QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES
Means "Who Polices the Police?"

From AOL's Newsbloggers:

Lesson of the Day: Do Not Help people in Distress

The Palacioses, of Chicago, claim the woman approached their car, parked outside Manolo’s restaurant, leaned in to the passenger side where Rocio was sitting and asked Erasmo if he wanted oral sex for $20 or sex for $25.

The couple laughed, realizing this wasn’t a woman in distress after all.

But within seconds, Chicago police swarmed the family car, hauling Erasmo Palacios out in handcuffs. He was charged with solicitation of a prostitute ...

Click here for the rest.

And their kids were in the back seat. The Newsbloggers post goes on to point out that, even though charges were eventually dropped, they still had to pay four grand to get their car out of impound. Obviously, this sucks big time, and my bet is that this has something to do with the ethnicity of the family in the car. That is, they were busted for driving too near a prostitute while Hispanic.

In addition to the hyper-masculine, self-righteous, us-and-them aspects of the dangerous police culture about which I've written repeatedly here at Real Art, is racism. That is, cops usually want to bust people of color well before they consider busting white people. For whatever reasons, this is so embedded in cop culture that you find both black and Hispanic cops falling into it themselves.

We've really got to rethink the entire concept of policing.

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HERE COMES HUMBERTO
Baytown prepares for flooding, storm damage

From the Houston Chronicle Tropical Weather Blog:

As Tropical Storm Humberto approaches, Baytown officials have announced that they are taking precautions such as cleaning grates over storm drains and keeping city vehicle gas tanks full.

Once the storm hits, Baytown police officers will report any problems from storm water, downed trees, fallen power lines or other situations to the Public Works Department, according to a news release the city issued at about 3:45 p.m.

Click here for more.

It's looking like my old stomping grounds in Baytown are going to be spared a direct hit, but I'm betting that they'll get buttloads of rain, come what may. As all Houston area residents have known since Allison back in 2001, tropical storms are nothing to fuck around with.

I've trashed Baytown a lot these last few years here at Real Art, but it is impossible to spend six years working somewhere without developing some affection for it, no matter how fucked up it is. I still have many friends there, and don't tell anybody, but from time to time I miss the old shit hole.

So my agnostic prayers go out to a god who may or may not be there, asking him, her, or it to take it easy on the old Dirty Bay.



Stay dry, guys.

UPDATE: It's a category 1 hurricane now.

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Ft. Bend teacher on leave over sex video claims

From the Houston Chronicle:

Fort Bend Independent School District officials have placed a Clements High School teacher on administrative leave after allegations surfaced that he took part in sexually-oriented videos.

And

The videos are displayed on a Web site depicting scantily clad and nude men wresting with each other.

Click here for the rest.

After a flurry of neo-puritan hits on individuals last year, I had hoped that this shit was dying down a bit. But no. They're back. This kind of shit is particularly insidious because rather than going after institutions or works of literature, these cases are about blackballing regular ordinary people. That is, in all these cases they're trying to destroy people's careers because of disapproval of how they live their personal lives.

It doesn't matter if a teacher dances nude in her spare time; it's her own life, and it has nothing to do with what she does on the job. If a cop's wife wants to post topless pictures of herself on the internet, it's just fine; it has nothing to do with her husband's work. It just doesn't matter if parents or "concerned citizens" are uncomfortable with it all. Too fucking bad.

For that matter, if I had children, I wouldn't want them having anything to do with Christians or Republicans, what with the way they're always pushing their warped views, but as long as they're doing their jobs, which means keeping their personal lives personal, I don't really have any complaint. Hell, they can even talk with students about these topics in the abstract, as long as they're balanced. It just doesn't matter. And it doesn't even matter if somebody goes snooping and figures out that, say, a teacher is a Scientologist, or attends Landmark Forum sessions. As long as it doesn't affect the job, no wrong has been done.

What's wrong is fucking over people with whom you disagree. Argue with them. Debate them. Persuade people that your point of view is correct.

But don't try to bury them.

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FAREWELL JOE ZAWINUL

From Wikipedia:

Classically trained at the Vienna Conservatoire, Zawinul played in various broadcasting and studio bands before emigrating to the U.S. in 1959, where he played with Maynard Ferguson and Dinah Washington before joining the Cannonball Adderley Quintet in 1961.

During his nine-year stint on keyboards with Adderley, Zawinul wrote the hit "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy." He also composed "Walk Tall" and "Country Preacher," the latter a tribute to U.S. Civil Rights Movement leader Rev. Jesse Jackson. In this title cut to the quintet's popular 1969 album release, Austrian-born Zawinul demonstrated a sophisticated and intimate understanding of the African/African-American concept of cool, of motion and interval. When "Country Preacher" debuted at a live recording session in Chicago at Jackson's Operation Breadbasket, it elicited enthusiastic cheers of immediate recognition from the mostly African-American audience.

In the late 1960s, Zawinul recorded with Miles Davis's studio band and helped create the sound of the new Jazz fusion. Among others he played on the album In a Silent Way, the title track of which he composed, and the landmark album Bitches Brew, for which he contributed the twenty-minute track, "Pharaoh's Dance", which occupied the whole of side one. Zawinul is known to have played live with Davis only once, on July 10, 1991, shortly before Davis' death.

Zawinul's biggest commercial success came from his composition "Birdland", a 6-minute opus featured on Weather Report's 1977 album Heavy Weather. "Birdland" is one of the most recognizable jazz pieces of the 1970s, covered by many prominent artists from The Manhattan Transfer to Maynard Ferguson. Even Weather Report's version received significant mainstream radio airplay — unusual for them — and served to convert many new fans to music which they may never have heard otherwise.

Zawinul was hospitalized in his native Vienna on August 7, 2007, only one week after concluding a six-week tour in Hungary. He died of cancer on September 11, 2007, aged 75.

Click here for the rest.

Zawinul first came to my attention my junior year in high school, back in 1984, when I bought Weather Report's album Heavy Weather. That was the first time I heard "Birdland" and it blew me away. Over the years I continued to encounter him and his influence. He was on Miles Davis' In a Silent Way album with Herbie Hancock and other greats. Brian Eno named a song "Zawinul Lava." He wrote one of the grooviest jazz tunes of the 60s for Cannonball Adderly, "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy." And of course, I ended up buying lots of other Weather Report records.

He really was one of the greats, and more specifically to me, one of my greats, with me throughout all my years as a jazz fan. It's weird. Because Zawinul came on the US jazz scene decades after other legends like Ellington, Armstrong, Parker, and others, I always thought of him as one of the young guys. But he was 75.

I guess that means I'm no longer one of the young guys.

Here's a live performance of "Birdland" with Jaco Pastorius on bass.



Farewell Joe Zawinul.

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Amid MTV debacle, harshest words are saved for Britney's bod

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The consensus is clear: Britney Spears performed like she was sloshing blindfolded through mud at MTV's Video Music Awards. No one disputes that the troubled pop princess royally mangled her much-heralded comeback.

But what about the nastiest comments of all — those about her body? "Lard and Clear," read Monday's headline in the New York Post. "The bulging belly she was flaunting was SO not hot," wrote E! Online. And so on.

Was it fair? Did Spears, lest we forget a mother of two, deserve to be held up against the standard of her once fantastically toned abs, sculpted by sessions of 1,000 tummy crunches? Or was she asking for it by choosing that unforgiving black-sequined bikini?

More profoundly, in an age where skinny models and skeletal actresses are under scrutiny for the message they're sending young girls, what does it say that we're excoriating a young woman for a little thickness in her middle?

Click here for more.

Well, I'm no Britney fan, but she seems to be something of a lightning rod lately for people's opinions of what an American woman's supposed to be, so let's take a look at what all the fuss is about:



I don't give a fuck what anybody says: That's not fat.

Actually, as far as my own aesthetic is concerned, I've never seen Britney looking so hot. For years, I've stood in perplexed disgust as the whole skinny-as-concentration-camp look took hold in American pop culture. I mean, I have mixed feelings about the corporate media's treatment of women as sex objects in general--like most American men, I love looking at hot babes, but I also understand that the constant and endless stream of the sexually objectified female image dominates cultural attitudes; that is, the whole thing keeps women down. But this objectification has taken an extraordinarily dangerous turn, changing men's sexual tastes while urging young women to behave in a clearly unhealthy fashion, and driving into anxiety and depression those who resist.

It's sick. And I just don't understand why so many men have bought into the look. It's as though they're all turned on by Bruce Lee now. Anyway, to be fair to critics, Britney's performance at the MTV awards show, rather than her now-curvaceous body, was indeed a disaster. She looked like a deer in the headlights, frozen with stage fright: as a performer myself, I've been there, and I sympathize. I really feel sorry for her.

I'm sure she'll turn it around. Maybe some more therapy is in order.

But not a diet, and not more intense work outs. She's fucking hot, and the entertainment hags who bashed her can just eat me.

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9/11'S UPSIDE

So happy anniversary.

Yes, yes, of course 9/11 was horrible. What came after it, from GOP fear mongering and power grabbing, to the terrorist-creating invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, was also horrible. A year or two ago it would have never occurred to me that the attacks of September 11th, 2001 would ever produce anything good.

I was wrong.

It probably would have happened eventually, but 9/11 so emboldened the forces of conservatism in this country that they shot their wad. That is, they went for it all, with weird economic ideology, barbaric and superstitious social policy, harsh and inflammatory over-the-top rhetoric, and just a whole lot of violent hatred. American conservatism, believing that 9/11 created their moment, revealed themselves for what they are: opposers of the American way. Now that they know, the American people won't have any of it.

So 9/11 was the beginning of the end of American conservatism. Or, at least, this late 20th century manifestation of it.

And that's 9/11's upside.




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ACTING TEACHER AS CULT LEADER

From the UK's Telegraph courtesy of AlterNet:

Friends, thetans, countrymen

Put the word on the street that you're writing about Milton Katselas, and every student he has ever had will want to tell you about the best acting teacher in the world, the man who took them from fresh-faced, straight-off-the-plane ingenues looking for work - commercials; God willing, someday a sitcom - to being real artists.

They'll tell you about how he saved them from the failings of the artist's personality, like narcissism and drug addiction, and set them aright. They were born with the talent, but he gave them careers.

But there are dissenters too. Students have left Katselas's school, the Beverly Hills Playhouse, because of the unspoken pressure they felt to join the Church of Scientology, the controversial religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s. Nobody ever told them to join, but they could not ignore how many of their classmates and teachers were Scientologists. Or the fact that Milton Katselas, the master himself, credits Hubbard for much of his success. And the assorted weirdness: one of Katselas's students has a day job at the Scientology Celebrity Centre, where Tom Cruise and John Travolta study, and one zealous television star left the Playhouse because she said she believed that Katselas wasn't committed enough to Scientology.

Click here for the rest.

I've been thinking about this subject as far back as high school. From time to time I would meet or see theater teachers from other schools at speech tournaments or one act play contests. Some of these people were simply amazing. And I don't mean their teaching ability, which I never really was able to experience. I mean the people themselves. Enormous personalities that entered the room sometimes minutes before their bodies. Extreme devotion from their fawning students. High priests who had secret knowledge of how to create great theater, and who possessed great influence in the high school drama world because others respected and/or wanted such knowledge for themselves. These education theater gods could and did fuck with people's heads.

It used to excite me. Now it just sickens me. Especially after teaching high school theater myself for six years and coming to understand that such behavior is at worst abusive, at best fucking stupid. And especially after realizing that nobody who teaches high school is that important.

But it's not surprising that such charades and charlatans continue to speckle the high school theater landscape in the Lone Star State. All these would-be shamans model themselves after the real deal. Yeah, that's right. You see the same kind of behavior from many acting teachers at both the university level and professionally. I suppose it all makes a kind of sense. The theater attracts enormous egos; the theater is self-important. Of course you're going to find numerous blowhards, both legitimate and illegitimate, coming into positions of power.

And teaching acting is a position of power. Acting, especially at its highest levels of complexity, is vague and esoteric. Everybody gets it when they see a riveting performance; everybody knows when acting is great. What's virtually impossible is to explain why it's great. That makes acting an extraordinarily difficult subject to learn--indeed, my time at LSU working on my master's degree was one of the biggest challenges of my life. I'm very lucky that my teachers were relatively meek and humane in working with me and my classmates--I mean, there were touches of what I'm talking about, but not much. And that's a great thing: acting teachers necessarily toy with their students' psyches. And, to be successful, students must willingly welcome this. It's very tempting to abuse such power.

It's also very easy to get away with mind-fucking acting students, too. If there are ever any complaints, any appeals to higher authority, they are easily dismissed by statements such as "Oh, well, you see, this is my art; it's necessary to do this for my art." Like I said, acting is esoteric, and it's easy to spew bullshit successfully.

Anyway, as good as this guy Katselas is, I'd venture to say that he's walking a fine line. He says he doesn't proselytize, but when you work with students as intimately as an acting teacher must, higher standards are needed. Simple suggestions, offhanded implications, examples, all these things become tantamount to commands in the high stakes autocratic environment of the acting studio. If people are saying there is pressure at Katselas' school to join the Scientologists, it's probably true, even if their master doesn't think so himself.

And this is extraordinarily bad because, you know, the Scientologists are insane hardcore assholes.

It's funny actually. The University of Delaware hosts the well respected Professional Theater Training Program: its Colonel Kurtz figure, renowned acting teacher Sanford Robbins (scroll down for bio here), requires all of his acting students to attend Landmark Education's "The Forum," a series of cult-like psychologically and physically grueling self-help sessions. Indeed, Robbins is apparently on LE's board of directors, which creates an obvious financial conflict of interest that seems to bother no one in Delaware. This situation has the same potential for abuse as the one with Katselas, but it's probably worse, because attending The Forum is a requirement, not a suggestion, and the Hollywood teacher, unlike Robbins, profits in no way from his students exploring Scientology.

Here's the funny part. Landmark Education is what was once called "est" in the 1970s. Est was created by a snake oil salesman named Werner Earhard who literally stole many of his ideas and "educational" practices from Scientology when he was a member in the late 60s. Scientology, of course, hates him, and has responded in typical fashion for some three decades now, suing and harassing him so much that he fled the country in the mid 90s, fearing assassins.

Well, that's what he gets. Now if we can only find somebody to run the Scientologists out.

At any rate, crap like this, along with lots of other crap, is why I'm very disenchanted with institutional theater right now. Bullshit is bullshit, and it doesn't matter that acting is so mysterious. Nobody is my or your superior. American theater really needs to get out of this mire of superstitious condescension.

Because, really, nobody else gives a shit.

UPDATE: Here.

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Book reveals Bush's bouts of crying, ghostly visions

From Canada's National Post courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe:

George W. Bush, the U.S. President, is prone to bouts of crying caused by the stress of his job and claims to have seen ghosts emerge from the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House, according to a new book on his presidency.

In a series of remarkably candid admissions by a sitting president, Mr. Bush confides to author John Draper he has been "sustained by the discipline of the faithful experience" during the most difficult days of his presidency.

"I've got God's shoulder to cry on. And I cry a lot," Mr. Bush says in Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush, which was released to U.S. bookstores yesterday. "I do a lot of crying in this job. I'll bet I've shed more tears than you can count, as president. I'll shed some tomorrow."

Click here for the rest.

So I decided a few days ago that Bush believing in Saddam's non-existent WMDs as late as April of last year made him delusional. Turns out I was more right than I thought. The idiot thinks he's fucking seen ghosts. He thinks he's seen ghosts. And he cries a lot.

Ladies and gentlemen, our President isn't simply stupid: he's nuttier than a fruitcake. And he has access to nuclear weapons. We're lucky things aren't any worse than they actually are.

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PIRATE JENNY

Probably my favorite musical is the vaguely socialist, off kilter, utterly non-Broadway Brecht and Weill show The Three Penny Opera. Great characters, great story, great music. Indeed, some of the songs have become jazz standards, "Mack the Knife" being the most well known. I've even performed "Song of the Heavy Cannon" myself at a few open mike nights. It's all great.

A couple of days ago over at VideoSift I ran across a fantastic performance of one of the show's highlights "Pirate Jenny." In German. Sung by the only woman to every rival Marlene Dietrich's Teutonic coolness, Hildegard Knef.

Here, check it out:


via videosift.com

I'm particularly fond of the song because it's lyrics deal with the subject of working class rebellion: Jenny, a prostitute who scrubs floors, fantasizes about a pirate ship coming and laying her town to waste, elevating her to the superior status she deserves.

Here are the English lyrics:

You people can watch while I'm scrubbing these floors
And I'm scrubbin' the floors while you're gawking
Maybe once ya tip me and it makes ya feel swell
In this crummy Southern town, in this crummy old hotel
But you'll never guess to who you're talkin'.
No. You couldn't ever guess to who you're talkin'.
Then one night there's a scream in the night
And you'll wonder who could that have been
And you see me kinda grinnin' while I'm scrubbin'
And you say, "What's she got to grin?"
I'll tell you.

There's a ship, the black freighter
with a skull on its masthead
will be coming in.

You gentlemen can say, "Hey gal, finish them floors!
Get upstairs! What's wrong with you! Earn your keep here!
You toss me your tips
and look out to the ships
But I'm counting your heads
as I'm making the beds
Cuz there's nobody gonna sleep here, honey
Nobody! Nobody!
Then one night there's a scream in the night
And you say, "Who's that kicking up a row?"
And ya see me kinda starin' out the winda
And you say, "What's she got to stare at now?"
I'll tell ya.

There's a ship, the black freighter
turns around in the harbor
shootin' guns from her bow

Now you gentlemen can wipe that smile off your face
'Cause every building in town is a flat one
This whole frickin' place will be down to the ground
Only this cheap hotel standing up safe and sound
And you yell, "Why do they spare that one?"
Yes, that's what you say.
"Why do they spare that one?"
All the night through, through the noise and to-do
You wonder who is that person that lives up there?
And you see me stepping out in the morning
Looking nice with a ribbon in my hair.

And the ship, the black freighter
runs a flag up its masthead
and a cheer rings the air

By noontime the dock is a-swarmin' with men
comin' out from the ghostly freighter
They move in the shadows where no one can see
And they're chainin' up people and they're bringin' em to me
askin' me, "Kill them NOW, or LATER?"
Askin' ME! "Kill them now, or later?"
Noon by the clock
and so still by the dock
You can hear a foghorn miles away
And in that quiet of death
I'll say, "Right now.
Right now!"
Then they'll pile up the bodies
And I'll say,
"That'll learn ya!"

And the ship, the black freighter
disappears out to sea
And on it is me.

God, I love this song! And man, hearing it sung in German is just too fucking cool.

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
Lester, Williams each score twice as LSU bulldozes Virginia Tech

From the AP via ESPN:

LSU didn't need any small-school sacrificial lambs on its early season schedule to post a couple of gaudy blowouts. The tenacious Tigers made Virginia Tech look like a pushover instead of the ninth-ranked team in the nation.

Keiland Williams ran for 126 yards and two touchdowns and quarterback Matt Flynn led LSU to scores on four of its first five possessions as the Tigers cruised to a 48-7 victory over the uncharacteristically hapless Hokies on Saturday night.

The performance was so overwhelming that head coach Les Miles spent his opening comments trying to dissuade people from saying things that might go to his players' heads.

"You can save the accolades. We've just won two games and we have a lot of football to play," Miles said. "Don't make too much of this. It's all about what we have to get done in the future."

Click here for the rest.

I made the mistake of turning on the radio too soon after the game: I think I was hearing the same motherfuckers who used to piss me off in Baton Rouge. Goddamned local sports-talk idiots were continuing to totally dis LSU's head coach, "Well the jury's still out on Les Miles, but the Tigers have a whole lotta talent, and that's what won tonight." What the fuck do these people want? The Hokies are a great team and we routed them. This doesn't have anything to do with actual analysis anymore. This can no longer be compared to Barry Switzer winning the Super Bowl with Jimmy Johnson's Cowboys. This is Miles' fourth season at LSU; it is no longer Nick Sabin's team.

And what a team it is! They looked like an NFL team out there tonight, and a good NFL team at that, totally dominant. I missed most of the first half because I was busy watching Texas get its shit together against TCU, but the second half was glorious. I bet the Tigers win the big one this year.

And I bet they win it outright, unlike the split one Sabin shared with USC. Geaux Tigers!


LSU running back Keiland Williams (5) runs past Virginia Tech's Victor Harris (1) on his way to a 67-yard touchdown in the first half of their college football game in Baton Rouge, La., Saturday, Sept. 8, 2007.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)(via ESPN)

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FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
McCoy, Texas regain composure to handle TCU

From the AP via ESPN:

Colt McCoy passed for a touchdown, set up another with a long run, and a dominant performance by its defense carried No. 7 Texas to a 34-13 win Saturday night, turning TCU's hopes for an upset into a second-half disaster.

"We knew they would come in and try to make it their house," Texas linebacker Roddrick Muckelroy said. "We showed them it was our house."

McCoy, who threw two first-half interceptions, including one that was returned for a touchdown, cut a 10-0 TCU lead in the third quarter with a 33-yard strike to Nate Jones. His 23-yard scramble early in the fourth set up the go-ahead score before the Longhorns started piling it on.

"You didn't want to touch me in the second quarter, I had some bad luck there," McCoy said. "I had Bible study the other morning (and) you're going to get tested. You get tested, then you're blessed."

Click here for the rest.

Yeah whatever, Colt; God helped you win because he likes the Longhorns more than the Horned Frogs.

I think it's more likely that the offense got its shit together finally during halftime when they saw that TCU was there to play some football. It's about fucking time. The pollsters were very kind to Texas after their scare against Arkansas State last weekend, dropping them only three slots to seventh. During the first half of tonight's game, I was really thinking that my predictions about a shitty season for the Longhorns, which earned me all kinds of ire from my fellow Texas Ex Matt in Real Art comments, were becoming all too true. The second half made me feel a lot better.

We might even have a chance at beating the damnable Sooners this year, which is a damned good thing because Oklahoma's looking pretty great right now.

Okay, cool. Let's keep it together guys. Hook 'em 'Horns!


TCU quarterback Andy Dalton, right, is separated from the ball on a pass-attempt by Texas linebacker Jared Norton, left, during fourth quarter action in their college football game Saturday, Sept. 8, 2007, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Harry Cabluck)(via ESPN)

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Minister arrested for child porn says it was research

From the Houston Chronicle:

A minister who was arrested on child pornography charges told authorities he was doing research to get some Web sites shut down, police said.

Henry Edgington, 63, of Chalk Bluff, was charged with seven counts of child pornography possession. He was released from the McLennan County Jail on $70,000 bond Thursday after he surrendered to police.

Click here for the rest.

Apparently, this minister is using the Pete Townshend defense, claiming he was doing "research." Unlike Townshend, however, who never actually downloaded any child pornography, and really was doing research, Edgington was found with shitloads of the stuff. He's probably going to prison for a long time.

As longtime Real Art readers know, I do a lot of thinking about Christianity and its meaning in contemporary American life. The fact that these "family values" leaders are falling like rain, coupled with the idea that most American Christians are religious more for social reasons than anything else, is steadily leading me to conclude that Christianity is now irrelevant as an actual moral force in our country. I mean, sure, it plays a role in politics, but that's more about power than doing what's good and right. And yeah, I'll be the first to admit that there are many individuals who do take Christian morality very seriously, my mother for instance. But the popular notion that this is a Christian nation? Well, that's just a sick and twisted joke.

In America today, Christianity is tribalism, plain and simple, good for nothing but keeping Americans at odds with each other. As the great President Lincoln once said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

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FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Sammy



Frankie



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

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Hugh Hefner Uncut

From Details via AlterNet:

Q: For many of us who grew up in the eighties, the seventies was the party we missed.
A: The “sexual revolution” came to a rather abrupt halt in the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan and the Christian right. We live in a technologically remarkably sophisticated world, but we deal with it like superstitious savages.

Q: We live in a schizophrenic time.
A: Yes . . . We have an administration that is at least as conservative as Reagan’s. Remember that America was founded by Puritans who left England to escape religious persecution and promptly started persecuting people who didn’t agree with them. That schizophrenic attitude is as American as apple pie. That’s who we are. I’m a 10th-generation descendant of William Bradford, who came over on the Mayflower, one of the original puritanical forefathers. My parents were puritan, and the creation of Playboy and my life are a response to that repression.

Click here for the rest.

Well, there's more to the end of the sexual revolution than Hef is admitting. The coming of AIDS was the watershed event that gave secular credibility to the forces of neo-puritanism, and the Reagan administration used its vast governmental resources to help out the new Christian right wing, who faithfully showed up to vote for Republicans on election day. I also think that a new cynicism born of capitalist sexual exploitation soured many Americans to the concept of sexual freedom, capitalist exploitation that was greatly aided in its early years by Hef himself.

But the old man is essentially correct. America really is in the grips of superstitious savagery, which comes all the way down from some of North America's first European settlers.

It's a shame that Playboy is now really only just another men's magazine. At one point, it was something of an intellectual beacon for the cause of sexual freedom. Hefner's "Playboy Philosophy" series of essays back in the 60s, of which I've only read a bit, was an extended, well reasoned critique of what we would today call "family values." Because the magazine was fairly mainstream at that point, many, many Americans were influenced by it in what I believe is a fairly sex-positive way. There is nothing coming even close to that now. Today's girlie magazines are all about arousal. There is simply no real philosophical counter to the forces of religious fundamentalism that is as widely known.

And that's a damned shame.



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Jesus gets company on Slidell courthouse wall

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Confucius, Hammurabi and more than a dozen other historical figures have joined Jesus Christ on the wall at Slidell City Court in a move that officials believe will reassure visitors that it has always been the court's intent to showcase the people who helped to create the laws of civilized nations.

Officials mounted the additional portraits Friday, one week before a scheduled court hearing at which the Louisiana ACLU will ask a federal judge to remove the Jesus portrait.

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the court, the city of Slidell, St. Tammany Parish and Judge Jim Lamz, saying the portrait and lettering underneath that says, "To know peace, obey these laws," violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a mandate calling for the separation of church and state.

"The idea here is there never has been an ulterior motive, as is alleged by the ACLU," said Mike Johnson, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization that is representing the court. "They wanted to erect an artistic display to emphasize the importance of following the law to maintain a peaceful society. The expanded display conveys that same message in a way that is unmistakable."

Click here for the rest.

You know, Johnson's probably right with his no "ulterior motive" assertion. That is, for many of the faithful, especially down here in the deep South, Jesus is a towering cultural symbol, representing far more than than salvation, which means that, symbolically, there is very little difference between the law, morality, and Christianity. I get that. They didn't mean anything bad by putting up a picture of Jesus and only Jesus on government property. But that doesn't get them off the hook. Furthermore, this is a courthouse we're talking about, full of people with law degrees. They should know better.

It's actually pretty simple. The first amendment to the Constitution plainly says that the government will not establish a state religion. Numerous Supreme Court cases have made it clear that "establish" also means favoritism. No government entity can favor any one religion over another, or over secular points of view for that matter. That's why students can pray or not pray in school, but teachers and administrators cannot lead or require such prayer non-prayer. It's why depictions of Christian icons are only acceptable on government property when it is clear that they are not intended to favor Christianity, as with this new iconographic context at the Slidell Courthouse. Simple. Even a televangelist can understand.

So the ACLU's lawsuit continues, but they're going to have a tougher time winning, what with Jesus now being depicted among both secular lawgivers and those from other religions. But it's just as well. Apparently, America desperately needs the ACLU to keep these people honest. I'm sure the civil rights organization will keep firing away.

Just as I'm sure that god fearing Christians with no "ulterior motive" will keep pushing the envelope.

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Bush ‘Still Believed Saddam Possessed WMD’ In April 2006

From Think Progress courtesy of Eschaton:

In Oct. 2004, President Bush finally admitted that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction: “Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there.”

Yet according to former White House chief of staff Andy Card, this statement was just rhetoric. In his new book on Bush, Robert Draper writes that the President continued to privately insist through April 2006 that Saddam had possessed weapons of mass destruction...

More here.

Wow. That's really disturbing. I mean, on the one hand it tells us once and for all that Bush, at least, didn't actually lie about Saddam's supposed WMD--it's hard to know where Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others' minds were at the time, but we know that naive little Bush boy really believed all the hype. I wonder if he still believes in Santa Claus? And I'm only partially kidding with that: if the President continued to believe when it was obvious to everybody that the justification for the invasion was a sham, then he must be delusional.

And having a delusional man occupy the most powerful position on the planet is really fucking scary.

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HANOI JANE ON HILLARY:
"ventriloquist for the patriarchy with a skirt and a vagina"

From AlterNet, an essay by a centrist Dem who's sick of all the Hillary bashing:

Last June actress and inveterate antiwar activist Jane Fonda soared to the top of a club that boasts millions of charter members. It's the hate Hillary Clinton club. Fonda called Clinton a "ventriloquist for the patriarchy with a skirt and a vagina." The big, crude, tasteless dig at Hillary wallows in the name calling gutter. The most hardline, shrill bash-Hillary Christian fundamentalists haven't stooped that low in name calling. And they've said and continue to say some pretty nasty things about her.

Fonda's quote has been picked up and run with by a legion of conservative website yakkers and bloggers. They have virtually made Fonda a perverse kind of heroine. Her silly broadside loaded up their ammo bandolier and they are firing away at Clinton. The sudden Fonda conservative love fest has stood politics and personalities on its head because Fonda for decades has bordered on being a virtual anti-Christ to many ultra-right conservatives. But Fonda's quote (not her) was redeeming and again tells much about the near clinical Hillary Hatred that those that style themselves progressives and even liberal Democrats froth with.

And

Clinton's sins are A. She initially backed the Iraq war and has refused to apologize for it ala Edwards or claimed ala Obama that he was a closet anti-Bush, anti-war guy all along; B. She is a clubby good ole girl, deal-making, centrist, Democrat who doesn't shout loudly enough about feminism; C. Is anointed by the big money, Democratic Party shot callers; and D. Is married to womanizer, Bill.

Click here for the rest.

Strictly speaking, Fonda was quite correct to say that Hillary has a vagina and wears skirts, meaning she's a woman. I think the actual name-calling consisted of branding her "ventriloquist for the patriarchy." But the essay writer kind of blends that standard feminist criticism with the vagina reference and decides it's all very crude. Well maybe, if you think referring to sex organs is always crude, but I think this guy is smarting more over the patriarchy thing. Kind of hits a bit too close to home. That is, Hillary is a ventriloquist for the patriarchy, or at least for the most muscular arm of it, corporate America.

This guy has no understanding of why so many liberals and progressives are just grossed out by the former First Lady. The excerpted criticisms above of Mrs. Clinton are soft-pedaled and warped. It's not that she hasn't apologized for her Iraq war support: it's that she never really believed all that WMD shit to begin with and very calculatingly supported it anyway in order to shore up her security credentials; that is, she has no problem with lying for political reasons. It's not that she's a deal making centrist: it's that she's a conservative corporatist. It's not that she's anointed by big money: it's that she's a conservative corporatist. It's not that Bill's a womanizer: it's that he's a conservative corporatist. In short, Hillary comes out of that 90s Democratic strategy circle, the Democratic Leadership Council, that unilaterally decided that the best way to win office in the Republican era was to swerve to the right. To date, the only success they appear to have had with that plan is getting Bill elected, and I don't even think that had anything to do with trying to out Republican the Republicans; Bill Clinton is simply the most gifted American politician of the last fifty years, and that's what got him in and then kept him there. In other words, the DLC's ideas are bad, and they're ideologically turning the party away from its liberal roots.

It's right to hate Hillary because she's death to liberalism. Fuck her. Fonda really should have gone for it and simply called her a great big stinky vagina. She'd have been right about that, too.


Hanoi Jane frolics on an NVA anti-aircraft gun during the Vietnam War

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When the Levees Broke

From Wikipedia:

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts is a 2006 documentary film directed by Spike Lee about the devastation of New Orleans, Louisiana due to the failure of the levees during Hurricane Katrina. The film runs for 4 hours, and premiered at the New Orleans Arena on August 16, 2006. The television premiere aired in two parts on August 21 and 22, 2006 on HBO. The film was shown in its entirety on August 29, 2006, the one-year anniversary of Katrina's landfall. It has been described by an HBO executive as "one of the most important films HBO has ever made."

The documentary was also screened at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival on August 31 and September 1, 2006. It won the Orizzonti Documentary Prize and one of two FIPRESCI awards. In addition it was shown at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival on September 15 and September 16, 2006. On July 19, 2007, it was nominated for five Emmys.

The title is a reference to the blues tune "When the Levee Breaks", by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie (later repopularized by Led Zeppelin) about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

The film's original score is by Terence Blanchard, a New Orleans-born trumpeter who also appears in the film with his mother and grandmother as they return to their flooded home.

The documentary consists largely of news footage and still photos of Katrina and its aftermath interspersed with interviews. Interviewees throughout the film include politicians, journalists, historians, engineers, and many people from various parts of New Orleans and the surrounding areas who give first hand accounts of their experiences with the levee failures and the aftermath.

More here.

Okay, so I haven't seen this yet, mainly because I don't have HBO, but I plan on watching as much as I can tonight. I asked for it for Christmas, but my family's pretty right-wing which is probably why it didn't end up in my stocking. And yeah, I expect it to be very much to the left. After all, Spike Lee directed it, and he's never been one to shy away from political confrontation with the forces of racism or conservatism. I also expect it to be depressing.

I am sure, however, that it will be powerful and moving. You should watch it too:


From YouTube via VideoSift

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GREAT SONGS REPUBLICANS NEED TO HEAR
Jeannie C. Riley: Harper Valley PTA

From YouTube courtesy of VideoSift:



This song is fucking great whatever your politics are. The slide guitar work here is just fantastic, and Riley's vocal is as good as she is beautiful--I've always been a sucker for the big 60s bouffant hairspray look, and she wears it well.

Here are the lyrics:

I wanna tell you all the story bout the Harper Valley widow wife
Who had a teenage daughter who attended Harper Valley Junior High
Well her daughter came home one afternoon and didn't even stop to play
And she said mom I got a note here from the Harper Valley PTA
Well the note said Mrs Johnson you're wearin' your dresses way too high
It's reported you've been drinkin' and a runnin' round with men and goin' wild
And we don't believe you oughta be a bringin' up your little girl this way
And it was signed by the secretary Harper Valley PTA
Well it happened that the PTA was gonna meet that very afternoon
And they were sure surprised when Mrs Johnson wore her miniskirt into the room
And as she walked up to the blackboard I can still recall the words she had to say
She said I'd like to address this meeting of the Harper Valley PTA
Well there's Bobby Taylor sittin' there and seven times he asked me for a date
And Mrs Taylor sure seems to use a lotta ice whenever he's away
And Mr Baker can you tell us why your secretary had to leave this town
And shouldn't widow Jones be told to keep
Her window shades all pulled completely down
Well Mr Harper couldn't be here cause he stayed too long at Kelly's Bar again
And if you smell Shirley Thompson's breath you'll find she's had a little nip of gin
And THEN you have the nerve to tell me you think that as a mother I'm not fit
Well this is just a little Peyton Place and you're all Harper Valley hypocrites
No I wouldn't put you on because it really did it happened just this way
The day my mama socked it to the Harper Valley PTA
The day my mama socked it to the Harper Valley PTA

Right on!

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Legendary Beat Generation Bookseller and Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books on the 50th Anniversary of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road", Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" and Poetry As Insurgent Art

From Democracy Now:

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI: Well, it all came out at once. And another case that if I had died shortly thereafter -- I wrote it when I was in my mid-thirties. That would probably be considered my best book, and it’s as I was saying before, the best poetry is written when one is fairly young. To me now, it seems that the mid-thirties as being -- is very young. But --

AMY GOODMAN: Why is it, then? I mean, you’ve got the wisdom of a lifetime now.

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI: Well, you haven’t have time to be acclimated or acclimated in the worst ways by modern industrial corporate monoculture, for instance, or American consumer society, which the way American consumer society is worked out, it seems to me the suburbs of America are the great American death.

You know, I’d like to read one poem that I just wrote. I really want to get this out.

AMY GOODMAN: Read.

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI: Especially since Khalil Gibran has been in the news lately, including yesterday or the day before on your program. “Pity the Nation,” after Khalil Gibran.

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation -- oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

Click here to read, watch, or listen to the rest.


"...it seems to me the suburbs of America are the great American death."

That's probably the best quote I've heard in the last five years or so. As many Real Art readers know, I'm a product of the American suburbs myself, and have spent the last twenty years or so trying to eradicate their influence on the person I am. It's sad really: even though I explicitly reject the consumerist, materialistic, vacuous, and selfish values of neighborhoods like the one that produced me, I will probably never be able to shake off entirely the dark shadow they've cast over me. That is, even rejecting the suburbs means I have a relationship with them.

Anyway, no real commentary from me on the Ferlinghetti interview--I mean, the guy's all over the place, which would have me typing until Thursday. His words speak best for themselves, and it's worth it to me to steer Real Art readers in his direction because he so well articulates what I think about the artist's role in America.

Go check it out.

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