Hillary and the Hagg ...9:31 pm
From a March 1st story:
Haggard is also getting attention for a song he’s not even recorded - “Hillary,” an ode to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in which he declares, that “This country needs to be honest/This country needs to be large/Something like a big switch of gender/Let’s put a woman in charge.”
“I’m just reacting to the news,” explains Haggard, adding that the Clinton campaign camp has been in touch with his representatives. “Never before in history has there ever been a woman anyone seriously thought to be a possible candidate for president. A couple women in the past had that in mind but never had a chance to in.”
“(The song) hasn’t got past the studio yet. I recorded it and nobody’s heard it, but they’re talking about it all over the country. It’s got me thinking it might be worth putting out there.”
A March 16th story:
Merle Haggard played the Fox Theatre in Bakersfield Feb. 7 and since has been playing concerts extensively in the Pacific Northwest, where he’s sung a song you won’t find on any CD.
The song is called “Hillary” and talks about how Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton should be elected president.
While it’s apparently not an endorsement, it is causing a stir online, where people have been posting their responses on message boards.
Some call it a clever parody; others like the lyrics and endorsement. Others, though, don’t like the song or more specifically the reference to Clinton becoming president.
Clinton’s presidential campaign did not return ABC 23’s phone calls and e-mails Friday. Haggard told a newspaper, though, that Clinton’s people contacted his people about the song.
Today’s story in the NY Post:
COUNTRY music legend Merle Haggard may be courting controversy for supporting Hillary Clinton with his song “Hillary.” But he’s not ready to commit to voting for her. “I don’t know. It depends on if she holds her mud between now and the time to vote,” Haggard told The Post’s Billy Heller before pulling into town for tomorrow’s Radio City “Last of the Breed” show with Willie Nelson and Ray Price. Pressed to translate, he laughed, “Lemme put it another way: If she don’t screw up.” But Haggard added, “I gotta stay neutral. You don’t wanna piss off half your audience just because you like somebody.”
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Old peaceniks don’t die: they just learn to hate Dylan ...8:51 pm
From mediaLeft network: What Price For The Bob Dylan In All Of Us?
It is the annual “Souper Supper” for the San Diego Peace Resource Center. Living in the most militarized section of the most militarized nation on Earth; nearly 100 people of conscience gather in secular communion. Walking human artifacts; year after year, decade after decade, they have not given up their need to oppose the abomination of war.
The Peace Resource Center´s 26th Anniversary event, November 19th, was billed as a celebration, yet solemn looks and serious discussion fanned through the group, reflecting the tragedy of the Iraq War and the evil that holds sway in our government.
[...]
A lagoon of white heads and gray tinted beards, ninety percent are over 50 years of age; while a good third are over seventy. A few pacifists from World War II and Korea, some are former hippies, still wearing tie-died t-shirts and beads, they are the aging peace movement, in it for the long haul.
There is great sadness, a lingering muteness, that after all these years, they must still pray or work for peace. Like the bewildered look of a mustang pulled from the range, standing in the corral, waiting to be slaughtered for dog food, their eyes reflect the confusion, the inability to understanding the insanity of violence. Yet, like all those unknown people of goodness throughout all the dark ages of human history, who met in small groups, to nurture peace, justice and fairness in the human heart, they keep hope and possibility alive.
[...]
Noisy young people stoke the sadness, reminding of the failures to fundamentally change the system of wealth and power that depends on weapons and violence for survival. At times, at the dinner, chatter becomes quiet, like those simple post-funeral gatherings in rural America. For whom is this wake? Do we mourn for our nation and its Imperial arrogance? Or do we cry for ourselves - that we have allowed it to happen?
Only white faces, perhaps two or three brown, showed up. Do people of color, after generations of subjugation and abuse, understand, down to the very gene level, that liberal tinkering is really just self-serving notions of absolution? That there will only be peace when the economic and political system that supports a market economy based on war and violence is brought down? Are they keeping their powder dry?
There were no poor people; no scruffy, smelly, homeless folks who everyday in San Diego are victims of systematic violence by city officials and police. Deprived of sleep, rousted from safe places, harassed, beaten, and jailed; our newly persecuted group (in the tradition of gypsies) stand in the way of gentrifying greed, profit for the few.
[...]
Amid the old timey folk music sung by the musicians at the peace supper, a group called A.C.T., was ironically, “The Times They Are a Changing.” Is there an unstated recognition of similarity with Bob Dylan; his cult of personality, looking out for number one, his material wealth - now a part of the problem? Once outsiders, now insiders, looking out; singing the lyrics ‘for the loser now will later to win.’ At what cost? Who sold out first Bob, you or I? Did you pave the way, allow that the “times” didn´t really change, only our perceptions of ourselves in opposition, in compromise? We now bomb Iraqi children, where we once napalmed Vietnamese children. We now beat and imprison the poor on our city streets, where we once attacked Negroes. We continue to poison our bodies with modified foods and destroy our very planet for profit.
Perhaps you can live with your gold covered mirror Bob, many former peaceniks cannot.
…
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Number One ...8:39 pm
… on Google tonight, for anyone who happens to search bob dylan dog food.
I hope that my host’s servers can handle all the traffic.
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Ted Again ...4:21 pm
Thanks to Jay for this alleged Ted Nugent vignette:
Many references, I’ve never seen an attribution:
He was being interviewed by a Parisian journalist.
The journalist asked, “What do you think the last thought is in the head of a deer before you shoot it? Is it, ‘Are you my friend?’ or is it ‘Are you the one who killed my brother?’”
Nugent replied, “They aren’t capable of that kind of thinking. All they care about is, ‘What am I going to eat next, who am I going to screw next, and can I run fast enough to get away.”
“They are very much like you French in that way.”
And while I’m at it, belated thanks to a different Ted for emailing me the link to this story in The Times: Drugs, alcohol and sex: why the Jesuits like Tom Waits.
Barely a week after Pope Benedict XVI disclosed his dislike for the “prophets of pop” and Bob Dylan in particular, the Jesuits in Rome have embraced Waits as a Christian role model.
The latest issue of Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal, the contents of which are subject to Vatican approval, says that Waits represents “the marginalised and misunderstood”.
Father Antonio Spadaro, 40, who normally writes about literature but is emerging as a Roman Catholic authority on pop music, said that Waits had lived a youthful life of “drugs, alcohol and sex” as an outcast on the streets of California.
He therefore understood “the lower depths” of society, and was able to convey the desperation of those on the margins. His past also enabled him to express their “capacity for hope and instinct for happiness” in “authentic songs devoid of vanity and false illusions”, Father Spadaro said.
Well, The Times is playing the story for laughs (I don’t think that Waits the man is really being embraced as a “Christian role model”) but that might be the safest course when it comes to looking at rock criticism from the clergy.
Maybe these guys should get back to saving souls. Or is that all under control now?
…
Addendum 4:48 pm: Ok, on consideration, that’s a cheap shot. Members of the clergy are as entitled to express opinions on pop-music as anyone else. However, either endorsing or rejecting particular performers while speaking from a place of perceived religious authority is, to my mind, a very ill-considered use of that authority.
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Two sides on “man-made global warming” ...2:53 pm
President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, delivered some written answers to questions from a committee of the U.S. congress which is currently considering these issues. Extract:
The — so called– climate change and especially man-made climate change has become one of the most dangerous arguments aimed at distorting human efforts and public policies in the whole world.
My ambition is not to bring additional arguments to the scientific climatological debate about this phenomenon. I am convinced, however, that up to now this scientific debate has not been deep and serious enough and has not provided sufficient basis for the policymakers’ reaction. What I am really concerned about is the way the environmental topics have been misused by certain political pressure groups to attack fundamental principles underlying free society. It becomes evident that while discussing climate we are not witnessing a clash of views about the environment but a clash of views about human freedom.
As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants. Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism. This ideology preaches earth and nature and under the slogans of their protection — similarly to the old Marxists — wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning of the whole world.
The environmentalists consider their ideas and arguments to be an undisputable truth and use sophisticated methods of media manipulation and PR campaigns to exert pressure on policymakers to achieve their goals. Their argumentation is based on the spreading of fear and panic by declaring the future of the world to be under serious threat. In such an atmosphere they continue pushing policymakers to adopt illiberal measures, impose arbitrary limits, regulations, prohibitions, and restrictions on everyday human activities and make people subject to omnipotent bureaucratic decision-making. To use the words of Friedrich Hayek, they try to stop free, spontaneous human action and replace it by their own, very doubtful human design.
Al Gore has been speaking to the same congressional committee today:
Former Vice President Al Gore, rejecting complaints by Republican lawmakers that he was waging an alarmist war on coal and oil use, insisted before Congressional panels today that human-caused global warming constitutes a “planetary emergency” requiring an aggressive federal response.
Mr. Gore, accompanied by his wife, Tipper, delivered the same blunt message to a joint meeting of two House subcommittees this morning and in written testimony prepared for a Senate hearing this afternoon: Humans are artificially warming the world, the risks of inaction are great, and meaningful cuts in emissions linked to warming will only happen if the United States takes the lead.
Evoking the hit movie “300,” about the ancient Spartans´ stand at Thermopylae, Mr. Gore called on Congress to put aside partisan differences, accept the scientific consensus on global warming as unambiguous and become “the 535,” a reference to the number of seats in the House and Senate.
[...]
Mr. Gore also proposed a 10-point legislative program, calling for everything from a tax on carbon emissions to a ban on incandescent light bulbs and a new national mortgage program to promote the use of energy-saving technologies in homes.
Sounding at times like a professor addressing a class and at others like a revivalist preacher, Mr. Gore arrived at the Rayburn House Office Building in his new black Mercury Mariner hybrid sports utility vehicle, gave a quick summary of the most recent science and statistics, then punctuated his mini-lecture with exhortations from his witness´s pulpit.
Waving his finger at some 40 House members, he said, “A day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they´ll ask one of two questions.’
Either, he said, “they will ask: what in God´s name were they doing?” or “they may look back and say: how did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy?”
And, as is being reported elsewhere, Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) credited Al Gore for having been “a prophet” with the warnings he was issuing over a decade ago.
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The Ted Nugent Medal ...9:47 am
Thanks to Clive Davis for the tip on this: Daniel Finkelstein, blogging at The TimesOnline, is instituting the Ted Nugent Medal for best conservative-minded singers or songs, loosely speaking. You can go here to see how he defines it, and to make your own suggestions if you are so inclined. I’ve already added my two cents.
…
Addendum: Whoops; I guess there’s no reference to animals in this post (unless you want to count Ted Nugent, which wouldn’t be very nice). Well, another solemn commitment bites the dust.
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Burdon ...9:41 am
Trying to keep to my new rule of only doing posts about animals from now on: Did you know that Eric Burdon not only has his own webpage but also his own MySpace site? Alan Price (who is seen often in “Don’t Look Back”) also has his own website.
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Tuesday, March 20, 2007
(Only posts about animals from now on) ...8:52 pm
Not so sweet: Xylitol, a sugar substitute, can kill your dog. It’s being used increasingly often in toothpastes, chewing gum, and other products. So, if Fido has bad breath, throw him a bone — not a stick of Wrigley’s. Who knew?
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The culture of death: not just for people anymore? ...6:53 pm
It’s a headline for the ages: ‘We want this baby polar bear dead’ say animal rights lobby. (Via Hot Air)
Tiny, fluffy and adorable, Knut the baby polar bear became an animal superstar after he was abandoned by his mother.
He rapidly became the symbol of Berlin Zoo, whose staff bottle-fed him and handed out cuddles in between.
At three months old, however, the playful 19lb bundle of fur is at the centre of an impassioned debate over whether he should live or die.
Animal rights activists argue that he should be given a lethal injection rather than brought up suffering the humiliation of being treated as a domestic pet.
“The zoo must kill the bear,” said spokesman Frank Albrecht. “Feeding by hand is not species-appropriate but a gross violation of animal protection laws.”
[...]
They argue that current treatment of the cub is inhumane and could cause him future difficulties interacting with fellow polar bears. “They cannot domesticate a wild animal,” added Ruediger Schmiedel, head of the Foundation for Bears.
How ’bout that? Don’t pay any attention to how happy the little bear looks, snuggling up with his keepers. He cannot be happy, not now and not ever — it would contradict some dogma of these alleged “animal rights” zealots. To allow him to go on living is inherently unfair to him. His is a life better not lived. If this doesn’t put you in mind of arguments applied to human beings in various and sundry circumstances, then you haven’t been paying attention.
Well, as much as this story is generating all kinds of outraged responses, I don’t think we need to worry too much about this particular ursa minor. From the BBC:
Knut has been nurtured by a keeper who has slept by his side, bottle-fed him, and strummed him Elvis Presley songs.
But suggestions the three-month-old should have been put down to stop him becoming emotionally and physically reliant on a human have caused outrage.
“We are keeping Knut,” Berlin zoo’s vet told the BBC. “He’s staying alive.”
The zoo says Knut should be strong enough to make his first public appearance at the end of this week, having amassed an army of fans who have followed his development - from walking to weaning - in the city’s newspapers.
He has already posed for the world-renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz as part of an environmental campaign, and next week is to be the subject of a documentary series by German broadcaster ARD.
It would be nice if societies that can readily appreciate the value of an animal’s life — reduced though it may be from what nature intended by some cruel circumstance — would just as readily appreciate human life in all its variations and stages.
But enough preaching. To those German animal rights activists and would-be-bear-cub-killers, I have one word that they should readily understand: Knuts!
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Monday, March 19, 2007
Chow time ...4:47 pm
So much going on in the world … so why do I feel like writing about the most controversial subject imaginable, one guaranteed to earn me new and even more determined enemies? I’m talking about dog food.
There’s an enormous recall on dog food in the United States, due to fears of some kind of toxicity in over 60 million containers containing food from a particular manufacturer; one which supplies food for dozens of different brands, mind you. This story from a local TV news organization is typical:
“I thought she got into some antifreeze or something,” says Bill Painter. “She was regurgitating a black bile like fluid, had rectal bleeding and was vomiting blood as well.”
Painter realized this weekend he was feeding Ginger food that’s part of a nationwide recall.
Local vets say they are treating dogs with kidney failure that have symptoms just like Ginger did.
“It does break your heart,” says Dr. Lynn Svoboda. “These people are buying this premium dog food and when they notice their animals stop eating, they try to make them eat more. The animals end up with kidney damage and it can be fatal.”
Painter isn’t positive the dog food killed his best friend, but is now just trying to say goodbye.
“I lost my best friend, my companion of more than 10 years. It’s too quiet out here without her,” says Painter.
People naturally think that when they’re buying a dog food with a premium name like “Eukanuba” or “Iams” that they’re getting a unique product manufactured by that company. It ain’t necessarily so, as the Gershwins would say; the same food involved in this recall was also in such unglamorous brands as “Price Chopper” and “Save-A-Lot.” The current list of brands affected is being provided by the original manufacturer at this link.
As a dog owner, I know people get sensitive when you start talking about the food you give to your canine companion. Naturally everyone considers that they’re making the best choice for their pet, although there are so many different choices and so many different and strongly-held opinions as to what actually is best. It’s clearly a matter of practicality too: if you own a big dog, or several dogs, feeding them a processed dog food that you can purchase in some bulk may be the only realistic option. I consider myself fortunate to own a fifteen-pound mutt for whom it is very easy and inexpensive to supply a home-made diet. Aside from some obligatory canine treats and a doggie vitamin, she eats nothing that hasn’t been certified as fit for human consumption by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. The standards for what goes into dog food are rather different, and the current mass recall is evidence that a fancy label is no guarantee of a substantially distinct product. There’s all kinds of different varieties now: special food for puppies, for middle-aged dogs, for menopausal pooches and for canine senior citizens. What is all that, really, except a few gerry-mandered minerals and vitamins in the same stinking concoction? The premium dog food makers go to such lengths to make their offerings sound healthy and delicious, with all that “chunky cuts of lamb in savory gravy, mouthwatering carrots, rice, black truffles,” and so on. It’s ironic that — on the one hand — dog food companies tell you that you have to give your animal a scientifically balanced diet made specifically for dogs, and yet — on the other hand — their marketing strategy is aimed at making the food sound tasty to you. Of-course, I can’t be the only one to wonder why food that is described as having such wholesome and appealing ingredients always looks and smells so bad.
I guess I’ll continue to refuse to be impressed until I see a C.E.O. swallowing two or three tablespoonfuls of the stuff himself. Now, that would be an attention-getting commercial.
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Sunday, March 18, 2007
Hallelujah ...9:11 pm
A few years ago, I came across a video clip somewhere of Bob Dylan and his band doing Hallelujah, I’m Ready To Go live in 1999. I looked for it on YouTube today, and, to my shock, I didn’t find it. It’s reached the point where it’s more surprising not to find something there, hasn’t it?
Well, hallelujah! It’s there now. It’s with the Sexton/Campbell iteration of the band, of-course, and it makes for great listening. The shaky camera work is another matter, but it’s not like we’re paying for it.
Interestingly, I’ve heard this song from the Stanley Brothers, and Dylan and the boys, while following the Stanleys’ arrangement pretty closely, do a slightly more artful version, in a certain sense.
The chorus call and response is sung twice, but first it’s sung one way, and then it is reversed. In other words (where the backing singers’ response is in brackets):
Hallelujah (I am ready!)
I am ready (Hallelujah)
Halelujah, I’m ready to go!
is followed by
I am ready (Hallelujah!)
Hallelujah (I am ready!)
Hallelujah, I’m ready to go
A small thing, maybe, but it keeps the singers and the listeners on their toes.
The inestimable Stanley Brothers don’t reverse the call and response (at least when they recorded the tune for King Records), although they do use a line variation that Dylan doesn’t use in this performance, namely: “I can hear the voices singing soft and low.” (Dylan did use that line in some other live performances.) The refrain in their version goes:
Hallelujah (I am ready)
I am ready
I can hear the voices singing soft and low
Hallelujah (I am ready)
I am ready
Hallelujah I’m ready to go!
Either way, it’s a great little tune.
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Friday, March 16, 2007
Peas in a pod ...5:26 pm
Donald Trump and Rosie O’Donnell are incredibly alike, and not just in terms of their interpersonal skills. Via Matt Drudge, Trump’s comments on President Bush:
Everything in Washington has been a lie. Weapons of mass destruction, it was a total lie. It was a way of attacking Iraq, which he thought was going to be easy and it turned out to be the exact opposite of easy. He reads 60 books a year. He reads a book a week. Do you think the president reads a book a week? I don’t think so. He doesn’t watch television. Now, one thing I know is when I’m on television, I watch, or I try. You do. Your own ego says, let’s watch. Whether good or bad, you want to watch. He doesn’t watch television. He’s on television being interviewed by you or someone else, he doesn’t watch. Does anyone really believe that?
I don’t know what people believe about George W. Bush, but I definitely have no trouble believing that The Donald watches every minute of his own appearances on television. Multiple times.
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Thursday, March 15, 2007
In better news ...9:44 pm
YouTube doesn’t belong only to the Jihadists: the Multi-National Force in Iraq now has an official profile to which you can subscribe, in order to see videos like the one below:
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Twenty pounds of headlines ...9:27 pm
I was checking the news online, when I happened to glance at the sidebar of “most read” headlines. Is it just me, or do today’s stories amount to a truly world-class litany of depravity?
Consider the first several stories:
- “Ohio 13-Year-Old Charged With 128 Felonies.” That headline speaks for itself.
- “Two Volunteer Police Officers Among Four Killed in NYC Shootout.” In NYC, volunteer or “auxiliary” police officers, like essentially all other demonstrably decent and law abiding citizens, are not allowed to carry firearms to defend themselves. In this case a criminal had shot a worker in a restaurant and fled to the street. The volunteer officers headed towards the report of shots fired. Let’s assume — as I think is reasonable — that their plan was not to take on the armed villain, but just to render whatever assistance they could in the situation. As it happened (according to early reports) the shooter was heading up the same block they were coming down, on the opposite side of the street. According to Mayor Bloomberg today, it is believed that he crossed the street towards the volunteer officers, in order to shoot them dead, which he did. He later was killed by law abiding citizens who are allowed to bear arms; i.e. paid officers of the NYPD.
- “Playboy Editor In Indonesia Found Guilty; Protesters Call For Death Sentence.” The editor in question was reportedly found guilty of doing what Playboy editors generally do: publishing naughty pictures. In this case, however, not nude pictures. Playboy apparently greatly restrained its usual style in deference to the largely Muslim population of Indonesia. The protesters calling for a death sentence are, of-course, Muslims.
- “Florida Teen’s Stomach Ache Turns Out To Be Gunshot Wound.” Again, no comment needed here.
- “Colorado Granny Charged With Sexually Assaulting Kids While Man Watched Over Internet.” That’s right: the woman allegedly had her grandchildren perform according to the requests of a man watching them via webcam. There’s a slight (very slight) amelioration of this story: the grandmother was 49 years old; i.e. not the white-haired seventy or eighty-year-old dear of our imagination. Still and all …
- “Boy, 6, Stays In Home Two Days With Dead Father.” I haven’t read this story, but the headline alone conveys something of the disconnect between many people in society today, and — what’s worse — the disconnect within families. There was no one else around?
- “Minnesota Teen Horrified To Receive Her Dog’s Head as Gift On Her Doorstep.” Truly, humankind can sink no lower than this.
- “Yellowstone Supervolcano Making Strange Rumblings.” This story seems only fitting after the preceding ones.
Farther down, right below a report on the latest contestant to be booted from the “American Idol” TV show, we get this:
“Al Qaeda Chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Confesses To Planning Sept. 11, Gitmo Transcript Shows.” Oh yeah. About five and a half years ago, there was some brouhaha at the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania. This has something to do with that, I guess.
The litany of headlines continues, with both Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears making their respective appearances before it ends.
Oh, well. You can draw your own conclusions.
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Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Subversion ...1:52 pm
Dylan was sure having fun on his Theme Time Radio Hour show today, attacking the subject of “TRAINS.” He was having so much fun he decided that next week’s theme will have to be more trains.
Before playing The Monkees doing Last Train to Clarksville Dylan made some interesting remarks. (… continue reading …)
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