May 5, 2014

What's wrong with "Meet the Press" is "The Problem (Ray and I Will Be Fixing This Morning)."

Emails the Crack Emcee, alerting us to the new episode of Uncle Ray's "Psychedelic Soul" — [listen live]—  and linking to this Slate piece by David Weigel called "Will.i.am is Not What’s Wrong With Meet the Press."

On the radio show, they're counting down Ray's top albums, and we're starting with #38 N.W.A., "Straight Outta Compton," so language alert (I guess!). You can see the list by scrolling way down here, so Bob Marley, Van Halen, Stevie Wonder, U2, and Jimi Hendrix will be up soon enough.

As for "Meet the Press," somehow I didn't get to it yesterday, but Will.i.am was on. I had it on my DVR along with the other Sunday shows, but this week I watched "Fox News Sunday" and quit. Had to go sit on a rock amidst the trout lilies and consider what Jesus said about soul.

("Lynch mob... macabre..." That was a good rhyme.)

The Jesus quotes with "soul" are:

1. "And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell."

2. "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”"

3. (Asked by the Pharisees "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”): “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” (Note the implication of 3 aspects of a person: heart, soul, and mind.)

4. At Gethsem′ane, to 3 disciples: “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” (This is right before the prayer: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.”)

5. The Parable of the Rich Fool: "The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully; and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns, and build larger ones; and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
Whether any of that is the kind of soul Uncle Ray has in mind with "Psychedelic Soul" is just another riddle to contemplate along with how Ray and Crack are solving "the problem" and what "the problem" is.

UPDATE 1: "A touch of rain and sunshine made the flower grow/Into the lovely smile that's blooming…" They're up to Stevie Wonder. Solving the riddle, Crack demonstrates the kind of analysis he could bring to "Meet the Press" that Will.i.am did not bring. A propos of Rick Perry's qualifications for the presidency, Crack manages to say "Niggerhead" about 10 times.

UPDATE 2: Ray regrets putting "Unforgettable Fire" high on his list, and Crack ferrets out the Ray has had some personal connections to the band (U2), causing him to rank it more highly than it deserves, considering off-key singing and that time Bono wore a cape. Crack tells us he feels that way about INXS, but doesn't disclose the details of his personal relationship with Michael Hutchence. At least Crack got out of it alive. When Ray apologizes to anyone who might be offended by his disparagement about U2, Crack says: "You can do anything you want with U2. Nobody's going to be offended." The U2 song that gets played is that one about Martin Luther King, Jr., and let the record show that Crack laughed contemptuously.

UPDATE #3: They're up to #27, Velvet Underground's "Loaded," an album I've played many times, and the chosen track is "Who Loves the Sun," and Meade thinks that he's hearing George Harrison and I listen to it in that light and it makes sense. There's "Here Comes the Sun," by George Harrison. George Harrison is not on Ray's Top 100 list (though The Beatles come in at #11 with "Rubber Soul," the Beatles album with "soul" in the title).

After "Loaded" comes Nat King Cole "The After Midnight Sessions," with the track "Caravan," and Uncle Ray, setting it up before naming it, says it's the artist's "album for white people." And Crack, not unpredictably, says "What album made in America is not made for white people?" And Uncle Ray says "Straight Outta Compton."

UPDATE #4: Ray tells us Crack is wearing a T-shirt that says "Let it burn," which leads to a discussion of how kids toasting marshmallows are always admonished to just burnish them nicely brown, but the kids always want to burn them, and Crack explains that's because marshmallows are the only thing they let you burn. Then he notes that they are talking about marshmallow, and how could that be a solution to the "Meet the Press" problem rather than more of the same problem. "We could be talking about race," he says, then declares: "BURNING MARSHMALLOWS ARE RACIAL."

21 comments:

madAsHell said...

Mr. Weigel concludes...

All I'm saying is: Lay off Will.i.am. He's not the problem here. What you want is longer and more probing interviews with more seemingly-boring people.

Probing interviews with more seemingly-boring people??

What?

wendybar said...

David Gregory is the problem with Meet the Press. He is a liberal flack that gives extremely softball questions to the administration, and attacks anybody else. I have nothing against Will I Am...but really...on Foreign policy?? Why not ask Taylor Swift to come on next week to talk Benghazi???

Quaestor said...

What you want is longer and more probing interviews with more seemingly-boring people.

As opposed to genuinely boring people like Will.i.am.

Nonapod said...

Ah Sunday morning! When you can listen to tedious partisan blather on the political shows, or tedious pontification in church, or sleep in. Guess which choice I pick.

To be fair, at this point I'd probably rather watch an interview with Will.i.am than someone like John Kerry. I suspect Will.i.am is more likely to be honest.

Gahrie said...

Why the constant facination with the ignorant racist?

cubanbob said...

Whats wrong with MTP is the underlying predicate of the questions.

Mountain Maven said...

I am not sure what you are getting at conflating "soul music" to Jesus' talking about our eternal souls. There is nothing in common other than the music originating from gospel music in the church. You might as well compare will.i.am, crack and uncle ray's music to the sole on your shoe or the sole at the fish market. Soul music used to be fun to listen to. Jesus' words are forever.

Danno said...

You are wasting your time watching any of these lamestream media shows on political topics. Not only do they totally slant left including the moderators, their so-called representatives of the right are always the lamest, tamest defenders of conservatism.

chickelit said...

I gave it brief listen -- just until Crack trotted out that tired old canard about Rick Perry's ranch in an attempt to smear him. Even Althouse saw through that one a long while ago: link.

David said...

Ray and I . . . .

At first I though you were referring to Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding (the comedy team Bob and Ray.) I looked them up to see that Bob is still alive at age 91. Ray died 24 years ago. They were very funny when light silly parody was in vogue.

They actually had one musical hit single record. It was "I'd Like to be a Cow in Switzerland" and it hit the charts in 1949. Perhaps Crack could play it one day on the show.

Ann Althouse said...

"I am not sure what you are getting at conflating "soul music" to Jesus' talking about our eternal souls. There is nothing in common other than the music originating from gospel music in the church. You might as well compare will.i.am, crack and uncle ray's music to the sole on your shoe or the sole at the fish market. Soul music used to be fun to listen to. Jesus' words are forever."

Why do you assume that the title of the radio show refers to "soul music"? There's plainly a wide range of music, not just soul music, so I think you should rethink the use of language here.

Challenge yourself: It's fun. And it's forever.

Ann Althouse said...

Also, you can get into so much trouble using absolutes like "nothing." You've got almost no chance of being right.

Roughcoat said...

What an odd, labored post this is. Doesn't tie together at all. I know Althouse is trying to make a point and I think I know what that point might be. But it seems to me that she's not successful in making it. Maybe she just wants to poke at her readers with a sharpened pencil or some such. Being an irritant. Teasing.

Well, good luck with that.

Roughcoat said...

Challenge yourself: It's fun. And it's forever.

O, yes ma'am, will do, forthwith. I like to have fun. And after that I'm gonna get some craft paper and crayons and make a pirate hat. Argh.

Richard Dolan said...

"The Jesus quotes with 'soul' are:
..."

It would be interesting to know whether the NT's Greek original used the same word for 'soul' in those five attributions. Given the way the NT was written and redacted, it is impossible to know whether whatever word(s) Jesus may have used in Aramaic matched what was later written by the evangelists in Greek.

Ann Althouse said...

Somewhere in the house I have a book that sorts out all the quotes from Jesus and assigns them a likelihood score, based on what a lot of scholars think.

It's interesting to see how the different familiar sayings rank.

I assume all the quotes are paraphrases, since they were committed to writing much later. Maybe the very short ones are word for word. That's quite aside from all of it being paraphrase since all we have is translation from the original spoken language. Whether any of it was ever written in Aramaic is (as I understand it) in question.

Richard Dolan said...

"... a book that sorts out all the quotes from Jesus ..."

If you are referring to the various publications of The Jesus Seminar, I have them too (The Five Gospels, The Acts of Jesus, etc.). But I don't have much confidence in them or their methods. John P. Meier's three-volume work, A Marginal Jew, goes through the sayings one by one, but mostly in an effort to determine (as best one can) basic historicity, not word choice or anything as granular as that. There are many others that go into the sayings and actions attributed to Jesus in depth -- Geza Vermes, Raymond Brown, Paula Fredriksen, Dominic Crosson, all the Q Source writers, and on and on. Of course, they don't agree -- the reality is that it's all highly speculative.

Except for a few sayings (the basics of the Our Father prayer or the eucharistic invocation, for instance, or the idea of addressing God as "Abba"), I don't think anyone takes the NT narrative as reproducing anything approaching quotations. If they did, they would have lots of difficulty in harmonizing the different treatments across the gospels.

Kirk Parker said...

Is there anything whiter than the ordinary marshmallow? I find the symbolism of burning them ... ... ... disturbing.

Kirk Parker said...

"Somewhere in the house I have a book..."

Oh, dear, not the preposterous Jesus Project thing?

Bayoneteer said...

Interviewing politicians has got to be a tuff task to make entertaining or informative. Most just stick to the pre-approved talking points whatever the issue is. The only way to get anything from them is to go at 'em hard and hope for an emotional outburst or a confused gaff. The larger point is that these kinda shows are obsolete in these days of internet and cable news going 24/7.

Mountain Maven said...

"Why do you assume that the title of the radio show refers to "soul music"?"

I couldn't get the links to work and assumed from all the names, posts and will.i.am being a rapper/R&B guy that it was "soul music."