All Things Considered, LeBron Would Rather Be in Philadelphia
Plus, Technology vs. Truth, Speaking for the Dead, & JD Vance Gives New Meaning to the Term Helicopter Parent
What I’m Discussing Today
Kareem’s Quote of the Day: If technology makes lies cheap and plentiful, how hard will we work to protect the truth?
LeBron Chooses Philly, Trump Says He’s “Maybe a Racist”: LeBron is taking his talents to the City of Brotherly Love, and Trump has the dumbest hot take.
Did Fallen Soldiers Support Iran War?: Trump’s attempt to enlist four dead service members ignores the people who actually knew and loved them.
JD Vance Is a Real Helicopter Parent, and You Are Footing the Bill: A $25K-per-hour ride to a golf lesson turns the VP’s embarrassment into a state secret.
The Philadelphia Story – George Cukor: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart combine to make this classic the perfect screwball comedy.
“Blood in My Eyes” - Bob Dylan: Desire, desperation, and an acoustic guitar cut deep in Dylan’s lean cover of this Depression-era gem from the Mississippi Sheiks.
Kareem’s Quote of the Day
“Technology to wipe out truth is now available. Not everybody can afford it but it’s available. When the cost comes down look out!”
Bob Dylan (1941–), American singer/songwriter, World Gone Wrong liner notes, 1993
Bob Dylan was more than thirty years into his career when he offered these thoughts about technology, and a long way removed from the days when he was considered the prophet-like voice of his generation. In 1966, he’d broken his neck in a motorcycle accident. He recovered, then spent the better part of a decade in the country, raising a family. There were great records (John Wesley Harding, Blood on the Tracks) and indifferent ones (Self Portrait, Street Legal), a disastrous four-hour movie he wrote and directed (Renaldo and Clara), an ugly divorce, a conversion to fire-and-brimstone Christianity, then a return to the road as a rock and roll troubadour whose performances could be thrilling or baffling on any given night. But he never lost his questing intelligence, and even at the lowest points of his career, there were flashes of brilliance no one else was capable of (see today’s Jukebox).
The 1993 album World Gone Wrong had no original songs on it. It was all old folk and blues numbers, and the liner notes, equal parts beat poetry and Sunday sermon, were his argument for the continued relevance of this music, which had shaped his own sensibility when he was starting out. The title came from a Mississippi Sheiks song that painted the picture of a world out of sync with any moral purpose:
“‘strange things are happening like never before’ strange things alright -- strange things like courage becoming befuddled & nonfundamental. evil charlatans masquerading in pullover vests & tuxedos talking gobbledygook, monstrous pompous superficial pageantry parading down lonely streets on limited access highways. strange things indeed -- irrationalist bimbos & bozos, the stuff of legend, coming in from left field -- infamy on the landscape -- “pray to the Good Lord” hit the light switch!”
As for the “technology to wipe out truth,” he says that when it comes, “there wont [sic] be songs like these anymore. factually there aren’t any now.”
What strikes me about these words today is that Dylan was absolutely right. In 1993, the Internet was just a blip on the horizon and cell phones were the size of a brick and just about that smart, but Dylan saw it all coming: the world wide web, the celestial jukebox, artificial intelligence that would make HAL 9000 look like a pussycat. He even gave us a snapshot of the Orangeman atop the despoiled world:
“an infantile sensualist -- white teeth, wide smile, lotza money, kowtow to fairy queen exploiters & corrupt religious establishments, career minded, limousine double parked, imposing his will & dishonest garbage in popular magazines.”
There’s little doubt that technology can now wipe out the truth. We’ve got deepfakes. We’ve got AI music that takes less time to create than it does to play, yet sounds exactly like 1940s jazz or 1960s soul. We’ve got a president who spreads lies like manure through his own platform and collects a royalty every time someone reads it. The cost hasn’t just come down, it’s all free. But we pay in other ways, more and more every day. The only real question is if a world gone wrong can turn itself around.
