hashtag meme of the day
#healthpolicyvalentines
via Tim
Concerning events in and around Anoka, MN
This is so depressing/infuriating that I actually recommend putting off reading until you have time to decompress afterward. I took it in two chunks.
“This isn’t something you kid about, Brittany,” her mom scolded, snatching the kitchen cordless and taking it down the hall to call the Johnsons. A minute later she returned, her face a mask of shock and terror. “Honey, I’m so sorry. We’re too late,” she said tonelessly as Brittany’s knees buckled; 13-year-old Sam had climbed into the bathtub after school and shot herself in the mouth with her own hunting rifle. No one at school had seen her suicide coming.
headline of the day
ROSEANNE BARR Files Official Docs To Become President
Stop the Presses
I stopped the presses once. The 1977 Hanafi siege of D.C.’s city hall ended after the press run had started. It was the lead story in the Birmingham Post-Herald and I was the late copy editor that night. Calls were made, stopping the presses was a costly move and rarely done. But I persisted, saying the story had to be updated. I remember the printers’ boss nodding to me, smiling and saying, “Let her stop the presses.” I was trying to be authoritative but couldn’t. I looked at the eyeshade wearing men poised over the layouts, started laughing, and said it, “STOP THE PRESSES!”
I had no idea that in three years I would be in Washington, D.C., working for United Press International. No more stopping the presses for me. But that city hall building was the first place I went to cover a story, a news conference with Rosalynn Carter, the first lady, and Mayor Marion Barry, whose election came after he was lauded as a hero in the Hanafi siege. After, I walked to the front of the room, introduced myself, and shook Mrs. Carter’s hand. I told the Georgia native that I had just transferred from Alabama. She said, “I’m so glad to have another southerner up here with us.”
This story was partly an excuse to post a photo, taken in the UPI newsroom in D.C., showing one of my favorite bosses ever, Lucien Carr, a key member of the New York City circle of the Beat Generation in the 1940s. And that’s another yarn for another day.
image out of context
via Popehat
tweet of the day
Whenever I see a picture of Newton Leroy Gingrich, I imagine there’s a half-eaten bowl of applesauce just out of frame.
— Aaron Winslow (@adwinslow) January 19, 2012
headline of the day, II
Mayor Nutter Says Stop Being Idiots and Assholes
via Daring Fireball
Shit homophobic people say
Occupy Portland has developed a tactic to keep a park when the police decide to enforce an eviction
Occupy Portland stumbled on a way to use the tactical superiority of the local police department, and by extension, the fluidity of the crowd, against them.
On December 3rd, we took a park and were driven out of it by riot police; that much made the news. What the media didn’t report is that we re-took the park later that same evening, and the police realized that it would be senseless to attempt to clear it again, so they packed up their military weaponry and left. Occupy Portland has developed a tactic to keep a park when the police decide to enforce an eviction.
The tactical evolution that evolved relies on two military tactics that are thousands of years old — the tactical superiority of light infantry over heavy infantry, and the tactical superiority of the retreat over the advance.
The whole article is worth a read, and nicely summarizes Occupy Portland’s serendipitous tactical breakthrough.
(thanks, Joel)
quote out of context
“What I can promise you is this – when you get out of college, if I’m president, you’ll have a job.”
Funk songs from Vietnam GIs
If you didn’t get a Christmas present from me, it’s because I’m waiting till the New Year to buy you East of Underground: Hell Below. (Thanks to Valerie for the tip.)
In 1971 the US was pulling troops out of Vietnam, and its bases in Germany were full of draftees at a loose end. “You were painting shovels, picking up cigarette butts – it was a lot of busy-work,” remembers former serviceman Lewis Hitt. “There was a longing by everyone, especially the draftees, to get home and go back to what you were doing before.”
This was the crucible in which were formed scores of raucous funk bands made up of servicemen, four of which have just been compiled by Now-Again Records. Adoring crowd noise was crudely dubbed on top of their records, which were then distributed in recruitment centres. These bands were used by the army to present service as varied, even hip. But the songs they cover – the bitter, suspicious likes of Backstabbers and Smiling Faces Sometimes – undermine any potential propagandising.
12 Indicted On Hate Crimes Charges For Hair Cutting Assaults Led By Break-Off Amish Group
I think this is my favorite story of 2011.
headline of the day
Anti-Gay Alabama GOPer Secretly Donated Sperm To Lesbian Couples In New Zealand
image out of context
Cain Suspends Campaign
It’s official, Herman Cain has suspended his campaign. And he certainly picked an interesting opportunity to make the announcement:
The announcement, originally slated as the opening of his campaign’s Georgia office, featured barbecue, a blues band, and Tea Party movement supporters in colonial costumes, The Times reported.
Too bad. I suspect he would have truly shown brightly in the upcoming Trump-moderated Republican debate.
This is 100% Real
Be sure to scroll down and read some of the testimonials.
(thanks, Rich)
“ism will cure any problem of the body politic”
I often say that we, as Americans, have a terrible historical memory.
This isn’t to say there aren’t valid critiques of the American capitalistic system, and this cartoon has that 1940s naïve idealism, but we are all smart enough to know what the deal with bathwater is.
(via my Pops)
Miley Cyrus and #OWS
The more I think on it, this might be the best piece on the Occupy Movement I’ve read:
Cyrus herself is a great guide as to how the image of an anti-capitalist movement could make so much sense next to the processed guitars and gloopy affirmations of “Liberty Walk.” The anti-establishment rhetoric of the 1960s, once so controversial and divisive, has been processed by children’s entertainment into a kind of self-esteem builder, rebellion turned from a political stance into the mark of a well-rounded personality. You can see it in Miley’s signature flashing of the peace sign, the righteous questioning of Cold War foreign policy becoming a wish foreverything to be chill y’all, and you can see it in the sign displayed as the video’s final image, its tweenishly hand-markered text reading “WE CAN CHANGE THIS WORLD… IMAGINE,” with the text interrupted by a red heart. That evocation of John Lennon’s most thoroughly neutered expression of leftism, and the resonance it apparently had for Miley (and apparently no one else), makes total sense if you’re even passingly familiar with the dynamics of tween shows: kids are free, fun, and in touch with the world, while adults are clueless, boring, and full of needless rules. In the 1960s, adults were a sort of stand-in for political leaders, but now adults are just adults.
Quote out of context
Arugula is a type of lettuce that is offensive to some conservatives.
headline of the day
EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration
tweet of the day
In case you need more context.
Phil Ochs: “I’m Going to Say It Now”
Achingly brief clip of Ochs in performance. Said to have been filmed at a Free Speech rally held in the spring of 1965 on The Oval at The Ohio State University campus in Columbus, Ohio.
Image with a Little Bit of Context
I stumbled across this picture a few days ago and meant to post it sooner. The headline? ‘Cain’s Bodyguards Get Physical with Reporters‘.
Is that not the most comically over-intimidating presidential bodyguard you’ve ever seen?
photo out of context
Mic Check
You heard about them, but have you seen one?
