20 years since Shock and Awe? ‘Good God, y’all!’

Posted on March 26, 2023 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit examined the playlist of protest songs I compiled to acknowledge the 20th anniversary of the Second Persian Gulf War. He played “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and started laughing. “That song came out in 1971, during the Vietnam War,” he said. “How many times the peeps been fooled since then?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. Americans are easily fooled because they’re good at forgetting. But how many times can you be fooled without catching on? How can you forget a whole war?

“It ain’t like you actually forget,” Swamp Rabbit explained. “You just pretend it never happened.”

He’s right, I guess. The Iraq war — conceived by Dubya’s rat’s nest of advisors, supported by big-name politicians in both major parties, endorsed by the compliant mainstream media — was commemorated with a national shrug last week. While in progress (2003-2011), the war lingered in the news but never sparked as much outrage as the Vietnam debacle.

“That’s because there wasn’t no draft,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Most young peeps didn’t have to worry about getting their asses shot off, so they put the Iraq war outta mind. They didn’t even write no protest songs.”

Right again. No reason to write and record songs like “Draft Morning” and “Fortunate Son.” No fear of being turned into a “Tin Soldier Man” and shipped overseas. No need for anti-war anthems like “What’s Going On” and “War” — Good God, y’all/What is it good for? — or prophetic warnings like “All Along the Watchtower.”

“That song ain’t about Vietnam, Odd Man.”

“It’s about the apocalypse. Same thing.”

Instead of protest songs about Iraq we got slammed with those stupid catchphrases dreamed up by Dubya’s propaganda team. Weapons of mass destruction, used to justify heightening the war on terror. Shock and Awe, to trick the public into thinking the war would end quickly. Mission accomplished, shorthand for Bush’s biggest lie. And so on.

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed and two trillion dollars wasted, but popular anti-war songs never appeared. “It can’t just be because there was no military draft,” I said.

Swamp Rabbit shrugged. “Maybe it’s on account of social media. Music ain’t a big deal to most young peeps in this century. They’d rather get strung out on video games or exchange jerky messages on TikTok. They’re numbed down to where they wouldn’t notice a good song even if it ran up and bit ’em on the ass.”

“Or maybe they’re already wise to the facts behind the lies,” I said. “To the fact that the Iraq war was really fought to ensure continued non-stop Western access to Middle Eastern oil reserves.”

“Maybe,” Swamp Rabbit replied. “It’s like Dubya said. ‘Fool me once — shame on… shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.'”

“Exactly,” I said. “I couldn’t have put it any better myself.”

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Trumpers love whales. Who knew?

Posted on March 17, 2023 by oddmanout215

We were discussing the rumor that whales are being killed by sonar emanating from offshore wind turbines in the northeastern part of the country.

Swamp Rabbit explained: The world is like a big house with a crawl space in the basement. Squeeze yourself through this space and you find yourself in Bizarro World, where up means down and left means right, etc. Kooks live there, and paranoids. People who think Hillary runs a baby-killing ring, and Covid-19 was started by Anthony Fauci, and JFK Jr. has risen from the dead.

“He came back in Dallas, right?” I said. “QAnon threw a party for him.”

For a long time, the word among the kooks was that birds were being driven to extinction by wind turbines. Then a new rumor sprang up everywhere all at once, like that silly movie that won all the Oscars. Kooks began shouting “Save the whales,” even at places like the Philadelphia Flower Show.

None of the major news outlets blamed wind turbines for whale deaths, but clean energy fans knew something shady was going on. They were being denounced by know-nothings who previously hadn’t shown the slightest interest in the fate of whales or any other species. But who lured the know-nothings into Bizarro World? Who’s peddling the bullshit?

“That ain’t no mystery,” Swamp Rabbit said. “The whale-killing rumor comes from the same source as the clean coal lie and friendly fracking. From the creeps who run the fossil fuel industry who wanna block them renewables. They got deep pockets.”

I shook my head. “That’s crazy. This week there were a million news stories stating there’s zero evidence that turbines are killing whales. The surge in deaths predates the presence of offshore turbines. They’re being killed by ships and fishing nets. The regular media have finally caught up with the bullshit.”

“There ain’t no catching up,” Swamp Rabbit said. “A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on. Joe Goebbels said that, I think. Or Rupert Murdoch.”

He reminded me that the wind turbine haters are fully revved up in places like the South Jersey shore, a stronghold for Trumpers and other climate-denying kooks. Down there, they think hateful frauds like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are credible. More importantly, they have access to Facebook, the go-to spot for lazy paranoids who love misinformation.

“I don’t know if Goebbels liked wind turbines,” Swamp Rabbit said. “But he would have loved Facebook.”

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Belated valentines for the broken-hearted

Posted on February 15, 2023 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit was at my shack waiting to welcome me home from a long road trip that ended on the treacherous backstreets of York, PA. I drove through an intersection with a sudden slope and the car came down hard on its front end, causing the oil pan to spring a leak. But that’s a long story for another time…

The good news was that I was back at the shack, a day late for Valentine’s Day, but not too late to send some belated valentines to victims of unrequited or insufficient love, especially those of you in the Philadelphia area whose hearts were broken by the Eagles’ loss a few days before, on Super Bowl Sunday.

“You got any love songs by Rihanna on that playlist?” Swamp Rabbit asked. “She was a big hit at the Super Bowl.”

“I saw her, but I couldn’t tell one song from another. I don’t think she did her most heartfelt love song — ‘Bitch Better Have My Money.'”

“Very funny, Odd Man. I should say old man. Ain’t nothin’ on your list from the 21st century, I bet.”

He had me there. I selected the Stones, Aretha, the Beatles and the Supremes from the 1960s. Suzanne Vega from the ’90s. Only one post-2000 number. The songs are more about power dynamics than about love. They’re often about the aftermath of love, when lovers become disillusioned and stop being nice. I’m looking through you, where did you go?

“Check out the segue from “Tattooed Love Boys” to Bacharach/David’s “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” I said. “Variations on the same theme.”

“Ain’t no way them songs are like each other, ‘cept in your sick mind.”

“Exactly, Rabbit. As I said last year, make you own list if you don’t like mine.”

Posted in apocalypse, arts, dirty rotten scoundrels, down and out, humor, mainstream media, pop music | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

State of the Union ritual is deader than the Latin mass

Posted on March 4, 2022 by oddmanout215

I was telling Swamp Rabbit that Joe Biden dodged more issues than he addressed in his State of the Union speech this week.

He sounded properly indignant about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but he didn’t seriously acknowledge the concerns that are alienating many of the voters the Democratic Party will need to avoid disaster in the midterms. I read out loud an example from the text regarding his “top priority”:

With all the bright spots in our economy, record job growth, higher wages, too many families are struggling to keep up with the bills. Inflation is robbing them of the gains they might otherwise feel.

“And that was that,” I said. “Nothing about how he’s planning to stop inflation from robbing Americans. Or about the fact that big corporations, the actual robbers, are using inflation as an excuse to raise prices well beyond what inflation alone is causing.”

Swamp Rabbit chuckled. “It’s the American way. If there’s money to be made, gouge ’em. Stop talkin’ like one of them progressives, Odd Man.”

I reminded him that Biden had mentioned how much more livable this country would be if we had a progressive agenda — a $15-an-hour minimum wage, cheaper prescription drugs, cleaner energy and so on. But he failed to dwell on how such goals could be reached.

Bottom line, the president seems to think that merely mentioning the need for reforms will motivate disaffected groups — young people, Blacks, working-class whites — to vote Democratic.

“That speech was for the corporate media gang,” Swamp Rabbit said. “If Biden said anything interesting, them middle-of-the-road mugwumps who write the od-eds wouldn’t give his speech a thumbs-up.”

He’s right, I guess. Ruth Marcus at The Washington Post approvingly noted that Biden seemed to be “retrenching,” which she defined as moving away “from placating his party’s liberal base to recognizing the sober reality that his legislative options are already limited.”

Therein lies the absurdity of the State of the Union ritual. The country hasn’t been this dis-united since the Civil War. The protofascist Republican officeholders protect the obscenely wealthy and refuse to denounce the would-be dictator Trump. The establishment Democrats hate Trump but, like the Republicans, would rather pander to wealthy donors than address the needs of the non-wealthy.

And mainstream media insiders like Marcus, weighing in on the ritual, continue to pretend the Democratic Party should find “common ground” with the party that would have been happy to let Trump overturn the legitimate results of a presidential election.

“Wise up,” Swamp Rabbit said. “The State of the Union is a phony event staged by phony leaders who would rather line their pockets than preserve government for the peeps.”

As usual, my mangy friend was exaggerating but not by much.

Footnote: My headline referenced the Latin mass because Biden is a practicing Catholic, although his allegiance to the big banks in Delaware seems to have been a lot stronger over the years than his religious faith.

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‘Retiring’ dirty energy is easier said than done

Posted on February 25, 2022 by oddmanout215

From The Uninhabitable Earth, the 2019 nonfiction bestseller by David Wallace-Wells that explains how climate change will turn the future into an ongoing catastrophe if we don’t drastically reduce carbon emissions:

We are… billions of dollars and thousands of breakthroughs later, precisely where we were when hippies were affixing solar panels to their geodesic domes. This is because the market has not responded to developments by seamlessly retiring dirty energy sources and replacing them with clean ones. It has responded by simply adding the new capacity to the same system.

“What’s wrong with adding?” Swamp Rabbit said. “You take them windmills and solar panels, put ’em near the fracking fields and the coal mines, and boom, you double up on making power. Greta Thunberg gets what she wants and so does Joe Manchin. Everybody’s happy.”

I threw one of his empty beer cans at him. “We make the environment cleaner by supplanting dirty energy, not by supplementing it. Sometimes I can’t tell when you’re kidding and when you’re not.”

But it’s not just Swamp Rabbit. Every time I check the news sites there are stories about new roadblocks to replacing fossil fuel sources. I itemized some recent examples for my mangy friend to chew on:

  •  American corporations that ostensibly support reducing carbon emissions — Amazon, AT&T, Uber and so on — continue to contribute big money to Republican attorney general candidates in various states. In other words, to candidates who, when elected, end up in court opposing stricter environmental regulations.
  •  Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has arranged for the government to spend billions on a new fleet of mail delivery trucks that will be only marginally cleaner than the fleet it will replace. This despite the input of White House agencies that wanted the U.S. Postal Service to transition to a fleet that would run on cleaner power. It’s “a major blow” to Joe Biden, who can’t figure out how to get rid of DeJoy, a piggish Trump ally who has been doing his best to weaken the USPS since his appointment.
  •  The Biden administration has said it will work to reduce the amounts of methane released into the atmosphere by oil and gas companies, but limited federal oversight of these companies remains a major problem. Regulators don’t know for sure how much gas is being flared and vented by the companies, only that it far exceeds the amounts being reported by the 13 states that are the worst offenders.

Swamp Rabbit shushed me. “Them monster companies don’t answer to nobody. Besides, Trump’s buddy Putin is trying to start World War III. Maybe we won’t have to worry about global warming.”

“Good point,” I said. “I feel happier already.”

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Love has come to town (one day only)

Posted on February 14, 2022 by oddmanout215

“What is this thing called love, Odd Man?”

It was Valentine’s Day, and Swamp Rabbit was in a reflective mood. I told him there were all sorts of love, that he was probably referring to eros, the ancient Greek word for sensual or romantic love. The trance-like feeling that compels you to stop eating and run red lights to get to the person who has infatuated you. The same person most likely to destroy you unless you snap out of your trance.

“I don’t get in no trance for nobody,” Swamp Rabbit said. “And there ain’t nobody gonna make me stop eatin’.”

“Then you haven’t been in love,” I replied. “Love makes you do right, makes you do wrong. Makes you come home early, makes you stay out all night long.”

“You’re talking crazy. That ain’t love, it’s confusion.”

“Not to Al Green. Like I said, there’s all sorts of love. Check it out sometime.”

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Spotify’s big profits ensure ‘free speech’ for Joe Rogan

Posted on February 7, 2022 by oddmanout215

See the source image
Rogan’s lies are money in the bank for the exclusive owner of his podcast

I told my neighbor Swamp Rabbit that the United States leads the world in Covid-19 deaths — we’ve passed the 900,000 mark — partly because of grifters like Joe Rogan, who has used his Spotify podcasts to channel bad medical advice to the large subsection of Americans who are most susceptible to misinformation.

Swamp Rabbit told me to stuff it, Rogan is a courageous showman who refuses to surrender his First Amendment right to voice his opinions, despite pressure from the woke crowd that wants to silence him because he’s not politically correct.

“This isn’t about political correctness,” I told him. “It’s about whether Rogan should be allowed to spread lies that lead to people dying or being hospitalized.”

“It’s his show, Odd Man. He’s got a right to say that peeps should decide for themselves whether to get vaccinated, or to treat Covid with horse de-wormer or horse radish or whatever. It ain’t right for the gov’mint or that old hippie Neil Young to tell the peeps what medicine to take. That’s censorship.”

I tried to keep my cool. “Neil Young didn’t tell anybody what medicine to take. He just said that he doesn’t want his music played on a digital streaming service that allows an ignorant anti-vaxxer to spread dangerous lies about a lethal contagion, either on his own or through guests on his show who are even dumber than he is. Young made Spotify choose between him and Rogan. Spotify chose Rogan because they make more money off his show than off Young’s music.”

Swamp Rabbit laughed. “It’s like that rightwing Constitution expert just wrote — ‘Greed is good for free speech.’ Corporations rule. I didn’t even know who Joe Rogaine was until this here kerfuffle with Neil Young. Turns out he’s got eleven million listeners on Spotify. That buys a whole lot of free speech.”

“It’s not about free speech,” I said, trying one last time. “It’s about whether a private media company with a highly popular show should be obligated to make sure the show doesn’t endanger public health and safety. Spotify isn’t just a platform for music anymore, it’s a producer and publisher, a media services provider. It shouldn’t be censored, but it should voluntarily curate its podcast content in a case like this, don’t you think?”

He scowled. “Curate or censor, what’s the difference? I think you and Neil Young are dinosaurs, and so are Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash and them other snowflakes who pulled their music off Spotify. You don’t fit too good in the 21st century, Odd Man.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I didn’t fit well in the 20th either.”

Footnote: Spotify can handle losing older, socially conscious artists like Young and Mitchell, but it would be fun to watch how the company would react if the acts that get streamed most often — The Weeknd, Taylor Swift and so on — also bailed out.

One more: Before Spotify, Rogan was a comedian of sorts and a reality TV host whose career highlights included eating a cockroach on “Fear Factor” and imitating a disabled kid during a standup routine. He recently posted on Instagram that he’s a “huge fan” of Joni Mitchell. (“l love her music. ‘Chuck E.’s In Love’ is a great song.”) Yes, it’s great, but it was written and performed by Rickie Lee Jones, not Mitchell. No surprise that Rogan apparently knows as much about music as he does about medicine.

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3.5 trillion dollars short and six months late

Posted on January 23, 2022 by oddmanout215

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Saul of Tarsus, later known as Paul the Apostle, is thrown from his horse and sees the light.
Has Joe Biden seen the light?

A Washington Post columnist declared Thursday that Joe Biden and the Democrats have had an epiphany and from now on will counter Republican nihilism by taking action that “leads to more progress in the future.”

Swamp Rabbit was puzzled. “What kind of epiphany? Like in one of them James Joyce stories? Or like when that guy Paul got knocked off his horse by a lightnin’ bolt and became a Christian?”

“Something like the latter,” I replied. “For months Biden was asleep in the saddle, seemingly unaware that two Democrats in Name Only, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, would never cast their crucial votes with the other 48 senators who wanted to override Republican opposition to the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better package and the voting rights bills.”

The Dems eventually cut the $3.5T to $1.5T, but that still wasn’t enough for the Republicans and the DINOs. Biden’s amazingly dopey — or disingenuous — admission at a news conference this week:

I did not anticipate that there’d be such a stalwart effort to make sure that the most important thing was that President Biden didn’t get anything done.

What is wrong with this guy? While Barack Obama’s VP, and after his own successful run for president, Biden watched Republicans, led by Mutant Ninja Turtle Mitch McConnell, obstruct and kill Democratic legislation that might help the poor and middle-class at the expense of mega-corporations and rich individuals. Like Obama before him, he wasted valuable time on futile efforts to find common ground with people whose stated goal is to wreck the Democratic agenda.

“I knew we were in trouble when he gave that July speech in Philly and didn’t mention that Senate Democrats have no chance of getting the big bills passed unless the filibuster is scuttled,” I said. “He didn’t even say the word filibuster.”

“Now he mentions it all the time,” Swamp Rabbit noted. “But he’s a dollar short and a day late.”

“Something like that,” I said again. “If he doesn’t turn things around before the midterms, he might as well get back on his horse and doze into the sunset.”

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Fifteen spirituals to help you get through 2022

Posted on January 12, 2022 by oddmanout215

“They ain’t spirituals,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Elvis was a rocker. Blind Faith don’t belong on no list with James Cleveland. Matthew Sweet got ain’t got nothin’ to do with Mahalia Jackson. You got gospel mixed up with rock ‘n’ roll.”

“Elvis grew up on gospel,” I replied. “Mahalia Jackson is gospel but she rocked harder than most rockers.”

He told me Randy Newman is an atheist. Bob Dylan was a Jew and then a Christian and God knows what now. And Steely Dan — sick pups, he called them.

“We’re all sick pups,” I said. “These songs soothe the sick soul. Say amen, somebody.”

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Watching ‘Wonderful Life’ but not getting it

Posted on January 4, 2022 by oddmanout215

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James Stewart as George Bailey in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ before the happy ending is in sight

“How come you like that corny movie?” Swamp Rabbit said after watching the holiday classic It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) for the first time. “I thought you were one of them too-cool-for-school guys.”

I told him Wonderful Life transcends its cornball depiction of small-town life in fictional Bedford Falls. As Robert Reich noted, director Frank Capra used his folksy style to make the movie’s radical message palatable to audiences that had just lived through World War II and had high hopes. He envisioned a future in which average joes would unite to defeat greedy pigs like Mr. Potter, just as they had defeated Hitler and Tojo.

“Good thing Capra ain’t around to see what happened to his big idea,” Swamp Rabbit said. “He’d probably off himself, like George Bailey was gonna do before that angel saved him.”

Ridiculous, I told him. Capra was a great artist who would have used current social conditions to make a movie that would end on the same happy, egalitarian note as the original.

“His movie needs a rewrite,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Peeps today don’t want to defeat the rich; they want to be the rich. They don’t trust do-gooders like Bailey, and they don’t want to live near ’em.”

You exaggerate, I told him. Sure, the post-war economic boom made many Americans complacent. Reagan and his ilk suckered them into believing continued prosperity depended on tax cuts for the rich, deregulation and a weakened social safety net. Neoliberals like Bill Clinton told them some of the same lies. But people know better now. Quality of life among the non-rich has been declining for decades. The gap between rich and poor is as wide as it was in the 1920s.

“Yeah, but most white peeps don’t blame Potter and his gang,” Swamp Rabbit said. “They blame blacks, Mexicans and Muslims. The whites elected Potter president in 2016.”

He showed me his rewrite. The townspeople are split into pro- and anti-Potter factions. Potter fans wear MAGA caps and denounce Bailey as a Communist. They sell their homes to Potter and move into exurban houses they can’t afford rather than work together to make Bedford Falls healthy. Bailey’s wife runs off with Potter. Bailey drowns himself and his angel. The rich get richer, and so on.

I said he was exaggerating again. You can fool some people some of the time, but don’t expect them to keep supporting causes contrary to their own interests.

It took him a while to stop laughing. “Tell that to the Trumpers and the anti-vaxxers. Tell it to them peeps who watched It’s A Wonderful Life a dozen times but still don’t get it.”

Posted in arts, history, humor, mainstream media, movies | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments