Quote of the Day (Alfred Doblin, on Gov. Christie’s Library-Funding Cuts)

“Libraries are like bread — they are a staple of the human diet. They aren’t sexy like sports teams. But they don’t leave communities like sports teams. As a state, New Jersey has bent over backwards to accommodate sports franchises. Most of these teams don’t even acknowledge the state they play in on their uniforms and merchandise. But when it comes to a commitment to public literacy — the currency of success — there is little fanfare. There is little notice.”—Alfred Doblin, “$10.4 Million is a Small Price to Pay for Literacy,” The Record (Bergen County, NJ), May 10, 2010

From Philadelphia to Boston, one of the first targets for government budget-cutters in the recession, it appears, would be library systems. Record editorial-page editor Doblin points out, with sharp and unanswerable logic, the skewed priorities shown by the administration of Gov. Chris Christie in cutting state funding for libraries by $10.4 million, while the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority—with a fifth of its employees making more than $100,000 per year—lines up asking for nearly triple that amount to bail itself out of its current deficit.

Particularly outrageous is the 74% reduction in interlibrary loan services—this, at a time when the governor was calling across the board for “encouraging consolidation of services.”

Doblin’s otherwise excellent article leaves out just one important fact: at a time when job-hunting services are more essential than ever, Christie proposes to reduce the effectiveness of an institution that has become busier than ever because of their resources for this.

After Christie targets the Sports Authority, he might turn to his own administration, where he is spending $400,000 a year more on staff salaries than his predecessor, Jon Corzine—including 10 more people making $100,000 plus a year.

Then, and only then, should he even begin to think about cutting anything else—and libraries should be far, far down that list.

Quote of the Day (Dolly Parton, on NYC’s Mayor)

“In recent years, she has also got to know Mayor Bloomberg—‘a very nice man’—a little bit. ‘In fact, I guess Shania Twain, one of our country stars, he called her “Shenowia,” or something,’ Parton recalled. ‘He said to me, “I felt so bad saying your girl’s name wrong,” and I said, “That’s O.K., Mr. Bloomingdale.’ ”—Dolly Parton quoted in Lauren Collins, “Transients: Looking Swell,” The New Yorker, May 4, 2009

Dolly—you gotta love her. Not for her put-on appearance, but for that down-home manner that knows how to take the air out of a male ego ever so gently. Few alpha males have needed deflating in the last year or so more than Michael Bloomberg.

I didn’t make a systematic study of this, mind you, but in the three or four reports that I heard or read about the New York Mayor’s third inaugural address, the operative word used to characterize his tone and demeanor was “modest.”

It put me in mind of the late Sixties, when the Beltway punditocracy was broaching the possibility of “the New Nixon”—a mature statesman who’d outgrown his youthful ruthlessness, or at least learned to use it for larger ends that would benefit America.

Well, no sooner did the perpetual GOP candidate finish taking his Presidential oath than he whipped off the approachable, reasonable mask he’d been wearing so uncomfortably. Before our eyes, he morphed back into the ol’ paranoid “Tricky Dick” we all knew. We know what happened next.

After two terms of Rudy Giuliani’s 24/7 aria, the exhausted New York press corps were so delighted to find someone who spoke in subdued—make that businesslike—tones that they lowered their guard.

Thus, while Don Rodolpho was nearly hooed and kicked off the Gotham stage after 9/11 for offering to serve a bit longer as mayor to surmount any possible primary voting disruption arising from that catastrophe, Bloomberg violated the public trust in a far more flagrant and enduring manner—circumventing the term-limits law that the voters made clear they wanted in two different citywide campaigns.

A compliant press rolled over for him, with the New York Times even going so far as to decry term limits as an infringement on democracy that would deny New Yorkers the chance to re-elect “an effective and popular mayor.” That would be the same mayor who, with all the money from his communications empire, made a mockery of the campaign-finance limits that the Gray Lady has always—at least until recently—also declared are necessary for democracy in this republic.

All the while, like the city’s other dailies, the Times kept telling voters that Bloomberg was so far ahead in the last mayoral race that the Democrats’ William Thompson could never catch him. The margin of victory was rather smaller than they—or the Mayor—had anticipated. That induced the "modesty" so widely remarked upon and, we can surely guess, so transitory.

More than two decades ago, when Malcolm Forbes was still alive, an editor who worked at one of his publications told me that the self-styled “Capitalist Tool” had given employees his birthday off. “It’s sort of like working for a medieval prince,” she marveled.

Bloomberg has had these moments, too, giving a number of his campaign staffers very, very handsome bonuses for helping to get him elected—20% of each worker’s total wages.

The media have encouraged a view of rich candidates and officeholders that is pernicious in the extreme. Such men and women, we are told, have so much money that they run no risk of being bribed.

True enough. What does not get said is that they can spend money in all kinds of ways to influence voters—especially, but not exclusively, demonstrating to party elders that they have massive war chests to mount a blitz of TV ads before elections.

For three separate races since 2000, Jon Corzine spent $131 million on his own money to get elected U.S. Senator and Governor of New Jersey. You have to ask how megalomaniacal a person is to believe it’s worth it to spend all that money on himself rather than, as an article by AP reporter Geoff Mulvihill has noted, “the entire property tax bill for a year for everyone in Corzine’s hometown of Hoboken.”

The only person in U.S. history who has spent more of his money to get elected is Michael Bloomberg, who spent twice as much as Corzine. I'm not sure I'd want that distinction.

Bonus Quote of the Day (Billboard, on the Raspberries’ Classic Final Album, “Starting Over”)

“Eric Carmen must be considered one of the strongest rock vocalists around, and it is a mistake to consider this band for kids only. There are a lot of music fans waiting for the kind of skillful, good rock this band serves up. Probably the strongest overall effort yet from this band, thematically and musically. Best cuts: ‘Overnight Sensation (Hit Record),’ ‘Play On,’ ‘I Don't Know What I Want,’ ‘I Can Hardly Believe You're Mine,’ ‘Starting Over.’” --“Pop Pick,” Billboard Magazine, September 28, 1974, on The Raspberries’ final album, Starting Over (from Eric Carmen’s Web site)

All hail The Raspberries! Most of the rock critics of the time wouldn’t give the power pop group of the Seventies a break, and the pressure from the record company just became too great to endure.

Two members left, but it still didn’t help. The title Starting Over took on unintended irony when the band collapsed. By the following spring, it was, as Carmen later sang on his eponymous solo album, time for “Ricky and the Tooth” (i.e., producer Jimmy Ienner).

All I know is that throughout high school, I wore out Starting Over—and, if I’d been able to get my hands on the Raspberries’ earlier LPs, they probably would have received the same treatment. For true believers, none of what I say is necessary.

But for anyone else—well, just think of some of their biggest fans: John Lennon, Keith Moon, Kurt Cobain, Bruce Springsteen. From great, full-out rock ‘n’ roll (“Cruisin’ Music,” a Beach Boys tribute covered in a prior post of mine) to the most hauntingly tender love songs (the title track), this album had it all.

But towering over it all was the first song, perhaps the great production masterpiece of Carmen’s entire career: “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record),” a thunderous five-minute extravaganza packed with piano, guitar, all-stops-out lead vocals by Carmen--and one hell of a lot of heart. It shows the struggle to get a creative product out there for fans to appreciate (“Well the program director don’t pull it/Then it’s bound to get back the bullet”), climaxing in the magical moment when the song-within-a-song issues from a transistor radio.

That LP has been consigned to history in the CD era, but I played it so often I can hear it still, as much as I can the heartbeat of my youth.

In my head I hear
The record play, hear it play…