Oddly, in recent days there were two Louis Armstrong-related matters under public dispute. The first was this Substack post by Lewis Porter, eminent jazz historian, pianist and friend, debunking misinformation contained in Johan Grimonprez’s Oscar-nominated documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat. In short: No, Armstrong never threatened to renounce his U.S. citizenship and move to Ghana, as is claimed onscreen in the film, with a footnote even. Porter followed the footnote and found the sources to be spurious. More on this below.
The second was an ill-advised screed in the Times of Israel going after Ricky Riccardi and the Louis Armstrong House Museum for supposedly downplaying Armstrong’s famous boyhood relationship with the Jewish Karnofsky family in New Orleans. “I’m certainly not an authority on any of this,” wrote Daniel Singer, who then proceeded to prove it, at some length. Singer’s insinuation throughout is that this alleged minimization of the Karnofskys is rooted in antisemitism. The charge is entirely without merit and an apology is in order.
Armstrong and the Karnofskys
Just about every paragraph of Singer’s piece is misleading or misinformed and too much to detail here. What I do want to note is the impetus for Singer’s animosity: Riccardi has doggedly attempted for years to correct the public record on a viral post making false, sentimentalized claims about Armstrong’s relationship with the Karnofskys. Singer argues that Riccardi’s rebuttal to this...
Democrats are able to play dumb about the censorship-industrial complex in part because Barrett’s decision gives them the ammunition to claim it doesn’t exist. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., quoted Just...