Johnny Angel Wendell Archives — Page 3 of 4 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Short cuts

May 29, 2013

Lots of stuff in news worth looking at today.

We bag on Texas and their generally idiotic governor a lot but recently, he and they did the right thing–under pressure from Texas’ parents, the state is going to slash the number of “No Child Left Behind” tests imposed on school children. NCLB is one of the worst educational ideas ever implemented. Teaching to the test teaches nothing and when its been shown in considerably poorer and smaller nations that drilling and rote are worthless, America should take stock. Good for Rick. That he sort of reversed Bush’s policy (whose actual aim was to enrich a family member, of course) showed some stones.

John McCain snuck over Syria’s border recently to meet with anti-Assad rebels. As the embargo on sending said rebels military aid is ending anyway, it’s hard to say what the purpose of the trip was. As usual, the military’s “worst pilot in history” was advocating more arms, more involvement and naturally, more bloodshed. One would think that after the particularly disasterous embrace of arming an enemy’s opposition in the 80’s and 90’s, the US would have learned, but as Senator McCain has never met a conflict he didn’t like (or that didn’t enrich his friends). no surprise.

Newsweek is for sale again. Its purchase in the first place, says money heavyweight Barry Diller “was a mistake”. It is operating at a loss, even online. Fact is, online content in a “general news” format is very hard to monetize. It’s even hard to monetize in specialty and local forms, but easier. This magazine’s day is over. C’est la vie.

More later!

Hasta La Vista, Michele Bachmann

May 29, 2013

Michele Bachmann, unsuccessful 2012 presidential candidate, subject of FBI inquiry, Congressman and wife of “Pray The Gay Away (Except For Mine)” Marcus Bachmann, has decided to call it a day.Not seeking re-election in 2014. She says losing her seat isn’t the cause. Sure.

An undistinguished rep from a safely gerrymandered district, she was the soul of the Evangelical Right for a short spell, which is likely her future occupation. Now martyred out of Congress, she can parlay her exile into every Fundamentalist yapper’s dream, not working and getting paid for it.

This one’s for you, Chellie:http://johnnyangelwendell.bandcamp.com/track/crazy-eyes

Sarah Palin = REO Speedwagon

May 28, 2013

One of the more remarkable components of the so-called “Right Wing Entertainment Complex” (Fox/AM Radio/a gazillion reactionary websites) is the agonizing and complete predictability of its content. Barack Obama is the most evil, traitorious, illegal usurper, Muslim, Kenyan Socialist dictator alive and the besieged heroes of American patriotism are outnumbered and will be outgunned when Obama seizes their weapons, Obamacare will kill every member of your family assuming they haven’t committed suicide after it bankrupted them, Benghazi was worse than 9/11, Iraq and the 1962 Mets combined and the IRS only hates the brave and fierce Republican Party. Who are the only ones that can keep you safe against the fifth column of baby-killing Hollywood liberals that will brainwash your son into marrying a barnyard animal.

(Also remarkable is however much you try to lampoon their cray-cray, they’re inevitably more out there than even a parodist can dream of).

Flip on any of these mediums and this is what you get and if I know this in advance, so do their fans and they like it that way. Like a soothing wash of a New Age mixtape in the foyer of a yoga studio.Except that the whoosh of the mixtape is familiar in form and not content.

Nope, the real parallel between the RW Entertainment Complex and its musical equivalent would be the aging classic rock dinosaurs of the 70’s and 80’s and the state fair/shitty casino/low rent rally circuit. Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, the battery of Sunday morning news show dildolatry and especially the Mega MILF of Moosery Sarah Palin are completely and totally identical to the slog it out warriors of faceless corporate FM rock–Foreigner, Journey, Styx, Nightranger and REO Speedwagon.

Think about it–what do Kevin Cronin (REO), Mick Jones (Foreigner, not the Clash’s Mick Jones) and whomever is left in the other bands do for a living? They mount the boards and play their hits–period. And vamoose off to the next hellhole whose main fiscal purpose at this point is alimony, child support and back taxes. 12 tunes, maybe, paycheck and screw. They try not to think about their better days, one imagines, and just do their jobs–which consist now of rote recitation. In that, they are exactly like Palin or Glenn Beck–who hit all the talking points, massage the prejudices of their chosen audience and remind them that only they understand their plight (and then batter them with ads for merchandise and books). Like peas in a pod.

Except that at one time, these bands were cranking out hit songs and even if you don’t like their hits, writing a hit is hard to do. Regurgitating “the best of Joe McCarthy” only replacing “Communists” with “Muslims” or “libs” is all these verbal midgets need do to cash in. “Hot Blooded” or “Don’t Let Him Go” or “Babe” may sound trite and brittle and overwrought to some, but they had to be concocted, recorded with care and sung in tune. That is a hell of a lot more than these repulsive mountebanks on the right are capable of.

(And there is, of course, the gent that straddles both worlds with ham-handed, blockheaded glory, the Nuge himself–except he’s third on the bill beneath REO and Styx this summer and is but a mere guest on FOX at best. Sorry, Ted).

Lastly, the rock bands who are on rickety stages this summer outside Lincoln NE or Bakersfield or Dothan Alabama next to livestock and ferris wheels are fucking honest men and women. They travel endless hours for vastly less pay than they used to get. They have seen their expected annuities disappear via digital downloading and YouTube. They look into the smaller crowds and see their reflections in the once fist pumping but now worn looking fans. And they still have enough pride to deliver the goods, because that’s what they do–not chauffered from their expensive mansions to TV and radio studios to spew out the party line that has been focus group and poll tested to perfection. And then home to mansion. I may not like the dino bands but I respect ’em–I have no respect for these reactionary carny barkers at all.

Justice For Trayvon — maybe?

May 28, 2013

Summer’s here and the time is right for neither dancing nor fighting in the streets down in Florida. George Zimmerman–accused of second degree murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin--is about to go on trial for same.

For the 7 people in America that don’t know the story, On February 26th, 2012, Martin, an African American teenager, left his dad’s house to go to the store to buy an iced tea and a bag of Skittles. Zimmerman, a self proclaimed but not actual member of the local Neighborhood Watch, started following Martin by car and then foot–for reasons not ever fully explained anywhere. What happened next is the crux of the trial, but what is known is that a police dispatcher suggested to Zimmerman not to follow Martin, Martin did phone a girlfriend to tell her he was being followed and Zimmerman did shoot Martin dead.

That Martin was unarmed and did not approach an armed man that shot him first would tend to indicate that this is an open and shut case. But because Florida has a “stand your ground” law, that will be Zimmerman’s defense, even though he has waived the right to a hearing before a judge on whether or not that statute applies–Zimmerman’s attorneys feel that the “stand your ground” defense is better argued in front of a jury than a judge and so off to trial they go.

Zimmerman’s defense got some rather bad news right from the git-go. Judge Debra Nelson has ruled that Zimmerman’s attorneys won’t be able to mention Trayvon Martin’s drug use, suspension from school and past fighting during opening statements (as Zimmerman himself knew none of this as he was following Martin and Martin isn’t on trial, Zimmerman is). This is an enormous blow to Zimmerman’s defense.

Why would something as utterly irrelevant as Martin’s pot smoking (pot makes whom more violent, exactly?) suspensions from school (not at the time) and fighting (common among teens) be an issue when Martin had no criminal record? Jeez, Louise, I wonder what on earth they would use such information for?

Let’s cut the shit once and for all here–Zimmerman’s defense begins and ends on the idea that Trayvon Martin was the stereotypical caraicature of an African American teenaged male. A dangerous, hip hop lovin’, chronic-huffin’, pants on the ground gang bangin’ thug. Which means that any “clear thinking person” would be terrified of same and have the right to ventilate same by firearm.

In short—1)George Zimmerman, like any sane person, would be scared of this kid and 2) Being scared really sucks and makes you feel awful, so 3) Of course it’s OK to shoot the kid. In the minds of the terrified reactionary, “being frightened” justifies “standing your ground”, even when you are chasing someone, not standing anywhere.

Fact is, Trayvon could have been 7” tall and weighed 400 pounds and out on parole and Zimmerman still wouldn’t have a case. But because he and his attorneys are banking on at least a few people in the jury being scared ninnies, that’s the defense. And as Zimmerman found out when he raised a ton of money for his “defense”, this kind of thinking is endemic to people that react to information as opposed to absorbing it.

That America’s “conservatives” lined up behind Zimmerman in near lockstep speaks volumes about the tie that binds them.

Armed man shoots unarmed man that he was clealry stalking. Can’t get more cut and dried than that. But when the victim is part of a population segment that has another population segment pooping its Depends, it is not. This is gonna be an interesting, if possibly revolting summer in the USA.

To The Valiant That Served

May 27, 2013

Let’s take a moment out of our day to salute the men and women that gave all in defense of our homeland. Memorial Day’s purpose is just that (although its actual origins may surprise you).

For me, the people that had it the hardest were those who, after agonizing reflection, realized that their war effiorts were best served by not serving at all. Like:

Richard Bruce Cheney–VP–he got five student deferments until successfully impregnating his bride. Would have been more than willing to slog through Vietnam’s jungles, but said “I have other priorities”.

Willard “Mitt” Romney–sat out Vietnam War and opted for the brutal battle along the Seine in Paris. As Paris itself had been at peace (minus demonstrations) for over 20 years at the time, his religious mission must have been a lot more satisfying than getting his magical underpants ventilated by VC landmines.

Theodore Nugent–The Motormouth City Madman decided it would be wiser to remain in Michigan rather than the Mekong Delta and spent a week or so shitting himself to stay out of draft. Also used student deferments and has of late raised the “I was making too much money as a musician at the time to waste my prime years”. Now that’s patriotism.

George W. Bush/Dan Quayle: America’s shores protected by these national guardsmen in “champagne units”, that is the scions of the powerful keeping themselves bulletproof via nepotism. The former found his time in the NatGuard too trying and appears to have disappeared in his last year there. Playing cards in Alabama being mentally and physically exhausting and all.

Ronald Reagan: Single handedly won the “Battle Of Culver City” in WW2. And believed and spoke of his war adventures as if they weren’t on film but real. And this is an icon.

Lest you think I am picking on the chickenhawk crew that cheerleads slaughters they have no intention of being a part of, let’s take time out to thank some really brave politicians named Hillary, John Edwards and John Kerry, whose votes on Iraq made solely with presidential ambition in mind led to the worst debacle in American history. And to Obama’s presidency.

Last but not least, a salute to the fearless Internet Infantry who brave thumb sprains and carpal tunnel to valiantly back America’s war efforts from the dingey bunker known as “mom’s basement”. You will never be forgotten, assuming anyone remembers you in the first place.

Happy holidays and drive safe!

Very Strange Bedfellows

May 26, 2013

If you stop and think about it for a moment, Memorial Day Weekend and Gay Pride weekends have a lot in common.

Both came about to commemorate serious and life-changing events for millions of people.

Now, not really about either. Memorial Day, except to veterans and families of the deceased, is the “beginning of summer”. Boat on lake and barbeques. Politicians may pay homage to fallen soldiers but it’s really Labor Day’s bookend to most. Gay Pride is now a city to city franchise of a sort, kind of a traveling mega party. Which make sense in both cases–as conscription ended in the 1970’s, the professional military represents a smaller and smaller segment of the American public (so much for shared sacrifice). And even though Stonewall was less than 45 years ago, a gay or lesbian kid now–even in the heart of the Bible Belt–could never imagine how secretive people had to be, even in the “enlightened 60’s”.

It isn’t a bad thing. It’s human nature. Just strange how two supposedly disparate events are so similar.

This Ain’t The Summer Of Love

May 26, 2013

Recently, I came across this great series from 1995 on YouTube, “Dancing In The Streets–the History of Rock and Roll”. Ten episodes from the R/B meets Country birth of the music all the way to hip hop. Really well done, excepting some glaring errors (whomever wrote the Ramones segment knew nothing of the band) and omissions (not an Elton John fan, but the guy was a recording artist of enormous success, ditto Rod Stewart and no MC5 or New York Dolls). As it is television and not music, the colorful parts of rock’s history got a lot of play.

One entire segment was devoted to psychedelia. Was great, too–bookended by the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” and “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”. Naturally, there was a lot of attention devoted to San Fran and its bands and the importance of the City in rock and roll. Which can’t be denied. San Francisco–from the mid 50’s to the mid 60’s–was America’s creative crucible. The Beats of North Beach and the hippies of the Haight are now cultural signifiers and as the program pointed out, they didn’t happen in San Francisco by accident.

As the Airplane’s Paul Kantner points out, San Fran is a seaport and seaports tend to be where the collision of disparate ideas from around the world makes new ones. What’s not in the piece is the real reason the Beats flourished in SF. In New York, cabaret licenses were hard to obtain in the 50’s, in SF, they weren’t. Therefore, a city with a population 1/10th the size of New York’s could compete with New York. As is also said in the show, all of SF’s old ballrooms were ideal for Kesey’s acid tests and the laissez faire attitude of the City wasn’t entirely due to its open-mindedness, but simply that San Fran had no idea what was coming in 1966 and 1967.

At the end of the show (which featured Jerry Garcia’s last interview and he was good naturedly hilarious in it), I wondered if in this day and age, San Francisco could ever be the giant of the zeitgeist again. Took me less than a half a minute to realize that the answer is a resounding “no”.

Every factor that figures in to a locale becoming a spawning ground for the arts no longer exists in SF. Artists need two things above all else–lots of space and cheap rent. An “artist” that works a 50 hour a week day job to pay the bare bones of rent, food and heat hasn’t got much left by way of time and energy. If the same artist is in a Mission one bedroom (and shared), there’s no elbow room. Nowhere to rehearse one’s craft and nowhere to paint or draw without getting up in someone else’s space.

That’s to say nothing of a “night life scene” where the price of two drinks and a cover could buy lunch five days a week in another city.

Don’t hand me the idea that the young software and PNS developers are somehow the same as Jack Kerouac, Jerry, Janis and Grace. Yeah–they’re all young (not now, of course). But conflating commerce with art that no one thought would make any money in the first place because “that’s what kids do now” is jive. They’re opposites. Artists and their fans are messy and free and by their nature hard to control, businessmen and politicians are soulmates. Catering to the very wealthy is a slam dunk to the Ed Lee’s and Nancy Pelosi’s of the world because the wealthy contribute to them.

Don’t get me wrong–the 60’s weren’t utopia and the hordes of homeless people that have flocked to SF since have become an almost intractable problem.

San Francisco is the country’s mosy physically beautiful city. It has a long history of upheaval (culturally and seismically). But in our time, Detroit, Erie or Buffalo are becoming just as likely if not more so to be where the arts boom next. They’re cheap and with the Internet, an artist’s work can go anywhere when he or she don’t have to. Fact is, plain old venality is doing SF in. Pandering to the few at the expense of the many means that the fertile underside of the (actual) creative class gets priced right off the peninsula. All that’s left is the safe and staid that San Fran has thumbed its nose at forever. Sad.

Because they’re assholes

May 25, 2013

Yesterday, Business Insider, the bastion of leftist socialism, reported that the Republican Party’s negatives are polling at an all time high. 59% of the public disapproves of the GOP. That number has only been this high once before.

The piece and a companion on Yahoo attributes the dissatisfaction to over-reach on the IRS/Benghazi issues mostly. Also the phenomena of “gerrymandering as electoral poison”, where congress-people from safe districts reflect their constituents’ views and those constituents are way out of America’s mainstream. Logical reasons, all of them.

I disagree. How many people really follow these scandals that closely? 40% of the people that thought Benghazi was a major issue can’t even find it on a map and they care about it. Imagine the people that hear “Benghazi” and think of the actor with the similar name or the tiger with the similar name. Most people don’t care at all about these matters, so why would they dislike the GOP that much?

The reason is painfully obvious and is not a surprise. But no one wants to say it aloud. I will, though–while many Republicans are indeed wonderful people (and relatives), most of them in 2013 are just plain assholes.

They’re assholes. The kind of unpleasant, red-eyed, mouth-foaming obsessives whose every thought centers around partisan politics and how every news item can be determined as good or bad. Not “true” or “false”, mind you. And this monomaniacal focus means that dealing with them in person is a drag and on the Internet, a nightmare. Any buzz word, anything they heard in their hermetically-sealed-off-from-reality echo chamber is barfed back onto the rest of us in a technicolor spew of incomprehensible talking points. Conversations with them have to be carefully parsed so as not to set them off. That may be OK when dealing with a child with an emotional issue, but these are technically adults. Who wants to self-censor everything lest they get a torrent of twittery back?

It’s like the guy on the bus that hasn’t bathed in a month. No one wants to sit near him. And the guy on the bus may be a great guy. But at that moment, he stinks. That’s how Republicans have become on the issue of politics. Keep them away from the topic and they may be OK, but because so many of them live for the stimulating rush of “telling off the libs”, they’re basically, well, assholes.

The worst part of this is that their hapless and cowardly adversaries, the Democratic Party, now need do almost nothing to win elections. All a Democrat has to be is “not them” in a fair part of the country to be competitive. Smile a lot, seem reasonable and speak calmly even as you do awful shit (see “drones”) or nothing (see “Gitmo” or “non prosecution of Wall Street”). (See Obama, Barack).

This was not the case in my youth. Republicans were generally the thoughful, prudent careful ones and even if they were still Tory-like, they weren’t aggressive about it and saw the other person’s point of view. Today’s Republican politician and their enablers bellow out inane Heritage Foundation horseshit and with a patina of smug contempt for the uncoverted, not unlike the above it all hippies post-Altamont. Their leaders and pundits wonder what might win people over to them? Simple. Stop catering to and being assholes. After that, you’ll be fine.

Talk Radio’s Funny Secret

May 24, 2013

Most folks do one thing for a living and are happy that way. I’m not. I need a lot of challenges that change all the time. I have a lot of different occupations, acting, playing music, writing and talk radio host on an LA station.Of the latter, I knew nothing about the genre at all when I got into it 10 1/2 years ago. Never listened to it and still don’t. News stations occasionally, but generally, the sound in the car is music.I found that there are a lot of people that just love talk radio and in all walks of life. Most remarkably, lots of fellow musicians. They’re addicted to it, the raving and the story-telling, the “painting a picture with words”. And many talk show hosts are “lifers” that dread being “on the beach“. It’s a massive rush to keep spieling, as Mike Watt would say and it is a rare skill. As I have never had a problem freely offering an opinion (asked for or not) or at a loss for words, it was a natural fit.Thing is, talk radio is really not at all what it appears to be. On the surface, it is the voice of outrage, the sound of angry people, villagers rising up with pitchforks to the sound of their leader’s voice, pure populism. And that’s what many successful hosts do. They represent for the little person–or so it seems.

In reality, no. If one listens closely to what 95% of talk hosts actually say, it’s fairly clear that they are not challenging the audience’s ideas, but bolstering them for the most part. Picking a common enemy and railing on same for hours–the voices inside the heads of the listener are congruent with what the show host is saying–he or she isn’t even articulating it half the time but spitting out time worn cliches.Ask yourself–when was the last time you heard a talk show host take a completely unexpected turn? As almost all news/talk is rightist, when was the last time you heard a private entity (not owned by a liberal) railed on? The government is fair game, but as right-wing Americans have been trained since diapers to hate the government (while mooching off same), who cares? Or suggested that nationalism (ours and the Muslims) is the root cause of terrorism. Or that the NRA are conmen. Or…….Also, the hatred of the government seems to abate on the airwaves five minutes after a Republican is elected. Which makes sense as a lot of talk shows hosts see themselves as indispensable parts of the GOP’s machine.This isn’t news to anyone, really. But the idea that the talk show host is the valiant bearer of the torch of freedom is pure fantasy. When was the last time a talk host was hauled off the air by the government for saying anything? Yes, profanity brings high fines. But all action against talk hosts comes from the public, generally in the form of embargoes or from stations afraid of a backlash fomented by the same public.

That the genre is getting beaten up on badly of late has a few proximate causes. An aging base of fans is one reason. Another is the sheer tedium of predictability–a road trip from Portland Me to Portland OR would be about 4 days long and there is almost no chance you’d ever hear anything on AM that’s different one city from another. That means dullness and laziness and copycatting,

The irony is that when AM talk stations–supposedly moribund–go back to their roots and go local and social and personal, they thrive. In California, KMJ in Fresno and KFI in Los Angeles are the prime examples. Limited national babble and lots of local means the hosts can’t lean on talking points or be completely predictable (as the audience is right there in the center of the topics, not distant from DC). It helps that in the latter station’s case, their morning and afternoon shows have hosts whose politics are wildly unpredictable. KFI is the nation’s #1 talk station and since KMJ became privately owned, its ratings have soared. What does that tell you?

Yes, saying shit on the air to piss people off on purpose sounds like it would work, but it never does. Conversely, kissing the audience’s ass for three hours at a time is just as bad. If talk really were the voice of the people, it would be impossible to suss what it would do, just as it’s impossible to figure out what people (us) do. Simple, huh?

Phobic Phatheads

May 24, 2013

No issue in America has had as abrupt a public opinion turn as gay rights. Once a third rail that could never be touched by politicians lest the juggernaut of America’s homophobes land on them, gay rights are now on their way to be accepted for what they actually are–basic human rights. Same sex marriage polls favorably by almost 3-2, ten years go, that figure was reversed. It’s easy to see why–as more gays and lesbians come out, more friends, neighbors, coworkers and family realize the plainly obvious–put a human face on an abstraction and the abstraction disappears. When it’s your kid or workmate, you get mighty angry when they’re attacked.

Nothing ever changes completely that fast, though. The two major stories of today–18 year old Floridian Kaitlyn Hunt’s refusal of a plea bargain in exchange for charges of sexual abuse of a minor (a 15 year old female) and the Boy Scouts of America’s decision to let openly gay kids join–are examples of the residue of obstinate, fundamentalist lunacy when it comes to the issue of same sex relationships, especially those of teens.

In the former’s case, Ms Hunt has been in an ongoing relationship with a younger girl for over a year, which began when both of them were minors. According to Hunt’s attorney, the younger girl’s parents were indeed aware of this at the time and seem to have waited until Hunt achieved majority before pressing charges which are two felony counts of “lewd and lascivious battery on a child 12 to 16” .

The local DA offered a plea deal of house arrest for a few years, which doesn’t sound too extreme–but part of the deal means Hunt becomes a registed sex offender, which affects the rest of her life. Hunt (no fool she) refused this.

That the relationship has been ongoing and that the “victim’s” parents picked the date they did to press charges indicates that they are vindictive and clueless. Their anger is really aimed at their own daughter because as fundamentalists, a lesbian child is a clear rebuke to their beliefs. The narrative of “older girl as seducer” is comforting, but ultimately absurd. This was and is a consensual relationship between peers and one set of parents cannot accept it and are willing to ruin another person’s life. It never occurs to them that in doing this, they may well ruin their own daughter’s faith and trust in them. But when you have been thinking inside the box your whole life, this never arises.

The case of the BSA is simple. Pressure from the rest of the world circa 2013 plus some really ugly moments for them has dragged them into the modern world. Naturally, the yammering toads on America’s right flank are going predictably bonkers. One, because many of them do believe their own bullshit, two, because this is lucrative (“only we can protect you, send us money and we’ll show you how”) and three because when one major article of faith is obliterated, all of them are vulnerable. If gay marriage, open gay relationships between teens and openly gay Scouts are acceptable, what else falls? People may wonder why these liars should be heeded at all and there goes the scam!

The saddest part of this is that lots of people get hurt badly to keep this backward-thinking idiocy afloat. Make no mistake, this is idiotic–the idea that accepting gay people is going to lead to sodomy-filled orgies in the streets is identical to the fear baiting of the 1960’s where “the blacks are going to marry your daughter”. Which rarely happened. One KKK becomes another–the Ku Klux Klan of the bygone era becomes the Krazy Klown Kult of today. Except that the latter has a formal title–the Republican Party.

Therefore, for this madness to end, the Republicans have got to tell the fundies to stow it. Not only is this nonsense ugly, it could very well doom them to extinction. As today’s birthday boy once sang in the 60’s, the times are a changing. And in reality, Kaitlyn Hunt should be a hero to the GOP for doing what they believe is the greatest thing any American can do. Stand up to government tyranny. Unless it’s theirs, of course.

Enough already

May 23, 2013

106

The gruesome and sordid attack in Woolwich, UK has alarmed and horrified that nation and a fair amount of the world. An unprovoked beheading by cleaver of the 25 year old Afghanistan war vet has stunned London and in the wake of the killing, reprisals have been carried out against Muslims in the UK as well. There have been heroes in this story as well, but it is impossible to imagine that anything would balance off this lunatic brutality.

As has become almost rote in the wake of these events, both sides in this battle are already fully engaged. I don’t mean the British military and local terrorists. I mean the dildos and dildettes of the Net, who regard every news story no matter what it is as vindication or repudiation of their cause.

When it became clear that the attackers were Muslims, you could almost hear the Pamela Geller’s and Steven Emerson’s of the world climaxing in sexual ecstasy over the intertubes. Their “opposition”, the people that trot out Tim McVeigh as the “white Christian terrorist” by way of “everyone does it” when these attacks occur were silent–they’d lost this one. Better luck next time, I suppose.

Which isn’t quite as sickening as the violence itself, but shit: What is wrong with these people? A dad had his head lopped off and for all the expressed sorrow by Islamophobes, they were actually pretty jazzed. Whether they admit it or not, what’s one dead dude you never met compared to the thrill of rubbing it in some “dumb lib’s” face? You were right and what’s better than that? Nothing!

It’s just as bad when it’s some white supremacist asshole and the “I told you so” palaver comes from the left.

Thing is, the idea that “my team won, yay!” over this story and other negates the painfully obvious. This is a complex issue. It doesn’t boil down to “see, I told you the Islamofascists were crazy/No, they aren’t”. Imperialism, propping up bogus sheikdoms, coups, invasions, nationalism–a melange of those plus the asymetricality of terrorism is complicated. Nobody wants to delve too deeply into the actual cause. They just wanna be the “right person at the water cooler this morning”. To which I say enough already. Really.

Weiner Rises!

May 23, 2013

Midnight Wednesday, Anthony Weiner–who resigned from Congress two years ago because of a “sexting” scandal–has announced he will run for mayor of New York City. He will enter a crowded field to replace Michael “Big Gulps Are Murder” Bloonberg.

As he has a boatload of cash and 100% name recognition, he will be a force to be reckoned with. Plus, his main opponent, Christine Quinn has serious personal issues of her own. New York politics and politicians being what they are, from Walker and LaGuardia to Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani, means that this will be very amusing to the rest of the country.

Weiner, if you recall, sent out bare chested (among other things) pics to females via text a few years ago. That was the proximate cause of the uproar behind his resignation. It can be debated whether this was really the reason or not–Weiner went after the insurance industry with an awful lot of gusto. And, like fellow New Yorker Eliot Spitzer, he paid for it–screw with the mega-wealthy while you are playing games on the Internet or with hookers and they will snag you.

The difference between Weiner and Spitzer is while Spitzer (a lawman) was breaking the law and having actual sex, Weiner was doing neither. For all of the hand-wringing and ridicule Weiner brought on himself and his wife, he did absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, he did absolutely nothing at all, because sexting and cyber sex are not sex. At all. By any stretch of the definition of sex.

Minus actual contact between parties, there is no sex. Weiner could not impregnate the women he was sexting nor could he directly provide them sexual pleasure and most importantly, if this is sex, when has sexting ever led to an STD? If there is no sexual transmission, there is no sex. The objection that he was indiscreet stands (no pun), but if there was any real unhappiness over these non-existent trysts, where is it?

Cyber sex is no more sex than a strip club or porn is sex or for that matter, flirting is sex. Because that’s all cybersex really is, flirtation. And for all the noise this nonsense generated, Huma Abedin (Mrs. Weiner) never left him–it is entirely possible that she sees this for what it is–nothing. She may even like the idea that her husband is a popular figure among women and that when it comes to the actual act, it’s her and he. (So far as we know).

Weiner, like Spitzer and even the pitiful John Edwards, were held up as pariahs because of their dalliances. But the truth is, they enraged the powers that be, from hammering Wall Street to suggesting that there are “two Americas” where the lesser one gets screwed a lot harder than anything in A Weiner’s provocative prose and photos. As the voters of South Carolina just sent back a cheater whose actual behavior is a hundred times worse than Bony Tony’s was, maybe this idiocy can finally be put to rest once and for all, but I wouldn’t count on it.

For No God’s Sake

May 22, 2013

The nightmarish aftermath of the Moore, Oklahoma EF-5 tornado is in rebuilding and rebounding mode. People are digging out of the mess. Survivors located. Businesses re-opening.

And the stories emanating from the Prairie are running the gamut. From heart warming to predictably dire. The human spirit seems both undaunted and inexplicable.

But because the world we live in now has around the clock news cycles and a plethora of channels devoted to same, sometimes the mavens of media reveal themselves to be a sorry lot. So was the case of Wolf Blitzer–a CNN talking head of much experience–and his interview with a local named Rebecca Vitsmun whose response to a question posed by Blitzer threw him.

Blitzer asked Vitsmun if she thanked the Lord for presumably sparing her life and that of her baby. She replied (nervously) that she didn’t as she was an atheist, quickly adding that she didn’t blame people that did.

It was quick and she was good humored about it. But there’s something really rancid about Blitzer’s question. The subtext isn’t theological or even sociological. It’s bigotry–Oklahoma is a deeply religious state with an enormous Evangelical community, so Blitzer assumed without asking that this woman must be one of those people.

This is no different than asking someone with an Irish surname what beer they drink, or a Mexican their favorite recipe for salsa or any number of stereotypes. The presumption that this woman is religious without asking (did the same question arise in New Jersey after Sandy?) pigeonholes Oklahomans as one-dimensional fanatics.

If you are a person over a certain age (40 say), ask yourself if newsmen asked these questions in our long gone youths. They didn’t. It would have been seen as trivial, leading and out of place. But because our culture has been “Tebowed” to death by loud public declarations of fealty to the Lord, this kind of piffle is not only manistream, it’s encouraged.

The moment passed, but it seems to have ignited the standard back and forth over the existance of a God or not. Not the issue (although asking someone whose home was razed if they thank the presumable force behind the razing does seem a little absurd). Religion is a matter of faith, conjecture and wishful thinking/culture. The news is supposed to be facts. I know that Blitzer has to filibuster to fill space, but c’mon, man–everything has its place.

Week One

May 22, 2013

I took this gig a week ago—multiple posts a week, basically a news-based version of what I did for the SFBG in the 90’s. It’s already kicking my ass, as the old “PISSED” columns were once a week and based in music. This is way tougher and way more gratifying. Thanks.

But I have to admit that, as much as I love doing this gig, the last 7 days have brought back to me one of the most vexing and confounding quandaries I have ever pondered, one that’s baffled me for the last 30 years or so. One that is as bizarre as any aspect of human nature or psychology is anywhere, one that makes less sense than a Soundgarden lyric: Why on God’s green earth do people with barely a pot to piss in go to war with the same ferocity as the Navy Seals went after Bin Laden on behalf of their actual enemies, the wealthy?

In every blog post, be they Redmond’s, mine, Steve’s–whomever’s–the valiant members of the 82nd Chairborne Divison swing into battle on behalf of San Francisco’s–or the world’s–landed gentry. And always up against (and with corresponding vitriol) people that are pretty much exactly like them. The dispossessed are generally screwed by the powerful. Their allegiance should be to Occupy or even to moderate mainstream pols, but instead goes to the folks whose machinations lead to tax breaks and bailouts and favors for “the private sector” or directly fuck them over even worse by pricing them out of SF’s whopping 49 square miles and leading to exhorbitant rents or mortgages and as such, exodus to the wilds of Stockton, Modesto or Lodi.

You’d think that something as benign as rent control would have the full thumbs up from people who really don’t want to have to pull up stakes when their neighborhoods become the Pacific’s Manhattan. Or that the idea that the City make deals with the Facebook/Twitters of the world that means that the city’s tax base is strained rather than expanded would enrage them. But a cursory scan of these pages reveal that the commenter’s target for ire isn’t that whose boot is aimed straight at their asses, but at the handful of people bucking a trend that began in the early 80’s–people that point out (and mildly at that) that quality of living in SF is endangered when the City devolves into a playpen for rich software developers that don’t want to pay for the City’s perks. Actually, the inchoate rage is aimed at anyone that suggests that “all it takes is pulling oneself up by the bootstraps/poor people are lazy” is one of the most painfully naive worldviews in history.

Even more incredible is the reflexive defense of the non-renewable energy industry and their toxic twin (sorry Steve/Joe), the insurance business. As if by divine right and a Mt. Sinai-esque proclamation from Jehovah himself, these allegedly private (but completely government dependent entities) businesses may as well graze on the banks of the Ganges according to the website’s keyboard commandos, because these people “create wealth” and “give people good jobs”. Neither of those are true–the plutocrats of today remove wealth and as far as a job being a gift, if the gift in question tends to be a mind numbing, stress laden drag, where’s the return window? Wealth creation comes from “velocity of money” and a job is a contract fulfillment by a party that agrees to do something for money that the money bearer doesn’t wanna do.

But anything–anything that remotely resembles a rebuke aimed at today’s version of Jay Gould–gets an immediate slapdown from people whose endless online activity suggest marginal employment at best and a free ride from family or government at worst. The sheer silliness of this can never be understated, much like a wage earner hating a labor union and siding with the same boss that keeps their pay low, hours long and blood pressure astronomical from fear–but as anyone with a grasp of history recognizes, the terrified serf or Tory is always easy prey from a feudal lord or aristocrat. The demon you know beats the one you don’t. And so it goes.

My boss ain’t my friend. He or she is my boss. Kissing up to them isn’t gonna pry love, respect or (most importantly) cash out of them–me defending their avarice or skeeviness isn’t gonna make them regard me as an ally, but as a sucker. Doesn’t seem right that all that affection that you bestow upon them is never reciprocated, but as the great poet D Byrne said in 1980, “same as it ever was”.

Love, Johnny.

Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill Of The Lord God Oil

May 21, 2013

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning, I take a brutal boot-camp type class at the Hollywood YMCA here in LA. 45 minutes of sheer hell, but as these things are measured, surely worth it. I’ve been going for the last year and a half at the prodding and urging of my friend Stacy “Beano” Johnson, a lively and lovely woman and an ex-pat Okie from outside Tulsa. Yesterday, I walked in to find her strecthing and she seemed, as you would imagine, distraught. Her state is devastated. Despite downward revisions of casualties, at least 24 people were killed by the storm and the cost to insurers will be over 1 billion dollars. Luckily, none of her family or friends were among the dead or wounded.

Because we are 1) good friends and 2) I am by nature very inquisitve, I asked her if her people back there were putting some of the cause on this particularly violent and early in the year twister on man-made climate change. Beano turned kind of reddish and responded “hell yeah they do. And why wouldn’t they? Summers are getting hot as hell there and it feels like it’s headed to 120 degrees when we go back for vacation. I know damned well it is”.

She isn’t a scientist and is also a self-proclaimed “California liberal” (by way of disclaimer). But this is nothing new to anyone with kin in “flyover country”–my younger brother has been telling me for ten years that the farmers in “Tornado Alley” where he is in Western Illinois talk about the heating and extremes and the effect on crops–and, as Beano has said, why wouldn’t they? 2010 was one of the hottest years on record, another freak tornado devastated Joplin MO in 2011, a drought nearly destroyed the entire Midwest’s crop output last year and now this. Yes–this is where tornadoes happen and they have been happening forever. But scientists warned us that “weather patterns are going to get more extreme and more violent” as the planet heats up and yes it has, and according to 97% of said scientists, the culprit is fossil fuels.

That no peer-reviewed publication has said otherwise and that the only “scientists” that claim that the jury is out tend to be on oil company payrolls isn’t exactly a new revelation. But in Oklahoma, were any politician to claim that the destruction in Moore was because of man-made climate change, they’d be demolished in the next election like so many of the homes were a few days ago.

And why? Because oil is one of the state’s biggest employers, in refining and extraction and logistics. Koch is king in the Sooner State. And even though the average Okie is beginning to see the light, they are willing to look the other way when their livelihood is concerned–their jobs are, in a way, literally to die for.

It is disgusting and sad and vile, but as Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal could tell you, there’s no percentage to ever attack the mighty hand of the petro-oligarchy. Despite the cheapskate idiocy by British Petroleum that nearly ruined that state’s fishing and tourism industries, at no point did Jindal demand that BP pay for all the damage they’d wreaked.

And so the oil companies continue their version of bullshit, as their exec’s declare that to destroy the planet is “God’s will” and their paid shills in broadcasting claim zero culpability, the planet roasts and the people of Moore are wondering where they’re gonna live. And if you think this is just far fetched lefty hand wringing, even the almighty insurance industry knows climate change is real and are changing their rates accordingly. These people play the “life and death odds” for a living in actuarial tables. They know.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma’s two Republican senators are asking for the same federal aid that they denied to Jersey and New York, “God’s will” is again invoked (by America’s #1 publicity hound family) and no one dares speak the truth, that black gold and natural gas are slowly cooking its users and that these same people will battle renewable and clean power with every trick in their arsenal even as it makes their grand-kids lives sheer misery. You might say that the denial is as high as an elephant’s eye in O-kla-Homa……

Legalize it–All of it

May 20, 2013

Tomorrow is election day in Los Angeles and beyond the biggest race (for mayor between a pair of dull left of center bureaucrats of whom the less said is better), the most important ballot measures are three that, in varying degrees, are used to restrict the explosion and proliferation of Cannabis Clinics, “pot clubs”, “Chronicatoriums” (OK, I made that one up) or whatever you’d care to call them. Naturally, the most popular of these, according to polls, is the measure that would severely restrict the number of such venues as they are the classic NIMBY, filling up Southern California’s mini-malls with stoners disinclined to buy anything else from whatever shops are there. Which, regardless of what moral trepidation is claimed by shopkeepers, is the source of their objection, as the Brains or Cyndi Lauper could tell you, money does change everything.

That this is restraint of trade in the extreme is an understatement but given the nature of “medicinal marijuana”, what do you expect? While it is true that marijuana does have valid medical use for glaucoma, nausea from chemo, insomnia and some forms of nerve pain, the only reason this half measure exists is as the gateway to the drug’s eventual legalization. As the case with any “moral scourge”, once it is plainly obvious that the world isn’t gonna end because people toke up and enough marginally interested voters switch their positions as a result (see the companion issue “marriage, gay“), end of laws. Which is why I’ve always seen medicinal marijuana as a crock of undiluted crap in the first place–the drug, in fact all recreational drugs, should be legal for adults period. Not incrementally and yes, all of them.

For the weed, that is inevitable and has happened already in Colorado and Washington state (with some restrictions). Marijuana is not seen as a dangerous drug, not responsible for overdoses, not anywhere near as physically addiciting (if at all) as the presently legal alcohol, nicotine or caffeine. While it’s true that some of the affectations that go along with it can be somewhat inexplicable (see “bands, jam“), they tend to be harmless and as is, the legalization of the drug is a slam dunk (or should be). This isn’t exactly a radical idea and does have an unusual array of proponents.

In reality, all recreational drugs should be. Even the “bad” ones. First of all as “bad” as hard drugs are supposed to be, the laws that govern the punishment for their use are far worse, more life destroying, costlier and have made the US the world’s number one prison state. Secondly, despite being illegal and punishment for same being draconian, people still seem to do lots of them at the danger of their health and well being–yet, when heart disease and diabetes are the first and seventh causes of death in the US, there is no similar call for imprisonment for either overeating, sedentary lifestyle or the injection of corn syrup into processed foods which lead to both–seems absurd. And yes–one does have to eat to live, one doesn’t have to eat everything!

It’s true–tweakers are gross, crackheads are whacked and junkies are thieving, scheming troublemakers. But banning their jollies hasn’t changed any of this. What they do is illegal and they still do it–in the case of the narcotic addict, simply giving them the drugs they want plus clean supplies for injection ends their stealing and severely reduces HIV/HCV transmission. As far as the other drugs go, were they legal, they would not be brewed in a bathtub or in a clandestine lab and have the kinds of impurities that wreak misery on them and (as is the case with heroin/opiate addicts) simply giving them their drugs ends the street crime that goes along with it. Most importantly (but generally unknown to non users), once the stigma of “criminal” is gone, the positive effect is two fold–people that want to seek treatment can do so without stigma and much more importantly, the badge of perverse honor that goes with being an outlaw/renegade dope fiend a la Charlie Parker, Keith Richards or Johnny Thunders is history. Junkies are resourceful, cunning people, but it’s no fun to be a junkie when all you do is go to a clinic, fix and nod out all day.

But because our Puritan roots suggest that all “bad behavior” (as if self-medicating is such a thing) can be stamped out with enough force, none of this will ever come to pass, I fear. It is (no pun intended) Johnny’s pipe dream. And I have no personal stake in this–I haven’t had a drink or rec. drug since Reagan was president, the USSR extant and indie rock any good. The binary thinking which leads to “drugs bad, must be eradicated” is what keeps the prison complex alive and well and the murderous Mexican drug cartels in business. Get rid of the “well-intentioned” laws and both disappear. However, my faith in the common sense of people died long before my sobriety was born, sad to say.

The “Do Nothing” Solution to “Illegal Immigration”

May 17, 2013

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Both sides of the political aisle have made a major issue out of the problem of the 11 million people inside the US illegally or presently undocumented. The president has said this is a priority and Florida senator Marco Rubio has agreed. They are theoretically opposed to each other, yet Rubio’s proposals entailed in the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 don’t differ a great deal from Obama’s. In a nutshell, Rubio has suggested that the wholesale eviction of 11 million people is impossible and that the bill offers them an opportunity for legalization and permanent residence and citizenship. Naturally, the “jump through hoops” process begins here: Fines and background checks and no federal bennies.

Sounds completely reasonable, but you’d think Rubio had suggested that the government was handing out lollipops and bon-bons, making Spanish the new “official language” and changing the “Star Spangled Banner” to “Guantanmera” by the reaction of his “conservative” peers. A cursory Google reveals an enraged base represented by such intellectual heavweights as Townhall.com and Ann “To Hell With Palin, I Was Here First” Coulter. Any concessions to the teeming masses of south of the border is treasonous amnesty and in their hardly humble opinions, this will lead to “de-Europeanization” (ie less white).

As far as what the generally pitiful Democrats are offering, it is only marginally different than Rubio’s idea. Which is also reasonable, but overlooks the crux of the issue, because no one anywhere has to unmitigated gall (until now) to say it: “Illegal Immigration reform” is a solution in search of a problem, because in reality, it isn’t a problem at all!

The way I see it, a problem means an aggrieved party and in this instance, there isn’t one. People want to hire help for whatever the task is, other people agree to do it for a price, end of story. The idea that “illegal immigrants are stealing American workers jobs” sounds fairly solid on its face unless you happen to live in the American Southwest and notice that wherever day laborers congregate, there aren’t a whole hell of a lot of white folks. As far as “taking away jobs that union carpenters/plumbers/electricians do”, isn’t it the union’s job to protect their own for one and for two, a skyscraper isn’t built and wired with dudes from the Lowe’s parking lot. It is not worth a major contractor’s license to screw with E-Verify (I passed an E-Verify check myself a few months ago for my radio show!).

Assuming you “legalized” every man, woman in child in the US tomorrow, what happens? The working person’s price rises. Which means that they will be replaced by new people from Central America or Asia that will remain invisible. See, we are a free country with open borders–people can come and go as they please, this isn’t a gulag (yet) (The irony of the most virulent anti-USSR voices being the loudest for a border fence is astounding). Not only is there no way to stop it, there isn’t even a real reason to stop it–as China and Japan might tell you, an aging and shrinking worker base is starting to hurt them and hard.

Fact is, both major political parties support and oppose it for a pair of reasons of their own. Democrats love this, as it accelerates the “Bluing” of the Southwest with millions of new voters beholding and grateful to them, making a Republican national electoral victory mathematically impossible. The other reason they love it is because it replenishes their most loyal and organized base, labor. Republicans hate it for two reasons as well–newly legal workers will have more rights, bargaining power and higher pay, which means that a new cheap labor era is gonna take a while. The other reason is the one they vehemently deny but is as obvious as the honkers on their maps–their base’s great unifier isn’t economics or even social issues, but race. That the Dixiecrats of the last century are now almost entirely Republican. The glue that holds them intact, whether they’d care to admit it or not, is white supremacy. And a sea of legal Americans that are a deeper shade of soul galls them to the cores of their rancid selves. Were they serious about “sending all of these people back to where they came from”, they’d boycott every and any business that employs them, which means they’d pretty much have to stop eating. I’ve seen what the average reactionary looks like--that ain’t happening.

In fact, when the “illegals” are white, they say nothing.

Obama and Rubio both cry out that the system is “broken” but it isn’t. Undocumenteds pour billions into the coffers of state and federal and don’t get it back and whatever their costs are to health or schools, they’re balanced off by what the public saves in lower food and service costs. They’re a wash. Which means that any changes to the laissez-faire system only make everyone’s life harder and more complex. If there is a solution, the easiest one would be a “seven year rule”–you prove you’ve actually been here 7 years, no criminal record, you take a citizenship test, that’s it.

We have undocumented people in this very neighborhood. They want the same things we do. That’s good enough for me.

JAW

Cryin’ wolf

May 16, 2013

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This has been a wretched stretch of brutal press for Barack Obama lately. Battered over and over by revelations of IRS malfeasance, aggressive assaults on press freedom at the AP and Benghazi ad infinitum, the hits keep on coming, amplified by the dual forces of the “Conservative Entertainment Complex” (as exemplified by this great pundit) and a “liberal media” that has realized that Internet hits are their most likely saving grace and revenue stream. It has reached such fevered pitch that the media is making a chilling analogy commonplace!

Thing is, once you get out of the fever swamps of the Internet, where seething Caucasian retirees amped up on Fox n Metamucil dominate debates with wildly incoherent snatches of reactionary-babble that sound like bizarre code to the unintiated, nobody–and I do mean NOBODY–gives a rodent’s anus about any of this. Be it at the laundromat, the gym, the coffee shop, kid’s schools, diner—general talk in my neck of the woods is a smorgasbord of the usual celeb/weather thing. And why?

Not just because none of this impacts anyone directly (certainly not as directly as this, which affects everyone that breathes, namely everyone alive), but in reality, because the Republican Noise Machine’s ceasleless elevation of every Obama falter/failure to a matter of the utmost urgency (requiring Obama’s removal) has rendered the public and even a fair amount of the blogosphere numb to their unending pounding. Benghazi–a bloody mess of a tragedy that left four Americans dead has actually been called by one of the GOP’s most repellant figureheads as more significant than 9/11. Another has called for impeachment. As the same level of outrage never existed during the Bush years (and similar attacks that left 60 people dead), this is transparent nonsense. Not to mention the hearings themselves over Benghazi, which deliberately leave out testimony from any key players that might deviate off script.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3HTaJJugwc

Of greater importance would be the IRS and AP scandals. But even these are revealed to be borderline ridiculous–the IRS didn’t single out only Tea Party groups and the AP’s claim of political persecution is no more than an attempt to deflect a legitmate inquiry into a serious security breach. Let’s get real: Using the IRS to persecute one’s opponents is serious beyond serious–but when the campaign finance laws have been upended, the IRS making legitimate inquiries into an organization’s status is to be expected.

The real issue at hand here is that for over 20 years, the Republican Party has molehilled into mountains every story that they thought would sway public opinion. And it tends to crest at the same time as well–right after a Democratic incumbent shocks them by trouncing a challenger, as was also the case in 1996. Never mind that the kitchen sink was thrown at both Clinton and Obama, whose policies themselves could barely be described as genuinely progressive, the only thing that mattered was wrecking their approval ratings in time for midterms or for the next presidential election–and as the Democrats gained seats in 1998 and their dreadful candidate outpolled the Republican in the popular vote in 2000, it really doesn’t work.

But they’ll cry wolf forever, because at this point “conservative politics” are a lucrative racket. And by playing this bait and switch game, the public tunes out even the things that are critical to them. So, “Benghazi” and the others replace “ACORN” or “Jeremiah Wright” for a spell and then roll back into the sea of noise like so many barking seals. But as the media lock that existed 15 some years ago disappears, these stories will hopefully carry less gravity in the future and pass along with the embittered folks whose panic over cultural changes has turned them into easy marks. Can’t come fast enough for me.

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Johnny Angel Wendell

Because facts mean nothing