October 2008 Archives

PLAYLIST FOR ZEP AUDITION (SINGERS/SONGS): Sorry about the monitors, people, we had like ZERO notice. Here are the ground rules: no breaks, no key changes, bring your own water and leave your cards at the door. If you are performing your own material, please give your changes to John Paul Jones IN ADVANCE. Eye contact with Mr. Page will lead to IMMEDIATE disqualification. Good luck.

JIMMY BUFFET ("Goin' to California" wine cooler remix)
JIM MORRISON ("Stairway to Heaven" Paris cemetry dub)
NOEL GALLAGHER ("Rock and Roll")
ANDY GIBB ("Boogie With Stu")
SEN. TED STEVENS ("Stairway to Heaven")
MICK JAGGER ("Bring it On Home")
TINA TURNER ("Acid Queen")
JAMES TAYLOR ("Thank You")
BONO ("You Shook Me")
ALAN ALDA (as Hawkeye Pierce, "What Is and What Should Never Be")
BOB DYLAN ("Mixed-Up Confusion," mash-up in absentia)
JOHN FOGERTY ("Kashmir")
BELINDA CARLISLE ("Heaven Is a Place On Earth")
RICHARD MARX ("Your Time Is Gonna Come")
JOE COCKER ("Battle of Evermore")
BOY GEORGE ("Help! I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up")
TOM JONES ("Friends," Ambitious Lovers club mix)
CHRIS ROBINSON ("Immigrant Song")
JON COUGAR MELLENCAMP ("Trampled Under Foot")
MANNY RAMIREZ ("I Should Have Quit You Babe")
MICK TAYLOR ("Moby Dick")
PAT BENATAR ("Communication Breakdown")
EDDIE VEDDER ("Houses of the Holy")
ARETHA FRANKLIN ("Whole Lotta Love")
ROD STEWART ("Jailhouse Rock")
DAVID LEE ROTH ("California Girls")
RAY DAVIES ("The Ocean")
ALISON KRAUS ("Fortune Teller")
*SAMMY HAGAR ("Ride the Tiger")

We'll phone you!

* (heavily favored)

Senator McCain: You have repeatedly opposed equal pay for equal work. If for any reason you were unable to fulfill your duties as President, would Sarah Palin receive the same executive salary in the event of her succession?

The Boston Herald, today's front page

It wasn't until I saw this photo that "Joe The Plumber" suddenly clicked as racist bait. How many black plumbers do you know? And who did Joe turn out to be but our most antiquated, rednecked, "bitter"-talking voter? Since only pictures "matter," Joe turned out to be exactly who Rove & Co. wanted him to be: an angry white guy who doesn't want some uppity black to "spread the wealth around." The witch hunt began even before Palin winked: our Smokin' Joe is instantly more American than Obama if only because none of his credentials matter: only his name, his persona, his innate superiority to anyone with differently colored skin than his. This guy's beyond bitter: he's desperate, and will make Obama's mandate even more serious, fragile, and burdened than JFK's, FDR's, or Mr. Smith's. All together now: hold hands and jump.

Former Village Voice columnist Leslie Savan, author of The Sponsored Life and Slam Dunks and No Brainers, has been blogging on campaign ads for the Nation:

...if you want it

"To note that Lennon and the band he founded have enduring capacities to ignite the public imagination is to commit an obviousness that is aptly painful..." David Hajdu in the New Republic.

1. Sarah Darling
(Tina Fey remix)
2. Murder Incorporated
(all hail: subprime credit crisis)
3. Born in the USA
(update the quagmire)
4. 'Dad's Gonna Kill Me
(Richard Thompson cover)
5. Detroit medley
(for "Devil With the Blue Dress")
6. Farmer John
(Premiers, Neil Young cover)
7. Double Shot of My Baby's Love
(Swingin' Medallions cover)
8. The River
("On account of the economy...," or, "Daddy, what's a union card?")
9. Nebraska
(Chuck Hagel dub)
10. State Trooper
(immigration law import)
11. Restless Nights
(RE: domestic violence)
12. Roulette
(Three Mile Chernobyl outtake)
13. None But the Brave
(two words: Clay Aiken)
14. Diddy Wah Diddy
(Captain Beefheart cover, relive the Fenway dream...)
15. Trapped
(Jimmy Cliff cover)
16. Democracy Is Coming
(Leonard Cohen cover)

Dear Friends, copy, paste, resend and GET OUT THE VOTE:

This is Your Nation on White Privilege
By Tim Wise / September 13, 2008

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a "light" burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

To William F. Buckley, Jr. October 18, 1965
Dear Bill-elect, What the hell does emunctory mean? You have here gone too far, sir, even for Buckley. I even heard one Roman turn over distinctly in his grave as the word went by and whisper to his neighbor, "Does that 'emunctory' come from the Greek?" Anyway, you're just an old fraud. You offered to pay a week's wages not to have to hear anyone who talks more predictable nonsense on the subject of foreign policy than myself. Sailor Bill, I come close to loving you here. When the hell did you ever earn a week's wages, you bleeding plutocrat. Of course if you were really indicating you were ready to give up one-fifty-second of your yearly income, then I will go look for such an intellectual and split the swag with him. . . . Last, how is Patsy's leg? I hope it's back to everything original. Please give her my love, and let me know about dinner. We still have one to offer you. I expect you'll find it easier after the election, but if you think we can plan anything before, fine, and fine again. Norman

"If I were Francis Bacon and dead, I'd find some way to come back just to paint Tilda..." David Thomson in the Guardian.