The Who

Next to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, The Who is commonly cited as the third great contender for “World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band.” Individually, John Entwhistle commonly shows up high on lists of greatest bassist of all time, Keith Moon on lists of greatest drummer of all time, and Pete Townsend on lists of greatest guitarists.

Keith Moon, bidding for attention.

I strongly disagree. I think The Who does not belong in the same league as the Beatles or the Stones. They do not even belong in the same dimension of reality. They are not a great rock band; they are a cartoon band. They were all flash and little substance, and their example has been responsible for most of the worst things that have happened to rock since.

This is Spinal Tap.

Let's take the players one by one: Keith Moon is a flashy and a loud player. But the job of a drummer is primarily to keep time, and Moon never did that well. The first temptation for any drummer is to play too loud; it is easy for a drummer to drown out the other instruments. Moon never got past this rookie pretension.

John Entwhistle

John Entwhistle's fault is about the same. He can play very fast; but that is not the job of a bass player. The bassist is, with the drummer, the rhythm section. His first job is to lay down a consistent line, a setting for the melody to play against. Entwhistle never does this. Nor is his own line ever melodic. Playing fast is by itself not good music; it is just showing off.

Together, Moon and Entwhistle deplete The Who of one half of what makes rock and roll: they are all rock, and no roll. In this, The Who started rock in general down the wrong path--a path the Rolling Stones, at least, but few others, managed to avoid. And without a proper rhythm section, what do The Who have left? Just one instrument.

Pete Townsend strums a chord.

That's Pete Townsend. He can play a good lead guitar when he needs to, but who else makes such a big deal out of simply strumming a chord? Still flash over substance.

Roger Daltrey? A technically adequate singer, but no more. There is nothing distinctive about his voice. He simply sings clearly and on key. At least he knows, and does, his job. 

Roger Daltrey

Taken together, as well as singly, as befits a cartoon band like the Monkees, the Archies, or Kiss, The Who is all gimmicks, all the time. They are always playing to the cheap seats. Even the name is a gimmick. They were the first to smash their instruments onstage—not necessarily a cheap gimmick, but a shameless one. They hold the Guinness record for the loudest rock concert of all time—the most obvious gimmick of all, and sadly too easy to imitate. Add stuttering vocals, bass solos, playing with feedback, Townsend swinging his arm like a windmill, Daltrey swinging the mike around. It's all about looking like a good rock band, as opposed to doing the work of being a good rock band. None of this is about the music. Even if they were actually good, they so blatantly insult the intelligence of their audiences that anyone at all thoughtful should be too embarrassed to say they liked them. How can you get past this?

At their best, they have produced a few great songs—but fewer than a lot of less-well-known bands you could name: "My Generation," "We Don't Get Fooled Again," and "Squeezebox." Against this, there is the painful pretension of Townsend's “rock operas,” and his claiming to be influenced by Purcell. That's just musical social climbing. This is beneath any true rocker. There are songs in which something as puerile as a pinball competition is presented as heroic.

Gimme shelter.

The Who's star on the Walk of Fame

What Really Happened at Altamont

Meredith Hunter

I don’t know if anyone actually even cares any more, but Altamont was not what most people think. Most people think Hell’s Angels ran riot and murdered somebody, ending the Sixties era of “peace and love.”

Actually, it was an engineering problem.

The stage at Woodstock was at least three metres high. The stage at Altamont was only a metre high—so that audience members could climb on. At Woodstock, audience members naturally stood back, or else they would not be able to see what was happening on the stage. At Altamont, the stage was at the bottom of a slope—audience members naturally crowded forward.

This was not anybody’s fault. The organizers had only 24 hours’ notice that they had to move the concert to Altamont; it was originally planned for San Jose. There was no time to fix the problem.

Possibly the Hell’s Angels used more force than necessary to keep the crowd from swamping the stage and mobbing the performers. But they had an impossible task. Moreover, they were doing it as volunteers, Good Samaritans. They were not being paid for it, and there was no explicit agreement that they were responsible for doing it. They were just stepping into the breach. If they hadn’t, there would have been chaos, and quite possibly many deaths.

One man was killed in the melee; but he was not murdered. Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death by a member of the Hell’s Angels. But he had a gun, was pointing it at the stage, and may have fired it. This is clear from film taken at the event. The Angel who stabbed Hunter probably saved Mick Jagger from assassination. He was acquitted of any crime by a jury of his peers.

That should end it. Only one person was clearly at fault at Altamont, and that is the dead man, Meredith Hunter.

One Point about Syria

...that I have not seen made, and perhaps it should be made:

I think we know now where Saddam's missing chemical and biological weapons ended up.

Why Christianity Is So Objectionable

Newspaper of Record to the Nations

A recent piece in the Washington Post claims to be a defense of Christianity against the visceral prejudice felt against it by “New Atheists” such as Richard Dawkins. Although the “defense,” this being the Washington Post, reads far more like an attack, it is interesting to see the things new atheists find disgusting about Christianity. I would never have guessed.

They are:

1. That Christianity is anthropomorphic, and 
2. That Christians claim absolute certainty about something. 

I find it hard to see these as objections. Let's look at them in turn.

• Christianity is anthromorphic. That is, it, absurdly, assigns human qualities to God. 

The problem is, God really is human. That's what this Jesus thing is all about. One might not believe in God, but how can anyone have a logical problem with that? By definition, God is all powerful. This is true of the concept whether he exists or not. Therefore, by definition, he is capable of making himself human. One must therefore allow that he may have done so: to say that God cannot be human is absurd.

Moreover, given that God is by definition perfect, he is also infinitely good. Therefore, it seems almost the inevitable assumption that he would, for our benefit, choose to express himself in human terms.

So what is your objection?

• Christians claim to be absolutely certain about some things. 

This is not about faith. This is about sincerity. Anyone who is not at least looking for the truth is dishonest. And anyone who claims to be looking for the truth, yet ipso facto disdains anyone who claims to have found it, is a liar and a hypocrite.

The Dogs of War

It looks as though Obama has the backing from the Arab League that he needs to take action against Syria. Now it's up to the US Congress.

Obama and Syria

It's just hard to take someone seriously as a villain who looks so much like a turtle.

I believe Obama is absolutely right to ask Congress for permission before taking action on Syria. It is the legal requirement, and he needs this kind of political backing in order to take the action that is really needed. He needs to do more than just lob a few missiles. He also needs the backing of the Arab League—which he does not yet have.

If he gets this support, however, he needs to take advantage of this formal mandate to do something substantive. Unless there is a clearly-defined and meaningful military target, firing missiles at Assad while leaving him in power is only likely to enhance his prestige and his position. And the debate has given him ample time to protect any meaningful military targets from such a strike. So this approach seems worse than useless—really an admission of American weakness. Sanctions invariably hurt the poor, not the regime. Even doing something that would topple the Assad regime might be counterproductive from the American perspective: the strongest element of the opposition is Islamist.

Accordingly, if Obama is going to do anything, he has to do the full monty. The only useful alternative is a full-scale invasion to overthrow the government.

No doubt this sounds crazy. The US is stretched financially and militarily and in recession. There is no stomach for more Middle Eastern adventures. Interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have bogged them down for years.

This is one reason why a full invasion is necessary: to prove American resolve. To prove that America cannot be scared off, as the Japanese hoped Pearl Harbor would.

Invading Syria need not be the expensive proposition Iraq and Afghanistan have turned out to be. Iraq and Afghanistan involved one fundamental and obvious mistake, that need not be repeated: there need be no nation-building. Go in, take out the regime, get out. If you recall, the matter of overthrowing the regime was, in both prior cases, extremely easy. Syria would be easier. It is a smaller piece of land, more accessible from the sea, and it has almost no natural defenses. It is ideal tank country. Moreover, the Syrian military is already fully engaged in fighting the rebels; the use of chemical weapons suggests that their position is desperate already. The US has a strong ally in Turkey, with a long border to the north; and another ally in Jordan, to the south, close to the Syrian capital. One fast pincer movement.

Boots. Ground. Deal with it.

If the US then just pulls out, I see no problem. By going in and taking out a regime easily and efficiently, it automatically ensures that any succeeding regime will be sensitive to US pressures. What it did easily once, it can do easily again.

But if it really must mess around with democratizing and all that, there is a simple solution available here that was not available in Iraq or Afghanistan: let Turkey do it. Turkey is interested these days in extending its influence in the Arab world. Syria was, not so long ago, Turkish/Ottoman territory, so it is a natural sphere of influence. Turkey has the manpower to do it, and the supply problems would be minimal. Turkey is a fellow Muslim country, so it would look less like “western interference.” And Turkey is a functioning democracy.

Can the US afford it? Maybe they don't have to. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have declared against Assad; they are concerned with the fate of the Sunni majority in Syria. Very well—their own militaries are not large, but their contribution can be to help fund the invasion.

Absolutely. No. Natural. Borders.

The result: the Syrian people would be free of a dictator; the next dictator would think long and hard before using chemical weapons; American prestige in the Middle East would be restored, and US concerns would be heeded; Turkish prestige in the Middle East, as a functioning democracy, would be enhanced; Syria would have a decent chance at democracy; and Iran would lose its only ally in the region.

Of course, if Obama loses the vote in Congress, as he is likely to, it’s all off. For now. But he can still do two things. First, arm any factions he can identify in Syria who are genuinely pro-Western, if any. Second, start beating the war drums. It took a long time to build up a coalition and popular opinion against Saddam. This administration has barely begun to do the same against Assad. It was not long ago that Hillary Clinton was characterizing him as “a reformer.”

Whatever Happened to RD Laing?

RD Laing tackling a knotty problem.

I cannot pass a dollar book bin without looking in. Not long ago, I came across one in front of a bookshop in Windsor's Walkerville. I dredged up a papeback copy of RD Laing's The Politics of the Family.

Whatever happened to RD Laing? He was the most famous psychologist of the Sixties, as well known as Jung or Freud. Now you hardly even hear the name.

Laing's basic idea was that “mental illness” was not an illness at all, but a coherent response by an individual to an impossible situation. Most often, this was a situation within the family—in effect, the family was mad, its solidarity built on a lie, and one or more individuals within it were sacrificed to sustain the delusion. Laing's brilliance was in analysing the way people can be caught by social situations in “double binds,” in which, whichever choice they make, they are in the wrong. This is the essence of abuse. Depression or even psychosis was the result.

A recent discussion of Laing in the Guardian prompted a lot of comments, which seemed to fall into two groups: comments by professionals claiming that Laing had been disproven, and comments by those diagnosed as mentally ill, or their friends, insisting that Laing was spot on in their own case, or that of their friend.

I don't think Laing has been disproven at all. He was eclipsed, certainly, by a move in psychiatry, encouraged by genetic science, and peaking in about 1990, to ascribe absolutely everything (notably including homosexuality) to genetics. It was the fad of the day, just as everything, including mental illness, was once ascribed to electricity. But since then, the tide has turned, and the actual evidence is piling up that Laing was on the right track all along.

Unfortunately, Laing did not help his own cause. Starting in the early seventies, he seemed to lose interest in his thesis, and indeed to backtrack. He got involved instead in eastern meditation, poetry, alcohol, and rebirthing therapy. I saw him lecture in about 1973, and he already seemed off the rails: instead of talking about psychology, he gave a rambling argument against abortion. A stand that seemed perfectly calculated, of course, to lose him all his political support, which had been on the “New Left.”

Here's what I think happened: both Laing and psychology in general backed away from the Laingian explanation for “mental illness” not because it was wrong, but because it was politically risky. Anyone who does not believe that politics is a major consideration in the field of psychiatry does not know the story of how homosexuality went, in a weekend, from being a treatable mental illness to an unalterable element of self and a human right.

The sad truth is that you can say or do anything you want about the “mentally ill.” They are powerless. But if you say anything against their families, you are bound to get one hell of a political backlash. These are people capable of defending themselves, and in their eyes, if, as Laing believed, they are delusional, you are slandering them. A lot of the “mentally ill” come from highly respectable, indeed prominent, families. This may even be the norm.

And there's worse. If families can drive one or more of their members mad with “double binds,” so too, logically, can other social groups of all kinds: churches, neighbourhoods, governments, employers. This means that 1) some accused families might indeed be quite innocent, the fault lying with another level of social interaction, and 2) you are implicitly challenging all centres of social power—all political entities—with this thesis. 

Backlash? You want backlash? 

Laing himself saw this logical implication, and was courageous or naive enough to level the accusations, in The Politics of Experience, against society as a whole.

Moreover, 3) as a practical matter, neither individual families nor society as a whole are likely to change. So even if Laing's thesis is exactly right, it is not of much commercial value: it leaves psychiatrists and psychologists with nothing to sell.

Certainly reason enough for the profession of psychology/psychiatry to back away from the whole area of enquiry, at least for a generation. Too dangerous to a group of people who, in the end, put their first priority on their own social status and large incomes. And I expect also reason enough for Laing himself to back away—into eastern mysticism, prevarication, the literary approach, and generic “rebirthing.” These are exactly the evasive tactics I would expect in these circumstances. As it was, his controversial stands earned him a persistent rumour that he himself was schizophrenic, and cost him his medical license.

But in the end, all he was saying was what the New Testament has always been saying. And Christianity is presented there as the specific cure. 

Eastern mysticism came damned close.

And Now for Something Completely Different...

Quacker Jack

I bought my daughter a big bag of rubber ducks for her birthday. Usually, she names everything, and gives them an imaginary character. This time, the sheer numbers overwhelmed her.

Just for fun, trying to help out with as many rubber duck names as I can muster:

Quacker Jack
Joe Duck
Feathers Fitzwater
Luke Pondwalker
Jemima Cuddleduck
Bill Wigglebutt
Shotgun Bait Bart
Shoelips Larry
Port Jelly Jim
Webs Murphy
The Ugly Swanling
Aquachicken
Nibble McFinger
Lord Drake of Crossharbour
Plastic Bob
Fred Flotsam
Dances-with-Fish
Zen Unduck
Wahid Pondwalla
Mick Riverdance
Mississippi John Squirt
Proud Mary
Louie Lakelump
Butterfeathers
Sidepaddle Sid
Roman Ben Anas
Percy the Lake Monster
Moe With-the-Flow
Groucho Viaduck
Smackwater Quack
Dr. Dogpaddle
Algernon Algaesucker

There! Now they all have a name!

Christian Family Values

Holy Family. Joseph was kind of left out, wasn't he?

³⁴ “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. ³⁵ For I have come to turn

“‘a man against his father,
    a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
³⁶     a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’^[c]

³⁷ “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

--Matthew 10:34-37, NIV

So much for “family values,” eh? Not a Christian concept—rather, something a lot of people think is good, and so they assume it must be in the Bible although it is not there. Like prohibition. Jesus is actually saying that the express effect of Christianity, followed properly, will be conflict within the family.

Like nations, towns, “peer groups,” and all other forms of social organization, families are in the end a part of the Devil’s realm, the earthly kingdom. Almost automatically, their demands are in conflict with conscience. Almost automatically, they exclude and discriminate. Almost automatically, one or more members get scapegoated and devoured. Group dynamics are generally an ugly thing.

Of course, families vary widely in their morality. Some are hellishly evil, and some are relatively good. When civil government is bad, the family can be an invaluable support. And, like civil government, families are a practical necessity. 

Let’s just not fall into any idolatries here.