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| He blazed a trail |
The president has poured kerosene on this. He has resorted to the most crude language in a public pronouncement: "sons of bitches." Could you imagine Barack Obama using this kind of language in connection to anything? And if he did, the reaction? Obama and Trump are polar opposites on the "class and dignity" index. NFL players who take a knee are not dissing the United States of America. It is a reasonable protest message, which is as American as apple pie. It is about law enforcement treatment of people of color.
The race element is one reason why Trump has weighed in. He has been hesitant to condemn the Klan and he insisted that "both sides" were at fault in Charlottesville. He continues to put forward the kneeling as a deflection from issues that might cause his standing to fall further. He appeals to his base, that 30 percent or so of Americans who pine for the Norman Rockwell days that are not coming back.
There is precedent for all this. Let me take you back to 1968, a year commonly considered "watershed." In other words, cultural change was afoot. It is always a clumsy process. The "retro" voices always assert themselves but in the end it's futile - the young generation represents the future. You know who is fully aware of this? Big business. So we now have Nike with its Kaepernick theme openly defying the retro crowd. Nike knows where the future lies.
I was 13 years old in 1968. We didn't have cable news channels then, so the next best thing was NBC's Today Show where the cultural clashes of the time became evident. NBC had no aversion to covering in generous terms the message of youth. It was counter to the Lawrence Welk crowd, 180 degrees counter. Major League Baseball, a business behemoth to be sure, knew what was up too. So Major League Baseball allowed a young stylistic singer, Jose Feliciano, to sing before a World Series game. Baseball was aware of its marketing issues.
A side note here is how baseball had allowed pitching to take over the game. We remember 1968 as "the year of the pitcher" which wasn't very exciting unless 2-1 games really turned you on. The trend toward pitching dominance began with umpires deciding to call the high fastball a strike. This explains how Sandy Koufax shot quickly to the top of the baseball firmament, according to the late author David Halberstam, who I once heard speak at St. Cloud State University.
Baseball addressed matters in 1969 by lowering the pitching mound. This hindered pitchers some, but certainly didn't seem an obstacle for our own Jerry Koosman who was a prime pitching star in the '69 season with the Mets. Jerry graduated from our West Central School of Agriculture in Morris.
In 1968 the Detroit Tigers played the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. The Cardinals had Lou Brock who was a past member of the St. Cloud (MN) "Rox." Out came the most agreeable young man named Jose Feliciano who wore sunglasses because he was blind. He was Puerto Rican. He performed for Game 5 of the Fall Classic. I wasn't watching at the time but my father gave me a heads-up after it happened, "it" being the controversy caused by how Feliciano interpreted the song.
My father was not negative toward Feliciano. I gathered he thought it was interesting. Music was of course my father's stock in trade. While he reflected his generation in certain ways, being temperate and overly fixated on money (due to being young during the Depression), he didn't have much aversion to the cultural changes.
Our family was a "generation gap" family to a certain extent. I saw a documentary once where a man my age said of his father: "I never knew him." That stuck in my head because I never felt I knew my father on a genuine level. Perhaps the anxiety of dealing with the Depression and WWII created defensiveness that prevented those people from really opening up and being human. My generation benefited from affluence but was also hurt by it. We weren't made to earn enough of what we had.
My father may have been temperate and conservative but he was not part of the "America, love it or leave it" crowd. Not even close. He was fundamentally gentle and accommodative. He always said around home of the Viet Nam war: "That's a bad deal." He should have written to his elected representatives.
So, my father gave me the heads-up about Feliciano's idiosyncratic rendition of that song known to be a bear to sing: the Star-Spangled Banner. It's a bear because of the very wide vocal range. Normally an octave is considered the maximum to be sung easily, maybe one note over as long as the extreme notes are not sustained. The Star Spangled Banner reaches beyond that to where you have to be very careful on what note you start, or you'll be desperate.
Feliciano already had a hit single with his cover of the Doors' "Light My Fire." To watch video of his World Series performance today, you'll easily wonder "what was the big deal?" Today we are accustomed to hearing highly stylized performances of the Anthem. The movie "Moneyball" showed a rock electric guitarist rendering his creative interpretation which would have been far more edgy - unthinkable really - than Feliciano's in 1968. "Moneyball" showed the typical old men with Legion hats unfurling a flag symbol as the guitarist did his thing, totally unfazed. That's today. In 1968 the youth culture met considerable resistance from the sector represented by John Wayne. And, Lawrence Welk. My goodness, the "Monkees" TV show was considered edgy.
Remember the problems with the Smothers Brothers? I think a reality-based movie should be made about the Smothers Brothers TV show. Such different times. Us young people were like strangers in a strange land. But the powers of Major League Baseball knew full well that the youth were the future, to be ignored at their own peril. So there's Feliciano performing the Anthem in such a sincere yet idiosyncratic way. It was a touchstone type of moment. And we know how these things turn out, with the values of youth gaining currency.
Feliciano sang with a gentle, Latin jazz-influenced feel. Some people were puzzled, others outraged. They hadn't heard the song done this way before. There were stories of war veterans taking off their shoes and throwing them at the TV. Oh, I think that's hyperbole. Some people perceived Feliciano's version as a protest. Of the war? Well, congrats. It was a war that we would go on to lose at great cost. Feliciano for his part said "I love this country." He had moved from Puerto Rico to New York City when he was a little boy.
Sadly, America was not ready yet for Feliciano's song interpretation. He got blackballed on commercial radio. He hung in there, getting bookings at colleges, jazz clubs and music festivals. I'm so happy he had great success with his Christmas song, "Feliz Navidad." He was a forerunner. His experience with all the slings and arrows in the aftermath opened the door for other artists. The National Anthem would no longer be a dull slog. Even Garth Brooks had a distinct interpretation.
Now we have the Anthem again at a flashpoint with Trump's pronouncement about the "sons of bitches." Congratulations to all you "evangelical Christians" who continue to support this most crude, amoral and offensive president, he of the porn star and Playboy centerfold payoffs to keep quiet.
Am I to assume that our local Apostolic Christians voted entirely for Trump? If I'm wrong on this, please get back to me and correct me. You can have your "ribfest."
Feliciano today supports the NFL players who at present take a knee to simply make a statement about perceived racial injustice in America.
Minnesotans might well associate "take a knee" with what Randall Cunningham did near the end of the Vikings' most infamous loss, when we should have made the Super Bowl (with Randy Moss). Why not throw the ball downfield and see if Moss could do his magic or perhaps draw a penalty? We'll never know. Brian Billick, you have some answering to do.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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