Sea Street

BLACK, WHITE AND GRAY AND THE GOLDEN ASS CAFE....OBAMA'S DILEMMA

                                BLACK, WHITE AND GRAY
AND THE GOLDEN ASS CAFÉ ...........OBAMA'S DILEMMA
Part 1 of 5 or 6?

A Prairie Home Companion was on PBS; Garrison Keillor was introducing Arlo Guthrie. I've never been into that sort of folk music thing but as I listened, I realized what a pro Arlo had become; his voice was strong and he had a great band. Of course, he did a tribute to his dad and that got my attention. Woody Guthrie had sung at the Golden Ass Café, the coffeehouse I owned with Glenn Bye in San Pedro, California. The name was from a story by Demosthenes but the cops didn't know from Demosthenes, they were always trying to bust us.

This was in the early sixties and everyone came by-Woody and Kerouac, Hunter Thompson, even Allen Ginsberg. Allen was there on a Friday night-Jazz Night-a night of "Nights in Tunisia" and many other hits of the day. I sang "Little Girl Blue" and played "The Preacher" on the trumpet along with "Bags Groove" in G Minor, my favorite trumpet key. There was poetry and readings with or without accompaniment. Kerouac and Thompson took turns reading and sleeping with Jack's wife. Sex was "in" like a great surf wave washing over everyone and everything and yet I couldn't seem to get laid, not until Alona came along. I'm using her real name because she passed away three years ago. By that time in her life, she had had many lovers-some of them famous-famous in Israel at least; but I got in at the beginning, she was only twenty-three and a great beauty. I loved her terribly.

But I'm getting away from my point. The point is that the Golden Ass Café was a Populist Liberal hangout-Wednesday and Saturday were Folk Nights. Glenn and I called the Wednesday and Saturday night crowd "The Heartland Crowd". Our "In-House" Folk Singer was Alta King, a gifted beauty in her early forties. I say that now because at the time I thought she was an old woman. She had three daughters and I ended up with one of them after Alona and I called it quits-it took Alona three years to realize I wasn't going to be rich and famous. "I can't wait for you to succeed," she said.
But I'm off track again. The point I wanted to make is that all of the habitués of The Golden Ass Café were middle-of-the-road liberals-they would have been Obama people; but all they had was Hubert Humphry-especially the Friday night crowd. Glenn and I called it the "Diverse Crowd" long before the word "diverse" took on social and political connotations.

Where am I going with this? I am going to suggest that in its own way, the Golden Ass Café was a metaphor for America. Of course, to be a true metaphor, the Golden Ass Café would have needed a Country and Western Night. The closest I came to Country and Western in the sixties was in 1968 when I played trumpet for Ike and Tina Turner. It seems that one night the Turner Show was on the bus heading for The Palomino Club in the San Fernando Valley.

"Has anyone ever been to The Palomino Club?" Ike asked.

Well, in truth I had driven by it. It had a large sign in front, which boasted a Palomino horse's head. When I told Ike this he said, "Manny" has fucked up again."

"Manny" was Ike's agent-The Palomino Club was Country and Western front to back and at the end of the first show when the band and Tina and the Ikettes emerged from the bathrooms, we all came out to face a phalanx of rednecks standing with their arms crossed on their chest presumably blocking our way to any of their women or any of their tables.

As I said before I wasn't into folk music and I said to Glenn, "What do we need with that crowd? They're not that bright and they're all white."

The Friday Crowd (Jazz Crowd) was made up of whites and blacks and grays (slang, at that time, for anyone who wasn't white and wasn't black).

Glenn took issue with me, he said, "The White Crowd pays the bills. Your buddies on Friday night aren't buying coffee and drinking; they're out in the alley sucking on grass."

As I said before, when I look back at the Golden Ass Café in those days, I see it as a metaphor for Obama's supporters today and therein lies Obama's Dilemma. Naturally, he loves the Diverse Crowd, the crowd at his inauguration was diverse and he mentioned this in his inaugural speech; but millions of Middle Americans-whites and grays-voted for him also and his dilemma is balancing the support of these groups. The American Revolution was built upon the phrase, "No Taxation without Representation". Since Obama has become president, the Heartland Crowd is under-represented while the Diverse Crowd is overly represented in the national culture.

I pay close attention to the media and I've noticed how, and to what extent, black is in. This is definitely true on CNN where the percentage of black talking heads far outweighs the black demographic. I noticed on CBS Evening News the other evening that when a panel was formed to discuss the effect of the recession on job prospects for college graduates, the panel of six had one white. This is not representative of the American population. Bill Maher has picked up on this and has run a segment taking note of this factor. All this may seem amusing to some but it's a source of anger in Middle America.

I'm making these points because, with the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the urge to diverse has brought us to a place where we could have a Supreme Court with six Catholics and two Jews. Does this represent the American people? Will this Court overturn Roe VS Wade? Will it do damage to the position of Church and State?" I want to believe that fairness will rule the day but my gut tells me to worry about it.

The Heartland or Middle American population is out there in the great open space between the East and West Coast away from the diverse cities. If one were to travel south and take a right turn on Fifth Avenue and follow the Lincoln Highway all the way to San Francisco, they would encounter this America.

My oldest son, Eliott, who teaches History in San Francisco, argues with me about the makeup and nature of America. By the way, he teaches American History but I told him the last time that he sat in my living room and dismissed my concerns about Obama as "pure prejudice", I said, "Eliott, the problem here is that you have never been to America. You grew up in L.A., you have friends in New York and you live in San Francisco. You've just flown across America and that's why I'm concerned; because if you do travel out the Lincoln Highway, you will realize that very close to eighty percent of the American population is white anglosentric people."

At one time, I lived in New York in the Village and my home base for nearly twenty years was Los Angeles; but, as a musician, I have performed in thirty-one states. I know Middle Americans; they are on the whole, a fair minded easygoing people who are slow to anger but once aroused, they respond with fury. Obama must keep this in mind. He has already given this group some cause for concern. By now they know that he doesn't walk on water even if he does have a Messianic Complex and they are beginning to criticize him. Richard Posner, the author of twenty books on law and economics including "A Failure of Capitalism", says that Obama's stimulus program "lacks a plan; he is improvising." Posner has a point, the urgency and near panic with which Obama pushed the Stimulus Plan is totally lacking now. There is very little evidence of it in the job market. It's also being administered in a slightly haywire manner. It was just reported on CBS News that hundreds of millions of dollars are being dumped on small local airports while major airports like LAX in LA lack funds to purchase much needed safety equipment. On top of this, the refurbishing of small airports is generating very few jobs. The girl who is in charge of this seemed young, inexperienced and just a little bit wacky (a former campaign staffer?).

Ironically the French whom Obama's people criticized for not taking things seriously enough have a flat out Stimulus Program underway which is employing tens of thousands of people.

David Leonhardt, writing in the New York Times, talks about the thirteen trillion dollar deficit Obama programs will generate and he says, in effect, that this deficit will take on a life of its own with disastrous results i.e. sky-high interest rates and a radically weakened dollar.

Even Maureen Dowd, a vehement Obama supporter who savaged Hillary Clinton during the Election Campaign, said recently that Obama is doing everything that Dick Cheney wanted him to do: 1.) Suspending Habeas Corpus, 2.) Trying to persuade the top terrorists to plead guilty of their crimes so that they can be executed without a trial, 3.) Allowing the NSA to read more email than ever before, 4.) Giving in to the military's demand that the most recent set of torture photos not be released. According to the military, this was to avoid stimulating recruitment by terrorists. I believe it had more to do with covering up officers' asses.

Am I making any sense?

The Woody Guthrie people out there in Middle America are natural Obama supporters if he pays attention to them. These are the people of "Grapes of Wrath". They don't believe they have been treated fairly. These are irreplaceable people. They are the people that make things that America needs; they are the people that grow the food that America eats. Let's face it; New York fashion designers and Hollywood producers don't do so well in machine shops. And "Coasties" sure as hell aren't farmers. Another place that Obama is running into problems with these people is through immigration policies. Obama would like to open the floodgates and in so doing increase Democratic voters. This has been done before in New York but this time Americans are out of jobs.

Yesterday I spoke to two young ladies at the beach who had been looking for work for six months. They both lost their jobs to low-wage immigrants. Ironically, just three days before meeting them, two Russian girls stopped me and my wife on Main Street and asked about a hostel. I took them to the Noah Shelter where they stayed the night. They told me they already had jobs at Star Market which they obtained at a Job Fair in Moscow. This is the problem in a nutshell. In due time many of the people who support wide-open immigration will have sons or daughters out there looking for work that doesn't exist and they may very well find themselves in that position also. Obama should seriously re-think his approach because wide-open immigration is what the Capitalists love. Their sons and daughters aren't threatened; they're in Harvard and Yale.

Next week......the Anti-Wasp Phenomenon

Be sure to watch David Rojay on The Dan and Dad Show each Saturday night at 9:30 on Channel 17. Read THE LONG BRIDGE RUNNER and A RED STATE HERO by David Rojay on capecodtoday.com. Check out David Rojay on YOUTUBE. For more information, Google "David Rojay".

CONCERT at the Railroad Station in West Barnstable featuring Emmy Award winning Singer/Songwriter, Jul3ia Richard, PLUS, Direct from L.A., Singer/Songwriter, Dan Rojay. Concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, August 15. Free Will Offering for Admission