Attack of the jazz racists

There’s a great old Leonard Cohen song—I believe it’s on his crazy Phil Spector album—called “Jazz Police”:

Wild as any freedom loving racist I applaud the actions of the Chief Tell me now, O beautiful and spacious Am I in trouble with the Jazz Police?

As so often in San Francisco, life does not just imitate art. It intimidates it. And so in today’s Chronicle—as the lead story, no less—we learn that racists have infiltrated the Bay Area jazz community. Or as the Chron puts it: JAZZ FANS DECRY EXCLUSION.

I mean, talk about underground. Talk about sleeper cells. We thought we’d whipped ‘em in Selma. We thought we had ol’ Bull Connor beat. But suddenly he reappears, and he’s calling himself “Susan Muscarella” and booking the Berkeley Downtown Jazz Festival.

Folks, we clearly need to keep more of an eye on these dangerous characters.