Ted Kennedy, on the Rocks

For those tired of all the lionizing of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy this week, see Michael Kelly's scathing 1990 profile in GQ, "Ted Kennedy, on the Rocks." It's not so much a profile, considering Kelly didn't interview Kennedy (he declined), but a brutal recounting of Kennedy's huge missteps during the 1980s and before: drunken swashbuckling with Sen. Christopher Dodd at La Colline, a Washington restaurant; dry-humping waitresses at Brasserie, another Washington restaurant, with, again, Dodd; and, of course, Chappaquiddick, among others.

Writes Kelly, who became an editor of the Atlantic and New Republic, only to die in the second Iraq War: "Arrested development doesn't seem to explain why Kennedy seems to be getting worse as he gets older. According to a theory, currently popular in Washington, such incidents as Brasserie I and II [II is having sex on the floor of a private dining room] are evidence that Kennedy, freed at last by the knowledge that he will never be president, is simply giving his natural inclinations full vent." And: "In short, with nothing left to lose politically (he'd have to hit the pope and pee on the Irish flag to lose his Senate seat) and long inured to ridicule, he has become the Kennedy Untrammeled, Unbound."

Really, this just makes me ache for the man. When his two older brothers are assassinated as president and running for president, and so much of the family dies and suffers in cruel ways, the psychological pain Ted Kennedy must feel are unfathomable. Kelly touches on this in one paragraph, noting that in April 1969 on a flight back from visiting poor Indians in Alasksa, "a hard-drinking Kennedy pelted aides and reporters with pillows, ranged up and down the aisles chanting 'Eskimo power' and rambled incoherently about Bobby's assassination," but doesn't properly address this. And to think of how titantic a lawmaker he has been! His professional core has been immigrant rights, health care, education, voting rights, housing and opposing ill-conceived wars. It doesn't get much better.

To end, one of the best lines from political speeches there is, the famed 1980 Democratic convention one by Kennedy: "For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

Can Someone Please Tell Arlen Specter the Eagles Aren't in the Playoffs?

For those who found Congress' investigation of steroid use in baseball absurd, Sen. Arlen Specter, Repbulican of Pennsylvania and noted Philadelphia Eagles fan, has decided to needlessly up the ante with the New England Patriots, Bill Belichick and "Spygate."

Videotaping their opponents' signals taints the Patriots' and Belichick's success this decade much the same way Bonds' apparent steroid use taints his career home run record: Both would have been beyond great even if they had played within the rules and it's impossible to quantify how much better their cheating made them. (Though I think steroids taints Mr. Bonds more.) And while there are plenty of much more important things to which Congress should devote itself, at least the Mitchell Report was full-blown, needed catharsis.

But with Mr. Specter, Spygate has been covered so exhaustively, I doubt there's anything left to find, unless he wants to investigate every NFL team, including his voters' Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers. (In fact, didn't Specter first inject himself into this when it seemed like Steelers and Patriots were going to meet in last year's playoffs? What poor politicking.) The Patriots and Belichick have paid their steep fines, and hopefully they and the full league have their lesson and won't try this again. Tom Brady is still a great quarterback (and a hunk!), Randy Moss is still a great wide receiver and Belichick is still a great coach. The Patriots will likely make the Super Bowl sans videocameras.

More than anything, Spygate has two unfortunate side stories:

1. Matt Walsh, a former Patriots' videotaper, who during the Super Bowl, as the story gained steam again, insinuated he had many more incriminating tapes of the team's misconduct. There was then a lame four-month dance before Walsh actually met with the NFL and Specter about what he did (and, more importantly, it turned out, didn't do), where Walsh and sports reporters inflated what he did to that of master strategist. I have to agree with Belichick on this one: Walsh was largely irrelevant, especially if his tape collection wasn't broader or deeper than what the Patriots handed to the NFL. In this great anti-climax revolving around a tape collection, there's probably a porn joke in there, but I can't think of it.

2. The Boston sports media. It is unbelievable the relationship they have with the teams and fans here. The reporters -- most especially those on WEEI (and they're not even reporters!) -- loves to moan and criticize at the slightest slip any team has, but also realize those teams are the "golden goose" here, so as much as they throttle, they have to fawn and defend the moment things start to turn around. And then, of course, there's the Herald's John Tomase and his retracted piece about the Patriots taping the St. Louis Rams' practice before the 2002 Super Bowl. (Link to original story here, though much is now hidden in pay-to-read archives.) There has been much intra-biz hand-wringing about what should befall Tomase and certainly the Herald should reverse course and remove him from the Patriots beat because he is now part of the story, if not the story. (Did Judith Miller cover Scooter Libby's trial? Gosh, no.) Really, Tomase's apologetic explanation, which didn't do much explaining or apologizing, only revealed that he went to press based on second-hand rumor without ever calling someone within the organization before making the "9 p.m., this story is going to print in an hour and I need your comment" call, and that Tomase looks, based on his head shot, like someone who's never played football before.

Sufjan Stevens Is Incredible, aka Will Allison Read This Post Since It's About Music?

You know what the true genius is of Sufjan Stevens' 50-states albums? They're not about states and their woolly, idiosyncratic histories, cultures and personalities. They're about you and me right here, right now; the intimacy, the joy, the sadness of life; my life, your life, our lives. Provincialism becomes universalism, the sprawling becomes the specific. Where am I? Right here. Embrace it. Embrace me.

The harmonies and instrumentation on "For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti," when the "I'll do anything for you / I did everything for you" line repeats over and over, is breathtaking. I could listen to those two minutes all day. (It's track 3 on "Michigan.")

Here's some (dark) video of his suite on the BQE, performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last year. Anyone who can make art from one of the city's (any city's) ugliest highways is incredible:



It's been three years now since "Illinois" was released. Hopefully we're closer to the release of the next record than we are the release of that one. Maybe an EP about Delaware or Rhode Island as a placeholder?

Welcome Back Thomas J. Friedman

Thomas J. Friedman, the Times' foreign affairs op-ed columnist, returned from book leave just in time last week. Right as he got the column cranking again, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain started pushing a federal gas tax holiday on the stump, Clinton even more so than McCain. Friedman, bless him, quickly tore it to shreds in this column, explaining it as the poor politicking and even poorer public policy that it is.

Here's the first paragraph, but you should read the whole thing: "It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country."

Eliminating the gasoline tax, even temporarily, only provides an incentive to keep using gasoline, which does nothing but increase the price. That seems simple and obvious, so why did Clinton push it so hard in Indiana and North Carolina for those states' primaries last week? It's always hard to attribute voting results to one specific thing, but perhaps her narrow win in the former and large loss in the latter, all but ending her campaign, happened because of her ill-suited and disingenous (the key word for Hillary Clinton's political life: disingenous) populist turn, of which the "gas tax holiday" was a part. Whereas much of the press forgot the Clintons are worth more than $100 million and pal around with economists and big-time Wall Street and hedge fund guys like these ones, it seems enough of the voting public remembered. (What's up with Rubin's head shot? And yes, I realize one can be quite wealthy and advocate for the middle class and poor -- isn't that what liberals do? -- but what Clinton has done on the campaign trail zooms past that principle and heads to infinite irrationality. Economists are "elitists"?)

Back to the gasoline tax: I was listening to Terri Gross interview Al Gore on "Fresh Air" last week, in what was probably the most interesting and sensible one I heard in awhile. Essentially, his argument was our country's taxation policy should be shifted from the income tax to a pollution/carbon/higher gas tax so U.S. businesses' burden for labor costs is somewhat alleviated compared to that for the developing economies of China and India, while discouraging people from partaking in polluting activities, by which I assume he means on the most basic, daily level: driving. A quote from Mr. Gore (I held my tape recorder up to a car speaker while driving): "We ought to pay for them [our country's social services] with pollution taxes instead and in the course of that give an incentive to the reduction of CO2 that assists people to the adjustment of a low-carbon, no-carbon economy that will make us much more competitive in the future..."

(Gore also scored tons of points with me for citing TV and its 30-second ad spots and superficial, poorly produced news programs as one reason why we now live in an age ill-suited to reason with an ill-informed population at-large. I couldn't agree more. Why is it my favorite politicians refuse to run for president?)

Back to the gasoline tax: What the short-term solution to our country's high gasoline prices is I don't know. Would any readers here suggest rolling back the tax might actually help since a penny saved is a penny saved and there isn't anything else on the horizon? Or might we all have to just gradually drive less, along with several other massive changes to the U.S. economy and culture? I realize my commuting does not aid anything.

Back to Friedman: One of my friends said he likes Friedman a lot because he thinks Friedman would be a wonderful dinner/drink companion -- engaging, thoughtful conversation -- compared to everyone else on the Times' op-ed page. I agree. I also like him because, unlike the rest of the page, he's non-partisan. He'll take the best answer out there, no matter where it comes from. (Politicians say this all the time; none of them mean it.) He even knocked it out of the park with his Mother's Day column today. I think this brand of column is often cloying and unoriginal, but he hits it.

Happy Mother's Day, mom and bubby!

Grey Lady, Grey Hair: Why Are So Many Developers So Self-Centered?

Campaign cycles don't last a million years; it only seems that way. In fact, it was only less than three months ago that the Times was getting killed for its front-page counterlede implying Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain had an affair with a telecom lobbyist. Does anyone remember this? I sure do.

In fact, the Times far outdid that story -- which, as I've said before, had questionable parts -- with two pieces the past two weeks that much better demonstrate McCain is not the patron saint of political ethics he claims to be.

The first, about Donald R. Diamond (is that really his given name?!), a big-time developer from McCain's homestate of Arizona, shows how McCain has supported several lucrative deals for Diamond over the years by sponsoring bills at the federal level and putting in the "good word" at the local level. (What quicker way to impress the mayor of Seaside, Calif., then a personal letter from McCain?) And, unsurprisingly, Diamond has bundled $250,000 for McCain's presidential bid, among other donations. The second is about how McCain's campaign appears to have paid far less than market value for plane travel ever since it starting using a jet owned by his wife's company. (For my underage readers: You have to be at least 21 years old to browse a beer distributor's Web site.)

McCain operates within the law in each instance, but these are not sparkling things to do if you champion yourself as a crusader of ethics. Perhaps in the first, one can argue everyone does favors for people they know -- that's what networking is -- but this involves publicly protected land, nice development deals and one person making lots and lots of money. On the second, using your wife's wealth to fund the campaign in a back-door approach is highly questionable. Why didn't either of these create stirs?

(Yes, Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts did the same four years ago and if he were running for president now or if I blogged back then, I would criticize just as hard. That Sen. Hillary Clinton appears to be on the verge of doing the same (did her $5 million loan to her campaign in February come from donations to the William J. Clinton Foundation, profits from Yucaipa Cos. and California supermarket magnate buddy Ron Burkle, or just from speaking and book deals?) is extremely disappointing. Why doesn't the Clinton Foundation disclose its donors? If you haven't read this Times story about former President Bill Clinton traveling to Kazakhstan with Vancouver mining magnate buddy Frank Giustra, helping him secure a huge deal, and then receiving a huge donation for the foundation -- all while proclaiming Kazakhstan is on the path to democracy?! -- you must.)

Anyway, at least Diamond is unapologetic about it all: ''I think that is what Congress people are supposed to do for constituents,'' he told the Times in an interview. ''When you have a big, significant businessman like myself, why wouldn't you want to help move things along? What else would they do? They waste so much time with legislation.''

Or, Why is Diamond so unapologetic about it all? Or, phrased more universally, Why are so many developers so self-centered? I've interviewed a lot of them -- no one of this repute, unfortunately -- and many are good people, who believe a development can transform a neighborhood and some who actually (whoa, stop the presses, here) think that people deserve to live in quality, affordable housing. But there are also so many who operate with a "Pave it Over, Move Mountains for Me" philosophy. Why?

Hold on, 20th Century

To my surprise, I found a copy of Stars' 2005 record, "Set Yourself On Fire," on my girlfriend's computer recently, which was great because it's exactly the kind of record that I like well enough to listen to occasionally, but not well enough to actually buy.

So I burned a copy, put it in my car stereo and the songs were all out of order. The record just didn't sound as good as I remembered because of it. (Two weeks later, I'm not even sure where the CD is. Maybe in my girlfriend's car?) For a twenty-something, I realize this sounds incredibly anachronistic, in an era when so much of music is downloaded a la carte and consumed in "shuffle mode." But I think there's so much to be said for the statement a full album, digested from first song to last, makes. (Don't get me started on how important the second song and closer are.) Listening to a full album's songs out of order is somewhat akin to reading a novel's chapters out of order: Sure, the quality of the work is understandable, but the greater artistic purpose is lost.

In a related, unsurprising development, the Times' Ben Sisario documents how NYC record stores are struggling as rents below 14th Street do nothing but climb and few buy records anymore. I couldn't imagine a world without Other Music, the greatest record store in the world. It's esoteric and elitist and tasteful -- adjectives that probably (hopefully?) describe me -- and Scott Mou sits on the stool near the new rock CDs and talks to those who are cool enough to know him. (Does Mou still work there? I haven't been in a few years.)

The record store scene in Boston/Cambridge is pretty underwhelming, as it seems to be Newbury Comics or used record store. At the latter, the collection is always random and usually not worth the digging, though I did find Cat Power's new record, "Jukebox," at Looney Tunes on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge for a cool $9 last week. And Newbury Comics...well, you'll find almost every indie record you're looking for there, but you'll find a lot of things you're most certainly not looking for, too, especially non-music-related kitsch and dumb psycheldic posters and T-shirts. At Other Music, it's the best and nothing but.

In another related, unsurprising development, Tony Judt's newly published essay collection, "Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten 20th Century," is on my list of books to buy.