Politics have always been close to Tom Morello’s heart. Last Saturday, however, marked the first time the Rage Against The Machine guitarist actually endorsed a political candidate when he performed a benefit concert in San Francisco under his folkie alter-ego The Nightwatchman for anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan. “It is an honor to perform at Cindy Sheehan’s fundraising event because I strongly believe she is the kind of uncompromising righteous voice for justice that this country so desperately needs,” Morello said. “Her unwavering commitment to peace and human rights as well as her intelligence and fortitude are inspiring and stand in dramatic contrast to the lame parade of mealy-mouthed sell-outs and red state war-mongers we are normally forced to choose between.”
Sheehan, who is best known for camping outside President George W. Bush’s Texas ranch after her son Casey was killed during his service in the Iraq War, is challenging Congressional House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California’s 8th district, which covers most of San Francisco. Sheehan announced her candidacy in protest of the inaction she perceived on the part of Democrats, particularly Pelosi, in standing up to Bush on the war and other issues. For more info: www.cindyforcongress.org.
Though Tyra Banks first asked the question on her talk show several months ago, it is from the glowing (what else) interview of Barack Obama in the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone that we finally see what’s on his iPod.
Dylan. The Stones. Stevie Wonder. Sheryl Crow. Yo-Yo Ma (quick: name another famous cellist. Can’t do it, can you?). Basically everything you’d expect from a tail-end Baby Boomer born in 1961. Somehow, Obama’s impossible-to-judge selections seem too safe and just believable–not as hip as his supporters might want, but totally acceptable to just about everyone.
Obama reveals himself to be a regular, faintly obsessive fan of the music of his time with decent, if safe and mainstream, taste. He said to Rolling Stone, “If I had one musical hero, it would have to be Stevie Wonder. When I was at that point where you start getting involved in music, Stevie had that run with Music of My Mind, Talking Book, Fulfillingness’ First Finale and Innervisions, and then Songs in the Key of Life. Those are as brilliant a set of five albums as we’ve ever seen.”
Note he says “albums.” One wonders what else was in his record collection that he won’t tell Jann Wenner. While we bet Obama is way into MC5 and the Stooges, maybe even a secret Albini fan (hello, he’s from Chicago), we do know he’s into Jay-Z, seeing as he made the “brush ya shoulders off” gesture publicly.
The news that Obama deleted his Netflix queue either proves that it is music that unites us or that Obama’s taste in film was becoming the topic of smears by conservative pundits. As reported in WiseNews, Obama’s move from Netflix came after conservative commentator Michelle Malkin wrote a column referencing accusations by conservative bloggers that Obama has had access to middle eastern DVDs depicting scenes of kaffiyehs, the checkered arab scarf. “There is no proof he hasn’t rented movies showing kaffiyehs. Lawrence of Arabia is right there on his Facebook page under Favorite Movies,” wrote Malkin. We’re not sure how she felt about Stevie Wonder.
THE GOP: FISHERS OF (WHITE) MEN
I recently had an illuminating conversation with my father. He was in management in the defense industry for years until he retired, causing him to hate Republicanism with a white hot passion. He can’t wait to pull the lever for Obama.
He had just returned from a Canadian fishing trip with five “Blue Collar American” types in their seventies. He told me he was worried about Barack Obama’s chances. “Some people are pretty racist,” he said.
I told him, “Think of it like sports. They said that Black men couldn’t be quarterbacks. Now it’s normal. Then they said Black men couldn’t be head coaches. They excelled. Then they said Black men couldn’t be owners…”
“But son,” he interrupted, “these guys don’t even like football! Get it?”
“What? Why not?”
“Too many Black people!”
I didn’t ask him why he had friends like that. If you grew up in Blue Collar America before the 1980s, the answer to that is self-evident: a person needs friends.
Anyway, having already exhausted “articulate”, “attractive”, “Muslim”, “naturally gifted”, “exotic” and the like, it is slowly dawning on the GOP’s that all of their “cleverness” might be accomplishing the opposite of what they intended: it may be inoculating people against code words. Now what?
I listened to Rush Limbaugh the other week, and he was laying out The Plan (beyond the one wherein we are winning the war). I hope you don’t have a full stomach and remember, I heard this with my own ears (though obviously I will be paraphrasing). Sigh. Here goes:
The Obama candidacy is part of a George Soros plot to rule the world. No surprise there. Then it gets ugly. Soros is so evil, so amoral and power hungry that he has trained a Black man to behave like a President! When the cameras aren’t rolling, when he doesn’t have a teleprompter to read someone else’s words, he isn’t so “articulate”. His speech is dull, slow and halting. In other words George Sauros has painstakingly trained Stepin Fetchit to ACT LIKE JFK!! WAKE UP AMERICA!
I shit you not, this is their plan (that and painting Michelle as a “ho”). Yep. Count on it. McCain will wag his finger and scold and denounce the offending miscreants, but he’ll have the smell of it all over him.
Back to Dad. “Well Dad,” I said, “these guys would never have voted for a Democrat anyway, no matter who it was.”
“Nah,” he laughed, “I don’t think that they ever vote at all.”
Picking a qualified and electable running mate will be a snap for John McCain after the woes he has encountered trying to find a suitable campaign theme song. In his struggle to employ a stirring but appropriate ditty, McCain has been more apt to incite the artists associated with the songs he favors to consider chopping off their own fingers or poking their own eyes out with their accursed, misunderstood pens. Until now McCain has hardly been able to settle on a song that didn’t call forth a barrage of Cease and Desist orders.
Part of the problem is that these wily musicians and their intentionally ambiguous lyrics are designed to engender a mass following (e. g., Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”) while obliquely projecting their political slants. McCain wanted John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Little Pink Houses,” with its familiar “Ain’t that America” refrain, to stoke patriotic fervor and unify the electorate around simple homespun values–but someone in McCain’s camp eventually figured out that this particular jam actually decries the empty lie that is the “American dream.” Plus, Mellencamp is all about the farmers, that tragic, oft-neglected group that might well unseat the oil dynasty if we would only let them grow the corn to fuel our cars, buses, jet liners and semis.
McCain also tried ABBA and, well, they are fricking foreigners, you daft geezer. Naturally all of their lyrics are flimsily coded anti-American messages. ABBA was able to re-unite on at least this issue; they had a collective hissy fit. Bush encountered similar resistance in 2004 when he tried to use the Orleans hit, “You’re Still the One.” Ah, but songwriter John Hall was an anti-nuke activist. So now McCain, figuring Chuck Berry has been fucked over in much worse ways and might indifferently abide this dubious but relatively innocuous misappropriation, has jacked “Johnny B. Goode.” Berry is a self-proclaimed Barack Obama man, but McCain says he will continue to use the song, penned over a half-century ago by the pedophilic pee fetishist, because the 81-year-old legend has been, “the only [artist who] hasn’t complained.”
Obama is currently going with U2 and “Beautiful Day,” playing to the optimistic hipster set with his whole rainbows and jellybeans appeal. You would like to believe he could have found one song by an American band that would bolster his image and rally the faithful. But then again, Bono is some kind of Christian, and even with their half-billion dollars and staff of thousands Obama & Co. wouldn’t have been able to find a Christian-American band that doesn’t induce spontaneous wide-spread vomiting.
This theme song business is some serious shit, though. Kosovo, the newest country in the world, has just chosen a national anthem. I caught a few bars of the grim ecclesiastical arrangement on the radio today and was quite underwhelmed. Things are so touchy in the tumultuous Balkan state that the song has no lyrics. A spokesman said that because of the broad array of ethnicities, historical volatility and the clashing factional interests, there likely exists no sequence of words that would not be a potential igniter of conflagration in the region that has for centuries been the embattled border land between the Muslim and Christian hemispheres.
It is possible that the outcome of this historic U.S. election will be determined by whichever candidate picks the catchier tune, and clearly McCain is at a distinct disadvantage in this realm, judging from the apparent rage inspired in popular musicians by anyone associated with the Bush administration or even the Republican Party. It would be commercial suicide for any contemporary mainstream rocker to align themselves with, or even to allow any of their “art” to be used for the advancement of the conservative agenda, especially if they were a closet neo-con. So, taking for granted the fact that leftist posturing might for some musicians be simply the pragmatic option, let’s not lose sight of the more compelling issue at hand here: this presidential election is our first one out of fifty-six, dating back to 1789, in which we are free to choose a presidential candidate by basing our votes on the singular criterion of the candidate’s race. Now if that ain’t democracy then Chuck Berry ain’t a freak.
I’ve been away for several weeks driving around America in a gasoline powered ve-hicle. I’ve seen things.
This I know: While nobody knows how this presidential campaign will play out it is an absolute certainty that like in 1968, the Empire will be shaken to its core.
W. and crew have taken the GOP so far out on a dead limb that they’ve nominated a candidate who they despise. Hillary, having given the okeydoke to “blue collar America” has smashed the LBJ coalition.
Meanwhile that unsinkable ship, the “USS Sole Superpower,” has sunk. A shocked and addled populace drifts on the waves, clinging to its habits and prejudices while sharks circle the wreckage. They face a stark choice: they can swim towards the small island on the horizon (which may not even have any food or water) called “Obama,” or they can stay put and hope to be rescued before the sharks decide to strike.
(Metaphor switch!) Obama, the Mohammed Ali of politics (see? Americans can embrace a Muslim champ) has, against all odds, defeated the hardest hitter around to take the Democratic Title. The Clintons, like George Foreman, foresaw an early knockout, but Obama employed a “rope-a-dope” strategy. He’s taken some thundering shots to the head and body, which is worrisome, and the tireless GOP waits in the wings like Joe Frazier. The ensuing fight won’t be pretty. Furthermore, unlike Ali, Obama didn’t get a knockout. He won on points in a controversial split decision.
Obama will not use the rope-a-dope on McCain. He’ll float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, stick and jab. To win he must fight his fight and bring it.
The greatest obstacle to this would be a Hillary vice-presidency. The Republicans have a warehouse full of ammunition on the Clintons, sitting unused. Obama would be caught flat footed, spending the entire campaign explaining what the Clintons really meant by this or that. You know the drill.
I know for a fact that Republicans are desperately praying (literally) for an Obama-Clinton ticket. For all of their bluster, GOPs know this: Their candidate might win out only if Obama picks Hillary. They know that McCain is no Joe Frazier. No, he is a Scott LeDeaux, a paper tiger with a glass jaw. A Great White Hope, if you will, though even a LeDeaux could land a lucky punch if he catches the Champ flat footed.
So will “blue collar America” ever vote for Obama? (Metaphor switching back!) As we bob on the ocean, surrounded by sharks, something new develops. Amongst the run-of-the-mill sharks, up swims a ravenous 40-foot Great White named “War on Iran!” Maybe, just maybe, America will decide to swim for that island.
These are the (legal) things Marion Kind has done for money: cabbage picker, office clerk, landscaper, ice cream man, injection molder, forklift driver, film and stage actor, drycleaner, comic book artist, truck driver, dishwasher, fanzine putter-outer, bartender, housepainter, singer, UAW shop steward, warehouse and packaging person, courier, waiter, guinea pig, illustrator, poet, writer, fashion model, five instrument recording artist, assembler, construction, cabbie. Not saying he did them well, only that he got paid.
The Liar Next Time
Former Bush administration press secretary Scott McClellan’s memoir about his tenure as spokesman for Cheney Inc., What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, puts, at first glance, the final touches on the first chapter of the post-Skull-and-Bones-Bildenberg, etc., conspiracy world. According to early reports of McClellan’s book–in stores Monday–he claims he was but a mouthpiece through which the Bush administration dispensed, on a daily basis, the directives by which all branches of the federal government should proceed. McClellan, heretofore considered a “loyalist,” says Bush governed on a “permanent campaign” premise, predicated primarily on “propaganda.” And, says McClellan, he told nothing but lies. The guidelines for his evasive press conference babble were simply the will and vision of the Cheney-Bush cadre. Thanks for coming forward in such a timely fashion there, Scotty.
A cursory retrospective might suggest that George XLIII, by being such a dweeb, ruined the fun for the monarch-capitalist elite, going so ham-handedly about the diabolical duties of titular commander of the U.S.S. Free World that he gave up the jig. He cracked out of turn, as a David Mamet character once said. George XLIII is a fable character of a boy who inherited kingship but did not possess the capacity for comprehending that the sacred charade was to be performed with dignity and that he should, under all circumstances, remain in character so the masses would have an idol on which to train their focus, a hero to whom they could entrust their dreams. But he got up in front of everybody like some vulgar, gangly teenager toasting his elder sister’s wedding, sporting an unconvincing cockiness while mimicking the ritual, and destroyed all illusions of wisdom and solemnity.
Bill Clinton, given his hillbilly roots, could be given a pass for his theatrical blunders. And reportedly George XLI never even planned for George XLIII to be the ascender; it was supposed to be Jeb or Cletus or whatever they call the purportedly smart one. What makes it all so mythical and Shakespearean is that the drama is drawn from the unscripted eventuality of the ascension of the retarded son. Talk about mainstreaming gone completely awry.
This time, the moral of this fable is not, however, America wins again. Pop philosophy superstar, Slavoj Zizek, for all of his dazzling, convoluted intertwining of infinite academic and cultural references, seems to have made at least one clear political point in all of his writing, and that is that the killing off of Stalinist-brand oppressive communism has, by eliminating that vital counter balance, collaterally taken with it the whole of the liberal democratic movement, including the American “left.” Zizek might have hit on something. Our new “face to the world,” Obama–who has all but ceased participation in the Senate–is merely the perfect stall, should his whole impossible dream thing actually come true, a placeholder while they primp the facade on the next chimera.
What’s my point? There is none. There is no conspiracy. The whole thing is done so above board–and since Bush stripped off the veneer–grotesquely so, we cannot accept that the grand reveal is even true. We suffer mass hysterical blindness because we cannot deal with what we are looking at. They–the profiteers, too many to enumerate–do what they want and we can’t or don’t do shit about it. Bush, by buying oil to bolster our emergency reserve at an extremely critical juncture in a market already strained by Middle East instability, deliberately raised oil prices. A story popped up online at the UK’s The Independent site last Friday: Dr. Mamdouh Salameh, an oil economist who advises both the World Bank (a tool of US hegemony) and the UN, says his study concludes that without the war on Iraq, oil would be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of its present price, or about what it was before the war. Monitoring of the web for even one American news source who linked to the story has come up empty. It is such a forgone conclusion that it is old news nobody wants to countenance.
The Arabs don’t set oil prices anymore than a titty dancer sets the cover charge. I was lapse in my cynical astuteness assuming G43 waged war for long-range control of the oil supply, but the Bush-Saud cartel are reaping such ludicrous immediate gains that you have to marvel at the pathology behind what enables them to psychologically rock themselves to sleep at night while magazine color photo spreads of amputated soldiers and shrapnel-blinded children litter newsstands and coffee tables from here to, literally, Timbuktu.
Francis Fukuyama, a historian and a target of Zizek’s criticism, contends in his book, The End of History, that the modern advance of democracy and the waning of old school communism indicates that all great historical changes are in the past, that there is no turning back from the global permeation of liberal-democratic government. I am with Zizek; Fukuyama probably missed the point. They have rubbed it in our face that they can conduct extreme and protracted evil, motivated only by vanity and greed for power and profit, and with utter impunity. We showed them that they can shut down the farcical democratic process at whim (election 2000) and we will behave as powerlessly as any subjects of a totalitarian dictatorship. We sit idly by as the feeble and anemic Democratic Party has long abandoned its constituency and comfort ourselves that at least “He” will soon be gone. Well, we might not know what the next version of Him looks like but we know who he’ll working for.
Smash Your TV!
No no no–I’m Damned if I’m going to let the one-eyed monster in the corner of the room brainwash me. I have finally had it with TV, having found myself watching less and less of it recently. I mean, let’s face it–it’s pretty much non-stop junk doncha think? The programs are bland and repetitive, the presenters are plastic tossers and the news is distorted to buggery.
It really is National Brainwash on an industrial scale, and pardon me if I sound elitist here but anyone with half a brain knew that the excuses for war with Iraq were complete bollocks…but in the end it didn’t matter as we were heavily outnumbered by the millions of couch potatoes who unquestioningly believe what they are told by TV news bulletins. It is now almost an art form in itself the way the reporters turn the truth on its head, whereby invading armies become liberators and resistance forces become insurgents or terrorists. It’s enough to make you throw a brick through the screen when the likes of John Bolton come on spouting off their vile propaganda (and what is it with that mustache anyway?).
Huge amounts of tax dollars are wasted on military spending that is completely out of control, dumping the USA and UK into a recession that is now really starting to bite–but are the news networks exposing this scandalous situation? Not likely. No, the dissenting points of view are conspicuous by their absence for we are all being rather cleverly hoodwinked–and as I said before, brainwashed, and all in the comfort of our own living rooms.
After all that political nonsense you need a bit of light relief, but I must have seen every episode of “Bewitched” and “Batman” a hundred times and it says a lot about today’s programs that when flipping through the channels that I (for one) would rather watch one of these ancient but brilliant relics than “Friends” or whatever it is they have on the schedules these days. Since when has Jennifer Aniston been either a) funny or b) a pinup? Don’t you wish she’d shut up for a while about those daft diets of hers. The woman’s all sinew and gristle. Too much meat methinks–maybe she should go vegetarian for a while…blah blah blah.
If one was going to define my role here as a jolly old blogger I guess there is an element of “loose cannon” involved, but from chatting to my cronies in various bands, etc. it does seem that I’m not alone in my disillusionment with the turgid nature of so called entertainment on-screen these days. Who really wants to watch Rocky again… or any of those dumb ass macho movies featuring Arnie, Sly or Bruce.
Come on people, you know it makes sense…ditch your TV sets, free your minds and take up doing something creative and potentially wonderful with all that lovely free time you will suddenly find yourself blessed with!
Write poetry, go on a drama course, become an environmental activist…take up a musical instrument even (don’t tell ‘em I told you but it’s a lot easier than you think); anything’s better than slobbing out on the couch watching the abject drivel we are being dished up on today’s TV.
Keith Moon had it right–throw the bloody thing out of the window!
Pip Pip,
Captain S.
The Worst Joke I’ve Heard This Week
One night a man walks into a bar looking sad. The bartender asks the man what he wants.
The man says, “Oh, just a beer.”
The bartender asked the man, “What’s wrong, why are you so down today?”
The man said, “My wife and I got into a fight and she said she wouldn’t talk to me for a month.”
The bartender said, “So, what’s wrong with that?”
The man said, “Well, the month is up tonight…”
F-F-F-Fire!
Why does the American public allow pundits and politicians to talk to them as if they are the senile relative in the room? These a-holes love to banter amongst themselves about what “The American People” think about some piece of drivel or another until we learn it verbatim.
The American People, the story goes, think issues are boring and politics are dirty.To be president a person must be able to take a punch–even (especially) a sucker punch, or a kick in the groin. I mean, what if Bin Laden caught Obama farting in church? What if Iran saw Hillary scratch her ass during the national anthem?
The American people just love this stuff, see? We love to gawk at the accident by the side of the road. In fact, we’d love it if, barring a real accident, one could be staged for our entertainment.
The Media, having framed the terms of battle, forces Democrats to steel themselves for months of expensive, banal, and–considering the numbers–pointless trench warfare between Clinton and Obama. Independents? Hell I don’t know…how could someone honestly not have chosen sides by now?
Republicans wait with bated breath: “Please, please, pleeeez, let it be Hillary!”
Their Hillary ammo sits un-used, and it is some foul stuff (I’ve heard it)–it will make the Rev. Wright business look like a stubbed toe. Seriously.
To most of the rest of the industrialized world this bickering is bizarre to say the very least. Why are we,The American People, putting ourselves through this? Why must we piss on people that we presumably expect our soldiers to salute someday? It’s as if The American People, standing in a burning house that could spread fire to the entire neighborhood, would rather argue about who left the toilet seat up (and what kind of person would do such an awful thing) than put the fire out. Is this really us?
The organization that passes for the Iraqi government has, according to Nation Public Radio’s “All Things Considered”, imposed a ban on a style of hip hop in which the lyrics praise Muqtada al Sadr, the militant Shiite cleric and leader of the Mahdi Army. Al Sadr’s forces are the most visible force of resistance to U.S. troop presence in the unstable Middle Eastern country. The banned music also levels explicit threats of violence on foreign occupying troops–mainly Americans.
Even though violation of the law carries with it the charge of inciting terrorism, Shiite resistance fighters have been seen driving the streets of war-ravaged Sadr City with the banned music blaring from loudspeakers atop their vehicles.
In a country still learning democracy (apparently from studying models such as American organizations like Parents Music Resource Center), the anemic Iraqi ruling body has made it unlawful to perform, distribute or even play tapes or CDs on stereos with songs such as Baha el Suwaedi’s “I Am the IED,” or singer Ali Delfi’s (pictured at left) new hit single, “Taste the IED.”
Recordings of the songs are, of course, available to anyone who can make themselves appear trustworthy enough to convince a street vendor to reach under his table and pass you over a CD, for the equivalence of an American dollar.
According to the “ATC” story, the songs strike a patriotic chord with many Iraqis who use them for cell phone ring tones. Making music “underground” is nothing new to any of the musicians who were active under Saddam Hussein’s regime because he had also banned songs based on Shiite chants.
NPR has videos and translations of lyrics posted on their website .
Having recently observed the fifth anniversary of W’s “mission accomplished” speech, what goes largely uncommented on is perhaps the most chilling sentence ever uttered by a U.S. president: “In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”
This was no slip of the tongue. In their hubris, the neo-cons clearly communicated that they considered Iraq to be a domino. A domino for regional democracy? Impossible. Clearly regional kings and dictators would not support their own overthrow.
In my conversations with both liberals and conservatives, I’m always shocked to find them unaware of the true neo-con agenda, what their military strategy is. They are unaware that we are witnessing (and a party to) the greatest power grab in the history of the world.
The views of the neo-con oil-military complex are no secret. Though the mainstream media, even PBS, observe a gag order on the subject, neo-con think tanks aren’t so bashful. Therefore, for the uninitiated, I shall present a thumbnail sketch of what your government is up to:
It is the opinion of the ruling cabal that–for better or worse–the economy of the world shall be animated by oil into the foreseeable future, fifty years hence and more. Having emerged from the Cold War as the sole Super Power, and having rigged the world’s banking system in our favor, it was incumbent upon the United States to preserve this mono-polar world for future generations.
The strategy was simple: Maintain an overwhelming military superiority for the US and park our troops on top of the oil where ever possible. Elegant in it’s simplicity, undemocratic and un-American (well…) to the core.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, as the world celebrated and contemplated a “peace dividend”, the US swooped into the newly liberated “stan” republics and plopped down US bases like so many hotels on the Boardwalk. We promised protection from the Russians and Chinese and Pasha lifestyles for the fledgling “presidents”.
Yugoslavia got caught in the gears of this machinery and was dispatched. Later, a small group of messianic Muslim former CIA assets calling themselves “al-Qaeda” suddenly found itself with fourth down on its own one yard line with ten seconds left in the game. The Americans were coming! They lobbed a 99 yard Hail Mary pass….complete! The question of whether the Americans called the play, pulled the defense or whether these hayseeds just got lucky, while important to know, has little bearing on our present predicament.
The neo-con blitzkrieg on the world oil supply would appear to be bogged down. Casualties are mounting. Elements of the military and the oligarchy are in revolt, though a “false flag” presidential candidacy has been mounted.
It is vital to remember that the neo-cons think in terms of historical context. In past eras, such a massive grab would have devoured perhaps hundreds of thousands of troops. Therefore, they believe that History will regard them as geniuses! Geniuses– just like Alexander and Napoleon and that Austrian person!
You may ask: “Aren’t the Chinese, who are funding this operation, likely to pull the plug?” The neo-cons are betting that the Chinese communists (sic) are like the Russian communists–ruthless, but politically naïve. Chinese growth has occurred in the context of our rigged world economy. More importantly, neo-cons are planning for China to have a “color revolution”, in which case our debt would be forgiven by our stooge.
The “false flag” candidate will fail. However, the neo-con media will mount a withering “human wave” type offensive over the summer and fall–one which will test the nerve of both the “anti” oligarchy and the slowly awakening public. The dye is 95% caste–if we falter, the America we have known (or thought we knew) will pass into History forever.
THIS IS REAL.
New York City educator Debbie Almontaser was, according to the New York Times, forced to step down from her position as founding principal of the Kahlil Gibran International Academy public school, before it even opened. It was her dream that the school could mold a curriculum that would serve a broad cross-section of NYC kids and produce graduates fluent in Arabic and with a clearer understanding of the Middle East and Islam, so as to be prepared and qualified to go forth, as “ambassadors of peace and hope,” and bridge the ever-widening chasm that separates East from West.
Almontaser, a Yemen-born, New York-bred Muslim, tendered her resignation in the wake of a deliberate smear job by a New York Post reporter who artfully misused her words, quoting her out of context and omitting qualifying clauses from her statements that mitigated what the Post presented as militant rhetoric.
Daniel Pipes, director of the self-described “think tank,” Middle East Forum, a conservative watch dog group with their eye trained on Muslims, sees Almontaser’s efforts at the Gibran school as part of a long-con strategy of Muslims to promote radical ideals through “soft” jihad. Pipes contends that Muslims are slowly and, more importantly, lawfully infiltrating, at a molecular level, all facets of American society. Pipes fears Muslims with radical leanings are operating under the radar and are ultimately intending to impose sharia law in the United States.
Whereas Pipes might view Barack Obama as a potential Manchurian Candidate type of un-witting operative, a less savvy group of fear mongers began work in January smearing “Barack Hussein Obama” by planting seeds of dread via a chain e-mail that claims that Obama is a closet “radical” Muslim extremist. The email reminds us that “the Muslims” endeavor to destroy America and that one of them in the White House would certainly accelerate their affecting that end.
What if Barack Obama is Muslim? He certainly chose a strange route along which to run for president. You would think a Muslim extremist mole would at least come up through the Republican Party to take us off of the scent for a while longer. But no, this crafty underhanded bastard has risen to the precipice of prominence as a radical reform Democrat. That’s “reverse psychology,” where you hide in plain sight and so forth. More diabolical still, as a college student, Obama changed his name from Barry back to his original christening, Barack. Damn, he’s good.
Who would suspect a guy of East African heritage with an African surname and a middle name identical to the family name of an infamous Islamic dictator of being Muslim? The length of exacting calculation to which this man and his cabal of coup d’etat hopefuls must have gone is horrifying to contemplate. But, the most daring and paradigm-inverting tactic that he has employed thus far has been to speak at length on the subject of race at a critical juncture of a tightly contested bid for his party’s nomination.
He had to do something to divert the scrutiny of the press from his glaring Muslim-ness and steer the focus toward a safer subject. So this cunning operator presented himself as someone who comes from a culture and community that struggles with its own conflicted sentiments toward the white race in general.
The 9/11 Truth-ers and Loose Change folks–the people promulgating the notion that the Bush administration, in cahoots with World Trade Center ownership, blew up the WTC themselves and blamed it on al Qaeda as an excuse to wage war on Iraq, or some such business–never saw this one coming. The only problem with the Loose Change theory is that Cheney and Co. quite obviously needed no complex and impossible-to-pull-off conspiracy in order to go to war. They just told some lies to buy some time, sent in the troops, were found out in their lies, and re-elected. Where is the necessity for an intricate conspiracy plot in all that? Here’s the conspiracy you fricking yahoos, it’s not this president who is doing al Qaeda’s bidding, it is the next president who is a secret Muslim.
If Obama gets to the White House, is he going to blow up his own crib, family, flat-screened TV, and his own ass, like some crass suicide bomber? If your goal is to assassinate the leader of the free world does it make you re-think your plans if you are the leader of the free world? Or, would he quietly wait it out through two terms of molding the new Great Society and, after he’s out of office, with his full compliment of Secret Service entourage in tow, pass the floor plans of the White House, along with lists of security pass codes and descriptions of secret handshakes to some thickly-bearded guy in a turban on a bridge in Ankara or Damascus?
What if they are right about him being Muslim but wrong about him being “extreme”? What if he’s just a regular old Muslim, like five or six of my neighbors? Most are single mothers who I rarely see or hear anything out of unless they are coming from or going to one of their multiple jobs. Directly across the street from me is an African-American Muslim bachelor who drives a fairly new pick-up truck. There is often a lot of foot traffic in and out of his house. But it’s mostly just the white work crews he regularly hires to lay tile and frame walls. He’s remodeling his house. Pretty scary.
War of the Roveses
For all of its incompetence, greed, lying, looting, and criminality, for all it’s hypocrisy, scandals, and military blunders, there are two things that modern Republicanism does well: accrue power and defeat liberals at the polls.
The Neo-con cabal, in spite of its anti-government rhetoric has succeeded in centralizing power in the executive branch to a degree heretofore undreamed of except perhaps in some paranoid and dystopian science fiction. Clearly, at some point the executive branch must voluntarily cede some of its power back to Congress and the judicial branch.
Additionally, over the last thirty years they have trained a large segment of the public to react emotionally to “cultural issues”, turning the 60’s on its head. Now it’s liberals who are old fashioned, hypocritical, and ideologically inflexible. This has been done using tactics perfected and instituted by that most foul of all Karls, Rove.
This is what worries me about the Clinton bid for the nomination. Beyond the daily insults to my intelligence, which are merely annoying, one’s tactics speak loudly as to what one’s motivations are. If the Clintons are willing to use Rovian tactics on Obama–whom nationwide polls indicate is the most popular Democrat in America, what does this say about how president H. Clinton will preside?
Like mustard gas and anthrax bombs, the mere existence of Rovian tactics doesn’t mean that they must be used. They contaminate the battlefield for everyone and must never be used except as a last resort on an enemy who has used them first. A Democrat should never use them on a Democrat. Ape shall NOT kill ape!
This brings us to the crux of the matter: these are not people whom I trust to pare back the executive branch’s power. Hillary promises health care and troop withdrawal. What if she decides to triangulate to the right as she has done so often in the past when faced with a tough political battle? Will she “go Rovian” on Democrats who stand in her way?
Because of the Supreme Court situation, I will vote for Ms. Clinton should she receive the nomination, but under extreme duress. Like the Third Degree, smallpox blankets, and McCarthyism, Rovian politics must be brought down. They have made the American voter a laughing-stock, an object of pity and scorn around the world. Rovism must be torn town like Saddam’s statue. This can only be done when it is no longer tolerated by decent people. It is the issue of this primary and indeed the whole election; it’s the one that History is watching.
What the Hell Is Punk, Anyway?
The three unavoidables for musicians: death, taxes, and the van–the less than sumptuous facilities from which I am reporting to you now as the Damned hurtle at breakneck speed from Thessalonica to Athens on our latest Euro jaunt.
At least we had a reasonable hotel last night–but is it “punk rock” to be afforded the luxury of a bathrobe, room service and a vanity kit and all that? It takes a lot to get my chum Charlie Harper, singer of the UK Subs, to complain (”sleep on the DJ’s floor Charlie?”…”Yeah yeah yeah, but where’s the beer?”). The Subs will play any gig, anywhere, anytime–the bloke’s a legend.
Now I’m not saying that dossing on the floor’s beneath me–I just think at this late state in my dubious career I deserve a bit of comfort after a hard day’s flitting about in my quest to spread a little joy and happiness (plus a dollop of subversion) around the planet. Oh, and I’m not sure my dodgy old back would stand sleeping on the DJ’s floor these days, either.
A few years ago the Damned participated in the Warped Tour, a traveling punk circus with the bands journeying from town to town through the night in their various tour buses. We did notice then that some of the buses were a lot posher than others. And how about the bands that have private planes with an anarchy logo on the tail–as the owner of our last label had (although that didn’t stop us borrowing it on occasion…cough, ahem!).
I remember when we flew in for what was the first US show by a UK punk band. At CBGB’s it was, in 1976 and we were met by this limo to take us into Manhattan…which we promptly sent off in disgust taking the shuttle bus instead. Who did they think we were–rock stars? But it wasn’t long before we started selling reasonable amounts of records and the inverted snobbery went down the jolly old toilet pan!
So, what exactly is punk rock? Is it just about kick ass songs, spiky hair and tattoos, or is there more to it? The Damned’s motto was “THE FIRST RULE IS–THERE’S NO RULES”–but I’m not sure you can front a punk group wearing bright orange loon pants and get away with it.
Maybe punk’s job is to tell it like it is: naming names, challenging the lunatic policies of government and pointing out the failures of a society that works just fine and dandy if you’re stinking rich but is a nightmare for the poor–in a way that journalists used to do before the likes of Rupert Murdoch changed all that nonsense! And whatever you think of Green Day–”American Idiot” did hit the nail firmly on the head lyrically (even if the tune does reminded us of Kim Wilde’s “Kids In America” somewhat).
But is it not the DIY attitude that is the crowning glory of punk? Buy a guitar and do it yourself. You only need to learn a few chords and you’re away. And for me that philosophy should go for sport, TV, religion, art, whatever…don’t sit on the couch watching some arrogant overpaid asshole do it for you–use your own brain and see what you can create. That’s punk if you like.
But I’d better wrap up now as our van is finally approaching Athens after 6 hours of hell–sweltering heat with no AC to speak of–and regardless of my preceding waffle about punk all I can say is if they don’t have any decent beer at the venue tonight the gigs off!
Pip pip,
Captain S.
The worst joke I’ve heard this week…
A 6 year old and a 4 year old are talking. The 6 year old says, “I think it’s time we started swearing”. The 4 year old agrees.
They go down to breakfast and Mum asks what they want. The 6 year old says, “Oh shit Mum, I think I’ll have some Cocoa Pops”. WHALLOP… he flies out of the chair and across the room and runs out crying.
Mum looks sternly at the 4 year old and asks what he wants.
“I don’t know,” he cries–”but it won’t be fucking Cocoa Pops!”
Amongst all the rhetoric on one side about “big government” and on the other about “protecting the commons” lies a whole lot of denial about what government is: a protection racket.
They guard the property of the rich from us, for a fee, and protect us from the avarice of the Rich, again for a fee. Their representatives are called “politicians”. They grow organically in each society. One helpful function of politicians is to make sure that wealth doesn’t become so concentrated at the top that rebellion becomes inevitable-voting as safety valve. It also acts as a safety valve for wealth owners if economic conditions change. They can form new coalitions amongst themselves and remove a politician, as opposed to overthrowing a king or dictator who is the state personified.
Modern multi-party democracies allow us to choose amongst two or more “branded” protection rackets. Instead of serfs, we are customers. Like Al Capone’s gang giving out Christmas hams, they need our goodwill. But they’re also happy to have us pay a lot for shoddy work, if we let them.
We create the wealth, but they own it. I do not mean this in the Marxist sense–I mean that in choosing a protection racket, it behooves us to examine the coalition that forms it, what their interests are and how they pursue those interests. We must shake them down for all the goodies we can get without mortally wounding the economic interests that fund them. It is a delicate dance, fraught with fraud on both sides.
We must be careful not to let wealth hide behind God or Patriotism and make them stick to the facts, if for no other reason than this: neither God nor Patriotism in and of themselves create any wealth.
Make no mistake, government wealth and power are ultimately accumulated and backed up by guns and bombs–they are protection rackets. We can however force them, through politicians, whose currency is votes, to behave more (for lack of a better word) “civilized”. How we spend that currency largely determines that behavior. To give up on politicians completely (loathsome as most of them are) is self defeating. It is politicians who stand between us and naked force. Ask Iraqis or Afghans–whose societies lack true professional politicians–what that’s like.
Officer Sam
BILLY: Hey Willy! Did you hear about the Superpower who started an oil war and invaded and ruined a whole country?
WILLY: No, Billy! What happened?
BILLY: They left without the oil!
WILLY: Really? Why??
BILLY: Cuz they’re so GOOD!
WILLY: HA HA HA!
The World Cop has become the Bad Lieutenant–a twisted, thieving, lascivious oil-swilling bully. To be sure, Officer Sam has never been a model cop. From his earliest days on the beat he’s lined his pockets, planted evidence, and twisted arms and done killings for the Big Boys. But in the last seven years he’s gone berserk while we–his employers–mostly averted our eyes as he’s strolled across the world spying, looting, and torturing on duty. He has ordered up every shiny gadget and every new weapon–on credit–to the point where the entire world economy is teetering on the brink of ruin.
Traditionally content to shake down Third World “ghetto” communities, he has lately taken to rummaging through our trash, breaking into our houses, bugging our phones and computers, looting our bank accounts, and arresting us without charges whilst smearing and destroying anyone who crosses him. Hiding behind the the flag, the sacrifices of his predecessors, and even the cross, Officer Sam has disgraced the force at a time when the world was most vulnerable, going so far as to deputize one Mr. Private Contractor, who answers only to him.
When he finally brought down the Soviet Mafia by means fair and foul, all hopes turned to the World Cop. Would he make things right with those whose lives were ruined or lost during the long struggle? Nope. Instead, Officer Sam promoted himself to Emperor Sam and wallowed in self-righteousness, ignorance, decadence and greed. Now the jig is almost up. At the very least, Emperor Sam will be demoted back to beat cop. What remains to be seen is what happens after that. Will he be forgiven, fired, or forced to resign? If it is one of the latter, will he wear a suit to work in his new life or will he work the drive-thru window?
Even if Barack or Hillary pull us out of Iraq, this won’t be over by a long shot. The crimes have been committed in plain view, and Sam’s “issues” remain–and his enablers have yet to admit the scope of the problems–his and theirs.
These are the (legal) things Marion Kind has done for money: cabbage picker, office clerk, landscaper, ice cream man, injection molder, forklift driver, film and stage actor, drycleaner, comic book artist, truck driver, dishwasher, fanzine putter-outer, bartender, housepainter, singer, UAW shop steward, warehouse and packaging person, courier, waiter, guinea pig, illustrator, poet, writer, fashion model, five instrument recording artist, assembler, construction, cabbie. Not saying he did them well, only that he got paid.
Pass the White-Out
Two nights ago, on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, I was walking home in South Philly, grumbling to myself about SUVs blocking narrow one-way streets because their owners abandoned them for quick sandwiches. Then I look to my right and see Bill Clinton sitting down with Chelsea and getting grubby with a cheese steak, right on the sidewalk–to very little fanfare. People were excited, taking cell phone snap shots and calling their moms, and Bill was letting anybody come right up and paw at him and shake the hand he was trying to eat with. The thing that struck me was that as small a gathering as it was–25 well-scattered people at its peak–they all really responded to the dude, and the dude to them. There was a Hispanic family, an Asian family, a twenty-something black couple, and random pedestrians of every variety–and there was no “Oh my God it’s the President!.” Instead it was a giddy “Oh my God, it’s Bill.” They just go to him like they know him.
Here in Philadelphia, I have enjoyed the option of squandering several opportunities in recent weeks to see either of the democratic candidates in person, and within easy walking distance. For years we have heard how presidential campaigns are completely controlled by the media, and determined by the TV strategies of campaign eggheads. Elections are long. The family of one candidate is working the street late at night, for the primaries. A big part of these things is decided on the ground, as they say.
Pennsylvania voters stuck to the script Tuesday and Hillary got her win. Obama, not terribly demoralized by the inevitable results, had–even as Hillary’s familial tentacles were glad handing working class Philly–already pulled out of the state to attend to more practical markets. The only thing the Clinton victory may have possibly accomplished was to bolster her latest strategy of hammering it into the Democratic party’s collective psyche that Obama would, as the Democratic nominee, have a daunting task ahead trying to wrest the coveted white, working class votes from a guy that reminds every hillbilly of their loopy estranged grandfather.
Nora Ephron (find her on IMDb before you Google her) is positively distraught that, as she estimates, this entire historical presidential election process will, ironically, come down to which candidate white male voters choose from the options of either-a-woman-or-a-black-guy, or an old white man who favors the illegal torture of illegally detained “enemy” combatants.
There are plenty of reasons not to vote and a variety of rationales that indicate that the outcome is a foregone conclusion, but Jesus lady, it is only April. Let the kids have a little fun.
Ephron is saying that even though voters from other demographic groups will each make educated, rational and color-and-gender blind decisions as to who should lead the free world, a bunch of misogynistic, xenophobic, anger management-challenged honkies will cast the votes that tip the scales.
Man, fuck that. Get off your sorry emo butts and go out and kick some metal head ass. Keep us honky motherfuckers from going to the polls. What do I care, I wouldn’t dignify that charade with my participation if they were giving out Xanax martinis to everybody as they came out of the voting booths.
Prior to the age of terror-alert-level color codes as a major campaign issue diversion, the women’s vote was divided and neutralized, and its electoral leverage had, for years, been gutted by one issue: abortion. Candidates felt little pressure in regards to how they were viewed in the light of any other issue, in the eyes of women, because once a candidate’s stance on abortion had been determined, the vote of nearly every woman was dictated by that. Women debated scores of other issues, but pro-choicers have not voted for fascist, right-to-life zealots, nor, conversely, have right-to-lifers voted for commie, pinko baby-killers.
Generally it has not mattered because these issues come in pre-packaged bundles. There aren’t many candidates running on a “Universal Health Care/Overturn Roe v. Wade” platform, and now, with John McCain pitted against Democratic candidate _____, it does seem time to unify the female vote. No politician really wants the hassle of overturning Roe, and McCain, crazy as he may be, isn’t a likely threat to focus his lunacy on taking on a nation of furious women. Iran maybe, but not politically active lefty women.
So to prevent us crackers (who Ephron assures you can in no way be trusted in this case) from queering the pitch when the curtains close, let’s go over a couple of strategies that will keep whitey from having his say on election day:
-Tell the white guys in your life that you truly believe they have a real chance at this Velvet Revolver lead singer gig and they shouldn’t spare a minute for anything that doesn’t involve preparing for their web-cam video audition.
-On election day: Free access to IShotMyself.com (NSFW)
-Schedule a Super Bowl with a Pamela Anderson-Condoleezza Rice mud-wrestling bout half-time show.
-Squidbillies marathon.
-Free Xanax martinis for anybody who knows most of the words to “Highway to Hell.”
All right, this ain’t a top ten list but you get the idea of how little effort is required to divert the abominable white man from his simple task of deciding the fate of the world, and you can use this as a guide to ensure that you will take back the night, fight the power, and stick it to the man.
Just remember though, a honky on a Xanax martini hangover can be a mother, brothers and sisters.
Long has written about sports, news, music and travel under various names and for various publications, including the Buffalo News, The Beast, Blue Dog Press, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the New York Sports Express, among others. He served a short stint as the guitar player in the Philadelphia metal-hop band, Incognegro. He also played guitar and sang on recordings of the Laughing Hyenas and The Unsane. He has dabbled in documentary and music video. He is a veteran of the US Navy and a graduate of the University of Houston. He lives in Philadelphia. You can google the rest.
What Up, America?
In my line of work, I hob-nob with Caucasians of every stripe. I have been shocked and disappointed by the reaction of many White folks–many of whom I have known for years and consider friends–to last month’s “speech on race” by Barack Obama. When I learned the speech was in progress (and lacking cable) I frantically searched the radio dial to find someone broadcasting it live. I finally found the one and only station.
I found the speech to be honest and very moving. I was swept away–surely Americans would embrace a man capable of such modest, intelligent bravery. The abject, hysterical hypocrisy of the “Reverend Wright Controversy” would soon be put to rest…
From the neighborhood bar, to the hallways of various work places, to snatches of conversation overheard on the street, these White people were not only unimpressed by (what they’d actually heard of) Obama’s speech, they were very angry at him. They viewed him as a phony and a racist.
Almost every day, I hear White people drop the “N-bomb”, mock Black speech patterns, sneer about Blacks supposedly being parasites, over-sexed, stupid, violent, loud, messy and arrogant. I hear them state matter-of-factly how their music sucks and their clothes are silly. What angers these Whites most of all is how Liberals “coddle” and “make excuses” for them.
In some circles, it is talked about in code words. In others, more crude terms are used. While some White people strenuously agree with such talk, others sigh and nod knowingly. Some try to diffuse such situations with “humor”. Once in a while, some White people actually defend Black people. These Whites are usually, in so many words, referred to as naive or worse. One thing I never see in these cases is people leaving that neighborhood bar, workplace or street corner with friendships dissolved forever, never to return. Yet that is precisely what some people expect of Obama, based on a few comments by his minister.
These White people almost never consider themselves racists–they are merely saying things that “everybody knows”. This crap is so deeply ingrained in White American culture, so ubiquitous, that it is almost a part of our identity. If I totally avoided people who engage in this type of racist behavior, or the establishments which tolerate it, I would never be able to leave my house.
The sick part of all of this is the amount of projection involved. When White Americans say something rude or lascivious, or attempt to dance, or bust a move athletically, when they borrow money or intend to buy illicit drugs or sex, when they depict a person with false eloquence, self serving generosity, or unthinking religiosity, how often do they affect a “Black” accent?
What Mr. Obama politely called “White Anger” is real and in many cases, justified. This other stuff is just raw, ignorant racism. Everybody knows that if the Republican Party “repudiated” everyone engaged in this type of behavior, they would have to fold up shop tomorrow. Sadly, the Democratic Party wouldn’t be in very good shape either.
Back to the live broadcast of Obama’s speech: when he’d finished, the voice of a middle aged white man broke in… “Oh brother, give me a break!” he said. I then realized that the only radio station I’d found that was broadcasting the speech live was a right-wing talk show–to mock it.
These are the (legal) things Marion Kind has done for money: cabbage picker, office clerk, landscaper, ice cream man, injection molder, forklift driver, film and stage actor, drycleaner, comic book artist, truck driver, dishwasher, fanzine putter-outer, bartender, housepainter, singer, UAW shop steward, warehouse and packaging person, courier, waiter, guinea pig, illustrator, poet, writer, fashion model, five instrument recording artist, assembler, construction, cabbie. Not saying he did them well, only that he got paid.
No Really, Shut Up
Normally, I don’t talk politics. When I was on “The Daily Show” as a correspondent I had to practice how to say Kofi Annan’s name over and over for a joke that I didn’t even understand. My self-absorption level works well with writing poetry and drinky parties but it can get in the way of good political banter.
But the other day I thought I had a political insight.
Sitting on the beach eating tacos I read about how Winston Churchill loved war. Which I thought was sick and sad and wrong. And much like my personal life.
My friend Gay Jon had recently yelled at me over the phone that I was “addicted to drama”. Which I thought was ironic since he was the one screaming and who moments before was claiming to have lung cancer because he’d been feeling “oddly tired” all the time. He implied that I always create drama because I saw myself as a struggling artist and needed the striving and suffering to feed my work. He claimed that he was sick of me acting like I was a victim to it all and didn’t want to talk to me until I had more pleasant things to say about my life (we haven’t spoken since). I hung up the phone, took Gay Jon out of my contact list in my cell phone and went to Circuit City to buy a Tivo so I don’t have to suffer through the experience of missing another episode of “Intervention”.
Gay Jon was right, though…I like conflict. The tension and the drama. It keeps me feeling productive. I may not have “worked” today at an actual job…but I did spend 3 hours fighting with my boyfriend and getting angry at Sprint. And I may say that I’d like peace…but do I really? I’m sure Winston didn’t say, “God, I love war” out loud. And then there’s Bush.
President Bush and I have so much in common. First there’s the nose thing. I have one…he has one. There have also been moments that I thought I recognized our shared humanity. Like when they told him that we were under terrorist attack–he stopped reading to the kids and looked stunned. When I saw that moment I recognized it as a human moment–“wow, he looks pretty stunned and jolted. That’s how I looked when I found out. God, we’re just alike.” Then he kept reading to the kids–and I thought–“oh, there we go–I’m back to not recognizing him as ‘one of us’ anymore”.
So I thought about how Bush loves war. This sounds simplistic, but he must sadly and oddly love the full on, all-encompassing conflict that leaves room for nothing else. I could get out of my relationship–but why would I want to when I’d be left with such real and deeper issues that take a lot more effort to solve.
But in a war people are dying–so this is a bad comparison.
So for the last 3 days I’ve been living my milk toast liberal motto of “No More War” at home with the BF and have stopped all the conflicts. The sad thing is that once I created peace…the days seemed so long. Not fighting is so lonely.
Peace is so lonely. And how do you know that you’re getting anything done or going anywhere if someone isn’t sobbing on the bathroom floor in his or her underwear. Covered in whipped cream and throwing poker chips at their own face.
So I’m flippin’ through the latest Blender like I do every 15 years (or however often it comes out) reading an interview with my favorite armed-to-the-teats lesbian hit man, Alicia Keys (whose portrayal of the afore described villainess you may or may not have caught in 2006’s Smokin’ Aces). From the interview, I learn she is not a member of the Cream tribute band from Ohio, The Black Keys, but she does tell me that it was the government who invented gangsta’ rap to get black people to kill each other.
Now it all makes sense. This government has consistently proved themselves so very competent in so many ways that the effortless play acting performed by Tupac and Biggie, et al, could have been choreographed only by an organization so exacting and perfectionist as that which dwells in halls of power in Washington, D. C.
Is there anything they can’t do? What with the storied cooperation and goodwill that has flourished between the clandestine, information-gathering branches of the government, such as the CIA, FBI and now I guess the late B.I.G. over the decades, how can they be stopped? And they’re so funky too. Who knew?
It was Gore, I bet. Tipper Gore, that is. Stumping away her days decrying and trying to suppress every form of musical expression on the planet, while at night she was in the VP mansion’s basement-studio kickin’ it with an old 808, a tube Neumann, pen and pad and some old school Koss cans. What times those must have been. Remember back when Clinton was running against Bush the 41st? Those bumper stickers that said George Bush and under that Bill Clinton, but the words Bush and Bill were crossed out, leaving “George Clinton: P-Funk in the White House!”
And you thought it was a joke? Maybe that’s what George Clinton did to get back at all those rappers who sample-jacked his jams without paying him. He conspired with the Billary Clinton administration to concoct a popular musical style so diabolical that the performers of it would kill each other in a public gang war. That old wily rascal.
It is a bold stance for Keys to take, however, suggesting that the artists who perform(ed) gangsta’ rap were not capable of fashioning the actual style of music that they so skillfully recorded, produced and performed, but that the government thought it up for them.
Or maybe I’m reading this wrong and looking ahead too far. Maybe Tupac and Biggie weren’t in on the con at all and were just duped pawns being moved around a game board that only the eye of the Man with the gigantic Hand is big enough to survey the enormity of. The Man that controls the world economy and so meticulously guides our domestic and foreign policies with such awe-inspiring deftness.
Keys must be talking about that same government who couldn’t think of anything better to do than sit outside of Manuel Noriega’s bunker in Panama blaring AC/DC and the Beach Boys from speakers propped up on their Humvees until puppet-gone-rogue Noriega caved and came out with his hands up. They used the same tactic towards Saddam’s Iraqi army positions in Kuwait in the Gulf War. These tactics are developed and deployed by the PsyOps (Psychological Operations) division of military intelligence. The work of pure genius.
Then again, if you sat outside my house and played even two Beach Boys songs all the way through I’d come out, guns a blazing–if I had any guns.
Keys says that “If Malcolm [X] or Huey [Newton] had the outlets our musicians have today, [the movement would] be global. I have to figure out a way to do it myself.”
I hope she doesn’t have anything in mind like working up a holographic Malcolm & Huey rap duo like that creepy Frank Sinatra ghost she sang a duet with at the Grammys this year. But then, what do I know? Maybe Keys is a genius and she’s working for the government, too.
Long has written about sports, news, music and travel under various names and for various publications, including the Buffalo News, The Beast, Blue Dog Press, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the New York Sports Express, among others. He served a short stint as the guitar player in the Philadelphia metal-hop band, Incognegro. He also played guitar and sang on recordings of the Laughing Hyenas and The Unsane. He has dabbled in documentary and music video. He is a veteran of the US Navy and a graduate of the University of Houston. He lives in Philadelphia. You can google the rest.
Will Someone Please Turn That Bloody Rubbish Off!
At the risk of coming over as a tad pompous and holier than thou I have to admit that I cannot find it within myself to enjoy the music of any band or artist that I consider to be in any way, shape or form of the asshole persuasion…and hearing the first couple of bars of any said musicians rancid output generally has me careening across the room (regardless of whoever might be in the way) in search of the dump switch.
For example, I accept that Ol’ Blue Eyes might very well have been the greatest crooner of his generation but are there not a whole stack of biographies literally brimming over with tales that suggest he was not exactly the nicest person that ever walked the face of the planet? Indeed there are, and I have to admit therefore that I try to avoid his music whenever possible.
Likewise the Fall, whose Mark E. Smith can apparently “smell a vegetarian a mile off”…and who, in Uncut magazine recently boasted about exterminating some squirrels in his back garden. Needless to say he is very much off the Sensible playlist also–anyway us vegetarians smell just fine than you very much…apart from maybe the occasional time when we might have overdone it on the cabbage…which reminds me of a joke I heard this week:
Old lady in a department store lift, doors open and two rich women walk in. One says to the other “Smell that? Christian Dior! $100/oz.” The other says “Smell that? Chanel No.5! $120/oz.” Old lady farts and says “Smell THAT? Brussel Sprouts! .50/lb.”
But enough of that–where was I? Oh yes…records by people I would rather not have my ears defiled by–and the reason I am harping on about it here is that while out for a soiree with some chums the other day, and just after the waiter had delivered a fancy selection of drinks, my ears detected a sound that was most definitely NOT welcome–Phil Collins. Whichever song of his it was I do not recall but it was followed by another…and another. We were commencing a greatest hits tirade…my heart sank.
I’m sure you’ve all been through that one–out with friends in a nice little bar or whatever and you’re just getting settled in and they start playing your least favorite muso–you know, the one that gives you feelings of nausea and the commencement of a foul mood. I hope you bloody well complain–I always do!
You see it’s all very well suggesting (as has been done many a time over the years) that I just ignore the muzak and get on with the task in hand–i.e., enjoying oneself, but as any musician will tell you–for us that would be an impossibility as we register every key change, analyze every drum fill, etc…even at background music volumes. And there are plenty of drum fills in Phil’s work. Boy does he love his paradiddles…or whatever it is they call them in the drummer fraternity.
But it’s not his skin bashing that pisses me off but more important stuff, like when he described punk as being “worthless”…which is a bit rich coming from a bloke in a band famous for nonsensical lyrics…like this Genesis classic “six saintly shrouded men walk across the lawn slowly…a seventh walks in front, cross held high in hand.” Not particularly relevant to a working class youngster in a council estate–in fact I’d go as far as saying that it was the likes of Genesis and Yes that more or less inspired punk, seeing as we had buggerall to identify with there–the only option being to do it yourself…which was pretty much the battle cry of the class of ‘77!
There is ONE thing I like about Collins though…he did put his money where his mouth is when he quit the UK–like he’d promised to do if the Conservatives got booted out of power in the 1997 election. Britain’s loss is Switzerland’s gain…a nice country where the people dress smartly and the trains run on time. Oh, and the taxes are low too…do you think that might have occurred to Phil and any of the other multi-millionaires who relocated to their mountainous retreat?
Of course nobody likes paying bloody taxes, and our scurrilous politicians seem to think there’s no limit to how much of our cash can be grabbed, whether through the IRS or via the cash registers. But this is not the case in Switzerland that leaves its citizens a far larger chunk of their earnings to spend as they see fit. Could the reason be that the Swiss government spends an absolute pittance each year on defense having long ago declared itself a neutral (i.e., peaceful) country–thus negating the purchase of any of the prohibitively costly military equipment required for warfare these days. Give everybody a Swiss Army Knife and a bicycle and tell them to cause havoc if anyone invades was the general idea–and the payoff is the low tax regime which seems to be rather popular with the celebrity tax exile set.
Contrast this to certain other Western governments who are currently in the process of further increasing the already vast amounts they are squandering on their disastrous follies in the Middle East…no wonder all the Fat Cats are stashing their cash abroad where it can’t be confiscated and turned into F-22 Raptors at $300 million a pop.
I sincerely hope that as the wine waiter uncorks a celebratory bottle of bubbly at the Collins local that Phil’s ears prick up…after someone with a sense of humor changes the piped music…and put on possibly his least favorite. THE DAMNED!
Captain Sensible is the guitarist of rabble rousers the Damned who kick started the UK punk scene of 1977 along with the Clash and the Sex Pistols, with whom they shared many a stage. Highly rated examples of the Damned on vinyl are “Damned Damned Damned” and “Machine Gun Etiquette”, the latter of which combined their rifftastic version of punk rock with a generous dollop of pysychedelia–a common theme in Mr. Sensible’s work. Mr. S also had a successful (if unlikely) solo career in the ’80s and toured the USA as a rap artist (I kid you not…) when his single “Wot” found itself high in the Billboard Dance Charts. He recently formed his own political organisation, The Blah! Party, as a direct result of Tony Blair’s warmongering. Captain is still touring with the Damned who are planning some recording soon–so if there’s any labels out there……
www.captainsensible.com