MADNESS: The madness of our own King George!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2025

Of our own pair of Kings George: When the madness surfaces in a King George, the silly stiff may surface first.

So it was yesterday morning! As recorded by an invaluable drummer, here's what pretty much happened first:

After the inauguration . . .

I'm sure I'll have plenty of updates to this, but here's what's happening in Washington DC after Trump's inauguration. First off, Trump has already ordered the Pentagon to remove its portrait of Gen. Mark Milley, which was hung ten days ago next to all the previous chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff...

You can see the photo of the missing spot on the wall right there at Kevin Drum's site. General Milley's photo was already gone. The childish stuff tends to come first.

After that, it was on to Silly Stuff II. During the inaugural address, such foolishness as this:

TRUMP (1/20/25): A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America...

Such foolishness as that! With the offending photograph gone, the more recent "King George" would be changing a name! 

These acts were part of the silliness; they came to us straight from the clown car. That said, the rest of that passage from that inaugural address moved to a more dangerous form of the madness:

TRUMP: A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and we will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs.

President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent—he was a natural businessman—and gave Teddy Roosevelt the money for many of the great things he did, including the Panama Canal, which has foolishly been given to the country of Panama after the United States—I mean, think of this—spent more money than ever spent on a project before and lost 38,000 lives in the building of the Panama Canal.

We have been treated very badly from this foolish gift that should have never been made, and Panama's promise to us has been broken.

The purpose of our deal and the spirit of our treaty has been totally violated. American ships are being severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape, or form. And that includes the United States Navy.

And above all, China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back...

This latest George is also planning to rename a mountain! The Gulf of Mexico has to go, and so too with Denali.

Before the day is done, we'll entertain you with the history of that mountain's name. But before we provide that service, let it now be said:

With the silly stuff done, this newest manifestation of George was moving into more dangerous territory. He had now officially said that we're going to take Panama back, or maybe just the Canal Zone.

Make Panama A Colony Again! Also, he was repeating his manifest lunacy concerning the nature of tariffs:

TRUMP: I will immediately begin the overhaul of our trade system to protect American workers and families. Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.

For this purpose, we are establishing the External Revenue Service to collect all tariffs, duties, and revenues. It will be massive amounts of money pouring into our Treasury, coming from foreign sources.

The American dream will soon be back and thriving like never before.

To appearances, whoever polished the final shape of the speech had possibly sanded his language down, if only a tiny tad. 

That said, does this madman actually know where the money comes from when a nation imposes a tariff? We know of no reason to assume that he does, or to assume that he doesn't. But President McKinley imposed lots of tariffs, so he has sworn to impose tariffs too.

That evening, this day's madness reached its summit with the release of certain "hostages" from their incarceration. Enrique Tarrio even got to take a hike. As a general matter, let us say this about that:

There are chunks of videotape from the violence of January 6 which Blue America routinely sees.

But if you live in Red America—if you watch the Fox News Channel—you're never shown the videotape of that violence on your favorite TV programs.

The corporate tools who crawl all over the sets of that "cable news" channel know that they must never discuss the violence which occurred on that day. Their handlers will never let the channel's viewers see the videotape of what was done—and at one point, they even let the baldly disordered Tucker Carlson conduct one of the great "journalistic" frauds by showing wholly irrelevant videotape of people just peaceably standing around on that particular day.

In fact, police officers were viciously beaten that day. Their attackers were being released last night. This is the ongoing madness of the current King George—but then too, we Blues have our own prior George, and his apparent enablers.

We've been saying, for quite a few years, that President Trump, to all appearances, seems to be some form of "mentally ill." As it was said in a very old book, that's how it plainly seems.

For better or worse, the major tribunes of Blue America have agreed—virtually to a man and a woman—that this obvious possibility must never be mentioned, evaluated or discussed.

Yesterday, the madness of this modern George was on vivid display. It started with the silly stuff, then moved on toward the suggestion of hemispheric war, in line with our manifest destiny.

That said:

We Blues have been carrying our own George too. Just within the past two weeks, he was (astoundingly) saying this:

Read what Biden said during his interview with USA TODAY

[...]

PAGE (1/5/25): Do you believe you could have won in November?

BIDEN: It's presumptuous to say that, but I think yes, based on the polling that—

PAGE: Do you think you would've had the vigor to serve another four years in office?

BIDEN: I don't know. That's why I thought when I first announced, talking to Barack about it, I said I thought I was the person. I had no intention of running after Beau died – for real, not a joke. And then when Trump was running again for reelection, I really thought I had the best chance of beating him. But I also wasn't looking to be president when I was 85 years old, 86 years old. And so I did talk about passing the baton. But I don't know. Who the hell knows? So far, so good. But who knows what I'm going to be when I'm 86 years old?

That was President Biden, with Susan Page, less than three weeks ago. 

"Who the hell knows," he jauntily said. "Who the hell knows if he could have served out his second term?

"Who the hell knows," he jauntily said. Horribly, he even said "Not a joke" again. 

It's well past time for us Blues to come to terms with the madness which has been dogging our own cognition and performance here in Blue America. To wit:

Despite what Acyn unwisely said, the problem which seems to be dogging President Biden is not the same problem which seems to be dogging President Trump. In our view, neither president can necessarily be "blamed," at the end of the day, for the affliction with which he seems to be saddled.

That said, a certain madness has been visible in Blue America too. This madness has belonged to us the Blue American people. 

We refer to the way we've refused to see the problem afflicting our own George. By and large, Red America can't see the problem afflicting President Trump. We Blues have refused to see the problem afflicting President Biden.

Yesterday, he did it again, with his own last-minute pardons. No explanation was offered. This was the latest manifestation of The Silence—the silence we've been asked to accept over the several years:

The silence about the southern border. The silence about the cost of living.  Most of all, the silence about the apparent or possible loss of cognitive power with which he seemed to be afflicted.

There was plenty of footage suggesting that decline, but now the practice of sifting was reverse: 

Viewers of the Fox News Channel were shown this footage again and again.  Sometimes, the evidence was embellished. More often, it wasn't. 

Viewers of the Fox News Channel were shown that footage again and again. Over here, in Blue America, we were shielded from any such knowledge by the corporate tools who were servicing us—who were servicing us at our own major "news orgs."

Briefly, let's state the obvious. No one on the face of the earth is ever guaranteed "four more years." 

(With whatever degree of awareness, Candidate Tsongas tried to gloss the severity of his cancer during Campaign 1992. Because he was running against Bill Clinton, he was cast as the admirable truth teller by the major mainstream orgs. He died in January 1997. Had this good, decent person been elected, he apparently wouldn't have lived out his first term.)

No one is ever guaranteed "four more years!" But in that interview with Page, there was the jaunty President Biden saying who the hell knows if he would have been able to serve a full second term.

Yesterday, he did it again with those unexplained pardons. 

We sympathize with the reason for those pardons. On balance, we're inclined to think that they were a bad idea.

That said, no explanation was offered for those highly unusual pardons—and that included the last-minute pardons he gave to five family members. Similarly, no explanation was ever offered for the policy practices which ended up sending Donald J. Trump back to his perch in the White House. 

Most likely, our own George wasn't able to offer public explanations. Most likely, his staffers and family, knowing this, kept him out of view.

In Red America, they were more right about this inexcusable state of affairs. In Blue America, we were more wrong. Meanwhile, the silence of our own King George permitted the re-ascension of the madness of theirs. 

Yesterday, he started with the silly stuff, the moved in the direction of true madness. Our "highly educated" blue elites still won't discuss the obvious fact that something seems to be clinically wrong with this particular person. 

These blue elites today! They don't have a pre-existing language for that discussion, and they simply aren't smart enough to create an acceptable language on their own.

"Sacred Troy must die," Hector tells Andromache, his loyal wife, fairly early in the verses of the Iliad. Years later, Professor Knox described the horrific events on the night Troy finally fell, after ten years of war.

We won't post that account again today. But our own failing nation has been trapped in a pair of dueling madnesses.

Those of us in Blue America are inclined to deny this fact. Millions of people in Red America have that same inclination.

Each group can see the madness, but only in the others. Where does such madness end? 

This afternoon: For entertainment purposes only! What the Sam Hill's in a word?

MONDAY: Bruni cites the theocracy hook!

 MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 2025

"With God On Our Side" Again: As a general matter, we heard the same thing Frank Bruni heard—and we haven't even heard the whole speech yet. This was Bruni's instant take at the New York Times:

The Line in Trump’s Speech That Will Echo in Time

“American carnage” was gone. No phrase in Donald Trump’s second Inaugural Address distilled his distemper quite like those chilling words from his first.

But the recriminations that gave rise to them? The portrayal of the United States as a dystopia in desperate need of immediate rescue? Those were as vivid on Monday, in the remarks that he delivered in the Capitol Rotunda, as they were in the speech he made after taking the oath of office eight years ago.

And they were joined by a newly pronounced messianic streak. America’s 47th president—who was also our 45th president—told us that he is not merely on a quest to bring this country into line with his and the MAGA movement’s vision for it. He is on a divinely directed mission.

Recalling the day in Butler, Pa., in July when “an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear,” Trump said that “I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”

That’s the keeper this time around—Trump’s trademark narcissism and usual grandiosity, along with an unsettling measure of theocracy, in one profoundly disturbing sentence...

Bruni continued briefly from there.

For a reason we may even discuss at some point, we haven't heard the full address yet. But in the brief chunk we have heard, we too were stuck by that "messianic streak"—by that return to the ancient realm of "theocracy."

Will that one line "echo in time?" Should it be viewed as "profoundly disturbing?" 

We won't necessarily go that far ourselves. But it's a markedly striking hook from a commander who plainly isn't religious. And in a nation which is being split into separate warring nations—American Babel, here we come!—the clam that the monarch's very existence was willed by God returns us to a part of human culture which is deeply bred in the bone.

Full disclosure! It's an antique part of human nature to line up behind a monarch—perhaps behind a "commander in chief." 

The belief that the monarch was empowered by God, or by the gods, is also deeply bred in the bone. It stretches back quite a few years.

We ourselves aren't inclined to endorse such views. We ourselves aren't religious at all although, at least as far as we know, most good decent people are.

That said, we've been struck, within the past year, by the way religious advocacy became more overt on the Fox News Channel show, Fox & Friends Weekend:

On the morning after the Butler assassination attempt, three of the four friends on the scene were explicitly attributing the Republican candidate's survival to the active intercession of "our lord and savior, Jesus Christ." (Pete Hegseth, come on down!)

That type of explicit sectarian religiosity seems to be spreading a bit into the weekday edition of this "cable news" program.  It's much harder to avoid the centrifugal power of tribal belief when a tribe is being encouraged to believe, once again, that it is moving into the future "With God On [Their] Side."

The early Dylan wrote the song; in truth, the song was perhaps a bit too dogmatic. But like certain kinds of gender beliefs and politics, the impulse it challenged is bred in the bone. Even when sold by a non-believer, it's an impulse which stretches way back. 

Is the American project coming undone? We Blues have our own ways of sowing disunion. This particular ancient instinct is more common over there, among the newly ascendant Reds.

Either way, disunion hurts. Also, it's hard to turn back.

MADNESS: Is the American project approaching its end?

MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 2025

Two roads diverged in a wood: In our view, it was an intriguing phone call.

Borrowing language from the early Dylan, the phone call in question came from "somewhere out in the United States." 

More specifically, it came from Alexander from New York (as best we can tell). He said he had just crossed into Pennsylvania on his way to D.C. to attend today's inauguration.

Yesterday morning, the gentleman called C-Span's Washington Journal as his fast car zipped along. We agreed with the first several things he said—with his assessments of the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

We agreed with those assessments. But then he moved on to this:

ALEXANDER FROM NEW YORK (1/19/25): I also want to say that Biden, I heard or I read, is leaving at 38% approval rating, which is the longest—the lowest in totally modern American history—you can fact check me on that. And Trump's policies are actually rather popular...

Briefly, the caller continued from there. To hear his full call, click this.

We were struck by the highlighted statement. To our ear, the caller wasn't completely sure of his number. On that basis, he said that he was open to a fact check.

We were struck by the fact that he welcomed a fact-check. At this site, we had already fact-checked the claim in question. We'd done so several days before. 

At this point, we offer a warning: 

WARNING: What follows will require a bit of time and attention!

Continuing right along:

The caller said he'd heard that President Biden is leaving office with a 38% approval rating. He said he'd heard that that was the lowest such rating in modern American history.

Almost surely, this was a reference to a recent CNN survey—a survey which was widely discussed by the stars of the Fox News Channel. The caller may even have read this news report at the Fox News website—a report which was perfectly accurate:

New polls show Biden leaving office with approval ratings still buried deep in negative territory

A new national poll indicates that President Biden's approval ratings remain well underwater as the nation's 46th president is only days from leaving office.

Just 36% of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing in the White House, according to the latest CNN poll conducted by SSRS, with 64% saying they disapprove. The approval rating matches the president's previous low mark in the cable news network's polling during Biden's single term in office.

The poll was released on Wednesday, just hours before the president delivers his primetime farewell address to the nation, with just days left before Biden's term ends and he is succeeded by President-elect Trump in the White House.

[...]

Sixty-one percent of those questioned in the CNN survey said they see Biden’s presidency overall as a failure, with 38% viewing it as a success. 

Was that survey the source of what the caller had heard? If so, President Biden's approval number actually stood at 36 percent—two points lower than the C-Span caller had said!

Full disclosure! The news report didn't say that this was the lowest such number in recent history. That said, we'll guess that such claims were made at some point on the Fox News Channel, where misstatement in service to Storyline is a key "journalistic" norm.

At any rate, the numbers from that CNN survey had been widely discussed. Below, you see the original news report at CNN's website about the results of that poll.

How did President Biden stand as he was about to leave office? On this occasion, the figure filberts at CNN were slicing the lunch meat quite thin:

CNN Poll: Biden leaves office with his approval rating matching the lowest of his term

President Joe Biden will leave office with his approval rating remaining at the lowest level of his term and his favorability rating close to his personal low, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS. Americans broadly view Biden’s four years in office more as a failure than as a success, with his administration doing little to turn around persistent negativity about the state of the country generally or about its economy.

Overall, 36% of US adults say they approve of the way Biden handled the presidency, matching his previous low mark in CNN polling during his term...

Biden’s favorability rating, a measure of personal feelings rather than job performance, stands at 33% favorable to 58% unfavorable, just one point off his previous low in CNN polling since he became vice president under Barack Obama in 2009 (he reached that 32% in June 2023). His favorability rating has been mired in the low 30s for much of the past two years.

[...]

Most Americans, 61%, say they see Biden’s presidency overall as a failure, with 38% viewing it as a success. That lags far behind two presidencies largely seen as successful: Bill Clinton’s (68% considered it a success in 2000) and Barack Obama’s (65% rated it a success in early 2017). Biden’s time in office stands above George W. Bush’s, though, which 68% of Americans judged as more of a failure than a success when he left office in 2009.

CNN was slicing it thin! Here's what the survey said:

The president's approval number was 36 percent. By way of contrast, his favorability number was 33 percent. 

That said, a 38 percent figure could also be found in the stew! That was the number of people who said they viewed his presidency as a success. 

So it went with the lunch meat—or perhaps in the stew. The numbers looked like this: 

President Biden's numbers:
Job approval: 36 percent
Viewed favorably: 33 percent
Successful presidency: 38 percent

Those numbers emerged from the CNN poll. That was the shape of the goulash.

In fairness, the C-Span caller had it pretty much right. Also, and stating the obvious, none of those numbers are good. By the norms of post-war American history, those are lousy numbers.

The C-Span caller, a Trump supporter, was pleased by those low assessments of Biden. That said, was one part of his claim simply wrong?

Days earlier, we'd been struck by a peculiar omission from CNN's report. It was on that basis that we'd already conducted the type of fact check the caller said he welcomed. 

Strange! In the passage we've posted, CNN compared Biden's "successful presidency" number with the substantially better numbers recorded by Presidents Clinton and Obama before him. 

CNN also said that President George W. Bush's "failed presidency" number had in fact been seven points worse than President Biden's! At least with respect to that assessment, Biden's score wasn't the worst!

Having said that, how strange! Biden had been compared to Clinton and Obama, but also to the younger President Bush. But something struck us as odd in CNN's report:

One of this nation's recent presidents had been completely unmentioned—President Donald J. Trump! Alone among our most recent presidents, his numbers upon leaving office had somehow failed to appear.

We were struck by that omission, and so we decided to check. What was his approval number when he was leaving office?

We'll guess that C-Span's caller had never heard what we found. Almost surely, he'd never heard it from the array of corporate hacks who star on the Fox News Channel's programs. 

How had President Trump been viewed when he was leaving office? Below, you see Gallup's report from January 2021:

Last Trump Job Approval 34%; Average Is Record-Low 41%

As President Donald Trump prepares to leave the White House, 34% of Americans approve of the job he is doing as president, the worst evaluation of his presidency. His 41% average approval rating throughout his presidency is four points lower than for any of his predecessors in Gallup's polling era. Trump's ratings showed a record 81-percentage-point average gap between Republicans and Democrats—11 points wider than the prior record.

The 34% job approval rating for Trump in Gallup's Jan. 4-15 poll is one point lower than his prior lowest single rating, registered on several occasions in late 2017...

None of this makes a lick of difference. But so the basic facts went. 

The C-Span caller thought Biden's approval number was the lowest in recent history. According to Gallup, Trump's number had been four points lower as he flew off to Mar-a-Lago, refusing to attend the inauguration of the man to whom he refused to admit he had lost.

(We never found a CNN survey from January 2021. Some such material may exist.)

Do the results of our fact-check matter? No, they don't matter at all.

Quite possibly, someone "will be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence." If so, no one will be listening to what that person is saying. Similarly, few people have been listening to facts or to actual information over the past thirty years. 

Two roads have diverged in a failing nation over the past many years. As a general matter, we the people have taken the road more pleasurably traveled by. 

We've offered you a bunch of facts in this pointless report. As empires die—and every empire eventually does—Storyline is pleasing and fun. Information and facts are hard.

Today, is an empire beginning to end? That would be our broadest guess, though our guess could always be wrong.

We don't see any obvious way to emerge from our failing nation's current cultural / journalistic / intellectual / tribal mess. The problem can be tracked to various groups of imperfect people, including us hapless Blues.

Tomorrow: Why didn't CNN cite Trump? Also, Ezra Klein explains

SATURDAY: We've been thinking about a certain "fair lady!"

SATURDAY, JANUARY 18, 2025

One way we Blues have lost votes: In the face of our failing nation's ongoing "American carnage," we've been thinking—and thinking and thinking—about a certain old song.

We refer to the old American song, Lady of Carlisle. For the record, this old American song got its start in the British Isles.

We've also been thinking of the mysterious female character in that song—the "fair lady" who is said to have behaved in this peculiar way reported below.

Two brave soldiers have approached her, seeking her hand in marriage. This fair lady responds to them in this antique way:

Lady of Carlisle 

[...]

[Verse 4]
Then up spoke this fair young lady
Saying "I can be but one man's bride.
But if you'll come back tomorrow morning
On this case we will decide."

[Verse 5]
She ordered her a span of horses
A span of horses at her command
And down the road these three did travel
'Til they come to the lions' den.

[Verse 6]
There she stopped and there she halted
These two soldiers stood gazin' 'round
And for the space of half an hour
That young lady lay speechless on the ground.

[Verse 7]
And when she did recover
Threw her fan down in the lions' den
Saying "Which of you to gain a lady
Will return her fan again?"

So behaved this fair young lady in this antique song. After lapsing into a trance, she defines a dangerous courtship test. 

(For the resolution of that test, see below.)

We first heard the song, as performed by the late Mike Seeger (Pete Seeger's younger half-brother), when we were mere juniors in high school. We heard the song when we purchased the Folkways album, The New Lost City Ramblers Vol. 3, the same album which contained the old (fully) American song, The Baltimore Fire.

In part, we've been thinking about the Lady of Carlisle because of A Complete Unknown, the new film which treats Bob Dylan's arrival, as an extremely young man, on the Greenwich Village folk music scene in 1961.

We haven't seen it yet. We had plans to do so this week, but a vicious attack of the labyrinthitis brought those plans to an end. 

Personally, we have a hard time believing that A Complete Unknown could possibly be good. (We're prepared to be surprised.) But there's one scene which surely won't be included in the film—that's the scene where the extremely young Dylan decided that he was going to have to start writing his own songs.

Dylan's describes the moment in his 2004 memoir, Chronicles Volume One. The moment involves Mike Seeger, who—though a young man himself at the time—was already a widely admired part of the burgeoning American traditional music scene.

Dylan describes the experience which led him to conclude that he had to become a song writer. He says he saw Seeger performing traditional songs in various high-end loft parties in Greenwich Village, and he says he concluded that he would never be able to perform such songs as well as Seeger could. 

For the record, Dylan's debut album for Columbia was built upon his own remarkable performance abilities. But in his memoir, Dylan goes on and on, at substantial length, about the greatness he saw in Seeger's performances. 

He says he knew that he'd never be able to perform those old American songs well as Mike Seeger already could: 

"The thought occurred to me that maybe I'd have to write my own folk songs, the ones that Mike didn't know," Dylan writes (page 71). "That was a startling thought."

Has there ever been a greater tribune from one performer to another? A year or two later, Seeger—then 30 years old—recorded Lady of Carlisle on NLCR Volume 3. 

(You may not hear what Dylan heard. But you can hear that performance here.)

Has there ever been a greater tribute? In part, we've been thinking about Seeger's performance of Lady of Carlisle because of all the recent talk about the young Dylan's emergence.

That said, we've also been thinking about this antique song because of its ancient sexual politics. Also, because it may help illustrate one of the three million ways those of us in Blue America may have lost votes in last year's election—may have helped earn our way out.

We always admired Mike Seeger as a performer. We did so for various reasons, many of which Dylan describes in the effusive praise for Seeger presented in his memoir. 

That said, we also admired Seeger for what we'd call his sexual politics as a singer—specifically, for the way he would sing the women's parts in the old story-songs he would sing.

He always sang the women's parts with full respect. He would adopt no silly falsetto. No parodic performance occurred.

On Lady of Carlisle, you can hear him sing the part of that "fair young lady" with complete and total respect. We've always admired Seeger for that form of sexual politics.

We've been thinking about that old song because of the talk about Dylan. We've also been thinking about Lady of Carlisle because of what we read when the New York Times interviewed a dozen men—four of them Democrats—who voted for Candidate Trump this past year.

(For more about those interviews, see Thursday afternoon's report.) 

The antique song, Lady of Carlisle, involve an antique form of gender politics. We ourselves wouldn't favor that form of courtship or gender relations, but—for better or worse—that antique form of sexual politics is deeply bred in the bone. 

To our ear, a longing for that form of politics is stated at various times in the interviews with those twelve men. We ourselves don't share the feelings to which these voters give voice, but many other people do.

Those ancient behaviors are bred in the bone! But over here in Blue America, many elements of our coalition have aggressively jumped far ahead in matters of this kind.

(At the present time, this would also involve the way trans issues are sometimes treated by Blues.)

We Blues! We can sometimes seem to be very sure of our own moral greatness. We name-call those who haven't arrived at the same point of moral greatness that we ourselves have often only recently reached. 

Along the way, we may be shedding votes. All too often, this is the business we Blues have chosen as we've earned our way out.

We've never favored the sexual politics lurking in that old song. That said, the longings in question are often deeply bred in the bone, for men and women alike.

Those of us in Blue America are playing with fire when we name-call such people. That said, we're often inclined to assert our moral greatness. All too often, this may be accompanied by a lack of perfect political smarts.

For inquiring minds only: What's the historical background to that old British/American song? (Where in the world do those lions come from?) You can start reading here.

To hear Mike Seeger sing the part of that fair lady, you can just click this. According to Dylan's account, when Dylan heard Seeger singing this way, Dylan judged that he himself would have to be moving on. 

He would have to write his own songs, the ones Mike didn't yet know.

The western world's oldest story: Late in life, Seeger recorded Black Jack David for his 2007 Smithsonian Folkways album, Early Southern Guitar Sounds.

This antique song tells (a much later version of) the western world's oldest story. It's the story which triggers the Iliad, the story in which a dissatisfied (and married) "fair young lady" runs off with a more thrilling man.

So it went at the dawn of the West! Helen abandoned a prince of Achaea, running off with Paris, the son of Troy's King Priam. There followed ten years of savage war as "war fighters" died in the dust outside Troy's sacred walls, seeking to avenge this insult to the tribe.

In our view, that was terrible sexual politics. It's also the starting point for western literature. 

You can hear Seeger's performance of Black Jack David simply by clicking this. He performs the song with Alexia Smith, his own wife, in an act of impressive self-confidence.  

He died two years later, at age 77. For his New York Times obituary, you can just click here. In a stunning tribute, Bob Dylan said he decided he'd have to write his own songs after seeing Mike Seeger perform.

Winning the courtship test: That fair young lady devised a dangerous courtship test for her pair of suitors. 

One of the suitors takes a hike. The other decides the lady is worth it. Here's the way the story plays out:

[Verse 10]

Down in the lions' den he boldly entered

The lions being both wild and fierce

He marched around and in among them

Safely returned her fan again.

[Verse 11]

And when she saw her true lover comin'

Seeing no harm had been done to him

She threw herself against his bosom

Saying "Here is the prize that you have won."

That's an ancient form of gender relations. Being ancient, it's bred in the bone.