EPISODE THE FIFTH
One of the preliminaries for tonight's installment
of the
BurnsThang was a warning that some material might
not be suitable for younger viewers.
Upon seeing this I'm thinking, "What the hell? Are
we gonna see for the first time ever footage of
Louis Armstrong in a compromising position with a
wildebeest?" No. After the full hour and a half, the
only thing I could possibly see as justification for
the warning were statements that Billie Holliday
was a prostitute at age 11 and that later in life she
sought both male and female companionship. Jesus H.
Monk on a stick how fucking lame to have to warn the
rubes to protect the brats from something that should
be rubbed in their overprotected, mollycoddled faces!
The real obscenity, of course, is the social and
political situation in Baltimore at the time
that led an 11 year old girl to having to choose to
sell her body to survive.
The screaming subtext of the entire series
is the ugly racism that has permeated the entirety
of jazz history until a distressingly recent time.
The most obvious example is Louis Armstrong, who
had to cede at least 50% of his income for practically
his entire career to a series of rapacious, ugly,
exploitative and criminal shitbags just to be able to
play his music in front of more than the 10-15% of
people in this country who were black.
While he never took an ounce of shit in his entire
career while on stage, he had to eat tons of it
when off, a fact that shouldn't be glossed over
especially seeing how he lived in a country that never
has and never will tire of patting itself on the back
for being the "last best hope of mankind."
While one has to admire the restraint of this musical
god for not using his bare hands to rip the heads off
the parasites (a feat I'll bet he was more than
capable of accomplishing ), one also has to recognize
the context in which he was not much more than a slave
more than half a century after the slaves were
ostensibly freed by Mr. Lincoln.
I'm reminded of about the only episode of the
"Jeffersons" that remains sharp in my mind's eye.
A relative of Louise who'd been a butler all his
life was visiting the Jefferson household, and all
George could do the entire time was mercilessly
bait him about what an Uncle Tom he'd been his entire
life. Her relative - an enormous man - eventually
had enough of this, grabbed George by the lapels,
easily lifted him off the floor, and proceeded to
lecture him about how if "Toms" like him hadn't done
what they'd done then punks like George - five of whom
the butler could eat for breakfast - would never have
gained the chance they did to move "on up to the east
side."
Armstrong knew the situation and realized he had to
eat a lot of shit - from people not fit to lick
syphilitic weasel shit off his shoes - in order to both do what he wanted
to do and to make things better for future generations,
but that doesn't excuse the fact that he had no other
choice but to do this
in the "land of the free and the home of the brave."
The most telling Armstrong anecdote I can remember
took place in the early 60s when Louis - long past a
premature prime ushered in before its time by those
exploiting him to the tune of probably one or more
shows a day for 40 years - saw one of the many scenes
on TV wherein some racist shitbag southern apparatchik
had summoned the tanks to thuggishly prevent blacks from doing something all the other paler citizens of
God's chosen country were free to do every day.
Louis - in tears - said, "Look what they're doing to
my children!" and refused to play the next show in
front of an undoubtedly nearly all-white audience
that most likely considered him nothing more than
an amusing Stepin Fetchit who'd at least temporarily
qualm their "fears of a black planet."
And what do I see nearly a century and a half after
Lincoln and 30 years after the death of Armstrong? Some racist turdsack about to become the
attorney general of the USofA.
posted by Steven Baum
1/17/2001 11:48:41 PM |
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