June was ‘Bustos’ out all over

Bill Knight column for 6-27, 28 or 29, 2019

U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos is no Mitch McConnell.

However, the four-term East Moline Democrat’s stubborn stance protecting incumbents at the expense of constituents is uncomfortably comparable to the Senate Majority Leader’s party-over-patriotism attitude, a cynical refusal to permit votes on many issues, from Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland to a bill protecting elections from interference. And Bustos may be threatening Democrats’ future as well as democracy itself.

This month, as Democrats’ presidential contenders debate in Miami, another debate is whether to protect the status quo or let voters choose voices they prefer, and that argument is heating up.

The new chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), Bustos in March announced that any vendors seeking work with Democratic candidates must agree not to work for primary challengers to incumbents. Indeed, when Bustos named seven DCCC leaders in January, there wasn’t even the pretense of its representing Democrats, much less the country. None came from the Progressive Caucus (with 95 members, Democrats’ largest bloc); all of them were New Democrat Coalition “centrists,” who seem to see grassroots support of Medicare for All, free college, paid family leave, etc. as jeopardizing their true constituents: corporate interests.

Explaining that Donald Trump won in her 17^th District and 12 others with Democratic representation, Bustos implies Democrats should worry, and her priority is to retain Democrats’ House majority. However, Trump’s scant 0.7-percent margin of victory in the 17th may have been due to turnout or arguably less about an attraction to Trump than a rejection of Clinton’s message. After all, the 17^th for years was represented by progressives – the great Lane Evans, then his colleague Phil Hare – and Obama won there in 2008 by 14 percent and 17 percent in 2012. Further, those worrisome 13 districts are out of 235 represented by Democrats and out of 435 total – 3 percent and 5 percent, respectively.  

Still, as Bustos told Politico, her DCCC will spend “every cent we can to hang on to our majority and not work against ourselves,” although that sounds exactly like what primaries should do.

Concerned that DCCC’s policy could hurt the party, a dozen Illinois Democratic officials, including Hare, and other progressives have objected to the blacklisting threat, but Bustos has refused to compromise.

“This goes against the very nature of our democracy,” complained Jim Zogby from the Bernie Sanders-aligned Our Revolution group. “Incumbents are being protected, even when their policies are out of step with their constituents. The Democratic Party is hurting itself [and] millions of Americans.”

Meanwhile, dozens of College Democrat chapters from Illinois to both coasts are urging people to not contribute to the DCCC because it discourages candidates and their supporters from seeking office.

“We have younger and progressive Democrats who want the party to be taken in that direction only to see the leadership and the establishment not be responsive,” University of Southern California College Democrats president Ben Pearce told The Atlantic. “I don’t think it does the party any favors to protect incumbents who might not be as responsive to new voices.”

Young activists are vitally important, from organizing for candidates to Get-Out-the-Vote efforts. In fact, last year, more young, female and urban voters cast ballots, and youth increased turnout from 19.9 percent in 2014 to 35.6 percent in 2018, the biggest improvement of any age group.

But like McConnell, Bustos’ enthusiasm for power and the money that funds it can obscure common sense.

A former corporate officer for an Iowa hospital system, Bustos has raised $13 million since her first campaign in 2011, and in 2017-18 about 11 percent of her $4 million in campaign contributions were from Finance, Insurance and Real Estate, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

“None of the big five, for-profit insurers [Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, Humana and UnitedHealth Group] that wrote big checks to her campaign are based in Illinois,” commented Wendell Potter, a former health-insurance executive who advocates for Medicare for All. “Those PACs’ favorite Democrat in Congress [is] Bustos.”

As Independence Day approaches, it may be good for Americans – including Bustos and McConnell – to reflect on a 2004 comment by the Rev. William Sloane Coffin of New York’s Riverside Church: “There are three kinds of patriots: two bad, one good. The bad ones are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country, a reflection of God’s lover’s quarrel with all the world.”

New Americana CDs charm, disappoint

Bill Knight column for 6-24, 25 or 26, 2019

Pope John XXIII is remembered as saying, “I never met a pessimist who managed to do something good,” a phrase that comes to mind after hearing two new Americana CDs with a sympathetic ear that was charmed, then disappointed.

(Full disclosure: I’m a longtime fan of the blues but prefer optimistic musicians to those wallowing in woe – I like “Wang Dang Doodle” much more than “Got A Mind to Give Up Living.”)

First, decades after his debut record, Adam Carroll recorded “I Walked in Them Shoes” (his ninth release) in a single December day in Dripping Springs, Texas. This month, the native Texan is scheduled to perform Thursday (June 27) at the Songbird Cafe in St. Louis (314-482-8994) and Friday (June 28) at Sandwich Life House Concerts in Champaign (217-722-3432).

Although Carroll, 44, references John Sebastian, Richie Havens and Willie Nelson here, his temperament and tone are more like reliable, accessible folkies Ramblin’ Jack Elliott or Utah Phillips.

Throughout the 10 tracks, there’s hope amid adversity, heartache without heartbreak, a mixture of pleasant memories of a romance and dim thoughts of a jarring end to love.

“Cordelia,” an ode to his wife, has a mood of some loneliness and even fear, and along with the Cajun-flavored “Crescent City Angels” the material concedes he’s been beset by troubles. However, he avoids self-pity with a matter-of-fact acknowledgment without showing some sleepy-eyed lack of concern.

“My Only Good Shirt” and “Night at The Show” also stress Carroll isn’t melancholy, which often implies sadness or even defeat. Instead, he opts for a little humor and a more neutral observation, if not acceptance of the Way Things Can Get.

In each number, there are lines, words or images that are soothing, from rainbows to hummingbirds, and especially in the title cut and “Iris and the Lonesome Stranger,” this storyteller’s song bag shows his consistent and eloquent lyrical gifts as well as instrumental guitar prowess.

In “Iris,” one of the most touching tales, he notes how homelessness too often means forgotten lives, lives that shared common experiences until “life just got too hard to hold onto.”

At once private yet somehow all-encompassing, his natural yarns are skillfully delivered in an acoustic audio and a twang that presents common ground rather than impossible obstacles, with conversational singing that celebrates survival in its absence of despair or disdain.

***

Next, there’s less enthusiasm for Chad Richard’s pleasing voice and promising abilities exhibited in the 12-track “Worthy Cause.”

More country than folk, and with a band sound benefiting from talented side musicians more than a singer-songwriter style, Richard has vocals that are somewhat reminiscent of Blood, Sweat & Tears front man David Clayton Thomas or even a brawnier Kenny Rogers, but better comparisons might be country bluesman Tony Joe White or country-music stalwart Dave Dudley.

This, his second release – a follow-up to 2015’s “Veteran’s Grocery” – is painfully morose, from “Slow Rollin’ State Line” to “The Game.” Repetition can be comforting or dull, but here it’s merely unchallenging. The tempos and styles do vary a bit, from shuffles to ballads, yet they’re overall rather predictable, especially in its gloomy outlook. The autobiographical anguish gets almost overwhelming, a funereal rendering of unhappy happenstance everyone endures to some extent.

Maybe Richard’s next outing will let his considerable skills lend themselves to a more balanced, nuanced perspective, leaving pessimism behind for what’s positive ahead.

He need not be a wide-eyed optimist but could embrace Illinois poet/journalist/historian Carl Sandburg’s attitude: “I am an idealist,” Sandburg said. “I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way!”

That could be good.

Worthy documentaries on journalists – and freedom

Bill Knight column for 6-20, 21 or 22, 2019

This spring 230 years ago the U.S. Constitution and its First Amendment took effect; 84 years ago this week, newspaperman Pete Hamill was born. As attacks on the press – commercial as well as political – persist, recent documentaries remind us of the value and virtues of a free press and how journalism and its practitioners help us have and hold our democratic republic.

By revisiting several stalwart journalists, we might appreciate how threatened and fragile the republic would be without a strong, independent “Fourth Estate” that gives voice to the voiceless and holds the powerful accountable.

In November, Hamill and colleague/competitor Jimmy Breslin were showcased in the documentary “Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists,” which premiered on HBO in January. Also in January, the Sundance Film festival screened “Mike Wallace is Here,” about the long-time CBS correspondent. And in April, PBS’ “American Masters” featured the best of the bunch, “Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People.”

Breslin and Hamill, born in 1928 and 1935, respectively, understood and worked the streets. More than newsmen, they were authors, literally and stylistically, telling the city’s countless stories. Co-written and -directed by Jonathan Alter, a Chicagoan who became a journalist/author/producer, “Breslin and Hamill” is affectionate and eye-opening, a 108-minute tribute to two guys and also to a time when newspapers appreciated having adequate staffs and eloquent professionals covering their areas like no other medium could.

A film about the hard-hitting “60 Minutes” interviewer, “Mike Wallace is Here” is a 94-minute documentary by award-winning director Avi Belkin, who also hints how broadcast journalism deteriorated to the questionable state it’s in. For more than five decades, Wallace, born in 1918, was the fearless, fearsome newsman who went face-to-face with people in power, from dictators to grifters claiming to be elected representatives. Watching archival footage, we see what’s mostly missing today.

The Pulitzer film, directed by award-winning filmmaker Oren Rudavsky, is the most compelling. Joseph Pulitzer was born in 1847, a member of Hungary’s oppressed Jewish minority. Responding to an offer for foreigners to join the Union army during the Civil War, Pulitzer immigrated here and served in the federal cavalry, after which he moved to St. Louis and started newspapering in 1868.

Recalled as a businessman and publisher, he started as a gifted journalist, initially in St. Louis’ lively German-language press. Ten years later, he bought newspapers and merged them into the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and in 1883 purchased the New York World. There, he became a crusader and creative entrepreneur.

An outspoken advocate for regular readers – whether immigrants like himself or hard-working laborers who wondered how the deck got stacked against them – Pulitzer opposed the Gilded Age and that era’s 1%. His reporter Nellie Bly had herself committed to an insane asylum for an expose on conditions there, and he dabbled in stunts, such as assigning Bly to duplicate Jules Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days” trip, and launching a campaign to build a platform for France’s gift to the nation, the State of Liberty – eventually raising $100,000 from readers. His efforts increased the World from a struggling 15,000-circulation daily to a dynamic paper reaching 10 times that many people every day.

Like Wallace, Breslin, Hamill (and most heroes), Pulitzer wasn’t perfect. Rudavsky displays his weaknesses, from occasional sensationalism (dubbed “yellow journalism,” for the World’s comic strip “The Yellow Kid”) and a marriage to a relative of Jefferson Davis, the president of the forces he’d fought in the War Between the States, to his seemingly contradictory economic standing. However, like contemporaries William Randolph Hearst and E.W. Scripps, Pulitzer became wealthy serving regular Americans instead of elites.

Pulitzer’s legacy is substantial, from his many philanthropic endeavors to the Columbia School of Journalism and the annual prizes that bear his name.

Narrated by Adam Driver and featuring Liev Schreiber and Tim Blake Nelson in audio dramatizations, the production is comparable to Ken Burns’ style of documentaries on the Civil War, baseball, jazz and other wholly American phenomena. It’s most definitely worth watching (and if you’d rather not wait for “American Masters” rebroadcasting the 84-minute gem, it’s available online at pbs.org).

Finally, when few newspapers did, Pulitzer attacked corruption in government and business, advocated for decent pay and a shorter workday, and unselfishly defended journalism, once commenting, “The complaint of the ‘low moral tone of the press’ is common but very unjust. A newspaper relates the events of the day. It does not manufacture its record of corruptions and crimes but tells of them as they occur. If it failed to do so it would be an unfaithful chronicler. The daily journal is a mirror. It reflects that which is before it. Let those who are startled by it blame the people who are before the mirror, and not the mirror, which only reflects their features and actions.”