I’ll give you a topic. Most security experts severely underestimate the existential threat posed by Michael Bublé: agree, disagree, or talk about something else.
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by DougJ| 49 Comments
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flukebucket
I read over at TPM that Herman Cain got the Neal Boortz gig now that Neal has decided to go Galt later this year. So, I guess Herman wound up with what he really wanted all along.
The Red Pen
Can I just say this is my first time on television?
Steeplejack
C’mon, Bublé is not that bad. On a scale with Kenny G at 10, Bublé’s barely a 3.
ETA: Plus he did a funny Top 10 list on Letterman.
Corner Stone
I’ve never actually been to one, but a friend of mine tells me a Buble concert is always jam packed full of women.
jibeaux
@Steeplejack: I agree. Not really my style, but I’d rather listen to it twice than the classic rock they play at my community pool all summer, every summer. When I was a kid and went to the pool I didn’t have to listen to the Andrews sisters so I don’t really know why my kids have to be subjected to Jefferson Airplane while they’re on vacation.
Raven
@jibeaux: because we are forces of chaos and anarchy, everything they say we are, we are, and we are very proud of oursleves. . .
dww44
Per a bulletin from the AJC a bit ago, Neil Boortz to retire after 40 plus years in the Atlanta talk radio market. And, his replacement? None other than Herman Cain.
I’ve a cousin who’s gonna be awfully distraught as she listens to Boortz everyday. Personally, I view this as a positive step, if ony for the distinct possibility that the humor quotient should increase exponentially.
danimal
@Corner Stone: My girlfriend is a fan; I took her to a Buble concert a couple of years ago. I definitely observed that, yes, the male/female ratio is, um, advantageous for a straight, single male. I found it interesting that he was pretty determined to establish that he isn’t teh gay, fwiw.
It wasn’t the worst musical experience I’ve ever had. Not an existential threat, just a saccharine-filled event with occasional earworms digging in.
ThresherK
I’d rather listen to Michael Feinstein. Buble’s voice is stronger but for me he doesn’t sell the song’s emotional content, and if you’re crooning, if you’re nodding in the direction of Sinatra or R and (either) H, that’s job one.
And that pop single “I just haven’t met you yet” is really something underbaked. If I didn’t know any better, I’d suggest he was in league with Dianne (The Antichrist) Warren.
reflectionephemeral
@Steeplejack:
That’s true as far as art crimes goes, but in terms of the sheer uselessness and irritation of the noises he emits, Buble is right there with Kenny G.
Here’s Pat Metheny on Kenny G. The whole thing is great; here’s one excerpt:
jc
More from Greenwald about the U.S. bombing funerals.
I ask this – what’s a way to denounce these type of un-American acts – or at least un-american in the sense of betraying American ideals – while at the same time, supporting Obama for President, since the other side is much, much, much, worse?
Linda Featheringill
@ThresherK:
“I just haven’t met you yet” is, in my opinion, a really dumb song.
But Buble has done some good songs and he isn’t totally awful.
Amir Khalid
I don’t consider Michael Bublé a security threat. He has never even said anything mean to me. On the other hand, there’s something about the look in Josh Groban’s eyes that makes me uneasy.
@flukebucket:
The name Neil Boortz is not familiar to me. If he’s going to be replaced by Mr. 9-9-9, does that mean he does comedy on his radio show?
Amanda in the South Bay
Without resorting to Google, I have no idea who Michael Bubble is. Should I?
chrismealy
I saw Buble on SNL. He sang every note so far behind the beat I thought he was just goofing on the audience. Is that really his thing?
Martin
I’ve never heard of Buble. I’m sure I’ve heard at least one of his songs, but I generally can’t put names to anything in that genre. I listen to plenty of music that I admittedly would describe as shit, but its at least shit that connects with me and has something of an edge to it, as opposed to shit that just sounds like it went though the washing machine 9 times and is soft and sloppy on the outside, but still retains it’s core shit component.
Not being critical. After all, if not for shitty music, the music industry would be about the size of the PGA and there’d be damn little new to listen to.
Gin & Tonic
@reflectionephemeral: You beat me to posting that, one of the greatest takedowns in music criticism ever. NB, I’ve loved Metheny ever since I encountered him with Gary Burton when he (Metheny) was an undergrad at Berklee.
MattF
So, when is this going to lead to people saying nasty things about Celine Dion? I’m waiting and I don’t have all day.
ThresherK
@Linda Featheringill: Okay, let’s take Kenny G. I’ll admit that if there’s a great Kenny G recording which is better than all his stuff I hear on the radio, I don’t know that it exists.
As far as original material, I mentioned that single because (except for the Xmas season) it lets us into what Michael Buble would do with a piece that doesn’t have the good vibes built into it. And I guess that he must have some say in the process of material and production choices at this point in his career.
When I have a go at “Ten Cents a Dance” or “If I Loved You”, I’m not doing anything special; I’m depending on anyone in earshot enjoying me reminding them of someone better doing it beforehand. (Tangent: If you find someone who doesn’t know Rodgers and Hart, and gets a bit wowed when you sing it, marry that person.)
(But, yes, at least Buble isn’t singing with “someone’s dead daddy”, as mentioned by the Pat Metheny thing of Kenny G over Satchmo.
Amir Khalid
@MattF:
I hate, hate, hate that scrawny harpy’s horrible song from Titanic. It is a particularly bad example of the musical genre I hate most: power ballads shouted at you by mediocre but somehow wildly successful singers. I especially hate that line “My heart will go on and on“, which does not mean what the lyricist thinks it means.
Will that do?
Brachiator
@jc:
There is nothing that prevents you from denouncing these actions as loudly as you wish, or from voting for liberal candidates who might nudge the president towards a position you find more reasonable.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: Thanks. Back to work.
flukebucket
@Amir Khalid:
Neal is a Republican who likes to call himself a libertarian. Personally I am glad he is leaving the talk radio market. I don’t know if Cain will be any better but at least maybe from time to time he will break into song.
sharl
Michael Bublé sings about Russian Unicorns; that’s all I know.
@Amir Khalid: Neal Boortz is a racist wingnut of (mostly) a libertarianish flavor. My dad loves him, or at least did – we don’t discuss him ever since I brought up the fact that he once was a speechwriter for Lester Maddox, a fact he conveniently omitted from the bio on his own site (I haven’t checked lately, though). In any case, dad likes him for the book he co-authored in support of the flat tax concept.
Boortz said some horrible (but typical) racist sh*t when the Katrina floods hit NOLA. And in general, if you search his name at MMfA, you’ll find more of his uglier stuff (example).
Martin
@jc: Not just the other side, but the alternative for any side. Here’s pretty much the options:
1) Attack your enemy with conventional forces
2) Attack your enemy with drones
3) Don’t attack your enemy
The challenge with drones is that they allow you to bridge 1 and 3. The question we need to ask is “Would we stay in Afghanistan longer with conventional forces in order to engage these militants if we didn’t have drones?” That is, would we extend 1) longer if not for 2)? Or, if drones weren’t available, would we go straight to 3)?
That’s a hard question to answer. In the case of sticking with a conventional effort, I argue that the drones are a net positive. It’s easy to read GGs piece and be outraged about the loss of innocent lives due to drone strikes, but only because we’ve become so accustomed to collateral damage in conventional warfare that we don’t account for it any longer. It’s a bit like being outraged over how many young people die in school shootings when the number who are killed in car accidents is thousands of times higher – and we completely discount those deaths, and both are avoidable. The best case for drones was probably Libya, where drones were targeting tanks and other indisputable targets, but that was also a case where the diplomatic situation was much more straightforward.
Pakistan is simply a disaster, not because of the drone strikes but because of Pakistans willingness to either harbor (as with OBL) or turn a blind eye toward these elements. And in that way Pakistan is something of a unique problem in our history. Any time in the past, we’d have had to declare a government like Pakistan as hostile, invaded or engaged in large-scale bombing, and so on. Terrorism is designed to route around that problem by taking military actions that historically were only possible by nation-states and executing them by non-state actors. That presents a unique problem for nations like the US that ONLY have mechanism to operate against nation states – which is why the ‘declaration of war’ issue has remained part of the debate. The effectiveness of terrorism also allows governments like Pakistan to claim absolution from those acts – either they lack the means to deal with the problem, or they simply deny the existence of the problem (as they did with OBL). That’s a serious diplomatic problem. Drones are the solution that’s been forced into the mix by basically being the nation-state counter to terrorism – the ability to act across borders with precision, and in a sense bypass the diplomatic problem. That’s what terrorism does.
So back to the original question, if we take the drones away, do we head toward 1) which would result in vastly more collateral damage than drones, or do we head toward 3) which doesn’t, but may open up more serious problem later. There’s really no dispute among experts that Obama has been very effective with the drone program. OBL is dead. A great deal of the al-Qaeda operation is dead. That’s come with lots of collateral damage, but the whole point of invading Afghanistan was to that very thing, and that came with VASTLY more collateral damage.
Way back during the occupy movement (probably during the Oakland disaster), Maddow had a very smart segment on non-lethal weaponry. She pointed out that the entire argument for non-lethal weaponry was that it would be used in lieu of lethal weaponry – that teargas and stun grenades wouldn’t kill people in situations when guns would normally be used. But that’s not how non-lethal weaponry is typically used. It’s typically used in situations where you’d never use firearms – like crowd control (well, usually never, though Kent St. situations prove that’s not always true). So in the spectrum above, where stun grenades occupy the 2) slot, they were always being used in situations that historically would have reverted to 3) – using no weaponry, rather than 1) using firearms. The risk with drones is that they’ll go down the same path. I know this is part of Cole’s concern, and rightfully so. But just because that’s the concern doesn’t mean that it reflects the current situation. So, if drones didn’t exist, what would Afpak look like today? More US involvement with tanks and soldiers, or less?
PurpleGirl
I saw Snow White and the Huntsman last night. It’s a decent retelling and envisioning of the story. Lots of fighting, lots of weird, magical type actions. Definitely not a Disney version, much more dark. Not having seen any of Kristen Stewart’s other movies, I can’t compare her performance but she sold me that she was Snow White. No comment as to her beauty quotient compared to Charlize Theron… I think they are both good lookers but they are different and ymmv. Guy who played the Huntsman is eye candy. Ian McShane is a good dwarf. Not sure I would go to the theater for a second viewing but it was worth a first viewing on the big screen. (And the theater I went to has big screens. ETA: I can now pay a senior’s price of $9.50, which helps.)
Phil P.
I have no idea who Michael Bublé is and (perhaps as a result) I initially misread the question in the OP as being about Michael Bérubé. I think it would have been much more fun if it was.
Corner Stone
@Martin:
I did my best to chew through this entire contorted exegesis, but I just had to stop.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
As far as I can see, Pakistan has two interlocking problems that make them especially difficult to deal with. One is that their civilian government is especially precarious because ISI basically acts as an independent force in their politics; their elected officials have very limited ability to control things because they’re under constant threat of a coup. The other is that the tribal areas in Pakistan are outside the effective control of the Pakistani government. They can try to bribe and bully the tribal leaders, but they don’t have enough power to step in and replace them with a modern national government.
The net result is a diplomatic no-man’s-land. The Pakistani government can’t exert enough control there to keep the tribal leaders in line, but we can’t send our forces in because that would be an invasion. We can’t even talk about the situation there too clearly because it would embarrass Pakistan’s civilian leadership and invite a coup. Drones have turned out to thread the needle between those unpleasant alternatives. What we really need to do is to figure out some way of neutering ISI, but there’s no obvious way of doing it that doesn’t put the civilian leadership in an even worse short-term position than they’re already in.
Martin
@Corner Stone: Criticism works better when you don’t think everything everyone has to say is complete shit.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
If listening to an hour of Buble a day would make our politics as rational and sane as Canada’s, I would gladly make the sacrifice. Not sure whether that makes him a security threat or not.
Corner Stone
@Martin: If you’d stop writing non sequiturs like the one from you I quoted then maybe there would be less criticism.
Oh, and that’s even if I granted that “experts” do not dispute the effectiveness of the drone program. Which I do not.
There are a number of leaps of faith in logic I had to reread a few times.
burnspbesq
@reflectionephemeral:
I know a number of jazz purists who think Pat Metheny is the Antichrist.
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq: But was he wrong about Kenny G?
burnspbesq
@Gin & Tonic:
No.
And you’ll note that I didn’t say I agree with those who think Metheny is the Antichrist.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: Metheny was a professional asshole. He was also one helluva drummer. Even those who despised him bent over backwards to work with him. I think for a time that was the fashion in jazz circles: the more of a dick you were, the more genius you were perceived as being. To wit: Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk.
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq: Duly noted.
“Jazz purist,” to me, carries unfortunate connotations of a Marsalis-like “I am the one and only true way” or, worse, something like Preservation Hall.
nastybrutishntall
Is this Mike Booblay on “the radio”? Because I wonder how a person should have ever heard him. All my radio comes out of tubes and the dial is tuned to “playing the good shit.” Which I get by listening to radio DJs who “know the good shit” and play their stuff on “the internet” and following them down the rabbit hole and its attendant hyperlinks. also GorillavsBear, all that h____er shit everyone hates because they are told to, etc. I’m 38 and I recognize that most musical offerings dished up by the 1% media are earpoison so are worth ignoring, pretty analogous to the Hollywood neighborhood and its peculiar tastes are to the eyes. Not exclusively, but its a handy rule. Also, if it’s something people deride as being “pretentious” and “hipster” then it’s probably worth listening to. YMMV.
Gin & Tonic
@Yutsano: Don’t know whom you are confusing him with, but Pat Metheny is a guitarist and composer/arranger, and to my knowledge never played drums.
Ben Cisco
@reflectionephemeral: Holy crap, THAT was a takedown. Death by a thousand cuts, indeed.
Gin & Tonic
@Yutsano: And, by the bye, are you suggesting that Miles and Monk were not musical geniuses? Miles may have been demanding and difficult, but he found and nurtured supremely talented musicians over generations, and completely redefined the jazz idiom at least four or five times over his career. I think whether or not he was a dick to work with was completely independent of that.
Yutsano
@Gin & Tonic: Nope. In fact that was my point. They were both jerks and amazing musicians. And I must be mixing people in my brain re: Metheny, maybe because I know a famous drummer recently died. I blame the pain meds. :)
Metrosexual Black AbeJ
@nastybrutishntall:
I flip through all the dials when I drive and sometimes something stands out as more awful than what I was ready for. Buble, Nickelback, etc.
nastybrutishntall
@Martin: (golf clap. satisfied nodding.) I’m going to cut and paste this to my Cogent Argument Clipboard for throwing on the BO=GB threadfires.
nastybrutishntall
@Metrosexual Black AbeJ: Nickleback still extant? wow. the world gets worser every day. If I’m on radio I entertain myself with trying to figure out what the trigger will be for the flavor Four On The Floor Maximum Compression with Extra Autotune Sauce to cue the cultural gag reflex for the rhinestone t-shirt demo. How many more white noise & snare crescendos will it take before they start hurling Rockstar onto their own laps? It’s tricky math.
That said, I’m a sucker for dance. I just wish the pop radio was a lil less Eurovision 2000 and a lil more Berlin 3000 (or Andre 3000 for that matter. couldn’t hurt).
dj spellchecka
@reflectionephemeral:
and don’t forget richard thomspon’s “i agree with pat metheny”
http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum10/HTML/202450.html
dj spellchecka
“Most security experts severely underestimate the existential threat posed by Michael Bublé”
well, his christmas album did keep the far more deserving “21” by adele out of the #1 spot on the billboard albums charts during december
Jebediah
@reflectionephemeral:
I had seen short excerpts before but never read the whole thing. I loved it, despite knowing fuck all about jazz – but when I got to the very end, there was a Mitt Romney ad. I feel like that fucker just wants to ruin my enjoyment of every possible thing.
Martin
@Corner Stone:
You don’t think the drone program was instrumental in surveillance on the suspected location of OBL? The administration has admitted that drones were part of the operation, and suggested that drones would have been used as part of a targeted strike had they chosen to go that route. Missile strikes are the minority of what they do with the drone program. It’s perfectly appropriate to bundle OBL in with the success (or failure) of the drone program. We also know that some of the drone strikes were believed to have been targeting OBL (who obviously either wasn’t there, or wasn’t injured in the strike).