Wingnut Wednesday

IT IS NO ACCIDENT that President Obama's tapping of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace the retiring David Souter represents the quintessential "rock and a hard place" conundrum for the right wing. That's what makes the choice such an inspiring one, and quite possibly Obama's single best move of his young presidency.

The beauty of the selection lies in the simple logic that the harder Republicans fight the nomination, the more likely they will continue to be seen as the anti-minority, anti-women, anti-progress bunch. And the more inflammatory the rhetoric, the less likely it becomes that Hispanics -- the fastest-growing voting block in the U.S. -- will want anything to do with the party that already has done so much for them on issues like immigration.

Granted, Sotomayor is no Harriet Miers when it comes to legal experience or jurisprudence -- who is? -- yet leading Democrats are confident of her eventual confirmation. Chuck Schumer even warned Republicans that they oppose the nomination "at their own peril."

And so with the lines drawn, the race was joined to see which leading right-wing figure could slander the nominee most irrationally. As expected, professional bigot Rush Limbaugh broke out well ahead of the pack, followed closely by warped hatemonger Anne Coulter and tiresome charlatan Newt Gingrich. The trio took turns branding her a "racist" based on an out-of-context soundbite from a 2001 speech she made to a Hispanic group:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Gingrich actually used his own Tweet account to urge Sotomayor to "withdraw" from consideration for the Supreme Court vacancy: Imagine a judicial nominee said "my experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman" new racism is no better than old racism. And former Congressman Tom Tancredo -- never one to pass up an opportunity to slander a brown person -- just had to throw his own white hood into the fray. Readily admitting he had never even glanced at a single word of Sotomayor's legal rulings or opinions from 16 years as a federal judge, the deranged crazed zealous anti-immigration lunatic advocate nevertheless used an MSNBC appearance to weigh in:

"I’m telling you she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context. That’s exactly how we would portray it and there’s no one who would get on the Supreme Court saying a thing like that except for a Hispanic woman and you’re going to say it doesn’t matter. Well, man. Where are you coming from? How can you possibly say that? There’s plenty of stuff."

But when it comes to politics, no part of the nation reliably brings the crazy like the Loon Star State.Could anyone have been surprised to learn that David Carney is an advisor to Texas Governor and recent secession advocate Rick Perry?

Apparently untroubled by poll after poll showing the number of Americans identifying themselves as Republicans shrinking to near-record lows, Carney still was having none of that Big Tent approach advocated by softies like Colin Powell. Times may be tough for the GOP, but as Carney told the Dallas Morning News on May 16, “that doesn’t mean you take your principles and throw them out the door and become a whorehouse and let anybody in who wants to come in, regardless.”

Any more talk along those lines, and David Carney may find himself slapped with a "mental anguish" lawsuit -- what with prostitutes, whores and streetwalkers polling higher than Republicans these days. After all, stranger things have happened inside an American courtroom.

Gone Too Soon

SOME REAL SAD NEWS for music fans of a certain age and taste. Just clicked on the New York Times website and the first thing to catch my eye is Jay Bennett, Ex-Member of Wilco, Dies at 45. Bennett made news earlier this month after filing a lawsuit against former bandmate Jeff Tweedy for unpaid royalties over his contribution to five Wilco records and his appearance in the movie I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. Cause of death is still unknown at this time, with the obituary saying he died in his sleep early Sunday morning.

In fact, it was seeing the Wilco movie in a Greenwich Village theater when it first came out in 2002 that drove me to jump off the Jeff Tweedy-Wilco bandwagon, never to climb back on. I thought Tweedy came off as overbearing and humorless in that film, and the shabby way he treated Bennett left a real bad taste in my mouth.

I always felt Wilco lost its heart and soul when it ousted Bennett. Tweedy in particular seemed to patronize the dreadlocked guitarist as they butted heads over the direction of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, with Tweedy trying to move the band away from its Americana roots and Bennett wanting to add some rock-and-roll attitude to the songs. Tweedy "won" that debate, and my revenge has been ignoring all things Wilco ever since. Despite my boycott, Wilco has done just fine, judging by the often over-the-top critical praise from every quarter as Tweedy took the band in new directions.

That said, the first Wilco album, 1995's A.M. was an unabashed country-rock romp and remains one of my favorite albums. Bennett would join Wilco for the expansive second double album Being There and remain through Summerteeth and YHF, in addition to playing a major role in the two terrific Mermaid Avenue albums adapted from Woody Guthrie lyrics made with British punk-folkie Billy Bragg.

What propels the songs on A.M. more than the songwriting are the tasty guitar licks played by Brian Henneman of the underrated Bottle Rockets -- elevating songs like "Boxful of Records," "I Must Be High" and "Pick Up the Change" to a higher level, just as multi-instrumentalist Bennett would do with future Wilco material when he came on board for 1996's Being There.

I remember reading about Bennett's lawsuit, and Tweedy's cavalier response had the effect of turning me off even more: "It was such a long time ago. Aside from everything else, I'm being sued for not paying someone for appearing in a movie I didn't produce. Go figure."

Apparently Bennett lived the last few months of his life in intense pain, but didn't have enough health insurance to pay for the hip surgery he needed. According to court documents, he was seeking damages of $50,000 in his suit, a relatively small amount considering the big part he played in Wilco's financial success.

The one time I saw Wilco live was just over 10 years ago -- Irving Plaza here in NYC on April 21, 1999 (my birthday) -- an outstanding, rollicking show, as were the Austin City Limits and Sessions at West 54th concert broadcasts from around the same time which I taped. Watching those shows over the years, what stands out is the sheer fun the band is having onstage as they rip through the sets. But Tweedy was so intent on moving away from alt-country toward something less pop-oriented and more experimental that he was willing to dump his ex-guitarist in the process.

In addition to his work with Wilco and solo releases, Bennett was a highly respected session musician and producer, working with artists as diverse as Billy Joe Shaver, Blues Traveler and Sheryl Crow. R.I.P., Jay, you'll be missed more than you probably ever thought -- out of sight, yes, but definitely not out of mind.
_________________________________________________________________________
Boogie Woogie Flu has a selection of Wilco songs, including some alternate takes and rarities, that Bennett had a major hand shaping; here's your link to yesterday's memorial post.

Here's a link to Cover Lay Down's Bennett tribute, also well worth checking out.

Aquarium Drunkard has demos and other outtakes from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Adios Lounge has a Jay Bennett & Edward Burch solo tune from a 2002 Minneapolis appearance.

And here's Bennett's myspace page, where you can hear his latest solo album and read the heartfelt testimonials from his fans.

"Tall buildings shake,
Voices escape singing sad sad songs,
Tuned to chords strung down your cheeks,
Bitter melodies turning your orbit around.
Voices whine,
skyscrapers are scraping together,
your voice is smoking,
last cigarettes are all you can get,
turning your orbit around.
Our love, our love, our love is all we have.
Our love, our love is all of God's money, everyone is a burning sun."
Jesus, Etc. (Bennett, Tweedy)

Freestyle Friday

LET'S OPEN THINGS UP with some sports on this fine Freestyle Friday... a little hardball, some roundball, maybe even throw the old medicine ball around if we have time left over.

Yankees go for their 10th straight victory tonight at the new Yankee Stadium versus Philadelphia in first interleague matchup of the season -- in my opinion way too early for that, but I go through this every year; I love interleague play, but MLB should wait till at least July before scheduling these games. They just feel too much like exhibition matches otherwise.

Remember we told you last month how the balls were just flying out of the new Stadium, with 26 HRs hit by both teams in the first 6 games? Well, Yanks have played 20 games now, and that pace has slowed only slightly: 75 have been hit, an all-time record for a new stadium.

Something's not quite right: Johnny Damon already has 7 HRs at the new park in just 75 at-bats -- an almost Ruthian percentage; last year he hit 7 HRs all year at home in 272 ABs.

The other New York team has dropped 4 in a row to fall out of 1st in the NL East, and Mets now head to Fenway Park, where Red Sox are 16-4 on the season. With SS Jose Reyes day to day, there's never been a better time than tonight for Johan Santana to take his microscopic 1.36 ERA to the mound.

Boston slugger David Ortiz probably wishes he got to play in the Bronx Bandbox on a regular basis because, speaking of microscopes, you need a magnifying glass to find Big Popout's paltry output. His batting average, at .211, is 20 points below his listed weight, charitably rounded off at 230, with just 1 HR in 142 ABs. In fact, this is part of a downward spiral that has seen his power numbers tumble from 54 in 2006 to 35 in '07 and then just 23 last year in an injury-shortened season (109 games). People are using the D word in relation to Ortiz now -- D as in DONE. If so, then credit Peter Gammons for first raising that possibility, citing physical problems.

Since my Philly 76ers were knocked out of the first round of the NBA playoffs in 6 games by Orlando, I've been rooting for the Denver Nuggets -- a real likable team led by George Karl (879-614 lifetime). Karl's teams -- Cleveland, Seattle, Golden State, Milwaukee, Denver -- have made the playoffs 22 times in his 25 years of coaching, and this might be his last best chance at that elusive NBA title.

In addition to Chauncey Billups -- finally getting his recognition as one of the top clutch point guards in league history -- there's plenty of talent in Carmelo Anthony and Kenyon Martin, as well as the white Dennis Rodman -- 6' 10" power forward Chris "Birdman" Andersen. Not that there's much competition, but Andersen is hands down the punk-rockin'est player the NBA has to offer. Like Rodman, he's got the attention-grabbing 'do and the crazy tats: in Andersen's case a crown of gel-spiked hair that looks like a lethal weapon -- as well as the non-stop motor that rubs off on his teammates and gets under the skin of opponents. But it wouldn't matter unless Andersen can ball, and like Rodman he can -- giving the Nuggets basically 6 points and 6 boards a night in about 20 quality minutes, and trailing only Dwight Howard in blocked shots per game on the season.

The Nuggets split the first pair on the road, and now head home to Denver for the next two games. I'm rooting for them to spoil half of Commissioner David Stern's wet dream matchup of Kobe-LeBron, and for Orlando to upset the Cavaliers after stealing Game 1 in Cleveland. Nothing against LeBron, but I always go underdog once my team is out, and so a Magic-Nuggets finals would work just fine for me. Plus, there's an added bonus for me as a 76ers fan: if LeBron is denied a championship this year, he's unlikely to leave for the harsher spotlight of, say, Madison Square Garden until he gets it done in Cleveland.

Finally got around to Mickey Rourke's The Wrestler, watching it over Bob & Holly's last night. We were just blown away by the movie, unlike many critics who couldn't get past some of its admittedly corny cliches. I could've done without the gruesome industrial-staples-into-the-back routine, but that's part of what gave it so much heart. It all added up to one of the most authentic, unapologetic blue collar portraits ever captured on film -- making the original Rocky seem almost like a genteel Ivory-Merchant period piece in comparison.

The funniest scene in The Wrestler had to be the one where Rourke gets a job at the supermarket deli counter. This had me and Bob carrying on a little too loudly, so Holly had to put the subtitles on -- which caused us to start saying the lines out loud along with Mickey. At that point Holly came up with a new bar game for the ages -- "Movie-okie" -- where you put a famous flick on and act out scenes with your friends. Well, it sounded good at the time...

The Wrestler's odd subtitling decisions also provided some hilarity. In addition to the usual DOOR OPENING, TIRES SCREECHING, CROWD HISSING... we saw "IMITATING SIREN" while a woman screamed in orgiastic ecstasy -- alas, a sound I rarely seem to encounter in real life...

Speaking of which, boy, you can really make a nice little compilation video out of all the times Marisa Tomei has pranced around naked in recent films. There's the topless scenes in The Wrestler, the convincing butt-fuck scene in When the Devil Knows You're Dead...

Notice how concept albums are making something of a comeback? The one garnering a lot of headlines is Green Day's follow-up to American Idiot: 21st Century Breakdown. I've downloaded 3 songs from the album so far, so the concept thing eludes me at the moment. For what it's worth, my initial impression is Know Your Enemy channels Combat Rock-era Clash lyrically but otherwise sounds like an outtake from American Idiot. Restless Heart Syndrome is a stab at White Album-vintage Beatles, an homage I thought they executed much more effortlessly on Warning, their 2000 album that is still in my opinion their strongest album by a considerable margin: their most interesting lyrically, most diverse musically. Horseshoes and Handgrenades has a great punk riff, but how if fits into the rest of the album I leave to reviewers who have absorbed the whole 21st Century Breakdown CD.

But if nothing else, the new Green Day album spotlights the trend toward making concept albums -- or at least works intended to be taken as complete entities. Which brings to mind how uber-dweeb Chuck Klosterman carried on last year about how Guns N Roses' hideous Chinese Democracy was "The Last Album" because no one will ever listen to a whole record at one sitting in the future. Klosterman was dead wrong then, and therefore even less right today as we look back at his half-baked premise:

“Chinese Democracy is (pretty much) the last Old Media album we’ll ever contemplate in this context—it’s the last album that will be marketed as a collection of autonomous-but-connected songs, the last album that will be absorbed as a static manifestation of who the band supposedly is, and the last album that will matter more as a physical object than as an Internet sound file. This is the end of that.”

As I said, have you heard the new Green Day release marketed as a collection of singles or as an entire album to be appreciated from start to finish? Of course it's the latter; all the reviews make the point that it's a throwback concept album.

It's way too early to weigh the gravitas of 21st Century Breakdown against heavy concept albums of yesteryear like Freak Out, Sgt. Pepper's, Ziggy Stardust or my favorite, Lou Reed's New York. It just feels good to point out how wrong Klosterman is and how overrated he is as a supposed pop culture guru if we're having the concept album conversation at all.

Not far from where Green Day formed in 1987, rising from 3-chord punks to worldwide pop stars, a new group named Divisadero throws its hat into the ring with Lefty -- "the sad tale of an emotionally and physically scarred boxer" (L.A. Underground). Maybe they'll make an album out of The Wrestler next!

Well, the other day their record company dropped an MP3 into my mailbox, and I've really been taken with the song The Boxer's Daughter [mp3] from the 2008 album. I've played it a lot the last 3 days, and it's giving off a real Soft Parade vibe, the melancholic Doors album from 1969, and trust me when I say I don't offer such praise lightly. Divisadero's myspace page has 5-6 other songs up and a group bio if you want to get a better feel.

Shadow Of A Dowd

THE NEWS BIZ IS ABUZZ with a good old-fashioned brouhaha: plagiarism allegations against Maureen Dowd. Her Sunday New York Times column contained a key paragraph that happened to have originated in another writer's piece -- and now the Internet version of a wet dream is in full spasm.

Perhaps equally alarming as the original charge of plagiarizing was the strangely nonchalant dog-ate-my-notes excuse Dowd offered Monday by way of an explanation. Let's just say that after her weak defense, journalism schools won't be teaching Dowd's Frankenstein approach to assembling her columns -- unless it's an introductory course in How Not To -- despite her Pulitzer pedigree.

Coincidentally, just a few scant posts ago I was offering something close to unvarnished praise for Dowd's recent work, which in retrospect looks like yet another Warden's World jinx:

...On the positive side of the street, Maureen Dowd has written one good column after another for a long stretch now. Moving away from Hillary Clinton as a subject has freed her from overdoing the oversimplified gender politics which she delighted reveling in during the long and bitter Clinton-Obama campaign. Sometimes she reverts to bad form, as in a recent overwrought Michelle Obama piece, but Dowd's twice-weekly column is once again a safe place to turn for an incisive if sometimes catty take on the culture of national politics...

Well, it was part of an April Fool's Day post...

Glenn Greenwald used the Dowd kerfuffle Monday to remind everyone that this kind of "exchange" goes on all the time, despite the one-sided portrayal of bloggers as parasites cannibalizing established mainstream news sources. In The myth of the parasitical bloggers, Greenwald documents how a writer from The Economist recently nipped large parts of his recent post on the prison-industrial complex. Dowd's wholesale swipe of Josh Marshall's paragraph is only the latest, most concrete case of a more widespread practice:

Often, the parasitical feeding happens in the opposite direction, though while bloggers routinely credit (and link to) the source of the material on which they're commenting, there is an unwritten code among many establishment journalists that while they credit each other's work, they're free to claim as their own whatever they find online without any need for credit or attribution (see here for a typical example of how many of these news organizations operate in this regard).

Typically, the uncredited use of online commentary doesn't rise to the level of blatant copying -- plagiarism -- that Maureen Dowd engaged in. It's often not even an ethical breach at all. Instead, traditional media outlets simply take stories, ideas and research they find online and pass it off as their own. In other words -- to use their phraseology -- they act parasitically on blogs by taking content and exploiting it for their benefit.

Ironically, I really liked Dowd's column last Sunday and had bookmarked it with the intention of mentioning of it in Monday's Give 'Em Enough Rope, but then decided my post would be too Times-heavy after quoting Frank Rich so extensively.

Also smacking of irony, or maybe its lesser-cited cousin mere happenstance, Greenwald commended Dowd's column in his own Sunday post (Distorting public opinion on torture investigations) -- quoting the exact section I had planned to highlight -- calling her piece "uncharacteristically cogent and substantive." I too found myself in agreement with her unequivocal call for a truth commission that would get to the bottom of the Bush administration's willful disregard of the Geneva Convention and its flaunting of international law in the wake of the Nancy Pelosi-CIA standoff:

I used to agree with President Obama, that it was better to keep moving and focus on our myriad problems than wallow in the darkness of the past. But now I want a full accounting. I want to know every awful act committed in the name of self-defense and patriotism. Even if it only makes one ambitious congresswoman pay more attention in some future briefing about some future secret technique that is “uniquely” designed to protect us, it will be worth it.

But it was the section directly proceeding the above closing one -- the penultimate paragraph of her Sunday column -- that got MoDo into HoWa (hot water). Here's (1) the original Josh Marshall reference from the Talking Points Memo of 5/14; (2) the paragraph in Dowd's Cheney, Master of Pain from the 5/17 op-ed page; (3) what it looks like now on the Times website; and finally (4) Dowd's Monday email to Huffington Post explaining how the offending graph slipped in without due attribution:

(1)
"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

(2)
"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

(3)
Josh Marshall said in his blog: “More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.”

(4)
josh is right. I didn't read his blog last week, and didn't have any idea he had made that point until you informed me just now. i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent -- and I assumed spontaneous -- way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column. but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me. we're fixing it on the web, to give josh credit, and will include a note, as well as a formal correction tomorrow.

Given how they've backed themselves into a corner with that explanation, you can appreciate how Dowd -- at the Times since 1983 and an op-ed columnist since '95 -- and Executive Editor Bill Keller now have to stay away from the third rail of journalism, the dreaded P word. Sure, the Dowd imbroglio is unlikely to blacken her name and reputation as emphatically as Jayson Blair or Judith Miller -- but it's potentially scandalous nonetheless.

Yesterday, a U.S. News & World Report writer seemed willing to give his colleague the benefit of the Dowd; despite not wholly endorsing her version of how the mistake occurred, John Aloysius Farrell wants everybody to move along, nothing to see here. Strange...

This isn't the first time Dowd's methodology has been called into question. During the 2008 primary season, she filed a piece from out of the country that made it seem she was reporting from Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire campaign headquarters. Perhaps it's now fair game to raise the specter that "friends" may have had a ghostly hand in previous columns.

I'm running out of synonyms for irony, but consider that it was Maureen Dowd who caught Joe Biden plagiarizing part of another pol's speech in a 1987 column -- a textbook case of What Goes Around Comes Around:

But Mr. Biden's borrowing raises questions about how much a candidate can adapt someone else's language and thoughts, whether he remembers to give credit or not.

On Jeopardy Monday, an entire category was devoted to New York Times columnists, using video clues where each writer awkwardly looked into the camera and said things like, "I wrote back in 2003 that the Bush administration should close this place where thousands of prisoners have been held without charges." These cameos were cringe-inducing moments of the highest order. I believe Richard Cohen mouthed the above words, and then Gail Collins, Nick Kristof, Charles Blow and Frank Rich took their turns.

What made it even worse was Alex pompously stopping the proceedings when the category ended to offer his solemn gratitude to the important columnists who took precious time out of their day to participate. It came off as overly deferential, even reverential, and therefore pompous to the nth degree. The Times management never imagined these Jeopardy appearances would be overshadowed so soon by another charge of wrong-doing by arguably its best-known personality.

Perhaps MoDo had better things to do than literally become the answer to a trivia question. But I was surprised she passed on an opportunity for self-promotion, because Dowd's obviously no shrinking violet. I once saw her promoting a book on Letterman and, while not quite at ease in front of the camera, she seemed to relish the attention. So I remember being surprised that she wasn't featured on the Jeopardy slot, but it makes sense now: she was probably busy stripping the blogosphere of parts for her next column.

Give 'Em Enough Rope

AT FIRST I THOUGHT it had to be a joke, the kind you might see on political humor blog Wonkette or from anything-goes The Onion. But there it was in Roger Simon's column Wednesday on Politico.com:

A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

Does it get any more embarrassing for the Republican'ts these days -- foolishly butting heads at every turn with an exceedingly popular president instead of picking their battles when they actually have, you know, something resembling an actual plan. I give embattled RNC Chairman Richard Steele a modicum of credit for having the common sense to oppose this latest display of red-baiting, predicting the stunt "will accomplish little than to give the media and our opponents the opportunity to mischaracterize Republicans.”

Yet what did you expect from the new Know-Nothings who thought up the bold Freedom Fries initiative after France refused to join the Coalition of Willing Invaders back in the heady early days of Operation Iraqi Oil? Red-baiting has always been their stock in fixed trade, their desperation go-to move. And why not? Branding opponents as communists or socialist traitors has always worked before, from South America to Southeast Asia and now back by unpopular demand to North America.

Judging by their actions in the last week alone, the Right sure doesn't need any help from the left in digging a deeper hole for themselves. Perhaps the most potent symbol of that obtuseness came when Deferment Dick very pointedly sided with Rush Limbaugh as the face of the party against former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ex-Secretary of State Colin Powell -- in effect choosing a draft-dodging, drug-addicted hatemonger over one of the party's most respected figures in a feeble attempt to work up its rabid, panicked base.

The move to "officially" brand Democrats as socialists is sure to backfire -- just as it did in the last election. The McCain-Palin campaign did its best, in effect making it a stalking point, and yet enough voters saw it as the shameless, shameful tactic it was.

Former Powell aide Lawrence Wilkerson finally had enough of Deadeye Dick besmirching his ex-boss, and he let loose in a no-holds-barred editorial published Thursday called The Truth About Richard Bruce Cheney:

First, more Americans were killed by terrorists on Cheney's watch than on any other leader's watch in US history. So his constant claim that no Americans were killed in the "seven and a half years" after 9/11 of his vice presidency takes on a new texture when one considers that fact. And it is a fact. Second, the fact no attack has occurred on U.S. soil since 9/11--much touted by Cheney--is due almost entirely to the nation's having deployed over 200,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and not to "the Cheney method of interrogation." Third--and here comes the blistering fact--when Cheney claims that if President Obama stops "the Cheney method of interrogation and torture", the nation will be in danger, he is perverting the facts once again. But in a very ironic way.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama's having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?

Remember, this criticism is coming from within his own party -- a retired military man, a Republican and former chief of staff at the State Department -- not from the "pages" of the Daily Kos or moveon.org. Wilkerson saves his best brush-back pitch for last -- passionately decrying the devastation the Cheney-Limbaugh axis of ill will is leaving in its wake:

Less important but still busting my chops as a Republican is the damage that the Sith Lord Cheney is doing to my political party. He and Rush Limbaugh seem to be its leaders now. Lindsay Graham, John McCain, John Boehner, and all other Republicans of note seem to be either so enamored of Cheney-Limbaugh (or fearful of them?) or, on the other hand, so appalled by them, that the cat has their tongues. And meanwhile fewer Americans identify as Republicans than at any time since WWII. We're at 21% and falling--right in line with the number of cranks, reprobates, and loonies in the country.

When will we hear from those in my party who give a damn about their country and about the party of Lincoln? When will someone of stature tell Dick Cheney that enough is enough? Go home. Spend your 70 million. Luxuriate in your Eastern Shore mansion. Shoot quail with your friends--and your friends. Stay out of our way as we try to repair the extensive damage you've done--to the country and to its Republican Party.

I guess 7-term Congressman Pete Sessions wanted to make it crystal clear where he stands on the new president, casting all logic and reason to the winds while his mouth proceeded full speed ahead. The Oklahoma Republican told a New York Times reporter last week that it was the Obama administration's intent to “diminish employment and diminish stock prices” as part of its “divide and conquer” strategy to consolidate power -- part of a long-term Democratic strategy that is “intended to inflict damage and hardship on the free enterprise system, if not to kill it."

But fear not, free marketeers, because come the 2010 midterm elections, voters will swarm to the polls, remembering that when the GOP controlled Washington, according to Sessions, “many dreams were achieved.” Until then, it's Sessions' mission to keep hope alive until the Republican dream machine can recapture power, preferably by the ballot box -- but Sessions lately seems to be espousing a more radical oppositional agenda.

Apparently unwilling to cite suitable homegrown precedents of heroic rebellion against tyranny in his own nation's storied past -- Sons of Liberty, anyone? -- in February of this year he reached for a more current inspiration: suggesting his party model their opposition to the new Democratic administration after Afghanistan's shining band of freedom fighters, the Taliban -- unabashedly stirred by their selfless brand of old school dementia:

"We understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban. And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes. And these Taliban -- I'm not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that's not what we're saying. I'm saying an example of how you go about is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with."

Not far from Sessions' home base, Kim Hendren -- a Republican state senator with (previous) designs on a U.S. Senate seat -- had his own Macaca moment in Arkansas: referring to Senator Chuck Schumer as "that Jew" at a campaign event. And like George Allen back in 2006, Hendren's half-hearted apology likely made things worse instead of better:

"I made the mistake of referring to Sen. Schumer as 'that Jew' and I should not have put it that way, as this took away from what I was trying to say. I ought not to have referred to it at all. When I referred to him as Jewish, it wasn't because I don't like Jewish people. I was attempting to explain that unlike Sen. Schumer, I believe in traditional values, like we used to see on 'The Andy Griffith Show.'"

Yessir, no big city Jews, uppity blacks or dirty immigrants on Mayberry's Main Street, a minority-free bastion of order where Otis the harmless town drunk is the biggest criminal concern.

The unfavorable news kept coming for Republicans last week -- some of it with more potential fallout than the usual jaw-dropping ignorance or crude anti-semitism on display.

Yesterday's Frank Rich column outlined a concerted propaganda effort by the previous administration bent on controlling public discourse relating to the increasingly unpopular war:

"...the Bush Pentagon fielded a clandestine network of retired military officers and defense officials to spread administration talking points on television, radio and in print while posing as objective “military analysts.” Many of these propagandists worked for military contractors with billions of dollars of business at stake in Pentagon procurement. Many were recipients of junkets and high-level special briefings unavailable to the legitimate press. Yet the public was never told of these conflicts of interest when these “analysts” appeared on the evening news to provide rosy assessments of what they tended to call “the real situation on the ground in Iraq.”

Someone needs to explain to Americans how is this any different than the Soviet Union in its repressive prime or any other dangerous totalitarian state? Until they do, then what comes to mind is Orwell's 1984, and it's scary as hell that it went on as long as it did. What's even more unacceptable is unless the details are revealed, then when it comes to the selling of our next war, it will follow a similar propaganda pattern, if it hasn't started already.

Meanwhile, ex-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was writing all over President Bush like the empty blank slate he was, pulling his strings in directions the neocon planners of the war needed him to go. Despite the obscene collateral carnage inflicted on Baghdad during "shock & awe," contrary to the expected cakewalk, the Pentagon knew it was in for a protracted war likely to last for years, not months. So Rumsfeld made sure that only the most rosy of scenarios was painted in the highly filtered intelligence briefings given to Bush, even personally selecting Biblical quotes to adorn the cover of the reports and thus appeal to the president's messianic vision of himself as crusader for Christianity against evildoers bent on world destruction:

And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Including, as it happened, into a quagmire.) Rumseld...was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible. But the secretary’s actions were not just oily; he was also taking a risk with national security. If these official daily collages of Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world’s apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war. As one alarmed Pentagon hand told Draper, the fallout “would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

As Rich put it, this is "seriously creepy." I feel the need to end on a slightly more humorous note. NFL Defensive Player of the Year James Harrison was having none of the old tradition of sports champions going to the White House to meet the president. Baseball teams do it, as do NBA, NHL, NCAA teams. But somehow Harrison found this practice disturbing, so he boycotted the ceremony back in 2006 when the Steelers won it all, passing up the opportunity to meet Bush, and proving his misguided stubbornness is at least consistent, he's not going to Washington to meet Obama last this week either to celebrate their last Super Bowl win.

"This is how I feel -- if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don't win the Super Bowl. As far as I'm concerned, he [Obama] would've invited Arizona if they had won."

Nice to see such a firm grasp of the obvious, James. See, the winners get to go to the White House, runner-ups...not so much. Or perhaps we're being unduly harsh and this was Harrison's not-so-subtle way of disagreeing with the president's stance on cap-and-trade emissions.

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Bauhaus Bop

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's a really stupid thing to want to do." -- Elvis Costello

AS YOU PROBABLY KNOW by now, this is not a music blog per se. I'm not exactly sure what it is and most of the time that's not necessarily a bad thing. But of course I do write about music now and then, and someone at JAXART Records evidently stumbled on a mention of their label's Henry Clay People in my review of the Airborne Toxic Event show at Bowery Ballroom a few months ago. Today she sent me a few songs from a Long Beach, California band called The Valley Arena, and I'm passing them on because after all why keep things like this to myself?

Actually, the two tracks from the forthcoming album "We Died" aren't bad, otherwise trust me I wouldn't waste your time. For what it's worth, Grayscale [mp3] sounds a lot like Interpol to these ears, and I've liked almost everything I've ever heard by Interpol if that's any help. The Dig [mp3] reminds me of the excellent Australian band Youth Group, as well as the Strokes, although sometimes it seems almost every other indie band gets compared to either the Strokes or Joy Division, so by all means take my forced analogies with a large grain of your favorite condiment. Anyway, listen and make up your own beautiful minds. Here's the press release if you want to follow up:

"We Died" The Valley Arena's third full length album will be released on Thursday May 21st, 2009 as a 7 Inch Vinyl EP + Digital LP Download and includes an exclusive B. Side remix of "SOS4XOX" by Ikey Owens of The Mars Volta and Free Moral Agents.

The Valley Arena was formed by Mike Nielsen, Chris Stevens and Warren Woodward in late 2003. Early on, the band took influence from both the DC Dischord scene (Fugazi, Q and Not U) and San Diego (Hot Snakes, No Knife).

As of 2009, The Valley Arena has played with: Mike Watt, Joe Lally (Fugazi), Hella, Don Caballero, Polysics, Thrice, Denali, The Meat Puppets, Monotonix, XBXRX, Planes Mistaken for Stars and The Appleseed Cast.
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One of the most versatile critics of the last 30 years, James Wolcott again shows how it's done in Alley of the Dolls -- deftly capturing the atmosphere at a recent New York Dolls show held at the shiny boutique where CBGB's once darkened the Bowery. The Vanity Fair piece is so masterful, it's almost disheartening. If writing is like dancing, then Wolcott does a mean old pogo with his elegiac evocation of bygone CB's:

The club that wan afternoon was still its old grotto self inside, encrusted with layers of graffiti and shredded flyers for bands long defunct. The toilet downstairs in the men’s bathroom was still a defiant naked throne with no stall, looking as if it had survived a bomb blast and been left standing as a site-specific sculpture representing a rougher, rawer bohemia of yesteryear, when personal hygiene ranked low on the totem pole of priorities. In the hushed dark, CBGB’s felt less like a birth canal, more like a catacomb for the departed.

Not many people can nail pop culture better than Wolcott. Here's the link to his blog.

Villain For A Day

MY POSTGRAD PUNK REUNION piece is up today. As I mentioned last week, music blog The Vinyl Villain is smack dab in the midst of 40 days of guest posts sent in from the ranks of its many knowledgeable followers. My own contribution spotlights some of the more recent music made by members of vintage British punk bands -- what JC has cleverly dubbed the Class of '79.

The Buzzcocks and Stiff Little Fingers disbanded in the early '80s. By the early '90s, though, both groups were back at it with slightly different personnel -- releasing records and touring all over the world again, to the delight of older fans as well as those unfortunate souls who never had the opportunity to see them live the first time around. Punk icons Joe Strummer and Paul Weller seemingly never looked back after the demise of The Clash and The Jam -- each instead embarking on prolific solo careers that would take them in interesting and unexpected directions over the following decades.

And on that note, if you're curious about the rest of the story, as well as the 4 songs I've featured, head to Vinyl Villain now, and be sure to bookmark it for future enjoyment and edification. You'll have plenty of time to thank me later.

Just Plane Dumb

DEMONSTRATING ONCE AGAIN why "military intelligence" is an oxymoron for a very good reason, someone fairly high up the old chain of command thought it would make for a sweet sendoff to allow a retiring fighter pilot from a Naval base in Maine to fly a P-3 patrol plane over New York City today at low altitudes -- 2 weeks to the day parts of the city were "terrorized" back to 9/11 by a low flying plane. This morning's flyover was ultimately canceled, but it's distressing to contemplate that plans for it ever got off the ground, if you will, in the first place. The ill-advised stunt was only abandoned once New York City officials got wind of it and reported it to FAA officials in Washington.

But the fact that it was even initially approved by the FAA is more than mind-boggling, it's bad acid trip, CIA thought control experiment mind-blowing.

Is it out of line to ask: Where the hell were the Navy fighter jets when we needed them 8 years ago? Don't remember them coming anywhere near the City when we needed it most -- you know, at any point along the route those two hijacked jumbo jets took from Boston to Lower Manhattan on that fateful day they managed to crash into the Twin Towers. Remember that little event. We sorta do here in New York. THAT was the time we could have used a military flyover! Yesterday? No so much really.

Instead, coming on the wings of the Air Force One fiasco just two weeks ago, I couldn't believe my ears when I heard the announcement on the radio that another flyover was scheduled in a half-hour, this one over the Hudson, as part of an emergency defense drill. Okay, I reasoned, perhaps there's a good reason for a show of force at this exact time in such a crowded area. Then to learn it would have been little more than a PR stunt... if I'm the Mayor I go nuts, but all Billionayor Bloomberg could muster was a lame:

"It was some Navy guy, I gather, who was retiring after many years of service and they wanted one last flyby from up in Maine down and back, and that's fine. That's their issue."

That's "their issue"?! No, Mike, it's your responsibility to ensure something like this never ever happens again -- to demand to be included in the loop in the future. I guess if you weren't humiliated last time -- allowing your subjects, er New Yorkers, to be scared senseless by an unnecessary stunt, what's another big middle finger to the City on your watch just two weeks later?

Tell Washington that your city is more than a fucking backdrop for someone's retirement. That citizens should count as more than fucking extras in a military ceremony. I know it's all about Manhattan real estate and the tourism industry to you, just as it was to Rudy Giuliani before you, but this is fucking ridiculous.

Well, I see that I've used up my self-imposed quota of 3 uses of the word fuck in the course of a post, so I'll save some precious outrage for another post. Thanks for coming and, as always, Heads up!

News To You?

IF YOU'RE READING THIS, chances are like me you're part of the problem.

In case you hadn't heard, the U.S. Senate has been holding hearings into the dismal state of the newspaper industry. No pun intended, but there hasn't been any good news to report on the industry this entire decade, with the latest publications either extinct or on the brink including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News, the Baltimore Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle. The industry continues to bleed readers and jobs, with a record 6,000 newsroom jobs lost in 2008 alone.

Can't argue too much with John Kerry when he says: "America's newspapers are struggling to survive and while there will be serious consequences in terms of the lives and financial security of the employees involved, including hundreds at the Globe, there will also be serious consequences for our democracy where diversity of opinion and strong debate are paramount." Which is Kerry's typically long-winded way of saying what Joe Pulitzer said much more succinctly: “Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together.” That's probably why Joe was Joe and John never became president.

Andrew Malcolm of the L.A. Times' Top of the Ticket blog finds something hypocritical and at the same time humorous about Kerry blaming print media's demise on the advent of online journalism:

"First, 70 million is way too many bloggers. It's chaos out here. Everybody posting at once. So much to read. Who's got time to scroll Favorites lists with 70 million urls? If the feds can cull banks and car companies, Kerry should whack the politics blogs way back to maybe eight. Ten max. We've got a list.

Second, because everyone knows they're becoming increasingly important as the true lifeblood of democracy, political bloggers should be paid a whole lot more money, at least as much as a senator. Actually, more maybe. It would help stimulate the economy.

T-shirts, jeans and diet Coke should be legitimized as blogging business expenses."

But seriously. A report on the opening day of hearings yesterday on NPR featured some clips of testimony, and a few things caught my ear, or at least made it from the radio to my auditory canal and the relevant parts of my cerebral cortex:

One witness said the decline of newspapers was a simple matter of the parasite (digital media) killing the host (print media). Another speaker predicted a weakened press would make it a "great time to be a corrupt politician" with no one left to report the corruption. Who knows what becomes of the Watergate style of in-depth political coverage?

By the way, Kerry's hometown paper, the Boston Globe, owned by the New York Times, got a reprieve late last week from its parent company to stave off its imminent demise, but for how long is anyone's guess.

The struggling Times itself is raising prices again: the daily paper will now be $2.00, and a copy of the hefty Sunday Times will now cost you the sizable sum of $5.00. Ironically, I bought the Times today for the first time in a long, long while, maybe a year; I had a bunch of extra quarters left over from the laundry and used 6 of them to cover the $1.50, but once the price climbs to 2 dollars, there's no way I'm plunking down that much for a daily newspaper, I don't care if I'm written about in its pages or my face is splashed across the cover. Well, maybe then...

Anyway, while scanning some old clips last week, I remembered how at one point in my young life I wanted nothing more than to be the next Jimmy Breslin. Yet even when I was majoring in print journalism over 20 years ago, it seemed to be a dying world. For instance, my intro to news writing class at Hunter College had exactly 4 students in it, but we soldiered on while the broadcast classes were packed, writing for the student newspaper The Envoy and hoping to intern somewhere decent. I ended up with a one-year internship at the Queens Tribune, a local weekly based in Flushing, where I got about 40 bylines.

Next I toiled joylessly, Bartleby-like, for an incredibly obscure science/future studies magazine, lasting just over a year in the cramped, disheveled office on Madison Avenue. My title sounded better than it was, Managing Editor; in reality it was a two-man operation, with me writing almost every word of each 32-page monthly issue and then, together with the Publisher, this being the 1980s, doing the layout with an X-Acto knife, a ruler and a jar of rubber cement.

I began applying to publications ranging from the Washington Post NY Bureau to the Irish Echo, getting interviews but not job offers. Then, two days after quitting the singularly inconsequential Futurific magazine, I landed a job at the Wall Street Transcript, a weekly financial paper. As fate would have it, I would remain there for over 15 years despite having absolutely zero interest in the stock market. Just your average Horatio Alger story, slowly working his way from an 8-dollar-an-hour transcription job up to copy editor and finally production manager.

For purposes of this blog post if not for a future time capsule, I wish I had saved at least one copy of an old Transcript issue from back when it published in a tabloid size even bigger than the old New York Times unfolded used to be. At last check the Transcript was still going, mostly as an online product, and by the time I was unceremoniously downsized off the island in 2005, we were down to fewer than 500 copies published a week unless it was a special conference issue.

When I started there in '87, our editorial department had about 5 or 6 copy editors working in a tiny office at 99 Wall, while in a room down the hall a row of proofreaders dutifully squinted at copy across their ancient wooden table -- the true galley slaves of the publishing world. Not sure if it qualifies as a lagging or leading indicator, but by the time I left the Wall Street Transcript over 15 years later, we were down to 3 copy editors and 1 proofreader.

At the Tribune office, tucked inside a shopping center off Kissena Blvd., the reporters would sit around in the morning reading the dailies -- Times, News, Post, Newsday -- and bouncing story ideas off each other. I picked a good time to work there: the astonishing Donald Manes corruption case was unfolding that year -- from the bizarre January night when the Queens borough president first attempted suicide to the March morning when he was found dead on his kitchen floor from self-inflicted knife wounds.

Every afternoon an elderly guy dressed in a suit would arrive at the office. Arthur, who had long retired from one of the big papers, lived in the area and volunteered to write the Police Blotter column for the Tribune. He was much older than us, had to be in his late 70s, and he kept to himself, working his phone and jotting notes in a yellow legal pad as we all worked around him.

It was obviously a case of old Arthur having newspaper ink in his blood, and he just had to be around the click and clatter of a newsroom, even a small community weekly like the Tribune.

When the last American newspaper publishes its final edition -- one writer cites 2043 as the year the printing press comes to a stop -- the culture will have irreversibly changed in more than a few big ways and in all kinds of small ones...

I remember in the '70s, much to my father's consternation, my brother the Dallas Cowboys fanatic just had to get the Dallas Times-Herald delivered 7 days a week to our apartment in Queens so he could keep up with the latest news about his favorite team. The Times-Herald is long gone, having merged years ago into the Morning News, which itself is reported to be on the brink.

Up until about 10 years ago, though it somehow seems much longer now, you could purchase almost any newspaper from any major city around the world at Hotaling's, a Times Square newsstand where in the late '80s I would buy the San Francisco Examiner to read Hunter Thompson's columns as well as Zippy the Pinhead. I even bought an English language version of Pravda there at the height of Perestroika to see for myself what this crazy Glasnost was all about! Hotaling's managed to stay afloat until 1999, when it became one of the earliest victims to succumb to the onrushing online news consumption tidal wave.

What kind of world will it be when small towns and big cities alike no longer offer kids the economic rite of passage that the paper route represented -- for literally millions of Americans their first foray into the working world.

I can recall turning 13 years old and applying for my working papers just so I could get a Long Island Press route. As it turned out, I wasn't cut out for a paper route, at least not the one I shared with my friend Chrys Nicholas.

Our route included The Mets, a block-long apartment complex where we had a bunch of customers. We would climb the stairs delivering papers floor to floor at one building, then walk across the roof and work our way down the next one, and so on until we had finished the block. Well, every afternoon found us fighting on the rooftop, coming to blows over who would get which apartment and who would collect from which subscriber -- all the usual business decisions that lead to arguments and, in our case, punches and fisticuffs.

Me and Chrys usually got along everywhere else, so we gave up the paper route shortly after we got it. It's not like we were ever gonna get rich anyway -- not the way old Mr. Kaye, a notorious cheapskate, ran the Press operation out of a dingy storefront on Steinway Street, gypping us and every other kid with a paper route out of a penny or two every time seemingly we turned around. Even then, I knew there was something not quite kosher about the newspaper business.