The Academy’s Bench Warmer

Spoon’s 2007 Album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is a fine record with some great tracks–”You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” and “The Underdog” among them.  There’s also “Don’t Make Me a Target,” which has a nice little shuffle-along guitar riff as well as these poignant lyrics:

Here come the man from the stars
we don’t know why he go so far
and keep on marching along
beating his drum

Clubs and sticks and bats and balls
for nuclear dicks with dialect drawls
they come from a parking lot town
where nothing lives in the sun

Don’t make me a target (3x)
When you reach back in his mind
feels like he’s breaking the law
There’s something back there he got
that nobody knows

He never claimed to say what he says
He smells like the inside of closets and stairs-
The kind where nobody goes

Don’t make me a target…

It seems pretty clear that this song is about Bush Jr.–the shock at seeing him in the presidency (“the man from the stars / don’t know why he go so far”), his “dialect drawls,” his supporters from the suburbs and strip malls (“parking lot town”), the administration’s constant lies (“He never claimed to say what he says”), and, of course, Bush’s constant war-mongering (“marching along / beating his drum / clubs and sticks and bats and balls”).  Leave it to some folks from Bush’s home state (at least, until Spoon’s Britt Daniels moved to Portland) to drive home the point (see also Jim Hightower, the Dixie Chicks, and the great Molly Ivins, may she rest in peace).  And any song about Bush is about history, as in what-a-historical-fuck-up-this-presidency-has-been sort of history.

But there’s more here, and it’s loaded into the phrase “nuclear dicks.”  This calls to mind Robert Dean’s Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy, in which Dean connects American foreign policy (up to Vietnam) to a hyperventilating, testosterone-dripping masculinity that permeated the White House beginning sometime in FDR’s administration.  Dean argues that the context of the masculine imperial brotherhood consisted of both prescriptive and proscriptive elements.  A particular set of experiences crafted the ideal member of the imperial brotherhood: family money; a private prep-school and then Ivy League education; and volunteer military experience, preferably in an elite group (like Kennedy’s torpedo boat adventures).  These ideas of what a man should be were coupled with rules of what a man should not be: homosexual, effete, and/or weak, along with the usual rejection of all things smacking of socialism.  This proscriptive element was reinforced and institutionalized during the Red and Lavender Scares, when conservatives jealous of power and liberals worried of losing it both acted to purge the federal government of anyone tainted by “homosexual tendencies,” directly or indirectly.  Dean argues that these proscriptive purges, along with the prescriptive construction of ideal masculinity, produced the arrogance and ignorance of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations vis-á-vis Cuba (Bay of Pigs, Missile Crisis, etc.) and Vietnam.  Top administration officials reaffirmed their masculinity through aggressive foreign policy, blinded to any possibilities (such as that suggested by George Ball) that ran counter to the masculine narrative that the imperial brotherhood had so carefully constructed and followed.  Dean insists that his narrative is meant to portray only the context within which decisions about the Vietnam War took place, but his argument often bleeds into a causal explanation.  Dean “imperial impulse that animated Vietnam policymaking” (235) and “the personal attributes…valued by the imperial brotherhood meant conformity to Cold War orthodoxy and willingness to direct acts of violence against unseen foreigners” (202), indicating that the masculine ideal caused (“animated”) the Vietnam War, rather than just set the context for it.  Dean doesn’t quite pull this part of the argument off, I think, relying on gender-dynamics-cause-history assumptions that I’ve never quite bought into.

That said, there is a good argument to be made that realpolitik is characterized by overt masculinity, and I wonder if it’s to do with the senselessness of the particular foreign policy in question.  The Cold War was certainly permeated by masculine swagger (“I didn’t just screw Ho Chi Minh.  I cut his pecker off.” — the immortal words of LBJ), as is the current War on Terror (Bush’s flightsuit package, for instance).  In both cases, the enemy is an illusive product of imagination–the black-suited Communists roaming the jungles of Vietnam, poised to rip apart the fabric of the American economic system; or “terror”–not even an ideology, by the way, but a tactic or, at most, a strategy–which has been used as the justification for wars against mountain militiamen in Afghanistan and the professional army of Iraq.  Perhaps, then, it is in the most futile and silly foreign policy that we see the most excessive masculinity–when presidents use military force not to protect democracy or even valuable markets, but to be Big Men.  And the United States gets made a target, all so that little men with dialect drawls can swing their nuclear dicks.

The Barenaked Ladies crafted yet another great album in their 2003 release Everything to Everyone. The singles selection (“Another Postcard” and “Testing 1,2,3″) wasn’t the best; “Unfinished” and “War on Drugs” are my favorite tracks. And then there’s the opening track, “Celebrity,” which starts with this little gem of a lyric:

Don’t call me a zero
I’m gonna be a hero
Like Phil Esposito or the Kennedys

Like so many of their tunes, BNL packs a lot into these few lines. Phil Esposito–of course–is Philip Anthony Esposito, the celebrated center for the Chicago Blackhawks, Boston Bruins, and New York Rangers. “Espo” began his pro career in 1964, and during his 18 years in the NHL, racked up 6 Art Ross trophies (league leading scorer), 2 Hart Memorial Trophies (most valuable player), and 2 Stanley Cub championships. According to the disembodied, dispassionate, passive-voice wisdom of Wikipedia, Esposito “is considered to be one of the best [hockey players? centers? Canadians?] to have ever played in the National Hockey League.” BAM! Hockey history in your face!

The Kennedys can claim no such hockey greatness, but they nevertheless deserve our attention for the influence they have exercised on American politics and culture. The Kennedys made their first appearance in American history in the form of businessman/politician Patrick Joseph Kennedy and his son, businessman/politician Joseph Patrick Kennedy (and no, I’m not just mixing up the first and middle names), who married Rose Fitzpatrick, daughter of Democratic party boss and Boston mayor John F. Fitzgerald. Put these power genes together and you get the Kennedy boys: John, Bobby, and Ted.

John F. Kennedy: WWII torpedo boat captain and 35th president, gunned down three years into his term. Generally regarded as the US’s most handsome president, although Andrew Jackson must surely run a close second. Gets credit for the Peace Corps, Project Apollo, and proposing what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But he’s also accountable for some less savory moments in presidential history: lying about the deal he struck with Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, thus putting his successor, LBJ, in the unfortunate position of having to show his own toughness against the Communists in Vietnam (as Eric Alterman argues). Robert Dean contends that Kennedy contributed to a cult of masculinity–an “imperial brotherhood”–that adopted the always popular dick-swinging school of foreign policy.

Robert F. Kennedy: His older brother’s attorney general, US Senator from New York, and Democratic presidential candidate in 1968, when he was assassinated. As attorney general, he went after the Teamsters; running for president in 1968, he spoke a psuedo-populist message, touring Appalachia and focusing on urban poverty. Like his brother, he left a long and sometimes depressing series of “what if?” questions for historians and Democrats–perhaps the last chance for unity and broad electoral success the Democratic party had for the rest of the 20th century.

Edward Kennedy: Best known as the senior senator from Massachusetts (serving in that capacity since 1962), Ted also made a run for the presidency in 1980, losing the nomination to Jimmy Carter, who then got mowed down by Reagan in the general election. Nevertheless, he has remained an active and effective senator, putting his mark on all manner of legislation, from immigration (in 1965 and 2007) to a bill honoring Johnny Carson.

There are other Kennedys, too: JFK’s son (JFK Jr., who died in a plane crash in 1999) and daughter (Caroline, who recently published a book on Christmas traditions); Ted’s son Patrick J. Kennedy (US congressman); Bobby’s son Robert Jr. (environmentalist, author, and falconer); and on and on and on.

It’s an amazing web of fame and power, and one wonders to what degree it is deserved. BNL suggest that celebrity is in large part facade for nothingness:

“I’ll be imitated
And overrated, but that doesn’t bother me”

and

“All that you will see is a celebrity
All that’s left of me is my celebrity”

Whether JFK, RFK, and the rest of the clan are overrated is a question I’m not equipped to answer (I’ve been working on this post for a few days, and I’m frankly sick of it). But the importance of celebrity in American history is unquestionable, and the Kennedys are an excellent example.

This post (first post of the new year–a happy one to you all) inaugurates a new feature on this blog: History through Pop. Music, that is. In my collection of tunes, I’ve noticed a few songs that nod at, refer to, or expound on historical events, and this feature will examine those songs. Today’s tune: “Leaders of the Free World” from Elbow’s 2005 record of the same name.

At one level, this song is a not-so-thinly veiled (and well-deserved) attack on Bush (“FECKLESS son,” as the lyrics go); a great performance at Seattle’s KEXP a few years ago makes that much clear. But there’s also a wonderful recognition of the importance of appreciating and understanding the past, particularly one line of the second verse:

“But I think we dropped the baton like the 60’s didn’t happen. Oh no.”

Guy Garvey (lyricist for Elbow) here seems to lament the failure–our failure–to realize the promises and potential of the 1960s, particularly the hope for peace. That failure, Garvey seems to be saying, is due to historical forgetfulness: “like the 60’s didn’t happen.” We have forgotten what people accomplished during the 1960s, such as forcing an end to the Vietnam War and bringing civil and voting rights to the south and beyond. Unfortunately, the only lessons that seem to have stuck are bad ones, such as how to appeal to racists without looking like a racist yourself (a mostly Republican strategy; see Nixon and Reagan; ), and how to diffuse the energy of mass protests by circumscribing those protests (where they can be held, for instance) while simultaneously appearing to embrace the exercise of “free speech,” gutted of content.

There’s another lesson from the 1960s, too, that I hope we are beginning to realize: the folly of carrying too far the concept of “the personal is political.” This became the refrain of feminists during the 1970s, and for good reason; gender relations, even/especially at the personal level of the home, shape power relations. But it went too far, and people gave up on changing society in favor of “revolutionizing” themselves, from running off to communes to embracing individual spirituality. People had different reasons for drawing inward: some honestly believed that the revolution had to start within one’s self; others were frustrated with the slow pace of economic and political reform; and many others had probably never really been committed to the project in the first place and had just been along for the personal ride/high. Whatever the reasons, the result was to effectively strip the 1960s of its collective energy–which actually had the power to bring about change–and replace it with individualism, which has proven to be far too susceptible to co-option by political and economic structures. This, I think, is how we “dropped the baton” of the 1960s, choosing the individual sprint to personal satisfaction instead of the team relay for reform and revolution. A powerful lesson. Cheers to Elbow for providing such a rocking tune to go along with it.