Howzit Howard

Music Post: Living in Ludwig's light

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) moved to Vienna in 1792, the year after Mozart died, and his first symphony premiered in 1800, when Haydn had nine years to live. For most of the next three decades Beethoven would dominate the music scene there, a rock star, and his fame spread far enough that his last symphony was commissioned for performance in London. Sometimes, judging from what works are performed and recorded in our own time, it seems as if Beethoven stood alone in his.

But several excellent composers were extant in those years, and it is a loss for us to forget them, so I have devoted tomorrow's radio program to the composers who worked in the 57 years that the great Beethoven was alive.

Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) lived only to 39 before succumbing to tuberculosis, but composed several operas still performed today, including "Der Freischutz," "Oberon" and "Euryanthe," overtures from which still grace the concert hall from time to time. Weber toured as a pianist and conductor and wrote concertos for piano, horn, clarinet and bassoon. Berlioz orchestrated his piano piece "Invitation to the Dance."

Louis Spohr (1784-1859), as famous as Beethoven in his day, was a child prodigy on violin, composed 18 violin concertos, but also nine symphonies, four clarinet concertos, and a great deal of fine chamber music. He invented the violin chin rest, and rehearsal letters in musical scores, and was one of the first conductors to use a baton. Living into his seventies, Spohr outlived his popularity as a composer but was an influential performer into his late years.

Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838) was a student of Beethoven. A student of the master who became a close friend, Ries composed eight piano concertos and eight symphonies, music which may be better appreciated today then when it was new, since Ries was a little conservative for his time, writing music influenced by Mozart, Haydn and early Beethoven, well into the early Romantic Era.

Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837) was another friend of Beethoven, who performed piano at Beethoven's funeral at the composer's request. Modern piano technique dates from Hummel, who wrote a popular book on piano technique and taught Czerny, who taught Liszt. Hummel's eight piano concertos influenced Chopin. Oddly, given all the fine piano music he wrote, it was Hummel's trumpet and bassoon concertos that became most secure in the repertory.

Joseph Wolfl (1773-1812) was a rival of Beethoven whose star fell after a cutting contest in which Beethoven was seen as blowing him a away. His operas, quartets, symphonies and piano concertos were forgotten after his death at 39, but Jon Nakamatsu, a pianist with Hawaii family ties, singlehandedly resurrected Wolfl's reputation with a recording of some of his sonatas.

Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), unlike all of these other composers, was older than Beethoven, indeed older than Mozart, but outlived Beethoven all the same by living to the age of 80. Though he composed more than 100 piano sonatas, Clementi became a music publisher and piano manufacturer, and published studies for piano that are still given to students today. Unfortunately, most pianists can't wait to leave their Clementi studies behind and play "real" music. His symphonies are largely forgotten. It would be interesting to hear his nonets.

I will sample works by all of these composers this week.

Howard's Day Off airs live Saturdays, 5am-7am HST, on KHPR Honolulu, KKUA Wailuku, and KANO Hilo, and streams on http://www.hawaiipublicradio.org . Max Cacas of Washington, D.C., founded the Howard's Day Off Listener Appreciation Society on Facebook.

 

 

Portrait of a restaurant critic on the job

Ever meet someone who is so compatible with you as a friend that it seems from the first that you have always been friends? That's how it was with John Heckathorn and me.

Heckathorn, the HPU writing professor and former Honolulu magazine editor who died this week, was good company. He liked viewing the world and commenting on it. He was smart and funny. We enjoying hanging around backstage at Gridiron, the Society of Professional Journalists fundraiser for newsroom internships, talking about whatever occurred to us.

He was honest in his restaurant reviews, which helped make Hawaiian regional cuisine famous, but he never engaged in the gratuitous laceration that mars so many critics' work. He liked inviting friends to join him, in part because we could order more dishes, each one of which he would try and photograph. The photos, he said, were to remind him what he ate and how he liked it.

A memorable dinner, for me anyway, at the late E&O Trading Co., taught me that a restaurant critic experiences a meal differently from a civilian. I had the luxury of enjoying everything I tried. John had the duty to consider whether a curry was the best he ever had, and if not, where was the best, and what was lacking in this one that kept it from the being the best. I wrote about this in a column for Pacific Business News, where I worked at that time, and John's genial comment on my piece was that I had beaten him into print writing about the meal.

When John suddenly left Honolulu magazine several years ago and the publisher spoke of moving in a new direction, I confess I made an acid remark on Hawaii Public Radio, noting that the previous direction had won the magazine numerous awards and dramatically increased its circulation. My wife Marilyn, furious that he was cut loose, helped him polish his resume and kept his spirits up. I found an assignment for him on the show I had then on PBS Hawaii, to keep him before the public. We needn't have worried. The Star-Bulletin hired him to write a column, and the publisher rehired him in another capacity. I heard he pitched in to help the staff put out the next magazine, an act so classy it impressed a lot of people. But John never forgot Marilyn's support, and when she died in 2006 he gave a good eulogy at her funeral. I remember being simultaneously moved by his remarks and also thinking how well-written they were.

When lightning struck twice and I married Bernadette, John gave another speech, at our wedding, and he enjoyed talking about food with Bernadette. Once we were at a then-new restaurant at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. "Bernadette," John said, "There's a flavor in this, but I can't decide what it is. What do you think?" Bernadette tried it and said, "Balsalmic vinegar." John said, skeptically, "Are you sure?" And he sent for the waiter. The waiter didn't know, and went to talk to the chef. He came back a couple minutes later and said, "Balsalmic vinegar." John looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, "How does she do that?"

On the air this morning, after I did an abbreviated version of what you're reading here, Dan Cooke, who also knew John from Gridiron, remarked that John had a great love of life. Yes, he did, and a lot of people who knew him were surprised to learn he was 65. He didn't seem 65. He and Barb have grown children or I, too, would have been surprised. John was one of those people who, whenever they, it seems too soon. But he and Barb produced excellent children who inherited John's wit and joie de vivre, not to mention a capacity for inner peace than may have come from Barb alone.

 

The Bambi-inspired top 10 list

The Library of Congress maintains something it calls the National Film Registry, which is a stuffy federal equivalent of a Movie Hall of Fame, especially since the Librarian of Congress picks a few films to add to the registy every year.

This year, James H. Billington added "Bambi" and "Silence of the Lambs," prompting me to blurt out a joke on the air about those being two of my favorite animal movies.

Btw, have you ever seen the 1969 animated short (less than two minutes) "Bambi Meets Godzilla"? Bambi quietly grazes until the end of the opening credits, then a giant foot stomps on her, and the opening credits roll, mostly crediting Marv Newland for every aspect of the film's production, apart from one that says "Marv NewLand produced by Mr. and Mrs. Newland."

It occurred to me that this was a gag that could be extended, by making a top 10 list of favorite "animal movies," so here it is, modified with a few improvements, including one from Dan Cooke that I liked better than my own:

• Silence of the Lambs.
• Day of the Jackal.
• Animal House.
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
• The Lion in Winter.
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
• Cat Ballou.
• Duck Soup.
• Dog Day Afternoon.
• Snakes on a Plane!!!

In conclusion, for the benefit of those who have seen "Bambi Meets Godzilla," I would like to acknowledge the city of Tokyo. 

Peace on Earth, or, when no news is good news

Let me start by saying there was a Christmas terror attack in Nigeria and it was horrible - Earth is a big place and there is very seldom nothing going on everywhere. But it is a very quiet Monday. Most stock markets are closed either because it's the closest working day to Christmas or, in other parts of the English-speaking world, it's Boxing Day, when the rich used to give presents to their servants.

When I was a kid growing up in suburban Baltimore, Md., Baltimore was one of the largest cities in America and its morning daily newspaper, the Sun, was one of the world's greatest newspapers, with its own bureaus around the world. But it didn't publish on Christmas Day. There wasn't enough news to make it worthwhile.

Broadcast stations would do newscasts but all they ever had to say was whatever Pope John has to say at Christmas mass, something about loving your neighbor, as best I can recall. Oh, and there would be some running tally of traffic deaths. Year after year, that was all there was. But remember, this was back in a day when many people would simply ignore the daily reports of national and world news, catching up once a week by reading Time magazine. There wasn't any People magazine - People was a column in the back of Time.

Just a year or two before Ted Turner founded Cable News Network, news executives at CBS, NBC and ABC (there wasn't any Fox News) assured us that there could never be a viable 24/7 news network because there wasn't enough news content to fill all that time. A couple years later CNN was operating not one but several channels. Most people who like to or have to keep up with all the news will tell you that their biggest challenge these days is keeping up with it all.

I do notice there in recent years a new impediment to global news coverage has arisen. as technological breakthroughs have made it easier to cover stories live from around the planet, budgetary constraints have led to news organizations cutting back on the number of reporters to do the part of the work that still requires human intellect and shoe leather.

This had no one single cause. One has been the expansion of broadcast holdings - a single company can own thousands of radio stations - has led to leveraged buyouts of broadcast groups, with the owner then cheaping out on the product in order to make enough profit to meet the payments on the debt incurred to make the acquisition. Another: the early entrepreneurial Internet spawned a lot of "aggregators" who harvested, sorted and repackaged other people's work to "add value," and it's gotten to the point where most news organization float an oil slick of original reporting on an ocean of other people's work.

Efforts to make news organizations more efficient have led to reporters not having the time to thoroughly research issues and discover what the truth is. What they do instead is interview two people with opposing viewpoints and present their views as if they are equally valid - because the reporter doesn't know if one is provably right and the other demonstrably wrong. An increasing volume of "news" content is commentary and analysis, which isn't inherently bad but should not be allowed to displace actual news.

It interests me that the average reader, listener or viewer seems more cognizant of this than news insiders. I don't know why the insiders lack that perspicacity, but I glad the public is so aware. It also occurs to me that this issue may save newspapers, because the simplest and most efficient way to gather facts and tie them together is to have some people doing news gathering who are not distracted by the need to also gather audio or video.

Remember, even Max Headroom had help from such a person back at Network 23.

 

Music Post: History of Christmas carols

A quick history of the most famous Christmas carols, from newest to oldest, although you will see that this is hard to do definitively, since many of them found final forms in the 1800s but use tunes that are much, much older:

"Carol of the Bells" is the newest "traditional" Christmas carol, words and music in current form dating from the 1930s. Peter Wilhousky wrote the words to a New Year's piece by Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych, itself based on an Eastern Orthodox chant for Epiphany.

"Away in a Manger," published in Philadelphia in 1885, uses a pre-existing tune. The words beyond the second verse were added later, when the whole carol was suddenly attributed to Martin Luther. No one has found any evidence of that. The melody is similar to a Johann Strauss waltz of 1866.

"O Little Town of Bethlehem" was written in 1865 by Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal priest in Philadelphia just back from visiting the Holy Land. His organist set it to a popular tune of the day.

"Angels We Have Heard on High" - in its most common form it dates from an 1862 translation by James Chadwick, a bishop in northeastern England, of an earlier French carol, "Les anges dans nos compagnes," or, "Angels in our countryside." 

"We Three Kings of Orient Are," was written, words and music, by John Henry Hopkins, an Episcopal deacon in Pennsylvania, in 1857 and published six years later. It has an interesting modulation up a minor third from the verse to the chorus.

"Good King Wenceslas," based on a Czech duke of the 10th century, as well-known in England as in Bohemia, was written in 1853 by John Mason Neale. But he and his musical collaborator Thomas Helmore used a pre-existing tune that has been traced back to 1582 in Finland.

"Here We Come a-Wassailing," originally meant for New Year's caroling, was composed around 1850, and the words suggest serfs (tenants) praising their lord or fief (landlord) who would accept their blessings and give them food and drink.

"It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," composed in 1849 by Edmund Sears of Boston, got its melody soon after from Richard Storrs Willis. The song is sung in a slow 6/8 time. I would classify it less with ancient carols than with more modern tunes like "Little Drummer Boy" (1957).

"O Holy Night" was composed by Adolphe Adam in 1847 to a French poem by Placide Cappeau, and the English words, which are not a translation but have a similar subject, were applied quite soon after by John Sullivan Dwight, in 1855. The most operatic of all carols. Adam composed operas and is also remembered for his ballet "Giselle."

"Silent Night" was composed by Franz Gruber for guitar and singer in 1818 to words written two years before by Joseph Mohr, a priest in Salzburg, Austria, where Mozart was born. Mohr wrote about the genesis of the hymn without making any mention of a broken organ, an apparently made-up story published in America in 1965.

"The First Noel," a Cornish carol (far southwest part of England) with the unusual quality of using the same melody for verse and chorus, dates from not later than 1700s and was published as early as 1823 in the form we know today.

"Deck the Halls," started as a Welsh song for New Year's in the 1500s, and the melody was sufficiently well-known for Mozart to use it in the 1700s in his Violin Sonata No. 18, but the English words were not added until 1794. The "fa la la" bit, however, is straight from the original Welsh.

"God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," billed as a new carol in a 1760 publication, became popular so quickly that Charles Dickens quotes it in "A Christmas Carol" in 1843, when carolers singing it are chased away by Scrooge.

"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," started as a poem by Charles Wesley in 1739, and was originally accompanied by somber music. The current melody, put to the words in 1855, was composed in 1840 by Felix Mendelssohn for a cantata on another subject.

"Joy to the World," based on Psalm 98, was published by Isaac Watts of England in 1719, and the music came from Lowell Mason of Boston in 1839, but based on fragments of melodies from Handel, which is fitting because Handel's tunes also date from the early 1700s.

"O, Christmas Tree," is an English translation of a German song, composed in 1615 by Melchior Franck and modified to its modern version by Leipzig organist Ernst Anschutz. The Maryland and Iowa state songs use the same melody and there are other versions in Florida and Michigan.

"We Wish You a Merry Christmas," another wassailing songs, dates from the 1500s in the Cornish part of England.

"The Coventry Carol," was written for a festival in Coventry, England, in 1534, and there was a printed manuscript with the music dating from 1591. The reference to a child made it easy to adapt for Christmas. The switch from minor to major third on the final cadence is called a Picardy third.

 

Here we come awassailing - what's with that?

Wassailing is Christmas caroling. But it was not always thus. Originally it was a contraction of two words meaning, "Good health," accompanying singing and drinking cider, with the last part of the word "wassail" coming from the same root as "hail," meaning healthy. 

The phrase was first associated with Twelfth Night rather than Christmas itself, and with a practice of peasants coming to visit their feudal lords, offering their good wishes, while the lord returns the compliment with food and drink.

In researching the roots of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, I was surprised to find a number of connections between these seemingly disparate holidays. Halloween and Thanksgiving both have roots in harvest festivals. Christmas and New Year's both trace their beginnings to celebrations in the dark of winter.

Trick-or-treating and caroling appear to share some history, too. Trick-or-treating is traced to a Scottish tradition of children busking for treats, singing or doing some other form of performing for people in late fall or winter. Eventually London beggars would do something similar.

But historians draw a distinction between outright begging by strangers and the friendly annual meeting of fiefs and serfs as described above, sometimes even citing the lyrics of "Here We Come a-Wassailing," in which the singers say, "We are not daily beggars that beg from door to door / but we are friendly neighbors whom you have seen before."

"The Holly and the Ivy," an English holiday song from the 1700s or earlier, refers to a pair of pagan fertility symbols that were co-opted by the church in England, with both winter plants decorating English churches from the 1400s. The lyrics speak alternately of these plants and of the birth of Jesus, harnessing the existing customs of holly and ivy for missionary purposes.

The poinsettia, by contrast is a fairly new add-on to Christmas celebrations. The plant comes originally from Mexico, and Poinsett was a U.S. ambassador to Mexico who brought it back to the United States. I assume its bright red-and-green colors made it a natural adoption into Christmas decoration, although you can get other kinds.

Modern Christmas came into being in the 1800s. "Twas the Night Before Christmas," actual title "A Visit from St. Nicholas," was published in 1822. James Lord Pierpont, born in 1822, wrote "Jingle Bells" in 1857, though it was originally a Thanksgiving song.

By 1860 Christmas was a legal holiday in 14 states and by 1870 it was a national holiday. Christmas cards date from 1875. The gift giving tradition was originally only for children and one gift was the norm, but an evangelical New York department store owner successfully promoted an expansion of the tradition, also in the 1800s.

 

Music Post: The Renaissance of Christmas music

Renaissance music sounds like Christmas music, because many Christmas carols date from the Renaissance. The composers active in the 1600s tended to favor minor keys and austere harmonies, and even when the lyrics are uplifting the music itself is redolent of winter.

Readers outside Hawaii may wonder how someone living on the same latitude as Mexico City can even think about winter. But the trade winds are blowing 20 mph as I write, and for someone barefoot wearing shorts and an aloha shirt, it's cold!

My favorite Christmas carol, "The Coventry Carol," which was actually written for another occasion but was readily adapted to Christmas because of its story about a little child, was composed not later than 1591, when it was performed at a festival in Coventry, England. "The Coventry Carol" uses the Picardy Third: phrases end on a minor third, but at the end of each verse it changes to major. (On a white key scale, if the chord is C-E-G, it's the E that changes from flat to natural.)

The Canadian Brass, the Chicago Chamber Brass and other wind ensembles have recorded pieces by Palestrina (1526-1594), Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623), Henry Purcell (1659-1695), and Paul Peuerl (1570-1625) that have that unmistakably Christmassy Renaissance sound, magnified, perhaps, by the association of small brass ensembles with outdoor musical performance, and by the fact that brass instrumental versions of these pieces mean no distracting Latin vocals.

It doesn't have to be brassy to have that 1600s sound, as shown by James Johnstone playing Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) on the virginal, a small harpsichord, or Sting playing John Dowland (1563-1626) on the lute.

This does not mean all music before Bach sounds Christmassy. If you go back far enough, it starts to not have the sound any more. On my radio show Saturday, I'll play an example, the Kronos Quartet performing a couple of Kyries by Guillaum de Machaut (1300-1377) which are far too austere even for the usual winter solstice muse. There are exceptions, though. "Veni, Veni, Emmanuel," which has Christmas associations, especially after being recorded one of the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas albums, is thought to date from the 12th century.

I'll play you some chilly Bach and Vivaldi as well this weekend.

And I'll play the one "traditional" Christmas tune that is actually quite recent: "Carol of the Bells," based on a Ukrainian chant for New Year's, was appropriated in the West with new lyrics in the 1930s.

Howard's Day Off airs live Saturday mornings, 5am-7am HST, on KHPR Honolulu, KKUA Wailuku, and KANO Hilo, and streams on http://www.hawaiipublicradio.org . Max Cacas of Washington, D.C., founded the Howard's Day Off Listener Appreciation Society on Facebook.

 

 

 

 

The battle between Republicans and Republicans

Most reporting on, and discussion of, the payroll tax flap has treated it either as a partisan matter or as a consumer story. But there is something else going on that is important for everyone to notice.

A divide is growing that has the potential to split the Republican Party permanently, and could also lead to a gulf between two parts of the U.S. business community.

The consumer story, to get that out of the way, is that on Jan. 1, unless extended, the payroll tax would return to previous levels, a tax increase of $1,000 a year for someone making $50,000 a year. That's the simple economic impact, which would be substantial in any economy but especially so in a slumpy one in which a lot of people are struggling with eroded income.

The partisan story, as told by reporters who still think of everything in terms of Republicans and Democrats, is that House freshmen, the Tea Party contingent of the GOP, blocked efforts to sunset temporary tax cuts on the affluent, only to take the opposite view when faced with sunsetting temporary tax cuts on wage earners.

The simple version of this is that the same Tea Party freshmen who flatly promised to oppose any new taxes, broke their promise on the payroll tax. Their opposition to any tax increase was unyielding as long as the rich were being protected, but fell down when your own ox was gored. 

Was that a fair description of the Tea set did? Well, the more complicated version is that the Tea Partiers feel the lower tax rates on the affluent create jobs, expand the economy, and thus create tax revenue, reducing the deficit, while the lower payroll tax creates no jobs and works against deficit reduction. A good thing versus a bad thing, in other words.

The facts don't appear to support that view. The Tea Party has been ardently searching for proof of its beliefs without finding anything convincing. I think this is because they're supporting lower taxes for the wrong people.

As we have discussed before, two thirds of U.S. economic activity is consumer spending. Consumer spending creates jobs. And where are jobs created? Big companies cut jobs or export them or outsource them. It's small business that creates jobs. Anything that reduces tax on small businesses or even makes their paperwork easier might promote job creation.

The flaw in the Tea Party thinking, if indeed it is flawed, is that the top 1% everybody talks about isn't the same people as the small business owners who create jobs. Most of those super-affluent, whose taxes have not been so low in a generation, get their income primarily from investments. And they tend to spend more or less depending on how secure they feel about their wealth, which in turn is a function of how their portfolio is doing. So the best way to stimulate the economy through these people would be to make the stock market go up. They won't create jobs in their small businesses. They're not the people who own the small businesses.

I've read news accounts of the most recent compromise over the payroll tax which refer to House Republican leaders as "bowing to pressure from both the White House and their Senate colleagues" (the quote is from the Washington Post) but it seems to me that House Speaker John Boehner, who had been widely described as ready to extend the payroll tax at the current lower level, bowed first to his own Tea Party contingent (is it my imagination, or is House Majority Leader Eric Cantor aligning himself with the T.P. crowd in hopes of unseating Boehner?) and then to outside pressure from Republican supporters who broke ranks and called for extending the payroll tax cut (the Wall Street Journal editorial page, for example, and political strategist Karl Rove.)

I'm really not sure anyone was bowing to the White House, not in an era where viral partisanship has become so uncivil that the bully pulpit has only indirect influence and then only on undecideds. This was a battle between Republicans and Republicans.

In a way that was fitting, because I also see a chasm growing between business and business.

In one corner, we have small business, creating almost all of America's new jobs, making goods and selling services. These are the hard-working business people, the entrepreneurs Ayn Rand wrote about, who transform the world with their ideas and their sweat and their desire to make money the old-fashioned way.

In the other corner, we have the middlemen, the traders, the hedgers, the arbitragers, the people who buy and sell and repackage the work of others, the ones who turn the hard work of others into a house of cards, "creating wealth," but the kind of wealth that can evaporate, so that you can lose "the savings of a lifetime in the twinkling of an eye," as Groucho Marx says while being fleeced in "A Day at the Races." The crazy thing is, these leeches all claim to love Ayn Rand. But Ayn Rand would have loved the other guys, the ones working for a living. If I had to pick one tax not to oppose, it would be a penny on every stock trade.

 

 

 

 

The worst Christmas present ever

MSRF Inc. of Chicago distributes a stocking stuffer called "D. Doggie Deer Poopin' Pets." They are little plastic deer that hold tiny toy deer scat. The head opens to put the items inside the deer's body. Then, when you push down on the tail, they emerge.

"Load these 'Poopers' up with candy and they release piles of fun," the packaging says. A banner on one corner of the pack says, "Poop happens!" On the back is the somewhat less festive message, "Warning: Choking Hazard - Small parts. Not for children under three years."

I did not realize until I saw a "Nutrition Facts" label on the back that you are supposed to eat the little, uh, things. They contain cane sugar, corn syrup, citric acid, modified corn starch, artificial flavor, artificial color and carnauba wax. This is where one of the CSI characters would say, "Ah! Jelly beans!"

Carnauba wax, in case you were wondering, comes from a sort of palm tree that grows only in northeastern Brazil. It is widely used in car wax and surf wax, but it's also used to coat pills and is a common ingredient in deodorant. Yummy.

 

The field I work in

An email that has been circulating virally for two years reached my inbox this week. It shows a field outside Omaha, mowed to say "Thank You! For Freedom!" The message, 4,000 feet across, can only be seen by the people it was designed to be seen by, military personnel flying into Offutt Air Force Base. According to Snopes.com, which did a Google Maps satellite search, the most recent message plowed into Chris Shotton's field was, "You Make America Proud."

The thing that struck me about the email was a line added by someone forwarding the images of the 2009 message: "Let's keep this going until everyone has seen it without the news media's help. This should have made national news."

Actually, I remember seeing a network television story about it a couple years ago, because the local television station did cover it, and it was picked up widely. The implication that "the news media" would somehow suppress this clever and uplifting message was false.

But it is the nature of viral editorial media that the messages one likes to forward reinforce one's existing beliefs, reflexively, without a moment's thought. Nothing is checked. Nothing is challenged. Anything which does not conform with one's own pre-existing worldview is assumed to be slanted. A perfectly delightful good news story is transformed into something snarky.

I'm used to it. I've spent a lifetime in the media. Mindless criticism comes with the territory in the field I work in, drowning out a lot of legitimate criticism that we ought to be listening to.

But now liberals and conservatives are doing it to each other in a way that makes it almost impossible for them to compromise to get anything done. The Tea Party just took action in Washington that will have the practical effect of raising most people's taxes on Jan. 1, even though they say, and believe, they are the ones who oppose tax increases. In viral media they will claim it was someone else's fault, on the other side, and many people will believe it.

My dad says he prefers to follow Congress just by watching CSPAN. Maybe we all should do that.