OUR COOL PRESIDENT?


We now live in an era of  connectedness, however superficial, but hyper and almost instantaneous,, and apparently it is of great use to both terrorists and advertisers, among others.

But this has succeeded previous "beat" generations which tended to be both aloof and "cool".Our
president, Barack Obama may not yet have realized this, however, judging from his recent behavior
in almost ignoring the recent protests in Paris, He is certainly NOT "Charlie" though perhaps 
he still tries to be Miles Davis,  as  is described in  the opening of a chapter called "Terminally Cool" from a book of essays by Marcelle Clements published in the early 1980's, The Dog is Us and Other Observations.


A jazz fan dies and goes to Heaven. when he gets there he is greeted by St. Peter who shows him around and it looks exactly like a jazz club with crummy lighting and cafe tables, waitresses in tights and everything.

When the jazz fan sees who's in the club, he says, "Oh my God, this really is Heaven".

At one table, Lady Day (Billie Holiday). is sitting with Lester Young (legendary alto saxophone player who accompanied her on some of greatest recordings). At another is Thelonius Monk having a drink with Charlie Parker (two more deceased  jazz legends).

"Man, this is too much", says the jazz fan to St. Peter. Then he sees a figure .sitting alone at the bar, dressed in black and wearing neck jewelry, with his back to the audience.. "Who's that?", asks the fan."Oh," says St. Peter, "that's God. He thinks he's Miles Davis. " (Miles was still alive then)......


 That chapter ends,

 .....it turns out though that Miles Davis has received and accepted
many awards and his biographer recounts  that the wall behind his piano is laden with plaques, so he asked Davis to explain. " I like nice wood, " said Miles Davis.


Incidentally,, Marcelle  Clements' book has a preface in which she discusses how she grew up
bicultural as Jewish refugee in France where her family was in hiding before moving to America.