Just yesterday in this space, yours truly said:

If Rick Perry wanted to end his campaign with a flourish and contribute to the cause of conservatism, I personally think that he could do no better at this stage than to drop out (in advance of Saturday’s vote) and endorse Gingrich.

The news on the wires this morning is that Governor Rick Perry is about to do just that. News conference predicted for 11 a.m.

It is exactly the right move for Perry and I salute him for it.

…

Update: From the transcript of Rick Perry’s remarks:

Therefore, today I am suspending my campaign and endorsing Newt Gingrich for president.

I believe Newt is a conservative visionary who can transform our country.

We have had our differences, which campaigns inevitably bring out. And Newt is not perfect, but who among us is?

The fact is, there is forgiveness for those who seek God and I believe in the power of redemption, for it is a central tenet of my own Christian faith.

And I have no question Newt Gingrich has the heart of a conservative reformer, the ability to rally and captivate the conservative movement and the courage to tell the Washington interests to take a hike if it’s what is best for the country.

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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

As I conveyed in my last post on the subject, I’m pretty exasperated at this point with the progress and the dynamics of the Republican presidential primary contest. If the whole thing had been set up by an omnipotent hand to structurally favor Mitt Romney’s success (despite his lack of an large enthusiastic base) it could hardly have been done any better. Endless blathering from my own vantage point is not going to change anything. But, as said before, nothing can alter the course events better than, well, events. It’s in the hands of the voters of South Carolina to determine whether a true contest continues or whether Mitt Romney’s crushing sense of inevitability—his greatest asset all along—becomes a crushing reality of inevitability.

There are hints of movement, largely in Newt Gingrich’s direction. He had characteristically strong rhetorical moments in the most recent debate, and the enormity of the South Carolina crowd’s response is still echoing in the air. Sarah Palin came as close to an endorsement as she has so far by indicating she thought Gingrich was the one to vote for if South Carolinians actually want the contest to continue beyond their state. Her endorsement is hardly a game-changer but Newt needs any sense of momentum he can gather. [Read more →]

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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

Now, the above would be an interesting headline (at least mildly interesting). But it’s not the actual headline today. The actual headline in today’s news is telling the most utterly predictable non-story of the entire political season: Huntsman dropping out, backing Romney.

We should give the antimatter candidate kudos for holding on as long he did, I guess.

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From section: Shorts by Sean Curnyn

A whole slate of videos have been uploaded to YouTube by the Melbourne Mass Gospel Choir featuring that 80 voice choir performing the gospel songs of Bob Dylan. Their channel is at this link, where you can explore them all, and I’m embedding a few of my favorites below.

I understand: Make all the jokes you want about a bunch of elderly white Australians singing black American gospel music (and black American gospel music composed by Robert Allen Zimmerman, at that). Make any joke you want but then just listen to it. I think this is gospel music being performed at a very high level, with superb voices and arrangements and with an obvious and quite galvanizing spirit of devotion. In short, it is truly great stuff, and it’s a huge treat to hear Dylan’s great songs of faith getting this kind of treatment.

Take “What Can I Do For You?” with lead vocal by Lisa Shergold, below.

Superb. And listen to the terrific take on “Saving Grace,” below, with lead vocal by Timothy Slater

And you may just feel like thanking the Lord for the great version of “Saved,” below, with lead vocal by Sharon McKenzie.

So, I’m very glad they did it, and it’s also a nice gift that they are sharing it in high quality for free on YouTube.

…

One note: I notice that a number of the arrangements take their lead from the Gotta Serve Somebody: Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan collection (various artists singing Dylan’s gospel songs), which is not too surprising since that album had a similar concept. However, in the case of “When You Gonna Wake Up,” I have a peeve about how Lee Williams and Spiritual QC’s changed the lyrics of that song for that album, and it seems that those same lyrics are being used in this rendition.

I understand some of Dylan’s words in that song might sound harsh to some, but the substitutions don’t impress me. There’s one great line in Dylan’s original litany of worldly troubles and injustices that goes: “The rich seduce the poor and the old are seduced by the young.” Isn’t that a great and piercing evocation of—in the first clause—the cruel power of materialism, with the rich seducing the poor into wanting to be like them, and—in the second clause—of the terrible tilt of our world towards the young and the beautiful, seducing and tempting the old into trying themselves to live as young people forever, or into some other peril. Fascinating line, making you look at things in a completely different way to the usual.

Whereas, Lee Williams and the Spiritual QC’s changed that to: “The rich oppress the poor and the old oppress the young.” Hmm. La dee dah.

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From section: Dylanosophy by Sean Curnyn

Bono (of U2) recorded the Jimmie Rodgers song “Dreaming with Tears in My Eyes” for a Jimmie Rodgers tribute albumthat was put out on Egyptian Records in 1996. If you happen to look for it on YouTube currently, you’ll see multiple instances where it’s been uploaded, but most of the people uploading and commenting on it seem to be under the impression that the song is actually a Bono or U2 original.

You can listen to the embedded version at right (though you might want to avoid looking at the slideshow of images associated with it by this particular uploader). A lot of the YouTubers believe it’s one of Bono’s greatest songs, or even the greatest. It’s not that surprising they assume it’s an original, because Bono’s rendition is certainly far away from any blue yodeling connotations; his characteristically big, breathy vocal floats atop a bed of piano and rising strings. However, that the version works very well is beyond question. In fact, I think it’s total dynamite, and likely the most striking contribution to that album (which is itself very good). [Read more →]

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From section: Commentary, Music by Sean Curnyn

At the 17th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, this very night. Clip via VH1 embedded below. It is, in my view at least, a masterful performance by the 70 year-old song and dance man, and a nice representation—with good production values—of how he is at his best on the live stage these days.

You can go to a Bob Dylan concert, and he performs just as well as he did right there, but due to the vagaries of arenas and other venues and the general annoyance of the rock concert experience, you basically miss it. (Yeah, I’m speaking from my own jaded experience.) So it’s nice to see it and hear it. Bob Dylan is something else; not what he used to be, for sure, but literally something else.

Anyway, like me you might be wondering how Bob Dylan performing “Blind Willie McTell” (a song that he wrote around 1983 but which wasn’t officially released until the 1991 Bootleg Series collection) constitutes a tribute to Martin Scorsese. I guess the tribute part is just in Bob Dylan showing up. And, when they do the glitzy tribute for me in Hollywood a few decades hence, I’ll be quite happy with Bob merely showing up. He can do “Ninety Miles An Hour Down a Dead-End Street” for all I care (and actually that might be fairly appropriate). [Read more →]

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From section: Dylanosophy by Sean Curnyn

I’ve done my best to keep the old chin up, but I have to admit that after these last two debates it’s getting a little wearing. I’ve been annoyed for months at some big-time conservative commentators—Mark Steyn and George Will, to name two—who have had only had negative things to say about those in the Republican field this year, as if there was no need to lift up the better qualities of even one or two of these candidates. One of them, after all, will be facing Barack Obama in November, in the hopes of putting an end to what has arguably been the most disastrous presidency in living memory (certainly of the past 40 years). However, the longer these dog and donkey shows go on, orchestrated by the likes of Stephanopoulos and Sawyer, the worse things look. It has been a mistake to enable the manipulation of the GOP nominating process by what are, frankly, liberal hacks and not-so-stealthy Democratic operatives. But for some in the Republican party establishment, it seems this kind of perverse masochistic circus is just what they want. After all, it’s looking more and more likely that it will result in the coronation of Mitt Romney, the reliable business-as-usual candidate this year for the Beltway boobs. [Read more →]

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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

A good one from Ben Lansing. [Read more →]

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From section: Shorts by Sean Curnyn

There was a long-running TV show on the BBC in Britain called “Tomorrow’s World,” which looked at budding new inventions and technologies and predicted how they would change the way people lived. The YouTube clip below is from a 1967 episode and focuses on an early form of a home computer. It’s quite amusing, naturally, with hindsight; it resembles a Flintstones version of a modern appliance. (How do you do bitTorrents on that thing?) But I was struck in another way by the final words of the narrator in the segment: [Read more →]

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From section: Shorts by Sean Curnyn

So, Rick Perry rode yesterday’s endorsement in this space to 10.3% of the vote and a fifth place finish in the Iowa caucuses, behind Newt Gingrich with 13.3%. As we know, Mitt Romney won over Rick Santorum by a few votes at 24.6% versus 24.5%, and Ron Paul was third with 21.4%.

It’s odd, really, that Mitt Romney, who neglected Iowa voters to a fairly insulting extent until recently, did so well. It’s not so odd that Rick Santorum did well: he worked his butt off in Iowa at the doorbell level, he has mega-social-conservative credibility and he peaked at precisely the right moment. Ron Paul has to be disappointed with a third place finish. It strands him as a curiosity rather than a contender.

Rick Perry is so delighted with his fifth place finish that he has returned to Texas to “reassess” his campaign. Michele Bachmann, who was last, is clearly about to drop out. [Read more →]

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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn