My favorite international comic strip, the Somali Pirates, has been back on Page One of late. I'm glad the U.S. captain and crew came away inconvenienced but unharmed. Of course, things did not go so well for the Somalis. U.S. Navy snipers took out three of 'em with a single shot - without, by the way, harming the parrots on their shoulders.

The parrots, for their part, were too involved discussing the Obamas' Puppy to notice much until everything fell out from under 'em.

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Some concern was expressed some while back in this blog about the Obama Administration's silence on their plans relevant to the U.N.'s dog-and-pony show on racism. Bless 'em, they decided to follow the precedent of the previous admin and not even go. Those EU types who did attend, wound up leaving early, to their credit.

And, of course, I would be remiss to not say "who'd-a thunk it" that the Black guy with the muslim father winds up being the first U.S. president to hold a Pesach seder in the White House.

Maybe there's a family connection:

It turns out that Michelle has a cousin who is not only a convert, but a convert with smicha. Not only has this dude gone from zero to rabbi in a single lifetime, but he's become the first black guy voted onto the Chicago Board of Rabbis.

Maybe items like this are why real comedians find this administration and its respective families frustrating. Achievement, while admirable, isn't really funny. Not like Dick Cheney's hunting trips.

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Simon Johnson's also in the news, this time for Congressional testimony on the notion of joining the Clayton and Sherman antitrust legislation and expanding the notion of a trust to include corporate entities that are "too big to fail." I hope Congress listens; clearly the executive branch has chosen not to, even in light of a report from the TARP's Special IG, that most of the bailout is going to the banks and their investors at the expense of beleaguered mortgage-payers, and that so much unsupervised money is, among other things, an invitation to fraud.

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Back some years ago, in the L.A. recording studios, there was a phenomenon known as The Wrecking Crew. Led by (at the time the most-requested studio guitarist in town) Glen Campbell, and frequently produced by a brilliant, energetic young man from Tulsa, OK named Leon Russell, the Crew consisted of every guitar picker in L.A. that could be found crammed into a room and playing together for background. When there were enough guys and enough sound, Leon Russell was rumored to yell, from the soundproofed safety of the engineer's booth, "Take That, Phil Spector!"

Leon Russell was, and by all accounts, still is, a gentleman and a total professional.

Phil Spector has now officially joined the list of Great American Tragedies.

The jury's still out on Campbell, whose been on both sides of the equation.

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Phil Spector was part of the illustrious graduating class of 1964 out of Fairfax High School. More than one of his classmates went on to bigger an better things, in particular one Herb Alpert.

Let me go on record as saying I never liked the Wall of Sound (loved the Crew, though), the distinctive muddied-up studio sound for which Spector became famous almost from Graduation Day. My musical opinions don't count for much now; how much more so then. The Wall of Sound was the Next Big Thing of its time, Phil Spector was a instant genius, and demonstrating right away that he was nobody's sweetheart. He distinguished himself outside the studio with his arrogance and reputation for a short temper.

By 1970, word was out on the streets of L.A. that Phil Spector's place was becoming dangerous. I was not part of that inner circle. so I don't know when cocaine made its entrance, but Phil's fascination with guns was much-too-common knowledge in L.A. by '68. Even back then, folks were saying that someone was going to get dead at Spector's someday.

Ronnie's memoir confirmed to the world what the L.A. locals had known for years, that Phil Spector was a violent, cocaine-fueled gun nut who needed to be brought under control before someone got killed. When was that? '75?

How this man, who hadn't had a hit record in over thirty years, was able to maintain that mausoleum of his in the Hills and his habits is beyond me. But he did. And someone got dead there.

And Michael Jackson's shenanigans were common knowledge in L.A. as early as '85. Of course, no one got hauled out of Neverland in a plastic zipper-bag.

Money talks. Money shields.

That's golus for ya.

So how does the Phil Spector story join with those of Bernie Madoff, Michael Jackson, Roger Clemens, Ken Lay, Mike Tyson, and Eliot Spitzer on the ever-increasing list of Great American Trgedies?

Mostly through proper use of the Language and some knowledge of the origins of the word tragedy.

The Oxford English Dictionary entry (from their website):

• noun (pl. tragedies) 1 an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress. 2 a serious play with an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character.
— ORIGIN Greek tragoidia, apparently from tragos ‘goat’ (the reason remains unexplained) + oide ‘song, ode’.

OED has taken on the contemporary expansion of the word, but the theatrical origins are reflected in its root in Greek. What the OED left out was that the "downfall" is most frequently the result of what's known as The Fatal Flaw. With Oedipus, it was ambition (leave his mother out of it!); with MacBeth, it was his wife's ambition, and so it goes. These dudes were kings and conquerors, masters of their universes - and they blew it.

So with our list of Amurricans above. We don't have royal dynasties here, so we make our own home-grown royalty out of actors, musicians, jocks, and, occasionally, politicians. Phil Spector, like the others, had it all and blew it in a big way.

Of course, because kingdoms do not depend on our Amurrican royalty, they can fall without causing any great or lasting harm, go into rehab when necessary, write the confessional, tour with it for a year or two (making a pile in the process, which helps to pay for rehab, I guess), and rebuild their careers. Glen Campbell's working on a comeback, as are Britney Spears and Eliot Spitzer. Mickey Rourke and Robert Downey pretty much deep-sixed their careers and look at the comebacks they've had - without writing the books.

Of course, no one got dead as a result of their antics. A comeback for Phil Spector looks as unlikely as for Bernie Madoff. Spitzer, on the other hand . . .

* * * * *

Something came up recently that told me it's time to tell this story here.

It was a few months before the radio show went silent, and its signoff, "Golus Sucks - Moshiach Now," was actually making it out onto the streets of Chassidic Brooklyn, just a little. A buddy of mine came up to me in shul and said that he thought the show was good, the signoff was an idea whose time had come, but he had concerns about his kid picking it up and saying it.

"It's for your kid," I told him. "We greybeards had our chance, and we were polite with G-d and not polite enough with each other. We blew it. Maybe our kids will do better."

I still think so.

So, go get the kids, gather around the computer and teach 'em to say it loud and say it proud:

Golus Sucks! Moshiach Now!!