Leary Bio: Opportunity for Unfounded 60's Revisionists

The reviews of Robert Greenfield's biography of Timothy Leary have allowed "sixties" revisionists to spread unfounded and uniformly negative opinions on an entire era.

Having been one of the publishers/editors of the same "underground" paper in Baltimore that P.J. O'Rourke, the first of such revisionists, made his mark lying about, I have some expertise on the subject.

Here's the myth promoted by the revisionists: The sixties were all about hedonism and self-satisfaction.

I wish.

First of all, the subject of "The Sixties" is so broad and complex, so full of contradictions and countervailing points of view that to generalize about it at all is not worth the effort. There are a few aspects that need attention, however.

Simply put, the ethos of the era for us can be summed up in these words: fairness, community, freedom of personal choice, and peace. Period. End of sentence.

Fairness in how government treated its citizens, and how people treated each other. After having been told that America was the land of the free, we saw people refused voting rights, freedom to reside where they could afford to, even denied service at lunch counters, hotels and rest rooms.

Imagine that? "Who would make rules like that?" we wondered.

We were told that America stood for peace in the world and then they sent us to fight a war of vanity in Vietnam. That didn't make sense to us and we did everything we could to bring our peers out of that hell. Many of us refused to participate.

The women in our life knocked us upside the head and let us know that things weren't so hot for them. Made sense to us. In the eyes of conservatives, hippies were girlie-men then, and stayed that way. And the hippie women were manly-girls, let's not forget that. This is nonsense and shouldn't be believed any more than any of their familiar lies which have come into current relief so clearly these days, but which are consistent with their history.

We were told that sex was, what a sin? With the development of the birth control pill we were the first generation, and maybe the last to be able to have unprotected sex anytime we wanted, with whom we wanted. Was there something wrong with that? Did we keep on with it? Nah, we got married and had kids. Did we have fun while we tried out everything under God's Red Light? Fuck yes.

Is that hedonism? Only to those who didn’t' get any.

When we dressed or acted in ways that seemed strange to the generation before us we got out asses kicked, literally. Would you like to know how many times I was arrested on trumped up charges simply because I was a long-haired hippie who worked for "that" paper? Don't forget, people were killed and imprisoned for exercising the rights guaranteed them in the Constitution.

What we found out was that the America we were taught existed was a figment of a script writer at best, and the deliberate misrepresentation, at worst.

All this has nothing to do with Timothy Leary, and none of it was taken into account by reviewers, NY Times and New Yorker included, who lashed out at an entire generation.

Did we take LSD? Sure we did. I took tons of it. I loved my hallucinations, even the bad ones. Did I find God? I'm still looking. Did it change my life? Yes, in some ways. It loosened the reins. I think if you asked P.J. O'Rourke if he regrets taking LSD and smoking all that dope, he would say he took some good things away from it.

But don’t tell me that Timothy Leary is responsible for anything except talking a good game. I enjoyed what he had to say. Some of it made sense and some of it didn’t'. I guess a few people bought it all, but that's just human nature.

The bluster and meanness of the revisionists who have attacked an era in which the driving idea was to make a better world reveals their own bleakness of spirit. They build the idea that Leary was much more influential than he ever was.

Take my word for it, he wasn't. The stars of the "counter-culture" (which actually existed) were just that, stars. We liked them. They entertained us. We took from them what we needed.

As those of us who fought for the right to control every aspect of our lives grow old and begin the fight to control the manner of our own death, the record needs to be set straight. Don't fuck with us. We're old, we know the score and we're still determined to "reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it."

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Keyword For Dems: Competence

I started to write this last week. Senator Brownback's sham hearing on assisted suicide intervened and I posted about that instead. Yesterday, this site bannered a story in which exasperating-but-many-times-right Senator Joe Biden used the word "competence."

These should be the Democrats' keywords from this time forth: 1. Competence. 2. Incompetence.

You and I know that those who currently hold power are a pack of lying thieves, religious lunatics, sadistic and immoral perpetrators of evil, and despoilers of the planet.

The problem is that if you say these truths in public, you're branded a left-wing nut. Pointing out these truths hasn't been enough to shake the electorate out of the habit of voting for those who appeal to their worst instincts.

Here's the only issue that matters: competence. Progressives know how to run a government and conservatives don't. It is demonstrable on every level. From the broken furniture of the Medicaid prescription drug plan, to getting food and water to folks trapped in New Orleans.

At every turn, even when it comes to running wars, something that conservatives SHOULD be good at, given their love for starting them, they prove that they can talk a good game, but can't deliver.

The only thing they CAN deliver is dollars to themselves and the people who put them in power.

Even then they constantly get caught stealing.

We know how close they have come to making this country a police state. We know that (dare we say?) they staged what amounts to a coup in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Doesn't matter, sounds like whining.

They can't pick up the garbage. This requirement of all local politicians must be required of Federal politicians. They have to do the job. It's simple. Republicans have failed. Democrats must point out how they have succeeded in the past; that they know how to pick up the garbage.

There's nothing more to say: Competence vs. Incompetence. Those are the talking points. No more, no less.

Ok, there is one other thing Democrats can do. When a Republican says you don't support the troops, you say, "OK, I'll make a deal with you, I'll start supporting the troops when you stop having cheating on your wife with the pizza boy.

That might shut him up.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com.

Brownback panders to radical right on Death With Dignity

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), a legislator who believes that the government should control our behavior based on his own religious beliefs threw a pathetic bone to his fanatical supporters on Friday by calling a quick subcommittee hearing on assisted suicide.

In the wake of the Gay Hate amendment that went to down to defeat earlier in the week, this was another attempt by the increasingly rag-tag discredited Republican Taliban to force their rabid fundamentalism on the rest of us.

Appealing to the Republican base which believes that government's place is in bedrooms and hospital rooms but not boardrooms, he demonstrated the cynicism and total bankruptcy of a party on the way out. Even Oregon's conservative Senator Gordon Smith has put the issue to rest.

Oregon voted three times, once in the legislature and twice in ballot initiatives to approve its Death With Dignity law. In 2000, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden blocked a bill sponsored by the Republicans, laughingly called the "Pain Relief Promotion Act," the aim of which was to knock down the Oregon law.

In 2001, the Bush administration tried to block the law again by having Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft rule that doctors who prescribe the lethal dose would be liable for criminal prosecution. It was a flimsy excuse used to pander to the religious radicals and it was laughed out of Federal Court on the State level, in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court and finally ruled against in the U.S. Supreme Court.

But these guys never stop. Brownback was quoted in The Oregonian as saying, "I held a hearing on this topic because I think we should carefully consider the unintended consequences and slippery slope of doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia. Legalizing doctor-assisted suicide can lead toward involuntary euthanasia, as we've seen in the Netherlands."

He knows this is a lie. There is no slippery slope. Oregonians use the law in very small numbers, and the evidence of several years of the law being in effect points to the fact that the law provides a cushion of peace for those dying.

The arguments against the law have been proven wrong. It isn't abused. Thousands of people have not flocked to Oregon to use it. Relatives aren't persuading their dying loved ones to get it over with. It is a law that works.

As the religious radical right sinks, you can bet they will be going down with guns blazing. But we know that their arguments are wrong at best and lies at worst.
This is not a campaign issue. It is just another attempt by a cynic in Congress to pander. He doesn't even have a bill to propose. He just wanted some publicity at the taxpayer's expense.
Other radical right wingers continue to lie about the issue. Lee Edwards, of the Heritage Foundation (they hijacked the word "heritage" too) was quoted in The Oregonian saying, "It's the concept of the scientific or the medical community treating people with less dignity, as expendable. With physician-assisted suicide, life is treated as a burden, that people who don't meet a certain standard, that it is somehow better off for them to be dead."

He pulled that out of his ass. He has no information to back that up, based on the Oregon experience. It's just a lie, made up to scare people. I have personally watched doctors agonize over the issue. Nobody has ever said anybody should be better off dead. Shame on you, Edwards.

The upside is that like the ravings of Ann Coulter, Brownback DOES bring up the subject again. That's not a bad thing. His religious posturing alerts people to the issue and how important it is. And they also turn off the rest of the electorate, weary of such posturing.

California will take up the issue again soon. This time there is a better chance of its passing. The more the radical right wing discredits itself, the more chance the bill will pass.

It's a medical issue, one between the patient and doctor. It's not a political issue. If it is a religious issue for YOU, don't do it.

That's the American way.

Thank You, Ann Coulter

Thanks, Annie! Keep up the good work.

Every time you open your mouth you put another Republican out of business. You are the poster child, the personification, the pure essence of Republicanism.

Orrin Hatch, after the defeat of the Gay Hatred Amendment today, asked Ted Kennedy if he thought that 49% of the American public were bigots. Ted can't say yes, but I can.

That's why we need more Ann Coulter on national TV. Please let her open her mouth and spew hatred and dishonesty. I welcome it. The more she talks the more quickly the demise of the Republican party.

For all of Rush and O'Reilly's lies and distortions, even they don't go as far as she does.

Her Today appearance might be the last straw, but maybe not. What else could she say after making fun of widows. WIDOWS! And 9/11 widows besides.

That's like something a political humorist would write as the next logical but ridiculous statement she might say. What's left?

She comes out against victims of child rape, telling them to stop whining.

She says Adolph Eichmann was only following orders, telling Jews to stop kvetching.

She says Martin Luther King asked for it.

See what I mean? I can see her saying those things.

Big Annie is a national treasure. She has helped define Republicans as cruel bigots, haters whose evil is unsurpassed in American life. It's not something I made up. It's something she brays and sprays every time she opens her mouth.

Keep talking, girl.


This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

The Emperor's New Buildings

Note: This is a piece the MSM in Portland didn't want you to see. It was rejected (roundly) by everybody to whom I pitched it.

Every so often it falls upon a citizen to tell the emperor he is naked. That the new suit made by those "swindlers," as Hans Christian Anderson called them in the original story, is a hoax. That the "swindlers" have put one over on us, and have convinced us that something wonderful exists where, in reality, nothing exists.

The architecture with which similar "swindlers" have clothed Portland…the Pearl District, most of the new buildings downtown, and the inevitably-to-be-flooded River District are is as ugly as sin and will obviously deteriorate faster than cheese left out in the sun.

We want to believe that these awkward, clunky manifestations of "build-fast-on-the-cheap-and-sell-high-as-possible" scheming are making us look beautiful. Remember the "honest old minister" sent by the emperor to check on how the new suit of clothes was coming? He said, '"Oh, it is very pretty, exceedingly beautiful. What a beautiful pattern, what brilliant colours! I shall tell the emperor that I like the cloth very much.'"

Is that what the rich residents of "The Henry" said when they looked up at their new home? Perhaps they really saw a dull green bunker, more fit for a small city in East Germany, when there was an East Germany. Instead, they said they liked it very much, just like the old minister.

Portland architecture has always been built on the cheap, but some of it was good cheap, The Portland Building, or the Art Museum, for example. But the collection of unconnected, graceless buildings in the Pearl, some of which are already showing signs of deterioration, barely five years into what should prove to be a short lifespan has apparently fooled the moneyed class into believing that their city is making itself attractive.

As Hans put it," Nobody wished to let others know he saw nothing…"And we gave them huge tax breaks to build, don't forget that. Elected officials and the unelected whom they appoint also looked at models and drawings of these buildings and saw what? Maybe they saw money. They certainly didn't see beauty or longevity. Was Hans writing the story of Portland in the 21st Century when he said "(T)he swindlers asked for more money, silk and gold-cloth, which they required for weaving. They kept everything for themselves, and not a thread came near the loom, but they continued, as hitherto, to work at the empty looms."

We've got a lot of empty looms. Some of them are rising before our eyes at the moment in the flood plain near the OHSU tram boondoggle (which was brought to you by the same folks).

Yes, the same folks that brought you East Berlin in the Pearl are bringing you Budapest 1957 by the river. All you have to do is look. This lack of architectural self-awareness in a town that prides itself on self-awareness leaves a relative newbie (nine years) like me in the dark. 'But he has nothing on at all,' said a little child at last," wrote Hans. Twenty years from now, when the buildings in The Pearl have fallen apart and the money has moved elsewhere, people around here are going to want to know who the "swindlers" were.

Start with Homer Williams and list pretty much every other person or corporation who has foisted this "swindled" result on the rest of us. But blame yourself, because you're the one who looked at the new and said, like the "honest courtier" who, "praised the cloth, which he did not see, and expressed his joy at the beautiful colours and the fine pattern. 'It is very excellent,' he said to the emperor."

My June Playlist

While waiting for the new John Ashcroft/50 Cent a capella collaboration to be released, I’m listening to.

1. Sun Ra, Untitled LP
On one side the label is hand-colored orange and green. Somebody wrote "Sun Ra" in black above the hand lettered list of four tunes which include "Space is the Place, "Dedicated to Natures, "The Cosmos Me," and "Space Shuttle." Under that is a crinkle-cut pasted-on piece of paper that has "compositions by SUN RA" typed in black.
I have no idea when this is from. I know it's before the summer of 1977, because that's when I got it.
You've got to pull out some Ra now and then. It's as fresh as it was the day it was recorded, and has never been surpassed on a lot of levels. Ra was the ultimate trickster, a genius who might have, indeed, been from another planet.
The brilliance and cheesiness, the great musicianship and the head-shaking weirdness of it all proves Ra's famous quote, "It ain't necessarily so that it ain't necessarily so."
And it ain't.

2. Stanton Moore "All Kooked Out!" CD
Best known as Gallactic's drummer, he's already in the pantheon of great New Orleans drummers, having studied at the feet of some of the current masters. This is from 1998 and has Charlie Hunter on 8-string guitar, Skerik, the little-known but much admired saxophonist. This is Moore at the start of his career, all young and bursting forth.
The interesting thing about Moore is that as good as this is (I had it on in the car for a week), he's gotten that much better over the years.
I once heard a street argument in Portland, Oregon over who was the best drummer in New Orleans, Russell Batiste or Stanton Moore. I voted for Russ between the two at the time, but you can find great drummers on any street there. Or you could before Katrina.
I could get started on the current diaspora in New Orleans, but you can read about that here, in a piece I wrote on Jazzfest 2006. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-dantoni/the-real-jazzfest-anger-_b_21045.html

3. Phillip Glass "Mishima" soundtrack CD
I was driving from Portland to Seattle to see the Orioles game and suddenly remembered the delights of driving fast with Phillip Glass blasting out of the speakers…especially Mishima, with its electric guitars, and martial drums.
Even though it evokes the persona of Mishima, the music itself is more effective by itself than it is in the movie it was written for. The opening is one of the most thrilling two minutes and forty-five seconds ever written.
When they used to let you use electronic equipment on planes during takeoff, this or The Photographer would always be in my ears. I still think about it when I'm taking off….or driving 85 on I-5 between Seattle and Portland.
Is that dishonoring Mishima? He can't get to me. He daid.

3. The Meters "Kickback" CD
Sundazed Music released all of The Meters LPs a few years ago. This is a collection of tunes that never got on any Meters' albums. There's some great stuff on here, and some not-so-great. They take pains to point out that the previously unreleased "Love The One You're With" is based on the Isley Brothers' version and not the original. Doesn't really matter though, there's a reason it wasn't released.
These are from the Warner Brothers/SeaSaint days of the mid 1970s.
The gem is "All I Do Everyday" which I re-discovered because New Orleans/now Portland, Oregon saxophonist Reggie Houston does it in nearly every set his Earth Island Band plays. I think I played this song 5 times in a row one day in the car. I'm going to go play it again now.
When the Meters played their famed reunion concert at Jazzfest 2005, they pulled out "He Bite Me," a song that's also on this. It could be the funniest song they ever recorded. It's about a dragon. Zig and George growl. Don't ask.
"Keep On Marching (Funky Soldier)" used to be in the regular set list of The Funky Meters, Art and George's band with Russell Batiste and Brian Stolz who kept the Meters' music alive until they finally figured out how to get along.

4. Michael Haberman "Plays Sorabi—The Legendary Works for Piano"
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988) wrote dense solo piano music, which Habermann discovered in a little shop in Mexico City in the 1970s. He became the only pianist Sorabi would trust to play his music.
It is not Cecil Taylor-like pounding and histrionics. A lot of it is just flat-out beautiful, if difficult. Some of these pieces have 8 staves for two hands. It took Habermann years to get them down.
He used to live in the apartment next to mine in Baltimore in the 1980s and I could lay in bed and listen to him practice. Before he knocked on my door to ask if he was bothering us, I thought angels lived next door.

5. Brian Eno "Music for Films" "Music for Airports" LPs
Although he never really disappeared, Eno has wormed his way back into public consciousness by working on Paul Simon's latest album. What's fun about these is that they're LPs and have scratches, adding to the "ambience."
I bought into the whole concept when they were released in the late 70s. They hold up. Could have been made today. In the back of my head there's a voice saying, "It's not New Age. It's not New Age. Really, it's not."
The music on here works the way it was designed to work.
It's isn't New Age. Really, it's not.

6. Eric Dolphy "Out There" LP
Oh man. Dolphy on alto, flute, clarinet and bass clarinet. Ron Carter on CELLO and George Duvivier on BASS and the young Roy Haynes at his young and gnarling best. Recorded FORTY-SIX years ago….jazz players today should BE this innovative.
What ever happened to the avant-garde?
Dolphy's tribute to Mingus, "The Baron," a Randy Weston tune and the rest Dolphy originals.
This album jumps out the speakers and runs away begging for new listeners and the long life it deserves.
I have the 1969 re-issue with notes from Ralph Berton in which he says, "…you won't 'know where you are;' you won't hear the well known chords and changes; you're on your own with the music being flung your way, music representative of a great deal that's happening now. Are they speaking to you? Or just thinking out loud? And do you like listening in?"
Is it me, or did the avant-garde stop? Somebody called today's scene "museumification of the music." The music on here is bright life. A museum couldn't hold it.

7. Oregon "Crossing" CD
The final recording with Colin Wolcott, and possibly their best. Well, it's the best one of theirs I've listened to this month, anyway. I have never gotten tired of Glen Moore's "Pepe Linque" and I've heard it a million times.
They are still huge in Europe. They are still little-known in America. Don't get me started. Sometimes I think most of the greatest music will never be discovered by most people. Oh well, that's show biz.
Glen Moore once unlocked Oregon for me, even though I had always loved them. He told me that when they started out, their objective was to make music as beautiful as Bill Evans'. Makes sense, huh?

8. Joe Turner "In The Evening" LP
Back when Joe had to sit down to sing. On the stool, becalmed until it was time for him to sing a verse, he would fill with some sort of inspired helium and belt out his lines, only to slump back on the stool until it was his turn to sing the next verse.
This is a Pablo release from 1976 backed by a quintet, including piano and guitar. Joe was a blues droner as well as a blues shouter by then. He's lanquid and old and world-weary. This makes "I've Got the World On a String" especially effective.
I've pretty much destroyed this record over the years by playing it when I've been pretty much destroyed, myself. It works every time. Like I said before, scratches help.

This also appears on counterpunch.org

Happy Birthday Jack Kevorkian

To clarify, Dr. Jack Kevorkian is still very much in favor of physician-assisted suicide and Oregon remains the only state in which it is legal.

News reports today, if read quickly, indicate that Kevorkian, who marks his 78th birthday today in a prison cell for helping a man die on television, does not favor the concept of controlling one’s own death any longer. This is not the case. He said only that he might have done things differently in his own cases.

There are many things to criticize about his methods, but without Kevorkian’s public persona and actions, the inexorable journey to nation-wide adoption of the Oregon model would probably not have come as quickly. He certainly does not deserve to rot and die in a prison cell.

In the future, Kevorkian will be known as a visionary, and the torture which he as been put through since his incarceration will be looked at as barbaric and unconscionable.

Having said that, when I was first discussing making a documentary out of Robert Schwartz’ death under Oregon’s Death With Dignity law, Robert and I discussed how the Kevorkian/Thomas Youk 60 Minutes story (which got him sent to jail) was a failure because: 1) Kevorkian was the story, not the dying man, and 2) there was no context for Youk’s death, other than the fact that he had Lou Gehrig’s Disease and wanted to die.

I promised Robert that the documentary would provide that context. Just before he died, Robert told his family and friends, at a service of Holy Communion on his back porch, how happy he was that they could be there and not be liable to criminal prosecution. He didn’t say, “as Kevorkian was,” but he might as well have.

Still, even though it was all legal, the facilitator took pains to make sure he did not hand Robert the glass of liquid Nembutal. Under the Oregon law, the patient must take the lethal dose on his own.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Kevorkian, from a resident of Oregon, who feels more secure and more in control of his own destiny because of your sacrifice. And I thank you for the men and women who have used the law, whether they took the medication or not.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

The Real Jazzfest: Anger and Sorrow

For two weeks the news from the 2006 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (Jazzfest) sounded hopeful. The Festival folks and the city as a whole tried to put on a smiley-face for the tourists. Good-intentioned big names like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, Dave Matthews were the focus. What has been missing from the Jazzfest coverage Jazzfest is the anger and the sorrow expressed by many of the local musicians who performed.

Also missing are about 200,000 residents of New Orleans who are still spread out all over America. Some estimate more. An overwhelming percentage of them are African-Americans. An Associated Press story estimated 150,000 in Houston alone. That’s larger than many familiar American cities. The 2000 U.S. Census tells us that the population of New Orleans was close to 485,000 with 67.5% of those African-Americans.

The essence of New Orleans culture and the wellspring of American music begins at Congo Square where slaves were allowed to drum and dance on Sundays. The blues was born in that context. The combination of the healing joy of music and the expression of the misery of conditions under which the slaves lived continues to this day.

New Orleans culture doesn’t get any deeper than the Second Line. Not only a part of funerals but of everyday life in New Orleans, especially for African-Americans. The Social and Pleasure Clubs and brass bands and Mardi Gras Indians who made the street parade a way of life have been a large part of the diaspora of the flood of 2005. Diaspora is a word I heard many times during the second weekend of the festival. It means a dispersion of a people from their original homeland. The word originally referred to the dispersion of Jews outside of Israel during the sixth century B.C., when they were exiled to Babylonia.

Some people go to Jazzfest to hear the mainstream performers. The festival promoters bring them in to attract affluent white folks who love the food and much of the flavor of the festival, but want most of their entertainment white. In recent years the promoters added jam-bands to attract younger audiences.

But the soul of the festival has always been the local musicians. Big Chief Monk Boudreau of the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indians was scheduled for a mid-afternoon set on Friday of the second weekend. New Orleans music magazine “Offbeat” describes Monk as, “One of the great voices in the Mardi Gras Indian tradition, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux tells the history in song. Post Katrina, this kind man with a warm smile spearheaded getting Indians feathers and plumes for their new suits.”

Donations to fund the suits rolled in from organizations and individuals such as Wynton Marsalis, Ed Bradley and Harry Shearer. Coordinating the effort with Monk was Quint Davis, who is Jazzfest’s director. After they found “plumes” from all over the country, they stored them in a building in New Orleans which was hit by a tornado.

Davis was quoted in The Times-Picayune, New Orleans daily paper, “’Monk and I were dying, dying, I tell you,’ Davis said. ‘Out of all the streets, all the buildings in New Orleans, here where the plums are, a tornado pops up. I tell you, though, when I heard the boxes were safe, I knew it was meant to be. Monk and I knew that this tradition is supposed to be kept alive.’”

Big Chief Monk Boudreax does not usually bring politics or social commentary into his music. The Mardi Gras Indian chants are all about what happens on Mardi Gras day and how they’re going to win confrontations with other tribes. He can go on for twenty minutes chanting “Donkey Got Water.”

But at the end of his set he unleashed all of the anger and all of the sorrow inside of him. With an all-star band backing him, chanting “You’ve got to save our city tonight,” Monk began half-singing half-chanting about the state of things and how he feels about them.

He said it made a grown man cry. He mourned the dead. He mourned the absence of the evacuees. He thundered at the fate of his city and the politicians who have not done nearly enough. It was the centerpiece of Jazzfest.

Later that day Big Chief Victor Harris of the Fi Yi Yi and Mandingo Warriors Mardi Gras Indians performed on one of the stages. He was dressed in bright green feathers and surrounded by his tribe, some of whom had been flown in from other parts of the country. It was another transforming moment.

This is from Steve Hochman’s account on Blogging New Orleans http://www.bloggingneworleans.com/2006/05/05/urban-renewal/ :

“No wind, no rain, no storm can stop Fi Yi Yi from coming home,” he said, encased in the stunning green suit he'd sewn by hand, as he had for his kids as well, in the six months between Katrina and Mardi Gras (the Indians usually start work on each year's new suit the day after Mardi Gras; the ones he'd been working on were destroyed in the flood).
As one of his associates chanted, “From Mandingo out to Houston, from Mandingo out to Atlanta . . . the drums are calling all of the people to come home,” the Big Chief took up the cry:
“Calling all the people to come back home, New Orleans is where you belong. They took my people away from home. I'm still waiting on my mother, my sister, my brother to come back home.”
He had to step back from the mic. He was crying. He walked around the stage trying to compose himself. Hochman picks it up:
And then:
“Shame on our representatives. Shame on our officials. Shame on all of them. They say they only want good people back. All people are good people.
“Listen to the drums.
’Listen to the drums
“I am not afraid.”

In the audience, people cried along with him, as they had during Boudreax’s last song.

There is anger and sorrow everywhere, both in New Orleans and among its evacuees. At the head of the list of critics is Cyril Neville, a member of New Orleans first family of music, now living in Austin, Texas. He refused to come home for Jazzfest. He was quoted by Robert Gabriel in an Austin Chronicle story:

"What happened during Katrina was not an evacuation as much as a roundup and a forced displacement," insists Neville. "It was the height of arrogance, greed, conceit, and disdain for a people who you think are less human than you. As that wind blew through New Orleans and that forced migration took place, that was the end, or at least a lot of people want it to be the end, of African-American political power in New Orleans.
"Why it's considered such a stretch for anyone to connect the dots between a boldfaced legacy of oppression and gentrification of black neighborhoods in New Orleans and the marginalization of poor blacks post-Katrina defies common sense. Life in the Big Easy has always been dictated by barriers between white and black. It's no secret that the economic disparity between the two communities serve as a study in violent inequality. Of course, rich whites have been eagerly debilitating poor blacks in New Orleans like a favored pastime. Ku Klux Klan sympathizer David Duke almost became governor of Louisiana only 16 years ago. To anyone paying any attention, no degree of racism in New Orleans should be considered surprising under any circumstance.
"The carving of New Orleans wards for political and economic gain is something that goes back at least to the Forties," says Neville. "At one point, Claiborne Avenue was one of the richest African-American thoroughfares in the United States. So they put the Claiborne overpass through it. There were two rows of oak trees where you could walk in the rain and not get wet on Claiborne Avenue. People picnicked there, people had birthday parties, christening parties. Every carnival, that's where the Mardi Gras Indians would make a straight shoot from uptown all the way downtown and back. Naturally, they tore down all the trees, put an overpass through there, and killed that entrepreneurial area of the city.
"That's the other point that a lot of people missed in what I was saying. It's hard to put into words what it was like on a day-to-day basis living in New Orleans as an African-American, because it's a proven fact in this country that no matter how high you climb up the social ladder or how many degrees and how many letters you have behind your name, if you're black, you're black, and regardless of what you think of yourself, you can get broke down right quick. You could be on your way home from a great meeting – you just did a great thing for your company and everybody is happy. You're in your Porsche on top of the world and then you get pulled over and called the big N and brought back to reality of where you are and who you are to the society that you're coming up in.
"A lot of those people that we saw in the Dome and at the Convention Center had been written off a long time before Katrina. A couple weeks before the storm hit, the oldest masking Mardi Gras Indian, Big Chief Tootie Montana, died at a meeting at the New Orleans City Council protesting how the chief of police and the city itself had been treating our culture, which since 1841 had been happening out in the streets from neighborhood to neighborhood."
"The powers-that-be only want a certain element back as far as black people are concerned," maintains Neville. "But the spirit of New Orleans is African and it ain't going anywhere. I guarantee any convention they have in that Convention Center and anything they have in that Dome will be haunted. People already don't understand that the Dome was built on top of a whole neighborhood. They've got a whole African-American cemetery underneath that Dome. Louis Armstrong's house was taken to the dump, chopped into pieces, and set on fire and a new parish prison was built on where he grew up."

Of course, there is also a spirit of rebuilding among those who have been able to come home. On the Tuesday that the flood hit, I was in Portland, Oregon but my heart was in New Orleans. I went to hear Reggie Houston play that night. Reggie held the baritone sax chair in Fats Domino’s band for twenty years. He also co-led Charmaine Neville’s band during that time. Reggie had moved to Portland in 2004, and missed the flood.

The next morning in an op-ed piece for The Oregonian, Portland’s daily paper, I wrote:

At the bandstand, Reggie played with a greater intensity than usual. At the other end of the room, the endless loops of devastation played on CNN. Reggie provided the soundtrack. The juxtaposition of the classic “Junko Partner,” the raucous brass band tune, “It Ain’t My Fault” with a ruined New Orleans was uplifting and heartbreaking all at the same time.
The traditional jazz funeral in New Orleans consists of a walking dirge, a memorial, and then a joyous second-line parade afterward. Reggie knows this, it is in his blood.
We’re in the dirge right now. Images flash. Proposing marriage to my wife over dinner. Sitting in Buster Holmes greasy spoon in 1979, tasting real red beans and rice for the first time as The Meters played on the jukebox. Shooting a TV story on the streetcar. Buying hats at Meyer The Hatter on St. Charles St. A Neville Brothers Christmas concert at Tipitina’s. Losing my shoes at The Columns Hotel. The delirium of musical overload at Jazzfest.
As The Meters’ song says, “if you’ve ever been there, then you know what I mean.”
I told my wife that if I die before she does, I want my ashes to be spread on Congo Square in New Orleans. Congo Square is the place where the slaves were allowed to dance and make music. It is said to be the only place in America where this was the case. It is also said that from that place American music sprung.
Some day, Congo Square will again be a destination for the living and the dead. The spirit of New Orleans will win this battle. Reggie showed me that Tuesday night.

On Sunday at the Festival, I was sitting in a tent eating some crawfish monica when I heard the unmistakable sound of a brass band. I dropped everything because I saw Reggie Houston marching and playing with the Storyville Stompers, led by a Social Aid and Pleasure Club, and followed by second-liners. I got in line. The spirit was there. Later, I found out that the Festival had flown in many of the members of the Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs for the Festival.

This was a good thing. The reunions were joyful and heartbreaking. But it also made it look like things were normal. Thanks aren’t normal. Of course, New Orleans is a pimp. They’re even charging tourists to ride Grey Line tours through the devastation.

Later that night, Reggie invited us to “Bullet’s,” a little club in the 7th Ward, in Gentilly, a neighborhood in which the water covered the rooftops. The club had been a haven for survivors because it had a second floor. During the aftermath, Rollin “Little Bullet” Garcia, Jr. stayed there, gun in hand to protect his place.

He rebuilt it. In that little place, surrounded by street after street of empty houses, by FEMA trailers, by darkness and misery, Reggie and his “pardners” rocked the house. One hundred percent Black except for me, my wife and two friends, people danced, they sang and in that moment the true spirit of New Orleans was alive.

Trymaine Lee, in The Times-Picayune, wrote about Bulllet’s:

“This here is therapeutic," Little Bullet said of his bar late last week, as he poured a beer for a customer. "The history's here. Ray Charles played here once. So did Roy Brown and other local artists. They (regulars) step through these doors and besides a little paint, nothing much has changed.
“Some days are harder than others, he said. One customer broke down crying recently. He said he wanted to die, the memories of Katrina were too tough to deal with. The hole it carved into his life was too deep for him to climb out of.
“I just cooked up a bowl of gumbo and shot the (breeze) with him, and it’s like nothing ever changed,” bar owner said. “If I can give them that then he knows he ain’t in this alone. That none of us are in this alone.”
"We do this so everybody can have something," said Cecilia Garcia, Little Bullet's wife. "These men have lost their homes. Some of them lost their wives. Coming here gives them something to hold onto."

There is spirit enough to rebuild this broken city, but it can never be truly rebuilt until its children come home. Until that happens, it can be built, but never rebuilt.

Just don’t mistake the attempts at attracting tourists for the real feelings on the ground. The hurt, the anger and the sorrow will take as much time to heal as the ruined buildings. More, I think.

The theme of the festival was “The Healing Power of Music.” In that way, the Festival was really for the folks in New Orleans, to show themselves they could, in some fashion, be like they were before the flood. In that, it was a success.

The end of this story is far from over.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

The Madness of King George: Dangerous and Unstable

In his farewell speech to the White House staff in 1974, Richard Nixon said “…only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.”

For George W. Bush, the opposite is true. Only if you have been on the highest mountain can you ever know how tragic it is to be in the deepest valley.

No matter how evil we think he is, he must know his position. He must be in the dark valley of his failure. He must feel the pain of seeing his world crashing around him. This makes him the most dangerous man in the world.

He must feel it all slipping away. His war is a disaster. The people have turned against him. His closest aides are being arrested. Even his father doesn’t approve. God knows what Barbara has said to him.

The world is collapsing around him. Only three years ago, he was triumphant, at least in his own mind. He stood in uniform, Commander-In-Chief, on the deck of that aircraft carrier, surrounded by men who were under his control, and declared he was King of the Hill. Number One. He did everything but raise his index finger.

Can you imagine what was going through his mind? Yes, of course he was set up by his handlers and put into that situation, but that has nothing to do with how he thought of himself and his world at that moment.

Bush is a classic bully. The website “Kids Health” says, “Some kids who bully realize that they don't get the respect they want by threatening others. They may have thought that bullying would make them popular, but they soon find out that other kids just think of them as troublemaking losers.” Have you ever heard a better description of the President of the United States? But does he yet realize?

We’re not talking about the actions of his administration, those are directed by others. We’re talking about HIM. What happens when a bully is defeated? I’ve never been a bully, so I can’t tell you. Perhaps they learn a lesson. Perhaps they strike back.

What must he think when he’s alone? Is there a level of insanity creeping in? He isn’t an evil genius. He is no Stalin or Hitler. He was a rich kid who bullied is way through life. But really, he is a weak boy who thought he had finally proven to his mom, his dad and brother and to all the Yalies who had made fun of him that he had beaten them all. Has he ever understood anything about himself? Has he ever been in therapy? What is the real level of self-awareness in this man?

It’s all darkness and defeat for him now. If we think his remaining time is a long two year nine-month sentence, how does HE feel? I wonder if he wouldn’t just chuck it and get back to Texas and have it over with?

Or is he ready to strike back, an unrepentant super-bully?

How would we deal with such a defeat? Would our despair overwhelm us? Can you imagine that feeling? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have sympathy for him. His evil will outlive him and he deserves ever moment of his misery. The question is: what does his potential instability mean for us?

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Playlist Friday 4/28/06

While I’m waiting for the Leon Russell revival to begin, I’m listening to:

1. “Urban Blues, Blues Uptown Vol. 1” Imperial Legendary Masters Series LP

I found this at a little shop in St. Johns, Oregon called “Vinyl Resting Place.”

The liner notes (by Pete Welding) say this collection is from 1968 and gives credits to Bob Hite and Henry Vestine of Canned Heat for “Inspiration” and “Final Selection Approval” and to Hite “for the loan of his priceless originals.”

Almost none of these tunes were hits, but that just don’t matter none, nohow. Tunes by Fats Domino from1953 and “c.1951-53,” from Smiley Lewis, Roosevelt Sykes, T-Bone Walker and someone named Mercy Dee (Walton) who, it turns out, wrote “One Room Country Shack” while living in Fresno.

The gems are a tune by Big Joe Turner recorded with Dave Bartholomew’s band in 1950, a previously unissued (remember this was 1968) Joe Turner/Wynonie Harris duet, and the most sublime version ever recorded of “Mother Fuyer.” It’s by Nelson Wilborn who recorded it under the name “Dirty Red.”

2. Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk “Live at Jazzfest 2005”. CD

Aaron’s son has taken over as the number one funkiest Neville of them all. He was a big part of all that new energy on the last Neville Brothers’ recording and leads this band which, along with Papa Grows Funk just may keep the funk alive till New Orleans gets itself together again and the musicians come back from Austin, or Memphis or wherever they’ve gone (and where they’re making more dough playing than they ever did in New Orleans).

Ivan’s got two bass players on this gig (which I saw from the audience) on the Accura Stage last year. Also sitting in is bonist Mark Mullins from Bonerama.

Ivan has matured. He isn’t the kid anymore. He’s the man.

Listening to it now, it seems like things were so much more innocent at last year’s Fest. Nobody knew what was coming. It was the final year of Jazzfest and New Orleans as we knew them.

3. Various Artists “The Now Sound of Brazil 2” Ziriguiboom CD

Ziriguiboom is a label. Don’t let anybody tell you Brazilian music isn’t just as happening now as it ever was. This collection came out last year and it’s got everything you’d ever want out of Brazilian music: rhythm, beauty and the sexiest signing (literally) in the world. Nobody ever had to learn Portuguese to appreciate this stuff.

Bebel Gilberto is the best known singer on this, but it’s been a lot of fun to discover the others on here: Cibelle, Celo Fonesca, Zuco 103, Bosscucanova, and Apollo Nove. See? Even their names are sexy.

Somebody took a lot of trouble to sequence the tunes. I can’t get enough of this.

4. Paul Motian Trio “At The Village Vanguard” CD

From 1995, with Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell. Frisell’s the chameleon, Lovano the Lion and Motian the intellectual. It’s easy to get swept up in who they are rather than what they’re playing, but wrapping yourself up in the vibe here is good for ya. It might make you smarter. It always makes me think. It’s one of those recordings that provides a jumping off point for your own brain.

You put it on, get into it, and let whatever brain cells are still functioning take over.

5. Don Cherry “Multikulti Live” DVD

Thank God there’s a visual record of Don Cherry’s last band. This is from a concert in Germany in 1991. Nobody ever said he was the greatest trumpet player who ever lived, or the greatest composer. He projected something more than talent (although he had it in freight car-sized amounts). He had, oh I dunno…a goodness, a vibe of peace.

I didn’t know him, although I interviewed him for an hour at the time he was recording the first Multikulti album. I mean, he could have been a rotten sonuvabitch and mean as shit, but I doubt it.

I can’t imagine anybody asking him why he had people of all colors in his band. I wish every American who travels abroad could bring what he brought to this concert.

Why can’t this DVD be an hour longer? Don Cherry has only grown in stature since his death.

Wonder what’s up with Nenah?


6. Nathaniel Mayer “I Just Want To Be Loved” CD

When I was a 14, I heard a song on the radio called “Village of Love” by somebody named Nathanial Mayer. It was wild. I bought the single and used to play it over and over and over, etc.

In 2004, forty-four years later Fat Possum released this album of newly-recorded songs. Nathaniel had stopped recording decades before and was currently, and had been by all accounts, getting over as best he could, if you know what I mean.

This is just as wild as “Village of Love.” Wilder. Out of control in an end-of-a-fucked-up-life way that we’ve never much heard before…the result of living the bad life in Detroit.

There are great liner notes which include a conversation with Mayer. He was calling for money. He wanted a car, he wanted clothes. Finally he said, “Fuck everything. Just give me 20 dollars so I can get my dick sucked.”

He sings like a thief and a pimp. Not the commercial 50 Cent kind, but in the most transparently calculated way. He’s the kind of Black Man who White Folks never understand. And he wants to keep it that way.

This was recorded with a very rough, funky Detroit band.

I like to drive around oh-so-polite Portland, Oregon and play this real loud with the windows down. Nathaniel would like that.

7. Wayne Horvitz The Four Plus One Ensemble “Sweeter Than The Day”

Not the funky Wayne of Zony Mash, not the outside Wayne of Pigpen, but the sweet, acoustic Wayne. Julian Priester is on here, Reggie Watts, Tucker Martine, Eyvind Kang on viola and violin, and the underrated Skerik, from New Orleans on bari sax.

He wrote these tunes in the middle of a night when he couldn’t sleep. He was living in a little town in Central Italy for a few months.

This album brings ya round. It’s narcotic in the good way. It hugs you. It’s a slow dissolve in a jump-cut world.

Horvitz and I have the best hats in the NW.

8. Louis Prima Keely Smith with Sam Butera and The Witnesses “Las Vegas Prima Style” LP

On the front cover it says, “Recorded Live at the Sahara Hotel” (underline theirs). On the back cover it says, “At 12:30 (a.m.)…Louis Prima issues the call that summons the faithful. From now until six in the morning, Las Vegas belongs to Louis Prima.”

I know he became a Lounge icon to the hipsters of the late 1990s but I’ve always loved Louie (underline mine). He’s all over the place with volume and coolness and excitement.

Imagine Tiger Rag, White Cliffs of Dover, Should I, Holiday For Strings and O Sole Mio all done al la Louie.
The thing about Louie and Sam and the band is that, besides being “The Wildest” (which they were), they could PLAY.

9. George Harrison and friends “The Concert For Bangladesh” DVD

I rented this to see how I would react to it, 34 years after the fact, and to see Dylan. Here’s what I found:

a. What the fuck was all that Indian religious shit about, anyway?
b. I like the Beatles only slightly better. I still nevah liked them. So shoot me.
c. Was Eric Clapton on junk? He didn’t play one good lick.
d. Did Eric Clapton have the worst haircut ever placed on the head of man?
e. Thank God for Billy Preston, who took the concert out of the muck of pandering to Eastern religion. Oh wait, he did a gospel tune. I’m busted.
f. Leon Russell was so heavy that Harrison introduced him without using Russell’s last NAME.
g. Everybody on stage was smoking!
h. Dylan was king. No competition.
i. Leon Russell singing harmony with Dylan was absolutely brilliant. Oh yeah, George sang on that song, too.
j. Yes, I listened to part of the Ravi Shankar set and skipped the rest.
k. The naivety was positively charming.
l. Leon Russell’s medley killed.
m. Did I keep pulling my hair away from my eyes every ten seconds when my hair was a long as George’s?

This also appears on CounterPunch.com

Click! I Quit!

More. Faster. Louder. More. More. Faster. Louder. More.

We have become contracted in our way of life. We are a jump cut society. Our discourse is truncated yet louder. Our visual stimulation must be more rapid or we tire and change the source. Thoughts come and go.

Five of the seven words you can’t say on TV have been said on network TV. The most violent thoughts, the most criminal behavior are a part of our children’s daily entertainment.

Having grown up playing video games, or not, is the defining factor of existence.

More violence. More greed. Sold to us, packaged and sold by those who believe in its reality, in its necessity. And each one who comes after believes that the way to success is to be more than what came before. To be faster. To be louder than what came before.

The number of boxes on a screen we are able to watch at any one time, indeed, the number of screen themselves, grows in inverse proportion to the number of paragraphs we can absorb at any one sitting. Watch your TV. Look at your magazines.

The internet has taught us that we no longer have to read anything more than 800 words. It has exposed our failure to have taught people to read, while at the same time has caused more people to type than ever before. Typing is not writing. You’re is different from your.

The President shouts at us, while three-word slogans repeat on the wall behind him, over and over, the simple message he cannot put into words. No one ever finishes a sentence on interview shows. Smugness reigns, and I sit on the bus, watching it pick up speed with no one at the wheel.

More. Faster. Louder. More. More. Faster. Louder. More.

Does anyone who is responsible for these things ever use these things? I mean, ulitimately responsible. The poor fools do. Not the buyers, but the fools making the things that go faster, louder, more profane, more violent, and which ignore basic human values. And more fools line up every day, confident in their belief that if they just made more of what already exists faster, and louder, that they can have more of what somebody else just made faster and louder and more.

Sex, music, politics, TV, movies. More. Faster. Louder. More. Can you top this? Can you take it further? If I just sat down and thought of the worst thing in the world, people would buy it. If I just made it a little bit more gross, a little bit more violent, a little faster, a little more. Just a little more.

How far over the top can you go before you fall off the edge? How edgy can you be before the edge becomes so thin, it disappears? How self-referential can you be before all of existence becomes a weblog and you spend your whole life documenting each and every moment as it happens?

I am infected with it. I can’t even finish writing this. I am bored by my own thoughts.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

U.S. & Iran---Friends Seperated by Religious Fanatics at the Top

Two countries, whose people have often liked each other, are now in the hands of reckless religious fanatics. The United States is ruled by a lawless Christian fundamentalist who has rained destruction and death on a Middle Eastern country which had not attacked it, and which he sees as a bed of infidels.

Iran is ruled by a similar head of state, a Muslim fundamentalist who wishes to have the means destroy a Middle Eastern country which has not attacked it and which he also sees as a bed of infidels.

This leaves us, in both America and Iran, the more informed and less fanatical of us wondering what how we got in this mess. Both leaders were selected in dubious, dishonest elections. Both are messianic in their beliefs...that they have the one sole truth, and that god smiles upon them.

I feel like if I had the phone number of a guy like me in Tehran, I’d call him up and we’d both be tearing our hair out about this situation. Neither of us wants to destroy the other, invade each other’s countries, or any others we can think of. We’d probably like to sit down and have a beer and shoot the shit, because the shit is the same all over.

He’d like me to put on some American music. I’d like him to put on some of what Americans call “World Music,” (that which comes from someplace other than our own back yards).

But no, we have to sit in our own houses without contact, wondering if these nutcases who think they have a pipeline to divinity are going to start a war over…over what? Has anybody figured that out?

These leaders appeal to the worst in humanity. They must be stopped. A small minority wants either side to start killing.

Hey, guy in Tehran. I want to tell you that there are lots of people trying to remove our lunatic from office. I’m hoping there are like-minded folks in your neighborhood. Maybe we’ll be glad to see each other again.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Tom DeLay Meets Jesus

Shortly after Tom DeLay was struck and killed by a runaway golf cart as he played the 18th hole at The Congressional, and as his immortal soul floated toward the light, it stopped at a crossroads where he was met by Jesus.

“Hello, Tom,” Jesus said.

“Who the hell are you?” muttered the Hammer.

“I am Jesus, the Son of God, Tom,” was the reply.

“No shit,” he said, extending the glad hand with the same smile he had in his mug shot. “Gladta meetya.”

“It is time to take stock of your actions in life, Tom,” Jesus said.

“I did pretty damn good, didn’t I? Except for those wimp-assed bastards who messed with me at the end,” Delay said proudly.

“Did you lie, Tom?” asked Jesus.

“Well, it takes a lot of guts to be a man in my position,” came the reply.

“So that’s a yes,” Jesus said, marking it down.

“And did you tell people that you were working on behalf of God, and in His name?”

“Yes, of course. I always spoke highly of you and told the people that you’d do the same as me, if you were me,” said DeLay

“Do you think I would make children work in sweatshops in Saipan like you did when you blocked reform there?” asked Jesus.

“Uh, well I had to take care of my friends, you know.”

“I will ask you again, do you think I would make children work in sweatshops in Saipan like you did when you blocked reform there, and force them to have abortions as you did?”

“Where’d you hear that, from Huffington or some other Godless Communist place?” said the Hammer getting angry.

“Tom, are you getting angry with me? Do you know me?” said Jesus. “Do you know what this crossroads is that you’ve come to?”

“No, I don’t,” the Hammer said, bristling.

“Well, Tom you’ve done a bad job representing me on Earth. I think the only thing left to do is to teach you a lesson.”

“Whad’ya mean?”

“Here’s a surprise for you, Tom. I have been talking this over with several friends of mine, including Buddha, Moses and Mohammed and we’ve come up with this. We’re going to send you back to earth, to Texas.”

“Well, thankya, Jesus!”

“Not so fast, Tom,” Jesus replied. “We’re sending you back as a roach, to Sugarland, and we’ve arranged for your extermination company to be scheduled to visit the kitchen you’re going to infest.”

“Just a damn minute,” said the Hammer.

“You will escape a couple of times, running in sheer terror as your company tries to spray you out of existence, but finally your time will come. When that happens, I’ll be here waiting and we can have another conversation, Tom,” said Jesus.

“Wait, wait, holdonhere,” cried Delay.

And with that he was gone, back to earth and his next destiny.


This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

D For Danger

Sometimes being “out here” in Oregon adds a certain perspective. East Coasters, especially in, on and around the Beltway, or in New York City, because they’re a part of the machine (or think they are), don’t get quite as alarmed as others. Or as alarmed they should be.

The incremental takeover of the powers of government by the executive branch has gotten totally out of hand.

Look at this: The President of the United States has decided he is above the law. Is there any disagreement with that?

He thinks he can ignore any existing law he chooses, violate the Constitution he has sworn to uphold, and by adding a paragraph at the end of any particular law he’s signing, he can nullify that law.

Just a minute, here. We’re allowing this to happen before our very eyes.

This isn’t funny. This isn’t censurable. This is impeachable. This is criminal. This is profoundly anti-American. It is what dictators do.

We’re in deep shit. Deeper than we’ve ever been in before.

We’ve let them steal an election (two really). We’ve let them start a war. We’ve let them bankrupt our country. We’ve let them ship our jobs to other countries. We’ve allowed religious fanatics to infect every aspect of our lives.

We’ve stood by and let this happen. Why did we do that? Because of a few terrorists? Does this make sense to you? Does anything make sense?

And if we try to vote them out of office, we’ve allowed them to place voting machines that give bogus results in our polling places.

What's wrong with us?

Why are the Democrats complicit? Ok, not Conyers and Feingold and Dean. Where are the so-called liberals from so-called progressive Oregon?

It’s easy to see why V For Vendetta is so popular. But as articulately as it laid out the logical conclusion of what’s transpiring in Washington right now, the Masque-ex-machina was a convenient savior. It didn’t require much action by the public, except putting on some masks and walking downtown.

Wasn’t the first American Revolution fought against a King George? Is that what’s required of us?

2006 is the tipping point. Which side are you on?

The Night I Went To Bush's Resignation With Lewis Lapham

I fell asleep with C-Span on my TV (works better than Ambien), and a copy of Harper’s Magazine on the table next to me, opened to Editor-In-Chief Lewis Lapham’s piece on the case for impeaching George W. Bush.

I began to dream.

I was at a cocktail party on the upper West Side of Manhattan with other journalists. They had all read my book. That’s how I know it was a dream.

I was drinking some wine and talking with Ellen Barkin (always in my dreams) who had been invited to the party by Cal Ripken (for some reason) when Lapham walked up to us and slapped me on the back saying, “Tom, I’ve never laughed as hard as when I read your book last night. I bought fifty of them to give to my staff.” (Did I mention that this is NOT a wet dream?)

I told him I loved his impeachment piece. He moved closer to me and said, “We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country's good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world's evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation's wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal—known to be armed and shown to be dangerous.”

I nodded.

But then he said, “Tom, I want you to come with me to the White House, Bush is resigning in twenty mintues.”

You don’t question time or travel in dreams so I said, “Love to, Lew.” (Do people call hm “Lew?”)

All at once we were standing in the same room where Nixon gave the farewell address to his staff on August 9, 1974, the day before my birthday. Lapham whispered, “Nice birthday present, huh?”

I chuckled and looked around the room.

It wasn’t only Bush’s resignation but a combination of Nixon’s and Bush’s. Cheney was still old. Rumsfeld was young but still pasty. Pat Buchannan was there and gave me a sharp punch to the kidney. Lapham had my back and told Buchanan he’d never be published in Harper’s again.

What a guy, that Lew.

There was one First Lady. I couldn’t tell which one she was but she had hair like Condi, lips like Pat, and the Xanax/Valium eyes of well, both Laura and Pat.

Henry Kissinger sidled up to me and said, “You know Tom, the President is a man awake in his own nightmare.” I said, “I know how he feels.”

As Jeff Gannon was giving Bob Woodward a lap dance, all the heads turned when a combination of Scott McLellan and Ron Ziegler walked in wearing a full nun’s habit and saying, “Ladies and gentlemen the Presidents of the United States.”

The Justices of the Supreme Court ushered him/them in singing “She's Lump, she's Lump. She's in my head. She’s Lump, she’s Lump. She might be dead”

I turned to Lapham and asked, “Were you ever into grunge?” He gave me a stern look and said, “Nah. I’m strictly old school rap. I used to wear a big watch around my neck at home.”

Bush/Nixon stood at a podium before a wall decorated, as with all his appearances, with a backdrop. This one read, “FTW” over a Harley-Davidson sheild. He had a five o’clock shadow. He stepped up to the mic, hunched his shoulders forward, looked around and said, “Who the hell are you people?”

From behind the curtain, a small voice said, “They work here, Mr. Presidents, they work for you.”

“Well, how the hell was I supposed to know, Turd Blossom,” he said, turning slightly to the left and behind him. “I never did too much work around here.” And then he laughed the Bush laugh, “Neh-neh-neh-neh.” There was never a Nixon laugh.

He turned to the crowd and said, “I think the record should show that this is one of those spontaneous things that we always arrange whenever the President comes in to speak, and it will be so reported in the press.” Then turning to me, he said, “Thanks for coming, Tom. You have to call it as you see it. But on our part, believe me, it is spontaneous. You believe me, don’cha?”

He turned away before I could answer and spread his arms out in that patented Bushian flex, started moving his neck and gave a “V” with both hands.

He continued, “You are here to say goodbye to us, and we don't have a good word for it in English -- the best is ah ravar, uh revere, oh reservoir, oh shit, whatever. Don’t have to worry about that stuff anymore, do I?” Harriet Miers, Condi and the two Bush daughters…or were they the Nixon daughters? They must have been the Bush daughters because I saw them chug the rest of their Jagers. All four of them held signs over their heads, one letter per sign, which collectively read, “L-O-L-Z.”

They squealed like they were in the audience at TRL.

Bush changed from wearing a gray business suit to wearing a white jumpsuit with a wide red belt and said, “Thankyaverrmush.”

Women screamed. Several fainted.

Instantly Bush was wearing a red-striped running outfit. He looked wistfully out to the crowd and said, “I look around here, and I see so many on this staff that, you know, I should have been by your offices and shaken hands, and I would love to have talked to you and found out how to run things around here but I just haven't given a shit. I mean you’ve gotten your share of the loot, haven’t you?”

John Stewart sat in the corner crying, bleeding from a bite in his neck administered by Michael Chertoff, who was standing nearby smiling and slowly licking his bloody lips.

At the podium, Bush was wearing a little boy’s private school uniform and beginning to cry. “Nobody will ever write a book, probably, about my mother. Jeb has the rights all tied up. My mother was a saint when she sobered up for about fifteen minutes in 1963 and apologized for locking me in up the basement for a month. And I think of her, two boys and how she taught us how to turn everything we touched to shit. Yes, she will have no books written about her, especially by you Lapham. Don’cha be going all new-cue-lar on me Lew,” he said with that patented Bush snicker.

At that moment, the real Nixon burst through the doors and said “Wait just a goddamned minute here. I may have been a lot of things but one thing I wasn’t was stupid. And I could pronounce the word nuclear for chrissake. New-clee-ar, you hear that you moron? Buchannan, are you responsible for this crap?”

Pat Buchannan spoke up, “No way, Mr President. In our day we were crooks but we knew how to run things. Let’s go kill a bottle of single malt and leave these amatures be.” They walked out hand in hand.

Bush continued, “Remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. I guess they’re all winners then, cuz I hate their goddamned guts. But then I win too, don’t I?” Turning back to the curtain he whispered, “Don’t I Turd Blossom.”

“Get this over with, asshole,” came the reply

“And so, we leave with high hopes, in good spirit, and with deep pockets, and with very much gratefulness in our hearts for the amount of money we were able to spread around among our friends.

“I’d like to announce with great sadness that I’ve accepted the resignation of Vice President Dick Cheney”

Cheney wheeled around and shot Lapham in the neck, face and chest with his shotgun. “It’s all your fault, you commie bastard,” the now-former Vice President said with a belch.
“Nice shot, daddy,” Bush cried out, laughing.

He continued, “And so before I leave, as my last act as your President, I’d like to introduce your new President and Vice President. Please welcome The President of the United States Tom DeLay, and the Vice President of the United States, Katherine Harris.”

I woke up. When I regained my senses I thought, “whenever I think something can’t happen with these Republicans, something worse always does.”

I’m staying tuned.

And, thanks for buying my book, Lew. At least in my dream.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

 

Oregon's Death With Dignity Numbers Don't Tell the Whole Story

Numbers tell some of the story. Thirty-eight people took their own lives, legally in 2005 under Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, according to figures just released from the Oregon State Department of Human Services, which keeps tabs on who gets the lethal doses and why they take them or not take them.

That’s thirty-eight deaths out of the sixty-four prescriptions written. Of those who got the prescriptions and didn’t take the medication, fifteen died from their illnesses and seventeen were still alive. Six people who had gotten their prescriptions during 2004 died in 2005 from the medication. Those numbers have been stable since 2002, one way or the other.

They mostly had cancer. They averaged seventy years of age.

There are more numbers, but that’s all they are, just numbers.

Unless you’ve been at the bedside of one of those numbers, as I have, you can only imagine what a blessing the Oregon Death With Dignity Act has been to the handful of suffering souls (one out of every 800 deaths in Oregon) who have had their final life decision in their own hands.

The opponents of the Oregon law warned against all kinds of horrors. They said thousands would be rushing to Oregon to take advantage of the law. That the law would be used to euthanize the disabled, against their will. That the law would be used by family members wishing to rid themselves of the expense of caring for their dying relations. That people would use the law indiscriminately and there would be lines around the block for prescriptions.

None of what the fear-mongers warned came true. The biggest opponent, the Catholic Church was also the biggest donor to the failed effort to knock down the Oregon law in the two ballot initiatives. The fundamentalist-right and the Republicans were right behind them. Does it seem familiar, the use of fear to persuade? It’s the most pervasive tool among those who wish to control other people’s behavior.

We are all afraid of death. Even if you believe that there’s a benevolent father waiting for you in the clouds, or if you believe that there’s a party of virgins-gone-wild as your reward, nobody wants to die. Nobody except those near death, who wish to end their suffering while they still have a little dignity left. That’s why it’s called Death With Dignity.

That’s how Robert Schwartz died, with dignity, surrounded by his friends and family. An AIDS patient, he was the subject of a two year project by me and co-director Greg Bond to document how one person used the law. He died wearing our microphone.

Every year, when the numbers come out I feel it is my duty in, one form or another, to find a public forum to remind people that each of these numbers is a person who wanted to live, but who also wanted to control the end of life. Each has a separate story. Each took the decision excruciatingly seriously when it came to the time to take the medication.

I watched Robert Schwartz chose two dates for his own death, and then change his mind. I watched him chose to have his enlarged spleen removed so that he might rid himself of some of the pain so that he might live a few more months.

So when you read these numbers, take a moment to consider what each of these people experienced. And then think about your own death for a moment. It isn’t easy, but it’s something you’re going to experience, no matter how indestructible you may feel at this moment.

Several other states are considering Death With Dignity laws, using the Oregon law as a model. The opponents will trot out the same old arguments, but mostly what they’re really saying, underlying their statements, is that their opposition is based on their religion. That’s fine for them. It’s not fine for the rest of us.

Fighting for personal rights and against religious tyranny is a fact of life. It has always been and will always be. The use of religious coercion is a fundamental human flaw, but it has nothing to do with how I wish to choose the manner of my own death.

I’m lucky to live in Oregon.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Am I Headed For the Gulag?

I’m wondering, given the talent and efficiency of the Bush Administration, if I’ll be prevented from flying the next time I travel. Whether I’ll be cuffed and shoved into the back of a black van, flown to a foreign country where I’ll be tortured, raped and possibly murdered because an international terrorist data base found out that I wrote this headline:
"WOMAN USES TAXIS FOR TOILETS: ONE-WOMAN WAVE OF DEFECATION TERRORISM."

That headline appears in my book, “Rabid Nun Infects Entire Convent and Other Sensational Stories From a Tabloid Writer” (Villard/Random House), a collection of totally fabricated stories I wrote for the supermarket tabloid, The Sun.
Wrapping around those stories are quasi tell-all boo-hoos from me about how I made up all the stories and how it drove me nuts thinking of all these horrible things.

I’ve had pretty good media run since the book came out around Thanksgiving; a piece in USA Today, a lot of radio (Public Radio’s “Whad’Ya Know” sold a huge amount of books). I got up at 2:30 am PT to be funny at 3:30 am PT for East Coast radio several times. I did lots of morning zoos, a few with hosts who would rather fart than talk. Most recently, Joe Frazier of the Associated Press did a piece on me and the book.

Have you ever Googled yourself? Of course you have. I have tried to keep tabs on various places the book has landed over the past couple of months. I also have never tired of seeing my own name in print. But last night, when I was rooting around, trying to find out how many papers had picked up the AP story, I found that the story was up on a website called MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base http://www.tkb.org/NewsStory.jsp?storyID=104906 .

MIPT stands for Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, an Oklahoma City based outfit which describes itself as “a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing terrorism on U.S. soil or mitigating its effects.”
They go on to say that “MIPT was established after the April 1995 bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, and it is funded through the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Grants and Training (G&T).

Remember now, I had clearly stated in my book that I had made up all the stories. The cover even says, “All Made Up by Tom D’Antoni.”
MIPT continues, “The United States Congress directed MIPT to conduct ‘research into the social and political causes and effects of terrorism’ through our automated information systems and to ‘serve as a national point of contact for antiterrorism information sharing among Federal, State and local preparedness agencies, as well as private and public organizations dealing with these issues.’ MIPT firmly believes that the accurate dissemination of knowledge on terrorism is a critical ingredient for combating terrorism.”

Their “accurate dissemination of knowledge on terrorism” in my case was catching Joe Frazier’s story which contained that headline about a woman who was crapping in London taxicabs for fun or for some other reason I didn’t specify. I also didn’t specify exactly which terror outfit she was working for, if any. I first wrote the story in the mid 1980’s when terrorism had a different meaning to Americans, and had not yet been used as a political tool to frighten us into voting for idiots who would wind up turning the world upside down and the nation’s population into thralls of the corporations.

Matter of fact, the only place terrorism is mentioned is in the headline. The story lead was a quote from the cabbie, “’It was a hell of a tip, brother.’” She had run out on the fare. Later, the driver told the cops “I jump right out of the cab and open the back door and there it is, right in the middle of the back seat, a whole pile of it. The police came over and he looks in the back and sees it and says, ‘How the hell did this get here?’

“I tell him about the bird who ran out on her fare. He says, ‘Did she have a dog with her?

“I say no, it must have been her.

“He says, ‘Are you serious?’

“I say there ain’t no other explanation, sir. I saw her moving around a lot and fixing her clothes, but when you’ve been a cabbie as long as I’ve been, unless they’re trying to rob you, I don’t pay that much attention to what goes on back there. I just try to give them a good ride and collect my money. Anyways, you don’t figure somebody’s gonna take a…well, do what she did in the back seat of your cab.”

This, THIS stupid story has put me on MIPT’s “Terrorism In the News” section. We can only assume that the story has been forwarded to the proper authorities in Washington, at NSA, to Langley, Homeland Security and other similar points of interest.

MIPT defines terrorism thus, “The term ‘terrorism’ means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.”

I’m finding it difficult to reconcile this definition with a tabloid story about woman taking repeated dumps in London taxicabs.

Accompanying that story in the same chapter is “Bag Lady’s B.O. Kills Five People On Bus,” also mentioned in the AP story. Even though people die, there is no mention of terrorism, although who’s to say she wasn’t in the employ of Osama? I say. I invented her.

The MIPT “knowledge base” (laughing here) describes itself as, “is the one-stop resource for comprehensive research and analysis on global terrorist incidents, terrorism-related court cases, and terrorist groups and leaders.”

Like the woman who was crapping in taxicabs, from a story I admitted in my book as having made up, that the AP said I made up, that has now probably put me on watch lists.

If I disappear, you’ll know why.

This also appears on huffingtonpost.com

Yes, Rabid Nun Merchandise

No, I'm not kidding. Be the first in your neighborhood. Be the only in your neighborhood, or in the universe.
Do what it says. Read the book. Buy some stuff. Act stupid.
http://www.cafepress.com/rabidnun

Why Do We Fight? Whom Do We Fight Is a Better Question

If I were an American soldier in Iraq I don’t think I’d know exactly who to shoot. Which side am I on? I guess I would shoot at whoever is shooting at me, but who isn’t shooting?
Is everybody who isn’t a Kurd my enemy?
We’ve got the Shia armies (conveniently called “militias” in our media—making them sound somewhat less like a military force and more like a police department). We’ve got the Sunnis and the remains of Saddam’s army. We’ve got Al Qaeda. They’re all fighting and the American soldiers are somewhere in the middle of it.
Do we protect the Shias from the Sunnis? The Sunnis from the Shia? Everybody from Al Qaeda? The Kurds from everybody including the Turks? Or do we just guard the American bureaucrats and the cash they brought with them and try not to get blown up while driving around?
The Bush administration been unsuccessful at everything it has tried in Iraq with the exception putting their hands in our pockets, taking out our money and handing it over to their friends with a smile. Oh, and bankrupting America. Why is it a surprise that thousands of FEMA-bought house trailers sit empty in a field in Arkansas. I could go on and on.
The tide is rising against the Republicans. Even the weaknesses of the Democrats may not be able to stem it.
The problem is that when faced with defeat, despots often destroy everything they are able. What we can look for in the remaining years of this administration is too awful to imagine. And every time one tries to imagine, the next day’s headlines prove our nightmares to be real.
There’s no place for the American military in Iraq’s civil war. There’s no place for them in Iraq, period. They are there to protect what?
I wonder if Bush found out about the escalation in the Iraq civil war by seeing it on TV, like he found out about the UAE port deal?
These are the dark ages and there’s no escape. Fifty Daily Shows won’t make this funny.

This also appears on huffingonpost.com