Thursday, October 8, 2009

Knowing When To Leave

John Paul Stevens, the senior justice on the Supreme Court, has hired only one new clerk for the Court term that just began, leading many to believe he will retire at the end of the term. Well, he is in his late eighties. Also, to give you how long he's served, he joined the Court when "Rock and Roll All Nite" was a new song.
It's too bad the the guys responsible for that song don't know when to quit.
Kiss just embarked on a tour to celebrate their thirty-fifth anniversary, although marking it rather than celebrating it seems more appropriate. Always loud and kind of dumb, Kiss were less about the music and more about style, showmanship, and ticking off music sophisticates and Bible-thumping preachers alike. Their face paint, concert special effects, and interstellar costumes paved the way for the production values commonly associated with videos on MTV, and their flamboyant heavy metal, to paraphrase one observer, ticked off members of the Moral Majority before there was a Moral Majority.
But at least in the seventies, Kiss were relevant. Now they're a bunch of old fogies trying to recapture their glory years, even if the glory was all hype courtesy of their manager and their record label (Casablanca, which also gave us the Village People). John Paul Stevens may be old, but his judicial opinions - especially given his liberal leanings on a conservative Court - still matter.
And who really cares about the intricate time signatures in "Detroit Rock City" anyway?

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