the end of race

race does not necessarily exclude people from just about anything, in our society. this is to say, regardless of race, a person can become just about anything they want to become. it's true we have not had a non-white president in the usa but we have heard names like powell and cisneros very near to that seat of power.

if you are poor, you are barred from mingling with the rich man. no houses in beverly hills until you ARE the rich man. no finely tailored suits until you are the rich man. no mercedes benz, no plasma color tv, no wolfgang puck, no courtside seats, no luxury vacations, until you are the rich man. you may serve the rich man, you may take an occasional handout from the rich man, but you cannot walk in his shoes period.

it's a shame that racism exists but if i may make myself as clear as possible one last time on this subject, i'm far more concerned with the neocons right now than the neo-nazis. both dangerous, both offensive, but one represents a significantly greater threat than the other.

wizzers

what is it with these wizened wizzers who must step into a stall in order to urinate in public, men's restrooms? what's wrong with them? are they afraid someone may see their junk and ridicule it for a lack of length or girth? do they really have such severe stagefright they cannot make it happen when others are in the same room and if so, isn't this something one just resolves themself to overcome? what the hell do these people do at outdoor, amphitheatre-style concerts? wait for a stall?!

i went into a stall today just to get some tp w/ which to blow my nose. the lid was up indicating the bastard who had pissed all over the commode and failed to flush was clearly a large and considerate fellow. (i could tell more about the magnanimous fuck, too. the bright, acetone yellow urine suggested a high vitamin intake or severe diabetes, which may explain why he's angry at half of the whole world to the point of pissing all over everything like an infant on a saltpeter iv drip.)

most men's rooms have a two-to-one ratio urinals to stalls, making it considerably easier to step up to a wall and leak as nature intended, (no aiming necessary.) most also have little walls to shield these shrinking violets from the prying eyes of their peers, (no pun intended.) it's not like dodger stadium where a wide trough awaits the piss of countless, beer-guzzling baseball fans but one must hang their dodger dog out in fairly public view in order to relieve themselves.

of all the prejudice and discrimination in our society, why does it all seem to be based on natural things beyond one's control? in other words, since a guy can't change the color of his skin or the shape of his eyes, shouldn't we just accept these things and move on to more important assholes? stall-pissers commit a sin so hideous and offensive, i can hardly bear to think about it. (jerks.)

first, they seek to separate themselves from the masses of man. let's face it, most of us are quite willing and able to step up to the urinal and let flow a relieving golden shower. so what's so wrong or special about these sob's they have to hide in a little partitioned section to piss? it's just a leak. everybody does it. they must have to go or else they wouldn't have shown up in the men's room to begin with.

theirs is a sin of proactivity. when they slip past the urinals and go to the stall to close themselves in, they aggressively portray themselves as some super-refined creatures of modesty. as if men were meant to be modest or demure. let's face some facts, we think with our penises and our penis is all we ever think about. no one's asking these sissies to run about with their member flapping in the wind in public view. just take a piss like a man. at the urinal, where it's quick and convenient.

second, they shoot their stream farther through the air creating greater splash and increasing the odds of poor aim or a diverted stream. vasodephrins can do only so much for maintaining the integrity of a stream of piss-if a guy's a bad aim, (or if he's drunk,) he's a bad aim. piss should go in the receptacle. i don't like to clean it up and i don't fancy making whomever's chore it is any less appealing, (as if that's possible.) in fact, i hate looking at a messy pisser's byproducts when i am merely trying to acquire some paper to clear my nasal cavity. bastards.

the rest of us use the stalls for far more important business. that business requires a level of cleanliness that cannot be overstated. in contrast to home practices, most of us have a veritable ritual of cleaning and grooming to conduct before we enter into said business in a public rest room. focus and concentration are key to that business and a sterile enviroment is integral to focus and concentration. pee at the urinal, loser!

just as everyone should "freeze out," (a term my girlfriend enjoys using,) a known domestic abuser, stall-pissers should get a cold stare from anyone in the men's room after ambling into their hovel and not turning around. if there's no flush, they should get kicked in the groin. (hard.) if we, as a class of citizenry cannot band together around a basic truth such as the fact these creeps are a threat to every pisser everywhere, we might as well rid ourselves of the sacred invention urinal and return our rest rooms to the partitioned vacuums of camraderie ladies' rooms are.

if you must wiz in private, please, do so sitting down. it just seems appropriate.

race II?

perhaps i was not as clear in my last entry as i would have preferred to be. the point i intended to make was that economy is primary. this is to say it comes before any of the other things mentioned and it weighs heavier. i don't mean to suggest how much heavier, only that in my estimation it plays the greatest role. it was not my intention to suggest that economy is at the root of all the byropoducts of racism. rather, i think racism divides and has, at times, been the cause of distraction from certain truths which have everything to do with economy.

when the bush's left kennebunkport for the capitol and the sons established themselves in florida and texas, and the talking heads talk talk talk about it being a political strategy, then they pour money into campaigns to win governorships, (and let's face it, in texas the money bought an election for an average ivy league student at best, by all accounts, from maine, over a popular incumbent,) then they win elections creating a presidential dynasty of wealth and power and favors, and the policies of that president afflicts poor people daily in the prisons of the united states, in the alleys behind the hospitals which won't treat them, in their manual labor jobs they get to in 1980s jalopies w/ "w '04," stickers on them, (so fucking fooled,) and they hate labor unions because money was spent to get them to think that way, and despite the fact president's have not affected roe v wade in some 40 years, they vote based on the candidates stance on this issue because money was spent to make them think this way, (they're programmed, man, money was spent to make them think this way,) they buy into supply side economics because money was spent to make them think this way, they tolerate republican presidents w/ their own agenda to make their name in history, (blah, blah, blah,) by invading some piece of crap little country somewhere which could never come close to standing up to our military might, thereby spending billions of dollars and turning what was a thriving economy into the crap economy of the world complete with sagging currency and trade deficits because money was spent to make them think it was the rightthing to do, (though in reality, for every one of those who lose money based on this economy, there is someone who wins and the president and his cronies likely know every one of those people,) they tolerate corruption at the highest levels of business because the ill-gotten money always ends up in their coffers anyway, (thanx ken lay you dirty fucking pig,) they are distracted by celebrity steroid scandals while wildernesses protected by the american people for decades are opened up for drilling which is sure to line the pockets of some rich texas oil baron or another who has got to be friends w/ our average ivy league student because money was spent to make them look away, (look away, look away, look away.) they don't seem to mind a guy who needed the credential of having served his country on his resume to be eligible for the highest seat of power so he chose a crap-ball, outdated airplane to learn to fly, (knowing it would not be involved in a certain "conflict,") and got favors for favors to serve in alabama instead of his other home texas and even skipped duties relative to that cushy assignment, but they do mind the other guy getting an extra-marital bj because money was spent to make them think that way. (they think it is a moral question but where is the morality in all this cronyism and cheating of the little guy?)

race divides and while i have felt the subtle look or occasional gesture based against my long man-hair or my slightly slanted eyes or my skin color which was not du jour for the spot, it has never, ever affected me in the way these other things do. i have never sat in a high level corporate meeting listening to a guy talk about a strategy for how we can continue to get money out of people without providing a great deal of value for said cash without noticing the subjective morality business-people have adopted. but our society, and i do not mean you and me personally or individually, but by and large in our society, we, (and i think it is important to state it that way so we stay angry and keep pushing for something better,) are more concerned with some group of dumbass white supremacists of the week on maury or local news coverage of yet another gang shooting or jerry and his merry band of lowest common denominators or cops and all the poor people on that show, of various skin tones, we tune in in droves to watch in order to feel better about our pathetic lives. this is where i'm coming from. it aint about the skin color, it's about certain people oppressing others with their money. it's about plush, favor-for-favor, repulican-gotten fcc appointments to open the door for clear channel and rupert murdoch cause if you can control the airwaves you can control the people because money will change the way they think. i know, i saw the money spent to make them think that way.

i've mellowed with age and i recognize that the key people in the middle, the decent americans who are somewhat fooled but still somewhat open to reason do not listen to anger. they tune out and disappear. so i've toned it down over the years because i am interested in making a difference. but trust, i liken it to our ability to understand the murderer and the child molestor and yes, even the crooked self-serving politician, because we have a measure of that man inside us, (be it ever so minimal for me and i hope for you,) but trust, i also still have a measure of that seething warlock of a bitch-ass-mother-fucker who is pissed to the gills about all this shit i've been talking about. fuck the g ride i want the machines that are making 'em.

remember joycelyn elders, clinton's failed appointee to be the surgeon general who did not condemn masturbation as a tool of satan? i saw her once on late night tv being interviewed by tom snyder. (i can't remember if i made a phone call last night but i remember this.) he asked her what the #1 health danger in the world was and she answered, (in heartfelt david byrne style,) same as it ever was; ignorance. not aids. not cholera, scarlet fever, polio, hepatitis, the plague, (black or otherwise,) the common cold or any other malady you and i expected to come out of her mouth. this super-intelligent godsend of a woman said; "ignorance," (and just about that softly.) undoubtedly, she's right.

this is why people in america today think the following words are dirty: liberal, communism, left-wing, labor union, gun control, (like some jackass who couldn't pass 10th grade english should be toting an ak-47,) affirmative action, ralph nader, cuba, free speech, etc. these people, too, they are the nicest of people. they work hard like us. they cook and clean and raise families and give gifts at xmas time-they're the freakin' salt of the earth, but they're fooled and it starts at the top.

it's fucking god's fault. i mean, it can't be the fault of an imaginary creature but it starts right there. until more of this ignorance falls away from us, we're going to be influenced by the money they spend to influence us. last week i was confronted by a friend who believes in ghosts. ghosts?! geezus h fucking christ!?! ghosts? (*winces and scratches head*) and they believe in god but they believe in all kinds of different ideas surrounding him, (doctrines and attributes and names. . .) some believe he's a woman. for some there are many gods, all without so much as an ounce of proof. you can hardly get someone to believe there's a guy on tv pulling a train by a piercing through his nose but imaginary, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient creature who created our world and our kind and lives in heaven with streets of gold and has a son who died in order to redeem our sin nature, blah-blah-blahhh? duhhhh, yep. (oh, and did i mention he's a god of love who knew how it all would turn out beforehand, including the hellfire and brimstone and gnashing of teeth part for the relative masses, but created it anyway? spiffy, huh?)

in my 20s i wanted to rage against the machine. i was mad my mother overdosed on heroin, that she was 14 when she had me and i never met my biological father. i was pissed at a lot of things i discovered. thankfully, i've arrived at a point where i recognize the impotence of mine rage. i accept those circumstances that formerly gave me visions in red. it is as it is. going forward i can make of my life whatever i want. the thing is, i have a choice. i could continue to be mad. and i don't regret having been mad, it served a purpose. but that time has passed. so now i choose acceptance of the truth and to go forward. i have a daughter. i am going to make this world better for her. i am.

and to at least a degree, this is how i have come to view race. i would we all just agreed to move past this angry stage of racism and sat down to a meal of enchiladas and collared greens and hummous and schnitzel and all the other foods of the peoples of the world. i wish we could just choose it. now.

i think it is important too, for me to mention that i love my country. i am not a patriot as such-i am opposed to nationalism. still, i recognize the good that has come from this country. i love our constitution and the bill of rights. i know we are a good people, despite the ignorance that sometimes obscures our actions.

race, belief systems, diversionary tactics all. we need to continue to fight the good fight and educate the good people of the united states so their political representatives are more representative of their/our values. simultaneously, we need to continue to overcome racism, by every means available. again, education is the key.

chuck d and race relations

race does have the power to divide, doesn't it?

i get frustrated by the way race is used in this country to create division among people. every single time someone remarks about how race is at the root of this or that problem or how a certain race has a certain trait or certain tendencies, i get frustrated just hearing it.

i think it was the communist manifesto where i learned an important lesson that has stayed with me all these years. economy is the one force that plays upon everyone's life most significantly. based on economy, much can be accurately predicted or intuited about a life. i get that sometimes people defy conventions as such, but economy is. . .

in chuck d's book, Fight the Power : Rap, Race, and Reality, chuck spends a lot of time explaining how things have stacked up against american blacks in the past and continue to do so in the present. ultimately, he's right most of the time. when he talks about the slave trade, he's right, and it is maddening that our forebears thought it was okay to do what they did. (i say this as three-fourths of a white man even if my irish ancestors were practically enslaved by the british.) chuck's book made me think about how it was possible to enslave people. now, i know the chinese invented gun powder and it seems to me an american invented the rifle but it must have been some european or another who invented some type of handgun that allowed the white euros to hop across the mediterranean and set up bases for the slave trade. or perhaps they were simply better organized and so, were prepared to counter any resistence the tribes of africa might have offered. in any case, what we all should agree on is that the act of enslaving humans for any purpose whatsoever was, (and is,) reprehensible.

chuck d assesses inequities in the music business, talking specifically about his grand visions for the genre rap, how the players within that genre are not as organized as they should be, and how the powers that be, everyone from music execs to corporate radio programmers, keep rap down.

chuck d comes through in his book as an honest and respectable man, a heroic figure in fact, fighting injustice and openly and honestly judging himself and his actions. i believe he means every word he coauthored in his book and i do not believe any portion of it is intended to be mere propaganda.

still, i disagree with him and others when it is suggested race is at the core of the various inequities. it is not race-it is economy. (same as it ever was.) i doubt the white, euro slave trader was appalled at the color of the african's skin to such a degree he plotted slavery. i don't think the southern plantation owner had a hideous reaction to the color of his slave's skin. rather, he recognized the manpower increased his own wealth, which was a greater incentive than a racial hate or intolerance ever could be. (what do you find more compelling: financial gain or revenge?) when chuck d talks about how much more money could have been made in the game of rap music, be it through merchandising or touring, the question is who would have been making the money. the white executives who would have put up the money for said ventures or the black recording artists or licensed rights owners? if the venture was risky for the white promoter because buildings were getting razed, it was economy which compelled the promoter not to get involved with the tour/venture. did that cost black artists money? yes. it did. my point is i think the promoter who did not become involved because he is prejudiced against black people is likely the exception to the rule.

i swear i have heard virtually every race called lazy at some time or another. recently i watched a latin kings of comedy show and noticed several jokes were dependant on the audience recognizing a stereotype of latin people being seen as lazy. i suppose they are the people of the afternoon siesta but still. . . my ancestors, (the 3/4,) have always been considered a lot of drunks. but then i've also heard similar stereotypes used on native americans. my ex-girlfriend used to swear up and down that no men were as domineering as armenian men. ha! i never could understand how she said it with a straight face. ask a japanese woman about that subject. or an indian woman. talk to the italian women about their men and see if you don't hear the same things. come to think of it, gender differences seem way more authentic to me than skin color ones. social and cultural differences will always exist, (but then there's always carlton, too.) my 1/4 side is known to eat the meat of dogs. (i've always wanted to write this next sentence. . .) wops, chinks, niggers, nips, cans, spics, mc's, russkies, polaks, trailer trash, japs, nazis, gooks, crackers, and rednecks are just a fraction of the many racial slurs that exist. in fact, most people and most languages have a slur of sorts for any person who is not of them or their place. if you are white in hawaii, someone might call you a haoli. if you are not armenian but your girl friend is, listen closely amongst her people for the word "odar." it means outsider.

the point is, the guy from the other side of town who we don't know but about whom we can perceive outward differences, will always be feared to some degree. he will always be regarded as an outsider so long as he stays an outsider. but he is usually not oppressed unless financial gain can be gleaned from him in some way.

tell me what race i am talking about when i describe these people. they are in our prisons in a disproportionately greater amount than how they are represented in society. they tend to be less educated. they tend to have great amounts of drama in their lives. they die sooner than the national average in part, because they have lower quality health care, (if they have health care at all.) they use drugs to a greater degree than any other segment of society. they are often characterized as lazy. they collect more unemployment compensation and welfare benefits than any other group. they are the most likely people in our society to spend time homeless. they are seen as dirty. they lack manners and class. they use poor grammar. by comparison, they smell bad.

this is poor folk. (again, there are always those who defy the rules or odds or convention but by and large,) economy is the force that dictates these things about people.

another thing chuck talks about in his book is how black americans are too often divided against one another. he suggests they should be united in their struggle against oppression and makes many similar points to the one made in john singleton's film; boyz in the hood, when lawrence fishburn's character explains how jewish people, a race which has suffered persecution, unite by patronizing one another's businesses and thusly, bring up the whole, (if you will.) i do not condone that behavior, from jewish/israeli people or anyone else. i would we lived in a meritocracy. it is my intention to run my life that way. i choose my friends based on a sort of merit system. but then, this idea is similar to that of affirmative action, which i agree with. as capitalism is a competitive system, when you hold a competitor, (an entire race or class of people,) at the starting line for some 15-200 years while everyone else is running to get ahead, it is hardly a fair race. for those who complain they did not commit the atrocities represented by slavery i say, the sins of the father are visited on the son. step up and take your medicine like a dignified man. it may be an imperfect solution but it has dignity. and in this way, i understand why chuck d feels as he does about the black cause. i get why he feels it is necessary for black people to band together and think as one. he wants the conditions of black people to have greater equity in society. he doesn't want a disproportionate number of black men to be incarcerated. he does want a proportionate number of black men, (and women,) represented in the board rooms of america. and so, he pursues, (in his book,) an agenda that doesn't sit entirely well with me but one i understand none the less.

in our country and system, (capitalism,) people can usually be seen either trying to get money or hold on to money. (the best movie i have seen for the insight it imparts is born rich. it is made by an heir to the johnson and johnson family fortune. watch that documentary and see if you don't get a bad taste in your mouth for those who seek to hold on to money.)

race is a diversionary tactic. chuck d spends time in his book talking about how plantation owners recognized the importance of creating division amongst slaves. it helped the owner to maintain control. in our modern day, race relations work in exactly the same way. we get caught up in thinking race is the difference that causes differences. in fact, it is economy. when riots erupted in los angeles, (either time,) and stores were looted, that was not a black-white thing. that was a have-have not thing.

i'm glad chuck d got me to thinking about these things.

U2-Vertigo Tour-Opening Night

bono once said u2's greatest fear when they embarked on their journey to rock and roll immortality was that they would grow up and suck. well guess what, even after all these years and their advanced age, u2 still does not suck. (but they may be working on it. . .)

i want to establish my authority to review u2, which is tricky business. i don't have the authority of a press pass or a gig writing for some rock mag. i am neither a friend nor an enemy of the band. i don't want to give the typical adam sandleresque rundown of the shows i've seen etcetera but, i have followed them since the early part of their careers.


*adam sandleresque rundown of shows*

• first saw them at the long beach civic auditorium in support of the unforgettable fire, (i think.)
• saw them twice more in la at the sports arena, same tour.
• (missed them touring for the joshua tree as i was in japan.)
• ended up not going to mann's grauman's chinese theatre for their impromptu show on the street at the hollywood opening of rattle and hum.
• saw zoo tv tour indoor broadcast at the same san diego sports arena i saw them open the vertigo tour at last night. clutched hands with bono during until the end of the world. i had great seats-they had a tiny stage thrust out about 15 rows into the crowd.
• saw zoo tv outdoor broadcast (w/ the sugarcubes and public enemy,) at dodger stadium.
• saw popmart at jack murphy stadium in san diego, mile high stadium in denver, and the coliseum, in la.
• saw all that you can't leave behind tour at arrowhead pond and at staples center, in la.
• counting monday, march 28th at san diego, that's nine times i've seen them live.
• i own some u2 memorabilia which has increased in value from when i purchased it by 2,000%.
• you get the picture, i'm quite a fan.
• but i'm not loony. it is not as if u2 can do no wrong in my sphere. while i am forgiving, i like to think i am fair in criticism, even when considering some of my favorite artists ever.
  
  so let me tell you about monday night. 91x, the only san diego radio station worth listening to, played only u2 songs on monday and touted the fact they would not be repeating any version of any song. i was able to listen for several hours during the day and those songs helped me get excited about the show. (i even heard a couple of songs i had not previously heard, thanks to the ipod release of their every track.)
  
  they opened with a song from how to dismantle an atomic bomb, (i think it was city of blinding lights,) then rolled right into vertigo. i think vertigo is a great song. thanks to u2's marketing campaign with the aforementioned ipod, i have little desire to hear it these days but i still like the song. (market saturation sucks-u2 does not.) to me the song is about vertigo, it's about the loss of equilibrium and balance in the age of information and sensation overload. it is brilliantly crafted so the music and the pulse of it, (along with the lyrics,) contributes to the overall message/feel of the piece of art that is the song. it would fit on radiohead's ok computer only where those songs speak of the isolation of the age of technology, of the chill of the confrontation inherent in solitude, of the confusion of media, vertigo admits those possibilities but suggests you may dance anyway. (and let's face it, i'm all about dancing.) when bono sings, "i can feeeeeeeeeeeeel!" it is typical u2, ever hopeful and positive in the face of confusion. the ad campaign for which u2 did not accept any royalties beyond the countless kids brought into the fold of u2 fans, seems to have discounted the real value the song merits.
  
  soon after vertigo, u2 fired up the time machine and went back to boy in conjuring stories for boys and an cat dubh/into the heart. wow. this portion of the show was easily the highlight for me. i didn't expect such a treat. and u2's sound and those songs stood the test of time in so much as they sounded like they could have been played on any alt-radio station last week. in fact, (speaking of radiohead,) u2's sound was as it really was back then, atmospheric and moody. i remember the days of the unforgettable fire when critics would describe u2's music as ethereal and spacey, these words seemed to be a denouncement of their ability to make a pop song or a love ballad or something that was truly radio friendly. boy, october and the unforgettable fire were filled with songs that evoked similar descriptions. and this inability to reach the masses so early in their tenure was likely a blessing, (because i believe they would have if they could have.)
  
  to be honest, the show never really went south. i could listen to u2 play live for as long as they could play live-i'm pretty sure. but when it ended, i was disappointed. in the course of their set, they played some great songs. they played bullet the blue sky and where the streets have no name. they hit, all the hits, (mostly.) beautiful day, elevation, one, sunday bloody sunday, pride (in the name of love,) zoo station, the fly, new year's day, etc.
  
  two songs stand out as having sounded exceptionally good. u2's rhythm section took new year's day and drove it right into my chest. it thumped and pumped and edge's guitar fill just sort of loomed over the whole thing and bono intoned the lyrics in a heartfelt way without seeming overwrought. listening to it i was reminded of bono's story about how he imagined lech walesa's reunion with his wife upon release from prison when he wrote the song. when u2 played the song, i was transported to that cell walesa lived in. i imagined the moments he must have longed for his wife and felt like the world would stop when they reunited and he would be with her, (be with her,) night and day. and to me, this is where u2 slays all other bands except the beatles. their lyrics are better. period. bono is a poet on par with bob dylan. running to stand still was also outstanding. gone were the theatrics of bono puncturing his arm with a heroin-laden syringe but what was left was what was always there: a tender and moving rendering of a person stuck in a moment of weakness. and it sounded like we all knew the song and we all sang along; "hah-la-la-lah-di-day, hah-la-la-light-o'-day, hah-la-la-di-day. . ."
  
  a couple of non-musical moments were nice as well. first, they opened the show with slow-falling, glittering confetti dropping from the center of the arena, and second, they had an interlude featuring the text of the united nation's declaration of human rights with an entreaty to fans to go to www.one.org to help create global equality. bravo to u2 for fighting for social justice.
  
  this is really just one of many reasons why i adore u2 but they tend to have themes and causes they promote and lend their support to, from record to record and tour to tour. from bono's recent efforts on behalf of jubilee 2000, (all that you can't leave behind,) to the band's campaign to increase the membership for amnesty international, (joshua tree,) to their seminal days raging against the violence that ripped families apart in ireland, (war,) u2 recognizes their position and status and they do not back down from it-in fact, they are responsible with it.
  
  in many ways, i feel like i have journeyed with u2. when i was a teenager, i was drawn to u2 because they were positive. it's that simple. i liked bands in those days like the cure, who were dark and seemed pessimistic. i liked the eurythmics and depeche mode who seemed more stylish than substantive and for this reason precisely, i championed u2. i told everyone i knew about this band, carried their cassettes around with me as if i was the u2 evangelist. and yes, i was something of an evangelist and that did play into the equation. when bono sang on tomorrow, (off of october,) "i want you to be back tomorrow, i want you to be back tomorrow, will you be back tomorrow. . .open up, open up, to the lamb of god, to him who made the blind to see, he's coming back, he's coming back, i belieeeeeeeve, jesus is coming!" i rejoiced. when on the zoo tv tour the band played running to stand still and bono began singing hallelujahs with outstretched arms and head tilted back, twirling in a circle under the spotlight, it felt more pure and worshipful then anything i ever experienced in a church. it was a celebration.
  
  in the late 80s, when i was living in japan, it seemed everyone was listening to bon jovi. i remember a friend coming back from the states, (from arizona, specifically,) telling me u2 was blowing up stateside, on mtv every 20 minutes, contests and radio airplay galore. . . i went home weeks later and sure enough, u2 was hitting it as big as i had always predicted. i felt like the preacher who had predicted christ's return on so many sunday afternoons and finally witnessed the rapture. well, those late 80s years were the worst i ever encountered musically. after u2, (and the pixies,) it was difficult for good bands to get airplay because the airwaves were clogged up with trash like poison, warrant and skid row.
  
  years later i was fortunate enough to hear and enjoy nirvana, pearl jam, radiohead, jeff buckley, and of course there were a lot of other great bands or artists along the way but u2 had the rare ability to retain their dignity, act responsibly and be commercial. in being commercial, it could be argued that they "sold out," in any number of ways but what being commercial really means is reaching a wider and larger audience. i suppose selling out can be a valid term if the process involves somehow not being true to oneself and/or lowering one's values in some way. but u2's quality of product has always been high. they're lyrics are second to none. their humanitarian efforts are more effective than others. (have a concert and send food to ethiopia and feed the people for a day. get ethiopia's debt forgiven and increase the value of their currency and you practically teach them to fish.)
  
  so while i enjoy some dark bands, (surely there is no better 2am music than leonard cohen,) i love u2's commitment to positivity. here's an encapsulated version of some of the messages i heard u2 sending over their life span as artists:
  
• "i can't change the world, but i can change the world in me." (rejoice - october)
• "i will follow." (i will follow - october)
• "In te domine...exultate...miserere." (gloria - october)
• "a new heart is what i need, oh god, make it bleed. . .let the bells ring out." (like a song - war)
• "if i want to live, i got to die to myself some day." (surrender - war)
• bono, on u2's charity/activism efforts: "it's anything you can do, if you can just do it with a bit of dignity."

there are many biblical references and much biblical imagery in u2's lyrics, (not unlike leonard cohen.) right up through pop, these references abound. after pop, (all that you can't leave behind and how to dismantle an atomic bomb,) they seem to become more overt, (almost as overt as on october, at which point in time their obscurity as a band tended to mask their would be credo, especially from the listener who is backtracking.)

u2 may have shown a dark side when they wrote surrender, (for war,) or running to stand still, but in those days their dark side wore a halo. they were the innocent observer of darkness, writing their poems about friends and acquaintances who succumbed to addiction or worse, but it wasn't until achtung baby that they actually showed their own ability to delve into the pit of sin or destruction. maybe silver and gold from rattle and hum showed a glimpse of the grittier side of life they were approaching? in that song they seem to recognize the nature of currency and perhaps, capitalism.

"the warden says the exit is sold, if you want a way out, silver and gold."

if they were remarking on or exploring an aspect of societal inequality or expressing any iota of outrage, who knows, but in achtung baby u2 can be heard as men, finally. corporeal, sage, balanced, men. zoo station is about a subway station in berlin where people can be seen shooting up drugs in public. in this way, it is said berlin is a 48-hour city-many people, (especially in the inner city,) stay up for 48 hours at a time, (for obvious reasons.) the band went to berlin because history was occurring, (also in public.) they thought the events of the day and the place would infuse their work with an energy and creativity perhaps they had not previously known. (i recall these things from being a fan, from reading the articles in the various magazines, from reading bill flanagan's u2 at the end of the world and eamon dunphy's unforgettable fire books, and perhaps from being on the u2 wire fan club thingy in my earliest days of surfing the internet. i haven't the time to cite quotes or even research or fact check but i believe i am accurate in the essence in these things.) and it did. actually, i would guess their age and circumstances played a greater role in the final product achtung, but it all played. edge went through a divorce and bono wrote about it/imagined it. axl rose called one the greatest rock ballad ever written, (this from the band who couldn't. . .) and i concur with his estimation. one is sublime in its grip on the pain and vertigo of love relationships.

"you say, love is a temple, love the higher law, you ask me to enter but then you make me crawl, but i can't keep holding on to what you got, when all you got is hurt."

in its simplicity, ("one heart, one life, one love. . .) it conveys basic human emotion and it is like the water of rock songs, it is for everyone. in its complexity. . .

"have you come here for forgiveness?
have you come to raise the dead?
have you come here to play jesus to the lepers in your head?
did I ask too much?
more than a lot?
you gave me nothing, now it's all I got.
we're one, but we're not the same. we hurt each other, then we do it again."

it is achingly poignant. in one you can sense the dance of lovers and leavers. why did he or she come to the other? when nothing is offered and nothing is what is retained, it fucking hurts, man. you know what i mean? can you feel it right there. bono grew a pair of sarcastic nuts on this song. while one ends positively enough, ("we get to carry each other. . .") three songs later he's stroking his sarcasm again on so cruel. (i'm certain i remember bono specifically saying he imagined edge's perspective when writing this song.)

"we crossed the line, who pushed who over? it doesn't matter to you-it matters to me. we're cut adrift, but still floating, i'm only hanging on to watch you go down, my love."

bitter. bitterly beautiful and poignant and real.

"i disappeared in you, you disappeared from me, i gave you everything you ever wanted, wasn't what you wanted."

i knew this girl, (and i don't mean edge's ex-i think her name was aislinn.) i mean the prototype. this is the same girl who reappears in tryin' to throw your arms around the world. she is never satisfied. she thinks there is always something out there bigger and better and brighter and louder and more exhilarating in every way and of course, she's a dumbass. and that is my point about this song and this record, it translates. bono is a master of basic imagery, (hence, the biblical references galore.) but he never got it better than on achtung. he once referred to that record as "a heavy mutha," and he was right. it's so heavy it can't be my brother. it's so heavy the cool british rock press always (correctly) ranks it up there with sgt peppers and a couple others as best rock albums ever. it's so heavy, not even u2 can surpass it.

"the men who love you, you hate the most, they pass right through you like a ghost, they look for you but your spirit is in the air, baby, you're nowhere."

okay, okay, i'll stop already but look at that. this is a universal feeling. if we haven't all known someone who exemplified these passages, we've felt like we did at one time or another. one more thing, bono can't really be sexual. he doesn't seem to have it in him. i guess it is likely because he never wanted to write rock and roll songs about sex in the back seat of a chevy, but sex is obviously another catholic area in the panorama of human experience, fertile area to write about and explore. while he can refer to "the orbit of your hips, eclipse. . ." for the most part, his self image/dogma/messianic complex/ideals do not allow him to write crappy lyrics about sex that end up coming off like a 14-year-old boy fumbling around in the dark for his penis. the closest he came though was on this album when he conjured a dream within a dream of the encounter between judas and jesus in until the end of the world.

"in my dreams, i was drowning in sorrows, but my sorrows they learned to swim, surrounding me, going down on me, spilling over the brim, waves of regret, waves of joy, i reached out for the one i tried to destroy and you, you said you'd wait, until the end of the world."

now doesn't that sound a lot better than "you make a grown man cry?" despite the fact the best sexual imagery he ever conjured was meant to address the age old christian doctrine question about the possibility of judas obtaining salvation, this is a sort of intelligent sexual allusion.

i suspect as u2 ventured into dance music and made zooropa and pop, they figured a diversion would best sustain them from a typical obsolescence, (perhaps the stigma of sting's five good records theory.) the lyrics remained strong, the music was good, pop, in particular, was a really good record. however, they're status on the charts waned.

as an aside. . . (i swear this happened to me. one day, i heard thom yorke being interviewed for a french radio station and he talked about how when he heard some record or another by some other band, [maybe it was air?] he felt ill. it took me a second but i got it. a month or so later, u2 was on kroq suffering through an interview with jed the fish, [or maybe it was a breakfast with kevin and bean when they drank the guiness and champagne concoctions,] and i heard bono say exactly the same thing but about the new oasis or rem records. hmmm. . . i love this guy; bono, but perhaps sometimes he doth protest too much. er, i mean, perhaps sometimes he does seem a bit contrived in his messages to the public. maybe it was sheer happenstance, coincidence. maybe.)

anyway, at that time they were promoting all that you can't leave behind. they really screwed up the titles on these two records, by the way. pop should have been all that you can't leave behind. they couldn't leave behind the disco balls of zooropa, the underground parties of nyc with all the hipsters and cross-dressers, the rock star image of macphisto and the glitter guy. (he just morphed into the muscley t-shirt guy or the unabomber.) all that you can't leave behind should have been pop, because that's what it is. some of the best pop i've ever heard, too. the songs on that record can be played on easy listening stations as well aor stations. some get airplay on alt-rock fm channels, (walk on, in a little while,) some make pop radio execs drool, (beautiful day, wild honey, in a little while.) and then there are peace on earth and grace. there are not more than about six or seven u2 songs i actually dislike, (okay, okay, i'll list them for you:)

• 
  a room at the heartbreak hotel
  even better than the real thing
  peace on earth
  grace
  yahweh

while grace is somewhat less off-putting than peace on earth, they are both trite pieces of steaming crap. (wow, crap twice in one piece and i never use that word. must be bono.) i can see where bono may have thought he didn't care how trite these songs seemed, the point was to reach milling masses of human life with a basic humanist message and maybe there is something to that. maybe in using the vertigo/ipod marketing putsch thereby expanding u2's reach to another generation, they can somehow elevate on a grand scale. why not? (and screw bob dylan for getting in bed with victoria's secret.)

the ultimate question is, can you promote belief in god and christian values and retain your relevance? if u2 is humanist, how can they also be christian? differences in opinion of religion have wreaked a greater amount of death, destruction, havoc and carnage on the human species than any other. u2, (and bono in particular,) are extremely careful when they discuss the topic of religion. if a question is posed to the band relating to religious beliefs, i have actually heard bono say something to the effect of, "ooh, that one's on religion, i'll take that question." reading between the lines, i believe their goal is to avoid associating themselves with a particular doctrine or sect but at the same time, to identify with all who believe and who consider their belief systems to be at the core of their fundamental values and/or, that which restrains them from the pursuit of evil.

(i will try not to digress into this topic too much but. . .) i struggle with religion and religious people. on the one hand, i have friends who are devout christians. they are the salt of the earth-nicest people you would ever want to meet. one practiced jesus-style christianity years ago when he let me live in his living room because i needed a place to stay. (rent free.) on the other hand, there are people out there like jerry falwell who are as intolerant as the day is long, blaming homosexuality for terrorist attacks and things like that. there is osama bin laden out there, believing america and americans evil to the core. there are peaceful sunni muslims and there are more radical shiite muslims. there are mormons in utah who believe in polygamy and there are christians in the united states who believe those mormons will spend eternity in hell, weeping and gnashing their teeth.

so given the potential for religious ideas to cause such great division amongst humans, why embrace those images and ideas at all? can they really be seen as humanist? when bono was running around the stage with a white flag, wasn't the flag meant to represent an absence of division? perhaps it represented the idea of surrender in some positive light but the absence of colors on a flag was clearly an absence of division. it stood for brotherhood. it contrasted with the religious warring ever present in northern ireland. religion in this world is all about division. religion causes brother to take up arms with one another. little else has the power to cause such strife amongst humans and yet, u2 has become increasingly overt in their zeal of late.

i didn't like when my rock concert turned into a church service. u2's encore consisted of pride, where the streets have no name, one, all because of you, yahweh and 40. yahweh means god in hebrew. like the entire record and despite the guitars and drums, it is a soft singsongy sort of tune you might have sang with a group on a hay ride at church camp. it is not a terrible song. it's just, who needs a u2 song called yahweh? perhaps it's a metaphysical new-agey positivity thing. still, who needs that? who needs to delve into the religious? is it possible bono thinks we might all still get on the same page some day. (and if so, would he condone the war that caused it to come about?)

40's lyrics come from the psalm of the same number. on monday night they ended their show as they did several times when i saw them in the 80s. as the crowd sang the chorus along with bono,

"i will sing, sing a new song. . ."

bono left the stage waving goodbye. next edge took off his axe and departed as well. soon adam followed and eventually, as the crowd continued to sing the chorus, larry stopped drumming and left 15,000 people singing and swaying.

when i was a young christian, devout as anyone, intent on spreading the gospel and happy to spend a worhipful evening singing songs and studying the bible, i adored this ending. i used to look down my nose at the fans of other bands thinking, 'they just don't get it.' this camaraderie evident at a u2 show pulled me in and if only for an evening, made me feel all those things i looked to christianity for in the first place: a sense of belonging and communion and brotherhood, a sense of purpose and destiny. this may sound overblown but to a degree, this was what it was all about. i would call them, u2; the positive rock band, but that would sell them short since they are so much more. they are artists, exercising and inspiring the imagination. so there is contradiction. it was good then but not now?

and the truth is, losing my faith was the best thing that ever happened to me and u2 played a role in that. through their work and their words, bono encouraged me to think for myself. it's true that i read nabakov's lolita because of sting's line in don't stand so close to me. i often read books because michael stipe said something about one that piqued my interest or some such thing. and bono did this as well. salman rushdie became one of my favorite writers in the world in part because bono mentioned supporting his cause, (and of course, bono supported his cause by putting him up at his house for the better part of a year.) i don't suppose i necessarily understood many of the implications of the satanic verses as they relate to islam but i know an epic novel when i read it. (it is also interesting that while living at bono's house, rushdie wrote the ground beneath her feet, a novel about an imaginary, indian rock band. rushdie wrote the words for the u2 song of the same name and i highly recommend the novel, which is likely rushdie's most entertaining and accessible [for westerners,] work.)

so perhaps it feels to me, upon listening to yahweh there in the ipay1 center, (whatever that is,) like i have grown and evolved but u2 has not? 40 sat better with me if for no other reason than nostalgia, but this entire record rankles me a little. rock and roll is about getting people moving, making them jump up and down and dance and flail about. every band i have ever known or seen who went soft was rejected after a season. (anyone remember journey?) there's a million of those groups. they weren't necessarily hard rock to begin with and this is not an endorsement of harder is better but it is the band that retains that ability to make someone get out of their seat and move around that thereby gains staying power. u2 always seemed to know that. with or without you was followed by bullet the blue sky. for every stay or if god will send his angels, (i know, i know...) there was zoo station and mofo. and the pop record all that you can't leave behind was a quality softening and it had up tempo songs. how to dismantle an atomic bomb seems to seek the same formula but it just misses and it misses most clearly on songs like yahweh.

u2's fate could be worse than the slide the stones took if they don't alter their course. yeah, i feel like darth vader in saying it, but those boys need to move towards the dark side. it's not like conjuring satan at their concerts is required but the fans they are attracting now are as fickle as can be and they're the same ones who bought records from brittany spears and ashley simpson. the encore on monday night sounded a tiny bit like a knell, signalling a descent into irrelevance or obscurity.

i left the show with two thoughts on my mind. one, if i could direct their next action, bono would discard the freaking costume and return to wearing jeans and t-shirts and portraying himself as a regular guy, and two, it sure is nice when you stumble on a new band like mars volta.

it is really a strange thing trying to write about u2. i seem to have wandered all over the place.

the latin from gloria? i think it means something like: in you mister/father, i exult, take pity on me. . .

propaganda

it amazes me more that we, as individuals, seem to think ourselves immune to the sway of propaganda, than it does how well the actual propaganda works. maybe education plays a role in how we view it and how susceptible we are to it?

marketing is a form of propaganda, right? the idea of it all is to color the opinion of the individual, (preferably en masse but this discussion needs to be personal,) in a preconceived way. i have a friend who believes he is immune to marketing. (silly-i know.) but he believes it. and he is not someone who just goes with the flow on everything, which is precisely why he is deluded on this point. because he detests the suv or more importantly, our reliance on oil, he fancies himself an independent thinker and to be fair to him, he is an independent thinker. but to think this industry that spends countless trillions of dollars (seemingly daily,) to affect our perceptions, thoughts, tastes, notions, etcetra, does so in vain, is pure folly. my friend thinks he exists in a niche outside of where marketing campaigns tread. (that place might also be known as fantasyland.)

i am targeted. daily. further, i succumb. who am i to stand up to this juggernaut? it's kind of like that laura branigan song from the '80s: gloria. remember that one? (of course you do-it was on pop radio every 40 minutes for about a 4-month span.) "gloria! gloria! i think they got your number. gloria! i think they got the alias, that you been livin' under!" i hated that song. i detested it. seriously. but here i am 20-something years later and i still remember the lyrics? seems more like i loved it. the truth is, the only radio station i could get at the beach was one called the mighty 690, an a.m. station, and they played it constantly. they played it till my ears bled.

al franken's air america radio recently requisitioned the #5 preset on my a.m. dial in my car. since i've been listening, i've noticed there are investment companies who are: "the right company for the socially conscious investor," (or some such poppycock.) npr is brought to me by companies that want my business. mother jones magazine and the new yorker contain ads from companies who have literally targeted me; the consumer. and guess what? they all win. i do spend some money. more importantly, i have no illusions that i am in some enlightened class who exist outside of the reach of marketing ploys and techniques. my goal, in this context, is to allow as little sway over me as possible, to maintain my values and to be true to myself.

when i see all the erectile dysfunction advertisements in the sports section of the la times, i like to think i'm not sucked into, (er, rephrase,) lured into that sense of insecurity that sells so many things. in that way i perceive myself as savvy. (somewhat. i mean, by comparison to the newly upright cro-magnon types who are running out to have surgery to increase their penis length or girth.) but in subtler ways, i know the marketers get me. they have my number. they know the alias i've been living under. ("socially conscious, left-leaning, tree hugger type with serious authority issues," might be a moniker they use?) they sell me npr for chrissakes, (which in turn sells me on shopping at whole foods or bristol farms or trader joe's. . .gets me thinking about the hybrid car and dyes in diapers.)

marketing and propaganda have been around forever. many war efforts have turned on which side better sold its message. in our current war effort, the u.s. has dropped thousands of leaflets on various parts of iraq. these little notes tend to suggest we are the big brother who has arrived in the nick of time to fend off evil dictators and unfriendly neighbors so the good reader can increase his quality of life by participating in democracy, etc. the point is simply that propaganda exists and it works to varying degrees. and i say all that to elucidate the idea that we are all subject to the effects of propaganda.

for an intellectual discussion of propaganda, how it works and how deeply entrenched our democracy is in it, see: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9103-media-control.html (therein, chomsky explains how propaganda is not simply socialist slogans and maoist songs for schoolchildren. he speaks of how it has effectively been used in our society ostensibly to change public opinion.) (i thought this quote was interesting and poignant: "Propaganda is to democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.")

despite my admission of vulnerability, i admit, i want to know when i am being manipulated. i want to recognize the tools of marketing and propaganda when they play upon me. i'm a regular guy. answering the college degree question all i can say is, "some coursework completed." but i don't want to be duped or taken advantage of. that's why these stories in the new york times over the last few days caught my eye.

this first one is about ken lay, the creepy friend of bush who engineered the enron debacle, (or at least must be held accountable for it,) and how he used propaganda at enron.

FRANK RICH
Enron: Patron Saint of Bush's Fake NewsPublished: March 20, 2005
Just when Americans are being told it's safe to hand over their savings to Wall Street again, he's baaaack! Looking not unlike Chucky, the demented doll of perennial B-horror-movie renown, Ken Lay has crawled out of Houston's shadows for a media curtain call.
His trial is still months away, but there he was last Sunday on "60 Minutes," saying he knew nothin' 'bout nothin' that went down at Enron. This week he is heading toward the best-seller list, as an involuntary star of "Conspiracy of Fools," the New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald's epic account of the multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme anointed America's "most innovative company" (six years in a row by Fortune magazine). Coming soon, the feature film: Alex Gibney's "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," a documentary seen at Sundance, goes into national release next month. As long as you're not among those whose 401(k)'s and pensions were wiped out, it's morbidly entertaining. In one surreal high point, Mr. Lay likens investigations of Enron to terrorist attacks on America. For farce, there's the sight of a beaming Alan Greenspan as he accepts the "Enron Award for Distinguished Public Service" only days after Enron has confessed to filing five years of bogus financial reports. Then again, given the implicit quid pro quo in this smarmy tableau, maybe that's the Enron drama's answer to a sex scene.
The Bush administration, eager to sell the country on "personal" Social Security accounts, cannot be all that pleased to see Kenny Boy again. He's the poster boy for how big guys can rip off suckers in the stock market. He also dredges up some inconvenient pre-9/11 memories of Bush family business. Enron was the biggest Bush-Cheney campaign contributor in the 2000 election. Kenny Boy and his lovely wife Linda flew the first President Bush and Barbara Bush to the ensuing Inauguration on the Enron jet. Even as Enron was presiding over rolling blackouts in California, Dick Cheney or his aides had at least six meetings with the company's executives to carve up government energy policy in 2001. Even now what exactly transpired at those meetings remains a secret.
But never mind. The president himself gave his word when the Enron scandal broke that Kenny Boy was really more of a supporter of Ann Richards anyway. Feeling our pain, Mr. Bush told us of his own personal tragedy: his mother-in-law lost $8,000 she had invested in Enron. Soon stuff was happening in Iraq, and the case was closed, or at least forgotten.
Yet the larger shadows linger. Revisiting the Enron story as it re-emerges in 2005 is to be reminded of just how much the Enron culture has continued to shape the Bush administration long after the company itself imploded and the Lays were eighty-sixed from the White House Christmas card list.
The enduring legacy of Enron can be summed up in one word: propaganda. Here was a corporate house of cards whose business few could explain and whose source of profits was an utter mystery - and yet it thrived, unquestioned, for years. How? As the narrator says in "The Smartest Guys in the Room," Enron "was fixated on its public relations campaigns." It churned out slick PR videos as if it were a Hollywood studio. It browbeat the press (until a young Fortune reporter, Bethany McLean, asked one question too many). In a typical ruse in 1998, a gaggle of employees was rushed onto an empty trading floor at the company's Houston headquarters to put on a fictional show of busy trading for visiting Wall Street analysts being escorted by Mr. Lay. "We brought some of our personal stuff, like pictures, to make it look like the area was lived in," a laid-off Enron employee told The Wall Street Journal in 2002. "We had to make believe we were on the phone buying and selling" even though "some of the computers didn't even work."
If this Potemkin village sounds familiar, take a look at the ongoing 60-stop "presidential roadshow" in which Mr. Bush has "conversations on Social Security" with "ordinary citizens" for the consumption of local and national newscasts. As in the president's "town meeting" campaign appearances last year, the audiences are stacked with prescreened fans; any dissenters who somehow get in are quickly hustled away by security goons. But as The Washington Post reported last weekend, the preparations are even more elaborate than the finished product suggests; the seeming reality of the event is tweaked as elaborately as that of a television reality show. Not only are the panelists for these conversations recruited from administration supporters, but they are rehearsed the night before, with a White House official playing Mr. Bush. One participant told The Post, "We ran through it five times before the president got there." Finalists who vary just slightly from the administration's pitch are banished from the cast at the last minute, "American Idol"-style.
Like Enron's stockholders, American taxpayers pay for the production of such propaganda, even if its message, like that of the Enron show put on for visiting analysts, misrepresents and distorts the bottom line of the scheme that is being sold. We paid for last year's phony television news reports in which the faux reporter Karen Ryan "interviewed" administration officials who gave partially deceptive information hyping the Medicare prescription-drug program. We paid Armstrong Williams his $240,000 for delivering faux-journalistic analysis of the No Child Left Behind act.
The administration cycled the Ryan and Williams paychecks through the PR giant Ketchum Communications. Ketchum was also one of the companies hired to flack for Andersen, the now-defunct Enron accounting firm that shredded a ton of documents. We don't know what, if any, role Ketchum is playing in the White House's Social Security propaganda push, though we do know the company has received at least $97 million from the government, according to a Congressional report.
That $97 million may yet prove a mere down payment. The Times reported last weekend that the administration told executive-branch agencies simply to ignore a stern directive by the Congressional Government Accountability Office discouraging the use of "covert propaganda" like the Karen Ryan "news reports." In other words, the brakes are off, and before long, the government could have a larger budget for fake news than actual television news divisions have for real news. At last weekend's Gridiron dinner, Mr. Bush made a joke about how "most" of his good press on Social Security came from Armstrong Williams, and the Washington press corps yukked it up. The joke, however, is on them - and us.
USA Today reported this month that the Department of Homeland Security, having failed miserably to secure American ports and air transportation from potential Al Qaeda attacks, has nonetheless shelled out $100,000-plus to hire "a Hollywood liaison": Bobbie Faye Ferguson, an actress whose credits include the movie "The Bermuda Triangle" and guest shots on television schlock like "Designing Women" and "The Dukes of Hazzard." She will "work with moviemakers and scriptwriters" to give us homeland security infotainment - which is to actual homeland security what the movie "Independence Day" is to an actual terrorist attack.
Another propagandist with a rising profile is Susan Molinari, the onetime CBS News personality who appears regularly on news shows like "Hardball" and "Capitol Report." As she bloviates from the right about Social Security or the fake newsman Jeff Gannon, she is invariably described as "a former Republican Congresswoman" or a "CNBC political analyst." But her actual current jobs remain mysteriously unmentioned: C.E.O. of the Washington Group, Ketchum's lobbying firm, and president of Ketchum Public Affairs. Were the Ketchum link disclosed, perhaps some real NBC reporter might find the nerve to ask her what other Karen Ryans and Armstrong Williamses might be on the Ketchum payroll. Or not.
The Bush propagandists have been successful at many tasks, from fomenting the canard that Iraqis attacked on 9/11 to deflecting moral outrage from Abu Ghraib and toward indecency as defined by its Federal Communications Commission. But Social Security may be a bridge too far even for propaganda machinery of this heft. Polls find that an ever-increasing majority of the country rejects the idea of letting Wall Street get its hands on its retirement savings.
Americans do have short memories, but it's the administration's bad luck that not just Kenny Boy but a whole brigade of bubble plutocrats have lately been yanked back into the spotlight by their legal travails: WorldCom's Bernard J. Ebbers, Tyco's L. Dennis Kozlowski, HealthSouth's Richard M. Scrushy, Global Crossing's Gary Winnick. No one is glad to see them. The public knows that the economy has not fully mended, and that there remain different economic rules for insiders than for the panelists drafted for the presidential Social Security roadshow. The new bankruptcy bill embraced this month by Republicans and Democrats alike throws Americans paying usurious credit-card interest to the wolves even as wealthy debtors remain protected.
You can catch the public mood in the reaction to Martha Stewart's homecoming. Despite the news media's heavy-breathing efforts to hype her emergence from jail as the heartwarming comeback of a born-again humanitarian, the bottom line shows that few in the audience are buying it. The Martha Stewart Omnimedia stock price started tumbling the moment she was back on camera, in line with the cratered circulation and ad sales of her magazine. Handing out hot cocoa to reporters at her Bedford, N.Y., estate did not turn the tide, and her spinoff of "The Apprentice" may be arriving just as the country is getting sick of C.E.O.'s again. Coincidentally or not, ratings for the existing "Apprentice" are off in tandem with the filing for bankruptcy protection by Donald Trump's casino empire, the saturation coverage of his lavish nuptials and the introduction of a Trump fragrance.
It's against this backdrop that the returning Mr. Lay - completely unrepentant, still purporting on "60 Minutes" that he's an innocent victim of others - could be the Democrats' new best friend. A Texas tycoon who helped create the political career of George W. Bush only to be discarded when scandal struck has re-emerged at just the precise moment when he might do his old buddy the most harm.

if you were there, as a reporter or a wall street investor, would you want to recognize the fact these enron people were trying to pull the proverbial wool past your eyes, over your mouth and into a straight-jacket of propaganda?

in this next piece, we see how insidious our own tax-dollar funded propaganda is.

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV NewsBy DAVID BARSTOW and ROBIN STEIN Published: March 13, 2005
It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.
To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.
Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters about the origin of the news segments they distribute. The reports themselves, though, are designed to fit seamlessly into the typical local news broadcast. In most cases, the "reporters" are careful not to state in the segment that they work for the government. Their reports generally avoid overt ideological appeals. Instead, the government's news-making apparatus has produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts describing a vigilant and compassionate administration.
Some reports were produced to support the administration's most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters, like the administration's efforts to offer free after-school tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight holiday drunken driving. They often feature "interviews" with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.
Some of the segments were broadcast in some of the nation's largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.
An examination of government-produced news reports offers a look inside a world where the traditional lines between public relations and journalism have become tangled, where local anchors introduce prepackaged segments with "suggested" lead-ins written by public relations experts. It is a world where government-produced reports disappear into a maze of satellite transmissions, Web portals, syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge cleansed on the other side as "independent" journalism.
It is also a world where all participants benefit.

by the way, the yellow is meant to represent the color of journalism evident. i went to school for journalism and my experience was that there were a few people who were conscientious and who would make fine journalists. the majority were lazy, hazy or just trying to get some course credit. but i was at a community college. based on the "news," i see on tv, based on lies even in this cornerstone paper i've been pasting here, based on that guy who made up all those stories at the nation, (was it the nation?) i assume it was no different at columbia u or the ohio state university.

this next piece is an example of how our president treats all this kind of stuff. he pooh-poohs it. that's his own form of propaganda. he says it as if an logical person would recognize it's business as usual and who the hell are these paranoid conspiracy theorists anyway who think there's harm around every corner, geez he's just a good texan and a good american and damn it he's steering the course in a mean angry world for all of our good. i remember him complaining about liberal hollywood back in his early days and how the right had to harness that propaganda machine that reaches people. this has got to be at least partially why arnold ran in the first place and certainly why this administration is spending through the nose on propaganda.

Bush Defends Offering Video News ReleasesBy RICHARD W. STEVENSON Published: March 17, 2005
WASHINGTON, March 16 - President Bush on Wednesday defended his administration's practice of providing television stations with video news releases that resemble actual news reports, saying that the practice was legal and that it was up to broadcasters to make clear that any of the releases they used on the air were produced by the government.
Responding to a question during his news conference in the White House briefing room, Mr. Bush said he expected cabinet agencies to abide by a Justice Department memorandum circulated last week that concluded video news releases were legal as long as they were factual and not intended to advocate the administration's positions.
"This has been a longstanding practice of the federal government to use these types of videos," Mr. Bush said. "The Agricultural Department, as I understand it, has been using these videos for a long period of time. The Defense Department, other departments have been doing so. It's important that they be based on the guidelines set out by the Justice Department."
Mr. Bush said it would be "helpful if local stations then disclosed to their viewers" that any portions of the releases they used were produced by the government, but he added that, "evidently, in some cases, that's not the case."
The New York Times reported on Sunday that at least 20 government agencies have made and distributed hundreds of video news releases in the last four years. Many of them were broadcast on local news programs without any public acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
Pressed on why the government does not require that broadcasters identify the material as being government-produced, Mr. Bush said that "there's a procedure that we're going to follow," and that if there is a "deep concern" about the releases appearing on the air as if they were journalistic reports, then local stations "ought to tell their viewers what they're watching." The administration's use of the video news releases paid for by taxpayers has drawn criticism from some Democrats in Congress, and Democrats are also raising questions about the way in which television stations use them. In a letter sent on Monday to Michael K. Powell, the departing chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, the senior Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, asked the commission to investigate whether stations were misleading their viewers.
"Until now, attention has largely focused on whether certain V.N.R.'s created by the federal government violated the restriction on using appropriated funds for publicity or propaganda," Mr. Inouye said in the letter. "However, equally as serious is growing evidence that certain broadcasters are editing government-created V.N.R.'s to make it appear as if such information is the result of independent news gathering."

Here's more of the same. the gao comptroller does his job and bush makes fun ofhim like he showed up at pistol duel with a swiss army knife.

Administration Is Warned About Its 'News' Videos By ANNE E. KORNBLUT Published: February 19, 2005 WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 - The comptroller general has issued a blanket warning that reminds federal agencies they may not produce newscasts promoting administration policies without clearly stating that the government itself is the source. Twice in the last two years, agencies of the federal government have been caught distributing prepackaged television programs that used paid spokesmen acting as newscasters and, in violation of federal law, failed to disclose the administration's role in developing and financing them. And those were not isolated incidents, David M. Walker, the comptroller general, said in a letter dated Thursday that put all agency heads on notice about the practice. In fact, it has become increasingly common for federal agencies to adopt the public relations tactic of producing "video news releases" that look indistinguishable from authentic newscasts and, as ready-made and cost-free reports, are sometimes picked up by local news programs. It is illegal for the government to produce or distribute such publicity material domestically without disclosing its own role. Mr. Walker, who as comptroller general is chief of the Government Accountability Office, Congress's investigative arm, said in his letter: "While agencies generally have the right to disseminate information about their policies and activities, agencies may not use appropriated funds to produce or distribute prepackaged news stories intended to be viewed by television audiences that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials." "It is not enough," he added, "that the contents of an agency's communication may be unobjectionable." Mr. Walker's letter was made available late Friday afternoon by Democrats on Capitol Hill. Asked for a response Friday night, the White House had no immediate comment. The two best-known cases of such video news releases - one concerning the new Medicare law, the other an antidrug campaign by the Bush administration - drew sharp rebukes from the G.A.O. after separate investigations last year found that the agencies involved had violated the law. Those cases were followed by disclosures that the government had paid at least one conservative commentator, Armstrong Williams, to promote the administration's No Child Left Behind education measure and had put two other conservative writers on the federal payroll to help develop programs. These episodes have prompted calls from Democrats for stricter oversight of the administration's publicity practices, which have cost millions of dollars of federal revenue. In the Medicare case, a video made in the style of a newscast featured a spokeswoman named Karen Ryan who claimed to be reporting from Washington on Medicare law changes strongly backed by the administration but opposed by many Democrats, who consider them a windfall for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. In part of one script, she said that "all people with Medicare will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending." Often there is an intermediary in the process: a public relations firm hired by a government agency to produce a polished video and direct other aspects of a publicity drive. One centrally involved firm is Ketchum, a giant in the public relations industry whose representatives arranged for both the Medicare video and the contract with Mr. Williams, a pact that is now under investigation by three government agencies. Ketchum has received $97 million in government public relations contracts since 2001. The G.A.O. letter did not caution agencies to curtail their publicity practices, telling them simply to adhere to disclosure requirements. "Prepackaged news stories," Mr. Walker wrote, "can be utilized without violating the law, so long as there is clear disclosure to the television viewing audience that this material was prepared by or in cooperation with the government department or agency." But Democrats said they hoped the letter would lead to tougher scrutiny of what they describe as an aggressive publicity machine within the administration. "The G.A.O. is sending a clear message to the Bush administration: shut down the propaganda mill," Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey said in a statement on Friday. "The G.A.O. is simply telling the White House to stop manipulating media, stop paying journalists and be straight with the American people."

while i think there is a fat chance that will happen, i still can't help but think since i recognize people trying to pull the wool over my eyes, since i recognize the propaganda in my own society, (in our democracy,) others can to.

i saw some grass roots advertising (propaganda,) recently from an aircraft manufacturer. (i think it was northrup.) i thought to myself, does northrup really care that much? are they protecting the environment and making the communities they are located in happier, more peaceful, places to live? and why is this ad on during csi? aircraft buyers are known to watch ridiculous crime dramas? or does northrup need a shot in the arm of public goodwill to ensure a certain legislation passes which will affect their business, or something similiar to that? did a republican controlled congress trot out the famous baseball players to discuss the well being of america's children as it relates to steroid use all the while taking photos and collecting autographs "backstage," in order to distract the public from a certain alaskan wilderness drilling the american public has said no to so many times in the past? it seems to me propaganda comes in many forms and guises-sometimes it is merely distraction.

lastly, i offer a couple quotes. . .

"i believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the rights of the people by the gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
-James Madison

"The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government."
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

jesus gets head

so korn gave head to jesus, eh? and i just saw footage of cat stevens on pbs singin' peace train which made me wonder about these rock stars that go religious. kerry livgren of kansas went christian back when i was a campus crusader for christ. phil keaggy left glass harp. kendall jones left fishbone. we all know about the reverand al, hammer and little richard. i'm pretty sure bob dylan has tried every religion at least once and i'm left wondering, what's it take to get someone to invite justin timberlake to church?

so rock stars are just like the rest of us. some join cults, (then accuse their sane band members of kidnapping them when they were just trying to really save them.) i could care less about this head guy since korn is my least favorite vegetable in the rock garden but damn that allah for snapping up cat stevens and making him change his name to yusuf islam. seeing him as he was back then i am reminded of how christians often characterize new converts. cat looked like he had a certain joy inside of him that just expressed itself when he sang. his moppy head bouncing from side to side embodied the peace and love ideals of the hippie movement. his songs were all about peace and love, (and understanding.) seems such a shame.

i wonder if people, who grow up without a religious background then arrive at a celebrity status, react to excess in such a way they feel untethered and in need of some sort of a lifeline. whatever one is denied as a child, seems fertile ground for overindulgence or abuse when access is granted as an adult. how many pastor's children have gone astray, succumbing to the temptations of the flesh? how many who grew up outside of a loving environment end up as cheaters in relationships because they can't get enough love as adults? is cat stevens just the opposite? i don't know his story but i wonder if he, (or this "head," guy, from korn,) grew up with parents who did not instill religious values or ideas in them as children.

hmmm. if prince is all about love, love, lovin' you up 24/7. . .would it make sense if his parent's relationship was abusive? since elvis wanted to numb himself constantly with drugs, were his parents religious zealots? since bono has this huge rock star persona would it follow that his parents were working class irish contented with the day to day grind of life? (dang. this just gets easier as i go.) since eddie vedder reads a lot and is politically active does that mean he grew up in a single parent environment and that parent had no time for such pursuits? if natalie cole hopped a train in chicago at 3:30. . .ah never mind. (i won't even try kurt cobain.)

well, this is how it goes sometimes. you start off thinking about musicians who feel guilty and next thing you know, you're off on a tangent about how we all want to kill our parents by becoming their anti-doppelgangers. i'm sure korn won't miss head. and since head is not incarcerated, i'm still trying to figure out how he found jesus.

from run to rage

so a friend of mine wrote a piece about run dmc and how they affected him and how rap music looked and sounded to him back in the day. in turn, i took a stroll down memory lane myself, conjuring my own thoughts on run dmc and rap.

run dmc crashed onto the scene when i had just signed up for uncle sam's air force. i remember being in the air force firefighting academy, near the university of illinois in champaign, when i first heard it. autumn, 1985.

"cuase it's like that, and that's the way it is!"

that is the single line i really remember. i remember them introducing the world to the beastie boys and their ill communication record. i was in my dorm-style room on an air base in japan when my friend art burst into the room to tell me i needed to go down to his room with him real quick to hear this new rap group. he played brass monkey for me first and we danced around the room mocking a girl we had seen dancing in an aomori disco. despite the energy that came from this record, and the run dmc records and many of the early rap records, i resisted rap.

looking back i remind myself of john oates in that mtv round table discussion where madonna is talking about video adding to the art of music and oates is complaining that it takes away from the musicianship that could have made it to the record. . . (what a maroon.) but i looked at rap similiarly. it bugged me these artists were sampling the works of others to compose their song. i thought there was a low talent requirement as rap consisted of poetry spoken to a beat. yeah, i enjoyed sugar hill bunch's rapper's delight. i can rap most of that song myself, to this day. but i looked at it initially as a novelty song. i enjoyed looking at it that way and at that time, i could not imagine an entire genre springing up as rap. (there is something liberating about discovering the errors of one's own thought.)

later that year i bought the very special christmas release because u2 had it's christmas (baby please come home,) on it and i got a large shot of

"it's christmas time in hollis, queens, mom's cookin' chicken and collared greens!"

i still wasn't buying rap records, not the beasties, not run dmc, but i could enjoy a rap song here or there.

when i wasn't wearing enlisted green, i wore black on the outside 'cause black was how i felt on the inside. at that time, my world was exploding with discontent, the good kind of discontent that reminds you you are alive, the kind that allows you to overcome dominating adult figures of childhood, the kind that exposes the multitude of lies proffered throughout adolesence, the kind of discontent that urges one to question everything. i was listening to the smiths, (and u2 and the cure. . .) i identified more with morrissey crooning,

"i know i'm unloveable, you don't have to tell me,"

than the records i saw as party/good time oriented. and that's why the first rap act i really embraced, (read: "bought their records,") was public enemy. while my little brother got into nwa and hung posters of eazy e in my bedroom, i tried to persuade him to switch, (to no avail.) chuck d is still one of the most down, righteous, badass artists on the planet. and it was the political bend that drew me in.

"elvis, was a hero to most, elvis, was a hero to most, elvis, was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me!"

now that's the kind of rebellion i wanted. the rebellion that went right to the core of the establishment, of white, corporate america. later de la soul caught my fancy, and pm dawn, and then came rage, (or, ratm, if you will.) fuck all the other rappers and rap acts. i get into a 'whose the best rapper ever,' conversation with friends and i always say zack and they always laugh. it's like they don't think him a real rapper. but what rap does, where it has that ability to make you jump out of your seat like your ass is on fire, the way it makes your body contract and coil and flail about involuntarily because the rhythm of the rhyme is rhythm2, pounding beat2, funkify2, well, when the element of real rage, over real important things, is added to the equation, it's just that much more powerful. so when zack raps,

"i'm rollin' down rodeo with a shotgun, these people aint seen a brown-skinned man since their grandparents bought one,"

and tom morello follows on the guitar with those rythmic, scratching sounds, eh-enh, enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh, eh-enh, enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh-enh. . .it represented the penultimate power of rap for me. and i adore this now defunct band. i love the way tom morello shared his harvard education with zack de la rocha and as a team, they constructed these wild-ass, angry diatribes against injustice. where dj jazzy jeff and the fresh prince made fun saying

"parents just don't understand,"

rage against the machine were a bit more direct and serious about what they had to say:

"fuck you i won't do what you tell me! . ."

when doug e said,

"lahdy dahddy, we love to pahdy,"

it was fun. you couldn't help but chime in about calling up your mother. but when zack said,

"fear is your only god on the radio-turn it off,"

it was a mantra for survival in this fear-stricken, corporate greed marketing overrun, society. it was a rapping, musical manifesto and if you were fortunate enough, as i was, to be in the hollywood palladium, right in front of the stage in the pit, when they kicked out the jams live, you would know the power of all rock and roll, of all music, and certainly of rap. i remember being in this crowd of sweaty bodies. i remember it at coachella, in the dry, hot, night-time desert air. i remember rage against the machine outside, post rain storm, at alpine valley for the tibetan freedom concert. (i remember looking back at a sea of white faces behind me bopping ever so slightly to the beat but seeming bewildered by these angry politicos.) i remember three times one summer seeing them open for u2: in denver the reception was cool but rage was in great form, in san diego they were typically good but in la, 100,000 people at the coliseum seemed more familiar and open to their tirades and for me, it was a love-in. u2 and rage. . . (all props to u2 by the way. thanks to them, [and opening for them over the years,] i have seen: lone justice, the pixies, public enemy, the sugarcubes, and rage against the machine.) still, it was in the parking lot of staples center for the 2000 democratic national convention where it was best, with al gore and a host of cronies inside. it is simply an amazing thing to pulse with a throng of would be combatants, in the pit for rage against the machine, che guevara peering out at us from morello's shirt, generallisimo marcos and the zapatiste rebellion in chiapas on our minds, hammering our weight back to the earth in time to the bass drum, fists pumping in the air in the name of causes, aggressive camaraderie, whispering at first.

"Brotha, did ya forget ya name? Did ya lose it on the wall Playin' tic-tac-toe? "

louder.

"Yo, check the diagonal Three million gone Come on Cause they're counting backwards to zero Environment"

ticking.

"The environment exceeding on the level Of our unconciousness For example What does the billboard say Come and play, come and play Forget about the movement "

screaming.

"Anger is a gift Freedom, Freedom, yeah right"

there never would have been a ratm had their not been a run dmc. i suppose it can be traced back further, to sugar hill bunch or blondie, just like the beatles and stones built on top of the bluesman of old, (and i'm sure they borrowed too.) (it's a bit like bono said, "every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief, all kill their inspiration and sing about the grief.") anyway, this conjuring run dmc takes me on a journey of my own, through my own memories of yore, that i so adore.

just before the end of the century i took a trip to wisconsin via chicago to see that tibetan freedom concert. (i think it was year 2?) it was a parade of excellent bands really, but when run dmc showed up on stage, i think the place was more rambunctious than when their protoges cum benefactors, the beastie boys, followed them. it was all right there for me. run dmc, the beastie boys and rage against the machine. i guess it came full circle. and rap is spawning its own genres now. i suppose this is the way of rock and roll. in the absence of new technology, without a discovery of another wavelength for our ears to hear on, there can only be fusions and variations for now. and there will always be cannibals and thieves.

"Killing in the name of. . ."