I and LOVE and YOU

The Avett Brothers have an old timey feel and they kind of look like The Band circa Music from Big Pink, who in turn looked like scroungy deserters from the Civil War. At any rate, these grizzled purveyors of Americana can write a good song. This one is pure as branchwater. It tells a little story, and you know how we like stories. Take off your shoes and sit a spell and give this a listen. Here they are live at Bonnaroo, singing a song dedicated to Wendy Lu from Kalamazoo.


Distant cousins, once removed: The Band in all their ragged glory in this clip from a hard to find documentary (ignore the foreign subtitles) on the making of the second Band album, the classic "Brown Album."

MICHELE BACHMANN SIGNS RACIST ANTI-PORN PLEDGE

Michelle Bachmann was the first Republican candidate to sign a very special loyalty pledge to the Tea Party. As you can imagine, the pledge is loaded with bullets of the conservative agenda, the boilerplate message that is staunchly pro-marriage, anti-choice, anti-porn, and anti-gay--but here's a new twist--overtly racist. We know racism has incited some fearful Tea Partiers to fight against President Obama--their picket signs alone prove that--but this document makes it official. And downright creepy. Decipher this passage:

...sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.

In other words, slavery helped keep families TOGETHER. So much for "family values." Even if you're ignorant of history, even if you've never read a history book on the era (or watched the television mini-series,"Roots," for godsakes) you know that slavery ripped families apart regulalry and that rape by slavemasters was common. Not exactly the "good old days."


What is Bachmann saying by signing this pledge? I'm not sure, really, other than that "the dark races" are incapable of taking care of themselves, that too much freedom for these troublesome folk does them no good, and therefore that white American has nothing to be ashamed of for owning other human beings as property--just more revisionist conservative history making from the lunatic fringe. How it applies? If their lot in life is their own damn fault, then we should be less concerned about the poor, and that the system is fair and meritocratic after all and people get what they deserve, they rise to the station they have earned, and this view justifies all the pro-wealthy tax cuts and loyalty to the rich since the "good people" have naturally risen to the top (and are probably are favored by God, as well). Bachmann is one of these middle Americans who probably see black people (and other minorities, and liberals, and gays, and immigrants) as always bellyaching about the American Way of Life, so she is defending it (including slavery, apparently) against these not-real-Americans who want a piece of the pie they don't deserve.

That Bachmann is historically ignorant comes hardly as a surprise, but the fact that she eagerly supports this kind of myth in an official pledge shows how extreme and divisive she is--exactly what we don't need, here and now, when the country is more divided than ever. Don't be hoodwinked. Her deep-dish, all-American pie is made with horse apples.



Watch this video clip and you'll know more about slavery than Michele Bachmann.

FOR FOX SAKE

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Jon Stewart was interviewed at Fox News recently (we posted the interview a few days ago, scroll down to view) and here are his post-interview comments. As usual, the ideologues at "fair & balanced" Fox thought they had Stewart against the ropes, but they weren't as clever as they thought. If only they were smart enough to appreciate how Stewart runs rings around them.

SOMEONE LIKE YOU

We're taking a break from politics and murder trials to listen to Adele. She's 22 years old and has a killer voice and an old school soul and R&B feel. She was born in London to a single teenage mother and she first loved the Spice Girls, but later found out about R&B singers Destiny's Child and Mary J. Blige. Wherever she came from, she can sing the hell out of a ballad. Her latest album ("21") has remained at number one on the UK charts longer than any other female solo artist in history. Back in 2008, her first album ("16") won her Grammys for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. She was barely twenty at the time. Overachievers take note: she wrote the following song, her first smash hit, "Hometown Glory," when she was just sixteen.

RETHINKING THE GRAPES OF WRATH

Rethinking "The Grapes of Wrath," the 1940 John Ford film made from John Steinbeck's classic novel. This story embodies the American spirit more than a million fireworks displays so it's fitting to post it today, on the 4th of July.

4TH OF JULY WEEKEND: WE SALUTE ABBIE

It's the 4th of July weekend, so we're saluting an American hero, Abbie Hoffman, a former civil rights worker who organized voters in Mississippi and went on to organize protests against the Vietnam War and the Nixon war machine. In another country, we might call him a dissident. Here in America, we confuse patriotism with jingoism, conservatism and militarism, but Abbie believed in the essence of America, and not just on paper--he actually practiced our guaranteed constitutional right to protest, our right to freedom of assembly, our right to freedom of association, and our right to freedom of speech. Sure, he was a wiseacre and a smart aleck, and didn't always behave himself. Yes, he spit in Nixon's eye at the height of the president's popularity, but Tricky Dick had it coming. Sure, he was a troublemaker, but he represented American values more than all the phony flagwavers who carry teabags, more than the stuffed shirts exchanging business cards at the Chamber of Commerce luncheons, more than the gladhanders making empty promises and pocketing contributions, more than the bible-thumping hatemongers who praise Jesus but only worship power. Abbie wrapped himself in the flag, too, and was promptly arrested for it, and in the process educated us about the way power plays favorites. This weekend, as we sidle up to picnics to fill our Old Glory paper plates, let's not confuse liberty with hot dogs and sparklers and the flatulence of brass bands playing marching music on Main Street. Let's not be snookered by the accouterments. It ain't about that, bub. Maybe, just maybe the American spirit is less about bombs bursting in air and the GNP, and more about the kid--the ornery one who doesn't always mind his manners--who shouts from the back of the adoring crowd that the emperor has no clothes.

JON STEWART ON FOX

No comment on the latest gaffes from Palin and Bachmann (they seem endless), no comment on the endless churn of Tea Party revisionism, and no comment on the idiot who just wrote a book claiming John Lennon was a closet Republican (Hoover and Nixon didn't think so, and hounded him endlessly; I direct you to the film "U.S. vs. John Lennon") because the weekend is here. Independence Day means something, and not the version embraced by the mouth-breathing morons of the right wing lunatic fringe who have tirelessly attempted to shred everything the country stands for, and who would sell out our hard-won liberties to military/corporate cronies at the drop of a hat. Better to show Jon Stewart on Fox News this week. Watch the whole thing. Beautiful.