Politicians In My Eyes

Robert McNamara: The Things He Didn’t Carry

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By no means can all (or most) of the blame for the catastrophic clusterfuck that was Vietnam be placed at the shiny wingtips of Robert McNamara. But his legacy is not subject to debate. Mea culpa, he said, about three decades and a little over 58,000 American casualties (and approximately 8 million Vietnamese, give or take a mil) too late.

In an irony that could only happen in this country, it was right around the time that the documentary The Fog of War was being made that the next generation of the “best and the brightest” (including some throwbacks who famously avoided serving in the previous war they endorsed, such as chickenhawk-in-chief Dick Cheney) were cooking up the propaganda to ensnare us in Iraq. You could watch this movie in spring 2003, then watch the news and see how it works in real time. You expect men like Cheney and his leering band of armchair generals to beat the drums; but you don’t expect men like Colin Powell, who saw the folly (then) and understood the consequences (in ’03) to raise his voice. In that regard, he is a sorry bookend to McNamara representing men who could have done the most to prevent loss of life and did the least.

About the only silver lining one can take from the war and its aftermath (an aftermath that lingers on today) is the humanity the survivors have displayed and the handful of lessons we actually did learn. And, of course, the art. Always the art. Just seeing the news that McNamara passed on to that great war room in the sky made me stop and contemplate the number of songs, books and movies that America’s involvement in Vietnam inspired. I am tempted to begin and end with Tim O’Brien’s masterpiece The Things They Carried, in part because it might just be the perfect (artistic) document of what happened before, during, and after that war. I wonder how many politicians that voted to invade Iraq in 2003 read that book. (I’m not naive enough to suggest that having read it would have put a trivial consideration like innocent lives in the way of political expediency, I’m just genuinely curious how many of them read it. And what type of reaction they had. Or, if they read it (or read it again) now, how it might affect them.)

Here is a quick sampler of some of the more painful, amusing, and enduring snapshots I could grab while thinking about this topic.

Bad Brains Before Bad Brains?

This is the reason you always remain humble, if not entirely content in the knowledge of how little you actually know. Not only about all the great art we know is out there, but can’t get around to acquiring all of, but the great art that is not out there, obscure, undiscovered, without a champion. Without a story.

Huge hat tip to Hersko for making sure I saw this piece in yesterday’s NYT.

Wow. This is Bad Brains before Bad Brains, Ramones before Ramones. Punk before punk, as Mike Rubin opines in his excellent NYT article.

It is enough of a commentary to even name-check Bad Brains without embarassment (I say this as an intrepid advocate for that band), because their debut album inspired a whole slew of styles and imitation, sprouting like weeds through concrete. It is almost beyond belief that Bad Brains did what they did in the early ’80s; to think that Death (three brothers, literally and figuratively, from Detroit) was making proto-punk like this in the mid-’70s in almost utter obscurity is staggering, to say the least.

It doesn’t get any better than this.

But it does: if the legend is true, rock impresario Clive Davis dug what he heard, but couldn’t get past the band’s name. Change it, and I’ll back you, he said. Fuck that, Death said. And the rest is, until now, three decades and change of unwritten (and almost unrecorded) history.

It gets better, still: this would be a wonderful story, a readymade movie even, regardless of the actual quality of the music. But check it out: the music is astonishing. As I say, to invoke Bad Brains would be ballsy, even gratuitous. Here’s the incredible thing: their song “Politicians In My Eyes” can stand alongside any of Bad Brains’ seminal early ’80s output. How is this possible? Don’t listen to me, listen to your ears: the ears never lie.

Here’s hoping Death lives in 2009, and cashes in some heavy and overdue karma to become the best story of the year: 1975 and now. Do what you have to do.