I don’t know how many times people have given me the stock market [argument]. Well, that’s great if you own a lot of stock. But that’s almost no one. Invariably, when I say that, reporters are really taken aback, “What do you mean?! I own stock! My friends own stock!” I go, “Yeah! Like I said: almost no one.” You have a lot people who are writing on economic issues that are incredibly out of touch with what the economy is for most of the country.
This tweet came to my attention via the great Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns & Money, The Environment in Which Trump Can Thrive. I don’t follow Erick Erickson, because he is not only a vile man, he’s also an idiot. He’s the sort of guy who would never have a writing job if he were liberal. He’s the poster-child of conservative affirmative action. The last time I wrote about him was all the way back in 2013, when he was saying if only the Republicans had kept the government shutdown going another day, week, month, year, then they would win!
But this tweet is a level vileness and stupidity that, while not exactly shocking coming from Erickson, is at least notable:
Growing up, I remember my parents never letting us have Asian food on December 7th. They were children of WWII.
There are two issues here. The first took me a moment to see, because it is so part of the conservative ethos that it tends to be invisible. It’s racism. This has nothing to do with World War II or “December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.” It is just throwing together a huge group of people and blaming them for Pearl Harbor. The fact that Erickson’s parents would feel this way is understandable, I suppose. What is only explicable because Erickson is a vile and stupid man, is why he would proudly repeat this bit of bigotry.
It’s also worth noting that Erickson was born in 1975. So his parents are almost certainly not from the Silent Generation, but from the Baby Boomers. If Erickson’s mother was 30 when she had him, she would have been born just in time for the end of the World War II. If that is a child of World War II, then we are all children of World War II. (And to some extent, we are; that makes Erickson’s claim all the more silly.) In addition, this has to be in the late 1970s and early 1980s. That’s a real grudge to hold.
But the second issue is the real reason I’m writing this. It was Japan that attacked on on this date 74 years ago, not “Asia.” In fact, China was an ally and was savagely abused by Japan — costing the lives of 14 million Chinese people during the war. Now maybe Erickson means “Japanese food.” After all, he seems to have come from a somewhat affluent family (they moved to Dubai when he was five). But as Lemieux noted, “I would bet dollars to beef and broccoli lunch specials that the ‘Asian food’ the Ericksons were abstaining from was Chinese food.”
Right. You know: food that kinda sorta comes from the country that was our ally in the war that Erickson’s parents were children of. This reminds me of the way that bigots during that time equated Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and so on. And now they equate Arabs, Persians, Indians, and so on. But it is amazing that someone so important in the conservative movement would make this kind of mistake. You may remember that the conservative movement used to have people like William Buckley.
Afterword
As I write this, Wikipedia has already integrated this tweet into his bio. It sounds to me like it was done by someone ridiculing him. But it could instead have been added by someone who simply has no idea about narrative flow:
Erickson was born in Jackson in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, moved to Dubai, United Arab Emirates when he was five, and returned to Jackson when he was fifteen. Erickson’s parents refused to let his family eat Asian food on December 7th, the anniversary of the Attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Navy. Erickson attended the American School of Dubai, previously known as the Jumeirah American School.
It’s kind of like: “Eric was born in Louisiana. He had a turtle named ‘Prigsby’! He went to school in Dubai.”
Well, as every American school child knows, this day in 1941, was “a date which will live in infamy.” Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. Two quick things. First, I’m sure FDR was thrilled, because he had been itching for a reason to get into the war because our UK allies were involved in it. Second, what we did to the Japanese in the following years decreases “infamy” to something more like “rudeness.” And don’t bother me about it. Just because modern warfare is accepted by much of the world does not mean that I have to accept it. Was the Pearl Harbor attack on civilians? No. Okay, on to more pleasant subjects.
On this day in 1972, one of the most famous pictures in the history of humanity was taken: The Blue Marble. It was shot by the crew of the Apollo 17 — the same day that the mission was launched. It was the last time that we went to the Moon. We had gotten really good at going to the Moon, so Americans didn’t care. On the other hand, when we were fighting a pointless war in Vietnam, you have to wonder if they weren’t right.
Regardless, the picture is spectacular. It makes Africa look kind of small. But more than that, it makes humanity look small and fragile. It makes me wonder about everything we fight over. There are currently 27 armed conflicts ongoing on in Africa. That’s half as many as there are countries in Africa. It’s just sad. It makes me wonder if this is why we die relatively young. Who could suffer the pain of watching humanity for hundreds of years?
But at least the image makes me think of a beautiful song:
I find myself more and more cynical these days. A lot of people have taken to calling Donald Trump a fascist. And he is. But as Jonathan Chait wrote last week, “A nominated Trump would be a different figure.” His point is that the reason the mainstream press feels as though it can call Trump out is because the Republican establishment is attacking him. If Trump gets nominated, the Republicans will fall in line and the mainstream press will be back to, “Trump says most immigrants are rapists, and Clinton says they aren’t. Who can’t say?! It’s a postmodern world!”
But the basic outline of fascism is what we humans naturally are. What Hitler did was only remarkable because we don’t do it so much anymore — at least in such clear ways. But fascism used to be the norm, not the exception. And the broader issue is just our tendency toward hierarchy. I was reading about spotted hyenas this morning. They are the most social of hyenas, with a rigid hierarchy. (There is an interesting twist that the lowest of females is dominant over the highest of males.) It is also passed on from generation to generation; that is, if mom was top hyena, so are you. The hierarchy is based on allies and it is rare for there to be a reversal of rank.
Now, all of this should sound very familiar. This is generally how things work with primates — most especially humans. Forget Donald Trump, let’s talk about Dick Cheney. On Friday, Glenn Greenwald wrote, US First Shields Its Torturers and War Criminals From Prosecution, Now Officially Honors Them. He noted, “Yesterday, the House of Representatives unveiled a marble bust of former Vice President Cheney, which — until a person of conscience vandalizes or destroys it — will reside in Emancipation Hall of the US Capitol.” You can bet whoever vandalizes the bust will do jail time — unlike the man being honored.
This went along with a presentation where the avuncular Joe Biden said, “I actually like Dick Cheney… I can say without fear of contradiction, there’s never one single time been a harsh word, not one single time in our entire relationship.” Of course there hasn’t! Dick Cheney may be a war criminal, but he’s “our” war criminal. He may be one of the most vile humans on the planet, but he’s “our” vile human. And by “our,” of course, I don’t me you or me; I mean the power elite; I mean people of Dick Cheney’s rank; I mean the hyena allies.
I’ve always been a bit bothered by the Nuremberg trials. I’m all for justice. But there was certainly an enormous amount of hypocrisy going on. What we saw was what we always saw: the winners of the war calling out all the bad behavior of the losers. Certainly the Allies had committed war crimes. According to one recent estimate, US troops alone raped almost 200,000 women. But there were also massacres and torture. And there was the firebombing of cities. War is hell, but there is not hell to pay if you win.
And so, of course Obama was never going to prosecute people in the Bush administration. And given that, it follows that there would eventually be statues honoring Dick Cheney. That’s because Obama, Biden, Bush, Cheney, Clinton, or any other major political figure will never hold one of the others accountable. They may do different things to get our votes, but they know they need each other. Hyena allies.
On Friday, we got the new jobs report. Usually, I anxiously await the first Friday of the month, but I’ve gotten to see it as pointless. I want to see good numbers — for the economy to continue to create jobs. But what does it matter? We really do not live in a democracy; we live in a plutocracy. And that is nowhere as clear as it is with the Federal Reserve. It is a group half made up of people whose only qualification is that they are rich. And these people aren’t looking out the best interests of the country — much less the American worker.
So if the economy looks like it might be taking off — like workers might be able to demand a more just share of the nation’s productivity — the Fed is right there to stop it. After years during which the rich capitalists have made scads of money and workers have seen their pay stagnate and even decrease, the Fed is unwilling to allow even a hint of “dangerous” inflation that might hurt the rich. It has now be years that the Fed has been wanting to raise interest rates. And they have quite literally been looking for any excuse to do it. The data do not drive the policy; the data are just tools of Fed apologetics.
We are looking at raising interest rates. Why? Sad to say, a lot of it has to do with this fact: the last time the Fed raised interest rates was June 2006. It’s like people are unnerved by this or something…
Consider that the standard U3 unemployment rate is 5%. Back in 2000, Janet Yellen was certain that this was full employment — the level that you do not go below for fear of accelerating inflation. But Alan Greenspan — admittedly a bit of a crank — said no and allowed unemployment to get down to 3.9%. You may remember that period as the last time you got a raise. And there was no accelerating inflation. So hooray! We learned something: 5% is not full employment.
But it is 15 years later, and now Yellen is in Greenspan’s position. But apparently, she learned nothing from the past. Or, she is just a hack for the financial industry — which is probably the more accurate reading of it. I’m not saying that full employment would be 3.9% now. I don’t know what it is. But the truth is that there is absolutely no sign of inflation, yet we are looking at raising interest rates. Why? Sad to say, a lot of it has to do with this fact: the last time the Fed raised interest rates was June 2006. It’s like people are unnerved by this or something — like they aren’t aware of just how bad the collapsing of the housing bubble was.
I listened to the beginning of Marketplace on Friday. In the segment about the jobs report, Linette Lopez of Business Insider is obviously giddy about the Fed raising interest rates. Sudeep Reddy of The Wall Street Journal just seemed to be resigned towards it. Regardless, lots of people are going to go without jobs because the Fed is going to raise interest rates. But none of these kind of business reporters seem all that aware of it — or at least care about it.
And it is worse than I’ve stated. As Dean Baker noted, in addition to an unchanged unemployment rate, “There was also no change in the labor force participation rate or the employment-to-population ratio, both of which remain far below pre-recession levels.” So the truth is that there is incredible slack in the economy. But the Fed must raise interest rates, because the rich might lose a couple of pennies. And besides, they haven’t raised rates in such a long time!
And so we start another week of Morning Music. I’ve been reading, Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man. So I thought we ought to feature him. He was an amazing talent. He died far too young. And he spent far too much time otherwise engaged, releasing no work. Still he left the world a great deal of work: 13 studio albums.
Given that he isn’t that well known, I think we should start with his breakout song, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” off his first album, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. I first heard it when I was in my very late teens, working graveyard as a baker. It blew my mind. For one thing, I had long been interested in a kind of chanting or talk singing. And I had long been told by people that you just couldn’t do that. Well, here was someone doing that and it was electrifying.
Note a couple of things about this. First, not all his work is like this. He was quite varied. Much of his music is very jazzy, as the song I’m going to feature tomorrow off his next album. Second, this is the original version. If you want to hear his recording of the song with a full band, it is on YouTube. I prefer this one:
Cover of “Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man” licensed under fair use.
Pieces of a Man
Today we listen to the title track of Pieces of a Man. Gil Scott-Heron wrote it with jazz composer Brian Jackson — who he would do some of his best work with.
The song is the perfect combination of music and lyrics. It sounds like a jazz standard with lots of major 7th chords. It is highly evocative, even as it tells a fairly concrete story about a man destroyed by his economic difficulties. In particular, it highlights the importance of having a paying job to a man’s self-esteem. “He was a good man and a strong man, yet he went to pieces.”
I especially like the line, “And for some unknown reason, he never turned my way.” I know that experience. Men of that generation did not like to cry. But this feeling was especially true when it came to crying in front of their sons. They felt like they had to be strong for their sons. Although as this song indicates (but it is not autobiographical), sons still saw their fathers as strong. Regardless, that’s such a wonderful way of rendering the scene — explaining exactly what was happening with very few words.
Jagged jigsaw pieces Tossed about the room, I saw my grandma sweeping With her old straw broom. But she didn’t know what she was doing. She could hardly understand, That she was really sweeping up Pieces of a man.
I saw my daddy meet the mailman. And I heard the mailman say, “Now don’t you take this letter to hard now Jimmy, Cause they’ve laid off nine others today.” But he didn’t know what he was saying. He could hardly understand That he was only talking to Pieces of a man.
I saw the thunder and heard the lightning, And felt the burden of his shame. And for some unknown reason, He never turned my way!
Pieces of that letter Were tossed about that room. And now I hear the sound of sirens Come knifing through the gloom. But they don’t know what they are doing. They could hardly understand That they’re only arresting Pieces of a man.
I saw him go to pieces! I saw him go to pieces! He was always such a good man! He was always such a strong, strong man! Yeah, I saw him go to pieces. I saw him go to pieces.
We will slide smoothly into Gil Scott-Heron’s third album, Free Will. I’m making no effort to stay away from his better known tunes, because none of his work that that well know. And even people who have heard these tunes may not know who did them. Today, I feature, “The Get Out of the Ghetto Blues.”
One thing that was interesting about the black power movement was how self-critical it was. In that way, it was exactly what conservatives like David Brooks and Paul Ryan claim the African American community should be. (In my work with a local Baptist church, I can assure you that this never went away.) But, of course, white America was terrified of black power. And, of course, we aren’t just talking bigots in small town Mississippi. We are talking northern white suburbanites — most of whom did not consider themselves racists.
“The Get Out of the Ghetto Blues” is very simple. It’s about self-empowerment — by way of hectoring. It also has an awesome guitar part by David Spinozza.
In 1973, Gil Scott-Heron released what I think is generally considered his masterpiece, Winter in America. And that’s saying something, considering the amazing quality of his work throughout his career. And I really think you should take eight minutes to love yourself by listening to “H²Ogate Blues.” Get it? It is an amazing musically accompanied rap. It is intense and insightful. But what it reminds me of is Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” because it is so clear that the musicians are having such a great time. It can’t help but cheer you up, and you don’t even have to think of Nixon and Vietnam. Although “Just how blind, America?” still cuts like a new razor.
But instead, let’s do a song that wasn’t on the original release of Winter in America: “Winter in America.” I’m sure it was meant to be on it. It was on his next album. And it has been on reissues. It starts with the line, “From the Indians who welcomed the pilgrims.” And I’m sure to most people, the response will be, “Yes, it probably did feel like winter in America in 1973.” But I think Scott-Heron is still right. Nothing has changed. It’s just that we are more delusional than we used to be. We pretend that we aren’t at war because we use machines to prop up our empire. Americans may not be dying, but I think it is pretty clear that America is dying.
Forgive me. By definition, weeks only have seven days, and it is impossible to squeeze into that the whole career of someone as great as Gil Scott-Heron. So I’m just going to jump to his last album, I’m New Here. We’ll spend our last two days on it.
It is not even a half hour long, but it packs a punch. In one way, it is totally different from what he’d done before. There’s a lot more atmosphere. But fundamentally, it is another Gil Scott-Heron record — in many ways as good as anything he ever did.
Me And The Devil
What we’re going to listen to is a video of two works on that album. The first song is his amazing cover of Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil Blues.” I don’t really know what to say. You’ve got to hear it. It’s fantastic. And then, there is his song “Your Soul and Mine.” It is Scott-Heron reciting “The Vulture” off his first album, with atmospheric music underneath. “Standing in the ruins of another black man’s life…” The two songs go perfectly together:
I’m New Here is probably Gil Scott-Heron’s most personal album. Or at least it feels that way. A friend mentioned that it was interesting that he should fall into the very trap of drug addiction and jail that he preached against. But I noted that this is actually a misreading of his work. Any hectoring that he did was loving. His real attacks were against the system that destroyed people. The fact that the system, to some extent, destroyed him almost seems appropriate to me.
The good thing about it is that he was able to write from both sides of it. For example, “The Crutch” presents what I think of as a very knowing portrait of a heroin addict, even though that was not his drug of choice. But I want to share with you a very raw blues number, “New York Is Killing Me.” It is both personal and social. And it is eternal. I am apparently not the only one to think that, because there are a lot of derivative songs based on it. But here is the album cut:
Gil Scott-Heroin 1990
We come to the end of our week of Gil Scott-Heron, and as usual, I’ve chosen a live set for this Saturday. I had a hard time choosing. The truth is that there are kind of two Gil Scott-Herons. There’s the young firebrand. Then there is the older and wiser man. Being older and wiser myself, I identify much more with the latter. But it is often great to spend time with the firebrand. It doesn’t really matter. I love it all.
The big problem is that I can’t find any live performances that are really late. They are more in the late 1990s and early 2000s when he was struggling. These performances make me a bit sad, even though they are still very good. This is the third time I’m posting a live performance. They keep being taken down. It’s from 1990.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdqLAeyqVr8
Cover of “Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man” licensed under Fair Use.
Popcorn, Bottle, and Gil Scott-Heron
Many of you may know of my fondness for Gil Scott-Heron and his funky proto-rap. I remember the first time I heard him, I was working as a baker in my late teens. The one nice thing about that job was that I was alone and so I could listen to the local alternative radio station. And on came “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” It was a revelation, “The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal… The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner because the revolution will not be televised.”
Earlier today, my friend (and sometimes writer for this site) Will sent me a link to Scott-Heron’s song “The Bottle” with a note, “Doesn’t the bass line sound like corn popping?” I had to admit that it did. But going back over a lot of his work, that’s more generally true. That’s part of what makes his work funky. There is no funk guitar, so it all comes down to the bass and the percussion. But the bass on “The Bottle” does sound more like a popcorn machine than any other song I’ve heard.
The song itself is deadly serious despite a really catchy tune and pleasant production. It’s about hopeless people who find their only solace in alcohol. It could be anything though. The bridge is slightly different each time, but the lyrics are:
Don’t you think it’s a crime The way, time after time Friends of mine In the bottle There’s people sure ‘nough In the bottle
But the song offers no solutions, and not even much in the way of context. Maybe in the three years between “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and “The Bottle,” Scott-Heron had become a bit more cynical. I don’t actually think so. But it is certainly true that Small Talk at 125th and Lenox with “Revolution” and “Whitey on the Moon” is more strident than Winter in America. I prefer the former, but musically the latter is better.
Anyway, here is “The Bottle”:
Conclusion
Gil Scott-Heron was one of the rarest of things: an idiosyncratic artist who was incredibly skilled. Every time I’m forced to listen to some American Idol screetcher, I’m reminded of the authentic beauty of Gil Scott-Heron’s work. In a way, I think of him as our Jacques Brel. But his work is so much more relevant to my life. I wish he were still alive. He’d only be 68 as I write this. It would be a different thing if his last album was weak, but it was some of his strongest work. He had so much more to offer us.
But I am extremely grateful for the work that he did leave to us. And I recommend that you check him out. There is lots of his work on YouTube. And you can still buy his albums at Amazon or your local record store. Listening to Gil Scott-Heron is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself!
On this day exactly 150 years ago — 6 December 1865 — the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. It abolished slavery, except as punishment for a crime — a loophole the south would use against African Americans in very clear ways. And thanks to the “war on drugs,” it has come back in a big way. Still, this was an important amendment. But it’s odd that it is more symbolic than anything else.
It is, of course, the Fourteenth Amendment that created the modern United States. This is something that I find conservatives just don’t understand. The United States was founded. It was pretty screwed up. But we had an amendment process. The Fourteenth was part of that. They might want to wish it away so they can go back to the good ol’ days of a weak federal government. But this is what America is, based upon its founding documents; if you don’t like it, you don’t like America. It’s as simple as that.
Perhaps the reason that the Thirteenth Amendment is not more important is that the Constitution never directly claimed that slavery was legal. Again, conservatives may be unhappy that Obama issues executive orders (though they didn’t have a problem when Bush did so). But they too are part of the government, and because of the way the Constitution was originally set up, Lincoln was able to free all the slaves in the Confederacy with the Emancipation Proclamation. But again, it was good to clarify that slavery was done. Plus, there were still slaves in Union states.
The whole thing is nicely ironic — and I think entirely typical of conservatives — that if the Confederate states had not been so pigheaded, the should would have been able to keep it’s “peculiar institution” for a lot longer. I know I’m rambling, but I keep remembering this line from Ken Burns: The Civil War. When poor southern soldiers were asked why they were fighting, they replied that it was because the northern soldiers were there. Well, first: they weren’t northern soldiers, but the soldiers of all of them. Second: isn’t that typical that the elites could convince poor southern whites to fight and die for an institution that doubtless made them poorer than they would have been? Nothing changes.
In an otherwise interesting article, Jonathan Chait wrote, “In the aftermath of the 2012 election, it was obvious to nearly every analyst outside the Republican Party, and to quite a few of those within it, that the GOP needed to get immigration reform off the table to give it a chance with Latino voters. All House leaders had to do in order to accomplish this was to bring up an immigration-reform bill that had passed in the Senate, and it could have passed with just a few dozen Republican votes.” No, no, no! Jesus, how long are people going to believe this hogwash?! Sure, there were and still are analysts who think this. But they couldn’t be more wrong.
Chait continued, “Anger by the base paralyzed them from acting, and they muddled through instead.” I really wonder what people like Chait think political parties are. Do they think that the parties just make up their platforms and then hope that there will be enough voters for them to win elections? Parties are coalitions. For almost 50 years, the Republican Party has managed to wed the “libertarian” part of the party with the racist part. Is that racist part just going to shut up because immigration reform was passed?
The whole time immigration reform was being debated, it was very clear that even its Republican supporters had the attitude that this was the one thing that they were willing to do for the immigrant community.
This brings us back to Chait, “Not long ago, the prospect of Trump heading the ticket in 2016 was utterly unthinkable. Now it is thinkable…” How is it that the House passing immigration reform would have stopped Trump from gaining so much traction? Indeed, if immigration reform had passed, wouldn’t that have made the base even more angry? Wouldn’t that have made a Trump or Cruz candidacy all that much more appealing? I really don’t get the way that mainstream (usually liberal) pundits see this. It’s like they think that an immigration reform bill — one that was ridiculously harsh, requiring almost two decades to get citizenship — was some kind of magic bullet that would make the Republican Party’s racism problem vanish.
And look at what Chait acknowledges: the Republicans just had to allow the bill to get a vote where only a tiny percentage of Republicans would have voted for it. And it only passed the Senate with a handful of Republican votes. So what would this have said to the Latino community specifically? That the Republican Party doesn’t hate them, just everyone in it?! It’s madness. And it gets worse.
At least by doing nothing, things stay the way they are. But the whole time immigration reform was being debated, it was very clear that even its Republican supporters had the attitude that this was the one thing that they were willing to do for the immigrant community. So the Republicans were offering an incredibly harsh, punitive approach to immigration reform and acting like that was the end of it. It’s like a friend giving a junkie twenty bucks after years of charity, “Okay, but this is the last time I’m doing this!” That’s what the Republicans were offering.
Given the Republicans will not embrace immigrants (legal or otherwise), I do not see how immigration reform helps them. Are we to assume that immigrants are just ignorant? That they wouldn’t know that it was the Democratic Party that somehow got immigration reform passed despite Republicans and not because of them? But regardless of that, how does immigration reform make Trump’s candidacy less plausible?
Yesterday, I watched Sam Peckinpah’s last film, The Osterman Weekend. It is based on the Robert Ludlum novel. It was only his second novel, and from what I understand, it didn’t make much more sense than the film. But the film really is something to behold. It has the feel of porn, with everyone spying on everyone else. And the last act turns the whole thing into a revenge story, with no real clue as to how the first two acts were meant to facilitate this. And it is a shame, because it has an excellent cast, and I’ve never seen Rutger Hauer so good.
But I want to focus on one little thing in the film. The CIA has decided to get well known liberal television journalist John Tanner (Rutger Hauer) to work for them by convincing him that his three closest friends are KGB agents. Laurence Fassett (John Hurt) thinks he will go for it because of Tanner’s politics. He says, “They say that converts make the greatest zealots. He’s more American and Americans. He’s a bigot about truth, democracy, justice.” I think that’s exactly true. The most liberal among us are the biggest believers in those grammar school civics lessons.
For a long time, I thought that conservatives were the same way. But I can’t say that’s true anymore. Conservatism is all about tribalism and hierarchy. America is not great because of its ideals or the things it does; for the conservative, America is great because it is America. And this is why we get this endless parade of jingoism — the constant call for us to use our military to crush some other group or country. I do see in this a certain naive idealism: the assumption that America is great for some vague and gauzy reason.
But if you aren’t willing to pull back the gauze and focus clearly on the reality, then all your patriotism is nothing more than chauvinism. And I wonder if there isn’t a deeper understanding that to look too closely at what America actually is would shatter the illusion. Maybe such naive conservatism is, at base, just the Dick Cheney kind of cynical conservatism. It doesn’t matter, I suppose. Because you can’t love something if you refuse to see it. That’s the kind of adolescent “love” that is weaker the more you know of the object.
The film made me wonder if I would rat out my friends if I found they were traitors. It’s hard to get into the mindset of the Cold War, especially knowing what a ridiculous game it was. But I’ve thought very clearly about whether I would rat out a friend involved in a terrorist plot (and I’ve had a few over the years who I could imagine being involved in one), and the answer is that I would. But even there, that’s probably first an act of humanism. It is second an act of patriotism, but only in the John Tanner version of it: being a bigot about truth, democracy, justice.
As I like to do when I highlight a particular artist, I end this week with a live set of said artist. This week, it has been Elvis Costello. And do I have a wonderful one: Elvis Costello at Woodstock 99. It will make up for my slighting the early albums at the same time that it is too early for him to perform stuff that I’m not intimately familiar with.
The second song is one that I had thought about using this week, “Mystery Dance.” When I first heard that song, I was still in my teens and I knew exactly what he was talking about. Sex really is an art, and it should not be attempted by two novices. So at the time, it made me feel normal. As an old man, it’s just hilarious, but in the kindest way.
There are lots of things to love about Elvis Costello. He’s got a great voice — capable of conveying any emotion (something I find distinctly lacking in the huge pop stars). Musically, he’s always interesting — never boring, but never too difficult (even on The Juliet Letters). But mostly, he’s just really smart. It’s nice to know what he has to say. I feel like I grew up with him. When he was angry, I was angry; when he started figuring out life, I started figuring out life. I really ought to get some of his newest albums to see if we are still growing together — or more likely, not growing together.
On this day last year, the first test flight of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (Orion MPCV) took place. Using it, we should be able to go beyond low Earth orbit to, say, the Moon. Indeed, its next test will be an uncrewed trip around the Moon by the end of 2018. And then, some time around 2022, we plan to send four astronauts into orbit around the Moon. And then a few years later, the first crewed trip to an asteroid.
Now you all know me: I love the robotic space program. I’m not that keen on people going up in space because I’m risk adverse. But this is pretty cool. And if people are going to be orbiting the planet… Plus, the potential for the exploration of asteroids really is great, because it is our first real efforts to address the potential catastrophe of an asteroid striking the Earth. On the other hand, given how well humans seem to be doing in creating their own catastrophes, maybe it is unnecessary. Still: it is worth doing.
Also: the cost of the mission is estimated to be less than $3 billion. That’s roughly 50 times less than colonizing the Moon — much less Mars. But I know how all of you are really excited about colonizing Mars, so listen up: Orion is an important step in that too. It seems to me that Orion is about the most exciting thing happening in crewed space exploration. It’s a bit of a return to the Apollo days.
On the other hand, Donald Trump will probably destroy the world before we ever reach an asteroid. Here’s hoping I’m wrong!
I’m sure that in the past, I have written about 2 Girls 1 Cup. But during my Thanksgiving trip, the subject came up, as I will discuss shortly. I have, for the first time, done a bit of research on the video. That is to say, I looked at the Wikipedia page on it, because that is about as close as I ever want to get to it. For those who may not know, it is a short film featuring two young women who apparently defecate into a cup (glass, actually), drink it, and vomit it back into the other’s mouth.
I was introduced to it by some young men I worked with at a startup. They really wanted to show it to me — as was quite common at the time (late 2007 — when it was still fairly new). I asked them, “Is it scatological?” That was said right as the video started. One of them said, “What is ‘scatological’?” At that point, one of the young women defecated into a glass. I immediately stood up and as I walked away, I said, “That is ‘scatological’!” So I only saw the first few seconds of it. The young men filled me in on the complete narrative later.
It turns out that the video itself is just the trailer for an hour long Brazilian fetish porn film called, Hungry Bitches. There has been much discussion over the years as to exactly how “real” the whole thing is. One thing I noticed in my brief encounter with it was that the feces of the one woman was either fake or she was very ill indeed. The porn industry seems to have perfected the art of the enema, so I don’t actually have much difficulty seeing how the whole thing could be faked. Clearly doing any of that is something that would be truly disgusting for a normal person, but for a professional, well, whatever.
(It is worth noting that I know a few people who are what we might call connoisseurs of pornography in its many forms. When I asked them about the video, they were lackadaisical about it. 2 Girls 1 Cup is not at all a new thing. Similar films have been around since at least the early 90s. So this particular video becoming a big deal is due to the vagaries of society — most especially the recent proliferation of video streaming services.)
What I learned last week is that there is a genre of videos which record people’s reactions to 2 Girls 1 Cup. Clearly, there are people who find scatological material erotic. It’s a small percentage of the population, surely. But human sexuality is broad. And I am not one to judge when it comes to such matters. But clearly, the video did not go viral because people found it titillating; it went viral because people found it disgusting. So shooting people’s reactions to the video was quite normal. I haven’t actually seen any of them, because even that is too close to the original.
Hungry Bitches was released in January of 2007. According to Wikipedia, “Around mid-October 2007, video-sharing sites including YouTube were flooded with videos depicting others’ reactions to watching the video for the first time.” By mid-November, comedian Adam Ray came up with his own scripted version, Kermit the Frog Reacts to 2 Girls 1 Cup. I actually hate the idea. Kermit is a hero of mine. But I did check it out. (Note: it has some foul language.)
There are a number of things that impress me. One is that the puppetry is rather good. The voice isn’t bad, until it gets too loud and outraged. And Adam Ray is the kind of comic who pushes jokes too far. He doesn’t allow the joke to end with the appearance of the hand lotion. Instead, we get Kermit masturbating under the table. Is it pedantic of me to note that frogs do not have penises but rather cloacae? Probably so, but it is something of a matter of honor.
Again, I think Ray pushes the joke far past its breaking point. All he needs to do is note that Rowlf is, in fact, a dog. But it works. I think they both do, and they are creative. It’s all rather interesting. The producer of Hungry Bitches, Marco Antônio Fiorito, even said in an official declaration, “I have already made fetish movies with scat/feces using chocolate instead of feces. Many actors make scat films but they don’t agree to eat feces.” That’s a lot of creativity to create the fantasy that some people desire. I respect that. But I hope the subject never comes up again in my life.
I don’t know how many times people have given me the stock market [argument]. Well, that’s great if you own a lot of stock. But that’s almost no one. Invariably, when I say that, reporters are really taken aback, “What do you mean?! I own stock! My friends own stock!” I go, “Yeah! Like I said: almost no one.” You have a lot people who are writing on economic issues that are incredibly out of touch with what the economy is for most of the country.
This tweet came to my attention via the great Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns & Money, 
Well, as every American school child knows, this day in 1941, was “a date which will live in infamy.” 
I find myself more and more cynical these days. A lot of people have taken to calling Donald Trump a fascist. And he is. But as 
Now, all of this should sound very familiar. This is generally how things work with primates — most especially humans. Forget Donald Trump, let’s talk about Dick Cheney. On Friday, Glenn Greenwald wrote, 
On Friday, we got the new 
Many of you may know of my fondness for Gil Scott-Heron and his funky proto-rap. I remember the first time I heard him, I was working as a baker in my late teens. The one nice thing about that job was that I was alone and so I could listen to the local alternative radio station. And on came “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” It was a revelation, “The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal… The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner because the revolution will not be televised.”
On this day exactly 150 years ago — 6 December 1865 — the 
In an otherwise 
As I like to do when I highlight a particular artist, I end this week with a live set of said artist. This week, it has been Elvis Costello. And do I have a wonderful one: Elvis Costello at Woodstock 99. It will make up for my slighting the early albums at the same time that it is too early for him to perform stuff that I’m not intimately familiar with.
On this day last year, the first test flight of the 
I’m sure that in the past, I have written about 2 Girls 1 Cup. But during my Thanksgiving trip, the subject came up, as I will discuss shortly. I have, for the first time, done a bit of research on the video. That is to say, I looked at the 
It turns out that the video itself is just the trailer for an hour long Brazilian fetish porn film called, Hungry Bitches. There has been much discussion over the years as to exactly how “real” the whole thing is. One thing I noticed in my brief encounter with it was that the feces of the one woman was either fake or she was very ill indeed. The porn industry seems to have perfected the art of the enema, so I don’t actually have much difficulty seeing how the whole thing could be faked. Clearly doing any of that is something that would be truly disgusting for a normal person, but for a professional, well, whatever.
