I've started listening again to right-wing radio (not Limbaugh/Beck bullshit, real right-wing radio - and you need to listen to Savage. Seriously.). I used to all the time but stopped, but I've been prompted these last couple of months by friends and smarter people, and yes: every once, twice an hour, the host says something anti-globalism, anti-bankster, anti-corporation, that sounds like what a populist progressive might say. I never said there wasn't common ground regarding a economic populist push-back against the financial elite.
Yesterday I learned from this local DC asshole that patriotic Americans are sick of a corporate culture that destroys whole communities if there's profit in moving labor off-shore, that the terrorist at the Discovery Building is the logical end result of Al Gore, that Mexican immigrants are being directed by La Raza to behead as many Americans with machetes as possible, and that gays want to fuck your toddlers in the ass and give them AIDS and watch them die. How this jibes with motherfucking hippies' motherfucking call for motherfucking communist universal health care he didn't explain.
- True this: There’s nothing in the world more tired than a progressive blogger like me flipping out over the latest idiocies emanating from the Fox News crowd. But this summer’s media hate-fest is different than anything we’ve seen before. What we’re watching is a calculated campaign to demonize blacks, Mexicans, and gays and convince a plurality of economically-depressed white voters that they are under imminent legal and perhaps even physical attack by a conspiracy of leftist nonwhites. They’re telling these people that their government is illegitimate and criminal and unironically urging secession and revolution.
- O! One other thing I learned listening to that DC cracker radio host: by 2020 there will be no Republican party; it will be replaced by a true conservative party that will be willing to deal with the liberal scum ruining this country, deal with them by any an all means necessary to restore America to the greatest republic the world has ever seen.
- Uh-oh, Pastor Sanctimonious talks about tribalism.
- Clearly I am not the mediator for the job of uniting crackers and hippies against the financial elite, but say someone emerged, charismatic, eloquent, brilliant, passionate: neither party would endorse him (or her), the media would deride him as a lunatic, tribal dog-whistlers would have both crackers and hippies condemning him as a traitorous motherfucking CINO or HINO respectively, and if he still was succeeding, the elite would have him killed.
- Things which don't go away.
- Fucking Democrats.
- Pre-blaming progressives.
- Greenwald versus Goldberg.
- RX for straight white dudes.
- New myths again.
- Anarchist flowchart.
- One more Judt tribute.
- What ideas will drive the next decade? While it's a nice gimmick, asking Camille Paglia to contribute undermines the oomph of everyone else involved.
- Anti-Babs ad!
- What the fuck is a Wargotz? Oh, an Eastern Shore cracker.
- Leggett unchallenged.
- Sharks of the Potomac.
- It's been at least ten years since I visited the Phillips.
- More on Metro and teenagers as mosquitoes.
- Did you know Washington DC has a professional baseball team?
- Someone at Picador emailed me and offered me a free PB copy of this, which, funny, I'd just started re-reading:
- I'll mail it as soon as I get it to the first of you who email me your address.
- (Speaking of mailing, I couldn't get past page 50 of McCarthy's C - I'm sure it's my fault; wrong time/wrong book - so it's already on the way to Charm City - hope it works better for you.)
- Workshops! What are they good for?
- Mao, King Kong, and the Future of the Book.
- Stereogum's 40 Best New Bands of 2010 (with downloads).
- You couldn't pay me to stream the new Walkmans' for free, but I'll gladly stream the new Thermals and Film School for free.
- New Film School!
- Billy Two.
- Stay alive.
- True faith.
- He's my star.
- Regret.
- UPDATE! She weaves a tender trap.
- Moon rocks.
- Tally-ho.
- End.
Marvin Bell
Being red is the color of a white sun where it lingers
on an arm. Color of time lost in sparks, of space lost
inside dance. Red of walks by the railroad in the flush
of youth, while our steps released the squeaks
of shoots reaching for the light. Scarlet of sin, crimson
of fresh blood, ruby and garnet of the jewel bed,
early sunshine, vestiges of the late sun as it turns
green and disappears. Be calm. Do not give in
to the rabid red throat of age. In a red world, imprint
the valentine and blush of romance for the dark.
It has come. You will not be this quick-to-redden
forever. You will be green again, again and again.
(h/t) I bought myself Hough's Chopin for my birthday. I am an excellent gift-giver.