Fox News | The Electron Pencil

04/27/2012

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.

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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?

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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

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04/11/2012

1 Comment

A People's History of American Empire, Anti-war Movement, Buffalo Springfield, Colonialism, Daniel Ellsberg, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Espionage Act of 1917, FBI, Fox News, France, George Zimmerman, Green Berets, Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Harry S Truman, Howard Zinn, Lyndon B. Johnson, Monty Python's Flying Circus, My Lai, New York Times, RAND Corporation, Richard M. Nixon, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Smothers Brothers, Terry Gilliam, Trayvon Martin, US Department of Defense, Vietnam War, Washington Post, Watergate

The Pencil Today:

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THE QUOTE

“I got my head bashed in at a demonstration against the Vietnam War. Police were losing control because they were up against a world they really didn’t understand.” — Terry Gilliam

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AND THEN THERE WERE TWO

Gotta tell ya, folks, I hate to see Little Rickey Santorum go, for the loss of his entertainment value alone.

Now the presidential race is down to two politico-economic fraternal twins, each of whom is about as exciting as a can of beige paint.

Definitely Not Beige

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If it wasn’t for guys like Santorum, I’d have to actually take the Republicans seriously and you know how disconcerting that prospect would be for me.

Digging the Santorum campaign was like having a daredevil hobby — bungee jumping off tall bridges, say, or rowing across an ocean. Exciting, sure, but if things go wrong, you’re screwed.

In this case, the worst-case scenario would have been a Santorum presidency

So, bye-bye Rickey. We knew you all too well.

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A SIMPLE QUESTION

Does it surprise anyone that the first media creature George Zimmerman has spoken with is Fox News’ Sean Hannity?

Sympathetic Ear

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DANIEL ELLSBERG, PATRIOT

I missed this. Saturday, April 7th was Daniel Ellsberg‘s birthday.

You want a hero? You got him.

Ellsberg

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Here’s the story of Ellsberg’s heroism as told by Howard Zinn in his compelling graphic narrative book, “A People’s History of American Empire.”

Zinn and Ellsberg became friends in 1969 during the anti-war movement. Ellsberg earlier had worked for the RAND Corporation, which was assigned by the US Department of Defense in 1967 to write up a history of the Vietnam War. Ellsberg actually did much of the grunt work researching this nation’s involvement there.

He learned that President Harry Truman authorized the funding of France’s colonial war against Vietnam independence fighters as far back as the 1940s. President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s threw US support behind Vietnam strongmen who opposed free elections in that country.

Throw in a pile of other falsehoods, exaggerations, forgeries, and intentional inaccuracies on the parts of generals and politicians executing the slaughter in Southeast Asia, and Ellsberg understood that our stated aims there were a colossal sham.

Thanks to the study, Ellsberg saw that President Lyndon Johnson’s assertion that the North Vietnamese had started a war just for kicks in the summer of 1964 was an out and out lie.

Johnson, see, had said some North Vietnamese in a little motorboat had attacked a couple of American cruisers just sitting in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin and minding their own business. Johnson parlayed this whopper into getting Congress to sign him a blank check and the next thing you knew, a half million American soldiers were fighting for who knows what in Southeast Asia.

Johnson, Finally Grasping What Vietnam Had Become

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Ellsberg and some other RAND researchers privately agreed that they had to say something to the American public about our country’s shenanigans in Vietnam.

They figured Middle American folks would trust them, sub-contractors to the Pentagon with 7000 pages of damning documents in their hands, rather than wild-eyed hippies carrying peace placards.

So they sent a letter to major newspapers around the country calling for an end to the war. The New York Times and the Washington Post both published the letter, but nobody really gave a damn about it.

Meanwhile, the United States military went on happily killing and bombing in Vietnam. Then there was a Green Beret murder scandal and the My Lai Massacre. Ellsberg already was wracked with guilt for his country over what he knew and these atrocities only pushed him over the edge.

Destroying The Town In Order To Save It

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He contacted another former RAND colleague and together they photocopied the 7000 pages with the goal of releasing the classified documents. The two agreed it was worth going to jail for exposing government secrets if it might shorten the war somehow.

Their hope was the release of the papers would turn even the most die-hard patriots against the war. They contacted the offices of a few congressmen and found no one willing to touch their hot docs.

Finally, they went to the New York Times with their bundle of papers. After a few months, the Times went ahead and published what would become known as the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg was charged with theft and violations of the Espionage Act. He faced 115 years in prison. He turned himself in to the FBI in Boston on June 28, 1971, after having run off many more copies of the Papers and distributing them to other newspapers.

Setting The Type For The New York Times Pentagon Papers Edition

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While Ellsberg was on trial, it was learned that the Nixon White House had ordered mugs to burglarize his psychiatrist’s office in hopes of finding incriminating notes against him there, and other mugs to harass him at public appearances. The federal judge declared a mistrial in Ellberg’s case due to these government interferences.

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He was lucky.

He was also, as I mentioned earlier. a hero.

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FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

The Buffalo Springfield played this song on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, February 26th, 1967.

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01/03/2012

3 Comments

Annie Dillard, Capitol Commission of Indiana, Fox News, God, Harry Burkhart, Indiana General Assembly, Los Angeles Arson, Norman Greenbaum, Shervin Lalezary, Spirit in the Sky

The Pencil Today:

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TODAY’S QUOTE

Eskimo: “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?”

Priest: “No, not if you did not know.”

Eskimo: “Then why did you tell me?”

— Annie Dillard

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BROWN GOOD; WHITE BAD? OH MY ACHING HEAD!

So, the LA cops have nabbed a guy who they think started all those fires over the weekend.

The blazes have been headlines on all the national news outlets for the last three or four days. The arrest of the suspect made a commensurate splash.

Shervin Lalezary (r) — A Headache For Fox News

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Except on Fox News.

I scanned the Fox website this morning and could find absolutely no mention of the arrest.

Odd, huh?

Perhaps not. Harry Burkhart, the suspect, is from Germany. And white.

Shervin Lalezary was born in Iran. He’s brown.

It was Lalezary who slapped the cuffs on Burkhart. The suspect reportedly said, “I hate America,” when he was arrested.

The Fox News people must be must be suffering from seizures at this moment. Can you imagine how they’d be baying like hounds had the roles been reversed?

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GOD SENT ME

So, here’s my advice to my leftie brothers and sisters: Start using the word “god” in every press release you issue.

Yep. And throw in terms like “faith” and ‘the lord.” Whenever you stage a demonstration, make sure someone in your group takes a knee, bows his head, and mutters some prayers.

See, that’s what works for the Right. They know the big man and that gets them places.

God: “I Know That Guy; He’s Cool. Let ‘im In.”

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Here’s an example: safety and security officials this year are instituting strict new guidelines limiting the number of people who can crowd into the Indiana statehouse during legislative sessions.

All gallery visitors will have to stand in line outside the statehouse and be admitted one by one until the capacity is reached.

The move has drawn criticism, only it’s from all the usual suspects — unions, Planned Parenthood, the Occupy people, and Democrats.

You know, the godless heathens who want to tear our holy land to shreds. They’re figuring the state drew up the guidelines as a way to filter them out when push comes to shove.

Like this year, when legislators will consider union-busting “right-to-work” bills.

Today’s the first day of the General Assembly’s winter session. And already the new rules are being skirted. A group of holy rollers has been given a special dispensation to avoid the expected long lines waiting to get in.

Some gang named the Capitol Commission of Indiana, which is attending today’s session for the sole purpose of uttering some prayers over the proceedings, will waltz into statehouse while the rest of the common clay wait out in the cold. And if the Capitol Commission folks fill up the joint, well, ain’t that just tough luck.

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SPIRIT IN THE SKY

I was 14 years old when this song became a big hit, reaching Number 1 on the Billboard chart in the spring of 1970. Even then it struck me as odd that a Jew, Norman Greenbaum, was singing about Jesus and Heaven.

Nevertheless, I dug the hell out of this song.

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12/30/2011

The Pencil Today:

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TODAY’S QUOTE

“The world is getting to be such a dangerous place a man is lucky to get out of it alive.” W.C. Fields

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THE WORRY GENERATION

Parents in the year 2011-going-on-2012 are probably the worryingest humans ever to have evolved.

We might blame TV crime dramas and the 24-hour news cycle for that. This holy land’s living room gibbons have seen so many kidnappings, murders, beatings, and rapes that they’ve begun to believe real life is chock-full of such thrills and chills.

TV Life

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This despite the fact that crime stats have been steadily decreasing in the last few decades. The evolutionary psychologist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker has written a bestseller entitled “The Better Angels of Our Nature” detailing how the human urge to eviscerate or otherwise express his emotions toward his neighbor has profoundly declined in the modern world.

Sure, sure, we have nuclear weapons and religious sects that want to slice our throats if we don’t agree with every single use of the comma in their book of tenets but, by and large, the casual one-on-one violence that characterized daily life as recently as the middle of the 20th Century is pretty much absent today in America.

In 1942, for instance, a man might disagree with the fellow next door over the relative merits of Plymouths versus Chevys. The discourse might become heated to the point that the Plymouth owner would, say, accuse the Chevy aficionado of having carnal knowledge of his mother.

The Chevy guy might at that point punch the Plymouth guy in the nose, causing the poor man to spend the rest of his life resembling a Picasso portrait.

Probably Had A Disagreement With His Neighbor

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And that would pretty much be the end of it save for the eagerly repeated recounts of the encounter which would only peter out when the next such slugging occurred.

Today, of course, a citizen displacing his neighbor’s nose from the front of his face to the side would trigger a flood of squad cars, ambulances, and attorneys to descend upon the block in question.

If it happened in Bloomington, the incident might even make the inside pages of the Herald Times.

We are, by and large, a more civilized people.

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Anyway, parents today won’t let their kids do much of anything on their own for fear they’ll be forced into sexual slavery. The world, Ma and Pa America believe, is more dangerous than it’s ever been.

So imagine how the parents of Oakland City, Indiana are reacting to the discovery of a meth lab in the janitor’s closet at the town’s high school.

They’re meeting today with the school’s principal and the town’s chief of police to talk the whole thing over. You know — as much as you know the sun will rise in the east tomorrow — there are now dozens of Oakland City parents who are convinced the nation’s high schools are all housing meth labs.

Even though there’s no evidence the janitor wanted in connection with the discovery had peddled his product to the kids. Nor is there evidence his closet was really a lab at all — the police chief says it appears a small amount of meth was made a single time there.

Parents worry. Always have. But never before the way they do now.

Remember “rainbow parties”? Oprah — who else? — had an episode once during which it was revealed teens were throwing get-togethers wherein the girls all put on different shades of lipstick and proceeded to blow all the boys in attendance — the “rainbow” signifying the lipstick spectrum each boy’s junk was adorned with after the party was over.

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Next thing you know, every parent in the land was convinced every Friday night party their precious daughters and lucky-dog sons were going to were really fellatio orgies.

Only there never had been any such things as rainbow parties. They were a figment of novelist Paul Ruditis’s imagination (and they never even occurred in his book, “Rainbow Party“!)

Or how about the Florida police chief who revealed to a startled republic that our sons and daughters were now all doing jenkem, a largely mythical hallucinogen made from fermented human sewage. The DEA and the mainstream media jumped on that bandwagon, warning of the dangers of sniffing hot shit.

Fox News (Who Else?) Reports On The Jenkem Epidemic

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And parents ate it up, natch. Until the jenkem rage was discovered to be a hoax.

Maybe today’s parents need the adrenaline high of worry and fear. Maybe it’s a replacement for the high they used to get from the substances they did before they became parents.

Or, as I alluded to earlier, maybe it’s simply the blurred line between fiction and reality that corporate media has created.

Whatever, every kid seems to have helicopter parents now. And I thought my generation had a lot of parental baggage to shed on the analyst’s couch. The poor kids of today are going to be gulping anti-depressants like M&Ms over the next few decades.

Man, I’m glad I never became a parent.

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MOTHER-IN-LAW

Especially when I or The Loved One might be viewed in the following light by the husband or wife of our thankfully non-existent kid:

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12/10/2011

1 Comment

1968 Democratic Convention, Alan Cromer, Bloomington Indiana, Chicago Police Department, Chicago Sun-Times, Durban Climate Conference, Environment, Fox News, G-8, Jon Burge, Kirk Douglas, Marvin Gaye, NATO, Neil Steinberg, Occupy Movement, Police Riot, Roger Ebert, Summerdale Police Scandal, What's Going On?

The Pencil Today:

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WE’D RATHER FEEL THAN THINK

The late physicist Alan Cromer suggested that scientific thinking is not a natural process for the seven billion of us who muddle through this life. “Human beings, after all, love to believe in spirits and gods,” he said. “Science, which asks them to see things as they are and not as they believe or feel them to be, undercuts a primary human passion.”

Cromer

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BLOOMINGTON REDUCES ITS GAS PAIN

Environmental issues, both local and global, are in the news this Saturday morning.

The Herald Times reports that the City of Bloomington used five percent less gasoline in its fleet vehicles during the first half of this year, as compared to the same span in 2010.

Good news, no?

Less Of This Here

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It’s important to keep in mind, though, that Bloomington, being the capital-in-exile of the former Soviet Union, is chock-full of liberals, Democrats, and other sinners who go in for that kind of Earth-y stuff.

The rest of this holy land? Well, you know.

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WHAT DO THOSE DUMB SCIENTISTS KNOW ANYWAY?

So, the South Africa climate talks are petering out with no agreement in sight.

It’s the usual snag: the big countries (like you-know-which holy land) that pollute most are pushing for a tepid pact to curb greenhouse gases and other flotsam and jetsam. Developing nations, which have a lot less to lose economically, want strong environmental safeguards.

I understand the motivations of corporate robber barons and their coatholders in Congress who want to forestall any restrictions. It costs dough, after all, to sanitize smokestacks that belch toxins.

The Sweet Smell Of Success

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Why, though, would that certain segment of the general populace that drools before any TV screen with Fox News on it not want stringent global environmental laws? Don’t they want to breathe fresh air or drink clean water?

Perhaps not. Perhaps they wish only to inhale Camels and slurp Diet Coke.

Anyway, that gang doesn’t believe the overwhelming majority of climatologists who are convinced humankind is mucking up the atmosphere so badly that Hurricane Katrina in a few decades will seem like a spring shower.

Many of them do believe in things like ghosts, UFO visitations, astrology, intelligent design, spontaneous human combustion, numerology, angels, homeopathy, feng shui, clairvoyance, Nostradamus, and other fairy tales.

In that sense, the Fox News audience is far more “natural” than I am.

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MERCY MERCY ME

Heck, let’s stick with the ecology. Here’s the final track on side one of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” vinyl disc, released in May, 1971. For my money, it’s the best pop album ever made. Enjoy.

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WE DO FACEBOOK SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO

◗ Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert can’t speak anymore but his voice rings out louder than ever these days. He’s become a writing machine. He reminds us that Kirk Douglas is now 95 years old.

By the way, you have to read Roger’s take on the Occupy Movement. He goes a little too soft on the Democratic Party, IMHO, but his righteous indignation is refreshing.

◗ And so we’ll stick with the Sun-Times. Columnist Neil Steinberg writes today about the Chicago Police. The boys in powder blue will be on world display next spring with the G-8 and NATO summits coming to town. The CPD has been tarnished through the years by the Summerdale Scandal, the ’68 Convention, the Jon Burge torture case, and too many others to name here. I personally took a beating in the back seat of a squad car once for the unforgivable sin of being a mouthy sixteen-year-old. Steinberg is no more popular with Chicago’s cops today than dopey kids like me were back then. His FB link illustrates why.

FYI: It was Steinberg who, as a pseudonymous critic of a well-known, pathologically flatulent Chicago newspaper columnist back in the ’90s, inspired the title for this feature. I wish I could tell you what Steinberg’s nom de plume was or who was the blowhard he skewered but, well, I just can’t.

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12/03/2011

The Pencil Today:

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SPIRIT IN THE SKY

So, I’m on the alert for lightning bolts directed at me right now because I hereby present one Penn Gillette, one of my fave people on Earth, rating the presidential candidates on their friendliness toward — cringe! — atheists.

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I’m not really trying to cause trouble here (oh, alright, yes I am) but a little balance is in order, no?

The Fox News rightists had apoplexy a week and a half ago when President Obama neglected to mention the all-powerful sugar daddy during his annual Thanksgiving message to the nation. Those campaigning to become president and those fortunate — or unfortunate — enough to become one rarely miss an opportunity to thank their sky-dwelling BFF.

Anybody who hopes to become president has to believe in god, still, today, some 300 years after the Age of Enlightenment and nearly 130 years after Neitzsche pronounced, “Gott ist tot” (god is dead.)

Me? I’m looking for the first prez aspirant who, well, doesn’t believe.

There’s your balance.

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WHO’S AMERICA’S BIGGEST LIAR IN 2011?

Hey, PolitiFact, the website that vets political statements and claims, has released its 2011 Lie of the Year Finalists. The lucky contestants include Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Facebook posters who claimed Republicans have proposed “zero job creation” legislation, and — horrors! — Barack Obama.

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Go there and vote. It’s fun.

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LOOK OVER YONDER

Here’s a good song for your Saturday morning, by Tommy James and the Shondells. It made the charts during that magical summer of 1969.

And just to show what a broad-minded fellow I am, it mentions, um, y’know, that big guy in the sky.

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