BartBlog

February 2, 2013

SFPD busts nudists

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:25 pm

 

KCBS reporter interviews protester Friday

On Friday morning February 1, 2013, the first page of the San Francisco Chronicle’s newspaper’s Bay Area Section carried a headline that read:  “Nudists hope City Hall protest will get them cited.”

The noon protest of the law that the Chronicle reported was scheduled to be held on the steps of City Hall but because it is a city law and because the steps are under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Sheriff, the lunch hour protest was quickly moved to the adjacent sidewalks which are under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Police Department.

In a city where the news media has featured saturation coverage of the Supebowl  football game which will pit a team from San Francisco against a team from Baltimore, the arrests drew a large contingent of journalists from a vast assortment of sources that feature news stories.

On Friday, in the town Herb Caen dubbed “Baghdad by the Bay,” a worker (or protester) would have been more noticeable if they weren’t wearing some item of clothing that proclaimed support for the San Francisco Forty Niners Football team.  The protesters wore shoes and not much else.

 

 

 

The Chronicle story plugged protester Gypsy Taub’s TV show, “My Naked Truth,” and her book, “Free Your Body, Free Your Mind,” which is available in the Kindle format.

Ms. Taub asserts that Freedom of Speech rights permit her to protest in the nude.  Was Lady Godiva the first nude protester in History?

San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener wrote the anti-nude law and the San Francisco Examiner on Friday February 1, (accurately) predicted that a nude George Davis would officially announce his intention to run for the Board of Supervisor in Wiener’s District.

Some protesters wearing clothes vocally protested the arrests for being a waste of precious funds which would be better spent (they asserted) for other different facets of law enforcement such as drug laws.

The arrest drama was put on a temporary hold while protester Trey Allen helped a bind woman up the City Hall stairs.  It was a visual media opportunity that provide a human interest angle to the day’s events.

 

 

January 28, 2013

Who was Jafsie?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 3:22 pm

[Fox has legally established the right to present lies as news and therefore one of the unintended consequences of that judicial ruling is that individual consumers of political punditry (such as this column) are solely responsible for any concomitant fact checking deemed appropriate.]

“Cemetery John,” written by Robert Zorn (The Overlook Press, New York N.Y. ©2012) slowly and methodically dismantles the case against Bruno Richard Hauptmann, who was tried and executed for participating in the theft of some children’s clothes from the home of Col. Charles A. Lindbergh.  Any reader of this column who assumes that Hauptmann was fried in New Jersey’s electrical chair because he was found guilty of the murder of the kidnapped baby has probably relied on other less comprehensive reports about the notorious crime.  In “Don’t Know Much about History,” author Kenneth C. Davis blithely informs his readers “ . . . but the evidence in the case was always strong against him (Hauptmann).”  (“What we have here is . . . failure to communicate!”)

Zorn’s book not only contradicts the conventional wisdom about Richard Bruno Hauptmann, he names a specific person as the mastermind of the famous heinous crime and builds an extensive case to bolster his assertion.

According to Zorn, academics have formulated a computer program that achieves a much higher accuracy rating for handwriting analysis than the human experts have scored in the past.  This innovative example of computer superiority confirms that his suspect actually wrote (at last parts of) the ransom notes delivered to Col. Lindbergh.

Dr. John F. Condon, whose initials JFC were used to derive his handle as Jafsie, served as the go-between for negotiations with a suspect (or suspects?) demanding money from the Lindberghs for the safe return of the baby.

Dr. Condon spoke directly to a suspect and later was reluctant to swear that Hauptmann was the person with whom he spoke.  Initial descriptions of the suspect given to police after his first encounter with an alleged kidnapper contradict the physical appearance of the man who was executed in the electric chair for being the one and only perpetrator of the vile deed.  Dr. Condon, AKA Jafsie, was, according to Zorn, coerced into upgrading his level of certainty and eliminating all his previously expressed doubts about Hauptmann being the man to whom Dr. Condon, at a second meeting, handed the ransom money.

Zorn raises a question about the possibility that the “Trial of the Century” actually took place in a location that did not legally have jurisdiction over the matter.

The conviction and execution of Hauptmann provided a foundation for a wide variety of careers for lawyers, politicians and police officials.  In the Thirties, any assertions about gaps in logic concerning the case quickly earned the sensational publicity seeking source a major amount of ridicule and (subsequently) a chance for inclusion in the Conspiracy Theory Hall of Fame.

Zorn alleges that some of the seats in the court room were sold by a local police official.  Coverage of the sensational trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann provided a springboard to fame for some of the journalists who reported on the proceedings.  Columnist Walter Winchell was one of those lucky individuals.

The antediluvian (has using big words gone out of fashion?) columnists’ technique, called three dot journalism, of using an ellipse to separate unrelated items has been superseded by the trend to streamline the demands on a reader’s attention span by adhering to the policy of one topic per column, but in the era of channel surfing via the remote control, perhaps the eclipse of the ellipse style will end?

Could separate and distinct topics, such as gun control, filibustering and storm damage legislation, which were separated by the use of three dot journalism, actually have a narrative thread which connects them all together?

With the new rules for filibustering, could a Senator introduce a ban on assault rifles with a dramatic public announcement which delights advocates of gun control and then later use the recently amended filibuster rules to anonymously kill the possibility of having a vote on that item and thus win the continuing supply of campaign donations from various gun supporting groups?  Aren’t all things possible through prayer?

Voters in California, who are “news junkies,” may have heard some (one or two?) disturbing rumors, last week, that both of their Democratic Senators allegedly gave stealth support to the piss poor filibuster reform measure that was approved by the Senate.  According to one radio report, a Senator who disapproved of the anemic reform actually told reporters the names of Quisling Democratic Senators who had quietly betrayed their constituents but he was quickly silenced (by senior Democratic Party officials?).

As the World’s Laziest Journalist understands it, the new filibuster rules present very ominous possibilities that only a vigilant free press can prevent.  At the end of December, the Congressional vote on Sandy Storm relief was postponed until after the New Year’s holiday.  The first day of the New Year, it was given immediate Congressional approval amid much loud hosannas in the news media.  Most folks didn’t notice the small footnote attached to the story:  Since a new congress was being sworn in, the approval of the measure by Congress meant that to be enacted into law it had to re-win approval in the Senate.

Those good ole boys in the Senate were, as the new session got started, mighty busy with filibuster reform, gun control, the annual State of the Union name calling competition, and (tah dah dah dutt dutt daaaahhh!) immigration reform and so it is possible that in all that excitement they have forgotten how many bills, such as the Storm relief bill, needed to be passed.  Now, they have to ask themselves another question:  “How many of the voters will notice/care?”  To which we can only add the traditional San Francisco question:  “Well, do ya, punk?”

In a country that is known for its dedication to a free press and truth, fretting about this slight oversight going unnoticed is probably a fool’s errand.  Since the World’s Laziest Journalist’s headquarters operates with limited access to commentary in the free press (the access costs money) we might have missed ample examples of instances where this possible sin of omission has been mentioned.  If it has not, then just as soon as the posse known as the New York Times national desk reads this column, they will (we must assume) pen a lead editorial calling the Senate to task for the glaring political fumble.

In all the excitement over the Judicial ruling that President Obama exceeded his authority with some recess appointments, the Journalists commenting on the sensational development seem to have missed a partisan implication question.  Will the Republicans use that decision as the grounds for starting impeachment proceedings against the President they love to hate?

Speaking of gun control, Zorn reports that Col Lindbergh was armed when he accompanied Dr. Condon when the doctor went to pay the ransom money and that the famous flyer noticed a fellow (who most likely knew that the Lindbergh baby was dead and that the ransom transaction was a fraud) walking away from the rendezvous location.  If (subjunctive mood) Col. Lindbergh had shot that person in the back, would he have been exonerated for an act of vigilante justice or would he have been convicted of murder by a jury of gun control advocates?  Just asking.

It will soon be the fiftieth anniversary of the time when Lee Harvey Oswald said to journalists:  “I’m a patsy.”

Now the disk jockey will play Johnny Cash’s “The Long Black Veil,” Merle Haggard’s “I’m the only Hell my mama ever raised,” and the Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley.”  We have to go buy a “Go Niners!” T-shirt.  Have a Lombardi Trophy winning type week.

January 16, 2013

Ye Olde Presents: Commentary in Pictures

Filed under: Commentary — Ye Olde Scribe @ 7:54 am

HERE COME THE REPUBLICANS AGAIN!

(more…)

January 10, 2013

Truth vs. Legend

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:25 pm

“Did Mr. Houdini really make the elephant disappear?”

“Yes,” I said.  “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Did President Bush make the expenses of running two wars disappear?  Telling the truth to Dubya’s loyal admiring fans would be as cruel and vicious as trying to take away their guns would be . . . and just as unproductive.

Modern Society is fueled by misperceptions.  Ridiculing the Emperor’s new clothes has always been a sure fire way to become an outcast.  A book of literary criticism summed it up in its title:  “Naked is the best disguise.”

In the early part of the Twentieth Century, there was a Congressman (everybody in Congress was a man back then and so the correct designation was Congressman) who was very popular and seemed destined to land in the Senate or the Governor’s office in Minnesota . . . until he criticized the role that bankers were playing in the effort to get the United States into the War to End All Wars.

That fellow, as a young lawyer, got into trouble when a bank sent him out to foreclose on a farm and he returned with the money that paid the farmer’s loan up to date.  The Bankers were furious and fired him.  He got his revenge by becoming a political activist who worked on behalf of farmers.  To show their gratitude, they elected him as their Congressman.

When a European member of nobility got shot and millions of soldiers were called on to die in the ensuing war, some influential decision makers in the USA saw the fracas as a sure way to increase profits for certain businessmen.  The fellow, who had been born in Stockholm Sweden, started saying things like:  “The war-for-profit group has counterfeited patriotism.”

Wasn’t patriotism what fueled the British soldiers’ charge into machine gun fire in the subsequent battles for “no man’s land” in WWI?  According to information we stumbled upon in a non-fiction book by Len Deighton, a curious thing called “the creeping barrage” may have augmented the patriotism.  It was alleged that in an effort to encourage soldiers to participate in the charge against the German line, an artillery barrage was laid down by the British.  It started behind the front line.  The shells were gradually moved farther forward and the soldiers in the trenches had the option of taking their chances with the barrage or running at the German line and see if they could get past them.  The image of brave young men running enthusiastically at the dreaded Bosch was very reassuring to the families on the home front.

The American Congressman had sealed his fate and his career in the halls of Congress was doomed.  He remained popular with his constituents, but they just couldn’t reelect him because of his views.  He tried in vain to become governor, but that didn’t work.

He was quoted as telling his son “In war it is not safe to think unless one travels with the mob.”

His achievements faded into the history books but not his name.  His son, Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. became a celebrity pioneer in the field of aviation.

In an article on a notorious TV appearance by the singer Madonna, writer Norman Mailer hypothesized that celebrities (and politicians?), who were rascals, would be forgiven so long as they didn’t commit the one unforgivable sin, which is going against type.  Hence celebrities who project an image of virtue are dealt with severely, by the media and fans, when they are caught in a scandal.

You could be a cynic who tells America that Houdini didn’t make the elephant disappear, but showing them how he did it would be completely unacceptable.

Did Robert Capa fake his most famous picture?  According to his biographer Richard Whelan, Capa was a rake-hell who often embellished his achievements with heaps of exaggeration and so the possibility that the “Falling Soldier” photo was an elaborate ruse is irrelevant.

Why is it that Elvis Presley was drafted but James Dean wasn’t?

When we first encountered a best selling history of the USA that had a title that (we thought) hinted it would be a “tell all” expose, we had visions of giving it a place of honor in the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory reference library.  Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be “more of the same” that breathlessly described how various legendary American heroes had made the elephant vanish into thin air.

[Note from the photo editor:  the photos we had of Banksy’s Los Angeles art installation called “The elephant in the room” have disappeared from the World’s Laziest Journalist’s photo archives and so this column will run without an accompanying photo.]

Is it hard work to be the World’s Laziest Journalist?

Did a well known folk singer really “burst on the scene already a legend”?

Was Amy Sample McPherson really kidnapped?

Did one bullet really do all that damage in Dallas?

Did a famous editor lie to a little girl named Virginia?

Are Federal investigators still trying to learn who made money on short selling airline stocks on Sept. 10, 2001?

Did Building 7 ever really exist?

Was President George W. Bush really able to reduce taxes, wage two wars, and not make a significant increase in the deficit?

When it comes time to make the call always remember the old journalism axiom:  “Always print the legend.”

Now the disk jockey will play “Do you believe in magic,” “That old black magic ” and“ Magic moments.”  We have to go try to score some tickets for Houdini at the Hippodrome.  Have an “abracadabra” type week.

January 9, 2013

The news and déjà vu

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 2:54 pm

During the last half of the 1930’s, Europe was flooded with journalists from America, who were being paid to report on the ominous developments that indicated a trend towards fascism was occurring, and they, subsequently, became the subject for a trend spotting item for historians to unearth.  Concurrently radio was in its Golden Age stage and Hollywood was about to release the movies that marked the high water mark.  Critics agree that the films receiving Oscar™ nominations for 1939 were a remarkable collection of excellent movies that has never been equaled in the following years.

What makes 2013 different from 1939?  How good is radio these days?  In typical Irish style we’ll answer that question with another question:  Was there more or less political propaganda on radio in Germany in 1939 or in the USA today?  In the late Thirties in Germany, citizens caught listening to foreign radio stations were dealt with in a very severe manner.  Why doesn’t the app that lets Americans listen to American radio stations on their cell phone let them listen to foreign origin radio stations?

Have the movies gotten better?  An obsession with maintaining political correctness while attracting the largest possible number of paid admissions has rendered cinema moribund.  How many Ten Best lists included “Killer Joe”?  Is regimented thinking a bad symptom in a country that was founded on the principle of freedom of speech?  Ja,wohl!

How much demand for foreign correspondents is manifest in American Journalism today?

CBS had a list of foreign correspondents in Europe in the Fifties that was on the “all star” level.  Today about the only foreign correspondent working in Europe that we can name is Silvia Paggioli and she works for NPR.

Do the students attending college this year have any idea who Gerda Taro was let alone consider her a woman’s lib role model?

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat history but what happens when the young generation is discouraged from learning history at all?

Back when LBJ was in the White House, the current issue of the French language magazine Paris Match was sold on the newsstand in the PanAm building each week.  (Where?)  Recently Al Jazeera bought Current TV as a way of gaining entrée into the American media market.  So far the response seems to be a cold shoulder reception.  Copies of Paris Match are available in Berkeley Public Library each week, but due to postal delivery the latest issue may be a tad outdated.

Are foreign language magazines (and points of view) a superfluous, unnecessary expenditure in a country that has renamed French Fries as Freedom Fries?  Has Freedom of Speech become an expensive, useless luxury in a time of austerity budgets?

Yes, you can use your Interenets connection to read foreign language web sites if you can read and understand sites using foreign languages or can fiddle with the “translate this page” option, but the few that do can easily be dismissed as unpatriotic conspiracy theory nuts.

Reportage in Washington has become a breathless scramble for spin rendering journalism into a copy of coverage of Hollywood luminaries.  When was the last time you encountered news using the phrase “an investigation has revealed” rather than “according to a reliable source”?

Rogue pundits out in the boondocks have as much chance of uncovering a scoop as do the members of the in crowd in D. C.   Neither group is going to get anything but announcements and news releases because everything that happens now in D. C. happens behind closed doors and journalists sit back and wait for the official press release to be delivered to their desk.

While the World’s Laziest Journalist was in the process of writing this column, we encountered a used copy of James Fallows’ 1996 book “Breaking the News (How the Media Undermine American Democracy)” for fifty cents.  We have read that book before but our copy of it is still out on loan somewhere in the San Francisco Bay area so we bought a new used copy to refresh our memory.

If well educated Americans didn’t heed Fallows’ 1996 warning what would be the use for this columnist to finish writing this column in early 2013?  On a cold day with rain in the forecast for Berkeley CA, it boils down to a line from “Rebel without a Cause:”  “We gotta do something.”

On page 74, Fallows starts off chapter three by saying:  “Any reporter born before 1965 did not go into journalism for the money.”

Was he trying to imply that Robert Capa got his self kilt for altruistic reasons?

Could stories about how the small coalition of military, bureaucrats, police, and clergy in Spain, who tamped down the demands for better condition from the farmers and workers in the mid Thirties, be a warning to the protesters wearing Guy Falk masks to the Occupy events?

Isn’t it enough for Fox News to run a quote from the President saying that holding the debt ceiling hostage won’t be tolerated and a quote from John Boner (from the codpiece party) saying “We’ll see about that!”? Isn’t that a marvelous example of fair and balanced journalism?  Aren’t the buttinskis who inject any commentary way out of line?

Do the liberal pundits think that Americans have to be told that if an order doesn’t carry an implied threat, it is useless?  If a fellow receives an order from a boss, a sergeant in the Army, or his girlfriend there is an implied threat behind the order.  If you don’t follow the boss’ order; you will be fired.  If you don’t follow the sergeants’ orders you won’t get a weekend pass.  If you don’t follow a girlfriends’ orders . . . something bad will happen.

When a kid delivers an ultimatum and indicates that if the threat isn’t accepted, he will eat worms how much gravitas does it carry?  How much serious consideration does it inspire?  If the Republicans hold the debt ceiling hostage, will President Obama hold a press conference and eat worms?

If America has a debt crisis on Super Bowl weekend (or thereabouts) will anybody care?  Will the Yankees finally win Super Bowl rings?  Can the Super Bowl and Oscar™ events be compared to a chance to dance to “our song” on the Titanic?

Is Jim Morrison’s wish to see anarchy reign supreme in America about to be granted?

Recent news reports indicate that there may have been as many as 400,000 unjustified home foreclosures.  (How many foreclosed homes were owned by journalists?)  Does that upset journalists?  Fallows quotes Michael Kinsley, of Crossfire, as saying:  “Being paid more than you are worth is the American dream.”

Now the disk jockey will play “Born to lose,” Iggy Pop’s “I wanna be your dog,” and Frank Zappa’s “It can’t happen here.”  We have to go see about joining the SF Press Club.  Have a “the check is in the mail” type week.

January 6, 2013

Hey, hey, LBJ how many unborn fetuses were killed today?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 4:26 pm

Mention the topic of birth control to a group of Catholics and folks leap (knee jerk reaction) to the assumption that the conversation will soon be about abortion, but not this time.  While attending a Jesuit University in the early Sixties approving the use of birth control pills was an indication that the student was showing a nasty propensity toward unorthodox thinking and anticipated the need for the expression “get your mind right, Luke.”  A comedian (wasn’t George Carlin always the source for all truly funny original thoughts?) back then made the assertion that “Catholics make the best fascists” and thus were used to accepting theological precepts while in the “unquestioning” mode of learning, but for one student who didn’t want to create waves and rock the boat, there were some very disturbing tangential aspects to the birth control debate which led the rogue thinker to question the morality of warfare, which was a very, very convoluted line or reasoning and best left unexpressed in a regimented atmosphere that equated heresy with treason.

At a time when American involvement in the internal affairs of South Vietnam was limited to sending a few advisers to help the South Vietnamese military handle dissent as they saw fit, questioning the morality of warfare was incidental in a segment of society that concentrated on stressing the rationality of using sperm and ovum to play a variation on the game of “Russian Roulette.”

Since college, even at a Jesuit University, is meant to be a time for sharpening one’s intellectual acuity, one particular student in the early Sixties was asking himself obscure questions meant to challenge his ability to analyze and assess regimented thinking.  Such as?  If one of the Ten Commandments advises folks to not do any killing, how then could the Pope reconcile German Catholics and American Catholics trading bullets, artillery shells, bayonet wounds, and aerial bombardments with each other during WWII?

Shouldn’t the Pope, whom we had been convinced spoke with absolute infallibility, have stepped in and, like a football referee, adjudicated the dispute and saved lives?

How could the Pope reconcile extensive killing from one side of his mouth while simultaneously assuring married couples that the sanctity of life required them to play a high stakes game of chance out the other side of his mouth?

Either life is sacred or not, but to maintain that young couples had to gamble with their future because the lives of their potential progeny were sacred and that once their children reached the age of 18 they were just cannon fodder to be used as counters in a world wide game of Imperial chess isn’t logical.

[We keep hearing PSA sound bytes on the progressive radio station in San Francisco reminding listeners to register with the draft board right after they celebrate their 18th birthday.  Are liberals still dispensing advice on how to dodge the draft in Berkeley CA.  You must register.  It’s the law.  Try fact checking this idea.]

Resources for fact checking abounded at a Jesuit University, because teachers of philosophy, logic, and theology were plentiful, but the answer to our question remained tantalizingly elusive.  Ultimately we were able to pin down the official stance on war and killing as taught by the Pope and holy mother the church:  “A Catholic citizen of any country may, in good conscience, participate in any war fought by his country as long as there is reasonable expectation of victory.”

That explained it.  The American Catholics thought that Patton was going to take them all the way to Berlin, and the German Catholics thought that Hitler would quarterback a magnificent goal line stand by his team.  No problem.

However, there was one teeny, tiny problem with that vague and nebulous doctrine that was just about totally irrelevant until after graduation.  Early on in the American intervention in the affairs of South Vietnam, Americans were reassured that the United States wasn’t going to get bogged down in a long, arduous, and costly (in terms of lives lost) campaign for total victory.  The U. S. would fight until things were back under control and then (like the Cheshire cat?) withdraw from the area formerly known as French Indochina.

If the US wasn’t going for victory how long would it be until the priests in the USA unanimously opposed the War in Vietnam on moral grounds?

When the students at UC Berkeley chanted “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?,” were they referring to unborn fetuses?

Since we were assessed as having a draft status of 1-Y and since our nomadic existence precluded a chance to take vows and enter into the holy institution of marriage, our obsession with reconciling the birth control question with the problem presented by optional military adventures in foreign lands, was put on hold for a good long while.  LBJ explained the lack of involvement with use of the expression:  “He doesn’t have a dog in that fight!”

Later in life we became our own source for theological opinion by becoming an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church.  (We are still trying to fact check the assertion that all members of the Sixties band, The Rolling Stones, availed themselves of the same opportunity.)

Now that the fiscal cliff has been postponed and the only item of national concern is the perennial debate about guns, we have a chance to sit back, reflect on the past, and polish our omphaloskepsis (a word which baffles Word Spellcheck) skills and revisit some intellectual conundrums from the past.

Did the mavens of pop culture ever conclusively answer the question:  “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”?

How the heck did the Japanese Army become the Army of occupation so fast in Vietnam?  It sure did provide a convenient launching pad for actions against certain British colonies later in WWII but efforts to consult the history books produce only a gaping gap when a fact checker attempts to find out how the Japanese Army took over so fast in Vietnam.

If austerity budgets become necessary isn’t it logical to conclude that suspending school lunch programs and funding armed guards in every school in the nation, is just a “no brainer”?

What would Ayn Rand advise about cutting Sandy Relief from the budget?

If Secretary of State Cordell Hull was quoted by UPI in a story that ran the last weekend in November of 1941 as saying that Pearl Harbor would be attacked and that war with Japan was inevitable, what would he say about the possible odds for a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear program?

Recently we saw a news story that hinted that some poor blighters are still serving a life term in Texas prisons for smoking one joint (i.e. a marijuana cigarette) back in the Sixties.

[Photo editor’s note:  A photo taken in December of 1966 showed a lone war protester on Times Square in New York City in blizzard conditions holding a sign saying:  “‘I’d rather see America lose face than it immortal soul.’ Norman Thomas” was assessed as being a great shot that generated too much anti-war sympathy and thus turned down for use on the AP wire.  Since then it has disappeared without a trace from the World’s Laziest Journalist’s photo archives and we must rely on words without an accompanying graphic to lure some readers to this column.]

Is it too late for an old hippie to get national attention (Does CBS Evening News read the World’s Laziest Journalist?) by burning a fifty year old draft card?

President Lyndon Baines Johnson said:  “If we’ve lost Cronkite, we’ve lost the country.”  [Back in the Sixties unconditional love in the mainstream media for (Republican) Presidents was unavailable because Fox News had not yet been born.]

Now the disk jockey will play “Alice’s Restaurant Massacre,” “The Ballad of the Green Beret” and “Eve of Destruction.”  We have to go write a tepid review of the new movie “Not Fade Away.”  Have a “time is on my side” type week.

January 3, 2013

Breaking News: Walking Orange Gets Appointed AGAIN and The Quote Goat

Filed under: Commentary — Ye Olde Scribe @ 2:36 pm
Courtesy mikenitro94 @ rising-hegemon.blogspot.com
Courtesy mikenitro94 @ rising-hegemon.blogspot.com
Elected for his second term, looks like we’ll have even more BONERS in the not so “new” House! Only it’s spelled “Boehner.”  HOWEVER, considering  the mispronunciation vs. his fake tears, nasty, vile nature and his screwed up way of doing things?

“BONER” WORKS!

Scribe quote goatAlso found at the same site as Orange Man, the following quote, or as Scribe prefers to put it: “In other Quote Goat news:” “Still no word on when America can get a restraining order against the Palin family.” -Posted by Attaturk

January 2, 2013

$, Guns, and Violence

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:30 pm

For someone who has not had a drink of booze for more than years, starting the new year by having breakfast at Lefty O’Doul’s sports bar in San Francisco might sound a tad misguided, but the World’s Laziest Journalist’s New Year’s Resolution for Thirteen is:  “Have more fun!”  So, a very good breakfast, with good (regular not Irish) coffee for a wee bit more $ than we are used to paying was in keeping with our game plan for the New Year.

After breakfast, we discovered that our plan to proceed to a movie theater complex and view Quentin Tarintino’s new movie was moving ahead of schedule and we could see the 11:30 a.m. show for a bargain matinee price and our budget could recoup the money we had spent on the (IMHO) lavish breakfast.

While watching the story of a freed slave who becomes a bounty hunter in Pre-Civil War America, we saw an opportunity to write a column that would suggest that the saga of mean slave owners could be interpreted as a parable for contemporary America with the plantation owners being the one percenters and the slaves seen as the exploited middle class and poor workers.  Some comparisons with a spaghetti Western, with some of Ennio Morricone’s music, could be thrown into the hypothetical column.

Watching the slaves fight with each other, literally as well as figuratively speaking, we were reminded of the Republican strategy for holding the Democratic Party at bay:  “Divide and Conquer!”  The Democrats fall for it every time!

Would “(Gun)Violence is as American as cherry pie” be a good headline for such a review?

We could do some pop culture nit-picking and point out that at one point what seems to be a Winchester 73 rifle is shown in the story that takes place before the Civil War started.

Writing such a column would be too much work and be a betrayal of our intention to ignore politics during a year in which no politician in Washington D. C. faces reelection and just focus on pop culture as a way of keeping our New Year’s Resolution.

Around Easter time, gyms will start running TV ads suggesting that viewers get in shape for summer excursions to the beach this summer.  (It is summer in Australia and folks going to the January White Sales can wear short sleeve shirts and other summer attire.)  Thing of it is anyone who has ever started toward that goal on New Year’s Day knows that exercise is like a train pulling out of the station.  It is recommended (for good reason) that people start with very easy workouts because their bodies aren’t ready for a long workout session that will burn up beaucoup calories.

The gyms should be running the ads now that truthfully advise that folks who start now and keep at it faithfully will just be starting to show results by the time tax season is over and have a small but realistic chance of showing some results by the time the July 4th picnic is being served.  Those ads will run about the time Ascension Thursday arrives and most of the people who pay to join a gym will have given up the effort by the time Independence Day arrives.

Easter of 2013 should coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the film “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” and for fact checking purposes we viewed it on New Year’s Eve and noticed that the star studded comedy is still funny and that the story of a wild scramble for $ is ripe for comparisons to the current situation in the USA.  A group of travelers learn that they can acquire a large sum of money (an obvious metaphor for happiness) “under the W.”  Was this a very accurate prediction of the philosophy of George W. Bush in action or what?  So maybe we’ll have to permit some occasional political commentary to seep into our year of living (as much as our meager budget will allow) lavishly in decedent splendor.

On New Year’s day of 2013, a Perils of Pauline finish avoided the financial disaster that the journalists in the mainstream media have been (enthusiastically?) predicting and so the politicians have nothing to do until its time for a replay later this year in December so it would only be an exercise in wasted effort to write about politics before then.

Based on past experience we think it may be too late to start applying for press credentials to cover this year’s Oscar™ Awards Ceremony but then again (as we were once advised) it never hurts to ask.

Maybe we should start now to apply for credentials to cover this year’s Le Mans sports car race?

Maybe this is the year we will be able to scratch a ride in a DC 3 airplane off our bucketlist.

Later this month the Noir City film festival will take place in San Francisco.  Usually a film noir movie opens showing a guy who is doomed.  Maybe we could use some pessimistic pundits’ quotes to compare him to the USA?  Whoops!  Staying away from political commentary is going to be challenge to our will power.

If Jeb Bush is going to jump into the 2016 Presidential race maybe we could do a column with a headline about the Bush Dynasty’s will to power?

See how easy it is to get sidetracked?

Maybe we could report on this year’s installment of the annual motorcycle event in Sturgis?

Could this be the year that we finally get to Hemingway Days in Key West?

We have had a ride in a B-17 G bomber.  To be fair and balanced, should we go to a gathering of warbirds and get a ride on a B-24?

We’ve been to Casablanca, Kalgoorlie, and Paris but we have never visited Paris in the month of April.  For sure, we would have to break into the piggy bank to write a first hand account about that.

One thing for sure.  We are not going to write a first hand account about what it feels like to go sky diving.  We are limiting our fact checking to repeated viewings of “Point Break” and that all.  Then again . . .

Two of our high school classmates have indicated that (finally) they might come and visit California!  We have been exploring the Golden State for a good many years.  On our first visit to Venice Beach, some activists were trying to advocate for ending the war in Vietnam.  (Some of them still are.)  We saw Bobby Kennedy campaign in Cali for getting the Presidential nomination.  We have not exhausted the list of “must see” locations in California.  I guess we’re going to have to offer to help either or both these friends get to the sequoia trees.  If they like the outdoor stuff, we can heartily recommend a visit to Yosemite.  Matter for fact, if they insist we’d go back for a second visit to see if it has change much in the last 42 years.  (Once, in a letter to a friend in Vietnam, we achieved a life time best with a quadruple end patentees bit of punctuation.  [Maybe we can beat that record in a 2013 column?])  The Golden Gate Bridge always looks very impressive, even in snapshots taken by folks who don’t know diddley about taking good pictures.

Our trusty Nikon Coolpix seems to be getting a bit worn out (we know that feeling) and may need a replacement.  In three years, we have take a ship load of digital images (25,000?) but we are ready to go on a new photo safari when the opportunity presents itself.

Four years ago, when we went to Australia seeking fun, quality photos, and perceptive and insightful insights into life, we had secret hopes of building a bigger and better journalism career, but now that a year that will be an “eye of the hurricane” time period has arrived, we are going to take a sabbatical year and just enjoy life and play things fast and easy just for kicks and giggles.  Our columns will be reports on pop culture items and our progress.

It’s like the character that Tom Cruise played in Risky Business said:  “Sometimes you just gottta say ‘What the fuck!’”

Now the disk jockey will play Duane Eddy’s “Rebel Rouser,” Jody Reynold’s “Endless Sleep,” and Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”  We have to go fact check the price for a hostel bunk in Paris during the month of April.  Have a (as Aunty Mame used to say)  “Life is a banquet and some poor suckers are starving” (even on a tight budget [they say that the best things in life are free]) type week and a happy new year.

December 31, 2012

Now what?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 2:51 pm

After posting a column on Friday December 28, 2012, in which we criticized the CBS Evening News for relying heavily on videos of people crying, we tuned in that night to the broadcast and saw a crying man who went out and actually begged for a kidney for his wife, a crying woman who lost her house to the bankers (banks don’t foreclose homes people working for those banks do [?]), and a crying man who was part of a couple whose effort to adopt a Russian orphan had come to a halt because of a new Russian law.  On the NBC Nightly News broadcast for Saturday December 29th, we saw a feature story with a video of a fellow who plays soccer and might get an offer from an American Football team to come and work in the USA.  The video had gone viral on the Internets and we wondered if a video of a crying pundit would “go viral” if it was posted on Youtube.  Did we just sabotage all (and we do mean all) our chances for becoming a late addition to the list of famous journalists known as “Murrow’s Boys”?

Slightly after four p.m. on the day we published the column criticizing CBS for tarnishing their legacy that was established by Edward R. Murrow, we heard Norm Goldman criticize, on his radio broadcast, a brand of banks (think of a 1939 movie that was a career breakthrough for John Wayne) because a recent decision by the Ninth Superior Court seemed to legitimize some unscrupulous accounting practices that always favored the bank and screwed the public.

While preparing to write a new column, we suddenly remembered the old oriental parable that ends with the punch line:  “I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet (those damn drones at it again?).”  Voila!  We had a Sutter’s Mill Moment.  An epiphany, as it were.

We didn’t need to envy CBS their ability to send a reporter and (union) camera crew out to video a person who was having tough times during post financial cliff period of uncertainty, if we wanted to get a video that would go viral on the Internets, we needed to get a video of a bank official who, wracked by guilt, was crying while contemplating the damage he had wrought.

Then what?

Everybody would see it.

Then what?

One thing seems certain.  If we get a video of a banker crying because of his complicity in a business practice that destroys hundreds of lives, CBS Evening News sure as hell ain’t gonna do a feature about how the World’s Laziest Journalist made a video that went viral on the Internets.  Dang!  It’s a tad late in the game to start searching for a new career . . . but . . . it will be a new year soon.  It will be a new year in some places when this column is posted.

Whatever happened to the guy who was America’s oldest porn actor?  Did he retire?  Could we do some Gonzo style reporting about walking a mile in his moccasins?

Speaking of the cinema, since we do love movies and since a goodly number of young folks like the movies made by Quentin Tarantino and since he has a new film just out, perhaps we could go see it and write a review as a way to rekindle our career as a film reviewer.  (Google Richard Ebert’s review of “Van Wilder” and read the last two paragraphs.)

Perhaps since we are not fully versed on the Facebook fad, we can just designate everything the World’s Laziest Journalist posts as “open to the public” and give George Taki (of Stark Trek fame) a run for the title of the most popular guy on that website.

We have heard of one woman in L. A. who went to a director to ask for a loan and was told:  “Write a sentence on this sheet of paper.”  She was totally perplexed but did as she was asked.  He threw the results in a drawer and jumped on the intercom and instructed his secretary to draw up a standard amount check for buying the film rights (to that sentence).  There are people in Hollywood who make a decent living just by selling ideas (known as “a pitch”) for films.

Didn’t one of those specialists become a director with offices on Wilshire Blvd. in Santa Monica?  Hmmm.  If he is busy maybe we could track him down and start a new career in pitching and sell him an idea for a new film?

Hey, bro, do you want to buy the story (with a few more specific details supplied) of a nurse who successfully escaped from a POW camp?  Yeah, yeah, yeah we know about the guy who used a motorcycle to escape from a POW camp in WWII but this is another “based on a true story” adventure with a chick as the protagonist.  What actress could turn down a chance to walk a mile in Steve McQueen’s moccasins?

Our columns rarely get comments but isn’t the topic of which young actress could evoke favorable comparisons to Steve McQueen rich with the potential for astute suggestions?

On the same program that he castigated bankers, Norm Goldman proceeded to tackle the legalize pot issue.  Back in the Seventies there was a novel, titled “Acapulco Gold,” that hypostasized what American culture would be like when (not “if”) marijuana became legal.

Wouldn’t it be odd if Washington’s repressive attitude forced the NRA and the legalize pot advocates to agree to a mutual assistance/defense treaty and seek refuge as a coalition group in a third part such as the Pirate Party?

Maybe after the bankers repent and ask forgiveness and the gun control issue is settled once and for all, maybe then the lobbyists representing America’s pharmaceutical companies will permit the politicians to address the legalize pot issue but in Thirteen the chances for that happening fall below the “slim and none” level down to the Australian category labeled “not bloody well likely, mate!”

In our efforts to select a photo to accompany this column, we remembered an image we acquired while doing some fact checking for a possible trend spotting story about snapshot collecting.  It showed a woman on a ship and carried the cryptic caption “Spring 1942.”  In the Spring of that year, the world was in turmoil but someone was making an effort to improve their lot in life.  Aren’t all journeys manifestations of optimism?  Couldn’t that woman be a metaphor for the USA at the start of 2013?

Maybe in an effort to achieve “fair and balanced” news coverage, CBS will hire a pundit to criticize the efforts of mainstream media in the USA?  They could feature a televised version of the media criticism made popular by A. J. Liebling.  Maybe not.  Maybe we could get a job at the American Studies Center at the University of Sydney helping them understand contemporary culture in the USA?  Maybe not.  Maybe now that Wolfman Jack has gone to the great sound booth in the sky, XERF needs a replacement announcer on the night side?  Maybe not.

All three of our writing heroes, Hemingway, Kerouac, and Hunter S. Thompson, seemed to find the obligations accompanying fame very disagreeable so maybe we can reconfigure  the old F. Scott Fitzgerald wisdom to read “Living well (in obscurity) is the best revenge.”?  If you don’t believe us, then ask author William Kotzwinkle if there is any truth in that amended quote.

Isn’t it amazing that the political commentators are making the assertion that the congressional representatives and the Senators are feeling pressure for the members of the 112th  Congress to reach a fiscal cliff agreement now because of concerns about possible resentment for not getting a bipartisan plan to avoid the cliff, playing  a role in their reelection as members of the 113th Congress.  Isn’t there an old political adage that states that American voters have a short memory?
Winston Churchill may have predicted the fiscal cliff political stalemate when he said:  “We conferred endlessly and futilely and arrived at the place from whence we began. Then we did what we knew we had to do in the first place, and we failed as we knew we would.”

Now the disk jockey will play “As Time goes by,” “the Alabama song,” and the Eagles song about James Dean.  We have to go post a link to this column on Facebook.  Have a “good night and good luck” type of new year.

December 28, 2012

Cheating death for fun and profit

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:23 pm

The woman who said “I don’t pay taxes; the little people do” may have inadvertently undercut the level of seriousness that some people will give to the looming prospect of a theoretically higher tax rate for the one percenters in return for giving them a chance to see how people addicted to consumerism handle austerity.  A thirty-nine percent tax rate that won’t be paid does sound more devastating than an irrelevant thirty-five percent tax rate, doesn’t it?

Wasn’t it established that Mitt Romney only pays about 15% in income tax?  If so, how serious of a threat would it be to tell him that if the USA goes off the financial cliff the theoretical rate he should be paying will be increased and life will get grim for the people who get government benefits.  Didn’t he dub them the 47 percenters?

Wealthy folks (like Mitt), after the first of the year, will be able to turn on the evening news, tune in to the nightly images of misery and drop out of the ranks of caring Christians.  Those with cash register hearts will see going off the financial cliff as the starting gun for a race to exploit the rest of society in a time of hardship and suffering.  Wasn’t there a Country song about chilling beers by holding it next to a cad’s heart?  Did he get a job as a CBS TV reporter?

Looking forward to an apocalyptic event that coincided with the end of the Mayan calendar because it would provide excellent material for use in a column may have been just a tad immature and illogical and now that it hasn’t happened writing about how CBS Evening News has morphed from a televised version of the World News Roundup into a contest to see which reporter can be the first to get an interviewee to cry on camera seems a bit anticlimactic and mundane.  If you had a buck for every time a person cried on camera this week and next on the Evening News, would you have a fistful of dollars or not?

After walking away unscathed from a rendezvous with certain death, it seems concomitant upon this columnist to inject a high level of joie d’vivre into our attempts to ridicule the arena of politics and perhaps in an year when not even Congressional representatives have to face the rigors of reelection to just focus on the other aspects of contemporary pop culture that are fun to observe.

Isn’t the yell that Wile E. Coyote gives when he goes sailing into the void a trademarked item that can’t be used without getting permission from a movie studio’s legal department?

When the fiscal cliff chapter of the political history of the USA started to unfold, didn’t Nancy Pelosi reassured Americans that she would bring up a measure in the House that had passed in the Senate last summer and thus avert a crisis?  Did she forget her solution to the problem?  Do the mainstream media journalists consider it rude to remind her of her promise?

How many skeptical commentators asked about how many Trevon Martin type incidents would occur in the schools if armed people are put in every school?  Is it realistic to expect that the armed guards will provide the law enforcement example of baseball’s unassisted triple play with a Rambo reaction to a school shooter?

If Fox News reported that its viewers were exceptionally well informed and that the concept of “the dumbing down of America” was part of a bogus Liberal conspiracy theory, and their viewers believed them; would that be an example of the Epimenides paradox?  Why is it that every time we hear the expression “I saw it on Fox News,” we think of the title of Ross Thomas’ mystery novel “The Fools in Town are on our side”?

Traditionally Ann Coulter used to use crazy talk to divert attention away from George W. Bush when the liberal criticism of him was getting intense.  Apparently the Republicans asked Wayne Lapierre to substitute for her recently when they wanted to turn a discussion on gun control into ideological gridlock.

When we heard of the investigation into the incident on TV that involved David Gregory holding up an extra capacity ammo clip, we were reminded of the time back in the Sixties when a New York City local news anchorman (Jeraldo Rivera?) was arrested on camera by someone dressed like a NYPD cop for holding up a roach (ie a marijuana cigarette) while he was on the air.  Who was that journalist?  What happened to that case?  Maybe if that on air personality is still serving time for that stunt, he can truly report that (for him) the Sixties still have consequences and aren’t over yet.

On one episode of the popular Sixties TV series Star Trek, the crew of the Enterprise was told that when the 21st century arrived massive land wars would be obsolete and that wars would be limited local struggles called Bush Wars.  Is that sound byte on Youtube?  If so we could write a column about that sometime during 2013.

If the World’s Laziest Journalist is going to relegate politics in the USA to the back burner, we could concentrate on other topics.  We might even shift our tendency to post on early Friday morning (PST in the USA) to a different day and time.  Maybe that would permit more readers an opportunity to skim our offerings?

Some cynics might suspect that a shift in emphasis away from politics to more of the “let the good times roll” reports might just be an excuse for this columnist to make the task of writing the columns more like an excuse to go out and have fun.  Watching a lava lamp and being inspired to write heavy philosophical think pieces might have been appropriate before the arrival of the last day on the Mayan Calendar, but now that we have cheated death isn’t every sandwich going to be a treat?  Didn’t a famous musician, after he learned he had a very serious health problem, advise people to “enjoy every sandwich!”?

Perhaps we should write a column about the old movie serials where a Hero (such as The Shadow as played by Victor Jory in the 1940 serial series) shrugs off a brush with certain death and plunges ahead with life in next week’s installment.  Will the saga of the post economic cliff America be a similar story line?

If a person rolls his car and winds up lying on a remote highway with a bunch of broken bones there are two ways to react.  One can either say:  “Oh dear, this means a long stay in the hospital” or he can exuberantly exclaim: “I’m still alive!”  We think that T-shirts that say “I survived the Mayan Apocalypse!” might sell well.  With or without an augmentation to the bank account, this columnist thinks that all the members of the  Mayan Apocalypse Survivors Association should make a concerted effort to make 2013 an enjoyable experience.

Yes, we realize that the suspension of unemployment checks is a serious economic situation, but if people who encounter that problem overcome the challenge just think of how baffled and aggravated the rich people, who expected to see soap opera existential crises every night on the evening news, will be.  It will be just like in the movie serials.  When 2012 ended it looked like “curtains” for sure, but when 2013 begins the financial cliff (except on Fox) will be No Big Thing (NBT).

If, somehow, the unemployed workers, manage to adopt a Zen existence that isn’t dependent on a weekly paycheck, just think how incensed that will make the capitalists who are counting on seeing the victims of their strategy suffer extensively.  It would almost be as if the victims refused to suffer just out of spite.

Back in the Eighties there was a spate of self help books that advised people to cut back on their standard of living and retire at a young age.  Perhaps some of the people getting their last unemployment check next week, should buy some used copies of those books this week?

After a few moments of contemplating what would make a good topic for a more feature oriented column, we realized that it might require a great deal of fact finding to produce a good trend-spotting column.  On the other hand, the obvious absurdities in politics are so readily available and the mainstream media makes no effort to point them out and so such columns full of “these columns practically write themselves” material need very little effort to produce, so maybe we will just slowly transition into some of the alternative topics.

Do the places that sell marijuana for medicinal purposes make extra profits by selling such periphery items as lava lamps?  Are T-shirts featuring a famous rolling paper logo still being sold?  Do the pot clubs sell those rolling papers?  Do rock concerts still include light shows?  When is the Jefferson Airplane going to release a new album?

Was it George Carlin who first said:  “If you can remember the Sixties; you weren’t really there.”?  Shouldn’t the closing quote for this column be something more intellectual such as Nietsche’s quote:  “ . . . when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”  (We preferred to use the Wile C. Coyote howl of despair, but, alas, it was not to be.)

Now the disk jockey will play “Rescue me,” “Cry me a river,” and “Sea of heartbreak.”  We have to go find a good VHS tape to play on New Year’s Eve.  Have a “ . . . but what if an armed guard had been there” type week.

December 21, 2012

Santa must arm the Elves!

Filed under: Commentary — Bob Patterson @ 1:39 pm

Could the Republicans be missing an excellent opportunity to make new inroads in the gun debate by politicizing Santa Claus and advocating that the only safe and sane way to prevent an invasion robbery at Santa’s toy factory, which would spoil an incalculable number of children’s Christmas celebrations, is to provide the elves with guns and give them firearms training and require them to spend time on the firing range every month.

Would it be politicizing freedom of speech to maintain that no topic on God’s Green Earth is so sacred that it merits an automatic exemption from the tendency of politicians to turn every possible subject of conversation at the local pub to their own advantage?

When hundreds (thousands?) of Santa’s Elves turned out on a cold rainy day in San Francisco to participate in the 2012 Santacon pub crawl, wasn’t the absence of any political activists supporting their about to become illegal right to be naked in public just a matter of common sense and not a verdict on the issue itself?

Theoretically freedom of speech is a good thing, but there are (as the Supreme Court decreed) limits.  People are not free to disseminate misinformation (as Mike Malloy pointed out on his radio show for December 17, 2012) such as yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater where there is no blaze.

Fox News, however, has used a case in Florida to establish their right to broadcast falsehoods as news.  Is there a difference between yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater where there is no blaze and pretending that fibs are news?

Does Fox’s right to tell fibs in newscasts override the United Supreme Court’s “Fire!” ruling about misinformation?  If so, does that mean it is OK to slip some fabricated facts into the gun control debate?

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, dontcha know that opens up a new can of worms and now the lawyers will insinuate themselves into the fookin’ debate and the issue will get sidetracked (and completely bogged down) with defining words such as trying to establish what the meaning of “is” is?  Isn’t it best to just ignore certain things?

In the mid Sixties, in Stroudsburg Pa., on Christmas day a fellow stressed out, killed his family, set the house on fire, and walked off into the sunset.  He was put on the FBI’s ten most wanted list but after a decade of remaining there, he was quietly and surreptitiously removed from that version of the Criminal Hall of Fame.  It is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to find his name on the Internets.  Did he use a gun?  Who knows?

The movie “Rare Export” provided a scientific explanation for several of the Christmas myths (such as flying reindeer) but it was ignored by the pop culture radar and was relegated to the “cult movie” category and is given the silent treatment by political pundits.  For connoisseurs of esoteric entertainment, it is a treasure to be cherished.

Speaking of Norway, Simo Häyhäy used a rifle to kill 542 men and became a national hero.  He was a sniper helping fend off an attack from Russia.

United States Marine Corps sniper Carlos Hathcock used a rifle to take out a Viet Cong general from more than a mile away.  He had one confirmed kill from 2,500 (no typo) yards out.  For a time he held the record for a sniper kill record from the longest distance.  Do gun critics want to establish 2,500 yards as the radius for gun free zones around schools?

Hathcock used one bullet carefully aimed to achieve precision with each of his shots rating rather than sending a “Hail Mary” style fusillade of ammunition towards his target. Critics of the large capacity magazines might want to emphasize Hathcock’s enviable skill and efficiency and disparage the use of a rapid burst of bullets with results that illustrate the law of averages.  Stressing quality rather than quantity when it comes to displays of marksmanship might get gun enthusiasts to listen to the opposing point of view.  Unfortunately that line of argumentation doesn’t apply in the Lanza case.

Some people have wondered why this particular mass shooting has provoked such a universal interest and emotional response.  Has any pundit pointed out the fact that usually such incidents involve a massive number of shots fired and the law of averages.  The shooter in the Connecticut school killed 26 people and was reported to have fired a hundred rounds.  The numbers make him sound more like some one using the execution style rather than randomness and perhaps that subconsciously disturbs the public more than the other killers who use the law of averages to do their dirty work. He was a one man firing squad and not a man unleashing a fusillade of random shots.

The contrast of the One Percenters vs. everyone else is especially sad this year when TV ads challenge the fat cats to buy luxury cars for those on their Christmas gift list while some of the unemployed have to face the possibility that their unemployment checks will be terminated on New Year’s day.

Pop culture scholars tend to credit some pre-war (WWII for those of you who want to know which particular war is being referenced) magazine ads for a popular brand of soda pop for being the source of the Santa image as being the incarnation of the Christmas spirit.

Let’s imagine that a privately owned item was secretly done on assignment several decades ago.  How valuable would a (hypothetical) Norman Rockwell painting be if it depicted an exhausted but happy Santa late on December 26 relaxing by cleaning some of the items in his gun collection?  ([Gun control advocates can never understand why one gun is never enough.]  The thought of being killed by an intruder whilst cleaning your weapon can only be assuaged by always having another loaded gun available when cleaning pistols or rifles.)

Yahoo highlighted the story about the one woman who took an item her father had brought back from WWII to a police gun buy back program and was advised to keep it.  It was a Sturmgewehr worth approximately $40,000 to discerning gun collectors.

http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/valuable-wwii-gun-police-buy-back-022155231–abc-news-topstories.html

If American pop culture could include Lenny Bruce’s humor and Stan Freberg’s sarcastic criticism regarding the capitalistic aspect of Christmas, then surely it must be ready, willing, and eager to add something new to the gun control debate.

Speaking of Stan Freberg, in Berkeley CA Carol Denney led some local carolers in a singing protest against the continuing efforts by advocates of a sit-lie law in “bear country.”  Recently the citizens of Berkeley voted against a sit-lie ordinance, but the friends of the homeless expect a renewed attack on the poor sometime in the future.

Blame it on the Kellys?  Speaking of Australia, there is a sidewalk plaque in (if memory serves) the Kings Cross Section of Sydney (NSW), that offers up the idea that space is a mark of wealth.  Some wealthy playboys might own several houses but a poor (but honest?) working man might have to crowd his entire family into a one room apartment close to his work place.  (Have you read Upton Sinclair’s “Jungle”?)

The concept of a poor but honest working man trying very hard to cram a happy holiday into a tight living space might be useful at a time when news stories about exceedingly small apartments are getting good play.  (Didn’t Dave Ross [or was it Charles Osgood?] feature that very topic on one of his recent radio reports?)  Examples of conspicuous consumption can not be shoehorned into a micro apartment.  Suppose that a fellow with a tiny apartment wins a giant screen TV.  It would be incompatible with his life style and cause an existential crisis.

Have you noticed how none (that we could find) of the high priced journalists have explained how the shooter’s mother could afford such a fine big home nor have they mentioned her place of employment.  We can’t imagine that the managing editors we have dealt with in the past would let such a gaping hole in the narrative slide, but this is the era of Murdock style news.  Did she inherit some of movie star Mario Lanza’s money?

What if (hypothetically speaking) a fellow were temporarily operating out of a hostel in Paris or Perth and there was no room in the suitcase for any additional material possessions?  What if such a person had a truly enjoyable Christmas without getting or giving anything physical?  What kind of craziness is it to think that good conversations with new friends, delicious food, and a trip to Cottesloe Beach makes for a wonderful holiday?

Wouldn’t that tend to validate the Apache philosophy that if you can’t take it with you on your pony when you move on, then you don’t need it and thereby invalidate the American compulsion to buy, buy, buy right up to the time when Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve begins?

What if some emotionally unstable person where to think that God gave him the assignment to assassinate Santa Claus and his helpers?  Shouldn’t Santa arm the Elves and require them to have firearms training just in case?

The Republican philosophy about the true meaning of Christmas may best be epitomized in a quote that is often attributed to Collis P. Huntington:  “Whatever is Not Nailed Down is Mine and Whatever I Can Pry Loose is Not Nailed Down.”

The World’s Laziest Journalist disk jockey agrees that poverty sucks and is assessing the possibility of composing a song that becomes a perennial holiday standard because that, he assures us, means a large royalties check every January.  Do we need to provide readers with a long list of examples?

Now the disk jockey will play the song “Santa’s in a wheelchair” by the Kids from Widney (not a typo) High, John Prine’s “Christmas in Prison” (there are several songs titled “Christmas in Jail”) and Stan Freberg’s “Green Christmas.”  We have to go see if the world has ended and we just didn’t notice.  Have a “no chains can hold me” type week.

December 14, 2012

Pot, War, and Rock ’n’ Roll

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:33 pm

“Fug You,” the 2011 book written by Ed Sanders, had completely gone stealth on the pop culture radar screen at the headquarters of the World’s Laziest Journalist until we noticed a remaindered copy for sale in the Half-Price Bookstore in downtown Berkeley CA, last week.  The snob appeal of being able to write about Sanders Sixties Rock group, the Fugs, and casually saying “we saw them perform in the Village in 1966” overpowered our usual tightwad tendency to avoid spending money just to be able to write a column mit book review.

When we got the book home and leaned that the cover was a visual pun that referred to the time the Fugs were featured on the cover of LIFE magazine, we had a breakthrough moment that solved a conundrum that has been baffling us for a long time:  “What makes the Bush era different from the Vietnam War era?”

The first time we read Albert Camus’ book, “The Rebel,” we thought we encountered a passage that asserted that the Establishment, as Society was called in the Sixties, would defuse rebels by absorbing them into high society.  (Subsequent rereadings of the Camus’ book failed to produce that particular passage for quoting purposes.)  That Camus insight, real or imagined, helped us immensely in our various subsequent excursions into pop culture analysis.  Didn’t a rebellious band from England eventually become The Rolling Stones Inc.?  Aren’t the rights to the Beatles songs still earning royalties?  Will new rock bands raise funds by selling stock?

As we started to read “Fug You,” we were delighted to see that a bunch of the references to the counterculture evoked some personal memories to add to our enjoyment level of Sanders recounting of the Sixties.  (Was the Psychedelicatessen NYC’s first “head shop”?  [It was featured in a Time magazine story dated February 24, 1967.])

Then we had our breakthrough insight while staring at the information that the Fugs were featured on the cover of the February 17, 1967 issue of LIFE magazine.  In the Bush era, underground cult heroes have zero chance of getting mainstream media exposure.  No corporation in its right mind (pun?) will give free publicity to a movie maker, novelist, or band that isn’t a shining example of the capitalist philosophy and (even better) part of that very corporation’s “extended family” of subsidiaries.

It wasn’t always like that.

When a book expert was asked to authenticate the validity of a hardback copy of the first edition of Jack Kerouac’s book, “On the Road,” which was autographed and inscribed to Marilyn Monroe, his research revealed that both the actress and the pioneer Beatnik novelist appeared on the Tonight TV show on the same night, so he verified the authenticity of the item.

Sanders says (on page 230) that the Fugs were invited to perform on the Johnny Carson version of the Tonight Show but that a dispute over which song was to be performed caused the cancellation of that potential milestone in pop culture history.

On November 5, 1965, the Fugs added an extremely unusual accomplishment to their resume (page 170).  Allen Ginsberg, the Fugs, and Country Joe and the Fish gave a concert performance in a chemistry lecture room on the University of California Berkeley campus.

In the Bush era, the mainstream media does not feature stories on the counterculture and thus bestow legitimacy on the rebel artists and their anti-establishment philosophy.  In the Sixties, underground celebrities were almost automatically given a ticket to fame by the mainstream media.

During 1969 while we lived in San Francisco, we were totally oblivious to the fact that a co-worker from our college yearbook and newspaper, John Walsh, was struggling with a counterculture venture in the very same city.  (Woulda/coulda/shoulda)  It wasn’t until about two years later that Newsweek magazine drew national attention to the feisty rock’n’roll magazine being published in the city slightly to the East of Berkeley CA.  That publishing venture called itself by the same name that O. Henry had used years before when he attempted to publish a magazine:  “Rolling Stone.”

San Francisco’s band of rogues called the Merry Pranksters weren’t the first people in the United States to buy an old bus and then go tearing around the country seeking fun and adventure, but the Pranksters were the first to have their escapades chronicled by a mainstream writer (from New York City) who just happened to be in the process of forming the Gonzo branch of Journalism, Tom Wolfe.

Hunter S. Thompson chronicled the exploits of the Hell’s Angles Motorcycle Club in the mid-Sixties in a book and then became a staff writer for the previously mentioned Rolling Stone magazine.

Comedian Flip Wilson did a routine about keeping up with the latest news that included “The Church of What’s Happening Now.”  Trend-spotting in the news media wasn’t just a fad in the Sixties, it was an obsession.

George Carlin skewered the Sixties penchant for fast moves in the pop culture arena when he suggested that a song could be “last week’s pick-hit of the week, this week number one, and next week’s ‘golden oldies’ selection.”

Was the band The Who trying to make a confession when they titled an album “The Who Sells Out” or were they just making a feeble attempt to be ironical?

In the Sixties, bands would get a career boost by appearing on the Ed Sullivan TV show.  TV talk shows were not reluctant to feature rising talent.  Saunders includes (pages 227 to 230) a partial transcript of the Fugs 1967 appearance on the David Susskind TV show.

In the early seventies, when a young unknown singer, named Bruce Springsteen, with a hard working publicity agent, wound up on the covers of both Time and Newsweek in the same week, the two rival magazines agreed to make sure that wouldn’t happen again.

When the “Sounds of Our Lives” radio format featured music from the big band era, rock fans might clandestinely listen to Glenn Miller but the roster of ads featuring denture adhesives, Depends, and cures for denture breath, would cause a young listener to recoil in horror exclaiming:  “Hell’s Bells, forty years from now will we become old farts who wax nostalgic listening to stations that only feature music from the British Invasion?”  Do Vietnam era veterans still utter the phrase “Roger that!”?

These days free publicity is too precious a commodity to be wasted on unknowns.

In the era of shrinking news staffs, journalism relies more and more on prepackaged material known as HO’s (hand outs).  Why pay a reporter when you can run a professionally done segment provided free from a large corporation (such as a pharmaceutical company?)?  We have recently learned that the United States and Switzerland are the only two countries that permit TV ads for medicines.

News from the underground provided fertile ground for the growth of alternative newspapers.  The Village Voice helped prepare the way for The L. A. Free Press, the Berkley Barb, and Al Goldstein’s Screw.  These days the San Francisco area sustains three weekly newspapers, the Guardian, San Francisco Weekly, and the East Bay Express.

Unfortunately the underground press no longer functions as a scout for the troops in the mainstream media.  Does Fox Views do trend spotting stories other than noting the rising stars in the Republican Party?  Wouldn’t it be a hoot if this column inspires the establishing of a late night talk show on Fox?  Would Disco Tex and the Sexoletts have a snowball’s chance in hell of being invited on that show?  Are stars from the underground this era’s missing media darlings?

Who is on the roster of the new angry young men?  What new band owns the rights to wear the enfant terrible label?  Can you name a contemporary poet, let alone say who is today’s most outspoken poet/critic of the military adventure in Afghanistan?  Is there any novelist working today who isn’t a corporate approved source of entertainment rather than a rogue who provides the voice of conscience for the USA?

Does the web site that is the leading source of links to contemporary Liberal Lite voices feature any content that can be considered “edgy”?  What ever happened to that word that was ubiquitous when the Internets was in the “new fad” phase?

Supposedly the Internets was going to give alternate voices a chance to get their messages out to the world, but ultimately many new voices and trends may be getting lost in a digital information dump.

Do Tweets provide the basis for trend spotting stories?  Really?  If a thousand people tweet their approval of some new music, do the friends of those thousand people run out and listen to the recommended music or are the tweets of approval lost among thousands of other tweets about thousands of other pop culture items?  If a Tweet is posted on the Internets and no one reads it, will it make a noise?  If a Tweeter touts a hundred new items this week, will a music recommendation carry any clout or will it get lost in the digital information dump?  Do Tweeters have fans who will follow up on all of this week’s one hundred recommendations?

Which will gather more media attention:  The Pope’s unsuccessful attempt to post his first Tweet, or a blog, called Media Darlings, which is being done by a fellow from New Zealand named Rory MacKinnon.  His blog is aimed at journalists and journalism students and it recounts his adventures in Great Britain.

Fame has become America’s answer to British Royalty.  Yes, occasionally some brash young upstart can break into the ranks of the usual suspects, but for the most part hasn’t fame in the USA become a matter of “carrying on a family tradition”?

Reading about all the causes that Ed Saunders promoted (legalize pot, stop the war in Vietnam, providing advice for young men facing the draft, free speech) one is forced to stop and ask:  “Where did he get the energy to do all that?”  For those who didn’t become quite active in all those causes, it seems natural to ask if it was worth all the effort.  Some of the early anti-Vietnam activities Sanders describes will soon be marking their half century anniversary.  Will there be any sentimental laden 50th anniversary events in 2013?  If so, will they get any mainstream media news coverage?  Would such a hypothetical event inspire a Fugs reunion?

[Note from the Photo Editor:  The World’s Laziest Journalist Legal Department was very reluctant to approve a shot of just the cover of the Ed Sanders book and so a file shot of a West Coast location that was also famous for spawning successful music careers at the same time the Fugs were hitting it big in New York City was used.]

On page 206, Sanders quotes a 1966 review in the New York Times in which Robert Shelton wrote:  “The Fugs might be considered the musical children of Lenny Bruce, the angry satirist. . . . While obviously far out by most accepted standards of popular music, the Fugs are clever, biting and effective satirists.”

Now the disk jockey will play the Fugs’ “Kill for Peace,” Country Joe’s song “Dark Clouds” (from his new “Time Flies By” album), and Seasick Steve’s song “Dog House Boogie.”  We have to go see if the Berkeley Barb has any relationship to Malibu Barbie.   Have a “meteoric rise to fame” type week.

The time has come for federal legalization of marijuana

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Greg in cheeseland @ 10:12 am

Author’s note:
With all this talk of a fiscal cliff, you would think Obama would have this in mind to generate more revenue. But as Bart says, Leonhart and Holder are too busy busting up poker games and arresting people for getting high.

Full text:
As a teenager, Barack Obama liked to get high in the back of a friend’s VW bus. He knows, as did George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him, what we all know: that pot is essentially harmless, writes Jann S. Wenner in Rolling Stone magazine. It is about time for the federal government to take steps to legalize marijuana on a federal level.

Not everyone in the federal government agrees that marijuana should be legal and if they do, they will not admit it. But most Americans do believe that, or at least think that the federal government should allow voters in states like Colorado and Washington to decide for themselves whether or not recreational marijuana use should be legal.

In a recent Gallup/USA Today poll, 64 percent of Americans said the federal government should not intervene in states that have legalized marijuana for recreational use. A Public Policy Polling national survey revealed that 58 percent of Americans feel that marijuana should be legal and 50 percent of respondents said they think marijuana will become legal under federal law within the next 10 years.

A closer examination of that poll and several others reveals numbers that probably should not be startling, and reveal a trend in American’s opinions about legalization of marijuana. You can view more polls on the topic here and here. It is clear that Americans want the federal government out of marijuana policies that have been decided by voters on a state level.

The polls suggest that the trend for legalization is going to increase, because all of them show that support for legalization of marijuana primarily comes from younger and middle aged voters. Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, put it this way: “This is the first time Quinnipiac University asked this question in its national poll so there is no comparison from earlier years. It seems likely, however, that given the better than 2-1 majority among younger voters, legalization is just a matter of time.”

The real question now is, will the Obama administration and federal agencies respect state’s rights and the popular opinion of voters and chance federal marijuana laws, or at least back down on enforcing them?

That remains to be seen, but a good indication are the words of Michelle Leonhart, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in her response, or rather her non-response, to a few simple questions in a congressional hearing. (See video here). According to her, all illegal drugs are equally bad, but it is okay to put kids on Zoloft or Adderall, or spend $8 billion a year to incarcerate pot users.

Here are some statistics, as seen at Online Paralegal Programs:

  • Marijuana is the greatest revenue producer of all agricultural products in the U.S. The annual income is $36 billion.
  • It is the top cash crop in 12 states, top 3rd in 30, and top 5th in 39 states.
  • If legalized, the U.S. would save $7.7 billion on prohibition costs.
  • The U.S. would gain $6.2 billion on tax revenues.
  • The U.S. economy would gain another $7 billion on shops and various products made from hemp.
  • Since the “war on drugs” began, the U.S. has spent $33 billion on the “just say no” campaign.
  • Marijuana use has remained the same since the war on drugs began, except in the states where medical use is legal.
  • 10 million of the 37 million people incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses have been arrested for possession of marijuana.
  • The total of cost of incarcerating drug offenders is about $450 billion per year.
  • Last year, about 850 million people were arrested for marijuana-related offenses. Of those arrests, 103,000 were for manufacture or sale and 750,000 were for simple possession.
  • Of 10 states that had legalized medical marijuana, eight saw a decrease in teen marijuana use from 1999 to 2006.

Simple solution – legalize weed and fire Leonhart, because anyone that ignorant or obstinate should not be in a high (no pun intended) position in government. Even Pat Robertson would probably do a better job in that position, and that is not a compliment for Pat. Any research team could dig up the statistics about legalization of marijuana and publicize them.

The potential for tax revenue from the legalization of marijuana has not even been mentioned in congressional debates over the budget, but with the country about to go off the metaphorical fiscal cliff, that deserves some attention. The legislators and voters in the states of Washington and Colorado realize that there is potential for revenue from legalizing and taxing marijuana, just like tobacco and alcohol in all 50 states. But thanks to people like Ms. Leonhart, no portion of the potential tax revenues from legalizing marijuana is even considered. Instead of cutting Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and then raising income taxes on everyone, how about finding a new source of revenue?

Like it or not, Mr. President and Ms. Leonhart, about half of the people in the country smoke weed. Most would probably like to have it legal and pay their fair share of taxes on it in return for you removing the fear of being arrested. That is reality and it is a reality that is going to continue to trend, so go with it and the rest of the people in this country. These “potheads” are also known as voters – the people that elected you.

Most people know that the war on drugs is a sham, especially when valuable resources are spent on curtailing pot smuggling, incarcerating users and banks like HSBC get to launder drug cartel’s money for private profit. Most people are also beginning to realize that spending billions on unnecessary wars and killing people on the other side of the globe is probably more economically and morally harmful to Americans than people smoking a joint.

Keep it lit and force the federal government to get off of the fence and do something about this issue.

Get links and see the video referenced here: Madison Independent Examiner – The time has come for federal legalization of marijuana

December 7, 2012

A return to the (Charlie) McCarthy era mentality?

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , , , — Bob Patterson @ 1:35 pm

Nota Bene</I>:  The following column contains irony.  Proceed with caution.

Democratic and Republican politicians, pundits both conservative and liberal, and voters from both parties want this columnist to believe that both sides in the fiscal cliff negotiations are participating in a difficult and nerve-wracking process of finding a suitable compromise that will avoid the dreaded denouement of: “what we have here is failure to communicate.”  A nagging doubt that the Republicans are negotiating in good faith continues to plague any attempt by the World’s Laziest Journalist to handicap this struggle and when we take a look at what the Republicans have been trying to do since the day the Social Security law was signed by FDR, we come up with a bleak evaluation of the prospects for any Happy New Year celebrations in the homes of the poor and middle class this year.

If the January first deadline passes without a compromise solution the 113 Congress which will be sworn in on January 3, 2013, will be busy performing necessary preliminary Parliamentary procedures and will be very pleased to let any public dissatisfaction with the results be linked to their predecessors and President Obama.

If the January first deadline passes without a compromise, how will the American Journalism community (with Fox News as point man?) react?  If Fox Television advocates a non-stop rush to hysteria as the only possible reaction to a post financial cliff crisis, will a handful of liberal radio personalities be able to stem the tide?

Haven’t the Republicans racked up a track record that indicates they might secretly want to let see President Obama take the USA over the fiscal cliff?

When St. Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President, a part of his program was to start union busting with the Air Controllers Union being the first group to suffer the consequences. Didn’t Michigan just pass a “right to work” law?  Doesn’t the San Francisco radio station that carries progressive talk shows just start airing commercials from the National Right to Work (www.nrtw.org) organization?

Later in the eighties the Los Angeles Times ran one or two stories advancing not only the possibility that computers would bring time saving and unquestioned results to the task of counting election ballots but that some (publicity seeking?) science based college teachers (them again?) were making the wild baseless assertion that such an innovation in the democratic process would include an inherent risk in the form of possibilities that the final results could be subject to tampering by some unscrupulous fiends.

Such completely unrealistic prognostications were quickly dismissed as the work of demented professors who had lost touch with reality and quietly slipped into the twilight zone now known as Conspiracy Theory.

Fortunately cooler heads prevailed and when the voting counting in Florida in the Presidential election of 2000 got a tad gnarly, electronic voting machines and the laws mandating the use of that method of letting the accountants furnish the final results were conveniently written and waiting for the chance to get an “up or down” vote from previously elected Senators and Congressmen.

Liberals who don’t see how eliminating “likely” Democratic voters from the registration rolls prevents voter fraud are the same ones who don’t realize that outsourcing jobs to other countries increases the profit margin and that more profits are, by definition, the  essential ingredient in the strategy for economic recovery.

The farsighted Republicans had (in a 1996 PNAC white paper) foreseen the possibility of the country facing the challenge of “another Pearl Harbor,” and quickly implemented several variations of the “double standard” concept after 9/11 occcured.

Democrats would be held to a very strict level of accountability while any Republican (it was well understood) would get an automatic exemption from confining ideology such as the precepts of war established by the lead council for America at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, which held that any invasion was a crime against peace.

Increases in the debt ceiling were automatic when George W. Bush was in the Oval Office and the cost of the military adventures in Iran and Afghanistan were exempt from concerns about the deficit.  Now that President Obama is the commander-in-chief, the main concern of Republicans is deficit reduction.

Meanwhile, the Republicans when they were in the majority in Congress had initiated a policy for the filibuster rule which would put the Democrats in a straight jacket if and when the loyal opposition leadership cadre ever became obstreperous.

The Liberals who see a conspiracy hiding behind every Bush would have Patriotic red-blooded Americans believe that the rules change which helped one particular media mogul acquire more outlets than the law previously permitted was some kind of ominous “plot.”  Now instead of a diverse group of Republican conservative publishers owning newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations, one fellow from “down under” does.  Do they think that it makes a difference if the media is owned by one man rather than a group of like minded fellows?  (These doubters probably take the concepts in Jonathan Kwitny’s book, “The Crimes of Patriots:  A True tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA,” as “gospel.”)  These narrow minded liberals would have everyone believe that Plato was predicting Fox’s high ratings when he said:  “Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.”

The Republicans have forced the Post Office to provide pre-paid funding for employee retirement programs thus forcing that government agency to contend with almost certain bankruptcy and subsequently the need to become privatized to continue to provide their services to the public.

Can the battle pitting the Republican majority Congress against President Obama be compared to the Alamo?

In his novel “Texas,” James Michener (who is noted for the quality of the factual background for his stories) stated that when the state of Texas agreed to join the United States, it specifically had as part of the deal, an option of separating into five individual states.  Wouldn’t rambunctious Republicans be more anxious to invoke that option and get ten Senators rather than succeed from the union and have none?

The beginning of the Great Depression is pinpointed as being Black Friday in October of 1929 and exuberant Republicans, who enthusiastically make the assertion that the country could have been better served by Republican leadership during the Depression, conveniently forget that the low point of the era was reached later in President Hoover’s term in office and that the recovery began with FDR’s inauguration.

During St. Ronald Reagan’s two terms in the oval office, some extremists voiced the opinion that what America needed was another Depression with the implication being that bad times would be better with a Republican in the White House.

Obviously Liberals who believes that any Republican would seriously consider the “advantages” of a Great Depression 2.0 won’t have any need to use a laxative during the duration of the fiscal cliff stare down.

Speaking of the Thirties, why doesn’t the Jon Stewart Show feature a W. C. Fields impersonator and a replica of the Charlie McCarthy dummy (now in the Smithsonian Institute) having a modern political debate?  Didn’t Fields provide the Republican Party with their unofficial motto when he said:  “If a thing is worth having; it’s worth cheating to get it!”?

To some cynical Liberals, the fact that the implication of austerity budgets, which demand cutting many social programs as part of coping with hard times, will be a chance for Conservatives to break out the Champaign and caviar might seem to be an oxymoron but for connoisseurs of schadenfreude this year’s Christmas celebrations will ring with rich people singing about the rich getting rich being part of God’s divine plan for humanity and the cry of “please, sir, may I have some more porridge” being mimicked throughout the one particular home (out of many, of course!) where they have gone to celebrate the holiday.

Are Republicans postulating a Santa with a Jekyll and Hyde personality?  Could there be one Santa to bring joy, tax cuts, and happiness to the rich and and another one who deals out tax increase and social service cuts to the middle class and poor?  Do the Republicans believe in a two Santa world?

Some folks prone towards manufacturing new and improved conspiracy theories have asked us if Berkeley City Mayor Tom Bates deliberately postpones contentious items until well past mid-night when many concerned citizens have gone home.  To which we respond:  Not bloody well likely, mate!”

Some of Berkeley’s famous panhandlers are asserting that the new Berkeley Public Library policy of turning away visitors carrying a large back pack is part of a concerted and coordinated policy of harassing them and is a new facet of the sit-lie controversy.

After Pearl Harbor was bombed (seventy one years ago on the day this column will be posted), the Republicans quickly proposed that the newly instituted laws mandating overtime pay be revoked so that workers could not be tainted by the suspicion of being war profiteers.  There were some very lucrative contracts going to come their way but in the country’s darkest hour, they still found time to be concerned about protecting their workers from the possibility of having their reputations tarnished by allegations of war profiteering.  The FDR administration (which had been suspected of being pro socialist when the Social Security Act was signed into law) thought that everyone including workers should share in the bounty that WWII was sure to bestow.

The Democrats seem very reluctant to admit that the Republicans have been relentless in the defense of Veterans benefits and programs.

When we look at all these separate examples of Republican political philosophy in action together, we can not conceive of a sudden “Christmas Carol” moment that puts a “God bless us one and all” sentiment in the mouths of the Republicans who see their mission as making a goal line defense to keep the Bush tax cuts in place.

[Photo Editor’s note:  Statues of newspaper owners (Rupert Murdoch?) such as this one of the publisher who founded Culver City CA (where about four decades ago we learned the fundamentals of covering city council meetings) are more likely to be erected than ones to well informed voters or Fox viewers and so we used a shot of the statue of Harry Culver in downtown Culver City, CA as this week’s column illustration.]

United States Senator Joe McCarthy is quoted online as having said:  “McCarthyism is Americanism with sleeves rolled.”

The disk jockey will now (for obvious reasons) play Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five, the Beach Boys song “Heroes and Villains,” and the theme music from “Cool Hand Luke.”  Now we have to go replay our VHS tape of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” because we may soon do a reassessment review for the 50th anniversary of its release in 1963.  Have a “can you spare a peso for a fellow American” (from Treasure of the Sierra Madre”) type week.

Ye Olde Scribe Asks…

Filed under: Commentary — Ye Olde Scribe @ 9:07 am

Courtesy torwars.com

If teaching a child how to think can be liberating, isn’t teaching a child what they MUST think a form of mental rape?

Should “age of consent” apply when fundamentalists of all kinds indoctrinate their children?

If a mind is a terrible thing to waste, why do we get children drunk on the hope Jesus, or Santa, will give them their every heart’s desire if they just pray, or “be good?”

Isn’t bribing children to be good teaching them if they do something for a selfish reason good will happen?

December 4, 2012

Ye Olde Scribe Presents: Groundhog Day AGAIN

Filed under: Commentary — Ye Olde Scribe @ 11:47 am

YOS woke up to Cher on the radio. He immediately threw it out the window, assuming it will be back in place next Groundhog’s day: tomorrow. These days only happened every year, with the same War on Christmas crap. Now they seem to happen almost every day. We just had an election, where one candidate wanted to raise rates on the rich: marginally, and only what they earned well over 200 grand. The other wanted to throw people out on street, make sure they couldn’t afford health care and would therefore DIE, not even be able to afford to go look for a job, all so those rich bitch buckaroo-laden folks didn’t have to pay a pittance more.

Election OVER!!! Yeah! And, now. we’re back to proposing a marginal rise in taxes for the uber rich, argued by the guy who WON. And those who lost, after said election, still have an erection to rape the poor so they can give to the hotsy totsy rich.

Look, up ahead, a fiscal cliff! Well, maybe it’s a speed bump? A slight dip claimed to be a “cliff” by dippy drama queens out to get everything they want by any means?

One thing’s certain. The nation’s car is being driven by a go-pher the Kochs and other mega rich fascisistas. Dems who enable the go-phur are Bill Murray. And there is a cliff up ahead we may still drive over.

It’s called compromising with bullies who refuse to compromise on anything, even though WE WON.

Courtesy wolfgnards.com


(more…)

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress