David Foster Wallace wrote a long-winded review of a new Jorge Luis Borges biography in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. And it was filled with – what else? – copious, runny, unnecessary, pretentious footnotes! When was the last time the NYTBR published a book review with friggin’ footnotes in it?

Sometimes I wonder who’s living in more of a state of denial, the right or the left.

Just two examples from today’s Michigan Daily:

One community activist is quoted thusly: “It’s very clear that the real public needs their voice heard. The Democrats do not represent the real people, nor do the Republicans.”

Okay, so who is this “real public” you’re talking about? Are they the “real public” who thought voting last Tuesday was too much of an inconvenience? And if neither major party represents them, why did they not vote? Because neither party represents them? And now they’re feeling disenfranchised? Ever heard of “begging the question”?

A student was quoted in another article as saying, “We as students need to realize that the government always knows more than we do, because we hear things from indirect sources and the media misconstrues things. We need to put faith in our government and intelligence agencies to make informed and proper decisions.”

So, the government is now equivalent to God? Sounds like somebody has some hard learning to do.

So the backlash mounts in intensity: evangelical Christians in Westland (just 20 miles from Ann Arbor, as the crow flies, which says nothing, really, because evangelicals interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle in Concord said the exact same thing, basically, and Concord is 30 miles from downtown San Francisco) interviewed by the Detroit News saying they voted for Bush because he was on God’s side and would prevent all those homos from getting too full of themselves and their disturbed notions of being able to have their relationships validated by the law and being able to visit one another in the hospital; a gay college student’s car spray-painted in Statesboro, GA with slogans like “GOD SAVE YOU”; gay businesses in Denver are shot up with pellet guns; couples from Oregon to Ohio are already fearful of losing their health insurance and any other benefits that they may have had, because, of course, all these amendments were ever about was protecting the sanctity of marriage; overseas in London, a bunch of teenagers are arrested for beating a gay man to death; and in merry Australia, John Howard’s government is going to re-introduce legislation that will ban gay couples from adopting children from overseas.

And meanwhile, we have shows on ABC like “Wife Swap,” in which heterosexual couples exploit matrimony on television for the profit of the networks and for the general exaltation of the sacred institution that is marriage; and rappers have albums at the top of the charts with titles like Thug Matrimony: Married to the Streets.

But we’re the real threat to marriage. Uh-huh.

On that same subject, I think the sudden popularity of old pop standards (as in recent albums by Michael McDonald, Rod Stewart, and even Queen Latifah) is an intriguing cultural happening. Why is it, for instance, that people are ready to accept Rod Stewart as an interpreter of Cole Porter and Rodgers & Hammerstein, but ignore the tried and true interpreters (the Ella Fitzgeralds and the Frank Sinatras)? Norah Jones’s phenomenal success probably has something to do with this trend, but then Norah Jones wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without the marketing and promotional muscle of Clive Davis, who just applied his magic touch to Norah in the same way that he applied it to Janis Joplin in the 1960s and to Whitney Houston in the 1980s. I don’t know what to make of it other than it’s a cyclical thing. People get tired of the flavor of the month and they come back to the standards, which are not “tried and true”; they’re timeless and have something to say to all generations.

I recall the out-of-nowhere success of Linda Ronstadt’s What’s New in 1983, which was recorded with the legendary Nelson Riddle and was really more his album than hers. She truly could be considered the pioneer in this musical niche; it’s not as though there were lines of rock and pop singers lining up to belt out George Gershwin tunes before her. Asylum (Ronstadt’s label at that time) did a fantastic PR job with her, because I recall buying that album and loving it at the same time that I’d had mentors try to get me turned on to the classics when I was listening to Human League and Culture Club (as most everybody else who was “busy” was at that time).

I ignored my elders, of course, and hung onto my Prince and Police albums, and considered myself sophisticated because I liked Joe Jackson’s Louis Jordan and Cole Porter imitations. It wouldn’t be until years later that I discovered the classics on my own, which I suppose is probably the way it should be, because there’s no way you’re going to realize how limited and narrow Linda Ronstadt’s interpretations of standards like “I’ve Got a Crush on You” are until you’ve heard Dinah Washington or Sarah Vaughan perform the same numbers. Linda Ronstadt has a beautiful voice for singing rock songs, and maybe canciones, but as far as an interpreter of pop standards, she’s about as credible as Sade would be as a jazz singer (not that Sade, to her everlasting credit, has ever tried to position herself as anything other than who she is).

But at the time, being marketed a second-rate version of the same songs seemed cool and natural to me; I was somehow participating in a trend. Maybe that’s what’s going on with the current wave, too. And as much as I dislike the idea of Rod Stewart butchering “Stardust” (or the idea of Alanis Morissette butchering “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love),” maybe his recordings of those songs will introduce the real thing to new generations. And that can’t be bad, I guess.

Supposed to go down to 22 degrees tonight … I definitely felt walking home tonight the fact that I hadn’t brought gloves or cap with me … it was a quiet, beautiful, starlit night, so still you could almost hear the stillness … winter’s coming.