A few comments about Miller Puckette's article

From: mclaren
To: Practical microtonality group
Subject: Some comments on the previous article

Herewith, some comments on Miller Puckette's article:
--------
Beliefs typically derive from underlying assumptions -- what are
Miller Puckette's assumptions? Who is Miller Puckette,
and where does he come from?
Puckette helped produce the algorithmic graphic
software application MAX. At present MAX enjoys
very wide popularity among college music students,
as well as among new music composers who use
technology. MAX runs only on Macintosh computers,
and the current version of MAX runs only on Power
Macs. (An older version of MAX exists but you
cannot buy it, nor does the company support it.)
Puckette comes out of the IRCAM/CCRMA
computer music environment. However, he appears
to have rebelled against the compile/listen paradigm
of computer music. That older mode of making
computer music required composers to painstakingly
type in many thousands of numerical parameters,
submit the batch job to a minicomputer, then wait
for hours or days while the job compiled, then
(only much later) listen to the resulting audio output,
make changes to the numerical score, and do the
whole shmear over again.
Like many other computer musicians of his
generation, Puckette quickly tired of the compile/listen
cycle because he found the extreme length of time
twixt writing the numerical score and hearing the
output counterintuitive and difficult to deal with.
Puckette belongs to the second generation of computer
music composers. The first generation (Max Mathews,
John Chowning, Paul Lansky, et al.) grew up with
large mainframe computers and assembly code
scores. To the first generation of computer musicians,
being able to type english-like numbers and letters into
a score represented a huge breakthrough in usability,
even if it meant having to wait weeks in order to hear
the compiled audio output.
The second generation of computer musicians (Puckette,
Barry Vercoe, Barry Truax, et al.) grew up with faster
smaller minicomputers which could sometimes run simple
numerical scores in real time (viz., Barry Truax's PDP-10-based
system in Toronto Canada). This taste of real-time audio output
led many of the second generation computer musicians to
search for ways to produce real-time output using MIDI
(MIDI appeared in 1983, and the minicomputer-based
computer music systems became common in the late 1970s).
This led to applications like Miller Puckette's MAX.
MAX does not generate or leave behind a written musical
score. Instead, you hook together graphical modules on
a Macintosh computer screen and then set the thing going.
The MAX application will then do its thing in real time.
Recently, an add-on for MAX has appeared. This add-on
can perform digital audio operations on incoming sounds
if the Power Mac is fast enough. The digital audio operations
include Fourier analysis/resynthesis, digital reverb, digital
echo, spectral operations like spectral inversion, and so on.
All of these operations can be performed in real time on
sounds as they come into the Power Mac, and all these
digital audio operations are directed by a MAX graphical
"score" which consists of various digital audio software
modules plugged into one another.
At present, Puckette is a faculty member at UCSD. The
UCSD music department has one of the worst reputations
of any in the United States. (Many have said THE worst.)
The UCSD computer music department is a vast sinkhole
for tax money that turned out to be largely wasted. F. R. Moore
was hired from Bell Labs in 1979 to create (from scratch) a
huge computer music system. He produced a total mess. Unlike
Max Mathews' MUSIC V or Barry Vercoe's Csound, Moore's
Cmusic is such a badly botched programming job that it never went
anywhere. (A digital thalidomide child.) Consisting of many hundreds
of scattered files, cmusic runs slowly, does what it does poorly, and
requires enormously greater computer resources to do the
same things that Vercoe's Csound does with much less RAM
and processor power. Also, Moore's Cmusic does not run
on Windows or Mac machines -- only UNIX/LINUX, _unlike_
Vercoe's Csound.
The UCSD music department remains infamous nationwide as
an altar at which composers and students alike are required
to abase themselves to the European so-called "avant
garde" of the 1930s-1950s. (How the 70-year-old ideas and
music of dead European composers can be considered "avant
garde" today, no one has succeeded in explaining.) The UCSD
music department offers an intensely mathematical music curriculum,
stressing math over talent, logic and diagrams and number-lists
over intuition, and Euroschlock musical ideology over passion.
Concerts of UCSD music represent the most ideologically
narrow form of modern music, with no discernible melodies
and no perceptible rhythmic pulse and no functional harmonies
and no audible organization. In short, the UCSD music department
seems stuck in time in the year 1950, like one of those chrononauts
in a science fiction story whose time machine breaks down and
leaves him stranded in the past.
---
Given this context, what can we conclude about
Miller Puckette's discussion of so-called "new music"?

-------------------------------------------------------------

Miller Puckette appears to subscribe to the "crisis theory" of
modern music. According to this belief system, 20th century (and
early 21st century music) suffers from a catastrophic systemic
problem. This alleged "crisis" supposedly affects all new music.
The alleged "crisis" is supposedly worsening, leading to some
final (but unspecified) musical cataclysm. The alleged "crisis" in
new music arises from supposed historical processes operating
primarily in Europe during the 20th century. The alleged "crisis"
in new music supposedly threatens the very existence of all new
music everywhere, and the continued survival of all composers
of so-called "new music."
Puckette's "crisis theory" belief system reveals itself in
passages
such as: "To ask, `Who cares if you listen,' is to open and peer
inside the forbidden closet. The skeleton inside has twelve ribs.
Run a mallet down them to hear the sound of 20th century academic
music in the USA."

Is Puckette's "crisis theory" of modern music accurate?
Does a "crisis theory" describe the actual history of 20th
century music?
Let's look at the facts:
Miller Puckette's belief system appears to be a rehash of a
European belief system first offered in the very early 20th century.
Indeed, a long line of (mostly European) modernist ideologues have
purveyed this "crisis theory" of modern music. Starting with the
Viennese kook, who ran around screaming "The end of tonality
is coming! The end of tonality is coming!" and proceeding to the
Darmstadt kook (who suffered a mental breakdown in 1970
requiring prolonged institutionalization) and on to the Princeton kook
(who has admitted publicly that his set-theory efforts to place modern
music on a "scientific basis" failed, and whose pitch class
set concoctions have been so widely criticized for their
intellectual shoddiness as well as their musical incoherence) and
thence to the Parisian kook who founded IRCAM (for scathing
reviews of the Parisian's kook's musical output see variously
The Musical Times, London, 1960, and The New York Times,
1991), each of these musical cranks marched up and down
the street carrying placards which read THE END OF TONALITY
IS COMING.
In the case of the Parisian kook, for example, we may
cite the notorious 1950 article in which he declared "Any
composer who does not recognize the absolute necessity of
the twelve-tone method is USELESS!" In the case of the
Princeton kook, Miller Puckette has already cited the
infamous article "Who Cares If You Listen?" (which would
seem to require no further comment)...and in the case of
the Darmstadt kook we may cite commentary from sources
as varied as James Backus and Leonard B. Meyer which
unanimously characterizes the Darmstadt kook's writings on
music as "meaningless jargon" which "uses the terminology
of science but without its customary scientific meaning," (Backus,
PNM, 1963) "vacuous fustian," (Meyer, "Music, the Arts, and
Ideas," 1956) and so on.
From this evidence, what may we conclude?
The simplest and most obvious conclusion is that the
so-called "crisis theory" of modern music is actually
nothing more than an apocalyptic cult. Like all doomsday
cults, this one proclaims "THE END OF [fill in the blank]
IS COMING!" (Here, the blank gets filled in with "TONAL MUSIC."
Elsewhere, the blank gets variously filled in with "THE WORLD,"
"THE WHITE RACE," "THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY
SYSTEM," etc., etc. ) Like all doomsday cults, the "crisis theory"
of modern music makes predictions which uniformly fail to
come true. For example, the followers of the Viennese
kook have written "Little children and mailmen
will whistle our tunes" -- Anton Webern, 1939, while followers
of the Princeton kook have written "The older or tonal
system is no longer used by serious composers, having
been replaced or superseded by the newer or serial
system." -- Charles Wuorinen, Simple Composition, 1979,
and the Parisian kook has written "The composer's intuition
is no longer sufficient to create music which is historically
compelling; today the scientist and the engineer must
collaborate with the composer..." -- IRCAM press release,
1977.
In each case, every one of these proclamations has failed
to come true. Contrary to the doomsday claims of the
Viennese kook, the end of tonality stubbornly refused to arrive
as scheduled, and subsequent generations of composers have
not only abandoned serial rows as a viable compositional
method but they have also largely given up listening to
or even trying to defend the music of the Viennese kook
and his immediate circle.(See "Music of the 20th Century,"
New York Times, Dec. 2001, for a blistering 21st
century reappraisal of the Viennese kook. "Critics have
exhausted every term in the lexicon of faint praise. Why
don't they just admit they can't stand to listen to it?" - ibid.)
Contrary to the apocalyptic claims of the Princeton
kook and his followers, pitch-class set theory has been
abandoned by younger composers as an unworkable
scheme which generates insufferably boring music with
no perceptible audible organization.
And contrary to the proclamations of the Parisian kook,
the vast majority of composers continue to merrily compose
exciting and vividly memorable music without feeling any need
whatever to collaborate with scientists or engineers.
Moreover, French scholars like Sorbonne Professor Laurent
Fichet have gone so far as to inconveniently debunk such
allegedly "scientific" musical schemes as those purveyed
by the Parisian kook who founded IRCAM, showing them to
be nothing more than abject pseudoscience on the
level of Dianetics or ufology or cold fusion. [See "Scientific
Theories of Music In the 19th and 20th Century," Laurent
Fichet, Paris, Librarie V. Brin, 1996.]
More -- contrary to the apocalyptic claims of the Parisisan
kook, no major serious composer has ever emerged from
IRCAM, and the overwhelming majority of the most widely
applauded computer music has emerged (and continues
to emergy, even today, in 2002) from venues *other* than
IRCAM. (As for example the computer music of
Richard Karpen, the computer music of William
Scottstaedt, the computer music of John Chowning,
the computer music of James Dashow, et al., none
of them IRCAM denizens.) IRCAM's darling, the
composer Phillipe Manoury, has been roundly denigrated
by just about every music critic and his musical output
is justly regarded by the international new music
community as trivial and musically meritricious. Indeed,
the situation at IRCAM has become so dire that
when the French Minister of the Interior went so far
as to ask the Parisian kook to justify his annual IRCAM
budget, the Parisian kook found himself required
to pull political strings to force the French interior
minister's resignation. Needless to say, the Parisian
kook got boxed into this exigency because he knew he
could not justify IRCAM's budget, and thus had to
shoot the messenger instead of fixing the problem.
(See "Rationalizing Music," 1995, for the full details
of this scandal, among many other scandals afflicting IRCAM
and the Parisian kook. The latest and most delicious scandal
to erupt around the Parisian kook reportedly involved his arrest
by Swiss police for terrorism in late 2001. Apparently the Parisian
kook made a bomb threat against one of the many critics who
wrote a savagely negative review of his music lo those many
moons ago, and his bomb threat remained in his police jacket.)
Notice that in each and every case, the dire predictions of the
apocalyptic musical cult failed to come true.
As with all doomsday cults, this failure of reality to converge
with the cult ideology left the "crisis theory" cult in disarray.
This in turn required drastic convulsions in order
to re-write history and rearrange the numerology and the
ideology in order to make the failed predictions appear to
conform with the apocalyptic cult belief system. This is also
typical of doomsday cults. (For a detailed list of failed
doomsday predictions made by cult leaders, and the subsequent
doublethink and doubletalk required to make the failed predictions
seem retroactively credible, see the appendix of James Randi's
"Encyclopedia of the Occult," 1996.)
The particular intellectual gyrations indulged in by the "crisis
theory"
cult of modern music include the usual dodges and doublethink
scams familiar from ufology or Dianetics -- for example, the old
warhorse "make the prediction unfalsifiable." In ufology, this
dodge is used when the ufologist finds himself confronted by
evidence that the UFO didn't show up on radar. "Oh, well,
the UFO has a force field which prevents it from showing up
on radar," the ufologist replies, thus rendering his prediction
of a UFO landing unfalsifiable (viz., no human technology
can detect it). In the case of the "crisis theory" cult of modern
music,
the attempt to make unfasifiable the prediction that "Tonality has
ended!"
typically runs along the lines of "Oh, well, tonality actually HAS
ended,
it's just that our backward-looking stodgy audiences don't
realize it and won't accept it." (Once again, the event allegedly
occurred, but no one can detect that it occurred.)
Other dodges used in a futile effort to to salvage the failed
doomsday predictions
made by the "crisis theory" cult of modern music include the ad hoc
objection -- also known as decoupling cause and effect. In
ufology, this scam typically pops up when the ufologist encounters
proof that no one saw a UFO abudcting anyone on the predicted
night. "Oh, well, aliens _did_ abduct someone -- they just didn't
do it with a UFO." In the "crisis theory" doomsday cult of modern
music,
this ad hoc objection (AKA decoupling of cause and effect)
takes the form of the specious claim, "Oh, well, all modern
composers actually DO use atonal serial methods of composition,
they just call them by different names like `algorithmic
composition' and `computer music.'" (In other words, cause and
effect are decoupled by redefining whatever *actually* happened
as the alleged result of the cause which failed to produce what
the cult leader predicted it would produce.)
Other dodges used in a futile attempt to salvage the failed
doomsday
predictions of the "crisis theory" of modern music involve
the familiar "post hoc propter hoc" fallacy (i.e., if a dog barks
during a thunderstorm, the dog's barking caused the thunderstorm).
In ufology this logical fallacy takes the form "UFO abductions
must be real, since so many people report them," while in
the "crisis theory" cult of modern music this logical fallacy
appears in the guise of "The end of tonality must be real,
since so many music professors and so many modern composers
produce atonal music." (the logical fallacy arises from the failure
to recognize that the thunderstorm might cause the dog's barking
rather than the other way round -- likewise, the possibilty that music
professors composing lotsa atonal music might cause the profs to claim
that tonality has ended, rather than the other way round.. "Post
hoc propter hoc." Correlation is not causation, as any grade
school logic textbook informs us.)
Further scams and junkthink con jobs which prop up the
failed predictions of the "crisis theory" of modern music include
the false antinomy ("We must either have a police state or
total anarchy!" No, there exists a large middle ground between
the two wild extremes) -- in so-called "modern" music this
takes the form of "We must either have [fill in the blank
according to the decade -- serial rows, pitch class set theory,
IRCAM pseudosciece] or trivial Muzak kitsch!" Also popular
is the self-fulfilling historicist prediction a la Georg F. Hegel and
Karl Marx and the American social Darwinists of the early 1900s,
to wit, "We are approaching an historically inevitable inflexion
point in human evolution in which UFOs will land and take
us all away to the stars, and the proof is the ever-growing
number of UFO cult members!" In the "crisis theory" doomsday
cult of modern music, this delusion takes the form of "We
are approaching an historically inevitable inflexion point
in musical evolution in which total pitch-class set atonality
will encompass all music everywhere on earth, and the
proof is the ever-growing number of music professors
and college music students who use pitch-class set
atonal music theory!" (The logical fallacy here derives from
the failure to realize that if the process is historically
necessary, there is no need for anyone to work to
produce the desired end -- but the argument depends
precisely on the fact that so many cultists are frantically
working to produce the claimed effect. Occam's Razor
assures us that the simpler explanation is that we are
dealing with a cult whose only supporting evidence for its
predictions is the frenzied activity of the cult members.)
---
In short, we can see from even this brief overview
that Miller Puckette's "crisis theory" of modern
music is an apocalyptic cult fantasy which, like all
doomsday cult belief systems, fails to conform with
reality.
Consequently most of the alleged "problems" Puckette
describes boil down to gyrations and convulsions and intellectual
flip-flops and mental spasms resulting from failed attempts to
get the apocalyptic cult belief system to conform with
reality. The alleged "problems" largely disappear if
we abandon the failed apocalyptic musical belief system.
For example, an objective historical survey of
20th century music fails to reveal signs of any alleged
"crisis." While the Viennese kook whipped himself into
convulsions in an effort to solve a purported "crisis"
in modern music which does not appear to exist,
other composers who lived around the same time
merrily wrote bushels of excellent music sans
convulsions..seemingly unaware of any alleged
"crisis."
Such composers living & working around the time of
the Viennese kook include Ralph Vaughan Williams,
today one of the most popular of 20th century
composers. Williams did not need to indulge in
theoretical or ideological spasms in order to
produce "Variations On A Theme Of Thomas
Tallis" in 1907 (compare with the Viennese kook's
"Five Orchestral Pieces" in 1905). "Tallis" is
widely beloved by modern audiences and is
frequently programmed in the modern
symphonic repertoire. By contrast, the Viennese
kook's musical output almost never appears
in 21st century symphonic programs, and is still
widely despised by modern audiences (despite
failed doomsday cult predictions that subsequent
generations would embrace the music of the
Viennese kook with fervent adoration. Compare
with cult predictions that "the cult guru will return
to life," viz., hollow earth cult leader Cyrus Teed,
whose corpse had to be confiscated by Florida
cops as a health hazard circa 1930 because Teed's
cult followers expected him to return from death.
See "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science"
1956, by Martin Gardner for more on the Teed hollow
Earth cult, also "Kooks" by Donna Kossey,
Feral Press, 1995. Then compare the cult
followers' behavior with that of the followers
of the End of Tonality cult established by the
Viennese kook.)
From an objective standpoint, the only difference
would appear to be that Vaughan Williams had
musical talent, while the Viennese kook did not.
(To give him credit, the Viennese kook _did_ manage
to come up with an unusually inventive scam for
covering up his lack of musical talent. Like the
accomplishment of Maurizio Ponzi, that _was_ an
achievement...in a manner of speaking.)
Other talented composers who led long and productive
lives without the need for ideological convulsions
induced by apocalyptic historicist fantasies
include Janacek, Prokofiev, Hindemith, Bartok,
Ravel, and Stravinsky. None of these composers
appears to have predicted the imminent "end of"
anything (either tonality, or anything else). They
simply composed a lot of very good music
sans ideological spasms.
Looking at the period from 1950 to 1999,
we note a veritable explosion of superb modern
composers including Iannis Xenakis, Krysztof
Pendercki, Conlon Nacarrow, Jean-Claude
Risset, John Chowning, William Schottstaedt,
Paul Lansky, Larry Polansky, and many many
others. None of these composers appears to
have felt the need to indulge in an apocalyptic
musical belief system. Once again, they merely
composed lots of superb music, sans ideological
paroxysms.
From this viewpoint, we find ourselves in a position
to ask a simple question. To wit: did any kind of
alleged "crisis" actually occur in 20th century
music? Or did we simply witness a handful of
kooks who wound themselves into ideological
knots, and whose music (along with their failed
apocalyptic musical predictions) has fallen by
the wayside, as typically happens with the
ideological output of apocalyptic cults?
--
From this perspective, we may regard either with
serene amusement or quiet disdain such proclamations
by Miller Puckette as "Stand back: twentieth century
art music is falling under its own weight." This typical
doomsday prediction depends on the redefinition
of the words "twentieth century art music" to mean
"music produced by followers of apocalyptic musical
cults of the 20th century." Apparently none of the many
serious composers who produce music outside the
university are composers, and apparently their music
is not music. Such are the miracles of Newspeak, as
George Orwell called it (a form of invented jargon whose
words often have a meaning the reverse of their normal
sense in ordinary English. In Newspeak, for instance,
"free thought" is redefined as "thoughtcrime.")
Once we understand that Miller Puckette is speaking
a form of invented jargon in which customary English-
language words have been redefined according to a
doomsday cult's lexicon, we can easily decrypt
Puckette's writings by building a simple glossary. The
KKK called such a glossary "The Kloran." The Kloran
told KKK members how to speak and how to use
the jargon of their cult. (Apparently there was a children's
Kloran, a women's Kloran, and a men's Kloran. There also
apparently exists a KKK songbook!) Once we construct a simple
musical Kloran, we will find ourselves in a postiion
to clearly understand Miller Puckette's jargon.
This leads us to a straightforward translation
of Puckette's article:

GLOSSARY:

"Twentieth century art music" -- music with no
perceptible melody and no discernible rhythm
and no functional harmony and no audible
organization

"We" -- members of an apocalyptic musical
doomsday cult whose predictions have
uniformly failed to come true

"audience" -- other members of an apocalyptic
musical doomsday cult whose predictions have
uniformly failed to come true

"concerts" - meetings of the apocalyptic musical
doomsday cult

"musical structure" -- the musical Kloran (the
"Kloran" is the KKK bible), i.e., the ideology
professed by the apocalyptic musical doomsday
cult -- this should not be confused with anything
ordinary people can actually hear

"dumb our music down" -- write music with
perceptible melodies and functional harmonies
and discernible rhythms and audible organization

"composer with integrity" -- anyone who adheres
to the strict doomsday ideology of the apocalyptic
musical cult

"the great tradition of European art music" -- failed
doomsday predictions made by a series of
dead apocalyptic musical cult leaders

"keep the ball in play" -- continue recruiting members
(chumps) for the apocalyptic musical cult

"educate the audience" -- brainwash gullible
dupes into joining the musical doomsday cult

"structural integrity...of the music" -- exact conformity
to the smallest details of the musical Kloran (i.e.,
musiKKKal ideology) as set out by the apocalyptic
musical cult guru (take your pick -- the Viennese
kook, the Darmstadt kook, the Princeton kook)

"the craft of getting the music to work out according to
the rules" -- suppressing your musical talent

"our own population turns to a music which derives more
strongly from the African diaspora than from our `own'
musical culture " -- Americans prefer to listen to music
composed by living American virtuosi instead of dead
European kooks

"safe, easy-listening, neo-tonal music" -- music with perceptible
melodies and discernible rhythms and audible organization

"what is difficult but worthwhile" -- music without perceptible
melodies and without discernible rhythms and without audible
organization

"the process of Western art music composition requires a system
of complex, interlocking rules" -- all those who do not belong
to the apocalyptic musical doomsday cult are not musicians,
they are not composers, they are even human, and in fact
they are both enemies of history and traitors to all mankind (this
is quite familiar from the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s, the
Pol Pot interrogations in Cambodia in the 1970s, the Taliban
executions of the 1990s, etc.)

"the rules are an essential kind of mental chewing gum, without
which the
composer can not walk" -- anyone who refuses to kneel before
the graven images of dead European kooks is not a composer

"either the ink will not flow or else it pours out and covers the
page" --
if we do not follow the ideology laid out by the musical doomsday
cult's guru, our music is in danger of becoming imaginative and
enthusiastic

"As our technical standards rise ever higher, the music becomes
ever more complicated" -- all apocalyptic cults progress through
ever-increasing demands for ideological purity to eventual
Jonestown-style/Heavens-Gate-type self-immolation

"we are stuck being who we are" -- doomsday cults do not permit
members to leave

"music always has to speak in some language" --- music which refuses
to ally itself with some form of apocalyptic musical cult ideology
is not really music

"composers are paid by the performers who commission them" --
In America, the apocalyptic musical cult has gotten itself
tax-exempt status so that (like Dianetics) it can slurp at
the government trough to its heart's content

"The musicians hire the composer to instruct them how to behave,
in much the same way as students pay professors to direct them" --
doomsday cults typically require prospective cult members to sign
over their life savings to the cult

"pyramid scheme" -- college music education

"new musical paradigm" -- music without perceptible melody and
without a discernible rhythmic pulse and without audible
organziation

"the shifting role of the composer" -- parents who refuse to pay
$20,000 - $150,000 to enroll their children in a musical
doomsday cult
----------
With the help of our musical Kloran, we have now decrypted Miller
Puckette's statements to a point where we can clearly understand what
he actually means.
From the vantage point of our musical Kloran, we can now recognize
that Puckette seems upset at being a fringe member of the modernist
musical doomsday cult. Because he uses computers and does not
produce a standard musical score (as required by the dead European
doomsday cult gurus), Puckette finds himself on the outer fringe of
the modernist musical doomsday cult -- and he would evidently
prefer to be the Grand Dragon, or at the very least an Imperial
Wizard.
In order to remove himself from the outer fringe of the modernist
musical doosmday cult to a position nearer its central burning cross,
Puckette finds it necessary to redefine some of the terms of the
modernist
musical Kloran. Most of these redefinitions follow the pattern of the
usual
KKK power struggles -- namely, arguments over the amounts of
cash coming into the Klan (never enough) and the recruitment of new
Klan members (we need a better quality of cross-burner in our
organization, these yohos are too stupid).
In the 1980s David Duke won such a KKK power struggle by
recasting the Ku Klux Klan as a neo-conservative organization
to appeal to younger voters disaffected with liberal tax-and-spend
policies. David Duke invented code phrases like "we oppose racial
quotas" (which roughly translated means "kill all the niggers on the
Great Day of the Rope"), thus changing the details of the Kloran
while preserving its overall goals and ideology.
Miller Puckette appears to be proposing to add some new
terminology to the modernist musical Kloran in the time-honored
manner of David Duke. Thus he proposes such novel terminology
as "more relevant to the situation" -- almost exactly the same
language employed by David Duke in his Ku Klux Klan power
grab. In this case, Miller Puckette's phrase appears to mean
something like "new ways to yank money out of parents' wallets
for the privilege of enrolling their children in a musical doomsday
cult." Presumably this results from the growing use of credit
cards for college tuitiion, inasmuch as credit card charges can
be inconveniently cancelled in the event of fraud. (Parents have
also begun to file lawsuits against colleges for breach of promise,
creating similar threats to the cult's survival. It is interesting to
note that family members of KKK lynching victims have recently begun
using a similar strategy of targeted lawsuits to impoverish KKK
chapters across the United States.)
Such stock code phrases as "an irresistably corrupting influence
on our music" echo David Duke's code words about the
"collapse of traditional values." In both cases this seems
to mean "keeping the uppity niggers in their place."
In Miller Puckette's case, the uppity musical niggers would
appear to be the 270-plus million Americans who pay 51
billion dollars in annual taxes to support American state universities
(through direct grants) and all private American universities
(indirectly,
through tax breaks on the investment profits from their 15-billion-
dollar
and 20-billion-dollar and 30-billion-dollar Harvard and Yale and
Princeton endowments).
----------
--mclaren