Yesterday, a radio program dedicated to American composers featured Robert Russell Bennett. If you think you have never heard again, let me tell you what I have been calling him for almost 50 years now: “the man who wrote Rodgers and Hammerstein.” Seriously, hammerstein wrote the words, which is not a trivial thing, and rodgers wrote the melodies, also not a trivial thing. But bennett did all the prchestrations – yhe harmonies, the non-verbal countermelodies, the instrumentation – wrote out all the parts – and to do that, you must also know how to transpose some parts, because some instruments play in different keys from others. it ain’t easy – and it’s also not all mechanical. To do it, you must be a real musician. And he also found time to compose original works. (There is also a Richard Rodney Bennett, who is no relation – he’s a Brit -who has composed a whole bunch of movie and TV scores and been knighted for them. I have to keep pinching myself to remember they are not related, the names and their talents being so similar.) Does all this qualify as a “Now you know the rest of the story”?
Mary Trump’s morning dispatch addresses CBS’s decision not to fact check on TV in real time. If I am reading her correctly (and if she is reading them correctly) they will fact check in real time in their live blog in social media. But it seems pretty cowardly of them to fear being yelled at by Trump** – even to fear a lawsuit from him which would surely fail. I wanted y’all to know this in advance in order for you to find a more principled source (in fact, I bumped another of her articles to Thursday to make room for this one. And, if you already learned it elsewhere and have prepared, she also includes a meaty section on how finland teaches its citizens to discern propaganda.) Also, I should say I plan on watching the debate tonight, but am not looking forward to it.
Rasmussen Reports used to have a halfway decent reputation. They were known to have a mild Republican bias, but only about 1.5 point. But then Nate Silver stopped using them, which says something – and now, I guess, they’ve lost any reputation they ever had.
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