Where Can We Find American Culture: The Super Bowl or the Streets of Bakersfield?

Hey, you don't know me, but you don't like me,
Say you care less how I feel.
But how many of you that sit and judged me
Ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

The Streets of Bakersfield

Homer Joy

Sung by Buck Owens

Kendrick Lamar performed at the Super Bowl last night, spewing rap lyrics I couldn't understand. Kendrick's performance was backed by a platoon of well-choreographed dancers--as disciplined as a Russian military unit.

What did Lamar's Super Bowl presentation mean, if anything?

Jon Caramonica, writing for the New York Times, treated Lamar's presentation as if it were as important as a Nobel Prize-winning novel, writing:

But what will always be remembered from this performance is not the musical choices Lamar made, or the aesthetics of his choreography, or the silhouettes of his outfit. What will remain is his grin when he finally begins rapping that song. It was wide, persistent, almost cartoonish in shape. 

The grin of a man having the time of his life at the expense of an enemy.

Caramonica clued me into the meaning of some of Lamar's lyrics; he was cryptically taunting another rapper! Gee, I'm glad I wasted a few minutes of my life watching that drivel.

Was Kendrick Lamar's performance a cultural event? Were there elements of his lyrics and the backup dancers' gyrations that were expressions of American culture? I don't think so.

I know what you're probably thinking. Who cares what some old Mississippi wheezer thinks about rap music? How could a retrograde fossil who lives on a gravel road in the goddamn middle of nowhere understand the profound meaning of Kendrick Lamar's lyrics?

If that's what you're thinking, it's a fair point. People living in Flyover Country have been left behind as mainstream American culture grows more youth-oriented, cynical, urbane, and dismissive of anything that happened last week.

Nevertheless, there are neglected currents of American culture that will endure long after Kendrick Lamar's music and his feud with another rapper are forgotten.

For example, most Americans are unaware of the Okie refugees who fled the Dust Bowl in the 1930s and settled in California. These people brought a music tradition that blossomed in the Bakersfield region. 

Merle Haggard was the son of Okies; his parents were from Checota, Oklahoma. He became the greatest singer and composer of country music to ever live--greater than Jimmie Rodgers or Hank Williams.

Buck Owens was born in Sherman, Texas, during the Great Depression and eventually moved to Bakersfield, where he and Haggard created what became known as the Bakersfield Sound.

Other Dust Bowl refugees contributed to the Bakersfield Sound: Tommy Collins, Wynn Stewart, and the great Wanda Jackson--the Queen of Rockabilly.

Americans enthralled by rap music have probably never heard of the Bakersfield Sound and may despise the people who listen to it as just a bunch of hicks from Flyover Country.

Nevertheless, 50 or 100 years from now, Americans will be listening to the Bakersfield Sound when Kendrick Lamar is just a footnote in the obscure history of rap.

"You don't know me, but you don't like me."
Image credit: WPA

 

U.S. colleges are in big financial trouble, and it's their own damn fault

I doubt that many college presidents listen to country music, but perhaps they should.

Country music is full of lyrics about people getting in trouble because they made poor decisions. In Mama Tried, Merle Haggard admits he wouldn't be in jail if he had listened to his mother. And of course, there are hundreds of country songs about guys who lost their marriages because they hung out in honky-tonks with loose women.

American colleges and universities, like country-music singers, have made spectacular mistakes. But unlike the hillbilly bards, college leaders won't admit it.  They just raise tuition and go on wild building sprees. Now they can't pay their bills.

As Jon Marcus wrote for The Hechinger Report, higher education's bad choices left it dangerously vulnerable when the coronavirus pandemic became its black swan.  What did the universities do wrong?

First of all, colleges continued hiring faculty even though they were attracting fewer students. As Marcus pointed out, overall enrollment in American colleges and universities shrank by 12 percent since the last recession (2008-2009), while higher education increased the number of employees by five percent.

In particular, many colleges didn't decrease staffing levels for programs that were in decline. Fewer and fewer students choose education or liberal arts as their major. Still, many institutions did not reduce staff or eliminated majors even though the professors had fewer students to teach.

Second, Marcus correctly noted that the trustees at many universities abdicated their leadership role to be "boosters, cheerleaders, and donors."  Many college boards paid their presidents lavish salaries with overly generous benefits, bonuses, and hefty retirement packages.  For example, Penn State University and Michigan State paid departing presidents millions of dollars in golden-parachute money after they left their positions in the wake of explosive sexual-abuse scandals.

Rather than trimming their financial costs or operating more efficiently, most colleges responded to rising costs by raising tuition, forcing students to take out larger and larger student loans. As students reacted to sticker shock, the colleges switched tactics by offering huge tuition discounts of 50 percent or more to lure students into enrolling.  That didn't work out well for most higher education institutions.  Their tuition discounts didn't reverse their financial woes, and revenues continued to drop.

Now the coronavirus has become an expensive problem for colleges and universities. Many of them will close. But they can't blame COVID-19 for their misfortune. A lot of colleges were "dead men walking" even before the pandemic showed up as a black swan event.

Let's kick California off the island: When bad things happen to a good state

You don't know me but you don't like me,

You say you care less how I feel

How many of you that sit and judge me

Ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

Streets of Bakersfield

Sung by Buck Owens

I love California, which I've visited many times. Napa Valley is lovely and produces terrific wines. The landscape around Santa Barbara is the most beautiful in the world, surpassing Tuscany and the Li Valley in southwestern China, in my opinion.

Unlike (I suspect) California's politicians, I appreciate the great literature of California. I've read Frank Norris' The Octopus, Nathanael West's Day of the Locust, some of Joan Didion's essays, Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, and many of the works of Jack London and John Steinbeck. I love T.C. Boyles' California novels, particularly The Tortilla Curtain and Budding Prospects.

And Californians are great people. Although I haven't met them all, I've never met a Californian I didn't like. (I might not like Charlie Manson or HarveyWeinstein, but we don't run in the same circles.)

But let's face it. The Californians insist on sending wingnuts to Congress, and these nut jobs are ruining the country.  I'm talking Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters, etc., etc.  It's got to stop.

So let's vote California off the island. I realize a state can't secede from the Union, but with a constitutional amendment, we can surely vote to kick a state out of the club.

Who could oppose such a move? Texas? North Dakota? Hell, the Californians would jump at the chance to have their own nation.

If California was a country it could do whatever it damn likes. It could have open borders, free sex-change operations for illegal immigrants, and no-charge facelifts. It could require corporations to put convicted rapists on their governing boards and make it a criminal offense for Christians to go to college. The People's Republic of California could give citizens the constitutional right to crap on the sidewalks instead of restricting that privilege to San Francisco.  What's not to like?

Of course, my proposal has some limitations. First of all, the town of Bakersfield--home of Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and the Bakersfield sound--would continue to be part of America.  And the Ronald Reagan Library.  That goes without saying.

And America would keep the military bases and Disney Land.  But Hollywood would be happier if California were a separate nation, and Americans are tired of Hollywood movies anyway.

Think about it. Kicking California out of the USA would solve a lot of problems, and I can think of no downsides. And if Americans get nostalgic about the old California, they can watch classic movies: Vertigo, The Big Lebowski, and The Maltese Falcon.

The Dude abides, man.