Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

Rupert Murdoch will purchase the Wall Street Journal. More from the New York Times.

UPDATE: From the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Legendary Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni passes away at 94. More from Roger Ebert.

A health scare for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. More from the Washington Post and Power Line.

UPDATE: More from the Washington Post and New York Times.

A health scare for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. More from the Washington Post and Power Line.

UPDATE: More from the Washington Post and New York Times.

The FBI raids the home of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens. More from the New York Times and Redstate.com.

The FBI raids the home of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens. More from the New York Times and Redstate.com.

Legendary coach Bill Walsh passes away at 75. More from the New York Times, Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal.

Popular talk show host Tom Snyder passes away at 71. More from Tom Shales.

Acclaimed filmmaker Ingmar Bergman passes away at 89. More from Roger Ebert.

The pro-life movement’s apparent dissatisfaction with the current roster of GOP Presidential candidates.

The Simpsons Movie opens at #1. More from Gitesh Pandya.

If you’re ever compiling a list of the most overrated groups of the last twenty years, be sure to place Digable Planets somewhere in the top 5.

The New York-based trio garnered plenty of attention fourteen years ago with their first, and last, good album, Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space), which became a hit on the strength of the popular single “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat).” You couldn’t turn on a radio in 1993 without hearing “Slick,” a skillful jazz-rap hybrid obviously influenced by A Tribe Called Quest. The album itself was a solid piece of work in the Tribe tradition, with such tracks as “Pacifics,” “Where I’m From,” “What Cool Breezes Do,” and “Escapism (Gettin’ Free)” standing out in particular. There was an inventiveness and sharpness to the lyrics, a creativity that was in woefully short supply in pop music at the time: I couldn’t help comparing the depth of “Slick” to the banality of the singles from Janet Jackson’s then-popular CD janet.

Reachin’ was not a flawless album: “La Femme Fetal,” a pro-Roe v. Wade song that garnered tremendous acclaim from music critics, was a perfectly dreadful tune: I thought the song was over-the-top propaganda when I first heard it, and I was pro-choice at the time! The song appears to have been written with the specific intent of getting positive coverage from those who agreed with the political sentiments, as opposed to being some sort of principled statement on the part of the artists. The song is so absurd that at one point, the lyrics imply that David Souter, of all people, is opposed to abortion. Talk about a track that shouldn’t have made the final cut.

The Planets won a Grammy for “Slick,” and their new fans waited in anticipation for their next album. Of course, once those fans heard that next album, 1994’s Blowout Comb, most of them were wondering what the heck happened to the group. Comb was, quite frankly, an abomination, one of the decade’s worst albums. Instead of the creativity of Reachin’, the lyrics were a mishmash of militancy and mediocrity; it appeared that the Planets were trying to rip off Tribe and Public Enemy at the same time, to little positive effect. The songs “Jettin’” and “9th Wonder (Blackitolism)” were half-decent, but the rest of the album was manifestly worthless. It was as though the Planets failed to realize that faux-militancy never led to quality music: much like De La Soul’s 1993 debacle Buhloone Mindstate, Comb is a lamentable example of talented artists squandering their gift by filling their albums with bizarre sociopolitical rants.

Looking back, a fair case can be made that the Planets weren’t all that in the first place, and that Reachin’ only received so much acclaim because it was released during a time in which pop music had reached a creative nadir. Folks were desperate to hear something that wasn’t cut from the usual hip-hop or “grunge” cloth: critics embraced Reachin’, Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville, and U2’s Zooropa not because they were classic albums, but because they were better than the garbage that filled the music industry’s recycling bins to capacity in 1993. The industry was still at a creative low tide in 1994, but Comb was so bad that it couldn’t be judged approvingly even under a lesser standard.

The Planets broke up shortly after the release of Comb; after spending years being involved in solo projects or participating in new groups, the group reunited in 2005 and released a greatest-hits album. If they ever put out an album of new material, it will hopefully stand the test of time, instead of receiving exaggerated praise because of the times.

Will the Democrats demagogue President Bush’s new effort to offset the threat posed by Iran? More from the New York Times.

If President Bush is concerned about the GOP base never liking him again, he doesn’t have much to worry about. If Hillary Clinton succeeds him as President, conservatives will forget every negative word they’ve ever said about him.

It won’t take long before the conservatives who’ve condemned the President over such political apostasies as the Dubai Ports World deal, the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination, and the No Child Left Behind Act find themselves deeply nostalgic for Dubya. The sight of Mrs. Clinton taking the oath will be enough to have Bush’s critics on the right singing that old Cher song: “If I could turn back time…”

I have never quite understood why Bush has taken so much heat from the right over the past few years. The left’s grievance against the President is obvious, but one would figure that the right’s default position would be to strongly defend the President against the left’s harsh criticisms.

It’s amazing that Bush’s critics on the right, many of whom lament public ignorance of history, so often forget recent history when it comes to their condemnations of Bush. It’s as if the public is supposed to forget that Bush never billed himself as a Reagan conservative, frequently rejected the limited-government vision, and always had a “tolerant” attitude when it came to such issues as illegal immigration.

No one’s going to forget 2000 and 2004, when conservatives rightfully argued that Al Gore and John Kerry would send the country on a negative course—and that Bush was the only candidate committed to preserving American greatness. Thus, the odd revisionist history that has taken place on the right with regard to Bush is fundamentally illogical.

It’s not that Bush is infallible. Far from it. There are times when he seems not to understand the frustrations of the conservative base, times when he seems deliberately deaf to their arguments.

However, the right invested in Bush—and he’s a stock they cannot sell off. In 1999-2000, they knew his flaws, his weakness for big government, his discomfort with the Reagan-conservative vision—and they accepted him anyway, feeling that a flawed Bush would be better for the conservative movement than the pseudo-liberal John McCain. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Bush-bashing on the right will be a historical footnote if Hillary recaptures the White House for the Clintons. Conservative blogs and magazines will be filled with lamentations about how much better things were under Bush then they are under Clinton. Those Republicans who attack him now will sing his praises, declaring a desire for the “Bush doctrine” to still be in effect.

I’m convinced that much of the anti-Bush sentiment on the right comes from those who don’t stop to think about what things would have been like under a President Gore or a President Kerry. It’s as if their fears about what would happen under such administrations ended after November 7, 2000 and November 2, 2004, respectively.

Once Clinton implements her foreign and domestic policy initiatives, Bush’s conservative critics will finally understand what those who have stuck by the 43^rd President have been saying all along: that Bush, even on his worst day, was better than the alternatives, and that he deserved our unconditional support. Once we see Clinton’s approach to immigration and national security, it will become clear that those on the right who couldn’t wait to wash their hands of Bush were manifestly mistaken.

There’s so much talk today about Bush’s unpopularity. Perhaps Bush wouldn’t be performing so poorly in these polls if some of the folks who voted for him in ’04 remembered why they voted for him instead of the other guy. Do these folks really believe Kerry would have done a better job than the one Bush is doing right now? If they don’t, then why are they giving the President such a hard time?

Many of the conservatives who’ve criticized Bush over the past few years are quite fond of Ronald Reagan, and justifiably so. One term of Hillary—perhaps even two terms—and these conservatives will tell Bush that all is forgiven, that he deserves to be considered a great President on the level of Reagan, and that they didn’t realize just how good they had it.

If President Bush is concerned about the GOP base never liking him again, he doesn’t have much to worry about. If Hillary Clinton succeeds him as President, conservatives will forget every negative word they’ve ever said about him.

It won’t take long before the conservatives who’ve condemned the President over such political apostasies as the Dubai Ports World deal, the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination, and the No Child Left Behind Act find themselves deeply nostalgic for Dubya. The sight of Mrs. Clinton taking the oath will be enough to have Bush’s critics on the right singing that old Cher song: “If I could turn back time…”

I have never quite understood why Bush has taken so much heat from the right over the past few years. The left’s grievance against the President is obvious, but one would figure that the right’s default position would be to strongly defend the President against the left’s harsh criticisms.

It’s amazing that Bush’s critics on the right, many of whom lament public ignorance of history, so often forget recent history when it comes to their condemnations of Bush. It’s as if the public is supposed to forget that Bush never billed himself as a Reagan conservative, frequently rejected the limited-government vision, and always had a “tolerant” attitude when it came to such issues as illegal immigration.

No one’s going to forget 2000 and 2004, when conservatives rightfully argued that Al Gore and John Kerry would send the country on a negative course—and that Bush was the only candidate committed to preserving American greatness. Thus, the odd revisionist history that has taken place on the right with regard to Bush is fundamentally illogical.

It’s not that Bush is infallible. Far from it. There are times when he seems not to understand the frustrations of the conservative base, times when he seems deliberately deaf to their arguments.

However, the right invested in Bush—and he’s a stock they cannot sell off. In 1999-2000, they knew his flaws, his weakness for big government, his discomfort with the Reagan-conservative vision—and they accepted him anyway, feeling that a flawed Bush would be better for the conservative movement than the pseudo-liberal John McCain. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Bush-bashing on the right will be a historical footnote if Hillary recaptures the White House for the Clintons. Conservative blogs and magazines will be filled with lamentations about how much better things were under Bush then they are under Clinton. Those Republicans who attack him now will sing his praises, declaring a desire for the “Bush doctrine” to still be in effect.

I’m convinced that much of the anti-Bush sentiment on the right comes from those who don’t stop to think about what things would have been like under a President Gore or a President Kerry. It’s as if their fears about what would happen under such administrations ended after November 7, 2000 and November 2, 2004, respectively.

Once Clinton implements her foreign and domestic policy initiatives, Bush’s conservative critics will finally understand what those who have stuck by the 43^rd President have been saying all along: that Bush, even on his worst day, was better than the alternatives, and that he deserved our unconditional support. Once we see Clinton’s approach to immigration and national security, it will become clear that those on the right who couldn’t wait to wash their hands of Bush were manifestly mistaken.

There’s so much talk today about Bush’s unpopularity. Perhaps Bush wouldn’t be performing so poorly in these polls if some of the folks who voted for him in ’04 remembered why they voted for him instead of the other guy. Do these folks really believe Kerry would have done a better job than the one Bush is doing right now? If they don’t, then why are they giving the President such a hard time?

Many of the conservatives who’ve criticized Bush over the past few years are quite fond of Ronald Reagan, and justifiably so. One term of Hillary—perhaps even two terms—and these conservatives will tell Bush that all is forgiven, that he deserves to be considered a great President on the level of Reagan, and that they didn’t realize just how good they had it.