Technologically unsavvy Republican presidential candidate John McCain may be regretting his choice of a green background in a nationally televised speech earlier this month.
Playing off an earlier challenge to his viewers, Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert called for submissions to his "green screen challenge" to make McCain's much-panned speech seem more interesting. On Thursday night's show, Colbert aired the first set of submissions. Dozens more have been posted to YouTube.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Colbert_mocks_McCain_speech_with_new_0613.html
Friday, June 13, 2008
Why McCain Has Beer On the Brain
Cindy McCain May Reap Benefits of Anheuser-Busch Bid (Update1)
By Jonathan D. Salant and Kristin Jensen
June 13 (Bloomberg) -- Cindy McCain, the millionaire wife of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, may see her fortune increase with a proposed takeover of beermaker Anheuser- Busch Cos., financial disclosures show.
Cindy McCain, who has assets of at least $8.5 million, owned more than $1 million of Anheuser-Busch shares at the end of last year, according to a Senate disclosure form filed by her husband and released today. News of the $46.3 billion unsolicited bid from InBev NV has sent the company's shares soaring, up about 17 percent from Dec. 31.
The exact size of the potential windfall is unknown because the financial forms require lawmakers and their spouses to list only ranges for the values of their assets, and one option is to simply say ``over $1 million.'' Messages left with McCain's Senate office and campaign weren't returned.
InBev made the $65-per-share offer for the maker of Budweiser beer on June 11, and Anheuser-Busch said it would consider the bid. A transaction would unite Budweiser, the lager first brewed 132 years ago in St. Louis, with InBev's Stella Artois, Bass and more than 200 other brands.
Cindy McCain also owns a beer distributorship, Hensley & Co., worth more than $1 million. She reported liabilities of between $2.8 million and $5.5 million, owing money on King Aviation, the private jet company whose planes were used by her husband during the campaign, as well as construction, credit and promissory notes.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aJik4WI9a0M8&refer=us
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Burning Airlines Give You So Much More
Watch 1.4 Billion (that's with a B)of YOUR tax dollars go up in smoke . You break it, you buy it -so enjoy:
Friday, June 06, 2008
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Toe Fat
The God figure in that Chick publication I rant about below looks like the cover of the first Toe Fat LP.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Chick Publications
I love these little cartoon books that you find on the street-this one's dated 1972 and is the usual nonsense about how our just and forgiving faceless God banishes people to a horrible burning eternal hell-the title is "THIS WAS YOUR LIFE!"
Read the whole "tract" HERE.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Singin' & Swingin': Lee Castle & The Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra: Hits Of Burt Bacharach (1974)#links
Singin' & Swingin': Lee Castle & The Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra: Hits Of Burt Bacharach (1974)#links
Look closely at the girl on the cover: it's Mary Tyler Moore in one of her album cover photos.This photo was taken for another cover in the early 60's.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Flying Penis Interrrupts Gary Kasparov
This anti-Kremlin Russian Chess Champ was trying to launch a new democratic political party yesterday when a propeller driven dildo scared the wits out of his bodyguards. I don't blame the Doberman-like security agent for swatting it down,stomping on it and then carrying the dick and balls away.Good job!
I just wish we had creative protests like this here in America.
So where can I buy one?
Thanks to Clark Kent for this.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Obama Smears
This fax arrived at a friend's workplace today ,and it shows how low the right will go to smear the Democratic front runner. I edited the link to the sender's site, but it is the nastiest dirtbomb I've seen thrown in ANY campaign. Is Obama really a gay drug sniffing murderer?It shows how scared the right wing wackos are, and how powerful tomorrow's Oregon primary vote will be.Click on the pick so that it will enlarge and read some of this crap.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
More Email from Listeners
thanks for your jungle-themed program today, one of my favorites in a while. i love the old exotica, bird calls, tiki music, not to mention thurston howell III/mr. magoo doing a caveman song.
-j
Hey Rev,
Have an awesome show tomorrow! I smell a mother's day theme. I don't know if I told you, but I found "I touch myself" on itunes. I love the look on my girlfriend's face when she hears it. Priceless. Anywho, I'm looking forward to another hangover! Laters.
-Danny
Here's the story.
I'm in a group called Team Chardonnay. We've been meeting every Saturday night for two years to drink wine.
Members of our team are also employees of the Eugene Hotel kitchen staff, and are great fans of your radio program. In after, this little meeting is responsible for us being hung-over while we listen to your show.
-cheers, Brian (the deck swabber)
RE: Kinder and Gentler
nope dont change at all......we like you real, jaded and witty
unclesneakyfun
marc, i just got to say that i used to do a radio show at kwva back in 1995-1996, and on my best days maybe i approached what is an average show for you. i never listen to the radio but i do make it a point to tune in your show as it never fails to entertain and make me laugh, and is always unpredictable. i seem to always hear something that makes me think, "i gotta find that!". were you doing shows back in the 90's? if so, i probably saw you either at the station or at house of records where i worked around the same time. i'm guessing you were also a fan of the 365 days project that had a blog of audio oddities in mp3 format. i created several discs of those recordings. anyway, sorry for the lengthy fan letter, and keep up the good work.
bill
ps on your most recent show when i attempted to listen to the little french girl sing from 1860 my son started screaming, "I DON'T LIKE THIS SOUND!!!!!".
HI MARC.
THANKS FOR YOUR GREAT PROGRAM. WHAT WAS THAT "THREE SUNS" TUNE YOU WERE PLAYING AT THE END OF YOUR LAST PROGRAM ON 3/30? IS MUCH OF THEIR STUFF AVAILABLE ON CD THESE DAYS? THANKS.
-JEFF
Mr T:
I've been missing your shows. I've got some sleeping issues and whatnots. I will try to get it together this weakend. I've listened to some of your back issues. Very Keen Sir !
You play the drums ! (the true leader of any band)
Best of wishes,
cja
Monday, May 12, 2008
O'Reilly Goes Ballistic
Here's a classic clip of Bill O(with hair)going ballistic with the F word on "Inside Edition.(Thanks to the Huffington Post.)
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
UNCOUNTED: The New Math of American Elections
Electronic voting machines have digested the millions of votes they gobbled up and made disappear in 2004 and are coming for more.
Find out what you can do to help stop them.
UNCOUNTED: The New Math of American Elections
A Film by David Earnhardt
"...powerful and persuasive..."
Howard Zinn, Author, "A People's History of the United States"
Bijou Arts Cinema
Wednesday, May 7, 2008 (ONE NIGHT ONLY)
6:45pm & 9:00 pm
Sponsored by: Truth in Voting and Progressive Democrats of America
Q&A with filmmaker David Earnhardt and Marc Baber of Truth in Voting
It's been four years since the 2004 election debacle yet these questions remain...
Why do 18 states still use computerized electronic voting machines?
Why are private corporations, with no obligation to protect the public interest, still maintaining and monitoring these machines?
Why are hundreds of primary election problems in states like Pennsylvania being ignored ("frozen" and malfunctioning machines, broken machines that were not replaced or fixed for hours, machines set up mistakenly so that only members of one political party could use them, etc..)?
Why are our country's loudest and most important voices silent on these issues? Where are Clinton, McCain and Obama?
Will you vote in November or will a machine vote for you?
Will the votes of Oregonians make a difference or will the November election be hijacked by the machines used in other states?
"A vital and important work...Uplifting, encouraging, optimistic..."
Brad Friedman, Investigative Journalist, BradBlog.com
Find out what you can do to help stop them.
UNCOUNTED: The New Math of American Elections
A Film by David Earnhardt
"...powerful and persuasive..."
Howard Zinn, Author, "A People's History of the United States"
Bijou Arts Cinema
Wednesday, May 7, 2008 (ONE NIGHT ONLY)
6:45pm & 9:00 pm
Sponsored by: Truth in Voting and Progressive Democrats of America
Q&A with filmmaker David Earnhardt and Marc Baber of Truth in Voting
It's been four years since the 2004 election debacle yet these questions remain...
Why do 18 states still use computerized electronic voting machines?
Why are private corporations, with no obligation to protect the public interest, still maintaining and monitoring these machines?
Why are hundreds of primary election problems in states like Pennsylvania being ignored ("frozen" and malfunctioning machines, broken machines that were not replaced or fixed for hours, machines set up mistakenly so that only members of one political party could use them, etc..)?
Why are our country's loudest and most important voices silent on these issues? Where are Clinton, McCain and Obama?
Will you vote in November or will a machine vote for you?
Will the votes of Oregonians make a difference or will the November election be hijacked by the machines used in other states?
"A vital and important work...Uplifting, encouraging, optimistic..."
Brad Friedman, Investigative Journalist, BradBlog.com
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Senator McCain, Did you Call Your Wife A C@#%&t!?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/01/mccain-asked-did-you-call_n_99744.html
"Clive businessman Marty Parrish was escorted from Sen. John McCain's town hall meeting by Des Moines police and members of the Secret Service after asking McCain if he had called his wife Cindy an expletive in 1992.
Parrish, an ordained Baptist minister who holds a master's degree in political science, was questioned by Secret Service agents before being released. He was not charged in the incident. Parrish asked whether McCain called his wife Cindy an expletive related to the female anatomy, as has been alleged in the book "The Real McCain," written by Dem strategist Cliff Schecter.
McCain's response got him a round of applause from the crowd: "There's people here who don't respect that kind of language, so I'll move on to the next questioner in the back."
In an interview with IowaPolitics.com, Parrish said his intentions were simple in posing the question to McCain. The former Joe Biden campaign worker stressed he is very concerned about the Republican presidential nominee's temperament.
"We have a man whose temper can get the best of him," Parrish said. "What I am worried about is his temper. Our country is in a serious crisis. This election is the most significant one since 1860. It appears America is asleep -- so I stood up and asked the question."
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Bill Clinton in Junction City
Yeah I actually went to the Hitl..-I mean Hillary Clinton Rally! We arrived at 8:45 on time to a packed(not!) Junction City High School crowd of 500 diehard Hillary fans and old school Democrats.Hillary wasn't there.
I brought my folded up plastic Obama lawn sign(hidden in a pocket) but my wife wouldn't let me unfurl it.
It WAS groovy seeing a former pres,and midway through his speech 3 cheerleaders walked into the event and giggled and squeeled.
Bill was up there telling everybody about all the cool stuff Hillary was up to and only dissed McCain once or twice.The word "outspent" was used a lot.
And he was talking about Obama. This coming from a political machine that was spending money for this campaign three years ago.
I'm still voting for Obama if you haven't guessed.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The Spotnicks ROOL!
These guys taught DEVO their dance moves. This Sunday at 11 AM on the Hangover a special tribute and musical history of the Spotnicks.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
More about John McCain's Temper
Did you see Today's Washington Post?
McCain: A Question of Temperament
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/19/AR2008041902224_pf.html
By Michael Leahy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 20, 2008;
John McCain cupped a fist and began pumping it, up and down, along the side of his body. It was a gesture familiar to a participant in the closed-door meeting of the Senate committee who hoped that it merely signaled, as it sometimes had in the past, McCain's mounting frustration with one of his colleagues.
But when McCain leaned toward Charles E. Grassley and slowly said, "My friend . . ." it seemed clear that ugliness was looming: While the plural "my friends" was usually a warm salutation from McCain, "my friend" was often a prelude to his most caustic attacks. Grassley, an Iowa Republican with a reputation as an unwavering legislator, calmly held his ground. McCain became angrier, his fist pumping even faster.
It was early 1992, and the occasion was an informal gathering of a select committee investigating lingering issues about Vietnam War prisoners and those missing in action, most notably whether any American servicemen were still being held by the Vietnamese. It is unclear precisely what issue set off McCain that day. But at some point, he mocked Grassley to his face and used a profanity to describe him. Grassley stood and, according to two participants at the meeting, told McCain, "I don't have to take this. I think you should apologize."
McCain refused and stood to face Grassley. "There was some shouting and shoving between them, but no punches," recalls a spectator, who said that Nebraska Democrat Bob Kerrey helped break up the altercation.
Grassley said recently that "it was a very long period of time" before he and McCain spoke to each other again, though he declined, through a spokesman, to discuss the specifics of the incident......
That temper has followed him throughout his life, McCain acknowledges. He recalls in his writings how, as a toddler, he sometimes held his breath and fainted during moments of fury.
In 2007, during a heated closed-door discussion with Senate colleagues about the contentious immigration issue, he angrily shouted a profanity at a fellow Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, an incident that quickly found its way into headlines.
Reports recently surfaced of Rep. Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican, taking offense when McCain called him "boy" once too often during a 2006 meeting, a story that McCain aides confirm while playing down its importance. "Renzi flared and he was prickly," McCain strategist Mark Salter said. "But there were no punches thrown or anything.".......
McCain's temper first became an issue after an incident in 1989, during McCain's first term in the Senate.
The nomination of a beleaguered John Tower to become defense secretary was already in trouble when Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, a conservative Democrat who later became a Republican, helped doom it by voting against Tower. A furious McCain, believing that Shelby had reneged on a commitment of support, accosted him, got within an inch of his nose and screamed at him. News of the incident swiftly spread around the Capitol.....
In 1992, during a private meeting of Arizona officials over a federal land issue that affected the state, a furious McCain openly questioned Johnson's honesty. "Start a tape recorder -- it's best when you get a liar on tape," McCain said to others in the meeting, according to an account of their "nose-to-nose, testosterone-filled" argument that Johnson later provided to reporters.....
While in the course of a policy disagreement at a luncheon meeting of Republican senators, McCain reportedly insulted Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico with an earthy expletive. Domenici demanded an apology. "Okay, I'll apologize," McCain said, before referring to an infuriated Domenici with the same expletive......
A platform that had been adequate for taller candidates had not taken into account the needs of the 5-foot-9 McCain, who left the suite and went looking for a man in his early 20s named Robert Wexler, the head of Arizona's Young Republicans, which had helped make arrangements for the evening's celebration. Confronting Wexler in a hotel ballroom, McCain exploded, according to witnesses who included Jon Hinz, then executive director of the Arizona Republican Party. McCain jabbed an index finger in Wexler's chest.
"I told you we needed a stage," he screamed, according to Hinz. "You incompetent little [expletive]. When I tell you to do something, you do it."
Hinz recalls intervening, placing his 6-foot-6 frame between the senator-elect and the young volunteer. "John, this is not the time or place for this," Hinz remembers saying to McCain, who fumed that he hadn't been seen clearly by television viewers. Hinz recollects finally telling McCain: "John, look, I'll follow you out on stage myself next time. I'll make sure everywhere you go there is a milk crate for you to stand on. But this is enough."
McCain spun around on his heels and left. He did not talk to Hinz again for several years.........
In 1994, McCain tried to stop a primary challenge to the state's Republican governor, J. Fife Symington III, by telephoning his opponent, Barbara Barrett, the well-heeled spouse of a telecommunications executive, and warning of unspecified "consequences" should she reject his advice to drop out of the race. Barrett stayed in. At that year's state Republican convention, McCain confronted Sandra Dowling, the Maricopa County school superintendent and, according to witnesses, angrily accused her of helping to persuade Barrett to enter the race.
"You better get [Barrett] out or I'll destroy you," a witness claims that McCain shouted at her. Dowling responded that if McCain couldn't respect her right to support whomever she chose, that he "should get the hell out of the Senate." McCain shouted an obscenity at her, and Dowling howled one back.
Woods raced over, according to a witness, and pulled Dowling away. Woods said he has "no memory" of being involved, "though I heard something about an argument."
Saturday, April 19, 2008
ABC Works for McCain
I don't like so called journalists who use Sean Hannity talking points.
I don't like journalists that seek out "shills" to ask loaded questions about flag pins.
The most recent "debate" was a sham.
Shame on you ABC.
http://video.236.com/services/link/bcpid1507884404/bctid1509297835
I don't like journalists that seek out "shills" to ask loaded questions about flag pins.
The most recent "debate" was a sham.
Shame on you ABC.
http://video.236.com/services/link/bcpid1507884404/bctid1509297835
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
McCain Calls His Wife a "Trollop" and a "C_nt"
Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity,mentioned an incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/McCain_temper_boiled_over_in_92_0407.html
A senator explained that he had already committed to support George Bush," the former Senate staffer said. "McCain said ‘f— you' and never spoke to him again."
Another former senator who requested anonymity recalled an exchange at a Republican policy lunch. McCain turned on another senator who disagreed with him.
"McCain used the f-word," the former senator said. "McCain called the guy a ‘sh--head.' The senator demanded an apology. McCain stood up and said, ‘I apologize, but you're still a sh--head.' That was in front of 40 to 50 Republican senators. That sort of thing happened frequently."
"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?" McCain said at a GOP fund-raiser in Washington. "Because Janet Reno is her father."
Robin Silver and Bob Witzeman, both medical doctors, met with McCain at his Phoenix office to discuss the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel. At the mention of the issue, McCain erupted. "He slammed his fists on his desk, scattering papers across the room," Silver said. "He jumped up and down, screaming obscenities at us for at least 10 minutes. He shook his fists as if he was going to slug us."
Democrat Paul Johnson, the former mayor of Phoenix, saw McCain's temper up close. "His volatility borders in the area of being unstable," Johnson has said. ""Before I let this guy put his finger on the button, I would have to give considerable pause." "I think he is mentally unstable and not fit to be president," former congressman LeBoutillier said
When running stories on Sen. George Allen's recent reference to a student of Indian descent as a "macaca," a genus of monkey, the media referred to inappropriate remarks by other political candidates but never mentioned McCain's 2000 statement, "I hate the gooks," a racial epithet for Asians. McCain later apologized and said he was referring to his wartime captors.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Klaus Dinger- Neu, Kraftwerk, La Dusseldorf
Neu!/Kraftwerk Drummer Klaus Dinger, R.I.P.
A founding father of krautrock has passed away. Klaus Dinger, who played drums for Kraftwerk and went on to co-found Neu!, died March 21, although the news of his death was not made public until today. A report from Neu! label Grönland cites the cause of death as heart failure. Dinger was 61, and would have turned 62 on March 24.
Dinger trademarked the steady, propulsive drumming style that came to define the motorik sound associated with krautrock. He drummed on Kraftwerk's 1970 self-titled debut before leaving the band, along with guitarist Michael Rother, to start Neu! Neu! released three seminal albums during the 70s, and had a noted influence on everyone from David Bowie to Sonic Youth to Stereolab.
After Neu! dissolved, Dinger achieved commercial success with La Düsseldorf, and in the 90s he formed a composite group of sorts called La! Neu?
René Renner, head of Grönland Records, called Dinger "an uncompromising musician, a challenging personality, [an] inspirational human being, and one of the most influential drummers" in a statement released today.
Renner also invoked a telling Brian Eno quote: "There were three great beats in the 70s. Fela Kuti's Afrobeat, James Brown's funk, and Klaus Dinger's Neu! beat."
Rother eulogized Dinger on his website, writing, "Together with many friends of his music I will remember Klaus for his creativity as an artist and I will think about him with gratitude for his wonderful contributions to our project Neu!."
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/news/49691-neukraftwerk-drummer-klaus-dinger-rip
A founding father of krautrock has passed away. Klaus Dinger, who played drums for Kraftwerk and went on to co-found Neu!, died March 21, although the news of his death was not made public until today. A report from Neu! label Grönland cites the cause of death as heart failure. Dinger was 61, and would have turned 62 on March 24.
Dinger trademarked the steady, propulsive drumming style that came to define the motorik sound associated with krautrock. He drummed on Kraftwerk's 1970 self-titled debut before leaving the band, along with guitarist Michael Rother, to start Neu! Neu! released three seminal albums during the 70s, and had a noted influence on everyone from David Bowie to Sonic Youth to Stereolab.
After Neu! dissolved, Dinger achieved commercial success with La Düsseldorf, and in the 90s he formed a composite group of sorts called La! Neu?
René Renner, head of Grönland Records, called Dinger "an uncompromising musician, a challenging personality, [an] inspirational human being, and one of the most influential drummers" in a statement released today.
Renner also invoked a telling Brian Eno quote: "There were three great beats in the 70s. Fela Kuti's Afrobeat, James Brown's funk, and Klaus Dinger's Neu! beat."
Rother eulogized Dinger on his website, writing, "Together with many friends of his music I will remember Klaus for his creativity as an artist and I will think about him with gratitude for his wonderful contributions to our project Neu!."
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/news/49691-neukraftwerk-drummer-klaus-dinger-rip
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Obama Comes to Corvallis
Last Friday night between his Portland and Eugene speeches Barack Obama stopped by my favorite lunch spot and pizza place American Dream in Corvallis.Around 5PM his bus and entourage stopped at the 2nd st. location and he went in and ordered a stack of pies for his crew, had his pic taken with a cheese slice,took pictures with the staff and supporters,and left for the Eugene speech, which was carried live at 9PM on the local stations.
There are more pics available on the net, but here are a few of this memorable event, which reminded me of all the presidential candidates' visits to Pepe's in New Haven.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Listen to the Hangover on the net
KWVA is putting a new website together and on the site will be a link to the streaming broadcast-until completion you can go to shoutcast.com to listen.
Go there and type KWVA into the shoutcast search engine. It helps if you have Winamp, which you can install from the shoutcast site.
The URL for the KWVA stream is:
http://www.shoutcast.com/directory/index.phtml?sgenre=&maxbitrate=999&numresult=25&s=KWVA
Click where it says Tune In to listen. If this activates another player, you can right click on Listen Here to save the icon to your desktop. Then, right click on the icon and select "open with.." and choose Winamp.
It should play.
Go there and type KWVA into the shoutcast search engine. It helps if you have Winamp, which you can install from the shoutcast site.
The URL for the KWVA stream is:
http://www.shoutcast.com/directory/index.phtml?sgenre=&maxbitrate=999&numresult=25&s=KWVA
Click where it says Tune In to listen. If this activates another player, you can right click on Listen Here to save the icon to your desktop. Then, right click on the icon and select "open with.." and choose Winamp.
It should play.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Obama's Speech 3/18/08
I am posting Barack's comment on the flap about his minister's remarks from the pulpit-I am posting it here because when I heard it tonight it made me tear up-it was so powerful that it made me want to work for his campaign.
Now, I am well aware of my rascism-I grew up in the 50's and 60's and don't pretend that I never used the N word or told some crude jokes.But this speech to me summed up where we are and where we have to go, and I think that today's speech should be remembered.It's a long one but VERY moving:
"Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories tha t we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicia ns, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committ ed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins. "
Now, I am well aware of my rascism-I grew up in the 50's and 60's and don't pretend that I never used the N word or told some crude jokes.But this speech to me summed up where we are and where we have to go, and I think that today's speech should be remembered.It's a long one but VERY moving:
"Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories tha t we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicia ns, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committ ed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins. "
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Don't Put Me In A Box... Yet
god some people really go out of their way to remind you how OLD you are!Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!I don't like when folks say that I play NOTHING but OLD music on my radio show.
Today I played some Goldfrapp, Kate Havnevik and Frou Frou, all from the last few years. I know I promote as "eclectic retro" but PULeeease respect the new stuff I play also.
Which leads to my next subject: Imogen Heap videos!
Here goes!
Today I played some Goldfrapp, Kate Havnevik and Frou Frou, all from the last few years. I know I promote as "eclectic retro" but PULeeease respect the new stuff I play also.
Which leads to my next subject: Imogen Heap videos!
Here goes!
Friday, February 29, 2008
INFRAGARD-YOUR BOSS HAS PERMISSION TO KILL YOU
The following is an excerpt from this article in the Progressive that describes InfraGard,a group of private industry execs that work with the FBI.
from:http://www.progressive.org/mag_rothschild0308
The FBI Deputizes Business
By Matthew Rothschild, March 2008 Issue
Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.
InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.
InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty-six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.
In November 2001, InfraGard had around 1,700 members. As of late January, InfraGard had 23,682 members, according to its website, www.infragard.net, which adds that “350 of our nation’s Fortune 500 have a representative in InfraGard.”
FBI Director Robert Mueller addressed an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. At that time, the group had less than half as many members as it does today. “To date, there are more than 11,000 members of InfraGard,” he said. “From our perspective that amounts to 11,000 contacts . . . and 11,000 partners in our mission to protect America.” He added a little later, “Those of you in the private sector are the first line of defense.”
He urged InfraGard members to contact the FBI if they “note suspicious activity or an unusual event.” And he said they could sic the FBI on “disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against their employers.”
In an interview with InfraGard after the conference, which is featured prominently on the InfraGard members’ website, Mueller says: “It’s a great program.”
The ACLU is not so sanguine.
“There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations—some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers—into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI,” the ACLU warned in its August 2004 report The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society.
InfraGard is not readily accessible to the general public. Its communications with the FBI and Homeland Security are beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act under the “trade secrets” exemption, its website says. And any conversation with the public or the media is supposed to be carefully rehearsed.
Curt Haugen is CEO of S’Curo Group, a company that does “strategic planning, business continuity planning and disaster recovery, physical and IT security, policy development, internal control, personnel selection, and travel safety,” according to its website. Haugen tells me he is a former FBI agent and that he has been an InfraGard member for many years. He is a huge booster. “It’s the only true organization where there is the public-private partnership,” he says. “It’s all who knows who. You know a face, you trust a face. That’s what makes it work.”
He says InfraGard “absolutely” does emergency preparedness exercises. When I ask about discussions the FBI and Homeland Security have had with InfraGard members about their use of lethal force, he says: “That much I cannot comment on. But as a private citizen, you have the right to use force if you feel threatened.”
“We were assured that if we were forced to kill someone to protect our infrastructure, there would be no repercussions,” the whistleblower says. “It gave me goose bumps. It chilled me to the bone.”
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Messages From Hangover Listeners
we love you at the eugene hotel!
my name is Lindsey and I'm the head chef at the Eugene hotel. when Anne quit, we all listened and cheered at your mention of our existence. I come in at 7:30 every morning to make breakfast for 100+ ungrateful octogenarians, and my servers are awesome, even if they'd rather be listening to top 40 and not the Hangover. For the past year and a half, we've tuned in. Thank you! You are wonderful!
I, head cook, am an adult with taste. One part of me feels for these young people, and one part relishes your choices. You keep us awake, alert, amused and happy. keep it up! I am a professional with a limited amount of time and an only occasionally functioning shift key. edit how you will, we love you. when your show is done, call the hotel and we'll fix you up with some awesome Eggs Benedict. I promise. You are great at filling the time during work where we're not hungover but still not quite sober.
Thank you.
Lindsey Eugene Hotel
Hi Reverend !
Better send this quick note before my short-term memory loss kicks in. I forgot about the show until we were en route to a brunch to celebrate our son's 29th b-day. The birthday selection was perfect.
The Pee-Wee and Sesame Street bits were quite nostalgic since we enjoyed them with our kids. The alien segments on SS were over-the-top hilarious. FYI Mark Zolun from the Iraila restaurant here in Eugene worked on several Pee Wee shows in the 80s.
Lastly, "Cave Man" brought back fond memories. The song was never a national hit but was played as an oldie in the early 60s while I was growing up in L.A. (ala KFWB). It followed Backus' hit of "Delicious" late in 1958.
I think I just blew a memory cell. Oh well, keep up the good work...................
Lloyd Zimmer(KRVM's "Sunday Swing Shift")
Hey Marc...
Love your show. I, being a native Wisconsinite, noticed you playing the classic "No, I don't wanna do dat" by the Manitowoc band Happy Schnapps Combo. I was curious if you had ever heard the most popular song in Wisconsin during deer hunting season, "Da Turty Point Buck".It is a true shining emblem of Wisconsin musical heritage.
Keep up the great work.
noah
Hey There Marc,
Really enjoyed both your shows a couple of weeks ago with 'Poor Mans Whiskey' and the record party thing on Sunday. I think that would be a great format for a friday night show. On the bluegrass vein I got a video that weekend from the library called 'High Lonesome' which was kind of a history......alot about Bill Monroe. They featured one bluegrass band that I've always liked, 'Seldom Scene.' So, ever curious to see what you come up with each week......hope you hang in there.....at least till I leave the state. Your listening pal..
.Mo
Dear Mr. Jumpin Johnnie Flash Doodle McGoo,
Anyways, it sure was a special treat to have a hangover for 4 whole hours on Sunday. My favorites from this week were Gwen McCrae, The Smurfs and Big Yellow Tomb. Any song with dead kids in it is ok by me! Down at the bakery we were all a little tired of Valentine's Day so a little carnage really hit the spot. Thanks for putting on such a swell show!
love Honey Pie Pants(Sweet Life)
Dear Reverend;
Just a short note to congratulate you on your 5th year!!! I may rarely call but I'm out there as a loyal listener. Thanks for the archiving; I hope to catch up on some missed shows . I thought I was the only one left with a copy of the Nutty Squirrels.
Lloyd Zimmer ("Sunday Swing Shift")
P.S. "Master Jack" the other month brought back fond memories when I was broadcasting on KDVS (Davis, Ca) during their first year on F.M. in 1968. UCD threw me out when my GPA went lower than their station's power....
Hey there!
A most enjoyable show this week....
I checked out the Roxy Music question and here's what I found. I'm
sure it'll cost a fortune.
Cheers,
Karen
hi marc,
love your radio show. you've motivated me to buy at least a couple of things in the past, (residents and julie christie). i was wondering if you could tell me who sang one of the last songs on your show this morning, "i love the way you smell" and if it doesn't take up too much time the name of the group who sang "imagine". i almost had to pull the car over when that came on! thanks!
bill
Marc,
I not only liked "Mr Lucky Goes Latin", I also
liked "Combo!"....except for the harpsichord.
We enjoy your show
Regards,
Steve
Rev-
Eric Carman Eartha Kitt "All By Myself" was based on Rachmaninoffs Piano
Concerto No.2 in C minor.
Bill Finneran
Marc
I'm not a fan of pop music,
which is why I enjoy your show, and others like it, so much. In fact I
hate pop music. I will agree the Beatles had a unique sound for their day,
just like Hank Williams and Buddy Holly, but the Beatles are in the pop
music camp and I just don't find it appealing. My wife is a big fan of
Frankie Laine and has an autographed copy of one of his CDs. When he died
recently not one major TV news show mentioned it. All we heard was a
segment on NPR. With a nation so obsessed with useless entertainers we
thought it was pretty sad that he would be overlooked like that.
Greg
Monday, February 18, 2008
Streaming is Back at KWVA!
THE STREAM IS BACK!!
you internet listeners may have noticed that our audio stream on our website has been down for a few weeks now, but WE HAVE GOOD NEWS!
IT'S FIIIIXXXXXEEEEDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
RealAudio is now up and running again at www.kwvaradio.org
LISTEN! party! rejoice!
Saturday, February 16, 2008
I think I'm CRAZY
This video is an experiment to see how rapidly the theremin can be injected into the world's collective consciousness. It's amazing that not everyone knows what a theremin is. It was one of the first electronic musical instruments ever made and it was invented in 1919. Are Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse from Gnarls Barkley really theremin players? There's only one way to find out!
some notes:
The main theremin was passed through iZotope Trash, an awesome software guitar effects plugin. The video was edited entirely in Adobe After Effects. The hand on the carpet was to simulate wind noise, definitely cause for confusion. This also means all the parts of the song were performed with hands only. CRAZY!
Randy - Moog Etherwave Pro Theremin, Moog Etherwave Theremin, Minimoog Voyager, carpet
KD - Akai MPC drum machine
OG - background vocals on keyboard
Elliot - Fender Bass VI
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Internet Mud Slinging
We received an email from a right wing acquaintance today that included the following:
Hillary accepted the traditional First Lady's role of decorator of the White House at Christmas, but in a unique Hillary way. In 1994, for example, The First Lady's Tree in the Blue Room (the focal point each year) was Decorated with drug paraphernalia, sex toys, and pornographic ornaments, all personally approved by Hillary as the invited artists' depictions of the theme, "The Twelve Days of Christmas."
THIS REALLY PISSES ME OFF. Somewhere there is a Karl Rovian asshole putting out this crap to influence our now important Oregon primary.
This pack of lies insinuates that Hillary is anti-Christmas and pro porno and drugs.
This is like the emails we get saying that Barack Obama is a Muslim.
It's all part of a dirty smelly Republican machine that has pulled this stuff for years and it REALLY burns me up.
What if I sent you an email claiming that Mike Huckabee was a pedophile? How would you like it, butthead?
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Friday, February 08, 2008
Ultra Nerd Festival
Sorry for republishing your great article Serena!
Great Job in capturing the vinyl junkie feeling--
Today's Eugene Newspaper has the following article about this week's Record Convention:
Digital backlash drives vinyl revival
By Serena Markstrom
The Register-Guard
By Serena Markstrom The Register-Guard
Published: February 8, 2008 06:16AM
Some audiophiles and independent music industry watchers predict the resurgence of new releases on vinyl will send the compact disc format the way of the eight-track tape.
Vinyl lovers are thrilled by the recent trend of more bands putting out records, accompanied at purchase by free MP3 download codes. But the phenomenon still represents only a fraction of overall music sales when compared to CDs and paid digital releases.
One thing dealers and shoppers at the 20th annual Eugene Record Convention can’t quite predict is how much of the merchandise for sale during the massive Sunday event will be these new LPs and vinyl singles, as opposed to vintage records. Vinyl seems to be the cool thing to do if you’re a trendy band such as the Arcade Fire, Radiohead or the Decemberists.
“I’ll be looking for albums I already have but don’t have on vinyl,” composer and music collector McKenzie Stubbert said of his strategy for Sunday’s show.
Although Stubbert’s music consumption habits probably are not typical, they represent a slowly increasing trend toward vinyl as the format of choice for buyers who want a tangible copy of their favorite music.
Stubbert has amassed countless digital-format songs, all stored on his computer. But when he moved to a new place and wanted only one media player in his living room, the CD player was out and record player was in.
Musicians, collectors and DJs probably still are the main buyers for vinyl in the resale market. But there’s a subset of more typical music fans, or “superfans,” who will buy vinyl even if they don’t have a turntable — if the artist sports the proper indie sheen.
In a Wired magazine commentary piece in October 2007, writer Eliot Van Buskirk predicted vinyl’s increased sales would further damage CD sales. He said big labels are not getting on board with the vinyl upswing, but then, they are traditionally slow-moving.
Van Buskirk also quoted insiders as saying the Recording Industry Association of America underestimates vinyl sales because it doesn’t count indie shops, indie labels or music sold at concerts.
True as that might be, some believe that people buy new vinyl for reasons that don’t necessarily affect sales of other formats.
Rob Jones, owner of the Portland label Jealous Butcher Records, got into vinyl a few years ago when he reissued the Decemberists’ “Her Majesty.” The band’s label, Kill Rock Stars, didn’t want to deal with putting it out in record form.
“It’s expensive; there is just no way around that,” he said, adding that it doesn’t always make economic sense to put something out on vinyl as a vanity project of the artist.
“The indie labels that are putting out vinyl, they are savvy. They are not going to do something just because it is trendy.”
Vinyl “didn’t ever really go away. People just starting paying attention to something else,” said Jones, who grew up in Eugene but moved to Portland about 10 years ago.
“The thing about vinyl is there aren’t more people manufacturing it. The same people for the last 20 years are still the ones doing it.”
Jones said more releases are definitely coming out of those same places, but it’s in small batches. Jones estimated he pressed and sold 3,500 to 4,000 copies of “Her Majesty,” while the CD form has moved more than 100,000 units.
In April, Kill Rock Stars and Jealous Butcher will release Decemberists’ singer-songwriter Colin Meloy’s new solo project, “Colin Meloy Sings Live!” It will be sold simultaneously on CD and a limited run, two-disc record.
Jones said a CD costs between 50 cents and $1 to produce, while vinyl costs more than $2. And the double-gatefold LP Meloy created costs $7 per unit just to produce.
“The audience for them is so much more limited,” he said. “All I’m doing is adding to the market share.”
That means he’s marketing to people who tend to buy the vinyl in addition to whatever other format they already would have purchased were the vinyl not available.
“I’m really into reissuing things that already have a base audience,” he said. “I don’t want to put out something that’s not going to sell, because that’s no fun for anyone.
“Vinyl is cool,” said Jones. “Not just because I make it, but it’s big and heavy and tangible.”
Jones joked that the increased number of releases in the indie music could be attributed to a “return to family values.” He might not be far off, at least about a return to old-school values in a changing world.
Might CDs soon be obsolete?
Eugene Record Convention organizer Bill Finneran said CDs might turn out to be a flash in the historical pan, made obsolete by how easy it is to skip the physical disc altogether and go straight to digital. But that trend hasn’t really threatened vinyl.
“You’ve got to remember that since the early part of the 20th century, records have been made, so there are so many out there still,” Finneran said. “It’s real hard to knock something out that’s been out there that long.”
Locally, young people have been into collecting vinyl for years.
“When people start getting into music, they start figuring out this doesn’t sound very good and they start looking for something,” he said. “A good analog recording will always sound better than a digital one.”
Finneran has noticed an increase in the variety of new music being released or reissued on vinyl. He said he thinks that’s driven by the basic human need to have something to hold and explore, in addition to listening to it.
“People are collectors at heart,” he said. “For years, there was a lull when there was hardly anything coming out in vinyl.”
Finneran said the market for making new product, if limited, is there. He noted that amazon.com has a vinyl-only store with 150,000 titles.
Finneran said Len Horowitz, who is one of the world’s experts on vinyl recordings, will be at the convention to answer questions about getting a record made or any related topic.
Local retro-surf/instrumental band Heavenly Oceans released its latest work, “The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack,” as a vinyl package that included a free CD. But that decision was driven more by artistic and personal, rather than financial, factors. Band member and graphic designer Tony Figoli spent almost 40 hours designing its cover.
It’s still a niche market
Other examples of records coming out from independent or small labels are myriad, but the production totals remain small compared to CDs.
Suicide Squeeze Records, for example, has been releasing 2,000 vinyl copies from seven artists each year. But the product seems to be marketed as a collector’s item, not something the company thinks will catch fire and replace other formats.
The first in the 2008 series comes out later this month. Past releases have featured Elliott Smith and Of Montreal.
Reverend Marc Time, host of KWVA-FM’s “The Sunday Morning Hangover,” said he’s been collecting records for decades. He has enjoyed the upswing in new vinyl releases, but sees a downside as his esoteric hobby becomes more mainstream.
Today, the Reverend said the thrill of the vinyl hunt often is subverted by those who are looking for records only to turn a profit.
“It used to be a secret,” he said. “Now everyone’s in on it, and it’s not as much fun anymore.”
Still, he said, the vinyl-loving underground is alive and kicking.
“Believe me, it’s an ultra-nerd festival,” he said of the convention. “You know the type: They kind of dress bad and smell bad, but they are really into the music.”
The Reverend spends a lot of time at the Museum of Unfine Art, where a number of those types are habitues.
“It seems like the only people interested in (new) vinyl were the DJs,” he said of the time before a noticeable resurgence. “I’ve noticed a lot of people are coming in (to the museum) and asking for stuff on vinyl.
“I don’t know why that is. I do know Shawn (DiFiore, the shop’s owner) is selling a lot of turntables.
“Maybe it’s a rebellion against this whole clinical MP3 thing.”
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Celebrating 5 years of the Hangover
That's right- I have been on the air doing the Sunday Morning Hangover Radio Program for 5 years! AND I haven't made a dime!I must admit that although my audience has increased, I've won a couple of awards, and it has been a lot of fun, I DO get tired and bored.
I wish I had a bigger canvas to paint on.
Thank you to all that have wished me well and supported my show.
--excerpts from Islands in the Clickstream Telling Time by a Broken Clock By Richard Thieme :
"My machinery is wired to move pretty fast, and all my life people have told me - bless their hearts - to slow down. It always comes from people who move more slowly, never from those who are faster, so once in a while I reply, no, YOU speed up. But then they think I'm rude.
It's fashionable to equate being slow with being spiritual. There's something to that, but popular culture turned it into the Forrest Gump School of Wisdom, where life is never complex and wisdom is rules for the first day of kindergarten.
Fast and slow are relative. For some projects, cycles of a thousand years work best, for others, nanoseconds. Yes, we twitchers often find serenity when we take things down a notch, when we focus on something outside ourselves that induces a state of flow and short-circuits our habitual thinking. But it's also true that we relish those moments when our brains or bodies twitch like the fingers of a teen genius at a game of Quake, lost in light-speed heaven."
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