Like Former Singers . . . Today’s Politics One Day Will Fade Away, But They’re Hot Topics Now
By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — On September 2 blogger and former Wanderer columnist Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, also known as “Fr. Z,” posted a video of the major twentieth-century rock group “The Who” in its young days, informally performing The Kids Are Alright in the open air, in a park by a lake.
This may have been London’s Hyde Park in the mid-1960s. Boaters casually floating by in the background, out for a little recreation, are captured on film forever in that moment as the rock group sings and plays, without microphones evident.
The acoustics we actually hear may have been dubbed in later because the sound is firm and clear, more of studio quality in the ’60s than open-air.
“The Who” members appear happy, although a touch or two at that time may have been regarded as defiant, like the drummer wearing a shirt that looks like the British flag. But their lyrics include a code of honor, beginning, “I don’t mind, other guys dancing with my girl. That’s fine, I know them all pretty well.”
In other words, the other guys are being trusted not to steal the girl.
No one is next to the performers. The camera cuts away briefly in the opposite direction in the park. We see mainly fewer than a dozen teenagers standing and watching, including some very pretty girls.
That would mean these cute teenagers — back before the United States achieved the first manned moon landing, in 1969 — are probably in their 70s by now, grandmothers or even great-grandmothers.
How time flies. People pass through this life and, before you know it, decades have vanished. People who rose to become major musicians fade away to being as unknown as they previously were. Their young fans eventually move on to retirement homes or communities.
Blogger Zuhlsdorf posted the video for that very reason. To explain the background of a parody. On September 2 he posted a parody of “The Who’s” The Kids Are Alright titled, “The Kids Are Old Rite by ‘Quis’.”
The parody of “The Who’s” lyrics pointed to young people today preferring the “Old Rite,” the Traditional Latin Mass, instead of “the revolution” imposed against tradition.
Zuhlsdorf asked, “Are you of an age that you do not know the song whence this [parody] is derived?” Then he supplied the video of “The Who” early in their career, before most people today were born. (He posted this item at https://wdtprs.com/2023/09/the-kids-are-old-rite-by-quis/)
That’s a reminder that no person or event lasts forever, although what they do or mean can’t be erased from the record. They become history, but often they’re reversible. However, they’re not reversible, of course, in circumstances such as a baby’s life ended forever by abortion.
Today’s political battles, too, are very much with us, from the destructive, immoral Democrat Joe Biden administration to continued turmoil in Arizona after suspiciously convenient results for Democrats and the local establishment here after Election Day chaos in Maricopa County in 2022.
Arizona Republican attorney general nominee Abe Hamadeh continues to seek redress of his supposed narrow loss to radical leftist, pro-abortion extremist Democrat Kris Mayes, by only 280 votes out of more than 2.5 million cast. Statistically, they each received 49.9 percent of the vote.
But the Arizona Supreme Court surprised some observers on August 23 when it declined to expedite Hamadeh’s appeal, even though a Mohave County Superior Court judge, Lee Jantzen, had let months go by without formalizing his denial last December of Hamadeh’s request.
Conservative Republican political consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer on September 1: “We can’t read very much into this decision because the Supreme Court basically said Hamadeh can’t skip any steps on the way to the Supreme Court. He has to first appeal to the Court of Appeals.
“Abe wanted to save time since it is obviously very consequential if Arizona is being represented by the wrong attorney general,” Querard said, “but the Supreme Court sent him back to the Court of Appeals first, so he will still have his day in court.”
On August 23 the Arizona Daily Independent posted that Arizona Chief Justice Robert Brutinel “noted Hamadeh’s petition for special action ‘misrepresented’ efforts undertaken to obtain the signed judgments from Jantzen. Therefore, by ‘unnecessarily’ filing the petition, it required Mayes and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to incur ‘unnecessary expense’ to respond. This justified an award of attorneys’ fees incurred by Mayes and Fontes, the order states.”
This meant Hamadeh and his counsel would have to cover that cost.
Capitol Media Services reporter Howard Fischer said the order from the state Supreme Court had the effect that only “after the appellate court has had its say — something that could take months — would the justices be willing to consider his arguments.”
Fischer also wrote that Brutinel urged the two sides to moderate their language — for instance, the Democrat side having attacked those who “weaponize our courts, sow unfounded distrust in our election processes, malign our public servants, and undermine our democracy,” and the Republican side criticizing the secretary of state’s “churlish imperiousness.”
The Daily Independent said the state high court issued an order to Jantzen “to sign off ‘forthwith’ on two overdue judgments in the case, one of which dates back to December 23, 2022.”
With the approach of October in sight, Hamadeh sees almost three-quarters of the first year of the four-year attorney general term already gone. Perhaps some powerbrokers would be pleased if he simply gave up.
And the same for GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, the supposed loser to Democrat extremist Katie Hobbs by less than one percent of the more than 2.5 million votes cast, including results from the Election Day chaos in Maricopa County.
Lake currently has a two-day Maricopa County Superior Court trial scheduled for September 21 and 25 regarding accuracy of mail-in ballot signatures.
The Just the News website wrote on August 28: “Lake has been in court over the past few months challenging the results of the 2022 gubernatorial election after losing to current Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs.
“She has pointed out major problems with the signature verification process for mail-in ballots and argued many voters in Arizona were disenfranchised on Election Day, when voting machine errors occurred in at least 60 percent of the voting centers in Maricopa County,” the Just the News story said.
Meanwhile, speculation continued on whether Lake would enter the Republican primary in 2024 for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by independent Kyrsten Sinema, who was elected as a Democrat in 2018 but resigned from the party in December 2022. She continued to caucus with Senate Democrats.
Blake Masters, the unsuccessful GOP U.S. Senate nominee in 2022, reportedly is preparing to announce he’s in the Senate race for 2024. However, Lake is considered notably more popular with GOP voters than Masters. Pinal County, Ariz., Sheriff Mark Lamb already is in this GOP contest.
Sinema hasn’t said whether she intends to run for re-election, but left-wing Arizona Democrat Cong. Ruben Gallego is eager for that seat.