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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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The beauty of Xmas be upon you, Dick

Posted on December 14, 2010 by oddmanout215

There ain't no sanity clause

An old friend sent me a holiday e-card — an animated cartoon, actually, with an angel and the baby Jesus in a Christmas tree, and a bit of text at the end. Enjoy the beauty of Christmas, and so on. I e-mailed a response: “If you see Santa Claus, send him to South Philly. Send Jesus, too. Tell them to bring cash. Even a stocking full of coal would do, at this point.”

‘Tis the season to count one’s blessings, if you’re my optimistic (and well-off) friend. To most of the rest of us, it’s the season to spend carefully, so as not to bounce any checks. It’s the season to quit unrealistic expectations. I question the sanity of anyone who expects Obama’s Republican tax-cut deal to jump-start the economy for more than a season or two. As Chico Marx said, “You can’t fool me. There ain’t no sanity clause.”

Christmas is an invention that will persist only so long as debt-ridden Americans can pretend they’re part of the middle class, which keeps disappearing as jobs are outsourced and incomes decline. (For a different POV on this, read the Earnest Weasel, David Brooks.) These days, only draft dodger/super-patriot Dick Cheney and other millionaires can afford to observe Christmas without going deeper into debt.

I mention Cheney only because he was singled out today in an online column by Michael Moore, about the WikiLeaks controversy:

“… what if the public in 2003 had been able to read “secret” memos from Dick Cheney as he pressured the CIA to give him the “facts” he wanted in order to build his false case for war? If a WikiLeaks had revealed at that time that there were, in fact, no weapons of mass destruction, do you think that the war would have been launched – or rather, wouldn’t there have been calls for Cheney’s arrest?”

Moore makes good sense, but can you imagine a mainstream media venue in America publishing such a column? You’re more likely to get a visit from Santa Claus, or to read that Cheney is spending Christmas in continental Europe, where many prominent jurists consider him a war criminal. Old Dick knows he’s much better off at home, where there ain’t no sanity clause.

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More mumbo jumbo from Ishmael Reed

Posted on December 12, 2010 by oddmanout215

Unlike white progressives, blacks and Latinos are not used to getting it all. They know how it feels to be unemployed and unable to buy your children Christmas presents. They know when not to shout. The president, the coolest man in the room, who worked among the unemployed in Chicago, knows too.

— Ishmael Reed, Dec. 12, The New York Times

Back in the day, black author Ishmael Reed was a darling of postmodernist English Lit professors. He wrote Mumbo Jumbo and other wildly satiric, Afrocentric novels but was a contrarian who resisted being pigeonholed as a leftist.

In his Sunday op-ed defense of Barack Obama’s policies, Reed reminds us that he’s still a contrarian with an aversion to orthodoxies and other notions of certainty. Except, of course, when it comes to his own notions.

Reed argues that Obama’s tendency to slink away from political fights is a tactic he must use to avoid being labeled a militant by racists itching to bring down America’s first black president. His op-ed is essentially a mini-lecture of everyone who suspects that expediency or other base motives played a part in Obama’s retreat (the kindest way to put it) from his campaign promises.

Reed, who has taught for many years at Berkeley and other elite universities, likes to have it both ways. In his view, Obama should be admired as “the coolest man in the room,” even when his coolness looks like a betrayal of working people, black and Latino and white. But white critics of Obama are automatically uncool. They are “used to getting it all,” and therefore don’t understand that Obama’s unwillingness to fight more bonus tax cuts for the rich is somehow in the best interest of the non-rich.

Reed clearly thinks he’s the second coolest man in the room — too cool to take a close look at political complexities, too cool to acknowledge that not all of Obama’s critics are rightwing loonies or white progressives, too cool to examine his self-contradictions. If he did the latter, Reed might have to re-think his special pleading and admit that black people who thrive in elitist environments are just as likely as white elitists to feel little empathy for the poor and disadvantaged.

Posted in Congress, fiction, mainstream media, mid-term elections, New York Times, Obama, Politics, Uncategorized, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NYT says beware of ‘hipster’ Democrats

Posted on December 11, 2010 by oddmanout215

In 1960, the hipster John F. Kennedy represented for liberals something similar to what Mr. Obama embodied as a candidate… ” — Matt Bai in the Dec. 7 New York Times

Is Obama a secret fan of William S. Burroughs?

The mainstream news monster is half-blind and barely functional, as Matt Bai recently demonstrated with his piece about Democratic challengers to Obama’s renomination. Early on, you realize there are no challengers, not yet, and that the article is a “what if” piece based on Bai’s hunch that Obama’s abysmal performance thus far might inspire progressive Democrats to field a candidate.

Bai’s article isn’t labeled “analysis,” but that’s what it’s supposed to be. In journalese, analysis means that the reporter takes the facts of the news story and tells you what they mean in the context of the big picture. Thus, the angry reaction of Democratic legislators to Obama’s tax-cut compromise with Republicans “is bound to intensify a debate” over whether the president “should face a primary challenge in 2012.” But “bound to” means there is no challenge as of yet, no actual story.

Note the spin in Bai’s piece. He writes that a primary challenge would come from “self-described progressive critics” of Obama, as if all Democratic critics of Obama are not only progressives, but self-described progressives. His language is flip, inaccurate and obviously biased, but he gets to pretend it is none of those things. He’s merely writing an analysis, even though he’s analyzing a story that hasn’t happened and using judgmental terms to indicate his disapproval of progressives.

The Kennedy reference is not only biased, but strange. Bai states that today’s liberals (are liberals and progressives the same thing?) see in Obama the same qualities a previous generation saw in “the hipster Kennedy.” Does that mean Obama is a hipster or merely that his fans think he is? And what does Bai mean by hipster? The word could refer to Beat Generation artist/bad guys like William S. Burroughs, or it might be a contemporary usage and refer to mild-mannered, shabbily dressed young urbanites who hang out in coffeehouses and have no strong political leanings.

The hipster Kennedy?

Take a chill pill, Matt, and try saying what you mean. Your false neutrality merely makes you seem sneaky, and more than a little incoherent.

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