Newt Gingrich: 2012 GOP Presidential Departure From Republican Principles

As we watch the 2012 GOP presidential nomination race unfold I continue to find it absolutely amazing that voters are drawn in by such artificially blown up rhetoric as we're seeing in these debates. In 2008 Barack Obama won the Presidential race because he was able to talk about the biggest and most revolutionary ideas which had absolutely no foundation for being accomplished. Newt Gingrich does the exact same thing.  He throws out so much hot air, he might float away. Apparently it's a common trait in academics with Gingrich being a PhD and Obama being a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.  The real question we as Americans should be asking is can they do what they say they are going to do. 

Barack Obama has proved time and again that he is not capable of doing almost anything he said he was going to do in his campaign.  But, his ideas ignited people with false hope that carried him into the White House.  Newt Gingrich has a political history that is so heavy laden with anti-conservative treachery it almost makes a mockery of the republican party that he is running as the most conservative figure and that people are actually buying it.  If he wins the nomination you can be sure that Obama will be blasting him on every side.  His failure as speaker of the house, his work with liberals like Nancy Pelosy, his lobbying for liberal platforms, his overt attack on capitalism and financial success, his personal life which more than radically departs from republican values, will be an absolute embarrassment to the party.  If you wanted to say in the 2012 GOP Presidential Race that someone was posturing to the crowd, or pandering to constituents, I can't think of a better example than what Gingrich did in South Carolina and is now doing in Florida. 

Besides his record as someone who consistently walked away from conservative principles during their political career, his divisiveness and mean spirited espousal of false information just to get back at Mitt Romney for tearing him down with truth in Iowa should have him up in front of the party under the scrutiny of an ethical interrogation. If that weren't enough, the management of his campaign with almost no money coming in, staff walking away from him, and calling in a personal favor to get a film on the air should be a red flag to voters that this man might talk a great game, but when the rubber meets the road he is totally incompetent as it pertains to management and leadership. Why anyone would vote for this man knowing what we know about him, is beyond me.

Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are the only people on the debate floor that are talking about things that can be done. Their rhetoric may not lift people out of their chairs, but since when did getting down to the nitty gritty of how to govern a nation and making the tough decisions ever inspire people to get up and yell amen. It's the doing and the history of doing that will make a person eligible for candidacy.  A year ago the whole country pleaded with one voice for someone to come into office that could actually get this country back on it's feet.  The retaking of the House and the exit polls from the South Carolina primary confirmed that is still an issue for conservatives.  If that is really the worry keeping people up at night then why would anyone vote for Newt Gingrich? He hasn't got the history, experience, or the know how to lead this nation back to sound financial footing.  He isn't even preaching a gospel of how to do it. He attacks the other candidates, ignores his downfalls, sounds the rhetoric of Jeffersonian revolution and at the end of the day is the most inconsistent of them all.

If the Republican party really wants to win the White House in 2012 it had better start thinking seriously about the issues, the electability of the candidates, and the person who can really defeat Barack Obama in a debate on character, family values, history of conservative principles, acting on those principles, and the saving grace of free market economics. Let's get it right in the 2012 GOP Presidential Nomination.

Cultural and Artistic Plurality in America

"I like to be in America," from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story is a picture perfect synthesis of cultural and artistic plurality in America.  The composition style used in the film score for this song is reminiscent of both the Spanish Pasadoble and American Jazz.  Syncopation is the rule rather than the exception with it's compound meter wavering back and forth between a solid two and three beat rhythm.  Bernstein has fused the styles together in a very modern way that seems to communicate the tension of the racial conflicts and cultural identity crisis experienced in America at the time.  People just didn't know where they fit in and some people weren't sure these foreigners should fit at all into the American panorama.

The dancing accompanying this number fits into the time period when dance in Hollywood was still an experimental element of film.  While the overall dancing is quite well pulled off, it's certainly not something you would see in a music video today. The precision between dancers is rough and individualized, however revolutionary for the realm of musical film in the 50's.  Highly suggestive of classical dance technique this choreography blends flamingo/Pasadoble dancing with pirouettes and leaps accompanied by sharp hands and heels.

Humanistically West Side Story is a masterpiece interpreting in a variety of ways the confusion and racial tension of the 50's.  It is the definition of syncretism because it melds several different cultural artistic styles together that revolutionized score composition and theatrical dancing on Broadway.  However, it was not the last drama to be packed with heavy handed social and political statements regarding tolerance and immigration.

Icon in American Music

George Gershwin was not your traditional Julliard School of Music snob that grew up hearing music in the professional world his whole life and then because of his family’s money made it big time.  He came from a family of Russian immigrant Jews. 

He first displayed interest in music at the age of ten, when he heard a friend’s violin recital. George went home and on the family piano, purchased for the instruction of his older brother, began to play.  His instructors guided him to attend orchestral concerts. After attending he would go home and attempt to re-create the music he had just heard on the piano.  He studied classical composition technique and method with Rubin Goldmark, avant-garde composer theorist.

George got his start in New York City’s Tin Pan Alley earning $15 a week.  He published his first song, When you want ‘em you can’t get ‘em, When you’ve got ‘em, you don’t want ‘em at the age of 17. From there he went on to compose hit singles, one-act operas, and classic Broadway music that has become part of the American songbook.

George Gershwin has significantly contributed to the style and identity of American Jazz.  He has been considered one of the great names in American music.  The verity of this assertion is evidenced by the fact that even today youth around the country can recognize his work.  Gershwin’s signature has become part of the cultural consciousness in listeners, performers, and composers alike.

The song, They Can’t Take That Away from Me, from Broadway Musical Crazy for You, is characteristic of Gershwin’s style.  It provides a loose framework of basic chords within the harmonic structure of the song, leaving wide license for improvisation on the part of the singer and instrumentalist.  Such music paints a very soft picture that is both alluring and relaxing to the listener.  It plays on the deepest sentiments of American culture about romance, industry, and innovation.

I chose this artist because I find his music to be a great description of American identity.  He captures the feeling of both modernism and postmodernism in that his compositional style conforms to the conventions of academic and classic jazz while at the same time synthesizing the two styles to generate something entirely new, but familiar.  In my opinion Gershwin is the beginning of the uniquely American musical identity.

In trying to replicate his style and get a feel for the music I experienced two things.  The first was that the improvisatory methods that Gershwin intends in his music are very difficult to imitate.  Second was that the music felt very natural to me, almost like the rhythm was part of me, instead of something I had to learn. Further evidence of the place Gershwin holds in American cultural identiy.

Amerian Music

Adagio for Strings – Samuel Barber

I had never heard Baber’s Adagio.  It would be an understatement to say that the piece was extremely moving to me.  Barber has captured the very essence of sorrow.  The music in a very real way gets into your soul and sweeps you up into the long bow strokes of the strings.  It’s as if the music pulls you a long with it.

Sorrow in and of itself doesn’t really go anywhere it intensifies and it gives way.  That is precisely what Barber has accomplished in Adagio for Strings.  The meticulously composed harmonies are hauntingly beautiful, but simplistically repetitive.  Like sorrow, it harmonically stays in one place but pulls at every part of your heart.  The composition calls for parallel motion as the violins move up the cellos move down pulling apart until they relinquish into a compelling melodic unity. A continuous minor rise and fall occasionally giving way to a major resolution.

The commentary throughout the piece did not provide much insight into the foundation of the piece. It really just got in the way. In so many ways this piece of music has to be experienced, it can’t really be explained.  That is precisely what the commentators were attempting to do, explain the power of the music through their personal experience with it.  The chilling dissonance and moving line really say it all.

Rhapsody in Blue – George Gershwin

Gershwin’s Rhapsody is an American Icon.  It is a brilliant meditation on American ingenuity and vitality.  Gershwin has captured the bravura and idiosyncrasy of being American.  Rhapsody in Blue has condensed the life of an average American in the 1920’s into a matter of minutes.  It tells of the grand moments of triumph in one’s life and the quiet moments of reflection.

The recurring motif’s and random connections between theme’s reflect so much of the American personality.  America is a melting pot of traditions and ideas and that is precisely what Gershwin has shown in his composition.  He has synthesized Academic Jazz, Classical convention, African blues, and Latin rhythms into a masterpiece of plurality that is uniquely its own.

The background information in the audio clip was extremely helpful in putting this work into context.  I thought it did a great job at explaining not only the musical ingenuity and nuance of this work, but why it was important for the time it came from.  The fact that is was written in three weeks is merely a testament to the brilliance of the composer.  Rhapsody in Blue through its vitality and composition effectively paints an accurate picture of what America was what when it was written and what it remains today.

 

His Eye is on the Sparrow – Mahalia Jackson

This song really reflects American spirituality.  While there is a rich diversity of religious belief across the 50 states, this song reflects the concept of a city on a hill that is uniquely a part of American identity.  We believe that God is intimately involved in our lives watching us individually and collectively as a people. 

Mahalia’s rich interpretation of this music is representative of the African community’s contribution to both American religious and musical experience.  The song seems to speak to social change in America both culturally and demographically, as African American’s became an important and prominent thread in the fabric of American society.  The fact that this song was so widely accepted among Americans is strong evidence to support how integrated the United States had become.

The Spirit of America

On November 13, 2010 Brigham Young University hosted the Amateur Dance Sport Championship.  Dancing has become an extremely popular form of entertainment in America with dance television series emerging as tremendous successes like Dancing with the Stars, and So You Think You Can Dance, and Films like Step Up.  But, even more importantly Americans aren’t standing by to let others having all the fun.  People are making dancing apart of their lives as evidenced from the vast array of competition on Saturday.

Dancers of all levels took the floor in the Ballroom at BYU. Many commented that they had never danced in their lives, let alone competed against others in a formal competition.  There were some that made fools of themselves, there were some that victoriously succeeded.  But, the fact of the matter is that young adults who never before had any interest in Dance are looking to it now for some form of expression and entertainment. 

History has demonstrated the prominent place that dance fills in western culture.  Due to the migratory nature of American culture dance forms have been borrowed rather than created here.  It wasn’t until the late 19^th century that dance started to become uniquely American, and then blossomed into it’s own with the rise of jazz and the big band.  This period marks a fusion of European musical and dance techniques with American flare and innovation.  Out this period were born the Quickstep, Cha Cha, Jive, and American Swing. 

Unfortunately, as the war came to a close dance as popular past time died out.  But, the vitality and huge numbers of contestants at the Dance Sport Competition demonstrated that American dance is still very much alive and well. What started as a bunch of fun in the dance halls across America has become institutionalized and perfected into the basic steps and forms that allow for organized competition.  However, the evolution and innovation of American dance has not gone anywhere. In the recently released film Step Up 3 forms featuring traditional high technique from ballet and ballroom melded with street and funk forms emerging from common people raised the roof.  Such a movement seems to identify with the post modern movement away from forms and conventions to letting whatever emerges from the human spirit take control.

America the Sublime

Adirondacks, by Homer Doge Martin, inspires awe and wonder in passersby. The painting gives a glimpse of the world in its most natural state, wild chaos untamed by human convention and industry. Adirondacks tells the story and the hope of America. Martin accomplishes this American vision by subscribing to the artistic philosophy of the Hudson River School, catering to the desire to get back to Edenic paradise, and perpetuating the American concept of opportunity and a new life.

Martin in his earlier life subscribed closely to the Hudson River School, as evidenced through his choice to portray a landscape in his painting. Adirondacks communicates the awe and majesty that exists in the raw wilderness. The Hudson River School attempted to show nature as pastoral, creating scenes where man and the natural world can exist in harmony with one another. However, Adirondacks was painted in 1879; American history up to that point had revealed a rugged and aggressive natural world that was no respecter of persons.

As most of the colonizers discovered, a lack of respect for the power of nature in the new world could quickly cost you your life. You can almost see the Nietzsche-esque concept of the Dionysiac in this painting through the wild trees and bushes growing over anything and everything in their way in an epic struggle to reach the life giving sunlight and claim their own space to inhabit. The over all feeling of painting demonstrates symmetry and harmony, but the details of the picture and the brushwork show a much more aggressive vitality of the natural world. Martin has combined the two elements and created a nuanced romantic vision of the wilderness that is uniquely sublime.

Adirondacks also has a spiritual element in its composition. The type of awe communicated in this work is the same type of awe one experiences in a cathedral. Architects and clergy designed cathedrals so that when you walk in the cathedral is so big and so deep that you can’t help but feel small and insignificant in comparison to it, subsequently comprehending the grandeur of God. Looking at Adirondacks you get the same feeling, that there is something of divinity in this landscape and there is even more of divinity in it because it remains unpolluted by civilization, that it might look just as it did after the creation.

The discovery of the new world awoke a yearning for a return to a paradisiacal world that had been lost as society continually became more modernized. As America moved into the industrial age and the exploitation of natural resources further ravaged the land, locations that remained preserved became more and more important. There is certainly no paradox in the fact that this yearning for a return to a paradisiacal world brought religious settlers to the America’s and viewed their community as a city upon a hill and a light to the nations. From this mentality have stemmed many visions of America namely the land of promise and the land of opportunity.

Martin’s compositional style is extremely inviting. It seems to operate on the ideas of discovery, opportunity, adventure, and settlement. Part of the foundation that is America is the concept that you can shape your own future. The Declaration of Independence says that every man has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which is an extension of Locke’s life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. In this painting is evidence that both are true. There are still places to conquered, property to be owned, adventures to be had, and new opportunity to be claimed for any one willing to try their hand at chance. This is the American dream. To make your own way, owning your own land, tilling the earth, living off of your own industry, and forging your own destiny.  A compelling message for immigrants coming through Ellis Island and lower class citizens that had grown tired of working in factories, the idea that even though a good portion of America had been conquered there was still, to make a biblical allusion, an inheritance waiting just for them.

Adirondacks' rugged nature and aggressive survivalist attitude could also be interpreted as a commentary on the time period. Social Darwinism mirrored the behavior portrayed in the painting through the trees and bushes. Just as they fight to get to the top of the tree line and battle for space the viewer can practically see urban centers like New York with its crowded spaces and capitalistic battles to get to the top of the ladder with out any regard for those who are marginalized on the way. Only the tough will survive and by natural selection rise to the top.

Homer Dodge Martin’s Adirondacks is a breath-taking glimpse into the beauty of natural America. However, the painting is doing much more than painting a landscape, it communicates American ideals through its subscription to Hudson River artistic theory, its play on western desire to get back to an Edenic paradise, and through a call to the world that just like this landscape you don’t have to be governed by civilization you can make your own way. Martin’s Adirondacks is in a very real way America.

Change of the American Soul

On Friday evening, September 24, 2010, BYU held a concert of the combined University choirs. Each one of the choirs performed at least one work by an American composer. Of those performed there seemed to be a message communicated in Everyone Sang, by Dominick Argento, and Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy by Kirby Shaw. The message was a dialectic of composition styles and feeling in music from post war America to present day America.

Everyone Sang is an extraordinarily difficult composition to sing. It follows contemporary choral compositional technique. The rhythm alone is enough to throw even the most educated musicians. I found myself looking for some sort of direction in the music. The downbeat was nowhere to be found, there was no sense of tonal center, and chaotic entrances of random vowels were enough to throw the audience for a loop. This style of composition does not cater to an uneducated populous of easy listeners. It was intended for a highly elite group of musicians and listeners that would be able to make meaning out of the nihilistic sound that filled the air. This marks a shift in American music and artistic mentality. Music no longer seeks wide spread approval from it’s populous; it seeks to make a point, some artistic point that is purely for art’s sake. If this music is any sort of indicator for the sentiment across the United States, then we have fallen into a chaotic confusing mess of life that isn’t communal any more or shared. This music doesn’t invite the listener in, it excludes the general public and seems to say, “listen, if you can.”

However, if the piece is viewed through the lens of the title, then this music takes one a different feeling. The random entrances, and different pitches, and lack of cohesion could easily be viewed as a mass of voices striving to be heard amongst all the rest of the noise. If this is intended to be a reflection of American national character, I would say it’s spot on. I think that people the nation over have so many worries, ambitions, fears, and opportunities, that they are striving to get above the noise of life to just be heard. It accurately reflects the religious, ethnic, and political plurality that has become America.

Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy is written in a Jazz big band style. It is reminiscent of the post war era, where Jazz and Big Band music filled music halls and the radio speakers of most American homes. Its message is that of a home grown life. Pie’s cooked at home, and dear old mom baking for her family. This work invites the listener in. It compels you to participate with syncopated rhythms, and Jazz chords that lift you right out of your seat and make your body want to jam. The feeling in the audience was reminisce of the good old days, nostalgic looking back at when times appeared simpler and easier to understand. When compared to Everyone Sang this work compositionally meets that standard; it is simpler and easier to understand. So much so, that the body innately seems to know what to do when that rhythm hits your ears.

The difference in these two choral works is drastically different. They both reflect the fundamental change that America has gone through in the last 70 years. While it is difficult to distinguish if it has changed for the better, the compositional style and feeling of the works marks a difference in the soul of American culture.