Our Attitude toward the Unvaccinated
Smokers are not precisely analogous to the unvaccinated but there are important similarities. Smoking and COVID-19 are associated with severe respiratory illness. Both can harm the general public: second-hand smoke with smoking, and the easy passing of the coronavirus unless mitigated by mask-wearing and social distancing. It is the fact that the general public can be harmed that generated our response to the unvaccinated and to smokers.
Happy Birthday, Chico Hamilton, Drummer of the Age of Integration
Before the electric Miles Davis of the 1970s, before Chick Corea’s Return to Forever, or Weather Report, or the other fusion bands, there was Chico Hamilton, Charles Lloyd, and Gábor Szabó in the 1960s, who introduced the elements of avant-garde, rock-ish melodies, and youthful vibrancy that joined both Black and White musical sensibilities.
Leon Spinks Once Blew Up the World
The world gets blown up so often these days that everyone has gotten used to it. Leon Spinks’s nervous system was not what it used to be, and neither was anyone else’s.
Larry Elder’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Larry Elder, the Republican candidate in the California gubernatorial recall race, was chased from a homeless encampment yesterday, one of his campaign stops. The first question is, why would Elder, a conservative, fish for votes among the homeless. Any campaign operative would say that is…
Happy Birthday, Elvin Jones
In 1972 or 1973, when I was twenty years old and a college undergraduate, I interviewed Elvin Jones at a Philly jazz club. I cannot remember which one, but I know it was not the Aqua Lounge or Just Jazz. It was not on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus either, where jazz groups sometimes played. What I remember was that I had to finagle to get in without paying.
Touchstone Texts: American Argument
American Argument provides historical depth in our consideration of how Blacks and Whites came together to enact the ritual of conversing across racial lines in the hope of better understanding each other. But it is remarkable how well it still speaks to us today, as aspects of that conversation have not changed.
What the Unvaccinated Can Teach Us
Being disobedient is not necessarily a wise choice in any given circumstance, but it is powerful, perhaps the most powerful of all human actions. From “No! In Thunder!” to “I would prefer not to.” The symmetry of opposition has a kind of beauty to it.
The Rise and Fall of Robert Kennedy’s Mission to Save America
Rising Justice is a magisterial book by a master historian, an epic sweep of Robert Kennedy and his time as a public figure. It is not a standard biography, but it has the narrative drive of a good biography. There is precious little here about Kennedy as a father, a husband, a son, just a few bits. Much testimony but little gossip. Yet one learns a great deal about Robert Kennedy person as well as Robert Kennedy the politician.
The Wonder World of Whiteness
I am not so sure if Williamson is a conservative as much as he is a contrarian, at times a kind of White Stanley Crouch, though less verbose. At times, a kind of Hunter Thompson but less gonzo. I did not always agree with his interpretation of the world as he saw it, but I always found what he saw stimulating and more than occasionally trenchant.