George Orwell’s special Olympics message: Sports are bunk

another from Dangerous Minds

In 1945, as all combatant nations were recovering from World War II, a notable “friendly” football (soccer) match took place in England. Football had been put on ice since 1939, and fans and athletes alike were eager for a resumption of the action. A Russian armed forces team had scored impressive victories over both its British and French counterparts, and the time had come for a top Russian team to take on a top British club. And thus it was that on November 13, 1945, FC Dynamo Moscow arrived at Stamford Bridge to take on Chelsea FC. The attendance was officially listed at 74,496, but the true attendance is usually estimated to be between 100,000 and 120,000. Chelsea led at halftime 2-0, but the Dynamos were able to make it 2-2, and each side tacked on another goal each before the end of play. (Four days later, the Dyamos walloped Cardiff City 10-1.)


A Chelsea shot narrowly misses against the Dynamos.

About a month after FC Dynamo Moscow went home, a prominent (but hardly famous) journalist for the Tribune named George Orwell published an acid reflection on the nature of nationalism and athletics. In the piece, titled “The Sporting Spirit,” Orwell argued that, contrary to all assurances that nation-based sports competitions foster brotherhood and understanding among the peoples of the world (you will hear endless statements from Sochi over the next two weeks), such events, if anything, generate a modicum of ill will among national groups. The whole thing, according to Orwell, has the flavor of the jingoism that is whipped up before all wars.

Orwell clearly had little interest in sports and is missing part of the picture of fandom for a national team (or even a regional team like our pro squads), but the part he gleaned is instructive, and the entire essay is worth reading. Here are some of the choice bits:

Now that the brief visit of the Dynamo football team has come to an end, it is possible to say publicly what many thinking people were saying privately before the Dynamos ever arrived. That is, that sport is an unfailing cause of ill-will, and that if such a visit as this had any effect at all on Anglo-Soviet relations, it could only be to make them slightly worse than before….

As soon as strong feelings of rivalry are aroused, the notion of playing the game according to the rules always vanishes. People want to see one side on top and the other side humiliated, and they forget that victory gained through cheating or through the intervention of the crowd is meaningless. Even when the spectators don’t intervene physically they try to influence the game by cheering their own side and “rattling” opposing players with boos and insults. Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting….

If you wanted to add to the vast fund of ill-will existing in the world at this moment, you could hardly do it better than by a series of football matches between Jews and Arabs, Germans and Czechs, Indians and British, Russians and Poles, and Italians and Jugoslavs, each match to be watched by a mixed audience of 100,000 spectators.

Orwell’s bleak conception of sports wouldn’t change over the years. A few years later, in his novel 1984, the following sentence appears: “Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.”

Here’s a brief Russian report on the Dynamos-Chelsea match. Note the throngs of spectators crowding along the sidelines.

Dozens of Fela Kuti albums available for free streaming

from Dangerous Minds:

A Metafilter user going by the wonderful handle “flapjax at midnite” has alerted the world to the existence of a Bandcamp page full of complete Fela Kuti LPs. 48 of them, in fact, which I don’t believe is even his complete discography.

If you’re unfamiliar, good lord take this opportunity! Fela (1938-1997) was an inestimably important African artist who began making music in the late ‘50s, and in the ‘60s pioneered a compelling fusion of psych-rock, funk, jazz, and traditional Nigerian music that he dubbed “Afrobeat.” His music dealt with themes of social justice, which, as he was a Pan-African and a Socialist, got him in major and repeated deep shit in the repressive milieu of Nigeria. The mid ’70s album Zombie, for example, was a blistering attack on the Nigerian military, whose response to the insult included fatally defenestrating his mother in a brutal raid on the Lagos commune in which he, his family, and his band lived. The 1989 release Beasts of No Nation—the recording that served as my introduction to his work—was a lengthy and stunning piece he wrote after being freed from a stint in prison on a politically motivated and trumped up currency smuggling charge.

Now, as heroic as his political struggles were, the man was not unproblematic. It’d be plain wrong to lionize him for his musical innovations and political engagement while leaving out that he was a polygamist who could be disturbingly misogynistic.

There are plenty of good entry points into Fela’s work, but among my favorites is the absolutely KILLER Live With Ginger Baker. The Cream drummer’s African sojurn is a story unto itself, and had no small impact on the development of that continent’s rock music in the ’70s.

Lastly, here’s some great footage from Catalonian television in the ‘80s, mixing interview material with a live concert, a combination which imparts a good sense of the man and his work.

Funny but serious Chomsky clips for the day Listen carefully with all you got...

Final Jimi Hendrix interview, one week before he died

from Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds

“When things get too heavy just call me helium—the lightest known gas to man.” - Jimi Hendrix

The sad (and beautiful) thing about this interview—the last interview Jimi Hendrix ever gave on September 11, 1970, a week before his death at the age of 27—is how happy the guy seemed.

He sounds neither druggy, nor in any way troubled. Full of life and excited about where his music was taking him.

The animation was done by Patrick Smith at Blank on Blank. Produced by David Gerlach. The interview was conducted by Keith Altham and you can hear the full recording at RocksBackPages.com

EYES ON THE PRIZE Ain't Scared of Your Jails, 1960-1961

Episode 3

Ain't scared of your jails chronicles the courage displayed by thousands of young people and college students who joined the ranks of the movement and gave it new direction. In 1960, lunch counter sit-ins spread across the South, may organized by the new, energetic Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1961, on the Freedom Rides, many young people faced violence and defied death threats as they labored to obliterate segregation in interstate bus travel below the Mason-Dixon Line. The growing movement toward racial equality influenced the 1960 Presidential campaign; and federal rights versus state's rights became an issue.

From Pythagorean to Pescatarian – The Evolution of Vegetarianism

from PBS.org

On her website The History Kitchen, Tori Avey explores the story behind the food – why we eat what we eat, how the recipes of different cultures have evolved, and how yesterday’s food can inspire us in the kitchen today.

“Good food is a celebration of life, and it seems absurd to me that in celebrating life we should take life.”
- Anna Thomas, The Vegetarian Epicure, 1972

The word vegetarian is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “a person who does not eat meat or fish and sometimes other animal products, especially for moral, religious, or health reasons.” While this is a good broad definition of the vegetarian diet, the actual practice of vegetarianism is somewhat less clear-cut. There are several subcategories of vegetarianism including ovolactarians, who eat dairy products and eggs but abstain from meat, and lactarians, who eat dairy products but abstain from meat and eggs. Some people include fish in their diet but still consider themselves vegetarians; a new name for this lifestyle, pescatarian, has recently emerged. Vegans are the strictest subcategory of the vegetarian movement, abstaining from all animal-based products. Strict followers of veganism do not eat honey or wear leather or wool. While religion sometimes calls for a vegetarian or vegan diet, over the years we have seen an increasing number of individuals choosing not to consume animal products based on their personal beliefs.

Some of the first self-proclaimed vegetarians were the Pythagoreans, a title derived from the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, creator of the geometric Pythagorean theorem. Though Pythagoras loaned his name to the meatless diet, it is unclear whether or not he followed a strict vegetarian regimen. Some suspect that in addition to his usual breakfast of honey and dinner of barley bread with vegetables that he may have eaten fish as well, which would have made him a pescatarian by today’s standards. Followers of Pythagoras adopted his dietary restrictions, believing that they were helpful in aiding longevity. The teachings of Pythagorus were first published in modern terms by Italian writer and physician Antonio Cocchi; in 1745 they were translated into English by Robert Dodsley. An account of his diet also appeared in the Greek philosopher Porphyry’s book On Abstinence from Animal Food (3rd century B.C.E.). The influential historical document includes some of the very same arguments that modern day vegetarians use when praising the merits of a meatless diet.



Humans abstained from eating animal flesh long before Pythagoras, though the first significant rise in vegetarianism based on principle likely occurred during classical times. The term “vegetarian” replaced Pythagorean on September 29, 1847 in Ramsgate, England when the first vegetarian society was formed. Three years later, a similar group known as the American Vegetarian Society was founded in New York City by William Metcalfe, Sylvester Graham, William Alcott and Russell Trall. Many notable feminists and abolitionists attended early meetings of the American Vegetarian Society including Susan B. Anthony, Horace Greeley, Lucy Stone and Amelia Bloomer. Founding member William Metcalfe was a member of the Bible Christian Church, a vegetarian church founded in England in 1809. When he arrived in Philadelphia with his wife Susanna in 1817, they founded an American branch of the Bible Christian Church, the first vegetarian church in America. In 1821 he published a pamphlet of a sermon inspired by Porphyry’s work, titled On Abstinence from the Flesh of Animals. The pamphlet proved to be influential in converting some of the most important members at the start of America’s vegetarian movement, including William Alcott, America’s first vegetarian physician, and Protestant minister Sylvester Graham. Amos Bronson Alcott, father of Little Women author Louisa May Alcott, co-founded America’s first vegetarian commune, Fruitlands, in Massachusetts.

The vegetarian movement gained momentum through the decades thanks to several influential historical figures. Upton Sinclair unknowingly contributed to the movement when his novel The Jungle spawned both the Pure Food and Drug Act and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1906. Sinclair was not a vegetarian for long, but his depiction of the unsanitary practices of the meat packing industry turned many Americans away from consuming animal flesh. John Harvey Kellogg, king of cold breakfast cereal and creator of cornflakes, was a strong advocate of vegetarianism and preached its benefits until the 1940s. In 1947 a short-lived political group known as the American Vegetarian Party formed in hopes of putting forth a successful candidate in the 1948 presidential election. They chose Chicago citizen, naturopathic doctor and restaurateur John Maxwell. Of course Maxwell did not win (in fact he was born in England, which made him ineligible), but the party continued to nominate candidates in every election until 1964.



Many noteworthy individuals throughout history have practiced vegetarianism during their lives, including Benjamin Franklin. While working as a printer at age 16, he was inspired by the vegetarian philosophy discussed in Thomas Tryon’s The Way to Health and Long Life. He began a short-lived diet of bread and water, which he believed made him as ‘stout and hearty’ as he’d ever been. In his autobiography, Franklin describes preparing a few of Tryon’s dishes, including boiled rice or potatoes and hasty pudding. He found that the diet had its economic advantages. His food expenses were decreased by half, affording him the opportunity to purchase more books for his collection. Franklin soon became an advocate of animal rights, which easily fit in with his anti-slavery and political rights agenda. Alas, his vegetarianism did not last for long. While traveling on a ship, he witnessed smaller fish being removed from the stomachs of cod that had been caught and butchered. Upon seeing this, according to his own writings, Franklin had a change of heart: “If you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you.” That day he indulged in a piece of fish, thus ending his time as a vegetarian.



American cookbooks dedicated to vegetarian cooking began popping up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One such early publication is E.G. Fulton’s The Vegetarian Cookbook, released in 1910. The book, like many early vegetarian cookbooks, contains several recipes containing protose, a meat substitute invented by John Harvey Kellogg. Though an exact recipe for protose is difficult to track down, several have tried to recreate its unique flavor and texture with a combination of wheat gluten, peanut butter, onion and herbs. During the 70s, cookbooks began to address the lack of protein associated with a vegetarian diet. Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet (1971) includes tips for cooking with high protein ingredients like peanuts, beans and grains. A section “concerning the amount of usable protein and the percent of daily protein allowance found in each serving” follows each recipe. When Anna Thomas published The Vegetarian Epicure in 1972, she had become frustrated with recipes that relied on meat substitutes. Her cookbook celebrated the variety and flavor of meatless meals without the need for substitution, signaling a new culinary approach to vegetarianism that continues to this day.

With vegetarianism on the rise, it’s now common for restaurants to feature vegetarian menus or meatless entrée alternatives. Grocery stores carry a large variety of vegetarian options, proving that there is a strong market for meatless products. With proper attention to nutritional intake, it is entirely possible for vegetarians and vegans to live a long and healthy life.

Do you follow a vegetarian or vegan diet? What are your reasons for adopting this lifestyle?

You can uncover more fascinating food history on Tori’s website: The History Kitchen.


Research Sources
-----------------------
Davidson, Alan (1999). Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford University Press, USA.

Fisher, Carol (2006). The American Cookbook. McFarland and Co, Inc., Jefferson, North Carolina.

Franklin, Benjamin (1996). The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Dover Publications, US.

Fulton, E.G. The Vegetarian Cook Book (1910). Pacific Press Publishing Company, Oakland, California.

Maurer, Donna (2002).Vegetarianism: Movement Or Moment: Promoting A Lifestyle For Cult Change. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Smith, Andrew F. (2007). The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Oxford University Press, New York, New York.

Stuart, Tristram (2006). The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, New York.

Disgraceland: Steven Van Zandt rips on Paul Simon

from BackStreets via Amber at Dangerous Minds



Little Steven at a press conference where Coretta Scott King accepted the first $50,000 check (on behalf of The Africa Fund) from Artists United Against Apartheid, 1985)

Perhaps one of my least punk predilections is a weakness for Paul Simon, and the album Graceland, specifically. It’s not that I have any compunction about liking “mom rock,” (moms are awesome, and my love for Carole King is also well-documented), but Graceland is steeped in some pretty nasty history. For one, I’m inclined to believe Los Lobos, who appear on the last track, “All Around the World or The Myth of Fingerprints,” when they say Simon should have given them a writing credit. The album made bank, and he certainly could have stood to give them credit and a little compensation.

But the most well-known controversy of Graceland is Simon’s refusal to cooperate with the cultural boycott of Apartheid—most of the album was recorded in South Africa, but Simon apparently considered himself exempt from the politics of the situation, since he had been invited by South African musicians and didn’t play live shows in the country. I’ll be the first to admit that cultural boycotts can be difficult to understand. From an artist’s perspective, no one wants to be told to avoid an audience or a musical collaboration because their governing body is corrupt. But Paul Simon pulled what we refer to in radical political circles as a “total dick move.”

If he was really committed to solidarity with South Africans (which he insists, to this day, that he was), it would have been incredibly easy for him to just ask the African National Congress if it was cool for him to visit, just to make sure that he wasn’t, ya know… undermining the struggle for liberation of a long-suffering people. He was even explicitly advised by Harry Belafonte to do just that, (and when Harry Belafonte gives you civil rights advice, you’d best just listen). Simon decided he was just going to go, and upon his arrival, he was treated to protests, with signs demanding, “Yankee Go Home” and “Go Back Simon.”

And here’s the thing—he still hasn’t fucking apologized. I’m not sure if it’s because the album was incredibly successful or because it broke South African vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo to a larger audience, but he seems to think the legacy of Graceland completely excuses his totally politically unconscionable transgression. In Under African Skies, the 2012 documentary on the album, he’s still a smug dick about it.

And this is why I love Steven Van Zandt. In addition to being a truly brilliant musician, a dedicated and studious curator of rock ‘n’ roll history, and Silvio Dante, Little Steven is down with the people, and a committed activist. In a recent interview with rock critic Dave Marsh on his Sirius/XM radio program Kick Out The Jams with Dave Marsh, he discussed his work with Artists United Against Apartheid. The whole thing was fascinating, but the very best part is Van Zandt hilariously calling out Paul Simon.

Picking up from the point where Little Steven tells the armed resistance movement, the Azanian People’s Organisation, not to just fucking assassinate Paul Simon for his bullshit…

Dave Marsh: I was with you the first time you saw Paul and talked to him about this, at [entertainment attorney] Peter Parcher’s 60th birthday party.

Van Zandt: That’s right, that’s right, that’s right! I’m glad you were a witness, because wait’ll you hear the latest on that. Anyway, I said to them, “Listen, this is not gonna help anybody if you knock off Paul Simon. Trust me on this, alright? Let’s put that aside for the moment. Give me a year or so, you know, six months,” whatever I asked for, “to try and do this a different way. I’m trying to actually unify the music community around this, which may or may not include Paul Simon, but I don’t want it to be a distraction. I just don’t need that distraction right now; I gotta keep my eye on the ball.” And I took him off that assassination list, I took Paul Simon off the U.N. blacklist, trying to...

You mean you convinced them to take him off…

Yeah, because this was a serious thing…

Because this was gonna eat up the attention that the movement itself needed.

Yes, and the European unions were serious about this stuff, man. You were on that [U.N. blacklist], you did not work, okay? Not like America, which was so-so about this stuff, man. Over there, they were serious about this stuff, you know? Anyway, so yeah, this was in spite of Paul Simon approaching me at that party saying, “What are you doing, defending this communist?!”

What he said was, “Ah, the ANC [African National Congress, the organization of which Mandela was President at the time of his arrest and imprisonment], that’s just the Russians.” And he mentioned the group that [murdered black South African activist Steven Biko] had been in, which was not AZAPO…

Was he PAC [Pan-Africanist Congress]?

It doesn’t matter [for this story], but [Paul Simon] said, “That’s just the Chinese communists.”

Yeah, yeah. And he says, “What are you doing defending this guy Mandela?! He’s obviously a communist. My friend Henry Kissinger told me about where all of the money’s coming from,” and all of this. I was, like, all due respect, Paul…

I remember it very vividly, because it was aimed at everybody standing in the general direction.

Yeah, but mostly he was telling me.

Well, yeah, you were the one… Everybody knew who to get mad at first. [laughter]

He knew more than me, he knew more than Mandela, he knew more than the South African people. His famous line, of course, was, “Art transcends politics.” And I said to him, “All due respect, Paulie, but not only does art not transcend politics… art is politics. And I’m telling you right now, you and Henry Kissinger, your buddy, go fuck yourselves.” Or whatever I said. But he had that attitude, and he knowingly and consciously violated the boycott to publicize his record.

Well, to make his record. That’s the violation of the boycott — to make his record.

Yeah, and he actually had the nerve to say, “Well, I paid everybody double-scale.” Remember that one? Oh, that’s nice… no arrogance in that statement, huh? [laughter]

Now, the punchline. Cut to 30 years later, or whatever it is. He asked me to be in his movie [Under African Skies, the documentary on the making of Graceland, included as a DVD in the album’s 25th anniversary boxed edition]. I said, “Alright, I’ll be in your movie, if you don’t edit me. You ready to tell it like it is?”

He says, “Yep.”

“Are you, like, uh, apologizing in this movie?”

“Yep.”

“Okay. I’m not gonna be a sore winner. I’ll talk to you.”

I did an interview. They show me the footage. Of course, they edited the hell out of it to some little statement where I’m saying something positive about Paul. [laughter] And I see the rest of the footage, where he’s supposedly apologizing, with Dali Tambo [founder of Artists Against Apartheid and son of late ANC leaders Adelaide and Oliver Tambo]. He says, “I’m sorry if I made it inconvenient for you.” That was his apology.

In other words, he still thinks he’s right, all these years later!

You’re the only person who’s ever met Paul twice who thinks that’s surprising. [laughter]

I mean, at this point, you still think you were right?! Meanwhile, that big “communist,” as soon as he got out of jail, I see who took the first picture with him. There’s Paul Simon and Mandela, good buddies. I’m watchin’ CNN the other day. Mandela dies, on comes a statement by Bono and the second statement’s by Paul Simon. I’m like oh, just make me throw up. You know, I like the guy in a lot of ways, I do; and I respect his work, of course. He’s a wonderful, wonderful artist, but when it comes to this subject, he just will not admit he was wrong. Y’know, just mea culpa. Come on, you won! He made twenty, thirty million dollars at least, okay? Take the money and apologize, okay? I mean, say “Listen, maybe I was wrong about this a little bit.” No.

Well…unfortunately we live in a country where the money means you don’t have to apologize, and let’s leave that there.

 

Via Backstreets

Marx's prescient predictions for the 21st century

from Rolling Stone via Boing Boing:

From the iPhone 5S to corporate globalization, modern life is full of evidence of Marx's foresight

In Rolling Stone, Sean McElwee enumerates five of Marx's predictions for late-stage capitalism that have largely come true in the 21st century, from globalization to the boom in luxury goods (what Marx called "imaginary appetites"):

1. The Great Recession (Capitalism's Chaotic Nature)
The inherently chaotic, crisis-prone nature of capitalism was a key part of Marx's writings. He argued that the relentless drive for profits would lead companies to mechanize their workplaces, producing more and more goods while squeezing workers' wages until they could no longer purchase the products they created. Sure enough, modern historical events from the Great Depression to the dot-com bubble can be traced back to what Marx termed "fictitious capital" – financial instruments like stocks and credit-default swaps. We produce and produce until there is simply no one left to purchase our goods, no new markets, no new debts. The cycle is still playing out before our eyes: Broadly speaking, it's what made the housing market crash in 2008. Decades of deepening inequality reduced incomes, which led more and more Americans to take on debt. When there were no subprime borrows left to scheme, the whole façade fell apart, just as Marx knew it would.

2. The iPhone 5S (Imaginary Appetites)
Marx warned that capitalism's tendency to concentrate high value on essentially arbitrary products would, over time, lead to what he called "a contriving and ever-calculating subservience to inhuman, sophisticated, unnatural and imaginary appetites." It's a harsh but accurate way of describing contemporary America, where we enjoy incredible luxury and yet are driven by a constant need for more and more stuff to buy. Consider the iPhone 5S you may own. Is it really that much better than the iPhone 5 you had last year, or the iPhone 4S a year before that? Is it a real need, or an invented one? While Chinese families fall sick with cancer from our e-waste, megacorporations are creating entire advertising campaigns around the idea that we should destroy perfectly good products for no reason. If Marx could see this kind of thing, he'd nod in recognition.

Marx Was Right: Five Surprising Ways Karl Marx Predicted 2014 [Sean McElwee/Rolling Stone]

One of the most influential books I've ever read:

SuperBowl and the Bullshit of Pro-SportsHow the NFL Fleeces Taxpayers

from The Atlantic:

Taxpayers fund the stadiums, antitrust law doesn't apply to broadcast deals, the league enjoys nonprofit status, and Commissioner Roger Goodell makes $30 million a year. It's time to stop the public giveaways to America's richest sports league—and to the feudal lords who own its teams.

Last year was a busy one for public giveaways to the National Football League. In Virginia, Republican Governor Bob McDonnell, who styles himself as a budget-slashing conservative crusader, took $4 million from taxpayers’ pockets and handed the money to the Washington Redskins, for the team to upgrade a workout facility. Hoping to avoid scrutiny, McDonnell approved the gift while the state legislature was out of session. The Redskins’ owner, Dan Snyder, has a net worth estimated by Forbes at $1 billion. But even billionaires like to receive expensive gifts.

Taxpayers in Hamilton County, Ohio, which includes Cincinnati, were hit with a bill for $26 million in debt service for the stadiums where the NFL’s Bengals and Major League Baseball’s Reds play, plus another $7 million to cover the direct operating costs for the Bengals’ field. Pro-sports subsidies exceeded the $23.6 million that the county cut from health-and-human-services spending in the current two-year budget (and represent a sizable chunk of the $119 million cut from Hamilton County schools). Press materials distributed by the Bengals declare that the team gives back about $1 million annually to Ohio community groups. Sound generous? That’s about 4 percent of the public subsidy the Bengals receive annually from Ohio taxpayers.

In Minnesota, the Vikings wanted a new stadium, and were vaguely threatening to decamp to another state if they didn’t get it. The Minnesota legislature, facing a $1.1 billion budget deficit, extracted $506 million from taxpayers as a gift to the team, covering roughly half the cost of the new facility. Some legislators argued that the Vikings should reveal their finances: privately held, the team is not required to disclose operating data, despite the public subsidies it receives. In the end, the Minnesota legislature folded, giving away public money without the Vikings’ disclosing information in return. The team’s principal owner, Zygmunt Wilf, had a 2011 net worth estimated at $322 million; with the new stadium deal, the Vikings’ value rose about $200 million, by Forbes’s estimate, further enriching Wilf and his family. They will make a token annual payment of $13 million to use the stadium, keeping the lion’s share of all NFL ticket, concession, parking, and, most important, television revenues.

After approving the $506 million handout, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton said, “I’m not one to defend the economics of professional sports … Any deal you make in that world doesn’t make sense from the way the rest of us look at it.” Even by the standards of political pandering, Dayton’s irresponsibility was breathtaking.

In California, the City of Santa Clara broke ground on a $1.3 billion stadium for the 49ers. Officially, the deal includes $116 million in public funding, with private capital making up the rest. At least, that’s the way the deal was announced. A new government entity, the Santa Clara Stadium Authority, is borrowing $950 million, largely from a consortium led by Goldman Sachs, to provide the majority of the “private” financing. Who are the board members of the Santa Clara Stadium Authority? The members of the Santa Clara City Council. In effect, the city of Santa Clara is providing most of the “private” funding. Should something go wrong, taxpayers will likely take the hit.

The 49ers will pay Santa Clara $24.5 million annually in rent for four decades, which makes the deal, from the team’s standpoint, a 40-year loan amortized at less than 1 percent interest. At the time of the agreement, 30-year Treasury bonds were selling for 3 percent, meaning the Santa Clara contract values the NFL as a better risk than the United States government.

Although most of the capital for the new stadium is being underwritten by the public, most football revenue generated within the facility will be pocketed by Denise DeBartolo York, whose net worth is estimated at $1.1 billion, and members of her family. York took control of the team in 2000 from her brother, Edward DeBartolo Jr., after he pleaded guilty to concealing an extortion plot by a former governor of Louisiana. Brother and sister inherited their money from their father, Edward DeBartolo Sr., a shopping-mall developer who became one of the nation’s richest men before his death in 1994. A generation ago, the DeBartolos made their money the old-fashioned way, by hard work in the free market. Today, the family’s wealth rests on political influence and California tax subsidies. Nearly all NFL franchises are family-owned, converting public subsidies and tax favors into high living for a modern-day feudal elite.

Pro-football coaches talk about accountability and self-reliance, yet pro-football owners routinely binge on giveaways and handouts. A year after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the Saints resumed hosting NFL games: justifiably, a national feel-good story. The finances were another matter. Taxpayers have, in stages, provided about $1 billion to build and later renovate what is now known as the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. (All monetary figures in this article have been converted to 2013 dollars.) The Saints’ owner, Tom Benson, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $1.2 billion, keeps nearly all revenue from ticket sales, concessions, parking, and broadcast rights. Taxpayers even footed the bill for the addition of leather stadium seats with cup holders to cradle the drinks they are charged for at concession stands. And corporate welfare for the Saints doesn’t stop at stadium construction and renovation costs. Though Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal claims to be an anti-spending conservative, each year the state of Louisiana forcibly extracts up to $6 million from its residents’ pockets and gives the cash to Benson as an “inducement payment”—the actual term used—to keep Benson from developing a wandering eye.

In NFL city after NFL city, this pattern is repeated. CenturyLink Field, where the Seattle Seahawks play, opened in 2002, with Washington State taxpayers providing $390 million of the $560 million construction cost. The Seahawks, owned by Paul Allen, one of the richest people in the world, pay the state about $1 million annually in rent in return for most of the revenue from ticket sales, concessions, parking, and broadcasting (all told, perhaps $200 million a year). Average people are taxed to fund Allen’s private-jet lifestyle.

The Pittsburgh Steelers, winners of six Super Bowls, the most of any franchise, play at Heinz Field, a glorious stadium that opens to a view of the serenely flowing Ohio and Allegheny Rivers. Pennsylvania taxpayers contributed about $260 million to help build Heinz Field—and to retire debt from the Steelers’ previous stadium. Most game-day revenues (including television fees) go to the Rooney family, the majority owner of the team. The team’s owners also kept the $75 million that Heinz paid to name the facility.

Judith Grant Long, a Harvard University professor of urban planning, calculates that league-wide, 70 percent of the capital cost of NFL stadiums has been provided by taxpayers, not NFL owners. Many cities, counties, and states also pay the stadiums’ ongoing costs, by providing power, sewer services, other infrastructure, and stadium improvements. When ongoing costs are added, Long’s research finds, the Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars, Kansas City Chiefs, New Orleans Saints, San Diego Chargers, St. Louis Rams, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Tennessee Titans have turned a profit on stadium subsidies alone—receiving more money from the public than they needed to build their facilities. Long’s estimates show that just three NFL franchises—the New England Patriots, New York Giants, and New York Jets—have paid three-quarters or more of their stadium capital costs.

Many NFL teams have also cut sweetheart deals to avoid taxes. The futuristic new field where the Dallas Cowboys play, with its 80,000 seats, go-go dancers on upper decks, and built-in nightclubs, has been appraised at nearly $1 billion. At the basic property-tax rate of Arlington, Texas, where the stadium is located, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones would owe at least $6 million a year in property taxes. Instead he receives no property-tax bill, so Tarrant County taxes the property of average people more than it otherwise would.

In his office at 345 Park Avenue in Manhattan, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell must smile when Texas exempts the Cowboys’ stadium from taxes, or the governor of Minnesota bows low to kiss the feet of the NFL. The National Football League is about two things: producing high-quality sports entertainment, which it does very well, and exploiting taxpayers, which it also does very well. Goodell should know—his pay, about $30 million in 2011, flows from an organization that does not pay corporate taxes.

That’s right—extremely profitable and one of the most subsidized organizations in American history, the NFL also enjoys tax-exempt status. On paper, it is the Nonprofit Football League.

This situation came into being in the 1960s, when Congress granted antitrust waivers to what were then the National Football League and the American Football League, allowing them to merge, conduct a common draft, and jointly auction television rights. The merger was good for the sport, stabilizing pro football while ensuring quality of competition. But Congress gave away the store to the NFL while getting almost nothing for the public in return.

The 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act was the first piece of gift-wrapped legislation, granting the leagues legal permission to conduct television-broadcast negotiations in a way that otherwise would have been price collusion. Then, in 1966, Congress enacted Public Law 89‑800, which broadened the limited antitrust exemptions of the 1961 law. Essentially, the 1966 statute said that if the two pro-football leagues of that era merged—they would complete such a merger four years later, forming the current NFL—the new entity could act as a monopoly regarding television rights. Apple or ExxonMobil can only dream of legal permission to function as a monopoly: the 1966 law was effectively a license for NFL owners to print money. Yet this sweetheart deal was offered to the NFL in exchange only for its promise not to schedule games on Friday nights or Saturdays in autumn, when many high schools and colleges play football.

Public Law 89-800 had no name—unlike, say, the catchy USA Patriot Act or the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Congress presumably wanted the bill to be low-profile, given that its effect was to increase NFL owners’ wealth at the expense of average people.

While Public Law 89-800 was being negotiated with congressional leaders, NFL lobbyists tossed in the sort of obscure provision that is the essence of the lobbyist’s art. The phrase or professional football leagues was added to Section 501(c)6 of 26 U.S.C., the Internal Revenue Code. Previously, a sentence in Section 501(c)6 had granted not-for-profit status to “business leagues, chambers of commerce, real-estate boards, or boards of trade.” Since 1966, the code has read: “business leagues, chambers of commerce, real-estate boards, boards of trade, or professional football leagues.”

The insertion of professional football leagues into the definition of not-for-profit organizations was a transparent sellout of public interest. This decision has saved the NFL uncounted millions in tax obligations, which means that ordinary people must pay higher taxes, public spending must decline, or the national debt must increase to make up for the shortfall. Nonprofit status applies to the NFL’s headquarters, which administers the league and its all-important television contracts. Individual teams are for-profit and presumably pay income taxes—though because all except the Green Bay Packers are privately held and do not disclose their finances, it’s impossible to be sure.

For Veterans Day last year, the NFL announced that it would donate cash to military groups for each point scored in designated games. During NFL telecasts that weekend, the league was praised for its grand generosity. The total donation came to about $440,000. Annualized, NFL stadium subsidies and tax favors add up to perhaps $1 billion. So the NFL took $1 billion from the public, then sought praise for giving back $440,000—less than a tenth of 1 percent.

In the NFL, cynicism about public money starts at the top. State laws and IRS rules generally forbid the use of nonprofit status as a subterfuge for personal enrichment. Yet according to the league’s annual Form 990, in 2011, the most recent year for which numbers are available, the NFL paid a total of almost $60 million to its leading five executives.

Roger Goodell’s windfall has been justified on the grounds that the free market rewards executives whose organizations perform well, and there is no doubt that the NFL performs well as to both product quality—the games are consistently terrific—and the bottom line. But almost nothing about the league’s operations involves the free market. Taxpayers fund most stadium costs; the league itself is tax-exempt; television images made in those publicly funded stadiums are privatized, with all gains kept by the owners; and then the entire organization is walled off behind a moat of antitrust exemptions.

The reason NFL executives’ pay is known is that in 2008, the IRS moved to strengthen the requirement that 501(c)6 organizations disclose payments to top officers. The NFL asked Congress to grant pro football a waiver from the disclosure rule. During the lobbying battle, Joe Browne, then the league’s vice president for public affairs, told The New York Times, “I finally get to the point where I’m making 150 grand, and they want to put my name and address on the [disclosure] form so the lawyer next door who makes a million dollars a year can laugh at me.” Browne added that $150,000 does not buy in the New York area what it would in “Dubuque, Iowa.” The waiver was denied. Left no option, the NFL revealed that at the time, Browne made about $2 million annually.

Perhaps it is spitting into the wind to ask those who run the National Football League to show a sense of decency regarding the lucrative public trust they hold. Goodell’s taking some $30 million from an enterprise made more profitable because it hides behind its tax-exempt status does not seem materially different from, say, the Fannie Mae CEO’s taking a gigantic bonus while taxpayers were bailing out his company.

Perhaps it is spitting into the wind to expect a son to be half what his father was. Charles Goodell, a member of the House of Representatives for New York from 1959 to 1968 and then a senator until 1971, was renowned as a man of conscience—among the first members of Congress to oppose the Vietnam War, one of the first Republicans to fight for environmental protection. My initial experience with politics was knocking on doors for Charles Goodell; a brown-and-white Senator Goodell campaign button sits in my mementos case. Were Charles Goodell around today, what would he think of his son’s cupidity? Roger Goodell has become the sort of person his father once opposed—an insider who profits from his position while average people pay.

I wanted to put questions about the NFL’s finances to Roger Goodell. When I was researching my book The King of Sports, from which this excerpt is drawn, I requested interview time with Goodell, and he agreed. When NFL headquarters learned that my questions would cover tax exemptions and health issues in the league, the interview was promptly canceled. League spokesman Greg Aiello told me it was not in the NFL’s “best interests” to discuss safety or subsidies.

One might suppose that with football raking in such phenomenal sums of cash, politicians could win votes by assuming populist stances regarding NFL subsidies and exemptions. Instead, in almost every instance, Congress and state legislatures have rolled over and played dead for pro football. NFL owners pressure local politicians with veiled threats of moving teams, though no franchise has moved since 1998. Public officials who back football-stadium spending, meanwhile, can make lavish (if unrealistic) promises of jobs and tourism, knowing the invoices won’t come due until after they have left office.

Politicians seem more interested in receiving campaign donations and invitations to luxury boxes than in taking on the football powers that be to bargain for a fair deal for ordinary people. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a moderate who served 30 years in the Senate, tried to pressure the NFL to stop picking the public’s pocket, but left Capitol Hill in 2011 and passed away the next year. No populist champion so far has replaced him. Specter told me in 2007, “The NFL owners are arrogant people who have abused the public trust, and act like they can get away with anything.”

Too often, NFL owners can, in fact, get away with anything. In financial terms, the most important way they do so is by creating game images in publicly funded stadiums, broadcasting the images over public airwaves, and then keeping all the money they receive as a result. Football fans know the warning intoned during each NFL contest: that use of the game’s images “without the NFL’s consent” is prohibited. Under copyright law, entertainment created in publicly funded stadiums is private property.

When, for example, Fox broadcasts a Tampa Bay Buccaneers game from Raymond James Stadium, built entirely at the public’s expense, it has purchased the right to do so from the NFL. In a typical arrangement, taxpayers provide most or all of the funds to build an NFL stadium. The team pays the local stadium authority a modest rent, retaining the exclusive right to license images on game days. The team then sells the right to air the games. Finally, the NFL asserts a copyright over what is broadcast. No federal or state law prevents images generated in facilities built at public expense from being privatized in this manner.

Baseball, basketball, ice hockey, and other sports also benefit from this same process. But the fact that others take advantage of the public too is no justification. The NFL’s sweetheart deal is by far the most valuable: This year, CBS, DirecTV, ESPN, Fox, NBC, and Verizon will pay the NFL about $4 billion for the rights to broadcast its games. Next year, that figure will rise to more than $6 billion. Because football is so popular, its broadcast fees would be high no matter how the financial details were structured. The fact that game images created in places built and operated at public expense can be privatized by the NFL inflates the amounts kept by NFL owners, executives, coaches, and players, while driving up the cable fees paid by people who may not even care to watch the games.

In too many areas of contemporary life, public subsidies are converted to private profit. Sometimes, such as with the bailout of General Motors, once the subsidies end, society is better off; sometimes, as with the bailout of AIG, subsidies are repaid. Public handouts for modern professional football never end and are never repaid. In return, the NFL creates nothing of social value—while setting bad examples, despite its protests to the contrary, regarding concussions, painkiller misuse, weight gain, and cheating, among other issues. The No. 1 sport in a nation with a childhood-obesity epidemic celebrates weight gain; that’s bad enough. Worse, the sport setting the bad example is subsidized up one side and down the other.

The NFL’s nonprofit status should be revoked. And lawmakers—ideally in Congress, to level the national playing field, as it were—should require that television images created in publicly funded sports facilities cannot be privatized. The devil would be in the details of any such action. But Congress regulates health care, airspace, and other far-more-complex aspects of contemporary life; it can crack the whip on the NFL.

If football images created in places funded by taxpayers became public domain, the league would respond by paying the true cost of future stadiums—while negotiating to repay construction subsidies already received. To do otherwise would mean the loss of billions in television-rights fees. Pro football would remain just as exciting and popular, but would no longer take advantage of average people.

In 2010, the National Football League moved its annual Pro Bowl away from Honolulu for the first time in 30 years. At the very time Hawaii was cutting its budget for public schools, state lawmakers voted to pay the NFL $4 million per game to bring the event back to their capital. The lawmakers’ gift-giving was bad enough. What was disgraceful was that the rich, subsidized owners of the NFL accepted.

Until public attitudes change, those at the top of the pro-football pyramid will keep getting away with whatever they can. This is troubling not just because ordinary people are taxed so a small number of NFL owners and officers can live as modern feudal lords and ladies. It is troubling because athletics are supposed to set an example—and the example being set by the NFL is one of selfishness.

Football is the king of sports. Should the favorite sport of the greatest nation really be one whose economic structure is based on inequality and greed?

Meet the real-life Simpsons' kids in a 1969 film made by Matt Groening's father, Homer

from Dangerous Minds:


He looks more like a “Bart,” don’t you think?

Fans of The Simpsons will enjoy “The Story,” a sweet short film made by Homer Groening in 1969. With a young Matt Groening and co-starring his sister Lisa, in “The Story,” a bedtime tale is told to their younger sister (that would be Maggie) about some encounters her siblings had in the woods with various animals.

The elder Groening, his name at least, immortalized by the Simpson’s doofus patriarch, was a war hero who flew a B-17 during WWII and participated in the D-Day invasion. He later became a prominent and award-winning advertising executive and made a series of films about water. Like his famous son, he was also a cartoonist and would make up the beginning of a story and then ask his children to finish it. Homer Groening died in 1996 at the age of 76.

Matt Groening told The Smithsonian magazine about how he came up with the idea for The Simpsons and why “Bart” wasn’t named Matt:

I had been drawing my weekly comic strip, “Life in Hell,” for about five years when I got a call from Jim Brooks, who was developing “The Tracey Ullman Show” for the brand-new Fox network. He wanted me to come in and pitch an idea for doing little cartoons on that show. I soon realized that whatever I pitched would not be owned by me, but would be owned by Fox, so I decided to keep my rabbits in “Life in Hell” and come up with something new.

While I was waiting—I believe they kept me waiting for over an hour—I very quickly drew the Simpsons family. I basically drew my own family. My father’s name is Homer. My mother’s name is Margaret. I have a sister Lisa and another sister Maggie, so I drew all of them. I was going to name the main character Matt, but I didn’t think it would go over well in a pitch meeting, so I changed the name to Bart.

Bart. Why?
Back in high school I wrote a novel about a character named Bart Simpson. I thought it was a very unusual name for a kid at the time. I had this idea of an angry father yelling “Bart,” and Bart sounds kind of like bark—like a barking dog. I thought it would sound funny. In my novel, Bart was the son of Homer Simpson. I took that name from a minor character in the novel The Day of the Locust, by Nathanael West. Since Homer was my father’s name, and I thought Simpson was a funny name in that it had the word “simp” in it, which is short for “simpleton”—I just went with it.

Did your father contribute anything besides his first name?
My father was a really sharp cartoonist and filmmaker. He used to tape-record the family surreptitiously, either while we were driving around or at dinner, and in 1963 he and I made up a story about a brother and a sister, Lisa and Matt, having an adventure out in the woods with animals. I told it to my sister Lisa, and she in turn told it to my sister Maggie. My father recorded the telling of the story by Lisa to Maggie, and then he used it as the soundtrack to a movie. So the idea of dramatizing the family—Lisa, Maggie, Matt—I think was the inspiration for doing something kind of autobiographical with “The Simpsons.” There is an aspect of the psychodynamics of my family in which it makes sense that one of us grew up and made a cartoon out of the family and had it shown all over the world.

An Incredible, synapse-by-synapse tour of a brain

from Maggie Koerth-Baker at Boing Boing

National Geographic has a nice video (as well as a long story by Carl Zimmer) about scientists who are trying to learn more about the way the brain works by slicing mice brains into incredibly thin sections, fore to aft, and then using scans of those slices to create what amounts to a wiring diagram. The goal is to see how all the parts connect and, hopefully, get a better idea of how they all work together.

The video is lovely, with some great shots of lab work and an animated tour of the mouse brain slices. The animation looks, at first, like a time-lapse thing, but it's actually more like driving down a highway and watching buildings on the roadside appearing, becoming larger, and then shrinking in the rearview. Really great stuff! It also underlines a bit why I'm pretty skeptical of Ray Kurzweil's singularity. Or, at least, his estimations of how long it will take for scientists to understand our brains well enough that they could be replicated digitally.

READ MORE HERE.

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EYES ON THE PRIZE Fighting Back, 1957-1962

EPISODE 2

Fighting Back follows the struggle for equality from the schoolroom to the courtroom and back as blacks reject the existing system of "separate but equal" education. In 1954, the Supreme Court also rejects the system with its historic Brown v. Board of Education decision. The legal battle won, in 1957 nine black teenagers dare to integrate Little Rock's Central High School. In 1962, a resolute James Meredith enrolls at the Univeristy of Mississippi. Students, parents, and lawyers unite to guarantee a better education and a better future for their children.

Building Detroit - Art in the Streets

From Colin M. Day
and MoCA TV

In Detroit, Michigan, where economic demise has forced the city to shrink and turn its back on empty homes and properties, a community of artists thrives by continuing its rich tradition of building. Under the auspice of Power House Productions, a local nonprofit which supports neighborhood revitalization, Oakland artist Monica Canilao transforms a dilapidated Victorian into an aesthetic object straddling the worlds of street art and architecture. On the land surrounding his African Bead Museum, DABLS incorporates discarded construction material into his network of sculptures and installations. And in his backyard, a former General Motors employee named Dmytro Szylak continues to build and tinker with a massive visionary environment which evokes both the auto plant and his own Ukrainian heritage. The factories are closed, but the desire to work remains.

Shot & Directed By Colin M. Day.
Edited by Albert Lopez & Nicolette Hagan.
Sound Mix by Jack Fusting.
Produced by Ethel Seno & Richard Enriquez.
Music Director Nic Notion.

Artists

Powerhouse Project: Monica Canilao, Richard Coleman, Swoon, Saelee Oh, Retna, Ben Wolf.
African Bead Museum: DABLS
Hamtramck Disneyland: Dmytro Szylak
N'Kisi Concorde Filmmakers: Nikki Sass & Brittin Richter

Music by:

Nick Speed: "Streets of Detroit," "Rise to Greatness," "Trust Me"
The Reelers: "A Terrible Place," "Motherfuckers Dying in the Fire..."
Ron Zakrin: "Labor Intensive"

Special Thanks:

Jesse Cory, Roula David, Revok, Pose, Monica Canilao, George N'Namdi, Powerhouse Productions, DABLS, Nikki Sass, Brittin Richter, Matt Eaton, Nic Notion, Nick Speed, Craig Hejka, Oscar from the Block

Archival Footage:

"The Detroit You've Never Met," Produced by Detroit Olympic Committee, courtesy of Prelinger Archives
"The Harvest of the Years," Produced by Ford Motor Company, courtesy of Library of Congress
"FDR WW2 News Reel," courtesy of Prelinger Archives

Like New York City in the 1970s, modern day Detroit is a paradise for street art. The miles of unused facades and ample loads of refuse in this "bombed-out, dilapidated urban landscape" are grist for graffiti artists and writers from the United States and beyond. In this short film, Los Angeles artist REVOK discusses the creative community that has coalesced in Detroit, highlighting the fantastic assemblages he creates from abandoned houses and buildings, and collaborates with POSE to mount a tribute mural to local icon Sean Griffin, better known as NEKST, on the western facade and southern wall of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Without local authorities policing or buffing their work, the city itself becomes an enormous canvas.

NEKST tribute painted by Revok, Pose, Omens, Vizie, Screw, Dont.

Featuring work by Nekst, Revok, Pose, Askew, Risk, Rime, Flying Fortress, Nychos, Decolonize.

Shot & directed by Colin M. Day. Edited by Tony Gonzalez. Audio mix by Steve Thorpe. Music director Nic Norton. Produced by Ethel Seno and Richard Enriquez.

Music: Ritual Howls: "Rosabelle Believe" and "Keep Those Stones Up Boys." Anonymous Touch: "D." Nick Speed: "Detroit City Blues."

Special Thanks: Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), Leto Rankine, Matt Eaton, Jesse Cory, George N'Namdi, Revok, Pose, 1xRun, The Seventh Letter, Noah Banks, Lyndon French, Ben Saginaw, Nikki Sass, DABLS, Roula David, Nic Notion, Nick Speed, Monica Canilao, Oscar from the Block, and the city of Detroit.

Made in Detroit.

MOCAtv and Colin M. Day Films.

OFF THE HOOK Destroy catchy music before it destroys you by Ian F Svenonius

from THE MEDIA

When a person walks down the street, an everyday setting might trigger remembrance of a song. As the lyrics convulsively unfold, an association between that moment, memory, and music is revealed; the song, instead of just being some random thought, was actually triggered by some stimuli or situation one had just encountered. Leaving a place might put the song "Leaving Here" or "Go Now" into one's head for example, or perhaps the connection is less obvious. The associative lyric might not even show up 'til the third stanza or fourth verse or something, at which point the singer is wowed by their unconscious brain at work.

Thus is illuminated the ancient use of song and the reason humans are intrinsically programmed to make and like music. Tunes carry or relay ideas, lessons and information from generation to generation and from place to place via memory. Since a bewitching tune stays with one forever–think of the jingles you heard as a child–the information contained in the song is unshakeable. One may choose to reject it, but if its constructed properly, with a good "hook," it will embed itself insidiously and be very hard or even impossible to completely remove. We might not care to "buy the world a coke to teach it harmony," but all who've heard that old commercial will carry its message to the grave.

Songs have had this function since the dawn of time and were the vehicle for social ideology and practical lessons such as: which berries to avoid, where the bears lived, how not to freeze in winter, why not to drink animal urine, etc. Just as important for survival were social lessons, such as the mores and rituals of one's particular tribe, explicated through song-stories. In modern times, these sung social and moral codes include the anthems of a Nation and (in folk songs) the mythology of its working class as well as the myths of its rulers (through courtly and classical music).

Because songs are an extremely powerful form of mind control, music became a highly contested battlefield in the war between various ruling class factions. This struggle was occurring in the 18th and 19th century through opera and symphonic music for example. Teutonic classical music was nurtured by well heeled patrons in the Holy Roman Empire, when the nascent German nation strove to assert a distinct cultural identity. This program contributed eventually to unification under Bismarck. Russian composers before and after the revolution competed with their supremacist "western" counterparts to explain an idea of Russian genius and sophistication, and so on.

Once capitalism became paradigmatic, the mind control properties of the "hook" and the catchy chorus were utilized by a new mercantile ruling class to sell products via "jingles". As the system became more sophisticated, song "hooks" were used to explain products' invaluable nature, the ways which people were inadequate without products, that ownership of products defined happiness itself, and how people without said products were deficient, pathetic, unseemly, grotesque, and sexually undesirable.

When rock n roll revealed itself in the post-war USA, it was immediately recognized for its awesome power and potential for conquering the world. Rock n roll came out of the black American south, but had its roots in ancient African music which had been suppressed by slavers and kept underground for centuries, like druidism in the British isles. Secretly practiced under the guise of "work songs" and "gospel" music, it evolved over time into something quite different from anything in Africa, cunningly constructed as to be almost irresistible to the listener. Having absorbed the obstacles and influences of its new environment, it emerged from its exile with the force of a teenage volcano. European music, Christianity, systemic oppression, electricity, and capitalism were assimilated the way a virus adapts and contorts itself to resist whatever antibodies it encounters. Rock n rolls songs were more powerful, simple, immediate and "hook" laden than any of their competitors and the genre was appraised by the ruling clique as the greatest carriage ever for translating and infiltrating ideological messages.

But they also recognized that this would only be effective if it weren't recognized as a tool. Commercial jingles, jingo-ist anthems, and Soviet agit-prop were tainted because their roots were apparent. Rock n roll in the hands of the ruling class had to retain a semblance of its autonomy and only be insidiously influenced by market programming. Therefore, the artists themselves had to manipulated in a manner where they would conform to desired standards. This was achieved through a barbaric system of arbitrary criticism, institutionalized poverty, degradation of the work force, momentary adoration followed immediately by callous disregard, and the promise of princely rewards and immortality after some undefined act which would be mysteriously deemed world beating.

As rock swept the world, conquering all other arts like a ferocious wild fire, some artists rebelled against its use. Intuitively, they knew "the hook" of a hit song was a kind of mnemonic time bomb which was possibly quite immoral to plant inside listeners heads. Every hit-maker was a typhoid Mary who was instructing their audience as to modes of behavior, right and wrong, sometimes even injecting morbid sociopathy into fans' unwitting brains. The singer's whim, caprice, or perverse sense of humor could unleash unfathomable destruction – socially and geo-politically – through the proliferation of song. Singers were concerned about their influence and tried to rein in their songs "catchiness." Folk singers in the late '50s and early '60s were particular exponents of this approach, trying to sing in obtuse, difficult ways and indulging in hardly listenable olde tyme pre-rock dirges. Jazz musicians, resentful of their use as an international propaganda weapon, made their music unquotable, first with "bop" and then with "free" jazz. But it was a steep price to pay. Any one who took this high road saw their ability to economically survive disintegrate.

Once the folk movement was demolished by the seductive force of electricity (1965), ex-folkies transferred their reluctant use of "the hook" to rock, infusing that medium with their anti sell-out concerns and counter-musicality. But, while in folk "selling out" had had fairly clear connotations, in the context of rock – which had (since it had been called "rock") always been tied to crass commercial proponents and mafia elements – "selling out" was a strange concept. It was never a coherent or delineated political concern as it had been with the crypto commies in the folk movement, who were often involved in activism and civil rights. Instead it became an aesthetic idea. "Selling out" was a sign that a group had crossed an invisible line into commercial vulgarity and was no longer behaving in a "cool," hip, and with-it manner. Sometimes this meant too much musicality; too many "hooks". Sometimes it meant the wrong clothing choices. These standards or rules of comportment radically changed from group to group.

Punk took the rhetoric of folk ("selling out" and "authenticity" were obsessions of both) and, understanding the mind control nefariousness of "the hook," tried to utilize its power to subvert commercialism, imperialism, etc, with anthems of resistance. But while this music tried to subvert the system by aping rock structures with rebellious lyrics, it was barred from mass proliferation by a rigid rock establishment that controlled distribution of records and access to airplay. Eventually it was assimilated into rock and absorbed as another texture.

When more extreme variants of punk, "no wave" and then "hardcore" started, they were – like folk, avant noise, and bop – an attempt to subvert the mass hypnosis of music in general and rock in particular, by being almost unlistenable. The attempt was similar as that attempted decades earlier by Xenakis, Cage, Feldman, and other insurrectionists of the avant "experimental" era. The paradox for the unlistenable groups was that their attempts to thwart mind control through anti-music were more intuitive than articulated, and therefore they were susceptible to bits of musicality creeping in. And when an unlistenable no-wave or HC group added a tease of a tune or melody, they were immediately rewarded with popularity by a well meaning but ignoramus audience who were genetically hard wired to respond to music codes like "hooks" and melody. This response – like human sexual response – was innate and had developed to help the species survive. Now, with "the hook" a slave to commercial forces intent on destroying the world for momentary gain and despotic control, the species paradoxically needed to destroy catchy music for its very survival. This was only sort of understood and never articulated by the actors in the post-punk drama, so the audience – while instinctively loving "the hook" – were still wary of too much musicality. Therefore, HC and no wave existed in a demi-world of "sort-of music" music, tantalizing their audiences with the threat of a song, but rarely delivering.

Why hate portrait-oriented video? Perhaps because of the human field of view

from Boing Boing

Discussion of portrait-oriented video--and the widespread hatred for it--has peaked in the wake of Apple's clever new ad for iMovie, which shows a sullen teen spending all of a family Christmas buried in his iPhone. The twist ending (spoilers!) is that he's been making a family movie. But it cheats a little: though the movie is widescreen, the young videographer is only shown using the phone upright, lest the viewer be tipped-off to his noble purpose.

But why do (most of us, at least) generally prefer landscape-oriented moving images? This has been the debate on Twitter today. On the assumption that it's because of binocular vision on a horizontal plane, I found this interesting paper from NASA detailing its study of human fields of vision.

The above image seems to be the paper's tl;dr moment. A roughly rectangular crop of the field yields a roughly 16:10 aspect ratio -- a common modern widescreen format.

This might explain why landscape-oriented moving images prevailed, but the hatred for portrait video surely also has plenty to do with the fact that video technology is so attuned to landscape production. Shoot portrait, and the chances are you'll have huge black bars either side of a tiny image, crushed into a widescreen video player.

Below, a high-quality, portrait-oriented video, appropriately embedded.

And now in the "Annoyascope" embed that YouTube gives you by default:

Pete Seeger HeroR.I.P.

I got to see Pete Seeger perform in person at an Earthday celebration, in Central Park, back in 2009, somehow I managed this one photograph, lucky me . . .



from NPR



Folk Activist Pete Seeger, Icon Of Passion And Ideals, Dies At 94

A tireless campaigner for his own vision of a utopia marked by peace and togetherness, Pete Seeger's tools were his songs, his voice, his enthusiasm and his musical instruments. A major advocate for the folk-style five-string banjo and one of the most prominent folk music icons of his generation, Seeger was also a political and environmental activist. He died Monday at age 94. His grandson, Kitama Cahill Jackson, said he died of natural causes.

Pete Seeger came by his beliefs honestly. His father, Charles Seeger, was an ethnomusicologist and a pioneering folkorist whose left-wing views got him into trouble at the University of California, Berkeley. Charles Seeger introduced his son to some of the most important musicians of the Depression era — including Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie.

Seeger and Guthrie eventually became fast friends — though they didn't agree on all things — and crisscrossed the country performing together. Seeger said that as early as 1941, they found themselves blacklisted as communists. Seeger actually was a member of the Communist Party in those early days, though he later said he quit after coming to understand the evils of Josef Stalin.

Following World War II and service entertaining the troops, Seeger teamed up with Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman to form the astonishingly successful folk group The Weavers. Ronnie Gilbert said that from the start, Seeger's performances were transcendent — whether you were on stage with him or in the audience.

"You got the sense that he was saying and singing way beyond the moment that he was in, the place that he was in. Alone on a stage in front of thousands of people ... everybody got it, everybody got his passion for music, his passion for being on the stage, making people sing, having people listen to each other's music. He was a passionate person, and that was what people saw. People absorbed his passion and his ideals," Gilbert says.

The Weavers' version of Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" hit the top of the pop charts in 1950. Other hits followed, including "On Top of Old Smokey," "So Long (It's Been Good to Know You)" and "Wimoweh."

If The Weavers hit an emotional and cultural sweet spot in postwar America, the Red Scare quickly soured it. Seeger refused to answer questions before Congress in 1955 about his political beliefs and associations. He was held in contempt and nearly served a jail sentence before charges were finally dropped in 1962 on a technicality.

But his troubles with Congress finished The Weavers as a major touring and recording group, so Seeger went out on his own again. Shut out of the big gigs, he played coffeehouses, union halls and college campuses to support his family. His wife, Toshi, managed his affairs and raised their children in the cabin they had built in Beacon, N.Y.

He co-founded and wrote for Sing Out, one of the first and most important magazines to grow out of the folk revival. He produced children's songs and books. But his commitment to political and social causes never waned. Seeger sang and marched nationwide for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. As he told NPR in 1971, "Sometimes I think [about] that old saying,'The pen is mightier than the sword.' Well, my one hope is the guitar is gonna be mightier than the bomb."

In 1968 he went local, but, of course, in a big way. Upset at the filth clogging the Hudson River near his home, he spearheaded the building of the Sloop Clearwater, which volunteers sailed up and down the Hudson. Politicians and polluters had to take notice. Seeger, not surprisingly, saw a larger purpose: "Bringing these people together, all these people, is the essential thing, and this is what the Clearwater almost miraculously has started to do on the Hudson," he said.

For all of his social activism, Seeger said more than once that if he had done nothing more than write his slim book How to Play the 5-String Banjo, his life's work would have been complete. Seeger's grandson Tao Rodriguez Seeger plays banjo and performed with his grandfather. He says the paperback, which is chock-full of chords and techniques, is a challenge.

"It's not a thick book but it's thick stuff. He doesn't really explain it too well. It's sort of quick, it's got a little diagram, 'Here's how you do it.' But it's great. It's an awesome resource. I have a copy," Rodriguez Seeger says.

Not just through his books but also through his sheer force of presence, Seeger became a model for younger folk musicians. Singer and songwriter Tom Paxton said he learned invaluable lessons from Seeger about how to reach an audience. "Look 'em in the eye. Make a gesture of inclusion, which he did all the time. And above all, have a chorus," Paxton says. "So I learned from Pete to have something for them to sing."

Bringing people together and getting them to sing out may be one of Pete Seeger's greatest legacies. But when it came to saving the world, Tao Rodriguez Seeger says, his grandfather ultimately seemed to question whether the guitar was mightier than the sword.

"[It] troubled him, troubled him deeply that technology was so advanced but our emotional state was so inadequate to cope, that with a push of a button, in a fit of rage, we could wipe ourselves off the face of the Earth. And he really wanted to fix that and always felt like he failed," Rodriguez Seeger says.

But if Pete Seeger didn't save the world, he certainly did change the lives of millions of people by leading them to sing, to take action and to at least consider his dream of what society could be.

Classic Cold War propaganda cartoon ‘Destination Earth’

from Dangerous Minds




An amazing piece of 1950s oil industry propaganda called Destination Earth tells the story of Colonel Cosmic, a spy from Mars sent to Earth. Martian society, y’see, was one of lockstep conformity and oppression under the hyper-statist rule of authoritarian great leader Ogg, and couldn’t be more obviously an analogue for the Soviet Union. Ogg has sent Colonel Cosmic to Earth to learn how we solved the problem of friction in moving parts, but instead, he learns all about the utopian joys of free markets and the miracle of GASOLINE, THE MOST EFFICIENT MOBILE POWER SOURCE ON EARTH! Naturally, revolution ensues. The squeamish needn’t worry, it’s bloodless.




The short was directed by Carl Urbano, and DM readers of a certain age have seen plenty of his work. As a director for Hanna-Barbera, he worked on shows like Super Friends and Laff-A-Lympics among dozens of others. A collection of his Cold War propaganda is available on DVD, as is—to my surprise—a collection of his petroleum industry work going back as far as the 1930s, and the collection includes Destination Earth. But you can enjoy that one in its entirety right here.

 

Jesus and Sarah Silverman In Her New PSA

EYES ON THE PRIZE, famed civil rights documentary series, is finally back!HERE, and on DVD!

Eyes on the Prize is a famed documentary series on the civil rights movement that all but disappeared because of trouble clearing the copyrights to clips of leaders like Martin Luther King for the reissue. Nearly ten years ago, a civil disobedience campaign brought attention to society's loss as a result of this series no longer being available for home and classroom use, and the resulting furore brought the intransigent rightsholders back to the bargaining table, and this indispensable video back from the dead -- you can even buy it on DVD now.

Episode 1 (of 14)

This will be an ongoing Sunday series here on this blog - Thank You PBS!



I WILL POST A NEW EPISODE EVERY SUNDAY ...

This episode description:

Awakenings focuses on the catalytic events of 1954-1956. The Mississippi lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till led to a widely publicized trial where a courageous black man took the stand and accused two white men of murder. In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to yield her bus seat to a white man and triggered a yearlong boycott that resulted in the desegregation of public buses. Ordinary citizens and local leaders joined the black struggle for freedom. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was formed. In response, may white southerners closed ranks in opposition to the burgeoning black rights movement. Racial discrimination finally became a political issue.

Heads up from Boing Boing, Thank You.

RUN-DMC Live as Can Be at The Ritz in NYC, June 12th, 1985

Bonus: Ultimate Run-DMC Megamix by DJ Dark Kent

Public Enemy's "It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back" Deconstructed

I've said it once (before almost anyone else) and I'm happy to say it again, it's the "The Greatest Hip-Hop Album of all time" - was the day it was released, and still is to this day.(No, the fact I took the cover photo has nothing to do with it!)

The densely multilayered nature of Nation of Millions cries out for a deconstruction—preferably one that can be imbibed via the ears. Fortunately, on the Solid Steel Radio Show a few months ago, DJ Moneyshot released a remarkably enjoyable hour-long episode that does precisely that. For anyone who loves the album, the show is a singular treat, nothing less than an aural essay on its sources, of which there are many. Civil rights speeches, immortal soul classics, contemporaneous rap gems, and interviews with the likes of Hank Shocklee are all mixed together, Bomb Squad style, into a delightful stew.

Thanks, Dangerous Minds

Why birds fly in a V formation

Why do birds fly in a "V" formation? Scientists at the UK's Royal Veterinary College attached sensors to endangered ibises migrating from Austria to Tuscany. What they confirmed is that the aerodynamics of V flocking helps the birds conserve energy and that they optimize this by careful positioning and timing their wing flaps. "Precision formation flight astounds scientists" (Nature)