Top Comments appears nightly, as a round-up of the best comments on Daily Kos. Surely you come across comments daily that are perceptive, apropos and .. well, perhaps even humorous. But they are more meaningful if they're well-known ... which is where you come in (especially in diaries/stories receiving little attention).
Send your nominations to TopComments at gmail dot com by 9:30 PM Eastern Time nightly, and indicate (a) why you liked the comment, and (b) your Dkos user name (to properly credit you) as well as a link to the comment itself.
I'm doing a late, pinch-hit diary for this evening. And so I'm not breaking any new ground here ..... but instead, will preview a coming attraction of mine: a diary whose history began with you, loyal readers of Top Comments.
Earlier this month, as host of Top Comments, I wrote in the diary portion about the campaign to have a (posthumous) Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to the Voice of America (VOA) disk jockey Willis Conover - whose "Jazz Hour" from 1955 to his death in 1996 was listened to by 100 million around the world and played a key role in totalitarian countries, whose citizens asked "How can this USA be so bad when they play such great music?" But because the VOA is an official part of the US government: it is prohibited to be broadcast in the USA (and thus you cannot hear it without having a short-wave radio). And that's where it might have ended.
But the response I received from several of you was so positive: I decided to post it as a stand-alone diary (with some added details and links). And the enhanced diary I wrote would have worked as-is ... but .... I felt it needed one more thing. All of the testimonials from musicians were from performers you would recognize if you were a jazz fan .. but if you weren't .... well, maybe not. And even less so their work. What to do?
Then for some reason, I recalled a performer who had emigrated to the West from behind the Iron Curtain ... whose work I had enjoyed over the years. And even if you don't recognize his name (a star of the 1970's jazz-rock scene's Mahavishnu Orchestra and a frequent tour partner of the guitarist Jeff Beck) - most likely you have heard the work of multi-keyboardist Jan Hammer on your TV sets, as he composed the music for Miami Vice - with two Grammy Awards as a result. What harm was there if I tried contacting him, asking if he had listened to Conover?
In the expanded diary that I posted, I included the response I received from his manager: confirming that indeed Jan Hammer credits Willis Conover with helping him become the musician he is today. I sent his manager the link, as a 'thank-you' for what I felt was the finishing touch on that diary.
I received a reply, saying that Jan had some additional stories about someone he admired, and that they wished they had told me more. And when his manager added that Jan was, in fact, a regular reader of Daily Kos .... well, we didn't have to leave it there ... did we? ............
The upshot? The other evening, I spent 35 minutes on the phone with Jan Hammer ... and he couldn't have been more friendly to an amateur like me. Although we did talk about the rest of his career, it was when discussing Willis Conover that you could hear the feeling in his voice. Indeed, it's entirely possible that in all of the interviews he's granted over the years ... no American interviewer ever asked him about Willis Conover.
And so I'll be posting this interview as part of a follow-up diary sometime in the near future. It should be noted that this all came about because of two factors: the positive feedback I received from you folks, and being willing to take that one extra step on my part.
Thanks, folks!
Now, on to Top Comments:
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From ontheleftcoast:
I usually wouldn’t nominate a comment with profanity in it. But sometimes, just sometimes, a rant requires it: and one took place today during the front-page story about reaction to President Obama's visit to Alabama. The emotions are raw, visceral, and primal. With that in mind, I nominate this comment - from mdmslle - for tonight’s honors.
And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening:
In the current Week in Review by Black Kos - when the discussion turned to the revelation that your-friend-and-mine Mr. Trump doesn't always have good relations with The Blacks - Deoliver47 suggests that what The Donald meant ..... was that he "likes black doormen and lawn jockeys".