Progressives have rightfully mourned the recent fate of New Orleans--a poor, predominately black city with a spectacular history that has been failed by our country over and over again.
I just returned from work and play in a city we hear less about, but it shares a lot in common with New Orleans--Detroit. AKA Motown, The 313, Rock City, The D. Detroit City, as the song goes, ain't nothin' to f with.
Most people react to Detroit the same way when they see it for the first time--something along the lines of "holy sh*t." It's frequently compared to a Third World country, with enormous vacant auto plants and many, many desperate people. It's a very dramatic landscape.
The Big 3 took what they needed from Detroit, and what they left behind is...how you say...challenging. There is tremendous poverty, hopelessness, crime, and violence.
But there is so much to love in Detroit. No, really.
I'm not a big Techno expert or anything, but the documentary above captures what I have grown to love about that place--it's rough, it's deprived and sometimes depraved, but out of much blight has risen one of the coolest creative scenes I've ever seen.
Seriously. If you're in the midwest, consider going to Detroit to see the sights this summer. There is remarkable stuff going on in Detroit, wonderful people...and they could definitely use the money. So come, won't you? I'll meet you just after the "continue reading" button.
Today I was downtown, driving through the historic area so many Philadelphians take for granted. As always, I was deeply moved by the sight of the visitors who come all over the world to spend Independence Day in my home town.
Think about that. They could have gone somewhere else, or stayed home for a backyard barbecue. Instead, they came to Philadelphia for July 4th because they're drawn by the idea of liberty, and the ideals expressed in our Declaration of Independence.
It seems our elected officials forget about those ideals. But we haven't! Sure, there are many reasons to be depressed, but don't give up. Get mad, get organized! Remember, it's our country. It doesn't belong to the corporations.
It belongs to us.
Adams:
It's a masterpiece, I say!
They will cheer every word, every letter
Jefferson:
I wish I felt that way
Franklin:
I believe I can put it better
Now then attend, as friend to friend
Our Declaration Committee
For us I see immortality
All:
In Philadelphia City
Franklin:
A farmer, a lawyer, and a sage
A bit gouty in the leg
You know it's quite bizarre
To think that here we are
Playing midwives to an egg
All:
We're waiting for the chirp, chirp, chirp
Of an eaglet being born
We're waiting for the chirp, chirp, chirp
On this humid Monday morning in this
Congressional incubator
Franklin:
God knows the temperature's hot enough
To hatch a stone, let alone an egg
All:
We're waiting for the scratch, scratch, scratch
Of that tiny little fellow
Waiting for the egg to hatch
On this humid Monday morning in this
Congressional incubator
Adams:
God knows the temperature's hot enough
To hatch a stone
Jefferson:
But will it hatch an egg?
Adams:
The eagle's going to crack the shell
Of the egg that England laid
All:
Yes, so we can tell, tell, tell
On this humid Monday morning in this
Congressional incubator
Franklin:
And as just as Tom here has written
Though the egg may belong to Great Britain,
The eagle inside belongs to us!
All:
And as just as Tom here has written
We say to hell with Great Britain! The eagle inside belongs to us!
Hello, amigos. Long time reader, first time poster.
My name's Andy Cobb, I'm pleased as punch and honored that John asked me to post here on occasion. Many thanks to the C&L team for giving me a chance to play a bit in this cool thing they've created and work so hard to maintain. That's not me all naked in that video up there, that's Brian Gallivan. More about him in a second, but first, me me meeeeee:
I'm an LA-based comic and actor, and I've been writing and directing videos for a while with a satirical/political bent. John, Bluegal, and the other folks here have been kind enough to post many of them here for your viewing pleasure. I'll bring you satirical and comedic bits from time to time. I often work with Second City on video projects, that's a theater company I worked with in Chicago and work with now in their burgeoning LA video dealie-do, called The Second City Network.
This bit has been made with them by the aforementioned talented tall glass of water named Brian Gallivan.
Brian has developed a great character called "Sassy Gay Friend" that has become one of those "viral franchiseable characters" that the entertainment industry covets so dearly. It's been put on the teevee, seen millions of times on the web, and widely discussed by his many rabid young fans.
C&L's ever-vigilant Bluegal posted the first installment of this series, in which SGF attempts to counsel Ophelia from Hamlet. Since then he's covered Othello and Romeo and Juliet, to fine effect.
I sat down to talk a bit with (the relatively non-sassy) Brian for a talk about his bit...
Michael Moore's doing a media blitz to mark the DVD release of "Capitalism: A Love Story" and after a couple of delays, I finally get to talk briefly to him Tuesday afternoon.
I first note he's a Crooks and Liars fan. "Oh yeah, it's great. I try to post whatever I can to lead to your site. It's bold and brave," he says. ("Bold and brave." I like it. Sounds like a movie review, right?)
"When you first started making movies, people were saying, 'Oh, that far-left Michael Moore'," I say. "It seems to me that with each movie, you were a little bit ahead of the curve and then people catch up with you. Has that been your experience?"
"That's exactly what happened," he says. "I haven't changed but the country has changed. People are not only catching onto the lies they've been told, they've become more progressive themselves. Now I'm not just that guy in the baseball cap."
When he first started appearing on television, that class bias in the media worked against him. "It was almost like, okay, we had this blue-collar working class guy on, and now we don't have to have another one for a year," I say.
"Oh yeah, absolutely. Let me give you an example of class bias in the media. Yesterday there were all these really serious things going on: the banking regulation proposal, what happened with Biden in Israel. And the story on NBC evening news and CBS news was ... the runaway Prius! That, and the rainstorm in New York. The announcer says, 'Let's go to the hardest hit city,' and it's Greenwich, Connecticut! Oh, the humanity!" he says, letting loose his trademark belly laugh.
Then he's serious again.
"The mainstream media is a huge distraction, and I have no doubt this is purposely done," he says. "It's a system of enforced ignorance to keep people dumb."
If liberal bloggers worked 24/7, 365 days a year, they couldn't begin to catch all the media distortions, I say - and people probably wouldn't want to hear it. Maybe our efforts would be better spent telling people not to watch television.
"If you're talking about a 50-year-old white guy, yeah," he agrees.
"Young people don't even watch the news anymore. They watch Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart," I say.
"But young people, by watching less news, are becoming more informed. Something new and good will come out of that. It was young people who put the first African-American president in the White House," he says.
I mention my pet peeve: the right-wing viral emails that go unanswered, pushing erroneous info into the less-informed voting public. "I try to talk to other liberals about it, and their attitude is, well, 'here's a white paper, these are the facts, now they'll agree with us'. Too much emphasis on the facts, not enough on the emotions."
"That was one of the criticisms people made about me from the beginning," he says. "But I'm only honoring what any good storyteller tries to do: convey the truth through emotion."
I end by asking him what's next. "Your movie kind of ended on a down note..."
"Not for me!" he interrupts, chortling. (At the end of "Capitalism" he says that if people don't take action, he won't be making another film.)
Then he becomes serious. "I want to see if people see the movie and say, 'What are we gonna do tomorrow?' You can't go home and say 'yay Mike, great film' You have to do something.
"I'm waiting to see if people will rise up, and if so, I'll rise with them."
Ever have one of those friends who just lights up the room? I have a feeling that the young woman who made this video is one of those people. Trapped in the Pittsburgh airport during the recent Snowpocalypse, she made art instead of curling up in a corner with a laptop. I hope someone gives her a TV show, she looks like she could be the next Tracey Ullman!
The Yes Men have done it again. They infiltrated the World Economic Forum at Davos and announced a united strategy to end world poverty. (As if!) They issued this press release and set up a fake website, featuring carefully-dubbed fake interviews with various leaders (including Bill Clinton, shown above) admitting past exploitative economic policies and pledging to change them.
But the press corps attending the event largely ignored them, more's the pity:
In a series of diabolically stupid video manipulations, a cabal of anti-poverty filmmakers have performed an elaborate slander of the World Economic Forum, showing its "leadinglights" taking a dramatic departure from the litany of meaningless pledges they usually make at the annual gathering in the Swiss resort town.
In response, WEF spokesperson Adrian Monck could barely contain himself. "The only defense to satire is common sense!" he sputtered, before racing back into the WEF war room to deal with the burgeoning crisis.
The CEO of Archer Daniels Midland, the world's largest agribusiness conglomerate, spoke of "agriculture's role in today's economic savagery, and the broader long-term issues of robbing whole groups for the greed of the food industry," before calling for "universal justice and agriculture's reform" via Food Sovereignty. "We want to undo the injuries of global capitalism," added a much-improved "Klaus Schwab," founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum.
"The source of our financial treasure was violence towards the colonies of the global South," admitted "Queen Elizabeth II" most refreshingly, before pledging to sell her lands and use the proceeds to improve the lot of the world's poor. "We have caused this disaster," added "Prince Harry" with a stalwart giggle. "Nobody wants a catastrophe," Canadian Prime Minister "Stephen Harper" chimed in most helpfully.
"Haiti was a house of cards that we built through a history of exploitative economic policies," said a tired-looking "Bill Clinton." Now we have a chance to rebuild a more independent society by ending exploitation, forgiving their debt and bringing back real sustainability."
I'm really sad this morning. It took our FUBARed health insurance system to finally push immense talent Vic Chesnutt over the cliff of despair this week. He needed kidney surgery and faced losing his home to pay for it. A songwriting hero to people like Kristin Hersh, Michael Stipe and Patti Smith, the Athens, Georgia performer took an overdose and spent his last few days in a coma.
In a "Fresh Air" interview a few weeks ago, he talked about the impossible economic demands he faced, despite help from Sweet Relief, the musicians' health care fund. "I don't want to die," he told Terry Gross.
Imagine how many other talents are falling by the wayside, unable to deal with the constant assaults on their dignity. It's just not right:
Vic Chesnutt, a singer-songwriter of spare, idiosyncratic folk songs tinged with melancholy, died Christmas Day in Athens, Ga., after taking an overdose of prescription muscle relaxants, a family spokesman said. He was 45.
Chesnutt had been admitted to Athens Regional Medical Center on Wednesday and died surrounded by “devastated” friends and family, according to Jem Cohen, a filmmaker and friend who produced Chesnutt's 2007 album "North Star Deserter."
"This is not a story of a rock star being on heroin or even drinking themselves down," Cohen said Friday in an interview with The Times. "The real story here is about someone who struggled against amazingly difficult odds for many years and managed to transcend those odds with almost unparalleled productivity and creativity and power in his work."
Paralyzed after a 1983 single-car accident when he was driving drunk at age 18, Chesnutt had limited use of his arms and hands but nonetheless carved out a career as a songwriter, singer and guitarist. He was discovered in the late-1980s by REM frontman Michael Stipe, who championed his early recordings, and he gained the respect of music critics and fellow musicians who were struck by his darkly humorous songs.
Chesnutt tackled death and mortality head-on in his lyrics, as in "It Is What It Is," from his new album "At the Cut."
"I don't worship anything, not gods that don't exist / I love my ancestors, but not ritually / I don't need stone altars to hedge my bet against the looming blackness / that is what it is."
In recent interviews he contemplated the challenges he faced as a wheelchair-using paraplegic with inadequate health insurance and mounting medical bills.
"I'm not too eloquent talking about these things," Chesnutt told The Times earlier this month. "I was making payments, but I can't anymore and I really have no idea what I'm going to do. It seems absurd they can charge this much. When I think about all this, it gets me so furious. I could die tomorrow because of other operations I need that I can't afford."
But as far as I'm concerned, Mary is always going to look a lot like Imogene Herdman - sort of nervous and bewildered, but ready to clobber anyone who laid a hand on her baby. And the Wise Men are always going to be Leroy and his brothers, bearing ham. When we came out of the church that night it was cold and clear, with crunchy snow underfoot and bright, bright stars overhead. And I thought about the Angel of the Lord - Gladys, with her skinny legs and her dirty sneakers sticking out from under her robe, yelling at all of us everywhere: 'Hey! Unto you a child is born!'
"The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" - Barbara Robinson
Here is how this book begins: "The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shoemaker's old broken-down toolhouse." These truly nasty kids bully their way into the lead roles in a church Christmas pageant to get free hot chocolate and cookies, but by the end of the book, their unexpected Christmas spirit has us in tears.
This is what I wish for all of you this Christmas: To see, to fly above the despair. To understand why Christmas resonates throughout the world, even in places where they don't especially care (or even believe) that Jesus was born in a manger.
Christmas is that Spirit which transforms and you don't have to be a Christian to let it work its magic. It might have been a different day designated by so many of the human race as the time to transcend our pain and fear, to reach out to each other in a way we don't allow ourselves to do the other 364 days of the year, but this seems to be the one. So let's celebrate it.
Some people manage to tap into that Spirit the rest of the year, while the rest of us keep our hearts "safe" behind concrete and razor wire. Silly, really - because a heart not used regularly shrivels up, becomes hard and small. (Like the Grinch.) Even a broken heart is better than one that's never used.
That Spirit is in all of us. Think of the very worst person you know (yes, worse than the Herdmans - or Dick Cheney), and even they have that Spirit inside. It's up to them whether they'll ever let it out, but it's there.
Every other day of the year, I focus on what's wrong with the world. Today, I'm writing about the thing that's so very, very right - the human impulse to shine a light in darkness. To help, to shelter people in need. To love.
We all have lives that are far from perfect. Sometimes we go through hard times that seem to never end, and people we trusted let us down, again and again. And yet.
And yet, there's hope. Every single year, Ebenezer Scrooge opens his heart. Every year, George Bailey gets a glimmer of understanding about what a very large part is played in very small ways, and Clarence gets his wings. A wounded little girl who didn't dare let herself believe in Santa Claus learns faith isn't rational, and Linus helps us see the spiritual yearning at the real heart of Christmas.
We're here. We're alive. Love each other, if you dare. Be brave with your hearts. Merry, merry Christmas.
This is a smart, thoughtful discussion, and Michael Moore is not quite the unquestioning Obama supporter he so often seems to be, as evidenced in this Nation interview with Naomi Klein. He also points out the major flaw in the Obama "Hey Guys, Let's Just Split The Difference" strategy:
Naomi Klein: Meanwhile, we are not seeing too many signs of the hordes storming Wall Street. Personally, I'm hoping that your film is going to be the wake-up call and the catalyst for all of that changing. But I'm just wondering how you're coping with this odd turn of events, these revolts for capitalism led by Glenn Beck.
Michael Moore: I don't know if they're so much revolts in favor of capitalism as they are being fueled by a couple of different agendas, one being the fact that a number of Americans still haven't come to grips with the fact that there's an African-American who is their leader. And I don't think they like that.
NK: Do you see that as the main driving force for the tea parties?
MM: I think it's one of the forces--but I think there's a number of agendas at work here. The other agenda is the corporate agenda. The healthcare companies and other corporate concerns are helping to pull together what seems like a spontaneous outpouring of citizen anger.
But the third part of this is--and this is what I really have always admired about the right wing: they are organized, they are dedicated, they are up at the crack of dawn fighting their fight. And on our side, I don't really see that kind of commitment.
When they were showing up at the town-hall meetings in August--those meetings are open to everyone. So where are the people from our side? And then I thought, Wow, it's August. You ever try to organize anything on the left in August?
NK: Wasn't part of it also, though, that the left, or progressives, or whatever you want to call them, have been in something of a state of disarray with regard to the Obama administration--that most people favor universal healthcare, but they couldn't rally behind it because it wasn't on the table?
MM: Yes. And that's why Obama keeps turning around and looking for the millions behind him, supporting him, and there's nobody even standing there, because he chose to take a half measure instead of the full measure that needed to happen. Had he taken the full measure--true single-payer, universal healthcare--I think he'd have millions out there backing him up.
