Did you read my blog about Secretary of State John Kerry trying to make amends for President Obama watching football instead of joining over 40 other heads of state to march in Paris against terrorism, by trotting out James Taylor to sing “You\’ve Got A Friend” – as if this would mean a thing to Francois Hollande or the French people? Did you feel that I was a little hard on Mr. Kerry and Mr. Taylor.
If so, please read this paragraph, written by National Review\’s Kevin D. Williamson…and maybe you won\’t feel I dealt with either man too harshly:
JamesTaylor may in fact be the quintessential man of his generation. He isthe son of two highly accomplished parents, his father a physicianand dean of the University of North Carolina medical school whoserved in the Arctic with Operation Deep Freeze, his mother a sopranowho studied at the New England Conservatory of Music. A child ofaffluence bringing up the rear of the Age of Aquarius, he was in amental institution by the time he was of high-school age, and thentried to launch a musical career but launched a career as a full-timejunkie instead. His fortunes turned around when he inherited moneyand used his new status to move to London and exploit his socialconnections to link up with Paul McCartney and become rich and famouswith a catchy song about what a complete screw-up he had been hisentire life. At some point, this man who is so colorlesslycountry-club that he makes the Fox News weekday lineup look like theoriginal cast of Hairdeclared himself a “churning urn of burning funk.” For the nextfew decades he proceeded to burden the world with a burgeoningcatalog of insipid mediocrity until, finally, he descended to thelowest point a musician ever reaches, three steps down from buskingin subway stations: He became a hired hand for politicians, playingwith MoveOn.org\’s “Vote for Change” tour through swing stateson behalf of – small world! – John Kerry, our nationalpersonification of vanity, a kept man, dilettante, and Democratictime-server whose career was both launched and sustained byself-serving accounts of his service in the Vietnam War, a conflictthat Taylor avoided by being declared mentally unfit to serve.
Now THOSE are strong words.
I award Paragraph Of The Day honors to Mr. Williamson for, against all odds, making me feel like Mr. Nice Guy.
Thanks, Kev. I didn\’t think you could do it, but you did.
