Bob Dylan takes it to the bank

A few years ago, I went out to the Post-Gazette Pavilion to see Bob Dylan, whose music I have always loved. Thirty years earlier I had seen him perform at Earls Court in London and I was eager to see him again.

Paul Simon was on the same bill, another performer I have long admired. Paul Simon put on a heck of a show. He was great.

But Bob Dylan was the main attraction I came to see and he was ... dreadful. He looked like a wizened senior citizen. If he had come on stage with a walker, the image would have been complete. As for his voice, his trademark gravelly inflection now sounded like a cement truck.

Too bad. There's nothing wrong with growing old - I have that project going on in my life - but if you are a musical idol you have to know when it's time to put your guitar back in its case. In journalism, by contrast, those of us who are idle can manage to hide behind print for a while.

Bob Dylan has not taken the hint. Recently, he decided to make a Christmas album with such classics included as "Here Comes Santa Claus." This is so bizarre that if Santa Claus does come, can he bring some beer so we can forget what's happening?

Now, he has taken it one stage of weirdness further. As The Huffington Post and other Web sites are reporting, he will release his new album first to special Citibank customers. (The bailout, my friends, is blowing in the wind.)

All I can say is: Wow, they took a lot of drugs in the sixties, didn't they?

Politics as an Olympic sport

Part of my noon face-off with Jack Kelly today was on the subject of President Obama and First Lady Michelle going to Copenhagen later this week to argue before the IOC that Chicago should get the 2016 Olympics. I would prefer that Rio got the nod, if only because the beach volleyball contestants would be more modestly dressed than other beachgoers, which would make a change.

But I see nothing wrong with the Obamas going and making the pitch. Jack, of course, thinks that the situations in Iran and Afghanistan are too serious for Obama to leave and, according to him, it shows that he has his priorities all wrong.

No, it doesn't. If I remember correctly, Bush's main priority in days of stress was keeping the brush cut at Crawford, so a president who is not lazy and never ceases working on multiple fronts is not a problem for me. It shouldn't be for anyone.

I took my own min-vacation this weekend but not to clear brush -- I flew to Martha's Vineyard for a reunion of friends. As a bonus, my daughter and her husband were there to. I was surprised that the Vineyard had not quite shed its off-island visitors, who are hanging on to the last taste of summer. Good luck with that one. Today in Pittsburgh seemed more like winter than fall.

When I wrote my last blog on Friday evening, it was before the police and students clashed up in Oakland. From every report I have read, the police action was over the top. Too bad. With some unfortunate lapses, they had behaved with some discipline over the previous two days only to seriously spoil their record at the end when the G-20 was as good as over.

What is it with police and students anyway? No matter where you are, it seems that cops just don't like kids and are provoked by the mere sight of them.

You say you want a revolution?

FORTRESS PITTSBURGH: Day Two of the G-20 summit:

Another lull before who-knows-what. So far, it's gone exactly as I expected. Despite the dramatic scenes in the Strip District and elsewhere yesterday, that was nothing like the Battle in Seattle. That was a Punch-Up in Pittsburgh, a mere platoon action. It was sound and fury signifying nothing.

The anarchists seemed less like anarchists than anachronisms. With all their retro wailing about capitalism, they were a blast from the distant past, perhaps the 1930s. Even the name of the unauthorized march - People's Uprising - reeked of the vanity of living in the past.

And what was the point? What message are we supposed to take away from such acts as the overturning of dumpsters? Workers of the world unite - you have nothing to lose but your dumpsters?

What about the attacks on businesses like Boston Market? Are we to believe that if the world were rid of roast chicken dinners at a reasonable price, utopia would be here?

Breaking a door at a PNC bank and attacking an ATM machine were equally stupid. KDKA reported that a perpetrator ran across the road and told the owner of a Mom and Pop operation that it was safe - they only attack corporations. How very quaint. But I wonder where the Mom and Pop business takes its receipts? Probably across the street to the PNC.

As you can see, I have very little time for vandals posing as protesters. Their message was that they had no message - they were just there to act out because they were young and stupid, except for those few who were old and stupid and had no excuse.

The Thomas Merton Center is organizing a march Downtown later today. I am looking to them to behave better than yesterday's mob who were no more dedicated to peace than I am to chastity. So far, the only thing the far-left have achieved is to make conservative tea parties look like models of civility.

 PS. (Written at 6.30 p.m.) As I also expected, the Thomas Merton Center folks did peaceably assemble -- and the thanks of the community go to them. As I write, the G-20 is just about history and we survived. Hurrah for us! I will resume this blog on Tuesday. After the hectic events of the last few days, I am going to take a rest. And have a beer.

Teddy Bear's Picnic of Cops

FORTRESS PITTSBURGH: Day One of the G-20 Summit.

This morning I parked opposite PNC Park and hoofed it over the Roberto Clemente Bridge.

The out-of-town visitors are starting to flesh out the Downtown population but it was still pretty quiet in the Golden Triangle. Bravely defying the rumors of trouble, some small coffee shops and delis are staying open, so the cops and others can get their java and bagels.

Police and National Guardsmen are pretty much everywhere. Although they don't appear all that cuddly, the scene reminds me of a Teddy Bear's Picnic of Cops. Strike up the band, maestro...

If you go down to the city today

Beware of a big surprise

For every cop that ever there was

Is gathered there as certain because

Today's the day the people are having their up ... rising.

Well, we'll see about that. Pittsburgh's recent uprisings have been all about the Penguins and the Steelers.

Welcome to (empty) Pittsburgh

Did anyone see the movie "On the Beach"? It was about the aftermath of a nuclear war and the world is pretty much destroyed, except for Melbourne, Australia, which is where the captain and crew of a U.S. nuclear submarine end up.

That scene of eerie, empty streets was what Pittsburgh looked like this morning. Pretty much anybody who was sensible stayed away. Not being known for sensible behavior, I drove into work as usual with hardly any traffic on Route 65 and found the Point Park parking lot looking like it was Sunday. Weird.

Is this the lull before the storm or the lull before the lull?

To break the monotony, a report came in saying that Greenpeace had erected a massive banner on the West End Bridge to protest climate change.

The banner put up outside the Hilton Hotel - Pittsburgh Welcomes the World! - is surely not as interesting. The Hilton banner, which was the subject of furious PG editorials for the hotel to pay its bills and get the thing up, has been erected and looks ... cheesy.

That's my opinion anyway. The best that can be said for it is that it looks cheesy in a Euro sort of way, so I suppose it will serve the purpose.

Welcome to Pittsburgh, Big Cheeses of the World, this is our cheesy greeting.

They doth protest too much

For everything there is a season and Pittsburgh is in the midst of its G-20 protest season.

As I have made abundantly clear, I am not big on street demonstrations, even while I recognize the right of people to peaceably assemble, with emphasis on the word peaceably. In that regard, the protesters have been on their best behavior so far -- and they deserve credit for that.

I also loved the the peace dance performed by flash mobs from Point Park University, but that seemed less like a demonstration that an act of exuberance. Check it out on the PG's Web site. If you aren't charmed, you may be dead.

http://www.post-gazette.com/multimedia/?videoid=102325

 But none of that changes my mind about the usefulness of protests.

During the Great Darkness (the Bush years) I was once asked by friends to picket George W. when he visited Sewickley. No thanks, not my thing. I wouldn't be caught dead on a street corner with a banner. I would not be caught dead at a tea party either, unless tea was actually served.

But what I have not done well is explain why I have this antipathy. As it happens, Barack Obama has done it for me. Ah, you conservative Reg-ulators knew he would.

In his meeting with Post-Gazette publisher and editor-in-chief John Block and executive editor David Shribman and others at the White House last week, the president said a surprising thing for someone believed by his critics to be some sort of radical.

When asked if he might have been in the streets with a sign in his younger days, he said: "Probably not."

"I was always a big believer in - when I was doing organizing before I went to law school - that focusing on concrete, local, immediate issues that have an impact on people's lives is what really makes a difference; and that having protests about abstractions [such] as global capitalism or something, generally is not really going to make much of a difference."

I think that is a great truth. It's one thing to picket a company, say, that is treating its workers badly - I can understand that and might approve of it. It's quite another to protest diffuse causes, even if they are loosely aligned (climate change might impact jobs and the economy, which in turn might impact war and peace).

Unless the focus is precise, there seems little point. I am of the persuasion that is better to swat one big fly than try to wave a stick at a swarm of bees.

Protesting one of the myriad causes associated with the G-20 makes as much sense to me as disliking the weather and picketing a meeting of meteorologists.

G-20 week: Send in the clowns

G-20 summit week has arrived in Pittsburgh and the marchers have started marching and the ACLU lawyers have started lawyering. Happy days are here again.

Yes, it is going to be a big inconvenience and a large cost to the city. On the plus side, Pittsburgh will get exposure in the world's press that money can't buy. On balance, I think it will be a good thing if violence doesn't mar the occasion.

But I see my mates over at Chateau Despair - you know it as the Tribune Review - are already in a lather, so much so that they can't get it straight in their heads whom to blame.

Consider this little gem in Friday's paper. It was among the lame-oh mini editorials that they produce under a Laurels & Lances headline for their more ADD-impaired readers:

Lance: To the G-20. Next week's Group of 20 "economic" summit has forced business after business and more than a few layers of government to incur untold thousands of dollars in expenses to avoid and/or mitigate its hassles. Untold thousands of dollars in commerce will be lost for the "privilege" of hosting this gathering of world leaders next Thursday and Friday. Is the irony not thick? And these clowns are making economic policy?

These clowns, as they call the heads of state coming, have nothing to do with this event costing Pittsburgh money. They are coming at President Obama's invitation and the concurrence of Pittsburgh city and county government. The G-20 has to be held somewhere and it's not the fault of the visiting "clowns" that it costs us. (Of course, some businesses -- for example, hotels -- are going to make out like bandits.) 

So there is no irony that these clowns are making economic policy because they aren't to blame for the un-economic costs for our area. And only a lathered-up clown would dare to make the non-existent connection.

By the way, the G-20 exhibition cricket game, which I played in on Saturday out at South Park, was a most enjoyable event. I want to thank the people I met who saw my invitation in this blog and came out for the match. I was delighted to meet you, although I am sorry I wasn't able to catch up with you again after our initial meeting. Shaabash!

Know your lefties

Today, boys and girls, let's play a game of pick the socialist. To play this game, you must know what a socialist is. That's a bit of problem because socialist has become the political insult du jour despite large numbers of people not having the first clue about what it really means.

That's why the right-wing critics of President Obama are able to insist he is a socialist/Marxist without feeling embarrassed.

As part of our game, let's compare the president's typical rhetoric to the rhetoric of those who actually embrace being socialists/Marxists/anarchists. As it happens, they don't like the president either, because they know he is not one of them.

Here is an excerpt of Obama's speech to the joint session of Congress called earlier this month on health care: "So let me set the record straight here. My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. That's how the market works."

Boys and girls, if you think this doesn't sound much like a socialist, you are right! Actually, Obama has said such things on a number of occasions and the wonder is how his endorsement of capitalism is always ignored by his critics. That's because what he says is inconvenient to their theory. That is why I have become convinced that "socialism" in the mouths of his some of critics - to be fair, not all - is really a code word for his being black.

I am reluctant to think this because sometimes race has nothing to do with anything. Sometimes. But when what is constantly said about a person is so removed from reality, it would be naive to rule out the possibility that some other slur is being implied. And that's the only one that's explains this phenomenon.

But back to our game. Now for an example of the genuine far-left politicospeak, the rusty boilerplate of the revolutionary dreamers in their communes. I took this timely excerpt from the Web site of the G-20 Resistance Project, which has set up shop in Pittsburgh for the summit.

To be sure, these people aren't really socialists or Marxists. They appear to be anarchists, but they do spout the same tired old leftist claptrap, making this comparison close enough for government (or anti-government) work. If Obama spouted stuff like this, I would believe his critics, but, of course, he doesn't.....

The following are the "Points of Unity" among individuals working with the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project and its various working groups.

We support:

Work to end all relationships of domination and subjugation, including but not limited to those rooted in patriarchy, racism, classism, homophobia, capitalism, imperialism and the state;

Resistance to the commodification of our shared and living Earth;

Organizing on the principles of decentralization, autonomy, sustainability, mutual aid and respect;

Opposition [to] the police and prison-industrial complex, and maintaining solidarity with all targets of state repression;

The use of a diversity of tactics to directly confront systems of oppression by advocating forms of resistance which maximize respect for life and oppressed peoples' rights, and to construct local alternatives to global capitalism.

So let's recap. Obama says: "My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition."

The real deal left says: "Opposition [to] the police and prison-industrial complex, and maintaining solidarity with all targets of state repression."

So, pick the socialist. Little Nellie and Her Dog can do it. Can you?

In other business, one of the Reg-ulators asked if there are any chants for cricket players. Yes, those of Indian heritage, which is most of them in Pittsburgh, shout Shaabash! at exciting moments.

Shaabash (I write it phonetically) is a Hindi word meaning, best as I can tell, "Here we go Steelers." Now there's a good sentiment for the weekend.

Myreply gets his reply on ACORN, Van Jones etc.

"Why have no liberals on this site commented on the Acorn tapes, the census bureau cutting them loose, Van Jones Tsargate, or the myriad of scandals affected this administration? Why have they not asked why the rest of the Cabinet has not yet been hired? Why have they not commented on the 1.5 million marchers on Washington, DC this past weekend? Do they feel that if they don't talk about it - it will simply go away? Or is it that they don't have any answers?"

So wrote myreply a couple of posts ago, with a separate assist from Titan Lee. Thanks ladies or gentlemen.

I am game. You want answers? I got them. Consider me Mr. Answers.

This can be discharged rather quickly. In the first place, concerning the alleged 1.5 million marchers at the weekend tea party, we have dealt with that since myreply was castigating us.

As one of the Reg-ulators pointed out, that 1.5 million figure is dubious. To be sure, it was a big crowd but I have seen a Swiss cheese with fewer holes in it. The other thing I noticed was that this mass of participants protesting the policies of the nation's first black president was overwhelmingly white. But I am sure that this was a coincidence.

As for Van Jones, the best piece about him was by the conservative and Obama-hating columnist, Charles Krauthammer last Saturday, who conceded that in a government of 8,000 people some flakes will be hired.

He also said that the disqualifying thing about Van Jones was not that he had said a bad word about conservatives, or that he was alleged to be a communist (indeed a quaint objection in an era when the U.S. sucks up to China), but that he signed a petition alleging that George W. Bush was in on the 911 plot - a theory every bit as lunatic as the Birther movement today.

Good riddance to Van Jones. That said, it is a further coincidence, of course, that Van Jones, an otherwise obscure so-called czar picked out by Glenn Beck for condemnation, should also be a provocative black man.

As for the ACORN tapes and ACORN's troubles in general, this is what you get when you hire inexperienced people for very little money.

Jack Kelly, in his daily debate with me (and where are you ingrates who read this blog but don't come in for the main fun?), called ACORN "a criminal conspiracy." By that standard, so are most large organizations in this country found to have a few bad apples (and they are easier to find when the dogs are set upon them, as happened with ACORN).

A good editorial about ACORN appeared this morning in the PG (no, I didn't write it, but I think it's conclusions are reasonable.) ACORN had it coming and this is a wake-up call to clean house.

But what has been forgotten in this witch hunt is that the things ACORN does in struggling communities - getting poor people to register to vote, the better that their interests are represented, helping them find jobs and manage their finances are good things.

It is, of course, just another coincidence, piled on the other two, that ACORN's staff and clients are mostly black.

What have we missed out on? Oh, yes, why have so many of Obama's Cabinet positions not been filled. Why, because he was burned earlier by clowns who did not pay their taxes. It is hardly a scandal that he is seeking to do the job right now. Ah, but at least it isn't another coincidence involving race.

Myriad scandals? That's what myreply thinks. But Mr. Answers (i.e. me) knows scandals - the Iraq war was a scandal - and the real answer why these things haven't been much discussed is that in the bigger scheme of things they don't amount to a hill of beans.

Santorum for president! Yes!

Who says there is no good news in the paper? I read with glee today the story - next to my column, who could miss it? - that former Sen. Rick Santorum is considering a presidential run.

Yes, Mr. Divisive, Mr. Sharp Elbows himself, the fellow who lost his Pennsylvania seat by 17 points, is testing the waters. Let those waters lift him up in a great tidal wave and on the backs of elephant seals propel him into the race.

Perhaps he could pair himself up with Sarah Palin for a Republican dream ticket - for liberals that is. For if anyone can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory for the GOP, it is those two, either singularly or in tandem. As a great presidential pretender once said, "Bring 'em' on!"

Unfortunately, a Ricky and Sarah ticket is just a wonderful hope and there's no serious talk of that yet. Still, Santorum is considering a run and that is enough to cheer any jaded political watcher.

Now there will be some who argue that the more people like myself who put Santorum down, the more his prospects will rise. I sincerely hope so.

Unfortunately, I don't believe the Republicans are that dumb. As The Tribune Review disapprovingly declared in a small, sniffy editorial yesterday, "Few would opine that Mr. Santorum is the GOP's ‘success' candidate."

Aw, don't discourage him. Who said anything about success? Santorum running for president would be a heck of a lot of fun.