FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Phil



Frankie



Sammy



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging!

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For ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ Split on Party Lines

From the New York Times courtesy of AlterNet:

The presidential candidates are dividing starkly along party lines on one of the signature fights of the 1990s: whether the 14-year-old policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” should be repealed and gay men and lesbians allowed to serve openly in the military.

In back-to-back debates in New Hampshire this week, every Democratic candidate raised his or her hand in support of repealing that policy, while not a single Republican embraced the idea. Democrats argued with striking unanimity that it was time to end the uneasy compromise that President Bill Clinton reached in 1993, after his attempt to lift the ban on gay men and lesbians in the military provoked one of the most wrenching fights of his young administration.

Republicans countered that the policy should not be changed, certainly not in time of war.

Click here for the rest.

Things have changed. I'm still outraged with the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sam Nunn, for his arrogant and homophobic opposition to President Clinton's attempt to repeal the ban. Indeed, this wouldn't even be an issue today if so many Democrats hadn't sided with Republicans on the issue fourteen years ago. It's nice to see that some Democrats have grown up a bit since then.

And really, there's just no good reason for the ban, especially in light of all those desperately needed gay Arabic translators thrown out after 9/11. The argument that openly gay troops somehow hurt unit cohesion is bogus on its face: this is clearly a command issue, and if straight soldiers don't want to follow orders, then they have no business being in the military in the first place. That is, I don't see why commanders can't simply order their troops to just deal with it. That's what Ike did when he integrated black and white units decades ago, and racist soldiers did a fine job of just dealing with it. Besides, if our fighting men and women are afraid of homosexuals, we're in much more trouble than any of us could ever imagine. Other arguments, like the "social engineering with the military is wrong" point of view, are even weaker. Like I said, we've already done the same thing with race. And with women. It's all homophobia.

The great irony here is that homosexuals serve, and have served for decades, honorably, without any problems--usually, their straight comrades know who's gay, and if they serve well, it's no big deal. When are we ever going to get over this bullshit?

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Dems Funding Abstinence-Only Ed?

From the Daily Kos:

Today, the House Democrats will waltz into the mark-up of the Labor HHS Subcommittee and proudly present a bill that puts their stamp of approval on domestic abstinence-only-until-marriage programs—an ideological boondoggle that threatens the health and well-being of America's youth.

The most appalling aspect of this sell-out is that that the Democrats will not only fully fund the worst of the failed abstinence-only-until-marriage programs—they'll give them a $27 million increase—the first in three years!

And

What in the hell are Obey and Pelosi thinking on this one? Study after study has shown that abstinence-only education not only doesn't work, but is harming the health of young people. This is just insane.

More here.

Insane is right, but then, I've come to expect no less from the Democrats. The Daily Kos post speculates that they're trying to avoid controversial social issues in order to make some headway elsewhere, like Iraq and the economy I suppose, but my guess is that if the "abstinence only" meme hadn't already taken on a weird life of its own, there wouldn't be much willingness on the part of the so-called liberal party to support such a stupid and life-threatening bill.

When it comes to policy and public discourse on sex, this country is downright mentally ill.

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Credibility of JFK terror case questioned

From the New York Newsday courtesy of Eschaton:

When U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf described the alleged terror plot to blow up Kennedy Airport as "one of the most chilling plots imaginable," which might have caused "unthinkable" devastation, one law enforcement official said he cringed.

The plot, he knew, was never operational. The public had never been at risk. And the notion of blowing up the airport, let alone the borough of Queens, by exploding a fuel tank was in all likelihood a technical impossibility.

And now, with a portrait emerging of alleged mastermind Russell Defreitas as hapless and episodically homeless, and of co-conspirator Abdel Nur as a drug addict, Mauskopf's initial characterizations seem more questionable -- some go so far as to say hyped.

And

"I think her comments were over the top," said Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. "It was a totally overstated characterization that doesn't comport with the facts." And Steven Simon, a terrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the government's hyperbolic descriptions -- whether of this case or of the alleged plot to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago -- could erode public confidence in law enforcement and lead to confusion about the terror threat.

"First, it creates the public impression that the adversary is just a bunch of losers who do not have to be feared," he said. "Second, the fact that these hapless people are angry enough to seek to attack the U.S. raises the issue of other more competent, well-organized groups that might be escaping police detection."

Click here for the rest.

As the article goes on to observe, even though global terrorism is a very real threat, to which the populations of Madrid and London can attest, there is now an obvious pattern here in the United States of agencies under White House control exaggerating and heavily publicizing arrests of these Don Knotts-like would-be bumbling "terrorists." I mean, this just keeps on happening, and this latest one goes into the file with that guy who was going to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch. Is it possible that the Oval Office is playing politics with these bogus "terrorism" plots in the same way that they have with all of those color-coded terrorist threat level warnings?

Duh.


The face of terrorism,
as seen from the Oval Office.

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Gay Groups Decry Surgeon General Nominee

From the AP via the Huffington Post courtesy of AlterNet:

President Bush's nominee for surgeon general, Kentucky cardiologist Dr. James Holsinger, has come under fire from gay rights groups for voting to expel a lesbian pastor from the United Methodist Church and writing in 1991 that gay sex is unnatural and unhealthy.

Also, Holsinger helped found a Methodist congregation that, according to gay rights activists, believes homosexuality is a matter of choice and can be "cured."

"He has a pretty clear bias against gays and lesbians," said Christina Gilgor, director of the Kentucky Fairness Alliance, a gay rights group. "This ideology flies in the face of current scientific medical studies. That makes me uneasy that he rejects science and promotes ideology."

Holsinger, 68, has declined all interview requests.

And

Sixteen years ago, he wrote a paper for the church in which he likened the reproductive organs to male and female "pipe fittings" and argued that homosexuality is therefore biologically unnatural.

More here.

I think I know of at least two gay flamingos that would disagree with Holsinger's assertion that homosexuality is "biologically unnatural." But this isn't simply a debate about a controversial social issue. The Surgeon General takes the lead in formulating and directing US public health policy, and Bush's latest bone-throw to the religious right is obviously unqualified to do the job. That is, he's yet another one of those Bush people whose faith trumps science. That this part-time minister honestly believes that homosexuals "can be cured" and that sexual orientation "is a matter of choice" stands in stark contrast to virtually all serious scientific research on the subject. This is not the kind of guy we need as Surgeon General.

I will give him this: at least he's actually a doctor, and therefore somewhat qualified for the position, unlike heckuva-job Brownie over at FEMA was.

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Ritalin use doubles after divorce, study finds

From Reuters via Yahoo courtesy of AlterNet:

Children from broken marriages are twice as likely to be prescribed attention-deficit drugs as children whose parents stay together, a Canadian researcher said on Monday, and she said the reasons should be investigated.

More than 6 percent of 633 children from divorced families were prescribed
Ritalin, compared with 3.3 percent of children whose parents stayed together, University of Alberta professor Lisa Strohschein reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

And

Ritalin, known generically as methylphenidate, is a psychostimulant drug most commonly prescribed for the treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in children.

There is a big debate in much of the developed world over whether it may be over-prescribed -- given to children who do not really need it. In March, a University of California, Berkeley study found that the use of drugs to treat ADHD has more than tripled worldwide since 1993.

More here.

Okay, this drug is definitely over-prescribed: if my information's correct, most Ritalin prescriptions in the US come from regular MD's, who have been heavily pressured by parents, rather than from psychiatrists; the problem here is that you absolutely have to have a psychiatrist to diagnose ADHD, which means there are a lot of kids out there tweaking in class simply because their parents can't deal with normal childish behavior.

It makes complete sense that kids from divorced families would lose some ability to focus while their homes are in turmoil, and that their newly single parents would turn to the local pediatrician for some mother's-little-helper. And that's pretty fucked up. In other words, it's a safe bet that most of the kids in this study don't have ADHD, and they're being drugged for expediency and convenience. I mean, they probably could use some therapy, and maybe even some anti-depressants or something, but making an unwarranted diagnosis and then treating it with the wrong drug is just plain bad.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not one of those ADD deniers; believe me, after teaching high school for six years, I've seen it in action, and it's pretty damned intense. But it's just not as widespread as it seems to be. Children are supposed to get antsy when confined for long periods of time, which is necessarily annoying to the adults who deal with them. Now that we can drug them to control their behaviors, the temptation to do it to every unruly kid is apparently overwhelming.

And none of this even begins to address the fact that ADHD, the real deal, not the fake stuff, has most likely been a naturally occurring human phenomenon for thousands of years, probably even serving an important evolutionary function in some way, but it is only in the information era, which demands that humans sit still and pay attention to boring drivel for the majority of the day, that it has become pathologized.

Meanwhile, the now debunked anti-drug D.A.R.E. program continues to expand throughout the public school system. So I'm confused now: are drugs good for us or bad for us?

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House Approves Speedy Jefferson Probe

From the AP via the Huffington Post courtesy of AlterNet:

Expelling a House member before a conviction would be unprecedented, according to the Congressional Research Service. But it was not clear that would happen in Jefferson's case, because the ethics committee could refuse to rule on whether the nine-term congressman should be thrown out of the House, according to a Democratic leadership aide.

Still, Republicans and a few Democrats said publicly or privately that Jefferson should step down.

Several House members said preparing a legal defense would take time Jefferson otherwise might spend representing his hurricane-ravaged New Orleans district.

"I would encourage Mr. Jefferson to take this under advisement and encourage him to step down," said Rep. Christopher Carney, R-Pa.

"My position is similar to the gentleman from Pennsylvania," said Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo. "I would suggest that (Jefferson) do justice to himself, prepare his defense, and that his district have someone else."

Click here for the rest.

In all the time that the Tom DeLay investigation was moving forward, in the numerous posts I made about it and how much I hate the now disgraced former GOP Congressional leader, I don't think I ever called for Congress to throw him out. Sure, I was all in favor of stripping him of his leadership position and committee assignments based on the indictment, and I was, and still am, all in favor of finding him guilty in court, but removing him from Congress before there's a verdict strikes me as a bad idea because, you know, it's always possible he could be found not guilty.

Fortunately, the Lizard King spared his party the awkward position he put them in.

Jefferson, whose defense attorney aggressively asserts is totally innocent, ought to do the same thing for his party. I mean, it's possible that the bags of money the FBI found in his freezer were somehow planted there--it certainly wouldn't be the first time the Bureau framed an African-American man. At the moment, however, the prima facie case against him appears to be airtight, and this kind of kickback corruption is not at all uncommon here in Louisiana. (Indeed, such petty corruption now threatens to drive the film industry, whose existence is what's allowing me to move to New Orleans this August, out of the state forever, so I take this shit very seriously.) And the Congressmen who point out that Jefferson won't be able to advocate for his Katrina-ravaged city while he's dealing with these charges are absolutely correct.

For the good of pretty much everybody, Jefferson needs to resign, guilty or not.

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Bush's "Magic" Economic Formula:
The Rich Get Richer; Regular People Lose Ground

From AlterNet:

Not, perhaps, as a general rule, but in an economy like ours, handing out money to rich people is the least effective way to make a healthier, stronger economy that benefits society as a whole. There are two reasons.

The first is that the Ayn Rand fantasy is a fantasy. For the most part, when people with millions of dollars get an extra hundred thousand, or several hundreds of thousands, or even millions, they invest it passively, in financial instruments and real estate.

So we get, for example, a real estate bubble. Which is worse that a dot.com bubble because a dot.com bubble is symptomatic of the excitement of investing in new, high risk, but high reward enterprises that are producing new things. A housing bubble is symptomatic of lots of money floating around with nowhere productive to go. The other reason is that insofar as investment does go into business, in terms of our society, there's a hole in the bucket. The hole is called globalization.

And

Lots of money is moving. As it passes through the company, the company profits. The company isn't going to build anything, so profits are spent on executive compensation. The actual work is outsourced (the money flows out), and no jobs are created. Nor does the actual business grow very much either, except as a middle man, taking American money and passing it on to foreign businesses (and oil producers).

At the same time, this creates downward pressure on normal working people.

Click here for the rest.

So the double-whammy of throwing money at the rich combined with globalization, or what are together more politely called "free market" principles, grows the economy but skews the vast majority of the benefits toward the upper end of the income spectrum. The old slogans about economics simply no longer have any relation to reality. Tax cuts don't help Americans, at least not the kind we've been seeing for the last six years. A rising tide does not raise all the boats. "Free trade," as implemented by both Democrats and Republicans for nearly three decades, isn't good for America. What's good for Wall Street is not good for Main Street.

I'm no communist, but this situation is unacceptable. Business in this country could not thrive without government intervention, and we pay for that with our tax dollars. That is, the Milton Friedman notion that a corporation's responsibility is only to its shareholders cannot be tolerated.

These businesses owe us, and it's time for them to pay up.

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God is passing out brain tumors too

From This Modern World:

I doubt that she was thinking, when she turned her head and saw the truck coming, “Well, there goes that trip to Greece.'’ But I thought that, later. I thought that the overlooked corollary to “it’s never too late'’ is “it’s never too early.'’

The day after Jeanne Steager died, I went into Mr. Stern’s office and quit my job. I was out of there in an hour; I was back home for lunch. It’s never too early. Plans are just guesses.

I SUPPOSE I AM bringing tidings of subversive cheer; I suppose I am suggesting that you consider a change. Quit your job if you hate it. Go on. I know these are hard times, and people fall off the edge, but God is passing out brain tumors too, and you might as well take the plunge. The plunge is all we’ve got.

When you’re young you think that life stretches out indefinitely and you can take this crap for another decade. And the lesson of Jeanne Steager is, No, you bloody well can’t. Life is of varying lengths, and actuarial tables are only averages, and sometimes you gotta close your eyes and jump. Even if it’s scary; especially if it’s scary.

Click here for more.

So Tom Tomorrow ran the text above, excerpting from a 1995 San Francisco Chronicle column, in reaction to the recent death of popular left-wing blogger Steve Gilliard, who was only two years older than me when he died. I only occasionally read Gilliard's stuff, when others linked to him, but it's clear that he was greatly loved by the left side of the blogosphere. When someone you don't really know dies, but everybody else seems to be talking about him, it may not be a cause for sadness per se, but it is definitely a time for reflection, hence the SFC column over at This Modern World.

I needed to hear this right now. The same attitude expressed above is what got me off my duff to go back to school to get my master's in acting, but now that I'm done, now that I'm facing the rest of my life, I have to admit it's pretty darned frightening. Professional acting is very much a losing proposition in terms of long-term success. At any given moment, some 97% of all people who call themselves actors are not working as actors. The Big Time is only reserved for a lucky few. It's really crazy to chase after such a pipe dream.

But I'm afraid that I'll be miserable going for safety and comfort. I mean, I well expect great misery ahead with what I'm planning on doing, but it's the only way I think I can give my life the meaning it seems to have been lacking for the last decade or so. Even if I fail, my life will have meaning. The plunge is all we've got.

So here I go.

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THIS WEEK IN REAL ART



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GREAT ROBOTS FROM FILM & TV

From RetroCRUSH:

I've always loved robots. From their earliest appearances in film to present day, they've always had a charm that's hard to resist. Here's a collection of some of my favorites throughout time. Some are just cool, and some are goofy as hell, but they're all great fun. I'm particularly fond of Maria from the 1926 Fritz Lang classic Metropolis. You can see how her styling was the basis for C3PO over 50 years later. And you can't not like Robby The Robot who may have the distinction of being the only robot to get featured billing in two different movie projects. And I know Ultraman may not be a "true" robot, but damn if that picture of him with a surfboard isn't too cool to pass up!

Click here for buttloads of robot pics!

Yeah, I love robots, too, the goofier the better. Okay, I like badass robots as well, but I've definitely got a soft spot in my heart for bad special effects, and when you put bad effects together with robots, you've got something pretty wonderful.

Here are some of my favorites:


K9 from Dr. Who


Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet. That's Morbius next to him,
one of the great mad scientists in film history.


Box from Logan's Run, probably my favorite robot of all time

You'd really be screwing yourself over if you don't go check out the list.

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THE STAR TREK CALENDAR PICTURE OF THE MONTH IS...



...Doctor McCoy and Mr. Spock!

"Then employ one of your own superstitions. Wish me luck."

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83% - Approve Interracial Dating

From the Pew Research Center courtesy of Eschaton:

More than eight-in-ten Americans (83%) now agree that "it's all right for blacks and whites to date," reflecting the most dramatic change among the racial attitudes tested in Pew polls--as recently as 1987, the public was divided virtually down the middle on the issue, with 48% approving of blacks and whites dating and 46% disapproving. Age is an important factor in attitudes toward interracial dating. In this regard, Pew surveys since 1987 have documented two complementary trends: Each new generation is more tolerant than the one that precedes it. At the same time, members of each generation have become increasingly tolerant as it ages.

Click here for more.

Okay, this is good news, especially because there is no good reason to be opposed to interracial romantic or sexual relationships. Absolutely none. Yeah sure, I've heard the old "I just don't think that's how God meant for it to be" line, but putting aside any problems I have with authority-driven morality of the sort associated with religion, it's utterly clear that there are simply no verses in the Bible even coming close to such a thought.

I mean, there's some Old Testament stuff about staying away from the people of Canaan and all, but the irony there is that the Canaanites were essentially the same race as the Jews, and like both Arabs and Jews, spoke a Semetic language--Yahweh's problem with the Canaanites was that they had other gods before Him. A former student of mine, a friend actually, told me recently about a Bible verse dealing with the yoking of oxen that's been thrown about in defense of romantic apartheid, but really, people aren't beasts of burden. Well most people, anyway.

The most interesting argument I've heard was on Maury or Oprah or somesuch back in the 90s: some African-American women were asserting that black men abandon the black community when they become romantically involved with white women, and that this greatly hurts African-Americans overall. Like I said, it was interesting, but struck me as more of a media creation that has little correspondence with reality. Sure, countless numbers of black men have been pulled away from the black community, but it has way more to do with the War on Drugs, which greatly disproportionately targets men of color, and the racist US judicial system, than the sexual lures of white chicks.

And it's barely even worth mentioning the sympathetic-sounding but obviously racist "children from mixed marriages will face taunting and cruelty while growing up" argument. I'm not even sure that really happens so much anymore, but clearly such an assertion is a blame-the-victim thing. The problem there isn't mixed marriage; it's the cruel racist taunters.

Like I said, no good reason.

So this is good news. The old farts are dying off, and the younger old farts are softening their attitudes. The young get it, and that gives me hope for the future.

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Phil



Frankie



Sammy



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging!

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BUTTHOLE BILL O'REILLY FULLY SUPPORTS
"THE WHITE CHRISTIAN MALE POWER STRUCTURE"

From Crooks and Liars:

Bill O'Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you're a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you've got to cap with a number.

Click here to watch the video.

Yet another mind-boggling utterance from the butthole. I'm not sure which is kookier, the belief that white Christian males ought to have exclusive power in the United States, or his bizarre conspiracy theory that liberals and the New York Times are trying to undermine that structure by supporting illegal immigrant rights. Never mind the contradiction here that the NY Times, like Fox News, is a part of the white Christian male power structure: O'Reilly's really going 'round the bend.

Needless to say, it's just fine for some white Christian males to have power in our society. The problem, of course, is when it's all white Christian males, or a large majority of them, in power. They just can't help but behave like good old boys when that's the case, and everybody else suffers. Needless to say, the "far left" and the NY Times support rights for illegals because it's fair, compassionate, and just to do so. Labeling that support as a plan to overthrow the power structure is just absurd.

I mean, do O'Reilly's viewers really believe this shit? Are people really that stupid?

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Why Do We Stay In Iraq?

Atrios lets loose a good rant over at Eschaton:

The answer is unknowable because there isn't one. There are a variety of powerful actors who have different motives. It's as true, if not more true, for the continued occupation as it was for the initial invasion.

George Bush started the war because Saddam tried to killed his Dad and because he wanted to prance around on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit. He later got stubborn about the whole thing when those mean Democrats started criticizing him, and he began to buy into the transformational rhetoric due to his increasing messianic bent. And, now, it's about his "legacy."

Dick Cheney started the war because of his insatiable lust for the black stuff. Dick Cheney keeps us in Iraq because of his insatiable lust for the black stuff.

Don Rumsfeld went to war to prove that he could achieve any military result with 3 marines, an armed aerial drone, and his left pinky. He stayed in Iraq because George Bush told him to and because he still needed to prove his awesomeness.

And the money shot:

Democrats went to war because they were scared of losing their elections. They stay there because they're scared of losing elections.

Click here for the rest.

And do check it out. I've excerpted about a third of his post and he hits other war contributers with at least as much poignancy. It's also worth checking out the Josh Marshall post that inspired Atrios' rant. Here's a bit:

This is about the US controlling the region itself, having troops on the ground and structures in place so that none of the nominal governments in the region can act on their own without US assent. That's a whole different question than which companies have the right to pump the stuff out of the ground.

More here.

It's extraordinarily interesting to hear someone as mainstream as Marshall sounding like he's coming around to the Noam Chomsky point of view that the whole Iraq debacle has been about controlling the oil for the purpose of creating mass economic leverage favoring the US, rather than owning it to make gas cheap or the oil companies richer. But Atrios makes an extremely good point: why does there continue to be so much support for such an obviously failed venture by so many people who clearly don't, rhetorically anyway, buy into the control-the-spigot strategy? As Atrios observes, most of these people appear to have their own self-serving reasons, but I'll go a step further and suggest that, while there may not be a single concrete motivation here, there is an overall unifying theme uniting these motivations.

The elite establishment, which includes the fantastically wealthy, the government, paid "intellectuals," corporations, and the mainstream press, all believe that America, whatever that may mean to them, is the greatest thing in the universe, and that war is a glorious and preferable method for manifesting that greatness. All these people usually express the obligatory "war is hell" or "we're the last ones to want war" bullshit, but none of them mean it. They want war. To them, war and America are synonymous. America is great; war is great. Sadly, it's not just the elite establishment who believes this. Even though most Americans have turned against the Iraq occupation, and with good reason, this is the prevailing attitude among US citizens today. And that's really no surprise. Think about it for a couple of seconds. The schools teach US history as a series of wars, which creates the implicit but insanely strong assumption that that's what we're all about. Movies and TV shows have glorified the American warrior for decades. The hypermasculine pop culture of the badass, from hip hop thugs to tough guy cops, only magnifies the idea.

We're fucking trained to want war. Every goddamned day. Really, it's amazing that we're not at war more often.

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THE GONG SHOW

From Wikipedia:

The Gong Show was a television variety show spoof broadcast on NBC's daytime schedule from June 14, 1976 through July 21, 1978 and in first-run syndication in the U.S. from 1976 to 1980. The NBC incarnation and the later years of the syndicated version were emceed by Chuck Barris, who also produced. Gary Owens (of Laugh-In fame) hosted the first syndicated season.

And

Each show presented a contest between amateur performers of often dubious talent, with a panel of three celebrity judges. The program's frequent judges included Jaye P. Morgan, Arte Johnson, Rip Taylor, Jamie Farr, and Anson Williams. If any one of the judges considered an act to be particularly bad, he or she could strike a large gong, thus forcing the performer to stop. Most of the disappointed performers took the gong with sheepish good grace, but there were exceptions.

Originally, panelists had to wait 20 seconds before they could gong an act; this was later extended to 30, and finally 45. Knowing this, some savvy contestants deliberately stopped performing just before the 45-second rule kicked in, but Barris would overrule this gambit and disqualify them. On other occasions, an act would be gonged before its minimum time was up; Barris would overrule the gong, and the hapless act would be obliged to continue with the full knowledge that their doom was sealed. The laughter and anticipation built as the judges patiently waited to deliver the coup de grace: they would stand up slowly and heft their mallets deliberately, like baseball players in the on-deck circle, letting everyone (including the contestant) know what was coming. Sometimes, pantomimed disputes would erupt between judges, as one celebrity would attempt to physically obstruct another celebrity from gonging the act. The camera would cut back and forth between the performers onstage, and the mock struggle over their fate.

If the act survived without being gonged, he/she/they were given a score by each of the three judges on a scale of 1-10, for a maximum score of 30. On the NBC run, the contestant with the highest combined score earned a prize of $516.32 (reportedly the Screen Actors Guild's minimum pay for a day's work). On the subsequent syndicated run, the prize was $712.05. In the event of a tie, three different tiebreakers were used in at various times during the show's run; at first, the studio audience decided the winner by their applause; later, the producers chose the winner; later still, the celebrities chose the winner. When Barris announced the final score, a midget in formal wear (former Munchkin Jerry Maren) would run onstage, throwing confetti.

Click here for more.

So I mentioned a couple of days ago when eulogizing Charles Nelson Reilly that my favorite game show is Match Game. That's not entirely true. My favorite game show of all time is the Gong Show. Of course, the Gong Show was only technically a game show in that performers competed against each other for a day's wages, so I don't really think of it as being part of the same genre. Really, the Gong Show was all about bizarre performance, the weirder the better. Indeed, "bad," instead of "weird," is the word that would have probably been used by most of the audience at the time, but I think that, even though people really liked the show, they didn't quite understand what it was they liked about it. Sure, it was incredibly funny, but, in its best moments, many of these "bad" acts, very much like the Residents who I posted on last Friday, literally challenged the senses, taking viewers into a state of utter surrealism, and provoking the studio audience into frenzies of hissing and boos. You can't call performances that inspire such intense reaction "bad."

Years later, I've come to realize that the Gong Show heavily influenced me, and probably got me a couple of low grades when I was studying television production at the University of Texas. I mean, this isn't such a strange phenomenon: it's the same thing that makes people love Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space, long described by serious film reviewers as one of the worst movies of all time. I guess some people still don't get it, but I'm pretty much of the opinion these days that there's great power in "bad" performance. Really, as long as it's interesting it's going to be good--that's clearly why some of the worst episodes of the original Star Trek series are also among the best episodes of the series.

Anyway, here's a Gong Show feast for you.

Two seventeen-year-olds eating Popsicles:



Recurring performer, Gene Gene the Dancing Machine:



Weird singer Judith Anne:



A guy with pies:



An overweight go-go dancer:



A performer that I'm not really sure how to describe:



And finally, singer Miss Peggy Guy:



This show was just brilliant.

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WHY DIDN'T ANYONE EVER CLUE ME IN?
OINGO BOINGO IN THE 70s WAS FUCKING GREAT!

From Wikipedia's entry for 80s new wave band Oingo Boingo:

The Mystic Knights years (1972-1980)

The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, formed in late 1972 by Richard Elfman, was a musical theatre troupe in the tradition of Spike Jones and Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, performing an eclectic repertoire ranging from Cab Calloway covers to instrumentals in the style of Balinese Gamelan and Russian ballet music. The name was inspired by a fictional secret society on the Amos 'n' Andy TV series called "The Mystic Knights of the Sea." Most of the members performed in whiteface and clown makeup; a typical show would contain music ranging from the 1890s to the 1950s, in addition to original material. This version of the band employed as many as fifteen musicians at any given time, playing over thirty instruments, including some instruments built by band members.

Few recordings from this period exist, although they did produce a novelty record about kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst, "You've Got Your Baby Back."

As Richard's interest shifted to filmmaking, he passed leadership of the band to younger brother Danny Elfman, who had recently returned from spending time in Africa playing violin and studying percussion music. They gained a following in Los Angeles, and appeared as contestants on The Gong Show in 1976, winning the episode they appeared on with 24 points out of a possible 30 (and without getting gonged.)

More here.

So I've only ever been a lukewarm Oingo Boingo fan at best, but I did get some heavy exposure to their music when I was in college. Some of my best pals were just ga-ga over the weird new wavers, and I learned to appreciate some good songs like "Nasty Habits," "Only A Lad," and "Nothing Bad Ever Happens to Me," but it just wasn't enough to get me to shell out some dollars for any of their CDs. I even came to appreciate some of band leader Danny Elfman's soundtrack stuff, although I'm lately faulting it for sounding too much alike from film to film. I will say this about Elfman's compositions: the score for Pee Wee's Big Adventure is some of the best music I've ever heard anywhere ever. And that's a good segue into my main point. Elfman's Pee Wee stuff harkens back to Boingo's pre-new wave years, described in the excerpt above. It's wild and zany, heavily inspired by the Berlin cabaret scene in the years between the two World Wars. Great stuff. Very theatrical, which is very appropriate because Boingo in the 70s was all of that and more.

I only figured this out by inadvertently bumping into the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo on YouTube from when they played the Gong Show back in 1976. Here, check it out; it's fucking great. And while you're at it, here's a clip of the same incarnation a few years later in the film Forbidden Zone, via VideoSift.

Why didn't my buddies ever let me know about this? It's totally up my aesthetic alley!


Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo on the Gong Show

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Supreme Court OKs Gender Discrimination

From AlterNet:

Despite this, and contrary to the judgment of the EEOC, the Court by a bare 5-4 majority threw out the discrimination claim she brought under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The Court--in an opinion, natch, written by its arch-reactionary newest member--argued that Ledbetter failed to challenge the initial discriminatory pay decision within the required 180 days, and the ongoing pay discrimination did not constitute an "unlawful employment practice." As Ginsburg points out, this reading of the statute makes little sense; unlike with a firing, both because an employee may not be aware of the discriminatory nature of their pay until much later, and moreover it is illogical to hold that only an initial decision to discriminate but not the discriminatory pay itself constitutes an unlawful practice. The effect of the case is to insulate employers from wage discrimination claims as long as they can hid the evidence from the employee being discriminated against for 180 days, a result contrary to the purpose of the statute that is in no way compelled by its language.

More here.

Okay, we're in Kafka territory now, and I'm afraid we're here to stay until I'm an old man. Clearly this decision runs counter to not only the intent of the law, but also its plain language. Alito and his nefarious pals on the bench had to dig deep inside their assholes to come up with this big turd. And these guys are supposedly opposed to "judicial activism." What a fucking laugh. The Civil Rights Act is supposed to prevent discrimination, not legalize it, but somehow that's what these black-robed good old boys managed to make it mean. Like the headline says, gender discrimination is now the law of the land. I mean, sure, there's a law that says it's illegal, but this Alice-in-Wonderland legal logic makes it such that it is impossible to enforce.

I seriously believe that we can look forward to the same kind of crap when it comes to African-Americans drinking out of the same water fountains as whites. The genie's out of the bottle; we're moving backward in time.

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Lawyer: Cheney Visitor Logs Not Recorded

From the AP via the Huffington Post courtesy of AlterNet:

A lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney told the Secret Service in September to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence, a newly disclosed letter states. The Sept. 13, 2006, letter from Cheney's lawyer says logs for Cheney's residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory are subject to the Presidential Records Act.

Such a designation prevents the public from learning who visited the vice president.

The Justice Department filed the letter Friday in a lawsuit by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, seeking the identities of conservative religious leaders who visited Cheney at his official residence.

The newly disclosed letter about visitors to Cheney's residence is accompanied by an 18-page Secret Service document revealing the agency's long-standing practice has been to destroy printed daily access lists of visitors to the residence.

Click here for more.

"Long-standing practice"? Exactly how "long-standing"? Does that mean for as long as Bush has been in office, or does it go back to, what, Truman or something? No matter. When coupled with the thousands of deleted White House emails, recently discovered by the Congressional investigation of the Justice Department prosecutor firings, it becomes pretty damned clear that the White House isn't slightly in violation of the Presidential Records Act; they're in full-blown defiance of it.

I wonder if the massive scale of this rises to the level of "high crime" needed for an impeachment. I bet these fuckers could rape little boys on prime time television and the Democrats would still think it politically unwise to throw them out of office.

I'm disgusted. What about you?

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