Fast Eddie’s casino freakout on 60 Minutes

Posted on January 10, 2011 by oddmanout215

You guys don't get it!

I’m Fast Eddie Rendell, and I’m smarter than the rest of you guys, always have been. It took me years to make you understand that casino gambling is the solution to shuttered factories and tens of thousands of lost jobs. That it’s good for the economy when people go broke at casinos, because some of what they lose comes back to state coffers. And so what if the losers can no longer afford to pay the mortgage or feed the kids? That’s what welfare is for.

Let’s face it, the sort of degenerates you see at casinos these days would blow their money on football pools or cockroach-racing if they couldn’t feed the slots in PA.

As we part-time sports announcers (ugh, how about those Eagles?) like to say, this is a no-brainer to everyone but Leslie Stahl and her sinister producers on 60 Minutes who ambushed me Sunday night with a bunch of stupid questions about the alarming nationwide proliferation of legalized gambling.

I mean, only wusses think casinos aren’t good business. Sure, these seedy little slots parlors sucker the poor and the clueless, but how else was I supposed to make up for the tax money that corporations and people with six-figure incomes won’t pay? If you guys don’t get that, you’re simpletons. You’re idiots if you don’t get that.

You’re probably involved with Casino-Free Philadelphia or one of those other professional leftist wing-nut groups that somehow blocked Foxwoods from building a second casino on the Philly waterfront, not long after I helped Neil Bluhm, my billionaire buddy from Chicago, build the first one.

You don’t get that the super-rich own this country, and that it’s a politician’s job to help the super-rich get even richer so that, when the politician’s term of office is up, he can reach out to the super-rich and get rich, too.

Let me put it this way: Do you know how many years I would have to be governor to make what Michael Jordan made in one year? I do — 600 or so. (I’m repeating this in case you didn’t hear me on “Radio Times” today.)

It’s my turn, people. It’s time to hit the jackpot, and I’m not talking about the video slots in those trashy-ass casinos I spent half of my adult life trying to help build. Or don’t you get it?

Posted in casinos, economic collapse, livable cities, mainstream media, Philadelphia, Politics, sports, taxes, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hunting lion in the Italian Market

Posted on January 8, 2011 by oddmanout215

Would you eat burgers made from the king of beasts?

Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance. – Giambattista Vico

Is this a great country, or what? A friend of mine walks into a butcher shop in Philadelphia’s Italian Market today and witnesses a customer haggling with the shop owner about a cut of meat. The shop stocks exotics – everything from ostrich to emu – but my friend is surprised to realize the meat being discussed is lion.

The customer leaves in a huff. It turns out he wanted to buy a lion’s head but, in order to get the head, he would have had to order and purchase an entire lion carcass – a lot of meat.

But why would anyone in America want to eat a lion’s head, or its other parts? Did the customer want the head for his wall, to pretend he was a big-game hunter?

I googled an old Philadelphia Weekly article. It seems at least one local restaurant/bar used to include lion meat on its menu, but stopped doing so because of protests from vegans and environmentalists, or because lion is too expensive to stock, or doesn’t taste very good, or all of the above. The writer of the story hit a few dead ends when he tried to find out who “farm-raises” lions for slaughter and sale to purveyors.

Help me if you’re out there, lion meat fans. Does eating it make you feel dashing? Is it like Viagra without a prescription?

I don’t expect much feedback on this. If I found an American who eats lion and asked him why, I’ll bet his honest reply would be “Because I can.”

Posted in enviromentalism, food, Philadelphia | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Boehner is so loathsome, he could cry

Posted on January 7, 2011 by oddmanout215

A good reason for all but the richest to weep

Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel… – James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

Speaker of the House John Boehner looks and talks like one of those Hollywood actors, circa 1960 – Tony Randall, Gig Young, et al. – who spend all their time drinking martinis and trying to get it on with Doris Day. They nurse hangovers and never work. Their saving grace is lightness – i.e., good-humored acceptance of their limitations and an aversion to pretending they’re serious about anything.

The difference is that the chronically weeping Boehner – nicknamed “Boner” by George W. Bush – wants America to take him seriously, despite abundant evidence he’s a shill for special interests and a bag man for the GOP. I can’t imagine Tony Randall trying to hook up by quoting from the Declaration of Independence (which Boner mistook for the Constitution). Or Gig Young blubbering about how hard he’s worked to become what Matt Taibbi called the “the ultimate Beltway hack.”

Read Taibbi’s well-researched piece from Rolling Stone and ask yourself where the Washington press corps was when this bleary-eyed bozo was setting new records for congressional sleaziness.

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Do-gooder reforms Huck Finn

Posted on January 6, 2011 by oddmanout215

The schoolmarms are still at it.

Next month, you will be able to buy the single- volume NewSouth Edition of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” edited by Professor Alan Gribben of Auburn University at Montgomery. It differs from other editions of those books because Mr. Gribben has turned the word “nigger” — as used by Tom and Huck — into “slave.” Mr. Gribben has also changed “Injun” to Indian. — Jan. 6, The New York Times

Beware of jackasses in positions of authority, especially those who bear the title of “professor.” (How do you get to teach English Lit if you don’t understand that altering an author’s text is like defacing a painting, and that, if you can’t discuss what the author actually wrote, you might as well let your students play video games on their phones until school’s out?)

Here’s a Mark Twain quotation for teachers in Philadelphia and elsewhere: “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter — ’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.” Write me a 500-word essay on this quote, and no cribbing allowed.

Posted in arts, fiction, mainstream media, Philadelphia | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

New Year’s in the twilight zone

Posted on January 5, 2011 by oddmanout215

Rod Serling to Robert Reich: What planet you on?

Republicans are telling Americans a Big Lie, and Obama and the Democrats are letting them. The Big Lie is our economic problems are due to a government that’s too large, and therefore the solution is to shrink it. The truth is our economic problems stem from the biggest concentration of income and wealth at the top since 1928, combined with stagnant incomes for most of the rest of us. — Robert Reich, Jan. 4, Reader Supported News

Barack Obama is weaving a tangled web. On the one hand, he stresses that America can “out-compete other countries around the world” and, in doing so, raise stagnant and falling incomes at home. On the other, he refuses to acknowledge that American companies are methodically destroying any hope of raised incomes by outsourcing  jobs and R&D departments. The rich get richer, and at lightning speed these days.

And yet Robert Reich won’t allow himself to reach the logical conclusion — i.e., the downward spiral won’t stop so long as our only alternative to the party of the rich is Obama and the faux-Democratic establishment that caved to every greedy Republican demand. A bunch of unctuous frauds almost as beholden to the corporations as the GOP.

Reich says he hopes Obama will use his upcoming State of the Union address to “stand up to the Big Lie,” but surely he doesn’t believe this will happen. Reich is doing a verbal dance to show that he was on the right side of history when the new dark age began.

Is this really the Obama we elected? Is this Reich? (Cue the cool intro music.) We’re moving into a land of shadows not substance, platitudes not ideas. The signpost up ahead reads 2011, but we’ve just crossed over to… the twilight zone.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, Great Recession, mainstream media, Obama, Politics, unemployment, world-wide economy | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Bunch’s best Obama news was in his blog

Posted on January 3, 2011 by oddmanout215

Blogs can be therapeutic for mainstream reporters, especially if their beat is politics. In this case I mean Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Daily News, who last month revealed that candidate Barack Obama, in 2008, lied when asked by Bunch what he would do regarding “allegations of torture and related crimes by the Bush administration.” Obama’s response was doubletalk — if crimes were committed, they should be investigated, blah blah. No investigations ever took place.

As Bunch noted in his blog, all presidents lie. The implicit, unanswered question is why don’t the mainstream media do a better job of publicizing their lies?

The answer is because the media have become an adjunct to the powers-that-be rather than an adversary. Reporters and editors, instead of admitting to timidity, defend their lack of aggressiveness by invoking objectivity. Too many of them pretend the “he said-she said” aspect of a story is all there is, when in fact it’s only the prelude to the story.

That’s why no mainstream papers have run stories about the president’s lie. If you asked an editor at a daily, he’d tell you the lie — Obama’s promise to look into the Bush administration’s possible complicity in war crimes — is fodder for an opinion piece but not a news story, even if the lie is documented. I’ll bet that’s what Bunch’s editor at the DN would tell him.

Obama’s lie should be front-page news – “Two years and still no torture probe” – not the stuff of blog posts. Maybe The New York Times or The Washington Post will showcase the torture issue in a midterm report on how many campaign promises Obama has broken. But don’t hold your breath.

If the mainstream media were serious about playing an adversarial role, it would follow a simple two-step formula regarding coverage of politicians’ promises: 1) Here is what so-and-so said. 2) Here is what so-and-so did.

Posted in Iraq war, mainstream media, mid-term elections, New York Times, Obama, Philadelphia, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Woe-is-uh-me-bop, Beefheart is dead

Posted on January 1, 2011 by oddmanout215

My musician son Barney sent me a text message on Dec. 17: “Beefheart died today.” This was sad but also a good sign that the music of Captain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet, will long outlast the man, although you wouldn’t know it by WXPN and other “alternative” stations that ignored his passing. God forbid they should bump Coldplay’s Christmas song to pay tribute to an American original.

Captain Beefheart

Beefheart probably didn’t think much of texting — a bastard spawn of the plastic-horned devil. It’s easier to picture him sending smoke signals from the Mohave, just after dinner. One red bean stuck in the bottom of a tin bowl/hot coffee in a crimped-up can/me and my girl named Bimbo Limbo Spam..

And maybe he wouldn’t care that he’d influenced young players like Barney, as well as Tom Waits and other notables.

He was like Walt Whitman, a multitude of contradictions. At one extreme is Trout Mask Replica (1969), a mostly joyous assault on the senses. At the other is his dark masterpiece Ice Cream for Crow (1982). By then he was a full-time downshouter, maybe in part because his music never found its way to the mainstream — Frank, it’s the big hit! it’s the blimp! But then he launched a second career as a painter.

You can’t pigeonhole his music — there ain’t no label for this bottle — but you can hear Delta blues, free jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, ancient Egyptian electronica, often in the same song, coming at you like shiny beasts of thought.

He was a free spirit and a control freak. The professors at the old folks’ homes would call him a primitive. Harold Bloom, if he’s even heard of Beefheart, would shake his jowls at the comparison to Whitman.

As Marlene Dietrich said in Touch of Evil, “What does it matter what you say about people?” In the end there’s only the work. In this case, there’s “Electricity” and “Dirty Blue Gene” — She’s not bad/She’s just genetically mean. And his finger of contempt to boomers: We don’t have to suffer, we’re the best batch yet/Baked in special/White flesh waves to black.

Composer, poet, snake oil salesman, black-hearted funnyman, magnet for great players, vocalist extra-or-di-naire… Beefheart cajoled and exhorted, evoking preachers and gold prospectors, changing texture with each turn of phrase. He crooned like a soul man — I got too much time to be without love — but held out little hope for this pirate flag headlong disaster course vessel we call Earth.

Download the music, or do like us dinosaurs and buy it on CD or vinyl. Spend time with a roundhouse man who — I’m paraphrasing Greil Marcus — remade America on his own terms.

Posted in arts, mainstream media, pop music, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Whose side are you on, Salon?

Posted on December 28, 2010 by oddmanout215

Yesterday I was reading the virtual magazine Salon.com and wondering why a high-profile liberal publication, a rarity, doesn’t take a hard line on the U.S. government’s campaign to smack down WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Woody Guthrie would have wondered.

One answer is that some writers at Salon think Assange’s alleged efforts to publish classified materials is a crime. Or they don’t support WikiLeaks because they’re busy calling Assange an anti-feminist, or worse. Herein lies a big problem. If liberals can’t agree it’s a journalist’s right to expose government lies, then the word “liberal” ought to be redefined, or at least used more sparingly. Also, Salon’s editors should reevaluate their mission. Are they running a venue for strong liberal opinions — on, say, health insurance reform or government secrecy — or a vague “forum of ideas” for Obama-style Democrats who dread saying anything they can’t qualify or water down when challenged?

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald is pro-WikiLeaks, but Salon’s Michael Lind recently argued that supporters of WikiLeaks are as reprehensible as people who advocate targeted assassinations and preventive war. This despite the fact that WikiLeaks exists to expose those who orchestrate assassinations, preventive wars, etc.

I don’t think journalists should be free to publish “e-mail correspondence or online records of any individuals they dislike” — that’s what Lind thinks WikiLeaks will lead to — any more than free speech should be used as an excuse for shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. But I think Greenwald was right to point out similarities between WikiLeaks and the work of certain foreign correspondents at The New York Times, and to state that journalists should “inform the public about important actions taken or being considered by their government which the government is attempting to conceal.”

If you can’t distinguish between exposing the secrets of private citizens for personal reasons and exposing government wrong-doing — Lind can’t, apparently — then maybe you should call yourself a neoliberal. Or maybe those of us who lean left, strongly opposed to government suppression of free speech, should disassociate ourselves from the L-word.

I’m with Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed government lies that got us mired in the Vietnam War. And with Thomas Jefferson, who said that if it came to a choice between government and a free press, he’d choose the latter.

I’m not with President Obama, who has done his best to discourage investigation of the Bush administration’s interrogation policies and other secrets that Bush and his cronies hid while pursuing and waging war in Iraq.

The question is, where is Salon? Is it with Greenwald or Lind? Does Salon have an editorial board, or something akin to one? Will Salon take an official stand on WikiLeaks, or is it like the Democratic Party, too divided to take a stand on anything?

Posted in Iraq war, mainstream media, New York Times, Obama, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A holiday fairy tale about lame ducks

Posted on December 23, 2010 by oddmanout215

It’s depressing to think that there was no way to win that would not have involved giving away billions of dollars to people who don’t need it. But it’s kind of cheery to think we have a president who actually does know what he’s doing.
— Gail Collins, Dec. 23 New York Times

Once upon a time, there was an adversarial press corps in D.C.

Santa’s been good to you, hasn’t he, Gail? You have a cozy gig covering national politics, far from the madding crowds waiting to apply for minimum-wage jobs, and from millions of solitary basket cases peeking out their windows to make sure the repo man isn’t creeping up the driveway.

Maybe this is why you seem to believe congressional Democrats — the lame ducks lined up all in a row, ass-backwards — have done a good job.

If Barack Obama “actually does know what he’s doing” — if he really did surrender on tax cuts for the rich in order to make possible the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the New Start treaty and the bill to help 9/11 responders — then he’s even more incompetent or sinister than most of us thought.

Has it occurred to you or your colleagues, Gail, that Obama and the Dems, by quitting without a fight on the tax-cuts issue before mid-term elections, sold out all constituents who make less than $250,000 a year? That Mitch McConnell and the other GOP uglies are happy to give ground in a few battles — 13 months of benefits for some of the jobless, DADT, money for first responders — now that they’ve won the war?

Is there even a blip of suspicion on your radar screen regarding the fact that Obama only took a stand on issues that don’t buck the interests of billionaire bankers and corporate chiefs?

Now we’re saddled with close to $1 billion more in debt, with a budget hole too deep to climb out of, and with a large influx of new congressional Republicans, many of them tea party types, who plan on dismantling what’s left of the laws put in place over the last 75 years to protect the poor from the super-rich. How cheery is that, Gail?

You’re telling a story that’s wildly different from the story most of us are living. You and your D.C. colleagues are on snooze control, writing about the imaginary enmity between wealthy senators, seemingly blind to the real news all around you. Are fairy tales the only stories you’re allowed to tell?

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, Great Recession, mainstream media, mid-term elections, New York Times, Obama, Politics, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Martians land in Meadowlands!

Posted on December 21, 2010 by oddmanout215

An NJ man stands his ground against the Martians. Or is it the Eagles?

There it was in big bold caps, the main headline on the front page of Monday’s Philadelphia Inquirer: BEYOND BELIEF. Had Obama created a jobs program? Had Martians landed in New Jersey, or among Florida’s frozen oranges?

No, it was an Eagles story. Under the headline was a color photo of running back DeSean Jackson prancing toward the winning touchdown in the final seconds of Sunday’s game against the New York Giants, at New Meadowlands Stadium. (Don’t ask me why an NYC team makes its home in NJ.) The football game was big news because the Eagles, led by quarterback Michael Vick, the former dog-slaying outcast, had scored 28 points in the last eight minutes of the game.

In America, victory = redemption. That’s in case you were wondering why animal lovers are no longer dogging Vick.

What struck me as I held the Inquirer was the lack of actual news on the front page. There was a piece about the controversy over teachers’ salaries in the Philly area, non-news about the Kensington strangler, a wire story about arms control legislation, a non-story about the fifth anniversary of the court ruling against the teaching of “intelligent design” theories in a Dover, PA, high school. But half of the page was about football. This in a town with a tabloid, the Daily News, that already does a great job over-reporting sports news.

Maybe I was overreacting. The Inquirer and DN were sold again this year. The print version of the Inky is on life support, operating with a skeleton crew. The new owners  are treading water while they try to figure out how to make money with an online newspaper (good luck with that).  They’re desperate for eye-catching stories.

It was a great game, but it’s not as if the Eagles had won the Super Bowl, or even the NFC championship. What about WikiLeaks, the most important free-speech story of our time? What about the danger of war in Korea, the pending FCC ruling on net neutrality, the repercussions of the country’s unrelentingly high jobless rates, and dozens of other stories, many of them local, that affect readers in a real way?

Instead, the Inquirer editors, grown men and women, chose the “miracle” in East Rutherford as their main story. Beyond belief.

Posted in mainstream media, Obama, Philadelphia, Politics, sports, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments