Category Archives: Barack Obama

05/09/2012
2 Comments
2012 NATO Summit, Barack Obama, Chicago, Christie's, G-8, James Madison, Mark Rothko, McCormick Place, Me Party, Rahm Emanuel, Richard Lugar, Richard Mourdock, Shelli Yoder, Tea Party, Todd Young

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.” — James Madison

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EXTREMITIES

So, Richard Lugar was “too moderate.”

Say that to yourself: too moderate.

That was the Me Party charge against the ancient US Senator from Indiana.

And that’s what lost him the 2012 Republican primary.

Too moderate.

Out

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It’s a contradiction, an oxymoron. It’s like saying a guy is of extremely medium height. Or the weather has been unbearably mild.

Too moderate.

In others words, Richard Lugar was thrown out of office because he wanted to work with the opposition party in the Senate.

And again, Dems, don’t get all huffy and righteous over this. Most of the criticism of Barack Obama from his own “loyalists” has been that’s he’s too willing to strike deals with the GOP. Hell, I’ve raked him over the coals for it.

But it occurs to me that moderation and compromise are the qualities that make just about every human relationship — from marriage to democracy — work.

GOP Winner Richard Mourdock Promises Not To Work Well With Others

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But see, we don’t want relationships any more, I suppose. And most especially, the Me Party-ists don’t want relationships. They want their way. And if they don’t get it, why then there’ll be hell to pay.

Another thing occurs to me now — the Me Party-ists are the definitive Americans of the 21st Century. They are the New Ugly Americans.

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A BEAUTIFUL MIND

I voted for Shelli Yoder in the Dem primary for strategic reasons. She’s the only one among the five candidates for the nomination for US Congress from Indiana’s 9th District who can beat Republican Todd Young in the November election.

I would have been equally happy with Jonathan George or Bob Winningham, strictly from a philosophical angle. John Tilford, too, only he never had a chance in this race and he knew it (I got that inside info from an impeccable source.) As for John Griffin Miller, well, I hope he had fun running — because his candidacy was a lark.

But Shelli can win over a lot of central and southern Indianans outside the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Bloomington (BSSR) because she’s exceedingly charming and pretty. Don’t yell at me for typing that — I’m just the messenger here. Most people vote for gut reasons, not because they’ve spent hours poring over position papers and contemplating the issues of the day.

All’s Fair

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I’ll say it again, there’s a lot more to Shelli Yoder than her shayna punim (relax, it’s not a dirty term; look it up in your Yiddish dictionary). Being a former Miss Indiana and the second runner-up in the 1993 Miss America pageant will make a lot of people much more comfortable voting for a Democratic woman, though.

In this case, the Dems have to use every edge they’ve got.

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THE COLOR OF MONEY

A Mark Rothko was sold for more than $86M in a Christie’s auction yesterday.

Rothko’s “Orange, Red, Yellow”

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Mark Rothko has been dead since 1970, so all that dough isn’t going to benefit him terribly much.

Capitalism’s a really weird system, no?

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STALAG 2012

The world’s biggest bags of wind are due to arrive in Chicago in a week and a half.

See, the leaders of the NATO member nations are gathering in my hometown to discuss how they can further carve up the planet.

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The 2012 NATO Summit will run for two days, May 20th and 21st. Not only will the presidents, prime ministers, and otherwise-titled bosses of the NATO states be in attendance, but so will their Secretaries of State, Foreign Ministers, Defense Ministers, and miscellaneous social delinquents.

Naturally, this presents a golden opportunity for the more snappish among the citizenry to cause mayhem.

At the low end of the threat level, some bandanna’d anarchists might embarrass Rahm’s Town, say, by tossing a stink bomb into McCormick Place. On the other hand, there’s the very real danger that some bad guys might try to harm the people who have the generally-accepted right to harm the rest of us when it benefits them and their countries.

So, the security apparatuses of the various nations have agreed to turn my ex-fair city into a prison camp for those couple of days. Everybody’s getting into the act. The Chicago cops are preparing for Armageddon, the FBI is spying on everybody who sneezes the wrong way, the US Secret Service will be on the lookout for people carrying fingernail clippers, and even downtown businesses are prepping their employees for the festivities.

According to news reports, Loop firms are advising their people to dress down on the days of the Summit. The wearing of suits and wingtips, apparently, might induce some wild-eyed radicals to attack. The idea, I guess, is that they’ll think the guy in pinstripes walking down Wabash Avenue with a cup of coffee in one hand and the Sun-Times in the other just might be British Prime Minister David Cameron. And you know wild-eyed radicals — next thing you know the poor schlub has a pie in the face (or worse).

“That Guy In The Suit, It’s The German Defense Minister! Get ‘Im!”

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Here’s my solution to the problem: next time these chuckleheads want to get together, send them to some way out of the way place where they won’t mess up the lives of innocent, ordinary citizens.

You know, the G-8 bosses were scheduled to meet this spring in Chicago as well — that is, until radical activists’ plans to descend on the city became known. Then the State Department moved the confab to Camp David, Maryland, where security is easier and the population is virtually nil.

But they did that for the comfort and ease of the big boys (and girls) involved, not for the little guys and gals on the streets of Chicago.

Ah, the privileges of power.

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Wednesday, May  9, 2012

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits, “Blended Harmonies: Music and Religion in Nepal”; through July 1st — “Esse Quam Videri (To Be, Rather than To Be Seen): Muslim Self Portraits; through June 17th — “From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”; through July 1st

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — Exhibit, “Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze”; through June 29th

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Arts Center — Exhibits at various galleries: Angela Hendrix-Petry, Benjamin Pines, Nate Johnson, and Yang Chen; all through May 29th

◗ Trinity Episcopal Church — Art exhibit, “Creation,” collaborative mosaic tile project; through May 31st

◗ Monroe County Public Library — Art exhibit, “Muse Whisperings,” water color paintings by residents of Sterling House; through May 31st

◗ Monroe County History Center — Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

◗ Bloomington High School North — Spring concert, Southern Indiana Wind Ensemble; 7pm

◗ Butler University, Clowes Hall — Garrison Keillor; 7:30pm

◗ Cafe Django — Media Noche Trio + 1; 7:30-9:30pm

The Media Noche Trio

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◗ Max’s Place — Open mic; sign up begins at 5:30pm, music begins at 7:30pm

◗ Harmony School — Contra dancing; 8-10:30pm

◗ IU Kirkwood Observatory — Star-gazing Open House, rain or shine; 9pm

◗ Bear’s Place — Brian Johnson & the Acquitted, Michael McFarland, Brian Fortner; 9pm

◗ The Bluebird — The Personal; 9pm

◗ The Bishop — The Strange Boys, William Tyler & the Constants; 9:30pm

The Strange Boys

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◗ Jake’s Nightclub — Battle of the bands; 10pm

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05/08/2012
1 Comment
Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Grameen Bank, Hillary Rodham Clinton, IDS, Joe Donnelly, Kelley School of Business, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Mohammed Yunus, Paddy Chayevsky, Park Ridge Illinois, Richard Lugar, Richard M. Nixon, Richard Mourdock, Rick Santorum, Ron Ziegler, Tea Party

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“Television is democracy at its ugliest.” — Paddy Chayevsky

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THIS IS THE OPERATIVE STATEMENT — THE OTHERS ARE INOPERATIVE

How can you not love politics?

“He is the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama.”

That was Rick Santorum six weeks ago describing Mitt Romney — a man whom he endorsed yesterday.

Best Friends Forever

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Now, if you’re a Dem or you loathe the GOP, don’t start getting huffy and righteous and say something foolish like, Oh, those Republicans — they can’t be trusted. They’ll say anything to get elected.

Let’s go back four short years ago. Hillary Clinton spent a lot of time wagging her finger at Barack Obama during the Dem primaries. Some of her supporters threatened to — gulp! — go Republican if Obama won the nomination. That’s how deep the animus had grown between the two camps. Next thing you knew, both sides had come together to defeat the McCain/Palin ticket that, by all accounts, induced no Clintonistas to switch parties.

See, that’s why I could never be a politician. First, I have no interest in having the skeletons in my closet bared. Second, I know that at some point in time, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from blurting out, “Jeez, can you believe how full of shit I am?”

BTW: recognize the headline at the top of this entry? That was Dick Nixon’s Squealer, Ron Ziegler, speaking to reporters on April 17th, 1973. Operative statements, in Ziegler’s bizarre argot, were simply today’s lies; inoperative statements were yesterday’s.

Animal Farm

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THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA IS BUSINESS

Let’s stick with a theme here: How can you not love business?

According to the IDS, a few enterprising students tried to sell ducats online for a c-note apiece to the IU Kelley School of Business commencement ceremony Saturday

An IU spokesbeing issued a statement tut-tutting the scalping deal.

Free Market?

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Making money in a free market is the aim of getting a degree from the Kelley school — except, apparently, when you’re trying to make money selling tickets to a celebration of spending four years of your life learning how to make money in a free market.

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HILLARY AT THE SUMMIT

Back to Hillary Clinton. It turns out losing the race for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 just might have been the best thing ever to happen to her.

You may recall that Hillary was perhaps the most despised human being in this holy land before Barack Obama came along to wrest the title from her.

WWN Wasn’t Half As Hard On Hil As Fox News

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Remember when Bill Clinton told voters he and the missus were a “package deal”? That she was going to be, in essence, a co-president? Middle America had apoplexy — Hillary was going destroy this sacred society by upending our traditional view of what a First Lady should be.

She even had to stop using her preferred hyphenated moniker, Hillary Rodham Clinton, because too many voters figured a woman who keeps her maiden name is most likely a Nazi abortionist.

And then she came out with that famous quote about not being interested in sitting at home and baking cookies. Millions of Americans became convinced at that very moment that she was a also lesbian communist.

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I never felt particularly warm about Hil. Oh sure, I voted for Bill (and her — I bought into the co-presidency idea) but she always struck me as a privileged white person, no matter how quasi-progressive she claimed her politics to be.

I always suspected she was incapable of dropping a gratuitous F-bomb or wouldn’t know how to drink a shot of tequila.

Park Ridge, Illinois, the Chicago suburb in which Hil was raised, was chock full of prim, holier-than-thou folks — even those, like HRC, who entertained near-liberal ideas.

Still, I’ve always had great respect for her. She’s tough enough in her own way to scare the bejesus out of her serial-philandering husband. Plus, she’s smart as a whip and ambitious to boot.

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Barack Obama saw these same qualities and selected her as his Secretary of State. Oh sure, he wanted to keep her occupied for four years as well, just in case she wanted to challenge him again in 2012. Still, he recognized her strengths.

Anyway, she’s done a fantastic job as a globe-trotting SoS. She’s juggling a potentially nuclear Iran, an uppity China, a schizo Pakistan, a mobbed-up Russia, a broke European Union, Myanmar, India, the nagging Isreal/Palestine issue, the Arab Spring, and too many other hot spots to mention. Somehow, the world hasn’t blown itself apart just yet.

She may not be tough enough to suck down a ounce of Tarantula Plata without gagging but I doubt there’s a male national leader on this Earth who has the cagliones to cross her.

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Why, just yesterday she told the Bangladesh government in no uncertain terms to lay off the Grameen Bank, the innovative microlender founded by Nobel Peace laureate Mohammed Yunus that helps women in south Asia develop small businesses and escape poverty. A while ago, Bangladesh had given the axe to Yunus as boss of the bank. Hil’s now staring that government down, saying don’t mess with Grameen.

Trust me, she’s writing her own entry in American history books.

But had she become president, she would have been savaged for her imagined sins nearly as much as Obama has for his. Who knows what form her “Birther” opposition might have taken. Most likely, there’d have been a constant flow of Hillary’s-gonna-force-our-daughters-into-dykedom “revelations” coming from right wing bloviators and Me Party-ists.

She might have had to spend her precious time denying that she leads a satanic sex cult in the White House basement.

It’s better being Secretary of State.

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INDIANA DEMS HAD BETTER BE RIGHT ABOUT MOURDOCK

Finally, speaking of Me Party-ists, their latest darling in Indiana, Richard Mourdock (“End the EPA!”), looks like a lock to unseat long-time US Senator Richard Lugar in the Republican primary today.

Now we’ll see if the state’s Democratic party theory that Mourdock is a preferable foe for their nominee Joe Donnelly in November holds any water.

Donnelly’d better win. Mourdock has been endorsed by none other than Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann.

She’s Back!

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I know, I know — you’d finally swept that name clear out of your consciousness and now I remind you that she’s still around. Hey, politics is a rough game.

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits, “Blended Harmonies: Music and Religion in Nepal”; through July 1st — “Esse Quam Videri (To Be, Rather than To Be Seen): Muslim Self Portraits; through June 17th — “From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”; through July 1st

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — Exhibit, “Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze”; through June 29th

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Arts Center — Exhibits at various galleries: Angela Hendrix-Petry, Benjamin Pines, Nate Johnson, and Yang Chen; all through May 29th

◗ Trinity Episcopal Church — Art exhibit, “Creation,” collaborative mosaic tile project; through May 31st

◗ Monroe County Public Library — Art exhibit, “Muse Whisperings,” water color paintings by residents of Sterling House; through May 31st

◗ Monroe County History Center — Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

◗ People’s Park — Lunch Concert Series, Starkraven; 11:30am

◗ The Venue Fine Arts & Gifts — Guitarist Erol Ozserver; 5:30-7:30pm

◗ IU Woodburn Hall, Room 101 — Secular Alliance Movie Night; 6-8pm

◗ Jake’s Nightclub — Karaoke; 6pm

◗ Deer Park Manor — Steppings Stones’ annual volunteer awards & recognition ceremony; 6:30-8pm

◗ Monroe County History Center — Civil War round table, “The Truth about the Confederate Flag”; 7-8pm

◗ The Player’s Pub — Blue jam, King Bee and the Stingers; 8pm

◗ The Bishop — EP release party, New terrors with Prayer Breakfast & The New Heaven and the New Earth; 9pm

◗ The Bluebird — Coheed and Cambria; 9pm

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05/07/2012
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al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Big Ten, Booker T & The MGS, Booker T. Jones, Earl Warren, France, Francois Hollande, Fresh Air, Indiana University, Jacobs School of Music, Khalid Sheikh Mohhamed, Nicolas Sarkozy, NPR, Parti Socialiste, Segolene Royal, Socialism, Steve Martin, Terry Gross, Valerie Trierweiler

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“”Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.” — Earl Warren

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BOOK IT — WE’VE GOT BOOKER

How cool is it that Booker T. Jones received an honorary doctorate during commencement ceremonies at IU this weekend?

Booker T.

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You know, growing up in Chicago and living within the city limits every day of my adult life until March 20th, 2007, I’d come to the conclusion — like most of my city-mates — that Indiana University was the place where Bobby Knight threw tantrums, won a few NCAA championships, got himself fired for being a jackass, and then the school went out of business.

That’s not much of an exaggeration. Of all the Big Ten schools, IU is probably the most anonymous. Perhaps Minnesota and Iowa might give IU a run for the title, but, nah, Indiana wins it.

If you can find three people in Chicago who know what town IU is in, I’ll give you a prize. I wonder if even a hundred people in Indianapolis know what town IU is in.

Northwestern is where all the future wealthy businessmen and doctors go. A few journalists, too. Illinois is known for Chief Illiniwek and the controversy of using the symbol of a wiped-out race to drum up support for its sports teams — at least it’s known for something. Purdue puts out engineers. Ohio State, Michigan, and Michigan State are sports factories. Penn State tolerates child sodomizers. Nebraska has a funny team name, Cornhuskers.

This Man Has A PhD In Cornhusking

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And Minnesota, Iowa, and Indiana may as well be in Bulgaria, especially Indiana.

Chicagoans no more know that Booker T. Jones, among many, many, many other great and fabulous musicians, studied at the Jacobs School of Music than they know that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was born in Kuwait City. (In fact, many Americans assume KSM was born in the same nebulous African/Asian tribal town that Barack Obama hailed from — and for all the average American knows, all three men went to a madrahsah there.)

Booker T. gave the commencement address at one of the two undergraduate ceremonies Saturday. According to the IDS, he told the grads that he used to walk to class at the Jake every morning at 7:15.

I recall listening to an interview with him on Terry Gross’s Fresh Air show on NPR when his “Potato Hole” disc came out. He told Gross that he still practices his scales every single morning and he works on his music eight hours every day. Booker T., it should be noted, is 67 years old.

Booker T. Jones — he’s someone Indiana University ought to be known for.

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TIME IS TIGHT

This is my absolute fave Booker T. and the MGs hit, from back in 1969.

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THE PRESIDENT IS A SOCIALIST!

Looks like Obama-haters will finally get to see what an honest-to-gosh Socialist looks like now.

François Hollande beat darling of the Right, Nicolas Sarkozy in the French national election for president this past weekend. Hollande is a card-carrying member of the French Socialist Party (or Parti Socialiste, in French — the French are so bizarre, Steve Martin once observed, they have a different word for everything.)

Hollande — Ayn Rand Is Spinning In Her Grave

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Not only that, Hollande lived in sin with a woman, fellow Socialist pol Sègoléne Royal, for more than 30 years, and then the two split up in 2007 when Hollande found himself a younger tomato named Valérie Trierweiler. Oh, and Hollande is a Jew.

Trierweiler — So, What Is It With French Presidents And Gorgeous Women?

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A guy like Hollande would be as electable in these Great United States, Inc. as, well, Khalid Sheikh Mohhamed.

Now get this — the French Socialists are considered a Center-Left party in that country. Center-Left! There are, apparently, des gauches even more, um, gauche than the Socialists in France. Either that or we have lost all perspective on the political spectrum in this holy land, considering that the very word Liberal is dirty here.

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Monday, May 7, 2012

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits, “Blended Harmonies: Music and Religion in Nepal”; through July 1st — “Esse Quam Videri (To Be, Rather than To Be Seen): Muslim Self Portraits; through June 17th — “From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”; through July 1st

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — Exhibit, “Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze”; through June 29th

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Arts Center — Exhibits at various galleries: Angela Hendrix-Petry, Benjamin Pines, Nate Johnson, and Yang Chen; all through May 29th

◗ Trinity Episcopal Church — Art exhibit, “Creation,” collaborative mosaic tile project; through May 31st

◗ Monroe County Public Library — Art exhibit, “Muse Whisperings,” water color paintings by residents of Sterling House; through May 31st

◗ Monroe County History Center — Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

◗ The Venue Fine Arts & Gifts — Exhibit, Daniel Lager; through May 17th

◗ Cafe Django — The Bloomington Short List variety show, featuring comedians, musicians, dancers, etc.; 7pm

◗ The Bishop — DJ Betsy Shepherd; 8pm — Arrah and the Ferns, Chandelier Ballroom; 9pm

Arrah And One Of Her Many Ferns

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05/03/2012
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Amboy Dukes, Angelina Jolie, Ava Gardner, Barack Obama, Brad Pitt, Burt Lancaster, Cracked.com, David Wong, Girl Scouts of America, Journey to the Center of the Mind, Mad Magazine, Mitt Romney, Norman Rockwell, Pretty Woman, Rep. Bob Morris, Ted Nugent, The Killers

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“I learned to draw everything except glamorous women. No matter how much I tried to make them look sexy, they always ended up looking silly — or like somebody’s mother.” — Norman Rockwell

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FUNTIME

Idly surfing the interwebs last night I came across this publicity still from the film noir classic, “The Killers.”

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That’s Ava Gardner and Burt Lancaster. Here’s a simple question — are they the two sexiest human beings ever brought together on film?

In fact, let’s make this official. Herewith is another in our irregular series of Pencil Polls:

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For my dough, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are mere romantic manqués. They can’t touch Ava and Burt for steaminess, passion, and delicious, forbidden love.

So, we’re presenting a list of hot screen couples. Pick your fave pairing. Results to follow in a couple of days.

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Anyone who writes in Julia Roberts & Richard Gere from “Pretty Woman” will be banned from this site permanently.

Oh, and remember, I’m a native Chicagoan so you can vote as often as you’d like. Additionally, I’ll accept unmarked envelopes stuffed with cash to influence the results. Hooray for democracy!

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SMART GUY

If your mind is open, you can acquire wisdom from the unlikeliest of sources. For instance, I read Cracked.com every day. I learned something about politics and Big Media from it this week.

When I was a kid, Cracked magazine was sort of a cut-rate Mad magazine. It wasn’t as incisive or insightful as Mad but it’d do in a pinch.

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Mad’s still out there as a hard copy magazine but Cracked is now only a web presence. Cracked seems to have superseded Mad in terms of overall popularity and name recognition among kids today (that includes anyone who’s a year and a half younger than I am). Cracked also has upped its game — its now as cutting-edge as Mad ever was.

Anyway, in an article entitled “5 Ways to Spot a B.S. Political Story in Under 10 Seconds,” Cracked offers as cogent an analysis of the role of corporate media and internet idiocy in the political arena as can be found in any collegiate media studies course.

Take my word for it and go there. You’ll thank me. Here’s the list — you do the reading.

  • 5) The Headline Contains the Word “Gaffe”
  • 4) The Headline Ends in a Question Mark
  • 3) The Headline Contains the word “Blasts”
  • 2) The Headline Is About a “Lawmaker” Saying Something Stupid
  • 1) The Headline Includes the Phrase “Blow To”

Even I — the most reasonable man on the face of the Earth — have fallen prey to one or more of these Big Media manipulations. How about the time that knuckleheaded state representative from Ft. Wayne, Bob Morris, called the Girl Scouts “radicalized” and accused GSA leadership of pushing an abortion agenda down its young membership’s throats.

I went all righteously ballistic on Morris and stood on my head trying to prove that he was the voice of the Republicans.

Now don’t get me wrong, the Republican platform is as appealing to me as spending a weekend at a retreat with the Kardashians, but the truth is just because a person is a member of the GOP doesn’t mean s/he is psychopathic.

No, only Bob Morris is. And that’s David Wong’s point (Wong is the author of the Cracked piece.) Wong asserts that any large group of people will contain a few lunatics. Even a group as small as a dozen would probably claim a maniac or two among its members. To paint the entire group with the brush handed you by its most deranged member is a childish act.

Wong brings up the recent hoo-hah over a Ted Nugent comment about Barack Obama. At this year’s NRA Convention in St. Louis Nugent said, “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” He then ranted about some “battlefield,” “chop[ping] their heads off,” and “clean[ing] house.”

Clearly it was just wacky, white noise (and I mean that on a couple of levels).

Ted Talking

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Big Media went gaga over it, though, wondering if the Motor City Madman was actually threatening to take out Obama with his bow and arrow. Reporters flocked to Mitt Romney to find out when precisely he’d disassociate himself from Nugent’s remark and if not, was it because Romney endorsed the assassination of the president?

It was pack journalism and media hysteria at its finest. And all because some old man rocker flapped his gums.

So, check out the piece. Perhaps it’ll make you a smarter voter.

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JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE MIND

I can take or leave Ted Nugent’s music — mostly I can leave it. But his first big hit with the band, the Amboy Dukes, was about as cool as anything released in the year 1968.

This vid is funny in that it shows the band as sort of stiff and contrived in a Republican-y way. I wonder if Nugent was a Republican even back then.

The song, though, is terrific.

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

◗ Monroe County Public Library — Exhibit, “Muse Whisperings,” water color paintings done by residents of Sterling House; through May 31st, 9am-close

◗ Monroe County Public Library — Used books and media sale; 9am-4pm

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits, “Blended Harmonies: Music and Religion in Nepal”; through July 1st — “Esse Quam Videri (To Be, Rather than To Be Seen): Muslim Self Portraits; through June 17th — “From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”; through July 1st, 9am-4:30pm

◗ IU Grunwald (SOFA) Gallery — MFA & BFA Thesis 3 exhibitions; through May 5th, Noon

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — Exhibit, “Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze”; through June 29th, 1:30-5pm

◗ Bear’s Place — Jazz Fables, IU Jazz Graduation Concert; 5:30pm

◗ IU Cinema — Short films from students in IU’s Department of Telecommunications; 6:30pm

◗ Farm Bloomington, The Root Cellar — Ryder Films, “The Fairy”; 6:30pm

◗ Monroe County Public Library, Auditorium — “We Don’t Know Where to Put You, Huck,” community panel discussion about Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”; 7-8:30pm

◗ Cafe Django — Tom Miller at the piano; 7:30-9:30pm

◗ The Bluebird — Son Volt; 8pm

Son Volt

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◗ Upland Brewing Company — Aaron Persinger; 8pm

◗ The Comedy Attic — TJ Miller; 8pm

◗ Max’s Place — New Old Cavalry; 9pm

◗ Bear’s Place — Karaoke; 9pm

◗ IU Cinema — Student film, “Student Seven”; 9:30pm

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05/02/2012
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2012 Indiana Primary, 9/11, AT&T, Barack Obama, Citigroup, Flavor Flav, Goldman Sachs, IDS, Lockheed Martin, Mitt Romney, Osama bin Laden, Rod Serling, Rudy Giuliani, Shelli Yoder

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears.” — Rod Serling

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KEEP YOUR SHIRT ON

Bear with me kiddies. I’m in a big hurry this morning; there’s only time to put up the event listings right now. I’ll get around to my daily blather ASAP.

 

Late

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DO YOUR DUTY

I’m wearing my “I Voted Today!” sticker on my shirt as I type this.

Had to go pay a parking ticket at City Hall and happened to pass the Curry Building on 7th Street. I figured, hell, may as well pop in and vote. As long as I have to pay some hard-earned cash to the government, it makes sense that I participate in the electoral process as well.

You know, the way Goldman Sachs, AT&T, Citigroup, and Lockheed-Martin do. Only their dough goes a lot further. They own much of the Senate and the House.

Me? I probably only own one of Shelli Yoder‘s old dishwashing sponges.

What Twenty Bucks’ll Get You In The Lobbies Of Congress Nowadays

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Anyway, go vote.

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“WHAT DID RUDY GIULIANI EAT FOR BREAKFAST THIS MORNING?”*

I hate to burst the Republicans’ bubble (no, let me amend that: I love to burst the Republicans’ bubble) but Mitt Romney and his pal Rudy Giuliani calling Barack Obama’s mentioning of the successful raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout a year ago “playing politics” is a bit disingenuous, no?

Come now, boys, Rudy baby was all washed up in politics the day before 9/11 happened. New Yorkers couldn’t wait to be rid of him.

“Put Your Mask On! (And Vote For Me.)”

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Then the planes hit the Twin Towers and Giuliani was caught on videotape emphatically telling someone off-screen to put their mask on and next thing you know he’s a presidential candidate.

That, my friends, is politics.

(*Answer to the smart-assed joke circulating during the 2008 presidential campaign: “The World Trade Center — he didn’t have anything else.”)

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WELL, J SCHOOL IS FOR LEARNING

Not to make light of the untimely passing of an IU student Friday, but the IDS headline for the story about Julian Eisner’s death is a tad, shall we say, clumsy.

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It reads more like a hostage threat in an al Qaeda daily paper than anything else.

♢

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

◗ Monroe County Public Library — Exhibit, “Muse Whisperings,” water color paintings done by residents of Sterling House; through May 31st, 9am-9pm

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits, “Blended Harmonies: Music and Religion in Nepal”; through July 1st — “Esse Quam Videri (To Be, Rather than To Be Seen): Muslim Self Portraits; through June 17th — “From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”; through July 1st, 9am-4:30pm

From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web

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◗ Twin Lakes Recreation Center — Senior Expo, health fair, free screenings; 10am

◗ IU Grunwald (SOFA) Gallery — MFA & BFA Thesis 3 exhibitions; through May 5th, Noon

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — Exhibit, “Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze”; through June 29th, 1:30-5pm

◗ Monroe County History Center — Presentation, “Pajama Genealogy,” genealogist Randi Richardson speaks about doing genealogy at home; 2pm

◗ IU Cinema — Student short films; 6:30pm

◗ Ivy Tech, Daniels Way, Lamkin Hall — 1st annual Food Flix international cooking video awards; 6:30pm

◗ Monroe County Public Library — Center for Sustainable Living discussion, “How to Bicycle to Work and Still Look Great: Tips & Tricks”; 7-8pm

Bike To Work In Style!

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◗ Bear’s Place — Americana jam; 7pm

◗ Max’s Place — Open mic; 8pm

◗ Harmony School — Contra Dancing, hosted by Bloomington Old Time Music and Dance Group, beginners welcome; 8-10:30pm

◗ IU Kirkwood Observatory — Public night sky viewing, rain or shine; 9pm

Andromeda Galaxy

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◗ The Bishop — Spirit of ’68 Presents: Retribution Gospel Choir; 9pm

◗ IU Cinema — Indiana Filmmakers Network presents Made in Bloomington film and video; 9;30pm

◗ Uncle Elizabeth’s — BoP; 10pm & midnight

◗ Jake’s Nightclub — Battle of the bands; 10pm

♢

Vandaveer

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◗ Vintage Phoenix Comic Books — Listening party, “The Best Show on WFMU”; 9pm-midnight

◗ IU Cinema — Indiana Filmmakers Network Short Films: Made in Bloomington; 9:30pm

◗ Rachael’s Cafe — Wringer, Arms Aloft; 10pm

♢

04/30/2012
2 Comments
al Qaeda, Alycin Bektesh, Barack Obama, bin Laden Death Hoax Theory, Chad Carrothers, Cindy Sheehan, Conspiracy Theory, Firehouse Broadcasting, George W. Bush, Iraq War, LiveScience.com, Matt Taibbi, Osama bin Laden, Pablo Picasso, Pakistan, Ryan Lee Dawes, Society of Professional Journalists, The Great Derangement, The Onion, US Navy SEAL Team 6, WFHB

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“You mustn’t always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer.” — Pablo Picasso

♢

TELL ME SWEET LITTLE LIES

It’ll be a year tomorrow that a posse of Navy SEALs cornered that varmint Osama bin Laden and plugged him in his bedroom.

President Barack Obama had large enough cagliones to order the secret assault on ObL’s hideout in Pakistan and the raid paid off big time — sort of. Had a Republican president been in charge there would have been daily parades in his honor in every big city since the al Qaeda boss’s take-down.

The President Watches The Operation Unfold

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But because Obama is a Muslim mole whose goal is to transform our holy land into a commie/Nazi gulag/stalag, he hasn’t exactly been showered with laurel leaves since his big night.

Funny thing is, almost within minutes of the announcement that ObL had been executed, the conspiracy theorists leaped out of the woodwork. Chief among them, sad to say, was Cindy Sheehan, the California mom whose son was killed in the Iraq War and who channeled her grief into highly publicized anti-war activism.

Literally within hours after the news of bin Laden’s death broke, Sheehan famously wrote on her website, “I am sorry, but if you believe the newest death of OBL (sic), you’re stupid.” She went on to detail some very iffy evidence that the whole operation was a hoax.

Poor Sheehan lost whatever credibility she had left after that.

Cindy Sheehan

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Fringe-y organizations both left and right jumped on the ObL Death Hoax bandwagon for the next several weeks, then fell silent. A brief scan of the internet shows that no one has said much about such hoax claims since about June last year.

Which is odd because conspiracies and hoaxes usually seem to have the staying power of a bad cold in January.

Here’s a list of the ten top conspiracy theories in the US, as compiled by LiveScience.com:

  • 10) 9/11 was an inside job (2001)
  • 9) Princess Diana was murdered (1997)
  • 8) Subliminal advertising (1973)
  • 7) The Apollo moon landings were faked (1978)
  • 6) Paul McCartney died (1966)
  • 5) All the people and organizations who killed JFK (mid-1960s)
  • 4) The Roswell UFO crash (1947)
  • 3) “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (1905)
  • 2) The epidemic of satanic cults (1980s)
  • 1) Big Pharma (1990s-2000s)

Leave It To The Onion

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As you can see, a good conspiracy/hoax theory can last a century or more. But today’s technology and the mass media bombardment of us with deception and myth has turned us into ever-more credulous suckers.

Journalist/polemicist Matt Taibbi has a nice explanation of the phenomenon in his book, “The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion.” On pages 183 to 189 (paperback edition) he lays out the ways advertisers, pols, and charlatans have inundated us with phony claims, distortions, spin, subterfuge, and outright lies. Here, I cherry-pick the key points from his thesis:

“How many lies are too many? How much bullshit is the human organism designed to tolerate before it starts to malfunction? Is there a breaking point?

“Mainstream American society has never been designed to confront difficult or dangerous truths. In fact, our mass media has corrupted the idea of objective truth so badly in the past five or six decades that it is now hard to tell when anyone is being serious about anything — the news, the movies, commercials, anything….

“Somehow ordinary people were supposed to keep track of all this, make their own sense of it. Decades after Watergate, Vietnam, and the Kennedy assassination, Americans were forced to rummage for objective reality in a sea of the most confusing and diabolical web of bullshit ever created by human minds — a false media tableau created mainly a s a medium to sell products, a medium in which even the content of the ‘news’ was affected by commercial considerations….”

“This was too much for the people to handle….”

“America by the early years of this century was a confusing kaleidoscope of transparent, invidious bullshit, a place where politicians hired consultants to teach them to ‘straight talk,’ where debates were decided by inadvertent coughs and smiles and elections were resolved via competing smear campaigns, and where network news programs — subsidized by advertisements for bogus alchemist potions like Enzyte that supposedly made your dick grow by magic — could feature as a lead story newly released photos of the Tom Cruise love child, at a time when young American men and women were dying every day in the deserts of the Middle East.

“The message of all of this was that Americans were now supposed to make their own sense of the world. There was no dependable authority left to turn to, no life raft in an increasingly perilous informational sea. This coincided with an age when Americans now needed to understand more of the world than ever before…. Now… Joe American has to turn on the Internet and tell himself a story that makes sense to him.”

Cindy Sheehan reached the breaking point when Barack Obama held his historic midnight news conference a year ago. Of course, she was pushed toward that snap by the death of her child. But the rest of us are under strain as well, if not so heart-wrenching.

We’re living in an age when fiction and reality are interchangeable. That’s why George W. Bush could lie us into a war and Barack Obama could sell himself as a man who would change government.

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So I’m surprised the Osama bin Laden Death Hoax stories didn’t last. It doesn’t mean we’re becoming more rational and sophisticated — probably only that the vast majority liked the the story of the Navy SEAL Team 6 operation a year ago too much.

♢

REAL NEWS

WFHB‘s Alycin Bektesh, Ryan Dawes, and Chad Carrothers lugged home a lot of hardware after Friday night’s Society of Professional Journalists annual awards dinner in Indianapolis. The Firehouse broadcasters won 19 awards for excellence, going up against news departments from around the state.

The WFHB Gang Friday Night In Indy

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Bloomington’s community radio station consistently puts out the best local news and special programming in the region. No commercial station nearby can hold a candle to the news department that current GM Carrothers started about a decade ago.

Carrothers took a chance, donating his time and considerable energies for no pay at first, just to get the operation off the ground. Now WFHB News puts all those for-profit radio news departments to shame.

♢

LIAR, LIAR

The 1965 hit by The Castaways.

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♢

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Monday, April 30, 2012

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits, “Blended Harmonies: Music and Religion in Nepal”; through July 1st — “Esse Quam Videri (To Be, Rather than To Be Seen): Muslim Self Portraits; through June 17th — “From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”; through July 1st, 9am-4:30pm

From “Esse Quam Videri”

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◗ IU Grunwald (SOFA) Gallery — MFA & BFA Thesis 3 exhibitions; through May 5th

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — Exhibit, “Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze”; through June 29th, 1:30-5pm

◗ IU Asian Culture Center — Henna 101; 4pm

◗ Bell Trace Health & Living Center — Session 2 of a 4-part class, “Life in a British Period Drama”; 6:30pm

◗ IU Cinema — Student film, “Mudcity”; 7pm

◗ IU Department of Folklore & Ethnomusicology, Performance & Lecture Hall — Students perform Ghanaian music, drumming, and dance, directed by Bernard Woma, guest artists: Evelyn Yaa Bekyore and Joyce Bekyore; 7pm

Bernard Woma

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◗ The Player’s Pub — Songwriters Showcase; 8pm

◗ The Bluebird — Dave Walters Karaoke; 8pm

◗ The Bishop — DJs, The Vallures; Film, “Brick and Mortar and Love”; both at 8pm

◗ Bear’s Place — Archie Powell & the Exports, Sandman Viper Command, Deadghost, Keeping Cars; 9pm

♢

04/27/2012
Leave a comment
Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Andrew Luck, Barack Obama, Bloomington Playwrights Project, Book Corner, Cam Newton, Chicago Cubs, Contraception, Emil Verban Society, Fox News, George Will, Homophobia, Indianapolis Colts, Ivy Tech, Leo Tolstoy, Lesbian, Mark Kruzan, Mitt Romney, Monica Crowley, NFL, O'Bannon Institute for Community Service, Pat Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh, Sam Bradford, Sandra Fluke, Soma Coffee, Susan Jones, Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“The secret of eternal youth is arrested development.” — Alice Roosevelt Longworth

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LUCK OF THE DRAW

This Andrew Luck fellow, who became an instant multi-millionaire in last night’s NFL draft, just might be able to run for King of Indiana in a few years if he has any kind of success at all on the football field.

He’s well-spoken and self-effacing, he has a dazzling smile, and it seems as though he’s got his feet on the ground. Hopefully, he’ll retain his positive character traits once he signs his obligatory obscenely lucrative contract with the Indianapolis Colts. Last year’s number one pick in the NFL draft, quarterback Cam Newton, inked a four-year, $22M deal with the Carolina Panthers.

The number one pick in 2010, the St Louis Rams’ Sam Bradford, scored a six-year, $78M contract but, of course, he’s white, as is Luck.

Luck-y

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Luck is 22 years old. Sure, he may seem mature beyond his years but scads of dough can tend to change any human being. I know that if I suddenly happened into tens of millions of dollars when I was 22, I probably would have become one of the world’s most unbearable people.

♢

WILL●HE●IS

One of the Boys of Soma, pistol-packin’ Pat Murphy, reports that George Will‘s appearance last night at the Ivy Tech Bloomington’s O’Bannon Institute for Community Service was eye-opening.

“He’s a smart guy,” Murphy, a dyed in the wool Dem allowed about the Republican darling. “He had some really perceptive things to say last night.”

Will

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Among other things, Will pointed out how difficult it will be for Mitt Romney to unseat Barack Obama in this fall’s presidential beauty contest. It’s a demographic thing, what with Romney expected to strike out big time with women, Latinos, and blacks.

Murphy added that Mayor Mark Kruzan asked Will if the Chicago Cubs will ever win the World Series. Will is a noted member of the Emil Verban Society, a boys club of Washington-insider Cubs fans (Ronald Reagan also was a member).

Will wouldn’t hazard a guess but did remind the crowd that the last time the Cubs won it all was two years before the death of Leo Tolstoy.

19th Century Man

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THE FOX PIGSTY

How about that blonde, Barbie Doll manqué from Fox News who tweeted the insult yesterday about the right wing’s current fave whipping girl, Sandra Fluke?

Crowley: News? Analyst?

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Fluke testified before a House Democrats caucus about the need for health insurers to cover contraception. Immediately, the anencephalics of this holy land jumped on her with both feet. Leading the bullying was Rush Limbaugh, who called her a “slut” and a “prostitute” on his nationally-broadcast radio upchuck fest.

Apparently, Fluke has announced she’s getting married. Fox News “analyst” Monica Crowley responded thusly in the Tweet-iverse:

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Knowing what we know about Fox News and the pan-troglodytes who watch it, implying that Fluke was thought to be a lesbian has to be an insult.

Problem is, Monica baby, Fluke testified about her own need for contraception. Lesbian sex does not result in pregnancy. Are we clear on that now?

♢

COLLINS WAS HUNGRY ONCE

Susan Jones, ex of the IU Enrollment Service operation, is working on a history of the Bloomington Playwrights Project.

Jones discovered recently that one of America’s hottest writers today wrote a couple of plays for the BPP back in the 1980s.

That’s right — Suzanne Collins, whose “Hunger Games” trilogy is de rigeur for literate teens (and even a lot of adults who sheepishly buy the books at the Book Corner), once was an aspiring scribe here. She earned a double major in Drama and Telecommunications from IU in 1985 and hung around town for a few years afterward.

Collins

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Sounds like a good reason to take in some BPP productions this year. Who knows which future superstar’s work you’ll be seeing?

♢

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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Friday, April 27, 2012

◗ Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Exhibits, “Blended Harmonies: Music and Religion in Nepal”; through July 1st — “Esse Quam Videri (To Be, Rather than To Be Seen): Muslim Self Portraits; through June 17th — “From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”; through July 1st, 9am-4:30pm

◗ IU Grunwald (SOFA) Gallery — MFA & BFA Thesis 3 exhibitions; through May 5th

◗ Kinsey Institute Gallery — Art exhibit, “Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze”; 1:30-5pm

◗ IU HPER — Lecture, Jonathan Jarvis, director of the National Park Service; 3:30pm

◗ Thrive Health & Well-Being Center — Opening reception, Donna Headrick Moore scanner and pinhole photo exhibit; 5-8pm

◗ Madame Walker Theatre Center — Jazz on the Avenue; 6pm

◗ The Venue Fine Arts & Gifts — Reception for Dawn Adams exhibit, “The Art of Healing”; 6pm

◗ IU Grunwald (SOFA) Gallery — Reception, MFA & BFA 3 participants; 6pm

◗ IU Cinema — “Water and Power” by Pat O’Neill; 6:30pm

◗ Patricia’s Wellness Arts Cafe & Quilter’s Comfort Teas — Poetry, “Readings for Our Earth” & open mic; 7-9pm

◗ Rachael’s Cafe — Park Jefferson, Marital Roles, The Greater Good; 7:30pm

◗ Cafe Django — Svetla Vladeva and the Eastern European Ensemble; 7:30-10pm

◗ The Player’s Pub — Dicky James and the Blue Flames; 8pm

◗ IU Auditorium — Musical, “Young Frankenstein”; 8pm

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◗ IU Memorial Union, Whittenberger Auditorium — Film, “The Artist”; 8 & 11pm

◗ Comedy Attic — Kumail Nanjiani; 8 & 10:30pm

◗ The Bishop — Documentary film, “Color Me Obsessed,” on the Replacements; 8pm

◗ Max’s Place — Louis; 8pm

◗ The Bluebird — Andy Holinden; 8pm

◗ The Palace Theatre — “Songs: The Musical”; 8pm

◗ Bear’s Place — Zach Dubois; 9pm

◗ Max’s Place — Soul Kinks; 9pm

◗ Uncle Elizabeth’s — Vicci Laine & the West End Girls; 10pm & Midnight

◗ The Bishop — Dave Walter Karaoke; 11pm

♢

04/22/2012
Leave a comment
Barack Obama, Birthers, Bloomington High School North, Bloomington High School South, Dianne Feinstein, IDS, John Griffin Miller, John W. Tilford, Jonathan George, Little 500, Orly Taitz, Robert Winningham, Sacramento Bee, Shelli Yoder, Soma Coffee, Stephen Hawking, Survey USA, The Onion, The Ten Commandments, Todd Young, US Congress

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the universe. That makes us something very special.” — Stephen Hawking

♢

THE TRADITIONS OF THE LITTLE 500

One of the Boys of Soma, who asked not to be identified, revealed Saturday morning that he did not find any passed-out drunk IU students on his front porch, as he usually does every year during Little 500 weekend.

He did say he found a number of slices of pizza on the lawn, though.

The Delta Gamma sorority won the women’s Little Five on Friday. The Indiana Daily Student reports that three ancient Greek letters won the men’s race Saturday afternoon. The Cyrillic alphabet of the Slavic languages is expected to appeal the result.

Controversy After This Year’s Little 500

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♢

KIDS ASK THE DARNEDEST THINGS

Mark off Tuesday, April 24th, on your calendars. Bloomington’s teenagers that evening will hold the Democratic candidates’ feet to the fire in a debate between the five contenders at Bloomington High School South.

The Kids Take Over

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Students from both South and North will hurl question at Gen. Jonathan George, John Griffin Miller, Col. John Tilford, Robert Winningham, and Shelli Yoder for an hour and a half beginning at 7:00pm.

The Indiana primary will be held Tuesday, May 8th, with the winner among the five Democrats going against first-term Republican Todd Young in November.

The things that make most high school kids annoying should come in quite handy in the debate. Corporate media animals generally ask polite or at least irrelevant questions. The kids, though, being direct and irreverent, ought to pepper the candidates with queries about the schools, the environment, our endless wars, taxes, and other things that, like, y’know, affect us.

Todd Young looks like a good bet to keep his seat in the general election but I can always hope.

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IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD COUNTRY

Gather all the children and bring them indoors. Lock your doors and windows and pull down the shades.

This holy land has officially and incontrovertibly gone mad.

Orly Taitz is running for the United States Senate from California.

Taitz

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Taitz is challenging the Golden State’s senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, who’s been in office since 1992. California runs a blanket non-partisan primary for statewide elective office. The candidates who finish first and second in the June 5th primary will face each other in the November general election.

I have no idea how this one got past me. Apparently, Taitz has been running since early November, when she told some EPA-hating, Ann Coulter-carrying news aggregator website about her plans. The announcement of her candidacy did not cause the nation’s news media to activate the Emergency Alert System.

I may even have seen a quickie story on her quixotic run but the rational part of my brain reflexively interpreted it as an Onion-style satire.

Really, everything about Taitz seems to be an Onion satire. For instance, when she was considering her run for the Senate back in September, she told the Sacramento Bee that one of the reasons she has a good chance to win is that she speaks Hebrew.

Hebrew?

Perhaps she once watched the Cecil B, DeMille epic “The Ten Commandments” and upon learning it was made in Hollywood, concluded that biblical Israel was really in California.

This Occurred Near Anaheim

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I mean, what else could explain Taitz-ness other than her and her followers’ inability to distinguish between reality and fiction?

Taitz’s claim to fame is her role as “Queen of the Birthers.” She’s certain Barack Obama has falsified his birth certificate, his Social Security number, and his college transcripts, among other nefarious acts, to become the first secret Muslim mole elected president. She believes Obama comes from Kenya, which is fitting because she comes from the moon.

Orly Taitz’s Childhood Home

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Survey USA earlier this month conducted a poll of likely California voters and found that the incumbent Feinstein leads all comers with 51 percent. Taitz in the same poll drew a single percentage point, placing her in a tie for fourth pace with 11 other candidates and above nine candidates who couldn’t even garner one percent of the vote.

Still, some political animals think Taitz could sneak into the second spot based purely on name recognition alone.

Democracy, my friends, can be a very dangerous thing.

♢

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WHAT TO DO? WHAT TO DO?

[Ed.’s Note: Welcome to the next phase of The Electron Pencil’s growth. From here on out, we’ll be running daily events listings in a section we’re naming Go. Many of this weekend’s listings are late because we’re still messing with the layout and design. What you see here now might not be what you see in ten minutes. So consider this installment of Go to be your beta version. Indulge us — we want to see how things look and work. Be here tomorrow, though, for the real thing. Thanks.]

Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc. (alphabetical venue info)

Sunday, April 22, 2012

◗ Kent Farm, IU Research & Teaching Preserve — Bird hike with IU Biology Professors Susan and Jim Hengeveld; 7am

◗ IU Tennis Center — IU Women’s Tennis vs. Northwestern; 11am

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◗ Madame Walker Theatre — Wet Your Pants Comedy Film Fest; 12pm

◗ Sembower Field — IU Baseball vs. Georgie Southern; 1pm

◗ IU Softball Field — IU Softball vs. Northwestern, doubleheader; 2pm

◗ Sweeney Hall — Music & Video Recital, Jeffrey Haas and John Gibson; 2pm

◗ Monroe Lake, Paynetown SRA — Monroe Lake Volunteer Call-Out; 3:30pm

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◗ Player’s Pub — Benefit for the Red Cross; 3-8pm

◗ Max’s Place — Project School Poetry Ready; 3:30pm

◗ The Kinsey Institute — opening reception, exhibit, “Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze”; 4-7pm

◗ Bub’s Burgers — Poker; 5:30pm

◗ IU Cinema — DW Griffith film, “Orphans of the Storm”; 6:30pm

◗ Bear’s Place — Ryder Film Series: “Chico and Rita”; 7pm

◗ Buskirk-Chumley Theater — Trashion Refashion; 7pm

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◗ IU Auditorium — European Union Youth Orchestra, 7pm

◗ Merrill Hall, Recital Hall — All-Campus Orchestra, Benjamin Bolter, conductor; 8:30pm

◗ IU Auditorium — “An Overture to Europe Day” Reception, 9pm

♢

04/18/2012
2 Comments
Ann Romney, Barack Obama, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Frank Zappa, Great Depression, HBO, John F. Kennedy, Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Master of the Senate, Michelle Obama, Mitt Romney, Oliver Stone, Peter Drucker, Pink Floyd, Pulitzer Prize, Rick Santorum, Robert Caro, Robert Moses, The Passage of Power, The Power Broker, Unfettered Capitalism

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.” — Frank Zappa

♢

SAVE US, RICK

Gotta say it: I miss Rick Santorum.

The political debate has pretty much petered out now that the wackiest altar boy in the nation has quit the presidential race.

We Miss You, Man

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Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are involved in a staring contest over who loves women more. Romney said recently, “93 percent of the job losses during the Obama years have been women who lost those jobs.” Obama, in turn, has dispatched his wife, not to correct Romney’s awkward sentence construction, but to say her man is the greatest thing to happen to women since the invention of chocolate.

Michelle Obama actually said this about the her husband’s deeds for women: “We have an amazing story to tell. This president has brought us out of the dark and into the light.”

Oy.

Suffragette Introducing Featured Speaker Barack Obama

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And in some weird, Twilight Zone-ish turn of events, Ann Romney, a woman who has struggled valiantly to assemble a staff of nannies and maids, has become an icon for all the hard-toiling homemakers of this holy land.

Oy, oy.

I don’t suppose this debate-for-the-ages will rank with the Lincoln-Douglas wrestling matches of 1858.

Sigh. Oh, for the madness of Rick Santorum.

♢

MAN ON THE THRONE

And, yes, I’m a political geek.

See, I’m pumped about the release in two weeks of the fourth volume in Robert Caro‘s brilliant series of books on the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson. It deals with the 1960 presidential election, Johnson’s ascendency to the presidency following the Kennedy assassination, and his electoral coronation in 1964.

Johnson Drives His Beloved Amphi-car

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LBJ was one fascinating man. He stole elections, bullied opponents, battled for civil rights legislation, loathed John F. Kennedy and then served under him as vice president, allowed the nation to slip into a senseless war in Vietnam and found himself mourning that course of events. He issued orders to members of his staff while perched upon the porcelain princess with the door wide open.

Caro won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Power Broker,” his look into the life of New York City strongman Robert Moses. (BTW, Oliver Stone is working on an HBO biopic based on Caro’s book.) He copped another Pulitzer for the third volume in the Years of Lyndon Johnson series, “Master of the Senate.” For my dough, Caro has to win a third Pulitzer for “The Passage of Power” if it’s even half as good as the previous three tomes on the man.

Robert Caro

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Pick up any of the aforementioned Caro books; you’ll understand a lot more about how America works if you do.

♢

BEYOND HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

Dig this observation by social ecologist Peter Drucker:

“Like the forces of war, depression shows man as a senseless cog in a senselessly whirling machine which is beyond human understanding and has ceased to serve any purpose but its own.”

Peter Drucker

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The quote, written in 1939, has been interpreted as a description of the madness that was the Great Depression. It sounds to me more like an indictment of unfettered capitalism itself.

♢

MONEY

“Don’t give me that do-goody, good bullshit.”

♢

04/10/2012
3 Comments
Alfred Hitchcock, Alfred Kinsey, American Library Association, Banned Books, Barack Obama, Birthers, Bullying, Censorship, Conspiracy Theory, Doglas Wilson, Fidel Castro, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance Mandate, IDS, Indiana University, Joe Arpaio, Miami Marlins, Obamacare, Ozzie Guillen, Tyrone Davis

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“I’m not against the police; I’m just afraid of them.” — Alfred Hitchcock

♢

THE READING MENACE

Books are dangerous things. That’s what quite a few jittery folks in this holy land think.

There are enough bibliophobes around to cause heaps of trouble for librarians who are brazen and perverted enough to stock their shelves with certain titles that any god-fearing soul knows will weaken the nation and destroy the family.

Herewith is the American Library Association’s list of 2011’s ten most challenged books in these Great United States, Inc.:

  • The Lauren Myracle series including “ttyl,” “ttfn,” and “l8r”
  • The Kim Dong Hwa series “The Color of Earth”
  • “The Hunger Games” trilogy by Suzanne Collins
  • “My Mom’s Having a Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy” by Dori Hillestad Butler
  • “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” by Sherman Alexie
  • The “Alice” series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
  • “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley
  • “What My Mother Doesn’t Know” by Sonya Sones
  • The “Gossip Girl” series by Cecily Von Ziegesar
  • “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee

Harper Lee, Contributor To Delinquency

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Any of these books may well turn your child into a young socialist or aspiring terrorist. If you are an older person and you even inadvertently read one of these tomes, you’ll suddenly find yourself wishing to acquit black men falsely accused of crimes, use indelicate language, and — worst of all — possibly think about sex.

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BULLIED BOY

Drop everything you’re doing right now and pick up a copy of the Indiana Daily Student or click over to the IDS website. Read the unsigned editorial about the personal struggle of a self-described chunky Hispanic latent homosexual who endured years of bullying at the hands of his schoolmates.

If it doesn’t make you cry, you’re probably dead.

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The author of the piece points out that a conservative Christian Cro-Magnon man named Douglas Wilson is slated to speak at IU Friday. Wilson thinks current anti-bullying efforts let gay and lesbian kids off the hook. They’re bad seeds, he concludes.

I checked out Wilson’s website. Man, this guy is a piece of work. He links the late IU sex researcher Alfred Kinsey with Nazism. He also espouses age-old Puritan chestnuts like a wife should be submissive to her husband (but not in the fun, light bondage way, either).

Nazi?

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Here’s an example of Wilson’s “thinking” on Barack Obama’s health care reform bill: “When they urge the passage of Obamacare because this person will now ‘have coverage,’ they overlook the fact that nothing good can come from men wanting to be God.”

Wait, what?

Wilson’s wife also has a blog. They’re both the kind of folk who need to cite a Bible passage for every thing they say. Only their Bible doesn’t seem to have a passage advising them not to terrorize kids who are struggling with their sexuality.

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SCARY COP

I’ve long suspected noted brute-with-a-badge Joe Arpaio is playing with a short deck. Now I know it’s true.

The longtime Maricopa County (Arizona) sheriff jumped on the Birther bandwagon months ago. He’s upping the ante now. Arpaio’s current take on that particular psychotic reaction makes earlier Birther charges seem almost sane.

“America’s Toughest Sheriff”

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Tough guy Joe now says the Republicans are in on the scheme!

Yep. GOP senators and even the motley crew running for the Republican nomination for president all have have thrown in their lots with the conspirators who took a Kenyan baby and groomed him to become the President of the United States.

Not even Stephen King could come up with this stuff.

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ONLY 90 MILES AWAY

Does the thought strike you that this great nation is riding a time machine backward?

Guess who’s in the headlines again, 54 years after the Cuban revolution, 50 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and fully four years after he quit as Cuba’s boss because he was getting too old and feeble to terrify anybody anymore.

Yep. Fidel Castro.

America, I’ll Be Living In Your Nightmares For The Next Fifty Years!

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I’m not part of Castro’s fan club. There’ve been good and bad things to say about his bully-boy reign. Sure, everybody can read and health care coverage is universal in Cuba. But just try being a dissident and see how far that’ll get you on the island.

Anyway, Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen, who has no filter between his reptilian brain and his mouth, the other day was talking about the Marlins new stadium which is located in Miami’s Little Havana district.

Perhaps Guillen, not normally known as a sage political observer, figured Hmm, lots of Cubans around here. I’d better say something nice about Castro.

So he gushed about the Havana strongman. “I love Fidel Castro,” he brayed. “I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years but that son of a bitch is still here.”

Suddenly, Guillen found out that the nearly one million Cubans who live in Miami are the ones who’ve wanted to slice Fidel’s throat this last half century. Don’t ask me why, but there’s hardly a group on Earth with longer memories and holding a deeper grudge than the people who fled Cuba after Castro took over.

Miami has rarely seen a storm like the one that’s blowing over town right now.

Local pols are screaming that Guillen should be fired. A state legislator is calling for “punitive measures” against him, according to the Associated Press.

The owner of Miami’s Major League Baseball team has suspended Guillen for five games.

No one knows if this will be enough to satisfy the baying hounds who right now are ringing Marlins Stadium, calling for Guillen’s head.

Look, Guillen’s a big-mouthed dope. So are Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus and every other professional gabber who has delivered racist, sexist, insensitive, insulting, or deliriously uninformed diatribes. But we don’t punish people for stupid talk in my country. We don’t take their jobs away from them.

If we did, everybody would be in hot water and nobody would have a job.

Not The Most Respected Political Commentator Around

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Wait a minute…, everybody is in hot water and nobody does have a job. Oh well, you know what I mean.

Back to this going back in time bit, though. Wasn’t it just a few years before Fidel Castro blew into the national consciousness that we proud Americans were punishing folks and taking away their livelihoods just for talking or thinking the wrong way?

It looks like old Joe McCarthy has never really gone away.

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TURN BACK THE HANDS OF TIME

Tyrone Davis’s soul hit from the spring of 1970.

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