You say that you're tired of me protesting

Massive, massive props to Jean Rohe for taking John McCain to task for the smug, condescending speech he gave yesterday the New School, the take-home message of which was essentially "y'all are young and foolish and ought to know your place." Rohe ably preempted McCain's sophistry in her own address to the New School Class of '06:

"Senator McCain will also tell us about his strong-headed self-assuredness in his youth, which prevented him from hearing the ideas of others, and in so doing he will imply that those of us who are young are too naïve to have valid opinions.

"I am young, and although I don't profess to possess the wisdom that time affords us, I do know that pre-emptive war is dangerous and wrong," she said.

The entire political blogosphere is abuzz with news of Rohe's remarks. But did you know that Jean Rohe is a jazz singer? And a very fine one at that. She has a regular duo with guitarist Jai Villnai, and she also sings with Darren Solomon's electronica project Science for Girls.

And, as Atrios notes, she will be appearing (with Villnai) at Rockwood Music Hall this Friday, May 26, from 7-8 PM.

UPDATE: More info on Rohe from the Daily Record:

Jean Rohe is quite familiar with the Minstrel Coffeehouse. Her parents are long-time members of the Folk Project, and her family was performing on the Minstrel stage as the Rohe Family Band starting when she and her brother Dan were children.

"Back when she was 8 years old she could sing blues effectively," said Mike Agranoff, the coffeehouse chairman.

She also took part in the group's festivals and evenings of music as she was growing up.

"Those are some of my fondest childhood memories," said Rohe, who is 20. "I was just at their most recent festival this past weekend."

At Nutley High School, she sang in a folk duo and in a female a cappella group called Accent that recorded a CD and performed at Lincoln Center.

Now she attends the New School University in New York City, where she studies jazz.

"I've sung in a lot of different settings," she said. "A lot of folk music, a lot of my own music, which runs the gamut from pretty jazz-oriented stuff to more folk to I don't even know what you would call it."

On Monday she took the stage at Sweet Rhythm, a jazz club in New York, as a member of The New School Afro-Cuban Jazz Ensemble.

Her brother Dan is three years younger, "but nowadays people ask us if we're fraternal twins," she said.

"We'll probably do a couple of my original tunes," she said. "We're going to do a couple songs by some bands my brother really likes; he's into indie rock. We might through in a classic sort of folk song like 'Sally Gardens' that we've reworked to suit our fancy."

Comments

[godoggo]

1.

Smiling in the sunlight
Laughing in the rain

As much of a scary fascist McCain is, I thought what he said was fairly banal, more like "debate those with whom you disagree; don't just shout them down."

Anyways if you think protests are for somehow going to become more effective than the massive ones that preceded the war, all I can say, with all sincerity, is more power to you.

[godoggo]

2.

...and, of course, it was a stump speech, the same as the one he gave to the presumably conservative audience at Liberty University.

[DJA]

3.

Yes -- as Jean herself noted, he gave the same speech at Liberty and Columbia. I'm not sure why that's being cited in his defense though -- something to do with his bullshit "straight talk" branding and "not being afraid to say the same thing to conservative students." Whatever.

It's incredibly lame to tell a roomful of graduating university students (yes, even "Liberty" "University" "students") that all their hard work amounts to nothing, and the diploma they are about to receive is worthless, because they are all simply too young to have an informed opinion on anything, and they ought rather to listen politely and attentively to their betters. Like, for example, John McCain. Despite the fact that the senator was demonstrably, mendaciously, catastrophically wrong about the Iraq war, and those who opposed it, including the "young and hopelessly naive" antiwar students in his audience, were right all along.

It's also pretty weak to recycle exactly same convocation speech that you already posted to your website. Like you said, it was a stump speech, not a convocation speech, and the students were entirely right to be angry that McCain was using their graduation day as a photo-op for his presidential run.

Street protests are great -- I've certainly participated in my share -- but there's also something to be said for an ordinary person who has the gonads to stand up and call McCain out on his hypocrisy directly to his face. He is still -- still -- the DC media's golden boy, and if they won't confront him, it's up to the rest of us to rise to the occasion, as Jean did.

[godoggo]

4.

Ah, well, I'm not going to bend over backward to defend the dude -as I said, I think he's scary in many ways - but I'm just not seeing what you've read into the speech - he is not saying that the young should blindly follow the old - rather that often unwarranted arrogance is a natural characteristic of youth. True.

I appreciate nuance and humility in my political thinkers. That's why my favorites tend to be kind of old - even the radicals.

[mwanji]

5.

Read part of McCain's speech. He hijacked the graduates' day, they rightly tried to hijack it back.