Neal Conan mastered the soft NPR tone, but roared like a lion at the end.
I had been wondering what the hell happened to Talk of the Nation over the last few months, and why it seemed to be gone. Tonight I looked it up, and listened to the host Neal Conan’s sign-off for the show and his career at NPR. It’s spicy! [listen here, it’s worth it]
So right here, I form my own private compact with NPR and my member stations. I will listen and, yes, I will open my checkbook, but I need some services in return. Go and tell me the stories behind everything that happened in the world today. Explain why it happened, and how it affects our lives. Do it every day. Tell me what’s important, and don’t waste my time with stupid stuff.
I listened devotedly to Talk of the Nation for more than 10 years. I recorded many programs from the radio and recorded them to my hard drive before podcasts were invented. Every day at work it was Howard Stern then Talk of the Nation. Ray Suarez was a good host, occasionally getting exasperated with the topic and/or guest with hilarious results. Juan Williams followed Suarez and was less interesting. Suarez went to Newshour, Williams went to Fox News and pretty much lost his mind.
Neal Conan didn’t have much flavor to him, but I stuck with the program for years into his tenure. Then, between progressive radio starting up (R.I.P. Air America) and then podcasts I stopped listening to TOTN. Also, TOTN shifted to shorter segments. Instead of an hour spent on a single topic, an hour show was split into 2-3 topics. I liked the depth and the meandering that an hour on a single topic would sometime lead to. Kooks started creeping into the discussion. That made the program more fun.
I blamed that format change on Neal Conan, but given that NPR has dropped TOTN entirely (I don’t think the ratings were bad) for a magazine format, it may have been a top-down decision.
Thank you Ray Suarez, Juan Williams, and Neal Conan. Talk of the Nation was a good program and the work of your teams was an important centerpoint of many days.
Diana Memorial Tartan, for sale at the United Kingdom land at Epcot in Walt Disney World, 2009.
The romance and swooning over the Windsor dynasty is disturbing. The family members have little to no merit given the amount of power they are born into. And almost to a person they seem miserable. Gross all the way around.
Was Lady Diana’s death a sad one? Sure. Did it warrant an entire hemisphere seemingly crippled with grief in 1997? No way.
Sympathies to her family and friends, but she was not a magical creature and I can’t recall any constructive thing she did other than take stands on issues like objecting to abandoned landmines blowing up children. Hardly daring stuff.
She was a crucial part of the big Royal Wedding industry that ramped up to her marriage to Prince Charles in the 1980s. Now we know Charles was in love with someone else at the time, Diana’s happiness was doomed (recall the “miserable” point made above).
Worst of all, as her family mourned and others projected their fantasies onto Diana’s blankness, Elton John reworked the lyrics to “Candle in the Wind” and made it WORSE than its original tribute to Marilyn Monroe. Sure, his longtime songwriting partner Bernie Taupin had a hand in it, but STILL. Is life better for anyone with words like “And your footsteps will always fall here
/ Along England’s greenest hills”? One imagines a gigantic Diana patrolling England, a colossal stomping wraith wandering a Emily Brontë heath.
I knew Alan Thicke’s kid was a singer. Hadn’t heard any song by him before (or at least connected any song with him). His photo would show up here and there, then his name. I’d think “Ah. Alan Thicke’s kid. Bet that’s a steep climb, or a career boost. Whatever. Looks like a dullard. Like an even-blander Enrique Iglesias.”
This week, I discovered the name of that song I’ve heard 300 times this summer (“Blurred Lines)”, and that it was Alan Thicke singing it. Great production. Not surprised Pharrell is involved. The video is causing a stir, due to the presence of naked female models (let’s all of us clothed primates gasp in horror). Even so, only Pharrell and T.I. come across like the only humans within worth hanging out with. Even better, though, is the parody video. Unfortunately, getting many of the jokes in the parody require seeing the original. Here you go [Not Safe For Work unless you work someplace awesome]:
The funnier, more personality-driven parody by Mod Carousel that swaps the genders:
Bet the group in the parody video had more fun than the pretend-fun in the first video.
A few times in recent years I’ve been asked why I get emotional about marriage equality. There’s typically a zest gap: the other person is rational, I’m on the verge of berserker rage. For my part, it’s a mix of religion and accrued anecdotes. Let’s start with anecdotes:
1985 – The Times of Harvey Milk Saw this documentary when it aired on PBS. The existence of gay people was still a foreign concept to me (so was going outside, or a city with more than 100,000 people in it). But Harvey Milk’s story was a moving one. This film stuck in my head, although it did not save me from being a dipshit (see below).
High school & college In high school I had a close friend who had a strong gay vibe. Yet he was dating girls. Our 16-18 year-old brains thought it was so funny that people kept thinking he was gay. This was an ongoing joke for years. “Ha ha, you are so not gay, yet people keep calling you gay. Isn’t that hilarious?” You can see where this is going.
In college I had another friend who had a strong gay vibe. Yet he also dated girls. Similar thing, but with the extra smarm that early college years can bring. Whispering/hissing cattily to my friend things like: “Ha! I feel so gay around you” during errands in the grocery store. This was the pinnacle of wit, as he was not gay, right?
In both cases, both friends eventually came out as gay in their late teens or early twenties. Thankfully. Knowing that for years I was a close friend to each yet part of an environment that reinforced that gayness was wrong, that I was part of the sense of oppression, still has me ill at ease decades later.
Eugene, Oregon – Kinko’s, 1992 On the Oregon ballot in 1992 was Measure 9, a vile piece of hateful shit from the Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA). For openers:
This state shall not recognize any categorical provision such as “sexual
orientation,” “sexual preference,” and similar phrases that include
homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism or masochism. Quotas, minority status,
affirmative action, or any similar concepts, shall not apply to these
forms of conduct, nor shall government promote these behaviors.
Scott Lively & Long Mabon. Source: The Oregonian
The two point people, Lon Mabon and Scott Lively, were pervy-looking dudes. As you can guess, there was propaganda equating homosexuality to dog fucking, child molesters, and an intense preoccupation with other people’s sexual activities. These hate-mongering ding-a-lings mentioned “water sports” in the Oregon Voters Guide as something homosexuals like to do. I had to ask around what that meant. Thanks for making the Voters Guide into pornography, guys!
The Kinko’s store I worked in was chock full of smarty pantses struggling to find jobs because of those Reagan and Bush sonsofbitches. Taking a tally of staff members, more than half were homosexual or bisexual. A socially awkward guy, this made my dating prospects dim.
Two of the buttons we made in 1992 (above), my teeny-seeming slipper-shod feet (below).
We were fired up about Measure 9. Some of us started wearing buttons at
work. The manager, a lesbian, initially and sensibly disapproved. Why
should a copy shop get involved in politics? The Kinko’s store was one
of the few left in the U.S. still owned by an individual. We had decent
relations with the owner. The Anti-Measure 9 campaign was a significant
store customer. The vibe reached a point where we asked the manager if
we could make buttons for free for that campaign. Finally, happily, she said yes.
That was a triumphant feeling.
Measure 9 failed (Fuck off, OCA!). As did the
similar Measure 13 years after (double fuck off, OCA!). Then when the ballot measure numbers
cycled around, a new anti-gay Measure 9 failed yet again (many people
still had their ’92 anti-Measure 9 bumper stickers – handy! Also: triple fuck-off, OCA!).
Disappointingly, in 2004 Oregon voters passed a “one man, one woman” definition of marriage still in Oregon’s books. Scott Lively is now part of anti-gay hate
fomenting in Uganda the last few years, and people are dying because of
it. No doubt Lively travels with a Bible.
Religion & embarrassment in history The
Bible is not a good source of morality. Both the Old and New Testaments are cited by anti-gay groups bashers as why homosexuals are
sinners. The Bible was used to justify anti-miscegenation (mixed-race)
laws. Both the Old and New Testament justify slavery. If that shoddy
book cannot get right the easiest moral issue we have: whether we
can own another human as property, what moral authority can it claim?
Yet
the Bible is also used to justify ignorance more broadly. Those denying climate
change likely rely on the Bible for their views. The Bible gets so much wrong
about science and the nature of reality it’s stupefying. It doesn’t
even reference lands beyond the middle east. Or understand diseases,
thinking them curses instead or caused by demon possession. It’s so embarrassing on these matters that
most Christians have learned to largely ignore the bulk of its
assertions on almost everything, focusing on a few lapidary phrases that reality hasn’t entirely laughed away yet. Bible-thumpers are behind the misogyny trying to legislate what women
should and should not be able to do with their own bodies. Women-as-chattel
is throughout the Bible and the Koran.
Believing
in magic books, magic institutions, or magic people always leads to
trouble. It is a grave embarrassment to our species to take ultimate
moral and scientific authority from an Iron Age compendium of
shoddy writing repeatedly tampered with and clearly written by
primate (not holy) hands. As we laugh at the ignorance of previous generations, so the future will
laugh at us.
History
never looks kindly on restricting the civil rights of citizens. We will eventually grant the right to marriage to all
adult citizens, why delay it? Banning same-sex marriage is anti-family. Anti-gay laws block family hospital visits, family medical decisions, child custody,
inheritance. Those laws hurt people. For no reason. “Marriage is about making
babies!” Bible-thumpers yell. Then take away marriage from
childless couples and old people. “Marriage is a sacred rite!” Sorry,
but marriage carries federal and state rights and privileges.
What
has happened in states and countries that have marriage equality?
Other than an occasional bigoted flip-out at the start: nothing. Gay marriage is boring there. Why? Because gay people are boring, like we straight people are boring. It is no fucking big deal to have it around!
So,
along with the case against marriage equality being morally and
metaphysically so fucking stupid, I get angry because we all will get
there, the end result is within sight. Let’s get it done and chill
out! I feel embarrassment for our country and our species that it hasn’t
happened yet. I want to stop having to explain to my kids why some of our
neighbors and friends can’t get married.
Pride flags fly over Harvey Milk Plaza on Castro & Market in San Francisco.
Red Lion has this ad directed at same-sex couples. “We look forward to
playing an important part of your life and future.” Sweet!
“Let’s make history together.” Very nice. We’ve all been in that spot, asking ourselves or our group of revolutionaries: “How’re we gonna get some justice up in here?” The answer, always, is to call the Red Lion. When thinking of the front
lines of civil rights, Red Lion is always there, picket signs and
bullhorns blaring. Look in photos in history books – from the American Revolution to Selma to Occupy Wall Street you will always find Red Lion, po-faced and glorious mane flowing, pushing for social justice.
This ad is in a Portland alternative newspaper, Willamette Week. Sadly,
our bigoted state of Oregon bans same-sex marriage. Washington doesn’t,
and its city Vancouver just over the Columbia River has a Red Lion
staring back at us, a sentinel with its new open mindedness and legal
pot. The Red Lion in Portland, literally across the river along the same
longitude, looks northward in meek shame, knowing its state is on the wrong
side of history.
All demographics deserve the right to
be pandered to. But this line made me wince: “We offer on-site event
specialists, group room rates and tasteful culinary experiences.”
Red Lion as a destination for fussy foodies? Doubtful. As a privileged,
white, probably straight male (I’ll probably never know for sure – men are
fucking boring and I lack the physical courage required of normal homosexual
acts. How those fellas endure it is a marvel) I feel this ad
somehow implies MY group doesn’t give a shit about tasteful food or event details.
We don’t, but STILL having that coarse stereotype shoved right into my
face is darned offensive. I’m taking my rage to a Del Taco where I shall dine without using a napkin!
A print misalignment in the The New York Times resulted in blurry faces in a series of glamor photos in the SundayStyles section. I snapped examples:
Glen Close, Lena Dunham, Gwyneth Paltrow, Amanda Seyfried all glamorous, all made clowns by an errant printing process. January Jones also a victim on the page.
Funny, right? Mistakes happen. January Jones was another victim. Naomi Campbell, on the same page, managed to look even better. Presumably these beautiful people will continue on, undeterred by what happened to a West Coast printing of the NYT. Having canceled by subscription to The Oregonian (its new publisher is an Orange County, California neocon jerk) and choosing the Sunday New York Times has been much more entertaining. Though I miss Doonesbury and the weekly pondering of what life would be like if my only information about the outside world was reading Parade magazine each Sunday (on my bucket list of experiments once I’m wealthy).
The NYT motto: “All the News That’s Fit to Print” is vomitous. Not a boast the NYT has earned, and reminiscent of Sarah Palin’s 2008 answer to which newspapers and magazines she read to stay informed: “All of them.”
It was a funny answer, but I would have LOVED if this vision of Palin, a constantly-churning-information-Braniac-machine, had turned out to be true.
But every weekly opening of the The New York Times I am haunted by two ghosts. I hear Christopher Hitchens moan about the New York Times slogan, and Gore Vidal sneers and spits at the New York Times Sunday Book Review. It held a vendetta against him for decades, and even when it started reviewing his books again he thought it was sloppy and ramshackle. I’m glad to have those voices. They’re good reminders that because something feels information-packed and sophisticated, doesn’t mean it’s true.
If Marco Rubio and his people have half a brain, they will turn his thirst for water into a trademark. In public appearances, he’ll be all “You know, me and my water” as he takes a sip of water. A nation shakes its head fondly, and with a sitcom posture of hands on hips or folded arms will say: “Oh, Rubio.” And Rubio will look at the crowd or the camera with a “Hey, I gotta be me.” Freeze frame. Credits roll.
But his State of the Union rebuttal was a disaster. Not only making up points to refute that weren’t even in the State of the Union speech, but Rubio made a variety of claims contrary to reality.
An essential point was one Rubio made early on: “See, for much of human history, most people were trapped in stagnant societies where a tiny minority always stayed on top.” He meant to say the U.S. is different from that. But it is not. U.S. class mobility does not really exist. The U.S. has record wealth but the lower 98% is not enjoying it, despite worker productivity nearly doubling as our earnings have stagnated due to corporate stooges of all parties, including Marco Rubio.
Poland Spring water, the brand Rubio desperately gulped, had better get on this moment. It’s promotional gold for them. That’s capitalism.
Since Karl Rove flushed away $400 million of plutocrat money through his shitty SuperPAC with a 1% success rate, he’s desperate for relevance. So he’s dedicating his time, like a good Republican politico, by picking on a woman and an imaginary issue at the same time.
His shitty SuperPAC (will be repeating this key phrase thrice for rhetorical stickiness) American Crossroads has funded a t.v. ad attacking actress Ashley Judd, who allegedly has something to someone somewhere she MAY consider a run against turtle Mitch McConnell for his Senate seat in Kentucky. Why run an attack ad against an entirely speculative candidate? She’s a smart, pretty lady that’s easy for dying angry toad men to croak at.
Reminiscent of the weirdly envious “Celebrity” ad run by the resentful McCain/Palin campaign that Obama was TOO popular, and his resonance with the people was a failing. A jiujitsu marvel! Hey, Amuhrican voter, why vote for the popular person? Vote instead for the loathsome person, like you!
For the record, many people who served with McCain said he was a bad pilot, petulant, entitled, and crashed planes unneccesarily.
If Judd responds to the ad or to Rove directly? Then her candidacy becomes a thing, and the need for their ad push is vindicated. If she does NOT run, they can claim victory that they daunted her. Rove has promised more attacks on Judd, because … why not? Rove loves to manufacture issues and battle them in an effort to gain applause and merit his existence. It’s a distraction for the plutocrats who otherwise would look at the hundreds of millions they’ve given Rove’s shitty SuperPAC and wonder what the hell he’s done with the money.
L-R: Not me (but could be), Ashley JuddI hereby offer my help to Ms. Judd to push back against Karl Rove. It would be very easy to get a little video going that presents Rove as a class warfare radical: “Karl Rove, a former salesman who used to at least return fear and lies on your investment. Now Rove only takes money from the old and American-ish businesses and offers empty promises and losses in return. [Insert footage of Rove counting wads of cash] Who’s the real radical? A pleasant, downhome actress who at least has a real job, or a bolshevik stealing your hard-earned capital? Tell Karl Rove to go away. Or throw a pie in his face and tell him to go back to Russia.”
I’ve never owned a gun. Not a political statement or safety concern, just never been a part of what nearby family and friends are into. I have many responsible friends and relatives who are gun owners, and I trust them. Guns can be used responsibly for recreation, hunting, just-in-case safety. If I lived in an area where the local law enforcement was 30+ minutes away, I’d consider owning a gun. Except for time in the armed forces, to my knowledge no friend or family members have injured themselves or others with guns. No big whoop.
I believe in the 2nd Amendment. I used to be for the concept of “gun control” until the Bush Administration and Congress pushed its long-in-development (pre-9/11) PATRIOT Act and started breaking our civil rights on surveillance, absurd security policies, and interrogation (Obama Administration? Not much better). The concept of a government turning on its people became more vivid. So the wisdom of the 2nd Amendment became apparent and now I’m on board. Still deliberating on whether citizens should have the right to all types of firearms, and listening to all sides there.
But the National Rifle Association is a fear-mongering pusher of guns that sucks donkey dongs. I’m sure in the topsy-turvy world of many of their donors, where single-parented mixed-race corporate-friendly Barack Obama is a privileged elitist socialist who’s gotten way too uppity, their recent ad resonates. The NRA ad is way over the top, and it’s fun to watch/read the outrage. I don’t agree with all of the hand-wringing below, but some of the reaction is on-the-nose:
The U.S. President has a tough job. That job includes death threats from outside and within the U.S. It’s a job where there’s close to a 10% chance of getting shot and killed. And the President is the Commander-in-Chief, the head of our military forces. Armed protection makes sense. Do school employees have a 1 in 10 chance of getting shot and killed? No. Do the majority of gun owners think arming our schools makes sense? Probably not. Does the gun lobby the N.R.A. represents have an interest in ginning up more out-of-proportion fear to sell millions of more guns? Yes.
And the N.R.A. ads are losing moderates who might otherwise consider what gun owners have to say. If the gubmint does end up taking away guns from citizens, the N.R.A. will deserve much of the blame.
