Mr. Postman, look and see

This weekend's required reading includes this absolutely choice excerpt from an essay by the late Neil Postman, "The Bias Of Language, The Bias Of Pictures", borrowed from the book How To Watch TV News.

...even when attempting to use purely descriptive language, a journalist cannot avoid expressing an attitude about what he or she is saying. For example, here is the opening sentence of an anchor’s report about national examinations: “For the first time in the nation’s history, high-level education policymakers have designed the elements for a national examination system similar to the one advocated by President Bush.”

This sentence certainly looks like it is pure description although it is filled with ambiguities. Is this the first time is our history that this has been done? Or only the first time that high-level education policymakers have done it? Or is it the first time something has been designed that is similar to what the President has advocated? But let us put those questions aside. (After all, there are limits to how analytical one ought to be.) Instead, we might concentrate on such words as “high-level,” “policymakers,” and “designed.” Speaking for ourselves, we are by no means sure that we know what a “high-level policymaker” is, although it sounds awfully impressive. It is certainly better then a “low-level policymaker,” although how one would distinguish between the two is a bit of a mystery. Come to think of it, a low-level “policymaker” must be pretty good, too, since anyone who makes policy must be important.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that what was done was “designed.” To design something usually implies careful thought, preparation, organization, and coherence. People design buildings, bridges, and furniture. If your experience has been anything like ours, you will know that reports are almost never designed; they are usually “thrown together,” and it is quite a compliment to say that a report was designed.

The journalist who paid this compliment was certainly entitled to do it even though he may not have been aware of what he was doing. He probably thought he had made a simple description, avoiding any words that would imply favor or disfavor. But if so, he was defeated in his effort because language tends to be emotion-laden. Because it is people who do the talking, the talk almost always includes a feeling, an attitude, a judgment. In a sense, every language contains the history of a people’s feelings about the world. Our words are baskets of emotion. Smart journalists, of course know this. And so do smart audiences. Smart audiences don’t blame anyone for this state of affairs. They are, however, prepared for it.

UPDATE: I added a few more paragraph divisions that weren't there originally, just for the sake of readability.

What I've been busy with (Special debate edition)

The blogging, inconsistent as it's always been, has definitely fallen by the wayside in recent months due to my heavy workload at both my current job and the university. But it's not as though I haven't been writing. So to remedy the dullness of this page, I'll be posting some of the work I've been up to at school.

Here's a brief essay I turned in for extra credit for "News On Radio And Television" class (BECA 460):

Watch the Presidential Debate on Wednesday night (10/3).
In 500 words (typewritten, no hand-written corrections accepted) give your analysis of how one television network covered the event.  Was it fair?  Did their critique fall on the side of objective or subjective coverage?  Why or why not?

This is what I gave them:

I watched the first presidential debate on KGO-TV (ABC) for this exercise. The program was hosted by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. After the debate itself, Sawyer and Stephanopoulos were joined by Matthew Dowd and Donna Brazile, with former Obama economic advisor Austin Goolsbee and former McCain/Palin campaign advisor Nicolle Wallace on remote feed.

First, I was struck by Sawyer’s giddy demeanor throughout. She appeared to be covering the event as entertainment news, gushing over the candidates’ families appearing with them onstage while complaining that the debate featured “a lot of numbers” and giggling continuously throughout the discussion. (Is she always like this?) In contrast, Stephanopoulos managed to maintain some semblance of basic professionalism in his role as cohost.

A consensus was reached very quickly by the panel: Romney had “won” the debate, Obama seemed distracted, and debate moderator Jim Lehrer let himself be overrun by the candidates. What I saw happening in the debate was a little different. Obama would try to address a previous statement of Romney’s and Romney would claim that he had never said such a thing and accuse Obama of misquoting him. It was a strange dance, and the President occasionally looked flustered. I hope he is better prepared next time.

Other commentators were brought in. Jake Tapper saw a lackluster Obama, and loved Romney’s “zingers” and “policies”. (Goolsbee, on the other hand, thought Obama’s best moment was when he challenged Romney about these policies that he refused to elaborate on: “What are your secret plans?”) David Muir was impressed by Romney’s anecdotes. Brazile also said that she thought it was “great” that the candidates talked about women. (Apparently, telling a story about a woman you talked to at a campaign stop counts as addressing women’s issues.) George Will thought that Romney scored with his attack on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which would supposedly “ration” healthcare. Will’s assertion was, of course, not challenged, presumably because to do so would not have been “objective”.

The post-mortem discussion was focused on how well the candidates performed, rather than analyzing what they were saying. Words like “fair” or “subjective” vs. “objective” are hard for me to apply here. What I saw was a group of professional pundits whose main commitment was to maintaining a narrative about the race being “close”. They needed Romney to look good last night in order to maintain that suspenseful, entertaining narrative. The actual impact of their respective policies and the truth of their statements were trivial compared to the all-important horse race.

Sawyer announced that the network would do some fact-checking, and brought on correspondent Jonathan Karl, who critiqued one statement by each candidate and pronounced both “mostly fiction”. I wondered why we were treated to a misleadingly tokenistic ritual of “fact-checking” here; would a detailed examination of Romney’s higher levels of dishonesty in the course of this campaign violate their sense of “balance”? I Googled Mr. Karl and found an article on the Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting website that asserts that Karl got his start in journalism through the Collegiate Network, a conservative group that supports right-leaning college journalists and assists them in their postgraduate careers. That would seem to take care of the objectivity question.

(What I left out) In conclusion, ABC is even worse than I even imagined. And WTF is Diane Sawyer's problem?

But where do the candidates stand on Big Jim Sullivan's "Sitar Beat" album?

Ear Candle Radio's Top 20: September 2012

So as I was saying, we are back and bopping, and the new playlist is developing while university work continues to kick our asses. We are slipping new delights into our randomly shuffling stream to tide you over, never fear! Oh, the places you'll go...

1. PJ Harvey - 50 Ft Queenie - Rid Of Me
2. Phil Ochs - Cops of the World - Phil Ochs in Concert
3. Can - Dead Pigeon Suite - The Lost Tapes
4. Steve Hillage - Meditation of the Snake - Fish Rising
5. KXP - 18 Hours (Of Love) - K-X-P
6. John Lennon - Do The Oz - Plastic Ono Band
7. Vivian Girls - You're My Guy - Everything Goes Wrong
8. Peter Green - Bottoms Up - The End of the Game
9. MC5 - The American Ruse - Back In The USA
10. Kalo Kawongolo / Seke Molenga - Masanga - African Roots
11. Dr. Spaceman - Staying Home - Zwanzig Kilometer Stau
12. Warren Smith - Ubangi Stomp - Rockin' Bones: 1950s Punk and Rockabilly
13. Silvia Parra MamaCoatl - Food Is A Weapon - Border Crossing Diosa
14. Fat Daddy Holmes - Where Yo Is - Chicken Rock
15. Dead Famous People - Barlow's House - Lost Person's Area
16. Gil Scott-Heron - Explanations - Moving Target
17. The Spinners - Living A Little, Laughing A Little - The Very Best Of The Spinners
18. The Zombies - Care Of Cell 44 - Odessey and Oracle
19. Leonard Cohen - Banjo - Old Ideas
20. Public Image Limited - One Drop - This Is PiL

Rebecca Solnit wins the internet

A progressive writer on progressive purity trolling:

"O rancid sector of the far left, please stop your grousing! Compared to you, Eeyore sounds like a Teletubby. If I gave you a pony, you would not only be furious that not everyone has a pony, but you would pick on the pony for not being radical enough until it wept big, sad, hot pony tears."

Ear Candle Radio's Top 20: August 2012

Yes, we are back, and assembling a new playlist teaspoon by teaspoon, while our incredible music library entertains you on random shuffle setting.

1. Suicide - American Mean - American Supreme
2. Angel Corpus Christi - Amateur Alchemist - Angel Does X-tal - EP
3. Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band - Between My Head And The Sky - Between My Head And The Sky
4. The New Age Steppers - Got To Get Away - Action Battlefield
5. The Firesign Theatre - Poop's Principles - Dear Friends
6. The Units - The Mission is Bitchin' - The Early Years of the Units 1977-1983
7. Them - Could You, Would You - The Story Of Them
8. Society of Rockets - The Great Experiment - Future Factory
9. The Royal Guardsmen - OM - The Return Of The Red Baron
10. PJ Harvey - The Words That Maketh Murder - Let England Shake
11. Moon Duo - Love On The Sea (Radio Edit) - Yeti 7
12. Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man - The Essential Leonard Cohen
13. KXP - Mehu Moments - K-X-P
14. Karen Mantler - Arnold's Dead - Farewell
15. Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart - Rising Above Bedlam - Rising Above Bedlam
16. J Neo Marvin & the Content Providers - We Are Alive - Freedom Fried
17. Grass Widow - Uncertain Memory - Past Time
18. The Experimental Bunnies - Bunnies On Fire - Bunnies On Fire
19. Dylan Champagne - Baby in a Bear Suit - Love Songs of the Apocalypse Vol. 1
20. Curtis Mayfield - Hard Times - There's No Place Like America Today

Tune in! We have great things in store.

"A chef who cooked up some mean meals"

A long documentary on the much-missed Gil Scott Heron. A little out of sync in places, but stay with it. It is very much worth it.

Excuse

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/curiosity.png

Vintage X-tal videos!

A special treat: we just posted two videos of X-tal from 1991 on YouTube. Produced by the band and put together by X-tal guitarist Jimmy Broustis and original Bedlam Rovers lead singer Lil' Mike, these were the only "official" videos made by the band in their lifespan. Unfortunately, their label at the time did not share the band's enthusiasm and these have remained underground until now. It's a time capsule!

X-TAL and their fellow travelers:
J Neo Marvin: Vocals and guitar
Jimmy Broustis: Guitar
Allison Moseley: Bass
Mick Freeman: Drums and vocals
Carrie Bradley: Violin on White Rat
Jeremy O'Doughaill: Mandolin on White Rat (not in video)
Mitzi Waltz: Ex-bassist (visible in a few shots in White Rat video)
Early D and Pat Thomas: Guest actors in White Rat video

Lil' Mike fills in some details:

wow...this video is legal drinking age! the original was made by Jimmy & I at Artists' Television Access on Valencia in a lil'' VHS dubbing room and we drove around collecting the footage on an 8mm video camera...then a buncha copies were dubbed in SF at some SOMA dubbing house by Alias...so this was dubbed off a an old 2nd or 3rd generation VHS copy ... lotsa clips taken from extinct clubs...Mick's double drum shot ala Song Remains The Same was actually the mirror behind the stage at the ol' Oasis... the rehersal footage of course with the Bulimia Banquet graffiti was in the basement of the Chameleon...Earl & Pat Thomas clip was shot in my backyard on Harrison across from the ol' Army St projects, i think it was supposed to be Jamaica or Haiti or something...the last closing shot with Mitzi Waltz grabbin' the mic was onstage at the Kennel Club...

Where are the sober adults?

An analysis well worth reading, although those who need it the most will probably just get offended at being picked on by meanie liberals. As for the sober adults, I think most of them now constitute the right wing of the Democratic Party, which is yet another reason this country can't get anything worthwhile done.

The Man Without Qualities

Excellent article in The Stranger about the strange, goofy man running for President this year.

Try watching a Romney speech sometime. "Robotic" isn't the right word, really. The man exhibits a peculiar discomfort badly covered by breathlessly fake enthusiasm. He's like a cross between Richie Rich and Willy Loman. You can just smell the flop sweat.

If the silos of money Republican donors are pouring into this campaign actually succeed in electing a candidate nobody likes, I will be surprised. I don't think even Citizens United can save his sorry ass. He makes George W. Bush seem poised and dignified in comparison.

Franken salutes Davis

Warning: You may need to fast forward a bit at the start to avoid hearing Joe Lieberman's hideous voice.

A subliterate bunch of guys

Since Mitt Romney made that wonderfully enlightened comment about how he (unlike that other guy whose father came from a more-recently-liberated former British colony than our own) truly understands our shared Anglo-Saxon heritage with the UK, I tried...



...my best...



...to find John's own original version of this Mountain Goats classic on YouTube...



...but to no avail.

And I had thought this song was relatively obscure! Gentlemen, I commend you all for your excellent taste.

Since the Mountain Goats' definitive version is nowhere to be found, here's something else that will put a chill up your spine:

Pissing off the right people (and others as well)

Phil Nugent writes a thought-provoking obit for Alexander Cockburn, including some delicious barbs aimed at also-departed former colleague and rival Christopher Hitchens. (The link to Cockburn's own obit for Hitchens is worth following, and I think he got it right, and I admit to having once been one of those anarcho-fanboys who bought that damned Mother Teresa book.)

Cockburn was a smart, funny, provocative and sometimes just-plain-wrong curmudgeon, but always an essential read, and his old Press Clips column in the Village Voice was the unsung ancestor to all those snarky lefty news-deconstructing blogs I can't face the day without. Someone (I'm not holding my breath expecting the current Voice owners to do it) needs to compile those columns in book form.

For those who are so sure...

an armed bystander would have "solved the problem"...

And yet I am led to understand that one person, who just happened to be carrying a piece would have calmly and with great presence of mind taken out the shooter just like he was Jason Bourne or whoever that guy is that Bruce Willis plays in those shitty Die Hard movies. Better yet, what if there were two or even three Jason Bourne-wannabes returning fire? Awesome! But how exactly would the brave hero in row thirty-two know that the guy in row twelve, who was also busy blasting away in the noise and the chaos, wasn’t James Holmes' wingman? Then the guy in row twenty-one sees the guy in thirty-two shooting at the guy in twelve and he has to make the decision which one is the bad guy … or maybe both. Then the police bust in and the whole thing looks like Reservoir Dogs but with more collateral damage.

You get the idea.

Yes, we do.

Mad Women (late to the party, we know)

We've been embarking on an intensified pop culture crash course here at Chez Ear Candle, catching up with every episode of Mad Men so far. At this point we're addicted. The show is packed with subtext and sociology, dealing with issues of misogyny, racism, addiction, class privilege, and more, in the context of an unexpectedly distant past. ("Unexpectedly" at least for people of a certain age: it's fascinating to see a portrait of a time you remember and realize how exotic and alien it looks from this temporal vantage point.) We get a view of the Sixties that avoids the usual cliches and raises the question, "how far have we come, really?"

All this plus great writing and acting, and complex characters who we feel for, even when they behave horribly.

Which brings us to this cool video from a couple years back. Hat tip to Amanda at Pandagon. Enjoy.

Mad Men: Set Me Free from Pop Culture Pirate on Vimeo.

And when you touch down

4th of July post

Disclaimer: Despite my undying love for Emma Goldman, I don't share the same cockeyed optimism that the elimination of all laws will make life better for everyone. In the real world, the rule of law is crucial to protect the powerless from the powerful, not to say that said rule of law is not often used for the opposite purpose. Other than that, yeah.

A New Declaration of Independence

By Emma Goldman

Published in Mother Earth, Vol. IV, no. 5, July 1909.

When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.

The mere fact that these forces--inimical to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--are legalized by statute laws, sanctified by divine rights, and enforced by political power, in no way justifies their continued existence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all human beings, irrespective of race, color, or sex, are born with the equal right to share at the table of life; that to secure this right, there must be established among men economic, social, and political freedom; we hold further that government exists but to maintain special privilege and property rights; that it coerces man into submission and therefore robs him of dignity, self-respect, and life.

The history of the American kings of capital and authority is the history of repeated crimes, injustice, oppression, outrage, and abuse, all aiming at the suppression of individual liberties and the exploitation of the people. A vast country, rich enough to supply all her children with all possible comforts, and insure well-being to all, is in the hands of a few, while the nameless millions are at the mercy of ruthless wealth gatherers, unscrupulous lawmakers, and corrupt politicians. Sturdy sons of America are forced to tramp the country in a fruitless search for bread, and many of her daughters are driven into the street, while thousands of tender children are daily sacrificed on the altar of Mammon. The reign of these kings is holding mankind in slavery, perpetuating poverty and disease, maintaining crime and corruption; it is fettering the spirit of liberty, throttling the voice of justice, and degrading and oppressing humanity. It is engaged in continual war and slaughter, devastating the country and destroying the best and finest qualities of man; it nurtures superstition and ignorance, sows prejudice and strife, and turns the human family into a camp of Ishmaelites.

We, therefore, the liberty-loving men and women, realizing the great injustice and brutality of this state of affairs, earnestly and boldly do hereby declare, That each and every individual is and ought to be free to own himself and to enjoy the full fruit of his labor; that man is absolved from all allegiance to the kings of authority and capital; that he has, by the very fact of his being, free access to the land and all means of production, and entire liberty of disposing of the fruits of his efforts; that each and every individual has the unquestionable and unabridgeable right of free and voluntary association with other equally sovereign individuals for economic, political, social, and all other purposes, and that to achieve this end man must emancipate himself from the sacredness of property, the respect for man-made law, the fear of the Church, the cowardice of public opinion, the stupid arrogance of national, racial, religious, and sex superiority, and from the narrow puritanical conception of human life. And for the support of this Declaration, and with a firm reliance on the harmonious blending of man's social and individual tendencies, the lovers of liberty joyfully consecrate their uncompromising devotion, their energy and intelligence, their solidarity and their lives.

Why "democrat" is such a dirty word to these people...it's not just the opposing party

Found this thought-provoking Alternet article about how the "new feudalism" is rooted in the old South.

For most of our history, American economics, culture and politics have been dominated by a New England-based Yankee aristocracy that was rooted in Puritan communitarian values, educated at the Ivies and marinated in an ethic of noblesse oblige (the conviction that those who possess wealth and power are morally bound to use it for the betterment of society). While they've done their share of damage to the notion of democracy in the name of profit (as all financial elites inevitably do), this group has, for the most part, tempered its predatory instincts with a code that valued mass education and human rights; held up public service as both a duty and an honor; and imbued them with the belief that once you made your nut, you had a moral duty to do something positive with it for the betterment of mankind. Your own legacy depended on this.

Among the presidents, this strain gave us both Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and Poppy Bush -- nerdy, wonky intellectuals who, for all their faults, at least took the business of good government seriously. Among financial elites, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet still both partake strongly of this traditional view of wealth as power to be used for good. Even if we don't like their specific choices, the core impulse to improve the world is a good one -- and one that's been conspicuously absent in other aristocratic cultures.

Which brings us to that other great historical American nobility -- the plantation aristocracy of the lowland South, which has been notable throughout its 400-year history for its utter lack of civic interest, its hostility to the very ideas of democracy and human rights, its love of hierarchy, its fear of technology and progress, its reliance on brutality and violence to maintain “order,” and its outright celebration of inequality as an order divinely ordained by God.

Add to all of this a constant barrage of spin portraying the Confederate traitor position as a stand for "freedom" and "liberty", and it's easy to see why people are so mind-bogglingly stupid and confused. We live in interesting times.

The entire article is a must-read. Welcome to Plantation America.

New form, new content

The long-neglected J Neo Marvin website has just been given a spiffy new makeover. The new site is much easier to edit, so expect frequent updates.

5 Songs: Through The Door Into Angst And Out Again

Davis Jones picks out the new Soundcloud spotlight, lulling us with a calmly ominous track from our newest artist, the mysterious Dr. Spaceman, before hitting us with some tough tracks.

Angel Does X-tal

Angel Corpus Christi's new EP of X-tal covers is out now as a digital release. Fill your mp3 player with these brilliantly whimsical reimaginings of songs by J Neo Marvin and his former comrades. Ear Candle Productions salutes our friends for keeping the music alive.

Get it here or here.

Amateur Alchemist

Angel Corpus Christi's X-tal covers project keeps humming along with this intoxicating ditty about intoxication.

And all the people were singin', they went, "La la la la la la"....

The recent loss of Levon Helm prompted me to watch this documentary on the making of The Band's second, self-titled, album last night. If you haven't seen anything in the Classic Albums series, they are well worth your time, especially compared to the Under Review series, which tends to range from moderately interesting to tediously mediocre. The cool thing about the Classic Albums docs is that, rather than alternating tantalizingly brief clips of the actual artists and padding the rest of the movie with critics pontificating about records (which can be interesting, but I can already do that myself), you always get some scenes of an engineer, producer or artist sitting at a mixing board, bringing tracks up and down, and pointing out cool details and talking about the actual process of making said records, which I find a lot more fun and enlightening. (Granted, I'm not always as keen on all of their choices of what to spotlight.)

The first two Band albums really can't be faulted: great examples of the ethic of putting a bunch of people in a room, giving them complete freedom to try anything out and pressing the record button. The little bits on the recording process are the exact sort of thing that excites me. The music is rich, emotional, and just weird enough to avoid the cliches of the legions of wannabe "authentic, rustic, and soulful" roots-rock AOR bands that sprouted like weeds in their wake. But there's always this big damn stinky elephant slumbering in the corner of the room when you put on "the brown album".

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is a beautiful, complex song that can make you cry. You can take it as the story of an everyman character named Virgil Caine, swept up and destroyed by a particularly nasty and traumatic war while he tries to hold on to the same notion of patriotic pride that got him in the fix he is in. Family and friends wiped out, home devastated, and all he got for his efforts was a fleeting glimpse of Robert E. Lee. There's a subtext there that clearly resonated with a generation growing up with a decade of the Vietnam War looming over their heads, which is probably why Joan Baez was inspired to cut her own hit version of the song. There's also an undercurrent, much-discussed by The Band themselves, of attempted healing and empathy on behalf of an angry Boomer counterculture who, in the wake of the Civil Rights struggle, often detested all things Southern. If we are to have an impact on Virgil Caine, we must understand where he's coming from.

But a singer or songwriter's intentions are one thing, while the audience's response can be quite another. My own Kentucky-born dad, who normally wouldn't have crossed the street to spit on Joan Baez, loved her cover of "Old Dixie". To him, it was an anthem for the eternally aggrieved Southerner, forever oppressed by those damn Yankees. (And yes, Kentucky never actually seceded from the union, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms...I will say I was shocked to learn this fact in school because it sure as hell was never pointed out at home.) It didn't help that Baez took what was originally a mournful funeral dirge and turned it into a bouncy pop song which undiscerning ears could easily fold into the Lost Cause narrative, a surprising bit of accidental signification from such a normally politically conscious singer.

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" presents a South with no black people and no slavery, just tragic, honorable white farmers suffering from losing a war. In itself, that's not an issue; the song tells a particular story from a particular point of view and no one song can take in the whole sweep of history. And I certainly don't have a clue how the story of those other impoverished Southern farmers of a different hue could have been honestly and naturally worked into the fabric of this song. All the same, their absence helps give the song meanings it was never meant to have. And so, as ever, we get played.

Again my mind goes to my just-finished Critical Study Of Popular Culture class at SFSU. The day we were meant to cover how race awareness impacts media, our lecturer started class with a disclaimer: "I don't feel I have the authority to address racism in the US, because I grew up in Canada, where those dynamics of race relations are very different." Four out of five members of The Band, of course, developed their love of Americana from the perspective of Canadians on the outside looking in. It's not surprising that Robbie Robertson would be deeply affected by meeting Southerners who talked about how "the South's gonna rise again" without fully comprehending all that that would imply. Meanwhile, the one American of the group, Arkansas-born Levon Helm, sings the song with such bottomless dignity and heart that Virgil's sad tale comes alive for you. Helm was by all accounts an absolutely beautiful guy, tapped into the deep cultures of both the black and the white South, nowhere even close to a racist. In fact, Helm was a perfect example of the sort of salt-of-the-earth white Southerner who fought racism and ignorance and brought black and white people closer together through the power of shared musical traditions, right up there with Steve Cropper and the also recently departed Duck Dunn. I acknowledge all of this wholeheartedly and am always deeply moved whenever I hear "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", but it still bugs the hell out of me.

Oh, and on the subject of the South rising again, can we finally admit that they already have done so, and have been essentially running the whole damn country for the last 40-plus years?

UPDATE: It's only fair to let the boys speak for themselves:

Have a fish

So Good It Hurts: The Unwritten Book!

The fun and informative 33 1/3 series of pocket-sized paperbacks, each focusing on a classic album, recently put out a call for new proposals. I submitted one for one of the greatest records ever made, crossing my fingers. Well, the short list is in and my proposal is not among them. Since they picked 94 out of 471 submissions, it was, of course, a crapshoot, but I'm proud to have been in the running.

Noentheless, I am inordinately pleased with my proposal, so here it is:

Your professional CV/resume, including full contact details (see file “SGIH-CV”; everything else is here)  

A draft annotated table of contents for the book and an approximate date of completion:

Tracks In History, Like Piss In The Snow

The introduction, setting the scene, who the Mekons are, why they matter, why this album rates the particular focus it does. To be further expanded/cut/refined from the draft enclosed.

The Ripples Whisper Warnings

Dissecting the first three songs: “I’m Not Here (1967)”, “Ghosts Of American Astronauts”, and “Road To Florida”. Ominous portent wrapped in the dreamy ideals of the Sixties. The first song speaks surreally of rock star hedonism and a counterculture absorbed in druggy self-reflection while the old guard continues with their atrocities; the second song contrasts the wonder of space exploration with the practice of using it as another tool of nationalism, militarism and cold-warring superpower exceptionalism; the third traces the sad demise of Band pianist Richard Manuel and the overall strangeness of the state of Florida---the 80s Miami Vice phenomenon must be dealt with as well. (“They send narcotics agents to catch a falling star”)

Like A Funeral March

Taking apart the cover art. Each Mekon is represented by a Day Of The Dead skeleton that also represents an aspect of a song or source. Bandmember mini-bios, a semiotic picking apart of the representations of each “skelly”, tracing of running themes (pirates, psychiatry, Robin Hood, astronauts, mutineers, libertines, blood, Nixon, etc.) as they speak to the UK and US in 1988. Personal testimonies of fans.

Now Your Body’s Up For Sale

Dissecting songs 4-6: “Johnny Miner”, “Dora”, and “Poxy Lips”. A cover of a working class ballad by Ed Pickford given a haunting circus-dub feel; a complex feminist ballad that takes in the assumptions behind the thrills of Wuthering Heights, the misogynistic blinders inseparable from Freudian psychoanalysis, and a portrait of a dominatrix between assignments; a rollicking two-step that quotes pirate Black Bart, alludes to Huysmans’ Against Nature and possibly reflects the AIDS crisis of the 80s.

See The Man Is Writing

How this multilayered, allusive material is actually created. The collective process of the Mekons’ songwriting and recording as described from fresh interviews and archival accounts. The contributions of “deputy Mekons” like Dick Taylor, Rob Worby and Brendan Croker.

Those Shapes And Symbols

Dissecting songs 7-9: “Fletcher Christian”, “Fantastic Voyage”, and “Robin Hood”. A ballad of the lonely desolation of the mutineer; 80s sex and drugs hedonism (the incessant cult of the tragic junkie commented on in “this is meant to be a painkiller, but it’s so good it hurts”) over a thudding Bo Diddley rhythm; and an Afro-pop flavored rebel song filled with allusions to the past and direct references to the Thatcher regime, the miners’ strike, and the Falklands War, plus titillating bisexual in-jokes. (This time, hedonism is an aspect of resistance, not a distraction from crisis: “Soft the scene so formed for joy/oh, curse the tyrants that destroy!”)

Looking Up At The Twinkling Stars

The state of mainstream rock, “modern” rock, indie rock, punk rock in the late 80s. The imminent Rough Trade bankruptcy, the calm before the 90s alt-rock storm, how a cult band negotiates the vagaries of the music business. What is “authenticity”? Why do we care?

Where’s My Baby Face?

Dissecting songs 10-13: “Heart Of Stone”, “Maverick”, “Vengeance”, and “Revenge”. A Rolling Stones cover, delivered straight with a twist; disconnected images of motion/action/frantic desperation with fleeting glances in the mirror; a more desolate but still resolute rebel song (“I’ll never rest and I’ll never forget”); a bonus track in the form of a souped up country song of revenge.
There’s A Mighty Crisis Coming

What came next: the promise of the A&M deal and Rock & Roll, the collapse, the curse, a second journey into the experimental wilderness, solo careers, a renaissance in the new millennium. Why the Mekons endure. We’ll do some dancing here!

These are the proposed contents. I am shooting for a completion time of around December 2012, with further edits and feedback in the following months.

A draft introduction/opening chapter for the book, of around 2,000 words:

This book is a detective story. We will dig through the dustbins of history to find clues to what makes this set of songs tick. What do they say about the distant past, about the time they were recorded, about right now? So Good It Hurts is a seance where you never know which departed spirit will speak next. Better yet, it’s a happy, drunken, rambunctious seance in the company of a dozen of your best new friends. The apparitions may be twisted and scary at times, but the jokes will have you on your knees in joyful convulsions.

The story so far:

The Mekons stumbled into life as the ultimate expression of punk ideals, a group of art school pals who imposed more rules on themselves than the Dogme 95 filmmakers. There would be no promo pictures, no records, no singling out of individual stars, no separation between the band and its audience. Some of these rules were thrown out immediately at the first opportunity; others linger on to this day, however mutated. Dark as the subjects of the songs may get, Mekons gigs are buoyant, ecstatic and side-splitting. The members of the band never stop affectionately ribbing each other and teasing the crowd. The nonstop banter between the goofy, fast-quipping Jon Langford and the beatifically snide Sally Timms never grows tired.

While the collective personality of the band (fiercely intelligent, humorously self-deprecating, and embracing their own human foibles) has stayed consistent for decades, the Mekons’ first incarnation was strikingly different from what they ultimately became. Two lead vocalists, Andy Corrigan and Mark “Chalkie” White, bellowed and shrieked in strained, expressive, unmelodic voices, sometimes in unison, sometimes one or the other singing solo, sometimes trading lines. To this day, I have difficulty telling them apart. (I think it’s Chalkie who takes the lead on their first classic single, “Where Were You?”) Two long-term members, Tom Greenhalgh and Kevin Lycett, slashed away on guitars in a sloppy, spirited, Gang Of Four style. The bass position was held first by future Delta 5 founder Ros Allen, then by Mary Jenner, who also contributed some sawing violin to some early records, paving the way for Susie Honeyman later on. And what about Jon Langford, now the most high-profile member, the assumed leader of a leaderless band? He was the drummer, barely recognizable in early photos with a scruffy moptop and a twinkle in his eye.

This was the group that emerged in the avalanche of independent British post-punk singles that followed the Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch, first with the scrappy Clash satire “Never Been In A Riot”, followed by a song that, if they had never done anything afterward, would be cherished as one of the all-time most beloved punk 45s.

“Where Were You?” is one of those great musical epiphanies, a simple song with a simple sentiment, delivered with the power of accidental genius. In a ridiculously long intro, one guitar slams out a brilliantly dumb riff of open E and A chords while Langford’s drum pattern builds and builds until POW, the band bursts out of the gate, riding the riff, gradually accelerating as the singer, defiant and assertive but almost on the verge of tears, relays in a few lines the feeling of waiting in a bar and being stood up by a woman who wasn’t as serious about him as he’d hoped. Neither a rage against the machine or a formulaic love song, it was just a human moment that said what it had to say in the most contagious way possible, then fizzled out like a toy whose battery had just run down.

This was the Mekons that rode a modest underground hit into their first major label contract (not their last) with Virgin, who released an album in 1980 with a cover featuring a chimpanzee at a typewriter, The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strnen. The content was twelve songs very much in the spirit of “Where Were You?” Catchy, chaotic songs that fall together and fall apart, deconstructing relationships and working class life with humor, angst, and energy. It’s an underrated classic of the post-punk era and a joy to hear. The Mekons hated and immediately disavowed it, claiming that Virgin’s input was stifling and the album was overproduced. Around the same time, the live punk circuit had become so dangerous and violent that the band, echoing the route taken by other contemporaries such as Alternative TV and Wire, took a hard left turn into obscure experimental territory to shake off the boneheads in the crowd.

Cutting down on live performance and recording on the cheap with a rapidly-shifting membership, the group sporadically released weird, opaque albums like Devils, Rats and Piggies and The Mekons Story, where their fragile, barely together songs had been allowed to fall to pieces and were displayed proudly in all their fragmentary disarray. The initial goal of forming the ultimate anti-band appeared to have been achieved by these lo-fi collections of broken, halting, obscure vignettes. There are moments of shocking beauty to found on these albums (Chalkie’s heart-stopping acapella scream “The Building”, the lonesome dub of “Another One”, the drunken fractured rockabilly stomp of “Institution”) but this was difficult stuff, unformed embryos of sound that took real effort for the listener to delve into and uncover their rewards.

What happened next was the last thing anyone expected. An album called Fear And Whiskey appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, credited to a band called the Mekons who were almost unrecognizable. The vocals were familiar; we knew Tom Greenhalgh’s voice from “After 6”, a highlight of Quality Of Mercy. But now the voice sat on top of a solid, reggae-influenced rhythm section, a keening, prominent violin and layers of guitars, all slathered with reverb. There was a folkish flavor that gradually revealed itself to be closer to country music, but there was little or no attempt to emulate the hot licks of the master musicians of Nashville. The lyrics retained the themes of lovelorn regret, wartorn landscapes, working class resistance, and drunken fatalism, but with a new coherence and power. They wore cowboy hats and covered Hank Williams. Darkness and doubt just followed them about. It’s hard to be human on the lost highway, when you just wanted to say “fall in love with me” and “it’ll be all right.” This was the first flowering of the Mekons’ maturity. They were back. And while they may not have pulled crowds as big as the ones that clamored to see the Pogues, they fed the same itch for human contact that wasn’t being scratched by the sleek pop of the early 80s.

A number of elements came together to bring this new Mekons into being. A friend of the band, convinced that their lyrics and sensibility were simpatico with older forms, made them tapes of essential American country-western sounds that caught their imagination and filled them with new ideas to twist to their own ends. Politically active friends like Dutch anarchists the Ex and UK activists putting on benefits for the Miners’ Strike started begging the disorganized band to get together and play some live shows, which led them to seek out some firm rhythmic ground. Former Graham Parker & The Rumour drummer Steve Goulding (whose deft touch and feel for reggae enriched Parker’s attempts in that area as well as Elvis Costello’s “Watching The Detectives”) was joined by former Damned guitarist Lu Edmonds on bass, as well as new members Susie Honeyman on violin and Rolling Stones/Pretty Things founder Dick Taylor as fourth guitarist. With their original lead singers gone, Greenhalgh (most of the time), Langford, and Kevin Lycett took turns fronting the band on guitar and vocals.

Fear And Whiskey was a breakthrough album, but the oppressive sadness of it all can be so forbidding that one is tempted to turn to something more upbeat like Joy Division. The next album, Edge Of The World, worked its way deeper into the tissues of roots music, and introduced two more new members, singer Sally Timms and accordionist/vocalist Rico Bell, as well as ongoing guest slide guitarist Brendan Croker. This time, with five strong vocal personalities, added instrumental color, and more evident humor in the lyrics, the dark clouds began to lift somewhat, and the band’s growing strengths became clearer. With increased touring, the word got out about what a crazy, delightful live act the Mekons were, and their cult following in the US began to take off in earnest. Another incredible album, Honky Tonkin’, solidified their reputation. This was a band that created something completely their own from the most unlikely influences, harnessing the energy and creativity of a ridiculously large group of characters. All of this in the service of songs that dealt with the bitter truths of now, while tossing in a capsule education and peppering the results with zany jokes and irresistible tunes.

Which brings us to 1988. Mekons fans are a devoted lot, and we do love to debate the merits of each of their records. The aforementioned “Alt-Country Trilogy” is beloved by just about everyone, and the roots reboot of Fear And Whiskey is often pointed to in particular. 1989’s Mekons Rock And Roll, the product of the band’s second major label deal is bright, loud, filled with glorious songs, and thanks to the power of A&M’s promo department, is many people’s first Mekons album, which gives it special status in many eyes. There is, however, another album that sits in between these that doesn’t get mentioned as often, that I would argue is the best one of all.

For the Mekons in 1988, the next step was to expand. So Good It Hurts folds in genres from dub to zydeco with an even broader swipe at history, literature, and cultural theory, making a thicker, more complex stew than ever that remains at its heart a fun, rollicking party record. In this funhouse mirror view of the myths and obsessions of Western culture, nothing is sacred or free from scrutiny--least of all, the eternal tropes of sex, drugs and rock and roll.

The 12 songs (13 if you count added B-side “Revenge”, a cruel, torchy Sally Timms vehicle where she makes some poor fool regret he ever crossed her) are packed with sounds and signifiers. While Honky Tonkin’ actually included bibliographical notes for each song, So Good It Hurts’ inner sleeve on the vinyl (reconstructed in the CD booklet) is a collage of out-of-sequence lyrics, random quotations, and silly or pensive band photos, scattered sloppily across a bright red background like pages from an overstuffed notebook blown away by the wind.

The quotations feel as much a part of the album as the guitars, commenting, corroborating, contradicting. Visions of hedonistic abandon collide with passages from Theodor Adorno’s despondent book of essays Minima Moralia: Reflections From Damaged Life. (More on him later.) The life of historical pirate Black Bart intersects with decadent fictional aesthete Des Esseintes and the AIDS epidemic of the 80s in a careening accordion-driven stomp. Female roles are viewed through the lenses of Freud, Bronte, and a London dominatrix, while elsewhere, we get a taste of how Mick Jagger’s lyrics would sound coming from a woman’s mouth. Hope and hopelessness embrace for the last dance before closing time; the beleaguered-yet-jolly fiddle-led protest of “Vengeance” is underscored by a quote from Reagan’s Secretary Of The Interior, James Watt, “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.”

So Good It Hurts serves up a dark vision to match the waning days of the Reagan/Thatcher era, but it’s a bracing one. This is music to be immersed in, songs to howl drunkenly at the top of your lungs with your fellow pirates and mutineers. It’s a lively tale, this to tell. Give it a taste; it’s worth bottling.

Your analysis of the most relevant competing books already published about the artist in question or the scene surrounding that artist – and how your book will differ:

Surprisingly for such a literary-minded cult band, there is not a lot of what I would call comparable work out there. There are two Mekons-themed books:

Mekons United (1/4 Stick): A companion piece to the band’s collective art show. It is a compilation of writings, some critical pieces, a lot of fiction (including a long excerpt from the group-written “unfinished novel”, Living In Sin), lyric quotations and miscellaneous musings on the environment the Mekons sprang from. The book is as provocative, heady and somewhat rambling as you might expect from an “official Mekons book”, profusely illustrated with stunning paintings, drawings and other visual works that suggest the founding members’ art school education was not in vain.

Hello Cruel World (Verse Chorus Press): A small, attractive hard cover book of lyrics from Fear And Whiskey to Journey To The End Of Night. Includes photos and more artwork. Gives you a nice overview of the band’s strong lyrical abilities. I provided the title and other suggestions and am credited as “editorial consultant”.

Probably the closest thing to a Mekons-related 33 1/3 type book is Jon Langford’s Skull Orchard (Verse Chorus Press), a book full of Langford’s own artwork, background information on the songs of his autobiographical solo album of the same name, writings from his brother and photos by his father that all stitch together a picture of his Welsh upbringing and the source of all the references and in-jokes in the lyrics. There is some similarity to what I aim to do, but there are obvious differences, number one being that Skull Orchard is a book put together by the artist himself, suitable for the personal nature of the album. The Mekons’ music is usually filled with deep meaning and emotion, but it is created through a very different process more akin to collages or automatic writing than your typical singer-songwriter’s act of personal expression. (Part of my goal is to find out and reveal more about how this process works.)

One model for what I’m going for is the approach of Greil Marcus, particularly in his book In The Fascist Bathroom aka Ranters And Crowd Pleasers, which also happens to include a few short articles on the Mekons that are some of the best writing I’ve ever read on the band. However, I also plan to interview band members and others in their circle to obtain some real horse’s mouth viewpoints and not rely strictly on the put-it-on-the-stereo-with-a-stack-of-books-and-let-your-mind-run-wild reveries that Marcus does so brilliantly, though I certainly will be doing my share of that as well.

Up to 1,000 words on which book, or parts of books, already published in the series you would aim to emulate on some level:

Forever Changes by Andrew Hultkrans is a favorite, being a book that probes the Zeitgeist of a period in history via a less popular album of the time. I’m inspired by the way he looks in less-obvious places, like the history of Gnosticism, to dig out aspects of Arthur Lee’s gnomic lyrics. Hultkrans probes the darker sides of the 60s and shows not just how, but why, Lee was influenced by Marat/Sade. A fascinating book on a fascinating album.

Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli is by nature a more sentimental book, which is appropriate for the brilliant sentimentalist that is Brian Wilson, but I enjoy the way he describes the musical elements and how they connect, even when I strongly disagree with some of his final judgements. (Surely there is room for both “Barbara Ann” and “God Only Knows” in the pantheon.)

The Who Sell Out by John Dougan, like Hultktrans’ book, is great for zeroing in on important non-musical background information, with his capsule histories of pop art and pirate radio, both of which are crucial to really get the point of this album.

Double Nickels On The Dime by Michael T. Fournier may be the most dogeared volume in my 33 1/3 collection, due to its wonderfully detailed song descriptions. Fournier misses nothing in his parsing of the Minutemen’s song constructions and lyrical references. And getting the participation of a larger-than-life force of nature like Mike Watt adds so much more. I hope to obtain as much funny, in-depth enlightenment from Jon Langford and his colleagues.

Another Green World by Geeta Dayal deserves a mention for the passage, “Many years ago, Eno coined a term he called ‘scenius’ to describe how large groups of people, not simply lone misunderstood geniuses, generate creativity. ‘Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene,’ Eno has said, ‘It is the communal form of the concept of the genius.’” This touches on another of the themes I want to deal with in So Good It Hurts: how a group of people can create a piece collectively that has all the perceived mark of an “auteur”: a unity of sound, theme and feeling that seems to come from one great mind. One of my most burning questions I wish to resolve in the process of writing this book is “how in the world does that work?”

Possible blurb and extra fun quotes:

Where do you go next when you began as the ultimate anti-band, started writing great catchy punk songs in spite of yourselves, turned into a lo-fi art project to jettison the boneheads in your audience, and ended up accidentally inventing alt-country? For the Mekons in 1988, the answer was to expand. So Good It Hurts folds in genres from dub to zydeco with an even broader swipe at history, literature, and cultural theory, making a thicker, more complex stew than ever that remains at its heart a fun, rollicking party record.

"In an honest service there is thin commons, low wages, and hard labor; in this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power; and who would not balance creditor on this side, when all the hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sour look or two at choking. No, a merry life and a short one, shall be my motto." -Bartholomew "Black Bart" Roberts (Johnson, 244)


When the ship finally docked in the West Indies a third victim of the same captain ‘carried his shirt, stained with the blood which had flowed from his wounds, to one of the magistrates of the island and applied to him for redress’. But the slaves on the ship were bound for the magistrate’s plantation and he was deaf to his pleas. The Royal AfricanCompany’s own chief surgeon, conducting a survey of conditions aboard ships off West Africa in 1725, wrote that ‘tyrannical oppression and want of necessities of life’ were ‘epidemical’ -”If A Pirate I Must Be--The True Story Of Black Bart, King Of The Caribbean Pirates” by Richard Sanders

5 songs: Leporidae

Our new Soundcloud Spotlight (picked by J Neo Marvin) shows off the varied work of the Experimental Bunnies, our psychedelic improvisational instrumental project. We started the Bunnies to record soundtrack music for the Noodle Brain Productions cable TV show in 2005-2006, and the spirit of spontaneous creativity was so intoxicating that the project continues to this day. A group of Bunnies gather at a designated time to create music with as few guidelines as possible, be it a basic track or new overdubs over previous Bunny improvisations. The best parts are edited and released on our label, with each participant on each track credited as a co-composer. We have two very different Experimental Bunny works in progress in the can now, slouching towards the mixing board to be born in their full glory further on down the road.

How we all get played

A brief primer on why we have racism:

Atlas Wept by The Granite Countertops: Official Video

The Granite Countertops perform "Atlas Wept" from their album CRASHING INTO THE FUTURE on Ear Candle Productions.



"You thought you would have your way forever
Turned out not to be true
You thought you were the hero of the movie
Now the world points its finger back at you
What can you do? What can you do?
Throw a tantrum, play the victim

You thought you were the winner in the dogpile
That pile of bodies, now it's rolling over you
You thought you were the author of the future
The book slammed shut before the end of chapter 2
What do you say? What do you say?
Blow the same stupid horn
Serve the same tasteless corn

You can't be satisfied to sit and count your money
Without your words written in the air
It's not enough just to get away with murder
It eats you up that they don't love you everywhere
So you keep croaking at every microphone you see
Our forsaken angry god
One sad obsolescent clod"

J Neo Marvin: Lyrics, vocals, keyboard, beat programming, electric guitars, dwarf djembe and melodica
Davis Jones: Vocals, Cuvaison wineglasses, Chinese massage balls, Tibetan cymbals
Matthew Grasso: Seven-string acoustic guitar, sympathetic strings and lamenting vocals
Lizzie Borden: Soothing vocals

Find this and more Granite Countertops music here!

Linkies and miscellany

The Fall 2012 semester will bring a Renaissance of radio activity from these quarters. I have registered for KSFS radio. I have not DJ'd at a college radio station since 1981, and never before as an actual student.

Mahablog on bogus freedom.

Substance on Crazy Man Michael and his spirited defense of the real victims. (Plus, a bonus Youtube by the Art Bears sounding like a really sloppy Deerhoof.)

Roy discovers a really bad source for mail order iced tea.

And you thought the Paul-is-dead conspiracy theory was goofy...

You really do need to be clicking Astronomy Picture Of The Day every day. Just look at this:

Purge!

Made something new yesterday. This may ultimately end up being a backing track for something else. Or maybe it will stand by itself. Or maybe it will be a theme for a TV show! However it goes, I like the way it turned out.

Didn't we try this "preppy asshole in the White House" idea already?

Up until now, as much as I have grown to detest Mitt Romney for his wide-eyed, histrionic, deceitful babbling, his obnoxious sense of privileged entitlement, and the very real damage he has done to small businesses and the economy as a corporate predator with Bain Capital, I have not considered his face to be nearly as irresistibly punchable as those of his fallen opponents Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, et al. This story changes all of that.

This is being spun as a tale of homophobia. Yeah sure, it's that, but that's not all. You don't have to actually be gay to see yourself in that kid who got pinned to the ground by some smug "popular" fucker taking a scissors to his hair. ANYONE who doesn't fit into the norm when they're young gets this kind of treatment from their peers, usually with no consequence whatsoever for the perpetrators. It's only now that people are actually bothering to have a conversation about what is now being called the "Bully Culture," but this is nothing new.

And if you were on the receiving end of it, you can have all the therapy you like, but it doesn't matter. Shit like this stays with you forever.

The only choice you have is to either turn it into an excuse to wallow in self-pity and take out your resentment on others, or recognize it as just one example of the pervasive injustice that shows up everywhere, in any form, and spend your life doing what you can to fight it wherever it shows it's ugly head. Not just for your own identity group, but for everyone.

As I said, I already hated Mitt Romney before this. But yesterday I just thought he was merely a ludicrous puffed-up target for laughter who deserves to be kept as far away from the levers of power as possible. Now I know better: Mitt Romney is That Guy. Here's to him receiving the metaphorical punch in the face he so richly deserves this November.

UPDATE: Doghouse sums it up beautifully as usual: "Isn't 'organize gang of snotty, well-off bullies to torment the less fortunate' pretty much a description of the man's business career?"

UPDATE II: Winning the Lord Of The Flies vote.

Song Of The Six Pack

Angel Corpus Christi's X-tal covers project is back. This time she and Rich Stim take on a song by Maati Stojanovich and Jeremy O'Doughaill (I did contribute the second verse) about drinking and dysfunction. In other words, it's a country song. Suitable for weeping in one's beer at 3 AM.

5 Songs: The Covering!

Our new Soundcloud Spotlight mix, selected by Davis Jones, opens with three cover songs (Ray Davies, Syd Barrett and Stephin Merritt) by the Content Providers, Davis's own composition for The Blame, "Wagons And Boys", and the Granite Countertops' recording of J Neo Marvin's "Animal Panic". Enjoy.

Schoolyard power plays

What Digby said, part infinity:

As we were watching some functionary or the other extolling the order to kill Osama bin laden as a unique act of leadership and courage this morning, Mr Digby muttered to me, "they're beating them at their own game." And that's what's wrong with it. It's not that Republicans are uniquely evil people in this regard, obviously. This stuff is very human. It's that the game itself is evil.

I get why the Democrats are doing it. I'm sure it's extremely satisfying to land those punches on the right wing blowhards after all the years of taunting and jeering about liberal cowardice. To be able to say they killed the evil mastermind where the swaggering codpiece failed is probably too much of a temptation for them to pass up. I get it.

But I hate it. I hated it when the Republicans did it and I hate it now. I don't believe the most powerful nation on earth should be running its democracy via schoolyard power plays. This is how we ended up stuck in Vietnam and how we have found ourselves floundering about in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It's why we can't stop spending trillions on useless weapons systems, why we "have" to continue to fund ridiculous programs like Star Wars and why everyone in the political establishment assumes that the only answer to budget problems is to cut the so-called "entitlements."