Where We Are This Week 07/07/2023
America part two, album reviews, the Supreme Court, and le Tour de France.
After my Fourth of July post this week, I saw several posts disparaging the holiday and the country it’s intended to celebrate.
So, I wanted to take this opportunity to make myself abundantly clear. I do not take for granted the country in which I was born and, given the history of human civilizations, it’s nothing short of a miracle that America exists.
Where my lamentation and conflict begin, however, is what we’re doing with the opportunity we have as a people to make this nation the greatest it could be. For that reason, I never really identify myself as an American per se, but I do realize how inextricable my nationality is from my worldview.
I’m an American artist and writer, and I take pride in benefiting from and participating in the legacy that Nilsson and Guthrie, and Steinbeck and Hemingway laid out before me.
So this week, I’ll give you a sample of what great American records my wife and I have been listening to in order to celebrate properly.
From left to right:
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground and Nico
A spectacular confluence of post-modern rock and roll and a quintessential American artist, Andy Warhol. An entertaining, and sometimes challenging, combination of pop melodies and noise.
Venus in Furs
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
An album so venerated it’s almost a joke. Brian Wilson said of Pet Sounds that he was able to create the music that was in his mind. If only we could all be so blessed.
Listen: God Only Knows
Darryl Hall and John Oates - Private Eyes
The tradition of great music from Philadelphia is alive and well on this record with incredible hooks and vocal performances on every twist and turn of the album.
Listen: I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)
Spoon - They Want My Soul
This album is Spoon at their best (which can be said about most of their work). Crunching guitars and punchy drumbeats, the record flits between dancey, sing-a-long, and rock anthems.
Listen: I Just Don’t Understand
Paul Simon - Graceland
What can I say about this masterpiece that hasn’t been said before? It’s uniquely American, one of our greatest songwriters playing songs marked by African background singers, Zydeco accordions, and an ode to Elvis.
Listen: Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes
Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
The first Dylan record I ever owned. I played it on CD in my bedroom all the time. Lyrically hard to follow, psychedelic, let your subconscious loose. The sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken.
Patti Smith - Horses
The coolest. American punk and poet, Patti Smith shines in her unrefined, verbose, improvisational excellence.
Listen: Birdland
Marvin Gaye - What’s Going On?
Holy smokes, there is no better record that communicates the unrest and hopefulness of America during the ‘60s and ‘70s. Gaye communicates the depths of the American experience on a party record with the chatter of all of us in the background.
Listen: Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Nuthin’ Fancy
Nothing says my childhood like this album. Nothing epitomizes the American South or says home like this record, hard riffs, bluegrass, it’s got it all. Ronnie Van Zant is one of rock and roll’s greatest voices.
Listen: Am I Losin’
Court’s Gone Wild
As the Supreme Court is set to end this year’s session in the coming days, they’ve done nothing but deliver blockbuster decisions in the waning hours of this period.
Last week, we saw the justices hand down a ruling against affirmative action, a policy that has been practiced in the United States for just under a century but has been on the books since the ‘60s. Then, on Friday, they ruled against President Biden’s student loan relief and upheld - the horror - the 1st amendment protections of free speech in a controversial case involving gay marriage and a Christian web designer. Quite this busy week, wouldn’t you say?
If that last one sounds familiar, you might be confusing it with another case from a few years ago - Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. I was under the impression that this had been a settled subject since 2018, but apparently not. Colorado still has the same ‘anti-discrimination’ law on the books, and it took a whole host of lower circuit judges disagreeing on the interpretation of federal law in order for this new case to make its way all the way to the top.
True to form, the Supreme Court continued to smack down fools like Rey Misterio and Randy Orton on a Friday night. Those who had a 2000s WWE reference on their Where We Are bingo cards this week, I applaud you.
In summation, the current case in question is Creative LLC v. Elenis. The conflict at hand is a Christian web designer refused to create a wedding website for a gay couple. It’s literally exactly like the cakeshop case from 2018. Those against the web designer’s right to refuse argued that refusal was discriminatory while it was the Supreme Court’s opinion that declining to create that particular website was well within the business owner’s first amendment rights.
The distinction between discrimination and free speech can be a grey area but this specific question seems pretty cut and dry. Creating something and serving someone are two entirely different endeavors. Could the designer refuse service to the gay couple by virtue of their sexuality? No. But can the designer decline to create something against their beliefs? Absolutely.
If the Colorado law were to be accepted as constitutional, by principle, a gay writer could be made to extol the virtues of conversion therapy, a black seamstress could be forced to make a hood for their local grand wizard, a Muslim artist could be compelled to illustrate the prophet Muhammed, or a Jet would have to write a song about Sharks. All equally egregious requests, to be sure.
So, good news, right? Partially.
The Court’s 6-3 decision is being castigated by the left as a green light to discrimination and a result of ‘right-wing’ justices who’ve gone too far. For reference, the cakeshop case was a 7-2 decision with even fewer originalists presiding at the time.
The 6-3 decision was split straight down ideological lines with Justice Gorsuch writing the opinion and Justice Sotomayor drafting the dissent. Midweek for the 4th, I wrote a poem titled Two Americas and it couldn’t be better encapsulated by a court case than this.
I don’t see myself along ideological lines and I generally can construct an argument for both sides of an issue - however, the difference in the way that this case is perceived is so stark, that we might as well be living in separate countries.
“Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class. Specifically, the Court holds that the First Amendment exempts a website-design company from a state law that prohibits the company from denying wedding websites to same-sex couples if the company chooses to sell those websites to the public.”
Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. She continued:
“Around the country, there has been a backlash to the movement for liberty and equality for gender and sexual minorities. New forms of inclusion have been met with reactionary exclusion. This is heartbreaking. Sadly, itis also familiar. When the civil rights and women’s rights movements sought equality in public life, some public establishments refused. Some even claimed, based on sincere religious beliefs, constitutional rights to discriminate. The brave Justices who once sat on this Court decisively rejected those claims.
Now the Court faces a similar test. A business open to the public seeks to deny gay and lesbian customers the full and equal enjoyment of its services based on the owner's religious belief that same-sex marriages are “false.” The business argues, and a majority of the Court agrees, that because the business offers services that are customized and expressive, the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment shields the business from a generally applicable law that prohibits discrimination in the sale of publicly available goods and services. That is wrong. Profoundly wrong.”
It’s one thing to claim that the Free Speech Clause doesn’t include the types of protections the majority of the court but it’s entirely another to do what she did next. Sotomayor attempted to draw a causal link between these types of discriminatory practices and a rise in violence against those communities.
The data to support that causation is scant - what a difficult cause/effect that would be to prove - but that doesn’t stop her from laying the blame at the feet of her fellow justices.
“A social system of discrimination created an environment in which LGBT people were unsafe. Who could forget the…brutal murder of Matthew Shepard? Matthew was targeted by two men, tortured, tied to a buck fence, and left to die for who he was…Or the Pulse nightclub massacre, the second-deadliest mass shooting in U. S. history?… Rates of violent victimization are still significantly higher for LGBT people, with transgender persons particularly vulnerable to attack.”
The first instance she references has been widely disputed and was likely a drug-related killing, not a hate crime, as evinced by the sexuality of one of his killers. But set that one aside for a moment, she cited the Pulse nightclub mass shooting as a hate-fueled attack on the LGBTQIA+ community.
While, indeed, Pulse was a gay nightclub and unspeakable tragedy did occur, it wasn’t a hate crime. The idea that it was has been debunked over and over, yet still, this false narrative is nestled in the dissent of a Supreme Court case. The shooter in the Pulse nightclub case had no anti-gay motive and even remarked that he was confused by the lack of women in the gay nightclub upon his entry.
If you’re not up to date on the details of that case, read this Vox article to catch you up.
So, why am I lingering on this specific case and this specific dissent? Well, sure, it might be a little bit of inside baseball, but this is, more and more, how law in our nation gets crafted.
Increasingly, the Supreme Court is used as an additional legislative body, granting powers to the judicial branch of our federal government that it was never intended to have. So, we find ourselves with the most powerful court we’ve ever had during a time of extreme political divide. So much so, in fact, that a Supreme Court Justice is including false, disproven narratives in their dissent.
What happens when the smartest people in the room are no longer smart - or even in the room?
I’m sure there have been plenty of such errors on both sides of the aisle but I just happened to catch this one. And far be it for me to praise the integrity of the court as a seemingly unending list of conflicts of interest, failures of recusal, and possible bribery has been revealed indicating justices from both sides.
With the integrity of the court reasonably in question and division amongst the justices frequently being so clearly ideologically based - as opposed to principle - how can American citizens be asked to put their faith in the institution? The Supreme Court was supposed to be the last bastion of impartial and honest rule - no longer, it seems.
Predictably, President Biden has criticized the court for its recent decisions, and cries from the left to expand the count of justices have been renewed.
Donald Trump’s presidential legacy, presuming he doesn’t win reelection, will likely rest on the triumph of the Abraham Accords and his three Supreme Court appointees. On the heels of the Roe v. Wade decision from last summer and these three pivotal decisions, look for judicial reform to play an increasingly large role in the run-up to the 2024 election - and for division and distrust to be exacerbated.
Le Tour de France
It’s that time of year again, my friends. Le Tour!
Such magic is only rivaled by the World Cup but whereas it only takes place every four years, the Tour de France graces our televisions and hearts every summer.
I’ve grown up watching this race with my parents. As a kid, I cheered on Lance Armstrong to beat his rival, Jan Ullrich. For me, it was like this recapitulation of World War II that saw America face off its German adversary yet again - but this time the two sides were represented by the US Postal Service and T-Mobile, and they battled in time trials and long mountain climbs.
Then in high school, I forced my friends - who didn’t ride bikes or watch cycling - to support the Schleck brothers with me in their fight against the unbeatable Alberto Contador. We made t-shirts, I have the photo somewhere.
I gave a presentation on Contador and his dominance for my Spanish class in my junior year. As it turns out, they were all doping - every cyclist I just mentioned. But it doesn’t matter! Thankfully, the Sosa/McGwire days of the pro peloton are behind us, but the Armstrong era hasn’t tarnished for me.
Last year, I would wake up to hold our two-month-old while she slept and I’d watch the greatest cycling race there is. As the best athletes in the world were suffering next to a picturesque chalet on some mountainside in France, I was in the dark of my living room, squinting my eyes at the television with drool on my shoulder and a numb arm.
I couldn’t think of anything better.
Unfortunately, I won’t be watching this year’s iteration quite the same; time moves on, and she sleeps in her crib now. But that doesn’t mean that the race won’t be constantly on in the background for the next three weeks - or even while I’m writing this to you, right now.
The Tour de France is a spectacle of indomitable will and human excellence in some of the most beautiful locales you could imagine, the French Alps, historic Paris, etc.
Watching and participating in sports allows us to pry into deep questions about ourselves. How far can you push yourself? How badly do you desire something? Are you willing to be better?
For instance, on the first day of this year’s race, Olympian gold medalist Richard Carapaz suffered a crash. He was expected to fight for a podium finish this year so a crash on the first day would certainly put a hamper on proceedings. The Ecuadorian was in clear distress as he finished fifteen minutes behind the rest of the field - almost immediately, it was evident he wouldn’t be competing for the overall classification this year as the time gap had already grown too large.
After the stage, it was revealed that Carapaz had a broken kneecap - a broken kneecap with which he rode the final 22 kilometers even as his high hopes for this year’s event had been dashed. Would you have had the resolve to do the same thing? Or more to the point, would I?
Wout van Aert, on Stage 6, had to be physically held upright on his bike on the final climb of the day after the effort he put in for his teammate. It’s enough to move you (me) to tears. Scenes like these are constantly occurring over these three magnificent weeks.
I said once that to be a cyclist is to have a certain hatred for the person you were yesterday - meaning, you have to always be willing to improve yourself. I try to inculcate that sentiment every time I turn the pedals over - and in the rest of my life, too. Listen to an old song of mine with me and watch me tear it apart. Hopefully, it’s working.
So, I won’t be watching this year’s race with my little girl in my arms, and while, that’s enough to make me quit writing this article altogether, I’ll watch it as eagerly as I do every summer, nonetheless, but I can’t wait for the day I can share with her, as I’m sharing with you, the magic, the inspiration, the grandeur that is the Tour de France.
To a better next week.
And le Tour!
á votre santé,
~FDA