Today’s Ammianoliner:
No matzo. No matzo balls. No balls but lots of chutzpah.
(From the home telephone answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Tuesday, election day in Pennsylvania,
April 22, 2008.)
SFBG Blogs
Ammiano: no balls, but lots of chutzpah
Hearst blacks out the PG&E scandal. Again!
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Often, on Wednesday, the San Francisco Chronicle will run a nice color PG&E ad on the lower right hand corner of its front page.
On Wednesday, April 16, the Chronicle did not run a PG&E ad on the front page, but it did run a major story on the front page above the fold that did a major favor for PG&E.
The story by Kelly Zito focused on public power and alternatives to PG&E, largely in Marin County where there’s an active and aggressive move to create a CCA (community choice aggregation) system that would replace PG&E
as an energy supplier in ll cities.
The story once again largely ignored San Francisco and its CCA movement headed by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi. It didn’t quote Mirkarimi nor any public power or CCA leaders, but instead used a dubious expert from the University of California at Berkeley, who never supported public power and generally supports PG&E private power and deregulation efforts to undermine without rebuttal the community- based anti-PG&E efforts.
And it once again followed the longtime Hearst policy of blacking out the key element of any serious public power story: the PG&E/Raker Act scandal and the fact that San Francisco is the only city in the U.S. that is mandated by federal law to have a public power system. (See Guardian stories and editorials back to 1969.)
I don’t blame Zito the reporter. She is only the latest in a long line of Hearst reporters who ends up executing Hearst policy of coddling PG&E and blacking out the Raker Act scandal. And, after years of questioning Chronicle reporters and editors and trying to get to the bottom of Hearst’s incessant censorship of and capitulation to PG&E, I really don’t know who to blame. But let me ask the questions again: who censors Hearst stories on PG&E as a matter of Hearst policy. The reporter? The city editor? The top editor? The publisher? Hearst corporate? Anybody over there?
In any event, I would much rather have a straightforward PG&E ad on the Chronicle front page, properly labeled PG&E, than stories that omit the Raker Act scandal and slant the stories for PG&E and against public power. B3
Click here for this week’s editorial, PG&E’s attack on CCA.
Click here for this week’s editorial, The floating peakers: An energy solution on the Bay?
Click here for The shame of Hearst
Where Rainbow Grocery $ really goes
Happy Earth Day everyone! Here’s a little present for you to print out and hang on your fridge.
GOOD Magazine put together a very handy guide to the big bad corporations that have co-opted the natural food companies you know and love. It’s sad, folks. Some, like the Odwalla-Coca Cola connection aren’t breaking news, but man, I didn’t know Dagoba was in bed with Hershey.
My Earth Day resolution: buy local, local, local.
Green dreams
As we celebrate Earth Day in this era of all things green, it’s worth contemplating whether our enviro-guilt has gotten the better of our skepticism and critical thinking. Is “Green=Good” our sole metric these days, making us susceptible to self-serving spin from our politicians and corporations? After all, our Governator seems to have gone from bad to good simply by donning verdant armor and signing a landmark global warming measure that he long fought and watered down.
Closer to home, PG&E’s has been trying to greenwash away our knowledge of their penchant for polluting technologies and political corruption, a quest that our lazy but ambitious and ever image conscious Mayor Gavin Newsom has sporadically tried to piggyback on (ie tidal power, sponsored conferences, and solar everything). When Newsom tried to beef up the city solar commitment by robbing a seismic upgrade fund for renters and then the city’s own bank for building municipal solar panels, it was understandable that the Board of Supervisors balked.
But in today’s Chron, SPUR policy wonk Egon Terplan and righteous activist Van Jones whack the move and decry city plans for more fossil fuel generation. It’s not a bad point, although it is an oversimplistic one, like too many of our either-or green political debates these days. Indeed, we seem to lose the ability to see shades of gray when we talk green, and we too often forget that money is the other form of green in the equation.
As we’ve reported, San Francisco’s solar problems are complicated, just like our power generation problems (see our story in tomorrow’s paper for a more nuanced look at the peaker plant issue). To solve the problems, we need honest leaders speaking candidly to us and each other, rather than all the spin, self-interest, and political gamesmanship that has sullied San Francisco’s political dialogue in recent years.
Green can be good, or it can be the equivalent of snake oil or the IPO for a overhyped tech company that will never make any money. As an excellent recent cover story in Harper’s Magazine noted, the green economy could be the next great bubble after the housing and dot-com crashes, something that desperate capitalists and their political partners are eagerly trying to make so.
Maybe that will be a good thing, but let’s learn our lessons from the last couple bubbles and don’t simply assume that the green label is some kind of stamp of public interest approval.
Eat these queens’ meats
It’s time to raise a knife and spoon to end AIDS, as restaurants throughout our fair berg are flooded on the evening of Thurs/24 for Dining Out For Life — a benefit in which 25 percent of all food and drink sales will be donated to StopAIDS. Oh yes, there will be drag queens. Perhaps even breaded and baked. Below are three choice happenings hosted by thirsty trannies aching to shove their meat in your mouth. Reservations strongly encouraged (Click here for 100 more participating restaurants!)
The Crispy Classic
Miss Juanita More dishes out her famous fried chicken with honey goo (plus carrot cake dessert!) at Mars Bar. her scrumptious (and possibly underaged) More Boys will wait on you, hostess Candi Gurl will look stunned but glamorous, and DJ James Glass –= the hottest straight boy into underground disco — will help it all go down easy.
5-9pm
Mars Bar
798 Brannan, SF
(415) 621-MARS
******************************************************
The Skewered Newbie
No one skewers the reigning queens of the scene like Monistat — so appropriately she’ll be hostessing, along with Castro Shawn, at the Castro’s deliciously healthy skewered meat wonderland Asqew Grill. Don’t forget to shishkabob your hair, lady.
6pm
Asqew Grill
3583 16th St., SF
(415) 626-3040
**************************************************
Just a Plain Ol’ Saucy Mess
The fiendishly fingerlickin’ Felicia Fellatio — pictured here with cutie leatherboy cohost Jorge — will hold glutton court at Memphis Minnie’s BBQ in Lower Haight. (Did you know that Memphis Minnie’s features a sake tasting menu with it’s plethora of roasted flesh? Well now you know!)
7pm
574 Haight, SF
(415) 864-7675
www.memphisminnies.com
PS: It’s rumored that Felicia can down a whole rack of ribs without swallowing. Here’s proof, at least, that she can down a whole racket:
Anyone for seconds?
Pics: Family Immigrant Day 2008
By Ariel Soto
On April 16, members of the thirteen immigrant community organizations that make up the San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network (SFILEN) met at City Hall today in an effort to advocate for more community resources for immigrants. Immigrants represent 40 percent of San Francisco’s population and the event was an opportunity for members of SFILEN to call attention to the need for more legal and educational programs, and to speak with City Supervisors as a continuation of making San Francisco a true sanctuary for all immigrants.
Members of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) on the steps of City Hall, supporting San Francisco’s Immigrant Family Day.
Supporters gathered at City Hall for Immigrant Family Day, asking City leaders to continue supporting immigrant programs for their communities.
Members of the community came out to hold signs and show their support to keep San Francisco true sanctuary for immigrant communities.
Members of Mujeres Unidas at San Francisco’s Immigrant Family Day.
Ben Younes Ouanane (left), an immigrant from Morocco, spoke about the help he has received from the African Immigrant and Refugee Resource Center (AIRRC), one of the cities many immigrant rights organizations involved in the Immigrant Family Day. Joe Sciarrillo, a paralegal at AIRRC, translated from French to English for Mr. Ouanane.
Mercury Interactive CFO indicted
In January of 2007, we brought you the story of a Silicone Valley company called Mercury Interactive, which was trying to bar media access to a detailed civil court complaint filed by shareholders against the company.
Mercury Interactive for months has been waste deep in the stock options backdating scandal, defined in the simplest terms possible as a version of card counting in which corporate executives can maximize their personal compensation by finding a date on the calender at which their stock was valued the lowest. That way, they can both buy the stock from the company at a fire sale price and then sell it when the company’s performing well, which results in a huge windfall profit. Another comparison might be knowing winning lottery numbers in advance.
Details of the scheme allegedly perpetrated by Mercury Interactive execs appeared in the civil complaint and it named names, so defense attorneys tried to keep them sealed off from the press. But local and national news outlets — including the Chronicle, a San Francisco legal newspaper and other business news services — sued to open them up. The Wall Street Journal ended up getting a hold of the documents before the drama could really play out in court.
A year-and-a-half later, Mercury Interactive CFO Sharlene Abrams has been indicted by federal prosecutors for tax evasion and aiding in the preparation of false tax returns. She’s looking at 11 years in prison and $750,000 in fines if proved guilty. It’s the first case in Northern California where someone’s been charged with criminal tax violations from the backdating scandal. Hewlett-Packard bought Mercury in July 2006. More details after the jump.
Crummy ‘Punk Goes Crunk’?
By Alex Felsinger
For the latest installment of Fearless Records’ noble quest to release the worst-themed cover-song compilations ever, they’ve truly one-upped themselves with the horrendously misnamed Punk Goes Crunk. It should have been called Popular Rock Goes Mainstream Rap, but, of course, that doesn’t have a nice ring to it. While the definition of punk has become so egregiously convoluted that some may claim that New Found Glory and Hot Rod Circuit are actually punk, no one can dispute that Will Smith’s Men in Black theme song is not crunk by any means. Nor is 2pac, Notorious B.I.G., the Roots, Snoop Dogg, or any of the other artists unfortunate enough to have their hits covered on this disc.
At first, the idea is kind of funny – I mean, it does rhyme. Beyond that, however, it’s bad. The first track, which happens to be the only actual cover of a crunk song, highlights the Bay Area’s own Set Your Goals covering Lil Jon‘s “Put Yo Hood Up.” Like most songs on the compilation, the band doesn’t try to give the song any kind of punk or pop-punk makeover, but rather takes the opportunity to try their own hand at rapping. With the help of a redundant chorus sung by what sounds like Yoda, the tune sets the overall tone for the collection.
The comp has a few somewhat interesting tracks, including Say Anything’s rendition of Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Got Yo Money,” which is good for a couple laughs. But it’s clear by the end that humanity has already endured enough experimentation between rock and rap (i.e., ahem, Limp Bizkit) and at some point, the genres need to go back to their respective corners. Frankly, I thought they already had. Some of these tracks were originally intended for release on Immortal Records‘ Yo! Indie Rock Raps compilation, but they canned the concept. Fearless should have taken note.
Perhaps recognizing that no one would ever put their own money towards purchasing Punk Goes Crunk, the label has put the entire release up online to hear for free. Lucky you.
WARPED TOUR
With most groups featured on Punk Goes Crunk
June 21, 11 a.m., $33
Pier 30/32, SF
(415) 421-TIXS
Ammiano outs polygamist DNA target
Today’s Ammianoliner:
Polygamist DNA test points to Mitt Romney. Talk about a stimulus package.
(From the home telephone answering machine of Sup.Tom Ammiano, making his say to Sacramento as the virgin politician amongst the hard-driving lobbyists. Recorded on Monday, April 2l, 2008). B3
Nicky and Gordo are back!
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Well, the sail racing news is that Nicky and Gordo are back.
As attentive readers of this blog remember, the fearsome twosome are my grandson, Nicholas Perez, a lithe 14-year sailor from Santa Barbara, and his veteran skipper Gordon (Gordo) Bagley, of Boulder City, Nevada. I wrote up how they did the impossible in the Hobie National Championship race in Alameda and and pulled off one of those once-in-a-lifetime sailing feats that sailors only dream about. Read original blog here.
Nicky and Gordo port tacked the fleet, which means they threaded the needle between the pin boat and the rest of the fleet of catamarans on port tack, took the lead, and never gave it up during the race. To pull off this maneuver during a national championship was nothing short of miraculous.
They were back in fine form in their first race of the season last weekend in Monterey Bay, the kickoff regatta for the Hobie Association of North America. (Hobie is the name of a catamaran boat.) It was so cold and windy that the race was canceled the first day (Saturday) and it was almost as cold and windy on Sunday, but some 40 sailors took to the water. Gordo sailed in bare feet. “I get a better feel of the movement of the boat,” he said, explaining his obvious masochistic tendencies.
Nicky and Gordo were first out on the bay, in their l6 foot Hobie, and sailed smartly out to sea.
They hit some rough patches during the race, but still managed to place fifth. “We survived,” Gordo said,
always optimistic, and looking ahead to the next race in San Diego.
HIs feet, he said, didn’t get cold but the rest of his body did. Nicky, bundled up in a dry suit, was cold but he didn’t complain. I was cold as hell standing on the shore watching.
As Gordon latched his boat onto his car for the ll-hour ride home, I noted several lines from Gordo’s favorite songs scrawled in blue on the sides of the boat.
Gordo’s favorite was a line from a song by the group Cream, “The sparkling waves are calling to kiss their lace white lips.” My favorite, “You can leave it all behind and sail…” from an Eagles song.
Meanwhile, I caught a wave while getting some closeup photos. So I headed off to a local bar to get out of the wet and into a dry martini. B3
Nicky and Gordon head out to sea.
Nicky and Gordo put their boat on wheels
Nicky and Gordo wheel the boat to the car.
Nicholas and Gordo standing tall at the end of a cold windy day at sea. Note Gordo’s bare feet. B3
Gray Area Gallery 2.0
By Vanessa Carr
Aaron Koblin’s Ten Thousand Cents
It’s hard to believe that San Francisco, the very birthplace of Web 2.0, has lacked a gallery space dedicated to new interactive media arts – until now.
Tomorrow, Gray Area Gallery, whose space closed last year, celebrates the launch of what is, in effect, its 2.0 rebirth – Gray Area Beacon (GAB) – which claims to be the first San Francisco gallery space to focus exclusively on the intersection of art and technology.
“This is the moment in time for the Bay Area to celebrate and appreciate technology-based art,” said GAB co-founder Josette Melchor. “[GAB] is trying to provide a home for exhibits, ideas, and interaction.”
GAB’s launch party on Tuesday, 4/22, coincides with the first day of the Web 2.0 Expo and features four pieces by local artist Aaron Koblin in his first ever San Francisco show.
Aaron Kiblin’s New York Talk Exchange
Recently featured in Wired Magazine and the New York MoMA, Koblin’s work creates visualizations of large datasets and human systems that explore some very Web 2.0 themes:digital labor marketplaces, online collaborations, and global communications.
“I thought [Koblin] was perfect because of [his] Sheep Market and Ten Thousand Cents pieces,” Melchor told the Guardian. “He’s used online means to get people to collaborate to create a large scale installation.”
Koblin’s Sheep Market features 10,000 sheep drawn by online “workers” from around world, each of whom were paid two cents to draw “a sheep facing left” using the Amazon Mechanical Turk marketplace.
Similarly, Ten Thousand Cents, Koblin’s collaboration with artist Takashi Kawashima, is a digital representation of a one-hundred dollar bill made up of one thousand tiny squares reproduced by anonymous online laborers who worked without knowledge of the overall picture. Each worker was paid one penny for his or her work, which amounted to $100 in total.
Violet Blue vs. Violet Blue
By Justin Juul
I totally got hoodwinked.
Two years ago, I bought expensive tickets to the 2006 Exotic Erotic Expo because the flyer for the event advertised a live appearance by Violet Blue, who is one of my favorite sex writers, and who I’d wanted to meet for a very long time. I never got to meet her though. Turns out there’s a porn star also named Violet Blue, and she was the one appearing. So, instead of schmoozing with a journalist, I spent my time at the expo drinking cheap beer and stalking a porn star. Snore.
The real Violet Blue
Naturally Violet Blue the writer is pretty pissed about this kind of mix up — she claims the fake Violet Blue is using her name to attract a bigger following — and the name feud has finally made it to the courthouse. (Full disclosure: I’m a witness for the writer’s side – my story was a direct catalyst for the suit.) It seems after our missed encounter, the real Violet Blue decided she’d had enough and started looking into patent laws and ways to challenge the star of Who Violet Blew, Planet of the Gapes 4, and Beauty and the Bitch. The initial court proceedings went down last October, but the case is far from over. The porn star has been quite successful under her moniker – winning multiple AVN awards, getting countless roles, and even hosting her own radio show — and she doesn’t want to give the name up (she “officially” changed it to Violetta Blue, but continues to use the original name whenever she appears at events or stars in videos).
The other Violet Blue (not posing with the author!)
What’s the big deal, you ask? Both of these women are involved in porn aren’t they?
Well, yes and no. The writer, whose real name actually is Violet Blue, has dedicated her entire life to showing the good side of the sex industry, whereas the other Violet Blue is just a plain ol’ sex worker. In her award winning blog, www.tinynibbles.com, and in her books, the real Violet Blue tries to show that an obsession with sex is totally natural and that “sex people” can be funny, smart, technologically advanced, artistically inclined, and full of unique ideas. She tours the world holding sex seminars on college campuses and even makes appearances on popular television shows to champion her conviction that any sex is good sex as long as it’s safe and consensual. She also believes that, contrary to popular belief, women like to watch pornography as much as men. Good deal.
But the issue isn’t about whether or not Violet Blue the imposter should be doing porn or whether or not she’s a good role model. The issue is that the real Violet Blue is constantly being mistaken for a so-so porn star and it’s fucking with her career. She can’t even win national awards, like Forbes’ Top 25 Web Celebs of 2007 (in which she won 25th place as the best pornstar/blogger) or get invited to conventions without someone thinking she does double anal for extra cash when her book sales are down. Not that that’s bad in itself, but come on. I’d be pretty pissed as well. Especially about Planet of the Gapes 4.
Ghostride the filmstrip, thizzy
By Justin Juul
Perhaps inevitably, long-awaited doc Ghostride The Whip: The Story of The Hyphy Movement screens this Thursday, April 24th at UC Berkeley. (It’ll be available on DVD this July after it makes some rounds. )
At first glance, it’s a movie about riding around on top of and outside your car while listening to goofy music, dropping e, and acting tough (duh). I was all set to write about how tired the film sounds and how played out the ghostriding phenomenon is, but I decided to do some research before opening my big mouth.
And now, well, what can I say? After spending an hour on Ghostride The Whip director DJ Vlad’s MySpace, I have become a full-blown fan. I still think ghostriding is ridiculous, and I can’t say I like hyphy music (or wasting gas), but holy shit, have you seen all the video tributes this Bay Area ghetto pastime has spawned? Maybe this is a perfect time to immortalize this movement onscreen. Here are a few of my favorites:
Ghostride the Granny
Extreme Ghostride!!!
Sports: Tim Lincecum, super freak
By A.J. Hayes
With his shaggy blue-black hair, boyish good looks and slight frame, the Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum looks as if he stepped out of an audition for American Idol. He could also pass as a record store clerk, a college student or a wine steward.
The point is, Lincecum (he’s listed at 5-foot-11, 170 pounds, but appears to be smaller) looks as if he could do anything for a living except play major league baseball.
But not only does the Bellevue, Washington native draw a nice check every two weeks from the Giants, the 23-year-old has quickly become the ace of San Francisco’s staff and arguably most exciting hurler to matriculate through the orange & black’s farm system since John “The Count” Monetfusco back in 1975.
Some in the media have nicknamed Lincecum, “The Franchise.” We prefer (with apologies to Rick James) “Super Freak.”
How else would you describe an average-sized dude expelling hardballs as if there’s a howitzer attached to his right side? Whether it’s from the torque generated from his “windmill” delivery or just unexplainable natural ability, Lincecum (lin-suh-COME) brings his pitches with markedly abnormal velocity.
That power pitching led to 150 strikeouts in 2007 over just 90 innings – tops among all rookies. Two seasons after he was selected as the 10th overall selection in the 2006 amateur draft, Lincecum has already lapped every player selected ahead of him, including No. 1 pick Luke Hochevar of Kansas City, who was bombed last weekend in Oakland, a day after Lincecum tossed seven shutout frames in a 3-0 Giants win at St. Louis.
With the victory, Lincecum solidified his position as the Giants “stopper,” i.e. the pitcher you turn when you absolutely need a win or to halt a losing streak.
Lincecum has become even more of a complete pitcher this season. In 2007, the righty authored a 7-5 record and 4.00 ERA with basically a dazzling fastball and an overhand curve. This season he’s introduced a darting slider and criminal change-up to his repertoire.
All that makes the recent news that the Giants brain-trust is seriously contemplating a move to an unheard of six-man starting rotation all that more disheartening.
Skyphone’s ‘Avellaneda’ soars
SKYPHONE
Avellaneda
(Rune Grammofon)
By Erik Morse
The Danish trio of Thomas Holst, Keld Dam Schmidt, and Mads Bodker has deepened the exotic secrets first whispered in its 2004 debut, Fabula (Rune Grammofon), with a new quiet masterpiece, Avellaneda.
Possibly a titular reference to the small port city in Argentina or the aristocratic family for which the town is named, Skyphone’s Avellaneda seems to recall nothing less than the cryptic landscapes and genealogies of Jorge-Luis Borges. In name alone, tracks like “Schweizerhalle,” “Quetzal Cubicle,” and “Yetispor” present odd, polyglot taxonomies of old Europe and the New World. While the grab bag of gizmos in Avellaneda – glockenspiels, toy pianos, analog synths – and field sounds are all found in the band’s debut, the manner in which they are layered together vertically in the former rather than stitched laterally in the latter liberates the space of each track, allowing the sounds to tarry and erect their own internal rhythms.
This is a great leap forward in Holst and co.’s working method. As a Scandinavian relative to artists like Alog, Phonophani, and Kim Hiorthøy, Skyphone’s achievements in lush, ambient soundtracking are not without referents, but in demurring to the post-dance emulsions of glitchy beats or po-mo production, Avellaneda puts the group in a sonic universe somewhere between Debussy and Eno. In fact, the conjurations of moody bliss and non-Western rhythms make the album a sequel of sorts to Eno’s 1975 classic Another Green World (EG). Deserving of all of the hype, Skyphone confirms why Scandinavia is still at the forefront of avant-garde electro-acoustic music.
Green, according to Brett Dennen
Singer-songwriter Brett Dennen has been getting a bunch of attention of late – appearing on Jay Leno among other late-night staples. He appears at the free Green Apple Festival show in Golden Gate Park on Sunday, April 20. Word had it he was a major-league recycler and composter, so I spoke to him in honor of Earth Day; here’s what he said.
SFBG: So you’re a pretty eco-conscious guy – would you say you make green music?
Brett Dennen: I guess the biggest reason is that it seems like the smartest thing to do, to invest in and live in a way that creates instead of destroys. Y’know, leave as little trace as possible. I don’t think it really inspires me on an artistic level – I don’t think I’m passionate about it in that way. It’s just something I’ve always lived with – it was the way I was raised. I grew up composting, recycling food scraps, recycling, walking, and riding a bike everywhere. It’s not like a cause I found – it doesn’t move me to write about it.
VERY FUNNY oil spill video
Okay, as afar as I can tell this is NOT a real interview, but an Australian TV skit. Still, it’s a really, really funny commentary on an oil spill.
Hot like Neu Wave Feminism
At the Femina Potens gallery, oil painter Alicia DeBrincat, photographer Rocksusto, and paper cut artist Lex McQuilkin take a fresh look at gender, sexuality, societal expectations and ethics in Neu Wave Feminism, a group show that opened April 5.
DeBrincat’s “Cultural Corset” series examines how women’s identities and societal expectations play out on the terrain of the body. She is interested in how American culture is simultaneously obsessed with the female body and repulsed by its natural form.
Her huge oil paintings portray female nudes with a stunning realism – breasts small and large, thighs puckered with cellulite, rounded bellies.
“The paint is applied with an attention to anatomical detail that both celebrates women’s bodies and references the leering voyeurism and minutely critical gaze that the female body encounters,” she writes in her artist statement.
Photographer Rocksuto has also taken a thematic approach to her work. In 2007, she embarked on A Photo a Day project, which explored a range of themes, such as population, foreclosures, sexual ethics, trust fund nihilism, and chickens.
This year, she’s embarked on A Photo a Month project, where she’s limited her thematic exploration to gender roles, sexual ethics, and religion.
Lex McQuilkin’s swirling, delicate paper cuts explore gender and masculinity from queer perspective. Her latest series, Good Old Boys, explores the precariousness of masculinity and its portrayal.
Gender and sexuality — not tired!
Neu Wave Feminism
April 5 – 27, 2008
Gallery hours: Thurs-Sun, 12-6 p.m.
Femina Potens Gallery
2199 Market, SF
415-864-1558
Perspective on the ‘bitter’ campaigns
By Bruce B. Brugmann
I liked the perspective of Bob Herbert in his April l5 Op Ed column in the New York Times.
Senator Obama, he wrote, ” has spent his campaign trying to dodge the race issue, which in America is trying to dodge the wind. So when he fielded the question in San Francisco, he didn’t say: ‘A lot of folks are not with me because I’m black–but I’m trying to make my case and bring as many around as I can.’
“Instead, he fell back on a tortured response that was demonstrably incorrect…In his San Francisco comments, Senator Obama fouled up when he linked frustration and bitterness over economic hard times with America’s
romance with guns and embrace of religion. But, please, let’s get a grip. What we ought to be worked up about is the racism that still prevents some people from giving a candidate a fair chance because of skin color.”
Herbert also made a key point: “this toxic issue is at the core of the Clinton camp’s relentless effort to persuade superdelegates that Senator Obama ‘can’t win’ the White House. It’s the only weapon left in the Clintons’ depleted armory.”
The race is over. Obama has won. And I will never feel the same about the Clintons.
Click here to read Bob Herbert’s NY Times article Some Perspective on ‘Bitter’.
I’m back
After an epic five-week trip to Bolivia and Peru, I’m back manning the news desk here at the Guardian and trying to catch up on what’s happening. And it seems the biggest things that have changed in my absence are my perspective and energy levels.
The Republicans in Sacramento and Mayor Gavin Newsom here in San Francisco are continuing to push draconian cuts to government services rather than having the courage to challenge the mindless “no new taxes” mantra and have the wealthy pay their fair share. And neither the Democrats in Sacramento or Washington D.C., nor the Board of Supervisors here, seem to be doing much to challenge this race to the bottom. It’s not that they don’t understand. In the last two days, we’ve had Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi and Assembly member Loni Hancock in for endorsement interviews, and they powerfully sound the message that something needs to change and they’re willing to work for it. But with the labor unions distracted by infighting, Democratic politicians battling one another (such as Carole Migden and Mark Leno, who we have the unfortunate task of deciding between for our endorsements that come out April 30), the mainstream media both smaller and more trivial, and many other factors stacked against our species finally getting wise to the problems we face, it looks like an uphill battle.
Does all this make me want to flee back to South America? No, it makes me want to renew the fight for truth and justice. How about you?
Ammiano: Popemobile goes green
Today’s Ammianoliner:
Popemobile goes green. Runs on Hail Marys.
(From the home telephone answering service of Sup. Tom Ammiano on April 18, 2008.) B3
Swooning over alt-folkie Kate Maki
A recent performance by Kate Maki in her home province of Ontario.
By Todd Lavoie
Front porch romantics and summer sunset swooners, set your heartstrings a-flutter in anticipation. Canadian alt-country-folk songstress Kate Maki will bring her enchanting “No Depression” melodies to Café du Nord Thursday, April 24, opening for weirdly wonderful Giant Sand mastermind Howe Gelb. Trust me: if you’ve ever tumbled weak-kneed and flustered over the down homey charms of a blue highway-rambling singer-songwriter in your lifetime, you’ll fall hard for Maki. I certainly have.
Boasting an arrestingly gentle, plainspoken delivery, Maki fashions impressive levels of pull-up-a-chair-and-stay-awhile intimacy out of uncluttered arrangements and emotionally direct lyricism. A cross between Suzanne Vega and Iris DeMent, perhaps, though I do detect threads of similarity with Gillian Welch – albeit with considerably less of that tattered black-and-white Dorothea Lange photo vibe going on here – as well as with fellow Ontarian Sarah Harmer.
It’s immediate, familiar-as-an-old-friend kind of stuff – and yet it’s all quite stimulating and at times even challenging. It ain’t easy to craft deceptively simple, homespun little charmers like those on Maki’s recently released American debut, On High (Confusion Unlimited/Ow Om) – a lot of folks try and fail, often out of succumbing to cliché or insisting upon self-perceived limitations of the genre. Not an issue here: this 27-minute introduction is loaded with forcefully understated little wonders. Can’t wait to hear ’em live.
Queer Prom, darlings
Who needs “Carrie” when you’ve got Mary? Those fabulously scandalous Sisters of Perpetual indulgence are at it again, hosting a Queer Prom this Sat/19 to raise funds to combat the proposed LBAM aerial spraying. Theme: Leather and Lace. Location: San Francisco’s wackiest techno leather “ball” room (get it?), the Powerhouse. Chaperones: Porn stars. Dress code: No one will remain clothed for long, sweetie, it’s a Queer Prom duh.
Hell yes the punch will be spiked
Queer Prom: Leather and Lace
Sat/19, 9pm-Midnite, $5-15 sliding scale
The Powerhouse
1347 Folsom
www.powerhouse-sf.com