'Best of TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
Dr. Martin Luther King Day 2007
By Baron Dave Romm
Hell
and High Water: Global Warming--the Solution and
the Politics--and What We Should Do by Joseph
Romm.
A clear, concise and convincing book on
climate change and why we need to hurry to fix
the problem.
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Dr. Martin
Luther King Day 2007
A ramble and some
quick thoughts
Today is Martin Luther King Day, a national holiday despite the "resolute" efforts of the radical right. The government web site insists it's "A day ON, not a day OFF" which, I think, would please Dr. King. Still, the equality that he worked for is not universal and new challenges arise.
Pride Festival and coaching selections
Several years ago I went to the Twin Cities Pride Festival, an umbrella event for Gays, Lesbians, Bisexual and Transgender people. I went with a Transgendered friend. (I'd call our relationship "Platonic" but I don't think Plato's dialogs cover the situation.) I didn't go to any of the parades, but the festival itself was fine. Normal. A gay friend who had been going for years said that the festival didn't take off until the Cheese Curds booth arrived. Ah, Minnesota.
What struck me was how quotidian the sponsors were. Banks, loan companies, soft drinks, beer. To the corporate world, the "gay agenda" was not markedly different than the "NASCAR agenda".
I wandered around, taking in the sights, seeing the politicians reaching out to voters, examining the crafts. People I knew kept looking at me, startled. "Baron Dave, I didn't think you were gay!" "I'm not," I retorted gently but firmly trying to let them down easy, "just because I go to an NAACP meeting doesn't make me black."
I'm glad I went, just to check it out. Good people, decent activities, interesting vendors, overpriced food. I probably won't be back soon, but you never know.
Still, when all was said and done, I began to worry about the lack of minority coaches in football. In both the pro and college ranks, the percentage of minority coaches and assistants is waaaaay under the percentage of minority players. (And by "minority" I mean "black". Sure, the Asian Pacific Islanders are underrepresented, but that's not the issue.) I won't go into the statistics -- because I don't care that much -- but it continues to remain an issue for the NCAA and in Professional Sports.
Why this is I cannot say. It's tempting to lay it all on the feet of racism. Racism is almost certainly a factor, especially in the south where some still insist on using the Confederate Flag in their state symbol. "Pride", like "faith", is a two edged sword. You should be proud of the good things you are and emulate the good deeds of your ancestors. You shouldn't forget the bad, but your "heritage" may contain evil acts that you should live down, not live up to.
But racism can't be the whole answer to the lack of minority coaching. Schools want to win, and pro sports value winning even more. If there was a buck to be made, any team would unhesitantly hire someone staggeringly unpopular. Indeed, the more controversial the hire, the more publicity and the more butts in seats. As long as the coaches win. Black coaches haven't don't terrifically well, as yet, but they haven't done any worse than most white (or Pacific Islander) coaches. As of this writing, former Minnesota Vikings Defensive Coordinator Tony Dungy, already a veteran coach of playoff teams, has brought his Indianapolis Colts to the AFC championship game. That doesn't make him Bill Belicheck, but it does put him on a par with Bud Grant and other white coaches who were very successful but never managed to win a world championship.
So why so few black coaches? More than a generation has passed since The Great Society programs tried to even the playing field. I'm inclined to blame, at least in part, the Old Boys Network. Even several generations later, college administrators tend to hire their friends. Or at least people who know people they know. This isn't racism so much as inbreeding. The Old Boys Network isn't evil, but it is inefficient. At some point, football people are going to go outside their comfort zone to hire coaches based on their ability to win.
I hate to recommend something so unhealthy, but perhaps the NAACP needs a Cheese Curds vendor.
It's Official: The TSA Sells out
It was bad enough when United Air Lines started selling commercial space on air sickness bags or when a Pennsylvania company s doing a roaring trade selling items confiscated at security checkpoints.
But now, the Transportation Security Administration itself is bravely fighting terrorism by selling ads on x-ray bins and tables (requires salon.com membership).
Coming to an Airport Checkpoint Near You: Ads In The Security Bins.
In the words of Michael Dare, I feel so much safer now.
Bipartisanship: Republicans can dish it out but they can't take it
The Democrats have a larger majority on the House of Representatives than the Republicans have had since the early 1950s. The so-called "Gingrich Revolution" collidedwith The K Street Project to give conservative Republicans the excuse for corruption, pedophelia and the most partisan Congress ever seen. Now, those same Republicans are whining about the bipartisanship after The Pelosi Revolution even before the Democrats are firmly in power.
Sad, really.
Too many conservatives just don't live in the real world. The right wing is so blinded by their own ambition and selfish concerns that the rest of the world can drown in a rising sea of warfare and moral bankruptcy. Fortunately, the adults are back in power in Congress. Let's hope Democrats rise to the occasion. So far, about half-way through their First 100 Hours program, they're doing pretty well and the momentum is building for the second hundred hours.
Return of the King
Returning to Martin Luther King for a moment, I'd have to say that the Boondocks episode Return of the King was the best show on tv during the 2005-2006 season. Of the shows I saw, and I watched altogether too much tv. The first season of Boondocks was uneven, but all the shows had bright spots and when it hit it hit hard. Not for everyone, and not work safe, but I highly recommend the shows in repeat or when the DVD comes out. I look forward to the next season.
Note to self: Monk starts the new season on Friday. Remember to tape 24...
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts of Shockwave Radio Theater. Permanent archive. More radio programs, interviews and science fiction humor plays can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
--////
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Rosemary Bray McNatt : The Shoes of Dr. King (beliefnet.com)
One mom reflects on the leader's life and shares his legacy with her son.
Kim A. Lawton: The Forgotten Martin Luther King: Local Pastor (beliefnet.com)
Dr. King left his mark on American history, but it was his congregation that gave him strength to go forward.
Mark Morford: Candles Make You Kill Yourself (sfgate.com)
One commercial makes it clear: Your life is totally vile. Also: Are can openers evil?
N.J. clergy exempt from performing civil unions (advocate.com)
Clergy in New Jersey cannot be required to unite gay couples in civil unions, the state attorney general said in a decision that quieted the fears of some religious groups opposed to same-sex ceremonies.
HeathCliff Rothman: Bill Maher doesn't care if you're gay (and that's why we love him) (advocate.com)
Our 2006 Advocate Person of the Year is a regular guy who speaks his mind, makes TV that matters, and proves to America that real men don't sweat the gay stuff.
Ellen Seidler: Homophobic Flagging of Lesbian Content on YouTube Continues (afterellen.com)
Why is lesbian content so often flagged on YouTube?
Heather Aimee O...: Lesbian Magazines Reinvent Themselves (afterellen.com)
How lesbian magazines are surviving in the age of the Internet.
Heather Aimee O...: Across the Page: Another Kind of Lesbian Comic (afterellen.com)
It is nearly impossible these days to walk into a bookstore without finding a section devoted to graphic novels. An umbrella term, graphic novels usually include comics, full-length books, magazines and manga, the Japanese word for comic. This month, three books - two graphic novels and one collection - show that lesbians have a lot they can look forward to in this genre.
Anne Thalheimer: Review of "The Complete Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist": Rage Against the Sex-Gene (popmatters.com)
Men who read comic books - a very small percentage of all men who read - tend not to read books like Hothead Paisan. This statement is, of course, a gross generalization. But I vividly remember leading a discussion on Hothead Paisan in one of my graduate classes, and a fellow (male) student turning to me after I asked what people thought of the book. He said, with some disgust, "I stopped reading when she started cutting off penises." In short, he stopped reading after six panels.
HOTHEAD PAISAN: HOMICIDAL LESBIAN TERRORIST
Hothead was walking down the street, and these two grubby men are standing by, and one of them says something like "Wanna suck this?", and Hothead gets real pissed, and as she's walking away she just casually tosses a bomb at them over her shoulder.
Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist: The Official Site (hotheadpaisan.com)
Hubert's Poetry Corner
LADY IN TEHRAN
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Another sunny, but brisk, day followed by a cold night with more freeze warnings.
Golden Globes - 2007
Returning To PBS With Weekly Show
Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers is returning to PBS in April with a weekly public affairs series, "Bill Moyers Journal," that resurrects the name of his first public television series for a new century.
Moyers, 72, did two specials for PBS last year, and both the work and response "whetted my appetite for more."
"People keep writing or stopping me on the street to suggest stories that are not being reported and voices that are not being heard," said the former press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson. "A lot of Americans long for more than conventional wisdom, celebrity pundits, predictable opinions and safe analysis of the obvious."
The first episode on April 25 discusses the role of the press before the invasion of Iraq.
Bill Moyers
Meets With Students
Harper Lee
Reclusive author Harper Lee attended a high school play based on her book, "To Kill a Mockingbird," on Wednesday, then met with students who appeared in the production.
The production brought together about 60 students from nearly all-white Mountain Brook High and all-black Fairfield High Preparatory School.
The 80-year-old Lee was invited as a special guest to be honored by education and arts officials. Famous for prizing her privacy, she rarely speaks to reporters, though she does occasionally meet with students.
Harper Lee
25th Anniversary
Jazz Masters
Pianist and broadcaster Ramsey Lewis joined the "in crowd" of Jazz Masters at a gala concert celebrating the 25th anniversary of the awards program for lifetime achievement in jazz.
The 71-year-old, Grammy-winning pianist, who topped the charts with such hit recordings as "The In Crowd" and "Wade in the Water," was among seven Jazz Masters named for 2007.
This year's winners include bandleader Toshiko Akiyoshi, trombonist Curtis Fuller, flutist-saxophonist Frank Wess, alto saxophonist-composer Phil Woods, vocalist Jimmy Scott, and historian and writer Dan Morgenstern, who was honored for his jazz advocacy.
Jazz Masters
Undergoes Bold Remake
Independent Film Channel
For much of its life, the Independent Film Channel was essentially content to show independent films.
That wasn't enough for Evan Shapiro. Since taking over as general manager two years ago, he's sought to establish IFC as a haven for free speech, a network that relishes taking on controversial issues. His slogan for IFC is "TV, Uncut."
"If cable does what broadcast cannot, IFC needs to do what cable does not," said Shapiro, who ran his own marketing company before working at Court TV and IFC.
One example is the recent documentary, "This Film is Not Yet Rated," that explores the politics behind Hollywood's movie ratings system. Many people in television loved the idea but no one wanted to make it, Shapiro said. He reasoned that "if we don't do this, we don't deserve to be the Independent Film Channel."
Independent Film Channel
Fres Staff
V2
Indie record label V2 North America, home to such acts as the White Stripes, Moby and the Raconteurs, laid off its staff Friday and will primarily become a catalog label.
The label's parent company, Sheridan Square, also plans to focus on digital distribution. About 35 people, including president Andy Gershon, are believed to have lost their jobs as part of the restructuring.
The company will retain the White Stripes catalog, but will no longer issue new music by the duo or other frontline artists such as Moby or the Raconteurs, sources say. The only genre the company plans to participate in going forward is gospel.
V2
Religiously Insane Museum
Ken Ham
Ken Ham's sprawling creation museum isn't even open yet, but an expansion is already underway in the state-of-the art lobby, where grunting dinosaurs and animatronic humans coexist in a Biblical paradise.
A crush of media attention and packed preview sessions have convinced Ham that nearly half a million people a year will come to Kentucky to see his Biblically correct version of history.
The $27 million project, which also includes a planetarium, a special-effects theater, nature trails and a small lake, is privately funded by people who believe the Bible's first book, Genesis, is literally true.
For them, a museum showing Christian schoolchildren and skeptics alike how the earth, animals, dinosaurs and humans were created in a six-day period about 6,000 years ago -- not over millions of years, as evolutionary science says -- is long overdue.
Ken Ham
Church As Billboard
James Cui
When people talk about seeing holy signs, they don't usually mean "Your Ad HERE" on the side of a church.
That 50-foot message, visible to thousands of commuters on a nearby freeway, was projected Wednesday evening on a dark portion of the bell tower of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.
The sign was gone within hours, but the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese was not amused.
However, the sign wasn't really trolling for advertisers. It was a guerrilla art piece by James Cui, who included a telephone in the projected image.
James Cui
Posthumous Nose Job
Dante
Italian scientists have made a reconstruction of the face of the poet Dante some 700 years after he died and have found some surprises, particularly about the supposed shape of his famous aquiline nose.
Professor Giorgio Gruppioni told Reuters in a telephone interview that the multi-disciplinary project discovered that Dante probably did have a hooked nose but it was pudgy rather than pointy and crooked rather than straight, almost as if he had been punched.
"We all had our ideas of what Dante looked like. But if this is right, it shows his face was different," he said. "He looks more like a common man, a man on the street."
Dante
Sues Over Brainwashing
Janine Huard
Five decades after unwittingly participating in brainwashing experiments that were funded by the CIA and the federal government, 78-year-old Janine Huard went to Federal Court yesterday to try and persuade a judge she is entitled to compensation.
"They demolished me," Huard told reporters yesterday before her court hearing. "They gave me terrible drugs, electroshocks and made me stay in a bed with a mask over my face listening to recordings for hours."
Huard had entered Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute in 1958 after suffering postpartum depression following the birth of her second child. Her newborn had become ill and Huard was having difficulty coping.
But instead of helping her, the institute's director, Dr. Ewen Cameron, used her as a "guinea pig" to carry out experimental brainwashing techniques that he mistakenly believed could treat depression.
Huard wants to launch a class-action suit on behalf of herself and about 200 other victims who were shut out of a 1994 federal compensation program that paid $100,000 to 77 victims who suffered the most serious damage.
Janine Huard
In Memory
Alice Coltrane
Alice Coltrane, a jazz performer and composer and wife of the late saxophone legend John Coltrane, has died. She was 69.
For nearly 40 years, Coltrane managed the archive and estate of her husband, a pivotal figure in the history of jazz. He died of liver disease in 1967 at age 40.
Born Alice McLeod in Detroit on Aug. 27, 1937, she began learning classical piano at age 7. She studied jazz piano briefly in Paris before moving to New York, where she met her future husband in 1963.
She left Terry Gibbs' band to marry Coltrane and began performing with his band in the mid-1960s. She played tour dates with Coltrane's group in San Francisco, New York and Tokyo.
After his death, she devoted herself to raising their children but continued to play.
Coltrane, a convert to Hinduism, was also a significant spiritual leader and founded the Vedantic Center, a spiritual commune now located in Agoura Hills.
Alice Coltrane
In Memory
A.I. Bezzerides
A.I. Bezzerides, a novelist-turned-Hollywood screenwriter best known for post-World War II film noir classics such as "Kiss Me Deadly," "On Dangerous Ground" and "Thieves' Highway," has died. He was 98.
Bezzerides was working as a communications engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power when his 1938 novel "Long Haul" was turned into "They Drive by Night," a 1940 melodrama starring George Raft and Humphrey Bogart as struggling trucker brothers hauling produce.
After Warner Bros. paid him $2,000 for the rights to his novel and put him under contract as a $300-a-week screenwriter, Bezzerides discovered that a script based on his book already had been written.
After leaving Warner Bros., Bezzerides, nicknamed Buzz, wrote or co-wrote films such as "Beneath the 12-Mile Reef," "Desert Fury," "Sirocco" and "Track of the Cat."
He got into television in the 1950s, writing for such series as "Bonanza," "The Big Valley," and "The Virginian."
While at Warner Bros., Bezzerides was a close friend with William Faulkner, another contract writer at the studio.
Albert Isaac Bezzerides was born Aug. 9, 1908, in Samsun, Turkey. His mother was Armenian and his father a Turkish-speaking Greek.
He moved to America with his parents by age 2, and they settled in Fresno, where his father worked in the fields before becoming a produce-hauling trucker.
A.I. Bezzerides
In Memory
Michael Brecker
Michael Brecker, a versatile and influential tenor saxophonist who won 11 Grammys over a career that spanned more than three decades, died Saturday. He was 57.
Throughout his career, Brecker recorded and performed with numerous jazz and pop music leaders, including Herbie Hancock, James Taylor, Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell, according to his Web site. His most recently released recording, "Wide Angles," appeared on many top jazz lists and won two Grammys in 2004.
Brecker, who first studied clarinet and alto saxophone, decided to pursue the tenor saxophone in high school after being inspired by the work of John Coltrane, according to his Web site. He followed his brother, Randy, a trumpet player, to Indiana University, but he left after a year for New York.
In 1970, he helped found the jazz-rock group Dreams. He later joined his brother in pianist and composer Horace Silver's quintet. Michael and Randy also started the successful jazz-rock fusion group the Brecker Brothers. The two also owned the now-defunct downtown jazz club Seventh Avenue South.
Brecker's survivors include his wife, Susan; his children, Jessica and Sam; his brother, Randy; and his sister, Emily Brecker Greenberg. Memorial services are being planned.
Michael Brecker
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