Shields Down.

“A House Republican leadership aide said that the automatic-dismissal rule is ‘the rule that is most commonly believed to be designed to protect Tom DeLay’ and that it was ‘impossible to win the communications battle’ on it.” Sensing that the (lack of) ethics issue was causing them real damage, and perhaps perturbed by the recent revelations involving Casino Jack’s credit card and gift-giving streak, the House GOP plan to rescind the recent rule change passed in January to protect Boss DeLay from any real ethics inquiry. Looks like palling around with Dubya yesterday didn’t change the Hammer’s fortunes much. Update: Hastert officially announces the rules changes.

Nearscape.

Buffy and Angel fans, look to the stars: The trailer for Joss Whedon’s Serenity breaks online. I never watched the TV show, so I don’t really know what’s going on here, but I could see myself catching this, if for nothing else than for Chiwetel Ejiofor as the villain. Still, that “define interesting” exchange near the end, among others in this clip, just about sets my teeth on edge.

…Columbia Records’…

Night #2 of Bob’s Beacon Stand:

Tombstone Blues / Love Minus Zero/No Limit / Lonesome Day Blues / This Wheel’s on Fire / Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum / John Brown / Under the Red Sky (Listen here) / Highway 61 Revisited / Bye and Bye / Shooting Star (Listen here) / Honest With Me / Masters of War

Encore: Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right / All Along the Watchtower

So, only two repeats from last night (Highway 61, Watchtower) in a 14-song setlist…that’s not bad at all. Tonight’s choices were more esoteric than Monday’s show, with “This Wheel’s on Fire” and “John Brown” the main standouts in the middle going. “Masters of War” has been given a spooky and even somewhat jarring update — as my friend Jeremy noted, it’s not exactly the type of song you expect to rock out to. And, while I don’t think I was as moved in this show as I was by “Visions of Johanna” or “Desolation Row” the night before (the stifling heat in the upper deck cheap seats didn’t help), any evening in which you hear the freewheelin’ Bob Dylan perform “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” has to go down as a good one.

Unfortunately, we missed Amos Lee this time around. As for Merle & the Strangers, I’d say their setlist was about 50-60% the same, although, Greatest Hits-wise, “Silver Wings” and “Okie from Muskogee” had been replaced by “The Bottle Let Me Down” and “Are the Good Times Really Over.” And, on both nights, Haggard has crooned a ditty called something like “Wish I Was Thirty Again,” which strikes a favorable chord in this corner.

At any rate, I’ll be missing the next two shows, but am greatly looking forward to the last stop of this tour, Saturday night at the Beacon. (Yea, I know three shows is kinda decadent, but tix went on sale the Tuesday morning after Hunter checked out, and it seemed to me then that it’s worth catching Dylan as many times as possible if given the opportunity. Two shows into this swing, I’m not regretting my decision at all.)

…Bob Dylan!

The Bob Dylan Show‘s freewheeling week in NYC began here last night at the Beacon Theatre, and it was a doozy. Bob’s got two opening acts this time around: First up was Amos Lee, a young guy who seemed pretty talented and exuded a sort of John Mayer/VH1-Storytellers vibe, and his three-piece band. Unfortunately, I arrived late and only caught the tail end of their set, but what I heard sounded pretty good.

Then came Merle Haggard and the Strangers, a well-traveled outfit (according to them, 40 years and running) with — as my friend Alex pointed out — the spitting image of Boris Yeltsin on the drums. Haggard & co. offered some old-school, easy-listening, toe-tappin’ country…I’m not a fan by any means, but I recognized some of the songs, including “Workin’ Man’s Blues,” “Okie from Muskogee,” and a cover of Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable.” (Well, it’s Merle Haggard…I wasn’t expecting “London Calling.”) And, despite some stage banter that sounded like it’d been in the can for a really long while (replete with rim-shots), the Strangers offered up a decent hour of countrified ditties that made for a solid, if somewhat quietening, kick-off to the Dylan set.

Finally, at around 9:30 or so, the man of the hour. Dylan’s show hasn’t changed all that much in the past couple of years, but he’s honed further his crack team of back-up musicians, and the stage design — red velvet curtains, a starry backdrop — has a choice David Lynch surreality to it this time around. Here’s the setlist:

To Be Alone With You /
I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight /
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) /
Visions Of Johanna (listen here) /
Cold Irons Bound /
Moonlight /
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again /
High Water (For Charley Patton) (Listen here) /
Summer Days /
Standing In The Doorway /
Highway 61 Revisited /
Desolation Row

Encore: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues / All Along The Watchtower

Aside from the occasional harp solo at center stage (during “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and “Desolation Row,” for example), Dylan spent the evening on the keys. His voice is not it what once was, obviously, but I generally get over that by the first song or so — In fact, on some cuts, like “It’s Alright, Ma” or “Watchtower,” I actually find Dylan’s current raspy, menacing delivery an improvement.

For me, last night’s highlights were “Visions of Johanna” and “Desolation Row,” both of which remain two of Dylan’s most transcendent wordscapes. And the Hendrix-esque closer “All Along the Watchtower,” while not really a surprise, just keeps getting better and better — Bob’s now added a very eerie echo-effect to the last couplet (“Outside in the distance / A wildcat did growl / Two riders were approaching / The wind began to howwwwll…“) I’m very much looking forward to seeing how he’ll top that tonight.

Birds of a Feather.

“Bush is supporting DeLay as ‘strongly as he ever has, which is strongly,’ McClellan said.” While trying once again to salvage his Social Security privatization plan (which even Republicans on the Senate Finance Commitee are now shying away from), Dubya struts beside Boss DeLay for all the world to see. Well, Mr. President, if he’s really the type of fellow you want us to associate with your administration…

Knight Over Gotham.

MTV obtains an exclusive new Wayne-centric Batman Begins trailer that includes much more of Katie Holmes and Morgan Freeman (and, briefly, Cillian Murphy and Ken Watanabe) than we’ve seen before.

Nuclear Chicken.

Despite a (somewhat dismaying but probably politically necessary) attempt by top Senate Dems to achieve a compromise on the question of judicial nominations, Catkiller Frist remains committed to go nuclear to preserve his presidential prospects. Two-thirds of the country think the nuclear option is a bad idea, but will that be enough to sway the moderate GOP?

The Home Front.

As many of y’all know, despite being a PhD student here at Columbia, I very rarely post about the newsmaking disputes that occasionally roil our campus. (Does it reflect badly on my academic gravitas that I spend more time at GitM discussing national politics, movie trailers, and online Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out knockoffs than ideological dust-ups closer to home? Well, so be it.)

That being said, two links of note. First, in the Financial Times, Ian Buruma — with the aid of one of my colleagues, Moshik Temkin — offers what I thought was one of the more sober-minded summaries I’ve read of the recent MEALAC controversy at Columbia. As he puts it, “racism exists, but not all Israeli policies towards Palestinians, however harsh, are inspired by racism. And…not all criticism of Israeli policies is the result of anti-Jewish prejudice. Yet these are the terms in which modern political debates are increasingly couched..”

Second, regarding the recent one-week graduate student strike on campus (which I voted against, due to concerns not unlike the ones I held last year, but respected by not crossing the picket and reviewing paper drafts from home), The Nation‘s Jennifer Washburn offers a write-up which connects the two buzz issues of unionization and academic freedom and includes an unearthed internal memo, signed by provost (and my dissertation advisor) Alan Brinkley, which suggests possible punitive measures to prevent future strikes.

I’ve already written about this at length on the (no longer) internal grad-student-historian listserv, and don’t really feel like getting into it in depth again here. Suffice to say that, while the document does seem uncharacteristic of Prof. Brinkley (as an aside, it reads like it was written by a member of his staff, although obviously it still carries his imprimatur), I am neither surprised nor all that dismayed by this memo. In the face of our continued strike actions, it seems perfectly appropriate to me for the administration — and the university provost, for that matter — to brainstorm both positive and punitive ways to mitigate future disruptions. All this means is that, come the next strike, it may well be time for the rubber to hit the road, and for graduate students who believe in unionization to make real financial sacrifices for our beliefs, as strikers in any other line of work are forced to do. (Of course, given that none of these proposed measures appear to have been enacted this time around, perhaps not.)

In fact, I think there’s actually a silver lining here for pro-union graduate students. For one, I expect this memo will do more to galvanize the movement than all of last week’s ill-conceived strike. For another, perhaps a heightened sense of what a strike actually constitutes might encourage more out-of-the-box thinking and political calculation by union leadership, rather than the “strike-only, strike-first” ideology that afflicts the upper echelons of our organization at the moment. To use an analogy I’m kinda fond of (for obvious reasons), the only way to get to Mars is by spaceship, but you don’t send it before it’s good and ready. Right now, our Mission Control keeps hitting the launch button before we’ve plotted a trajectory or even built the darned thing.

Update: I’ve since been informed in a personal e-mail that I’m both a “Brinkley apologist” (because I clearly don’t share the vitriol of the Palpatine Unmasked contingent) and a “scab.” (Shouldn’t have looked at those drafts, I guess…) You see, this is exactly why I post about Arthur Dent here much more than I do Columbia inside-baseball. Which reminds me, that Frusion Punch-Out link was via Usr/Bin/Grl.