Regarding Dylan’s latest award

Posted on June 3, 2012 by oddmanout215

[I posted the following on Suburban Guerrilla Thursday and felt compelled to post it here today after seeing the bizarre video of Bob Dylan, bobbing from side to side onstage, looking like he got off at the wrong bus stop, as Barack Obama, on the same stage, said nice things about him.]

From Rolling Stone:

Bob Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, at a ceremony at the White House [Tuesday] afternoon.

At the ceremony, President Obama said of Dylan, “There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music,” adding that the “unique gravel-y power” of his voice helped redefine “not just what music sounded like, but the message it carried and how it made people feel.”

When the White House announced that Dylan would be one of this year’s recipients, they wrote in a statement that the rock & roll pioneer had “considerable influence on the civil rights movement of the 1960s and has had significant impact on American culture over the past five decades.”

Dylan also had considerable influence on the anti-war movement — you know, protests against the undeclared Vietnam war, the war that made it so easy for future presidents to send young Americans into equally unnecessary conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to keep them there long after it was obvious there was nothing to be gained.

Too bad Dylan didn’t get to sing a few verses of “Masters of War,” although I don’t think Obama would have been amused by the irony.

Posted in arts, Obama, pop music | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Chris Hayes, heroes, and ‘Catch 22’

Posted on May 31, 2012 by oddmanout215

Erik Kain at Mother Jones, defending MSNBC host Chris Hayes who, on Memorial Day weekend, was bombarded with insults after criticizing those who overuse the word “hero”:

In transforming our soldiers or police automatically into “heroes” we ignore the atrocities our own side commits. In doing so we also ignore the real moments of heroism. We give a free pass to anyone with a uniform and a gun regardless of their individual merit, and lend unwitting support to every war, from Iraq and Afghanistan to the War on Drugs, in the process.

I’m with Kain. What we need these days are more anti-heroes — people who rebel against the “my country right or wrong mentality” that allows us to be manipulated by lying politicians who all too often take the country into unnecessary wars to enrich “defense” contractors while dodging serious domestic problems.

Hayes later apologized for this statement:

I feel uncomfortable with the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war.

He should have stood his ground. If more people in the media had the courage to voice such opinions, there might be fewer military debacles that result in thousands of needless deaths and billions of dollars of wasted taxpayer dollars.

I’m also with the late Joseph Heller, whose experience flying combat missions in World War II inspired him to write the brilliant anti-war novel Catch-22 and to invent the classic anti-hero, John Yossarian, who is haunted by the death of an airman named Snowden:

… Being in the hospital was better than being over Bologna or flying over Avignon with Huple and Dobbs at the controls and Snowden dying in back.

There were usually not nearly as many sick people inside the hospital as Yossarian saw outside the hospital, and there were generally fewer people inside the hospital who were seriously sick. There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate. Few people died unnecessarily. People knew a lot more about dying inside the hospital and made a much neater, more orderly job of it. They couldn’t dominate Death inside the hospital, but they certainly made her behave. They had taught her manners. They couldn’t keep Death out, but while she was in she had to act like a lady. People gave up the ghost with delicacy and taste inside the hospital. There was none of that crude, ugly ostentation about dying that was so common outside the hospital. They did not blow up in mid-air like Kraft or the dead man in Yossarian’s tent, or freeze to death in the blazing summertime the way Snowden had frozen to death after spilling his secret to Yossarian in the back of the plane.

“I’m cold,” Snowden had whimpered. “I’m cold.”

“There, there,” Yossarian had tried to comfort him. “There, there…”

Sometimes, a book you love as a kid doesn’t seem nearly as good when you re-read it later in life. Not so with Catch-22. Decades later, the absurdities seem as funny as ever, but the grim humanism resonates in a way I wasn’t capable of appreciating the first time around. I guess the difference is I hadn’t yet really thought about all those real-life Snowdens whose lives are wasted in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. At least you could make a case for Heller’s war being just.

Posted in arts, fiction, history, Iraq war, mainstream media | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Mittens must have loved NYT’s puff piece

Posted on May 24, 2012 by oddmanout215

In case you missed it: Jodi Kantor’s front-page story in Sunday’s New York Times, headlined “Romney’s Faith, Silent but Deep,” was one of the most cringe-worthy puff pieces about a political candidate published in recent memory.

Read it and you’ll see I’m not exaggerating.

If I were Kantor’s editor, I would have immediately shot the piece back to her along with this question: How does Romney reconcile his supposedly deep faith with the well-documented evidence of his blatant lies regarding not only rival candidates but also his own past actions and statements on important issues?

Does he think lying is OK so long as it’s in the service of a greater good? Does he lie because he thinks American voters ultimately will overlook this glaring fault in their eagerness to oust Barack Obama?

Here’s an example of Kantor’s irony-free and unquestioning brand of analytical journalism:

…In church, Mr. Romney frequently spoke about obeying authority, the danger of rationalizing misbehavior and God’s fixed standards. “Most people, if they don’t want to do what God wants them to do, they move what God wants them to do about four feet over,” he once told his congregation, holding out his arms to indicate the distance, [Romney friend Clayton] Christensen remembered…

Kantor mentions that some Mormon supporters wonder how Romney can reconcile his moral notions with the attack ads presented in his name, but she doesn’t come close to addressing the disconnect between the candidate’s professed religiosity and his tendency to make deliberately false statements. Her story is a classic example of how far mainstream publications will go to prove how “objective” — i.e., non-adversarial — they are.

Posted in liar, mainstream media, Mitt Romney | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

South Philly saints come marchin’ in

Posted on May 20, 2012 by oddmanout215

Mother Mary, minus the money strips

This is in case you missed the May procession held today under a soul-piercing blue sky on Philly’s Italian Market. Kids in white suits and dresses, followed by statues of solitary saints on floats pushed by local parishioners, with a little marching band behind each float.

The Latino musicians, all in white, reminded me of The Wild Bunch, the scene in which Angel is tied to the generalissimo’s car and dragged around the camp as drunken soldiers laugh it up. Music equally suited to a wedding or a wake, superficially gay but ultimately mournful and demented, especially the trumpets.

Mother Mary rolled by wearing blue and white robes and adhesive strips to which dollar bills had been attached by the faithful. Actually, there were two Marys — one for the Italians, one for the Latinos. On each of the floats was a name tag, in case you didn’t know your saints. St. Lucy and Padre Pia glided past, then St. John Newmann, whose mummy is enshrined right here in Philly. Poor St. Joseph was way in the back, far from his revered wife. Somewhere in the middle of the procession was — I kid you not — St. Rocco. The patron saint of wiseguys, I guess.

Then it was time for the Italian Market Festival. Ninth Street was closed to cars, with white tents pitched north and south for six blocks and ancient blooze rock blasting from the speakers of WMGK. Thousands of revelers filled the streets and sidewalks, streaming under metal awnings, past produce vendors, through clouds of barbecue smoke, sipping beer from plastic cups, feasting on gourmet cupcakes, tomato pie, pepperoni on a stick, mozzarella in a cup, sculpted mangoes, hot sausage and meatballs, porchetta (oven-roasted pigs, with eyeless heads still attached), and enough cannoli to clog a thousand arteries.

Afterwards, a mess. But the garbage will be gone by morning and the market, which is pretty messy to begin with, will be back to normal.

My gratitude will linger. Times are tough, but at least I don’t live in the suburbs.

—–Original Message—–

Posted in food, humor, livable cities, pop music | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Wall Street creep of the week

Posted on May 17, 2012 by oddmanout215

Even the grimmest fiction seems less depressing than many real-life news stories. For example, there’s that poor man in California who killed himself Sunday after a long, unsuccessful fight to avoid being evicted from his home by Wells Fargo, the “too big to fail” bank that had scammed him and his wife into taking out a predatory mortgage.

And the rash of stories about Wall Street creep of the week Jamie Dimon, who was reelected chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase Tuesday, at $23 million a year, despite the fact that his “too big to fail” bank recently blew more than $2 billion making the sort of derivatives trading bet that wrecked the economy a few years ago.

Then Dimon made a speech in which he scoffed at the notion that banks should be better regulated. Then Barack Obama, on some dumb-ass daytime TV show, skimmed over the $2 billion debacle and called Dimon “one of the smartest bankers we got.”

Nomi Prins of The Daily Beast:

Bank chairmen, like Jamie Dimon, will claim that regulation is too complex, too anti-competitive, and too un-American (putting U.S. banks at a disadvantage against other global banks). Yet, those arguments are exactly what led a cadre of bankers, an incoming and an outgoing treasury secretary (Larry Summers and Robert Rubin) and President Clinton to, in 1999, abolish the last remnants of the Glass-Steagall banking-reform act—making it fair game for banks to grow in size and complexity, plus engage in a bevy of speculative plays under the same roof as their FDIC-insured, Fed liquidity-baked deposits and loans. And that’s exactly what they did.

If you know you will be cushioned no matter how high you jump off a tightrope, and you’re getting paid to jump, you’re going to find ways to jump. Take away the tightrope, and you won’t jump. Resurrecting a true Glass-Steagall barrier is like taking away the net.

Update: Late today it was announced that Dimon will be “invited” to testify before the Senate Banking Committee to discuss JPMorgan Chase’s huge trading loss. This is according to Banking Committee chairman Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD), who said a hearing date has yet to be determined.

Posted in Great Recession, Obama, Occupy Wall Street, Wall Street | 1 Comment

America colonized again

Posted on May 14, 2012 by oddmanout215

From The National Employment Law Project, May 10:

Long-term unemployed workers in a growing list of states are being abruptly cut from federal unemployment insurance, a new analysis from the National Employment Law Project shows. Due to reductions Congress enacted earlier this year, more than 400,000 workers in 27 states will have lost between 13 to 20 weeks of federal unemployment insurance under the Extended Benefits program by Saturday, May 12th. The cuts come even though long-term unemployment remains near record highs.

From Chris Hedges in Truthdig, May 14:

… We have been, like nations on the periphery of empire, colonized. We are controlled by tiny corporate entities that have no loyalty to the nation and indeed in the language of traditional patriotism are traitors. They strip us of our resources, keep us politically passive and enrich themselves at our expense… The colonized are denied job security. Incomes are reduced to subsistence level. The poor are plunged into desperation. Mass movements, such as labor unions, are dismantled. The school system is degraded so only the elites have access to a superior education. Laws are written to legalize corporate plunder and abuse, as well as criminalize dissent. And the ensuing fear and instability — keenly felt this past weekend by the more than 200,000 Americans who lost their unemployment benefits — ensure political passivity by diverting all personal energy toward survival. It is an old, old game…

And so on, a Marxism 101 summary. For a second, I thought Hedges was calling me a member of the proletariat, the low-born who tend to simply endure rather than revolt, or the lumpenproletariat, who — gasp! — survive through crime and other sordid activities, like Wall Street banksters but not as sneaky.

But no, it seems I’m in the declasse intellectual camp, which sounds a lot cooler, even though it means you’re jobless and probably in as much debt as the proles, a situation that ensures you will divert “all personal energy toward survival.”

History shows that it’s up to the declasse intellectuals and other disaffected members of the middle class to light a fire under the proles, and that, of course, is what Occupy Wall Street is all about. A lot of what Hedges writes makes sense, but there will be no large-scale push against the corporate monsters until a significant percentage of the (formerly) middle class uses up the last of its assets and gives up trying to stay solvent in a rigged economy. Even then, a radicalized citizenry is highly unlikely, don’t you think?

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, mainstream media, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Wing nuts love Mom, too

Posted on May 13, 2012 by oddmanout215

Sara Robinson of Alternet had a good idea for a Mother’s Day column – “Ayn Rand-Loving Right Is Like Teen Boys Gone Crazy” — but she got carried away and ended up arguing that Randian conservatism is, more than anything else, anti-feminist:

… Make no mistake: all this Ayn Rand libertarian me-first-and-the-rest-of-you-go-to-hell stuff – the there’s-no-government-like-no-government theology that’s now being piously intoned as Holy Received Truth by everybody, male and female, in the GOP – is, very precisely, the kind of politics you’d come up with if you were a 16-year-old boy trying to explain away his dependence on Mom.

Parents? I don’t have any parents. I raised myself, on roots and berries and small vermin I dug up in vacant lots. That lady hanging around, feeding me and nagging me and picking up my socks and driving me to practice? She’s just the nanny state. That bitch. I hate her…

Later, Robinson adds this regarding the term “nanny state”:

… It’s sexist as hell. Anti-feminist at its very core. It says that the concerns that we most identify with mothers – cleaning up your crap, minding your manners, not annoying other people, taking responsibility for your actions – are intrusive and unwarranted infringements on your essential freedom, instead of the basic adult responsibilities that are required of everybody if society is going to remain free and functional.

It says that the power and authority by which mothers – “nannies,” in this construction – set the rules within the family is illegitimate. It belittles women who are bossy enough to insist on adult behavior from men…

Amusing, but off-base. What about women libertarians, who are just as contemptuous of the nanny state as the Paul Ryans of the world? Most libertarians are men, but the number of true-believing women is on the rise. Just ask the Ladies of Liberty Alliance.

I’ve encountered libertarians up close, men and women, and they are very good at cleaning up their own crap and minding their manners. They’re extremely arrogant, but in a “reasonable” fashion. You don’t even know they’re wing nuts until you talk politics with them and they shock you with their lack of compassion for the wretched of the earth — more precisely, with their professed belief that government assistance to those in need is harmful to social order.

Robinson should have remembered that Ayn Rand ran a very strict cult. I can’t imagine Alan Greenspan and Rand’s other male minions balking when she ordered them to pick up their dirty socks.

I’m guessing Robinson’s hot-botton issue is feminism. Otherwise, she’d see that libertarianism is essentially anti-humanist, not anti-feminist.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

‘Get a job’ easy to say if you’ve got one

Posted on May 13, 2012 by oddmanout215

Paul Krugman recently noted a close resemblance between Ben Bernanke’s famously lame prediction about the economy — “I think as those green shoots begin to appear in different markets and as some confidence begins to come back that will begin the positive dynamic that brings our economy back” — and the words of Chance, the simple-minded gardener who is mistaken for a sage in the satiric movie Being There, based on Jerzy Kosinski’s novel — “As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden. . . . There will be growth in the spring.”

In the same piece, Krugman quoted from the novel Treasure of the Sierra Madre, by B. Traven:

Anyone who is willing to work and is serious about it will certainly find a job. Only you must not go to the man who tells you this, for he has no job to offer and doesn’t know anyone who knows of a vacancy. This is exactly the reason why he gives you such generous advice, out of brotherly love, and to demonstrate how little he knows the world.

B. Traven was a German mystery man who wrote in Mexico and probably was an anarchist. I’ve never read Traven, but the quotation and my fondness for the classic movie adapted from his novel makes me want to run out and buy the latter.

Footnote: I wonder if the the most famous line from the movie — “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!” — was taken from the novel.

Posted in arts, movies, unemployment | 1 Comment

When will Obama ‘evolve’ on jobs?

Posted on May 11, 2012 by oddmanout215

From MoveOn.org:

Breaking: The Obama Announcement That May Just Make You Cry

And after the sappy headline:

Yes! We couldn’t be more excited! As MoveOn Executive Director Justin Ruben puts it: “This is a historic day. The president’s support for marriage equality is great news that’s likely to energize progressive activists across the country.”

I’ll bet most people who are excited by Obama’s lukewarm and long-overdue announcement live inside the liberal bubble, where no one speaks of how little leadership and passion the president has shown on most progressive concerns, especially the ongoing disaster of unemployment in this country.

Put another way, Obama had been described as “evolving” toward the state of mind he was in when he endorsed marriage equality. I’m wondering how long it will take him to evolve into a leader who recognizes the urgent need for economic equality.

It’s true Obama had nothing to do with the financial collapse. There’s no way he could quickly reverse the effects of Dubya’s disastrous stupidity, or defeat all by himself the loathsome Congressional Republicans who are happy that one percent of Americans prosper while the rest grow poorer.

But again — when will this guy evolve beyond equating “the economy” with the interests of big banks and multinational corporations? When will he stop hobnobbing with the heads of companies that make billions, are taxed at outrageously low rates, and continue to outsource jobs and lower the wages of Americans still hanging on to jobs? When will he at least try to appear to be serious about fighting for working people?

Here’s Paul Krugman on the extent of the problem:

… There are now four job seekers for every job opening, which means that workers who lose one job find it very hard to get another. Six million Americans, almost five times as many as in 2007, have been out of work for six months or more; four million have been out of work for more than a year, up from just 700,000 before the [financial] crisis… Not since the 1930s have so many Americans found themselves seemingly trapped in a permanent state of joblessness…

The fact that Obama made a condescending speech to endorse marriage equality — as if it’s a big deal that he’s for something that wouldn’t even be controversial in more civilized countries — while he continues to ignore the scope of the unemployment problem, sickens me.

And the fact that MoveOn.org functions as a cheerleading operating for the president instead of pressuring him to fight for job creation makes me think the Democratic Party will never re-connect with the working class.

Full disclosure: I’m an out-of-work writer. If MoveOn.org reads this and is seeking someone to crank out news releases that are realistic, as opposed to euphoric-sounding and worshipful, please contact me.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, Obama, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Mittens distinguishes himself again

Posted on May 10, 2012 by oddmanout215

How awful is Mitt Romney? Is there anything he won’t do or say to improve his chances of being elected? Here’s a for instance:

… On Thursday morning, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conducted tense negotiations with the Chinese government over the fate of Chen Guangcheng, the blind dissident who had sought refuge in the U.S. embassy in Beijing, Romney seized on rumors of American capitulation to launch a political salvo: “If these reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom and it’s a day of shame for the Obama administration,” he said at a rally in Virginia. “We are a place of freedom here and around the world, and we should stand up and defend freedom wherever it is under attack…”

The crisis ended in what Joe Conason called a “face-saving solution” for the Chinese and the Obama administration. It turned out to be a bright day for Chen. I don’t agree with Conason too often, but I’m with him on this:

… Romney’s error was worse than a misguided political tactic. It showed a woeful ignorance of diplomacy and a callow opportunism that don’t befit the next occupant of the Oval Office. To endanger Chen’s safety and the prestige of the United States in those difficult hours was an act of weak character as well as stupidity…

Romney’s statements about Chen came shortly after another glaring example of his weak character — his decision to throw Richard Grenell under the bus. The openly gay staffer resigned after taking a lot of heat from anti-gay rights Republicans. Romney didn’t defend the man, and didn’t ask him to stay on. Conason again:

If Grenell was qualified to hold the sensitive post of foreign policy spokesman, why did Romney cave instantly to demands from radio hosts and other ignorant bigots to let him go?

Gee, I don’t know. Could it have anything to do with the fact that he’s simultaneously ruthless and cowardly, not to mention morally bankrupt? He also came out against same-sex marriage, of course, to counter Barack Obama’s position on the issue.

Footnote: I’ll take it all back if Romney turns out to be an android — a suspicion I expressed in a previous post — like those creatures in Blade Runner. Except that the Blade Runner androids had character.

Posted in humor, Mitt Romney, Politics | Tagged , , | 1 Comment